Except colleges rarely teach "state of the art", they usually teach theory or programming languages a few years behind the times...
I don't disagree a BS is a great foundation or that keeping up is a good idea, but once you are an experienced engineer it's really not that hard to "keep up" on your own - for free.
Also, given a good, experienced software engineer can make $150-200k+ these days, any time away from that is probably a bigger expense than will ever be paid back through salary raises, etc.
Actually, I think it would be interesting to see a graph of UID vs. registration date. I'm guessing it was fairly exponential at first, and then leveled out in recent years...
Eh, for many schools - even the top ones like Stanford - an MS is just a chance to take more graduate level courses - TAing and research is optional. That said I find it hard to imagine you learn the same things online, since said "top schools" also put a lot of emphasis on sections and fairly complex programming assignments...
Unless you collect degrees because you don't have enough artwork on your wall, it doesn't at all seem like a no-brainer. If you think you will put in effort and LEARN it might be useful, but that would in fact require a brain...
Based on your UID, I assume you have been on/. for ~7-10 years? Why would you want to get a degree if you are an experienced programmed working at a startup? Sorry, but this is a pretty solid troll:)
I'm not a big fan of the English system, but I do have to say the Celsius/Kelvin scale is much less interesting for everyday use. Maybe that's why Americans (beyond the farming and enormous climate variety angles) are much more interested in the weather than most other people - it's more interesting talking about the weather when it's in the range of 0-100 instead of -18-38...
they're the same thing, as an apathetic electorate tolerates this sort of censorship
This I totally agree with.
a work means what it means, not what its author intended it to mean
This is silly. (you can say a work may have more/different meanings to the reader, but to say something someone wrote just plain doesn't mean what they intended it to mean is naive. Without context and intent a lot of writing is useless).
does the law prevent death of the author from taking effect until 70 years after the literal death of the author
I hope you realize that the exact same system is used to distribute warnings regarding wild fires, flash floods, tornadoes and any other natural or man made disasters.
No, it's not. There are separate settings for emergencies and AMBER alerts.
Though in my area of California the only emergency of note is a major earthquake, and the phone will vibrate as soon as that happens whether it's on or off.
Exactly! Implementing a whole new system to do something they probably could have done with SMS messages is a done deal, sunk cost and effort. But they could still easily make it look the same.
I'm guessing part of the issue is carriers don't want people to know how absurdly simple and cheap SMS messages are to handle, and for the most part they should already be *free*/unlimited as a part of *any* data plan. They still want to pretend there is some justification for charging customers $0.10-$0.20 EACH...
Isn't that what they did? Implemented a system that doesn't use SMS, but has the same effect
No, not the same effect - the same effect would be for it to look like a text message, which is the goal of iMessage.
having it flash on your screen only to be discovered in the morning may make the data too stale to use.
That's my *point* - how on earth were all of the people lying in bed at midnight supposed to use it in a timely manner? They'd be better off seeing it in the morning before they left for their daily commute, etc. And probably awake and interested in it instead of tired, pissed off, and turning it off. And those people actually on the road would get a text message (or equivalent) on their phone that they would read when they were able to (not a crazy loud alarm while they are driving, that's probably going to cause much more harm than good...) To be honest, I didn't even really get the full details until I listened to the radio on my way to work and the morning talk show topic was about the pros and cons of the phone messages...
As to how I'd implement it - I'd be *smart* about it (and really, it's not as much the implementation as the *design*). Think of all the amazing things that have been developed for smart phones in the last decade. This design/implementation distinctly smells of government bureaucracy and carrier laziness/requirement. Actually, probably also cell phone manufacturer laziness - I'm sure Apple had a lot to do with the crappy implementation on the iPhone after they decided it wasn't worth doing right...
Once the system is in place there is hardly any money involved in sending out an alert. The attention is minimal
That's totally untrue. I'm not just talking about the phone part, I'm questioning the whole system - remember AMBER alerts are not just about phone messages, but billboards, radio and TV alerts, police response, FEMA review, tons of false positive reports, etc. I read an article where authorities complained that an AMBER alert hoax cost taxpayers large amounts of money all told ($50-$100k+). I assume the hoaxes cost the same as the "real" ones, so it's clearly impossible that there is hardly any money involved.
It's called opportunity cost. These alerts aren't free and resources are limited. The argument that "if it saves one child it will be worth any cost" is unfortunately not a good one when there are so many thousands that could be helped in other, much more common circumstances if the limited resources were used more wisely.
Seriously, do you not understand that the *carrier* can do whatever they want here? They know where all of their customer's cells are all the time, they could implement this with SMS messages just as easily as the system they did end up implementing. Or a system that DIDN'T USE SMS but had the same effect (ever heard of iMessage?) I don't know, seems pretty fucking obvious to me.
But in the end, as I already said, I'm not against the idea, just the implementation. Who the hell cares which protocol is used to get the message to your phone, the key point is they needed to present it in a way that didn't just piss off people so the turned off the feature, and it was a big failure in that regard.
Another option is to use the DND (do not disturb) feature which I believe overrides the national alerts and prevents a 2am wakeup call when you can't help.
My phone was on DND. Didn't help. Still sounded like my house was on fire.
Disabling an important warning system that could save children seems kind of... selfish.
Oh, come on, based on your UID I would have thought you'd be better than that tired line... BUT THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!
If you look into it at *all*, AMBER alerts have been even less useful, with more false positives, than TSA airport screening. "Crime control theater", indeed.
The issue - as usual - isn't that the problem - strangers kidnapping and murdering children - isn't horrible, it's that it's in fact extremely rare and the "solution" spends an absurd amount of time, money, and attention on it instead of the other 99.9% of the actual crimes against children. And the implementation was so bad it managed to piss off people instead of encourage them to help.
Because the carrier networks are not designed to send a geographically targeted SMS message, not to send millions of simultaneous SMS messages.
That's absurd. Did you read that somewhere or just make it up? Either way, just stop and THINK about how they already send millions of simultaneous SMS messages! AT&T sent 630 BILLON text messages in 2011 to ~90M total customers in the US. That's almost 2 billion a day. I think they can handle another few million to their CA customers for an AMBER alert.
It wasn't the middle of the night, I got my message at 10:51 - a time when many people were still awake.
And they resent it at 2:30am just in case it didn't piss off EVERYONE at 10:51.
I'm not arguing the whole concept is bad, just the implementation. What the hell is wrong with a text message? Ok, if it's delayed by a few minutes big deal, the 99.9% of the people who are not on the road until the next morning will get it anyway (and technically it's actually *illegal* in CA - and possibly dangerous - for the 0.1% who are on the road - to check it while driving!) And in fact, they will possibly be MORE likely to get it since the first thing I did on my phone going bats hit crazy was unlock it, which cancelled the message window... I never even got to see what it actually said until I read a news article the next day. If it was just a text message I would have seen it on my phone when I woke up, read it and probably digested the contents a lot better (and not immediately opted out of it like many also did).
Did you get the message on your phone? I did. It was just a plain bad experience for most people. Scared the crap out of me, it vibrated and made a crazy loud noise I'd never heard before even though my phone was in my pocket and supposedly on mute. The first thing I did was disable all future amber alerts (which was the only option in the iPhone's settings), as apparently did millions of other people who were woken up or otherwise freaked out by the way it was delivered. One of the main things they needed to avoid with this "opt out" system was the "car alarm syndrome", and they completely failed that.
Now go look up "Boulevard, CA" on a map and explain why 20+ million people in CA who have never heard of it or live within 300 miles of it should be woken up in the middle of the night about it.
All services implemented the same feature and sent the EXACT same nearly useless message (which was written by a CA agency and approved by FEMA before being sent out).
Makes no sense to single out "AT&T's implementation"... it's mostly the cell phone manufacturer's implementation, and the govt's decision to send it out to the entire state in the middle of the night...
If someone with 10+ years of experience still can't think creatively, they probably never will. And I have worked with a number of people hired as senior developers who were expected to "grow" into a more architectural role (with significant mentoring!) but were totally incapable of it. You can try to argue that no one was able to "unlock their creative potential" but that's just semantics, if they can't rise to it eventually they aren't meant to do it.
Wow, you are really worked up about this, aren't you? Resulting to cursewords over a kitchen gadget is a bit over the top!
Clearly you have an issue with spoon rest hoarding, but don't worry, there are support groups you and your wife can join to get over it. Though if you also have an avocado slicer, egg separator, or garlic peeler you may be a lost cause...
Slashdot Mirror
Except the "UK Constitution" is about as coherent a legal concept as the US patent system...
Except colleges rarely teach "state of the art", they usually teach theory or programming languages a few years behind the times...
I don't disagree a BS is a great foundation or that keeping up is a good idea, but once you are an experienced engineer it's really not that hard to "keep up" on your own - for free.
Also, given a good, experienced software engineer can make $150-200k+ these days, any time away from that is probably a bigger expense than will ever be paid back through salary raises, etc.
No, not really, but I guess you are ;)
Actually, I think it would be interesting to see a graph of UID vs. registration date. I'm guessing it was fairly exponential at first, and then leveled out in recent years...
Eh, for many schools - even the top ones like Stanford - an MS is just a chance to take more graduate level courses - TAing and research is optional. That said I find it hard to imagine you learn the same things online, since said "top schools" also put a lot of emphasis on sections and fairly complex programming assignments...
Unless you collect degrees because you don't have enough artwork on your wall, it doesn't at all seem like a no-brainer. If you think you will put in effort and LEARN it might be useful, but that would in fact require a brain...
Based on your UID, I assume you have been on /. for ~7-10 years? Why would you want to get a degree if you are an experienced programmed working at a startup? Sorry, but this is a pretty solid troll :)
Stealth moose already exist. And they can be more effective at taking out an unsuspecting vehicle than a Predator drone...
So, as long as he makes sure the VTT software understands "tab" he'll be golden...
I'm not a big fan of the English system, but I do have to say the Celsius/Kelvin scale is much less interesting for everyday use. Maybe that's why Americans (beyond the farming and enormous climate variety angles) are much more interested in the weather than most other people - it's more interesting talking about the weather when it's in the range of 0-100 instead of -18-38...
Uh, no, the point is the reference is from an American novel from 1953.
they're the same thing, as an apathetic electorate tolerates this sort of censorship
This I totally agree with.
a work means what it means, not what its author intended it to mean
This is silly.
(you can say a work may have more/different meanings to the reader, but to say something someone wrote just plain doesn't mean what they intended it to mean is naive. Without context and intent a lot of writing is useless).
does the law prevent death of the author from taking effect until 70 years after the literal death of the author
And this is totally off topic...
That reference is for books made of *rayon or cotton*. Since most books are made of cellulose it's pretty bogus.
I hope you realize that the exact same system is used to distribute warnings regarding wild fires, flash floods, tornadoes and any other natural or man made disasters.
No, it's not. There are separate settings for emergencies and AMBER alerts.
Though in my area of California the only emergency of note is a major earthquake, and the phone will vibrate as soon as that happens whether it's on or off.
Exactly! Implementing a whole new system to do something they probably could have done with SMS messages is a done deal, sunk cost and effort. But they could still easily make it look the same.
I'm guessing part of the issue is carriers don't want people to know how absurdly simple and cheap SMS messages are to handle, and for the most part they should already be *free*/unlimited as a part of *any* data plan. They still want to pretend there is some justification for charging customers $0.10-$0.20 EACH...
Isn't that what they did? Implemented a system that doesn't use SMS, but has the same effect
No, not the same effect - the same effect would be for it to look like a text message, which is the goal of iMessage.
having it flash on your screen only to be discovered in the morning may make the data too stale to use.
That's my *point* - how on earth were all of the people lying in bed at midnight supposed to use it in a timely manner? They'd be better off seeing it in the morning before they left for their daily commute, etc. And probably awake and interested in it instead of tired, pissed off, and turning it off. And those people actually on the road would get a text message (or equivalent) on their phone that they would read when they were able to (not a crazy loud alarm while they are driving, that's probably going to cause much more harm than good...) To be honest, I didn't even really get the full details until I listened to the radio on my way to work and the morning talk show topic was about the pros and cons of the phone messages...
As to how I'd implement it - I'd be *smart* about it (and really, it's not as much the implementation as the *design*). Think of all the amazing things that have been developed for smart phones in the last decade. This design/implementation distinctly smells of government bureaucracy and carrier laziness/requirement. Actually, probably also cell phone manufacturer laziness - I'm sure Apple had a lot to do with the crappy implementation on the iPhone after they decided it wasn't worth doing right...
Once the system is in place there is hardly any money involved in sending out an alert. The attention is minimal
That's totally untrue. I'm not just talking about the phone part, I'm questioning the whole system - remember AMBER alerts are not just about phone messages, but billboards, radio and TV alerts, police response, FEMA review, tons of false positive reports, etc. I read an article where authorities complained that an AMBER alert hoax cost taxpayers large amounts of money all told ($50-$100k+). I assume the hoaxes cost the same as the "real" ones, so it's clearly impossible that there is hardly any money involved.
It's called opportunity cost. These alerts aren't free and resources are limited. The argument that "if it saves one child it will be worth any cost" is unfortunately not a good one when there are so many thousands that could be helped in other, much more common circumstances if the limited resources were used more wisely.
Seriously, do you not understand that the *carrier* can do whatever they want here? They know where all of their customer's cells are all the time, they could implement this with SMS messages just as easily as the system they did end up implementing. Or a system that DIDN'T USE SMS but had the same effect (ever heard of iMessage?) I don't know, seems pretty fucking obvious to me.
But in the end, as I already said, I'm not against the idea, just the implementation. Who the hell cares which protocol is used to get the message to your phone, the key point is they needed to present it in a way that didn't just piss off people so the turned off the feature, and it was a big failure in that regard.
Another option is to use the DND (do not disturb) feature which I believe overrides the national alerts and prevents a 2am wakeup call when you can't help.
My phone was on DND. Didn't help. Still sounded like my house was on fire.
Disabling an important warning system that could save children seems kind of... selfish.
Oh, come on, based on your UID I would have thought you'd be better than that tired line... BUT THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!
If you look into it at *all*, AMBER alerts have been even less useful, with more false positives, than TSA airport screening. "Crime control theater", indeed.
The issue - as usual - isn't that the problem - strangers kidnapping and murdering children - isn't horrible, it's that it's in fact extremely rare and the "solution" spends an absurd amount of time, money, and attention on it instead of the other 99.9% of the actual crimes against children. And the implementation was so bad it managed to piss off people instead of encourage them to help.
Because the carrier networks are not designed to send a geographically targeted SMS message, not to send millions of simultaneous SMS messages.
That's absurd. Did you read that somewhere or just make it up? Either way, just stop and THINK about how they already send millions of simultaneous SMS messages! AT&T sent 630 BILLON text messages in 2011 to ~90M total customers in the US. That's almost 2 billion a day. I think they can handle another few million to their CA customers for an AMBER alert.
It wasn't the middle of the night, I got my message at 10:51 - a time when many people were still awake.
And they resent it at 2:30am just in case it didn't piss off EVERYONE at 10:51.
I'm not arguing the whole concept is bad, just the implementation. What the hell is wrong with a text message? Ok, if it's delayed by a few minutes big deal, the 99.9% of the people who are not on the road until the next morning will get it anyway (and technically it's actually *illegal* in CA - and possibly dangerous - for the 0.1% who are on the road - to check it while driving!) And in fact, they will possibly be MORE likely to get it since the first thing I did on my phone going bats hit crazy was unlock it, which cancelled the message window... I never even got to see what it actually said until I read a news article the next day. If it was just a text message I would have seen it on my phone when I woke up, read it and probably digested the contents a lot better (and not immediately opted out of it like many also did).
Did you get the message on your phone? I did. It was just a plain bad experience for most people. Scared the crap out of me, it vibrated and made a crazy loud noise I'd never heard before even though my phone was in my pocket and supposedly on mute. The first thing I did was disable all future amber alerts (which was the only option in the iPhone's settings), as apparently did millions of other people who were woken up or otherwise freaked out by the way it was delivered. One of the main things they needed to avoid with this "opt out" system was the "car alarm syndrome", and they completely failed that.
Now go look up "Boulevard, CA" on a map and explain why 20+ million people in CA who have never heard of it or live within 300 miles of it should be woken up in the middle of the night about it.
All services implemented the same feature and sent the EXACT same nearly useless message (which was written by a CA agency and approved by FEMA before being sent out).
Makes no sense to single out "AT&T's implementation"... it's mostly the cell phone manufacturer's implementation, and the govt's decision to send it out to the entire state in the middle of the night...
If someone with 10+ years of experience still can't think creatively, they probably never will. And I have worked with a number of people hired as senior developers who were expected to "grow" into a more architectural role (with significant mentoring!) but were totally incapable of it. You can try to argue that no one was able to "unlock their creative potential" but that's just semantics, if they can't rise to it eventually they aren't meant to do it.
Wow, you are really worked up about this, aren't you? Resulting to cursewords over a kitchen gadget is a bit over the top!
Clearly you have an issue with spoon rest hoarding, but don't worry, there are support groups you and your wife can join to get over it. Though if you also have an avocado slicer, egg separator, or garlic peeler you may be a lost cause...