There's a lot of ageism now in the software engineering sector. I'm over 40, first began programming BASIC and C in the 1980s, and have kept current: I now program in Python and JavaScript. Does the latter matter to employers? Not that I see. I'm unemployed and can barely get an interview or a meeting, let alone get hired after they see that I have a couple of strands of grey hair (I still have all my hair, though). Doesn't matter how I dress, or if I wear a hoodie and chucks. I'm old, and apparently that means I'm worthless in this market.
<i>Owing to a bug in one of the numerous package upgrade scripts, upgrading to Dapper completely hosed my system (as it did to quite a few other Ubuntu users), and then I discovered that my Mondo backups that I'd burnt the day before were corrupted:(</i>
Dittos on the whole government contractor vs. private shop thing. If you're disciplined, you can exist peacefully and get a nice paycheck workin for the Man. You just have to be able to work with a wider variety of people...people who don't necessarily have every episode of Trek or Babylon 5 memorized.
BTW, can anybody out there comment on PBX tech work now? Anybody out on the field in a truck, punching stuff down that was doing a higher-level job last year?
What about people sending attachments when they should be using plaintext?
I'm sick and tired of looking at how much bandwidth I see wasted on the mailserver here by people opening MSWord attachments telling them they didn't get a Job Somewhere Else.
Why would anyone send a message consisting of "Thank you for applying, after a review of your experience and credentials, blah blah blah" as an attachment???
Fingers are pointing everywhere, but it'll end up being a war between sysads and lusers unless we ALL take the view that it starts with us. So don't attach some bloat when you could just send text.
Sorry, I had meant to say "potato." I'm still getting used to the naming conventions of Debian. I guess I'm going to just get XF4.x burned at work and take it home.
I just got the Debian woody (2.2r4) i386 set of binaries from CheapBytes. Maybe someday when xDSL becomes less of a pain in the ass, I can have all the current packages.
I was disappointed that the binaries came with XFree86 3.x Why? Can somebody point me to a CD vendor with the latest (latest as in today) images?
OK, you made your point. It's stupid to complain about the default GUI when you can change it to "classic." I dual-boot w/W2K (mostly for games) and I'd rather avoid the SAP, Passport, and other licensing fascism.
But the fact remains that this IS the default GUI, and it DOES look very Fisher-Price. Why does M$ think computer professionals (XP Professional) need to be visually condescended to? Do they really think all consumers are idiots and buy whatever is put in front of them?
increment = Pronunciation: 'i[ng]-kr&-m&nt, 'in-
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin incrementum, from increscere to increase
Date: 15th century
1 : the action or process of increasing especially in quantity or value : ENLARGEMENT
2 a : something gained or added b : one of a series of regular consecutive additions c : a minute increase in quantity
3 : the amount or degree by which something changes; especially : the amount of positive or negative change in the value of one or more of a set of variables
Hopefully the 486'ers won't get their way
on
Five Years of KDE
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· Score: 1
Key word is "almost." 2.2 is incredible; of course the FUD has always been "OS desktops are about cloning proprietary desktops." We HAVE come a long way, baby. That being said, I hope the K people don't listen to the 486'ers and increase the functionality regardless of how many cries of "BLOAT, BLOAT!" they no doubt hear these days.
Re:Oh yea! Especailly the new Harry Potter set!
on
Battle Over Blocks
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· Score: 1
"He and I have very different ideas about Legos," says Ethan's mom, Lisa Gates, a dean at Wesleyan University, who is in Orlando on vacation. "I prefer the free-form bricks, where he can make his own universe. Ethan is most drawn to the theme-based scenarios. He has an Egyptian-pyramid-dig set and some Star Wars sets. He's fixated on the directions -- when he builds it, he wants it to look exactly like it looks on the box. That introduces a note of anxiety into playing with Legos -- did I do it right?"
Look, the new Legos have been dumbed down to death. They're just models with cute figurines included. No creativity necessary---and don't even get me started on the Jack Stone series!!!
The first writer pointed out how stupid and muddled their current catalogue is. They are trying desperately to hit on something, anything, that can compete with Pokemon. They should just forget about appealing to modern kids raised on a glut of information, play-dates, and micro-managed lives...and do what they can do to appeal to the AFOL's.
If you think Legos aren't up to your level of creativity, just check out Eric Harshbarger's Lego Grandfather Clock, which includes working mechanics:
http://www.ericharshbarger.org/lego/clock.html
I got to play with leftover Erector sets given up by older kids. I liked them, but they were going out by the time I was old enough to get that creative. The original Legos, though...you could really get creative with those. I hate the new kits, what's the point of having 25 pieces in a box with a figure? No fun there...someone at Lego said they were for little kids, but why not just make 'em pre-formed? Plus, they have pieces small enough for tykes to swallow, and that's a big P.C. no-no.
"All e-mail, calls, AND video monitoring are *standard* for most companies"??? (emphasis mine).
I don't know who you work for, but if I were you I'd start looking for alternative employment...
Slashdot Mirror
There's a lot of ageism now in the software engineering sector. I'm over 40, first began programming BASIC and C in the 1980s, and have kept current: I now program in Python and JavaScript. Does the latter matter to employers? Not that I see. I'm unemployed and can barely get an interview or a meeting, let alone get hired after they see that I have a couple of strands of grey hair (I still have all my hair, though). Doesn't matter how I dress, or if I wear a hoodie and chucks. I'm old, and apparently that means I'm worthless in this market.
Some folks on the Ubuntu forums advocate changing the hotkey to SHIFT+SPACE. Do that, and you'll have the command functionality in Linux.
It's a bad idea though for most people, esp. if you use capital letters when entering something.
<i>Owing to a bug in one of the numerous package upgrade scripts, upgrading to Dapper completely hosed my system (as it did to quite a few other Ubuntu users), and then I discovered that my Mondo backups that I'd burnt the day before were corrupted :(</i>
Thanks for the heads-up on Mondo.
I'm sure there are some <a href="http://www.kevinpoulsen.com/bio.html">ex- SRI employees</a> that would find this technology useful.
"The German way of thinking." Hmmm...would that include staying the hell out of Switzerland???
Dittos on the whole government contractor vs. private shop thing. If you're disciplined, you can exist peacefully and get a nice paycheck workin for the Man. You just have to be able to work with a wider variety of people...people who don't necessarily have every episode of Trek or Babylon 5 memorized.
BTW, can anybody out there comment on PBX tech work now? Anybody out on the field in a truck, punching stuff down that was doing a higher-level job last year?
Wow, and he gets a score of 3??? Why do trolls keep getting modded up?
What about people sending attachments when they should be using plaintext?
I'm sick and tired of looking at how much bandwidth I see wasted on the mailserver here by people opening MSWord attachments telling them they didn't get a Job Somewhere Else.
Why would anyone send a message consisting of "Thank you for applying, after a review of your experience and credentials, blah blah blah" as an attachment???
Fingers are pointing everywhere, but it'll end up being a war between sysads and lusers unless we ALL take the view that it starts with us. So don't attach some bloat when you could just send text.
Sorry, I had meant to say "potato." I'm still getting used to the naming conventions of Debian. I guess I'm going to just get XF4.x burned at work and take it home.
I just got the Debian woody (2.2r4) i386 set of binaries from CheapBytes. Maybe someday when xDSL becomes less of a pain in the ass, I can have all the current packages.
I was disappointed that the binaries came with XFree86 3.x Why? Can somebody point me to a CD vendor with the latest (latest as in today) images?
The BEST thing about it is that you don't have to reinstall every time you update your kernel.
That, combined with the command line, was enough for me to switch about a year ago.
Let me get this straight: updates are bad, bad, bad???
Updates and patches are the biggest reason I run Linux now. Wouldn't you rather update than run old shit?
OK, you made your point. It's stupid to complain about the default GUI when you can change it to "classic." I dual-boot w/W2K (mostly for games) and I'd rather avoid the SAP, Passport, and other licensing fascism.
But the fact remains that this IS the default GUI, and it DOES look very Fisher-Price. Why does M$ think computer professionals (XP Professional) need to be visually condescended to? Do they really think all consumers are idiots and buy whatever is put in front of them?
Actually, VMS=WNT incrementally.
increment = Pronunciation: 'i[ng]-kr&-m&nt, 'in-
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin incrementum, from increscere to increase
Date: 15th century
1 : the action or process of increasing especially in quantity or value : ENLARGEMENT
2 a : something gained or added b : one of a series of regular consecutive additions c : a minute increase in quantity
3 : the amount or degree by which something changes; especially : the amount of positive or negative change in the value of one or more of a set of variables
Key word is "almost." 2.2 is incredible; of course the FUD has always been "OS desktops are about cloning proprietary desktops." We HAVE come a long way, baby. That being said, I hope the K people don't listen to the 486'ers and increase the functionality regardless of how many cries of "BLOAT, BLOAT!" they no doubt hear these days.
pr0n and mp3's. Simple, huh?
"He and I have very different ideas about Legos," says Ethan's mom, Lisa Gates, a dean at Wesleyan University, who is in Orlando on vacation. "I prefer the free-form bricks, where he can make his own universe. Ethan is most drawn to the theme-based scenarios. He has an Egyptian-pyramid-dig set and some Star Wars sets. He's fixated on the directions -- when he builds it, he wants it to look exactly like it looks on the box. That introduces a note of anxiety into playing with Legos -- did I do it right?"
Look, the new Legos have been dumbed down to death. They're just models with cute figurines included. No creativity necessary---and don't even get me started on the Jack Stone series!!!
The first writer pointed out how stupid and muddled their current catalogue is. They are trying desperately to hit on something, anything, that can compete with Pokemon. They should just forget about appealing to modern kids raised on a glut of information, play-dates, and micro-managed lives...and do what they can do to appeal to the AFOL's.
If you think Legos aren't up to your level of creativity, just check out Eric Harshbarger's Lego Grandfather Clock, which includes working mechanics: http://www.ericharshbarger.org/lego/clock.html I got to play with leftover Erector sets given up by older kids. I liked them, but they were going out by the time I was old enough to get that creative. The original Legos, though...you could really get creative with those. I hate the new kits, what's the point of having 25 pieces in a box with a figure? No fun there...someone at Lego said they were for little kids, but why not just make 'em pre-formed? Plus, they have pieces small enough for tykes to swallow, and that's a big P.C. no-no.
"All e-mail, calls, AND video monitoring are *standard* for most companies"??? (emphasis mine). I don't know who you work for, but if I were you I'd start looking for alternative employment...