Why in the world can't I buy my 3 year old a decent quality hot wheels/matchbox sized Dump truck? Or bull dozer?
You can. My three year-old has an entire fleet of construction trucks that are Matchbox- or Hotwheels-sized. Admittedly some aren't made by either company, but I know for a fact that he has a really nice Matchbox dumptruck -- which, come to think of it, I think came with a construction set of some sort. 'Course, he also has an entire fleet of Hotwheels monster trucks. He puts that stuff together with his larger construction trucks, tractors, and a farm or two, and has hours of fun, sometimes with us, sometimes with his younger sister, or even just by himself. And, yes, we actually love to play with our children and they love it, too. And we can't just dump them in front of a TV and leave them be because they actually want to talk about whatever it is they're watching.
All that aside, though, I do think that Hotwheels and Matchbox need to do something to their fleet. So many of their cars these days seem like they don't do anything. When I was growing up (born in `71) I had a ton of cars from those companies that at least did something. Maybe they had a door or hood that opened or a dump bed that lifted up and down. Doesn't sound like much, but for a little boy that's a big deal and can do quite a bit to inspire imagination. And my son's taking after his old man. The cars that have working lights (yes, even some that are Matchbox- or Hotwheels-sized), moving parts, or even pull-back-n-launch or push-to-launch motors are his favorites. The trucks that you can buy at Hess gas stations around Christmastime are awesome trucks, and he loves 'em. The rest are merely obstacles in his monster truck races or fodder for his construction trucks or tractors.
His friends that come over to play who are raised on/by technology all go nuts over his comparatively primitive trucks. They understand trucks. They know they can do whatever they want with trucks. They're not confined by a game maker's rules, and the fun doesn't have to end after a few minutes or when the batteries die or when the power goes out.
Why go through the trouble of trying to build a nuclear weapon and risking discovery when you could just buy it from a cash-strapped country who views your enemy as their enemy as well? Or why not just steal it from someplace with lax security or cash-strapped personnel?
It was either my freshman or sophomore year in college -- 1989, 1990 -- when the usual gang of entertainers (who'd be better off shutting up and singing or acting) and liberals were running around, saying that if we didn't curtail our environmental abuse, then the world would literally end in ten years. It was either right before or right about the time that the global warming fad started up. Well, those ten years have come and gone, and we're still here.
Something caused and ended the previous ice ages -- and it wasn't us. Oh, and I'm sure that the occasional volcanic eruption has no impact whatsoever on the global climate or pollution, right?
Scientists can't even predict the weather three days out -- hell, in this area, not even twelve hours out! -- with any degree of accuracy, yet they have the audacity to claim that they can accurately predict what'll happen in five, ten, twenty, or a hundred years to the Earth's climate, taking into consideration not only human activity, but also the natural phenomena that they don't fully understand and can't accurately model? Give me a break!
Global warming is more of a political movement, an anti-American, anti-capitalist load of crap than it is a sound climatological theory. How else can one explain that ridiculous Kyoto Treaty?
Unless my memory's foggy, didn't the Dept. of Homeland Security and CERT advise everyone recently to stop using closed-source Internet Explorer, developed by an American company, and switch to open-source Mozilla, an international effort for security reasons? Nah, I must've dreamt that...
The best payment thusfar has been a bottle of 25 year-old Macallan Scotch whisky. That set the precedent for payment for all future services -- a bottle of Scotch whisky or Irish whiskey.
I've never seen outsourcing done because the workforce was too stupid. It's always been because of supposed cost savings. Yes, the American secondary and undergraduate education systems are turning out graduates who are, on average, borderline clueless with regards to basic math, science, engineering, and even English language skills. But to say that this is the primary reason for outsourcing -- I don't buy it. I've rejected a significant number of resumes over the years because the candidates couldn't write well and/or were weak on basic principles, but sooner rather than later, even when before the bubble burst, we always found people who were excellent. There were periods of time there that the majority of the hired candidates were foreign -- and they wrote and spoke better English than native-born Americans.
A company I worked at about six or seven years ago was vigorously lobbying the local universities' Computer Science departments to modify their curricula to teach practical skills, such as C++, Java, systems engineering, software configuration management concepts, concepts of transactions, databases, etc. Our point was that their graduates would be better served, get more bang for their tuition buck, and would have better chances at employment right after graduation if the curricula were more practical. The universities steadfastly refused, insisting instead to continue teaching CS students essentially nothing more than problem-solving with useless and/or home-grown languages.
We had Comcast cable three years ago and lost it when Comcast came through to do the neighborhood-wide upgrade to digital cable. After two weeks of yelling at the customer service people and not receiving the repeatedly promised call from a line supervisor to coordinate a repair of the line feeding our house, we turned to DirecTV. Five or six weeks after we disconnected cable service, Comcast called up and asked if our line/quality problems had been fixed. My response, "Yes, by DirecTV."
We've had DirecTV ever since and have had very reliable service -- more reliable than (analog) Comcast, to be honest. We lose the satellite signal in very heavy rain, and usually for only fifteen minutes at most. (We're more likely to lose power than satellite, to be honest.) We've never lost signal due to trees, clouds, wind, ice, snow, steady rain, dogs sneezing, cats coughing, kids screaming, birds crapping, etc.
As for DVRs, we do have a DirecTV TiVo. It's probably not as good as a standalone series 2 TiVo, but I don't know how well a standalone TiVo integrates with DirecTV as compared to a DirecTV TiVo. Works fine, regardless, and we wouldn't give it up.
I've used Verizon now for ten years, and although they're not exactly God's gift, I haven't had any problems with them, personally. So I won't be switching. But I do know others, especially contractors (construction, electrical, etc.), who use Nextel phones because of their (annoying) walkie-talkie feature but, at the same time, hate Nextel with a passion because of their poor customer service and limited coverage area. (We live five miles from Ground Zero (Washington, D.C.), and in our 'hood Verizon phones get 100% signal; Sprint, between 50 and 75%, and; Nextel, 0%.) Now that Verizon has a walkie-talkie feature, I know several of these guys are going to ditch Nextel, especially if they can keep their cell number. Wireless portability will clinch it for them.
Given the few but monumental failures in the software that has controlled various space missions in recent years, I sure hope this thing's perfect. I could just see the thing getting confused and launching something straight down. "Oops..."
The summary says that the system's results are compared with the live umpire's results at the end of the time. My question is, who died and made the umps gods? Some of those guys need Lasik just as badly as NFL refs do! Given their track record, I'm not sure how anyone could authoritatively say that the system's better than the umps or vice-versa given that the baseline for comparison is at times of dubious quality.
Here in the Washington D.C. metro area we drive closer than 300 feet apart. The system would be engaged the whole time, or damned close to it, and you'd be going through brakes faster than some people used to go through clutches. And given how people dart in and out of lanes here, the system would go insane. This just sounds like a recipe for more accidents. I could be wrong -- I sure hope I am.
HR people are idiots...
on
Ageism in IT?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
This is one reason why, at least in my group, the developers do the interviewing. And, as of late, the lack of age has been a penalty, not a bonus.
We work predominantly, but not entirely, in Internet services. It has to run, all the time, and when it crashes, it better log something meaningful, get off its lazy ass, and get back up and working yesterday. Young kids who have little to no professional programming and development experience don't know much at all, if anything, about fault tolerance and high availability. Nor do they usually fully grasp the importance of error checking and reporting, defensive practices like design-by-contract, CM, QA, etc. I want folks with battle scars. Occasionally you find a youngin' who's dealt with that already, and they work out great, but most haven't.
Now that's not to say that I wouldn't hire a youngin'. I'd hire a recent college grad with at least some of the prerequisite skills and a good attitude to start off with maintenance work and small projects. For example, fix some bugs, do integration testing and explain why the bugs are bugs and what caused them. Sooner or later they can actually explain what happened and how to fix the problem, and then they're off.
As for learning ability, I, frankly, haven't noticed a real difference in the ability to learn between the young and old when it comes to languages, specs, etc. If anything, I've seen older people pick stuff up faster.
I've been in this situation twice. The first time, within six months of our group departing, the division in which we worked saw their revenues tank -- because, after all, our project brought in more money than all other projects within that division combined. Shortly thereafter, the head of the division was sacked, the remaining employees transferred, and the division dissolved. Our departure was en masse -- a dozen or so resignations, all effective on the same day. The second exodus was less dramatic, both in the resulting vacuum and in the results to the company. The company was on guard for poaching, so our departures were spread out. They were able to adjust to our absence and kept on going, although the folks who took over our work ended up working obscene hours and probably contemplated hunting us down like rabid dogs.
My advice to anyone in this situation, regardless of how the economy's doing, is to not quit your current job unless you have a one year's cash reserve, a winning lottery ticket in hand, or another job secured. Otherwise, you might find yourself in a real world of hurt very quickly.
The software industry's not dead, but it does lack innovation and direction. Okay, that's a huge statement, and maybe it's more my own cynicism than it is an accurate view of reality, but here's what I'm getting at. The software industry right now seems like it's more in maintenance mode than it is in innovation mode. So much of what's coming out these days just seems to be rehashes of or tweaks to existing products. And I think people -- well, me, anyway -- have grown tired of the hype, how this new product or protocol will change everything and allow us all to develop better software faster (but not cheaper), to work together better, be more productive, be happier little worker bees, singing "Kumbyah", blah, blah, blah, but it never happened. There was Java, then CORBA, then XML, then EJB, various Microsoft offerings, P2P software and networks, and God knows what else. But things are still the same. The same arguments about software development processes, configuration management, languages, techniques, etc. from five years ago are still going on. From the end-user's perspective, software's larger and buggier than ever and just as poorly documented, supported, and designed (at least from the GUI perspective) as ever. And the P2P stuff right now seems to be a very specific application -- trading.
The industry needs another VisiCalc or Mosaic before it really starts moving again, I think...
This isn't a problem per se with the open software movement but rather a commentary on the quality of the available Linux distributions -- their choice of packages, their installation options, some combination of both. Admittedly I haven't looked at the latest releases of the major Linux distributions to see how their installation programs now behave and what packages they're now including. But over the last several years the major distro vendors keep saying that their installation processes have been simplified and things improved for the average desktop user, but I disagree. The package selection is still overwhelming for the average user. My wife can (re)build a Mac OS X machine with no effort, but I don't think she'd have the patience for a Linux installation.
Plus, if someone wants software that works perfectly, then they shouldn't use a computer. Or at least not one running Windows.
Okay, so Little Johnny's having trouble with arithmetic, so the teacher suggests that he just use a calculator instead. So Little Johnny grows up, never knowing how to do or having extreme trouble with doing basic arithmetic, Algebra, or Calculus on paper because he's been so reliant on calculators and programs like Matlab or Mathematica. Then the day comes when he's under pressure to finish a task or assignment, and the batteries in the calculator are dead or the symbolic manipulator's not working right (server's down, computer's dead). He's screwed. I know this is the modern teaching method, and it's nothing more than a recipe for eventual disaster.
Pilots learn how to fly by wire, but they also learn how to fly without those aids, just in case, and they practice it. At least that's what the pilots I know have told me.
To tell programmers to forego lower-level programming languages because they don't know how to use them properly and switch to higher-level languages is foolish. Sooner or later they're going to have to work with those lower-level languages because of a project requiring hard-core performance, and they'll be so screwed if they don't know what to do or how to do it properly. Plus, if it's not in their mindset to watch out for security and performance issues in language A, then what makes one think that the programmer will do a better job with language B?
Most programmers I know don't see C or C++ as their dream languages, but rather Java with EJB. And on many instances they have to be beaten back from that because they're trying to implement something that's far more complicated and fragile than it should be. Oh, and insecure, too -- not because of buffer overflows or formatting string problems, but because of bad architectural decisions and too much emphasis placed on OODA techniques and not enough placed on security, data integrity, fault tolerance, etc. They end up with systems that, despite being written in a higher-level language, are easily compromised and private data yanked out of a database, content defaced, systems easily taken down, etc.
It doesn't matter what language you use for a task; they each have their own risks, vulnerabilities, quarks, etc. Just as mechanics, construction workers, plumbers, electricians, carpenters have to know how to use their tools, programmers have to know how to use theirs. If they don't, then they should be retrained or sacked or moved to someplace where they can not cause as much damage.
Re:Every office I've worked in....
on
The Tyranny of Email
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· Score: 5, Insightful
...abuses phones just as much, if not more, than email. Why go see them or email them when you can just grab the cellphone, speed-dial 'em, and yack away? Ridiculous... I remember one day a few years ago at my current employer when I was talking with a manager about one of her underlings. She wanted to talk with him, and he was in the office next door. Instead of going to his office to talk, she pulled up the company's website-based phone directory and started looking for his name. I just shook my head and yelled, "Hey, Zippy, get in here!" He was there before she ever found his phone number. (Yes, the website and online phone directory were slow.)
Technology so often times is the reason why we're not more productive...
There were software developers in The Net? Damn, I must've really been asleep during that one!
Not having time to read through 600+ responses, I'm sure that one or more of the many astute Slashdot readers has pointed out that software developers are also able to write viruses that are compatible with and destructive to alien computer systems -- and controllable by Apple PowerBooks to boot! ('Course, I'm talking about Independence Day)
I've been quite frustrated over the years, interviewing recent college graduates whose software development abilities seem to be limited to problem-solving. They didn't know about requirements, design, configuration management, testing, lifecycles. They didn't put as much thought into how others would use their libraries or classes as they should've, eventually causing some serious redesign to be done to make overall integration easier. Only after a couple of years of having design documents ripped apart and pissed upon, having CM staff threaten them with dismemberment, having QA people file a ton of defect reports against their work, and having their phone ring in the wee hours of the night did they understand the bigger picture.
I took a couple of CS courses in college as part of my Math major. They were full-blown CS courses, not courses that had been altered for us Math majors. And they were nothing more than problem-solving courses -- and the problems being solved were so utterly asinine that it was laughable. However, when I studied in Germany I took a CS practicum course where we were assigned the task of creating a graphics program in X Windows on SunOS 4. The class was divided into groups: GUI, backend algorithms, SCM, QA, and requirements and management. There were design sessions and reviews, unit and integration testing, etc, etc, etc. It's the closest I'd ever seen to the real world in academia. I've never heard of any American college or university offering such a course, and no one I've interviewed ever had such a course. That's not to say that it's not offered somewhere, but it just doesn't seem all that common. And that's a real shame.
Let's see. The hard drives in the computers here add up to about 250 GB. About 85 GB of that is being used right now. Backing up 85 GB for a level 0 backup over an ADSL 1.5 Mbps/384Kbps connection would take, oh, 3 - 4 weeks to complete. Ummmm, no thanks, that's okay, I'll pass. Some folks would say that this is perhaps an unrealistic example, but let's consider the Mac G4 with its 120 GB hard drive currently at 33% capacity. That'd take almost two weeks to back up. The incrementals wouldn't be so bad, but those initial and subsequent full backups would truly bite.
My backup solution right now might be a bit involved, but it works. The public server can be restored at the drop of a hat with a kickstart CD, so that one's taken care of. The Macs are backed up via Retrospect Workgroup to one central Mac, and the contents are dumped to DDS4 tape. The internal Linux server's backed up to DDS4 tape. The Mac and Linux full backups are done twice. One copy stays here, the other goes into a safe deposit box at a bank a ways from here. Incrementals are done automatically every night and stashed in the safe -- more for fire protection than thief protection.
It's not fullproof (there are no fullproof methods with computing), but I've used the same method for about three years now, and it's gotten me through some disasters with little or no data loss. Now, if the house safe and bank's vault are both destroyed by fire, earthquake, or nuclear explosion, then I'm screwed. 'Course, I'd probably have bigger concerns on my mind at the time...
So let me see if I'm getting this right. According to their article, I've somehow misconfigured my nameserver if a query for slashdot.org goes from my local nameserver to the root, then to a VeriSign gTLD server, and then to a VA Software (or whatever y'all are known as this year) nameserver? Funny, I thought that's how DNS was supposed to work! I suppose they want us to go set up ~300 forward zones in our nameservers to prevent these unnecessary queries...? Yeah, okay, sure, I'll get right on that after lunch. *snicker*
Repetitive queries from the same nameserver in rapid succession, full-blown email addresses, search engine queries -- those are unnecessary, illegitimate queries that indicate not only bad nameserver configuration, but also bad application software. How many assorted DNS query permutation tricks have the various versions of Netscape Navigator tried over the years?
So if this project works out, how long will it be before the out-of-control personalized advertising on every flat surface that we saw in "Minority Report" comes to life?
Might be time to buy some stock in whoever makes baseballs and baseball bats...
For about 2.5 years I used a Nikon Coolpix 990 for all of our digital photography needs. Pretty much every picture required some time in Photoshop because of the poor placement of the flash in relation to the main lens, because of the Nikon's tendency to run red, and because of the useless red-eye reduction feature. I just replaced it with a Canon EOS D60, and of the 250 pictures I've taken since getting it, less than a dozen have required time in Photoshop. I'd toyed with a Canon Powershot G3, and it seemed like it'd require very little Photoshop time, too. So if you've got a good enough camera and know how to use it, your CPU's clock speed won't matter much at all. You'll be spending more time worrying about hard drive space and how to back up/archive everything.
How could they have left off duct tape!? Just think about all of the household problems, server problems, and co-worker problems (ahem) it's helped solve! It apparently came out during World War II, according to this somewhat disturbing article at About.com.
Slashdot Mirror
You can. My three year-old has an entire fleet of construction trucks that are Matchbox- or Hotwheels-sized. Admittedly some aren't made by either company, but I know for a fact that he has a really nice Matchbox dumptruck -- which, come to think of it, I think came with a construction set of some sort. 'Course, he also has an entire fleet of Hotwheels monster trucks. He puts that stuff together with his larger construction trucks, tractors, and a farm or two, and has hours of fun, sometimes with us, sometimes with his younger sister, or even just by himself. And, yes, we actually love to play with our children and they love it, too. And we can't just dump them in front of a TV and leave them be because they actually want to talk about whatever it is they're watching.
All that aside, though, I do think that Hotwheels and Matchbox need to do something to their fleet. So many of their cars these days seem like they don't do anything. When I was growing up (born in `71) I had a ton of cars from those companies that at least did something. Maybe they had a door or hood that opened or a dump bed that lifted up and down. Doesn't sound like much, but for a little boy that's a big deal and can do quite a bit to inspire imagination. And my son's taking after his old man. The cars that have working lights (yes, even some that are Matchbox- or Hotwheels-sized), moving parts, or even pull-back-n-launch or push-to-launch motors are his favorites. The trucks that you can buy at Hess gas stations around Christmastime are awesome trucks, and he loves 'em. The rest are merely obstacles in his monster truck races or fodder for his construction trucks or tractors.
His friends that come over to play who are raised on/by technology all go nuts over his comparatively primitive trucks. They understand trucks. They know they can do whatever they want with trucks. They're not confined by a game maker's rules, and the fun doesn't have to end after a few minutes or when the batteries die or when the power goes out.
Why go through the trouble of trying to build a nuclear weapon and risking discovery when you could just buy it from a cash-strapped country who views your enemy as their enemy as well? Or why not just steal it from someplace with lax security or cash-strapped personnel?
Something caused and ended the previous ice ages -- and it wasn't us. Oh, and I'm sure that the occasional volcanic eruption has no impact whatsoever on the global climate or pollution, right?
Scientists can't even predict the weather three days out -- hell, in this area, not even twelve hours out! -- with any degree of accuracy, yet they have the audacity to claim that they can accurately predict what'll happen in five, ten, twenty, or a hundred years to the Earth's climate, taking into consideration not only human activity, but also the natural phenomena that they don't fully understand and can't accurately model? Give me a break!
Global warming is more of a political movement, an anti-American, anti-capitalist load of crap than it is a sound climatological theory. How else can one explain that ridiculous Kyoto Treaty?
Unless my memory's foggy, didn't the Dept. of Homeland Security and CERT advise everyone recently to stop using closed-source Internet Explorer, developed by an American company, and switch to open-source Mozilla, an international effort for security reasons? Nah, I must've dreamt that...
The best payment thusfar has been a bottle of 25 year-old Macallan Scotch whisky. That set the precedent for payment for all future services -- a bottle of Scotch whisky or Irish whiskey.
A company I worked at about six or seven years ago was vigorously lobbying the local universities' Computer Science departments to modify their curricula to teach practical skills, such as C++, Java, systems engineering, software configuration management concepts, concepts of transactions, databases, etc. Our point was that their graduates would be better served, get more bang for their tuition buck, and would have better chances at employment right after graduation if the curricula were more practical. The universities steadfastly refused, insisting instead to continue teaching CS students essentially nothing more than problem-solving with useless and/or home-grown languages.
We've had DirecTV ever since and have had very reliable service -- more reliable than (analog) Comcast, to be honest. We lose the satellite signal in very heavy rain, and usually for only fifteen minutes at most. (We're more likely to lose power than satellite, to be honest.) We've never lost signal due to trees, clouds, wind, ice, snow, steady rain, dogs sneezing, cats coughing, kids screaming, birds crapping, etc.
As for DVRs, we do have a DirecTV TiVo. It's probably not as good as a standalone series 2 TiVo, but I don't know how well a standalone TiVo integrates with DirecTV as compared to a DirecTV TiVo. Works fine, regardless, and we wouldn't give it up.
I've used Verizon now for ten years, and although they're not exactly God's gift, I haven't had any problems with them, personally. So I won't be switching. But I do know others, especially contractors (construction, electrical, etc.), who use Nextel phones because of their (annoying) walkie-talkie feature but, at the same time, hate Nextel with a passion because of their poor customer service and limited coverage area. (We live five miles from Ground Zero (Washington, D.C.), and in our 'hood Verizon phones get 100% signal; Sprint, between 50 and 75%, and; Nextel, 0%.) Now that Verizon has a walkie-talkie feature, I know several of these guys are going to ditch Nextel, especially if they can keep their cell number. Wireless portability will clinch it for them.
So, would the feds' use of this network violate the new Conyers-Berman anti-P2P bill?
Given the few but monumental failures in the software that has controlled various space missions in recent years, I sure hope this thing's perfect. I could just see the thing getting confused and launching something straight down. "Oops..."
The summary says that the system's results are compared with the live umpire's results at the end of the time. My question is, who died and made the umps gods? Some of those guys need Lasik just as badly as NFL refs do! Given their track record, I'm not sure how anyone could authoritatively say that the system's better than the umps or vice-versa given that the baseline for comparison is at times of dubious quality.
Here in the Washington D.C. metro area we drive closer than 300 feet apart. The system would be engaged the whole time, or damned close to it, and you'd be going through brakes faster than some people used to go through clutches. And given how people dart in and out of lanes here, the system would go insane. This just sounds like a recipe for more accidents. I could be wrong -- I sure hope I am.
We work predominantly, but not entirely, in Internet services. It has to run, all the time, and when it crashes, it better log something meaningful, get off its lazy ass, and get back up and working yesterday. Young kids who have little to no professional programming and development experience don't know much at all, if anything, about fault tolerance and high availability. Nor do they usually fully grasp the importance of error checking and reporting, defensive practices like design-by-contract, CM, QA, etc. I want folks with battle scars. Occasionally you find a youngin' who's dealt with that already, and they work out great, but most haven't.
Now that's not to say that I wouldn't hire a youngin'. I'd hire a recent college grad with at least some of the prerequisite skills and a good attitude to start off with maintenance work and small projects. For example, fix some bugs, do integration testing and explain why the bugs are bugs and what caused them. Sooner or later they can actually explain what happened and how to fix the problem, and then they're off.
As for learning ability, I, frankly, haven't noticed a real difference in the ability to learn between the young and old when it comes to languages, specs, etc. If anything, I've seen older people pick stuff up faster.
My advice to anyone in this situation, regardless of how the economy's doing, is to not quit your current job unless you have a one year's cash reserve, a winning lottery ticket in hand, or another job secured. Otherwise, you might find yourself in a real world of hurt very quickly.
The industry needs another VisiCalc or Mosaic before it really starts moving again, I think...
Plus, if someone wants software that works perfectly, then they shouldn't use a computer. Or at least not one running Windows.
Pilots learn how to fly by wire, but they also learn how to fly without those aids, just in case, and they practice it. At least that's what the pilots I know have told me.
To tell programmers to forego lower-level programming languages because they don't know how to use them properly and switch to higher-level languages is foolish. Sooner or later they're going to have to work with those lower-level languages because of a project requiring hard-core performance, and they'll be so screwed if they don't know what to do or how to do it properly. Plus, if it's not in their mindset to watch out for security and performance issues in language A, then what makes one think that the programmer will do a better job with language B?
Most programmers I know don't see C or C++ as their dream languages, but rather Java with EJB. And on many instances they have to be beaten back from that because they're trying to implement something that's far more complicated and fragile than it should be. Oh, and insecure, too -- not because of buffer overflows or formatting string problems, but because of bad architectural decisions and too much emphasis placed on OODA techniques and not enough placed on security, data integrity, fault tolerance, etc. They end up with systems that, despite being written in a higher-level language, are easily compromised and private data yanked out of a database, content defaced, systems easily taken down, etc.
It doesn't matter what language you use for a task; they each have their own risks, vulnerabilities, quarks, etc. Just as mechanics, construction workers, plumbers, electricians, carpenters have to know how to use their tools, programmers have to know how to use theirs. If they don't, then they should be retrained or sacked or moved to someplace where they can not cause as much damage.
Technology so often times is the reason why we're not more productive...
Not having time to read through 600+ responses, I'm sure that one or more of the many astute Slashdot readers has pointed out that software developers are also able to write viruses that are compatible with and destructive to alien computer systems -- and controllable by Apple PowerBooks to boot! ('Course, I'm talking about Independence Day)
I took a couple of CS courses in college as part of my Math major. They were full-blown CS courses, not courses that had been altered for us Math majors. And they were nothing more than problem-solving courses -- and the problems being solved were so utterly asinine that it was laughable. However, when I studied in Germany I took a CS practicum course where we were assigned the task of creating a graphics program in X Windows on SunOS 4. The class was divided into groups: GUI, backend algorithms, SCM, QA, and requirements and management. There were design sessions and reviews, unit and integration testing, etc, etc, etc. It's the closest I'd ever seen to the real world in academia. I've never heard of any American college or university offering such a course, and no one I've interviewed ever had such a course. That's not to say that it's not offered somewhere, but it just doesn't seem all that common. And that's a real shame.
My backup solution right now might be a bit involved, but it works. The public server can be restored at the drop of a hat with a kickstart CD, so that one's taken care of. The Macs are backed up via Retrospect Workgroup to one central Mac, and the contents are dumped to DDS4 tape. The internal Linux server's backed up to DDS4 tape. The Mac and Linux full backups are done twice. One copy stays here, the other goes into a safe deposit box at a bank a ways from here. Incrementals are done automatically every night and stashed in the safe -- more for fire protection than thief protection.
It's not fullproof (there are no fullproof methods with computing), but I've used the same method for about three years now, and it's gotten me through some disasters with little or no data loss. Now, if the house safe and bank's vault are both destroyed by fire, earthquake, or nuclear explosion, then I'm screwed. 'Course, I'd probably have bigger concerns on my mind at the time...
Repetitive queries from the same nameserver in rapid succession, full-blown email addresses, search engine queries -- those are unnecessary, illegitimate queries that indicate not only bad nameserver configuration, but also bad application software. How many assorted DNS query permutation tricks have the various versions of Netscape Navigator tried over the years?
Might be time to buy some stock in whoever makes baseballs and baseball bats...
For about 2.5 years I used a Nikon Coolpix 990 for all of our digital photography needs. Pretty much every picture required some time in Photoshop because of the poor placement of the flash in relation to the main lens, because of the Nikon's tendency to run red, and because of the useless red-eye reduction feature. I just replaced it with a Canon EOS D60, and of the 250 pictures I've taken since getting it, less than a dozen have required time in Photoshop. I'd toyed with a Canon Powershot G3, and it seemed like it'd require very little Photoshop time, too. So if you've got a good enough camera and know how to use it, your CPU's clock speed won't matter much at all. You'll be spending more time worrying about hard drive space and how to back up/archive everything.
How could they have left off duct tape!? Just think about all of the household problems, server problems, and co-worker problems (ahem) it's helped solve! It apparently came out during World War II, according to this somewhat disturbing article at About.com.