That "big boobed chick" has a name - Vanessa Angel. She was the genie in the Weird Science series.
Her character is human, but has a Goa'uld symbiot. Except they call themselves Tok'ra and are good guys. O'Neill was tempted, but he has strong reasons to distrust the Goa'uld and doesn't fully trust the Tok'ra.
It's no crime to "knock off" Enemy Mine because that story predated that movie by a long time. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the story dates to the ancient Greeks.
Finally, it was Col. O'Neill and Major Carter who were locked up. Daniel and Teal'c were 'clean.'
It's not just women who are pissed at the change in the series, and it's not just because a character was killed off.
The conspiracy angle has seriously polluted most of the recent shows. As an exercise on another board we've been reframing some of the recent "non-conspiracy" stories without the adolescent confrontation that's become so common recently. Without exception, everyone agreed that these modified story lines were better drama and closer to the original feel of the episode.
To be blunt, the series was interesting to adults. But now, dude, you diss'd my man and I gotta cut you! There's nothing wrong with shows directed at teenage males who want to see a righteous ass-kicking, but that's not what Stargate SG-1 has been. This change is as unwanted as if ER became a horror story with at least one vampire victim every week, or the Friends storyline suddenly focused on Monica beating the crap out of Chandler every week and all of his friends abandoned him because they couldn't deal with the spousal abuse.
Frank Herbert had an interesting point in his books involving the Gowachin. Under their system, judges could be biased but not prejudiced. The former meant they would give one side every possible benefit of the doubt, and then some, but could still rule against them. The latter meant they would never rule against one side.
I, and I suspect most other people, have the same attitude about journalism. We don't mind that there's a slant, but we want there to be at least an attempt at balance.
Since there's a lot of uncertainty over exactly what.Net does, nobody should mind the occasional piece pointing out the expected benefits. The piece can even gush a bit.
But this article made it sound like the Gnome team was ecstatic to follow Bill's brilliant lead. In fact, one key guy said that it will have to work with.Net years from now, but even that concession was meet with a lot of hostility by a lot of developers.
This article made it sound like Microsoft had a few minor problems with security in the past, but the have bright people working on the problem and it's all behind us now. In fact, many of us believe that the.Net model has some serious and fundamental security flaws that will be hard to close. and rushing it towards production just makes it harder to fix these problems.
Finally he assured everyone that there would be plenty of authentication services other than Passport, despite the fact that this is one area that Microsoft is holding close to its chest and it's far from certain that the alternate authentication services will be useful.
Overall, this piece wasn't biased, it was flat-out prejudiced. Nothing.net did was wrong, none of the critics have valid points, hell there aren't really any serious critics at all!
Re: Now Waaaaait a Minute here....
on
.NETly News
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· Score: 3, Interesting
... or that guy sucking up to ObL in one of the tapes found in Afghanistan.
I thought about this, but two things make it hard for me to dismiss it as just a troll:
It was published under the "Technology & Business" banner, not "This Just Posted" and then rotated down into the "Recently in Salon" catchall.
It's well-known that Salon has been having financial troubles, not least because many of the people who would have paid for subscriptions have been caught in the economic slowdown and are unable to justify even $30 on a luxury.
I want to dismiss it as a troll. If there was any type of framing by the usual staff, or it was within a week of April 1st I wouldn't give it a second thought.
But now I keep coming back to the fact that the Microsoft PR machine can link to this seemingly glowing comment in "Linux friendly" Salon. We may know it's totally out of character, but a PHB concerned about Hailstorm or.Net implementation issues will take it at face value.
That makes me wonder if I've been playing the fool on other stories. Salon has been valuable precisely because the articles often surprise me, but it's precisely because I'm not knowledgeable about those topics that I'll mistake a 'wink, wink, nudge, nudge' troll for a serious piece.
Microsoft has a mixed record on PR firms. Sometimes they're very good, sometimes they make stupid but probably innocent mistakes, and sometimes they seem to be trolling.
A classic example of the latter was a product launch ad with very impressive music. Impressive funeral music for the damned. I remember recognizing the piece and thinking that it was an odd choice for a product launch... and a few days later it was yanked and the PR firm fired.
So I keep going around in circles on this - was it entirely written by an overzealous VB hack? Or did he flesh out an article outlined by a PR firm? The piece does not sound like something a tech author would write - it strikes the same false note.
Salon lost major tech and street cred
on
.NETly News
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· Score: 5, Insightful
When I read that Salon puff piece last night, I had to check my calendar. Twice. Yet it stubbornly refused to be April Fools Day.
I wouldn't have minded a piece on.NET. I wouldn't have minded, much, a softball piece on.NET.
But that fawning piece of crap was inexcusable. It was clearly written by the marketing department - no tech would ever favorably compare Bill Gates to Guttenberg - but it was presented as a straight story.
Now I'm going to find it impossible to take any other story the post seriously. I will always have to ask who really wrote the piece.
That's a shame - Salon has been a good thorn in the side of the powerful for a long time. Look at the old stories on the "Drug Czar" paying for anti-drug messages in prime time entertainment shows, or their coverage of the RIAA. But now there will always be a loud voice in the back of my head asking if this is another PR piece by the powerful.
Huh? I thought that the "demonstration" of this damage was shown to be fradulent. The videotape testimony claiming to show the consequences of removing IE was shown to actually involve two separate systems. The Microsoft attorney managed to avoid disciplinary actions, but it totally shredded Microsoft's credibility.
Meanwhile a prosecution witness testified that he was able to remove most of IE without the serious damage claimed by Microsoft.
It's a Big Lie of the first order if Microsoft is now claiming that they "proved" this during the trial.
This is the CRIMINAL anti-trust case, not the civil anti-trust case that MS tried to get dismissed by having the education market handed to it.
This is action is also being taken during the penalty phase after conviction of criminal charges. That eliminates any legal presumption of innocence - the legal burden is now on the convicted party to prove innocence, not the state to prove guilt. (That's also why it's so hard to get convictions overturned even when new evidence is discovered.)
As for the bench warrant, all it requires is that the judge believe that the most expedient way to resolve the matter is to seize those servers. I doubt there are many experts who would look at Microsoft's performance during the trial phase and not foresee months of stonewalling unless the experts had full access to all source from the first day - and that would require seizure. I would expect many experts would make this a condition of serving in this role, to avoid wasting their own time.
If the court orders this and selects competent experts, they aren't going to wait while MS prepares a very special set of media. They will send in Federal Marshals to take control of the MS servers containing all source code for anything that ends up on the Windows OEM disc and copy *everything* on them. MS won't regain access to its systems until the experts can build the Windows OEM disc on their own systems.
If Microsoft claims it doesn't know where all of the source code is stored (yeah, right), that's not a problem. The Marshals can seize the entire Redmond campus just as easily as they can seize a few server rooms. They should be able to seize the computers and media from all offices within a week or so, then they can sort it out back in the lab. Microsoft can easily afford to replace all of those computers. (The contents are another matter, but they'll have to request copies from the Marshals.)
Think this is unrealistic? Ask any victim of a BSA raid - and they've only been alleged of doing something wrong. Microsoft has had its day in court, been found guilty (and this verdict has been sustained on appeal), and is now being told to sustain its claims during the penalty phase.
Privacy isn't explicitly named, but when you look at the history of the Bill of Rights it is clear that the framers thought it was self-evident. When the states insisted on an explicit Bill of Rights, they very clearly enumerated the privacy issues of the day but neglected to explicitly list privacy itself.
Before we read too much into this oversight, it's important to remember that most of the privacy issues we face today are tied advances in technology that they could have never anticipated.
When you have never seen a message travel faster than walking pace, it's hard to anticipate the needs of a society where conversations with a person on the other side of the continent are unnoteworthy.
There's also a considerable expense involved in fighting for your rights. In the Colorado case,
The Tattered Cover Bookstore is one of the largest independent bookstores in the nation and has a well-earned reputation for taking the needs of an informed populace seriously. E.g., carrying books too controversial for the chains, or fighting overly-broad "anti-obscenity" constitutional amendments.
Would the large corporate chain bookstores be willing to fight this battle? Would it even come up, or would they only carry "safe" books?
Are you trying to ensure that this idea would never fly? This is a high school class, not a college class, and all it takes is one "concerned parent" yapping at the school board meeting or to the local investigative reporter about their poor 15-year-old being exposed to scary ideas for the principal and/or school board to show their true colors (bright yellow).
If a student memories "indecent" material, the teacher (and principal) are exposed to charges of contributing the deliquency of a minor. Doesn't matter that the student selected the material themselves if you have a grandstanding prosecutor out to make a name for himself.
The "scripture" point is a bit more subtle. You're probably thinking of somebody doing exactly what I suggested, while I'm concerned about a student using this to proselytize and force the school to deal with issues that it's been trying to put off as no-win situations.
You might be able to productively spend 40 hours/week responding to job listings, but in much of the country there just aren't that many positions available.
Be cruel. Tell them to select a passage - any passage - that they will protect from the firemen. It just has to be at least 2000 words, and they have to memorize it and recite it during class.
(Obviously there would be some restrictions on content - nothing indecent, and possibly no scripture.)
There's actually a connection to your question here. Technology has allowed us to avoid developing our own memories, yet the same technology is now making it easy to rewrite history in a way that's nearly indetectable. Changing microfilm copies of a newspaper in a dozen libraries is hard, changing a database entry feeding a newspaper web site is trivial.
We need to develop our memory, and a 2000 word passage is long enough to be a real challenge to your students. Yet it's nothing compared to a novel, and maybe a third to half of a 30-minute sitcom.
As for looking out of state, I've been doing that since this summer when it became clear that the local market was unlikely to recover for years. It's no good - many recruiters and companies don't want to talk to you unless you're local. Even if you're willing to pay for your own relocation they won't talk to you unless you have a local address and phone number.
It's irrational and easily circumvented by anyone with a bit of money to spare - find the "roommates wanted" section of the newspaper and pay someone to add your name to the answering machine, to accept mail for you, etc. But when you've been unemployed for a year that's a lot of money with little to show for it - remember that you need to do this for every city.
As for using the old college network, that depends on the school and the local job market. I left Florida for a reason, and even my parents have finally accepted that the job market there is just too small -- you have a lot of tourism-driven jobs, but relatively few decent jobs for the population.
I hate to burst your bubble, but the real reason for your success was that you were able to get in front of the CTO and DirEng.
Get me in front of the people actually doing the work, and my success rate at turning interviews to offers is very high. Same thing with my friends. But that doesn't mean squat when you're forced to deal with clueless HR people. Hell, a friend of mine was basically told to expect an offer, but the HR person sat on it and wouldn't talk to either him or the project manager for weeks! The HR person didn't give a damn about slipped schedules, poor morale (since this open position was forcing people to function in roles where they weren't comfortable), etc.
Health insurance is cheap - when young/healthy
on
The Laid-off Techie
·
· Score: 2
Health insurance is remarkably affordable, if you lie about your medical history.
The problem is that insurance companies are so risk adverse that they'll take minor things and blow them up into life-threatening illnesses. I could go into a doctor today, have a complete physical, and be told that I'm in pretty good shape except for slightly elevated cholesterol - something I'm already addressing with changes in diet and exercise. But to the health insurance providers, I'm completely uninsurable for two separate reasons, both minor and both years ago, and only have insurance because I qualified for the state's uninsurable insurance pool. It's insane to say situational bipolar illness (basically, if the stress gets too high I start to show mood swings, so I've learned to control the stress!) or a viral infection that 99% of the rest of world has a childhood illness with no ill long-term effect puts me in the same risk category as late-stage AIDS patients and recent cancer survivors, but according to the insurance companies it does.
Re:"hackers" vs. "professional software engineers"
on
The Laid-off Techie
·
· Score: 2
A lot of us know both, and we're still looking for a job.
In my experience, most seem to be serious. I've gotten exactly *zero* responses, not even an acknowledgement that my resume has been received, when responding to positions were I had 80+% of the wish list.
An example from last week: company looking for somebody with Unix admin experience, DBA experience (designing schemas), Pro*C, java and visual basic. (The last two were used by the client side of a client/server application.) That's usually (at least) four separate positions - unix admin, DBA/stored procedures, client programmer and manager/coordinator. I don't have VB, but I have everything else *and* I know enough J2EE to help identify a long-term strategy.
But I don't have VB - a language that's oh so hard to pick up when you only know C, C++, Java, Ada and assembler - so I haven't even gotten an ack that my resume was received. I would just pick up a "VB for dummies" book and get up to speed, but I know from talking to some recruiters that the clients with laundry lists rarely count experience unless you were paid for it - a solid month of self-directed training is worth less than having an unopened box on a shelf at your last job!
Grandpa walked 4 miles uphill in snow. Both ways.
on
The Laid-off Techie
·
· Score: 2
That article was straight out of the 1970s.
Today some people job hop, but many more people sign on for a project and move on when the project (or their part of it) is finished. If you stay on as a "staff programmer," not only do you not get the tasks that help you develop your skills (they go to experts brought on board for the project), you also have a harder time getting your next job because HR departments increasingly expect specialization.
The older developers tend to be in project management or senior guru roles, something that takes much more time than any simple development task.
I saw one position (on Dice?) that wanted 10+ years of Cobol and Java. Like the number of people who have used both Cobol and Java professionally during the past decade can be counted on more than the fingers on one thumb.
Actually punch card ballots solve a number of real problems. They're tangible, they can audited, they can be repeatedly recounted, they can be archived. Heaven help you if there are problems with some of these "improved" systems.
But punch card technology covers everything from the heavy punch used in my precinct (which takes a sizeable bite out of two-faced card - hard to overlook hanging chads) and the unmarked small holes produced with a stylus in the "vote-o-matic" system used in Palm Beach County, Florida. Our system isn't perfect, but it's hardly an indefensible anachronism.
I've used ecpg (ESQL/C, similar to Oracle's Pro*C) since I started using postgresql years ago, and have had no problems at all accessing the data from C or C++ code.
If you're using java then this is even more of a no-brainer - just used the JDBC binding.
Slashdot Mirror
That "big boobed chick" has a name - Vanessa Angel. She was the genie in the Weird Science series.
Her character is human, but has a Goa'uld symbiot. Except they call themselves Tok'ra and are good guys. O'Neill was tempted, but he has strong reasons to distrust the Goa'uld and doesn't fully trust the Tok'ra.
It's no crime to "knock off" Enemy Mine because that story predated that movie by a long time. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the story dates to the ancient Greeks.
Finally, it was Col. O'Neill and Major Carter who were locked up. Daniel and Teal'c were 'clean.'
It's not just women who are pissed at the change in the series, and it's not just because a character was killed off.
The conspiracy angle has seriously polluted most of the recent shows. As an exercise on another board we've been reframing some of the recent "non-conspiracy" stories without the adolescent confrontation that's become so common recently. Without exception, everyone agreed that these modified story lines were better drama and closer to the original feel of the episode.
To be blunt, the series was interesting to adults. But now, dude, you diss'd my man and I gotta cut you! There's nothing wrong with shows directed at teenage males who want to see a righteous ass-kicking, but that's not what Stargate SG-1 has been. This change is as unwanted as if ER became a horror story with at least one vampire victim every week, or the Friends storyline suddenly focused on Monica beating the crap out of Chandler every week and all of his friends abandoned him because they couldn't deal with the spousal abuse.
They've already annouced that the sixth season - the Sci Fi channel one - will be the last one.
What's suddenly up in the air is the future of the second Stargate movie and the spinoff series Stargate: Atlantis.
Frank Herbert had an interesting point in his books involving the Gowachin. Under their system, judges could be biased but not prejudiced. The former meant they would give one side every possible benefit of the doubt, and then some, but could still rule against them. The latter meant they would never rule against one side.
.Net does, nobody should mind the occasional piece pointing out the expected benefits. The piece can even gush a bit.
.Net years from now, but even that concession was meet with a lot of hostility by a lot of developers.
.Net model has some serious and fundamental security flaws that will be hard to close. and rushing it towards production just makes it harder to fix these problems.
.net did was wrong, none of the critics have valid points, hell there aren't really any serious critics at all!
I, and I suspect most other people, have the same attitude about journalism. We don't mind that there's a slant, but we want there to be at least an attempt at balance.
Since there's a lot of uncertainty over exactly what
But this article made it sound like the Gnome team was ecstatic to follow Bill's brilliant lead. In fact, one key guy said that it will have to work with
This article made it sound like Microsoft had a few minor problems with security in the past, but the have bright people working on the problem and it's all behind us now. In fact, many of us believe that the
Finally he assured everyone that there would be plenty of authentication services other than Passport, despite the fact that this is one area that Microsoft is holding close to its chest and it's far from certain that the alternate authentication services will be useful.
Overall, this piece wasn't biased, it was flat-out prejudiced. Nothing
I thought about this, but two things make it hard for me to dismiss it as just a troll:
I want to dismiss it as a troll. If there was any type of framing by the usual staff, or it was within a week of April 1st I wouldn't give it a second thought.
But now I keep coming back to the fact that the Microsoft PR machine can link to this seemingly glowing comment in "Linux friendly" Salon. We may know it's totally out of character, but a PHB concerned about Hailstorm or
That makes me wonder if I've been playing the fool on other stories. Salon has been valuable precisely because the articles often surprise me, but it's precisely because I'm not knowledgeable about those topics that I'll mistake a 'wink, wink, nudge, nudge' troll for a serious piece.
Microsoft has a mixed record on PR firms. Sometimes they're very good, sometimes they make stupid but probably innocent mistakes, and sometimes they seem to be trolling.
A classic example of the latter was a product launch ad with very impressive music. Impressive funeral music for the damned. I remember recognizing the piece and thinking that it was an odd choice for a product launch... and a few days later it was yanked and the PR firm fired.
So I keep going around in circles on this - was it entirely written by an overzealous VB hack? Or did he flesh out an article outlined by a PR firm? The piece does not sound like something a tech author would write - it strikes the same false note.
When I read that Salon puff piece last night, I had to check my calendar. Twice. Yet it stubbornly refused to be April Fools Day.
.NET. I wouldn't have minded, much, a softball piece on .NET.
I wouldn't have minded a piece on
But that fawning piece of crap was inexcusable. It was clearly written by the marketing department - no tech would ever favorably compare Bill Gates to Guttenberg - but it was presented as a straight story.
Now I'm going to find it impossible to take any other story the post seriously. I will always have to ask who really wrote the piece.
That's a shame - Salon has been a good thorn in the side of the powerful for a long time. Look at the old stories on the "Drug Czar" paying for anti-drug messages in prime time entertainment shows, or their coverage of the RIAA. But now there will always be a loud voice in the back of my head asking if this is another PR piece by the powerful.
Huh? I thought that the "demonstration" of this damage was shown to be fradulent. The videotape testimony claiming to show the consequences of removing IE was shown to actually involve two separate systems. The Microsoft attorney managed to avoid disciplinary actions, but it totally shredded Microsoft's credibility.
Meanwhile a prosecution witness testified that he was able to remove most of IE without the serious damage claimed by Microsoft.
It's a Big Lie of the first order if Microsoft is now claiming that they "proved" this during the trial.
This is the CRIMINAL anti-trust case, not the civil anti-trust case that MS tried to get dismissed by having the education market handed to it.
This is action is also being taken during the penalty phase after conviction of criminal charges. That eliminates any legal presumption of innocence - the legal burden is now on the convicted party to prove innocence, not the state to prove guilt. (That's also why it's so hard to get convictions overturned even when new evidence is discovered.)
As for the bench warrant, all it requires is that the judge believe that the most expedient way to resolve the matter is to seize those servers. I doubt there are many experts who would look at Microsoft's performance during the trial phase and not foresee months of stonewalling unless the experts had full access to all source from the first day - and that would require seizure. I would expect many experts would make this a condition of serving in this role, to avoid wasting their own time.
The states are the plantiffs, but it's still a case before the US Federal Court and the Federal Marshals are the enforcement arm of those courts.
It would take a week or so, max.
If the court orders this and selects competent experts, they aren't going to wait while MS prepares a very special set of media. They will send in Federal Marshals to take control of the MS servers containing all source code for anything that ends up on the Windows OEM disc and copy *everything* on them. MS won't regain access to its systems until the experts can build the Windows OEM disc on their own systems.
If Microsoft claims it doesn't know where all of the source code is stored (yeah, right), that's not a problem. The Marshals can seize the entire Redmond campus just as easily as they can seize a few server rooms. They should be able to seize the computers and media from all offices within a week or so, then they can sort it out back in the lab. Microsoft can easily afford to replace all of those computers. (The contents are another matter, but they'll have to request copies from the Marshals.)
Think this is unrealistic? Ask any victim of a BSA raid - and they've only been alleged of doing something wrong. Microsoft has had its day in court, been found guilty (and this verdict has been sustained on appeal), and is now being told to sustain its claims during the penalty phase.
Privacy isn't explicitly named, but when you look at the history of the Bill of Rights it is clear that the framers thought it was self-evident. When the states insisted on an explicit Bill of Rights, they very clearly enumerated the privacy issues of the day but neglected to explicitly list privacy itself.
Before we read too much into this oversight, it's important to remember that most of the privacy issues we face today are tied advances in technology that they could have never anticipated.
When you have never seen a message travel faster than walking pace, it's hard to anticipate the needs of a society where conversations with a person on the other side of the continent are unnoteworthy.
There's also a considerable expense involved in fighting for your rights. In the Colorado case,
The Tattered Cover Bookstore is one of the largest independent bookstores in the nation and has a well-earned reputation for taking the needs of an informed populace seriously. E.g., carrying books too controversial for the chains, or fighting overly-broad "anti-obscenity" constitutional amendments.
Would the large corporate chain bookstores be willing to fight this battle? Would it even come up, or would they only carry "safe" books?
Are you trying to ensure that this idea would never fly? This is a high school class, not a college class, and all it takes is one "concerned parent" yapping at the school board meeting or to the local investigative reporter about their poor 15-year-old being exposed to scary ideas for the principal and/or school board to show their true colors (bright yellow).
If a student memories "indecent" material, the teacher (and principal) are exposed to charges of contributing the deliquency of a minor. Doesn't matter that the student selected the material themselves if you have a grandstanding prosecutor out to make a name for himself.
The "scripture" point is a bit more subtle. You're probably thinking of somebody doing exactly what I suggested, while I'm concerned about a student using this to proselytize and force the school to deal with issues that it's been trying to put off as no-win situations.
You might be able to productively spend 40 hours/week responding to job listings, but in much of the country there just aren't that many positions available.
Be cruel. Tell them to select a passage - any passage - that they will protect from the firemen. It just has to be at least 2000 words, and they have to memorize it and recite it during class.
(Obviously there would be some restrictions on content - nothing indecent, and possibly no scripture.)
There's actually a connection to your question here. Technology has allowed us to avoid developing our own memories, yet the same technology is now making it easy to rewrite history in a way that's nearly indetectable. Changing microfilm copies of a newspaper in a dozen libraries is hard, changing a database entry feeding a newspaper web site is trivial.
We need to develop our memory, and a 2000 word passage is long enough to be a real challenge to your students. Yet it's nothing compared to a novel, and maybe a third to half of a 30-minute sitcom.
How many horror stories do you need?
As for looking out of state, I've been doing that since this summer when it became clear that the local market was unlikely to recover for years. It's no good - many recruiters and companies don't want to talk to you unless you're local. Even if you're willing to pay for your own relocation they won't talk to you unless you have a local address and phone number.
It's irrational and easily circumvented by anyone with a bit of money to spare - find the "roommates wanted" section of the newspaper and pay someone to add your name to the answering machine, to accept mail for you, etc. But when you've been unemployed for a year that's a lot of money with little to show for it - remember that you need to do this for every city.
As for using the old college network, that depends on the school and the local job market. I left Florida for a reason, and even my parents have finally accepted that the job market there is just too small -- you have a lot of tourism-driven jobs, but relatively few decent jobs for the population.
I hate to burst your bubble, but the real reason for your success was that you were able to get in front of the CTO and DirEng.
Get me in front of the people actually doing the work, and my success rate at turning interviews to offers is very high. Same thing with my friends. But that doesn't mean squat when you're forced to deal with clueless HR people. Hell, a friend of mine was basically told to expect an offer, but the HR person sat on it and wouldn't talk to either him or the project manager for weeks! The HR person didn't give a damn about slipped schedules, poor morale (since this open position was forcing people to function in roles where they weren't comfortable), etc.
Health insurance is remarkably affordable, if you lie about your medical history.
The problem is that insurance companies are so risk adverse that they'll take minor things and blow them up into life-threatening illnesses. I could go into a doctor today, have a complete physical, and be told that I'm in pretty good shape except for slightly elevated cholesterol - something I'm already addressing with changes in diet and exercise. But to the health insurance providers, I'm completely uninsurable for two separate reasons, both minor and both years ago, and only have insurance because I qualified for the state's uninsurable insurance pool. It's insane to say situational bipolar illness (basically, if the stress gets too high I start to show mood swings, so I've learned to control the stress!) or a viral infection that 99% of the rest of world has a childhood illness with no ill long-term effect puts me in the same risk category as late-stage AIDS patients and recent cancer survivors, but according to the insurance companies it does.
A lot of us know both, and we're still looking for a job.
In my experience, most seem to be serious. I've gotten exactly *zero* responses, not even an acknowledgement that my resume has been received, when responding to positions were I had 80+% of the wish list.
An example from last week: company looking for somebody with Unix admin experience, DBA experience (designing schemas), Pro*C, java and visual basic. (The last two were used by the client side of a client/server application.) That's usually (at least) four separate positions - unix admin, DBA/stored procedures, client programmer and manager/coordinator. I don't have VB, but I have everything else *and* I know enough J2EE to help identify a long-term strategy.
But I don't have VB - a language that's oh so hard to pick up when you only know C, C++, Java, Ada and assembler - so I haven't even gotten an ack that my resume was received. I would just pick up a "VB for dummies" book and get up to speed, but I know from talking to some recruiters that the clients with laundry lists rarely count experience unless you were paid for it - a solid month of self-directed training is worth less than having an unopened box on a shelf at your last job!
That article was straight out of the 1970s.
Today some people job hop, but many more people sign on for a project and move on when the project (or their part of it) is finished. If you stay on as a "staff programmer," not only do you not get the tasks that help you develop your skills (they go to experts brought on board for the project), you also have a harder time getting your next job because HR departments increasingly expect specialization.
The older developers tend to be in project management or senior guru roles, something that takes much more time than any simple development task.
I saw one position (on Dice?) that wanted 10+ years of Cobol and Java. Like the number of people who have used both Cobol and Java professionally during the past decade can be counted on more than the fingers on one thumb.
Actually punch card ballots solve a number of real problems. They're tangible, they can audited, they can be repeatedly recounted, they can be archived. Heaven help you if there are problems with some of these "improved" systems.
But punch card technology covers everything from the heavy punch used in my precinct (which takes a sizeable bite out of two-faced card - hard to overlook hanging chads) and the unmarked small holes produced with a stylus in the "vote-o-matic" system used in Palm Beach County, Florida. Our system isn't perfect, but it's hardly an indefensible anachronism.
What is it you're having problems with?
I've used ecpg (ESQL/C, similar to Oracle's Pro*C) since I started using postgresql years ago, and have had no problems at all accessing the data from C or C++ code.
If you're using java then this is even more of a no-brainer - just used the JDBC binding.