anyone who calls themself a "Software Engineer" is full of it!
The problem isn't that some people call themselves (or others) "software engineers," it's that some people assume that software engineering is rigorous and correct. It's not.
I have no problem with professional societies using the law to reserve titles like "Professional Engineer" for those who can pass a rigorous certification, but to claim ownership of the term "engineer" is just silly. Why not also claim ownership of the term "professional"?
Yes, that's a valid opinion. I'm not sure where I stand on it; if I were in charge of a company, and if I didn't know how to grow it without wasting tons of money, I'd be inclined to let it sit in the bank. (Or retire in favor of somebody competent and enjoy my golden parachute.)
I just don't buy the whole "lets encourage everyone but young white men to get into [ insert field/acedemia here ] because the industry needs diversity argument."
An interesting study that I read about recently said that all sorts of computing-related diversity-increasing measures that are being tried basically amount to test cases for methods that will work for anybody, regardless of their minority status. So when Group G does Foo to try to get more members of Minority M into computing, if it works, then Foo tends to be applicable to any group, minority or not. So if you're offended when somebody says "let's encourage everyone but young white males," rest assured that young white males may very well reap the benefits of that particular method of encouragement eventually.
it's reasonable to consider the issuing of shares and existence for the purpose of making profit to be essential aspects of a corporation
Mmm no I consider the essential element of a 'corporation' to be as the word implies, an organisation that functions as a fictional or legal person. 'The Army' can be treated in many ways as if it were an individual, it is attributed goals, interestes, desires, responsibilities, etc. but in fact there is no individual there with those properties - it's just a legal fiction under which the reality of thousands of individuals with their own individual interests function.
What kind of organization does not function as a fictional or legal person?
What you've described is corporate behavior, but just because a group of people engages in corporate behavior does not mean that they have formed a corporation. Any group of people behaving corporately is susceptible to a self-reinforcing culture of bad leadership, even if they have not formed or joined a corporation.
If you define "corporation" as "organization", then sure. However, it's reasonable to consider the issuing of shares and existence for the purpose of making profit to be essential aspects of a corporation. Issuing shares and making profit are not prerequisites for a dysfunctional management culture, however. Even a military organization can be susceptible.
Actually, the rest of the world doesn't use dd/mm/yyyy for their date formation. Billions of Chinese use what is known in the West as the ISO standard date format.
Has anyone stopped to consider that what hinders linux migration the most is the linux community itself and gaming industry?
Yes, in every article that talks about obstacles to linux use in one area or another. This article, however, is not one of those: this article is about Microsoft attempting to catch up to linux use in certain areas. In those areas, linux-based solutions are ahead of Microsoft-provided solutions--or so Microsoft seems to think.
Very insightful comment. It's not limited to corporations, though: any organization that's too big *for the current leaders* to actually understand and manage, with a structure that insulates it from responsibility, creates a culture where managers like that survive and thrive.
Governments, clubs, unions, and religious organizations are susceptible to this effect. So are small or medium-sized organizations with poor leadership.
I would love to agree with you but unfortunately I can't. There are lots of people in senior IT purchasing positions who really don't understand the technology at all and just know buzzwords and are easily swayed by sales people.
In the summer, take in air in near ground level (if not prone to floods!) and venting it up and out by convection or just out the nearest wall if fan forced. A steady flow of air, even if it's humid and 90F will keep your servers pretty happy so long as the amount of air is sufficient.
I would be cautious about this solution, depending on the local air quality. Air conditioning isn't just for temperature control.
Why is $1800 considered a lot of money for a programmer?
Because what constitutes "a lot of money" is relative. I can think of lots of things I'd rather have my employer spend $1800 on. Plus, some companies don't have that much to throw around; if I were in that situation, I'd rather put up with one of the less-good alternatives than lose developers from my group.
It's not completely accurate to include the costs of the CEV and HLV among the moon costs, at least without noting that even without a push to the moon, the US would be spending that money on those two things anyway. Some of the cost of those two programs will undoubtedly be affected by the moon effort (and they might be budgeted under "moon program" because that's where the money is), but exactly how much of their cost will actually be due to the moon program is probably impossible for amateurs to estimate accurately.
No, I think "but" is the correct word to use. If they were P4s, the natural assumption would be that they create lots of heat, but despite the fact that they're not P4s, 32 of these processors will still create lots of heat. To rephrase, the fact that they're not P4s might lead someone to assume that they don't create lots of heat, but in fact they do, because there are 32 of them.
And some fanatics of a different religion believe that if they die while killing Americans, they go to a paradise where 75 virgins are waiting for them. When they live up to *their* ideals, we call them terrorists. Their own people call them freedom fighters, martyrs, and such.
Yes... and?
Are you proposing a crusade...
Yes! A crusade of grace, mercy and kindness. With military efficiency, heeding no obstacle, we will be nice to everyone, even when treated poorly. We will storm the walls of intolerance and salt the fields of injustice. It's an uphill battle, but it is a fight that must be fought.
Which particular brand of Christianity would we be pushing?
Pushing? I don't suggest we push anything. People choose how to live; it's not like I can force someone to believe something.
Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?
on
Vim 6.4 Released
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Actually, in about one month you should be able to gain reasonable speed.
My experience was even faster than that. The number of basic commands I needed to learn was very small, and after using vi-like programs for years now, I still have barely scratched the surface. I never did quite get the hang of using hjkl for movement, but that is seldom an issue these days. I'm currently working on using the native cut and paste commands instead of the mouse and menu.
Way back when, vi was the only text editor on a class of systems I needed to work on, and I figured that if I used it for everything I wouldn't need to constantly change my mode of thinking when switching from system to system. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that gvim for windows combined vi semantics with all of the windows editor semantics that I was used to. (My previous text editor was PFE.)
Right dismiss someone because of a years old moniker they chose as a joke.
I wasn't dismissing you, I was making light of how well your handle fits your position.
I'm sure they loved working together to build their workers' paradise.
They never got the chance to.
They sure did: in 1975 the Communists won.
I can't see how they wouldn't have been better off if left to determine their own fate.
Undoubtedly they would have been much better off had they been left to determine their own fate instead of being conquered by the Chinese, but what had happened in the past isn't relevant to whether or not it was shameful for the US to abandon an ally in need. That the US perhaps should not have made that country an ally to begin with does not absolve it from its guilt.
When you buy a graphics adapter, should the CD come with drivers packaged as a.deb, as a.rpm, as source (if the licence even allows it) ?
"Should" is an interesting choice of words. What "should" happen is that the driver is open source and already part of the kernel.
Since we live in a non-optimal world, non-optimal solutions are sometimes necessary. Today, hardware vendors choose to support whichever distributions or kernel variants they think they should, and the CD comes with drivers in whatever form is necessary to achieve that. If a vendor chooses only to support RHEL3, then the drivers will be in an rpm that targets that distribution.
Of course you can always print on the box "only supported on RedHat" (or whatever), but this might seriously cut into potential sales.
That's exactly what you print on the box, and it does cut down on potential sales. Where the vendor draws the line is a sales/marketing decision based on where the vendor thinks the most profit lies. Deciding which operating system to support is not a new thing; vendors today put "only supported on Windows" or "only supported on MacOS X" or whatever on the boxes of their products. Not only is there no guarantee that any given device will work on every single operating system out there, there is no obligation for a vendor to support every single operating system out there.
Kernel modules target specific kernels (especially now that 2.6 enforces that), so a vendor of an out-of-tree driver already must say "only supported on this list of kernels," and the only thing that can change that is stagnation in the development of the Linux kernel (or moving in-tree, or acquiring a community that maintains your driver for you.) The vendor is free to support as many or as few as they have the resources and the desire to support.
Application vendors are in the same boat. There's no expectation for a program to work in an environment where its dependencies are not met, be that program open source or not.
But again, we're not talking about Linux third party vendors, we're talking about the RISC OS first party vendor, RISC OS Ltd. If their biggest problem was that so many people were using their OS that it was fragmenting, they'd be in a better financial position. And of course, there are ways to limit fragmentation if the OS vendor desires to. One is to ensure compatibility through trademark management.
Having lots of distros absolutely is a good thing. There's nothing wrong with having specialized distributions, or with giving everybody the chance to prove that they can do it better than the big boys.
There's no support nightmare either: you support what you choose to support. If RISC OS was Open Source, nothing would obligate RISC OS Ltd. to support anything other than "their" variant of it.
However, you seem to imply that there are no "universal values."
Sometimes it does seem that way, but I do believe that there is absolute truth and absolute right and wrong. I also believe that my opinions about those absolutes are the best approximations of their actual values that I can come up with, and that others have different opinions. The real interesting question, though, is coming up:
Meaning that, humans instrinsically have those rights, and the governments over them should be unable to constrain them. Do you believe otherwise? Can the case be made otherwise?
In the end, I have to say "I'm not sure." From a naturalistic perspective, rights are a matter of opinion, consensus and force. Yawn. From a Christian perspective it's more interesting: just what is a 'right'? Something that a person deserves? Christianity says that we deserve death, but that God grants us what we do not deserve and that we should do likewise in our dealings with others.[0] So one possible conclusion for a Christian to make is that there are no natural rights, but that we should treat others with grace, mercy, and kindness anyway. Or, a Christian could conclude that our obligation to treat each other with grace, mercy and kindness constitutes a 'right' -- that therefore, everybody has the right to be treated with grace, mercy and kindness, because that is what God wants.
[0] The operative word there is "should". If Christians could actually live up to their supposed ideals, the world would be very different.
Why do we consider it a problem if countries want content control within their own borders?
Because no matter how much we pay lip service to the idea that our values are for us and their values are for them, we don't really believe it. Deep down inside, we believe that everyone should agree with us, unless they're stupid or evil.
This is the general case. In some specific cases, we're willing to overlook the wrong values of others, but in other specific cases we're not.
UW-Madison does have a pretty highly rated CS department, but that's probably more a measure of faculty publications than the undergrad program. (Still, I wonder sometimes. My second semester programming course included topics like big O notation and sorting and searching algorithms; is that a sign of a good program or one that tries to cram too much into too little time?)
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The problem isn't that some people call themselves (or others) "software engineers," it's that some people assume that software engineering is rigorous and correct. It's not.
I have no problem with professional societies using the law to reserve titles like "Professional Engineer" for those who can pass a rigorous certification, but to claim ownership of the term "engineer" is just silly. Why not also claim ownership of the term "professional"?
Yes, that's a valid opinion. I'm not sure where I stand on it; if I were in charge of a company, and if I didn't know how to grow it without wasting tons of money, I'd be inclined to let it sit in the bank. (Or retire in favor of somebody competent and enjoy my golden parachute.)
Having enough cash for one year of operations is a sign of strength, not weakness. Lots of companies couldn't survive a single quarter of no sales.
...unless you're not on the single architecture that it supports.
An interesting study that I read about recently said that all sorts of computing-related diversity-increasing measures that are being tried basically amount to test cases for methods that will work for anybody, regardless of their minority status. So when Group G does Foo to try to get more members of Minority M into computing, if it works, then Foo tends to be applicable to any group, minority or not. So if you're offended when somebody says "let's encourage everyone but young white males," rest assured that young white males may very well reap the benefits of that particular method of encouragement eventually.
What kind of organization does not function as a fictional or legal person?
What you've described is corporate behavior, but just because a group of people engages in corporate behavior does not mean that they have formed a corporation. Any group of people behaving corporately is susceptible to a self-reinforcing culture of bad leadership, even if they have not formed or joined a corporation.
If you define "corporation" as "organization", then sure. However, it's reasonable to consider the issuing of shares and existence for the purpose of making profit to be essential aspects of a corporation. Issuing shares and making profit are not prerequisites for a dysfunctional management culture, however. Even a military organization can be susceptible.
Actually, the rest of the world doesn't use dd/mm/yyyy for their date formation. Billions of Chinese use what is known in the West as the ISO standard date format.
Yes, in every article that talks about obstacles to linux use in one area or another. This article, however, is not one of those: this article is about Microsoft attempting to catch up to linux use in certain areas. In those areas, linux-based solutions are ahead of Microsoft-provided solutions--or so Microsoft seems to think.
Governments, clubs, unions, and religious organizations are susceptible to this effect. So are small or medium-sized organizations with poor leadership.
Those people are not "serious users".
Also, "lots" doesn't counter "most".
I would be cautious about this solution, depending on the local air quality. Air conditioning isn't just for temperature control.
Because what constitutes "a lot of money" is relative. I can think of lots of things I'd rather have my employer spend $1800 on. Plus, some companies don't have that much to throw around; if I were in that situation, I'd rather put up with one of the less-good alternatives than lose developers from my group.
It's not completely accurate to include the costs of the CEV and HLV among the moon costs, at least without noting that even without a push to the moon, the US would be spending that money on those two things anyway. Some of the cost of those two programs will undoubtedly be affected by the moon effort (and they might be budgeted under "moon program" because that's where the money is), but exactly how much of their cost will actually be due to the moon program is probably impossible for amateurs to estimate accurately.
Actually, the 'correct' spelling is (that's & # 3 8 1 0 9 ; for those who are font-impaired.) Unless you're using a different language or something.
64 processors will let you run a lot more spyware before your frame rate is affected.
No, I think "but" is the correct word to use. If they were P4s, the natural assumption would be that they create lots of heat, but despite the fact that they're not P4s, 32 of these processors will still create lots of heat. To rephrase, the fact that they're not P4s might lead someone to assume that they don't create lots of heat, but in fact they do, because there are 32 of them.
Yes... and?
Yes! A crusade of grace, mercy and kindness. With military efficiency, heeding no obstacle, we will be nice to everyone, even when treated poorly. We will storm the walls of intolerance and salt the fields of injustice. It's an uphill battle, but it is a fight that must be fought.
Pushing? I don't suggest we push anything. People choose how to live; it's not like I can force someone to believe something.
My experience was even faster than that. The number of basic commands I needed to learn was very small, and after using vi-like programs for years now, I still have barely scratched the surface. I never did quite get the hang of using hjkl for movement, but that is seldom an issue these days. I'm currently working on using the native cut and paste commands instead of the mouse and menu.
Way back when, vi was the only text editor on a class of systems I needed to work on, and I figured that if I used it for everything I wouldn't need to constantly change my mode of thinking when switching from system to system. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that gvim for windows combined vi semantics with all of the windows editor semantics that I was used to. (My previous text editor was PFE.)
I wasn't dismissing you, I was making light of how well your handle fits your position.
They sure did: in 1975 the Communists won.
Undoubtedly they would have been much better off had they been left to determine their own fate instead of being conquered by the Chinese, but what had happened in the past isn't relevant to whether or not it was shameful for the US to abandon an ally in need. That the US perhaps should not have made that country an ally to begin with does not absolve it from its guilt.
"Should" is an interesting choice of words. What "should" happen is that the driver is open source and already part of the kernel.
Since we live in a non-optimal world, non-optimal solutions are sometimes necessary. Today, hardware vendors choose to support whichever distributions or kernel variants they think they should, and the CD comes with drivers in whatever form is necessary to achieve that. If a vendor chooses only to support RHEL3, then the drivers will be in an rpm that targets that distribution.
That's exactly what you print on the box, and it does cut down on potential sales. Where the vendor draws the line is a sales/marketing decision based on where the vendor thinks the most profit lies. Deciding which operating system to support is not a new thing; vendors today put "only supported on Windows" or "only supported on MacOS X" or whatever on the boxes of their products. Not only is there no guarantee that any given device will work on every single operating system out there, there is no obligation for a vendor to support every single operating system out there.Kernel modules target specific kernels (especially now that 2.6 enforces that), so a vendor of an out-of-tree driver already must say "only supported on this list of kernels," and the only thing that can change that is stagnation in the development of the Linux kernel (or moving in-tree, or acquiring a community that maintains your driver for you.) The vendor is free to support as many or as few as they have the resources and the desire to support.
Application vendors are in the same boat. There's no expectation for a program to work in an environment where its dependencies are not met, be that program open source or not.
But again, we're not talking about Linux third party vendors, we're talking about the RISC OS first party vendor, RISC OS Ltd. If their biggest problem was that so many people were using their OS that it was fragmenting, they'd be in a better financial position. And of course, there are ways to limit fragmentation if the OS vendor desires to. One is to ensure compatibility through trademark management.
There's no support nightmare either: you support what you choose to support. If RISC OS was Open Source, nothing would obligate RISC OS Ltd. to support anything other than "their" variant of it.
Sometimes it does seem that way, but I do believe that there is absolute truth and absolute right and wrong. I also believe that my opinions about those absolutes are the best approximations of their actual values that I can come up with, and that others have different opinions. The real interesting question, though, is coming up:
In the end, I have to say "I'm not sure." From a naturalistic perspective, rights are a matter of opinion, consensus and force. Yawn. From a Christian perspective it's more interesting: just what is a 'right'? Something that a person deserves? Christianity says that we deserve death, but that God grants us what we do not deserve and that we should do likewise in our dealings with others.[0] So one possible conclusion for a Christian to make is that there are no natural rights, but that we should treat others with grace, mercy, and kindness anyway. Or, a Christian could conclude that our obligation to treat each other with grace, mercy and kindness constitutes a 'right' -- that therefore, everybody has the right to be treated with grace, mercy and kindness, because that is what God wants.
[0] The operative word there is "should". If Christians could actually live up to their supposed ideals, the world would be very different.
Because no matter how much we pay lip service to the idea that our values are for us and their values are for them, we don't really believe it. Deep down inside, we believe that everyone should agree with us, unless they're stupid or evil.
This is the general case. In some specific cases, we're willing to overlook the wrong values of others, but in other specific cases we're not.
(The "we" is applicable to anybody.)
UW-Madison does have a pretty highly rated CS department, but that's probably more a measure of faculty publications than the undergrad program. (Still, I wonder sometimes. My second semester programming course included topics like big O notation and sorting and searching algorithms; is that a sign of a good program or one that tries to cram too much into too little time?)