Facebook acquires it's revenue by sale of personal information (direct or aggregate I can't say for sure). This information has continued diminishing returns as each new bit about a person becomes less valuable once you have a significant profile. The only way to continue revenue growth, through sellable information, is to continue to gather fresh information.
There's also the business called "selling advertisements". Google has grown to its current size by just doing that.
Facebook has the eyeballs and the data to make its ads selling business even more efficient than Google. While Google has to guess whether you may be interested in (for example) a new movie, Facebook already knows what movies you like and could show you ads of the same genre, or starring similar actors. The possibilities are simply endless.
Advertising isn't a business with diminishing returns, otherwise most advertising agencies (incl. Google) would have been gone by now.
I'm suspecting their need for more manpower is actually due to needing to implement what I described the above. It sounds great on paper, but I can imagine it being a bitch to implement correctly.
I think the problem is not age. There aren't really so many positions for "30+ years of C programming" out there.
I'm half your age, but IMHO the problem you have is that "C programming" is simple enough for even a fresh graduate to grasp within a few months at most (the language is really simple compared to most newer languages with more features and stuff). Your algorithms knowledge is rusty, you (probably) demand a higher salary, and your "live performance" is weak. How are you going to convince an interviewer that you're better than that college graduate who knows C (and a bunch of other languages), does well on the algorithms questions, and could code it up on the spot?
Companies these days don't care whether you've worked hard for 30 years. They only care whether you have the requisite skills they need. From your post, it seems to me that's the problem.
Me, I don't see myself getting into your situation in 30 years. I may be wrong, and as you said, karma is a bitch, but unless the whole software industry collapses (I have solid reasons to expect it not to, but that's for another day), I will survive. I don't code in (predominantly) a single language, I don't work within a single problem domain, and I learn things beyond my day to day work. I don't foresee myself doing the same things over and over again for 30 years, and I'll likely switch jobs if I did, just to make sure I don't run into some career dead end.
Granted, that may not be sufficient to prevent myself from being unemployed when I'm in my 50s, but I tell myself that will help. After all, even if ageism is rampant, there's really no arguing against somebody who can help your company make money. As long as I can keep being that, I really couldn't care less about the "insensitivities" of interviewers not respecting your years of "working hard" and giving you an easier pass.
Care to elaborate; care to explain how Sears will stop you shopping at Macy's?
If Sears became a monopoly, there'd be no Macy's, or at least there'd be very very few of them left. You can't shop at nonexistent stores...
(or have you never seen the Chrome search selector screen?)
Yes. I can't help but be reminded of Microsoft's browser selection screen where they have been ordered to do so. Google is obviously a bit short of having a monopoly in the browser market, but it does suggest they are a bit concerned about being sued for anticompetitive practices...
I'm only talking about the search/web service space here; as an advertiser they do seem to have a aggressively maintained dominance driven monopoly.. But since I think of advertisers as second-class lifeforms I really cant get very worked up about it.
I think that's our main difference. I probably don't dislike advertisers as much as you do.:)
When you do not obey another country's laws, why should they allow you to do business there?
The fact is, US companies want to do business abroad, and this means they've implicitly agreed to following the laws of the countries they're doing business in.
Unless you're a major shareholder of any company, you can cry all you want about having to follow whatever unjust laws you perceive, but the reality is that shareholders want money instead of the ideological zealotry that you're so fond of.
You could say the same for the Microsoft monopoly. After all, you have to choose MS Windows before you'd get the default IE browser. And before you say Windows is installed by default on the computer and users didn't "choose" it, keep in mind that Apple had always been happy to sell you a Mac -- the user did choose the Wintel platform.
you would not expect to see Macy's products advertised on Sears would you?
If Sears became a monopoly, and used its position to block competitors of its own products, then I suspect there'd be a problem too.
I don't believe people don't want to program. In fact, they absolutely do want to program. They just don't want to learn a programming language to do it.
No. I absolutely believe most people don't want to program. Programming is the process of translating what you want into precise and unambiguous language, usually in the form of a programming language (but not necessarily).
While learning programming languages isn't trivial for a beginner, the greatest mental hurdle is not the language. What most people want is a "Do what I want" function, not the programming primitives where you'd write a hundred lines just to sort an array or serve a web page, or "simple" things like that.
In fact, most people can't even program in English. If you asked what they wanted, they'd babble in an inconsistent self contradicting manner until you've drilled through the whole requirements enough until they know precisely what they're requesting. That's why the job of drafting requirement specs is so dreaded (luckily I've hadn't had the displeasure of doing these things)
Heh. This is the last time I'll reply since you seem to have little regard for objective truth and seem so proud of your little conspiracy theory for me to take you seriously, but I'll feed you once more.
You claimed "both price and value are almost completely centrally controlled with little impact from "market forces", and now you're countering with a strawman argument claiming that I said "XXX policy had no effect"? Come on. Nobody's disputing policies have profound effects, but there's a lot more than that.
*Of course* when you look at multidecade stock prices and values in the macroscopic scale where individual stocks are averaged out by the rest, the government has ultimate control.
You could do the same argument for essentially everything.
People are not individuals, they are government controlled. Look at all those John Does, they obviously are mere embodiment of government propaganda!! Going from a literacy rate from 40% in the early 20 century to 80% this century (pulled from my ass) now does not have a large effect? From government sponsored schools even!!
Cars are government controlled. Look how speed limits, traffic lights, even public roads built by government, effectively dictate how they move around!! Now *you'd* think you drive a car, but it's actually driven by the corrupted officials on a puppet string in Washington!
Just cut the crap. If you really want to see what "government controlled" companies and prices look like, read up about state planned economies of communist states a few decades ago.
The *overall* average/aggregate stock prices for a particular economy may be affected quite a bit by government policies, but 1) the effect is not so large as you claimed, and 2) your theory does not account for the obvious fact that well managed (and lucky) companies see their share price sky rocket while the badly managed ones go bankrupt (i.e. value goes to near zero).
It's obviously not a wiki cut and paste, because it's just plainly wrong. Just take off your tinfoil hat and look at the reality, instead of making up (or worse, believing in) baseless conspiracy theories about how the government is out to get you.
There's an ADHD problem with this embarrasment of riches. By the time a kid starts getting traction in one technology, he (I'm taking the gender for granted) sees two dozen other hotter technologies and wants to move on, before really becoming expert in the first.
That's actually a great thing if true. Why should a teenager want to boast 10 years of C++ experience, and (for example) understand the difference between a shared pointer and scoped pointer when really there's so many other (language-agnostic) things to learn about?
Similarly, we generally live in societies with few servants today. We do many things ourselves, and we have appliances like fridges that help us to do things ourselves. That's a large drop in the standard of living, if measured by victorian times for example, when personal servants were common.
So your argument is essentially that the standard of living for a commoner nowadays has dropped by reference to the richest aristocracies in the Victorian era? How about the personal servants who were living on a pittance?
When we talk about standards of living improving, we're not really talking about the "1%" who could afford servants, we're actually talking about the standards of living for the servants.
Do you have to clean the toilets and wash clothes and prepare meals for your master? No? Does the average person have to? No? Then that's an improvement.
Hate replying to an AC on such a subject, but then really want to get this off me:
I'm a game developer who doesn't want people to pirate my stuff but don't give a fuck about the 70+ years crap
Then will commit to releasing the game to the public domain after (for example) 10 years? A statement to that effect within the "EULA" of your game would have legal effect unless you've drafted it horribly.
which BTW is irrelevant here because that only applies to music/movies/books and such 'literary' stuff and not games specifically. http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html
If I'm not mistaken, computer programs are considered "literary" works. How else are the game companies claiming copyright over the game code?
Stealing is denying someone just compensation.
As others have mentioned, "stealing" is taking away things owned by others. If I own an expensive car because my rich friend gave it to me as a gift, it's not my "just compensation", but you'd still be stealing if you took it away. "compensation" has nothing to do with the concept of stealing.
Javascript speeds have increased greatly due to the reheated competition by browser vendors (it wasn't too long ago that the only thing really existed was IE6). Thus in the past 10 years, nobody in their right mind would expect a x86 emulator, a JVM etc. to be implementable in Javascript at tolerable speed.
In fact, few expect these "discoveries" to happen so soon and so quickly, but since somebody proved it possible to do crazy things on Javascript, everyone with too much time on their hands are jumping on board and having fun with these projects.
Fads come and go, but if you're proud of being "Anti-Apple", then you must realize your pride is based on the "fad" of Apple fandom in the real world outside slashdot.
I mean, if you think it's bad enough for me to see slashdot being reduced to an anti-apple site, I can't imagine how many hairs you pull when you see all those Steve Jobs articles on mainstream media. (it must be painful to see so many people are fixated on the man's life and death) But I'm sure you've already GTFO of the real world, which is why you're here, no?
Slashdot Mirror
yet I know very few consumers who would not be able to tell the difference between a real leather Louis Vuitton bag and a cheap PU leather knock off.
How? I'm not into fashion and accessories. The only way for me to tell the difference is price.
The rare cases where customer confusion may ensue or be detrimental are usually covered by PL and safety laws better anyway.
So, as long as the phone/tablet doesn't blow up, it's all good?
There are much better, smaller, more private blogging options, with less spam, more freedom, and less privacy rape
For some people, when they blog, they want it to be seen and read. I use Facebook for that purpose, precisely because it's not private.
If you want "private" blogs, I suggest writing on your physical diary book.
I do have a blog somewhere in the middle -- not exclusively private, yet not as public as Facebook. Different tools, different purposes.
Facebook acquires it's revenue by sale of personal information (direct or aggregate I can't say for sure). This information has continued diminishing returns as each new bit about a person becomes less valuable once you have a significant profile. The only way to continue revenue growth, through sellable information, is to continue to gather fresh information.
There's also the business called "selling advertisements". Google has grown to its current size by just doing that.
Facebook has the eyeballs and the data to make its ads selling business even more efficient than Google. While Google has to guess whether you may be interested in (for example) a new movie, Facebook already knows what movies you like and could show you ads of the same genre, or starring similar actors. The possibilities are simply endless.
Advertising isn't a business with diminishing returns, otherwise most advertising agencies (incl. Google) would have been gone by now.
I'm suspecting their need for more manpower is actually due to needing to implement what I described the above. It sounds great on paper, but I can imagine it being a bitch to implement correctly.
I think the problem is not age. There aren't really so many positions for "30+ years of C programming" out there.
I'm half your age, but IMHO the problem you have is that "C programming" is simple enough for even a fresh graduate to grasp within a few months at most (the language is really simple compared to most newer languages with more features and stuff). Your algorithms knowledge is rusty, you (probably) demand a higher salary, and your "live performance" is weak. How are you going to convince an interviewer that you're better than that college graduate who knows C (and a bunch of other languages), does well on the algorithms questions, and could code it up on the spot?
Companies these days don't care whether you've worked hard for 30 years. They only care whether you have the requisite skills they need. From your post, it seems to me that's the problem.
Me, I don't see myself getting into your situation in 30 years. I may be wrong, and as you said, karma is a bitch, but unless the whole software industry collapses (I have solid reasons to expect it not to, but that's for another day), I will survive. I don't code in (predominantly) a single language, I don't work within a single problem domain, and I learn things beyond my day to day work. I don't foresee myself doing the same things over and over again for 30 years, and I'll likely switch jobs if I did, just to make sure I don't run into some career dead end.
Granted, that may not be sufficient to prevent myself from being unemployed when I'm in my 50s, but I tell myself that will help. After all, even if ageism is rampant, there's really no arguing against somebody who can help your company make money. As long as I can keep being that, I really couldn't care less about the "insensitivities" of interviewers not respecting your years of "working hard" and giving you an easier pass.
Care to elaborate; care to explain how Sears will stop you shopping at Macy's?
If Sears became a monopoly, there'd be no Macy's, or at least there'd be very very few of them left. You can't shop at nonexistent stores...
(or have you never seen the Chrome search selector screen?)
Yes. I can't help but be reminded of Microsoft's browser selection screen where they have been ordered to do so. Google is obviously a bit short of having a monopoly in the browser market, but it does suggest they are a bit concerned about being sued for anticompetitive practices...
I'm only talking about the search/web service space here; as an advertiser they do seem to have a aggressively maintained dominance driven monopoly.. But since I think of advertisers as second-class lifeforms I really cant get very worked up about it.
I think that's our main difference. I probably don't dislike advertisers as much as you do. :)
When you do not obey another country's laws, why should they allow you to do business there?
The fact is, US companies want to do business abroad, and this means they've implicitly agreed to following the laws of the countries they're doing business in.
Unless you're a major shareholder of any company, you can cry all you want about having to follow whatever unjust laws you perceive, but the reality is that shareholders want money instead of the ideological zealotry that you're so fond of.
PEOPLE ACTIVELY CHOOSE GOOGLE
You could say the same for the Microsoft monopoly. After all, you have to choose MS Windows before you'd get the default IE browser. And before you say Windows is installed by default on the computer and users didn't "choose" it, keep in mind that Apple had always been happy to sell you a Mac -- the user did choose the Wintel platform.
you would not expect to see Macy's products advertised on Sears would you?
If Sears became a monopoly, and used its position to block competitors of its own products, then I suspect there'd be a problem too.
It's probably not what the GP is talking about, but the Chinese do eat "toads".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Edible_Frog
Not one of my favorite foods but it does taste like chicken.
Inciting the commission of a crime is also a crime.
I don't believe people don't want to program. In fact, they absolutely do want to program. They just don't want to learn a programming language to do it.
No. I absolutely believe most people don't want to program. Programming is the process of translating what you want into precise and unambiguous language, usually in the form of a programming language (but not necessarily).
While learning programming languages isn't trivial for a beginner, the greatest mental hurdle is not the language. What most people want is a "Do what I want" function, not the programming primitives where you'd write a hundred lines just to sort an array or serve a web page, or "simple" things like that.
In fact, most people can't even program in English. If you asked what they wanted, they'd babble in an inconsistent self contradicting manner until you've drilled through the whole requirements enough until they know precisely what they're requesting. That's why the job of drafting requirement specs is so dreaded (luckily I've hadn't had the displeasure of doing these things)
Nit pick: technically, dogs are just one species.
Heh. This is the last time I'll reply since you seem to have little regard for objective truth and seem so proud of your little conspiracy theory for me to take you seriously, but I'll feed you once more.
You claimed "both price and value are almost completely centrally controlled with little impact from "market forces", and now you're countering with a strawman argument claiming that I said "XXX policy had no effect"? Come on. Nobody's disputing policies have profound effects, but there's a lot more than that.
*Of course* when you look at multidecade stock prices and values in the macroscopic scale where individual stocks are averaged out by the rest, the government has ultimate control.
You could do the same argument for essentially everything.
People are not individuals, they are government controlled. Look at all those John Does, they obviously are mere embodiment of government propaganda!! Going from a literacy rate from 40% in the early 20 century to 80% this century (pulled from my ass) now does not have a large effect? From government sponsored schools even!!
Cars are government controlled. Look how speed limits, traffic lights, even public roads built by government, effectively dictate how they move around!! Now *you'd* think you drive a car, but it's actually driven by the corrupted officials on a puppet string in Washington!
Just cut the crap. If you really want to see what "government controlled" companies and prices look like, read up about state planned economies of communist states a few decades ago.
The *overall* average/aggregate stock prices for a particular economy may be affected quite a bit by government policies, but
1) the effect is not so large as you claimed, and
2) your theory does not account for the obvious fact that well managed (and lucky) companies see their share price sky rocket while the badly managed ones go bankrupt (i.e. value goes to near zero).
It's obviously not a wiki cut and paste, because it's just plainly wrong. Just take off your tinfoil hat and look at the reality, instead of making up (or worse, believing in) baseless conspiracy theories about how the government is out to get you.
There's an ADHD problem with this embarrasment of riches. By the time a kid starts getting traction in one technology, he (I'm taking the gender for granted) sees two dozen other hotter technologies and wants to move on, before really becoming expert in the first.
That's actually a great thing if true. Why should a teenager want to boast 10 years of C++ experience, and (for example) understand the difference between a shared pointer and scoped pointer when really there's so many other (language-agnostic) things to learn about?
It's human nature. Everyone wants to whine how those beneath them are incompetent pricks. It makes them feel superior.
Without the lower ranks, the illusion of superiority is gone.
So yes, they want the incompetent people under them and they want to whine.
</sarcasm>
Similarly, we generally live in societies with few servants today. We do many things ourselves, and we have appliances like fridges that help us to do things ourselves. That's a large drop in the standard of living, if measured by victorian times for example, when personal servants were common.
So your argument is essentially that the standard of living for a commoner nowadays has dropped by reference to the richest aristocracies in the Victorian era? How about the personal servants who were living on a pittance?
When we talk about standards of living improving, we're not really talking about the "1%" who could afford servants, we're actually talking about the standards of living for the servants.
Do you have to clean the toilets and wash clothes and prepare meals for your master? No? Does the average person have to? No? Then that's an improvement.
The point above was that most people (with money) had an advantage.
If that was the point, what's the point of speaking such an obvious thing?
Note the GGP:
Oh yeah, they all STARTED with a big-ass pile of cash that they could fritter away on risk.
Emphasis mine. Providing a counter example, if only one, balances the claim.
Hate replying to an AC on such a subject, but then really want to get this off me:
I'm a game developer who doesn't want people to pirate my stuff but don't give a fuck about the 70+ years crap
Then will commit to releasing the game to the public domain after (for example) 10 years? A statement to that effect within the "EULA" of your game would have legal effect unless you've drafted it horribly.
which BTW is irrelevant here because that only applies to music/movies/books and such 'literary' stuff and not games specifically. http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html
If I'm not mistaken, computer programs are considered "literary" works. How else are the game companies claiming copyright over the game code?
Stealing is denying someone just compensation.
As others have mentioned, "stealing" is taking away things owned by others. If I own an expensive car because my rich friend gave it to me as a gift, it's not my "just compensation", but you'd still be stealing if you took it away. "compensation" has nothing to do with the concept of stealing.
Spending "millions" to analyze these things doesn't mean their conclusions must be right.
Javascript speeds have increased greatly due to the reheated competition by browser vendors (it wasn't too long ago that the only thing really existed was IE6). Thus in the past 10 years, nobody in their right mind would expect a x86 emulator, a JVM etc. to be implementable in Javascript at tolerable speed.
In fact, few expect these "discoveries" to happen so soon and so quickly, but since somebody proved it possible to do crazy things on Javascript, everyone with too much time on their hands are jumping on board and having fun with these projects.
but it wouldn't be "virtually impossible"
Exactly. It'd literally be virtually possible if you control the whole virtual machine...
I'd gladly sell you a $100000 placebo utility to clear your RAM on shutdown....
And for the times they can't, they wish they hadn't forked over an extra $XXX for nothing.
90%+ of your browsing information is sent in plain text (i.e. HTTP) to some server on the Internet anyway.
Are the intermediate routers between your ISP and their servers more sinister than any random router on the net?
Society is dynamic, not static. Fads come and go
Fads come and go, but if you're proud of being "Anti-Apple", then you must realize your pride is based on the "fad" of Apple fandom in the real world outside slashdot.
I mean, if you think it's bad enough for me to see slashdot being reduced to an anti-apple site, I can't imagine how many hairs you pull when you see all those Steve Jobs articles on mainstream media. (it must be painful to see so many people are fixated on the man's life and death) But I'm sure you've already GTFO of the real world, which is why you're here, no?