If you haven't realized it by now, Duke Nukem Forever was a joke. They're never planning on releasing a game by that title.
Who told you they never planned to make it? Because wiki says it was a real game with actual development work completed. By now, I'm sure it has been canceled.
I don't think you get it. I'm not a client. I didn't sit down with a set of requirements for my home network and then go purchase the most cost-effective solution. I buy stuff because I'm a geek and I like to play with technology. Then later I use what I already have for something practical (my home network).
Saying, "I wouldn't hire a person with a home network like that" is like saying, "I'm hiring for the Discovery Channel's _Monster Garage_ and I would never hire a guy with a tricked out Harley. He should know that all he needs to drive to work is a minivan."
I find this to be a very interesting topic. Thanks for your insights.
Here's the best evidence I have: marriage license. Why do you need a marriage license?
But your position is that kings and rulers, thousands of years ago invented marriage. To use the idea of marriage licenses to support your position, you need to show that marriage liceses have existed for thousands of years. Is there any evidence that a marriage license was required in order to get married in ancient Egypt or the like?
That's you're response? "well, you believe in GOD! har har har"
That's all you've got? That's weak.
My point here is simple: when someone tries to do something, don't discourage them. There's nothing fairy-tale-like about a space elevator. It's not teleportation. It's not magic. It's physics so simple that anyone can understand it. The reason we don't have a space elevator right now is the same reason they didn't have airplanes in 1902 - not because airplanes were impossible the way faster than light travel is impossible, but because the technology isn't ready yet.
I just think it's very shortsighted of you to scoff at someone who is trying to make something happen, just like it would have been shortsighted to scoff at someone trying to make fire, or someone trying to make an airplane.
be sure to have it degrade nicely for browsers that are not ajax aware and then also for browsers that are not handling javascript.
I am a big proponent of this way of thinking, and I design *all* my apps to degrade gracefully. Nobody has ever asked me to code this way and nobody seems to care that I do it, but for me it is a point of personal pride.
And you know what, it really isn't all that hard to do this. For starters, you check your input params on the server. Many people think they don't have to do this because they have fancy javascript doing it. They don't realize that they are writing insecure apps most likely. Secondly, you should use javascript to write javascript-only controls. In other words, if you have a button that does some nifty javascript function, use document.write() to create that button. That way, people without javascript wont even see it.
You'd be amazed at how many people scoff at the suggestion that they do simple things like those described above. Most programmers, it seems to me, just slop things together. They take no pride at all in their work. They don't love the code. And I think they are just lazy.
The challenges of a space elevator aren't in the climber; they're in the cable. We're not even remotely close to such a cable.
About 30,000 years ago, somebody noticed that he could bang two rocks together and make a spark, he showed it to the rest of the tribe and said (with grunts and hand gestures) "hey, I think I might be able to make fire like this!" Meanwhile, an ancestor of yours scoffed at him. "Why are you wasting your time?" your ancestor said. "The challenge of making fire isn't just the spark. You've got to turn that spark into an ember. You've got to have something to catch fire. You've got to keep yourself from getting burned. That's just for starters. You're a long way from making fire. Stop wasting everyone's time and go back to eating raw meat with the rest of the cavemen."
I suspect that the ideal of a lifetime monogamous commitment was developed by the new State Authorities
Is there any actual evidence that a group of people got together in a back room and actually consciously invented lifelong monogamy? Because the idea seems to me just a little bit far fetched. I don't think that people are quite that insightful and forward-thinking.
At any rate, just to support what you said about serial monogamy, there is strong evidence that it was (subconsciously) an invention of women. Men, I think, would be happy roaming about like nomads, and just mating (forcibly if necessary) with any female they happen to meet. Monogamy was like a contract that women made with men. "I will stop resisting and you'll actually have more and better sex IF you agree to stick around and help with the kids." And then once the kids had aged five or six years, the contract stopped serving its purpose and both parties moved on to their next contract.
I think that lifelong monogamy just evolved out of that, as the contract term kept getting longer and longer. The more complex the civilization, the *more* support that children need. Now you've got to buy them clothes, you've got to put them through school, you've got to teach them the complex behaviors that will allow them to fit into this civilization. That takes more than just a few years.
I just think this is a better explanation for lifelong monogamy than the idea that it was invented for a purpose. I think it evolved.
Nonetheless, what you said about the state supporting marriage for its own selfish reasons, I certainly agree with. I just don't think the state invented it.
I use 2.60. Old versions of winamp were really great. They load up instantly, have a tiny memory footprint, and do everything I want to do. My friends use iTunes, and it's true that some of the features are great, but when I just want to play one file winamp is faster and better.
Anyway, to answer your queston, so long as you don't have a browser plugin you shouldn't be vulnerable.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I have absolutely zero interest in Microsoft's VM products.
Yeah, but the way the world works is that people who wouldn't normally even think about VMs will think about them for no other reason than the fact that it came for free with their OS. Microsoft will have a button somewhere labeled, "click here to make this a VM" and people who don't even know what a VM is will click it.
Don't believe me? Take a look at the form that comes up after you install Win2k3 advanced server. The form is labeled "Configure this Server" and it has a checkbox labeled, "make this a DNS server" and the word DNS is underlined. When you click it, if gives you the definition of DNS. Isn't that great? If you don't already know what DNS is, then you don't have any business setting one up. But that's the microsoft way. That's their target audience.
How hard is it to sell a DNS server to these people? "Do we need DNS? Wait, don't we already have that in windows?" VMWare is understandably worried that their product will soon be viewed in exactly the same way. "A VM? Do we need that? Wait, we already have it right here, just click that button"
Isn't that a bit like saying all Racing Sims are the same except that they have different cars and graphics?
Imagine a world where only the following racing sims were available: NASCAR NASCAR Extreeme Super Stockcar Racer Daytona 500 Jeff Gordon's Racing Simulator NASCAR 2004 NASCAR Unlimited
and
Grand Turismo
That's the way I see the FPS market. Quake was Grand Turismo.
That wasn't my impression, and I played it a lot when it first came out. If you say it's fast then maybe I'll go back and try some mods. Have you played CPMA in quake 3? god almighty that's fast. In UT, they would put me in a walled fort and I would look out at this wide open expance with a few hills like miles away and I'm thinking, "this is bullshit! I'm never going to make it all the way there! I need to be able to rocket off a wall and strafe jump!"
To me, UT never seemed even close to fast enough. That's why they had vehicles.
Q3 did away with planning in favor of pure reflex.
hmm, I have to disagree with you on this. I play quake 3 threewave capturestrike and I'm in my 30's, I certainly don't have the twitch abilities that the younger guys have, but I frequently wipe the floor with them because I use my brain.
I often fire a rocket at a doorway seemingly hours and hours before my opponent turns around and runs for the door. I do the same thing with bounce pads. I fire the rocket and it looks like I do it before the other guy even thinks about going that way, but then sure enough, he turns around and tried to make his escape and I connect. If you watch a demo, it looks like (this sounds corny but w/e) it looks like I willed him into my rocket:-)
The reason I can do that is because I'm thinking, not twitching. I'm thinking about what you want to do and where you want to go so that I can act instead of react. The reason that's possible in quake is because of the movement speed. I've also played a lot of UT, and in that game, I wasn't so good, so I typically just hung out near the flag and spammed, and I got lots of kills that way. You could never spam me to death in quake because I move so fast I'll dodge.
Twitch factor is all about moving the mouse so as to aim your gun. I've recorded (with a video camera) myself playing and my mouse hand isn't moving nearly as fast as my fingers on the keyboard. 90% of quake is movement. Only about 10% is mouse twitch.
I agree with basically everything you said and just want to highlight the speed of movement thing. In quake, you can grab someone flag and rocket jump out of the base and you're gone. It's really hard to catch someone in Quake, so you always have to think ahead and plan out where you're going to go so that you are in a position to head someone off if need-be. In that sense, it's actually a lot like a combat flight simulator. In those, you have to keep thinking about your altitude and energy. If the enemy get's an altitude advantage, he has control of the engagement. The same thing is true in quake.
How cool is that? In every other FPS that I've played, it was just a matter of walking around holding down the fire button, or hiding behind something and spraying bullets.
Can we please, for the love of god, have a game like Quake 3? *Every* other FPS is exactly the same. You know what the difference is between Halo 2 and Half Life 2? The story. Oh sure, the storylines are great. I loved those games. But they are all the same in terms of gameplay. They just have different graphics. Quake 3 - particularly with the threewave mod, is totally unique. It's not like anything else out there.
In quake, the movement speed is so fast, it feels like being in the matrix movies. And everything is so well balanced. Case in point, everybody knows what a camper is, right? In every other FPS game, there is one super weapon, and everybody goes and gets that weapon and that's it, the game consists of marching around holding down the fire button. There was a map in Q3 called space ctf. You all played it. There are the platforms way up in the air with railguns on them. Newbs would go up there and sit on the railgun and fire at people. But it wasn't a problem in Q3. I used to love it when people went up there because that showed they were inexperienced. In quake, the shotgun does as much damage as the railgun, which does as much damage as the rocket launcher, which does as much damage as the grenade launcher, etc. The BFG was probably an unbalancing factor, but most servers took it out. So anyway, if you were a newb in quake and you picked up that railgun, I could kill you easily with the shotgun, I just had to get close to you. And with Quake's speed of movement, that wasn't a hard thing to do. See, that's called strategy. I don't see that kind of thing in other FPS games.
Other games are fun, don't get me wrong. They just aren't as good as Quake 3. Take a look at this website, it has videos of people playing Quake3. Have you ever seen Halo or Halflife or UT videos that cool?
So basically, game makers are just going to give us more of the same old same old. They are going to make versions of Halo and versions of Halflife with better graphics and different storylines. That's it. That's what we have to look forward to.
I wonder how many genetically perfect people there are? Would there be enough genetically perfect people for companies to hire, so that they could ignore the imperfect ones?
Nah, you miss the point, when a company hires you they do a simple calculation.
Money you will generate for the company - Money you cost the company = Your worth to the company
Theoretically, they do this calculation for all applicants and then hire the person with the highest number after the equals sign. In practice, much of it is based on subjective judgment calls. They can't see into the future, they can only guess.
So let's say that we have three applicants. Based on their resumes we think they will all be equally productive. Maybe we decide that each of them will bring in $100,000 in profit for the company. This is all just hypothetical.
All of the applicants demand $40,000 a year in take-home pay. FICA and other taxes raise that to perhaps $60,000. All employees get health insurance. I don't know, I'm just making up numbers. Let's say that with health insurance the base cost is now $80,000 a year.
So the profit from any of these applicants is $100,000 - $80,000 = $20,000 per year. Well, one of the applicants rides a motorcycle, and you have to know that if they bash their head in and cost your health insurance provider a lot of money, your rates are going to go up. So we might add a little bit to this employee's cost. Maybe bump it from $80,000 to $90,000. So now, the expected profit from two of the applicants is 20k and from the deviant motorcycle rider it's 10k. Guess who's not going to get hired.
Companies aren't looking for perfect. You're right to say that nobody is perfect. Companies are looking for maximum profit. All things being equal, they wont hire the guy with a slightly higher chance of heart disease, because that person will cost them more in the long run.
I'll say it again: all things being equal. If the three applicants for programmer are: Linus Torvalds (and he has a heart condition), and two pimply-faced high-school students, then all things are not equal. Linus will bring in the most profit and he will get the job.
But for you, when you go to get a job, if you have some minor issue that they can use to disqualify you, then you are screwed. But hey, maybe it's for the best. We don't have predators eating us anymore. Maybe if companies did this it would help human evolution along.
From the article: Ohio is one of 21 states that allow companies to fire workers who smoke anywhere -- even at home.
You call me paranoid, but I bet that if, 10 years ago, I'd suggested that people would be fired for smoking in their own homes and on their own free time you would have called that paranoid too.
I'm sure that the same companies who fire employees who dare to smoke on their own time would NEVER dream of sequencing the genes of employees and fire any who have a 2% change of heart desease. Oh no. That will never happen. And if it did, I'm sure that congress, who does not receive enormous donations from the companies, will pass laws that will protect us.
Another big reason that you see so many PHP vulnerabilities is that PHP is free and easy, and so lots of (frankly) amateurs pick it up and write wizz-bang apps with it. The reason I call them amateurs is that they really have no idea and usually don't even know or care to write code with security in mind. Many, perhaps most newbie programmers think that bugs are something that happen to other people who aren't as smart as they are.
So basically, you have some well-intentioned but not experienced person with a good idea, and they sit down and hack together an application while learning PHP at the same time. Do they even know the definition of "SQL Injection Vulnerability" - probably not.
And a lot of the issues that I see on places like bugtraq are application specific, and I usually haven't even heard of the app. "The PHP app, Lyrus Extreme version 3.2 has a remote exploit." In your head, you subconsciously tally that up as "one more PHP problem" and if someone is gathering statistics on PHP problems by searching bugtraq for the string PHP, this one will be counted. But really, it's not a PHP problem, it's just an amateur programmer.
One lesson here is that you should use your real name for things that you can be proud of. Sure, if you have a blog about anime and furries then use an alias. But for acedemic stuff, it's a good idea to use your real name.
It also makes a nice google-trail for potential employers. When you go to apply for a job, they are going to google you. If everything you've done has been anonymous, they wont find anything. No big deal I guess. But if you published that presentation under your real name, then that potential employer might have found it and that makes you look good - it makes you look learned.
Stop for a minute and thing about what that means. You as a manager decide that you need a new software tool for your business. So you pay X amount to have someone develop one for you, and you think you are saving money because you "didn't waste resources on making it better than it needs to be." Inevitably, your business grows and you find that you need to add a feature or two to that piece of custom software. Now you find that the changes are going to cost seven times what you paid for the original program!!
That's not my opinion. I didn't just pull that out of my ass. That is a fact that has been proven time and time again by countless studies.
You say, "nobody's going to notice" Well, you're wrong. You're going to notice when you try to add functionality and discover that because the code is crap, now you're going to pay out the nose.
When you say, "don't make it better than it needs to be" that's like saying, "we don't need a sturdy roof on this building because it never rains this time of year."
Other engineering disciplines, structural engineering for example, have learned their lessons the hard way. They've learned that it's actually cheaper to build in quality. Unfortunately, we in the software industry haven't learned that yet, and that's why software is so expensive.
I'll bet you anything that smart companies like Google are writing quality code, looking to the future when they'll want to make changes quickly and without adding new bugs.
Slashdot Mirror
If you haven't realized it by now, Duke Nukem Forever was a joke. They're never planning on releasing a game by that title.
Who told you they never planned to make it? Because wiki says it was a real game with actual development work completed. By now, I'm sure it has been canceled.
I don't think you get it. I'm not a client. I didn't sit down with a set of requirements for my home network and then go purchase the most cost-effective solution. I buy stuff because I'm a geek and I like to play with technology. Then later I use what I already have for something practical (my home network).
Saying, "I wouldn't hire a person with a home network like that" is like saying, "I'm hiring for the Discovery Channel's _Monster Garage_ and I would never hire a guy with a tricked out Harley. He should know that all he needs to drive to work is a minivan."
a) it's the koreans who are known for playing Starcraft
b) "chinaman" ??? the 19th century called. They want their trite racism back.
I find this to be a very interesting topic. Thanks for your insights.
Here's the best evidence I have: marriage license. Why do you need a marriage license?
But your position is that kings and rulers, thousands of years ago invented marriage. To use the idea of marriage licenses to support your position, you need to show that marriage liceses have existed for thousands of years. Is there any evidence that a marriage license was required in order to get married in ancient Egypt or the like?
According to wiki, marriage licenses have existed since only the middle ages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_license
So I think that they are evidence not of government trying to force lifelong monogamy, but of the church trying to force a set of morals
That's you're response? "well, you believe in GOD! har har har"
That's all you've got? That's weak.
My point here is simple: when someone tries to do something, don't discourage them. There's nothing fairy-tale-like about a space elevator. It's not teleportation. It's not magic. It's physics so simple that anyone can understand it. The reason we don't have a space elevator right now is the same reason they didn't have airplanes in 1902 - not because airplanes were impossible the way faster than light travel is impossible, but because the technology isn't ready yet.
I just think it's very shortsighted of you to scoff at someone who is trying to make something happen, just like it would have been shortsighted to scoff at someone trying to make fire, or someone trying to make an airplane.
be sure to have it degrade nicely for browsers that are not ajax aware and then also for browsers that are not handling javascript.
I am a big proponent of this way of thinking, and I design *all* my apps to degrade gracefully. Nobody has ever asked me to code this way and nobody seems to care that I do it, but for me it is a point of personal pride.
And you know what, it really isn't all that hard to do this. For starters, you check your input params on the server. Many people think they don't have to do this because they have fancy javascript doing it. They don't realize that they are writing insecure apps most likely. Secondly, you should use javascript to write javascript-only controls. In other words, if you have a button that does some nifty javascript function, use document.write() to create that button. That way, people without javascript wont even see it.
You'd be amazed at how many people scoff at the suggestion that they do simple things like those described above. Most programmers, it seems to me, just slop things together. They take no pride at all in their work. They don't love the code. And I think they are just lazy.
The challenges of a space elevator aren't in the climber; they're in the cable. We're not even remotely close to such a cable.
About 30,000 years ago, somebody noticed that he could bang two rocks together and make a spark, he showed it to the rest of the tribe and said (with grunts and hand gestures) "hey, I think I might be able to make fire like this!" Meanwhile, an ancestor of yours scoffed at him. "Why are you wasting your time?" your ancestor said. "The challenge of making fire isn't just the spark. You've got to turn that spark into an ember. You've got to have something to catch fire. You've got to keep yourself from getting burned. That's just for starters. You're a long way from making fire. Stop wasting everyone's time and go back to eating raw meat with the rest of the cavemen."
A very interesting post, but I wonder:
I suspect that the ideal of a lifetime monogamous commitment was developed by the new State Authorities
Is there any actual evidence that a group of people got together in a back room and actually consciously invented lifelong monogamy? Because the idea seems to me just a little bit far fetched. I don't think that people are quite that insightful and forward-thinking.
At any rate, just to support what you said about serial monogamy, there is strong evidence that it was (subconsciously) an invention of women. Men, I think, would be happy roaming about like nomads, and just mating (forcibly if necessary) with any female they happen to meet. Monogamy was like a contract that women made with men. "I will stop resisting and you'll actually have more and better sex IF you agree to stick around and help with the kids." And then once the kids had aged five or six years, the contract stopped serving its purpose and both parties moved on to their next contract.
I think that lifelong monogamy just evolved out of that, as the contract term kept getting longer and longer. The more complex the civilization, the *more* support that children need. Now you've got to buy them clothes, you've got to put them through school, you've got to teach them the complex behaviors that will allow them to fit into this civilization. That takes more than just a few years.
I just think this is a better explanation for lifelong monogamy than the idea that it was invented for a purpose. I think it evolved.
Nonetheless, what you said about the state supporting marriage for its own selfish reasons, I certainly agree with. I just don't think the state invented it.
make your ajax scripts available through https or half of the corporate users won't ever stand half a chance
corporate users aren't allowed to use http?
armed with airplanes (both manned and UAV),
you do realize that airplanes don't work without air, right?
I use 2.60. Old versions of winamp were really great. They load up instantly, have a tiny memory footprint, and do everything I want to do. My friends use iTunes, and it's true that some of the features are great, but when I just want to play one file winamp is faster and better.
Anyway, to answer your queston, so long as you don't have a browser plugin you shouldn't be vulnerable.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I have absolutely zero interest in Microsoft's VM products.
Yeah, but the way the world works is that people who wouldn't normally even think about VMs will think about them for no other reason than the fact that it came for free with their OS. Microsoft will have a button somewhere labeled, "click here to make this a VM" and people who don't even know what a VM is will click it.
Don't believe me? Take a look at the form that comes up after you install Win2k3 advanced server. The form is labeled "Configure this Server" and it has a checkbox labeled, "make this a DNS server" and the word DNS is underlined. When you click it, if gives you the definition of DNS. Isn't that great? If you don't already know what DNS is, then you don't have any business setting one up. But that's the microsoft way. That's their target audience.
How hard is it to sell a DNS server to these people? "Do we need DNS? Wait, don't we already have that in windows?" VMWare is understandably worried that their product will soon be viewed in exactly the same way. "A VM? Do we need that? Wait, we already have it right here, just click that button"
Isn't that a bit like saying all Racing Sims are the same except that they have different cars and graphics?
Imagine a world where only the following racing sims were available:
NASCAR
NASCAR Extreeme
Super Stockcar Racer
Daytona 500
Jeff Gordon's Racing Simulator
NASCAR 2004
NASCAR Unlimited
and
Grand Turismo
That's the way I see the FPS market. Quake was Grand Turismo.
And the run speed is the same as Q3A
That wasn't my impression, and I played it a lot when it first came out. If you say it's fast then maybe I'll go back and try some mods. Have you played CPMA in quake 3? god almighty that's fast. In UT, they would put me in a walled fort and I would look out at this wide open expance with a few hills like miles away and I'm thinking, "this is bullshit! I'm never going to make it all the way there! I need to be able to rocket off a wall and strafe jump!"
To me, UT never seemed even close to fast enough. That's why they had vehicles.
Q3 did away with planning in favor of pure reflex.
:-)
hmm, I have to disagree with you on this. I play quake 3 threewave capturestrike and I'm in my 30's, I certainly don't have the twitch abilities that the younger guys have, but I frequently wipe the floor with them because I use my brain.
I often fire a rocket at a doorway seemingly hours and hours before my opponent turns around and runs for the door. I do the same thing with bounce pads. I fire the rocket and it looks like I do it before the other guy even thinks about going that way, but then sure enough, he turns around and tried to make his escape and I connect. If you watch a demo, it looks like (this sounds corny but w/e) it looks like I willed him into my rocket
The reason I can do that is because I'm thinking, not twitching. I'm thinking about what you want to do and where you want to go so that I can act instead of react. The reason that's possible in quake is because of the movement speed. I've also played a lot of UT, and in that game, I wasn't so good, so I typically just hung out near the flag and spammed, and I got lots of kills that way. You could never spam me to death in quake because I move so fast I'll dodge.
Twitch factor is all about moving the mouse so as to aim your gun. I've recorded (with a video camera) myself playing and my mouse hand isn't moving nearly as fast as my fingers on the keyboard. 90% of quake is movement. Only about 10% is mouse twitch.
I agree with basically everything you said and just want to highlight the speed of movement thing. In quake, you can grab someone flag and rocket jump out of the base and you're gone. It's really hard to catch someone in Quake, so you always have to think ahead and plan out where you're going to go so that you are in a position to head someone off if need-be. In that sense, it's actually a lot like a combat flight simulator. In those, you have to keep thinking about your altitude and energy. If the enemy get's an altitude advantage, he has control of the engagement. The same thing is true in quake.
How cool is that? In every other FPS that I've played, it was just a matter of walking around holding down the fire button, or hiding behind something and spraying bullets.
Can we please, for the love of god, have a game like Quake 3? *Every* other FPS is exactly the same. You know what the difference is between Halo 2 and Half Life 2? The story. Oh sure, the storylines are great. I loved those games. But they are all the same in terms of gameplay. They just have different graphics. Quake 3 - particularly with the threewave mod, is totally unique. It's not like anything else out there.
In quake, the movement speed is so fast, it feels like being in the matrix movies. And everything is so well balanced. Case in point, everybody knows what a camper is, right? In every other FPS game, there is one super weapon, and everybody goes and gets that weapon and that's it, the game consists of marching around holding down the fire button. There was a map in Q3 called space ctf. You all played it. There are the platforms way up in the air with railguns on them. Newbs would go up there and sit on the railgun and fire at people. But it wasn't a problem in Q3. I used to love it when people went up there because that showed they were inexperienced. In quake, the shotgun does as much damage as the railgun, which does as much damage as the rocket launcher, which does as much damage as the grenade launcher, etc. The BFG was probably an unbalancing factor, but most servers took it out. So anyway, if you were a newb in quake and you picked up that railgun, I could kill you easily with the shotgun, I just had to get close to you. And with Quake's speed of movement, that wasn't a hard thing to do. See, that's called strategy. I don't see that kind of thing in other FPS games.
Other games are fun, don't get me wrong. They just aren't as good as Quake 3. Take a look at this website, it has videos of people playing Quake3. Have you ever seen Halo or Halflife or UT videos that cool?
So basically, game makers are just going to give us more of the same old same old. They are going to make versions of Halo and versions of Halflife with better graphics and different storylines. That's it. That's what we have to look forward to.
Only one game is really different.
I wonder how many genetically perfect people there are? Would there be enough genetically perfect people for companies to hire, so that they could ignore the imperfect ones?
Nah, you miss the point, when a company hires you they do a simple calculation.
Money you will generate for the company - Money you cost the company = Your worth to the company
Theoretically, they do this calculation for all applicants and then hire the person with the highest number after the equals sign. In practice, much of it is based on subjective judgment calls. They can't see into the future, they can only guess.
So let's say that we have three applicants. Based on their resumes we think they will all be equally productive. Maybe we decide that each of them will bring in $100,000 in profit for the company. This is all just hypothetical.
All of the applicants demand $40,000 a year in take-home pay. FICA and other taxes raise that to perhaps $60,000. All employees get health insurance. I don't know, I'm just making up numbers. Let's say that with health insurance the base cost is now $80,000 a year.
So the profit from any of these applicants is $100,000 - $80,000 = $20,000 per year. Well, one of the applicants rides a motorcycle, and you have to know that if they bash their head in and cost your health insurance provider a lot of money, your rates are going to go up. So we might add a little bit to this employee's cost. Maybe bump it from $80,000 to $90,000. So now, the expected profit from two of the applicants is 20k and from the deviant motorcycle rider it's 10k. Guess who's not going to get hired.
Companies aren't looking for perfect. You're right to say that nobody is perfect. Companies are looking for maximum profit. All things being equal, they wont hire the guy with a slightly higher chance of heart disease, because that person will cost them more in the long run.
I'll say it again: all things being equal. If the three applicants for programmer are: Linus Torvalds (and he has a heart condition), and two pimply-faced high-school students, then all things are not equal. Linus will bring in the most profit and he will get the job.
But for you, when you go to get a job, if you have some minor issue that they can use to disqualify you, then you are screwed. But hey, maybe it's for the best. We don't have predators eating us anymore. Maybe if companies did this it would help human evolution along.
One, I've never heard of any company firing someone who smokes. Could you provide a source.
Have you tried google?
If You Smoke, You're Fired
and
Bad habit is under fire from Daniels, U.S. firms
From the article:
Ohio is one of 21 states that allow companies to fire workers who smoke anywhere -- even at home.
You call me paranoid, but I bet that if, 10 years ago, I'd suggested that people would be fired for smoking in their own homes and on their own free time you would have called that paranoid too.
the Internet probably fifteen years away.
It happened in 1986. Fifteen years after that is 2001. Wow, you just got the internet in 2001? Well, uh, welcome aboard. Enjoy the porn.
I'm sure that the same companies who fire employees who dare to smoke on their own time would NEVER dream of sequencing the genes of employees and fire any who have a 2% change of heart desease. Oh no. That will never happen. And if it did, I'm sure that congress, who does not receive enormous donations from the companies, will pass laws that will protect us.
Another big reason that you see so many PHP vulnerabilities is that PHP is free and easy, and so lots of (frankly) amateurs pick it up and write wizz-bang apps with it. The reason I call them amateurs is that they really have no idea and usually don't even know or care to write code with security in mind. Many, perhaps most newbie programmers think that bugs are something that happen to other people who aren't as smart as they are.
So basically, you have some well-intentioned but not experienced person with a good idea, and they sit down and hack together an application while learning PHP at the same time. Do they even know the definition of "SQL Injection Vulnerability" - probably not.
And a lot of the issues that I see on places like bugtraq are application specific, and I usually haven't even heard of the app. "The PHP app, Lyrus Extreme version 3.2 has a remote exploit." In your head, you subconsciously tally that up as "one more PHP problem" and if someone is gathering statistics on PHP problems by searching bugtraq for the string PHP, this one will be counted. But really, it's not a PHP problem, it's just an amateur programmer.
most bosses won't say, "take your time and do it right, to make things easier 6 months or 2 years from now".
Yeah, I know. That still doesn't make it the smart thing to do.
everything on my site is under a psudoname
One lesson here is that you should use your real name for things that you can be proud of. Sure, if you have a blog about anime and furries then use an alias. But for acedemic stuff, it's a good idea to use your real name.
It also makes a nice google-trail for potential employers. When you go to apply for a job, they are going to google you. If everything you've done has been anonymous, they wont find anything. No big deal I guess. But if you published that presentation under your real name, then that potential employer might have found it and that makes you look good - it makes you look learned.
don't waste resources on making stuff better than it needs to be; nobody's going to notice
That is factually incorrect. It is long-established, common knowledge (except by you apparently) that 70 PERCENT OF THE COST OF SOFTWARE IS MAINTENANCE
Stop for a minute and thing about what that means. You as a manager decide that you need a new software tool for your business. So you pay X amount to have someone develop one for you, and you think you are saving money because you "didn't waste resources on making it better than it needs to be." Inevitably, your business grows and you find that you need to add a feature or two to that piece of custom software. Now you find that the changes are going to cost seven times what you paid for the original program!!
That's not my opinion. I didn't just pull that out of my ass. That is a fact that has been proven time and time again by countless studies.
You say, "nobody's going to notice" Well, you're wrong. You're going to notice when you try to add functionality and discover that because the code is crap, now you're going to pay out the nose.
When you say, "don't make it better than it needs to be" that's like saying, "we don't need a sturdy roof on this building because it never rains this time of year."
Other engineering disciplines, structural engineering for example, have learned their lessons the hard way. They've learned that it's actually cheaper to build in quality. Unfortunately, we in the software industry haven't learned that yet, and that's why software is so expensive.
I'll bet you anything that smart companies like Google are writing quality code, looking to the future when they'll want to make changes quickly and without adding new bugs.