I agree wholeheartedly. My brother went back to school and became an RN at age 50 (he was a medic in the Air Force in the 1950's), and I started learning Japanese when I was 47. I'm having to come up to speed on Java, Hibernate, AndroMDA, Maven, Oracle, and Spring for the project I'm on (I had no experience with any of them except Java 1.0) and even though it's hard to get all of them at once, I've made enough progress in 2 months to start fixing simple bugs. I've programmed in about a half-dozen other languages, and wrote code for everything from microprocessors to mainframes for the past 30 years, so that helped. I use my iPod to help me study Japanese vocabulary whenever I have a few minutes (like a 20 minute compile), and I occasionally read and post stuff on the Internet. If I wasn't working I wouldn't be bored, because there are a lot of projects I've put on hold that I could be doing if I had the money and time for them.
Hopefully my brother and I can stave off the possibility of Alzheimer's that we may have inherited from our father and grandfather...
Sorry, you're overqualified...
(I'm an old, conservative, Republican, Christian, hence evil old fart, and I got 32 out of 33. Of course I was in school before the Modern Education System took over...)
Re:Pop quiz, hotshot ...
on
American Nerd
·
· Score: 1
Hey, if the old fart you're interviewing hasn't worked in the better part of a year, is nearing the end of his unemployment insurance, and is really laid-back, you can discriminate safely. It worked with me, I was told specifically that I was too old, and that despite my near-perfect alignment with their needs and my skill-set. If I'd had the money (and if wishes were horses I'd be eating steak etc)...
Well, I've just turned 50, and I do have a (somewhat) gray beard, and I also had trouble finding anyone who'd bother with me. I had quite a few interviews, was asked a lot of detailed questions which I either answered honestly "here's what I think the answer is" or honestly "I don't have a background in that specifically, but here's the nearest example I can think of where I've seen something like that". I was out of work from March to August, here in the DC metro area. No government work since I had no clearance, no contract work, not even for W2 type places, and only one place even reluctantly made me an offer (which I took immediately) for half of my previous salary. I had no Java experience, but only 20 years of C++, no Flash/Actionscript experience, but 5 years of Javascript. I've done MVC in Smalltalk (but not Java, so it didn't count), I've installed and run Linux since 1.0 (but not RedHat Enterprise, so that didn't count), and had lots of other "near misses". The last interview I had before the job I'm working on was almost a perfect match, except I was told (outright) that they were looking for someone younger, who they could "mold" into a long-term support person for the project. "Long-term" being 5 years...
If I'd had the money I would have tried to pursue a suit, but they basically got away with age discrimination, and quite blatantly. Of course, it also helped that they were a Government agency...
Since the Federal Government has shown it will offer to bail out companies in industries that are "too large to fail", and since an "objective" press is so important to our society, it's obvious that the media are hoping that they'll get Federal dollars to keep going, even if it means we get the NYTimes or the WaPo delivered whether we want it or not.
All we have to do is set up a list of approved study donors, so that we can reject the "facts" produced by the corrupt donors and accept the "true facts" from the good people.
So, who funded this study, and can we suspect the study because of who funded it?
Of course, they will discover that the "harmless" nitrates will cause rivers to choke on algae, due to the fertilizing effect of the nitrate runoff in the rain.
I'm really not sure, it's just a vaguely remembered article from Scientific American or some such from a couple decades ago. I remember that they put the soil samples into a medium which had some kind of organic material, like agar or something, as well as water, and that there was a flurry of results, of oxygen being released (isotope tagged in the medium) but when they added more medium, there was no more oxygen produced. I remember a lot of discussions about some kind of explanation, and at the time the peroxide theory had the least arguments against it. I imagine a google search might find more info. Hopefully we'll learn about this latest find soon.
The key part is in the last paragraph, where it says the "provocative" results came from the experiment where they added water from Earth to a sample of soil. I bet they had a burst of oxygen like the old Viking lander experiments, which no one ever satisfactorily explained. The one that I remembered that made sense was some kind of dry peroxide in the soil formed by UV, which reacted with water to generate O2, but didn't repeat because the peroxide was used up.
I hope this indicates some kind of chemistry that makes it easy to extract breathable O2 from Martian soil, so that any explorers/exploiters won't have to take as much in consumables. Would be nice to find a nitrogen source, then you'd have CHON, which is most of what you need to live. In the right proportions, of course.
Slashdot Mirror
Depends on how good you are at sketching circuits...
So, no one thought they were Chairface Chipendale? Disappointing, I was looking forward to seeing "CHA" on the Moon, eventually...
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine...
I agree wholeheartedly. My brother went back to school and became an RN at age 50 (he was a medic in the Air Force in the 1950's), and I started learning Japanese when I was 47. I'm having to come up to speed on Java, Hibernate, AndroMDA, Maven, Oracle, and Spring for the project I'm on (I had no experience with any of them except Java 1.0) and even though it's hard to get all of them at once, I've made enough progress in 2 months to start fixing simple bugs. I've programmed in about a half-dozen other languages, and wrote code for everything from microprocessors to mainframes for the past 30 years, so that helped. I use my iPod to help me study Japanese vocabulary whenever I have a few minutes (like a 20 minute compile), and I occasionally read and post stuff on the Internet.
If I wasn't working I wouldn't be bored, because there are a lot of projects I've put on hold that I could be doing if I had the money and time for them.
Hopefully my brother and I can stave off the possibility of Alzheimer's that we may have inherited from our father and grandfather...
Make serving in Congress like jury duty, and don't allow for more than one term. And go back to letting state legislatures select Senators.
At least we wouldn't have so many lawyers making laws that only other lawyers understand, and that have so many unintended consequences...
Sorry, you're overqualified... (I'm an old, conservative, Republican, Christian, hence evil old fart, and I got 32 out of 33. Of course I was in school before the Modern Education System took over...)
I'm a Browncoat, you unfeeling Alliance clod!
Hey, if the old fart you're interviewing hasn't worked in the better part of a year, is nearing the end of his unemployment insurance, and is really laid-back, you can discriminate safely. It worked with me, I was told specifically that I was too old, and that despite my near-perfect alignment with their needs and my skill-set. If I'd had the money (and if wishes were horses I'd be eating steak etc)...
Well, I've just turned 50, and I do have a (somewhat) gray beard, and I also had trouble finding anyone who'd bother with me. I had quite a few interviews, was asked a lot of detailed questions which I either answered honestly "here's what I think the answer is" or honestly "I don't have a background in that specifically, but here's the nearest example I can think of where I've seen something like that". I was out of work from March to August, here in the DC metro area. No government work since I had no clearance, no contract work, not even for W2 type places, and only one place even reluctantly made me an offer (which I took immediately) for half of my previous salary. I had no Java experience, but only 20 years of C++, no Flash/Actionscript experience, but 5 years of Javascript. I've done MVC in Smalltalk (but not Java, so it didn't count), I've installed and run Linux since 1.0 (but not RedHat Enterprise, so that didn't count), and had lots of other "near misses". The last interview I had before the job I'm working on was almost a perfect match, except I was told (outright) that they were looking for someone younger, who they could "mold" into a long-term support person for the project. "Long-term" being 5 years... If I'd had the money I would have tried to pursue a suit, but they basically got away with age discrimination, and quite blatantly. Of course, it also helped that they were a Government agency...
Going by my 25 years in the business, I'd say "three weeks"...
I will have, didn't I?
If he really is a Papermaster then IBM better hope he doesn't tell them where to put the contract paper. Or worse, show them!
Since the Federal Government has shown it will offer to bail out companies in industries that are "too large to fail", and since an "objective" press is so important to our society, it's obvious that the media are hoping that they'll get Federal dollars to keep going, even if it means we get the NYTimes or the WaPo delivered whether we want it or not.
Since no one has said it yet, "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these"...
Great, now I'm going to have to spend my time using the F'n' key...
That's okay, because we're secretly breeding hordes of vicious anti-sock wire hangers in closets all over the world.
Obligatory: "Time is an illusion, lunchtime, doubly so." D. Adams
A horrible violation of the laws of God and Man...
All we have to do is set up a list of approved study donors, so that we can reject the "facts" produced by the corrupt donors and accept the "true facts" from the good people. So, who funded this study, and can we suspect the study because of who funded it?
Move to Chicago and you can...
Of course, they will discover that the "harmless" nitrates will cause rivers to choke on algae, due to the fertilizing effect of the nitrate runoff in the rain.
4 passwords? "Speak 'friend' and enter" maybe?
Funny how Hollywood almost got it right: Robinsons Crusoe On Mars
I'm really not sure, it's just a vaguely remembered article from Scientific American or some such from a couple decades ago. I remember that they put the soil samples into a medium which had some kind of organic material, like agar or something, as well as water, and that there was a flurry of results, of oxygen being released (isotope tagged in the medium) but when they added more medium, there was no more oxygen produced. I remember a lot of discussions about some kind of explanation, and at the time the peroxide theory had the least arguments against it. I imagine a google search might find more info. Hopefully we'll learn about this latest find soon.
The key part is in the last paragraph, where it says the "provocative" results came from the experiment where they added water from Earth to a sample of soil. I bet they had a burst of oxygen like the old Viking lander experiments, which no one ever satisfactorily explained. The one that I remembered that made sense was some kind of dry peroxide in the soil formed by UV, which reacted with water to generate O2, but didn't repeat because the peroxide was used up.
I hope this indicates some kind of chemistry that makes it easy to extract breathable O2 from Martian soil, so that any explorers/exploiters won't have to take as much in consumables. Would be nice to find a nitrogen source, then you'd have CHON, which is most of what you need to live. In the right proportions, of course.