Reminds me of an old film I saw as a kid - "The Day The Earth Split In Two", I think.
Scientists drilled a deep shaft then fired a rocket (a probe of some sort) down it. Unfortunately this caused an earthquake nearby and the crack started moving slowly round the planet until, despite all efforts, it came back to the start. The closing scene was the view from space as a large cone (about 30-40%) af the earth floated off and the core spewing out.
It was a typical 50/60's B movie, really corny and it scared the hell out of me, I couldn't sleep properly for weeks. Who needs The Matrix...? bring back the good ol' B movie.;-)
"Why is using a scraper robot so different from, say, walking into Best Buy with a handheld and recording product pricing manually?"
I guess it's as much about the percieved ability to stop a human and the lag in that information being used.
A number of years ago I was using my Psion to check the E-numbers on the food labels, I'm both vegetarian and have an intolerance to certain food additives. The store's duty manager came up to me to ask me to stop or I'd be ejected from the store for unacceptable behaviour, it took quite a while to persuade him that I was not an undercover operative from a competitor or investigative reporter - I was just doing my shopping carefully!
People don't like the idea that they can't stop the robot from checking their prices and providing that information back in seconds so that their competition can undercut them almost as soon as they post their prices.
With modern technology, retailers like to believe they could stop a person from gleaning too much information for a competitor in person but it's all just perception, the fact is that we're well past all that.
Isn't it led by the most dangerous one of all - Shrub himself?
I don't mean to offend the good citizens of the U.S. but, shit, I'm daily getting more frightened of the States than of any other country or organisation.
No offence taken, you're quite correct, but I think you missed the point I was making (perhaps poorly?). I'm not talking about the graduates here, anyone coming out of education with a decent qualification deserves and will generally get a bite at the apple - good luck to you/us/them all.
The poor schmucks I'm talking about are the 30+ age group (yep, it's that low!) who've never worked in I.T. before and are looking for a career change - voluntarily or otherwise. It's these poor saps that are sold the fast-track, three or six month training course which "will guarantee you a role in the I.T. industry".
In the current climate, these poor bastards will jump at any chance to improve their outlook and no-one points out to them that, since the degree graduates who've been studying for the past three or four years are having a hard time of it, they have very little hope.
Often they're people who've only ever dabbled with Access or the likes to create a d.b. to hold their record collection and that's it at best. The agencies then tell them they've got all they need to cross-train into I.T., when the truth is generally quite the opposite. They're sold a dream... a fantasy... and they'll cling to it in desperation - I've seen it all too often.
You'd have to shoot me before you could promote me, can't think of a worse thing than to be taken from a hands-on tech. role to become a paper-pusher... what a nightmare! That's why I went contract, no career pressure, and I'm a far better developer that I could ever be as a manager.
I've been in the industry for almost 20 years (25 if you count school/uni.), mostly contract both here in Oz and formerly in the U.K.; I find it bad enough having to run to stand still and keep up to date on all the new technologies - you all know what I mean! Unfortunately, people still see the I.T. industry as the universal panacea to employment problems, after all "how difficult can it be to programme one of those computer things?"(!)
What few of these poor schmucks are told or realise is that different languages are basically just a change of syntax (plus some relatively minor technique changes) and therefore easy to pick up if you already have the grounding. It's the underlying design and analysis skills (the ones you can't really teach) plus straight-forward experience that people are looking for in the more mature developers.
If an employer wants inexperienced developers, the newbie graduate will be be favoured as they will have lower salary expectations. If they are looking to the more mature person, it's because they are looking for the I.T. skills and not the "life" experience.
My current employer just sent round some c.v's for us to comment on for a work experience (read: unpaid) position we have - God, I hate doing that - and half of them were "mature" people moving from other industries which have slackened off. You try to ignore that you are potentially consigning the unchosen to failure and potential unemployment, thinking "there but for the grace of God go I". You look at the scant overview of I.T. skills that their three/six month "training" course has given them and know that most haven't got a chance - they've been sold a fantasy by the training agency.
The fact is that I.T. is a young person's industry, be it due to misconceptions or not, and unless you get in early it will be very hard to make it stick. We all know how rapidly the technology changes and how hard it can be to keep up; when you have a house and family there's even less time available - I've learnt to read and walk (without bumping into things/people) just so I can use the train/walk to work to read manuals - it's only my long experience, adaptability and up-to-date skills that have seen me through these last few years of lean times.
If you can show the ability to adapt, have plenty of hands-on and can keep up then contracting is the way to go for the older developer IMHO. Employers don't want to take on permanent oldies (like me, shit I'm only 41!) but the contract industry cares less about the person and looks more for the right skill-set and the experience to back it up. It's kept me in good money thus far but I have to admit it's getting harder to keep up all the time.
I totally agree about the wear and tear issue, hence my not-too-old comment. It depends on how you read his comments I guess, but to my way of reading he's actually recommending an old (how old is old?) machine in a number of places but only refers to the wear and tear issue the once, I believe.
As to the chassis flexing, a decent bench can solve that - I know a HiFi vinyl fanatic who had a concrete stand built in his media room to ensure the perfect platform for the deck!
Did any of the last shuttle pieces reach their intended landing zone?;-)
Say what you like about the Russian space program, the fact is that they've done bloody well on a shoestring budget. If if weren't for them, the astronauts would still be up there, rapidly running out of supplies.
If it's VHS, use an old machine which doesn't thread the tape around the heads for fast-forward or rewind (ie. less wear)
I can't agree about the old machine. Most older/cheaper models of v.c.r. run the tape at high speed until the optics detect the clear header tape at each end, then slam on the brakes (with that painful sounding thump). Modern, (higher cost) recorders user the relative spool rotation speed to identify position and slow the tape down as it reaches the end of a wind/rewind. Hell, our latest unit rewinds at 750x play speed! It can completely rewind a E180 in under a minute, you hear it decelerate from a high speed whine to a crawl before a gentle click.
The result is that older units tend to stretch the start/end of tapes far worse than modern ones and may also tighten the outer winds of tape due to the braking action, potentially rucking/rippling the inner winds slightly. You should also avoid tapes longer than E180 (3 hr.) as the tape thickness is reduced significantly beyond this length to fit them on the spool, which can lead to more stretching.
Try to keep the tapes in a dry and cool (but not cold) constant environment. If there is enough moisture around and the temp. varies enough you'll get condensation which can lead to mould between the tape layers.
Finally, obvious though it may sound, check the walls and floors with one of those wire/pipe/stud detectors the electricians use to ensure there are no live mains cables within about 0.5m of the storage area. I lost a heap of audio tapes some years ago when I didn't know there was a lightswitch on the far side of a wall behind the storage case.
My ISP ArachNet, Western Australia provides spam filtering and virus scanning of e-mail automatically as part of their entire account range. I can't say the span filtering works perfectly, but I don't recall receiving any since switching over, I've also received NO viruses since. If all the ISP's did something responsible like this, it might not stop the spam/virus problem but it would sure reduce the numbers.
it's a little inconvenient for me to drive a stick shift. But I bet it's just as inconvenient for righties in places like England and Japan Duh, what?! C'mon, think about this for a bit would you? The vast majority of drivers in those two places (and others, like here in Oz) are right handed (as is the general world population) and have no problem with a manual (stick) gearbox. In fact, the vast majority of cars in the U.K. are manuals, people prefer them - less lazy, more control. I hate to have to point out the obvious, but the problem you have with a stick shift... is you! Lefties are apparently just generally less dexterous, my wife is. Perhaps some of it due to the right-handed environment and left/right conflicts set up in early life, but the rest is down to you.
The Cube sales were an abboration based on novelty factor - "gee, let's buy that cool looking computer, it looks even cooler that the iMac". In typical marketing fashion, Apple then thought that fashion was of more importance that function - dream on! At the end of the day, the sustainability of sales is based on product quality and value, not looks. If Apple can't work this one out they deserve to go under - after all, a Porsche with a 250cc 2 cylinder engine would not exactly generate great sales would it?
Given the Q.M. nature of the symposium, aren't we going to end up with a load of attendies turning up to the wrong place on the right day or the right place on the wrong day?
As someone who was head-hunted as a "Pascal Guru" in the pre-Windows days (yup, I'm old!), the important thing is not to specialise too far. The Pascal market in the U.K. disappeared almost overnight in the late eighties and I went from Guru to unemployed very fast, because I had too few in-favour alternatives.
My favourite choice for Windows would be Delphi/Kylix due to my early days with Pascal - and it craps all over V.B., but I use V.B. for my main contracting role (people want it, so I write in it).
I use Delphi/Kylix for my own projects, Java, ASP, PHP, etc. where appropriate; hell, if it pays the bills and gets me the new car and holiday, I'll even revive my Cobol skills... as long as I'm having fun!
C/C++ is still a good career choice but the learning curve is very steep and the market a bit 'snobbish' with the new kid on the block.
What is important it not to narrow down your skill set but to build it up. Keep your V.B. skills up, learn Delphi/Kylix and Java and go with the market. Remember that programming techniques are the skill to be learnt, languages are just syntax.
In an ideal world we could choose the best tools and everyone would love us for it - welcome to reality, it doesn't happen that way.
Shit, I really do sound like an old fart, don't I?
I recall that it happened quite recently that a farmer down here had a normal phone cable (copper wire) laid in one of his crop fields before he planted. He didn't know it was there and ploughed the cable - ended up getting bits of cable in all the hay bales at the end of the season - ruined the entire crop 'cos it couldn't be sold as feed. Almost ruined the poor bugger; and did the telco care? What do you think!
I went to a chiro. first to get all the kinks taken out of my back ($$$) then got one of those big, funky (cheap) exercise balls to sit on (75cm for someone about 183cm) - haven't looked back since. It helps keep your hips (and thus lower back) at the correct angle and strengthens your ab. muscles 'cos you're always making minor adjustments to keep on top of it. It has the added bonus of making an excellent stress toy (just try to dunk it in the waste basket at lunch!), it's a minor talking/joking point and helps keep you awake for the all-nighters - you sleep, you fall off, you wake up. No worries.
Slashdot Mirror
Reminds me of an old film I saw as a kid - "The Day The Earth Split In Two", I think.
;-)
Scientists drilled a deep shaft then fired a rocket (a probe of some sort) down it. Unfortunately this caused an earthquake nearby and the crack started moving slowly round the planet until, despite all efforts, it came back to the start. The closing scene was the view from space as a large cone (about 30-40%) af the earth floated off and the core spewing out.
It was a typical 50/60's B movie, really corny and it scared the hell out of me, I couldn't sleep properly for weeks. Who needs The Matrix...? bring back the good ol' B movie.
"Why is using a scraper robot so different from, say, walking into Best Buy with a handheld and recording product pricing manually?"
I guess it's as much about the percieved ability to stop a human and the lag in that information being used.
A number of years ago I was using my Psion to check the E-numbers on the food labels, I'm both vegetarian and have an intolerance to certain food additives. The store's duty manager came up to me to ask me to stop or I'd be ejected from the store for unacceptable behaviour, it took quite a while to persuade him that I was not an undercover operative from a competitor or investigative reporter - I was just doing my shopping carefully!
People don't like the idea that they can't stop the robot from checking their prices and providing that information back in seconds so that their competition can undercut them almost as soon as they post their prices.
With modern technology, retailers like to believe they could stop a person from gleaning too much information for a competitor in person but it's all just perception, the fact is that we're well past all that.
"Visual" & "Basic" ...and I have to use the *&!#&@$ thing every bloody working day.
Isn't it led by the most dangerous one of all - Shrub himself?
I don't mean to offend the good citizens of the U.S. but, shit, I'm daily getting more frightened of the States than of any other country or organisation.
...they're just trying another approach on what the monkeys were typing.
...the last requirements meeting I had with the users, when I told them how much Phase II of the system was going to cost.
No wait, they didn't urinate, they did something else...
No offence taken, you're quite correct, but I think you missed the point I was making (perhaps poorly?). I'm not talking about the graduates here, anyone coming out of education with a decent qualification deserves and will generally get a bite at the apple - good luck to you/us/them all.
The poor schmucks I'm talking about are the 30+ age group (yep, it's that low!) who've never worked in I.T. before and are looking for a career change - voluntarily or otherwise. It's these poor saps that are sold the fast-track, three or six month training course which "will guarantee you a role in the I.T. industry".
In the current climate, these poor bastards will jump at any chance to improve their outlook and no-one points out to them that, since the degree graduates who've been studying for the past three or four years are having a hard time of it, they have very little hope.
Often they're people who've only ever dabbled with Access or the likes to create a d.b. to hold their record collection and that's it at best. The agencies then tell them they've got all they need to cross-train into I.T., when the truth is generally quite the opposite. They're sold a dream... a fantasy... and they'll cling to it in desperation - I've seen it all too often.
I used to wonder what was so holy about a silent night, now I have a child.
Amen to that!
You'd have to shoot me before you could promote me, can't think of a worse thing than to be taken from a hands-on tech. role to become a paper-pusher... what a nightmare! That's why I went contract, no career pressure, and I'm a far better developer that I could ever be as a manager.
I've been in the industry for almost 20 years (25 if you count school/uni.), mostly contract both here in Oz and formerly in the U.K.; I find it bad enough having to run to stand still and keep up to date on all the new technologies - you all know what I mean! Unfortunately, people still see the I.T. industry as the universal panacea to employment problems, after all "how difficult can it be to programme one of those computer things?"(!)
What few of these poor schmucks are told or realise is that different languages are basically just a change of syntax (plus some relatively minor technique changes) and therefore easy to pick up if you already have the grounding. It's the underlying design and analysis skills (the ones you can't really teach) plus straight-forward experience that people are looking for in the more mature developers.
If an employer wants inexperienced developers, the newbie graduate will be be favoured as they will have lower salary expectations. If they are looking to the more mature person, it's because they are looking for the I.T. skills and not the "life" experience.
My current employer just sent round some c.v's for us to comment on for a work experience (read: unpaid) position we have - God, I hate doing that - and half of them were "mature" people moving from other industries which have slackened off. You try to ignore that you are potentially consigning the unchosen to failure and potential unemployment, thinking "there but for the grace of God go I". You look at the scant overview of I.T. skills that their three/six month "training" course has given them and know that most haven't got a chance - they've been sold a fantasy by the training agency.
The fact is that I.T. is a young person's industry, be it due to misconceptions or not, and unless you get in early it will be very hard to make it stick. We all know how rapidly the technology changes and how hard it can be to keep up; when you have a house and family there's even less time available - I've learnt to read and walk (without bumping into things/people) just so I can use the train/walk to work to read manuals - it's only my long experience, adaptability and up-to-date skills that have seen me through these last few years of lean times.
If you can show the ability to adapt, have plenty of hands-on and can keep up then contracting is the way to go for the older developer IMHO. Employers don't want to take on permanent oldies (like me, shit I'm only 41!) but the contract industry cares less about the person and looks more for the right skill-set and the experience to back it up. It's kept me in good money thus far but I have to admit it's getting harder to keep up all the time.
Nah, she's gonna buy you one of those Japanese Cardboard PC cases, cut a short wide slot in the front, slip it over the TV and... voila, widescreen!
I though the traditional problem for geeks was getting the girlfriend / female counterpart / opposite gender humanoid and turning it on!
I claim the x2 points on behalf of M$ for transforming my office workstation into a work-stationary all by itself - ****ing XP!
"...and now over to the office, where this month's fifth p.c. build is about to take place..."
I totally agree about the wear and tear issue, hence my not-too-old comment. It depends on how you read his comments I guess, but to my way of reading he's actually recommending an old (how old is old?) machine in a number of places but only refers to the wear and tear issue the once, I believe.
As to the chassis flexing, a decent bench can solve that - I know a HiFi vinyl fanatic who had a concrete stand built in his media room to ensure the perfect platform for the deck!
Did any of the last shuttle pieces reach their intended landing zone? ;-)
Say what you like about the Russian space program, the fact is that they've done bloody well on a shoestring budget. If if weren't for them, the astronauts would still be up there, rapidly running out of supplies.
If it's VHS, use an old machine which doesn't thread the tape around the heads for fast-forward or rewind (ie. less wear)
I can't agree about the old machine. Most older/cheaper models of v.c.r. run the tape at high speed until the optics detect the clear header tape at each end, then slam on the brakes (with that painful sounding thump). Modern, (higher cost) recorders user the relative spool rotation speed to identify position and slow the tape down as it reaches the end of a wind/rewind. Hell, our latest unit rewinds at 750x play speed! It can completely rewind a E180 in under a minute, you hear it decelerate from a high speed whine to a crawl before a gentle click.
The result is that older units tend to stretch the start/end of tapes far worse than modern ones and may also tighten the outer winds of tape due to the braking action, potentially rucking/rippling the inner winds slightly. You should also avoid tapes longer than E180 (3 hr.) as the tape thickness is reduced significantly beyond this length to fit them on the spool, which can lead to more stretching.
Try to keep the tapes in a dry and cool (but not cold) constant environment. If there is enough moisture around and the temp. varies enough you'll get condensation which can lead to mould between the tape layers.
Finally, obvious though it may sound, check the walls and floors with one of those wire/pipe/stud detectors the electricians use to ensure there are no live mains cables within about 0.5m of the storage area. I lost a heap of audio tapes some years ago when I didn't know there was a lightswitch on the far side of a wall behind the storage case.
My ISP ArachNet, Western Australia provides spam filtering and virus scanning of e-mail automatically as part of their entire account range.
I can't say the span filtering works perfectly, but I don't recall receiving any since switching over, I've also received NO viruses since.
If all the ISP's did something responsible like this, it might not stop the spam/virus problem but it would sure reduce the numbers.
-----------------------
it's a little inconvenient for me to drive a stick shift. But I bet it's just as inconvenient for righties in places like England and Japan
Duh, what?! C'mon, think about this for a bit would you? The vast majority of drivers in those two places (and others, like here in Oz) are right handed (as is the general world population) and have no problem with a manual (stick) gearbox. In fact, the vast majority of cars in the U.K. are manuals, people prefer them - less lazy, more control.
I hate to have to point out the obvious, but the problem you have with a stick shift... is you! Lefties are apparently just generally less dexterous, my wife is.
Perhaps some of it due to the right-handed environment and left/right conflicts set up in early life, but the rest is down to you.
The Cube sales were an abboration based on novelty factor - "gee, let's buy that cool looking computer, it looks even cooler that the iMac". In typical marketing fashion, Apple then thought that fashion was of more importance that function - dream on!
At the end of the day, the sustainability of sales is based on product quality and value, not looks. If Apple can't work this one out they deserve to go under - after all, a Porsche with a 250cc 2 cylinder engine would not exactly generate great sales would it?
Given the Q.M. nature of the symposium, aren't we going to end up with a load of attendies turning up to the wrong place on the right day or the right place on the wrong day?
As someone who was head-hunted as a "Pascal Guru" in the pre-Windows days (yup, I'm old!), the important thing is not to specialise too far. The Pascal market in the U.K. disappeared almost overnight in the late eighties and I went from Guru to unemployed very fast, because I had too few in-favour alternatives.
My favourite choice for Windows would be Delphi/Kylix due to my early days with Pascal - and it craps all over V.B., but I use V.B. for my main contracting role (people want it, so I write in it).
I use Delphi/Kylix for my own projects, Java, ASP, PHP, etc. where appropriate; hell, if it pays the bills and gets me the new car and holiday, I'll even revive my Cobol skills... as long as I'm having fun!
C/C++ is still a good career choice but the learning curve is very steep and the market a bit 'snobbish' with the new kid on the block.
What is important it not to narrow down your skill set but to build it up. Keep your V.B. skills up, learn Delphi/Kylix and Java and go with the market. Remember that programming techniques are the skill to be learnt, languages are just syntax.
In an ideal world we could choose the best tools and everyone would love us for it - welcome to reality, it doesn't happen that way.
Shit, I really do sound like an old fart, don't I?
I recall that it happened quite recently that a farmer down here had a normal phone cable (copper wire) laid in one of his crop fields before he planted. He didn't know it was there and ploughed the cable - ended up getting bits of cable in all the hay bales at the end of the season - ruined the entire crop 'cos it couldn't be sold as feed. Almost ruined the poor bugger; and did the telco care? What do you think!
I went to a chiro. first to get all the kinks taken out of my back ($$$) then got one of those big, funky (cheap) exercise balls to sit on (75cm for someone about 183cm) - haven't looked back since.
It helps keep your hips (and thus lower back) at the correct angle and strengthens your ab. muscles 'cos you're always making minor adjustments to keep on top of it.
It has the added bonus of making an excellent stress toy (just try to dunk it in the waste basket at lunch!), it's a minor talking/joking point and helps keep you awake for the all-nighters - you sleep, you fall off, you wake up.
No worries.