Well, she made a great covert operative. It's actually, in a strange way, realistic, as epsionage agencies regularly resort to sex as a means of obtaining access to sensitive data.
I'm a programmer. Can a sexy blonde android seduce me?:)
Absolutely brilliant! My co-workers and I are marveling over your ability to work the system. You should get the "Playa of the Year" award.
Whenever you should change jobs, I'd actually put it on your resume and claim the international management experience. With that, you might have added another several years of life to your career.
I agree that something needs to be done. I currently work as a programmer but my degree is an MA in English, and I recall my tenured full professors being incapable of explaning deconstruction, and some other branches of lit. crit. What I believe we need is 1) a scathing paper to be published by the PMLA and 2) a project designed specifically to communicate the salient elements of lit. crit. to the layman (a "Cosmos" for lit. crit.). We need a Carl Sagan to explain the relevance to the public and ourselves, and if we can't find enough relevance then we need to rethink what we're doing.
I think your last paragraph makes a great point, and that's my hope as well. I'm still quite worried about several factors for the US economy in the short to middle term, though, so maybe someone with more macro-economic skills than I can help.
1) For starters, what will happen when the flight of service jobs begins a spiral of deflation in the US economy? Japan still hasn't figured out how to get out of their deflation after over a decade. What are the solutions to spiraling deflation? Where have these solutions been successfully implemented?
2) How will we solve the lack of incentive to earn an excellent education? Higher education costs big bucks in the US, so potential students require the realistic expectation of a high salary upon graduation to pay off their incured debt. Doesn't it usually follow that a less educated nation is a poorer nation? If not, what nation is an example?
TiVo... you need a TiVo. Please, do yourself a favor, and let it do the recording for you, and stop regretting all the good stuff that you missed as opposed to the crappy stuff that you watched just because "it was on."
When in doubt, make like the Reb's did in the civil war... leave a burned swath all the way to the freakin' sea
Congratulations, sir! You've just failed American History. Other than that, a pretty decent post.
No, I don't think he did. Sherman's famous march might have been what he was alluding to, which would be a mistake, but ironically many Rebel forces burned their own towns in advance of Sherman so as not to leave anything for his forces to find. One common tactic was to use flour to demolish homes, since when dispersed in air it has explosive properties.
So, next time you reply to a post, be careful about using a snotty tone. Makes you sound like a punk-ass 14 year old.
I never saw an engineering course that wasn't curved, and curved in a big way. Instead of most of the students deserving a C and getting a B or A, most deserved an F and got a C.
For an excellent essay on what defines great SF, read Ursula K. Le Guin's introduction to The_Left_Hand_of_Darkness. The basic gist? Great SF is descriptive, not predictive.
In non-software related companies, terrible requirements from the business units were, and in many cases still are. How is IT supposed to save money when the business units demand poorly conceived features (which they want yesterday) and then after 60% of the coding is done they start changing their minds? How many of you coders from non-tech companies out there remember being in meetings with these people trying to help them figure out what they want? How many of you remember them getting frustrated because our asking questions like "what specifically do you mean by 'The system should always work but if it doesn't it should do something'?" Remember all the times that you bit your tongue because you really wanted to say, "I can't read your minds"? Remember the scope creep? People from business units saying "But isn't that easy?" or "Just stop development now and send it to QA," or "Your problems is that you guys are perfectionists." For those of you who coded in software houses, how many times did Product Marketing come to Engineering with specs for a product that they boasted would outsell MS Office? And how many times did PM do an about face and the product got cancelled... after it got as far as the QA cycle? If you experience is anything like mine, all of these events happened all too often.
Lincoln Stein created a classic with "How to Set Up and Maintain a Web Site," and I believe that any serious web developer (and certainly any professional) should know how to get around in Perl CGI. Stein also wrote CGI.pm, probably one of the most used Perl modules. JSP/Servlet implementations remain the right way to do things today, but Stein's book still holds great value.
Like anybody would care to know that, but I couldn't help myself. I grew up reading sci-fi, and went on to earn an M.A. in Literature, and this book still rockets above all the rest. It's... well... I don't want to ruin anything. Just read it so we can discuss!
Ditto to all others who suggested Myst. It's completely non-violent, and the original version will run on old systems (Mac or PC) and still looks stunning. If you have access to new machines and sense that the children will crave more eye candy and full 3D immersion, RealMYST will fit the bill nicely.
As developers, we seek the respect and recognition of our peers, with that motivation often taking priority over money. Open-source allows the prefect vehicle to show our work to and share with that peer audience.
but ramblings with poorly placed parentheticals (crap) and nonsensical punctuation. (learn to write) attempt to appear philosophical (fail) leading to derisive laughter from the audience (*BURP*).
How true that the inane consumes more of our attention. Probably because it pisses us off.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, she made a great covert operative. It's actually, in a strange way, realistic, as epsionage agencies regularly resort to sex as a means of obtaining access to sensitive data.
:)
I'm a programmer. Can a sexy blonde android seduce me?
Absolutely brilliant! My co-workers and I are marveling over your ability to work the system. You should get the "Playa of the Year" award.
Whenever you should change jobs, I'd actually put it on your resume and claim the international management experience. With that, you might have added another several years of life to your career.
I agree that something needs to be done. I currently work as a programmer but my degree is an MA in English, and I recall my tenured full professors being incapable of explaning deconstruction, and some other branches of lit. crit. What I believe we need is 1) a scathing paper to be published by the PMLA and 2) a project designed specifically to communicate the salient elements of lit. crit. to the layman (a "Cosmos" for lit. crit.). We need a Carl Sagan to explain the relevance to the public and ourselves, and if we can't find enough relevance then we need to rethink what we're doing.
I think your last paragraph makes a great point, and that's my hope as well. I'm still quite worried about several factors for the US economy in the short to middle term, though, so maybe someone with more macro-economic skills than I can help.
1) For starters, what will happen when the flight of service jobs begins a spiral of deflation in the US economy? Japan still hasn't figured out how to get out of their deflation after over a decade. What are the solutions to spiraling deflation? Where have these solutions been successfully implemented?
2) How will we solve the lack of incentive to earn an excellent education? Higher education costs big bucks in the US, so potential students require the realistic expectation of a high salary upon graduation to pay off their incured debt. Doesn't it usually follow that a less educated nation is a poorer nation? If not, what nation is an example?
TiVo ... you need a TiVo. Please, do yourself a favor, and let it do the recording for you, and stop regretting all the good stuff that you missed as opposed to the crappy stuff that you watched just because "it was on."
No, I don't think he did. Sherman's famous march might have been what he was alluding to, which would be a mistake, but ironically many Rebel forces burned their own towns in advance of Sherman so as not to leave anything for his forces to find. One common tactic was to use flour to demolish homes, since when dispersed in air it has explosive properties.
So, next time you reply to a post, be careful about using a snotty tone. Makes you sound like a punk-ass 14 year old.
I never saw an engineering course that wasn't curved, and curved in a big way. Instead of most of the students deserving a C and getting a B or A, most deserved an F and got a C.
For an excellent essay on what defines great SF, read Ursula K. Le Guin's introduction to The_Left_Hand_of_Darkness. The basic gist? Great SF is descriptive, not predictive.
Both from Mercury Interactive. Expensive, but excellent. LoadRunner in particular does an great job of load testing against any major RDBMS.
In non-software related companies, terrible requirements from the business units were, and in many cases still are. How is IT supposed to save money when the business units demand poorly conceived features (which they want yesterday) and then after 60% of the coding is done they start changing their minds? How many of you coders from non-tech companies out there remember being in meetings with these people trying to help them figure out what they want? How many of you remember them getting frustrated because our asking questions like "what specifically do you mean by 'The system should always work but if it doesn't it should do something'?" Remember all the times that you bit your tongue because you really wanted to say, "I can't read your minds"? Remember the scope creep? People from business units saying "But isn't that easy?" or "Just stop development now and send it to QA," or "Your problems is that you guys are perfectionists." For those of you who coded in software houses, how many times did Product Marketing come to Engineering with specs for a product that they boasted would outsell MS Office? And how many times did PM do an about face and the product got cancelled ... after it got as far as the QA cycle? If you experience is anything like mine, all of these events happened all too often.
"IE and Konqueror don't both to check the issuer ...." C'mon, Taco, get another pair of eyes on your copy before you post it.
Lincoln Stein created a classic with "How to Set Up and Maintain a Web Site," and I believe that any serious web developer (and certainly any professional) should know how to get around in Perl CGI. Stein also wrote CGI.pm, probably one of the most used Perl modules. JSP/Servlet implementations remain the right way to do things today, but Stein's book still holds great value.
Like anybody would care to know that, but I couldn't help myself. I grew up reading sci-fi, and went on to earn an M.A. in Literature, and this book still rockets above all the rest. It's ... well ... I don't want to ruin anything. Just read it so we can discuss!
Ditto to all others who suggested Myst. It's completely non-violent, and the original version will run on old systems (Mac or PC) and still looks stunning. If you have access to new machines and sense that the children will crave more eye candy and full 3D immersion, RealMYST will fit the bill nicely.
As developers, we seek the respect and recognition of our peers, with that motivation often taking priority over money. Open-source allows the prefect vehicle to show our work to and share with that peer audience.
but ramblings with poorly placed parentheticals (crap) and nonsensical punctuation. (learn to write) attempt to appear philosophical (fail) leading to derisive laughter from the audience (*BURP*). How true that the inane consumes more of our attention. Probably because it pisses us off.