As a web developer it's nice to know where you get linked from, and which of those links are the most popular. I'm all for privacy, but it just doesn't seem like very personal information to me.
You got by on credit fraud? Are you sure you shouldn't post that one anonymously?
Seriously though, it is good to have a practical skill outside of computers. In my case blowing glass pipes is good for a solid $20-$40 an hour, and if world governments collapse leaving us in a post-apocalyptic Mad Max world I have someone to fall back on.
First, you need to know that I am a technical person. I will always be down in the trenches coding because, like you, I enjoy learning and the satisfaction of a job well done.
I recognize that most people in the world will never care about the details of what I do. Growing up as a geek in America is enough to make anyone bitter. Throw in the fact that everyone in the world depends on the fruits of our labor through the ages and it makes for a pretty supreme irony.
But there is an even greater irony. In the grown-up world, unlike grade school, people are mature enough to give everyone a fair shake. Unfortunately, many geeks have developed a superiority complex as a substitute for self-esteem, and end up being arrogant pricks.
You, my friend, need to learn to value other people's talents just as you wish they would value yours. You deride 'soft skills' as being 'fake' and unnecessary, but that is blatantly untrue. If you are getting a lot false platitudes, maybe it's because people don't like your arrogant attitude, but they fear being honest because they are depending on your work. Soft skills mean communicating effectively, making others feel good so they work harder, and communicating ACROSS disciplines. You may think you're more important than the middle management, and you may be right in some cases, but remember that scientific and technical jobs would not exist were they not funded throughout history by means of agriculture, hard labor, the military, religion, and most recently capitalism.
Soft skills make the world go around, and at a basic level keep people from killing each other. Just because you aren't interested in developing them doesn't make you any better than someone who, for whatever reason, isn't interested in developing technical skills. You can't get respect without giving respect. And just because you are different than someone doesn't justify elitism. I'm not saying it's easy to respect everyone, but judging people without knowing their entire life story is hypocrisy. Everyone including me does it, but I don't think it makes the world a better place, and it certainly never makes me feel better.
You think it's wrong for hiring managers to look at soft skills? Let's see, if you had the choice of working with someone who had no respect for you or someone who would try to communicate with you on your terms and kept you in the loop, which would you choose?
I fully support patents and copyrights as an incentive for the creation of new ideas. The last thing I want is a world where people think to themselves, "I could write a book, but I would make a lot more money for a lot less work if I just stole someone else's and sold it." I've heard some countries are like this. The thing is that banning technology because of it's capabilities is not only futile, but does more harm than good because of the brick wall it places in front of innovation.
I think the corporations are scared of technology because they don't understand it. They really have no cause to be so paranoid however, because as any Gnutella user knows, free information is only worth as much as the people who are making it available get paid.
So what if everything gets pirated on-line? No matter how good P2P gets, it will never be able to duplicate the quality of media that one receives from a legitimate centralized service (such as Amazon). In order for the quality of pirated materials to equal that of the legitimate version, the pirated version has to be subsidized somehow. As long as it is illegal to sell copyrighted material, no pirate distribution system will ever be able to provide the equivalent value.
Of course, new technology could always prove me wrong, but it's a little tiresome to see a raging political debate fueled by people who make all sorts of outrageous claims about what 'technology is doing' without the slightest understanding of the reality.
I wish I could find the email that a friend of mine at my ISP sent me a while back (irony at its best).
Basically he has some software that parses emails and assigns it a 'spam value'. That is, it searches for various patterns, and cumulatively adds up the 'weights' for each pattern that matches. Because there are common threads throughout spam, and because a typical spam contains many identifiable factors, this software makes it possible to filter on patterns that you don't want to just filter outright (eg. HTML emails, or mail that contains porn-related swear words).
Can anyone remember the name of this software? I'm not familiar enough with unix administration to remember exactly what it's called or the gory implementation details.
I was just going to post this myself. Of course this solution is basically unacceptable to people who receive email from new and prospective clients regularly.
Your idea of responding with a password that allows people to get added to the whitelist automatically is great as long as your system doesn't gain widespread use. If it did, then spam software would simply be updated to use the password. Probably not something to lose sleep over.. however, being a web designer my solution is to reply with a link to a form that people can use to email me. Granted, the form itself could be used to spam me, but it strikes me that spamming software that uses people's feedback forms would never be effective enough to make it a problem (what with the chaotic and dynamic nature of web forms).
As far as blacklisting goes there are some decent alternatives in that vein too. Read my next post.
First of all, I think you are right that simply deleting spam is not all that difficult or expensive. But in practice there are many more costly effects spam can have that can drive up the average cost ($1 is still pretty high though):
Employees may actually waste time clicking on spam links
High-bandwidth graphical spam can bring slow computers and connections to their knees
Spam can obfuscate legitimate emails, causing them to be deleted by accident in a flurry of spam deletions
I've experienced crashes that may have been caused by the huge volume of email, or the piss-poor HTML code, but definitely had to do with spam. Data loss is unquantifiable.
All in all, I think having an administrator try to filter out spam before it gets to the 45,000 employees is a good idea. I mean, if a spam targets only 20,000 employees, they will still have to spend the 5*20,000 seconds to collectively delete the single spam that an admin could take care of at the root (also saving bandwidth and storage space). Throw in the issues of employees working with slow computers and slow connections and I can definitely see a full-time spam admin.
That's pretty sad, considering the vehement hatred of spam and high level of technical skill here at Slashdot, harvesting email addresses here seems like a fool's game. Of course, spamming falls in the category of get-rich-quick schemes, so that's no surprise.
Or more specifically that 'smart' isn't a single trait.
Being 23 myself, and having significant mathematical and technical skills myself, I have always struggled with the challenges of fitting in socially with those whose interests differ from my own.
When people dismiss your knowledge and make fun of you for it, the way I see it there are 3 possible outcomes:
1) You let it roll off your back since you can't please everyone all the time anyway. 2) You become arrogant and dismiss anyone who you view as 'less intellignet' or 'not worthy of my time'. 3) You learn to communicate with everyone on their own terms, the same way that most successful professionals do.
#1 might be the easiest, but it never worked for me because I'm too sensitive. #3 is my choice, because it earns me a lot more respect.
#2 is obviously the way this kid went, and I really feel sorry for him, because that is the road to bitterness. He's probably working himself up to a frenzy right now because he can't stand all those 'idiots.' Which is hypocrisy because he isn't even able to understand the basic tenets of respectful human interaction. It's sad to think that someone who supposedly values intelligence, doesn't value all the collective knowledge that society has about all kinds of topics. This kind of arrogance would seem to be chosen against by evolution in any period of history except the last few generations...
Re:They'll never get me
on
Penguin2Apple
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· Score: 2
Okay, you seem pretty smart with unix, but you don't seem to have a great concept of top-down design and economic principles. The trivial points you make are valid, but why are you so incensed over it? Do you really think Steve Jobs called a board meeting discussing the merits of circular vs stack-based window changing?
Let's just put things in a business perspective. Apple has a niche market of which only a very few are hackers. Apple's OS is stagnating and falling behind Windows. Apple has come to realize the importance of adopting standards instead of making everything proprietary. Apple buys NeXT in an attempt to inject UNIX stability and open-source efforts into their own platform. Apple's new OS solves dozens of annoying issues that have plagued desktop OSes since the early days. Creative professionals who work with media rather than code rejoice at all the benefits Apple has bestowed.
So you see, Apple is still making a desktop OS. The really cool thing though is that now Mac users can harvest the benefits of UNIX without having to spend all their time learning it. Your argument only makes sense if most users are hackers, but that hasn't been true for over a decade. I am like you, I like to learn, but we should both be happy that Apple is bringing Unix to the masses, because otherwise you'd have to spend more time helping your friends fix their Windows boxes:)
I would be willing to pay for/. as it is today, but inevitable charging money would drive a certain portion of the demographic away and then it's value as a level-playing field debate venue would be diminished.
Of course, I come here because it is simply the best place to get well-informed views about geeky topics. The question is could it maintain its top-ranked position if it started charging?
Depends on too many factors to be sure, but I'll say one thing, if/. can't secure funding and maintain its grassroots democratic feel in today's economy, then it makes a pretty compelling argument against capitalism and 'free market' theory for supplying people with what they want.
I have a television, I don't really need streaming Olympics on my computer.
Sure it's all driven by greed, and it's easy to take a cynical view, but what's new? Money and power have always been nearly synonymous. Corporate fat cats milking the Olympics for profit is only to be expected. We may not like it, but at least we can still watch for free.
What surprises me is that any geeks care about this. I don't view the Internet as the medium of choice for hugely popular events and promotions. It just doesn't scale as well as television. A couple more generational upgrades of bandwidth and more sophisticated multi-casting technology and I might be convinced to lament the lack of Olympics coverage.
A lot of the comments nitpick details about the economic representation of EQ. As everyone here knows, statistics can be manipulated to show whatever you want. I think the important fact to come out of this article is just what we already know. EQ wastes a lot of time.
Remember, however, that money is an abstraction of value, traditionally the value that was built on the backs of laborers... if people are willing to pay for EQ items, then playing EQ is a valid job. It contributes to the GNP and therefore helps the economy.
The problem with economic indexes is that they really only measure the amount of money changing hands, but does that translate into quality of life? That is the assumption that many capitalists and economists make, but I submit that as we move into an increasingly abundant era, traditional economic indexes become more and more meaningless. I believe earning more money is only the best use of your time up to a modest income level ($30-$60k). After that non-GNP adding activities like spiritual/religious exploration, volunteer work, mentoring, open-source hacking, etc. will not only satisfy an individual more, but may also contribute more to society.
So, to tie up this massive ideology that I've strewn about, my point is that EQ should not be judged by the cash sales it generates, but by the amount of happiness.
Personally I feel that most computer game playing is pure escapism and thus not worth much even to the people who play it, but that's another argument for another day.
The suggestion of true P2P is revolutionary, and the perfect implementation (should it ever arrive) will also be revolutionary.
Wait a minute, I thought the point of this article is that true P2P can never scale. More to the point though, are you claiming Gnutella isn't true P2P? I don't know enough networking theory to argue one way or the other on this though.
True, I'm being no better than the author of the original article; because I too am offering no solutions. I'm just holding out hope for true P2P in the future.
From my understanding of the article, the scalability problems are directly linked to a raw P2P scheme. You can't hope for a more 'pure' implementation of P2P to solve that problem. P2P has already fulfilled it's promise: a de-centralized file-sharing service that can't be easily shut down by any one party.
Technologically P2P isn't all that impressive though, at least not from a theoretical standpoint. The challenge now is to maintain sufficient decentralization while pragmatically improving the technology. Limewire has shown some recent success in this arena despite having a long way to go still.
Time to dub a new term such as Multi-Tiered P2P (MTP2P) with the theoretical goal of connecting the most computers using the least bandwidth. Certainly this would require a degree of centralization that would be more vulnerable than a fully equal P2P system, but if done carefully in an open protocol would still be immune from legal attack.
If you're boss can't prove you wrong in that arrogant assumption, how can they possibly be qualified to direct your work or to evaluate it afterwards?
It's not arrogant to think that programmers work is difficult to evaluate. Notice I did not say technical ability does not matter, I said that interpersonal skills are very important (and underestimated).
You think trying to communicate effectively with your boss is 'sucking up'? Let me ask you a question, do you only respect your boss if they understand all the technical jargon that you use on a daily basis?
I don't know what kind of job you have, but not everyone works at a software company. I work for a University, and to say that my boss is unqualified if she can't evaluate my programming skills is ludicrous. To do that she would not only need her existing marketing/PR skills, but she would need a significant technical background in database and web technologies. That would be one hell of an education, and I expect someone with the experience would be outside the University's budget for the position.
So if when I talk to her I say "Alright, should I write the Events Calendar Web App using a fully normalized MySQL database and modular script that the various pages plug in to? Or should I just throw it all in flat-file format and write quick hack scripts for each page we need generated?" she would have no idea what I was talking about. The worst thing I could do is sigh and say "should I spend 160 hours to do it the right way? Or 40 hours to get it done quick?".
The proper way to go about asking the question would be to phrase it in terms she understands. "Should I spend 160 hours on the Events Calendar code so that it is easier to add pages later? Or should I just do a quick 40 hour job that will require more work for successive updates?"
She would no doubt ask a few questions to get a better idea what I was talking about, but she wouldn't feel belittled by me throwing out a bunch of jargon then oversimplifying when she didn't understand.
If one needs to depend upon sucking up to the boss to get ahead, it's time to look elsewhere
You don't need colleagues that understand what you do to be appreciated. If you want to be a curmudgeon and get ahead by the sheer brilliance of your work then more power to you. But I don't care where you work, you'll advance quicker and be better liked by dealing with people on their level. If you see that as somehow selling out then I feel bad for you, because people probably don't like you very much.
The thing that makes getting presents nice is the fact that someone took time out of their routine to do something for you. I know American culture demands that we buy more stuff faster, but I don't know how much I appreciate getting gifts that someone ordered on-line at work without even getting out of their chair.
This has been my whole argument against e-cards. It's too easy, I'd much rather get a card that someone spent some time looking for.
Of course, if my grandparents sent me an e-card I would probably appreciate it more than a paper card, because for them it would be more work (and possibly more expensive):)
Hm, I don't think I said that you are dumb if you don't go to college. On the contrary, I agree that college does not really increase technical skills much. I agree with other posts that say the people who excel in IT probably don't need school because they love it enough to learn in their spare time.
My point is that all that is moot because when it comes to getting jobs/promotions/raises, interpersonal skills and ability to relate to your boss make all the difference in the world.
Let's face it, if you treat your boss as your intellectual inferior, why should they give you a raise? Even if you are twice the programmer of everyone else around, it's hard for bosses to make an objective evaluation of your performance since programming is such an amorphous task anyway. For all you know, someone else might look a lot better just because they got an easier task.
For me personally math and programming come natural. My intellectual challenge is communicating effectively with my colleagues (I am the only techy in a marketing office). Let me tell you, helping my boss understand the importance of database normalization is just as satisfying as actually normalizing the database.
I think that's a little arrogant to think that companies shouldn't consider a college degree when making hiring decisions.
If you've ever interviewed anyone for a job (or talked to anyone ever for any reason), you should know that people fudge all kinds of things on resumes to make themselves look better. A college degree is something that represents a substantial sustained work effort.
The attitude that you are too smart for college is not too far off from the attitude that you are too smart to work with non-technical people. It's a kind of superiority complex that I see from time to time in geeks (possibly as a result of a painful high school experience?). I'd just like to point out that if you think you are better than someone because they used to think they were better than you, then what sets you apart from them?
Will you ever _need_ a degree? Once you get some experience under your belt it's not hard to find more jobs (assuming a certain level of talent since you got this job without a degree).
It's already clear that if you are on the bleeding edge then there's not much in school for you, but a college degree is a status symbol. When you're hobnobbing with the bigwigs at a cocktail party, hoping to get some high-dollar consulting work or whatnot, and they ask you where you went to school it comes in handy. Shallow though it may seem, many people will dismiss you if you don't have a college degree.
Your social connections can take you far in IT because so many geeks have no interest or skill in business communication.
Government funded elections? And you say you
are for freeedom? If you have no private funding
and only the government can fund elections then
only those who meet the governments *approval*
will be able to run for office. That doesn't
sound like freedom to me.
I don't blame you for your cynicism on this issue, but ideally the government is supposed to represent the people. Democracy is supposed to ensure that the government does represent the people, and that each person is represented equally. The spirit of Democracy has been shit on by the fact that you have to spend in insane amount of money to even stand a chance at winning an election.
The only way to give everyone an equal voice is to make it illegal to use money to influence political campaigns. The only way to get the money out is to provide a standard forum for candidates to voice their opinions. The government is supposed to be the organization that represents everyone's interests, and therefore can provide a service without having the profit from it.
Granted, the idea is not possible to implement given the current state of our government, but I'm quite surprised that you trust corporate-sponsored government more than money-free government.
I can see by the various replies that phrase "Legislate Morality" is difficult to interpret objectively.
All I meant by it is that we pass laws to prevent people from doing things that we view as 'wrong' (meaning amoral) for whatever reason.
I agree that we should only legislate things that trample on others freedom. Your post illustrates a nuanced point about modern legislation and should be modded up.
It is unfortunate that you posted anonymously so most people won't read your counterpoint.
Still, you aren't really addressing my argument. My argument hinges on the assumption that wealth is increased by production of goods and services that people desire. If you are going to call my argument "complete nonsense", perhaps you would care to address that issue.
The assertion that we have "too much prosperity" is not a meant as an empirical statement. Rather it is somewhat of a side issue. When legislators are convinced that economy is driven by middle-men and resellers then there is a clear obfuscation of what drives the economy. If we were "less prosperous" then it would be more clear where the value was coming from, and congress certainly wouldn't consider legislation that would help a few special interests skim more money off the already short supply of actual goods and services.
The current state of the economy is not part of my argument. I fully understand that a lot of bad legislation is inspired by industry woes. I'm not concerned with the regular ups and downs of the economy, I'm just concerned that if this country doesn't pull itself out special interests' grip we will be dragged down with them in the inevitable ebb and flow of industries.
I find it somewhat scary that 'content companies' have willing allies in congress for this kind of oppressive legislation.
To me it's a symptom of too much prosperity. Think about it, these 'content companies' are no more than _businessmen_ who profit from other people's work. They say it's their god-given right to buy something and then sell it repeatedly forever making billions of dollars. Yet they forget (and it would seem congress forgets) that money != value. Money is supposed to represent value so that people can trade goods. Throwing more middle-men into the equation doesn't increase value UNLESS they provide quality-assurance, shipping, or some other thing that the producer themselves doesn't want to do but is nevertheless necessary.
Our quality of life is determined by how many goods and services get produced, not how much money is spent. Because the United States is so rich, we forget that the value of money comes from all our hard work. If we suddenly start devoting man-hours to stifling distribution of existing work and regulating everything so that every pasty-faced exec can get his stock options + bonus, where will the value be?
In the information age it's clear that the richest society is the one with the most information. The way to achieve that goal is to spend our time researching and developing new information, not creating a world where trading information becomes harder.
Note that this is not an "information wants to be free" argument. I think people who contribute to society should get paid, and get paid well. Currently there is not an efficient mechanism whereby information producers can get paid small amounts by the masses who enjoy their work. That's the 'content companies' niche.
I grudgingly admit that there is a place for middle-men in this world, but we have to draw the line at legislation that just makes them fatter and reduces our cultural value.
I think this problem, like so many in our society is caused by too much money in government. The founding fathers knew that religion had to be separated from government in order to be fair and just. Sadly we were too poor then for them to realize that the economy must also be kept strictly out of government. I say we have publicly funded elections with standard forums where candidates can express their views. Outlaw political advertising as subversive propaganda, and let Joe Schmoe run for office. It has been said that "You can't legislate morality." But that is a falacy because what else is legislation for?
Slashdot Mirror
As a web developer it's nice to know where you get linked from, and which of those links are the most popular. I'm all for privacy, but it just doesn't seem like very personal information to me.
You got by on credit fraud? Are you sure you shouldn't post that one anonymously?
Seriously though, it is good to have a practical skill outside of computers. In my case blowing glass pipes is good for a solid $20-$40 an hour, and if world governments collapse leaving us in a post-apocalyptic Mad Max world I have someone to fall back on.
First, you need to know that I am a technical person. I will always be down in the trenches coding because, like you, I enjoy learning and the satisfaction of a job well done.
I recognize that most people in the world will never care about the details of what I do. Growing up as a geek in America is enough to make anyone bitter. Throw in the fact that everyone in the world depends on the fruits of our labor through the ages and it makes for a pretty supreme irony.
But there is an even greater irony. In the grown-up world, unlike grade school, people are mature enough to give everyone a fair shake. Unfortunately, many geeks have developed a superiority complex as a substitute for self-esteem, and end up being arrogant pricks.
You, my friend, need to learn to value other people's talents just as you wish they would value yours. You deride 'soft skills' as being 'fake' and unnecessary, but that is blatantly untrue. If you are getting a lot false platitudes, maybe it's because people don't like your arrogant attitude, but they fear being honest because they are depending on your work. Soft skills mean communicating effectively, making others feel good so they work harder, and communicating ACROSS disciplines. You may think you're more important than the middle management, and you may be right in some cases, but remember that scientific and technical jobs would not exist were they not funded throughout history by means of agriculture, hard labor, the military, religion, and most recently capitalism.
Soft skills make the world go around, and at a basic level keep people from killing each other. Just because you aren't interested in developing them doesn't make you any better than someone who, for whatever reason, isn't interested in developing technical skills. You can't get respect without giving respect. And just because you are different than someone doesn't justify elitism. I'm not saying it's easy to respect everyone, but judging people without knowing their entire life story is hypocrisy. Everyone including me does it, but I don't think it makes the world a better place, and it certainly never makes me feel better.
You think it's wrong for hiring managers to look at soft skills? Let's see, if you had the choice of working with someone who had no respect for you or someone who would try to communicate with you on your terms and kept you in the loop, which would you choose?
I fully support patents and copyrights as an incentive for the creation of new ideas. The last thing I want is a world where people think to themselves, "I could write a book, but I would make a lot more money for a lot less work if I just stole someone else's and sold it." I've heard some countries are like this. The thing is that banning technology because of it's capabilities is not only futile, but does more harm than good because of the brick wall it places in front of innovation.
I think the corporations are scared of technology because they don't understand it. They really have no cause to be so paranoid however, because as any Gnutella user knows, free information is only worth as much as the people who are making it available get paid.
So what if everything gets pirated on-line? No matter how good P2P gets, it will never be able to duplicate the quality of media that one receives from a legitimate centralized service (such as Amazon). In order for the quality of pirated materials to equal that of the legitimate version, the pirated version has to be subsidized somehow. As long as it is illegal to sell copyrighted material, no pirate distribution system will ever be able to provide the equivalent value.
Of course, new technology could always prove me wrong, but it's a little tiresome to see a raging political debate fueled by people who make all sorts of outrageous claims about what 'technology is doing' without the slightest understanding of the reality.
I wish I could find the email that a friend of mine at my ISP sent me a while back (irony at its best).
Basically he has some software that parses emails and assigns it a 'spam value'. That is, it searches for various patterns, and cumulatively adds up the 'weights' for each pattern that matches. Because there are common threads throughout spam, and because a typical spam contains many identifiable factors, this software makes it possible to filter on patterns that you don't want to just filter outright (eg. HTML emails, or mail that contains porn-related swear words).
Can anyone remember the name of this software? I'm not familiar enough with unix administration to remember exactly what it's called or the gory implementation details.
I was just going to post this myself. Of course this solution is basically unacceptable to people who receive email from new and prospective clients regularly.
Your idea of responding with a password that allows people to get added to the whitelist automatically is great as long as your system doesn't gain widespread use. If it did, then spam software would simply be updated to use the password. Probably not something to lose sleep over.. however, being a web designer my solution is to reply with a link to a form that people can use to email me. Granted, the form itself could be used to spam me, but it strikes me that spamming software that uses people's feedback forms would never be effective enough to make it a problem (what with the chaotic and dynamic nature of web forms).
As far as blacklisting goes there are some decent alternatives in that vein too. Read my next post.
- Employees may actually waste time clicking on spam links
- High-bandwidth graphical spam can bring slow computers and connections to their knees
- Spam can obfuscate legitimate emails, causing them to be deleted by accident in a flurry of spam deletions
- I've experienced crashes that may have been caused by the huge volume of email, or the piss-poor HTML code, but definitely had to do with spam. Data loss is unquantifiable.
All in all, I think having an administrator try to filter out spam before it gets to the 45,000 employees is a good idea. I mean, if a spam targets only 20,000 employees, they will still have to spend the 5*20,000 seconds to collectively delete the single spam that an admin could take care of at the root (also saving bandwidth and storage space). Throw in the issues of employees working with slow computers and slow connections and I can definitely see a full-time spam admin.Of course, with 45,000 employees at $5 an hour, payroll alone costs them $1.8 million a day, but your point is well-taken.
That's pretty sad, considering the vehement hatred of spam and high level of technical skill here at Slashdot, harvesting email addresses here seems like a fool's game. Of course, spamming falls in the category of get-rich-quick schemes, so that's no surprise.
Or more specifically that 'smart' isn't a single trait.
Being 23 myself, and having significant mathematical and technical skills myself, I have always struggled with the challenges of fitting in socially with those whose interests differ from my own.
When people dismiss your knowledge and make fun of you for it, the way I see it there are 3 possible outcomes:
1) You let it roll off your back since you can't please everyone all the time anyway.
2) You become arrogant and dismiss anyone who you view as 'less intellignet' or 'not worthy of my time'.
3) You learn to communicate with everyone on their own terms, the same way that most successful professionals do.
#1 might be the easiest, but it never worked for me because I'm too sensitive. #3 is my choice, because it earns me a lot more respect.
#2 is obviously the way this kid went, and I really feel sorry for him, because that is the road to bitterness. He's probably working himself up to a frenzy right now because he can't stand all those 'idiots.' Which is hypocrisy because he isn't even able to understand the basic tenets of respectful human interaction. It's sad to think that someone who supposedly values intelligence, doesn't value all the collective knowledge that society has about all kinds of topics. This kind of arrogance would seem to be chosen against by evolution in any period of history except the last few generations...
Okay, you seem pretty smart with unix, but you don't seem to have a great concept of top-down design and economic principles. The trivial points you make are valid, but why are you so incensed over it? Do you really think Steve Jobs called a board meeting discussing the merits of circular vs stack-based window changing?
:)
Let's just put things in a business perspective. Apple has a niche market of which only a very few are hackers. Apple's OS is stagnating and falling behind Windows. Apple has come to realize the importance of adopting standards instead of making everything proprietary. Apple buys NeXT in an attempt to inject UNIX stability and open-source efforts into their own platform. Apple's new OS solves dozens of annoying issues that have plagued desktop OSes since the early days. Creative professionals who work with media rather than code rejoice at all the benefits Apple has bestowed.
So you see, Apple is still making a desktop OS. The really cool thing though is that now Mac users can harvest the benefits of UNIX without having to spend all their time learning it. Your argument only makes sense if most users are hackers, but that hasn't been true for over a decade. I am like you, I like to learn, but we should both be happy that Apple is bringing Unix to the masses, because otherwise you'd have to spend more time helping your friends fix their Windows boxes
I would be willing to pay for /. as it is today, but inevitable charging money would drive a certain portion of the demographic away and then it's value as a level-playing field debate venue would be diminished.
/. can't secure funding and maintain its grassroots democratic feel in today's economy, then it makes a pretty compelling argument against capitalism and 'free market' theory for supplying people with what they want.
Of course, I come here because it is simply the best place to get well-informed views about geeky topics. The question is could it maintain its top-ranked position if it started charging?
Depends on too many factors to be sure, but I'll say one thing, if
I have a television, I don't really need streaming Olympics on my computer.
Sure it's all driven by greed, and it's easy to take a cynical view, but what's new? Money and power have always been nearly synonymous. Corporate fat cats milking the Olympics for profit is only to be expected. We may not like it, but at least we can still watch for free.
What surprises me is that any geeks care about this. I don't view the Internet as the medium of choice for hugely popular events and promotions. It just doesn't scale as well as television. A couple more generational upgrades of bandwidth and more sophisticated multi-casting technology and I might be convinced to lament the lack of Olympics coverage.
A lot of the comments nitpick details about the economic representation of EQ. As everyone here knows, statistics can be manipulated to show whatever you want. I think the important fact to come out of this article is just what we already know. EQ wastes a lot of time.
Remember, however, that money is an abstraction of value, traditionally the value that was built on the backs of laborers... if people are willing to pay for EQ items, then playing EQ is a valid job. It contributes to the GNP and therefore helps the economy.
The problem with economic indexes is that they really only measure the amount of money changing hands, but does that translate into quality of life? That is the assumption that many capitalists and economists make, but I submit that as we move into an increasingly abundant era, traditional economic indexes become more and more meaningless. I believe earning more money is only the best use of your time up to a modest income level ($30-$60k). After that non-GNP adding activities like spiritual/religious exploration, volunteer work, mentoring, open-source hacking, etc. will not only satisfy an individual more, but may also contribute more to society.
So, to tie up this massive ideology that I've strewn about, my point is that EQ should not be judged by the cash sales it generates, but by the amount of happiness.
Personally I feel that most computer game playing is pure escapism and thus not worth much even to the people who play it, but that's another argument for another day.
The suggestion of true P2P is revolutionary, and the perfect implementation (should it ever arrive) will also be revolutionary.
Wait a minute, I thought the point of this article is that true P2P can never scale. More to the point though, are you claiming Gnutella isn't true P2P? I don't know enough networking theory to argue one way or the other on this though.
True, I'm being no better than the author of the original article; because I too am offering no solutions. I'm just holding out hope for true P2P in the future.
From my understanding of the article, the scalability problems are directly linked to a raw P2P scheme. You can't hope for a more 'pure' implementation of P2P to solve that problem. P2P has already fulfilled it's promise: a de-centralized file-sharing service that can't be easily shut down by any one party.
Technologically P2P isn't all that impressive though, at least not from a theoretical standpoint. The challenge now is to maintain sufficient decentralization while pragmatically improving the technology. Limewire has shown some recent success in this arena despite having a long way to go still.
Time to dub a new term such as Multi-Tiered P2P (MTP2P) with the theoretical goal of connecting the most computers using the least bandwidth. Certainly this would require a degree of centralization that would be more vulnerable than a fully equal P2P system, but if done carefully in an open protocol would still be immune from legal attack.
Knock the company for making a crap game yes, but when it comes to personal stuff and how companies operate I say to each his own
Agreed. Google likes to provide nice facilities for their employees, and it doesn't look like it has hurt their product.
If you're boss can't prove you wrong in that arrogant assumption, how can they possibly be qualified to direct your work or to evaluate it afterwards?
It's not arrogant to think that programmers work is difficult to evaluate. Notice I did not say technical ability does not matter, I said that interpersonal skills are very important (and underestimated).
You think trying to communicate effectively with your boss is 'sucking up'? Let me ask you a question, do you only respect your boss if they understand all the technical jargon that you use on a daily basis?
I don't know what kind of job you have, but not everyone works at a software company. I work for a University, and to say that my boss is unqualified if she can't evaluate my programming skills is ludicrous. To do that she would not only need her existing marketing/PR skills, but she would need a significant technical background in database and web technologies. That would be one hell of an education, and I expect someone with the experience would be outside the University's budget for the position.
So if when I talk to her I say "Alright, should I write the Events Calendar Web App using a fully normalized MySQL database and modular script that the various pages plug in to? Or should I just throw it all in flat-file format and write quick hack scripts for each page we need generated?" she would have no idea what I was talking about. The worst thing I could do is sigh and say "should I spend 160 hours to do it the right way? Or 40 hours to get it done quick?".
The proper way to go about asking the question would be to phrase it in terms she understands. "Should I spend 160 hours on the Events Calendar code so that it is easier to add pages later? Or should I just do a quick 40 hour job that will require more work for successive updates?"
She would no doubt ask a few questions to get a better idea what I was talking about, but she wouldn't feel belittled by me throwing out a bunch of jargon then oversimplifying when she didn't understand.
If one needs to depend upon sucking up to the boss to get ahead, it's time to look elsewhere
You don't need colleagues that understand what you do to be appreciated. If you want to be a curmudgeon and get ahead by the sheer brilliance of your work then more power to you. But I don't care where you work, you'll advance quicker and be better liked by dealing with people on their level. If you see that as somehow selling out then I feel bad for you, because people probably don't like you very much.
The thing that makes getting presents nice is the fact that someone took time out of their routine to do something for you. I know American culture demands that we buy more stuff faster, but I don't know how much I appreciate getting gifts that someone ordered on-line at work without even getting out of their chair.
:)
This has been my whole argument against e-cards. It's too easy, I'd much rather get a card that someone spent some time looking for.
Of course, if my grandparents sent me an e-card I would probably appreciate it more than a paper card, because for them it would be more work (and possibly more expensive)
Hm, I don't think I said that you are dumb if you don't go to college. On the contrary, I agree that college does not really increase technical skills much. I agree with other posts that say the people who excel in IT probably don't need school because they love it enough to learn in their spare time.
My point is that all that is moot because when it comes to getting jobs/promotions/raises, interpersonal skills and ability to relate to your boss make all the difference in the world.
Let's face it, if you treat your boss as your intellectual inferior, why should they give you a raise? Even if you are twice the programmer of everyone else around, it's hard for bosses to make an objective evaluation of your performance since programming is such an amorphous task anyway. For all you know, someone else might look a lot better just because they got an easier task.
For me personally math and programming come natural. My intellectual challenge is communicating effectively with my colleagues (I am the only techy in a marketing office). Let me tell you, helping my boss understand the importance of database normalization is just as satisfying as actually normalizing the database.
I think that's a little arrogant to think that companies shouldn't consider a college degree when making hiring decisions.
If you've ever interviewed anyone for a job (or talked to anyone ever for any reason), you should know that people fudge all kinds of things on resumes to make themselves look better. A college degree is something that represents a substantial sustained work effort.
The attitude that you are too smart for college is not too far off from the attitude that you are too smart to work with non-technical people. It's a kind of superiority complex that I see from time to time in geeks (possibly as a result of a painful high school experience?). I'd just like to point out that if you think you are better than someone because they used to think they were better than you, then what sets you apart from them?
Will you ever _need_ a degree? Once you get some experience under your belt it's not hard to find more jobs (assuming a certain level of talent since you got this job without a degree).
It's already clear that if you are on the bleeding edge then there's not much in school for you, but a college degree is a status symbol. When you're hobnobbing with the bigwigs at a cocktail party, hoping to get some high-dollar consulting work or whatnot, and they ask you where you went to school it comes in handy. Shallow though it may seem, many people will dismiss you if you don't have a college degree.
Your social connections can take you far in IT because so many geeks have no interest or skill in business communication.
Government funded elections? And you say you
are for freeedom? If you have no private funding
and only the government can fund elections then
only those who meet the governments *approval*
will be able to run for office. That doesn't
sound like freedom to me.
I don't blame you for your cynicism on this issue, but ideally the government is supposed to represent the people. Democracy is supposed to ensure that the government does represent the people, and that each person is represented equally. The spirit of Democracy has been shit on by the fact that you have to spend in insane amount of money to even stand a chance at winning an election.
The only way to give everyone an equal voice is to make it illegal to use money to influence political campaigns. The only way to get the money out is to provide a standard forum for candidates to voice their opinions. The government is supposed to be the organization that represents everyone's interests, and therefore can provide a service without having the profit from it.
Granted, the idea is not possible to implement given the current state of our government, but I'm quite surprised that you trust corporate-sponsored government more than money-free government.
I can see by the various replies that phrase "Legislate Morality" is difficult to interpret objectively.
All I meant by it is that we pass laws to prevent people from doing things that we view as 'wrong' (meaning amoral) for whatever reason.
I agree that we should only legislate things that trample on others freedom. Your post illustrates a nuanced point about modern legislation and should be modded up.
It is unfortunate that you posted anonymously so most people won't read your counterpoint.
Still, you aren't really addressing my argument. My argument hinges on the assumption that wealth is increased by production of goods and services that people desire. If you are going to call my argument "complete nonsense", perhaps you would care to address that issue.
The assertion that we have "too much prosperity" is not a meant as an empirical statement. Rather it is somewhat of a side issue. When legislators are convinced that economy is driven by middle-men and resellers then there is a clear obfuscation of what drives the economy. If we were "less prosperous" then it would be more clear where the value was coming from, and congress certainly wouldn't consider legislation that would help a few special interests skim more money off the already short supply of actual goods and services.
The current state of the economy is not part of my argument. I fully understand that a lot of bad legislation is inspired by industry woes. I'm not concerned with the regular ups and downs of the economy, I'm just concerned that if this country doesn't pull itself out special interests' grip we will be dragged down with them in the inevitable ebb and flow of industries.
I find it somewhat scary that 'content companies' have willing allies in congress for this kind of oppressive legislation.
To me it's a symptom of too much prosperity. Think about it, these 'content companies' are no more than _businessmen_ who profit from other people's work. They say it's their god-given right to buy something and then sell it repeatedly forever making billions of dollars. Yet they forget (and it would seem congress forgets) that money != value. Money is supposed to represent value so that people can trade goods. Throwing more middle-men into the equation doesn't increase value UNLESS they provide quality-assurance, shipping, or some other thing that the producer themselves doesn't want to do but is nevertheless necessary.
Our quality of life is determined by how many goods and services get produced, not how much money is spent. Because the United States is so rich, we forget that the value of money comes from all our hard work. If we suddenly start devoting man-hours to stifling distribution of existing work and regulating everything so that every pasty-faced exec can get his stock options + bonus, where will the value be?
In the information age it's clear that the richest society is the one with the most information. The way to achieve that goal is to spend our time researching and developing new information, not creating a world where trading information becomes harder.
Note that this is not an "information wants to be free" argument. I think people who contribute to society should get paid, and get paid well. Currently there is not an efficient mechanism whereby information producers can get paid small amounts by the masses who enjoy their work. That's the 'content companies' niche.
I grudgingly admit that there is a place for middle-men in this world, but we have to draw the line at legislation that just makes them fatter and reduces our cultural value.
I think this problem, like so many in our society is caused by too much money in government. The founding fathers knew that religion had to be separated from government in order to be fair and just. Sadly we were too poor then for them to realize that the economy must also be kept strictly out of government. I say we have publicly funded elections with standard forums where candidates can express their views. Outlaw political advertising as subversive propaganda, and let Joe Schmoe run for office. It has been said that "You can't legislate morality." But that is a falacy because what else is legislation for?