Yeah, it's very novel to see a spider nomming on plant matter, but rushing to call it vegetarian is as inane as calling anyone wearing all black goth. They might just be wearing all black...
Aparently it's changed since we were young. "Goth" is a sad 90's sub-culture, but wearing black and mopping around while declaring your hate for everything is "Emo" (which I think is short for emotionally crippled fashion victim).
Although a Ti-83 can definitely be enhanced by a custom OS, the usefulness of a Ti-83 would greatly decrease for students if custom OS's existed. On many standardized tests, including the SATs and ACTs, the tests specify which calculators are permitted for the test. They have a very specific list, based on which ones they think are not too powerful and would give an unfair advantage to a test taker
How about changing the test, or finding some other way to verify the calculators, instead of trying to prevent people from doing interesting things with equipment they own?
That is because TI sells a large number of its calculators to students. The custom OS's could greatly hurt TI's reputation in the eyes of its biggest supporters: the test makers.
Henceforth known as the lazy luddites. Seriously, get with the program. If your test strategy and regime were created in 1965, it's time to update it. This is no excuse to stiffle innovation.
You're assuming the certificate is used immediately to establish a connection.
No, I'm not. Where did I say that?
Point of sale terminals are not always on-line, and when they are off-line they must encrypt the authorization request and store it until it can be sent to the settlement system once they're back on-line.
Encryption and authentication (signing) are two different things. You almost certainly want both but you can encrypt without authenticating and vice versa.
In that case, the terminal really needs to assure itself that the certificate is valid, because it might not be able to attempt the decryption until long after the customer has left with your merchandise and their charge card.
First as you've probably conceded unless you replace the certificates at both ends, you won't authenticate or encrypt/decrypt the message or both so that it's recognised at the other end. So the funds don't get transfered.
As for merchandise leaving the store, once your POS is compromised, it's compromised. You can replace the entire set of certificates. You can even make the terminal pretend it has gone out and connected with the bank and transfered the money. There is NOTHING you can do to ensure that the certificates you have cached and the software you have aren't compromised to allow the sale to go through, since anything you are relying on to authenticate can itself be compromised.
I'm pretty certain you don't know what you're talking about, and that's dangerous if you're advising others on security.
If you literally weren't paid that's one thing. Otherwise it should be a matter of professionalism that you don't publicly denounce work you're actively still doing.
I do them because, as Gore Vidal said: "Never pass up an opportunity for sex or to be on TV."
Ah, in that case you have no professionalism or credibility. Are you married? Do you ever plan to be? I hope your current or future wife realises you plan to have sex with whomsoever provides the opportunity.
You're the sort of person that can't tell the difference between Myth Buster's and good science television.
Seriously, go read the book - The Elegant Universe, then watch the video again. You'll see the difference.
I have read the book you arrogant little man. Have you? I've also got a masters degree in astronomy, which didn't come from watching documentaries, and which I did for myself without intention of making it my career.
The point is it takes 3 hours to see the documentary, and longer to properly read and digest the book. The visuals in the TV program complimented the understanding I gained from the book very nicely. It also allows me to share the information with anyone willing to give me 3 hours, but who might not want to spend significant time reading. Still neither the book nor the documentary will make you a Quantum Dynamacist or an expert in String Theory. For that you need several years at University and an aptitude for higher level math and physics.
Each level of education has it's place.
Get some self respect and credibility, stop behaving opportunistically and then you might not be so cynical.
There's never a reason to have the private keys stored in the Point-Of-Sale application.
Way to mis-read what I said. I gave an example that wasn't strictly related to POS terminals of how frameworks encourage poor security practices. Whether it's a certificate, key or password having it embedded in the configuration or the application package is poor security design but also the standard way things work.
The credit card data should be encrypted in the POS system using a public key borne on a verified certificate. It doesn't ever have to be decrypted at POS for any reason. Decryption should happen only at the point of authorization, and at the point of settlement with the bank. Those private keys are only in centrally located machines that can be much more easily secured than the thousands of cash registers located in thousands of stores.
And you shouldn't have to write custom code to get this kind of behaviour, yet you often do.
The hardest part is ensuring the certificate signatures are valid. You have to ensure the encryption certs weren't replaced with evil certs, and that no rogue root certificate was installed on the POS system.
Huh? That's the whole point of a certificate. If it's replaced with an "evil" certificate it won't authenticate at the other end. You'd have to replace them at both ends. Very difficult to do if you're talking about a Hardware Security Module (HSM) that doesn't allow certificate export. You basically have to steal the hardware.
Want to really learn something, shut off the TV and read a book. Geez, for the price of cable TV these days, you can buy a new book every 3 days or so.
But if you want to be entertained with the illusion that you're learning something factual, when it's often just as made-up and sensationalized as any other made-for-tv drama, then carry on.
Hey just because you were "cast as an expert" on some dodgy pseudo-scientific shows on Discovery Channel, that doesn't suddenly make all documentaries like that. I can name a few excellent piece of television:
Universe (History Channel) Cosmos (Carl Sagan) Elegant Universe Most documentaries by David Attenborough
Now the focus might be entertainment (though David Attenborough makes me want to go to sleep). You're not going to learn calculus from mainstream TV. But that doesn't make the medium rubbish. If you want good educational value download some video from MIT OpenCourseware, or buy a The Teaching Company series DVD.
By the way it's particularly silly of you to be telling people to stay away from documentaries if that's how you make part of your living.
If your neighbors complain, you leave and join the anarcho-syndicalist collective colony on Kaka 4. Where does capitalism fit in with this technology?
Well it's not perfect but it's the best you have, but before you knew it someone spoilt it and you were left in Kaka. Sounds a lot like captialism to me.
So we'll have to wait another 75 years before management lets us focus on application efficiency instead of throwing hardware at the performance problems? Sigh...
You're going to place any stock in a prediction made by someone that will only come to fruition just outside their lifetime? Such predictions belong in a tent with a crystal ball.
And if the POS software was secure, it should not matter if someone downloaded the source code.
That depends on whether the source code was stored separately to certificates/key files and how well the passwords were externalised. You'd be surprised how modern security systems allow and even encourage awful practices in this regard. For example Spring web services and spring security have a bad tendancy of including such things in their config file, which are often bundled up in the application.
It's actually not a trivial problem. If you include everything required for the app to run in the application package/bundle, you inevitably include such things somewhere they shouldn't be (even if that's just a build machine). The best solution I've seen is hardware security modules that don't allow keys and certificates to be exported. They aren't cheap but if you're running a large organisation and have been trusted with potentially millions of credit card numbers it's not exactly beyond the call.
Software engineers are not real engineers - mechanical, civil, electrical, but anyway, bridges are built to multiple variables - the materials, wear and tear, metal fatigue, weather, vibration, structural integrity of the bedrock they're embedded in and many, many more I'm sure.
Yes software engineers never ever deal with variables. We only use literals.
The OS only has to avoid deleting or corrupting data.
Yeah when's the last time you wrote a file system, loser?
It doesn't have to protect the user from himself. It has to make sure that no-matter what the subsystem handling IO does not f-up. What the higher level component does is not the fault of the system. Pressing the Delete key will delete data. But changing user accounts should not delete data. Removing a USB stick suddenly with write-behind caching disabled while the stick is idle should not corrupt it. There's not much here, it's not rocket science.
Well then I guess every file system bug ever is because the guy who wrote it was less smart than you.
How often does user sofware make as much money as the construction of a bridge?
Talk to an avionics engineer.
How much has Windows made for MS? Do you think a construction company makes more on a bridge than MS on the sale of its OS? or Apple? Economies of scale. Each OS copy is cheap but millions are sold.
Yes but how many use cases are there?
How old is the software industry compared to bridge building? Not very old, either. It's just that engineers respect fundamentals and maybe know what they're doing?
Funny that you couldn't even write this comment if software engineers hasn't written software for you to do so. Guess they didn't know what they were doing.
How variable are software problems compared to bridge problems? How variable? How about don't delete my data by mistake. The component doing the IO has to work properly, the major variability lies with higher level programs which use this component. There the user could press Delete or overwrite important data - that you can't protect against.
Yeah I don't think that some idiot put in a line of code to delete data on purpose. That's not how it works.
Oh and by the way there have been some catastrophic bridge failures. Sure there have but the industry learns from them.
And the software industry learns from failures such as these.
Simple method for visualizing RFID
on
Visualizing RFID
·
· Score: 3, Funny
1. Pick up RFID chip 2. Look at it. It's an RFID chip! You have just visualized it. 3. ??? 4. Profit
When will software/computer/IT companies be held to the same standards that other engineers (Civil, Electrical, Mechanical) are? If a bridge is built and it collapses due to a poor design, or a gadget catches fire or brakes are poorly designed, people head to their local courthouse and sue.
I hear this often and it's nonsense. How often do bridges get built to highly variable designs? How often does user sofware make as much money as the construction of a bridge? How much did you pay for your last bridge? Would you like sofware to cost as much?? (Avionics software is built to that level of quality. Care to have your desktop OS cost as much?) How old is the software industry compared to bridge building? How variable are software problems compared to bridge problems? Oh and by the way there have been some catastrophic bridge failures.
I've got a better suggestion for you. Stop calling yourself a feminist. The term itself is sexist. It implies that you are putting women's issues and needs ahead of men's. It also associates you with some extreme man hating and man bashing. Women who truly want equality need to place themselves under a different banner.
Oh please. Stallman is a nut job. Have you met the man? If you don't understand that perpetuating a joke like "The Church of EMACS" means he's completely out of touch and on his own little planet, you have your own problems.
There's bound to be some sexism in Open Source. Just as there is bound to be rascism. Just as there are bound to be mentally unstable people. Blowing any of these out of proportion to push an agenda is dishonest and quite frankly vile as you're basically exploiting the mentally unstable and socially maladjusted.
I have no problem with women in software development, open source or otherwise, and I do feel they deserve to be respected which means making them uncomfortable with sexist jokes and porn references is out. However I do have a problem with some women who call themselves "feminists" who's true agenda is ironically the oppression of men.
You are focusing on the Murdochs and Trumps of the world and ignoring the Gates (yes BG is really a nice person) Bransons and Schmits of the world. These three may not be the worlds nicest people but would be far less of an arsehole then the average man on the street.
Neither you nor I know them personally, but if I had to bet, I'd bet you're being naive.
Being an arsehole is not the key to getting rich, otherwise all the Bogans, Chav's and Rednecks would be striking it rich.
You're talking about people with no social skills and no skills for manipulation.
It's entirely possible to become #1 without being a prick.
You keep saying this. And I keep replying that it depends on how you define rich. Are you missing the point on purpose? To be REALLY rich requires a willingness to take credit for work you didn't do. If you're not prepared to do that, there's always someone who'll get further ahead than you because they are willing to. It's really that simple. So sure you can get "rich" but not up in the top few percent. I'm going to stop repeating myself now. If you don't get it, you're simply not listening.
Now you are confusing fame with success. They are two different concepts and are not dependent on one another.
Fame and success go hand in hand. No one wants to know about the 3rd or 4th people to land on the moon. They want to know who was first, and there may be some residual interest for second. Likewise no one wants to know who the 123rd richest person in the world is. They want to hear about the top 3, or at most the top 10.
At no point did I say you couldn't make yourself enough money to be comfortable without being evil. I said you couldn't make it into the top few percent. I'm tired of repeating myself.
I honestly don't think hobby coding is either a plus or a minus in and of itself. It can make you a better programmer which is a plus. But it's certainly no pre-requisit to being a good coder.
The point you're missing is that people can enjoy coding but can be satisified by the 8-16 hours a day on weekdays that their jobs require. That doesn't make them a bad coder. You would hope their employers would give them the time they need to keep up with technology.
Now if I was interviewing and a candidate told me they hated computers and never turned one on at home, that'd be a red flag. But not being involved in coding at home wouldn't be. Coding that's related to the toolset or language might be a plus, so long as that's not all this person did.
As for slashdot moderation, all I can say is better get use to it - people here behave very badly when it comes to moderation.
If you let your kids take over your entire free time then your not doing yourself or your kids any favours.
Idealistic but totally unrealistic. Wake up and smell the coffee or don't have kids. Kids don't just take up your spare time. They take up every second of your time. You're talking about a life that can't fend for itself and doesn't have the common sense not to hurt itself. You'll give up not just spare time, but sleep, social life, it'll even cut into work.
You can't just roll over and go back to sleep if your kid is screaming at 3am because they're sick or they've wet themselves or whatever else. Especially at the infant stage. You can't leave them unsupervised because once they're old enough to move around they will do themselves harm. You'll go from chore to chore - feeding, bathing, changing, washing clothes, doing dishes/rinsing bottles. This doesn't stop. You don't get many breaks. It lasts for years. If you're the bread winner, you come home and your wife wants a break from doing those chores all day. It is LITERALLY that hard and that constant. If you don't believe me, you'll learn when you become a parent. If you do believe me, think carefully before taking steps to become one.
It's worthwhile. If you have kids you won't wish them gone. But don't even pretend you can be a good parent by taking care of your own needs first. It just doesn't work that way.
The fun started AFTER the resort closed down. We fired up the lifts again after the crowds left and skied, sledded, used lunch trays and shovels on mogul fields, whatever we could find. Those were good times.
Well if it were computing not skiing, these days you'd just be expected to run the slopes for longer and be shown off the property once you were done.
My tram ride to work takes 40 minutes. Honestly, what am I going to do with that time? I have a eeepc 701 loaded with ubuntu. On the tram I write code. It makes the commute bearable for me,
- Watch DVDs (half hour episodes would be perfect for you)
- Learn to play chess
- Computer games and simulations (I love flight simulators)
- Read a book, programming related or otherwise
- Catch up on podcasts
- Read the paper
- Talk to friends and family (though this one is hard if you're trying to be considerate)
- Read that work document that you've been meaning to
Obviously after a long day on the job I understand that this person would just want to go home, eat a pizza and do something completely different. But I'd be concerned about the coder that didn't have any pet projects, any interest in coding outside work like a ski instructor that never just goes skiing. No deadlines, no pressure, no dealing with poor specs, annoying customers or superiors.
You clearly don't have kids. This notion that you go home and laze around after work only applies while you're young and single. Households don't run themselves. Don't expect your wife to do it all either. She'll be exhausted from a day of looking after kids and will want you to help out.
Those who code in their spare time are much more valuable than those who don't.
Not necessarily. If your health is bad, and you have no social life because all you do is code, you're quite likely to end up in a mess. A good example is Hans Reiser.
Also if you're not getting any better at your coding due to your hobby coding, all you're doing is dividing your attention between two things. That's not a plus for an employer.
Another point. If your code is related to your work in any way you're opening up your company for a law suite if someone claims they implemented a feature in an open source project you've been working with and you "stole" it without releasing it under the same open license.
Having a life is a good thing, so long as you also have a work ethic.
Being an arsehole is not a prerequisite for financial success. Your making the mistake of polarising it by saying that you are either 100% generous and give everything away or 100% greedy and kick puppies in order to steal their water bowls and sell them to the bigger dogs. This neglects the important middle ground where most people exist.
No, what I'm saying is that the middle ground leads you to being fair and paying others what they are worth, not taking credit where it's not due etc. If you're a decent human being it's a much harder thing to horde wealth and success. This is EXACTLY what the middle ground is all about.
There are plenty of financially sucessful people who are not complete arseholes, we just don't know their names as only the rich arseholes are rewarded with fame.
Exactly my point. They'll never be #1 on the rich list. They'll never make enough waves. I did not say you couldn't do well for yourself. Just that you couldn't play with the mega-rich.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, it's very novel to see a spider nomming on plant matter, but rushing to call it vegetarian is as inane as calling anyone wearing all black goth. They might just be wearing all black...
Aparently it's changed since we were young. "Goth" is a sad 90's sub-culture, but wearing black and mopping around while declaring your hate for everything is "Emo" (which I think is short for emotionally crippled fashion victim).
Although a Ti-83 can definitely be enhanced by a custom OS, the usefulness of a Ti-83 would greatly decrease for students if custom OS's existed. On many standardized tests, including the SATs and ACTs, the tests specify which calculators are permitted for the test. They have a very specific list, based on which ones they think are not too powerful and would give an unfair advantage to a test taker
How about changing the test, or finding some other way to verify the calculators, instead of trying to prevent people from doing interesting things with equipment they own?
That is because TI sells a large number of its calculators to students. The custom OS's could greatly hurt TI's reputation in the eyes of its biggest supporters: the test makers.
Henceforth known as the lazy luddites. Seriously, get with the program. If your test strategy and regime were created in 1965, it's time to update it. This is no excuse to stiffle innovation.
You're assuming the certificate is used immediately to establish a connection.
No, I'm not. Where did I say that?
Point of sale terminals are not always on-line, and when they are off-line they must encrypt the authorization request and store it until it can be sent to the settlement system once they're back on-line.
Encryption and authentication (signing) are two different things. You almost certainly want both but you can encrypt without authenticating and vice versa.
In that case, the terminal really needs to assure itself that the certificate is valid, because it might not be able to attempt the decryption until long after the customer has left with your merchandise and their charge card.
First as you've probably conceded unless you replace the certificates at both ends, you won't authenticate or encrypt/decrypt the message or both so that it's recognised at the other end. So the funds don't get transfered.
As for merchandise leaving the store, once your POS is compromised, it's compromised. You can replace the entire set of certificates. You can even make the terminal pretend it has gone out and connected with the bank and transfered the money. There is NOTHING you can do to ensure that the certificates you have cached and the software you have aren't compromised to allow the sale to go through, since anything you are relying on to authenticate can itself be compromised.
I'm pretty certain you don't know what you're talking about, and that's dangerous if you're advising others on security.
There's no money in them.
If you literally weren't paid that's one thing. Otherwise it should be a matter of professionalism that you don't publicly denounce work you're actively still doing.
I do them because, as Gore Vidal said: "Never pass up an opportunity for sex or to be on TV."
Ah, in that case you have no professionalism or credibility. Are you married? Do you ever plan to be? I hope your current or future wife realises you plan to have sex with whomsoever provides the opportunity.
You're the sort of person that can't tell the difference between Myth Buster's and good science television.
Seriously, go read the book - The Elegant Universe, then watch the video again. You'll see the difference.
I have read the book you arrogant little man. Have you? I've also got a masters degree in astronomy, which didn't come from watching documentaries, and which I did for myself without intention of making it my career.
The point is it takes 3 hours to see the documentary, and longer to properly read and digest the book. The visuals in the TV program complimented the understanding I gained from the book very nicely. It also allows me to share the information with anyone willing to give me 3 hours, but who might not want to spend significant time reading. Still neither the book nor the documentary will make you a Quantum Dynamacist or an expert in String Theory. For that you need several years at University and an aptitude for higher level math and physics.
Each level of education has it's place.
Get some self respect and credibility, stop behaving opportunistically and then you might not be so cynical.
There's never a reason to have the private keys stored in the Point-Of-Sale application.
Way to mis-read what I said. I gave an example that wasn't strictly related to POS terminals of how frameworks encourage poor security practices. Whether it's a certificate, key or password having it embedded in the configuration or the application package is poor security design but also the standard way things work.
The credit card data should be encrypted in the POS system using a public key borne on a verified certificate. It doesn't ever have to be decrypted at POS for any reason. Decryption should happen only at the point of authorization, and at the point of settlement with the bank. Those private keys are only in centrally located machines that can be much more easily secured than the thousands of cash registers located in thousands of stores.
And you shouldn't have to write custom code to get this kind of behaviour, yet you often do.
The hardest part is ensuring the certificate signatures are valid. You have to ensure the encryption certs weren't replaced with evil certs, and that no rogue root certificate was installed on the POS system.
Huh? That's the whole point of a certificate. If it's replaced with an "evil" certificate it won't authenticate at the other end. You'd have to replace them at both ends. Very difficult to do if you're talking about a Hardware Security Module (HSM) that doesn't allow certificate export. You basically have to steal the hardware.
Want to really learn something, shut off the TV and read a book. Geez, for the price of cable TV these days, you can buy a new book every 3 days or so.
But if you want to be entertained with the illusion that you're learning something factual, when it's often just as made-up and sensationalized as any other made-for-tv drama, then carry on.
Hey just because you were "cast as an expert" on some dodgy pseudo-scientific shows on Discovery Channel, that doesn't suddenly make all documentaries like that. I can name a few excellent piece of television:
Universe (History Channel)
Cosmos (Carl Sagan)
Elegant Universe
Most documentaries by David Attenborough
Now the focus might be entertainment (though David Attenborough makes me want to go to sleep). You're not going to learn calculus from mainstream TV. But that doesn't make the medium rubbish. If you want good educational value download some video from MIT OpenCourseware, or buy a The Teaching Company series DVD.
By the way it's particularly silly of you to be telling people to stay away from documentaries if that's how you make part of your living.
If your neighbors complain, you leave and join the anarcho-syndicalist collective colony on Kaka 4. Where does capitalism fit in with this technology?
Well it's not perfect but it's the best you have, but before you knew it someone spoilt it and you were left in Kaka. Sounds a lot like captialism to me.
So we'll have to wait another 75 years before management lets us focus on application efficiency instead of throwing hardware at the performance problems? Sigh...
You're going to place any stock in a prediction made by someone that will only come to fruition just outside their lifetime? Such predictions belong in a tent with a crystal ball.
And if the POS software was secure, it should not matter if someone downloaded the source code.
That depends on whether the source code was stored separately to certificates/key files and how well the passwords were externalised. You'd be surprised how modern security systems allow and even encourage awful practices in this regard. For example Spring web services and spring security have a bad tendancy of including such things in their config file, which are often bundled up in the application.
It's actually not a trivial problem. If you include everything required for the app to run in the application package/bundle, you inevitably include such things somewhere they shouldn't be (even if that's just a build machine). The best solution I've seen is hardware security modules that don't allow keys and certificates to be exported. They aren't cheap but if you're running a large organisation and have been trusted with potentially millions of credit card numbers it's not exactly beyond the call.
You're not a real engineer.
And you're not a real anonymous coward.
Software engineers are not real engineers - mechanical, civil, electrical, but anyway, bridges are built to multiple variables - the materials, wear and tear, metal fatigue, weather, vibration, structural integrity of the bedrock they're embedded in and many, many more I'm sure.
Yes software engineers never ever deal with variables. We only use literals.
The OS only has to avoid deleting or corrupting data.
Yeah when's the last time you wrote a file system, loser?
It doesn't have to protect the user from himself. It has to make sure that no-matter what the subsystem handling IO does not f-up. What the higher level component does is not the fault of the system. Pressing the Delete key will delete data. But changing user accounts should not delete data. Removing a USB stick suddenly with write-behind caching disabled while the stick is idle should not corrupt it. There's not much here, it's not rocket science.
Well then I guess every file system bug ever is because the guy who wrote it was less smart than you.
How often does user sofware make as much money as the construction of a bridge?
Talk to an avionics engineer.
How much has Windows made for MS? Do you think a construction company makes more on a bridge than MS on the sale of its OS? or Apple? Economies of scale. Each OS copy is cheap but millions are sold.
Yes but how many use cases are there?
How old is the software industry compared to bridge building?
Not very old, either. It's just that engineers respect fundamentals and maybe know what they're doing?
Funny that you couldn't even write this comment if software engineers hasn't written software for you to do so. Guess they didn't know what they were doing.
How variable are software problems compared to bridge problems?
How variable? How about don't delete my data by mistake. The component doing the IO has to work properly, the major variability lies with higher level programs which use this component. There the user could press Delete or overwrite important data - that you can't protect against.
Yeah I don't think that some idiot put in a line of code to delete data on purpose. That's not how it works.
Oh and by the way there have been some catastrophic bridge failures.
Sure there have but the industry learns from them.
And the software industry learns from failures such as these.
1. Pick up RFID chip
2. Look at it. It's an RFID chip! You have just visualized it.
3. ???
4. Profit
When will software/computer/IT companies be held to the same standards that other engineers (Civil, Electrical, Mechanical) are? If a bridge is built and it collapses due to a poor design, or a gadget catches fire or brakes are poorly designed, people head to their local courthouse and sue.
I hear this often and it's nonsense. How often do bridges get built to highly variable designs? How often does user sofware make as much money as the construction of a bridge? How much did you pay for your last bridge? Would you like sofware to cost as much?? (Avionics software is built to that level of quality. Care to have your desktop OS cost as much?) How old is the software industry compared to bridge building? How variable are software problems compared to bridge problems? Oh and by the way there have been some catastrophic bridge failures.
It's a terrible analogy and awful reasoning.
a poke got you infinite lives, not arrested. /get off my 8-bit lawn
Funny I always thought it got you 18 years child support payments.
I've got a better suggestion for you. Stop calling yourself a feminist. The term itself is sexist. It implies that you are putting women's issues and needs ahead of men's. It also associates you with some extreme man hating and man bashing. Women who truly want equality need to place themselves under a different banner.
Oh please. Stallman is a nut job. Have you met the man? If you don't understand that perpetuating a joke like "The Church of EMACS" means he's completely out of touch and on his own little planet, you have your own problems.
There's bound to be some sexism in Open Source. Just as there is bound to be rascism. Just as there are bound to be mentally unstable people. Blowing any of these out of proportion to push an agenda is dishonest and quite frankly vile as you're basically exploiting the mentally unstable and socially maladjusted.
I have no problem with women in software development, open source or otherwise, and I do feel they deserve to be respected which means making them uncomfortable with sexist jokes and porn references is out. However I do have a problem with some women who call themselves "feminists" who's true agenda is ironically the oppression of men.
You are focusing on the Murdochs and Trumps of the world and ignoring the Gates (yes BG is really a nice person) Bransons and Schmits of the world. These three may not be the worlds nicest people but would be far less of an arsehole then the average man on the street.
Neither you nor I know them personally, but if I had to bet, I'd bet you're being naive.
Being an arsehole is not the key to getting rich, otherwise all the Bogans, Chav's and Rednecks would be striking it rich.
You're talking about people with no social skills and no skills for manipulation.
It's entirely possible to become #1 without being a prick.
You keep saying this. And I keep replying that it depends on how you define rich. Are you missing the point on purpose? To be REALLY rich requires a willingness to take credit for work you didn't do. If you're not prepared to do that, there's always someone who'll get further ahead than you because they are willing to. It's really that simple. So sure you can get "rich" but not up in the top few percent. I'm going to stop repeating myself now. If you don't get it, you're simply not listening.
Now you are confusing fame with success. They are two different concepts and are not dependent on one another.
Fame and success go hand in hand. No one wants to know about the 3rd or 4th people to land on the moon. They want to know who was first, and there may be some residual interest for second. Likewise no one wants to know who the 123rd richest person in the world is. They want to hear about the top 3, or at most the top 10.
At no point did I say you couldn't make yourself enough money to be comfortable without being evil. I said you couldn't make it into the top few percent. I'm tired of repeating myself.
I honestly don't think hobby coding is either a plus or a minus in and of itself. It can make you a better programmer which is a plus. But it's certainly no pre-requisit to being a good coder.
The point you're missing is that people can enjoy coding but can be satisified by the 8-16 hours a day on weekdays that their jobs require. That doesn't make them a bad coder. You would hope their employers would give them the time they need to keep up with technology.
Now if I was interviewing and a candidate told me they hated computers and never turned one on at home, that'd be a red flag. But not being involved in coding at home wouldn't be. Coding that's related to the toolset or language might be a plus, so long as that's not all this person did.
As for slashdot moderation, all I can say is better get use to it - people here behave very badly when it comes to moderation.
Brain surgery? Nothing like after a hard day in the operating theatre unwinding by taking out the kids pre-frontal cortex.
I'm sure brain surgeons read medical journals and go to symposiums outside of their normal working hours.
So you're saying they practice on themselves, not the kids?
If you let your kids take over your entire free time then your not doing yourself or your kids any favours.
Idealistic but totally unrealistic. Wake up and smell the coffee or don't have kids. Kids don't just take up your spare time. They take up every second of your time. You're talking about a life that can't fend for itself and doesn't have the common sense not to hurt itself. You'll give up not just spare time, but sleep, social life, it'll even cut into work.
You can't just roll over and go back to sleep if your kid is screaming at 3am because they're sick or they've wet themselves or whatever else. Especially at the infant stage. You can't leave them unsupervised because once they're old enough to move around they will do themselves harm. You'll go from chore to chore - feeding, bathing, changing, washing clothes, doing dishes/rinsing bottles. This doesn't stop. You don't get many breaks. It lasts for years. If you're the bread winner, you come home and your wife wants a break from doing those chores all day. It is LITERALLY that hard and that constant. If you don't believe me, you'll learn when you become a parent. If you do believe me, think carefully before taking steps to become one.
It's worthwhile. If you have kids you won't wish them gone. But don't even pretend you can be a good parent by taking care of your own needs first. It just doesn't work that way.
The fun started AFTER the resort closed down. We fired up the lifts again after the crowds left and skied, sledded, used lunch trays and shovels on mogul fields, whatever we could find. Those were good times.
Well if it were computing not skiing, these days you'd just be expected to run the slopes for longer and be shown off the property once you were done.
My tram ride to work takes 40 minutes. Honestly, what am I going to do with that time? I have a eeepc 701 loaded with ubuntu. On the tram I write code. It makes the commute bearable for me,
- Watch DVDs (half hour episodes would be perfect for you)
- Learn to play chess
- Computer games and simulations (I love flight simulators)
- Read a book, programming related or otherwise
- Catch up on podcasts
- Read the paper
- Talk to friends and family (though this one is hard if you're trying to be considerate)
- Read that work document that you've been meaning to
- Have a kip (catch up on sleep)
That's just off the top of my head.
Obviously after a long day on the job I understand that this person would just want to go home, eat a pizza and do something completely different. But I'd be concerned about the coder that didn't have any pet projects, any interest in coding outside work like a ski instructor that never just goes skiing. No deadlines, no pressure, no dealing with poor specs, annoying customers or superiors.
You clearly don't have kids. This notion that you go home and laze around after work only applies while you're young and single. Households don't run themselves. Don't expect your wife to do it all either. She'll be exhausted from a day of looking after kids and will want you to help out.
Those who code in their spare time are much more valuable than those who don't.
Not necessarily. If your health is bad, and you have no social life because all you do is code, you're quite likely to end up in a mess. A good example is Hans Reiser.
Also if you're not getting any better at your coding due to your hobby coding, all you're doing is dividing your attention between two things. That's not a plus for an employer.
Another point. If your code is related to your work in any way you're opening up your company for a law suite if someone claims they implemented a feature in an open source project you've been working with and you "stole" it without releasing it under the same open license.
Having a life is a good thing, so long as you also have a work ethic.
in 5...4....3...2...1
Being an arsehole is not a prerequisite for financial success. Your making the mistake of polarising it by saying that you are either 100% generous and give everything away or 100% greedy and kick puppies in order to steal their water bowls and sell them to the bigger dogs. This neglects the important middle ground where most people exist.
No, what I'm saying is that the middle ground leads you to being fair and paying others what they are worth, not taking credit where it's not due etc. If you're a decent human being it's a much harder thing to horde wealth and success. This is EXACTLY what the middle ground is all about.
There are plenty of financially sucessful people who are not complete arseholes, we just don't know their names as only the rich arseholes are rewarded with fame.
Exactly my point. They'll never be #1 on the rich list. They'll never make enough waves. I did not say you couldn't do well for yourself. Just that you couldn't play with the mega-rich.