And with two wiki links included? Sheesh... now I know you stated that/.ers "should be of a level of intelligence that they can understand this stuff", which I believe is true enough, but you greatly underestimate our laziness. "Virtual telescope" works just fine for me... IANAA, and I never will be, sorry.
Well then why bother to read the article at all?
Better yet, if you're so lazy why reply like this? You could have spent the same amount of time skimming one of the articles.
And how about "release early, release often"? Or how open source software has a much longer history of perpetual betas than Google?
"Release early, release often" doesn't mean release overhyped broken shit early and often. It means don't horde it until it's perfect. It means allow developers and early adopters access early. It does not mean suggest that the product is ready for production use by the masses.
Why the fuck is it that people seem to think open source is an excuse for writing and releasing garbage? The idea is to be able to fix bugs to IMPROVE the quality of the code, not to constantly release unusable crud.
First of all "Modem" is a layman's term? Gimme a break? You analogy is weak as piss.
Secondly Pendantry???? I explained how things worked in simple terms. When you talk about "Virtual Telescopes" to describe interferometry it's like talking about a virtual go pedal instead of an accelerator in a car. Or perhaps a better analogy isn't modem for a DSL device but "brain" when talking about a CPU. The atricle was a science article for "nerds". It shouldn't resort to baby talk.
You're just an attention seeking troll.
Re:Firefox Damage Control Is More Than Enough
on
Chrome Vs. IE 8
·
· Score: 1
I have no problem, and I do not need to.
"It works for me" is a pitiful response to a user's problems. I bet we use the browser very differently (and no I'm not doing anything usual with it - I just use lots of tabs AND lots of new windows - that seems to be the difference).
What do you want them to do? Never change anything?
I made it clear that what I want them to do is listen to user feedback. Your response is just plain trolling.
I think it is the most useful addition to browsers since Opera added tabs a decade ago.
Glad you like it. I have no problem with the inclusion of new features that I don't want SO LONG AS I CAN TURN THEM OFF WITHOUT RESORTING TO HACKS AND EXTENSIONS. This is not a clear improvement. Lots of people dislike Coolbar immensely and they've just been told "tough" by FF devs.
Stop trolling and suggesting that I'm being unreasonable by putting up fictitious straw men.
Can we stop saying "virtual telescopes" and start using the proper grown up terms? Interferometry and Aperture Synthesis aren't hard to understand. It's a pet peeve of mine, and slashdotters should be of a level of intelligence that they can understand this stuff.
Yes you get the same angular resolution as a much larger telescope (one as big as the distance between the telescopes), which is why you do it. However it's important to note that you you don't increase the amount of radiation you're collecting - it's still just the sum of the telescopes you're using.
I'll try to put it simply. Let's use optical telescopes as a familiar example. (In practice optical interferometry is much harder than radio astronomy, but I digress). The larger the diameter of the mirror (or lens) the more light we collect, and the smaller an object we can look at with reasonable detail (There is a physical relationship between the diameter of the telescope and the smallest thing you can resolve with it). We could space multiple telescopes a good distance apart and increase how small a piece of the sky we can look at in detail. The detail we could now resolve depends on the distance between the telescopes. However we're still only collecting as much light in total as the sum of the light collected by each scope. So even though we can look at a much smaller part of the sky, we won't be able to brighten up the image as much as if we had the larger telescope. It's still worth doing and it still yields discoveries, but it's not the same as having a massive telescope.
...Because I just spent 5 minutes getting rid of that shit. Scheduled tasks to start something that didn't start at startup. I'm fed up with Google. The only thing they offer that I'm actually interested in is web search. For everything else there's a simpler more reliable or more feature complete alternative.
I think the comparison is unwarranted - mission-critical embedded systems are orders of magnitude less complex than a web browser
Oh yes, the space shuttle is orders of magnitude less complex than Chrome.
I'm not even going to bother with the rest of your argument. What it comes down to is that you don't seem to comprehend the difference between a well componentized complex system and a simple one. You manage complexity by breaking it down, whether it's the shuttle or a web browser.
They tested it. It still has bugs. So they're releasing it as an open beta. This wasn't "in vogue" in the 90's... but these days, MANY things are released in a beta after the developers have been unable to find any bugs themselves.
Get some perspective. This was a public release overhyped and touting the product as an FF/IE killer.
When developers look for bugs, it's in alpha. When the developers cannot find anymore bugs, but they know it could benefit from many more eyes, computer configurations, etc... they release it as a beta. Once all the bugs are worked out, then it is golden and is released.
Mustn't have many developers. I managed to freeze it looking at 2 websites in under 5 minutes.
Google misuses the term "beta" and sometimes mean it as "we have more features planned for this until we're comfortable taking the beta label off"... think Gmail. But in this particular case, this is a true beta from Google. Expect bugs. If you don't want to help beta test the product, wait until it has been tested for a while and is fully released.
They're the ones who've created the confusion misusing the term. Also I'd argue this is ALPHA.
Should we also complain that the first beta version of IE8 had bugs in it? Sure, let's.
IE8 was not touted as a revolutionary new browser that would blow everything else out of the water. Nor does MS generally misuse the term beta. I haven't tried it, but with a solid lineage I bet it's less buggy than Google's offering.
You don't work in the aircraft, spacecraft, power industry or telecommunications do you? There's no way to test everything economically.
It's not about testing EVERYTHING. I'm not complaining about obscure bugs. I'm complaining about crashing and hanging on the handful of sites I bothered to try.
No point in entering into discussion about the rest of your rant (complete with DNF reference). Yes sure you can take a long time and still come out with crap. So what? I'm talking about the standard a good company can achieve in a reasonable time. What I saw yesterday ain't it.
If you're going to try to sway me, you're better off not quoting Joel on software. I use to read some of his work, but I lost all respect for him very quickly, particularly since reading his story where he is proud rather than critical of the arrogance and lack of professionalism Bill Gates demonstrated when he was working for him.
There's a reason "mission critical" software costs millions of dollars to develop and license. And there's a reason that free software, for which it's impractical to spends millions of dollars on development, has a few warts.
A few warts? If flaws were warts, this browser would be a bush pig!!!
Nevermind the fact that a browser must be fresh -- if you don't support all the latest standards, you're useless; and if you do, then you are, necessarily, somewhat hastily developed.
More excuses for releasing buggy rubbish. Sorry, what I tested yesterday was Alpha. So was the last browser I tried (Safari on Windows). I'm very keen to dump Firefox and IE, but not in exchange for something unusable.
You wouldn't *want* to use a browser developed to operate to "mission critical" standards. It'd have a feature set comparable to Lynx.
I don't WANT to use this browser either. How about a happy medium instead of "mission critical". Test it on a wider set of web sites, and don't overhype it as an IE/FF killer? It's called being reasonable.
There are those of us who consider something like Chrome to have value before it is perfect. If it is possible to have a year early in a buggy state, I'd like to check it out and use it in my plans.
I'd be fine if they called it what it is - ALPHA - and didn't overhype it. I'm not suggesting early release is bad. It is THEIR fault for playing so loose with the term beta.
In case you didn't know, software is complex. Modern web browsers are complex things even as examples of software.
In case you didn't know, being condescending reflects poorly on you.
Yes modern web browsers are complex. So's
Google has done unit tests, automated whole application tests, and even used the most popular web sites in their ranking system to test the thing. Now they're allowing people to use a free product in exchange for admitting the users are testing it.
They must have done one hell of a poor job, or I must have had terrible luck, given that I visited a half a dozen web sites and one froze, and another crashed the browser. It's not just about running a small number of unit tests against popular web sites and releasing it. If they're looking to kill off established browsers they'll have to do much much better.
Now they're allowing people to use a free product in exchange for admitting the users are testing it.
Sure it's a free beta. They owe me nothing. It's nice to have access to their browser. That doesn't mean I won't try it and make a decision as to whether I think it's a good product. I've already uninstalled it. Perhaps I'll look at their next release, if I find the features compelling and others report good usage. In the meantime thanks a lot for not uninstalling google update when I uninstalled the browser. My opinion of it is very very low at the moment.
It's much better, in my opinion, than charging someone $300 for something that should still be in alpha.
It's that attitude that leads to unusable buggy crap. Sure it's better than overcharging for bug infested software. But That's like telling someone on an assault charge that at least it isn't murder. Over-hyped buggy crap is bad. It is not to be encouraged!
So I take it you don't like open source software much, huh?
I love open source. However I don't equate it to untested crap. I've seen rock solid open source software.
Re:Firefox Damage Control Is More Than Enough
on
Chrome Vs. IE 8
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I'd love to ditch Firefox. I hate the memory usage (and having to kill it 3 times a day). I hate the developer's attitude. (We're removing feature X or changing feature Y because it's the way of the future and to those who complain tough). I wouldn't be using 3.0 if it weren't for the hideunivisted and oldbar extensions. (Coolbar is an abomination and an annoyance all in one change).
But I tried Chrome yesterday and it's got a long way to go. I was pleasantly surprised that it handled rendering complex web pages and worked with Microsoft proxies at work. However it is slow and crashes or freezes (or rather individual pages freeze). I'd also lose my extensions and ad blocking if I switched. No thanks. At least not yet. It's got a long way to go to be a viable replacement for me.
TCPView is certainly more convenient than using netstat -o and matching it up with the process ID in the task list, but either way you're still left with cryptic process names like [System Process]:0 which doesn't tell you what's going on.\
While you're at it add ZoneAlarm or Comodo Firewall or similar to the list. Users can learn about traffic and block anything suspicious. Of course firewall software comes with its own issues and management requirements which the average user may not be prepared to deal with.
If you're concerned about rootkits hiding traffic, you're going to need to use a hardware solution. A router with firewall like the Linksys WRT54GL with a decent 3rd party firmware (Tomato is probably better than DD-WRT) for monitoring.
However the more software and hardware you have to install, the further away from what the average user is prepared to do.
Honest question - without resorting to answers like "if it's not running Linux it's zombied" I'd be curious to know how the average user can even determine whether their box is pwn3d.
No, but you could teach them quickly even if they didn't fully understand what they are doing. Simple recipe 1. Turn off PC for half an hour 2. Start it up, and start your network connection. Do not start web browsers or other happs 3. Open up a command prompt from Start-Run 4. Type netstat -a and look for connections 5. Repeat step 4 several times over an one hour period
Now some connections may be software updating (eg. antivirus) but discounting that if you have lots of open connections or they're regularly changing, you have to assume it's probably owned.
Damn them for not making their codebase absolutely perfect from day one! Software should spring into life fully formed, like Athena from Zeus' forehead!
Actually it should. It's not in vogue right at the moment but it's called testing BEFORE release. Do you really think for more critical stuff that the developers can afford to release untested crap and say "oh well it's beta"? Think of mission critical stuff - aircraft and spacecraft, power industry, telecommunications. Okay a web browser doesn't deserve quite the same level of scrutiny, but obvious bugs should be eliminated on day one. It USe to be common practice to at least try to do so, and failing to do so use to be an embarrassment. Now it's just business as usual. (By the way Google would have a lot more credibility using the term if their "beta" software didn't stay in beta for years)
Why would a man not screw around as much as possible? In short, because our young are vulnerable after birth, require a fairly large energy investment, and are few in number.
As a new father I have to say I concur! Well that, and the fact that my wife's got a black belt in Karate.
Are any employers anywhere willing to hire high schoolers in any tech jobs in today's economy?
My first computing job was after I'd dropped out of a 1st year B.Sc. I worked for a year based on just high school certification for less than I could have earnt if I held a job at McDonalds. This was in 1994, and the job involved programming, phone support and on site customer installations. My boss only hired highschoolers so he could pay like that. I was able to get into a B.Sc. in Computing the following year and use that year of underpaid work as my industrial experience year (so in the end I only lost the year I spent on that first degree). So while the pay was awful and I'd have been a fool to stay it actually worked out well for me in the long run. Well 14 years have passed, but I bet my old boss is still engaged in the exact same hiring practices.
First of all, how long do you think it takes for a book to get to market? Between 6 months and a year it's still brand spanking new.
Secondly, even in computing good books become classics - Think K&R for C programming.
Thirdly, newer books often just make minor modifications to the old text. Hell some just renumber pages to keep up sales. (Hell some teachers re-use course notes for years in a row at a time with little revision).
Fourthly, 5 year old skills are still useful. Few if any companies are using bleeding edge stuff exclusively.
Then there's the Net which is a great resource. There are a ton of free tutorials on the web for various things.
If you've got access to 4 year old books and the Net, quit whining and looking for the most up to date books. You might as well ask for a pony.
Google has corporate accounts and customers that dwarf us in size and mail volume.
Do you have a corporate contract with Google? If so, I get it now. If not, corporate relationships with other entities are irrelevant.
And so does RIM, your ISP and anyone with a relay between you and your message destination.
That's why companies run internal email services, and if they have to run at multiple sites encrypt with a VPN. Where I'm from internal and external email are treated very differently. I even get a confirmation/warning when I send external email.
Just where is your mail going without an internet connection? We mostly IM around the office. I was even IM'ing with our CFO and her office is right next door. And we have redundant internet connections anyway.
Our external Internet link can be down but our exchange servers would still relay mail within the office. IM has it's place but it is by definition instant. Sometimes you want to speak to someone asynchronously but still urgently. Like "Hey Bob, go pull those accounts and get back to me ASAP". Sure you can use IM for that but it's not the same as email.
Why would they do that? Millions of people trust Google with their email, and Microsoft and Yahoo, Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, RIM...it's a long list. Google isn't any less reliable than any of them. If Google sold our trade secrets of cut off our mail service I'd blog about it. The traffic alone would probably make up enough revenue to replace the loss of income from getting fired. They'd make me famous.
Companies fold or drop services.
How are you mitigating the risk of getting hit with a meteorite?
The web and persistence frameworks are important. They're over-engineered and I hate them but if you don't know them you won't get work. (Without them it'd be very much like trying to become a game developer knowing only ANSI standard C and no frameworks). They're what you need to learn second. Possibly on a smaller project where you're not the lead. However learn to crawl before walking or flying.
Slashdot Mirror
And with two wiki links included? Sheesh... now I know you stated that /.ers "should be of a level of intelligence that they can understand this stuff", which I believe is true enough, but you greatly underestimate our laziness. "Virtual telescope" works just fine for me... IANAA, and I never will be, sorry.
Well then why bother to read the article at all?
Better yet, if you're so lazy why reply like this? You could have spent the same amount of time skimming one of the articles.
Good question
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Interferometry_Mission
And how about "release early, release often"? Or how open source software has a much longer history of perpetual betas than Google?
"Release early, release often" doesn't mean release overhyped broken shit early and often. It means don't horde it until it's perfect. It means allow developers and early adopters access early. It does not mean suggest that the product is ready for production use by the masses.
Why the fuck is it that people seem to think open source is an excuse for writing and releasing garbage? The idea is to be able to fix bugs to IMPROVE the quality of the code, not to constantly release unusable crud.
First of all "Modem" is a layman's term? Gimme a break? You analogy is weak as piss.
Secondly Pendantry???? I explained how things worked in simple terms. When you talk about "Virtual Telescopes" to describe interferometry it's like talking about a virtual go pedal instead of an accelerator in a car. Or perhaps a better analogy isn't modem for a DSL device but "brain" when talking about a CPU. The atricle was a science article for "nerds". It shouldn't resort to baby talk.
You're just an attention seeking troll.
I have no problem, and I do not need to.
"It works for me" is a pitiful response to a user's problems. I bet we use the browser very differently (and no I'm not doing anything usual with it - I just use lots of tabs AND lots of new windows - that seems to be the difference).
What do you want them to do? Never change anything?
I made it clear that what I want them to do is listen to user feedback. Your response is just plain trolling.
I think it is the most useful addition to browsers since Opera added tabs a decade ago.
Glad you like it. I have no problem with the inclusion of new features that I don't want SO LONG AS I CAN TURN THEM OFF WITHOUT RESORTING TO HACKS AND EXTENSIONS. This is not a clear improvement. Lots of people dislike Coolbar immensely and they've just been told "tough" by FF devs.
Stop trolling and suggesting that I'm being unreasonable by putting up fictitious straw men.
Can we stop saying "virtual telescopes" and start using the proper grown up terms? Interferometry and Aperture Synthesis aren't hard to understand. It's a pet peeve of mine, and slashdotters should be of a level of intelligence that they can understand this stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_interferometer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture_synthesis
Yes you get the same angular resolution as a much larger telescope (one as big as the distance between the telescopes), which is why you do it. However it's important to note that you you don't increase the amount of radiation you're collecting - it's still just the sum of the telescopes you're using.
I'll try to put it simply. Let's use optical telescopes as a familiar example. (In practice optical interferometry is much harder than radio astronomy, but I digress). The larger the diameter of the mirror (or lens) the more light we collect, and the smaller an object we can look at with reasonable detail (There is a physical relationship between the diameter of the telescope and the smallest thing you can resolve with it). We could space multiple telescopes a good distance apart and increase how small a piece of the sky we can look at in detail. The detail we could now resolve depends on the distance between the telescopes. However we're still only collecting as much light in total as the sum of the light collected by each scope. So even though we can look at a much smaller part of the sky, we won't be able to brighten up the image as much as if we had the larger telescope. It's still worth doing and it still yields discoveries, but it's not the same as having a massive telescope.
...Because I just spent 5 minutes getting rid of that shit. Scheduled tasks to start something that didn't start at startup. I'm fed up with Google. The only thing they offer that I'm actually interested in is web search. For everything else there's a simpler more reliable or more feature complete alternative.
It can sort my porn.
It recognizes faces, not genitals and backsides.
I think the comparison is unwarranted - mission-critical embedded systems are orders of magnitude less complex than a web browser
Oh yes, the space shuttle is orders of magnitude less complex than Chrome.
I'm not even going to bother with the rest of your argument. What it comes down to is that you don't seem to comprehend the difference between a well componentized complex system and a simple one. You manage complexity by breaking it down, whether it's the shuttle or a web browser.
They tested it. It still has bugs. So they're releasing it as an open beta. This wasn't "in vogue" in the 90's... but these days, MANY things are released in a beta after the developers have been unable to find any bugs themselves.
Get some perspective. This was a public release overhyped and touting the product as an FF/IE killer.
When developers look for bugs, it's in alpha. When the developers cannot find anymore bugs, but they know it could benefit from many more eyes, computer configurations, etc... they release it as a beta. Once all the bugs are worked out, then it is golden and is released.
Mustn't have many developers. I managed to freeze it looking at 2 websites in under 5 minutes.
Google misuses the term "beta" and sometimes mean it as "we have more features planned for this until we're comfortable taking the beta label off"... think Gmail. But in this particular case, this is a true beta from Google. Expect bugs. If you don't want to help beta test the product, wait until it has been tested for a while and is fully released.
They're the ones who've created the confusion misusing the term. Also I'd argue this is ALPHA.
Should we also complain that the first beta version of IE8 had bugs in it? Sure, let's.
IE8 was not touted as a revolutionary new browser that would blow everything else out of the water. Nor does MS generally misuse the term beta. I haven't tried it, but with a solid lineage I bet it's less buggy than Google's offering.
You don't work in the aircraft, spacecraft, power industry or telecommunications do you? There's no way to test everything economically.
It's not about testing EVERYTHING. I'm not complaining about obscure bugs. I'm complaining about crashing and hanging on the handful of sites I bothered to try.
No point in entering into discussion about the rest of your rant (complete with DNF reference). Yes sure you can take a long time and still come out with crap. So what? I'm talking about the standard a good company can achieve in a reasonable time. What I saw yesterday ain't it.
Good software takes 10 years to write.
If you're going to try to sway me, you're better off not quoting Joel on software. I use to read some of his work, but I lost all respect for him very quickly, particularly since reading his story where he is proud rather than critical of the arrogance and lack of professionalism Bill Gates demonstrated when he was working for him.
There's a reason "mission critical" software costs millions of dollars to develop and license. And there's a reason that free software, for which it's impractical to spends millions of dollars on development, has a few warts.
A few warts? If flaws were warts, this browser would be a bush pig!!!
Nevermind the fact that a browser must be fresh -- if you don't support all the latest standards, you're useless; and if you do, then you are, necessarily, somewhat hastily developed.
More excuses for releasing buggy rubbish. Sorry, what I tested yesterday was Alpha. So was the last browser I tried (Safari on Windows). I'm very keen to dump Firefox and IE, but not in exchange for something unusable.
You wouldn't *want* to use a browser developed to operate to "mission critical" standards. It'd have a feature set comparable to Lynx.
I don't WANT to use this browser either. How about a happy medium instead of "mission critical". Test it on a wider set of web sites, and don't overhype it as an IE/FF killer? It's called being reasonable.
There are those of us who consider something like Chrome to have value before it is perfect. If it is possible to have a year early in a buggy state, I'd like to check it out and use it in my plans.
I'd be fine if they called it what it is - ALPHA - and didn't overhype it. I'm not suggesting early release is bad. It is THEIR fault for playing so loose with the term beta.
If you don't like it try this: don't use it.
Already uninstalled.
In case you didn't know, software is complex. Modern web browsers are complex things even as examples of software.
In case you didn't know, being condescending reflects poorly on you.
Yes modern web browsers are complex. So's
Google has done unit tests, automated whole application tests, and even used the most popular web sites in their ranking system to test the thing. Now they're allowing people to use a free product in exchange for admitting the users are testing it.
They must have done one hell of a poor job, or I must have had terrible luck, given that I visited a half a dozen web sites and one froze, and another crashed the browser. It's not just about running a small number of unit tests against popular web sites and releasing it. If they're looking to kill off established browsers they'll have to do much much better.
Now they're allowing people to use a free product in exchange for admitting the users are testing it.
Sure it's a free beta. They owe me nothing. It's nice to have access to their browser. That doesn't mean I won't try it and make a decision as to whether I think it's a good product. I've already uninstalled it. Perhaps I'll look at their next release, if I find the features compelling and others report good usage. In the meantime thanks a lot for not uninstalling google update when I uninstalled the browser. My opinion of it is very very low at the moment.
It's much better, in my opinion, than charging someone $300 for something that should still be in alpha.
It's that attitude that leads to unusable buggy crap. Sure it's better than overcharging for bug infested software. But That's like telling someone on an assault charge that at least it isn't murder. Over-hyped buggy crap is bad. It is not to be encouraged!
So I take it you don't like open source software much, huh?
I love open source. However I don't equate it to untested crap. I've seen rock solid open source software.
I'd love to ditch Firefox. I hate the memory usage (and having to kill it 3 times a day). I hate the developer's attitude. (We're removing feature X or changing feature Y because it's the way of the future and to those who complain tough). I wouldn't be using 3.0 if it weren't for the hideunivisted and oldbar extensions. (Coolbar is an abomination and an annoyance all in one change).
But I tried Chrome yesterday and it's got a long way to go. I was pleasantly surprised that it handled rendering complex web pages and worked with Microsoft proxies at work. However it is slow and crashes or freezes (or rather individual pages freeze). I'd also lose my extensions and ad blocking if I switched. No thanks. At least not yet. It's got a long way to go to be a viable replacement for me.
TCPView is certainly more convenient than using netstat -o and matching it up with the process ID in the task list, but either way you're still left with cryptic process names like [System Process]:0 which doesn't tell you what's going on.\
While you're at it add ZoneAlarm or Comodo Firewall or similar to the list. Users can learn about traffic and block anything suspicious. Of course firewall software comes with its own issues and management requirements which the average user may not be prepared to deal with.
If you're concerned about rootkits hiding traffic, you're going to need to use a hardware solution. A router with firewall like the Linksys WRT54GL with a decent 3rd party firmware (Tomato is probably better than DD-WRT) for monitoring.
However the more software and hardware you have to install, the further away from what the average user is prepared to do.
Honest question - without resorting to answers like "if it's not running Linux it's zombied" I'd be curious to know how the average user can even determine whether their box is pwn3d.
No, but you could teach them quickly even if they didn't fully understand what they are doing. Simple recipe
1. Turn off PC for half an hour
2. Start it up, and start your network connection. Do not start web browsers or other happs
3. Open up a command prompt from Start-Run
4. Type netstat -a and look for connections
5. Repeat step 4 several times over an one hour period
Now some connections may be software updating (eg. antivirus) but discounting that if you have lots of open connections or they're regularly changing, you have to assume it's probably owned.
Epic fail.
What does the Electronic Privacy Information Center have to do with it?
Damn them for not making their codebase absolutely perfect from day one! Software should spring into life fully formed, like Athena from Zeus' forehead!
Actually it should. It's not in vogue right at the moment but it's called testing BEFORE release. Do you really think for more critical stuff that the developers can afford to release untested crap and say "oh well it's beta"? Think of mission critical stuff - aircraft and spacecraft, power industry, telecommunications. Okay a web browser doesn't deserve quite the same level of scrutiny, but obvious bugs should be eliminated on day one. It USe to be common practice to at least try to do so, and failing to do so use to be an embarrassment. Now it's just business as usual. (By the way Google would have a lot more credibility using the term if their "beta" software didn't stay in beta for years)
Why would a man not screw around as much as possible?
In short, because our young are vulnerable after birth, require a fairly large energy investment, and are few in number.
As a new father I have to say I concur! Well that, and the fact that my wife's got a black belt in Karate.
(I kid, though she does really have a black belt)
Are any employers anywhere willing to hire high schoolers in any tech jobs in today's economy?
My first computing job was after I'd dropped out of a 1st year B.Sc. I worked for a year based on just high school certification for less than I could have earnt if I held a job at McDonalds. This was in 1994, and the job involved programming, phone support and on site customer installations. My boss only hired highschoolers so he could pay like that. I was able to get into a B.Sc. in Computing the following year and use that year of underpaid work as my industrial experience year (so in the end I only lost the year I spent on that first degree). So while the pay was awful and I'd have been a fool to stay it actually worked out well for me in the long run. Well 14 years have passed, but I bet my old boss is still engaged in the exact same hiring practices.
First of all, how long do you think it takes for a book to get to market? Between 6 months and a year it's still brand spanking new.
Secondly, even in computing good books become classics - Think K&R for C programming.
Thirdly, newer books often just make minor modifications to the old text. Hell some just renumber pages to keep up sales. (Hell some teachers re-use course notes for years in a row at a time with little revision).
Fourthly, 5 year old skills are still useful. Few if any companies are using bleeding edge stuff exclusively.
Then there's the Net which is a great resource. There are a ton of free tutorials on the web for various things.
If you've got access to 4 year old books and the Net, quit whining and looking for the most up to date books. You might as well ask for a pony.
Yeah. Are you really surprised or being factious?
Genuinely surprised.
Google has corporate accounts and customers that dwarf us in size and mail volume.
Do you have a corporate contract with Google? If so, I get it now. If not, corporate relationships with other entities are irrelevant.
And so does RIM, your ISP and anyone with a relay between you and your message destination.
That's why companies run internal email services, and if they have to run at multiple sites encrypt with a VPN. Where I'm from internal and external email are treated very differently. I even get a confirmation/warning when I send external email.
Just where is your mail going without an internet connection? We mostly IM around the office. I was even IM'ing with our CFO and her office is right next door. And we have redundant internet connections anyway.
Our external Internet link can be down but our exchange servers would still relay mail within the office. IM has it's place but it is by definition instant. Sometimes you want to speak to someone asynchronously but still urgently. Like "Hey Bob, go pull those accounts and get back to me ASAP". Sure you can use IM for that but it's not the same as email.
Why would they do that? Millions of people trust Google with their email, and Microsoft and Yahoo, Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, RIM...it's a long list. Google isn't any less reliable than any of them. If Google sold our trade secrets of cut off our mail service I'd blog about it. The traffic alone would probably make up enough revenue to replace the loss of income from getting fired. They'd make me famous.
Companies fold or drop services.
How are you mitigating the risk of getting hit with a meteorite?
Now you're just being silly.
Wow, what a load of advice to launch into frameworks, buy books, get certification etc.
Start with what's authoritative, basic, and free. That's the Sun Java Standard Edition tutorials
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/
Or download from:
https://cds.sun.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/CDS-CDS_Developer-Site/en_US/-/USD/ViewProductDetail-Start?ProductRef=tutorial-2008_03_14-oth-JPR@CDS-CDS_Developer
The web and persistence frameworks are important. They're over-engineered and I hate them but if you don't know them you won't get work. (Without them it'd be very much like trying to become a game developer knowing only ANSI standard C and no frameworks). They're what you need to learn second. Possibly on a smaller project where you're not the lead. However learn to crawl before walking or flying.