But transferring large amounts of money for a huge payoff? People may miss the fact that it's a scam, but I don't believe anyone thinks it's legal, even if the email doesn't explicitly spell it out.
I once had a friend of a friend try to convince me that star trek warp drives were really being developed and soon we'd be traveling the stars. He was actually sane and could be convinced otherwise - he was just dumb as a brick. I've been accosted by a UFO nut on a train who insisted that non-net-connected my laptop was being used to brainwash me via the internet. His sanity I'd question. Stupid, stupid, stupid people do exist. Now unless either of these guys are a serious threat to society, while I don't want to socialize with them, I don't want them locked up or fined into a desperate corner. It's not a far stretch to imagine that these 2 people who'd escaped reality already think it's their lucky day.
If someone offers you, a random nobody, hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for doing a trivial amount of work, you absolutely know that there's something shady going on. Nowhere in the honest world do you make that kind of money for doing a trivial amount of simple work.
So you're saying that pop stars deserve millions for commercials that take less than a week to shoot?
What about lotto? If you win lotto, is that commensurate with your sweat and toil??
There are definitely circumstances where people make money for doing jack shit, through pure good fortune.
Even if the victims don't KNOW that they're assisting in a criminal enterprise, they think they're putting one over on the world in some way.
That's one hell of an attitude to have. Are you a defeatist by nature? Or into guilt? Do you whip yourself to keep yourself awake so you can pray longer?
That said, if one of these conspirators is dumb enough that they really didn't understand, all they have to do is to convince the jury. When it comes to crimes of intent, like conspiracy, actually having the intent is a central part of what the prosecution has to prove, and they have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Prosecutors are fairly good at evaluating cases and plea-bargaining or dropping those that are losers, so I doubt many truly stupid victims would end up in court.
You have way too much faith in juries. It's not unheard of for juries to convict innocent people on flimsy evidence, let alone a subjective element like intent.
I haven't heard of the law the you must stop at a red light, magistrate didn't buy it.
This tripe is modded insightful? It's difficult to live or function in society without knowing that you must stop at a red light. It's common knowledge. It's also common knowledge you need a license to drive and in obtaining one you're required to study and become familiar with the road rules. Of course the magistrate didn't buy that you don't know that you must stop at a red light. No reasonable person would. To break this law you must have done it willfully or through negligence, not through ignorance.
Another difference is that in most jurisdictions road rules are not laws that require intent as an element of the crime. Whereas many criminal acts do require that and a lesser crime is prescribed if the element can't be demonstrated (eg. murder vs man-slaughter)
Now when it comes to laws that aren't the subject of common knowledge, while the law does not accept ignorance of them as an excuse, there is usually some leeway in how they are prosecuted. Prosecuting victims of a crime defeats the purpose of law protecting society as a whole UNLESS the harm they're doing to society outweighs the harm being done to themselves.
If you make language even an idiot can use, idiots will be using it. Like with VB.
So lets make the language as difficult as possible. That way only good programmers will even be able to write code in it. Never mind the fact that they'll have to spend all their mental effort getting the code to work instead of focusing on the problem they're trying to solve.
The fact that an easy versatile language makes it easy for idiots to program in it is no reason to artificially make a language overly complex. That's insane. It's like making a hammer that requires a PhD to use just to prevent bad handymen from doing handywork.
In other words plenty of good code was written in VB by non-idiots who didn't want to focus on the language but had a practical problem to solve. You can leave the morons to survival of the fittest.
Someone's decided to make DNS poisoning an Olympic sport. Obviously the only place to do it at the moment is China.
I've got images in my head of a broken toothed Chinese geek running around Beijing with an EEE PC and a Linksys wireless router hooked to a 12V SLA battery, lights a-blinking, instead of the Olympic torch. Thank goodness the Olympics are about to end.
But one of those "help me get money out of the country" scans, if it were a real legitimate proposition, is still very much illegal, in that if it were ever carried out all parties involved could be found guilty of money laundering and such.
It's perfectly legal to move money between countries if you do it through the right channels. How many people understand how to go about this though? How many "average joes" have even heard the term "Nigerian scam"? I know ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law, and I know greed is involved here, but that doesn't necessarily mean that people understand it's illegal.
For example. My wife's no idiot. (She's a primary school teacher and she does her job well) However in some areas she's not interested in her knowledge is less than adequate, and sometimes she's too trusting. When she received a chain letter in the mail about 3 years ago, it was only because I'd drummed into her that she should look things up (at least Google them) that she became aware that in our area it's illegal to pass on a chain letter. She read about another school teacher who'd ended up with a criminal record and hefty fine (10s of thousands) doing just that. If she hadn't looked it up she'd have thought what the hell I'll give this a try. (I'm sure she'd have done that before we got together and before she had access to always on internet). It's not immediately obvious that chain letters are illegal, and not everyone that participates is intending to break the law.
Wearing a mini-skirt is not illegal. International money laundering and bribing foreign officials are both illegal. There is the difference.
Most of the scams that hit my inbox aren't so explicit about doing anything illegal. The scammer usually poses as someone owed a large sum of money but that needs assistance releasing it. You don't even have to be a complete moron to fall for this - just gullible/naive and inexperienced. Think of how you'd react to this if you'd never heard of a Nigerian scam and it was something new that just started happening. Non-techies often haven't heard of Nigerian scams.
Most of these scams basically boil down to "give me $ and together we can steal/embezzle/defraud $$$". So the "victim" hands over $ and then the conman vanishes. But the "victim" willingly joined a conspiracy to commit a crime.
Most of the victims of the crime have no understanding of either how the scam is suppose to work, nor what the scammer is offering, or they'd never part with their money. These are stupid people who don't know what they're doing and are usually negligent in checking whether it is in fact illegal rather than agreeing to commit a crime.
It's the same as these idiots that SMS to mobile phone companies that charge for messages each way and then are inundated with hundreds of messages charged at several dollars each. Strictly speaking they agreed to download that porn snippet or ring tone or mobile phone game and are liable for the amount but it's clearly a scam nonetheless, and if the victim understood how it worked they wouldn't participate.
Totally different. The girl in the mini-skirt is totally innocent...until you make it a crime to wear a miniskirt, or go out late at night alone.
the "victim" of these scams is usually not totally innocent.
The victim of the scam is usually some poor moron that doesn't have 2 spare braincells to rub together.
It's really no different than if I say to you "give me $50 so I can buy a lockpick and then we'll rob this house together" and then disappear with your $50.
Except that people understand how lockpicks work and how the crime works. A better analogy would be a guy offering to help you by buying you a hunting knife if you'll help him pick one out for himself, then he steals the hunting knife from the store while you have the sales person distracted, meets you outside, robs you at knife-point, and stabs you to death.
I think it would be more similar to jailing the prostitute who was raped for prostitution.
Actually it's more similar to the man in charge of jailing the rapist failing to do his job, then complaining and excusing his ineptness by diverting attention to the fact that the prostitute hasn't been jailed for her crime yet either.
Compassion... I'd love to discuss this some more but first, please give me a strict legal definition of it - a definition that can be used reproducibly and predictably in all criminal and civil cases.
That topic's more suited to an ethics in law undergraduate course. You need to have a good long think about WHY we have a legal system in the first place. After all, if you want zero compassion the law of the jungle is much more efficient.
It can't be denied any more than it can denied that the sky is blue.
That's because the sky is black at night, orange/and red/pink at dawn and dusk. During the day it's blue sometimes, but sometimes it's grey, sometimes it's white, and sometimes it's a mixture of grey, blue, and white.
My point? Anything can be denied and/or debated. In the case of climate change data, you can ask how it was collected, what (past) control data you have? (Ice cores don't capture everything). Is the collection standardized. What about the instruments? How have they changed over time....and so on and so on.
Jailing the victim is asinine and a sure sign that the authorities are lazy and stupid themselves.
How is this any different to saying that a girl that goes into a rough neighbourhood in a mini-skirt and is raped should also be jailed? Just because someone puts themself in a position where they are easy prey doesn't mean that we should lash out against them if we find it difficult to prosecute the criminal.
What they'll do is make it a crime to send money. A few years ago they made it illegal in NSW, Australia to leave your car unlocked. The rationale was that stolen cars were being used to commit crime and a deterent was needed to stop people making their cars easy to steal. Never mind the inconvenient fact that glass windows are trivial to break. Personally I think this had more to do with car insurance fraud than a crime epidemic. So now rushing to work and forgetting to lock your car makes you a criminal, rather than just making you negligent (and possibly causing you to forfeit an insurance claim).
I think people who don't understand their role as a public servant and propose solutions like making a victim a criminal should be sacked, if not jailed themselves.
If the timing technology is so good, why is it that they get the age of China's gold medal winning gymnast wrong by 2 years? She shouldn't be eligible.
Outlook, IE6, and Exchange are a lot worse than Vista.
Entirely anecdotal but I've used all of these products (though I haven't admin'd exchange).
Outlook is irritating and has some quirks but is usable. IE6 has many problems but is usable.
But Vista? Well my laptop came with Vista and I dual boot XP. Mostly I just ignore the Vista partition. The laptop has had the hard disk die under warranty twice. The first time Vista complete backup and restore merrily wiped the drives then refused to restore the image with an error very early on. (Thanks for wiping my drives without checking the image was ok!) The second time it worked. Guess which one I remember more? Guess which one caused me hours of work.
Then there's the fact that I get a loud buzzing out of my sound card from early on in the boot right up until the desktop is displayed. Googled it but still dont' have a viable fix. Very annoying.
Then there's file copy, which has been a joke and gotten stuck so many times copying across the network that it's unusable. I'm told SP1 fixes the problem for some. I don't use Vista enough to bother with the SP1 update and the inevitable new problems it will cause just as it solves some others (maybe). The performance in Vista sucks and I have to worry about software compatibility. No thanks.
Then there's the fact that drivers are scarce, and that features like recording what you hear when the sound card have been intentionally crippled unless you hack your way around them.
Nope, for me Vista's bad reputation is well deserved. Vista has been nothing but trouble. I can only think of 2 pieces of software I've used that are not available in XP. The new version of robocopy (which has some features not included in the older XP versions) is tied to Vista. The backup and restore software, which only worked for me 50% of the time (1 of 2 occassions) and which is easily replaceable with 3rd party backup software.
So, no it's not just an issue of perception. The product is a joke. It's buggy, DRM ridden, and the new colourful clown suite interface that replaces the old kindergarten motif is no better than what we had in Win95 (I just don't care about "pretty" effects, reflection and transparency on the desktop - they're a distraction).
Can I do my work in my underwear, or am I expected to video conference? (To clarify you may need to ask: Is it okay if I video conference in my underwear?)
People who code, administer or test will not survive.
Wrong. Pure and simple. People who code badly, administer inflexibly or test poorly won't survive, but that's always been the case. People outsource, realise it's not actually as good, then insource again. I keep hearing about these jobs disappearing but every time I've been even remotely in danger of being outsourced I've learnt new skills and moved to a coding job that was more secure.
People who are unable to create something from nothing will not survive. If you need a well-defined set of requirements and design before you can do your work, your job is in danger. If you need someone else to take some vague problem from the customer/boss and come up with a solution that you can implement, your job is in danger. If, however, you invent solutions, you will be fine.
You're not describing "creating something from nothing". You're discribing being a good analyst/programmer (with some emphasis on the analysis part). If you code like a monkey you won't survive, nor should you. However most good designs aren't innovative. Most businesses do very similar things - capture data, store data, retrieve it and display it, consolidate and report on it. A good understanding of how things work in business in general is more important than the ability to innovate.
People with inability to solve problems will not survive.
This is the same as your last point. No they won't survive. Nor should they.
Good answer: 6 months (cuz we have to learn all the shit first)
If you're competing on that basis you won't survive either. There are people in outsourcing companies that either know the technologies you need to learn, or will claim to know them even if they don't. However if you can convince the company that learning a new skill set is going to be beneficial in he long term on multiple projects you're a step closer to being more viable. Better still if you can provide a compelling argument that you should do the job using a skillset you already have, the idea of outsourcing the work becomes less attractive.
People who will survive are those who can talk to customers to elicit business requirements, design tecnhnical solutions and coordinate project activities - not people who know how to change a config file to get Linux to play mp3 files.
Nope. People who survive will know how to do BOTH.
Good-looking people who can talk with management and customers in a confident non-geeky way in perfect English will survive.
Perfect English is not a requirement. English that is easy to understand, and difficult to confuse is. Good-looking is only a requirement if your job is going to require communication outside the company because that's when it's important. However most managers will hire a glue eating geek that doesn't shower if his job has limited scope and exposure. They will however prefer someone with basic hygeine that doesn't look like crap as they're more versatile. You don't need to be on magazine covers or have the elocution of a British royal. Just dress well, take care of the basics and put on some cologne.
Java's got a few rough edges but it doesn't suck. What sucks is the crudware bloated frameworks which in turn implement the ShinyNewWillSaveYourBusiness people insist on using pattern that people insist on using, even where something simpler is going to do the job much better.
In other words Java doesn't suck. EJBs suck. Hibernate sucks. Struts sucks. Spring sucks. Try working on a project that uses them all. The other pain in the arse is that none of the technologies last for more than about 3 years before someone finally does say "Hey this sucks" and starts again, only to make the same mistakes with a whole new framework you have to learn.
Seriously, how much did ANSI C change over the years. If you took a 5 year break from coding Java you'd have to practically start again. Even the core language is still evolving.
Especially in established subjects. A lot of math doesn't really change much. The textbooks shouldn't have to either.
Have you ever even looked at a math textbook from the 1920s? Heck try reading one from the 1950s. There's a reason (beyond their own inability) that parents struggle to teach their kids when they falter with their homework. The notation, and presentation of subject material changes from decade to decade depending on what fad the education system considers to be "the new way".
If you still think things don't change much, and want to argue with me, I challenge you to go and try to read the original Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton. I've never done so but I have tried to read a translation (since I never learnt Latin, and didn't want to do so just for this task). Granted that's 300+ years old, but I think I make my point well that the presentation of information isn't timeless.
'"When you are trying to preserve anything you are trying to preserve the most important things about that artefact," she said. "With video games we do not yet know what is important."'
The answer to that is: Grow the fsck up. None of it is important. It's an fscking game and when you work that out and see that real people in the real world are what matter, you might enjoy both real life and your game. Oh and you might get laid. Well anything's possible.
Note the above isn't directed at you (the poster) personally.
Slashdot Mirror
But transferring large amounts of money for a huge payoff? People may miss the fact that it's a scam, but I don't believe anyone thinks it's legal, even if the email doesn't explicitly spell it out.
I once had a friend of a friend try to convince me that star trek warp drives were really being developed and soon we'd be traveling the stars. He was actually sane and could be convinced otherwise - he was just dumb as a brick. I've been accosted by a UFO nut on a train who insisted that non-net-connected my laptop was being used to brainwash me via the internet. His sanity I'd question. Stupid, stupid, stupid people do exist. Now unless either of these guys are a serious threat to society, while I don't want to socialize with them, I don't want them locked up or fined into a desperate corner. It's not a far stretch to imagine that these 2 people who'd escaped reality already think it's their lucky day.
If someone offers you, a random nobody, hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for doing a trivial amount of work, you absolutely know that there's something shady going on. Nowhere in the honest world do you make that kind of money for doing a trivial amount of simple work.
So you're saying that pop stars deserve millions for commercials that take less than a week to shoot?
What about lotto? If you win lotto, is that commensurate with your sweat and toil??
There are definitely circumstances where people make money for doing jack shit, through pure good fortune.
Even if the victims don't KNOW that they're assisting in a criminal enterprise, they think they're putting one over on the world in some way.
That's one hell of an attitude to have. Are you a defeatist by nature? Or into guilt? Do you whip yourself to keep yourself awake so you can pray longer?
That said, if one of these conspirators is dumb enough that they really didn't understand, all they have to do is to convince the jury. When it comes to crimes of intent, like conspiracy, actually having the intent is a central part of what the prosecution has to prove, and they have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Prosecutors are fairly good at evaluating cases and plea-bargaining or dropping those that are losers, so I doubt many truly stupid victims would end up in court.
You have way too much faith in juries. It's not unheard of for juries to convict innocent people on flimsy evidence, let alone a subjective element like intent.
I haven't heard of the law the you must stop at a red light, magistrate didn't buy it.
This tripe is modded insightful? It's difficult to live or function in society without knowing that you must stop at a red light. It's common knowledge. It's also common knowledge you need a license to drive and in obtaining one you're required to study and become familiar with the road rules. Of course the magistrate didn't buy that you don't know that you must stop at a red light. No reasonable person would. To break this law you must have done it willfully or through negligence, not through ignorance.
Another difference is that in most jurisdictions road rules are not laws that require intent as an element of the crime. Whereas many criminal acts do require that and a lesser crime is prescribed if the element can't be demonstrated (eg. murder vs man-slaughter)
Now when it comes to laws that aren't the subject of common knowledge, while the law does not accept ignorance of them as an excuse, there is usually some leeway in how they are prosecuted. Prosecuting victims of a crime defeats the purpose of law protecting society as a whole UNLESS the harm they're doing to society outweighs the harm being done to themselves.
If you make language even an idiot can use, idiots will be using it. Like with VB.
So lets make the language as difficult as possible. That way only good programmers will even be able to write code in it. Never mind the fact that they'll have to spend all their mental effort getting the code to work instead of focusing on the problem they're trying to solve.
The fact that an easy versatile language makes it easy for idiots to program in it is no reason to artificially make a language overly complex. That's insane. It's like making a hammer that requires a PhD to use just to prevent bad handymen from doing handywork.
In other words plenty of good code was written in VB by non-idiots who didn't want to focus on the language but had a practical problem to solve. You can leave the morons to survival of the fittest.
Oh, what the hell.. I actually don't know enough about international property law to know what kind of system you'd deposit land rights into anyway.
Let me help you out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flush_toilet
Someone's decided to make DNS poisoning an Olympic sport. Obviously the only place to do it at the moment is China.
I've got images in my head of a broken toothed Chinese geek running around Beijing with an EEE PC and a Linksys wireless router hooked to a 12V SLA battery, lights a-blinking, instead of the Olympic torch. Thank goodness the Olympics are about to end.
But one of those "help me get money out of the country" scans, if it were a real legitimate proposition, is still very much illegal, in that if it were ever carried out all parties involved could be found guilty of money laundering and such.
It's perfectly legal to move money between countries if you do it through the right channels. How many people understand how to go about this though? How many "average joes" have even heard the term "Nigerian scam"? I know ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law, and I know greed is involved here, but that doesn't necessarily mean that people understand it's illegal.
For example. My wife's no idiot. (She's a primary school teacher and she does her job well) However in some areas she's not interested in her knowledge is less than adequate, and sometimes she's too trusting. When she received a chain letter in the mail about 3 years ago, it was only because I'd drummed into her that she should look things up (at least Google them) that she became aware that in our area it's illegal to pass on a chain letter. She read about another school teacher who'd ended up with a criminal record and hefty fine (10s of thousands) doing just that. If she hadn't looked it up she'd have thought what the hell I'll give this a try. (I'm sure she'd have done that before we got together and before she had access to always on internet). It's not immediately obvious that chain letters are illegal, and not everyone that participates is intending to break the law.
Wearing a mini-skirt is not illegal. International money laundering and bribing foreign officials are both illegal. There is the difference.
Most of the scams that hit my inbox aren't so explicit about doing anything illegal. The scammer usually poses as someone owed a large sum of money but that needs assistance releasing it. You don't even have to be a complete moron to fall for this - just gullible/naive and inexperienced. Think of how you'd react to this if you'd never heard of a Nigerian scam and it was something new that just started happening. Non-techies often haven't heard of Nigerian scams.
Most of these scams basically boil down to "give me $ and together we can steal/embezzle/defraud $$$". So the "victim" hands over $ and then the conman vanishes. But the "victim" willingly joined a conspiracy to commit a crime.
Most of the victims of the crime have no understanding of either how the scam is suppose to work, nor what the scammer is offering, or they'd never part with their money. These are stupid people who don't know what they're doing and are usually negligent in checking whether it is in fact illegal rather than agreeing to commit a crime.
It's the same as these idiots that SMS to mobile phone companies that charge for messages each way and then are inundated with hundreds of messages charged at several dollars each. Strictly speaking they agreed to download that porn snippet or ring tone or mobile phone game and are liable for the amount but it's clearly a scam nonetheless, and if the victim understood how it worked they wouldn't participate.
Totally different. The girl in the mini-skirt is totally innocent ...until you make it a crime to wear a miniskirt, or go out late at night alone.
the "victim" of these scams is usually not totally innocent.
The victim of the scam is usually some poor moron that doesn't have 2 spare braincells to rub together.
It's really no different than if I say to you "give me $50 so I can buy a lockpick and then we'll rob this house together" and then disappear with your $50.
Except that people understand how lockpicks work and how the crime works. A better analogy would be a guy offering to help you by buying you a hunting knife if you'll help him pick one out for himself, then he steals the hunting knife from the store while you have the sales person distracted, meets you outside, robs you at knife-point, and stabs you to death.
I think it would be more similar to jailing the prostitute who was raped for prostitution.
Actually it's more similar to the man in charge of jailing the rapist failing to do his job, then complaining and excusing his ineptness by diverting attention to the fact that the prostitute hasn't been jailed for her crime yet either.
Compassion... I'd love to discuss this some more but first, please give me a strict legal definition of it - a definition that can be used reproducibly and predictably in all criminal and civil cases.
That topic's more suited to an ethics in law undergraduate course. You need to have a good long think about WHY we have a legal system in the first place. After all, if you want zero compassion the law of the jungle is much more efficient.
goes with him to a dark alley and is then raped, she should definitely go to jail for prostitution
You know I'm no fan of prostitution, but I have to say that shows a complete lack of compassion.
It can't be denied any more than it can denied that the sky is blue.
That's because the sky is black at night, orange/and red/pink at dawn and dusk. During the day it's blue sometimes, but sometimes it's grey, sometimes it's white, and sometimes it's a mixture of grey, blue, and white.
My point? Anything can be denied and/or debated. In the case of climate change data, you can ask how it was collected, what (past) control data you have? (Ice cores don't capture everything). Is the collection standardized. What about the instruments? How have they changed over time....and so on and so on.
Jailing the victim is asinine and a sure sign that the authorities are lazy and stupid themselves.
How is this any different to saying that a girl that goes into a rough neighbourhood in a mini-skirt and is raped should also be jailed? Just because someone puts themself in a position where they are easy prey doesn't mean that we should lash out against them if we find it difficult to prosecute the criminal.
What they'll do is make it a crime to send money. A few years ago they made it illegal in NSW, Australia to leave your car unlocked. The rationale was that stolen cars were being used to commit crime and a deterent was needed to stop people making their cars easy to steal. Never mind the inconvenient fact that glass windows are trivial to break. Personally I think this had more to do with car insurance fraud than a crime epidemic. So now rushing to work and forgetting to lock your car makes you a criminal, rather than just making you negligent (and possibly causing you to forfeit an insurance claim).
I think people who don't understand their role as a public servant and propose solutions like making a victim a criminal should be sacked, if not jailed themselves.
If the timing technology is so good, why is it that they get the age of China's gold medal winning gymnast wrong by 2 years? She shouldn't be eligible.
Outlook, IE6, and Exchange are a lot worse than Vista.
Entirely anecdotal but I've used all of these products (though I haven't admin'd exchange).
Outlook is irritating and has some quirks but is usable. IE6 has many problems but is usable.
But Vista? Well my laptop came with Vista and I dual boot XP. Mostly I just ignore the Vista partition. The laptop has had the hard disk die under warranty twice. The first time Vista complete backup and restore merrily wiped the drives then refused to restore the image with an error very early on. (Thanks for wiping my drives without checking the image was ok!) The second time it worked. Guess which one I remember more? Guess which one caused me hours of work.
Then there's the fact that I get a loud buzzing out of my sound card from early on in the boot right up until the desktop is displayed. Googled it but still dont' have a viable fix. Very annoying.
Then there's file copy, which has been a joke and gotten stuck so many times copying across the network that it's unusable. I'm told SP1 fixes the problem for some. I don't use Vista enough to bother with the SP1 update and the inevitable new problems it will cause just as it solves some others (maybe). The performance in Vista sucks and I have to worry about software compatibility. No thanks.
Then there's the fact that drivers are scarce, and that features like recording what you hear when the sound card have been intentionally crippled unless you hack your way around them.
Nope, for me Vista's bad reputation is well deserved. Vista has been nothing but trouble. I can only think of 2 pieces of software I've used that are not available in XP. The new version of robocopy (which has some features not included in the older XP versions) is tied to Vista. The backup and restore software, which only worked for me 50% of the time (1 of 2 occassions) and which is easily replaceable with 3rd party backup software.
So, no it's not just an issue of perception. The product is a joke. It's buggy, DRM ridden, and the new colourful clown suite interface that replaces the old kindergarten motif is no better than what we had in Win95 (I just don't care about "pretty" effects, reflection and transparency on the desktop - they're a distraction).
St. Paul wrote that "faith is the evidence of things unseen."
This is the same St. Paul who was executed on some trivial pretext.
Wrong! The most important question is...
Can I do my work in my underwear, or am I expected to video conference? (To clarify you may need to ask: Is it okay if I video conference in my underwear?)
People who code, administer or test will not survive.
Wrong. Pure and simple. People who code badly, administer inflexibly or test poorly won't survive, but that's always been the case. People outsource, realise it's not actually as good, then insource again. I keep hearing about these jobs disappearing but every time I've been even remotely in danger of being outsourced I've learnt new skills and moved to a coding job that was more secure.
People who are unable to create something from nothing will not survive. If you need a well-defined set of requirements and design before you can do your work, your job is in danger. If you need someone else to take some vague problem from the customer/boss and come up with a solution that you can implement, your job is in danger. If, however, you invent solutions, you will be fine.
You're not describing "creating something from nothing". You're discribing being a good analyst/programmer (with some emphasis on the analysis part). If you code like a monkey you won't survive, nor should you. However most good designs aren't innovative. Most businesses do very similar things - capture data, store data, retrieve it and display it, consolidate and report on it. A good understanding of how things work in business in general is more important than the ability to innovate.
People with inability to solve problems will not survive.
This is the same as your last point. No they won't survive. Nor should they.
Good answer: 6 months (cuz we have to learn all the shit first)
If you're competing on that basis you won't survive either. There are people in outsourcing companies that either know the technologies you need to learn, or will claim to know them even if they don't. However if you can convince the company that learning a new skill set is going to be beneficial in he long term on multiple projects you're a step closer to being more viable. Better still if you can provide a compelling argument that you should do the job using a skillset you already have, the idea of outsourcing the work becomes less attractive.
People who will survive are those who can talk to customers to elicit business requirements, design tecnhnical solutions and coordinate project activities - not people who know how to change a config file to get Linux to play mp3 files.
Nope. People who survive will know how to do BOTH.
Good-looking people who can talk with management and customers in a confident non-geeky way in perfect English will survive.
Perfect English is not a requirement. English that is easy to understand, and difficult to confuse is. Good-looking is only a requirement if your job is going to require communication outside the company because that's when it's important. However most managers will hire a glue eating geek that doesn't shower if his job has limited scope and exposure. They will however prefer someone with basic hygeine that doesn't look like crap as they're more versatile. You don't need to be on magazine covers or have the elocution of a British royal. Just dress well, take care of the basics and put on some cologne.
They nag each other instead of nagging you?
Does this happen in soviet russia?
You have to migrate your badly written and hard-to-maintain Perl code into badly written and hard-to-maintain Java code as soon as possible.
That comment is priceless. I should frame it. Thank you.
Java kinda sucks
Java's got a few rough edges but it doesn't suck. What sucks is the crudware bloated frameworks which in turn implement the ShinyNewWillSaveYourBusiness people insist on using pattern that people insist on using, even where something simpler is going to do the job much better.
In other words Java doesn't suck. EJBs suck. Hibernate sucks. Struts sucks. Spring sucks. Try working on a project that uses them all. The other pain in the arse is that none of the technologies last for more than about 3 years before someone finally does say "Hey this sucks" and starts again, only to make the same mistakes with a whole new framework you have to learn.
Seriously, how much did ANSI C change over the years. If you took a 5 year break from coding Java you'd have to practically start again. Even the core language is still evolving.
Especially in established subjects. A lot of math doesn't really change much. The textbooks shouldn't have to either.
Have you ever even looked at a math textbook from the 1920s? Heck try reading one from the 1950s. There's a reason (beyond their own inability) that parents struggle to teach their kids when they falter with their homework. The notation, and presentation of subject material changes from decade to decade depending on what fad the education system considers to be "the new way".
If you still think things don't change much, and want to argue with me, I challenge you to go and try to read the original Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton. I've never done so but I have tried to read a translation (since I never learnt Latin, and didn't want to do so just for this task). Granted that's 300+ years old, but I think I make my point well that the presentation of information isn't timeless.
'"When you are trying to preserve anything you are trying to preserve the most important things about that artefact," she said. "With video games we do not yet know what is important."'
The answer to that is: Grow the fsck up. None of it is important. It's an fscking game and when you work that out and see that real people in the real world are what matter, you might enjoy both real life and your game. Oh and you might get laid. Well anything's possible.
Note the above isn't directed at you (the poster) personally.
I know! Thats why I've been gimping stuff for the past few years.
I hope you mean photo-editing, otherwise.....ewwwww!!!!!