There's obviously something really compelling about the idea of imminent apocalypse. People really want to believe that these are the end of times, whether because of divine intervention or ecological collapse. My theory is that people don't want to think that the world can get by without them.
Re:What's The Point?
on
Pro C#
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
>Microsoft only shops are a dwindling commodity
really? Prove it.
Anecdotal evidence shows that MS shops exist and are hiring fiercely. I put a c# resume up a couple weeks ago and the phone rang in an hour and hasn't stopped ringing.
Outside of mom's basement, people use these technologies, despite what the slashbots would like to think. And from spending 48 hous with asp.net 2.0, despite some frustrations, I can tell you that this is a *very* powerful platform. The user management stuff is amazing. It makes all the user management/login work absolutely trivial. Color me impressed.
Trust no science story from either the Guardian or the Independent. Both always run alarmist screeds, unsupported by the facts. Heck! The headline and lead aren't even supported by the article! Get past the first three paragraphs and it all turns to might/could/possibly.
Story is probably BS, but I like it so much, I'll just pretend it is true.
My college roomate's dad was a math prof at either Penn state or U Penn or one of those. He would teach those enormous 800 student introductory courses. The final was always held in a theater. He would distribute the exams, then hoisting a pair of binoculars and a bullhorn, announce that he was headed up to the balcony and he would be watching everyone like a hawk. Most giggled at the suggestion that he could possibly proctor the exam from a distance, but he kept a serious demeanor.
Twenty minutes into the exam, he would lean over the railing and bellow out through the bullhorn: "You! Row 18, seat 34!! GET OUT!!!!" A stunned student would look guilty, drop his crib sheet, then run out of the room. The students were amazed at the prof's powers of perception and would abandon any thought of cheating.
The "cheater" was always a graduate student hired for the occasion. The prof swore by the method.
That looks just monstrously complicated. How does it tell when you are searching google for an error message for a client and when you are searching google for movie trivia (by trivia, I mean screencaps of actresses)?
And this is better than the save button with backround autosave how?
Users grok save at a basic level. Throw what, 2000 branches at them and they are likely to flip. How would automagic know that changing my font was a BS change and not worth branching and changing my character's name was a big deal?
The version tree just isn't very useful if it includes 900 slightly different versions of the same document. Which one do I want? Let's see, it was about 10:00 when I started doing dumb stuff so I guess I want version 845 then, it was from about that time...
I could label my versions explicitly, but then how would this be better than a save button?
people who are looking for certain "Keywords" on the resume and could not care less about hiring a "good" IT person. you mistake not caring about with not knowing how.
Devoid of specialized knowledge, and assigned the task of winnowing 280 resumes down to a number that a harried middle manager can actually evaluate in addition to doing their regular work, how else would you do it?
If the requisition says C++ and it doesn't have C++... are they doing anyone any favors by passing it on?
Having placed ads for employees, let me tell you, I am no longer suprised at the crap I get. People with no relevant training nor experience routinely apply for programmer jobs. As the boss, someone who knows what I want, I do keyword bingo too. I ask for C++, Java, or C# and if I don't find them, I toss it.
"Everyone but me is stupid" seems to be the overriding theme of the slashbots.
" How much hard checking do these CA's really do?" Thawte just wanted a fax of our phone bill. Ours even had the wrong company name. I told them to look up our newly filed "doing business as" statement, but I don't know if they did.
Maybe if we claimed to be Chase.com they would care.
>There's definitely a problem with open source development. My guess is that more emphasis should be place on raising money. Maybe open source programmers need more support than they are getting.
So the problem with free software is that people don't get paid? There is another model, you know.
I only see that from interns. I don't know what they teach kids these days, but it seems to be "use lots of comments that explain the trivial bits, but never comment anything that could actually help someone."
Someone really should gin up a piece of baffling code only commenting that trivial crap for use as an anti-pattern.
"Rarely comment what. Often comment why." is the approach that works best for us.
Don't let the facts stop a good bout of paranoia. It is more fun to pretend that life is a black and white cyberpunk airport thriller novel than to recognize shades of gray. It makes us feel more important.
Attention slashbots: your next move is the slippery slope. In which you argue that searches approved by judges aren't bad but searches not approved are and therefore we need to freak out about about warranted searches because they might lead to unwarranted searches.
The best solution is just to poison the phisher's databases. Build some javascript field detecting abomination and fill their databases with plausible junk.
Before: send 1,000,000 emails, get 250 valid credit card numbers (I know, rank optimism about humanity). After: send 1,000,000 emails, get 15250 unconfirmed credit card numbers. Spend hours trying to use the credit cards or spend minutes with automated systems but generate so many errors that the banks notice.
As soon as this stuff doesn't pay returns, that is when it will stop.
Microsoft's documentation. I wouldn't say it's one of their strong points, it usually sucks to read, but they do generate a TON of it. If you can extract the actual information from the marketing speak it's usually there.
You obviously haven't read much MSDN documentation or SQL Books Online. Whitepapers and such tend to be heavy on buzzwords because that is what they are for: 30,000 ft stuf: "What is Microsoft TLA and why is it the greatest thing since cheese."
SQL Books Online and the.NET MSDN documents are "just the facts." They take this stuff very seriously. If you have a gripe, email the page administrator. I have gotten replies same day after I pointed out problems with something. "What does this method do"-type documentation is something they are very, very good at.
No joke. It is pure hype that makes people think the Ipod is well designed.
The click wheel is a terrible interface. What, is there a little piece of string in there that connects the click wheel to the menus? The screen menus go up/down/in. Wheels go around. The metaphors just don't link up at all.
Then again, as the IProduct parody says, Jobs could take a dump in a white plastic box and people would line up to buy it, and they would feel smug and superior for doing so.
you would think that even the SUGGESTION that we should be conscious over what is in our control would be an action item.
Unless focusing all our efforts on effecting a trivial dent in climate change prevents us from working on more important things like malaria or HIV, or malnutrition. All the politcally convenient sturm and drang (we get to blame America for something else!) ignores the more important problems.
The shrieking hysteria of the British press is amazing. The Independent needs to just get it over with and start running the same headline every day: "The Sky is Falling and it is all America's Fault!" It would save a whole lot of trouble.
This is nothing but price segmentation. The goal is to extract the highest price a customer is willing to pay for a given product. Tiered pricing lets you charge $99 to the people unwilling to pay more than $100 for your product and $149 for those unwilling to pay more than $150. If you didn't segment, you would get $100 from both the cheapskates and spendthrifts.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled BSOD jokes.
You think this is a decision made at the highest levels? Give me a break. This is either some idiot web developer willing to put up with the bs of doing business with the Feds. Or perhaps it is one of those: $X for ie only $X * 1.5 if we have to deal with multiple browsers.
Getting the little stuff right between browsers takes time. Most of our customers think we are nuts when we suggest spending more time (their money) so we can get those 2-5% chunks of the browser market, each of which behaves a bit differently. Like it or not ie is the "standard-defying standard."
That said, I understand their impulse, but it is a dumb idea. Nice that they asked first, though.
The problems were document portability AND integration with other users. This is there MS cleans up and where OSS falls down completely. How many integrated OSS packages are there that play nicely? (See Info Week this week for some beginnings). Ten years since debut, even something as simple as LAMP is still a PITA to set up and configure. Where is the OSS answer to Exchange??
I just saw a demo of MS SBA and let me say I'm glad I'm not Quicken. It does all the usual Quicken stuff, but leverages the Office suite to do it all better. Integrating multiple tools: That is where their advantage lies.
Maybe, just maybe, 90% of the market isn't completely wrong. Maybe the most successful company in history makes products that are slightly better than what amateurs put together in their spare time. Maybe packages that come from one organization (or are bought from their creators and Borg-ed) beat those cobbled together from the efforts thousands of volunteers, occassionally undrwritten by consulting firms out to make system so hard to configure you need to pay for consultants to do everything. Just a suggestion from someone who talks to real users guys.
I have to admit I loved seeing this article, knowing the howls of shock and indignation that would soon come from the slashbots.
Slashdot Mirror
There's obviously something really compelling about the idea of imminent apocalypse. People really want to believe that these are the end of times, whether because of divine intervention or ecological collapse. My theory is that people don't want to think that the world can get by without them.
>Microsoft only shops are a dwindling commodity
really? Prove it.
Anecdotal evidence shows that MS shops exist and are hiring fiercely. I put a c# resume up a couple weeks ago and the phone rang in an hour and hasn't stopped ringing.
Outside of mom's basement, people use these technologies, despite what the slashbots would like to think. And from spending 48 hous with asp.net 2.0, despite some frustrations, I can tell you that this is a *very* powerful platform. The user management stuff is amazing. It makes all the user management/login work absolutely trivial. Color me impressed.
Trust no science story from either the Guardian or the Independent. Both always run alarmist screeds, unsupported by the facts. Heck! The headline and lead aren't even supported by the article! Get past the first three paragraphs and it all turns to might/could/possibly.
Story is probably BS, but I like it so much, I'll just pretend it is true.
My college roomate's dad was a math prof at either Penn state or U Penn or one of those. He would teach those enormous 800 student introductory courses. The final was always held in a theater. He would distribute the exams, then hoisting a pair of binoculars and a bullhorn, announce that he was headed up to the balcony and he would be watching everyone like a hawk. Most giggled at the suggestion that he could possibly proctor the exam from a distance, but he kept a serious demeanor.
Twenty minutes into the exam, he would lean over the railing and bellow out through the bullhorn: "You! Row 18, seat 34!! GET OUT!!!!" A stunned student would look guilty, drop his crib sheet, then run out of the room. The students were amazed at the prof's powers of perception and would abandon any thought of cheating.
The "cheater" was always a graduate student hired for the occasion. The prof swore by the method.
That looks just monstrously complicated. How does it tell when you are searching google for an error message for a client and when you are searching google for movie trivia (by trivia, I mean screencaps of actresses)?
And this is better than the save button with backround autosave how?
Users grok save at a basic level. Throw what, 2000 branches at them and they are likely to flip. How would automagic know that changing my font was a BS change and not worth branching and changing my character's name was a big deal?
Isn't this a solution in search of a problem?
Aside from the user model issues...
The version tree just isn't very useful if it includes 900 slightly different versions of the same document. Which one do I want? Let's see, it was about 10:00 when I started doing dumb stuff so I guess I want version 845 then, it was from about that time...
I could label my versions explicitly, but then how would this be better than a save button?
people who are looking for certain "Keywords" on the resume and could not care less about hiring a "good" IT person.
you mistake not caring about with not knowing how.
Devoid of specialized knowledge, and assigned the task of winnowing 280 resumes down to a number that a harried middle manager can actually evaluate in addition to doing their regular work, how else would you do it?
If the requisition says C++ and it doesn't have C++... are they doing anyone any favors by passing it on?
Having placed ads for employees, let me tell you, I am no longer suprised at the crap I get. People with no relevant training nor experience routinely apply for programmer jobs. As the boss, someone who knows what I want, I do keyword bingo too. I ask for C++, Java, or C# and if I don't find them, I toss it.
"Everyone but me is stupid" seems to be the overriding theme of the slashbots.
" How much hard checking do these CA's really do?"
Thawte just wanted a fax of our phone bill. Ours even had the wrong company name. I told them to look up our newly filed "doing business as" statement, but I don't know if they did.
Maybe if we claimed to be Chase.com they would care.
>There's definitely a problem with open source development. My guess is that more emphasis should be place on raising money. Maybe open source programmers need more support than they are getting.
So the problem with free software is that people don't get paid? There is another model, you know.
i=i+1; /* Add one to i */
I only see that from interns. I don't know what they teach kids these days, but it seems to be
"use lots of comments that explain the trivial bits, but never comment anything that could actually help someone."
Someone really should gin up a piece of baffling code only commenting that trivial crap for use as an anti-pattern.
"Rarely comment what. Often comment why." is the approach that works best for us.
>>the patriot act gave the DOJ to ability to monitor anything when they invoke a terrorism charge.
Except it didn't. Most of the PA just codified existing practice as Slate's four part analysis piece explains.
What parts were more radical (215) have been struck down as unconstitutional as can be seen on the EFF's (join EFF now!! the sky is falling!!) Patriot Act webpage.
One might want to notice that the PA renewal substantially weakened govt power while demanding new accountability.
Don't let the facts stop a good bout of paranoia. It is more fun to pretend that life is a black and white cyberpunk airport thriller novel than to recognize shades of gray. It makes us feel more important.
Attention slashbots: your next move is the slippery slope. In which you argue that searches approved by judges aren't bad but searches not approved are and therefore we need to freak out about about warranted searches because they might lead to unwarranted searches.
The best solution is just to poison the phisher's databases. Build some javascript field detecting abomination and fill their databases with plausible junk.
Before: send 1,000,000 emails, get 250 valid credit card numbers (I know, rank optimism about humanity).
After: send 1,000,000 emails, get 15250 unconfirmed credit card numbers. Spend hours trying to use the credit cards or spend minutes with automated systems but generate so many errors that the banks notice.
As soon as this stuff doesn't pay returns, that is when it will stop.
Microsoft's documentation. I wouldn't say it's one of their strong points, it usually sucks to read, but they do generate a TON of it. If you can extract the actual information from the marketing speak it's usually there.
.NET MSDN documents are "just the facts." They take this stuff very seriously. If you have a gripe, email the page administrator. I have gotten replies same day after I pointed out problems with something. "What does this method do"-type documentation is something they are very, very good at.
You obviously haven't read much MSDN documentation or SQL Books Online. Whitepapers and such tend to be heavy on buzzwords because that is what they are for: 30,000 ft stuf: "What is Microsoft TLA and why is it the greatest thing since cheese."
SQL Books Online and the
No joke. Anyone who thinks management is easy should try it sometime.
None of their developer pages have Verisign certs. I guess they don't want to pay the piper either.
One should note that you need an invitation.
[I]t sure is surprising how much Microsoft defending has grown in Slashdot comments each year.
Which Slashdot are you reading?
Tonight on FOX...When Fanboys Attack!
No joke. It is pure hype that makes people think the Ipod is well designed.
The click wheel is a terrible interface. What, is there a little piece of string in there that connects the click wheel to the menus? The screen menus go up/down/in. Wheels go around. The metaphors just don't link up at all.
Then again, as the IProduct parody says, Jobs could take a dump in a white plastic box and people would line up to buy it, and they would feel smug and superior for doing so.
you would think that even the SUGGESTION that we should be conscious over what is in our control would be an action item.
Unless focusing all our efforts on effecting a trivial dent in climate change prevents us from working on more important things like malaria or HIV, or malnutrition. All the politcally convenient sturm and drang (we get to blame America for something else!) ignores the more important problems.
The shrieking hysteria of the British press is amazing. The Independent needs to just get it over with and start running the same headline every day: "The Sky is Falling and it is all America's Fault!" It would save a whole lot of trouble.
This is nothing but price segmentation. The goal is to extract the highest price a customer is willing to pay for a given product. Tiered pricing lets you charge $99 to the people unwilling to pay more than $100 for your product and $149 for those unwilling to pay more than $150. If you didn't segment, you would get $100 from both the cheapskates and spendthrifts.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled BSOD jokes.
>And if IE users have a problem with some page, just suggest that they get a standards-compliant browser.
You have never actually met a customer or an end user, have you? Excluding 90-odd % of the market just isn't an option.
You think this is a decision made at the highest levels? Give me a break. This is either some idiot web developer willing to put up with the bs of doing business with the Feds. Or perhaps it is one of those: $X for ie only $X * 1.5 if we have to deal with multiple browsers.
Getting the little stuff right between browsers takes time. Most of our customers think we are nuts when we suggest spending more time (their money) so we can get those 2-5% chunks of the browser market, each of which behaves a bit differently. Like it or not ie is the "standard-defying standard."
That said, I understand their impulse, but it is a dumb idea. Nice that they asked first, though.
RTFA.
The problems were document portability AND integration with other users. This is there MS cleans up and where OSS falls down completely. How many integrated OSS packages are there that play nicely? (See Info Week this week for some beginnings). Ten years since debut, even something as simple as LAMP is still a PITA to set up and configure. Where is the OSS answer to Exchange??
I just saw a demo of MS SBA and let me say I'm glad I'm not Quicken. It does all the usual Quicken stuff, but leverages the Office suite to do it all better. Integrating multiple tools: That is where their advantage lies.
Maybe, just maybe, 90% of the market isn't completely wrong. Maybe the most successful company in history makes products that are slightly better than what amateurs put together in their spare time. Maybe packages that come from one organization (or are bought from their creators and Borg-ed) beat those cobbled together from the efforts thousands of volunteers, occassionally undrwritten by consulting firms out to make system so hard to configure you need to pay for consultants to do everything. Just a suggestion from someone who talks to real users guys.
I have to admit I loved seeing this article, knowing the howls of shock and indignation that would soon come from the slashbots.