The next step is to limit sharing of personal information; this is something that some states have achieved.
Make sure that lists are opt-in. Businesses must ask personal permission at all times.
Higher penalties for stealing mail or other personal information that is used for wrong purposes.
Require online businesses to use secured connections for better protection.
Hold banks, credit card, loan agencies, etc. accountable for credit history fuckups.
Require timetables on identity theft resolutions; have businesses pay for it.
Fine companies for losing personal information.
If this does not work, let people buy cheap guns and shoot mother fuckers who commit or contribute to identity theft. Why should people sit in silence if credit card industry gets a fat profit that is growing from year to year? Make those fuckers responsible for their fuckups.
I could not agree with you more on that one. However, the sad part is that the cycle of "learn, work, see new things, change jobs" is getting shorter and shorter. Based on what I see in IT on the East Coast, the average same-job-same-title period is about 2-3 years now. If you do not get a title change within 3 years. If you're still stuck doing the same old thing for the past 2-3 years; then you're the next one to go.
At this point, programming and any kind of software development is the last thing I want to do. If you want to keep your job, work with customers, be on a business side, start doing sales, contribute to the profit. That may save your ass for a couple of years. And then you say, "So long and thanks for the fish!" and move on to a different job:)
Not every sales engineer is a freaking moron. Make a sale - earn some money; make a friend - earn a fortune. I am sorry that you had a bad experience. However, between choosing pre-sales and the Geek Squad... I'd chose the former any day of the week.
You have a career as a marketing engineer. The work on the side is just a beer money or an additional income for some projects. That I can understand and there is nothing wrong with it. However, it is still a help desk position:)
You have to be fucking kidding me. No, really. Think again: replaced software engineers who have tons of experience are forced to find themselves in basically level 1 tech suppor role. Travelling to customers' sites in a funny car is not what I consider to be a career. A marketing equivalent of Geek Squad is telling a VP of marketing department to work a a local Gap.
I agree that technical support is on the rise, but I would highly argue against making a career through an at-home service. What the fuck are you? A maid?. If you really want to make a good buck on support, try getting into B2B environments and work with integrators, high level support of enterprise software, etc. Help desk support is "help desk" no matter where it is located and how it is done.
If you have people skills and like technology, why not switch to pre-sales engineering? Pays better and you don't have to have "Geek" in the name of your company.
I cannot believe this is news. After several years of depression and economic downturn, everybody should know this by now. If you think that you can have a job that requires you to write code and nothing else, be ready to move to India or somewhere where code monkeys will live.
However, the IT is not dead; the face is different. Right now there is a demand for customer facing professionals who know technology. Believe it or not, it is very hard to find people who know programming languages -- at least on the level where one can communicate about them without problems -- and provide excellent customer service. Knowing C++ is one thing; being able to look at a customer's code that integrates your product with their product and find out a bottleneck is a different beast. How about talking to the customer and coming up with something that improves their business through technology? I have met many excellent software engineers who could not keep a conversation on any topic but programming. Most of them were seeking employment. The real world says: your technical skills are obsolete unless you can translate them into business.
If you want a job, focus on how a particular technology can be integrated with the rest of IT world. Learn to know who your customers are and what they do. Suggest the most effective solutions, do marketing and show that your technical skills can bring in money. As long as you contribute to profits, you will have at least some sort of a job security thing going on. If you sit in the cubicle waiting for the specs, make sure that you can do something else. Plumbing, construction work, etc., pay pretty well.
Finally, I find that many people do not take geeks for serious because of the way geeks look. You can walk through an office and tell who does what by their haircut, clothing that they wear and attitudes. Unfortunately, geeks can be singled out right away (just as sales guys, but the latter get far more respect). If you don't take care of yourself, if you don't change your attitutes and adapt to the global economy, then you're screwed.
Not bad, but I am sure that ol' Al knows a bit more about the economy than you do. Also, please do not say "buy gold and gold stocks." You forget one rule of investment: there is such thing as a secure asset.
Old? Dude, I don't know where you went to school... I graduated a couple of years ago and I remember that streaking happened every year in spring. We had naked bikers, naked sorority chicks, naked everybody:)Snow's out -- skin's in!
I hate moving. I really do. My girlfriend and I don't have a lot of stuff, yet packaging and organizing everything we have is a pain. That is why I can't wait to sell my desktop and get a laptop instead. Less stuff to move.
Seriously, I am kinda tired of having to work in a separate room. Sometimes I'd like to sit out on the porch or listen to the news on TV while doing my day-to-day tasks on the computer: reading e-mail, web browsing, online banking and chatting. If I want a lot of computing power, I can always use servers at work. However, at home all I want is a small computer that I can take anywhere. I really don't care if my screen is small -- although 15" is pretty good size for a laptop monitor -- or that hard drives are slower. As long as I can sit in a comfy chair and do my work anywhere I want, it is worth every single penny. Plus, wires get too freaking messy:)
This is working out quite well, I must admit. If we get Japan and other countries to decrease their energy usage and drop their demand for oil, we'll get cheaper oil if the production does not slow down!
With that, I will finally be able to get a Ford Excursion or a Hummer (H2, not the pussy H3 version) a good gas-loving asphalt-ripping sports car and cheap gas that I can pump on a daily basis without destroying my wallet.
This is correct. China likes using coal for its energy needs. Also, in some parts of China the infrastructure is not stable yet. It is not uncommon to see plants and factories to have their own generators of electricity that are powered by gas.
I have an advice for you. If this is that bad, if you can't take it anymore, why not move somewhere else? Why not quit your fucking day job and becoming a miner in a third world country. Then I will pitty you.
That is the question to answer before you get into a discussion of how Open Source can be used and who is going to move the agenda forward.
I am not interested in creating something that I think will benefit people in some sort of fashion unless I get paid for it. Companies are the same way . Your business plan involves making profit; if you can put Open Source to a good use, then go for it. What if companies realize that they either cannot profit from this model or that their margins will be low? Has anybody thought of that? Some companies, like RedHat and IBM, have a vision and a clear strategy of how they can use Open Source to make money. Some companies do not. If they don't feel that OS brings money, then they don't use it. This is simple!
Ultimately, everything follows the trail of money and the market forces will adjust any path. Falling behind -- which is a very vague term itself -- is not a bad thing. I would love if our government (U.S.) fell behind in terms of swiping credit cards and ranking up debt.
I got a better program: let's spend billions of dollars in order to provider affordable education, clean up the environment and make sure that nobody is *really* left behind. Maybe then the rest of the world will look up to us again.
I got sick of using a mouse and the fact that my poiting device had to be off the keyboard. I threw my mouse away and got a trackball. Then I took off all the keys from the numeric pad and used velcro to mount the trackball in pace of the numeric keyboard. As a result, I don't have to reach for the mouse anymore. The movement of the wrist is minimal and the footprint of the workspace is smaller since I no long have a mouse and because the trackball is on the keyboard itself.
I don't like to make fun of lonely geeks. Yet they force me to laugh at them everytime I see a line of grown up men with kids toys and costumes. What the hell? I mean, really, grow up.
jeans - made in the u.s.a - $120
t-shirt - made in the u.s.a - $30
flip-flops - made in the u.s.a - $50
underwear - made in china - $10
It is possible to buy stuff that is made in the U.S. The list above is actually what I've paid and what I wear. Is everybody willing to spend $120 on a pair of pants that are made in the U.S.? That's another question...
This is pretty far away from the thruth. I know several U.S. contractors that mint their software abroad. After that is done, they wrap the software in a nice American flag -- hey, their main office is in Boston -- and sell it to U.S. gov. This is not a rant or "you're an idiot" post. I know this because I work in B2B environment and I always learn who my customers are.
Sorry, can't give you any examples. I value my job.
I think that the submitter of the article wanted to say "angry nerds" and not "company geeks" in the title. Every single company geek that I've ever known was a harmless person who did not mind being overemployed and undervalued. Nerds, on the other hand, did not last too long due to their inability to socialize and fit into office culture.
For this particular reason, I prefer not to deal with zealots or opinated freaks who are usually easy to spot during the first round of interviews. So far, it was easy for me to spot who I did not trust with a pencil and a piece of paper, let alone a production server.
You missed several points. First of all, the rest of the world is aware of the Indian IT boom; it appears that Indians did not learn from the U.S. There is nothing we can do about it:(
The price of an average contractor has increased; take it from somebody who worked closely with the "other side." Also, top Indian business officials understand that their economy is as strong as the rest of the world that is willing to support it. As soon as the other contries cut the pipe, the outsourcing boom will become a bust. In fact, there was a good article about regulating the outsourcing field becuase it harms Indian development because everything that is created is done for the outsiders. The country is working for the other countries.
I would argue with that. What do Java, C++, Python and other languages have in common? Answer: most poeple who are not in IT don't give a fuck about them.
The best approach that I've seen so far was introduced in the former USSR: a course on information. This was a basic course that introduced kids to computers and what went inside them. Also, it was mixed with math in terms of problems and tasks that students had to complete. The first part of the course was dedicated to learning about algorithms; the second part of the course required students to use algorithms in order to solve common math problems. The language that we used was absolutely useless. However, that single course is the reason why I am working in IT right now.
Re:We need to teach programming earlier and better
on
Johnny Can So Program
·
· Score: 1
Starting programming earlier? How about starting teaching how to use tools in the first grade?
Learning programming is a waste of time. Let's teach kids science and math, give them analytical skills, history, geography, etc. Once they know stuff, they'll know what to do with it. Programming by itself is nothing. I'd hate to teach kids something that they can't use. The whole problem with our education system is that kids are not exposed to a great variety of things to begin with.
Yesterday I read the latest volume of Newsweek. There was an article talking about a tough history teacher who asked kids to memorize and remember 10 European countries, where they are located and the capitals of those countries. You call it fucking tought? If it is tough to learn European geography, then I don't know what is easy. If it were up to me, I'd have kids memorize the goddamn freaking map of the Earth so they don't have to bother me with "Where is this country located?" whenever they look at the "Made in " label on products.
Slashdot Mirror
The next step is to limit sharing of personal information; this is something that some states have achieved.
Make sure that lists are opt-in. Businesses must ask personal permission at all times.
Higher penalties for stealing mail or other personal information that is used for wrong purposes.
Require online businesses to use secured connections for better protection.
Hold banks, credit card, loan agencies, etc. accountable for credit history fuckups.
Require timetables on identity theft resolutions; have businesses pay for it.
Fine companies for losing personal information.
If this does not work, let people buy cheap guns and shoot mother fuckers who commit or contribute to identity theft. Why should people sit in silence if credit card industry gets a fat profit that is growing from year to year? Make those fuckers responsible for their fuckups.
I could not agree with you more on that one. However, the sad part is that the cycle of "learn, work, see new things, change jobs" is getting shorter and shorter. Based on what I see in IT on the East Coast, the average same-job-same-title period is about 2-3 years now. If you do not get a title change within 3 years. If you're still stuck doing the same old thing for the past 2-3 years; then you're the next one to go.
At this point, programming and any kind of software development is the last thing I want to do. If you want to keep your job, work with customers, be on a business side, start doing sales, contribute to the profit. That may save your ass for a couple of years. And then you say, "So long and thanks for the fish!" and move on to a different job :)
Not every sales engineer is a freaking moron. Make a sale - earn some money; make a friend - earn a fortune. I am sorry that you had a bad experience. However, between choosing pre-sales and the Geek Squad... I'd chose the former any day of the week.
You have a career as a marketing engineer. The work on the side is just a beer money or an additional income for some projects. That I can understand and there is nothing wrong with it. However, it is still a help desk position :)
Buddy, I hear you. My take on it is the following: as long as you get paid and are in the industry, things are not that bad.
You have to be fucking kidding me. No, really. Think again: replaced software engineers who have tons of experience are forced to find themselves in basically level 1 tech suppor role. Travelling to customers' sites in a funny car is not what I consider to be a career. A marketing equivalent of Geek Squad is telling a VP of marketing department to work a a local Gap.
I agree that technical support is on the rise, but I would highly argue against making a career through an at-home service. What the fuck are you? A maid?. If you really want to make a good buck on support, try getting into B2B environments and work with integrators, high level support of enterprise software, etc. Help desk support is "help desk" no matter where it is located and how it is done.
If you have people skills and like technology, why not switch to pre-sales engineering? Pays better and you don't have to have "Geek" in the name of your company.
I cannot believe this is news. After several years of depression and economic downturn, everybody should know this by now. If you think that you can have a job that requires you to write code and nothing else, be ready to move to India or somewhere where code monkeys will live.
However, the IT is not dead; the face is different. Right now there is a demand for customer facing professionals who know technology. Believe it or not, it is very hard to find people who know programming languages -- at least on the level where one can communicate about them without problems -- and provide excellent customer service. Knowing C++ is one thing; being able to look at a customer's code that integrates your product with their product and find out a bottleneck is a different beast. How about talking to the customer and coming up with something that improves their business through technology? I have met many excellent software engineers who could not keep a conversation on any topic but programming. Most of them were seeking employment. The real world says: your technical skills are obsolete unless you can translate them into business.
If you want a job, focus on how a particular technology can be integrated with the rest of IT world. Learn to know who your customers are and what they do. Suggest the most effective solutions, do marketing and show that your technical skills can bring in money. As long as you contribute to profits, you will have at least some sort of a job security thing going on. If you sit in the cubicle waiting for the specs, make sure that you can do something else. Plumbing, construction work, etc., pay pretty well.
Finally, I find that many people do not take geeks for serious because of the way geeks look. You can walk through an office and tell who does what by their haircut, clothing that they wear and attitudes. Unfortunately, geeks can be singled out right away (just as sales guys, but the latter get far more respect). If you don't take care of yourself, if you don't change your attitutes and adapt to the global economy, then you're screwed.
"IBM turns to Open Source development... in India!"
In the U.S.A., they just fire people :)
Not bad, but I am sure that ol' Al knows a bit more about the economy than you do. Also, please do not say "buy gold and gold stocks." You forget one rule of investment: there is such thing as a secure asset.
Old? Dude, I don't know where you went to school... I graduated a couple of years ago and I remember that streaking happened every year in spring. We had naked bikers, naked sorority chicks, naked everybody :)Snow's out -- skin's in!
Freshmen hotties, drunk sorority chicks, raging parties that involve underage drinking and streaking.
Holy shit, what the fuck am I talking about? I am getting old :)
I hate moving. I really do. My girlfriend and I don't have a lot of stuff, yet packaging and organizing everything we have is a pain. That is why I can't wait to sell my desktop and get a laptop instead. Less stuff to move.
Seriously, I am kinda tired of having to work in a separate room. Sometimes I'd like to sit out on the porch or listen to the news on TV while doing my day-to-day tasks on the computer: reading e-mail, web browsing, online banking and chatting. If I want a lot of computing power, I can always use servers at work. However, at home all I want is a small computer that I can take anywhere. I really don't care if my screen is small -- although 15" is pretty good size for a laptop monitor -- or that hard drives are slower. As long as I can sit in a comfy chair and do my work anywhere I want, it is worth every single penny. Plus, wires get too freaking messy :)
This is working out quite well, I must admit. If we get Japan and other countries to decrease their energy usage and drop their demand for oil, we'll get cheaper oil if the production does not slow down!
With that, I will finally be able to get a Ford Excursion or a Hummer (H2, not the pussy H3 version) a good gas-loving asphalt-ripping sports car and cheap gas that I can pump on a daily basis without destroying my wallet.
This is correct. China likes using coal for its energy needs. Also, in some parts of China the infrastructure is not stable yet. It is not uncommon to see plants and factories to have their own generators of electricity that are powered by gas.
I have an advice for you. If this is that bad, if you can't take it anymore, why not move somewhere else? Why not quit your fucking day job and becoming a miner in a third world country. Then I will pitty you.
That is the question to answer before you get into a discussion of how Open Source can be used and who is going to move the agenda forward.
I am not interested in creating something that I think will benefit people in some sort of fashion unless I get paid for it. Companies are the same way . Your business plan involves making profit; if you can put Open Source to a good use, then go for it. What if companies realize that they either cannot profit from this model or that their margins will be low? Has anybody thought of that? Some companies, like RedHat and IBM, have a vision and a clear strategy of how they can use Open Source to make money. Some companies do not. If they don't feel that OS brings money, then they don't use it. This is simple!
Ultimately, everything follows the trail of money and the market forces will adjust any path. Falling behind -- which is a very vague term itself -- is not a bad thing. I would love if our government (U.S.) fell behind in terms of swiping credit cards and ranking up debt.
I got a better program: let's spend billions of dollars in order to provider affordable education, clean up the environment and make sure that nobody is *really* left behind. Maybe then the rest of the world will look up to us again.
I got sick of using a mouse and the fact that my poiting device had to be off the keyboard. I threw my mouse away and got a trackball. Then I took off all the keys from the numeric pad and used velcro to mount the trackball in pace of the numeric keyboard. As a result, I don't have to reach for the mouse anymore. The movement of the wrist is minimal and the footprint of the workspace is smaller since I no long have a mouse and because the trackball is on the keyboard itself.
I don't like to make fun of lonely geeks. Yet they force me to laugh at them everytime I see a line of grown up men with kids toys and costumes. What the hell? I mean, really, grow up.
t-shirt - made in the u.s.a - $30
flip-flops - made in the u.s.a - $50
underwear - made in china - $10
It is possible to buy stuff that is made in the U.S. The list above is actually what I've paid and what I wear. Is everybody willing to spend $120 on a pair of pants that are made in the U.S.? That's another question...
This is pretty far away from the thruth. I know several U.S. contractors that mint their software abroad. After that is done, they wrap the software in a nice American flag -- hey, their main office is in Boston -- and sell it to U.S. gov. This is not a rant or "you're an idiot" post. I know this because I work in B2B environment and I always learn who my customers are.
Sorry, can't give you any examples. I value my job.
I think that the submitter of the article wanted to say "angry nerds" and not "company geeks" in the title. Every single company geek that I've ever known was a harmless person who did not mind being overemployed and undervalued. Nerds, on the other hand, did not last too long due to their inability to socialize and fit into office culture.
For this particular reason, I prefer not to deal with zealots or opinated freaks who are usually easy to spot during the first round of interviews. So far, it was easy for me to spot who I did not trust with a pencil and a piece of paper, let alone a production server.
You missed several points. First of all, the rest of the world is aware of the Indian IT boom; it appears that Indians did not learn from the U.S. There is nothing we can do about it :(
The price of an average contractor has increased; take it from somebody who worked closely with the "other side." Also, top Indian business officials understand that their economy is as strong as the rest of the world that is willing to support it. As soon as the other contries cut the pipe, the outsourcing boom will become a bust. In fact, there was a good article about regulating the outsourcing field becuase it harms Indian development because everything that is created is done for the outsiders. The country is working for the other countries.
I would argue with that. What do Java, C++, Python and other languages have in common? Answer: most poeple who are not in IT don't give a fuck about them.
The best approach that I've seen so far was introduced in the former USSR: a course on information. This was a basic course that introduced kids to computers and what went inside them. Also, it was mixed with math in terms of problems and tasks that students had to complete. The first part of the course was dedicated to learning about algorithms; the second part of the course required students to use algorithms in order to solve common math problems. The language that we used was absolutely useless. However, that single course is the reason why I am working in IT right now.
Starting programming earlier? How about starting teaching how to use tools in the first grade?
Learning programming is a waste of time. Let's teach kids science and math, give them analytical skills, history, geography, etc. Once they know stuff, they'll know what to do with it. Programming by itself is nothing. I'd hate to teach kids something that they can't use. The whole problem with our education system is that kids are not exposed to a great variety of things to begin with.
Yesterday I read the latest volume of Newsweek. There was an article talking about a tough history teacher who asked kids to memorize and remember 10 European countries, where they are located and the capitals of those countries. You call it fucking tought? If it is tough to learn European geography, then I don't know what is easy. If it were up to me, I'd have kids memorize the goddamn freaking map of the Earth so they don't have to bother me with "Where is this country located?" whenever they look at the "Made in " label on products.