Re:Java is bad for our industry
on
Head First Java
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Java is just an OO-Language so I don't see how you can say it is "bad" for the industry. And personally, I get tired of seeing the same negative criticism being leveled time and time again as if the thing has never progressed in the last 5 years. I work with Java everyday and have watched it improved dramatically with each new release. But I'm meandering..back to the original point. Java is just a language. Your effectiveness with Java is only as good as your understaning of the OO principles that it is built upon, and THAT is where I see problems. It sounds like what you're really biting at is that you've seen a lot of people, rushed into the market, who *surprise surprise* can't code their way out if a paper bag. How is that Java's fault? Are you suggesting they would have been better programmers had they been rushed through C++ instead? Dot com boom/bust had nothing to do with Java. If you want to blame anyone, blame the VCs. They're the ones who spoon fed money into dumb projects creating the market for overpaid poorly trained programmers in the first place. The fact many of them may have learned Java is beside the point.
As far as good or bad for the industry... well.. you don't really define what your industry is. Software house for the most part don't use Java. I personally feel it's an "IT" language, and the IT shops/people that I've been involved with LOVE Java for its productivity and cross-platform compatibility.
Directed energy weapons! what does that mean? High powered lasers? Something else that's super-secret?
Isn't that just a really fancy term for... a gun? It's directed (you aim it) and bullets have lots of... KINETIC ENERGY! America's enemies will read this thinking they need to blow their budgets on defenses against Laser beams and ion canons only to get pulverized because they're not defended against a good ol' fashioned shelling.
As the offspring of a law enforcement officer myself, I have mixed feelings about this. I find any kind of game which involves flaunting a disrespect for the law somewhat disturbing. On the other hand, a lot of laws don't deserve our respect and a lot of cops shouldn't be issued the badge. But... I myself will not play these kinds of games. I prefer games RPGs where you go out and slaughter demi-human races and accept without question that they every "thing" you are killing is evil and where the ends justify the means. Yay NWN!
Since when? There's several and most distros include at least one. You can get a free Adobe PDF reader for linux no problem. If you don't like Adobe then there's Xpdf. Ghostview can also reads/write pdfs I believe.
On the second, if this is your sole reason, you're being illogical. That would be like brushing off a good idea from a fellow developer because you didn't like his office.
No. It's more like, here's a company that simply cannot be trusted, has a history of screwing anything and everything, has committed crimes and walked away scott free, and here I am not wanting to reward that behaviour with my time or money. If.NET becomes so pervasive that I need to learn it to continue in my career as a software developer, then I'll switch profession. Hell, even living on an Amish farm masturbating bulls would be less distasteful.
So you're all for wiping out spam, as long as it isn't yours. Nice.
Somehow I don't think the companies selling penis enlargers are big multi-nationals. Hell, they're probably tiny garage businesses who don't care about their reputations, so maybe they should be exempt too?
That tends to happen in conflict. Rival groups killing each other. Didn't American revolutionaries kill loyalists, burn their farms, and exterminate native american tribes who sided with the British? And yet "heroes" of the American revolution are idolized despite the carnage they inflicted. Do you consider any of them "evil"? (I'm assuming you're American - but even if you're not, I'm sure you can find examples in your own history)
Deny people the means of protesting or implementing change without violence, then you leave violent revolution as the only (and inevitable) option.
How many regular IM users actually type using proper spelling an rules of grammar? I think it safe to say that most messages contain a lot of shorthand, and I don't mean the run-of-the-mill LOL, BRB, etc.. that everyone knows and uses. I mean just plain ol' not good grammar, bad shrthnd that only another human reader can possibly understand, or massive amounts of typoos, swithced letters, etc. (who "really" knows how to type accurately anymore), etc.
And it would have to be damned fast - otherwise it's going to spending a lot of time translating messages like 'sigh', 'waiting...' for impatient users.
I would think developing a translator than can translate "real world" IM speak would be a monumental task. Hell, look at babelfish, it can't even handle proper grammar.
It won't happen again until everyone falls into the mindset that it won't happen again. Boastful Assumptions lead to false sense of security leads to complacency leads to repeated mistakes.
On the other hand, eternal vigilance is counter to human nature, despite what all the patriotic propaganda may try to tell you. People in general simply are unable to deal with the constant stress of worrying about attack and eventually allow themselves to fall back into old habits. You can put preventative routines and technology into place, but the problem with routines is that they become predictable and "routine" - Routine leads to laxness on the part of the security personnel, and anything that is predictable can eventually be circumvented by the those with the time, the will and the means.
Face it. Terrorism won't go away until injustice goes away. Don't start flaming me for being a "sympathizer" but the root of terrorism is injustice (whether perceived or real). Nobody dedicates their life to carrying out destruction against a particular state because they just wake up one day and "feel like it". Until injustice goes away (not likely) then events like September 11 will always be looming on the horizon.
I was in the mall here the other day and saw a new kind of business I'd never seen before. It was an ink refilling service. This guy operated out of little booth, not unlike a shoe repairman, and people could drop off their empty printer cartridges, and pick them up later refilled with generic ink. Pretty cool idea.
I'm not too worried about the whole print vs ink thing though. I think the HP/Lexmark/et. all business model is self-defeating in the long run especially when you can buy the printer for below cost and then take your empty cartridges to a refilling service while you shop for new pants. That, and I do all my printing on my employers printer. Shhhhhh.
Here's a "slow speed" analogy for you. Take a dish cloth (this will be your kevlar or your nanotube t-shirt). Put it over a lump of plastercine (this will be you). Now poke your finger (your bulltet) into the cloth so that it indents into the plastercine. See the hole in the plastercine? See the lack of tear in your cloth? You still need something to dissipate the energy concentrated at the point of the bullet over a wide area. Kevlar does not do that, nor would any material light and flexible enough to wear as a t-shirt no matter what it's made of.
That's why SWAT personnerl look like tanks instead of sleek scuba-divers - One t-shirt thin layer of Kevlar ain't nearly enough protection.
Exactly! I wish someone would explain that to Tolkien, or perhaps Peter Jackson too! I don't care how hard mithril is, if it's flexible and light enough to wear hidden under your clothes then it's flexible and light enough to be forced (without tearing either) into a gaping hole in your chest when an 18 foot cave troll skewers you full force with a spear. You can't tell me there was enough impact absorbancy in Frodo's shirt to dissipate the energy from that impact enough so as to prevent chronic pierced lung syndrome.
Am I still on topic? Ummm... "Mithril Nanotubes". (There that should fix it.)
more sociological questions
on
Altered Carbon
·
· Score: 5, Funny
More questions the books raises:
1. If you can download your conscious into different bodies... how would you know if that gorgeous babe you're in bed with is really.... a babe? 2. Would it matter? 3. Would it finally be acceptable to ask your wife to get a new body for your birthday?
Do you deny that it still takes a shell script to start most Java apps on Unix? The latest Ant apparently still does this, for example.
uh... yeah? But even if you do, so what? Last I looked shell scripts weren't that big of a deal. Hell, if you can write the app I'm sure you're more than capable of writing a little itty bitty shell script to launch nicely with your favorite settings and perhaps even change your background to a nice picture of Lucy Liu while you're at. who cares.
Do you deny that developing and building Java apps requires that you adjust you CLASSPATH in order for the compiler to find the locations of third-party libraries you are linking against?
ANT solves this for you during compile time, and runtime really isn't an issue anymore. In fact, if you find yourself setting the classpath in your environment you're probably doing something wrong or using the wrong tools.
Do you deny that running Java applications still requires you to obtain a JRE from Sun? And that many applications require at minimum a certain version of the JRE?
Nothing requires you to use Sun's JRE if that's what you're opposed to. But again, so what? If it's the requirement for a JRE in general you don't like, then again I ask.. so what? Smalltalk apps only run through a Smalltalk interpreter..NET apps need the.NET runtime. VB apps need that massive dll linked or available on the system... Pretty petty point to base a dislike for a language on. And for IT users.. it's especially moot.
Given your antipathy towards Java I take it you tried it once perhaps Loooooong ago, didn't like it, and now spew the same antipathy today as if nothing has changed. Not trying to criticize your view or anything but they "were" valid... years ago.
I've used Java from day one, loved it, and use it everyday in my career. It's changed a lot from when it first came out and my love for it has only increased.
People like me, who love Java, tend to do so because a) We do not have to worry about the underlying OS (mostly) - Great for IT shops supporting many machine architectures. b) The richness of the standard libraries means programmer's can concentrate on the "business" logic - so again, it's great for IT.
As far as classpath and look and feel goes - neither one is an issue. Simply jar everything you need into one file. Make sure the java runtime is in your bin path and away you go. Even the look and feel can be switched to whatever is appropriate for the OS (Windows, Motif..) quite painlessly. Speed being the thing most people seem to bitch about isn't much of an issue anymore either. And as far as the build environment goes NOTHING beats ANT for shear beauty and ease of use. (And I used to be a make/perl zealot before I was pressured into trying ANT. Never looked back).
So I can't help but feel your views are based upon an impression of the the very early stages of Java when quite frankly it was still learning to walk. And I can't help but notice that your comparisons to C/C++/Python have to be qualified with "depending on" and "as long as".
Now.. if you had instead stated.. Java is ok but JNI sucks rotten clams. I would be more inclined to agree with you. Java really needs a better way to interact with native dll's and shared.so files.
Unfortunately the decision to "do it right now" as opposed to "do it right" is often made out of necessity rather than impatience.
A lot of the software that is in the $100K range is used for IT purposes. It's software that is needed to service customers. Maybe it doesn't do everything they asked and maybe it doesn't do everything perfectly - but the fact that it is there doing something is more important than the quality.
For example, I work in the IT department of a company in a highly competitive saturated industry. We produce most of our software for processing "samples" and servicing the client in-house (but still at great expense). We routinely release software that is incomplete or even defective because something is needed NOW! The external client doesn't know, doesn't care about the software we use to service them - they just want the samples processed and if it's not done NOW they take their business elsewhere and don't come back.
So... sometimes its pressure from a market that does not care and has no reason to care, rather than clueless managers.
Judging from attitudes apparent in some of the remarks in this thread, have any of you paused to consider that perhaps you "invite harassment" from cops simply by way of your attitude towards them? I've never met a cop I didn't like. Never. And oddly enough I've got "friends" who have never met one they did like. The difference? These friends are beligerent a-holes who can't keep their mouths shut or just accept that a cop is just trying to do his job without throwing a hissy fit and screaming about their rights being violated.. because.. why? A cop stopped you to talk to you, make sure you know where you're going and not just scoping out the neighbourhood? It's called keeping the peace. It's called maintaining a community presence. It's called proactive crime-prevention. Sure you can refuse to give them your Id and just walk away. Sure there's no law requiring you to be decent civil human being who treats everyone with respect, even law-enforcement officers. But wouldn't it just be a better place if you did anyway. I have never met anyone who complained about bad treatment from the police who didn't in some way invite suspician through their own negative attitudes. And in case you're wondering, I myself have been the subject of legitimate police investigation while living in crummy crime-ridden neighbourhoods. I'm reminded of one cop in particualt who I met beating on my doors and screaming in my face. While he vented his anger I should "quietly" and "politely" listened and answered his question without getting all upset and defensive. Eventually the guy calmed down. He apologised and we ended up talking for a little while. He revealed to me the stresses that cops face every day: they get called names like "pig" all day long and just generally are treated with very little respect by the people they put their lives on the line to protect. Obviously, they're used to dealing with a certain unsavoury segment of the population and sometimes natural defense mechanism and stresses come though when they find themselves dealing with just ordinary law-abiding folk. They can't do their jobs without people bi8ching that they're either not doing enough or they're violating someone's rights because they looked at them the wrong way. It's a very stressful job. But in the end, they really appreciate just being treated with the same basic respect that everyone else takes for granted. You might want to try it one day and see if you get treated just a little bit better from then on.
How many children ARE you and your friends having? Again, the trend seems to indicate that affluence leads to smaller family sizes, I have one daughter. I don't plan on having more. Most of MY friends are also sticking to one or at most 2 children. That is LESS than than the 2 adults required to make them which means "negative" population growth. That doesn't mean everybody is having small families, and I'm sure there will still be 10-children families even here in the west. But there is a LOT LESS of those. Do all children grow to adulthood or at least long enough to have children of their own. Sadly, no. And given that the trend is moving towards fewer children at later stages in life, fewer of those children that don't make it to parenthood are being replaced.
People who panic about exponential population growth make the following 2 mistakes: 1. They ignore the "statistical" information from affluent societies that suggest the opposite. 2. They make the assumption that the third world will ALWAYS be what they are: poverty stricken baby factories. I certainly don't share this view.
I can't quote the source but I'm sure someone can google it.. but a fairly recent study (by the UN I believe) has predicted the world's population will peak sometime within the this century at a relatively manageable level. More than now obviously, but not the exponential nightmare the doomsayers predict. Fact is, the more affluent societies get, the slower the population increases. Hell, some European countries have negative growth. China and India aren't going to keep ballooning forever and are on the right path to stability.
My point is, we will never hit an astronomically high population. At some point population will peak but (at least hopefully) technology will not. In time technology will help solve the problems created by the numbers.
Let's just hope we don't kill ourselves through war in the meantime.
This is obviously an April fool's joke. Very sneaky. Everyone knows that the posts on April 1 are dumb redundant stupid annoying *ahem*.."jokes". So now they wait until mid June to post them hoping to "REALLY" fool someone.
This is ridiculous. You don't need to change over all the pipes and wood, etc, etc... Just use the Canadian model. Technically we're a metric country. But it really depends. Go buy lumber and ask for some 2 x 5 meter sheets of particle board you'll get a confused huh? It's still sold in imperial measurements. Pipe fittings are still measured in inches, they're just sold by the kg. Go to the store and buy veggies. Sure they have the prices in Kg... if you read the fine print. The large displayed prices are still by the pound.
So what does it mean to convert to metric. The most obvious change will be fuel prices and the distances displayed on road signs. A large expense but not one that requires a lot of infrastructure change.
The next most visible change will be product packaging. All your margarine will now be sold in the SAME standard container sizes for example... makes it easier to compare prices.
But as far as infrastructure. Look... The U.S. Military is already metric. U.S. Scientists use metric in there calculations. It's the general populace that isn't converted, and the conversions are relatively superficial. No.. you do not need to redo all the wiring, pipes, ballbearings, whatever... Canada certainly didn't.
Case in point. I just recently built a brand new house. ALL the measurements are imperial.. My lot is measured in yards. The house dimensions are all blue-printed in feet. I bought my top soil in cubic yards. Brand new house in a "metric" country.
Once long ago... this is exactly how the Roman Empire's neighbours felt about the...er.. Roman Empire. And look where the Roman Empire is. Then the Spanish Empire... then the British Empire...
Now it's America turn at the helm. And as it is with all Empire's (and all human creations), it too will eventually wither away.
And after the age of America has come and gone... DJIBOUTI will rise and conquer all!
... on Java books: - They're outdated within months. - As a general rule I've found the individual APIs are too complex to be well-served by books that cover a broad spectrum. - The official specifications have all the information you need anyway.
The way to approach Java is pretty much the same way you approach programming languages in general: don't try to master them all, pick one or two and excel at that. With Java - there's a lot of APIs and many ways to skin the cat. Select the one methodology you're most comfortable with and concentrate your skills there. I'm not saying ignore all the other APIs, just don't spread your knowledge too thin. And not everything needs to be done with EJBs!
Incidentally, I used to own just about every O'Reilly java book published. Found I never used them, the online javadocs had everything I needed already.
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Java is just an OO-Language so I don't see how you can say it is "bad" for the industry. And personally, I get tired of seeing the same negative criticism being leveled time and time again as if the thing has never progressed in the last 5 years. I work with Java everyday and have watched it improved dramatically with each new release. But I'm meandering..back to the original point. Java is just a language. Your effectiveness with Java is only as good as your understaning of the OO principles that it is built upon, and THAT is where I see problems. It sounds like what you're really biting at is that you've seen a lot of people, rushed into the market, who *surprise surprise* can't code their way out if a paper bag. How is that Java's fault? Are you suggesting they would have been better programmers had they been rushed through C++ instead? Dot com boom/bust had nothing to do with Java. If you want to blame anyone, blame the VCs. They're the ones who spoon fed money into dumb projects creating the market for overpaid poorly trained programmers in the first place. The fact many of them may have learned Java is beside the point.
As far as good or bad for the industry... well.. you don't really define what your industry is. Software house for the most part don't use Java. I personally feel it's an "IT" language, and the IT shops/people that I've been involved with LOVE Java for its productivity and cross-platform compatibility.
Directed energy weapons! what does that mean? High powered lasers? Something else that's super-secret?
Isn't that just a really fancy term for... a gun?
It's directed (you aim it) and bullets have lots of... KINETIC ENERGY! America's enemies will read this thinking they need to blow their budgets on defenses against Laser beams and ion canons only to get pulverized because they're not defended against a good ol' fashioned shelling.
As the offspring of a law enforcement officer myself, I have mixed feelings about this. I find any kind of game which involves flaunting a disrespect for the law somewhat disturbing. On the other hand, a lot of laws don't deserve our respect and a lot of cops shouldn't be issued the badge. But... I myself will not play these kinds of games. I prefer games RPGs where you go out and slaughter demi-human races and accept without question that they every "thing" you are killing is evil and where the ends justify the means. Yay NWN!
Since when? There's several and most distros include at least one. You can get a free Adobe PDF reader for linux no problem. If you don't like Adobe then there's Xpdf. Ghostview can also reads/write pdfs I believe.
On the second, if this is your sole reason, you're being illogical. That would be like brushing off a good idea from a fellow developer because you didn't like his office.
.NET becomes so pervasive that I need to learn it to continue in my career as a software developer, then I'll switch profession. Hell, even living on an Amish farm masturbating bulls would be less distasteful.
No. It's more like, here's a company that simply cannot be trusted, has a history of screwing anything and everything, has committed crimes and walked away scott free, and here I am not wanting to reward that behaviour with my time or money. If
So you're all for wiping out spam, as long as it isn't yours. Nice.
Somehow I don't think the companies selling penis enlargers are big multi-nationals. Hell, they're probably tiny garage businesses who don't care about their reputations, so maybe they should be exempt too?
That tends to happen in conflict. Rival groups killing each other. Didn't American revolutionaries kill loyalists, burn their farms, and exterminate native american tribes who sided with the British? And yet "heroes" of the American revolution are idolized despite the carnage they inflicted. Do you consider any of them "evil"? (I'm assuming you're American - but even if you're not, I'm sure you can find examples in your own history)
Deny people the means of protesting or implementing change without violence, then you leave violent revolution as the only (and inevitable) option.
..because your last name is Berlusconi?
;)
Sorry.. couldn't help
How many regular IM users actually type using proper spelling an rules of grammar? I think it safe to say that most messages contain a lot of shorthand, and I don't mean the run-of-the-mill LOL, BRB, etc.. that everyone knows and uses. I mean just plain ol' not good grammar, bad shrthnd that only another human reader can possibly understand, or massive amounts of typoos, swithced letters, etc. (who "really" knows how to type accurately anymore), etc.
And it would have to be damned fast - otherwise it's going to spending a lot of time translating messages like 'sigh', 'waiting...' for impatient users.
I would think developing a translator than can translate "real world" IM speak would be a monumental task. Hell, look at babelfish, it can't even handle proper grammar.
It won't happen again until everyone falls into the mindset that it won't happen again. Boastful Assumptions lead to false sense of security leads to complacency leads to repeated mistakes.
On the other hand, eternal vigilance is counter to human nature, despite what all the patriotic propaganda may try to tell you. People in general simply are unable to deal with the constant stress of worrying about attack and eventually allow themselves to fall back into old habits. You can put preventative routines and technology into place, but the problem with routines is that they become predictable and "routine" - Routine leads to laxness on the part of the security personnel, and anything that is predictable can eventually be circumvented by the those with the time, the will and the means.
Face it. Terrorism won't go away until injustice goes away. Don't start flaming me for being a "sympathizer" but the root of terrorism is injustice (whether perceived or real). Nobody dedicates their life to carrying out destruction against a particular state because they just wake up one day and "feel like it". Until injustice goes away (not likely) then events like September 11 will always be looming on the horizon.
Gotta love the free market.
I was in the mall here the other day and saw a new kind of business I'd never seen before. It was an ink refilling service. This guy operated out of little booth, not unlike a shoe repairman, and people could drop off their empty printer cartridges, and pick them up later refilled with generic ink. Pretty cool idea.
I'm not too worried about the whole print vs ink thing though. I think the HP/Lexmark/et. all business model is self-defeating in the long run especially when you can buy the printer for below cost and then take your empty cartridges to a refilling service while you shop for new pants. That, and I do all my printing on my employers printer. Shhhhhh.
Well, since you asked so nicely: You're just paranoid.
Yours truly,
B. Gates.
Here's a "slow speed" analogy for you. Take a dish cloth (this will be your kevlar or your nanotube t-shirt). Put it over a lump of plastercine (this will be you). Now poke your finger (your bulltet) into the cloth so that it indents into the plastercine.
See the hole in the plastercine? See the lack of tear in your cloth? You still need something to dissipate the energy concentrated at the point of the bullet over a wide area. Kevlar does not do that, nor would any material light and flexible enough to wear as a t-shirt no matter what it's made of.
That's why SWAT personnerl look like tanks instead of sleek scuba-divers - One t-shirt thin layer of Kevlar ain't nearly enough protection.
Exactly! I wish someone would explain that to Tolkien, or perhaps Peter Jackson too! I don't care how hard mithril is, if it's flexible and light enough to wear hidden under your clothes then it's flexible and light enough to be forced (without tearing either) into a gaping hole in your chest when an 18 foot cave troll skewers you full force with a spear. You can't tell me there was enough impact absorbancy in Frodo's shirt to dissipate the energy from that impact enough so as to prevent chronic pierced lung syndrome.
Am I still on topic? Ummm... "Mithril Nanotubes". (There that should fix it.)
More questions the books raises:
1. If you can download your conscious into different bodies... how would you know if that gorgeous babe you're in bed with is really.... a babe? 2. Would it matter? 3. Would it finally be acceptable to ask your wife to get a new body for your birthday?
Do you deny that it still takes a shell script to start most Java apps on Unix? The latest Ant apparently still does this, for example.
.NET apps need the .NET runtime. VB apps need that massive dll linked or available on the system... Pretty petty point to base a dislike for a language on. And for IT users.. it's especially moot.
uh... yeah? But even if you do, so what? Last I looked shell scripts weren't that big of a deal. Hell, if you can write the app I'm sure you're more than capable of writing a little itty bitty shell script to launch nicely with your favorite settings and perhaps even change your background to a nice picture of Lucy Liu while you're at. who cares.
Do you deny that developing and building Java apps requires that you adjust you CLASSPATH in order for the compiler to find the locations of third-party libraries you are linking against?
ANT solves this for you during compile time, and runtime really isn't an issue anymore. In fact, if you find yourself setting the classpath in your environment you're probably doing something wrong or using the wrong tools.
Do you deny that running Java applications still requires you to obtain a JRE from Sun? And that many applications require at minimum a certain version of the JRE?
Nothing requires you to use Sun's JRE if that's what you're opposed to. But again, so what? If it's the requirement for a JRE in general you don't like, then again I ask.. so what? Smalltalk apps only run through a Smalltalk interpreter.
Given your antipathy towards Java I take it you tried it once perhaps Loooooong ago, didn't like it, and now spew the same antipathy today as if nothing has changed. Not trying to criticize your view or anything but they "were" valid... years ago.
.so files.
I've used Java from day one, loved it, and use it everyday in my career. It's changed a lot from when it first came out and my love for it has only increased.
People like me, who love Java, tend to do so because
a) We do not have to worry about the underlying OS (mostly) - Great for IT shops supporting many machine architectures.
b) The richness of the standard libraries means programmer's can concentrate on the "business" logic - so again, it's great for IT.
As far as classpath and look and feel goes - neither one is an issue. Simply jar everything you need into one file. Make sure the java runtime is in your bin path and away you go. Even the look and feel can be switched to whatever is appropriate for the OS (Windows, Motif..) quite painlessly. Speed being the thing most people seem to bitch about isn't much of an issue anymore either. And as far as the build environment goes NOTHING beats ANT for shear beauty and ease of use. (And I used to be a make/perl zealot before I was pressured into trying ANT. Never looked back).
So I can't help but feel your views are based upon an impression of the the very early stages of Java when quite frankly it was still learning to walk. And I can't help but notice that your comparisons to C/C++/Python have to be qualified with "depending on" and "as long as".
Now.. if you had instead stated.. Java is ok but JNI sucks rotten clams. I would be more inclined to agree with you. Java really needs a better way to interact with native dll's and shared
Unfortunately the decision to "do it right now" as opposed to "do it right" is often made out of necessity rather than impatience.
A lot of the software that is in the $100K range is used for IT purposes. It's software that is needed to service customers. Maybe it doesn't do everything they asked and maybe it doesn't do everything perfectly - but the fact that it is there doing something is more important than the quality.
For example, I work in the IT department of a company in a highly competitive saturated industry. We produce most of our software for processing "samples" and servicing the client in-house (but still at great expense). We routinely release software that is incomplete or even defective because something is needed NOW! The external client doesn't know, doesn't care about the software we use to service them - they just want the samples processed and if it's not done NOW they take their business elsewhere and don't come back.
So... sometimes its pressure from a market that does not care and has no reason to care, rather than clueless managers.
Judging from attitudes apparent in some of the remarks in this thread, have any of you paused to consider that perhaps you "invite harassment" from cops simply by way of your attitude towards them? I've never met a cop I didn't like. Never. And oddly enough I've got "friends" who have never met one they did like. The difference? These friends are beligerent a-holes who can't keep their mouths shut or just accept that a cop is just trying to do his job without throwing a hissy fit and screaming about their rights being violated.. because.. why? A cop stopped you to talk to you, make sure you know where you're going and not just scoping out the neighbourhood? It's called keeping the peace. It's called maintaining a community presence. It's called proactive crime-prevention. Sure you can refuse to give them your Id and just walk away. Sure there's no law requiring you to be decent civil human being who treats everyone with respect, even law-enforcement officers. But wouldn't it just be a better place if you did anyway. I have never met anyone who complained about bad treatment from the police who didn't in some way invite suspician through their own negative attitudes. And in case you're wondering, I myself have been the subject of legitimate police investigation while living in crummy crime-ridden neighbourhoods. I'm reminded of one cop in particualt who I met beating on my doors and screaming in my face. While he vented his anger I should "quietly" and "politely" listened and answered his question without getting all upset and defensive. Eventually the guy calmed down. He apologised and we ended up talking for a little while. He revealed to me the stresses that cops face every day: they get called names like "pig" all day long and just generally are treated with very little respect by the people they put their lives on the line to protect. Obviously, they're used to dealing with a certain unsavoury segment of the population and sometimes natural defense mechanism and stresses come though when they find themselves dealing with just ordinary law-abiding folk. They can't do their jobs without people bi8ching that they're either not doing enough or they're violating someone's rights because they looked at them the wrong way. It's a very stressful job. But in the end, they really appreciate just being treated with the same basic respect that everyone else takes for granted. You might want to try it one day and see if you get treated just a little bit better from then on.
How many children ARE you and your friends having? Again, the trend seems to indicate that affluence leads to smaller family sizes, I have one daughter. I don't plan on having more. Most of MY friends are also sticking to one or at most 2 children. That is LESS than than the 2 adults required to make them which means "negative" population growth. That doesn't mean everybody is having small families, and I'm sure there will still be 10-children families even here in the west. But there is a LOT LESS of those. Do all children grow to adulthood or at least long enough to have children of their own. Sadly, no. And given that the trend is moving towards fewer children at later stages in life, fewer of those children that don't make it to parenthood are being replaced.
People who panic about exponential population growth make the following 2 mistakes:
1. They ignore the "statistical" information from affluent societies that suggest the opposite.
2. They make the assumption that the third world will ALWAYS be what they are: poverty stricken baby factories. I certainly don't share this view.
I can't quote the source but I'm sure someone can google it.. but a fairly recent study (by the UN I believe) has predicted the world's population will peak sometime within the this century at a relatively manageable level. More than now obviously, but not the exponential nightmare the doomsayers predict. Fact is, the more affluent societies get, the slower the population increases. Hell, some European countries have negative growth. China and India aren't going to keep ballooning forever and are on the right path to stability.
My point is, we will never hit an astronomically high population. At some point population will peak but (at least hopefully) technology will not. In time technology will help solve the problems created by the numbers.
Let's just hope we don't kill ourselves through war in the meantime.
This is obviously an April fool's joke. Very sneaky. Everyone knows that the posts on April 1 are dumb redundant stupid annoying *ahem*.."jokes". So now they wait until mid June to post them hoping to "REALLY" fool someone.
I mean.. it IS a joke right? QBASIC?
This is ridiculous. You don't need to change over all the pipes and wood, etc, etc... Just use the Canadian model. Technically we're a metric country. But it really depends. Go buy lumber and ask for some 2 x 5 meter sheets of particle board you'll get a confused huh? It's still sold in imperial measurements. Pipe fittings are still measured in inches, they're just sold by the kg. Go to the store and buy veggies. Sure they have the prices in Kg... if you read the fine print. The large displayed prices are still by the pound.
So what does it mean to convert to metric. The most obvious change will be fuel prices and the distances displayed on road signs. A large expense but not one that requires a lot of infrastructure change.
The next most visible change will be product packaging. All your margarine will now be sold in the SAME standard container sizes for example... makes it easier to compare prices.
But as far as infrastructure. Look... The U.S. Military is already metric. U.S. Scientists use metric in there calculations. It's the general populace that isn't converted, and the conversions are relatively superficial. No.. you do not need to redo all the wiring, pipes, ballbearings, whatever... Canada certainly didn't.
Case in point. I just recently built a brand new house. ALL the measurements are imperial.. My lot is measured in yards. The house dimensions are all blue-printed in feet. I bought my top soil in cubic yards. Brand new house in a "metric" country.
Once long ago... this is exactly how the Roman Empire's neighbours felt about the...er.. Roman Empire. And look where the Roman Empire is. Then the Spanish Empire... then the British Empire...
Now it's America turn at the helm. And as it is with all Empire's (and all human creations), it too will eventually wither away.
And after the age of America has come and gone... DJIBOUTI will rise and conquer all!
... on Java books:
- They're outdated within months.
- As a general rule I've found the individual APIs are too complex to be well-served by books that cover a broad spectrum.
- The official specifications have all the information you need anyway.
The way to approach Java is pretty much the same way you approach programming languages in general: don't try to master them all, pick one or two and excel at that. With Java - there's a lot of APIs and many ways to skin the cat. Select the one methodology you're most comfortable with and concentrate your skills there. I'm not saying ignore all the other APIs, just don't spread your knowledge too thin. And not everything needs to be done with EJBs!
Incidentally, I used to own just about every O'Reilly java book published. Found I never used them, the online javadocs had everything I needed already.