I'll admit it: I've got fungus growing in my genital area and between my toes, and it bugs the hell out of me. I've seen ads (infomercials) over the past few years, but knew them to be mostly hoax products and have steered clear. But now I've noticed RiteAid and Walgreens selling "athletes foot" and "jock itch" treatments. They're moderately expensive ($5-$15), but I'd be willing to foot the large sum _if_ I knew how well they worked. Their ads claim clinical proof, but what exactly does that mean? Did a researcher test the drug on a sample of scrotii to measure effectiveness? Does use of the phrase 'clinically proven' require anything like FDA approval? Has anyone out there used any such product, or know someone who has? Did you use spray, ointment, or powder? Care to comment on how well it has worked? How long can you wear the same socks and underpants with this medication? Would you like to come over and apply the ointment or powder?
I've been teaching Python to older kids and teens (10+) and have had good success. A few younger kids started in the classes but had trouble with typing and general computer skills. Most of the kids caught on to programming and were writing their own variations on assignments.
Very young kids have problems with attention span, reading, typing, etc. so you may want to use something like Lego Mindstorms instead of text-based programming.
50% of people claiming to be programmers are merely the most computer-savvy person in their immediate clique. They don't have the skills or experience to work on a real project. If you work at Starbucks but have a 300-line Perl script on your Linux "box" at home that downloads the weather report, you are not a programmer. If you have a Geocities web site with a CGI page counter, you are not a programmer, even if your grandma or co-workers at Kinkos can't even do that. Recognize these clowns by their goatees and black trenchcoats. Large herds are often in evidence at Fry's on weekends: look in the video card section.
25% of people claiming to be programmers just chatter about Java and buy books and download the latest Java crap, but can't actually get anything to compile or run because their CLASSPATH is wrong. When they aren't talking about Java they're working on their own blogging program because none of the 42,000 blogging tools already written can do all of the things they need it to do. I suspect that these dorks also masturbate while playing Everquest. The most they can hope for is to get their fat face on the cover of a 900-page Wrox book.
5% are the same as the Java dorks, but to be different they advocate an obscure language and act like everyone else is clueless. These people are also prone to excessive facial and body piercing. This group includes masochists who insist on doing everything with emacs and shell scripts. Often hard-core open source advocates who work at universities, Richard Stallman is their hero.
10% of people claiming to be programmers learned some COBOL or Fortran back in college, and now lurk in the ventilation ducts of big companies and government agencies. They often regale co-workers with Y2K war stories and anecdotes about punch cards. These are the ones you see at Fry's buying the DCOM books and Novell certification guides from the sale bin. Colorful suspenders and big beards are the style. Jerry Pournelle is the textbook example of this group.
That leaves 10% who don't suck. 10% who don't go around telling everyone they know how they can't realize their dream because no current computer is powerful enough for their unique vision of online role-playing. 10% who actually know what a pointer is from experience, rather than from articles about how C++ sucks. 10% who don't pretend to be musicians or skateboarders because they are secure with their programming skills. 10% who don't wear all black clothes or ironic thrift store garb. 10% who don't have a nervous breakdown if they have to use Window$.
What next? How do I return an ugly sweater to Target? I bought a Big Mac and didn't get cheese on it? Grow up--you're wasting everyone's time with petty personal problems and eliciting a lot of armchair legal opinions from people who don't know what they're talking about.
But Intel, not surprisingly, excels on their own hardware.
Do you mean to imply that Intel knows something about the Pentium architecture or instruction set that the authors of gcc don't? Does the code emitted from the Intel compiler use undocumented instructions? Intel's compiler is newer than gcc and wasn't developed with the "many eyes" that have looked at gcc over the years. It looks like Intel's engineers wrote a better compiler, simple as that.
These benchmarks give gcc a black eye, but I doubt Intel was using undocumented secrets of their chip to defeat gcc. Sometimes the open source community has to admit that not every open source project represents the state-of-the-art.
Intel does not support all gcc language extensions; while it has been used to compile the Linux kernel and other free software projects, it is not a drop-in replacement for gcc.
The comb sort is a variation of the bubble sort algorithm that achieves N log(N) execution times, similar to heapsort. The algorithm is simple and memory efficient, compared to Quicksort.
A lot of us with jobs use open source all the time, on the desktop and on our servers. Have you noticed all the big companies using and supporting open source software--IBM, Apple, Sun, Oracle, etc. etc.?
Who posts these questions? People living in their mom's basement, playing Everquest all day and night, looking for someone to write their term paper?
I've been using SpamOracle with great success for a few weeks. Plays well with procmail. It's based on the Bayesian technique described by Paul Graham.
It's written in OCaml so getting it up and running takes a little work (though not much). Once it's installed the command-line learning interface is quite easy to use.
http://pauillac.inria.fr/~xleroy/software.html#s pa moracle
Kids don't "become autodidacts." Everyone starts out learning on their own. After twelve or more years of school most people have lost the ability. School has trained them to do what they are told and to trust so-called experts (e.g. teachers) rather than themselves.
To wit, the frequent demonstrations of bad spelling and grammar right here on slashdot. If you find any TEACHERS' COLLEGES let us know.
Many parents homeschool for regligious reasons, but no state requires homeschoolers to join a church or profess the Christian faith. (And you don't pass or fail the SAT, either.) Secular homeschoolers will easily find plenty of other people who aren't just putting their kids through religious indoctrination. For the last ten years the most growth among homeschoolers has been non-religious families.
The best reason to homeschool your kids: to be closer as a family. Too many parents don't know their kids, don't know what their kids are doing, and leave almost every aspect of their child's education and growth to total strangers. Nothing can replace spending time with your kids every day. Numerous studies, not to mention common sense, show that kids who spend time with their parents and are part of a family do better in life.
The socialization issue is really a non-issue; people with don't like homeschooling for one reason or another always trot that out. Spend some time in a public school and say with a straight face that most of those kids show healthy socialization. Do you really want your kids to spend 12 years in an artificial, opressive, regimented, and cruel environment that--at best--prepares them to do what they are told, to blindly accept arbitrary authority, and to jump whenever a bell rings?
Some homeschooled kids are spelling bee geeks. Some are jocks. Some are social butterflies. To me they mostly seem like well-adjusted versions of schooled kids, minus the toxic amounts of peer pressure and grade anxiety the schooled kids carry around. And I don't have to wait for the 10th grade skills test to find out what my kids know or don't know.
The "professional teacher" argument is another red herring favored by teachers and "education professionals." Kids know how to learn on their own. Almost everyone learns the single hardest skill they will ever learn--speaking their own language--with no professional help at all. Believe in your child, and yourself. If you don't know how to teach your child something you can easily find someone who can. Many homeschooled kids we know attend some classes at private schools or community college, to learn things like languages or music that are best taught by an expert.
I have three homeschooled kids and my wife and I are involved in various city and state groups of homeschoolers. Social activities dominate the calendar: skating, teen dances and activities, camping, museum trips, 4-H, soccer and other sports, various clubs and study groups, etc. etc. Lots of kids have part-time jobs. Most will go to college: homeschooling conventions and curriculum fairs attract recruiters from Ivy-league schools now, and homeschoolers have higher college admission rates than public school kids.
Don't accept random opinions from slashdotters to decide something so important. Find a local group of like-minded (secular or religious) homeschoolers and attend some activities. Read about it: John Holt's two excellent books How Children Fail and How Children Learn will open your eyes.
If you still think public school has something magical to offer, or that the folks who run the school and choose the curriculum know more than you do, read John Taylor Gatto's excellent essay The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher at:
Now, when I tell my friends who email me at my mac.com address that they'll need to mail me at yahoo or something instead, how is that going to make Apple look?
How does it make you look? Get a real email address. Clue: they aren't free.
Why on earth does anyone expect Apple to give OSX updates away for free? Toyota doesn't give away updated cars every year; they don't even give away new tires. O'Reilly doesn't send out free second editions of their books. Sony doesn't give away Playstation games just because you bought a console.
If you want to use a Mac then you have to pay for it, the same way that you pay for a BMW if you don't feel like driving a Yugo.
If you don't want to pay for your OS use Linux or FreeBSD. If you don't like Apple's prices use Windows. I'm sure a lot of you will install a pirated 10.2 update anyway so why complain about it--should Apple send you a blank CDR for free too?
Did anyone over 9 yrs old really think iTools/.mac would be free forever? Either you pay or you get ads pasted into your email--that's how the real world works. Show of hands: how many people who complain about losing their free.mac email address also complained about how Apple's email service sucks?
Grow up, get a job, pay for shit you use. You'll find out that's how things work outside of the dorm room and mommy's basement.
#5 -...Don't show up in a suit unless it's an executive position
You should have some idea of appropriate dress before interviewing. Walk through the parking lot at 8:30am or 5:00pm and observe. Better yet, call or walk in and ask the receptionist what kind of clothes other candidates are wearing.
You should always look presentable and comfortable, and maybe a little overdressed. But if the only suit you have is from your high school graduation, and you don't know how to knot a tie, don't bother wearing it--you'll look like an idiot.
Go easy on the facial hair and hair gel, and remove any visible piercings. Avoid perfume or cologne. Be a little more conservative and a little more dressy than you would expect to be every day at that job, but don't go overboard.
Buy a good pair of standard, classic dress shoes--nothing unusual or fancy. I want to cry when someone comes to an interview with an ill-fitting blue suit AND a scuffed old pair of brown Timberlands. That's even worse than 300-pound geeks with huge beards, hiking shorts, and Birkenstocks over colorful socks.
Women, avoid fuck-me pumps or disco shoes, but don't look like you work at a nursing home, either. And go easy on jewelry (especially costume jewelry), scarves, purses, etc.--you don't want to look like a junior real estate agent.
The jobs are there but you have to work at finding them and getting one. Standing out solely on technical qualifications can be tough if you don't have 10 or more years real experience, so be the candidate they remember. Be polite, easy to talk to, interested, curious, eager.
I can't emphasize writing and speaking and good manners enough. If you come across as illiterate, uncomfortable, or socially handicapped (as so many geeks do), you are handicapped in the job market. The last time I interviewed candidates for a mid-level programmer job we had candidates show up unwashed, in skateboarder clothes; we had candidates who seemed uneasy around other humans; we had candidates who mumbled "I guess" and "I mean" and "You know what I'm saying" every few words, as if they had speech lessons from Eminem; we had candidates launch into scary (and irrelevant) anti-Microsoft or anti-Linux tirades that made us hope they weren't armed; we had candidates who obviously devoted too much time to body piercing and not enough to reading our job description.
Learn to write. Read outside your discipline. Practice speaking, composing your thoughts, talking to a group. Practice problem-solving skills. Practice debugging--SourceForge is overflowing with opportunities for working on real code. Don't wait to learn on-the-job: spend some time every day learning something new. Use Borders as a library with coffee.
Learn something about the businesses and industries that might hire you. Learn a little about accounting, inventory, logistics, sales, marketing, manufacturing, publishing, etc., so at least you know what the jargon means and what questions make sense.
Learn databases and SQL. Learn them really well. It takes a while but you have to start sometime. Most companies have databases old enough to have seen many industry trends come and go.
When job hunting you'll be competing with people who have the same stuff on their resume as you do, more or less. Stand out by presenting yourself well. Show some ability to string two thoughts together. Show enthusiasm about solving problems, debugging skanky old code, working as part of a team.
Job hunting is not like taking tests in school where the best student ranks at the top of their class. Employers usually make up their mind about you in the first few minutes (or first few seconds if you smell bad, dress like a slacker, or display poor manners). Take 20 Java programmers with equivalent experience and certifications and the one who makes the interviewers believe he will fit in will get the job.
Join a user's group, go to trade shows, network. Ask people you know who have jobs what kind of people their company needs. Get names of skilled recruiters and work with them--they aren't all dishonest scumbags. If you have time do volunteer work--you can meet people who can point you at full-time jobs.
The short-term bubble that burst and put so many techies on the street persuaded too many of them that growing unusual facial hair and learning Flash would set them up for a lifetime, or at least get them in a Volkswagen commercial. Sorry to break it to you, but employers have sobered up now.
Ummm, no. There was once on this planet several species of humans living concurrently. Homo Sapiens destroyed all competing species (unless you subscribe to the Bigfoot theory).
What's your point? Lots of species go extinct and individuals fight to survive in their own way. In fact evolution predicts that one species of human would push out the others; in any ecosystem there is very little room at the top. In all of North American you can count only a few apex predators; there simply isn't room for a lot of them.
The conceit I refer to is assuming we are exempt from natural laws (evolution) simply because we are human. We will certainly affect our own evolution, but the process goes on.
The irreducible complexity issue has been addressed at length by Richard Dawkins and others. In fact the author the paper you linked to and one of his books are discussed by Dawkins.
The mousetrap analogy is false. Remove any part and the mousetrap ceases to function as a mousetrap. It does not cease to exist, though. A horse may be born with a pair of stubby wings. The horse can't fly, but as long as the wings don't lessen the horse's chances at survival and reproduction the wings don't do that horse any harm. Mutations and adaptations don't have to be advantageous; they can be neutral, or even disadvantageous if they are offset by other factors. The widespread survival of Americans with genetically-based diseases is an example of an ofsetting environmental factor.
Read some Richard Dawkins books for an expert's refutation of the irreducible complexity issue.
It took 200 years for anyone to start believing darwin
Not quite. Fact: Charles Darwin was born in 1809. The Origin of Species was first published in 1859. People started believing it right away. By 1925 the matter was already in U.S. Courts (the Scopes "Monkey Trial").
It's also not true that scientific method only allows for disproving a theory. Duplicating an experiment or obtaining corroborating evidence bolsters a theory.
Evolution is part of life's process, it goes on regardless of human conceit. I don't know what you mean by "few people die." Last I checked we can all plan on dying. The human death rate is at 100%, as always; it just takes longer than it used to.
Jerry Springer's audience aside, the genetically fit are more likely to pass their genes on, and their offspring are more likely to survive. What makes an individual genetically more or less fit may or may not match your notions of genetically inferior or superior, but that is irrelevant.
Evolution is accepted as fact by scientists and thinking people. It is no more or less a theory than physics or astronomy.
Many details of evolution are not understood, particularly the genetic mechanisms. This new discovery helps answer some of those questions, but it doesn't make evolution any more "real" than it already is. It's possible we haven't discovered every moon or even every planet in our solar system, but that doesn't mean the sun may actually revolve around the earth after all. We're pretty sure we haven't found all of the subatomic particles, and we still don't agree on what makes gravity, but physics is still secure and we don't expect the Red Sea to part on its own.
Accepting Creationism means tossing out all of established science. Creationism is the adversary of all science, not just Darwinian evolution.
The US Navy should have issued their pilots Serbian cell phones instead of cheap-ass satellite radios. The Serbs use their cell phones everywhere, in terrain where the Navy-issue radios go dead. I can't get that kind of cell service in a major US city, and our infrastructure is still intact.
I feel bad for Gene Hackman--he's a really great actor in the right role. Unfortunately in this loser he plays the part usually given to Fred Thompson.
I guess Owen Wilson can add "action hero" to his credits, now that he's outrun bullets and mines, jumped off a cliff to catch a Marine's hand, and stabbed a bad guy in the chest with a flare. You don't see that kind of stuff very often.
My connection to @home died at midnight PST. About 30 minutes later my cable modem's online light came back on. I couldn't get anywhere on the web, but simply changing my router to DHCP and restarting put me back online. Yahoo, CNET, Slashdot all accessible. My new email account @attbi.com is working. In in Portland, Oregon for anyone keeping score.
Slashdot Mirror
Look into teeth whitening and antifungal treatments. You can start right here on slashdot.
You can also get a law degree right here, just read all the posts about licenses and copyrights.
I'll admit it: I've got fungus growing in my genital area and between my toes, and it bugs the hell out of me. I've seen ads (infomercials) over the past few years, but knew them to be mostly hoax products and have steered clear. But now I've noticed RiteAid and Walgreens selling "athletes foot" and "jock itch" treatments. They're moderately expensive ($5-$15), but I'd be willing to foot the large sum _if_ I knew how well they worked. Their ads claim clinical proof, but what exactly does that mean? Did a researcher test the drug on a sample of scrotii to measure effectiveness? Does use of the phrase 'clinically proven' require anything like FDA approval? Has anyone out there used any such product, or know someone who has? Did you use spray, ointment, or powder? Care to comment on how well it has worked? How long can you wear the same socks and underpants with this medication? Would you like to come over and apply the ointment or powder?
I've been teaching Python to older kids and teens (10+) and have had good success. A few younger kids started in the classes but had trouble with typing and general computer skills. Most of the kids caught on to programming and were writing their own variations on assignments.
Very young kids have problems with attention span, reading, typing, etc. so you may want to use something like Lego Mindstorms instead of text-based programming.
See www.geekschool.org for one approach.
50% of people claiming to be programmers are merely the most computer-savvy person in their immediate clique. They don't have the skills or experience to work on a real project. If you work at Starbucks but have a 300-line Perl script on your Linux "box" at home that downloads the weather report, you are not a programmer. If you have a Geocities web site with a CGI page counter, you are not a programmer, even if your grandma or co-workers at Kinkos can't even do that. Recognize these clowns by their goatees and black trenchcoats. Large herds are often in evidence at Fry's on weekends: look in the video card section.
25% of people claiming to be programmers just chatter about Java and buy books and download the latest Java crap, but can't actually get anything to compile or run because their CLASSPATH is wrong. When they aren't talking about Java they're working on their own blogging program because none of the 42,000 blogging tools already written can do all of the things they need it to do. I suspect that these dorks also masturbate while playing Everquest. The most they can hope for is to get their fat face on the cover of a 900-page Wrox book.
5% are the same as the Java dorks, but to be different they advocate an obscure language and act like everyone else is clueless. These people are also prone to excessive facial and body piercing. This group includes masochists who insist on doing everything with emacs and shell scripts. Often hard-core open source advocates who work at universities, Richard Stallman is their hero.
10% of people claiming to be programmers learned some COBOL or Fortran back in college, and now lurk in the ventilation ducts of big companies and government agencies. They often regale co-workers with Y2K war stories and anecdotes about punch cards. These are the ones you see at Fry's buying the DCOM books and Novell certification guides from the sale bin. Colorful suspenders and big beards are the style. Jerry Pournelle is the textbook example of this group.
That leaves 10% who don't suck. 10% who don't go around telling everyone they know how they can't realize their dream because no current computer is powerful enough for their unique vision of online role-playing. 10% who actually know what a pointer is from experience, rather than from articles about how C++ sucks. 10% who don't pretend to be musicians or skateboarders because they are secure with their programming skills. 10% who don't wear all black clothes or ironic thrift store garb. 10% who don't have a nervous breakdown if they have to use Window$.
QED.
It has nothing to do with big email attachments or recipe sites.
What next? How do I return an ugly sweater to Target? I bought a Big Mac and didn't get cheese on it? Grow up--you're wasting everyone's time with petty personal problems and eliciting a lot of armchair legal opinions from people who don't know what they're talking about.
But Intel, not surprisingly, excels on their own hardware.
Do you mean to imply that Intel knows something about the Pentium architecture or instruction set that the authors of gcc don't? Does the code emitted from the Intel compiler use undocumented instructions? Intel's compiler is newer than gcc and wasn't developed with the "many eyes" that have looked at gcc over the years. It looks like Intel's engineers wrote a better compiler, simple as that.
These benchmarks give gcc a black eye, but I doubt Intel was using undocumented secrets of their chip to defeat gcc. Sometimes the open source community has to admit that not every open source project represents the state-of-the-art.
Try reading the article before posting.
Intel does not support all gcc language extensions; while it has been used to compile the Linux kernel and other free software projects, it is not a drop-in replacement for gcc.
The comb sort is a variation of the bubble sort algorithm that achieves N log(N) execution times, similar to heapsort. The algorithm is simple and memory efficient, compared to Quicksort.
1 /c ombsort.htm
http://cs.clackamas.cc.or.us/molatore/cs260Spr0
http://world.std.com/~jdveale/combsort.htm
A lot of us with jobs use open source all the time, on the desktop and on our servers. Have you noticed all the big companies using and supporting open source software--IBM, Apple, Sun, Oracle, etc. etc.?
Who posts these questions? People living in their mom's basement, playing Everquest all day and night, looking for someone to write their term paper?
I've been using SpamOracle with great success for a few weeks. Plays well with procmail. It's based on the Bayesian technique described by Paul Graham.
s pa moracle
It's written in OCaml so getting it up and running takes a little work (though not much). Once it's installed the command-line learning interface is quite easy to use.
http://pauillac.inria.fr/~xleroy/software.html#
Kids don't "become autodidacts." Everyone starts out learning on their own. After twelve or more years of school most people have lost the ability. School has trained them to do what they are told and to trust so-called experts (e.g. teachers) rather than themselves.
To wit, the frequent demonstrations of bad spelling and grammar right here on slashdot. If you find any TEACHERS' COLLEGES let us know.
Save The Children: Homeschool
Also paraphrased in John Brunner's Stand On Zanzibar as "The difficult we did yesterday; the impossible we're doing right now."
Christ, what an imagination I've got.
Many parents homeschool for regligious reasons, but no state requires homeschoolers to join a church or profess the Christian faith. (And you don't pass or fail the SAT, either.) Secular homeschoolers will easily find plenty of other people who aren't just putting their kids through religious indoctrination. For the last ten years the most growth among homeschoolers has been non-religious families.
The best reason to homeschool your kids: to be closer as a family. Too many parents don't know their kids, don't know what their kids are doing, and leave almost every aspect of their child's education and growth to total strangers. Nothing can replace spending time with your kids every day. Numerous studies, not to mention common sense, show that kids who spend time with their parents and are part of a family do better in life.
The socialization issue is really a non-issue; people with don't like homeschooling for one reason or another always trot that out. Spend some time in a public school and say with a straight face that most of those kids show healthy socialization. Do you really want your kids to spend 12 years in an artificial, opressive, regimented, and cruel environment that--at best--prepares them to do what they are told, to blindly accept arbitrary authority, and to jump whenever a bell rings?
Some homeschooled kids are spelling bee geeks. Some are jocks. Some are social butterflies. To me they mostly seem like well-adjusted versions of schooled kids, minus the toxic amounts of peer pressure and grade anxiety the schooled kids carry around. And I don't have to wait for the 10th grade skills test to find out what my kids know or don't know.
The "professional teacher" argument is another red herring favored by teachers and "education professionals." Kids know how to learn on their own. Almost everyone learns the single hardest skill they will ever learn--speaking their own language--with no professional help at all. Believe in your child, and yourself. If you don't know how to teach your child something you can easily find someone who can. Many homeschooled kids we know attend some classes at private schools or community college, to learn things like languages or music that are best taught by an expert.
I have three homeschooled kids and my wife and I are involved in various city and state groups of homeschoolers. Social activities dominate the calendar: skating, teen dances and activities, camping, museum trips, 4-H, soccer and other sports, various clubs and study groups, etc. etc. Lots of kids have part-time jobs. Most will go to college: homeschooling conventions and curriculum fairs attract recruiters from Ivy-league schools now, and homeschoolers have higher college admission rates than public school kids.
Don't accept random opinions from slashdotters to decide something so important. Find a local group of like-minded (secular or religious) homeschoolers and attend some activities. Read about it: John Holt's two excellent books How Children Fail and How Children Learn will open your eyes.
If you still think public school has something magical to offer, or that the folks who run the school and choose the curriculum know more than you do, read John Taylor Gatto's excellent essay The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher at:www.cantrip.org/gatto.html
Now, when I tell my friends who email me at my mac.com address that they'll need to mail me at yahoo or something instead, how is that going to make Apple look?
How does it make you look? Get a real email address. Clue: they aren't free.
Why on earth does anyone expect Apple to give OSX updates away for free? Toyota doesn't give away updated cars every year; they don't even give away new tires. O'Reilly doesn't send out free second editions of their books. Sony doesn't give away Playstation games just because you bought a console.
.mac email address also complained about how Apple's email service sucks?
If you want to use a Mac then you have to pay for it, the same way that you pay for a BMW if you don't feel like driving a Yugo.
If you don't want to pay for your OS use Linux or FreeBSD. If you don't like Apple's prices use Windows. I'm sure a lot of you will install a pirated 10.2 update anyway so why complain about it--should Apple send you a blank CDR for free too?
Did anyone over 9 yrs old really think iTools/.mac would be free forever? Either you pay or you get ads pasted into your email--that's how the real world works. Show of hands: how many people who complain about losing their free
Grow up, get a job, pay for shit you use. You'll find out that's how things work outside of the dorm room and mommy's basement.
#5 - ...Don't show up in a suit unless it's an executive position
You should have some idea of appropriate dress before interviewing. Walk through the parking lot at 8:30am or 5:00pm and observe. Better yet, call or walk in and ask the receptionist what kind of clothes other candidates are wearing.
You should always look presentable and comfortable, and maybe a little overdressed. But if the only suit you have is from your high school graduation, and you don't know how to knot a tie, don't bother wearing it--you'll look like an idiot.
Go easy on the facial hair and hair gel, and remove any visible piercings. Avoid perfume or cologne. Be a little more conservative and a little more dressy than you would expect to be every day at that job, but don't go overboard.
Buy a good pair of standard, classic dress shoes--nothing unusual or fancy. I want to cry when someone comes to an interview with an ill-fitting blue suit AND a scuffed old pair of brown Timberlands. That's even worse than 300-pound geeks with huge beards, hiking shorts, and Birkenstocks over colorful socks.
Women, avoid fuck-me pumps or disco shoes, but don't look like you work at a nursing home, either. And go easy on jewelry (especially costume jewelry), scarves, purses, etc.--you don't want to look like a junior real estate agent.
The jobs are there but you have to work at finding them and getting one. Standing out solely on technical qualifications can be tough if you don't have 10 or more years real experience, so be the candidate they remember. Be polite, easy to talk to, interested, curious, eager.
I can't emphasize writing and speaking and good manners enough. If you come across as illiterate, uncomfortable, or socially handicapped (as so many geeks do), you are handicapped in the job market. The last time I interviewed candidates for a mid-level programmer job we had candidates show up unwashed, in skateboarder clothes; we had candidates who seemed uneasy around other humans; we had candidates who mumbled "I guess" and "I mean" and "You know what I'm saying" every few words, as if they had speech lessons from Eminem; we had candidates launch into scary (and irrelevant) anti-Microsoft or anti-Linux tirades that made us hope they weren't armed; we had candidates who obviously devoted too much time to body piercing and not enough to reading our job description.
Learn to write. Read outside your discipline. Practice speaking, composing your thoughts, talking to a group. Practice problem-solving skills. Practice debugging--SourceForge is overflowing with opportunities for working on real code. Don't wait to learn on-the-job: spend some time every day learning something new. Use Borders as a library with coffee.
Learn something about the businesses and industries that might hire you. Learn a little about accounting, inventory, logistics, sales, marketing, manufacturing, publishing, etc., so at least you know what the jargon means and what questions make sense.
Learn databases and SQL. Learn them really well. It takes a while but you have to start sometime. Most companies have databases old enough to have seen many industry trends come and go.
When job hunting you'll be competing with people who have the same stuff on their resume as you do, more or less. Stand out by presenting yourself well. Show some ability to string two thoughts together. Show enthusiasm about solving problems, debugging skanky old code, working as part of a team.
Job hunting is not like taking tests in school where the best student ranks at the top of their class. Employers usually make up their mind about you in the first few minutes (or first few seconds if you smell bad, dress like a slacker, or display poor manners). Take 20 Java programmers with equivalent experience and certifications and the one who makes the interviewers believe he will fit in will get the job.
Join a user's group, go to trade shows, network. Ask people you know who have jobs what kind of people their company needs. Get names of skilled recruiters and work with them--they aren't all dishonest scumbags. If you have time do volunteer work--you can meet people who can point you at full-time jobs.
The short-term bubble that burst and put so many techies on the street persuaded too many of them that growing unusual facial hair and learning Flash would set them up for a lifetime, or at least get them in a Volkswagen commercial. Sorry to break it to you, but employers have sobered up now.
Good luck.
Ummm, no. There was once on this planet several species of humans living concurrently. Homo Sapiens destroyed all competing species (unless you subscribe to the Bigfoot theory).
What's your point? Lots of species go extinct and individuals fight to survive in their own way. In fact evolution predicts that one species of human would push out the others; in any ecosystem there is very little room at the top. In all of North American you can count only a few apex predators; there simply isn't room for a lot of them.
The conceit I refer to is assuming we are exempt from natural laws (evolution) simply because we are human. We will certainly affect our own evolution, but the process goes on.
The irreducible complexity issue has been addressed at length by Richard Dawkins and others. In fact the author the paper you linked to and one of his books are discussed by Dawkins.
The mousetrap analogy is false. Remove any part and the mousetrap ceases to function as a mousetrap. It does not cease to exist, though. A horse may be born with a pair of stubby wings. The horse can't fly, but as long as the wings don't lessen the horse's chances at survival and reproduction the wings don't do that horse any harm. Mutations and adaptations don't have to be advantageous; they can be neutral, or even disadvantageous if they are offset by other factors. The widespread survival of Americans with genetically-based diseases is an example of an ofsetting environmental factor.
Read some Richard Dawkins books for an expert's refutation of the irreducible complexity issue.
It took 200 years for anyone to start believing darwin
Not quite. Fact: Charles Darwin was born in 1809. The Origin of Species was first published in 1859. People started believing it right away. By 1925 the matter was already in U.S. Courts (the Scopes "Monkey Trial").
It's also not true that scientific method only allows for disproving a theory. Duplicating an experiment or obtaining corroborating evidence bolsters a theory.
Evolution is part of life's process, it goes on regardless of human conceit. I don't know what you mean by "few people die." Last I checked we can all plan on dying. The human death rate is at 100%, as always; it just takes longer than it used to.
Jerry Springer's audience aside, the genetically fit are more likely to pass their genes on, and their offspring are more likely to survive. What makes an individual genetically more or less fit may or may not match your notions of genetically inferior or superior, but that is irrelevant.
Evolution is accepted as fact by scientists and thinking people. It is no more or less a theory than physics or astronomy.
Many details of evolution are not understood, particularly the genetic mechanisms. This new discovery helps answer some of those questions, but it doesn't make evolution any more "real" than it already is. It's possible we haven't discovered every moon or even every planet in our solar system, but that doesn't mean the sun may actually revolve around the earth after all. We're pretty sure we haven't found all of the subatomic particles, and we still don't agree on what makes gravity, but physics is still secure and we don't expect the Red Sea to part on its own.
Accepting Creationism means tossing out all of established science. Creationism is the adversary of all science, not just Darwinian evolution.
The US Navy should have issued their pilots Serbian cell phones instead of cheap-ass satellite radios. The Serbs use their cell phones everywhere, in terrain where the Navy-issue radios go dead. I can't get that kind of cell service in a major US city, and our infrastructure is still intact.
I feel bad for Gene Hackman--he's a really great actor in the right role. Unfortunately in this loser he plays the part usually given to Fred Thompson.
I guess Owen Wilson can add "action hero" to his credits, now that he's outrun bullets and mines, jumped off a cliff to catch a Marine's hand, and stabbed a bad guy in the chest with a flare. You don't see that kind of stuff very often.
My connection to @home died at midnight PST. About 30 minutes later my cable modem's online light came back on. I couldn't get anywhere on the web, but simply changing my router to DHCP and restarting put me back online. Yahoo, CNET, Slashdot all accessible. My new email account @attbi.com is working. In in Portland, Oregon for anyone keeping score.
Very smooth. Nice job, AT&T.