Not to mention he cried through his 15 minutes of fame.
He had all the ability in the world to spin things in his favor, if not only in the eyes of fellow geeks, but still. I hope he uses some of that money to buy some thicker skin.
Are you high?
You understand that it's a video game console, and not a piece of software, right?
Re:The problem with the alternatives to PHP
on
Pro PHP Security
·
· Score: 1
You've really missed only one major point, and that's installation.. specifically of projects rather than languages.
Installing an existing PHP application is as simple as tar -zxvf. There's no need to edit fcgi/rb files to set paths, setup something specific with Lighty that's different from any other website, et cetera.
It has no entrance exam, no setup time.
At the same time, however, I feel that documentation is the single greatest factor. PHP.net is nothing short of amazing, and other, "better" frameworks out there have little to no documentation at all. Couple that with the fact that in addition to learning a framework, a lot of developers will be learning a new language at the same time, and you're really screwed without some decent documentation.
All in all, however, I feel it's just a matter of time. After using it for half a decade, I ran out of interest in PHP before I had ever seen Rails, Django or anything else out there today.
It's a fantastic language, but PHP and Classic ASP are dinosaurs... "low level" web application languages... in this day and age.
While I'm personally no supporter of Perl for web application development, doesn't it make more sense to blame the people writing slashcode rather than the language for those errors?
He traded the KISS Snowglobe for a role in a movie. He then traded the role in the movie for the farmhouse. Nowhere in the article, in his bio, or anywhere else you could have yanked it did it say he was a filmmaker.
Re:Recommendation
on
SQL Cookbook
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The PHP manual is the absolute must use resource.
Not only is it obviously a complete reference guide to the language, but the user comments on each function often cover a wide variety of uses that can help solve your particular problem. More importantly, if poor quality code is posted, someone will often post a cleaned up version.
Not to knock books at all. Just saying, there's a great free resource out there that is vastly superior to the hundreds of ad ridden script sites.
Your end point is essentially the long term answer.
I can only base my opinion on my own personal experience and what I've heard from others, but I think you went down the list of options almost to the letter.
Verbal or physical retaliation seem to work well for most people I've talked with about this. I have a knack--that I'm not particularly proud of--for verbally destroying people, and when I learned to stop pitying myself and dish it back out, I stopped having problems.
Physical violence is never a good solution, but it's definitely a way to show you mean business. I think the downside to it is that when it comes to verbal retaliation, the worst outcome is that your comeback falls totally flat... with physical violence, you may end up with a meathead who's absolutely willing to follow through and beat the hell out of you.
But! A real point I'd like to make, and this is really the sad point for this kid, is that a lot of it depends on who you know. We seem to believe as a subculture that jocks are inherently bad, and we fuel the jock/geek feud as much as they do. As adults, it's easy to get past this, but it's absolutely possible to get past it in high school as well. There's nothing written in stone that prevents a practially defenseless nerd from being friends with the toughest son of a bitch in the place. I can't stress what an important lesson it is to find common ground with everyone, and how important it is to be loyal and protective of your friends, especially those who might not to be able or willing to protect themselves. Your friends may be able to stop bullying better than you can on your own.
But, you have a real point. My personal situation doesn't dictate potential outcomes for this kid or for anyone else. Some of us end up in situations where things stay like that, and it's really unfortunate. I just hate to see people so frightened when they haven't even tried to properly defend themselves.
1. As many people have pointed out, the simplest way to stop being bullied is to stop taking shit from other people. It is an effective method that I finally discovered in the middle of high school and it did nothing short of change my life. The kid has had the ability to spin this since day one--either by embracing his internet fame or by showing these bullies that they couldn't ruin his life. Instead, his parents sued their parents. Great idea.
2. I've seen that video at least a dozen times, not including parodies of the Matrix, et cetera made from it... and I couldn't tell him from any other fat white kid in a line up. Until this article, I had no idea what his name even was. Unless he's walking around swinging a broom handle, I doubt anyone else will know who he is either.
I can completely understand your point.
When it's appropriate, I curse like a sailor. I have zero problem with it--words are just words and all of that--but over the past few years there's been an outrageous increase in the number of times I run into people screaming racial slurs online.
I am a firm believer in the thought that nothing is sacred, and everything is up for a potential laugh, but the manner in which these words are used is insane. It's like every fourteen year old in the US has replaced the word noob with another n word.
Taking a small to moderate pay cut for a small to moderate increase in on-the-job happiness probably isn't worth it.
I left a company where I was doing web application development in a language I despised for another where I was Chief Web Monkey. It was a startup like you seem to be talking about, and at first it was great--I had the opportunity to really branch out my skill set by helping to set this company up from scratch. For the first six weeks or so, I exchanged my keyboard for a tool belt, and together with the rest of the IT team, we removed and installed carpet, built walls, put together a beautiful custom NOC, et cetera. Unfortunately, after another six weeks, I realized that I hadn't traded pay for happiness--I had traded job security for coding preferences.
Eventually the company went under, and the state of the economy at the time left me back at the bottom of the ladder. It was shocking how hard I had to try to scrape back to the level I was at before I left to join the startup.
What I'm trying to say is--yes, I absolutely believe that a pay cut is acceptable to do something you'll really enjoy, but don't confuse a job more interesting than your own for one worth jumping ship for. When the job comes along, as yourself this question, as ridiculous as it sounds--If I was financially golden, and had no reason to work a moment for the rest of my life, would I work here?
If you wouldn't even consider it, then it's not worth it. Stay where you are, do your monkey work, and cash your big paycheck. On the other hand if your answer is Yes, then jump ship immediately.
Personally, I've realized that it takes considerably less money than I originally projected to have a great standard of living, especially if you've got a significant other picking up part of the tab. I'm filling in some loose ends and saving up to jump ship within the next eighteen months myself--but I'm going to do what I'd do if I was loaded, and leave being a code monkey behind as best I can.
You have taken a single sentence out of context. Good job.
If you bother to include the whole relevant paragraph, Tycho says that correct information does eventually triumph over bullshit on collaboratve projects like Wikipedia, but that it's idiotic to fight with the people posting bullshit rather than just exclude them from directly editing articles.
Last night a jackass friend of mine changed the last sentence in the Michael Jackson article's child molestion section to read "Michael Jackson never molested any children. He made love to them." And wham, it was live on the internet for at least an hour. Doesn't that seem ridiculous? Shouldn't peers at least have to evaluate the edit first, rather than spending time to correct this stupid shit?
I feel your pain. I'm a 23 year old web application developer, but I have experience deploying wireless internet access (for last mile and otherwise), building machines, and doing admin work under Linux, FreeBSD and 2000/2003. Five years ago my portfolio was enough to land an entry level job for a language I had no practical experience with. The company was willing to pay me to learn the language at my own pace before I even began real work.
When I came in, the company was restructuring and for all practical purposes there was no onsite suit-style bossman. After a while, they began to introduce new management types who were eager to turn our lax, productive creative environment into something that made us look more like telemarketers, so the vast majority of the IT staff left for a startup headed by the boss who had been fired just before I came on board.
Six months later, I had experience painting, carpeting, and installing racks, and no job to show for it. Our boss at the startup lied to us about why he had been fired, and ran the new company into the ground until he was hauled away in handcuffs.
Since then, I've done everything possible to expand my skillset, but even with my now nonexistant standards, I haven't been able to find a job. I live in a small market, but things seem so spread out it's outrageous--a few weeks ago there was an ad in the paper for a combination system administrator and mail clerk. It's unbelievably embarassing to go from being the most successful person you know back to mooching off your irritated parents.
My advice to anyone considering entering the IT field is to either find a foot in the door somewhere and stick with it, regardless of what better opportunities may seem to arise, or to find another field. Personally, I'm writing a book and doing occasional freelance web application development at rates that are more sad than a basket of dead puppies.
Years ago, a few friends of mine and I spent two weeks in Spain. My Spanish isn't so great, so when I tried to order a screw driver, I ended up with vodka and orange Fanta instead. Up until this moment, I was sure that was the greatest Fanta moment of all time, but now you're telling me Fanta has its own console? Truly we live in a great time.
I hear this bullshit from people all of the time. One of my friend's insists I'm a "rare case." My parents, my only set of parents before you come up with some stupid term for the people who had to fuck to make me, are unable to have children.
Outside of having weird questions (How do I know my medical history? How do I know my ancestry? Eventually I guess you give up and realize you don't know those things, and neither does anybody else), I'm no different than anyone else.
What I wonder about this situation is why does the kid want to know? I don't understand the urge to meet the particular people who have donated their genes to your parents. If I did meet my genetic "parents," if they must so be called, they would be no different from any other random SOB off the street. What this kid needs to learn to appreciate is that he has loving parents who he wasn't forced onto because of a drunken accident.
I sell high range PCs, and (several months ago) decided to go back to my "eBay roots" and see how things went there. What I discovered is that eBay Stores have become a way to oversaturate every category known to man with items that don't even exist (Sure, I have 500 AthlonFX PCs for sale, as long as you buy them and are willing to wait for me to order parts and assemble them). To make matters worse, all of those items were featured and all the rest of eBays standard BS, so there are apparently newer ways to be featured that cost even more.
After reading several pages of either idiotic defense of individuality or blatant descrimination based on appearance, your post is refreshingly to the point.
Consider this in reference to your own story: my first real job in IT was tech support for a local ISP. Because we have limited (ie: practically zero) face to face interaction with customers, the atmosphere was about as formal as my living room. Most days I would wear jeans and a geeky t-shirt.
One day, one of the higher ups had his mother come in so we could diagnose the problems with her laptop in person. I just so happened to be wearing Think Geek's "I read your email" shirt, and she almost flipped her wig.
Piercings and tattoos are little different than clothes; you buy them, change them, and add more to your collection as you see fit. Just like clothes, there are places where certain things are appropriate and places where they are not. Just like clothes, regardless of what any overly conservative, crotchy old men say, they're not a valid representation of your worth as a person.
To make a final point related to the original blurb, I think the reason that piercings and tattoos are more accepted in the IT industry is because of the perceived age of the people working in IT.
Slashdot Mirror
Where, exactly, do you see modchips for sale on their site?
You are not alone. It makes me cringe.
Not to mention he cried through his 15 minutes of fame.
He had all the ability in the world to spin things in his favor, if not only in the eyes of fellow geeks, but still. I hope he uses some of that money to buy some thicker skin.
That's assuming you even get a DVD from them. The last Dell I bought had a partition, and I could "send away" for a proper XP CD.
You, sir, are a goddamn genius. 3
Are you high? You understand that it's a video game console, and not a piece of software, right?
You've really missed only one major point, and that's installation.. specifically of projects rather than languages. Installing an existing PHP application is as simple as tar -zxvf. There's no need to edit fcgi/rb files to set paths, setup something specific with Lighty that's different from any other website, et cetera. It has no entrance exam, no setup time. At the same time, however, I feel that documentation is the single greatest factor. PHP.net is nothing short of amazing, and other, "better" frameworks out there have little to no documentation at all. Couple that with the fact that in addition to learning a framework, a lot of developers will be learning a new language at the same time, and you're really screwed without some decent documentation. All in all, however, I feel it's just a matter of time. After using it for half a decade, I ran out of interest in PHP before I had ever seen Rails, Django or anything else out there today. It's a fantastic language, but PHP and Classic ASP are dinosaurs... "low level" web application languages... in this day and age.
While I'm personally no supporter of Perl for web application development, doesn't it make more sense to blame the people writing slashcode rather than the language for those errors?
He traded the KISS Snowglobe for a role in a movie. He then traded the role in the movie for the farmhouse. Nowhere in the article, in his bio, or anywhere else you could have yanked it did it say he was a filmmaker.
The PHP manual is the absolute must use resource.
Not only is it obviously a complete reference guide to the language, but the user comments on each function often cover a wide variety of uses that can help solve your particular problem. More importantly, if poor quality code is posted, someone will often post a cleaned up version.
Not to knock books at all. Just saying, there's a great free resource out there that is vastly superior to the hundreds of ad ridden script sites.
Your end point is essentially the long term answer.
I can only base my opinion on my own personal experience and what I've heard from others, but I think you went down the list of options almost to the letter.
Verbal or physical retaliation seem to work well for most people I've talked with about this. I have a knack--that I'm not particularly proud of--for verbally destroying people, and when I learned to stop pitying myself and dish it back out, I stopped having problems.
Physical violence is never a good solution, but it's definitely a way to show you mean business. I think the downside to it is that when it comes to verbal retaliation, the worst outcome is that your comeback falls totally flat... with physical violence, you may end up with a meathead who's absolutely willing to follow through and beat the hell out of you.
But! A real point I'd like to make, and this is really the sad point for this kid, is that a lot of it depends on who you know. We seem to believe as a subculture that jocks are inherently bad, and we fuel the jock/geek feud as much as they do. As adults, it's easy to get past this, but it's absolutely possible to get past it in high school as well. There's nothing written in stone that prevents a practially defenseless nerd from being friends with the toughest son of a bitch in the place. I can't stress what an important lesson it is to find common ground with everyone, and how important it is to be loyal and protective of your friends, especially those who might not to be able or willing to protect themselves. Your friends may be able to stop bullying better than you can on your own.
But, you have a real point. My personal situation doesn't dictate potential outcomes for this kid or for anyone else. Some of us end up in situations where things stay like that, and it's really unfortunate. I just hate to see people so frightened when they haven't even tried to properly defend themselves.
Two quick and obvious points:
1. As many people have pointed out, the simplest way to stop being bullied is to stop taking shit from other people. It is an effective method that I finally discovered in the middle of high school and it did nothing short of change my life. The kid has had the ability to spin this since day one--either by embracing his internet fame or by showing these bullies that they couldn't ruin his life. Instead, his parents sued their parents. Great idea.
2. I've seen that video at least a dozen times, not including parodies of the Matrix, et cetera made from it... and I couldn't tell him from any other fat white kid in a line up. Until this article, I had no idea what his name even was. Unless he's walking around swinging a broom handle, I doubt anyone else will know who he is either.
I can completely understand your point. When it's appropriate, I curse like a sailor. I have zero problem with it--words are just words and all of that--but over the past few years there's been an outrageous increase in the number of times I run into people screaming racial slurs online. I am a firm believer in the thought that nothing is sacred, and everything is up for a potential laugh, but the manner in which these words are used is insane. It's like every fourteen year old in the US has replaced the word noob with another n word.
Taking a small to moderate pay cut for a small to moderate increase in on-the-job happiness probably isn't worth it. I left a company where I was doing web application development in a language I despised for another where I was Chief Web Monkey. It was a startup like you seem to be talking about, and at first it was great--I had the opportunity to really branch out my skill set by helping to set this company up from scratch. For the first six weeks or so, I exchanged my keyboard for a tool belt, and together with the rest of the IT team, we removed and installed carpet, built walls, put together a beautiful custom NOC, et cetera. Unfortunately, after another six weeks, I realized that I hadn't traded pay for happiness--I had traded job security for coding preferences. Eventually the company went under, and the state of the economy at the time left me back at the bottom of the ladder. It was shocking how hard I had to try to scrape back to the level I was at before I left to join the startup. What I'm trying to say is--yes, I absolutely believe that a pay cut is acceptable to do something you'll really enjoy, but don't confuse a job more interesting than your own for one worth jumping ship for. When the job comes along, as yourself this question, as ridiculous as it sounds--If I was financially golden, and had no reason to work a moment for the rest of my life, would I work here? If you wouldn't even consider it, then it's not worth it. Stay where you are, do your monkey work, and cash your big paycheck. On the other hand if your answer is Yes, then jump ship immediately. Personally, I've realized that it takes considerably less money than I originally projected to have a great standard of living, especially if you've got a significant other picking up part of the tab. I'm filling in some loose ends and saving up to jump ship within the next eighteen months myself--but I'm going to do what I'd do if I was loaded, and leave being a code monkey behind as best I can.
Fuck you. That's all I have to say on the matter, heh.
You have taken a single sentence out of context. Good job.
If you bother to include the whole relevant paragraph, Tycho says that correct information does eventually triumph over bullshit on collaboratve projects like Wikipedia, but that it's idiotic to fight with the people posting bullshit rather than just exclude them from directly editing articles.
Last night a jackass friend of mine changed the last sentence in the Michael Jackson article's child molestion section to read "Michael Jackson never molested any children. He made love to them." And wham, it was live on the internet for at least an hour. Doesn't that seem ridiculous? Shouldn't peers at least have to evaluate the edit first, rather than spending time to correct this stupid shit?
What, exactly, does that rambling bunch of shit have to do with this hard drive?
I feel your pain. I'm a 23 year old web application developer, but I have experience deploying wireless internet access (for last mile and otherwise), building machines, and doing admin work under Linux, FreeBSD and 2000/2003. Five years ago my portfolio was enough to land an entry level job for a language I had no practical experience with. The company was willing to pay me to learn the language at my own pace before I even began real work.
When I came in, the company was restructuring and for all practical purposes there was no onsite suit-style bossman. After a while, they began to introduce new management types who were eager to turn our lax, productive creative environment into something that made us look more like telemarketers, so the vast majority of the IT staff left for a startup headed by the boss who had been fired just before I came on board.
Six months later, I had experience painting, carpeting, and installing racks, and no job to show for it. Our boss at the startup lied to us about why he had been fired, and ran the new company into the ground until he was hauled away in handcuffs.
Since then, I've done everything possible to expand my skillset, but even with my now nonexistant standards, I haven't been able to find a job. I live in a small market, but things seem so spread out it's outrageous--a few weeks ago there was an ad in the paper for a combination system administrator and mail clerk. It's unbelievably embarassing to go from being the most successful person you know back to mooching off your irritated parents.
My advice to anyone considering entering the IT field is to either find a foot in the door somewhere and stick with it, regardless of what better opportunities may seem to arise, or to find another field. Personally, I'm writing a book and doing occasional freelance web application development at rates that are more sad than a basket of dead puppies.
Years ago, a few friends of mine and I spent two weeks in Spain. My Spanish isn't so great, so when I tried to order a screw driver, I ended up with vodka and orange Fanta instead. Up until this moment, I was sure that was the greatest Fanta moment of all time, but now you're telling me Fanta has its own console? Truly we live in a great time.
:ipostedsomethingretardedemoticon
Agreed, he's just fodder for something that's always bothered me.
And you know this how exactly?
I hear this bullshit from people all of the time. One of my friend's insists I'm a "rare case." My parents, my only set of parents before you come up with some stupid term for the people who had to fuck to make me, are unable to have children.
Outside of having weird questions (How do I know my medical history? How do I know my ancestry? Eventually I guess you give up and realize you don't know those things, and neither does anybody else), I'm no different than anyone else.
What I wonder about this situation is why does the kid want to know? I don't understand the urge to meet the particular people who have donated their genes to your parents. If I did meet my genetic "parents," if they must so be called, they would be no different from any other random SOB off the street. What this kid needs to learn to appreciate is that he has loving parents who he wasn't forced onto because of a drunken accident.
Then your point is that you're not their target audience, making your opinion more than a little irrelevant.
Thanks for admitting that you're a troll.
I think you just ruined my childhood ;D
:D
When I saw the original post, I went OH NO THERE'S NOT, NOT ANYMORE! OOH OOH OOH! and immediately moved on to your reply, feeling smart.
Then I realized I learned all of this at Space Camp when I was like 11
We can only hope. eBay has become a menace.
I sell high range PCs, and (several months ago) decided to go back to my "eBay roots" and see how things went there. What I discovered is that eBay Stores have become a way to oversaturate every category known to man with items that don't even exist (Sure, I have 500 AthlonFX PCs for sale, as long as you buy them and are willing to wait for me to order parts and assemble them). To make matters worse, all of those items were featured and all the rest of eBays standard BS, so there are apparently newer ways to be featured that cost even more.
Absolutely insane.
After reading several pages of either idiotic defense of individuality or blatant descrimination based on appearance, your post is refreshingly to the point.
Consider this in reference to your own story: my first real job in IT was tech support for a local ISP. Because we have limited (ie: practically zero) face to face interaction with customers, the atmosphere was about as formal as my living room. Most days I would wear jeans and a geeky t-shirt.
One day, one of the higher ups had his mother come in so we could diagnose the problems with her laptop in person. I just so happened to be wearing Think Geek's "I read your email" shirt, and she almost flipped her wig.
Piercings and tattoos are little different than clothes; you buy them, change them, and add more to your collection as you see fit. Just like clothes, there are places where certain things are appropriate and places where they are not. Just like clothes, regardless of what any overly conservative, crotchy old men say, they're not a valid representation of your worth as a person.
To make a final point related to the original blurb, I think the reason that piercings and tattoos are more accepted in the IT industry is because of the perceived age of the people working in IT.