Why exactly is spam illegal? If you are presenting false information or running pump and dump schemes you may be breaking other preexisting laws, so another law is not required. But why is it illegal to send out large amounts of messages in accordance with the SMTP protocols?
If we are banning things that are annoying, I've got a long list of things to ban.
Some bureaucrat thinks he is helping the environment by making me do one of three things: 1) Keep driving with a failed inspection and pay the tickets I get. 2) Put more money into my car than it is worth to fix it. (Yeah. Like I'm going to do that.) 3) Buy a new car and scrap mine, even though it runs okay and still gets 35 MPG.
Surely it is better overall for me to put another 50k miles on my car with a mild emissions problem than to force the early manufacture of a new car 3 years early.
Oh. Stupid me. I forgot that this country runs on corruption and money. My "representative of the people" isn't trying to help. He is pocketing money from the people who make new cars, and want me to scrap mine and buy a new one.
I'm going with option 4) Only buy cars older than 1996. Hmm, I've always wanted a BMW e34.
You are lucky. My car started hesitating, getting lousy gas mileage, and the exhaust smelled like gas. I hooked it up to a code scanner and it said "Fuel mixture rich." No kidding, I never would have guessed that.
So I took it to a shop that had one of the multi-thousand dollar diagnostic systems from the manufacturer. The mechanic hooked it up and, you guessed it, "Fuel mixture rich."
The problem with that approach is that if you are advertising an IT position in Wisconsin, your candidates are going to be 99% white and 80% male. Your company probably has an official policy of "proactively striving for a diverse workplace" or something to that effect, not "employee demographics in line with the candidate pool or general local population".
Your rebuttal is a very good point. I hadn't thought of it; but now that you mention it, I notice that it often is an advantage in my current diverse workplace.
My Motorola v260 beeps loudly ever few minutes when the battery is low. I know when it starts beeping I have another 12 hours. There is no way to shut off the beeping.
Is there any evidence that diversity in the workplace has any tangible benefit to productivity, the bottom line, quality, or employee happiness? I would think that having a group of employees working together who have similar backgrounds, cultures, ideas, and styles would work better together than a diverse group - leading to higher productivity, higher employee happiness, better communication, and an overall positive effect on the bottom line.
One will often hear the argument that diversity brings different ideas and approaches to the table. This may be the case in some fields, and may have a positive impact in some fields. I suspect that IT is not one of those fields. Somebody is not likely to have a different and helpful perspective on any particular technical problem because they have different skin color, a different gender, or a different culture.
Before you call me racist, consider what I am suggesting: that a group of old nerdy white East-coast Slashdotters and a group of young liberal social Latino SoCal women will _both_ outperform a "diverse" group. I am not discussing, nor presently concerned with, the relative productivity of the first two groups.
It would be an interesting problem if it was shown that diversity actually hinders performance in certain fields. A corporation's policy of encouraging diversity would be in direct opposition to its responsibility to its shareholders.
Conduct a study that contradicts my hypothesis, I and will gladly admit to being wrong.
People try to redefine words they do not understand in terms that make no sense in relation to the real technical definition.
T1 (DS1) is not broadband. Ethernet is not broadband. If you mean "high speed internet", say "high speed internet". High is a relative term, so specific uses can be defined and redefined.
Managing a business is difficult, and always risky.
So is working for an entrepreneur. There are also all the employees who became broke and jobless because their employer's risks did not pay off. All of the risk, none of the potential for reward.
Why is it okay to describe the American Revolutionary War as a valiant attempt by the down-trodden to regain control of their lives? Oh yeah, because they won.
The American Revolutionary War was a case of the poor man fighting the rich man's war - the rich man was fighting threats of economic control from another source. The American Civil War was the same case. They just lost.
If you think it was only about slavery, keep in mind that the Union did not, at any point before or during the war, ban slavery in its own territory.
We did revolt against economic control by the wealthy who control the federal government. Half the country tried to leave. We lost because we were out-manned and out-gunned. Put up a hell of a fight though. If I walked down the street today with my 1851 Colt Navy in a holster (which was completely legal to do prior to the failed revolution), I would be harassed and probably jailed before released because it is still not a crime. If I walked down down the street today with the same weapon that the current armed forces use, I would be in jail for a long time.
There used to be two options: 1) Armed revolt. 2) Stop paying taxes until the government collapses for lack of funds.
Armed revolt is no longer possible, because we aren't armed. Cutting off the money is no longer possible because the very wealthy will continue to fund the tyrant, because he is good for business.
Regarding your example in your last paragraph - you didn't go through a ten step process, but you did design and write some sort of technical specification (on paper), and then revise that specification after seeing shortcomings. (There may be some people who can imagine a complete system and come up with the right design the first time around, but I am surely not one of them, nor do I imagine most people are.)
Why would that have been disastrous in a commercial situation?
And 99% of OSS projects suck. I know it is very trendy to start writing code and worry about figuring out what it is supposed to do later and to spend a lot of time rewriting code written without a clear vision, but there is no substitute for proper planning. It is along the same lines of the old adage "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
I don't know anything about the SE textbooks, I never read any of them. I just know from experience that if I don't have some sort of specification, be it a polished document or just ideas in my head that I thought long and hard about, I'm going to produce some nice looking code that doesn't do anything useful.
I usually get small portions of it working during steps 1) and 2). These portions are very helpful to my understanding and development of a technical spec, and sometimes even end up as working code in the finished product. They may even be enough to get somebody else interested. But they are not enough to show an idea of the whole project to somebody who isn't reading the specs and the code thoroughly.
Slashdot Mirror
Why exactly is spam illegal? If you are presenting false information or running pump and dump schemes you may be breaking other preexisting laws, so another law is not required. But why is it illegal to send out large amounts of messages in accordance with the SMTP protocols?
If we are banning things that are annoying, I've got a long list of things to ban.
I used to use aliases, but they got too cumbersome. Now I use a database table.
I started out following this tutorial: http://workaround.org/articles/ispmail-sarge/
Some bureaucrat thinks he is helping the environment by making me do one of three things:
1) Keep driving with a failed inspection and pay the tickets I get.
2) Put more money into my car than it is worth to fix it. (Yeah. Like I'm going to do that.)
3) Buy a new car and scrap mine, even though it runs okay and still gets 35 MPG.
Surely it is better overall for me to put another 50k miles on my car with a mild emissions problem than to force the early manufacture of a new car 3 years early.
Oh. Stupid me. I forgot that this country runs on corruption and money. My "representative of the people" isn't trying to help. He is pocketing money from the people who make new cars, and want me to scrap mine and buy a new one.
I'm going with option 4) Only buy cars older than 1996. Hmm, I've always wanted a BMW e34.
You are lucky. My car started hesitating, getting lousy gas mileage, and the exhaust smelled like gas. I hooked it up to a code scanner and it said "Fuel mixture rich." No kidding, I never would have guessed that.
So I took it to a shop that had one of the multi-thousand dollar diagnostic systems from the manufacturer. The mechanic hooked it up and, you guessed it, "Fuel mixture rich."
Chevrolet Prism (=Toyota Corolla), BTW.
The problem with that approach is that if you are advertising an IT position in Wisconsin, your candidates are going to be 99% white and 80% male. Your company probably has an official policy of "proactively striving for a diverse workplace" or something to that effect, not "employee demographics in line with the candidate pool or general local population".
Your rebuttal is a very good point. I hadn't thought of it; but now that you mention it, I notice that it often is an advantage in my current diverse workplace.
I know of no study on the subject.
My Motorola v260 beeps loudly ever few minutes when the battery is low. I know when it starts beeping I have another 12 hours. There is no way to shut off the beeping.
Is there any evidence that diversity in the workplace has any tangible benefit to productivity, the bottom line, quality, or employee happiness? I would think that having a group of employees working together who have similar backgrounds, cultures, ideas, and styles would work better together than a diverse group - leading to higher productivity, higher employee happiness, better communication, and an overall positive effect on the bottom line.
One will often hear the argument that diversity brings different ideas and approaches to the table. This may be the case in some fields, and may have a positive impact in some fields. I suspect that IT is not one of those fields. Somebody is not likely to have a different and helpful perspective on any particular technical problem because they have different skin color, a different gender, or a different culture.
Before you call me racist, consider what I am suggesting: that a group of old nerdy white East-coast Slashdotters and a group of young liberal social Latino SoCal women will _both_ outperform a "diverse" group. I am not discussing, nor presently concerned with, the relative productivity of the first two groups.
It would be an interesting problem if it was shown that diversity actually hinders performance in certain fields. A corporation's policy of encouraging diversity would be in direct opposition to its responsibility to its shareholders.
Conduct a study that contradicts my hypothesis, I and will gladly admit to being wrong.
"Information wants to be free."
My information doesn't have its own wants. Where are you getting your animate information? I want some.
People try to redefine words they do not understand in terms that make no sense in relation to the real technical definition.
T1 (DS1) is not broadband. Ethernet is not broadband. If you mean "high speed internet", say "high speed internet". High is a relative term, so specific uses can be defined and redefined.
Hmm. Kind of like if a display system was built entirely by developers. Think X + ICCCM + Motif.
h hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Aahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
So is working for an entrepreneur. There are also all the employees who became broke and jobless because their employer's risks did not pay off. All of the risk, none of the potential for reward.
It isn't about who is willing to take risks. It is about who is able to get other people to let him spend their money.
Why are people who do not understand what they are making decisions about the ones making the decisions?
Why is it okay to describe the American Revolutionary War as a valiant attempt by the down-trodden to regain control of their lives? Oh yeah, because they won.
The American Revolutionary War was a case of the poor man fighting the rich man's war - the rich man was fighting threats of economic control from another source.
The American Civil War was the same case. They just lost.
If you think it was only about slavery, keep in mind that the Union did not, at any point before or during the war, ban slavery in its own territory.
Many Iraqis are willing to die for their position. American's aren't even willing to be mildly inconvenienced.
We did revolt against economic control by the wealthy who control the federal government. Half the country tried to leave. We lost because we were out-manned and out-gunned. Put up a hell of a fight though. If I walked down the street today with my 1851 Colt Navy in a holster (which was completely legal to do prior to the failed revolution), I would be harassed and probably jailed before released because it is still not a crime. If I walked down down the street today with the same weapon that the current armed forces use, I would be in jail for a long time.
There used to be two options:
1) Armed revolt.
2) Stop paying taxes until the government collapses for lack of funds.
Armed revolt is no longer possible, because we aren't armed. Cutting off the money is no longer possible because the very wealthy will continue to fund the tyrant, because he is good for business.
The US is done. Europe is not far behind.
In my experience, the people who say "Amen" to just writing code end up with lousy architecture design.
They can get a court order to subpoena your phone records. Or if your provider is Verizon, they can just ask for them.
Regarding your example in your last paragraph - you didn't go through a ten step process, but you did design and write some sort of technical specification (on paper), and then revise that specification after seeing shortcomings. (There may be some people who can imagine a complete system and come up with the right design the first time around, but I am surely not one of them, nor do I imagine most people are.)
Why would that have been disastrous in a commercial situation?
What do you mean by "see everything as a conceptual system"?
And 99% of OSS projects suck. I know it is very trendy to start writing code and worry about figuring out what it is supposed to do later and to spend a lot of time rewriting code written without a clear vision, but there is no substitute for proper planning. It is along the same lines of the old adage "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
I don't know anything about the SE textbooks, I never read any of them. I just know from experience that if I don't have some sort of specification, be it a polished document or just ideas in my head that I thought long and hard about, I'm going to produce some nice looking code that doesn't do anything useful.
I usually get small portions of it working during steps 1) and 2). These portions are very helpful to my understanding and development of a technical spec, and sometimes even end up as working code in the finished product. They may even be enough to get somebody else interested. But they are not enough to show an idea of the whole project to somebody who isn't reading the specs and the code thoroughly.
I didn't realize you could do that. Thanks for the tip.
1) Requirements specification
2) Research helpful libraries and frameworks
3) Technical specification
4) Prototype
5) Realistic requirements specification
6) Research helpful libraries and frameworks
7) Rewritten technical specification
8) Revised requirements specification
9) Revised technical specification
10) Start implementation. Get portions of it working
11) Release alpha, look for help
12) ?
13) Profit!!!