I guess what you see is a bad thing, is actually a good thing in my book. Do you want your leader's vote to be for sale to the most powerful lobby, or would you rather it be for sale to the public opinion of the majority? I prefer option three. The oath of office includes the phrase "serve and defend the Constitution, against all enemies foreign and domestic". The most dangerous enemy the Constitution can ever face is a domestic majority that believes the Constitution should be gutted. So I want a politician with the courage to defend the Constitution against popular opinion.
Agreed, small companies and consulting really are the best places for the high talent older programmer. I work at a small software vendor, and while there is an on-call rotation, it's nothing like what I endured in my twenties. Back then, at a large corporate IT department, I could get five calls a night for a week running.
At the smaller shop, with much more experience behind the codebase, I get about one after hours call per year.
This is just another example of a gubment windbag trying to grab some press for being the 'good guy' while not actually doing shit for his constituents.
A heck of a lot of very big snowballs start out as something quite small. I give the Senator credit for starting with a simple, reasonable request that nobody could really say no to. Had he started off by tearing into their flesh he'd have probably gotten nowhere. But this way he can keep asking for just a little more rope until he's got enough to hang them with.
It helps being old enough to remember recent history.
Back in the '80s, the US IT press was full of stories about how the Japanese were going to take over America, with both money and computer technology. The Ministry of Trade and Information (MITI) was touted as the all-knowing agency masterminding the invasion, with tools such as Project Z, aiming to produce the definitive fifth generation computer language.
The popular media was running alarming stories about how the Japanese were buying up golf courses and hotel chains, and owned more of the United States than any other foreign country.
But along the way, a few things were overlooked. The measure of ownership was comparing recent Japanese purchases to older book value purchases by other countries. In fact, Denmark owned more US properties than Japan ever did, correcting for inflation of market values over time.
And the technology project flopped. It was a triumph of central planning, a brilliant piece of work from people who believed a command economy could work for software. It resembled Open Source in no manner at all, nor did it resemble any capitalist company.
At the same time, the Japanese economy remained mercantilist, producing strictly for export, and went into a ten-year depression. While we recently went through one of the longer periods of economic expansion in our history.
So I see some parallels here. I hope for India's sake that they avoid the Japanese mistake, and continue to have a multi-lateral market. That would be quite good for all sides. If they don't, it'll be their loss; a permanent imbalance will send them into the same tailspin Japan went through.
But if they start attracting technology jobs persistently, with a free society and open markets, they'll promote themselves into a First World county, with a standard of living just like ours. And expenses of living, just like ours.
And after they're up at our level, the job flow will balance right back out.
While it could be a little rough during the transition, there are some things to remember. Top talent with people skills always has its pick of jobs. So be good at two things: Some piece of technology, and dealing with people. Those are always your edge with a remote low-cost provider.
Remember the saying, "Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick any two" ? The other person has cheap nailed. You have to win on the good and fast attributes.
Electronic Boutique is pretty cool about it. I bought a couple games there last month, and they said I could return them for any reason within two weeks. Exchange for anything else in the store, no problem. It could be that they recognize me by now, I do spend a certain amount there every year.
But I also checked their website, and they'll accept returns on anything within 30 days.
Actually, harsh questioning can often be a good sign. Read through this document about oral arguments before the Supreme Court. Section V., on questioning, indicates what I've heard a few commentators point out, that the side receiving the toughest questions can suprisingly come out on top in the final ruling.
Perhaps something's been overlooked here. Often any corporation's largest cost is found in wages and salaries. It's a good bet that for an ISP it's the help desk.
Inquiring minds want to know how much of that slice is taken up by a very small segment of subscribers.
To add to your argument, banking records are not covered by the First Amendment and are routinely coughed up by banks. Telephone calling records are also readily produced, even though they could be construed as a means to limit freedom of association.
So if this goes through to the Supremes, all sorts of things could be on the line.
IANAL, but I've read a number of stories about the US Supreme Court knocking down any number of car searches as illegal. A quick google search with the keywords "scotus illegal car search" produced volumes of material. The first link was instructive, a reversal by the Supremes of an illegal search in Iowa in 1996.
I usually read Yahoo and the Washington Post for news about the Supreme Court decisions. It's hardly as gloomy a situation as you imply.
Embedded systems often need good recycle times. A weapons programmer gave me the title quote, wish I could attribute it but it really made the point to me.
You can protect yourself from those after the fact surprises by adding your own clause to the initial employment agreement. Words to the effect that they have to give you a year's salary if they even show you a non-compete agreement.
This is certainly hardball and only something to try if you've got multiple offers.
Like I said in my above post, most of the people I know went to Europe and came back with stories of dislike for Americans. For example, some bars in Spain refuse to admit Americans because "they cause too much trouble".
Not to knock the friendliness of the Indian people while you were there, but don't you think it had something to do with the fact that you were in the Army? You wouldn't want to piss off people who were protecting you, in wartime (with another country) or otherwise.
Can't say I was ever stationed in Spain, but in Japan both of those experiences were true. There were some bars, usually high-class business places in cities close enough to a US military base that just wouldn't allow you in.
But get a little distance away, and your sake cup would never go more than half-empty, and you couldn't pay your own bar bill no matter how much you insisted (even if you learned Japanese grace, which really meant letting your host take care of you so he could keep face). And I really don't think they cared that I was there ostensibly protecting their country, it really came across as genuine hospitality.
I'll add to that. I did some of my first debugging 26 years ago. It was just RTFM, but I learned that early.
I've been paid for my computer skills for 21 years. I've demonstrated ability to learn, and then teach, any technology required.
My productivity is two orders of magnitude higher than the average programmer, still even one order after I've taught them the technology.
Some companies do take a while to pass me through the required levels of their interview screen. Those that take too long, lose.
Because by then I'm working for their competition.
The companies that can recognize and hire talent, without any kind of blinders, will win. There maybe temporary blips as the job food chain is momentarily dominated by the stupids, but they'll get eaten soon enough.
Two things to do that will apply the hurt to a cable company that tries this.
1) It's anti-telecommuting, so write a nice letter to your county gov't official that is most sensitive to growth and road paving issues. Might be your district official, might be a transportation committee chair. Let them know that your cable company (granted it's monopoly by the county) opposes telecommuting by its AUP.
2) It's abuse of monopoly, so write another nice letter to your county official that periodically reviews the cable company's franchise. Every few years, 3-7 or so, depending on where you live, the franchise has to be renewed. Most counties have staff to forward complaints from county residents to the cable company, and track the cable company's performance on fixing them. Use this channel, it's powerful!
They're quite accustomed to getting castoffs from the other services. Back in 1980, the mainframe I was operating was a ten-year old reconditioned graveyard piece, found in packing crates covered in mud from the Mekong delta. Enough freshwater rinses, and it came back to life.
Linux will fit well with the something-for-nothing mindset there.
I remember that was the coolant of choice for IBM mainframes in the '80s. Although that might have been just for the loop to the rooftop heat exchanger, it seems like it had some properties that improved the amount of heat transferred.
Because your town and street corners analogy is flawed. Suppose this auction was non-digital, but you still had all the other elements of people with things to sell, people that want to buy them, a place to meet, and price setting mechanisms. Yahoo is providing the place and the mechanism.
If they're repeatedly told by a copyright owner of violations, they're liable. Providing the place, setting up a pricing mechanism, but failing to to perform even minimal supervision of the activities does make them liable in the real world. So it should in this case also.
The brain's rather strange in these situations. I was in a car accident many years ago that left me unconscious for hours, waking up in a strange hospital and no idea how I got there.
My injuries were nowhere near Jason's in severity, but a strong concussion left me with no clue what day it was. All I could figure out was late July or early August. Strangely, I could remember breakfast that day, and my last code build number, but nothing after about ten minutes before the accident.
His ramblings sound eerily familiar, I have odd recollections of babbling in fragments of coherency that gradually made more and more sense.
It's sounds like he's recovering, albeit slowly, let's just keep hoping.
The obvious next step is to provide some duct tape and wrapping around these tools to provide similar functionality (though not run-alike compatibility) to SAS
Which is an interesting statement of itself. In most MVS shops I've found that SAS is frequently used as the glue and duct tape itself, often in the role of a batch scripting facility.
I've not seen how well it works with other Unix platforms, does it tend to fill more of a pure stats facility, since Unix has vastly better native scripting?
And here's some music for the younger geeks. Not mine, unattributed author on a home-schooling mailing list. > > THE PI SONG > (to the tune of "Oh Christmas Tree") > > Oh, number Pi > Oh, number Pi > Your digits are unending, > Oh, number Pi > Oh, number Pi > No pattern are you sending. > You're three point one four one five nine, > And even more if we had time, > Oh, number Pi > Oh, number Pi > For circle lengths unbending. > > Oh, number Pi > Oh, number Pi > You are a number very sweet, > Oh, number Pi > Oh, number Pi > Your uses are so very neat. > There's 2 Pi r and Pi r squared, > A half a circle and you're there, > Oh, number Pi > Oh, number Pi > We know that Pi's a tasty treat. >
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed, small companies and consulting really are the best places for the high talent older programmer. I work at a small software vendor, and while there is an on-call rotation, it's nothing like what I endured in my twenties. Back then, at a large corporate IT department, I could get five calls a night for a week running. At the smaller shop, with much more experience behind the codebase, I get about one after hours call per year.
A heck of a lot of very big snowballs start out as something quite small. I give the Senator credit for starting with a simple, reasonable request that nobody could really say no to. Had he started off by tearing into their flesh he'd have probably gotten nowhere. But this way he can keep asking for just a little more rope until he's got enough to hang them with.
I downloaded it, installed it, and was about to try it until I saw it had installed a desktop link to try out "Free BonziBuddy".
Trashed it fast, running Ad-Aware now.
Seen this one yet? It's the Milky Way in a sequence of 10x zooms.
It helps being old enough to remember recent history.
Back in the '80s, the US IT press was full of stories about how the Japanese were going to take over America, with both money and computer technology. The Ministry of Trade and Information (MITI) was touted as the all-knowing agency masterminding the invasion, with tools such as Project Z, aiming to produce the definitive fifth generation computer language.
The popular media was running alarming stories about how the Japanese were buying up golf courses and hotel chains, and owned more of the United States than any other foreign country.
But along the way, a few things were overlooked. The measure of ownership was comparing recent Japanese purchases to older book value purchases by other countries. In fact, Denmark owned more US properties than Japan ever did, correcting for inflation of market values over time.
And the technology project flopped. It was a triumph of central planning, a brilliant piece of work from people who believed a command economy could work for software. It resembled Open Source in no manner at all, nor did it resemble any capitalist company.
At the same time, the Japanese economy remained mercantilist, producing strictly for export, and went into a ten-year depression. While we recently went through one of the longer periods of economic expansion in our history.
So I see some parallels here. I hope for India's sake that they avoid the Japanese mistake, and continue to have a multi-lateral market. That would be quite good for all sides. If they don't, it'll be their loss; a permanent imbalance will send them into the same tailspin Japan went through.
But if they start attracting technology jobs persistently, with a free society and open markets, they'll promote themselves into a First World county, with a standard of living just like ours. And expenses of living, just like ours. And after they're up at our level, the job flow will balance right back out.
While it could be a little rough during the transition, there are some things to remember. Top talent with people skills always has its pick of jobs. So be good at two things: Some piece of technology, and dealing with people. Those are always your edge with a remote low-cost provider.
Remember the saying, "Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick any two" ? The other person has cheap nailed. You have to win on the good and fast attributes.
Electronic Boutique is pretty cool about it. I bought a couple games there last month, and they said I could return them for any reason within two weeks. Exchange for anything else in the store, no problem. It could be that they recognize me by now, I do spend a certain amount there every year.
But I also checked their website, and they'll accept returns on anything within 30 days.
Not all merchants distrust their customers.
Actually, harsh questioning can often be a good sign. Read through this document about oral arguments before the Supreme Court. Section V., on questioning, indicates what I've heard a few commentators point out, that the side receiving the toughest questions can suprisingly come out on top in the final ruling.
Inquiring minds want to know how much of that slice is taken up by a very small segment of subscribers.
Help stamp out Help-Desk Hogs today!
To add to your argument, banking records are not covered by the First Amendment and are routinely coughed up by banks. Telephone calling records are also readily produced, even though they could be construed as a means to limit freedom of association.
So if this goes through to the Supremes, all sorts of things could be on the line.
I usually read Yahoo and the Washington Post for news about the Supreme Court decisions. It's hardly as gloomy a situation as you imply.
We did that, and more. I modified the core loader tape to erase the boot loader, so the victim would have to toggle it in again.
One particularly obtuse recipient of this gift repeated the cycle seven times.
He wasn't very fond of my presence after that.
Embedded systems often need good recycle times. A weapons programmer gave me the title quote, wish I could attribute it but it really made the point to me.
I'm not so sure about that. In 1975 I was washing dishes for 1.70USD/hour. Paperbacks, new, were sometimes 1.25, but more like 1.75 and 1.95USD.
But I take your point more generally, as a 7.95 paperback today as quite a bit more than the 5.40 (?) minimum hourly wage today.
You can protect yourself from those after the fact surprises by adding your own clause to the initial employment agreement. Words to the effect that they have to give you a year's salary if they even show you a non-compete agreement.
This is certainly hardball and only something to try if you've got multiple offers.
Like I said in my above post, most of the people I know went to Europe and came back with stories of dislike for Americans. For example, some bars in Spain refuse to admit Americans because "they cause too much trouble".
Not to knock the friendliness of the Indian people while you were there, but don't you think it had something to do with the fact that you were in the Army? You wouldn't want to piss off people who were protecting you, in wartime (with another country) or otherwise.
Can't say I was ever stationed in Spain, but in Japan both of those experiences were true. There were some bars, usually high-class business places in cities close enough to a US military base that just wouldn't allow you in.
But get a little distance away, and your sake cup would never go more than half-empty, and you couldn't pay your own bar bill no matter how much you insisted (even if you learned Japanese grace, which really meant letting your host take care of you so he could keep face). And I really don't think they cared that I was there ostensibly protecting their country, it really came across as genuine hospitality.
I'll add to that. I did some of my first debugging 26 years ago. It was just RTFM, but I learned that early.
I've been paid for my computer skills for 21 years. I've demonstrated ability to learn, and then teach, any technology required.
My productivity is two orders of magnitude higher than the average programmer, still even one order after I've taught them the technology.
Some companies do take a while to pass me through the required levels of their interview screen. Those that take too long, lose.
Because by then I'm working for their competition.
The companies that can recognize and hire talent, without any kind of blinders, will win. There maybe temporary blips as the job food chain is momentarily dominated by the stupids, but they'll get eaten soon enough.
Two things to do that will apply the hurt to a cable company that tries this.
1) It's anti-telecommuting, so write a nice letter to your county gov't official that is most sensitive to growth and road paving issues. Might be your district official, might be a transportation committee chair. Let them know that your cable company (granted it's monopoly by the county) opposes telecommuting by its AUP.
2) It's abuse of monopoly, so write another nice letter to your county official that periodically reviews the cable company's franchise. Every few years, 3-7 or so, depending on where you live, the franchise has to be renewed. Most counties have staff to forward complaints from county residents to the cable company, and track the cable company's performance on fixing them. Use this channel, it's powerful!
They're quite accustomed to getting castoffs from the other services. Back in 1980, the mainframe I was operating was a ten-year old reconditioned graveyard piece, found in packing crates covered in mud from the Mekong delta. Enough freshwater rinses, and it came back to life.
Linux will fit well with the something-for-nothing mindset there.
I remember that was the coolant of choice for IBM mainframes in the '80s. Although that might have been just for the loop to the rooftop heat exchanger, it seems like it had some properties that improved the amount of heat transferred.
Because your town and street corners analogy is flawed. Suppose this auction was non-digital, but you still had all the other elements of people with things to sell, people that want to buy them, a place to meet, and price setting mechanisms. Yahoo is providing the place and the mechanism.
If they're repeatedly told by a copyright owner of violations, they're liable. Providing the place, setting up a pricing mechanism, but failing to to perform even minimal supervision of the activities does make them liable in the real world. So it should in this case also.
The brain's rather strange in these situations. I was in a car accident many years ago that left me unconscious for hours, waking up in a strange hospital and no idea how I got there.
My injuries were nowhere near Jason's in severity, but a strong concussion left me with no clue what day it was. All I could figure out was late July or early August. Strangely, I could remember breakfast that day, and my last code build number, but nothing after about ten minutes before the accident.
His ramblings sound eerily familiar, I have odd recollections of babbling in fragments of coherency that gradually made more and more sense.
It's sounds like he's recovering, albeit slowly, let's just keep hoping.
Which is an interesting statement of itself. In most MVS shops I've found that SAS is frequently used as the glue and duct tape itself, often in the role of a batch scripting facility.
I've not seen how well it works with other Unix platforms, does it tend to fill more of a pure stats facility, since Unix has vastly better native scripting?
And here's some music for the younger geeks. Not mine, unattributed author on a home-schooling mailing list.
>
> THE PI SONG
> (to the tune of "Oh Christmas Tree")
>
> Oh, number Pi
> Oh, number Pi
> Your digits are unending,
> Oh, number Pi
> Oh, number Pi
> No pattern are you sending.
> You're three point one four one five nine,
> And even more if we had time,
> Oh, number Pi
> Oh, number Pi
> For circle lengths unbending.
>
> Oh, number Pi
> Oh, number Pi
> You are a number very sweet,
> Oh, number Pi
> Oh, number Pi
> Your uses are so very neat.
> There's 2 Pi r and Pi r squared,
> A half a circle and you're there,
> Oh, number Pi
> Oh, number Pi
> We know that Pi's a tasty treat.
>