Tolkein had no objections to the dramatisation of the LoTR. It was first performed on the BBC back in 1955-56. Tolkein was dissatisfied with it, however. He also expressed interest in a cartoon version of LoTR: "As far as I am concerned personally, I should welcome the idea of an animated motion picture, with all the risk of vulgarization; and that quite apart from the glint of money..."
Yes, yes, I shouldn't have said niche, maybe something like "predominantly used in one field" or whatever. In terms of LOC, embedded development is pretty minor.
Being familiar with "pointers etc." isn't brain surgery. I've been a C programmer for many years, have a metric ton of running code out there in the world, and the weird reverence that some people (mostly those who aren't professional programmers, such as hobbyists and students) have for C has always puzzled me.
You are making an artificial distinction between the "IT world" and some other, higher realm. It's all programming. Some tasks are more trivial than others, and some tasks follow a pretty boilerplate way of doing things in order to improve time to market. Lots and lots and LOTS of former C programmers, who were good at their jobs, now happily code in Java. I'm sorry to burst your idealistic bubble, but that's the real world for you.
The point of the article is that there are a tiny fraction of developers actively writing C compared to those writing, say, Java (practically every enterprise app) or C++ (practically every desktop app). They are judging the "life" of a technology by the number of its practitioners.
And before someone jumps in to say, "Oh, but all the open source developers, blah blah," there honestly isn't that many compared even to C# developers. Honestly. And I say this as someone who has contributed his share of open source C.
So, there is a lot of legacy C around, and there is still lots being written in niche fields (embedded). But for active, mainstream, ground-up development, there isn't too much happening. No big deal, really, that's the nature of technology.
The parent is the best post in the thread thus far. A personal trading account, ETFs, and a bit of research go a long way, practically regardless of what you might happen to earn. Maximise your investments for the year ("pay yourself first"), then have fun with life. Bravo, sir, for keeping your eye on the ball.
"I don't believe I'm responding to this because it's such a F'ing joke, but here it goes"
No joke. Your initial reaction just shows how illogical you are.
As an example of your silliness:
"Fine, if scientology survives for 2000 years, I'll consider it a valid religion. Not my religion, but a valid one nonetheless."
So when Christianity was first invented, it wasn't a valid religion, but only became so when it reached this magical 2000 year old mark? What a pathetic argument.
Oh wait, are those church bells I hear? Better run along, sheep.
There are no contemporaneous, third-party accounts of Jesus that we know of. Everything about him was written after he supposedly died. It seems likely Jesus is a fictional figure.
There are other planets in the universe, even in our own galaxy.
Hydrogen bombs and volcanoes exist.
What never happened are the fantastical events linking them all together as described by the Church of Scientology.
Similarly, the Bible mentions all kinds of stuff that existed (ancient cities, a few historical figures [of which Jesus is probably not one]) and links them together with fictional stories. It's just been around for a lot longer, that's all. But at one time, Christianity was freshly invented too.
You seem to think that the Deathbed Rule means throwing all caution to the wind and living for today at every opportunity. It doesn't. One critical DR decision I made was to become completely debt-free in my 20s. Another was to start investing $1000 a month, every month. The DR is not an excuse to behave irresponsibly.
I live in Canada, so I pay $54.00 a month for health coverage. I pay for dental work as I need it - cleanings, basically (I am fortunate in that I've never had a cavity). I may purchase some form of extended health coverage at some point here, which would be the usual death and dismemberment stuff.
When I travel, I purchase travel insurance, which normally costs around a dollar a day. My provincial insurance covers me in the US to some degree, so when I go down there, I don't bother purchasing extra.
Here are some other hints to having the well-paid, yet lots of free time lifestyle:
1. Have someone else arrange your contracts for you. In other words, contract out to a contracting company, and have them subcontract you. I have a one year contract with a place that does just that. The advantages: you don't have to arrange the business stuff, pound the pavement to find contracts, etc., and you aren't legally liable if the relationship goes sour. The downside is you'll earn somewhat less.
2. Work at home. I collaborate with the other contractors on a given project online. I've never even met any of the clients. We do everything via Skype, pretty much. Skype is absolutely essential for this lifestyle, as it's ubiquitous and everyone seems to use it. The Linux client sort of sucks, unfortunately, so I switched to OS X.
By working at home, I free up a huge amount of time for fun stuff. I typically get up around 6:45 and shuffle over to the computer. By 1:00-2:00 or so, I'm finishing up for the day.
3. Learn Java and the current "hot" frameworks and libraries. I'm pretty lukewarm towards Java as it's not a terribly exciting language. However, it is the unofficial server-side standard. Learn it well, and you'll be turning away work on a regular basis. Because it's got a low barrier to entry, there are a ton of terrible Java programmers out there. If you can distinguish yourself with clean designs and implementations, and deliver in a reasonable fashion, then you'll be worth your weight in gold.
4. Communicate well and often. If you can write well, and lay out progress, designs, docs, etc. in a clean and concise fashion, clients will love you. Good communication skills are beyond crucial.
Well, let's not get carried away. Of course I'm taking reasonable steps for my future. I'm putting away enough so that I'll have a comfortable retirement, barring some huge disaster. The key word here is "balance".
'Whether you're rich and comfortable or not, when you're lying on your deathbed, are you going to think back on your life and say "if only I had tried this" or "I may not have done everything I wanted, but I gave it my best shot?"'
Bingo! I actually have a name for this: the Deathbed Rule. When faced with a choice in life, choose the path that will lead to good deathbed memories and no regrets.
By following this rule, I've done things that many might consider foolish - quit jobs to go travelling, spending months in other countries, and so forth. These days, I'm a contractor and I make it a rule to keep several months a year aside for fun stuff, even if that consists of just lazing around, spending time with my girlfriend and reading books, as I've done these past few weeks.
By not following the Deathbed Rule, I'd probably have more money saved, but an absolute dearth of worthy life experiences - I'd have lived a "normal" life until now. What a terrible thought.
Slashdot is CmdrTaco's blog site. It is biased by its very nature. It makes no claims to objectivity or to be a "true" news site. To put it another way, it's an opinion site by design.
Haha, that "surface of the sun" site is just hilarious - for those who don't want to be bothered, apparently the sun is a solid body covered by (wait for it) iron. This has GOT to be a gigantic troll. Hats off if so!
"Welcome to the twentieth century"? You might want to look at a calendar some time.
This ridiculous "story" should be pulled from the front page. Or, better yet, it should get the big "joke foot" icon put beside it. I'm not opposed to junk science stories for the sake of humour - laughing at creationists, the anti-global warming crowd, and these electrical universe kooks is all good fun.
"The Ogg Vorbis specification is in the public domain. It is completely free for commercial or noncommercial use. That means that commercial developers may independently write Ogg Vorbis software which is compatible with the specification for no charge and without restrictions of any kind." . . . "Again, there are no licensing fees for any use of the Ogg Vorbis specification. As a commercial developer, you are free to create and sell (or give away) open or closed source implementations of Vorbis encoders, decoders, or other tools. However, if you use our software rather than writing an independent implementation, you must respect the terms of the license. Our libraries are available under our BSD-like license and can be used whole or in part by closed source applications."
Took me around five seconds to find this. There's no excuse for such laziness. Ogg Vorbis is anything but proprietary - it is the exact opposite of proprietary.
Your "analysis" of Sony is completely incorrect. Strangely enough, they are the mega-corp, and you are a Slashdot poster. I wonder who knows more about making money.
The main issue has been the inclusion of certain X11 libs here and there (DCOP, for example), and the KDE apps doing lots of things outside the auspices of Qt. The Qt parts of the apps are indeed a recompile. It's the other, non-Qt part that's taking time.
Your fundamental error is assuming all of KDE is based on Qt, when in fact it's just one part.
Slashdot Mirror
Tolkein had no objections to the dramatisation of the LoTR. It was first performed on the BBC back in 1955-56. Tolkein was dissatisfied with it, however. He also expressed interest in a cartoon version of LoTR: "As far as I am concerned personally, I should welcome the idea of an animated motion picture, with all the risk of vulgarization; and that quite apart from the glint of money..."
Buy a MacBook. You won't be sorry.
Yes, yes, I shouldn't have said niche, maybe something like "predominantly used in one field" or whatever. In terms of LOC, embedded development is pretty minor.
Being familiar with "pointers etc." isn't brain surgery. I've been a C programmer for many years, have a metric ton of running code out there in the world, and the weird reverence that some people (mostly those who aren't professional programmers, such as hobbyists and students) have for C has always puzzled me.
You are making an artificial distinction between the "IT world" and some other, higher realm. It's all programming. Some tasks are more trivial than others, and some tasks follow a pretty boilerplate way of doing things in order to improve time to market. Lots and lots and LOTS of former C programmers, who were good at their jobs, now happily code in Java. I'm sorry to burst your idealistic bubble, but that's the real world for you.
Hahahaha this is the stupidest idea I've ever seen. Go back to talking to "god", kid.
The point of the article is that there are a tiny fraction of developers actively writing C compared to those writing, say, Java (practically every enterprise app) or C++ (practically every desktop app). They are judging the "life" of a technology by the number of its practitioners.
And before someone jumps in to say, "Oh, but all the open source developers, blah blah," there honestly isn't that many compared even to C# developers. Honestly. And I say this as someone who has contributed his share of open source C.
So, there is a lot of legacy C around, and there is still lots being written in niche fields (embedded). But for active, mainstream, ground-up development, there isn't too much happening. No big deal, really, that's the nature of technology.
The parent is the best post in the thread thus far. A personal trading account, ETFs, and a bit of research go a long way, practically regardless of what you might happen to earn. Maximise your investments for the year ("pay yourself first"), then have fun with life. Bravo, sir, for keeping your eye on the ball.
"I don't believe I'm responding to this because it's such a F'ing joke, but here it goes"
No joke. Your initial reaction just shows how illogical you are.
As an example of your silliness:
"Fine, if scientology survives for 2000 years, I'll consider it a valid religion. Not my religion, but a valid one nonetheless."
So when Christianity was first invented, it wasn't a valid religion, but only became so when it reached this magical 2000 year old mark? What a pathetic argument.
Oh wait, are those church bells I hear? Better run along, sheep.
There are no contemporaneous, third-party accounts of Jesus that we know of. Everything about him was written after he supposedly died. It seems likely Jesus is a fictional figure.
For example, see here: http://nobeliefs.com/exist.htm
L. Ron Hubbard really existed.
DC-10 aircraft exist.
There are other planets in the universe, even in our own galaxy.
Hydrogen bombs and volcanoes exist.
What never happened are the fantastical events linking them all together as described by the Church of Scientology.
Similarly, the Bible mentions all kinds of stuff that existed (ancient cities, a few historical figures [of which Jesus is probably not one]) and links them together with fictional stories. It's just been around for a lot longer, that's all. But at one time, Christianity was freshly invented too.
You seem to think that the Deathbed Rule means throwing all caution to the wind and living for today at every opportunity. It doesn't. One critical DR decision I made was to become completely debt-free in my 20s. Another was to start investing $1000 a month, every month. The DR is not an excuse to behave irresponsibly.
I live in Canada, so I pay $54.00 a month for health coverage. I pay for dental work as I need it - cleanings, basically (I am fortunate in that I've never had a cavity). I may purchase some form of extended health coverage at some point here, which would be the usual death and dismemberment stuff.
When I travel, I purchase travel insurance, which normally costs around a dollar a day. My provincial insurance covers me in the US to some degree, so when I go down there, I don't bother purchasing extra.
Here are some other hints to having the well-paid, yet lots of free time lifestyle:
1. Have someone else arrange your contracts for you. In other words, contract out to a contracting company, and have them subcontract you. I have a one year contract with a place that does just that. The advantages: you don't have to arrange the business stuff, pound the pavement to find contracts, etc., and you aren't legally liable if the relationship goes sour. The downside is you'll earn somewhat less.
2. Work at home. I collaborate with the other contractors on a given project online. I've never even met any of the clients. We do everything via Skype, pretty much. Skype is absolutely essential for this lifestyle, as it's ubiquitous and everyone seems to use it. The Linux client sort of sucks, unfortunately, so I switched to OS X.
By working at home, I free up a huge amount of time for fun stuff. I typically get up around 6:45 and shuffle over to the computer. By 1:00-2:00 or so, I'm finishing up for the day.
3. Learn Java and the current "hot" frameworks and libraries. I'm pretty lukewarm towards Java as it's not a terribly exciting language. However, it is the unofficial server-side standard. Learn it well, and you'll be turning away work on a regular basis. Because it's got a low barrier to entry, there are a ton of terrible Java programmers out there. If you can distinguish yourself with clean designs and implementations, and deliver in a reasonable fashion, then you'll be worth your weight in gold.
4. Communicate well and often. If you can write well, and lay out progress, designs, docs, etc. in a clean and concise fashion, clients will love you. Good communication skills are beyond crucial.
Well, let's not get carried away. Of course I'm taking reasonable steps for my future. I'm putting away enough so that I'll have a comfortable retirement, barring some huge disaster. The key word here is "balance".
'Whether you're rich and comfortable or not, when you're lying on your deathbed, are you going to think back on your life and say "if only I had tried this" or "I may not have done everything I wanted, but I gave it my best shot?"'
Bingo! I actually have a name for this: the Deathbed Rule. When faced with a choice in life, choose the path that will lead to good deathbed memories and no regrets.
By following this rule, I've done things that many might consider foolish - quit jobs to go travelling, spending months in other countries, and so forth. These days, I'm a contractor and I make it a rule to keep several months a year aside for fun stuff, even if that consists of just lazing around, spending time with my girlfriend and reading books, as I've done these past few weeks.
By not following the Deathbed Rule, I'd probably have more money saved, but an absolute dearth of worthy life experiences - I'd have lived a "normal" life until now. What a terrible thought.
Slashdot is CmdrTaco's blog site. It is biased by its very nature. It makes no claims to objectivity or to be a "true" news site. To put it another way, it's an opinion site by design.
Haha, that "surface of the sun" site is just hilarious - for those who don't want to be bothered, apparently the sun is a solid body covered by (wait for it) iron. This has GOT to be a gigantic troll. Hats off if so!
"Welcome to the twentieth century"? You might want to look at a calendar some time.
This ridiculous "story" should be pulled from the front page. Or, better yet, it should get the big "joke foot" icon put beside it. I'm not opposed to junk science stories for the sake of humour - laughing at creationists, the anti-global warming crowd, and these electrical universe kooks is all good fun.
Skype video works great in OS X also. I use it all the time.
"The Ogg Vorbis specification is in the public domain. It is completely free for commercial or noncommercial use. That means that commercial developers may independently write Ogg Vorbis software which is compatible with the specification for no charge and without restrictions of any kind."
.
.
.
"Again, there are no licensing fees for any use of the Ogg Vorbis specification. As a commercial developer, you are free to create and sell (or give away) open or closed source implementations of Vorbis encoders, decoders, or other tools. However, if you use our software rather than writing an independent implementation, you must respect the terms of the license. Our libraries are available under our BSD-like license and can be used whole or in part by closed source applications."
Took me around five seconds to find this. There's no excuse for such laziness. Ogg Vorbis is anything but proprietary - it is the exact opposite of proprietary.
Both aac and mp3 are patent encumbered.
Your "analysis" of Sony is completely incorrect. Strangely enough, they are the mega-corp, and you are a Slashdot poster. I wonder who knows more about making money.
The main issue has been the inclusion of certain X11 libs here and there (DCOP, for example), and the KDE apps doing lots of things outside the auspices of Qt. The Qt parts of the apps are indeed a recompile. It's the other, non-Qt part that's taking time.
Your fundamental error is assuming all of KDE is based on Qt, when in fact it's just one part.
Sweden's corporate tax rate is just 28%, which is lower than the US. Its effective tax rate on capital is just 12.1%, compared with 37.7% in the US.
s h/article_10003326.shtml
http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publi
So the article didn't leave off any small "thinks".
How does a nut like Hoagland make a living? Is he actually funded somehow? I can't imagine him working in real life as a middle manager or something.
What is your brand of TV, if I may ask? That's about the size I'm looking for, and some real recommendations would be nice rather than online reviews.
Why do you capitalise Mac as though it were an acronym? It's short for "Macintosh".
Word running under Wine starts much more quickly than OpenOffice Write does, so your argument is neither here nor there.