That wasn't a flame. I was simply poking fun at blogging since most of them consist of several entries that mention very ordinary, mundane tasks. Much of it is hardly interesting, but for some reason people believe it is. I'm sorry, I just don't see why blogging is such a big thing. Its kind of like watching a movie on hackers and crackers. You want to spend hours watching someone walk through code and looking for vulnerabilities?
Yeah, ok, so your friends and family all over the world want to know that you went to Kroger for a can of refried beans and a package of flower tortillas? Did you blog the result of this gastro-intestinal-torturing feast for them to share? Damn, you must be dedicated.
You don't need to download it. Here is the script for the movie:
The scene opens with the camera moving slowly up a concrete walkway towards the front door or a brick house. It is night time and the front porch light is on. Tiki lamps (the type you get at home depot for $29.95 for 20) line the concrete walkway.) When the camera gets to the front step, the scene wipes into the bedroom of a typical suburban teen. Here we meet the protagonist, Rakeesh Mumalalalamynasian
Rakeesh: Hey, there is that '80s song I've been looking for since I graduated from elementary school. Wow, the memories. I better download it!
The viewer sees Rakeesh double-click on the song.
Rakeesh: Yeah, this guy has a phat-pipe! 30kb/sec! I should have it in no time!
Rakeesh continues to look at the computer screen anxiously....
Rakeesh: Wait, what?!?! 96% and its stalling at 0kb/sec? Ack, the connection dropped! You snot-sucking mp3 whore! You closed Napster in the middle of my download!!!! Now I have to find someone else who has this song!
Repeat 152 times, or until the movie is two hours long
I first used them in Black & White. Does that count?
I mean, there has to be a population of people that were introduced to using gestures by trying to get their animals to stop eating their own shit, throw fireballs at enemies, and make rain clouds appear.
So does this mean that I can make a gesture and all my coding work will be complete? Damn, that would be nice.
No way...too simple. All the fighter pilots should just ask Lockheed to install auto-warming cupholders now. It will help drowsey pilots on those long flights around hostile airspace.
This type of stuff probably won't kill them. I'm pretty sure a company can't go on forever when their sole means of income is banner ads and affiliate commissions. I'm sure at some point they are going to have to pay market salaries to some of the people, which their income model will likely not support. I know nothing about their staff or their qualifications, but I would guess they have a staff of developers that are more dedicated than they are interested in making a lot of money. As they grow older, the lean-and-mean startup atmosphere drags on them and they make their experience pay by going to another company for a market salary. This leaves the P2P software makers with less experienced people, and the turnover rate gets bumped up and so on.
Its sad, but unharnessed P2P file trading is just too cool a thing to last forever. So my wife sits at home and tries to fill up our new 80GB hard drive while I'm at work.
Maybe because our ISD is a bunch of retards and the CS department is the only one to realize it... (Yes, I'm a CS major obviously)
I didn't go to USC, but I swear one of the CS PhDs at my college said the same thing about our equivalent to your ISD. I used to admin the Chem departments computers and it would take them days to reset the switch after I ghosted all the lab computers. Seems it was so old that all it knew how to do was shut off ports that had excess broadcasts. They had to power cycle the switch that connected the whole building to the campus backbone in order to reset it.
It then took them two weeks to re-wire one port so that I could disconnect from the campus backbone and still ghost labs on multiple floors. Funny they never thought about configuring the wiring different to avoid the problem with ghosting.
Yeah, that all works fine for the college kid who likes to gloat over his SourceForge community project.
While I didn't mean that *I* would throw my morals out the window for a buck, it is certainly a fact that your ideal world where everyone sticks to their guns is a fantasy. I've seen far too many 20ish people have the same attitude as you, and I'm as guilty as anyone is. When you decide that you're sick of seeing this know-nothings drive the nice cars while you're deciding if you want to pay rent or fix yours, or possibly just fricking sick and tired of living with five other roomates to be able to afford rent, your morals will disappear too.
Then try raising a family. You don't have the luxury of morals when you have children crying themselves to sleep because they are hungry. I'd stick a knife in the next person if it meant the difference between feeding my family and upholding my morals, and I don't apologize for it.
Don't be too sure. Jobs are not easily found out there now, and the money is probably good.
There are always sell outs out there. They have people that wrote code that tries to track down P2P file swappers. I'm sure there are more than a few out there that are just chomping at the bit to help implement the USA-Wide identity card stuff. When you gotta eat, and you're tired of living in a cardboard box, principles go right out the window.
Well, now that its virtual "Harlem," is there a guy that runs up to you with a tommy gun and yells, "Drop them Nikes before I blast a cap in yo' ass!"?
When I was in an undergraduate operating systems class, the professor and all the students got into a discussion about cruise missiles. We determined it would be cheaper to replace the guidance computers with liberal studies majors.
And then we realized the problem. They'd be too lame to figure out how to hit the target.
From what I've seen, most teachers actively resist teaching computers to students. When I was in elementary school, we had 3 TRS-80 Model III machines. Only about 5 students got to get any formal computer instruction time. I wonder if the rest of the group became software engineers....
That may be a factor, but often the person that bids lower will under-bid and walk away from the project before it is complete. Then they spent the $5k for a false start, and have to spend an additional $15k to get the other bidder to do the project. Then they have legal costs if they want to go after the first contractor, etc.
If they start out with the $15k contractor, they probably have a higher probability of getting the job complete. If the higher bidder under-bid, at least he has more profits from the initial bid to eat into than the guy with $5k does before he walks away.
It is interesting that you chose the term "idiot" to describe US Citizens. It originally meant, in Roman times of course, a person who did not exercise their right to vote.
Oppression here is the same as anywhere, the penalty just differs. For every thing you can't do or own legally, there is something here that is similar. For every illegal opinion, there is one here too. Hell, you saw what they did to the Branch Davidians in Waco, TX, right? Their beliefs and practices where supposed to be legal, and they probably were. They just weren't popular and some closet-communist (Janet Reno) decided to burn 'em out. I'm betting you'd at least get a trial in Germany for disbelieving in the holocaust.
Cut out the local cable companies, which already charge around $40.00 a month or more for access to the TV. I can't think of anything else I pay for directly that also forces me to watch their adverts. (Don't count the net, because there is plenty to do that is free and doesn't require ads, not to mention blocking software.)
If each channel encrypted their signal and got a licensing fee from each local provider based on each subscriber the had enabled to receive their signals, then they would be making money. The real problem about this way of making money is that it would actually give the networks a concrete metric of how many people are actually using their service. The high-paid news anchors, Nielson, and high residuals to voice and screen actors would go away. There are a lot of side-industries that don't want to see this happen.
Now that we are in the "information age," it is possible that the interests of the general public have changed. I personally don't find a lot of stuff on TV very interesting, so I don't have cable. This may be because of the increased amount and length of ads, or the lack of content networks can air now. (Yeah, we can't offend these religious idiots, so we have to make everyone else suffer.)
Maybe TV won't be around that much longer. Who knows.
Damn, you mean that taking a monitor out to the shooting range and reducing it to dust with a shotgun is not a good way to dispose of it? My neighbors in the trailers next door will be so pissed now that their weekend has been ruined.
No its more like: "Hey boss, I just finished writing this program in record time with this new vision-based text entry system. The floor and walls seem to be moving...." and then you puke on your boss.
I don't think I labeled all graduating students. I said some students, which, as far as I know, doesn't mean all of them. There are always some good and some bad students in any class. I just have to give the personal observation that there seems to be more of the bad ones than the good ones.
How do I relate "thinking on ones feet" to being a proactive problem solver? Isn't that the definition of a proactive problem solver? When a problem comes up and needs to be solved quickly, someone has to adapt to the situation quickly ("thinking on their feet"). Generally, this would imply that they don't take the time to look it up in the manual or get the manager's ok for what they are about to do. This would be because they not only know how it works, but also why it works. They also know that it is important enough to solve quickly, and that this type of proactive initiative will be easy to justify later if need be.
And you're right about not doing a good job at hiring the people that need 3-10 explanations. I wasn't doing the hiring, and I don't work for that company any longer.;)
People who are technical because they took school coursework that says they are technical usually can't think on their feet. This is the problem with a lot of students - they expect knowledge and a career handed to them on a plate with no additional work.
People who have the certification and went to school plus have work experience (usually during school), reseach experience, personal projects, and possibly a track record of past successes can usually think well on their feet.
Personally, the ones that can't think on their feet are usually the ones that can't remember how to fix a customer's tech support problem even though they've been told how to fix it at least 3-10 times already. These are usually the ones that piss the customer's off the most and end up getting me involved in a pointless conference call with the customer due to some perceived "catastrophic bug."
The ones that think on their feet are the ones that use their own credit card to renew their company's $70 domain reg before millions of users of their free web-email service get locked out due to no resolvable DNS record. The same ones are those that pull a screw driver and make a tweak to your broadcast equipment 10 seconds after your first color TV broadcast goes live and everyone realizes all the color TVs everyone bought have a problem receiving 30 frames per second. (Now US TV gets 29.997 frames per second due to this same technical person.) Too bad there aren't more of these types of people out there.
I know a foolproof way to protect CDs. It is highly secure and could never be cracked.
Sell empty cases that have all the pretty cover art and lyric books. Can't rip that music.
Seriously, I remember my uncle telling me about some new, uncrackable, small satellite dish that the company he was working for was working on. You just attach it to the eave of your house, and point it north. That company was Hughes, and we all know this technology as DirecTV. Turns out it was far from uncrackable.....
It appears that if someone makes it, it is only a matter of time before someone cracks it. But aren't all William Gibson novels about a conflict between large data companies and a fringe digital underground?
I predict - maybe I'm wrong, who knows - that this BS with digital rights laws and stuff will bounce around for another 10 years until we actually get politicians in office that know anything about technology. It always seems strange that politicians are generally really old people that are ill-equipped to deal with new technologies. These people will die off or get pushed out of office, and people who are mid-20s to mid-30s now will start to take office. Hopefully, they will have had the chance to get an education in the digital age, and they will educate the remaining dinosaurs of the folly of trying to regulate this stuff. You can't make laws that apply a label of criminal to everyone in the world except for the luddites, it is just a waste of time.
What would happen if the pneumatics malfunction? How many MPH can it make a secret message ball eject out of the tube that is probably at about the same level as the family jewels? Talk about a d20 damage roll.....
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I still love the smell of napalm in the morning though.
That wasn't a flame. I was simply poking fun at blogging since most of them consist of several entries that mention very ordinary, mundane tasks. Much of it is hardly interesting, but for some reason people believe it is. I'm sorry, I just don't see why blogging is such a big thing. Its kind of like watching a movie on hackers and crackers. You want to spend hours watching someone walk through code and looking for vulnerabilities?
Yeah, ok, so your friends and family all over the world want to know that you went to Kroger for a can of refried beans and a package of flower tortillas? Did you blog the result of this gastro-intestinal-torturing feast for them to share? Damn, you must be dedicated.
The scene opens with the camera moving slowly up a concrete walkway towards the front door or a brick house. It is night time and the front porch light is on. Tiki lamps (the type you get at home depot for $29.95 for 20) line the concrete walkway.) When the camera gets to the front step, the scene wipes into the bedroom of a typical suburban teen. Here we meet the protagonist, Rakeesh Mumalalalamynasian
Rakeesh: Hey, there is that '80s song I've been looking for since I graduated from elementary school. Wow, the memories. I better download it!
The viewer sees Rakeesh double-click on the song.
Rakeesh: Yeah, this guy has a phat-pipe! 30kb/sec! I should have it in no time!
Rakeesh continues to look at the computer screen anxiously....
Rakeesh: Wait, what?!?! 96% and its stalling at 0kb/sec? Ack, the connection dropped! You snot-sucking mp3 whore! You closed Napster in the middle of my download!!!! Now I have to find someone else who has this song!
Repeat 152 times, or until the movie is two hours long
I mean, there has to be a population of people that were introduced to using gestures by trying to get their animals to stop eating their own shit, throw fireballs at enemies, and make rain clouds appear.
So does this mean that I can make a gesture and all my coding work will be complete? Damn, that would be nice.
No way...too simple. All the fighter pilots should just ask Lockheed to install auto-warming cupholders now. It will help drowsey pilots on those long flights around hostile airspace.
Its sad, but unharnessed P2P file trading is just too cool a thing to last forever. So my wife sits at home and tries to fill up our new 80GB hard drive while I'm at work.
And then we get to replace all the help desk people with.....oh, nevermind.
of course by community they mean the few guys they personally know and who make money using their MS knowledge
Few?!? I think someone is in denial.....
I didn't go to USC, but I swear one of the CS PhDs at my college said the same thing about our equivalent to your ISD. I used to admin the Chem departments computers and it would take them days to reset the switch after I ghosted all the lab computers. Seems it was so old that all it knew how to do was shut off ports that had excess broadcasts. They had to power cycle the switch that connected the whole building to the campus backbone in order to reset it.
It then took them two weeks to re-wire one port so that I could disconnect from the campus backbone and still ghost labs on multiple floors. Funny they never thought about configuring the wiring different to avoid the problem with ghosting.
While I didn't mean that *I* would throw my morals out the window for a buck, it is certainly a fact that your ideal world where everyone sticks to their guns is a fantasy. I've seen far too many 20ish people have the same attitude as you, and I'm as guilty as anyone is. When you decide that you're sick of seeing this know-nothings drive the nice cars while you're deciding if you want to pay rent or fix yours, or possibly just fricking sick and tired of living with five other roomates to be able to afford rent, your morals will disappear too.
Then try raising a family. You don't have the luxury of morals when you have children crying themselves to sleep because they are hungry. I'd stick a knife in the next person if it meant the difference between feeding my family and upholding my morals, and I don't apologize for it.
There are always sell outs out there. They have people that wrote code that tries to track down P2P file swappers. I'm sure there are more than a few out there that are just chomping at the bit to help implement the USA-Wide identity card stuff. When you gotta eat, and you're tired of living in a cardboard box, principles go right out the window.
At least they could have put a decent picture of the thing there. You can't even see it well.
Well, now that its virtual "Harlem," is there a guy that runs up to you with a tommy gun and yells, "Drop them Nikes before I blast a cap in yo' ass!"?
And then we realized the problem. They'd be too lame to figure out how to hit the target.
From what I've seen, most teachers actively resist teaching computers to students. When I was in elementary school, we had 3 TRS-80 Model III machines. Only about 5 students got to get any formal computer instruction time. I wonder if the rest of the group became software engineers....
And then: You do not need to know UML or OO Design...
Forgive me while I laugh up a lung.
If they start out with the $15k contractor, they probably have a higher probability of getting the job complete. If the higher bidder under-bid, at least he has more profits from the initial bid to eat into than the guy with $5k does before he walks away.
Oppression here is the same as anywhere, the penalty just differs. For every thing you can't do or own legally, there is something here that is similar. For every illegal opinion, there is one here too. Hell, you saw what they did to the Branch Davidians in Waco, TX, right? Their beliefs and practices where supposed to be legal, and they probably were. They just weren't popular and some closet-communist (Janet Reno) decided to burn 'em out. I'm betting you'd at least get a trial in Germany for disbelieving in the holocaust.
If each channel encrypted their signal and got a licensing fee from each local provider based on each subscriber the had enabled to receive their signals, then they would be making money. The real problem about this way of making money is that it would actually give the networks a concrete metric of how many people are actually using their service. The high-paid news anchors, Nielson, and high residuals to voice and screen actors would go away. There are a lot of side-industries that don't want to see this happen.
Now that we are in the "information age," it is possible that the interests of the general public have changed. I personally don't find a lot of stuff on TV very interesting, so I don't have cable. This may be because of the increased amount and length of ads, or the lack of content networks can air now. (Yeah, we can't offend these religious idiots, so we have to make everyone else suffer.)
Maybe TV won't be around that much longer. Who knows.
Damn, you mean that taking a monitor out to the shooting range and reducing it to dust with a shotgun is not a good way to dispose of it? My neighbors in the trailers next door will be so pissed now that their weekend has been ruined.
No its more like: "Hey boss, I just finished writing this program in record time with this new vision-based text entry system. The floor and walls seem to be moving...." and then you puke on your boss.
How do I relate "thinking on ones feet" to being a proactive problem solver? Isn't that the definition of a proactive problem solver? When a problem comes up and needs to be solved quickly, someone has to adapt to the situation quickly ("thinking on their feet"). Generally, this would imply that they don't take the time to look it up in the manual or get the manager's ok for what they are about to do. This would be because they not only know how it works, but also why it works. They also know that it is important enough to solve quickly, and that this type of proactive initiative will be easy to justify later if need be.
And you're right about not doing a good job at hiring the people that need 3-10 explanations. I wasn't doing the hiring, and I don't work for that company any longer. ;)
People who have the certification and went to school plus have work experience (usually during school), reseach experience, personal projects, and possibly a track record of past successes can usually think well on their feet.
Personally, the ones that can't think on their feet are usually the ones that can't remember how to fix a customer's tech support problem even though they've been told how to fix it at least 3-10 times already. These are usually the ones that piss the customer's off the most and end up getting me involved in a pointless conference call with the customer due to some perceived "catastrophic bug."
The ones that think on their feet are the ones that use their own credit card to renew their company's $70 domain reg before millions of users of their free web-email service get locked out due to no resolvable DNS record. The same ones are those that pull a screw driver and make a tweak to your broadcast equipment 10 seconds after your first color TV broadcast goes live and everyone realizes all the color TVs everyone bought have a problem receiving 30 frames per second. (Now US TV gets 29.997 frames per second due to this same technical person.) Too bad there aren't more of these types of people out there.
Sell empty cases that have all the pretty cover art and lyric books. Can't rip that music.
Seriously, I remember my uncle telling me about some new, uncrackable, small satellite dish that the company he was working for was working on. You just attach it to the eave of your house, and point it north. That company was Hughes, and we all know this technology as DirecTV. Turns out it was far from uncrackable.....
It appears that if someone makes it, it is only a matter of time before someone cracks it. But aren't all William Gibson novels about a conflict between large data companies and a fringe digital underground?
I predict - maybe I'm wrong, who knows - that this BS with digital rights laws and stuff will bounce around for another 10 years until we actually get politicians in office that know anything about technology. It always seems strange that politicians are generally really old people that are ill-equipped to deal with new technologies. These people will die off or get pushed out of office, and people who are mid-20s to mid-30s now will start to take office. Hopefully, they will have had the chance to get an education in the digital age, and they will educate the remaining dinosaurs of the folly of trying to regulate this stuff. You can't make laws that apply a label of criminal to everyone in the world except for the luddites, it is just a waste of time.
What would happen if the pneumatics malfunction? How many MPH can it make a secret message ball eject out of the tube that is probably at about the same level as the family jewels? Talk about a d20 damage roll.....