Not that it really matters in the context of the conversation, but Wellbutrin(Bupropion) isn't an SSRI. It works on another neurotransmitter - norepinephrine as opposed to serotonin.
I have been using Drupal to do site development for 5 years now. I have developed small and medium sized sites for everyone from restaurants to professional membership organizations. I use it for sites of all sizes because eventually someone asks for a feature that isn't available or is painful to implement in WP. I have written custom modules and complex themes in relatively short timeframes because of the flexibility of the platform.
You don't like Drupal - that's great, don't use it. I am not a big RoR fan. I tried it out for a new project at work and it just didn't "feel" right. I was able to get the Symfony2 framework up and running pretty quickly and we are developing a multi tiered app in house with it. I don't hate RoR and I don't need to bash it. Plenty of intelligent developers who know more than me are using it and developing kick-ass software. It just didn't fit for me.
Nah - we can't have that kind of adult response. Quit liking what I don't like!
First of all I think you are attacking a straw man. I never said that I was opposed to evolutionary theory. It seems to hold up well in many ways, and I don't have a problem with that. I do have a problem with the religious zeal that defends evolution to the point of denying its weaknesses.
I happen to believe in guided evolution. I think there are enough questions about evolution and abiogenesis that blind evolution is unlikely.
Secondly, while I don't have a problem with language reconstruction, I think there are valid questions to be asked in that realm as well. I am not a linguist, so you can take my opinion for what its worth, but I think it is pretty humorous that we think we can accurately reconstruct a language that hasn't been spoken in thousands of years. There isn't anyone to confirm that the assumptions behind the reconstruction are correct, and there is no way to verify. That doesn't invalidate linguistics or the reconstruction process completely. It does mean that we have to have at least a shred of humility and acknowledge the weaknesses inherent in the process.
Which is as absurd a demand as saying "Show me every generation of the spoken language between Proto-Germanic and Elizabethan English with complete syntax and vocabularies."
One does not have to have a complete data set to be able to make inferences based upon the data we do have, and thus we can say with a high degree of confidence that "Elizabethan English is descended from Proto-Germanic" and "all extant life evolved from a common ancestor", when in both cases we can only make indirect inferences about what Proto-Germanic and the earliest common ancestor of life were like.
This isn't quite the same thing. A spoken language dies when its speakers die. Evidence only remains if the culture had writing that is on a substrate that can survive long periods of exposure.
When a species dies out there is at least a possibility that there will be some fossilized evidence. I don't think we would find complete fossilized skeletons, but we should be able to find some evidence of intermediate species. I think it is disingenuous to ignore the very real questions about intermediate steps in the evolutionary process. We may find more fossils in the future that demonstrate the evolutionary transitions, but right now this is an area that is lacking
That cracks me up. It's because of a Big Idea that 1/3 of the human population even eats.
Big Ideas is exactly why many people put food on their table.. not just food, but an abundance of food.
We have an abundance of unhealthy food. Simple carbs and fat laden crap. Most families can't afford to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables. Add to that the vast urban tracts that don't even have access to a decent grocery store and you can see that we have a real food problem that isn't being addressed.
The promised land is a goal you set to always be better. Here are some thing you might want to consider:
Polio, pretty much GONE.
Most childhood diseases, gone.
Between those two things, child death has moved from expected, to tragic.
I can sit in my home and watch pretty much any movie any time.
I can also go tot he park and play with a baseball. A purchase which helped put food on the table on the other side of the world.
Contrary to what some people trying to choke this country have said, life is better then it was even 20 years ago.
It is great that childhood diseases are gone. We have picked the low hanging fruit. We are making very little headway on resolving diseases of aging such as dementia, Alzheimers and cancer. The options that are available are so expensive that they are only available to people with $$$. We continue to defund research and pay pharmaceutical companies billions to create drugs to treat symptoms, but don't actually solve problems.
Because of the highway system, my work option are far wider, my life style is higher, everyone's in the US's is higher.
You can drive your car to a non-existent job? Well goody for you. Again, there is a large and growing underclass in this country that can't afford a car or the outrageous fuel prices to run it. Employment has stagnated and the options for employment have narrowed. It is a choice between something in the tech field or a low paying service job. Middle class jobs are becoming extinct.
The current economy? would have LOVED for it to be this good in the 80's.
Safety Crime? Way the fuck down since the 70's and 80s.
I think you need to look at history and see that the majority of Americans are not benefiting from big ideas today. The gulf between rich and poor widens, access to basics like health care and education is becoming more difficult and real income is shrinking. Some things have gotten better. Increased access to broadband internet and by extension all kinds of information is nice, but that doesn't address basic needs. We are not better off as a society than we were 20 years ago when you look at the big picture.
Disillusionment with "ideas" permeates our culture and has lead to a lack of interest in pursuing and discussing new ideas. Despite all of the grand ideas of the past 125 years, our wealth gap is widening and for the first time we are losing ground financially, educationally and socially. All of the past ideas have not changed one thing about the realities we live with. As a matter of fact we could argue that many of those ideas got us into the mess we are facing today.
People are tired of ideas. Ideas don't work in resolving the issues of survival most of our society is facing, they don't put food on the table, and they haven't lead us to the Promised Land envisioned by many Enlightenment and modernist thinkers.
It isn't the job of businesses to take care of anyone - even their employees. The number one job of a business is to maximize profit.
Ideally, the individuals who profit from the operation of a business would be interested in taking care of the individuals in society. Unfortunately those people seem to have take the attitude that they have gotten their piece of the pie and don't care about the reality others may be living in.
I agree with the analogy of the Romans used by unity100 upthread. The wealthy have no reason to care about our society any longer. The analogy isn't perfect but it seems like we are headed in the same general direction.
Drupal is uneven, missing features that you would expect from a full CMS and enabling functionality via contrib modules that I have spent months coding in the past. Features show up that are clearly not ready for prime time and are slowly developed into useful modules that become a core part of the Drupal developer's toolkit. It really seems like the archetypal open source/agile project in that way. Unfortunately, that style doesn't work well in a dead tree format. It will be interesting to see if a second edition hits the shelves that fixes some of the glaring problems.
I just signed up for Mozy for a measly $54/year. I have almost 9GB of data backed up to their servers that took about a week to completely upload from my laptop when I was occasionally connected to the internet and not using it. I have a very small consulting business and I don't have time to juggle hard drives, run to the bank to keep a secure offsite backup or spend time worrying about my data.
If I don't pay my bill, the data does disappear. So What? I probably moved to a different service or a local backup solution at that point, or my business failed and the backups are the least of my concerns.
You may think it is expensive, but I find it to be a deal. I don't know what it would cost me to replace my data, but it far exceeds the cost in time or money of backing up using Mozy. You may have a different cost/benefit balance sheet and find that these services are too expensive and you may have other reasons you are not comfortable using them. That is fine, but understand your needs are not the same as the millions of people who do find value in online backup.
Excellent insight! The reality is that optimism proffers an advantage in our current American/Western society. At other times or places pessimism may well be a better choice.
I have read similar studies and find that amazing when considered in the light of the fact that successful people tend to be more optimistic. So, seeing a "clearer view of reality" doesn't seem to confer any advantages. I lean toward the view that intelligent people are more depressed because of the fact that they see reality more clearly.
The problem you are describing here isn't a self-employment problem, it is a project management problem. If you had created a project plan and built realistic time expectations with your customer, then he could not have been irate. He would have signed off on the project plan, the schedule, and would have been kept abreast of the project's progress via milestones and a strong communication plan.
This is going to be a problem whether you are self-employed or work for $MegaCorp.
Graduates should also continue a lifetime of self-study.
That is a great idea, but most college grads crack less than one book a year. If more people would put down the mouse and the remote and read a &#$%%! book, our society would be much better off.
As someone already mentioned, SAMBA came about because users wanted to play nice in the dominant environment. And MS didn't grow to dominance because their software was superior.
Oddly enough, much of AD is built on OSS technologies -> LDAP and Kerberos.
And MS is only simple to admin if you don't mind constantly searching for hacks, patches and updates for obscure problems. Often, you have to manually go to the nightmare that is the registry to solve problems. Those of us comfortable with a text editor don't need the square training wheels of the MS gui.
So stay up on your soapbox saying how much better MS is...
I have found the perl community to be the most open, supportive and cohesive group of all the languages I work with. Right now I am working with PHP, perl and C#, and perl is by far the easiest language to get help and correct information. I can find tons of info on the other languages, but the information isn't always the best quality.
Actually, we are a representative republic with a democratically elected governing body. Most of the founding fathers abhorred direct democracy, and decried it as mob rule. Our constitution creates a system that tries to hold on to the good parts of democracy, while shielding us from the ignorant mobs that would make life hell in a society where the majority always ruled.
Conspiracy theories aside, are you surprised that someone who supports GWB would prefer not to play music that is critical of him? If you had a public forum, would you make anything available that opposed your opinions and beliefs? Of course not!
So because Clear Channel stopped playing their songs, the public was unable to go out and buy their music, or find it on their favorite torrent sites?
See, Clear Channel has the freedom to disagree with the Chicks. They have the right to choose which music to play, and which music to leave on the shelf. That is the definition of freedom of speech. Individuals, groups, and businesses have the freedom to choose what to say, what to see, and what to support. Freedom of speech is only violated when the government steps in to curtail that freedom.
One man's fascism is another man's freedom. You are free to hold your opinions, whether I or anyone likes them or agrees with them.
In the context of this discussion, censorship implies curtailing free speech rights. When an individual, group, or corporation exercises censorship, the effect is limited, and no rights are trampled upon.
In the example given, the Dixie Chicks did not loose the right to sing their song, and it was still available to anyone who wanted to listen. Individual or group censorship is the other side of the free speech coin. You have the right to say whatever you want, and I have the right to not listen
The outrage of the public over the Dixie Chicks is the perfect example of free speech, not an example of censorship. The DC were free to sing their song, and the public was free to react and let them know that it wasn't well received.
Please tell me where the government stepped in to curtail anyone's free speech rights in that situation?
(Hint: censorship is carried out by governments, not the public)
There are loads of SaaS offerings that we gladly pay for regularly. I use goosync, Basecamp, and I am currently researching an online invoicing system for my consulting business. What makes this any different?
Saying that Microsoft is doing it, and they are teh Ev1l!!! isn't a good enough reason to be up in arms.
This is a smart move to entice the SMB market, which doesn't always have the free capital to spend on this kind of software up front. If it doesn't work well, or seems too expensive for the marketplace, alternatives like OOo will gain mind and market share
I started off doing website design and development for local small businesses. When a couple of them got tired of dealing with their hosting companies, I set up a reseller account over at Hostgator, and offered the hosting as well.
I started a service called "Hands Off Hosting". My customers contract with me to design, develop and host their sites, and if they have any issues, I am the only person they have to deal with. I make small changes for them gratis, and I make a hefty profit on the hosting.
IOW - don't bother trying to do it yourself. As everyone here has pointed out, the market is saturated. Admin, security and support are all going to become huge time sinks, and you can't compete on price or features with the big dogs. Find out what you can do to differentiate yourself and let someone else handle the dirty details.
I think the book's author missed a step in his logic. The centralization of power utilities didn't obsolete electricians. IT departments will become more like electricians, helping companies deal with localized problems and building local infrastructure. Application service providers will not take over all datacenter functions, and as long as end users are proud of their technological ignorance, local support will be absolutely necessary. Now, this may mean opportunities for more independent service providers and a new round of technological entrepreneurialism, but not the death of the IT professional.
Slashdot Mirror
that is all I have to say.
Not that it really matters in the context of the conversation, but Wellbutrin(Bupropion) isn't an SSRI. It works on another neurotransmitter - norepinephrine as opposed to serotonin.
I have been using Drupal to do site development for 5 years now. I have developed small and medium sized sites for everyone from restaurants to professional membership organizations. I use it for sites of all sizes because eventually someone asks for a feature that isn't available or is painful to implement in WP. I have written custom modules and complex themes in relatively short timeframes because of the flexibility of the platform.
You don't like Drupal - that's great, don't use it. I am not a big RoR fan. I tried it out for a new project at work and it just didn't "feel" right. I was able to get the Symfony2 framework up and running pretty quickly and we are developing a multi tiered app in house with it. I don't hate RoR and I don't need to bash it. Plenty of intelligent developers who know more than me are using it and developing kick-ass software. It just didn't fit for me.
Nah - we can't have that kind of adult response. Quit liking what I don't like!
First of all I think you are attacking a straw man. I never said that I was opposed to evolutionary theory. It seems to hold up well in many ways, and I don't have a problem with that. I do have a problem with the religious zeal that defends evolution to the point of denying its weaknesses.
I happen to believe in guided evolution. I think there are enough questions about evolution and abiogenesis that blind evolution is unlikely.
Secondly, while I don't have a problem with language reconstruction, I think there are valid questions to be asked in that realm as well. I am not a linguist, so you can take my opinion for what its worth, but I think it is pretty humorous that we think we can accurately reconstruct a language that hasn't been spoken in thousands of years. There isn't anyone to confirm that the assumptions behind the reconstruction are correct, and there is no way to verify. That doesn't invalidate linguistics or the reconstruction process completely. It does mean that we have to have at least a shred of humility and acknowledge the weaknesses inherent in the process.
Which is as absurd a demand as saying "Show me every generation of the spoken language between Proto-Germanic and Elizabethan English with complete syntax and vocabularies."
One does not have to have a complete data set to be able to make inferences based upon the data we do have, and thus we can say with a high degree of confidence that "Elizabethan English is descended from Proto-Germanic" and "all extant life evolved from a common ancestor", when in both cases we can only make indirect inferences about what Proto-Germanic and the earliest common ancestor of life were like.
This isn't quite the same thing. A spoken language dies when its speakers die. Evidence only remains if the culture had writing that is on a substrate that can survive long periods of exposure.
When a species dies out there is at least a possibility that there will be some fossilized evidence. I don't think we would find complete fossilized skeletons, but we should be able to find some evidence of intermediate species. I think it is disingenuous to ignore the very real questions about intermediate steps in the evolutionary process. We may find more fossils in the future that demonstrate the evolutionary transitions, but right now this is an area that is lacking
Dr. Cal Lightman in Lie to Me. He works with a crew, but he is a badass hero.
We have an abundance of unhealthy food. Simple carbs and fat laden crap. Most families can't afford to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables. Add to that the vast urban tracts that don't even have access to a decent grocery store and you can see that we have a real food problem that isn't being addressed.
It is great that childhood diseases are gone. We have picked the low hanging fruit. We are making very little headway on resolving diseases of aging such as dementia, Alzheimers and cancer. The options that are available are so expensive that they are only available to people with $$$. We continue to defund research and pay pharmaceutical companies billions to create drugs to treat symptoms, but don't actually solve problems.
You can drive your car to a non-existent job? Well goody for you. Again, there is a large and growing underclass in this country that can't afford a car or the outrageous fuel prices to run it. Employment has stagnated and the options for employment have narrowed. It is a choice between something in the tech field or a low paying service job. Middle class jobs are becoming extinct.
I think you need to look at history and see that the majority of Americans are not benefiting from big ideas today. The gulf between rich and poor widens, access to basics like health care and education is becoming more difficult and real income is shrinking. Some things have gotten better. Increased access to broadband internet and by extension all kinds of information is nice, but that doesn't address basic needs. We are not better off as a society than we were 20 years ago when you look at the big picture.
Disillusionment with "ideas" permeates our culture and has lead to a lack of interest in pursuing and discussing new ideas. Despite all of the grand ideas of the past 125 years, our wealth gap is widening and for the first time we are losing ground financially, educationally and socially. All of the past ideas have not changed one thing about the realities we live with. As a matter of fact we could argue that many of those ideas got us into the mess we are facing today.
People are tired of ideas. Ideas don't work in resolving the issues of survival most of our society is facing, they don't put food on the table, and they haven't lead us to the Promised Land envisioned by many Enlightenment and modernist thinkers.
It isn't the job of businesses to take care of anyone - even their employees. The number one job of a business is to maximize profit.
Ideally, the individuals who profit from the operation of a business would be interested in taking care of the individuals in society. Unfortunately those people seem to have take the attitude that they have gotten their piece of the pie and don't care about the reality others may be living in.
I agree with the analogy of the Romans used by unity100 upthread. The wealthy have no reason to care about our society any longer. The analogy isn't perfect but it seems like we are headed in the same general direction.
Drupal is uneven, missing features that you would expect from a full CMS and enabling functionality via contrib modules that I have spent months coding in the past. Features show up that are clearly not ready for prime time and are slowly developed into useful modules that become a core part of the Drupal developer's toolkit. It really seems like the archetypal open source/agile project in that way. Unfortunately, that style doesn't work well in a dead tree format. It will be interesting to see if a second edition hits the shelves that fixes some of the glaring problems.
I just signed up for Mozy for a measly $54/year. I have almost 9GB of data backed up to their servers that took about a week to completely upload from my laptop when I was occasionally connected to the internet and not using it. I have a very small consulting business and I don't have time to juggle hard drives, run to the bank to keep a secure offsite backup or spend time worrying about my data.
If I don't pay my bill, the data does disappear. So What? I probably moved to a different service or a local backup solution at that point, or my business failed and the backups are the least of my concerns.
You may think it is expensive, but I find it to be a deal. I don't know what it would cost me to replace my data, but it far exceeds the cost in time or money of backing up using Mozy. You may have a different cost/benefit balance sheet and find that these services are too expensive and you may have other reasons you are not comfortable using them. That is fine, but understand your needs are not the same as the millions of people who do find value in online backup.
Excellent insight! The reality is that optimism proffers an advantage in our current American/Western society. At other times or places pessimism may well be a better choice.
I have read similar studies and find that amazing when considered in the light of the fact that successful people tend to be more optimistic. So, seeing a "clearer view of reality" doesn't seem to confer any advantages. I lean toward the view that intelligent people are more depressed because of the fact that they see reality more clearly.
The problem you are describing here isn't a self-employment problem, it is a project management problem. If you had created a project plan and built realistic time expectations with your customer, then he could not have been irate. He would have signed off on the project plan, the schedule, and would have been kept abreast of the project's progress via milestones and a strong communication plan.
This is going to be a problem whether you are self-employed or work for $MegaCorp.
Graduates should also continue a lifetime of self-study.
That is a great idea, but most college grads crack less than one book a year. If more people would put down the mouse and the remote and read a &#$%%! book, our society would be much better off.
As someone already mentioned, SAMBA came about because users wanted to play nice in the dominant environment. And MS didn't grow to dominance because their software was superior.
Oddly enough, much of AD is built on OSS technologies -> LDAP and Kerberos.
And MS is only simple to admin if you don't mind constantly searching for hacks, patches and updates for obscure problems. Often, you have to manually go to the nightmare that is the registry to solve problems. Those of us comfortable with a text editor don't need the square training wheels of the MS gui.
So stay up on your soapbox saying how much better MS is...
Documentation: peldoc.perl.org
Community: perlmonks.org
Articles: www.perl.com (O'Reilly site)
I have found the perl community to be the most open, supportive and cohesive group of all the languages I work with. Right now I am working with PHP, perl and C#, and perl is by far the easiest language to get help and correct information. I can find tons of info on the other languages, but the information isn't always the best quality.
Good luck with your search.
Actually, we are a representative republic with a democratically elected governing body. Most of the founding fathers abhorred direct democracy, and decried it as mob rule. Our constitution creates a system that tries to hold on to the good parts of democracy, while shielding us from the ignorant mobs that would make life hell in a society where the majority always ruled.
Conspiracy theories aside, are you surprised that someone who supports GWB would prefer not to play music that is critical of him? If you had a public forum, would you make anything available that opposed your opinions and beliefs? Of course not!
Again, this is freedom of speech, not censorship.
So because Clear Channel stopped playing their songs, the public was unable to go out and buy their music, or find it on their favorite torrent sites?
See, Clear Channel has the freedom to disagree with the Chicks. They have the right to choose which music to play, and which music to leave on the shelf. That is the definition of freedom of speech. Individuals, groups, and businesses have the freedom to choose what to say, what to see, and what to support. Freedom of speech is only violated when the government steps in to curtail that freedom.
One man's fascism is another man's freedom. You are free to hold your opinions, whether I or anyone likes them or agrees with them.
In the context of this discussion, censorship implies curtailing free speech rights. When an individual, group, or corporation exercises censorship, the effect is limited, and no rights are trampled upon.
In the example given, the Dixie Chicks did not loose the right to sing their song, and it was still available to anyone who wanted to listen. Individual or group censorship is the other side of the free speech coin. You have the right to say whatever you want, and I have the right to not listen
The outrage of the public over the Dixie Chicks is the perfect example of free speech, not an example of censorship. The DC were free to sing their song, and the public was free to react and let them know that it wasn't well received.
Please tell me where the government stepped in to curtail anyone's free speech rights in that situation?
(Hint: censorship is carried out by governments, not the public)
There are loads of SaaS offerings that we gladly pay for regularly. I use goosync, Basecamp, and I am currently researching an online invoicing system for my consulting business. What makes this any different?
Saying that Microsoft is doing it, and they are teh Ev1l!!! isn't a good enough reason to be up in arms.
This is a smart move to entice the SMB market, which doesn't always have the free capital to spend on this kind of software up front. If it doesn't work well, or seems too expensive for the marketplace, alternatives like OOo will gain mind and market share
I started off doing website design and development for local small businesses. When a couple of them got tired of dealing with their hosting companies, I set up a reseller account over at Hostgator, and offered the hosting as well.
I started a service called "Hands Off Hosting". My customers contract with me to design, develop and host their sites, and if they have any issues, I am the only person they have to deal with. I make small changes for them gratis, and I make a hefty profit on the hosting.
IOW - don't bother trying to do it yourself. As everyone here has pointed out, the market is saturated. Admin, security and support are all going to become huge time sinks, and you can't compete on price or features with the big dogs. Find out what you can do to differentiate yourself and let someone else handle the dirty details.
I think the book's author missed a step in his logic. The centralization of power utilities didn't obsolete electricians. IT departments will become more like electricians, helping companies deal with localized problems and building local infrastructure. Application service providers will not take over all datacenter functions, and as long as end users are proud of their technological ignorance, local support will be absolutely necessary. Now, this may mean opportunities for more independent service providers and a new round of technological entrepreneurialism, but not the death of the IT professional.