Seems to me that there is miles of difference between a born Engineer (a smart, logical thinker who loves tinkering and solving problems), and a sold Engineer (someone who has no inclination or desire towards engineering, but simply wants to make as much money as possible).
So very true. As someone who did a fair amount of freelance developing over the last decade, the number of people who are using compilers because they think it will get them rich is truly scary. Non-comp sci types are *probably* safe to let loose on basic web development tasks, and that is about it. If the number of developers that I have meet that are the really talented types who really 'get' coding are representative of the industry as a whole, I fear for our future.
I considered the whole thing subject to the same confidentiality restrictions as a doctor
And this is probably the sort of attitude we should be adopting. IT sort of has the back door keys to everything, since we are the people who write the code and maintain the servers.
On the flip side, one could also assume that the boss's secretary now has less access to this same privileged information, so the number of peeking eyes hasn't increased, but simply changed departments.
..You just made next year's college chemistry students have to buy a new edition of the textbook. College books might just be affordable if people would just stop learning new things.
When I think of the things in our house that *must* run on AC, it's only our fridge, freezer, and HVAC
For those of us with a modest knowledge of electrical devices, what is it that *prevents* these devices from running DC? My understanding is that AC was chosen over DC so many years ago based off of long distance transmission requirements.
FB is like AOL was in the 90s: A ubiquitous, shitty walled garden that provided you access to a bunch of similar low tech jerks and annoying worthless adds, and like AOL, it will fade into nothingness when the whole 'social networking' craze dies down.
If I could short FB stock over a twenty year period, I would make a killing.
Hiring assassins is a somewhat tricky business. If you show up with 10k and a name, why would the assassin be too picky about who he shot? On one hand he has to track down and shoot someone without getting caught for the money, on the other hand he can just shoot the person with the money and call it a day. That is assuming that he doesn't just take the money and run. What do you do then, hire an assassin to kill the assassin?
You know, for a long time I have been telling people that is the very reason the right is so fucked up. I would think a true fiscal conservative wouldn't be so upset about the amount of money that is taxed, but that it is spent as efficiently as possible, getting the maximum bang for the buck, as it were. It seems to me that they are very confused about what they should be focusing on.
You know, perhaps the only thing to do is just start a anti-idiot revolution. We could get a pack of nerds together and start executing anyone who couldn't explain that correlation != causality or find the roots of a quadratic equation. The best part is nobody would try to stop us, because who would willing join a mob of 'idiots' to put down the packs of wheezy db programmers intent on idioticide...
I don't think the 300 million minutes are wasted by any means.
I think the AB haters are really funny. Most of the people I have meet that think its a stupid game are 'hard-core' gamers that are too cool for that sort of silliness. The amusing thing is AB is just a graphically updated version of the old games we used to play on c64 and apple ][e, where you selected an angle and velocity for your cannon, and fired a projectile at a target over polynomial generated mountains.
Just because its is launching funny looking bird sprites rather than spiky cannon balls, it is somehow less engaging of a physics simulation....
I have a friend that was doing help desk work for a large software company around the time that the whole Iraq thing started. He was a competent guy, but he didn't posses any special tech skills. I suspect that he was making about 35k a year with a few benefits. He caught wind of a job that was providing help desk support to the troops in Iraq that paid something like 90 or 100k per year, and jumped on it.
At the time, I was rather shocked at the rate of pay. He was making something like 2 to 3 times what you would realistically pay someone for the same thing stateside. Then I heard a few stories from him as time passed. They were sequestered in a military base 24/7 for the duration of their time in country, so they wouldn't get murdered. I asked him once about why he slept in a tent in their base, and his reply was that 'The buildings tend to draw mortar fire', so there were some dynamics that made life more interesting than most help desk gigs.
As an outsider who just sees the 100k a year job without understanding what it entails, it seems like a $600 hammer. The government isn't stupid (well, mostly not stupid), so there is usually a reason for things.
I could have taken the job, but getting possibly shelled, shot at, and trapped in a desert base surrounded by 18 year old marines with SAWs for 10 months, no benefits and no promise of a job past the current contract wasn't worth the money.
...which begs an interesting question, why doesn't source control include some sort of formatting neutral diff system?
Imagine code that you format using style "a", because you prefer it, is uploaded to the server, which removes all formatting and saves it. I download your changes, and upon download, style "b" formatting is applied. When I look at changes, formatting differences are negated.
Seems like a very useful feature.
We beat the North Koreans soundly. We tied with the Chinese reinforcements supplied with Russian hardware because we didn't want to turn the proxy fight into a full blown world war.
I suspect that the Bloom is referring 'tech' skills in a general sense. Most IT people are not programmers, and thus consume rather than create software products. If you have 'skills' using Office version X, it will probably not be as valuable in two years when a new and improved product, Office X+1 comes out.
Obviously, if you think of IT as just programers, what he is saying makes no reals sense, since staples like C, Java, and.Net have been around awhile and are not going to go away.
I read through the comments below, and one thing I found funny:/. normally goes ballistic when the RIAA calls copyright infringement 'stealing', but nobody seems to have problems Jobs calling Android copying 'his' ideas 'stealing'.
If it is copying style and design elements, it would be trade dress (trademark) infringement, or patent infringement if they used techniques that Apple had patented. It isn't plagiarism, because that is a failure to attribute other people's writings, and there is no copyright involved. Copying ideas seems to be fair game if it isn't covered under any other category.
I homeschool - my kids kick ass and I don't need your fucking State education
This is where people who don't support public education miss the GODDAMED BUS. You aren't paying to educate just your kids. You are paying to educate everbody's kids, so when your kids grow up, they can live in a nice community full of other educated people. There is a pretty direct correlation between lack of education and crime. Do you want your kids to get murdered by a mugger in twenty years because they have a nice watch?
I am selfish. I want to live in a country full of interesting, educated people. If you think this isn't important, take you brilliant kids and move to Somalia and tell me how it works out for you.
So what are you going to do when California decides that it wants to run 117 volts AC, Nevada 204 volts AC, and Oregon decides to go DC ? Sure, it isn't an insurmountable problem but it greatly complicates selling products that use electricity or transferring excess power to neighbor states. The same thing applies to roads, rail ways, and a whole host of other public utilities. Having one body setting down standards benefits everybody.
There are so many great *modern* science fiction writers out there
There are. But there are even more hacks than ever before. I find most contemporary sci-fi and fantasy books to be unreadable. The signal to noise ratio has gone way up from the golden era. Because these genres have become much more mainstream fare, the barrier to entry has gone way down and so a lot of authors that wouldn't have even gotten published 40 years ago are now cranking out trilogies of garbage.
To aspiring writers out there: If you are going to write sci-fi or fantasy books, please have more substance than 'I like elves and blasters are cool'.
Slashdot Mirror
i think gene simmons is a gigantic douche, but script kiddies are even worse.
You are wrong. The kids will grow out of it in a few years.
They'd probably nuke Wales or something.
They had it coming.
Seems to me that there is miles of difference between a born Engineer (a smart, logical thinker who loves tinkering and solving problems), and a sold Engineer (someone who has no inclination or desire towards engineering, but simply wants to make as much money as possible).
So very true. As someone who did a fair amount of freelance developing over the last decade, the number of people who are using compilers because they think it will get them rich is truly scary. Non-comp sci types are *probably* safe to let loose on basic web development tasks, and that is about it. If the number of developers that I have meet that are the really talented types who really 'get' coding are representative of the industry as a whole, I fear for our future.
I considered the whole thing subject to the same confidentiality restrictions as a doctor
And this is probably the sort of attitude we should be adopting. IT sort of has the back door keys to everything, since we are the people who write the code and maintain the servers.
On the flip side, one could also assume that the boss's secretary now has less access to this same privileged information, so the number of peeking eyes hasn't increased, but simply changed departments.
..You just made next year's college chemistry students have to buy a new edition of the textbook. College books might just be affordable if people would just stop learning new things.
When I think of the things in our house that *must* run on AC, it's only our fridge, freezer, and HVAC
For those of us with a modest knowledge of electrical devices, what is it that *prevents* these devices from running DC? My understanding is that AC was chosen over DC so many years ago based off of long distance transmission requirements.
FB is like AOL was in the 90s: A ubiquitous, shitty walled garden that provided you access to a bunch of similar low tech jerks and annoying worthless adds, and like AOL, it will fade into nothingness when the whole 'social networking' craze dies down.
If I could short FB stock over a twenty year period, I would make a killing.
Caving in a giant inverted zigguart sounds like a lot of work. FLOODING a zigguart sounds much easier...
Why would you give children landmines? You probably peel the 'DO NOT EAT' stickers off of them before you hand them off, too....
Hiring assassins is a somewhat tricky business. If you show up with 10k and a name, why would the assassin be too picky about who he shot? On one hand he has to track down and shoot someone without getting caught for the money, on the other hand he can just shoot the person with the money and call it a day. That is assuming that he doesn't just take the money and run. What do you do then, hire an assassin to kill the assassin?
You know, for a long time I have been telling people that is the very reason the right is so fucked up. I would think a true fiscal conservative wouldn't be so upset about the amount of money that is taxed, but that it is spent as efficiently as possible, getting the maximum bang for the buck, as it were. It seems to me that they are very confused about what they should be focusing on.
Paying for some lard ass to taser everyone he sees
I would pay for this. Is it like some sort of new reality tv show? "Chubby d00dz taser random people", tonight on Fox.
You know, perhaps the only thing to do is just start a anti-idiot revolution. We could get a pack of nerds together and start executing anyone who couldn't explain that correlation != causality or find the roots of a quadratic equation. The best part is nobody would try to stop us, because who would willing join a mob of 'idiots' to put down the packs of wheezy db programmers intent on idioticide...
I don't think the 300 million minutes are wasted by any means.
I think the AB haters are really funny. Most of the people I have meet that think its a stupid game are 'hard-core' gamers that are too cool for that sort of silliness. The amusing thing is AB is just a graphically updated version of the old games we used to play on c64 and apple ][e, where you selected an angle and velocity for your cannon, and fired a projectile at a target over polynomial generated mountains.
Just because its is launching funny looking bird sprites rather than spiky cannon balls, it is somehow less engaging of a physics simulation....
I have a friend that was doing help desk work for a large software company around the time that the whole Iraq thing started. He was a competent guy, but he didn't posses any special tech skills. I suspect that he was making about 35k a year with a few benefits. He caught wind of a job that was providing help desk support to the troops in Iraq that paid something like 90 or 100k per year, and jumped on it.
At the time, I was rather shocked at the rate of pay. He was making something like 2 to 3 times what you would realistically pay someone for the same thing stateside. Then I heard a few stories from him as time passed. They were sequestered in a military base 24/7 for the duration of their time in country, so they wouldn't get murdered. I asked him once about why he slept in a tent in their base, and his reply was that 'The buildings tend to draw mortar fire', so there were some dynamics that made life more interesting than most help desk gigs.
As an outsider who just sees the 100k a year job without understanding what it entails, it seems like a $600 hammer. The government isn't stupid (well, mostly not stupid), so there is usually a reason for things.
I could have taken the job, but getting possibly shelled, shot at, and trapped in a desert base surrounded by 18 year old marines with SAWs for 10 months, no benefits and no promise of a job past the current contract wasn't worth the money.
...which begs an interesting question, why doesn't source control include some sort of formatting neutral diff system? Imagine code that you format using style "a", because you prefer it, is uploaded to the server, which removes all formatting and saves it. I download your changes, and upon download, style "b" formatting is applied. When I look at changes, formatting differences are negated. Seems like a very useful feature.
We beat the North Koreans soundly. We tied with the Chinese reinforcements supplied with Russian hardware because we didn't want to turn the proxy fight into a full blown world war.
I suspect that the Bloom is referring 'tech' skills in a general sense. Most IT people are not programmers, and thus consume rather than create software products. If you have 'skills' using Office version X, it will probably not be as valuable in two years when a new and improved product, Office X+1 comes out.
.Net have been around awhile and are not going to go away.
Obviously, if you think of IT as just programers, what he is saying makes no reals sense, since staples like C, Java, and
The first terminators would be tanks and UAVs, hardly targets that could be overrun by humans with water buckets and sledge hammers....
I read through the comments below, and one thing I found funny: /. normally goes ballistic when the RIAA calls copyright infringement 'stealing', but nobody seems to have problems Jobs calling Android copying 'his' ideas 'stealing'.
If it is copying style and design elements, it would be trade dress (trademark) infringement, or patent infringement if they used techniques that Apple had patented. It isn't plagiarism, because that is a failure to attribute other people's writings, and there is no copyright involved. Copying ideas seems to be fair game if it isn't covered under any other category.
I homeschool - my kids kick ass and I don't need your fucking State education
This is where people who don't support public education miss the GODDAMED BUS. You aren't paying to educate just your kids. You are paying to educate everbody's kids, so when your kids grow up, they can live in a nice community full of other educated people. There is a pretty direct correlation between lack of education and crime. Do you want your kids to get murdered by a mugger in twenty years because they have a nice watch?
I am selfish. I want to live in a country full of interesting, educated people. If you think this isn't important, take you brilliant kids and move to Somalia and tell me how it works out for you.
So what are you going to do when California decides that it wants to run 117 volts AC, Nevada 204 volts AC, and Oregon decides to go DC ? Sure, it isn't an insurmountable problem but it greatly complicates selling products that use electricity or transferring excess power to neighbor states. The same thing applies to roads, rail ways, and a whole host of other public utilities. Having one body setting down standards benefits everybody.
Read all his comments, nothing but astroturf.
...because anyone with opinions contrary to yours is obviously a corporate shill.
The signal to noise ratio has gone way up from the golden era.
Er, way down, not up. Note to self: spend more time proof reading my posts ranting about crappy writing......
There are so many great *modern* science fiction writers out there
There are. But there are even more hacks than ever before. I find most contemporary sci-fi and fantasy books to be unreadable. The signal to noise ratio has gone way up from the golden era. Because these genres have become much more mainstream fare, the barrier to entry has gone way down and so a lot of authors that wouldn't have even gotten published 40 years ago are now cranking out trilogies of garbage.
To aspiring writers out there: If you are going to write sci-fi or fantasy books, please have more substance than 'I like elves and blasters are cool'.