I've noticed this as well, and to be honest, I really don't have a problem with it. Isn't this human nature? For the record, I'm a white american male.
I'm an engineer. I only hold an undergrad ME degree. However, I was helping my advisor (who was from Pakistan, by the way... he fled the purge of the educated in the 70s... great guy) with graduate level research my last two years. The reason was that there were no American grad students in the department, and those that were there didn't know english well enough to help write papers and, well, research other papers that were written in english. I don't know what those foreign grad students actually did, but I suspect that I wasn't the only person who found them to be relatively useless as TAs or research assistants because you couldn't talk to them without an interpreter. Schools do strange things for money... mine hired a Chinese laser expert hoping to get research grants. Problem: not only could he not teach, he couldn't speak English. Makes for an interesting physics class. I don't mean he had an accent problem; he couldn't speak the language. On the other hand, I had another Chinese physics prof who was great, brilliant optics guy. He had this weird fetish for US warplanes, though. I remember a lecture about the speed of sound including "You have gun... F15 coming... F15 going mach 1.2, launches missile, missing accelerating at whatever, whole building blow up, you never hear plane". Actually, that was part of every lecture now that I think about it. Still, I managed to get a good education even if I do kick myself from time to time for not going to law school. See, engineers get billed out, a lawyer gets the money or at least a cut.
Here's another approach, and I'm surprised no one has suggested this yet: buy a motorcycle. I get 60 mpg on my daily driver (which will keep up with most Mustangs if you rev the hell out of it) and 25 mpg out of the go-fast bike. And I don't have to annoy other drivers with "gas saving big toe only driving methods". The go-fast bike is a want, and not a need, and doesn't get used often enough. Even so, it gets better mileage than most of the pickup trucks (crewcab, of course) that my coworkers drive.
Hey, I have no problem with you and no problem with what you think. Everyone has the right to try to make a living. However, if the language difference means that they cannot supply the services they are being paid for then I have a problem with that. Nothing personal at all.
I really doubt that rats make good pets. I had a houseful of art students as roommates for a while, and one bought a rat for a film shoot. His girlfriend objected to returning the rat to wild, and bought it a cage and all the usual rat accesories. She named it Sneezy. Long story short, there was NO WAY to keep Sneezy in his cage. There's nothing quite like rolling over at three in the morning and discovering a pissed-off screaming rat under you. I didn't have anything against the rat, I just wish he would have picked someone else's bed to stay warm in.
Re:Offtopic fo' yo' gran-momma...
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Google Terror Threat
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Ok, I have nothing against India, Indians, or their technical abilities. However, the accent DOES cause problems in my experience. Here's one example from personal experience:
An elderly client used the reinstall CDs to try to fix his Dell. Whoops, that wiped Office Small Business and he had thrown away the cases because they didn't fit in his drawer the way he wanted. Oops. Called Dell, they couldn't find a serial that would work. Explained to the customer that calling Microsoft would cost $90 (I think that's what is was, I might be off a little) and he agreed. I got a guy in India. Now, have you ever tried to get a CD key, over the phone, from a guy with a REALLY strong accent? It went something like this: India: "Ok, your key is 9-8-7-bleh". Me: "Bleh? Was that D as in dog or B as in boy?" India (getting more and more aggravated): "Dog? What is dog? I do not know dog. I said BLEH". Anyway, I never could get a working CD key out of them. The customer didn't understand what the problem was, so I handed him the phone. Upshot is since he didn't use Outlook anyway he hung up and I installed Open Office.
Agreed. I've turned down shitty jobs and the would-be-employer tried to look shocked, hurt, and offended when I did. The shocked part almost looked real, and I feel sorry for whoever took the job. I was polite and professional, though, so I didn't burn any bridges even if those companies are on the "I'd rather be homeless" list. There are people desperate enough to take those jobs, and a lot of them have families, and that's really depressing.
I don't think he was being pompous... that kind of implies that he wrote his response without realizing how it would come across. I think he knew exactly how it would come across: it would needle someone at Microsoft, and it would drive the fanboys on/. into a frenzy. He accomplished his goal. Nicely done, ESR. I hope you were operating on the principle that any publicity is good publicity and just stirring up shit in the process. Nothing really wrong with that, in my book.
I understand why head hunters exist, but they seem kind of ham-handed. You get a call or an e-mail, very carefully targeted, and you can count on one hand who among your vendors and consultants that information came from. They almost always admit to it over drinks the next time they are in town. And it's not just in the top end of the job market, it's anything really specialized. Companies would rather not have to train you, and if it's something industry specific the head hunters get called so some poor sales rep for a VAR doesn't get embarassed while playing golf.
You missed the point as well, in my experience. Interviews are normal, whether or not the company has already decided on hiring you. If the position is not going to be advertised, they will still want an interview just to talk to you in person if they haven't already. If the position (for policy/legal reasons) has been advertised, they still do interviews so they don't get sued, even if they already know who they want to hire. This is why, in my opinion, it is easier to get a job if you know someone and why Monster et al are a waste of time if you have experience in your field. This is just my experience, YMMV.
I work in automation too in a sense, and the biggest problem I see is consultants. Consultants work off statements of work and spec sheets; they don't really understand how our company works or WHY some process should be automated. Couple that with the fact that MANAGEMENT is the ones writing the statement of work forms, and will override engineering for political reasons, and I think it should be obvious why completely new systems (I.E., things no other company have tried) rarely work right the first time around. In my experience, I have had to fix or replace at least 90% of the programs that were written by consultants on spec. I usually just replace them, because when you look at the code they obviously didn't understand the entire system, let alone what their piece was supposed to do. If I wasn't in the meetings, it not worth my time to try to figure out what THEY thought they were supposed to do, the guy that wrote it usually doesn't speak English as a native language, and just replacing it is more efficient. I want to punch someone every time I hear management refer to a VAR or consulting company as a "partner" in a project. Maybe I'm just bitter.
No, they still make them. And they still suck. I bought one for cheap Windows box because it was, well, cheap and I still regret it. No way to tweak anything, and six months after I got it it wouldn't boot off a CD or let me into the BIOS. POS.
What really irks me is the use of the word "amateur". WTF does he mean by that? The word implies "not an expert". But he applied to an important developer. So does he mean "someone who does something because he enjoys it", ie a hobbyist? Oh well, he just throws in some hari krishna BS to cover it. "Amateur" is a poor word to use, at least the way he used it. The arcticle reads like a troll aimed at CIOs... "Yeah, I started in mommys basement, but I figured out how to make a profit, and then, like, I was flying my rich ass around in Europe and I was tired, but I came to the conference anyway, and you're just dirty hippies. Yeah, bitches." He might have a successful company, but his attitude sucks.
Fuck their "culture". They say "death to america" and I'm going to to take their dumb, mullah-following asses quite litterally. It's not a culture, it's a cult, based on a "prophet" who married little girls and has a thing for suicide bombings. Fuck them, and their culture. If any them spoke out against suicide bombings and the like I might change my mind, but for the moment FUCK THEM.
Iran is run by whacked out religious types, and has been for a while. The people of that country, however, seem to be content with the situation. If they are, in fact, not happy with the mullahs then give them guns. If they are happy, fuck it... why should I care that they want to practice a fucked-up religion as government and sideline half their workforce? Fuck being PC, these people have a middle ages "
burn the witch" type of mentality, but now they are building atomic bombs. Tolerance is going to bite the US in the ass.
This is just my experience, but the only time I ever had a problem with sound on Linux was with (if remember correctly) Redhat 6.something. Yeah, it took a config file change, but all I had to do was take it off mute. Nvidia drivers, on the other hand, have always been a pain. The solution to that has been to keep a Windows box around as a gaming console.
You might just have a point there... kind sad that you do, though. Although I would have to point out that it's not just the government making these types of economic decisions. My dad (a career military guy, veteran of a couple of wars) always told me that if you want to know why there was a war just follow the money. I think he was right.
This sounds like total academic B.S. Did we create the Bin Ladin problem when we were trying to get the Russians out of Afghanistan? Probably. Was he created so that 9/11 could happen and Bush could start a really stupid war with the rest of the world? Somehow I doubt it. Yes, having an enemy is a good way to unify a country, but I doubt it was deliberate.
No, the car has four wheel disk brakes. The front brakes get a lot more pressure from the proportional valve, that's all. Theoretical braking power is just a function of surface area, but disc brakes get rid of heat better and expand when heated that don't kill braking power as badly. In this case is was too much motor for the rear brakes to handle. Also, the real limit is the tire. If the tire's grip is less than the power being put onto it, it's going to spin. I was in the middle of someone's lawn on wet grass when it spun out.
The problem is, the old testament was written a couple thousand years ago. Different time, doubtful accuracy. Ever hear about the "victor writes the history books" to justify his actions? Unfortunately the fundamentalist Muslims of the world are sharing time on this world with me. I have no reason to like them, respect them, or give a fuck whether they continue to breathe givin the tactics they are using to pursue their goals of fundamentalist theocracies. I dislike fundamentalists in general. If some jackass blows up an abortion clinic and kills people, give 'em the chair or life in prison. However, most Christians (and I'm not one, by the way) would condemn such cowardly and terroristic acts. I do not see the Muslim world condemning terrorism at all. It seems to be ingrained in their culture and some versions of their religion. "God told me to do it" is not a valid excuse. If the rest of the world decides that they are violent pests and tries to get rid of the more reactionary strains of Islam, that's just how it is. They should have fired the Imam when he started teaching bomb belt classes in the mosque. And that is what's happening, in case you hadn't noticed.
Now you're starting to get it. Just because two sides are fighting doesn't mean that they are doing it for the same reason. It would appear that to us the fighting is justified to keep the oil flowing, since our economy depends on it. And a lot of the rest of the world depends on our economy being stable, not that justifies some the things that were happening. WMD was the excuse we used to launch the war in Iraq. No, as for the other side, they portray it as a religious war. That's just another excuse too. They want to establish totalitarian Muslim states because that gives them CONTROL. We want unrestricted access to the oil, they want to be little kings instructing their sheeple on what the Koran really means. I don't support the war in Iraq, and think it was a really dumb idea, but how can you even compare the two sides? I mean, can you see the US or Israel rioting (and killing their own people) because someone allegedly flushed a copy of the Bible or Torah down the john? No. Do I really give a shit if someone DID give the Koran a swirly? No. I could really give a fuck less. Bush plays up to the religious right to get votes. Not good, but everyone seems to know the deal. The Taliban/Wahibi types play religion to control the way entire societies live their lives. That's worse. What even worse is that entire societies have gone along with the fundamentalist brainwashing, either out of lack of brains or lack of balls. So, the reality as I see it is that this is really a religious war. It might not be for the people pulling the strings, but it may very well be for the poors saps pulling the trigger, especially on the Muslim side. This might sound insensitive, but even if we went over there for the wrong reason I really am not going to feel bad if a few people who saw other people's heads off with knives (you DID see that video, didn't you?) wind up with large holes in them. Kill as many as humanly possible, then pull out and let the Iraqis deal with the rest.
That's not always true. I own a Jag with a Mustang drivetrain in, and I didn't to a great job of routing the throttle cable the first time around. The throttle stuck wide open, and the brakes did not hold the car. I wound up doing a couple of doughnuts in someone's front yard before I got the engine shut down (the front brakes held, the back brakes did not). Brakes lose power QUICK once they get hot.
No, I'm not surprised. I'm 30, and on paper I'm not a programmer, let alone an enterprise systems coder. However, no one else seems to have ever programmed ANYTHING. I do it so it gets done. Common sense has very little to to with modern american big business.
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I've noticed this as well, and to be honest, I really don't have a problem with it. Isn't this human nature? For the record, I'm a white american male.
I'm an engineer. I only hold an undergrad ME degree. However, I was helping my advisor (who was from Pakistan, by the way... he fled the purge of the educated in the 70s... great guy) with graduate level research my last two years. The reason was that there were no American grad students in the department, and those that were there didn't know english well enough to help write papers and, well, research other papers that were written in english. I don't know what those foreign grad students actually did, but I suspect that I wasn't the only person who found them to be relatively useless as TAs or research assistants because you couldn't talk to them without an interpreter. Schools do strange things for money... mine hired a Chinese laser expert hoping to get research grants. Problem: not only could he not teach, he couldn't speak English. Makes for an interesting physics class. I don't mean he had an accent problem; he couldn't speak the language. On the other hand, I had another Chinese physics prof who was great, brilliant optics guy. He had this weird fetish for US warplanes, though. I remember a lecture about the speed of sound including "You have gun... F15 coming... F15 going mach 1.2, launches missile, missing accelerating at whatever, whole building blow up, you never hear plane". Actually, that was part of every lecture now that I think about it. Still, I managed to get a good education even if I do kick myself from time to time for not going to law school. See, engineers get billed out, a lawyer gets the money or at least a cut.
Hey, I LIKE looking at Ann when she has a black dress on... you just have to hit the "mute" button.
Here's another approach, and I'm surprised no one has suggested this yet: buy a motorcycle. I get 60 mpg on my daily driver (which will keep up with most Mustangs if you rev the hell out of it) and 25 mpg out of the go-fast bike. And I don't have to annoy other drivers with "gas saving big toe only driving methods". The go-fast bike is a want, and not a need, and doesn't get used often enough. Even so, it gets better mileage than most of the pickup trucks (crewcab, of course) that my coworkers drive.
Hey, I have no problem with you and no problem with what you think. Everyone has the right to try to make a living. However, if the language difference means that they cannot supply the services they are being paid for then I have a problem with that. Nothing personal at all.
I really doubt that rats make good pets. I had a houseful of art students as roommates for a while, and one bought a rat for a film shoot. His girlfriend objected to returning the rat to wild, and bought it a cage and all the usual rat accesories. She named it Sneezy. Long story short, there was NO WAY to keep Sneezy in his cage. There's nothing quite like rolling over at three in the morning and discovering a pissed-off screaming rat under you. I didn't have anything against the rat, I just wish he would have picked someone else's bed to stay warm in.
Ok, I have nothing against India, Indians, or their technical abilities. However, the accent DOES cause problems in my experience. Here's one example from personal experience: An elderly client used the reinstall CDs to try to fix his Dell. Whoops, that wiped Office Small Business and he had thrown away the cases because they didn't fit in his drawer the way he wanted. Oops. Called Dell, they couldn't find a serial that would work. Explained to the customer that calling Microsoft would cost $90 (I think that's what is was, I might be off a little) and he agreed. I got a guy in India. Now, have you ever tried to get a CD key, over the phone, from a guy with a REALLY strong accent? It went something like this: India: "Ok, your key is 9-8-7-bleh". Me: "Bleh? Was that D as in dog or B as in boy?" India (getting more and more aggravated): "Dog? What is dog? I do not know dog. I said BLEH". Anyway, I never could get a working CD key out of them. The customer didn't understand what the problem was, so I handed him the phone. Upshot is since he didn't use Outlook anyway he hung up and I installed Open Office.
I feel your pain, man :)
Agreed. I've turned down shitty jobs and the would-be-employer tried to look shocked, hurt, and offended when I did. The shocked part almost looked real, and I feel sorry for whoever took the job. I was polite and professional, though, so I didn't burn any bridges even if those companies are on the "I'd rather be homeless" list. There are people desperate enough to take those jobs, and a lot of them have families, and that's really depressing.
I don't think he was being pompous... that kind of implies that he wrote his response without realizing how it would come across. I think he knew exactly how it would come across: it would needle someone at Microsoft, and it would drive the fanboys on /. into a frenzy. He accomplished his goal. Nicely done, ESR. I hope you were operating on the principle that any publicity is good publicity and just stirring up shit in the process. Nothing really wrong with that, in my book.
I understand why head hunters exist, but they seem kind of ham-handed. You get a call or an e-mail, very carefully targeted, and you can count on one hand who among your vendors and consultants that information came from. They almost always admit to it over drinks the next time they are in town. And it's not just in the top end of the job market, it's anything really specialized. Companies would rather not have to train you, and if it's something industry specific the head hunters get called so some poor sales rep for a VAR doesn't get embarassed while playing golf.
You missed the point as well, in my experience. Interviews are normal, whether or not the company has already decided on hiring you. If the position is not going to be advertised, they will still want an interview just to talk to you in person if they haven't already. If the position (for policy/legal reasons) has been advertised, they still do interviews so they don't get sued, even if they already know who they want to hire. This is why, in my opinion, it is easier to get a job if you know someone and why Monster et al are a waste of time if you have experience in your field. This is just my experience, YMMV.
I work in automation too in a sense, and the biggest problem I see is consultants. Consultants work off statements of work and spec sheets; they don't really understand how our company works or WHY some process should be automated. Couple that with the fact that MANAGEMENT is the ones writing the statement of work forms, and will override engineering for political reasons, and I think it should be obvious why completely new systems (I.E., things no other company have tried) rarely work right the first time around. In my experience, I have had to fix or replace at least 90% of the programs that were written by consultants on spec. I usually just replace them, because when you look at the code they obviously didn't understand the entire system, let alone what their piece was supposed to do. If I wasn't in the meetings, it not worth my time to try to figure out what THEY thought they were supposed to do, the guy that wrote it usually doesn't speak English as a native language, and just replacing it is more efficient. I want to punch someone every time I hear management refer to a VAR or consulting company as a "partner" in a project. Maybe I'm just bitter.
No, they still make them. And they still suck. I bought one for cheap Windows box because it was, well, cheap and I still regret it. No way to tweak anything, and six months after I got it it wouldn't boot off a CD or let me into the BIOS. POS.
What really irks me is the use of the word "amateur". WTF does he mean by that? The word implies "not an expert". But he applied to an important developer. So does he mean "someone who does something because he enjoys it", ie a hobbyist? Oh well, he just throws in some hari krishna BS to cover it. "Amateur" is a poor word to use, at least the way he used it. The arcticle reads like a troll aimed at CIOs... "Yeah, I started in mommys basement, but I figured out how to make a profit, and then, like, I was flying my rich ass around in Europe and I was tired, but I came to the conference anyway, and you're just dirty hippies. Yeah, bitches." He might have a successful company, but his attitude sucks.
Fuck their "culture". They say "death to america" and I'm going to to take their dumb, mullah-following asses quite litterally. It's not a culture, it's a cult, based on a "prophet" who married little girls and has a thing for suicide bombings. Fuck them, and their culture. If any them spoke out against suicide bombings and the like I might change my mind, but for the moment FUCK THEM.
Iran is run by whacked out religious types, and has been for a while. The people of that country, however, seem to be content with the situation. If they are, in fact, not happy with the mullahs then give them guns. If they are happy, fuck it... why should I care that they want to practice a fucked-up religion as government and sideline half their workforce? Fuck being PC, these people have a middle ages " burn the witch" type of mentality, but now they are building atomic bombs. Tolerance is going to bite the US in the ass.
This is just my experience, but the only time I ever had a problem with sound on Linux was with (if remember correctly) Redhat 6.something. Yeah, it took a config file change, but all I had to do was take it off mute. Nvidia drivers, on the other hand, have always been a pain. The solution to that has been to keep a Windows box around as a gaming console.
You might just have a point there... kind sad that you do, though. Although I would have to point out that it's not just the government making these types of economic decisions. My dad (a career military guy, veteran of a couple of wars) always told me that if you want to know why there was a war just follow the money. I think he was right.
This sounds like total academic B.S. Did we create the Bin Ladin problem when we were trying to get the Russians out of Afghanistan? Probably. Was he created so that 9/11 could happen and Bush could start a really stupid war with the rest of the world? Somehow I doubt it. Yes, having an enemy is a good way to unify a country, but I doubt it was deliberate.
No, the car has four wheel disk brakes. The front brakes get a lot more pressure from the proportional valve, that's all. Theoretical braking power is just a function of surface area, but disc brakes get rid of heat better and expand when heated that don't kill braking power as badly. In this case is was too much motor for the rear brakes to handle. Also, the real limit is the tire. If the tire's grip is less than the power being put onto it, it's going to spin. I was in the middle of someone's lawn on wet grass when it spun out.
The problem is, the old testament was written a couple thousand years ago. Different time, doubtful accuracy. Ever hear about the "victor writes the history books" to justify his actions? Unfortunately the fundamentalist Muslims of the world are sharing time on this world with me. I have no reason to like them, respect them, or give a fuck whether they continue to breathe givin the tactics they are using to pursue their goals of fundamentalist theocracies. I dislike fundamentalists in general. If some jackass blows up an abortion clinic and kills people, give 'em the chair or life in prison. However, most Christians (and I'm not one, by the way) would condemn such cowardly and terroristic acts. I do not see the Muslim world condemning terrorism at all. It seems to be ingrained in their culture and some versions of their religion. "God told me to do it" is not a valid excuse. If the rest of the world decides that they are violent pests and tries to get rid of the more reactionary strains of Islam, that's just how it is. They should have fired the Imam when he started teaching bomb belt classes in the mosque. And that is what's happening, in case you hadn't noticed.
Now you're starting to get it. Just because two sides are fighting doesn't mean that they are doing it for the same reason. It would appear that to us the fighting is justified to keep the oil flowing, since our economy depends on it. And a lot of the rest of the world depends on our economy being stable, not that justifies some the things that were happening. WMD was the excuse we used to launch the war in Iraq. No, as for the other side, they portray it as a religious war. That's just another excuse too. They want to establish totalitarian Muslim states because that gives them CONTROL. We want unrestricted access to the oil, they want to be little kings instructing their sheeple on what the Koran really means. I don't support the war in Iraq, and think it was a really dumb idea, but how can you even compare the two sides? I mean, can you see the US or Israel rioting (and killing their own people) because someone allegedly flushed a copy of the Bible or Torah down the john? No. Do I really give a shit if someone DID give the Koran a swirly? No. I could really give a fuck less. Bush plays up to the religious right to get votes. Not good, but everyone seems to know the deal. The Taliban/Wahibi types play religion to control the way entire societies live their lives. That's worse. What even worse is that entire societies have gone along with the fundamentalist brainwashing, either out of lack of brains or lack of balls. So, the reality as I see it is that this is really a religious war. It might not be for the people pulling the strings, but it may very well be for the poors saps pulling the trigger, especially on the Muslim side. This might sound insensitive, but even if we went over there for the wrong reason I really am not going to feel bad if a few people who saw other people's heads off with knives (you DID see that video, didn't you?) wind up with large holes in them. Kill as many as humanly possible, then pull out and let the Iraqis deal with the rest.
That's not always true. I own a Jag with a Mustang drivetrain in, and I didn't to a great job of routing the throttle cable the first time around. The throttle stuck wide open, and the brakes did not hold the car. I wound up doing a couple of doughnuts in someone's front yard before I got the engine shut down (the front brakes held, the back brakes did not). Brakes lose power QUICK once they get hot.
No, I'm not surprised. I'm 30, and on paper I'm not a programmer, let alone an enterprise systems coder. However, no one else seems to have ever programmed ANYTHING. I do it so it gets done. Common sense has very little to to with modern american big business.