I was walking into a liquor store a few years back as a couple of thugs were sprinting out. The owner was waving a PPK and his daughter had a 44 magnum Desert Eagle in her hand. I think it might of sprained her wrist if she had fired it, but it sure made an impression on the would-be robbers. The owner and his daughter were very proud of themselves. He showed me the video of the attempted crime on the monitor behind the counter; the look on the face of the two thugs when the gun came out was PRICELESS. In that case, yeah, I'd say the guns prevented a crime.
They can't figure that out, and you think they understand the issues enough to be voting? Then again, there are assistants at the polls to help with these kinds of problems.
There are also people who can't find work, are going back to school to retrain in something new, and who have too much pride to apply for welfare. I know, I'm supporting one. Until my job gets outsourced as well, anyway. I'm in OK shape, I can work in any of several fields, but most are stuck with what they went to school for and have experience in. For all the comments about "capitalism vs socialism" and so on there seem to be very few people who realise that some people just want to support themselves without help, and outsourcing is going to make it harder.
I'm a mechanical engineer, and I wouldn't want to have to deal with something someone "self-taught" did. I'd start over, just to make sure no one got sued. Not to say it wouldn't be good work, but the degree is there to get hired in the first place and for legal reasons... nothing else. Yeah, that sucks, but you figure out a way to get rid of silly lawsuits and I'll take another look at what I'm willing to sign off on.
You can do a quick Google for "Ron's house of guns". See, that's (used to be, anyway) a gun shop not far from where my parents grew up. Here's the story: The guns were shipped into Canada, to take advantage of poor security. Then the came into this country, apparantly over the lakes. Old Ron fucked up when he skimmed a few and sold them to street gangs in Milwaukee out of the back of a van. Hey, shit happens, right?
Hmmm... let's think this through. Canada has a lax immigration policy, at least if you have money. Something along the lines of "if you have the money to open a convenience store we'll let you in", right? And you have a lot of Middle Eastern immigrants in your major cities, don't you? Some of those, percentage wise, are bound to be terrorists. The more immigrants, the more terrorists... you gotta admit, you don't screen very well. Also, your borders are swiss cheese. Before you disagree, why did most of the guns that Reagan and friends sent to the Contras get shipped into YOUR country before they came here? Because it was easier, that's why. And that was the 80's. No military, no border patrol to speak of, no control of private vessels coming across the great lakes. So, oh great liberal, why was a right-winger like Reagan able to take advantage of your country and ship boatloads of guns throught it? Answer: you were asleep at the switch.
Some banks are also genuinely stupid. My bank (soon to be my former bank) told me a couple of years ago that they were not going to get into online banking because it "wasn't secure enough". Reasonable answer. Then they got bought out, and starting offering online banking. I went to the website to sign up, and everything looked OK... until I hit submit. Then I got a message that said "We'll email you your password in a few days. Hit finish to continue". PLAINTEXT passwords through email? And no, I didn't click finish! I have also seen investment banks where, upon trying to log into my account over the web, found the default IIS page instead of a login prompt. Wrong answer there too. So no, there seem to be some real boneheads in the banking industry as well. Here's my alltime favorite, though: I know of a certain LARGE business DSL provider who used to use 1234 as the password on all of the routers they installed at businesses so that "it was easier to log in and troubleshoot". And you though Spaceballs was just a movie... Moral is, there are idiots everywhere.
When dealing with customers, I agree... you have to dress the part. That depends on the customers and the gig, though... the IBM consultants trying to get a contract where I work stopped wearing suits six months ago. Now they show up business casual... I guess they figured out that they stood out like sore thumbs spraypainted day-glo orange:)
No personal attack or flame intended... just pointing out that the ability to become fixated on something isn't always bad. Not if all you're worried about is the finished product, anyway. Yes, there is more to life than that, as I would currently agree to. But it is not because geeks are lazy. So you're not management, and I hope to god you never will be.
"Do you know any people working 2+ minimum wage jobs to put food on the table?"
Um, yes, I do. You just don't know how the world works yet. It isn't friendly, it isn't nice, and people fall through the cracks. Deal with it.
It has nothing to with "I do my own thing", usually (if you're talking about geeks). It's more like "I was really busy and hand this great idea and rushed out the door without trimming my beard". When I had a long beard, I only trimmed when it got in the way of drinking coffee:)
And who exactly defines presentable? I take it your company has rules such as "for males, hair must be longer than 0.25" and shorter than 2.5". No jeans are allowed. Women cannot wear green skirts". Ok, I'm exaggerating, but you get the idea. I'm not a salesman. I rarely meet with customers, but if I do I "dress up". Same with upper management (president or CEO). I will not "dress up" for vendors. The point of business is to get a project finished so you can sell it, not to impress your "enterprise PLM vendor". Fashion sense is completely irrelevant to doing a good job. If it is relevant in your job you are either not a techie or working for the wrong company. I'm guessing that you are a manager who is annoyed that one of your employees showed up in jeans on a Tuesday or something.
Ok, I'm speaking for MYSELF, and only myself, but you are missing the point. I can focus on several things at once, sure, but if I'm really hard at work on a project I might not think about "it's Sunday afternoon, better do some laundry". Hey, there's always at least one clean shirt somewhere in the house, so it's no big deal. The point is that in my case (possibly stereotypical, I don't know) I am very task orientied, and tend to work on things I'm really interested in. I don't want to stop and cook, so I order pizza. I don't shave unless a significant female insists on it, because A) it's a stupid ritual and B) it adds ten minutes to time spent in the bathroom in the morning. I'm not trying to be "punk" or "hackerish" or "antisocial", I just don't give a rat's ass what MBA types want to read into how I look. And you know what? Management likes me. Not because I'm a "rebel" that habitually disobeys their dress code (actually I don't think they care for that) but because they can give me a tough problem, one that really needs fixed, and know that I'll fix it if possible. Without supervision from MBAs. I'm kind of exeption where I work, most other people work in "groups" or "teams", whereas I work alone. I get called in where things have to be done fast without consensus. Your statement that minor errors in "business casual dress protocols" are the result of a sloppy, lazy mind are flamebait. In my experience they are the result of a tendency to focus exclusivly on solving a problem until it is resolved. And no, I'm not overweight, so I don't fit the stereotype comepletely.
If my job nitpicked about how I looked, I'd find another one. Ok, I'll admit: until last night I had long hair and a LONG beard. Then I tried to give myself a haircut and beard trim with clippers that I put together from two semi-working units on the bathroom floor. I thought the results were OK, but it is kind of hard to see the back of your head in the mirror. The girlfriend offered to "even it up for me", so I let her. Now I have a shaved head. Her reasoning? "You gave yourself a bald spot." I can't think of any way to argue with that logic:) And I don't think anyone at work will care, either. I just hope they recognize me Monday morning:)
This sounds to me like "If you use the free edition, you SHOULD distribute whatever you create with it. If you don't want to distribute OR you want to distribute with no source you should buy the Professional/Enterprise Edition license". Since when does the GPL require you to distribute anything?
I have never been able to get the Nvidia drivers to work on my main Linux box... nothing too odd, dual PIIIs on an Abit motherboard, GeForce3 video card. They try to load, then hose Xwindow. I haven't had a problem with single processor machines, but (in my limited experience) they blow goats with multiple processors.
I think the odds of as US/EU war are virtually zero. Also, I think it's important to remember that bad as 9/ll was, it was essentially a fleabite. China is the only major threat, in my opinion.
Ok, first manned try is what I meant. If the others had failed, it wouldn't be as embarrassing as the manned one going splat. After the problems China has had manufacturing very small numbers of fighters, submarines, etc. I wouldn't want to be the poor sucker they strap into it.
No, the Chinese are probably going end up making a big crater somewhere in Mongolia. This IS their first try, you know, and they have had major quality control issues with their submarines. I would imagine a manned space mission would be even more complicated than a boomer.
To get a namespace registered? ICANN? Verisign? This part was interesting:
The "info" URI scheme explicitly decouples identification from
resolution. Applications SHOULD NOT assume that an "info" URI can
be dereferenced to a representation of the resource identified by
the URI, though some business processes MAY make "info" URIs
resolvable either directly or conditionally. The purposes of the
"info" URI scheme are the identification of information assets and
the standardization of rules for declaring and comparing identity
of information assets without regard to any resolution of the URI
or even whether the information asset identified by the URI is
accessible on the Internet.
This makes it look like this was intended more for internal use than for routing to specific information on the net. Anyone have a clear idea how and why this would be used on the internet?
So, this guy thinks that too few students are going for science or technology degrees? I wonder why... lets see, scientists dont make much. Manufacturing is moving to the third world, and taking a hell of a lot of engineering jobs with it. IT is moving to India. Yeah, I'd be sure to pick one of those fields if I were trying to decide on a major. You can't blame the students for the decline in "the strength of the country", they're just looking out for themselves and trying to pick a career that might actually have a future.
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I was walking into a liquor store a few years back as a couple of thugs were sprinting out. The owner was waving a PPK and his daughter had a 44 magnum Desert Eagle in her hand. I think it might of sprained her wrist if she had fired it, but it sure made an impression on the would-be robbers. The owner and his daughter were very proud of themselves. He showed me the video of the attempted crime on the monitor behind the counter; the look on the face of the two thugs when the gun came out was PRICELESS. In that case, yeah, I'd say the guns prevented a crime.
They can't figure that out, and you think they understand the issues enough to be voting? Then again, there are assistants at the polls to help with these kinds of problems.
There are also people who can't find work, are going back to school to retrain in something new, and who have too much pride to apply for welfare. I know, I'm supporting one. Until my job gets outsourced as well, anyway. I'm in OK shape, I can work in any of several fields, but most are stuck with what they went to school for and have experience in. For all the comments about "capitalism vs socialism" and so on there seem to be very few people who realise that some people just want to support themselves without help, and outsourcing is going to make it harder.
I'm a mechanical engineer, and I wouldn't want to have to deal with something someone "self-taught" did. I'd start over, just to make sure no one got sued. Not to say it wouldn't be good work, but the degree is there to get hired in the first place and for legal reasons... nothing else. Yeah, that sucks, but you figure out a way to get rid of silly lawsuits and I'll take another look at what I'm willing to sign off on.
AI, maybe? Then we'll really have a reason to bitch about jobs being given to computers. Just think of /. after the singularity :)
I think I might have worked on a project of theirs... if the stupid acronym "ROTIS" means anything to you, I was there. And yeah, I live in Savannah.
You can do a quick Google for "Ron's house of guns". See, that's (used to be, anyway) a gun shop not far from where my parents grew up. Here's the story: The guns were shipped into Canada, to take advantage of poor security. Then the came into this country, apparantly over the lakes. Old Ron fucked up when he skimmed a few and sold them to street gangs in Milwaukee out of the back of a van. Hey, shit happens, right?
Hmmm... let's think this through. Canada has a lax immigration policy, at least if you have money. Something along the lines of "if you have the money to open a convenience store we'll let you in", right? And you have a lot of Middle Eastern immigrants in your major cities, don't you? Some of those, percentage wise, are bound to be terrorists. The more immigrants, the more terrorists... you gotta admit, you don't screen very well. Also, your borders are swiss cheese. Before you disagree, why did most of the guns that Reagan and friends sent to the Contras get shipped into YOUR country before they came here? Because it was easier, that's why. And that was the 80's. No military, no border patrol to speak of, no control of private vessels coming across the great lakes. So, oh great liberal, why was a right-winger like Reagan able to take advantage of your country and ship boatloads of guns throught it? Answer: you were asleep at the switch.
Some banks are also genuinely stupid. My bank (soon to be my former bank) told me a couple of years ago that they were not going to get into online banking because it "wasn't secure enough". Reasonable answer. Then they got bought out, and starting offering online banking. I went to the website to sign up, and everything looked OK... until I hit submit. Then I got a message that said "We'll email you your password in a few days. Hit finish to continue". PLAINTEXT passwords through email? And no, I didn't click finish! I have also seen investment banks where, upon trying to log into my account over the web, found the default IIS page instead of a login prompt. Wrong answer there too. So no, there seem to be some real boneheads in the banking industry as well. Here's my alltime favorite, though: I know of a certain LARGE business DSL provider who used to use 1234 as the password on all of the routers they installed at businesses so that "it was easier to log in and troubleshoot". And you though Spaceballs was just a movie... Moral is, there are idiots everywhere.
The Dilbert website used to sell an iflatable cube roof... I don't know if they still offer it or not.
What is this slashdot personals you speak of? Why on earth would slashdot need a personals section ?
When dealing with customers, I agree... you have to dress the part. That depends on the customers and the gig, though... the IBM consultants trying to get a contract where I work stopped wearing suits six months ago. Now they show up business casual... I guess they figured out that they stood out like sore thumbs spraypainted day-glo orange :)
No personal attack or flame intended... just pointing out that the ability to become fixated on something isn't always bad. Not if all you're worried about is the finished product, anyway. Yes, there is more to life than that, as I would currently agree to. But it is not because geeks are lazy. So you're not management, and I hope to god you never will be.
"Do you know any people working 2+ minimum wage jobs to put food on the table?" Um, yes, I do. You just don't know how the world works yet. It isn't friendly, it isn't nice, and people fall through the cracks. Deal with it.
It has nothing to with "I do my own thing", usually (if you're talking about geeks). It's more like "I was really busy and hand this great idea and rushed out the door without trimming my beard". When I had a long beard, I only trimmed when it got in the way of drinking coffee :)
And who exactly defines presentable? I take it your company has rules such as "for males, hair must be longer than 0.25" and shorter than 2.5". No jeans are allowed. Women cannot wear green skirts". Ok, I'm exaggerating, but you get the idea. I'm not a salesman. I rarely meet with customers, but if I do I "dress up". Same with upper management (president or CEO). I will not "dress up" for vendors. The point of business is to get a project finished so you can sell it, not to impress your "enterprise PLM vendor". Fashion sense is completely irrelevant to doing a good job. If it is relevant in your job you are either not a techie or working for the wrong company. I'm guessing that you are a manager who is annoyed that one of your employees showed up in jeans on a Tuesday or something.
Ok, I'm speaking for MYSELF, and only myself, but you are missing the point. I can focus on several things at once, sure, but if I'm really hard at work on a project I might not think about "it's Sunday afternoon, better do some laundry". Hey, there's always at least one clean shirt somewhere in the house, so it's no big deal. The point is that in my case (possibly stereotypical, I don't know) I am very task orientied, and tend to work on things I'm really interested in. I don't want to stop and cook, so I order pizza. I don't shave unless a significant female insists on it, because A) it's a stupid ritual and B) it adds ten minutes to time spent in the bathroom in the morning. I'm not trying to be "punk" or "hackerish" or "antisocial", I just don't give a rat's ass what MBA types want to read into how I look. And you know what? Management likes me. Not because I'm a "rebel" that habitually disobeys their dress code (actually I don't think they care for that) but because they can give me a tough problem, one that really needs fixed, and know that I'll fix it if possible. Without supervision from MBAs. I'm kind of exeption where I work, most other people work in "groups" or "teams", whereas I work alone. I get called in where things have to be done fast without consensus. Your statement that minor errors in "business casual dress protocols" are the result of a sloppy, lazy mind are flamebait. In my experience they are the result of a tendency to focus exclusivly on solving a problem until it is resolved. And no, I'm not overweight, so I don't fit the stereotype comepletely.
If my job nitpicked about how I looked, I'd find another one. Ok, I'll admit: until last night I had long hair and a LONG beard. Then I tried to give myself a haircut and beard trim with clippers that I put together from two semi-working units on the bathroom floor. I thought the results were OK, but it is kind of hard to see the back of your head in the mirror. The girlfriend offered to "even it up for me", so I let her. Now I have a shaved head. Her reasoning? "You gave yourself a bald spot." I can't think of any way to argue with that logic :) And I don't think anyone at work will care, either. I just hope they recognize me Monday morning:)
This sounds to me like "If you use the free edition, you SHOULD distribute whatever you create with it. If you don't want to distribute OR you want to distribute with no source you should buy the Professional/Enterprise Edition license". Since when does the GPL require you to distribute anything?
I have never been able to get the Nvidia drivers to work on my main Linux box... nothing too odd, dual PIIIs on an Abit motherboard, GeForce3 video card. They try to load, then hose Xwindow. I haven't had a problem with single processor machines, but (in my limited experience) they blow goats with multiple processors.
I think the odds of as US/EU war are virtually zero. Also, I think it's important to remember that bad as 9/ll was, it was essentially a fleabite. China is the only major threat, in my opinion.
Ok, first manned try is what I meant. If the others had failed, it wouldn't be as embarrassing as the manned one going splat. After the problems China has had manufacturing very small numbers of fighters, submarines, etc. I wouldn't want to be the poor sucker they strap into it.
No, the Chinese are probably going end up making a big crater somewhere in Mongolia. This IS their first try, you know, and they have had major quality control issues with their submarines. I would imagine a manned space mission would be even more complicated than a boomer.
To get a namespace registered? ICANN? Verisign? This part was interesting: The "info" URI scheme explicitly decouples identification from resolution. Applications SHOULD NOT assume that an "info" URI can be dereferenced to a representation of the resource identified by the URI, though some business processes MAY make "info" URIs resolvable either directly or conditionally. The purposes of the "info" URI scheme are the identification of information assets and the standardization of rules for declaring and comparing identity of information assets without regard to any resolution of the URI or even whether the information asset identified by the URI is accessible on the Internet. This makes it look like this was intended more for internal use than for routing to specific information on the net. Anyone have a clear idea how and why this would be used on the internet?
So, this guy thinks that too few students are going for science or technology degrees? I wonder why... lets see, scientists dont make much. Manufacturing is moving to the third world, and taking a hell of a lot of engineering jobs with it. IT is moving to India. Yeah, I'd be sure to pick one of those fields if I were trying to decide on a major. You can't blame the students for the decline in "the strength of the country", they're just looking out for themselves and trying to pick a career that might actually have a future.