There are a lot of things that are written in the Bible that are promptly ignored by people pushing their own religious ideals. My favorite, so oft forgotten dictum "Judge not, lest ye be judged".
Translation? Worry about saving yourself and less about what everyone else is up to.
So are you saying that performing regular, predictable backups is completely pointless because you never really know when the system was first compromised? How then is it safe to ever use anything from the FSF? If the backup is compromised and the MD5 hash is compromised, you're back to square one. Better yet, how can anyone convince their boss to use FSF release binaries knowning there is no guarantee they're original?
Excusing really sloppy practices by implying those practices are pointless doesn't cut it. Comprehensive, qualified backups should be the norm.
You know the saddest part of this whole thing? The jury more than likely didn't even look at the merits of the patent. They saw "small company" vs "large company" and decided to play robin hood - all too often these days in the US court system and the reason law suits are so numerous. You don't actually have to prove anything to have some monster-truck watching jury award you millions of dollars from the "big bad company" because "they can afford to pay".
Take two programmers; one 21 year old fresh out of college, one 35 year old with 15 years of experience. Hand them a complex 6-month assignment and watch what happens.
20-year old takes what he can out of your terse project summary and starts coding right away.
35-year old takes the project summary, digests it, and starts on a design.
20-year old codes in a vaccum, not worrying too much whether or not what he's coding actually solves your business problem. Coding is cool, and it's fun, so why interrupt it with useless questions?
35-year old realizes that wasting time coding before requirements are fully specified is a sure way to fall behind schedule. He asks a lot of questions, does research on different approaches, documents his findings.
After a month, 20-year old has a slew of code that may or may not meet requirements. He understands what he's written but not how it fits into an overall architecture. You inform him he needs error logging, exception handling, internationalization support, performance metrics, patchability, maintainablity, and testability. Seeing all this boring crap that gets in the way of coding, 20-year old gets totally demotivated. Since he has no real commitments, he quits.
35-year old has a solid grasp on what is required, knows what needs to be done in the grand scheme of things, has already thought about the maintainability, internationalization, and testability. He sees a challenge ahead, he maintains a mortage and a wife and some kids, soe he's more motivated to get the job done right, and he's less likely to jump ship when things get 'dull'.
Give me the 35-year old coder with experience over the 20-year old with enthusiasm any day of the week.
Couldn't the original copyright holder use the DMCA to prevent virus-protection software companies from reverse engineering their creations? Simply send out a nasty legal form demanding Symantec to cease sending virus scan updates. Write the virii with some basic self protection and one could argue the virus racket is circumventing a DRM protocol.
I think that would be an appropriate use of the DMCA.
And to be equally frank - the market for MCSEs and Webmonkies is dead. As for software development, there are plenty of innovations happening and will continue to happen. All this chicken little "THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING" crap is just there to garner attention. Oracle and Sun are both in the crapper, but not because software is dying. More to do with inflexible business strategies and over inflated egos.
1) install hundreds of miles of high speed railing. Don't worry, no one will mess with it. We're the United States, after all. 2) haul heavy, rail guided missile, place on rails. 3) fire and forget.
All those getting in SBC's face for trying to enforce this patent need to change your priorities. SPC has received a government patent on this, so they're entitled to attempt enforcement. The problem here is not the corporation screwing over the internet, it's a broken government office that doesn't research prior art in software. This has been an ongoing problem - patent office grants rediculously broad patent on a software "innovation" without bothering to even check if the applied for technology already exists.
Combine these bogus patent approvals with our draconian approaches to copyright law and we're sliding down that slippery slope that much faster. Pretty soon you'll be paying your employer a "usage" fee for office space and the government will be taxing the air we breath. The fact that companies can patent human genes should have set of alarm bells throughout the nation. Companies are preparing to buy our very existance in the name of profits and our government is letting it happen.
Sounds like bad code unrelated to the underlying infrastructure. Why does chat have higher priority than game-required packets? Why is the game so sensitive to CPU utilization? Does the networking code account for a high number of dropped packets requiring retransmit?
A bad design in one application != a bad programming API.
Why is it that for ever "problem" in our society, the immediate answer from our representatives is to pass more legislation? Highly reliable software already exist and those that need it are willing to pay the extra money to obtain it. If someone is running their mission critical applications on a Win95 box, who's fault is it when it crashes? Considering there are numerous, more reliable alternatives out there, it seems to me that the operator is at fault.
The initial intention behind liability laws was to make entities financially responsible for gross negligence or willful neglect. What we have today is a society full of people that refuses to take any personal responsibility what so ever. Ice storm drop 5" of ice on my driveway and the mailman slips? It's my fault - sue me. I have an accident on the freeway? The car was at fault, sue the automaker. Not watching what you're doing on a construction job and shoot a nail through your foot? Outlaw nailguns and sue the manufacture. I'm running my business on win95? I'll sue microsoft when it crashing, taking all my business records with it.
Ummm, no. If Neo-nazis can parade down the street, hate-mongers can publish their diatribes, crosses can be burnt, and flags defecated on then by God the first amendment should protect academic discussion on security holes and their implications. Teaching someone how to pick a lock is not the same as breaking into Ft. Knox.
Do you love what you're doing or dont you? If you did, then salary wouldn't be a factor. Obviously you dont. So enjoy to your new career in food services. Leave the fun jobs to those of us that actually like the work.
The whole "entitlement" argument is crap. No one is "entitled" to anything. Maybe law law would be more to your liking? Sounds like you have the right attitude for it.
"Yeah, but are you making $30k - $40k a year, or are they paying you a real salary?"
What the hell is this supposed to mean? Those of us with jobs making $40k a year are somehow being duped into working for less? If you're in Tech and have a job you're one up on those who dont. The days of 6 figure programming jobs are over and the sooner people start to realize this fact, the faster people will either a. come to terms with it and deal, or b. get the hell out of my industry.
Supply and demand is a bitch.
It's not cooler, it's longer term. While US firms concentrate on innovations that pay off in 1 or 2 quarters, Japanese firms are looking out over decades or more. And regardless of what people might imply, R&D not altruistic but rather a long term survivability requirement.
I've got 8 remotes sitting on my coffee table. If I can find a single replacement for all 8 remotes, it'll save me a hell of a lot of fumbling around in the dark wondering where that damned laser disc remote floated off to. On the down side, if I lose the single remote, I'm totally screwed.
Too many decisions, to little time.
Let me get this straight. You've applied for a director-level position. Presumably, you'll be managing direct reports, working on budgets, determining spending levels, qualifying capital expenditures against income for your department, along with all the other responsibilities of a mid-level manager. Yet you have a problem with the company doing a full background check?
If I were hiring a director, I'd want to know that hire could handle the difficult task of balancing a checkbook. I'd also want to know if someone was having money problems -- last thing I need is someone cooking the books to their own advantage.
Either sign the damn paper, or find another job. If you don't like the conditions for employment, time to find another employer.
Re:Jobs leaving example: Earthlink Tech Support
on
Giant Sucking Noise
·
· Score: 1
Earthlink tech support has always sucked ass; moving it off shore isn't going to change that. If they really were concerned about customer support, they'd actually train the people they have manning the phones. The few unfortunate times I've called there, it was obvious that the person on the other end had no clue.
Worse yet, I send an email asking about an issue not found on their tech support site and I get a "personalized" response telling me to check the support site.
Re:How big a TV are you watching the game on?
on
Superbowl XXXVII
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· Score: 1
Slashdot Mirror
Oh where has Duke Nukem run off to? It's been Forever since we've seen him!
That has to be the ugliest PDA I've ever seen.
There are a lot of things that are written in the Bible that are promptly ignored by people pushing their own religious ideals. My favorite, so oft forgotten dictum "Judge not, lest ye be judged".
Translation? Worry about saving yourself and less about what everyone else is up to.
So are you saying that performing regular, predictable backups is completely pointless because you never really know when the system was first compromised? How then is it safe to ever use anything from the FSF? If the backup is compromised and the MD5 hash is compromised, you're back to square one. Better yet, how can anyone convince their boss to use FSF release binaries knowning there is no guarantee they're original?
Excusing really sloppy practices by implying those practices are pointless doesn't cut it. Comprehensive, qualified backups should be the norm.
You know the saddest part of this whole thing? The jury more than likely didn't even look at the merits of the patent. They saw "small company" vs "large company" and decided to play robin hood - all too often these days in the US court system and the reason law suits are so numerous. You don't actually have to prove anything to have some monster-truck watching jury award you millions of dollars from the "big bad company" because "they can afford to pay".
Lawyers are parasites.
The captain looks up from his display, a look of horrified alarm on his face.
Captain - "We cannot let that ship get away! Mr. Data, HIGH SPEED AHEAD!"
Data - *head explodes*
Captain - "Whoa! What'd I say?!?!?"
Number 1 - "Data's head only supports full speed captain. You've blown his control chip!"
Captain - *hangs his head in shame*
Short selling: Limited upside potential. Unlimited downside potential.
And if some uninformed judge sides with SCO? Get ready for your broker to call.
A better bet is to buy IBM stock. You know they're not going anywhere.
Take two programmers; one 21 year old fresh out of college, one 35 year old with 15 years of experience. Hand them a complex 6-month assignment and watch what happens.
20-year old takes what he can out of your terse project summary and starts coding right away.
35-year old takes the project summary, digests it, and starts on a design.
20-year old codes in a vaccum, not worrying too much whether or not what he's coding actually solves your business problem. Coding is cool, and it's fun, so why interrupt it with useless questions?
35-year old realizes that wasting time coding before requirements are fully specified is a sure way to fall behind schedule. He asks a lot of questions, does research on different approaches, documents his findings.
After a month, 20-year old has a slew of code that may or may not meet requirements. He understands what he's written but not how it fits into an overall architecture. You inform him he needs error logging, exception handling, internationalization support, performance metrics, patchability, maintainablity, and testability. Seeing all this boring crap that gets in the way of coding, 20-year old gets totally demotivated. Since he has no real commitments, he quits.
35-year old has a solid grasp on what is required, knows what needs to be done in the grand scheme of things, has already thought about the maintainability, internationalization, and testability. He sees a challenge ahead, he maintains a mortage and a wife and some kids, soe he's more motivated to get the job done right, and he's less likely to jump ship when things get 'dull'.
Give me the 35-year old coder with experience over the 20-year old with enthusiasm any day of the week.
Couldn't the original copyright holder use the DMCA to prevent virus-protection software companies from reverse engineering their creations? Simply send out a nasty legal form demanding Symantec to cease sending virus scan updates. Write the virii with some basic self protection and one could argue the virus racket is circumventing a DRM protocol.
I think that would be an appropriate use of the DMCA.
And to be equally frank - the market for MCSEs and Webmonkies is dead. As for software development, there are plenty of innovations happening and will continue to happen. All this chicken little "THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING" crap is just there to garner attention. Oracle and Sun are both in the crapper, but not because software is dying. More to do with inflexible business strategies and over inflated egos.
Want to bomb bagdhad? Three easy steps:
1) install hundreds of miles of high speed railing. Don't worry, no one will mess with it. We're the United States, after all.
2) haul heavy, rail guided missile, place on rails.
3) fire and forget.
Seems perfectly cost effective to me.
All those getting in SBC's face for trying to enforce this patent need to change your priorities. SPC has received a government patent on this, so they're entitled to attempt enforcement. The problem here is not the corporation screwing over the internet, it's a broken government office that doesn't research prior art in software. This has been an ongoing problem - patent office grants rediculously broad patent on a software "innovation" without bothering to even check if the applied for technology already exists.
Combine these bogus patent approvals with our draconian approaches to copyright law and we're sliding down that slippery slope that much faster. Pretty soon you'll be paying your employer a "usage" fee for office space and the government will be taxing the air we breath. The fact that companies can patent human genes should have set of alarm bells throughout the nation. Companies are preparing to buy our very existance in the name of profits and our government is letting it happen.
Sounds like bad code unrelated to the underlying infrastructure. Why does chat have higher priority than game-required packets? Why is the game so sensitive to CPU utilization? Does the networking code account for a high number of dropped packets requiring retransmit?
A bad design in one application != a bad programming API.
Why is it that for ever "problem" in our society, the immediate answer from our representatives is to pass more legislation? Highly reliable software already exist and those that need it are willing to pay the extra money to obtain it. If someone is running their mission critical applications on a Win95 box, who's fault is it when it crashes? Considering there are numerous, more reliable alternatives out there, it seems to me that the operator is at fault.
The initial intention behind liability laws was to make entities financially responsible for gross negligence or willful neglect. What we have today is a society full of people that refuses to take any personal responsibility what so ever. Ice storm drop 5" of ice on my driveway and the mailman slips? It's my fault - sue me. I have an accident on the freeway? The car was at fault, sue the automaker. Not watching what you're doing on a construction job and shoot a nail through your foot? Outlaw nailguns and sue the manufacture. I'm running my business on win95? I'll sue microsoft when it crashing, taking all my business records with it.
Holy Crap, this is one masterful Troll. Look at all the little fishies biting! Well done.
Motorola Sucks. I hated that requirement. 1 patent submission every quarter? What a crock. No wonder the PO is PO'd.
Was sex a disappointment for you the first time, too? ;)
:p
I'll have to get back to you on this one...
Ummm, no. If Neo-nazis can parade down the street, hate-mongers can publish their diatribes, crosses can be burnt, and flags defecated on then by God the first amendment should protect academic discussion on security holes and their implications. Teaching someone how to pick a lock is not the same as breaking into Ft. Knox.
Do you love what you're doing or dont you? If you did, then salary wouldn't be a factor. Obviously you dont. So enjoy to your new career in food services. Leave the fun jobs to those of us that actually like the work.
The whole "entitlement" argument is crap. No one is "entitled" to anything. Maybe law law would be more to your liking? Sounds like you have the right attitude for it.
"Yeah, but are you making $30k - $40k a year, or are they paying you a real salary?" What the hell is this supposed to mean? Those of us with jobs making $40k a year are somehow being duped into working for less? If you're in Tech and have a job you're one up on those who dont. The days of 6 figure programming jobs are over and the sooner people start to realize this fact, the faster people will either a. come to terms with it and deal, or b. get the hell out of my industry. Supply and demand is a bitch.
It's not cooler, it's longer term. While US firms concentrate on innovations that pay off in 1 or 2 quarters, Japanese firms are looking out over decades or more. And regardless of what people might imply, R&D not altruistic but rather a long term survivability requirement.
I've got 8 remotes sitting on my coffee table. If I can find a single replacement for all 8 remotes, it'll save me a hell of a lot of fumbling around in the dark wondering where that damned laser disc remote floated off to. On the down side, if I lose the single remote, I'm totally screwed. Too many decisions, to little time.
Let me get this straight. You've applied for a director-level position. Presumably, you'll be managing direct reports, working on budgets, determining spending levels, qualifying capital expenditures against income for your department, along with all the other responsibilities of a mid-level manager. Yet you have a problem with the company doing a full background check?
If I were hiring a director, I'd want to know that hire could handle the difficult task of balancing a checkbook. I'd also want to know if someone was having money problems -- last thing I need is someone cooking the books to their own advantage.
Either sign the damn paper, or find another job. If you don't like the conditions for employment, time to find another employer.
Earthlink tech support has always sucked ass; moving it off shore isn't going to change that. If they really were concerned about customer support, they'd actually train the people they have manning the phones. The few unfortunate times I've called there, it was obvious that the person on the other end had no clue.
Worse yet, I send an email asking about an issue not found on their tech support site and I get a "personalized" response telling me to check the support site.
I've a 36" HDTV. It was bigger AND better.