I try to qualify with "probably" and "mostly" in the right places. Gravity can cause you to crash or it can create a sling-shot effect. It's just a matter of application. Too frequently people over-apply "fast and easy" and too frequently people discount the power of wisdom and experience in a computer system. "It's old!" they say as if that is some kind of rebuke in itself. Morons. They keep repeating the same mistakes their programming ancestors did. In the least you can learn from the ancient system programmers what not to do.
Programmers should strive to do as little as possible and no less. Rapidly accomplishing things should not be the driving force of development. Instead, creating valuable tools should be the goal. You should seek to make something new and unique. You should never seek to follow a pattern. If you are doing things "fast and easy" you are probably doing things that have already been done before. If you are making a "login system" you should seriously ask yourself if what you are doing is not significantly contributing to the state of the art... why in-the-name-of-excrement are you doing it?
The consequence of seeking "fast and easy" solutions and "fast and easy" programming tools is that you are more likely to quickly and easily ignore the value of your work and be willing to reproduce it over and over... after all it only took 30 minutes. I'll just do that same task over and over and over... it'll be easy... easier than solving the problem once and for all. The forces of laziness do not push us in the right directions if we work with solutions that are too "fast and easy" in the wrong directions. So when it is time we scale up and throw more persons at the problem we throw them at the "do it over and over and over" problem not the "once and for all" problem.
Why can't someone attack a profession like Law or Medicine with a tool like this? Seriously? Imagine:
"Our new Suem 4.0 system makes it possible to practice law without passing difficult bar exams!"
Don't hire expensive lawyers to represent you in court when you can use Suem 4.0 to help you defend yourself! Defend yourself against Murder charges! Rape charges! or even Embezzlement! Now anyone can practice law!
"Our new Surge 4.0 system makes surgery possible with 90-per cent less precision!"
Why pay for expensive surgeons when you can operate on your own brain! Perform tumor excisions and Lobotomies in just minutes of training!
Verizon: Hey, what you got there AT&T? AT&T: oh, this? It's my new iPhone. Verizon: wow, very spiffy. So what apps do you have? AT&T: well, I have this cool mapping feature... see... Verizon: I don't see anything... AT&T: it takes a while to load... Verizon: Does it look like this when it's loaded? AT&T (looks at Droid phone... then sullen): go away.
In all seriousness... from the scant details in the real article (which barely provides any information) it seems the blog functioned as a newspaper would. Other than the fact that this was a blog I don't see how this is different from... say "The Colonist's Advocate" used by Benjamin Franklin... or their modern analogs such as Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" or their "Covert Report"... or (on the right) the "comedians" such as Rush Limbaugh or the comedy players on Fox News. There's a fine tradition of comedians helping to shape politics dating back at least as far as Shakespeare.
Maybe if we created a mail header with the pgp signature of the message in it we could train our spam filters to filter on that. Google could silently inject the header into its mail clients... no one would need training. Email would look the same. Clients unaware what to do with the header could ignore it. Inside systems like Groups you could see "verified" or not on the email.
Okay, here's the short version: The Mayans didn't believe the end of the world would happen in 2012 or 2220 because they had a date carved into stone which would happen over 2000 years from now. It's THEIR calendar and even THEY didn't believe the end of the world nonsense.
THOSE FOOLS! Good thing we're here to straighten stuff out! Now quickly! Everyone head over to ebay and buy my 2012 survival necklaces guaranteed to help you survive the 2012 end of the world. You will need to buy another one for the end of the world in 2220 however.
No literally. I would die. I'm at least half cybernetic now. Not with bio-mechanical implants or anything... I rely heavily on the internet as an "exo-cortex" and I would no longer function cognitively without the internet. I would be as useless as a surgeon without a scalpel... a race car driver without a race car... a politician.
The supreme court ruled that the ancient doctrine protecting property from the center of the earth into the infinite sky had no place in the modern world. That land owner could *not* charge fees for airplanes to pass over their lands. Similarly in the modern age we live in a world of information where I cannot reasonably expect that if I create a term, word, or idea that I can retain ownership of it.
The patent is a good thing. Land and property rights are good things. Intellectual property rights are good things. There can be too much of a good thing.
There must be a reasonable limitation to these rights. Does a comedian have a right to keep you from retelling his joke? It's his intellectual property. He wrote it. If you tell your friends his joke you violate his property.
I will now affix a term to this post... new and never before seen. The word is: fusboto. Fixed in this medium I now own the term fusboto and shall charge royalties for thinking of the word fusboto.
Should you quote the term fusboto you are in copyright violation. Nobody may fusboto without written fusboto from fusboto.
If the airplane were invented today it would fail to generate an "airline industry" because of all the royalties airlines would have to pay to land owners for flying over their lands, apartments, and so on.
Somehow back in the day the airplane was invented common sense prevailed. When did common sense become legally obsolete?
Laws can and must be broken. No government can survive the stringent enforcement of its own laws. This is the fundamental difference between law and procedural computer code. Law requires judgment while code merely requires execution.
On the level that this project seeks to work, however, the task might not be completely foolish.
From the article it seems the Slashdot contributor has done a fantastic job sensationalizing the article It looks like Ted Dziuba is actually saying he has an active family life and is angry that this brands him as a non-performer at work. This is a common problem with programmers today: workaholism worship. It's perpetuated by the fact that the majority of the "best" programmers are the ones who find other avenues to express themselves out side of work. This is not a failing of the programmers... it's a failing of the programmer's work-places and the worship of the workaholic ethos just perpetuates this terrible short-coming in many work places as if it were normal and to be expected.
The problem stems from the fact that as a programmer you are unlikely to get professional training on the job and your bosses are unlikely to know talent when it bites them on the neck. So you simply *must* do something like article writing (just as Ted Dziuba does) or open source contributions in order to keep fresh. The most insightful companies offer "10% time" or other open source incentives so you can show your work to the rest of the industry.
Imagine if an author could only sell his novel to a single reader. That's what a programmer has to deal with. How else should a programmer show what they can do? They must find another avenue through articles, journals, books, speaking, open source projects,... whatever to show their career development. If you don't do that then the only path for you is the one your employer decides to give you. If you aren't lucky enough to get hired by an insightful employer then you've got either a dead end job or a path to middle management. It's not like Schmo IT department is going to need you to become a kernel hacker.
Ted Dziuba is just as bad as the "free time" coders he derides... Ted writes articles in his "free time" stealing just as much time from his family as I do writing articles and contributing code. So to that I say Ted is a bit of a hypocrite. But sadly, I fully agree with his sentiment. Tech work places need to change. They need to give talented programmers ways to express their talent and be recognized for it the way star sports players are recognized. It would revolutionize the industry and make better companies and better employees.
So... wait... writing articles in the Register about technology related things doesn't count the same? Either he's cheating on his day job writing these Register articles while getting paid to do something else or he's writing Register articles in his "free time" just like some other folks might write code in their "free time"... I think I smell a hypocrite.
The very fact we know he has this opinion is spurred by him doing career related stuff in his "free time" why should his article writing be any different from the person who contributes source code?
Well said. I was going to post the same thing. When I heard the argument from the Brazilians I knew it was going to them. They have one of the 10 largest economies in the world and have never hosted. Your argument makes a lot of sense. Getting to host the Olympics should be a badge of honor saying you've arrived. I sincerely hope we get to see the Olympics hosted on every continent.
Slashdot Mirror
I try to qualify with "probably" and "mostly" in the right places. Gravity can cause you to crash or it can create a sling-shot effect. It's just a matter of application. Too frequently people over-apply "fast and easy" and too frequently people discount the power of wisdom and experience in a computer system. "It's old!" they say as if that is some kind of rebuke in itself. Morons. They keep repeating the same mistakes their programming ancestors did. In the least you can learn from the ancient system programmers what not to do.
Programmers should strive to do as little as possible and no less. Rapidly accomplishing things should not be the driving force of development. Instead, creating valuable tools should be the goal. You should seek to make something new and unique. You should never seek to follow a pattern. If you are doing things "fast and easy" you are probably doing things that have already been done before. If you are making a "login system" you should seriously ask yourself if what you are doing is not significantly contributing to the state of the art... why in-the-name-of-excrement are you doing it?
The consequence of seeking "fast and easy" solutions and "fast and easy" programming tools is that you are more likely to quickly and easily ignore the value of your work and be willing to reproduce it over and over... after all it only took 30 minutes. I'll just do that same task over and over and over... it'll be easy... easier than solving the problem once and for all. The forces of laziness do not push us in the right directions if we work with solutions that are too "fast and easy" in the wrong directions. So when it is time we scale up and throw more persons at the problem we throw them at the "do it over and over and over" problem not the "once and for all" problem.
Fast and easy are traps.
Why can't someone attack a profession like Law or Medicine with a tool like this? Seriously? Imagine:
"Our new Suem 4.0 system makes it possible to practice law without passing difficult bar exams!"
Don't hire expensive lawyers to represent you in court when you can use Suem 4.0 to help you defend yourself! Defend yourself against Murder charges! Rape charges! or even Embezzlement! Now anyone can practice law!
"Our new Surge 4.0 system makes surgery possible with 90-per cent less precision!"
Why pay for expensive surgeons when you can operate on your own brain! Perform tumor excisions and Lobotomies in just minutes of training!
"Did you take Data Structures?" if the answer is yes then we're cool.
All he had was bread. But, the bird knew you needed to hook up the LHC to a sponge cake in order for the LHC to let us understand the universe.
Verizon: Hey, what you got there AT&T? ... then sullen): go away.
AT&T: oh, this? It's my new iPhone.
Verizon: wow, very spiffy. So what apps do you have?
AT&T: well, I have this cool mapping feature... see...
Verizon: I don't see anything...
AT&T: it takes a while to load...
Verizon: Does it look like this when it's loaded?
AT&T (looks at Droid phone
You have a profound understanding of Physics. That's exactly what physicists do.
Of course it's dark matter in the middle
Dark matter is sort of like violence. If it doesn't work, just use more of it.
Oh please. Do you see my UID? I've been karma capped for a decade.
Like I'd be such a noob that I'd reply to an AC.
In all seriousness... from the scant details in the real article (which barely provides any information) it seems the blog functioned as a newspaper would. Other than the fact that this was a blog I don't see how this is different from ... say "The Colonist's Advocate" used by Benjamin Franklin... or their modern analogs such as Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" or their "Covert Report" ... or (on the right) the "comedians" such as Rush Limbaugh or the comedy players on Fox News. There's a fine tradition of comedians helping to shape politics dating back at least as far as Shakespeare.
I'm going to let you finish but...
Maybe if we created a mail header with the pgp signature of the message in it we could train our spam filters to filter on that. Google could silently inject the header into its mail clients... no one would need training. Email would look the same. Clients unaware what to do with the header could ignore it. Inside systems like Groups you could see "verified" or not on the email.
the government is acting intelligently. I feel strange.
Okay, here's the short version: The Mayans didn't believe the end of the world would happen in 2012 or 2220 because they had a date carved into stone which would happen over 2000 years from now. It's THEIR calendar and even THEY didn't believe the end of the world nonsense.
THOSE FOOLS! Good thing we're here to straighten stuff out! Now quickly! Everyone head over to ebay and buy my 2012 survival necklaces guaranteed to help you survive the 2012 end of the world. You will need to buy another one for the end of the world in 2220 however.
I'm not with you. Come again?
No literally. I would die. I'm at least half cybernetic now. Not with bio-mechanical implants or anything... I rely heavily on the internet as an "exo-cortex" and I would no longer function cognitively without the internet. I would be as useless as a surgeon without a scalpel... a race car driver without a race car... a politician.
On the off chance you aren't a troll. Here you go:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q25-S7jzgs
I plagarized from that video at 4:51
The supreme court ruled that the ancient doctrine protecting property from the center of the earth into the infinite sky had no place in the modern world. That land owner could *not* charge fees for airplanes to pass over their lands. Similarly in the modern age we live in a world of information where I cannot reasonably expect that if I create a term, word, or idea that I can retain ownership of it.
The patent is a good thing. Land and property rights are good things. Intellectual property rights are good things. There can be too much of a good thing.
There must be a reasonable limitation to these rights. Does a comedian have a right to keep you from retelling his joke? It's his intellectual property. He wrote it. If you tell your friends his joke you violate his property.
I will now affix a term to this post... new and never before seen. The word is: fusboto. Fixed in this medium I now own the term fusboto and shall charge royalties for thinking of the word fusboto.
Should you quote the term fusboto you are in copyright violation. Nobody may fusboto without written fusboto from fusboto.
So you see, things aren't that different now.
ROFL
640k should be enough for anybody.
If the airplane were invented today it would fail to generate an "airline industry" because of all the royalties airlines would have to pay to land owners for flying over their lands, apartments, and so on.
Somehow back in the day the airplane was invented common sense prevailed. When did common sense become legally obsolete?
Laws can and must be broken. No government can survive the stringent enforcement of its own laws. This is the fundamental difference between law and procedural computer code. Law requires judgment while code merely requires execution.
On the level that this project seeks to work, however, the task might not be completely foolish.
I *knew* it. They're using mind-viruses now.
From the article it seems the Slashdot contributor has done a fantastic job sensationalizing the article It looks like Ted Dziuba is actually saying he has an active family life and is angry that this brands him as a non-performer at work. This is a common problem with programmers today: workaholism worship. It's perpetuated by the fact that the majority of the "best" programmers are the ones who find other avenues to express themselves out side of work. This is not a failing of the programmers ... it's a failing of the programmer's work-places and the worship of the workaholic ethos just perpetuates this terrible short-coming in many work places as if it were normal and to be expected.
The problem stems from the fact that as a programmer you are unlikely to get professional training on the job and your bosses are unlikely to know talent when it bites them on the neck. So you simply *must* do something like article writing (just as Ted Dziuba does) or open source contributions in order to keep fresh. The most insightful companies offer "10% time" or other open source incentives so you can show your work to the rest of the industry.
Imagine if an author could only sell his novel to a single reader. That's what a programmer has to deal with. How else should a programmer show what they can do? They must find another avenue through articles, journals, books, speaking, open source projects, ... whatever to show their career development. If you don't do that then the only path for you is the one your employer decides to give you. If you aren't lucky enough to get hired by an insightful employer then you've got either a dead end job or a path to middle management. It's not like Schmo IT department is going to need you to become a kernel hacker.
Ted Dziuba is just as bad as the "free time" coders he derides... Ted writes articles in his "free time" stealing just as much time from his family as I do writing articles and contributing code. So to that I say Ted is a bit of a hypocrite. But sadly, I fully agree with his sentiment. Tech work places need to change. They need to give talented programmers ways to express their talent and be recognized for it the way star sports players are recognized. It would revolutionize the industry and make better companies and better employees.
So ... wait ... writing articles in the Register about technology related things doesn't count the same? Either he's cheating on his day job writing these Register articles while getting paid to do something else or he's writing Register articles in his "free time" just like some other folks might write code in their "free time" ... I think I smell a hypocrite.
The very fact we know he has this opinion is spurred by him doing career related stuff in his "free time" why should his article writing be any different from the person who contributes source code?
That would be a fantastic year 3000 wouldn't it?
Well said. I was going to post the same thing. When I heard the argument from the Brazilians I knew it was going to them. They have one of the 10 largest economies in the world and have never hosted. Your argument makes a lot of sense. Getting to host the Olympics should be a badge of honor saying you've arrived. I sincerely hope we get to see the Olympics hosted on every continent.
I thought he didn't finish the sentence... you know... like he *meant* to say: insert diety fad here ... diet-y as in diet-ish or diet-like.