However the 'enthusiasm' of Goldman and probably the rest of Wall Street + [intellectually dishonest] desire from the EU Commission to have a great deal of buy-in [whatever the cost] pushed them in.
To declare interest, I'm a Brit, I worked for the commission for nearly ten years and for an investment bank in London. I don't admire or believe in either of them. I'm not a big fan of the euro, it connects everything and puts it [south and north, large and small] into a straitjacket. Indeed I'm a supporter of community currencies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... an idea that Bernard Lietaer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... also supports.
Greece is a mess, but basically this is warfare without guns. Maybe that's the future?
If the little people start cooperating, doing stuff, changing the world, that's really, really bad. So we must compete, win prizes given by the big people, follow their agenda. Hence, also, attempts to buy into or hijack open-source, communism and altruism on the hoof, cannot be allowed, everything must be monetised.
I'm currently doing voluntary work in schools in the UK and the 'push' coming from Google, Microsoft 'partners' etc. is extrordinary. One would be mad to believe that any of this is altruistic, it's just a big, stable, undemanding [I deal with crap computers and software during the volunteering gigs] market.
Sorry that this sounds so ranty, unusual for me, but I don't trust them, don't trust their motives.
I really recommend these two books by Sladek: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R... they're very funny satire about a naive, learning robot in a cruel illogical world. This is what our little friend here can expect.
I'm 64, a Perl guy and in London. I still get a fair amount of contract work, some of which I turn down. Recently that's included a couple of start-ups. Are you London area? I suspect this may also be a geographical and networking problem. I'm ex-investment bank and people know me.
Meanwhile some of the other advice is great, learn Python [I did], learn Java [I do some, hate it, it reminds me of COBOL], improve Javascript, especially the 'new' frameworks. But, I like to program and I like freelance, if you're programming 'for cash', then the advice about graduating to management is good. At this age, I can look at things and go NOOOOO, often saving others a lot of time, money and heartache, but I don't like meetings/suits etc. etc.
So if you're old, I'm moribund [although 2 hour half marathon suggests otherwise, keep healthy too!], don't despair, very best of of luck from me.
Sorry about that. I still work part-time at 64, but I've nearly always been a contractor so I don't get plugged into 'new' management 'paradigms'.
I have breakfast with a young friend [she's 50] nearly every Sunday, she a business analyst and tells me stories from her job. Nearly every time, I send her a link afterwards to Dilbert. I really think some of them use that as an operating manual.
For a more general view, see David Graeber's essay: http://strikemag.org/bullshit-... we're pretty lucky as technologists, we actually 'do' in many but not all cases.
I'm a Perl person, so biased. That said, I agree with an associated idea, only realistic, humble and experienced people will mark 'ugly hacks' as such. Many others, less experienced, ignorant or simply 'bad' won't even recognise them.
I'd love to see standardisation across languages for FIXME and TODO too, then it would be easier to distinguish the two cases, where they ARE distinct.
Actually there are a lot of very big Perl codebases, well written and commented [and some atrocious ones, like every other language].
Someone who has an iPhone, iPad, iPod? An iDiot. Unhappily Apple Watch doesn't fit into this rather feeble joke, but these are consumer fetish items.
It's working though, a charity that I volunteer for bought a load of iPads for an older-person project, display keypads are a lot harder to use than clunky mechanical ones for old fingers and they're really expensive. So, if any of the people in the trial wanted to 'progress' they'd have to lay out £500 pounds. I'm not a huge fan of Android either, but, at least the follow-up would have been more affordable and a little more open.
My ex is from Singapore, where they speak 'Singlish': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... The rhythm is different and the grammar is something like bits of Mandarin, loan words from Hokkien the most famous being kiasu: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K.... For example 'eat already?', 'don't want', it tends to sound a little harsh because it's very abbreviated.
I think this is probably the future of English, that is it will win and lose at the same time. However, for a while, most of these variations should be roughly comprehensible. It's also a reason to try and keep some kind of 'standard core' as a fallback. In Singapore, once they hear my Brit accent, they slow down and use fewer local words.
BTW Perl does suck, but the useful vacuum created is 'awesome', to quote the kids.
Yes, from a 64 year old who uses Geany each and every day. I hate Eclipse, Emacs and [except when in a hurry] Vim. Vim reminds me of when I started 'editing' programs on a Teletype 33, who would want that?
Bah! You have a smart phone. Actually, so do I but it spends most of its life in the kitchen drawer. Although it was straight purchase, it was/is full of bloatware and I'm waiting to get around to rooting it.
I don't have Facebook, I'm thinking of giving up on Twitter and I do have LinkedIn for professional presence only. I'm 65 this year and have spent my whole life in tech, my house is full of computers, but I see no need for permanent connection with superficial social transactions.
News at 8, Facebook 'friends' aren't friends in the main, you can go a couple of hours without the latest Curtis Jackson [you see, I do keep up] video. Especially when it involves bumping into me, because you aren't PAYING FUCKING ATTENTION TO OTHER PEOPLE. When I say I'll see you at 6pm, I'll see you without half a dozen intermediate texts and [smart, what's the diff?] phone calls. End of.
My opinion is that education is about a great deal more than becoming a trained worker ant for some [US usually] multinational. Hey, a topic could be 'optimal picking in an Amazon warehouse', what joy! That would combine sports, graph theory, manual dexterity and subservience to the man.
Against this, I don't know exactly what the 'plan' is, so my comments could be wide of the mark. I hope so, in fact.
Yes, agree, I use hive.co.uk here, they try and support local bookshops to some extent too. I don't hate Amazon and have programmed for one of their subsidiaries for a while, but I feel there are dangers that I expressed. Same kind of thing we had with IBM [in the old days], Microsoft [more recently] and Amazon, Google, eBay etc. now.
However that was nearly always one class of products, this is a lot more 'horizontal', everything needs to pass through the Amazon door, if it comes to that.
I live in the UK and have cut down on Amazon for nearly 'everything'. I appreciate their efficiency, their systems and their prices but I don't want to live in a world where there's just one shop. That's the thing for everybody to be afraid of. They treat their staff pretty badly too.
With great power comes great responsibility, with late-stage capitalism comes winner takes all. I'm prepared to give up optimal pricing and some of the the rational economic man stuff for 'choice' and 'quality of life'.
Or SDD as it is known in HughBar-Labs [inventors of llama-case, one capital letter at the beginning of stuff] has been in use since about 1930. Some blame it for the rise of the Nazis in Germany, they used plenty of slogans, too. Our lawyer tried to sue them, but we never heard from him again, last thing was a postcard from some place sounding like Tribblinka, maybe the tribbles ate him?
Also, you're supporting the Murdoch empire, including the Sun etc. etc. As for the rest, 'quad play' and 'bundles' used to be called bundling in the computer industry and several large lawsuits [somewhat] abolished it. When everything comes from one supplier, they give you the service they want at a price that they want.
As a bit of an eco-nazi, I don't see any of this as 'good', more 'features' every year, none of them particularly useful [do you really want to watch crappy music videos on a tiny screen, judging by my commute people do though] and more phones made/destroyed/in landfill.
Actually cell phones are a nuisance anyway, people can't walk and text or phone and text, so they bump into you. On bicycles, they risk life and limb [theirs and unhappily others] in London by using headphones [though admittedly a walkman or ipod is just as 'good' for this].
Despite what you see above, I love tech, having been in/around it for 40 years, but I really, really believe we need to step back from our current destructive and rather purposeless [except for making cash, of course] product cycles. Fat chance.
This way, sanity lies too, the resource cost of manufacturing new PC is enormous: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... so doing it just to put money in the pockets of Microsoft, Apple etc. is an aberration.
I recently changed my desktop but it was about 10 years old and I've given it to a recycling company. I've been able to do that because I'm a Linux user, it would have worked for BSD etc. too.
I regard Android as an abomination, basically engineered to geo-locate us, sell us stuff, isolate us from the web, 'give' us tons of mutually incompatible insecure 'apps' all in an unnecessary thick 'sauce' of Java, the COBOL of the 1990s. See also, this rant: http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/... and this: http://blog.codinghorror.com/a.... Of course, it's Google too, though, in principle, open-source, another huge reason to avoid.
So I'm waiting for Linux phones, essentially I probably trust Canonical more than I trust Google. That may make me a fool, we'll see...
Thanks, great essay. I was lucky enough to do public school [that's a private fee-paying 'prep' school for those in the US, it has a very unhelpful name] and I got to write FORTRAN program in 1965. We ran it on a mainframe in a steel mill in a nearby town. That mill has, of course. closed now.
Secondly I and a pretty-much-genius friend built OSTEC, Oundle School Transistorised Electronic Computer, something that was pretty much just a full adder and a bit of core-store [ferrite core, they still use it in space]. It had a backplane and [fairly standardised] printed circuits that I etched with ferric chloride. I also etched a number of shirts, to the disgust of my mother.
I'm really happy that 'proper' computing seems to be coming back with Arduino, Pi and Scratch. At time of writing I've just come back from a local school where we're just starting a Code Club: https://www.codeclub.org.uk/ So I feel that things are picking up a little, people are, at least, aware that we've been neglecting science and technology for quite a while.
The worry I have left is that education should be about human potential not just about 'jobs', commerce is lobbying hard, so expensive to train people, so they prefer school to output pre-trained/compliant workers with low expectations. Go figure.
Slashdot Mirror
Greece should never have been part of the Euro, in the first place: http://tinyurl.com/yzj8tzo
However the 'enthusiasm' of Goldman and probably the rest of Wall Street + [intellectually dishonest] desire from the EU Commission to have a great deal of buy-in [whatever the cost] pushed them in.
To declare interest, I'm a Brit, I worked for the commission for nearly ten years and for an investment bank in London. I don't admire or believe in either of them. I'm not a big fan of the euro, it connects everything and puts it [south and north, large and small] into a straitjacket. Indeed I'm a supporter of community currencies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... an idea that Bernard Lietaer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... also supports.
Greece is a mess, but basically this is warfare without guns. Maybe that's the future?
This reminds me of a joke that came out of the philosophy department in Oxford, about fifty years ago.
Student: Wouldn't you agree, Professor Strawson that everything is relative?
Professor Strawson: Absolutely!
In other news, please try not to put words into other people's mouths. It never ends really well.
If the little people start cooperating, doing stuff, changing the world, that's really, really bad. So we must compete, win prizes given by the big people, follow their agenda. Hence, also, attempts to buy into or hijack open-source, communism and altruism on the hoof, cannot be allowed, everything must be monetised.
I'm currently doing voluntary work in schools in the UK and the 'push' coming from Google, Microsoft 'partners' etc. is extrordinary. One would be mad to believe that any of this is altruistic, it's just a big, stable, undemanding [I deal with crap computers and software during the volunteering gigs] market.
Sorry that this sounds so ranty, unusual for me, but I don't trust them, don't trust their motives.
I really recommend these two books by Sladek: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R... they're very funny satire about a naive, learning robot in a cruel illogical world. This is what our little friend here can expect.
I'm 64, a Perl guy and in London. I still get a fair amount of contract work, some of which I turn down. Recently that's included a couple of start-ups. Are you London area? I suspect this may also be a geographical and networking problem. I'm ex-investment bank and people know me.
Meanwhile some of the other advice is great, learn Python [I did], learn Java [I do some, hate it, it reminds me of COBOL], improve Javascript, especially the 'new' frameworks. But, I like to program and I like freelance, if you're programming 'for cash', then the advice about graduating to management is good. At this age, I can look at things and go NOOOOO, often saving others a lot of time, money and heartache, but I don't like meetings/suits etc. etc.
So if you're old, I'm moribund [although 2 hour half marathon suggests otherwise, keep healthy too!], don't despair, very best of of luck from me.
http://chirp.io/ and, as previous poster remarked, acoustic coupler. This is a pretty bad idea, generally.
Sorry about that. I still work part-time at 64, but I've nearly always been a contractor so I don't get plugged into 'new' management 'paradigms'.
I have breakfast with a young friend [she's 50] nearly every Sunday, she a business analyst and tells me stories from her job. Nearly every time, I send her a link afterwards to Dilbert. I really think some of them use that as an operating manual.
For a more general view, see David Graeber's essay: http://strikemag.org/bullshit-... we're pretty lucky as technologists, we actually 'do' in many but not all cases.
I'm a Perl person, so biased. That said, I agree with an associated idea, only realistic, humble and experienced people will mark 'ugly hacks' as such. Many others, less experienced, ignorant or simply 'bad' won't even recognise them.
I'd love to see standardisation across languages for FIXME and TODO too, then it would be easier to distinguish the two cases, where they ARE distinct.
Actually there are a lot of very big Perl codebases, well written and commented [and some atrocious ones, like every other language].
Someone who has an iPhone, iPad, iPod? An iDiot. Unhappily Apple Watch doesn't fit into this rather feeble joke, but these are consumer fetish items.
It's working though, a charity that I volunteer for bought a load of iPads for an older-person project, display keypads are a lot harder to use than clunky mechanical ones for old fingers and they're really expensive. So, if any of the people in the trial wanted to 'progress' they'd have to lay out £500 pounds. I'm not a huge fan of Android either, but, at least the follow-up would have been more affordable and a little more open.
To go with all the tiny, blinking sea of blue screens of death that surround me.
My ex is from Singapore, where they speak 'Singlish': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... The rhythm is different and the grammar is something like bits of Mandarin, loan words from Hokkien the most famous being kiasu: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K.... For example 'eat already?', 'don't want', it tends to sound a little harsh because it's very abbreviated.
I think this is probably the future of English, that is it will win and lose at the same time. However, for a while, most of these variations should be roughly comprehensible. It's also a reason to try and keep some kind of 'standard core' as a fallback. In Singapore, once they hear my Brit accent, they slow down and use fewer local words.
BTW Perl does suck, but the useful vacuum created is 'awesome', to quote the kids.
Yes, from a 64 year old who uses Geany each and every day. I hate Eclipse, Emacs and [except when in a hurry] Vim. Vim reminds me of when I started 'editing' programs on a Teletype 33, who would want that?
Bah! You have a smart phone. Actually, so do I but it spends most of its life in the kitchen drawer. Although it was straight purchase, it was/is full of bloatware and I'm waiting to get around to rooting it.
I don't have Facebook, I'm thinking of giving up on Twitter and I do have LinkedIn for professional presence only. I'm 65 this year and have spent my whole life in tech, my house is full of computers, but I see no need for permanent connection with superficial social transactions.
News at 8, Facebook 'friends' aren't friends in the main, you can go a couple of hours without the latest Curtis Jackson [you see, I do keep up] video. Especially when it involves bumping into me, because you aren't PAYING FUCKING ATTENTION TO OTHER PEOPLE. When I say I'll see you at 6pm, I'll see you without half a dozen intermediate texts and [smart, what's the diff?] phone calls. End of.
My opinion is that education is about a great deal more than becoming a trained worker ant for some [US usually] multinational. Hey, a topic could be 'optimal picking in an Amazon warehouse', what joy! That would combine sports, graph theory, manual dexterity and subservience to the man.
Against this, I don't know exactly what the 'plan' is, so my comments could be wide of the mark. I hope so, in fact.
And pressure for all on-line retailers to add a 'secure boot status' bullet point on their detailed descriptions.
Yes, agree, I use hive.co.uk here, they try and support local bookshops to some extent too. I don't hate Amazon and have programmed for one of their subsidiaries for a while, but I feel there are dangers that I expressed. Same kind of thing we had with IBM [in the old days], Microsoft [more recently] and Amazon, Google, eBay etc. now.
However that was nearly always one class of products, this is a lot more 'horizontal', everything needs to pass through the Amazon door, if it comes to that.
I live in the UK and have cut down on Amazon for nearly 'everything'. I appreciate their efficiency, their systems and their prices but I don't want to live in a world where there's just one shop. That's the thing for everybody to be afraid of. They treat their staff pretty badly too.
With great power comes great responsibility, with late-stage capitalism comes winner takes all. I'm prepared to give up optimal pricing and some of the the rational economic man stuff for 'choice' and 'quality of life'.
Or SDD as it is known in HughBar-Labs [inventors of llama-case, one capital letter at the beginning of stuff] has been in use since about 1930. Some blame it for the rise of the Nazis in Germany, they used plenty of slogans, too. Our lawyer tried to sue them, but we never heard from him again, last thing was a postcard from some place sounding like Tribblinka, maybe the tribbles ate him?
Seriously though folks.
Stopshitgategate ?
Also, you're supporting the Murdoch empire, including the Sun etc. etc. As for the rest, 'quad play' and 'bundles' used to be called bundling in the computer industry and several large lawsuits [somewhat] abolished it. When everything comes from one supplier, they give you the service they want at a price that they want.
As a bit of an eco-nazi, I don't see any of this as 'good', more 'features' every year, none of them particularly useful [do you really want to watch crappy music videos on a tiny screen, judging by my commute people do though] and more phones made/destroyed/in landfill.
Actually cell phones are a nuisance anyway, people can't walk and text or phone and text, so they bump into you. On bicycles, they risk life and limb [theirs and unhappily others] in London by using headphones [though admittedly a walkman or ipod is just as 'good' for this].
Despite what you see above, I love tech, having been in/around it for 40 years, but I really, really believe we need to step back from our current destructive and rather purposeless [except for making cash, of course] product cycles. Fat chance.
Yes, agree, but the problem also with XP is end-of-life. Shame because it was one of their best ones too!
This way, sanity lies too, the resource cost of manufacturing new PC is enormous: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... so doing it just to put money in the pockets of Microsoft, Apple etc. is an aberration.
I recently changed my desktop but it was about 10 years old and I've given it to a recycling company. I've been able to do that because I'm a Linux user, it would have worked for BSD etc. too.
I regard Android as an abomination, basically engineered to geo-locate us, sell us stuff, isolate us from the web, 'give' us tons of mutually incompatible insecure 'apps' all in an unnecessary thick 'sauce' of Java, the COBOL of the 1990s. See also, this rant: http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/... and this: http://blog.codinghorror.com/a.... Of course, it's Google too, though, in principle, open-source, another huge reason to avoid.
So I'm waiting for Linux phones, essentially I probably trust Canonical more than I trust Google. That may make me a fool, we'll see...
Thanks, great essay. I was lucky enough to do public school [that's a private fee-paying 'prep' school for those in the US, it has a very unhelpful name] and I got to write FORTRAN program in 1965. We ran it on a mainframe in a steel mill in a nearby town. That mill has, of course. closed now.
Secondly I and a pretty-much-genius friend built OSTEC, Oundle School Transistorised Electronic Computer, something that was pretty much just a full adder and a bit of core-store [ferrite core, they still use it in space]. It had a backplane and [fairly standardised] printed circuits that I etched with ferric chloride. I also etched a number of shirts, to the disgust of my mother.
I'm really happy that 'proper' computing seems to be coming back with Arduino, Pi and Scratch. At time of writing I've just come back from a local school where we're just starting a Code Club: https://www.codeclub.org.uk/ So I feel that things are picking up a little, people are, at least, aware that we've been neglecting science and technology for quite a while.
The worry I have left is that education should be about human potential not just about 'jobs', commerce is lobbying hard, so expensive to train people, so they prefer school to output pre-trained/compliant workers with low expectations. Go figure.