well, that and the sweet amount of storage. I went MP3 player shopping the other day and the majority of the players were 128 or 256 Mb. Granted, the iPod is like 4x the price, but for 20gigs as compared to 128mb? totally worth it.
Sometimes we call the grad students (and some undergrads) who hang around WAY too long the "furniture" because they last so long and they're such an integral part of everything. Could be like that.
Yes, but if a girl is into "freaky" sex, chances are good that age doesn't factor into it too much. Plus, I guarantee you there are college girls out there who like older guys.
There have been studies done that show that up until junior high, females tend to score better on tests than males. It's only in junior high that these levels tend to go down. One of the reasons given for this is that teachers don't tend to encourage girls to go into math and science. Now we all know that there are more factors at work than that, but in my personal experience, it IS a factor. Now, I went to an all girls high school and junior high (flame me all you want for being a hypocrite here with my single-gender school choice), and something like 70% of our graduating class went into maths and sciences. And believe me, they all liked it. But compare those numbers to that of a typical high school and I think you'll see a big difference.
Well, take a look in the coal mines. They too are very gender biased. You don't see many chicks underground with a jack-hammer. Funny, you don't see them complaining about this, either.
Believe me, I've worked in both a mine and in tech, and the industry with the greater gender bias is definately tech. At least in my experience. Granted, it wasn't a coal mine, and I was working in the underground lab, but I never once experienced any sort of derogatory comments or question of my abilites from anyone there. In the mine, I could be carrying a monkey wrench the size of my arm and everyone would assume that I was doing just fine and would ask for help if I needed it. In the computer labs, if I'm carying a screw driver, invariably there's someone who warns me to be careful or asks if I need help. Now I'm not saying these people have malicious intent, but at the same time it's not like these people know me and just think I'm incompetent - it's usualy someone I don't even know. I'm sure they all mean well, but there's always this underlying assumption that for some reason I don't know how to handle myself around a computer.
Now, I'm not saying that the way to fix this is to put in quotas - I really don't think they help, and sometimes they even hinder because people assume you got the job because of your gender. But before you dismiss the entire notion of bias in tech, and say that women are really getting a good deal here because "look at all the breaks we give them", ask yourself if you'd get a better deal if you were a woman.
Bought my first pen drive, and the first time I used it I left it in the back of the school computer lab. duh.
So now...the next purchase on the way is the USB watch - figure I'm less likely to lose something I look at all the time. plus, it's so geeky.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/watches/5eec/
I know it was meant as a joke, but I'm pretty sure that slashdot is becoming my boyfriend substitute. i KNOW it's becoming my work substitue. I'm definately in an unhealthy relationship with this web site.
I'd hardly say that Java is a training language for children. If I was training my child I'd go for a non-object oriented language to start.
Besides that, to say a language is "for children" just becuase it is easy to use is kind of contradictory. I'd say that if a language was excessively hard to use THAT would be a flaw because you would end up with more bugs. Essentially, you're saying here that Java was too well designed and too safe for real programmers to use.
What I mean is that the company is paying you and therefore the software is not free for them. I'm not saying that developers are entitled to get royalties from the stuff they develop, but that companies who invest in development should not have to give away their investments for free. If there is a company who bases their business on developing consumer software, then the expectation should not be that they give it away for free and make money some other way (support advertizing etc).
As for your company - they likely had two choices (assuming their was no commercial software available) - either pay people to develop the tools in-house, or contract out. Either way, they are still paying to have the software developed. And that means that they're likely also not going to turn around and give the stuff they developed away for free either.
Yes, but that is not free software - just because it is developed in house does not make it free - the company is paying you to write it. If your company didn't have a software development department, they would likely contract out to a third party company, who, almost guaranteed wouldn't charge $0 for their work. And neither do you.
I think you're misunderstanding what I meant - I'm not saying that NO software should be free - I'm saying that ALL software can't be free. Call it my crazy cripled imagination about economics, but somewhere along the line a company has to make money to survive. Sure they can do it through support and ads, but that's not going to support the whole industry. Some products lend themselves to these types of services, others not so much.
Right now I'm working for a company that does medical software - they're not going to support themselves through service or through ads - they need people to pay to buy their software otherwise the company will go out of business. There are a lot of areas like that. Free software is just not going to work for them.
Re:The correct pricing structure for most software
on
Pricing a Software Product
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Hate to be the part of the money-grubbing capitalist here, but money makes the world go 'round. If all software was free, why would anyone bother developing it? I know there are great free software products out there, and I know there are ways to make money off of software other than by selling it, but making all software free really doesn't seem to be a viable option.
Let me put it another way...you're a software developer making a product - the final piece of software represents the work you've put in to devloping something unique and useful....how much is this effort worth? Nothing?
Not only that, but it'd be worth the $20 if you were going to take it on a vacation or a trip where it might get totally wrecked. A $20 camera is way more affordable than trashing your good digital.
As much as we'd all like to think that this is just a case of MS screwing up again, I'm pretty sure this isn't just an MS problem. Besides, the article talks not just about simple geography, but of mistakes made about highly disputed geographic regions. There are a few in there where microsoft could have gone either way and still offended someone. Granted, stuff like that should have been checked, but the mistakes really aren't as simple as the post makes them out to be.
You're absolutely right that people in North America are very overdependant on air conditioning. But the problem is that it's way harder to change the habits of an entire continent than it is to change the way a system is implemented. Yes, the best solution is to have everyone use less air conditioning, but until that happens, using a more environmentally friendly and sustainable system is what will actually have an effect.
Imagine it was the other way around though - the republicans repeatedly reload their webpage and block all the traffic. I'm betting they would be the first ones to declare that they were being unfairly silenced and censored.
Yes, but there are two assumptions there - 1) that they want it 2) that they have the technical know-how to get root access even from the physical machine. It's not like you just touch the machine and *poof* root access. You have to make an effort to get in. The problem with the prompts before login is that anyone who wants to log in, even if they're not looking to change settings, will have to make some kind of choice in the matter if they want to get to a login screen.
Yup, neither is Canada. Not to say that I got royally screwed over, but they do seem to like the whole "hit em with the bill twice and see if they notice" scam. After trying for about an hour to find a person to talk to who would refund the second billing, I gave up and just bit the cost. No big deal because it was only like $20, but factor in shipping and the double bill, and that was the most expensive $8 purchase I think I ever made.
So huzzah! I might get the $ back. And over here in canada, that $20's worth like twice as much.
Yeah, the light year estimate does seem to be a little bit off...considering the assumption was that life would be somewhere in the galaxy, and the galaxy is more like 100,000 light-years across. So, even if we're right in the dead center, which we're not, you're looking at an upper estimate of at least 50,000 light-years, not the 1000 quoted in the article. Kinda makes the wait time a wee bit longer, eh?
That's a bit of a harsh analogy, wouldn't you say? Besides, I don't know about anyone else, but my condom-less Tijuana hooker didn't come installed standard on my computer.
The thing to realize though, is that slashdot surfers generally aren't the same as a regular computer user - for better or for worse, most computers just aren't patched. I mean, what normal computer user has the time to download a new microsoft patch every two days? For that matter, why would they even think that it was necesary? Realistically, to keep your computer secure, you've really got to be on top of that patching thing, and most people just aren't. Granted, there is a security risk there, but how can a user be faulted for trusting that a well known site isn't going to give them some freaky virus? I mean, I'd think that I'd be fairly safe at a large commercial site. It just makes sense.
Slashdot Mirror
well, that and the sweet amount of storage. I went MP3 player shopping the other day and the majority of the players were 128 or 256 Mb. Granted, the iPod is like 4x the price, but for 20gigs as compared to 128mb? totally worth it.
Sometimes we call the grad students (and some undergrads) who hang around WAY too long the "furniture" because they last so long and they're such an integral part of everything. Could be like that.
...or not
Yes, but if a girl is into "freaky" sex, chances are good that age doesn't factor into it too much. Plus, I guarantee you there are college girls out there who like older guys.
A little while ago I was reading some snopes at work (bored) and somehow I managed to surf over to this story. Very long, but incedibly interesting.
That's the point - I'm saying it's NOT. They're very different.
There have been studies done that show that up until junior high, females tend to score better on tests than males. It's only in junior high that these levels tend to go down. One of the reasons given for this is that teachers don't tend to encourage girls to go into math and science. Now we all know that there are more factors at work than that, but in my personal experience, it IS a factor. Now, I went to an all girls high school and junior high (flame me all you want for being a hypocrite here with my single-gender school choice), and something like 70% of our graduating class went into maths and sciences. And believe me, they all liked it. But compare those numbers to that of a typical high school and I think you'll see a big difference.
Well, take a look in the coal mines. They too are very gender biased. You don't see many chicks underground with a jack-hammer. Funny, you don't see them complaining about this, either.
Believe me, I've worked in both a mine and in tech, and the industry with the greater gender bias is definately tech. At least in my experience. Granted, it wasn't a coal mine, and I was working in the underground lab, but I never once experienced any sort of derogatory comments or question of my abilites from anyone there. In the mine, I could be carrying a monkey wrench the size of my arm and everyone would assume that I was doing just fine and would ask for help if I needed it. In the computer labs, if I'm carying a screw driver, invariably there's someone who warns me to be careful or asks if I need help. Now I'm not saying these people have malicious intent, but at the same time it's not like these people know me and just think I'm incompetent - it's usualy someone I don't even know. I'm sure they all mean well, but there's always this underlying assumption that for some reason I don't know how to handle myself around a computer.
Now, I'm not saying that the way to fix this is to put in quotas - I really don't think they help, and sometimes they even hinder because people assume you got the job because of your gender. But before you dismiss the entire notion of bias in tech, and say that women are really getting a good deal here because "look at all the breaks we give them", ask yourself if you'd get a better deal if you were a woman.
A REAL girlfriend, eh? So what do you have now then? The virtual one from yesterday?
Bought my first pen drive, and the first time I used it I left it in the back of the school computer lab. duh. So now...the next purchase on the way is the USB watch - figure I'm less likely to lose something I look at all the time. plus, it's so geeky. http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/watches/5eec/
I know it was meant as a joke, but I'm pretty sure that slashdot is becoming my boyfriend substitute. i KNOW it's becoming my work substitue. I'm definately in an unhealthy relationship with this web site.
I'd hardly say that Java is a training language for children. If I was training my child I'd go for a non-object oriented language to start. Besides that, to say a language is "for children" just becuase it is easy to use is kind of contradictory. I'd say that if a language was excessively hard to use THAT would be a flaw because you would end up with more bugs. Essentially, you're saying here that Java was too well designed and too safe for real programmers to use.
What I mean is that the company is paying you and therefore the software is not free for them. I'm not saying that developers are entitled to get royalties from the stuff they develop, but that companies who invest in development should not have to give away their investments for free. If there is a company who bases their business on developing consumer software, then the expectation should not be that they give it away for free and make money some other way (support advertizing etc). As for your company - they likely had two choices (assuming their was no commercial software available) - either pay people to develop the tools in-house, or contract out. Either way, they are still paying to have the software developed. And that means that they're likely also not going to turn around and give the stuff they developed away for free either.
See, now I've gone and misread and stuck my foot squarely in my mouth. You're right - the original post did say that. Sorry.
Yes, but that is not free software - just because it is developed in house does not make it free - the company is paying you to write it. If your company didn't have a software development department, they would likely contract out to a third party company, who, almost guaranteed wouldn't charge $0 for their work. And neither do you.
I think you're misunderstanding what I meant - I'm not saying that NO software should be free - I'm saying that ALL software can't be free. Call it my crazy cripled imagination about economics, but somewhere along the line a company has to make money to survive. Sure they can do it through support and ads, but that's not going to support the whole industry. Some products lend themselves to these types of services, others not so much. Right now I'm working for a company that does medical software - they're not going to support themselves through service or through ads - they need people to pay to buy their software otherwise the company will go out of business. There are a lot of areas like that. Free software is just not going to work for them.
Hate to be the part of the money-grubbing capitalist here, but money makes the world go 'round. If all software was free, why would anyone bother developing it? I know there are great free software products out there, and I know there are ways to make money off of software other than by selling it, but making all software free really doesn't seem to be a viable option. Let me put it another way...you're a software developer making a product - the final piece of software represents the work you've put in to devloping something unique and useful....how much is this effort worth? Nothing?
Not only that, but it'd be worth the $20 if you were going to take it on a vacation or a trip where it might get totally wrecked. A $20 camera is way more affordable than trashing your good digital.
As much as we'd all like to think that this is just a case of MS screwing up again, I'm pretty sure this isn't just an MS problem. Besides, the article talks not just about simple geography, but of mistakes made about highly disputed geographic regions. There are a few in there where microsoft could have gone either way and still offended someone. Granted, stuff like that should have been checked, but the mistakes really aren't as simple as the post makes them out to be.
You're absolutely right that people in North America are very overdependant on air conditioning. But the problem is that it's way harder to change the habits of an entire continent than it is to change the way a system is implemented. Yes, the best solution is to have everyone use less air conditioning, but until that happens, using a more environmentally friendly and sustainable system is what will actually have an effect.
Imagine it was the other way around though - the republicans repeatedly reload their webpage and block all the traffic. I'm betting they would be the first ones to declare that they were being unfairly silenced and censored.
Yes, but there are two assumptions there - 1) that they want it 2) that they have the technical know-how to get root access even from the physical machine. It's not like you just touch the machine and *poof* root access. You have to make an effort to get in. The problem with the prompts before login is that anyone who wants to log in, even if they're not looking to change settings, will have to make some kind of choice in the matter if they want to get to a login screen.
Yup, neither is Canada. Not to say that I got royally screwed over, but they do seem to like the whole "hit em with the bill twice and see if they notice" scam. After trying for about an hour to find a person to talk to who would refund the second billing, I gave up and just bit the cost. No big deal because it was only like $20, but factor in shipping and the double bill, and that was the most expensive $8 purchase I think I ever made. So huzzah! I might get the $ back. And over here in canada, that $20's worth like twice as much.
Yeah, the light year estimate does seem to be a little bit off...considering the assumption was that life would be somewhere in the galaxy, and the galaxy is more like 100,000 light-years across. So, even if we're right in the dead center, which we're not, you're looking at an upper estimate of at least 50,000 light-years, not the 1000 quoted in the article. Kinda makes the wait time a wee bit longer, eh?
That's a bit of a harsh analogy, wouldn't you say? Besides, I don't know about anyone else, but my condom-less Tijuana hooker didn't come installed standard on my computer.
The thing to realize though, is that slashdot surfers generally aren't the same as a regular computer user - for better or for worse, most computers just aren't patched. I mean, what normal computer user has the time to download a new microsoft patch every two days? For that matter, why would they even think that it was necesary? Realistically, to keep your computer secure, you've really got to be on top of that patching thing, and most people just aren't. Granted, there is a security risk there, but how can a user be faulted for trusting that a well known site isn't going to give them some freaky virus? I mean, I'd think that I'd be fairly safe at a large commercial site. It just makes sense.