In the CS business they have this weird fetish for youth. It's like they were recruiting for a football team, not an engineering department.
I think it is because we are at the same stage in software engineering that medicine was in when the guy who cut your hair was the same guy who set your bones.
We don't know shit about how to program computers, you know. Not SHIT.
Software engineering is so grossly inefficient that only kids have the stamina to weather the hours that it takes to do anything robust and useful.
I am a software engineer but I'd be ashamed to show my face at a mechanical or civil engineer convention - the buildings and machines they make don't blow up all the time, repeatedly, for no reason at all.
I am right now on the eighth floor of an eleven floor building. I'm eight stories up and there's still a thousand tons of concrete and steel over my head. I have a great deal of confidence that if I don't make it out of this building alive it won't be because it collapsed on me.
BUT - if this building were a computer program I'd be freaking terrified at all times UNLESS it had been around for a long time (and therefore rebuilt over and over after falling on other people.)
Also, this business, which no one understands, is changing at a high rate of speed.
It's as if you became a doctor and 2 years later no one had a liver anymore. They all upgraded to a new organ, about which you know nothing. All the learning about the liver you did and the exams you passed on it mean nothing.
Now all the hospitals are hiring young new doctors who know all about the new organ, never mind your years of experience.
Now you get to sit around in unemployment, watching these kids make all the intern mistakes again. Swell.
Of course, you can go back to medical school to learn the new organ, but two years from now you're going to have to do it again. How long can you keep this up?
The fact is - we are screwed. The industry has not seen it's Newton yet, so all is in darkness.
The creating of Doctors is a science. MEDICINE is an art but CREATING DOCTORS is a science. They go to medical school, they serve an internship, they pick a specially etc.
If a Doctor and his Grand Dad the Doctor and his Grand DAUGHTER the Doctor all got together to discuss becoming Doctors, they'd find they all had things in common, the toughness of medical school the greater toughness of internship etc etc.
Computer programming on the other hand, is like hiring a poet. You never know what kind of poetry you are going to get, so everyone wants an EXPERIENCED poet so someone else paid for the bad poetry they do in the beginning.
There's lamers with PhDs and great coders in high school. What to do?
The fact is, in Software Engineering if you are over 30 you had better be in management or a legacy maintenance program like me with Clipper, or you're out.
This hurts CS. Can you imagine where chemical, mechanical or civil engineering would be if they got rid of all the engineers over 30?
When CS is a mature discipline you'll see older guys dominating it.
If I cut a scene of Luke Skywalker from a SW movie and put it in my own I'd be violating CR and TM.
If I dress up as Luke Skywalker and wave a cardboard light sabre around shouting "I, Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight, will save you Princess!' on camera, I'd be violating TM and the Laws of Good Taste:-)
You can't copyright a character, only a particular representation of it. TRADEMARK is for the character and it's name and likeness.
Slashdot Mirror
At Microsoft, There is No Will But Bill.
Bill will handle this and woe unto the heratics!
all computers had blinking lights.
I was very disaopinted when the IBM box came out with no blinking lights.
Nice to see we're getting back to the good old days.
I've been looking forward to someone building a Windows comptable GUI over OpenBSD and calling it 'Gates'...
He meant people from not around here....
Doesn't this belong on Everything2 ?
I think called Jungle Lad where he gets captured by 8 bit block jungle natives who are, to give no offence to anyone, GREEN.
I remember thinking 'He's been captured by the Booger Tribe..."
being in a crib, wearing an orange coverall and crying.
I also have this rare dream where I'm walking around and the chair seats are all as high as my face - I turn a corner and wake up.
I actually publicize my email address to get more spam now, just to watch PF smack it!
If EQ was designed from the get go to be a Skinner box and addict you - that was grotesquely immoral. It really was.
I think we'll see the day when games like that are illegal.
Remember when there was Coke in Coke?
Well, you never know when a breakthrough will come in laying down carbon atoms.
Remember, all we need here is a flat surface not a gemstone.
Moore's Law's funeral will have to be postponed for a little while longer yet again.
It's true he stole credit card numbers but he never did anything with them.
He just stole them to see if he could do it.
Kevin won't tell the US govt. some of the passwords for encrypted stuff on his computers and if the NSA can read it they aren't saying.
So, they've decided to adjust his attitude by kicking his ass as hard as they are legally allowed.
We'd be talking real power...
Excellent, thanks!
Some of those rules are what I call the 'God Bless Japan' rules, for example, the first time saw certain genres of anime I thought 'God bless Japan!'
Yes but not if the MAC address is on a list that's already on the locked-down network.
Also http://www.winton.org.uk/zebedee/ should do for a secure connection - at least no one has contradicted me regarding it yet.
Perhaps this will do the trick http://www.winton.org.uk/zebedee/
That there's a project on Sourceforge to implement strong encryption on WANs to overcome the WAP problem.
Can anyone elaborate on this, please?
Yes he did! In his book 'Secrets and Lies'
He pointed out that if it was compromised, they'd have to issue you a new thumb....
I agree those guys are Gods, but the trouble is, those guys are Gods and Gods are damn rare.
In the CS business they have this weird fetish for youth. It's like they were recruiting for a football team, not an engineering department.
I think it is because we are at the same stage in software engineering that medicine was in when the guy who cut your hair was the same guy who set your bones.
We don't know shit about how to program computers, you know. Not SHIT.
Software engineering is so grossly inefficient that only kids have the stamina to weather the hours that it takes to do anything robust and useful.
I am a software engineer but I'd be ashamed to show my face at a mechanical or civil engineer convention - the buildings and machines they make don't blow up all the time, repeatedly, for no reason at all.
I am right now on the eighth floor of an eleven floor building. I'm eight stories up and there's still a thousand tons of concrete and steel over my head. I have a great deal of confidence that if I don't make it out of this building alive it won't be because it collapsed on me.
BUT - if this building were a computer program I'd be freaking terrified at all times UNLESS it had been around for a long time (and therefore rebuilt over and over after falling on other people.)
Also, this business, which no one understands, is changing at a high rate of speed.
It's as if you became a doctor and 2 years later no one had a liver anymore. They all upgraded to a new organ, about which you know nothing. All the learning about the liver you did and the exams you passed on it mean nothing.
Now all the hospitals are hiring young new doctors who know all about the new organ, never mind your years of experience.
Now you get to sit around in unemployment, watching these kids make all the intern mistakes again. Swell.
Of course, you can go back to medical school to learn the new organ, but two years from now you're going to have to do it again. How long can you keep this up?
The fact is - we are screwed. The industry has not seen it's Newton yet, so all is in darkness.
The creating of Doctors is a science. MEDICINE is an art but CREATING DOCTORS is a science. They go to medical school, they serve an internship, they pick a specially etc.
If a Doctor and his Grand Dad the Doctor and his Grand DAUGHTER the Doctor all got together to discuss becoming Doctors, they'd find they all had things in common, the toughness of medical school the greater toughness of internship etc etc.
Computer programming on the other hand, is like hiring a poet. You never know what kind of poetry you are going to get, so everyone wants an EXPERIENCED poet so someone else paid for the bad poetry they do in the beginning.
There's lamers with PhDs and great coders in high school. What to do?
The fact is, in Software Engineering if you are over 30 you had better be in management or a legacy maintenance program like me with Clipper, or you're out.
This hurts CS. Can you imagine where chemical, mechanical or civil engineering would be if they got rid of all the engineers over 30?
When CS is a mature discipline you'll see older guys dominating it.
Until then, CS, like Trix, is for kids.
No they aren't.
:-)
If I cut a scene of Luke Skywalker from a SW movie and put it in my own I'd be violating CR and TM.
If I dress up as Luke Skywalker and wave a cardboard light sabre around shouting "I, Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight, will save you Princess!' on camera, I'd be violating TM and the Laws of Good Taste
You can't copyright a character, only a particular representation of it. TRADEMARK is for the character and it's name and likeness.
No its a TRADEMARK he has to defend.
And that brings up another of my pet peves. This 'defend your trademark or lose it' thing is a scam by the lawyers.
In Japan where they do not have this law the IP grafix/comix business is a lot bigger than in the west. Not a coincidence.
By putting 'SW and all characters TM George Lucas 2002' they can cover their asses on this.
In Movie Physics sounds are LOUDER in space because they haven't got all that air in the way.
has the brains to not kill this.
IF HE'S SMART he'll encourage it. But you never know when he'll stop being smart.
Like Henry Ford said about Model T jokes 'Every joke is another Model T sold' so every SW fan effort is another pile of tickets sold.