Then the question is, who controls the white list of approved web sites?
That would be me. So get your applications (and application fees) in early, you don't want to be left out in the cold. I take Paypal and all major credit cards.
No, you're doing the same thing most of the people writing these articles (not to mention this Schmidt character) are doing. You're confusing fault and responsibility. Yes, if you screw up when writing a piece of code it's your fault. But it should not be your responsibility, because there are (or should be) others in your organization who's responsibility is to determine that your code is correct and serves its intended purpose. Managers (who are paid much bigger bucks than the developers because they have more responsibility), quality control, design assurance, and so forth. Oh... your company doesn't have any such people? Well, that's really the responsibility of the people that run your company. Not yours.
Well, the HD-DVD camp was going to call theirs "Hoo-Ray", but somehow it just didn't sound as good. The new Chinese standard will, I believe, be called "Hu-Ray" but that's not confirmed.
"Prolly" is often a deliberate misspelling/mispronunciation done for effect and is thus acceptable in certain contexts, whereas "Alot", "lose vs. loose" and my personal favorite "interger" (argh!) are just wrong.
Many years I go I dated an English instructor. She told me that she had been forced to read so many misspelled words over the years that it had really affected her own ability to spell properly (and this from a girl who won spelling bees without batting an eyelash.) She would occasionally show me student papers while she was grading them. These were from first and second year college students, many of whom could not write in full sentences, much less use proper spelling. It was truly appalling... somewhere along the line a few balls got dropped.
I hear a lot of noise about how far down the educational ladder America has fallen, mostly with regard to math and science as those are seen as essential to our economic survival. But language skills are no exception, I'm afraid. Like it or not, the ability to communicate efficiently with your fellow man is just as important whether you are a rocket scientist, an engineer, or a journalist.
This is for all of you semi-literate technojocks that chose an engineering curriculum thinking you could avoid learning how-to-write because, after all, you're only interested in the technology. Right? You know who you are. And I personally know a number of technical people that were astonished (and dismayed) to find that the world outside the University fully expected them to have reasonable communication skills. Nobody expects quality prose from an engineer... but full sentences are nice, as is the ability to organize ones thoughts on paper.
Frankly, all those analytical term papers I had to write about Shakespeare, Mary Shelly, and other dead people didn't seem all that useful to me at the time. Just another hill I had to climb on my way to a diploma. But the first time I got asked to write a fifty-page project proposal it all became very clear.
I ran my own consulting business for many years, and I discovered (much to my surprise, I admit) that good communication skills were, in and of themselves, a competitive edge. Other consultants that I would go up against might even have had technical skills superior to my own: but they were unable to communicate that to the customer. Furthermore, good documentation of a completed project is equally important to many customers, and if your written communication throughout the initial phases of a project is solid and professional, they will have no problem believing that you will document it properly as well.
For anyone who is considering a technical or engineering career, all I can say is: study hard, and don't neglect your verbal skills. They will pay off handsomely throughout your entire working life.
I thought PHP stood for Programmers Having Problems. But then again, I think that HTML stands for a Hokey Twisted Macro Language that is Hard To Make Likeable because it Has Too Much Lacking, so probably I'm not the best person to ask.
Yes... human history is chock full of headless Good Samaritans.
Sometimes it pays to simply keep your mouth shut and let the people who are paid to
deal with it do their jobs. Or not, but the U.S. is not a particularly friendly place
for unauthorized people that report security problems.
If I noticed a serious security breach on a system or server somewhere, no way I'd
point it out unless I happened to know the administrator personally, and knew that
that person wouldn't immediately turn around and report me as an "evil hacker" to the
FBI. I've read of too many cases where someone who was only trying to help got reamed.
It's funny, some States have Good Samaritan laws where you can be held liable for
refusing to help someone in dire circumstances (car accident victim, etc.) but the
law works pretty much the other way when it comes to computer security.
So forget it. Let everybody secure their own networks. Or not. But in either case it's
not my problem.
when @Home spent some $900 million on Blue Mountain Greeting Cards. @Home went belly-up for that plus a number of other reasons... but blowing almost a billion on an electronic greeting card company wasn't too smart. They could have used that money to stay in business, rather than making me give up my 4 mbit/sec symmetric @Home connection for AT&T Broadband's wimpy-assed 1.5/256, followed by Comcast's 3.0/384. So now here's E-Bay betting a truckload of green that they can make money from "free" phone calls. Unless they can get some kind of law passed that says that transmitting voice over IP via anything that other than an "official" provider is illegal, I can't see how they're going to get much of an R on that I. I understand the concept of diversification but, well... I guess don't have the big picture.
In my line of work, an "e-stop" (Emergency Stop) usually means that a potentially dangerous machine just got shut down in a hurry to prevent damage. This frequently involves a bright red, mushroom shaped button, prominently placed on a console or control panel. It is really too bad that we can't E-Stop the average malfunctioning attorney the same way:
Citizen 1: "Whoa, Bob! That Jack dude is running wild again!"
No competent military or paramilitary force depends solely upon information provided by an enemy to attack that enemy. The people that run major terrorist organizations are a lot of things, none of them good, but incompetency isn't generally one of them. Google showing years out-of-date satellite imagery isn't going to make much difference in their planning, one way or the other. Saying so in order to make publically-available information seem dangerous is disingenuous at best.
This is all political posturing, but with a purpose. Numerous countries have been focusing a lot of their public ire on the Bush Administration and on Google's capabilities, but that's only a smokescreen, a rationalization. The obvious intent is eliminate or restrict a very unwelcome something that the Internet (in particular, that suite of protocols known collectively as "the World Wide Web") foisted upon the unsuspecting governments of the world. That something is called "freedom of information".
What is becoming very apparent is that many of those governments would be perfectly content if the Internet were restricted to governmental and commercial purposes, with private citizens getting jack from it. Couple the irrational attacks on Google with the European Union's impending and equally-irrational confiscation of the European root servers, and you have plenty of material with which to fashion appropriate tinfoil hats.
The Internet and the WWW are the most powerful tools for the dissemination and advancement of civilization ever created... Gutenberg's invention of the printing press pales in comparison. And yet, as with books, there are those that would ban or destroy the Internet if they could. They will have plenty of nicely-packaged words to explain why it is necessary to keep the human race in the dark for as long as possible. "It's for your own good!" they will cry, as they look upon us from their palace windows. And if we see past their fundamental selfishness, and work to keep our hold on the key to knowledge, they will try and take it from us anyway.
This particular conflict has been raging for centuries, transcends all others, and will continue until some fraction of us finally grows up.
Maybe so... but that just means that regular use of the stuff by the general population will increase the Slashdot subscriber base by an order of magnitude or more.
No point. These particular lifeforms are known as "Bores" (i.e., Borg Spores) if you do come into contact with them, you will quickly discover that resistance is futile.
Yes. I've often wondered what would happen if you just pointed a light saber at someone (from far enough away so as not to actually poke a hole in that person, of course.) Would they feel a cool breeze?
Big game companies went the way of movie studios. In fact, the big studios have big stakes in video game production (a friend of mine works as a game producer at Viacom.) So it's not hard to understand that the same risk-averse "go with what worked before" mentality would manifest itself in the game industry.
Slashdot Mirror
Then the question is, who controls the white list of approved web sites?
That would be me. So get your applications (and application fees) in early, you don't want to be left out in the cold. I take Paypal and all major credit cards.
These people are making the patent system collapse in a way that those against software patents don't have the power to do.
... but unlike the rest of us they are getting rich.
Yeah
I'll take your kagillion and raise you a gazillion!
No, you're doing the same thing most of the people writing these articles (not to mention this Schmidt character) are doing. You're confusing fault and responsibility. Yes, if you screw up when writing a piece of code it's your fault. But it should not be your responsibility, because there are (or should be) others in your organization who's responsibility is to determine that your code is correct and serves its intended purpose. Managers (who are paid much bigger bucks than the developers because they have more responsibility), quality control, design assurance, and so forth. Oh ... your company doesn't have any such people? Well, that's really the responsibility of the people that run your company. Not yours.
Well, the HD-DVD camp was going to call theirs "Hoo-Ray", but somehow it just didn't sound as good. The new Chinese standard will, I believe, be called "Hu-Ray" but that's not confirmed.
"Prolly" is often a deliberate misspelling/mispronunciation done for effect and is thus acceptable in certain contexts, whereas "Alot", "lose vs. loose" and my personal favorite "interger" (argh!) are just wrong.
... somewhere along the line a few balls got dropped.
... but full sentences are nice, as is the ability to organize ones thoughts on paper.
Many years I go I dated an English instructor. She told me that she had been forced to read so many misspelled words over the years that it had really affected her own ability to spell properly (and this from a girl who won spelling bees without batting an eyelash.) She would occasionally show me student papers while she was grading them. These were from first and second year college students, many of whom could not write in full sentences, much less use proper spelling. It was truly appalling
I hear a lot of noise about how far down the educational ladder America has fallen, mostly with regard to math and science as those are seen as essential to our economic survival. But language skills are no exception, I'm afraid. Like it or not, the ability to communicate efficiently with your fellow man is just as important whether you are a rocket scientist, an engineer, or a journalist.
This is for all of you semi-literate technojocks that chose an engineering curriculum thinking you could avoid learning how-to-write because, after all, you're only interested in the technology. Right? You know who you are. And I personally know a number of technical people that were astonished (and dismayed) to find that the world outside the University fully expected them to have reasonable communication skills. Nobody expects quality prose from an engineer
Frankly, all those analytical term papers I had to write about Shakespeare, Mary Shelly, and other dead people didn't seem all that useful to me at the time. Just another hill I had to climb on my way to a diploma. But the first time I got asked to write a fifty-page project proposal it all became very clear.
I ran my own consulting business for many years, and I discovered (much to my surprise, I admit) that good communication skills were, in and of themselves, a competitive edge. Other consultants that I would go up against might even have had technical skills superior to my own: but they were unable to communicate that to the customer. Furthermore, good documentation of a completed project is equally important to many customers, and if your written communication throughout the initial phases of a project is solid and professional, they will have no problem believing that you will document it properly as well.
For anyone who is considering a technical or engineering career, all I can say is: study hard, and don't neglect your verbal skills. They will pay off handsomely throughout your entire working life.
I thought PHP stood for Programmers Having Problems. But then again, I think that HTML stands for a Hokey Twisted Macro Language that is Hard To Make Likeable because it Has Too Much Lacking, so probably I'm not the best person to ask.
Yes ... human history is chock full of headless Good Samaritans.
Sometimes it pays to simply keep your mouth shut and let the people who are paid to deal with it do their jobs. Or not, but the U.S. is not a particularly friendly place for unauthorized people that report security problems.
If I noticed a serious security breach on a system or server somewhere, no way I'd point it out unless I happened to know the administrator personally, and knew that that person wouldn't immediately turn around and report me as an "evil hacker" to the FBI. I've read of too many cases where someone who was only trying to help got reamed.
It's funny, some States have Good Samaritan laws where you can be held liable for refusing to help someone in dire circumstances (car accident victim, etc.) but the law works pretty much the other way when it comes to computer security.
So forget it. Let everybody secure their own networks. Or not. But in either case it's not my problem.
when @Home spent some $900 million on Blue Mountain Greeting Cards. @Home went belly-up for that plus a number of other reasons ... but blowing almost a billion on an electronic greeting card company wasn't too smart. They could have used that money to stay in business, rather than making me give up my 4 mbit/sec symmetric @Home connection for AT&T Broadband's wimpy-assed 1.5/256, followed by Comcast's 3.0/384. So now here's E-Bay betting a truckload of green that they can make money from "free" phone calls. Unless they can get some kind of law passed that says that transmitting voice over IP via anything that other than an "official" provider is illegal, I can't see how they're going to get much of an R on that I. I understand the concept of diversification but, well ... I guess don't have the big picture.
No doubt it's on a greeting card somewhere.
No, it's spelled Stop First. Or maybe Frost Pits, or even Fits Ports. But certainly not Frist Psot. That would be silly.
This isn't rocket science.
..."
You forgot the "oh wait
And then, of course ... there's the Ringworld compromise.
Okay ... how about warblimping?
Phooey. They're just mad because they either a. didn't think of it first or b. did think of it but didn't have the huevos to give it a try.
Sour grapes.
"I got your 'fiber' right here!" said Spiderman through knitted teeth.
that the Technological Arts require the elimination of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
"estop the contract"
In my line of work, an "e-stop" (Emergency Stop) usually means that a potentially dangerous machine just got shut down in a hurry to prevent damage. This frequently involves a bright red, mushroom shaped button, prominently placed on a console or control panel. It is really too bad that we can't E-Stop the average malfunctioning attorney the same way:
Citizen 1: "Whoa, Bob! That Jack dude is running wild again!"
Citizen 2: "Quick, hit the estop!"
No competent military or paramilitary force depends solely upon information provided by an enemy to attack that enemy. The people that run major terrorist organizations are a lot of things, none of them good, but incompetency isn't generally one of them. Google showing years out-of-date satellite imagery isn't going to make much difference in their planning, one way or the other. Saying so in order to make publically-available information seem dangerous is disingenuous at best.
... Gutenberg's invention of the printing press pales in comparison. And yet, as with books, there are those that would ban or destroy the Internet if they could. They will have plenty of nicely-packaged words to explain why it is necessary to keep the human race in the dark for as long as possible. "It's for your own good!" they will cry, as they look upon us from their palace windows. And if we see past their fundamental selfishness, and work to keep our hold on the key to knowledge, they will try and take it from us anyway.
This is all political posturing, but with a purpose. Numerous countries have been focusing a lot of their public ire on the Bush Administration and on Google's capabilities, but that's only a smokescreen, a rationalization. The obvious intent is eliminate or restrict a very unwelcome something that the Internet (in particular, that suite of protocols known collectively as "the World Wide Web") foisted upon the unsuspecting governments of the world. That something is called "freedom of information".
What is becoming very apparent is that many of those governments would be perfectly content if the Internet were restricted to governmental and commercial purposes, with private citizens getting jack from it. Couple the irrational attacks on Google with the European Union's impending and equally-irrational confiscation of the European root servers, and you have plenty of material with which to fashion appropriate tinfoil hats.
The Internet and the WWW are the most powerful tools for the dissemination and advancement of civilization ever created
This particular conflict has been raging for centuries, transcends all others, and will continue until some fraction of us finally grows up.
Maybe so ... but that just means that regular use of the stuff by the general population will increase the Slashdot subscriber base by an order of magnitude or more.
No point. These particular lifeforms are known as "Bores" (i.e., Borg Spores) if you do come into contact with them, you will quickly discover that resistance is futile.
Well ... they had to do something, after the original C-4 standard blew up in their faces.
I don't think I know a single person with Internet access who doesn't.
You do now.
Yes, but what rights does it give you?
Yes. I've often wondered what would happen if you just pointed a light saber at someone (from far enough away so as not to actually poke a hole in that person, of course.) Would they feel a cool breeze?
Big game companies went the way of movie studios. In fact, the big studios have big stakes in video game production (a friend of mine works as a game producer at Viacom.) So it's not hard to understand that the same risk-averse "go with what worked before" mentality would manifest itself in the game industry.