"Always" and "Never" must be taken with a grain of salt in arguments about technical futures. In the medium term future, convenience will trump other issues that might keep wireless out of most company office environments.
At my company, wifi allows us to connect our laptops in meeting rooms that don't have ethernet ports. We can also keep working while waiting for the exec prima donna who called the meeting but can't manage to be on time. As new rooms are divided off or joined together, IT doesn't have to rewire everything.
At home the "fiber to the wall" in my new home meant fiber to a little box on the side of the house where the DSL hardware was housed with a little 8-hr APC UPS. Rain getting into that box, bad connectors, etc. kept taking down my connection and requiring me to wait for a tech to come to the house. I now use Clearwire and have a wireless connection between the box sitting on my desk and the Clearwire tower a couple miles away. So far it has been MUCH more reliable. I only use ethernet for that "last yard" to my Clearwire box. It's much slower now, but more trouble free. Just my own experience. Your milage may vary.
Cable gives you speed and some greater security, but at the cost of pulling cables all over and being at the mercy of connectors that can get old and break. Then you are under your desk or up in the ceiling trying to find the problem.
That said, I would normally use a cable connection if available and if I had a good quality cable that was long enough to allow me to place my workstation where I want it. But I am getting very tired of having to deal with the tangle of power and ethernet cables to all my various equipment.
Exactly! But was there ever a time that the SciFi channel had more science fiction than nonsense?
Not science fiction: ghosts, the Bermuda Triangle, vampires, witches, wrestling.
Things I would like to see on a science fiction channel:
- new series like then new Battlestar Galactica, Eureka, Stargate, etc.
- made-for-tv movies with a scifi theme
- reruns of old scifi tv shows (Firefly, Misfits of Science,...)
- reruns of old scifi movies (Forbidden Planet, Day the Earth Stood Still, It Came From Outer Space, War of the Worlds, The Blob)
It doesn't all have to be great art, but it should all be science fiction.
I ran into this problem once while working at a larger company in Silicon Valley. In my case I was simply transferring from one division to another within the same company. I had a good reputation at the company for several years, so I had no problem finding a new position with a different manager. Company guidelines clearly stated that once an offer had been accepted, transfer should be completed within two weeks. But at that point my current manager became upset and vowed to have me fired if I tried to move in that time-frame. I did consult HR and was originally told the company guidelines were clear and all on my side. The HR rep told me he'd take care of it. After a few days he came back and just told me there was nothing he could do for me. I had to stay in that job for months to complete the project in progress before leaving. But even then, my old manager filed a review that questioned my intelligence and competence. In 14 years working for that company, this was the only negative review I ever received. What I took from this is that I should have just left that company at that point. Staying just gave a vindictive manager an opportunity to damage me with a bad review.
Your new employer will only contact previous companies to verify employment. It is the references you give then they contact for more in-depth reviews. If your company is going to give you trouble for leaving, it's unlikely they will treat you fairly even if you stay the extra time.
Different publishers...different requirements. That said, I worked with 3 other authors on a book published last year by No Starch Press and we used Open Office (NeoOffice on the Mac) to write the text and generally PNGs for images. The publisher was happy with this and it served our purposes nicely. Using word processing software that would run on each author's preferred workstation made collaboration simple. We submitted text in Open Documment format. This worked great for us.
Ackerman was always known as a big-hearted, genuinely decent guy in addition to being a huge science fiction/fantasy fan. Stories of the parties, comings and goings and general happy weirdness at his house were legend.
He'll be missed.
Ditto. He was an icon of the science fiction/horror genre. I'll miss him.
In the Linux world you'll want to be familiar with C. But C++ is a perfectly good language for programming on Linux if you're already familiar with it. Since C++ is just an OOP extension of C, writing in C will just be a matter of not using the extensions.
You'll also want to become at least a little familiar with bash scripting.
Then you'll eventually want to have at least one of the higher level languages in your toolbelt, like Perl or Python.
I've been programming professionally for 35 years now and on Linux for the past 10. Personally I prefer working in C++ rather than C, but ever since Microsoft cozied up to C++, that has been an impossible sell to Unix/Linux people. So, I've mostly been using C.
I'm also a very satisfied pobox.com customer. Been using them for about 9 years. I started with just the forwarding service and eventually upgraded to IMAP. The cost is minimal and the service more reliable than my company's email server. Also, the pobox name is easy for my friends to remember.
I think the most likely implementation of tube freight would involve replacing the long-haul trucking or rail portion of the transport, not the home delivery part. But I fail to see how someone at the post office asking me whether I'm sending anything explosive, caustic,... actually improves security. Right now I can buy a pre-paid box, put in whatever I can jam in there, and send using an automated system. Sure, humans will dump the contents of a mailbox into a cart and push it to a truck, but how secure is that? I also suspect trucks on a freeway are much easier to sabotage than an underground pipeline, in case you are thinking about that end of things.
However, if someone was able to damage the underground tube, they would disrupt mail transport much more than taking out a single truck on a freeway.
I left SV about 15 years ago but was back within a year. Outside SV there are even fewer tech jobs and the companies feel they have you at a disadvantage. Quiting generally means having to sell your house and move. So that's what I did, and move back to SV. I'm still programming at 50-something.
I find that companies ask for your whole life, but you don't have to give it. Once you're at a job for about 3 years, you're the guy everyone comes to for help. Just give good value for your pay and quietly resist requests to move the throttle up to early burnout.
An alternative is consulting. I know several people who like it because they can set their hours better, but you only get paid for the time you work and you have to find new contracts. There seems to be a lot of work out there fixing what the offshore people have done. SV companies now seem to like relying on contractors because it gives them more flexibility.
Slashdot Mirror
"Always" and "Never" must be taken with a grain of salt in arguments about technical futures. In the medium term future, convenience will trump other issues that might keep wireless out of most company office environments.
At my company, wifi allows us to connect our laptops in meeting rooms that don't have ethernet ports. We can also keep working while waiting for the exec prima donna who called the meeting but can't manage to be on time. As new rooms are divided off or joined together, IT doesn't have to rewire everything.
At home the "fiber to the wall" in my new home meant fiber to a little box on the side of the house where the DSL hardware was housed with a little 8-hr APC UPS. Rain getting into that box, bad connectors, etc. kept taking down my connection and requiring me to wait for a tech to come to the house. I now use Clearwire and have a wireless connection between the box sitting on my desk and the Clearwire tower a couple miles away. So far it has been MUCH more reliable. I only use ethernet for that "last yard" to my Clearwire box. It's much slower now, but more trouble free. Just my own experience. Your milage may vary.
Cable gives you speed and some greater security, but at the cost of pulling cables all over and being at the mercy of connectors that can get old and break. Then you are under your desk or up in the ceiling trying to find the problem.
That said, I would normally use a cable connection if available and if I had a good quality cable that was long enough to allow me to place my workstation where I want it. But I am getting very tired of having to deal with the tangle of power and ethernet cables to all my various equipment.
Exactly! But was there ever a time that the SciFi channel had more science fiction than nonsense?
...)
Not science fiction: ghosts, the Bermuda Triangle, vampires, witches, wrestling.
Things I would like to see on a science fiction channel:
- new series like then new Battlestar Galactica, Eureka, Stargate, etc.
- made-for-tv movies with a scifi theme
- reruns of old scifi tv shows (Firefly, Misfits of Science,
- reruns of old scifi movies (Forbidden Planet, Day the Earth Stood Still, It Came From Outer Space, War of the Worlds, The Blob)
It doesn't all have to be great art, but it should all be science fiction.
I ran into this problem once while working at a larger company in Silicon Valley. In my case I was simply transferring from one division to another within the same company. I had a good reputation at the company for several years, so I had no problem finding a new position with a different manager. Company guidelines clearly stated that once an offer had been accepted, transfer should be completed within two weeks. But at that point my current manager became upset and vowed to have me fired if I tried to move in that time-frame. I did consult HR and was originally told the company guidelines were clear and all on my side. The HR rep told me he'd take care of it. After a few days he came back and just told me there was nothing he could do for me. I had to stay in that job for months to complete the project in progress before leaving. But even then, my old manager filed a review that questioned my intelligence and competence. In 14 years working for that company, this was the only negative review I ever received. What I took from this is that I should have just left that company at that point. Staying just gave a vindictive manager an opportunity to damage me with a bad review. Your new employer will only contact previous companies to verify employment. It is the references you give then they contact for more in-depth reviews. If your company is going to give you trouble for leaving, it's unlikely they will treat you fairly even if you stay the extra time.
Different publishers...different requirements. That said, I worked with 3 other authors on a book published last year by No Starch Press and we used Open Office (NeoOffice on the Mac) to write the text and generally PNGs for images. The publisher was happy with this and it served our purposes nicely. Using word processing software that would run on each author's preferred workstation made collaboration simple. We submitted text in Open Documment format. This worked great for us.
Ackerman was always known as a big-hearted, genuinely decent guy in addition to being a huge science fiction/fantasy fan. Stories of the parties, comings and goings and general happy weirdness at his house were legend.
He'll be missed.
Ditto. He was an icon of the science fiction/horror genre. I'll miss him.
In the Linux world you'll want to be familiar with C. But C++ is a perfectly good language for programming on Linux if you're already familiar with it. Since C++ is just an OOP extension of C, writing in C will just be a matter of not using the extensions. You'll also want to become at least a little familiar with bash scripting. Then you'll eventually want to have at least one of the higher level languages in your toolbelt, like Perl or Python. I've been programming professionally for 35 years now and on Linux for the past 10. Personally I prefer working in C++ rather than C, but ever since Microsoft cozied up to C++, that has been an impossible sell to Unix/Linux people. So, I've mostly been using C.
I'm also a very satisfied pobox.com customer. Been using them for about 9 years. I started with just the forwarding service and eventually upgraded to IMAP. The cost is minimal and the service more reliable than my company's email server. Also, the pobox name is easy for my friends to remember.
I think the most likely implementation of tube freight would involve replacing the long-haul trucking or rail portion of the transport, not the home delivery part. But I fail to see how someone at the post office asking me whether I'm sending anything explosive, caustic, ... actually improves security. Right now I can buy a pre-paid box, put in whatever I can jam in there, and send using an automated system. Sure, humans will dump the contents of a mailbox into a cart and push it to a truck, but how secure is that? I also suspect trucks on a freeway are much easier to sabotage than an underground pipeline, in case you are thinking about that end of things.
However, if someone was able to damage the underground tube, they would disrupt mail transport much more than taking out a single truck on a freeway.
I left SV about 15 years ago but was back within a year. Outside SV there are even fewer tech jobs and the companies feel they have you at a disadvantage. Quiting generally means having to sell your house and move. So that's what I did, and move back to SV. I'm still programming at 50-something. I find that companies ask for your whole life, but you don't have to give it. Once you're at a job for about 3 years, you're the guy everyone comes to for help. Just give good value for your pay and quietly resist requests to move the throttle up to early burnout. An alternative is consulting. I know several people who like it because they can set their hours better, but you only get paid for the time you work and you have to find new contracts. There seems to be a lot of work out there fixing what the offshore people have done. SV companies now seem to like relying on contractors because it gives them more flexibility.