I said: "...No chance now of studying physics and developing a unified theory..."
You quoted: "I chose mechanical engineering. No chance now of studying physics"
And commented: "Wow... what school did you go to? Every mechanical engineering textbook I've seen is just loaded with physics."
I went to Oxford. Lots of some physics in mech. eng. textbooks. Not very much (well, none at all) relativity or quantum machanics , which is where you'd be starting when you develop your unified theory.
"...A guy I know keeps falling for crap like "You are a great poet! Be immortalized in the hall of fame! ** $50 plz", and virtually all multilevel marketing schemes that he happens to encounter. He must be on the "World's Greatest Suckers" mailing list. I just utterly cannot comprehend whatsoever, he simply does not want to listen to reason, there is some kind of fantasy to it all that is so much more enjoyable..."
Must be great for him, and I'm not being sarcastic here: Can you imagine how happy and exciting life must be for a guy who has no concept of his limitations or capabilities?
You and I (and the vast majority of people on/.) know damn well that we are very, very limited. We are limited by the choices we have made as we grow older.
When I chose to study math, physics and chemistry in my senior years at school, the possiblity of me becoming a famous historian (I'd studied history as a junior) vanished. Poof!
After leaving school and picking university courses, I chose mechanical engineering. No chance now of studying physics and developing a unified theory, or following (say) medical biochemistry and working on a cure for something which is currently fatal.
My first job was writing structural analysis software. Goodbye professional engineering status...
What I'm saying is, maybe it's not so bad to be the guy who gets scammed slighty, but to still have that naive self belief and lack of insight that says: "I might design and build a rocket ship tomorrow, and fly it to the moon. Unless it rains".
"If the Roman Empire had never fallen, we wouldn't have the special effects that we have today, because there would be no need for fake blood or any such nonsense"
We've moved on. There's another empire in the ascendent and they're playing Counter-Strike.
Note the subject line: It seems that the accepted spelling uses "ck", rather than double "c". I'd only heard the term verbally before I started rooting around.
Regarding sentencing: It's complicated by the fact that taking without consent is a young person's crime, so the format of the trial and the outcome are heavily dependent on the age of those convicted.
As best I can make out, simple taking without consent carries a six month maximum, while aggravated taking without consent (in which injury, endangerment or damage are caused) carries a 2 year maximum. However, those under 14 are not (generally) subject to custodial sentences, and 15-17 year olds may be detained for a maximum of one year.
Take all this with a pinch of salt, (IANAL etc), but that's the best I could turn up.
Interestingly on one of the legal pages I found, a writer likened "twocking" to a kind of physical copyright infringement! Best keep this nugget hidden at the dead end of an obscure thread, or the usual/. saloon bar fight is sure to ensue...
"For instance, if you had a summer home and left a car there so that you could just fly in and go with it, and some fuck wad took it over the winter and then put it back -- ensuring that nothing was damaged, the engine was serviced and the oil was changed and had someone on the inside so that if you were anywhere near a thousand mile fucking radius, they could put it back as good as new (or better) -- would this be theft?"
Well, in the UK at least it wouldn't be theft.
In your scenario, the car is kept as good as new and no criminal damage has ocurred, so the only offence comitted is that of Taking Without Consent (T.W/O.C in Police shorthand, hence the term "Twoccing").
This offense was dreamed up at the back end of the last century, when joyriding became immensely popular with the chavs and pikies that infest the housing projects of this green and pleasant land.
Since the car was invariably abandoned after the fun was over, the prosecutor could not show that there was an intent to permanently deprive the owner of his property, hence , no theft ocurred.
The Twoc law was introduced so that the fun-loving and excitable rascals who joyride could be charged with a more serious crime than merely busting a car door lock.
"...Just like something about say, robots. What kind of rights they should get..."
None, the same as any other utensil or posession. Maybe the right to be recycled rather than scrapped, but that's for the benefit of society, rather than the robot.
"... if they should be equal..."
Equal to what? Their creators? They could say that they're losing their mind, and sing "Daisy, Daisy" until the cows come home - you're talking about a machine here. Turn 'em off and toss 'em in the garbage, Hank!
"...what we would do if they became more elligent tha[n] us..."
Just let Hitachi or Daewoo or whoever know that they need to dial back a bit on the intelligence settings of their positronic brains. This is basic stuff, what are they teaching kids in "Robotics 101" these days?
"...I'm thinking the robot situation might turn out something like the holocaust..."
And that would be a terrible thing. About as terrible as a holocaust on the great toaster nation.
Life's complicated and hard already without devising new - and non-existant - dilemmas.
"When
body deuterium reaches about 50%, it inhibits mitosis because spindle
microtubules won't form (some hydrogen bond effect inhibiting
self-polymerization, I think). So all eucaryotic cells are poisoned
about about these concentrations, or a little higher (bacteria can
survive full deuteration-- they just grow half as fast). The
consequences of failure of cell division for an intact animal like a
rodent, are somewhat like those of radiation or chemo-- the bone marrow
and gut lining cells suffer. Animals die of infection or diarrhea.
"
"...At home, I use some giant mousepad I found at CompUSA. Unfortunately, they do not list the product on their website. It is about 4x the size of a normal pad and is the old school fabric over foam type. It does great for FPS gaming, as I never run out of room..."
You must use Dogbert's technical support:
Dogbert: Hello you've reached Dogbert's technical support, how may I abuse you?
PHB: My cursor is in the middle of the screen and my mouse is stuck right at the edge of my mousemat.
Dogbert: I see. Have you tried moving your desk to the left?
PHB: Yup. No dice.
Dogbert: In that case you're going to need our $800 mousemat upgrade...
Apologies for the length of this quote from the above link, but I think it's worth reading (Steve Harris MD on medical costs and litigation):
"...You [correspondent] were complaining about the cost of American medical care not long ago. You are clueless as to the connection here. Drugs cost more here. Medicine costs more here. A lawyer costs more here. An artitect costs more here. Each of these things has reasons. Until you
step away from medicine and see the big picture, you'll never figure it out...
... And that's not even the worst part. The worst part is what you don't see. The products that are never developed, or developed too
late to help people, because everyone is afraid that somebody will get hurt, and sue. In the case of vaccines it got so bad that without
DIRECT government intervention to hamstring the civil litigation process, you would not today be able to buy a dose of vaccine in the United States for love or money. The very last couple of makers were getting set to leave the U.S. market and sell only overseas, before the
government stepped in and stopped an out of control civil litigation process...
...For less obvious things than vaccines and aircraft, FYI, the government does not step in, and the product you don't know about simply ceases to exist. If you need a lung lavage of fluorocarbon to save your life if you have lung damage from a fire or shock, you're not going to get it. 3M, which makes most of these chemicals, quite deliberately got out of the medical market years ago, after the Dow
Corning Silicone suit. So you're out of luck. You won't know why, but that won't change a thing. If your heart valve fails, you'll never
know that it might not have, if the suture 3M made for that purpose, in a little tiny subdivision of the company, was still available. But it's not, since a giant company like 3M has deep pockets, and they don't need the medical market liability grief. Now, it's YOUR problem."
"...The least you can do when you pop-up an error is to give some additional information; like where it occurred ("Bad Thing Happened in somefile.c line #456"),..."
No, no, no, wrong, wrong, WRONG! Bad geek! [flourishes rolled-up newspaper]
This idea - dumping debug info into dialogs that will be seen and used by end users - went out with the ark. It''s probably worse than what it seeks to replace in that rather than being merely uninformative, it's downright confusing.
Remember that the vast majority of Word users do not have any idea what a source file is or how it relates to their computing experience. We - software developers - have no business expecting users to respond intelligently to the runes which rule our lives.
An error dialog should inform the user that there is a problem and if possible, focus on the solution to the problem. Eg. "Close down some apps before you try to run Doom 3" etc.
T&K.
Been there, seen it, got the boxers to prove it...
on
Best Buy Sued By Ohio
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Many moons ago, I was working part time in Marks and Spencer's warehouse, Oxford, while I was attending a local tech. college.
Marks and Spencer for those of you who are not UK-centric, is a department store, supposedly of above average quality which prides itself on the level of customer service they provide. They have/had a very liberal returns policy, and were famous for standing behind their products.
Picture the scene: It is January the 2nd. The customer service desk is swamped with people returning unwanted Christmas gifts for cash. As I am taking a trolley load of packaging down to the waste compactor in the basement, one of the customer service assistants is peering quizzically at the inside of a pair of boxer shorts that have been presented for refund.
Her facial expression, and her words, will stay with me until the day I die:
"I'm very sorry sir, we can't accept these shorts: They are soiled".
"Until last year, I would have an employee come to me every 6-8 weeks with a beatup floppy containing their sole copy of some critical spreadsheet or database file... "
Your solution was to: "new 'legacy free' PCs with no floppy drives."
Invent a better sneakernet, and the world won't beat a path to your door!
Might be better to join the 20th century, and insist on new PC's with 10/100 networking on board, and buy some cat5?
Or if your employees were bringing these disks from a remote site, you could buy one of them thar newfangled routers, and connect up to this information superhighway thing?
Fulfills the specs, no crashes, leaks, etc etc etc, obviously.
Reuses, and is reusable, where sensible (making a religion out of reuse is as bad as no reuse IMHO)
Is comprehensible to the rest of the team (but maybe not on first inspection)
Is documented (Javadoc stylee, for preference!)
Sparse, to the point where nothing can be taken out (without deteriorating into an obfuscated C entry. The rest of the team still have to understand it)
"Being self employeed I give my self my own perks. So for the long hours, sleepless night I get a meal out at the local pub on a Friday. God I'm a cheapskate"
I'm not self-employed, but I find your "pub lunch" perk extremely unimpressive.
If I was self employed, at least expect I'd get frequent sex with the boss.
From the Houston Chronicle article, after the usual plug for the current crop of propellor-head cards [FX6800, X800]:
"...If you're upgrading, look for at least 128 MB of video memory in a card with Direct X 9.0 capability that installs into an AGP slot. Cards in the $150 to $200 range -- such as a GeForce 5900XT or a Radeon 9600XT -- will be a sweet spot..."
Who knows - you might be in luck here, Just depends what you mean by "acceptable level". 1600x1200 and full-scene *anything* are probably out of our league (I've got an FX5900XT too), but 1280x1024 might be attainable with a pragmatic tweak of the in-game video settings.
[People who will pimp-out their rig to play Doom3]
1) Oldskool die-hard Doom lovers. These people have been around long enough that the concept of hardware upgrades is nothing new to them. Chances are they will currently have good enough hardware for Doom 3, or they will take it for granted that they will need an upgrade before they buy the game.
"Hmm, that's me - I was playing Doom on my ultra-expensive 100MHz 486 laptop, underway on a submarine in 1995.
But I have a life (and wife and kids) now! I certainly am NOT on the upgrade treadmill anymore. I might have asked for this game for Christmas or something, but there's no way in hell I'm getting expensive hardware upgrades just to play a game I won't have much time for anyway.
So scratch #1 off your (and IDs) list, unless they're stuck in a time warp.
"
So you're Oldskool, but your waning enthusiasm demonstrates that you're no longer die-hard.
I've been in the game since...Oh, lessee...1991, in 5 companies.
And how much source code have I kept since then?
Nothing. Nada. Nil.
Why? Partially because i know it's not mine to keep, but mainly because I've realised that every job I've done could be done so much better now that I know what I know. The source is not important: What I've learned *is*.
BTW, trophy aquisition is a big indicator for psychopathy I'd stop that if i were you. Or can't you stop?!
"... have an article I wrote a whole back dealing with this concept of the "idea men" not being able to execute their own innovations properly. The one thing that a lot of former dotcom execs told me was that they wish they'd sold out soon before they got the big company with all the programmers and Coke machines, because the biggest lesson they learned was that they didn't know how to run a business as well as they knew how to come up with great starter ideas...."
This is precisely why a lot of the successful venture firms (think 3i and the like) plan to remove the innovators within eighteen to twenty-four months of startup, before even thinking about ipo.
They VC firms know:
The innovators generally don't have a clue about running a business.
The innovators are often more in love with seeing their idea fly, rather than being methodical and realistic about growing a business.
I suppose if a guy with a Harvard MBA and ten year's management experience came along for funding he might be retained, as he would be "one of us". Unlikely though - The Harvard man is more likely to pick up the phone, and talk to his old college buddy T. Pierce Morgan III, who he knows got a few mil sitting idle: Venture firms are there for those with little experience or connections in business and finance. Once the ideas have been transferred and proven, the innovators are so gone.
I can't comment on other places of work, but I guess in our case its worth hanging onto talent, mainly because our problem domain is pretty specialised. Plus we've got to integrate with other manufacturers' military information systems, which makes the problem domain tricky^2.
If someone comes in raw, as I did, it's a couple of months before they even get a solid overview of what everyone's talking about and where their bit slots into the system. The guys who are retraining know our systems inside out and they are solid, productive programmers even with the limited tools and environments used for the older systems. Java is simple and C-like enough for them to be up and running after a 5-day course, and when they hit problems thereafter, they can call on my team (who are pretty experienced with Java) for guidance. The only hurdle, and it's a slight one, is getting across how rich the environment is and how much stuff has already been done for you, compared to the sparse environment they are used to.
While there's work to be done, it would be utter madness to discard all that knowledge, experience and "institutional memory" for the sake of a week's training, plus a bit of my (and others) time.
Ironically, when this project hits the production phase and the headcount is lowered in line with the required effort, it's likely to be me and others like me, who will get escorted off the premises bearing boxes and potted plants. The retrained guys will be ticking over very nicely and by then I doubt there's anything we could do that they couldn't.
"But you could use C, C++, ADA, Perl, PHP, Python, Lisp, OCaml,... as well for writing cross platform applications.
And for user interfaces you could use QT, FLTK, WxWindows,...
And for 3D you could use OpenGL.
There might be a million reasons to use Java (and probably as many for not using it) - but writing portable code is definitely no reason.
"
Why not put aside the additional effort of writing portable C, C++ etc etc, and just get on with fulfilling the specs by using... Java?
BTW, Java isn't so much about writing portable code as building portable apps.
For instance, I'm writing (part of) a biggish defense system (> GBP 300 million for HW + SW). It is an absolutely stunning timesaver to be able to develop, build & test on commodity NT boxes. The same jars are then FTP'd onto the target platform, which is not NT (and I'm not saying what it is, either). Guess what: Exact same behaviour on the target machine as on my desktop, but, each target machine costs around GBP100k, so we're happy that about all we need 'em for is soak testing - it's all inventory, you know!
Next, we can FTP the same jars to the training machines, which are commodity boxes running Linux, and guess what: No recompilation, porting or testing necessary - we get exactly the same behaviour here too. Again less inventory, and no added programming effort. Sweet!
The guys working on older products - ones that are in the maintenance phase, and will soon be phased out - are starting to be trained in Java. These guys are used to programming down to the metal, and at best having a C cross-compiler with printf's for debugging. They are, to a man, amazed at the ease with which they can slot applications together, and at the productivity they can attain with Java. One guy made a comment that stuck in my mind: "Things just work first time... this doesn't feel like programming!"
Slashdot Mirror
I said: "...No chance now of studying physics and developing a unified theory..."
You quoted: "I chose mechanical engineering. No chance now of studying physics"
And commented: "Wow... what school did you go to? Every mechanical engineering textbook I've seen is just loaded with physics."
I went to Oxford. Lots of some physics in mech. eng. textbooks. Not very much (well, none at all) relativity or quantum machanics , which is where you'd be starting when you develop your unified theory.
T&K
"...A guy I know keeps falling for crap like "You are a great poet! Be immortalized in the hall of fame! ** $50 plz", and virtually all multilevel marketing schemes that he happens to encounter. He must be on the "World's Greatest Suckers" mailing list. I just utterly cannot comprehend whatsoever, he simply does not want to listen to reason, there is some kind of fantasy to it all that is so much more enjoyable..."
Must be great for him, and I'm not being sarcastic here: Can you imagine how happy and exciting life must be for a guy who has no concept of his limitations or capabilities?
You and I (and the vast majority of people on
When I chose to study math, physics and chemistry in my senior years at school, the possiblity of me becoming a famous historian (I'd studied history as a junior) vanished. Poof!
After leaving school and picking university courses, I chose mechanical engineering. No chance now of studying physics and developing a unified theory, or following (say) medical biochemistry and working on a cure for something which is currently fatal.
My first job was writing structural analysis software. Goodbye professional engineering status...
What I'm saying is, maybe it's not so bad to be the guy who gets scammed slighty, but to still have that naive self belief and lack of insight that says: "I might design and build a rocket ship tomorrow, and fly it to the moon. Unless it rains".
T&K.
"If the Roman Empire had never fallen, we wouldn't have the special effects that we have today, because there would be no need for fake blood or any such nonsense"
We've moved on. There's another empire in the ascendent and they're playing Counter-Strike.
T&K.
Note the subject line: It seems that the accepted spelling uses "ck", rather than double "c". I'd only heard the term verbally before I started rooting around.
Regarding sentencing: It's complicated by the fact that taking without consent is a young person's crime, so the format of the trial and the outcome are heavily dependent on the age of those convicted.
As best I can make out, simple taking without consent carries a six month maximum, while aggravated taking without consent (in which injury, endangerment or damage are caused) carries a 2 year maximum. However, those under 14 are not (generally) subject to custodial sentences, and 15-17 year olds may be detained for a maximum of one year.
Take all this with a pinch of salt, (IANAL etc), but that's the best I could turn up.
Interestingly on one of the legal pages I found, a writer likened "twocking" to a kind of physical copyright infringement! Best keep this nugget hidden at the dead end of an obscure thread, or the usual
T&K.
"For instance, if you had a summer home and left a car there so that you could just fly in and go with it, and some fuck wad took it over the winter and then put it back -- ensuring that nothing was damaged, the engine was serviced and the oil was changed and had someone on the inside so that if you were anywhere near a thousand mile fucking radius, they could put it back as good as new (or better) -- would this be theft?"
Well, in the UK at least it wouldn't be theft.
In your scenario, the car is kept as good as new and no criminal damage has ocurred, so the only offence comitted is that of Taking Without Consent (T.W/O.C in Police shorthand, hence the term "Twoccing").
This offense was dreamed up at the back end of the last century, when joyriding became immensely popular with the chavs and pikies that infest the housing projects of this green and pleasant land.
Since the car was invariably abandoned after the fun was over, the prosecutor could not show that there was an intent to permanently deprive the owner of his property, hence , no theft ocurred.
The Twoc law was introduced so that the fun-loving and excitable rascals who joyride could be charged with a more serious crime than merely busting a car door lock.
T&M.
"...Just like something about say, robots. What kind of rights they should get..."
None, the same as any other utensil or posession. Maybe the right to be recycled rather than scrapped, but that's for the benefit of society, rather than the robot.
"... if they should be equal..."
Equal to what? Their creators? They could say that they're losing their mind, and sing "Daisy, Daisy" until the cows come home - you're talking about a machine here. Turn 'em off and toss 'em in the garbage, Hank!
"...what we would do if they became more elligent tha[n] us..."
Just let Hitachi or Daewoo or whoever know that they need to dial back a bit on the intelligence settings of their positronic brains. This is basic stuff, what are they teaching kids in "Robotics 101" these days?
"...I'm thinking the robot situation might turn out something like the holocaust..."
And that would be a terrible thing. About as terrible as a holocaust on the great toaster nation.
Life's complicated and hard already without devising new - and non-existant - dilemmas.
T&K.
"...The only thing in the body that heavy water might affect is osmosis, so I think that is a very unlikely suggestion..."
No Nobel prize. Not even a White Owl. Here's a more knowledgeable view of heavy water toxicity
To quote:
"When body deuterium reaches about 50%, it inhibits mitosis because spindle microtubules won't form (some hydrogen bond effect inhibiting self-polymerization, I think). So all eucaryotic cells are poisoned about about these concentrations, or a little higher (bacteria can survive full deuteration-- they just grow half as fast). The consequences of failure of cell division for an intact animal like a rodent, are somewhat like those of radiation or chemo-- the bone marrow and gut lining cells suffer. Animals die of infection or diarrhea. "
T&K.
"...At home, I use some giant mousepad I found at CompUSA. Unfortunately, they do not list the product on their website. It is about 4x the size of a normal pad and is the old school fabric over foam type. It does great for FPS gaming, as I never run out of room..."
You must use Dogbert's technical support:
Dogbert: Hello you've reached Dogbert's technical support, how may I abuse you?
PHB: My cursor is in the middle of the screen and my mouse is stuck right at the edge of my mousemat.
Dogbert: I see. Have you tried moving your desk to the left?
PHB: Yup. No dice.
Dogbert: In that case you're going to need our $800 mousemat upgrade...
T&K.
I'd suggest that a truly secure desktop has no business on the internet at all, so the choice browser is moot (except for the corporate intranet).
That's how it goes at my place of work - the secure network has a bona fide airgap between it and the rest of the world.
T&K.
Why don't you read some of the reasons why meds are so expensive?
Apologies for the length of this quote from the above link, but I think it's worth reading (Steve Harris MD on medical costs and litigation):
"...You [correspondent] were complaining about the cost of American medical care not long ago. You are clueless as to the connection here. Drugs cost more here. Medicine costs more here. A lawyer costs more here. An artitect costs more here. Each of these things has reasons. Until you step away from medicine and see the big picture, you'll never figure it out...
T&K.
"...The least you can do when you pop-up an error is to give some additional information; like where it occurred ("Bad Thing Happened in somefile.c line #456"),..."
No, no, no, wrong, wrong, WRONG! Bad geek! [flourishes rolled-up newspaper]
This idea - dumping debug info into dialogs that will be seen and used by end users - went out with the ark. It''s probably worse than what it seeks to replace in that rather than being merely uninformative, it's downright confusing.
Remember that the vast majority of Word users do not have any idea what a source file is or how it relates to their computing experience. We - software developers - have no business expecting users to respond intelligently to the runes which rule our lives.
An error dialog should inform the user that there is a problem and if possible, focus on the solution to the problem. Eg. "Close down some apps before you try to run Doom 3" etc.
T&K.
Many moons ago, I was working part time in Marks and Spencer's warehouse, Oxford, while I was attending a local tech. college.
Marks and Spencer for those of you who are not UK-centric, is a department store, supposedly of above average quality which prides itself on the level of customer service they provide. They have/had a very liberal returns policy, and were famous for standing behind their products.
Picture the scene: It is January the 2nd. The customer service desk is swamped with people returning unwanted Christmas gifts for cash. As I am taking a trolley load of packaging down to the waste compactor in the basement, one of the customer service assistants is peering quizzically at the inside of a pair of boxer shorts that have been presented for refund.
Her facial expression, and her words, will stay with me until the day I die:
"I'm very sorry sir, we can't accept these shorts: They are soiled".
T&K.
"Until last year, I would have an employee come to me every 6-8 weeks with a beatup floppy containing their sole copy of some critical spreadsheet or database file... "
Your solution was to: "new 'legacy free' PCs with no floppy drives."
Invent a better sneakernet, and the world won't beat a path to your door!
Might be better to join the 20th century, and insist on new PC's with 10/100 networking on board, and buy some cat5?
Or if your employees were bringing these disks from a remote site, you could buy one of them thar newfangled routers, and connect up to this information superhighway thing?
T&K
Fulfills the specs, no crashes, leaks, etc etc etc, obviously.
Reuses, and is reusable, where sensible (making a religion out of reuse is as bad as no reuse IMHO)
Is comprehensible to the rest of the team (but maybe not on first inspection)
Is documented (Javadoc stylee, for preference!)
Sparse, to the point where nothing can be taken out (without deteriorating into an obfuscated C entry. The rest of the team still have to understand it)
Just one man's opinion.
T&K.
"Being self employeed I give my self my own perks. So for the long hours, sleepless night I get a meal out at the local pub on a Friday. God I'm a cheapskate"
I'm not self-employed, but I find your "pub lunch" perk extremely unimpressive.
If I was self employed, at least expect I'd get frequent sex with the boss.
T&K
From the Houston Chronicle article, after the usual plug for the current crop of propellor-head cards [FX6800, X800]:
Who knows - you might be in luck here, Just depends what you mean by "acceptable level". 1600x1200 and full-scene *anything* are probably out of our league (I've got an FX5900XT too), but 1280x1024 might be attainable with a pragmatic tweak of the in-game video settings.
T&K.
"Hmm, that's me - I was playing Doom on my ultra-expensive 100MHz 486 laptop, underway on a submarine in 1995.
But I have a life (and wife and kids) now! I certainly am NOT on the upgrade treadmill anymore. I might have asked for this game for Christmas or something, but there's no way in hell I'm getting expensive hardware upgrades just to play a game I won't have much time for anyway.
So scratch #1 off your (and IDs) list, unless they're stuck in a time warp. "
So you're Oldskool, but your waning enthusiasm demonstrates that you're no longer die-hard.
Best keep #1 on the list.
T&K.
I've been in the game since
And how much source code have I kept since then?
Nothing. Nada. Nil.
Why? Partially because i know it's not mine to keep, but mainly because I've realised that every job I've done could be done so much better now that I know what I know. The source is not important: What I've learned *is*.
BTW, trophy aquisition is a big indicator for psychopathy I'd stop that if i were you. Or can't you stop?!
T&K.
"...I don't know how they'd cope with somebody who had a photographic memory and some artistic talent..."
Prabaly a big sign by the entrance gate:
NO CAMERAS
NO RECORDING DEVICES
NO IDIOTS-SAVANTS
They check for this by asking everyone who enters "Who's on first base?". Works every time...
T&K.
"... have an article I wrote a whole back dealing with this concept of the "idea men" not being able to execute their own innovations properly. The one thing that a lot of former dotcom execs told me was that they wish they'd sold out soon before they got the big company with all the programmers and Coke machines, because the biggest lesson they learned was that they didn't know how to run a business as well as they knew how to come up with great starter ideas.
This is precisely why a lot of the successful venture firms (think 3i and the like) plan to remove the innovators within eighteen to twenty-four months of startup, before even thinking about ipo.
They VC firms know:
The innovators generally don't have a clue about running a business.
The innovators are often more in love with seeing their idea fly, rather than being methodical and realistic about growing a business.
I suppose if a guy with a Harvard MBA and ten year's management experience came along for funding he might be retained, as he would be "one of us". Unlikely though - The Harvard man is more likely to pick up the phone, and talk to his old college buddy T. Pierce Morgan III, who he knows got a few mil sitting idle: Venture firms are there for those with little experience or connections in business and finance. Once the ideas have been transferred and proven, the innovators are so gone.
T&K.
Everyone has an angle.
Including Earthlink. Their check said I was riddled with Alexa toolbar + A load of tracking cookies.
Problem was, Both Ad-Aware & Spybot S&D (latest definitions) said otherwise: Clean as a whistle.
I bet if I download the Earthlink Toolbar (same page as the free spyware check) these problems would go away?
T&K.
I can't comment on other places of work, but I guess in our case its worth hanging onto talent, mainly because our problem domain is pretty specialised. Plus we've got to integrate with other manufacturers' military information systems, which makes the problem domain tricky^2.
If someone comes in raw, as I did, it's a couple of months before they even get a solid overview of what everyone's talking about and where their bit slots into the system. The guys who are retraining know our systems inside out and they are solid, productive programmers even with the limited tools and environments used for the older systems. Java is simple and C-like enough for them to be up and running after a 5-day course, and when they hit problems thereafter, they can call on my team (who are pretty experienced with Java) for guidance. The only hurdle, and it's a slight one, is getting across how rich the environment is and how much stuff has already been done for you, compared to the sparse environment they are used to.
While there's work to be done, it would be utter madness to discard all that knowledge, experience and "institutional memory" for the sake of a week's training, plus a bit of my (and others) time.
Ironically, when this project hits the production phase and the headcount is lowered in line with the required effort, it's likely to be me and others like me, who will get escorted off the premises bearing boxes and potted plants. The retrained guys will be ticking over very nicely and by then I doubt there's anything we could do that they couldn't.
T&K
Wrong. Good for you for trying, though.
"But you could use C, C++, ADA, Perl, PHP, Python, Lisp, OCaml,
And for 3D you could use OpenGL.
There might be a million reasons to use Java (and probably as many for not using it) - but writing portable code is definitely no reason. "
Why not put aside the additional effort of writing portable C, C++ etc etc, and just get on with fulfilling the specs by using... Java?
BTW, Java isn't so much about writing portable code as building portable apps.
For instance, I'm writing (part of) a biggish defense system (> GBP 300 million for HW + SW). It is an absolutely stunning timesaver to be able to develop, build & test on commodity NT boxes. The same jars are then FTP'd onto the target platform, which is not NT (and I'm not saying what it is, either). Guess what: Exact same behaviour on the target machine as on my desktop, but, each target machine costs around GBP100k, so we're happy that about all we need 'em for is soak testing - it's all inventory, you know!
Next, we can FTP the same jars to the training machines, which are commodity boxes running Linux, and guess what: No recompilation, porting or testing necessary - we get exactly the same behaviour here too. Again less inventory, and no added programming effort. Sweet!
The guys working on older products - ones that are in the maintenance phase, and will soon be phased out - are starting to be trained in Java. These guys are used to programming down to the metal, and at best having a C cross-compiler with printf's for debugging. They are, to a man, amazed at the ease with which they can slot applications together, and at the productivity they can attain with Java. One guy made a comment that stuck in my mind: "Things just work first time... this doesn't feel like programming!"
T&K.
"...I was stupid and actually stopped looking at porn after maybe 5 minutes..."
Don't feel too stupid. Or bad.
It's not a coincidence that well-produced porn films feature some kind of "crescendo" every nine minutes (approximately).
Holding on for five minutes is pretty good for an 8th grader!
T&K.