Programmers are essentially force multipliers. For example, I write web apps for customer oriented businesses that enable them to handle more customers with the same staff they currently have. If half their customers use web tools instead of phoning in questions, then the business can double it's customer base without doubling it's overhead(employees, office space, etc).
A good programmer can go into any business and write software that increases the ability of that business by 10, 20, etc percent.
If in 10 years all software is free, there will still be a need for programmers in business because each business has a custom workflow that can be enhanced beyond the stock software you can buy or get for free.
The comparison with artists doesn't hold up, because a pretty song or a painting doesn't increase the productivity of a company by 10%. The right piece of software can.
Unfortunately, we have to choose our battles, and respect those who don't choose the same as we might.
No, I'm sorry, I most certainly do not have to respect those that choose differently. When I think about how hard life was for the people that founded this country, it makes me ill when people today that enjoy the freedom their forefathers paid for in blood just roll over to some bully because it's "easier".
Just because someone is being sued doesn't make them guilty of anything. In fact, judges in quite a few of the cases for this threw out the suit because of lack of evidence.
The problem is that a lot of people are so afraid of going to court that they cave in to these sorts of legal letters.
Skydiving today has computers that can automatically open your reserve parachute for you if you get knocked out: http://www.cypres-usa.com/
Also the refinement/design of the parachute containers has made the sport safer than ever.
On the flip side, CAD and laser cutting have transformed parachute canopies into high speed extremely manueverable wings that can be very dangerous to fly without good training. I wouldn't be suprised if in another 10 years more people died under a perfectly good parachutes than those that died because they couldn't get one out. It's almost at that point today.
Re:REGISTER_GLOBALS and why fixing is not fixing
on
PHP 5 Beta 1
·
· Score: 1
You add the following line to your php.ini file:
register_globals = On
And your globals will work just like they used to. Turning the above off by default prevents tech magazine reviewers that can't code from saying how insecure the language is.
It also keeps newbies from shooting themselves in the foot.
Let's see, late 90's we had the internet bomb where everyone was throwing money at anything with the word "net" in it. You didn't need a sound business plan, just a good domain name to be worth billions.
And to top it all off we had the Y2K craze, where the Y2K bug was basically an excuse to totally upgrade everyone's infrastructure. You had people cashing in on that one big time, you could even buy Y2K steak knives.
So is it any surprise people aren't spending as much IT money today?
It'll bounce back up, computers and software don't last forever, but it'll never be like it was back in the late 90's, which is a good thing IMHO.
We're a stable democracy and China isn't. As an American I wouldn't lose any sleep at night if all of Western Europe had the power to blow me off the earth. Because they're stable democracies, which means the masses of people generally run the show.
I DO worry about countries where the people that live in the country don't have a say in how it operates though, because you're more likely to end up with a rogue nut in power that stupid enough to pull the trigger and there's no one to stop him.
That's funny, my experiences with Gentoo have been about the exact opposite of yours. It took me 8 months to get accepted as a Debian developer, which is about the average wait time, but with Gentoo I was submitted ebuilds to the project after only 2 days.
As far as ideas getting ignored in the forums, ideas are cheap. Implementing them is the real work. Generally the stuff that gets into Gentoo gets there not because someone tosses out a cute idea, but because someone actually does some work and codes it. I've seen changes merged into portage because users put out their own patches for it that enhance its functionality.
Why do we need AMD when all the employees for that company could work for Intel?
Why do we need Apple, Novell, and Sun when they could just work for Microsoft?
Why don't all the computer manufacturers just merge with Dell?
Why did MS make their own database when they could've just used Oracle?
Why do we have a Barnes and Nobles and Borders book stores when we already had a Waldenbooks?
Why a Wendy's and Burger King when they could've just gone with McDonalds?
Why do we have different brands of milk, eggs, butter, noodles, and other foods?
Why didn't Pepsi come about when we already had Coke?
AT&T was already our nation's phone carrier, so why did Sprint and MCI form?
Capitalism seems to be remarkably ineffective. Perhaps we should just have one central authority running all this stuff... I hear they tried that in Russia once. I wonder how that worked out.
When you work so many hours you start to not care about the work. When that happens, productivity will go below what you'd get out of a 40 hour a week employee.
Of course the other side of the coin is that the guy with the house and kids really needs to job for the money, while the kid can quit whenever he feels like it because he has no responsibilities.
So I guess it depends on what kind of wage slave you're looking for.
Currently bandwidth is a limited resource that has to be delivered into our homes so we pay for it, like water and electricity.
But what I think most of the responses have missed is that it doesn't always have to work that way. For example, I don't have to pay anyone for the air I breath because it's so plentiful and no one has to deliver it to me.
It's conceivable, I'd say even likely, that bandwidth could one day work the same way.
However from the responses to this article I think the biggest hurdle won't be technical so much as overcoming peoples' preconceptions.
When you make changes to websites, they sometimes break. Anytime you introduce change into a stable system, you open the door for instability.
And generally business websites don't see as much traffic on the weekends, so naturally the weekend is the time to make changes.
So wow, it's no shock that Mondays are when you're most likely to see problems with a website. But these problems and hiccups are the price you pay for progress.
If you don't want to chance any disruption in your life, then I guess you should never change. Otherwise, get over it.
To "wing" the system online it's simply a matter of running either one of:
net-setup eth0 (if you're on a LAN) adsl-setup adsl-start (if you're using PPPoE)
For links, simply doing a USE="-X" emerge links would've emerged it without X support. The whole point of Gentoo is that you choose exactly what kind of support goes into each package, unlike in Debian where some maintainer makes that choice for you.
Of course you don't know these tricks, because you didn't stick around log enough to learn them or didn't read the docs.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, so it compiles in about the same amount of time it takes to start it up...
Programmers are essentially force multipliers. For example, I write web apps for customer oriented businesses that enable them to handle more customers with the same staff they currently have. If half their customers use web tools instead of phoning in questions, then the business can double it's customer base without doubling it's overhead(employees, office space, etc).
A good programmer can go into any business and write software that increases the ability of that business by 10, 20, etc percent.
If in 10 years all software is free, there will still be a need for programmers in business because each business has a custom workflow that can be enhanced beyond the stock software you can buy or get for free.
The comparison with artists doesn't hold up, because a pretty song or a painting doesn't increase the productivity of a company by 10%. The right piece of software can.
Unfortunately, we have to choose our battles, and respect those who don't choose the same as we might.
No, I'm sorry, I most certainly do not have to respect those that choose differently. When I think about how hard life was for the people that founded this country, it makes me ill when people today that enjoy the freedom their forefathers paid for in blood just roll over to some bully because it's "easier".
Anyone remember that petsmart.com site, where the owner of the online store was suing everyone and anyone who posted bad remarks about his business?
He represented himself in court, which is what made it affordable for him to sue so many people.
Just because someone is being sued doesn't make them guilty of anything. In fact, judges in quite a few of the cases for this threw out the suit because of lack of evidence.
The problem is that a lot of people are so afraid of going to court that they cave in to these sorts of legal letters.
Skydiving today has computers that can automatically open your reserve parachute for you if you get knocked out: http://www.cypres-usa.com/
Also the refinement/design of the parachute containers has made the sport safer than ever.
On the flip side, CAD and laser cutting have transformed parachute canopies into high speed extremely manueverable wings that can be very dangerous to fly without good training. I wouldn't be suprised if in another 10 years more people died under a perfectly good parachutes than those that died because they couldn't get one out. It's almost at that point today.
You add the following line to your php.ini file:
register_globals = On
And your globals will work just like they used to. Turning the above off by default prevents tech magazine reviewers that can't code from saying how insecure the language is.
It also keeps newbies from shooting themselves in the foot.
Let's see, late 90's we had the internet bomb where everyone was throwing money at anything with the word "net" in it. You didn't need a sound business plan, just a good domain name to be worth billions.
And to top it all off we had the Y2K craze, where the Y2K bug was basically an excuse to totally upgrade everyone's infrastructure. You had people cashing in on that one big time, you could even buy Y2K steak knives.
So is it any surprise people aren't spending as much IT money today?
It'll bounce back up, computers and software don't last forever, but it'll never be like it was back in the late 90's, which is a good thing IMHO.
Yeah, that's why I said "stable" democracies :)
But you raised some good points.
We're a stable democracy and China isn't. As an American I wouldn't lose any sleep at night if all of Western Europe had the power to blow me off the earth. Because they're stable democracies, which means the masses of people generally run the show.
I DO worry about countries where the people that live in the country don't have a say in how it operates though, because you're more likely to end up with a rogue nut in power that stupid enough to pull the trigger and there's no one to stop him.
That's funny, my experiences with Gentoo have been about the exact opposite of yours. It took me 8 months to get accepted as a Debian developer, which is about the average wait time, but with Gentoo I was submitted ebuilds to the project after only 2 days.
As far as ideas getting ignored in the forums, ideas are cheap. Implementing them is the real work. Generally the stuff that gets into Gentoo gets there not because someone tosses out a cute idea, but because someone actually does some work and codes it. I've seen changes merged into portage because users put out their own patches for it that enhance its functionality.
Why do we need AMD when all the employees for that company could work for Intel?
Why do we need Apple, Novell, and Sun when they could just work for Microsoft?
Why don't all the computer manufacturers just merge with Dell?
Why did MS make their own database when they could've just used Oracle?
Why do we have a Barnes and Nobles and Borders book stores when we already had a Waldenbooks?
Why a Wendy's and Burger King when they could've just gone with McDonalds?
Why do we have different brands of milk, eggs, butter, noodles, and other foods?
Why didn't Pepsi come about when we already had Coke?
AT&T was already our nation's phone carrier, so why did Sprint and MCI form?
Capitalism seems to be remarkably ineffective. Perhaps we should just have one central authority running all this stuff... I hear they tried that in Russia once. I wonder how that worked out.
Rule 1:
If you're ever arrested for anything say the following 4 words to the police and only the following 4 words: I want my lawyer.
Nothing else you say will help you, it will only hurt you.
Rule 2:
If a reporter wants to talk to you about anything only ever say the following 2 words: No comment.
Anything else you say can be twisted into making it sound like you said whatever that reporter wants.
No native toolset and the game client won't play the movies from the official campaign and first expansion because they're in .bik format.
The toolset works fine under wine though.
Like the others have said, more people are player today than ever.
Aside from BioWare's main http://nwn.bioware.com/ site I'd also recommend you check out http://www.neverwinterconnections.com/
Is employee burnout.
When you work so many hours you start to not care about the work. When that happens, productivity will go below what you'd get out of a 40 hour a week employee.
You DO know that without copyright law the GPL is unenforcable, right?
Just because they nickname the GPL "copyleft", doesn't mean it doesn't depend on copyright law.
[quote]
:)
I'll be compiling my kernel from the comfort of my bed with my geek fiancee. =P
[/quote]
We hate you.
She have any sisters?
Of course the other side of the coin is that the guy with the house and kids really needs to job for the money, while the kid can quit whenever he feels like it because he has no responsibilities.
So I guess it depends on what kind of wage slave you're looking for.
Scarcity and delivery.
Currently bandwidth is a limited resource that has to be delivered into our homes so we pay for it, like water and electricity.
But what I think most of the responses have missed is that it doesn't always have to work that way. For example, I don't have to pay anyone for the air I breath because it's so plentiful and no one has to deliver it to me.
It's conceivable, I'd say even likely, that bandwidth could one day work the same way.
However from the responses to this article I think the biggest hurdle won't be technical so much as overcoming peoples' preconceptions.
I have a Sony SDM-X82, which is a 18in LCD that runs native in 1280x1024 that works with games just fine.
Just get a LCD with something in the area of a 20ms response time.
When you make changes to websites, they sometimes break. Anytime you introduce change into a stable system, you open the door for instability.
And generally business websites don't see as much traffic on the weekends, so naturally the weekend is the time to make changes.
So wow, it's no shock that Mondays are when you're most likely to see problems with a website. But these problems and hiccups are the price you pay for progress.
If you don't want to chance any disruption in your life, then I guess you should never change. Otherwise, get over it.
And gopher works fine for browsing documents online, so why would anyone use that stupid http thing...
Considering how much spam is a problem for ISPs, I think you'd be suprised how widespread adoption of SMTP2 would be if it actually kill spam.
Is that everyone today is talking about whether or not Linux will really give you cost savings over Windows on the desktop.
A year ago they weren't even ready to admit it was ready for the desktop at all.
Two years ago people would've laughed at you if you even suggested Linux on the desktop for corporate users.
I wonder if next year's report won't be whether or not you should use Linux on the desktop, but rather which distribution you should be using.
The documentation on USE variables:
http://www.gentoo.org/dyn/use-index.xml
To "wing" the system online it's simply a matter of running either one of:
net-setup eth0 (if you're on a LAN)
adsl-setup
adsl-start (if you're using PPPoE)
For links, simply doing a USE="-X" emerge links would've emerged it without X support. The whole point of Gentoo is that you choose exactly what kind of support goes into each package, unlike in Debian where some maintainer makes that choice for you.
Of course you don't know these tricks, because you didn't stick around log enough to learn them or didn't read the docs.