I think some people equate "soft" with "easy", which isn't the same thing. In fact, those things viewed as "soft" can be much "harder" (in terms of difficulty) than the "hard" (in terms of concrete and definitive answers) fields. In a science or engineering discipline, the math works the same way each time, but in education, something that works wildly well once could fail miserably the next time even though the situations are remarkably similar.
As another example, I think of economics is a soft field, despite its heavy use of math and technical sophistication. I don't think of it as easy though.
But I was using emoticons (we just called them "smileys" then... real computers didn't HAVE icons) on BITNET in the 1980s when her biggest concern was whether her My Little Pony or Care Bears collection got put on the top shelf in her room. They're not a recent phenomenon.
To my knowledge, I can think of only two companies in the US that have nearly-nationwide grocery STORES: Kroger and Wal-Mart. There are many large regional grocery chains here: Safeway, Albertson's (two of those, actually), Piggly Wiggly, Publix, Food Lion, and a bunch I'm sure I never heard of. Even the Kroger family is made up of a bunch of different branded stores and I have no idea how much their logistics are integrated.
Someone who knows more about grocery retailing than I do could probably remind me of another out there that's nearly nationwide. K-mart and Target are nationwide, but haven't fully moved into groceries from their discount retail roots.
His reference to Austria has little to do with the practice of Austrian government or central banks, past or present. He is referring to Austrian School economics.
HTH.
I didn't think they were there and all it took was about 10 hours of me poking around semi-random articles in a research library (Arizona State's Hayden Library) and the internet to come to that conclusion. That the 60 billion a year we spend on intelligence couldn't come to the same conclusion I did using only unclassified data for what amounted to a day of work by a single bright but no means brilliant guy (who is also untrained in intelligence) reading in his spare time was very troubling to me.
Ah, nostalgia. My first IT (we called it "Data Processing" then) job was as a System/38 operator. It was a pretty impressive machine. I still have a fridge magnet I made out of Spanish language System/38 badge. I always put it on the upper right of the freezer door.:-)
...that said false things about you that denied you financial services, employment, housing, etc., It seems I would be guilty of libel, especially if I'm making money of off my libelous statements.
I am not a lawyer, and not up on the maze of laws that governs this, but why can't credit bureaus be charged with libel or defamation of character when they do it?
"Woah! You had to answer those questions on the phone whilst he was talking to you?"
That is interesting, isn't it?
What I find even more interesting is I have gone through the Google phone screen process twice (I've never applied, they love cold-calling me), and that exact same question has been asked of me as the second question, in the second phone screen, both times. So, I call BS on the "no set questions" comment from the article.
The second time that question was asked of me, I ended the phone screen then and there. Here I am thinking this a company that prides itself on creativity and imagination and I'm feeling more and more like someone's trying to recruit me to sell Amway by following a carefully crafted script.
They still write me every three or four months and ask me if I'd be interested in working for them. I just politely decline them now. I love their services, but I'm not comfortable with the idea of hitching my wagon to that particular star anymore.
The virtual servers are responsive, and they provide secondary DNS for as many domains as you want to run off it. Linux server with 10 gigs of disk space (which the base OS doesn't eat due to virtual file system trickiness), 75 Gigs/month, $79 on a month-to-month basis, cheaper if you buy in larger blocks. The FreeBSD is cheaper and if you're hosting an open source project on it, they cut a pretty big discount, too. I've got multiple instances of Drupal and SMF running off of it, and it clicks along nicely.
The only restrictions I can recall is nothing illegal (duh), no modern game servers (MUDs are okay), and no IRC servers joined to an IRC network. A local IRC server is fine. You can run 1 domain, or 100, as long as you come in under the bandwidth cap. There's a bigger plan if you need more horsepower and packets, but I've had no need for it.
The tech support is kick-ass. I will email them asking for things on Sunday afternoon and 10 minutes later I get an email back saying "it's done." Note that all of these tech support requests was asking for changes or help because I was stuck on something... nothing has ever broken that wasn't my fault.:-) I don't recall ever having downtime exceeding two minutes and those were few and scheduled a couple days in advance.
I recommended them to my boss for a project here at work, and he liked them so much, he moved his personal project stuff to them, too.
I'm not connected with them except as a very satisfied customer for 4 years now. It's rare one does business with a company that is just delightful to work with, so when you find one, you want to crow about it.
Wow, I suppose if you don't want me transitioning what I'm working on to other people and just want me out the door, that's your watch, but I'm going to be a lot less receptive to any phone calls or emails later asking what the ramifications are if we change A or move B to this fancy new server.
I don't care how well you document everything, use pair programming, or whatever you think keeps you running a tight ship, someone somewhere down the road is going to need a little boost where a quick email or three minute phone call to me could save them a day or more of work if I had been doing anything of real consequence for your organization. Do you really get so many worker's comp claims from people about to leave? You're nice enough to pay me still...I want to stick around to help you!
Let me know where you have hiring authority... I'll make sure we both save each other lots of hassle and I'll just not apply there. We're obviously completely incompatible in an employer-employee relationship.:-)
They wanted me to move across the continent from a place with average cost of living and a 10 minute commute to work in San Francisco (right in the city, not even an outlying area) for about a 15% increase in pay. The only way I could afford that would be to take on a 2-3 hour commute and even then I'd have to run an even tighter ship, financially speaking, than I do now.
I suppose they were counting on the "cool factor". The job was cool, but not so cool I was willing to stick a stake through the heart of my family. Right after this, I read that Lucas donates 170 million to his alma mater. Hey George, why not donate 10% less and actually pay your people something more since you're insisting on setting up shop right in the freaking Presidio?
600 Tbyte of disk in total can't be right. I wrote an application a couple years ago that has 6 terabytes of disk allocated to it to cache its work. This was for a single app. Admittedly, we worked with fairly big data files where I was working, but I've got to think Lucasfilm's files are way larger than my 1-2 gig files.
When will somebody figure out how to speed up light such that going for a nice dinner at that quaint little cafe overlooking the crystalline fields on that lovely planet around Tau Ceti is feasible?
"Comparing software to a bridge is useless. A bridge is like one specific program - a calculator, or a no-frills text editor. Building software is more like urban planning. Now go ask engineers how many times they've screwed the pooch on that one."
Spot. On. The construction metaphors applied to software systems always bothered me for this reason, which I could never put into words as clearly and succinctly as you have right here.
I thought that was just the BoE and that the Scottish banks (and maybe Northern Ireland too?) issued £100 notes.
$50 and $100 bills are uncommon in everyday US transactions, too. Although I found an ATM in the Ahwatukee region of Phoenix, Arizona that dispensed only 50s because it got so much traffic they had to refill it several times daily as it was busy and most people were taking out at least a 100 bucks per transaction.
On the other hand, let's be honest. Most mid and senior level people prefer to work on new systems versus mucking with a crufty legacy COBOL system. I know that if my job suddenly became COBOL legacy maintenance 100% I would be pounding the pavement looking for a new job, unless they also rented a Terex dumptruck, filled the bucket with $100 bills and dumped it out on my front lawn.
I don't mind taking a gander at a COBOL program once in a while, but I don't want to make a career of it.
Slashdot Mirror
I think some people equate "soft" with "easy", which isn't the same thing. In fact, those things viewed as "soft" can be much "harder" (in terms of difficulty) than the "hard" (in terms of concrete and definitive answers) fields. In a science or engineering discipline, the math works the same way each time, but in education, something that works wildly well once could fail miserably the next time even though the situations are remarkably similar.
As another example, I think of economics is a soft field, despite its heavy use of math and technical sophistication. I don't think of it as easy though.
But I was using emoticons (we just called them "smileys" then... real computers didn't HAVE icons) on BITNET in the 1980s when her biggest concern was whether her My Little Pony or Care Bears collection got put on the top shelf in her room. They're not a recent phenomenon.
*grumble* damn kids need to get off my lawn :-(
I can neither confirm nor deny that.
To my knowledge, I can think of only two companies in the US that have nearly-nationwide grocery STORES: Kroger and Wal-Mart. There are many large regional grocery chains here: Safeway, Albertson's (two of those, actually), Piggly Wiggly, Publix, Food Lion, and a bunch I'm sure I never heard of. Even the Kroger family is made up of a bunch of different branded stores and I have no idea how much their logistics are integrated.
Someone who knows more about grocery retailing than I do could probably remind me of another out there that's nearly nationwide. K-mart and Target are nationwide, but haven't fully moved into groceries from their discount retail roots.
His reference to Austria has little to do with the practice of Austrian government or central banks, past or present. He is referring to Austrian School economics. HTH.
I didn't think they were there and all it took was about 10 hours of me poking around semi-random articles in a research library (Arizona State's Hayden Library) and the internet to come to that conclusion. That the 60 billion a year we spend on intelligence couldn't come to the same conclusion I did using only unclassified data for what amounted to a day of work by a single bright but no means brilliant guy (who is also untrained in intelligence) reading in his spare time was very troubling to me.
Because I got this:
"Quantum Random Bit Generator Service: Sign up failed
Congratulations! You have successfully registered for QRBG Service.
Now, you can log in and check your quota and usage statistics, or just start using the Service."
I guess I have to stuff a cat in a box to see if my account actually works now.
Ah, nostalgia. My first IT (we called it "Data Processing" then) job was as a System/38 operator. It was a pretty impressive machine. I still have a fridge magnet I made out of Spanish language System/38 badge. I always put it on the upper right of the freezer door. :-)
...that said false things about you that denied you financial services, employment, housing, etc., It seems I would be guilty of libel, especially if I'm making money of off my libelous statements.
I am not a lawyer, and not up on the maze of laws that governs this, but why can't credit bureaus be charged with libel or defamation of character when they do it?
It must've been a math book he tossed out the window.
That is interesting, isn't it?
What I find even more interesting is I have gone through the Google phone screen process twice (I've never applied, they love cold-calling me), and that exact same question has been asked of me as the second question, in the second phone screen, both times. So, I call BS on the "no set questions" comment from the article.
The second time that question was asked of me, I ended the phone screen then and there. Here I am thinking this a company that prides itself on creativity and imagination and I'm feeling more and more like someone's trying to recruit me to sell Amway by following a carefully crafted script.
They still write me every three or four months and ask me if I'd be interested in working for them. I just politely decline them now. I love their services, but I'm not comfortable with the idea of hitching my wagon to that particular star anymore.
Seconded. Johncompanies is awesome.
The virtual servers are responsive, and they provide secondary DNS for as many domains as you want to run off it. Linux server with 10 gigs of disk space (which the base OS doesn't eat due to virtual file system trickiness), 75 Gigs/month, $79 on a month-to-month basis, cheaper if you buy in larger blocks. The FreeBSD is cheaper and if you're hosting an open source project on it, they cut a pretty big discount, too. I've got multiple instances of Drupal and SMF running off of it, and it clicks along nicely.
The only restrictions I can recall is nothing illegal (duh), no modern game servers (MUDs are okay), and no IRC servers joined to an IRC network. A local IRC server is fine. You can run 1 domain, or 100, as long as you come in under the bandwidth cap. There's a bigger plan if you need more horsepower and packets, but I've had no need for it.
The tech support is kick-ass. I will email them asking for things on Sunday afternoon and 10 minutes later I get an email back saying "it's done." Note that all of these tech support requests was asking for changes or help because I was stuck on something... nothing has ever broken that wasn't my fault. :-) I don't recall ever having downtime exceeding two minutes and those were few and scheduled a couple days in advance.
I recommended them to my boss for a project here at work, and he liked them so much, he moved his personal project stuff to them, too.
I'm not connected with them except as a very satisfied customer for 4 years now. It's rare one does business with a company that is just delightful to work with, so when you find one, you want to crow about it.
Same thing you called them before 2000: Lame.
Wow, I suppose if you don't want me transitioning what I'm working on to other people and just want me out the door, that's your watch, but I'm going to be a lot less receptive to any phone calls or emails later asking what the ramifications are if we change A or move B to this fancy new server.
I don't care how well you document everything, use pair programming, or whatever you think keeps you running a tight ship, someone somewhere down the road is going to need a little boost where a quick email or three minute phone call to me could save them a day or more of work if I had been doing anything of real consequence for your organization. Do you really get so many worker's comp claims from people about to leave? You're nice enough to pay me still...I want to stick around to help you!
Let me know where you have hiring authority... I'll make sure we both save each other lots of hassle and I'll just not apply there. We're obviously completely incompatible in an employer-employee relationship. :-)
They wanted me to move across the continent from a place with average cost of living and a 10 minute commute to work in San Francisco (right in the city, not even an outlying area) for about a 15% increase in pay. The only way I could afford that would be to take on a 2-3 hour commute and even then I'd have to run an even tighter ship, financially speaking, than I do now.
I suppose they were counting on the "cool factor". The job was cool, but not so cool I was willing to stick a stake through the heart of my family. Right after this, I read that Lucas donates 170 million to his alma mater. Hey George, why not donate 10% less and actually pay your people something more since you're insisting on setting up shop right in the freaking Presidio?
600 Tbyte of disk in total can't be right. I wrote an application a couple years ago that has 6 terabytes of disk allocated to it to cache its work. This was for a single app. Admittedly, we worked with fairly big data files where I was working, but I've got to think Lucasfilm's files are way larger than my 1-2 gig files.
When will somebody figure out how to speed up light such that going for a nice dinner at that quaint little cafe overlooking the crystalline fields on that lovely planet around Tau Ceti is feasible?
vi or emacs?
"Comparing software to a bridge is useless. A bridge is like one specific program - a calculator, or a no-frills text editor. Building software is more like urban planning. Now go ask engineers how many times they've screwed the pooch on that one."
Spot. On. The construction metaphors applied to software systems always bothered me for this reason, which I could never put into words as clearly and succinctly as you have right here.
I thought that was just the BoE and that the Scottish banks (and maybe Northern Ireland too?) issued £100 notes.
$50 and $100 bills are uncommon in everyday US transactions, too. Although I found an ATM in the Ahwatukee region of Phoenix, Arizona that dispensed only 50s because it got so much traffic they had to refill it several times daily as it was busy and most people were taking out at least a 100 bucks per transaction.
Well, given the exchange rate, I'd be okay with 100 pound notes too, thankyouverymuch. :-)
On the other hand, let's be honest. Most mid and senior level people prefer to work on new systems versus mucking with a crufty legacy COBOL system. I know that if my job suddenly became COBOL legacy maintenance 100% I would be pounding the pavement looking for a new job, unless they also rented a Terex dumptruck, filled the bucket with $100 bills and dumped it out on my front lawn.
I don't mind taking a gander at a COBOL program once in a while, but I don't want to make a career of it.
Have you considered a career in destroying unstable planets instead?
No. :-)
"we see it fine"
For a liberal interpretation of the word "fine". Gah! I have Flash installed and this site was hideous enough to consider UNinstalling it.
To the GP, it's 100% useless to those who have Flash installed, too.
I got the sarcasm. Maybe you need your PhD. I'll be on your committee if you like. :-)
The key word was "might".