I'm sorry. I really should not pick on ya. I'm sure we'd get along just fine in 'meat space'. ____ You wrote: First of all I graduated from school at 21 thus I have 2 years of experience under my belt. Over the last year I have worked on two military software maintanance projects. Both a successes. Before that I worked on a project that involves building a complex OCR from scratch. Experience? I don't lack. Talent? I have plenty of. Skills? Sharp as Excalibur. My only weakness is I don't know how to manage people, and that is something that will come over time.
Yep, you sure do sound very good at what you do.
The perception of "experience" is relative. I remember thinking I was a 'senior' programmer when I was at the same point as you are in my career. Just for comparison, I had been working as a geek for five years about the time you were born. I've got pimples on my ass that have more time in front of a computer than you do. Now I'm sure you are much better developer than they are...
_______ I wrote: Oh, you probably meant you can do anything that you know about, which ain't much at 23. Seems you know so little, you don't even know what you don't know. That's a scary thought
You replied: So now you're Nustrodamus now huh? This has got to be one of the most nebulous things I have ever heard. At some point in time there are some everone knows nothing about but the most important thing is how quickly can get up to speed? I am a highly visual and auditory person so if you give me something to look at or tell me about something it will sink in within a minute.
You're 100 percent correct about the benefits of being a quick study. You just haven't had the joy of dealing with a class of applications that you can spend years working on before you are even half way competent at that application.
The solutions look simple when ya first look at them but then you realize that as the number of elements increase, the compute time required to brut force a solution grows exponentially. You just can't solve these problems with a few lines of clever code. So stay away from these and you'll never have to confront how little you actual know about writing software for that ugly a problem.
_________ I said: Those damn older people have lives. They just waste their weekends having fun with family and friends. You don't.
You replied: Actually, family and friends are very important to me but so is my job. So far I've only had to work 3 weekends since January which isn't bad.
Again I apologize. Of course, you have friends and family.
As far as spending time at work, I've been an early employee at two high tech startups and worked 60 to 70 hours a week for years before the companies went public and the hard work paid off. Sure the stock options might of been worth millions but how many times does that happen? Just find yourself a nice 40 hour week job and stick with it.
I was the biggest pain in the the ass to manage when I was in my twenties. When I got civilized, I was thrust into managing the kind of people I used to be. It was pure karma. It turned out I was a pretty good geek boss.
Ya know what made a big difference? One day I was bitchin' to my boss about my not feeling like I was contributing as much as I used to. My boss looked at me like I was a fuckin' moron and said, "I don't judge you by what you do any more. I judge you by what your people do." Duh. Geez, I can be such a dope...
So instead of trying to get people to help me get my job done, I started helping them get their jobs done. What a fuckin' improvement that made. I also told the people that worked for me that their number one job was making sure I didn't look stupid. They gave me so much grief over that. Said I was asking for the impossible. But they did it by staying focused on the tasks that I had to stand up in front of everyone and say were finished or not finished. All it took was a little redefinition of what was important.
I hated being a geek manager but at least I figured out how to do it half way decent.
Karma Whore sayth thus:
> Bad Things about young coders
> 6. Fuck everything in site ...
> Good Things about older coders
> 3. Choosy about who to fuck
_______________
Hey, us old geeks still wanna fuck everything in sight but when you are old ya gotta use charm to get good lookin' women into bed. And that takes alot more time and alot more sweet talk. Sure it ain't easy, but what else ya gonna do? Fortunately, I've always been real butt ugly and never had any other way to get laid except by using charm. So I been doing it all my life and was used to it when I got old.
Ya know, When you young, handsome guys get to be old farts, Bro, you are gonna be in deep shit. Just being the strong, silent type won't get you laid no more. You pretty boys never had to learn how to talk chicks into bed and by then its too late... Maybe you guys ought get some practice in now? Maybe wearing a paper sack over yer head? Either that Or ya will have to do the fats ones. Ya gotta trust me on this one, dude, you'll thank me big time later.
Let me clue ya in to something else. Even when ya are a old guy, you still feel exactly like you did when you were 18! That's just some old asshole lookin' back at you in the mirror. Thankfully us guys aren't held to the same standards of youthful appearence like the chicks are. So being an old man ain't really that bad - it gives ya lots of good excuses when ya fuck up...
> I guess I would consider myself truly gifted because there is literally nothing I can't do.
The hubris of youth is unlimited.
OK how 'bout you whip out some CAD software to do IC design rule checking. And when that's done - build us a command and control system for a spacecraft. Ready to tackle a SCADA system for your local utility company? Let's keep it simple - wanna tackle "the traveling salesman" routing problem? You'll just love writing NP-complete software.
Oh, you probably meant you can do anything that you know about. Which ain't much at 23. Seems you know so little, you don't even know what you don't know. That's a scary thought
> I am a young guy, > 23, and when my manager says jump I tend to say how high? > The older folks seem to want to get into an arguments and > complain about time factor. They sure as hell don't want > to come in on the weekends where as I don't mind. Give a > 23 year old 60K dollars a year and he'll bust his right > nutt to keep getting paid that much.
Those damn older people have lives. They just waste their weekends having fun with family and friends. You don't.
> He (the article author) underestimates the scientific mind and determinism of some programmers.
Hey, I'm a radical reductionist to the bone but I wanted to point out:
When I'm in the middle of a really good hack, my fingers are doing all the coding and my brain is just sorta watching them go for it. The code just flows off the tips of my fingers, no typos, no errors, just like it ought to. If my brain is doing anything at all,it's looking a couple of lines ahead to see what kinda ugly shit might come up...
I don't know if this is the geek equivalent of 'being in the "Zone"' that the jocks talk about but it sure sounds similar.
I'm told great musicians let their finger make the notes come out.
I got no use for metaphysics but this experience seems pretty universal. Anybody got other examples?
best regards,
buck
__________________________________________________ ________
"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people
we despise, we don't believe in it at all."- Noam Chomsky
My kid and I slicked up the air foil on the ducted fan version with a little packing tape. We took it down to the school grounds, pumped it up with a 12v air pump and launched the thing. It made a steep left bank, straighten out and flew off out of visual range. We looked for that puppy for a mile in the direction we saw it head and never found it.
Could not believe that dinky little air powered engine could power a plane that well. Very cool!!
> People who were ligitimately qualified for the jobs they > were in seem to still have no real problem finding and > keeping jobs at the same pay scale they were at two or > three years ago.
I think that your observation may be based on a limited set of data points. One critical factor is the level of the position that you are qualified to hold. I'm not a trade school grad with a couple years of IT work under his belt... And I have been looking for work for close to 24 months.
I'm a real senior geek with a broad, deep and up to date software development skill set. I have an outstanding track record for delivering innovative software products, one of which that has made more money than a Hollywood blockbuster movie. I've held positions as a software architect, principal scientist, director of R&D, and director of engineering at some major outfits.
I can't tell ya how tired I am of HR droids telling me that I'm "overqualified" for the position they have open. Companies won't hire somebody if they think that person is gonna bail out on them when the next decent job comes along. I'd work for half my previous salary if somebody would only hire me.
I guess my age and experience level are big negative factors now. (I just turned 50 and I started hacking in the mid- 1970's) Big sigh....
> You want to know where all those $500 hammers come from? > The PAPERWORK, that's where
Actually the cost run ups comes from DOD folks who specify the requirements for the hammer. I once saw a 17 page spec from the DOD for fruitcake. These guys are so disconnected from reality because they're not driven by cost concerns.
Back in the mid 1980's somebody implemented network connection hardware that used N-way cache coherency for a memory to memory shared data segment. The CPU did not do anything to keep the the data synchronized between all the systems.
It was notable because the guys who implemented it were unaware that you could not do that without the overhead of network protocol to slow everything down to a crawl but they made it work anyhow.
It was called 'membus' or something similar.
Anybody remember this or is it just the drugs again?
Those clever guys at Livermore Labs could simulate social interactions with my ex-wife using their nuclear bomb simulation software. KABOOOOM!!!!
Let me put it another way, the paralegal who worked for my attorney, described my ex as the most irrational, vindictive individual the paralegal had ever encountered during the 25 years she had been dealing with people getting divorced!!
Pretty strong words but that's an understatement. My ex-wife wanted the world to believe she was sane so she toned it down for other people. She had no reason to do so with me. KABOOOM!!!!!
I tried to explain to our friends that my spouse of 22 years was acting pretty fuckin' crazy. So bizarre that it was like an alien from outer space had taken over her body. Those friends dismissed my comments as me just being bitter about the breakdown of our marriage.
Of course, when my ex suddenly joined the Jehovah's Witness religious cult AND gave them $80,000 from our divorce settlement, our friends were almost as stunned as I was. Then they agreed with me that an alien must have taken over her body. It was a viable explaination for her 180 degree philosophical flipflop and her joining those religous screwballs. $80,000 hard earned bucks, our kids college money. And it was from my IRA. Tell me that's not totally fuckin' nutz...
And this was only one of the insane stunts my ex-wife pulled. Geeez, like I said, KABOOOM!!!!!!!!!!
I say outlaw porno. Period. There is more to life than jacking off. If people would put as much effort into bettering themselves as they put into beating the lizard this would be a better world..
Funny, I could have sworn folks had a right to life, liberty and to chase down and kill whatever makes 'em happy.
Maybe I missed it but when did this dude get put in charge of deciding what people ought to read, watch on TV or how to better themselves?
We really need to keep our eye on guys like this. If we don't, they'll start burning books, telling us there's only one right way to live, or worship or whatever and make people who disagree with them disappear in the middle of the night. These guys have pulled that kinda shit before ya know...
If you are writing apps for HR folks, you are a programmer.
If ya write software for the guidance system on a cruise missle, I'd say you were an engineer.
I think that people are hung up on semantics because the social status of "engineer" was equivalent to being a mechanic before they started handing out degrees from colleges. Ya don't wanna have too many people who call themselves "engineers" ya know.
Have you noticed that any subject you study in college that has the word "science" in it, isn't. Like political science, social science, behavioral science are anything but scientific.
Who cares, really?? Me?, I'm just a geek whore. Call me anything ya want as long as ya pay me.
Hmmm, interesting notions but approaching the topic this way kinda reminds me of people who believe in astrology. Those folks read about the personality characteristics associated with their birth date and they can usually find some attributes that matches their perception of themselves. So they then think astrology has some validity. Not exactly a very scientific way of thinking IMHO.
Using a similar analysis, you could make an equally valid case that most software people lack creativity and are very linear thinkers. For example, when I first started taking programming classes in college I noticed that most people had difficulty because of all the little details you must be aware of when writing code. I just happen to be really good at that sorta thing and ended up becoming a programmer. I certainly don't have much of an artistic bent but I do have that 'focus' thing mentioned in the article.
If good programmers have any common characteristics, tenacity and a high frustration tolerance gotta be at the top of the list.
well that proves that you probably shouldn't be applying for any windows sysadmin jobs because you obviously have no clue how to properly use a windows machine.
Yeah, I suppose you could be right about me being totally clueless and should not be working as a windows admin. After all I only started working with Windoze machines in 1993...
On the other hand, I've been doing system, network and database admin since the 1970's -(Hmmm, were you even born yet?) Plus I've been developing system and network software for almost 30 years now, including hi-rel command and control software for NASA and SCADA systems for a handful of utility companies. I was also the senior developer responsible for Akamai's first generation content delivery network and co-authored one of their patents for internet video.
Oh yeah, one more thing, as a director level engineering manager for more than a decade now, I can't even begin to tell ya how many admin folks I've trained and supervised.
So, I guess if I had been a real IT weenie such as yourself, I might know as much as you do. Plz forgive me for being so clueless, dude...
It's amazing the number of supposedly knowledgable people who don't have any idea that Windows is extremely stable these days.
Windows... "stable"!?!
Hmmmm, my operational definition of the term must be very different. "Stable" to me is booting a Solaris server and not needing to rebooting it for a year or so. And even then its because ya gotta install some lousy new DBMS software -- not because Solaris went tits up on ya.
I dunno, I guess if you got used to your PC locking up once an hour, then having it happen only once a day must seem like a major improvement. Geezzzzz....
Under our constitutional form of government it seems what really defines a free society is choice and freedom of expression. Even unpopular ideas, porno and "hate speech" must be allowed.
If ya don't like it, don't do it or look at it.
That's your choice.
Please don't try to limit my choice in reading material or what I'm allowed to watch on video or the net. That's unpatriotic and unacceptable to most Americans.
I thing what ol' Norm said on the topic was on the mark"
"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."
So after almost 30 years working my ass off as a geek and for the first and only time in my life, I've been unemployed. Since before 9/11.
Gee, I spent 15 years in Silcon valley working as a software geek including an eight year stint at a startup building EDA tools. If you are a chip designer, there's a 90% chance that you may have used one of the design verification tools I developed for guys like you.
So I switched gears after I put my wife's retail store on the web in 1994. Built a site for a home shopping tv show, and a video sales site for local adult film actress, That led to me getting hired by a dot.com startup to build a content delivery network.
And then some self rightous, SOB hardware engineer has the balls to declare that I don't deserve a job?
Back in the paleolithic 70's, the toughest hardware was built by HP. Their stuff was built like a battleship. They tested their keyboards to make sure they would not be damage if you spilled coffee in them.
But that was along time ago. At a previous job, my boss foolishly bought several Vectra PC's and it was so disappointing to see how far their standards have eroded.
Teaser suggests:
> launch a probe with the sole purpose of seeing how far it can get and how long we can communicate with it.
> No (other) on board experiments, no camera. Just a beacon and a propulsion system.
As I recall the transmitter power on Pioneer 10/11 was a whole 8 watts. Shows ya how sensitive those DSN receivers really are.
In order to get that kinda S/N ratio, the amps sit in a tub of liquid nitrogen to reduce the noise in the circuits due to Brownian motion.
Its like being able to see a nightlight that's so damn far away it takes 12 hours for its light to reach us.
______________________________________________ "Pioneer 10 called home for over thirty years of spaceflight.
Its future is now transferred from NASA to Isaac Newton and
Johannes Kepler, neither of whom could be reached for comment"
_______________________________________________
-- James Van Allen
Waffle Iron said:
> It's like a roller coaster with Jupiter creating a big dip in the track. The probe goes
> fastest at the bottom of the dip, but returns to its original speed after it climbs out.
Sorry, but that would only be true if the planet wasn't moving.
It's actually more like playing crack the whip on ice skates. The planet's huge angular momentum transfers an incredible amouut of energy to the little spacecraft and it leaves way faster than the speed it was moving before the encounter.
You guys should go check out JPL's website.There are some great tutorials on this subject.
From JPL online course in orbital mechanics ___________________________________________
"Chapter 1 pointed out that the planets retain most of the solar system's angular momentum. This momentum can be tapped to accelerate spacecraft on so-called "gravity-assist" trajectories. It is commonly stated in the news media that spacecraft such as Voyager, Galileo, and Cassini use a planet's gravity during a flyby to slingshot it farther into space. How does this work? By using gravity to tap into the planet's tremendous angular momentum."
If the spacecraft was only moving 20,000 MPH it could not exit the solar system, that's even slower than earth's escape velocity.
What always blew my mind was how accurately the nav guys could can get the speed and position of the Pioneer 10 spacecraft. It was like shooting a freethrow from 3000 miles and swishing it with no mid course corrections.
I had the privilege of writing software for the Pioneer project in the 1970's. I worked on the dirtside command and control systems and supported the mission ops people. My ex-spouse was a mission controller. During one of the planetary encounters, an FOA snuck my ass into mission control and then she got the flight director to let me stay. One day, I'm cruising down the hallway and my boss stopped me so he could introduce me to one of the project scientists, a guy named "Jim". It took me a minute before it dawned on me that I was talking to James Van Allen. I saw the first close-up photos of Saturn before the images were enhanced at the UofA. I even got to remotely pilot one of the Pioneer spacecraft in orbit around Venus - completely by accident!
So I've been a geek for almost three decades now. The Pioneer project is where I learned to hack, generating R/T OS kernels for the PDP-11s used on the uplink side. I started writing network software while working there. When Ed Post mentioned the folks who worked on Pioneer and Voyager in his 'Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL' you should of heard my balls clank as I walked around. The code I've written code was part of software that has made more money than the fuckin' movie "E.T.", and twice I've made (and lost) a damn million buck$ at two startup software companies, but of all the places I've worked, the stuff I've written, the coolest, the best, the most fun and exciting job I ever had was working on Pioneer.
I really consider myself so fortunate to have been part of humanity's first step into interstellar space and hope that the Pioneer project may be seen by history as the equivalent to when life here on earth first crawled up out of the sea onto dry land. Hey, I figure that oughta look good on my resume...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry. I really should not pick on ya. I'm sure we'd get along just fine in 'meat space'.
____
You wrote:
First of all I graduated from school at 21 thus I have 2 years of experience under my belt. Over the last year I have worked on two military software maintanance projects. Both a successes. Before that I worked on a project that involves building a complex OCR from scratch. Experience? I don't lack. Talent? I have plenty of. Skills? Sharp as Excalibur. My only weakness is I don't know how to manage people, and that is something that will come over time.
Yep, you sure do sound very good at what you do.
The perception of "experience" is relative. I remember thinking I was a 'senior' programmer when I was at the same point as you are in my career. Just for comparison, I had been working as a geek for five years about the time you were born. I've got pimples on my ass that have more time in front of a computer than you do. Now I'm sure you are much better developer than they are...
_______
I wrote:
Oh, you probably meant you can do anything that you know about, which ain't much at 23. Seems you know so little, you don't even know what you don't know. That's a scary thought
You replied:
So now you're Nustrodamus now huh? This has got to be one of the most nebulous things I have ever heard. At some point in time there are some everone knows nothing about but the most important thing is how quickly can get up to speed? I am a highly visual and auditory person so if you give me something to look at or tell me about something it will sink in within a minute.
You're 100 percent correct about the benefits of being a quick study. You just haven't had the joy of dealing with a class of applications that you can spend years working on before you are even half way competent at that application.
The solutions look simple when ya first look at them but then you realize that as the number of elements increase, the compute time required to brut force a solution grows exponentially. You just can't solve these problems with a few lines of clever code. So stay away from these and you'll never have to confront how little you actual know about writing software for that ugly a problem.
_________
I said:
Those damn older people have lives. They just waste their weekends having fun with family and friends. You don't.
You replied:
Actually, family and friends are very important to me but so is my job. So far I've only had to work 3 weekends since January which isn't bad.
Again I apologize. Of course, you have friends and family.
As far as spending time at work, I've been an early employee at two high tech startups and worked 60 to 70 hours a week for years before the companies went public and the hard work paid off. Sure the stock options might of been worth millions but how many times does that happen? Just find yourself a nice 40 hour week job and stick with it.
best regards,
buck
inkedmn sayth thus:
>but i'd hate to be a programmer's boss...
Yeah, you got that right.
I was the biggest pain in the the ass to manage when I was in my twenties. When I got civilized, I was thrust into managing the kind of people I used to be. It was pure karma. It turned out I was a pretty good geek boss.
Ya know what made a big difference? One day I was bitchin' to my boss about my not feeling like I was contributing as much as I used to. My boss looked at me like I was a fuckin' moron and said, "I don't judge you by what you do any more. I judge you by what your people do." Duh. Geez, I can be such a dope...
So instead of trying to get people to help me get my job done, I started helping them get their jobs done. What a fuckin' improvement that made. I also told the people that worked for me that their number one job was making sure I didn't look stupid. They gave me so much grief over that. Said I was asking for the impossible. But they did it by staying focused on the tasks that I had to stand up in front of everyone and say were finished or not finished. All it took was a little redefinition of what was important.
I hated being a geek manager but at least I figured out how to do it half way decent.
best regards,
buck
Karma Whore sayth thus:
...
> Bad Things about young coders
> 6. Fuck everything in site
> Good Things about older coders
> 3. Choosy about who to fuck
_______________
Hey, us old geeks still wanna fuck everything in sight but when you are old ya gotta use charm to get good lookin' women into bed. And that takes alot more time and alot more sweet talk. Sure it ain't easy, but what else ya gonna do? Fortunately, I've always been real butt ugly and never had any other way to get laid except by using charm. So I been doing it all my life and was used to it when I got old.
Ya know, When you young, handsome guys get to be old farts, Bro, you are gonna be in deep shit. Just being the strong, silent type won't get you laid no more. You pretty boys never had to learn how to talk chicks into bed and by then its too late... Maybe you guys ought get some practice in now? Maybe wearing a paper sack over yer head? Either that Or ya will have to do the fats ones. Ya gotta trust me on this one, dude, you'll thank me big time later.
Let me clue ya in to something else. Even when ya are a old guy, you still feel exactly like you did when you were 18! That's just some old asshole lookin' back at you in the mirror. Thankfully us guys aren't held to the same standards of youthful appearence like the chicks are. So being an old man ain't really that bad - it gives ya lots of good excuses when ya fuck up...
best regards,
buck
Some dude named
> I guess I would consider myself truly gifted because there is literally nothing I can't do.
The hubris of youth is unlimited.
OK how 'bout you whip out some CAD software to do IC design rule checking. And when that's done - build us a command and control system for a spacecraft. Ready to tackle a SCADA system for your local utility company? Let's keep it simple - wanna tackle "the traveling salesman" routing problem? You'll just love writing NP-complete software.
Oh, you probably meant you can do anything that you know about. Which ain't much at 23. Seems you know so little, you don't even know what you don't know. That's a scary thought
> I am a young guy,
> 23, and when my manager says jump I tend to say how high?
> The older folks seem to want to get into an arguments and
> complain about time factor. They sure as hell don't want
> to come in on the weekends where as I don't mind. Give a
> 23 year old 60K dollars a year and he'll bust his right
> nutt to keep getting paid that much.
Those damn older people have lives. They just waste their weekends having fun with family and friends. You don't.
best regards,
buck
> He (the article author) underestimates the scientific mind and determinism of some programmers.
Hey, I'm a radical reductionist to the bone but I wanted to point out:
- When I'm in the middle of a really good hack, my fingers are doing all the coding and my brain is just sorta watching them go for it. The code just flows off the tips of my fingers, no typos, no errors, just like it ought to. If my brain is doing anything at all,it's looking a couple of lines ahead to see what kinda ugly shit might come up...
- I don't know if this is the geek equivalent of 'being in the "Zone"' that the jocks talk about but it sure sounds similar.
- I'm told great musicians let their finger make the notes come out.
I got no use for metaphysics but this experience seems pretty universal. Anybody got other examples?best regards,
buck
_________________________________________________
"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."- Noam Chomsky
Those Air Hogs are totally fuckin' amazing!
My kid and I slicked up the air foil on the ducted fan version with a little packing tape. We took it down to the school grounds, pumped it up with a 12v air pump and launched the thing. It made a steep left bank, straighten out and flew off out of visual range. We looked for that puppy for a mile in the direction we saw it head and never found it.
Could not believe that dinky little air powered engine could power a plane that well. Very cool!!
best regards,
buck
tdg spoketh:
> People who were ligitimately qualified for the jobs they
> were in seem to still have no real problem finding and
> keeping jobs at the same pay scale they were at two or
> three years ago.
I think that your observation may be based on a limited set of data points. One critical factor is the level of the position that you are qualified to hold. I'm not a trade school grad with a couple years of IT work under his belt... And I have been looking for work for close to 24 months.
I'm a real senior geek with a broad, deep and up to date software development skill set. I have an outstanding track record for delivering innovative software products, one of which that has made more money than a Hollywood blockbuster movie. I've held positions as a software architect, principal scientist, director of R&D, and director of engineering at some major outfits.
I can't tell ya how tired I am of HR droids telling me that I'm "overqualified" for the position they have open. Companies won't hire somebody if they think that person is gonna bail out on them when the next decent job comes along. I'd work for half my previous salary if somebody would only hire me.
I guess my age and experience level are big negative factors now. (I just turned 50 and I started hacking in the mid- 1970's) Big sigh....
best regards,
buck
> You want to know where all those $500 hammers come from?
> The PAPERWORK, that's where
Actually the cost run ups comes from DOD folks who specify the requirements for the hammer. I once saw a 17 page spec from the DOD for fruitcake. These guys are so disconnected from reality because they're not driven by cost concerns.
best regards,
buck
Back in the mid 1980's somebody implemented network connection hardware that used N-way cache coherency for a memory to memory shared data segment. The CPU did not do anything to keep the the data synchronized between all the systems.
It was notable because the guys who implemented it were unaware that you could not do that without the overhead of network protocol to slow everything down to a crawl but they made it work anyhow.
It was called 'membus' or something similar.
Anybody remember this or is it just the drugs again?
best regards,
buck
Those clever guys at Livermore Labs could simulate social interactions with my ex-wife using their nuclear bomb simulation software. KABOOOOM!!!!
Let me put it another way, the paralegal who worked for my attorney, described my ex as the most irrational, vindictive individual the paralegal had ever encountered during the 25 years she had been dealing with people getting divorced!!
Pretty strong words but that's an understatement. My ex-wife wanted the world to believe she was sane so she toned it down for other people. She had no reason to do so with me. KABOOOM!!!!!
I tried to explain to our friends that my spouse of 22 years was acting pretty fuckin' crazy. So bizarre that it was like an alien from outer space had taken over her body. Those friends dismissed my comments as me just being bitter about the breakdown of our marriage.
Of course, when my ex suddenly joined the Jehovah's Witness religious cult AND gave them $80,000 from our divorce settlement, our friends were almost as stunned as I was. Then they agreed with me that an alien must have taken over her body. It was a viable explaination for her 180 degree philosophical flipflop and her joining those religous screwballs. $80,000 hard earned bucks, our kids college money. And it was from my IRA. Tell me that's not totally fuckin' nutz...
And this was only one of the insane stunts my ex-wife pulled. Geeez, like I said, KABOOOM!!!!!!!!!!
Big sigh....
best regards,
buck
Funny, I could have sworn folks had a right to life, liberty and to chase down and kill whatever makes 'em happy.
Maybe I missed it but when did this dude get put in charge of deciding what people ought to read, watch on TV or how to better themselves?
We really need to keep our eye on guys like this. If we don't, they'll start burning books, telling us there's only one right way to live, or worship or whatever and make people who disagree with them disappear in the middle of the night. These guys have pulled that kinda shit before ya know...
best regards,
buck
Depends on what ya do I guess.
If you are writing apps for HR folks, you are a programmer.
If ya write software for the guidance system on a cruise missle, I'd say you were an engineer.
I think that people are hung up on semantics because the social status of "engineer" was equivalent to being a mechanic before they started handing out degrees from colleges. Ya don't wanna have too many people who call themselves "engineers" ya know.
Have you noticed that any subject you study in college that has the word "science" in it, isn't. Like political science, social science, behavioral science are anything but scientific.
Who cares, really?? Me?, I'm just a geek whore. Call me anything ya want as long as ya pay me.
best regards,
buck
Hmmm, interesting notions but approaching the topic this way kinda reminds me of people who believe in astrology. Those folks read about the personality characteristics associated with their birth date and they can usually find some attributes that matches their perception of themselves. So they then think astrology has some validity. Not exactly a very scientific way of thinking IMHO.
Using a similar analysis, you could make an equally valid case that most software people lack creativity and are very linear thinkers. For example, when I first started taking programming classes in college I noticed that most people had difficulty because of all the little details you must be aware of when writing code. I just happen to be really good at that sorta thing and ended up becoming a programmer. I certainly don't have much of an artistic bent but I do have that 'focus' thing mentioned in the article.
If good programmers have any common characteristics, tenacity and a high frustration tolerance gotta be at the top of the list.
best regards,
buck
On the other hand, I've been doing system, network and database admin since the 1970's -(Hmmm, were you even born yet?) Plus I've been developing system and network software for almost 30 years now, including hi-rel command and control software for NASA and SCADA systems for a handful of utility companies. I was also the senior developer responsible for Akamai's first generation content delivery network and co-authored one of their patents for internet video.
Oh yeah, one more thing, as a director level engineering manager for more than a decade now, I can't even begin to tell ya how many admin folks I've trained and supervised.
So, I guess if I had been a real IT weenie such as yourself, I might know as much as you do. Plz forgive me for being so clueless, dude...
best regards,
buck
Windows
Hmmmm, my operational definition of the term must be very different. "Stable" to me is booting a Solaris server and not needing to rebooting it for a year or so. And even then its because ya gotta install some lousy new DBMS software -- not because Solaris went tits up on ya.
I dunno, I guess if you got used to your PC locking up once an hour, then having it happen only once a day must seem like a major improvement. Geezzzzz....
best regards,
buck
Under our constitutional form of government it seems what really defines a free society is choice and freedom of expression. Even unpopular ideas, porno and "hate speech" must be allowed.
If ya don't like it, don't do it or look at it.
That's your choice.
Please don't try to limit my choice in reading material or what I'm allowed to watch on video or the net. That's unpatriotic and unacceptable to most Americans.
I thing what ol' Norm said on the topic was on the mark"
"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."
- Noam Chomsky
best regards,
buck
So after almost 30 years working my ass off as a geek and for the first and only time in my life, I've been unemployed. Since before 9/11.
Gee, I spent 15 years in Silcon valley working as a software geek including an eight year stint at a startup building EDA tools. If you are a chip designer, there's a 90% chance that you may have used one of the design verification tools I developed for guys like you.
So I switched gears after I put my wife's retail store on the web in 1994. Built a site for a home shopping tv show, and a video sales site for local adult film actress, That led to me getting hired by a dot.com startup to build a content delivery network.
And then some self rightous, SOB hardware engineer has the balls to declare that I don't deserve a job?
Did I understand you right, friend??
best regards,
buck
Back in the paleolithic 70's, the toughest hardware was built by HP. Their stuff was built like a battleship. They tested their keyboards to make sure they would not be damage if you spilled coffee in them.
But that was along time ago. At a previous job, my boss foolishly bought several Vectra PC's and it was so disappointing to see how far their standards have eroded.
best regards,
buck
Teaser suggests:
> launch a probe with the sole purpose of seeing how far it can get and how long we can communicate with it.
> No (other) on board experiments, no camera. Just a beacon and a propulsion system.
As I recall the transmitter power on Pioneer 10/11 was a whole 8 watts. Shows ya how sensitive those DSN receivers really are. In order to get that kinda S/N ratio, the amps sit in a tub of liquid nitrogen to reduce the noise in the circuits due to Brownian motion.
Its like being able to see a nightlight that's so damn far away it takes 12 hours for its light to reach us.
Just a little over the top, huh?
best regards,
buck
______________________________________________
"Pioneer 10 called home for over thirty years of spaceflight.
Its future is now transferred from NASA to Isaac Newton and
Johannes Kepler, neither of whom could be reached for comment"
_______________________________________________
-- James Van Allen
Waffle Iron said:
> It's like a roller coaster with Jupiter creating a big dip in the track. The probe goes
> fastest at the bottom of the dip, but returns to its original speed after it climbs out.
Sorry, but that would only be true if the planet wasn't moving.
It's actually more like playing crack the whip on ice skates. The planet's huge angular momentum transfers an incredible amouut of energy to the little spacecraft and it leaves way faster than the speed it was moving before the encounter.
best regards,
buck
You guys should go check out JPL's website.There are some great tutorials on this subject.
From JPL online course in orbital mechanics
___________________________________________
"Chapter 1 pointed out that the planets retain most of the solar system's angular momentum. This momentum can be tapped to accelerate spacecraft on so-called "gravity-assist" trajectories. It is commonly stated in the news media that spacecraft such as Voyager, Galileo, and Cassini use a planet's gravity during a flyby to slingshot it farther into space. How does this work? By using gravity to tap into the planet's tremendous angular momentum."
If the spacecraft was only moving 20,000 MPH it could not exit the solar system, that's even slower than earth's escape velocity.
What always blew my mind was how accurately the nav guys could can get the speed and position of the Pioneer 10 spacecraft. It was like shooting a freethrow from 3000 miles and swishing it with no mid course corrections.
best regards,
buck
Wow, alot of emotional postings here.
I had the privilege of writing software for the Pioneer project in the 1970's. I worked on the dirtside command and control systems and supported the mission ops people. My ex-spouse was a mission controller. During one of the planetary encounters, an FOA snuck my ass into mission control and then she got the flight director to let me stay. One day, I'm cruising down the hallway and my boss stopped me so he could introduce me to one of the project scientists, a guy named "Jim". It took me a minute before it dawned on me that I was talking to James Van Allen. I saw the first close-up photos of Saturn before the images were enhanced at the UofA. I even got to remotely pilot one of the Pioneer spacecraft in orbit around Venus - completely by accident!
So I've been a geek for almost three decades now. The Pioneer project is where I learned to hack, generating R/T OS kernels for the PDP-11s used on the uplink side. I started writing network software while working there. When Ed Post mentioned the folks who worked on Pioneer and Voyager in his 'Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL' you should of heard my balls clank as I walked around. The code I've written code was part of software that has made more money than the fuckin' movie "E.T.", and twice I've made (and lost) a damn million buck$ at two startup software companies, but of all the places I've worked, the stuff I've written, the coolest, the best, the most fun and exciting job I ever had was working on Pioneer.
I really consider myself so fortunate to have been part of humanity's first step into interstellar space and hope that the Pioneer project may be seen by history as the equivalent to when life here on earth first crawled up out of the sea onto dry land. Hey, I figure that oughta look good on my resume...
best regards,
buck
Dan wrote:
"Python is not typed at all."
Good. Strong Typing is for weak minds...
best regards,
buck