You know it won't look like this. It will be more like
"You are about to install MSCFGT38.EXE. Installation of this program will improve your browsing experience, and is required to access this website."
The fact that it is some sort of auto-dialer that connects to a foreign country at a rate of $65/min won't really get mentioned.
Personally I blame Microsoft. They have been trying to hide what the computer is doing for years, undoubtedly out of some misguided notion that when you don't name the problems that you have they will somehow be less severe, even though all it does is frustrate support people.
If NASA can have space shuttles crash because they get confused dealing in both metric and english systems...
Which space shuttle was that, then?
But you make a good point. In order to have any kind of competition, proprietary formats must be ruled out, either through thorough and free documentation or by not accepting any solutions that include them. It would be a good thing if the government started working on that.
That only works fine for already-designed components. But quite often, industry is asked to design the system as well - perhaps because nothing quite like it already exists on the market, or simply because they are better suited to do the job.
If you move all design activities to the government you will eliminate all design capability in the industry. And actual implementation is already done cheaper in China anyway...
It would be interesting to know if you were the only one. We always hear that as many as 3% of the population are functionally unable to read or write in the western world, and I always found that hard to believe, but perhaps slashdot can now help us gain some solid numbers.
So, if you, like the original poster, were unable to read the headline, could you just quickly reply to this? I'll count the number of replies and calculate the number of analphabetics here on slashdot.
Thanks for your help. Remember, we do it all for science!
Ham and cheese is good. So is apple, sugar, and cinnamon. And so is cream cheese, salami, and... something I honestly don't know what it is called in english;-) 20cm long, round, green stalks, you can easily grow it yourselves. this;-)
I have one of those "jaffle irons", which I inherited from my grand mother. She used to make toasted bread with it for most of her life, apparently...
Great. Now you are assuming that because people buy less music they must therefore be stealing it. I guess you work for the RIAA?
Has it occurred to you that those same men could simply be listening to new music less? Either because they are playing their old CD's or because they are too busy playing games? Or do you really want to make the point that these men are engaging in "income-piracy" of the poor music artists? [sarcasm]Because that is what is going on, after all: by choosing not to spend their money on CD's the artists are being deprived of their rightful income. Really, the government should step in. Maybe a special tax so everyone automatically pays the correct amount of entertainment money is in order?[/sarcasm]
I agree. Part of the charm of Half Life was really that in some sections you were exploring and didn't really have much to shoot. Half Life 2 is more like Opposing Force, where progress depended much more on combat abilities. But the section I liked best in HL1 is that underground section with all the radioactive goo. It was eery and claustrophobic, and that made it great.
But on the whole HL2 was a great game. The only thing that bothered me about it is very much on rails - it just looks like there is a whole world to be explored, but it isn't actually true.
Personally I hope we will some day get to see a game like Deus Ex (i.e. branching, highly interactive, intelligent plot) with the Half Life 2 engine and overal looks.
I missed the best bit... Our "hate" for Microsoft is based on their business practices, not on their choice of tools. When and if that changes, so will our "hate".
somewhere down the road we discover that Microsoft is borrowing a lot of readily available *BSD (or even Linux) code for some or all of the operating system core?
Honestly, this meme needs to die. The UNIX way of doing things is not the ONLY way, nor the BEST way. The NT kernel is already good enough that it doesn't need to borrow anything from UNIX, and even if there was something to be borrowed the architectures would likely be so different that you might as well write it from scratch.
What bothers me so much about the whole meme is that it makes it appear as if writing a kernel is some black art that noone understands, whereas in reality it is CS101. You hear it about Microsoft all the time: "the poor people at Microsoft, desperately guarding their 'secret ingredients' for making an operating system"... Blargh.
To those developers that want keep working on their projects, I suggest learning Portuguese, saving a little money, and head over to our beloved country. Besides not worrying about being sued, I should say that people love foreigners (as opposed to the EU and US that hates them), and in Sao Paulo were I am from, the temperature is around 80F for a good part of the year and our economy did grow around 4% last year.
Ok, you are making a good case. Are there any hot women around?
Actually I'm only half joking. I wonder how much money one might need to be financially reasonably independent in a place like Brasil?
So well let's assume this is a fair test of programming skill, why is it that an Islamic state's team, Sharif University of Technology, beat out not only the top technical university of India (IIT) but all of the US's Ivy League schools -- not just MIT and CalTech?
One reason I can think of is because they really are better now. Don't forget, there hasn't been any good reason to study computer science in the US for a while now, unless you _enjoy_ flipping burgers of course. On the other hand, the countries to which all that work is outsourced have a strong need to produce more and more competent programmers. The result is a loss of competence in the US, in favor of those other countries.
So you are saying I could patent a "CPU that runs at more than 4GHz", then patiently sit back until Intel or IBM builds one, and collect money?
Before you ask, the "obviousness" clause does not apply here - if those CPU's were so bloody obvious someone would have built one already. So it is clearly my idea, and since I don't have to provide a working implementation I can lay claim to it and collect my rent over the next twenty years. By which time you can rest assured I'll have patented "CPU that runs at more than 10GHz"...
Yeah, exactly what I thought. This is not some random Chinese plot; this is a Chinese plot funded with money and based on knowledge _we_ (the western world) gave them in the first place because at some point someone desperately wanted to have a temporary competitive edge.
This is just the final step: after outsourcing most of the company, the CEO function is now also being outsourced. I think of this as a natural thing, bringing the CEO back to the location where the company resides.
That leaves pretty much nothing in the country of origin, but then again, we (the country of origin) chose to do this ourselves. Or at least implicitly agreed to do this ourselves, by not protesting the outsourcing, by not boycotting outsourced products.
They are being destroy cuz it cost too much too keep them.
Are we talking about the same patent office that makes money on every patent granted? Now suddenly that money is not enough to actually keep a f*cking record of that!?
Look, we don't actually ask much of them. All they need to do now is sit there, rubberstamp incoming applications, and then keep track of them. Apparently even that is too much now.
I guess this means part of the prior art is also lost, and we can go back to recycling old patents?
Do you have _any_ clue what kind of crap is routinely dumped into the world's oceans by us? One spacecraft is not going to make any kind of difference...
Hint: think complete nuclear reactors, endless amounts of plastic, any chemical you can think of (no matter how poisonous), etc...
Games had a different attitude back then. Now games are written so the average gamer can complete them without problems. You are expected to pass through once on your way to the goal, and never come back. Back then games were hard - you were expected to struggle to get deeper into it, and most players never managed to finish any given game (or loop through even once, whichever came first;-) ).
And while I don't have all that many old systems around (well, my old MSX and my Amiga) I still play emulated games regularly on my PC. Indeed, it never gets old.
There is also the additional fact that we used to be respected because a lack of respect would quickly lead to lack of service (i.e. programmers leaving for better-respected jobs). Now that there are many more programmers than jobs, respect is simply no longer required, and no longer given so easily.
Having said that, I don't have any trouble getting respect. Like other posters have suggested, it is all about doing your job professionally and competently. And not taking shit when it is undeserved of course - just because the job market is tight doesn't mean they are free to take it out on you. You need to make clear that you want to be treated with some dignity. It goes without saying that this goes two ways.
As to why the original poster is not getting the respect he feels he should be getting, there is no way for us to tell. Maybe there is a problem with him, either professionally or personally. Maybe there is a problem with his customers. Maybe there is some sort of business reason (his boss beating the other guy's boss at golf every single sunday). All the people shouting it is him are being extremely premature - there really are a lot of assholes out there who cannot think of you as anything but a dimwitted code monkey who can only communicate with computers, and will happily treat you that way.
Slashdot Mirror
"You are about to install MSCFGT38.EXE. Installation of this program will improve your browsing experience, and is required to access this website."
The fact that it is some sort of auto-dialer that connects to a foreign country at a rate of $65/min won't really get mentioned.
Personally I blame Microsoft. They have been trying to hide what the computer is doing for years, undoubtedly out of some misguided notion that when you don't name the problems that you have they will somehow be less severe, even though all it does is frustrate support people.
...in the new Mozilla 1.7.7 I installed just seconds ago. Wasn't a fix for this made available a long time ago?
Which space shuttle was that, then?
But you make a good point. In order to have any kind of competition, proprietary formats must be ruled out, either through thorough and free documentation or by not accepting any solutions that include them. It would be a good thing if the government started working on that.
If you move all design activities to the government you will eliminate all design capability in the industry. And actual implementation is already done cheaper in China anyway...
I realize the soviet threat is gone, but really, shouldn't ICBM operators be paying attention to their _jobs_ instead of some random radio program?
So, if you, like the original poster, were unable to read the headline, could you just quickly reply to this? I'll count the number of replies and calculate the number of analphabetics here on slashdot.
Thanks for your help. Remember, we do it all for science!
I have one of those "jaffle irons", which I inherited from my grand mother. She used to make toasted bread with it for most of her life, apparently...
Any other recipes will be gladly accepted...
Has it occurred to you that those same men could simply be listening to new music less? Either because they are playing their old CD's or because they are too busy playing games? Or do you really want to make the point that these men are engaging in "income-piracy" of the poor music artists? [sarcasm]Because that is what is going on, after all: by choosing not to spend their money on CD's the artists are being deprived of their rightful income. Really, the government should step in. Maybe a special tax so everyone automatically pays the correct amount of entertainment money is in order?[/sarcasm]
But on the whole HL2 was a great game. The only thing that bothered me about it is very much on rails - it just looks like there is a whole world to be explored, but it isn't actually true.
Personally I hope we will some day get to see a game like Deus Ex (i.e. branching, highly interactive, intelligent plot) with the Half Life 2 engine and overal looks.
I missed the best bit... Our "hate" for Microsoft is based on their business practices, not on their choice of tools. When and if that changes, so will our "hate".
Proof by historical reference: IBM.
Honestly, this meme needs to die. The UNIX way of doing things is not the ONLY way, nor the BEST way. The NT kernel is already good enough that it doesn't need to borrow anything from UNIX, and even if there was something to be borrowed the architectures would likely be so different that you might as well write it from scratch.
What bothers me so much about the whole meme is that it makes it appear as if writing a kernel is some black art that noone understands, whereas in reality it is CS101. You hear it about Microsoft all the time: "the poor people at Microsoft, desperately guarding their 'secret ingredients' for making an operating system"... Blargh.
They just want to associate "open source" with "child porn".
Ok, you are making a good case. Are there any hot women around?
Actually I'm only half joking. I wonder how much money one might need to be financially reasonably independent in a place like Brasil?
One reason I can think of is because they really are better now. Don't forget, there hasn't been any good reason to study computer science in the US for a while now, unless you _enjoy_ flipping burgers of course. On the other hand, the countries to which all that work is outsourced have a strong need to produce more and more competent programmers. The result is a loss of competence in the US, in favor of those other countries.
Before you ask, the "obviousness" clause does not apply here - if those CPU's were so bloody obvious someone would have built one already. So it is clearly my idea, and since I don't have to provide a working implementation I can lay claim to it and collect my rent over the next twenty years. By which time you can rest assured I'll have patented "CPU that runs at more than 10GHz"...
That also neatly explains why those of us who have _not_ committed to a package based system do not want this...
I'm asking because it sounds like one long marketing speech...
This is just the final step: after outsourcing most of the company, the CEO function is now also being outsourced. I think of this as a natural thing, bringing the CEO back to the location where the company resides.
That leaves pretty much nothing in the country of origin, but then again, we (the country of origin) chose to do this ourselves. Or at least implicitly agreed to do this ourselves, by not protesting the outsourcing, by not boycotting outsourced products.
Are we talking about the same patent office that makes money on every patent granted? Now suddenly that money is not enough to actually keep a f*cking record of that!?
Look, we don't actually ask much of them. All they need to do now is sit there, rubberstamp incoming applications, and then keep track of them. Apparently even that is too much now.
I guess this means part of the prior art is also lost, and we can go back to recycling old patents?
Hint: think complete nuclear reactors, endless amounts of plastic, any chemical you can think of (no matter how poisonous), etc...
Besides, I figured there was only a small chance anyone might notice... ;-)
I think it makes an excellent opportunities for small businesses to jump into ;-)
Actually, it does! ;-)
And while I don't have all that many old systems around (well, my old MSX and my Amiga) I still play emulated games regularly on my PC. Indeed, it never gets old.
Having said that, I don't have any trouble getting respect. Like other posters have suggested, it is all about doing your job professionally and competently. And not taking shit when it is undeserved of course - just because the job market is tight doesn't mean they are free to take it out on you. You need to make clear that you want to be treated with some dignity. It goes without saying that this goes two ways.
As to why the original poster is not getting the respect he feels he should be getting, there is no way for us to tell. Maybe there is a problem with him, either professionally or personally. Maybe there is a problem with his customers. Maybe there is some sort of business reason (his boss beating the other guy's boss at golf every single sunday). All the people shouting it is him are being extremely premature - there really are a lot of assholes out there who cannot think of you as anything but a dimwitted code monkey who can only communicate with computers, and will happily treat you that way.