Yes, but it doesn't scale. In LabVIEW you get stuff crossing over and under all over the place unless you decide to have the complete opposite of a modular approach and end up with a time consuming verbose thing. The choice for anything other than an utterly trivial project is too complex for another to understand easily or too much code for them to bother looking at it. IMHO it's a teaching tool gone wrong. I think it's supposed to inspire people to go up to the next step and think of large modules the way they would think of individual elements in LabVIEW.
In the pizza case - have you ever considered that inexperienced workers under minimal supervision who care very little about their job make a very large number of mistakes? I've learned that with fast food it's best to have a very simple order and to check it before you leave (eg. frequently no tomato in ham cheese and tomato). Also avoid the low turnover items, especially ones where it's not obvious when they are undercooked.
and she said it's a "thing" amongst young workers now
Exaggerated anecdotes about workplaces and whining about the same are also a "thing". How many "I put one over the boss" stories do you think are real in every detail?
Right, I hear about "ageism" all the time, but is there any actual (non-anecdotal) evidence for it?
There are a lot of statistics out there - google will help.
I'm in my 20s, I am college-educated, but I have a hell of a time finding any real IT work.
Yes, that's the problem at the other end of the curve that gets discussed far more than ageism. Discussing ageism every now and again doesn't mean your very real problem has been forgotten about.
never been a super big problem for him to find a new one
For many it has been a problem and they've dropped out of IT entirely (yes just like some recent graduates who gave up chasing that first job after a couple of years).
There's more than one employment situation that sucks.
Staying up to date on trending technology (ex. I've let so many ppl go because they refused to follow scrum
Isn't "fad" the word there instead of "trend"?
Perhaps if you are losing so many technical staff over the fad you may have to consider that you have implemented the fad poorly? An example is those places that only implemented portions of the "Toyota method" (as distinct from a fad) with far worse results than those places that paid attention to the feedback loop in the method. Did you ignore the inconvenient bits of scrum?
It goes with "SJW" and is a similar meaningless political insult directed at people the insultees see as being unfit to being considered a worthwhile member of society. For example, a person complaining about needing wheelchair access to get into a building is a "special snowflake" for complaining when a person who could walk would not. It's a term that escaped from the political argument cesspool and has become common enough that it's no longer a reliable idiot detector, especially since it sometimes gets deliberately turned around - eg. describing a baker "triggered" by being asked to make a cake for a gay person as a "special snowflake".
Incredibly juvenile and more than a little disgusting in places but that's politics for you.
While it seems to generate anger from some on Slashdot, it really is a problem that a non-trivial number of older tech workers have and one that they can solve: Stay up to date and relevant with your knowledge. Tech is a fast and continually moving field, so you always need to be learning.
That's what the magazines say so that you will keep buying them but in a lot of aspects of IT it appears that things are moving frustratingly slowly. If in some SF scenario you thawed out a C and Java programmer from the year 1999 you could put them to work on the same day. Sure, they'd have to google a few things, but they used google back then as well. While some topics have moved on most have not - unfortunately.
relevant certification periodically and keeping it current. It is a way to demonstrate to HR/PHB types
That is correct and annoyingly so - when you are in a situation where you could teach the course you still are expected to take it otherwise it becomes difficult to get blocked by a gatekeeper who has no idea what the certification is about.
In some cases yes, pretty fucking close to it - HR is where top management put their idiot nephews and others to reward with a soft job, which gives HR disproportionate power in a company when they use their contacts. It's really fucked up a few major mining companies and was the source of a lot of the "fly in/fly out" employment. The idiot nephews want to live in trendy cities and don't want to go anywhere else to deal with people from anywhere else, so the workers have to show up at the trendy city to fill out forms in person then fly to where the mine actually is. There are plenty of other examples in other types of very large company where the HR people as gatekeeper have disproportionate power resulting in very major policy changes. It's probably nowhere near the first symptom that a company is really fucked up, but it happens far more than it should.
So in a well run company you are right - HR does it's task as desired under tight supervision from those it is working for - however that's getting rarer while a hands-off approach is not.
Minor nitpick (especially minor since a google search would now sort out the spelling mistake), but it was Bonzi Buddy. It was incredibly annoying. I'd had to go back to doing support every now and again, had a user complain about a very slow PC, found that piece of shit malware on it, deleted it, and then had to explain to that user's manager why I had made the user angry by removing the user's "friend".
listening on a custom socket and that has the ability to do administrative things on the computer
MS Windows is like that:( MS Windows security is like a starlet's underwear. If it's there at all it doesn't cover much and is just there for decoration. You need third party tools (which do administrative things on the computer that in an ideal world only MS supplied tools could do) to fill up the gaps. So the above poster probably wrote something that acted like third party antivirus for specific situations - impressive but not impossible for a lone coder.
Nice story but not very likely since it requires too much planning from your mythical slackers thus rendering them not very slack at all. Maybe you should have worked on that fiction a bit more before publication.
How is unproven allegations about the sick day policy of a retailer "news for nerds"?
To pay their way to being a professional nerd or at times when there are few technical jobs around a lot of nerds work in retail. It's actually a bit of a worry that I had to tell you that. Are you really paying so little attention to what is going on around you?
That's probably part of the point. Talk to some HR people at a large company for a while and you'll see how well "fresh meat" would fit into their conversation instead of the buzzword of the day. It was especially annoying dealing with their attitude a bit over twenty years ago at a site where there were a few employee deaths every year. They don't see employees as human. The worst would even see slavery as a good idea and it's only the legal system that holds them back.
Second, the Linux desktop has always been about 10 years behind Windows
Then why did MS Windows 7 with it's little window snapshot icons look like the Enlightenment Window Manager from 1997 that did the same:) It hasn't been technical superiority, it's been merely the effort required to change.
Remember the Stratfor hack? If you are hacked the FBI are the ones to ask, especially the question "was it one of your informants doing the hacking" and "did you know about the hack"?
Cory Doctrow is not a soothsayer but a two-bit charlatan hack riding on the coat tails of others like Linux or Richard Stallman and passes it off as his own insight.
Why do you expect someone who writes about what others are doing to be original? Where is he passing it off as his own insight instead of something that he has observed others doing? As for his fiction - is he supposed to actually invent the things he writes about instead of just loosely describing them?
At the same time, I wonder what is bothering these guys more?
It looks like a very heavy handed and transparent tactic to drive off someone who dared to complain. I don't think they actually cared about his qualifications and title, it was just the method used that time in using the legal system as a blunt instrument against a citizen who was "stirring up trouble". This time it just didn't manage to scare him off.
When I held a clearance (thank the FSM I don't anymore), it was drilled into us.
That's interesting to read but not anything like an answer. Has anyone else heard of a case where the threat was followed through on? All I keep hearing about is fuckups of this type that get ignored when contracts are renewed. I've seen a few myself and fruitlessly argued to ditch the contractor but not in a security situation.
Indeed - good idea. Sometimes Murphy is still against you. A power station I did some work at had a 20MW emergency generator (old jet engine) to kick things off (conveyors and crushers require a lot of juice) and it was tested monthly for around 25 years and maintained carefully. The only time it was needed (due to a fairly rare set of circumstances) it didn't work. A second one was installed later as a backup to the backup but neither was needed again for the remaining life of the power station. I think those two little 20MW gas turbines were adjusted to run on natural gas are still in use from time to time to cover peaks. They may be old but running time is what matters.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but it doesn't scale.
In LabVIEW you get stuff crossing over and under all over the place unless you decide to have the complete opposite of a modular approach and end up with a time consuming verbose thing.
The choice for anything other than an utterly trivial project is too complex for another to understand easily or too much code for them to bother looking at it.
IMHO it's a teaching tool gone wrong. I think it's supposed to inspire people to go up to the next step and think of large modules the way they would think of individual elements in LabVIEW.
I've learned that with fast food it's best to have a very simple order and to check it before you leave (eg. frequently no tomato in ham cheese and tomato). Also avoid the low turnover items, especially ones where it's not obvious when they are undercooked.
Exaggerated anecdotes about workplaces and whining about the same are also a "thing". How many "I put one over the boss" stories do you think are real in every detail?
There are a lot of statistics out there - google will help.
Yes, that's the problem at the other end of the curve that gets discussed far more than ageism. Discussing ageism every now and again doesn't mean your very real problem has been forgotten about.
For many it has been a problem and they've dropped out of IT entirely (yes just like some recent graduates who gave up chasing that first job after a couple of years).
There's more than one employment situation that sucks.
Isn't "fad" the word there instead of "trend"?
Perhaps if you are losing so many technical staff over the fad you may have to consider that you have implemented the fad poorly? An example is those places that only implemented portions of the "Toyota method" (as distinct from a fad) with far worse results than those places that paid attention to the feedback loop in the method. Did you ignore the inconvenient bits of scrum?
It goes with "SJW" and is a similar meaningless political insult directed at people the insultees see as being unfit to being considered a worthwhile member of society. For example, a person complaining about needing wheelchair access to get into a building is a "special snowflake" for complaining when a person who could walk would not.
It's a term that escaped from the political argument cesspool and has become common enough that it's no longer a reliable idiot detector, especially since it sometimes gets deliberately turned around - eg. describing a baker "triggered" by being asked to make a cake for a gay person as a "special snowflake".
Incredibly juvenile and more than a little disgusting in places but that's politics for you.
That's what the magazines say so that you will keep buying them but in a lot of aspects of IT it appears that things are moving frustratingly slowly.
If in some SF scenario you thawed out a C and Java programmer from the year 1999 you could put them to work on the same day. Sure, they'd have to google a few things, but they used google back then as well.
While some topics have moved on most have not - unfortunately.
That is correct and annoyingly so - when you are in a situation where you could teach the course you still are expected to take it otherwise it becomes difficult to get blocked by a gatekeeper who has no idea what the certification is about.
In some cases yes, pretty fucking close to it - HR is where top management put their idiot nephews and others to reward with a soft job, which gives HR disproportionate power in a company when they use their contacts.
It's really fucked up a few major mining companies and was the source of a lot of the "fly in/fly out" employment. The idiot nephews want to live in trendy cities and don't want to go anywhere else to deal with people from anywhere else, so the workers have to show up at the trendy city to fill out forms in person then fly to where the mine actually is.
There are plenty of other examples in other types of very large company where the HR people as gatekeeper have disproportionate power resulting in very major policy changes. It's probably nowhere near the first symptom that a company is really fucked up, but it happens far more than it should.
So in a well run company you are right - HR does it's task as desired under tight supervision from those it is working for - however that's getting rarer while a hands-off approach is not.
Minor nitpick (especially minor since a google search would now sort out the spelling mistake), but it was Bonzi Buddy.
It was incredibly annoying. I'd had to go back to doing support every now and again, had a user complain about a very slow PC, found that piece of shit malware on it, deleted it, and then had to explain to that user's manager why I had made the user angry by removing the user's "friend".
MS Windows is like that :(
MS Windows security is like a starlet's underwear. If it's there at all it doesn't cover much and is just there for decoration.
You need third party tools (which do administrative things on the computer that in an ideal world only MS supplied tools could do) to fill up the gaps. So the above poster probably wrote something that acted like third party antivirus for specific situations - impressive but not impossible for a lone coder.
It's not illegal. How are you going to fine a business for doing something that isn't illegal?
Legislate.
Nice story but not very likely since it requires too much planning from your mythical slackers thus rendering them not very slack at all.
Maybe you should have worked on that fiction a bit more before publication.
To pay their way to being a professional nerd or at times when there are few technical jobs around a lot of nerds work in retail.
It's actually a bit of a worry that I had to tell you that. Are you really paying so little attention to what is going on around you?
That's probably part of the point. Talk to some HR people at a large company for a while and you'll see how well "fresh meat" would fit into their conversation instead of the buzzword of the day.
It was especially annoying dealing with their attitude a bit over twenty years ago at a site where there were a few employee deaths every year. They don't see employees as human. The worst would even see slavery as a good idea and it's only the legal system that holds them back.
No point "pussyfooting" around by suggesting he misunderstood, Trump will just grab you by that.
Say it how it is.
He lied.
Then why did MS Windows 7 with it's little window snapshot icons look like the Enlightenment Window Manager from 1997 that did the same :)
It hasn't been technical superiority, it's been merely the effort required to change.
And other bits. Drivers for wifi hardware on similar things have been a bit of a stumbling block.
It's not the board itself though is it? It's a petty government official taking their name in vain and starting legal proceedings.
Remember the Stratfor hack?
If you are hacked the FBI are the ones to ask, especially the question "was it one of your informants doing the hacking" and "did you know about the hack"?
Why do you expect someone who writes about what others are doing to be original? Where is he passing it off as his own insight instead of something that he has observed others doing?
As for his fiction - is he supposed to actually invent the things he writes about instead of just loosely describing them?
It looks like a very heavy handed and transparent tactic to drive off someone who dared to complain. I don't think they actually cared about his qualifications and title, it was just the method used that time in using the legal system as a blunt instrument against a citizen who was "stirring up trouble". This time it just didn't manage to scare him off.
okay so everybody just switch to "I am engineering".
thats great. by the way, I want to know if slashdot servers are hosted in oregon so I can know what to call myself.
Call me Leyte Fordinna.
When I held a clearance (thank the FSM I don't anymore), it was drilled into us.
That's interesting to read but not anything like an answer.
Has anyone else heard of a case where the threat was followed through on? All I keep hearing about is fuckups of this type that get ignored when contracts are renewed. I've seen a few myself and fruitlessly argued to ditch the contractor but not in a security situation.
While that's how you would do it reality of what BA did seems to be less sensible.
Yes, and by outsourcing to someone who has not learned your lessons you have to get through all those mistakes a second time.
Indeed - good idea.
Sometimes Murphy is still against you.
A power station I did some work at had a 20MW emergency generator (old jet engine) to kick things off (conveyors and crushers require a lot of juice) and it was tested monthly for around 25 years and maintained carefully. The only time it was needed (due to a fairly rare set of circumstances) it didn't work. A second one was installed later as a backup to the backup but neither was needed again for the remaining life of the power station.
I think those two little 20MW gas turbines were adjusted to run on natural gas are still in use from time to time to cover peaks. They may be old but running time is what matters.