.edu addresses can easily be faked as evidenced by one George Burgess, who works at the University of Florida in Gainsville. He is cited by publications all over as a shark expert and as "Dr. Burgess". In reality, he only has a BS degree in an unrelated field and happens to maintain a portion of the University's museum assests. He rolls the.edu address into "his" respectability by hosting his shark website on the university ISP.
Another example was a professor at the United States Naval Academy (Full professor) who was quickly terminated when it came to light that he faked his resume and did not have a PHD.
And even further back, I remember linked lists as nothing new in my Data Structures class and that was in the late 1970's - here I go showing my age again. I don't remember the book title, but it was the one with the Dragon on the front cover.
And I have sample code I wrote and copyrighted in 1985 which is also prior art, not to say I invented this, just knew how to use it.
And that brings up a sidelight as well. In today's environments, the DBA is spending more time than ever tuning the queries of the developers, because the quality of the developers to bring about efficient code has dropped like a rock.
On the scanner issue, I would bet against the Nikon Scanner working on anything but Windows. The HP scanner maybe. Both printers, probably, though the one I might not bet on.
The external drive. I would be not. If I had it to buy over, I probably would go with someone else's drive, due to their poor driver support as it is.
My point was only that XP works, and it works pretty well, but the hidden costs of going to Vista are astronomical, and for no percieved benefit that I don't already have.
As for going to any Unix or Linux flaver. That would not work with other things I have online now. My blood meter software is only warrentied for Windows and only authorized for Windows by the FDA. My dive log software, well, you can finally get something, but I am not sure of the usefulness of the non windows software.
The big one is the CASE tool I have. I talked to the vendor yesterday. While they intend to support Vista, they are not ready yet.
Bottom line - Vista is a long ways away, and any Unix or Linus flavor is even further away.
We have a total ban on those same products here. And we are a fortune 10 company.
As for home use, I looked at the upgrade path. I ran the checkout program provided by Microsoft. It tells me: Both printers not supported, both scanners not supported, my external hard drive (160GB) not supported, and elements of my LAN not supported.
In follow up, I have tracked down that for 1 scanner and both printers, the vender (HP) has ALREADY declared they will NOT be releasing updated drivers. The other scanner, I have to upgrade the software for (Nikon). The other items I have no word on yet.
Also, I have a Laptop with 2GB of memory and that isn't enough to run Vista well? WTF? And looking at the new feature list from MS. I don't want them wasting all that memory on the file search process. Nor do I want the DRM, so what exactly is Vista giving me besides grief?
Brings to mind the time I had a disk drive that I purchased shrink wrapped from the store fail about a year later. Could not get an RMA from the manufacturer because the serial number of the drive was a "stolen one". Apparently that was how they stocked the shelves in that case. I had to go buy a brand new one froma reputable dealer.
I live in a "Right to Work" state, and I just looked it up and so does the guy who was fired - Alabama.
As I was told by a lawyer a while back, in a right to work state, they can fire you legally because they don't like the way your hair is parted.
Thus this guy's only defense is a national law, which trumps state law. The ADA law.
So, as far as discrimination is concerned, forget it.
As for the ADA law, I think the guy is up a creek without a paddle. I won a suit using the ADA law (settled out of court, but I collected), and this guy hasn't got a prayer.
>About the only case during which ID theft can happen that you cannot easily attribute (at least partially) to a fault of the victim is when customer information is stolen from a legitimate business and then abused to steal identities.
Which is exactly what happened to me 2 weeks ago. And the legitamate business? My OWN employer! To get the corporate discount on services, you have to enter your credit card to generate an acocunt number. Well, on the last transaction, phony transactions started. And the card had not been used for 2 weeks before that. And the card was only ever used on the net once before - 3 years ago. The bank shut it down fast, but I am still pursueing it thru the company, since I suspect a dirty employee.
Let's see, $15 dollars, times 3 = $45 dollars. 7% compuonded insterst is still only 228.26 if I could collect, but there is such a thing as the statute of limitations, which is long since over.
Back in the early 80s I had auto insurance thru them. I called and canceled. It went thru, but instead of them refunding some of what I overpaided, they tacked on a 10% cancelation fee and tried to charge me. And the state I lived in was NH, which PROHIBITED such a fee at the time.
After taking it thru a collection agency, (Whom I fired, they work for you, not the original company), a lawyer, and finally the state attorney general, they waived the additional charge, but never did refund what they had over collected.
It has been over 20 years, and guess what, they still don't get business from me.....
Appeared to me to be one where the undervote of 18,000 does not surprise me. I saw the ads for each side (I live in a neighboring county) and I was tempted to not vote that race myself. The bottom line is that BOTH cadidates are scum, and I believe that there was no "undervote", but just that many people who had no choice in that race. A mandatory "none of the above" entry probably could have won that race.
President. No Wiki quote, look it up yourself. But he joined 6 of the 12 men who walked on the moon with that distinction. (Why do you think Apollo 11's lunar module was called "The Eagle"?)
This years bonuses? Well for Xmas, they catered a lunch for the department. In the big conference room. Thanksgiving? I have worked the last 4 of them. I get a different day off instead.
The "best" year? The day we came back after Christmas, I was fired. That was the year I had just come back from being out with cancer. The good news is that eventually, I won a lawuit against them, using the ADA law.
The inside of my dive mask, to show up the data on my dive computer? There is something like it which uses the edges of the mask, but this would be better.
No, I never downloaded any SDK, but I have developed 2 aps so far for the Palm OS. And you know what? Using the Appforge Basic language makes that easy, since the code is almost exactly the same for the PC version under Visual Basic.
As for the PDA itself, I am still using a Handspring. Why? Only PDA with the bloodmeter attachment. And I have a module with a 1GB compactflash card, and Palm Acrobat on the PDA. So I have lots of books stored from Project Gutenberg, plus a couple of IBM manuals on the machine. Also have my dive log on the PDA. And that application is still in active development. Lots of free games still on the net. Oh, and a GPS attachment as well.
Why oh why would I want to switch to Windows CE and lose all these things?
This is not a once a year or even a every 6 month treatment. This is a one shot treatment. Would I pay $4-5K to get rid of my diabetis forever? Heck, I would go to the bank and take out a loan for it. I pay $2600 a year for drugs to combat it now! After 2 years I break even.
Actually, I did bring it up. The people administering the test submitted the multiple choice answers to a scoring SERVICE. They didn't know bupkus about coding.
What was even scarier was that they gave an hour to take the test, and I finished and walked out with a passing score (they will only tell you pass/fail) after about 1/2 hour. The other person taking the test was still struggling at the 1 hour mark.
If they request code samples, then they are anal and you don't want to work for them (as others have stated), or two, they are looking to see if you lift code from another source. Depending on the company, that can be either a good thing or a bad thing. If they are an ethical company, and they find you lifting code, then you are toast. If they aren't an ethical company, why do you want to work for them?
Either way, if a company asked me to bring in a code sample, I would cancel the interview, since obviously, I don't want to work for them.
Oh, and ANY code I worked on for previous employers is not my property, and to display it to someone else is violating the no compete clause I may have signed when leaving the previous company, or with my current employer.
In many job interviews over the last 25 years, not once have I been asked to show "code samples". With one company I was asked to take a basic programming test, but that only took a half hour. (Stupid test, they had an invalid question on it, where the correct answer would depend on the setting of a compile time switch in several languages).
Most insurance, and transportation companies still use COBOl, as well as communications companies. (General Electric, AT&T, SPRINT, Disney, FedEx, Prudential, Aetna - just to name a few).
The way I look at it, COBOL will still be around when I retire and that isn't for some time yet.
And for those of you talking up all the other languages. Look to installed code value. Las tfigures I have are a bit old and dated, but still. In the early 90's some manager where I was at was crowing about 6$ billion in "C" code around. At the time there was 6$ Trillion (with a "T") of COBOL around. I doubt that COBOL has decreased all that much, but where is "C" today?
I found a security hole in a "secrue" system used against pedophiles. I documented the system and submitted it thru channels to the proper authorities. I had to jump up a couple of levels before they could pay attention, but tha tis the way it is done.
What this guy did is not research, but *IS* criminal.
I claim prior art as well. And my prior art is documented in the Library of Congress, where I put it. I built a database of my very own. It was completed in 1989 (or at least that was the copyright date).
Of course, my CS teacher for Data Structures might also be worried, as he was teaching patented material on this very subject in 1980.
It says that the 50% only applies to databases of sizes 200GB and less. Well guess what? Not only is my companies systems 24x365, but we have 1+ trillion rows of data, spread out over 1000 tables. 200GB? I have that in less than 10 tables!
And that is just the mainframe. Now add up all the UDB and SQLserver databases, and we probably have another 500 million rows spread out over those systems.
You may gain productivity at the developer level, but Agile DESTROYS productivity at the DBA and system programmer levels.
We are prototyping some agile development. So far, I have had to REDO a pair of tables 8 TIMES because they keep changing their mind on the definitions. And the project isn't done yet. And when I say redo, I mean drop and start from scratch.
My time (I'm the one DA in the shop and the MVS DB2 DBA)costs the company more than the time of the developer who keeps changing their mind, and it keeps me from helping the other developers. If this evers goes thru the whole shop we will ahve to hire 5 more DBAs, jsut to keep up.
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.edu addresses can easily be faked as evidenced by one George Burgess, who works at the University of Florida in Gainsville. He is cited by publications all over as a shark expert and as "Dr. Burgess". In reality, he only has a BS degree in an unrelated field and happens to maintain a portion of the University's museum assests. He rolls the .edu address into "his" respectability by hosting his shark website on the university ISP.
Another example was a professor at the United States Naval Academy (Full professor) who was quickly terminated when it came to light that he faked his resume and did not have a PHD.
Sorry, your idea just doesn't cut the mustard.
If a messy desk is the sign of a messy mind, what is the empty desk a sign of?
Messy desk owners unite!
And even further back, I remember linked lists as nothing new in my Data Structures class and that was in the late 1970's - here I go showing my age again. I don't remember the book title, but it was the one with the Dragon on the front cover.
And I have sample code I wrote and copyrighted in 1985 which is also prior art, not to say I invented this, just knew how to use it.
Database Adminsitration and Data Analysis.
And that brings up a sidelight as well. In today's environments, the DBA is spending more time than ever tuning the queries of the developers, because the quality of the developers to bring about efficient code has dropped like a rock.
On the scanner issue, I would bet against the Nikon Scanner working on anything but Windows. The HP scanner maybe. Both printers, probably, though the one I might not bet on.
The external drive. I would be not. If I had it to buy over, I probably would go with someone else's drive, due to their poor driver support as it is.
My point was only that XP works, and it works pretty well, but the hidden costs of going to Vista are astronomical, and for no percieved benefit that I don't already have.
As for going to any Unix or Linux flaver. That would not work with other things I have online now. My blood meter software is only warrentied for Windows and only authorized for Windows by the FDA. My dive log software, well, you can finally get something, but I am not sure of the usefulness of the non windows software.
The big one is the CASE tool I have. I talked to the vendor yesterday. While they intend to support Vista, they are not ready yet.
Bottom line - Vista is a long ways away, and any Unix or Linus flavor is even further away.
We have a total ban on those same products here. And we are a fortune 10 company.
As for home use, I looked at the upgrade path. I ran the checkout program provided by Microsoft. It tells me: Both printers not supported, both scanners not supported, my external hard drive (160GB) not supported, and elements of my LAN not supported.
In follow up, I have tracked down that for 1 scanner and both printers, the vender (HP) has ALREADY declared they will NOT be releasing updated drivers. The other scanner, I have to upgrade the software for (Nikon). The other items I have no word on yet.
Also, I have a Laptop with 2GB of memory and that isn't enough to run Vista well? WTF? And looking at the new feature list from MS. I don't want them wasting all that memory on the file search process. Nor do I want the DRM, so what exactly is Vista giving me besides grief?
Brings to mind the time I had a disk drive that I purchased shrink wrapped from the store fail about a year later. Could not get an RMA from the manufacturer because the serial number of the drive was a "stolen one". Apparently that was how they stocked the shelves in that case. I had to go buy a brand new one froma reputable dealer.
I live in a "Right to Work" state, and I just looked it up and so does the guy who was fired - Alabama.
As I was told by a lawyer a while back, in a right to work state, they can fire you legally because they don't like the way your hair is parted.
Thus this guy's only defense is a national law, which trumps state law. The ADA law.
So, as far as discrimination is concerned, forget it.
As for the ADA law, I think the guy is up a creek without a paddle. I won a suit using the ADA law (settled out of court, but I collected), and this guy hasn't got a prayer.
IANAL
>About the only case during which ID theft can happen that you cannot easily attribute (at least partially) to a fault of the victim is when customer information is stolen from a legitimate business and then abused to steal identities.
Which is exactly what happened to me 2 weeks ago. And the legitamate business? My OWN employer! To get the corporate discount on services, you have to enter your credit card to generate an acocunt number. Well, on the last transaction, phony transactions started. And the card had not been used for 2 weeks before that. And the card was only ever used on the net once before - 3 years ago. The bank shut it down fast, but I am still pursueing it thru the company, since I suspect a dirty employee.
Let's see, $15 dollars, times 3 = $45 dollars. 7% compuonded insterst is still only 228.26 if I could collect, but there is such a thing as the statute of limitations, which is long since over.
Back in the early 80s I had auto insurance thru them. I called and canceled. It went thru, but instead of them refunding some of what I overpaided, they tacked on a 10% cancelation fee and tried to charge me. And the state I lived in was NH, which PROHIBITED such a fee at the time.
After taking it thru a collection agency, (Whom I fired, they work for you, not the original company), a lawyer, and finally the state attorney general, they waived the additional charge, but never did refund what they had over collected.
It has been over 20 years, and guess what, they still don't get business from me.....
Appeared to me to be one where the undervote of 18,000 does not surprise me. I saw the ads for each side (I live in a neighboring county) and I was tempted to not vote that race myself. The bottom line is that BOTH cadidates are scum, and I believe that there was no "undervote", but just that many people who had no choice in that race. A mandatory "none of the above" entry probably could have won that race.
President. No Wiki quote, look it up yourself. But he joined 6 of the 12 men who walked on the moon with that distinction. (Why do you think Apollo 11's lunar module was called "The Eagle"?)
This years bonuses? Well for Xmas, they catered a lunch for the department. In the big conference room. Thanksgiving? I have worked the last 4 of them. I get a different day off instead.
The "best" year? The day we came back after Christmas, I was fired. That was the year I had just come back from being out with cancer. The good news is that eventually, I won a lawuit against them, using the ADA law.
The inside of my dive mask, to show up the data on my dive computer? There is something like it which uses the edges of the mask, but this would be better.
No, I never downloaded any SDK, but I have developed 2 aps so far for the Palm OS. And you know what? Using the Appforge Basic language makes that easy, since the code is almost exactly the same for the PC version under Visual Basic.
As for the PDA itself, I am still using a Handspring. Why? Only PDA with the bloodmeter attachment. And I have a module with a 1GB compactflash card, and Palm Acrobat on the PDA. So I have lots of books stored from Project Gutenberg, plus a couple of IBM manuals on the machine. Also have my dive log on the PDA. And that application is still in active development. Lots of free games still on the net. Oh, and a GPS attachment as well.
Why oh why would I want to switch to Windows CE and lose all these things?
This is not a once a year or even a every 6 month treatment. This is a one shot treatment. Would I pay $4-5K to get rid of my diabetis forever? Heck, I would go to the bank and take out a loan for it. I pay $2600 a year for drugs to combat it now! After 2 years I break even.
Actually, I did bring it up. The people administering the test submitted the multiple choice answers to a scoring SERVICE. They didn't know bupkus about coding.
What was even scarier was that they gave an hour to take the test, and I finished and walked out with a passing score (they will only tell you pass/fail) after about 1/2 hour. The other person taking the test was still struggling at the 1 hour mark.
If they request code samples, then they are anal and you don't want to work for them (as others have stated), or two, they are looking to see if you lift code from another source. Depending on the company, that can be either a good thing or a bad thing. If they are an ethical company, and they find you lifting code, then you are toast. If they aren't an ethical company, why do you want to work for them?
Either way, if a company asked me to bring in a code sample, I would cancel the interview, since obviously, I don't want to work for them.
Oh, and ANY code I worked on for previous employers is not my property, and to display it to someone else is violating the no compete clause I may have signed when leaving the previous company, or with my current employer.
In many job interviews over the last 25 years, not once have I been asked to show "code samples". With one company I was asked to take a basic programming test, but that only took a half hour. (Stupid test, they had an invalid question on it, where the correct answer would depend on the setting of a compile time switch in several languages).
Most insurance, and transportation companies still use COBOl, as well as communications companies. (General Electric, AT&T, SPRINT, Disney, FedEx, Prudential, Aetna - just to name a few).
The way I look at it, COBOL will still be around when I retire and that isn't for some time yet.
And for those of you talking up all the other languages. Look to installed code value. Las tfigures I have are a bit old and dated, but still. In the early 90's some manager where I was at was crowing about 6$ billion in "C" code around. At the time there was 6$ Trillion (with a "T") of COBOL around. I doubt that COBOL has decreased all that much, but where is "C" today?
You guys are just biased.
But it is a step in the right direction.
I found a security hole in a "secrue" system used against pedophiles. I documented the system and submitted it thru channels to the proper authorities. I had to jump up a couple of levels before they could pay attention, but tha tis the way it is done.
What this guy did is not research, but *IS* criminal.
I claim prior art as well. And my prior art is documented in the Library of Congress, where I put it. I built a database of my very own. It was completed in 1989 (or at least that was the copyright date).
Of course, my CS teacher for Data Structures might also be worried, as he was teaching patented material on this very subject in 1980.
Tiem to write the congress critters again.
It says that the 50% only applies to databases of sizes 200GB and less. Well guess what? Not only is my companies systems 24x365, but we have 1+ trillion rows of data, spread out over 1000 tables. 200GB? I have that in less than 10 tables!
And that is just the mainframe. Now add up all the UDB and SQLserver databases, and we probably have another 500 million rows spread out over those systems.
You may gain productivity at the developer level, but Agile DESTROYS productivity at the DBA and system programmer levels.
We are prototyping some agile development. So far, I have had to REDO a pair of tables 8 TIMES because they keep changing their mind on the definitions. And the project isn't done yet. And when I say redo, I mean drop and start from scratch.
My time (I'm the one DA in the shop and the MVS DB2 DBA)costs the company more than the time of the developer who keeps changing their mind, and it keeps me from helping the other developers. If this evers goes thru the whole shop we will ahve to hire 5 more DBAs, jsut to keep up.