Screw people without speakers.. what about the dead people? Do you have any idea how difficult it is to do a turing test when you're dead? You can't see, hear, or move. I mean we really need to prioritze here.. Which is most important: 1. Blocking spammers. 2. Allowing dead people to post on your forum.
Clearly #2 is the winner here.. And since there is no way for a dead person to pass a turing test it's clear you shouldn't use it.
In regards to call centers-
I was trying to think of visible signs that the 5% outsourcing figure might be a little low. As for more qualified positions the folks from Microsoft Developer(Visual Studio) support I've spoken to are in India(trying to figure out what Unknown Error xxx was) -- This isn't the real issue though: Outsourcing risk is higher for who: CS people, Accountants, Medical Profession? Do you honestly think it isn't a risk?
In regards to B-Schools-
I've seen a lot of failing engineering students go Business and do just fine. The point behind that is there are easier routes to take that result in higher financial returns. There are plenty of schools with reasonable CS & Business programs.. Take MIT's Sloan School of Business for instance... Look online for the relative ranking of their business program... The relative rank of their engineering is well known.
---
But the main point of my post was this: For the trouble one goes through for a CS degree the financial compensation isn't worth it. If you really love it then have fun.. Money isn't everything.. You MIGHT do quite well financially... You can also do quite well financially in Vegas.
I didn't say it isn't needed... Teachers are needed and I think they are underpaid too.
I didn't say we don't need CS people.. I said it's not worth being one for the monetary compensation received.
If you want money in proportion to the difficulty the do something else... Also several nursing fields taking less education can make $80k+/year and qualify for overtime. Salary does not equate to not qualifying for overtime.. The IRS code lists specific exemptions from overtime... Computer people don't get it and lots of others do.
1. You don't get overtime... A lot of times people are expected to work 50-60 hours/week.
2. It's a tough field -- Much tougher than say business or nursing. Failing computer science students often get a business degree.. There is a good reason: The difficulty is a joke compared to computer science.
3. There are way easier fields(say nursing) that compensate more highly, are not subject to outsourcing, and give overtime.
4. There is a huge risk of outsourcing. 5%? Come on.. When is the last time you called a tech support line and got an american? Cisco, Dell, Gateway, Microsoft.. Anywhere you call you speak to someone from India. Any kind of "Government study" from the Bush administration isn't exactly reliable.
5. No one understands your job, this often comes with lack of appreciation for the contributions made to an organization.
6. No licensing -- Someone can study for 2 weeks, get a MCSE and take over a lot of peoples jobs. They won't be as good as someon with a degree but see #5.
In short-- Don't enter this field.. There are more highly rewarded skills you can pursue for a lot less effort.
Below is a little perl script to load a spammers web site a whole lot, and keep track of how much bandwidth one "uses". Since they spam me to look at their web site.. I certainly look at it. Not in a DOS type of way but sequentially over and over for months.
Since a lot of spammers(and people in general) pay per Gig of bandwidth this adds up.. Especially those people hosted on yahoo where you can actually watch the hundreds of dollars tick away.
Step 1: Find a URL that is fairly large. You can do this by wget URL and see how large of a chunk is pulled down.
Step 2:./eat-bandwidth.pl URL 00
This will do it over and over again. If you want to only do 1000 interations put 1000 instead of 00. This script is just thrown together and I figured I'd offer it since it is fairly on topic.
By the way.. I don't claim to be a very good programmer but this script does the job and is pretty readable I think. It's free for all and for any use so do whatever you like with it.
Slashdot wouldn't let me inline-posted it so it's available at this URL:
http://208.36.232.50/eat-bandwidth.pl
Enjoy.
Yep. Computer science is relatively difficult, why would anyone go into it these days? I certainly wouldn't.. Skill set is on the export list, crappy salary, no overtime,.. Do something easier that makes more money.
Lesson learned years ago:
Stay away from Intuit.
I was a loyal turbotax customer for YEARS.. Never considered purchasing anything else, then they came out with their fancy DRM crap and I've never purcahsed from them since... A company that does that clearly does not care about their customers.. And this is just more proof.
Written "slander" is libel. And it only qualifies if it is untrue.
Re:They just want better pricing from Intel
on
Dell Might do AMD
·
· Score: 1
Sorry, I misread your earlier comment. I should revise my statement to mean that most computer illiterate people at the time the Pentium-4 came out equated clock speed with performance in a 1:1 relationship. I think Intel was trying to capitalize on this misconception and AMD did a really good job of dispelling it.
Re:They just want better pricing from Intel
on
Dell Might do AMD
·
· Score: 1
Compare an AMD64 and a P4.. At the same clock rating(not the 3000+ stuff, the actual GHz) the AMD64 absolutely destroys the Pentium-4. This is why we are given the 3000+ designations... Pretty much means this 2.0GHz processor performs better than a 3.0GHz processor from Intel.. And it does.
This is a tad off topic, but intel made several engineering decisions(extremely long pipeline, for instance) that in my opinion were based on marketing, not engineering. It allows for a very high clock rate, however the performance at that clock rate isn't all that impressive when compared to other approaches.
(For instance, a very long pipeline means you need to keep a large amount of instructions 'partially' executed, this means you have to have very good branch prediction.. If you mispredict a branch(in other words if x=0 then do this..) You have to toss out a huge amount of partially/specutaively executed instructions. A processor with a shorter pipeline doesn't have such a high mispredict penalty.
Re:They just want better pricing from Intel
on
Dell Might do AMD
·
· Score: 1
The per unit cost for manufacturing even the fastest CPU is just a few dollars in the volumes they are produced. They large price comes from offsetting the R&D efforts.. So it isn't like Intel will be(on a per unit basis) making something for $400 and selling it for $300.. more like making it for $2, selling it for $300 but spent 400 million researching it.
AMD has a better product though, so I hope Dell gets them in their product line. Intel went the route for MHz that don't matter, and AMD concentrated on building a solid product.
Recurring expenses show up on the income statement, not balance sheet. They will reduce balance sheet assets(by say $1,000 every month for a car payment).. But it won't show that you spent $50,000 on a new car.(for an operating lease.. For a capital lease there are footnotes)
An 'operating lease', ie one that the item retains a significant amount of value at least end(not a lease where the purchase price is $1!) does not have to be reported on financial reports as a liability.
This is a pretty big deal because these lease payments can add up to millions per year, that will NOT appear as debt on the balance sheet even though it has many characteristics of debt.
Here's an example:
You're Bob, Inc.
You have $100,000 in cash, and $1,000 in debt. So your equity is $99,000.. Bob looks pretty solid, right? Good investment?
Well Bob, Inc. leases a Ferrari. The Ferrari costs $10,000/month for 10 months, and at the end of the lease Bob has a pretty hefty buy cost on it.. Maybe $50,000... What does Bob's balance sheet look like?
Assets
$100,000
Liabilities
$1,000
Stockholder Equity
$99,000
Debt to Equity: 0.01 (1000 / 99000) Very good!
Looks deceptively good.
Now lets say Bob is more conservative and buys a $80,000 Hummer. His balance sheet might look like:
Assets
100,000 Cash
80,000 Hummer
Liabilities
1,000 Whatever
80,000 Hummer Loan
Stockholder Equity
99,000
Debt to Equity Ratio: 0.81 (not so good)
Now lets look at a few other things. Lots of analysis looks at interest paid vs other things. The purchase loan will have a significant interest portion to it, the lease may be accounted for as "Automotive Lease Expense" or somesuch, which typically won't go into those ratios.
I don't want to write a book, but there were a couple thigns I didn't see in other posts.
An 'operating lease', ie one that the item retains a significant amount of value at least end(not a lease where the purchase price is $1!) does not have to be reported on financial reports as a liability.
This is a pretty big deal because these lease payments can add up to millions per year, that will NOT appear as debt on the balance sheet even though it has many characteristics of debt.
Most others touched on the tax aspects of leases so I won't mention that.
I think this product would of been great if they would of made it OpenPGP compliant, and have a method of signing your keys for a particular email address(verify email address, send a web link, click on link and you're done)
If they would of implemented all the automatic sender email matching, automatic decryption, automatic signing, etc. with the current(OpenPGP) standards it would be great.. You would already have a compatible userbase & everything.
But as of now I have to support two standards S/MIME and OpenPGP when communicating with people.. Why would I want to recommend to a less technical friend a 3rd one? I'll just set them up with Thunderbird/Mozilla and Enigmail(http://enigmail.mozdev.org)
If you havent looked at enigmail check it out.. I'm very impressed with it, and it works fine under windos too.
By the way.. I never got the deal about static electricity destroying things since I've always lived and worked in Florida.
On a trip to New York it was suddenly all clear... In pitch blackness I ruffled my bed sheets to see a trail of lightning bolts blue in the blackness... I was like WOAH! So that's why there are all those warnings and wrist straps and such!
So the whole static thing is dependant on where you live to a large degree.
There is a large difference between remotely exploitable security issues, and internally exploitable security issues(by internal I mean a local user existing on the box itself, by external I mean something like a FTP or Web user that has no shell access)
With the servers I operate a local exploit isn't really a big deal... Only myself and my staff have access to exploit it... Of course I'd rather they not exist but it just isn't the same as a hole in the web server where a worm can come in:)
If you are getting money back then you should adjust your deductions so that doesn't happen.. Money should sit in your account rather than theirs.
With that in place since it's often extra to E-File just send the dead trees.. It's more of a pain for them to process it, and that gives them less time to find anything wrong with it.
Lets put this in context...
Rape: 5 years
Selling Crack: 10 Years
Manslaughter: 2-20 YEARS(see below)
Shining a laser pointer: 25 years
This is stupidity.
---
SEC. 97-3-25. Homicide; penalty for manslaughter.
Any person convicted of manslaughter shall be fined in a sum not less than five hundred dollars, or imprisoned in the county jail not more than one year, or both, or in the penitentiary not less than two years, nor more than twenty years.
Slashdot Mirror
Screw people without speakers.. what about the dead people? Do you have any idea how difficult it is to do a turing test when you're dead? You can't see, hear, or move. I mean we really need to prioritze here.. Which is most important:
1. Blocking spammers.
2. Allowing dead people to post on your forum.
Clearly #2 is the winner here.. And since there is no way for a dead person to pass a turing test it's clear you shouldn't use it.
In regards to call centers- I was trying to think of visible signs that the 5% outsourcing figure might be a little low. As for more qualified positions the folks from Microsoft Developer(Visual Studio) support I've spoken to are in India(trying to figure out what Unknown Error xxx was) -- This isn't the real issue though: Outsourcing risk is higher for who: CS people, Accountants, Medical Profession? Do you honestly think it isn't a risk? In regards to B-Schools- I've seen a lot of failing engineering students go Business and do just fine. The point behind that is there are easier routes to take that result in higher financial returns. There are plenty of schools with reasonable CS & Business programs.. Take MIT's Sloan School of Business for instance... Look online for the relative ranking of their business program... The relative rank of their engineering is well known. --- But the main point of my post was this: For the trouble one goes through for a CS degree the financial compensation isn't worth it. If you really love it then have fun.. Money isn't everything.. You MIGHT do quite well financially... You can also do quite well financially in Vegas. I didn't say it isn't needed... Teachers are needed and I think they are underpaid too.
I didn't say we don't need CS people.. I said it's not worth being one for the monetary compensation received. If you want money in proportion to the difficulty the do something else... Also several nursing fields taking less education can make $80k+/year and qualify for overtime. Salary does not equate to not qualifying for overtime.. The IRS code lists specific exemptions from overtime... Computer people don't get it and lots of others do.
1. You don't get overtime... A lot of times people are expected to work 50-60 hours/week. 2. It's a tough field -- Much tougher than say business or nursing. Failing computer science students often get a business degree.. There is a good reason: The difficulty is a joke compared to computer science. 3. There are way easier fields(say nursing) that compensate more highly, are not subject to outsourcing, and give overtime. 4. There is a huge risk of outsourcing. 5%? Come on.. When is the last time you called a tech support line and got an american? Cisco, Dell, Gateway, Microsoft.. Anywhere you call you speak to someone from India. Any kind of "Government study" from the Bush administration isn't exactly reliable. 5. No one understands your job, this often comes with lack of appreciation for the contributions made to an organization. 6. No licensing -- Someone can study for 2 weeks, get a MCSE and take over a lot of peoples jobs. They won't be as good as someon with a degree but see #5. In short-- Don't enter this field.. There are more highly rewarded skills you can pursue for a lot less effort.
Below is a little perl script to load a spammers web site a whole lot, and keep track of how much bandwidth one "uses". Since they spam me to look at their web site.. I certainly look at it. Not in a DOS type of way but sequentially over and over for months. Since a lot of spammers(and people in general) pay per Gig of bandwidth this adds up.. Especially those people hosted on yahoo where you can actually watch the hundreds of dollars tick away. Step 1: Find a URL that is fairly large. You can do this by wget URL and see how large of a chunk is pulled down. Step 2: ./eat-bandwidth.pl URL 00
This will do it over and over again. If you want to only do 1000 interations put 1000 instead of 00. This script is just thrown together and I figured I'd offer it since it is fairly on topic.
By the way.. I don't claim to be a very good programmer but this script does the job and is pretty readable I think. It's free for all and for any use so do whatever you like with it.
Slashdot wouldn't let me inline-posted it so it's available at this URL:
http://208.36.232.50/eat-bandwidth.pl
Enjoy.
Yep. Computer science is relatively difficult, why would anyone go into it these days? I certainly wouldn't.. Skill set is on the export list, crappy salary, no overtime, .. Do something easier that makes more money.
Lesson learned years ago: Stay away from Intuit. I was a loyal turbotax customer for YEARS.. Never considered purchasing anything else, then they came out with their fancy DRM crap and I've never purcahsed from them since... A company that does that clearly does not care about their customers.. And this is just more proof.
Written "slander" is libel. And it only qualifies if it is untrue.
Sorry, I misread your earlier comment. I should revise my statement to mean that most computer illiterate people at the time the Pentium-4 came out equated clock speed with performance in a 1:1 relationship. I think Intel was trying to capitalize on this misconception and AMD did a really good job of dispelling it.
Compare an AMD64 and a P4.. At the same clock rating(not the 3000+ stuff, the actual GHz) the AMD64 absolutely destroys the Pentium-4. This is why we are given the 3000+ designations... Pretty much means this 2.0GHz processor performs better than a 3.0GHz processor from Intel.. And it does.
This is a tad off topic, but intel made several engineering decisions(extremely long pipeline, for instance) that in my opinion were based on marketing, not engineering. It allows for a very high clock rate, however the performance at that clock rate isn't all that impressive when compared to other approaches.
(For instance, a very long pipeline means you need to keep a large amount of instructions 'partially' executed, this means you have to have very good branch prediction.. If you mispredict a branch(in other words if x=0 then do this..) You have to toss out a huge amount of partially/specutaively executed instructions. A processor with a shorter pipeline doesn't have such a high mispredict penalty.
The per unit cost for manufacturing even the fastest CPU is just a few dollars in the volumes they are produced. They large price comes from offsetting the R&D efforts.. So it isn't like Intel will be(on a per unit basis) making something for $400 and selling it for $300.. more like making it for $2, selling it for $300 but spent 400 million researching it. AMD has a better product though, so I hope Dell gets them in their product line. Intel went the route for MHz that don't matter, and AMD concentrated on building a solid product.
What idiot would actually get a .travel domain? That's what I want.. A domain name that is as long and confusing to people as possible.
It's some lame attempt to try and make companies have to buy as many domains as possible.. ibm.com ibm.cw ibm.travel ibm.jobs
Recurring expenses show up on the income statement, not balance sheet. They will reduce balance sheet assets(by say $1,000 every month for a car payment).. But it won't show that you spent $50,000 on a new car.(for an operating lease.. For a capital lease there are footnotes)
An 'operating lease', ie one that the item retains a significant amount of value at least end(not a lease where the purchase price is $1!) does not have to be reported on financial reports as a liability. This is a pretty big deal because these lease payments can add up to millions per year, that will NOT appear as debt on the balance sheet even though it has many characteristics of debt. Here's an example: You're Bob, Inc. You have $100,000 in cash, and $1,000 in debt. So your equity is $99,000 .. Bob looks pretty solid, right? Good investment?
Well Bob, Inc. leases a Ferrari. The Ferrari costs $10,000/month for 10 months, and at the end of the lease Bob has a pretty hefty buy cost on it.. Maybe $50,000... What does Bob's balance sheet look like?
Assets
$100,000
Liabilities
$1,000
Stockholder Equity
$99,000
Debt to Equity: 0.01 (1000 / 99000) Very good!
Looks deceptively good.
Now lets say Bob is more conservative and buys a $80,000 Hummer. His balance sheet might look like:
Assets
100,000 Cash
80,000 Hummer
Liabilities
1,000 Whatever
80,000 Hummer Loan
Stockholder Equity
99,000
Debt to Equity Ratio: 0.81 (not so good)
Now lets look at a few other things. Lots of analysis looks at interest paid vs other things. The purchase loan will have a significant interest portion to it, the lease may be accounted for as "Automotive Lease Expense" or somesuch, which typically won't go into those ratios.
I don't want to write a book, but there were a couple thigns I didn't see in other posts.
An 'operating lease', ie one that the item retains a significant amount of value at least end(not a lease where the purchase price is $1!) does not have to be reported on financial reports as a liability. This is a pretty big deal because these lease payments can add up to millions per year, that will NOT appear as debt on the balance sheet even though it has many characteristics of debt. Most others touched on the tax aspects of leases so I won't mention that.
I think this product would of been great if they would of made it OpenPGP compliant, and have a method of signing your keys for a particular email address(verify email address, send a web link, click on link and you're done) If they would of implemented all the automatic sender email matching, automatic decryption, automatic signing, etc. with the current(OpenPGP) standards it would be great.. You would already have a compatible userbase & everything. But as of now I have to support two standards S/MIME and OpenPGP when communicating with people.. Why would I want to recommend to a less technical friend a 3rd one? I'll just set them up with Thunderbird/Mozilla and Enigmail(http://enigmail.mozdev.org) If you havent looked at enigmail check it out.. I'm very impressed with it, and it works fine under windos too.
By the way.. I never got the deal about static electricity destroying things since I've always lived and worked in Florida. On a trip to New York it was suddenly all clear... In pitch blackness I ruffled my bed sheets to see a trail of lightning bolts blue in the blackness... I was like WOAH! So that's why there are all those warnings and wrist straps and such! So the whole static thing is dependant on where you live to a large degree.
There is a large difference between remotely exploitable security issues, and internally exploitable security issues(by internal I mean a local user existing on the box itself, by external I mean something like a FTP or Web user that has no shell access)
:)
With the servers I operate a local exploit isn't really a big deal... Only myself and my staff have access to exploit it... Of course I'd rather they not exist but it just isn't the same as a hole in the web server where a worm can come in
If you are getting money back then you should adjust your deductions so that doesn't happen.. Money should sit in your account rather than theirs.
With that in place since it's often extra to E-File just send the dead trees.. It's more of a pain for them to process it, and that gives them less time to find anything wrong with it.
Lets put this in context... Rape: 5 years Selling Crack: 10 Years Manslaughter: 2-20 YEARS(see below) Shining a laser pointer: 25 years This is stupidity. --- SEC. 97-3-25. Homicide; penalty for manslaughter. Any person convicted of manslaughter shall be fined in a sum not less than five hundred dollars, or imprisoned in the county jail not more than one year, or both, or in the penitentiary not less than two years, nor more than twenty years.
Yes I'm sure there are many non-visible changes such as an internal (C) Microsoft 2004 statement..