especially in "liberal areas" for abusing their authority. In places like Northern Virginia, one of the bluest parts of the country, the prosecutors won't touch a cop who shoots and kills someone in a criminal way while on duty.
Are you trying to smear "liberals" as pro-authoritarians or are you saying that even in "liberal" areas where one might expect cops to be held accountable they still aren't? Regardless, it's no better down here in Texas where cops can not only shoot people with impunity, they can beat them to the point of hospitalization just for the fun of it AFTER they are arrested and in booked into the jail.
I used to work within IBM, and here is the story I got from a senior developer...
Eclipse was a rogue project within IBM whose purpose was to take down MS Visual Studio 97. When it became obvious that there was absolutely no way that Windows developers who were used to the speed, ease of use, and rather decent integration with Windows of VS97 would shell out money for a Java-based IDE with its own oddball help system, poor integration with the Win32 toolchain, and most importantly was slow as molasses even on decent hardware, IBM decided to in essence use the $30+ million in sunk costs to buy goodwill in the F/OSS community. (And Eclipse really needed that OSS shot in the arm: NetBeans was killing it in the Java IDE landscape.)
What exactly prevents women from doing the same thing?
How about the fact that pregnancy is not just some period of time that is conveniently forgotten once it's over? Reproduction is not an equivalent experience between women and men. For those women who choose to undergo a pregnancy, it comes with permanent and often unwanted physiological changes to their body coupled with a rather long time to form an emotional bond with their future child. Men don't experience that, and frankly no amount of being there and being supportive and going to the store at 3am for weird food or whatever will really equate to an actual pregnancy with the shoes that don't fit anymore to the stares and random advice from absolutely everyone an expecting mother sees. A man may love his woman and future child more than anything but there will always be an experience gap he can't cross over to achieve full understanding.
If it's not clear already, I'm not "pro-abortion" but I am pro-choice. Women who choose it should get far more social (emotional) and financial support than they do already, particularly non-white women in America who are often blamed from mainstream society for all of its ills because they reproduced at all. Women who choose otherwise should have that decision respected.
Until we have RFID implanted in all men and a total surveillance society to track them, men can still decide at any time after a baby is born that they just don't care anymore about it and skip out with practically no consequences compared to the woman they leave behind. Only women with the resources to both battle in court for child support and track the man down who flees jurisdiction can count on guaranteed support, and in most cases it's easier to just go on without the help that keep such a problematic "father" somewhere in the picture.
In reality the biological burden of gestating a child and the financial burden in raising a child are both squarely on the woman's shoulders. So IMHO the woman should get the first and only say about whether or not she is ready for it.
No country including Iran would use the internet for C4I, and BTW no credible invasion force could mass near Iran in secret.
And just how many independent journalists would be able to report on a hypothetical invasion force or civilian casualties within Iran without the Internet?
Hell, forget terrorism -- how about the guys who invented the hydrogen bomb? They had to have been smart enough to say to themselves, "Hooboy, this thing that we're going to develop and deliver into the hands of a bunch of politicians and those peacenik generals could really fuck up the world for real, way worse than just the A-bombs we have now." They *had* to know this, and yet they still sat down and got right to work on it.
Have you ever read a history book from before the 60's? They were filled with grandiose visions of the march of civilization inexorably making the planet better for all people, and "better" was generally known to be the middle class / lower nobility lifestyle of Victorian England at its political apex. They discuss "German civilization" quite distinct from "American civilization" and "Chinese civilization". World War II was a battle between civilizations for the heart of all humanity. And even now there is a significant fraction of people who believe in that worldview. I heard just yesterday someone talking about their experience in Europe and how "only some of them over there still remember what we [Americans] did for them". US and UK == heroes and natural leaders of the free world.
We very rarely think in this way now. We now know that ALL governments will be attractive to evil people seeking power, even the most democratic ones, and the most successful governments are those with sufficient checks and a strong idnependent media to ensure they stay mostly clean. We know to be wary of authority and that giving even the most beneficial people greater technological power may be paving the way for a future despot to abuse it. But in the 1930-1950 timeframe, the majority of middle class people really didn't know that.
I live in Newton's world even though I know that his "rules" are a little flawed. I occasionally need to visit Einstein's world because I'm doing something weird.
Are you a nuclear engineer? Because if not I'd really like to know under what circumstances you need to correct for velocity...
As others have replied, there were once LOTS of programs for autmatically scanning uploads within BBSes. I would search for "BBS file processor" or "upload processor" or "upload door". Essentially every major BBS system (and there dozens or majors and hundreds of minors) had an upload processor for it that would scan all files uploaded. They would even unzip the archives up to N levels deep to scan it all.
The almost religious fervor which sysops applied to scanning uploads was a response to the popular press' typical characterization of BBSes as the absolute easiest way of getting computer viruses, the precursor to the current stereotype that the 'Net is basically one giant computer virus distribution system that incidentally has some porn and a couple dozen useful web sites. I think BBSes were deliberately given a bad rap because the media folks tended to use extremely expensive pay services like CompuServe, GEnie, and Prodigy, and so they heavily promoted those over the often-100%-free BBSes available. Add the fact that the virus creators often used BBSes to communicate amongst themselves and the meme that BBSes were the preferred vehicle for criminals to prey on folks just would not die.
The result is that the ability to automatically scan incoming files was old hat back in the late 80's.
You know, there IS a standard way to embed images in a MIME message such that the main body part can be HTML: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MHTML . I even wrote code that would easily generate RFC 2110 compliant messages via JavaMail. Unfortunately, web-based email services mangled the messages, and though Outlook and Kmail handled the messages OK, Notes 4.x and 5.x failed miserably at it (circa 2000-2002). We even found a bug filed against Notes for this behavior with the status "will not fix".
I don't expect to Microsoft to get the full outcome, but I do think that it accurately reflects the business goal behind Vista's extensive DRM design and implementation.
Now, in the face of outright consumer rejection Microsoft might be able to spin this after the fact as, "See, we tried DRM to satisfy Hollywood but consumer's didn't want it!" However, Microsoft has already been there, done that with their own software products. They know full well that technological copyright controls are unpopular and that effective controls actually hinder widespread adoption. That's why they looked the other way during the rampant software piracy of their product lines in the 90's and still allow moderate amounts of piracy of their current products via corporate activation keys. They had plenty of evidence to present the case to Hollywood five years ago, yet instead they "caved" and delayed shipping Vista until enough of the DRM path was working. They even dropped features that users were actually clamoring for in favor of finishing the DRM. They supposedly spent $10 billion on Vista development yet the only major new features are Aero glass and DRM. Other changes such as the multi-threaded GPU and new networking stack are significant features too, but those are under the hood and did not in truth warrant years of delay of the main product, they could have been released as service packs. DRM OTOH requires completely new drivers for video and sound, which makes it a much bigger deal.
Hence there has to be something very important to Microsoft that necessitates DRM. Being able to play high-def disks on a general-purpose PC isn't enough since most users already have TV's and dedicated DVD/Bluray playback boxes, and the Xbox can be secured on its own without changing Vista. It has to extend far beyond WMP support for high-def movies to warrant the money spent on it. Control of the entire information economy, now THAT's a lot of money to cash in on someday.
Like I said, I don't expect them to fully succeed. But even a partial "success" could open up enough new revenue streams to justify the cost.
They only did it to placate Hollywood, and it's a major reason why Vista had developmental problems.
No, they did it to "embrace, extend, and extinguish" Hollywood itself in a bid for total power over the end user.
If Vista-style DRM becomes the norm for all Hollywood releases, then:
1) F/OSS gets shut out of the legitimate playback market. Hollywood doesn't care because Mac and Windows stay in.
2) Software-as-a-service where the software is very fat desktop applications is much easier to support. (And let's be honest, local software will always be faster and more feature-full than browser-based applications.) $20/month for access to the *entire* Microsoft home applications portfolio begins to look very attractive, especially when combined with digital television and broadband access into a single package.
3) DRM into TCPA means that web sites will be able to discriminate based on the end user. All of the content on Youtube that can today be easily ripped to.avi will then be completely unrippable.
4) After consumers become used to the idea of #2 and #3, Microsoft will be able to dictate terms to *all* content providers including Hollywood, software developers, and other markets as yet unknown. You want 90% of the desktops in the world to run your software? You need a TCPA key signed by Microsoft. Comedy Central wants to offer streaming video? They'll need a TCPA key signed by Microsoft. You want to run a F/OSS operating system? Fine, but the corporate portion of Internet will be off-limits to you -- and routers will use QOS to ensure that the non-TCPA-accessible Internet is not fast enough to compete with the TCPA-locked-down Internet.
No it wasn't. In the early 1900's some workplaces had a 12 percent mortality rate.
Let me repeat that: 12 PERCENT MORTALITY RATE.
Let me repeat that again: There was statistically a 12% chance that you would DIE for every 1 YEAR you worked.
In 1908 US Steel began to record safety incidents and worked to minimize the accident rate in a "safety first" program; in 1913 the Department of Labor was formed to coordinate a federal response; by 1915 the National Safety Council was established to improve working conditions in multiple industries. Without this effort, there was a good chance the US would have gone Communist before 1930.
I suspect IBM will suffer some harsh feelings as well; not only will some likely leave, others like me won't consider them for employment in the future if they have openings.
And you would be correct. Those of us who used to work there won't go back no matter what they offerred, since their word is about as solid as wet toilet paper.
Back in 2002-2003 timeframe employees tried to unionize at IBM (Alliance@IBM) and got basically nowhere. However, they were superb at ferreting out dirt form management's (at the time) secretive outsourcing effort. Suffice to say those of us paying attention began to take to heart the maxim "Never believe something until it has been officially denied."
Which means that the IBM employees who think they're being treated unfairly should quit and find new jobs for a better employer. Eventually IBM will get the point and treat its remaining employees better.
IBM stopped wanting good people to work for them the day Lou left. I seriously doubt they would be able to pull off the modern-day equivalent of the Sydney 2000 Olympics again with the staff they have now. It would be impossible for IBM to get me back, and all of the other good developers I worked with across three groups have also left IBM for various reasons, and we all now make better money with better benefits and do far more interesting things.
For any students out there who have already signed on with IBM: get your initial experience for two years but keep your eyes open for greener pastures.
Yes you do, it's still considered income and is taxed at the federal level and state level if you live in an income tax state. It also stops after 6 months, is based on how much you made before (and is only a fraction of your former income -- quite a bit less than half for many people), and depends on what you made for the prior 18 month period. If you had a lapse in work for about a year, your unemployment insurance is gone until about two more years of full-time work have passed.
Frankly, it's a very crappy supplement. If you are broke enough to really need it, it won't be enough to help vault you to a decent job. And if you paid for years and years into it early on, you'll get nothing for it later if you took some time off for medical, e.g. if you took a break from working for maternity.
when it comes to books we have a vast number of them only because it's possible for most authors to make a decent supplemental income from royalties.
It always sounds like writers can do pretty well, but in truth writing is already going the way of music thanks to the agglomeration of publishing houses. A few big stars make it really big, a secondary small pool of talented folks can manage to eek a one-hit-wonder for themselves, and then everyone else remains unknown.
I wouldn't mind such a tag if sites would at guarantee usability with really old browsers if the tag is ignored, e.g. the "default" page would run somewhat on Netscape/MSIE 3.x and newer browsers could use the tag to turn on the more advanced features.
If I wanted to complain about something, I'd complain about lack of communication skills among CS graduates. That's something that we can address in higher ed that really impacts everyone with a CS degree, not just some narrow part of the field.
Thank you. My undergrad CS required two semesters of technical writing which worked WONDERS on making me a better fit into my first real job. Now I am working on a MS in chemical engineering and seeing a huge difference between the CS/IT world and the engineering world. I feel like back in the 90's CS became a sort of haven within the corporate world; programmers could dress in relaxing clothes, enjoy more flexible working hours (due the common necessity of night duty), and avoid much of the "corporate bs" that most other white-collar jobs had to deal with. But then the dot-com brought along with it a "geek counter-culture" such that it was expected that one could only prove themselves "hardcore" by dressing in boots and black t-shirts and such in contrast to "the suits", and now at the career fairs I see that all of the inappropriately-dressed students are from CS.
I feel like academia tolerates this geek counter-culture when it really should be challenging it and insisting that students realize that the geek culture can be a real liability.
I usually define "big iron" as supercomputers, which often mean these days hundreds or thousands of 4-16 CPU boxes networked with a fast interconnect (myrinet or infiniband) and a batch queueing system on top. I haven't seen much Java in this space. I see lots of Fortran, C, and C++ though.
I'm not sure why I don't see much Java here. Java's got MPI libraries available, and some of the programs being used could have been written in Java in their early days. I suspect that it is probably any number of reasons, including:
1) "Java is the new COBOL", e.g. Java is perceived as generally a business-oriented platform. 2) Java's performance problems in the 90's turned these scientist programmers away from it. 3) JVM's weren't available for a long time on some of this hardware, and when they were they suffered from serious stability problems under load. 4) Scientist programmers just aren't really into OOP yet, and may never be. 5) Some combination of the above.
But then I also don't see Lisp, Python, Ruby, or any of the other "hip" CS languages on this kind of "big iron".
Seriously, the interface is the main reason I can't stand IE 7 (well, that and my copy of Win2k running in Parallels). If I could have the IE 7 rendering with the IE 6 "look and feel" then I would update it.
(Of course, I generally use Seamonkey on Linux and Firefox on Mac, so this is just for the times I find myself stuck on a Windows machine.)
I've never understood that. Last time I checked, Walmart doesn't employ armed forces to compel suppliers to sell to them.
Walmart doesn't use "armed forces", instead it offers use of its position as the #1 distribution channel as a stick against its suppliers. If Walmart wants to stock an item that is produced by an American company, it offers the company a stark choice: be able to offer the item at a particular price, or we will purchase from an overseas (usually Chinese) company. Since the monetary exchange rate automatically favors the Chinese competitor, Walmart is essentially offering the American company the choice to lower its profit margins and sell through Walmart, or keep its profit but sell elsewhere. The Chinese company OTOH can both sell through Walmart AND retain its local profit margins.
Some companies have adapted by staying away from Walmart and tried to link the Walmart brand with crappy quality. Others have been "forced" to comply with Walmart's demands because the loss of the entire distribution channel in one fell swoop would be too great a blow to survive.
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especially in "liberal areas" for abusing their authority. In places like Northern Virginia, one of the bluest parts of the country, the prosecutors won't touch a cop who shoots and kills someone in a criminal way while on duty.
Are you trying to smear "liberals" as pro-authoritarians or are you saying that even in "liberal" areas where one might expect cops to be held accountable they still aren't? Regardless, it's no better down here in Texas where cops can not only shoot people with impunity, they can beat them to the point of hospitalization just for the fun of it AFTER they are arrested and in booked into the jail.
think eclipse
I used to work within IBM, and here is the story I got from a senior developer...
Eclipse was a rogue project within IBM whose purpose was to take down MS Visual Studio 97. When it became obvious that there was absolutely no way that Windows developers who were used to the speed, ease of use, and rather decent integration with Windows of VS97 would shell out money for a Java-based IDE with its own oddball help system, poor integration with the Win32 toolchain, and most importantly was slow as molasses even on decent hardware, IBM decided to in essence use the $30+ million in sunk costs to buy goodwill in the F/OSS community. (And Eclipse really needed that OSS shot in the arm: NetBeans was killing it in the Java IDE landscape.)
What exactly prevents women from doing the same thing?
How about the fact that pregnancy is not just some period of time that is conveniently forgotten once it's over? Reproduction is not an equivalent experience between women and men. For those women who choose to undergo a pregnancy, it comes with permanent and often unwanted physiological changes to their body coupled with a rather long time to form an emotional bond with their future child. Men don't experience that, and frankly no amount of being there and being supportive and going to the store at 3am for weird food or whatever will really equate to an actual pregnancy with the shoes that don't fit anymore to the stares and random advice from absolutely everyone an expecting mother sees. A man may love his woman and future child more than anything but there will always be an experience gap he can't cross over to achieve full understanding.
If it's not clear already, I'm not "pro-abortion" but I am pro-choice. Women who choose it should get far more social (emotional) and financial support than they do already, particularly non-white women in America who are often blamed from mainstream society for all of its ills because they reproduced at all. Women who choose otherwise should have that decision respected.
I suppose this is true for the dregs of society, but I assume they're a minority.
You assume wrong.
Until we have RFID implanted in all men and a total surveillance society to track them, men can still decide at any time after a baby is born that they just don't care anymore about it and skip out with practically no consequences compared to the woman they leave behind. Only women with the resources to both battle in court for child support and track the man down who flees jurisdiction can count on guaranteed support, and in most cases it's easier to just go on without the help that keep such a problematic "father" somewhere in the picture.
In reality the biological burden of gestating a child and the financial burden in raising a child are both squarely on the woman's shoulders. So IMHO the woman should get the first and only say about whether or not she is ready for it.
No country including Iran would use the internet for C4I, and BTW no credible invasion force could mass near Iran in secret.
And just how many independent journalists would be able to report on a hypothetical invasion force or civilian casualties within Iran without the Internet?
(pre-9/11 Americans took the high road. No torture. Beer and b00bies for everyone!)
That was the perception at home. It wasn't the reality abroad.
increased capacity = PROFIT!!!
Yeah, that incentive is going to go over real well at a non-profit organization...
Hell, forget terrorism -- how about the guys who invented the hydrogen bomb? They had to have been smart enough to say to themselves, "Hooboy, this thing that we're going to develop and deliver into the hands of a bunch of politicians and those peacenik generals could really fuck up the world for real, way worse than just the A-bombs we have now." They *had* to know this, and yet they still sat down and got right to work on it.
Have you ever read a history book from before the 60's? They were filled with grandiose visions of the march of civilization inexorably making the planet better for all people, and "better" was generally known to be the middle class / lower nobility lifestyle of Victorian England at its political apex. They discuss "German civilization" quite distinct from "American civilization" and "Chinese civilization". World War II was a battle between civilizations for the heart of all humanity. And even now there is a significant fraction of people who believe in that worldview. I heard just yesterday someone talking about their experience in Europe and how "only some of them over there still remember what we [Americans] did for them". US and UK == heroes and natural leaders of the free world.
We very rarely think in this way now. We now know that ALL governments will be attractive to evil people seeking power, even the most democratic ones, and the most successful governments are those with sufficient checks and a strong idnependent media to ensure they stay mostly clean. We know to be wary of authority and that giving even the most beneficial people greater technological power may be paving the way for a future despot to abuse it. But in the 1930-1950 timeframe, the majority of middle class people really didn't know that.
I live in Newton's world even though I know that his "rules" are a little flawed. I occasionally need to visit Einstein's world because I'm doing something weird.
Are you a nuclear engineer? Because if not I'd really like to know under what circumstances you need to correct for velocity...
As others have replied, there were once LOTS of programs for autmatically scanning uploads within BBSes. I would search for "BBS file processor" or "upload processor" or "upload door". Essentially every major BBS system (and there dozens or majors and hundreds of minors) had an upload processor for it that would scan all files uploaded. They would even unzip the archives up to N levels deep to scan it all.
The almost religious fervor which sysops applied to scanning uploads was a response to the popular press' typical characterization of BBSes as the absolute easiest way of getting computer viruses, the precursor to the current stereotype that the 'Net is basically one giant computer virus distribution system that incidentally has some porn and a couple dozen useful web sites. I think BBSes were deliberately given a bad rap because the media folks tended to use extremely expensive pay services like CompuServe, GEnie, and Prodigy, and so they heavily promoted those over the often-100%-free BBSes available. Add the fact that the virus creators often used BBSes to communicate amongst themselves and the meme that BBSes were the preferred vehicle for criminals to prey on folks just would not die.
The result is that the ability to automatically scan incoming files was old hat back in the late 80's.
You know, there IS a standard way to embed images in a MIME message such that the main body part can be HTML: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MHTML . I even wrote code that would easily generate RFC 2110 compliant messages via JavaMail. Unfortunately, web-based email services mangled the messages, and though Outlook and Kmail handled the messages OK, Notes 4.x and 5.x failed miserably at it (circa 2000-2002). We even found a bug filed against Notes for this behavior with the status "will not fix".
I don't expect to Microsoft to get the full outcome, but I do think that it accurately reflects the business goal behind Vista's extensive DRM design and implementation.
Now, in the face of outright consumer rejection Microsoft might be able to spin this after the fact as, "See, we tried DRM to satisfy Hollywood but consumer's didn't want it!" However, Microsoft has already been there, done that with their own software products. They know full well that technological copyright controls are unpopular and that effective controls actually hinder widespread adoption. That's why they looked the other way during the rampant software piracy of their product lines in the 90's and still allow moderate amounts of piracy of their current products via corporate activation keys. They had plenty of evidence to present the case to Hollywood five years ago, yet instead they "caved" and delayed shipping Vista until enough of the DRM path was working. They even dropped features that users were actually clamoring for in favor of finishing the DRM. They supposedly spent $10 billion on Vista development yet the only major new features are Aero glass and DRM. Other changes such as the multi-threaded GPU and new networking stack are significant features too, but those are under the hood and did not in truth warrant years of delay of the main product, they could have been released as service packs. DRM OTOH requires completely new drivers for video and sound, which makes it a much bigger deal.
Hence there has to be something very important to Microsoft that necessitates DRM. Being able to play high-def disks on a general-purpose PC isn't enough since most users already have TV's and dedicated DVD/Bluray playback boxes, and the Xbox can be secured on its own without changing Vista. It has to extend far beyond WMP support for high-def movies to warrant the money spent on it. Control of the entire information economy, now THAT's a lot of money to cash in on someday.
Like I said, I don't expect them to fully succeed. But even a partial "success" could open up enough new revenue streams to justify the cost.
They only did it to placate Hollywood, and it's a major reason why Vista had developmental problems.
.avi will then be completely unrippable.
No, they did it to "embrace, extend, and extinguish" Hollywood itself in a bid for total power over the end user.
If Vista-style DRM becomes the norm for all Hollywood releases, then:
1) F/OSS gets shut out of the legitimate playback market. Hollywood doesn't care because Mac and Windows stay in.
2) Software-as-a-service where the software is very fat desktop applications is much easier to support. (And let's be honest, local software will always be faster and more feature-full than browser-based applications.) $20/month for access to the *entire* Microsoft home applications portfolio begins to look very attractive, especially when combined with digital television and broadband access into a single package.
3) DRM into TCPA means that web sites will be able to discriminate based on the end user. All of the content on Youtube that can today be easily ripped to
4) After consumers become used to the idea of #2 and #3, Microsoft will be able to dictate terms to *all* content providers including Hollywood, software developers, and other markets as yet unknown. You want 90% of the desktops in the world to run your software? You need a TCPA key signed by Microsoft. Comedy Central wants to offer streaming video? They'll need a TCPA key signed by Microsoft. You want to run a F/OSS operating system? Fine, but the corporate portion of Internet will be off-limits to you -- and routers will use QOS to ensure that the non-TCPA-accessible Internet is not fast enough to compete with the TCPA-locked-down Internet.
THAT is why they did DRM in Vista.
It was doing perfectly fine.
No it wasn't. In the early 1900's some workplaces had a 12 percent mortality rate.
Let me repeat that: 12 PERCENT MORTALITY RATE.
Let me repeat that again: There was statistically a 12% chance that you would DIE for every 1 YEAR you worked.
In 1908 US Steel began to record safety incidents and worked to minimize the accident rate in a "safety first" program; in 1913 the Department of Labor was formed to coordinate a federal response; by 1915 the National Safety Council was established to improve working conditions in multiple industries. Without this effort, there was a good chance the US would have gone Communist before 1930.
I suspect IBM will suffer some harsh feelings as well; not only will some likely leave, others like me won't consider them for employment in the future if they have openings.
And you would be correct. Those of us who used to work there won't go back no matter what they offerred, since their word is about as solid as wet toilet paper.
Back in 2002-2003 timeframe employees tried to unionize at IBM (Alliance@IBM) and got basically nowhere. However, they were superb at ferreting out dirt form management's (at the time) secretive outsourcing effort. Suffice to say those of us paying attention began to take to heart the maxim "Never believe something until it has been officially denied."
Which means that the IBM employees who think they're being treated unfairly should quit and find new jobs for a better employer. Eventually IBM will get the point and treat its remaining employees better.
IBM stopped wanting good people to work for them the day Lou left. I seriously doubt they would be able to pull off the modern-day equivalent of the Sydney 2000 Olympics again with the staff they have now. It would be impossible for IBM to get me back, and all of the other good developers I worked with across three groups have also left IBM for various reasons, and we all now make better money with better benefits and do far more interesting things.
For any students out there who have already signed on with IBM: get your initial experience for two years but keep your eyes open for greener pastures.
Probably Nill. It shouldn't take to many brain cells to realize that working for IBM is a damn good job.
Actually, the best IBM-ers were either pushed out or left on their own shortly after Lou was gone.
-Former IBM-er
and you don't pay taxes on it......
Yes you do, it's still considered income and is taxed at the federal level and state level if you live in an income tax state. It also stops after 6 months, is based on how much you made before (and is only a fraction of your former income -- quite a bit less than half for many people), and depends on what you made for the prior 18 month period. If you had a lapse in work for about a year, your unemployment insurance is gone until about two more years of full-time work have passed.
Frankly, it's a very crappy supplement. If you are broke enough to really need it, it won't be enough to help vault you to a decent job. And if you paid for years and years into it early on, you'll get nothing for it later if you took some time off for medical, e.g. if you took a break from working for maternity.
when it comes to books we have a vast number of them only because it's possible for most authors to make a decent supplemental income from royalties.
It always sounds like writers can do pretty well, but in truth writing is already going the way of music thanks to the agglomeration of publishing houses. A few big stars make it really big, a secondary small pool of talented folks can manage to eek a one-hit-wonder for themselves, and then everyone else remains unknown.
I wouldn't mind such a tag if sites would at guarantee usability with really old browsers if the tag is ignored, e.g. the "default" page would run somewhat on Netscape/MSIE 3.x and newer browsers could use the tag to turn on the more advanced features.
If I wanted to complain about something, I'd complain about lack of communication skills among CS graduates. That's something that we can address in higher ed that really impacts everyone with a CS degree, not just some narrow part of the field.
Thank you. My undergrad CS required two semesters of technical writing which worked WONDERS on making me a better fit into my first real job. Now I am working on a MS in chemical engineering and seeing a huge difference between the CS/IT world and the engineering world. I feel like back in the 90's CS became a sort of haven within the corporate world; programmers could dress in relaxing clothes, enjoy more flexible working hours (due the common necessity of night duty), and avoid much of the "corporate bs" that most other white-collar jobs had to deal with. But then the dot-com brought along with it a "geek counter-culture" such that it was expected that one could only prove themselves "hardcore" by dressing in boots and black t-shirts and such in contrast to "the suits", and now at the career fairs I see that all of the inappropriately-dressed students are from CS.
I feel like academia tolerates this geek counter-culture when it really should be challenging it and insisting that students realize that the geek culture can be a real liability.
I usually define "big iron" as supercomputers, which often mean these days hundreds or thousands of 4-16 CPU boxes networked with a fast interconnect (myrinet or infiniband) and a batch queueing system on top. I haven't seen much Java in this space. I see lots of Fortran, C, and C++ though.
I'm not sure why I don't see much Java here. Java's got MPI libraries available, and some of the programs being used could have been written in Java in their early days. I suspect that it is probably any number of reasons, including:
1) "Java is the new COBOL", e.g. Java is perceived as generally a business-oriented platform.
2) Java's performance problems in the 90's turned these scientist programmers away from it.
3) JVM's weren't available for a long time on some of this hardware, and when they were they suffered from serious stability problems under load.
4) Scientist programmers just aren't really into OOP yet, and may never be.
5) Some combination of the above.
But then I also don't see Lisp, Python, Ruby, or any of the other "hip" CS languages on this kind of "big iron".
Seriously, the interface is the main reason I can't stand IE 7 (well, that and my copy of Win2k running in Parallels). If I could have the IE 7 rendering with the IE 6 "look and feel" then I would update it.
(Of course, I generally use Seamonkey on Linux and Firefox on Mac, so this is just for the times I find myself stuck on a Windows machine.)
I've never understood that. Last time I checked, Walmart doesn't employ armed forces to compel suppliers to sell to them.
Walmart doesn't use "armed forces", instead it offers use of its position as the #1 distribution channel as a stick against its suppliers. If Walmart wants to stock an item that is produced by an American company, it offers the company a stark choice: be able to offer the item at a particular price, or we will purchase from an overseas (usually Chinese) company. Since the monetary exchange rate automatically favors the Chinese competitor, Walmart is essentially offering the American company the choice to lower its profit margins and sell through Walmart, or keep its profit but sell elsewhere. The Chinese company OTOH can both sell through Walmart AND retain its local profit margins.
Some companies have adapted by staying away from Walmart and tried to link the Walmart brand with crappy quality. Others have been "forced" to comply with Walmart's demands because the loss of the entire distribution channel in one fell swoop would be too great a blow to survive.