I guess you could say that considering it's no longer about holding a shield tight around ourselves, but instead effectively smothering our enemies with them.
Three wishes for Slashdot that I'm hoping come true: 1) The trn interface is implemented [if UNIX is so awesome, then why not?], including regex-based killfiling. It's called D3. 2) Barring that, user preference score modifiers are optionally made to apply up instead of down, to filter out posts modded higher than a certain threshold. 3) SlashdotTV becomes SlashdotT&A.;)
Too true. It's esp. evident that a page is overflowing with crap when your workplace has plenty of bandwidth but runs a very aggressive web nanny proxy server. Things load in quick spurts between lengthy delays, and with many sites nowadays making their pages just frames of header nav and ads, with the actual content of that page loading later via AJAX, all the bloated animated ads load first, one by one, so you end up staring at a mostly empty page for a good while.
You should try viewing the DVD extras. I like how they put a copyright display screen up for several seconds after *every* *single* *one* of the outtakes/bloopers. It could be a 2-second scene of a fart and a giggle and whoop, there's that again.
I envision a team of lawyers crawling around on the cutting room floor making sure each fragment of film gets a stamp of legalese. When you feel the need to jealously guard even the garbage you're throwing out, you have serious control issues.
But I mostly blame the DVD player makers. "Operation prohibited by disc" is 10x more enraging than "PC LOAD LETTER".
In order (and since I think we pretty much have this whole discussion to ourselves, by now):
* That's rough, and a lot of pressure, having to come up to speed on a new API or framework *plus* a new business, every year. I already learn a new tech something each year, but usually with a heads-up, either by a boss or myself, before it's actually needed, so as not any real pressure. And learning a problem domain is the hardest, or rather longest taking, part for me.
* If you've only been a short-timer all your career, you might indeed never get selected, or even interviewed, for a position where they're looking for someone to stay a while. I've had a few comments from interviewers about my two ~ 6-year stints and how they're looking for someone who sticks around. (Which might be advertising that I'm more easily abused, but when I need a job, companies are free to draw all the wrong, positive conclusions about me they want.)
* "Ask questions of the rest of the team"?!? Man, I wish I had that luxury. Maybe in contracting you're given more respect, but asking questions in my experience puts you in danger. Like my current job, where they told me in the interview (for a Software Engineer level II position) that they'd hired junior programmers for it before, but they needed too much help, so that's why they were looking for someone like me. So I don't ask a lot of questions, and try to (appear to) be self-sufficient.
* I've almost always got a raise, but they've been nominal except when they've been for changing jobs. But the intra-job raises seemed to have been about how indispensable I was (or not) for something, and the inter-job ones seemed to have had to do with which way the economy was going at the time. I.e. it doesn't seem like the shareholders had much say in it. You have to retain the talent you need, or promised delivery dates to customers get missed and expected sales/revenues then don't happen. And you have to pay for new talent according to the market. Reality doesn't leave much room for mgrs or shareholders wishing for otherwise.
But I have a new outlook on salary. I'm 45 and am not at an "enterprise architect" level or anywhere near it, nor do I have really any project lead experience, so my goal is to be a bargain. I'd like to stay where I'm at a number of years, and get another good span of employment on my resume and show that I've bounced back from my long spell of sans job, and have future employers pleasantly surprised how cheaply they can get a solid, older dev. I hope it works.
You're coming at this solely from a contractor's POV. There's a whole other (and very common) side to looking at this.
For a temporary, hired gun type of job, I definitely wouldn't consider it ethical to get the organization to pay me for learning anything beyond what it took to get the job done.
For that matter, I wouldn't really consider it right that the org pay me for learning *anything* technical, unless it was clearly stated or implied as already understood. That is, I think of contracting as specifically *not* for any on-the-job learning, except for the org's particular systems and way of doing things and maybe their problem domain. I think of contracting as hiring an expert in something technical, where as soon as they learn what it is that's needed to be done, they can immediately get down to doing it, because they already have all the necessary background in whatever technologies are involved.
Whereas for full-time type employees, the view is often much more long-term, and the thoughtful ones are looking not only for someone who can get up-to-speed quickly (but not necessarily immediately), but also someone who'll stick around and grow with the job and the company.
So my big question might be, why would anyone expect their employer to give them raises for learning nothing more than just getting the job done. And today's needs might not be tomorrow's needs. This is less of an issue in contracting, where I suppose they can just not re-hire you and instead go with someone who already and better matches the new needs. But in the full-time model it's in the interest of the org to invest somewhat in their people, and it's typical between projects to be given time, on the company dime, to ramp up on what's anticipated to be the coming technical needs.
Not to mention as you become more expert in the technologies the org uses and learn more of their business and your salary rises, there's the expectation that you'll be willing, and also able, to move up into more difficult and valuable and contributory roles. Including mentoring more junior people.
So in depth is great for academics, but it also fills a need for people like me who need it to satisfy our technical craving, and it's also useful I think for doing the full-time employee thing where you stay at a place for 5 or more years (when you can).
But, this discussion has made me realize that there's a wiiide difference in people's definitions of "learning a technology".
The rest is just "what framework am I on and what objects do I have available?"
"Just"?!? Maybe you've made your living mostly doing contract work and dabbling in a multitude of technologies to be maximally versatile and knowing them just enough to get the job done. So maybe it's a YMMV thing, but I take "learn" differently than say a sysadmin who spent a couple of weeks on "learning" C++ at a superficial level and declared that it was easy. I've spent my career specializing on things, and over 10 years with C++ for example, and when I thought I had "learned" it, every couple of years I found out there was so much more to learn and that I really hadn't "learned" it when I thought I did.
Same with frameworks. Esp. since there are so many, it's hard to find the time to get really good at more than just a few of them. So I guess I take "learn" more as "mastery" than "have become (sufficiently) familiar with". But I'm more of a depth person, whereas as others like to be more breadth people, tech-wise.
you'll spend less time on concepts and more time on syntax.
As someone who's a programmer by trade, it's the opposite of that. Syntax is trivial to learn. It's applying the concepts of different kinds of programming languages that's the fun and interesting part.
if you know other programming languages, it's not that hard to learn a new one
1) No. For example knowing C still does not make C++ "not that hard to learn". Be an expert in Java and (modern usage of) JavaScript will still take a lot of getting used to. Grokking SQL is not helped by knowing any of the above.
2) So? Even in the rare cases where your statement is true, such as going between mutually redundant languages like C# and Java, you can't hardly actually do anything with either of those two unless you learn the GUI or web templating and database access and networking and other API's in their expansive associated class libraries. (Of which there are usually multiple of each.)
This is why I always shudder when I see the recurring "I can pick up any new language in a couple of weeks" sentiments posted to Slashdot. Maybe so, but they can't get a job in it unless it only requires coding for-loops and writing text to stdout.
The Progressive argument would be the same one against term limits, that then our leaders/policy makers would not have a chance to build up sufficient expert knowledge.
Even so, I'd be willing to try it. Leftists go on and on about the money canard (and only from corporations and not other special interest groups), when it's being a little too expert at being a politician that's the problem.
People like Obama and most of Congress believe they are working towards some kind of greater good, that the damage they knowingly do to society will somehow be worth it when their utopia (really a dystopia) is finalized. The label "Marxist" is a feeble attempt to describe this quality.
I would call that "Progressive". Statism to me implies nothing beyond believing in centralized planning and control. But the desire to constantly be socially and economically re-engineering the society and humanity towards a more perfect order is Progressivism.
Then the direction in which it's manifested is another axis. Neocons utilize the national security issue. Leftists pursue the concepts of social and economic justice. So given Obama's strong redistributionist bent, it can be said that he's very much (at least for the U.S.) a Marxist, and then given that this almost always coincides with statism, makes it a sufficient descriptor.
Average Joes don't stand a chance of winning a federal election. Candidates don't emerge; they are groomed.
Average Joes possess the power to reject the candidates that both major parties groom. Just don't vote for any candidate that either of the establishments anoint. If for example a Green party candidate and a Constitution party candidate each got 45% of the vote and the Dem and Rep candidates each got 5%, the two larger parties would wake up in a fucking hurry.
If I'm understanding it correctly, it relies on both of the two following things being true of a given web site (besides it using an MS SQL Server backend (or maybe it also works on Sybase database product(s) which also use the T-SQL language and might still have the involved system tables in common)): 1) SQL commands constructed via string concatenation including web form text field values, and 2) No sanitization of data coming out of the database before inserting into the HTML.
Anyone know if Obama still has his Blackberry? Clearly his having one last time and McCain being without meant that the smart vote was for Obama. But now those are so old tech, and anyone who's serious about running this year better have a rooted Ice Cream Sandwich "superphone"!
Slashdot Mirror
It is he who the company has doing the "monkey work", then.
Nerd thissers : 2011 :: AOLamer me tooers : 1993
I guess you could say that considering it's no longer about holding a shield tight around ourselves, but instead effectively smothering our enemies with them.
Not sure but I'm guessing they would say it sucks.
Three wishes for Slashdot that I'm hoping come true: ;)
1) The trn interface is implemented [if UNIX is so awesome, then why not?], including regex-based killfiling. It's called D3.
2) Barring that, user preference score modifiers are optionally made to apply up instead of down, to filter out posts modded higher than a certain threshold.
3) SlashdotTV becomes SlashdotT&A.
If they make a BFG version of it you could sanitize the entire bodies of a whole roomful of people in like seconds! ;)
In future world, your mobile wallet is you!
Those kinds of plans are really for the birds.
Too true. It's esp. evident that a page is overflowing with crap when your workplace has plenty of bandwidth but runs a very aggressive web nanny proxy server. Things load in quick spurts between lengthy delays, and with many sites nowadays making their pages just frames of header nav and ads, with the actual content of that page loading later via AJAX, all the bloated animated ads load first, one by one, so you end up staring at a mostly empty page for a good while.
You guys should date. ;)
You should try viewing the DVD extras. I like how they put a copyright display screen up for several seconds after *every* *single* *one* of the outtakes/bloopers. It could be a 2-second scene of a fart and a giggle and whoop, there's that again.
I envision a team of lawyers crawling around on the cutting room floor making sure each fragment of film gets a stamp of legalese. When you feel the need to jealously guard even the garbage you're throwing out, you have serious control issues.
But I mostly blame the DVD player makers. "Operation prohibited by disc" is 10x more enraging than "PC LOAD LETTER".
In order (and since I think we pretty much have this whole discussion to ourselves, by now):
* That's rough, and a lot of pressure, having to come up to speed on a new API or framework *plus* a new business, every year. I already learn a new tech something each year, but usually with a heads-up, either by a boss or myself, before it's actually needed, so as not any real pressure. And learning a problem domain is the hardest, or rather longest taking, part for me.
* If you've only been a short-timer all your career, you might indeed never get selected, or even interviewed, for a position where they're looking for someone to stay a while. I've had a few comments from interviewers about my two ~ 6-year stints and how they're looking for someone who sticks around. (Which might be advertising that I'm more easily abused, but when I need a job, companies are free to draw all the wrong, positive conclusions about me they want.)
* "Ask questions of the rest of the team"?!? Man, I wish I had that luxury. Maybe in contracting you're given more respect, but asking questions in my experience puts you in danger. Like my current job, where they told me in the interview (for a Software Engineer level II position) that they'd hired junior programmers for it before, but they needed too much help, so that's why they were looking for someone like me. So I don't ask a lot of questions, and try to (appear to) be self-sufficient.
* I've almost always got a raise, but they've been nominal except when they've been for changing jobs. But the intra-job raises seemed to have been about how indispensable I was (or not) for something, and the inter-job ones seemed to have had to do with which way the economy was going at the time. I.e. it doesn't seem like the shareholders had much say in it. You have to retain the talent you need, or promised delivery dates to customers get missed and expected sales/revenues then don't happen. And you have to pay for new talent according to the market. Reality doesn't leave much room for mgrs or shareholders wishing for otherwise.
But I have a new outlook on salary. I'm 45 and am not at an "enterprise architect" level or anywhere near it, nor do I have really any project lead experience, so my goal is to be a bargain. I'd like to stay where I'm at a number of years, and get another good span of employment on my resume and show that I've bounced back from my long spell of sans job, and have future employers pleasantly surprised how cheaply they can get a solid, older dev. I hope it works.
You're coming at this solely from a contractor's POV. There's a whole other (and very common) side to looking at this.
For a temporary, hired gun type of job, I definitely wouldn't consider it ethical to get the organization to pay me for learning anything beyond what it took to get the job done.
For that matter, I wouldn't really consider it right that the org pay me for learning *anything* technical, unless it was clearly stated or implied as already understood. That is, I think of contracting as specifically *not* for any on-the-job learning, except for the org's particular systems and way of doing things and maybe their problem domain. I think of contracting as hiring an expert in something technical, where as soon as they learn what it is that's needed to be done, they can immediately get down to doing it, because they already have all the necessary background in whatever technologies are involved.
Whereas for full-time type employees, the view is often much more long-term, and the thoughtful ones are looking not only for someone who can get up-to-speed quickly (but not necessarily immediately), but also someone who'll stick around and grow with the job and the company.
So my big question might be, why would anyone expect their employer to give them raises for learning nothing more than just getting the job done. And today's needs might not be tomorrow's needs. This is less of an issue in contracting, where I suppose they can just not re-hire you and instead go with someone who already and better matches the new needs. But in the full-time model it's in the interest of the org to invest somewhat in their people, and it's typical between projects to be given time, on the company dime, to ramp up on what's anticipated to be the coming technical needs.
Not to mention as you become more expert in the technologies the org uses and learn more of their business and your salary rises, there's the expectation that you'll be willing, and also able, to move up into more difficult and valuable and contributory roles. Including mentoring more junior people.
So in depth is great for academics, but it also fills a need for people like me who need it to satisfy our technical craving, and it's also useful I think for doing the full-time employee thing where you stay at a place for 5 or more years (when you can).
But, this discussion has made me realize that there's a wiiide difference in people's definitions of "learning a technology".
"Just"?!? Maybe you've made your living mostly doing contract work and dabbling in a multitude of technologies to be maximally versatile and knowing them just enough to get the job done. So maybe it's a YMMV thing, but I take "learn" differently than say a sysadmin who spent a couple of weeks on "learning" C++ at a superficial level and declared that it was easy. I've spent my career specializing on things, and over 10 years with C++ for example, and when I thought I had "learned" it, every couple of years I found out there was so much more to learn and that I really hadn't "learned" it when I thought I did.
Same with frameworks. Esp. since there are so many, it's hard to find the time to get really good at more than just a few of them. So I guess I take "learn" more as "mastery" than "have become (sufficiently) familiar with". But I'm more of a depth person, whereas as others like to be more breadth people, tech-wise.
As someone who's a programmer by trade, it's the opposite of that. Syntax is trivial to learn. It's applying the concepts of different kinds of programming languages that's the fun and interesting part.
1) No. For example knowing C still does not make C++ "not that hard to learn". Be an expert in Java and (modern usage of) JavaScript will still take a lot of getting used to. Grokking SQL is not helped by knowing any of the above.
2) So? Even in the rare cases where your statement is true, such as going between mutually redundant languages like C# and Java, you can't hardly actually do anything with either of those two unless you learn the GUI or web templating and database access and networking and other API's in their expansive associated class libraries. (Of which there are usually multiple of each.)
This is why I always shudder when I see the recurring "I can pick up any new language in a couple of weeks" sentiments posted to Slashdot. Maybe so, but they can't get a job in it unless it only requires coding for-loops and writing text to stdout.
The Progressive argument would be the same one against term limits, that then our leaders/policy makers would not have a chance to build up sufficient expert knowledge.
Even so, I'd be willing to try it. Leftists go on and on about the money canard (and only from corporations and not other special interest groups), when it's being a little too expert at being a politician that's the problem.
I would call that "Progressive". Statism to me implies nothing beyond believing in centralized planning and control. But the desire to constantly be socially and economically re-engineering the society and humanity towards a more perfect order is Progressivism.
Then the direction in which it's manifested is another axis. Neocons utilize the national security issue. Leftists pursue the concepts of social and economic justice. So given Obama's strong redistributionist bent, it can be said that he's very much (at least for the U.S.) a Marxist, and then given that this almost always coincides with statism, makes it a sufficient descriptor.
Average Joes possess the power to reject the candidates that both major parties groom. Just don't vote for any candidate that either of the establishments anoint. If for example a Green party candidate and a Constitution party candidate each got 45% of the vote and the Dem and Rep candidates each got 5%, the two larger parties would wake up in a fucking hurry.
Why is it wrong when a behavior increases an individual's societal burden?
If I'm understanding it correctly, it relies on both of the two following things being true of a given web site (besides it using an MS SQL Server backend (or maybe it also works on Sybase database product(s) which also use the T-SQL language and might still have the involved system tables in common)):
1) SQL commands constructed via string concatenation including web form text field values, and
2) No sanitization of data coming out of the database before inserting into the HTML.
And that's what this is really about: Trying to tie the fight against loss of control of our computing devices with a need for communism.
Anyone know if Obama still has his Blackberry? Clearly his having one last time and McCain being without meant that the smart vote was for Obama. But now those are so old tech, and anyone who's serious about running this year better have a rooted Ice Cream Sandwich "superphone"!
A drawback is for those who don't wish their online identities be linkable.
The determination might be that it's unnecessary to change it for a given year, but evaluating the need on an annual basis is not a bad idea.
What's considered a strong password has changed over time.