How is it any different for closed source software?
If you run your own business, then OSS is better since it is free and likely more secure.
If you are a middle manager, the situation is different. Your goal is not to minimize failure, but to protect your career. Proprietary software gives you someone else to blame.
Most of the time it's easier to just type in what you want anyway.
But a voice assistant is great when your hands are busy with other things. I keep Alexa in my kitchen. She can give me a news brief, and a summary of my daily schedule while I am busy fixing breakfast for my family. She can turn on the light over the sink for me when my hands are wet. She can set a timer. She can add milk to the shopping list.
These are only minor conveniences, but they add up. A few minutes saved every day is hours in a year. She is definitely worth the price ($149).
If our future is this level of lazy dumbness, we all deserve to go extinct.
To late. They lazy dumbasses won as soon as they realized that planting wheat was way easier than gathering wild seeds. It was all downhill from there.
There is a word used to describe doing more with less effort. It is called "civilization".
If there is visible light we can be certain that it wasn't a black hole that was formed.
Not true. The radius of a neutron star is roughly twice its Schwarzschild radius (the radius of the event horizon of a black hole of the same mass), so in a collision resulting in a black hole, 7/8 of the mass would initially be outside the event horizon. Much of that would likely fall in, but much of it would also likely be blown away by the force of the collision.
Keep in mind that the amount of energy released in a collision like this is big. Like really really big. Even a regular supernova is big. Imagine detonating hydrogen bomb pressed against your eyeball. Well, a supernova, observed from 1AU, is a billion times brighter than that! And that is just peanuts compared to this collision. It is possible the one or more solar masses were radiated away as energy if it actually collapsed into a black hole.
No. They go after the merchants that accepted the fraudulent transactions. If you run an online business, and you accept "card not present" transactions, then you are SOL if the bank issues a chargeback. You can verify the address, or at least the zipcode, to cut down on fraud, or you can just eat the loss as a cost of doing business. Either way, there are no "losses" for the bank. That is why they have no incentive to fix the system. It is not their problem.
That is a sensible idea, but there is a big problem: Those with the power to fix the system have no incentive to do so. The cost of fraud is pushed onto the merchants. The hassle of dealing with identity theft is dumped on the consumer. Mastercard and Visa have a vested interest in the current system, since any attempt at reform would quickly expose them as parasites that can be easily bypassed. The banks also have a vested interest in keeping the current system since a new system would likely be a "charge" system run by tech companies rather than a "credit" system run by banks.
Don't expect the government to take the lead, since any attempt at reform will be demagogued as "big government" by the incumbents.
America is too dysfunctional to fix the problem. Other countries have already come up with their own solutions. China's WeChat payment system is way superior to anything we have in the USA, or are likely to have in the next decade.
many companies and researches are living the good life....
That is a ridiculous argument. Anyone smart and innovative enough to contribute to oncology research is going to be well paid in any profession. If we don't pay them well, they will go elsewhere.
do you really think all those research dollars are well spent??
I have a sister and aunt that are breast cancer survivors. My mom is a colon cancer survivor. I support spending more on cancer research.
If you look at the overall cost of cancer to our nation, spending more to find cures and preventions is a total no-brainer.
Other areas of medical research were a cost benefit shows that we should be spending WAY more: dementia and mental health. Dementia costs America more than $160B annually. Schizophrenia costs more than $100B. Yet we spend way way more running prisons to keep our mentally ill than we do on finding effective treatments.
But I suspect that improvements in breast cancer survival are mostly due to better early detection.
Early detection works better because mammograms have improved in both cost and accuracy, especially at distinguishing between malignant tumors and benign growths. Why have mammograms and other diagnostic tools improved? Answer: research.
I don't and I'm only in my 30s. Programmers go older than 30 you know.
I am twice your age. I have every program I have ever written. I learned to program in Fortran in the 1970s. In 1979, I copied all my card decks onto an 8 inch floppy. Then in the 80s to 5.25 inch, then to a HDD.
My ~/src has 637 subdirectories, each containing a program or library that I have written. When I hire someone, I expect them to have a "bag of tricks" that they can apply. I refuse to believe that there are "great programmers" who have NOTHING.
that opens the pool of good candidates much wider.
I want a deep and narrow pool. For a typical open position I get over 200 resumes submitted. I narrow those down to 20 that get a followup email, 10 that receive a phone call, 3 to 5 who get an interview, and one who gets the job. The last thing I need is more candidates who have no ability whatsoever to demonstrate that they can do the job. I already get plenty of those.
So you are claiming that there are "great programmers" that have never done hobby programming, do not contribute to open source, have never written a single professional program that they are allowed to share, have never written a program as a school assignment, and are unwilling to sit down and spend a day writing 500 lines of code so they can go to an interview?
Are you serious? I think there are this many "great programmers" that fit that description: 0.
There is much work to be done, but many "revolutionary new treatments" are indeed revolutionary. Other cancers are succumbing to steady incremental progress.
Every year, at least one brush fire is started that way in California.
That is less of a problem, since smoking rates in California have gone way down. California is now under 15%, and only Utah does better. Kentucky is the worst, at 30%.
One reason for California's low rate is their anti-smoking ads. Many states squandered their tobacco settlement money on ads about how smoking is unhealthy, which was not effective. California focused their ads on making smoking look stupid and uncool. There was a billboard on my commute with a man asking an attractive woman "Do you mind if I smoke?" Her reply "Do you mind if I fart?"
We cut paper use by moving the printer to the back of a smelly warehouse that is as hot as a sauna in the summer, and frigid in the winter. Printer use dropped by about 80% just by making it less convenient.
I've written so much code "for me" and for my reuse, this person just leaves me scratching my head. He's written no library work?
Indeed. I have over 200MB of code that I have written over the years that is mine. I reuse it in nearly every project. Need to do file sync with UDP? I got it. Need an RS-232 module in Verilog? I got that too. Nobody can say I don't own it, because I do a periodic public timestamp.
To timestamp your work, just create a zip or tgz file of all your stuff, and then do a SHA-256 hash of the file. Post the hash in a public place, such as Facebook, or mail it to yourself or someone else via Gmail or other well known mail service.
If you're looking for how well they architecture something or solve non-trivial problems, you might need more than 50 lines.
Indeed. I hire people, and I am looking for way more than 50 lines. At least 500 lines. It should be a non-trivial complete program that does something interesting. It is fine if it is something you wrote for a hobby project on your own time. In fact, it is BETTER if it is hobby code, since that indicates passion and a love of coding.
The first question I will ask is "Explain what this program does." I expect you to walk me through it, explaining as you go. It is surprising how many candidates can't do that... since they clearly didn't write the code themselves. That is great. I love ending interviews early because I then have free time in my schedule.
Besides listening to a candidate explain their own code, I am looking for useful comments, logically named functions that do only one thing, consistently named variables, encapsulation of state, etc. The code should be readable and easy to understand. It should look like it was written by a competent professional who is proud of his craftsmanship.
I am looking for much more than a "grasp of the language". I am looking for a grasp of professional programming principles.
every flat tax proposal I have ever seen isn't about just a flat percent, but getting rid of all the zillions exceptions and loopholes
Every flat tax proposal that I have seen does this with a lot of vagueness and hand waving, and no concrete proposals, or even a clear definition of how a "loophole" differs from a legitimate expense
that enable mostly the wealthy from using obscure exceptions to not pay that percent.
Yet most support for a flat tax comes from wealthy people. The top 1% have 20% of the income, yet pay nearly 40% of all income tax. They would clearly benefit from a flat tax.
Disclaimer: I am a well paid developer in SV. So is my spouse. We would benefit very much from a flat tax. It is still a stupid idea.
No write offs, thus "legitimate business expenses" don't matter.
You just put 99% of companies out of business. They can't deduct payroll? Or cost of supplies? Cost of utilities? Now, the standard response is that, of course, they can deduct THOSE expenses, because they are LEGITIMATE. But then what about advertising expenses? R&D? Depreciation? Interest? Etc? Etc?
The main motivation for Chinese to want to go abroad is to escape the hot smoggy climate, and move somewhere cool and green.
China is bigger than America, and has climates as varied as Alaska is from Florida, including plenty of places that are cool and green. If you visit China, consider going to Lijiang. It is called "the city of perpetual springtime". The air is clean and it is green and verdant all year round, never too hot and never too cold. The Naxi people living there are very friendly and welcoming. When Han people go to nearby Tibet, the Tibetans see "invaders", but when outsiders come to Lijiang the Naxi see "customers".
I have friends and relatives in China, and their main motivator to move money abroad and obtain foreign residence permits, is to have a bolthole in case of political instability in China. The Chinese people tolerate the CCP because it delivers steady economic growth. If there is a hard downturn, it could all fall apart very quickly.
A "flat tax" does nothing to make taxes less complex. 99.999% of the complexity is determining "what is income", not the single percentage calculation at the end.
with no loopholes
Please give us your clear, concise, and universally accepted distinction between a "loophole" and a "legitimate business expense".
Anyone who plans to sabotage anything like this on the way out the door deserves everything that comes to them
Sure, the sabotage was criminal and wrong. But leaving access enabled was still stupid, especially when they knew this guy was irrational and had anger issues.
Burglars should go to jail, but I still lock my front door.
Slashdot Mirror
How is it any different for closed source software?
If you run your own business, then OSS is better since it is free and likely more secure.
If you are a middle manager, the situation is different. Your goal is not to minimize failure, but to protect your career. Proprietary software gives you someone else to blame.
Most of the time it's easier to just type in what you want anyway.
But a voice assistant is great when your hands are busy with other things. I keep Alexa in my kitchen. She can give me a news brief, and a summary of my daily schedule while I am busy fixing breakfast for my family. She can turn on the light over the sink for me when my hands are wet. She can set a timer. She can add milk to the shopping list.
These are only minor conveniences, but they add up. A few minutes saved every day is hours in a year. She is definitely worth the price ($149).
If our future is this level of lazy dumbness, we all deserve to go extinct.
To late. They lazy dumbasses won as soon as they realized that planting wheat was way easier than gathering wild seeds. It was all downhill from there.
There is a word used to describe doing more with less effort. It is called "civilization".
If there is visible light we can be certain that it wasn't a black hole that was formed.
Not true. The radius of a neutron star is roughly twice its Schwarzschild radius (the radius of the event horizon of a black hole of the same mass), so in a collision resulting in a black hole, 7/8 of the mass would initially be outside the event horizon. Much of that would likely fall in, but much of it would also likely be blown away by the force of the collision.
Keep in mind that the amount of energy released in a collision like this is big. Like really really big. Even a regular supernova is big. Imagine detonating hydrogen bomb pressed against your eyeball. Well, a supernova, observed from 1AU, is a billion times brighter than that! And that is just peanuts compared to this collision. It is possible the one or more solar masses were radiated away as energy if it actually collapsed into a black hole.
Do the banks go after Pizza Hut for their losses?
No. They go after the merchants that accepted the fraudulent transactions. If you run an online business, and you accept "card not present" transactions, then you are SOL if the bank issues a chargeback. You can verify the address, or at least the zipcode, to cut down on fraud, or you can just eat the loss as a cost of doing business. Either way, there are no "losses" for the bank. That is why they have no incentive to fix the system. It is not their problem.
That is a sensible idea, but there is a big problem: Those with the power to fix the system have no incentive to do so. The cost of fraud is pushed onto the merchants. The hassle of dealing with identity theft is dumped on the consumer. Mastercard and Visa have a vested interest in the current system, since any attempt at reform would quickly expose them as parasites that can be easily bypassed. The banks also have a vested interest in keeping the current system since a new system would likely be a "charge" system run by tech companies rather than a "credit" system run by banks.
Don't expect the government to take the lead, since any attempt at reform will be demagogued as "big government" by the incumbents.
America is too dysfunctional to fix the problem. Other countries have already come up with their own solutions. China's WeChat payment system is way superior to anything we have in the USA, or are likely to have in the next decade.
many companies and researches are living the good life ....
That is a ridiculous argument. Anyone smart and innovative enough to contribute to oncology research is going to be well paid in any profession. If we don't pay them well, they will go elsewhere.
do you really think all those research dollars are well spent??
I have a sister and aunt that are breast cancer survivors. My mom is a colon cancer survivor. I support spending more on cancer research.
If you look at the overall cost of cancer to our nation, spending more to find cures and preventions is a total no-brainer.
Other areas of medical research were a cost benefit shows that we should be spending WAY more: dementia and mental health. Dementia costs America more than $160B annually. Schizophrenia costs more than $100B. Yet we spend way way more running prisons to keep our mentally ill than we do on finding effective treatments.
But I suspect that improvements in breast cancer survival are mostly due to better early detection.
Early detection works better because mammograms have improved in both cost and accuracy, especially at distinguishing between malignant tumors and benign growths. Why have mammograms and other diagnostic tools improved? Answer: research.
I don't and I'm only in my 30s. Programmers go older than 30 you know.
I am twice your age. I have every program I have ever written. I learned to program in Fortran in the 1970s. In 1979, I copied all my card decks onto an 8 inch floppy. Then in the 80s to 5.25 inch, then to a HDD.
My ~/src has 637 subdirectories, each containing a program or library that I have written. When I hire someone, I expect them to have a "bag of tricks" that they can apply. I refuse to believe that there are "great programmers" who have NOTHING.
that opens the pool of good candidates much wider.
I want a deep and narrow pool. For a typical open position I get over 200 resumes submitted. I narrow those down to 20 that get a followup email, 10 that receive a phone call, 3 to 5 who get an interview, and one who gets the job. The last thing I need is more candidates who have no ability whatsoever to demonstrate that they can do the job. I already get plenty of those.
So I guess I don't get your point then.
So you are claiming that there are "great programmers" that have never done hobby programming, do not contribute to open source, have never written a single professional program that they are allowed to share, have never written a program as a school assignment, and are unwilling to sit down and spend a day writing 500 lines of code so they can go to an interview?
Are you serious? I think there are this many "great programmers" that fit that description: 0.
We've made a little progress over the decades, but nowhere near what you'd expect from all the articles about revolutionary new treatments.
Breast cancer survival rates have tripled. Rates for some other cancers have improved even more.
There is much work to be done, but many "revolutionary new treatments" are indeed revolutionary. Other cancers are succumbing to steady incremental progress.
You're still filtering out fantastic programmers with hobbies that aren't coders
No I'm not. Hobby code is great, but certainly not mandatory.
I also disagree that to have a passion for something you have to live and breathe it 24/7.
But the converse is true.
That doesn't prove ownership
I don't need to prove ownership, only disprove it.
If the code existed before my job started, then my employer has no valid claim to it.
Proving ownership would only be necessary to stop others from using my code. I have no desire to do that.
Every year, at least one brush fire is started that way in California.
That is less of a problem, since smoking rates in California have gone way down. California is now under 15%, and only Utah does better. Kentucky is the worst, at 30%.
Smoking rates by state.
One reason for California's low rate is their anti-smoking ads. Many states squandered their tobacco settlement money on ads about how smoking is unhealthy, which was not effective. California focused their ads on making smoking look stupid and uncool. There was a billboard on my commute with a man asking an attractive woman "Do you mind if I smoke?" Her reply "Do you mind if I fart?"
We cut paper use by moving the printer to the back of a smelly warehouse that is as hot as a sauna in the summer, and frigid in the winter. Printer use dropped by about 80% just by making it less convenient.
I've written so much code "for me" and for my reuse, this person just leaves me scratching my head. He's written no library work?
Indeed. I have over 200MB of code that I have written over the years that is mine. I reuse it in nearly every project. Need to do file sync with UDP? I got it. Need an RS-232 module in Verilog? I got that too. Nobody can say I don't own it, because I do a periodic public timestamp.
To timestamp your work, just create a zip or tgz file of all your stuff, and then do a SHA-256 hash of the file. Post the hash in a public place, such as Facebook, or mail it to yourself or someone else via Gmail or other well known mail service.
If you're looking for how well they architecture something or solve non-trivial problems, you might need more than 50 lines.
Indeed. I hire people, and I am looking for way more than 50 lines. At least 500 lines. It should be a non-trivial complete program that does something interesting. It is fine if it is something you wrote for a hobby project on your own time. In fact, it is BETTER if it is hobby code, since that indicates passion and a love of coding.
The first question I will ask is "Explain what this program does." I expect you to walk me through it, explaining as you go. It is surprising how many candidates can't do that ... since they clearly didn't write the code themselves. That is great. I love ending interviews early because I then have free time in my schedule.
Besides listening to a candidate explain their own code, I am looking for useful comments, logically named functions that do only one thing, consistently named variables, encapsulation of state, etc. The code should be readable and easy to understand. It should look like it was written by a competent professional who is proud of his craftsmanship.
I am looking for much more than a "grasp of the language". I am looking for a grasp of professional programming principles.
I'd rather support a website with cpu cycles anonymously than advertising. They have to eat too.
For every dollar their visitors pay to the electric company, the site earns a penny. It is an incredibly inefficient way to pay for content.
We need a decent system for micropayments.
The more crazy s**t doctors put in people's brains the more mass murders we get.
The problem with your theory is that the number of mass murderers hasn't increased.
every flat tax proposal I have ever seen isn't about just a flat percent, but getting rid of all the zillions exceptions and loopholes
Every flat tax proposal that I have seen does this with a lot of vagueness and hand waving, and no concrete proposals, or even a clear definition of how a "loophole" differs from a legitimate expense
that enable mostly the wealthy from using obscure exceptions to not pay that percent.
Yet most support for a flat tax comes from wealthy people. The top 1% have 20% of the income, yet pay nearly 40% of all income tax. They would clearly benefit from a flat tax.
Disclaimer: I am a well paid developer in SV. So is my spouse. We would benefit very much from a flat tax. It is still a stupid idea.
No write offs, thus "legitimate business expenses" don't matter.
You just put 99% of companies out of business. They can't deduct payroll? Or cost of supplies? Cost of utilities? Now, the standard response is that, of course, they can deduct THOSE expenses, because they are LEGITIMATE. But then what about advertising expenses? R&D? Depreciation? Interest? Etc? Etc?
The main motivation for Chinese to want to go abroad is to escape the hot smoggy climate, and move somewhere cool and green.
China is bigger than America, and has climates as varied as Alaska is from Florida, including plenty of places that are cool and green. If you visit China, consider going to Lijiang. It is called "the city of perpetual springtime". The air is clean and it is green and verdant all year round, never too hot and never too cold. The Naxi people living there are very friendly and welcoming. When Han people go to nearby Tibet, the Tibetans see "invaders", but when outsiders come to Lijiang the Naxi see "customers".
I have friends and relatives in China, and their main motivator to move money abroad and obtain foreign residence permits, is to have a bolthole in case of political instability in China. The Chinese people tolerate the CCP because it delivers steady economic growth. If there is a hard downturn, it could all fall apart very quickly.
How about we move to a simple flat tax
A "flat tax" does nothing to make taxes less complex. 99.999% of the complexity is determining "what is income", not the single percentage calculation at the end.
with no loopholes
Please give us your clear, concise, and universally accepted distinction between a "loophole" and a "legitimate business expense".
Anyone who plans to sabotage anything like this on the way out the door deserves everything that comes to them
Sure, the sabotage was criminal and wrong. But leaving access enabled was still stupid, especially when they knew this guy was irrational and had anger issues.
Burglars should go to jail, but I still lock my front door.