probably dealing with the arguments of "Why do you even need that?"
Which are perfectly legitimate questions to be asking (in fact, I'd go so far as to say that asking those questions is the reason we ought to be on the payroll in the first place). I rarely encounter requests for features along the lines of, "We need to crebit the general ledger by $5.00 every time somebody incurs a transaction fee" - the need for that is obvious, and I wouldn't argue about that. The requests for "features" I encounter tend to be more along the lines of, "Can we create a table in our Oracle database to store all of the word documents that accounting keeps the general ledger on?" I guess you'd just reflexively say "yes" to avoid being a "roadblock" to the "business needs" - after all, you don't want to refuse to "except (sic) without lengthy disagreement the 'needs' of the business people."
I'd also like to hear what kind of work you're doing that business majors would grasp it easier than CS majors.
Try not to take the trolls too seriously. Several variants of the "studying computer science makes you dumber - and I know because I'm teh big bo$$" appear underneath every slashdot article whose summary contains the letters "CS". Undoubtedly, this guy was a business major - if you think CS majors are concerned, you should be aware that business majors are terrified. Computer Science, relevant to the practice of computer programming or not, is an extremely difficult degree to attain, whereas business degrees are fairly straightforward to complete (somewhere in between, say, an English Lit or a Communications degree and a Computer Science degree). It's fairly obvious, to most everybody, that somebody who can complete a CS degree can pick up the basics of economics and accounting (which is essentially what a "business degree" is) far easir than a business school drone can pick up (even the) basics of software design. The only reason we haven't started replacing them in droves (yet) is because, at the moment, our current jobs appear far more interesting than theirs. This guy's rant is designed to scare potential CS majors away to business school, to make sure that enough people drink the kool-aid to keep this guy in place until retirement.
You think Lycos' customer service is bad? I just got an e-mail from Bank of America about how they need me to click through this link and verify my client information, and I don't even have an account there! I messed them up, though - I clicked through and input my account details with my actual bank account with Washington Mutual. That ought to confuse somebody in processing!
the "no" should have sounded a little more like, "sorry, but no"
I must wonder, though, how many "sorry, but no" responses came before the "not so sorry, but no" response, but weren't represented in her blog. Remember, the customer service rep didn't get a chance to tell his side of the story.
they offered to restore it... but only if she upgraded to the $20 premium service.
That point seems to be a bit ambiguous - I get the impression that what he was trying to say was that if she had originally signed up for the premium service, then this would have been an option at this point. I'm not quite ready to jump on the "hate the customer service guy" bandwagon here yet - we didn't see the whole exchange; we just see a few excerpts presented by somebody with an axe to grind (for all we know, that last response was completely fabricated). He may have explained exactly what he was talking about, and she may have gotten a lot ruder in the blank spaces. I think it's ironic the number of Slashdot readers who are ready to crucify this guy for being honest rather than hiding behind corporate doublespeak and faux politeness - say what you want about this guy, but at least he's not an insincere, two-faced, backstabbing PHB.
Here's how I think about that... about 230 years ago, folks living in a British colony that didn't have that sort of legal protection were willing to fight and die for the right to have it (it was the fourth thing on their list, actually). I'm guessing that there's probably something pretty upsetting about random, unwarranted searches and seizures that propelled them to feel so strongly about it. Of course, the way things are going, I won't have to guess much longer - it will be readily apparent to all of us pretty soon what it feels like to live in a world where the cops can kick in your door on a whim and take whatever they feel like taking.
It sounds to me like you have some growing up left to do before you realize that all people are people - not just you. Think about this from the teacher's perspective (the poor $25,000/yr civil servant you seek to burden with yet more responsibility for sanitizing the first 18 years of a person's life before sending them out, unprepared into the big bad Real World) - "Oh, shit - Kray1975 and Big Meanie are bickering again. Now I have to break it up and take sides. Damn, whose self-esteem do I damage this time? Ah, flip a coin."
My wife and I both had this ephiphany not too long ago - we used to see ourselves as victimized in school, but when we looked back over our childhood, we were mean to other kids, too. We weren't the lone hero in the movie, silently dealing with injustice and unfairness, shining beacons of purity and goodness awash in a sea of cruelty... instead, we were normal people in a world full of normal people. Some days you're the dog, some days you're the fire hydrant.
At least things changed when we hit high school. I went to a very diversely populated high school. Started playing football. I hate football. But I got to play against a LOT of my former tormentors. Offensive Tackle is a very good position I can tell you, and vengeance is sweet no matter what your mom says.
So, in other words, you did what people do when they grow up - you handled it. Learning to handle teasing (which is what we called "cyber-bullying" when I was a kid) is part of growing up.
Let me ask you a question - do you really think that you'd be the man you are today if, instead of being given a chance to work things out on the football field, the teachers had intervened every time a "dozen fucking assholes surrounded you and tormented you verbally" by telling them, "now, now, you twelve - don't hurt poor GeckoX's feelings, there - he's a fragile little thing and your words will ruin his life"?
I'm almost positive that I was picked on way worse than you, bro - I had Tourette's Syndrome (the kind that makes you twitch, not the kind that makes you swear) and I definitely didn't have any friends throughout primary and middle school. But I grew up. I learned to deal with adversity. I didn't even get bigger and stronger than everybody else, like you did - I'm still a bit on the small side (other than my midsection, unfortunately). However, I'm self confident and women even actually talk to me (even though I do occasionally suffer from odd twitches) - because I learned to deal with my own problems, the way men are supposed to.
(Perhaps veering off topic a bit...) I've seen that brought up quite a bit in the past few years - "X carries a lighter sentence than Y", where Y is always a crime involving children, but it's usually used to justify raising the penalty of Y. For example, Masha's Law triples the penalties for CP possession because "the penalties for downloading music are/were higher". I sort of suspect that the upshot of this (if any) won't be to introduce sanity around gambling laws, but just to impose the death penalty for kidnapping and psychologically altering young boys.
Those who can't teach themselves get a Comp Sci BS
Tell me about it - I am so tired of the bias against the self educated. I read all of "Open Heart Surgery for Dummies" and the hospital still keeps telling me to get out of the OR.
Speaking of which, Linux seems to work just fine for me (much better than Windows), so I haven't started beating the bushes for an alternative - however, I can't stand X-Windows. The main problem I have with MS-Windows is that it (the OS kernel) is joined at the hip with that horrible desktop with its horrible overbloated API. Although Linux isn't joined at the hip with the horrible XWindows with its horrible overbloated API, but I'm not aware of any alternatives. There are lots of desktops that run on *top of* XWindows, but the only potential replacement I've ever seen is SVGA Lib, which, like the orphan OSes in the OP, doesn't get much developer attention.
But you're just guessing as to what the contents of the site(s) in question were - all you know is that some LEA said it was illegal. The actual content may have been much tamer than you're thinking (or even completely fictional) - we'll never know. And (regardless of the country in which you live, apparently) it's against the law for you or I even to look and find out if we agree that it is illegal (or should be). I beleive I read somewhere that Canada even made it against the law to find out how to find out (that is, just to find out what the name of the website was). One would presume that, if these folks go to trial (if they even get trials for these cases any more), then at least the jury will have a chance to take a look at what the accused was looking at and say, "yep, that's illegal alright"... but I'm afraid I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they didn't even let the jury look.
You're assuming they're using their own credit cards... remember, we're talking about people who are already commiting a crime to begin with. How'd you like to have your credit card # harvested and then find out about it by having the Gestapo kick in your door? Yikes.
Slashdot Mirror
Which are perfectly legitimate questions to be asking (in fact, I'd go so far as to say that asking those questions is the reason we ought to be on the payroll in the first place). I rarely encounter requests for features along the lines of, "We need to crebit the general ledger by $5.00 every time somebody incurs a transaction fee" - the need for that is obvious, and I wouldn't argue about that. The requests for "features" I encounter tend to be more along the lines of, "Can we create a table in our Oracle database to store all of the word documents that accounting keeps the general ledger on?" I guess you'd just reflexively say "yes" to avoid being a "roadblock" to the "business needs" - after all, you don't want to refuse to "except (sic) without lengthy disagreement the 'needs' of the business people."
Try not to take the trolls too seriously. Several variants of the "studying computer science makes you dumber - and I know because I'm teh big bo$$" appear underneath every slashdot article whose summary contains the letters "CS". Undoubtedly, this guy was a business major - if you think CS majors are concerned, you should be aware that business majors are terrified. Computer Science, relevant to the practice of computer programming or not, is an extremely difficult degree to attain, whereas business degrees are fairly straightforward to complete (somewhere in between, say, an English Lit or a Communications degree and a Computer Science degree). It's fairly obvious, to most everybody, that somebody who can complete a CS degree can pick up the basics of economics and accounting (which is essentially what a "business degree" is) far easir than a business school drone can pick up (even the) basics of software design. The only reason we haven't started replacing them in droves (yet) is because, at the moment, our current jobs appear far more interesting than theirs. This guy's rant is designed to scare potential CS majors away to business school, to make sure that enough people drink the kool-aid to keep this guy in place until retirement.
You think Lycos' customer service is bad? I just got an e-mail from Bank of America about how they need me to click through this link and verify my client information, and I don't even have an account there! I messed them up, though - I clicked through and input my account details with my actual bank account with Washington Mutual. That ought to confuse somebody in processing!
I must wonder, though, how many "sorry, but no" responses came before the "not so sorry, but no" response, but weren't represented in her blog. Remember, the customer service rep didn't get a chance to tell his side of the story.
That point seems to be a bit ambiguous - I get the impression that what he was trying to say was that if she had originally signed up for the premium service, then this would have been an option at this point. I'm not quite ready to jump on the "hate the customer service guy" bandwagon here yet - we didn't see the whole exchange; we just see a few excerpts presented by somebody with an axe to grind (for all we know, that last response was completely fabricated). He may have explained exactly what he was talking about, and she may have gotten a lot ruder in the blank spaces. I think it's ironic the number of Slashdot readers who are ready to crucify this guy for being honest rather than hiding behind corporate doublespeak and faux politeness - say what you want about this guy, but at least he's not an insincere, two-faced, backstabbing PHB.
Here's how I think about that... about 230 years ago, folks living in a British colony that didn't have that sort of legal protection were willing to fight and die for the right to have it (it was the fourth thing on their list, actually). I'm guessing that there's probably something pretty upsetting about random, unwarranted searches and seizures that propelled them to feel so strongly about it. Of course, the way things are going, I won't have to guess much longer - it will be readily apparent to all of us pretty soon what it feels like to live in a world where the cops can kick in your door on a whim and take whatever they feel like taking.
Sounds more to me like a roadblock every time there's a little crime.
Your sarcasm reeks of cyber-bullying. Help! Police!
Spoken like a cyber-bully. Help! Police!
That looks like cyber-bullying to me. Help! Police!
It sounds to me like you have some growing up left to do before you realize that all people are people - not just you. Think about this from the teacher's perspective (the poor $25,000/yr civil servant you seek to burden with yet more responsibility for sanitizing the first 18 years of a person's life before sending them out, unprepared into the big bad Real World) - "Oh, shit - Kray1975 and Big Meanie are bickering again. Now I have to break it up and take sides. Damn, whose self-esteem do I damage this time? Ah, flip a coin."
My wife and I both had this ephiphany not too long ago - we used to see ourselves as victimized in school, but when we looked back over our childhood, we were mean to other kids, too. We weren't the lone hero in the movie, silently dealing with injustice and unfairness, shining beacons of purity and goodness awash in a sea of cruelty... instead, we were normal people in a world full of normal people. Some days you're the dog, some days you're the fire hydrant.
So, in other words, you did what people do when they grow up - you handled it. Learning to handle teasing (which is what we called "cyber-bullying" when I was a kid) is part of growing up.
Let me ask you a question - do you really think that you'd be the man you are today if, instead of being given a chance to work things out on the football field, the teachers had intervened every time a "dozen fucking assholes surrounded you and tormented you verbally" by telling them, "now, now, you twelve - don't hurt poor GeckoX's feelings, there - he's a fragile little thing and your words will ruin his life"?
I'm almost positive that I was picked on way worse than you, bro - I had Tourette's Syndrome (the kind that makes you twitch, not the kind that makes you swear) and I definitely didn't have any friends throughout primary and middle school. But I grew up. I learned to deal with adversity. I didn't even get bigger and stronger than everybody else, like you did - I'm still a bit on the small side (other than my midsection, unfortunately). However, I'm self confident and women even actually talk to me (even though I do occasionally suffer from odd twitches) - because I learned to deal with my own problems, the way men are supposed to.
(Perhaps veering off topic a bit...) I've seen that brought up quite a bit in the past few years - "X carries a lighter sentence than Y", where Y is always a crime involving children, but it's usually used to justify raising the penalty of Y. For example, Masha's Law triples the penalties for CP possession because "the penalties for downloading music are/were higher". I sort of suspect that the upshot of this (if any) won't be to introduce sanity around gambling laws, but just to impose the death penalty for kidnapping and psychologically altering young boys.
Tell me about it - I am so tired of the bias against the self educated. I read all of "Open Heart Surgery for Dummies" and the hospital still keeps telling me to get out of the OR.
So I guess it's safe to assume that your girlfriends legs and armpits are as hairy as yours then, right?
I got married five years ago. So I can't remember.
Yes, because the bit density of the 300x200 pixel windows you download is much too low.
Or so I've heard.
Gnu Libc, X window and POSIX
Speaking of which, Linux seems to work just fine for me (much better than Windows), so I haven't started beating the bushes for an alternative - however, I can't stand X-Windows. The main problem I have with MS-Windows is that it (the OS kernel) is joined at the hip with that horrible desktop with its horrible overbloated API. Although Linux isn't joined at the hip with the horrible XWindows with its horrible overbloated API, but I'm not aware of any alternatives. There are lots of desktops that run on *top of* XWindows, but the only potential replacement I've ever seen is SVGA Lib, which, like the orphan OSes in the OP, doesn't get much developer attention.
Well, you're assuming they're done. Maybe they had just finished searching suspect #323 when this article went to print.
But you're just guessing as to what the contents of the site(s) in question were - all you know is that some LEA said it was illegal. The actual content may have been much tamer than you're thinking (or even completely fictional) - we'll never know. And (regardless of the country in which you live, apparently) it's against the law for you or I even to look and find out if we agree that it is illegal (or should be). I beleive I read somewhere that Canada even made it against the law to find out how to find out (that is, just to find out what the name of the website was). One would presume that, if these folks go to trial (if they even get trials for these cases any more), then at least the jury will have a chance to take a look at what the accused was looking at and say, "yep, that's illegal alright"... but I'm afraid I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they didn't even let the jury look.
You're assuming they're using their own credit cards... remember, we're talking about people who are already commiting a crime to begin with. How'd you like to have your credit card # harvested and then find out about it by having the Gestapo kick in your door? Yikes.
And the job before that, and the job before that, and the job before that...
Seriously, I finally quit job-hopping when I realized that all programming jobs are the same.
Damn, dude... if the accountants didn't already know that, you've got bigger problems than which programming language to use.
You're giving him too much credit. He would save give 9 pages each to 600 developers.
Actually, that was Fezzik's line.