I remember in 2006 an ad for a senior.NET developer job... The catch is, that ad was obviously written by HR, not IT...so they used their canned senior developer ad...
Senior developer often means 6-8 years experience. So they asked for someone with 6-8 years experience with the.NET framework 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005.
Think about it for a sec. in 2006, 6-8 years experience with VS2005... whoops much?.NET in general came out in 2002, so even if someone used the beta 1-2 years before general release, worked at Microsoft or something, you could at best brush the requirement at 6 year... 8 year was plain and simple impossible.
and thats fine. Companies don't switch OS every 3 years. Honestly, a lot of companies were going to skip XP altogether, but considering XP lived 5-6 years, all they skipped was XP and XP ServicePack 1:)
Even if Vista was the best thing since sliced bread, it most likely would have been skipped by most companies since MS seems to be back on their usual OS release schedule (2-3 years between releases).
Well, technically the PS3 is sold at a loss, while the blu ray player is potentially sold at a profit, thus why they have the same price point.
I agree with most of the rest of your post though. I have an upconverting DVD player, and if I play a 720p movie, then switch to a normal DVD, I don't see a difference. There -is- a difference if you put them side by side...but if the difference isn't painfully obvious (like VHS vs DVD), then its not worth it for me.
"IT" is a term that englobes too many positions. I know here that anything hardware or network related is kindda down... companies train their in-house techy staff to keep it working until they have more money to replace the sysadmin and the hardware techs, while abusing VMWare and stuff like nuts when a machine goes down instead of replacing it...
In the software development, and moreso, software maintenance fields though... There was a big boom early this year, and it went down a bit with the threat of recession, but the boom is back now that companies want to enhance their existing infrastructure instead of getting new ones (which is takes more people in house, but less integrator and consultants than a new system, etc).
On top of the usual boom that happens at the end of each year (replacing all of the per-year consultants that quit, etc), software developers really don't have any issues unless they suck or live in an area that was more heavily affected than most.
I agree. Vista's shutdown button defaults to "Sleep", which is the same thing as the suspend you describe. Once you start using it, you don't look back. Well, unless then 50 cents a month in electricity that it costs is a big deal to you:)
Not for free since you have to pay for Windows, but Vista (except basic and maybe business, not sure) DOES have DVD playback built in (not from the OEM).
Just in case there's some confusion (since the standard WinXP Pro didn't have DVD decoders built in), Vista Home Premium and Ultimate do have DVD playback support out of the box.
Now if you were (which is more likely) refering to out of the box Vista experience being inferior, regardless of codec, thats fine. I just wanted to clarify in case it was because of DVD playback:)
Well, that C++0x thing or however its called has lambdas and functions closer to being a first class construct...so thats pretty much exactly whats happening already, give or take:)
The fact that highschool or college prof would not allow it as a source is meaningless: many, many schools will not allow ANY encyclopedia as a source, for various reason. OF COURSE they won't allow Wikipedia in that case (and obviously, many will allow some encyclopedias, but not Wikipedia, because they don't allow online references).
If you just take the subset of profs that will allow online references, will allow encyclopedias, yet won't allow wikipedia, the number falls by a lot.
Man, they SERIOUSLY need that license notification...considering that last I checked, Firefox wasn't GPL (its MPL) and a lot of people here seem to think it is!
The last bit is incorrect. In most modern RDBMS, the query analysis is done at the same time for both stored procedure and parameterized queries, and then, in both cases, is cached, for whatever amount of time the RDBMS (or DBA configuration) tells it to, and reused for that period of time.
Compile time query analysis and query plan caching is actually an old way of handling it (some less powerful rdbms still do it that way, but the good ones don't): it has to be, as the query analysis will vary GREATLY depending on database statistics, thus it needs to be defered as far as possible, and redone every so often to re-analyse the statistics. Complex stored procedures would be incredibly slow if they were precompiled, or even if the query plan was cached for too long.
Parameterized queries work the same way (actually, in many cases, the parameterized queries and stored procedures go through the same pipeline), with the only performance difference being the amount of data sent (for a stored procedure, you only send the time...for parameterized sql, you send the entire query, which can be a hit if you have extremely huge queries. This is offset by how a parameterized query can be more flexible, and dynamically generated to request less data, while stored procedure reuse makes that harder, so often requests for useless fields will be made)
All in all, in most cases, the myth that stored procedures are precompiled is just that: a huge myth.
The fact that "mysql_real_escape_string" or whatever exists is an example of that: String escaping relies on string manipulation tricks to make things "secure". On top of being potentially vulnerable to any problem in the server (which obviously cannot be gotten around of), it is also vulnerable to anything on the language side: for example, a string vulnerability would also make your queries vulnerable. Two attack vectors.
Its a workaround, a cheat, a hack. A prepared statement is handled by the driver and/or by the server itself, to compile your statement, and then pass the parameters (like you would a stored procedure or a function) at the binary level, on a RDBMS by RDBMS basis... That is, the vulnerabilities at the string level of MySQL are not the same as Postgres which are not the same as Oracle, DB2, or SQLServer, etc.
On top of that, prepared statements will (in most RBDMS) compile and cache the statement, and be able to reuse it whenever is needed (basically, whenever the query is the same except for the parameters), which enhance performance.
So there's simply no reason to use string escaping, and hasn't been ages.
Don't even need stored procedures... prepared statements are more than enough... But seems like even this is asking too much. I'll never understand... having to think about all the concatenating and quote escaping and conversion of datatypes to string and all that garbage is so confusing... Even if it wasn't for security, prepared statements are so much better (when not using an ORM anyway)
The string escaping culture is really sticky, too. Its almost like hungarian notation, but worse. People tend to get insulted if you mention that you need to use prepared statements. Then when you explain it, they tend to insist that nothing can get through string escaping, that its perfectly fine, and sometimes they make excuses for it being better.
Then the only way to convince some people is to point out the performance issues (prepared statements result in cached query plans in many RDBMS, giving performance equal to stored procedures), and thats the only way to get through.
iTunes on a Windows computer has about the same effect as installing a mainstream anti-virus such as Norton or McAfee, and its been like that basically for all available versions.
The first stage alone is worth the 60$ for the game. For those who don't know (its kind of a spoiler...but its the FIRST stage, so whatever!), the first stage is a prequel to the actual game, and you play as Darth Vader himself with basically all of the skills maxed out, except with Force Lightning swapped out for Force Choke (since I beleive story-wise Darth Vader cannot use Force Lightning).
There was a video of the early game made by GameSpot... the demo really doesn't do the game justice. And screw the reviews. Is there still people who don't realise that buying out critics is the norm more than the exception in the industry? So the poor reviews probably just mean critics weren't bought and that the game isn't Final Fantasy: The Force Unleashed, or Halo 4: Force Unleashed Evolved.
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I remember in 2006 an ad for a senior .NET developer job... The catch is, that ad was obviously written by HR, not IT...so they used their canned senior developer ad...
Senior developer often means 6-8 years experience. So they asked for someone with 6-8 years experience with the .NET framework 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005.
Think about it for a sec. in 2006, 6-8 years experience with VS2005... whoops much? .NET in general came out in 2002, so even if someone used the beta 1-2 years before general release, worked at Microsoft or something, you could at best brush the requirement at 6 year... 8 year was plain and simple impossible.
Funny stuff.
and thats fine. Companies don't switch OS every 3 years. Honestly, a lot of companies were going to skip XP altogether, but considering XP lived 5-6 years, all they skipped was XP and XP ServicePack 1 :)
Even if Vista was the best thing since sliced bread, it most likely would have been skipped by most companies since MS seems to be back on their usual OS release schedule (2-3 years between releases).
Well, technically the PS3 is sold at a loss, while the blu ray player is potentially sold at a profit, thus why they have the same price point.
I agree with most of the rest of your post though. I have an upconverting DVD player, and if I play a 720p movie, then switch to a normal DVD, I don't see a difference. There -is- a difference if you put them side by side...but if the difference isn't painfully obvious (like VHS vs DVD), then its not worth it for me.
"IT" is a term that englobes too many positions. I know here that anything hardware or network related is kindda down... companies train their in-house techy staff to keep it working until they have more money to replace the sysadmin and the hardware techs, while abusing VMWare and stuff like nuts when a machine goes down instead of replacing it...
In the software development, and moreso, software maintenance fields though... There was a big boom early this year, and it went down a bit with the threat of recession, but the boom is back now that companies want to enhance their existing infrastructure instead of getting new ones (which is takes more people in house, but less integrator and consultants than a new system, etc).
On top of the usual boom that happens at the end of each year (replacing all of the per-year consultants that quit, etc), software developers really don't have any issues unless they suck or live in an area that was more heavily affected than most.
I agree. Vista's shutdown button defaults to "Sleep", which is the same thing as the suspend you describe. Once you start using it, you don't look back. Well, unless then 50 cents a month in electricity that it costs is a big deal to you :)
honestly this all wouldn't matter if we had hardware decoders as standard... would raise the cost, but....
Not for free since you have to pay for Windows, but Vista (except basic and maybe business, not sure) DOES have DVD playback built in (not from the OEM).
Vista Home Premium and Ultimate have DVD playback built in. It doesn't change the rest of your point though.
Just in case there's some confusion (since the standard WinXP Pro didn't have DVD decoders built in), Vista Home Premium and Ultimate do have DVD playback support out of the box.
Now if you were (which is more likely) refering to out of the box Vista experience being inferior, regardless of codec, thats fine. I just wanted to clarify in case it was because of DVD playback :)
I'm a C# guy. To me, -everything- C++ short of the curly braces is damn ugly syntax. I can't tell whats "super ugly" and what is normal :)
Well, that C++0x thing or however its called has lambdas and functions closer to being a first class construct...so thats pretty much exactly whats happening already, give or take :)
Man I love Nietzsche. Didn't read enough of his stuff though, as shown by the fact that I had never heard that quote. Epic.
Or that maybe its just that solar cells convert 10% of not much light into energy, and that this would convert 10% of a lot more light per surface =P
The fact that highschool or college prof would not allow it as a source is meaningless: many, many schools will not allow ANY encyclopedia as a source, for various reason. OF COURSE they won't allow Wikipedia in that case (and obviously, many will allow some encyclopedias, but not Wikipedia, because they don't allow online references).
If you just take the subset of profs that will allow online references, will allow encyclopedias, yet won't allow wikipedia, the number falls by a lot.
Technet is for the sysadmins/network & domain admins/DBAs.
For programmers in Microsoft Land, the main reference site is MSDN (or well, google with site:msdn.microsoft.com, because MSDN's search tool sucks)
Thats because Javadoc -IS- machine generated =P Its just an API reference, not a full documentation per say, for better or worse.
Hrm, its tri-licensed, not just MPL, whoopsies. Anyway, you get the idea.
Man, they SERIOUSLY need that license notification...considering that last I checked, Firefox wasn't GPL (its MPL) and a lot of people here seem to think it is!
The last bit is incorrect. In most modern RDBMS, the query analysis is done at the same time for both stored procedure and parameterized queries, and then, in both cases, is cached, for whatever amount of time the RDBMS (or DBA configuration) tells it to, and reused for that period of time.
Compile time query analysis and query plan caching is actually an old way of handling it (some less powerful rdbms still do it that way, but the good ones don't): it has to be, as the query analysis will vary GREATLY depending on database statistics, thus it needs to be defered as far as possible, and redone every so often to re-analyse the statistics. Complex stored procedures would be incredibly slow if they were precompiled, or even if the query plan was cached for too long.
Parameterized queries work the same way (actually, in many cases, the parameterized queries and stored procedures go through the same pipeline), with the only performance difference being the amount of data sent (for a stored procedure, you only send the time...for parameterized sql, you send the entire query, which can be a hit if you have extremely huge queries. This is offset by how a parameterized query can be more flexible, and dynamically generated to request less data, while stored procedure reuse makes that harder, so often requests for useless fields will be made)
All in all, in most cases, the myth that stored procedures are precompiled is just that: a huge myth.
VBA can have paramterized query. The old ADO supports them just fine...
The fact that "mysql_real_escape_string" or whatever exists is an example of that: String escaping relies on string manipulation tricks to make things "secure". On top of being potentially vulnerable to any problem in the server (which obviously cannot be gotten around of), it is also vulnerable to anything on the language side: for example, a string vulnerability would also make your queries vulnerable. Two attack vectors.
Its a workaround, a cheat, a hack. A prepared statement is handled by the driver and/or by the server itself, to compile your statement, and then pass the parameters (like you would a stored procedure or a function) at the binary level, on a RDBMS by RDBMS basis... That is, the vulnerabilities at the string level of MySQL are not the same as Postgres which are not the same as Oracle, DB2, or SQLServer, etc.
On top of that, prepared statements will (in most RBDMS) compile and cache the statement, and be able to reuse it whenever is needed (basically, whenever the query is the same except for the parameters), which enhance performance.
So there's simply no reason to use string escaping, and hasn't been ages.
Don't even need stored procedures... prepared statements are more than enough... But seems like even this is asking too much. I'll never understand... having to think about all the concatenating and quote escaping and conversion of datatypes to string and all that garbage is so confusing... Even if it wasn't for security, prepared statements are so much better (when not using an ORM anyway)
The string escaping culture is really sticky, too. Its almost like hungarian notation, but worse. People tend to get insulted if you mention that you need to use prepared statements. Then when you explain it, they tend to insist that nothing can get through string escaping, that its perfectly fine, and sometimes they make excuses for it being better.
Then the only way to convince some people is to point out the performance issues (prepared statements result in cached query plans in many RDBMS, giving performance equal to stored procedures), and thats the only way to get through.
Oh well, someday...someday...
iTunes on a Windows computer has about the same effect as installing a mainstream anti-virus such as Norton or McAfee, and its been like that basically for all available versions.
The first stage alone is worth the 60$ for the game. For those who don't know (its kind of a spoiler...but its the FIRST stage, so whatever!), the first stage is a prequel to the actual game, and you play as Darth Vader himself with basically all of the skills maxed out, except with Force Lightning swapped out for Force Choke (since I beleive story-wise Darth Vader cannot use Force Lightning).
There was a video of the early game made by GameSpot... the demo really doesn't do the game justice. And screw the reviews. Is there still people who don't realise that buying out critics is the norm more than the exception in the industry? So the poor reviews probably just mean critics weren't bought and that the game isn't Final Fantasy: The Force Unleashed, or Halo 4: Force Unleashed Evolved.