t's easy to say "provided that thought process will successfully create software". But if we are allowed to assume that unproven statement, it would also be true if everybody used their own process, provided that those each of those processes "will successfully create software".
...where did you get that I was assuming an unproven statement? I think the statement I am making does make sense. If you are using a development process that works, having your team instinctively follow that process will make shipping software easier. It reduces training costs and impedance from people who are not really interested in following that development style.
Good bye libpcap! oh ethereal wireshark, where art thou?
...and after Microsoft manages to ensure those don't work on Windows they can claim that 99% of all hackers run linux. Hurray for enabling bad statistics.
The last time I saw production code that reversed a linked list, it was because someone wanted the last element of the list. So they reversed the list and extracted the head. After reading the code for a while, I realized that I was looking at C code written by a LISP programmer.
I would hazard a guess that you were looking at C code written by a poor Lisp programmer, too. Anyone who has studied Lisp and did not learn the value in understanding how your language maps to your problem did not really study Lisp. A competent Lisp programmer would have examined their method, the tools provided by the language, or the choice of language itself before diving into pointer munging.
The implicit assumption that their approach is (a) the only one that works, or (b) better than everyone else's, is not going to help improve their business.
You forgot (c) that having a time entirely built of people who instinctively use the same approach has operational value. If your entire team thinks the same way, provided that thought process will successfully create software, you are going to have an easier time getting work out the door. Obviously there are caveats, and there may be factors that are more important than this, but I can understand why someone would base business decisions on this principle.
That said, most companies that do end up hiring this way are probably going of some permutation (a), (b), or both. In which case I agree with what you are saying.
Most people think about it as a great idea, few people actually do it. But if it's any incentive, the fewer people that do something the more weight granted to those that do. For example, when you vote, if only half the eligible voters turn out, your opinion counts for two. In the example of writing to your congressman, if only 1 per 1000 do it, your opinion counts for a 1000 people.
I have a friend that is an elected official. I forget what the title is exactly, but I think he supervises the collection of ballots at election time. He wrote his own name in on the ballot at election time and won unopposed with a single vote. This happened in a major metropolitan area (Philadelphia). I am not suggesting that one person could write in and change a congressman's mind, but the minimum threshold to get him/her to sit up and listen is probably a lot lower than you would suspect.
(image only, don't want something that hacks into automated tractors)...
Aww, well take all the fun out of it why don't ya? As for your question, probably not very hard to get something working, much more difficult to make it look convincing. You could pretty easily make something that looks decent provided the crops in the picture are roughly consistent in color though.
I have a friend that is a 50 year old former auto mechanic. He decided to change jobs when he lost the middle finger on one hand in an accident and couldn't stand the idea of going back into that profession. He took the settlement and used the money to fund his way through community college, then a MIS degree. He now has a full time sysadmin job.
In short, if a 50 year old mechanic can do it missing a middle finger on one of his hands you should be able to muddle through.
That means there are 84 and 126 year old people out there doing all sorts of cool stuff!
Most of them are working on in-place genetic anti-aging solutions that are applicable towards extreme ends of the life cycle. For some reason they seem more driven about this than their fellow researchers. The 126 year-old in particular.
In the interest of being fair, Ruby is the current hype language and hasn't had much in the way of books until recently, of course book sales are going to be way up. I would expect them to die down a bit as the language reaches whatever natural saturation level it is going to hit.
I also am having a hard time recalling any good OReilly Python books that came out recently. That may have something to do with this as well.
The problem there is that you are implicitly assuming that both sites are developed in the same way. My guess is that most banking websites are part of a package deal for the entire banking infrastructure, and are put together by systems programmers or someone else who does not specialize in web design. It generally is somewhere between hard and impossible to get a given website to look correct in all browsers when you are an expert in the field, someone less experienced trying to use a widget library to help them get the job done will end up with platform issues. Until very recently (if at all) the website has not really been the public face for banks. It has always been so for game companies, which makes it a little more important to them to get things right.
That said, I agree that it sucks and should be fixed. Yes, it is hard to do it right, but sometimes it takes a hard man to make a tender chicken.
Please try harder next time. My Pun-Ometer just went all the way down to "R. Dangerfield". Any lower I would have had to call in a cleanup crew to scrub the residue from a Carrot Top level event.
"Doomsday device? Ah, now the ball's in Farnsworth's court! [Presses a button, revealing a vast and fearsome arsenal of doomsday weapons] I suppose I could part with one and still be feared..."
Just stick to open standards... is it really that hard?
In a word, yes. Try some google searches on the subject if you are really interested. Getting the same document to look reasonably similar in IE and everything else becomes much more difficult as your page gets more complicated. Although there are slight standards issues with the other browsers, combined they do not even come close to the pain in the ass that IE is.
Fans of Ruby/Python/Smalltalk/Lisp/etc will do things like add a calculate-average method to Array and claim that is object-oriented, but it is not really.
Without knowing all of the languages in that list I feel safe, because of the languages I do know, in asserting that you have no fucking clue what you are talking about.
Well, lets put a few percent (out of four million users who may take up programming) at 3%. Then we can say that only a few percent of those will take up squeak (another 3%, just to make the math easy). That still leaves 3600 new squeak programmers, with even more coming if the numbers stay consistent as more of these laptops are purchased. Even then we are still assuming that nobody will have to share a laptop.
And yes, we stand on opposite sides of the question. You are coming from emotion; I am coming from reason.
Yeah, I guess it is easy to be right when you decide at the outside that your opponent is wrong. Good job, give yourself a pat on the back there. If I jump in and say that you are coming from emotion and I am coming from reason will that make my arguments correct without having to really read yours? I was simply stating that, in the sense that it raises awareness, celebrities discussing their diseases is a good thing. Obviously it is prone to emotional appeal, and I never argued that such appeals were not a problem. For what its worth although Parkinson's occurs less frequently it is more debilitating than most cancers.
I've explained it. At conception a unique human genetic combination (UHGC) comes into existence, with all its human potential of unique personality, talents, and physical expression. What makes yours superior to its? What gives your unique human genetic makeup the right to tear its apart for your purposes?
I refuse to acknowledge the rights of a chemical reaction, regardless of what it could turn into. Until it is capable of participating in our society it has no more rights than pool chemicals. Before we go any further please explain to me how unique human genetic combinations are differentiated from other unique genetic combinations for the purposes of this argument.
Really? I think you have to think more deeply, then, about what exactly they are promising you for your moral surrender, and what you are tacitly accepting.
Oh, well then please just come out and tell me what I think and what I am getting into, because according to you I obviously lack the ability to figure it out on my own. Before that you may want to look up fallacious uses of slippery slope arguments, or provide the steps by which stem cell experimentation that has been explicitly allowed for medical experiments to cure diseases will lead to immortality.
This isn't about accepting culteral differences, or racial differences. This isn't about recognizing the moral equivalence of all "systems." This is about defining murder. And you define murder far too conveniently, too sloppily, for my liking.
No, this is only about defining murder for you. It is your moral outlook that defines this as murder, not mine. I do not have the time or the inclination to explain my belief systems to you. This is probably a good thing because you apparently are not interested in understanding them, only asserting that your ideas are right.
Obviously, and not to the point. The point is that it is an emotional manipulation, adds nothing to the moral debate, and such appeals can lead us to do things that are wrong.
Yes, attempting to save Alex Keaton at all costs simply because the actor playing him made us smile in Family Ties is a bit much, but that is not the only option. For many (hopefully most) people the differences between Michael J. Fox at that time and as he is now would be instructive in what Parkinson's actually does to people. When it serves to highlight the affects of Parkinson's is celebrity campaigning really such a bad thing? The debate from there obviously devolves into wether or not it incites personal analysis or emotional manipulation in the common case of people, and I would hazard a guess that we stand inarguably on opposite sides there.
Simply an inhuman comment. Your ability to see people as research material is disturbing at the least. Why not sterilize and eat people instead of burying them? Use the wasted resources, according to your philosophy. "Soylent Green," here we come. As for the "potential benefits," you don't demand much in order to discard morality, do you? All you need is the pretty zirconia of potential immortality dangled before you by the scientific-industrial-complex. You don't seem to really have any moral boundaries. That is a problem of many people in this subject area, a kind of socially acceptable psychopathy. Considering the percentage of people willing to tear others apart for their own need, I have to wonder, is psychopathy the new normalcy?
Let me highlight a comment that was obviously missed, which may explain the response you received.
Note: I am not really trying to be an ass here, just pointing out that there are some basic assumptions in this argument that are probably still up for debate.
That said, you managed to glean an astonishing amount of information about my (lack of) thought processes and (lack of) moral fibre from that comment. Too bad most of it was utterly wrong. Lets try this again though, just for fun.
Your ability to see people as research material is disturbing at the least.
Your ability to see a collection of cells as equivalent to a human being is disturbing at the least. Please explain to me why the conception stage is the appropriate point to characterize a group of cells as a person instead of, for instance, the point where a child is no longer directly dependant on its mother for continued functioning.
Why not sterilize and eat people instead of burying them? Use the wasted resources, according to your philosophy.
Even ignoring my above argument about the point at which cells equate to human life, how does this logically follow from what I said? I was discussing the use of fertilized cells (or extremely young people, by some moral classifications) for medical research, not food. Additionally your statement of "instead of burying them" implies that the individuals in question are already dead, which is not the case in fertilized embryos. Does that mean, however, that you do not support medical experimentation on corpses?
As for the "potential benefits," you don't demand much in order to discard morality, do you? All you need is the pretty zirconia of potential immortality dangled before you by the scientific-industrial-complex.
I never once stated that I believed stem cells will lead us to immortality, and frankly have no idea where you got that idea. That said, it is your morality that is being discarded for this, not mine. Experimentation with fertilized eggs is entirely consistent with a moral viewpoint that human life starts at biological independance from any one individual. (commonly: at birth, medically: somewhat sooner)
You don't seem to really have any moral boundaries. That is a problem of many pe
And why exactly are we supposed to rush into crossing moral boundaries and ponying up billions of dollars in research money to save Michael J. Fox or Superman?
Most people can identify with a celebrity more than a total stranger. To see a stranger twitching during an interview due to Parkinsons is tragic, but to see the same thing happen to someone with a recognizable face makes the issue slightly more personal. Obviously that it is happening to a celebrity does not make the issue more important, but it does cause us to examine our interests in the subject on a more personal level.
It amazes me how people turn the deep discussion of morality into a simple discussion of waste. They trivialize the subject. They dismiss the un-responded-to point that it is immoral to tear unique human genetic combinations apart for research because of the selfish human need to live forever. To be perfectly clear, it is not a question of wasting a resource by discarding fertilized eggs; it is a question of using those eggs for research contrary to the correct moral strictures against experimenting on humans without their permission.
It amazes me how people turn the simple discussion of waste into a deep discussion of morality. They overstate the importance of the subject. They dismiss the great potential benefits because of a selfish desire to impose their belief structure on a world that does not agree with them. To be perfectly clear, it is not a question of moral strictures as applied to collections of cells that can only be dubiously labelled as human; it is a question of wasting resources by needlessly discarding fertilized eggs in concession to the moral viewpoints of a social minority.
Note: I am not really trying to be an ass here, just pointing out that there are some basic assumptions in this argument that are probably still up for debate.
When I played EVE there was one character who was infamous for kill-stealing and stuff like that. Everyone knew his name. Many wanted him banned. Sure, it sucks for the people who got cheated, but why should a game be completely sanitized? Personally, I thought it was neat to have infamous people like that. I thought it made the game more interesting to have real problems to deal with, talk about, and think about instead of just the more mundane things that are programmed into the game.
The other cool part about EVE is that people could deal with this because death is meaningful there. If the guy becomes too much of a problem, form up a posse and hunt him down. Decide that you want to work on that problem permanently? Start a corporation of bounty hunters that track these people down and deal with them.
So those who are above starving are going to connect to Myspace to tell others that there are people starving 30 miles away?
Most are, but some will actually get out in help. I doubt that the numbers will be much different from how they are in first world countries. That said, provided the helpers:non-helpers ratio stays constant, adding to the population of people capable of helping still increases the number of people doing so. Considering that this is being largely funded by geeks who probably would not have spent their money on donating food and medicine it seems like a decent project.
While someone has said "teach a man to fish", he still needs a pole and that pole is not a laptop.
fishing::learning as fishing pole::laptop. Although a laptop is obviously not required for learning, given some of the other constraints in the areas where it will be going it is better than most other tools.
Sorry folks but yes, it's a good idea but there are far more basic needs that must be addressed FIRST.
Yep, there are a lot of people with really basic needs. Too bad there are not more educated members of society with the ability to communicate those needs to each other and organize some aid. It would be awesome if someone could help give an education boost to those countries that are above starvation but not yet affluent enough to really provide a lot of help. Oh wait...
By definition you are a server once you're connected to the internet. A server SENDS OUT INFORMATION TO OTHER COMPUTERS AS IT'S REQUESTED - guess what your computer does the second it connects to a website? It sends out an initial request,
That makes it a client you twit. A server waits for requests and answers them, a client initiates requests to gather information from a server. That negotiation is involved in the data exchange does not somehow make the client also a server. If you were to take something like that to court their attorneys would cite a longstanding history of computing culture defining clients and servers at the overall connection level, not just as the direction of an individual data transmission.
Ohh, nice one. Let me guess, you plan on following this up with some "your momma" jokes and finishing it off by making faces at me? Care to actually respond to any of the points I made, or is this the upper limit of your intellectual ability?
Slashdot Mirror
That said, most companies that do end up hiring this way are probably going of some permutation (a), (b), or both. In which case I agree with what you are saying.
In short, if a 50 year old mechanic can do it missing a middle finger on one of his hands you should be able to muddle through.
I also am having a hard time recalling any good OReilly Python books that came out recently. That may have something to do with this as well.
That said, I agree that it sucks and should be fixed. Yes, it is hard to do it right, but sometimes it takes a hard man to make a tender chicken.
Please try harder next time. My Pun-Ometer just went all the way down to "R. Dangerfield". Any lower I would have had to call in a cleanup crew to scrub the residue from a Carrot Top level event.
"Doomsday device? Ah, now the ball's in Farnsworth's court! [Presses a button, revealing a vast and fearsome arsenal of doomsday weapons] I suppose I could part with one and still be feared..."
Well, lets put a few percent (out of four million users who may take up programming) at 3%. Then we can say that only a few percent of those will take up squeak (another 3%, just to make the math easy). That still leaves 3600 new squeak programmers, with even more coming if the numbers stay consistent as more of these laptops are purchased. Even then we are still assuming that nobody will have to share a laptop.
Yes, attempting to save Alex Keaton at all costs simply because the actor playing him made us smile in Family Ties is a bit much, but that is not the only option. For many (hopefully most) people the differences between Michael J. Fox at that time and as he is now would be instructive in what Parkinson's actually does to people. When it serves to highlight the affects of Parkinson's is celebrity campaigning really such a bad thing? The debate from there obviously devolves into wether or not it incites personal analysis or emotional manipulation in the common case of people, and I would hazard a guess that we stand inarguably on opposite sides there.
Let me highlight a comment that was obviously missed, which may explain the response you received.
That said, you managed to glean an astonishing amount of information about my (lack of) thought processes and (lack of) moral fibre from that comment. Too bad most of it was utterly wrong. Lets try this again though, just for fun.
Your ability to see a collection of cells as equivalent to a human being is disturbing at the least. Please explain to me why the conception stage is the appropriate point to characterize a group of cells as a person instead of, for instance, the point where a child is no longer directly dependant on its mother for continued functioning.
Even ignoring my above argument about the point at which cells equate to human life, how does this logically follow from what I said? I was discussing the use of fertilized cells (or extremely young people, by some moral classifications) for medical research, not food. Additionally your statement of "instead of burying them" implies that the individuals in question are already dead, which is not the case in fertilized embryos. Does that mean, however, that you do not support medical experimentation on corpses?
I never once stated that I believed stem cells will lead us to immortality, and frankly have no idea where you got that idea. That said, it is your morality that is being discarded for this, not mine. Experimentation with fertilized eggs is entirely consistent with a moral viewpoint that human life starts at biological independance from any one individual. (commonly: at birth, medically: somewhat sooner)
Note: I am not really trying to be an ass here, just pointing out that there are some basic assumptions in this argument that are probably still up for debate.
Ohh, nice one. Let me guess, you plan on following this up with some "your momma" jokes and finishing it off by making faces at me? Care to actually respond to any of the points I made, or is this the upper limit of your intellectual ability?