Unfortunately, you are wrong. Remember, these are the assholes (MBAs) that are deciding to outsource skilled professional jobs. They will not outsource themselves. HR and other non-essential to core business types will go next.
The problem isn't that Windows XP ships with only the most common drivers, it's that Windows XP shipped 5 years ago. There's obviously been A LOT of hardware released since then. The Linux fanboys usually conveniently leave that little tidbit out though, and then claim Linux has better driver support.
True. However a Linux distro from 5 years ago would have the exact same problems as Windows XP. The reason that Linux does NOT have the problem is because of regular, smaller, and frequent releases. Thus, the argument is still valid.
The immorality of what the NSA and AT&T have done is worse that the illegality of it. I see no reason why the ultimate penalty should not be paid by the government officials who created this beast.
You mean you are going to take away their golf clubs and make them take minumum wage jobs at Wallmat?
HR and accounting? I mean seriously, what is so "special" about IT that makes it the most frequently outsourced field. There is no technical reason that the bean counters and HR monkeys could not be outsourced just as easily.
Divulging classified information is not "whistleblowing", no matter how you look at it. There are policies in place to report corruption or illegal activities in regards to classifired material. Leaking the info to reporters is not one of those procedures.
What are you fucking stupid? Speaking as someone familiar with clearances and classified material myself, do you REALLY think those "procedures" to report abuses would result in any sort of outcome that would actually solve the problem? In my view, the highest clearances have typically been used to protect information that violates some sort of international treaty. I'm also of the opinion that using clearances to hide violations of international treaties is fine. I'm not stupid. If you think that China or other European countries are not doing the EXACT same thing in that regard, you are fucking kidding yourself. As a soverign nation, we'd be doing ourself a disservice if we were not "keeping up with the Joneses".
The problem that I have with this administration is that they seem to be using clearances to hide their own illegal and unconstitutional activities and THAT is a fucking MAJOR problem. I take my hat off to the people who leaked it and wish them the best. I'm sure they know the sacrifice they made and I can only hope that the people of our country wake up and realize that the "real" terrorist wears a tie and is currently sitting in the Oval Office.
I agree with you completely. I've been following this somewhat closely and have come to something of a quandry. I understand and support the argument you made. Most of the people I know also understand and agree with the argument you made.
The next step is to convince our legislators. Though to do that we need to convicne Joe-six-pack. Will he still be able to play XBox Live? Will he still be able to go to NFL.com? Will he still be able to download pr0n? Will he still be able to go to an online gambling site? My guess is that he will still be able to do those things. Why should he (and by extension the legislators) care? How can we get the message across to "him"?
On the whole I completely agree with you. Personally, I cringe at the thought of writing documentation and I imagine that most other developers out there feel the same. So we end up with a situation where a developer, on their own time and because they enjoy it, is writing FOSS code. However, said developer hates writing documentation. Should they have to?
I would argue that no is the answer. That being said, the FOSS movement needs to be more proactive in recruiting people who would not mind writing documentation and want to contribute to FOSS.
I am soooo sick of hearing about "Web 2.0". Allow me to assist the Slashdotting public in understanding the definition of "Web 2.0":
rant Web 2.0 (noun, currently, wait until next week when marketing people start using it as a verb) - definition 1 - the underlying goal of the Internet as it is now finally understood by marketing majors (12 years after it first began getting popular) who never studied in college and now need a term to throw around. Thank you, masters of the obvious.
- definition 2 - Marketing term invented by group without any real technical knowledge (who did not study in school) to reflect the type of technology that frameworks such as AJAX are now offering. Note, there was never a "Web 1.5" when flash first came out because the marketing majors were still "playing catch up".
When will Oklahoma be passing the law making it a crime for ignorant parents to let their children (under the age of 18, of course) play these violent games?
From the parent: All the work that has to go into keeping the browser afloat is time that could have been better spent on making Vista work as first advertised [...] If you were to put together a comprehensive profit-and-loss statement for IE, there would be a zero in the profits column and billions in the losses column--billions.'"
In all honestly, its a headline I would love to read. I absolutely can not stand the crap software or the tactics put out by that company. However, I will not dignifiy Dvorak with the ad revenue of clicking to his article and will instead take apart his weak qoute from the Slashdot story...
Dvorak, quite simily, is an idiot or is on something. I'll go with the former. First off, on any given development project, there is a finite number of developers that you can through at it before productivity begins to go down. As such, it makes sense for a company like Microsoft with BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of dollars laying around to create other teams to do other things. The utter failure of Vista has nothing at all to do with IE and all its associated problems.
Ok, so now that we've dealt with how the two could not possibly be linked lets look at the reason d'etre for IE. IE has probably not DIRECTLY generated any revenue for Microsoft, however indirectly its been a cash cow. Had MS not used illegal predatory practices and bundled IE with Windows and given it away for free, MS would have steadily lost a foothold in the OS market by giving Netscape the browser edge. Even more servers would be UNIX based Apache (or Netscape) web servers and MS and its operating system would have been completely commoditized faster than its already happening. Every major web page that "works best with IE #.##" means another desktop that is not running Linux or OS X or whatever other great alternative we would have found. Its absolutely assinine to question why MS "keeps their browser afloat".
Well, there goes 15 minutes of my life, rebuffing Dvorak, when I could have been doing something more productive like watching dust settle on my finger nails. Stupid me.
"But copyright infringement is illegal. So they can stop some of the terrorists there (in theory)."
Do you not realize how fucking stupid this sounds? I'm agast that the parent was modded to insightful - probably on account of the mention of a Venn Diagram.
Here, allow me to hit you up with a qoute: "Those who are willing to sacrifice their basic liberties to assure their security deserve neither." - Benjamin Franklin
THAT, my friend, was a Patriot. The spineless assclown coward we have in office, his cronies, and the mindless sheep that agree with them, are NOT Patriots.
No. Every generation tends to get rid of bad mutations. It's called natural selection.
I know thats what you'd like to think, but its REALLY His Noodly Appendage making the area potentially habitable for Pirates again. There is simply not enough evidence to support any other conclusion.
Somehow, Microsoft has managed to make Macs look unappealing. There's just something about them sitting in that borgish configuration displaying on the older CRT monitors that makes them look cheap. Amazing.
Its really easy to point out everything wrong with Java. However, have you EVER had to develop a huge application in C or C++? Talk about pointer arithmitic hell. Ever try developing in a procedural language like PLSQL? I just recently inherited a project and am leading a team that has to support a large PLSQL web application. It is VERY painful. If I had a dime for everytime someone changed something and it broke 14 other things - I'd not be doing this anymore. Conversly, and complements of data hinding, our Java projects do not have that problem.
So yes, its easy to rag on Java (i personally perfer objective C). But what is the "better" alternative for large web based applications?
It also helps weed out those who shouldn't be studying CS, so that's a good thing for you.
I was not going to reply to this overall thread (about math and CS) - but this is something of a sore spot for me and I just can not resist:)
Back when the GRE was in three parts (Verbal, Quantatative, and Analytical), I took the test. Twice. The first time I scored a 690 in analytical, 530 in Quantative, and 560 in Verbal. The second, I was slightly lower in alalytical and slightly higher in quantatative. Verbal stayed almost identical. In college, I graduated with a major in Anthropology (with a focus on genetics) and a minor in Comp Sci. The quantatative test measures your ability to do classical math problems. The analytical test measures your ability in logical reasoning. My score on the anlytical section of the test put it somewhere in the top 10 percent of the population. Conversely, my score on the "math" section was considerably lower.
When I started college, I was a dual major. I changed comp sci to a minor because I could not STAND the math classes. I was bored to tears and more often than not, I just "did not get it".
So, why then am I ranting about what I can and can not seem to do well? I am ranting because the traditional way to weed out comp sci majors is to bombard them with gobs of unrelated math crap. More importantly, the math that is presented to comp sci majors is presented by people who only learn math a certain way and as such only teach math a certain way. I know what my logical reasoning skills are and what I am capable of - you could not convince me that there is NO better way of "weeding" out comp sci majors. I think that our university math departments need to do a better job of "weeding" out math profs who can not teach if their lives depended on it.
Yeah, we did. In most cases, I'd agree with you too. But in THIS case, the "bullies" have probably impacted this kid for the rest of his life. 10 years from now, on job interviews, he'll probably have to deal with - "hey, arent you the Star Wars Kid???". All while the assholes that caused his problems are quietly forgotten. I hope they had to pay - alot.
Ever hear of Clinton? You know, the democrat that signed us up for Kyoto? Perhaps you've heard of Bush, you know, the ASS that had us back out of it. Perhaps you've heard of Gore and his environmental record? So, yes. I would say that a democrat would handle it differently.
The Prince of Darkness (TM) as set up a new site called "Port 666" where residents of Hel will discuss their experiences with that Other guy. As a quote from the PoD himself, "We'd really just like to help the community out there understand the implications of the decesions they make." More on this later...
I see no issue with Redhat doing this. If the Fedora guys are really unhappy about it, I think they should just take their ball and go home (figurativly). The beauty of Linux is the fork()
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, you are wrong. Remember, these are the assholes (MBAs) that are deciding to outsource skilled professional jobs. They will not outsource themselves. HR and other non-essential to core business types will go next.
The problem isn't that Windows XP ships with only the most common drivers, it's that Windows XP shipped 5 years ago. There's obviously been A LOT of hardware released since then. The Linux fanboys usually conveniently leave that little tidbit out though, and then claim Linux has better driver support.
True. However a Linux distro from 5 years ago would have the exact same problems as Windows XP. The reason that Linux does NOT have the problem is because of regular, smaller, and frequent releases. Thus, the argument is still valid.
The immorality of what the NSA and AT&T have done is worse that the illegality of it. I see no reason why the ultimate penalty should not be paid by the government officials who created this beast.
You mean you are going to take away their golf clubs and make them take minumum wage jobs at Wallmat?
HR and accounting? I mean seriously, what is so "special" about IT that makes it the most frequently outsourced field. There is no technical reason that the bean counters and HR monkeys could not be outsourced just as easily.
Divulging classified information is not "whistleblowing", no matter how you look at it. There are policies in place to report corruption or illegal activities in regards to classifired material. Leaking the info to reporters is not one of those procedures.
What are you fucking stupid? Speaking as someone familiar with clearances and classified material myself, do you REALLY think those "procedures" to report abuses would result in any sort of outcome that would actually solve the problem? In my view, the highest clearances have typically been used to protect information that violates some sort of international treaty. I'm also of the opinion that using clearances to hide violations of international treaties is fine. I'm not stupid. If you think that China or other European countries are not doing the EXACT same thing in that regard, you are fucking kidding yourself. As a soverign nation, we'd be doing ourself a disservice if we were not "keeping up with the Joneses".
The problem that I have with this administration is that they seem to be using clearances to hide their own illegal and unconstitutional activities and THAT is a fucking MAJOR problem. I take my hat off to the people who leaked it and wish them the best. I'm sure they know the sacrifice they made and I can only hope that the people of our country wake up and realize that the "real" terrorist wears a tie and is currently sitting in the Oval Office.
Actually, the LAST thing we need as a country is to be spying on our own citizens.
CTRL-C irks the crap out of me as a way to copy text. CTRL-C means "kill process", NOT "copy".
I agree with you completely. I've been following this somewhat closely and have come to something of a quandry. I understand and support the argument you made. Most of the people I know also understand and agree with the argument you made.
The next step is to convince our legislators. Though to do that we need to convicne Joe-six-pack. Will he still be able to play XBox Live? Will he still be able to go to NFL.com? Will he still be able to download pr0n? Will he still be able to go to an online gambling site? My guess is that he will still be able to do those things. Why should he (and by extension the legislators) care? How can we get the message across to "him"?
On the whole I completely agree with you. Personally, I cringe at the thought of writing documentation and I imagine that most other developers out there feel the same. So we end up with a situation where a developer, on their own time and because they enjoy it, is writing FOSS code. However, said developer hates writing documentation. Should they have to?
I would argue that no is the answer. That being said, the FOSS movement needs to be more proactive in recruiting people who would not mind writing documentation and want to contribute to FOSS.
I am soooo sick of hearing about "Web 2.0". Allow me to assist the Slashdotting public in understanding the definition of "Web 2.0":
/rant
rant
Web 2.0 (noun, currently, wait until next week when marketing people start using it as a verb) - definition 1 - the underlying goal of the Internet as it is now finally understood by marketing majors (12 years after it first began getting popular) who never studied in college and now need a term to throw around. Thank you, masters of the obvious.
- definition 2 - Marketing term invented by group without any real technical knowledge (who did not study in school) to reflect the type of technology that frameworks such as AJAX are now offering. Note, there was never a "Web 1.5" when flash first came out because the marketing majors were still "playing catch up".
When will Oklahoma be passing the law making it a crime for ignorant parents to let their children (under the age of 18, of course) play these violent games?
From the parent:
All the work that has to go into keeping the browser afloat is time that could have been better spent on making Vista work as first advertised [...] If you were to put together a comprehensive profit-and-loss statement for IE, there would be a zero in the profits column and billions in the losses column--billions.'"
In all honestly, its a headline I would love to read. I absolutely can not stand the crap software or the tactics put out by that company. However, I will not dignifiy Dvorak with the ad revenue of clicking to his article and will instead take apart his weak qoute from the Slashdot story...
Dvorak, quite simily, is an idiot or is on something. I'll go with the former. First off, on any given development project, there is a finite number of developers that you can through at it before productivity begins to go down. As such, it makes sense for a company like Microsoft with BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of dollars laying around to create other teams to do other things. The utter failure of Vista has nothing at all to do with IE and all its associated problems.
Ok, so now that we've dealt with how the two could not possibly be linked lets look at the reason d'etre for IE. IE has probably not DIRECTLY generated any revenue for Microsoft, however indirectly its been a cash cow. Had MS not used illegal predatory practices and bundled IE with Windows and given it away for free, MS would have steadily lost a foothold in the OS market by giving Netscape the browser edge. Even more servers would be UNIX based Apache (or Netscape) web servers and MS and its operating system would have been completely commoditized faster than its already happening. Every major web page that "works best with IE #.##" means another desktop that is not running Linux or OS X or whatever other great alternative we would have found. Its absolutely assinine to question why MS "keeps their browser afloat".
Well, there goes 15 minutes of my life, rebuffing Dvorak, when I could have been doing something more productive like watching dust settle on my finger nails. Stupid me.
"But copyright infringement is illegal. So they can stop some of the terrorists there (in theory)."
Do you not realize how fucking stupid this sounds? I'm agast that the parent was modded to insightful - probably on account of the mention of a Venn Diagram.
Here, allow me to hit you up with a qoute:
"Those who are willing to sacrifice their basic liberties to assure their security deserve neither." - Benjamin Franklin
THAT, my friend, was a Patriot. The spineless assclown coward we have in office, his cronies, and the mindless sheep that agree with them, are NOT Patriots.
No. Every generation tends to get rid of bad mutations. It's called natural selection.
I know thats what you'd like to think, but its REALLY His Noodly Appendage making the area potentially habitable for Pirates again. There is simply not enough evidence to support any other conclusion.
Somehow, Microsoft has managed to make Macs look unappealing. There's just something about them sitting in that borgish configuration displaying on the older CRT monitors that makes them look cheap. Amazing.
I don't think he was saying we need to head to another planet in THIS solar system...
It sounds like we had similar experiences. I wish that I also ran across the better math profs ;-)
Its really easy to point out everything wrong with Java. However, have you EVER had to develop a huge application in C or C++? Talk about pointer arithmitic hell. Ever try developing in a procedural language like PLSQL? I just recently inherited a project and am leading a team that has to support a large PLSQL web application. It is VERY painful. If I had a dime for everytime someone changed something and it broke 14 other things - I'd not be doing this anymore. Conversly, and complements of data hinding, our Java projects do not have that problem.
So yes, its easy to rag on Java (i personally perfer objective C). But what is the "better" alternative for large web based applications?
It also helps weed out those who shouldn't be studying CS, so that's a good thing for you.
:)
I was not going to reply to this overall thread (about math and CS) - but this is something of a sore spot for me and I just can not resist
Back when the GRE was in three parts (Verbal, Quantatative, and Analytical), I took the test. Twice. The first time I scored a 690 in analytical, 530 in Quantative, and 560 in Verbal. The second, I was slightly lower in alalytical and slightly higher in quantatative. Verbal stayed almost identical. In college, I graduated with a major in Anthropology (with a focus on genetics) and a minor in Comp Sci. The quantatative test measures your ability to do classical math problems. The analytical test measures your ability in logical reasoning. My score on the anlytical section of the test put it somewhere in the top 10 percent of the population. Conversely, my score on the "math" section was considerably lower.
When I started college, I was a dual major. I changed comp sci to a minor because I could not STAND the math classes. I was bored to tears and more often than not, I just "did not get it".
So, why then am I ranting about what I can and can not seem to do well? I am ranting because the traditional way to weed out comp sci majors is to bombard them with gobs of unrelated math crap. More importantly, the math that is presented to comp sci majors is presented by people who only learn math a certain way and as such only teach math a certain way. I know what my logical reasoning skills are and what I am capable of - you could not convince me that there is NO better way of "weeding" out comp sci majors. I think that our university math departments need to do a better job of "weeding" out math profs who can not teach if their lives depended on it.
Yeah, we did. In most cases, I'd agree with you too. But in THIS case, the "bullies" have probably impacted this kid for the rest of his life. 10 years from now, on job interviews, he'll probably have to deal with - "hey, arent you the Star Wars Kid???". All while the assholes that caused his problems are quietly forgotten. I hope they had to pay - alot.
Ever hear of Clinton? You know, the democrat that signed us up for Kyoto? Perhaps you've heard of Bush, you know, the ASS that had us back out of it. Perhaps you've heard of Gore and his environmental record? So, yes. I would say that a democrat would handle it differently.
The Prince of Darkness (TM) as set up a new site called "Port 666" where residents of Hel will discuss their experiences with that Other guy. As a quote from the PoD himself, "We'd really just like to help the community out there understand the implications of the decesions they make." More on this later...
I see no issue with Redhat doing this. If the Fedora guys are really unhappy about it, I think they should just take their ball and go home (figurativly). The beauty of Linux is the fork()
Have you not seen most (not everyone's) Visual Basic code? At least C forces some level of competance out of a coder...
As a huge fan of OS X, I really hope that you are right and I am wrong.