The thing that always scrambles my brain when thinking of this is consciousness:
If you can do that, if you make a digital copy of ones brain, then logically you can "install" it into multiple bodies. So lets say you do that.. You die and they install a copy of your brain into two bodies. Picture yourself waking up.. as two people? To the outside world these two would behave as you would, but where is the conscious you. The one that's staring that the computer screen right now. How does that duplicate or even what the hell is that.
I generally consider myself scientifically minded and am an athiest, but this aspect of things always throws me through a loop.
I've done this. Works if you enable hardware acceleration. I've got a decent box though (i7, 12G ram) and the experience was barely usable, so probably not the most practical solution.
Probably because in a small town, this wasn't a frequent occurrence. Drop a kid down a well every week and you'd have a lot less people turning up...
Obviously some folk are more self-sacrificing than others, but everyone draws a line somewhere, or else we’d all be living on the bare minimum possible and donating all our money to feed starving children/cure cancer/whatever.
Here in Canada, most jobs seem to pay every 2 weeks.
At this point in my life it probably wouldn't matter, but coming out of school, not getting a paycheck for a month (or more likely a month + 1 week if they pay in arrears like most places I've worked) would have really sucked.
Also I've known a lot of people (some actually otherwise intelligent) who wouldn't be able to budget that far. If they got a larger influx of cash, they'd spend it and be screwed by the end of the month.. so I guess it's good for that too.
Interesting article, but this seems an issue of a very pedantic interpretation of a common idiom.
When I (or I suspect most) whine about pointlessly complex code, it's just that. Code that is more complex than is reasonable for the problem. No one expects a simple solution for a challanging problem. It's an overly complex solution to a simple problem which we complain about...
You'd probably have better luck with smaller shops. The kind where the owner will probably meet with you personally if you go in and ask for a job in person. Be prepared to compensate for your lack of formal credentials with examples of your work.
Probably varies from place to place, but around here, previous experience trumps education most of the time. Larger places you might need the degree to get passed the automated keyword hunter, but your references from previous employers and what you can say about what you've worked on are what sell you.
And on that note, with that long track record of success, you should also have a large collection of people who know the kind of work you do and would recommend you to others. Get in touch with them and see if they know of anyone looking for someone with your skillset.
People who can refer you to the company they work for are your absolute best bet. Your chances of getting a job are magnitudes higher when someone inside the company, who knows the role and office culture and the position, is saying "this guy is good, he's exactly what we need".
For the most part, people arn't hired purely for their technical skill.
Software development is mostly a team sport. How you fit in with the office culture, how easy you are to work with, how much ego and asshattery you bring to the table are as relevant or even more relevant than your technical chops. This becomes increasingly true as you move up the ladder.
There's still jobs that require the cliche "guy who spends every waking moment in his basement hacking out killer code" employee, but it's becoming a rarity.
That said, lots of people (including me) chose not to use facebook and friends but still maintain an active(ish) social life. Long as you don't come across as a hermit in the interview, I think you're probably fine.
I was very happy with dreamhost for a number of years, but my experience was that they couldn't handle the load.
I still think it's great if you're just doing hobby stuff.. or have a site that gets low to medium traffic. You get a tonne of features for what you pay, their control panel is actually pretty damn good, and their "just a bunch of guys" public image (though at this point they are probably quite large) gives a warm fuzzy feeling.
Once you get into the realm of what submitter is talking about however, it probably becomes a poor choice. If you poke around google you find many similar stories. Great until they started getting serious traffic, then it falls apart.
Never really looked into z-wave, but I've heard insteon described as "x10 with the bugs worked out", which sounds nice. The idea behind x10 made a lot of sense, the implementation was just terrible.
Unfortunately my home automation craze ended. Kind of depressing really, it was real "house of the future" stuff and I was totally into it when younger. Now that I actually have the money and knowledge to do it properly, I no longer have the motivation.
I guess the gee-wiz factor of it died for me. With my remote controlled bedroom light, automatic coffee maker (or more commonly the tim hortons on the way to work..), and "smart" thermostats.. there's really not much else that makes sense to automate for more than the novelty of it. I know we are supposed to look at the "but why" question with distain.. but I can't help it:(
Somewhere in the recesses of my brain that sounds fami.. oh god.. OH GOD!
Kidding aside, I played with x10 for a while and if anyone is thinking about it, my suggestion is: don't
It's a terrible and outdated protocol. A quick "of the top of my head" list of the major problems: - It's one way (for the most part). There was a kind of handshake thing out there but it was never used. - The signals are easily lost in what were called "signal suckers" in many x10 circles. Basically any device using cheap filtering could kill a signal. This was a bad combination with the first one. It was common recommended practice to send a command 3 times at a 2s interval.. - False positives! The protocol is insanely simple and came from olden times when there were generally few noisy devices plugged in. The result is the right burst of noise can actually be a valid message and result in anything (but normally it was your bedroom lights turning on in the middle of the night). - Slow. I don't know what the actual command throughput was.. but it wasn't good.
The whole thing was a terrible experience, and ultimately the novelty of it dies pretty quick. The very few useful implications are easily dealt with using much simpler technologies. One of the nicer things was always turning off the bedroom lights while laying in bed. Now I've got a self contained wall switch/remote dealie that works _perfectly_ and didn't even require a neutral ground wire or anything.. literally just swap and go.
I still have most of my old x10 gear. I will usually pull some of it out during christmas time.. few appliance modules controlling christmas lights and such.. but I'd never even think of trying to automate a home with it.. stuff is garbage.
That sounds like a shitty situation, my condolences:(
I suspect the lawyer route is probably a bad idea, but I'd be really curious what a lawyer would have to say on the subject (at least here in Canada we have "moral" rights that dictate among other things an authors ownership of his work (even when it's "work for hire").
I've been browsing slashdot for over a decade. Around 6 or 7 years under this account alone (I did the AC thing for a while..). Corney as it sounds, I've got some very fond memories of very insightful discussions had here, some of which legitimately impacted my life and at least many that actually changed how I thought about something.
As shitty as slashdot gets, it'll take a long damn time to erode away that kind of legacy.
Would it be better if the sub-domain just spun off and you never even knew there was a relationship?
To be honest, I think I'd be happier with that. If you look at it objectively it's probably not that bad, but slashbi just seems to clash against the culture I associate with slashdot, and I interpret this kind of crosslinking as an attempt to push the established slashdot crowd into what appears at first glance to be a failing attempt to draw in the kind of pseudo-technical suit crowd (I don't know the numbers though, maybe slashbi has been a huge success..).
Want to make slashbi known, fine, put something in the side bar. Shoving what could be argued as a well disguised advertisment in with the regular content just feels icky..
Obviously everyone on a team should have a decent understanding of what the guy paying the bills wants, but keeping track of the exact details, maintaining the relationship, and pushing new business is a whole different job description.
Maybe in a small shop the programmers can just do everything, in any reasonably sized venture things like accounting, marketting, and dealing directly with the customer are probably filled best by people who are specifically dedicated to those roles.
At minimum, having someone who has a lot of experience dealing within a particular industry, and while not knowing the absolute latest tech, has enough tech background to know whats possible is usually a good fit for that kind of role.
In my (admittedly limited) experience, that's exactly why people get out of the trenches and go for jobs that rely more on them knowing what the customer wants than knowing how the latest toolstack/middlewhere/design style.
It's mainly because I find business attire uncomfortable while doing actual work. My job involves a fair amount of designing and review, which involves a lot of thinking, which is hard to do while half my brain is focused on how uncomfortable a tie is.
That combined with the fact that wearing a t-shirt isn't likely to negatively impact the quality of my work at all make restrictions on dress when not in a public facing position (beyond the basic "don't offend people" common courtesy) silly.
You're being paid to work
Money isn't everything when I consider a job. It's obviously the most visible component, however the benefits package, growth opportunities, and work environment also weight in. Mentally I picture it like those old "create character" screens from video games. If one value is low, the others have to be higher to compensate in order to get to the required number. Want me to wear a suit or deal with the customer (both things I hate) on a regular basis, it's going to cost you more money in salary or benifits. Want to pay me less? Gonna have to give me some nice office perks or up my vacation time or show me that you work on some really cool stuff or that your company might be the next google in 3 years.
you're a professional
.. with a valuable skill. You don't have to take what you're given and feel lucky you got that much. A little shopping around and negotiating means you get something you are much happier with. You still get bent over the barrel one way or the other, but if you've got some credit to your name at least you can have your choice of lube...
not a student hanging out in their dorm room
A lot of the really successful companies are trying to emulate this environment for a reason. People are creative when they are relaxed. Put me in a suit and stick me in a board room and my brain becomes useless.
I have a hard time getting worked up over an article of clothing.
Yes I'm sure there is good reason to be given what it represents and the arbitrary requirement to wear one.. but it's a piece of clothing you have to wear for like an hour or two to get past someone you will likely not see all that often (how often do you deal with HR after you get hired..).
If they told me I had to "look professional" while at my desk working, damn right I'd fight that... but I can induldge a silly tradition to get through an interview.
My experience has been that the HR experience of large companies seldom matches the actual working environment. Getting through the bullshit sucks, but once you do you might find a great working atmosphere.
Smaller shops where you get interviewed by the owner are usually (but not always) lighter on the BS. A suit/tie is usually still a good idea though! Its a silly custom but why fight it (unless you are ready to really fight it/make some kind of point).
Sure, but this article was all about budgeting, and bandwidth wasn't even mentioned. To use a car-ish analogy, it would be like debating between a car and a truck without considering the different in fuel usage..
Not saying what he wants to do is impractical, but "will my home ISP connection provide me enough pipe to do what I need to do" would be top of my list of stuff to think about... way before how much electricity will the thing use.
The word doesn’t even appear in the article... yet it’s probably the biggest consideration when looking at a server, be it local, shared/vps, or dedicated.
Hardware and even power are cheap by comparison. It’s definitely gonna be the limiting factor of what you can do with a home server (especially a decently sized minecraft server or one that uses a lot of mods..). If you can get a home fibre connection you might be ok, but reading the article, this guy is probably on dialup.. so good luck with that!
Slashdot Mirror
The thing that always scrambles my brain when thinking of this is consciousness:
If you can do that, if you make a digital copy of ones brain, then logically you can "install" it into multiple bodies. So lets say you do that.. You die and they install a copy of your brain into two bodies. Picture yourself waking up.. as two people? To the outside world these two would behave as you would, but where is the conscious you. The one that's staring that the computer screen right now. How does that duplicate or even what the hell is that.
I generally consider myself scientifically minded and am an athiest, but this aspect of things always throws me through a loop.
I've done this. Works if you enable hardware acceleration. I've got a decent box though (i7, 12G ram) and the experience was barely usable, so probably not the most practical solution.
Probably because in a small town, this wasn't a frequent occurrence. Drop a kid down a well every week and you'd have a lot less people turning up...
Obviously some folk are more self-sacrificing than others, but everyone draws a line somewhere, or else we’d all be living on the bare minimum possible and donating all our money to feed starving children/cure cancer/whatever.
Here in Canada, most jobs seem to pay every 2 weeks.
At this point in my life it probably wouldn't matter, but coming out of school, not getting a paycheck for a month (or more likely a month + 1 week if they pay in arrears like most places I've worked) would have really sucked.
Also I've known a lot of people (some actually otherwise intelligent) who wouldn't be able to budget that far. If they got a larger influx of cash, they'd spend it and be screwed by the end of the month.. so I guess it's good for that too.
Interesting article, but this seems an issue of a very pedantic interpretation of a common idiom.
When I (or I suspect most) whine about pointlessly complex code, it's just that. Code that is more complex than is reasonable for the problem. No one expects a simple solution for a challanging problem. It's an overly complex solution to a simple problem which we complain about...
You'd probably have better luck with smaller shops. The kind where the owner will probably meet with you personally if you go in and ask for a job in person. Be prepared to compensate for your lack of formal credentials with examples of your work.
Probably varies from place to place, but around here, previous experience trumps education most of the time. Larger places you might need the degree to get passed the automated keyword hunter, but your references from previous employers and what you can say about what you've worked on are what sell you.
And on that note, with that long track record of success, you should also have a large collection of people who know the kind of work you do and would recommend you to others. Get in touch with them and see if they know of anyone looking for someone with your skillset.
People who can refer you to the company they work for are your absolute best bet. Your chances of getting a job are magnitudes higher when someone inside the company, who knows the role and office culture and the position, is saying "this guy is good, he's exactly what we need".
For the most part, people arn't hired purely for their technical skill.
Software development is mostly a team sport. How you fit in with the office culture, how easy you are to work with, how much ego and asshattery you bring to the table are as relevant or even more relevant than your technical chops. This becomes increasingly true as you move up the ladder.
There's still jobs that require the cliche "guy who spends every waking moment in his basement hacking out killer code" employee, but it's becoming a rarity.
That said, lots of people (including me) chose not to use facebook and friends but still maintain an active(ish) social life. Long as you don't come across as a hermit in the interview, I think you're probably fine.
I was very happy with dreamhost for a number of years, but my experience was that they couldn't handle the load.
I still think it's great if you're just doing hobby stuff.. or have a site that gets low to medium traffic. You get a tonne of features for what you pay, their control panel is actually pretty damn good, and their "just a bunch of guys" public image (though at this point they are probably quite large) gives a warm fuzzy feeling.
Once you get into the realm of what submitter is talking about however, it probably becomes a poor choice. If you poke around google you find many similar stories. Great until they started getting serious traffic, then it falls apart.
Oh wow.
Yeah, I had completely blocked that from my memory. Those damn popups were everywhere.
Never really looked into z-wave, but I've heard insteon described as "x10 with the bugs worked out", which sounds nice. The idea behind x10 made a lot of sense, the implementation was just terrible.
Unfortunately my home automation craze ended. Kind of depressing really, it was real "house of the future" stuff and I was totally into it when younger. Now that I actually have the money and knowledge to do it properly, I no longer have the motivation.
I guess the gee-wiz factor of it died for me. With my remote controlled bedroom light, automatic coffee maker (or more commonly the tim hortons on the way to work..), and "smart" thermostats.. there's really not much else that makes sense to automate for more than the novelty of it. I know we are supposed to look at the "but why" question with distain.. but I can't help it :(
x10 .. x10
Somewhere in the recesses of my brain that sounds fami.. oh god.. OH GOD!
Kidding aside, I played with x10 for a while and if anyone is thinking about it, my suggestion is: don't
It's a terrible and outdated protocol. A quick "of the top of my head" list of the major problems:
- It's one way (for the most part). There was a kind of handshake thing out there but it was never used.
- The signals are easily lost in what were called "signal suckers" in many x10 circles. Basically any device using cheap filtering could kill a signal. This was a bad combination with the first one. It was common recommended practice to send a command 3 times at a 2s interval..
- False positives! The protocol is insanely simple and came from olden times when there were generally few noisy devices plugged in. The result is the right burst of noise can actually be a valid message and result in anything (but normally it was your bedroom lights turning on in the middle of the night).
- Slow. I don't know what the actual command throughput was.. but it wasn't good.
The whole thing was a terrible experience, and ultimately the novelty of it dies pretty quick. The very few useful implications are easily dealt with using much simpler technologies. One of the nicer things was always turning off the bedroom lights while laying in bed. Now I've got a self contained wall switch/remote dealie that works _perfectly_ and didn't even require a neutral ground wire or anything.. literally just swap and go.
I still have most of my old x10 gear. I will usually pull some of it out during christmas time.. few appliance modules controlling christmas lights and such.. but I'd never even think of trying to automate a home with it.. stuff is garbage.
Assuming it's work for hire / a client.. it would seem unreasonable to make the work public unless the client specifically allowed it?
That sounds like a shitty situation, my condolences :(
I suspect the lawyer route is probably a bad idea, but I'd be really curious what a lawyer would have to say on the subject (at least here in Canada we have "moral" rights that dictate among other things an authors ownership of his work (even when it's "work for hire").
I've never delved too deeply into X, but none of the issues pointed out in the article really seemed all that compelling.
They seemed like the kind of quirks you end up in any large system. I assume wayland will trade them for a completely different set of quirks.
without the need for cabling or setup
Unless you want a keyboard or mouse?
EIther way as others have said, this really doesn't seem newsworthy. We're talking about some very basic case modding and a little custom wiring here.
Habit.
I've been browsing slashdot for over a decade. Around 6 or 7 years under this account alone (I did the AC thing for a while..). Corney as it sounds, I've got some very fond memories of very insightful discussions had here, some of which legitimately impacted my life and at least many that actually changed how I thought about something.
As shitty as slashdot gets, it'll take a long damn time to erode away that kind of legacy.
Would it be better if the sub-domain just spun off and you never even knew there was a relationship?
To be honest, I think I'd be happier with that. If you look at it objectively it's probably not that bad, but slashbi just seems to clash against the culture I associate with slashdot, and I interpret this kind of crosslinking as an attempt to push the established slashdot crowd into what appears at first glance to be a failing attempt to draw in the kind of pseudo-technical suit crowd (I don't know the numbers though, maybe slashbi has been a huge success..).
Want to make slashbi known, fine, put something in the side bar. Shoving what could be argued as a well disguised advertisment in with the regular content just feels icky..
Interlinking like this still seems in poor taste.
Obviously everyone on a team should have a decent understanding of what the guy paying the bills wants, but keeping track of the exact details, maintaining the relationship, and pushing new business is a whole different job description.
Maybe in a small shop the programmers can just do everything, in any reasonably sized venture things like accounting, marketting, and dealing directly with the customer are probably filled best by people who are specifically dedicated to those roles.
At minimum, having someone who has a lot of experience dealing within a particular industry, and while not knowing the absolute latest tech, has enough tech background to know whats possible is usually a good fit for that kind of role.
In my (admittedly limited) experience, that's exactly why people get out of the trenches and go for jobs that rely more on them knowing what the customer wants than knowing how the latest toolstack/middlewhere/design style.
Why do so many people here have that attitude?
It's mainly because I find business attire uncomfortable while doing actual work. My job involves a fair amount of designing and review, which involves a lot of thinking, which is hard to do while half my brain is focused on how uncomfortable a tie is.
That combined with the fact that wearing a t-shirt isn't likely to negatively impact the quality of my work at all make restrictions on dress when not in a public facing position (beyond the basic "don't offend people" common courtesy) silly.
You're being paid to work
Money isn't everything when I consider a job. It's obviously the most visible component, however the benefits package, growth opportunities, and work environment also weight in. Mentally I picture it like those old "create character" screens from video games. If one value is low, the others have to be higher to compensate in order to get to the required number. Want me to wear a suit or deal with the customer (both things I hate) on a regular basis, it's going to cost you more money in salary or benifits. Want to pay me less? Gonna have to give me some nice office perks or up my vacation time or show me that you work on some really cool stuff or that your company might be the next google in 3 years.
you're a professional
.. with a valuable skill. You don't have to take what you're given and feel lucky you got that much. A little shopping around and negotiating means you get something you are much happier with. You still get bent over the barrel one way or the other, but if you've got some credit to your name at least you can have your choice of lube...
not a student hanging out in their dorm room
A lot of the really successful companies are trying to emulate this environment for a reason. People are creative when they are relaxed. Put me in a suit and stick me in a board room and my brain becomes useless.
I have a hard time getting worked up over an article of clothing.
Yes I'm sure there is good reason to be given what it represents and the arbitrary requirement to wear one.. but it's a piece of clothing you have to wear for like an hour or two to get past someone you will likely not see all that often (how often do you deal with HR after you get hired..).
If they told me I had to "look professional" while at my desk working, damn right I'd fight that... but I can induldge a silly tradition to get through an interview.
Also, hate BS so went to academia?
My experience has been that the HR experience of large companies seldom matches the actual working environment. Getting through the bullshit sucks, but once you do you might find a great working atmosphere.
Smaller shops where you get interviewed by the owner are usually (but not always) lighter on the BS. A suit/tie is usually still a good idea though! Its a silly custom but why fight it (unless you are ready to really fight it/make some kind of point).
Sure, but this article was all about budgeting, and bandwidth wasn't even mentioned. To use a car-ish analogy, it would be like debating between a car and a truck without considering the different in fuel usage..
Not saying what he wants to do is impractical, but "will my home ISP connection provide me enough pipe to do what I need to do" would be top of my list of stuff to think about... way before how much electricity will the thing use.
The word doesn’t even appear in the article... yet it’s probably the biggest consideration when looking at a server, be it local, shared/vps, or dedicated.
Hardware and even power are cheap by comparison. It’s definitely gonna be the limiting factor of what you can do with a home server (especially a decently sized minecraft server or one that uses a lot of mods..). If you can get a home fibre connection you might be ok, but reading the article, this guy is probably on dialup.. so good luck with that!