Sheesh. Where'd they put the file? in public_html?
Re:I dont understand how they could have missed th
on
Generation Wrecked
·
· Score: 2
However, my job could evaporate and I'd be fine because of a diverse skillset which I'm always improving
Don't be smug about it. Having a diverse skillset is a necessary condition for continued employment but not a sufficient condition. It's considerably easier to get a job when you're 33 than it is when you're 43 or 53. Regardless of age, I would not want to be pounding the pavement right now, skillset notwithstanding.
I fully agree with you about staying out of debt.
Planned their careers poorly. The IT industry is cyclical... only defense against cycles is diversification
Yeah, but you best extend that strategy outside IT. You may find it necessary to change your line of work. I've already had to twice. You can be prepared for other opportunities but there's no guarantee they'll arise and there's only so much you can do to position yourself to take advantage of them.
I resent the Boomers for is eating up Social Security at an alarming rate
Whoa up there partner! Boomers were born between 1945 and 1960. The post war crowd will be starting to draw SS soon but the Sputnik babies have a ways to go. That having been said, I sympathize with your resentment of those who ARE drawing SS, particularly those of means who don't need it. Roosevelt foisted this colossal pyramid scheme on us 70 years ago.
Be my guest. The first ones to do what Cringly has described will go to jail. The rest will see that and chicken out. We have 2 million people in jail in the US and we're building jails as fast as we can. There will be plenty of room.
... half of the people in my intro to EE class have never touched a resistor in their life, or even know what one looks like...
It wasn't much different in the 70s when an engineer might reasonably be expected to deal with discrete components. A few in each engineering class were tinkerers but most weren't. I had lots of hands on experience before I studied EE. One of my professors recognized that and asked me to become a laboratory instructor. I did that my soph., junior and senior years. There were students who didn't know + from -. Others were in and out in 30 minutes and got 100 on each lab. I also noticed that few who graduated with EE degrees ended up actually designing electronic circuits. I did for more than 15 years before switching to software.
We're not buying enough of this new stuff, so they will be trying to mandate
You hit the nail on the head. The digital technology they've put forth takes away fair use and costs more. If consumers can stick with analog, they will. So industry gets the gov't to force everyone to use digital. At some point, the analog signals will no longer be carried in the name of bandwidth efficiency. Oh yeah, we will have a choice. Watch TV or don't watch TV. Some choice.
Many people shop around for the lowest price on a computer system but then they think nothing of loading it with expensive software. If you load a new PC with XP pro, Office, Norton AV, etc., you have about as much money tied up in the software as you have in the hardware. It would be interesting to see a cost breakdown on some of the systems you see advertised that come with "all the software". At some point, the cost of the software on your basic bargain system will exceed the hardware cost. I'm not sure whether we've reached that point but we're bound to be close. This combination of hardware frugality with software extravagance reminds me of dieters who pour tons of rich dressing on their salads.
Look at the code Frontpage spews. Many people have snickered at me for using text editors to edit HTML. Then they fire up Frontpage. Later, I check out a file they have editted and find all sorts of goofy tags in it. So, it ain't just the browsers. Some of the authoring tools intended to dumb down the process of designing and maintaining web pages share the blame for the garbage code. Yessir.
Public schools have been doing a poor job of teaching algebra for at least the past 30 years. I was encouraged to take remedial algebra in college. The instructor was excellent and I did very well. Math became my best subject, although it wasn't my major. I took math courses as electives. I really should have made it my major but engineering beckoned. Since graduation, I took 3 more math courses. I thoroughly enjoyed all of them. What I like most about it is it never becomes obsolete. Most mathematical principles are pretty old; math just doesn't change all that much. Whereas the half-life of an engineering degree is about 5 years. It's a pity public schools do such a lousy job teaching something as important as algebra.
The economy is in bad shape. Lots of people are out of work. As such, they have fewer dollars to spend on non-essential items like entertainment. If the price of entertainment goes up, they'll consume less. So, Jack Valenti may get his way. But it probably won't be the outcome he wants. He should be careful what he asks for. He might just get it.
If you don't like the terms of a contract then DON'T SIGN IT! I am sure Alcatel included such a clause in the contract that would allow for something like this to happen. THis is no one's falut but the man who is being "exploited."
... and DON'T WORK! The vast majority of employers of engineers and programmers compel prospective employees to sign such contracts.
One of the nice things about a textbook is once the course is over, you will have an excellent reference. Assuming the text is used alot, you will have communed with it and when you need to, you can quickly find the answer to a question. E books tend to disappear once the course is over. You have nothing but your notes. E books perhaps have a place in courses where the knowledge being diseminated will be obsoleted quicky but for a math or english course, where syllabus seldom changes, they are a raw deal.
So, in 4 years, a huge, federally mandated bonepile of "old" analog TVs will be created. Lately, there's been lots of concern about TVs and monitors in the landfills due to heavy metals and other environmental ills associated with their disposal. Then, there's the sheer volume of junk which would be created by this government fiat.
Where are the environmentalists? Why aren't they raising hell about this?
Some decent comparisons there, but then, along comes the FUD, I guess they couldn't resist:
Advantage of going Microsoft: Better business alignment with straightforward licensing and clarity of intellectual property ownership.
Let's skip the meaningless "Better business alignment" and skip straight to the part that keeps the bullshit detector pegged at 10.
No. Wait. Let's dwell on it some. Consider the mindset of the asshat sloganeer who cooked up this gem. They probably pay this guy a whole lot to come up with stuff like this.
I like the "from the but-still-okay-to-rip-off-the-stock-market dept". That's fitting, given the posturing of congress to get tough on corporate crime.They paid lip service to it and raised some of the penalties but they've done nothing to increase the vigor with which these cases are prosecuted. To date, few of these cases have been prosecuted. When they do prosecute a company for cooking it's books, they'll be defended by the best lawyers money can buy. When a hacker is tried, he'll have the standard, substandard legal defense. The result is few corporate criminals will ever go to jail but lots of hackers will be railroaded.
I too was inspired to play bass by John Entwistle. The bass parts on every Who record are very powerful. He was an innovator. He was the first to use roundwound strings. Read the paragraph on a pack of RotoSound RS-66 strings, "Other bassists quickly followed his lead." He brought the bass out front and raised the bar. His unique, aggressive piano hammer right hand technique gave him the distinctive tone we associate with the Who. I saw the '75 tour in Greensboro. Moon was sober and in good form. He and Entwistle bulldozed their way through that show. Too this day, that rates as my favorite concert. Entwistle had no gimmicks. He was all about great playing.
I got into it because I once had an hour commute and wanted a hobby I could do on the road. Talking on 2m repeaters initially seemed like alot of fun. Now, I too am an "idle key". I discovered that unless I took myself and the ham radio hobby as seriously as the members of the clubs, I was less than welcome. They really don't cotton to dabblers and that best described my interest. The fancied themselves as emergency officials of some sort or uber engineers. If you weren't inclined to get involved with this, you sorta become a persona non grata amoung the hams. Many were given to power driven arguments about esoteric technical stuff. One of these hobbyists baited me into an argument about certain aspects of power supply design. I've no doubt he was smart enough to build one that would work but that doesn't equate to designing them for a living for 15 years. That's just one example. I listened while a friend of mine's transmission on a local repeater was jammed by a member of the radio club who helped maintain the repeater because he was about to give out the control codes for the talking S meter, horror of horrors. In time, I felt less welcome on these repeaters because my participation was purposely limited and lost interest.
So, it isn't done well, if at all. QA isn't taken seriously. Regression tests, if they exist, are poorly maintained. Then people wonder why something wasn't caught before it went out.
Put the QA department in charge of nightly builds, testing, docs and shipping. Allocate sufficient time for a thorough testing. Give them the power to hold up a release. Hire good people to do this, people who are good developers themselves. Pay them well and listen to them. Don't second guess and overrule them.
Re:The problem is not a failure of the market
on
Homogenized Music
·
· Score: 2
The market is working just fine. The problem is that the majority are willing to listen to the homogeneous crap that CCU broadcasts.
Only because that's all they get anyway.
CCU truly isn't performing a service that people want, advertisers will stop buying airtime and it will go bankrupt.
I'm not sure how tightly coupled advertising is to the actual number of listeners.
Once these policies are enforced, the weakest link will be the PDAs and paper pads where people write down all the damned passwords they have to keep up with. I don't know what else we can do but this password stuff is getting out of hand.
I must agree with you about the printers, ink cartridges, etc. and that the HP I lament is long gone.
The HP I lament is the company that made all the wonderful test equipment I used in the 70s and 80s. They made the workstations I used in the 90s. But the personal computers, printers and accessories they made recently seem to have been built by a vastly inferior outfit. Their merger with Compaq simply hastens the downward spiral.
Well, for one thing I'd consider the source. The ITAA has a vested interest in hyping industry growth.
The ITAA is the outfit that constantly claimed there was a shortage of programmers (~600,000) during the height of the dot com boom. This was used to jusitfy ratcheting up the annual cap on H1-B visas when they lobbied congress.
Slashdot Mirror
Sheesh. Where'd they put the file? in public_html?
However, my job could evaporate and I'd be fine because of a diverse skillset which I'm always improving
Don't be smug about it. Having a diverse skillset is a necessary condition for continued employment but not a sufficient condition. It's considerably easier to get a job when you're 33 than it is when you're 43 or 53. Regardless of age, I would not want to be pounding the pavement right now, skillset notwithstanding.
I fully agree with you about staying out of debt.
Planned their careers poorly. The IT industry is cyclical
Yeah, but you best extend that strategy outside IT. You may find it necessary to change your line of work. I've already had to twice. You can be prepared for other opportunities but there's no guarantee they'll arise and there's only so much you can do to position yourself to take advantage of them.
I resent the Boomers for is eating up Social Security at an alarming rate
Whoa up there partner! Boomers were born between 1945 and 1960. The post war crowd will be starting to draw SS soon but the Sputnik babies have a ways to go. That having been said, I sympathize with your resentment of those who ARE drawing SS, particularly those of means who don't need it. Roosevelt foisted this colossal pyramid scheme on us 70 years ago.
Once the RIAA gets wind of this they'll try to get the high speed ISPs to put something like this in place.
Be my guest. The first ones to do what Cringly has described will go to jail. The rest will see that and chicken out. We have 2 million people in jail in the US and we're building jails as fast as we can. There will be plenty of room.
It wasn't much different in the 70s when an engineer might reasonably be expected to deal with discrete components. A few in each engineering class were tinkerers but most weren't. I had lots of hands on experience before I studied EE. One of my professors recognized that and asked me to become a laboratory instructor. I did that my soph., junior and senior years. There were students who didn't know + from -. Others were in and out in 30 minutes and got 100 on each lab. I also noticed that few who graduated with EE degrees ended up actually designing electronic circuits. I did for more than 15 years before switching to software.
That's an excellent point. I know lots of people with cellphones, land line(s) and dialup service who balk at the cost of broadband.
We're not buying enough of this new stuff, so they will be trying to mandate
You hit the nail on the head. The digital technology they've put forth takes away fair use and costs more. If consumers can stick with analog, they will. So industry gets the gov't to force everyone to use digital. At some point, the analog signals will no longer be carried in the name of bandwidth efficiency. Oh yeah, we will have a choice. Watch TV or don't watch TV. Some choice.
Many people shop around for the lowest price on a computer system but then they think nothing of loading it with expensive software. If you load a new PC with XP pro, Office, Norton AV, etc., you have about as much money tied up in the software as you have in the hardware. It would be interesting to see a cost breakdown on some of the systems you see advertised that come with "all the software". At some point, the cost of the software on your basic bargain system will exceed the hardware cost. I'm not sure whether we've reached that point but we're bound to be close. This combination of hardware frugality with software extravagance reminds me of dieters who pour tons of rich dressing on their salads.
Look at the code Frontpage spews. Many people have snickered at me for using text editors to edit HTML. Then they fire up Frontpage. Later, I check out a file they have editted and find all sorts of goofy tags in it. So, it ain't just the browsers. Some of the authoring tools intended to dumb down the process of designing and maintaining web pages share the blame for the garbage code. Yessir.
Public schools have been doing a poor job of teaching algebra for at least the past 30 years. I was encouraged to take remedial algebra in college. The instructor was excellent and I did very well. Math became my best subject, although it wasn't my major. I took math courses as electives. I really should have made it my major but engineering beckoned. Since graduation, I took 3 more math courses. I thoroughly enjoyed all of them. What I like most about it is it never becomes obsolete. Most mathematical principles are pretty old; math just doesn't change all that much. Whereas the half-life of an engineering degree is about 5 years. It's a pity public schools do such a lousy job teaching something as important as algebra.
The economy is in bad shape. Lots of people are out of work. As such, they have fewer dollars to spend on non-essential items like entertainment. If the price of entertainment goes up, they'll consume less. So, Jack Valenti may get his way. But it probably won't be the outcome he wants. He should be careful what he asks for. He might just get it.
If you don't like the terms of a contract then DON'T SIGN IT! I am sure Alcatel included such a clause in the contract that would allow for something like this to happen. THis is no one's falut but the man who is being "exploited."
... and DON'T WORK! The vast majority of employers of engineers and programmers compel prospective employees to sign such contracts.
One of the nice things about a textbook is once the course is over, you will have an excellent reference. Assuming the text is used alot, you will have communed with it and when you need to, you can quickly find the answer to a question. E books tend to disappear once the course is over. You have nothing but your notes. E books perhaps have a place in courses where the knowledge being diseminated will be obsoleted quicky but for a math or english course, where syllabus seldom changes, they are a raw deal.
So, in 4 years, a huge, federally mandated bonepile of "old" analog TVs will be created. Lately, there's been lots of concern about TVs and monitors in the landfills due to heavy metals and other environmental ills associated with their disposal. Then, there's the sheer volume of junk which would be created by this government fiat.
Where are the environmentalists? Why aren't they raising hell about this?
Some decent comparisons there, but then, along comes the FUD, I guess they couldn't resist:
Advantage of going Microsoft: Better business alignment with straightforward licensing and clarity of intellectual property ownership.
Let's skip the meaningless "Better business alignment" and skip straight to the part that keeps the bullshit detector pegged at 10.
No. Wait. Let's dwell on it some. Consider the mindset of the asshat sloganeer who cooked up this gem. They probably pay this guy a whole lot to come up with stuff like this.
I like the "from the but-still-okay-to-rip-off-the-stock-market dept". That's fitting, given the posturing of congress to get tough on corporate crime.They paid lip service to it and raised some of the penalties but they've done nothing to increase the vigor with which these cases are prosecuted. To date, few of these cases have been prosecuted. When they do prosecute a company for cooking it's books, they'll be defended by the best lawyers money can buy. When a hacker is tried, he'll have the standard, substandard legal defense. The result is few corporate criminals will ever go to jail but lots of hackers will be railroaded.
I too was inspired to play bass by John Entwistle. The bass parts on every Who record are very powerful. He was an innovator. He was the first to use roundwound strings. Read the paragraph on a pack of RotoSound RS-66 strings, "Other bassists quickly followed his lead." He brought the bass out front and raised the bar. His unique, aggressive piano hammer right hand technique gave him the distinctive tone we associate with the Who. I saw the '75 tour in Greensboro. Moon was sober and in good form. He and Entwistle bulldozed their way through that show. Too this day, that rates as my favorite concert. Entwistle had no gimmicks. He was all about great playing.
Long Live Rock!
I got into it because I once had an hour commute and wanted a hobby I could do on the road. Talking on 2m repeaters initially seemed like alot of fun. Now, I too am an "idle key". I discovered that unless I took myself and the ham radio hobby as seriously as the members of the clubs, I was less than welcome. They really don't cotton to dabblers and that best described my interest. The fancied themselves as emergency officials of some sort or uber engineers. If you weren't inclined to get involved with this, you sorta become a persona non grata amoung the hams. Many were given to power driven arguments about esoteric technical stuff. One of these hobbyists baited me into an argument about certain aspects of power supply design. I've no doubt he was smart enough to build one that would work but that doesn't equate to designing them for a living for 15 years. That's just one example. I listened while a friend of mine's transmission on a local repeater was jammed by a member of the radio club who helped maintain the repeater because he was about to give out the control codes for the talking S meter, horror of horrors. In time, I felt less welcome on these repeaters because my participation was purposely limited and lost interest.
So, it isn't done well, if at all. QA isn't taken seriously. Regression tests, if they exist, are poorly maintained. Then people wonder why something wasn't caught before it went out.
Put the QA department in charge of nightly builds, testing, docs and shipping. Allocate sufficient time for a thorough testing. Give them the power to hold up a release. Hire good people to do this, people who are good developers themselves. Pay them well and listen to them. Don't second guess and overrule them.
The market is working just fine. The problem is that the majority are willing to listen to the homogeneous crap that CCU broadcasts.
Only because that's all they get anyway.
CCU truly isn't performing a service that people want, advertisers will stop buying airtime and it will go bankrupt.
I'm not sure how tightly coupled advertising is to the actual number of listeners.
Once these policies are enforced, the weakest link will be the PDAs and paper pads where people write down all the damned passwords they have to keep up with. I don't know what else we can do but this password stuff is getting out of hand.
Shitty PC's
Overpriced (read price gouging) ink jet cartrides
Disposal Printers
etc.
The HP you lament was dead long ago.
I must agree with you about the printers, ink cartridges, etc. and that the HP I lament is long gone.
The HP I lament is the company that made all the wonderful test equipment I used in the 70s and 80s. They made the workstations I used in the 90s. But the personal computers, printers and accessories they made recently seem to have been built by a vastly inferior outfit. Their merger with Compaq simply hastens the downward spiral.
"The energizer's bypassed like a Christmas tree. She cannot take too many bumps."
"Aye, lad. You're going to need something to wash that down with."
"That ties it. That poppinjay Fox just beamed down with the landing party."
Well, for one thing I'd consider the source. The ITAA has a vested interest in hyping industry growth.
The ITAA is the outfit that constantly claimed there was a shortage of programmers (~600,000) during the height of the dot com boom. This was used to jusitfy ratcheting up the annual cap on H1-B visas when they lobbied congress.
This is false economy.
They should sack this twit, pay up and move on.