Thank you! I am about as far from an Aerospace Engineer as you can get, but even those of us in mundane jobs like banking ended up doing some coding when we never had that in our job description. In fact, I think a large percentage of on-site development is done this way. If I were the boss, I, too, would take the engineer I already have who can write me some module that solves our problem and does what he needs rather than bring in Waldo the Visual Basic Wonder Boy at $15/hr to hose the whole system for a week.
Too bad the rest of the world still believes programming is voodoo and fairy dust.
Nothing that was ever worth anything to anybody was ever covered with every single stinking article about it starting off: "The web is no longer a place..." | "Programmers no longer have to..." | "Computer applications used to..." | "In the old days of the web, applications..." | "The old way of managing interactive content..." | "Now there's a new way to..." | "Is everything we know about web programming about to become..." | "Computer scientists the world over have voluntarily turned themselves in for deactivation due to the overwhealming outdatedness of..." | "Everything you thought you knew about the Universe just changed because of..." God, where's the dopey techno-newage music and the third-world natives in jumpsuits dancing around with scarves on a breezy hilltop? Where's the voice-over: "What can a peanut-butter enema teach us about portfolio investment?" Where's the tagline at the end "...and the company who will bring it to you; AT&T" over glossy images of astronauts in freefall playing zero-G roller-derby? Where's the radioactive butterfly going in people's bedroom windows with the voice-over "Ask you doctor if AJAX is right for you!" The first five times I heard it, it was interresting. The next ten times I heard it, it got irritating. It's been another fifty times I've heard it and now I think there's an inherent security risk in it, because my AAAAIIIIIEEEE my AJAX buffer just overflowed!
I was quite harsh on Daniel Robbins when he left to "join the enemy". It now appears that this may have better outcomes than if he'd stayed at Gentoo the whole time. And paying job or not, you can't tell me he won't at least peek in on Gentoo on the side from time to time...
Now all he has to do is dig the Borg sockets out of his skull...
Not a lot of Slashdot response on this one, huh? Stuck for words?
OK, Unca Hosie'll help you out. First, general refutation: if the sole criteria for deeming something an "addiction" is that you spend a lot of time doing it so much as to neglect other activities, then why not say *sleep* is addicting? We spend one third of our lives doing it, we're unable to stop (we may try to curtail our sleeping but the "withdrawal symptoms" set in), and we could be doing a lot of more valuable things with our time if we didn't have to spend so much of it sleeping.
Second, if we must categorize computer use as addicting, then it is a relatively benign addiction. Beyond the case of the occasional socially-handicapped geek (rarely reported these days), few detrimental effects are known to stem from excessive computer use. Carpal tunnel syndrome and repetitive stress disorder may affect certain individuals in extreme cases (and may partly be blamed on poor interface design). Beyond that, it neither affects your physical health like drugs nor your financial health like gambling (which I don't classify as an addiction, but rather as a mental disease - based on the denial of the laws of mathematics in the face of an irrational faith in luck). Some psychological damage can be noted in the case of system administrators (read scary-devil-monastery lately?), but as these people encounter their hardships as a result of using computers in a professional capacity, even this evidence is negligible.
I've never programmed Ruby specifically, but wouldn't "while 0" evaluate to false and hence not execute the block? In any other language, it'd be "while 1".
What a joke. He appointed that militant fundamentalist to censor NASA. The kid was a dropout, who had never had a full-time job, and whose only qualification was that he had served on Bush's 2004 electoral campaign.
Before he awards any Science awards he should fire all the ignorant political appointees he placed to oversee real scientists. He should fire anybody who is as incompetent and unqualified as "You are doing a heck of a job Brownie."
Troll my ass, this is a very valid point posted above, as well as the first thing to my mind on seeing the headline. Whoever modded it troll needs to walk west til their hat floats...maybe it'll cool em off.
It was still announced with more hoopla than it deserved. Picasa is a web application, not an installed application. It should have run on every platform in the first place, as should all web apps. All the dumb thing does is upload pictures and send them somewhere. It's a glorified Flickr.
Well, I wasn't pointing fingers at any particular country. EU may follow suit, but I think they have some catching up to do.
Sorry, yes, I can blame 100% Americans. Complacent, cowed, middle-class-trash Americans who have never read a book, had an original thought, believed anything but USAToday and FOX news and tabloids in their lives. I, as an American who actually tries to keep track of what's going on, and having been reviled all my life by the majority of my coutry's population as a "geek" and "nerd" and "outcast" and "mad scientist" and all the other derogatory terms, can attest. So can many in here.
What DO you expect? You think a whole nation whose sole rallying causes are indifference and propaganda-induced paranoia is going to hang onto it's freedoms? You can get people to put up with a lot (even torture them) if only you spare them that which they fear the most (complete poverty). So see to it that they have just enough means to get by, and skim the rest. What is our option? Revolution? And what happens to everyone's 401K after the revolution? So a revolution will never happen again in this country. Go out on the street and talk to these people. Ask them how they like the situation. You'll get dumbfounded shrugs. Most of them wouldn't know the difference if you pissed on them, and very many of them don't have the self-esteem to object.
As for me and *my* household...as I've said about the hardware DRM issue a hundred times before, I *still* have my soldering iron. I've built/repaired my own hardware before, and I'll build and repair it again. Unlike those who succumb to the false security of the Second Amendment to protect a gun they can't use, I make my own security by using the brains that the system cannot match to look out for myself and my own. The Government can shoot back, but it can't outwit you.
My theory is that flame wars start when people go *looking* for one. In 90% of the cases in which I had a flame war and typed and typed and kept at it with tireless, dogged determination, it began to emerge that they had a chip on their shoulder before I ever came along. Thus, the person flaming you already got out of bed this morning pissed off at a certain category of people and you were the closest fit to project their agression onto. I've seen this happen hundreds of times. It at least makes a flame war more interesting if you approach it with the attitude of "Let's see what I can learn about human nature this time!"
Not very long at all...inside the United States borders.
Outside the United States borders, people are not such wussy little sheep. There are people in other countries who still have a pair of balls attached to their body, and who won't huddle in their little cages muttering "But if we don't support DRM, the terrorists win!" They'll fight back. They'll kick it to the curb. They'll get us back our freedom for us, since the greatest nation of cowards in history has shamed their heritage and given up.
I'm almost waiting for you to post a follow-up on your own. Surely, you can think about how laws come to be passed in the first place: because people consider some things ethically wrong to do, and pass laws against them!
The examples you cite are perfect. Sweatshops - getting a lot of press for a decade, now. Telemarketers - bringing the "do-not-call" list into necessity. Spam - laws are forming against it; a few of the worst offenders have gotten jail time for it. Patent-tag: still nothing being done about it legal-wise, but show me the tech user who isn't at least aware of the issue. In any case we most definitely *can* expect companies to have some ethics...or their profits slide when public outcry against their practice reaches a roar.
I keep getting "not found" errors. I finally Googled "dylanknightrogersblog" and was able to read the cache, but no evidence of the TFA on executable internet - obviously the page was indexed prior to the post.
Ah...plan9. I liked trying the live CD, it was fun, I got some gnarly screenshots out of it. It has a lot going for it. But seriously, the learning curve on this sucker is vertical. I have a hard enough time convincing people that they *can* *too* draw a straight line in Gimp, I run screaming from the scenario where I'm explaining the whole plan9 system!!!
If China launched a Google competitor targetting 1 billion potential customers that Google can't reach + all of Google's customers
Uh, but the Chinese Google would have to be censored. And who outside of China would prefer the censored Chinese Google over the free one? No, this hypothetical "Choogle" would be just another competing search engine, like the dozen or so competitors Google has now; no more, no less.
Don't expect a company to take ethics over profits.
OK, this line just made the top ten of the stupidest things to say. Sell your daughter on the street, why don't you? Pimp for your sister, too, huh? How about selling drugs to schoolkids? Peddle any kiddie-porn, lately? If yes, you're too vile for the rest of our presence. If no, you need to shut your hypocritical ass up, because ETHICS ARE OBVIOUSLY MORE IMPORTANT THAN PROFITS SOMETIMES, AREN'T THEY?
I'm fed up with this stupid line. Corporations every day are constrained by the judgements of the public regarding what is ethical. This is why fast food joints quit packaging in styrofoam containers which hurt the environment. That's why we boo Oracle for axing 2000 employees so it can snap up another subsidiary. That's why nobody likes Firestone for making defective tires that can kill people. That's why we put people in jail for starting Ponzi schemes. For $DIETY's sake, the Christian Right and Focus on the Family gets to call out boycotts against TV shows for portraying a gay character, and everybody's supposed to go "Oh, OK, Ba-a-ad TV show! I'm telling all my friends not to watch it!", but you violate basic human rights and all of a sudden the bottom line rules!
I'm dying to see what Norton does to fight back. Will it come to where anti-malware has to *be* malware just to get to be the "Boss anti-malware" on your machine?
Every now and then I just have to ask the Windows people the question that any Free/Open Source Software user would be asking: WHY THE HELL DO YOU PUT UP WITH THIS??? You PAY for this? Are you that into pain, or is it just a humble-before-God thing?
That was the first thought that leaped to my mind, but I didn't say anything thinking it'd be flamed before it hit the floor (weekend and all, y'know). But in fact, that seems to be the last resort of tech companies which find themselves floundering. Check out Solaris - without Belenix and Nexenta, stunted beginning efforts though they are, how many home PC users would have ever seen a Solaris system on their desktops? Gateway could ship with a solid Linux distro which would love their cheap hardware, cut their competitor's prices, and re-arrange the cow-spot pattern on the boxes into a penguin pattern (hey! They're both black-n-white!). Like many other big tech companies that have started boosting Linux, they are at the "What have we got to lose?" point - which is about the only damn way any innovation ever happens, unfortunately.
This means more clueless MS zombies throwing out perfectly good hardware in order to upgrade, which means more free computers to run GNU/Linux/BSD/OpenSolaris/plan9 for MEEEEEEE! Thank you, Bill Gates! (And when my basement Beowolf cluster attains sentience, it will "thank" you, too!)
Ever heard of the "Boss key", which was around even in the days of DOS games? You mean to tell me you're so inept that you can't hide a solitaire window on your screen? You don't have a good enough sense of radar to know when somebody's coming? You let your screen be visible from the door of your cubicle?
Yeah, one of the main complaints you hear about Linux is that it isn't a developed gaming platform. Quite true, but in our proprietary software days, our household burned out on games. We'd buy the newest blockbuster, play it to death for a month, and then get bored and have to go buy another one. It cost us $40-$60 every time we got bored, and we were no smarter or more enriched for the experience. And that's the problem with Windows for us: it's a great game box that sucks at everything else.
We just got a Nintendo Game Cube for Christmas, and we actually took it right back to the store without even opening it. We just looked at the side of the box and saw the same Mario they've been selling us since what, 1992? We traded it in, amongst other things, for a web programming book for my spouse's site design, a Python programming book for me, some hardware. Games? We snarf LLGP or Wolvix and play that on the PC. Linux gaming is finally showing signs of coming into it's own!
Slashdot Mirror
Too bad the rest of the world still believes programming is voodoo and fairy dust.
*pant* *pant* *heave*
Now all he has to do is dig the Borg sockets out of his skull...
OK, Unca Hosie'll help you out. First, general refutation: if the sole criteria for deeming something an "addiction" is that you spend a lot of time doing it so much as to neglect other activities, then why not say *sleep* is addicting? We spend one third of our lives doing it, we're unable to stop (we may try to curtail our sleeping but the "withdrawal symptoms" set in), and we could be doing a lot of more valuable things with our time if we didn't have to spend so much of it sleeping.
Second, if we must categorize computer use as addicting, then it is a relatively benign addiction. Beyond the case of the occasional socially-handicapped geek (rarely reported these days), few detrimental effects are known to stem from excessive computer use. Carpal tunnel syndrome and repetitive stress disorder may affect certain individuals in extreme cases (and may partly be blamed on poor interface design). Beyond that, it neither affects your physical health like drugs nor your financial health like gambling (which I don't classify as an addiction, but rather as a mental disease - based on the denial of the laws of mathematics in the face of an irrational faith in luck). Some psychological damage can be noted in the case of system administrators (read scary-devil-monastery lately?), but as these people encounter their hardships as a result of using computers in a professional capacity, even this evidence is negligible.
I've never programmed Ruby specifically, but wouldn't "while 0" evaluate to false and hence not execute the block? In any other language, it'd be "while 1".
Before he awards any Science awards he should fire all the ignorant political appointees he placed to oversee real scientists. He should fire anybody who is as incompetent and unqualified as "You are doing a heck of a job Brownie."
Troll my ass, this is a very valid point posted above, as well as the first thing to my mind on seeing the headline. Whoever modded it troll needs to walk west til their hat floats...maybe it'll cool em off.
OK, meanwhile I'll make the bold proposal that you squat on your thumb, you arrogant, Fascist-loving bastard.
It was still announced with more hoopla than it deserved. Picasa is a web application, not an installed application. It should have run on every platform in the first place, as should all web apps. All the dumb thing does is upload pictures and send them somewhere. It's a glorified Flickr.
Sorry, yes, I can blame 100% Americans. Complacent, cowed, middle-class-trash Americans who have never read a book, had an original thought, believed anything but USAToday and FOX news and tabloids in their lives. I, as an American who actually tries to keep track of what's going on, and having been reviled all my life by the majority of my coutry's population as a "geek" and "nerd" and "outcast" and "mad scientist" and all the other derogatory terms, can attest. So can many in here.
What DO you expect? You think a whole nation whose sole rallying causes are indifference and propaganda-induced paranoia is going to hang onto it's freedoms? You can get people to put up with a lot (even torture them) if only you spare them that which they fear the most (complete poverty). So see to it that they have just enough means to get by, and skim the rest. What is our option? Revolution? And what happens to everyone's 401K after the revolution? So a revolution will never happen again in this country. Go out on the street and talk to these people. Ask them how they like the situation. You'll get dumbfounded shrugs. Most of them wouldn't know the difference if you pissed on them, and very many of them don't have the self-esteem to object.
As for me and *my* household...as I've said about the hardware DRM issue a hundred times before, I *still* have my soldering iron. I've built/repaired my own hardware before, and I'll build and repair it again. Unlike those who succumb to the false security of the Second Amendment to protect a gun they can't use, I make my own security by using the brains that the system cannot match to look out for myself and my own. The Government can shoot back, but it can't outwit you.
My theory is that flame wars start when people go *looking* for one. In 90% of the cases in which I had a flame war and typed and typed and kept at it with tireless, dogged determination, it began to emerge that they had a chip on their shoulder before I ever came along. Thus, the person flaming you already got out of bed this morning pissed off at a certain category of people and you were the closest fit to project their agression onto. I've seen this happen hundreds of times. It at least makes a flame war more interesting if you approach it with the attitude of "Let's see what I can learn about human nature this time!"
How? When? Where? Video games have absolutely saturated society at every level they need to! What more adoption do we need? Play them in our sleep?
Outside the United States borders, people are not such wussy little sheep. There are people in other countries who still have a pair of balls attached to their body, and who won't huddle in their little cages muttering "But if we don't support DRM, the terrorists win!" They'll fight back. They'll kick it to the curb. They'll get us back our freedom for us, since the greatest nation of cowards in history has shamed their heritage and given up.
The examples you cite are perfect. Sweatshops - getting a lot of press for a decade, now. Telemarketers - bringing the "do-not-call" list into necessity. Spam - laws are forming against it; a few of the worst offenders have gotten jail time for it. Patent-tag: still nothing being done about it legal-wise, but show me the tech user who isn't at least aware of the issue. In any case we most definitely *can* expect companies to have some ethics...or their profits slide when public outcry against their practice reaches a roar.
I keep getting "not found" errors. I finally Googled "dylanknightrogersblog" and was able to read the cache, but no evidence of the TFA on executable internet - obviously the page was indexed prior to the post.
Ah...plan9. I liked trying the live CD, it was fun, I got some gnarly screenshots out of it. It has a lot going for it. But seriously, the learning curve on this sucker is vertical. I have a hard enough time convincing people that they *can* *too* draw a straight line in Gimp, I run screaming from the scenario where I'm explaining the whole plan9 system!!!
Uh, but the Chinese Google would have to be censored. And who outside of China would prefer the censored Chinese Google over the free one? No, this hypothetical "Choogle" would be just another competing search engine, like the dozen or so competitors Google has now; no more, no less.
OK, this line just made the top ten of the stupidest things to say. Sell your daughter on the street, why don't you? Pimp for your sister, too, huh? How about selling drugs to schoolkids? Peddle any kiddie-porn, lately? If yes, you're too vile for the rest of our presence. If no, you need to shut your hypocritical ass up, because ETHICS ARE OBVIOUSLY MORE IMPORTANT THAN PROFITS SOMETIMES, AREN'T THEY?
I'm fed up with this stupid line. Corporations every day are constrained by the judgements of the public regarding what is ethical. This is why fast food joints quit packaging in styrofoam containers which hurt the environment. That's why we boo Oracle for axing 2000 employees so it can snap up another subsidiary. That's why nobody likes Firestone for making defective tires that can kill people. That's why we put people in jail for starting Ponzi schemes. For $DIETY's sake, the Christian Right and Focus on the Family gets to call out boycotts against TV shows for portraying a gay character, and everybody's supposed to go "Oh, OK, Ba-a-ad TV show! I'm telling all my friends not to watch it!", but you violate basic human rights and all of a sudden the bottom line rules!
Every now and then I just have to ask the Windows people the question that any Free/Open Source Software user would be asking: WHY THE HELL DO YOU PUT UP WITH THIS??? You PAY for this? Are you that into pain, or is it just a humble-before-God thing?
That was the first thought that leaped to my mind, but I didn't say anything thinking it'd be flamed before it hit the floor (weekend and all, y'know). But in fact, that seems to be the last resort of tech companies which find themselves floundering. Check out Solaris - without Belenix and Nexenta, stunted beginning efforts though they are, how many home PC users would have ever seen a Solaris system on their desktops? Gateway could ship with a solid Linux distro which would love their cheap hardware, cut their competitor's prices, and re-arrange the cow-spot pattern on the boxes into a penguin pattern (hey! They're both black-n-white!). Like many other big tech companies that have started boosting Linux, they are at the "What have we got to lose?" point - which is about the only damn way any innovation ever happens, unfortunately.
This means more clueless MS zombies throwing out perfectly good hardware in order to upgrade, which means more free computers to run GNU/Linux/BSD/OpenSolaris/plan9 for MEEEEEEE! Thank you, Bill Gates! (And when my basement Beowolf cluster attains sentience, it will "thank" you, too!)
Ever heard of the "Boss key", which was around even in the days of DOS games? You mean to tell me you're so inept that you can't hide a solitaire window on your screen? You don't have a good enough sense of radar to know when somebody's coming? You let your screen be visible from the door of your cubicle?
That'd be one of the scariest two sentences to hear in concurrence: "That company that just axed 2000 employees? They just bought us."
Whoa! That was beyond insightful. How do you mod a comment "+5 Zen"?
We just got a Nintendo Game Cube for Christmas, and we actually took it right back to the store without even opening it. We just looked at the side of the box and saw the same Mario they've been selling us since what, 1992? We traded it in, amongst other things, for a web programming book for my spouse's site design, a Python programming book for me, some hardware. Games? We snarf LLGP or Wolvix and play that on the PC. Linux gaming is finally showing signs of coming into it's own!
Or a Plan 9 from Bell Labs server. Heck, I dare anybody to understand it!(-: