Buy a car? Did you smoke in it ? Oh, now it has no resale value, sorry.
This is already happening where I live (Netherlands). If a car has a distinct smell of tobacco, you are going to be pretty hardpressed to sell it without getting it discounted heavily. So standard practice is to take it to a professional car cleaner for a few hundred euros and get it refurbished. The not-so-smart folk get a 1000 euro discount on their price.
As an engineer, perhaps you should have hired a professional in a field you're not competent in? For this type of stuff, I hire an accountant.
And he or she would have likely told you that it's the same situation as with any subscription service: basically you were selling a (product-)lifetime subscription. As far as I know, we still have subscriptions after SOX.
I beg to differ. Access have a viable solution if you care about your datas: Use access as a front-end to a MsSQL back-end. You have then all the power of Access as a RAD tool with the integrity of a real database.
FFS!!!! Use MS Sharepoint for crying out loud! Its the official recommendation of Microsoft.
Heck they are pushing their user base out of Access and into.NET with the fact they are trying to drop Access support. Even they know its a horrid program.
Yes, and I'm sure the price of Sharepoint being several orders of magnitude higher than that of Access would have nothing to do with it... (Office Sharepoint Server without CALS is now $4,451 with each enterprise-graded CAL being $171. The internet server version costs $41,134)
...back in my university days, we used to scoff at the morons in the labs who would, quite literally, randomly hack their projects until they worked.
Apparently there *is* a dark side to a high-quality unit test suite... it gives idiots a false sense of security and justifies their idiotic development practices.
You sir, are a snob. A programming snob at that, congrats.
I'd rather follow up on the work of a programming snob than a programming slob.
Actually, I always use the Web-philosophy. No, not the internet web-thing, the old one by Donald Knuth using Tangle and Weave.
Basically, i write a short story of what the program is doing, and why, and how. Then I comment that story. Then I add in the code at the points it should be. Most of the logical errors I can catch this way before I even start to program. Using invariants and pre/postconditions make it even possible (if you're so inclined) to prove the code as correct.
Short comments, or long comments, who cares. Just make them meaningful and readable.
And another thing: I work with data warehouses. They can be large. Sometimes, huge. The thing that annoys me a lot (but keeps me in business) is the distinct inability of most programmers to actually read something about set theory before designing terabyte-sized databases. Then I get called in to solve the issues. At the moment I have to work with a database used by lots of organisations, that uses the column "unique" (with ''random'' values to make the table-keys distinct) and that's only one of the violations of database theory I've come across in there...
While I know one person who has taught himself a lot because of real interest, I know dozens (30+) of people who didn't get the education before starting, and never bothered to get certified on anything afterwards either. So if you're hiring, the save bet is to select on education.
For instance, if you're using Linq, you are basically using an implementation of the Lambda calculus. It would really help your understanding of Linq if you understood Lambda calculus. Where I studied, it was actually the prerequisite to learning any functional language, since basically they are all grounded in it.
You might not have *needed* those, but it would have been *easier* if you had learnt those items.
Couldn't agree more. Marriage lasts for a while, and living with someone who ridicules the things you find important in life (and vice versa, it looks like) gets really, really old after a while.
You can either discuss this, now, while you still have a relationship to speak of, or let it fester and have it kill off your relationship in the long run.
My RAZR (V3) has mini-USB. I can charge it while driving, on the plug normally used to charge my navigation (also micro-USB). And I can charge it from my laptop. I haven't used the recharger that came with it for the last few years.
If your son is susceptible to fever seizures (mine was too, when he was 2-3 years old) they prescribe something that's basically anally inserted valium to relax the muscles. That should help in emergencies (a colleague of mine had the same as your son with his, and he always kept that tube close until the kid was old enough he didn't have instant 40 degrees (celsius) fevers).
In our case, we just made VERY sure that whenever our kid ran a fever we dosed him with paracetamol in good quantities (enough to down the fever, which was the max dosage for his weight), at the correct time. In his case, correct time was not 8 hours later, but 5-6 hours after the previous dose (doesn't give trouble if you only do that for 2-3 days). It really is quite a close call because being 30 minutes late means a very sharp spike in the fever and bam, seizures.
It scared me witless the first time it happened. So I can imagine your anxiety.
I think it's sad that you don't realize that on most parts of the worldmap, the boundaries *are* completely artificial. Check the African maps. See the straight lines?
The issues in France are not shared across the EU. In The Netherlands the contractors are now a sizeable part of the workforce, even more as a percentage than in the USA (funny enough: mostly because of the healthcare expensives that are prohibitive in the USA, and quite affordable over here - that shed a new light on the healthcare debate for me). It is one of the reason that companies have been getting away with a minimum of people being cut, instead the contractors have been evicted on a massive scale. Fortunately for the government, contractors are not counted in the unemployment statistics (they are not eligible for benefits so they don't apply - and unemployment statistics only count unemployment benefits). In The Netherlands it's not difficult to fire someone, unless you really have no reason at all except "didn't like his looks" - in which case you can still fire someone but you have to compensate them for it (on avg, one month pay per year worked at the company).
Why not hire all contractors? Because you want to retain business knowledge in the company. In The Netherlands you don't count as contractor if you don't run "entrepreneurs-risks", so having steady employment is considered "virtual employment" and if the IRS catches you with that, you're liable for all taxes etc. that haven't been paid by the contractor. So this means contractors are basically forced to switch jobs every 6 months or so. There's more, but this is an effective brake on "all-contractor" workforces. There are companies that try this model, especially in the building sector (carpenters etc.) where the labor is semi-skilled so it's no problem if someone leaves.
Your argument would work for people who can't afford a new washing machine. Most people in Europe should have no trouble paying for one, in cash or with a long-term payment arrangement (an expensive loan, basically). So in that case the argument does become viable. And that's why it could work just as well with a television.
It works with cars just as well, though. Sales for cars with an E or F efficiency label (the lowest) have dropped to nearly zero, while those with label A or B (best in class) have gone up. Daihatsu is reporting one of their best years ever, so far.
Yes, but it is one state that is driving that change. One state that is affecting the other states without their approval. One could say it is one state infringing on the "rights" of the other states. So even if the effects are "positive," should one state have that much power?
No, but we in Europe have mostly given up complaining about it in disgust. Or weren't you talking about how the USA forces the rest of the world to implement *their* IP-laws, export-laws and proxy-wars?
Even then you have to be careful about ingesting enough salt/sugar (and not too much either. Drinking 10 Lbs of sportdrinks could be just as fatal as drinking only water).
We know that Japanese IQ is about 20 points higher than African IQ. Could this IQ difference explain why all societies dominated by Africans are gross failures?
If politics had something to do with intelligence instead of interests, you might have a point. But even in that case, you're wrong. In societies with a large amount of inequality, such as China, the USA, and most African nations, IQ is much less inherited than it is socially determined. Only when you get to societies where everyone has equal access to education, regardless of income, you see that IQ is related more to the person than to his circumstances.
So IQ being higher in Japan could well mean that access to education in Japan is available to everyone and not restricted to a fairly wealthy subset of the population, such as in the USA.
Ofcourse, your argument was bullshit to begin with: you had to restrict it to the USA and Japan to start with, then you had to restrict it to only the physics and chemistry nobel prizes because including literature or a peace prize (Obama) would have destroyed your argument right off the bat. And ofcourse you had to ignore the fact that a lot of those contributions came about when the African Americans were still enslaved or had just left slavery - slavery tends to reduce your chance of becoming a Nobel prize winner a bit.
In other words: you had to put on a blindfold in order not to see the gaping holes in your argument. Well, good luck in your cosy little world. It must be pretty peaceful when you only see things you want to see.
These doctors treated this machine like a magic button that takes pictures. This is what happens when a user interface lies to its users, fooling them into thinking something is simple when it is in fact complex and dangerous.
Avast, iPod! Begone, Evil Spawn! Back to the Seven Hells with thee, thou lying Tool of the Devil!:)
On a more serious note: you sound like the type of folk that advocates *not* initializing C-variables to safe NULL-values by default, because it hides complexity from the programmers and doesn't teach them a good lesson when someone uses their security holes and cleans out the bank. I really thought we'd gone beyond all that.
In The Netherlands that one was closed after we had too many people fly out to St.Maarten (near Curacao), which has one single highway of about 1 km. long (or something to that effect), get their drivers license there, and fly back and exchange it for a real one. Not the best way if you want to stay alive so the loophole was closed.
But a classmate of mine was exchange student and he got his license in California in about 5 minutes, spending the remainder of the time having a chat with the examinator. He said Dutch traffic scared him witless the first time he tried driving here - not at all like the US traffic.
A co-worker of mine put this type of information on his blog. We mainly deal with corporations as customers so it was quite damaging. He was fired on the spot and his picture posted with the guards.
This was in The Netherlands, where you are very well-protected from randomly being fired. But he didn't have a chance.
Delft pottery is a Dutch knockoff of Chinese pottery. Maybe the Chinese should sue?
And then call it what? Beijing pottery? Good luck with that:)
Although the Chinese could just ploink down a pottery-factory in Delft and create as much Delft pottery as they like. However the market is very small so I've no doubt that Delft pottery has little to fear from the Chinese.
It's strange. Eternal weekends start to get boring after a while. You start running out of stuff to do. Then you don't do anything.
That is ofcourse a risk. Until this year I've long wondered whether I'd be susceptible to that boredom, or not. Well, with the creditcrisis my work ended and I had enough money left over from last year to not have to worry so much for this year. So I've spent 8 months at home.
Fortunately, my home wasn't finished as much as I'd like so that took off 2 months. Then I got sick and had to stay in bed for two weeks. Then my inlaws came over from China and stayed two months. Then I decided I really needed to finish that Prince II Foundation book and get certified on it, so I did. Somewhere in April I had a few horrible interviews for a position as datawarehouse architect - I realized that I could do much better as an architect after updating my knowledge so I started to study the latest techniques. I wrote 3 articles, one of which (on Anchor Modelling) will be published in November. I redesigned my website. Had a lot of lunches with old coworkers. Oh, and I started to go to the gym to work out - I've since gained 7 kilograms in weight (57-64), my BMI is now in the healthy range (up from 'underweight') and I never get cold again, even wearing a t-shirt. My condition has improved immensely. My wife liked it a lot as well, so my lovelife was better too - ofcourse, getting to bed on time and not having to get up earlier than your normal biorhythm dictates is a bonus there:)
Oh yes, I cancelled my WoW subscription during this time. Doing meaningful things with your life suddenly removes the need to slay dragons in virtual life. It opened my eyes to a realization that playing games had a lot to do with alienation.
All in all - I can heartily recommend a sabbatical. It really opened my eyes to a lot of things and I came out of it as a much better professional (and healthier person). So yes, give me a few million. I'd never stop working, but I'd make very sure the work was interesting enough.
Slashdot Mirror
Buy a car? Did you smoke in it ? Oh, now it has no resale value, sorry.
This is already happening where I live (Netherlands). If a car has a distinct smell of tobacco, you are going to be pretty hardpressed to sell it without getting it discounted heavily. So standard practice is to take it to a professional car cleaner for a few hundred euros and get it refurbished. The not-so-smart folk get a 1000 euro discount on their price.
As an engineer, perhaps you should have hired a professional in a field you're not competent in? For this type of stuff, I hire an accountant.
And he or she would have likely told you that it's the same situation as with any subscription service: basically you were selling a (product-)lifetime subscription. As far as I know, we still have subscriptions after SOX.
I beg to differ. Access have a viable solution if you care about your datas: Use access as a front-end to a MsSQL back-end. You have then all the power of Access as a RAD tool with the integrity of a real database.
FFS!!!! Use MS Sharepoint for crying out loud! Its the official recommendation of Microsoft.
Heck they are pushing their user base out of Access and into .NET with the fact they are trying to drop Access support. Even they know its a horrid program.
Yes, and I'm sure the price of Sharepoint being several orders of magnitude higher than that of Access would have nothing to do with it... (Office Sharepoint Server without CALS is now $4,451 with each enterprise-graded CAL being $171. The internet server version costs $41,134)
...back in my university days, we used to scoff at the morons in the labs who would, quite literally, randomly hack their projects until they worked.
Apparently there *is* a dark side to a high-quality unit test suite... it gives idiots a false sense of security and justifies their idiotic development practices.
You sir, are a snob. A programming snob at that, congrats.
I'd rather follow up on the work of a programming snob than a programming slob.
True, but try asking for explanations :)
Actually, I always use the Web-philosophy. No, not the internet web-thing, the old one by Donald Knuth using Tangle and Weave.
Basically, i write a short story of what the program is doing, and why, and how. Then I comment that story. Then I add in the code at the points it should be. Most of the logical errors I can catch this way before I even start to program. Using invariants and pre/postconditions make it even possible (if you're so inclined) to prove the code as correct.
Short comments, or long comments, who cares. Just make them meaningful and readable.
And another thing: I work with data warehouses. They can be large. Sometimes, huge. The thing that annoys me a lot (but keeps me in business) is the distinct inability of most programmers to actually read something about set theory before designing terabyte-sized databases. Then I get called in to solve the issues. At the moment I have to work with a database used by lots of organisations, that uses the column "unique" (with ''random'' values to make the table-keys distinct) and that's only one of the violations of database theory I've come across in there...
While I know one person who has taught himself a lot because of real interest, I know dozens (30+) of people who didn't get the education before starting, and never bothered to get certified on anything afterwards either. So if you're hiring, the save bet is to select on education.
Even in data-access, you need math.
For instance, if you're using Linq, you are basically using an implementation of the Lambda calculus. It would really help your understanding of Linq if you understood Lambda calculus. Where I studied, it was actually the prerequisite to learning any functional language, since basically they are all grounded in it.
You might not have *needed* those, but it would have been *easier* if you had learnt those items.
Couldn't agree more. Marriage lasts for a while, and living with someone who ridicules the things you find important in life (and vice versa, it looks like) gets really, really old after a while.
You can either discuss this, now, while you still have a relationship to speak of, or let it fester and have it kill off your relationship in the long run.
You misread him. He just stated that liberal opinions sound fine. :)
My RAZR (V3) has mini-USB. I can charge it while driving, on the plug normally used to charge my navigation (also micro-USB). And I can charge it from my laptop. I haven't used the recharger that came with it for the last few years.
Ouch... I wish you luck. I hope they grow over it - mine did. Same as for most of his ailments: they usually get more robust when they get older.
Ofcourse, they also do more dangerous things then :)
If your son is susceptible to fever seizures (mine was too, when he was 2-3 years old) they prescribe something that's basically anally inserted valium to relax the muscles. That should help in emergencies (a colleague of mine had the same as your son with his, and he always kept that tube close until the kid was old enough he didn't have instant 40 degrees (celsius) fevers).
In our case, we just made VERY sure that whenever our kid ran a fever we dosed him with paracetamol in good quantities (enough to down the fever, which was the max dosage for his weight), at the correct time. In his case, correct time was not 8 hours later, but 5-6 hours after the previous dose (doesn't give trouble if you only do that for 2-3 days). It really is quite a close call because being 30 minutes late means a very sharp spike in the fever and bam, seizures.
It scared me witless the first time it happened. So I can imagine your anxiety.
I think it's sad that you don't realize that on most parts of the worldmap, the boundaries *are* completely artificial. Check the African maps. See the straight lines?
The issues in France are not shared across the EU. In The Netherlands the contractors are now a sizeable part of the workforce, even more as a percentage than in the USA (funny enough: mostly because of the healthcare expensives that are prohibitive in the USA, and quite affordable over here - that shed a new light on the healthcare debate for me). It is one of the reason that companies have been getting away with a minimum of people being cut, instead the contractors have been evicted on a massive scale. Fortunately for the government, contractors are not counted in the unemployment statistics (they are not eligible for benefits so they don't apply - and unemployment statistics only count unemployment benefits). In The Netherlands it's not difficult to fire someone, unless you really have no reason at all except "didn't like his looks" - in which case you can still fire someone but you have to compensate them for it (on avg, one month pay per year worked at the company).
Why not hire all contractors? Because you want to retain business knowledge in the company. In The Netherlands you don't count as contractor if you don't run "entrepreneurs-risks", so having steady employment is considered "virtual employment" and if the IRS catches you with that, you're liable for all taxes etc. that haven't been paid by the contractor. So this means contractors are basically forced to switch jobs every 6 months or so. There's more, but this is an effective brake on "all-contractor" workforces. There are companies that try this model, especially in the building sector (carpenters etc.) where the labor is semi-skilled so it's no problem if someone leaves.
Your argument would work for people who can't afford a new washing machine. Most people in Europe should have no trouble paying for one, in cash or with a long-term payment arrangement (an expensive loan, basically). So in that case the argument does become viable. And that's why it could work just as well with a television.
It works with cars just as well, though. Sales for cars with an E or F efficiency label (the lowest) have dropped to nearly zero, while those with label A or B (best in class) have gone up. Daihatsu is reporting one of their best years ever, so far.
Yes, but it is one state that is driving that change. One state that is affecting the other states without their approval. One could say it is one state infringing on the "rights" of the other states. So even if the effects are "positive," should one state have that much power?
No, but we in Europe have mostly given up complaining about it in disgust. Or weren't you talking about how the USA forces the rest of the world to implement *their* IP-laws, export-laws and proxy-wars?
Even then you have to be careful about ingesting enough salt/sugar (and not too much either. Drinking 10 Lbs of sportdrinks could be just as fatal as drinking only water).
We know that Japanese IQ is about 20 points higher than African IQ. Could this IQ difference explain why all societies dominated by Africans are gross failures?
If politics had something to do with intelligence instead of interests, you might have a point. But even in that case, you're wrong. In societies with a large amount of inequality, such as China, the USA, and most African nations, IQ is much less inherited than it is socially determined. Only when you get to societies where everyone has equal access to education, regardless of income, you see that IQ is related more to the person than to his circumstances.
So IQ being higher in Japan could well mean that access to education in Japan is available to everyone and not restricted to a fairly wealthy subset of the population, such as in the USA.
Ofcourse, your argument was bullshit to begin with: you had to restrict it to the USA and Japan to start with, then you had to restrict it to only the physics and chemistry nobel prizes because including literature or a peace prize (Obama) would have destroyed your argument right off the bat. And ofcourse you had to ignore the fact that a lot of those contributions came about when the African Americans were still enslaved or had just left slavery - slavery tends to reduce your chance of becoming a Nobel prize winner a bit.
In other words: you had to put on a blindfold in order not to see the gaping holes in your argument. Well, good luck in your cosy little world. It must be pretty peaceful when you only see things you want to see.
These doctors treated this machine like a magic button that takes pictures. This is what happens when a user interface lies to its users, fooling them into thinking something is simple when it is in fact complex and dangerous.
Avast, iPod! Begone, Evil Spawn! Back to the Seven Hells with thee, thou lying Tool of the Devil! :)
On a more serious note: you sound like the type of folk that advocates *not* initializing C-variables to safe NULL-values by default, because it hides complexity from the programmers and doesn't teach them a good lesson when someone uses their security holes and cleans out the bank. I really thought we'd gone beyond all that.
Lol, that must have been one of the most confused comics I've read in ages :)
Great parody!
Argonauts.. as in "arrrghh you just murdered a piece of classical mythology" :)
And Huguenots.
In The Netherlands that one was closed after we had too many people fly out to St.Maarten (near Curacao), which has one single highway of about 1 km. long (or something to that effect), get their drivers license there, and fly back and exchange it for a real one. Not the best way if you want to stay alive so the loophole was closed.
But a classmate of mine was exchange student and he got his license in California in about 5 minutes, spending the remainder of the time having a chat with the examinator. He said Dutch traffic scared him witless the first time he tried driving here - not at all like the US traffic.
A co-worker of mine put this type of information on his blog. We mainly deal with corporations as customers so it was quite damaging. He was fired on the spot and his picture posted with the guards.
This was in The Netherlands, where you are very well-protected from randomly being fired. But he didn't have a chance.
You can't make "Delft" pottery except in Delft.
Delft pottery is a Dutch knockoff of Chinese pottery. Maybe the Chinese should sue?
And then call it what? Beijing pottery? Good luck with that :)
Although the Chinese could just ploink down a pottery-factory in Delft and create as much Delft pottery as they like. However the market is very small so I've no doubt that Delft pottery has little to fear from the Chinese.
It's strange. Eternal weekends start to get boring after a while. You start running out of stuff to do. Then you don't do anything.
That is ofcourse a risk. Until this year I've long wondered whether I'd be susceptible to that boredom, or not. Well, with the creditcrisis my work ended and I had enough money left over from last year to not have to worry so much for this year. So I've spent 8 months at home.
Fortunately, my home wasn't finished as much as I'd like so that took off 2 months. Then I got sick and had to stay in bed for two weeks. Then my inlaws came over from China and stayed two months. Then I decided I really needed to finish that Prince II Foundation book and get certified on it, so I did. Somewhere in April I had a few horrible interviews for a position as datawarehouse architect - I realized that I could do much better as an architect after updating my knowledge so I started to study the latest techniques. I wrote 3 articles, one of which (on Anchor Modelling) will be published in November. I redesigned my website. Had a lot of lunches with old coworkers. Oh, and I started to go to the gym to work out - I've since gained 7 kilograms in weight (57-64), my BMI is now in the healthy range (up from 'underweight') and I never get cold again, even wearing a t-shirt. My condition has improved immensely. My wife liked it a lot as well, so my lovelife was better too - ofcourse, getting to bed on time and not having to get up earlier than your normal biorhythm dictates is a bonus there :)
Oh yes, I cancelled my WoW subscription during this time. Doing meaningful things with your life suddenly removes the need to slay dragons in virtual life. It opened my eyes to a realization that playing games had a lot to do with alienation.
All in all - I can heartily recommend a sabbatical. It really opened my eyes to a lot of things and I came out of it as a much better professional (and healthier person). So yes, give me a few million. I'd never stop working, but I'd make very sure the work was interesting enough.