...require the sites which depend upon Flash to notify users they cannot download Flash if they are using a device on the list [and this is because of a Flash policy].
Visitors go away, counts go down, and those with Flash-based sites decide Flash-based restrictions suck and kick them to the curb.
People seem to think bringing landsharks into problems are the way to solve them. Something most weenies seem to forget or haven't learned is: the best way to beat the system is to play by the system. translated: play by the rules to the nth degree and stupid things have a way of blocking things up such that those who have the most at stake suddenly see the light, throw a tantrum, and remove the obstructions.
The problem is too many people try to fight the system and look for exceptions in the rules. That's a lost cause. The rule makers spend so much time sewing up loose ends they forget just how bunged up the system can be if people actually follow their rules.
Whilst I'm drifting off-topic....
this is a tip for those of you who are in repressive workplaces. Don't fight it, adhere to it like a fanatic. They're counting on a fight. Everyone bitches about something and they figure that's your bitch forte.
Microsoft's efforts in these studies is obviously part of their marketing efforts. Microsoft's strongest suit is marketing, not technology development. After all, look at how many companies they've purchased vs. original technologies which have been developed in-house.
I will qualify my question with this: I like Linux, but I make my bread & butter off of Windows - like it or not, it's easier to find income [here] with Windows. n.b. I said easier. I didn't say the work was better.
The TCO certain is dropping over time. No need to upgrade software, no need to purchase an assload of new hardware to support upgraded software. Microsoft may have to break one of their "rules" re: backward compatibility. It's been said IE 7.0 won't work on pre-XP systems, although I don't think that's going to make corporate accounts give a rat's posterior because there are some fine, decaf browsers which work quite well and don't make anyone miss IE at all.
As I said, MS could easily prove TCO of Windows is low(er), but to do so would admit loudly businesses don't want to budge. So the question remains: how do they motivate the 2K users to pry open their accounts payable budget and upgrade? Until they answer that, it doesn't matter what they say about TCO.
The chairman of the CS department had advanced degrees in math and English. We were graded as heavily for punctuation, grammar, and spelling, as we were for design and coding skills. This included comments as well as external documentation. T/F sections of tests consisted of marking T or F, and correcting the False statements to make them true. Several "short answer" questions - one or two sentences. A few questions which required writing a few paragraphs. How often do CS students have to turn in blue book answers for their semester finals?
Our Senior Comprehensives were the toughest on campus. My "Orals", which covered all four years as well as defending my Senior Project, required me to stand before three department chairs (Comp Sci, Systems Analysis, Physics). No one else had to stand before more than two.
They wanted to make sure we didn't fit in with the industry who's member's believe the best way to identify it's member's is by killing the English language. [sic]
I think you're being fussy. CS means "Computer Science"; i.e. "the science of computing". It says nothing about software.
It's incredible how many people walk into an interview with "CS" on their diploma and essentially have a degree in computer programming. If you are in that situation, you're better off walking in with a degree in Forestry or no degree at all.
I managed to walk away 20+ years ago with a CS degree with a lot of liberal arts on the side (e.g. Modern European History, Old English Literature - although my Latin was solid enough at the time I wasn't allowed to read translations - I was forced to make my own translations from the French source as a challenge) but also managed to take a course [each] in electronics and microcomputer interfacing, courses requiring us to write our own operating system, compiler, DBMS, debugger, and some AI, which I started by teaching the LISP section. There was a lot of calculus on the schedule, but I studied in advance and tested out of almost all of it. I spent a lot of time sitting in classrooms full of math majors, studying Galois' work as a hobby.
As a religious facility (non-denominational), we also took on projects for local religious and not-for-profit groups which couldn't afford to pay the big buck$ for high-powered consultants, so we had class projects which entailed doing work for them. They got work done gratis and the students got real-world experience (those who didn't have businesses of their own, such as myself, which made for nice Summers and longer school breaks). Those projects also provided people with project management experience as well as time management beyond what the typical college student encounters.
As far as languages go, I'm not so worried about seeing people walking in with all of the "current" or "hot" languages, but if they've had some diversity. Sitting on languages which have the same or similar syntax and environment will do nothing for some thought diversity. And writing Windows & Linux (only) as operating systems won't do you much good, either. Even some (even brief) exposure to something more exotic such as a mainframe or midrange like a Data General or DEC should provide some cross pollenation of the brain cells.
The point is that if you've spent four years working to become Linus' acolyte and know nothing but Linux, C|C++|Java, PERL, and PHP, then you'll likely do nothing but that for a long time and always apparently have a job. Personally, I need a bit more variety. And I needed a lot more in college (hence a lack of resistence to the classical courses). The variety doesn't have to lie in what you do with your work, but the tools. If you are willing to limit yourself, including to software only, more power to you. Personally, I enjoyed learning about the hardware and enjoying the knowledge of how the pieces fit together. I'm wagering most people haven't built their own boards, debug them, interface them to some type of computer, and manage to get things to work. The more diversity, the better. I'd hate to go to a pot luck picnic every day and have everyone bring green beans all of the time. (I don't even like green beans.)
I'm working on the DARPA Grand Challenge (Go IRV!) at the moment and my piece of the action could permit me to remain distanced from a lot of things [if I wanted to] but I've learned to peek into a lot of things, ask a lot of stupid questions, and I've found a lot more to enjoy which I might have missed out on.
Remember what Richard Bach (Jonathon Livingston Seagull) wrote in Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah? (The Messiah's Handbook)
Argue your limitations, and sure enough, they are yours.
Now I just have to figure out which member of the DMA modded me as flamebait.
The only conjecture I made was my prediction of Richter's future method of making money. And this afternoon, I found news sources stating his intended means supports what I said above: harvesting email addresses and selling them to other spammers.
Unfortunately, spammers have this tendency to say, "You are receiving this message because you opted-in|indicated you are interested in|etc." as though that's supposed to convince you [that]you forgot about doing it. Some even provide an IP address you supposedly were using at the time this happened.
The only way opting-in works is if it's COI (confirmed opt-in). This is when you send email, a response is sent to you, and you either respond with a confirmation or click on a link and make a confirmation.
To spammers, confirmed opt-in means you confirmed your interest by sending email; i.e. you've confirmed your interest by sending email. They call double opt-in what I just described as COI (confirmed opt-in).
Even if opt-in is allowable as a method of collecting addresses, they should retain a copy of the message you submitted, including untouched headers. With nothing less, it's harvested information. And because that can be forged, opt-in isn't good enough. With COI, they should save the initial email message you send and the confirming response. They then have two examples (including headers) showing who and where your responses came from.
Now if that's flamebait, ask yourself this: Q: "What's the difference between a blue-eyed spammer and a brown-eyed spammer?" A: The blue-eyed spammer is a quart low. The flamebait modder is a blue-eyed spammer.
Bite me, spammer. Have the stones to show your face.
Not anybody. Reread U-CAN-SPAM. It focuses upon AGs and ISPs. Some states have started trying to rework their laws.
To make it start hurting spammers, two things need to be done: 1) have the states permit individuals go after the spammers; 2) a long arm provision, forcing the opposition to come to your home turf to deal with the suit. You might win by summary judgement or by default (the spammers rarely show up).
The problem becomes acquiring your bounty. That's where the collection agency comes into play. You didn't have the money before, so getting less isn't going to hurt you. Collection agencies are legal pit bulls. Once the prospect of collecting on a legal judgement is on their plate, look out. The spammers stand the risk of going through the process of declaring bankruptcy and reorganizing, finding the hits on their credit rating, or paying up.
If you were out of work, out of money, and looking at defaulting on bills...and spam looked as a way out (aside from working at McDonald's or Wendy's, which is honorable work), which would deter you more: 1) paying a substantial fine out of the cache of money you receive; 2) going to prison for 1-2 years, bunking with a guy who insists upon calling you "Betty the Bitch" and when you hear him read a letter from his mom, you find out she is complaining about all of the spam she gets when she tries to send email to his grandmother. What will you tell him you're locked up for?
Now, Betty the Bitch: which of those two things are a stronger deterrent for you to become a spammer?
p.s. Ponder how much money (remember, time is money as are resources) are wasted cleaning up this stuff in the workplace? How much money or physical assets would someone have to steal (from that business) to be put behind bars? If you wasted as much time in toto at work as a spammer costs your business, how long would you remain employed?
U-CAN-SPAM permits AGs and ISPs to sue spammers for money. One of the things which sucks is most ISPs (in the way we think of ISPs) aren't going after them and AGs as well as the FTC serve in bulk mode: get billionz-n-billionz of examples, then ponder going after them.
It's the fault of the DMA, who essentially wrote U-CAN-SPAM. Take a gander at some of these from Jerry Cerasale, of the DMA, on June 16, 2004:
Washington Post...We agree that the consumer should have choice, that they can say 'no' to receiving further e-mail. (IOW, they demand the right for everyone to get one bite at the apple).
ZDNet.com, October 21, 2002..."We're finding that we need to give the consumers the choice to try and allow them to control their inbox, to try and say no, I don't want this, while leaving the medium open for commerce," Cerasale said.
But, Cerasale said, a federal requirement that consumers "opt in" instead of "opt out" of bulk e-mail is unacceptable. "We think the opt-in creates a true noneconomic model," Cerasale said. "We don't believe you get a viable economic model in opt-in."
Interpretation: any law which prevents businesses from making money via email is wrong. And anything which permits inbox owners to avoid getting business-oriented unless they give permission is wrong.
IOW, email serves one purpose and one purpose only: for businesses to make money. Anything impeding that is wrong and anything else is personal consumption and secondary.
But in a contradiction, here's what the DMA has to say about spyware legislation on May 25, 2005:
"The DMA strongly believes that consumers should be in control of their computers..."
Now, DMA, which is it? Do we have control or don't we?
This last quote is the newest. Does it mean they've changed their collective minds? I doubt it I don't think they realized they contradicted themselves. If confronted, they'd backpedal and perform some serious tap dancing in the process.
If you want to collect the loot yourself, set up a server, sell services to your neighbors, and you're in business as an ISP. When the spam rolls in, pay a visit to your local court and file the paperwork.
BTW, I'll say here what I said on SPAM-L: even though Richter was taken off of the ROKSO list, Richter has tasted the taste of money regardless of how it was obtained and he's sitting on millions of email addresses. He's not shutting down how he does business, despite anything he says. And he still stands to make a lot of money harvesting email addresses and selling them to others. There is nothing in U-CAN-SPAM which prohibits the harvesting and sale of email addresses, only the use of harvesting email addresses as the targets of unsolicited email.
I have a feeling Darl will be as prolific AD (after death) as L. Ron Hubbard has been. I think he (the latter) has written|published more since he died than when he was alive.
I fully expect Darl to publish missives from the grave about Unix & Linux for a long, long time.
(for all we know, he's writing this stuff from a casket)
Not everyone drinks coffee. I had it once hot, once iced, and detested it both times.
It works out, by coincidence, that if you aren't hooked on cigarettes, coffee, or rap music by the time you are nineteen, there are significant odds you never will be.
((I get some caffeine from chocolate, but for the most part, I eliminated caffeine from my diet over 2 1/2 years ago. I'm in my mid-40s and can still work my younger co-workers under the table, stamina-wise, even when they're hyped on caffeine & HFCS (high fructose corn syrup). It'll catch up with them, eventually.))
Try Microsoft Bob. Or did you mean yourBattery Operated Boyfriend?
I have yet to figure out why the technical field overuses 's for pluralization, 's for pronoun possession, and the mystery acronyms (see: scud - not SCUD - missles during the Gulf War) - just because a word is unfamiliar to you doesn't mean it's an acronym.
As more and more people are learning this tidbit of information, making it less & less arcane Microsoft trivia, the product manager for Microsoft Bob was Melinda French. You know her now as... Mrs. William Henry Gates III.
AJAX wasn't invented how long ago? AJAX has been around for several years, but with a less than sexy name. It was, and is stil in some circles, known as remote scripting. Yes, it's improved upon the original remote scripting, but the concepts are essentially the same. Remote scripting was just a little ahead of its time and now it's got an acronym to help it sound glamorous.
Don't count on it becoming a municipal utility
on
When Pigs Wifi
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· Score: 3, Informative
There's a story from Dvorak in the current issue of PC Magazine where the state of Pennsylvania enacted (and the Gov signed into law) House Bill 30:
<copypaste> Philadelphia wanted to create a municipal Wi-Fi network in the form of a universal MAN (metropolitan area network). This would be like a utility, costing the public next to nothing while providing universal access. You'd be able to log on from anywhere. It would provide municipal news and broadband access to the Net for anyone with a computer and an 802.11 connection.
The telecom lobby got wind of this and had its stooges in the state legislature draft House Bill 30, which actually banned such municipal activity. The rationale for such a ban? You tell me.
This was softened slightly after some protests to a semi-ban, with Comcast and Verizon getting an opportunity (with potential subsidies) to build a MAN themselves within 14 months of any proposed municipal implementation. This means for anyone to implement a MAN with either Wi-Fi or WiMAX, they have essentially to go through Comcast and Verizon, who can stall the project as they see fit. There are ways around this, but the bill was written to make these corporations de facto gatekeepers on behalf of the state.
</copypaste>
And you know Comcast and|or Verizon aren't going to make such a MAN...costing the public next to nothing....
(in addition to WiFi and|or WiMax, when will this happen to VOIP? If not in large scale, regionally? The corporations may not be able to swing big votes at the Federal level, but they sure can at the state level (as seen above) There is no way corporation$ are going to take these things sitting down while they watch their bread & butter service$ compete against low-cost competitor$. Anyone claiming otherwise needs to take off their rose-colored glasses).
Kind of like Mr. "Insightful (4)" above (who spoke of a stint in secondary school)?
...pc's...was in it's infancy...
Why people don't say PCs instead of using the universal pluralizer's (you'd think the technical world was a grocery store)
And look at the posted story above: Linpire. I've never heard of Linpire before. Have you?
I suppose there are those in the technical union whose (the morons reading this can pretend I said "who's") job consists of maintaining the image of poor spelling and punctuation.
When I was in college 20-25 years ago, poor spelling and grammar, in the CS department, lost as many points as inefficient or non-working code. And this pertained to errors in internal and external documentation. On tests, there were always short answer questions, forcing people to write. They wanted to make sure people left with more than the ability to write code. Just out of curiosity: do those of you who have this predisposition to poor communication make sure it's on your resume and|or cover letter?
Um, someone needs to mod you down for not reading very carefully.;)
I didn't say the Session() and Application() collections (or variables) are bad. I said stashing ADO objects in them are bad.
The reason why is threading. When you toss something such as an ADO connection object into one of those two collections, you're in essence locking that process space to a single thread.
And if you have multiple web sites running in the same process space....
As I said, it's in---credible how many people think they are the first to conceive of such a technique: "Hey! Instead of creating, opening, using, closing, releasing ADO objects, I'll create one, open it, toss it into a Session() variable and all will be well - I'll be able to use it on any page!"
The realsmart ones take it one step further: "Hey! I'll create one connection, pack it into an Application() variable and everyone can use it!"
I followed behind one guy who littered these things all over the servers and on top of that, he did it in a six week application written in six months (using VBScript, which is no big deal) which used no subroutines, no functions, massive #include files, nested #include files to the point where I found them nested six deep. Every trip to the server meant 20k lines were played with. Yes, the server loaded them up the first time and processed them, but quad processor servers running the fastest chips at the time with vast quantities of memory were pegged with ca. fifty (yes, 50) users.
On a side-by-side comparison, fixing the threading issues produced gargantuan returns in response time compared to semi-fixes to the code.
That's not the only place I've dealt with it. When dealing with a "regular" ASP site and performance has been an issue, the best and first thing has always been (for me) to grep for the Set Session and Set Application strings. Inevitably, Set Session turns up more times than not. As cited above, the Set Application only turns up when someone who was really smart worked on the app.
Things like this are what have given ASP a very, very, bad rep.
Oh, these are also the people who use Access as their database because "they already own it" (or it's inexpensive) and don't want to pay for SQL Server. They've never heard of MySQL - or anything else, for that matter. If you tell them MSDE is free and supports five concurrent connections, they interpret this to mean, "only five people can use the web site at a time." and nothing can educate them beyond that mindset.
So I'll amend my earlier statement:
When dealing with super-slow ASP-based web sites, grepping Set Session (and possibly Set Application) will show up as will the use of Access.
Besides...considering their financial status, what continent and|or country do you think was the residence of their programmers? Their financial situation aside, who would develop for them (and admit it; i.e. put it on their resume)?
There are two [obvious] good uses for multiple languages, even within the same work enviroment:
1) Never write what you can steal. If you can find the code you need in another language and you know enough of the source language to understand and follow the algorithm, you're avoiding a complete reinvention of the wheel.
2) Frequently, there are concepts you can steal from one language or platform and use them where you need them now. Similar to #1, but in a more generic sense.
As far as using as many languages as possible - do it on your own, homegrown material. And when you try to sell it, you're going to find the price isn't as high when they find out they're going to have to either support or rewrite an octopus. If you're doing it to show off, then you're going to have to get in line behind those of us who have used many different languages but know when to use which languages as well as when to use one, two, or more.
If I find more than one language in a single tier, it means someone's been off doing something with too much free time and needed|needs to be a bit busier. I hate micromanagement - regardless of whether I'm the one doing it or on the receiving end - but if someone's off playing cowboy, it may be time to lock down their PC so they can't keep installing new toys as well as time for more frequent checks as to what's really being done with their time. There are far too many things which have a way of interfering with schedules as it is; we don't need people finding ways to make people work eighty hour weeks because they could have taken on more work during regular hours.
You can write for ASP using PHP, PerlScript, JScript, oh, and what those with an overwhelming trait of ignorance presume ASP to be: VBScript.
It's no more difficult to write an ASP-based website using the other (non-VBScript) languages than it is VBScript. And for that matter, those are the scripted languages. You could code in practically any language you choose if you can compile it and plug it into IIS appropriately.
What has seemed to be an interesting pattern is those who write IIS|ASP web sites and are wearing blinders - believing VBScript is the only tool they can use, generally write slow, sloppy sites. It doesn't mean VBScript alone makes the site projects so bad, but the people who are so shortsighted seem to not fully comprehend the architecture they're dealing with. These are the same people who think they've invented something no one else has thought of: stashing various ADO objects in Application() and Session() variables. Almost without exception, if you sit down with access to source code on a poochy site and grep for "Set Session" or "Set Application", you'll see a slew of hits. And the reason those two statements will appear is because the only people who do those things are VBScript-only people. Oh....anyone whose code which contains such statements should be taken out back, have their peepee whacked, then die a death of a thousand cuts in return for the grief they cause the users of their web sites.
....to Redmond. Paging Dr. Henry Heimlich to Redmond...Bill Gates is choking on his supper from laughing so hard.
Did someone dump a little flea spray and kool-aid in this guy's meth?
This guy needs to stop by eBay and buy a clue.
The only things you'll ever see WHG III giving away are through his foundation - innoculations for the third world, etc. That section of Redmond may have hired OS people, but that doesn't mean they'll ever understand OS. Think of OS as being infrasound or ultrasound. It's outside their realm of recognition, regardless of whether it's right or wrong - it just doesn't fit within their philosophy. I'm guessing many|most[1] long-term MS personnel if pushed outside of the door would have a hard time understanding OS without some deprogramming. It's not part of the lifestyle.
____________________________ [1]n.b. I didn't say 'all'.
Well, in about 2000 there was a mutation in some type of bacteria that pretty much eliminated the honey bee in a large part of the south east US (just now recovering from it somewhat, since 2000 I've seen less than 10 honey bees, 6 of them this year
Nope. You're a mite off. Two mites, actually: Trachial and Verroa mites.
They pose a serious hazard to practically every honeybee hive, wild and domestic, in the US. For years, a lot of beekeepers have started up extra hives with new bees, trying to keep them separated (at good distances) from existing hives, hoping some survive.
US fruits & vegetables are so dependent upon honeybees now if the regions of the country which are untouched - and that space is shrinking rapidly - suffer at the same rate as the hives already destroyed, it could pose some serious food & price issues. Africanized hives are important, but nowhere near the same concern as the mites.
You said "PHP and ASP" as though they are both languages. PHP is a language, ASP is a technology. ASP, which is server-side, can be written in VBScript, JScript, PerlScript, PHP, jeez, now I lost my place. As long as IIS has a way of translating the language|script in question to HTML (or anything else, for that matter - XML, embedded client-side script), it's viable.
There seems to be a misconception that ASP==VBScript. And it couldn't be farther from the truth.
It's not a sign of stupidity, it's a sign of unfamiliarity or lack of experience. If all you've ever used to write within the ASP world is VBScript, it'd be like saying, "When you say object-oriented programming, you have to be talking about C++". (which isn't, as it's a partial OO language. So we could throw things such as Actor and Eiffel into the mix and say either one of those is the only language in question when you say OOP)
We're seeing duplicated stories which appear on the same edition[1], this is not the first time the contributor has had a direct connection to the news source (in very recent history).
It's time for a new round of elections and vote out some of the schmoos who aren't doing their jobs very well.
I mean, come on, folks, proofreading and fact-checking before making the stuff public is not rocket science. I've worked as a technical editor, I read six newspapers daily, dozens of [real] magazines on a regular basis, and I don't lose track of what I've read. (even after a couple of large goblets of good gin) I don't understand how some of these morons can't look at the storyboard once a day and remember what they've seen at a later date. And if they aren't sure, take a few minutes and actually take a few minutes and look. If they don't have a few minutes to actually perform a decent job, then why the #$(*#U&)$(# are they pretending to do so? Doing it fast doesn't mean doing it well.
Who voted these boobs into office?
(and if they were "selected", can anyone say what party favors they had to perform to get the job?)
_______________
[1] Scroll from the top down and they both appear on the same screen.
Slashdot Mirror
Visitors go away, counts go down, and those with Flash-based sites decide Flash-based restrictions suck and kick them to the curb.
People seem to think bringing landsharks into problems are the way to solve them. Something most weenies seem to forget or haven't learned is: the best way to beat the system is to play by the system. translated: play by the rules to the nth degree and stupid things have a way of blocking things up such that those who have the most at stake suddenly see the light, throw a tantrum, and remove the obstructions.
The problem is too many people try to fight the system and look for exceptions in the rules. That's a lost cause. The rule makers spend so much time sewing up loose ends they forget just how bunged up the system can be if people actually follow their rules.
Whilst I'm drifting off-topic....
this is a tip for those of you who are in repressive workplaces. Don't fight it, adhere to it like a fanatic. They're counting on a fight. Everyone bitches about something and they figure that's your bitch forte.
Microsoft's efforts in these studies is obviously part of their marketing efforts. Microsoft's strongest suit is marketing, not technology development. After all, look at how many companies they've purchased vs. original technologies which have been developed in-house.
I will qualify my question with this: I like Linux, but I make my bread & butter off of Windows - like it or not, it's easier to find income [here] with Windows. n.b. I said easier. I didn't say the work was better.
Now:
If Windows is such a great product, why is Microsoft plucking out their own short hairs (one-by-one) in frustration because they cannot convince tens of thousands (hundreds of?) of corporate licenses to move from Windows 2000 when it went out of service on June 30 '05; well-covered by the media, no less? It would seem businesses|corporations are well aware the various flavors of 2K are (relatively speaking) arguably the most stable of Microsoft's O/S products. Office 2000 and Visual Studio 6.0 dovetail quite well with 2K, creating a very cozy ménage à trois.
The TCO certain is dropping over time. No need to upgrade software, no need to purchase an assload of new hardware to support upgraded software. Microsoft may have to break one of their "rules" re: backward compatibility. It's been said IE 7.0 won't work on pre-XP systems, although I don't think that's going to make corporate accounts give a rat's posterior because there are some fine, decaf browsers which work quite well and don't make anyone miss IE at all.
As I said, MS could easily prove TCO of Windows is low(er), but to do so would admit loudly businesses don't want to budge. So the question remains: how do they motivate the 2K users to pry open their accounts payable budget and upgrade? Until they answer that, it doesn't matter what they say about TCO.
p.s.
The chairman of the CS department had advanced degrees in math and English. We were graded as heavily for punctuation, grammar, and spelling, as we were for design and coding skills. This included comments as well as external documentation. T/F sections of tests consisted of marking T or F, and correcting the False statements to make them true. Several "short answer" questions - one or two sentences. A few questions which required writing a few paragraphs. How often do CS students have to turn in blue book answers for their semester finals?
Our Senior Comprehensives were the toughest on campus. My "Orals", which covered all four years as well as defending my Senior Project, required me to stand before three department chairs (Comp Sci, Systems Analysis, Physics). No one else had to stand before more than two.
They wanted to make sure we didn't fit in with the industry who's member's believe the best way to identify it's member's is by killing the English language. [sic]
I think you're being fussy. CS means "Computer Science"; i.e. "the science of computing". It says nothing about software.
It's incredible how many people walk into an interview with "CS" on their diploma and essentially have a degree in computer programming. If you are in that situation, you're better off walking in with a degree in Forestry or no degree at all.
I managed to walk away 20+ years ago with a CS degree with a lot of liberal arts on the side (e.g. Modern European History, Old English Literature - although my Latin was solid enough at the time I wasn't allowed to read translations - I was forced to make my own translations from the French source as a challenge) but also managed to take a course [each] in electronics and microcomputer interfacing, courses requiring us to write our own operating system, compiler, DBMS, debugger, and some AI, which I started by teaching the LISP section. There was a lot of calculus on the schedule, but I studied in advance and tested out of almost all of it. I spent a lot of time sitting in classrooms full of math majors, studying Galois' work as a hobby.
As a religious facility (non-denominational), we also took on projects for local religious and not-for-profit groups which couldn't afford to pay the big buck$ for high-powered consultants, so we had class projects which entailed doing work for them. They got work done gratis and the students got real-world experience (those who didn't have businesses of their own, such as myself, which made for nice Summers and longer school breaks). Those projects also provided people with project management experience as well as time management beyond what the typical college student encounters.
As far as languages go, I'm not so worried about seeing people walking in with all of the "current" or "hot" languages, but if they've had some diversity. Sitting on languages which have the same or similar syntax and environment will do nothing for some thought diversity. And writing Windows & Linux (only) as operating systems won't do you much good, either. Even some (even brief) exposure to something more exotic such as a mainframe or midrange like a Data General or DEC should provide some cross pollenation of the brain cells.
The point is that if you've spent four years working to become Linus' acolyte and know nothing but Linux, C|C++|Java, PERL, and PHP, then you'll likely do nothing but that for a long time and always apparently have a job. Personally, I need a bit more variety. And I needed a lot more in college (hence a lack of resistence to the classical courses). The variety doesn't have to lie in what you do with your work, but the tools. If you are willing to limit yourself, including to software only, more power to you. Personally, I enjoyed learning about the hardware and enjoying the knowledge of how the pieces fit together. I'm wagering most people haven't built their own boards, debug them, interface them to some type of computer, and manage to get things to work. The more diversity, the better. I'd hate to go to a pot luck picnic every day and have everyone bring green beans all of the time. (I don't even like green beans.)
I'm working on the DARPA Grand Challenge (Go IRV!) at the moment and my piece of the action could permit me to remain distanced from a lot of things [if I wanted to] but I've learned to peek into a lot of things, ask a lot of stupid questions, and I've found a lot more to enjoy which I might have missed out on.
Remember what Richard Bach (Jonathon Livingston Seagull) wrote in Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah? (The Messiah's Handbook)
Argue your limitations, and sure enough, they are yours.
There are two, other, long-shot possibilities!
1) BeOS?
2) Early implementations of FORTH?
(O/S + compiler in a 7k footprint, interactively compiled.
But on an OT thought, I have to wonder what would happen to it if MS got their paws on it, then shoehorned it into
Now I just have to figure out which member of the DMA modded me as flamebait.
The only conjecture I made was my prediction of Richter's future method of making money. And this afternoon, I found news sources stating his intended means supports what I said above: harvesting email addresses and selling them to other spammers.
Unfortunately, spammers have this tendency to say, "You are receiving this message because you opted-in|indicated you are interested in|etc." as though that's supposed to convince you [that]you forgot about doing it. Some even provide an IP address you supposedly were using at the time this happened.
The only way opting-in works is if it's COI (confirmed opt-in). This is when you send email, a response is sent to you, and you either respond with a confirmation or click on a link and make a confirmation.
To spammers, confirmed opt-in means you confirmed your interest by sending email; i.e. you've confirmed your interest by sending email. They call double opt-in what I just described as COI (confirmed opt-in).
Even if opt-in is allowable as a method of collecting addresses, they should retain a copy of the message you submitted, including untouched headers. With nothing less, it's harvested information. And because that can be forged, opt-in isn't good enough. With COI, they should save the initial email message you send and the confirming response. They then have two examples (including headers) showing who and where your responses came from.
Now if that's flamebait, ask yourself this: Q: "What's the difference between a blue-eyed spammer and a brown-eyed spammer?" A: The blue-eyed spammer is a quart low. The flamebait modder is a blue-eyed spammer.
Bite me, spammer. Have the stones to show your face.
Not anybody. Reread U-CAN-SPAM. It focuses upon AGs and ISPs. Some states have started trying to rework their laws.
To make it start hurting spammers, two things need to be done: 1) have the states permit individuals go after the spammers; 2) a long arm provision, forcing the opposition to come to your home turf to deal with the suit. You might win by summary judgement or by default (the spammers rarely show up).
The problem becomes acquiring your bounty. That's where the collection agency comes into play. You didn't have the money before, so getting less isn't going to hurt you. Collection agencies are legal pit bulls. Once the prospect of collecting on a legal judgement is on their plate, look out. The spammers stand the risk of going through the process of declaring bankruptcy and reorganizing, finding the hits on their credit rating, or paying up.
Why?
If you were out of work, out of money, and looking at defaulting on bills...and spam looked as a way out (aside from working at McDonald's or Wendy's, which is honorable work), which would deter you more: 1) paying a substantial fine out of the cache of money you receive; 2) going to prison for 1-2 years, bunking with a guy who insists upon calling you "Betty the Bitch" and when you hear him read a letter from his mom, you find out she is complaining about all of the spam she gets when she tries to send email to his grandmother. What will you tell him you're locked up for?
Now, Betty the Bitch: which of those two things are a stronger deterrent for you to become a spammer?
p.s. Ponder how much money (remember, time is money as are resources) are wasted cleaning up this stuff in the workplace? How much money or physical assets would someone have to steal (from that business) to be put behind bars? If you wasted as much time in toto at work as a spammer costs your business, how long would you remain employed?
Microsoft as an ISP is taking the money.
U-CAN-SPAM permits AGs and ISPs to sue spammers for money. One of the things which sucks is most ISPs (in the way we think of ISPs) aren't going after them and AGs as well as the FTC serve in bulk mode: get billionz-n-billionz of examples, then ponder going after them.
It's the fault of the DMA, who essentially wrote U-CAN-SPAM. Take a gander at some of these from Jerry Cerasale, of the DMA, on June 16, 2004:
Washington Post...We agree that the consumer should have choice, that they can say 'no' to receiving further e-mail. (IOW, they demand the right for everyone to get one bite at the apple).
ZDNet.com, October 21, 2002..."We're finding that we need to give the consumers the choice to try and allow them to control their inbox, to try and say no, I don't want this, while leaving the medium open for commerce," Cerasale said.
But, Cerasale said, a federal requirement that consumers "opt in" instead of "opt out" of bulk e-mail is unacceptable. "We think the opt-in creates a true noneconomic model," Cerasale said. "We don't believe you get a viable economic model in opt-in."
Interpretation: any law which prevents businesses from making money via email is wrong. And anything which permits inbox owners to avoid getting business-oriented unless they give permission is wrong.
IOW, email serves one purpose and one purpose only: for businesses to make money. Anything impeding that is wrong and anything else is personal consumption and secondary.
But in a contradiction, here's what the DMA has to say about spyware legislation on May 25, 2005:
"The DMA strongly believes that consumers should be in control of their computers..."
Now, DMA, which is it? Do we have control or don't we?
This last quote is the newest. Does it mean they've changed their collective minds? I doubt it I don't think they realized they contradicted themselves. If confronted, they'd backpedal and perform some serious tap dancing in the process.
If you want to collect the loot yourself, set up a server, sell services to your neighbors, and you're in business as an ISP. When the spam rolls in, pay a visit to your local court and file the paperwork.
BTW, I'll say here what I said on SPAM-L: even though Richter was taken off of the ROKSO list, Richter has tasted the taste of money regardless of how it was obtained and he's sitting on millions of email addresses. He's not shutting down how he does business, despite anything he says. And he still stands to make a lot of money harvesting email addresses and selling them to others. There is nothing in U-CAN-SPAM which prohibits the harvesting and sale of email addresses, only the use of harvesting email addresses as the targets of unsolicited email.
It will always get better.
I have a feeling Darl will be as prolific AD (after death) as L. Ron Hubbard has been. I think he (the latter) has written|published more since he died than when he was alive.
I fully expect Darl to publish missives from the grave about Unix & Linux for a long, long time.
(for all we know, he's writing this stuff from a casket)
Not everyone drinks coffee. I had it once hot, once iced, and detested it both times.
It works out, by coincidence, that if you aren't hooked on cigarettes, coffee, or rap music by the time you are nineteen, there are significant odds you never will be.
((I get some caffeine from chocolate, but for the most part, I eliminated caffeine from my diet over 2 1/2 years ago. I'm in my mid-40s and can still work my younger co-workers under the table, stamina-wise, even when they're hyped on caffeine & HFCS (high fructose corn syrup). It'll catch up with them, eventually.))
Nice try, but (TM) != patent.
Try Microsoft Bob. Or did you mean your Battery Operated Boyfriend?
I have yet to figure out why the technical field overuses 's for pluralization, 's for pronoun possession, and the mystery acronyms (see: scud - not SCUD - missles during the Gulf War) - just because a word is unfamiliar to you doesn't mean it's an acronym.
As more and more people are learning this tidbit of information, making it less & less arcane Microsoft trivia, the product manager for Microsoft Bob was Melinda French. You know her now as... Mrs. William Henry Gates III.
AJAX wasn't invented how long ago? AJAX has been around for several years, but with a less than sexy name. It was, and is stil in some circles, known as remote scripting. Yes, it's improved upon the original remote scripting, but the concepts are essentially the same. Remote scripting was just a little ahead of its time and now it's got an acronym to help it sound glamorous.
There's a story from Dvorak in the current issue of PC Magazine where the state of Pennsylvania enacted (and the Gov signed into law) House Bill 30:
<copypaste>
Philadelphia wanted to create a municipal Wi-Fi network in the form of a universal MAN (metropolitan area network). This would be like a utility, costing the public next to nothing while providing universal access. You'd be able to log on from anywhere. It would provide municipal news and broadband access to the Net for anyone with a computer and an 802.11 connection.
The telecom lobby got wind of this and had its stooges in the state legislature draft House Bill 30, which actually banned such municipal activity. The rationale for such a ban? You tell me.
This was softened slightly after some protests to a semi-ban, with Comcast and Verizon getting an opportunity (with potential subsidies) to build a MAN themselves within 14 months of any proposed municipal implementation. This means for anyone to implement a MAN with either Wi-Fi or WiMAX, they have essentially to go through Comcast and Verizon, who can stall the project as they see fit. There are ways around this, but the bill was written to make these corporations de facto gatekeepers on behalf of the state.
</copypaste>
And you know Comcast and|or Verizon aren't going to make such a MAN
(in addition to WiFi and|or WiMax, when will this happen to VOIP? If not in large scale, regionally? The corporations may not be able to swing big votes at the Federal level, but they sure can at the state level (as seen above) There is no way corporation$ are going to take these things sitting down while they watch their bread & butter service$ compete against low-cost competitor$. Anyone claiming otherwise needs to take off their rose-colored glasses).
Kind of like Mr. "Insightful (4)" above (who spoke of a stint in secondary school)?
Why people don't say PCs instead of using the universal pluralizer 's (you'd think the technical world was a grocery store)
And look at the posted story above: Linpire. I've never heard of Linpire before. Have you?
I suppose there are those in the technical union whose (the morons reading this can pretend I said "who's") job consists of maintaining the image of poor spelling and punctuation.
When I was in college 20-25 years ago, poor spelling and grammar, in the CS department, lost as many points as inefficient or non-working code. And this pertained to errors in internal and external documentation. On tests, there were always short answer questions, forcing people to write. They wanted to make sure people left with more than the ability to write code. Just out of curiosity: do those of you who have this predisposition to poor communication make sure it's on your resume and|or cover letter?
Um, someone needs to mod you down for not reading very carefully.
I didn't say the Session() and Application() collections (or variables) are bad. I said stashing ADO objects in them are bad.
The reason why is threading. When you toss something such as an ADO connection object into one of those two collections, you're in essence locking that process space to a single thread.
And if you have multiple web sites running in the same process space....
As I said, it's in---credible how many people think they are the first to conceive of such a technique: "Hey! Instead of creating, opening, using, closing, releasing ADO objects, I'll create one, open it, toss it into a Session() variable and all will be well - I'll be able to use it on any page!"
The real smart ones take it one step further: "Hey! I'll create one connection, pack it into an Application() variable and everyone can use it!"
I followed behind one guy who littered these things all over the servers and on top of that, he did it in a six week application written in six months (using VBScript, which is no big deal) which used no subroutines, no functions, massive #include files, nested #include files to the point where I found them nested six deep. Every trip to the server meant 20k lines were played with. Yes, the server loaded them up the first time and processed them, but quad processor servers running the fastest chips at the time with vast quantities of memory were pegged with ca. fifty (yes, 50) users.
On a side-by-side comparison, fixing the threading issues produced gargantuan returns in response time compared to semi-fixes to the code.
That's not the only place I've dealt with it. When dealing with a "regular" ASP site and performance has been an issue, the best and first thing has always been (for me) to grep for the Set Session and Set Application strings. Inevitably, Set Session turns up more times than not. As cited above, the Set Application only turns up when someone who was really smart worked on the app.
Things like this are what have given ASP a very, very, bad rep.
Oh, these are also the people who use Access as their database because "they already own it" (or it's inexpensive) and don't want to pay for SQL Server. They've never heard of MySQL - or anything else, for that matter. If you tell them MSDE is free and supports five concurrent connections, they interpret this to mean, "only five people can use the web site at a time." and nothing can educate them beyond that mindset.
So I'll amend my earlier statement:
When dealing with super-slow ASP-based web sites, grepping Set Session (and possibly Set Application) will show up as will the use of Access.
Does this clear things up?
Besides...considering their financial status, what continent and|or country do you think was the residence of their programmers? Their financial situation aside, who would develop for them (and admit it; i.e. put it on their resume)?
There are two [obvious] good uses for multiple languages, even within the same work enviroment:
1) Never write what you can steal. If you can find the code you need in another language and you know enough of the source language to understand and follow the algorithm, you're avoiding a complete reinvention of the wheel.
2) Frequently, there are concepts you can steal from one language or platform and use them where you need them now. Similar to #1, but in a more generic sense.
As far as using as many languages as possible - do it on your own, homegrown material. And when you try to sell it, you're going to find the price isn't as high when they find out they're going to have to either support or rewrite an octopus. If you're doing it to show off, then you're going to have to get in line behind those of us who have used many different languages but know when to use which languages as well as when to use one, two, or more.
If I find more than one language in a single tier, it means someone's been off doing something with too much free time and needed|needs to be a bit busier. I hate micromanagement - regardless of whether I'm the one doing it or on the receiving end - but if someone's off playing cowboy, it may be time to lock down their PC so they can't keep installing new toys as well as time for more frequent checks as to what's really being done with their time. There are far too many things which have a way of interfering with schedules as it is; we don't need people finding ways to make people work eighty hour weeks because they could have taken on more work during regular hours.
And...ASP is not a language.
You can write for ASP using PHP, PerlScript, JScript, oh, and what those with an overwhelming trait of ignorance presume ASP to be: VBScript.
It's no more difficult to write an ASP-based website using the other (non-VBScript) languages than it is VBScript. And for that matter, those are the scripted languages. You could code in practically any language you choose if you can compile it and plug it into IIS appropriately.
What has seemed to be an interesting pattern is those who write IIS|ASP web sites and are wearing blinders - believing VBScript is the only tool they can use, generally write slow, sloppy sites. It doesn't mean VBScript alone makes the site projects so bad, but the people who are so shortsighted seem to not fully comprehend the architecture they're dealing with. These are the same people who think they've invented something no one else has thought of: stashing various ADO objects in Application() and Session() variables. Almost without exception, if you sit down with access to source code on a poochy site and grep for "Set Session" or "Set Application", you'll see a slew of hits. And the reason those two statements will appear is because the only people who do those things are VBScript-only people. Oh....anyone whose code which contains such statements should be taken out back, have their peepee whacked, then die a death of a thousand cuts in return for the grief they cause the users of their web sites.
Did someone dump a little flea spray and kool-aid in this guy's meth?
This guy needs to stop by eBay and buy a clue.
The only things you'll ever see WHG III giving away are through his foundation - innoculations for the third world, etc. That section of Redmond may have hired OS people, but that doesn't mean they'll ever understand OS. Think of OS as being infrasound or ultrasound. It's outside their realm of recognition, regardless of whether it's right or wrong - it just doesn't fit within their philosophy. I'm guessing many|most[1] long-term MS personnel if pushed outside of the door would have a hard time understanding OS without some deprogramming. It's not part of the lifestyle.
____________________________
[1]n.b. I didn't say 'all'.
Well, in about 2000 there was a mutation in some type of bacteria that pretty much eliminated the honey bee in a large part of the south east US (just now recovering from it somewhat, since 2000 I've seen less than 10 honey bees, 6 of them this year
Nope. You're a mite off. Two mites, actually: Trachial and Verroa mites.
They pose a serious hazard to practically every honeybee hive, wild and domestic, in the US. For years, a lot of beekeepers have started up extra hives with new bees, trying to keep them separated (at good distances) from existing hives, hoping some survive.
US fruits & vegetables are so dependent upon honeybees now if the regions of the country which are untouched - and that space is shrinking rapidly - suffer at the same rate as the hives already destroyed, it could pose some serious food & price issues. Africanized hives are important, but nowhere near the same concern as the mites.
You said "PHP and ASP" as though they are both languages. PHP is a language, ASP is a technology. ASP, which is server-side, can be written in VBScript, JScript, PerlScript, PHP, jeez, now I lost my place. As long as IIS has a way of translating the language|script in question to HTML (or anything else, for that matter - XML, embedded client-side script), it's viable.
There seems to be a misconception that ASP==VBScript. And it couldn't be farther from the truth.
It's not a sign of stupidity, it's a sign of unfamiliarity or lack of experience. If all you've ever used to write within the ASP world is VBScript, it'd be like saying, "When you say object-oriented programming, you have to be talking about C++". (which isn't, as it's a partial OO language. So we could throw things such as Actor and Eiffel into the mix and say either one of those is the only language in question when you say OOP)
And you're surprised?
We're seeing duplicated stories which appear on the same edition[1], this is not the first time the contributor has had a direct connection to the news source (in very recent history).
It's time for a new round of elections and vote out some of the schmoos who aren't doing their jobs very well.
I mean, come on, folks, proofreading and fact-checking before making the stuff public is not rocket science. I've worked as a technical editor, I read six newspapers daily, dozens of [real] magazines on a regular basis, and I don't lose track of what I've read. (even after a couple of large goblets of good gin) I don't understand how some of these morons can't look at the storyboard once a day and remember what they've seen at a later date. And if they aren't sure, take a few minutes and actually take a few minutes and look. If they don't have a few minutes to actually perform a decent job, then why the #$(*#U&)$(# are they pretending to do so? Doing it fast doesn't mean doing it well.
Who voted these boobs into office?
(and if they were "selected", can anyone say what party favors they had to perform to get the job?)
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[1] Scroll from the top down and they both appear on the same screen.
Be creative:
Tell them, "No one on the moon is using Windows: in fact, there's a strict, enforced 'No Windows' policy."
They'll be packing, along with their landsharks, and on the launchpad before a blastoff can be scheduled.