the salesman warned me that natural granite is a bit "porous and tends to get stained irreversibly"
The salesman wanted to sell you a composite. First you need to know that in the market, any kind of counter top stone will be called granite in the business. Then, while it's true that ligth-coloured mostly quarz and feldspar are somehow porous (but less than, say, marble, and you'll find, even white marble, covering floors) and can be stained, then try just "standard" Spain Grain or Swedish Absolute Black and let me know if you manage to, while technically porous, stain it at all even without any caresness.
"A $30 aeropress coffee maker is as good as a $5000 espresso machine"
Haven't tested a $5000 one so I can't say. I tested espresso machines at any bar at, say, Venetia, and I can attest that no, your $30 aeropress coffe maker is no challenge for them.
"A double edge safety shaver that uses 20 cent blades is far superior to any expensive disposable shaver system, even the ones with 5 blades."
I use them and I agree.
"A $150 Formica counter top fulfills all the duties of a $3000 granite counter top."
The $150 Formica counter top at my rented flat and my mother's 30-year-old granite one beg to differ.
"And yet we are constantly told by marketing and advertising that better equals more expensive."
Yes, marketing (publishing, to better say) is quite clever in using bad rationals to push sells.
Better equals more expensive and that's right more times than not. The point is that more expensive doesn't equate better (see? even you fall on bad rationale).
"my car's not going all that much slower than a Cessna."
A Cessna 172 cruise speed is 143 miles/hour. Remember kinetic energy formulae states it goes to the square of speed and you'll see that yes, you are going all that much slower than a Cessna (and that's cruise speed, if you are uncontrolably heading to the ground you'll probably go faster than that).
"I think what's really going on is we actually are anti-matter, and what WE see as anti-matter is the real matter."
You probably have a point after all.
After all, I don't think the problem is what kind of matter are we, that one of them should become majority it's obviously a must. The problem is why matter instead of antimatter... but if antimatter was the majority it automatically would become matter, wouldn't it?
"Certification counts for very little BTW, it'll be read on your CV, and then ignored"
Certifications will be read BY AN HR DRONE and, if not found, your CV ignored. You won't get to an interview unless: a) It is a short company so CVs are triaged by technical staff themselves. b) You know an insider so your CV bypasses HR. c) Your CV has the proper buzzwords for HR to pass it to next level.
Note that having the certifications won't hurt on cases 'a' and 'b' but not having them will kill you in case 'c'. Now you need to look around you and ask yourself what's your proportion of 'a', 'b' and 'c' cases to see if it's worth for you the investment on time and money to get the certifications.
"For pragmatic-minded people, PHP is an extremely productive language to work in. No compiling, or waiting for compiling, no object files to mess with or get out of sync, and still relatively good speed. "
You mean, like any other interpreted languages you could choose?
"The down-side has always been that the language also had many sloppy characteristics."
You mean, like those avoided by any other interpreted languages you could choose?
Exactly my thoughts: he's a good technology teacher (so he says) but all he seems to know is using Microsoft products and lacks the push to even do a Google search and experiment a bit at home.
"Fascism is government control of the economy while still allowing private ownership"
Sorry, that's not fascism. That's plain old rule of law.
In order to go from there to fascism you also need totalitarism, statism, autarky. utranationalism, militarism and, then, full entrenchment of corporations and state.
And no, "control of the national economy" is not the same as full planning of the means of production in accord to a national plan.
"1 month later, the entire team was laid off except me and the documentation writer (all four devs and both full time QA people). We had a fixed deadline to ship to that customer [...] I don't think firing over 60% of the US workforce without transitioning knowledge was the brightest way to transition"
Unless you are the company owner, no, "we" didn't have a fixed deadline, your company, the one that laid off 60% of the employees, had a fixed deadline. And given the results, your are wrong: the way they managed the transition was brilliant because it was cheap and sucessful... thanks to a simpleton that was working 2.5x for free.
It is not as if it's very difficult to see what the times are for an athlete with or without this suit. If the suits were tested and found not to be at fault, the alternate is obvious: the athelete is at fail.
"there are lots of things that could be done, that are low impact, that AREN'T done because it would require management to authorize it, and the people who understand it can't communicate the importance to management."
This management needs to be called for authorization for a reason. If that management doesn't understand what they need to manage and authorize, that's bad management per the book.
"Only the navel-gazing technocrati and engineers are so arrogant as to presume everyone else on the team is an idiot just because they don't "grok" the technical."
That's not usually the case. While I agree with the basic premise that one of best assets for a consultant is to be able to communicate with -and listen to, somebody out of her field, it's also true that the one that hires a technical expert on a field he himself is not a technical expert but still confronts the expertise of the consultant *is* an idiot.
"Yes, yes, tell me more about this novel concept, I have never heard of the term before"
Of course you didn't know about them before. You even missed the basic point that it is not a concept but a "technology". It is said right there, in the article!
I for one will immediately buy a score of units of this new technology!
"Most people will never need to look at any amount of code in their lives"
Absolutly wrong. Most of people will manage to go through their lives without touching a command prompt. But most first world people would save a lot of hours just with minimal programing abilities (shell level).
You think otherwise simply because you just don't foresee how many automatable actions you do along your day, from obvious things, like algorithmically renaming your computer-based photo collection, to not so obvious (to you) like a big percentage of what an office drone does along his day.
"What I mean by that is they come out of school knowing how to access the software they expect to need for their profession"
Which is a lost proposition but quite aligned to your "most people won't be exposed to code": lack of imagination. If there's anything true is that the software that they are expected to need for their profession when at school won't the the software they'll use when some years in the future are in their professions.
"explain the importance of updating software and drivers"
I've spent more than twenty years in the field and I still don't understand what the need to update software and drivers really is, can you explain, please? I, of course, understand the need to replace *faulty* software and drivers, mostly on Windows environment, but that's a different issue.
"I had to bash my brains out on a table for many, many weeks, just to understand basic concepts like lists and arrays"
And that's exacly why programing could be a very nice *tool* to develop youngsters' brains.
You see, "lists" and "arrays" are words from common language because lists and arrays in programing are exactly that: lists and arrays.
That you had problem understanding that, means that in fact you have problems with such common concepts.
It's a pitty, but if you have problems grasping basic concepts like iterations (go once and again onto something till you get to your intended result), functions (decompose big tasks into shorter ones), boolean algebra (when a composed assertion is either true or false), etc. what it means is that you are not properly prepared to understand the world around you and your education has made of you a gullible person easier to fool than it should be.
On the other hand, of course you are better at programing the more you practice and the more fitted your natural abilities are for the task. I'll take your assertion that you work for a sales org as if you are a salesman. Do you think being a salesman is an easy task? Do you think you are not a better salesman a decade into the trade than the day you started?
"The question brought to mind a nice quote by Oscar Wilde: "A gentleman need not know Latin, but he should at least have forgotten some"."
Absolutly right and, probably, in the same sense as Wilde tried to transmit.
Should everybody learn to code? Absolutly not.
Should everybody learn to think rationaly, not to be fooled by appearances, find the nut of a problem and then be able to decompose it into action items, set a path of action to solve them and finally check the intended result with the obtained one? I think so.
And it happens tom that learn to code can be a fantastic tool, probably the best, to achieve that goal.
"The government signed the contract saying that they'll pay. They can't renege on the deal just because they decided they didn't "
Of course they can't renege on the deal just because they decided they didn't.
On the other hand, they can renege on the deal because they added a clausule that regulated such a possibility as it's done on any contract of the kind.
Slashdot Mirror
the salesman warned me that natural granite is a bit "porous and tends to get stained irreversibly"
The salesman wanted to sell you a composite. First you need to know that in the market, any kind of counter top stone will be called granite in the business. Then, while it's true that ligth-coloured mostly quarz and feldspar are somehow porous (but less than, say, marble, and you'll find, even white marble, covering floors) and can be stained, then try just "standard" Spain Grain or Swedish Absolute Black and let me know if you manage to, while technically porous, stain it at all even without any caresness.
"A $30 aeropress coffee maker is as good as a $5000 espresso machine"
Haven't tested a $5000 one so I can't say. I tested espresso machines at any bar at, say, Venetia, and I can attest that no, your $30 aeropress coffe maker is no challenge for them.
"A double edge safety shaver that uses 20 cent blades is far superior to any expensive disposable shaver system, even the ones with 5 blades."
I use them and I agree.
"A $150 Formica counter top fulfills all the duties of a $3000 granite counter top."
The $150 Formica counter top at my rented flat and my mother's 30-year-old granite one beg to differ.
"And yet we are constantly told by marketing and advertising that better equals more expensive."
Yes, marketing (publishing, to better say) is quite clever in using bad rationals to push sells.
Better equals more expensive and that's right more times than not. The point is that more expensive doesn't equate better (see? even you fall on bad rationale).
"DevOps people don't necessarily have good understanding of the underlying issues of the production environment."
You should train them better, then.
Because the point of "devops" is exactly so they understand the underlying issues of the production environment.
"my car's not going all that much slower than a Cessna."
A Cessna 172 cruise speed is 143 miles/hour. Remember kinetic energy formulae states it goes to the square of speed and you'll see that yes, you are going all that much slower than a Cessna (and that's cruise speed, if you are uncontrolably heading to the ground you'll probably go faster than that).
"I think what's really going on is we actually are anti-matter, and what WE see as anti-matter is the real matter."
You probably have a point after all.
After all, I don't think the problem is what kind of matter are we, that one of them should become majority it's obviously a must. The problem is why matter instead of antimatter... but if antimatter was the majority it automatically would become matter, wouldn't it?
"At that point you want 'clean' VMs that follow the vendor spec exactly."
Except, of course, when the vendor insists that their software shouldn't be virtualized at all.
"Certification counts for very little BTW, it'll be read on your CV, and then ignored"
Certifications will be read BY AN HR DRONE and, if not found, your CV ignored. You won't get to an interview unless:
a) It is a short company so CVs are triaged by technical staff themselves.
b) You know an insider so your CV bypasses HR.
c) Your CV has the proper buzzwords for HR to pass it to next level.
Note that having the certifications won't hurt on cases 'a' and 'b' but not having them will kill you in case 'c'. Now you need to look around you and ask yourself what's your proportion of 'a', 'b' and 'c' cases to see if it's worth for you the investment on time and money to get the certifications.
"For pragmatic-minded people, PHP is an extremely productive language to work in. No compiling, or waiting for compiling, no object files to mess with or get out of sync, and still relatively good speed. "
You mean, like any other interpreted languages you could choose?
"The down-side has always been that the language also had many sloppy characteristics."
You mean, like those avoided by any other interpreted languages you could choose?
Exactly my thoughts: he's a good technology teacher (so he says) but all he seems to know is using Microsoft products and lacks the push to even do a Google search and experiment a bit at home.
I'm sorry for his students.
"The story is about the health benefits of a vegetarian diet"
Hummm... nope.
It is about a low-protein diet, not a vegetarian one.
Try to be more attentive and think before you speak.
"The only way to make money is for the pirates to go and sell the contents of the containers"
Yeah... just like the only way for somebody stealing a famous work of art to make money is selling it.
Did you think about insurance companies willing to pay 10 millions for a cargo valued 150?
"No, plain old rule of law is where the same rules apply to everyone and has nothing to do with what type of economic system you use"
And therefore all and any economic system gets under the rule of the law -and thus controlled by it, as it happens with any other public affair.
"Fascism is government control of the economy while still allowing private ownership"
Sorry, that's not fascism. That's plain old rule of law.
In order to go from there to fascism you also need totalitarism, statism, autarky. utranationalism, militarism and, then, full entrenchment of corporations and state.
And no, "control of the national economy" is not the same as full planning of the means of production in accord to a national plan.
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
"1 month later, the entire team was laid off except me and the documentation writer (all four devs and both full time QA people). We had a fixed deadline to ship to that customer [...] I don't think firing over 60% of the US workforce without transitioning knowledge was the brightest way to transition"
Unless you are the company owner, no, "we" didn't have a fixed deadline, your company, the one that laid off 60% of the employees, had a fixed deadline. And given the results, your are wrong: the way they managed the transition was brilliant because it was cheap and sucessful... thanks to a simpleton that was working 2.5x for free.
It is not as if it's very difficult to see what the times are for an athlete with or without this suit. If the suits were tested and found not to be at fault, the alternate is obvious: the athelete is at fail.
"there are lots of things that could be done, that are low impact, that AREN'T done because it would require management to authorize it, and the people who understand it can't communicate the importance to management."
This management needs to be called for authorization for a reason. If that management doesn't understand what they need to manage and authorize, that's bad management per the book.
In fact, it's always bad management.
"Only the navel-gazing technocrati and engineers are so arrogant as to presume everyone else on the team is an idiot just because they don't "grok" the technical."
That's not usually the case. While I agree with the basic premise that one of best assets for a consultant is to be able to communicate with -and listen to, somebody out of her field, it's also true that the one that hires a technical expert on a field he himself is not a technical expert but still confronts the expertise of the consultant *is* an idiot.
"Yes, yes, tell me more about this novel concept, I have never heard of the term before"
Of course you didn't know about them before. You even missed the basic point that it is not a concept but a "technology". It is said right there, in the article!
I for one will immediately buy a score of units of this new technology!
"learning to code does nothing by itself."
Of course not. That's why I presented (at least so I thought I did) programing as a tool to an end.
Well, they would most probably want NOBODY to learn their secret ways, so their guilds retain their monopolies.
So, you see, not the same case.
"Most people will never need to look at any amount of code in their lives"
Absolutly wrong. Most of people will manage to go through their lives without touching a command prompt. But most first world people would save a lot of hours just with minimal programing abilities (shell level).
You think otherwise simply because you just don't foresee how many automatable actions you do along your day, from obvious things, like algorithmically renaming your computer-based photo collection, to not so obvious (to you) like a big percentage of what an office drone does along his day.
"What I mean by that is they come out of school knowing how to access the software they expect to need for their profession"
Which is a lost proposition but quite aligned to your "most people won't be exposed to code": lack of imagination. If there's anything true is that the software that they are expected to need for their profession when at school won't the the software they'll use when some years in the future are in their professions.
"explain the importance of updating software and drivers"
I've spent more than twenty years in the field and I still don't understand what the need to update software and drivers really is, can you explain, please? I, of course, understand the need to replace *faulty* software and drivers, mostly on Windows environment, but that's a different issue.
"I had to bash my brains out on a table for many, many weeks, just to understand basic concepts like lists and arrays"
And that's exacly why programing could be a very nice *tool* to develop youngsters' brains.
You see, "lists" and "arrays" are words from common language because lists and arrays in programing are exactly that: lists and arrays.
That you had problem understanding that, means that in fact you have problems with such common concepts.
It's a pitty, but if you have problems grasping basic concepts like iterations (go once and again onto something till you get to your intended result), functions (decompose big tasks into shorter ones), boolean algebra (when a composed assertion is either true or false), etc. what it means is that you are not properly prepared to understand the world around you and your education has made of you a gullible person easier to fool than it should be.
On the other hand, of course you are better at programing the more you practice and the more fitted your natural abilities are for the task. I'll take your assertion that you work for a sales org as if you are a salesman. Do you think being a salesman is an easy task? Do you think you are not a better salesman a decade into the trade than the day you started?
"The question brought to mind a nice quote by Oscar Wilde: "A gentleman need not know Latin, but he should at least have forgotten some"."
Absolutly right and, probably, in the same sense as Wilde tried to transmit.
Should everybody learn to code? Absolutly not.
Should everybody learn to think rationaly, not to be fooled by appearances, find the nut of a problem and then be able to decompose it into action items, set a path of action to solve them and finally check the intended result with the obtained one? I think so.
And it happens tom that learn to code can be a fantastic tool, probably the best, to achieve that goal.
"The government signed the contract saying that they'll pay. They can't renege on the deal just because they decided they didn't "
Of course they can't renege on the deal just because they decided they didn't.
On the other hand, they can renege on the deal because they added a clausule that regulated such a possibility as it's done on any contract of the kind.