I still maintain the point that designing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is a fundamental error. Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design...Writing a new OS only for the 386 in 1991 gets you your second 'F' for this term. But if you do real well on the final exam, you can still pass the course.
-- Andy Tanenbaum, flaming Linus Torvalds for perceived design flaws in Linux
I can safely say that, regardless of what's easier to write, functional code is much harder to *read*.
Procedural code (C w/o function pointers and setjmp()) follows a simple, easy-to-read tree structure.
In functional code, I can't just look at some dead code and know what code is being executed ("Oh, so this variable that's being executed is a function returned from this other function that took a function that was returned from another function a while later...now *what* code, exactly, does that mean is being run?")
How do you deal with functions that perform a transaction -- i.e. operations that must be all rolled back if any operation fails?
For example:
int alloc_func(void) {
r = malloc(30)
if (!r) goto alloc_func_error1;
t = malloc(20);
if (!t) goto alloc_func_error2;
q = malloc(25);
if (!q) goto alloc_func_error3;
return 0;
I mean, in C++ you can get this by having code that runs when variables go out of scope, but in C, this seems to me to be a pretty good way of dealing with the problem.
I like using goto for cascading error handling in functions performing allocation. This avoids redundant error-handling code and extraneous flag variables.
However, this is *structured* use of goto, in such a way that one essentially doesn't need to look at the destination (and if one does, it's on the same page, and ordered -- foobar_error10 is the first label, then foobar_error9, then foobar_error 8...).
I agree with the general concept of avoiding goto. The initial complaint about goto was that it makes code hard to read and maintain.
The easiest-to-read code structure that I've ever seen is a tree -- function foo calls function bar and function baz, each of which call their own functions. Procedural programming follows this structure.
Code that uses goto for general control flow is completely unstructured -- instead of trying to follow the control flow of a tree, it's trying to follow a randomly-connected graph.
Every function pointer (and setjmp()/longjmp()) in C breaks this beautiful, easy-to-read tree, so minimizing use of function pointers is quite useful.
I don't know why so many people get hung up on OO. Reading OO (with polymorphism) is like reading a bunch of little one-level bushy trees that aren't connected to any of the other trees.
One of the most competent computer people I know didn't get their high school diploma (but that doesn't mean that "natural talent" simply filled in or anything -- they studied and read technical and engineering works like mad due to personal interest).
Granted, probably an outlier...just pointing out that the largest factor in technical knowledge may be drive to learn -- and that while there may be correlation between that and the level of degree that someone earns, it is not a perfect correlation.
You're reading a Slashdot article...about a blog...which is criticizing a report...which is pretty obviously another paid-for-study.
Gah.
That's so many orders of removal away from meaningful content that it's amazing.
Plus, the argument is about the technical merits of Linux versus Windows. You know, I like Linux. I think that it's a pretty nifty system. But, I have to be honest. I think that the technical merits of Linux comprise a pretty small chunk of the real-world benefits it has over Windows.
I think that the biggest reason that I'd rather have a Linux box running something is just that the cluefulness factor of Linux folk tends to be significantly higher. Thus, the chance that the guy writing the software and adminning the machine actually knows what he's doing is significantly better. I know a couple of Windows hackers that I'd call competent, and one that's really good, but of all the Linux hackers I know, I can't think of even one that really doesn't know what he's doing, and most of them are extremely good. It's not that the Penguin is the end-all be-all, it's that his adherents are damn knowledgeable.
I've been around the Internet for a long time -- since the early 90s in fact
We're impressed.
and am thus quite aware of the ruinous activities it has been subjected to by the typical user since then...When I started, the USENET application would inform me that my message would be spread across tens of thousands of computers at immeasurable cost as a subtle hint to keep things interesting
Yes, it's nice when people choose to restrict their activities to keep a network usable. However, that isn't feasible at a large scale. Furthermore, taking a "technical restrictions keep you from abusing the network" approach rather than a "just do no evil, m'kay?" approach is a lot more stable against attacks from that one malicious individual who *will* show up no matter what on any network....and Internet Chat required some basic knowledge of Makefiles and attention to documentation before you could run a client.
You realize that maybe there are people out there who view people like *you*, who use IRC, as time-wasters? Hell, you're posting on Slashdot rather than transferring research data over FTP. What's up with that?
I mean, it's a gradient.
Besides, the fact that those masses out there have tax dollars that can be used and entertainment dollars that are spent is what keeps Internet pricing low and connectivity high. I don't really give a damn about the fine points of bonsai or Hello Kitty, but the fact that a lot of people do means that a lot of people work hard to provide high-speed Internet access inexpensively most places in the world.
Frankly, things became unmanageable at the point the Internet was made accessible to anybody with a web browser; anybody who's been around this long knows what I'm talking about.
If you think so. I find the modern Internet, with Google, lots of governmental information sites, Wikipedia, instant-messaging systems, Project Gutenberg, and so forth to be a lot more interesting than the old-style Internet, a mess of gopherspace and talk/telnet systems. Sure, there were some good things that got left by the wayside (I still don't have a suitable replacement for archie, though content-addressable URLs for eDonkey are coming close), but on the whole, I'd say that things are vastly better and more interesting today.
What I can't believe is that a lot of help desk jobs list 4 year CS degrees as a requirement. It's a fucking help desk! A trained monkey could do that job.
Why get upset about it?
If you're right, and they can't hire anyone, then they'll figure it out pretty quickly and correct their expectations.
If not, some competitor will squash 'em before long, as they'll have no employees.
I can understand people being upset about policies of their employer, because it's often not really easy to just leave for someone else (you going to sell your house, uproot the kids, etc?) But the policies of someone hiring people? If they're wrong, they'll find out.
But most of the time you have people that are at the bottom of the experience ladder eager to learn and apply their skills or folks who are tenured and expect higher pay for their years of experience.
I've seen a number of exchanges like this in the past. I've often wondered if Slashdot and similar forums are better mechanisms for finding people to hire than, say, dice.com. At a dedicated job forum, both the employer and employee are stiff, formal, and cautious, whereas on Slashdot, people are talking pretty honestly and frankly about something they need done/work they need.
Yes, there are still some advantages to face-to-face meetings. However, as the of OSS projects (usually produced by geographically distributed people that communicate only electronically) busily stomping closed-source products can attest to, you can do great work without all coming in to sit in the same gray box each day.
If you can hire telecommuters, your pool of potential workers suddenly expands by a factor of maybe a hundred thousand, to the entire globe. Your telecommuter doesn't have to spend 30 minutes each morning and evening driving to and from his house -- just think about the amount of resources we blow on shipping sacks of meat back and forth each morning, mostly so that they can sit in front of a computer.
For the employee, one *huge* restriction on where they live has just been eliminated -- you want to live out in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska, but still want to work for a compiler company? No problem! Flexible schedules are a *lot* easier to swing for telecommuters, because you don't have to ensure 24/7 availability of office access -- if someone wants to hack code on Saturday instead of Wednesday, it's not a huge deal. Worried that you won't have quick access to people? Any of the many IM systems are *far* quicker than walking over to someone's cube a floor down to ask them a question. Plus, you can copy and paste content, which can be really nice for technical writing (try describing commands or code without typing...gah).
The Wallstree Journal has an article titled "Google Ignites Silicon Valley Hiring Frenzy".
I don't know why so many people want to work at Google. It confuses the hell out of me. Okay, they're in the news a lot. They currently have some people that produce a good product. But, you know...those people didn't say to themselves, "Damn, Microsoft seems to be the hot place to be today! I should go work there!" They just decided what they wanted to make and started making it.
In the software world, you need very, very little capital to do incredible things. Talent is the limiting factor, not how many investment dollars you need. You don't need heavy machinery or bands of Korean workers. You don't even need that many people.
Now, it may be neat to work at Google because you have some people who can carry on interesting conversations at lunch...but it's hardly as if tying yourself to Google's rising star is the fastest and best way to do anything. Google is just a bunch of guys (some of whom, in the past, hacked some neat code). You're just a guy, too. You can hack some neat code wherever you are, too. To make great stuff, you don't need a a trademarked sign out front that the Wall Street Times says is a really hot investment opportunity.
Paul Graham has written a good deal about this (and his essays are well worth reading, IMHO). His writing has some stuff that I don't like much -- he's a bit elitist, kind of Orson Scott Card. He tends to push the idea of starting a company to get bought out (which he did, and then griped about what Yahoo did to his company). He gets incredibly defensive about Lisp. However, reading his essays is like reading a solid string of +5, Insightfuls on Slashdot.
Now the market is correcting itself. Companies are trying to reduce cost, some by outsourcing (and seeing how that won't work for the most part) others are trying to get by with fewer people and are finding out that out 4 out of 5 people in their IT dept are just warm bodies and can be removed without reducing the amount or quality of the software.
I'd venture to say that deadwood tends to decrease the quality of output. Either you're producing or you're obstructing people are *are* producing.
When it comes to CS, College offers nothing that cannot be learned by a dedicated individual on his own time.
Every single one of the best people in CS that I know spends large chunks of their own time learning more about the subject. Open source development, reading books, reading online content, whatever. Their work is not a 9-to-5 job to them -- it's a hobby and a fascination to talk about at lunch and after work.
You *cannot* go to college, open your mouth, and expect the professors to just cram everything you need in. That might make someone competent, but no more.
I think that this is true of other fields too, but I don't have the experience to absolutely say yes or no -- I've certainly found examples that seem to support this.
One correlation I've found is a strong one between use of Linux and/or hacking OSS and in capability level of the person involved. This has very little to do with using Linux in and of itself -- sitting down and using a different command set to do your tasks is no big deal, and isn't going to make you a brilliant developer. However, *many* or *most* of the people out using Linux (especially when the learning curve was steeper) and writing OSS are doing so not specifically to build a resume (though they may use this as a mental justification), but because they find the content interesting, and because they are the kind of people that seek out challenges. As a result, they keep learning about the material, and learn on their own time. No matter how hard you work, putting in four years of sucking in enough material to get good grades on some exams gets completely trounced by anyone that's doing work on their own time. Those people care about what they're doing, and are learning at their own pace (and hence get a full, deep understanding). As long as they can view their professional work as an interesting intellectual challenge, they will do phenomenal work.
I know a couple good people that like to hack on interesting projects under Windows too -- the correlation is not 1.0. Heck, a few years back, that person might have been doing hardware modifications to Apple IIs, and a few years before that building radios. There's nothing inherently special to Linux and/or OSS -- it's just where most of the really talented people are currently spending time.
Actually, I think there is a substantial amount of loyalty out there.
It's the sunk cost fallacy. To a kid, the price of a console is a lot, and most kids can't afford all the consoles out there. They have to make a decision (a significant one, since they're making it with limited information and it determines the class of their entertainment for the next couple of years). They are going to play video games with their friends, so it will impact their social lives to at least some extent. They *don't* want to look like they've been suckered.
Adults are the same way about things that are proportionally costly, like cars ("Yeah, this Porsche I bought was totally worth it. It changed my life!")
Hence, fanboyism -- a reaction to the fear of appearing to one's peers as having made a bad decision.
they can call it what they want, but I think, the proper term is "dumping".
No, it is not dumping at all. Dumping occurs when you have an *unsustainable price* being used with the intent of driving someone else out of business. Microsoft can keep selling the 360 at a loss, because they believe that they will profit based on the games that are sold. Whether or not they *do* make money, they have a pretty reasonable expectation of doing so, given that console manufacturers have followed this razor-and-blades model for a long time successfully.
I guess as an official monopoly under absolutely no oversight, this is just business as usual.
Microsoft does not have a monopoly in the video game market, and they are barely, if at all, using their monopoly in the operating systems market to try to give themselves an advantage in the video game market.
must be nice not having to complete on QUALITY
Nobody competes on quality on the first models of video game consoles. There's no way for the consumer to *buy* based on quality because there's no data to base a quality judgement on. These are right out of the factories. They can't test their consoles for five years to see what fails. Revision 1 game consoles generally *are* flaky.
Look, I don't like Microsoft either, and I think that they play a lot more than their share of dirty pool. But none of this is *illegal*.
Hell, even some techies will insist that the premium on Monster cable is justified
I'm wondering why someone hasn't tried to class-action Monster for their cables.
Okay, there is a large class of luxury products that may be rip-offs, but at least they are clearly rip-offs. If you want to pay $30,000 for a table that consists of a piece of glass on two aluminum sawhorses, you are clearly just making a value judgement. It may be irrational, but you are making that decision with all the information that you can reasonably have, and nobody lying to you (like claiming that your new table will cure cancer).
On the other hand, Monster represents its cables as providing better audio or video quality, which is completely horseshit, at least in the instance of their digital cables. They are selling *lies*, and making a damn lot of money on it by preying on consumers that aren't electrical engineers. In a *lot* of retail stores. For example, look at this. "This ultra-high performance fiber optic cable greatly reduces jitter and maintains optimum signal integrity for smoother, more detailed sound from CD players, minidisc, DVD players, DACs, and satellite receivers."
Look, dude. Diebold is *not* going to sell their US e-voting software to China . This is a (lucrative) one-off deal, plus any followup contracts that they can buy theirselves into. There is no point to the software not being placed in the public domain, like everything *else* the federal government pays for with my money.
Because the only reason we have e-voting is because
(a) election officials are scared of being held responsible for another Bush-Gore style fiasco
and
(b) Diebold has promised them that e-voting will solve this problem. (No hanging chads with a simple binary button!)
What's happening is a massive taxpayer expenditure to buy an inferior product lacking existing safeguards that benefits only (a) Diebold, who can siphon off federal money and (b) the election officials, who can't be personally held responsible for anything.
You can do DRM in Linux. You add the DRM code to the kernel, sign the kernel, and then use some sort of trusted hardware that checks said signature. It's somewhat dubious as to whether anyone actually wants this in a product (ESR mentioned that perhaps you could use this to avoid someone trying to Trojan your system), but Linux can, theoretically, support TCPA.
Now, obviously, you can use a system without DRM stuff added. However, if the media is distributed in some form of encrypted format that can only be decrypted with trusted hardware, then theoretically people using Linux without DRM would not have access to the content.
Trying to restrict people from playing data stored in an unencrypted format like Redbook Audio, however, is not going to work, as you pointed out.
I was also thinking some one should explain to them what the V stand for in DVD.
Well, originally the "V" stood for "Video". That presumably made some marketing guy from some DVD Consortium company that made non-video devices unhappy, so it was renamed to "Versitile". After many more dollars spent debating this crucial issue, nobody could agree, so officially the "V" stands for nothing.
You probably think I'm joking; I assure you, I'm not, sad as it is.
I once had a boss that kept marketing people off of his back by generating busywork to occupy their time. Every time they had a meeting in which they wanted to influence anything technical, he'd bring up the fact that something lacked a name and emphasized how crucial it was to the product's success that the name be appealing. They'd vanish for a month. It was amazing to see this guy in action.
Of course, we had to put up with silly names as a result, but we didn't have to deal with technically broken things, so it was worthwhile.
I think everyone is paying too much attention to some small amount of people who actually are the "dumb science-hating" fundamentalists the/. crowd characterize as mainstream right-wing christian americans.
Slashdot is completely non-representative of the United States as a whole. Go to, say, rural West Virginia and you realize that most people running around absolutely could not even begin to understand what's being argued on here.
The problem is that, to some extent, most people live a fairly insulated existence. If you're a right-wing fundamentalist living in a little town in Mississippi, all the authority figures around you and the people you trust keep telling you that there's a big invisible guy running around and you buy into it.
If you're a Slashdotter, on the other hand, you're probably relatively young (I suspect that there are only a few senior citizens on Slashdot). You are probably well-educated. You probably work in a field where logic is a Good Thing.
I remember high school, in (not that rural) West Virginia. (West Virginia, for those of you who aren't familiar with the US social breakdown, is one of the poorer and more Christian states, but interestingly tends toward the Democrat party because of all the union ties and blue collar labor in the state.) My science teacher confided that she was very glad that the curriculum didn't require her to teach evolution, because she'd have to take a stand if it did. The school board was in just about the same boat -- we had one particular notable member of the school board (a Baptist minister, Rex Bartholomew) who periodically wrote impassioned letters to the regional paper. He had a number of interesting theories that he frequently detailed, such as how the Asian stock market collapse was because the Asians deliberately collapsed their own stock markets in order to bring down the US. He's convinced that there is some sort of coalition between government and the universities to try to "eliminate the manger scene" from Western society.
I happen to have a clipping from a couple years back when I was in the area. Rex was still writing letters and preaching to his flock:
Holy Land events hold answer to our future
The greatest end time sign and the least emphasized is the return of the Jews to the Promised Land, now recognized as the nation of Israel. It appears that all major religions will soon be integrated into the One World Ecumenical Church (Revelation 17-18). They may worship their own god, but they will use different names for their deities. What will they do with Jesus? He will not be recognized as the Savior, Lord, and the only way to Heaven. True believers will not be a part of this deception. Isn't it amazing how some will believe in the Quatrains of Nostradamus, but not accept the Word of God (the Bible).
Look at what is taking place at this moment with the gaining momentum of the New World Order. The One World Religion, World Court, One Economy and a Cashless Society are coming into focus. The Universal Product Code (UPC) mark has been in existence for some time. Have you noticed that they are already talking about another national identification number?
Russia hasn't changed and will soon join with the Islamic Jihan Nations for the distruction of Israel, but all 1/6 of this invading Army will be destroyed. (Ezekiel 37 and 38). Then the United Roman Empire will lead the world religiously, politically and economically. It will promise Israel peace and safety, by signing a seven-year treaty, under the leadership of the false Messiah. For seven years, this world will be under such tribulation as never before seen in the history of the world.
Pastor Rex Bartholomew
The problem is that most people on here will just dismiss this guy as a whacko. After all, one of the programmers and sysadmins and mathematicians on here run into people like this at their work. The problem is that this guy has *clout* in his community --
Maybe if you don't tell people that there's a big scaly guy with a pitchfork ready to screw them over if they sin, they'll get along with people better.
Should be:
Maybe if you do tell people that there's a big scaly guy with a pitchfork ready to screw them over if they sin, they'll get along with people better.
I don't think that there's actually been much of a shift in the country.
It's just that recently a lot of educated, wealthy city-dwellers leftKansas, deciding that they wanted to live in exciting urban areas.
The political effects of doing this are to simply hand over control of the state to rural residents, which tend to be less educated, more Christian, and more conservative.
Thus, New York City is the intelligent design advocate's best friend. If it was less appealing to move to already-liberal places, states wouldn't be getting increasingly conservative.
Bounce that around in your skull for a few minutes.
Slashdot Mirror
I still maintain the point that designing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is a fundamental error. Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design...Writing a new OS only for the 386 in 1991 gets you your second 'F' for this term. But if you do real well on the final exam, you can still pass the course.
-- Andy Tanenbaum, flaming Linus Torvalds for perceived design flaws in Linux
I can safely say that, regardless of what's easier to write, functional code is much harder to *read*.
Procedural code (C w/o function pointers and setjmp()) follows a simple, easy-to-read tree structure.
In functional code, I can't just look at some dead code and know what code is being executed ("Oh, so this variable that's being executed is a function returned from this other function that took a function that was returned from another function a while later...now *what* code, exactly, does that mean is being run?")
How do you deal with functions that perform a transaction -- i.e. operations that must be all rolled back if any operation fails?
For example:
int alloc_func(void) {
r = malloc(30)
if (!r) goto alloc_func_error1;
t = malloc(20);
if (!t) goto alloc_func_error2;
q = malloc(25);
if (!q) goto alloc_func_error3;
return 0;
alloc_func_error3:
free(t);
alloc_func_error2:
free(r);
alloc_func_error1:
return -1;
}
I mean, in C++ you can get this by having code that runs when variables go out of scope, but in C, this seems to me to be a pretty good way of dealing with the problem.
I like using goto for cascading error handling in functions performing allocation. This avoids redundant error-handling code and extraneous flag variables.
However, this is *structured* use of goto, in such a way that one essentially doesn't need to look at the destination (and if one does, it's on the same page, and ordered -- foobar_error10 is the first label, then foobar_error9, then foobar_error 8...).
I agree with the general concept of avoiding goto. The initial complaint about goto was that it makes code hard to read and maintain.
The easiest-to-read code structure that I've ever seen is a tree -- function foo calls function bar and function baz, each of which call their own functions. Procedural programming follows this structure.
Code that uses goto for general control flow is completely unstructured -- instead of trying to follow the control flow of a tree, it's trying to follow a randomly-connected graph.
Every function pointer (and setjmp()/longjmp()) in C breaks this beautiful, easy-to-read tree, so minimizing use of function pointers is quite useful.
I don't know why so many people get hung up on OO. Reading OO (with polymorphism) is like reading a bunch of little one-level bushy trees that aren't connected to any of the other trees.
One of the most competent computer people I know didn't get their high school diploma (but that doesn't mean that "natural talent" simply filled in or anything -- they studied and read technical and engineering works like mad due to personal interest).
Granted, probably an outlier...just pointing out that the largest factor in technical knowledge may be drive to learn -- and that while there may be correlation between that and the level of degree that someone earns, it is not a perfect correlation.
You're reading a Slashdot article...about a blog...which is criticizing a report...which is pretty obviously another paid-for-study.
Gah.
That's so many orders of removal away from meaningful content that it's amazing.
Plus, the argument is about the technical merits of Linux versus Windows. You know, I like Linux. I think that it's a pretty nifty system. But, I have to be honest. I think that the technical merits of Linux comprise a pretty small chunk of the real-world benefits it has over Windows.
I think that the biggest reason that I'd rather have a Linux box running something is just that the cluefulness factor of Linux folk tends to be significantly higher. Thus, the chance that the guy writing the software and adminning the machine actually knows what he's doing is significantly better. I know a couple of Windows hackers that I'd call competent, and one that's really good, but of all the Linux hackers I know, I can't think of even one that really doesn't know what he's doing, and most of them are extremely good. It's not that the Penguin is the end-all be-all, it's that his adherents are damn knowledgeable.
I've been around the Internet for a long time -- since the early 90s in fact
...and Internet Chat required some basic knowledge of Makefiles and attention to documentation before you could run a client.
We're impressed.
and am thus quite aware of the ruinous activities it has been subjected to by the typical user since then...When I started, the USENET application would inform me that my message would be spread across tens of thousands of computers at immeasurable cost as a subtle hint to keep things interesting
Yes, it's nice when people choose to restrict their activities to keep a network usable. However, that isn't feasible at a large scale. Furthermore, taking a "technical restrictions keep you from abusing the network" approach rather than a "just do no evil, m'kay?" approach is a lot more stable against attacks from that one malicious individual who *will* show up no matter what on any network.
You realize that maybe there are people out there who view people like *you*, who use IRC, as time-wasters? Hell, you're posting on Slashdot rather than transferring research data over FTP. What's up with that?
I mean, it's a gradient.
Besides, the fact that those masses out there have tax dollars that can be used and entertainment dollars that are spent is what keeps Internet pricing low and connectivity high. I don't really give a damn about the fine points of bonsai or Hello Kitty, but the fact that a lot of people do means that a lot of people work hard to provide high-speed Internet access inexpensively most places in the world.
Frankly, things became unmanageable at the point the Internet was made accessible to anybody with a web browser; anybody who's been around this long knows what I'm talking about.
If you think so. I find the modern Internet, with Google, lots of governmental information sites, Wikipedia, instant-messaging systems, Project Gutenberg, and so forth to be a lot more interesting than the old-style Internet, a mess of gopherspace and talk/telnet systems. Sure, there were some good things that got left by the wayside (I still don't have a suitable replacement for archie, though content-addressable URLs for eDonkey are coming close), but on the whole, I'd say that things are vastly better and more interesting today.
What I can't believe is that a lot of help desk jobs list 4 year CS degrees as a requirement. It's a fucking help desk! A trained monkey could do that job.
Why get upset about it?
If you're right, and they can't hire anyone, then they'll figure it out pretty quickly and correct their expectations.
If not, some competitor will squash 'em before long, as they'll have no employees.
I can understand people being upset about policies of their employer, because it's often not really easy to just leave for someone else (you going to sell your house, uproot the kids, etc?) But the policies of someone hiring people? If they're wrong, they'll find out.
But most of the time you have people that are at the bottom of the experience ladder eager to learn and apply their skills or folks who are tenured and expect higher pay for their years of experience.
You can't train a guru. Gurus are self-made.
Why not just admit that you're too damn cheap to pay either a living salary for the area or for training?
Are you honestly claiming that someone applying for a Unix admin position should not know what "df" is?
I mean, this isn't even an admin-level question. This is more along the lines of "Have you *used* Unix before?"
I've seen a number of exchanges like this in the past. I've often wondered if Slashdot and similar forums are better mechanisms for finding people to hire than, say, dice.com. At a dedicated job forum, both the employer and employee are stiff, formal, and cautious, whereas on Slashdot, people are talking pretty honestly and frankly about something they need done/work they need.
I suggest hiring people to telecommute.
We are *so* behind in this area.
Yes, there are still some advantages to face-to-face meetings. However, as the of OSS projects (usually produced by geographically distributed people that communicate only electronically) busily stomping closed-source products can attest to, you can do great work without all coming in to sit in the same gray box each day.
If you can hire telecommuters, your pool of potential workers suddenly expands by a factor of maybe a hundred thousand, to the entire globe. Your telecommuter doesn't have to spend 30 minutes each morning and evening driving to and from his house -- just think about the amount of resources we blow on shipping sacks of meat back and forth each morning, mostly so that they can sit in front of a computer.
For the employee, one *huge* restriction on where they live has just been eliminated -- you want to live out in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska, but still want to work for a compiler company? No problem! Flexible schedules are a *lot* easier to swing for telecommuters, because you don't have to ensure 24/7 availability of office access -- if someone wants to hack code on Saturday instead of Wednesday, it's not a huge deal. Worried that you won't have quick access to people? Any of the many IM systems are *far* quicker than walking over to someone's cube a floor down to ask them a question. Plus, you can copy and paste content, which can be really nice for technical writing (try describing commands or code without typing...gah).
The Wallstree Journal has an article titled "Google Ignites Silicon Valley Hiring Frenzy".
I don't know why so many people want to work at Google. It confuses the hell out of me. Okay, they're in the news a lot. They currently have some people that produce a good product. But, you know...those people didn't say to themselves, "Damn, Microsoft seems to be the hot place to be today! I should go work there!" They just decided what they wanted to make and started making it.
In the software world, you need very, very little capital to do incredible things. Talent is the limiting factor, not how many investment dollars you need. You don't need heavy machinery or bands of Korean workers. You don't even need that many people.
Now, it may be neat to work at Google because you have some people who can carry on interesting conversations at lunch...but it's hardly as if tying yourself to Google's rising star is the fastest and best way to do anything. Google is just a bunch of guys (some of whom, in the past, hacked some neat code). You're just a guy, too. You can hack some neat code wherever you are, too. To make great stuff, you don't need a a trademarked sign out front that the Wall Street Times says is a really hot investment opportunity.
Paul Graham has written a good deal about this (and his essays are well worth reading, IMHO). His writing has some stuff that I don't like much -- he's a bit elitist, kind of Orson Scott Card. He tends to push the idea of starting a company to get bought out (which he did, and then griped about what Yahoo did to his company). He gets incredibly defensive about Lisp. However, reading his essays is like reading a solid string of +5, Insightfuls on Slashdot.
Now the market is correcting itself. Companies are trying to reduce cost, some by outsourcing (and seeing how that won't work for the most part) others are trying to get by with fewer people and are finding out that out 4 out of 5 people in their IT dept are just warm bodies and can be removed without reducing the amount or quality of the software.
I'd venture to say that deadwood tends to decrease the quality of output. Either you're producing or you're obstructing people are *are* producing.
When it comes to CS, College offers nothing that cannot be learned by a dedicated individual on his own time.
Every single one of the best people in CS that I know spends large chunks of their own time learning more about the subject. Open source development, reading books, reading online content, whatever. Their work is not a 9-to-5 job to them -- it's a hobby and a fascination to talk about at lunch and after work.
You *cannot* go to college, open your mouth, and expect the professors to just cram everything you need in. That might make someone competent, but no more.
I think that this is true of other fields too, but I don't have the experience to absolutely say yes or no -- I've certainly found examples that seem to support this.
One correlation I've found is a strong one between use of Linux and/or hacking OSS and in capability level of the person involved. This has very little to do with using Linux in and of itself -- sitting down and using a different command set to do your tasks is no big deal, and isn't going to make you a brilliant developer. However, *many* or *most* of the people out using Linux (especially when the learning curve was steeper) and writing OSS are doing so not specifically to build a resume (though they may use this as a mental justification), but because they find the content interesting, and because they are the kind of people that seek out challenges. As a result, they keep learning about the material, and learn on their own time. No matter how hard you work, putting in four years of sucking in enough material to get good grades on some exams gets completely trounced by anyone that's doing work on their own time. Those people care about what they're doing, and are learning at their own pace (and hence get a full, deep understanding). As long as they can view their professional work as an interesting intellectual challenge, they will do phenomenal work.
I know a couple good people that like to hack on interesting projects under Windows too -- the correlation is not 1.0. Heck, a few years back, that person might have been doing hardware modifications to Apple IIs, and a few years before that building radios. There's nothing inherently special to Linux and/or OSS -- it's just where most of the really talented people are currently spending time.
Actually, I think there is a substantial amount of loyalty out there.
It's the sunk cost fallacy. To a kid, the price of a console is a lot, and most kids can't afford all the consoles out there. They have to make a decision (a significant one, since they're making it with limited information and it determines the class of their entertainment for the next couple of years). They are going to play video games with their friends, so it will impact their social lives to at least some extent. They *don't* want to look like they've been suckered.
Adults are the same way about things that are proportionally costly, like cars ("Yeah, this Porsche I bought was totally worth it. It changed my life!")
Hence, fanboyism -- a reaction to the fear of appearing to one's peers as having made a bad decision.
they can call it what they want, but I think, the proper term is "dumping".
No, it is not dumping at all. Dumping occurs when you have an *unsustainable price* being used with the intent of driving someone else out of business. Microsoft can keep selling the 360 at a loss, because they believe that they will profit based on the games that are sold. Whether or not they *do* make money, they have a pretty reasonable expectation of doing so, given that console manufacturers have followed this razor-and-blades model for a long time successfully.
I guess as an official monopoly under absolutely no oversight, this is just business as usual.
Microsoft does not have a monopoly in the video game market, and they are barely, if at all, using their monopoly in the operating systems market to try to give themselves an advantage in the video game market.
must be nice not having to complete on QUALITY
Nobody competes on quality on the first models of video game consoles. There's no way for the consumer to *buy* based on quality because there's no data to base a quality judgement on. These are right out of the factories. They can't test their consoles for five years to see what fails. Revision 1 game consoles generally *are* flaky.
Look, I don't like Microsoft either, and I think that they play a lot more than their share of dirty pool. But none of this is *illegal*.
Hell, even some techies will insist that the premium on Monster cable is justified
I'm wondering why someone hasn't tried to class-action Monster for their cables.
Okay, there is a large class of luxury products that may be rip-offs, but at least they are clearly rip-offs. If you want to pay $30,000 for a table that consists of a piece of glass on two aluminum sawhorses, you are clearly just making a value judgement. It may be irrational, but you are making that decision with all the information that you can reasonably have, and nobody lying to you (like claiming that your new table will cure cancer).
On the other hand, Monster represents its cables as providing better audio or video quality, which is completely horseshit, at least in the instance of their digital cables. They are selling *lies*, and making a damn lot of money on it by preying on consumers that aren't electrical engineers. In a *lot* of retail stores. For example, look at this. "This ultra-high performance fiber optic cable greatly reduces jitter and maintains optimum signal integrity for smoother, more detailed sound from CD players, minidisc, DVD players, DACs, and satellite receivers."
Look, dude. Diebold is *not* going to sell their US e-voting software to China . This is a (lucrative) one-off deal, plus any followup contracts that they can buy theirselves into. There is no point to the software not being placed in the public domain, like everything *else* the federal government pays for with my money.
Because the only reason we have e-voting is because
(a) election officials are scared of being held responsible for another Bush-Gore style fiasco
and
(b) Diebold has promised them that e-voting will solve this problem. (No hanging chads with a simple binary button!)
What's happening is a massive taxpayer expenditure to buy an inferior product lacking existing safeguards that benefits only (a) Diebold, who can siphon off federal money and (b) the election officials, who can't be personally held responsible for anything.
You can do DRM in Linux. You add the DRM code to the kernel, sign the kernel, and then use some sort of trusted hardware that checks said signature. It's somewhat dubious as to whether anyone actually wants this in a product (ESR mentioned that perhaps you could use this to avoid someone trying to Trojan your system), but Linux can, theoretically, support TCPA.
Now, obviously, you can use a system without DRM stuff added. However, if the media is distributed in some form of encrypted format that can only be decrypted with trusted hardware, then theoretically people using Linux without DRM would not have access to the content.
Trying to restrict people from playing data stored in an unencrypted format like Redbook Audio, however, is not going to work, as you pointed out.
I was also thinking some one should explain to them what the V stand for in DVD.
Well, originally the "V" stood for "Video". That presumably made some marketing guy from some DVD Consortium company that made non-video devices unhappy, so it was renamed to "Versitile". After many more dollars spent debating this crucial issue, nobody could agree, so officially the "V" stands for nothing.
You probably think I'm joking; I assure you, I'm not, sad as it is.
I once had a boss that kept marketing people off of his back by generating busywork to occupy their time. Every time they had a meeting in which they wanted to influence anything technical, he'd bring up the fact that something lacked a name and emphasized how crucial it was to the product's success that the name be appealing. They'd vanish for a month. It was amazing to see this guy in action.
Of course, we had to put up with silly names as a result, but we didn't have to deal with technically broken things, so it was worthwhile.
I think everyone is paying too much attention to some small amount of people who actually are the "dumb science-hating" fundamentalists the /. crowd characterize as mainstream right-wing christian americans.
Slashdot is completely non-representative of the United States as a whole. Go to, say, rural West Virginia and you realize that most people running around absolutely could not even begin to understand what's being argued on here.
The problem is that, to some extent, most people live a fairly insulated existence. If you're a right-wing fundamentalist living in a little town in Mississippi, all the authority figures around you and the people you trust keep telling you that there's a big invisible guy running around and you buy into it.
If you're a Slashdotter, on the other hand, you're probably relatively young (I suspect that there are only a few senior citizens on Slashdot). You are probably well-educated. You probably work in a field where logic is a Good Thing.
I remember high school, in (not that rural) West Virginia. (West Virginia, for those of you who aren't familiar with the US social breakdown, is one of the poorer and more Christian states, but interestingly tends toward the Democrat party because of all the union ties and blue collar labor in the state.) My science teacher confided that she was very glad that the curriculum didn't require her to teach evolution, because she'd have to take a stand if it did. The school board was in just about the same boat -- we had one particular notable member of the school board (a Baptist minister, Rex Bartholomew) who periodically wrote impassioned letters to the regional paper. He had a number of interesting theories that he frequently detailed, such as how the Asian stock market collapse was because the Asians deliberately collapsed their own stock markets in order to bring down the US. He's convinced that there is some sort of coalition between government and the universities to try to "eliminate the manger scene" from Western society.
I happen to have a clipping from a couple years back when I was in the area. Rex was still writing letters and preaching to his flock:
Holy Land events hold answer to our future
The greatest end time sign and the least emphasized is the return of the Jews to the Promised Land, now recognized as the nation of Israel. It appears that all major religions will soon be integrated into the One World Ecumenical Church (Revelation 17-18). They may worship their own god, but they will use different names for their deities. What will they do with Jesus? He will not be recognized as the Savior, Lord, and the only way to Heaven. True believers will not be a part of this deception. Isn't it amazing how some will believe in the Quatrains of Nostradamus, but not accept the Word of God (the Bible).
Look at what is taking place at this moment with the gaining momentum of the New World Order. The One World Religion, World Court, One Economy and a Cashless Society are coming into focus. The Universal Product Code (UPC) mark has been in existence for some time. Have you noticed that they are already talking about another national identification number?
Russia hasn't changed and will soon join with the Islamic Jihan Nations for the distruction of Israel, but all 1/6 of this invading Army will be destroyed. (Ezekiel 37 and 38). Then the United Roman Empire will lead the world religiously, politically and economically. It will promise Israel peace and safety, by signing a seven-year treaty, under the leadership of the false Messiah. For seven years, this world will be under such tribulation as never before seen in the history of the world.
Pastor Rex Bartholomew
The problem is that most people on here will just dismiss this guy as a whacko. After all, one of the programmers and sysadmins and mathematicians on here run into people like this at their work. The problem is that this guy has *clout* in his community --
Maybe if you don't tell people that there's a big scaly guy with a pitchfork ready to screw them over if they sin, they'll get along with people better.
Should be:
Maybe if you do tell people that there's a big scaly guy with a pitchfork ready to screw them over if they sin, they'll get along with people better.
Never write in a huff. You make mistakes.
Unfortunately, you're in the minority.
I don't think that there's actually been much of a shift in the country.
It's just that recently a lot of educated, wealthy city-dwellers left Kansas, deciding that they wanted to live in exciting urban areas.
The political effects of doing this are to simply hand over control of the state to rural residents, which tend to be less educated, more Christian, and more conservative.
Thus, New York City is the intelligent design advocate's best friend. If it was less appealing to move to already-liberal places, states wouldn't be getting increasingly conservative.
Bounce that around in your skull for a few minutes.