You obviously haven't used Google services from Iran, or any other non-US country for that matter.
Yes, I obviously don't live in the UK, my whole life is a work of fiction.
Or alternatively, I have no need for proxies. I wonder which it is? (I one time VPNed into our US offices so that I could try out Hulu, but that's about it)
I setup my own US proxies when traveling (VPN actually), and if I stay in a country long enough, gmail will show the US IP address as a address.
If your proxy is in the US then that's exactly how things should be working, isn't it? I'm not sure what you were trying to say there.
As for ways around them detecting your location despite the proxy (which I find odd), if you use something like SSH/VNC/Remote Desktop to a machine on the VPN, there's no way in hell they're going to be able to detect where you really are.
*shrug* I know I'm not a top class programmer, though I wouldn't go so far as to say bad. IMO bad programmers are ones who just can't get things to work, can't track down bugs, etc.
I used to be much more motivated, until my dad died 6 weeks before my CS course started (I got into computing because my dad studied it and so I had opportunity to learn how to program at a young age, and I've always enjoyed it).
I did lose my thirst for learning for a good few years, because I saw how much my dad was learning all the time and how it was causing him to neglect spending time with us, and in the end you don't take any of your learning with you to the grave.
The next 4 years at University were a constant reminder of my dad, and it was my first time away from home. Not exactly the healthiest I've ever been mentally.
My interest in life and curiosity has gradually bubbled back up again (it's been 10 years since my dad died), and I do always seek to better myself in everything that I do (though that doesn't all revolve around computers), but "learn a new programming language" every year to me sounds like a bullshit arbitrary "rule" that I've never heard in my life. I respect the knowledge and experience of a lot of Slashdotters, but at the same time I'm not one to go in for groupthink if I can avoid it.
This thread has made me consider looking into Ruby and wonder if there's any merit in porting over the current set of projects I've built up in PERL, I'm not sure yet. There is something to be said for just getting the work done, and I have a 3 month project coming up where the implementation language is not up for debate since I'm just adding in new features to a downhole simulation program that we license out to clients.. it will be several months before I have enough free time to think of porting anything.
I actually think they just have to give up on selling copies of music after it's released... Putting a whole CD onto torrents is just way too easy.
Just because something is easy, that doesn't make it right. Believe it or not, there are many people out there who like to pay for things to encourage the future production of said things.
Be it music, clothes, cars, or software, this model of producing things then pushing it down peoples throat with advertising just sucks.
I kind of agree, but do you seriously think it will ever change? The answer is "no". Producing things is good for one thing, and without advertising we often wouldn't know about these things. With the internet and viral/word of mouth marketing becoming so easy, the advertising landscape is changing, but it's still advertising. A lot of cool stuff has gone overlooked over the years because of lack of decent advertising.
A colleague was joking about putting a "like" button on our sales/contract database. I am tempted to do it just for a laugh.. though there are a couple of guys with a stick up their ass that probably would just get annoyed at how unprofessional it is.
Though you can sell your own stuff on Amazon.co.uk too, so what you said didn't strike me as strange:P In fact I often buy from Amazon 3rd party sellers, but rarely look for stuff on eBay unless I need car parts.
Some people already get that. I knew a guy who always had social workers working with him, and every so often they'd contribute for him to go off on his ski-ing holidays. He had a really nice flat too, and didn't even have a job. He had "learning disabilities", but he also was just a selfish asshole who wouldn't even try when he did have a job. He'd just throw some tantrum, insult his boss, get fired and go back to lazing around on his leather sofas watching his big screen TV.
Who said I was stagnating? I have plenty of opportunity to learn stuff on company time, and I do try to improve my skills. Just outside of work I have other things that I have worked on over the years. From one point of view, I'd be "stagnating" far more as a person if I spent 100% of my time coding. As it is, I have spent time with photography, drumming, driving (often in computer games admittedly, but I enjoy thinking about the physics of good car control, learning the best techniques, and I also passed my "Advanced Driving" test IRL), doing Parkour (usually maybe 5 hours throughout the week and 5-6 hours on Saturdays as long as I'm not injured). I love computing, but I love other things too.
I don't see where the "wrong" comes into it there. I said "if they have appropriate libraries", and you said they don't work if they don't have the appropriate libraries. Which is what I said.
One lazy workaround would be to put the working compiler environment into a VM to ensure that it environment will always work (at least as long as you're on x86). And as someone else said, you could compile everything yourself rather than relying on repositories.. probably a good idea if you're relying on legacy stuff.
Learning for learning's sake is an important part of life
Well, for one thing, work is not my life. Learning for learning's sake is fine if you have time to spare, and I learn things when they're needed, but I don't make a habit of looking for the next cool thing to use. If I have a need, I will look for something that fills that need. Sometimes random cool things will pass through the radar, often from Slashdot, but a lot of new stuff isn't relevant to me nor my work.
Seeing as I only maintain one app for actual clients, and the rest of the stuff I do is all for internal use and they don't care how it gets done as long as it works, then I'd go with proven to me.
I'd be perfectly happy to do so, despite not wanting to own an iPhone myself:) I considered trying to get into iPhone development when it was all kicking off, when any piece of crap game would net you thousands if it was remotely good, but I decided against bandwagon jumping as it were.
If they asked me to write a Blackberry app I might kick up a fuss. I hate Blackberrys, the interfaces are awful. But if they really needed it then I'd do it:p
A couple of years ago they assigned me to one of our prototype engineering projects for developing a deep water power pack. I was initially a little nervous of doing something almost completely new to me (closest thing I'd done was write AI for little robotic cars at Uni, but that was self contained with no need for networking), but I learned about MODBUS and wrote all the base communication code for the microcontroller and the PC interface, and fulfilled all the basic functionality requirements they had without too much fuss. It was a very enjoyable experience, and a nice confidence booster, because I tend to be a cautious person and probably underestimate my ability a lot of the time, despite knowing that I, to put it bluntly, am pretty good at most things I try (and if I'm not good, I practice until I am).
Often if I imagine doing something new I'll build it up in my head into something a lot harder than it ends up actually being. These days so much basic and even advanced functionality already exists in libraries that a lot of the heavy lifting has already been done, and you just need to fit the pieces together correctly:)
Eh, I'm making enough money already, and I enjoy my job. I'd rather have a job I enjoy than always be chasing after bigger bucks, and having to spend all my evenings learning new stuff rather than just having a life. Like I said, I'm happy to learn new stuff if it's proven and useful, but since going to University and then starting work, I have lost interest in doing my own home projects. I really enjoyed having my own projects at home as a teenager, but I have other things I want to spend my time on right now.
the IT world changes *way* faster than either of those fields.
Things change fast sure, but by that token, not all of the changes are permanent or important. I'm not averse to learning new stuff if it's proven, but I don't go running after new stuff simply because it's there. Old programming languages still work fine for new tech if they have appropriate libraries, etc.
I agree. That's why I switched to a netbook for my main machine, it's powerful enough really. My phone is also capable of docking to get USB and HDMI connectivity, but I don't really have any reason to splash out for that yet. Definitely a cool concept though. You should probably patent that before posting up here;)
I wasn't saying that it could be possible, I was pretty sure that it is already possible (and if not it would only be a customisation of Android away), just that I don't think many people actually do that yet.
With the dock accessory my Streak should be able to handle a USB keyboard and HDMI out too, though perhaps it would be like the iPad in that the HDMI out is only used for video rather than normal applications.
I didn't think we were talking specifically about the home. I agree that most home users can get by without Windows. I do it myself. In fact I use Linux for a lot of my work too - though I am one of the programmers that the original comment you replied to mentioned. And in fact if nobody else used computers, most of us programmers would be out of a job too.
I have to confess I didn't read the quote you were replying to otherwise your niche comment would have made more sense, but despite the fact that most people technically don't need a computer for their job, it certainly makes things more efficient and robust (if done correctly). The business world has been entirely changed by things like email, shared network storage and the web. Yes, a lot of things can of course still be done entirely without computers, but it would often be very inefficient and expensive in terms of manpower, storage space, paper, phone operators, etc and basically a lot of things that we take for granted would no longer be possible because employers wouldn't even be able to afford them. It would completely change the business landscape. We'd perhaps have more jobs, but a lot of them would be very dull. Computers allow for all kinds of interesting new jobs though.
Why do you say that? Was Windows more user friendly than the other options available at the time? No. People would have ended up using computers anyway, it just so happens that Windows was either better marketed, or lucky.
I'm not really aware of all the historical ins and outs of the OS wars seeing as I was only 9 at the time, but all I know is that back then, I thought Windows 3.1 was an ugly and unusable piece of shit compared to my Macs and Amigas. Not because I couldn't figure it out, I just thought the windowing manager was awkward and ugly. And waddya know? With Windows 95 the windowing manager design finally caught up with the Macs and Amigas from the mid 1980s, but was still behind the Macs and Amigas of the day in terms of user friendliness and speed, despite running on more powerful hardware. I can't speak for other OSes at the time as I didn't have any direct experience with them. It still makes me sick to think how much MS have held things back with their fugly inefficient software, though I try to just ignore it these days and make the best of what we have.
Dislike him and his product all you want, but computers would not be a mainstream household appliance today if it wasn't for Microsoft Windows.
Bullshit. I was writing and printing my homework assignments from a Mac before Windows 3.1 even came out (I was 8 at the time). Later on I also bought a cheap printer for my Amiga which I could have used to print assignments, though I'm not sure if I ever used it for that.
Macs were expensive though, and Amigas were seen as gaming machines, so maybe you reject that.
Okay, so we need something that runs on cheap yet professionally respectable hardware. What about stuff like BeOS, BSD, Linux, and whatever other OSes were released around the same time as Windows 3.1? If Windows hadn't been released, one of them would have done the job better. The market is very slowly correcting itself, but ffs I wish it would get there before I'm too old to even care.
So once you remove gaming and design, you are left with a "niche"? Hate to break it to you, but gaming and 2D design (not many professional 3D CAD apps run on Mac) are both niches. What you are left with is a whole world of Windows only business software. I'd like to see it all go cross platform too, but we're not there yet.
Android shouldn't be worried about Windows 7. I wouldn't even want Win7 on a netbook, let alone a tablet. If they designed a touch interface for Win7 then you'd be getting somewhere, but compared to any mobile OS, it's still a crazy resource hog.
Android is currently the best option for a tablet OS, hands down. I don't really need a fully fledged tablet though, my netbook and my phone cover all the bases nicely (Dell "Mini 9" and "Mini 5":p ). Lightweight like iOS, but also open so you can do whatever the hell you want with it.
Thinking about it just now: technically with a tablet, if you really want to you could plug in a keyboard and TV (many have HDMI out) and do office productivity, web browsing, email, HD video playback and I suppose even gaming on a big screen.. pretty much everything that a home user (excluding the hardcore gamers of course) really needs to do, so it's not that far fetched to compare them to PCs.
Slashdot Mirror
You obviously haven't used Google services from Iran, or any other non-US country for that matter.
Yes, I obviously don't live in the UK, my whole life is a work of fiction.
Or alternatively, I have no need for proxies. I wonder which it is? (I one time VPNed into our US offices so that I could try out Hulu, but that's about it)
I setup my own US proxies when traveling (VPN actually), and if I stay in a country long enough, gmail will show the US IP address as a address.
If your proxy is in the US then that's exactly how things should be working, isn't it? I'm not sure what you were trying to say there.
As for ways around them detecting your location despite the proxy (which I find odd), if you use something like SSH/VNC/Remote Desktop to a machine on the VPN, there's no way in hell they're going to be able to detect where you really are.
*shrug* I know I'm not a top class programmer, though I wouldn't go so far as to say bad. IMO bad programmers are ones who just can't get things to work, can't track down bugs, etc.
I used to be much more motivated, until my dad died 6 weeks before my CS course started (I got into computing because my dad studied it and so I had opportunity to learn how to program at a young age, and I've always enjoyed it).
I did lose my thirst for learning for a good few years, because I saw how much my dad was learning all the time and how it was causing him to neglect spending time with us, and in the end you don't take any of your learning with you to the grave.
The next 4 years at University were a constant reminder of my dad, and it was my first time away from home. Not exactly the healthiest I've ever been mentally.
My interest in life and curiosity has gradually bubbled back up again (it's been 10 years since my dad died), and I do always seek to better myself in everything that I do (though that doesn't all revolve around computers), but "learn a new programming language" every year to me sounds like a bullshit arbitrary "rule" that I've never heard in my life. I respect the knowledge and experience of a lot of Slashdotters, but at the same time I'm not one to go in for groupthink if I can avoid it.
This thread has made me consider looking into Ruby and wonder if there's any merit in porting over the current set of projects I've built up in PERL, I'm not sure yet. There is something to be said for just getting the work done, and I have a 3 month project coming up where the implementation language is not up for debate since I'm just adding in new features to a downhole simulation program that we license out to clients.. it will be several months before I have enough free time to think of porting anything.
They are stupid, rich, and in charge
They might be stupid when it comes to technology, but to become rich and in charge seems like a smart choice to me.
In recent news, the Iranian government have moved to telecommuting until they figure out what a proxy is.
I actually think they just have to give up on selling copies of music after it's released ... Putting a whole CD onto torrents is just way too easy.
Just because something is easy, that doesn't make it right. Believe it or not, there are many people out there who like to pay for things to encourage the future production of said things.
Be it music, clothes, cars, or software, this model of producing things then pushing it down peoples throat with advertising just sucks.
I kind of agree, but do you seriously think it will ever change? The answer is "no". Producing things is good for one thing, and without advertising we often wouldn't know about these things. With the internet and viral/word of mouth marketing becoming so easy, the advertising landscape is changing, but it's still advertising. A lot of cool stuff has gone overlooked over the years because of lack of decent advertising.
A colleague was joking about putting a "like" button on our sales/contract database. I am tempted to do it just for a laugh.. though there are a couple of guys with a stick up their ass that probably would just get annoyed at how unprofessional it is.
Though you can sell your own stuff on Amazon.co.uk too, so what you said didn't strike me as strange :P In fact I often buy from Amazon 3rd party sellers, but rarely look for stuff on eBay unless I need car parts.
What next? Subsidised skiing holidays?
Some people already get that. I knew a guy who always had social workers working with him, and every so often they'd contribute for him to go off on his ski-ing holidays. He had a really nice flat too, and didn't even have a job. He had "learning disabilities", but he also was just a selfish asshole who wouldn't even try when he did have a job. He'd just throw some tantrum, insult his boss, get fired and go back to lazing around on his leather sofas watching his big screen TV.
I dunno, they could probably steal one easy enough.
Same here. Though if my dad were still alive he'd be making more, and I'd probably work with him (he had his own small software development business)
Who said I was stagnating? I have plenty of opportunity to learn stuff on company time, and I do try to improve my skills. Just outside of work I have other things that I have worked on over the years. From one point of view, I'd be "stagnating" far more as a person if I spent 100% of my time coding. As it is, I have spent time with photography, drumming, driving (often in computer games admittedly, but I enjoy thinking about the physics of good car control, learning the best techniques, and I also passed my "Advanced Driving" test IRL), doing Parkour (usually maybe 5 hours throughout the week and 5-6 hours on Saturdays as long as I'm not injured). I love computing, but I love other things too.
I don't see where the "wrong" comes into it there. I said "if they have appropriate libraries", and you said they don't work if they don't have the appropriate libraries. Which is what I said.
One lazy workaround would be to put the working compiler environment into a VM to ensure that it environment will always work (at least as long as you're on x86). And as someone else said, you could compile everything yourself rather than relying on repositories.. probably a good idea if you're relying on legacy stuff.
Learning for learning's sake is an important part of life
Well, for one thing, work is not my life. Learning for learning's sake is fine if you have time to spare, and I learn things when they're needed, but I don't make a habit of looking for the next cool thing to use. If I have a need, I will look for something that fills that need. Sometimes random cool things will pass through the radar, often from Slashdot, but a lot of new stuff isn't relevant to me nor my work.
Seeing as I only maintain one app for actual clients, and the rest of the stuff I do is all for internal use and they don't care how it gets done as long as it works, then I'd go with proven to me.
I'd be perfectly happy to do so, despite not wanting to own an iPhone myself :) I considered trying to get into iPhone development when it was all kicking off, when any piece of crap game would net you thousands if it was remotely good, but I decided against bandwagon jumping as it were.
If they asked me to write a Blackberry app I might kick up a fuss. I hate Blackberrys, the interfaces are awful. But if they really needed it then I'd do it :p
A couple of years ago they assigned me to one of our prototype engineering projects for developing a deep water power pack. I was initially a little nervous of doing something almost completely new to me (closest thing I'd done was write AI for little robotic cars at Uni, but that was self contained with no need for networking), but I learned about MODBUS and wrote all the base communication code for the microcontroller and the PC interface, and fulfilled all the basic functionality requirements they had without too much fuss. It was a very enjoyable experience, and a nice confidence booster, because I tend to be a cautious person and probably underestimate my ability a lot of the time, despite knowing that I, to put it bluntly, am pretty good at most things I try (and if I'm not good, I practice until I am).
Often if I imagine doing something new I'll build it up in my head into something a lot harder than it ends up actually being. These days so much basic and even advanced functionality already exists in libraries that a lot of the heavy lifting has already been done, and you just need to fit the pieces together correctly :)
Eh, I'm making enough money already, and I enjoy my job. I'd rather have a job I enjoy than always be chasing after bigger bucks, and having to spend all my evenings learning new stuff rather than just having a life. Like I said, I'm happy to learn new stuff if it's proven and useful, but since going to University and then starting work, I have lost interest in doing my own home projects. I really enjoyed having my own projects at home as a teenager, but I have other things I want to spend my time on right now.
the IT world changes *way* faster than either of those fields.
Things change fast sure, but by that token, not all of the changes are permanent or important. I'm not averse to learning new stuff if it's proven, but I don't go running after new stuff simply because it's there. Old programming languages still work fine for new tech if they have appropriate libraries, etc.
The engineers in Dilbert are fine, it's the managers you don't want.
I agree. That's why I switched to a netbook for my main machine, it's powerful enough really. My phone is also capable of docking to get USB and HDMI connectivity, but I don't really have any reason to splash out for that yet. Definitely a cool concept though. You should probably patent that before posting up here ;)
I wasn't saying that it could be possible, I was pretty sure that it is already possible (and if not it would only be a customisation of Android away), just that I don't think many people actually do that yet.
With the dock accessory my Streak should be able to handle a USB keyboard and HDMI out too, though perhaps it would be like the iPad in that the HDMI out is only used for video rather than normal applications.
I didn't think we were talking specifically about the home. I agree that most home users can get by without Windows. I do it myself. In fact I use Linux for a lot of my work too - though I am one of the programmers that the original comment you replied to mentioned. And in fact if nobody else used computers, most of us programmers would be out of a job too.
I have to confess I didn't read the quote you were replying to otherwise your niche comment would have made more sense, but despite the fact that most people technically don't need a computer for their job, it certainly makes things more efficient and robust (if done correctly). The business world has been entirely changed by things like email, shared network storage and the web. Yes, a lot of things can of course still be done entirely without computers, but it would often be very inefficient and expensive in terms of manpower, storage space, paper, phone operators, etc and basically a lot of things that we take for granted would no longer be possible because employers wouldn't even be able to afford them. It would completely change the business landscape. We'd perhaps have more jobs, but a lot of them would be very dull. Computers allow for all kinds of interesting new jobs though.
Why do you say that? Was Windows more user friendly than the other options available at the time? No. People would have ended up using computers anyway, it just so happens that Windows was either better marketed, or lucky.
I'm not really aware of all the historical ins and outs of the OS wars seeing as I was only 9 at the time, but all I know is that back then, I thought Windows 3.1 was an ugly and unusable piece of shit compared to my Macs and Amigas. Not because I couldn't figure it out, I just thought the windowing manager was awkward and ugly. And waddya know? With Windows 95 the windowing manager design finally caught up with the Macs and Amigas from the mid 1980s, but was still behind the Macs and Amigas of the day in terms of user friendliness and speed, despite running on more powerful hardware. I can't speak for other OSes at the time as I didn't have any direct experience with them. It still makes me sick to think how much MS have held things back with their fugly inefficient software, though I try to just ignore it these days and make the best of what we have.
Dislike him and his product all you want, but computers would not be a mainstream household appliance today if it wasn't for Microsoft Windows.
Bullshit. I was writing and printing my homework assignments from a Mac before Windows 3.1 even came out (I was 8 at the time). Later on I also bought a cheap printer for my Amiga which I could have used to print assignments, though I'm not sure if I ever used it for that.
Macs were expensive though, and Amigas were seen as gaming machines, so maybe you reject that.
Okay, so we need something that runs on cheap yet professionally respectable hardware. What about stuff like BeOS, BSD, Linux, and whatever other OSes were released around the same time as Windows 3.1? If Windows hadn't been released, one of them would have done the job better. The market is very slowly correcting itself, but ffs I wish it would get there before I'm too old to even care.
So once you remove gaming and design, you are left with a "niche"? Hate to break it to you, but gaming and 2D design (not many professional 3D CAD apps run on Mac) are both niches. What you are left with is a whole world of Windows only business software. I'd like to see it all go cross platform too, but we're not there yet.
Android shouldn't be worried about Windows 7. I wouldn't even want Win7 on a netbook, let alone a tablet. If they designed a touch interface for Win7 then you'd be getting somewhere, but compared to any mobile OS, it's still a crazy resource hog.
Android is currently the best option for a tablet OS, hands down. I don't really need a fully fledged tablet though, my netbook and my phone cover all the bases nicely (Dell "Mini 9" and "Mini 5" :p ). Lightweight like iOS, but also open so you can do whatever the hell you want with it.
Thinking about it just now: technically with a tablet, if you really want to you could plug in a keyboard and TV (many have HDMI out) and do office productivity, web browsing, email, HD video playback and I suppose even gaming on a big screen.. pretty much everything that a home user (excluding the hardcore gamers of course) really needs to do, so it's not that far fetched to compare them to PCs.