The process to hire for an opening is long, expensive, and time consuming, so you'd like to hire people that will stick around.
That's more like it. That's the truth. And yet you still hear the following bleated in all slashdot discussions on this topic: "Watch out, man - the company will just replace you - it's easy; there are loads of people hungry for jobs."
Nobody ever seems to consider the question: will those people be any good at their jobs?
Hiring good people is hard work and time-consuming.
Hiring the first dumb idiot that walks into the interview is easy, though, which I guess explains many things.
The solution I use for such things - whether they be ads, porn, image web bugs etc, is to deny my email program access to any port that isn't SMTP, POP3 or IMAP, at the firewall.
So if I get some crappy HTML email made up of images - all I see are little boxes with red crosses in them, and I smile to myself.
I can't think of any email that I would actually want to read, that uses inline images to convey something important.
"I feel bad for some companies out there. The founders, who are these incredible engineers, are now directors of their departments doing management rather than engineering. At the same time most of the people they are managing are nowhere near as good as they were at doing the actual work."
Where does the article mention that the prisoners are writing code in jail? Does it even say that they're learning how to code?
Where does it say they will not be learing to code?
"It's not working!"
"Well, maybe you shouldn't have filled the video machine with washing up liquid."
"But it says here Michael, 'Ensure machine is clean, and free from dust and dirt'."
"Yes, Vyvyan, but it doesn't say 'Ensure machine is full of washing up liquid', does it?"
"Yes, but it doesn't say 'Ensure machine is not full of washing up liquid', does it?"
etc.
Re:Adams would probably have appreciated the irony
on
Douglas Adams' Doctor Who
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I'm curious to know what you think Adams' views on Shada were.
He didn't want Shada to ever be aired in any form by the BBC (after the strike had happened, etc), and was pretty annoyed (to put it mildly) when the BBC got the rights to do it (basically via an error/misunderstanding in a later contract).
Ha - this reminds me of when the first screenshots of Quake started to appear on the net - complete with a texture of someone crucified to a wall. Cue much debate about whether this was Jesus Christ or not, what did it mean, how awful it was to see it in a game, etc. People saying "You're just assuming it's Jesus", "It looks like Jesus", "No, it could be anybody, you don't know that it's meant to be Jesus." and so on.
Somebody eventually ended the argument fairly effectively by saying something like: "Come on, it's id software - who do you think it's supposed to be?":-)
I mean, people moved away from banner ads because they didn't work and popups don't work either, but if all spam stopped working wouldn't it eventually go away too?
You mean like the way banner ads and popups eventually went away?
Which internet do you use? Sounds like you've been browsing with Mozilla for too long:-)
You cannot use C++ effectively and safely without templates.
I think this is the kind of thing that usually bugs me about discussions on STL/generic programming/templates. Advocates will insist on saying silly things like this.
I mean, do you honestly believe that not a single one of the many C++ projects that exist in the world that do not use templates have not been effective?
It's like when I read an interview with Stepanov, where he claimed that object-oriented design was "useless".
I mean, there's a difference between honest assessment of what you do and don't like, and what you have found is most effective, but to claim things like you're not using C++ effectively unless you use templates, or that object-oriented design is useless (tablizer need not apply) is just unhelpful and somewhat arrogant.
I don't rock that much - if I did, I would have read the rest of these comments and noted that others have mentioned the same book by name a couple of times already, just further down the page:-)
I hate it when that happens - I mentioned this book to a friend just the other day in relation to a subsonic story line in a TV series, and now it comes up again, in a freaky way.
Anyway, I know the book you mean (I must have read it about 20 years ago) - it was one of The Three Investigators books - I just did a brief google based on the fact that I remembered the clever kid's name was Jupiter, and that they had an HQ in the middle of a junkyard. Judging from this page it was "The Secret of Terror Castle".
Ah, that takes me back...:-)
Tim
Maybe she took the Apple slogan too seriously?
on
Baked Apple
·
· Score: 0
I can't believe nobody's done a "Rip. Mix. Burn" gag yet.
tell me this.. why the hell would i bother to pay for opera if pheonix is just as good or even better as many claim?
Well, if you paid for a version of Opera before you tried Phoenix or Mozilla, then there's a two word explanation that might be appropriate: Cognitive Dissonance.
Oh and heaven help me but who wouldn't spend whatever amount time is necessary to get the chance to see Leonardo DiCaprio get creamed by large angry men...
It's just possible that you may want to rephrase that:-)
Tim
Re:The article misses the point entirely
on
Why VHS Was Better
·
· Score: 1
I hope Sony learned something from this, although as someone else pointed out, maybe not
I think they learned something. They learned that if you don't have software/content available on your format, people won't buy the machines.
This is (apparently) why Sony started buying content production companies (Columbia, Tri-Star, various expansion of their music publishing empire). Much of this was driven by the desire to be able to make a new format succeed by having the clout to publish lots of material on the new format. In other words, they didn't want a Betamax fiasco all over again.
Of course, they got it to a certain extent with Minidisc, but there you go. I've never quite worked out why MD isn't popular in the US. I can see the advantages of mp3 players over MD now, but back then they didn't exist. At least, not when I bought my MD walkman, and I wasn't much of an early adopter when it came to MD.
Probably price. The hardware was fairly expensive, but the blank discs were cripplingly so - about £5 each at the time, IIRC (they're sub-£1 level now, I believe).
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously not a Maths major, either.
That's more like it. That's the truth. And yet you still hear the following bleated in all slashdot discussions on this topic: "Watch out, man - the company will just replace you - it's easy; there are loads of people hungry for jobs."
Nobody ever seems to consider the question: will those people be any good at their jobs?
Hiring good people is hard work and time-consuming.
Hiring the first dumb idiot that walks into the interview is easy, though, which I guess explains many things.
The solution I use for such things - whether they be ads, porn, image web bugs etc, is to deny my email program access to any port that isn't SMTP, POP3 or IMAP, at the firewall.
So if I get some crappy HTML email made up of images - all I see are little boxes with red crosses in them, and I smile to myself.
I can't think of any email that I would actually want to read, that uses inline images to convey something important.
I'm with Carmack:
"It's not working!"
"Well, maybe you shouldn't have filled the video machine with washing up liquid."
"But it says here Michael, 'Ensure machine is clean, and free from dust and dirt'."
"Yes, Vyvyan, but it doesn't say 'Ensure machine is full of washing up liquid', does it?"
"Yes, but it doesn't say 'Ensure machine is not full of washing up liquid', does it?"
etc.
I'm curious to know what you think Adams' views on Shada were.
He didn't want Shada to ever be aired in any form by the BBC (after the strike had happened, etc), and was pretty annoyed (to put it mildly) when the BBC got the rights to do it (basically via an error/misunderstanding in a later contract).
Tim
Yeah, and they even used the same variable names - what are the chances two people would call their variables ebx, ecx, etc?
Somebody eventually ended the argument fairly effectively by saying something like: "Come on, it's id software - who do you think it's supposed to be?" :-)
You mean like the way banner ads and popups eventually went away?
Which internet do you use? Sounds like you've been browsing with Mozilla for too long :-)
Couldn't you say the same about beat'em ups?
I think this is the kind of thing that usually bugs me about discussions on STL/generic programming/templates. Advocates will insist on saying silly things like this.
I mean, do you honestly believe that not a single one of the many C++ projects that exist in the world that do not use templates have not been effective?
It's like when I read an interview with Stepanov, where he claimed that object-oriented design was "useless".
I mean, there's a difference between honest assessment of what you do and don't like, and what you have found is most effective, but to claim things like you're not using C++ effectively unless you use templates, or that object-oriented design is useless (tablizer need not apply) is just unhelpful and somewhat arrogant.
How does that work?
Surely if he thought he was dishonest, the first thing he'd do is look in the bottom of the box for the missing item?
What did he think the guy was going to do - bash him on the head while he was looking in the box?!
You're right. Jesus, I'm asleep today.
The cheapest iBook I can see on Apple's website is $999.
What's your point?
And they say blogs are just about vanity ;-)
I don't rock that much - if I did, I would have read the rest of these comments and noted that others have mentioned the same book by name a couple of times already, just further down the page :-)
Tim
I hate it when that happens - I mentioned this book to a friend just the other day in relation to a subsonic story line in a TV series, and now it comes up again, in a freaky way.
Anyway, I know the book you mean (I must have read it about 20 years ago) - it was one of The Three Investigators books - I just did a brief google based on the fact that I remembered the clever kid's name was Jupiter, and that they had an HQ in the middle of a junkyard. Judging from this page it was "The Secret of Terror Castle".
Ah, that takes me back... :-)
Tim
I can't believe nobody's done a "Rip. Mix. Burn" gag yet.
Come on slashdot, get it together!
Tim
Well, if you paid for a version of Opera before you tried Phoenix or Mozilla, then there's a two word explanation that might be appropriate: Cognitive Dissonance.
Tim
I'm very much afraid that we do...
Tim
It's just possible that you may want to rephrase that :-)
Tim
I think they learned something. They learned that if you don't have software/content available on your format, people won't buy the machines.
This is (apparently) why Sony started buying content production companies (Columbia, Tri-Star, various expansion of their music publishing empire). Much of this was driven by the desire to be able to make a new format succeed by having the clout to publish lots of material on the new format. In other words, they didn't want a Betamax fiasco all over again.
Of course, they got it to a certain extent with Minidisc, but there you go. I've never quite worked out why MD isn't popular in the US. I can see the advantages of mp3 players over MD now, but back then they didn't exist. At least, not when I bought my MD walkman, and I wasn't much of an early adopter when it came to MD.
Probably price. The hardware was fairly expensive, but the blank discs were cripplingly so - about £5 each at the time, IIRC (they're sub-£1 level now, I believe).
Tim
I think you spelled 'helical' incorrectly :-)
But yes, try convincing the average person that it doesn't mean 'Video Home System', and you're onto a loser.
Tim
I'm sure I used/installed PCs with VGA graphics cards in 1990 or maybe 1989, when I worked for British Telecom.
:)
That is, they were definitely VGA cards, not EGA (the graphics demo program they came with was amazing at the time), and I last worked for BT in 1990.
I can't imagine it took 3 years for them to reach a lot of home users. Then again, I have no idea how much they cost then
Tim
I don't like the word 'unhackable'. It sounds too much like 'unsinkable'.
Tim