By the time a person reaches 40 he/she will be doing fine.
By the time a programmer hits 40 they're either stuck in a rut or progressed out of programming for a living.
Don't bother telling me that's an entirely unfair generalisation, because I know already. It is however sufficiently accurate to describe 98% of programming jobs.
Almost nobody pays continually increased rates for programming roles as you gain experience. People get pay rises by moving into management, architecture, consultancy; not by programming.
It's a young man's game, and I've seen no evidence of that changing since Steve McConnell published 'Orphans Preferred'.
In the UK the job agencies are leeches that will screw over employers and employees in their desperate attempts to make a commission.
They do however tend to only be used to recruit experienced staff. Most companies looking for new graduates tend to work with the universities directly (even the small businesses). Certainly if you're after a job with a "big" company (e.g. MS, IBM, Google, Apple, Oracle, one of the big consultancies) then they'll be engaged directly with the universities and not be going through agencies.
So go directly to your university - it should have a careers dept, that have lists of current recruiters, that advice and guidance on how to find potential employers that haven't already been in contact. And click on the 'careers' link on every single website you go to and think "this might be fun to work on", or that's for a company you think works in the area you're interested in.
But probably not a bad idea to defer until after exams, and be patient as the graduate jobs market is currently oversupplied with graduates due to broader economic factors.
if I hired you as a software engineer to work on really high-grade problems, I could confidently expect that you'd be missing the background knowledge and instincts that would stop you seriously screwing things up.
This makes him different to every other grad exactly how?
Computer Science grads know approximately fuck all about software engineering. Software Engineering grads (from those half-dozen courses available in the country) will know the theory, but still wont be safe to leave alone on a project. Physics grads wont have the slightest inkling about software engineering but do have the skills to understand and apply the theory when taught.
So exactly where do you get your entry level programmers from?
If the answer is that you don't, you only employ experienced software engineers, that's a reasonable and understandable business decision. It doesn't qualify you to tell an EE graduate they shouldn't be applying for a job as a software engineer.
There's a very big difference between 'user accounts' and 'static web pages'.
CGI scripts don't need user accounts. Sessionless web games don't need user accounts. Loan repayment calculators don't need user accounts. Data transformation services don't need user accounts.
But hey, I'm biased, I went for my first job interview with evidence of the MORPG I'd helped write and was helping admin. Which was hosted on its own Sun box, in 1994, despite not charging to play, not advertising, not relying on patronage.
Maybe things are different these days, but please, don't pretend you can't write a web application without needing user accounts and/or SSL. It makes you look silly.
In the UK motorists pay around £45bn/year in taxes (in 2010 it was £29.5bn just in fuel duty). It's hard to find the spending on road building/maintenance, but it's in the region of £6-12bn/year, with the total road network worth around £65bn.
In other words you could rebuild the road network every two years and still afford to buy every cunt in the country a bike to ride for free on it, using just the money received from motorists.
Car owners massively subsidise other road users and other Government services, so please, tell me, exactly how the fuck are non-car owners losing out?
The health benefits of riding a bike are not exactly external, but they are underappreciated, and they are large
I agree completely, although you forgot to mention something: The health benefits of riding a bike are negative.
Bike riding took my congenitally bad knees and damaged them beyond repair. Continued bike riding would leave me crippled and requiring disability aids.
To the extent that we are all share insurance pools, you want other people in your pool to ride a bike, because it ought to save you money.
To the extent that insurance pools include medical cover and not just car related costs, no, I don't, because it wont.
Anyway, your suggestion is impractical for many road users. How are you going to get a family of four on a bike, how do I do my 110 mile commute on a Monday morning on a bike and still get to work on time, and do you really think someone's carrying their weekly shopping home from the supermarket on a bike?
I have a lot of games released by Paradox. They make some fun games with excellent mechanics.
Europa Universalis III: Crashes so often it's unplayable Europa Universalis: Rome: Crashes so often it's unplayable King Arthur the RPG: Crashes so often I don't dare even try the expansion, despite owning it Hearts of Iron III: Didn't even bloody start
Hopefully the ones I haven't tried yet but got in a Steam bundle will be more stable. I'm not holding out much hope though.
My point was that they likely have muslim sailors and so would already be servicing their spiritual needs. They wouldn't need to import a new Imam just to bury a dead enemy.
I also think that it would be silly not to respect the person you're at war with. A lack of respect invariably leads to behaviours modern civilisations frowns upon - rape & pillage is illegal in most armies across the world, why should desecration of the dead be any different?
I recall much US anguish about Somalians parading corpses of dead US soldiers; this is comparable, and it's great that the US took a responsible approach here.
Indeed, I think the US military have portrayed themselves superbly here. Controlled, proportionate, justified, mature, highly skilled and capable and sufficiently brave, with entirely appropriate levels of respect for someone with whom they unfortunately found themselves in conflict.
It's the American public shooting off fireworks that have shown their ignorance and irrationality.
Regarding the downed Helo, I'm not sure a tech would've helped any, and abandoning a single helicopter with no loss of life and without compromising the mission is actually impressive and militarily a great success.
I suppose they also had an imam on board, so it would be a proper Muslim burial?
Hmm. 5000 men on board, yeah, it's not unlikely they had someone able to perform Islamic rites.
(even ignoring the fact that I could perform Islamic rites; I don't even know Arabic but frankly shitting on a dog has as much real connection with Allah as anything in the Koran, on account of him not fucking existing)
I'd celebrate the loss of religion like I celebrated the Berlin Wall coming down. I didn't celebrate Ceausescu getting shot. Celebrate the change, not the death of the person that was necessary to achieve it.
What he perceives as evil is pretty irrelevant to me respecting the fact that he was willing to stand up for it.
I disagreed with him strongly enough to support military action to prevent him getting it too, but that doesn't mean I'm going to celebrate when he's dead. I'm especially not going to demonise him, because that would be an act of ignorance.
Make all religion go away and I'll celebrate that. Meanwhile I'm going to call out the bullshit of people celebrating that he's dead.
NPR reports that one of these cowards used a woman as a human shield during the course of the raid
What's more cowardly, using a woman as a shield or shooting her dead so the person hiding behind her can't shoot you?
It makes much sense to go in with a desire to capture for subsequent trial, but frankly given the option of dying with a gun in my hands or suffering years or decades of torture at Guantanamo I'm going to try and take a SEAL down with me.
Lets face it, chances of a fair trial: 0. Chances of death penalty: close to 1. Not exactly a lot to lose.
The bank maybe doesn't audit you, but in this country they will demand certification from a QSA, and those guys will audit you because they're liable for your fuck-ups if they sign you off.
Not to mention that the set of "PSN users" and the set of "People whose credit cards have been fraudulently charged" were never mutually exclusive, so PSN users suffering card fraud is not itself an indication that the PSN compromise led to that fraud.
Of course, sensible people with either cancel their card or at least closely monitor their statements for a few years. But sensible people monitor their card statements anyway..
How do you add a new charge to a credit card when you can't retrieve its number?
I fully expect that Amazon and Steam hold my credit card details in a retrievable form. I also fully expect that they encrypt those details, as they would not be PCI-DSS compliant if they don't.
It's still not a one-way hash.
Passwords being retrievable I completely agree is an utter fuck-up. Sensitive card details however are only as secure as the server they sit on, combined with the server their decryption key sits on.
You give me a gun, I'm going to apply the safety catch, take out the ammunition (magazine and chamber), strip it, clean it, re-assemble it and put it safely in a secure location.
I'm not going to use it to shoot policemen who burst into my house armed and yelling "This is the police, get down on the floor."
Is that being afraid of guns or just common fucking sense?
The prosecution used the photos to prove presence. The defense used the timestamps on the photos to cast doubt on a different aspect of the prosecution case.
Just because the photos were provided for one purpose does not preclude their use for another.
Or do you also support denying defence attorneys the opportunity to cross-examine prosecution witnesses?
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By the time a person reaches 40 he/she will be doing fine.
By the time a programmer hits 40 they're either stuck in a rut or progressed out of programming for a living.
Don't bother telling me that's an entirely unfair generalisation, because I know already. It is however sufficiently accurate to describe 98% of programming jobs.
Almost nobody pays continually increased rates for programming roles as you gain experience. People get pay rises by moving into management, architecture, consultancy; not by programming.
It's a young man's game, and I've seen no evidence of that changing since Steve McConnell published 'Orphans Preferred'.
In the UK the job agencies are leeches that will screw over employers and employees in their desperate attempts to make a commission.
They do however tend to only be used to recruit experienced staff. Most companies looking for new graduates tend to work with the universities directly (even the small businesses). Certainly if you're after a job with a "big" company (e.g. MS, IBM, Google, Apple, Oracle, one of the big consultancies) then they'll be engaged directly with the universities and not be going through agencies.
So go directly to your university - it should have a careers dept, that have lists of current recruiters, that advice and guidance on how to find potential employers that haven't already been in contact. And click on the 'careers' link on every single website you go to and think "this might be fun to work on", or that's for a company you think works in the area you're interested in.
But probably not a bad idea to defer until after exams, and be patient as the graduate jobs market is currently oversupplied with graduates due to broader economic factors.
if I hired you as a software engineer to work on really high-grade problems, I could confidently expect that you'd be missing the background knowledge and instincts that would stop you seriously screwing things up.
This makes him different to every other grad exactly how?
Computer Science grads know approximately fuck all about software engineering. Software Engineering grads (from those half-dozen courses available in the country) will know the theory, but still wont be safe to leave alone on a project. Physics grads wont have the slightest inkling about software engineering but do have the skills to understand and apply the theory when taught.
So exactly where do you get your entry level programmers from?
If the answer is that you don't, you only employ experienced software engineers, that's a reasonable and understandable business decision. It doesn't qualify you to tell an EE graduate they shouldn't be applying for a job as a software engineer.
There's a very big difference between 'user accounts' and 'static web pages'.
CGI scripts don't need user accounts.
Sessionless web games don't need user accounts.
Loan repayment calculators don't need user accounts.
Data transformation services don't need user accounts.
But hey, I'm biased, I went for my first job interview with evidence of the MORPG I'd helped write and was helping admin. Which was hosted on its own Sun box, in 1994, despite not charging to play, not advertising, not relying on patronage.
Maybe things are different these days, but please, don't pretend you can't write a web application without needing user accounts and/or SSL. It makes you look silly.
In the UK motorists pay around £45bn/year in taxes (in 2010 it was £29.5bn just in fuel duty). It's hard to find the spending on road building/maintenance, but it's in the region of £6-12bn/year, with the total road network worth around £65bn.
In other words you could rebuild the road network every two years and still afford to buy every cunt in the country a bike to ride for free on it, using just the money received from motorists.
Car owners massively subsidise other road users and other Government services, so please, tell me, exactly how the fuck are non-car owners losing out?
The health benefits of riding a bike are not exactly external, but they are underappreciated, and they are large
I agree completely, although you forgot to mention something: The health benefits of riding a bike are negative.
Bike riding took my congenitally bad knees and damaged them beyond repair. Continued bike riding would leave me crippled and requiring disability aids.
To the extent that we are all share insurance pools, you want other people in your pool to ride a bike, because it ought to save you money.
To the extent that insurance pools include medical cover and not just car related costs, no, I don't, because it wont.
Anyway, your suggestion is impractical for many road users. How are you going to get a family of four on a bike, how do I do my 110 mile commute on a Monday morning on a bike and still get to work on time, and do you really think someone's carrying their weekly shopping home from the supermarket on a bike?
I have a lot of games released by Paradox. They make some fun games with excellent mechanics.
Europa Universalis III: Crashes so often it's unplayable
Europa Universalis: Rome: Crashes so often it's unplayable
King Arthur the RPG: Crashes so often I don't dare even try the expansion, despite owning it
Hearts of Iron III: Didn't even bloody start
Hopefully the ones I haven't tried yet but got in a Steam bundle will be more stable. I'm not holding out much hope though.
My point was that they likely have muslim sailors and so would already be servicing their spiritual needs. They wouldn't need to import a new Imam just to bury a dead enemy.
I also think that it would be silly not to respect the person you're at war with. A lack of respect invariably leads to behaviours modern civilisations frowns upon - rape & pillage is illegal in most armies across the world, why should desecration of the dead be any different?
I recall much US anguish about Somalians parading corpses of dead US soldiers; this is comparable, and it's great that the US took a responsible approach here.
Indeed, I think the US military have portrayed themselves superbly here. Controlled, proportionate, justified, mature, highly skilled and capable and sufficiently brave, with entirely appropriate levels of respect for someone with whom they unfortunately found themselves in conflict.
It's the American public shooting off fireworks that have shown their ignorance and irrationality.
Regarding the downed Helo, I'm not sure a tech would've helped any, and abandoning a single helicopter with no loss of life and without compromising the mission is actually impressive and militarily a great success.
I suppose they also had an imam on board, so it would be a proper Muslim burial?
Hmm. 5000 men on board, yeah, it's not unlikely they had someone able to perform Islamic rites.
(even ignoring the fact that I could perform Islamic rites; I don't even know Arabic but frankly shitting on a dog has as much real connection with Allah as anything in the Koran, on account of him not fucking existing)
I'd celebrate the loss of religion like I celebrated the Berlin Wall coming down. I didn't celebrate Ceausescu getting shot. Celebrate the change, not the death of the person that was necessary to achieve it.
What he perceives as evil is pretty irrelevant to me respecting the fact that he was willing to stand up for it.
I disagreed with him strongly enough to support military action to prevent him getting it too, but that doesn't mean I'm going to celebrate when he's dead. I'm especially not going to demonise him, because that would be an act of ignorance.
Make all religion go away and I'll celebrate that. Meanwhile I'm going to call out the bullshit of people celebrating that he's dead.
The presumption of innocence and a trial only apply to US citizens and people within the borders of the US.
That's odd. It applies to people in my country too.
Why do you think we're so keen not to hand Gary McKinnon over to you?
Technically, yes. You are at a minimum guilty of attempting to shoot someone that has a gun of their own, and is trained to use it.
That may not necessarily be illegal, but it can be fatal.
And you have insulted someone by implying that they have woman parts.
Actually, no, he's insulted someone by referring to them as a woman's cunt, but in an "acceptable for TV" manner.
I think you should learn English swear words. We have some wonderful ones.
A throwaway comment demonstrating your blinkered ignorant view of the world, including a call to celebrate someone dying?
What can I say.. next time get to work on time.
BBC earlier were reporting that they've been monitoring his compound since August.
Sorry, that probably didn't help you :)
NPR reports that one of these cowards used a woman as a human shield during the course of the raid
What's more cowardly, using a woman as a shield or shooting her dead so the person hiding behind her can't shoot you?
It makes much sense to go in with a desire to capture for subsequent trial, but frankly given the option of dying with a gun in my hands or suffering years or decades of torture at Guantanamo I'm going to try and take a SEAL down with me.
Lets face it, chances of a fair trial: 0. Chances of death penalty: close to 1. Not exactly a lot to lose.
A man that puts his life on the line to fight what he perceives as a great evil.
Disagree with his politics, take decisive military action to protect yourself, sure. Celebrating his death? Fuck you, you xenophobic imperialist twat.
I hate Islam and other archaic superstitions but I very easily understand why people in the Middle-East hate America.
You probably ought to read up on PCI DSS then. Start here:
https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/merchants/index.php
The bank maybe doesn't audit you, but in this country they will demand certification from a QSA, and those guys will audit you because they're liable for your fuck-ups if they sign you off.
they didn't have enough data for real identity theft
Well, no, they didn't have full DNA samples, photographs of all scars and tattoos and a voiceprint to enable full replication.
I guess it's lucky that they can't do too much damage with name, address, date of birth, security question answers and credit card details.
Care to share yours?
VISA don't issue credit cards.
Not to mention that the set of "PSN users" and the set of "People whose credit cards have been fraudulently charged" were never mutually exclusive, so PSN users suffering card fraud is not itself an indication that the PSN compromise led to that fraud.
Of course, sensible people with either cancel their card or at least closely monitor their statements for a few years. But sensible people monitor their card statements anyway..
How do you add a new charge to a credit card when you can't retrieve its number?
I fully expect that Amazon and Steam hold my credit card details in a retrievable form. I also fully expect that they encrypt those details, as they would not be PCI-DSS compliant if they don't.
It's still not a one-way hash.
Passwords being retrievable I completely agree is an utter fuck-up. Sensitive card details however are only as secure as the server they sit on, combined with the server their decryption key sits on.
You give me a gun, I'm going to apply the safety catch, take out the ammunition (magazine and chamber), strip it, clean it, re-assemble it and put it safely in a secure location.
I'm not going to use it to shoot policemen who burst into my house armed and yelling "This is the police, get down on the floor."
Is that being afraid of guns or just common fucking sense?
There were no other cars in the frames.
No, but there was a fucking bus:
http://media.washtimes.com/media/image/2011/04/20/20110420-205144-pic-539113282_s630x479.jpg?b7cfe1cfd3137aa28a7d58a9c1c923a475f1eedd
The prosecution used the photos to prove presence.
The defense used the timestamps on the photos to cast doubt on a different aspect of the prosecution case.
Just because the photos were provided for one purpose does not preclude their use for another.
Or do you also support denying defence attorneys the opportunity to cross-examine prosecution witnesses?