> So, for those of you that make "640K should be enough for anyone", and similar jokes, and for all of the Microsoft bashing that goes on here, I pose this question to you: How many of you have written even a BASIC interpretoe? Or have the knowledge and skill to do so? The desire to, and the drive necessary to learn how?
I have.
> Or even know how to write code, in general? Have contributed, in ANY way, to improving computing, by dint of your effort? Made things better, because you could, and wanted to?
I have.
Remember: "When we judge or criticize another person, it says nothing about that person; it merely says something about our own need to be critical."
Well, it wasn't really meant to sound like I'm any sort of really great programmer - because I'm not. I really meant it when I said "all that time spent for no apparent result". I've spent a week trying to mess with performance for no gains at all (and sometimes, performance degrades as a result). Other times, I get truly spectacular results. I'm hoping that experience makes me consistently better than I am now.
Really, though, the entire point of the story was to relate that even the average programmer can make themselves attractive to recruiting staff. If it didn't do that... it should have. =/
About 18 months ago. I was tired of working for a big telco, so I set out on a hunt for a new job - and met with overwhelming success. At my first couple of interviews, I was the one being interviewed. I took days off for the phone interviews, let them ask the questions, and lead the conversation, etc. They were all suitably impressed and I got some on-site interviews, but it was going to take a little bit of time to make up their mind for me or the next Joe candidate. In the end, some of those companies didn't call back with an offer (though some did).
However, I'd done a really bang-up job of writing my resume, and requests for phone interviews/on-site interviews were literally pouring in. For every ten jobs I applied to, I was getting a phone call back (And no, I didn't do any spamming or lying on my resume!). The response was so overwhelming that my wife began to act as my secretary and schedule phone interviews for people to even talk to me. I ended up taking 2-3 days off per week and had phone interviews scheduled for 10-12 hours per day.
I think there was a certain freedom in already having a job, and even more from having such an overwhelming response rate. So I started interviewing THEM, and it worked remarkably well. The conversations became much more two sided, and I'd ask the things that I was most interested in about their company (and a little bit of research prior to the interview makes all the difference in the world!). I think I was treated with more respect this way, and it brought more interesting things into the interviews.
For a bit about me: although I've had a rather substantial impact (usually almost completely revolutionary tbh) on every project I've ever worked on, I wouldn't call myself an "excellent" programmer - merely fairly decent to pretty good. I simply don't have the experience to be "excellent" (3-4 years of experience now). I think my biggest failing is being too ambitious in my goals and designs. Sometimes I improve throughput or efficiency by 500-1000%, and sometimes all the work seems to have no effect at all. =/
Anyway, all of that was to say that interviews are a two way street. Always interview your interviewer, because you'll just waste your time and theirs if you accept a job you'll be unhappy with. Besides, sometimes the company that interviews best in your book is the one that pays the most too. ^_^
-Mark
Re:It doesn't "remotely shut down vehicles"
on
Stalling Cars Via OnStar
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Because obviously the overseer needs more oversight? What happened to the citizens overseeing the government? What happened to governments serving their citizens? What happened to public servants?
Governments, by nature, take as much power as they can get their grubby hands on. Things like this are dangerously close to living in a police state. Police states do not exist to serve their citizens, but only to collect and consolidate power for some select few.
People putting their foot down and saying "No" is the oversight of the police that you were asking for.
To be honest, if the Government is willing to pay to do something that it feels needs done, there's nothing wrong with that. The only problem that people complain about is that the money goes to a religious (and usually Christian) organization.
In reality, however, the government is paying for a non-profit organization to perform a service that someone feels is necessary. This service might be anything from abstinence training to drug rehab or half-way housing. There's nothing wrong with any organization being paid to perform these duties - whether you or I agree with them or not.
I think most of the problem here is that people are concerned that someone will be indoctrinated with a religion that they may not believe in (or be actively against). This is a valid concern, but perhaps is a bit myopic of the situation. The service is still being performed (hopefully).
Sounds like someone's been thoroughly frightened by what passes for "sex education" in this country. Yep, sucks to grow up in a country run by religious fundamentalists. I daresay this "study" is more revealing about the culture of the United States than it is about the behaviour of teenagers.
I'm not going to say that my stance on this is either way, but you're foolish to immediately discount the study because it disagrees with what you believe.
Also, this is anecdotal evidence in favor of the study, but most of the people in school that I knew that were far above average were virgins. Some of them still are... though I'm mid twenties and married with some kids.
Furthermore, most of the religious fundamentalists that I know say that the country is run by a bunch of secular wackos with the agenda of wiping God from the face of the culture. So the question becomes whether you're falling into their stereotype as much as they fall into yours.
Additionally, when was the last time you sat down and had an actual conversation with most of these religious fundamentalists? I have recently, and though they're sometimes cooky, they're usually not, certainly not dangerous - and they didn't push their beliefs on me the way that some of the more "secular", group-think, politically correct members of society do.
I guess, what I wanted to say, was that you shouldn't discount a study because it disagrees with your particular bias - and that since you (seemingly) did exactly that, that you should stop and examine your own biases. Make sure that you don't become socially myopic, and a mirror of what you despise. Keep an open mind, and weigh the evidence.
Speaking of WindowMaker, it is the desktop environment that I use. I've firmly fallen in love with it, though I've had to considerably alter the standard behavior to make it up to what I'm looking to use. For instance, I like having (exactly) 10 desktops. I like the buttons to do certain things, and the applications to behave certain ways. It is a very customized environment.
However, I've found (not so infrequently), that people who come to my computer for "pair programming" look at my desktop and think it's my screen saver. They quite literally have no idea how to use my box. Every single one of them has left with a "wow, this is a really productive environment!" after I explain how it works.
In the end, I love WindowMaker, and wish it were even more configurable. I suppose I have 2 weeks for the holiday, I could download the source and get to hacking. However, there's a dozen project's I'd love to devote my time to. And as much as I love WindowMaker and its ilk, I can't see it ever becoming mainstream again. The Windows "feel" has a stranglehold on the GUI market.
Hrm, I'm not really seeing what you're looking at... I didn't get any popups or ads ? If it was supposed to overwhelm me with popups, it failed horribly. I don't have an IE to run, because I'm at home and run Linux here. I'd try it at work, but I do believe it would be universally considered stupid...
// End Fanboy
// Begin Seriousness
In all fairness though, you could probably make some pretty sweet heuristics to block popups in a call-home software each time someone got a popup. Especially if it closed within 10 seconds of loading. Then again, I've never browsed the source tree of Adblock+, and neither have I examined my firewall logs lately, so for all I know, that's exactly what they're doing.
At that rate, how many of you have browsed the source and have a decent idea of how Adblock+ works? How about NoScript? And have you browsed your firewall logs lately? To a point, Linux for the Average Linux User relies on security through obscurity as well. It's just a different kind of obscurity.
My New Year's Resolution? Learn more about Linux security. As sure as the sun shines, Linux is getting more popular. With that popularity is going to come more attacks.
Well, I work at a rather impressive software development firm; and the truth be told, he may not be the one that created said bug. Depending on the constructs used, it may well take all day to find it. Perhaps its a threading or similar intermittent bug that's based on some sort of timing issue?
At any rate, I do tend to agree... the VERY best developers tend to work rather short hours.
http://www.python.org/dev/culture/
According to the Python Development Culture page, maintainability is more important in CPython than fast execution times. "Correctness and Clarity before Speed", is a direct quote from the page. I'm not saying Python is slow; but I am saying that someone saying they're 1.7x as fast as CPython isn't really all that impressive.
Mark
Seriously, this article is kindof pathetic. I normally don't comment, but wow. The Polo thing.. maybe a bad idea, but hardly a technology. It sounded more like they were petulantly crying over things they simply didn't like. For instance, there's nothing wrong with a small phone. So your camera takes 8 seconds to boot up... that would hardly make it the WORST tech of Q2 2006. Hey, that wouldn't even get an honorable mention from me! Ah well. At least most of the other articles have been interesting.
I assure you that Verizon doesn't care what you do with your DSL. If you got prompted to buy it with credit, either you did it wrong or Skype just wants your money.
You decide...
Slashdot Mirror
> So, for those of you that make "640K should be enough for anyone", and similar jokes, and for all of the Microsoft bashing that goes on here, I pose this question to you: How many of you have written even a BASIC interpretoe? Or have the knowledge and skill to do so? The desire to, and the drive necessary to learn how?
I have.
> Or even know how to write code, in general? Have contributed, in ANY way, to improving computing, by dint of your effort? Made things better, because you could, and wanted to?
I have.
Remember: "When we judge or criticize another person, it says nothing about that person; it merely says something about our own need to be critical."
Well, it wasn't really meant to sound like I'm any sort of really great programmer - because I'm not. I really meant it when I said "all that time spent for no apparent result". I've spent a week trying to mess with performance for no gains at all (and sometimes, performance degrades as a result). Other times, I get truly spectacular results. I'm hoping that experience makes me consistently better than I am now.
Really, though, the entire point of the story was to relate that even the average programmer can make themselves attractive to recruiting staff. If it didn't do that... it should have. =/
About 18 months ago. I was tired of working for a big telco, so I set out on a hunt for a new job - and met with overwhelming success. At my first couple of interviews, I was the one being interviewed. I took days off for the phone interviews, let them ask the questions, and lead the conversation, etc. They were all suitably impressed and I got some on-site interviews, but it was going to take a little bit of time to make up their mind for me or the next Joe candidate. In the end, some of those companies didn't call back with an offer (though some did).
However, I'd done a really bang-up job of writing my resume, and requests for phone interviews/on-site interviews were literally pouring in. For every ten jobs I applied to, I was getting a phone call back (And no, I didn't do any spamming or lying on my resume!). The response was so overwhelming that my wife began to act as my secretary and schedule phone interviews for people to even talk to me. I ended up taking 2-3 days off per week and had phone interviews scheduled for 10-12 hours per day.
I think there was a certain freedom in already having a job, and even more from having such an overwhelming response rate. So I started interviewing THEM, and it worked remarkably well. The conversations became much more two sided, and I'd ask the things that I was most interested in about their company (and a little bit of research prior to the interview makes all the difference in the world!). I think I was treated with more respect this way, and it brought more interesting things into the interviews.
For a bit about me: although I've had a rather substantial impact (usually almost completely revolutionary tbh) on every project I've ever worked on, I wouldn't call myself an "excellent" programmer - merely fairly decent to pretty good. I simply don't have the experience to be "excellent" (3-4 years of experience now). I think my biggest failing is being too ambitious in my goals and designs. Sometimes I improve throughput or efficiency by 500-1000%, and sometimes all the work seems to have no effect at all. =/
Anyway, all of that was to say that interviews are a two way street. Always interview your interviewer, because you'll just waste your time and theirs if you accept a job you'll be unhappy with. Besides, sometimes the company that interviews best in your book is the one that pays the most too. ^_^
-Mark
Governments, by nature, take as much power as they can get their grubby hands on. Things like this are dangerously close to living in a police state. Police states do not exist to serve their citizens, but only to collect and consolidate power for some select few.
People putting their foot down and saying "No" is the oversight of the police that you were asking for.
In reality, however, the government is paying for a non-profit organization to perform a service that someone feels is necessary. This service might be anything from abstinence training to drug rehab or half-way housing. There's nothing wrong with any organization being paid to perform these duties - whether you or I agree with them or not.
I think most of the problem here is that people are concerned that someone will be indoctrinated with a religion that they may not believe in (or be actively against). This is a valid concern, but perhaps is a bit myopic of the situation. The service is still being performed (hopefully).
Also, this is anecdotal evidence in favor of the study, but most of the people in school that I knew that were far above average were virgins. Some of them still are... though I'm mid twenties and married with some kids.
Furthermore, most of the religious fundamentalists that I know say that the country is run by a bunch of secular wackos with the agenda of wiping God from the face of the culture. So the question becomes whether you're falling into their stereotype as much as they fall into yours.
Additionally, when was the last time you sat down and had an actual conversation with most of these religious fundamentalists? I have recently, and though they're sometimes cooky, they're usually not, certainly not dangerous - and they didn't push their beliefs on me the way that some of the more "secular", group-think, politically correct members of society do.
I guess, what I wanted to say, was that you shouldn't discount a study because it disagrees with your particular bias - and that since you (seemingly) did exactly that, that you should stop and examine your own biases. Make sure that you don't become socially myopic, and a mirror of what you despise. Keep an open mind, and weigh the evidence.
Mine's lasted 6 years so far, and its still the best one on the block.
www.beekmanlibrary.org/Mgloss.html
Who's the dumbass now? =) The Wikipedia article discusses why it's important that 1 is not prime.
WizZaT?
I was so waiting for someone to say that. lol, good show!
I don't think it matters...
However, I've found (not so infrequently), that people who come to my computer for "pair programming" look at my desktop and think it's my screen saver. They quite literally have no idea how to use my box. Every single one of them has left with a "wow, this is a really productive environment!" after I explain how it works.
In the end, I love WindowMaker, and wish it were even more configurable. I suppose I have 2 weeks for the holiday, I could download the source and get to hacking. However, there's a dozen project's I'd love to devote my time to. And as much as I love WindowMaker and its ilk, I can't see it ever becoming mainstream again. The Windows "feel" has a stranglehold on the GUI market.
In all fairness though, you could probably make some pretty sweet heuristics to block popups in a call-home software each time someone got a popup. Especially if it closed within 10 seconds of loading. Then again, I've never browsed the source tree of Adblock+, and neither have I examined my firewall logs lately, so for all I know, that's exactly what they're doing.
At that rate, how many of you have browsed the source and have a decent idea of how Adblock+ works? How about NoScript? And have you browsed your firewall logs lately? To a point, Linux for the Average Linux User relies on security through obscurity as well. It's just a different kind of obscurity.
My New Year's Resolution? Learn more about Linux security. As sure as the sun shines, Linux is getting more popular. With that popularity is going to come more attacks.
You think its funny, but I bet he was serious.. I know my boss might have the same question. ;-)
Well, I work at a rather impressive software development firm; and the truth be told, he may not be the one that created said bug. Depending on the constructs used, it may well take all day to find it. Perhaps its a threading or similar intermittent bug that's based on some sort of timing issue? At any rate, I do tend to agree... the VERY best developers tend to work rather short hours.
http://www.python.org/dev/culture/ According to the Python Development Culture page, maintainability is more important in CPython than fast execution times. "Correctness and Clarity before Speed", is a direct quote from the page. I'm not saying Python is slow; but I am saying that someone saying they're 1.7x as fast as CPython isn't really all that impressive. Mark
Looks like Dubya's sitting at #22. Though Harding appears to be liked little. And I'd agree that Grant was pretty terrible as a President.
Seriously, this article is kindof pathetic. I normally don't comment, but wow. The Polo thing.. maybe a bad idea, but hardly a technology. It sounded more like they were petulantly crying over things they simply didn't like. For instance, there's nothing wrong with a small phone. So your camera takes 8 seconds to boot up... that would hardly make it the WORST tech of Q2 2006. Hey, that wouldn't even get an honorable mention from me! Ah well. At least most of the other articles have been interesting.
I assure you that Verizon doesn't care what you do with your DSL. If you got prompted to buy it with credit, either you did it wrong or Skype just wants your money. You decide...