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User: jaxent

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  1. Skills are what count, keep them current on Age Bias In IT: the Reality Behind the Rumors · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm turning 50 this year. Have a good full time job and more side work than I can do. But I have an advantage, I didn't go to college so I never got a piece of paper saying I am an engineer, I have to prove it everyday! I learned C from the K & R book, then C++ as it came along. I learned Java in 96 or 97. PHP around 2003. Learning Scala these days. I can administer networks databases, and, servers of most types (I know several dead operating systems and languages). Because I never stop learning and I never refuse to do something just because I don't know how. I just say up front, I don't know that API, it will take a little longer. I love to do the things I don't know. Plus I don't live in a world that has a cleanly defined line between management and contributor. I have moved back and forth many times. I currently have a VP title in a smaller company, but spend most of my time writing java code, and when something like a DNS record needs to be changed or a new router needs to be configured, I just do it. I used to have to find the manuals, now I can pull it up on my phone. No excuses. Flexibility is what it takes to keep your career going as you get older. I have worked for big industry players as both an engineer and as a manager. Those companies don't always last and neither does any single technology, the only constant is change. If you don't love change, get out of this business.

  2. Re:Why is this news? on Australian Extradited For Breaking US Law At Home · · Score: 1

    The victims are in the US. If you have not had the rewards months of work taken away from you by a some punk who thinks that your work should be free, you may not fully understand that there are victims of software piracy. If you want to put your own work out for free that is your choice, I do some of that as well. But most programmers, musicians and professionals in the movie/tv industry do their work to support our families. Baby needs new shoes.

    We have created a way to erase borders in where we live and work. We have also erased them in where crime is committed. We have to erase them in how we protect victims of crime.

    I am a US citizen and I would expect that if I committed a crime against anyone (a company is just a group of people, it is not faceless) it would be punishable by that country. You should not be able to hide behind a keyboard.

    Before you start, I think that the people in the Bush administration that knowingly went to war under false pretenses should be tried in an Iraqi court first since that country has the most victims.

  3. At least B of A is trying something on Study Finds Bank of America SiteKey is Flawed · · Score: 1

    I could think of several ways, both completely social and lightly technical to get around site key. Even if somebody gave me the grant money that MIT got for this, I would not write it up for public consumsion. I hope the MIT folks know some other techniques and just released this one to tell people to not be stupid. The study itself is flawed. Would you volunteer to login to your bank account on somebody else's computer? NOT ME! I think this study would attract only dolts.

  4. Re:What about... on Where the Highest Paying Tech Jobs Are · · Score: 1

    Sorry, Silicon Valley homes have slab foundations.

  5. Or Bubble Memory on A Magnetic Memory Alternative to Hard Disk · · Score: 1

    It was going to replace hard drives too. http://www.decodesystems.com/tib0203.html

  6. Re:How Silicon Valley really works on Is Silicon Valley Reproducible? · · Score: 1

    I lived in the valley from 77 until a couple years ago. I still work for a company in the Bay Area, but I do it from a bigger house. You hit a couple of pretty good points. Especically the one about the dot com boom screwing things up. People got the idea that you get into a startup and make a bunch of money off of options, just like magic. Ask those folks on Sand Hill Rd. how many startups they expect to succeed. The untold story is you go work at a startup, you bust your hump, it fails. If you have never been laid off, you haven't really worked in the Silicon Valley. You find, or start with your friends that are unemployeed with you, another, it fails. One day you might get lucky and the time to market is right, then you're fat, dumb and happy. (Or like the founder of Eagle Computers you drive your brand new Ferrari into Lexington Reservior) But you are never bored and you make cool stuff. And work with some really good people.

  7. Hippies!! on Is Silicon Valley Reproducible? · · Score: 1

    The author forgot the hippies!! Apple was funded by the sell of a VW Bus not rich people.

  8. Re:Guess this leaves him on McNealy Steps Down as Sun Microsystems CEO · · Score: 1

    My money is on the Sr. PGA tour. He's a scratch golfer. That comes from spending a lot of time on the course you know.

  9. Re:Didn't see that coming. on McNealy Steps Down as Sun Microsystems CEO · · Score: 2, Interesting

    McNealy was Director of Operations at Onyx Systems in San Jose before Sun. Onyx was the first company to port Unix onto a machine that would sit on a desktop, Zilog Z8000 based, AT&T version 7, then AT&T System III. The machines could support 16 users on TTYs. You could put in upto 1 MegaByte of RAM, and 2 40 MegaByte hard disks (8"). All for less than $75,000. Those were the days. If he worked at a dog food company it may have been while he was in school. He tends to make up crap during his speeches, although some of his top 10 lists were funny.

    Johnathan Schwartz has been in a position of power within Sun for some time now, and one would expect that if he were going to make an impact on Sun's behavior, he'd have done it already.
    More than true. I give him 6 month before the Board replaces him.

  10. Re:That's odd... on McNealy Steps Down as Sun Microsystems CEO · · Score: 0, Troll

    Schwartz is a dolt! He speaks out in the press before thinking what it will do to product sales. He kills any software product that makes money and puts the manpower onto free products (not always open, just free). "We may loss money on each unit, but we'll make it up with volume." He says how Sun will make it's money on service and guts the support departments. Sun has become a Me Too hardware vendor that will be killed off by IBM and Dell. Nobody buys them out because when they lock the doors, Java will be in the public domain anyway. Why pay to open source it?

  11. Hard to believe you read slashdot on A Stark Warning On Climate Change · · Score: 1

    The America economy runs on innovation not oil. This is one area where the Republicans are still conservatives (not like the budget). They don't want our economy to change (change == grow). They must protect those that have money now, not those who have ideas for tomorrow.
    Addressing global warming could become the next big technology boom. No one can come up with new ideas like Americans. How do you think we lead the world in Computer Science while having the lowest math scores in the industrialized world? There are no creativity tests in school. Technology is the application of science. We train and import scientists so we can apply what they discover. But if we ignore what they discover, how can we build technologies from it?
    Remember the balance, geeks / suits / hippies. The hippies have been screaming about this for years, the suits deny it. It's time us geeks to pick sides. I side with building cool new stuff. Smells like there's a need, let's fill it. It's kinda a cold way to get to doing the right thing, but I'm an American. I believe the market (market == community) will lead us to the correct course of action.