I said "make sure they can understand them." It is up to the writer to really, REALLY make sure, rather than just ask - as you assumed "make sure" meant.
It is up to the OP or technical writer to keep these up to date. If the OP had no intention of keeping this information up to date then he wouldn't have posted the question, now would he?
You are imagining that I am assuming that the readers are skilled in "technical reading." In fact, there is no such skill, other than basic reading. It is up to the writer to write to the audience. If you have to write as if they are four years old, then that is what you do. On the other hand, when one's "audience" is the internet, there will always be someone who works extra hard to mis- or re-interpret what you write, just so they can say you are wrong.;^P
I said "make arrangements with your bank" not "with your banker." A bank is an institution. If you leave specific instructions or make specific arrangements then those arrangements are with the BANK, not with a specific person. They are recorded and remain regardless of the turnover of employees. Have you never even created a bank account or rented a safe deposit box? Did you think everyone would forget that you had an account after the person who actually helped you got a different job? When you go to the bank, do you always make sure to talk to the same person, because they are the only one who will remember where they hid your money? Sheesh!
Same thing with lawyers. Even if they are independent, even half-way decent ones make arrangements for all their records and clients to be passed on to someone else when they die or retire. Also, have you never heard of sealed documents? While banks and law firms are not absolutely guaranteed to he honorable, their dishonor usually comes in the form of ripping off their entire countries rather than opening sealed envelopes of their customers. That is is sure fire way to loose a lot of business and their accreditation.
Finally, it has been my observation that "trusted friends" are far more likely to not end up being trustworthy than a bank or lawyer. Yes, I know, "All banks and lawyers are crooks!" which is total BS. Some big banks and some lawyers exhibit freakishly greedy behavior. But really, how much money are they going to make from looking at your e-mail password? It is not worth being disbarred or loosing their job. If you have a falling out with your friend, then all bets are off. If you have a falling out with your bank or lawyer, you ask for your sealed documents and take them somewhere else. If you find they are no longer sealed, then there are legal actions you can take. If you find your ex-friends have unsealed an envelope, then there is absolutely nothing you can do but try to change all your passwords before they do.
Not that I am surprised that someone on/. has a naive and conspiratorial point of view. But seriously, if you truly believe what you say, then you would not have a bank account and would just keep all your money under your friend's mattress.
Your wife (if you actually have one) must have an incredible memory. And she must be pretty cool headed as well, to be able to remember all of your passwords in what - you hope - will be the worst time of her life.
I'm guessing you have never been married or you would realize how simplistic this notion is.
Just as an aside: Do you record all of your conversations you have with friends where you may have complained about your wife (or even just asked a close friend for guidance on how to deal with some issue) and then replay those recordings for your wife (again, if you have one)? I thought not.
Most people do not want to know every detail of what is going on in their spouse's life. All truly healthy relationships also include privacy. People need to know they can write an e-mail to their friends asking for help with an issue without worrying about their spouse being able to read it any time they want.
Conflating "having some privacy" with "not including your family in your life" is both a false dichotomy and terribly naive.
One thing that everyone seems to be forgetting is that a mere list of passwords does not necessarily provide access. You must write clear instructions on how to use those passwords to get to the information needed. The instructions should explain:
1) Where to find the passwords and how to gain access to them. Will they need to call the lawyer or will they need to get the safe-deposit-box key out of the safe and go to the bank? Are the passwords printed on paper (recommended) or will they then be encrypted in a file on some storage media (not recomended).
2) Once they have the passwords, exactly what do they do to get to each place where they must use said password.
3) What information is available at each location where each password can be used, including an explanation as to how urgent that information may be (Is that info necessary right after your death or is it just for posterity?), thus allowing your survivors to focus their limited emotional energy on only what is necessary right now.
4) Now explain exactly how to use each service, site, or other information-containing system to get the information out. Not only how do they get to see that it is there, but how do they export that information in a form that they can use. How do they print out copies of e-mails that they may deem important. How do they export all the posts you made on some scientific web-forum so they can be preserved for when someone writes a biography about you.
5) Conversely, you may want to ensure that certain information gets deleted (as best as possible), after your death. Leave instructions about exactly how to do that as well. However, those instructions may need to be on a separate list, left only with your lawyer, depending on how understanding and cooperative you can expect your survivors to be.
Now, have your potential survivors read these instructions and make sure they can understand them. This whole exercise will give you practice in technical writing, which is a skill most people could use more practice at.
Distribute that set of instructions far and wide. As the instructions do not contain any actual passwords you don't have to worry about those people being subpoenaed for the passwords.
Finally, make appropriate arrangements with your bank and lawyer so that:
A) Only the appropriate people will be able to get access to the list of passwords.
B) Those people will only be able to gain access to that list after you are dead.
C) If you are still alive and anyone attempts to gain access to said list of passwords then said institutions will notify you immediately.
I'm supposed to trust my most important personal information to an internet-based company who's home page cannot gracefully fail when I have JavaScript turned off? Really?
But everyone has something to hide, because the law requires them to hide it. People have to close the curtains when they are neked in their own homes because they will get arrested if someone from outside can see them.
So, to extend that analogy, there are plenty of things that are legal and/or normal but that society or law requires one to avoid exposing to others. This whole nonsense about "not having anything to hide" is just that: Nonsense.
Perhaps, after a few generations of ubiquitous invasion of privacy, those taboos will subside and people can be less self conscious (kind of like living in a nudist camp) but the transition phase is going to be very awkward, to say the least.
Research has shown over and over again that we CANNOT hold 20 factors in our minds at once, regardless of the context. The most gifted can only hold 5-7 things. I believe that the people who are truly top-anything get there by giving up such egotistical nonsense and writing things out on paper or a whiteboard. Everything else is bluster.
This is actually the best advice I have seen here. Yes, there is age discrimination. But usually only in the fields where HR people PERCEIVE that young blood is needed. (The facts don't really matter.) So, as with everything else, the best bets are to play to one's strengths or to one's interests. As the OP is asking for direction, it appears he has no overriding interests. So that leaves playing to strengths. There is nothing wrong with that. Then, although the OP may not get a full-time job doing said strength, he may get regular consulting work, which can be rewarding and interesting in itself.
My chief complaint about the CS program at was that it was almost all about the science. They would sell the unfortunate undergraduates on the notion that they were being trained to become real programmers. But then almost none of the training that the students were paying for included any real world programming. Essentially after C++ 1 & 2, all the professors talked about was theory. But their homework assignments were expected to be turned in as a C++ implementation of that theory. Unfortunately little instruction was given in advanced topics of actual programming. You were just expected to learn that on your own.
Now, some may argue that this teaches you to learn to program on your own. And that would be true if the work-load wasn't so high that one had very little time to actually do that. So, many students only did just enough to get by, and often "worked together" to write programs. I would overhear them teaching one another how to change things just enough so it looked like they wrote it on their own. I would also overhear when they actually tried to teach each other how to do things. Unfortunately, since they were all just guessing their way through, most of what I heard sounded like this: "So, if you type that, then it will work. Don't ask me how. I just kept changing things till it worked."... Seriously!
From what I have seen, a CS degree actually teaches you BAD programming skills by forcing you to program with limited knowledge, time, and instruction. And I have yet to see a CS course on how to choose a good, reliable preexisting library with a good API. This is probably why so many CS graduates write every darned thing from scratch, ignoring existing programming standards or patterns.
So, it seems the currently most acceptable way to really learn how to program (that is design useable, maintainable code that actually does what the user needs, and can be easily installed by regular people) is to get your CS degree to get past the HR department, then forget all about what you "learned" and start learning on the job from existing, knowledgeable programmers. Unfortunately, one can't "forget" about all those student loans. Another option is to pick an open-source project and really contribute a lot. Also network a lot amongst programmers in your town or in the global developer community. Then use that notoriety to get your foot in the door somewhere so you can then learn from those preexisting experts. But, in a way, that is like using the NBA to get out of the slums. Not everyone can become a "star" programmer in some OS project.
There really needs to be better mentoring programs amongst skilled programmers and some means for those experts to vouch for their "students." Something like an apprentice program, with journeyman and "master" levels. Like one of the "guild's of old.
Then they should have called it "Software Engineering."
Woulda, shoulda, coulda. But too late now.
P.S. "Information Science" is already taken by the "Library Science" folks. It is the study of how to organize information, whether it be in a computer or not.
This sounds similar to my idea for establishing a special top-level domain for scientists to register a permanent domain name, which I posted back in February. Except, with my system the ID incorporates the scientists name and birth date, identifying information that is already commonly used when referring to historical figures. (OK, all the Wangs may need to include the exact time of their birth, down to the second in order to get a unique ID.) With my system the ID is itself an IRI so it can be used in RDF and RDFa information. And it allows for the creation of actual web sites that sit under that IRI, with additional information about the scientist. All using standard, common web technologies. Finally, I am not going to be trying to make money off of this system by selling registrations. Once a law is in place creating the.sci TLD and specifying that the domain names will be sold for perpetuity (rather than requiring renewal each year), then the regular, existing domain registration system can be used. No need for massive non-profit organizations with signatories and memberships. No worries that said non-profit organization - and thus their system - will cease to exist in the future.
I have voted democrat or independent all my voting life and I have never been so disappointed or felt so betrayed as I am/have with Barack Obama. I am now pretty much convinced that he is either a republican plant or truly one of those liberal elitists that the GOP was yammering about. The difference between a "liberal" and a "liberal elitist" is that a "liberal" truly believes in helping the common person and generally thinks the reason we even have governments is to pool resources in an effort to help said common person. A "liberal elitist" is actually a rich person who thinks that the wealthy should be aided and abetted in getting even more wealthy by just about any means possible BUT the best way to do that is to appeal to the sensibilities of the regular "liberals." In other words, a "liberal elitist" is just a republican who tells a different set of lies. Republican politicians tell lies designed to appeal to conservative voters and "liberal elitists" tell lies designed to appeal to regular liberals.
That said, I have seen absolutely no evidence that Barack Obama has done anything to stir up hate between the races. The GOP and the conservatives have done a pretty good job of that on their own. So, the "us" you are referring to must be people who listen to the fear-mongering, conservative talk-radio hosts. Because I don't know a single soul who is afraid of race riots when/if Obama looses. Not even my more conservative friends at work. This talk of fear of race riots is actually pretty racist at its core. It says that black people can't handle a peaceful exchange of power. The same peaceful exchanges of power we have had about every four to eight years for over two-hundred years. Remember, it was the conservative voters who started marching in the streets with rifles on their shoulders when Obama was elected. Sure, no one got shot, but that is about the strongest sign of people not accepting the peaceful exchange of power that I have ever seen.
Exactly! Too many people seem to want simple solutions to complex problems. We can't fix the patent system by making it too scary for honorable but relatively poor inventors to sue big corporations who use their invention without permission. Nor can we fix it by totally eliminating software patents. Some software inventions are truly worthy of patents. As with almost every problem for which we already have laws: The solution lies in more correctly enforcing the existing laws rather than making up new, simpler laws that cause more problems than they solve.
Just remember that every modern factory and gizmobowatzit was built using stone tools. Indirectly, of course. But anything can be built starting with stone tools. (And stone tools were made using plain rocks!) We already did it. And most of the problem was in figuring out the next thing we wanted to make, not in the actual making. So, it doesn't take shipping entire forges and factories up to the moon. Just a few tools and some know-how. Now, I am not advocating sending actual stone tools. Just that one doesn't need to send complete factories either. You figure out a happy medium of weight and utility, then get started.
It never ceases to amaze me how many arguments on/. and elsewhere are based entirely on false dichotomies. It would be amusing if it weren't so damaging.
Research has been done on this issue. I have read it right here on Slashdot. Yes, I am too lazy to look it up.
Young women, just getting out of high-school have been shown to have a perception that programming is full of dorks and geeks. Dorks and geeks who will stare at them but not know how to interact with them. Now, this perception is mostly manufactured by Hollywood but young high-school aged girls and boys are very susceptible to the stereotypes fed to us by Hollywood. The perception is so strong that merely decorating a room with a couple of Star-Wars posters was enough to affect young-women's perceptions as to whether they would like to pursue a given career. If you don't fix the public perception that all programmers are geeks and dorks then you will never attract high-school girls to the field.
I suspect that the stereotype is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy as well. Not a lot of young, high-school aged boys like to associate or be associated with dorks and geeks. So it may be that only the more dorky and geeky boys are choosing the field merely because of the stereotype. It is amazing how powerful the urge is to be who everyone expects you to be, when you are that age. I haven't seen research on this one, but I imagine if you remove the constant reinforcement of that stereotype by Hollywood, you would see more girls and less dorky guys entering the field.
An ex of mine got a degree in CS, back in 1996, in order to get on the Y2K bandwagon. She worked mostly with COBOL and some crazy scripting language I had never heard of. According to her, there were a lot more women where she worked than are typically reported in programming shops today. Why? Because a lot of these women came to programming later in life. After they had gotten over their stereotypes of what programmers were like. To them, programming was nothing more than yet another white-collar job that paid a lot more than being a secretary.
As a former network manager (most of who's job was supporting various special purpose software products) I can tell you that I got sick to death of supporting software where it was obvious that design decisions were based on what the programmer knew he could do easily. Sure, you wrote a program that could do "D" but my users had to go through "W" then "L" and then "R" to get there. Oh, it all made perfect sense from a programming perspective. I could easily see why a programmer would add that feature in that particular manner. But it made even educated users feel like idiots trying to figure out the logic of how they were supposed to do things. I have overheard minor religions being invented while users try to figure out why in the world they have to go through "W" then "L" and then "R" to just get to "D" when they are sitting at "C" right now. It was so bad that it is the major contributing factor for my decision to get out of the IT field. I got sick and tired of trying to make software just simply do what the vendor said it would do.
So, I am a firm believer in writing the USER documentation before writing a single line of code. If you can't explain how a user is supposed to get from "C" to "D" in a simple, coherent, manner which is somewhat consistent with how they got from "B" to "C" then you aren't finished designing your program yet. Have your grandmother read the manual. If it doesn't make sense to her then you got more work to do. Sure, your code may be elegant, with clojures and functional programming all over the place. Your class structure may be the envy of all who maintain it. Sure you may be able to refactor the holy hell out of it and every bit of the code is reused three times. But if users can't use it then what the F is the point?
Agreed. There needs to be a site, similar to Creative Commons, where they list prewritten and pre-vetted agreements that crowd-funded researchers "sign" onto. These agreements would lay out, in very explicit terms, exactly what the researchers intend to do with the "work product" from their research. I would not want to fund research that is just going to enrich some professor after he retires. Neither will I trust vague, open-ended promises that the research will be "open." But you give me a legally binding agreement that has been signed by all parties, scanned, and posted on the internet... then I will trust you to not just take my money and run.
Thank you. I will definitely look into Processing. After a quick glance it seems to meet many of my immediate needs, even lots of documentation and support. Definitely worth further exploration.
There was no basic cable when I was growing up. No cable TV at all. Mickey Mouse Club was in re-runs in the afternoons when I got home from school. Actually, I thought the show was boring and switched over to Batman & Robin or Lost in Space once I saw that hoard of brats singing that stupid song.
A) Show me a culture that actually calls it "13 o'clock" instead of "thirteen-hundred hours" or just "thirteen-hundred."
(Actually, I would be curious to know if any do.)
B) Perhaps you aren't getting the Mickey Mouse Club reference. or...
I have been saying this for a while. I call it "starving the big fish." It basically amounts to creating an alternative economy where we entirely ignore/boycott the big corporations as much as possible. Who really needs to listen to any music or watch any movies put out by the current movie and music industry? Just stop even downloading stuff put out by them. Ignore them completely. The only way to starve the big fish is to help all the little fish get out of their way. Things like this go a long way toward that end by providing all us little fish something else to watch or listen to. Now we just have to be willing to pay the creators what they are worth for keeping us entertained or no one will want to produce new stuff at all.
When I was an IT manager at a hospital, we had a pharmacist as a CIO merely because he once wrote a program in GWBasic to print labels for pill bottles.
Slashdot Mirror
I said "make sure they can understand them." It is up to the writer to really, REALLY make sure, rather than just ask - as you assumed "make sure" meant.
;^P
/. has a naive and conspiratorial point of view. But seriously, if you truly believe what you say, then you would not have a bank account and would just keep all your money under your friend's mattress.
It is up to the OP or technical writer to keep these up to date. If the OP had no intention of keeping this information up to date then he wouldn't have posted the question, now would he?
You are imagining that I am assuming that the readers are skilled in "technical reading." In fact, there is no such skill, other than basic reading. It is up to the writer to write to the audience. If you have to write as if they are four years old, then that is what you do. On the other hand, when one's "audience" is the internet, there will always be someone who works extra hard to mis- or re-interpret what you write, just so they can say you are wrong.
I said "make arrangements with your bank" not "with your banker." A bank is an institution. If you leave specific instructions or make specific arrangements then those arrangements are with the BANK, not with a specific person. They are recorded and remain regardless of the turnover of employees. Have you never even created a bank account or rented a safe deposit box? Did you think everyone would forget that you had an account after the person who actually helped you got a different job? When you go to the bank, do you always make sure to talk to the same person, because they are the only one who will remember where they hid your money? Sheesh!
Same thing with lawyers. Even if they are independent, even half-way decent ones make arrangements for all their records and clients to be passed on to someone else when they die or retire. Also, have you never heard of sealed documents? While banks and law firms are not absolutely guaranteed to he honorable, their dishonor usually comes in the form of ripping off their entire countries rather than opening sealed envelopes of their customers. That is is sure fire way to loose a lot of business and their accreditation.
Finally, it has been my observation that "trusted friends" are far more likely to not end up being trustworthy than a bank or lawyer. Yes, I know, "All banks and lawyers are crooks!" which is total BS. Some big banks and some lawyers exhibit freakishly greedy behavior. But really, how much money are they going to make from looking at your e-mail password? It is not worth being disbarred or loosing their job. If you have a falling out with your friend, then all bets are off. If you have a falling out with your bank or lawyer, you ask for your sealed documents and take them somewhere else. If you find they are no longer sealed, then there are legal actions you can take. If you find your ex-friends have unsealed an envelope, then there is absolutely nothing you can do but try to change all your passwords before they do.
Not that I am surprised that someone on
Your wife (if you actually have one) must have an incredible memory. And she must be pretty cool headed as well, to be able to remember all of your passwords in what - you hope - will be the worst time of her life.
I'm guessing you have never been married or you would realize how simplistic this notion is.
Just as an aside: Do you record all of your conversations you have with friends where you may have complained about your wife (or even just asked a close friend for guidance on how to deal with some issue) and then replay those recordings for your wife (again, if you have one)? I thought not.
Most people do not want to know every detail of what is going on in their spouse's life. All truly healthy relationships also include privacy. People need to know they can write an e-mail to their friends asking for help with an issue without worrying about their spouse being able to read it any time they want.
Conflating "having some privacy" with "not including your family in your life" is both a false dichotomy and terribly naive.
One thing that everyone seems to be forgetting is that a mere list of passwords does not necessarily provide access. You must write clear instructions on how to use those passwords to get to the information needed. The instructions should explain:
Now, have your potential survivors read these instructions and make sure they can understand them. This whole exercise will give you practice in technical writing, which is a skill most people could use more practice at.
Distribute that set of instructions far and wide. As the instructions do not contain any actual passwords you don't have to worry about those people being subpoenaed for the passwords.
Finally, make appropriate arrangements with your bank and lawyer so that:
I'm supposed to trust my most important personal information to an internet-based company who's home page cannot gracefully fail when I have JavaScript turned off? Really?
But everyone has something to hide, because the law requires them to hide it. People have to close the curtains when they are neked in their own homes because they will get arrested if someone from outside can see them.
So, to extend that analogy, there are plenty of things that are legal and/or normal but that society or law requires one to avoid exposing to others. This whole nonsense about "not having anything to hide" is just that: Nonsense.
Perhaps, after a few generations of ubiquitous invasion of privacy, those taboos will subside and people can be less self conscious (kind of like living in a nudist camp) but the transition phase is going to be very awkward, to say the least.
Research has shown over and over again that we CANNOT hold 20 factors in our minds at once, regardless of the context. The most gifted can only hold 5-7 things. I believe that the people who are truly top-anything get there by giving up such egotistical nonsense and writing things out on paper or a whiteboard. Everything else is bluster.
People who don't have their heads up their butts (or anyone else's butts).
This is actually the best advice I have seen here. Yes, there is age discrimination. But usually only in the fields where HR people PERCEIVE that young blood is needed. (The facts don't really matter.) So, as with everything else, the best bets are to play to one's strengths or to one's interests. As the OP is asking for direction, it appears he has no overriding interests. So that leaves playing to strengths. There is nothing wrong with that. Then, although the OP may not get a full-time job doing said strength, he may get regular consulting work, which can be rewarding and interesting in itself.
... and not enough real-world programming.
... Seriously!
My chief complaint about the CS program at was that it was almost all about the science. They would sell the unfortunate undergraduates on the notion that they were being trained to become real programmers. But then almost none of the training that the students were paying for included any real world programming. Essentially after C++ 1 & 2, all the professors talked about was theory. But their homework assignments were expected to be turned in as a C++ implementation of that theory. Unfortunately little instruction was given in advanced topics of actual programming. You were just expected to learn that on your own.
Now, some may argue that this teaches you to learn to program on your own. And that would be true if the work-load wasn't so high that one had very little time to actually do that. So, many students only did just enough to get by, and often "worked together" to write programs. I would overhear them teaching one another how to change things just enough so it looked like they wrote it on their own. I would also overhear when they actually tried to teach each other how to do things. Unfortunately, since they were all just guessing their way through, most of what I heard sounded like this: "So, if you type that, then it will work. Don't ask me how. I just kept changing things till it worked."
From what I have seen, a CS degree actually teaches you BAD programming skills by forcing you to program with limited knowledge, time, and instruction. And I have yet to see a CS course on how to choose a good, reliable preexisting library with a good API. This is probably why so many CS graduates write every darned thing from scratch, ignoring existing programming standards or patterns.
So, it seems the currently most acceptable way to really learn how to program (that is design useable, maintainable code that actually does what the user needs, and can be easily installed by regular people) is to get your CS degree to get past the HR department, then forget all about what you "learned" and start learning on the job from existing, knowledgeable programmers. Unfortunately, one can't "forget" about all those student loans. Another option is to pick an open-source project and really contribute a lot. Also network a lot amongst programmers in your town or in the global developer community. Then use that notoriety to get your foot in the door somewhere so you can then learn from those preexisting experts. But, in a way, that is like using the NBA to get out of the slums. Not everyone can become a "star" programmer in some OS project.
There really needs to be better mentoring programs amongst skilled programmers and some means for those experts to vouch for their "students." Something like an apprentice program, with journeyman and "master" levels. Like one of the "guild's of old.
Then they should have called it "Software Engineering."
Woulda, shoulda, coulda. But too late now.
P.S. "Information Science" is already taken by the "Library Science" folks. It is the study of how to organize information, whether it be in a computer or not.
This sounds similar to my idea for establishing a special top-level domain for scientists to register a permanent domain name, which I posted back in February. Except, with my system the ID incorporates the scientists name and birth date, identifying information that is already commonly used when referring to historical figures. (OK, all the Wangs may need to include the exact time of their birth, down to the second in order to get a unique ID.) With my system the ID is itself an IRI so it can be used in RDF and RDFa information. And it allows for the creation of actual web sites that sit under that IRI, with additional information about the scientist. All using standard, common web technologies. Finally, I am not going to be trying to make money off of this system by selling registrations. Once a law is in place creating the .sci TLD and specifying that the domain names will be sold for perpetuity (rather than requiring renewal each year), then the regular, existing domain registration system can be used. No need for massive non-profit organizations with signatories and memberships. No worries that said non-profit organization - and thus their system - will cease to exist in the future.
I have voted democrat or independent all my voting life and I have never been so disappointed or felt so betrayed as I am/have with Barack Obama. I am now pretty much convinced that he is either a republican plant or truly one of those liberal elitists that the GOP was yammering about. The difference between a "liberal" and a "liberal elitist" is that a "liberal" truly believes in helping the common person and generally thinks the reason we even have governments is to pool resources in an effort to help said common person. A "liberal elitist" is actually a rich person who thinks that the wealthy should be aided and abetted in getting even more wealthy by just about any means possible BUT the best way to do that is to appeal to the sensibilities of the regular "liberals." In other words, a "liberal elitist" is just a republican who tells a different set of lies. Republican politicians tell lies designed to appeal to conservative voters and "liberal elitists" tell lies designed to appeal to regular liberals.
That said, I have seen absolutely no evidence that Barack Obama has done anything to stir up hate between the races. The GOP and the conservatives have done a pretty good job of that on their own. So, the "us" you are referring to must be people who listen to the fear-mongering, conservative talk-radio hosts. Because I don't know a single soul who is afraid of race riots when/if Obama looses. Not even my more conservative friends at work. This talk of fear of race riots is actually pretty racist at its core. It says that black people can't handle a peaceful exchange of power. The same peaceful exchanges of power we have had about every four to eight years for over two-hundred years. Remember, it was the conservative voters who started marching in the streets with rifles on their shoulders when Obama was elected. Sure, no one got shot, but that is about the strongest sign of people not accepting the peaceful exchange of power that I have ever seen.
Exactly! Too many people seem to want simple solutions to complex problems. We can't fix the patent system by making it too scary for honorable but relatively poor inventors to sue big corporations who use their invention without permission. Nor can we fix it by totally eliminating software patents. Some software inventions are truly worthy of patents. As with almost every problem for which we already have laws: The solution lies in more correctly enforcing the existing laws rather than making up new, simpler laws that cause more problems than they solve.
Just remember that every modern factory and gizmobowatzit was built using stone tools. Indirectly, of course. But anything can be built starting with stone tools. (And stone tools were made using plain rocks!) We already did it. And most of the problem was in figuring out the next thing we wanted to make, not in the actual making. So, it doesn't take shipping entire forges and factories up to the moon. Just a few tools and some know-how. Now, I am not advocating sending actual stone tools. Just that one doesn't need to send complete factories either. You figure out a happy medium of weight and utility, then get started.
/. and elsewhere are based entirely on false dichotomies. It would be amusing if it weren't so damaging.
It never ceases to amaze me how many arguments on
Research has been done on this issue. I have read it right here on Slashdot. Yes, I am too lazy to look it up.
Young women, just getting out of high-school have been shown to have a perception that programming is full of dorks and geeks. Dorks and geeks who will stare at them but not know how to interact with them. Now, this perception is mostly manufactured by Hollywood but young high-school aged girls and boys are very susceptible to the stereotypes fed to us by Hollywood. The perception is so strong that merely decorating a room with a couple of Star-Wars posters was enough to affect young-women's perceptions as to whether they would like to pursue a given career. If you don't fix the public perception that all programmers are geeks and dorks then you will never attract high-school girls to the field.
I suspect that the stereotype is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy as well. Not a lot of young, high-school aged boys like to associate or be associated with dorks and geeks. So it may be that only the more dorky and geeky boys are choosing the field merely because of the stereotype. It is amazing how powerful the urge is to be who everyone expects you to be, when you are that age. I haven't seen research on this one, but I imagine if you remove the constant reinforcement of that stereotype by Hollywood, you would see more girls and less dorky guys entering the field.
An ex of mine got a degree in CS, back in 1996, in order to get on the Y2K bandwagon. She worked mostly with COBOL and some crazy scripting language I had never heard of. According to her, there were a lot more women where she worked than are typically reported in programming shops today. Why? Because a lot of these women came to programming later in life. After they had gotten over their stereotypes of what programmers were like. To them, programming was nothing more than yet another white-collar job that paid a lot more than being a secretary.
As a former network manager (most of who's job was supporting various special purpose software products) I can tell you that I got sick to death of supporting software where it was obvious that design decisions were based on what the programmer knew he could do easily. Sure, you wrote a program that could do "D" but my users had to go through "W" then "L" and then "R" to get there. Oh, it all made perfect sense from a programming perspective. I could easily see why a programmer would add that feature in that particular manner. But it made even educated users feel like idiots trying to figure out the logic of how they were supposed to do things. I have overheard minor religions being invented while users try to figure out why in the world they have to go through "W" then "L" and then "R" to just get to "D" when they are sitting at "C" right now. It was so bad that it is the major contributing factor for my decision to get out of the IT field. I got sick and tired of trying to make software just simply do what the vendor said it would do.
So, I am a firm believer in writing the USER documentation before writing a single line of code. If you can't explain how a user is supposed to get from "C" to "D" in a simple, coherent, manner which is somewhat consistent with how they got from "B" to "C" then you aren't finished designing your program yet. Have your grandmother read the manual. If it doesn't make sense to her then you got more work to do. Sure, your code may be elegant, with clojures and functional programming all over the place. Your class structure may be the envy of all who maintain it. Sure you may be able to refactor the holy hell out of it and every bit of the code is reused three times. But if users can't use it then what the F is the point?
Agreed. There needs to be a site, similar to Creative Commons, where they list prewritten and pre-vetted agreements that crowd-funded researchers "sign" onto. These agreements would lay out, in very explicit terms, exactly what the researchers intend to do with the "work product" from their research. I would not want to fund research that is just going to enrich some professor after he retires. Neither will I trust vague, open-ended promises that the research will be "open." But you give me a legally binding agreement that has been signed by all parties, scanned, and posted on the internet... then I will trust you to not just take my money and run.
Thank you. I will definitely look into Processing. After a quick glance it seems to meet many of my immediate needs, even lots of documentation and support. Definitely worth further exploration.
There was no basic cable when I was growing up. No cable TV at all. Mickey Mouse Club was in re-runs in the afternoons when I got home from school. Actually, I thought the show was boring and switched over to Batman & Robin or Lost in Space once I saw that hoard of brats singing that stupid song.
A) Show me a culture that actually calls it "13 o'clock" instead of "thirteen-hundred hours" or just "thirteen-hundred."
(Actually, I would be curious to know if any do.)
B) Perhaps you aren't getting the Mickey Mouse Club reference. or...
C) Perhaps I am way too old...
If I could get a million people to do this for me then I could be the biggest quitter ever!
I'm beginning to think that a blinking 12 government beats one that tells you it is 13 o'clock with a perfectly straight face.
Now I know I will never get a Twitter account.
I have been saying this for a while. I call it "starving the big fish." It basically amounts to creating an alternative economy where we entirely ignore/boycott the big corporations as much as possible. Who really needs to listen to any music or watch any movies put out by the current movie and music industry? Just stop even downloading stuff put out by them. Ignore them completely. The only way to starve the big fish is to help all the little fish get out of their way. Things like this go a long way toward that end by providing all us little fish something else to watch or listen to. Now we just have to be willing to pay the creators what they are worth for keeping us entertained or no one will want to produce new stuff at all.
When I was an IT manager at a hospital, we had a pharmacist as a CIO merely because he once wrote a program in GWBasic to print labels for pill bottles.