Comment Re:Planned intimidation tactic (Score 1) 1034
Posting to undo accidental click on "redundant" when Imeant "insightful"
Posting to undo accidental click on "redundant" when Imeant "insightful"
It is standard practice in good writing to say what an acronym or abbreviation means the first time it's used. Afterwards using the shortened version is just fine.
It's also standard practice in good writing to say what something is "fraught" with, use a negation before "anymore" in a statement (as in "Idon't go there anymore"), and use an adjective when describing a group's gender (e.g. "female writer"). Then again, it's also standard practice in web development to make sure a new design isn't a user-repellent clusterfuck before releasing it as a public beta.
Some somewhat-standard reasonably-good writing with examples of the above:
"He stared in horror at the flaming supply room, suddenly realizing his explanation was fraught with contradictions."
"Sorry, I don't let visitors carrying sledgehammers in the server room anymore."
""No," he snarled, "I'm a male android collector, I do not have a bunch of naked robot-boys in my office!"
"I stared at Slashdot Beta in horror. "Uh, guys? I think I know where the LSD-pot combo brownies went...""
Bonus: suppose vs. supposed:
"Supposed" is about what an authority allows/requires : "I wasn't supposed to park in the boss' space, but given I'd just rammed his Beamer with a snowplow, company rules were the least of my problems."
"Suppose" refers to an assumption: "I suppose they're here to arrest me for attempting to mate the snowplow with a bus. Damn."
To preempt the usual anti-education crowd: I can't really be a 'grammar Nazi' given the rules already weren't being taught when I was a kid; I'm going purely by what I learned naturally from reading tons of books over the years.
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Please ignore any missing spaces; Slashdot randomly ignores the ones I put in.
In many areas, HOA-controlled neighborhoods are all that have been built for quite a while now... My home is in one of the very last traditional neighborhoods built in my suburb/city; all of the homes built here after ~1980 are either apartments, condos, or HOA-controlled houses on tiny plots of land.
Do most universities over-react as Yale did -- or did the guy possibly just choose the wrong school for someone that isn't content to wait around for someone else to do things for him?
When Iwas a Berkeley undergrad in the late 90s, students creating new services or improving existing ones (without breaking rules against cheating or similar, of course) at Berkeley seemed far more likely to be praised than punished. That might be because the school still had mostof its Internet services handled by EECS majors hired for work-study jobs rather than paying outside companies to do the work (as is common now), or because it openly wanted students that felt driven to use their abilities/talents to improve the world around them. I have no idea whether Cal is still like that, however.
If you've ever seen a death like that, you probably know on a visceral level that it's cruel. Isaw one when a vet hospital** fucked up the euthanasia drugs for my cat almost five years ago. I can't begin to describe how horrifying the sight/sounds are -- all Ican say is that I had to bolt from the room to vomit & retch repeatedly in the parking lot, and had sickening flashbacks for at least a year or two afterward.
**Animal Care Center of Sonoma County. Not only did they fuck up, the vet present insistedthat it was normal.
The low end jobs which go to India are where engineers enter industry and learn their stuff so this does matter here and is a good trend (I am really hoping India manages to use this to take their country out of poverty).
It's a "good trend" from the perspective of people in India that benefit from it. It's not so good from the perspective of US engineers whose experience or ability is best suited to that kind of job, and when they're stuck taking crappy jobs that let them just scrape by, it's not good for their family or our society's tax base & economy.
It's like the old swimming rule that if you see somebody drowning, don't swim right up to them -- because rather than saving their life, you are far more likely to find them dragging you under and making it extremely hard at bestto stay afloat. Countries that have severe socioeconomic gaps between privileged/underprivileged groups, with the bulk of the population living in poverty, are a lot like that theoretical drowning person. Rather than India being at all likely to improve things for its general population, it's merely dragging the US under.
Countries tend to do their best at lasting improvements when they focus on inventing items or concepts that creatively address common problems, amuse people, or improve quality of life, and then alter the invention/idea so that it is a product people would wish to buy. In comparison, entry-level/unskilled jobs poached from other countries tend to pay less over time, they don't encourage government investment in education for higher-end jobs or for creating new industries, and virtually all of the income is taken by the facilitating company rather than being put back into the local economy by employees.
I definitely agree with free trade & our politicians being the culprit... I have no idea how to fix the pro-corporate corruption that has taken over every facet of government, though, and we'd have to do that before we could come close to fixing the problem.
Mod parent up! Quoting it for the AC-blocking crowd:
half of what you know is obsolete in three to five years. This is true in software engineering and also, I've read, in most other kinds of engineering.
There is nothing new under the sun. There never has been. What you call obsolescence is just marketing. Hook line and sinker.
Experienced professionals know this and compensate by making a career-long commitment to staying current and developing new skills.
No, experienced professionals know that what marketing says doesn't mean anything. Experienced professionals make a life-long commitment, they aren't in it just for the "career" and to jump to the latest trend because marketing tells them to. They do things outside of work, for free, or for fun, not just because it helps their "career" and it is the latest fad.
By all means, I encourage anyone who cannot stand the heat to get out of the kitchen. You'll be happier in a position where learning is not required, and I'll be happier not to get stuck working with another has-been.
Experienced professionals can work in a team and make use of others skills *whatever their background*. Experienced professionals can see how so-called obsolete things are still the entire underpinnings of all the modern mechanisms.
It sounds more like, you can't be bothered to learn any of the basics, you don't respect people as people but just toys for you to use for your own gain, and you don't care about technology or computers or engineering, you are just in it for a check.
I would guess they stick you with the "new" stuff because you are too dangerous to be messing with the foundation, much safer to leave you putting up the drapes and wallpaper.
Where the hell are you living that bulbs burn out that fast? Everyone I know here on the West Coast easily gets 3+ years out of a standard incandescent bulb. Even with the shitty wiring in my home killing bulbs "quickly"weusually see ~1.5 years out bulbs that are on from dusk until 2-3 a.m. or later.
Just as importantly, poor people have to look at things in terms of having enough money to merely get through the month or week, which makes total cost of ownership irrelevant. Try writing out a budget for getting by on a monthly income of around $800 that includes the added-in cost of various minor or major unexpected expenses, like a temporary doubling of transit/gas prices, your lone computer suddenly not working, fridge failing, and so forth. Then try a variant where you need to buy 4-5 light bulbs, but can't get CFLs because you're among the unfortunate minority that see headache-inducing flicker even the really high-end ones.**
**I'm in that minority, based on a bunch of "identify the low/mid/high-end CFL"tests friends &family have tried by changing bulbs at random without telling me.
Usenet is a full discussion platform where people could express their thoughts at any length and have ongoing conversations lasting days, weeks or longer -- it's not limited to soundbites as microblogging or most social networking is. "Twister" is far more like the decentralized social-networking platform Diaspora with character limits.
The tech community concerned about government censorship/spying should be putting its efforts into repopulating Usenet, rather than engaging in endless attempts to reinvent the wheel that all stall out in the octagonal stage due to lack of participation or burnout. It has no central owner, servers all over the planet (so if one engages in censorship or is shut down, users can easily switch), proxies (for anonymous access/posting) and existing client software.
I'd seriously wonder about anyone that went to a Slashdot editor for advice. (That is, unless it was on how to keep a news/discussion site within the tiny overlap between "could thrive if we made an effort" and "try harder or it's going under." Their talent for it will probably be harnessed someday to provide the AIneeded to produce drinks that are almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.)
The pain is similar for peritonitis, which is also supposed to be worse than childbirth.... It's so intense that memories of it have the intellectual knowledge "I was in pain"rather than any sensory memory -- I've heard that's the reason that most women are willing to give birth more than once.
My main memory of having peritonitis at 9 and 13 is of remaining totally motionless on my side and trying to will my body to stop breathing so I'd die. On the bright side, when the surgeon told me that the second infection obliterated my ovaries, I immediately thought of how painful childbirth is supposed to be, and secretly reacted with cheerful relief, "awesome, I can have all the sex I want when I grow up and never have to worry about getting pregnant!"
No, fight back with IRC -- a little web research to find the right networks/channels, and you get a vastly superior variety of available books.
It's not unreasonable for those of us that can't afford the initial cost. Idon't mean that in a "waah can't have as many lattes" sense, but in a "my computer's 9.5 years old as my disability income is well below the poverty level" way.
Cree's official indoor lighting FAQ still states outright:
"Our lamps are designed for open air and semi-enclosed housings, but not recommended for fully enclosed housings."
I have prosopagnosia, but I prefer the stress/awkwardness over people being able to know my name at a glance whether I trust them or not. From firsthand experience, having your name makes it feasible for an unstable, pissed-off, or obsessed individual to track down your contact info, school, workplace, home, and family members; even if they don't do any real damage, the situation can become really fucking creepy and last a very long time.
I also just don't want to make it any easier for the government or law enforcement to keep track of me everywhere I go.
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death. -- James F. Byrnes
