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Comment Young whipper snappers (Score 3, Interesting) 461

When I started, I had 4K and saved programs I typed to cassette tape! The differences between then and 1995 are orders of magnitude greater than 1995 to now.

I clearly recall the last three jaw-dropping moments:

circa 2001, Seeing AMD beat intel to the market with a 1GHz processor
circa 1997, being able to download a music file in less time than it took to play.
circa 1991, seeing a postage-stamp video of the moon launch on Quicktime from the Apple Developer CD they distributed monthly.

Other than that, its all more of the same, or far enough back in history as to be a blur.

-db

Comment Prove to me you know something (Score 1) 523

I don't care if you're self taught or have an ivy league education - prove to me you know something. Let me see a portfolio. Contribute to open source. Build your own website, do IT support for your local volunteer fire department, build a web app that helps a local pet rescue organization accept donations. Get involved in your local user groups. Anything - just get visible.

I'm not just talking 'out of my ass' here either. If you are in the Reston, VA area and have skills with html/css/javascript/ruby/rails, I'm hiring right now, and thats how I'm trying to find candidates.

Education is irrelevant when compared to knowledge and motivation.

-db

Comment You underestimate the value (Score 3, Insightful) 913

I think you underestimate the value of those things. Most of these classes aren't strictly about history, english, and the like, but enhance your overall mental ability - such as the ability to write, comprehend, and reason, which frankly, is generally missing from those in our field.

If you don't have those things, that's fine, but that's not a BS or a BA, thats a trade school education.

Comment Why I watched it (Score 1) 762

I watched it out of desperation - I never thought it was great, but I want some sci fi that is actually thought-provoking and it was much closer than crap like Eureka. It was just getting interesting with the chick turning into an alien, the mysterious message in the background radiation of the Universe, etc.

Oh well. Here's hoping the Walking Dead stays good/gets better.

Comment From Kirk to Crane, amazing Actor (Score 3, Insightful) 152

Shatner might have almost been a character actor, except that all the characters he has played are so *different*. I was a fan of Boston Legal, and I'd occasionally stop and look at this Denny Crane character and have to think "Thats the same guy who player Kirk!". Granted, they were 35+ years apart, but his skillset is anything but one-dimensional.

I can't wait to see "Shit my Dad Says".

And he cracks me up, the way he signs all of his tweets "My best, Bill"...

Comment Not NoACID, NoSchema (Score 2, Interesting) 272

Interesting article )and yes, I read the article), but the point of the NoSQL movement isn't so much about SQL, or ACID, as much as it is about Schema.

Most applications today are written in object-oriented languges like Java, C#, Ruby, etc... and most common frameworks in these languages use object-relational models to essentially 'unpack' the object into a relational model, and then reconstitute the objects on demand. this post explains the kinds of problems better than most.

NoSchema is about storing data closer to the format we process it in today. Key-Value pairs. XML. Sets and Lists. Object-Oriented data structures. This is about abstractions that make developers more productive. It is a tool in a toolbox, and useful in some circumstance and not in others.

SQL databases do not have to be the 'one persistence data mechanism to rules them all'. We don't need one; we need many that solve differing classes of problems well.

Comment Secure mamcached with the '-l' option on startup (Score 1) 149

Read my blog about it here:

http://blog.codesherpas.com/on_the_path/2010/08/securing-memcache-in-2-minutes.html

This isn't a security problem - this is operating by design. If you are a memcache user and this is news to you, you need to read more about the tools you are using. I bet you have security problems beyond this one.

Comment AT&T - not Apple (Score 0, Redundant) 209

I realize saying AT&T made the headline more sensational, but really - RTFA and you'll see this is AT&T's data breach, NOT Apple's. If AT&T had lax security on some other database, would this have been classified a data breach by RIM or Motorola?

No, because that wouldn't have been very interesting.

Comment in nib form? (Score 1) 175

Does the summary mean they are using nib form because 3400 years ago it would have been in nib form to get to that region of the New World, or are they saying they are compromising the original slightly based on the geographic location of the brewer reproducing it today? Surely there is a way to get them to Delaware this day in age...

Submission + - Voyager 2 Speaking in Tongues (space.com)

dangle writes: Voyager 2's flight data system, which formats information before beaming it back to Earth, has experienced a hiccup that has altered the pattern in which it sends updates home, preventing mission managers from decoding the science data beamed to Earth from Voyager 2. The spacecraft, which is currently 8.6 billion miles (13.8 billion km) from Earth, is apparently still in overall good health, according to the latest engineering data received on May 1. "Voyager 2's initial mission was a four-year journey to Saturn, but it is still returning data 33 years later," said Voyager project scientist Ed Stone of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "It has already given us remarkable views of Uranus and Neptune, planets we had never seen close-up before. We will know soon what it will take for it to continue its epic journey of discovery." The space probe and its twin Voyager 1 are flying through the bubble-like heliosphere, created by the sun, which surrounds our solar system.

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