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Comment: Re:Science works (Score 1) 434

by turgid (#43945155) Attached to: Fear of Death Makes People Into Believers (of Science)

To believe in science

There is nothing to believe in.

Science provides a reliable, repeatable, disinterested, transferable framework for the study of Nature (well, phenomena in general).

By "disinterested" I really mean disinterested: it has no favourites and makes no moral or ethical judgements. It just lets us measure things and to make reliable predictions based on past measurements (observations).

This is the killer feature of Science. Nothing else lets us do this.

Comment: Re:both money and control, The Oracle Way (Score 4, Insightful) 187

by turgid (#43885505) Attached to: Opposition Mounts To Oracle's Attempt To Copyright Java APIs

considering it takes Oracle longer to patch an exploit in Java than it does for Apple to patch an exploit, if indeed they acknowledge one, perhaps it would not be a bad thing to let ol Larry take 120 percent of nothing, and standardize on another universal API across the web.

This is the correct answer.

Comment: Re:Redistributing the code internally (Score 1) 266

There is the linux kernel, then there is busyox, the GNU tools, the gcc toolchain and all kinds of other 3rd party FOSS which is licensed under all different kinds of terms and conditions.

We just ignored the PHBs and got on with the job.

It seems to be the only way to make progress these days.

Comment: Re:Redistributing the code internally (Score 1) 266

Completely true. I used to work for a very large company of > 150k employees who decreed that we wouldn't be allowed to touch certain types of Open Source software with a 10-foot pole, completely missing the fact that their entire line of copier products was based on Linux...

There was a complete disconnect between the PHB-side of the business and R,D&E.

Comment: Re:Bound to work... (Score 2) 146

by turgid (#43796741) Attached to: Immigration Reform May Spur Software Robotics

It's not racism, it's just a sad fact and here's my experience.

For several years I worked as a Software Engineer at Xerox in the UK and we survived for 3 years after the global economic crisis hit in 2008. But management, always looking to save a few percent on the Engineering budget every year (despite always breaking even and returning to profit), finally cut it to below a level where they could continue to fund us as a cohesive unit, so they did a deal with HCL where we were all transferred to HCL who could do the work for the price (allegedly) and provide more engineers!

So HCL's plan was to take as many of us as possible off the Xerox work and to replace us with Indians, sending us newly-acquired, expensive staff to do contract work for better-paying customers (many miles from home for months at a time).

The HCL CEO sold the story that Westerner engineers are spoilt, lazy and ignorant, compared with intelligent, diligent and self-motivated Indians.

What HCL provided was very young, inexperienced and very poorly-paid Indians, perhaps straight out of university, to acquire knowledge, pick up work and to train off-shore teams of similarly-inexperienced staff.

Nothing was impossible. They were instructed to say "yes" to everything.

They were posted here for 3 months at a time, often expected to assimilated decades-worth of institutional knowledge in that time and to work all the hours god sends.

You see, they were brainwashed that everything is possible if you just try hard enough and that success is entirely down to the individual. Managers wielded metaphorical sticks, and let me tell you, they had the pointiest hair I've ever seen.

This is "empowerment."

If you don't succeed, it's because you didn't try hard enough. Not that projects were completely mismanaged...

So these poor young men and women, being paid a pittance and with no living expenses for being in a much more expensive foreign country, were apart from their families for several months at a time and living in tiny rooms, expected to work night and day, to do the work of entire teams of people who'd taken a decade or more to learn their craft and getting shouted at and lied to by their management.

That's the reality, so cut these poor guys a bit of slack. It's not their fault. It's the fault of The System.

Comment: Outsource to HCL (Score 1) 293

They'll bring in fresh Indian graduates for no more than 3 months at a time at 20% each of what you're paying your local developers. When one guy finishes, he'll go back to India and his replacement will arrive. The only fly in the ointment is that he'll have to be trained from zero. And the cycle repeats.

Comment: Re:Royalty? Just say no. (Score 2) 214

by turgid (#43678877) Attached to: Did the Queen Just Resurrect the Snooper's Charter?

Phil the Greek is ace. He produces a never-ending torrent of politically-incorrect and quite amusing quips. LIke the one he asked the local driving instructor on a remote Scottish island: "How do keep the locals sober long enough to get them through the driving test?"

Money and/or votes can't buy that. It's priceless.

"We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem." -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982

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