Posts by Sandra Greer
105 posts • joined Thursday 3rd May 2007 10:55 GMT
Re: More Fantasy
Obviously a right-wing nut. My coastal city went underwater first time ever with the superstorm. There is hardly ever snow here in New York City. The polar bears are being driven out and their populations are shrinking. We have a combination of drought and flood which has been wiping out our farmers, who are selling off their meat animals earlier than usual. Spring is definitely coming earlier, based on when various plants are flowering.
There is global warming. Whether man-made or not.
Re: transactional
Yeah, the kind that lacks "commitment".
In the kitchen...
I think ... I love you
Re: Half a dozen of one, but only six of the other. @Eguro @Eddy Ito
Actually I am rather glad you took the trouble to quote from the document presented by the Democrats:
'"Whereas the ability of women to adapt to climate change is constrained by a lack of economic freedoms, property and inheritance rights, as well as access to financial resources, education, family planning and reproductive health, and new tools, equipment, and technology;"'
Translated into English, this reads "Since women are in general poorer and even more oppressed than men in their cohort, and less likely than men to be able to bash their neighbours on the head when resources are short ... they (and children) will need additional support in the face of climate change."
The "Forces Women Into Prostitution" headline is just to draw attention.
When will they come to Brooklyn?
Where I live, in high-tech Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY, we don't have Verizon FIOS yet and I don't know when we will. We have crappy Time Warner cable. I have been using ADSL for nearly 10 years. Anybody remember what that is?
Plod these days
Anyone know if it is better or worse since Thatcher? I'm a Merkin and have been wondering.
Re: Lip Smacking eh?
Yes, they sit on their construction sites having lunch and do that. Never noticed the ladies liked it though.
Epidemiology of violence
I think the idea behind this is to build some analytics around the use of hate terms. This database would be used as a reference base for the analytics.
US CDC have used terms around illness to track cases of flu via Google queries and Twitter messages. Using this tool to locate virulent hate outbreaks could be useful. At the moment, in the US, there are trends around American Nazis, KKK, gun nut paranoids, and any number of historically minor hate groups. Excessive activity could be indicative of possible threats.
Keeping the techs on campus
I once worked at a large telecommunications company as a rent-a-programmer. We were quartered in a warehouse about a half mile from nowhere in New Jersey. They served (well, left for us in the printer room) free Danish and coffee. This was clearly to prevent us from going on a break with our cars. That is entirely for the convenience of the employer.
Locating one's data center in the back of beyond is a strategy for 1) getting cheap land to build on, and 2) making it likely that your staff will never take a substantial break or meal, but will work right through.
Taxing us for the break room would have been just the worst.
By the way, in the US the employer's contribution to health insurance and other benefits is tax free. The IRS is looking into a way to make it taxable, of course. Right now it is only taxable to the gay spouse!
Re: Student Grant
The US took a similar route, with similar results.
But there is a hint of the decline of capitalism here, with "growth" in markets believed to be the only way to solvency. However, growth in the population of workers leads to a glut, qualified or not. The result is a poorer populace, thus less demand, thus a shrinking market. Resulting in less demand for workers, etc.
Any system that requires unbounded growth to work is a Ponzi scheme in sheep's clothing.
Re: Is a degree worth the paper it is written on?
A lot of this is simply discrimination against older applicants. HR departments are full of flimsy minds with crap educations, but one thing they know how to do is get the cheapest person for the job.
What kind of politician?
From Wikipedia:
"Craig Berkman (born about 1943) is a longtime venture capitalist and was an influential Republican politician in the U.S. state of Oregon. "
This means more to Americans, but sort of like Conservative politicians.
Re: Funny..
The company has to pay more to torture the techs at the outsource firm. The actual techs don't get the extra pay anyway -- it goes to management, who torture the techs.
I was a consultant for years, the kind who is a permanent employee of a consulting company. The employing company paid extra for superior tech knowledge and the ability to drive us nuts; plus markup for profit, of course. We also told their management the truth rather than sucking up. We always knew we would be out of there at some finite future point, leaving them stewing in it.
Ironically, most of this type of consulting is gone, outsourced to India. I was there when the flags came down.
Write the comment first
Since I started programming in the days of the dinosaurs, I have found it useful to write down what I was trying to do BEFORE writing any code. I still do that, even in SQL. Changing the comment is automatic if a commented line of code is changing. That seldom happens, though. Generally a whole function is being extended in some way. So the description of how it works would require some thought. Essentially, the specification is contained in the code. It doesn't take up that much space! Adding my name and a date helps other team members keep track of what changes correspond to user requests.
Of course it helps that I think in English, and my first programming language was COBOL. There was an invalid assumption in those days that COBOL was self documenting. The people who taught me never let us get away with that.
More about ethnicity?
The Republicans feature more WASPy (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) people of both genders. I suspect they are considered prettier and more feminine by everyone (possibly unconsciously) than the more varied ethnic groups represented in the Democratic party.
We are not all as smart as you are
Back in the day, we had COBOL, and sometimes CICS, and frequently a database -- or not. We also had teams. The best results came from communicating to the end users and the team members in some sort of common language. We used flow charts, pseudocode, and sometimes a sort of graphic prototype for screen flow. We also used something we called structured programming, which is more natural to the modern programming languages, starting with PL/1.
The prototype, if any, was contained in the structured program, in which control passed to PERFORMs, also known as subroutines. The comments at the beginning of each set of paragraphs in the PERFORM would be the statement of what it was supposed to do. While writing this non-code, we discovered errors in thinking and design.
We could do this as a group, because there were also CALLed programs, with parameters. The design team could say up front what should be in the program, and define its inputs and outputs. Common data definitions were put into the same sort of INCLUDE libraries used today.
There would have been no point in writing all this in the target language, COBOL (and sometimes assembly language). It isn't self-documenting, despite claims. Using and maintaining the comments, taken from pseudocode, was a best practice that lived on in some form through C and possibly Java. Anything larger than a single algorithm (e.g., an operating system, a compiler), requiring teamwork over a period of time, needs this thoughtful design phase. Even if, like Linus Torvalds, you ended up writing it all yourself.
Posted in Why do women pick IT as a career ?
Still in IT
When I started in IT, back in the mainframe days, it was pretty hard to get a job in IT at all, and there was lots of discrimination against women in all jobs (as well as against blacks, gays, and anyone who looked different). I was soon recruited by a consulting firm, whose owner realised that women were a great overlooked resource, so we actively recruited them. I have a feeling we were also paid less than the men, but it would be hard to prove. It's just the way it was in those days.
Women stayed, and got promotions. At some point male sales reps went out of fashion, so they were almost all replaced with what I called sales clones, attractive and bright young women.
Computer science meanwhile was starting to be important, and was somewhat less attractive to women than to men. Previously, programmers learned on the job, mostly. The women were frequently mathematicians, while the men were frequently recruited from accounting and the mail room, where the early tab equipment lived. I went back to school at one point, first in computer science, then transferring after a year to the MBA program, where I learned things I had never encountered in college. I had found the computer science curriculum overly academic and boring; my MBA was in Operations Research, which is applied mathematics.
I'll be retiring next year at age 71. IT has been good to me, but I don't recommend it now, as the opportunities seem to have shrunk over the years. Possibly today's women have realised that, and are fleeing to areas where they can find growth.
Wonderful!
I wish I were much younger and much smarter. Maybe this will inspire the young and smart to create good stuff like this instead of going into finance.
Manning is a hero
It's hard to get anyone to expose the stupid and evil things done by our government. They know the full force of the wounded bulls will be all over them. Private Manning is a brave man. He apparently knew that what he was giving to the world would improve things somehow, by exposing stupidity and venality. He most likely had no intention of damaging our real security (and probably hasn't). Most whistle-blowers are accused of doing serious damage to something or other. (That's what they used to say about hackers who exposed vulnerabilities.) Generally it's a lie. Kind of like the damage done by some kid sharing a file.
So seriously, the leaks threatened the lives of informers in Afghanistan? If so, the leaks are still up there -- show us!
Didn't there used to be a rule?
Don't use even-numbered releases of anything? I vaguely remember that it was true a long time ago, even before M$FT.
Dashboard?
Yeah, once in a LONG while I fetch it to see the weather app, translate a foreign word, or use calc, if I happen to be sitting at the Mac. I mostly use the apps on my iPad for those, though.
The terrorists have definitely won
They have got us all at each others' throats. They have poorly educated recruits from the criminal classes patting down little old ladies and treating our external hearing aids as if they might be bombs.
They win! No more flying vacations. Driving to Cape Cod is going to be the extent of my vacation plans. I only have to watch out for poorly educated recruits from the criminal classes driving trucks and SUVs on the interstate highways.
Posted in Unemployment rate inches up in the US
Second Great Depression
When we studied the Great Depression in school, nobody could explain how it happened. Like, why did there all of a sudden stop being employment for so many people? It was like explaining how a guy could be alive and then suddenly dead. What left him?
What President Roosevelt (FDR) did was try to employ as many people as possible in government jobs under programs like WPA. It wasn't enough, though. The way the depression ended was with Extreme Government Employment, also known as World War II. There was so much employment available that they had to hire WOMEN (imagine that!).
Throughout, the Republicans hated FDR and referred to him as "that man in the White House", with "man" probably a euphemism.
In the United States
We have enough idiots who will love this. It is once again embarrassing to be a Yank. They want to repeal our poor substitute for NHS. But -- do they buy iPads?
Translation into Amurikan
We used to have Defined Benefit (pensions) from employers. They were supposed to be putting money aside and investing it for the benefit of the employees.
What happened is that the value of the investments went up a lot during the bubble, so the employers neglected to add any money to the pot. When investment went tits-up, so did pensions.
They changed it to Defined Contribution (401 K). That's the equivalent of "money purchase pensions". When they went tits-up, so did this type of pension. All we have left is Social Security, and that is being threatened all the time.
Your Ponzi Scheme on the hoof! Anything that depends on the ever-expanding good will of the market is doomed by maths.
Your conclusion remains totally correct. "The workers carry all the risks, the spivs get all the bonuses. Nice."
Brat Radio Stations
We have rap / hiphop / gangsta stations that can be turned up and amplified through ground-pounders (which should also be illegal). So everyone can be treated to obscenity in stereo.
There is no excuse for cruising while broadcasting, and it is actually illegal. But our cops are all ex-chavs and don't care.
You don't have to be a parent to wish that cars contained more controls on bad behavior. By adults as well as brats.
Lovely, lovely, lovely
Made my day - 7:22 AM in NYC and getting ready for Friday. I'll smile (menacingly) all day.
Nasty organisation, however you look at it
Exists for the main purpose of wiping out Israel. A puppet of Iran mostly. The rest of the Moslem world is Sunni, generally, except for half of Iraq.
Wikipedia article:
Hezbollah[1] (Arabic: حزب الله ḥizbu-illāh(i),[2] literally "Party of God") is a Shi'a paramilitary group and political party based in Lebanon.[3][4][5] It is regarded as a resistance movement throughout much of the Arab and Muslim worlds,[3] and is supported by Iran and Syria. Multiple countries, including Sunni Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan,[6] have condemned actions by Hezbollah. The United States, United Kingdom, Egypt,[7] Israel, Australia, and Canada regard Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, in whole or in part.[8]
Hezbollah first emerged in response to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, during the Lebanese civil war.[3][9] Its leaders were inspired by Ayatollah Khomeini, and its forces were trained and organized by a contingent of Iranian Revolutionary Guards.[10] Hezbollah's 1985 manifesto listed its four main goals as "Israel's final departure from Lebanon as a prelude to its final obliteration," ending "any imperialist power in Lebanon," submission of the Phalangists to "just rule" and bringing them to trial for their crimes, and giving the people the chance to choose "with full freedom the system of government they want," while we not hide our commitment to the rule of Islam."[11][12][13] Hezbollah leaders have also made numerous statements calling for the destruction of Israel, which they refer to as a "Zionist entity... built on lands wrested from their owners."[12][13]
Posted in German zoo separates gay vulture couple
Meanies!
Separating bonded friends is just meanness to birds, who (like people) have relationships. Although it is only since March, so maybe they should get out more...
Posted in BOFH: Look out!
PFY scored well this time
Excellence in project planning for contingencies:
"The door’s razor sharp and can cut through a drip line, a monitor and a patient call cable....”
It's 7:57 AM across the pond and I am giggling my head off as I get ready for work.
Posted in US may disable all in-car mobile phones
Treat adults like children?
Been following our elections over here? There are a lot of "adults" who are just children in disguise, and they vote,
Posted in Police-baiting website Fitwatch returns
"Comfie circle"? "Should be fine"?
Where have you spent the last 50 years, Matt -- herding cows?
I'm one of those "grannies", and I have talked with quite a few "coppers" over the years. They do indeed have a wide range of political views, including some very negative ones. The difference between them and everybody else is their entitlement to use force. Once in a while we are able to prosecute one or two who overstep their duties. Nobody has been able to do anything about various Mayors of New York City, who order attacks.
Currently our "finest" have been falsifying precinct statistics to reflect well on the precincts and the Mayor. Political faith does indeed make you immune to the law, whatever country you live in.
Offering advice to those who "may have committed a crime" is part of our legal structure. It is how we got through the Civil Rights and Anti-War periods. Frequently it has saved lives.
Remember Stonewall? That was the event when the drag queens in a bar discovered they were tired of being shaken down by the police, and fought back. It was the beginning of the Gay Rights movement in the U.S.
ESPERANTO - the inventor paid his dues
Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof (born Leyzer Leyvi Zamengov in 1859 in Bialystok, Poland) spoke Russian, Polish, and Yiddish as a child. He later learned a number of other languages. The languages of his childhood are highly inflected, and when he came to invent Esperanto, he could not stand to be without just one. So direct objects (accusative case) take a suffix "n". Aside from that, there is extensive use of suffixes and prefixes to carry all the other features of grammar in a quite regular way.
He felt that Italian was the most beautiful language to the ear, so the sound of Esperanto tends toward that sound.
Vocabulary was stolen/borrowed from various European languages, both Latin-based and English-based.
Back when I started programming, I also studied this language briefly, as an alternative form of code-talking. How very geeky!
Posted in US may disable all in-car mobile phones
How about read-only or half-duplex or input-only cell?
If a jammer could be set up to disallow talk and output texting while the car is moving, that would take care of it. Anyone needing a map or a conversation could be expected to pull over, request the download, text and talk as needed, then hang up and resume driving. It would not interfere with OnStar. 911-type calls could be permitted. Incoming voice could be permitted, if people could accept an automated reply that the person is busy driving but can hear your message and will call back when it is safe. Sort of halfway between voicemail and full duplex,
Tell me nobody could hack something like that! (Of course, then someone would hack a work-around, but not everybody.)
Most of us can handle hearing the radio or people in the car. Having to create a message of any sort uses much more of our limited CPU and attention.
As for kids, how about a nice cage in the back seat?
Posted in Police-baiting website Fitwatch returns
Thanks for the Pointers
This is my first exposure to FitWatch, as I am in the USA. We have our own issues with police and their scoutmasters. Attacks on CriticalMass rides and on the peaceful demonstrations against the Republican National Convention a few years back may be familiar to those across the pond.
Yes, we want the police to stop muggings. We really don't need them to mug us when they or their bosses disagree with our politics.
Posted in Firefox fixes stability bug
App Container Rogue Hog
I follow Ustream.tv birds (theOwlbox) and eventually the Flash App Container hangs the whole system (I can see it on the PC, but it happens on the Mac also). Killing FF doesn't entirely fix it - have to kill Container also to recover memory.
Flash has its uses! Needs rewriting (Open Sourcing) to become well behaved.
Purple People
What do you think happens when a blue mates with a red?
'Course they could be gay too.
Posted in Boobquake fails to destroy planet
Rape in those countries
There are plenty of rapes in those countries where the women are veiled head to toe. Only the police won't respond to complaints, and the women's relatives respond by killing the women. Morality has nothing to do with dress and everything to do with taking responsibility for one's own actions.
As long as the crass morons with Imaginary Friends make the rules, they can focus on fake morality and ignore the real thing. This goes for the Vatican also, now doesn't it?
Like what happened in Brooklyn...
A windshield replacement joint had someone go around breaking windshields, to improve business...
Accenture history, huh?
New Delhi, huh? Leaving waste and ruin in their path.
Nuff said. That's a combination everyone should avoid.
Bring back hanging
just for proven fraud. It's much more serious than murder of a single person, as it affects a lot of people. That goes for Enron executives and all those rotters on Wall Street as well.
Posted in Wikipedia springs free labor leak
I love Wikipedia
I use it all the time, to write explanations for health questions on Yahoo Answers. I always point to the Wikipedia articles I use. They are generally fabulous!
If I knew anything in depth, I would contribute. Perhaps when I am retired I will be able to contribute rewrites to pieces that are clumsily written.
Kudos to the solid editors, and good riddance to the ones who aren't up to the standard.
Fascinating
and evidently the stuff of George W. Bush's wet dreams. Now we know what he was trying to emulate here in the good ol' USA. The Yale Cowboy is an Anglophile - who woulda thunk?
Posted in Apple seeks OS-jacking advert patent
Shoot if you must this old gray head...
but spare my Apple systems! I swear that if they so much as start the implementation of this crapola, I will ditch my beloved Mac and iPhone and use nothing but Linux!
So that's what happened
to all those laid-off financial district programmers!
Posted in Has IBM grown a new Lotus?
Too rich for our blood now - but oh what a great tool it was
I loved Domino. I think I started developing in Notes 3 something. When it went webified, in 4.6 I think it was, I went crazy over it.
I haven't used it in about 8 years. Last time I looked into it for the non-profit I now work for, it was just too complex and too expensive for us. We are using Drupal. But Domino -- now that was a rapid development tool. Never mind how it looked!
Looks are way over-rated.
Priorities
We are definitely fourth-rate in a lot of ways.
Until everyone is fed and housed, and has access to a doctor when needed, and can be educated, broadband has a rather low priority. Watching movies on a computer is what most people use it for anyway.
I live in New York, where Verizon FIOS is not available everywhere, and I got DSL just to manage servers remotely. Otherwise broadband is just another pretty face. Like that dopey person shown here.
Posted in Texan judge outlaws Word
First time I have ever rooted for Texas...
particularly a Texas judge. If they can just forbid saving Word docs as HTML, I would be happy. Also that stupid application that lets idiots create Web pages that are impossible to fix and will not render in other browsers.
Word is hideous in general. I am a pretty heavy user of Excel at the office, although I use OO elsewhere. So I am not totally anti-MS. But Word just has a bad attitude.
Posted in Orthodox Jews tuck into kosher Koogle
These Orthodox are kind of a pain in the behind
but in this case they are building a search engine for themselves. That is pretty harmless.
These folks are harmful to Israel in other ways, as they get money and more lunatics from their American counterparts, and build colonies where they aren't supposed to. A lot of them are leeching off the population and not doing their military service.
Posted in NASA's ENose sniffs for cancer
Dogs in every doctor's office?
It wouldn't be particularly cheap, or easy, to train enough dogs. And not every doctor or diagnostic lab would have people who can work with a dog. Dogs get tired and stop being interested after a while.
Not to mention the contamination. They are still dogs! Do you want them in your clinic or hospital?
