Posts by LucreLout

Re: Shakespeare? who is he anyway?

@AdamWill

To a large extent, the point of study is not so much what you study as the techniques you learn by studying it

Certainly this is true, else all those studying "the classics" at Oxbridge would be wasting their time, and I rather think they're not.

That being said, the study of anything other than computing conveys no knowledge of or ability with computers. Separate study must begin, and it is this that is often lacking. Most of the worst code I encounter is produced by people who studied something else at university; those studying nothing fare better, and those studying computing best of all.

I believe this to be because having completed a degree in something else, too many participants then begin working as programmers and learn on the job. That works fine, but the code they produce while so learning is universally garbage.

So back to the point of the article. Impressively, I think we're in near universal agreement that Kohsla is fundamentally wrong. I enjoy writing code for a living, but seldom enjoy reading it for entertainment. Quite apart from that, it is Khosla and his ilk that drive the offshoring boom, leaving coders in stiff competition for work from cheap, inexperienced, and largely unskilled offshorians.

I can see much to be gained in teaching my children coding, both as a means to structure thought, but also as a fall back skill in case their careers don't work out. But as a primary career? Coding seems to have little future for those of school age, and I certainly don't envy the junior programmers just starting out.

Re: Morning Prayers

In a previous work place a few years ago we had Morning Prayers but also Evening Psalms.

Indeed. At my last gig, one of the projects decided to have 9am mtgs and 5:30-6pm mtgs. Which is fine, if its a multi-region project where you need to crossover time-zones, but this wasn't. Someone seemed to presume we'd all be working into late evenings at a time when I'd decided to leave that company.

My morning status updates got skipped after the first week, which roughly would have gone like this:

Monday AM - Had a nice sh*t and went to the pub as it was Friday night.

Tuesday AM - Went home, watched TV, had dinner & the wife, and went to bed.

Wednesday AM - Went home. Mrs was out with the girls so I ordered pizza & prawn on the internet.

Thursday AM - Home, dinner, wife, TV, bed.

Friday AM - Beers with the guys, skanky hot dog, more beer, various table dancing establishments, strange looking kebab, and a dodgy cab home. Are done now, only the kebab had a lot of chilli sauce on it and it's now seeking a place of residence?

Re: False premise leads to false results

"Boffins" can predict all they like, but no evidence will change the mind of those who are convinced AGW is a conspiracy.

It's not a conspiracy; It's a lifestyle.

Re: Yeah... not "tech" so much..

I'm a code monkey, have been for decades, and the idea it is recession proof is concealing a lot of blips.

If your employer goes bust then it doesn't matter what you used to do for them.

If you get a new asshat boss and need to leave, the recession can make that very difficult, especially if you're a very highly paid non-contracting code monkey. And that can be utterly utterly miserable.

The next recession looks likely to arrive in H1 2017, and hopefully after that is out of the way we can get some feel good factor going in that recovery, because it's passed me by this time around for sure.

The other piss on the chips, of course, is off-shoring. Bean counters and empty suits have this hopelessly incorrect idea that because Indians & other offshorians are cheap that they can do the job. Unfortunately that just isn't born out by the experience of literally anyone I know who has had the privilege of working with them.

The code is below graduate level, the spec poorly understood and often some distance from what is built, and appalling lack of accountability borders on insanity (Lose your job? No worries, the body shop over the road is hiring and will give you a raise).

Until the government take action to address this madness, there's zero likelihood of me encouraging my kids into coding. I'd rather spend my time teaching them a trade or something else that can't be off-shored or easily robotised, and just enough computers to fall back on.

Re: Oh yes

@AC

Yes, and at the end of it all, the b@stards will have the temerity to label you as resistant to change!

Re: the geeks shall inherit the earth

When machines replace workers in site automation and self-learning AI automation robots, the geeks will be kings.

No, no we won't. That's hubris. We'll be redundant like all the other workers.

The main moderating brake on that happening is that we're being offshored to low skill low cost countries like India so fast that we've barely time to keep the plates spinning, never mind automating them.

Re: DIdo Harding

@Chivo234

Yeah, there's far too much of that around. Yesterday I noticed that awful Pryce woman on TV plugging her book about life in jail on the beeb. Who cares? You're a criminal, now have some sense of shame and disappear from public life FFS.

Re: The only problem with autonomous cars

Well, yes, but not in the way you think.

Effectively all lanes will become Zil Lanes, as we saw during the Olympics. The public sector just can't help itself - the view that they're all important (see Key Workers for reference) pervades and they'll insist on being able to leapfrog traffic queues.

Re: discredit ...

@uffish

You can wiggle around in all the pseudo logic you want but America has not treated her as well as she deserves.

I can see what you're trying to say, but what you've actually said is "I, Uffish, am a hard of thinking pseudo-intellectual, who isn't half as smart as I'd like people to believe".

Attempting to counter an argument you have no counterpoint too by mislabeling it "pseudo logic" just gives away the game that you have no argument, no reasoning, just an emotive position you'd like the rest of us to adopt.

Manning was treated exactly how she was always going to be treated because she knows she's guilty. The balls to then press on and go for it are admirable, and your detracting from that because you want her to be innocent is disrespectful, and you should be ashamed.

I'm not sure why you're struggling with the concept that what is legally permissible and what is morally allowable are two separate things.

I'm personally highly amused by English profs and others who will very loudly insist that "paper is better" right up until they've actually used a Kindle for travel

I'm certainly no prof, and I do love my Kindle when travelling, however, for reading academic journals then yes, paper is better by far. I can scribble notes in the margins easily, underline things etc. Lay all the papers out around me when evaluating & analyzing them etc.

Re: Maybe it's just me...

Maybe it's just me...

... but I don't get the point of the article. Or rather, I get the point but would not consider this news.

Me either.

And for all the problems Potty describes, Skype, FaceTime et-al still seem to work well enough to be extremely popular.

Re: A completely meaningless ruling

I have a healthy distrust of Government but a firm respect for the rule of law.

I have a healthy and well earned distrust of both Government and the law, but a firm respect for a woman's rights over her own body.

No means no, yes with caveats means yes with caveats, and do whatever the hell you want apparently does not mean buy a motorcycle.

Re: Don't like his chances

Most offenders are given a dressing down by the courts and told "Don't do it again" even for repeat offences.

Most offenders don't run up £x Million pounds in policing costs by hiding in an embassy while evading rape charges. Innocent men don't run from rape charges, as there's no more certain a way to proclaim guilt. Add on his thumbing his nose at the judiciary, and they'll likely have a very dim view of him.

Assange is almost certainly looking at a short custodial penalty once he scurries out from under his rock. And very well deserved it will be too.

I couldn't care less about what America may or may not do to him; what he did to those women is unacceptable and to flee from it until the offences time out is willfully denying them justice and their day in court. The coward owes them that much at the very least.

Re: unspecified techniques

Oh, like bobbies, when you steal a purse and run away, they say "Stop!" or I'll say "Stop!" again because I don't have gun....

While I can appreciate your sentiments, I'm not wholly sure I want our police routinely armed. Some of them aren't very bright and can be known to be intemperate.

I'm not having a general pop at the boys n girls in blue; my best mate is one of them, and he'd give the same reason I'm about to. The interview and selection process undertaken to recruit the current intake will have taken no account of their suitability to maintain a firearm, because it was never envisaged as a requirement of the job.

In some respects I feel a degree of pity for these folk that have to do this sort of work.

Half or more, in my experience, of their ilk are psychopaths; your pity is wasted because they simply wouldn't understand it.

All they do is put people out of work and destroy the morale of those left behind, both at the time because they fear for their own jobs and afterwards when they have to tidy up the mess

In cases such as the one in this article, failure [of management] seems the most relevant description, rather than redundancy.

Redundancy is a sad fact of life. Its inevitable on a long enough timeline. It should never be personal, and it should always be handled with compassion by those wielding the axe. Companies need to be able to shed staff.

However, rampant outsourcing and off-shoring as a driver for redundancies never works; it gives you a short term hit on the costs bong for one year only, and after that you've lost your capability to achieve change in your business.

If a private enterprise wants to reward the top dogs with large compensation payments, I care not. What I do care about is when that becomes decoupled from accountability, which is the situation in which we now find ourselves.

Gen Xers will be old enough to remember the last Conservative government, which was really the last time we had accountability in Britain. The rot set in quickly under Blair & Brown, and has only grown worse with time including under Cameron & Clegg. The coalition and current Conservative government have continued making matters worse. The "brazen it out until a new headline comes along" approach has its roots firmly in public life but has quickly taken over the corporate world (see Dido at TalkTalk for proof).

We need change. I just don't see how that can readily be achieved when we have a generation at the top that has never been held to account, and a generation coming into the work place that have never seen adults behave in an accountable manner in their lives.

Have attitudes hardened against technically legal bullshit from the likes of Google? You bet

Attitudes could be harder than a virgin at a stripper convention and it won't matter a jot. Emotion is not a good way to run anything... except maybe a lonely hearts column.

The only way to prevent tax arbitrage is with flat taxes, and those same people emoting against Google also rail against those.

If it's a matter of public record they'll have to justify it and it becomes much harder for them to hide the real cost

"You don't actually think they spend $20,000 on a hammer, $30,000 on a toilet seat, do you?"

Independence Day explains the sort of funding shenanigans that will ensue far better than anything else I've yet heard.

Re: Building their own coffin

means you're cutting loose anything more than two and a half years old

Ok, taking that at face value, there seem to be lots of people upgrading their devices on a short timeline than that, for phones at least.

We wouldn't have given MSFT a pass for telling us in 2009 (8 years after XP) that security patches have been available since Vista so "tough luck".

Agreed, but most people update their computer when it breaks, and the same cannot be said about phones. Tablets may be different, I don't know - never had one.

Re: retailer?

some places have discounts if your in the Military.

Indeed - many fast food outlets in the UK also do this. I always remember a debate between a group of soldiers and a low standard burger chain staffer regarding their discount. It seems they needed ID cards; full uniform and an obvious military bearing wouldn't suffice - even the APC parked right outside the window wouldn't sway him.

Re: Hold on a moment

@Sir Barry

All instances of Sql Injection stem from ignorance by an unskilled developer, coupled with negligence by the company to not adequately verify their product prior to release.

There's simply no excuse for it in 2016 and it is wholly inappropriate for the ICO to suggest that there might be.

Little Bobby Tables will be old enough to vote soon!

Re: Dissapointed

For shame Lincolnshire, have you not seen the memo about what to do in these situations from TalkTalk?

Oh I'm sure "lessons will be learned".

Re: @lucrelout

@Terry

I think if you read what I wrote you'll find I acknowledged both times that situations such as this would be a problem. Its probably also a problem when you find lots of people with elderly relatives tying up the bays despite granny being at home.