Hard disagree. We have to look at more than 5 years of data. And when we look at hundreds / thousands of years of data, things get murkier as to what the "temperature should be today".
I'll leave this here to show what I'm talking about why we can't just predict the next 5 or 10 or 100 years so easily.
I don't follow politics as closely as some people, so I don't know how she meant it, but I parsed her statement as "A top climate scientist is warning that if we don't stop using fossil fuels over the next five years, climate change will wipe out humanity [at some point in the future]."
If climate change is really a science, if the science is really settled, what testable predictions does it make?
I'll agree with this statement, but it's also a strawman thrown in by both sides. We can't test climate change. We don't have two earths. We have to rely on other methods to determine if we're screwing ourselves (via environmental changes) or not.
but they seemed to remove the "Extinguish" from their core motto.
Don't ever think that any large corporation doesn't think about extinguishing other companies. It happens all the time -- and large companies are the worst offenders. They may pause the trend for PR purposes, but every large company will happily buy up a smaller company that is doing better, gut that little company, and discard the carcass. We see it happen over and over and over again even in today's world.
I haven't replied to any thread on Slashdot since I last screamed "Fuck Beta" as often as I could over a year ago. I believe I logged in once when Slashdot said they had removed Beta. (It didn't look like it to me.) I'll occasionally look at a story if something looks interesting on my RSS feed. I don't come to the website except to log in. It's been a long time since I've actually visited.
Want to show a really good faith move to attract the "old farts" back? When Soylent News was formed, they took the old Slashdot code and saw it hadn't been updated in years, and was severely broken.
Open source it again. Put a nice link on the website in an easy to find location. As a matter of fact, make it a front news story once you've done it. If you think that this is a bad move because you need to keep the code close to your chest so you don't have another split off like Soylent News, then you don't understand the "old farts" and they are not your target audience.
And even after you've done that, it will still take time for the old farts to trust you. Trust is not earned with a single action nor in a short period of time.
There's a pretty good book I own in paperback (electronic versions available) for high performance stuff from PostgreSQL. It's called PostgreSQL 9.0 High Performance. It's probably beyond what you want, but if you're interested in looking at it, let me know and I'll bring it next time we get together.
It's always a fight for me to find work, usually 100 miles away from the previous job, most likely because HR rejects every resume lacking any keyword on the job reqs, and I'm one of the GOOD ones, with a resume that includes senior positions in big companies you've heard of. I swear HR has gone underground in the past few years, and is recruiting exclusively from LinkedIn or something.
You've almost got it. HR hires from consulting firms and one of the places consulting firms go is LinkedIn. That's right, boys and girls, you have to please a minimum of three layers to get a job. (Consultant, HR, Manager). You have to look good online, on paper, and in person.
Disclaimer: I don't have answers. I've been looking for about three years off and on (earlier in the States and now in Europe), but I know who calls me and who wants to talk to me: the consultants. I've physically walked into businesses (when I knew they were hiring) and asked for a name in HR but the front desk wouldn't even give me the time of day. When I went to CeBIT (a large convention here in Europe), I spoke with small companies, large companies, and consulting firms. The large companies pointed me to their website (which is takes a lot of time to fill in because they think they are special) and consultants dominated the floor. The few small companies that were there were very picky and want loads of experience in their particular area.
Yeah, unfortunately, I don't have many words of encouragement. The best advice I can offer at this time is look at the ads and see what they are looking for. There seems to be a good deal of suck to go around because companies are unwilling to make the effort to train people and managers are unwilling to hire based on "real" quality instead of paper quality.
When I sheer-dumb-luck ran across this guy (CEO of 20 - 30 employees), I went into full study mode. I took two weeks of reading hundreds of pages of tech docs and skimming thousands of pages in an effort to absorb over a dozen technologies. The third and fourth week has been to try to write some code, but as you can imagine, I've had very limited success; too much to learn too quickly. (I've been working my butt off weekends, some nights, and all holidays. I'm not sleeping very well right now.) Although I don't know much about the job or the company, I'm trying very hard to get this job. He's the first serious bite I've seen in a long time.
The take away I've gotten from my journey is that companies want you to look good on paper. The more your resume matches the ad, the better. Key words on high-demand jobs will also trigger phone calls. My key word was "Java". They completely ignored my lack of web experience or what I had been doing for the past 10 years. I even had a list of technologies on my website. "Java" was how I inadvertently got phone calls from head hunters, recruiters, (and in a few rare instances) HR. I'm into PHP now and it's my intention to write small programs and publish the code on the Internet so I can stand out in an interview, but this comment is very discouraging with that idea. (It's still my plan if this second interview doesn't yield me the job. I have to learn and keep up the skills somehow.)
I am trying very hard to figure out how sub-standard programmers get employed. Other than out-right lying, I cannot figure it out. I've never lied and I'm not about to start now, though.
Wisecat, I wish you luck in your journey. Be smart, keep at it, and don't become discouraged.
In my opinion, for a longer view, pick a field you are good at rather than one that appears strong now.
I usually agree with you, but I'm going against that advice right now. I've had multiple phone interviews that lasted about 5 minutes. Long enough for them to learn that I programmed in Java, but not JEE or J2EE. I'm good at what I do, but the market doesn't seem to want me as my skills don't present well on paper. It's hard to filter past the HR drones. When I do get it to filter, the managers are disappointed that I don't have 100% of the knowledge they are after. This has been going on for three years. It's a little hard to "wait it out" after so long.
Recently, I had a manager say he likes my skills, but he needs those skills in the web world. He's given me a little time to see what I can learn, so I've dived both feet into we web development and I get to interview with him again shortly. It was a good time for both of us because I was tired of searching for a non web-related job (which seems to be what most open positions want) and he was tired of interviewing script kiddies.
Merely food for thought.
You don't have to pay anything, you can watch it, and you won't even have to die. Mostly to your specifications.
For your viewing pleasure: Feds Deconfliction
"Stable job" "all the way to retirement" [snip] they're average to below average [snip] I'd need to be convinced otherwise in the interview to give them an offer.
It's a shame that people only want rock star programmers today. The best of the best of the best. It leave common joes like me wondering why my talents are being wasted by companies. I think common programmers like me should have a good place to fit in a company, but I suppose my averageness doesn't allow me to envision the right way things should be like you rock stars. I envision training by companies and a little guidance by the rock stars so they can focus on things that I can't. I don't mind doing grunt work. But again, your vision of instability for the life of a project or a program is probably better than what I had in mind. After all, I'm only average. I'm only a common joe.
If you paid your new hire to spend his or her first week reading an O'Reilly book, then the next month paired up with a more experienced coder, you'd find that there is no shortage of workers, rather there is a surplus.
Nary a quote was better spoken. It is unbelievable how true this is.
They may be out there but they seem to be behind a wall of recruiters
This is my current problem. I've encountered it living in two different countries in the past two years. If I can't present myself to a computer just perfectly and if I can't talk to HR just perfectly, I'm never going to get to you. I have a list of examples. (I even have an example of two managers who wanted to talk with me in a particular company and HR screwed up so badly that after a solid month of trying to talk to the managers, I finally said no to the company and walked away. I had friends in that company. My friends and the managers were left with wide eyes at how badly I was treated. And that company was posting multiple open positions every week. But, no, I couldn't talk or schedule meetings with the manager directly. That was a no-no and the managers couldn't do that. I had to schedule everything through HR.) Every time I try to talk to someone face to face in any company, I am shot down with "go on the computer and submit your resume". Frankly, my resume isn't impressive. I suck at making resumes. I suck at networking with managers. I'm a decent programmer with experience and I'm a good people person. I'm so frustrated that I can't seem to link up with the right people.
Sorry that I can't live in Denver or I'd contact you.
The purpose of the boycott is to tell Dice how many people are upset enough to leave. They can track the numbers. They will know. We will too even without exact numbers. In two weeks, either CmdrTaco is right (and a small minority spoke out and Slashdot will return to whatever is "normal" for the site) or he is incorrect and a huge majority will leave. Or Dice apologizes and a bunch of us stay. (I'm not too hopeful on that last one.)
-- Common Joe
Valentines Day Slashcott: Boycott Slashdot because "Fuck Beta!": February 10 - 17
Support Okian Warrior's alternate slashdot idea! Information can be found here: www.altslashdot.org.
It's not Unitron, it's unitron, and always has been
Well, then... my bad on all fronts.
If I have to choose between giving up the name "slashdot.org" and giving up everything about the name of which I've been a part since October of 1998, it's no contest.
If that's the choice, I'm happy for Dice to take the name and leave the rest, since it seems like they'll be flushing the rest before long anyway.
I understand how you feel. I've been here a very long time -- like many others, longer than my UID suggests. I think since about 2003. I just have bad vibes about this jolt from Dice in all respects. We (the community) will figure something out. It may not be what we want 100% because of so many different opinions, but today's Slashdot isn't exactly what we want either. I'll see you around.
It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
