Oh course, the products in Gift Guides aren't meant to be the ones that most people can afford. No one wants to look at a gift guide of moderately priced mid-level gear. Gift guides give people something to aspire to. And I think a lot of people do look at the items and then go order a cheaper version on amazon later.
You can do this on projects sometimes and its not necessarily as great as it sounds. Its ok when the office building is over the road from where all the consultants stay, but occasionally the meeting rooms in the hotel get used too, especially for training and workshops and longer events needing catering. You end up bumping into the wrong people at the wrong times. Theres no privacy. Cant just pop outside for a joint in the evening because your bosses are having dinner downstairs and will see you walk past. If someone thinks you need to sign a document at 6am or 9pm there will be knocks on your door. Everyone will have to go on runs together and shit...
The "professional" market doesn't care about visual cohesion. They either use just one app anyway or have them custom written to use their nvidia quadros with whatever UI they like,
But the senior execs that need the absolute monster for outlook and facebook will always be well served by the top end macs.
I personally respect, and am thankful for the fact that people exist that have opinions that differ, even a lot, from mine. Especially on moral issues. I find it pretty immoral to have too much faith in ones moral framework. I will do business with anyone especially those with different political or other opinions than mine, they are usually more interesting conversations.
I was being toungue and cheek. Of course reading a book is an experience, as is taking drugs. And its not just chemical , you might go to the park and have an adventure between two blades of grass or something. Its not like people just drop a tab, close their eyes and lie in bed. I would say in order of strength of experience I would say something like: [Big Adventure without drugs] > [Small adventure with drugs] > [Reading] > [Dreaming]
Well, if real wisdom requires experience then the harm you are talking about is probably slightly less harmful than the pseudo-wisdom one feels when reading another persons experience in a book. After all reading a book doesn't give us an experience, its all "just" chemistry too..
Its a shame the article "wont go into details" because it is only the details that are interesting. The rest is known. Tim Patersons wikipedia page mentions he had access to CP/M source and copied at least the "API" for compatibility purposes. Considering this is low level assembler, for 2 fairly small, mininmal operating systems, basically handling interrupts and interacting with the bios etc, even if Paterson didn't have access to the source, (but may have had e.g. read the same books as Kildall) two operating systems will have similarities, especially if they share an API. There are only a couple of ways to set up an interrupt handler, or call a bios function.
It refers basically only to the IBM z/Architecture machines. (I think no one else makes them any more. There were some IBM compatible (heh) Japanese ones recently). You can call a cluster of PCs a supercomputer, but you cant call it a mainframe.(But you can run a cluster, or sysplex, of mainframes. It sounds over the top but it is actually quite common.) They are particularly considered mainframes when they run z/OS and work in batch mode especially running CICS or IMS based applications. As soon as it runs linux, or web services, or more interactive things, the same zSeries machine is slightly less mainframy. (Using USS is less mainframy than using TSO or ISPF btw heh)
Surely when writing a technical book, rather than a novel about some specifically English people or in a English context, it would be hard to make it specifically British rather than international English. I am trying to think of scenarios where englishms could even occur in an ASP.NET book.
I come from a country where there are always plenty of open cashiers and no lines. If I saw a queue there I would leave and not go shopping because its either overloaded or some system was down. When I first came to Germany I kept seeing the queue and thinking "oh, I will come back later when it isn't so busy". But I have noticed the reverse occurs too. If there is an idle cashier no one goes to them. They assume, due to the absence of the queue that it isn't open yet or something, so they head straight for the queue.
Really, wow I never felt that. I always put them in my bag at the natural speed. The only social pressure I felt was when paying before finishing packing. This lead to the next persons groceries being mixed in with mine and accidentally packing their stuff etc. Now I take my time and finish packing before paying to avoid this issue and it is all good.
Its not really. Most people would get it from the "asian shop", but many "German" supermarkets have a small shelf for "international" stuff like asian noodles, taco shells and russian stuff.
That was my immediate thought too, and I half expected to see 20 year old article. First thing I looked at was the date and I thought, "I wonder what this guy is writing about".
ETL is just a small part of it, and engineers should probably have more of a role than they do. My last project was a data warehouse one, where the thing was obviously slapped together by PowerCenter users. They thought it was all about the ETL, They forgot the other 95%, how to engineer large scale, complex, maintainable software solutions.
Sure, let the powecenter users "write the ETL", but then they need to get the heck out of the way and let the big boys actually build the warehouse.
Two good reasons but (especially outside of the hard sciences) a third reason is possibly even more relevant than supporting a research career or a teaching skills. That "Doctor" title is prestigious. Your employer can pay you more, you can get higher positions as e.g. a consultant on projects, you will automatically get more of a certain type of respect and get listed to more. I am thinking of a management consultant type career here, but I suspect it is reasonably universal. Hell in some cultures I imagine it can even help you get a better choice of marriage partner. (I know it is a little bit fake, but often people's perception is more important than reality)
I don't know many Germans that do not have a credit card these days. You are right that the EC card gets used day-to-day (but maybe less than cash) but most Germans have a credit card for online shopping.
Actually most of the time German VISA and MasterCards work as a debit card. Payments are cleared from your checking account / Giro, instantly or nightly, so you are never really in debt, rather than being a second account that is always negative and partially or fully paid off each month. I am not sure which type is more common, but I usually ended up with the debit card style.
"That has resulted in an awkward arrangement, akin to sending a warship into battle with its skipper stuck onshore."
This seems a bit overstated. Its more akin to the head of NASA not having a space suit, or the head of the Olympics Committee taking 40 seconds to run the 100m. He is basically a pen-pusher at this stage, chasing funding, greasing up to politicians, attending banquets. I think it is good he cannot see secrets, he doesn't need to, he has staff for that.
I am not going to get sucked into Scientology or any other organised religion, but I expect consistency from governments. I find it despicable that governments get to pick and choose which insidious organizations get their blessing. Of course it is a religion, more or less as bad as any other. Either support religious freedom, or don't, but picking your favorites is something for individuals to do not governments.
Those "millions" of programmers had work in their own countries I presume. Long before a small fraction of these "millions" get around to leaving and moving to the west, the market would have stabilized a bit. Wages would raise there as the supply drops below demand. Eventually we will see "millions" of western developers taking a small paycut to move to Romania or Maruitius or wherever for lifestyle reasons. I hope someone will come here to replace my job for much cheaper, I am sick of it. It would take them a while to train up though, and by the time they are ready to take over, I will be ready to move on to something else. All these new programmers will need someone to support, train, manage, lead, and coordinate them.
Yes I am overpaid on a global scale. Underpaid on a local scale heh. Now what we need is millions of people here earning less than me.. That should put prices down...
I am a software development manager from Europe. Right now we have to turn down projects because we don't have enough people. If we have more people we can start more projects and make more money. My wages will go up as I will have a larger team to manage. The developers in the team already will get more seniority as people come in from overseas "below" most of them. Their wages might go up. Some of them that might not perform as well as the new arrivals might get paid less. Overall, the market might not be as flexible as the labor supply, so we might a reduction in wages over the mid term. This would be a correction in my eyes. I think western workers are overpaid and third world workers are underpaid, so it seems fair to see a natural adjustment here.
As someone who did the completely normal thing of leaving one country to go work and live in another, I agree completely and can barely understand those who do not.
I had some access to a mainframe this year and learned the basics of z/OS. Things do feel very restricted and slowish, you really notice that it comes from a batch background, and interactivity came later. A UNIX user might find it a bit frustrating. They can be interesting and do have their charms though. Interesting for you, on the real mainframe, due to the restrictions etc, there was only a limited number of things I could really do on it. Just the stuff I needed for my job and not much more. I actually learned more from reading "the book". I suggest just reading that and then you will have a good idea about whether you want to pursue access on the real machine or not. Free to download: http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg246366.html