Also, just want to point out, in Arizona, for most misdemeanors, you have no right to a jury trial, I didn't read up enough on this to know whether it would be a felony / misdemeanor, etc (or if it could be either), but its something to also be aware of, I have lived in Arizona and seen their legal system firsthand and its a pathetic joke, it has to be one of the worst in the U.S., certainly for a state that has a major metro area.. if you get charged with a misdemeanor, your options are 1) bench trial in front of some corrupt judge (about 80% chance of conviction) 2) plea deal. Someone needs to stop the nutjobs out there, I am all for the federal government stepping in, in cases like this, where they are essentially trying to massively violate people's civil rights.
The state truly does have a "prison complex", it has a huge law enforcement culture and they are looking for bodies to put in prison as it makes the state money and this may just be another one of their sick attempts to have another way to put people in jail. Seeing something like this is getting me all worked up, I truly hate that place with a passion
I am extremely glad to have gotten out of Arizona, I made the mistake of moving there for two years and literally put everything I had into being able to move out of there. The only way I can really describe the state is "assbackwards", I'm sorry to anyone who still lives there but there is just something off about the place as far as the way the police, other government officials and elected people there act, they are trying to make their own little fiefdom out in the desert and "to hell" with the rest of the U.S. and its laws, rights, etc
I think this will happen eventually as well, however it still feels far off, I definitely get frustrated with Java's lack of functional programming, I just think its so well rooted now in so many organizations it will be a while until a new platform can really take over.. I haven't really looked at Scala but plan to, the problem is, there just aren't many companies using it and unless you're starting your own, it feels like you have to keep your experience in line with what companies are using
The JVM is written in C, if thats what you mean by "is that still Java". I agree Java has its weak spots but I still feel it has its places (maybe I'm a bit biased as I do a lot of Java dev), the whole JSP, Java full web stack is pretty awful, I definitely agree with critics who say things along these lines, but for writing code that isn't just CRUD and actually does computations, uses complex data structures, etc I don't think any dynamic language would be replacing this anytime soon. (are people really writing large scale search engines in Ruby or Python, etc?) I prefer Java to C# as I develop on Linux and have never been into the whole Microsoft scene, so I think its a good alternative to the .Net world. I think the future of Java on the web is mainly for powering API's, whether internal or public, while other languages continue to take over anything relating to the front-end.
With java, you have tons of libraries for doing complex computing, the ones that come to mind first for me are search oriented ones like Apache Lucene / Solr as well as NLP libs, etc... Java no longer needs to try to be the "end all" solution, but are there other platforms that have the wealth of libraries for working with big data? (honestly am a bit curious about this)
I worked from home for a startup (as a contractor, wasn't invested in the business at all) that had no office. In this case, the owner and other programmer were in the same metro area but, after a few initial meetings, I met with them in person less than once a month, on average. I can't say its ideal, it did annoy me having to always be on the phone with him, etc but he had a somewhat abrasive way of dealing with people to get his way so I'm not sure that this sort of setup would necessarily preclude success.
yes, you are right, we are agreeing, I think I put it the way I did since I still like some light, I know some people like to work in what would be considered a "dark" environment, I suppose I prefer more on the side of "dimly lit"
Yes, this is definitely true.. the main thing I've noticed is I like to not be a in an environment where its really brightly lit, so time of day isn't important, just if its during day time, I need to be somewhere not right by a window, etc, I find the office I work in currently has a great lighting scheme that seems to keep me where I need to be regardless of time of day
I worked at a place that seemed to be this way, it wasn't a startup though but a fairly small company. The offices were in an older office park and kind of dingy and I think thats why. When you have certain types of insulation, etc and the building isn't well kept up I think it tends to harbor mold, etc, I know I would always smell something (like mold) when I walked in one of the doors.
By contrast the building I work in now is actually quite old, but it has wooden ceilings, no layers of insulation, etc and is fairly open and airy. I think it really can be caused by the building and then of course the lack of space and number of people also contribute.
I work in SF now too but the "sick office" place was in Phoenix, there they had to run the AC all day for 7-8 months out of the year, which I think is part of the problem, here the climate is milder and I would think you can figure out creative ways to use the ventilation system to get more fresh air into the building
You can make this argument about most software developers too, while they may create unique applications, they are mainly using the "already known" (existing languages, API's, etc)... You can then go on to apply this argument to nearly any other "white collar" job, accounting is "the application of the already known", etc..
White collar does not mean that you are in a research field and pushing the limits of knowledge, from what I understand it has long had an entirely different meaning. Personally, I feel that white collar / blue collar are very outdated terms. I often feel that a software developer is somewhat of a modern blue collar worker as its a creative trade and very different from a "white collar" job such as a sales or marketing job.
My understanding is that some "hospital chains" have started doing stuff like this, primarily larger ones, however I think a lot of the smaller / independent ones are often still stuck in the dark ages as they can't afford the hassle of moving to newer technology
I think it may even go beyond that, where they have even stipulated what other software could be run on the machine. I do know, for example, that they HAVE to run XP, nothing newer, or it would void their support, etc.. its really insane how companies can get away with that, I don't even understand how for a web app (it uses a Java applet, so I guess it goes beyond a regular "web app", but still..) they can demand this sort of control over the end user's system.
its forbidden by their IT department, I don't know the whole picture, as I'm just going by what information my dad was able to pry out of them, but I think they basically have barebones machines with nothing but essential software and something such as a browser other than IE 6 isn't on that list and I guess you would have to move mountains to get them to approve it because apparently they haven't moved into this century with everyone else and are stuck in the past.
The topic of regulation that others have mentioned here makes me think of the airline industry also as, from what I can tell, medical regulations are almost as strict as those, I worked with a guy who used to do programming for devices on airliners and he said it was basically insane how much regulation there was, they were still not approved to use multi-core processors, etc so it was like programming for computers running technology of 10 years ago. I think people tend to think that healthcare would / should be much easier to use new technology for as its not quite the same as the aviation industry. However, it seems this isn't the case in legal terms and the industry may need a regulatory reform before innovation can really take place. In the case of an airliner, it really is life or death, however with healthcare, I think they can put in place enough backup systems (writing on paper, etc), even make the system do print-outs at set intervals, so if it goes down, there is a paper record right there, or something like that, so these issues can be overcome
Yes, and hospitals have arcane policies / IT departments, my dad is a doctor and the hospital he works at still has Internet Explorer 6 installed on all computers there and they refuse to upgrade it for fear it might break compatibility with some ancient software program they use they access through it. He wants me to create some little software program to see if he can get them to use it when the main system goes down but it has to work in IE6 so its kind of a nightmare and I've been dragging my feet on it because of this... its things like this that make dealing with healthcare such a pain in the ass.
Thinking about this more, its actually a bit scary if I do create something and he is able to get them to use it as I could be opening myself up to a lot of liability. I figure, as a doctor, he should be aware of all this but not 100% sure how up on this he actually is, maybe I should get him to sign something having him take full ownership and responsibility of the software
Not sure why he threw compulsory military service in their which seems to be counter to the other points, all that would do is give the corrupt politicians a low wage, essentially temporarily enslaved, class of people to do their bidding. If politicians should be assumed corrupt why on earth give them our young people to control and indoctrinate for two years against their will
One reason would be if you use a compiled language server side that could be a reason its faster than javascript. another reason would be that rendering pages is usually lighter weight, you already may have a lot of objects in memory on the server, especially if using orm layer caching, etc, as I understand it, a framework like backbone has a slight delay in configuring itself
Something that's helped me, without having to resort to smart drugs, or anything like that, is increasing your vitamin intake from natural sources, I get the natural vitamins (made from real fruits and vegetables, not manufactured ones in a lab, you have to look for them as they don't sell them everywhere and they are more expensive) and also drink a lot of vegetable juice or the veggie / fruit juice mixes (look for the light ones or sodium free ones if you want to keep it as healthy as possible). I don't know for sure if is a placebo effect or if it really boosts energy short term, but I feel like it can sometimes give me a boost and just feel healthier and more awake overall.
Sometimes I wonder, can't exercise, for example, going for a run outdoors, or even just working out with weights, be a form of meditation? This assumes that you are in good enough shape / have exercised long enough to where its basically routine, you hardly have to think while you're doing it, so you can just let your mind go blank. I think this is part of the appeal for exercise for me sometimes, I find that if I have 30 minutes to spare I like to do something active rather than quietly meditate.
This is absolutely true in America and in almost no way is it necessarily tied to being a Christian, even those who are non-religious will often espouse the fact that alcohol "isn't like other drugs". Obviously this is just anecdotal evidence but a number of people I know will insist, for example, that alcohol is far less harmful and "not a drug" when compared to marijuana. They usually use an example of someone they know who they know uses / has used marijuana, who clearly has issues / problems in their life and say, "see what it can do to you", while completely ignoring X number of alcoholics all around them that have completely fucked up lives and the fact that the person they are talking about often also abuses alcohol so there is really no way to separate his / her alcohol use from their marijuana use to pinpoint which has a more negative affect.
The scary thing here is that basically no one in the U.S., who isn't a teenager / in college, will openly come out and say to most people, "I smoke marijuana", so anyone who is remotely normal / has a job, etc will only tell other people whom they know also smoke marijuana (even if just occasionally), because otherwise they are ostracized. Therefore, we have this skewed perception where only people who are either too close to someone to hide it (such as a son / daughter) or there life is messed up in such a way that its obvious / they don't care about hiding it are the ones that these people can point to and say "they use marijuana" as any "normal" person who uses it will never admit to it around someone who they know is against it or even neutral / not in favor and may actually go to great lengths to hide it as the repercussions can be extremely severe. If you live in the wrong state, you can quickly lose your job, etc very fast if word gets out.
yes, I agree, I once worked in a completely open office (no separate rooms, even for the manager / "CEO", it was a very small startup company and would have to listen to this sort of nonsense all day
Even then, you can keep communication via email or IM, just send a message to the person who may know, "hey, do we have any library for this, seems like we might", etc and they get back to you when they can, you don't have to have face to face to ask questions, as you said, mainly its important for newbies, but more experienced dev's should know when to ping someone even if the response won't be immediate.
yeah, there's a literary / English class term for this sort of article, basically, you're just arguing one side, you may not even believe all the points, but everything is supposed to support the main point, its not meant to be a balanced presentation of an issue
yeah I definitely agree. I used to work in a cube farm, the office I work in now is more open, has sort of half-cubicles but is laid out differently than a cube farm. With the cube farm people would still talk and you'd hear their private conversations but never see them, at least with the more open plan if you glare over at someone who is being rudely loud they get the idea, with the cube farm they just yammer away all day in their little isolated pods, I noticed some of the dev's there seemed to screw around a lot more and have a lot more non-work related conversations (one in particular) than they do in the more open environment.
In some places its lower, some places higher, I presume, but I've never heard as high as 23%, I think people here wouldn't stand for that, I presume there are much better social services in Ireland, which would be the benefit of higher taxation
I agree, its simply not possible to do this effectively in many situations, you can't just plug in a bunch of people for 2 days a week and expect to get the same output as the equivalent number of hours worked from a team of full-timers. I think companies could potentially adjust to this long-term, but projects and tasks have to become much more modular. With most companies I've worked with, their code base simply isn't set up for this sort of thing, theres often a lot of wasted time because of lack of documentation, refactoring that never was done, etc to where its often very hard to feel like you're working at maximum efficiency so IMO it would be hard to work in this sort of environment just 2 days a week, however on smaller scale projects, where its just one dev working on a new project, I think it would be more possible.
we are taxed at consumption as well, I'm assuming you mean you want even higher sales tax than we currently have but no income tax? I have felt that the current sales tax of up to 10% in some places is already fairly high as is