dreamhost, bluehost, hostgator etc are notorious for this. It works fine at low volumes, but as soon as you are getting a few thousand hits per day, the site is mysteriously unavailable. Their offering is basically a bait and switch. As soon as your volume increases, they encourage you to upgrade your plan.
When I read articles like this, I feel old. Really old.
I mean, 28 years in the workforce, staring blankly in meetings when someone talks about 'synergy' and 'driving the key factors forward' as if it actually means something, when really it is a 20th century sub-dialect of English known as 'corporate bullshit'.
And here comes a brave new world of hackers and painters who are 'passionate' and who "bounced around a couple of times in corporately jobs that aren’t the right match and is ready to take the leap". He doesn't have that "founders spark", whatever that is, but he is "awesome" and "super, super smart", and seemingly importantly, "ambitious and passionate".
Apparently, startups are "cool" now, so programmers are no longer sucked into Wall Street by the evil siren songs of Vampire Squids.
Forgive my crusty old cynicism, but it all sounds like a pitch, a new sub-dialect of bullshit, to convince young software developers to work long hours for low pay with the promise of creating something "cool" that you are "passionate" about. (Personally, I'm pretty passionate about prosperity).
And always in the background is the unspoken promise of great riches (Whatsapp was bought for 19 BEEELION dollars!!). Unspoken, because that would be gauche to suggest it was about the money.
Edit: Thanks ars. I guess it's because one of my posts was downvoted 5 times without explanation.
Or maybe because I suggested fluoride was rat poison in another post. I've obviously offended someone, or broken some rule I wasn't aware of.
At any rate, I'm kind of used to this kind of insidious censorship on the web. It's probably the reason why the web is becoming such a worthless place to spend one's time.
>> The chlorine makes salt, and the fluoride can be sold to be added to city drinking water.
Yes, because what our drinking water REALLY needs is more rat poison.
On the up side,in clinical trials, fluoride stops rats from breeding, so if the same effect is observed in humans, at least we will have an answer to the world's population problem.
I remember reading about this valve in 'Man Out Of Time'[1], (great book BTW, highly recommended).
Well, you said ask questions. :)
1) I seem to recall this valve only works when there is flow, so if you need to store liquid oxygen, for example, you would still need a check valve on the tank. Is that correct?
2) I think there is another variation on this valve for liquids, is that right? This version is for gasses, the valve for liquids looks like a series of petals. Is that right or did I imagine it?
3) Was the original intent of this valve to prevent back pressure from the blade turbine?
I think the author of the article answers his own question on why he misses war so much:
Being in danger is NOT the same as being helpless. When you are in a war, you are in danger, but you are not helpless. You can fight back. You can make life and death decisions (literally). You can take the life of those who are attacking you.
In civilian life, your world is being shaped and decided by faceless powers-that-be, meeting behind closed doors in corporate boardrooms, government committees and banking lairs. And there is not a damn thing you can do about it. You are helpless and at the mercy of those who want to control you. You can't fight back. You can't kill those who are stealing from you with sophistry and corruption.
Being in danger is not so bad. As the planet's top predator, we are designed for a little danger, we even thrive on it. Being helpless on the other hand is a state of quiet desperation. Helplessness literally makes us sick, depressed and confused.
It doesn't surprise me that he misses war, and if the war with Iran comes off as planned, he will be back in Khaki for another tour.
Thanks for enlightening me. Welch's tenure ended in 2001, by which time 40% of GE's revenues were from GE Capital, who were actively engaged in derivatives markets and had large exposures that would have gone bad even if they hadn't levered up from 2002 to 2006.
There are many other criticisms of Welch's tenure that come to the conclusion that GE did well DESPITE Jack Welch, not because of him.
Here is a tasty link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch#Criticism
At any rate, I personally think that CEOs are figureheads of companies and the only things about a CEO that makes any difference is
a) how good a head of hair they have
b) how tall they are
c) which ivy league school they attended and if they shared a class with anyone now at Goldman Sachs
At least he was a Chemist, and not one of those idiot Physicists ;)
"An Industry Moves On." LOL.
Here's a little secret from a 43yo programmer making the best $$$ of his career. MOST SOFTWARE IS NOT BUILT BY SOFTWARE COMPANIES.
Sure, everyone knows about Google, and Facebook, and for my fellow genXers, Microsoft. The truth is though, the code that gets written at those companies and other software companies like them is a tiny fraction of the all code that gets written.
All over the economy, companies that are NOT software companies are writing code to DO STUFF. Sure Facebook is highly visible, 'valued at 100 BEEELLLIION dollars', and what all the cool kids are into. But really, who gives a shit about a feed of photos and asinine updates. Yes, it's like soap operas. Always popular, always mildly profitable, and if it disappeared tomorrow, the economy wouldn't notice.
Real companies, on the other hand, need to build software to improve their business. Your productivity at those companies will depend on you getting some 'Domain Knowledge'. Yes, I know it's like getting your hands dirty, but if you want to prosper in software development as you get older, then you will need to add domain knowledge to your skill set.
Ah! But which domains? Pick the hardest ones, is my advice. Ten years ago I would have said Financial Markets, but we are coming to the end of that gravy train. Financial Markets is a hard domain. It's difficulty makes it very difficult to find programmers who understand the domain enough to be productive, hence programmers who do have that knowledge are in very high demand. And no, they don't give a shit about how old you are.
In the future, I think the fields of bio-informatics, robotic control, logistics, traffic control (and other N-P hard problems) will present great opportunities for older programmers to find niche domains to excel at and add longevity to your programming career.
If you are young and you want to try your hand at a startup, do it now. If it works out, more power to you. If not, and you want to build a long career in software development, then find difficult and complex domains/industries and learn about them, because even if they don't build software now, they will in the future, and for that they are going to need programmers who understand the domain, not domain experts that can hack together some code.
Actually, this article reads like a play book for the next group who wants to create 'MegaUpload2'.
1) Secure your servers
2) Encrypt your email
3) Keep a low profile
4) Hide your identity
5) etc
1. Register (with email) for practices - THAT INFORMATION WAS NOT PROVIDED BEFOREHAND
2. Python only - THAT INFORMATION WAS NOT PROVIDED BEFOREHAND
3. Skype required - THAT INFORMATION WAS NOT PROVIDED BEFOREHAND
-1
fail and don't send me any spam on my email addy.
> I've visited twice, read a lot, and conversed with a number of people who've lived there.
So did I before I lived there. Once you live there for a while (a year or more), you begin to understand that much of what you thought was true is merely a thin façade.
Still, compared to it's neighbours, it has come a long way. Mostly due to importing expertise and technology from the West.
>I admire how productive and peaceful Singapore is, with high living standards
It's not particularly productive. Singapore lives off the proceeds of its port and it's oil Bourse.It IS peaceful, I'll grant you that. When you have police with automatic weapons,ready to use, in plain view it tends to chill people out.
> a large degree of economic freedom/opportunity
A 'large degree'? Sounds very Singaporean. :)
>continuing effective investment in infrastructure and education
Debatable. Certainly that is the Govt. line, but like much in SGP, the reality is very different.
> From what I've read, its health-care system delivers results as well as any other highly-developed country, at much lower costs.
I know this is a BIG issue for USians, but most developed countries don't spend much time thinking about their health care system. It's taken for granted, because it is always there, and mostly works (with exceptions).
> Often not worth it, C is the lowest common denominator of languages, if you want to be accessible to all languages... you'll probably use C.
Personally I see that not so much as a feature of C, but as a limitation of other languages. Interoperability is a Hard Problem(tm) which deserves more thought and effort than it currently receives.
It's easy to say 'If you want interoperability, use C' because that's the current state of affairs. It would be better if interop was a solved problem.
Thanks for replying. I lived in Singapore for a year, and my experience of the place was very different from yours is, so I am interested in your perspective.
From your reply, I understand that you are running a startup in Singapore? I am particularly interested in why you find Singapore good in that regard. Apart from the low taxes, my experience of Singapore would indicate to me that it is a very difficult place for a technology startup for the following reasons (if you could refute these I would be most interested).
1. The large and ongoing diaspora of educated, intelligent engineers who find the constant censorship and nonsensical propaganda distasteful and leave for free-er pastures. Making it difficult to hire and keep technical people locally.
2. The abysmal state of internet services. I found internet to be slow, unavailable, expensive, monitored and censored.
3. Despite the low taxes, the cost of living is very high. The Lee family (through Temasek and the Government) control the supply and demand for housing and use that leverage to apply a 'rental tax' on guest workers which is a way of distributing wealth from the middle class 'migrant' workers to the local population (who receive preferential terms for loans and purchase price of Government housing. There is typically a 300 bps spread between the loan and the rental yield). Food and transport is also expensive.
4. Related to 1 & 2, the general antithetic feeling towards free speech.
5. The city is boring as hell. It has some good museums, and a couple of interesting nightspots, but generally not much goes on. Anyone doing anything interesting risks fining, caning, jailing or all three. For technical people this is a big downside.
Apart from those, there are some things I do agree with you on.
1. The city is very safe (except for Dengue fever), and very clean, something that appeals to technical people.
2. The weather is excellent if you like 28 deg Celsius @ 85% humidity 300 days of the year. (I don't, but SGP does have A/C almost everywhere.)
3. It IS a great base for travelling in SE Asia. For North Asia, I think HK is better.
And some, not so much.
1. The public transport is not particularly reliable, except in Govt. statistics. The buses are often late, are very slow and badly organised. The trains are fine as long as you don't have to change lines, then they seem to be deliberately mis-timed. I was in Singapore when the train breakdowns occurred. On the green line they did not have enough power to run the line, so they started turning the A/C off.
2. The food ranges from mediocre (and expensive) to food poisoning. How you find the food will depend on which country you arrived from. For me, it was uninspiring.
Every place has good points and bad. On balance, I personally felt that the bad outweighed the good, but there were other contributing factors to that decision. I am still curious as to why you think it is a good city for a startup.
Regards,
o2sd
> If you're passionate about computing and software engineering, you'll have a natural interest in how things work under the hood.
When I was 12, I learned 6502 assembly language. The computer I had did not have a C compiler, only BASIC or assembler (you could also enter hex into memory locations, which was hardcore). Learning assembly is actually a LOT easier than people make out. Assembly is basically mnemonics for the underlying machine code, plus named locations. Assembly has everything a language needs for Turing completeness. Assign, Add, Subtract, Compare, Branch. And THAT is how the computer works 'under the hood'. C is one level of abstraction above that, and while it's true that a LOT of software has been historically written in C, before C came along, most software was written in assembler or BASIC (which is older than C, for the historians).
> Learning C is almost mandatory if you want to see how deep the rabbit hole is.
Not really. I know what is going on 'down there', regardless of which language was used to compile the machine code. What is REALLY useful is to have really succinct, powerful, high-level abstractions to build software quickly and with as little code as possible.
> Knowing it will certainly help when exploring the intricacies of processors and operating systems.
If that's what you want to do, then fine. I'm too much of a utilitarian for that kind of exploration. I want to build stuff.
I think if you want to understand what's going on 'down there' in the 'rabbit hole', learn assembly language. There are only seven to ten basic instructions and you can learn them in a couple of days. You can build anything you want in assembly language, if you have an eternity to do it in.
If I wanted to do iOS/Cocoa programming, I would go straight to Objective-C, bypassing C without stopping, but that's me.
I learned C++ without ever learning C. Although, one could make the argument that in learning C++, I learned about 80% of C anyway. I can debug and fix C code, but I don't enjoy it, and avoid it if possible.
C is interesting, in the same way that Cuneiform is interesting. Personally I just find the Roman alphabet a lot more productive.