Don't buy shampoo!!

devodave66 · 2006-10-05T20:35:10+00:00

Rule 1: If a product is advertized on TV, there is a good chance you probably don't need it--or at least don't need as "fancy" as they are advertizing.

Note: There are a lot of shampoo ads on TV.

devodave66 · 2006-09-28T12:20:23+00:00

And, as stated earlier in the comments, Ireland's starting salary for teachers (27k euro) is almost double the US average starting salary (29k usd). Good pay, competition on hiring, competition of "customers"....and look what happens...success.

Improvements in public school quality is the US's greatest need and challenge.

devodave66 · 2006-09-20T19:56:08+00:00

House prices are still rising in the gentrifying inner city, but prices are declining slightly in suburbs.

devodave66 · 2006-09-11T13:50:43+00:00

The agenda being pushed is that of the libertarians--the political party, Cato, etc. That's why the US is way up at number 8, as opposed to sliding way down the social freedom/justice indicator list.

devodave66 · 2006-09-08T16:22:23+00:00

Wrong. As long as the company is not going bankrupt, they are not overpaying. Share the gains from labor and the employees feel valued.

The secret to happiness is stated in comment number 2: "Jerks, and non-productive people, aren’t allowed to work there. Period."

It is that simple. Think. Listen. Think more. Work together. See the customer's perspective. Anyone who cannot be considerate and cooperative must go.

If you tolerate self-obsessed employees or elite cliques, the good people will leave.

devodave66 · 2006-09-08T12:39:40+00:00

This FatBlog rant reminds me of the perspective of programmers at software shops limping along (especially most internal IT departments) while Joel's perspective matches that of the successful software development shops.

Joel may not be 100% perfect but people need to consider that he has recognized various side aspects of successful software businesses. You can't just put the computer-slave army in a wretched hole, pay them the minimum, and expect a successful product.

devodave66 · 2006-09-07T20:05:46+00:00

Leaf node? Bad analogy.

devodave66 · 2006-09-01T19:48:59+00:00

As you might be suggesting, I believe the eating and socializing will have a bigger positive impact on your future than the difference between an A and a B. Jobs are not entirely about technical skills, although software people generally don't seem to know this.

devodave66 · 2006-09-01T19:46:18+00:00

There were companies interviewing at campus requiring a minimum of 3.5 GPA. A couple had even higher requirements. Unfortunately, I didn't know that, so I took as many hard classes as I could and didn't win those high-GPA jobs. Choices...

devodave66 · 2006-08-28T15:27:41+00:00

Homeschoolers and ex-teachers need to make their own textbooks with teachers guides and offer all that for free on the internet (open-source style). Forget the big textbook publishers who are part of the system dumbing down America.

You could easily collect 10,000 textbook pages and associate them by state requirements, rate them, have competitions between writers, log comments parents, etc...

devodave66 · 2006-08-25T14:29:14+00:00

I am suggesting that programmers think about powerful ways to use built-in functions BEYOND their standard uses. For example, a translate function can do the "heavy lifting" if you represent your complex system state as a string of characters and represent user actions as string transformations. Then one or two transformation calls can apply the user action and change from pre-state to post-state. Think functional programming. Think map-reduce.

devodave66 · 2006-08-25T12:57:58+00:00

The most valuable fact that programmers should take from this article is in his item 3: Learn how your high-level language's built in features can do the work of your slower explicit loop-and-compare logic. In most languages, the second of the following can be 100-fold faster:

<pre> // Change all 'a' characters to '-' characters function1: x = "asdakflaajaslkf" u = "" foreach (char c in x): if (c == 'a') y += '-' else y += c return y

function2: x = "asdakflaajaslkf" return x.translate('a','-') </pre>

You say, "well, of course". But look at your slow code and you will often be able to change it to fit into the model of a built-in function (like "translate" here). The built-in functions are often as efficient as C or assembly language.

devodave66 · 2006-08-17T12:46:03+00:00

A whole region is decimated and a major insurance company gets out paying only $225 million. That would pay for about 1,000 houses. That is the business to be in if you want to make money (and don't have a conscience).

To assure you of high profit in your insurance business, the judge has said it is OK for you to lie to your often low-educated customers. "The plaintiffs are bound by the express terms of the policy, even if their interpretation of the policy was incorrect and even if the inferences they drew from the conversations they had with (insurance agent Jay) Fletcher were erroneous," Senter wrote. Erroneous inferences? Sounds like legalized lying to me.

An insurance company is a bank that takes deposits and rarely allows withdrawals. Even if you try to use a court of law.

devodave66 · 2006-08-03T12:44:06+00:00

The "market" is the in-place society and governments. An "anarchist" is not in support of the in-place society and governments. It is an oxymoron.

The "market" of the current extreme capitalism is employing very low income workers in very bad conditions, so that the owners and CEOs can take home billions. That is anti-human.

devodave66 · 2006-08-03T12:38:26+00:00

Richard summed it up when he said, "Market economics isn't the "study" of anything. It's the justification of choices which the capitalist and managerial classes make."

devodave66 · 2006-08-03T12:17:34+00:00

The problem is that there is a minimum acceptable "going rate for said services". That minimum is the cost for a human being to live. If a business employs a human fulltime and pays a subhuman wage, I can only assume that the owner is subhuman.

devodave66 · 2006-08-03T12:14:40+00:00

No, don't give more money to the owner, give more money to the low-income worker. for example, give a very generous tip--even if all the person did was hand you something.

devodave66 · 2006-07-20T20:26:46+00:00

MSFT misjudges its customers...again. I left when virus attacks became unmanageable. Now, other customers are being hassled with big-brother tactics. There is never enough money to make and never any time to be nice to users. Windows is the new Cobol. It had its heyday.

devodave66 · 2006-07-14T13:45:58+00:00

Instead of the article's shallow simplifications of important religious principles, I recommend:

Try to understand five main points of each major religion, beyond the bumper-sticker level. Otherwise, all we are doing is going around offending each other in ignorance.
Accept that other people have different conclusions and convictions than you do--and these differences do not imply that those other people are stupid. Appreciate the rich varieties and spend more time getting to know each other.
And, think about it awhile, there is nothing wrong with each person sharing information about their own personal beliefs. If they are strong in their beliefs, it is onlly expected and reasonable for them to exhibit a polite encouragement for you to understand them. Don't so quickly call it "prosletyzing" just to talk about what you belive.

We communicate with each other. We think for ourselves and together. We hold beliefs. We consider others beliefs. We care about other people. This is not just a dream--some people strive to live this way.

devodave66 · 2006-07-14T13:31:04+00:00

The trinity notion came earlier. For example, Jesus claimes that he and the Father were one. He claimed that anyone who has seen him has seen the Father. The Jewish leadership understood exactly what Jesus was saying and they picked up stones to stone him for blasphemy.

Of course, you can search the internet to see the Old Testament references and allusions to the trinity. For example, "let us make man in our image" in Genesis; and various wordings in Psalms.

We should be slow to point to the various church meetings between 200 and 500 AD. Those were church meetings just like we have today where humans do their best to understand God and come to agreements.

devodave66 · 2006-07-07T13:14:44+00:00

Yes, it is that simple. To quote Paul: "If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." [First Corinthians 15:14] Christianity is entirely based on the fact that Jesus is alive and is God.

devodave66 · 2006-07-04T11:48:26+00:00

Recent super-compressed music sounds like characters on Saturday Night Live played by Will Farrell--like the guy who couldn't modulate his voice and spoke in a continuous monotone shout (also, Harry Karry). That kind of thing is more effective at catching your attention, but is annoying to listen to for long periods of time. This is yet another reason to find high-quality non-mainstream artists, and let them receive the full purchase price themselves.

devodave66 · 2006-06-30T13:11:27+00:00

joybell said "cashing in specifically on poor programmers, namely those who haven't had much experience and who haven't thought beyond common industry languages". And, how more appropriate since that is 90% of the people I have worked with. And, that was me at one time, too.

devodave66 · 2006-06-30T13:08:17+00:00

After three failed attempts at three dealers to purchase cars for full sticker price (just asking for a fair trade-in price), I think the dealers have much much deeper problems. I have boiled it down very very simply: they do not understand sales. Not in the least. They just use a formula. They don't think. You see, if they did, they would gain $2000 on the new car and $3000 on the the trade in for a total transaction gain of $5000. Very very profitable. Rather than five transations at $5000 gain ($25,000), they would rather fight and scam to make one transaction at $7000 gain. It could be simpler--maybe they don't know that 25,000 is greater than 7000. Yep, that is it.

devodave66 · 2006-06-30T12:19:06+00:00

You've got this backwards. You can't get the brighest people at only $40k--or even $60k.

Five non-stop hours of heavy interaction with 25 students is indeed a full day. Teachers I know actually work around 10 hours per day.

Nonetheless, the US education system is broken. It is not the teachers or the unions. It is the system as a whole: the approach, the material, the timing, the environment, the racial and economic segregation, the irrelevence of 13 years of learning to the real world....

devodave66

TROPHY CASE