FiatDev Tumble Log

Master's degree preferred

I recently found this in a job ad:

This position will be responsible for customizing xml front-end templates

Sounds like fun. After lines of “must have X plus years in Y technology” the employer states:

Candidates will possess a Bachelor’s Degree in a related field, with a Master’s Degree preferred.

Seriously? I am curious what field is “related” to editing XML templates.

“ And many of us are hoping that all those in power fail, because those in power have a grating habit of being annoyingly self-righteous, hopelessly corrupt, resolutely incompetent and completely apathetic about the freedoms that they have sworn to protect.

— Nothing Personal, But I Hope You All Fail

“ But why is the Macalope thrilled by this news? He is thrilled because a Zune phone must, by the comic laws that govern our universe, be simply hysterical.

— The Macalope

“ No one likes the transmission of power between generations—not the left or the right. But the market forces favored by the right turn out to be a better way of preventing it than the credentials the left are forced to fall back on.

— Paul Graham: After Credentials

Forwarded to me by a friend:

    In wine

There is wisdom;

    In beer

There is freedom;

    In water

There is bacteria.

“ Some of us learn by doing, while others learn by following a strict regimen of carefully-planned activities that build skills systematically from the ground up. While the latter probably spent time at school using Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing on an Apple IIGS, the former spent the same time dying of dysentery behind the teacher’s back.

— Review: Improve your iPhone typing with Typing Genius

“ Yet it was Mr. Sarkozy, speaking before Congress last November, who offered the most profound assessment of our nation’s gift to the world. “What made America great was her ability to transform her own dream into hope for all mankind,” he said. “America did not tell the millions of men and women who came from every country in the world and who — with their hands, their intelligence and their heart — built the greatest nation in the world: ‘Come, and everything will be given to you.’ She said: ‘Come, and the only limits to what you’ll be able to achieve will be your own courage and your own talent.’

— A Capitalist Manifesto - WSJ.com

“ Beer is a health food. And you do not need to buy it from those wan, unhealthy-looking people who, peering disapprovingly at you through rimless Trotsky-style spectacles, seem to run all the health food stores.

— George F. Will - Survival of the Sudsiest

“ The user manual is a list of software design mistakes.

— Quoted in Could software be a list of business process mistakes?

“ Every revolutionary idea evokes three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: (1) it’s completely impossible; (2) it’s possible but it’s not worth doing; (3) I said it was a good idea all along.

— Arthur C. Clarke

“ There are the languages everyone complains about, and there are the languages no one uses.

— Damien Katz: What Sucks About Erlang

“ The fundamental lesson is that property rights are not—and never have been—created by Congressional fiat. Property rights emerge spontaneously from the social fabric of a community.

— History suggests copyright crusade is a lost cause

“ [I]…said that I don’t need an IDE, he got mad and called me a name. It wasn’t even a particularly imaginative name, so perhaps he could get his IDE to automatically rename that name for him to turn it into a better insult.

— Static Languages: Rationalizations and Myths :: Steve Vinoski’s Blog

“ The passion is impressive but the clarity, not so much.

— Things I Learned At The Apple Store — Part 2

“ Is it more depressing to think that Microsoft, seemingly alone among industry observers, truly believes that there’s some legitimate “synergy” (ugh) here, or that it is consciously leveraging its bank account to crush a competitor? In one case, Microsoft looks hopelessly out of touch, or perhaps just so desperate that denial has set in. The other evokes the “evil” Microsoft from the bad-old days of the 1990s.

— Ars Technica: Knee-deep in the dead