Sadly.... very, very sadly, I have to disagree with you.
The average american is completely driven by fear and pretty much just accepts the reality they're presented as how it is, how it was, and how it will be. Very few people have the courage to try to bring about change. Look at how long slavery existed, then look at how long Jim Crowe laws were in place after that. If you tell the average American that communists/terrorists/gays/drug dealers/whoever are out to get them, and the only way they'll be safe is to give up some of their rights/freedoms the sad, sad truth is most people will choose safety over liberty.
I talked to a guy just a couple weeks ago, a smart college-educated guy, who when I was ranting about surveillance said he didn't care. When I looked at him incredulously he said he "didn't have anything to hide" and something about catching/punishing whichever bad guys we were talking about. It was yet another step towards me losing all faith in humanity.
You can't sell a (tax-free) $3,000 banana that comes with a "free" plasma tv to avoid paying taxes on the tv sale, I assume similar rules would apply here as you're just wink-wink nudge-nudging to get around what is really a payment for the service.
Some of the worry about lines and wait times may be FUD but there is certainly a lot of truth to it as well. I personally know people who came to the US from Canada to get surgery when they would have had to wait 1-3 months in CA. I also know a doctor who moved his family to the US because he was sick of dealing with the Canadian system.
Lets not pretend socialized medicine will magically solve all our problems. With how the US gov't handles things, what we're likely to see is all the worst parts of the bureaucracy in HMO's now forced on everyone.
The democrats are just as corrupt and just as fond of taking away your freedom as the republicans. They just haven't had a chance to do so in a while. I don't know what the solution is, but neither "vote democrat" nor "vote republican" seems to be it.
Buying a second dvr IS working out a solution to the problem though. In fact, it is the best solution if you can afford it. No matter how we compromise, we still end at a net loss (one of us has to delete shows we don't want to). Buying a second allows both parties to keep everything.
Again, as many have pointed out, it all depends on the individuals. Some are going to want to stay more independent others are going to want to share more. Neither is better than the other, it just depends on the people involved.
If I could mod you up I would. You are right on both points. It is highly likely that we will start seeing droves of freshman declared as something very open, in fact my school has a "Liberal arts - open option" for people undecided on a major. Then after getting a number of preliminary courses done switch to their "real" major.
Which has the negative that in many cases these students won't be getting the best use of their education because their adviser/counselor won't be able to help them as much, and they may miss out on other extra-curricular activities because they are one major on paper but a different one in reality.
Every time one of these stories comes around (and some politician proposes some ludicrous internet filtering/logging/restriction every few months it seems) I always wonder the same thing:
Are they completely out of touch with technology (it is often a guy in his 60s or 70s proposing the law) and they really see it as a menace and thing these things will solve it, or
Are they completely aware the program won't do one damned thing to solve any problem, but the propose it anyway just so they can put a blurb in their campaign ads about how they protect children.
I played a pure blacksmith for more than a year and had a blast.
Though it has been years since we played, my friends and I occasionally reminisce about the crazy things we did starting out in UO before we even knew about macroing. Our first house was a 1-room that we paid for by spending HOURS and HOURS mining iron ore by hand and selling the ingots in town. Buying that first house was quite possibly the most fun thing I've done in a video game.
I find it fascinating that all the later, more popular mmorpg's seem to be far inferior to the "original": Ultima Online.
You could own a house, put vendors there to sell stuff, you had trade skills that were fully independent of fighting, you had an economy of "rare" artifacts with no use at all people just wanted them to have them, you could kill other players and take their gear.
And it was so much friendlier to the casual player: you could teleport to where your real-life friends were, you could play with your friends even if they played 40 hours a week and you played 2, you could macro when you were away to keep up with your friends or do things like craft armor to support a guild.
PvP made you actually have REAL friends and REAL enemies, instead of "You're an orc and he's an elf so you hate each other". It also made guilds have value, as you needed protection and could benefit from a guildmate making your armor while you made him potions.
Basically, I just can't stand that WoW is worse than UO in almost every way but has about 8.8 million more subscribers. UO was ahead of its time.
I don't think he meant accidental blocking of things that are false positives for porn like superbowl XXX.
The concept is once you start blocking porn, you tend to start blocking other things. Because we don't want terrorism so we better block that website on how to make a bomb. And we don't want racism so we better block that site that we consider hate speech. And that website with {insert religious figure/icon} in the {offensive noun or verb} is clearly obscene so we better block that.
Pretty soon, you've got something far far worse than a 10 year old seeing a boob.
I have to fully disagree. I have met people before who say similar things that a degree in X or a few years working will make you "just as good" of a programmer.
NO! It may make you as familiar with syntax as a CS major, but it does not rival the software development and problem solving skills of a CS degree. In CS you take classes in programming, algorithms, data structures, project management, testing, and a large range of practical and theoretical courses. Any other degree is necesarrily going to leave some of these out.
At my school, we had a IT-like degree called information systems. It was basically what people changed their major to after they found out CS was too hard. Every year CS got like 200 incoming freshman, but by sophomore year 80 of them would be IS majors, 20 something else, and only 100 still in CS.
I am not a recruiter, but speaking from personal experience, it appears grades make a huge difference. I have a really high gpa from a reputable school. When I go to career fairs the recruiters are signing me up for interviews the second they see GPA at the top of my resume.
I've had conversations go from the recruiter looking bored and distracted, then they look at my resume, see the GPA (and often comment on it) then suddenly they take a great interest in me.
Maybe you can't raise the GPA enough to really make an impact by changing a few Cs to Bs, but a top GPA has immediatly opened doors in my experience.
It is actually pretty easy if the keywords are not common (such as a fairly uncommon name). I put a personal/professional website up with the only goal being that if someone searched for specifically my name it would be at the top of the rankings.
1 week after launching, and with only a handful of incoming links, Google Yahoo and MSN have my page as the first result for my name. Ask.com still doesn't know the site exists, but thats because ask sucks.
Then I guess I was mocked by the above post? I applied to Microsoft for an internship when I was a callow underclassmen and at the time had my reservations. A year later I had a very solid gpa and resume and walked past them at my schools career fair knowing I could find a job with a company that was less evil.
Not wanting to work for ms isn't about hating them, some people may feel a very real ethical dilemma working for microsoft. It may not be as bad as working for a tobacco company or planned parenthood but still valid.
If it wasn't such a serious issue, watching pro-abortion people try to justify their position would be funny.
Its not a baby or not a human life so its okay to kill it... unless your reason for killing it is wrong because then it is a human life.
If abortion hadn't gotten tied into religion, then everyone with a high school education would accept that on simple biological grounds a fetus is a human life. Claiming otherwise is burying your head in the sand as much as the creationism people.
As a computer scientist, I'm fascinated by the research potential of creating AI with for-profit motives. It even has some turingtest-esque features. "Did you just get fragged by billy or Stanfords KillBot version 3.2?"
The problem as you outline it is a fairly different one than what is really needed. You want robotics to do what we do. DARPA wants robots to accomplish the same task. Its a similar but distinct problem.
If we can make a robot drive a car using gps, maps and lasers, then once the computer vision technology progresses far enough, we will be able to use that input (signs, etc) in place of the maps. Regardless, it may be solving the wrong problem to even WANT robots to do that. If you can hop in an automated car and travel from California to New York, do you care whether it is using street signs or gps? To put it another way: do you care if a submarine can swim?
I think the challenge is a great thing and that the guidelines and rules are appropriate to reaching the stated goals.
Proper research is just a better version of listening. They are listening to user feedback as well as taking specific measurements to quantify and corroborate the statements.
Research > "listening". If you listen to people they'll tell you "Opposites attract" and then 5 minutes later tell you "Birds of a feather...". What people say is full of inconsistencies and errors, thats why we do research.
From my experience and everything I've read, I'd say you must have just gone to a poor school for computer science, Horn. I've never heard of a CS degree out of the college of business (My school offers a "Management Information Systems" out of biz which is what CS dropouts major in) but I would agree its probably a joke.
My school has CS in college of liberal arts & sciences and CprE in engineering, we have a lot of classes in common between the majors and there is really no difference in difficulty between the two, and majors from both programs tend to get high paying jobs right out of college.
The difference here is that CS does theory and advanced topics while CprE does hardware and low-level (assembly, embedded systems, etc). Neither is "better" or "harder" its just a different focus, with about 50-60% classes in common.
Actually... one could quite easily argue that there is nothing wrong here and that this is a perfect example of a free market working.
Person A is willing to spend X dollars on a system, but not the time waiting in line. Person B is willing to spend the time waiting in line to buy a system at Y to sell for X. End result: both parties satisfied.
The only flaw is that Sony should be taking the profit for this instead of letting third parties do it. Imagine if they used an auction-like system (hey, if google ipo can do it) then the people who value the PS3 most get one, and sony keeps all the profits.
Slashdot Mirror
Sadly.... very, very sadly, I have to disagree with you.
The average american is completely driven by fear and pretty much just accepts the reality they're presented as how it is, how it was, and how it will be. Very few people have the courage to try to bring about change. Look at how long slavery existed, then look at how long Jim Crowe laws were in place after that. If you tell the average American that communists/terrorists/gays/drug dealers/whoever are out to get them, and the only way they'll be safe is to give up some of their rights/freedoms the sad, sad truth is most people will choose safety over liberty.
I talked to a guy just a couple weeks ago, a smart college-educated guy, who when I was ranting about surveillance said he didn't care. When I looked at him incredulously he said he "didn't have anything to hide" and something about catching/punishing whichever bad guys we were talking about. It was yet another step towards me losing all faith in humanity.
Probably illegal but IANAL.
You can't sell a (tax-free) $3,000 banana that comes with a "free" plasma tv to avoid paying taxes on the tv sale, I assume similar rules would apply here as you're just wink-wink nudge-nudging to get around what is really a payment for the service.
Some of the worry about lines and wait times may be FUD but there is certainly a lot of truth to it as well. I personally know people who came to the US from Canada to get surgery when they would have had to wait 1-3 months in CA. I also know a doctor who moved his family to the US because he was sick of dealing with the Canadian system.
Lets not pretend socialized medicine will magically solve all our problems. With how the US gov't handles things, what we're likely to see is all the worst parts of the bureaucracy in HMO's now forced on everyone.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
The democrats are just as corrupt and just as fond of taking away your freedom as the republicans. They just haven't had a chance to do so in a while. I don't know what the solution is, but neither "vote democrat" nor "vote republican" seems to be it.
Buying a second dvr IS working out a solution to the problem though. In fact, it is the best solution if you can afford it. No matter how we compromise, we still end at a net loss (one of us has to delete shows we don't want to). Buying a second allows both parties to keep everything.
Again, as many have pointed out, it all depends on the individuals. Some are going to want to stay more independent others are going to want to share more. Neither is better than the other, it just depends on the people involved.
Maybe I'm just a bad person, but the parent post seemed more like a tongue in cheek joke than a troll.
If I could mod you up I would. You are right on both points. It is highly likely that we will start seeing droves of freshman declared as something very open, in fact my school has a "Liberal arts - open option" for people undecided on a major. Then after getting a number of preliminary courses done switch to their "real" major.
Which has the negative that in many cases these students won't be getting the best use of their education because their adviser/counselor won't be able to help them as much, and they may miss out on other extra-curricular activities because they are one major on paper but a different one in reality.
Every time one of these stories comes around (and some politician proposes some ludicrous internet filtering/logging/restriction every few months it seems) I always wonder the same thing:
Are they completely out of touch with technology (it is often a guy in his 60s or 70s proposing the law) and they really see it as a menace and thing these things will solve it, or
Are they completely aware the program won't do one damned thing to solve any problem, but the propose it anyway just so they can put a blurb in their campaign ads about how they protect children.
Though it has been years since we played, my friends and I occasionally reminisce about the crazy things we did starting out in UO before we even knew about macroing. Our first house was a 1-room that we paid for by spending HOURS and HOURS mining iron ore by hand and selling the ingots in town. Buying that first house was quite possibly the most fun thing I've done in a video game.
I find it fascinating that all the later, more popular mmorpg's seem to be far inferior to the "original": Ultima Online.
You could own a house, put vendors there to sell stuff, you had trade skills that were fully independent of fighting, you had an economy of "rare" artifacts with no use at all people just wanted them to have them, you could kill other players and take their gear.
And it was so much friendlier to the casual player: you could teleport to where your real-life friends were, you could play with your friends even if they played 40 hours a week and you played 2, you could macro when you were away to keep up with your friends or do things like craft armor to support a guild.
PvP made you actually have REAL friends and REAL enemies, instead of "You're an orc and he's an elf so you hate each other". It also made guilds have value, as you needed protection and could benefit from a guildmate making your armor while you made him potions.
Basically, I just can't stand that WoW is worse than UO in almost every way but has about 8.8 million more subscribers. UO was ahead of its time.
I don't think he meant accidental blocking of things that are false positives for porn like superbowl XXX.
The concept is once you start blocking porn, you tend to start blocking other things. Because we don't want terrorism so we better block that website on how to make a bomb. And we don't want racism so we better block that site that we consider hate speech. And that website with {insert religious figure/icon} in the {offensive noun or verb} is clearly obscene so we better block that.
Pretty soon, you've got something far far worse than a 10 year old seeing a boob.
I have to fully disagree. I have met people before who say similar things that a degree in X or a few years working will make you "just as good" of a programmer.
NO! It may make you as familiar with syntax as a CS major, but it does not rival the software development and problem solving skills of a CS degree. In CS you take classes in programming, algorithms, data structures, project management, testing, and a large range of practical and theoretical courses. Any other degree is necesarrily going to leave some of these out.
At my school, we had a IT-like degree called information systems. It was basically what people changed their major to after they found out CS was too hard. Every year CS got like 200 incoming freshman, but by sophomore year 80 of them would be IS majors, 20 something else, and only 100 still in CS.
I am not a recruiter, but speaking from personal experience, it appears grades make a huge difference. I have a really high gpa from a reputable school. When I go to career fairs the recruiters are signing me up for interviews the second they see GPA at the top of my resume.
I've had conversations go from the recruiter looking bored and distracted, then they look at my resume, see the GPA (and often comment on it) then suddenly they take a great interest in me.
Maybe you can't raise the GPA enough to really make an impact by changing a few Cs to Bs, but a top GPA has immediatly opened doors in my experience.
I'm pretty sure we're a post or two away from "Doc Ruby" telling us we're glib and don't know the history of psychology.
What sound does a duck make?
It is actually pretty easy if the keywords are not common (such as a fairly uncommon name). I put a personal/professional website up with the only goal being that if someone searched for specifically my name it would be at the top of the rankings.
1 week after launching, and with only a handful of incoming links, Google Yahoo and MSN have my page as the first result for my name. Ask.com still doesn't know the site exists, but thats because ask sucks.
Then I guess I was mocked by the above post? I applied to Microsoft for an internship when I was a callow underclassmen and at the time had my reservations. A year later I had a very solid gpa and resume and walked past them at my schools career fair knowing I could find a job with a company that was less evil.
Not wanting to work for ms isn't about hating them, some people may feel a very real ethical dilemma working for microsoft. It may not be as bad as working for a tobacco company or planned parenthood but still valid.
If it wasn't such a serious issue, watching pro-abortion people try to justify their position would be funny.
Its not a baby or not a human life so its okay to kill it... unless your reason for killing it is wrong because then it is a human life.
If abortion hadn't gotten tied into religion, then everyone with a high school education would accept that on simple biological grounds a fetus is a human life. Claiming otherwise is burying your head in the sand as much as the creationism people.
This is NOT flamebait, this is the sentiment of millions of gamers. I strongly prefer the starcraft style of gameplay to the warcraft 3 style.
I too hope it does not have the heros, they're the reason I grew weary of wc3 in a week instead of the 4 years I played sc.
I don't care about this at all as a gamer.
As a computer scientist, I'm fascinated by the research potential of creating AI with for-profit motives. It even has some turingtest-esque features. "Did you just get fragged by billy or Stanfords KillBot version 3.2?"
The problem as you outline it is a fairly different one than what is really needed. You want robotics to do what we do. DARPA wants robots to accomplish the same task. Its a similar but distinct problem.
If we can make a robot drive a car using gps, maps and lasers, then once the computer vision technology progresses far enough, we will be able to use that input (signs, etc) in place of the maps. Regardless, it may be solving the wrong problem to even WANT robots to do that. If you can hop in an automated car and travel from California to New York, do you care whether it is using street signs or gps? To put it another way: do you care if a submarine can swim?
I think the challenge is a great thing and that the guidelines and rules are appropriate to reaching the stated goals.
Proper research is just a better version of listening. They are listening to user feedback as well as taking specific measurements to quantify and corroborate the statements.
Research > "listening". If you listen to people they'll tell you "Opposites attract" and then 5 minutes later tell you "Birds of a feather...". What people say is full of inconsistencies and errors, thats why we do research.
From my experience and everything I've read, I'd say you must have just gone to a poor school for computer science, Horn. I've never heard of a CS degree out of the college of business (My school offers a "Management Information Systems" out of biz which is what CS dropouts major in) but I would agree its probably a joke.
My school has CS in college of liberal arts & sciences and CprE in engineering, we have a lot of classes in common between the majors and there is really no difference in difficulty between the two, and majors from both programs tend to get high paying jobs right out of college.
The difference here is that CS does theory and advanced topics while CprE does hardware and low-level (assembly, embedded systems, etc). Neither is "better" or "harder" its just a different focus, with about 50-60% classes in common.
Actually... one could quite easily argue that there is nothing wrong here and that this is a perfect example of a free market working.
Person A is willing to spend X dollars on a system, but not the time waiting in line.
Person B is willing to spend the time waiting in line to buy a system at Y to sell for X.
End result: both parties satisfied.
The only flaw is that Sony should be taking the profit for this instead of letting third parties do it. Imagine if they used an auction-like system (hey, if google ipo can do it) then the people who value the PS3 most get one, and sony keeps all the profits.