So, some major differences between Google and the dot-com boom are
a) Google actually makes a considerable amount of money
b) The Internet is substantially more stable than it was (initial fervor has subsided and things have shaken out and consolidated since then
c) Google is packed full of the best people
We had a visitor from Google a while ago (Pablo Cohn). The guy reports to Peter Norvig and has taught machine learning summer school to Guido Van Rossum. These guys are literally the modern superstars of Computing Science.
In the Dot-com boom/bust, tons of money was gambled on any random person with a crazy idea. In contrast, Google is a collection of super talented people earn crazy money off their ideas.
First, I don't like the conservative government, but I feel compelled say something when someone is being slandered unfairly. The conservatives have made (IMHO) many mistakes, I just object to making sweeping generalizations saying they haven't helped anyone that needs it.
There are at least 4000 graduate students (myself included) studying the natural sciences and engineering getting $17 000 or more per year in scholarship funding from NSERC, which is a national funding agency. SSHRC for the social sciences and other organizations add to that number significantly. Finally, there are provincial and institutional scholarships that provide additional support for many students who don't get national help.
Each of these students is saving thousands of dollars per year in income tax. These are people who have excelled in their undergraduate degree program, could be making good money in industry, but have decided to further their education by pursuing a post-graduate degree. They will be the leading scientists of tomorrow, both here and abroad. They will improve our international standing in research. They will make the breakthroughs of the next generation. It is important that these people exist, and that they are cultivated. I'm not out to get rich doing research, but I'm 27, I'm married, I cannot afford to live hand to mouth and slide into debt for 7 years of graduate school before getting a real job. The scholarships, and by extension the tax cut has given me a way to make ends meet until I graduate at the tender age of 30 years.
If they've done nothing else good, the Harper government made life a little easier for people like me.
Just for the record, there is at least one counter example to ".... ONLY benefits the rich".
The Harper government raised the tax exemption on scholarships from $3000 to unlimited. That change benefits people other than the rich, in fact, it benefits any student studying on a substantial scholarship.
Excuse me, but are you high? Here in Ontario, we are constantly short of power during hot summer days, and we have to pay to import power from Manitoba
No, not high. I'm from Manitoba. I guess what I meant is:
In Manitoba, they're constantly trying to get us to use less electricity, because we can export it to other places, like Ontario, and make more money from it.
Only if *everyone* did. Including big businesses, the government, etc. Also, only if the entire export market also generated their own power. For example, as I understand it, here in Canada, our power companies are constantly trying to get us to use less power, because whatever power we don't use gets exported to the USA, and the markup and profits are higher for exported power sales than domestic sales.
Actually, this is unlikely to be a result of a bad guesstimate. You see, although it's impossible to *know* exactly how many there are, statistics has given scientists a great many tools to estimate things from samples with very high confidence.
Lets say every year they count penguins at a place, and they count them not just once, but once a week for a few months, and that place has about X (plus or minus Y) penguins. For example, maybe the samples are like 100, 102, 105, 96, etc, and that these numbers are consistent week to week, and year to year. Usually, there are about 100 penguins, plus or minus 5.
Now, this year they go, and there are 70. Then they go next week and there are 73. Then the following week there are 68. Now it's looking like 70 penguins.
Finally, pretend that this same effect is not just seen at a single site, but at most of the sites that penguins are known to frequent. Further, of the places not seeing a decrease, there is not a major increase in the number of penguins.
If this is the case, either there are fewer penguins (as the scientists have stated), or they have decided (as a group) to go hide some place where nobody can find them. The scientific question is : which is more likely.
Answer : 30% fewer penguins.
Sweden. It is safe to live in Sweden, not because they have a massive defense system, but because no one cares to attack them.
Also, until recently (end of the cold war) Sweden had mandatory military service. You might not wan to invade such a country because every single male in the population is now potentially a well trained freedom fighter, unlike other countries where a large portion of the masses can more easily be contained by a relatively smaller military force.
Even if the country is small, the strength of its defenses come into play. If it were easy to make spam zombies out of OS X boxes : you can rest assured, people would be doing it.
I'm not seeing the incentive for an energy company to pretend peak oil doesn't exist.
In fact, the scarcer oil seems, the higher the price goes, and the more money the oil companies make.
Sure. However, peak oil is *bad* for the world. Seems like the oil companies will have a vested interest in making peak oil happen, so that it isn't preempted by the world making smarter energy choices.
Didn't your CS programs have "software engineering" courses? Here are the courses from the two Universities that I've been a student at:
University of Manitoba: Description: 074.335 Software Engineering 1 (3)L
Introduction to software engineering. Software life cycle models, system and software requirements analysis, specifications, software design, testing and maintenance, software quality.
Course homepage here. The University of Alberta has a similar page here.
Is this unique? Doesn't every CS program have 1-2 courses that exactly focus on gathering requirements and building some code as a team? Maybe it doesn't work - in my experience the best/most motivated programmer in the group ends up doing 95% of the work... but the course exists.
Do you really think it's the hard to effectively test the visual acuity of an animal? Doesn't seem that unreasonable to me. See if you can teach them that the blue lever makes food and the red one doesn't. Or...see if they avoid obstacles when navigating. Or... anyway, seems like testing if a mouse is blind or not is probably a solved problem.
That's a pretty strong comparison to say that an old person getting swindled by another person who is directly trying to deceive them is the same thing as an old person not knowing/acknowledging their physical limitations and getting into an accident.
I just don't get this "don't be on the stupid people's side", because "it's a jungle out there and life is the survival of the fittest". If I told you that I made a living by tricking old people into letting me into their homes, tying them up, and then stealing their stuff, you wouldn't say that they deserved it for letting me in the door, would you? Maybe you would...
I don't understand how people getting scammed in some way through the Internet is somehow so different from a telephone or a face-to-face meeting. If some grandmother gets scammed in person by a con artist, people say it's a sad shame and the con artist is a horrible person. If some grandma gets scammed over the Internet it's her own fault? Again - perhaps both of these are ok to some people - if I am a victim of fraud, perhaps it's my own fault. I should have shredded my documents, been more careful online, used Firefox and Linux, etc.... basically if there is a hole in my fraud defense, then I am liable for whatever comes through that hole. That's an opinion people are entitled to hold, I guess.
Personally - my view is that the fact that *you* don't lock your home doesn't entitle me to walk right in and steal your TV and say its your fault.
Yeah sure, they deserve it. Anyone that thinks that they might be able to download something cool from the Internet for free *deserves* to have their machine maliciously invaded and "thrashed". That's what they get for believing something that is offered to them.
Also, every random grandma got cleaned out by a phishing scam also deserves it. I'm sure that dumb old bag deserved it.. couldn't she see that the url was an IP address and not really her bank?
Maybe people should just need a license to use the Internet and *you* can be in charge of giving them out. Maybe you could do the training too, so every person in the web-connected world can aspire to be as wise as you.
Slashdot Mirror
So, some major differences between Google and the dot-com boom are a) Google actually makes a considerable amount of money b) The Internet is substantially more stable than it was (initial fervor has subsided and things have shaken out and consolidated since then c) Google is packed full of the best people We had a visitor from Google a while ago (Pablo Cohn). The guy reports to Peter Norvig and has taught machine learning summer school to Guido Van Rossum. These guys are literally the modern superstars of Computing Science. In the Dot-com boom/bust, tons of money was gambled on any random person with a crazy idea. In contrast, Google is a collection of super talented people earn crazy money off their ideas.
First, I don't like the conservative government, but I feel compelled say something when someone is being slandered unfairly. The conservatives have made (IMHO) many mistakes, I just object to making sweeping generalizations saying they haven't helped anyone that needs it. There are at least 4000 graduate students (myself included) studying the natural sciences and engineering getting $17 000 or more per year in scholarship funding from NSERC, which is a national funding agency. SSHRC for the social sciences and other organizations add to that number significantly. Finally, there are provincial and institutional scholarships that provide additional support for many students who don't get national help. Each of these students is saving thousands of dollars per year in income tax. These are people who have excelled in their undergraduate degree program, could be making good money in industry, but have decided to further their education by pursuing a post-graduate degree. They will be the leading scientists of tomorrow, both here and abroad. They will improve our international standing in research. They will make the breakthroughs of the next generation. It is important that these people exist, and that they are cultivated. I'm not out to get rich doing research, but I'm 27, I'm married, I cannot afford to live hand to mouth and slide into debt for 7 years of graduate school before getting a real job. The scholarships, and by extension the tax cut has given me a way to make ends meet until I graduate at the tender age of 30 years. If they've done nothing else good, the Harper government made life a little easier for people like me.
Just for the record, there is at least one counter example to ".... ONLY benefits the rich". The Harper government raised the tax exemption on scholarships from $3000 to unlimited. That change benefits people other than the rich, in fact, it benefits any student studying on a substantial scholarship.
Excuse me, but are you high? Here in Ontario, we are constantly short of power during hot summer days, and we have to pay to import power from Manitoba No, not high. I'm from Manitoba. I guess what I meant is: In Manitoba, they're constantly trying to get us to use less electricity, because we can export it to other places, like Ontario, and make more money from it.
Only if *everyone* did. Including big businesses, the government, etc. Also, only if the entire export market also generated their own power. For example, as I understand it, here in Canada, our power companies are constantly trying to get us to use less power, because whatever power we don't use gets exported to the USA, and the markup and profits are higher for exported power sales than domestic sales.
Actually, this is unlikely to be a result of a bad guesstimate. You see, although it's impossible to *know* exactly how many there are, statistics has given scientists a great many tools to estimate things from samples with very high confidence. Lets say every year they count penguins at a place, and they count them not just once, but once a week for a few months, and that place has about X (plus or minus Y) penguins. For example, maybe the samples are like 100, 102, 105, 96, etc, and that these numbers are consistent week to week, and year to year. Usually, there are about 100 penguins, plus or minus 5. Now, this year they go, and there are 70. Then they go next week and there are 73. Then the following week there are 68. Now it's looking like 70 penguins. Finally, pretend that this same effect is not just seen at a single site, but at most of the sites that penguins are known to frequent. Further, of the places not seeing a decrease, there is not a major increase in the number of penguins. If this is the case, either there are fewer penguins (as the scientists have stated), or they have decided (as a group) to go hide some place where nobody can find them. The scientific question is : which is more likely. Answer : 30% fewer penguins.
Didn't your CS programs have "software engineering" courses? Here are the courses from the two Universities that I've been a student at:
University of Manitoba: Description: 074.335 Software Engineering 1 (3)L
Introduction to software engineering. Software life cycle models, system and software requirements analysis, specifications, software design, testing and maintenance, software quality.
Course homepage here. The University of Alberta has a similar page here.
Is this unique? Doesn't every CS program have 1-2 courses that exactly focus on gathering requirements and building some code as a team? Maybe it doesn't work - in my experience the best/most motivated programmer in the group ends up doing 95% of the work... but the course exists.
Do you really think it's the hard to effectively test the visual acuity of an animal? Doesn't seem that unreasonable to me. See if you can teach them that the blue lever makes food and the red one doesn't. Or...see if they avoid obstacles when navigating. Or... anyway, seems like testing if a mouse is blind or not is probably a solved problem.
That's a pretty strong comparison to say that an old person getting swindled by another person who is directly trying to deceive them is the same thing as an old person not knowing/acknowledging their physical limitations and getting into an accident. I just don't get this "don't be on the stupid people's side", because "it's a jungle out there and life is the survival of the fittest". If I told you that I made a living by tricking old people into letting me into their homes, tying them up, and then stealing their stuff, you wouldn't say that they deserved it for letting me in the door, would you? Maybe you would... I don't understand how people getting scammed in some way through the Internet is somehow so different from a telephone or a face-to-face meeting. If some grandmother gets scammed in person by a con artist, people say it's a sad shame and the con artist is a horrible person. If some grandma gets scammed over the Internet it's her own fault? Again - perhaps both of these are ok to some people - if I am a victim of fraud, perhaps it's my own fault. I should have shredded my documents, been more careful online, used Firefox and Linux, etc.... basically if there is a hole in my fraud defense, then I am liable for whatever comes through that hole. That's an opinion people are entitled to hold, I guess. Personally - my view is that the fact that *you* don't lock your home doesn't entitle me to walk right in and steal your TV and say its your fault.
Yeah sure, they deserve it. Anyone that thinks that they might be able to download something cool from the Internet for free *deserves* to have their machine maliciously invaded and "thrashed". That's what they get for believing something that is offered to them.
Also, every random grandma got cleaned out by a phishing scam also deserves it. I'm sure that dumb old bag deserved it.. couldn't she see that the url was an IP address and not really her bank?
Maybe people should just need a license to use the Internet and *you* can be in charge of giving them out. Maybe you could do the training too, so every person in the web-connected world can aspire to be as wise as you.