The first rule is "whatever you do, it must be fun"
When I started High School I used to be slightly overweight but physically "able", with lots of energy. Over time High School wore me down with misery and then I got into computer jobs and I was sitting down 96% of the day. I looked around one day and found that I was now considered obese and couldn't run more than 100 feet without becoming exhausted.
I've been trying to find some way to get exercise but nothing seemed to stick. I gave up on going to gyms after a month (it was just so dreary). My doctor recommended running but I gave up on that pretty quickly too since it was so boring.
Ultimately, I found what works for me is martial arts. Right now I'm studying Taekwon Do and managed to stick with it for eight months. I've gotten stronger, my stamina has improved, I'm learning to kick some ass, and best of all--it's fun! My wife and I go to classes together. My scale weight is still about the same, but I've added some muscle mass, so it means something must've been eliminated, right? Maybe it was fat! Awesome!
Conversely, the most shocking part is how long it's taking me to regain the strength and stamina that I had when I was 16. After eight months of training I'd say I'm only 20% of the way back to how I was. And even that wasn't impressive, I couldn't do mile runs or chinups -- I still can't. It's going to be a long struggle before I'm as physically fit as I want to be. But for the first time ever I have hope.
I owe my myself and my wife a future where we're in our 70s and want to go out with the energy to experience life. Not sit at home and watch TV because we're too weak to do anything else--burdening our loved ones with our troubles. We're all lead to believe that being elderly means that you simply have to be exhausted and weak all the time. It doesn't have to happen, most people just let it happen.
If I can impart wisdom on some of you youngsters (I'm fucking 24 and I can call people youngsters, jeez), it's this: don't go into school or the workforce and forget about your health. Making the A or getting the paycheck will seem like the only thing you can focus on, but you'll ultimately regret letting yourself go.
I know someone in their near 50s who can't go up a flight of stairs without needing to rest 20 minutes on the couch afterwards. She only has enough energy to stay upright for about 30 minutes a day, and if she runs an errand that takes more than an hour she has to take a nap afterwards.
How much time would it take her to get her vitality back? Five years? Maybe she can get it down to three if she puts her entire life on hold? It'd be a hopelessly monumental task for her.
The poster is absolutely right. It must be fun It must be fun. Find exercise you enjoy, otherwise you won't do it. Your future is at stake here, don't let it go.
So if local law doesn't recognise denial of liability, you're liable?
Sweeping "default liability" laws in this case would realistically limit the copyright holder's liability to whatever amount you paid them. Where free software is concerned, the amount is usually $0.
Of course, there are plenty of abusable laws out there, this is just a guess.
Wow, so I'm not the only one that talks to strippers when he gets dragged to a strip club.
Generally, where strippers are concerned, I've seen geeks respond in one of four ways:
Stereotypical geekiness: "No, I will NOT fix your computer! *snort* I'm a geek and PROUD OF IT!" *beats chest* *stripper rolls her eyes during the rest of her dance*
Overwhelming friendliness: "So, do you like stripping? No? So why do it? Yeah, I guess you can't argue about the money *hands dollar* Well, I have overbearing clients with my cell phone number who can wake me up at 4AM no matter where I am to yell at me about some computer problem. Yeah, we're not much different after all I guess." *when stripper is done dancing, kisses geek on cheek and then pinches it* (this is usually me)
Hacker's response: *some social engineering attempt about how much of a badass he is* *stripper sees through it and plays along* *one of them ends up with no money at the end of the night*
Free software advocate: "But don't you see, we are REVOLUTIONARIES crusading to DESTROY an EVIL EMPIRE!..." *stripper's eyes widen with interest* "They've thrown some of us in jail for simply giving speeches! They've arrested us just because of what we've written! While some of us have fallen, we MUST persevere because the freedom of the WORLD is AT STAKE!" *stripper melts with desire* (Yes, this has happened)
A typical FPS that somehow incorporates 4D concepts. I don't mean crap like "portals", I mean literally defining a world that exists in 4 dimensions that you can traverse. Somehow. I have no idea what it would look like, but it sure would be trippy.
Granted, approximating 3D space on a 2D bitmap is already a hack in itself, but this is part of the challenge. Right?
A street fighting game that incorporates real fighting styles -- not just a topical ghist, one that covers all of the moves and forms in depth. Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance was a step there and I found it extremely fascinating. Reduce the quantity of styles, increase the quality of the ones left, and pit them against each other. You should really see the strengths and weaknesses of Taekwon Do and how it matches up against Muay Thai. The game should be an advertisement of the martial arts that will encourage people to learn them, but it should still appeal to lazy fatasses who want to live vicariously.
I haven't seen a satisfying, mindless blow lots of shit up shooter in such a long time. All of them suffer from story/diversion-creep. I don't want to rescue hostages or wisely choose powerups or solve a puzzle. When I was playing games like Gradius and R-Type I only imagined how much they'd improve with today's badass hardware. No one's run with it. Make a 3D R-Type where you wind through organic mazes at guided high speed blowing enemies up as fast as you can. I want to be dazzled by insane special effects and I want my fingers to hurt from having to hit the keys so hard. If I can look away from the screen for three seconds and still be alive, the game is a failure.
A game that simulates movie-style computer hacking. There was an excellent independent attempt at this game and I forget its name, it might be neat to see more professionally done eyecandy. Something that represents the thrill of breaking into a system, finding what you're not supposed to find, and getting out. It doesn't need to be authentic, it just needs to capture the drama, the fighting against time, finding weaknesses in a system's defenses, the busting a fuck-it and just destroying a system that you've lost your patience on, whatever.
Any system that automatically catchers EVERY speeder or moving violations in general is going to completely devastate a huge source of income for a given municipality.
People have to believe they can get away with it so that police can stick some people with the fine.
Apparently eBay is doing something right, but with no buyer protection, no seller authentication, and no desire to participate in seller-buyer conflicts, no return policy, can the business model be sustained?
The market adjusts the price accordingly, and it sustains itself just fine! Or not! Online auction sites are not inalienable rights. Get lost.
The reason the requirement was especially obnoxious is that in my school system, unless you had taken some extra math courses or started early somehow, the furthest you'd get by graduation is "precalculus".
How is this fair? He completely and utterly changed the entire assignment on you forcing you to throw all of your work away. And gave you one week for it!?
apt-get and emerge are two totally different implementations of the same idea. Changing the environment on you may have taught you a lesson about how optimizing eliminates robustness, but if the last professor encouraged you to try MMX/SIMD instructions then you were totally right to tie yourself to the x86.
You probably picked the simplest, dumbest algorithm and probably used the most basic data structure. Why do all of the hard work when you don't even know if the easy work will suffice?
If they don't suffice, your options are to develop your own algorithm/find a better one and a more natural data structure, or to throw hardware at it. Chances are, you won't be lucky enough that you can just upgrade so you'll have to spend valuable programmer time implementing a more complex algorithm that will need more careful maintenance that is likely to have more bugs that is probably less robust. You'll probably have to convert the data to a more machine-friendly format. Maybe you'll have to inconvenience the user or ship a lot of precompiled data. Whatever.
It's rare that the easy algorithm is slow enough that it won't do as-is, but fast enough that doubling cpu power makes it tolerable. Usually there are orders of magnitude differences between the "best" algorithm and the easy algorithm, and only incremental speed bumps in computer offerings.
On the other hand, maybe with an extra GB of RAM you'll never have to touch swap. Maybe that's good enough.;)
The math department head at my high school said I had to take calculus in order to take the C++ class. I said calculus is a bullshit prerequisite for C++ (since, you know, C++ has nothing to do with calculus). She refused to make an exception for me.
At the end of the year I demanded to be allowed to take the test to prove to her that the prerequisites were garbage and that the school was probably too clueless to teach C++ anyway. She couldn't refuse (the AP classes are not mandatory) and so I took the test, although she insisted that I reconsider and that I should take the classes and that I'm otherwise wasting everyone's time.
It turns out that I was the only one in my entire school to show up for the test.
I scored a 5 (the highest score). Came in and stapled that to her forehead.
Outsourcing is fine if you realize that you are paying not only the wages of the 4 IT people that you would have in-house PLUS the M&A and net the outsourcing company generates for it's stockholders. If you think you can make it up in the increased sales of widgets because you can focus on widgets, all the more power to you.
I did not say every company should outsource everything, just that some companies find real value in outsourcing some or many parts of their business.
When Craig Barrett says he doesn't have a solution for recent IT grads, he's right. It isn't a private sector problem except in the sense we are seeing a dramatic decline in IT and CS students. It's a public sector problem. If you have a public policy of globalization because you think in the long term it will generate better economic growth, you had better think about the short term consequences too. If you don't you are going to get a lot of political flack and maybe not get re-elected.
I don't believe we have the ability to shape market forces such that it leads to goals like "long term...economic growth". It's heart warming to see a politician "stand up" for our needs. However, all of these initiatives are just political posturing and no matter how good the intentions, they restrict market forces which in the past have always had very dramatic, negative and unintended side-effects.
If you can deal with basic arithmetic you can handle most of CS.
The areas where more sophisticated math is required are usually pretty obvious, just like you'd need to know accounting principles if you wanted to write an accounting package, you'll need to know basic trigonometry to write 2d games, linear algebra if you want to do 3d games, uhm, information theory if you wanted to work on cryptography, and god knows what for AI?
I'm not going to glorify it and say that I ultimately help increase sales, because I don't think it's relevant.
Nor do I particularly feel for the artists who cry that their art has been "commoditized". What artist gets upset about people enjoying their work? You create something because you want it to be enjoyed, otherwise you don't release it.
What concerns me most are people who believe that copying data creates victims, and that if there are victims then there must be criminals and that the criminals need to be punished, and not only that, but that an invasive copy-control infrastructure needs to be built to thwart these criminals.
The idea of controlling information has always been awkward, but today that position is outright ludicrous. The internet is the first step of our civilization towards eliminating scarcity, and we've started with information scarcity. Anything you want to see or hear available to you anywhere at any time. We're almost there.
Sure, the people who have built business models that depend on the existing infrastructure will be upset, but trying to prevent its collapse is sacrificing the future for the convenience of a few in the present.
One day this may carry over to the physical world: replicators. Replicators would solve so many world problems, but there will be opposition. Which side do you think you'll be on?
My definition of usable is something that mass-market computer vendors aren't interested in.
My requirements are stability, speed, power, and transparency.
My system should never crash, it should respond quickly to my commands (moving a mouse around is not what I consider quick), it should allow me to control it fully to every last detail, and it should let me see what it's doing at every level and let me modify its inner functions.
Solaris and MacOS X offer a taste of these ideas, but they're not developed to the point where someone like me is happy to use them.
This is an abstract argument, most people say that Linux and MacOS X offer these same things, and on the surface they do, but in the day-to-day, it's clear that one system is meant to encourage the kind of use that I want from it, and one is just bundling it because it was on the list.
You can install Cygnus on Windows NT and get all of the shell commands you need, but it's not even close to owning a Linux system. You can install some GNU utilities on Solaris and get the familar commands. But at some point you hit a wall on these systems that Linux doesn't have, because Linux encourages you to interoperate, Linux wants you to understand exactly how it works, Linux begs you to modify its internals, Linux wants you to have 100% control.
To put it another way, Linux has never worked against me. There have been times where I've had a problem on Windows, or MacOS X, or Solaris where I simply could not resolve it because the system served a different master (for example, under Windows I couldn't fix a bug in the sound driver, and I knew what it was and I knew how to fix it, but I couldn't do the fix so I had to deal with a workaround and hope the vendor cared to read my bug report and fix it). Having the source code makes a big difference, but it still doesn't mean that my life is going to be as easy as it is under Linux, where the developers have the mentality that of course I'm going to modify a driver or replace some core package or do the things that I expect to be able to do.
So lets say you have a business of maybe 50 employees, and you have 4 people in IT. Those 4 people in IT are essential for the operation of the business, but there's no room for them to grow. The business focuses on $widget, and only the people essential in the design and marketing of $widget are going to grow and achieve. All of the other departments will just stagnate. The employees in the stagnant departments may be happy with this, but ultimately unmotivated employees are inefficient and expensive.
The modern business owner/operator doesn't want to waste their time on typical business crap issues like payroll, accounting, computers, etc. Today, they have the option of focusing on their marketing and product development, with the rest of the boring humdrum of running a business outsourced to professionals.
The outsourced professionals grow their own companies by providing the essentials, the client business focuses on their core competencies.
Everyone wins!?
Well, except for the people who want the "security" of doing the same job day in day out for the rest of their lives.
You're not going to see the solution if you close your eyes to the truth. And the truth is that times change. What once took hours now takes nanoseconds. What once was the size of a building is now the size of a nickel. Naturally, what once took 50 employees now takes 3, and what was once done in farms on the island of Manhattan are now done in farms in a third world country you'll never visit.
The solution is for humans to do what we've always done to survive: adapt.
You really mean to tell me that a well-educated , intelligent, CS-degreed-from-a-fancy-school-graduate can't find a job? What are they trying to do, gain employment as an entry-level Java monkeys in some giant corporation?
All of the people I know in my field who have skills or intelligence can find well paying work, and all of the people I know who lack both whine about how all of the jobs they want have been outsourced, like my father in-law who has been working in IT for 25 years doing entry-level programming who can't find anything today (luckily, the rest of us make so much extra money doing what we do that the government can hook him up with all of the free drugs and disability pay he could ever want).
The strength of your whining isn't going to stop the horrible wheels of progress, and no one cares what excuses you can come up with (I'm a high school dropout and have no trouble getting work). You will learn to adapt or you will, well, you won't die, but the highlight of your month will be your dentist prescribing you vicodin.
You don't just sprinkle "open source pixie dust" onto a project and see instant revitalization. GPL'ing Solaris is worth little if Sun still thinks like a proprietary software company.
Open source is about the long-term. Open source projects take years to become truly useful, but when they reach maturity they are more useful than any proprietary software offering because open source fosters a development culture that focuses solely on technical achievement. Contrary business motivations like lock-in and forced obsolescence are anathama, and no doubt Solaris is full of it.
This is the same reason I think MacOS X isn't worth using, there's source code but the development mentality is entirely different from Linux's, and all of the things that make using Linux convenient are not the high priority, MacOS X very much feels like a proprietary UNIX with some familar utilities added. Maybe some day it'll be more usable.
Maybe after 5 years of GPL Solaris it'll become usable. Unfortunately, GPL Solaris is in greater danger of forking because Sun would try to impose its direction on it instead of simply serving as a guide.
I think the person who says "Russian mp3 downloading is free market at its best" is the same kind of person who says "Been outsourced? Stop whining and adapt!"
In one of the God themed episodes of the Simpsons, the Flanders family sings "God said to Noah there's gonna be a floody floody". So I looked it up, and it turns out that this is a real Christian rock song.
: |
--- Rise and Shine
God said to Noah there's gonna be a floody floody God said to Noah there's gonna be a floody floody Get those children out of the muddy muddy Children of the Lord
CHORUS: So rise and shine And give God your glory, glory. Rise and shine And give God your glory, glory Rise and shine and HEY!! Children of the Lord
So Noah he built him he built him an arky arky Noah he built him he built him an arky Made it out of hickory barky barky
CHORUS
The animals they came on came on by twoosies twoosies Animals they came on came on by twoosies twoosies Elephants and Kangaroosies-roosies, Children of the Lord
CHORUS
It rained and poured for forty daysies daysies Rained and poured for forty daysies daysies Drove those animals nearly crazy crazy Children of the Lord
CHORUS
The sun came out and dried up the landy landy Sun came out and dried up the landy landy Everything was fine and dandy dandy Children of the Lord
CHORUS
Noah he sent out sent out a dovey dovey Noah he sent out sent out a dovey dovey Everything was peace and lovey lovey Children of the Lord
CHORUS
The animals they came out came out by threesies threesies Animals they came out came out by threesies threesies Must have been those birds and beesees beesees Children of the Lord
CHORUS
This is the end of end of the story story This is the end of end of the story story Everything was hunky dory dory Children of the Lord
Why can't they just sue the company who's purchasing the ad, instead of suing Google?
This is a common problem, and I'm sure the source of most of Google's legal threats.
Once Google is informed that an AdWord violates a trademark (or whatever), they become liable to prosecution. The way Google usually responds is by immediately pulling the ad.
I can't imagine why Google wouldn't pull the ad, the money they make on them can't be worth the legal battle.
Also, Google has deep pockets, and there are plenty of litigious assholes out there...
I thought the purpose of insurance was to turn random unpredictable costly expenses in your lifetime into small, fixed, periodic payments.
If the numbers are done properly, the amount of money you will pay in your lifetime to this cause is equal to the amount of money you will pay in premiums, but you can plan for paying premiums.
In exchange for this convenience, the insurer collects slightly more money to cover operating expenses and so that they can turn a profit on their promise. Due to the economies of scale, it may actually be cheaper to go with an insurance company in spite of their overhead costs.
But anyway...
Insure Linux against intellectual property violations? Lets apply the formula:
Number of dollars that I plan to pay fighting off intellectual property claims on Linux: 0.
Post much on usenet? You've got the syndrome. Try going back and reading the second paragraph of the post you responded to:
There is no toll bridge or road that I won't cross, no traffic jam that I won't bear, no gas tax that I won't accept, and no garaging fee that I will not pay so that I never have to take public transportation ever again.
As an outer New York City resident , I've been riding the bus, subway, and railroads for ten years now. First to get to school, then to my job. Recently I got a car, and I've reached an epiphany.
There is no toll bridge or road that I won't cross, no traffic jam that I won't bear, no gas tax that I won't accept, and no garaging fee that I will not pay so that I never have to take public transportation ever again.
In my car I control the comfort level, the climate, the music or radio that is played (or not played), the passengers that are picked up, the route that is chosen, the speed that is used, the stops along the way.
Gone are the class-loads of students who get on, headphones on full blast, who still try to have a conversation so they need to shout to hear each other. Gone are the old people who could do an entire day of shopping at a department store and carry their bags onto the train, but still demand that you give up your seat because they're too weak to stand. Gone are the pan-handlers who run a gimmick hoping for some spare change.
Hello liberating highways, drive-throughs, beautiful bridges, awe-inspiring tunnels, sprawling landscapes, incredible cityscapes, and the world flying by on fast-forward.
Hello, great America. I want to drive you just thinking about you. And I'll pick up a caramel Macchiato along the way.
You must explicitly request Google by name to use their services. You can't be unaware of their existence like you can with Microsoft or Apple (comes with the computer).
Google does not surreptitiously install spyware on your system and record everything you do on your computer, requiring you to meticulously hunt down and remove its components or employ third party scumware removal utilities.
All you have to do stop using Google is to stop typing their name.
Switching to Google did not require a 15MB download, or a registration process, or a credit card. As the average joe, you've invested very little in Google, and you can replace them as simply as you can type a 4-8 letter word.
The only thing that keeps you typing their name is that you believe they're the best way to find the answer. Once you stop believing that, once a significant group of people become fed up, Google is finished. They know this, you should too.
In fact, type "search engine" and Google will tell you about altavista, lycos, excite, alltheweb, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
The first rule is "whatever you do, it must be fun"
When I started High School I used to be slightly overweight but physically "able", with lots of energy. Over time High School wore me down with misery and then I got into computer jobs and I was sitting down 96% of the day. I looked around one day and found that I was now considered obese and couldn't run more than 100 feet without becoming exhausted.
I've been trying to find some way to get exercise but nothing seemed to stick. I gave up on going to gyms after a month (it was just so dreary). My doctor recommended running but I gave up on that pretty quickly too since it was so boring.
Ultimately, I found what works for me is martial arts. Right now I'm studying Taekwon Do and managed to stick with it for eight months. I've gotten stronger, my stamina has improved, I'm learning to kick some ass, and best of all--it's fun! My wife and I go to classes together. My scale weight is still about the same, but I've added some muscle mass, so it means something must've been eliminated, right? Maybe it was fat! Awesome!
Conversely, the most shocking part is how long it's taking me to regain the strength and stamina that I had when I was 16. After eight months of training I'd say I'm only 20% of the way back to how I was. And even that wasn't impressive, I couldn't do mile runs or chinups -- I still can't. It's going to be a long struggle before I'm as physically fit as I want to be. But for the first time ever I have hope.
I owe my myself and my wife a future where we're in our 70s and want to go out with the energy to experience life. Not sit at home and watch TV because we're too weak to do anything else--burdening our loved ones with our troubles. We're all lead to believe that being elderly means that you simply have to be exhausted and weak all the time. It doesn't have to happen, most people just let it happen.
If I can impart wisdom on some of you youngsters (I'm fucking 24 and I can call people youngsters, jeez), it's this: don't go into school or the workforce and forget about your health. Making the A or getting the paycheck will seem like the only thing you can focus on, but you'll ultimately regret letting yourself go.
I know someone in their near 50s who can't go up a flight of stairs without needing to rest 20 minutes on the couch afterwards. She only has enough energy to stay upright for about 30 minutes a day, and if she runs an errand that takes more than an hour she has to take a nap afterwards.
How much time would it take her to get her vitality back? Five years? Maybe she can get it down to three if she puts her entire life on hold? It'd be a hopelessly monumental task for her.
The poster is absolutely right. It must be fun It must be fun. Find exercise you enjoy, otherwise you won't do it. Your future is at stake here, don't let it go.
Now, if I could just find a fun diet...
So if local law doesn't recognise denial of liability, you're liable?
Sweeping "default liability" laws in this case would realistically limit the copyright holder's liability to whatever amount you paid them. Where free software is concerned, the amount is usually $0.
Of course, there are plenty of abusable laws out there, this is just a guess.
Wow, so I'm not the only one that talks to strippers when he gets dragged to a strip club.
Generally, where strippers are concerned, I've seen geeks respond in one of four ways:
A typical FPS that somehow incorporates 4D concepts. I don't mean crap like "portals", I mean literally defining a world that exists in 4 dimensions that you can traverse. Somehow. I have no idea what it would look like, but it sure would be trippy.
Granted, approximating 3D space on a 2D bitmap is already a hack in itself, but this is part of the challenge. Right?
A street fighting game that incorporates real fighting styles -- not just a topical ghist, one that covers all of the moves and forms in depth. Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance was a step there and I found it extremely fascinating. Reduce the quantity of styles, increase the quality of the ones left, and pit them against each other. You should really see the strengths and weaknesses of Taekwon Do and how it matches up against Muay Thai. The game should be an advertisement of the martial arts that will encourage people to learn them, but it should still appeal to lazy fatasses who want to live vicariously.
I haven't seen a satisfying, mindless blow lots of shit up shooter in such a long time. All of them suffer from story/diversion-creep. I don't want to rescue hostages or wisely choose powerups or solve a puzzle. When I was playing games like Gradius and R-Type I only imagined how much they'd improve with today's badass hardware. No one's run with it. Make a 3D R-Type where you wind through organic mazes at guided high speed blowing enemies up as fast as you can. I want to be dazzled by insane special effects and I want my fingers to hurt from having to hit the keys so hard. If I can look away from the screen for three seconds and still be alive, the game is a failure.
A game that simulates movie-style computer hacking. There was an excellent independent attempt at this game and I forget its name, it might be neat to see more professionally done eyecandy. Something that represents the thrill of breaking into a system, finding what you're not supposed to find, and getting out. It doesn't need to be authentic, it just needs to capture the drama, the fighting against time, finding weaknesses in a system's defenses, the busting a fuck-it and just destroying a system that you've lost your patience on, whatever.
can get away with it!
Any system that automatically catchers EVERY speeder or moving violations in general is going to completely devastate a huge source of income for a given municipality.
People have to believe they can get away with it so that police can stick some people with the fine.
Free market forces protect our liberties.
Apparently eBay is doing something right, but with no buyer protection, no seller authentication, and no desire to participate in seller-buyer conflicts, no return policy, can the business model be sustained?
The market adjusts the price accordingly, and it sustains itself just fine! Or not! Online auction sites are not inalienable rights. Get lost.
Yeah, thanks.
The reason the requirement was especially obnoxious is that in my school system, unless you had taken some extra math courses or started early somehow, the furthest you'd get by graduation is "precalculus".
How is this fair? He completely and utterly changed the entire assignment on you forcing you to throw all of your work away. And gave you one week for it!?
apt-get and emerge are two totally different implementations of the same idea. Changing the environment on you may have taught you a lesson about how optimizing eliminates robustness, but if the last professor encouraged you to try MMX/SIMD instructions then you were totally right to tie yourself to the x86.
I would've kicked that moron's ass.
Well, that depends.
You probably picked the simplest, dumbest algorithm and probably used the most basic data structure. Why do all of the hard work when you don't even know if the easy work will suffice?
If they don't suffice, your options are to develop your own algorithm/find a better one and a more natural data structure, or to throw hardware at it. Chances are, you won't be lucky enough that you can just upgrade so you'll have to spend valuable programmer time implementing a more complex algorithm that will need more careful maintenance that is likely to have more bugs that is probably less robust. You'll probably have to convert the data to a more machine-friendly format. Maybe you'll have to inconvenience the user or ship a lot of precompiled data. Whatever.
It's rare that the easy algorithm is slow enough that it won't do as-is, but fast enough that doubling cpu power makes it tolerable. Usually there are orders of magnitude differences between the "best" algorithm and the easy algorithm, and only incremental speed bumps in computer offerings.
On the other hand, maybe with an extra GB of RAM you'll never have to touch swap. Maybe that's good enough. ;)
The math department head at my high school said I had to take calculus in order to take the C++ class. I said calculus is a bullshit prerequisite for C++ (since, you know, C++ has nothing to do with calculus). She refused to make an exception for me.
At the end of the year I demanded to be allowed to take the test to prove to her that the prerequisites were garbage and that the school was probably too clueless to teach C++ anyway. She couldn't refuse (the AP classes are not mandatory) and so I took the test, although she insisted that I reconsider and that I should take the classes and that I'm otherwise wasting everyone's time.
It turns out that I was the only one in my entire school to show up for the test.
I scored a 5 (the highest score). Came in and stapled that to her forehead.
Spite: it's what's for dinner.
Outsourcing is fine if you realize that you are paying not only the wages of the 4 IT people that you would have in-house PLUS the M&A and net the outsourcing company generates for it's stockholders. If you think you can make it up in the increased sales of widgets because you can focus on widgets, all the more power to you.
I did not say every company should outsource everything, just that some companies find real value in outsourcing some or many parts of their business.
When Craig Barrett says he doesn't have a solution for recent IT grads, he's right. It isn't a private sector problem except in the sense we are seeing a dramatic decline in IT and CS students. It's a public sector problem. If you have a public policy of globalization because you think in the long term it will generate better economic growth, you had better think about the short term consequences too. If you don't you are going to get a lot of political flack and maybe not get re-elected.
I don't believe we have the ability to shape market forces such that it leads to goals like "long term...economic growth". It's heart warming to see a politician "stand up" for our needs. However, all of these initiatives are just political posturing and no matter how good the intentions, they restrict market forces which in the past have always had very dramatic, negative and unintended side-effects.
None, really.
If you can deal with basic arithmetic you can handle most of CS.
The areas where more sophisticated math is required are usually pretty obvious, just like you'd need to know accounting principles if you wanted to write an accounting package, you'll need to know basic trigonometry to write 2d games, linear algebra if you want to do 3d games, uhm, information theory if you wanted to work on cryptography, and god knows what for AI?
Just a guess.
I play games and music that I haven't paid for.
Do I feel even an iota of guilt? Not really.
I'm not going to glorify it and say that I ultimately help increase sales, because I don't think it's relevant.
Nor do I particularly feel for the artists who cry that their art has been "commoditized". What artist gets upset about people enjoying their work? You create something because you want it to be enjoyed, otherwise you don't release it.
What concerns me most are people who believe that copying data creates victims, and that if there are victims then there must be criminals and that the criminals need to be punished, and not only that, but that an invasive copy-control infrastructure needs to be built to thwart these criminals.
The idea of controlling information has always been awkward, but today that position is outright ludicrous. The internet is the first step of our civilization towards eliminating scarcity, and we've started with information scarcity. Anything you want to see or hear available to you anywhere at any time. We're almost there.
Sure, the people who have built business models that depend on the existing infrastructure will be upset, but trying to prevent its collapse is sacrificing the future for the convenience of a few in the present.
One day this may carry over to the physical world: replicators. Replicators would solve so many world problems, but there will be opposition. Which side do you think you'll be on?
My definition of usable is something that mass-market computer vendors aren't interested in.
My requirements are stability, speed, power, and transparency.
My system should never crash, it should respond quickly to my commands (moving a mouse around is not what I consider quick), it should allow me to control it fully to every last detail, and it should let me see what it's doing at every level and let me modify its inner functions.
Solaris and MacOS X offer a taste of these ideas, but they're not developed to the point where someone like me is happy to use them.
This is an abstract argument, most people say that Linux and MacOS X offer these same things, and on the surface they do, but in the day-to-day, it's clear that one system is meant to encourage the kind of use that I want from it, and one is just bundling it because it was on the list.
You can install Cygnus on Windows NT and get all of the shell commands you need, but it's not even close to owning a Linux system. You can install some GNU utilities on Solaris and get the familar commands. But at some point you hit a wall on these systems that Linux doesn't have, because Linux encourages you to interoperate, Linux wants you to understand exactly how it works, Linux begs you to modify its internals, Linux wants you to have 100% control.
To put it another way, Linux has never worked against me. There have been times where I've had a problem on Windows, or MacOS X, or Solaris where I simply could not resolve it because the system served a different master (for example, under Windows I couldn't fix a bug in the sound driver, and I knew what it was and I knew how to fix it, but I couldn't do the fix so I had to deal with a workaround and hope the vendor cared to read my bug report and fix it). Having the source code makes a big difference, but it still doesn't mean that my life is going to be as easy as it is under Linux, where the developers have the mentality that of course I'm going to modify a driver or replace some core package or do the things that I expect to be able to do.
So lets say you have a business of maybe 50 employees, and you have 4 people in IT. Those 4 people in IT are essential for the operation of the business, but there's no room for them to grow. The business focuses on $widget, and only the people essential in the design and marketing of $widget are going to grow and achieve. All of the other departments will just stagnate. The employees in the stagnant departments may be happy with this, but ultimately unmotivated employees are inefficient and expensive.
The modern business owner/operator doesn't want to waste their time on typical business crap issues like payroll, accounting, computers, etc. Today, they have the option of focusing on their marketing and product development, with the rest of the boring humdrum of running a business outsourced to professionals. The outsourced professionals grow their own companies by providing the essentials, the client business focuses on their core competencies.
Everyone wins!?
Well, except for the people who want the "security" of doing the same job day in day out for the rest of their lives.
You're not going to see the solution if you close your eyes to the truth. And the truth is that times change. What once took hours now takes nanoseconds. What once was the size of a building is now the size of a nickel. Naturally, what once took 50 employees now takes 3, and what was once done in farms on the island of Manhattan are now done in farms in a third world country you'll never visit.
The solution is for humans to do what we've always done to survive: adapt.
You really mean to tell me that a well-educated , intelligent, CS-degreed-from-a-fancy-school-graduate can't find a job? What are they trying to do, gain employment as an entry-level Java monkeys in some giant corporation?
All of the people I know in my field who have skills or intelligence can find well paying work, and all of the people I know who lack both whine about how all of the jobs they want have been outsourced, like my father in-law who has been working in IT for 25 years doing entry-level programming who can't find anything today (luckily, the rest of us make so much extra money doing what we do that the government can hook him up with all of the free drugs and disability pay he could ever want).
The strength of your whining isn't going to stop the horrible wheels of progress, and no one cares what excuses you can come up with (I'm a high school dropout and have no trouble getting work). You will learn to adapt or you will, well, you won't die, but the highlight of your month will be your dentist prescribing you vicodin.
You don't just sprinkle "open source pixie dust" onto a project and see instant revitalization. GPL'ing Solaris is worth little if Sun still thinks like a proprietary software company.
Open source is about the long-term. Open source projects take years to become truly useful, but when they reach maturity they are more useful than any proprietary software offering because open source fosters a development culture that focuses solely on technical achievement. Contrary business motivations like lock-in and forced obsolescence are anathama, and no doubt Solaris is full of it.
This is the same reason I think MacOS X isn't worth using, there's source code but the development mentality is entirely different from Linux's, and all of the things that make using Linux convenient are not the high priority, MacOS X very much feels like a proprietary UNIX with some familar utilities added. Maybe some day it'll be more usable.
Maybe after 5 years of GPL Solaris it'll become usable. Unfortunately, GPL Solaris is in greater danger of forking because Sun would try to impose its direction on it instead of simply serving as a guide.
...was pretty outwardly anti-Globalization.
It also got boring pretty quickly. Hopefully you bought it after it flopped and the sticker price was halved.
I think the person who says "Russian mp3 downloading is free market at its best" is the same kind of person who says "Been outsourced? Stop whining and adapt!"
In one of the God themed episodes of the Simpsons, the Flanders family sings "God said to Noah there's gonna be a floody floody". So I looked it up, and it turns out that this is a real Christian rock song.
: |
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Rise and Shine
God said to Noah there's gonna be a floody floody
God said to Noah there's gonna be a floody floody
Get those children out of the muddy muddy
Children of the Lord
CHORUS:
So rise and shine
And give God your glory, glory.
Rise and shine
And give God your glory, glory
Rise and shine and HEY!!
Children of the Lord
So Noah he built him he built him an arky arky
Noah he built him he built him an arky
Made it out of hickory barky barky
CHORUS
The animals they came on came on by twoosies twoosies
Animals they came on came on by twoosies twoosies
Elephants and Kangaroosies-roosies,
Children of the Lord
CHORUS
It rained and poured for forty daysies daysies
Rained and poured for forty daysies daysies
Drove those animals nearly crazy crazy
Children of the Lord
CHORUS
The sun came out and dried up the landy landy
Sun came out and dried up the landy landy
Everything was fine and dandy dandy
Children of the Lord
CHORUS
Noah he sent out sent out a dovey dovey
Noah he sent out sent out a dovey dovey
Everything was peace and lovey lovey
Children of the Lord
CHORUS
The animals they came out came out by threesies threesies
Animals they came out came out by threesies threesies
Must have been those birds and beesees beesees
Children of the Lord
CHORUS
This is the end of end of the story story
This is the end of end of the story story
Everything was hunky dory dory
Children of the Lord
CHORUS
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Why can't they just sue the company who's purchasing the ad, instead of suing Google?
This is a common problem, and I'm sure the source of most of Google's legal threats.
Once Google is informed that an AdWord violates a trademark (or whatever), they become liable to prosecution. The way Google usually responds is by immediately pulling the ad.
I can't imagine why Google wouldn't pull the ad, the money they make on them can't be worth the legal battle.
Also, Google has deep pockets, and there are plenty of litigious assholes out there...
I thought the purpose of insurance was to turn random unpredictable costly expenses in your lifetime into small, fixed, periodic payments.
If the numbers are done properly, the amount of money you will pay in your lifetime to this cause is equal to the amount of money you will pay in premiums, but you can plan for paying premiums. In exchange for this convenience, the insurer collects slightly more money to cover operating expenses and so that they can turn a profit on their promise. Due to the economies of scale, it may actually be cheaper to go with an insurance company in spite of their overhead costs.
But anyway...
Insure Linux against intellectual property violations? Lets apply the formula:
Number of dollars that I plan to pay fighting off intellectual property claims on Linux: 0.
I guess I can pass on this kind of insurance.
Post much on usenet? You've got the syndrome. Try going back and reading the second paragraph of the post you responded to:
There is no toll bridge or road that I won't cross, no traffic jam that I won't bear, no gas tax that I won't accept, and no garaging fee that I will not pay so that I never have to take public transportation ever again.
Duh?
As an outer New York City resident , I've been riding the bus, subway, and railroads for ten years now. First to get to school, then to my job. Recently I got a car, and I've reached an epiphany.
There is no toll bridge or road that I won't cross, no traffic jam that I won't bear, no gas tax that I won't accept, and no garaging fee that I will not pay so that I never have to take public transportation ever again.
In my car I control the comfort level, the climate, the music or radio that is played (or not played), the passengers that are picked up, the route that is chosen, the speed that is used, the stops along the way.
Gone are the class-loads of students who get on, headphones on full blast, who still try to have a conversation so they need to shout to hear each other. Gone are the old people who could do an entire day of shopping at a department store and carry their bags onto the train, but still demand that you give up your seat because they're too weak to stand. Gone are the pan-handlers who run a gimmick hoping for some spare change.
Hello liberating highways, drive-throughs, beautiful bridges, awe-inspiring tunnels, sprawling landscapes, incredible cityscapes, and the world flying by on fast-forward.
Hello, great America. I want to drive you just thinking about you. And I'll pick up a caramel Macchiato along the way.
Fuck public transportation.
You must explicitly request Google by name to use their services. You can't be unaware of their existence like you can with Microsoft or Apple (comes with the computer).
Google does not surreptitiously install spyware on your system and record everything you do on your computer, requiring you to meticulously hunt down and remove its components or employ third party scumware removal utilities.
All you have to do stop using Google is to stop typing their name.
Switching to Google did not require a 15MB download, or a registration process, or a credit card. As the average joe, you've invested very little in Google, and you can replace them as simply as you can type a 4-8 letter word.
The only thing that keeps you typing their name is that you believe they're the best way to find the answer. Once you stop believing that, once a significant group of people become fed up, Google is finished. They know this, you should too.
In fact, type "search engine" and Google will tell you about altavista, lycos, excite, alltheweb, etc.
Regardless of whatever Joe Blow installs, I'll always be installing Debian. And if Debian is compromised to suit Joe Blow, I can find something else.
You don't have the choice with Windows.