Though on a more serious note, I must admit the headline did concern me. The Xandros linux which ships with the EEE is very easy to use, albeit setup a little insecurely. I like the fact that I don't have to login, but it makes me wonder if they did a good security analysis. If they did, and decided to do automatic login for usability, I don't have a problem with that; but I can't help but wonder if for the sake of expedience they discarded all of the other security as well.
The majority of people - even those with college degrees - have a difficult time with logic. Something as simple as an if-else construct can be very confusing to the average person at first.
And there's another twist. About 40% of learners can understand and manipulate abstract concepts, and learn them without any practical experience whatsoever. The other 60% require experiential learning - they have to do before they understand. Fortunately, computers can very easily demonstrate concepts such as if-else...
And how computers work is a mystery to most people. Before you start the course, you should come up with a simple mental model that you can use to explain how a computer works to someone with absolutely no understanding of electronics, logic, etc... For a basic programming course, you should first assess class understanding:
Do they know how a computer works at a basic level - files, memory, cpu, etc?
Do they know the difference between an application, and the files it creates ("I saved it in Word..." etc..)
Do they understand how to solve a problem by breaking it down into its constituent steps? Believe me, there are people that really struggle with this, and expect the instructor just to teach them to solve a particular problem, rather than how to instruct a computer to solve problems. In fact, that might be a good introduction to programming, "Computer programming is the art of instructing computers to solve problems."
For most programming courses, you should not even assume your students understand how to use the compiler. Furthermore, you should probably come up with a series of simple examples which demonstrate your point without any extraneous code. Because most people learn by doing, one of the first exercises should be to build a simple "hello world" type of application to familiarize themselves with the build tools.
And have fun! Come up with interesting problems. Your students will most likely spend most of their corporate careers doing boring stuff, so they'll appreciate the chance to do fun things like games.
That allows investment bankers to pawn off responsibility for their misdeeds on the American public?
So I'm supposed to pay an additional $10k in taxes to finance the bad decisions of those who foreclosed on middle class Americans? And if I have to pay it over time (as Congress proposed), I'll end up paying even more (because Congress will borrow money to finance the bailout).
I would say that I've got that money in my 401k, but I doubt it's worth anything now.
I've got a better idea. Start printing money. Yes, devalue the currency to the point where I can settle my mortgage for a few hours worth of work. If bank CEOs can get bonuses for shafting even the Americans who were smart enough to avoid bad lending practices, we should be able to just print the money to pay off our debts.
I say bullocks. Okay, so you encrypt your drive with truecrypt. I imagine the exchange at the border will go something like this:
Border Agent: Okay, open your laptop and log in.
You: Okay... (logs in...)
Border Agent: Hmm, you've got TrueCrypt installed. I'm going to need you to give me the password to your hidden partition.
You: But I don't have a hidden partition (And maybe you don't. But it's irrelevant; you can't prove that you don't)
Border Agent: Why don't you just give me the password?
You: But I don't have a password; I don't have a hidden partition!
Border Agent: (taking away your laptop) You'll get this back after the NSA has cracked your hidden partition, or can prove that you don't have one. Have a nice day!
You: What!?
Border Agent: I said, have a good day.
The best bet you've got is to have a relatively clean laptop with the usual files: pictures of the kids, cookies from gmail or Yahoo, etc...
If you need to encrypt it, use steganography to hide it in your pictures of your kids, or that video you shot of dolphins at Sea World, etc... Because nothing attracts attention from law enforcement better than trying to hide something from them. The fact that you don't have a hidden partition is irrelevant; because of the fact that TrueCrypt makes no secret of this feature means that Law Enforcement is going to assume you are using it. It's their job to be suspicious...
If the religious establishment had accepted contraception when it came out...
Normally, I would consider this a troll, but in your case, I think it's just plain ignorance. I suppose it's understandable given the abysmal state of religious knowledge in this country... But I digress. Main point: there have been various religious denominations in Christianity which accepted (and some still accept) contraception. However, their numbers are dwindling. Hence fundamentalism.
I'm not sure how you can reason that removing the perceived negative consequences from something - let alone sex - would make people do less of it. It just seems a matter of common sense that if you remove the possibility of pregnancy, that those afraid of getting pregnant (namely, teenagers), would do it more, not less. Unfortunately, for some things, such as premarital sex, the moral consequences only become clearer in hindsight.
So it seems to me that on the issue of contraception, the religious establishment was correct about the societal consequences.
But it is believed to effect almost any encryption program currently on sale as long as the two volumes being compared use the same encryption key whilst being slightly different from one another.
There are two issues that immediately come to mind:
Any encryption solution which has a halfway decent key management scheme will have a low probability of using the same keys... (However, key management is still a relatively nascent field within cryptography; the lack of serious, public study of this issue is one of the reasons why even public key cryptography is not secure in the hands of a novice - a simple "sign my sig" attack can be used against those who don't know any better. I know I'll probably get flamed for this, but the lack of a good, easily managed key-management scheme is one of the reasons why gpg has not been widely adopted, in spite of the fact that it is rather easy to install and use. As the matter of how best to make the tradeoffs between security and usability is not mathematically provable, progress in this area has been and will continue to be slow.)
One of the enduring tests for encryption algorithms is the degree to which they disguise the degree of entropy in the plaintext. The issue of the "proper" way to do secure disk encryption is also relatively nascent. The problem of what to do with the relatively low entity in filesystems, the prevalence of easily predicted data (for example, inode tables and FATs are relatively predictable) has been one of the enduring problems of full disk encryption. Wikipedia can give one an idea of where this has been and is going. The oldest listed disk encryption software is only 15 years old. Considering that DES, is ~30 years old, and the concepts of public key crypto were discovered shortly after WWII, there has not been a lot of time for the study of this area.
Disclaimer: I've been brewing beer for a few years now. I've made a few meads and wines as well.
My experience with fermented beverages is that aging does not, universally, make a beer or wine or whiskey better. Most times, aging is used to smooth over some defect with the original beverage; perhaps a cheap vintage, a beer that didn't attenuate fully (too "wet"), etc...
There are a few exceptions, of course. Scotch and Irish ales - like oatmeal stout, for example - go through wonderful transitions in flavor, from chocolately to licorice-like, to finally smoothing out over the course of a few months. Mead is known for being a little harsh after the primary fermentation, and does improve, even if aged in glass.
Whether or not your cheap wine gets better over time is probably due more to how it was handled before bottling than the price of the bottle:
Wine that has been exposed to oxygen will almost never improve, only worsen.
Commercial wine is typically filtered, removing the yeast, which play a vital role in smoothing out harsh flavors over time.
Even a common vintage can become passable given enough time in the barrel; but time in the bottle away from the yeast does nothing for it.
However, in my rather limited experience with inadvertently shocking boards, the most common result is that the board resets itself.
11 points, though:
While it is indeed possible for static electricity to jostle bus lines, power supply lines, etc..., I find it rather unlikely that static discharge would add an extra 10111011100 (binary) votes for a candidate. I would find a power of two (such as 2048 or 4096) more plausible, but still unlikely.
Any engineer worth his salt is going to design the board and layout to minimize the possibility of static discharge damage. I'm not sure why any competent engineer would design the case with an electrical path from VCC or data lines to the user interface; regardless, it seems very odd that static is the culprit. Still, those who can remember the Palm cradle fiasco know that such oversights do occasionally make it into commercial products.
I don't for a moment believe static is to blame. Even assuming well-intentioned engineers, it is far more likely that the code has a race condition, or the box was hacked, or it was deliberate sabotage. They're probably saying static because they have no clue what happened.
I've been working overtime recently. Sadly, even I haven't learned that working overtime causes me to make bad decisions...
Today I looked at code that really should be refactored. And had I taken time to think about the problem, instead of approach it with the "let's ship something now" attitude, I would have done it differently. But in spite of the OT, I'm a few weeks past deadline (again, arbitrary opinion of management...) and, something occurred to me that hadn't ever before in my career:
I could ship this code as is.
The perfectionist in me says it should be refactored, and go through another round of testing. But, 1.) it works now, as is, and 2.) defects don't count against the deadline. I'll get dinged for not meeting a deadline, but engineers never get dinged for releasing buggy code.
So I don't have to work OT. I just have to deliver. And by delivery, we mean that quality matters less than deadlines. Am I setting up the maintainer for a nightmare? You bet. But my colleagues will think of me as some kind of expert because the code is complicated, and I got it done "fast". The maintainers will curse me.
But, I have to keep in mind that my employer can't be loyal to its employees. It doesn't matter how beautiful the code is, or how easily maintained it is. This is no ivory tower, this is Corporate America(TM). If it's not on someone's metric sheet, it doesn't matter. Deadlines matter today; tomorrow someone else will have to take the heat for why it can't be maintained.
And yes, I'll be pleasant when I decline overtime. But I would rather have the support from management to leave a legacy of a job well done, rather than one which merely met some artificial deadline and crude metrics. Sometimes I think that Corporate America has no place for those passionate about their jobs... or for long-term thinking.
Having a "I'll sit here and take it" attitude isn't exactly a winning strategy in interviews.
Nor is having the attitude that you won't take any BS from your employer. The "I'll sit here and take it" attitude employees are exactly the kind of employees most employers want. Unpaid overtime? No problem! Lousy working conditions? No problem!
I do have a hard time believing that just becuase you work in tech support in a call center, you aren't getting jobs.
I've experienced a similar stigma working with Big Iron: "Oh, you're a mainframe programmer? Well, we don't do much of that anymore, most of our stuff is object-oriented..." Nevermind the fact that I've been doing C++ for more than a decade. I experienced a similar stigma when I got into embedded development. My degree says computer science, not IBM mainframes.
Some people just can't wrap their head around the fact that you aren't tech support. Personally, I would not put anything on my resume that wasn't career related. The fact that you have tech support on your resume probably makes them think that you think it has something to do with the position offered. They don't need to know you worked as a tech support - sure, you might have to put it on the application, but it should stay off the resume.
The next time it happens, you might want to end the conversation like this:
Them: Well, we're interested in hiring an engineer... Not so much tech support...
You: Have you ever worked in fast food? I thought so! I'm not interested in working for a burger flipper, either...
Believe it or not, I've said worse to an interviewer...
That it can't do 720p video when my EEE 900 can using mplayer. The biggest problem I encounter is that it gets glitchy at times because the SSD can't keep up...
The problem is when you have employees who come to work and do a good job without slacking off, and are then expected to work weekends because of mistakes made by management.
You've heard it before, "The love of money is the root of all evil".
The appeal of gambling is the gambler's love of money. I have no particularly love of money - while I recognize it's utilitarian aspect, I don't place it on a pedestal above all other things. Hence, I find gambling rather boring.
I come from the opposite perspective: Why do people defend a practice that takes their money away from them? They'll rant about taxes, but if the taxman cometh with spinning wheels and blinking lights, it somehow magically becomes entertainment?
Instead of fighting open source, why don't businesses learn to exploit it?
Fighting open source is rather stupid, in my opinion. Who pays for what they can get for free? If your competitor is making his product's source code available, you had better as well; it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know who is giving the customer a better value. You can bet your customers are going to know.
Granted, there are certain cases where companies have good reasons for hiding the source code. Shoddy programming, intellectual property violations (stealing others' copyrighted works, surrepititious illegal patent use, etc...) all come into play. It could even be a matter of keeping trade secrets, secret. However, in all of these cases, if you can't provide compelling value above and beyond what open source projects are doing, there's no point in keeping the code secret.
Instead, your open-source competition is going to offer a product of comparable value, with considerably less development effort on their part. Your competition's profit margins will be higher than yours. Your shareholders will start asking probing questions, like, "Why is development so expensive..." and "Why are our margins so low..."
As much as I hate to say it, capitalism works for open source, rather than against it. No one on the board wants to pay your programmers an arm and a leg to reinvent the database; rather, they'd probably prefer you to use an existing open-source database and concentrate on developing features which add value and differentiate your product from the competition. Companies go bankrupt reinventing the wheel.
Today you can't fight open source. It's just not economically feasible. Rather, companies need to learn to instead build upon the foundation provided by open source, rather than trying to undermine it. That way, they can produce compelling features and provide value for less cost than their competition.
The reason why jet engines can only approach the efficiency of piston engines is because piston engines have such high compression ratios. Instead of the 10 or 12 to 1, a particularly efficient turbofan might get 4 to 1. The thermal efficiency just isn't there. Build and patent a 12 or 10 to 1 compression ratio turbofan, and you could retire.
And we haven't even discussed diesels, which can push 20 to 1 compression ratios.
One mitigating factor is that jet engines allow aircraft to fly faster, spreading the inordinately large fuel consumption over a greater distance. The other is that piston engines are considerably heavier than turbofans of equivalent power, and weight increases fuel consumption (which can, again, be mitigated by traveling faster).
Is that I frequently have ideas at home. And write them down. And later use them at work.
Would the discovery of these documents in my home constitute evidence of "stealing trade secrets" in the eyes of my employer? If I decided to leave my current employer and work for the competition, would those hobby projects of mine be a liability?
I'm just curious, because I do quite a bit of independent development, and from time to time, it becomes valuable at work.
Spam is the ideal litmus test for where someone stands on the rights of free speech. It's almost universally objectionable, never warranted, and offensive to just about everyone.
Yet I'm not sure if there's anyone in the./ crowd who will stick to their free speech principles when such principles inconvenience them personally. Is there anyone here who, upon receiving spam, remarks to themselves, "Ah, yes, free speech is not dead. I'm glad that - although I personally could care less about replica watches or increasing the size of my body parts - that somewhere, someone out there is free to send such materials to my inbox. USA! USA! USA!"
Because it stands to reason that if spammers have no right to send anonymous messages, then neither do you or I. While a lot of people may not like this particular consequence of free speech, it's far more dangerous to do away with the legal protections for anonymous speech.
The problem is that they didn't actually do these things.
If, as the police storyline goes, the groups had been infiltrated, why couldn't the infiltrators arrest the offending protestors at the time they committed the crime? Oh, that's right, because the entire group could be peaceful, and there's the risk that none of the allegations of future crime would ever come to pass.
Even supposing you're right about these "freedom hating" folks, the fact is that the tactics used by the police will only ensure the evidence brought before the court - if anyone is actually charged - will be so weak that anyone with a good lawyer will walk. End result? People who are legally innocent have been harassed by the police for no one's benefit. If they are indeed criminals, the police haven't done anything to protect the community; if innocent, the protestors will end up paying for their patriotism. No matter which way you look at it, we, the taxpaying public, are worse off.
Police harassment is not the same as law enforcement.
Why not just say, "Vista doesn't make sense." The relatively small capacity of SSD is not an issue for those of us who run Linux. The great thing about SSD is that I don't have to worry so much about shock, and if I need more space, I can always carry a conventional USB hard drive. That way, I can add capacity by simply buying a larger drive - no OS reinstall needed.
SSD is perfect for laptops. It solves the fundamental problems of durability and power consumption.
Relative: Why does my computer lose my wallpaper and give me a black screen every hour?
Me: Ah, that's just Vista for you. You have to pay Microsoft to get rid of that.
Relative: Why? Why should I have to pay Microsoft? Why doesn't it just work?
Me: A.) It's not Linux, so it won't "just work" no matter what you do, and B.) You didn't really expect Microsoft to let you use their computer for free, did you?
Relative: Um, I already paid for it-
Me: Yes, you paid for the computer. But you didn't pay Microsoft. You have to pay Microsoft before you can use it. You own the computer, they own the software.
Relative: So wait - you have to pay for both the computer and Microsoft?
Me: No, I use Linux. I only have to pay for the computer.
Relative: But if I paid Microsoft, I'd own both the computer, and the software, right?
Me: No, you would own just the computer. Microsoft would still own the software.
Relative: But I could move the software to a new computer if I bought the software, right?
Me: No, that's not how Microsoft works. You pay them, and you get to use the software on that computer. They still own it - you don't - and you can't move it from computer to computer.
Relative: So let me get this straight: I pay Microsoft for software, and they still own it?! What kind of $&*!@ is that?
Me: Yep, that's how proprietary software works. You get to use it, but you can't own it.
Relative: So how is it that you don't have to pay Microsoft?
Me: I run Linux.
At this point, it starts to sink in that pirating Windows isn't doing them any favors. As far as I'm concerned, if you want to use proprietary software, you can pay for it.
People are trying to figure out the unknown, and don't always get it right the first time.
Unless, of course, the subject is evolution. Then its Gospel Truth(TM). Before you think this a troll, know that I could care less one way or another whether evolution is "true" or not. Personally, I don't believe it conflicts with my theist leanings.
But there are people who believe evolution somehow proves God doesn't exist. For these people, any part of the scientific process which questions their dear theory is somehow suspect. They're going to find something to prop up their biases, and - unfortunately for science - evolutionary theory becomes the victim. They attempt to extend evolution from a qualified explanation to a provable tenet. Regardless of the strength of the evidence, evolution will never be proven in the philosophical sense, and attempting to graft science into a philosophical debate is fruitless at best.
To anyone familiar with the scientific method, these things are to be expected. We know that science is neither proven nor true - at least not in the mathematical or philosophical sense. Yet, the larger population often lacks the ability to discriminate between a tentative explanation which may be refined or disproved with the discovery of additional evidence and something that is provably correct. When science speaks, they listen.
Unless, of course, they're the fundamentalist type, in which case they treat all science with suspicion. Not because the claims of science are false, but because they can't understand the difference between an eternal truth (like the resurrection of Jesus) and a qualified statement.
And this is really what the debate about evolution, and the role of science in our society is about. It's not about the scientific method; it's about culture. It's about whose authority (Church or Academia) is accepted by the public at large. Yes, we know science is self-correcting; yes, we know that it has limits, and is frequently wrong. That's not the point. The point is the average person wants to find an authority in whom they can trust. For some people, that authority is their pastor. For others, it is the scientific establishment. For others, it is their parents/politicians/etc... It is these people who need to be convinced that - while the experts might know more than them - they are still expected to think and exercise independent judgment. So many don't, and that is the real root of the problem of science's public image. It is not for the intellectually lazy.
Slashdot Mirror
And no, I don't have it!
Though on a more serious note, I must admit the headline did concern me. The Xandros linux which ships with the EEE is very easy to use, albeit setup a little insecurely. I like the fact that I don't have to login, but it makes me wonder if they did a good security analysis. If they did, and decided to do automatic login for usability, I don't have a problem with that; but I can't help but wonder if for the sake of expedience they discarded all of the other security as well.
The majority of people - even those with college degrees - have a difficult time with logic. Something as simple as an if-else construct can be very confusing to the average person at first.
And there's another twist. About 40% of learners can understand and manipulate abstract concepts, and learn them without any practical experience whatsoever. The other 60% require experiential learning - they have to do before they understand. Fortunately, computers can very easily demonstrate concepts such as if-else...
And how computers work is a mystery to most people. Before you start the course, you should come up with a simple mental model that you can use to explain how a computer works to someone with absolutely no understanding of electronics, logic, etc... For a basic programming course, you should first assess class understanding:
For most programming courses, you should not even assume your students understand how to use the compiler. Furthermore, you should probably come up with a series of simple examples which demonstrate your point without any extraneous code. Because most people learn by doing, one of the first exercises should be to build a simple "hello world" type of application to familiarize themselves with the build tools.
And have fun! Come up with interesting problems. Your students will most likely spend most of their corporate careers doing boring stuff, so they'll appreciate the chance to do fun things like games.
That allows investment bankers to pawn off responsibility for their misdeeds on the American public?
So I'm supposed to pay an additional $10k in taxes to finance the bad decisions of those who foreclosed on middle class Americans? And if I have to pay it over time (as Congress proposed), I'll end up paying even more (because Congress will borrow money to finance the bailout).
I would say that I've got that money in my 401k, but I doubt it's worth anything now.
I've got a better idea. Start printing money. Yes, devalue the currency to the point where I can settle my mortgage for a few hours worth of work. If bank CEOs can get bonuses for shafting even the Americans who were smart enough to avoid bad lending practices, we should be able to just print the money to pay off our debts.
I say bullocks. Okay, so you encrypt your drive with truecrypt. I imagine the exchange at the border will go something like this:
Border Agent: Okay, open your laptop and log in.
You: Okay... (logs in...)
Border Agent: Hmm, you've got TrueCrypt installed. I'm going to need you to give me the password to your hidden partition.
You: But I don't have a hidden partition (And maybe you don't. But it's irrelevant; you can't prove that you don't)
Border Agent: Why don't you just give me the password?
You: But I don't have a password; I don't have a hidden partition!
Border Agent: (taking away your laptop) You'll get this back after the NSA has cracked your hidden partition, or can prove that you don't have one. Have a nice day!
You: What!?
Border Agent: I said, have a good day.
The best bet you've got is to have a relatively clean laptop with the usual files: pictures of the kids, cookies from gmail or Yahoo, etc...
If you need to encrypt it, use steganography to hide it in your pictures of your kids, or that video you shot of dolphins at Sea World, etc... Because nothing attracts attention from law enforcement better than trying to hide something from them. The fact that you don't have a hidden partition is irrelevant; because of the fact that TrueCrypt makes no secret of this feature means that Law Enforcement is going to assume you are using it. It's their job to be suspicious...
If the religious establishment had accepted contraception when it came out...
Normally, I would consider this a troll, but in your case, I think it's just plain ignorance. I suppose it's understandable given the abysmal state of religious knowledge in this country... But I digress. Main point: there have been various religious denominations in Christianity which accepted (and some still accept) contraception. However, their numbers are dwindling. Hence fundamentalism.
I'm not sure how you can reason that removing the perceived negative consequences from something - let alone sex - would make people do less of it. It just seems a matter of common sense that if you remove the possibility of pregnancy, that those afraid of getting pregnant (namely, teenagers), would do it more, not less. Unfortunately, for some things, such as premarital sex, the moral consequences only become clearer in hindsight.
So it seems to me that on the issue of contraception, the religious establishment was correct about the societal consequences.
But it is believed to effect almost any encryption program currently on sale as long as the two volumes being compared use the same encryption key whilst being slightly different from one another.
There are two issues that immediately come to mind:
Disclaimer: I've been brewing beer for a few years now. I've made a few meads and wines as well.
My experience with fermented beverages is that aging does not, universally, make a beer or wine or whiskey better. Most times, aging is used to smooth over some defect with the original beverage; perhaps a cheap vintage, a beer that didn't attenuate fully (too "wet"), etc...
There are a few exceptions, of course. Scotch and Irish ales - like oatmeal stout, for example - go through wonderful transitions in flavor, from chocolately to licorice-like, to finally smoothing out over the course of a few months. Mead is known for being a little harsh after the primary fermentation, and does improve, even if aged in glass.
Whether or not your cheap wine gets better over time is probably due more to how it was handled before bottling than the price of the bottle:
The answer is yes, it is possible.
However, in my rather limited experience with inadvertently shocking boards, the most common result is that the board resets itself.
11 points, though:
I've been working overtime recently. Sadly, even I haven't learned that working overtime causes me to make bad decisions...
Today I looked at code that really should be refactored. And had I taken time to think about the problem, instead of approach it with the "let's ship something now" attitude, I would have done it differently. But in spite of the OT, I'm a few weeks past deadline (again, arbitrary opinion of management...) and, something occurred to me that hadn't ever before in my career:
I could ship this code as is.
The perfectionist in me says it should be refactored, and go through another round of testing. But, 1.) it works now, as is, and 2.) defects don't count against the deadline. I'll get dinged for not meeting a deadline, but engineers never get dinged for releasing buggy code.
So I don't have to work OT. I just have to deliver. And by delivery, we mean that quality matters less than deadlines. Am I setting up the maintainer for a nightmare? You bet. But my colleagues will think of me as some kind of expert because the code is complicated, and I got it done "fast". The maintainers will curse me.
But, I have to keep in mind that my employer can't be loyal to its employees. It doesn't matter how beautiful the code is, or how easily maintained it is. This is no ivory tower, this is Corporate America(TM). If it's not on someone's metric sheet, it doesn't matter. Deadlines matter today; tomorrow someone else will have to take the heat for why it can't be maintained.
And yes, I'll be pleasant when I decline overtime. But I would rather have the support from management to leave a legacy of a job well done, rather than one which merely met some artificial deadline and crude metrics. Sometimes I think that Corporate America has no place for those passionate about their jobs... or for long-term thinking.
Having a "I'll sit here and take it" attitude isn't exactly a winning strategy in interviews.
Nor is having the attitude that you won't take any BS from your employer. The "I'll sit here and take it" attitude employees are exactly the kind of employees most employers want. Unpaid overtime? No problem! Lousy working conditions? No problem!
I do have a hard time believing that just becuase you work in tech support in a call center, you aren't getting jobs.
I've experienced a similar stigma working with Big Iron: "Oh, you're a mainframe programmer? Well, we don't do much of that anymore, most of our stuff is object-oriented..." Nevermind the fact that I've been doing C++ for more than a decade. I experienced a similar stigma when I got into embedded development. My degree says computer science, not IBM mainframes.
Some people just can't wrap their head around the fact that you aren't tech support. Personally, I would not put anything on my resume that wasn't career related. The fact that you have tech support on your resume probably makes them think that you think it has something to do with the position offered. They don't need to know you worked as a tech support - sure, you might have to put it on the application, but it should stay off the resume.
The next time it happens, you might want to end the conversation like this:
Them: Well, we're interested in hiring an engineer... Not so much tech support...
You: Have you ever worked in fast food? I thought so! I'm not interested in working for a burger flipper, either...
Believe it or not, I've said worse to an interviewer...
That it can't do 720p video when my EEE 900 can using mplayer. The biggest problem I encounter is that it gets glitchy at times because the SSD can't keep up...
The problem is when you have employees who come to work and do a good job without slacking off, and are then expected to work weekends because of mistakes made by management.
You've heard it before, "The love of money is the root of all evil".
The appeal of gambling is the gambler's love of money. I have no particularly love of money - while I recognize it's utilitarian aspect, I don't place it on a pedestal above all other things. Hence, I find gambling rather boring.
I come from the opposite perspective: Why do people defend a practice that takes their money away from them? They'll rant about taxes, but if the taxman cometh with spinning wheels and blinking lights, it somehow magically becomes entertainment?
Could they be older than McCain?
Instead of fighting open source, why don't businesses learn to exploit it?
Fighting open source is rather stupid, in my opinion. Who pays for what they can get for free? If your competitor is making his product's source code available, you had better as well; it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know who is giving the customer a better value. You can bet your customers are going to know.
Granted, there are certain cases where companies have good reasons for hiding the source code. Shoddy programming, intellectual property violations (stealing others' copyrighted works, surrepititious illegal patent use, etc...) all come into play. It could even be a matter of keeping trade secrets, secret. However, in all of these cases, if you can't provide compelling value above and beyond what open source projects are doing, there's no point in keeping the code secret.
Instead, your open-source competition is going to offer a product of comparable value, with considerably less development effort on their part. Your competition's profit margins will be higher than yours. Your shareholders will start asking probing questions, like, "Why is development so expensive..." and "Why are our margins so low..."
As much as I hate to say it, capitalism works for open source, rather than against it. No one on the board wants to pay your programmers an arm and a leg to reinvent the database; rather, they'd probably prefer you to use an existing open-source database and concentrate on developing features which add value and differentiate your product from the competition. Companies go bankrupt reinventing the wheel.
Today you can't fight open source. It's just not economically feasible. Rather, companies need to learn to instead build upon the foundation provided by open source, rather than trying to undermine it. That way, they can produce compelling features and provide value for less cost than their competition.
A brewery would be more appropriate.
The reason why jet engines can only approach the efficiency of piston engines is because piston engines have such high compression ratios. Instead of the 10 or 12 to 1, a particularly efficient turbofan might get 4 to 1. The thermal efficiency just isn't there. Build and patent a 12 or 10 to 1 compression ratio turbofan, and you could retire.
And we haven't even discussed diesels, which can push 20 to 1 compression ratios.
One mitigating factor is that jet engines allow aircraft to fly faster, spreading the inordinately large fuel consumption over a greater distance. The other is that piston engines are considerably heavier than turbofans of equivalent power, and weight increases fuel consumption (which can, again, be mitigated by traveling faster).
This wouldn't have even been an issue if she'd used encryption.
Maybe high-profile leaks like this will help convince the public at large that encryption is beneficial, even if you aren't doing anything wrong.
Is that I frequently have ideas at home. And write them down. And later use them at work.
Would the discovery of these documents in my home constitute evidence of "stealing trade secrets" in the eyes of my employer? If I decided to leave my current employer and work for the competition, would those hobby projects of mine be a liability?
I'm just curious, because I do quite a bit of independent development, and from time to time, it becomes valuable at work.
but your right to spam everyone with it?!
First Ammendment in action?
Spam is the ideal litmus test for where someone stands on the rights of free speech. It's almost universally objectionable, never warranted, and offensive to just about everyone.
Yet I'm not sure if there's anyone in the ./ crowd who will stick to their free speech principles when such principles inconvenience them personally. Is there anyone here who, upon receiving spam, remarks to themselves, "Ah, yes, free speech is not dead. I'm glad that - although I personally could care less about replica watches or increasing the size of my body parts - that somewhere, someone out there is free to send such materials to my inbox. USA! USA! USA!"
Because it stands to reason that if spammers have no right to send anonymous messages, then neither do you or I. While a lot of people may not like this particular consequence of free speech, it's far more dangerous to do away with the legal protections for anonymous speech.
The problem is that they didn't actually do these things.
If, as the police storyline goes, the groups had been infiltrated, why couldn't the infiltrators arrest the offending protestors at the time they committed the crime? Oh, that's right, because the entire group could be peaceful, and there's the risk that none of the allegations of future crime would ever come to pass.
Even supposing you're right about these "freedom hating" folks, the fact is that the tactics used by the police will only ensure the evidence brought before the court - if anyone is actually charged - will be so weak that anyone with a good lawyer will walk. End result? People who are legally innocent have been harassed by the police for no one's benefit. If they are indeed criminals, the police haven't done anything to protect the community; if innocent, the protestors will end up paying for their patriotism. No matter which way you look at it, we, the taxpaying public, are worse off.
Police harassment is not the same as law enforcement.
Why not just say, "Vista doesn't make sense." The relatively small capacity of SSD is not an issue for those of us who run Linux. The great thing about SSD is that I don't have to worry so much about shock, and if I need more space, I can always carry a conventional USB hard drive. That way, I can add capacity by simply buying a larger drive - no OS reinstall needed.
SSD is perfect for laptops. It solves the fundamental problems of durability and power consumption.
Relative: Why does my computer lose my wallpaper and give me a black screen every hour?
Me: Ah, that's just Vista for you. You have to pay Microsoft to get rid of that.
Relative: Why? Why should I have to pay Microsoft? Why doesn't it just work?
Me: A.) It's not Linux, so it won't "just work" no matter what you do, and B.) You didn't really expect Microsoft to let you use their computer for free, did you?
Relative: Um, I already paid for it-
Me: Yes, you paid for the computer. But you didn't pay Microsoft. You have to pay Microsoft before you can use it. You own the computer, they own the software.
Relative: So wait - you have to pay for both the computer and Microsoft?
Me: No, I use Linux. I only have to pay for the computer.
Relative: But if I paid Microsoft, I'd own both the computer, and the software, right?
Me: No, you would own just the computer. Microsoft would still own the software.
Relative: But I could move the software to a new computer if I bought the software, right?
Me: No, that's not how Microsoft works. You pay them, and you get to use the software on that computer. They still own it - you don't - and you can't move it from computer to computer.
Relative: So let me get this straight: I pay Microsoft for software, and they still own it?! What kind of $&*!@ is that?
Me: Yep, that's how proprietary software works. You get to use it, but you can't own it.
Relative: So how is it that you don't have to pay Microsoft?
Me: I run Linux.
At this point, it starts to sink in that pirating Windows isn't doing them any favors. As far as I'm concerned, if you want to use proprietary software, you can pay for it.
Evolution
People are trying to figure out the unknown, and don't always get it right the first time.
Unless, of course, the subject is evolution. Then its Gospel Truth(TM). Before you think this a troll, know that I could care less one way or another whether evolution is "true" or not. Personally, I don't believe it conflicts with my theist leanings.
But there are people who believe evolution somehow proves God doesn't exist. For these people, any part of the scientific process which questions their dear theory is somehow suspect. They're going to find something to prop up their biases, and - unfortunately for science - evolutionary theory becomes the victim. They attempt to extend evolution from a qualified explanation to a provable tenet. Regardless of the strength of the evidence, evolution will never be proven in the philosophical sense, and attempting to graft science into a philosophical debate is fruitless at best.
To anyone familiar with the scientific method, these things are to be expected. We know that science is neither proven nor true - at least not in the mathematical or philosophical sense. Yet, the larger population often lacks the ability to discriminate between a tentative explanation which may be refined or disproved with the discovery of additional evidence and something that is provably correct. When science speaks, they listen.
Unless, of course, they're the fundamentalist type, in which case they treat all science with suspicion. Not because the claims of science are false, but because they can't understand the difference between an eternal truth (like the resurrection of Jesus) and a qualified statement.
And this is really what the debate about evolution, and the role of science in our society is about. It's not about the scientific method; it's about culture. It's about whose authority (Church or Academia) is accepted by the public at large. Yes, we know science is self-correcting; yes, we know that it has limits, and is frequently wrong. That's not the point. The point is the average person wants to find an authority in whom they can trust. For some people, that authority is their pastor. For others, it is the scientific establishment. For others, it is their parents/politicians/etc... It is these people who need to be convinced that - while the experts might know more than them - they are still expected to think and exercise independent judgment. So many don't, and that is the real root of the problem of science's public image. It is not for the intellectually lazy.