(Pardon me for going bit off-topic here, but I think this is the perfect place to share my experience)
one of the key reasons why the chinese don't need a large intelligence agency is because their entire population is actually their intelligence agency, having been trained from a very young age to memorise vast amounts of information - for example, the 10,000 or so chinese characters.
Something I noticed first hand. I have taught maths and programming to Chinese or Chinese-decent students. I observed that a sizeable portion of them struggling to cope up with logical/methodical flow in approaching problems in those subjects. I hardly saw any ingenuity in terms of solutions, most of them are slapdash jobs. However, they ace the final paper by simply memorizing the past paper solutions and vomiting them on the examination hour.
Another experience from my college years, I usually performed well in any subject that needs intense logical thinking and methodical approach (like programming, digital logic etc). But my Chinese peers absolutely hated them. However, they were very good at subjects with barrage of details that one requires to memorize in order to answer the final paper. Furthermore, if there was a change of the format, usually I score better than them in the final examination (as their memorizing is obsolete for the new paper format).
My native language is an Indo-Aryan language (I am from South Asia BTW) and I was using it as my primary language for 18 years. It has about 20 vowels, 36 consonants and many more (if interested, please refer here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhala_script). However, most of them are inter-related i.e. slight variation of another. Hence it is easy to remember in terms of 'relationships'. Grammar is diabolical (but not as German or Russian)... still it is manageable if you memorize the logical flow.
So maybe this is why I tend to be good at logics better than memorizing stuff.
(Going back to the topic....)
In my opinion, nothing can beat 'being in an environment where majority speaks the target language'. Because you have no option but to speak in the target language to get things done.
I was horrible at communicating in English about 8 years ago (maybe still I am). But then I moved out of my home town, into an environment where majority speaks English (yep.. it was college). So I had no option but to speak in English. I remember how difficult it was when I first went to see the doctor (in the new country) after a bad food poisoning. Step-by-step, along the way I learnt how to communicate properly in English.
Quite luckily, there were good instructors (as in, they don't speak slang versions of English) at the language unit in my college. I sought their help quite badly at the early stages, until the point I can manage my self.
The other trick is, watching movies with subtitles. I know this sounds silly. But I did it a lot in the early days, so I can catch proper expressions. (as for Chinese/Japanese, Anime is a good choice.. then again, most DVDs provide Chinese translation I believe).
Maybe now I can manage to speak in a neutral accent and listen without a problem. But still, I am quite bad at writing. However, I did TOEFL last August and posted 107/120. Not bad compared to 8 years ago, where I passed it marginally.
Now I am thinking of taking up French or German (I wish to work/travel in EU). But still, I'm wondering whether I have to invest more time on improving my English skills. What do you think?
I am a TA and I attended a math tutorial class as an observer earlier today. I was sitting in the last row. I saw one or two guys with laptop open, playing first-person shooting games.
When I attended university as a freshmen 8 years ago, laptops are still clunky and not easy to carry around like netbooks. So somewhat we were forced to take down notes by hand.
In practical lab classes like signal processing, in my day we had to manually copy the signal traces on analogue oscilloscope to the lab notebook. But now, with camera phones, its a matter of taking a snap.
I am not against new technology. But technology that hinders the education.. should be kept outside classroom!
Obviously, it can't do anything fantastic. But it can invigorate the enthusiasm of the casual coder to do more coding. That's the best trait in my opinion.
I mean, I don't think a first time coder wants to write an OS kernel. Maybe he/she wants to print his/her name on the screen, see computer knows the answer from 2+2, draw a geometrical shape on the screen... simple things that makes them happy.
Once they are done with simple stuff, they might level up to experiment with algorithm type tasks, e.g. routines to generate Fibonacci numbers, prime numbers etc.
Certainly, nothing I picked up in BASIC helped me in anyway on any language I tried later. But at least, when I walked into CS101, I wasn't someone totally new to the concept of 'programming' and wasn't scared at all. What I see is, people who never had programming experience before college years, tend to develop a real hatred towards it in their freshmen year.
Somebody above mentioned JAVA (or any OOP language) is a bad idea for new programmers. I totally agree with that. Even my CS101 taught JAVA, it wasn't a pretty experience. May be I am strange person, I never liked Visual Basic either.
But in my 2nd year, I learnt C.. it is to-date, the best damn thing I learned in my life. It pave the way for me to learn C++, MATLAB, C#.
In my opinion, programming is not something one can teach to a great depth. Its something one needs to explore with his/her inner curiosity. BASIC can spark that inner interest. BASIC gives some hope for a newbie casual programmer, rather totally putting off like most advanced languages does (even C/C++). That's what matters at the end of the day.
I saw M$ is rolling out 'Small Basic' as an replacement for original BASIC (in many plaforms including linux). I never had the chance to try it out, but I see some important additions that helps coder to play with GUI, internet so on. I am glad to see someone is putting effort to bring the programming back down to absolute ground level.
I think any hardware company can survive until either their products become a part of another system (e.g. Sound Cards) OR seriously fail to compete against another product (not a good e.g., but MIPS architecture... which lost to x86 in desktop sector).
I am confident all three players (INTL, AMD, NVDA) will survive this decade with the exceptions:
1. AMD financially collapse 2. INTL builds a competing CPU+GPU product, which will cut lose NVDA
After all, in the PC targeted semi-con industry, there are not many players but still.. its a growing market!
I seriously doubt NVDA can win a x86 processor battle against INTL... unless they acquire AMD. Which will be an interesting tech-fight we can tune in. But still, AMD is a toxic asset with all the debts and mismanagement in later half of naughties.
Obviously, I want to see a CPU+GPU product. It can be a real game changer in this decade considering the upcoming trends like e-readers, powerful netbooks, smart phones so on.
Clearly, hardware companies are lucky compared to software counterparts. As in, software market can change overnight and that's it. If Intel was a pure software company and did a mistake like Netburst, they will be niche within months. And Microsoft.. they survived vista debacle plainly because of market share.. but if they continued until 2011-2012.. they would've been doomed and apple would've easily take over OS market.
Recently I came across Guy Kawasaki's lectures. In one of them he mentioned, back in the 80s when he was a Mac-Evangelist, Macintosh department employees were given world class treatment like professional massage treatments during working days, First Class air tickets if the flight is 2+ hours etc.
But in reality, Macintosh wasn't earning a dime and continuing the spending spree of all what Apple II department was earning. In return, not a single Apple II employee was permitted to enter the Macintosh building.
I observe some similarity here in Microsoft too (i.e. one department earns, other spends). But seems it is not that bad.
In my humble opinion, I predict the demise of Office and Windows OS in next 10 years (maybe there will be cloud versions). I believe Microsoft will move into more enterprise/back-end technology space rather than remaining in desktop/consumer space (just like IBM). But nothing can be predicted to a higher accuracy, as the internet backbone is yet to achieve higher bandwidths and reliability, which is somewhat mandatory before a full migration in to a cloud based software eco-system.
My university provided me with a typical student mailbox of 50MB (which was increased to 300MB in 2007). It had a clunky web interface, no filters and no support for IMAP or POP for that matter. So the problem is inevitable, you are out of space all the time.
It wasn't a bigger deal back in undergrad days. But once I joined back as a postgrad, I had to use the official university account frequently to correspond with students, counter-parts, administration and so on (mostly official work). I ended up FWD mail to my gmail, then set up gmail to send on behalf of my university account. Then I managed to access gmail with outllook using IMAP. Things are all good and organized, unless google IMAP runs into some sort of trouble.
But then again, I am wondering who communicates with e-mails these days.. apart from people working in office environments. I know some junior fellas in here who literally don't check their inboxes. They are happy to settle with FB, twitter, IM or text messages. Then I met someone the other day, she finds e-mail so old fashioned and irritating (and she went on complaining how hard it is to concentrate reading long ones and keep track of details.. sounds ADHD to me).
I am not lying here, my university implemented a "results over text message" system and was considering delivering news, event details and other important messages via text, as students don't check their inboxes frequent enough. I don't know, I find it ridiculous nevertheless!
On my way in, I managed to change my USD to INR at the airport right after the immigration counter, no problem with that.
But on my way out, I thought I can get my INR change back to USD at the air port (this is my normal routine). Alas! there are no money-changers at the airport. Even if they are available, they are only for Indians and it is capped at INR 5000.
I ended up bringing some 5-digit amount INR back to home, later changed back to USD and lost something like ~20 USD as I don't get same rates outside India.
This is ridiculous. I mean, I have been to many airports. And in most of them, there is a money changer and there are no restrictions for foreigners. But this is the first time I'm seeing other way around. Strange land indeed!
unfortunately, I don't have any solutions with me. But I can tell you some long term consequences based on my experience.
I was brought up in south-asia in a co-ed public school. Public schools are a mix of all the social classes and it is still a habit of 3rd world country men to look down each other on minor nuances.
I was a bully victim throughout my school years (and to a certain extent in my college years.. but more towards 'work-wise bullying'). Definitely I didn't have the physique to fight back. So I had to submit it to survive school years as changing schools is not the solution for everything. As a consequence, I never had a big circle of friends in school. And I try to forget most of my school years and ppl I met there.
Most of my school time, I spent on home work and other stuff (including reading, thinking stuff up) while rest are having merry time in the school yard. But nevertheless, I met handful of good guys (mostly nerds), who ended up being my long term friends/confidantes.
But I really got to know I'm having a serious issue, only after I entered to college. I spent 4 years there without attending a single dorm party, going to college prom or road trips. I just didn't fit into people. I had hard time understanding ppl and only time I understood them was.. when they are ganging up to bully me.
Same thing with romantic stuff. Its a shame, even educated in a co-ed school, I never went on a date in my entire life (and not to mention, no first time yet). Simply because, I don't know how to approach females and talk to them nor have the confidence. Back in school days, when I approached a girl, there are herds of ppl shouting/yelling nasty stuff.... and to avoid that harassment, I opt not to talk with girls.
Moreover, I have issues approaching strangers and talking with them. And I'm worst in terms of bargaining things and manipulating situation for my advantage. No matter how much I try to fit into social groups, I always get kicked out.
Even in my office, I tend to limit my communication to e-mails/IMs. Even thought other staffers having great non-work bonds.. I only have professional relationships.. that's that.
If I didn't get bullied.. I would've interact with more ppl and probably complete 10,000 hours in social relationship training, hence I would've done much better in things I came across after school years. Plainly, I'm having hard time in terms of communicating with people, that pretty much closes most of the life experiences. In long run, all this have costed me quite badly. And yes, I agree with what the article explains.
1. By publication numbers, YES! China or even any Asian institution can easily knock down a Western institution. But once you bring in "Impact Factor", Asian institutions sink in to the bottom of the pacific!!
Maybe Westerners don't know much about what I'm about to tell. In general, researchers in Asia (especially of Chinese descent) loves to publish barrage of papers every year. Most institutions in this part of the world gives you incentives/bonuses based on the "number" of publications.
How do I know this? Because I'm a PhD student in an university in south-east Asia. When I entered this department, head of research was a mainland Chinese. His first rule was "publish at least 1 journal + 1 conference paper every year. Without 2 journal papers, I won't even read your thesis".
As a consequence of this rat-race, people here are just publishing every crap they can and they don't respect the quality or adherence to ethics of sciences. Even one time, a chinese-descent researcher asked me to fake/make-up data and publish (in fact, that's how she get really amazing data for publications). Here people may call it "scientific discovery", but for a proper trained eyes (like myself), its nothing but "scientific fraud".
Personally, I'm very disappointed with how research departments operate here. Hence I applied to US grad schools last month.
2. Can China improve ? I'm not sure. But certainly I have met several extremely talented mainland Chinese researchers, but all of them reside in some other country (e.g. Australia, Singapore).
Then again, I was asked to review a conference paper, written by *post-doc* students from a non-popular rural university in China. Literally, it was unreadable. It seems they have heavily used the thesaurus or used a translator altogether. Lets forget about the language (even I am happy to help them re-write the paper). That particular paper I read, it didn't prove anything significant nor important, knowledge contribution wise.. NULL. Undergrads in my university report much better research outcomes.
So it is hard to predict... but surely, western institutions still have the mojo.
3. Despite what we see and read, I strongly believe they (Chinese) have a proper R&D knowledge sphere hidden out somewhere. Otherwise, they won't be able to progress in nuclear, military and other technology fronts. Also not to forget, they have journals and other publications in *chinese*.... which I believe are out of reach to us, as we can't read Chinese and those material hardly get translated to English and reach to science databases in west.
As of 2010, it is safe to say... US/UK/EU institutions have the monopoly in Research.. and Asia is nothing but spammers to periodicals. Just my $0.02...
Syntaxes are pretty similar to C# style. Overall, not bad. Good documentation too. I managed to get my little sister hands on with programming using Small Basic.
In my opinion, I believe this is a good quality any boss should possess.
I used to work in an IT service company with a group of engineers. Every morning, Senior Engineer (my boss) briefs and delegate tasks. Then he visits every work site and check whether we have issues and our well-being. If it is a grave yard-shift, at least he will spend the first hour with us. If he is not around, he will take calls at any time and give any support he could. Essentially what he does is, kick start the work and empower us to finish it.
What I feel is, if someone is breaking sweat for me, it is my duty to support them. At least stay connected through IM, email or mobile. After all, without co-workers, we are nothing!
IMHO, Internet live, breathe on electricity and if no electricity, no Internet at all.
Hence it is worth to calculate its electricity usage (Energy usage, to be precise) on a given time (say a day), then plug into E=mc^2 to calculate the Mass.
I once saw a news story on CBS covered by David Pogue on dying 'content storage formats'. It is surprising how fast even certain popular file formats extinct from the face of earth because of a new competing format. And it doesn't take centuries, one good decade is more than enough.
Yes, you can have the 1000 y.o. DVD... but you better append the software to read your specific data + an OS which runs that software. Not to forget, find an emulator which can mimic the hardware environment for a 1000 y.o. OS.
Actually.. ACME has tried this well before IBM. Might IBM is violating ACME patents.
From "Loony Land Or Bust!"
ACMETROPOLIS - At Acme Laboratories, here on the outskirts of the desert, a team of genetically modified, hyper-intelligent rodents are working around the clock on their next big product: Acme Internet in a Box.
"The difficult thing isn't getting it to work properly," says The Brain, the project's lead lab mouse. "Nearly anyone can create a stable Internet connection these days. The tough thing is getting it to fail properly--and spectacularly--at the worst possible time. Our dream product would literally catch on fire just as you are uploading a project you'd spent weeks working on. It would be a bonus if it took down a couple of major Web sites in the process."
Remember... Deep Thought is the only computer we ever know who gave the answer to the ultimate question (101010 in binary...or 42 in decimal). So the truth is out there.. deep inside Deep Thought....
Guys... lets go and debug it.. check the logs, put a botnet, do whatever can to find the laws of nature!!!
John Nash's biography (Beautiful Mind) claims he was homosexual. But later, some claimed it wasn't the case and book is wrong. So which is correct ???
Beautiful thing about Wikipedia is.... some of their sources are based on interviews (usually on youtube) and other rare stuff. But dynamic behaviour of internet (missing web pages, changes etc) surely causing the reliability of wikipeida.
Ubuntu just as good? No. Free software just isn't there yet. If it were, Dell, HP and Acer would have dumped Microsoft quite some time ago in the home market. People want cheap and easy. Not necessarily good, just cheap and easy. Linux doesn't even qualify as that yet - the market has spoken as always. totally agree !!!
(Okay.. first I must say, I got this 0 points simply because I made a honest criticize on linux few weeks back right here and moderators went angry with me, okay fine.. this is linux territory)
Just my 2 cents...
Windows is the most used OS on the planet. No arguments. And its been a long time with different incarnations. Now the new incarnation have to live up to the expectation of backward compatibility.
Yes.. once intel tried giving up x86 and totally going with itanium.. it ended up as a real white elephant that they don't about it anymore. So now they invest billions on improving it and making it much better.
Same story with C language... there are people criticise it as well.. but still.. its a language which can do many miracles in programming world. That's why still it is the holy grail of programming (maybe I am exaggerating too much). That's why they are trying to bring in multti-threading as well.
So.. windows may lose some market share (largely.. thanks to the Intel powered Macs). But still it will be the ultimate OS we gonna see for another long time. PRetty much all the applications written to it.
Also do appreciate the fact that M$ do sweat alot in making their product better. If we go and place our selves in M$ shoes, non of us gonna complain about Windows. Pretty much any real-time OS is pretty tricky to program with all the concerns (DRM, Security, multi users etc.)
And lastly... many here praise on Linux. Yeah its free and it has some legacy from UNIX (the holygrail of modern OS). But for the well built enterprise one (which I use in large PABX servers).. still not for free!
of course.. there should be somekind of a browser to access internet and download Opera (or any other browser.. assuming they are free).
I adore Opera and I am writing this reply using Opera browser. I wish IE and other browsers would follows the Opera browser as the role model in browser designing.
But I honestly fear about Opera's actions. Afterall, they got to sit on top of M$ OS if they really want to triumph. No question, M$ owns the OS market with 90+% share. Engaging these kind of actions may push them to lower market shares like Apple, Linux... which is not so healthy.
Anyway.. when think about it... why M$ vista.. how about Apple Safari and Linux browser?? are they gonna go through this same thing (removed from the OS) ???
Slashdot Mirror
mod parent up!
(Pardon me for going bit off-topic here, but I think this is the perfect place to share my experience)
one of the key reasons why the chinese don't need a large intelligence agency is because their entire population is actually their intelligence agency, having been trained from a very young age to memorise vast amounts of information - for example, the 10,000 or so chinese characters.
Something I noticed first hand. I have taught maths and programming to Chinese or Chinese-decent students. I observed that a sizeable portion of them struggling to cope up with logical/methodical flow in approaching problems in those subjects. I hardly saw any ingenuity in terms of solutions, most of them are slapdash jobs. However, they ace the final paper by simply memorizing the past paper solutions and vomiting them on the examination hour.
Another experience from my college years, I usually performed well in any subject that needs intense logical thinking and methodical approach (like programming, digital logic etc). But my Chinese peers absolutely hated them. However, they were very good at subjects with barrage of details that one requires to memorize in order to answer the final paper. Furthermore, if there was a change of the format, usually I score better than them in the final examination (as their memorizing is obsolete for the new paper format).
My native language is an Indo-Aryan language (I am from South Asia BTW) and I was using it as my primary language for 18 years. It has about 20 vowels, 36 consonants and many more (if interested, please refer here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhala_script). However, most of them are inter-related i.e. slight variation of another. Hence it is easy to remember in terms of 'relationships'. Grammar is diabolical (but not as German or Russian)... still it is manageable if you memorize the logical flow.
So maybe this is why I tend to be good at logics better than memorizing stuff.
(Going back to the topic....)
In my opinion, nothing can beat 'being in an environment where majority speaks the target language'. Because you have no option but to speak in the target language to get things done.
I was horrible at communicating in English about 8 years ago (maybe still I am). But then I moved out of my home town, into an environment where majority speaks English (yep.. it was college). So I had no option but to speak in English. I remember how difficult it was when I first went to see the doctor (in the new country) after a bad food poisoning. Step-by-step, along the way I learnt how to communicate properly in English.
Quite luckily, there were good instructors (as in, they don't speak slang versions of English) at the language unit in my college. I sought their help quite badly at the early stages, until the point I can manage my self.
The other trick is, watching movies with subtitles. I know this sounds silly. But I did it a lot in the early days, so I can catch proper expressions. (as for Chinese/Japanese, Anime is a good choice.. then again, most DVDs provide Chinese translation I believe).
Maybe now I can manage to speak in a neutral accent and listen without a problem. But still, I am quite bad at writing. However, I did TOEFL last August and posted 107/120. Not bad compared to 8 years ago, where I passed it marginally.
Now I am thinking of taking up French or German (I wish to work/travel in EU). But still, I'm wondering whether I have to invest more time on improving my English skills. What do you think?
I am a TA and I attended a math tutorial class as an observer earlier today. I was sitting in the last row. I saw one or two guys with laptop open, playing first-person shooting games.
When I attended university as a freshmen 8 years ago, laptops are still clunky and not easy to carry around like netbooks. So somewhat we were forced to take down notes by hand.
In practical lab classes like signal processing, in my day we had to manually copy the signal traces on analogue oscilloscope to the lab notebook. But now, with camera phones, its a matter of taking a snap.
I am not against new technology. But technology that hinders the education.. should be kept outside classroom!
My first computer language is BASIC too.
Obviously, it can't do anything fantastic. But it can invigorate the enthusiasm of the casual coder to do more coding. That's the best trait in my opinion.
I mean, I don't think a first time coder wants to write an OS kernel. Maybe he/she wants to print his/her name on the screen, see computer knows the answer from 2+2, draw a geometrical shape on the screen... simple things that makes them happy.
Once they are done with simple stuff, they might level up to experiment with algorithm type tasks, e.g. routines to generate Fibonacci numbers, prime numbers etc.
Certainly, nothing I picked up in BASIC helped me in anyway on any language I tried later. But at least, when I walked into CS101, I wasn't someone totally new to the concept of 'programming' and wasn't scared at all. What I see is, people who never had programming experience before college years, tend to develop a real hatred towards it in their freshmen year.
Somebody above mentioned JAVA (or any OOP language) is a bad idea for new programmers. I totally agree with that. Even my CS101 taught JAVA, it wasn't a pretty experience. May be I am strange person, I never liked Visual Basic either.
But in my 2nd year, I learnt C.. it is to-date, the best damn thing I learned in my life. It pave the way for me to learn C++, MATLAB, C#.
In my opinion, programming is not something one can teach to a great depth. Its something one needs to explore with his/her inner curiosity. BASIC can spark that inner interest. BASIC gives some hope for a newbie casual programmer, rather totally putting off like most advanced languages does (even C/C++). That's what matters at the end of the day.
I saw M$ is rolling out 'Small Basic' as an replacement for original BASIC (in many plaforms including linux). I never had the chance to try it out, but I see some important additions that helps coder to play with GUI, internet so on. I am glad to see someone is putting effort to bring the programming back down to absolute ground level.
I think any hardware company can survive until either their products become a part of another system (e.g. Sound Cards) OR seriously fail to compete against another product (not a good e.g., but MIPS architecture... which lost to x86 in desktop sector).
I am confident all three players (INTL, AMD, NVDA) will survive this decade with the exceptions:
1. AMD financially collapse
2. INTL builds a competing CPU+GPU product, which will cut lose NVDA
After all, in the PC targeted semi-con industry, there are not many players but still.. its a growing market!
I seriously doubt NVDA can win a x86 processor battle against INTL... unless they acquire AMD. Which will be an interesting tech-fight we can tune in. But still, AMD is a toxic asset with all the debts and mismanagement in later half of naughties.
Obviously, I want to see a CPU+GPU product. It can be a real game changer in this decade considering the upcoming trends like e-readers, powerful netbooks, smart phones so on.
Clearly, hardware companies are lucky compared to software counterparts. As in, software market can change overnight and that's it. If Intel was a pure software company and did a mistake like Netburst, they will be niche within months. And Microsoft.. they survived vista debacle plainly because of market share.. but if they continued until 2011-2012.. they would've been doomed and apple would've easily take over OS market.
I think it is time to introduce...
KONDOMS ...condoms custom tailored for Kualas !!!
Recently I came across Guy Kawasaki's lectures. In one of them he mentioned, back in the 80s when he was a Mac-Evangelist, Macintosh department employees were given world class treatment like professional massage treatments during working days, First Class air tickets if the flight is 2+ hours etc.
But in reality, Macintosh wasn't earning a dime and continuing the spending spree of all what Apple II department was earning. In return, not a single Apple II employee was permitted to enter the Macintosh building.
I observe some similarity here in Microsoft too (i.e. one department earns, other spends). But seems it is not that bad.
In my humble opinion, I predict the demise of Office and Windows OS in next 10 years (maybe there will be cloud versions). I believe Microsoft will move into more enterprise/back-end technology space rather than remaining in desktop/consumer space (just like IBM). But nothing can be predicted to a higher accuracy, as the internet backbone is yet to achieve higher bandwidths and reliability, which is somewhat mandatory before a full migration in to a cloud based software eco-system.
My university provided me with a typical student mailbox of 50MB (which was increased to 300MB in 2007). It had a clunky web interface, no filters and no support for IMAP or POP for that matter. So the problem is inevitable, you are out of space all the time.
It wasn't a bigger deal back in undergrad days. But once I joined back as a postgrad, I had to use the official university account frequently to correspond with students, counter-parts, administration and so on (mostly official work). I ended up FWD mail to my gmail, then set up gmail to send on behalf of my university account. Then I managed to access gmail with outllook using IMAP. Things are all good and organized, unless google IMAP runs into some sort of trouble.
But then again, I am wondering who communicates with e-mails these days.. apart from people working in office environments. I know some junior fellas in here who literally don't check their inboxes. They are happy to settle with FB, twitter, IM or text messages. Then I met someone the other day, she finds e-mail so old fashioned and irritating (and she went on complaining how hard it is to concentrate reading long ones and keep track of details.. sounds ADHD to me).
I am not lying here, my university implemented a "results over text message" system and was considering delivering news, event details and other important messages via text, as students don't check their inboxes frequent enough. I don't know, I find it ridiculous nevertheless!
I visited New Delhi last November (2009).
On my way in, I managed to change my USD to INR at the airport right after the immigration counter, no problem with that.
But on my way out, I thought I can get my INR change back to USD at the air port (this is my normal routine). Alas! there are no money-changers at the airport. Even if they are available, they are only for Indians and it is capped at INR 5000.
I ended up bringing some 5-digit amount INR back to home, later changed back to USD and lost something like ~20 USD as I don't get same rates outside India.
This is ridiculous. I mean, I have been to many airports. And in most of them, there is a money changer and there are no restrictions for foreigners. But this is the first time I'm seeing other way around. Strange land indeed!
unfortunately, I don't have any solutions with me. But I can tell you some long term consequences based on my experience.
I was brought up in south-asia in a co-ed public school. Public schools are a mix of all the social classes and it is still a habit of 3rd world country men to look down each other on minor nuances.
I was a bully victim throughout my school years (and to a certain extent in my college years.. but more towards 'work-wise bullying'). Definitely I didn't have the physique to fight back. So I had to submit it to survive school years as changing schools is not the solution for everything. As a consequence, I never had a big circle of friends in school. And I try to forget most of my school years and ppl I met there.
Most of my school time, I spent on home work and other stuff (including reading, thinking stuff up) while rest are having merry time in the school yard. But nevertheless, I met handful of good guys (mostly nerds), who ended up being my long term friends/confidantes.
But I really got to know I'm having a serious issue, only after I entered to college. I spent 4 years there without attending a single dorm party, going to college prom or road trips. I just didn't fit into people. I had hard time understanding ppl and only time I understood them was.. when they are ganging up to bully me.
Same thing with romantic stuff. Its a shame, even educated in a co-ed school, I never went on a date in my entire life (and not to mention, no first time yet). Simply because, I don't know how to approach females and talk to them nor have the confidence. Back in school days, when I approached a girl, there are herds of ppl shouting/yelling nasty stuff.... and to avoid that harassment, I opt not to talk with girls.
Moreover, I have issues approaching strangers and talking with them. And I'm worst in terms of bargaining things and manipulating situation for my advantage. No matter how much I try to fit into social groups, I always get kicked out.
Even in my office, I tend to limit my communication to e-mails/IMs. Even thought other staffers having great non-work bonds.. I only have professional relationships.. that's that.
If I didn't get bullied.. I would've interact with more ppl and probably complete 10,000 hours in social relationship training, hence I would've done much better in things I came across after school years. Plainly, I'm having hard time in terms of communicating with people, that pretty much closes most of the life experiences. In long run, all this have costed me quite badly. And yes, I agree with what the article explains.
Let me bust some myths here...
1. By publication numbers, YES! China or even any Asian institution can easily knock down a Western institution. But once you bring in "Impact Factor", Asian institutions sink in to the bottom of the pacific!!
Maybe Westerners don't know much about what I'm about to tell. In general, researchers in Asia (especially of Chinese descent) loves to publish barrage of papers every year. Most institutions in this part of the world gives you incentives/bonuses based on the "number" of publications.
How do I know this? Because I'm a PhD student in an university in south-east Asia. When I entered this department, head of research was a mainland Chinese. His first rule was "publish at least 1 journal + 1 conference paper every year. Without 2 journal papers, I won't even read your thesis".
As a consequence of this rat-race, people here are just publishing every crap they can and they don't respect the quality or adherence to ethics of sciences. Even one time, a chinese-descent researcher asked me to fake/make-up data and publish (in fact, that's how she get really amazing data for publications). Here people may call it "scientific discovery", but for a proper trained eyes (like myself), its nothing but "scientific fraud".
Personally, I'm very disappointed with how research departments operate here. Hence I applied to US grad schools last month.
2. Can China improve ? I'm not sure. But certainly I have met several extremely talented mainland Chinese researchers, but all of them reside in some other country (e.g. Australia, Singapore).
Then again, I was asked to review a conference paper, written by *post-doc* students from a non-popular rural university in China. Literally, it was unreadable. It seems they have heavily used the thesaurus or used a translator altogether. Lets forget about the language (even I am happy to help them re-write the paper). That particular paper I read, it didn't prove anything significant nor important, knowledge contribution wise.. NULL. Undergrads in my university report much better research outcomes.
So it is hard to predict... but surely, western institutions still have the mojo.
3. Despite what we see and read, I strongly believe they (Chinese) have a proper R&D knowledge sphere hidden out somewhere. Otherwise, they won't be able to progress in nuclear, military and other technology fronts. Also not to forget, they have journals and other publications in *chinese*.... which I believe are out of reach to us, as we can't read Chinese and those material hardly get translated to English and reach to science databases in west.
As of 2010, it is safe to say... US/UK/EU institutions have the monopoly in Research.. and Asia is nothing but spammers to periodicals. Just my $0.02...
I started off with GW-Basic.
I know we slash-dotters to some extent dislike M$. But they have something just to address this issue. They call it the "Small Basic"
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/cc950524.aspx
Syntaxes are pretty similar to C# style. Overall, not bad. Good documentation too. I managed to get my little sister hands on with programming using Small Basic.
In my opinion, I believe this is a good quality any boss should possess.
I used to work in an IT service company with a group of engineers. Every morning, Senior Engineer (my boss) briefs and delegate tasks. Then he visits every work site and check whether we have issues and our well-being. If it is a grave yard-shift, at least he will spend the first hour with us. If he is not around, he will take calls at any time and give any support he could. Essentially what he does is, kick start the work and empower us to finish it.
What I feel is, if someone is breaking sweat for me, it is my duty to support them. At least stay connected through IM, email or mobile. After all, without co-workers, we are nothing!
IMHO, Internet live, breathe on electricity and if no electricity, no Internet at all.
Hence it is worth to calculate its electricity usage (Energy usage, to be precise) on a given time (say a day), then plug into E=mc^2 to calculate the Mass.
what do you think?
1^0 = 1
1^1 = 1
hence 1^0 = 1^1
taking log to the base 1 from both sides,
0 = 1
by extending to 1^2, 1^3 etc...
0 = 1 = 2 = 3 .....
can it flush the toilet... ???
Personally I find this ridiculous.
I once saw a news story on CBS covered by David Pogue on dying 'content storage formats'. It is surprising how fast even certain popular file formats extinct from the face of earth because of a new competing format. And it doesn't take centuries, one good decade is more than enough.
Yes, you can have the 1000 y.o. DVD... but you better append the software to read your specific data + an OS which runs that software. Not to forget, find an emulator which can mimic the hardware environment for a 1000 y.o. OS.
nice to have powerful machines. But what about the programming end ?
More specifically, can it run MATLAB or Octave and use all the flops for computations ?
I think its a known fact that most academia use MATLAB/Octave to do model creation/testing...
Actually.. ACME has tried this well before IBM. Might IBM is violating ACME patents.
From "Loony Land Or Bust!"
ACMETROPOLIS - At Acme Laboratories, here on the outskirts of the desert, a team of genetically modified, hyper-intelligent rodents are working around the clock on their next big product: Acme Internet in a Box.
"The difficult thing isn't getting it to work properly," says The Brain, the project's lead lab mouse. "Nearly anyone can create a stable Internet connection these days. The tough thing is getting it to fail properly--and spectacularly--at the worst possible time. Our dream product would literally catch on fire just as you are uploading a project you'd spent weeks working on. It would be a bonus if it took down a couple of major Web sites in the process."
read the rest at http://www.forbes.com/2007/12/11/acme-corporation-looney-oped-books-cx_mn_fict1507_1211acme.html
where was the BEAVERS ??? they would've done much greater job.... perhaps they were trouble-shooting the cluster...
Remember... Deep Thought is the only computer we ever know who gave the answer to the ultimate question (101010 in binary...or 42 in decimal). So the truth is out there.. deep inside Deep Thought....
Guys... lets go and debug it.. check the logs, put a botnet, do whatever can to find the laws of nature!!!
sometimes, sources can wrong as well.
John Nash's biography (Beautiful Mind) claims he was homosexual. But later, some claimed it wasn't the case and book is wrong. So which is correct ???
Beautiful thing about Wikipedia is.... some of their sources are based on interviews (usually on youtube) and other rare stuff. But dynamic behaviour of internet (missing web pages, changes etc) surely causing the reliability of wikipeida.
What about Darth Vader's mentor....... Sith Lord ????
(Okay.. first I must say, I got this 0 points simply because I made a honest criticize on linux few weeks back right here and moderators went angry with me, okay fine.. this is linux territory)
Just my 2 cents...
Windows is the most used OS on the planet. No arguments. And its been a long time with different incarnations. Now the new incarnation have to live up to the expectation of backward compatibility.
Yes.. once intel tried giving up x86 and totally going with itanium.. it ended up as a real white elephant that they don't about it anymore. So now they invest billions on improving it and making it much better.
Same story with C language... there are people criticise it as well.. but still.. its a language which can do many miracles in programming world. That's why still it is the holy grail of programming (maybe I am exaggerating too much). That's why they are trying to bring in multti-threading as well.
So.. windows may lose some market share (largely.. thanks to the Intel powered Macs). But still it will be the ultimate OS we gonna see for another long time. PRetty much all the applications written to it.
Also do appreciate the fact that M$ do sweat alot in making their product better. If we go and place our selves in M$ shoes, non of us gonna complain about Windows. Pretty much any real-time OS is pretty tricky to program with all the concerns (DRM, Security, multi users etc.)
And lastly... many here praise on Linux. Yeah its free and it has some legacy from UNIX (the holygrail of modern OS). But for the well built enterprise one (which I use in large PABX servers).. still not for free!
of course.. there should be somekind of a browser to access internet and download Opera (or any other browser.. assuming they are free).
I adore Opera and I am writing this reply using Opera browser. I wish IE and other browsers would follows the Opera browser as the role model in browser designing.
But I honestly fear about Opera's actions. Afterall, they got to sit on top of M$ OS if they really want to triumph. No question, M$ owns the OS market with 90+% share. Engaging these kind of actions may push them to lower market shares like Apple, Linux... which is not so healthy.
Anyway.. when think about it... why M$ vista.. how about Apple Safari and Linux browser?? are they gonna go through this same thing (removed from the OS) ???