Thanks judge - you've just struck a great blow for liberty. I'm sure those folks in the news - you know, the ones buying hundreds of Trac-Phones are extremely grateful too. But don't worry about them. Remember, it's really all about George Bush.
I used to run the SETI@Home screensaver. Now I run Folding@Home. But the point is that it's my PC, I'm paying for the cycles - so it's my decision how those cycles are used. If a PC owner wants to search to extra-terrestrials, factor primes, fold proteins, or whatever - it's their decision.
These days I program mostly in Java / C# with occasional quick-n-dirties in PHP. However, for system programming you'd want something low-level like C (or even assembly). For an OS, compilers, assemblers, drivers, or anything real-time you'd want a non-interpreted language. Same goes for the interpeter (like a JVM) or a JIT.
And before you say hardware support for interpreted language - do a quick search on Japan's fifth generation project.
In the US the tax system is 'progressive'. Thus your marginal tax rate will go up much faster than your income increases from your second job. Also savings for early retirement would have to take into account a longer period of retirement, inflation, and the incrasing cost of (individual) health insurance as you grow older (increasing faster than inflation). Bottom line - with two jobs you could retire early - but not as early as you might think. Personally, I'd rather take a more balanced approach than become a victim of karoshi.
Long before fear of terrorism took hold, fear of lawsuits caused home science kits to be 'dumbed down'. I'm surprised that 'chemistry sets' are still sold. In my youth, I had a chemistry set that today would prompt the authorities to send in hazmat teams* from all the neighboring states. Oh well, I suppose you can always simulate chemistry experiments on a PC, sigh...
* - a local middle school was recently locked down till a hazmat team arrived. Someone had broken a mercury thermometer outside the school. I kid you not!
I'd be surprised if they didn't have Ipod vending machines in Japan. Next to the Pocari Sweat machines, the Pocky machines, the Ice Cream machines, the Manga machines, and the... uh... never mind.
I'm starting to feel like the only person on earth who doesn't like Ipods. I admit they are well designed, they have a great user interface. They're very functional. From my point of view there's just one thing wrong with them. The built-in rechargable power supply. I use my MP3 player in a lot of outdoor activities. I prefer a device that I can either replace the battery or take one or more spares with me. You can't do that with an Ipod. Instead, I have a small Sandisk MP3 player which takes on AAA battery. When travelling I can get replacement batteries anywhere. When hiking or biking I can take a spare rechargable AAA. When camping, I can bring several. The design and UI are nowhere near as nice, but that's trumped (at least for me) by the portability.
Not as far as I am concerned! To arms, my Brothers! Remember the Maine!
Hell yes! I say we storm the Spanish beaches and drink all their wine and eat all their tapas. Oh yeah, and take lots of photos. And maybe visit a few art musuems and...
I suspect that the easiest mechanism for distribution would be to place educational software on a single USB flash drive connected to one machine in a classroom mesh. The software on the USB drive could be downloaded, if the school has an internet connection or the USB flash drive could be delivered from a central point.
I agree that the software would have to be small and unneccesary lnaguages would not be shipped or installed. But if the software was sufficiently modular - a localization pack could be developed for each country separate from the core software. Only the core and ONE localization pack would be installed.
Each country will probably develop their own software, but it would be nice if there was a central repository somewhere to share the best of it, and to accept and distribute OSS contributions.
The YLIP was Stephensons vision of the ultimate adaptive AI teaching tool. Clearly nothing like that (or even close) exists. However, w/o a collection of good cheap (or free) CAE software, the laptops are not likely to have a whole lot of impact. Ideally, the educational software would be open-source, free, very modular, extensible, small (quick downloads), user friendly, easily internationalized, and compelling. This is an opportunity for the OSS community to dramatically leverage MIT's work. And who knows - maybe some group of developers WILL create the YLIP.
Do you really think being among those that constantly say this will reduce your competition?
Yup, you found me out. All that news about foreign outsourcing, H-1B's, downsizing, etc. is propaganda designed to reduce competition in the IT field. Feel free to ignore it.
There is lot of discussion of 'FU' money in Neal Stephenson's novel 'Cryptonomicon'. One of my favorite novels (and to the best of my knowledge - the only novel to ever include a PERL program). 'FU' money is not a constant, it depends on your standard of living and life style, the local cost of living, the rate of inflation, the current rate of return on your savings, and how long you plan to need the money (i.e. amount of time to find a new job, or not as the case may be). One of the characters in Stephenson's book has a spreadsheet to calculate it.
I learned a few things from my last lay off. I was out of work for about six months. Fortunately I had savings to get through it. Always keep at least six months of savings available. I had a lot of stock in the company that layed me off. The layoff was a mass layoff due to the company experiencing financial problems. Needless to say, the value of the stock had dropped considerably. The stock options I'd been 'saving' were worthless. Lesson two - don't invest heavily in your employer, and cash in any options as soon as they vest.
When you're unemployed, you need to lower your (cash) burn rate. We reduced unnecessary car trips, eating at restaurants, and most entertainment. We also shopped for food bargains and used coupons. We had several services we subscribed to on a monthly basis. Only those that were absolutely neccessary stayed. We kept internet access, as that was needed for my job search.
We substituted free entertainment for the movies, trips, etc. That included bicycling, local parks, and books and DVD's from the library. One unpleasant surprise expense was health insurance. Companies are required to offer COBRA coverage (i.e. you get company health insurance for 18 months, but your pay. They set the price). Family coverage cost $900 per month! Had I continued to be unemployed, we would have had to switch to a (non-employer) cheaper 'hospital only' plan.
I'm working now (ironically at the place that layed me off). My wife has re-trained (outside of IT) to provide some employment diversification. My daughter has changed her career objectives to avoid IT.
If you're in IT, accumulate sufficient savings, prepare a contingency plan, keep your resume up to date, monitor your cash burn rate. Don't over-invest in your company's stock. Don't live beyond your means, or paycheck to paycheck. If you're thinking about entering the IT field - don't do it.
That's why, this morning, I just moved almost all of my 401k out of US-based stocks.
Hope you didn't move any of it into Chinese equity or bonds. Chinese banks have bad debts equal to 40% of their GDP. The Chinese government has been trying (unsuccessfully) to sweep it all under the carpet. When their banking system finally melts down, it ain't going to be pretty.
This sort of thing ALWAYS happens in the US in time of war. Lincoln suspended habeus corpus during the Civil War. And the Copperheads complained vehemently. There was a great deal of censorship and monitoring of communications sanctioned by Roosevelt during WWII. Americans will tolerate a loss of privacy in exchange for victory. After each war, things went back to normal.
Personally I've got no problem with the NSA doing traffic analysis. If someone's making calls to Waziristan, Yemen, Iran, Syria, and the Bulk Fertilizer Sales Company; they might be a farmer with international customers. But they might be something else, and I'd rather see the Feds act prudently than 'fail to connect the dots' again.
How about the Japanese government either encourages more anime producers to provide English translation of their works and license distribution - or - legitimize fansub distributions via some formal mechanism (creative commons?). Perhaps some of both.
The Chinese banking system is apparently rife with bad loans - over $1 trillion dollars worth (see link below). In the early '90's the real estate bubble combined with dodgy loans threw Japan into a fifteen year recession. It also caused the LDP government to lose power. A banking meltdown and recession would have profound effects on China (and the rest of the world). It could cause the government to loosen it's grip on the people of China. Or it could cause chaos, as the government becomes increasingly desparate to maintain it's power.
I was looking at some packs of civilian MRE's (for camping). You can apparently get them either with or without heating packs. The heating packs appear to take a small quantity of water and produce some sort of chemical exothermic reaction (wouldn't be surprised if they also use Calcium Oxide). Anyway the US military's been using them for many, many years.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks judge - you've just struck a great blow for liberty. I'm sure those folks in the news - you know, the ones buying hundreds of Trac-Phones are extremely grateful too. But don't worry about them. Remember, it's really all about George Bush.
But only if you're REALLY good at math. I'm told that the exam is a extremely difficult.
Knox and others fear gangs are using the Internet to recruit new members, who can be influenced by the secret handshakes
You mean stuff like 'HELO', 'GET', and 'POST' secured by SSL.
Great! I'm going to form a new band called 'Blank'. Spain now owes me a lot of money.
I used to run the SETI@Home screensaver. Now I run Folding@Home. But the point is that it's my PC, I'm paying for the cycles - so it's my decision how those cycles are used. If a PC owner wants to search to extra-terrestrials, factor primes, fold proteins, or whatever - it's their decision.
These days I program mostly in Java / C# with occasional quick-n-dirties in PHP. However, for system programming you'd want something low-level like C (or even assembly). For an OS, compilers, assemblers, drivers, or anything real-time you'd want a non-interpreted language. Same goes for the interpeter (like a JVM) or a JIT.
And before you say hardware support for interpreted language - do a quick search on Japan's fifth generation project.
In the US the tax system is 'progressive'. Thus your marginal tax rate will go up much faster than your income increases from your second job. Also savings for early retirement would have to take into account a longer period of retirement, inflation, and the incrasing cost of (individual) health insurance as you grow older (increasing faster than inflation). Bottom line - with two jobs you could retire early - but not as early as you might think. Personally, I'd rather take a more balanced approach than become a victim of karoshi.
Long before fear of terrorism took hold, fear of lawsuits caused home science kits to be 'dumbed down'. I'm surprised that 'chemistry sets' are still sold. In my youth, I had a chemistry set that today would prompt the authorities to send in hazmat teams* from all the neighboring states. Oh well, I suppose you can always simulate chemistry experiments on a PC, sigh ...
* - a local middle school was recently locked down till a hazmat team arrived. Someone had broken a mercury thermometer outside the school. I kid you not!
I'd be surprised if they didn't have Ipod vending machines in Japan. Next to the Pocari Sweat machines, the Pocky machines, the Ice Cream machines, the Manga machines, and the ... uh ... never mind.
It's a hoax. See Snopes
I'm starting to feel like the only person on earth who doesn't like Ipods. I admit they are well designed, they have a great user interface. They're very functional. From my point of view there's just one thing wrong with them. The built-in rechargable power supply. I use my MP3 player in a lot of outdoor activities. I prefer a device that I can either replace the battery or take one or more spares with me. You can't do that with an Ipod. Instead, I have a small Sandisk MP3 player which takes on AAA battery. When travelling I can get replacement batteries anywhere. When hiking or biking I can take a spare rechargable AAA. When camping, I can bring several. The design and UI are nowhere near as nice, but that's trumped (at least for me) by the portability.
Not as far as I am concerned! To arms, my Brothers! Remember the Maine!
...
Hell yes! I say we storm the Spanish beaches and drink all their wine and eat all their tapas. Oh yeah, and take lots of photos. And maybe visit a few art musuems and
I suspect that the easiest mechanism for distribution would be to place educational software on a single USB flash drive connected to one machine in a classroom mesh. The software on the USB drive could be downloaded, if the school has an internet connection or the USB flash drive could be delivered from a central point.
I agree that the software would have to be small and unneccesary lnaguages would not be shipped or installed. But if the software was sufficiently modular - a localization pack could be developed for each country separate from the core software. Only the core and ONE localization pack would be installed.
Each country will probably develop their own software, but it would be nice if there was a central repository somewhere to share the best of it, and to accept and distribute OSS contributions.
The YLIP was Stephensons vision of the ultimate adaptive AI teaching tool. Clearly nothing like that (or even close) exists. However, w/o a collection of good cheap (or free) CAE software, the laptops are not likely to have a whole lot of impact. Ideally, the educational software would be open-source, free, very modular, extensible, small (quick downloads), user friendly, easily internationalized, and compelling. This is an opportunity for the OSS community to dramatically leverage MIT's work. And who knows - maybe some group of developers WILL create the YLIP.
Does it come with the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer?
According to Nintendo's Company History, the games produced in 1889 apparently looked a whole lot like Japanese playing cards
Yu-Gi-Oh is a whole lot older than I thought!
Do you really think being among those that constantly say this will reduce your competition?
Yup, you found me out. All that news about foreign outsourcing, H-1B's, downsizing, etc. is propaganda designed to reduce competition in the IT field. Feel free to ignore it.
There is lot of discussion of 'FU' money in Neal Stephenson's novel 'Cryptonomicon'. One of my favorite novels (and to the best of my knowledge - the only novel to ever include a PERL program). 'FU' money is not a constant, it depends on your standard of living and life style, the local cost of living, the rate of inflation, the current rate of return on your savings, and how long you plan to need the money (i.e. amount of time to find a new job, or not as the case may be). One of the characters in Stephenson's book has a spreadsheet to calculate it.
I learned a few things from my last lay off. I was out of work for about six months. Fortunately I had savings to get through it. Always keep at least six months of savings available. I had a lot of stock in the company that layed me off. The layoff was a mass layoff due to the company experiencing financial problems. Needless to say, the value of the stock had dropped considerably. The stock options I'd been 'saving' were worthless. Lesson two - don't invest heavily in your employer, and cash in any options as soon as they vest.
When you're unemployed, you need to lower your (cash) burn rate. We reduced unnecessary car trips, eating at restaurants, and most entertainment. We also shopped for food bargains and used coupons. We had several services we subscribed to on a monthly basis. Only those that were absolutely neccessary stayed. We kept internet access, as that was needed for my job search.
We substituted free entertainment for the movies, trips, etc. That included bicycling, local parks, and books and DVD's from the library. One unpleasant surprise expense was health insurance. Companies are required to offer COBRA coverage (i.e. you get company health insurance for 18 months, but your pay. They set the price). Family coverage cost $900 per month! Had I continued to be unemployed, we would have had to switch to a (non-employer) cheaper 'hospital only' plan.
I'm working now (ironically at the place that layed me off). My wife has re-trained (outside of IT) to provide some employment diversification. My daughter has changed her career objectives to avoid IT.
If you're in IT, accumulate sufficient savings, prepare a contingency plan, keep your resume up to date, monitor your cash burn rate. Don't over-invest in your company's stock. Don't live beyond your means, or paycheck to paycheck. If you're thinking about entering the IT field - don't do it.
Samantha Carter
That's why, this morning, I just moved almost all of my 401k out of US-based stocks.
Hope you didn't move any of it into Chinese equity or bonds. Chinese banks have bad debts equal to 40% of their GDP. The Chinese government has been trying (unsuccessfully) to sweep it all under the carpet. When their banking system finally melts down, it ain't going to be pretty.
This sort of thing ALWAYS happens in the US in time of war. Lincoln suspended habeus corpus during the Civil War. And the Copperheads complained vehemently. There was a great deal of censorship and monitoring of communications sanctioned by Roosevelt during WWII. Americans will tolerate a loss of privacy in exchange for victory. After each war, things went back to normal.
Personally I've got no problem with the NSA doing traffic analysis. If someone's making calls to Waziristan, Yemen, Iran, Syria, and the Bulk Fertilizer Sales Company; they might be a farmer with international customers. But they might be something else, and I'd rather see the Feds act prudently than 'fail to connect the dots' again.
How about the Japanese government either encourages more anime producers to provide English translation of their works and license distribution - or - legitimize fansub distributions via some formal mechanism (creative commons?). Perhaps some of both.
The Chinese banking system is apparently rife with bad loans - over $1 trillion dollars worth (see link below). In the early '90's the real estate bubble combined with dodgy loans threw Japan into a fifteen year recession. It also caused the LDP government to lose power. A banking meltdown and recession would have profound effects on China (and the rest of the world). It could cause the government to loosen it's grip on the people of China. Or it could cause chaos, as the government becomes increasingly desparate to maintain it's power.
6 7,19057043-36375,00.html)
(http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,208
I was looking at some packs of civilian MRE's (for camping). You can apparently get them either with or without heating packs. The heating packs appear to take a small quantity of water and produce some sort of chemical exothermic reaction (wouldn't be surprised if they also use Calcium Oxide). Anyway the US military's been using them for many, many years.