If so, I'm sorry to say he lacks the cynicism to deal with politicians, specially those from third world nations. These individuals will endorse any project that makes them look good. An OLPC endorsement is marketing gold from a politician's point of view, because it ties education, children and technology -- areas which third world nations are very reluctant to invest in -- all at zero cost.
Some of the hardware in a breathalyzer is a photodetector connected to an A/D converter. Sensitive A/D converters can be sensitive to RFI.
You also missed the point of my question, like two other posters before you.
I'm a Ph.D. candidate in electronic engineering, and I can come up with these conjectures by myself. The question here is why "crimguy", who claims to represent 3 clients in AZ confidently states "Believe me when I tell you - these machines are unreliable, and subject to many errors, most glaringly the result of RFI screwing up the results."
What I'm looking for is quantitative proof that these breathalyzers are behaving badly due to RFI. For instance, a lab report stating non-compliance to EMC regulations would be interesting. I don't want to read possible explanations to a problem that may not exist! I want proof that these machines are operating incorrectly in the field. Because if there's no experimental evidence to support this "glaring result", then the "believe me when I tell you" phrase is worthless and he might as well be use sunspots to support his case.
because the cop would have high-powered digital radios and perhaps radar gun turned on while they test you in front of the bright lights. In the given environment, the low probability of circumstances is nearly certain to be in place to cause failure.
That's not what I was asking. I want to know his basis for claiming that the breathalyzer is susceptible to RFI, and not an illustration of why EMI compliance is important with this type of equipment.
Believe me when I tell you - these machines are unreliable, and subject to many errors, most glaringly the result of RFI screwing up the results.
Are you at liberty to say why RFI is considered the most glaring fault? I wouldn't expect this behaviour from a breathalizer, so it kind of surprises me.
A lot of it probably has its roots with Christianity. The Devil is smart, remember? When Dante was populating the Inferno, he dumped Odysseus in the 8th circle, 1 up from the bottom. Why? Because he's a smart, tricky bastard, just like the Devil is supposed to be. This country has a lot of radical Christian roots (Puritans, anyone?) so it's not all that surprising that our views on intellectualism are shaped around that.
That's nonsense, and there are many counterexamples to this claim. Which is a pity, because I enjoyed the first part of your post. Christianity doesn't teach people to be stupid. Jesus himself said "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and innocent as doves." (Matthew 10:16).
"Unlike corporations such as IBM - with revenues of $22 billion in the first quarter of 2007 alone - our schools do not have the ability to generate new dollars to fund projects or pay for employees," the lawmakers wrote. "Our schools rely solely on limited state and federal assistance to educate our students and every dollar is precious."
If every dollar is precious, they should've thought twice before spending $5 million in hardware that was never even used!
This district's atrocious conduct is precisely the reason why IBM should not forgive the debt.
I was about to buy 3 of these, but when I actually looked closely at the graph I realised how biased it is toward the biomedical/health sciences. Math is a puny cluster of small dots, there's no area labeled Engineering and Chemistry looks like it has more lines than all the hard sciences put together.
Their site actually lets you highlight the portions that they consider Engineering, and the result is pretty weird: you get computer science, math, a lot of astrophysics, fluid mechanics, materials, applied physics and some physical chemistry. Most of these don't even qualify as engineering, and there's a lot of stuff that isn't featured (topics published by the IEEE would make a good start).
I suppose this is appropriate considering it was published in Nature, but to me it's a let down. It's a pretty poster, but it neglects the areas I enjoy the most. At least it has astrophysics.
As an American, I see that particular facet of our culture more as a sign of our irrationality than anything else, although I guess that a total absence of any desire to change culture or civilization for the better would be if anything more depressing.
I usually find it irritating rather than depressing, since it's a byproduct of lazyness and corruption.
Around here, most problems being unnoticed because of the population's lack of standards. Anyone who brings attention to them is singled out and shunned because criticism is seen as aggression. I should note that Brazilians hate the notion of aggression, and would rather suffer quietly than complain when mistreated.
Problems inevitably grow when ignored. When they reach the point where they're causing very obvious damage, the individuals in command make speeches. Brazilians are notable for talking too much and accomplishing very little. Responsibilities are constantly reassigned, no clear plan of action is taken and nothing gets done.
The population has a very timid reaction to most problems. And when there's a measurable reaction, it's often very bizarre in nature, with no clear purpose. A good example was a set of very large demonstrations called the "walks for peace", in which people would dress in white and walk quietly along large avenues. Were they trying to show criminals that armed robbery, assault and murder are disapproved by society? I think so, misguided as that attempt was.
This happens because a very, very large portion of society has conflicts of interest. There's the middle class kid who buys pirate Playstation CDs from street vendors, directly financing paramilitary criminal organizations. Then there's the cute middle upper class girl who takes ecstasy pills at her favorite rave or club. There's the 30-something executive who has cocaine parties, and the 50-something husbands who spend their evenings with prostitutes to blow off steam, consuming all kinds of illegal products. These same people don't want to get tickets, they bribe police officers, commit tax fraud, divert domestic sewer into the river and bribe the building inspector and so on. Then these same people complain that the streets are unsafe and that politicians are corrupt.
Whenever I comment online over this sort of issue, I usually get a reply from an American who identifies the same issues in the US (maybe not so much with the walk for peace part). Of course you can identify these and many more typically Brazilian problems anywhere in the world. There's a question of magnitude, though, and I can't emphasize this part enough. And even though American civil liberties may be degenerating and American citizens often feel powerless to halt this process, you guys still have the moral impetus to demand and bring forth change. I don't see this around here, and things are only getting worse.
While I understand your point about feeling the "vibrant essence of life itself", it's one thing to take a trip to Bolivia, and it's another thing to have this experience every day of your life.
I've lived my whole life in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and while conditions here are nowhere near what you've described, the general population's lack of commitment and accountability eventually gets to your nerves. What impressed me most is this part of your comment:
Here in the US, people seem to have what I call a hysteria of action. If something bad happens to anyone , Sometime Must Be Done, so that nobody ever has to suffer ever again. If a child dies in a shooting, all guns everywhere must be registered and locked up. If somebody gets food poisoning, we must institute totally new rules and procedures about handling food. If somebody dies in a car accident, we have to put air-bags on the roofs of all new cars. If somebody dies of a rare, expensive disease, we must establish a new non-profit so that nobody ever need suffer this disease again. If something bad ever manages to happen again, it was because somebody was lazy, not doing their job, and they must be fired. America is a paradise, and if bad things happen, it's somebody's fault for not doing their job.
I greatly admire The Something Must be Done philosophy. It suggests a degree of discipline that pushes society as a whole to improve itself, act on its problems and not try to excuse itself as a victim of circumstances. It shows people value personal responsibility and back their feelings with real actions. And while in some aspects this may be an idealization, it shows a set of values which are lost on the general Brazilian culture.
As long as Windows is shipped with computers and people have to pay the Microsoft tax, there isn't a free market to speak of.
Are you implying that you can buy a Mac that is not bundled with an OS? Seriously, I don't know. Is that true?
Nothing I wrote implies this.
A MacBook doesn't violate the concept of a free market because Apple makes and sells both the hardware and software. The laptop/OS X combo is in fact a single product developed by a single company.
Most other desktop computer vendors won't give you the option of buying a computer without Windows. These companies didn't develop Windows. In most cases, they didn't even develop the hardware they're selling. They're just software and hardware resellers, yet they don't let you buy the hardware without the software.
Now to me the problem is crystal clear. You can play the devil's advocate all you want, but the Microsoft tax still exists and it plays a big part in Microsoft's business strategy.
I expect to go to any computer retailer and be able to buy a computer without Windows pre-installed. That's all I want -- I don't dispute anything you wrote.
It's apples own fault that more people don't pick it up. If Dell were able to sell a PC and offer the users the choice of OSX or Windows...I bet with Apple's marketing you'd get LOADS of people adopting it for the first time.
Yeah, but that's just the thing. Microsoft isn't pleased when vendors start selling machines without Windows (or worse, with Linux). Dell and IBM get away with this on a limited basis, but even then it's tricky.
People have different preferences. That's what makes the free market work.
Exactly, and this is why a lot less people should be using Windows. As long as Windows is shipped with computers and people have to pay the Microsoft tax, there isn't a free market to speak of.
Most Windows users didn't choose a Microsoft operating system, so their preferences weren't a factor.
You suggest that the Department of Defense's nameserver is badly managed, making an argument by analogy concerning "large governmental organizations". Since you haven't provided a technical argument, your accusation has no merit. Your "distinct impression" is pure speculation.
PIC is a braindead horror show architecture from the 70s, and Microchip's microcontrollers are the hardware equivalent of spaghetti code, built with kludge upon kludge.
Go with a simple yet elegant architecture, as it will teach good design practice. With PICs these kids will spend a lot of their time writing tricks to compensate for the hardware's flaws, and may get the impression that programming amounts to writing "clever", unmaintainable code.
Avoid the frustration and go with the AVR lineup. If you want to showcase a traditional design, introduce them to the 8051 (but don't necessarily have them in the lab). If you need more features, use the Freescale HCS12 with the GCC toolchain (coding in assembly for the HCS12 isn't practical, since it essentially implements the old fashioned, register starved 68HC11 instruction set). And if you want performance for higher level applications (which may not be the case), go with an ARM part.
I think perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Vista will not be a complete flop, but it will sell well under what Microsoft expects.
Legal copies of Vista will be bundled with most new computers, and this alone will make it a best seller. Also, many corporations will upgrade just for the sake of upgrading.
I believe Microsoft has a very good idea of what's going to happen. They understand the business and marketing aspects of selling software better than anyone else.
Engineer/Physicists/Mathemathician-type programmers may think that to write business programs you only need "general" programming skills and little specialised knowledge, but that is very wrong. Getting accounting right is difficult, getting supply chain management right is tricky. And don't even think about working at banking or insurance without some serious domain-specific specialisation.
I once interned at a consultancy developing business software. Our product was in some ways an analogue to Siebel, and the people I worked with also gave Siebel consultancy. So even though I don't claim to have some specialization in business software, I understand what you mean.
I think everyone would rather have software engineering people writing business software because these apps tend to get really big really fast, and are constantly under modification. Developing this sort of code without a good software model is a recipe for failure, and anyone with experience has seen this in practice. Scientific applications tend to be very specialized, and you can get stable products with good (instead of excellent) programming practice. I can't speak for all engineers/physicists/etc., but this is why I tend to associate software engineers with business code.
I've also seen a fair sample of code written by people without a strong CS background and I agree -- most of the time it's anywhere from bad to horrible. But there are engineers, physicists and mathematicians with good programming (and computer science) skills, and I was referring to those. The kind of people who wouldn't know what the dragon book is and don't read RFCs, but have a solid understanding of data structures, algorithms, modelling and good programming practice.
There are some areas where the typical CS majors excel. Business programming is one of those. They're also fine for a lot of the industrial code out there. But given the choice, I prefer to leave mission critical scientific code to scientists (engineers, applied mathematicians and physicists). CS guys would be our world's general purpose CPUs, and engineers would be the DSPs -- it's another instance of choosing the right tool for the right job.
In other disciplines, the engineers ARE math guys. Face it, compared to other engineering types, software engineers and programmers are SLOPPY. This is because engineering has thousands of years worth of spectacular cork-ups with enormous death tolls to look back on, and engineering students are (I'm guessing, IANAE) shown horrific, traffic-safetyesque movies like Blood on the Protractor, Slide Rule Massacre, and London Bridge is Falling Down, Killing Litle Johnny's Entire Family.
Engineering and applied mathematics are much more demanding than computer programming. Sure, one could argue that "computer science is math too", but my experience is that CS majors don't graduate with a strong math background. And even if they did once know some calculus and linear algebra, they were never required to apply it like an EE or Applied Math person would.
So while you could find a rigorous programmer or software engineer (and I use the term "software engineer" very loosely, because few individuals actually fit that description), it's often a lot easier to look for an engineer or applied mathematician with good programming skills. Their math and physics is usually significantly stronger, and they actually understand what they're programming.
I am remeinded if Bill Maher, Usually you have an administration that is corrupt or one that is inept. The Bush administration is both.
I used to make this division between corrupt and inept as well, until I realised that the best way to disguise corruption is to fake ineptitude. While people can be sued for corruption, it's much harder to sue for incompetence. So the thief keeps part of the money, does a shoddy job with the remainder and people think he's a bad administrator, but still honest.
That said, I'm not so quick to blame it on Bush. North Korea has been up to this kind of crap for much longer than his administration. And after watching this video, I believe Bush has some serious health problems. Even if he was once in command, I don't think he is now.
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If so, I'm sorry to say he lacks the cynicism to deal with politicians, specially those from third world nations. These individuals will endorse any project that makes them look good. An OLPC endorsement is marketing gold from a politician's point of view, because it ties education, children and technology -- areas which third world nations are very reluctant to invest in -- all at zero cost.
Talk is cheap.
Have you ever played the original System Shock? That was really, really cool. Better than SS2, IMHO.
The sounds, the music, the atmosphere, the game engine, all just above and beyond everything else in the genre.
You mean as opposed to the Apollo program which was a well thought out deliberate success?
YES. And who modded you up?
Some of the hardware in a breathalyzer is a photodetector connected to an A/D converter. Sensitive A/D converters can be sensitive to RFI.
You also missed the point of my question, like two other posters before you.
I'm a Ph.D. candidate in electronic engineering, and I can come up with these conjectures by myself. The question here is why "crimguy", who claims to represent 3 clients in AZ confidently states "Believe me when I tell you - these machines are unreliable, and subject to many errors, most glaringly the result of RFI screwing up the results."
What I'm looking for is quantitative proof that these breathalyzers are behaving badly due to RFI. For instance, a lab report stating non-compliance to EMC regulations would be interesting. I don't want to read possible explanations to a problem that may not exist! I want proof that these machines are operating incorrectly in the field. Because if there's no experimental evidence to support this "glaring result", then the "believe me when I tell you" phrase is worthless and he might as well be use sunspots to support his case.
because the cop would have high-powered digital radios and perhaps radar gun turned on while they test you in front of the bright lights. In the given environment, the low probability of circumstances is nearly certain to be in place to cause failure.
That's not what I was asking. I want to know his basis for claiming that the breathalyzer is susceptible to RFI, and not an illustration of why EMI compliance is important with this type of equipment.
Believe me when I tell you - these machines are unreliable, and subject to many errors, most glaringly the result of RFI screwing up the results.
Are you at liberty to say why RFI is considered the most glaring fault? I wouldn't expect this behaviour from a breathalizer, so it kind of surprises me.
A lot of it probably has its roots with Christianity. The Devil is smart, remember? When Dante was populating the Inferno, he dumped Odysseus in the 8th circle, 1 up from the bottom. Why? Because he's a smart, tricky bastard, just like the Devil is supposed to be. This country has a lot of radical Christian roots (Puritans, anyone?) so it's not all that surprising that our views on intellectualism are shaped around that.
That's nonsense, and there are many counterexamples to this claim. Which is a pity, because I enjoyed the first part of your post. Christianity doesn't teach people to be stupid. Jesus himself said "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and innocent as doves." (Matthew 10:16).
"Unlike corporations such as IBM - with revenues of $22 billion in the first quarter of 2007 alone - our schools do not have the ability to generate new dollars to fund projects or pay for employees," the lawmakers wrote. "Our schools rely solely on limited state and federal assistance to educate our students and every dollar is precious."
If every dollar is precious, they should've thought twice before spending $5 million in hardware that was never even used!
This district's atrocious conduct is precisely the reason why IBM should not forgive the debt.
It's just generated directly from what's been published. It's not biased; this is just what people are working on.
Yes, but published where? They didn't say.
Their bad categorization of Engineering reinforces my belief that there really is a bias.
I was about to buy 3 of these, but when I actually looked closely at the graph I realised how biased it is toward the biomedical/health sciences. Math is a puny cluster of small dots, there's no area labeled Engineering and Chemistry looks like it has more lines than all the hard sciences put together.
Their site actually lets you highlight the portions that they consider Engineering, and the result is pretty weird: you get computer science, math, a lot of astrophysics, fluid mechanics, materials, applied physics and some physical chemistry. Most of these don't even qualify as engineering, and there's a lot of stuff that isn't featured (topics published by the IEEE would make a good start).
I suppose this is appropriate considering it was published in Nature, but to me it's a let down. It's a pretty poster, but it neglects the areas I enjoy the most. At least it has astrophysics.
As an American, I see that particular facet of our culture more as a sign of our irrationality than anything else, although I guess that a total absence of any desire to change culture or civilization for the better would be if anything more depressing.
I usually find it irritating rather than depressing, since it's a byproduct of lazyness and corruption.
Around here, most problems being unnoticed because of the population's lack of standards. Anyone who brings attention to them is singled out and shunned because criticism is seen as aggression. I should note that Brazilians hate the notion of aggression, and would rather suffer quietly than complain when mistreated.
Problems inevitably grow when ignored. When they reach the point where they're causing very obvious damage, the individuals in command make speeches. Brazilians are notable for talking too much and accomplishing very little. Responsibilities are constantly reassigned, no clear plan of action is taken and nothing gets done.
The population has a very timid reaction to most problems. And when there's a measurable reaction, it's often very bizarre in nature, with no clear purpose. A good example was a set of very large demonstrations called the "walks for peace", in which people would dress in white and walk quietly along large avenues. Were they trying to show criminals that armed robbery, assault and murder are disapproved by society? I think so, misguided as that attempt was.
This happens because a very, very large portion of society has conflicts of interest. There's the middle class kid who buys pirate Playstation CDs from street vendors, directly financing paramilitary criminal organizations. Then there's the cute middle upper class girl who takes ecstasy pills at her favorite rave or club. There's the 30-something executive who has cocaine parties, and the 50-something husbands who spend their evenings with prostitutes to blow off steam, consuming all kinds of illegal products. These same people don't want to get tickets, they bribe police officers, commit tax fraud, divert domestic sewer into the river and bribe the building inspector and so on. Then these same people complain that the streets are unsafe and that politicians are corrupt.
Whenever I comment online over this sort of issue, I usually get a reply from an American who identifies the same issues in the US (maybe not so much with the walk for peace part). Of course you can identify these and many more typically Brazilian problems anywhere in the world. There's a question of magnitude, though, and I can't emphasize this part enough. And even though American civil liberties may be degenerating and American citizens often feel powerless to halt this process, you guys still have the moral impetus to demand and bring forth change. I don't see this around here, and things are only getting worse.
While I understand your point about feeling the "vibrant essence of life itself", it's one thing to take a trip to Bolivia, and it's another thing to have this experience every day of your life.
I've lived my whole life in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and while conditions here are nowhere near what you've described, the general population's lack of commitment and accountability eventually gets to your nerves. What impressed me most is this part of your comment:
Here in the US, people seem to have what I call a hysteria of action. If something bad happens to anyone , Sometime Must Be Done, so that nobody ever has to suffer ever again. If a child dies in a shooting, all guns everywhere must be registered and locked up. If somebody gets food poisoning, we must institute totally new rules and procedures about handling food. If somebody dies in a car accident, we have to put air-bags on the roofs of all new cars. If somebody dies of a rare, expensive disease, we must establish a new non-profit so that nobody ever need suffer this disease again. If something bad ever manages to happen again, it was because somebody was lazy, not doing their job, and they must be fired. America is a paradise, and if bad things happen, it's somebody's fault for not doing their job.
I greatly admire The Something Must be Done philosophy. It suggests a degree of discipline that pushes society as a whole to improve itself, act on its problems and not try to excuse itself as a victim of circumstances. It shows people value personal responsibility and back their feelings with real actions. And while in some aspects this may be an idealization, it shows a set of values which are lost on the general Brazilian culture.
Well said.
The doors of hell are closed from the inside.
What kind of journal publishes arithmetic?
To me, the fact that they wasted space printing 18-7=9 is more shocking than the actual error.
Nothing I wrote implies this.
A MacBook doesn't violate the concept of a free market because Apple makes and sells both the hardware and software. The laptop/OS X combo is in fact a single product developed by a single company.
Most other desktop computer vendors won't give you the option of buying a computer without Windows. These companies didn't develop Windows. In most cases, they didn't even develop the hardware they're selling. They're just software and hardware resellers, yet they don't let you buy the hardware without the software.
Now to me the problem is crystal clear. You can play the devil's advocate all you want, but the Microsoft tax still exists and it plays a big part in Microsoft's business strategy.
"Microsoft Tax?" What do you expect?
I expect to go to any computer retailer and be able to buy a computer without Windows pre-installed. That's all I want -- I don't dispute anything you wrote.
It's apples own fault that more people don't pick it up. If Dell were able to sell a PC and offer the users the choice of OSX or Windows...I bet with Apple's marketing you'd get LOADS of people adopting it for the first time.
Yeah, but that's just the thing. Microsoft isn't pleased when vendors start selling machines without Windows (or worse, with Linux). Dell and IBM get away with this on a limited basis, but even then it's tricky.
People have different preferences. That's what makes the free market work.
Exactly, and this is why a lot less people should be using Windows. As long as Windows is shipped with computers and people have to pay the Microsoft tax, there isn't a free market to speak of.
Most Windows users didn't choose a Microsoft operating system, so their preferences weren't a factor.
You suggest that the Department of Defense's nameserver is badly managed, making an argument by analogy concerning "large governmental organizations". Since you haven't provided a technical argument, your accusation has no merit. Your "distinct impression" is pure speculation.
But congratulations on getting everyone riled up.
PIC is a braindead horror show architecture from the 70s, and Microchip's microcontrollers are the hardware equivalent of spaghetti code, built with kludge upon kludge.
Go with a simple yet elegant architecture, as it will teach good design practice. With PICs these kids will spend a lot of their time writing tricks to compensate for the hardware's flaws, and may get the impression that programming amounts to writing "clever", unmaintainable code.
Avoid the frustration and go with the AVR lineup. If you want to showcase a traditional design, introduce them to the 8051 (but don't necessarily have them in the lab). If you need more features, use the Freescale HCS12 with the GCC toolchain (coding in assembly for the HCS12 isn't practical, since it essentially implements the old fashioned, register starved 68HC11 instruction set). And if you want performance for higher level applications (which may not be the case), go with an ARM part.
I think perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Vista will not be a complete flop, but it will sell well under what Microsoft expects.
Legal copies of Vista will be bundled with most new computers, and this alone will make it a best seller. Also, many corporations will upgrade just for the sake of upgrading.
I believe Microsoft has a very good idea of what's going to happen. They understand the business and marketing aspects of selling software better than anyone else.
Engineer/Physicists/Mathemathician-type programmers may think that to write business programs you only need "general" programming skills and little specialised knowledge, but that is very wrong. Getting accounting right is difficult, getting supply chain management right is tricky. And don't even think about working at banking or insurance without some serious domain-specific specialisation.
I once interned at a consultancy developing business software. Our product was in some ways an analogue to Siebel, and the people I worked with also gave Siebel consultancy. So even though I don't claim to have some specialization in business software, I understand what you mean.
I think everyone would rather have software engineering people writing business software because these apps tend to get really big really fast, and are constantly under modification. Developing this sort of code without a good software model is a recipe for failure, and anyone with experience has seen this in practice. Scientific applications tend to be very specialized, and you can get stable products with good (instead of excellent) programming practice. I can't speak for all engineers/physicists/etc., but this is why I tend to associate software engineers with business code.
I've also seen a fair sample of code written by people without a strong CS background and I agree -- most of the time it's anywhere from bad to horrible. But there are engineers, physicists and mathematicians with good programming (and computer science) skills, and I was referring to those. The kind of people who wouldn't know what the dragon book is and don't read RFCs, but have a solid understanding of data structures, algorithms, modelling and good programming practice.
There are some areas where the typical CS majors excel. Business programming is one of those. They're also fine for a lot of the industrial code out there. But given the choice, I prefer to leave mission critical scientific code to scientists (engineers, applied mathematicians and physicists). CS guys would be our world's general purpose CPUs, and engineers would be the DSPs -- it's another instance of choosing the right tool for the right job.
In other disciplines, the engineers ARE math guys. Face it, compared to other engineering types, software engineers and programmers are SLOPPY. This is because engineering has thousands of years worth of spectacular cork-ups with enormous death tolls to look back on, and engineering students are (I'm guessing, IANAE) shown horrific, traffic-safetyesque movies like Blood on the Protractor, Slide Rule Massacre, and London Bridge is Falling Down, Killing Litle Johnny's Entire Family.
Engineering and applied mathematics are much more demanding than computer programming. Sure, one could argue that "computer science is math too", but my experience is that CS majors don't graduate with a strong math background. And even if they did once know some calculus and linear algebra, they were never required to apply it like an EE or Applied Math person would.
So while you could find a rigorous programmer or software engineer (and I use the term "software engineer" very loosely, because few individuals actually fit that description), it's often a lot easier to look for an engineer or applied mathematician with good programming skills. Their math and physics is usually significantly stronger, and they actually understand what they're programming.
This is one of the most insightful, accurate comments I've ever read.
:(
I just wish you hadn't posted anonymously. I could use some advice
I am remeinded if Bill Maher, Usually you have an administration that is corrupt or one that is inept. The Bush administration is both.
I used to make this division between corrupt and inept as well, until I realised that the best way to disguise corruption is to fake ineptitude. While people can be sued for corruption, it's much harder to sue for incompetence. So the thief keeps part of the money, does a shoddy job with the remainder and people think he's a bad administrator, but still honest.
That said, I'm not so quick to blame it on Bush. North Korea has been up to this kind of crap for much longer than his administration. And after watching this video, I believe Bush has some serious health problems. Even if he was once in command, I don't think he is now.