Actually, the Christian faith, taken as a whole is much more complicated than that. It consistently asserts opposite and contradictory truths, often in its core doctrines: A god of infinite justice and infinite mercy. Total predetermination and total free will. Absolute obedience to the Law, and absolute freedom from the Law. Etc.
Your post would make a lot more sense if the economies of nation-states bore any real resemblance to personal finances. As it is, your post makes no sense at all.
This means rocket science is once again hard. You may now resume saying "Well, this isn't rocket science" until they solve this.
But shockwave instability in rocket propulsion systems has been a known problem since the very beginning of rocketry. They've been solving it repeatedly for decades. Heck, the Saturn V's F1 engine had it bad in early designs. Solving the F1's shockwave problem required significant innovations in testing methods and tools, and in fuel injection techniques, but solved it was.
The only thing going on today is the same thing that's been going recently in a lot of fields from building architecture to aerodynamics: the replacement of empirical trial-and-error problem-solving methods with highly complex mathematically-driven computer simulation methods.
Indeed, this advancement of the state of the art will make rocket science easier, since it allows researchers to model different designs in much greater detail, without having to physically build them.
You mistake my point. I'm not saying that natural competitors will defeat grey goo. I'm saying that I don't expect grey goo to outperform algae, or fungi. If these advanced evolutionary products still haven't figured out how to find enough material and energy resources to take over the world, I doubt grey goo will somehow outperform them.
Unless by "grey goo" you mean "nanomachines that can magically find sources of food an energy millions of times more abundant than those available to similar, naturally-evolving nanomachine colonies". Which is fine, I guess. If you can show that the "magic" is a plausible and imminent technological advance.
Given that the earth is full of nanomachine colonies trying desperately to consume all available resources and expand indefinitely, I'm pretty sure grey goo won't be all that interesting. If algae and fungi haven't taken over the world after several billion years of trying...
You do realize that legislators (such as U.S. Congressmen) are charged almost exclusively with making human arguments to human beings, and with carrying out the will of human beings, right? This guy isn't going to be working with clean, cold science and logic. He's going to be working with politicians and voters. A scientific mindset unused to making irrational arguments and expecting people to calmly accept good evidence is probably a handicap.
Common sense is overrated. Furthermore, it's been my experience that "coders" are no more likely to be gifted with it (such as it is) than anybody else. Not to mention the pretty clear evidence that common sense is not just useless but counter-productive in the political arena. His actual constituency (which is not actually "Slashdotters") will be best served if he checks his "common sense" at the door, and takes up a ruthless commitment to meeting their demands by hook or by crook.
I'm not really sure how a professional physicist, who probably doesn't even read Slashdot and probably knows more programming languages than all of Slashdot's readership combined as a side effect of his profession, is "one of ours". About the only thing he has in common with Slashdot's readership is that he's probably a political amateur.
And his constituency is the inhabitants of the Illinois Congressional district. That's who elected him. That's who he represents, not "people who post on Slashdot".
Will having a tech-savvy congressman change the game at all?
Why would a tech-savvy human being be any more useful or valid as a politician than an education-savvy human being? Or a law-savvy human being? Or an entertainment-industry human being? Or a war-savvy human being? Or a bureaucracy-savvy human being? Or a classical literature-savvy human being? Or a propaganda-savvy human being? Or a violent revolution-savvy human being?
Is there something special about technology, that sets tech-savvy humans apart from all the other kinds of humans when it comes to politics?
Was his vote on this ethics-reform bill somehow informed by his tech-savvyness in some kind of game-changing way?
Sure they have, they've spent our money for nothing.
Which, given the clear propensity of politicians to do harm wherever they enjoy freedom of action, is probably the best possible outcome. I'd rather have my government doing nothing--even to the point that I don't mind so much paying them for it--than have them doing whatever it is they would do if they were actually able to do something.
I'm not saying your companies exit in an alternate universe. I'm saying that in most companies, sysadmins and developers exist in alternate universes. If your company is different from most companies, I applaud you. Also, are you hiring?
But I suspect that if you are a developer, you are blissfully unaware of the headaches you cause your sysadmins, who go to great lengths to protect the company from the hassles you cause by your un-considered assumption that whatever you want at any given moment is in fact the best possible idea.
It's not a question of technobabble. Technobabble I understand. It's a question of unclear sentence structure. Also, I was exaggerating for effect. I can--I think--dechipher the broad outlines of his complaint. But since success in my work requires a very clear understanding of the technical details that will meet my customer's requirements, I can't rely on deciphering his piss-poor grammar and punctuation skills. I'm going to have to go back and forth with him repeatedly, until I can coax from him the clear, concise, technical description that I need, to make sure that what I do is what he wants.
This is, in fact, one of the thing that pisses me off about the developers I support: For people who make their living in a highly technical field, they seem generally incapable of expressing themselves in clear, concise technical language when necessary.
All that and you, as a sysadmin, haven't been able to make the case that these practices were wasteful, and the developers should be put on notice by management?
I would love to live in your alternate universe! Are you hiring?
Like I said, we live in opposed-alignment alternate universes. Each of us is convinced the other's universe is the evil one. Everything you've just said only serves to reinforce my own conviction. Indeed, even the way in which you said it reinforces my conviction. Far from including the kind of technical clarity that would allow me to rationally evaluate your demands and make a well-informed decision on whether or not an exception to the policy was warranted in this case, you instead degenerated steadily into technical inchoherence so that by the end of your post I have no idea what you're talking about anymore. No doubt you--like my own developers--sincerely believe you've been crystal clear in every important detail.
All that aside, I do have some commentary:
Too hard for us to administer
It sounds like you're talking about IT Helpdesk, which I don't know much about anymore. But in the realm of "enterprise" applications (the big, customer-facing, 99.99%+ uptime moneymakers), a developer's insistence on using their own favorite OS rather than the departmental standard is, in my experience, a guarantee of systems-adminstration headaches, instability, confusion, and vulnerability. You may have a list of reasons longer than my big swinging dick as to why your OS is better than the departmental standard, but I guarantee you that once it goes into our datacenter, its nonstandard nature will cause far more problems than it solves.
We can't run our anti-virus on your computer (ahem, I don't need that crap)
Contrary to popular belief, non-MS operating systems and the applications that run on them are, in fact, exploitable. And I have yet to meet a Linux developer (of which I support several) who didn't insist on flatly ignoring Linux's built-in security features (such as the permissions system, for example), because it was either easier to develop everything as root, or because he had a hard-on for some third-party app that needed to run as root, or both. Maybe your corporate Linux workstation isn't a big security threat, but all my enterprise Linux servers are just as exploitable as my Windows servers. Because it makes my developers' jobs easier.
We can't tell if you're running unlicensed software on that computer (why don't you just like, ask me?)
We don't ask you because we don't trust you. We don't trust you because you generally spew evil-universe stuff like this post at us. Also, we don't trust you because you obviously don't know or care about the requirements of good systems administration policy. Asking end-users if they're complying with regulatory requirements is not a sufficient test of regulatory compliance. Your refusal to acknowledge and accept this fact, and work within its framework, only serves to enhance your notoriety as a super-villain from an evil alternate universe.
We can't tell if you're running encryption software of packet sniffers you would-be corporate spy?
This last item and its explanation are complete gibberish to me. About the only thing I can say for sure is that, yes, if you want to run packet sniffers on a corporate network, then you will get looked at like a criminal.
Autocratic, and completely clueless.
Only from your point of view. From our point of view, we're just trying to do our jobs, within a set of constraints you refuse to understand or even consider, and to prevent you in your ignorance and sense of entitlement from undoing our hard work, ruining our weekends, or putting our employer into serious legal and financial jeopardy.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the Christian faith, taken as a whole is much more complicated than that. It consistently asserts opposite and contradictory truths, often in its core doctrines: A god of infinite justice and infinite mercy. Total predetermination and total free will. Absolute obedience to the Law, and absolute freedom from the Law. Etc.
Your post would make a lot more sense if the economies of nation-states bore any real resemblance to personal finances. As it is, your post makes no sense at all.
But shockwave instability in rocket propulsion systems has been a known problem since the very beginning of rocketry. They've been solving it repeatedly for decades. Heck, the Saturn V's F1 engine had it bad in early designs. Solving the F1's shockwave problem required significant innovations in testing methods and tools, and in fuel injection techniques, but solved it was.
The only thing going on today is the same thing that's been going recently in a lot of fields from building architecture to aerodynamics: the replacement of empirical trial-and-error problem-solving methods with highly complex mathematically-driven computer simulation methods.
Indeed, this advancement of the state of the art will make rocket science easier, since it allows researchers to model different designs in much greater detail, without having to physically build them.
You mistake my point. I'm not saying that natural competitors will defeat grey goo. I'm saying that I don't expect grey goo to outperform algae, or fungi. If these advanced evolutionary products still haven't figured out how to find enough material and energy resources to take over the world, I doubt grey goo will somehow outperform them.
Unless by "grey goo" you mean "nanomachines that can magically find sources of food an energy millions of times more abundant than those available to similar, naturally-evolving nanomachine colonies". Which is fine, I guess. If you can show that the "magic" is a plausible and imminent technological advance.
Given that the earth is full of nanomachine colonies trying desperately to consume all available resources and expand indefinitely, I'm pretty sure grey goo won't be all that interesting. If algae and fungi haven't taken over the world after several billion years of trying...
Why do you say that legal threats and/or counter-hacking can't work?
Why is "tons of bandwidth" the critical resourc for taking down these botnets?
You do realize that legislators (such as U.S. Congressmen) are charged almost exclusively with making human arguments to human beings, and with carrying out the will of human beings, right? This guy isn't going to be working with clean, cold science and logic. He's going to be working with politicians and voters. A scientific mindset unused to making irrational arguments and expecting people to calmly accept good evidence is probably a handicap.
Thanks, but I'll pass. Something along the lines of a defense against Meningitis would be closer to what I had in mind.
Common sense is overrated. Furthermore, it's been my experience that "coders" are no more likely to be gifted with it (such as it is) than anybody else. Not to mention the pretty clear evidence that common sense is not just useless but counter-productive in the political arena. His actual constituency (which is not actually "Slashdotters") will be best served if he checks his "common sense" at the door, and takes up a ruthless commitment to meeting their demands by hook or by crook.
I'm not really sure how a professional physicist, who probably doesn't even read Slashdot and probably knows more programming languages than all of Slashdot's readership combined as a side effect of his profession, is "one of ours". About the only thing he has in common with Slashdot's readership is that he's probably a political amateur.
You're clearly delusional.
And if you're a coder, you have an overly high opinion of yourself and your trade as well, at least as it relates to political skill.
He's a physicist. His coding is incidental.
And his constituency is the inhabitants of the Illinois Congressional district. That's who elected him. That's who he represents, not "people who post on Slashdot".
Seriously.
At any scale. But nanoscale is my preference.
Ideally of types that interface cleanly with the human nervous system.
But that's just me.
Well, it doesn't not make it all the less uninteresting, that's for sure!
Why would a tech-savvy human being be any more useful or valid as a politician than an education-savvy human being? Or a law-savvy human being? Or an entertainment-industry human being? Or a war-savvy human being? Or a bureaucracy-savvy human being? Or a classical literature-savvy human being? Or a propaganda-savvy human being? Or a violent revolution-savvy human being?
Is there something special about technology, that sets tech-savvy humans apart from all the other kinds of humans when it comes to politics?
Was his vote on this ethics-reform bill somehow informed by his tech-savvyness in some kind of game-changing way?
Which, given the clear propensity of politicians to do harm wherever they enjoy freedom of action, is probably the best possible outcome. I'd rather have my government doing nothing--even to the point that I don't mind so much paying them for it--than have them doing whatever it is they would do if they were actually able to do something.
Summaries can't include all the details; if they did, they'd be the full article, and we'd have to summarize the summary.
What makes you think this particular detail is important enough to be included in the summary?
I'm sure this robot will provide countless valuable lessons and learning experiences regarding the design and deployment of automatons in space.
I'm not saying your companies exit in an alternate universe. I'm saying that in most companies, sysadmins and developers exist in alternate universes. If your company is different from most companies, I applaud you. Also, are you hiring?
But I suspect that if you are a developer, you are blissfully unaware of the headaches you cause your sysadmins, who go to great lengths to protect the company from the hassles you cause by your un-considered assumption that whatever you want at any given moment is in fact the best possible idea.
Like I said, opposing-alignment alternate universes.
It's not a question of technobabble. Technobabble I understand. It's a question of unclear sentence structure. Also, I was exaggerating for effect. I can--I think--dechipher the broad outlines of his complaint. But since success in my work requires a very clear understanding of the technical details that will meet my customer's requirements, I can't rely on deciphering his piss-poor grammar and punctuation skills. I'm going to have to go back and forth with him repeatedly, until I can coax from him the clear, concise, technical description that I need, to make sure that what I do is what he wants.
This is, in fact, one of the thing that pisses me off about the developers I support: For people who make their living in a highly technical field, they seem generally incapable of expressing themselves in clear, concise technical language when necessary.
Like I said, we live in opposed-aligment alternate universes.
All that aside, I do have some commentary:It sounds like you're talking about IT Helpdesk, which I don't know much about anymore. But in the realm of "enterprise" applications (the big, customer-facing, 99.99%+ uptime moneymakers), a developer's insistence on using their own favorite OS rather than the departmental standard is, in my experience, a guarantee of systems-adminstration headaches, instability, confusion, and vulnerability. You may have a list of reasons longer than my big swinging dick as to why your OS is better than the departmental standard, but I guarantee you that once it goes into our datacenter, its nonstandard nature will cause far more problems than it solves.Contrary to popular belief, non-MS operating systems and the applications that run on them are, in fact, exploitable. And I have yet to meet a Linux developer (of which I support several) who didn't insist on flatly ignoring Linux's built-in security features (such as the permissions system, for example), because it was either easier to develop everything as root, or because he had a hard-on for some third-party app that needed to run as root, or both. Maybe your corporate Linux workstation isn't a big security threat, but all my enterprise Linux servers are just as exploitable as my Windows servers. Because it makes my developers' jobs easier.We don't ask you because we don't trust you. We don't trust you because you generally spew evil-universe stuff like this post at us. Also, we don't trust you because you obviously don't know or care about the requirements of good systems administration policy. Asking end-users if they're complying with regulatory requirements is not a sufficient test of regulatory compliance. Your refusal to acknowledge and accept this fact, and work within its framework, only serves to enhance your notoriety as a super-villain from an evil alternate universe.This last item and its explanation are complete gibberish to me. About the only thing I can say for sure is that, yes, if you want to run packet sniffers on a corporate network, then you will get looked at like a criminal.Only from your point of view. From our point of view, we're just trying to do our jobs, within a set of constraints you refuse to understand or even consider, and to prevent you in your ignorance and sense of entitlement from undoing our hard work, ruining our weekends, or putting our employer into serious legal and financial jeopardy.