It sickens me that in the space program (and indeed, in many things) we don't take a chance with human lives anymore. "Oh no! There's a 0.02% chance that someone could get hurt. Even though this could be a huge breakthrough, we can't risk it!" That's not the attitude we had about getting to the moon - we took the gambles, and at times paid for it with human lives. But those people knew the risks, and they knew that the potential gains far outweighed the potential losses. They dove head first into it knowing they very possibly might not survive - but that was a risk they were willing to take, and it paid off.
Ummm...maybe you're too young to remember 1986, but do you remember what happened after the Challenger disaster? The entire space program shut down for something like 2 years while they did the necessary investigations and put fixes in place. It is better to demand more safety and keep going then less and be forced to stop for long periods each time something bad happens.
It is important that NASA demand the kind of fail-safety that they do (we aren't writing MS software here, for god's sake!). If there was even the perception that NASA wasn't being careful enough, you can bet the budget ax would drop real quickly.
The Herbert, Asimov and Clarke are all great, but how about someone that's still alive? (Sorry Arthur). I've been a big fan of David Brin's books for a while now. He's very authentic with the science and he has interesting characters. Best of all, his books make you think, which is the main reason to read science fiction IMHO.
This is true, but remember, with computer-related ventures like a spam operation, all you need is one clever person to write the clever program that gets distributed to all the morons. This spam filter is a perfect example. I'm not clever enough to write something like that myself, but I'm certainly clever enough to download it and use it.
How do you know? I find it highly unlikely that Slashdot is the only entity that knew the judgement URLs. After all, Slashdot got it from someone else to begin with.
you would think that 83% is a bit high. I guess Arizona farmlands must look a lot like wild, untouched desert.
Land Area of Earth: 57,000,000 square miles
Area of Arizona: 100,000 square miles
That works out to just shy of 2 tenths of 1 percent. I don't know if 83% is correct either, but presumably they employed slightly more rigorous estimating techniques than eyeballing the local terrain.
The really shocking part was the function had been part of their language for over 5 years. Imagine if my Java skills were 5 years out of date. I would be making flaming applets on webpages thinking that was advanced.
Yeah, instead you are writing Java code that may not work in 5 years. I think your story shows a great strength of Fortran that gets lost in these days of "Internet time." There is something to be said for maturity and stability in a language.
I didn't mean to sound pessimistic. Did I sound pessimistic? I did register to vote today. (no kidding). That's optimistic, right?
Candidates still campaign because there is still a lot at stake, but the rules of the game are well laid out and campaigns have them down to a science. If I say the right things, I'll move the poll numbers by x percent. To make x more predictable, you want to introduce as few variables as possible. Extra voters are added variables. That's just applied science.
I also never claimed a utopia would result from mandatory elections. I frankly don't know what would happen. I predict that there would be a lot of people upset, demanding the right not to vote (great irony there) and you might also get a lot more Jesse Ventura like winners. As I said, I just think it would be interesting, that's all.
I think your right though. I should do some research on countries with mandatory voting. Are you from one of them? I think Austrailia has that, no?
Yes, but George W. Officeholder...will do his best to get Joe out of his recliner and to the polls.
No, I suspect quite the opposite is true. It is not in the best interests of an entrenched elected official to encourage his constituents to vote. Think about it, if I got elected by the the majority of the approximately 40% of my constituents that voted, why would I want to do anything that would rouse the slumbering, unpredictable 60%. The people that vote all the time tend to be reliable and predictable.
The DMCA has some potential to rouse the sleeping majority of people that don't vote, so politicians will avoid it like the plague.
It would be highly interesting if, (just for this year, say) the US passed a law making voting in the November election mandatory. There might be a few politicians soiling themselves wondering what would happen.
Meanwhile, the RIAA doesn't feel the same logic applies to record sales in the U.S., and has started an ad campaign to convince the public that sharing music hurts artists.
Ouch! Those folks over at Roll Call might want to consider utilizing a bit more of my screen in their Web pages. The article barely uses up half the width of my screen.
Lets hope they can prove there are other, less annoying advertising models that work.
Unfortunately, annoying advertising works. Quick! Name a company that makes Web cameras. Maybe you didn't say X10, but it's still the first thing that came to your mind, isn't it? Getting people to buy your products is the ultimate goal of advertising, but the name of the game is name recognition.
The US has a huge supply of computer hobbyists, but very few programmers who are: Degreed in CS, are willing to learn and apply design principles (rather than hacking crappy, unmaintainable solutions), and/or are willing to develop in 4-5 year old, proven technologies rather than cutting-edge, buggy, but 'sexy' buzz-world filled technologies.
Hear hear! One thing I've found is that that there is still a tremendous need for good programmers right now. What we don't have is a great demand.
One thing I'm seeing on a lot of the responses here is this attitude that we either accept more H1-B workers or the software shops will move overseas, as if the two were equivalent. They are not. A small software shop doesn't really have the option of moving overseas. Moving is expensive.
Even the bigger shops can't simply move away from their biggest clients because I think that developing good software pretty much requires proximity to your user base. Ever try to communicate software requirements to someone only via email and conference calls? It's pretty tough even when everyone is the same ethnicity and shares the same culture. Imagine doing it when half the programming team doesn't even speak the language of the user base. These factors are all hidden costs that eventually make their way to the bottom line.
Just playing devil's advocate here. I'm not sure what my feelings are regarding the whole H1-B thing.
Just think about how much it costs the US government to educate a single citizen. People are a cost on society until they are at least 18. Via H1B programs you can get people that another country has paid for to come and contribute.
True, but if we (meaning the US) pay all that money to educate a person til s/he's 18, it doesn't make much sense to then to leave them out on the street looking for work while the tech companies hire H1-B workers.
I don't really have a problem competing with H1-B visa holders. I think that I have valuable skills that most foreign programmers can't match (cultural, linguistic, etc.) I think the main thing that bothers me about the H1-B program is that most of the excellent H1-B workers I know are being exploited by their visa sponsors. Maybe they don't feel exploited but it still bothers me to see it.
It just has that sort of prostitution feel about it.
Re:What if it is hacked?
on
Robot Wars
·
· Score: 1
What happens if the system is hacked? Can the robots then be turned against us or do they just quit working?
Didn't you see Star Trek:TNG? Like Data, they obey Asimov's 3 laws of Robotics.
How do you expect anyone except yourself to see these?
This gets to the fundamental question. Are easter eggs put in for the benefit of users or for the personal satifaction of the programmers? I suspect the latter, in which case the answer is, they don't."
I've seen a lot of people who code empirically. They rely on a fast compile run cycle and just make changes until the code does what it is supposed to do. Perl coding is especially susceptible to this problem. What's wrong with this style of programming is that you often don't really understand what the code is doing. This is a good way to introduce bugs.
Make sure you understand the problem space before you write the code that navigates through it. And don't code blindly. If you don't understand how a given function or class works, write a test program that explores how it works.
Slashdot Mirror
Ummm...maybe you're too young to remember 1986, but do you remember what happened after the Challenger disaster? The entire space program shut down for something like 2 years while they did the necessary investigations and put fixes in place. It is better to demand more safety and keep going then less and be forced to stop for long periods each time something bad happens.
It is important that NASA demand the kind of fail-safety that they do (we aren't writing MS software here, for god's sake!). If there was even the perception that NASA wasn't being careful enough, you can bet the budget ax would drop real quickly.
The Herbert, Asimov and Clarke are all great, but how about someone that's still alive? (Sorry Arthur). I've been a big fan of David Brin's books for a while now. He's very authentic with the science and he has interesting characters. Best of all, his books make you think, which is the main reason to read science fiction IMHO.
...it'll cook a hot dog faster than your microwave oven.
This is true, but remember, with computer-related ventures like a spam operation, all you need is one clever person to write the clever program that gets distributed to all the morons. This spam filter is a perfect example. I'm not clever enough to write something like that myself, but I'm certainly clever enough to download it and use it.
How do you know? I find it highly unlikely that Slashdot is the only entity that knew the judgement URLs. After all, Slashdot got it from someone else to begin with.
- Land Area of Earth: 57,000,000 square miles
- Area of Arizona: 100,000 square miles
That works out to just shy of 2 tenths of 1 percent. I don't know if 83% is correct either, but presumably they employed slightly more rigorous estimating techniques than eyeballing the local terrain.I like that one even better.
How about My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Numerous Pizzas Quickly. Then we no longer have the scalability problem.
Yeah, instead you are writing Java code that may not work in 5 years. I think your story shows a great strength of Fortran that gets lost in these days of "Internet time." There is something to be said for maturity and stability in a language.
Of course, stagnation can be bad too.
I didn't mean to sound pessimistic. Did I sound pessimistic? I did register to vote today. (no kidding). That's optimistic, right?
Candidates still campaign because there is still a lot at stake, but the rules of the game are well laid out and campaigns have them down to a science. If I say the right things, I'll move the poll numbers by x percent. To make x more predictable, you want to introduce as few variables as possible. Extra voters are added variables. That's just applied science.
I also never claimed a utopia would result from mandatory elections. I frankly don't know what would happen. I predict that there would be a lot of people upset, demanding the right not to vote (great irony there) and you might also get a lot more Jesse Ventura like winners. As I said, I just think it would be interesting, that's all.
I think your right though. I should do some research on countries with mandatory voting. Are you from one of them? I think Austrailia has that, no?
No, I suspect quite the opposite is true. It is not in the best interests of an entrenched elected official to encourage his constituents to vote. Think about it, if I got elected by the the majority of the approximately 40% of my constituents that voted, why would I want to do anything that would rouse the slumbering, unpredictable 60%. The people that vote all the time tend to be reliable and predictable.
The DMCA has some potential to rouse the sleeping majority of people that don't vote, so politicians will avoid it like the plague.
It would be highly interesting if, (just for this year, say) the US passed a law making voting in the November election mandatory. There might be a few politicians soiling themselves wondering what would happen.
Course it'll never happen.
Can you mod the intro blub as Off-topic?
Ouch! Those folks over at Roll Call might want to consider utilizing a bit more of my screen in their Web pages. The article barely uses up half the width of my screen.
Sorry, it's a pet peeve of mine.
Look what Google turned up... An Open Source (GNU) electronic voting initiative
Well...I know that the consulting company I worked for in the '90's took a lot of .com money.
By the way...Thanks!
Worst....Post...Ever!
[just kidding]
Unfortunately, annoying advertising works. Quick! Name a company that makes Web cameras. Maybe you didn't say X10, but it's still the first thing that came to your mind, isn't it? Getting people to buy your products is the ultimate goal of advertising, but the name of the game is name recognition.
Hear hear! One thing I've found is that that there is still a tremendous need for good programmers right now. What we don't have is a great demand.
One thing I'm seeing on a lot of the responses here is this attitude that we either accept more H1-B workers or the software shops will move overseas, as if the two were equivalent. They are not. A small software shop doesn't really have the option of moving overseas. Moving is expensive.
Even the bigger shops can't simply move away from their biggest clients because I think that developing good software pretty much requires proximity to your user base. Ever try to communicate software requirements to someone only via email and conference calls? It's pretty tough even when everyone is the same ethnicity and shares the same culture. Imagine doing it when half the programming team doesn't even speak the language of the user base. These factors are all hidden costs that eventually make their way to the bottom line.
Just playing devil's advocate here. I'm not sure what my feelings are regarding the whole H1-B thing.
Just think about how much it costs the US government to educate a single citizen. People are a cost on society until they are at least 18. Via H1B programs you can get people that another country has paid for to come and contribute.True, but if we (meaning the US) pay all that money to educate a person til s/he's 18, it doesn't make much sense to then to leave them out on the street looking for work while the tech companies hire H1-B workers.
I don't really have a problem competing with H1-B visa holders. I think that I have valuable skills that most foreign programmers can't match (cultural, linguistic, etc.) I think the main thing that bothers me about the H1-B program is that most of the excellent H1-B workers I know are being exploited by their visa sponsors. Maybe they don't feel exploited but it still bothers me to see it.
It just has that sort of prostitution feel about it.
Didn't you see Star Trek:TNG? Like Data, they obey Asimov's 3 laws of Robotics.
I think.
This gets to the fundamental question. Are easter eggs put in for the benefit of users or for the personal satifaction of the programmers? I suspect the latter, in which case the answer is, they don't."
Perhaps some would argue that this is not necessarily "News for Nerds," but it's certainly stuff that matters.
How's this for you? Lem is the guy that coined the term robot.
I've seen a lot of people who code empirically. They rely on a fast compile run cycle and just make changes until the code does what it is supposed to do. Perl coding is especially susceptible to this problem. What's wrong with this style of programming is that you often don't really understand what the code is doing. This is a good way to introduce bugs.
Make sure you understand the problem space before you write the code that navigates through it. And don't code blindly. If you don't understand how a given function or class works, write a test program that explores how it works.
Good luck trying to find anyone in this forum that qualifies.