That's one problem. The other problem is the inevitably compromised "internet of things" that allows regular old criminals to pull up a list of "hot targets". They'll have a nice little map that shows them the optimal route to drive by houses where people aren't at home, and where their consumption of items from certain stores makes it a juicy target. Regular criminals won't have access to this technology of course. Just like any other business, the 1%er organized criminals will squeeze out Mom n Pop.
Arguably this goes for anything on TV; but I found myself keeping it particularly in mind while watching the NSA segment. You have to watch it thinking, "How much of this will later be revealed as a lie?".
I bet a lot of people took that approach. It's called "credibility" and the NSA has lost it. They can't get it back with one dog and pony show. At least... you shouldn't let them get it back that easily.
I *did* take a look at the Angry Birds example. I skipped over the parts that I got right away, skimming the whole thing in about five minutes. Here's my take on it.
It's a lot like working with a GUI builder. When they started coming out with tools that let us position buttons and other elements on dialog boxes, it was a godsend. If you looked at the code that MSVC++ spat out, you'd see things like, INPUT(59,545,20) or some such, which would have been tedious to do with compile, view, edit... cycles. Tools like that save programmer hours of tedium.
The Angry Birds example does that with logic, which is less tedious than positioning elements on a dialog box, so that seems less useful to an experienced programmer.
I would tend to agree that using a GUI builder is not programming; but this leads us to something. If you can do programming with something as easy to use as a GUI builder, then why program at all? I don't know anybody who gets upset with people who prefer to use a GUI builder as opposed to typing in pixel coordinates by hand. There may come a day when more programming, even logic programming is dominated by tools that resemble GUI builders.
We should always retain the ability to go under the hood; but honestly, I've never had a buggy GUI builder where I had to edit the coordinates by hand. I haven't done assembly from C. Ever. Other people do though, at least the latter. I don't feel like not doing assembly from C disqualifies me as a "real programmer". As the tools become more advanced, the bar for "real programmer" gets lower.
It's just that right now, no serious developers are using GUI builder style interfaces for logic. Twenty years from now, it might be the norm.
People who think you can learn CS in a few days should be punished by giving the same kids two days of music, and then having their playback devices loaded with nothing but the resulting tunes.
It'll never sell to me. There are sunk costs involved. I have too much engineering invested in non-linear coffee consumption as cheap mugs and paper cups lose heat. Slowly at first, with much intake of the aroma. Then cautious sips, then normal sips, then fairly heavy consumption somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3rd of the way down. It ain't broke. I'm not fixing it. It works anywhere. No need to buy an expensive mug, take it with me everywhere, wash it, and worry about losing it.
I love arguments that use the term "Meritocracy", as though there is some fair and universal standard for that all-encompassing term? There isn't, and that is where the ruthless manager and big money gets to talk. "Meritocracy" is a Libertarian fiction invented to give the boss the last say, and he may not even be evaluating performance on the merits of the work being done.
This is a false dichotomy. I never meant to imply a choice between pure meritocracy or pure royalty. Even countries that still have royalty operate with quite a bit of meritocracy, and the USA definitely has its aristocrats. Meritocracy is certainly *not* a fiction; but that doesn't mean that luck, trickery, inheritance and connections aren't a big part of what gets people into high financial status. I hope that clears things up for you.
And yes, in order for meritocracy to work the boss has to be able to pay people more based on what they're worth or... gasp! fire people who are no good on the job. I've seen meritocracy in action.
For cryin' out loud. Just turn on your tube and watch sports or something. There isn't a thousand page "standard" for deciding who gets cut from a team. The "boss" decides who gets cut. Sometimes his decisions are arbitrary and unfair. Other bosses get the player in trade if that's the case, and they can turn around and beat the other team.
So sorry. There just isn't any better system than letting management make hiring, firing, and pay decisions based on judgement. Any attempt to codify it as process would just lead to some kind of absurd situation.
for now figure out how to cure cancer before worrying about the big picture.
Boy will you have egg on your face when their research leads to the development of a machine that allows us to isolate and neutralize all the cancer cells in a body in one quick pass. Yes, as a side effect it will actually cause an egg to materialize, go to your house, knock on your door, and hit you. Right in the face. That's the wonder of quantum mechanics.
Really? REALLY??? Do you have any idea what was happening in Russia after the USSR fell apart? They were in some serious economic trouble. Securing nuclear assets was of vital importance not just to us, but to them and the entire world. If anything we didn't do enough. I heard there were RTGs left to rust in Siberia. Some of their naval nukes were also mothballed under questionable circumstances.
I'm the first to admit that the USA's actions aren't always for the best; but not in this case.
Your customers are lucky, they get to know that something changed. If you were making 'cloud' software, they wouldn't know anything changed until they logged in one morning and things are broken.
Worse yet, they could get a screen full of MyCleanPC spams mixed in with their data.
[snip] history of past union goods, not disputed. [snip] citing 3rd world totally non-union atrocity, not disputed.
Followed by, a reference to unions in Germany. The German model might actually be closer to what I have in mind, although they still have what sounds like a lot of micromanaging. The wiki article states, " trade unions that set the framework for working conditions, such as collective wage agreements, for whole sectors" which sounds promising but then it goes on to say, "or single companies" which seems to be getting back to the American system which to me is inherently unfair because if my contract with company X is unfair, then it should be fixed for all companies, not just company X. If my conditions at both companies are fair, but company X is better simply because my union is stronger, then you end up with the problem of people shopping the union and/or the union picking which company wins--the power to choose who loses business in a strike is a very strong power, and power corrupts. That's why I see the US approach as unworkable. The Germans are probably doing OK with it because of the culture, at least for now. At this point in time, cronyism and corruption just doesn't seem to be that bad in Germany. All that "following the rules and being neat and orderly" stuff about the Germans can have an advantage... for now.
The US isn't Germany. The attitude is more about "getting what's mine" and you just don't hear very much about a US union doing something to promote quality, or educate, or discipline workers that stink or ought to be doing some other job. Nope.
If you really want to help labor, forget about the unions. Instead, establish fair wages for various job classifications via regulation.
And how do you propose to enforce this?
The same way we enforce any other labor law. We do have labor laws, and they are enforced at least somewhat. Yes, it could be better; but so could anything else.
Especially considering businesses are in cahoots with governments.
The unions are in cahoots with the governments too. Usually that's local, not Federal. If you want to be a teacher in California you MUST join the union. There are allegedly provisions for segregating political activism out of your dues; but that's as big a joke as medical marijuana. Unions, Sacramento, and local governments are joined at the hip. Of course YMMV depending on your state; but if fascism is the merger or corporation and state, then communism is the merger of union and state and yep, California is quite communist in this regard. You must join the union to do certain jobs, the union funds the politicians, you must pay your taxes... "The Party" is the government. It's sickening.
Having an award wage is all good and well, but it will never be adhered to (or set stupidly low by industry lobbyists) the minute you strip the power from workers to unionise.
I did not mean to imply anybody should be stripped of their rights to free association. It should not be permitted to fire somebody simply because they belong to an organization that the boss doesn't like, and that includes unions. Now you'll come back and say that if the law doesn't allow "union shops" then the unions are powerless and I say, "no, they aren't". All the union goods that you cited at the top of your post came from the power of people to unite and freely associate, a right enumerated in the 1st Ammendment. You don't have to force labor to pay dues to a union shop and perpetuate an organization. Ad-hoc organizing is actually better because once rights are won they generally aren't revoked. Standing unions are like standing armies. They have to be maintained. The 40 hour work week and minimum wage are enshrined. Nobody pays maintenance on them beyond standard law enforcement. It'
The unions and the management kind of merged at some point. You ended up with unions having a major say about whether or not a plant would even be built. Never mind paint process. The unions are management. The sooner the rank-and-file figures that out, the better.
I didn't say it was better. I just said returning to post-war style unionism isn't the answer. To elaborate a bit further:
The original labor movement that took place during the early 20th century gave us two pillars we take for granted: 40 hour work weeks and minimum wage, along with many other regulations.
There's the closest thing to an answer. Why? Because these regulations are enforced at relatively low cost. In theory, if you work with the system you can get these rules applied fairly. Employers who systematically violate labor laws *do* get punished.
Here's the best part: I never pay any dues for that, just taxes.
You might even go so far as to say it's... wait for it... a "single payer union". Hey, it's good for health care, it should be great for labor care too right? We should get rid of all the pesky private labor insurance and have ONLY the "single payer union". BTW, this also demolishes the Republican argument that you can't have a government player and private players in the same space.
IMHO, the only good strike is a general strike. The only good union is a caucus within a party. The only fair contract is a universal contract for all workers doing a particular job.
And, to avoid killing the goose that lays the golden eggs: tenure and seniority should never be allowed to factor into the contract. Contracts should only establish minimum standards for compensation. Meritocracy should rein above the floor.
Look at the last bastion of unionism in America: the public sector. If anything, it robs the working class. The working class is paying taxes for people who have contracts where seniority and tenure are involved.
Unions provided higher wages for a few people back then. The system was unsustainable and inefficient. It was fantastic for the immediate post-war generation in the US. As other countries rebuilt their manufacturing base, we began to see the downside. The 1970s were the transition for all that. 70s cars were absolutely awful in terms of quality.
It's easy to point to a high paying union job and say the union did good. It's harder to point to all the other regular Joes who got lemons in their driveways because it was considered acceptable behavior to show up drunk on the job and just bolt a few things together before taking another break.
If you really want to help labor, forget about the unions. Instead, establish fair wages for various job classifications via regulation. Of course that doesn't work under free trade, so you'd need to bring back the good 'ol tariff to cancel out the sweat shop effect.
We had some computers in high school. We had many of them in college.
In both settings, the lecture was actually very important. The lectures were about algorithms. Because these were elective programs (or perhaps met an elective requirement for an engineering degree) most of the students did well. Even the ones who struggled with it were at least highly motivated. Even people like myself who had done a lot of coding outside the classroom struggled with the material at times, so it was very challenging. I had the misfortune to take the 100 level course the last year before they switched from Pascal to C.
For some strange reason, pointers were harder in Pascal than C; but that might be because it was my first exposure to memory in a HLL (I had experience with 6502 assembly, purely self taught). The entire 1st semester was to write a Logo interpreter in Pascal. You built it piece-by-piece each week. If you couldn't complete a piece bug-free, you were graded on how close you got and permitted to use the instructor's code as a starting point for the next week. If you were really good, you'd have your very own interpreter; but most of us ended up with a patched instructor's version.
Anyway, I digress. The instructors had to know the material. It wasn't a lot of typing. It was algorithms and the language was just a tool used to make the machine execute the algorithms.
I feel like a got a quality CS education when I was in the CS department even though I wasn't a CS major. Something tells me these kids aren't in for such a good experience...
OK, B+C can be evaluated once when you assign A, or it can be evaluated every time you evaluate A. Sometimes you know that A will not change after you calculate it, or that a fresh value of A is required, and sometimes you don't.
Delaying the evaluation of A is usually safe; but it can sometimes be very slow. Like it or not, performance still matters. If you evaluated A unnecessarily inside a tight loop in a game, you'd be dead. Even less CPU intensive thinks like web apps could be killed by this kind of thing, if A is evaluated in JavaScript every time you move your mouse pointer.
Evaluating A every time is not only slow, it might not even be correct. Let's say you pull in some weather data and then render a map. The frontal zone should be a smooth line. If you pull in new frontal boundary data while rendering the map... you'll render a broken front.
Sorry. It looks like the programmer still has to think. Re-calculating A every time the symbol A occurs may or may not be required.
That's my thought. If I've got time and money to burn, and I'm going to fire up the soldering iron, I want a wall full of blinking lights that signify... ummm... that the FUTURE has arrived. Yes, see? That green one there? It means we're in the future. The red one? When it starts blinking, you're time is running out...
It's funny that this should come up because just now I was in a fast food Chinese place by myself. I was watching people, and there were these two middle-school aged kids with smart phone splaying games or something. I was thinking, these kids have never known a time when tiny little computers were not everywhere. When I was a kid, we thought a home computer would be a wall full of blinking lights.
Slashdot Mirror
That's one problem. The other problem is the inevitably compromised "internet of things" that allows regular old criminals to pull up a list of "hot targets". They'll have a nice little map that shows them the optimal route to drive by houses where people aren't at home, and where their consumption of items from certain stores makes it a juicy target. Regular criminals won't have access to this technology of course. Just like any other business, the 1%er organized criminals will squeeze out Mom n Pop.
Arguably this goes for anything on TV; but I found myself keeping it particularly in mind while watching the NSA segment. You have to watch it thinking, "How much of this will later be revealed as a lie?".
I bet a lot of people took that approach. It's called "credibility" and the NSA has lost it. They can't get it back with one dog and pony show. At least... you shouldn't let them get it back that easily.
I *did* take a look at the Angry Birds example. I skipped over the parts that I got right away, skimming the whole thing in about five minutes. Here's my take on it.
It's a lot like working with a GUI builder. When they started coming out with tools that let us position buttons and other elements on dialog boxes, it was a godsend. If you looked at the code that MSVC++ spat out, you'd see things like, INPUT(59,545,20) or some such, which would have been tedious to do with compile, view, edit... cycles. Tools like that save programmer hours of tedium.
The Angry Birds example does that with logic, which is less tedious than positioning elements on a dialog box, so that seems less useful to an experienced programmer.
I would tend to agree that using a GUI builder is not programming; but this leads us to something. If you can do programming with something as easy to use as a GUI builder, then why program at all? I don't know anybody who gets upset with people who prefer to use a GUI builder as opposed to typing in pixel coordinates by hand. There may come a day when more programming, even logic programming is dominated by tools that resemble GUI builders.
We should always retain the ability to go under the hood; but honestly, I've never had a buggy GUI builder where I had to edit the coordinates by hand. I haven't done assembly from C. Ever. Other people do though, at least the latter. I don't feel like not doing assembly from C disqualifies me as a "real programmer". As the tools become more advanced, the bar for "real programmer" gets lower.
It's just that right now, no serious developers are using GUI builder style interfaces for logic. Twenty years from now, it might be the norm.
People who think you can learn CS in a few days should be punished by giving the same kids two days of music, and then having their playback devices loaded with nothing but the resulting tunes.
You've gotta be kidding. With the ID of "Required Snark" at least I hope so.
All we need now is for the mayor of Toronto to give a speech about health care with sign language translation. The perfect storm.
Economic theory be damned. I'm going all-in on ignoring their product.
It'll never sell to me. There are sunk costs involved. I have too much engineering invested in non-linear coffee consumption as cheap mugs and paper cups lose heat. Slowly at first, with much intake of the aroma. Then cautious sips, then normal sips, then fairly heavy consumption somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3rd of the way down. It ain't broke. I'm not fixing it. It works anywhere. No need to buy an expensive mug, take it with me everywhere, wash it, and worry about losing it.
I love arguments that use the term "Meritocracy", as though there is some fair and universal standard for that all-encompassing term? There isn't, and that is where the ruthless manager and big money gets to talk. "Meritocracy" is a Libertarian fiction invented to give the boss the last say, and he may not even be evaluating performance on the merits of the work being done.
This is a false dichotomy. I never meant to imply a choice between pure meritocracy or pure royalty. Even countries that still have royalty operate with quite a bit of meritocracy, and the USA definitely has its aristocrats. Meritocracy is certainly *not* a fiction; but that doesn't mean that luck, trickery, inheritance and connections aren't a big part of what gets people into high financial status. I hope that clears things up for you.
And yes, in order for meritocracy to work the boss has to be able to pay people more based on what they're worth or... gasp! fire people who are no good on the job. I've seen meritocracy in action.
For cryin' out loud. Just turn on your tube and watch sports or something. There isn't a thousand page "standard" for deciding who gets cut from a team. The "boss" decides who gets cut. Sometimes his decisions are arbitrary and unfair. Other bosses get the player in trade if that's the case, and they can turn around and beat the other team.
So sorry. There just isn't any better system than letting management make hiring, firing, and pay decisions based on judgement. Any attempt to codify it as process would just lead to some kind of absurd situation.
for now figure out how to cure cancer before worrying about the big picture.
Boy will you have egg on your face when their research leads to the development of a machine that allows us to isolate and neutralize all the cancer cells in a body in one quick pass. Yes, as a side effect it will actually cause an egg to materialize, go to your house, knock on your door, and hit you. Right in the face. That's the wonder of quantum mechanics.
Really? REALLY??? Do you have any idea what was happening in Russia after the USSR fell apart? They were in some serious economic trouble. Securing nuclear assets was of vital importance not just to us, but to them and the entire world. If anything we didn't do enough. I heard there were RTGs left to rust in Siberia. Some of their naval nukes were also mothballed under questionable circumstances.
I'm the first to admit that the USA's actions aren't always for the best; but not in this case.
Your ex is a bitch, but Karma is a bigger bitch. Multiply that by all the users on the web site. He's lucky the law got to him first.
Your customers are lucky, they get to know that something changed. If you were making 'cloud' software, they wouldn't know anything changed until they logged in one morning and things are broken.
Worse yet, they could get a screen full of MyCleanPC spams mixed in with their data.
[snip] history of past union goods, not disputed. [snip] citing 3rd world totally non-union atrocity, not disputed.
Followed by, a reference to unions in Germany. The German model might actually be closer to what I have in mind, although they still have what sounds like a lot of micromanaging. The wiki article states, " trade unions that set the framework for working conditions, such as collective wage agreements, for whole sectors" which sounds promising but then it goes on to say, "or single companies" which seems to be getting back to the American system which to me is inherently unfair because if my contract with company X is unfair, then it should be fixed for all companies, not just company X. If my conditions at both companies are fair, but company X is better simply because my union is stronger, then you end up with the problem of people shopping the union and/or the union picking which company wins--the power to choose who loses business in a strike is a very strong power, and power corrupts. That's why I see the US approach as unworkable. The Germans are probably doing OK with it because of the culture, at least for now. At this point in time, cronyism and corruption just doesn't seem to be that bad in Germany. All that "following the rules and being neat and orderly" stuff about the Germans can have an advantage... for now.
The US isn't Germany. The attitude is more about "getting what's mine" and you just don't hear very much about a US union doing something to promote quality, or educate, or discipline workers that stink or ought to be doing some other job. Nope.
The same way we enforce any other labor law. We do have labor laws, and they are enforced at least somewhat. Yes, it could be better; but so could anything else.
The unions are in cahoots with the governments too. Usually that's local, not Federal. If you want to be a teacher in California you MUST join the union. There are allegedly provisions for segregating political activism out of your dues; but that's as big a joke as medical marijuana. Unions, Sacramento, and local governments are joined at the hip. Of course YMMV depending on your state; but if fascism is the merger or corporation and state, then communism is the merger of union and state and yep, California is quite communist in this regard. You must join the union to do certain jobs, the union funds the politicians, you must pay your taxes... "The Party" is the government. It's sickening.
I did not mean to imply anybody should be stripped of their rights to free association. It should not be permitted to fire somebody simply because they belong to an organization that the boss doesn't like, and that includes unions. Now you'll come back and say that if the law doesn't allow "union shops" then the unions are powerless and I say, "no, they aren't". All the union goods that you cited at the top of your post came from the power of people to unite and freely associate, a right enumerated in the 1st Ammendment. You don't have to force labor to pay dues to a union shop and perpetuate an organization. Ad-hoc organizing is actually better because once rights are won they generally aren't revoked. Standing unions are like standing armies. They have to be maintained. The 40 hour work week and minimum wage are enshrined. Nobody pays maintenance on them beyond standard law enforcement. It'
The unions and the management kind of merged at some point. You ended up with unions having a major say about whether or not a plant would even be built. Never mind paint process. The unions are management. The sooner the rank-and-file figures that out, the better.
Wow, blazing strawmen there. Not even sure where to squirt the hose.
I didn't say it was better. I just said returning to post-war style unionism isn't the answer. To elaborate a bit further:
The original labor movement that took place during the early 20th century gave us two pillars we take for granted: 40 hour work weeks and minimum wage, along with many other regulations.
There's the closest thing to an answer. Why? Because these regulations are enforced at relatively low cost. In theory, if you work with the system you can get these rules applied fairly. Employers who systematically violate labor laws *do* get punished.
Here's the best part: I never pay any dues for that, just taxes.
You might even go so far as to say it's... wait for it... a "single payer union". Hey, it's good for health care, it should be great for labor care too right? We should get rid of all the pesky private labor insurance and have ONLY the "single payer union". BTW, this also demolishes the Republican argument that you can't have a government player and private players in the same space.
IMHO, the only good strike is a general strike. The only good union is a caucus within a party. The only fair contract is a universal contract for all workers doing a particular job.
And, to avoid killing the goose that lays the golden eggs: tenure and seniority should never be allowed to factor into the contract. Contracts should only establish minimum standards for compensation. Meritocracy should rein above the floor.
Look at the last bastion of unionism in America: the public sector. If anything, it robs the working class. The working class is paying taxes for people who have contracts where seniority and tenure are involved.
Unions provided higher wages back then.
Unions provided higher wages for a few people back then. The system was unsustainable and inefficient. It was fantastic for the immediate post-war generation in the US. As other countries rebuilt their manufacturing base, we began to see the downside. The 1970s were the transition for all that. 70s cars were absolutely awful in terms of quality.
It's easy to point to a high paying union job and say the union did good. It's harder to point to all the other regular Joes who got lemons in their driveways because it was considered acceptable behavior to show up drunk on the job and just bolt a few things together before taking another break.
If you really want to help labor, forget about the unions. Instead, establish fair wages for various job classifications via regulation. Of course that doesn't work under free trade, so you'd need to bring back the good 'ol tariff to cancel out the sweat shop effect.
There is no easy fix.
We had some computers in high school. We had many of them in college.
In both settings, the lecture was actually very important. The lectures were about algorithms. Because these were elective programs (or perhaps met an elective requirement for an engineering degree) most of the students did well. Even the ones who struggled with it were at least highly motivated. Even people like myself who had done a lot of coding outside the classroom struggled with the material at times, so it was very challenging. I had the misfortune to take the 100 level course the last year before they switched from Pascal to C.
For some strange reason, pointers were harder in Pascal than C; but that might be because it was my first exposure to memory in a HLL (I had experience with 6502 assembly, purely self taught). The entire 1st semester was to write a Logo interpreter in Pascal. You built it piece-by-piece each week. If you couldn't complete a piece bug-free, you were graded on how close you got and permitted to use the instructor's code as a starting point for the next week. If you were really good, you'd have your very own interpreter; but most of us ended up with a patched instructor's version.
Anyway, I digress. The instructors had to know the material. It wasn't a lot of typing. It was algorithms and the language was just a tool used to make the machine execute the algorithms.
I feel like a got a quality CS education when I was in the CS department even though I wasn't a CS major. Something tells me these kids aren't in for such a good experience...
It past the spell choker.
I'm really curious how a bra will stop me (a man) from over eating.
It interfaces with Google Glass. Whenever she looks at a fat guy, a little sign pops up from between her boobs that says, "I don't date fat guys".
I'm using Chrome with NotScript and Flash Blocker. Even when I permitted the scripts and Flash, that 3d frogger thing was bogged down and unworkable.
That's OK though. All they have to do is go to their own web site and learn how to code.
OK, B+C can be evaluated once when you assign A, or it can be evaluated every time you evaluate A. Sometimes you know that A will not change after you calculate it, or that a fresh value of A is required, and sometimes you don't.
Delaying the evaluation of A is usually safe; but it can sometimes be very slow. Like it or not, performance still matters. If you evaluated A unnecessarily inside a tight loop in a game, you'd be dead. Even less CPU intensive thinks like web apps could be killed by this kind of thing, if A is evaluated in JavaScript every time you move your mouse pointer.
Evaluating A every time is not only slow, it might not even be correct. Let's say you pull in some weather data and then render a map. The frontal zone should be a smooth line. If you pull in new frontal boundary data while rendering the map... you'll render a broken front.
Sorry. It looks like the programmer still has to think. Re-calculating A every time the symbol A occurs may or may not be required.
I hope this silver bullet is better than the last one.
"I'm not too worried about that" said every vampire on the planet.
That's my thought. If I've got time and money to burn, and I'm going to fire up the soldering iron, I want a wall full of blinking lights that signify... ummm... that the FUTURE has arrived. Yes, see? That green one there? It means we're in the future. The red one? When it starts blinking, you're time is running out...
It's funny that this should come up because just now I was in a fast food Chinese place by myself. I was watching people, and there were these two middle-school aged kids with smart phone splaying games or something. I was thinking, these kids have never known a time when tiny little computers were not everywhere. When I was a kid, we thought a home computer would be a wall full of blinking lights.