Let's say you want to work at a delivery company, stacking heavy boxes. Now, how will you train for such a job?
By going to the gym and doing weights.
But, you say: I will be lifting boxes, not dumbbells!
See the point? A computer science degree teaches you the foundations and gives you the means to build upon those foundations.
Suppose you are a C/C++ programmer. And overnight Java becomes the language dujour. If you are strong in your foundations (data structures, analysis of algorithms, structured programming, good design, etc.) then making the leap to Java will be almost trivial. On the other hand, if you learnt programming "on the street" (so to say), learning a new language and efficiently using it becomes more difficult (it can be done, but may not be very efficient).
I used to TA some of these basic courses. So many times I was asked, "what's the point of this bloody big-Oh analysis? All this math is killing me". And then these same people would come back all confused when their bubblesort (the easiest to implement) failed miserably when given 1000000 numbers to sort.
If you do business in or live in a country, you follow the laws of that country.
Tomorrow if the FBI comes to Google or Yahoo or MSN with a warrant, guess what? They will comply with that too.
Expecting a corporation to not follow the laws of the country where they do business is asinine.
How would you like it if the Brits who come to the US started driving on the left side of the road? Hey, they don't like to drive on the right; let them drive on the left!
It is not as if Yahoo volunteered the information. They complied with a lawful request of the current regime in PRC. There's nothing wrong with that. It is not upto the corporation to judge what's lawful or not (or, at least, not yet;) ).
I am sick of these optimistic figures (to put it mildly).
It is fine for 1 cellphone to receive 100Mbps.
But how does it scale? Remember, there will be about 10000 users within range of a base. Can the base pump out 1Tbps of data? (Remember, the users could be watching live HD video at the same time).
True. The difference is that in the academic world, noone can hold a tenured professor accountable. In the business world, there's the possibility of the shareholders or the SEC stepping in. There are no such protections in the academic world.
As long as the professor doesn't bang his hottie students (while they're in his class) or doesn't plagiarise, he's golden.
I have seen professors deliberately delay the dissertation defence of students by years, just to keep them working on their projects. After having spent 5-6 years working on the dissertation, the student can't just get up and leave. He has to stick around kissing the arse of the professor, working 60-hour weeks for below minimum wage just to get the coveted signature some day.
People who have not experienced the academic world up close have abso-fucking-lutely no idea how bad it can get in there.
I used to work in an academic department doing research under contract for many years. My bosses (tenured faculty) were psychopaths too. Lying, manipulative scumbags both of them. This article may be talking about the business world, but it could easily be applied to many people in the academic world.
Now I'm out of the academic world, and with perspective I can see what a shithole that place was.
ARTHUR: There! Look!
LAUNCELOT: What does it say?
GALAHAD: What language is that?
ARTHUR: Brother Maynard! You are a scholar.
MAYNARD: It's Aramaic!
GALAHAD: Of course! Joseph of Arimathea!
LAUNCELOT: 'Course!
ARTHUR: What does it say?
MAYNARD: It reads, 'Here may be found the last words of Joseph of Arimathea. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the Holy Grail in the Castle of aaarrrrggh'.
ARTHUR: What?
MAYNARD: '...The Castle of aaarrrrggh'.
BEDEVERE: What is that?
MAYNARD: He must have died while carving it.
LAUNCELOT: Oh, come on!
MAYNARD: Well, that's what it says.
ARTHUR: Look, if he was dying, he wouldn't bother to carve 'aarrggh'. He'd just say it!
MAYNARD: Well, that's what's carved in the rock!
GALAHAD: Perhaps he was dictating.
I'm feeling the heebie-jeebies about the housing market right now.
Somebody once said, "when you see grandmothers jumping into the stock market, get out" (or words to that effect).
In the local farmers market in the mid-peninsula region, I saw a display advising people to jump into Real Estate with their IRAs, etc. When people start hawking Real Estate in the local farmers' market, you know there's something wrong.
I'm jaded by these PR stunts. Wake me up when they actually end up buying the Linux boxen! Till then, it is just a ploy to get super-steep discounts from Microshaft.
You know... as much as it sucks, you have to admit that if people weren't pirating things, there'd be no need for DRM.
This is laughable, to say the least. Companies want DRM not because of rampant piracy, but because the technology is advancing so fast, they can't predict where the future lies; and they want to be able to make money regardless of which way the technology turns.
Tell me something: is photocopying of books (by poor students, usually) not piracy? Then why don't copier makers have DRM? Where's the DRM for FM radio? People used to make copies of broadcast songs quite rampantly.
Any fool who thinks DRM is about "stopping piracy" is nothing but a pure fool who's had too much Koolaid.
As others have mentioned, this is old news. This begs the question: is there something special going on between Google and Slashdot? In other words, is there some sort of payola involved?? Just like Roland Pipequaille(?), it is strange how even the smallest Google stories make it into Slashdot.
I think the Slashdot editors/owners should come out and tell us (the paying customers) if this is indeed the case.
All I see is a picture of a large garage. How do we know this is where the truck(s) is (are) kept? And even if the truck were being kept there, what's the big deal? What next: the picture of the garage where a Google programmer parks his car? A menu from a restaurant where Page/Brin ate last month?
The one containing all possible mathematical theorems...
Sorry, that's incorrect. Erdos's "The Book" is supposed to contain only the most elegant proofs. Once in a while a mathematician will come up with a proof that is very elegant; such a proof is referred to as being "from The Book". Of course, there's no such "Book" in real life; one gets to see it only in the afterlife, and that too if one's been good...;-)
Well, the submitter was merely pointing out a logical fallacy behind the purported reasoning of these (proposed?) restrictions.
If the idea indeed is to deny knowledge to potential enemies, it makes sense to see who these "enemies" are. And looking at the fact that the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi; Bin Laden is a Saudi; many of the others in the Al Qaeda hierarchy are Saudi; it would make sense to include Saudis in this set of restricted students. Now, to not put restrictions on Saudis and then turn around and place such restrictions on Indians (to name a group) who have had no involvement whatsoever in terrorism against the US and EU, defies logic, doesn't it??
So why haven't they? The problems with Windows have been around for 10 years, and yet Windows is still notoriously insecure. If the availability of money was the sole arbiter of excellence, then Windows would be the most secure/best/whatever OS around, and Linux (because it lacks money) would be like DOS 3.0.
It's not that they don't carry "objectionable" stuff; it is that they selectively edit out content of movies (dubbing over swear words, etc.). This is censorship.
As I pointed out to the editors (OK, laugh at that), this has been covered before.
Though, I don't understand the need to throw in Linus's name. Maybe that's to rile up the crowd?:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Let's say you want to work at a delivery company, stacking heavy boxes. Now, how will you train for such a job?
By going to the gym and doing weights.
But, you say: I will be lifting boxes, not dumbbells!
See the point? A computer science degree teaches you the foundations and gives you the means to build upon those foundations.
Suppose you are a C/C++ programmer. And overnight Java becomes the language dujour. If you are strong in your foundations (data structures, analysis of algorithms, structured programming, good design, etc.) then making the leap to Java will be almost trivial. On the other hand, if you learnt programming "on the street" (so to say), learning a new language and efficiently using it becomes more difficult (it can be done, but may not be very efficient).
I used to TA some of these basic courses. So many times I was asked, "what's the point of this bloody big-Oh analysis? All this math is killing me". And then these same people would come back all confused when their bubblesort (the easiest to implement) failed miserably when given 1000000 numbers to sort.
Tomorrow if the FBI comes to Google or Yahoo or MSN with a warrant, guess what? They will comply with that too.
Expecting a corporation to not follow the laws of the country where they do business is asinine.
How would you like it if the Brits who come to the US started driving on the left side of the road? Hey, they don't like to drive on the right; let them drive on the left!
It is not as if Yahoo volunteered the information. They complied with a lawful request of the current regime in PRC. There's nothing wrong with that. It is not upto the corporation to judge what's lawful or not (or, at least, not yet ;) ).
(runs off to try it on his gf..)
I am sick of these optimistic figures (to put it mildly).
It is fine for 1 cellphone to receive 100Mbps.
But how does it scale? Remember, there will be about 10000 users within range of a base. Can the base pump out 1Tbps of data? (Remember, the users could be watching live HD video at the same time).
and neither, it would seem, does MS... ;-)
... begin, the next dotcom bubble has.
As long as the professor doesn't bang his hottie students (while they're in his class) or doesn't plagiarise, he's golden.
I have seen professors deliberately delay the dissertation defence of students by years, just to keep them working on their projects. After having spent 5-6 years working on the dissertation, the student can't just get up and leave. He has to stick around kissing the arse of the professor, working 60-hour weeks for below minimum wage just to get the coveted signature some day.
People who have not experienced the academic world up close have abso-fucking-lutely no idea how bad it can get in there.
Now I'm out of the academic world, and with perspective I can see what a shithole that place was.
ARTHUR: There! Look!
LAUNCELOT: What does it say?
GALAHAD: What language is that?
ARTHUR: Brother Maynard! You are a scholar.
MAYNARD: It's Aramaic!
GALAHAD: Of course! Joseph of Arimathea!
LAUNCELOT: 'Course!
ARTHUR: What does it say?
MAYNARD: It reads, 'Here may be found the last words of Joseph of Arimathea. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the Holy Grail in the Castle of aaarrrrggh'.
ARTHUR: What?
MAYNARD: '...The Castle of aaarrrrggh'.
BEDEVERE: What is that?
MAYNARD: He must have died while carving it.
LAUNCELOT: Oh, come on!
MAYNARD: Well, that's what it says.
ARTHUR: Look, if he was dying, he wouldn't bother to carve 'aarrggh'. He'd just say it!
MAYNARD: Well, that's what's carved in the rock!
GALAHAD: Perhaps he was dictating.
Thank you! That's the story I was thinking of.
Huh? Top Yahoo hit is A&E televison! See for yourself. Stop making crap up.
Somebody once said, "when you see grandmothers jumping into the stock market, get out" (or words to that effect).
In the local farmers market in the mid-peninsula region, I saw a display advising people to jump into Real Estate with their IRAs, etc. When people start hawking Real Estate in the local farmers' market, you know there's something wrong.
I'm jaded by these PR stunts. Wake me up when they actually end up buying the Linux boxen! Till then, it is just a ploy to get super-steep discounts from Microshaft.
The information has already been published on the WWW; this is how Google indexed it.
This is laughable, to say the least. Companies want DRM not because of rampant piracy, but because the technology is advancing so fast, they can't predict where the future lies; and they want to be able to make money regardless of which way the technology turns.
Tell me something: is photocopying of books (by poor students, usually) not piracy? Then why don't copier makers have DRM? Where's the DRM for FM radio? People used to make copies of broadcast songs quite rampantly.
Any fool who thinks DRM is about "stopping piracy" is nothing but a pure fool who's had too much Koolaid.
Now you've done it! This was going to lead to 2 more Slashdot stories.
I think the Slashdot editors/owners should come out and tell us (the paying customers) if this is indeed the case.
All I see is a picture of a large garage. How do we know this is where the truck(s) is (are) kept? And even if the truck were being kept there, what's the big deal? What next: the picture of the garage where a Google programmer parks his car? A menu from a restaurant where Page/Brin ate last month?
Sorry, that's incorrect. Erdos's "The Book" is supposed to contain only the most elegant proofs. Once in a while a mathematician will come up with a proof that is very elegant; such a proof is referred to as being "from The Book". Of course, there's no such "Book" in real life; one gets to see it only in the afterlife, and that too if one's been good... ;-)
If the idea indeed is to deny knowledge to potential enemies, it makes sense to see who these "enemies" are. And looking at the fact that the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi; Bin Laden is a Saudi; many of the others in the Al Qaeda hierarchy are Saudi; it would make sense to include Saudis in this set of restricted students. Now, to not put restrictions on Saudis and then turn around and place such restrictions on Indians (to name a group) who have had no involvement whatsoever in terrorism against the US and EU, defies logic, doesn't it??
So why haven't they? The problems with Windows have been around for 10 years, and yet Windows is still notoriously insecure. If the availability of money was the sole arbiter of excellence, then Windows would be the most secure/best/whatever OS around, and Linux (because it lacks money) would be like DOS 3.0.
It's not that they don't carry "objectionable" stuff; it is that they selectively edit out content of movies (dubbing over swear words, etc.). This is censorship.
As I pointed out to the editors (OK, laugh at that), this has been covered before. Though, I don't understand the need to throw in Linus's name. Maybe that's to rile up the crowd? :-)
Built-in: Ethernet, Analog modem, 2x USB2.0 ports, CF-II, SD/MMC, VGA out.
With 2 USB ports, you can add on a lot of other crap.
Even if this doesn't succeed: it is good to see them experimenting.