I too partially suck at estimates. Aside from the "unknown unknowns" which you can budget for but never predict I have found several rules of thumb have got my estimates from "fairyland guesses" to "accurate with withing a factor of 2". These are:
* If you have done the exact same task before using the exact same technology then your estimate is probably good to within around 20%
* If you are using new technology, a new technique then you have no real estimate. Have to be super conservative with estimates of these parts of the project
* If you are debugging the time is also undefined. It could be short, it could be long. Your time is in freefall while you debug.
* If you have done a detailed design then your time estimates are more accurate, because you have thought through many problems
* If you have prototype code for core areas your time estimate is even more accurate, because you have solved many problems.
* Joel Spolsky was right. If you haven't thought about all the steps you need to do, down to a granularity of an hour, then you are not thinking about your estimate hard enough and your estimates will miss things (which makes them inaccurate).
* No matter what project you take the customer and yourself will always thinks of ways to make it better as you go along. This is the area where project blowouts occur. Learn to identify and mitigate this risk (I often add enhancements at the end, and resist temptation to do them before the core stuff is done and tested)
* Developing new algorithms takes significant time (which is hard to predict ahead of time)
* Unit testing saves a huge amount of debugging time. Despite lots of unit/integration/system test code getting written, the time to do this is lower than debugging code that doesn't have automated tests. Also, time estimates need to take into account writing, running and maintaining tests.
* User Interface layout takes quite a while to make look really nice. Even worse, every user thinks they are UI experts so you get a lot of suggested tweaks to the UI that you may not be able to push back on.
* If there is a fault with the specification (and there will be, it is very hard for BAs to get specs right) then the time to fix it (and the flow-on effects) have to be taken out of your time budget and put into theirs. Doesn't help the overall wall-clock time to complete the project though, so this has to be factored in
* I also find that I can usually only solve one or two really hard design or algorithmic problems per day. The rest of the day is dealing with less hard stuff. Factor this in to your estimates.
* Factor in lots of time to be distracted by meetings and design sessions. Usually coding is around 50-80% of a week.
* Documentation is easy and the time to do it can be predicted easily. Don't forget to add time to do the edits from feedback. Unfortunately, documentation is usually done at the end, when little time remains (time was 'stolen' for development slippages).
Thanks to all the other posters for their lists and suggestions. Time estimates are much much harder than development.
Ah, the anti-scientific closed mind. ps. I never advocated hurting a hair on anyone's head. It is you that is apologizing for the genocidal Islamists. But I guess you never checked by references nor really read by posts. No wonder your statements show you don't take into account the evidence in the world nor of the statements I wrote. Which is puerile.
Did you even notice the plot in the last few days in Canada to commit mass murder on a train by *Islamic* students? probably not. You have just stated you filter all out information that might challenge your (incorrect) worldview. That is why you are anti-scientific. As a former astrophysicist I'm trained to not dismiss things out of hand - I always go looking for counter evidence of my current position and weigh it on its merits. After all, "The most beautiful theory can be slain by a single ugly fact". Get scientific, dude. If you do then you'll start actually reading other people's posts properly, not inventing slanders against them, and you will learn things you didn't know.
I barely care even though you're insulting me so much.
Apologies for being so harsh. Didn't mean to offend. Just meant to make a point (defending Islam is exactly akin to defending National Socialism - apart from different mythologies they have similar aims and methods in many ways).
I think you need to get your spectacles adjusted. I called for no violence, nor intimidation, nor expulsion. Read my first post again - it calls for strengthening of existing laws and making explicit jurisdiction of laws. It is you who is backing the Islamists who openly and daily call for genocide (ever read the Hamas Charter? it is evil; ever listened to Ahmadinejad's speeches? they are evil). You are projecting your sordid genocidal agenda on to me (a common tactic by trolls and leftists). Fortunately the readers following this thread can see my cross-referenced posting vs your fact-free strawmen.
Ok, I'll help you out since you seem to have a broken moral compass. You make that claim that "because several hundred million Muslims don't go around blowing things up it means that Islam must be ok" which is *exactly* analogous to saying "because most Nationalist Socialist German Worker's Party members didn't kill anyone then it means that the ideology of Nationalist Socialism must be ok".
Can you spot the deep flaw in your argument yet?
Can you see why people with functioning moral compasses might think that by tolerating the hideously intolerant you are being a deliberate apologist for evil?
The number of Muslims in the World is between 1.2 and 1.5 billion. Of that number only around 5% are prepared to engage in direct jihadi activity, many of the rest support the jihad financially. Depending on the survey and the region around 40% of youths in Pakistan and 37% of British Muslim youths would like to live under Sharia:
reference http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/jan/29/thinktanks.religion
That's an *awful lot of people* who would like a legal system that gives you the choice of converting to Islam, being discriminated against as a second-class dhimmi or being killed. Those are the facts.
Meanwhile there are several hundred million who don't go around blowing things up. I think they count as typical a bit more than the handful who do, but that is what is known as seeing things in perspective and you appear to be having a great deal of trouble with that.
Ok, you have a comprehension problem so I'll say it again for you. The problem is not Muslims (who are *people*, who may be good or evil as all people can be). The problem is the political ideology called Islam. It is Islam that can take an otherwise moral person and convince them that supporting or doing evil is a good idea (eg. all those hundreds of millions that agree with the racist, discriminatory, misogynistic, homophobic, anti-scientific, and generally oppressive draconian set of laws called Sharia).
Protip: if you find yourself talking about "pussies" your plan is probably more testosterone than logic. Great for exercise programs, terrible for strategy.
Thanks, but I might ignore this tip. One could classify US Administrations into categories such as "Tiger" (eg. Reagan), "Paper Tiger" (eg. Carter) and "Pussy" (eg. Obama). I choose to use the word "pussy" because advocates of appeasement in denial of the evidence are really described by words such as "cowardly" and "craven". Pussy is a good modern substitute for this. Why do I feel I can say this? well, given Obama pulled out the rug from Mubarak and made it clear his support was for the tyrannical Muslim Brotherhood and their Salafi allies instead of a mere garden variety tyrant who ensured stability (and relative peace with neighbours); when the Green Revolution of 2009 happened in Iran and those protesting for freedom called "Obama, with us or against us?" the pussy-in-chief said nothing to support them, when a few words and perhaps covert support would have emboldened the protesters greatly and they could have overthrown the evil theocracy; instead the Free World now has the choice between allowing the tyrant Assad and his cronies to stay (backed by Iran) or arm Al Nusra (a branch of Al Qaeda) [which have now obtained heavy weapons originally supplied by the US]. Then we have the selling out of Poland and Czech with the European missile defence umbrella canned - Obama was on camera saying he'd sell out to Putin (via Medvedev) if they kept quiet so he could get re-elected. Who other than a pussy sells out allies for their political gain? So, you confuse my usage of the word as the result of hypermacho meat-head-ism. This is not true. I use it because I am disgusted by the contempt for the promotion of liberty by the immoral cowards in the current Administration!
I can't comment on an accuracy of an unnamed study, but you do realize that you're basically accusing the entire law enforcement system of massive corruption here? After all, you're saying that 80% of mosques break laws yet the law enforcement ignores it. And not only that, but they're taking a risk of massive backlash in the wake of terrorist incident such as this should this fact become public. Does that sound believable to you? Because it doesn't sound that way to me.
The problem is not law enforcement. The problem is that it has been deemed politically incorrect to associate terrorism with Islam by the Obama Administration. The Administration ordered a review and gutted all DoD, FBI, CIA, DHS documents in an astounding *six weeks* of all references to jihad, terrorism, etc (they did this by listening to CAIR, an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism funding trial, and a front group for Hamas). That is why Major Hussein's rampage at Foot Hood as he killed 13 fellow servicemen while screaming "Allahu Akhbar!" was deemed politically correct "workplace violence" rather than the jihad it was (after all, his business card did say, "Soldier of Allah"). Furthermore, General Casey when talking about this was more worried about any loss of religious diversity in the Army than the servicemen killed. The US has been so infiltrated by Cultural Marxism that political correctness now trumps the Truth (note: you cannot be for Free Speech and tolerate political correctness; they are diametrically opposed; Free Speech is Chaotic Good while Political Correctness is Lawful Evil:) ). Did your information sources not tell you about this fact - that the commissars of the Obama Administration are neutering the ability of agencies to defend you, and also working at neutering the ability of the citizens do defend themselves (callously exploiting the deaths of children by a crazed individual to attack the Constitutional 2nd Amendment Right to defend against tyranny).
No, just giving up freedoms of religion and speech. No big deal, that, no sir.
The science comes because of deciding what is real or not based on evidence. It is clear you are denying the evidence of the Boston bombers that has emerged. To claim that Islam wasn't their motivation despite their uncle and relatives saying Timurlan had gotten obsessed with Islam is to deny the evidence that is staring you in the face. That is what is anti-scientific about your posture.
A Muslim shopowner down the street is as unlikely to share the views of these criminals as you or I are likely to share the more extreme ideas of Charles Manson just because we are also Christians like Manson is.
I know what you are trying to say. I don't think you understand Islam in the slightest. There are "Cultural Muslims" who are "Muslims in name only". They nice fellows are great human beings but lousy Muslims. They are considered apostates by mainstream Islam and are liable to be killed once the Salafis etc finish dealing with the Jews, Christians, Apostates, Buddhists etc. Sometimes the devout Muslims don't wait and start bumping off the apostate Muslims early - which is why you have endless violence in Muslim countries (which is why I gave you that "thereligionofpeace" link with the index of daily killing - most of it Muslim on Muslim).
Now one interesting thing is that Muslims (people) may be moderate but Islam (the political ideology) never is [as famously stated recently by Erdogan, the Islamicist Prime Minister of Turkey]. The difference between Al Qaeda, The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the shopkeeper down the road is not in their intended end-goal state (political Islam dominating the world) but in how they get there (whether through violence, subterfuge or dawa proselytization). All devout Muslims believe that Sharia must dominate the globe, sooner or later.
Then we get back to your original statement. That the perpetrators of the Boston murders were "no more Islamic than I am". This is false from the statements that have been emerging. In fact, the reason they did it (and the reason for approx 90% of the World's terrorism) is *Islam*. Motivated by verses like the one I originally quoted 9:29.
I know you are guarding against kneejerk intolerance. That's a noble goal, but I believe you have gone so far into this as to deny the reality of what Islam is and what its goals are. I wish it was a "religion of peace" as the apologists claim, but the reality is it is a totalitarian, theocratic, misogynistic, homophobic, racist, supremacist, anti-individualist, anti-scientific *political* ideology. That means you are unfortunately trying to defend an evil political system. Please don't do this.
Look, it is clear you want to be anti-scientific. I won't try and debate with you. You have made up your mind and no amount of evidence will make you change your (incorrect) opinions. It is rare to meet someone online who is so resistant to reality though, who rejects facts so readily due to their prejudices.
Dude, you are determined to deny reality. Fine. I also get your point - but you also seem to be of the mindset that you will refuse to believe what the murderers say with their own mouths. I can't help you if you want to remain willfully delusional. Fortunately, most of the readers of Slashdot will see your apologetics are bogus in the case of the Boston jihadis.
Also not in there - that these guys are no more Islamic than you are.
Who are "they", the Boston murderers? If that's who you mean they you haven't been following the evidence on the older one. His uncle said he had become a lot more devout of late. Tsaraev went from praying once a day to five times a day. Not a crime, but shows how he has become radicalized as a jihadi (his entire mind was taken over by thoughts of Islam, and he was in contact with radical imams).
You only think I have a "kneejerk" reaction because you appear to live in a fact-free bubble. You probably still labour until the illusion that "Islam is a Religion of Peace" - which simply indicates you have zero understanding of Islamic doctrine. I would be happy to provide you with an avalance of material from Islamic sources if you like - it would cure you of any illusions as to the global intentions of political Islam. Here are some facts on exactly how peaceful Islam is around the globe: http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/index.html#Attacks http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
Your statement also indicates that in 13 years you have learned exactly *zero*. This is probably because you either dismiss facts you don't like (the anti-scientific way), or only watch left-leaning mainstream media (who selectively report and suppress inconvenient truths, like what Muslims say to each other behind closed doors). Here's an article showing how false the media reporting is, and why you are so very, very wrong in your statement that Tsaraev was "no more Islamic" than I am (which is utter bullshit): http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/what-really-going/2013/apr/20/liberal-media-take-chill-pill-boston-bombers-musli/
As long as you remain in denial of the the nature and goals of Islam you will always be a "useful idiot" that the Islamists rely on to further their agenda. You think you are being tolerant and doing good but in fact you are providing a defense of the intolerant and evil. Please stop doing that - stop defending evil by deflecting legitimate and factual criticism of jihad and known jihadis.
Dude, socialism is simply collectivism. Do a fact check on US Government debt. Where is all the money being spent? 0.8 trillion in defence? a drop in the bucket compared to the estimated *$80 TRILLION* the burgeoning government has in unfunded liabilities for entitlements (State sector pensions, benefits and social programmes). This is socialism. As Margaret Thatcher said, "Socialism is great until you run out of other people's money to spend". This is exactly what is happening to the US, meanwhile the political Left (currently in power) are trying to deflect your attention with talk about Defence Department spending when in fact it is the socialist social programmes that are bringing the economy down. Simply do a Google search for "US Government Unfunded Liabilities" and you will quickly find the Truth. The Socialism of the US is ruining its economy (just as socialism ruins the economies sooner or later of everywhere it touches). Of course, the mainstream media try papering over this in their reporting, but look at the *facts* of US debt. The United Socialist States of America is the reality, "Land of the Free" is the lie that is currently being sold to you (by both Democrats and Republicans - both are guilty of over spending on social programmes and increasing government to placate the insatiable demands of the voters).
What Java developer in this day and age doesn't do TDD or similar? I agree that more languages makes you better, however you still haven't addressed my point. On most large commercial projects only one language gets to be used. On most large commercial projects the team has a spectrum of skills and all must be productive. On most large commercial projects a developer who knows more libraries is usually more productive (features per unit time; that is, features per dollar) than someone who knows more languages. I'm not saying not to learn more languages, I'm saying on large commercial developments that more languages are a less significant factor than having a team that has a broader knowledge of libraries and application domains (eg. hardware integration; or internationalization; or knowing the internals of their database engine so that they correct optimize complex queries so that their [unavoidable] queries over seven billion rows work in reasonable time, etc). That's what I'm saying. The more time you have in the trenches, the less worried you are about learning the language du jour (which comes and go like virtual particle pairs). How much value will your F# and Acca knowledge be in ten years? Yet if you learned more application domains that is always valuable.
It is the result of the indoctrination of Cultural Marxism. While Marxism was defeated economically in the Cold War the Marxists of the Frankfurt School were clever enough to plant the seeds of Cultural Marxism in the universities, where it has grown ever since the 1960's. Pretty much university graduates in the States have been subjected to that narrative. That means politicians (low-fact guys at the best of times), university professors and decision makers of all stripes have their thoughts influenced by this narrative. This is the same narrative that guides Hollywood and now seeps into popular culture. It is so pervasive that many American citizens can't see it anymore, and thence vigorously deny that they are indoctrinated at all. We can see this working in the Occupy movements, the false narratives about US foreign policy aims, the complete misunderstanding of the history (the Republicans were founded to end slavery and have always been about *equality* [no special treatment]; the Democrats were pro-slavery, and fought emancipation).
Yes, this is a bold claim. Before you rant that I'm some paid agent of some American conservative (I'm not, if I could get paid for telling the truth I would) please watch this two hour video about the history of Cultural Marxism. Once you are aware of it, you will see the transparent bars of the Matrix that many Americans (particularly those on the political Left/Democrats that haven't cross-checked the facts about their memes) now live in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIdBuK7_g3M
ps. as a non-US foreigner I liked your post. Very insightful!
Opps, missed a "not in there". Last paragraph, please substitute "All very very determined NOT to acknowledge..." instead of "All very very determined to acknowledge...". Apologies for that.
It is to stop being pussies and admit to what caused these terrorists to do what they did, jihad (a central and *mainstream* doctrine of Islam). The US will lose if it is continually on defence, to continually be in lockdown every time a jihadist goes on a rampage. The economic losses would be too great.
The solution is to neuter political Islam in the US. Investigate every mosque. If you preach violence (which 80% of them do, according to a 2011 study) then you get shut down or the imam is replaced. If a politician promotes evil they can be impeached. If an imam preaches evil (as in, the hate speech that comprises around 17% of the material the Qur'an, hadiths and sira) then they should be punished under existing hate speech laws. It is that simple. No persecution of Muslims required, no mass deportation, no violence of any kind.
What does need to happen is that the political Left needs to learn about Islam and wake up to the Truths about it (and stop making excuses for jihadis). At the moment the Left endless repeats the lies that the jihad is the result of minority marginalisation, or poverty, or poor education, of US or Israeli foreign policy, or oil, or... These are all completely false and do not match the historical facts. Jihadis have been carrying out their operations for 1400 years because the Qur'an tells them to. That is the reason they say they do it, why is it so hard for the political Left to accept them at their word? (easy, because it doesn't mesh with the Leftist narrative, and because it doesn't mesh with that narrative the Left can't use that narrative as a club to beat the Right with - as in, it is more politically comfortable for the Left to cling to their counter-factual narrative at all costs than admit that the political Right are correct about the motivations of Islamic terrorism).
Dudes, no need to scratch your heads for hours looking for the motivation of these jihadis. Spend 30 seconds reading and thinking about this verse of the Qur'an,
Sura 9:29:
"Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture - [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled."
Now grab some popcorn and watch the verbal gymnastics of the Obama Administration and all politicians, as well as most mainstream media as they try and guess motivations. All very very determined to acknowledge the truth that is staring them in the face (and has been ever since 9/11). Jihadis do what they do because the Qur'an tells them to. That means any devout Muslim can self-radicalise and do the same thing because the political ideology of Islam commands it. It is time for all Free People to work to shut down political Islam and turn it back into a mere nonsense personal faith/superstition. Once Iran gets nukes we won't have the luxury of letting the Left remain in their delusions. As soon as they get a chance places like "Ground Zero" in New York could well take on its real meaning. A city-wide lockdown will not protect a city once the jihadis get themselves a backpack nuke (once Iran gets the technology there is no telling what will happen).
Since when do people need the government to tell them whether it's safe to go outside or not?
When there are armed jihadis out on the streets that the Government is giving its assessment that they are still armed and dangerous? the police forces still let people move about, but it hindered their manhunt and was a danger to the civilians moving (which could be deliberately shot by the jihadis or accidentally shot by the police). The advisory lockdown suited everyone - but it wasn't "arrest anyone moving on sight" by the police as your sentiment would make out.
Since when did anti-Government paranoia (a little of which is healthy) completely override common sense and the ability to see the benefit of the Government's advisory for citizens? oh wait, this is Slashdot..
Staying with one language as a strategic decision makes your skills as a programmer erode.
Not at all. I don't know whether you have done much university mathematics but what you are arguing for is equivalent to learning more pure maths. This can be handy. However, what I'm suggesting is once you have a good grasp on the pure maths you need it can be a good thing to then learn the applied maths that is actually useful in practice. In coding terms, rather than learning toy languages I instead spend my term learning application and solution domains and find the language I use is broad enough that it doesn't need to change. Rather spending a couple of years learning say, Django, Dart and Clojure I instead learned and coded with GL/GLSL shaders, IEEE 1278.1 DIS, applied aerodynamics, I18n/L10n, writing internationalized global software with regard to which timezones and dates to store data in (there are more subtleties than you would think), hardware device input and control on Linux/Mac/Windows, head tracking etc etc etc.
So, learning new languages is useful. However, it is dangerous to fall into 'snobbery' where you equate more languages with being a better programmer. I posit that once you have mastered a couple of languages, and have selected a portable general purpose language then time is better spent learning the 'applied' part of development - different problem domains and libraries. If all you are doing is database to UI and back then one might not ever see how this is significant, so I can understand your point of view to some degree. I hope you can begin to see mine - that being able to solve lots of problem domains is at least as good as solving the same problem multiple ways.
Actually I know many programming languages (I've been at it for two decades). If you want to work on *huge* projects you need to think strategically. While I do have lots of little projects, and do lots of large projects for work, I do have a very large project that will take another two years to complete (and has already taken two years to get to this stage). Yes, it is good to experiment with many languages - that's the only way you understand them. However, I would like to bring up the old chestnut, "You can write bad FORTRAN in any language". By this I mean that when you are doing C# you ought to be writing in the mainstream style of C#. Similarly writing in a C style in Java is a mistake. etc. I hope you get my point. Knowing lots of languages and techniques is good, but trying to shoehorn a style into a language with a different convention sucks for people maintaining it (and writing good software is all about writing for the maintainers who have to look after and extend your masterpieces).
As I said, Java is not the perfect language. Its strength is its ubiquity (especially of its libraries and the high portability of many third party libraries). My main point is I would never trade the portability of Java for the any of the nice little features of C#. I think that is a strategic mistake (particularly once you start thinking in terms of software developed on multi-year scales, which is nearly all large software for commercial sale).
I am merely a bad to average developer,
Lol. I like the humility, mate:) Actually, I don't believe I'm a terrible software developer, I just have concerns greater than mere technology (as in, strategic business ones - like locking yourself into Windows-only development being madness these days) that give Java quite an edge over other platforms. I recommend Java mainly for those reasons (and, I would suggest, you might too if you start considering factors more than mere language constructs).
Slashdot Mirror
You are talking to a scientist about the meaning of science? the delusion is strong in you, padawan.
I too partially suck at estimates. Aside from the "unknown unknowns" which you can budget for but never predict I have found several rules of thumb have got my estimates from "fairyland guesses" to "accurate with withing a factor of 2". These are:
Thanks to all the other posters for their lists and suggestions. Time estimates are much much harder than development.
Ah, the anti-scientific closed mind. ps. I never advocated hurting a hair on anyone's head. It is you that is apologizing for the genocidal Islamists. But I guess you never checked by references nor really read by posts. No wonder your statements show you don't take into account the evidence in the world nor of the statements I wrote. Which is puerile.
Did you even notice the plot in the last few days in Canada to commit mass murder on a train by *Islamic* students? probably not. You have just stated you filter all out information that might challenge your (incorrect) worldview. That is why you are anti-scientific. As a former astrophysicist I'm trained to not dismiss things out of hand - I always go looking for counter evidence of my current position and weigh it on its merits. After all, "The most beautiful theory can be slain by a single ugly fact". Get scientific, dude. If you do then you'll start actually reading other people's posts properly, not inventing slanders against them, and you will learn things you didn't know.
False. Perhaps you should see this video, it describes you very well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwK7VRkbGiU
I barely care even though you're insulting me so much.
Apologies for being so harsh. Didn't mean to offend. Just meant to make a point (defending Islam is exactly akin to defending National Socialism - apart from different mythologies they have similar aims and methods in many ways).
I suggest you visit this site regularly to understand what is really going on:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/
Nobody cares? ask the people in Boston and the US. This was a big wakeup call for them - and they are searching for information like never before.
I think you need to get your spectacles adjusted. I called for no violence, nor intimidation, nor expulsion. Read my first post again - it calls for strengthening of existing laws and making explicit jurisdiction of laws. It is you who is backing the Islamists who openly and daily call for genocide (ever read the Hamas Charter? it is evil; ever listened to Ahmadinejad's speeches? they are evil). You are projecting your sordid genocidal agenda on to me (a common tactic by trolls and leftists). Fortunately the readers following this thread can see my cross-referenced posting vs your fact-free strawmen.
Ok, I'll help you out since you seem to have a broken moral compass. You make that claim that "because several hundred million Muslims don't go around blowing things up it means that Islam must be ok" which is *exactly* analogous to saying "because most Nationalist Socialist German Worker's Party members didn't kill anyone then it means that the ideology of Nationalist Socialism must be ok".
Can you spot the deep flaw in your argument yet?
Can you see why people with functioning moral compasses might think that by tolerating the hideously intolerant you are being a deliberate apologist for evil?
The number of Muslims in the World is between 1.2 and 1.5 billion. Of that number only around 5% are prepared to engage in direct jihadi activity, many of the rest support the jihad financially. Depending on the survey and the region around 40% of youths in Pakistan and 37% of British Muslim youths would like to live under Sharia:
reference http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/jan/29/thinktanks.religion
That's an *awful lot of people* who would like a legal system that gives you the choice of converting to Islam, being discriminated against as a second-class dhimmi or being killed. Those are the facts.
Meanwhile there are several hundred million who don't go around blowing things up. I think they count as typical a bit more than the handful who do, but that is what is known as seeing things in perspective and you appear to be having a great deal of trouble with that.
Ok, you have a comprehension problem so I'll say it again for you. The problem is not Muslims (who are *people*, who may be good or evil as all people can be). The problem is the political ideology called Islam. It is Islam that can take an otherwise moral person and convince them that supporting or doing evil is a good idea (eg. all those hundreds of millions that agree with the racist, discriminatory, misogynistic, homophobic, anti-scientific, and generally oppressive draconian set of laws called Sharia).
Do you get it now????
That's right, don't debate on facts - merely fixate on the person saying them. That way you never have to confront reality.
Protip: if you find yourself talking about "pussies" your plan is probably more testosterone than logic. Great for exercise programs, terrible for strategy.
Thanks, but I might ignore this tip. One could classify US Administrations into categories such as "Tiger" (eg. Reagan), "Paper Tiger" (eg. Carter) and "Pussy" (eg. Obama). I choose to use the word "pussy" because advocates of appeasement in denial of the evidence are really described by words such as "cowardly" and "craven". Pussy is a good modern substitute for this. Why do I feel I can say this? well, given Obama pulled out the rug from Mubarak and made it clear his support was for the tyrannical Muslim Brotherhood and their Salafi allies instead of a mere garden variety tyrant who ensured stability (and relative peace with neighbours); when the Green Revolution of 2009 happened in Iran and those protesting for freedom called "Obama, with us or against us?" the pussy-in-chief said nothing to support them, when a few words and perhaps covert support would have emboldened the protesters greatly and they could have overthrown the evil theocracy; instead the Free World now has the choice between allowing the tyrant Assad and his cronies to stay (backed by Iran) or arm Al Nusra (a branch of Al Qaeda) [which have now obtained heavy weapons originally supplied by the US]. Then we have the selling out of Poland and Czech with the European missile defence umbrella canned - Obama was on camera saying he'd sell out to Putin (via Medvedev) if they kept quiet so he could get re-elected. Who other than a pussy sells out allies for their political gain? So, you confuse my usage of the word as the result of hypermacho meat-head-ism. This is not true. I use it because I am disgusted by the contempt for the promotion of liberty by the immoral cowards in the current Administration!
I can't comment on an accuracy of an unnamed study, but you do realize that you're basically accusing the entire law enforcement system of massive corruption here? After all, you're saying that 80% of mosques break laws yet the law enforcement ignores it. And not only that, but they're taking a risk of massive backlash in the wake of terrorist incident such as this should this fact become public. Does that sound believable to you? Because it doesn't sound that way to me.
The problem is not law enforcement. The problem is that it has been deemed politically incorrect to associate terrorism with Islam by the Obama Administration. The Administration ordered a review and gutted all DoD, FBI, CIA, DHS documents in an astounding *six weeks* of all references to jihad, terrorism, etc (they did this by listening to CAIR, an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism funding trial, and a front group for Hamas). That is why Major Hussein's rampage at Foot Hood as he killed 13 fellow servicemen while screaming "Allahu Akhbar!" was deemed politically correct "workplace violence" rather than the jihad it was (after all, his business card did say, "Soldier of Allah"). Furthermore, General Casey when talking about this was more worried about any loss of religious diversity in the Army than the servicemen killed. The US has been so infiltrated by Cultural Marxism that political correctness now trumps the Truth (note: you cannot be for Free Speech and tolerate political correctness; they are diametrically opposed; Free Speech is Chaotic Good while Political Correctness is Lawful Evil :) ). Did your information sources not tell you about this fact - that the commissars of the Obama Administration are neutering the ability of agencies to defend you, and also working at neutering the ability of the citizens do defend themselves (callously exploiting the deaths of children by a crazed individual to attack the Constitutional 2nd Amendment Right to defend against tyranny).
No, just giving up freedoms of religion and speech. No big deal, that, no sir.
That's a strawman a
The science comes because of deciding what is real or not based on evidence. It is clear you are denying the evidence of the Boston bombers that has emerged. To claim that Islam wasn't their motivation despite their uncle and relatives saying Timurlan had gotten obsessed with Islam is to deny the evidence that is staring you in the face. That is what is anti-scientific about your posture.
A Muslim shopowner down the street is as unlikely to share the views of these criminals as you or I are likely to share the more extreme ideas of Charles Manson just because we are also Christians like Manson is.
I know what you are trying to say. I don't think you understand Islam in the slightest. There are "Cultural Muslims" who are "Muslims in name only". They nice fellows are great human beings but lousy Muslims. They are considered apostates by mainstream Islam and are liable to be killed once the Salafis etc finish dealing with the Jews, Christians, Apostates, Buddhists etc. Sometimes the devout Muslims don't wait and start bumping off the apostate Muslims early - which is why you have endless violence in Muslim countries (which is why I gave you that "thereligionofpeace" link with the index of daily killing - most of it Muslim on Muslim).
Now one interesting thing is that Muslims (people) may be moderate but Islam (the political ideology) never is [as famously stated recently by Erdogan, the Islamicist Prime Minister of Turkey]. The difference between Al Qaeda, The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the shopkeeper down the road is not in their intended end-goal state (political Islam dominating the world) but in how they get there (whether through violence, subterfuge or dawa proselytization). All devout Muslims believe that Sharia must dominate the globe, sooner or later.
Then we get back to your original statement. That the perpetrators of the Boston murders were "no more Islamic than I am". This is false from the statements that have been emerging. In fact, the reason they did it (and the reason for approx 90% of the World's terrorism) is *Islam*. Motivated by verses like the one I originally quoted 9:29.
I know you are guarding against kneejerk intolerance. That's a noble goal, but I believe you have gone so far into this as to deny the reality of what Islam is and what its goals are. I wish it was a "religion of peace" as the apologists claim, but the reality is it is a totalitarian, theocratic, misogynistic, homophobic, racist, supremacist, anti-individualist, anti-scientific *political* ideology. That means you are unfortunately trying to defend an evil political system. Please don't do this.
Look, it is clear you want to be anti-scientific. I won't try and debate with you. You have made up your mind and no amount of evidence will make you change your (incorrect) opinions. It is rare to meet someone online who is so resistant to reality though, who rejects facts so readily due to their prejudices.
Dude, you are determined to deny reality. Fine. I also get your point - but you also seem to be of the mindset that you will refuse to believe what the murderers say with their own mouths. I can't help you if you want to remain willfully delusional. Fortunately, most of the readers of Slashdot will see your apologetics are bogus in the case of the Boston jihadis.
Also not in there - that these guys are no more Islamic than you are.
Who are "they", the Boston murderers? If that's who you mean they you haven't been following the evidence on the older one. His uncle said he had become a lot more devout of late. Tsaraev went from praying once a day to five times a day. Not a crime, but shows how he has become radicalized as a jihadi (his entire mind was taken over by thoughts of Islam, and he was in contact with radical imams).
You only think I have a "kneejerk" reaction because you appear to live in a fact-free bubble. You probably still labour until the illusion that "Islam is a Religion of Peace" - which simply indicates you have zero understanding of Islamic doctrine. I would be happy to provide you with an avalance of material from Islamic sources if you like - it would cure you of any illusions as to the global intentions of political Islam. Here are some facts on exactly how peaceful Islam is around the globe:
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/index.html#Attacks
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
Your statement also indicates that in 13 years you have learned exactly *zero*. This is probably because you either dismiss facts you don't like (the anti-scientific way), or only watch left-leaning mainstream media (who selectively report and suppress inconvenient truths, like what Muslims say to each other behind closed doors). Here's an article showing how false the media reporting is, and why you are so very, very wrong in your statement that Tsaraev was "no more Islamic" than I am (which is utter bullshit):
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/what-really-going/2013/apr/20/liberal-media-take-chill-pill-boston-bombers-musli/
As long as you remain in denial of the the nature and goals of Islam you will always be a "useful idiot" that the Islamists rely on to further their agenda. You think you are being tolerant and doing good but in fact you are providing a defense of the intolerant and evil. Please stop doing that - stop defending evil by deflecting legitimate and factual criticism of jihad and known jihadis.
Dude, socialism is simply collectivism. Do a fact check on US Government debt. Where is all the money being spent? 0.8 trillion in defence? a drop in the bucket compared to the estimated *$80 TRILLION* the burgeoning government has in unfunded liabilities for entitlements (State sector pensions, benefits and social programmes). This is socialism. As Margaret Thatcher said, "Socialism is great until you run out of other people's money to spend". This is exactly what is happening to the US, meanwhile the political Left (currently in power) are trying to deflect your attention with talk about Defence Department spending when in fact it is the socialist social programmes that are bringing the economy down. Simply do a Google search for "US Government Unfunded Liabilities" and you will quickly find the Truth. The Socialism of the US is ruining its economy (just as socialism ruins the economies sooner or later of everywhere it touches). Of course, the mainstream media try papering over this in their reporting, but look at the *facts* of US debt. The United Socialist States of America is the reality, "Land of the Free" is the lie that is currently being sold to you (by both Democrats and Republicans - both are guilty of over spending on social programmes and increasing government to placate the insatiable demands of the voters).
What Java developer in this day and age doesn't do TDD or similar? I agree that more languages makes you better, however you still haven't addressed my point. On most large commercial projects only one language gets to be used. On most large commercial projects the team has a spectrum of skills and all must be productive. On most large commercial projects a developer who knows more libraries is usually more productive (features per unit time; that is, features per dollar) than someone who knows more languages. I'm not saying not to learn more languages, I'm saying on large commercial developments that more languages are a less significant factor than having a team that has a broader knowledge of libraries and application domains (eg. hardware integration; or internationalization; or knowing the internals of their database engine so that they correct optimize complex queries so that their [unavoidable] queries over seven billion rows work in reasonable time, etc). That's what I'm saying. The more time you have in the trenches, the less worried you are about learning the language du jour (which comes and go like virtual particle pairs). How much value will your F# and Acca knowledge be in ten years? Yet if you learned more application domains that is always valuable.
It is the result of the indoctrination of Cultural Marxism. While Marxism was defeated economically in the Cold War the Marxists of the Frankfurt School were clever enough to plant the seeds of Cultural Marxism in the universities, where it has grown ever since the 1960's. Pretty much university graduates in the States have been subjected to that narrative. That means politicians (low-fact guys at the best of times), university professors and decision makers of all stripes have their thoughts influenced by this narrative. This is the same narrative that guides Hollywood and now seeps into popular culture. It is so pervasive that many American citizens can't see it anymore, and thence vigorously deny that they are indoctrinated at all. We can see this working in the Occupy movements, the false narratives about US foreign policy aims, the complete misunderstanding of the history (the Republicans were founded to end slavery and have always been about *equality* [no special treatment]; the Democrats were pro-slavery, and fought emancipation).
Yes, this is a bold claim. Before you rant that I'm some paid agent of some American conservative (I'm not, if I could get paid for telling the truth I would) please watch this two hour video about the history of Cultural Marxism. Once you are aware of it, you will see the transparent bars of the Matrix that many Americans (particularly those on the political Left/Democrats that haven't cross-checked the facts about their memes) now live in:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIdBuK7_g3M
ps. as a non-US foreigner I liked your post. Very insightful!
Opps, missed a "not in there". Last paragraph, please substitute "All very very determined NOT to acknowledge ..." instead of "All very very determined to acknowledge ...". Apologies for that.
What is the solution then?
It is to stop being pussies and admit to what caused these terrorists to do what they did, jihad (a central and *mainstream* doctrine of Islam). The US will lose if it is continually on defence, to continually be in lockdown every time a jihadist goes on a rampage. The economic losses would be too great.
The solution is to neuter political Islam in the US. Investigate every mosque. If you preach violence (which 80% of them do, according to a 2011 study) then you get shut down or the imam is replaced. If a politician promotes evil they can be impeached. If an imam preaches evil (as in, the hate speech that comprises around 17% of the material the Qur'an, hadiths and sira) then they should be punished under existing hate speech laws. It is that simple. No persecution of Muslims required, no mass deportation, no violence of any kind.
What does need to happen is that the political Left needs to learn about Islam and wake up to the Truths about it (and stop making excuses for jihadis). At the moment the Left endless repeats the lies that the jihad is the result of minority marginalisation, or poverty, or poor education, of US or Israeli foreign policy, or oil, or ... These are all completely false and do not match the historical facts. Jihadis have been carrying out their operations for 1400 years because the Qur'an tells them to. That is the reason they say they do it, why is it so hard for the political Left to accept them at their word? (easy, because it doesn't mesh with the Leftist narrative, and because it doesn't mesh with that narrative the Left can't use that narrative as a club to beat the Right with - as in, it is more politically comfortable for the Left to cling to their counter-factual narrative at all costs than admit that the political Right are correct about the motivations of Islamic terrorism).
Dudes, no need to scratch your heads for hours looking for the motivation of these jihadis. Spend 30 seconds reading and thinking about this verse of the Qur'an, Sura 9:29:
"Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture - [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled."
Now grab some popcorn and watch the verbal gymnastics of the Obama Administration and all politicians, as well as most mainstream media as they try and guess motivations. All very very determined to acknowledge the truth that is staring them in the face (and has been ever since 9/11). Jihadis do what they do because the Qur'an tells them to. That means any devout Muslim can self-radicalise and do the same thing because the political ideology of Islam commands it. It is time for all Free People to work to shut down political Islam and turn it back into a mere nonsense personal faith/superstition. Once Iran gets nukes we won't have the luxury of letting the Left remain in their delusions. As soon as they get a chance places like "Ground Zero" in New York could well take on its real meaning. A city-wide lockdown will not protect a city once the jihadis get themselves a backpack nuke (once Iran gets the technology there is no telling what will happen).
Since when do people need the government to tell them whether it's safe to go outside or not?
When there are armed jihadis out on the streets that the Government is giving its assessment that they are still armed and dangerous? the police forces still let people move about, but it hindered their manhunt and was a danger to the civilians moving (which could be deliberately shot by the jihadis or accidentally shot by the police). The advisory lockdown suited everyone - but it wasn't "arrest anyone moving on sight" by the police as your sentiment would make out.
Since when did anti-Government paranoia (a little of which is healthy) completely override common sense and the ability to see the benefit of the Government's advisory for citizens? oh wait, this is Slashdot ..
Staying with one language as a strategic decision makes your skills as a programmer erode.
Not at all. I don't know whether you have done much university mathematics but what you are arguing for is equivalent to learning more pure maths. This can be handy. However, what I'm suggesting is once you have a good grasp on the pure maths you need it can be a good thing to then learn the applied maths that is actually useful in practice. In coding terms, rather than learning toy languages I instead spend my term learning application and solution domains and find the language I use is broad enough that it doesn't need to change. Rather spending a couple of years learning say, Django, Dart and Clojure I instead learned and coded with GL/GLSL shaders, IEEE 1278.1 DIS, applied aerodynamics, I18n/L10n, writing internationalized global software with regard to which timezones and dates to store data in (there are more subtleties than you would think), hardware device input and control on Linux/Mac/Windows, head tracking etc etc etc.
So, learning new languages is useful. However, it is dangerous to fall into 'snobbery' where you equate more languages with being a better programmer. I posit that once you have mastered a couple of languages, and have selected a portable general purpose language then time is better spent learning the 'applied' part of development - different problem domains and libraries. If all you are doing is database to UI and back then one might not ever see how this is significant, so I can understand your point of view to some degree. I hope you can begin to see mine - that being able to solve lots of problem domains is at least as good as solving the same problem multiple ways.
Actually I know many programming languages (I've been at it for two decades). If you want to work on *huge* projects you need to think strategically. While I do have lots of little projects, and do lots of large projects for work, I do have a very large project that will take another two years to complete (and has already taken two years to get to this stage). Yes, it is good to experiment with many languages - that's the only way you understand them. However, I would like to bring up the old chestnut, "You can write bad FORTRAN in any language". By this I mean that when you are doing C# you ought to be writing in the mainstream style of C#. Similarly writing in a C style in Java is a mistake. etc. I hope you get my point. Knowing lots of languages and techniques is good, but trying to shoehorn a style into a language with a different convention sucks for people maintaining it (and writing good software is all about writing for the maintainers who have to look after and extend your masterpieces).
As I said, Java is not the perfect language. Its strength is its ubiquity (especially of its libraries and the high portability of many third party libraries). My main point is I would never trade the portability of Java for the any of the nice little features of C#. I think that is a strategic mistake (particularly once you start thinking in terms of software developed on multi-year scales, which is nearly all large software for commercial sale).
I am merely a bad to average developer,
Lol. I like the humility, mate :) Actually, I don't believe I'm a terrible software developer, I just have concerns greater than mere technology (as in, strategic business ones - like locking yourself into Windows-only development being madness these days) that give Java quite an edge over other platforms. I recommend Java mainly for those reasons (and, I would suggest, you might too if you start considering factors more than mere language constructs).