Yes, I'm sure there is a very small number of people who share your opinion. I used to be one of them. My email, calendar, and web server were all hosted on my home systems. I had total control. But I realized that every time I had to reformat, move, change IPs, or whatever, I was in for a world of hurt. Especially if it came at a bad time for me socially. I moved everything over to Google Apps for My Domain, and I don't have to worry about a thing. My friends no longer get bounced emails if my power blinks while I'm on vacation.
So yes, this is progress even from the perspective of some highly technical home users.
Now that internet access is ubiquitous, fast, and reliable, the age of the thin client may really be upon us. Though thin clients have been touted in the past and failed, the state of the internet has never been ready to handle thin clients in the past. This has changed.
Home users and small business simply should not have to worry about maintaining firewalls, patches, backups, revision control, document sharing services, and all the other mess that comes with typical PC use. They have only done it so far because there was no other option. Now things are changing, and I welcome it. The only people who will lose out on this are the low-level tech support types and small business IT technicians. With today's unemployment rates, this isn't a huge problem.
Yes, I suppose I meant to say "scientific evidence." You are right that there certainly is non-scientific evidence to support many supernatural claims, from the existence of religious figures through alien abductions and spoon bending. In fact, there are many more witnesses to alien abduction than there are to Jesus's resurrection, and these witnesses can be interviewed directly, rather than through manuscripts which have been translated and transcribed by centuries of non-neutral parties.
However, a group which aims to (1) keep church and state separate, and (2) demand scientific evidence be the foundation of government policies (where it is available), does not necessarily EVER have to apply the lens of science to the question of the validity of religions, because that would be at odds with their #1 goal.
My understanding is that England and Ireland have booming economies, and you don't have to learn a new language, either:-)
Additionally, the US is way ahead of most countries in terms of IT. I'm sure there are a lot of places willing to pay Americans well to help them catch up.
It is certainly possible to be religious and support these organizations AS LONG AS you believe in separation of church and state.
Empiricism (the philosophy that knowledge must be derived from evidence) is fundamental to science, and is in opposition to dogmatism (the fundamental philosophy supporting religion). Nevertheless, it is not the government's job to decide if any of the thousands of gods worshiped in human history are real.
Also, outside of the religious realm, even religious Americans, especially those that are educated, tend to be empirically minded.
Therefore, as long as you support secular government and freedom of religion, the naturalism of evidence-based political organizations is primarily aligned with your own beliefs.
I doubt you will come up with a statistically significant body of evidence suggesting supernaturally-supported governmental policies are superior to evidence-supported governmental policies, because I suggest such evidence does not exist.
Join Scientists and Engineers for America. They are "a non-profit organization dedicated to renewing respect for evidence-based debate and decision-making in politics and at all levels of government."
If groups like that had the same sort of clout that religious groups have, America could remain the economic and philosophical leader of the world.
Of course, if we continue to elect politicians who make decisions based on theology instead of science, it may be time to start looking for jobs in western europe.
What happened to the FCC? This decision would actually benefit the country! The FCC is supposed to be spending all its budget on forcing Christian fundamentalist values on everyone! What went wrong?
The mutation which gives immunity to Plague also gives immunity to HIV. Europeans with roots in plague-ravaged populations have a pretty good chance of being immune to HIV. It has nothing to do with food.
First, you need to understand that physicians are NOT scientists. They MUST "do something" whether there is sufficient evidentiary support or not. Most of the time, their decisions are strongly influenced by the probability that any particular action they take could lead to a malpractice lawsuit. Nobody has ever been sued for recommending people avoid nicotine, whether that recommendation is true or not.
Second, this article does not recommend smoking at all. It's talking about the nicotine molecule. Talking about whether smoking is net-good or not is tangential to the subject.
A coworker of mine recently quit cold-turkey. He had the gum, but had no use for it so he gave it to me. I've never smoked, so I was curious. My research turned up no evidence that nicotine had health effects any worse than coffee, so I gave it a shot.
In my case, the effects of the drug were a serious caffeine-like buzz, followed by a day or so of nausea. This makes sense, considering that tobacco was once marketed as a weight loss product. I threw the rest of the gum out.
What do your friend's mental problems have to do with physics? I know it is late on Friday night, but I'm not nearly drunk enough to believe your anecdote has anything to do with some sort of tacky, sci-fi, interdimensional communication.
In fact, the ONLY lessons to be learned from your story are 1) Check your smoke detector batteries, dumbass! 2) Get a cat.
Hypothetical question: If you had been working in an area where the "magic" age is 16 or 14, and someone asked you to develop a pic of a 17-year-old, would your stomach still churn?
Wow... so many jobs with only a few years out of school! So do you think the plane a boat design industries pay so well because high turnaround can lead to sunken ships? Or have you found a diamond-in-the-rough company? None of my college buddies have broken $100k yet, even in expensive areas.
Many countries don't allow patents at all for business processes, math, and algorithms. Some countries don't enforce any IP law at all (the Asian buys copyright-protected DVDs and patent-protected software with complete disregard to the IP right holder). There are many differing ideas about IP for medicine.
Perhaps the USA's software patent minefield will eventually make starting a software company here SO risky, that no bright investor would chose to do so. The countries with NO software patents could dominate.
Did you see my original quote? Programming micros is not the source of the dinosaur comment. When you essentially said all high level languages are not "real software" is when you sounded like some bitter old graybeard counting months until retirement.
Also, web applications can be some of the most complex and sophisticated out there. The "web" part is just the UI. What is behind the UI, in many cases, could hardly be described as "web programming" (whatever you mean by that).
As for micros, the one I'm working on right now, in my other window, is a PIC 16F88. That's 8b, with 368B data memory (a few k program memory, though). I'm writing in assembly. It's no more or less "real software" than the Perl I wrote at work today. It doesn't have to do much, though. I'm just making an IR challenge/response secure hash based wireless cryptographic key. It's just PWM to IR LEDs and a little math, with a transistor/relay bit to control the solenoid that unlocks the door. I don't need OOP, that's for sure.
There is nothing "dinosaur" about programming micros, except that they aren't going to get any lower in price, so once full-fledged, system-on-a-chip PCs get down in the $10 range, the guys writing in high level languages are going to be able to DESTROY the people writing 8-bit assembly in terms of development time and functionality. Still, that's maybe a decade off, so take some of that money and buy a book on Ruby:-)
And no, the average young, high-level language programmer doesn't top $100k. But then, they don't have stock options and overtime (most people are salaried... do you have a govt. contract or something?).
Remember, your options haven't made you a dime until you use them! Diversify your portfolio!
And my current career is nice, but I would, without a doubt, switch careers for a $100k base salary. What did you do to get so much skill on micros at our age? My uni only had a couple courses on programming micros available to the computer science engineering students, so I'm just learning by playing around, reading datasheets, and browsing forums online...
The patent system is just some arbitrary way of encouraging innovation. The US system is obviously failing, as the costs of maintaining the system outweigh the benefits it imparts on our society.
Other countries have different ways of encouraging innovation, and in the long term, their economies may dwarf ours due to our failing system.
All property rights, be they Intellectual or Physical property, exist to encourage investment. No one "naturally" owns anything, though many people have been brainwashed into thinking that is the case.
I don't know which way is best. It seems the Stalinist system doesn't work well, and the US system has some SERIOUS problems which require periodic correction (trust-busting and such).
My advice: Watch the world economies, and don't be afraid to immigrate if you see one system collapsing and another rising. Of course, you should avoid contributing to economies in countries which deny fundamental human rights (China, Iran, etc.) but don't let nationalism blind you to economic realities.
If you think the way the language is executed (interpreter, machine code, virtual machine, whatever) is what makes "good software" then you are sadly ignorant of the current state of the software industry, regardless of your age. I'm guessing you are an EE, not a CSE or CIS major.
I have written real software in MANY languages, from SPARC assembly to C# to Java to Ruby to C. I can tell you, without a doubt, that the execution environment doesn't make a bit of difference as to the "realness" of software. By your definition, Python is not "real," right? Did you know that it is possible to compile Python code to binary (with a full interpreter included as a library)?
The highest level OOP languages are the best for modeling business processes (==making money), and most of them are primarily "scripting" languages.
In fact, no modern PC apps REALLY run as a binaries. Intel processors are actually like interpreters which translate their CISC binary code into RISC that runs on the iron.
The latest app I was paid to write was your typical AJAX web app, which used Ruby, SQL, Javascript, and HTML/CSS. It is real software that gets real work done for my company. It is not compiled because, as an engineer, I use the right tool for the job and the app has a low load, so script form was optimal.
I also code for microcontrollers as a hobby (Microchip PIC) in MPASM assembly. I'm doing simple little robot tricks and hope to eventually come up with a better security system that what is out there... but my point is that for ME, writing embedded assembly for microcontrollers is my toy language for my hobby. I am not arrogant enough to assume that all embedded programming is not "real" though...
And I'm curious. Just what does an embedded developer make these days? Give me a ballpark number and I'll tell you if the market considers embedded stuff more real than ultra-high-level web software... I'm 26, too, so we're level in the experience department.
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Yes, I'm sure there is a very small number of people who share your opinion. I used to be one of them. My email, calendar, and web server were all hosted on my home systems. I had total control. But I realized that every time I had to reformat, move, change IPs, or whatever, I was in for a world of hurt. Especially if it came at a bad time for me socially. I moved everything over to Google Apps for My Domain, and I don't have to worry about a thing. My friends no longer get bounced emails if my power blinks while I'm on vacation.
So yes, this is progress even from the perspective of some highly technical home users.
Now that internet access is ubiquitous, fast, and reliable, the age of the thin client may really be upon us. Though thin clients have been touted in the past and failed, the state of the internet has never been ready to handle thin clients in the past. This has changed.
Home users and small business simply should not have to worry about maintaining firewalls, patches, backups, revision control, document sharing services, and all the other mess that comes with typical PC use. They have only done it so far because there was no other option. Now things are changing, and I welcome it. The only people who will lose out on this are the low-level tech support types and small business IT technicians. With today's unemployment rates, this isn't a huge problem.
Yay, progress!
Yes, I suppose I meant to say "scientific evidence." You are right that there certainly is non-scientific evidence to support many supernatural claims, from the existence of religious figures through alien abductions and spoon bending. In fact, there are many more witnesses to alien abduction than there are to Jesus's resurrection, and these witnesses can be interviewed directly, rather than through manuscripts which have been translated and transcribed by centuries of non-neutral parties.
However, a group which aims to (1) keep church and state separate, and (2) demand scientific evidence be the foundation of government policies (where it is available), does not necessarily EVER have to apply the lens of science to the question of the validity of religions, because that would be at odds with their #1 goal.
My understanding is that England and Ireland have booming economies, and you don't have to learn a new language, either :-)
Additionally, the US is way ahead of most countries in terms of IT. I'm sure there are a lot of places willing to pay Americans well to help them catch up.
It is certainly possible to be religious and support these organizations AS LONG AS you believe in separation of church and state.
Empiricism (the philosophy that knowledge must be derived from evidence) is fundamental to science, and is in opposition to dogmatism (the fundamental philosophy supporting religion). Nevertheless, it is not the government's job to decide if any of the thousands of gods worshiped in human history are real.
Also, outside of the religious realm, even religious Americans, especially those that are educated, tend to be empirically minded.
Therefore, as long as you support secular government and freedom of religion, the naturalism of evidence-based political organizations is primarily aligned with your own beliefs.
I doubt you will come up with a statistically significant body of evidence suggesting supernaturally-supported governmental policies are superior to evidence-supported governmental policies, because I suggest such evidence does not exist.
If you want to be pedantic, they make decisions motivated by profit and justified by religion.
Join Scientists and Engineers for America. They are "a non-profit organization dedicated to renewing respect for evidence-based debate and decision-making in politics and at all levels of government."
If groups like that had the same sort of clout that religious groups have, America could remain the economic and philosophical leader of the world.
Of course, if we continue to elect politicians who make decisions based on theology instead of science, it may be time to start looking for jobs in western europe.
You said engineers do not exist in the real world, and you take yourself seriously? Pft.
It is viral marketing (a favorite on digg for a while), but it is for blenders that START at $400. Who spends $400 for the ability to make margaritas?
What happened to the FCC? This decision would actually benefit the country! The FCC is supposed to be spending all its budget on forcing Christian fundamentalist values on everyone! What went wrong?
The mutation which gives immunity to Plague also gives immunity to HIV. Europeans with roots in plague-ravaged populations have a pretty good chance of being immune to HIV. It has nothing to do with food.
First, you need to understand that physicians are NOT scientists. They MUST "do something" whether there is sufficient evidentiary support or not. Most of the time, their decisions are strongly influenced by the probability that any particular action they take could lead to a malpractice lawsuit. Nobody has ever been sued for recommending people avoid nicotine, whether that recommendation is true or not.
Second, this article does not recommend smoking at all. It's talking about the nicotine molecule. Talking about whether smoking is net-good or not is tangential to the subject.
A coworker of mine recently quit cold-turkey. He had the gum, but had no use for it so he gave it to me. I've never smoked, so I was curious. My research turned up no evidence that nicotine had health effects any worse than coffee, so I gave it a shot.
In my case, the effects of the drug were a serious caffeine-like buzz, followed by a day or so of nausea. This makes sense, considering that tobacco was once marketed as a weight loss product. I threw the rest of the gum out.
I can't say how well this will advance "AI," but it would certainly have fantastic implications for the computer translation world!
You have some evidence, I assume, to back up your claim that nicotine gum makes people more susceptible to stroke and heart attacks? ...
Wow... what you just wrote makes no sense if it is being read while sober.
What do your friend's mental problems have to do with physics? I know it is late on Friday night, but I'm not nearly drunk enough to believe your anecdote has anything to do with some sort of tacky, sci-fi, interdimensional communication.
In fact, the ONLY lessons to be learned from your story are
1) Check your smoke detector batteries, dumbass!
2) Get a cat.
Hypothetical question: If you had been working in an area where the "magic" age is 16 or 14, and someone asked you to develop a pic of a 17-year-old, would your stomach still churn?
Wow... so many jobs with only a few years out of school! So do you think the plane a boat design industries pay so well because high turnaround can lead to sunken ships? Or have you found a diamond-in-the-rough company? None of my college buddies have broken $100k yet, even in expensive areas.
Many countries don't allow patents at all for business processes, math, and algorithms. Some countries don't enforce any IP law at all (the Asian buys copyright-protected DVDs and patent-protected software with complete disregard to the IP right holder). There are many differing ideas about IP for medicine.
Perhaps the USA's software patent minefield will eventually make starting a software company here SO risky, that no bright investor would chose to do so. The countries with NO software patents could dominate.
Did you see my original quote? Programming micros is not the source of the dinosaur comment. When you essentially said all high level languages are not "real software" is when you sounded like some bitter old graybeard counting months until retirement.
:-)
Also, web applications can be some of the most complex and sophisticated out there. The "web" part is just the UI. What is behind the UI, in many cases, could hardly be described as "web programming" (whatever you mean by that).
As for micros, the one I'm working on right now, in my other window, is a PIC 16F88. That's 8b, with 368B data memory (a few k program memory, though). I'm writing in assembly. It's no more or less "real software" than the Perl I wrote at work today. It doesn't have to do much, though. I'm just making an IR challenge/response secure hash based wireless cryptographic key. It's just PWM to IR LEDs and a little math, with a transistor/relay bit to control the solenoid that unlocks the door. I don't need OOP, that's for sure.
There is nothing "dinosaur" about programming micros, except that they aren't going to get any lower in price, so once full-fledged, system-on-a-chip PCs get down in the $10 range, the guys writing in high level languages are going to be able to DESTROY the people writing 8-bit assembly in terms of development time and functionality. Still, that's maybe a decade off, so take some of that money and buy a book on Ruby
And no, the average young, high-level language programmer doesn't top $100k. But then, they don't have stock options and overtime (most people are salaried... do you have a govt. contract or something?).
Remember, your options haven't made you a dime until you use them! Diversify your portfolio!
And my current career is nice, but I would, without a doubt, switch careers for a $100k base salary. What did you do to get so much skill on micros at our age? My uni only had a couple courses on programming micros available to the computer science engineering students, so I'm just learning by playing around, reading datasheets, and browsing forums online...
The patent system is just some arbitrary way of encouraging innovation. The US system is obviously failing, as the costs of maintaining the system outweigh the benefits it imparts on our society.
Other countries have different ways of encouraging innovation, and in the long term, their economies may dwarf ours due to our failing system.
All property rights, be they Intellectual or Physical property, exist to encourage investment. No one "naturally" owns anything, though many people have been brainwashed into thinking that is the case.
I don't know which way is best. It seems the Stalinist system doesn't work well, and the US system has some SERIOUS problems which require periodic correction (trust-busting and such).
My advice: Watch the world economies, and don't be afraid to immigrate if you see one system collapsing and another rising. Of course, you should avoid contributing to economies in countries which deny fundamental human rights (China, Iran, etc.) but don't let nationalism blind you to economic realities.
If you think the way the language is executed (interpreter, machine code, virtual machine, whatever) is what makes "good software" then you are sadly ignorant of the current state of the software industry, regardless of your age. I'm guessing you are an EE, not a CSE or CIS major.
I have written real software in MANY languages, from SPARC assembly to C# to Java to Ruby to C. I can tell you, without a doubt, that the execution environment doesn't make a bit of difference as to the "realness" of software. By your definition, Python is not "real," right? Did you know that it is possible to compile Python code to binary (with a full interpreter included as a library)?
The highest level OOP languages are the best for modeling business processes (==making money), and most of them are primarily "scripting" languages.
In fact, no modern PC apps REALLY run as a binaries. Intel processors are actually like interpreters which translate their CISC binary code into RISC that runs on the iron.
The latest app I was paid to write was your typical AJAX web app, which used Ruby, SQL, Javascript, and HTML/CSS. It is real software that gets real work done for my company. It is not compiled because, as an engineer, I use the right tool for the job and the app has a low load, so script form was optimal.
I also code for microcontrollers as a hobby (Microchip PIC) in MPASM assembly. I'm doing simple little robot tricks and hope to eventually come up with a better security system that what is out there... but my point is that for ME, writing embedded assembly for microcontrollers is my toy language for my hobby. I am not arrogant enough to assume that all embedded programming is not "real" though...
And I'm curious. Just what does an embedded developer make these days? Give me a ballpark number and I'll tell you if the market considers embedded stuff more real than ultra-high-level web software... I'm 26, too, so we're level in the experience department.