But first a complaint, "Slashdot threads get too big too fast." Some of us are supposedly working I have no idea if some low moderated post mentioned these or not yet...
Anyway because I'm waiting for a meeting I'll give some advice. I too advise reading books other than SF. I almost read no SF/Fantasy now because there are so many better books out there then another hack formulaic SF/Fantasy novel.
That said my dad read a pile of SF and I kept some his books from their garage sale destiny and am reading some James Blish right now. He's an old dead Science Fiction writer.
I would recommend Burgess, "A Clockwork Orange" as a more literary Scifi. Or perhaps "The Wanting Seed" which I was given for Christmas but have yet to read.
I would also recommend a trifecta of "1984", "Brave New World", and "A Clockwork Orange". I personally think "Brave New World" is better then "1984" but how can you not read both?
I also recommend to everyone to read Malcolm Lowery's "Under the Volcano".
My friend Owen I were just discussing our mutual admiration for Joseph Hellers' "Catch 22". That book is brilliant, funny, insightful.
There are a lot of books out there if you look past the 400 copies of Steve King, Daniel Steel, Micheal Crighton, etc. etc. etc.
I never read every post, but I use MailSmith (http://www.barebones.com/products/mailsmith.html) and report my spam to Spam Cop (http://spamcop.net)
Of course this is Spam I downloaded first... SpamAssassin is also pretty keen and I want to make greater use of it.
Surely SpamCop or SpamAssassin already has a pretty good database of Spam. I know I send in a pile mostly from my university account which though largely retired was in use on the UseNet, Web etc. since 94/95.
I'd never even heard of ActiveState until last night when I went out drinking with "some guy" from there.:-) Now I show up on site where I'm contracting with too little sleep from closing down some bar last night and what should to my blurry eyes appear but the most recent story on Slashdot on said company.
This ironic like an Alanis song not like a Shakespearean Sonet or even a Spencerean Sonet.
One day I'll learn to spell but not two day.:-)
Muskie
I read the article, and I'm familiar with the concept of how Google determins its rankings. It and www.directhit.com used fundementally different tactics then had previously been employed by the likes of Altavista, WebCrawler, and what have you.
Google as I understand it uses a formula where a pages value is determined by the value of the pages linked to it. The pages linking to it's value is determined by the value of the pages that link to it tranferse X links in all directions. So for medical sites, not my forte, but any specialized subject will do, a repository of specialized knowledge which is linked to a lot of other repositories of specialized knowledge will have a high score on Google. Presumeably because each of the repositories will have had many people linking to them. Where as a lot of geocities homepages with a link to Yahoo.com will not have a high score as the individual geocities pages though great in number will not have a high scores themselves as they are not well linked to. Google does also take into account the usual stuff: meta tags, placement of keywords in the title, the body, how close together multiple keywords are etc. etc. All this goes into a "secret formula" which determines the pages ranking on a particular search.
Combined with this secret formula which could well have been modified based on their recent agreement with Yahoo as suggested by this article, Google also has excellent spider technology.
Now DirectHit relies on people in addition to the usual meta tags, number of occurences of the word, giving greater weight to having the word appear in the title, proximity of mulitple keywords to each other etc, in DirectHit the page that ranks the highest is the one the most people who've performed an identical search to you chose to click on. And example works best:
If you perform a query on direct hit for I don't know "news for nerds" you get the benefit of everyone else who has ever performed a search on "news for nerds" if they all chose www.slashdot.org and due to the placement and occurences of "news for nerds" prominantly on the site itself slashdot could well be returned first for this querry.
back to work...
Muskie
One of the mysteries of/. I guess. I agree that HTML by itself isn't programming and replied mainly as my unofficial definition of a programing language is has variables and looping mechanisms.
However just to play Devil's advocate when you consider the web is moving away from static pages to something more like Slashdot web design becomes more like programming. The addition of Javascript, Java applets, backside scripting CGI and others... Also the whole idea of a easy to use interface is a major area of software engineering. Webdesign is all about presenting information in a easy to understand, appealling, and efficient method.
Well back to regular scheduled Microsoft bashing...
For the record the school I am attending UVIC recently added a Software Engineering degree option. You could even take all the courses offered the first year with no prerequisites.
Out CSC department is aligned with the Engineering department and is part of the faculty of Engineering for what that is worth. It was originally part of the Arts and Sciences Faculty, that Faculty has been broken up a lot too now.
Well I knew it was phoney but I thought it was well done. The part that really let them down was concering Warhammer 40,000. It isn't a role playing game. You just can't expect credibility in certain circles if you make glaring research mistakes like that.
Everyone knows it is a miniature based wargame right?
Don't you find it odd that Americans are so preoccuppied with trials? Amittedly I'm not an expert on this issue, but the facts support that he broke into other people's systems, and that he's been held without trial for an excessively long time. That is it lets wait for the (supposedly fair as this is America afterall...) trial, on to something more interesting.
However Americans love trials. The Mitnick trial, the MS vs DOJ trial, the Zippergate hearings, the killer nanny, and of course OJ. It isn't even real trials, witness the rise of John Grisham. Not to mention all the films Grisham related or not that revolve around trials. What about all the TV shows that revolve around lawyers: Ally McBeal, LA Law, the Practice, even something like Night Court. It is an easily observable obsession.
I mean do you really think Grisham will still be read in 50 or 100 years? Is he the next James Joyce? Does the world need another movie about a trial or a book for that matter? Does the media have to besiege the streets around courthouses, and have hourly updates for every trial that comes along?
You would think so according to the American Media, it even spills over into other countries but not with such single mindedness. Mitnick himself would prefer a lot less media coverage, he blames the media not the goverment for his plight. Maybe if people stopped being so engrossed by trials in general, didn't buy 500,000 copies of the next Grisham novel, didn't go see a movie like Takedown, did something more productive with their time, Mitnick would have had a trial by now, recieved a verdict and gotten on with the rest of his life?
Just what I came up with upon reading the article. For the record I'm Canadian and I would be on the Big Endian side of the Jihad.
At the school where I go to, Math 100 and 101 which is Calc I and II generally 70% of the students fail or drop out. This happens most years even grading on a curve.
The 6 left out of 30 is a 20% survival rate which is a bit lower, but I'm talking about every Math 100 class as they right a common final so this effects 100's of people every year. I know people in CS who took this course three times before they got through.
These courses are weeder courses as is CSC 225 at my school. Math 100 is also something of a cash cow too.
Of course people know what there getting into with these classes. So how relevant this is well I'll have to see the "Score"
Slashdot Mirror
But first a complaint, "Slashdot threads get too big too fast." Some of us are supposedly working I have no idea if some low moderated post mentioned these or not yet...
Anyway because I'm waiting for a meeting I'll give some advice. I too advise reading books other than SF. I almost read no SF/Fantasy now because there are so many better books out there then another hack formulaic SF/Fantasy novel.
That said my dad read a pile of SF and I kept some his books from their garage sale destiny and am reading some James Blish right now. He's an old dead Science Fiction writer.
I would recommend Burgess, "A Clockwork Orange" as a more literary Scifi. Or perhaps "The Wanting Seed" which I was given for Christmas but have yet to read.
I would also recommend a trifecta of "1984", "Brave New World", and "A Clockwork Orange". I personally think "Brave New World" is better then "1984" but how can you not read both?
I also recommend to everyone to read Malcolm Lowery's "Under the Volcano".
My friend Owen I were just discussing our mutual admiration for Joseph Hellers' "Catch 22". That book is brilliant, funny, insightful.
There are a lot of books out there if you look past the 400 copies of Steve King, Daniel Steel, Micheal Crighton, etc. etc. etc.
Back to work...
Muskie
I never read every post, but I use MailSmith (http://www.barebones.com/products/mailsmith.html) and report my spam to Spam Cop (http://spamcop.net)
Of course this is Spam I downloaded first... SpamAssassin is also pretty keen and I want to make greater use of it.
Surely SpamCop or SpamAssassin already has a pretty good database of Spam. I know I send in a pile mostly from my university account which though largely retired was in use on the UseNet, Web etc. since 94/95.
Muskie
I'd never even heard of ActiveState until last night when I went out drinking with "some guy" from there. :-) Now I show up on site where I'm contracting with too little sleep from closing down some bar last night and what should to my blurry eyes appear but the most recent story on Slashdot on said company.
This ironic like an Alanis song not like a Shakespearean Sonet or even a Spencerean Sonet.
One day I'll learn to spell but not two day. :-)
Muskie
I read the article, and I'm familiar with the concept of how Google determins its rankings. It and www.directhit.com used fundementally different tactics then had previously been employed by the likes of Altavista, WebCrawler, and what have you. Google as I understand it uses a formula where a pages value is determined by the value of the pages linked to it. The pages linking to it's value is determined by the value of the pages that link to it tranferse X links in all directions. So for medical sites, not my forte, but any specialized subject will do, a repository of specialized knowledge which is linked to a lot of other repositories of specialized knowledge will have a high score on Google. Presumeably because each of the repositories will have had many people linking to them. Where as a lot of geocities homepages with a link to Yahoo.com will not have a high score as the individual geocities pages though great in number will not have a high scores themselves as they are not well linked to. Google does also take into account the usual stuff: meta tags, placement of keywords in the title, the body, how close together multiple keywords are etc. etc. All this goes into a "secret formula" which determines the pages ranking on a particular search. Combined with this secret formula which could well have been modified based on their recent agreement with Yahoo as suggested by this article, Google also has excellent spider technology. Now DirectHit relies on people in addition to the usual meta tags, number of occurences of the word, giving greater weight to having the word appear in the title, proximity of mulitple keywords to each other etc, in DirectHit the page that ranks the highest is the one the most people who've performed an identical search to you chose to click on. And example works best: If you perform a query on direct hit for I don't know "news for nerds" you get the benefit of everyone else who has ever performed a search on "news for nerds" if they all chose www.slashdot.org and due to the placement and occurences of "news for nerds" prominantly on the site itself slashdot could well be returned first for this querry. back to work... Muskie
One of the mysteries of /. I guess. I agree that HTML by itself isn't programming and replied mainly as my unofficial definition of a programing language is has variables and looping mechanisms.
However just to play Devil's advocate when you consider the web is moving away from static pages to something more like Slashdot web design becomes more like programming. The addition of Javascript, Java applets, backside scripting CGI and others... Also the whole idea of a easy to use interface is a major area of software engineering. Webdesign is all about presenting information in a easy to understand, appealling, and efficient method.
Well back to regular scheduled Microsoft bashing...
Muskie
For the record the school I am attending UVIC recently added a Software Engineering degree option. You could even take all the courses offered the first year with no prerequisites.
Out CSC department is aligned with the Engineering department and is part of the faculty of Engineering for what that is worth. It was originally part of the Arts and Sciences Faculty, that Faculty has been broken up a lot too now.
Muskie
Well I knew it was phoney but I thought it was well done. The part that really let them down was concering Warhammer 40,000. It isn't a role playing game. You just can't expect credibility in certain circles if you make glaring research mistakes like that.
Everyone knows it is a miniature based wargame right?
Muskie
Don't you find it odd that Americans are so preoccuppied with trials? Amittedly I'm not an expert on this issue, but the facts support that he broke into other people's systems, and that he's been held without trial for an excessively long time. That is it lets wait for the (supposedly fair as this is America afterall...) trial, on to something more interesting.
However Americans love trials. The Mitnick trial, the MS vs DOJ trial, the Zippergate hearings, the killer nanny, and of course OJ. It isn't even real trials, witness the rise of John Grisham. Not to mention all the films Grisham related or not that revolve around trials. What about all the TV shows that revolve around lawyers: Ally McBeal, LA Law, the Practice, even something like Night Court. It is an easily observable obsession.
I mean do you really think Grisham will still be read in 50 or 100 years? Is he the next James Joyce? Does the world need another movie about a trial or a book for that matter? Does the media have to besiege the streets around courthouses, and have hourly updates for every trial that comes along?
You would think so according to the American Media, it even spills over into other countries but not with such single mindedness. Mitnick himself would prefer a lot less media coverage, he blames the media not the goverment for his plight. Maybe if people stopped being so engrossed by trials in general, didn't buy 500,000 copies of the next Grisham novel, didn't go see a movie like Takedown, did something more productive with their time, Mitnick would have had a trial by now, recieved a verdict and gotten on with the rest of his life?
Just what I came up with upon reading the article. For the record I'm Canadian and I would be on the Big Endian side of the Jihad.
MuskieAt the school where I go to, Math 100 and 101 which is Calc I and II generally 70% of the students fail or drop out. This happens most years even grading on a curve.
The 6 left out of 30 is a 20% survival rate which is a bit lower, but I'm talking about every Math 100 class as they right a common final so this effects 100's of people every year. I know people in CS who took this course three times before they got through.
These courses are weeder courses as is CSC 225 at my school. Math 100 is also something of a cash cow too.
Of course people know what there getting into with these classes. So how relevant this is well I'll have to see the "Score"
Muskie