5. It keeps you honest. Coding is full of temptations to cut corners. But you're less likely to cut that corner if someone else is watching -- and you won't let a colleague do the kind of lazy things you'd do yourself.
Well, that's fine and all; you're a Myers-Briggs type "I" for "introvert". But other people are type "E" for "Extrovert", and are at their best when collaborating face-to-face with someone else.
Perhaps traditionally the "I"s were just absent from programming. But increasingly the profession is attracting people who thrive on teamwork, and *like* interacting with people.
In any case, we're not talking about solid 12 hour hackathons as pairs. We're talking, say, 4 hours out of a day, with breaks. And ideally you'd be rotating pair partners regularly.
I'd like to do a lot more pair programming. A big barrier for us is that our furniture isn't amenable to it. Dev shops that take pairing seriously set up pairing workstations specifically for the purpose.
So, marijuana should be illegal for young kids to smoke
It *is* illegal for young kids to smoke marijuana (and for anyone else).
The problem here is that there isn't a direct link between "it's illegal" and "people cease to do it". Prohibiting drug use has demonstrably failed to stop people wanting to use drugs, and has demonstrably failed to prevent them from doing so. It's even possible that prohibition has made it *easier* for people to get hold of drugs, since production, distribution and retail is in the hands of people who aren't beholden to the usual rules.
Make it legal, such that illicit supply is no longer profitable. Regulate and educate, so that kids (and adults) generally don't want to use, kids that want to can't find a supply, adults that want to have a trustworthy supply and a society that encourages sensible usage levels.
Actually, you don't want the UK for anything urgent. In the UK, unless you're willing to pay for a private clinic, you'll usually need to wait at least 6 months before you can see a specialist.
[citation needed]
Two NHS anecdotes of my own:
I had a pain in the left side of my chest while running. Looked at the NHS direct web site, which told me to call an ambulance. I didn't, but I went to A&E soon afterwards. Within 5 minutes I was being interviewed by a nurse, and within 20 minutes I was on an ECG. Within 2 hours I'd had a chest X-ray and a second ECG. Happily I was given a clean bill of health -- the pain was just caused by muscle tension. But I was astonished by the rapid and thorough response.
More recently, a couple of friends noticed a mole on my back which they thought I should get checked out. I phoned for a GP appointment, and got one 3 days hence. The GP referred me to a consultant dermatologist. That appointment was about a week later. I got to the hospital 10 minutes early, and was seen 5 minutes early. The consultant gave me a thorough examination and recommended a biopsy. I had to take a form to reception -- where there was no queue -- and made an appointment for the biopsy scraping, 1 week later. Again I was seen on time, treated with immaculate professionalism. A couple of days later the test results came through the post -- all clear.
I appreciate some people have had bad NHS experiences, and of course we must relentlessly maintain/improve standards. But mostly I sense that people in general are pleased with the NHS. In particular, I'm of an age where lots of my friends are having babies, and not one has complained about NHS maternity care.
Also you say "for anything urgent". My sense is that the NHS is very good at prioritising. If you find yourself waiting, it's because someone with a more urgent need has taken precedence. For example, with my chest pain, I jumped a queue of bleeding but stable A&E patients.
There are plenty of other vectors. The keyless ignition system. The remote central locking. The MP3 decoder. The digital radio. With physical access -- direct connection to the bus.
McAfee makes me think of AV, and AV makes me think band-aid. Please, please let's not end up with a situation where cars are susceptible to viruses, therefore an AV application scans for viruses. Cars (or at least, the important bits of them) should be secure from the ground up.
The problem has been that the designers have given computer security no thought *whatsoever*, and applied techniques already well known to security people, too late for some victims.
For example, the first remote keys were susceptible to replay attacks. Anyone with half a clue about computer security already knew at that time that needed a challenge/response scheme. But keys with challenge/response came later. And keys with sufficiently secure crypto algorithms came later still.
For example, it's common to have the audio system, the ignition, the satnav, etc. all on the same data bus, with no authentication. From a security point of view, that's a disaster waiting to happen. Researchers have already demonstrated hacking the MP3 player to unlock the doors -- pointing out it's not much of a stretch to having hacked cars unlock themselves and email their GPS location to the attacker.
Huge amounts of space? Heavy and awkward? We're not talking about a student with a pile of text books to be lugged from class to class.
We're talking about a couple trade paper backs to fill the occasional down/waiting time.
You're clearly not a very voracious reader.
Around the time the Kindle was announced, I was on a two week work assignment in Tokyo. There's lots to do in Tokyo, but in the evenings I was usually pretty exhausted, so all I really wanted to do was read in my hotel room. I finished two fat novels in the first three nights -- I'd run out of stuff to read. Now, if I'd been in an English speaking country, I could probably have bought another book easily. But as it was, I had to plan a schlep across the city to Tower Records where I knew they had an English Language book department. So I did that, and for my journey home, there was an extra kilogram of paper in my suitcase.
If I'd had a Kindle then:
- my luggage weight would have stayed low
- I could have added books without leaving my hotel room.
You were lied to. Nothing is addictive the first time you use it.
In William Burroughs' "Junky" he starts off by explaining that you have to take an awful lot of heroin over a sustained period in order to get addicted.
But then he goes on to document (semi-fictionalised) how he did exactly that, and what undignified depravity he did as a result.
I think it depends on the individual.
Also it should be noted that if you have a reliable supply of clean heroin, and the money to afford it, you can live a perfectly civilised life as an addict. Tainted supplys, withdrawal, and self-neglect caused by poverty are what make you ill.
[The Beatles] put out a lot of bubble gum crap (and that is where the money came from).
They put out a better class of bubblegum crap than other bands were putting out.
Get four good session musicians and ask them to play She Loves You. They'll do it note-perfect, but they won't give it the joie the vivre that the Beatles did.
The thing with rap, though, is that most of the archetypal rap records loop pre-existing records, so Rapper's Delight is Chic's "Good Times" and so on. So musically it wasn't as new as all that. The cutting and scratching added something new, of course, and some DJs were cleverer than others at taking breaks and re-contextualising them such that they were something new (for example, a lot of the Public Enemy loops didn't use the main hook of the source record).
When I'm in old fogey mode, I find myself thinking nobody's made a big innovation -- as in, something that sounds unlike anything before, that's gone mainstream -- since... when?
I think drum'n'bass was a big one: I remember when things started coming out with those double-speed drum tracks, thinking I'd never heard anything like it before.
I think dubstep is another. It's got a feel to it that I've never heard before (quite different from Jamaican dub).
It's high time the non-electronic side of things stepped up with something that sounds new.
Yes, DBAN works very well. Google around and you'll find instructions on how to put it on a bootable USB stick. I recently ran this before taking my girlfriend's old desktop to the tip.
I don't know your employers' culture, but a reasonable approach seems to me:
- call the IT dept
- say "I'm going to completely wipe this laptop; you'll be OK to re-image it, right?"
- run DBAN
Sorry but I don't believe that explanation. In many places of Portugal, including the capital, we also have many different types of emigrants, mainly from the African colonies (Christians), but also a lot of Gypsies and Muslims. And guess what, most of them, except for the Gypsies, live right in the center of the city.
(Aside: I know English is probably not your first language -- an emigrant is someone leaving; an immigrant is someone who's come in. One country's immigrant is someone else's emigrant)
Paris is not Portugal. From what I understand, in Paris due to their planning decisions, the centre is full of expensive property that only rich residents and high-end businesses can afford. Those homes and businesses need low-paying labour though -- cooks, cleaners, security guards etc. -- and those people have to live somewhere. So there is a ring of deprived areas a certain distance from the centre. They become ghettos because the only people prepared to live there are the ones who can't afford to live anywhere else, within reach of jobs.
Other cities avoid this by planning affordable housing.
He saw an article about a crime in Paris. Of all the things he could have posted in response, the first thing that came to his head was "hey, nobody's speculated about the criminal's race yet! I'd better post with my guess."
Why do people say "minorities" instead of "non-white" or "darker-skinned people"? In some areas, these people are not "minorities" and yet are still referred to as such.
In Europe, I believe there are no cities in which whites represent less than half of the population. The area with the largest proportion of non-whites in the UK is the London borough of Tower Hamlets which is ~56% white. Obviously if you draw small enough boundaries you can isolate areas with strong non-white majorities, but I don't see how that's helpful.
In the US, it's different. Atlanta, GA, for example, is 61% "Black or African American". It would be technically wrong to describe a black person living in Atlanta as a minority. But then I'm not sure anyone does - do they?
The term "minority" is useful, because being in the minority puts you in a position of weakness.
Most British people understand "Asian" to mean Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi/thereabouts. We would normally refer to Chinese/Korean/Japanese/etc. as "Oriental". I appreciate that in the US "Oriental" isn't PC. That is not the case in Britain.
I'm not sure whether the 26.1% covers both Indian and Chinese people - but realistically, the East Asian population would be a statistical blip compared to the Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi population.
22.1% of the census population (included in that 26.1%) was "British Asian", suggesting that 4% were 1st generation immigrants.
They confine THEMSELVES! It is exactly the same here in Germany. The Muslim popular stays in their own areas. They choose not to integrate.
I spent a few weeks working in Japan. I picked up a newsletter for British expats, which included an article about where to get the best British-style roast dinner in Tokyo. One weekend I went to visit a British friend who'd been living in Tokyo for a few years, and I mentioned that article to him. "I can't imagine why you'd come to Japan, where there's all this amazing Japanese food, and then go to these lengths to get a British meal, and spend time with British people"
And he said "well, you know, after the first couple of months, you just want a taste of home, and to hang out with people who speak your language and understand your cultural reference points."
And, put like that, I understood what he meant.
Ghettos come about for (at least) two reasons:
- People want to be near people who share their culture
- People live where they can afford to live
I do believe integration should be encouraged - but in a slow and steady manner. Making sure that schools all contain a natural ethnic mixture would be a good start.
Slashdot Mirror
Great points all. I'll add:
5. It keeps you honest. Coding is full of temptations to cut corners. But you're less likely to cut that corner if someone else is watching -- and you won't let a colleague do the kind of lazy things you'd do yourself.
Well, that's fine and all; you're a Myers-Briggs type "I" for "introvert". But other people are type "E" for "Extrovert", and are at their best when collaborating face-to-face with someone else.
Perhaps traditionally the "I"s were just absent from programming. But increasingly the profession is attracting people who thrive on teamwork, and *like* interacting with people.
In any case, we're not talking about solid 12 hour hackathons as pairs. We're talking, say, 4 hours out of a day, with breaks. And ideally you'd be rotating pair partners regularly.
I'd like to do a lot more pair programming. A big barrier for us is that our furniture isn't amenable to it. Dev shops that take pairing seriously set up pairing workstations specifically for the purpose.
So, marijuana should be illegal for young kids to smoke
It *is* illegal for young kids to smoke marijuana (and for anyone else).
The problem here is that there isn't a direct link between "it's illegal" and "people cease to do it". Prohibiting drug use has demonstrably failed to stop people wanting to use drugs, and has demonstrably failed to prevent them from doing so. It's even possible that prohibition has made it *easier* for people to get hold of drugs, since production, distribution and retail is in the hands of people who aren't beholden to the usual rules.
Make it legal, such that illicit supply is no longer profitable. Regulate and educate, so that kids (and adults) generally don't want to use, kids that want to can't find a supply, adults that want to have a trustworthy supply and a society that encourages sensible usage levels.
No, not surprising. But even apparently obvious hypotheses should be tested. This one has been. Hooray for science!
Actually, you don't want the UK for anything urgent. In the UK, unless you're willing to pay for a private clinic, you'll usually need to wait at least 6 months before you can see a specialist.
[citation needed]
Two NHS anecdotes of my own:
I had a pain in the left side of my chest while running. Looked at the NHS direct web site, which told me to call an ambulance. I didn't, but I went to A&E soon afterwards. Within 5 minutes I was being interviewed by a nurse, and within 20 minutes I was on an ECG. Within 2 hours I'd had a chest X-ray and a second ECG. Happily I was given a clean bill of health -- the pain was just caused by muscle tension. But I was astonished by the rapid and thorough response.
More recently, a couple of friends noticed a mole on my back which they thought I should get checked out. I phoned for a GP appointment, and got one 3 days hence. The GP referred me to a consultant dermatologist. That appointment was about a week later. I got to the hospital 10 minutes early, and was seen 5 minutes early. The consultant gave me a thorough examination and recommended a biopsy. I had to take a form to reception -- where there was no queue -- and made an appointment for the biopsy scraping, 1 week later. Again I was seen on time, treated with immaculate professionalism. A couple of days later the test results came through the post -- all clear.
I appreciate some people have had bad NHS experiences, and of course we must relentlessly maintain/improve standards. But mostly I sense that people in general are pleased with the NHS. In particular, I'm of an age where lots of my friends are having babies, and not one has complained about NHS maternity care.
Also you say "for anything urgent". My sense is that the NHS is very good at prioritising. If you find yourself waiting, it's because someone with a more urgent need has taken precedence. For example, with my chest pain, I jumped a queue of bleeding but stable A&E patients.
got to love classic cars
Because who needs a comfortable car that starts reliably and uses fuel efficiently?
Why do car companies feel the need to hook their CD players or whatever into the critical systems of the car?
Because it's the cheapest way to provide features that customers want, and competitors will deliver.
Not just theoretically -- University of Washington researchers crafted an MP3 that let them at the CAN via the MP3 player: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/03/how-an-mp3-can-be-used-to-hack.html
Don't make the car computer have a wi-fi antenna.
There are plenty of other vectors. The keyless ignition system. The remote central locking. The MP3 decoder. The digital radio. With physical access -- direct connection to the bus.
McAfee makes me think of AV, and AV makes me think band-aid. Please, please let's not end up with a situation where cars are susceptible to viruses, therefore an AV application scans for viruses. Cars (or at least, the important bits of them) should be secure from the ground up.
The problem has been that the designers have given computer security no thought *whatsoever*, and applied techniques already well known to security people, too late for some victims.
For example, the first remote keys were susceptible to replay attacks. Anyone with half a clue about computer security already knew at that time that needed a challenge/response scheme. But keys with challenge/response came later. And keys with sufficiently secure crypto algorithms came later still.
For example, it's common to have the audio system, the ignition, the satnav, etc. all on the same data bus, with no authentication. From a security point of view, that's a disaster waiting to happen. Researchers have already demonstrated hacking the MP3 player to unlock the doors -- pointing out it's not much of a stretch to having hacked cars unlock themselves and email their GPS location to the attacker.
Huge amounts of space? Heavy and awkward? We're not talking about a student with a pile of text books to be lugged from class to class.
We're talking about a couple trade paper backs to fill the occasional down/waiting time.
You're clearly not a very voracious reader.
Around the time the Kindle was announced, I was on a two week work assignment in Tokyo. There's lots to do in Tokyo, but in the evenings I was usually pretty exhausted, so all I really wanted to do was read in my hotel room. I finished two fat novels in the first three nights -- I'd run out of stuff to read. Now, if I'd been in an English speaking country, I could probably have bought another book easily. But as it was, I had to plan a schlep across the city to Tower Records where I knew they had an English Language book department. So I did that, and for my journey home, there was an extra kilogram of paper in my suitcase.
If I'd had a Kindle then:
- my luggage weight would have stayed low
- I could have added books without leaving my hotel room.
You were lied to. Nothing is addictive the first time you use it.
In William Burroughs' "Junky" he starts off by explaining that you have to take an awful lot of heroin over a sustained period in order to get addicted.
But then he goes on to document (semi-fictionalised) how he did exactly that, and what undignified depravity he did as a result.
I think it depends on the individual.
Also it should be noted that if you have a reliable supply of clean heroin, and the money to afford it, you can live a perfectly civilised life as an addict. Tainted supplys, withdrawal, and self-neglect caused by poverty are what make you ill.
[The Beatles] put out a lot of bubble gum crap (and that is where the money came from).
They put out a better class of bubblegum crap than other bands were putting out.
Get four good session musicians and ask them to play She Loves You. They'll do it note-perfect, but they won't give it the joie the vivre that the Beatles did.
Here's the sort of perfectly acceptable, but not all that exciting Merseybeat that the early Beatles were competing with: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMYSdjIlDLk
The thing with rap, though, is that most of the archetypal rap records loop pre-existing records, so Rapper's Delight is Chic's "Good Times" and so on. So musically it wasn't as new as all that. The cutting and scratching added something new, of course, and some DJs were cleverer than others at taking breaks and re-contextualising them such that they were something new (for example, a lot of the Public Enemy loops didn't use the main hook of the source record).
When I'm in old fogey mode, I find myself thinking nobody's made a big innovation -- as in, something that sounds unlike anything before, that's gone mainstream -- since... when?
I think drum'n'bass was a big one: I remember when things started coming out with those double-speed drum tracks, thinking I'd never heard anything like it before.
I think dubstep is another. It's got a feel to it that I've never heard before (quite different from Jamaican dub).
It's high time the non-electronic side of things stepped up with something that sounds new.
Lou Reed: "One chord is fine. Two chords is pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz."
Yes, DBAN works very well. Google around and you'll find instructions on how to put it on a bootable USB stick. I recently ran this before taking my girlfriend's old desktop to the tip.
I don't know your employers' culture, but a reasonable approach seems to me:
- call the IT dept
- say "I'm going to completely wipe this laptop; you'll be OK to re-image it, right?"
- run DBAN
his right to bare arms
He wore short sleeves?
Sorry but I don't believe that explanation. In many places of Portugal, including the capital, we also have many different types of emigrants, mainly from the African colonies (Christians), but also a lot of Gypsies and Muslims. And guess what, most of them, except for the Gypsies, live right in the center of the city.
(Aside: I know English is probably not your first language -- an emigrant is someone leaving; an immigrant is someone who's come in. One country's immigrant is someone else's emigrant)
Paris is not Portugal. From what I understand, in Paris due to their planning decisions, the centre is full of expensive property that only rich residents and high-end businesses can afford. Those homes and businesses need low-paying labour though -- cooks, cleaners, security guards etc. -- and those people have to live somewhere. So there is a ring of deprived areas a certain distance from the centre. They become ghettos because the only people prepared to live there are the ones who can't afford to live anywhere else, within reach of jobs.
Other cities avoid this by planning affordable housing.
Maybe he's Mormon and believes we're all descended from Adam and Eve, who lived in Jackson County Missouri
Of course he is.
He saw an article about a crime in Paris. Of all the things he could have posted in response, the first thing that came to his head was "hey, nobody's speculated about the criminal's race yet! I'd better post with my guess."
That is the action of a racist.
I think the scientific consensus is that all women have DNA passed down from a Mitochondrial Eve who lived in Africa.
Why do people say "minorities" instead of "non-white" or "darker-skinned people"? In some areas, these people are not "minorities" and yet are still referred to as such.
In Europe, I believe there are no cities in which whites represent less than half of the population. The area with the largest proportion of non-whites in the UK is the London borough of Tower Hamlets which is ~56% white. Obviously if you draw small enough boundaries you can isolate areas with strong non-white majorities, but I don't see how that's helpful.
In the US, it's different. Atlanta, GA, for example, is 61% "Black or African American". It would be technically wrong to describe a black person living in Atlanta as a minority. But then I'm not sure anyone does - do they?
The term "minority" is useful, because being in the minority puts you in a position of weakness.
In what way isn't 'French' a race?
In the sense that two French people can have different races.
Most British people understand "Asian" to mean Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi/thereabouts. We would normally refer to Chinese/Korean/Japanese/etc. as "Oriental". I appreciate that in the US "Oriental" isn't PC. That is not the case in Britain.
I'm not sure whether the 26.1% covers both Indian and Chinese people - but realistically, the East Asian population would be a statistical blip compared to the Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi population.
22.1% of the census population (included in that 26.1%) was "British Asian", suggesting that 4% were 1st generation immigrants.
They confine THEMSELVES! It is exactly the same here in Germany. The Muslim popular stays in their own areas. They choose not to integrate.
I spent a few weeks working in Japan. I picked up a newsletter for British expats, which included an article about where to get the best British-style roast dinner in Tokyo. One weekend I went to visit a British friend who'd been living in Tokyo for a few years, and I mentioned that article to him. "I can't imagine why you'd come to Japan, where there's all this amazing Japanese food, and then go to these lengths to get a British meal, and spend time with British people"
And he said "well, you know, after the first couple of months, you just want a taste of home, and to hang out with people who speak your language and understand your cultural reference points."
And, put like that, I understood what he meant.
Ghettos come about for (at least) two reasons:
- People want to be near people who share their culture
- People live where they can afford to live
I do believe integration should be encouraged - but in a slow and steady manner. Making sure that schools all contain a natural ethnic mixture would be a good start.