Unfair? Not at all. When the professor says "I expect you to complete a near-impossible task simply to pass" then you drop the course. Simple as that. He did exactly what he said he'd do - what's unfair about that?
Note that this was a 400-level course.
If it worries you that you can't take the class without losing your scholarship, simply take it in your last semester.
1. Prof says 'I'll fail you if you don't perform a near-impossible test.' 2. Student says 'OK.' 3. Student fails to perform task; student fails course but learns lots of cool stuff. 4. Student complains that prof was telling the truth.
Too confusing. In Applesoft Basic (NOT Integer Basic, mind you), the conventions were this: $ -> String % -> Integer
So "A$" denoted a string variable while "A%" denoted an integer variable. An unadorned "A" was a floating point variable. You could store integers in floating point variables, but explicitly using integer variables saved 3 bytes per variable. But only if you were using an array.
Anyway...have I demonstrated enough elite arcane legacy programming knowledge? Do I get the job?
What can students struggling with pre-calc do with fractals other than gawk at pretty pictures?
It's been about 10 years since I read Barnsley's "Fractals Everywhere" (a college level text), but I think some of the lessons in it could easily be communicated to grade schoolers. (in fact, now that I've got grade-schoolers of my own, maybe I should dig up that presentation I did...) Anyway, to answer your question:
1. Learn about transformations. On the geometrical side, this can be introduced as early as elementary school (I have this vivid recollection of a hymn to the Euclidean symmetry transformations - "A flip a turn and a slide, a flip a turn and a slide.") On the analytical side, it takes only a bit of algebra and geometry to understand this. A sophomore-level geometry course would be an ideal place to introduce this aspect of transformations.
2. Learn about iterated processes. Applying the same set of transformations over and over again can have surprising results. This can be done visually at almost ANY level. I can show you how three transformations, each consisting of a few scaling, a rotation, and a translation, can, when iterated, produce the image of a fern. Other iterated processes can produce other images.
3. Learn about the limit of an iterated process. To continue my previous example, it doesn't matter WHAT shape I start with - I end up with the image of a fern. The limit of a process may be nothing like what you start with. Understanding limits is key to understanding the underpinnings of calculus, by the way.
Frankly, ALL mathematics are merely a novelty at high-school level. Unless you take an applied math course (read: "MAthematics for non-college-bound losers"), you get precious little in the way of real applications of the mathematics (Two trains leave two cities simultaneously...).
I don't think that board members and executive management lay awake at night wondering how they will feed their families if they lose their jobs. THAT is the qualitative difference between labor unions and poison pills. One protects people who can't protect themselves; the other protects people who are already well-protected.
Not saying I believe everything the article suggests, but the way it COULD change everything is that now there may be a large profit motive for a large number of people to produce zero-day or even zero-hour exploits. It's one thing when hobbyists hackers think it's nifty to write an exploit to prove their leetness; it's something else entirely when a corporate entity writes exploits for profit.
I think you're right in that this isn't really a qualitatively new thing, but the quantity of pay-to-attack may increase substantially.
Any programmer, let alone computer scientist, who hardcodes a list of values that is otherwise easily constructed programmatically should be drug out into the street and shot
...unless, of course, he's optimizing for speed. =)
BTW, why would you expect a CTO to understand the concept of a loop? You do realize that a CTO is one step down from a CEO, right? Would you expect a CEO to understand the concept of a loop? A CTO is a business person, not a technical person. Of course, the fact that your CTO was writing code and that you (I'm assuming you're a down-in-the-trenches type) were permitted to speak with him tells me he wasn't a CTO at all, merely a glorified supervisor. I'm curious - how long did it take him to create code that would endure for months? How long did it take you to do the same?
The flaw in your analogy is that the people working union assembly line jobs generally aren't the most productive people. The most productive bread delivery driver (to take your example) quits and forms a bread delivery company.
If you can produce more in 2 hours than your comorkers can in a whole day, then perhaps you should do a full day's work for a few months (maybe even nights and weekends) until you are indispensable. Then ask to be promoted to Senior Architect or some other "management" position where you can be payed commensurate with your value instead of with the number of hours you put in. THAT is how the old-line unionized businesses used to work.
Your is very seductive, though, because each geek secretly believes that HE is the most productive member of the development staff and therefore has the most to lose to a collective bargaining agreement. I find that the real flaw in the argument is that we should permit 99% of the developers to be mistreated under the current arrangement because 1% of them would be mistreated under the new arrangement. This gets very quickly to arguments for or against elitism; I'm an elitist at heart (the best in any field of endavour are largely responsible for the progress in that field) but I also believe that EVERYONE should be taken care of, not just the elite.
OK, I'm getting a bit abstract and philosophical, and that means it's time to turn this back over to the horde for comments.
This is the opinion of someone recently affiliated with the government. In reality, there is no abstract entity known as "THE GOVERNMENT." Instead, there are numerous individuals trying to implement their ideas. George Tenet was one of them. The current administration gave him a great deal of power; it is disturbing that they would permit such power to a man who seems to oppose free expression.*
The lack of an official affiliation is not a lack of affiliation. What better way to float a trial ballon? "George, this is George W. I've got this crazy idea about limiting internet access, but I want to see if the public would go for I. Can you say something about it so we can see what the reaction is?"
*With regard to free expression, regulating access to the internet is like regulating the purchase of a printing press.
A few Orion launches would have had FAR less yield than one of the many atmosperic tests of nuclear weapons. Had we skimped on testing weapons and instead tested nuclear launch methods, we would have injected less radiation into the atmosphere.
One of the concerns of Freeman Dyson, one of the originators of Orion was that the radiation placed into the atmosphere by a single launch produced a statistical guarantee that 10 people somewhere in the world would get cancer who otherwise would not have. He has a valid concern, but I think that has to be compared with 50,000 killed by cars. In one year. In the USA alone. By Dyson's reasoning, all cars should be scrapped, never mind the economic benefits, the quality of life, and the standard of living that the automobile presents.
The only argument against the Orion spacecraft that I think holds weight is that it is darned near impossible to NOT use it as a weapon. Would you be happy if the Chinese or the Russians built a "space exploration vehicle" (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) that could expel low-yield nuclear bombs at the rate of 10 per minute? What do you think the Soviet response would have been if we'd put a fleet of those into interplanetary space? What would the Chinese response be if we tried to do it today?
Sigh...guess we'll keep living at the bottom of the gravity well.
Gateway rose to prominence through ads in Computer Shopper. You weren't a geek in the 90s unless you could remember some of their 14-page themed ads. (My favorite was Power to the People.) Looking at a company's ad could give you a real feel for the company's culture. Now, instead of hundreds of ads, you have hundreds of web sites, all unique in the exact same way, all produced by drones and marketroids. All worthless except for the ease of searching. And as it turns out, people WANTED ease of searching.
boot was where I got my first Linux distro. It was where I first saw the visage and read the words (outside of a game) of Mr. Carmack. It was where I learned about.plan files. It was where I learned to revere Alex St. John (who taught us that great evil need not be stupid). It was part of what made me the geek I am today.
Maximum PC showed me that the jocks had invaded. They could now discuss "meg-herts" and "jigo-bites" instead of the fourth-down pass or curveballs. They were the sort of people who worried about appearance rather than substance, who were concerned that the name on the magazine didn't attract the right people - so they changed it to some vague pablumesque moniker. The change was slow but unstoppable. Now it's nothing but "PC Magazine" for adolescents with more money than brains, "Low Rider" for the mouth-breathing computer crowd.
The good days of computing are gone and they'll never return. I think I'm going to go buy a used DNA sequencer and start hacking my hamster's genome.
"...you can't force people to do the moral thing and not kill someone."
Yes you can. That's the theoretical basis for the death penalty - to prevent repeat offenders. Timothy McVeigh will never bomb another federal building. Ever.
Microsoft is not against viral licenses; indeed, they use one themself. Don't believe me? Try releasing code based on the Windows source. You will rapidly find that Microsoft claims that they own your work; in essence, their IP will infect yours.
The 'viral license' meme is deviously subtle, because it implies that there are licenses that are non-viral; the only non-virally-licensed software is public domain. If you license your software in a way that permits me to release derivative works, and if your software doesn't mandate that I enforce your terms on my source (ie if it's not viral), then I can modify your code, release it according to your terms, and someone else can ignore your terms when they modify my code. In short, if your license isn't viral, then you have NO control over the second generation of modifications to your source. For all intents and purposes, your software has entered the public domain.
Non-viral code = public domain. Viral code = everything else.
The key is "discreet". Gay/straight has nothing to do with it. There would have been no basis for 'blackmail' had the personal ad said "Gay, Gayer, GAYEST! Flamboyant male, years/light-years out of the closet seeks same for wildly publicised relationship!". He was susceptible to 'blackmail' because he had publicised something he wanted kept private.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfair? Not at all. When the professor says "I expect you to complete a near-impossible task simply to pass" then you drop the course. Simple as that. He did exactly what he said he'd do - what's unfair about that?
Note that this was a 400-level course.
If it worries you that you can't take the class without losing your scholarship, simply take it in your last semester.
True. However...
1. Prof says 'I'll fail you if you don't perform a near-impossible test.'
2. Student says 'OK.'
3. Student fails to perform task; student fails course but learns lots of cool stuff.
4. Student complains that prof was telling the truth.
Too confusing. In Applesoft Basic (NOT Integer Basic, mind you), the conventions were this:
$ -> String
% -> Integer
So "A$" denoted a string variable while "A%" denoted an integer variable. An unadorned "A" was a floating point variable. You could store integers in floating point variables, but explicitly using integer variables saved 3 bytes per variable. But only if you were using an array.
Anyway...have I demonstrated enough elite arcane legacy programming knowledge? Do I get the job?
What can students struggling with pre-calc do with fractals other than gawk at pretty pictures?
It's been about 10 years since I read Barnsley's "Fractals Everywhere" (a college level text), but I think some of the lessons in it could easily be communicated to grade schoolers. (in fact, now that I've got grade-schoolers of my own, maybe I should dig up that presentation I did...) Anyway, to answer your question:
1. Learn about transformations. On the geometrical side, this can be introduced as early as elementary school (I have this vivid recollection of a hymn to the Euclidean symmetry transformations - "A flip a turn and a slide, a flip a turn and a slide.") On the analytical side, it takes only a bit of algebra and geometry to understand this. A sophomore-level geometry course would be an ideal place to introduce this aspect of transformations.
2. Learn about iterated processes. Applying the same set of transformations over and over again can have surprising results. This can be done visually at almost ANY level. I can show you how three transformations, each consisting of a few scaling, a rotation, and a translation, can, when iterated, produce the image of a fern. Other iterated processes can produce other images.
3. Learn about the limit of an iterated process. To continue my previous example, it doesn't matter WHAT shape I start with - I end up with the image of a fern. The limit of a process may be nothing like what you start with. Understanding limits is key to understanding the underpinnings of calculus, by the way.
Frankly, ALL mathematics are merely a novelty at high-school level. Unless you take an applied math course (read: "MAthematics for non-college-bound losers"), you get precious little in the way of real applications of the mathematics (Two trains leave two cities simultaneously...).
I don't think that board members and executive management lay awake at night wondering how they will feed their families if they lose their jobs. THAT is the qualitative difference between labor unions and poison pills. One protects people who can't protect themselves; the other protects people who are already well-protected.
I could be wrong, but I suspect that the search string "lindow name change microsoft paid" is identical to "name change lindows paid microsoft".
In other words, no, I don't think it's biased at all.
Not saying I believe everything the article suggests, but the way it COULD change everything is that now there may be a large profit motive for a large number of people to produce zero-day or even zero-hour exploits. It's one thing when hobbyists hackers think it's nifty to write an exploit to prove their leetness; it's something else entirely when a corporate entity writes exploits for profit.
I think you're right in that this isn't really a qualitatively new thing, but the quantity of pay-to-attack may increase substantially.
Maybe the sky is falling. Or maybe not.
Am I the only one who read the headline as "Penny Arcade sues..."?
BTW, why would you expect a CTO to understand the concept of a loop? You do realize that a CTO is one step down from a CEO, right? Would you expect a CEO to understand the concept of a loop? A CTO is a business person, not a technical person. Of course, the fact that your CTO was writing code and that you (I'm assuming you're a down-in-the-trenches type) were permitted to speak with him tells me he wasn't a CTO at all, merely a glorified supervisor. I'm curious - how long did it take him to create code that would endure for months? How long did it take you to do the same?
The flaw in your analogy is that the people working union assembly line jobs generally aren't the most productive people. The most productive bread delivery driver (to take your example) quits and forms a bread delivery company.
If you can produce more in 2 hours than your comorkers can in a whole day, then perhaps you should do a full day's work for a few months (maybe even nights and weekends) until you are indispensable. Then ask to be promoted to Senior Architect or some other "management" position where you can be payed commensurate with your value instead of with the number of hours you put in. THAT is how the old-line unionized businesses used to work.
Your is very seductive, though, because each geek secretly believes that HE is the most productive member of the development staff and therefore has the most to lose to a collective bargaining agreement. I find that the real flaw in the argument is that we should permit 99% of the developers to be mistreated under the current arrangement because 1% of them would be mistreated under the new arrangement. This gets very quickly to arguments for or against elitism; I'm an elitist at heart (the best in any field of endavour are largely responsible for the progress in that field) but I also believe that EVERYONE should be taken care of, not just the elite.
OK, I'm getting a bit abstract and philosophical, and that means it's time to turn this back over to the horde for comments.
Yup. There are two things to consider.
This is the opinion of someone recently affiliated with the government. In reality, there is no abstract entity known as "THE GOVERNMENT." Instead, there are numerous individuals trying to implement their ideas. George Tenet was one of them. The current administration gave him a great deal of power; it is disturbing that they would permit such power to a man who seems to oppose free expression.*
The lack of an official affiliation is not a lack of affiliation. What better way to float a trial ballon? "George, this is George W. I've got this crazy idea about limiting internet access, but I want to see if the public would go for I. Can you say something about it so we can see what the reaction is?"
*With regard to free expression, regulating access to the internet is like regulating the purchase of a printing press.
True, but at a certain point, lower prices DO mean lower quality.
I sent my sinuses to Arizona
I sent my liver to Peru
I sent my lungs and my kidneys
For the summer to Sydney
But I'm sending my heart to you!
"Maybe intentionally, maybe not"
Those funny chinamen! They can't even de-orbit a satellite properly! No need to ramp up OUR space program!
Yes, I think it was intentional.
BZZZT! Wrong answer.
A few Orion launches would have had FAR less yield than one of the many atmosperic tests of nuclear weapons. Had we skimped on testing weapons and instead tested nuclear launch methods, we would have injected less radiation into the atmosphere.
One of the concerns of Freeman Dyson, one of the originators of Orion was that the radiation placed into the atmosphere by a single launch produced a statistical guarantee that 10 people somewhere in the world would get cancer who otherwise would not have. He has a valid concern, but I think that has to be compared with 50,000 killed by cars. In one year. In the USA alone. By Dyson's reasoning, all cars should be scrapped, never mind the economic benefits, the quality of life, and the standard of living that the automobile presents.
The only argument against the Orion spacecraft that I think holds weight is that it is darned near impossible to NOT use it as a weapon. Would you be happy if the Chinese or the Russians built a "space exploration vehicle" (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) that could expel low-yield nuclear bombs at the rate of 10 per minute? What do you think the Soviet response would have been if we'd put a fleet of those into interplanetary space? What would the Chinese response be if we tried to do it today?
Sigh...guess we'll keep living at the bottom of the gravity well.
No discussion of video games in Canada would be complete without a reference to Acts Of Gord, a Canadian video game store. Especially topical would be the Oddity story in Chapter 23 of the Book of Annoyances. .
Gateway rose to prominence through ads in Computer Shopper. You weren't a geek in the 90s unless you could remember some of their 14-page themed ads. (My favorite was Power to the People.) Looking at a company's ad could give you a real feel for the company's culture. Now, instead of hundreds of ads, you have hundreds of web sites, all unique in the exact same way, all produced by drones and marketroids. All worthless except for the ease of searching. And as it turns out, people WANTED ease of searching.
Ah, yes. Remember "poof"?
.plan files. It was where I learned to revere Alex St. John (who taught us that great evil need not be stupid). It was part of what made me the geek I am today.
boot was where I got my first Linux distro. It was where I first saw the visage and read the words (outside of a game) of Mr. Carmack. It was where I learned about
Maximum PC showed me that the jocks had invaded. They could now discuss "meg-herts" and "jigo-bites" instead of the fourth-down pass or curveballs. They were the sort of people who worried about appearance rather than substance, who were concerned that the name on the magazine didn't attract the right people - so they changed it to some vague pablumesque moniker. The change was slow but unstoppable. Now it's nothing but "PC Magazine" for adolescents with more money than brains, "Low Rider" for the mouth-breathing computer crowd.
The good days of computing are gone and they'll never return. I think I'm going to go buy a used DNA sequencer and start hacking my hamster's genome.
"...you can't force people to do the moral thing and not kill someone."
Yes you can. That's the theoretical basis for the death penalty - to prevent repeat offenders. Timothy McVeigh will never bomb another federal building. Ever.
Microsoft is not against viral licenses; indeed, they use one themself. Don't believe me? Try releasing code based on the Windows source. You will rapidly find that Microsoft claims that they own your work; in essence, their IP will infect yours.
The 'viral license' meme is deviously subtle, because it implies that there are licenses that are non-viral; the only non-virally-licensed software is public domain. If you license your software in a way that permits me to release derivative works, and if your software doesn't mandate that I enforce your terms on my source (ie if it's not viral), then I can modify your code, release it according to your terms, and someone else can ignore your terms when they modify my code. In short, if your license isn't viral, then you have NO control over the second generation of modifications to your source. For all intents and purposes, your software has entered the public domain.
Non-viral code = public domain.
Viral code = everything else.
The key is "discreet". Gay/straight has nothing to do with it. There would have been no basis for 'blackmail' had the personal ad said "Gay, Gayer, GAYEST! Flamboyant male, years/light-years out of the closet seeks same for wildly publicised relationship!". He was susceptible to 'blackmail' because he had publicised something he wanted kept private.
Probably for the same reason that WINS didn't beat DNS. And that NETBEUI didn't beat TCP/IP. Etc.
Wow - can you imagine a new Beowulf cluster of slashdot?!?
+5, LOL (in the original sense, not in the "AOLOLOLOLOLOL" sense)
+5 Insightful, man.
I especially like your penultimate and antepenultimate paragraphs, which nicely explain my experience working on a help desk for corporate attorneys.