As if that has not been the norm in other parts of the world since the beginning of time.
The reality is that the American Dream is not what it used to be, but it is certainly a much better alternative for a lot of folks in other countries. I'm not saying that we do not have a problem, but it is not one unique of this country, and it is far more fixable than what other countries are facing right now - think Greece, Spain, France or take your pick of any country in Latin America (where I'm from) or Africa.
Ummm, no. Physical working conditions are certainly great, but Amazon fulfillment warehouses are notoriously known for driving workers into a state of constant terror due to managerial abuse. A middle class job used to imply a sort of shielding from such things (not totally but certainly more than what you would see and still see at a minimum wage fast food joint.)
Middle class doesn't imply that anymore. And $10-$12 an hour is $24K. That is not below what is typically considered a low-end middle class salary. $24K was middle class twenty years ago. Not anymore. They are just above the limit that forces people to use social services.
I'm not saying these jobs are decent or honest (and thank God they are not Walmart salaries.) Any job with salaries above the poverty line is better than no job or poverty-line job, anytime, any day. And I'm not saying that for the type of job being performed, these are not fair wages. They are.
But let us not call them middle class wages. They are not. The rising cost of living, education and health care, and the continuous shift towards replacing full-time workers with part-time workers (or contractors) have pretty much made sure a $12/h job is not a middle class job anymore.
you're assuming folks want to immigrate. what about those dodging US taxes by *not* becoming US citizens?
<fucking-face-palm/>
What sort of ignoramus demon propelled you to ask such a bestially stupid question? Anyone that works legally in this country, be them citizens, green-card holders, refugees and H-1B visa holders pay the same f* taxes rates as per the same f* tax schedules. People have to be obscenely ignorant of their own laws if they think *not being a citizen* provides a tax advantage to the legal immigrant that qualifies for nationalization.
Here's the thing I don't like about how evolution is presented...
researchers also have a new guess about why the spine evolved: They suggest that the creatures might wedge themselves between the trunk of a palm tree and the base of its leaves, then use the strength and flexion of their muscular spine to force open this crevice, revealing insect larvae
Um, no. The spine did not evolve to meet the needs of the animal, the animal is alive because it had the traits needed to live.
And how did the animal acquired said traits. Natural selection. By random mutations some animals had traits that provided a slight advantage over others, surviving longer, procreating more often and passing those genes downs where further refinements in the typical life-and-death struggle would reinforce those traits. In the case of this shrews, it started with a slightly stronger back, which throughout generations lead to the unique and amazing spine structures they now posses.
Your statement is neither more accurate than what the article (and the media) say, nor does it paint a full picture of evolution. Their statements and yours are complimentary. It's a goddamned feedback loop. The animals are alive today because their traits allowed them to survive. And those traits took place and refine/reinforce themselves (sometimes to the detriment of others) because they help the animals meet their needs.
Its not a replacement for portable computing... Its a replacement for portable netflix, web browsing, and stupid little kiddie games/apps.
If you do not think that is portable computing for the common 21st century person (which is the definition that matters the most), you need to revisit your understanding of computing as a whole.
What's interesting about this story, at least for me, is that iPad sales have tanked. Maybe that suggests that Android on tablets has matured somewhat from the early days of few, clunky tablet apps, and that tablets are commodities now too.
No, it rather means that people are finally understanding that a tablet is a novelty.
No. You are being subjective here. What is a novelty for some (you), it is a commodity for others.
The only time I hear someone talking about how great their iPad (or other tablet) is when they are talking about how much their (less than 10 year old) kid enjoys it
So, it is a commodity then. It has a function, though not one that was originally envisioned (and which goes in tandem with typical definitions of marketable products as items with potentially alternative uses.
Also, how many people (ordinary people that is, not of the otaku kind) talk how great their laptop is, or their lawnmower, or car, or I dunno, vibrator? In opposition to your original premise, when things stop being a novelty and yet retain some time of value or alternative usage, then it becomes a commodity, an item that renders some utility and value that you now take for granted and yet you wish to keep.
For me, I rarely use my either laptop or development desktop at home anymore (both development environments with relative powah!). I simply use my tablet to do what I typically used to do with a laptop or computer at home before - consume information, email, facebook, banking, tracking my sells and purchases on ebay, amazon and gunbroker.com, reading my kindle books, etc.
I've also find my internet consumption more productive since the restricted nature of a tablet prevents me from engaging in thread discussions (compared to the rate I used to before I had a tablet.) One thing that certainly has suffered is my rate of producing content (blogging, mostly.)
It is no longer a novelty, and it has become a commodity, and quite an invisible one to say the least. I've seen other people engaging in similar patterns of media consumption with their tablets (be them ipads, galaxy tabs or whatever.)
And I never really talk about how awesome my tablet is. I don't think I ever did even when the technology was just a novelty. People who have tools that they use successfully and transparently for doing things that are now part of their mundane, daily lives, they don't talk about them. That's a fanboi geek trait (from a particular view of geekery), not a trait of general living.
but the bulk of box-office success ultimately comes down to the most elusive and unquantifiable of things: knowing what the audience wants before it does, and a whole lot of luck.
In particular in our economic times when people think twice before paying a ticket and $8 for a cup of soda, the audience wants quality. Quality, engaging plots (horror, drama, sci/fi, action, commedy, whatever) that keep you at the edge of your seat, or comm. Special effects is just spice. You can put spice on a turd, but that won't turn it into a cut of filet mignon.
I knew that Pacific Rim was going to flop (even though I wanted it to succeed.) I mean, giant robots vs monsters? What the fuck is the main population made off? 4-th graders? I know that in/. (and in the interweebz in general) we like to paint the population as dumb (where population == everyone but us), but that's just bullshit...
... and the proof of that is in the cinematographic flops among other things.
Serious...? Uh, this is a student election. He got this sentence because he used "hacker" tactics..
RTFA. He got sentenced for identity theft and computer fraud. Either you think this guy did not commit identity theft and computer fraud, or you think these two acts should not be punishable by federal law, or you simply do not know WTF is going on.
I can understand him getting kicked out of school, but freaking federal prison for a year for just messing with a STUDENT school election?!?!
Geez, we're getting out of hand here...I've been hearing of small school children getting kicked out of school and having the cops called just for playing in the school play ground using their hands and fingers as 'guns' yelling bang bang at each other.
This is a freaking school election...not a federal / city/state election..it is college, it means NOTHING....
I can see them being punished by the school, but WTF...Federal Prison?!?!?
You are one gynormous ignoramus of the law. He stole people's credentials and broke into a system. These two are federal felonies. Do you live in some alternate universe version of the US where federal law doesn't include computer fraud and identity theft? Or are you simply being obtuse, seeking an opportunity to cry about the abuse of powah!!!!?
Oh, and you will need flexibility to travel. It will be extremely hard (though not impossible) to get such a position without a willingness to travel to laboratories and/or field/test sites.
Those are few in existence. Unfortunately (and I speak from former experience) a B.S. degree in CS with experience exclusively in the "enterprise" does not lead itself to any research/R&D position of the sort. Plus, research and R&D positions typically go to positions titled as "engineers" or "architects", not programmers. Every good software engineer or architect is a programmer, and any good programmer is an engineer or architect. But sadly, labels rule the world, pigeonholing people in stupid, mutually exclusive roles.
My suggestion is to go back to academia and get a graduate degree. Aim to do research associated with (or funded by) a company. Establish connections. Concurrently to that effort, or after that, go work with a true software engineering firm (say Google.) Aim high. Or, go into a defense or aeronautics company (Lockheed Martin Missile Divisions or Boeing.) Avoid defense contractors that specialize in "integration". Aim for the companies or divisions that actually do cool shit. For this later type of company, a graduate degree in Computer Engineering would be more helpful than CS alone (I'm a CS grad btw, so I'm talking from experiencing my lack of a hardware background.)
Once there (be it in the commercial or defense sectors), aim high, and keep studying, build your connections, and seek out to work with R&D programs. You want to move to a position of responsibility and become a subject-matter expert in something. You want to aim to a position that does research or architecture. That's where scientific/R&D positions exist.
Either or going all the way to a Ph.D. Though I'm not sure that's what you really want.
Giving him the prize would also 'save the Nobel Peace Prize from the disrepute that incurred by the hasty and ill-conceived decision to award U.S. President Barack Obama' the prize, according to professor Stefan Svallfors
Save the Nobel Peace Prize from disrepute? Too little too late dumbass. To the Stefan Svallfors of the world, where the hell were you when the Nobel Prize was given to Arafat and Rabin, when it was given to Al Gore over Irena Sendler, or when it was never given to Gandhi?
Svallfor's motion has nothing to do with reputation or morality. It's about political posturing. I'm sure and certain that there are people other than Snowden more deserving of an actual peace price that actually matters. I mean, Snowden was more than willing to go on asylum in Venezuela or Cuba, hardly bastions of democracy and decency. People deserving of a true peace price (Gandhi for instance) would never had contemplated such a cognitive dissonant option, regardless of consequences.
So the Nobel Peace Prize = "I HATE AMERICA" Prize.
Not really. It's meant to be a prize for making the world more peaceful. Giving it to Obama was nuts, and it's now not clear if this prize has any point any more.
No. Giving it to Obama was controversial. Giving it to Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, and not giving it to Gandhi, now that was, is and will ever be nuts. Another nuts (read stupid) decision? Giving it to Al Gore while completely ignoring Holocaust savior and survivor Irena Sendler who saved 2,500 Jewish children during WII (acts for which she was detained, tortured, sentenced to death but miraculously survived.)
The Nobel Peace price not about peace. It's about political posturing.
Whats needed is good educators, like Richard Feynman was. What passes for "good educator" these days is pathetic.
We could certainly do with a lot less people going around saying Math is hard. That's defeatist thinking. Math is easy!
"Math is easy". That's one hell of a subjective statement. Some math is easy. Other math can be extremely hard regardless of how you much you like it. As a broad subject, it is mired with difficulties. Those difficulties become greater when you add professors who made it hard on purpose, who favor being "tough" over being "effective", and who come to class already with a mind set in giving A to only 10% of the class, B to 30% of the class and C's, D's and F's to the rest, REGARDLESS OF HOW WELL PEOPLE COULD BE CAPABLE OF DOING AT THE HANDS OF ANOTHER, MUCH BETTER PROFESSOR.
"What they didn't expect is that even if they work hard, they still won't do well."
Purely anecdotal, and I won't mention names other than my own. Many professors are good and go above and beyond what is required of them to get the subject matter through their students' skulls. For example, my Logic for CS professor on his own dime and time chose to meet the entire class for an additional lecture every single Saturday to go over lectures and homeworks and additional exercises. Suffice to say that, collectively our grades and learning skyrocketted. We were fortunately that our CS department didn't care much about grade quotas.
Sadly, not all departments and not all universities are like that. For instance, my Physics II professor was admonished by the Physics department because too many people were getting good greats. IMO, he was the best professor I've ever met, and he made it possible, via his teaching, to get the bulk of the class to have a satisfactory rate of learning. But 3/4 up the semester he was forced to start "curving" and quoting who got A's, who got B's, etc. This was independent of how well he did.
An acquaintance of mine is a full-time Math professor at a local community college who was also teaching part-time at another local 4-year school. It was the same story. Good professor and lots of people getting good grades. Sadly he was constantly harassed about being "tough", that he was "giving away" too many good grades (those grades weren't given away, they were earned. I know the guy, and I know he won't give a grade to someone not deserving it.) Lo and behold he was pretty much forced out of (and made to walk away from) this specific teaching position.
A sad day for the pedagogical sciences and many from-now-on unfortunate students. Being "tough"? Being "tough"? How about being effective for a change. Regardless of the hardness of a topic, if you cannot get the bulk of your students to get good grades, you pretty much suck at teaching. Period.
A lot of students are unfortunately poorly trained in middle and high school to tackle science courses. But that is just a fraction of the problem. There are extremely few topics that are truly that hard. The bulk of freshman, sophomore and even junior science courses are not in that category. A lot of professors simply suck. And I'm not just talking about sucking at teaching, but sucking at being human.
To be deliberately "tough" as opposed to striving in efficiency, that's the hallmark of being an asshole to cover for other, deeper levels of flaws. It is the ultimately form of incompetence IMO.
That's a huge difference. Programmers can program in C/C++, but of course would never do that if C/C++ is not the best tool to solve the problem at hand. You realize that a lot of universities teach functional first? Carnegie mellon adopted functional first in 2011 (don't know about right now).
Lots of universities teaching functional programming first =/= most of the top universities.
This inequality should be obvious to you if you were as brilliant as your words tend to imply you think you are. Whether you like it or not, top shit is written by top developers in C, C++ and Java, not Haskel or Lisp.
My university did that in 2006 with haskell.
So did you graduate recently (ergo talking with little experience) or are you just cheerleading?
So in a way the requirement of (C/C++) favors bad universities.
Non sequitur. Just because you say "in a way" so, that does not make it so. This statement of yours does not follow logically from anything you have said so far. Major failzx0r for a supposedly Computer Scientist IMO.
Let's say the requirement was you have to develop in Visual Basic on a windows machine in visual studio. Then, out of principle, a lot of students won't go.
That might be a "principle", but that does not make it a logical one. A programming language is a programming language. Good programmers can make shit sing with any programming language. Arrogant dilettantes hide their deficiencies behind principles. Besides, there is nothing inherently wrong with Visual Basic (or any of the modern BASIC incarnations.) They were never meant to be the most elegant of things, but tools to get things done.
That people write bad code with it is not truly a function of the language/system. After all, and as I've said, good programmer will code good shit with any language. Bad programmers will exhibit some limited competence in an idiot savant way with one technology while being completely inept with all others.
The same is true with the stupid C/C++ requirement.
Oh grow the hell up dude. Real world, complex systems developed by very intelligent people gets written all the time in C, C++ and Java. Combat, missile and aeronautic systems? Mostly C or C++ (some Ada here and there.) Critical systems like nuclear monitoring stuff or medical devices? Mostly C. Large, fault tolerant, highly available distributed systems? Java (and to a much lesser degree, Erlang).
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy functional programming languages (in particular Haskel and Common Lisp). But if we are going to be pedantic about the qualities of a language, let's get hung on the actual, large scale, uber-complex, real world successes of each. If we are going to be pedantic, let us be with some substance behind it.
I mean John Backus told the world in 1972 that imperative programming might not be the best idea, and people still don't get it in 2013.
Yeah Backus said it, but he never formulated a concrete solution. In reality, is there a significant need for one? From an academic POV, I would love to see one? From a practical POV, at this time, the world does not desperately need one.
That was 42 years ago!
So what? Dijkstra also said eons ago that GOTO was inherently evil. That was a proper response back then to people who resisted the idea of structured programming, and in particular resisted the implications of Böhm-Jacopini's Structured Program Theory.
But as that principle has become well established, the unrestricted demonization of the GOTO statement yielded some pretty stupid coding guidelines (thou shall not have more than one return.) Pretty stupid as there are cases where a GOTO statement is the right thing to do. Ergo why Donald Knuth and many others had a more relaxed, pragmatic view on the subject.
"The Russian Federal Guard Service (FSO), who are in charge of protecting high level politicians like president Putin (amongst others), are 'upgrading' to electric typewriters for writing sensitive documents. They have found out that computers pose a security risk and this is their answer to it. On first sight this seems like a very pragmatic and cost-efficient thing to do.
This kind of reminds me of the Colonial solution to Cylon infiltration in the re-imagined BSG TV series. Obviously not perfect, but also simple and good enough. It is not something we in the U.S. - with so much resources to waste (and fall into further debt) would think about.
However, the FSO has its roots in the KGB and those were the ones who placed keystroke loggers on the popular IBM Selectric electric typewriter 40 years ago! So how much safer does this make them?"
It makes them safer from UNWANTED/EXTERNAL infiltration. Infiltration by them is just fine. In the world of political/military security and intelligence, safety does not mean impenetrability. It means resilient to infiltration that you do not want. This is a completely different requirement from the requirement of "safety" as understood in the commercial/private sector.
Your answer/explanation amounts as such. The OP states that he does not see a reason/explanation for X (implying that such a reason does not exist). You reply by saying that he does not see it because of reason Y (in this case Y=u r racist, but that is beyond the point.) Reason Y implies then that there is a reason/explanation for X (a counter-argument to the OP's statement that there is none.)
It's an argumentative stretch from my part, I know. But it is quite appropriate to your decision to focus, quite conveniently, on the fact that I said "counter-argument" than on the more important fact of you pulling such a cheap and gratuitous race bait at the first opportunity for no apparent reason. Pathetic to say the least.
As an American, it made no sense to me that a person would consider that the respect towards their superior was worth more than the lives of two hundred people.
We see the same here in the good old U.S. of A. buddy. Just in other ways, like mindlessly supporting the Iraq War (which I sadly did) by blindly listening to a president's flawed arguments for it. Being American, it didn't prevent you (or us) from causing the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands just to get a chance to say "Americuh fuck yeah!" didn't it? All cultures have some flaws regarding the worshiping of something to stupid levels (be it national symbols, religion, superiors, the elders, etc.) Don't go believing that because you or I are Americans that we are somehow immune to it.
Also, with the following words you said, you are taking the whole situation literally, whether out of ignorance or with argumentative premeditation, only you know:
As an American, it made no sense to me that a person would consider that the respect towards their superior was worth more than the lives of two hundred people.
First, drop the "As an American". It makes everyone here look like a self-aggrandized nincompoop. Second, it's not like the pilots were "uh, yeah, I'll obey my master and won't think about the lives on board." Complex events must have taken place at that moment. It is possible that indeed there was flawed decision making due to power structures, but even if the problem statement might sound simple, it does not mean that its nature is simple as well.
Now, if you still insist in seeing it in simple black-n-white colors from a nationality-based POV, shit, knock yourself out. That would say more about you than on the problem at hand (and thankfully than on Americans as a whole.)
Easy tiger. Pulling the race card does not make your counter-argument invalid. If all you can do to answer the question is to pull the race card, then you don't quite understand the problem itself.
the main difference when things go bad either people get fired or businesses go under, in government when things go bad those people with no real job get raises.
Not true. Just look at all the Motorola execs who drove the company to the ground, all playing golf and going "caaachiiiiiin!". On a more plebeian note, people do not get fired for chronic incompetence in general. They get shuffled somewhere else.
More to the point, in general very few people are actually utterly incompetent. There are occasional or at worst chronic incompetent people who by sheer brute force gets by. Sometimes their incompetence gets contained by giving them narrow tasks, like ant soldiers, stuff that needs to get done, but uncomplicated enough for them to not fuck it up.
A person has to be utterly incompetent (or being caught doing something so bad, like watching pedo pr0n on a corporate asset) to get fired/let go. I've work in both private industries and in the defense sector. There are competent and incompetent people on both sides of the fence. The private goes "yeah, we are efficient" and the government says "we do stuff no one else can", all the while both get a hard-on while spouting their delusions of grandeur.
Don't worry, they have handguns for the express purpose of "protecting them from intruders". I'm sure it will work out fine.
Err, don't know if you are being sarcastic, but if so, what a great fail. For starters, no. That's not the express purpose. What happens to the person owning a hunting rifle, and nothing more (it is very common, more than what you think or wish to believe.) And even if you were to own one for home defense, that does not mean you carry it with you. Me for example, I own a concealed permit, but I rarely carry.
Meaning, my firearms are at home (disassembled or with a trigger lock for safety.) If we are not home, then, those firearms, however locked they might be, they are home alone. Nothing that can prevent a robber from breaking in and steal them.
Guns are not the absolute line of personal defense. They are part of it in addition to other things. Gun owners who think they are 100% safe with them are idiots. Gun-safety advocates who think gun ownership make things absolutely unsafe are idiots as well.
It is not rocket science, but that doesn't prevent the ideological idiot (be it from the left or from the right) from reducing complex problems to the minimalistically absurd for the sake of rhetoric.
Slashdot Mirror
The American Dream.
Fuck you if you can't make it.
As if that has not been the norm in other parts of the world since the beginning of time.
The reality is that the American Dream is not what it used to be, but it is certainly a much better alternative for a lot of folks in other countries. I'm not saying that we do not have a problem, but it is not one unique of this country, and it is far more fixable than what other countries are facing right now - think Greece, Spain, France or take your pick of any country in Latin America (where I'm from) or Africa.
What are you talking about?
They're decent, honest jobs that pay a fair wage.
That's about as middle class as it gets.
Ummm, no. Physical working conditions are certainly great, but Amazon fulfillment warehouses are notoriously known for driving workers into a state of constant terror due to managerial abuse. A middle class job used to imply a sort of shielding from such things (not totally but certainly more than what you would see and still see at a minimum wage fast food joint.)
Middle class doesn't imply that anymore. And $10-$12 an hour is $24K. That is not below what is typically considered a low-end middle class salary. $24K was middle class twenty years ago. Not anymore. They are just above the limit that forces people to use social services.
I'm not saying these jobs are decent or honest (and thank God they are not Walmart salaries.) Any job with salaries above the poverty line is better than no job or poverty-line job, anytime, any day. And I'm not saying that for the type of job being performed, these are not fair wages. They are.
But let us not call them middle class wages. They are not. The rising cost of living, education and health care, and the continuous shift towards replacing full-time workers with part-time workers (or contractors) have pretty much made sure a $12/h job is not a middle class job anymore.
you're assuming folks want to immigrate. what about those dodging US taxes by *not* becoming US citizens?
<fucking-face-palm/>
What sort of ignoramus demon propelled you to ask such a bestially stupid question? Anyone that works legally in this country, be them citizens, green-card holders, refugees and H-1B visa holders pay the same f* taxes rates as per the same f* tax schedules. People have to be obscenely ignorant of their own laws if they think *not being a citizen* provides a tax advantage to the legal immigrant that qualifies for nationalization.
Here's the thing I don't like about how evolution is presented... researchers also have a new guess about why the spine evolved: They suggest that the creatures might wedge themselves between the trunk of a palm tree and the base of its leaves, then use the strength and flexion of their muscular spine to force open this crevice, revealing insect larvae Um, no. The spine did not evolve to meet the needs of the animal, the animal is alive because it had the traits needed to live.
And how did the animal acquired said traits. Natural selection. By random mutations some animals had traits that provided a slight advantage over others, surviving longer, procreating more often and passing those genes downs where further refinements in the typical life-and-death struggle would reinforce those traits. In the case of this shrews, it started with a slightly stronger back, which throughout generations lead to the unique and amazing spine structures they now posses.
Your statement is neither more accurate than what the article (and the media) say, nor does it paint a full picture of evolution. Their statements and yours are complimentary. It's a goddamned feedback loop. The animals are alive today because their traits allowed them to survive. And those traits took place and refine/reinforce themselves (sometimes to the detriment of others) because they help the animals meet their needs.
Its not a replacement for portable computing... Its a replacement for portable netflix, web browsing, and stupid little kiddie games/apps.
If you do not think that is portable computing for the common 21st century person (which is the definition that matters the most), you need to revisit your understanding of computing as a whole.
Its a replacement for portable netflix, web browsing, and stupid little kiddie games/apps.
That IS portable computing for the majority
Indeed. Pathetically, the nuisance is missed to most self-proclaimed computing geeks.
What's interesting about this story, at least for me, is that iPad sales have tanked. Maybe that suggests that Android on tablets has matured somewhat from the early days of few, clunky tablet apps, and that tablets are commodities now too.
No, it rather means that people are finally understanding that a tablet is a novelty.
No. You are being subjective here. What is a novelty for some (you), it is a commodity for others.
The only time I hear someone talking about how great their iPad (or other tablet) is when they are talking about how much their (less than 10 year old) kid enjoys it
So, it is a commodity then. It has a function, though not one that was originally envisioned (and which goes in tandem with typical definitions of marketable products as items with potentially alternative uses.
Also, how many people (ordinary people that is, not of the otaku kind) talk how great their laptop is, or their lawnmower, or car, or I dunno, vibrator? In opposition to your original premise, when things stop being a novelty and yet retain some time of value or alternative usage, then it becomes a commodity, an item that renders some utility and value that you now take for granted and yet you wish to keep.
For me, I rarely use my either laptop or development desktop at home anymore (both development environments with relative powah!). I simply use my tablet to do what I typically used to do with a laptop or computer at home before - consume information, email, facebook, banking, tracking my sells and purchases on ebay, amazon and gunbroker.com, reading my kindle books, etc.
I've also find my internet consumption more productive since the restricted nature of a tablet prevents me from engaging in thread discussions (compared to the rate I used to before I had a tablet.) One thing that certainly has suffered is my rate of producing content (blogging, mostly.)
It is no longer a novelty, and it has become a commodity, and quite an invisible one to say the least. I've seen other people engaging in similar patterns of media consumption with their tablets (be them ipads, galaxy tabs or whatever.)
And I never really talk about how awesome my tablet is. I don't think I ever did even when the technology was just a novelty. People who have tools that they use successfully and transparently for doing things that are now part of their mundane, daily lives, they don't talk about them. That's a fanboi geek trait (from a particular view of geekery), not a trait of general living.
but the bulk of box-office success ultimately comes down to the most elusive and unquantifiable of things: knowing what the audience wants before it does, and a whole lot of luck.
In particular in our economic times when people think twice before paying a ticket and $8 for a cup of soda, the audience wants quality. Quality, engaging plots (horror, drama, sci/fi, action, commedy, whatever) that keep you at the edge of your seat, or comm. Special effects is just spice. You can put spice on a turd, but that won't turn it into a cut of filet mignon.
I knew that Pacific Rim was going to flop (even though I wanted it to succeed.) I mean, giant robots vs monsters? What the fuck is the main population made off? 4-th graders? I know that in /. (and in the interweebz in general) we like to paint the population as dumb (where population == everyone but us), but that's just bullshit...
Serious...? Uh, this is a student election. He got this sentence because he used "hacker" tactics. .
RTFA. He got sentenced for identity theft and computer fraud. Either you think this guy did not commit identity theft and computer fraud, or you think these two acts should not be punishable by federal law, or you simply do not know WTF is going on.
Wow...just wow.
I can understand him getting kicked out of school, but freaking federal prison for a year for just messing with a STUDENT school election?!?!
Geez, we're getting out of hand here...I've been hearing of small school children getting kicked out of school and having the cops called just for playing in the school play ground using their hands and fingers as 'guns' yelling bang bang at each other.
This is a freaking school election...not a federal / city/state election..it is college, it means NOTHING....
I can see them being punished by the school, but WTF...Federal Prison?!?!?
You are one gynormous ignoramus of the law. He stole people's credentials and broke into a system. These two are federal felonies. Do you live in some alternate universe version of the US where federal law doesn't include computer fraud and identity theft? Or are you simply being obtuse, seeking an opportunity to cry about the abuse of powah!!!!?
Oh, and you will need flexibility to travel. It will be extremely hard (though not impossible) to get such a position without a willingness to travel to laboratories and/or field/test sites.
Scientific Research Positions For Programmers?
Those are few in existence. Unfortunately (and I speak from former experience) a B.S. degree in CS with experience exclusively in the "enterprise" does not lead itself to any research/R&D position of the sort. Plus, research and R&D positions typically go to positions titled as "engineers" or "architects", not programmers. Every good software engineer or architect is a programmer, and any good programmer is an engineer or architect. But sadly, labels rule the world, pigeonholing people in stupid, mutually exclusive roles.
My suggestion is to go back to academia and get a graduate degree. Aim to do research associated with (or funded by) a company. Establish connections. Concurrently to that effort, or after that, go work with a true software engineering firm (say Google.) Aim high. Or, go into a defense or aeronautics company (Lockheed Martin Missile Divisions or Boeing.) Avoid defense contractors that specialize in "integration". Aim for the companies or divisions that actually do cool shit. For this later type of company, a graduate degree in Computer Engineering would be more helpful than CS alone (I'm a CS grad btw, so I'm talking from experiencing my lack of a hardware background.)
Once there (be it in the commercial or defense sectors), aim high, and keep studying, build your connections, and seek out to work with R&D programs. You want to move to a position of responsibility and become a subject-matter expert in something. You want to aim to a position that does research or architecture. That's where scientific/R&D positions exist.
Either or going all the way to a Ph.D. Though I'm not sure that's what you really want.
Ghandhi? Do some research before spouting off.
I guess we see that you're a dumbass as well.
Well, since you say so, it must be so.
Giving him the prize would also 'save the Nobel Peace Prize from the disrepute that incurred by the hasty and ill-conceived decision to award U.S. President Barack Obama' the prize, according to professor Stefan Svallfors
Save the Nobel Peace Prize from disrepute? Too little too late dumbass. To the Stefan Svallfors of the world, where the hell were you when the Nobel Prize was given to Arafat and Rabin, when it was given to Al Gore over Irena Sendler, or when it was never given to Gandhi?
Svallfor's motion has nothing to do with reputation or morality. It's about political posturing. I'm sure and certain that there are people other than Snowden more deserving of an actual peace price that actually matters. I mean, Snowden was more than willing to go on asylum in Venezuela or Cuba, hardly bastions of democracy and decency. People deserving of a true peace price (Gandhi for instance) would never had contemplated such a cognitive dissonant option, regardless of consequences.
So the Nobel Peace Prize = "I HATE AMERICA" Prize.
Not really. It's meant to be a prize for making the world more peaceful. Giving it to Obama was nuts, and it's now not clear if this prize has any point any more.
No. Giving it to Obama was controversial. Giving it to Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, and not giving it to Gandhi, now that was, is and will ever be nuts. Another nuts (read stupid) decision? Giving it to Al Gore while completely ignoring Holocaust savior and survivor Irena Sendler who saved 2,500 Jewish children during WII (acts for which she was detained, tortured, sentenced to death but miraculously survived.)
The Nobel Peace price not about peace. It's about political posturing.
Whats needed is good educators, like Richard Feynman was. What passes for "good educator" these days is pathetic.
We could certainly do with a lot less people going around saying Math is hard. That's defeatist thinking. Math is easy!
"Math is easy". That's one hell of a subjective statement. Some math is easy. Other math can be extremely hard regardless of how you much you like it. As a broad subject, it is mired with difficulties. Those difficulties become greater when you add professors who made it hard on purpose, who favor being "tough" over being "effective", and who come to class already with a mind set in giving A to only 10% of the class, B to 30% of the class and C's, D's and F's to the rest, REGARDLESS OF HOW WELL PEOPLE COULD BE CAPABLE OF DOING AT THE HANDS OF ANOTHER, MUCH BETTER PROFESSOR.
"What they didn't expect is that even if they work hard, they still won't do well."
Purely anecdotal, and I won't mention names other than my own. Many professors are good and go above and beyond what is required of them to get the subject matter through their students' skulls. For example, my Logic for CS professor on his own dime and time chose to meet the entire class for an additional lecture every single Saturday to go over lectures and homeworks and additional exercises. Suffice to say that, collectively our grades and learning skyrocketted. We were fortunately that our CS department didn't care much about grade quotas.
Sadly, not all departments and not all universities are like that. For instance, my Physics II professor was admonished by the Physics department because too many people were getting good greats. IMO, he was the best professor I've ever met, and he made it possible, via his teaching, to get the bulk of the class to have a satisfactory rate of learning. But 3/4 up the semester he was forced to start "curving" and quoting who got A's, who got B's, etc. This was independent of how well he did.
An acquaintance of mine is a full-time Math professor at a local community college who was also teaching part-time at another local 4-year school. It was the same story. Good professor and lots of people getting good grades. Sadly he was constantly harassed about being "tough", that he was "giving away" too many good grades (those grades weren't given away, they were earned. I know the guy, and I know he won't give a grade to someone not deserving it.) Lo and behold he was pretty much forced out of (and made to walk away from) this specific teaching position.
A sad day for the pedagogical sciences and many from-now-on unfortunate students. Being "tough"? Being "tough"? How about being effective for a change. Regardless of the hardness of a topic, if you cannot get the bulk of your students to get good grades, you pretty much suck at teaching. Period.
A lot of students are unfortunately poorly trained in middle and high school to tackle science courses. But that is just a fraction of the problem. There are extremely few topics that are truly that hard. The bulk of freshman, sophomore and even junior science courses are not in that category. A lot of professors simply suck. And I'm not just talking about sucking at teaching, but sucking at being human.
To be deliberately "tough" as opposed to striving in efficiency, that's the hallmark of being an asshole to cover for other, deeper levels of flaws. It is the ultimately form of incompetence IMO.
That's a huge difference. Programmers can program in C/C++, but of course would never do that if C/C++ is not the best tool to solve the problem at hand. You realize that a lot of universities teach functional first? Carnegie mellon adopted functional first in 2011 (don't know about right now).
Lots of universities teaching functional programming first =/= most of the top universities.
This inequality should be obvious to you if you were as brilliant as your words tend to imply you think you are. Whether you like it or not, top shit is written by top developers in C, C++ and Java, not Haskel or Lisp.
My university did that in 2006 with haskell.
So did you graduate recently (ergo talking with little experience) or are you just cheerleading?
So in a way the requirement of (C/C++) favors bad universities.
Non sequitur. Just because you say "in a way" so, that does not make it so. This statement of yours does not follow logically from anything you have said so far. Major failzx0r for a supposedly Computer Scientist IMO.
Let's say the requirement was you have to develop in Visual Basic on a windows machine in visual studio. Then, out of principle, a lot of students won't go.
That might be a "principle", but that does not make it a logical one. A programming language is a programming language. Good programmers can make shit sing with any programming language. Arrogant dilettantes hide their deficiencies behind principles. Besides, there is nothing inherently wrong with Visual Basic (or any of the modern BASIC incarnations.) They were never meant to be the most elegant of things, but tools to get things done.
That people write bad code with it is not truly a function of the language/system. After all, and as I've said, good programmer will code good shit with any language. Bad programmers will exhibit some limited competence in an idiot savant way with one technology while being completely inept with all others.
The same is true with the stupid C/C++ requirement.
Oh grow the hell up dude. Real world, complex systems developed by very intelligent people gets written all the time in C, C++ and Java. Combat, missile and aeronautic systems? Mostly C or C++ (some Ada here and there.) Critical systems like nuclear monitoring stuff or medical devices? Mostly C. Large, fault tolerant, highly available distributed systems? Java (and to a much lesser degree, Erlang).
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy functional programming languages (in particular Haskel and Common Lisp). But if we are going to be pedantic about the qualities of a language, let's get hung on the actual, large scale, uber-complex, real world successes of each. If we are going to be pedantic, let us be with some substance behind it.
I mean John Backus told the world in 1972 that imperative programming might not be the best idea, and people still don't get it in 2013.
Yeah Backus said it, but he never formulated a concrete solution. In reality, is there a significant need for one? From an academic POV, I would love to see one? From a practical POV, at this time, the world does not desperately need one.
That was 42 years ago!
So what? Dijkstra also said eons ago that GOTO was inherently evil. That was a proper response back then to people who resisted the idea of structured programming, and in particular resisted the implications of Böhm-Jacopini's Structured Program Theory.
But as that principle has become well established, the unrestricted demonization of the GOTO statement yielded some pretty stupid coding guidelines (thou shall not have more than one return.) Pretty stupid as there are cases where a GOTO statement is the right thing to do. Ergo why Donald Knuth and many others had a more relaxed, pragmatic view on the subject.
By
"The Russian Federal Guard Service (FSO), who are in charge of protecting high level politicians like president Putin (amongst others), are 'upgrading' to electric typewriters for writing sensitive documents. They have found out that computers pose a security risk and this is their answer to it. On first sight this seems like a very pragmatic and cost-efficient thing to do.
This kind of reminds me of the Colonial solution to Cylon infiltration in the re-imagined BSG TV series. Obviously not perfect, but also simple and good enough. It is not something we in the U.S. - with so much resources to waste (and fall into further debt) would think about.
However, the FSO has its roots in the KGB and those were the ones who placed keystroke loggers on the popular IBM Selectric electric typewriter 40 years ago! So how much safer does this make them?"
It makes them safer from UNWANTED/EXTERNAL infiltration. Infiltration by them is just fine. In the world of political/military security and intelligence, safety does not mean impenetrability. It means resilient to infiltration that you do not want. This is a completely different requirement from the requirement of "safety" as understood in the commercial/private sector.
I suspect having a device that has only one purpose, as compared to a computer, it is much less likely to be compromised and much easier to detect.
^This.
I had a counter-argument???
Your answer/explanation amounts as such. The OP states that he does not see a reason/explanation for X (implying that such a reason does not exist). You reply by saying that he does not see it because of reason Y (in this case Y=u r racist, but that is beyond the point.) Reason Y implies then that there is a reason/explanation for X (a counter-argument to the OP's statement that there is none.)
It's an argumentative stretch from my part, I know. But it is quite appropriate to your decision to focus, quite conveniently, on the fact that I said "counter-argument" than on the more important fact of you pulling such a cheap and gratuitous race bait at the first opportunity for no apparent reason. Pathetic to say the least.
As an American, it made no sense to me that a person would consider that the respect towards their superior was worth more than the lives of two hundred people.
We see the same here in the good old U.S. of A. buddy. Just in other ways, like mindlessly supporting the Iraq War (which I sadly did) by blindly listening to a president's flawed arguments for it. Being American, it didn't prevent you (or us) from causing the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands just to get a chance to say "Americuh fuck yeah!" didn't it? All cultures have some flaws regarding the worshiping of something to stupid levels (be it national symbols, religion, superiors, the elders, etc.) Don't go believing that because you or I are Americans that we are somehow immune to it.
Also, with the following words you said, you are taking the whole situation literally, whether out of ignorance or with argumentative premeditation, only you know:
As an American, it made no sense to me that a person would consider that the respect towards their superior was worth more than the lives of two hundred people.
First, drop the "As an American". It makes everyone here look like a self-aggrandized nincompoop. Second, it's not like the pilots were "uh, yeah, I'll obey my master and won't think about the lives on board." Complex events must have taken place at that moment. It is possible that indeed there was flawed decision making due to power structures, but even if the problem statement might sound simple, it does not mean that its nature is simple as well.
Now, if you still insist in seeing it in simple black-n-white colors from a nationality-based POV, shit, knock yourself out. That would say more about you than on the problem at hand (and thankfully than on Americans as a whole.)
That's because you are racist.
Easy tiger. Pulling the race card does not make your counter-argument invalid. If all you can do to answer the question is to pull the race card, then you don't quite understand the problem itself.
the main difference when things go bad either people get fired or businesses go under, in government when things go bad those people with no real job get raises.
Not true. Just look at all the Motorola execs who drove the company to the ground, all playing golf and going "caaachiiiiiin!". On a more plebeian note, people do not get fired for chronic incompetence in general. They get shuffled somewhere else.
More to the point, in general very few people are actually utterly incompetent. There are occasional or at worst chronic incompetent people who by sheer brute force gets by. Sometimes their incompetence gets contained by giving them narrow tasks, like ant soldiers, stuff that needs to get done, but uncomplicated enough for them to not fuck it up.
A person has to be utterly incompetent (or being caught doing something so bad, like watching pedo pr0n on a corporate asset) to get fired/let go. I've work in both private industries and in the defense sector. There are competent and incompetent people on both sides of the fence. The private goes "yeah, we are efficient" and the government says "we do stuff no one else can", all the while both get a hard-on while spouting their delusions of grandeur.
Don't worry, they have handguns for the express purpose of "protecting them from intruders". I'm sure it will work out fine.
Err, don't know if you are being sarcastic, but if so, what a great fail. For starters, no. That's not the express purpose. What happens to the person owning a hunting rifle, and nothing more (it is very common, more than what you think or wish to believe.) And even if you were to own one for home defense, that does not mean you carry it with you. Me for example, I own a concealed permit, but I rarely carry. Meaning, my firearms are at home (disassembled or with a trigger lock for safety.) If we are not home, then, those firearms, however locked they might be, they are home alone. Nothing that can prevent a robber from breaking in and steal them.
Guns are not the absolute line of personal defense. They are part of it in addition to other things. Gun owners who think they are 100% safe with them are idiots. Gun-safety advocates who think gun ownership make things absolutely unsafe are idiots as well.
It is not rocket science, but that doesn't prevent the ideological idiot (be it from the left or from the right) from reducing complex problems to the minimalistically absurd for the sake of rhetoric.