Technically I could do this, but it's a distraction. If I can't see the side of my own car, then when I look in the mirror I have no frame-of-reference for what I'm looking at.
I used to think this till I tried moving the mirrors out so I couldn''t see the side of my car. No loss of reference. At all. The mirror is a small surface area which is supposed to be showing you dynamic information - cars moving around you. The side of your car is static information. Completely unnecessary information taking up precious mirror space. You get a tremendous amount of reference information from the roadway markings and the movements of the cars around you. And now you've maximized the amount of useful information (cars moving around you) that you're getting from your mirrors.
The environment is dynamic. Taking a mental snapshot then backing up based on that snapshot will ignore targets which have both moved in, and moved out of your travel path. Having a device which relays in realtime, the changing environment, will be much more effective in avoiding those moving targets (e.g. dogs and children).
My understanding is that this is a backhanded way to force display screens, via visual systems, into all cars because many people simply won'tt pay a premium for it - they want a plain car. First, car manufacturers want to heavily profit on their technology investments (remember car stereo markups?) and to recoup their investments - they can likely only do this if they sell the volume. Second, car companies want to sell software and services to you (profitable only in volume, maybe even force ads), and they cannot do so if you didn't pony up the money for their technology. Crazy? Maybe. It was not my idea but I tend to believe it having experienced enough socio-pathic Marketing behaviors in pursuit of profit.
Absolutely there is some sociopathic marketing VP who's looking at it from this angle. But, sales and marketing people optimally want the situation to be win-win. They move product and make profit, and the consumer gets a very useful thing, making him more inclined to go back to said salesman/marketer. Win-win.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Conversely, the road to the promised land is paved with some nasty ones.
We know many drivers are idiots (I wonder sometimes if there's an idiot out there with my name on him). So providing technology which could marginally reduce their lethality in spite of themselves, would help the others who share the environment with them and their multi-ton rolling missiles.
Even the best drivers are subject to momentary foibles as well. Which, in a perfect storm, could result in a tragedy. Any technology which could mitigate the effect of these foibles would serve to reduce human pain and misery. Everything of course is subject to cost/benefit analysis, but IMHO, a couple of hundred bucks imposed on the individual which saves a couple of hundred fatalities and reduces tens of thousands of injuries would be well worth it.
I once had a roommate - a guy - who would bring women back to the dorm room for sex. WHILE I was sleeping in the bed across the room, 10 feet away. I'd wake up from the door opening, normally fall back asleep, but the female voices and the quiet moaning would keep me awake. Now, this happened multiple times. I'd have exams the next day, or whatever - I needed the sleep. One day, after several of these trysts, I woke up in the midst of their flagrante delicto and let them know that the party was over. The roommate was pissed at ME because I... I don't know... something like I "pretended to be asleep." Idiot. He was a tall handsome blond guy whose ass most people kissed, and as a result, quite narcissistic.
Anyway, I don't know the intimate details of this story, but if someone were not infrequently keeping me out of my dorm room with hookups, I'd be pretty effing pissed. However, I'd probably talk to the roommate about it, not set up a video camera and threaten to distribute / actually distribute the video.
If you could send missives over a computer network, and another person could read them at some point in the future, that's email. This fellow is implying he invented THAT functionality. That is classical email.
The correct claim, it seems, is that he created one of the early email-management programs.
The use of all caps versus mixed case only usually matters to compilers. In written English, EMAIL versus email contains no difference in conveyed information. Unless one is an acronym and no one is making that claim. And all-caps does not mean anything in spoken communication.
This fellow seems to be intentionally misleading gullible reporters for self-aggrandizing purposes.
Specifically, he's IMPLYING he invented classical email, and letting the reporters INFER that he did in fact create classical email. When confronted with the truth, he will say he was referring to his program called "EMAIL." It would be like me telling a reporter that I invented THE INTERNET, which is a program which prints "Hello World" seven times, and a reporter then reporting that I invented the Internet.
Newsflash: Today is a horrible oppressive time for the vast majority of people.
Let's keep some perspective folks: "A computer programmer from Canada faces imminent execution in Iran for the actions of another person, which he had no control over, a human rights group says. Saeed Malekpour wrote a program to upload photos to the Internet, an accomplishment that could cost him his life, Amnesty International reported Friday." Source: CNN
Hyperbole has its place, but we ARE in a low intensity conflict with Sunni extremists. Like it or not, it's reality. And that has some consequences. Like the TSA and DHS.
... when he comes up from the IT department and tells you that your password is weak and you need to change it. However, in Assad's Syria, user change* you!
I have a background in C++. I could write PHP like a tentative teenager, write a line, see what it does, write another line, and soon have a working program serving web pages.
Or, I could apply classical code hygiene principles, define a few constants, limit my use of global variables, use objects with methods and properties, global functions,organize my code, think about what I want to do before I do it. There are many patterns one can implement in PHP. I recently implemented a singleton pattern because I wanted to call a query once, capture the data, instantiate the encapsulating object once, and be easily able to access that object's data through multiple other functions in the execution path without multiple database calls and multiple object instantiations.
You can be as tight or as sloppy with PHP as you wanna be. Not being strongly typed doesn't mean one is forced to write sloppy, buggy, opaque sh-t. I've seen the most abstruse, difficult-to-track down bugs in C++. Strongly typed doesn't automatically equal clean, solid, transparent code.
The quality of the end product is dependent, IMHO, on the code hygiene.
Javascript is a powerful complement to PHP, databases and server-based functionality. To do AJAX for example, you have to create the XMLHttpRequest object - created in Javacript in the browser - to send data to the server. And the browser is a very powerful engine. It should be exploited. It can pick up some of the server processing. I hear what you're saying about your code being totally exposed, but you can always keep the proprietary stuff on the server and send down the HTML only in those cases.
I'm a C++ guy and here's how I got conversant with Javascript:
1) Get "Javascript: The Definitive Guide", by Flanagan, published by O'Reilly.
2) Read the chapters on Objects, Functions, Classes and Constructors.
3) Wrap your head around closures.
4) Understand the concept of function prototypes.
It's different than strongly typed languages. Just about everything is an "object" in Javascript. Including functions. Learn the subtle difference between defining and declaring a function - and it's nothing like what that means in C++.
Take from C++ the concept that you can have objects which have methods and properties. Then open your mind and read those chapters I mentioned. And don't try to apply any more C++/strongly-typed preconceptions. The "Definitive Guide" was not pleasure reading. It's not informal and humorous. It's dense. And it's geared towards those with some programming experience. But read those chapters and I think you'll be most effectively able to leverage your experience with strongly typed languages into Javascript.
I think Javascript is great and it is object oriented so you can get jiggy with it.
Also - give yourself an assignment with it and start hacking away.
Actually, the Germans suffered 5.5 million battle KIA while the US suffered 416,000 battle KIA. So the World War II death ratios were actually reversed. It was more like 13 dead Germans to 1 dead American.
This is like giving people free money. They say "I have no money" so you give them $5 dollars. Then they go spend it. Then they complain they have no money again...
It's the old "Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a night. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life" thing.
I've wondered about societies that value harmony and falling into line and "the nail that stands up will be hammered down" attitudes, etc. What kind of leaders do they get? I'm guessing they get real sociopaths since leadership qualities go against the ruling social paradigms in those cultures.
In the US, we certainly have narcissistic assbags who would sell out the country for a dollar as leaders, but leadership here is considered a good thing, and many parents encourage leadership traits in their kids. So you don't have to be a sociopath - oppose the ruling social paradigms - to be a leader here. So how much worse is it societies which actively oppose leadership traits?
However, they have managed this prosperity by going into debt (borrowing from the future). Who knows how long it can keep going.
As I've heard it put, Japan is a bug in search of a windshield. Debt does matter. Money represents some fraction of the wealth in the economy. If a currency loses its credibility as a store of value, well... the the Germans in the 1920s knew how that went.
However... if a country can maintain price stability in the face of massive debt, that could probably keep the game going for a long time. Which makes the Federal Reserve's noises about desiring a bout of inflation to bring down the real value of the debt very puzzling. Fiat currencies get their value from confidence that currency as a store of value. Undermining that in the face of 1:1 debt to GDP ratios seems ill advised.
Have you considered just looking for a straight-up part-time job? If you're an extrovert, you could try your hand at being a real estate agent. You only need to make a few sales a year to bring in some cash. Typically 3% commission on the cost of a house and you pocket your cash at the point of sale. That's one option.
As far as computing goes, if you had some coding experience, you might be able to rustle up a part time gig. Check out dice.com for part-time tech gigs. Go to advanced search - expanded to find part-time work. I think looking for a part-time gig will give you the best opportunity of flexibility in terms of where you work.
I've got no problems with corporations naming names and trying to uncover crimes. I just want to make sure any assertions of violation they make go through the due process of the US legal system. With this, or with copyright infringement or anything else. Plus, it's nice when they haven't corrupted the system by buying politicians who then make laws that dramatically favor them.
Meanwhile the owner of a failed business has probably lost his health, family, etc.
If he funded the business with his own money and didn't create the legal construct known as a corporation or LLC, he personally could lose money. But most likely, he made some cash with a salary paid from the construct, and only the construct is now lying dead on the financial landscape, being picked over by its creditors.
Slashdot Mirror
And if you make money from software, you want the hardware it runs on to be as widely available as possible. Thus you maximize profit.
Not rocket science.
I used to think this till I tried moving the mirrors out so I couldn''t see the side of my car. No loss of reference. At all. The mirror is a small surface area which is supposed to be showing you dynamic information - cars moving around you. The side of your car is static information. Completely unnecessary information taking up precious mirror space. You get a tremendous amount of reference information from the roadway markings and the movements of the cars around you. And now you've maximized the amount of useful information (cars moving around you) that you're getting from your mirrors.
The environment is dynamic. Taking a mental snapshot then backing up based on that snapshot will ignore targets which have both moved in, and moved out of your travel path. Having a device which relays in realtime, the changing environment, will be much more effective in avoiding those moving targets (e.g. dogs and children).
Absolutely there is some sociopathic marketing VP who's looking at it from this angle. But, sales and marketing people optimally want the situation to be win-win. They move product and make profit, and the consumer gets a very useful thing, making him more inclined to go back to said salesman/marketer. Win-win.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Conversely, the road to the promised land is paved with some nasty ones.
We know many drivers are idiots (I wonder sometimes if there's an idiot out there with my name on him). So providing technology which could marginally reduce their lethality in spite of themselves, would help the others who share the environment with them and their multi-ton rolling missiles.
Even the best drivers are subject to momentary foibles as well. Which, in a perfect storm, could result in a tragedy. Any technology which could mitigate the effect of these foibles would serve to reduce human pain and misery. Everything of course is subject to cost/benefit analysis, but IMHO, a couple of hundred bucks imposed on the individual which saves a couple of hundred fatalities and reduces tens of thousands of injuries would be well worth it.
I once had a roommate - a guy - who would bring women back to the dorm room for sex. WHILE I was sleeping in the bed across the room, 10 feet away. I'd wake up from the door opening, normally fall back asleep, but the female voices and the quiet moaning would keep me awake. Now, this happened multiple times. I'd have exams the next day, or whatever - I needed the sleep. One day, after several of these trysts, I woke up in the midst of their flagrante delicto and let them know that the party was over. The roommate was pissed at ME because I... I don't know... something like I "pretended to be asleep." Idiot. He was a tall handsome blond guy whose ass most people kissed, and as a result, quite narcissistic.
Anyway, I don't know the intimate details of this story, but if someone were not infrequently keeping me out of my dorm room with hookups, I'd be pretty effing pissed. However, I'd probably talk to the roommate about it, not set up a video camera and threaten to distribute / actually distribute the video.
A data point.
If you could send missives over a computer network, and another person could read them at some point in the future, that's email. This fellow is implying he invented THAT functionality. That is classical email.
The correct claim, it seems, is that he created one of the early email-management programs.
The use of all caps versus mixed case only usually matters to compilers. In written English, EMAIL versus email contains no difference in conveyed information. Unless one is an acronym and no one is making that claim. And all-caps does not mean anything in spoken communication.
This fellow seems to be intentionally misleading gullible reporters for self-aggrandizing purposes.
Specifically, he's IMPLYING he invented classical email, and letting the reporters INFER that he did in fact create classical email. When confronted with the truth, he will say he was referring to his program called "EMAIL." It would be like me telling a reporter that I invented THE INTERNET, which is a program which prints "Hello World" seven times, and a reporter then reporting that I invented the Internet.
Let's keep some perspective folks: "A computer programmer from Canada faces imminent execution in Iran for the actions of another person, which he had no control over, a human rights group says. Saeed Malekpour wrote a program to upload photos to the Internet, an accomplishment that could cost him his life, Amnesty International reported Friday." Source: CNN
Hyperbole has its place, but we ARE in a low intensity conflict with Sunni extremists. Like it or not, it's reality. And that has some consequences. Like the TSA and DHS.
"If you can persuade your customer to tattoo your name on their chest, they probably will not switch brands."
-- An Indiana University professor on Harley Davidson owners
* And by "change" I mean "shoot."
"Tomorrow never happens. It's all the same fucking day, man." - Janis Joplin
“Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out of it, but that is not the reason we are doing it. ”
Richard P. Feynman
I have a background in C++. I could write PHP like a tentative teenager, write a line, see what it does, write another line, and soon have a working program serving web pages.
Or, I could apply classical code hygiene principles, define a few constants, limit my use of global variables, use objects with methods and properties, global functions,organize my code, think about what I want to do before I do it. There are many patterns one can implement in PHP. I recently implemented a singleton pattern because I wanted to call a query once, capture the data, instantiate the encapsulating object once, and be easily able to access that object's data through multiple other functions in the execution path without multiple database calls and multiple object instantiations.
You can be as tight or as sloppy with PHP as you wanna be. Not being strongly typed doesn't mean one is forced to write sloppy, buggy, opaque sh-t. I've seen the most abstruse, difficult-to-track down bugs in C++. Strongly typed doesn't automatically equal clean, solid, transparent code.
The quality of the end product is dependent, IMHO, on the code hygiene.
Javascript is a powerful complement to PHP, databases and server-based functionality. To do AJAX for example, you have to create the XMLHttpRequest object - created in Javacript in the browser - to send data to the server. And the browser is a very powerful engine. It should be exploited. It can pick up some of the server processing. I hear what you're saying about your code being totally exposed, but you can always keep the proprietary stuff on the server and send down the HTML only in those cases.
I'm a C++ guy and here's how I got conversant with Javascript:
1) Get "Javascript: The Definitive Guide", by Flanagan, published by O'Reilly.
2) Read the chapters on Objects, Functions, Classes and Constructors.
3) Wrap your head around closures.
4) Understand the concept of function prototypes.
It's different than strongly typed languages. Just about everything is an "object" in Javascript. Including functions. Learn the subtle difference between defining and declaring a function - and it's nothing like what that means in C++.
Take from C++ the concept that you can have objects which have methods and properties. Then open your mind and read those chapters I mentioned. And don't try to apply any more C++/strongly-typed preconceptions. The "Definitive Guide" was not pleasure reading. It's not informal and humorous. It's dense. And it's geared towards those with some programming experience. But read those chapters and I think you'll be most effectively able to leverage your experience with strongly typed languages into Javascript.
I think Javascript is great and it is object oriented so you can get jiggy with it.
Also - give yourself an assignment with it and start hacking away.
No relation of course, genetically or content-wise, to Harrison Bergeron.
Actually, the Germans suffered 5.5 million battle KIA while the US suffered 416,000 battle KIA. So the World War II death ratios were actually reversed. It was more like 13 dead Germans to 1 dead American.
It's the old "Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a night. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life" thing.
I've wondered about societies that value harmony and falling into line and "the nail that stands up will be hammered down" attitudes, etc. What kind of leaders do they get? I'm guessing they get real sociopaths since leadership qualities go against the ruling social paradigms in those cultures.
In the US, we certainly have narcissistic assbags who would sell out the country for a dollar as leaders, but leadership here is considered a good thing, and many parents encourage leadership traits in their kids. So you don't have to be a sociopath - oppose the ruling social paradigms - to be a leader here. So how much worse is it societies which actively oppose leadership traits?
The myth of Japan's failure.
However, they have managed this prosperity by going into debt (borrowing from the future). Who knows how long it can keep going.
As I've heard it put, Japan is a bug in search of a windshield. Debt does matter. Money represents some fraction of the wealth in the economy. If a currency loses its credibility as a store of value, well... the the Germans in the 1920s knew how that went.
However... if a country can maintain price stability in the face of massive debt, that could probably keep the game going for a long time. Which makes the Federal Reserve's noises about desiring a bout of inflation to bring down the real value of the debt very puzzling. Fiat currencies get their value from confidence that currency as a store of value. Undermining that in the face of 1:1 debt to GDP ratios seems ill advised.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
Have you considered just looking for a straight-up part-time job? If you're an extrovert, you could try your hand at being a real estate agent. You only need to make a few sales a year to bring in some cash. Typically 3% commission on the cost of a house and you pocket your cash at the point of sale. That's one option.
As far as computing goes, if you had some coding experience, you might be able to rustle up a part time gig. Check out dice.com for part-time tech gigs. Go to advanced search - expanded to find part-time work. I think looking for a part-time gig will give you the best opportunity of flexibility in terms of where you work.
I've got no problems with corporations naming names and trying to uncover crimes. I just want to make sure any assertions of violation they make go through the due process of the US legal system. With this, or with copyright infringement or anything else. Plus, it's nice when they haven't corrupted the system by buying politicians who then make laws that dramatically favor them.
A developer's life (1:44 minutes, SFW)
Haunting really :-)
If he funded the business with his own money and didn't create the legal construct known as a corporation or LLC, he personally could lose money. But most likely, he made some cash with a salary paid from the construct, and only the construct is now lying dead on the financial landscape, being picked over by its creditors.