The point is, the general public has NO reference point on which to judge any particular science topic. No, they don't have to be capable of doing that science themselves, or doing the calculations to believe.
If they understand enough science to know how it works then they can have enough of an understanding to evaluate the theory.
I got into a discussion about AGW in a blog and made the statement that I understood the theory and data. One woman, who obviously didn't, got upset, claimed she could understand the data as well as I and became downright angry when I asked her why then were her conclusions counter to what I said, and mainstream science had to say. I'm far from being an expert, but my entire education has been based on science, not the liberal arts. I admire artists and musicians, or even business men with MBAs who chose their fields because they like those fields. With the exception of the MBA which has potential they realize and understand the likelihood of their chosen field supporting them in the style to which they'd like to become accustomed to is close to nil. They love their field and understand the prospects. The key words are love and understand. However there is absolutely nothing in these fields to aid in understanding science.
Many chose the arts because most of the courses are easier and contain very little math. When asked why she didn't choose science because an OWS demonstrater stated, "because those courses are too hard. I graduated at 50 and earned a full ride for my masters in CS as a GA.
Unfortunately a degree does not make a person intelligent, it just shows they have been educated.
For many years you only needed a degree. This ended up in many useless degrees that taught very little useful information. Gone now are the days of "any degree". The degree needs to be in a specific field, or closely associated field. Still. students run up horrendous debt, earning these useless degrees. No jobs? Continue on and earn an advanced degree in the same useless field and double the debt! I think they need to make practical decision making and basic economics mandatory before allowing entry into any college, or university. I taught many students as a GA, I wondered how many of them ever made it into the university.. Their ability to solve practical problems was abysmal. Out of 200, mostly business students, I had maybe 10 who could type. This was intro to CS, something most on here would find very boring. It was hoe to turn 'em on, turn 'em off, load a program, run a word processor, spread sheet, paint program, and combine the results into a paper. IOW an add for a job with some imaginary company. The best one was for a condom company. The guy was a good writer and understood the assignments. He received a "A". There were probably 10 in there who weren't going to make it. A course, most 5th graders could ace and I had 10 college students who were going to fail. I had one Einstein who took a girls disk out of the computer and turned it in as his own work...with out even changing the name on the paper. He sat between my boos and me in a small, hot room. I'll swear we could have put a drip pan under him and got enough grease to make candles, but he never cracked, so all we could do was dock him (and her) a grade, Her for sharing homework, and him for mistakenly turning in the wrong disk.
So, I can well understand why far more than the majority do not understand science.
I hired in as a sys admin. In a year, I was a Developmental analyst ( fancy name for programmer), and after a total of less than 3 years I was a major project manager. (about 5 pay scales above programmer)
As I understood the work flow, I never had to go the call center route, nor did I hire in at starting wage scale. So I was 3 years ahead on the pay scale when I started Most places want people who have a broad skill set and do not want someone who is a programmer and wants to stay a programmer. They want some one with the broad skill set, who is a fast learner, has the desire and ambition to move up the food chain as rapidly as possible.
If you want to stay a programmer there are only a few locations where that is possible and in most industry, programmers are a long way from the top pay scale. Be careful of "burn 'em and turn 'em" companies. They milk you for all your ideas, then instead of a promotion, show you the door and hire some one new for more ideas...and repeat.
We've known for a long time that ethanol is a polluter. Yes, it lets us recycle CO2, bu that's the only good thing about it. Besides, it takes land out of food production and reduces food for animals, raising meat prices.
At least to start, the same group the Tobacco companies use to combat the health issues were hired to spread confusion and dissent against AGW. Now some of the oil companies "appear" to be coming around. IOW, they see the science as concrete enough they do not want to be seen on the losing side.
The rational in that post made no sense at all. Knowledge must be based on fact, even if just a seed at the start. Knowledge not based on fact is not knowledge, it is faith which has little place in a scientific discussion. People "believe" in something, but they don't know it with out some concrete basis. One of the first steps is learning the difference between faith and science.
I can believe in something because it fits within what I do know, I ca believe in something just because it sounds right, I can believe in something...just because, but I can't know something unless I am able to derive a concrete answer from what information I do have and that information must be fact, or based on fact. No one can know something just because. They can't just know something. That's a belief!. I can know within a given percentage that what "I believe I know is the correct interpretation" In faith, you believe or don't believe, there is no room for statistically saying, this belief is 99% likely to be true while this belief is only 30% likely. It's my faith is right and yours is wrong. We can say (with a great amount of risk) your belief is barbaric and ignores the laws of common decency. Look at the Crusades and "Dark ages". Look at Galileo and the church which is a classic example of the collision between faith, science, and control of power.. One problem today is revisionist history. Science is based on laws and theories. Accepted theories have survived the test of time and gone through many rigorous tests.
I agree with AGW, but disagree with the Carbon taxes and Credits. Encourage conservation (one way or another) convince people to save, not raise the prices. Gas taxes, are generally based on gallons rather than price. The amount of fuel used has dropped to the point where many states are having problems maintaining roads. Not only do most cars on the roads use less, but with higher prices on both food and fuel (neither of which is used in computing the cost of living so inflation numbers are far less than reality), people are driving less. States that are vacation spots are seeing fewer out of state visitors and less income.
Thing is, these are happening naturally, without carbon taxes and credits. A recent study showed that "in general", renewables are reaching parity (they can produce power for the same cost as conventional fuels) with drastic reductions in the subsidies that got them started. . OTOH there are still many of these corporations that will go bankrupt. A good deal of this is the rising cost of energy produced by conventional fuels but the cost of the renewables is coming down while the volume is going up. The same study showed that China has replaced the US as the #1 importer of energy AND the US passed Saudi Arabia as the #1 exporter. Fracking has produced so much natural gas the current price is about 10% that of 10 years ago. Looking at the numbers, I believe converting from crude and coal to natural gas would would more than meet the desired reduction in our carbon footprint with no expensive taxes or credits. We need to drop the demand for importing products that are causing forest land to be converted to farming, particularly when the forest soil is not suited for growing crops. Indirectly, our buying habits are contributing to the third world countries increasing carbon footprints. Had AGW been announced without carbon taxes and credits, I think it's quite likely that we wouldn't see anywhere near the number of deniers that we have now. A large percentage of them see AGW used as a source of money, therefore "it must be a manufactured hoax". Most scientists are not known as people who are good at explaining "things" to non scientific people (the majority of the population) and that same majority is not capable of properly interpreting the raw data on their own, so anyone who can come up with a halfway plausible sounding reason that it's a hoax is believed.. Unfortunately we don't know all the mechanisms by which the climate tries to stay in equilibrium, so when the temp rise flattens out, we need a concrete answer for the deniers. Unfortunately it's unlikely they will accept any reason now. It's like those who still blame Bush for Obama's failures.
Making News instead of Reporting News has been the mainstay for the network news for quite some time. It sorta reduces the credibility on whatever they report on, knowing their "Creative Editing" changes the news to mean what ever they desire.
For some that's science, religion, or lack of religion. After all, Atheism is faith in ones self.
Most of the posts seem to be rantings, for or against "something", but I think INT_QRK is closest with his/her tagging zealots.
I'm pretty much live and let live. I don't care about a person's race religion, or even persuasion, UNTIL they can not engage in a rational discourse. As soon as any religion or group tries to convert me, or get me to accept them by force, intimidation, threats, or shouting down anyone who disagrees with them, I'm likely to vote against anything they want or stand for.
Used to be you could see just how well founded, or secure a person was in their belief, by being able to discuss rationally those beliefs with someone of opposing beliefs.
The liberal arts have mostly been indoctrination for several generations...or more. Some colleges and universities are worse than others with the schools being destroyed by political correctness. Colleges and universities are "supposed to be institutions of learning. They are not democracies to be run by students, or aren't supposed to be.
Be it any religion, atheists, or any other group that feel they have to resort to shouting down the opposition makes them sound like spoiled kids that didn't get their way.. That goes particularly for those who resort to threats, intimidation, and violence.
As for educated voters. I've found many politicians quite willing to listen to the voters. Thing is, very few voters ever contact them. They hear from special interest groups and unhappy voters, but very few "concerned citizens" that have any understanding of the issue about which they write. It's those zealots that get their attention, although, I think the rantings probably head straight for the round file. Most of those go to a co-op with the instructions:"standard form letter". Yes, there are those who have their own agenda and could care less what those who put the in office want.
Although I'm not a conservative, I find the Liberals are far more likely to reply with form letters than the conservatives. Maybe that will change if they lose control of both the house and senate. Conservatives consider me a liberal and liberals consider me a conservative.
Many imported, hand held multimeters are yellow. I've had one for close to 30 years that looks like the Fluke 87-v except it's all yellow. the entire case being yellow. Many brands of hand held meters were yellow quite some time ago.The meter in question does indeed look like the Fluke.
However, Fluke is apparently doing the right thing.
Below is Fluke's response to the situation.
http://hackaday.com/2014/03/20...
There is a big difference between helping and doing their homework.
Many parents do not know how to help with homework. Helping should be fine if it's done as a teacher, teaching how to do the work, not doing it for them.
Reading aloud certainly helps for young children, but having them follow along is even better. . By the time I was 3, I could read quite well. Both of our children could also read well at an early age and at 7th or 8th grade level by the time they started school. Whether this led to them earning a number of scholarships and grants, I don't know, but it certainly didn't hurt.
Many things appear to help. Probably the most helpful is the attitude toward learning and achievement in the home coupled with reading to them in a manner that aids learning to read. But home attitude, encouragement and instilling the ethic that nothing is impossible if they are willing to work for it should be a good start..
People are in general, far less success oriented than they were a couple generations ago. Many do not know the difference in the success of reaching a goal and success oriented. Most think, getting an education, a good job, going home, propping their feet up and having a beer while watching the big game is success oriented, but it's not. It's being a success at reaching a goal, where success oriented people are continually setting new goals, generally more lofty and rewarding goals, but they may be just learning new things. Today, most professionals can expect to change professions at least 2 or three times, while those of my generation expected to learn a profession for life, or possibly change once. So today's professional should seriously consider adding another degree, or trade, as a backup, just-in-case. The more fields you can excel at, the more your hire-ability.
Much of the employee, employer relationship has deteriorated from dedication/loyalty to just employer, employee for 8 hours a day and you see very few people who are truly success oriented.
Some corporations subscribe to a 10% turnover per year. I know one corporation that hired an upper level manager from a company like this. When he applied that philosophy to this particular business, it wrecked the employer, employee relationship and caused them to lose a good deal of specialized people. One comment I heard, after they got rid of him was they would never again hire anyone from that company again. It may, most likely take years to recover from the damage he did, particularly in this economy. "To me" this all ties together. Lack of dedication to the worker, lack of success oriented people leads to a less learning oriented home environment, which leads to less success in schools and so on around the circle.
A large amount of classroom work, (in some schools) is done on laptops. Even their books in junior high and some grade schools.are on computers They need them for the classes.
When I went to college, they banned recorders in the class room. I stuck a Pearl corder in my shirt pocket and an ear bud in my ear. If questioned, I just handed them the ear bud. they heard the noise around us, amplified. They thought it was a hearing aid...which it was...sorta. The only short coming was every time the chalk (before white boards, but after slide rules) hit the blackboard, it was like a gunshot. We couldn't use calculators with memories, now they are required. Never could figure out why CS students were not allowed to work in study groups. Technology changes and the rules change. What was banned, is now required. In some cases the members of the school IT departments are just teachers that know something about computers. (many IT members in these schools do not have degrees in CS)
Only if the IT team is competent!
You don't need to install anything on the students machines to filter all traffic on the network, or block IPs, or blocks of IPs.
Trying to keep teens and porn apart is "almost" a lost cause. They will find a way.
Unless you make defeating your filters an offense leading to expulsion (not many are willing to take it that far), they will find a way and not all intermediate and high schools have the sharpest IT departments. Like another topic (some do and some don't):-))
I find XP to be one of the most user friendly OSs out there for non computer people and that's far more than the rest of us. There are physicians, clinics, hospitals, physical rehab centers, emergency rooms, and even large corporations still on XP. The medical industry is still upgrading to computer systems in many cases. Most of this is custom software unfortunately using proprietary databases. This makes it prohibitively expensive for them to have to upgrade to a new OS AND new custom software after such a major expense. This will likely put our medical records at risk.
When in the hospital, or visiting the PT centers I'm amazed at the lack of computer system knowledge and how awkward some of the software may be. Most of the time I see the XP logo screen saver drifting across the monitor.
At my age, it's nice to see the family doctor who can access any specialists records that are on "the system". It speeds consultation with specialists and reduces mistakes, or conflicting medications. The news only covers the few mistakes, faulty software, and sometimes the lack of an audit trail. Most wouldn't know an audit trail if it bit them in the ass, but they still sensationalize the weak spots and ignore the good points.
Staying with XP, is the logical thing to do when it does all that they want and does it well. The rest of the world looks at a computer system and asks "will it do all I want?" and if the answer is yes, they have no incentive or desire to upgrade. The real world is driven by cost and results. Nothing more. So obsoleting their main OS of choice that leaves them with a costly option of purchasing a new OS, purchasing new custom software, and retraining thousands of people that have to be shown how to turn them on and off, let alone use the new software is creating the potential for a new round of errors in the medical community. To me, this makes any problems the responsibility of MS and these can be "life and death" mistakes. People can blame poor training, but if you deal with the general public you quickly realize that you literally have to take many of these people through each step, "every time" until they learn it by rote and there are many operations. My wife made the mistake of helping some of her friends with their computers. Now, time after time, they call her for help on the same thing. As a project manager, I didn't normally work on end users work stations, but when out in a lab, I'd often be asked about some problem. Often, it'd turn out that when finished, they'd physically turn the computer off, not let it shut down. That took too long.
Remember, we are dealing with an entire group of people that spans from just barely literate to PHDs that have one thing in common. They know absolutely nothing about computers. They know absolutely nothing about support, Operating systems, or vulnerabilities. It's not that they don't want to learn, but particularly in the medical industry, it's a question of available time. Sure, there is a segment that doesn't want to learn, but why should they, if what they have does what they want. There are a lot of infected computers out there with the latest Operating systems. The only thing the user knows is that "this computer sure is slow"
As the government maintains you have no right to expect privacy for your data if it's not on your physical computers, under your physical control(on your property), cloud users can tout all the security they want, but the govt agencies say they can legally peruse your data all they want without a warrant . Think about all conditions a person might not want to share with the govt, because you will.
I purchase Apple stock, not their hardware. It costs too much.
So those who say, "go to Apple". Do so. I can use the money. Their stock hasn't been very healthy as of late and could use a boost.
LINUX and Apple are no longer being ignored by hackers, either.
God, how I hate these Legit sites pushing spam. At first they just sent you their updates, then it was loaded with stuff, but you could opt our. Now the opt out is grayed out. Another trick is putting the download button in an obscure spot with the prominent download buttons for "other stuff". I've found many that send me to CNET which has most of the opt outs, grayed out. I've had to spend hours getting Yahoo and its hooks cleaned off my wife's computer. The Ask toolbar is annoying, but Yahoo takes over your browsers (every one that's installed), home page0(set the protection to prevent the change in "options"), searches and is a royal PITA to get rid of. I doubt the average computer user could do it An uninstall leaves many directories full of files behind.. In several instances I had to install a clean download of the browser after uninstalling the original(s) and cleaning the files off the computer, I mean wiping, not just deleting
I told my wife "from now on, when a prompter wants to up date something, write the name down, tell it no, and have me go through the updates later." That's a lot easier than cleaning bucket loads of shit off the computer later. Yahoo should be listed as a major spammer as should these other programs that are organized to trick the user into downloading and installing useless memory hogs they didn't want. Much of this stuff is more than older computers can handle.
I worked those hours because I liked my job! My boss was well aware of the work I did. As a result I was given great flexibility and freedom as well as advancements...and pay. I worked for good people and had good people working for me. 20 years ago, I spent as much time logged in, working from home as I did at the plant, often more. OTOH I sometimes went to work at 10:00 and left early to make up for it. They knew they would get another 6 or 8 hours of productive work from me at home.
The first step would be to change the public school system and stop teaching to the lowest denominator. Avoid any history books newer than 1960. IE: Revisionist History, Put emphasis on the 3 Rs. Give the kids a challenge that will make them want to learn instead of endure until they can get out.
"Used to be", first to market could get the patent. A large chemical corporation chose to keep their product proprietary on the gamble no one would figure the process out until well after the patent would have run out. Another large and well known corporation finally figured out the process and applied for a patent. They then sued the original company who had been selling the product line for something like 50 years. It was thrown out of court. Strangely, not too long after that the law was changed from first to market to first to patent. I don' know, but it may be that way for copyright now days. They aren't "supposed" to be able to copyright common, or name that are generic.
Text based is about as simple as you can get for the programmer. Machine code is as simple as you can get for the CPU. Then we have assembly code using mnemonics, but today’s CPUs unlike the old 6502s and 8086s have a huge number of mnemonics and individual machine code instructions.
We either “compile” text into machine code, or text is “translated” at run time as in BASIC. Translators are not very efficient, while a compiler can be quite complex.
To write out an algorithm, convert it to a Nassi Schneidernan flow chart, and then write the source code to be compiled is complex, but it's about as simple as you ate going to get. As already mentioned, To simplify the job for the programmer gets very complex. The simpler you make the job, the more complicated the compiler becomes. Like writing a program to be user friendly gets complicated...fast! If you have a degree in CS or CIS, try unraveling the code written by a EE or Chem-E. It's not that their code is bad (many would argue that point) but they think differently than we do and approach problems differently.
From the question, I take it, you have learned to write code, but programming, is problem solving and CS is being able to analyze code for the fastest and most efficient code to do a job. One of the first graduate courses is the design and analysis of algorithms. You start out with 5 different sorts. Using a random number generator, you generate strings of 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000 in lengths. You also have the same lengths in order and reverse order.
The goal is to determine which sort is the fastest for each of the strings that are in order, reverse order and random, mathematically. Then you write and run the sorts on the strings to prove the math. You basically end up with a 5 level simultaneous equations which is relatively simple.
You quickly learn there is a lot more to programming than just being able to write code. It varies with companies, but I typically had people come in and ask for a program to do something. It was up to me to write the algorithm, have them tell me if that was truly what they wanted (it often wasn't), and work out the details. Some areas work in teams on large projects, others may have a programmer or two work on a project. I became a project manager in about 2 to 2.5 years.
Generally speaking CS is highly math oriented, where CIS is more writing programs. With CS I only had to take two more courses to earn a minor in Math.
Generally speaking you need a pretty good background to get a job as a programmer.(and good grades) The Type and size of programs as well a jobs varies significantly as do the languages used. You may take all that math and never use it once out of college, or you may spend a substantial portion of your Time analyzing programs.
Vetting, Vetting, who does the vetting?
We certainly don't want the government to be the lord and master of what we can see, hear, and read. That is one of the first steps to a totalitarian state.
Still, as the press has virtually stopped reporting and now make the news. Rather than talking heads doing the partisan bit, the reporting is biased to the point of absurdity. Reporters ceased being reporters some time back and now report the news to favor, or denounce candidates, the constitution, people's life style, and religion. They discredit anyone who disagrees with them, be it left or right. So the networks can not be trusted to present stories in an unbiased light either. At present many of the networks just parrot the present administration's views. As I said, that's the talking heads job, not the reporter's.
It would certainly be nice to be able to find unbiased news. If the FCC stuck by its own rules, they’d revoke the licenses of most radio and TV networks.
I'm old enough that I can remember when we had real reporters, not cheerleaders for one side or the other. In general they didn’t distort the facts to suit their goals. Today, it takes no more than a few sentences to know where the reporter is headed with a story. That's the job of the talking heads, not the reporter. Theirs is to write the story, not their opinion, nor to distort the facts, or make them up where none exist. Cast doubt on the opposition. Most of these so called reporters wouldn't have been able to keep a job 30 years ago.
“The News” is no longer a place where a person can stay informed. It is only a presentation for the left or right.
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Almost all WD drives over the last 16 years.. With 5 computers loaded, that's a total of 28 drives in service. Even with WD they have a number of different ratings. I typically go for the ones tested for several million hours MTBF and the computers vary from 24 X 7 to about half that, but mostly 24 X 7. In all those years, I've only had 3 drive failures. HOWEVER: I have to add that as drives and CP/us have gone down in price and up in capacity, I've upgraded HDs every couple of years to keep up with the CPU capacity, AVI work, and Photography, with over 30,000 high resolution scans and high res digital images running 35 MB per photo, or more.. I think I counted 32 HDs, mixed, Parallel and SATA in the pile. A few old ones starting with an 80 GB, a 160 and about 4 200s. There's a bunch of 250s and 6 or 7 500s. Most of my drives in service are 2 TB, and there are 4 1 TB and 2 4TB. I hit the old drives with a bulk tape eraser, which has always rendered them beyond economical repair. To erase them using the suggested methods that would leave them useable, but none of the data recoverable would take a day or two per drive, so I just trash them and then use them for target practice. If you can get a new 500 Gig HD for less than 50 bucks, it's not worth spending a day or two to wipe them for what they are worth,
Even at 3 years, that's 8766 hrs per year, or 26,298 hours running 24 X 7 and a long way from even getting near the MTBF ratings for the drive. I no longer purchase drives without published MTBFs and those are 2 million or more. This makes me glad that My HDs have no where near the failure rate of cell phones, or head phones. Both of those suffer a high mortality rate around here. Those and TVs I purchase only at Brick and mortar stores where I can try them and get the extended warranty. Every headphone set and cell phone has made the extra insurance worth it. I just hand them a bag of parts and they replace them. My present cell phone is less than 6 Mo old and it's getting difficult to read the display.
They certainly did not follow systematic thinking, or know what internal documentation is. Some of it appeared to not only be spaghetti code, but written to become a mobius strip. OTOH to call a computer language a foreign language is ridiculous. They may be foreign to their way of thinking, but in no way do they meet the definition of a foreign language.
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The point is, the general public has NO reference point on which to judge any particular science topic. No, they don't have to be capable of doing that science themselves, or doing the calculations to believe. If they understand enough science to know how it works then they can have enough of an understanding to evaluate the theory. I got into a discussion about AGW in a blog and made the statement that I understood the theory and data. One woman, who obviously didn't, got upset, claimed she could understand the data as well as I and became downright angry when I asked her why then were her conclusions counter to what I said, and mainstream science had to say. I'm far from being an expert, but my entire education has been based on science, not the liberal arts. I admire artists and musicians, or even business men with MBAs who chose their fields because they like those fields. With the exception of the MBA which has potential they realize and understand the likelihood of their chosen field supporting them in the style to which they'd like to become accustomed to is close to nil. They love their field and understand the prospects. The key words are love and understand. However there is absolutely nothing in these fields to aid in understanding science. Many chose the arts because most of the courses are easier and contain very little math. When asked why she didn't choose science because an OWS demonstrater stated, "because those courses are too hard. I graduated at 50 and earned a full ride for my masters in CS as a GA. Unfortunately a degree does not make a person intelligent, it just shows they have been educated. For many years you only needed a degree. This ended up in many useless degrees that taught very little useful information. Gone now are the days of "any degree". The degree needs to be in a specific field, or closely associated field. Still. students run up horrendous debt, earning these useless degrees. No jobs? Continue on and earn an advanced degree in the same useless field and double the debt! I think they need to make practical decision making and basic economics mandatory before allowing entry into any college, or university. I taught many students as a GA, I wondered how many of them ever made it into the university.. Their ability to solve practical problems was abysmal. Out of 200, mostly business students, I had maybe 10 who could type. This was intro to CS, something most on here would find very boring. It was hoe to turn 'em on, turn 'em off, load a program, run a word processor, spread sheet, paint program, and combine the results into a paper. IOW an add for a job with some imaginary company. The best one was for a condom company. The guy was a good writer and understood the assignments. He received a "A". There were probably 10 in there who weren't going to make it. A course, most 5th graders could ace and I had 10 college students who were going to fail. I had one Einstein who took a girls disk out of the computer and turned it in as his own work...with out even changing the name on the paper. He sat between my boos and me in a small, hot room. I'll swear we could have put a drip pan under him and got enough grease to make candles, but he never cracked, so all we could do was dock him (and her) a grade, Her for sharing homework, and him for mistakenly turning in the wrong disk. So, I can well understand why far more than the majority do not understand science.
I hired in as a sys admin. In a year, I was a Developmental analyst ( fancy name for programmer), and after a total of less than 3 years I was a major project manager. (about 5 pay scales above programmer) As I understood the work flow, I never had to go the call center route, nor did I hire in at starting wage scale. So I was 3 years ahead on the pay scale when I started Most places want people who have a broad skill set and do not want someone who is a programmer and wants to stay a programmer. They want some one with the broad skill set, who is a fast learner, has the desire and ambition to move up the food chain as rapidly as possible. If you want to stay a programmer there are only a few locations where that is possible and in most industry, programmers are a long way from the top pay scale. Be careful of "burn 'em and turn 'em" companies. They milk you for all your ideas, then instead of a promotion, show you the door and hire some one new for more ideas...and repeat.
We've known for a long time that ethanol is a polluter. Yes, it lets us recycle CO2, bu that's the only good thing about it. Besides, it takes land out of food production and reduces food for animals, raising meat prices.
I can purchase a 500 Gig SSD for less than a 500 Gig Hd as of 4 or 5 years ago. That's plenty of high speed room for the OS, Program, and mail.
At least to start, the same group the Tobacco companies use to combat the health issues were hired to spread confusion and dissent against AGW. Now some of the oil companies "appear" to be coming around. IOW, they see the science as concrete enough they do not want to be seen on the losing side.
The rational in that post made no sense at all. Knowledge must be based on fact, even if just a seed at the start. Knowledge not based on fact is not knowledge, it is faith which has little place in a scientific discussion. People "believe" in something, but they don't know it with out some concrete basis. One of the first steps is learning the difference between faith and science. I can believe in something because it fits within what I do know, I ca believe in something just because it sounds right, I can believe in something...just because, but I can't know something unless I am able to derive a concrete answer from what information I do have and that information must be fact, or based on fact. No one can know something just because. They can't just know something. That's a belief!. I can know within a given percentage that what "I believe I know is the correct interpretation" In faith, you believe or don't believe, there is no room for statistically saying, this belief is 99% likely to be true while this belief is only 30% likely. It's my faith is right and yours is wrong. We can say (with a great amount of risk) your belief is barbaric and ignores the laws of common decency. Look at the Crusades and "Dark ages". Look at Galileo and the church which is a classic example of the collision between faith, science, and control of power.. One problem today is revisionist history. Science is based on laws and theories. Accepted theories have survived the test of time and gone through many rigorous tests.
I agree with AGW, but disagree with the Carbon taxes and Credits. Encourage conservation (one way or another) convince people to save, not raise the prices. Gas taxes, are generally based on gallons rather than price. The amount of fuel used has dropped to the point where many states are having problems maintaining roads. Not only do most cars on the roads use less, but with higher prices on both food and fuel (neither of which is used in computing the cost of living so inflation numbers are far less than reality), people are driving less. States that are vacation spots are seeing fewer out of state visitors and less income. Thing is, these are happening naturally, without carbon taxes and credits. A recent study showed that "in general", renewables are reaching parity (they can produce power for the same cost as conventional fuels) with drastic reductions in the subsidies that got them started. . OTOH there are still many of these corporations that will go bankrupt. A good deal of this is the rising cost of energy produced by conventional fuels but the cost of the renewables is coming down while the volume is going up. The same study showed that China has replaced the US as the #1 importer of energy AND the US passed Saudi Arabia as the #1 exporter. Fracking has produced so much natural gas the current price is about 10% that of 10 years ago. Looking at the numbers, I believe converting from crude and coal to natural gas would would more than meet the desired reduction in our carbon footprint with no expensive taxes or credits. We need to drop the demand for importing products that are causing forest land to be converted to farming, particularly when the forest soil is not suited for growing crops. Indirectly, our buying habits are contributing to the third world countries increasing carbon footprints. Had AGW been announced without carbon taxes and credits, I think it's quite likely that we wouldn't see anywhere near the number of deniers that we have now. A large percentage of them see AGW used as a source of money, therefore "it must be a manufactured hoax". Most scientists are not known as people who are good at explaining "things" to non scientific people (the majority of the population) and that same majority is not capable of properly interpreting the raw data on their own, so anyone who can come up with a halfway plausible sounding reason that it's a hoax is believed.. Unfortunately we don't know all the mechanisms by which the climate tries to stay in equilibrium, so when the temp rise flattens out, we need a concrete answer for the deniers. Unfortunately it's unlikely they will accept any reason now. It's like those who still blame Bush for Obama's failures.
Making News instead of Reporting News has been the mainstay for the network news for quite some time. It sorta reduces the credibility on whatever they report on, knowing their "Creative Editing" changes the news to mean what ever they desire.
For some that's science, religion, or lack of religion. After all, Atheism is faith in ones self. Most of the posts seem to be rantings, for or against "something", but I think INT_QRK is closest with his/her tagging zealots. I'm pretty much live and let live. I don't care about a person's race religion, or even persuasion, UNTIL they can not engage in a rational discourse. As soon as any religion or group tries to convert me, or get me to accept them by force, intimidation, threats, or shouting down anyone who disagrees with them, I'm likely to vote against anything they want or stand for. Used to be you could see just how well founded, or secure a person was in their belief, by being able to discuss rationally those beliefs with someone of opposing beliefs. The liberal arts have mostly been indoctrination for several generations...or more. Some colleges and universities are worse than others with the schools being destroyed by political correctness. Colleges and universities are "supposed to be institutions of learning. They are not democracies to be run by students, or aren't supposed to be. Be it any religion, atheists, or any other group that feel they have to resort to shouting down the opposition makes them sound like spoiled kids that didn't get their way.. That goes particularly for those who resort to threats, intimidation, and violence. As for educated voters. I've found many politicians quite willing to listen to the voters. Thing is, very few voters ever contact them. They hear from special interest groups and unhappy voters, but very few "concerned citizens" that have any understanding of the issue about which they write. It's those zealots that get their attention, although, I think the rantings probably head straight for the round file. Most of those go to a co-op with the instructions:"standard form letter". Yes, there are those who have their own agenda and could care less what those who put the in office want. Although I'm not a conservative, I find the Liberals are far more likely to reply with form letters than the conservatives. Maybe that will change if they lose control of both the house and senate. Conservatives consider me a liberal and liberals consider me a conservative.
It hasn't affected my beliefs one bit except for Learning the goals of of one are "convert or die".
Many imported, hand held multimeters are yellow. I've had one for close to 30 years that looks like the Fluke 87-v except it's all yellow. the entire case being yellow. Many brands of hand held meters were yellow quite some time ago.The meter in question does indeed look like the Fluke. However, Fluke is apparently doing the right thing. Below is Fluke's response to the situation. http://hackaday.com/2014/03/20...
There is a big difference between helping and doing their homework. Many parents do not know how to help with homework. Helping should be fine if it's done as a teacher, teaching how to do the work, not doing it for them. Reading aloud certainly helps for young children, but having them follow along is even better. . By the time I was 3, I could read quite well. Both of our children could also read well at an early age and at 7th or 8th grade level by the time they started school. Whether this led to them earning a number of scholarships and grants, I don't know, but it certainly didn't hurt. Many things appear to help. Probably the most helpful is the attitude toward learning and achievement in the home coupled with reading to them in a manner that aids learning to read. But home attitude, encouragement and instilling the ethic that nothing is impossible if they are willing to work for it should be a good start.. People are in general, far less success oriented than they were a couple generations ago. Many do not know the difference in the success of reaching a goal and success oriented. Most think, getting an education, a good job, going home, propping their feet up and having a beer while watching the big game is success oriented, but it's not. It's being a success at reaching a goal, where success oriented people are continually setting new goals, generally more lofty and rewarding goals, but they may be just learning new things. Today, most professionals can expect to change professions at least 2 or three times, while those of my generation expected to learn a profession for life, or possibly change once. So today's professional should seriously consider adding another degree, or trade, as a backup, just-in-case. The more fields you can excel at, the more your hire-ability. Much of the employee, employer relationship has deteriorated from dedication/loyalty to just employer, employee for 8 hours a day and you see very few people who are truly success oriented. Some corporations subscribe to a 10% turnover per year. I know one corporation that hired an upper level manager from a company like this. When he applied that philosophy to this particular business, it wrecked the employer, employee relationship and caused them to lose a good deal of specialized people. One comment I heard, after they got rid of him was they would never again hire anyone from that company again. It may, most likely take years to recover from the damage he did, particularly in this economy. "To me" this all ties together. Lack of dedication to the worker, lack of success oriented people leads to a less learning oriented home environment, which leads to less success in schools and so on around the circle.
At least in grade and high schools they don't teach in auditoriums. AFAIK. As a GA at the university, I taught 5 classes of 40 students each.
A large amount of classroom work, (in some schools) is done on laptops. Even their books in junior high and some grade schools.are on computers They need them for the classes. When I went to college, they banned recorders in the class room. I stuck a Pearl corder in my shirt pocket and an ear bud in my ear. If questioned, I just handed them the ear bud. they heard the noise around us, amplified. They thought it was a hearing aid...which it was...sorta. The only short coming was every time the chalk (before white boards, but after slide rules) hit the blackboard, it was like a gunshot. We couldn't use calculators with memories, now they are required. Never could figure out why CS students were not allowed to work in study groups. Technology changes and the rules change. What was banned, is now required. In some cases the members of the school IT departments are just teachers that know something about computers. (many IT members in these schools do not have degrees in CS)
Sharing usually results in a rapid closing of the hole.
Only if the IT team is competent! You don't need to install anything on the students machines to filter all traffic on the network, or block IPs, or blocks of IPs. Trying to keep teens and porn apart is "almost" a lost cause. They will find a way. Unless you make defeating your filters an offense leading to expulsion (not many are willing to take it that far), they will find a way and not all intermediate and high schools have the sharpest IT departments. Like another topic (some do and some don't) :-))
I find XP to be one of the most user friendly OSs out there for non computer people and that's far more than the rest of us. There are physicians, clinics, hospitals, physical rehab centers, emergency rooms, and even large corporations still on XP. The medical industry is still upgrading to computer systems in many cases. Most of this is custom software unfortunately using proprietary databases. This makes it prohibitively expensive for them to have to upgrade to a new OS AND new custom software after such a major expense. This will likely put our medical records at risk. When in the hospital, or visiting the PT centers I'm amazed at the lack of computer system knowledge and how awkward some of the software may be. Most of the time I see the XP logo screen saver drifting across the monitor. At my age, it's nice to see the family doctor who can access any specialists records that are on "the system". It speeds consultation with specialists and reduces mistakes, or conflicting medications. The news only covers the few mistakes, faulty software, and sometimes the lack of an audit trail. Most wouldn't know an audit trail if it bit them in the ass, but they still sensationalize the weak spots and ignore the good points. Staying with XP, is the logical thing to do when it does all that they want and does it well. The rest of the world looks at a computer system and asks "will it do all I want?" and if the answer is yes, they have no incentive or desire to upgrade. The real world is driven by cost and results. Nothing more. So obsoleting their main OS of choice that leaves them with a costly option of purchasing a new OS, purchasing new custom software, and retraining thousands of people that have to be shown how to turn them on and off, let alone use the new software is creating the potential for a new round of errors in the medical community. To me, this makes any problems the responsibility of MS and these can be "life and death" mistakes. People can blame poor training, but if you deal with the general public you quickly realize that you literally have to take many of these people through each step, "every time" until they learn it by rote and there are many operations. My wife made the mistake of helping some of her friends with their computers. Now, time after time, they call her for help on the same thing. As a project manager, I didn't normally work on end users work stations, but when out in a lab, I'd often be asked about some problem. Often, it'd turn out that when finished, they'd physically turn the computer off, not let it shut down. That took too long. Remember, we are dealing with an entire group of people that spans from just barely literate to PHDs that have one thing in common. They know absolutely nothing about computers. They know absolutely nothing about support, Operating systems, or vulnerabilities. It's not that they don't want to learn, but particularly in the medical industry, it's a question of available time. Sure, there is a segment that doesn't want to learn, but why should they, if what they have does what they want. There are a lot of infected computers out there with the latest Operating systems. The only thing the user knows is that "this computer sure is slow" As the government maintains you have no right to expect privacy for your data if it's not on your physical computers, under your physical control(on your property), cloud users can tout all the security they want, but the govt agencies say they can legally peruse your data all they want without a warrant . Think about all conditions a person might not want to share with the govt, because you will. I purchase Apple stock, not their hardware. It costs too much. So those who say, "go to Apple". Do so. I can use the money. Their stock hasn't been very healthy as of late and could use a boost. LINUX and Apple are no longer being ignored by hackers, either.
God, how I hate these Legit sites pushing spam. At first they just sent you their updates, then it was loaded with stuff, but you could opt our. Now the opt out is grayed out. Another trick is putting the download button in an obscure spot with the prominent download buttons for "other stuff". I've found many that send me to CNET which has most of the opt outs, grayed out. I've had to spend hours getting Yahoo and its hooks cleaned off my wife's computer. The Ask toolbar is annoying, but Yahoo takes over your browsers (every one that's installed), home page0(set the protection to prevent the change in "options"), searches and is a royal PITA to get rid of. I doubt the average computer user could do it An uninstall leaves many directories full of files behind.. In several instances I had to install a clean download of the browser after uninstalling the original(s) and cleaning the files off the computer, I mean wiping, not just deleting I told my wife "from now on, when a prompter wants to up date something, write the name down, tell it no, and have me go through the updates later." That's a lot easier than cleaning bucket loads of shit off the computer later. Yahoo should be listed as a major spammer as should these other programs that are organized to trick the user into downloading and installing useless memory hogs they didn't want. Much of this stuff is more than older computers can handle.
I worked those hours because I liked my job! My boss was well aware of the work I did. As a result I was given great flexibility and freedom as well as advancements...and pay. I worked for good people and had good people working for me. 20 years ago, I spent as much time logged in, working from home as I did at the plant, often more. OTOH I sometimes went to work at 10:00 and left early to make up for it. They knew they would get another 6 or 8 hours of productive work from me at home.
The first step would be to change the public school system and stop teaching to the lowest denominator. Avoid any history books newer than 1960. IE: Revisionist History, Put emphasis on the 3 Rs. Give the kids a challenge that will make them want to learn instead of endure until they can get out.
"Used to be", first to market could get the patent. A large chemical corporation chose to keep their product proprietary on the gamble no one would figure the process out until well after the patent would have run out. Another large and well known corporation finally figured out the process and applied for a patent. They then sued the original company who had been selling the product line for something like 50 years. It was thrown out of court. Strangely, not too long after that the law was changed from first to market to first to patent. I don' know, but it may be that way for copyright now days. They aren't "supposed" to be able to copyright common, or name that are generic.
Text based is about as simple as you can get for the programmer. Machine code is as simple as you can get for the CPU. Then we have assembly code using mnemonics, but today’s CPUs unlike the old 6502s and 8086s have a huge number of mnemonics and individual machine code instructions. We either “compile” text into machine code, or text is “translated” at run time as in BASIC. Translators are not very efficient, while a compiler can be quite complex. To write out an algorithm, convert it to a Nassi Schneidernan flow chart, and then write the source code to be compiled is complex, but it's about as simple as you ate going to get. As already mentioned, To simplify the job for the programmer gets very complex. The simpler you make the job, the more complicated the compiler becomes. Like writing a program to be user friendly gets complicated ...fast! If you have a degree in CS or CIS, try unraveling the code written by a EE or Chem-E. It's not that their code is bad (many would argue that point) but they think differently than we do and approach problems differently.
From the question, I take it, you have learned to write code, but programming, is problem solving and CS is being able to analyze code for the fastest and most efficient code to do a job. One of the first graduate courses is the design and analysis of algorithms. You start out with 5 different sorts. Using a random number generator, you generate strings of 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000 in lengths. You also have the same lengths in order and reverse order.
The goal is to determine which sort is the fastest for each of the strings that are in order, reverse order and random, mathematically. Then you write and run the sorts on the strings to prove the math. You basically end up with a 5 level simultaneous equations which is relatively simple.
You quickly learn there is a lot more to programming than just being able to write code. It varies with companies, but I typically had people come in and ask for a program to do something. It was up to me to write the algorithm, have them tell me if that was truly what they wanted (it often wasn't), and work out the details. Some areas work in teams on large projects, others may have a programmer or two work on a project. I became a project manager in about 2 to 2.5 years.
Generally speaking CS is highly math oriented, where CIS is more writing programs. With CS I only had to take two more courses to earn a minor in Math.
Generally speaking you need a pretty good background to get a job as a programmer.(and good grades) The Type and size of programs as well a jobs varies significantly as do the languages used. You may take all that math and never use it once out of college, or you may spend a substantial portion of your Time analyzing programs.
Vetting, Vetting, who does the vetting? We certainly don't want the government to be the lord and master of what we can see, hear, and read. That is one of the first steps to a totalitarian state. Still, as the press has virtually stopped reporting and now make the news. Rather than talking heads doing the partisan bit, the reporting is biased to the point of absurdity. Reporters ceased being reporters some time back and now report the news to favor, or denounce candidates, the constitution, people's life style, and religion. They discredit anyone who disagrees with them, be it left or right. So the networks can not be trusted to present stories in an unbiased light either. At present many of the networks just parrot the present administration's views. As I said, that's the talking heads job, not the reporter's. It would certainly be nice to be able to find unbiased news. If the FCC stuck by its own rules, they’d revoke the licenses of most radio and TV networks. I'm old enough that I can remember when we had real reporters, not cheerleaders for one side or the other. In general they didn’t distort the facts to suit their goals. Today, it takes no more than a few sentences to know where the reporter is headed with a story. That's the job of the talking heads, not the reporter. Theirs is to write the story, not their opinion, nor to distort the facts, or make them up where none exist. Cast doubt on the opposition. Most of these so called reporters wouldn't have been able to keep a job 30 years ago. “The News” is no longer a place where a person can stay informed. It is only a presentation for the left or right. .
Almost all WD drives over the last 16 years.. With 5 computers loaded, that's a total of 28 drives in service. Even with WD they have a number of different ratings. I typically go for the ones tested for several million hours MTBF and the computers vary from 24 X 7 to about half that, but mostly 24 X 7. In all those years, I've only had 3 drive failures. HOWEVER: I have to add that as drives and CP/us have gone down in price and up in capacity, I've upgraded HDs every couple of years to keep up with the CPU capacity, AVI work, and Photography, with over 30,000 high resolution scans and high res digital images running 35 MB per photo, or more.. I think I counted 32 HDs, mixed, Parallel and SATA in the pile. A few old ones starting with an 80 GB, a 160 and about 4 200s. There's a bunch of 250s and 6 or 7 500s. Most of my drives in service are 2 TB, and there are 4 1 TB and 2 4TB. I hit the old drives with a bulk tape eraser, which has always rendered them beyond economical repair. To erase them using the suggested methods that would leave them useable, but none of the data recoverable would take a day or two per drive, so I just trash them and then use them for target practice. If you can get a new 500 Gig HD for less than 50 bucks, it's not worth spending a day or two to wipe them for what they are worth, Even at 3 years, that's 8766 hrs per year, or 26,298 hours running 24 X 7 and a long way from even getting near the MTBF ratings for the drive. I no longer purchase drives without published MTBFs and those are 2 million or more. This makes me glad that My HDs have no where near the failure rate of cell phones, or head phones. Both of those suffer a high mortality rate around here. Those and TVs I purchase only at Brick and mortar stores where I can try them and get the extended warranty. Every headphone set and cell phone has made the extra insurance worth it. I just hand them a bag of parts and they replace them. My present cell phone is less than 6 Mo old and it's getting difficult to read the display.
They certainly did not follow systematic thinking, or know what internal documentation is. Some of it appeared to not only be spaghetti code, but written to become a mobius strip. OTOH to call a computer language a foreign language is ridiculous. They may be foreign to their way of thinking, but in no way do they meet the definition of a foreign language.