I have been a software engineer for more than 12 years and a developer for more than 18. I have had jobs writing c/c++ (MSVC, Borland C++ Builder and gcc), Java & J2EE (J2SE RMI to Weblogic + Portal to Apache + Tomcat + JBoss), Perl (Catalyst + Mason) and Python (TurboGears 2.0 + SQLAlchemy). My resume reads like a pro athlete's scoresheet with well over twenty full lifecycle projects under my belt in all of my proficient languages.
All of that, and the simple fact is that it HURTS my job search instead of helping it. My varied career has lead to long term exposure to a language and some related frameworks which was then mostly forgotten as I picked up a new language and framework. I have no trouble at all taking programming challenges even if they are timed provided I have access to google or some API documentation but I simply don't remember the little nuances of any language I'm not currently working on.
This hurts me when some recruiter throws a timed competency test at me that reads exactly like a SCJP exam and expects me to remember the names of specific classes or language rules. Give me a couple of days, perhaps a week of working in the language on a practical project and I'd pick it all back up, but trying to sort it all on a per-question basis with less than 3 minutes to do it in and I choke.
Development is about learning algorithms and techniques, not APIs. Experienced developers know many ways of collecting, retrieving, updating and deleting data, breaking down complex problems into logical steps and then using experience to reduce the number of steps, reduce the number of times the required number of steps must be taken and breaking linear problems down into distributed tasks. A specialist in a given language is capable of coding faster in any given language than a generalist like myself, but then they only know techniques specific to their language of choice which reduces their ability to choose from multiple approaches to real-world problems. In addition, every problem is solved in terms of their language of experience rather than by pulling from the techniques discovered and improved upon by developers in multiple languages, apis and frameworks.
Hiring managers and other developers know this.
Recruiters and HR representatives don't.
Now if only a good business person could figure out how to code a business process that bypasses the filtering process put in place by non-technical recruiters so that hiring managers get presented with the best candidate for the position they need filled instead of the people who the recruiters think has the best chance of making them a pile of money.
For anyone who made it this far and is still reading: my personal technique for getting through this is to self-create projects in any and all languages and frameworks for which I expect to be interviewed and then just start coding the project. This generally means that I spend about a month looking for work while working 60-80 hours per week for free. The upshot is that I get an offer 9/10 interviews.
Way way way easier than 95% of my tests... Pythonish pseudo code solution: foreach ndex (limit):
if not (ndex%3):
if not (ndex%5):
print "FizzBuzz, "
else:
print "Fizz, "
elif not (ndex%5):
print "Buzz, "
else:
printf "%d", ndex
The one I just did went like this:
Write a function that given a string of digits and a target value, prints where to put +'s and *'s between the digits so they combine exactly to the target value. Note there may be more than one answer, it doesn't matter which one you print. Examples: "1231231234",11353 -> "12*3+1+23*123*4" "3456237490",1185 -> "3*4*56+2+3*7+490" "3456237490",9191 -> "no solution"
This was the first of two questions, the second was a volume fill problem using string representation of graphical tiles as input and a printed matrix as a result to stdout. The test had to be taken with ANSI c using only STL. The test was timed and preferred candidates needed to present their coded solution and compiled example within 3 hours. Maximum time limit was 8 hours.
The original idea of copyright was, if I am not mistaken (and of course IANAL), was extended to physical objects after the infringement against Elijah McCoy. I know there is debate about this, and that's fine since the story provides a suitable analogy and that is all I'm going for. Also, please excuse my interchangeable use of patent/copyright. While I understand that copyright is generally for media and patent is for physical inventions, I am also under the distinct impression that either can be applied to any original invention, physical or media, given the proper conditions. Once again, IANAL so forgive my inevitable ignorance of the finer points to be considered along those lines.
The phrase "The real McCoy" is believed by many to have originated with his device for lubricating the wheel/break/drive-shafts of locomotive machine parts. The device was hugely popular but, like any good inventor, Elijah wanted to make it rich, so he charged a rather hefty price for his contraption. Very quickly, his fledgling company noticed similar devices attached to locomotives operating across the country. Many of them were substandard and some were even being returned to his company with complaints and demands for repair. The resulting legal battles are reported to have significantly strengthened copyright/patent law.
Disregarding the inevitable deluge of corrections I am bound to get for my summarized narrative of Elijah McCoy and his invention, my point here is that he created a MECHANICAL device that performed a function as-yet unrealized by any other manufacturer. His idea was good, and should have resulted in wealth for him but he had to depend on copyright to protect his invention. The copies were original works, crafted with iron or steel purchased from the market. They doubtless only looked at his design before making their duplicates.
They were only stealing his idea. That's the WHOLE POINT of copyright and patent... Protecting the RIGHT TO COPY.
I do not support the OP. You were trying to make money off someone else's idea. Invent a derivative work and I would support you all the way, but you're just a cheap hack attempting to siphon money away from someone else.
Not because you are wrong, but because you are so correct. We are software engineers, developers, networking specialists and system administrators. We know the businesses we work for far better than the fat lazy salary guzzling managers we are abused by. We understand politics with no trouble since we spend most of our lives doing our best to avoid the politics of our respective offices.
There is more than enough talent here to force those attacking the middle class to step back and listen. Instead of whining about getting screwed out of the just compensation we have earned, why aren't any of you proposing a way to fight back?
I'm replying to the first response here, but this applies to about 3 or 4 posts below as well...
(Note: I'm not especially knowledgeable about current spaceflight technology. I read a lot on digg/popular mechanics/NASA news and make some attempts at keeping up with current technology, but I'm by no means an expert. If I said anything that is completely wrong, please just let me know and link me to the correction:-) )
You guys watch WAY too much star trek and star wars. We are nowhere remotely close (either in NASA or anywhere else) to a feasible transport mechanism capable of industrializing space, much less planetoids. Consider the following points:
1.) Space elevators for Earth and her Moon as well one for any planetoids or moon one wishes to mine. Rail launch systems are almost certainly too energy consumptive and the fuel requirements for interception and deceleration would negate the profits of recovery. 2.) Travel time from the Earth to Mars is too long for regular human flight. This means that cargo would have to be "shot at" the earth and the accuracy requirements would challenge our best procedures. We would also be required to expend most if not all volatiles we could mine in space just getting the materials back home. You can also scratch that idea of a "Mars vacation" right there. No matter how rich a person is, taking two years off to visit mars is a rather long vacation. 3.) How do we get very heavy things from space to earth? Dropping large rocks on the earth is a risky business. Even if you could devise a safe landing point for the objects that wouldn't kick up tons of debris into the atmosphere, every single earth friendly organization in the world would have a fit about all of the stuff left in the atmosphere by transit. If you packaged the materials to be delivered to reduce this, you have just created a huge expense for yourself in carting the stuff up to space. 4.) Propulsion systems capable of reaching mars by tiny unmanned spacecraft are grossly expensive to build and largely untested due to the very few times we have sent things to mars. Manned propulsion systems have never been tested. The only realistic assertion is that we do not yet have any propulsion system that is a viable candidate for the industrialization of our solar system.
NASA's role is largely experimental. There simply isn't any viable way for corporations to justify the incredibly massive budgets required for any project in space with the single possible exception of a space elevator. I sincerely believe that if anyone is willing to invest a trillion or so in the project, it would (eventually) pay off since it would be the delivery system of choice for nearly everything we want to put into space.
wtf does that mean exactly? Guilty of writing a program to search data? Guilty of writing a program to search data and then letting others view the results?
The only way that the MPAA/RIAA even know what is out there is by doing the same thing, the only difference being they aren't providing a service, they are angry about what they found.
What we find ourselves faced with is the guilt or innocence of someone writing software and then *giving away the software and/or the results of the software*. If indexing is a crime, then it is only a very very small step to say that writing software that gives others access to "features" of their hardware that the manufacturer doesn't want to give access to is illegal. After all, without VLC and mplayer it would be pretty easy for Quicktime/iTunes and Microsoft Media player to lock down the watching of illegal movies and listening of illegal music.
Keep walking down that path, and soon we loose all our digital freedoms...
I have real issue with the federal circuit courts having any say whatever in what California can or cannot ban for sale in their own state. The distribution of authority in the DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC of the United States has been shifting with ever increasing momentum to the federal level.
I think california is full of insane pollitics, but isn't that their right as a state under the constitution? I don't like my local and regional policies being dictated by californian pollitics and in order to preserve the rights of my own state I am willing to let california have their rights.
I registered skyleach.com in the 90s (forget the exact year now) but when I tried to move it to a cheaper registrar my transfer was denied and my domain was locked. Of course, since it had some decent traffic, espcially surrounding anything conerning battletech, it was purchased out from under me. A squatter has been sitting on it since.
The practice is anticompetative and dishonest and should be stepped on, HARD.
I'll let microsoft pimp me out on my blog! Then just like a good ho I'll call all my tricks and tell 'em I just gave 'em CIV (Computing Immunodeficiency Disorder).
Christ haven't any of you even tried to discover how to get from a simple amino acid to DNA? That's a whole hell of a lot further leap than some stupid missing link between a fish and a cammel.
Go and read the work by Michael Behe about the problem of Irreducible Complexity. If you are smart enough to prove him wrong, publish a paper on it.
I'm sick to death of people claiming that it's just the right wing christians who want fairness to our kids. Some people think aliens made us. Some people believe in God. Hell some people believe that the anthropomorphic principle is responsible for the creation of man (the more we think about ourselves, the more we create ourselves.)
I don't fit into any camp or ride on any bandwagons but the THEORY of evolution has a whole lot of gaps, has never been PROVEN and as such is a fucking THEORY. Only a tiny percentage of mankind even believes in evolution if you include everyone in the world instead of just a few "learned" men in the US and the European nations.
Stop making this a fucking issue of religion and thereby insulting those of us who refuse to be bullied into believing a half-finished theory.
Last time I checked the game industry was full of Enterprises, the audio companies were Enterprises, the Computer periferal companies were Enterprises.
Last time I checked every person in my department had at least one linux desktop for Enterprise use.
So please tell me how writing drivers for video cards, sound cards, usb devices, hardware sensors for monitoring, multiport serial card controllers, etc can be considered tasks only targeted at home desktop users?
I would like to point out that Microsoft makes a damned site more money on Office than on windows, and I don't know that I have ever seen Office running on a server.
To close: Enterprise linux != Server systems only.
It's quite simple: to make everything better by inciting competition.
Computers and software more than anything else has a stiff learning curve to the use of applications and operating systems.
Everyone is aware of this and every major software company knows that they can ride on the skirt-tails of this to enjoy fat revenue streams from inferior products.
Compare the level of competition and subsequent innovation in the processor market to the innovation and competition in the software market. There is almost no comparison (admitedly this will change soon). The changes in Windows since W95 and NT are less dramatic and less beneficial than in a minor release of KDE or Gnome, and they are only winodow managers not OSes. Look at os X compared to OS9! This was pushed by the desire of Mac to continue competing with M$.
But Microsoft doesn't feel this pressure yet. How many people do you know that have a mac or linux desktop at home other than choosy professionals? Look at Sun's lack of innovation clearly due to brand loyalty and sedentary system admins who will die before they accept that Linux is an actual competetor.
I use all the OSes every day. On my desk now I have Mac (PowerBook G4), BSD (Dell), Linux (Dell and Penguin Computing), and a SunBlade 2000. The really innovative and compelling things are comming from Linux and Mac right now.
Given the budgets of Microsoft and Sun I expect more, and by pushing their competetors I intend to get more for all of us.
To those of you who are talking about the movie being dumbed down: get a clue.
The movie must be dumbed down so that the majority of the populace will pay to see it. I think that even DA would agree that the dumbing down of HGTG for a movie is a colossal joke on the audience and is laughing somewhere is the great beyond today.
You can't make a satire on the world like HGTG and expect the world to understand. The books are for those of us who do understand.
I, for one, will go to the movie and laugh at the audience more than the film. My own private movie.
For those of you, like me, who were like what!?
on
SCO Missing 16,209 Files?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
A privilege log is a log of information covered by client/attourney privilege such as letters between councels, letters from client to councel, testemonies to councel, etc... It is logged to prevent your opponent from finding and submitting the information in court and then claiming it wasn't covered by privilege.
When I got my (http://www.skyleach.com/?p=11/ )first computer I was totally unproductive with it until I learned to use it to it's full advantage.
It takes about one or two years (IMHO depends on the age and intuativeness of the user) to get to the point where you learn how to assimilate the information on a screen effectively.
This is a lot like learning to read or learning to speak, the speech and writing centers of the frontal lobe are essentially extreemly complex pattern regognition systems which are capable of working in reverse to convert information back into written or visual form from memory.
The information on a computer screen is pretty complex for a new user, and even though a first-time novice can read the information it take s a great deal more concentration to find, read and understand the information on the screen at first.
This is totally asside from the 'cool' factor of the computer, which affects everyone at first. New uers look at a computer and they are scarred to tough anything at first, and then as they start exploring they don't want to stop. Who wants to study history when you can do this, or hey wait look at that Numa Numa dance thing...
I'm all for having a class where you just turn kids loose on a computer for an hour and let them learn, with some basic content restrictions perhaps.
Open source is NOT about linux. I use linux 90% of the time and solaris 10% of the time. About 90% of the apps I use on Solaris are GNU. Solaris isn't free.
Free software is about free software, not linux. If someone wants to port software to any platform whatever I will support them fully. I use windows when I have to and the more free apps I can find the better. I want portablility, reliability and quality in my computers. Spreading/porting or developing OSS for windows is a win-win situation. M$ makes far more money from Office than from Windows, so it stands to reason that getting competition onto the windows desktop is good for OSS.
Microsoft gets valid competition and is forced to make a better product and hopefully lower their prices. Users get a choice. OSS gets more people paying attention. Companies save money. KDE gets more developers and experience with portability.
I really think anyone who wants to use OSS as a tool to beat up on M$ is missing the whole point of OSS to begin with. Sure, we can all rant and rave about how bad Billy is and gripe about the srongarm tactics of M$ but OSS is about codebase, community and progress, none of which give a rats ass about M$.
Looking at the responses to my post and the "troll" mod point I can see it's quite pointless to post anything meaningfull here but since you seem to be the only one who actually read my post and you are asking real (if shallow) questions I'll dignify you with an honest response
I did not say that Evolution was incompatable with religion, I said it requires more faith. There is a subtle but important difference. Evolution is persented to the world as a scientific theory born of a naturalistic desire to explain the origin of species and not as a religious doctrine. As such, it should be examined and studied like any other theory. It should be tested and either proven or disproven. The difference between this theory and most others is that dispite continuous evidence that macro evolution does not occour in nature and that life follows a tendancy towards extinction and degeneration not self-improvement this theory continues to be fostered on the world as fact. There is hasn't been a single fossile record recovered that shows reasonable evidence of macro evolution. For this reason I say that evolution is a belief (a faith) that flies in the face of fact.
If you want proof that athiests deny the facts, read some of these posts. Those that read my posts, ignore the points I have made and merely rant, most didn't even read my posts. I have found that most athiests are vehemenently angry with established religion and fuel their arguments with this anger rather than relying on reason or logic. No sane person can claim that the evidence is in favor of evolution as the origin of our species. No theory can come remotely close to showing a reasonable explanation for our existance on this planet.
The purpose of my arguments are not to argue for religion but to argue against evolution, yet the oposition to my arguments and the emotion presented in that oposition makes my point for me: evolution is not supported because it is sound, but rather because it is not religion.
I challenge anyone who reads this post to present reasonable evidence that humanity can expect SETI to find ET life based on any theory other than Creation. I can make this challenge because it is impossible. There is no such evidence to be had.
There is only hope, and hope is merely Faith without roots.
Please clairify your statement. Are you suggesting the scientific model is wrong, that statistical science is wrong, or that our observations are wrong?
Statistical science is about raw probability that events occoured according to a theory. If they show that something is unlikely then you can be sure that either the data used in the prediction was flawed, the calculation of the statistics was flawed, or that the theory was flawed. If errors are found in the data gathered or the results of its annalysis then there was likely a flaw in the execution of the scientific method, not in the method itself. Failing that, the scientific method itself says that you must question the theory.
"when it did in fact happen" is a statement of unequivocable faith. You are basing your argument on the unscientific position that your theory is fact rather than a theory. Your only facts in this argument is that life does exist and that the laws of physics must be assumed to be inflexible unless some evidence can be produced or observation made which shows otherwise. Therefore you must discard the statement that "it did in fact happen" is unscientific and any suppositions based on that statement and proceed from that point.
As you can see, it is not myself but you who musunderstood how science approaches this situation.
I will attempt give you some hard numbers taken from "Reasons To Believe".
You must remember that the evolution of intelligence is hardly the most daunting fascit of evoluion. First, you must overcome other problems. Let's start with the environment itself.
As you can see from this compilation and the references included it's highly improbable to get a planet within the required range of suitability for anything close to carbon-based life forms.
Then, assuming we get past that improbability, life must spontaneously appear from non-life. This is more complicated than you may have been led to believe in school. Just some of the problems are outlined in these articles...
The suggestion that early life was extreamophiles has been pretty well rebuffed here. The theory of a virus being the source of life is unlikely. Then there is the argument that life started far less complex than a modern cell. Sudies have shown that the cell is of irreduceable complexity.
I'd like to think I am not close-minded to other arguments in the search for the origin of life. If you have other statistics, reports or papers please do post and I will be happy to read over them.
The thing I keep finding again and again is that evolution requires far more faith than religion. I do not hide that I am a believer, but I must wonder what the motives may be fore an athiest to so vehemenently deny the clear facts. If I am wrong and there is no God then that does not make the probability that we evolved any less unlikely. Putting aside questions of faith, arguments about morality and anger over the injustices of organized religion evolution simply does not make much sense!
Here is the kicker: I fall closer to the camp of C.S. Lewis than of staunch protestantism. I believe there is every possibility that ET life could exist, but I do not believe in evolution. I do believe that if indeed the Creator has created other worlds than the earth, it would probably be outside his design to allow interaction with them. Every evidence of the designs of God upon the earth suggests that this is a boot-camp for life, not a pleasure planet. We aren't here to see how far we can explore into space (tower of Babel and all that) but rather to see how far we as a people will digress morally and how far we as individuals may progress spiritually.
When the meaning of life is argued as one of individual spiritual growth and understanding instead of popular civil evolution and technical advancement the questions of the origin of life seem to make a great deal more logical sense.
Setting aside that even giving credence to the pseudo-theory that "what can happen will happen" could have allotted for the improbable evolution of humanity the likelyhood of the evolution of even a second carbon-baed life form anywhere in the galaxy is simply ludicrous.
Every science we have shows that the accidental appearance of mankind on earth is as close to a statistical impossibility as the science of statistics allows. In addition, the suggestions that we may come into contact with non-carbon lifeforms is even more improbable.
So, if against all odds we did evolve, spending money on SETI to search the heavens for the off chance that someone or something else did as well is most like betting millions on the most rediculous lottery ever concieved, one we are sure to loose, no matter how many tickets we buy.
and for all the time you took to read it your pondering didn't do you a lick of good.
I'm sorry if I think too fast for you to comprehend. It's really not my fault. Everyone seems to want me to be at least as dumb as they are. It's called the Dilbert principle.
Well I refuse. I will be both smart and fast.;-P
And flesh and blood cops are not omnipresent and cannot run checks on every plate they see. That's a good thing imho.
Slashdot Mirror
I have been a software engineer for more than 12 years and a developer for more than 18. I have had jobs writing c/c++ (MSVC, Borland C++ Builder and gcc), Java & J2EE (J2SE RMI to Weblogic + Portal to Apache + Tomcat + JBoss), Perl (Catalyst + Mason) and Python (TurboGears 2.0 + SQLAlchemy). My resume reads like a pro athlete's scoresheet with well over twenty full lifecycle projects under my belt in all of my proficient languages.
All of that, and the simple fact is that it HURTS my job search instead of helping it. My varied career has lead to long term exposure to a language and some related frameworks which was then mostly forgotten as I picked up a new language and framework. I have no trouble at all taking programming challenges even if they are timed provided I have access to google or some API documentation but I simply don't remember the little nuances of any language I'm not currently working on.
This hurts me when some recruiter throws a timed competency test at me that reads exactly like a SCJP exam and expects me to remember the names of specific classes or language rules. Give me a couple of days, perhaps a week of working in the language on a practical project and I'd pick it all back up, but trying to sort it all on a per-question basis with less than 3 minutes to do it in and I choke.
Development is about learning algorithms and techniques, not APIs. Experienced developers know many ways of collecting, retrieving, updating and deleting data, breaking down complex problems into logical steps and then using experience to reduce the number of steps, reduce the number of times the required number of steps must be taken and breaking linear problems down into distributed tasks. A specialist in a given language is capable of coding faster in any given language than a generalist like myself, but then they only know techniques specific to their language of choice which reduces their ability to choose from multiple approaches to real-world problems. In addition, every problem is solved in terms of their language of experience rather than by pulling from the techniques discovered and improved upon by developers in multiple languages, apis and frameworks.
Hiring managers and other developers know this.
Recruiters and HR representatives don't.
Now if only a good business person could figure out how to code a business process that bypasses the filtering process put in place by non-technical recruiters so that hiring managers get presented with the best candidate for the position they need filled instead of the people who the recruiters think has the best chance of making them a pile of money.
For anyone who made it this far and is still reading: my personal technique for getting through this is to self-create projects in any and all languages and frameworks for which I expect to be interviewed and then just start coding the project. This generally means that I spend about a month looking for work while working 60-80 hours per week for free. The upshot is that I get an offer 9/10 interviews.
Way way way easier than 95% of my tests...
Pythonish pseudo code solution:
foreach ndex (limit):
if not (ndex%3):
if not (ndex%5):
print "FizzBuzz, "
else:
print "Fizz, "
elif not (ndex%5):
print "Buzz, "
else:
printf "%d", ndex
The one I just did went like this:
Write a function that given a string of digits and a target value, prints where to put +'s and *'s between the digits so they combine exactly to the target value. Note there may be more than one answer, it doesn't matter which one you print.
Examples:
"1231231234",11353 -> "12*3+1+23*123*4"
"3456237490",1185 -> "3*4*56+2+3*7+490"
"3456237490",9191 -> "no solution"
This was the first of two questions, the second was a volume fill problem using string representation of graphical tiles as input and a printed matrix as a result to stdout. The test had to be taken with ANSI c using only STL. The test was timed and preferred candidates needed to present their coded solution and compiled example within 3 hours. Maximum time limit was 8 hours.
The original idea of copyright was, if I am not mistaken (and of course IANAL), was extended to physical objects after the infringement against Elijah McCoy. I know there is debate about this, and that's fine since the story provides a suitable analogy and that is all I'm going for. Also, please excuse my interchangeable use of patent/copyright. While I understand that copyright is generally for media and patent is for physical inventions, I am also under the distinct impression that either can be applied to any original invention, physical or media, given the proper conditions. Once again, IANAL so forgive my inevitable ignorance of the finer points to be considered along those lines.
The phrase "The real McCoy" is believed by many to have originated with his device for lubricating the wheel/break/drive-shafts of locomotive machine parts. The device was hugely popular but, like any good inventor, Elijah wanted to make it rich, so he charged a rather hefty price for his contraption. Very quickly, his fledgling company noticed similar devices attached to locomotives operating across the country. Many of them were substandard and some were even being returned to his company with complaints and demands for repair. The resulting legal battles are reported to have significantly strengthened copyright/patent law.
Disregarding the inevitable deluge of corrections I am bound to get for my summarized narrative of Elijah McCoy and his invention, my point here is that he created a MECHANICAL device that performed a function as-yet unrealized by any other manufacturer. His idea was good, and should have resulted in wealth for him but he had to depend on copyright to protect his invention. The copies were original works, crafted with iron or steel purchased from the market. They doubtless only looked at his design before making their duplicates.
They were only stealing his idea. That's the WHOLE POINT of copyright and patent... Protecting the RIGHT TO COPY.
I do not support the OP. You were trying to make money off someone else's idea. Invent a derivative work and I would support you all the way, but you're just a cheap hack attempting to siphon money away from someone else.
Not because you are wrong, but because you are so correct. We are software engineers, developers, networking specialists and system administrators. We know the businesses we work for far better than the fat lazy salary guzzling managers we are abused by. We understand politics with no trouble since we spend most of our lives doing our best to avoid the politics of our respective offices.
There is more than enough talent here to force those attacking the middle class to step back and listen. Instead of whining about getting screwed out of the just compensation we have earned, why aren't any of you proposing a way to fight back?
I'm replying to the first response here, but this applies to about 3 or 4 posts below as well...
(Note: I'm not especially knowledgeable about current spaceflight technology. I read a lot on digg/popular mechanics/NASA news and make some attempts at keeping up with current technology, but I'm by no means an expert. If I said anything that is completely wrong, please just let me know and link me to the correction :-) )
You guys watch WAY too much star trek and star wars. We are nowhere remotely close (either in NASA or anywhere else) to a feasible transport mechanism capable of industrializing space, much less planetoids. Consider the following points:
1.) Space elevators for Earth and her Moon as well one for any planetoids or moon one wishes to mine. Rail launch systems are almost certainly too energy consumptive and the fuel requirements for interception and deceleration would negate the profits of recovery.
2.) Travel time from the Earth to Mars is too long for regular human flight. This means that cargo would have to be "shot at" the earth and the accuracy requirements would challenge our best procedures. We would also be required to expend most if not all volatiles we could mine in space just getting the materials back home. You can also scratch that idea of a "Mars vacation" right there. No matter how rich a person is, taking two years off to visit mars is a rather long vacation.
3.) How do we get very heavy things from space to earth? Dropping large rocks on the earth is a risky business. Even if you could devise a safe landing point for the objects that wouldn't kick up tons of debris into the atmosphere, every single earth friendly organization in the world would have a fit about all of the stuff left in the atmosphere by transit. If you packaged the materials to be delivered to reduce this, you have just created a huge expense for yourself in carting the stuff up to space.
4.) Propulsion systems capable of reaching mars by tiny unmanned spacecraft are grossly expensive to build and largely untested due to the very few times we have sent things to mars. Manned propulsion systems have never been tested. The only realistic assertion is that we do not yet have any propulsion system that is a viable candidate for the industrialization of our solar system.
NASA's role is largely experimental. There simply isn't any viable way for corporations to justify the incredibly massive budgets required for any project in space with the single possible exception of a space elevator. I sincerely believe that if anyone is willing to invest a trillion or so in the project, it would (eventually) pay off since it would be the delivery system of choice for nearly everything we want to put into space.
this isn't an exploit for your computer, it only affects IRC networks.
wait... wat?
"found guilty of indexing"!?!?
wtf does that mean exactly? Guilty of writing a program to search data? Guilty of writing a program to search data and then letting others view the results?
The only way that the MPAA/RIAA even know what is out there is by doing the same thing, the only difference being they aren't providing a service, they are angry about what they found.
What we find ourselves faced with is the guilt or innocence of someone writing software and then *giving away the software and/or the results of the software*. If indexing is a crime, then it is only a very very small step to say that writing software that gives others access to "features" of their hardware that the manufacturer doesn't want to give access to is illegal. After all, without VLC and mplayer it would be pretty easy for Quicktime/iTunes and Microsoft Media player to lock down the watching of illegal movies and listening of illegal music.
Keep walking down that path, and soon we loose all our digital freedoms...
I have real issue with the federal circuit courts having any say whatever in what California can or cannot ban for sale in their own state. The distribution of authority in the DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC of the United States has been shifting with ever increasing momentum to the federal level.
I think california is full of insane pollitics, but isn't that their right as a state under the constitution? I don't like my local and regional policies being dictated by californian pollitics and in order to preserve the rights of my own state I am willing to let california have their rights.
-SL
I registered skyleach.com in the 90s (forget the exact year now) but when I tried to move it to a cheaper registrar my transfer was denied and my domain was locked. Of course, since it had some decent traffic, espcially surrounding anything conerning battletech, it was purchased out from under me. A squatter has been sitting on it since.
The practice is anticompetative and dishonest and should be stepped on, HARD.
-SL
Any chance of rockfishing?
(for those of you who haven't been around long enough): http://www.atomfilms.com/film/rockfish.jsp
I'll let microsoft pimp me out on my blog! Then just like a good ho I'll call all my tricks and tell 'em I just gave 'em CIV (Computing Immunodeficiency Disorder).
Evolution and Creation are BOTH THEORIES.
Christ haven't any of you even tried to discover how to get from a simple amino acid to DNA? That's a whole hell of a lot further leap than some stupid missing link between a fish and a cammel.
Go and read the work by Michael Behe about the problem of Irreducible Complexity. If you are smart enough to prove him wrong, publish a paper on it.
I'm sick to death of people claiming that it's just the right wing christians who want fairness to our kids. Some people think aliens made us. Some people believe in God. Hell some people believe that the anthropomorphic principle is responsible for the creation of man (the more we think about ourselves, the more we create ourselves.)
I don't fit into any camp or ride on any bandwagons but the THEORY of evolution has a whole lot of gaps, has never been PROVEN and as such is a fucking THEORY. Only a tiny percentage of mankind even believes in evolution if you include everyone in the world instead of just a few "learned" men in the US and the European nations.
Stop making this a fucking issue of religion and thereby insulting those of us who refuse to be bullied into believing a half-finished theory.
Last time I checked the game industry was full of Enterprises, the audio companies were Enterprises, the Computer periferal companies were Enterprises.
Last time I checked every person in my department had at least one linux desktop for Enterprise use.
So please tell me how writing drivers for video cards, sound cards, usb devices, hardware sensors for monitoring, multiport serial card controllers, etc can be considered tasks only targeted at home desktop users?
I would like to point out that Microsoft makes a damned site more money on Office than on windows, and I don't know that I have ever seen Office running on a server.
To close: Enterprise linux != Server systems only.
It's quite simple: to make everything better by inciting competition.
Computers and software more than anything else has a stiff learning curve to the use of applications and operating systems.
Everyone is aware of this and every major software company knows that they can ride on the skirt-tails of this to enjoy fat revenue streams from inferior products.
Compare the level of competition and subsequent innovation in the processor market to the innovation and competition in the software market. There is almost no comparison (admitedly this will change soon). The changes in Windows since W95 and NT are less dramatic and less beneficial than in a minor release of KDE or Gnome, and they are only winodow managers not OSes. Look at os X compared to OS9! This was pushed by the desire of Mac to continue competing with M$.
But Microsoft doesn't feel this pressure yet. How many people do you know that have a mac or linux desktop at home other than choosy professionals? Look at Sun's lack of innovation clearly due to brand loyalty and sedentary system admins who will die before they accept that Linux is an actual competetor.
I use all the OSes every day. On my desk now I have Mac (PowerBook G4), BSD (Dell), Linux (Dell and Penguin Computing), and a SunBlade 2000. The really innovative and compelling things are comming from Linux and Mac right now.
Given the budgets of Microsoft and Sun I expect more, and by pushing their competetors I intend to get more for all of us.
To those of you who are talking about the movie being dumbed down: get a clue.
The movie must be dumbed down so that the majority of the populace will pay to see it. I think that even DA would agree that the dumbing down of HGTG for a movie is a colossal joke on the audience and is laughing somewhere is the great beyond today.
You can't make a satire on the world like HGTG and expect the world to understand. The books are for those of us who do understand.
I, for one, will go to the movie and laugh at the audience more than the film. My own private movie.
A privilege log is a log of information covered by client/attourney privilege such as letters between councels, letters from client to councel, testemonies to councel, etc... It is logged to prevent your opponent from finding and submitting the information in court and then claiming it wasn't covered by privilege.
The Fountainhead
When I got my (http://www.skyleach.com/?p=11/ )first computer I was totally unproductive with it until I learned to use it to it's full advantage.
It takes about one or two years (IMHO depends on the age and intuativeness of the user) to get to the point where you learn how to assimilate the information on a screen effectively.
This is a lot like learning to read or learning to speak, the speech and writing centers of the frontal lobe are essentially extreemly complex pattern regognition systems which are capable of working in reverse to convert information back into written or visual form from memory.
The information on a computer screen is pretty complex for a new user, and even though a first-time novice can read the information it take s a great deal more concentration to find, read and understand the information on the screen at first.
This is totally asside from the 'cool' factor of the computer, which affects everyone at first. New uers look at a computer and they are scarred to tough anything at first, and then as they start exploring they don't want to stop. Who wants to study history when you can do this, or hey wait look at that Numa Numa dance thing...
I'm all for having a class where you just turn kids loose on a computer for an hour and let them learn, with some basic content restrictions perhaps.
Open source is NOT about linux. I use linux 90% of the time and solaris 10% of the time. About 90% of the apps I use on Solaris are GNU. Solaris isn't free.
Free software is about free software, not linux. If someone wants to port software to any platform whatever I will support them fully. I use windows when I have to and the more free apps I can find the better. I want portablility, reliability and quality in my computers. Spreading/porting or developing OSS for windows is a win-win situation. M$ makes far more money from Office than from Windows, so it stands to reason that getting competition onto the windows desktop is good for OSS.
Microsoft gets valid competition and is forced to make a better product and hopefully lower their prices. Users get a choice. OSS gets more people paying attention. Companies save money. KDE gets more developers and experience with portability.
I really think anyone who wants to use OSS as a tool to beat up on M$ is missing the whole point of OSS to begin with. Sure, we can all rant and rave about how bad Billy is and gripe about the srongarm tactics of M$ but OSS is about codebase, community and progress, none of which give a rats ass about M$.
Looking at the responses to my post and the "troll" mod point I can see it's quite pointless to post anything meaningfull here but since you seem to be the only one who actually read my post and you are asking real (if shallow) questions I'll dignify you with an honest response
I did not say that Evolution was incompatable with religion, I said it requires more faith. There is a subtle but important difference. Evolution is persented to the world as a scientific theory born of a naturalistic desire to explain the origin of species and not as a religious doctrine. As such, it should be examined and studied like any other theory. It should be tested and either proven or disproven. The difference between this theory and most others is that dispite continuous evidence that macro evolution does not occour in nature and that life follows a tendancy towards extinction and degeneration not self-improvement this theory continues to be fostered on the world as fact. There is hasn't been a single fossile record recovered that shows reasonable evidence of macro evolution. For this reason I say that evolution is a belief (a faith) that flies in the face of fact.
If you want proof that athiests deny the facts, read some of these posts. Those that read my posts, ignore the points I have made and merely rant, most didn't even read my posts. I have found that most athiests are vehemenently angry with established religion and fuel their arguments with this anger rather than relying on reason or logic. No sane person can claim that the evidence is in favor of evolution as the origin of our species. No theory can come remotely close to showing a reasonable explanation for our existance on this planet. The purpose of my arguments are not to argue for religion but to argue against evolution, yet the oposition to my arguments and the emotion presented in that oposition makes my point for me: evolution is not supported because it is sound, but rather because it is not religion.
I challenge anyone who reads this post to present reasonable evidence that humanity can expect SETI to find ET life based on any theory other than Creation. I can make this challenge because it is impossible. There is no such evidence to be had.
There is only hope, and hope is merely Faith without roots.
Please clairify your statement. Are you suggesting the scientific model is wrong, that statistical science is wrong, or that our observations are wrong?
Statistical science is about raw probability that events occoured according to a theory. If they show that something is unlikely then you can be sure that either the data used in the prediction was flawed, the calculation of the statistics was flawed, or that the theory was flawed. If errors are found in the data gathered or the results of its annalysis then there was likely a flaw in the execution of the scientific method, not in the method itself. Failing that, the scientific method itself says that you must question the theory.
"when it did in fact happen" is a statement of unequivocable faith. You are basing your argument on the unscientific position that your theory is fact rather than a theory. Your only facts in this argument is that life does exist and that the laws of physics must be assumed to be inflexible unless some evidence can be produced or observation made which shows otherwise. Therefore you must discard the statement that "it did in fact happen" is unscientific and any suppositions based on that statement and proceed from that point.
As you can see, it is not myself but you who musunderstood how science approaches this situation.
I will attempt give you some hard numbers taken from "Reasons To Believe".
You must remember that the evolution of intelligence is hardly the most daunting fascit of evoluion. First, you must overcome other problems. Let's start with the environment itself.
Probability of a Life Support Body
As you can see from this compilation and the references included it's highly improbable to get a planet within the required range of suitability for anything close to carbon-based life forms.
Then, assuming we get past that improbability, life must spontaneously appear from non-life. This is more complicated than you may have been led to believe in school. Just some of the problems are outlined in these articles...
The suggestion that early life was extreamophiles has been pretty well rebuffed here. The theory of a virus being the source of life is unlikely. Then there is the argument that life started far less complex than a modern cell. Sudies have shown that the cell is of irreduceable complexity.
I'd like to think I am not close-minded to other arguments in the search for the origin of life. If you have other statistics, reports or papers please do post and I will be happy to read over them.
The thing I keep finding again and again is that evolution requires far more faith than religion. I do not hide that I am a believer, but I must wonder what the motives may be fore an athiest to so vehemenently deny the clear facts. If I am wrong and there is no God then that does not make the probability that we evolved any less unlikely. Putting aside questions of faith, arguments about morality and anger over the injustices of organized religion evolution simply does not make much sense!
Here is the kicker: I fall closer to the camp of C.S. Lewis than of staunch protestantism. I believe there is every possibility that ET life could exist, but I do not believe in evolution. I do believe that if indeed the Creator has created other worlds than the earth, it would probably be outside his design to allow interaction with them. Every evidence of the designs of God upon the earth suggests that this is a boot-camp for life, not a pleasure planet. We aren't here to see how far we can explore into space (tower of Babel and all that) but rather to see how far we as a people will digress morally and how far we as individuals may progress spiritually.
When the meaning of life is argued as one of individual spiritual growth and understanding instead of popular civil evolution and technical advancement the questions of the origin of life seem to make a great deal more logical sense.
Setting aside that even giving credence to the pseudo-theory that "what can happen will happen" could have allotted for the improbable evolution of humanity the likelyhood of the evolution of even a second carbon-baed life form anywhere in the galaxy is simply ludicrous.
Every science we have shows that the accidental appearance of mankind on earth is as close to a statistical impossibility as the science of statistics allows. In addition, the suggestions that we may come into contact with non-carbon lifeforms is even more improbable.
So, if against all odds we did evolve, spending money on SETI to search the heavens for the off chance that someone or something else did as well is most like betting millions on the most rediculous lottery ever concieved, one we are sure to loose, no matter how many tickets we buy.
and for all the time you took to read it your pondering didn't do you a lick of good.
;-P
I'm sorry if I think too fast for you to comprehend. It's really not my fault. Everyone seems to want me to be at least as dumb as they are. It's called the Dilbert principle.
Well I refuse. I will be both smart and fast.
And flesh and blood cops are not omnipresent and cannot run checks on every plate they see. That's a good thing imho.
my arse already has enough companies trying to rape it so what's one more?
Electricty,
Water,
telecom,
television