There really wasn't an option to 'have a life'...some tried but one or the other would win out. In order to get an EE degree you simply MUST become a dork.
This is perhaps more applicable to CS than EE, but consider this entry from that Hacker's Jargon file (italics mine):
larval stage/n./
Describes a period of monomaniacal concentration on coding apparently passed through by all fledgling hackers. Common symptoms include the perpetration of more than one 36-hour hacking run in a given week; neglect of all other activities including usual basics like food, sleep, and personal hygiene; and a chronic case of advanced bleary-eye. Can last from 6 months to 2 years, the apparent median being around 18 months. A few so afflicted never resume a more `normal' life, but the ordeal seems to be necessary to produce really wizardly (as opposed to merely competent) programmers. See also wannabee. A less protracted and intense version of larval stage (typically lasting about a month) may recur when one is learning a new OS or programming language.
With few exceptions, all of the really wizardly software engineers I've known went through some form of this. Is it possible that the sort of intense focus that you describe is actually necessary to become a good EE, and that's why the courses are the way they are? That the professors have learned through experience that those who can't or won't do what's required to get through the weeding out courses are unlikely to succeed in their later EE education, and should therefore be weeded out?
They are the ONLY major search provider who fought against China's requests for data on dissident bloggers
How about Google's close relationship with the NSA ?
As a Googler, I'd say the best description is of Google's relationship with the NSA is "antagonistic". The news that the NSA had been tapping fiber between Google's data centers really pissed people off.
Google has publicly denied providing the NSA with any access, and there's no evidence that the denials are false. From my internal point of view (working on security infrastructure stuff), I also see zero evidence, and I think I would see it if it existed.
Heh, good question. It does seem that the intersection between the set of people who have the scientific mindset and unflappable temperament ideal for operating effectively in life-threatening situations and the set of people who have entertaining "TV personalities" is probably very small.
If this is so good, why not explain your reasoning and allow for an opt-in?
Because then the service provider would have to support every single version of their software, forever. Before long users wouldn't have to decide whether or not to accept new features, because there wouldn't be any.
Well, your YouTube comments were public. Just not under the same name.
They were public under another name, yes, and will optionally become public under your real name. If you activate a Google+ profile, you're given the option of what should be done with all of your old comments. You can keep them public, hide them, or delete them.
What motive would Google have for removing this feature?
If anything I expect it to go the other way. I bet we'll ultimately end up with a global email-from-circles kill switch (what they've provided so far) along with per-circle settings, so you can allow people in some circles to e-mail you and not others. Since most G+ users have separate circles for friends & family vs random people whose posts they like to read, that would make a lot of sense.
Oh, I should also mention that my personal take on this feature is "Yay, finally!". I've wanted for some time to be able to send e-mail to a circle, so I can use circles as poor man's mailing lists. Yeah, I can set up a real mailing list easily enough, but for example, I have circles for people in various branches of my extended family, and for groups of former co-workers, and I occasionally need to send an e-mail inviting people to some family gathering or friendly dinner. I don't do it often enough to bother with a mailing list, so I've found myself adding e-mail addresses one-by-one, but jumping over to check my circles to make sure I'm not forgetting anyone. I could also use Google Contacts groups for the same purpose, but why have multiple mechanisms for grouping contacts? I have, and maintain, the G+ circles already.
My threshold for putting somebody in a broadcast-only circle is VERY low. Why would I want to restrict access to my own posts? Again, I don't post publicly most of the time.
Then for your particular mode of using G+, you should probably remove permission for people you've circled to e-mail you.
I wouldn't be surprised if this particular permission becomes more fine-grained over time, so you can specify it on a per-circle basis. In fact that's the way I think it should go. Another alternative would be to make it easy to create gmail filters by the circle(s) the sender is in, then you could create a filter than just trashes e-mails from any of your "broadcast" circles. Actually, both features would be useful, I think.
If Google fixed their broken model which is based on the assumption that if I'm interested in Linux then I'm interested in Subsurface
How is that? It sounds to me like you've circled Linus Torvalds, who talks about what he's interested in. If you instead follow his Linux page you'd get only Linux stuff with no diving content (personally, as a Linux user and a SCUBA diver, I like following both, plus I find Linus to be a generally interesting fellow).
However, I wouldn't be surprised if as the auto-tagging feature gets more mature they don't eventually make it possible to follow a person, but only show posts with particular tags. Of course, when Linus posts about the Linux version of Subsurface, you'd probably still see that.
I really hate that they are doing the whole Facebook-like thing and insisting on "Real Identities or well known pseudonyms", and denying account creation outside those categories.
You can work around that by creating a "page", which is essentially a pseudonymous sub-account, and using that instead. Pages can have any sort of name you like, and can be used as an identity for posting, commenting, etc.
>> But the whole point of a self driving car is that it is safer driving in a self-driving car with your eyes closed than in a non-self driving car with open eyes.
Maybe thats the selling pitch of said cars, but I for one don't believe that they would actually be safer in practice at all.
Yeah, and automobiles will never be as reliable as horses.
If self-driving cars are going to be in any way relevant beyond being cool but impractical tech being argued about on geek forums, they're going to need to actually get into people's hands: Not just uber-rich geek-hands, but the mundanes out there, too. And in order for that to happen, there will be corner-cutting.
In what way? There's no reason to degrade the input/scanning systems, since they're not inherently expensive (though they're expensive now due to their low volume manufacturing), and there's not much room for saving costs by degrading them. The rest of the system is just standard computers plus software. Given the trajectory of computing power, and given that the current systems don't need to be all that beefy by current standards, there's no significant value in cutting the hardware, and it would cost more to use different software than that which has already been developed and refined.
If a self-driving car can't avoid an impending incident there is no way I will believe a human could.
We're headed down the freeway. Up ahead I see some teenagers standing on an overpass holding something large and watching cars pass underneath. I recognize a potential dropped rock and change lanes to get away from it. Will the computer do that?
Probably not. On the other hand, if you don't notice the kids and suddenly a rock slams into your windshield, you're likely to freak out and do entirely the wrong thing, while if the rock takes out the LIDAR and blinds the computer, it will smoothly and safely come to a stop based on it's perfect recall of the location, as it was just before the "lights" went out.
I'm almost home. I see the neighbor kid playing basketball in his driveway. He shoots. He misses. I know as soon as he misses that there is a good chance the ball will roll out into the street, and knowing how oblivious the neighbor kid is I can expect him to follow. Will the computer know this?
Yes. Demos I've seen of driverless systems see objects like balls and note their trajectory and respond by slowing. Actually, it's more likely that the car won't recognize that there's a chance the kid will make the basket, causing the ball to be redirected downward, and so will always assume that it's coming into the road.
In fact, I see the kid running towards the street, but he is hidden behind a parked van and will not actually be visible in the street until he's in the street directly in front of me. Will the car track him all the way from the upper end of his driveway?
Sure. Standard moving-object recognition. Again, it's more likely that the computer will fail to recognize that the kid may stop before he gets to the street and so may slow unnecessarily (but with proper consideration of following traffic).
I'm passing an intersection and there are two people standing on the corner. They are in a position where they might step into the crosswalk. Can the computer read those people's body language to predict that they will or won't step off the sidewalk in front of me?
Probably not, so the car will respond conservatively, slowing for safety.
There are any number of fuzzy logic problems that the computer will never be better at solving as fast and correctly as a human is, simply because the data will be missing. Everyone who claims that the new robotic car overlords will be better and safer at doing everything for us are hopelessly naive.
And for every problem that the human can solve faster and more correctly, there are a dozen the computer can solve faster and more correctly... and as in your examples, in most cases where the computer gets it wrong it will err on the side of caution and be less likely to be in an accident than a human would.
But even more important is the removal of the emotional and cognitive factors that are the root cause of most accidents. Driving too fast for conditions, getting angry and trying to beat other drivers by weaving through traffic or cutting people off, pushing the boundaries on changing lights, and just plain not paying attention, are all failure modes that computers will not have.
Let's face it, these professional exploit writers are not "years away" from their next great product.
And also don't forget - a *truly* great exploit kit is completely unknown to security researchers and the press. Once it's existence is known, it becomes much less useful.
I don't think that follows. Access by security researchers to the latest version of the kit, so they can analyze it and include countermeasures in the operating systems it attacks, that makes it much less useful. But mere knowledge of its existence doesn't damage its utility, and may enhance its saleability.
If it's a "classic car" they let you just ignore all the safety standards?
Yes, actually. If the original vehicle didn't have air bags, seat belts, turn signals, etc., you're not required to have them. I think if you could find a vehicle that were made without headlamps it would be illegal to drive it at night, and if it couldn't manage the minimum speed you couldn't drive it on the freeway, but mostly you can just ignore all the safety standards implemented after the vehicle was made.
And would it run on unleaded?
They'll all run on unleaded, but there can be problems, mostly with overheated valves that fuse and stick. You can replace the original valve seats with hardened seats that don't need the lead-provided lubrication, or you can add aftermarket lead substitute additives to unleaded fuel and use the original equipment.
Really, though, the tithes taken by the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints is mostly dedicated to running their missionary program(i.e. marketing department)
Missionaries are unpaid volunteers. Moreover, they pay all of their own expenses (or, rather, their families do, since few 18-19 year olds can come up with the ~$14K it costs to maintain them for two years). There is a missionary fund which is used to subsidize missionaries whose families can't afford it, but that doesn't come out of tithing, it's a separate donation category.
and the salaries of religious figures
Essentially all LDS leaders are unpaid volunteers, also. I believe there may be some small stipends for the very few senior, full-time leaders who aren't independently wealthy, but that's almost none of them (nearly all were very successful professionals or businessmen before becoming full-time clergy).
I don't know if a breakdown of how the church's revenues are spent is made public, but I guarantee that your assumed expenditures are wrong.
I agree that enough civilians with good enough weapons and the disposition to use them is adequate to deter most invasions, I just don't think invasion is the only threat we need to confront.
What else? Terrorism? I posit that our foreign military adventures create more risk of terrorism than they prevent. Plus foreign terrorism is a negligible risk anyway.
I'm including solar, wind etc. in alternative energies. Those are some of the market's (modest, so far) successes, which are always accompanied by a lot of failures. What you're seeing there is the market working. So far, the use of those technologies is limited to locations and uses where they are cost effective. As the cost of the technologies fall (driven by research which is in turn driven by perception of market opportunities), and as the cost of traditional energy rises, their use will expand.
The increase in natural gas production (I'm including that with fossil fuels because it's a fossil fuel) is another example of the market working, along with coal seam gas, oil sands and oil shale production, crude extraction from difficult locations (e.g. undersea), etc. Those are all examples of the market finding more cost-effective ways to extract fossil fuels, not shifting away from them... but those examples are crucial to understanding how the transition no non-fossil fuels will happen. As costs rise, it becomes cost-effective to exploit ever more difficult resources, which is why we aren't going to face a fossil fuel availability "cliff", but a gradual (but not smooth) tapering, AND it also becomes cost-effective to move into non-fossil energy sources.
The biggest and best example of government intervention trying to "fix" the market is ethanol, which is widely used but by almost any measure a failure. Of course, ethanol, like most politically-driven changes, was less about utility and more about paying some people off for their votes.
Slashdot Mirror
flopple
"Flopple"? Seriously? I'm a big Android fan, and really annoyed at much of Apple's recent behavior, and even I think that's lame.
There really wasn't an option to 'have a life'...some tried but one or the other would win out. In order to get an EE degree you simply MUST become a dork.
This is perhaps more applicable to CS than EE, but consider this entry from that Hacker's Jargon file (italics mine):
larval stage /n./
Describes a period of monomaniacal concentration on coding apparently passed through by all fledgling hackers. Common symptoms include the perpetration of more than one 36-hour hacking run in a given week; neglect of all other activities including usual basics like food, sleep, and personal hygiene; and a chronic case of advanced bleary-eye. Can last from 6 months to 2 years, the apparent median being around 18 months. A few so afflicted never resume a more `normal' life, but the ordeal seems to be necessary to produce really wizardly (as opposed to merely competent) programmers. See also wannabee. A less protracted and intense version of larval stage (typically lasting about a month) may recur when one is learning a new OS or programming language.
With few exceptions, all of the really wizardly software engineers I've known went through some form of this. Is it possible that the sort of intense focus that you describe is actually necessary to become a good EE, and that's why the courses are the way they are? That the professors have learned through experience that those who can't or won't do what's required to get through the weeding out courses are unlikely to succeed in their later EE education, and should therefore be weeded out?
They are the ONLY major search provider who fought against China's requests for data on dissident bloggers
How about Google's close relationship with the NSA ?
As a Googler, I'd say the best description is of Google's relationship with the NSA is "antagonistic". The news that the NSA had been tapping fiber between Google's data centers really pissed people off.
Google has publicly denied providing the NSA with any access, and there's no evidence that the denials are false. From my internal point of view (working on security infrastructure stuff), I also see zero evidence, and I think I would see it if it existed.
Actually, for EV charging you want 240v. Same for good welders.
Have a 15A socket in the garage.
Plus a couple of 30A circuits. Maybe 50A. Electric cars (or a welder... but tell the building inspector it's for EV chargers).
Eventually you see which version is more popular and phase out the less popular one.
At which point you have the same howls of outrage as now... so you've delayed the problem but not actually changed anything.
Heh, good question. It does seem that the intersection between the set of people who have the scientific mindset and unflappable temperament ideal for operating effectively in life-threatening situations and the set of people who have entertaining "TV personalities" is probably very small.
Possibly empty.
If this is so good, why not explain your reasoning and allow for an opt-in?
Because then the service provider would have to support every single version of their software, forever. Before long users wouldn't have to decide whether or not to accept new features, because there wouldn't be any.
I don't understand the need for continuous communication.
They want to fund it by showing it on TV.
Well, your YouTube comments were public. Just not under the same name.
They were public under another name, yes, and will optionally become public under your real name. If you activate a Google+ profile, you're given the option of what should be done with all of your old comments. You can keep them public, hide them, or delete them.
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2657961?hl=en&ref_topic=3097177
Google really is careful about this stuff.
I'm just waiting for a conclusive youtube history gets linked in to your G+ display.
Google will never do that. The only thing that is displayed on your G+ profile is stuff you choose to make public.
I dunno--why did Google force its Youtube users to link their accounts to G+ when they first made it optional?
Seems pretty obvious to me: Google only wants to have a single user account system for all of their products. It's about integration.
Near as I can figure is that Google really wants G+ to succeed, because they want to directly compete with Facebook.
Nah. Google+ isn't interested in competing with Facebook. Google+ is less of a social network and more of an integration hub for Google products.
Though the obvious response is, "for now."
What motive would Google have for removing this feature?
If anything I expect it to go the other way. I bet we'll ultimately end up with a global email-from-circles kill switch (what they've provided so far) along with per-circle settings, so you can allow people in some circles to e-mail you and not others. Since most G+ users have separate circles for friends & family vs random people whose posts they like to read, that would make a lot of sense.
Oh, I should also mention that my personal take on this feature is "Yay, finally!". I've wanted for some time to be able to send e-mail to a circle, so I can use circles as poor man's mailing lists. Yeah, I can set up a real mailing list easily enough, but for example, I have circles for people in various branches of my extended family, and for groups of former co-workers, and I occasionally need to send an e-mail inviting people to some family gathering or friendly dinner. I don't do it often enough to bother with a mailing list, so I've found myself adding e-mail addresses one-by-one, but jumping over to check my circles to make sure I'm not forgetting anyone. I could also use Google Contacts groups for the same purpose, but why have multiple mechanisms for grouping contacts? I have, and maintain, the G+ circles already.
Now if I could just add circles to circles...
My threshold for putting somebody in a broadcast-only circle is VERY low. Why would I want to restrict access to my own posts? Again, I don't post publicly most of the time.
Then for your particular mode of using G+, you should probably remove permission for people you've circled to e-mail you.
I wouldn't be surprised if this particular permission becomes more fine-grained over time, so you can specify it on a per-circle basis. In fact that's the way I think it should go. Another alternative would be to make it easy to create gmail filters by the circle(s) the sender is in, then you could create a filter than just trashes e-mails from any of your "broadcast" circles. Actually, both features would be useful, I think.
If Google fixed their broken model which is based on the assumption that if I'm interested in Linux then I'm interested in Subsurface
How is that? It sounds to me like you've circled Linus Torvalds, who talks about what he's interested in. If you instead follow his Linux page you'd get only Linux stuff with no diving content (personally, as a Linux user and a SCUBA diver, I like following both, plus I find Linus to be a generally interesting fellow).
However, I wouldn't be surprised if as the auto-tagging feature gets more mature they don't eventually make it possible to follow a person, but only show posts with particular tags. Of course, when Linus posts about the Linux version of Subsurface, you'd probably still see that.
I really hate that they are doing the whole Facebook-like thing and insisting on "Real Identities or well known pseudonyms", and denying account creation outside those categories.
You can work around that by creating a "page", which is essentially a pseudonymous sub-account, and using that instead. Pages can have any sort of name you like, and can be used as an identity for posting, commenting, etc.
Spam City, here we come.
Do you circle a lot of people who will spam you?
>> But the whole point of a self driving car is that it is safer driving in a self-driving car with your eyes closed than in a non-self driving car with open eyes.
Maybe thats the selling pitch of said cars, but I for one don't believe that they would actually be safer in practice at all.
Yeah, and automobiles will never be as reliable as horses.
If self-driving cars are going to be in any way relevant beyond being cool but impractical tech being argued about on geek forums, they're going to need to actually get into people's hands: Not just uber-rich geek-hands, but the mundanes out there, too. And in order for that to happen, there will be corner-cutting.
In what way? There's no reason to degrade the input/scanning systems, since they're not inherently expensive (though they're expensive now due to their low volume manufacturing), and there's not much room for saving costs by degrading them. The rest of the system is just standard computers plus software. Given the trajectory of computing power, and given that the current systems don't need to be all that beefy by current standards, there's no significant value in cutting the hardware, and it would cost more to use different software than that which has already been developed and refined.
If a self-driving car can't avoid an impending incident there is no way I will believe a human could.
We're headed down the freeway. Up ahead I see some teenagers standing on an overpass holding something large and watching cars pass underneath. I recognize a potential dropped rock and change lanes to get away from it. Will the computer do that?
Probably not. On the other hand, if you don't notice the kids and suddenly a rock slams into your windshield, you're likely to freak out and do entirely the wrong thing, while if the rock takes out the LIDAR and blinds the computer, it will smoothly and safely come to a stop based on it's perfect recall of the location, as it was just before the "lights" went out.
I'm almost home. I see the neighbor kid playing basketball in his driveway. He shoots. He misses. I know as soon as he misses that there is a good chance the ball will roll out into the street, and knowing how oblivious the neighbor kid is I can expect him to follow. Will the computer know this?
Yes. Demos I've seen of driverless systems see objects like balls and note their trajectory and respond by slowing. Actually, it's more likely that the car won't recognize that there's a chance the kid will make the basket, causing the ball to be redirected downward, and so will always assume that it's coming into the road.
In fact, I see the kid running towards the street, but he is hidden behind a parked van and will not actually be visible in the street until he's in the street directly in front of me. Will the car track him all the way from the upper end of his driveway?
Sure. Standard moving-object recognition. Again, it's more likely that the computer will fail to recognize that the kid may stop before he gets to the street and so may slow unnecessarily (but with proper consideration of following traffic).
I'm passing an intersection and there are two people standing on the corner. They are in a position where they might step into the crosswalk. Can the computer read those people's body language to predict that they will or won't step off the sidewalk in front of me?
Probably not, so the car will respond conservatively, slowing for safety.
There are any number of fuzzy logic problems that the computer will never be better at solving as fast and correctly as a human is, simply because the data will be missing. Everyone who claims that the new robotic car overlords will be better and safer at doing everything for us are hopelessly naive.
And for every problem that the human can solve faster and more correctly, there are a dozen the computer can solve faster and more correctly... and as in your examples, in most cases where the computer gets it wrong it will err on the side of caution and be less likely to be in an accident than a human would. But even more important is the removal of the emotional and cognitive factors that are the root cause of most accidents. Driving too fast for conditions, getting angry and trying to beat other drivers by weaving through traffic or cutting people off, pushing the boundaries on changing lights, and just plain not paying attention, are all failure modes that computers will not have.
Let's face it, these professional exploit writers are not "years away" from their next great product.
And also don't forget - a *truly* great exploit kit is completely unknown to security researchers and the press. Once it's existence is known, it becomes much less useful.
I don't think that follows. Access by security researchers to the latest version of the kit, so they can analyze it and include countermeasures in the operating systems it attacks, that makes it much less useful. But mere knowledge of its existence doesn't damage its utility, and may enhance its saleability.
I can still drive a Model T on the highway;
If it's a "classic car" they let you just ignore all the safety standards?
Yes, actually. If the original vehicle didn't have air bags, seat belts, turn signals, etc., you're not required to have them. I think if you could find a vehicle that were made without headlamps it would be illegal to drive it at night, and if it couldn't manage the minimum speed you couldn't drive it on the freeway, but mostly you can just ignore all the safety standards implemented after the vehicle was made.
And would it run on unleaded?
They'll all run on unleaded, but there can be problems, mostly with overheated valves that fuse and stick. You can replace the original valve seats with hardened seats that don't need the lead-provided lubrication, or you can add aftermarket lead substitute additives to unleaded fuel and use the original equipment.
Really, though, the tithes taken by the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints is mostly dedicated to running their missionary program(i.e. marketing department)
Missionaries are unpaid volunteers. Moreover, they pay all of their own expenses (or, rather, their families do, since few 18-19 year olds can come up with the ~$14K it costs to maintain them for two years). There is a missionary fund which is used to subsidize missionaries whose families can't afford it, but that doesn't come out of tithing, it's a separate donation category.
and the salaries of religious figures
Essentially all LDS leaders are unpaid volunteers, also. I believe there may be some small stipends for the very few senior, full-time leaders who aren't independently wealthy, but that's almost none of them (nearly all were very successful professionals or businessmen before becoming full-time clergy).
I don't know if a breakdown of how the church's revenues are spent is made public, but I guarantee that your assumed expenditures are wrong.
I agree that enough civilians with good enough weapons and the disposition to use them is adequate to deter most invasions, I just don't think invasion is the only threat we need to confront.
What else? Terrorism? I posit that our foreign military adventures create more risk of terrorism than they prevent. Plus foreign terrorism is a negligible risk anyway.
I'm including solar, wind etc. in alternative energies. Those are some of the market's (modest, so far) successes, which are always accompanied by a lot of failures. What you're seeing there is the market working. So far, the use of those technologies is limited to locations and uses where they are cost effective. As the cost of the technologies fall (driven by research which is in turn driven by perception of market opportunities), and as the cost of traditional energy rises, their use will expand.
The increase in natural gas production (I'm including that with fossil fuels because it's a fossil fuel) is another example of the market working, along with coal seam gas, oil sands and oil shale production, crude extraction from difficult locations (e.g. undersea), etc. Those are all examples of the market finding more cost-effective ways to extract fossil fuels, not shifting away from them... but those examples are crucial to understanding how the transition no non-fossil fuels will happen. As costs rise, it becomes cost-effective to exploit ever more difficult resources, which is why we aren't going to face a fossil fuel availability "cliff", but a gradual (but not smooth) tapering, AND it also becomes cost-effective to move into non-fossil energy sources.
The biggest and best example of government intervention trying to "fix" the market is ethanol, which is widely used but by almost any measure a failure. Of course, ethanol, like most politically-driven changes, was less about utility and more about paying some people off for their votes.
Thanks for supporting my argument, BTW :-)