... while driving? Though I'd rather stop. Almost everybody passes *someplace* that sells coffee at least every half hour or so, unless they live in the desert.
(There are at least 20 coffee shops within a mile of my house, though. Not every place is Portland:-)
Realistically, you could probably find a solution by brute force fairly quickly, because for the purposes of a dorm room, most people are compatible with most other people. But this is still clearly a problem of satisfiability.
For example, it's within the bounds of the problem to assume that each student is only compatible with, say, two others. With that restriction, it seems much harder, but it's the same problem. You can do an exhaustive search to assign students to rooms, but your search will necessarily take an amount of time bounded by an exponential function of the number of students.
Before the next reading comprehension nazi comes along and abuses me in similar fashion, I should take this opportunity to point out that I also failed to read the OP correctly. "Raping our dreams" was not in fact referring to bionic technology. The editors apologize for any confusion this may have caused.
Look, it was obviously uninformed knee-jerk hyperbole (I'm an expert in that) but I'll try to help explain this to you, futile though the task may be. In English, words often have multiple meanings. That means you can sometimes say "raping" and not mean literal forced sexual intercourse. In the GP, this useful property applies to both the words "raping" and "dreams". It seems to me that the most likely combination of meanings is that (a) people hope to extend their lives and avoid the pain, discomfort and limitations which we have always experienced due to aging; and (b) corporations are exploiting this hope, without providing real or affordable solutions, purely for their own profit and consolidation of power. In fact I think the fellow is wrong, but he's entitled to his opinion.
In addition, you could interpret "raping our dreams" in terms of rhetorical devices known as "metaphors". When a person uses one of those, he says something which is not literally true but which evokes an image of what he means. They're really very common; perhaps you could try to spot one in your next attempt at reading. (There are several in these very paragraphs!) However, that's a lesson for a different condescending sneer.
(Sneer in the preceding paragraph is, however, not a metaphor but a synechdoche, as I am in fact literally sneering *right now*.)
Have a lovely day, --The Reading Comprehension Nazi
the one time they tried to regulate it as a drug, it caused so much trouble that they ended up deregulating it again.
You mean the rampant crime, gang warfare, police corruption, toxic homemade hooch, etc? Yeah, I'm glad we've left those problems in the past. Our modern drug regulation is the envy of the world!
Individuals with different numbers of chromosomes can in fact reproduce, although IIANM their offspring are usually (but not always) sterile, as in the case of mules. Horses have 64 chromosomes while donkeys have 62.
I'm sorry to hear that. I must have only been familiar with the very old ones. Nevertheless I've always heard that ARM became popular through its openness and the vast number of clones. Is that wrong, or did they suddenly bring the hammer down?
You're not wrong about that, but it's not a bad thing. The same applies to doctors and lawyers, as has been pointed out. I can't call myself a doctor, even if I have a bachelor's degree in health sciences or something. They get to keep their exclusive club and high salaries, and the rest of us get to know that anyone who calls herself "Doctor" or "Engineer" actually has the proper expertise.
The guy a few posts up the chain who thinks he's an engineer because he knows what pointers are is simply delusional.
Actually, you might have hit on it there. If you could refer to a body of knowledge (you could say, "Best Practices") and use that with evidence from the problem to confidently state that something is a correct solution, in my opinion you would be doing engineering, especially if you could sign your name to it and risk your career as a matter of course. That applies to *nothing* I've ever done professionally.
It could be Microsoft methods, or a full-blown risk-analysis, requirements gathering, detailed design, etc. waterfall model, or just tossing something together and giving it to the users to find any bugs. But your process should be able to pass some kind of peer review and you should be able to stand behind any design before and after the implementation.
I should also mention that in many cases, engineers have personal legal liability for what they create. That's the tradeoff for the automatic credibility that comes with the title.
I have a software engineering degree, and I'm not an engineer. In civil engineering, mechanical engineering, etc., "engineer" is a title you can use after you obtain a license by completing an engineering degree, then passing a comprehensive exam for the state, working for an established engineer for a few years, then passing a focused Professional Engineering exam which is comparable to (or more difficult than) the Bar Exam. There's nothing like it for software.
You can do something analogous to that kind of engineering in software, but not many people do, certainly not most of the people who call themselves software engineers.
You remember the A-Team episodes where they weld steel plates on the outside of a car or whatever, drop a bus engine in it, stick some guns on and go ass-kickin?
If you call that mechanical engineering, you can probably call your job software engineering. I'd do either one of 'em though...
Slashdot Mirror
... while driving? Though I'd rather stop. Almost everybody passes *someplace* that sells coffee at least every half hour or so, unless they live in the desert.
:-)
(There are at least 20 coffee shops within a mile of my house, though. Not every place is Portland
Talk about your malicious packets. Coming soon: New SandBag(tm) Firewall...
I suppose the "knocking" people in your signature are from General Motors?
one of the people walking through the door is a tyrant with billions subjects,
Be careful, Starbucks has spies everywhere.
Teenage anger? God, I wish.
Realistically, you could probably find a solution by brute force fairly quickly, because for the purposes of a dorm room, most people are compatible with most other people. But this is still clearly a problem of satisfiability.
For example, it's within the bounds of the problem to assume that each student is only compatible with, say, two others. With that restriction, it seems much harder, but it's the same problem. You can do an exhaustive search to assign students to rooms, but your search will necessarily take an amount of time bounded by an exponential function of the number of students.
Before the next reading comprehension nazi comes along and abuses me in similar fashion, I should take this opportunity to point out that I also failed to read the OP correctly. "Raping our dreams" was not in fact referring to bionic technology. The editors apologize for any confusion this may have caused.
Also, I misspelled "synecdoche".
Look, it was obviously uninformed knee-jerk hyperbole (I'm an expert in that) but I'll try to help explain this to you, futile though the task may be. In English, words often have multiple meanings. That means you can sometimes say "raping" and not mean literal forced sexual intercourse. In the GP, this useful property applies to both the words "raping" and "dreams". It seems to me that the most likely combination of meanings is that (a) people hope to extend their lives and avoid the pain, discomfort and limitations which we have always experienced due to aging; and (b) corporations are exploiting this hope, without providing real or affordable solutions, purely for their own profit and consolidation of power. In fact I think the fellow is wrong, but he's entitled to his opinion.
In addition, you could interpret "raping our dreams" in terms of rhetorical devices known as "metaphors". When a person uses one of those, he says something which is not literally true but which evokes an image of what he means. They're really very common; perhaps you could try to spot one in your next attempt at reading. (There are several in these very paragraphs!) However, that's a lesson for a different condescending sneer.
(Sneer in the preceding paragraph is, however, not a metaphor but a synechdoche, as I am in fact literally sneering *right now*.)
Have a lovely day,
--The Reading Comprehension Nazi
Sorry you feel that way, and you might be right, but, uh... I'll have a drink for you when I turn 135 :-)
the one time they tried to regulate it as a drug, it caused so much trouble that they ended up deregulating it again.
You mean the rampant crime, gang warfare, police corruption, toxic homemade hooch, etc? Yeah, I'm glad we've left those problems in the past. Our modern drug regulation is the envy of the world!
Pointless, repetitive, off-topic flamebait is why we come here, dumbass. You want substantive debate, locate your nearest university.
u ll/nature04629.html
Anyway, TFA is useless. There are however numerous references below to the *actual* paper; read it yourself at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7086/f
In addition to the other response, duplication of chromosomes is a common occurrence in plants.
Individuals with different numbers of chromosomes can in fact reproduce, although IIANM their offspring are usually (but not always) sterile, as in the case of mules. Horses have 64 chromosomes while donkeys have 62.
I'm sorry to hear that. I must have only been familiar with the very old ones. Nevertheless I've always heard that ARM became popular through its openness and the vast number of clones. Is that wrong, or did they suddenly bring the hammer down?
Keep in mind, the American government is funded largely by investments from many other world governments! So it's your money, too. Have a nice day!
Actually, it's just about the size of a shilling :-)
You're not wrong about that, but it's not a bad thing. The same applies to doctors and lawyers, as has been pointed out. I can't call myself a doctor, even if I have a bachelor's degree in health sciences or something. They get to keep their exclusive club and high salaries, and the rest of us get to know that anyone who calls herself "Doctor" or "Engineer" actually has the proper expertise.
The guy a few posts up the chain who thinks he's an engineer because he knows what pointers are is simply delusional.
ARM is practically the canonical example of an open architecture.
Actually, you might have hit on it there. If you could refer to a body of knowledge (you could say, "Best Practices") and use that with evidence from the problem to confidently state that something is a correct solution, in my opinion you would be doing engineering, especially if you could sign your name to it and risk your career as a matter of course. That applies to *nothing* I've ever done professionally.
It could be Microsoft methods, or a full-blown risk-analysis, requirements gathering, detailed design, etc. waterfall model, or just tossing something together and giving it to the users to find any bugs. But your process should be able to pass some kind of peer review and you should be able to stand behind any design before and after the implementation.
I pity da foo who makes fun of the A-Team!
I should also mention that in many cases, engineers have personal legal liability for what they create. That's the tradeoff for the automatic credibility that comes with the title.
I have a software engineering degree, and I'm not an engineer. In civil engineering, mechanical engineering, etc., "engineer" is a title you can use after you obtain a license by completing an engineering degree, then passing a comprehensive exam for the state, working for an established engineer for a few years, then passing a focused Professional Engineering exam which is comparable to (or more difficult than) the Bar Exam. There's nothing like it for software.
You can do something analogous to that kind of engineering in software, but not many people do, certainly not most of the people who call themselves software engineers.
You remember the A-Team episodes where they weld steel plates on the outside of a car or whatever, drop a bus engine in it, stick some guns on and go ass-kickin?
If you call that mechanical engineering, you can probably call your job software engineering. I'd do either one of 'em though...
I have no connection with them, but I agree that it's pretty sweet :-)
This is Java based and it's not free - it used to be at least unlimited - but it's a lot more interesting than www.thesaurus.com:
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/