r.e. main topic of "good print resources": I enjoy Scientific American, recreational reading. I don't know if I could have kept up with The Economist before it was "dumbed down" as mentioned in another post, but it is a good travel magazine for me (airport reading fare) - just not a quick read (for me). I subscribed to Wall Street Journal for a while but just didn't have time to read all of it - I found some interesting things there. I am going to try a Guardian subscription based on another recommendation.
Here's an excerpt from As We May Think: fascinating reading, I encourage you to check it out (same link)if you haven't yet.
Let us project this trend ahead to a logical, if not inevitable, outcome. The camera hound of the future wears on his forehead a lump a little larger than a walnut. It takes pictures 3 millimeters square, later to be projected or enlarged, which after all involves only a factor of 10 beyond present practice. The lens is of universal focus, down to any distance accommodated by the unaided eye, simply because it is of short focal length. There is a built-in photocell on the walnut such as we now have on at least one camera, which automatically adjusts exposure for a wide range of illumination.
Also... we're not there yet on "trails".... has a fascinating section on readers researching and building their own trails; the closest I've seen is browser bookmarks. "trails" are a different thing than pre-canned trails stitched together by authors. This captures WikiPedia pretty well (in 1945!):
Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. The lawyer has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience of friends and authorities. The patent attorney has on call the millions of issued patents, with familiar trails to every point of his client's interest. The physician, puzzled by a patient's reactions, strikes the trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics for the pertinent anatomy and histology. The chemist, struggling with the synthesis of an organic compound, has all the chemical literature before him in his laboratory, with trails following the analogies of compounds, and side trails to their physical and chemical behavior.
r.e. "First Question: who are you".... yeah, they could have done a better introduction.
Reading through the answers did give me a pretty good idea though.
Also: the warcraft + spiff videos are amusing. I haven't looked at machinima for a long time, I was glad for the reference. (take home point: some good things buried in the answers)
r.e. slashdot not continuing this way....
You make some good points about weaknesses in the ask-slashdot format.
(editors, worth your time to consider them - don't just toss the observations into the "rant file").
Actually... I found 4 drive slots in a Sager NP8255-S with 2 x 2.5" (spinning or ssd), and 2 x msata (ssd only).
(And... if one drops the optical drive for a sata caddy then it should handle 5 drives.)
I looked long and hard for laptops that could handle more than 2 drives; they're kind of rare these days.
I'm finding raid-0 (multiple SSD's) to be pretty peppy (yeah, I back up early and often:-) ).
Also, being able to go up to 32gb of ram is kind of nice.
I've been pleased with it thus far (going into month #4 now).
Looks like that exact model isn't in production now, but this will get you close: NP8258.
Anyway, most laptops (and essentially *all* ultrabooks) are single drive machines; which works perfectly fine for probably 95% of laptop users. I realize I'm an edge case (in more ways than one:-) ).
r.e. high IO... iops tend to be bottlenecked by random access (think seek time).
Snapshots, installs, and so on are not so much random access limited as sustained sequential throughput; more streaming than random... SSD's tend to saturate SATA ports so you end up with tricks like raid to get more speed.
*shrug* So... there are different kinds of "high IO". Depends on what your app needs from a storage point of view.
The take home message is that if storage performance matters to your app(s) be sure you understand what kind of storage subsystem options your cloud dealer can give you.
For your research pleasure... (link has performance #'s for an interesting range of devices, worth a look if you're doing data intensive things).
Um, LOTS of stuff requires high IO.
Think of a qa VM. It has to do snapshots, installs, reverts. All of which are high IO. Especially if the build is a large install.
3am? ouch:-)
I will grant you all points, increased clarity (especially in production code) is a win.
I spend most of my time with Java these days, and rather miss the brevity of perl.
Bonus points for croak (and error handling in general vs. "But... but... it always works on my dev image!").
I will also concede the reality of a challenging coworker.
So... have they gotten any better over time?
"...and at the end of the day, is somewhat more readable."
There, fixed that for you:-)
(Unless I missed a use whoosh; here... don't think so because your post seems sincere.)
At the point where you're using Perl idioms to slurp an entire file into memory... is the array reference really the hard bit to understand here?:-)
I'll grant you the point about not needing to be a reference at all because of function locality.
But my $x = [ ]; and my @x; both establish an array.
push is actually suggestive of what it does, unlike the input operator's ability here @x = <$fileHandle>; to return all lines in a file as a list context... That is as obscure as references; if your target audience is expected to know how that aspect of the input operator works I wouldn't be too hard on your coworker for expecting them to understand array references.
Oh so this!
I have had to tell cow-orkers to knock that crap off. They've got the job, and from this point on the only thing that will impress us is code that can be maintained by anyone else on the team, even if they have not set eyes on it in years.
Programmer did:
my $something = [];
open my $filehandle, '<', $filename or croak "Can't read file";
push @$something, <$filehandle>;
close $filehandle;
How about:
open(my $filehandle, '<', $filename) or croak "Can't read file";
my @something = <$filehandle>;
close($filehandle);
Much more succinct, gets rid of a pointless use of an array reference (seriously, it was used as an array in that function only, never passed around or returned), and at the end of the day, is far more readable.
I'll recommend a tour guide in the form of John Bentley's Programming-Pearls-2nd-Edition.
His Programming Perls book does a nice job of putting interesting algorithms and design forces into context and helps the reader understand the pros & cons thereof. Part of the problem with just wandering around looking at things is you don't see the history and decisions that were made leading up to the result; understanding "what" isn't nearly as important as "why".
Also, the book isn't related the the Perl language; instead it uses Pearl as a metaphor for a small yet beautiful treasure.
Anyway, check out the Amazon reviews to see if it is worthwhile (I have no vested interest here; I just stumbled across this in a real book store some time ago and found it a satisfying read).
For math Khan academy is worth checking out; I don't know why parent is modded zero.
Probably good for other stuff too, it was the math that caught my eye.
https://www.khanacademy.org
I liked it. Maybe you're not nerdy enough?
TFA was an interesting analysis, drew upon the author's to airplane safety research, and reached some interesting conclusions. For example, one of the conclusions was (paraphrasing) that Tesla software has a User Interface warning (beeps + message) if driver pushes both brake + accelerator... so why not go one step further and ignore accelerator if brake is pressed at the same time? Author couldn't think of a scenario where that would be a problem. I can't either. Seems like a simple safety feature. I'd love to hear what automotive engineers think about it.
Your strategy will depend on your possible customers (or employers); I can't say much in detail without a better understanding of that.
(by the way, for eastern europe your english writing is quite good!)
So... can you do some market analysis for us here on Slashdot?
Are there any local shops in your geography that do software development?
Are there any charities or small businesses that would benefit from some custom code and/or database work?
Schools perhaps?
I suspect it will be easier to connect with them rather than looking for telecommuting jobs day #1.
Your main advantage at this point is your low cost + enthusiasm; work that.
The other posts about Open Source projects are fine to get started with....
But they won't be as useful as a reference from some small business owner who loves what you
were able to do for them and talks about it to their associates.
I've done the struct-based objects w/fnct pointers in C; it just isn't as much fun as working with more oo-minded languages, but at the time C is what we had for multi-platform support (early 90's... I wouldn't go down that road today, much better options are available).
So I agree with your premise, HiThere. It is an interesting exercise to imagine how to do oo-things in non oo languages (though
riding that train of thought to the end of the line leads to concluding that assembly language has oo-capabilities).
For something to be an oo-language, the capability to roll-your-own class hierarchy and dispatch mechanism
gets one's foot in the door... I will suggest that not having to roll anything on your own (e.g. having all that oo stuff
pre-built for you) gets one all the way to the Buffet of Productivity.
Now... whether Strong Typing is "all that" is a debate ranking right up there with emacs vs vi..:-)
*shrug* I suppose people that want the extra (alleged) safety of Strong Typing will seek it out.
Agreed. I wanted to learn something; turns out it is just a lame opinon piece.
From TFA (emphasis added):
Yes, by this standard, Astronomy and Social Sciences are also not sciences. I have no idea what Computer Science is, but no, it’s not a science either.
As part of our mission is to turn out employees immediately ready for the work force, is teaching knowledge-based careers as a vocation appropriate?
So... what are the employers in your area asking for?
I'll suggest working with the top 5 employers who want what you're contemplating and enlist their guidance; let them drive the skills they want to see (also, ask them how they'd like to see those skills be tested and/or demonstrated, so your students will have an easier time meeting their prospective employer's requirements).
Also, iterate often - track the placement + feedback of employers that do hire your students so you can find out what works well, what doesn't work as well, etc. You're not going to be optimal from the beginning (and even if you were, requirements will drift over time, so measure, adjust, rinse & repeat).
(As for all the "hands on" vs "ivory tower theory" posts, yeah... "hands on" wins for what you're describing.)
Good luck:-)
During a speech he once gave, someone in the audience asked Arthur C. Clarke when the space elevator would become a reality.
"Clarke answered, 'Probably about 50 years after everybody quits laughing,'" related Pearson. "He's got a point. Once you stop dismissing something as unattainable, then you start working on its development. This is exciting!"
Also, things to consider: without knowing these, all advice offered here is less focused (and hence less useful) than it could be otherwise.
1) Who are the stakeholder(s)?
1.B) What is the stakeholders' definition of "success"?
2) What is your budget - fixed bid, time & material? (if the later, do you have a max budget or is it open ended)
3) What is an ideal outcome for you personally?
4) What is the least-sucky outcome for you personally that you would accept?
Some general advice (this applies to the excellent "real assessment" mentioned above): Whatever bad news you have for your client, the SOONER you deliver it the BETTER OFF everyone will be, including yourself. If you go heads-down a pile of crap code for 6 months and end up stuck and unable to deliver anything useful enough and timely enough to satisfy the stakeholders then things will NOT end well for you.
Also... what you think may be "bad news" may be something the client is aware of and fully expects, so don't sweat it too much. Talk to them and do some brainstorming about how to rearrange things to make success possible.
*shrug* Maybe Wolfram didn't code 100% of Alpha, but it exists because of his vision.
The downside of your hand-waving is that it distracts others away from his ideas and perspective, which is their loss.
So... here is 20 minutes of rather cool geeky viewing; it is well worth watching S.Wolfram walk through his ideas, and talk a bit about WolframAlpha as well:
http://www.ted.com/talks/stephen_wolfram_computing_a_theory_of_everything.html
spoiler alert: if you were to read TFA you'd find a link to the actual blog 'norvig.com' that is pretty interesting.
In short, they handle the "ambiguity" of people that are both Winners+Losers ignoring any Winner's losses:
From Norvig's blog:
To avoid a contradiction and achieve Randall's intent, eliminate all winners from the set of losers:
In [293]: losers = losers - winners
The code on Norvig's blog is pretty interesting.
This one was worth my coffee break time today.
I might be missing something here, but the list of winners and the list of losers in US presidential elections both contain Richard Nixon.
How can a regexp match ALL the winners and NONE of the losers in that case?
Treadmill desks are actually cool. A lot of what I do is reading, thinking and typing - and (except for debugging really intricate logic), I do that as well whether I'm sitting or walking 1.6 mph. I am pleased with how my 2nd hand ikea desk + used treadmill is working out for me. An example: jerker-treadmill-desk (not mine, but a similar setup - I've read the jerker desk is out of production at Ikea, I was lucky enough to find one on craigslist).
So yeah, I'm a fan of the treadmill desk and recommend them.
Unless of course basic fitness smells too much of douchery for you, then never mind.
Mandatory bounties is the wrong way to go; it reminds me of this: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-11-13/. An approach like TFA advocates would have an underground economy in bug fixes spring up and wouldn't solve real zero day. Instead...
Allowing users to recover damages seems more suitable; a "zero day" class action suit or two would result in tremendous advances in best practices for security and qa (aspects of software development that, for some odd reason, just don't seem to get much funding today). By 'allowing' I mean changing software licensing so that verbiage like '...AS-IS WITHOUT RECOURSE TO RECOVER ANY LOSSES OR DAMAGES, DIRECT OR INDIRECT...' no longer holds.
Which is a pretty huge change, and a number of interests would lobby against that. So I expect it will take a pretty severe incident (e.g. loss of life, or maybe a loss of significant money) to shock existing legislation and treaties (it would have to be global; hello WTO) sufficiently to encourage change. By "significant" I mean larger than the multi-billion dollar loss 'estimates of global damage from cybercrime' cited in TFA. That "cost" isn't nearly enough to change behavior, especially when you average it out across the world population.
Because I'm lazy I asked wolfram.alpha to do the math:
What is $10.5 billion divided by the population of the usa.
It says $32.90 / person. I briefly thought GM could give everyone a free car as their way of saying "We're sorry" but $32 doesn't really buy much more than a license plate holder.
From the referenced article...
page 2, paragraph 7:
The question boils down to the accumulating impacts of daily incremental pollution from burning coal or the small risk but catastrophic consequences of even one nuclear meltdown.
And at the end:
As a general clarification, ounce for ounce, coal ash released from a power plant delivers more radiation than nuclear waste shielded via water or dry cask storage.
The referenced article isn't the slam-dunk that its headline suggests. There are other more valid reasons to be pro-nuke than pro-coal. (Heck, there are valid reasons to be anti-coal even if you take nuclear-anything out of the equation.) The article doesn't add as much in the way of useful light as I had hoped it would; interesting, but not a compelling data point.
TFA is basically a "creative" type whining about her kind not being appreciated for their brilliance. For example:
A close friend of mine works for a tech startup. She is an intensely creative and intelligent person who falls on the risk-taker side of the spectrum. Though her company initially hired her for her problem-solving skills, she is regularly unable to fix actual problems because nobody will listen to her ideas.
Which makes me wonder,
1) "[R]egularly unable to fix..." ranges from "Never able to fix" to "Able to fix up to 49% of the problems." TFA smells like weasel phrasing here (e.g. spin) to emphasize the hand-wringing tragedy of (millions?) of poor ignored creative souls across the land laboring away in vain...
I would like to know what %ge of their solutions were adopted, and what %ge of those actually improved upon the original problem situation; e.g. what exactly is this 'intensely creative and intelligent person's actual track record ?
2) The 'close friend' works for a tech startup, and was hired for their problem solving skills.
Which means friend (aka 'anecdotal data point') has a job where they get paid to sit around and do (apparently) nothing?
Sounds like a squandered opportunity for all involved parties.
Which leads me to agree 100% with your conclusion:
If you have an idea about changing the way the company does things, the burden is on you to demonstrate the value of that change. If you can't, then the "creative" idea isn't worth much.
Slashdot Mirror
r.e. main topic of "good print resources": I enjoy Scientific American, recreational reading. I don't know if I could have kept up with The Economist before it was "dumbed down" as mentioned in another post, but it is a good travel magazine for me (airport reading fare) - just not a quick read (for me). I subscribed to Wall Street Journal for a while but just didn't have time to read all of it - I found some interesting things there. I am going to try a Guardian subscription based on another recommendation.
Here's an excerpt from As We May Think: fascinating reading, I encourage you to check it out (same link)if you haven't yet.
Let us project this trend ahead to a logical, if not inevitable, outcome. The camera hound of the future wears on his forehead a lump a little larger than a walnut. It takes pictures 3 millimeters square, later to be projected or enlarged, which after all involves only a factor of 10 beyond present practice. The lens is of universal focus, down to any distance accommodated by the unaided eye, simply because it is of short focal length. There is a built-in photocell on the walnut such as we now have on at least one camera, which automatically adjusts exposure for a wide range of illumination.
Also... we're not there yet on "trails".... has a fascinating section on readers researching and building their own trails; the closest I've seen is browser bookmarks. "trails" are a different thing than pre-canned trails stitched together by authors. This captures WikiPedia pretty well (in 1945!):
Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. The lawyer has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience of friends and authorities. The patent attorney has on call the millions of issued patents, with familiar trails to every point of his client's interest. The physician, puzzled by a patient's reactions, strikes the trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics for the pertinent anatomy and histology. The chemist, struggling with the synthesis of an organic compound, has all the chemical literature before him in his laboratory, with trails following the analogies of compounds, and side trails to their physical and chemical behavior.
r.e. "First Question: who are you".... yeah, they could have done a better introduction.
Reading through the answers did give me a pretty good idea though.
Also: the warcraft + spiff videos are amusing. I haven't looked at machinima for a long time, I was glad for the reference. (take home point: some good things buried in the answers)
r.e. slashdot not continuing this way....
You make some good points about weaknesses in the ask-slashdot format.
(editors, worth your time to consider them - don't just toss the observations into the "rant file").
Actually... I found 4 drive slots in a Sager NP8255-S with 2 x 2.5" (spinning or ssd), and 2 x msata (ssd only). :-) ).
:-) ).
(And... if one drops the optical drive for a sata caddy then it should handle 5 drives.)
I looked long and hard for laptops that could handle more than 2 drives; they're kind of rare these days.
I'm finding raid-0 (multiple SSD's) to be pretty peppy (yeah, I back up early and often
Also, being able to go up to 32gb of ram is kind of nice.
I've been pleased with it thus far (going into month #4 now).
Looks like that exact model isn't in production now, but this will get you close: NP8258.
Anyway, most laptops (and essentially *all* ultrabooks) are single drive machines; which works perfectly fine for probably 95% of laptop users. I realize I'm an edge case (in more ways than one
NatasRevol: All valid points; sounds like we're vigorously agreeing :-)
r.e. the s840 raids, I feel a bit jealous - that sounds like fun to work with.
Snapshots, installs, and so on are not so much random access limited as sustained sequential throughput; more streaming than random... SSD's tend to saturate SATA ports so you end up with tricks like raid to get more speed.
*shrug* So... there are different kinds of "high IO". Depends on what your app needs from a storage point of view.
The take home message is that if storage performance matters to your app(s) be sure you understand what kind of storage subsystem options your cloud dealer can give you.
For your research pleasure... (link has performance #'s for an interesting range of devices, worth a look if you're doing data intensive things).
Um, LOTS of stuff requires high IO.
Think of a qa VM. It has to do snapshots, installs, reverts. All of which are high IO. Especially if the build is a large install.
3am? ouch :-)
I will grant you all points, increased clarity (especially in production code) is a win.
I spend most of my time with Java these days, and rather miss the brevity of perl.
Bonus points for croak (and error handling in general vs. "But... but... it always works on my dev image!").
I will also concede the reality of a challenging coworker.
So... have they gotten any better over time?
There, fixed that for you
(Unless I missed a use whoosh; here... don't think so because your post seems sincere.)
At the point where you're using Perl idioms to slurp an entire file into memory... is the array reference really the hard bit to understand here?
I'll grant you the point about not needing to be a reference at all because of function locality.
But my $x = [ ]; and my @x; both establish an array.
push is actually suggestive of what it does, unlike the input operator's ability here @x = <$fileHandle>; to return all lines in a file as a list context... That is as obscure as references; if your target audience is expected to know how that aspect of the input operator works I wouldn't be too hard on your coworker for expecting them to understand array references.
Oh so this!
I have had to tell cow-orkers to knock that crap off. They've got the job, and from this point on the only thing that will impress us is code that can be maintained by anyone else on the team, even if they have not set eyes on it in years.
Programmer did:
my $something = []; open my $filehandle, '<', $filename or croak "Can't read file"; push @$something, <$filehandle>; close $filehandle;
How about:
open(my $filehandle, '<', $filename) or croak "Can't read file"; my @something = <$filehandle>; close($filehandle);
Much more succinct, gets rid of a pointless use of an array reference (seriously, it was used as an array in that function only, never passed around or returned), and at the end of the day, is far more readable.
I'll recommend a tour guide in the form of John Bentley's Programming-Pearls-2nd-Edition.
His Programming Perls book does a nice job of putting interesting algorithms and design forces into context and helps the reader understand the pros & cons thereof. Part of the problem with just wandering around looking at things is you don't see the history and decisions that were made leading up to the result; understanding "what" isn't nearly as important as "why".
Also, the book isn't related the the Perl language; instead it uses Pearl as a metaphor for a small yet beautiful treasure.
Anyway, check out the Amazon reviews to see if it is worthwhile (I have no vested interest here; I just stumbled across this in a real book store some time ago and found it a satisfying read).
For math Khan academy is worth checking out; I don't know why parent is modded zero.
Probably good for other stuff too, it was the math that caught my eye.
https://www.khanacademy.org
Some cool video (give the first one five minutes... I think you'll like it):
Salman Khan talk at TED 2011 (from ted.com)
TEDxSanJoseCA - Salman Khan - (Sequel to talk at TED)
I liked it. Maybe you're not nerdy enough?
TFA was an interesting analysis, drew upon the author's to airplane safety research, and reached some interesting conclusions. For example, one of the conclusions was (paraphrasing) that Tesla software has a User Interface warning (beeps + message) if driver pushes both brake + accelerator... so why not go one step further and ignore accelerator if brake is pressed at the same time? Author couldn't think of a scenario where that would be a problem. I can't either. Seems like a simple safety feature. I'd love to hear what automotive engineers think about it.
Your strategy will depend on your possible customers (or employers); I can't say much in detail without a better understanding of that.
(by the way, for eastern europe your english writing is quite good!)
So... can you do some market analysis for us here on Slashdot?
Are there any local shops in your geography that do software development?
Are there any charities or small businesses that would benefit from some custom code and/or database work?
Schools perhaps?
I suspect it will be easier to connect with them rather than looking for telecommuting jobs day #1.
Your main advantage at this point is your low cost + enthusiasm; work that.
The other posts about Open Source projects are fine to get started with....
But they won't be as useful as a reference from some small business owner who loves what you
were able to do for them and talks about it to their associates.
I've done the struct-based objects w/fnct pointers in C; it just isn't as much fun as working with more oo-minded languages, but at the time C is what we had for multi-platform support (early 90's... I wouldn't go down that road today, much better options are available).
:-)
Also, just for fun, who remembers that C++ started life as a pre-processor (cfront) that generated C code?
So I agree with your premise, HiThere. It is an interesting exercise to imagine how to do oo-things in non oo languages (though
riding that train of thought to the end of the line leads to concluding that assembly language has oo-capabilities).
For something to be an oo-language, the capability to roll-your-own class hierarchy and dispatch mechanism
gets one's foot in the door... I will suggest that not having to roll anything on your own (e.g. having all that oo stuff
pre-built for you) gets one all the way to the Buffet of Productivity.
Now... whether Strong Typing is "all that" is a debate ranking right up there with emacs vs vi..
*shrug* I suppose people that want the extra (alleged) safety of Strong Typing will seek it out.
From TFA (emphasis added):
Yes, by this standard, Astronomy and Social Sciences are also not sciences. I have no idea what Computer Science is, but no, it’s not a science either.
*sigh* RTFA was a waste of time.
As part of our mission is to turn out employees immediately ready for the work force, is teaching knowledge-based careers as a vocation appropriate?
So... what are the employers in your area asking for?
:-)
I'll suggest working with the top 5 employers who want what you're contemplating and enlist their guidance; let them drive the skills they want to see (also, ask them how they'd like to see those skills be tested and/or demonstrated, so your students will have an easier time meeting their prospective employer's requirements).
Also, iterate often - track the placement + feedback of employers that do hire your students so you can find out what works well, what doesn't work as well, etc. You're not going to be optimal from the beginning (and even if you were, requirements will drift over time, so measure, adjust, rinse & repeat).
(As for all the "hands on" vs "ivory tower theory" posts, yeah... "hands on" wins for what you're describing.)
Good luck
During a speech he once gave, someone in the audience asked Arthur C. Clarke when the space elevator would become a reality.
"Clarke answered, 'Probably about 50 years after everybody quits laughing,'" related Pearson. "He's got a point. Once you stop dismissing something as unattainable, then you start working on its development. This is exciting!"
Makes sense to me; original link here.
Excellent points r.e. "real assessment"
Also, things to consider: without knowing these, all advice offered here is less focused (and hence less useful) than it could be otherwise.
1) Who are the stakeholder(s)?
1.B) What is the stakeholders' definition of "success"?
2) What is your budget - fixed bid, time & material? (if the later, do you have a max budget or is it open ended)
3) What is an ideal outcome for you personally?
4) What is the least-sucky outcome for you personally that you would accept?
Some general advice (this applies to the excellent "real assessment" mentioned above): Whatever bad news you have for your client, the SOONER you deliver it the BETTER OFF everyone will be, including yourself. If you go heads-down a pile of crap code for 6 months and end up stuck and unable to deliver anything useful enough and timely enough to satisfy the stakeholders then things will NOT end well for you.
Also... what you think may be "bad news" may be something the client is aware of and fully expects, so don't sweat it too much. Talk to them and do some brainstorming about how to rearrange things to make success possible.
*shrug* Maybe Wolfram didn't code 100% of Alpha, but it exists because of his vision.
The downside of your hand-waving is that it distracts others away from his ideas and perspective, which is their loss.
So... here is 20 minutes of rather cool geeky viewing; it is well worth watching S.Wolfram walk through his ideas, and talk a bit about WolframAlpha as well:
http://www.ted.com/talks/stephen_wolfram_computing_a_theory_of_everything.html
and the job as CEO at Microsoft
You evil evil bastard. Have you no compassion in your soul?
From Norvig's blog:
To avoid a contradiction and achieve Randall's intent, eliminate all winners from the set of losers:
In [293]: losers = losers - winners
The code on Norvig's blog is pretty interesting.
This one was worth my coffee break time today.
I might be missing something here, but the list of winners and the list of losers in US presidential elections both contain Richard Nixon. How can a regexp match ALL the winners and NONE of the losers in that case?
Judgement comes from experience.
Experience comes from poor judgment.
--Robert E. Lee
Treadmill desks are actually cool. A lot of what I do is reading, thinking and typing - and (except for debugging really intricate logic), I do that as well whether I'm sitting or walking 1.6 mph. I am pleased with how my 2nd hand ikea desk + used treadmill is working out for me. An example: jerker-treadmill-desk (not mine, but a similar setup - I've read the jerker desk is out of production at Ikea, I was lucky enough to find one on craigslist).
So yeah, I'm a fan of the treadmill desk and recommend them.
Unless of course basic fitness smells too much of douchery for you, then never mind.
Allowing users to recover damages seems more suitable; a "zero day" class action suit or two would result in tremendous advances in best practices for security and qa (aspects of software development that, for some odd reason, just don't seem to get much funding today). By 'allowing' I mean changing software licensing so that verbiage like '...AS-IS WITHOUT RECOURSE TO RECOVER ANY LOSSES OR DAMAGES, DIRECT OR INDIRECT...' no longer holds.
Which is a pretty huge change, and a number of interests would lobby against that. So I expect it will take a pretty severe incident (e.g. loss of life, or maybe a loss of significant money) to shock existing legislation and treaties (it would have to be global; hello WTO) sufficiently to encourage change. By "significant" I mean larger than the multi-billion dollar loss 'estimates of global damage from cybercrime' cited in TFA. That "cost" isn't nearly enough to change behavior, especially when you average it out across the world population.
Because I'm lazy I asked wolfram.alpha to do the math: What is $10.5 billion divided by the population of the usa.
It says $32.90 / person. I briefly thought GM could give everyone a free car as their way of saying "We're sorry" but $32 doesn't really buy much more than a license plate holder.
page 2, paragraph 7:
The question boils down to the accumulating impacts of daily incremental pollution from burning coal or the small risk but catastrophic consequences of even one nuclear meltdown.
And at the end:
As a general clarification, ounce for ounce, coal ash released from a power plant delivers more radiation than nuclear waste shielded via water or dry cask storage.
The referenced article isn't the slam-dunk that its headline suggests. There are other more valid reasons to be pro-nuke than pro-coal. (Heck, there are valid reasons to be anti-coal even if you take nuclear-anything out of the equation.) The article doesn't add as much in the way of useful light as I had hoped it would; interesting, but not a compelling data point.
TFA is basically a "creative" type whining about her kind not being appreciated for their brilliance. For example:
Which makes me wonder,
1) "[R]egularly unable to fix..." ranges from "Never able to fix" to "Able to fix up to 49% of the problems." TFA smells like weasel phrasing here (e.g. spin) to emphasize the hand-wringing tragedy of (millions?) of poor ignored creative souls across the land laboring away in vain...
I would like to know what %ge of their solutions were adopted, and what %ge of those actually improved upon the original problem situation; e.g. what exactly is this 'intensely creative and intelligent person's actual track record ?
2) The 'close friend' works for a tech startup, and was hired for their problem solving skills.
Which means friend (aka 'anecdotal data point') has a job where they get paid to sit around and do (apparently) nothing?
Sounds like a squandered opportunity for all involved parties.
Which leads me to agree 100% with your conclusion:
If you have an idea about changing the way the company does things, the burden is on you to demonstrate the value of that change. If you can't, then the "creative" idea isn't worth much.