The Perl shop - will you be happier there? Are you planning to move, and if so do youlike the area/can afford it? Does the company have long tem prospects? Will it likely stay this size, or grow. (Grow means more opportunities, but also that the culture may change.) Will you get to play with technology that interests you and has a future applications.
The Windows shop - same basic questions. Take out moving, add in how much you'll be working undr others/following corp standards - can you enjoy that, or be stifled by it.
I know that I've done startups, small, and mid sized, and they each have their bonuses. To make a sweeping generalization that has plenty of exceptions, larger companies give more stability, smaller companies give more opportunities.
You're in a good position - two employers competing for you. Figure out which will long term make you happy - which technology, culture, size, and company. And go for it with a passion.
One of the primary differences with classes from a design perspective is "niche protection". If everyone can do everything, everyone will. With classes or other methods of giving focus, you make sure that you have a sufficiently diverse party that not everyone is stepping on each other's toes - and that you can cover the bases. Champions is a fantastic game an you can make anything - but there are still common niches. "Okay, we've got a brick, a martial artist, and an egoist. I'm going to play a flying energy projector." This isn't because the rules forced them, but because it was useful to gamers.
No you don't. You want 90%-95% confidence interval estimates. Worse-case estimates tend to be ridiculous.
I stand corrected. And as the one who raises a stink whenever senior mgmt wants "no bugs" or "100% server up time", I feel doubly idiotic for going forth with a end-of-spectrum absolute.
I applaud you for recognizing the problems with "realistic estimates" (which are sometimes just an excuse for inexperienced management to refuse to accept the estimates given).
Sure, the boss learns fairly quickly that you're giving worst case estimates, but I think that's a lot better than giving best case estimates.
As a boss who's come up the technical ranks, I want worst case estimates. I had one DBA who only gave me best case estimates and my team would consistantly be burned when he couldn't deliver. Everyone wants "realistic" estimates, but that's not, pardon the pun, realistic. Especially if different people/groups are trying to schedule resources, you push everything back when any part fo the chain gets delayed. I'd rather have a timeframe we consistantly make, and often enough beat. I didn't understand that until I was managing.
The real answer if you need flexibility with regards to "non-production stuff" is to not let IT have anything to do with it at all. Create a separate sub-net if you have to to keep the non-production machines off the IT network, and a firewall between your network and theirs to prevent any viruses, or other effects, from leaking from your net to theirs (this may require having to VPN through it just to work with these machines, c'est la vie). Keep the machines in a different room than the official server room. Maintain them all 100% yourself.
Working IT Infrastructure, we hate when this happens. Do you know the number of "applications" (and I use that word loosely) that branches have decided they need (without coming to IT in the first place), hired some yahoo to develop, use for a few years, have it break (and said yahoo is nowhere to be found), and then suddenly it's IT's problem. Often with changes in management in the branches so they don't even realize that it's not "official IT" software so they're yelling that support sucks all the way up to senior management and IT is costing them money/impacting their ability to do their job.
We've had people install databases locally on desktops without telling us, then got hit by a DB worm because they weren't kept up on patches. We've had people install private ISP software on laptops that ended up next time brought in our network registered itself with DHCP with the IP addresses already in use by servers and caused major screwups.
Having "you're own little box to play in" can still hurt the rest of the company unless it's kept to the same standards (security, anti-virus, patches, etc) as the rest of the company, and maintained like that for the entire lifespan of the project. And if you're going to do that, why go through all of the duplication of effort, let IT who already can do that large scale do it.
Really, we're lean. Sometimes we bring in consultants to deal with operational needs in a timely manner. Instead of some branch manager doing it on their own, coordinate with us. Maybe we have resources available and you save money. Maybe we don't, but we coordinate with the consultant you would have hired behind out backs, and in the end we have a good, stable, and maintainable system.
Actually, no you can't insure even that there are no dangerous bugs.
Yes you can. The post I referred to described a way to do this by constraining outputs to known safe values. There are still bugs, but none that can hurt you.
Doesn't work in all, heck in MANY cases. Your input assumes you know all states, and can determine everything that's dangerous.
Take air traffic controller software. List all dangerous conditions. You can't. You can make reasonable assumptions, but EVERY condition isn't possible. Maybe the problem end up being that you've got a radar Hw error flooding the software with over 2^32 signatures, and the programming language dies with arrays that big. You can't think of every possibility.
That why firewalls don't say "these are bad conditions, keep them out". They say "this are good conditions, keep everything else out."
But that's not always practical - I can make a radiation therapy machine perfectly safe - it'll never turn on. But if you want the system to deal with potentially unsafe conditions, having the hubris to assume you can identify every dangerous condition in your output state isn't reasonable except for the simplest of projects.
The vast majority (like World of Warcraft) have devolved into places where it's only fun for the kids who can play for hours and hours each day, exploiting every bug they find in order to enlarge their "e-penis".
I stayed away from all of the MMPORGs before WoW for many of the reasons you stated, but then gave WoW a try based on some friends recommendations.
Amusingly, the fact that it's a subscription model instead of a free play helps keep off a lot of the immature annoyances. Sure, you've still got your share, but having to pay to play helps filter out a lot of idiots.
Normal people who occasionally play video games (like myself) are instantly turned off these games because of all of the kids playing. Until companies figure out how to make the games playable for everybody, they're going to continue to be popular among only the hardest of hardcore gamers.
WoW is much more "casual player friendly" then most of these, and my friends who do play often just have characters my level on my server they play if we ever get together.
To sum up, give it a try and see if it fits your occasional gaming need. When I purchased it, besides the 30 day initial subscription, it also came with a 10-day guest pass to let your friends try. You borrow the CDs (not needed to play, only install) and try the 10 day pass. This gives you time to try it without spending a single cent.
You don't want to work in a company where almost all your coworkers are millionaires, and you're not, because you happened to join the company after the IPO date.
Maybe in 3 - 5 years, when most of the millionaires have left, but I would certainly NOT join Google right now, unless my stock options strike price was at pre-IPO levels (which it won't).
I've got to second this. Joining google right now:
1. Get Options at current price. 2. 500-1000 millionairs leave during the 5 years it takes to become vested. 3. In leaving, stock price drops. 4. Your options, at old, high price, are under water and worth nothing. 5. New employees coming on get stock options at the new, lower rate, and make fun of you when they apperciate from there, but yours are still worthless.
Take a deep breath and repeat after me: "It's only a film, It's only a film, It really is only a film".
It is only a film (er, well, three films). They happen to be fairly influential films from my formative years, and since I see the newer folms also as "just films", but lousy ones, I am astounded that someone would go through the effort to downgrade perfectly good films.
It's so much easiler to leave it along.
I'm not going to say "the Mona Lisa is just a painting", but I will say that the first three movies were classics, just as many books are classics. And I get just as annoyed if someone changed around classic books and would only publish the new versions and never again the old.
*shrug* I don't expect you to agree, btu I hope you understand where the thought comes from.
Look, it's well established that the first three movies are a classic. But some of the changes seem to bring the classic in line with the latest shovel-fed garbage. Redubbing Boba Fett's voice? Replacing the Anakin Skywalker ghost?
It's like taking Dracula (the original) and "updating" it so it's got smoother continuity with all of the cheesy vampire moves made over the years.
Guess what - there already is a break between the original trilogy and the 2/3 releases prequel trilogy. If you need to adjust to bring them in line, adjust the new junk to be in line with the classic, not the other way around!
Isreal may have done a slick job at getting the computers out of the warehouse, but I wonder if he would be so good at social engineering if he was trying it at a place he didn't work for. Knowing all of the procedures and stuff definitely helps.
Not that you don't have to be aware of employees or ex-employees who are trying to game the system, but being able to SE someplace you're familar with is an order of magnitude easier then trying to scam someplace else because you know all the right internal buzzwords and procedures.
Cringley is right (who'd of thunk I'd say that). Not only is the amount fairly trivial, not only can it get reduced or removed via appeal, but the interest they get off the profits from that market while they are appealing will pay for a good chunk of the fines.
So, if punitive monetary damages aren't sufficient to hurt a company, how CAN a government wield a realistic prod to get them back in line? They can't tell MS that they can't sell - companies would go crazy. Tariffs and taxes are again just money. What type of stick could a government wield to actually make MS take notice and play nice?
One of the things I always liked about the ACM problems, both now and when I was competing, was that they were fun challenges. Very few "real world examples", instead they always made your head spin a few times and then you could dive right in.
You had a limited amount of time, and when I was going it only a single terminal so only one team member could actually code at once. So optimizing for time to code was a huge factor. But it also meant that you could afford to specialize a bit, have some out-of-the box thinkers who may be great algorethmically but not the best with real code, and a dedicated coder to implement.
I remember one year we had a Mechanical Engineer on the team who had a completely different approach. We were trying to work out how to do one problem correctly mathmatically and he mentioned that they only wanted two significant digits and suggested an iterative solution to the math problem that worked beautifully.
He needs to take this up with the original posters of this information. You can sue someone for libeling you (hopefully if it's not true), but you can't sue Xerox for printing the copy.
The original article says that the problem is that the "page rank" takes things out of context. I assume they mean the little snippets of the page that are displayed.
While this guy is a freaking idiot, and with his list of defendants he obviously just wants some settlement money, but his point of showing a small section of the content changes the context is only about 99% wrong.
Of course, it's still like trying to sue a library card catalog catalog because you don't like the book description.
The ending of A Wizard of Earthsea still amazes me almost a quarter-century after I first read it.
The Wizard of Earthsea happens to be the book that introduced me to reading fantasy. Before that it was just SF (A.C.Clark, I.Asimov, G.R.Dickenson, P.K.Dick, etc.)
I'm going to take a view against the article, and maybe an unpopular one. I'm a Unix sysadmin, have been for over 10 years, came in from developing, and I manage the other Unix admins and DBAs.
One primary function is to keep systems available and functioning for the users. You know, that ones that do the work that pays the salaries of both the admins and the developers.
Often we need to rein in developers who want to do something in a particular way. Maybe because it's easier for them, or because they don't have a broader picture and see how it will or will not play well with other things, or even just because sometimes ideas work great in small scall on dedicated development platforms but don't scale.
So there are definitely times we say "No". I personally perfer to be able to say "would this work instead", but sometimes I don't have a clear enough understanding of their problem, and we both need to get our heads together to figure out a real solution.
Does this slow down the development of any particular app becuase they can't just throw it on willy-nilly? Yeap. Does it end up with a better total environment? I also would like to think yes.
All sorts of other *admin positions - some are needed, and some are chaff. A good security admin I expect to get into my face more then the developers face, and probably be well justified in doing so - hey, we need to upgrade to the latest patch of BIND becuase of XYZ security hole. Other parts may involve the developers - say the developers want web access from the internet to a system in your internal network for a client. If the security admin wasn't there, it would be quicker for the developer, but more detremental as a whole for the company due to potential security issues.
I may get modded down for the opinion, but let developers focus on developping, sysadmins focus on their systems, security admin focus on security, and have them LISTEN to each other. It's not that developers aren't smart enough to do sysadmin and security work, it's that they shouldn't have to be bothered to do it, let them focus on what they do best. Just like I might bring in others to clean up documentation instead of expecting my developers to have masters in English, we have other, needed, positions to make things run smoothly.
The article describes something that might work at a small shop, but a mid size or big shop needs more structure. This doens't mean ties and timeclocks, it means that we do have ways of doing things that keep things organized, and maintanable in four years without chaining that same group of developers to the project forever. And a lot of that requires extra admin positions.
The DMCA is vague on that point. It says that it is illegal to circumvent the technological measures used to protect a copyrighted work. It seems to be assumed that you do not own the copyright to the work in question, but this isn't explicitly stated from what I remember.
So if Ritz goes any circumvents a technological measure to protect a copywrited work (their OWN technological measure, but a technological measure regardless), to download YOUR copywrited photos, can you sue them for DMCA violations?
"My router every once in a while replaces my URL with one for Belkin parental controls."
"That's correct."
"But I just spent half an hour filling out the web form, and it doesn't cache, so I have to do it all again."
"You can turn off parental controls by clicking on 'No thanks!'"
"So this is intentional?"
"Yes sir, it's a service to you, provided at no extra cost. It also comes with a free 6 month trial."
"But a router is supposed to ROUTE."
"It can do that, if you change the configuration."
"So, it comes intentionally misconfigured to fail once every eight hours?"
"It's not failing, it's offering a service."
"So it's spamming me."
"It's not spam."
"Why not?"
"Because we're offering you a service you might not know about."
"So it's intentionally misconfigured to send me spam on something I didn't request any information for, dropping my URL and information in the process?"
"Well, yes."
"You should really just kill yourself."
"You're right. Goodbye."
*BANG*
"Dang, should of told him to kill the marketting department first. Well, I can always call back..."
It can't be a proper model of the internet unless it contains its own Slashdot, complete with the Slashdot Effect.
Of course, this is a simulation of the internet, so it will have a simulation of Slashdot, and thus we are all now simulations somewhere in a computer in California, simulating the Slashdotting of simulated small, interesting web sites. Wow, I now have an avitar!
But really, we're all here and just hooked into the simulated/. thinking it's real/. while they use our meat-bodies for energy...... oh wait, that's the plot of the new W Bros movie, Matrix Slashdotted.
Patches? They can go on immediately. What is this "reboot" you speak of?
What, you're not running a Unix system? Why not?
Ok, not to sound like a troll - some patches do require we reboot the system, but those are usually the fairly big ones. Often I have to shut down a service temporarily. But these are fairly minor to what I see the Win32 team doing.
But even there you can run clustered, or server farms, so you can update one system at a time and stay mostly available.
Not to get too simplistic, but if your business is critical enough that you need patches immeditately, you should be putting in place enough infrastructure that you can patch fairly painlessly anyhow.
But is it really the computer that's winning? It's one thing if all we do is give a computer the rules of Chess, and then see how it does. However, the computer is being told how to think and what to compute by humans. The computer is just automating (via opening/closing/midgame books, brute force, etc.) a human created algorithm. All that the computer has over the human is the speed of number crunching.
It's an interesting point. Depends on what you define winning as.
If you are comparing the ability of own human to do something unaided vs. the ability of another human to build a tool to do the same, then the tool builders win.
If you are comparing chess skill, then the designers need not have more chess knowledge then the master, they just have a different way of approaching the probelm. In that case, as a matter of pure chess skill, hte master "wins" over the human designers.
*shrug*
I don't think the question is all that important, except to illustrate that "the computer" doesn't win, it's merely a tool.
=Blue(23)
P.S. Of course, the computer is your friend, keep your laser handy.
My thought is this - grand masters in chess used to be so far above computer players, because the computer players could not handle the huge number of possible positions.
Computers have advanced enough that now they can deal with positions on the level of a grand master, at least with a powerful enoguh computer (a la Deep Blue).
I would expect that the same will eventually hold true of Go. Currently, computers can't hold a match to high dan players (or is it high kyu players, I haven't checked out rankings in a while).
However, I would expect that as computers get faster, that even the massive positional space of Go will eventually be able to be calcuated in a period of time given for moves to a deep enough level to emulate human players.
I don't think a computer will ever have human elegance, for lack fo a btter term, while playing, but it may have it's own, unique brand of play that is quite effective.
Chess defied computers as real masters for so long because the problem space/used to be/ too large to take a good look at, so intuition and finely honed skills at determining positional strength (as opposed to just calculating plies of moves) kept the top humans the top of the field.
However, as computers get more powerful, being able to look far ahead/prune less will slowly be able to simulate true positional understanding, because the computer will be able to "see" farther reaching strategies.
That was the magic of Deep Blue. Lots of custom designed chess chips (like Brutus, except even faster because it was on a single chip and there were more of them) running in an IBM SP cluster. It just had enough cycles to look far enough ahead that it simulated positional understanding at the level of a grand master.
I'm not putting Deep Blue down - it took an amazing amount of thought to design those chips, I'm in awe of it.
Coming back to Brutus, computer speeds have been doing their normal Moore's law increase. What used to take a huge number of custom chips, you can now do on much fewer.
Their are games where the search space is even larger, and not just by a few orders of magnitude. Go is one of these, and is often touted as the next fronteir of man's superiority over machine.
Man will maintain that for a time, as computers get faster and ground down the difference. Maybe they'll never "get it". Or maybe they'll be able to play all possible games in 3 minutes.
If I remember, Deep Thought's "magic" was in the special chess evaluation chips, which wouldn't of been able to contribute to any general purpose floating point calculations.
Without those, it was just a high-end RS/6000 SP cluster. Nice, but not one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.
Slashdot Mirror
For me, carreers are about long term goals.
The Perl shop - will you be happier there? Are you planning to move, and if so do youlike the area/can afford it? Does the company have long tem prospects? Will it likely stay this size, or grow. (Grow means more opportunities, but also that the culture may change.) Will you get to play with technology that interests you and has a future applications.
The Windows shop - same basic questions. Take out moving, add in how much you'll be working undr others/following corp standards - can you enjoy that, or be stifled by it.
I know that I've done startups, small, and mid sized, and they each have their bonuses. To make a sweeping generalization that has plenty of exceptions, larger companies give more stability, smaller companies give more opportunities.
You're in a good position - two employers competing for you. Figure out which will long term make you happy - which technology, culture, size, and company. And go for it with a passion.
Good luck,
=Blue(23)
One of the primary differences with classes from a design perspective is "niche protection". If everyone can do everything, everyone will. With classes or other methods of giving focus, you make sure that you have a sufficiently diverse party that not everyone is stepping on each other's toes - and that you can cover the bases. Champions is a fantastic game an you can make anything - but there are still common niches. "Okay, we've got a brick, a martial artist, and an egoist. I'm going to play a flying energy projector." This isn't because the rules forced them, but because it was useful to gamers.
Cheers
=Blue(23)
No you don't. You want 90%-95% confidence interval estimates. Worse-case estimates tend to be ridiculous.
I stand corrected. And as the one who raises a stink whenever senior mgmt wants "no bugs" or "100% server up time", I feel doubly idiotic for going forth with a end-of-spectrum absolute.
I applaud you for recognizing the problems with "realistic estimates" (which are sometimes just an excuse for inexperienced management to refuse to accept the estimates given).
*nod* Thanks.
=Blue(23)
Sure, the boss learns fairly quickly that you're giving worst case estimates, but I think that's a lot better than giving best case estimates.
As a boss who's come up the technical ranks, I want worst case estimates. I had one DBA who only gave me best case estimates and my team would consistantly be burned when he couldn't deliver. Everyone wants "realistic" estimates, but that's not, pardon the pun, realistic. Especially if different people/groups are trying to schedule resources, you push everything back when any part fo the chain gets delayed. I'd rather have a timeframe we consistantly make, and often enough beat. I didn't understand that until I was managing.
Cheers,
=Blue(23)
The real answer if you need flexibility with regards to "non-production stuff" is to not let IT have anything to do with it at all. Create a separate sub-net if you have to to keep the non-production machines off the IT network, and a firewall between your network and theirs to prevent any viruses, or other effects, from leaking from your net to theirs (this may require having to VPN through it just to work with these machines, c'est la vie). Keep the machines in a different room than the official server room. Maintain them all 100% yourself.
Working IT Infrastructure, we hate when this happens. Do you know the number of "applications" (and I use that word loosely) that branches have decided they need (without coming to IT in the first place), hired some yahoo to develop, use for a few years, have it break (and said yahoo is nowhere to be found), and then suddenly it's IT's problem. Often with changes in management in the branches so they don't even realize that it's not "official IT" software so they're yelling that support sucks all the way up to senior management and IT is costing them money/impacting their ability to do their job.
We've had people install databases locally on desktops without telling us, then got hit by a DB worm because they weren't kept up on patches. We've had people install private ISP software on laptops that ended up next time brought in our network registered itself with DHCP with the IP addresses already in use by servers and caused major screwups.
Having "you're own little box to play in" can still hurt the rest of the company unless it's kept to the same standards (security, anti-virus, patches, etc) as the rest of the company, and maintained like that for the entire lifespan of the project. And if you're going to do that, why go through all of the duplication of effort, let IT who already can do that large scale do it.
Really, we're lean. Sometimes we bring in consultants to deal with operational needs in a timely manner. Instead of some branch manager doing it on their own, coordinate with us. Maybe we have resources available and you save money. Maybe we don't, but we coordinate with the consultant you would have hired behind out backs, and in the end we have a good, stable, and maintainable system.
Cheers,
=Blue(23)
Actually, no you can't insure even that there are no dangerous bugs.
Yes you can. The post I referred to described a way to do this by constraining outputs to known safe values. There are still bugs, but none that can hurt you.
Doesn't work in all, heck in MANY cases. Your input assumes you know all states, and can determine everything that's dangerous.
Take air traffic controller software. List all dangerous conditions. You can't. You can make reasonable assumptions, but EVERY condition isn't possible. Maybe the problem end up being that you've got a radar Hw error flooding the software with over 2^32 signatures, and the programming language dies with arrays that big. You can't think of every possibility.
That why firewalls don't say "these are bad conditions, keep them out". They say "this are good conditions, keep everything else out."
But that's not always practical - I can make a radiation therapy machine perfectly safe - it'll never turn on. But if you want the system to deal with potentially unsafe conditions, having the hubris to assume you can identify every dangerous condition in your output state isn't reasonable except for the simplest of projects.
Cheers,
Blue
The vast majority (like World of Warcraft) have devolved into places where it's only fun for the kids who can play for hours and hours each day, exploiting every bug they find in order to enlarge their "e-penis".
I stayed away from all of the MMPORGs before WoW for many of the reasons you stated, but then gave WoW a try based on some friends recommendations.
Amusingly, the fact that it's a subscription model instead of a free play helps keep off a lot of the immature annoyances. Sure, you've still got your share, but having to pay to play helps filter out a lot of idiots.
Normal people who occasionally play video games (like myself) are instantly turned off these games because of all of the kids playing. Until companies figure out how to make the games playable for everybody, they're going to continue to be popular among only the hardest of hardcore gamers.
WoW is much more "casual player friendly" then most of these, and my friends who do play often just have characters my level on my server they play if we ever get together.
To sum up, give it a try and see if it fits your occasional gaming need. When I purchased it, besides the 30 day initial subscription, it also came with a 10-day guest pass to let your friends try. You borrow the CDs (not needed to play, only install) and try the 10 day pass. This gives you time to try it without spending a single cent.
Cheers,
Blue
You don't want to work in a company where almost all your coworkers are millionaires, and you're not, because you happened to join the company after the IPO date.
Maybe in 3 - 5 years, when most of the millionaires have left, but I would certainly NOT join Google right now, unless my stock options strike price was at pre-IPO levels (which it won't).
I've got to second this. Joining google right now:
1. Get Options at current price.
2. 500-1000 millionairs leave during the 5 years it takes to become vested.
3. In leaving, stock price drops.
4. Your options, at old, high price, are under water and worth nothing.
5. New employees coming on get stock options at the new, lower rate, and make fun of you when they apperciate from there, but yours are still worthless.
Cheers,
=Blue(23)
Take a deep breath and repeat after me: "It's only a film, It's only a film, It really is only a film".
It is only a film (er, well, three films). They happen to be fairly influential films from my formative years, and since I see the newer folms also as "just films", but lousy ones, I am astounded that someone would go through the effort to downgrade perfectly good films.
It's so much easiler to leave it along.
I'm not going to say "the Mona Lisa is just a painting", but I will say that the first three movies were classics, just as many books are classics. And I get just as annoyed if someone changed around classic books and would only publish the new versions and never again the old.
*shrug* I don't expect you to agree, btu I hope you understand where the thought comes from.
Cheers,
=Blue(23)
Look, it's well established that the first three movies are a classic. But some of the changes seem to bring the classic in line with the latest shovel-fed garbage. Redubbing Boba Fett's voice? Replacing the Anakin Skywalker ghost?
It's like taking Dracula (the original) and "updating" it so it's got smoother continuity with all of the cheesy vampire moves made over the years.
Guess what - there already is a break between the original trilogy and the 2/3 releases prequel trilogy. If you need to adjust to bring them in line, adjust the new junk to be in line with the classic, not the other way around!
Hopping mad,
=Blue(23)
Isreal may have done a slick job at getting the computers out of the warehouse, but I wonder if he would be so good at social engineering if he was trying it at a place he didn't work for. Knowing all of the procedures and stuff definitely helps.
Not that you don't have to be aware of employees or ex-employees who are trying to game the system, but being able to SE someplace you're familar with is an order of magnitude easier then trying to scam someplace else because you know all the right internal buzzwords and procedures.
Cheers,
=Blue(23)
Cringley is right (who'd of thunk I'd say that). Not only is the amount fairly trivial, not only can it get reduced or removed via appeal, but the interest they get off the profits from that market while they are appealing will pay for a good chunk of the fines.
So, if punitive monetary damages aren't sufficient to hurt a company, how CAN a government wield a realistic prod to get them back in line? They can't tell MS that they can't sell - companies would go crazy. Tariffs and taxes are again just money. What type of stick could a government wield to actually make MS take notice and play nice?
Cheers,
=Blue(23)
One of the things I always liked about the ACM problems, both now and when I was competing, was that they were fun challenges. Very few "real world examples", instead they always made your head spin a few times and then you could dive right in.
You had a limited amount of time, and when I was going it only a single terminal so only one team member could actually code at once. So optimizing for time to code was a huge factor. But it also meant that you could afford to specialize a bit, have some out-of-the box thinkers who may be great algorethmically but not the best with real code, and a dedicated coder to implement.
I remember one year we had a Mechanical Engineer on the team who had a completely different approach. We were trying to work out how to do one problem correctly mathmatically and he mentioned that they only wanted two significant digits and suggested an iterative solution to the math problem that worked beautifully.
Hats off to all the competitors.
Cheers,
=Blue(23)
He needs to take this up with the original posters of this information. You can sue someone for libeling you (hopefully if it's not true), but you can't sue Xerox for printing the copy.
The original article says that the problem is that the "page rank" takes things out of context. I assume they mean the little snippets of the page that are displayed.
While this guy is a freaking idiot, and with his list of defendants he obviously just wants some settlement money, but his point of showing a small section of the content changes the context is only about 99% wrong.
Of course, it's still like trying to sue a library card catalog catalog because you don't like the book description.
Cheers,
=Blue(23)
The ending of A Wizard of Earthsea still amazes me almost a quarter-century after I first read it.
The Wizard of Earthsea happens to be the book that introduced me to reading fantasy. Before that it was just SF (A.C.Clark, I.Asimov, G.R.Dickenson, P.K.Dick, etc.)
Definitely a well done book.
Cheers,
Blue(23)
In my day all we had was this damn turtle.
You had a turtle? We plunged forever into the nothingness of pure void. Uphill. Both ways.
I'm going to take a view against the article, and maybe an unpopular one. I'm a Unix sysadmin, have been for over 10 years, came in from developing, and I manage the other Unix admins and DBAs.
One primary function is to keep systems available and functioning for the users. You know, that ones that do the work that pays the salaries of both the admins and the developers.
Often we need to rein in developers who want to do something in a particular way. Maybe because it's easier for them, or because they don't have a broader picture and see how it will or will not play well with other things, or even just because sometimes ideas work great in small scall on dedicated development platforms but don't scale.
So there are definitely times we say "No". I personally perfer to be able to say "would this work instead", but sometimes I don't have a clear enough understanding of their problem, and we both need to get our heads together to figure out a real solution.
Does this slow down the development of any particular app becuase they can't just throw it on willy-nilly? Yeap. Does it end up with a better total environment? I also would like to think yes.
All sorts of other *admin positions - some are needed, and some are chaff. A good security admin I expect to get into my face more then the developers face, and probably be well justified in doing so - hey, we need to upgrade to the latest patch of BIND becuase of XYZ security hole. Other parts may involve the developers - say the developers want web access from the internet to a system in your internal network for a client. If the security admin wasn't there, it would be quicker for the developer, but more detremental as a whole for the company due to potential security issues.
I may get modded down for the opinion, but let developers focus on developping, sysadmins focus on their systems, security admin focus on security, and have them LISTEN to each other. It's not that developers aren't smart enough to do sysadmin and security work, it's that they shouldn't have to be bothered to do it, let them focus on what they do best. Just like I might bring in others to clean up documentation instead of expecting my developers to have masters in English, we have other, needed, positions to make things run smoothly.
The article describes something that might work at a small shop, but a mid size or big shop needs more structure. This doens't mean ties and timeclocks, it means that we do have ways of doing things that keep things organized, and maintanable in four years without chaining that same group of developers to the project forever. And a lot of that requires extra admin positions.
Cheers,
=Blue(23)
The DMCA is vague on that point. It says that it is illegal to circumvent the technological measures used to protect a copyrighted work. It seems to be assumed that you do not own the copyright to the work in question, but this isn't explicitly stated from what I remember.
So if Ritz goes any circumvents a technological measure to protect a copywrited work (their OWN technological measure, but a technological measure regardless), to download YOUR copywrited photos, can you sue them for DMCA violations?
=Blue(23)
"Belkin support, how can I help you?"
"My router every once in a while replaces my URL with one for Belkin parental controls."
"That's correct."
"But I just spent half an hour filling out the web form, and it doesn't cache, so I have to do it all again."
"You can turn off parental controls by clicking on 'No thanks!'"
"So this is intentional?"
"Yes sir, it's a service to you, provided at no extra cost. It also comes with a free 6 month trial."
"But a router is supposed to ROUTE."
"It can do that, if you change the configuration."
"So, it comes intentionally misconfigured to fail once every eight hours?"
"It's not failing, it's offering a service."
"So it's spamming me."
"It's not spam."
"Why not?"
"Because we're offering you a service you might not know about."
"So it's intentionally misconfigured to send me spam on something I didn't request any information for, dropping my URL and information in the process?"
"Well, yes."
"You should really just kill yourself."
"You're right. Goodbye."
*BANG*
"Dang, should of told him to kill the marketting department first. Well, I can always call back..."
=Blue(23)
It can't be a proper model of the internet unless it contains its own Slashdot, complete with the Slashdot Effect.
/. thinking it's real /. while they use our meat-bodies for energy ... ... oh wait, that's the plot of the new W Bros movie, Matrix Slashdotted.
Of course, this is a simulation of the internet, so it will have a simulation of Slashdot, and thus we are all now simulations somewhere in a computer in California, simulating the Slashdotting of simulated small, interesting web sites. Wow, I now have an avitar!
But really, we're all here and just hooked into the simulated
=Blue(23)
Patches? They can go on immediately. What is this "reboot" you speak of?
What, you're not running a Unix system? Why not?
Ok, not to sound like a troll - some patches do require we reboot the system, but those are usually the fairly big ones. Often I have to shut down a service temporarily. But these are fairly minor to what I see the Win32 team doing.
But even there you can run clustered, or server farms, so you can update one system at a time and stay mostly available.
Not to get too simplistic, but if your business is critical enough that you need patches immeditately, you should be putting in place enough infrastructure that you can patch fairly painlessly anyhow.
=Blue(23)
But is it really the computer that's winning? It's one thing if all we do is give a computer the rules of Chess, and then see how it does. However, the computer is being told how to think and what to compute by humans. The computer is just automating (via opening/closing/midgame books, brute force, etc.) a human created algorithm. All that the computer has over the human is the speed of number crunching.
It's an interesting point. Depends on what you define winning as.
If you are comparing the ability of own human to do something unaided vs. the ability of another human to build a tool to do the same, then the tool builders win.
If you are comparing chess skill, then the designers need not have more chess knowledge then the master, they just have a different way of approaching the probelm. In that case, as a matter of pure chess skill, hte master "wins" over the human designers.
*shrug*
I don't think the question is all that important, except to illustrate that "the computer" doesn't win, it's merely a tool.
=Blue(23)
P.S. Of course, the computer is your friend, keep your laser handy.
Thanks for the link, I haven't read that before.
My thought is this - grand masters in chess used to be so far above computer players, because the computer players could not handle the huge number of possible positions.
Computers have advanced enough that now they can deal with positions on the level of a grand master, at least with a powerful enoguh computer (a la Deep Blue).
I would expect that the same will eventually hold true of Go. Currently, computers can't hold a match to high dan players (or is it high kyu players, I haven't checked out rankings in a while).
However, I would expect that as computers get faster, that even the massive positional space of Go will eventually be able to be calcuated in a period of time given for moves to a deep enough level to emulate human players.
I don't think a computer will ever have human elegance, for lack fo a btter term, while playing, but it may have it's own, unique brand of play that is quite effective.
=Blue(23)
Chess defied computers as real masters for so long because the problem space /used to be/ too large to take a good look at, so intuition and finely honed skills at determining positional strength (as opposed to just calculating plies of moves) kept the top humans the top of the field.
However, as computers get more powerful, being able to look far ahead/prune less will slowly be able to simulate true positional understanding, because the computer will be able to "see" farther reaching strategies.
That was the magic of Deep Blue. Lots of custom designed chess chips (like Brutus, except even faster because it was on a single chip and there were more of them) running in an IBM SP cluster. It just had enough cycles to look far enough ahead that it simulated positional understanding at the level of a grand master.
I'm not putting Deep Blue down - it took an amazing amount of thought to design those chips, I'm in awe of it.
Coming back to Brutus, computer speeds have been doing their normal Moore's law increase. What used to take a huge number of custom chips, you can now do on much fewer.
Their are games where the search space is even larger, and not just by a few orders of magnitude. Go is one of these, and is often touted as the next fronteir of man's superiority over machine.
Man will maintain that for a time, as computers get faster and ground down the difference. Maybe they'll never "get it". Or maybe they'll be able to play all possible games in 3 minutes.
The joy of discovery.
=Blue(23)
If I remember, Deep Thought's "magic" was in the special chess evaluation chips, which wouldn't of been able to contribute to any general purpose floating point calculations.
Without those, it was just a high-end RS/6000 SP cluster. Nice, but not one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.
=Blue(23)