Kurzweil's one of a kind, super intelligent human being.. but as with all super intelligent human beings with a highly developed imagination (not to say this is bad), he often times comes off as a (a favorite term among physicists) 'crank'. Granted, for what he has accomplished, he is anything but a crank, however some of the things he predicts in his book, at least to me, is in the category, of how shall I put it gently - too optimistic.
Then again, maybe it is I that is limited, so I guess time will show...
None of what is said right now about him or anything else will matter on a long enough timeline anyway:).
everyone's got one, and I am or can be an asshole at times:), so I'll chip in.
Java _stormed_, not just merely took over, but literally stormed the programming world much, as I understand it even though it's a bit before my time, like COBOL did. When I started my first job, 1996 as a fresh grad, C++ reigned supreme still for _application_ software.
Slowly but surely, with the mass commercialization of the internet, the Java tornado came over the C++ camp, and blew it away (or I should say converted it, en masse).
Java hit & solved some extremely important painpoints with C++. No one ever accused C++ of being inferior as a language, as a matter of fact, the STL has yet to be repeated in Java (and no, generics aren't same as STL - STL yields more power), however, its demise was inevitable, again IMHO (the asshole talks now:), because 1) no garbage collection (memory leaks get by even the best/most disciplined of software engineers/programmers), 2) the god damn syntax of C++ and its overloaded object model was _overkill_ for most newbie programmers. There was just one too many ways to blow your head off by C++'s powerful object model (think..pointers, references, new/delete, virtual destructors, 'smart pointer', exception handling was immature, copy constructors, assignment operators, operator overloading, reckless use of STL with pointers versus static objects, etc etc etc), and 3) 95% of software out there isn't system software (OS's, drivers, embedded) but application software. Hell, even for embedded nowadays one can use J2ME, and it works admirably well. This means if and when Java or a language like Java with enough similarity with C/C++ came by and removed all the pain points of its predecessors, it was bound to succeed.
Java succeeded. It did not miss any opportunities. You can elaborate on the benefits of more dynamic languages today, like Ruby, Lisp, whatever, but as it stands, de facto, Java is the standard today for most web applications (and it is making huge inroads into embedded even realtime applications too).
Yes, I suppose from your viewpoint, it is 'fair'. It is also 'fair' if he agreed to work for free in exchange for an H1B and an eventual permanent residence (a.k.a. "green card"), while his company files bogus papers with the USCIS (formerly known as INS) that he is getting paid prevailing wage, or better yet, he or she is laundering his salary into the company's books which the company pays him out of, thus technically agreeing on a 'fair' salary, correct?
While he's doing this, they can pretty much ditch him at any time, and unless he finds another company that will sponsor him for an H1B immediately within a month or so of losing his other job, he has to depart the country soon thereafter and apply for jobs in the U.S. from overseas, or worst, he has to resort, if able and willing, to agreeing on a sham marriage so he can stay here, and pursue the American dream.
Some or all of this falls under the definition of 'fair', it just really depends whether you are on the giving or receiving and of all this fairness.
Well, that is an excellent generalization of the matter at hand. However, not more than a small fraction of that 300 million (if you trust Wikipedia - it does reference the Bureau of Labor Statistics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_ demographics), approximately around 600k are actual practicioners of the profession (software engineering/programming/computer science/engineering related job titles).
So the pool that MS is choosing from is 600k, most of which, if you go by official unemployment statistics in the U.S., is gainfully employed 95% of the time. Given that the USA is the center of the world for IT, it follows to speculate that more jobs are generated here for IT than anywhere else, which possibly means there could be a shortage of U.S. based qualified talent, which leaves them few options - hiring H-1B's. Given that CS enrollment is on the decline (just look at how many articles on Slashdot have been on that issue alone "why software is hard", etc etc), a shortage of qualified people is probably a hard fact by now... I have yet to find anyone with a CS degree good enough to earn their keeps that has been unemployed for longer than 3 months..... if that says anything to you.
You can play politics all you want with this issue, as you just did by generalizing it, but I'm sure those who are in charge of hiring can paint you a slightly different picture.
To Bill Gates' point - H1B's that get hired by U.S. companies are required to pay the prevailing wage for the profession the H1B is being hired in, for the region they reside in. I immigrated into the U.S. via the H1B route (I'm a citizen now and I also did my undergraduate in CS here), and have been able to verify that the prevailing wage was indeed paid to me while I was an H1B.
There is also another law that states that no more than 15% of your workforce can be H1-B based. This law is meant to protect U.S. citizens from being displaced by H1-B's and to assure that only really critical roles can be filled with H1-B workers. No one is going to hire an HR person on an H-1B (well unless they are super critical in an HR-kind of way to the company).
Another noteworthy thing to mention is, prevailing wage != FMV (fair market value) wage, at least in my experience. This difference between the two may amount to _some_ savings, but I doubt it is as significant as, let's say, hiring a foreign Indian worker in India at 1/2 or less the salary.
Speaking of hiring offshore - this may or may not prove to be a value added proposition - if you have some seriously senior, super-technical project managers who can divvy up a project into many well-defined/well-bounded specific tasks (e.g. write code for login/logout procedures for a webapp based on Tomcat, using JAAS as the authentication/mechanism, task #2, integrate JAAS with Active Directory on Windows Server, etc.), delegating these tasks to off-shore people, it could work. But this only works in a mature environment like Microsoft probably. It could work in smaller companies too, but it's much riskier, and it could inhibit the company's growth.
Offshoring is overrated. Hiring local, U.S. talent as well as H1B is much better value. Well, that's my opinion anyway, and I'm sticking to it;) (for now).
I agree with most, save #1 - I took calculus, didn't really ace it, got B's overall, and I didn't go as far with calculus as someone who was doing CE or EE, however to say that it is completely unneeded isn't true. Maybe there aren't direct applications of what one learns in calculus, but the analytical skills one develops when soplving calculus problems are,well IMHO, invaluable. I can't say the same about writing english prose, studying biology/ecology or playing tennis/soccer/swimming, which all have their benefits of course in aiding your intellect/health.
The math driven subjects, where math or a form of math (discrete math is the basis of CS) is used to describe actual problems are the building block of what you as an engineer will do later on when solving "real" problems in the "real" world. Any subject matter (despite genetic predesiposition like "raw intelligence") that helps you break down/understand/solve problems in CS (or other similar disciplines where analytical reasoning is a must) can be called a necessary part of the curriculum.
If we just stuck to the CS core strictly, then you can freely shave off 2 years from the overall college education, and be done with most of what you need to know for the 'real world'.
Now, you can argue that this may be useful in some way but only if you want to turn programming into a vocation, as someone else pointed above - teach people ONLY CS principles, nothing else and you'd have a quicker turnaround of graduates in up to 2 years who can do one thing and one thing only, but they would be blind to everything else. Granted, one can not know everything, but not developing an 'independent mind' (as Chomsky likes to call it) while in college or soon thereafter with all of the education you've been assigned to complete in your college curriculum, is in my opinion an intellectual sin.
Only much later in my programming career (I graduated in CS) I realized the importance of human behaviour, language, economics, management, etc. Before, I squarely fit in one of your points above:), I won't say which one.....
Anyway, the college experience, regardless of whether you pick a super geeky major like CS/CE/EE or something more left brained, is supposed to offer a bit more than just knowing what buttons to push... my opinion only:).
How else are they measurable, please enlighten me? So what if Saddam is out of power if the US isn't going to see real economic benefit? I suppose you can justify the war based on some perceived threat from Iraq to the US in some distant, unlikely future scenario... Call me skeptical, but I never thought Iraq posed any danger to the U.S. directly. As far as indirectly...well, that's the economic scenario, which is an indirect threat. Militarily, unless you can launch ballistic missiles from camelbacks, I can't see how he threatened anything.
We were talking about war, so I saw it fit to ask about our current war on terror. I guess I 'hijacked' it, in your opinion... To me, it was still on-topic, tangential, but on topic...(war).
I obviously liked something about your "half-assed realizations", otherwise I would not have replied.
Well, coming from Slashdot I didn't really expect anything more... Try this on for size - if it weren't for legal, sales or marketing - you can take your superior technical ideas and shove them where the sun don't shine....
Please don't treat or mod one liners as Insightful... It insults the intelligence of many, many people. I understand the medium of conversation is biased toward geeks, but in all fairness there should be some objective/fact based discussion rather than just opinions....
I believe it is YouTube's 1.6B acquisiton by Google that really put the final nail in Real's coffin...
Real was a great company. I know someone who used to work there. I'm willing to bet that executives at Real shit a brick when they heard of GOOG's YouTube purchase.... Real could've been the next YouTube...
Sort of tangential to your message, but definitely worth mentioning:).
Microsoft released a service pack for VS.NET 2005 for Vista - perhaps that might solve the issues you are having? Wild guess, but worth upgrading if you (or anyone else) haven't already...
So, in your opinion, what conditions could be called favorable as a condition for exiting Iraq? Has the expense of Iraq been recouped as of yet? Has the invasion of Iraq paid off then? What good does invading a country do if we can't say with some certainty that it paid off.
> any bias in primary sources MUST be recognised and commented on as the work produced will be meaningless otherwise.
Then that makes the historian's job very difficult. If you can not merely stick to listing facts alone without discussing the context (e.g. ideas at the time that generated those facts) in which they appear and/or happen, the scope of your job becomes enormous. I much prefer sticking to hard/tangible topics like science, engineering, etc:).. keeps it simple and unchangeable over longer periods of time. The only thing that changes in sciene is someone's mistaken premise gets replaced by a more correct one that then either doesn't change or gets changed very infrequently.
This is perhaps why I used to hate history so much, as it was mostly taught in some interpretive manner, as though it was the victors of any war or those who were at an economic peak at the time that were writing it. Not that there's anything 'wrong' with this, but the highly subjective aspect of history is something I could never digest.... (thus my inborn hate toward it, and thus my current profession - software engineer).
My/. signature probably contains the my most honest opinion of history as a subject:)...
Heh, you may not like the answer to this, but I've seen a few in my life, as I have a countryman friend of mine who is an interventional cardiologist who has let me watch a few taped ones. He lives/operates out of Kissimmee, FL. He never does anything but pay full attention to the patient while doing any kind of procedure...
> How does a national ID standard limit liberty any more that the existing standard set by the state of Maine or any of the other > 49 states? How does an ID database with your name prevent you from doing anything that you can do today. (not to mention that > you are already in a Federal database, probably several like Social Security, IRS and so on)
Your right not to share anything, including personal information, with anyone under the blue sky is inalienable, whether you admit, recognize, like it or not. The fact that you are willing to give this up because you were compelled to do so by commercial or governmental interests does not reduce or nullify this God given right of "selfishness", or the right not to share.
The problem, with you in particular, is that you have been successfully desensitized to this right, to the point where you've given it up. You may not value this right, but rest assured, millions or possibly billions of others do.
> Because it will be harder for Abu Mohammed to fake.
This is a moot point. Most, if not all, ids can be faked as far as the actual piece of paper or plastic goes, regardless of how complex it is. This is why we do not rely on the document alone. When you fill out an I-9 form (Employment Eligibility Verification) at your new job, they typically ask you to present either a permanent resident card, or a work-type visa, or if you're a citizen, a passport or birth certificate. All of these documents, to a sufficiently technical/resourceful/skillful/malicious person, are relatively easy to fake. What gets you caught cheating (or telling the truth, in case you were)is the verification process that follows upon signing (thus by, swearing that what you put down is genuine) and submitting the I-9 form.
This is why basing security around objects is a lame, futile attempt of obtaining security. Can you build an impenetrable safe? Is there such thing as an impenetrable safe? Is there such a thing as an unfakeable ID? Security isn't about building bigger safes, or guns, or better ID cards - it is a process (and yeah, it costs money too).
> Uh, yeah it is. We have speed limits to keep me safe. I have to wear a seatbelt to keep me safe. I can't drink and drive to keep > me (and you) safe... How is this any different?
Uh, no, it is not. Speed limits exist for one and only one purpose - it is the easiest way for the government to collect excess revenue/profits (that, and to keep insurance companies happy, since they're in cahoots with the gov't). How difficult do you think is for a traffic cop to fill his monthly quota? Speed, contrary to popular belief, does not kill. Your stupid behaviour, however, does, can, and will put you out of commission. This is a very, very important distinction most "reasonable" people fail to make. I regularly drive over the speed limit, have been driving over 15 years, and the most I've had is a fender bender in a parking lot (not my fault too). Am I or you any less safe because I drive over the speed limit (so far)? You could argue that I may die because I drive faster than the posted limit, but then again, a piano could fall on my head as I step out of the office too...
You really need to think before you respond with knee-jerky arguments that make no sense.
> But the central issue already has a name--it's called "common carrier." ISPs need to be held to a standard that is content- and author-neutral. My Web site or e-mail or video should not be able > to be blocked or slowed based simply on what it says or who wrote it. I don't care about the technology that gets it there--just get it there and don't let me be discriminated against.
Then it's really not about priority queueing (QoS) or bandwidth allocation, but about First Amendment rights.
The initial, and I might even say continued, reaction of Network Neutrality advocates was a knee-jerk reaction to QoS - they considered it a slippery slope, a potential door through which content discrimination can be pushed through. And as far as that goes, they have a valid point. If your access to _any_ content you desire to access or broadcast on the internet is in any way abridged because you aren't paying more than X, Y or Z (whoever they may be), then your rights guaranteed by our 200+ old constitution are indeed violated.
However, if queueing VoIP traffic introduces a slight _lag_ (which in 99% of cases it won't, unless your network (neighborhood, e.g.) node is hogging bandwidth at max utilization) in your porn downloading (or broadcasting) activities because QoS is required for VoIP, then your rights to view your porn aren't abridged. They're just slightly delayed, and rightly so.
People to this day still confuse QoS with some form of abridging the freedom of speech. These are two distinct issues - one hardly has anything to do with the other unless QoS is used to abridge your freedom of speech. But guess what - ISPs don't and have never needed QoS to abridge your freedom of speech/expression, and had they ever done so, it would not have gone unnoticed for the last 12 years eversince the internet got massively popular among consumers.
That's what Kahn is warning about - using regulation to stifle technical innovation (such as last mile QoS) because of the people's inability to understand issues of a highly technical nature. Knee jerk reaction at best. Misguided at worst.
Then education should also teach humility in science, not just seeking to prove or disprove something, because you always run that ugly risk of being disproven at age 85 after a lifetime of work on some particular idea, whether you like it, admit it or not.
The only time scientists can be objective is when they're dealing in facts and ideas regarding what it is they're working on. The minute you bring them out of their comfort zone, they're the worst kind of sheep there is for great many things that do not fit in their micro-worldview.
So do you think physicists will eventually find what they're looking for? Can we be happy with not knowing the ultimate cause of the universe, time etc? Or do we simply give in to beliefs?
I think your little passage there neatly described the threshold between physics and metaphysics. Too bad some people are publicity whores, manipulator and money extortionists so they play on the unknowng or the fear of the unknown in people for profit, instead of actually contributing something valid and verifiable.
I'd like to think that even Einstein was probably content with not knowing it all, in the final analysis (whatever that may have been for him)... so did he give in to "God" in the end? Just curious on what your opinion is:) (EmbeddedJanitor, I like that nick, I gotta tell ya - it's very modest).
That's what RUP (Rational Unified Process, now owned by IBM) is all about - iterative & incremental development.
Following RUP + SCRUM based approach has done wonders for multiple projects where I currently work. It seems to work every time, if everyone is on board, daily engr. meetings are conducted to check on status, or adjust expectations if something is taking longer than expected/calculated. But because the breakdown of tasks is such that we have brief sprints, realistic, well defined smaller tasks, and management knows exactly where we are with development at any point in time, it seems to work very very well (at least for us).
The day where you design/capture everything up front for a complex system, and then just build it out as if it's set in stone, are officially over. Software programmers today and software programmers 20 years ago, are two different beasts (probably same with hardware engineers, though I'm a CS major, not EE/CE).
Rather than jumping through hoops like this user did to get rid of the default Windows install, why is it so difficult for Dell to just include a "No operating system installed" option when customizing their desktop/notebook products? You can have it default to a pre-installed version of Windows, but if someone just didn't want an OS preinstalled on their Dell, how does that violate anything? Can anyone shed some light on this?
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Kurzweil's one of a kind, super intelligent human being.. but as with all super intelligent human beings with a highly developed imagination (not to say this is bad), he often times comes off as a (a favorite term among physicists) 'crank'. Granted, for what he has accomplished, he is anything but a crank, however some of the things he predicts in his book, at least to me, is in the category, of how shall I put it gently - too optimistic.
:).
Then again, maybe it is I that is limited, so I guess time will show...
None of what is said right now about him or anything else will matter on a long enough timeline anyway
everyone's got one, and I am or can be an asshole at times :), so I'll chip in.
:), because 1) no garbage collection (memory leaks get by even the best/most disciplined of software engineers/programmers), 2) the god damn syntax of C++ and its overloaded object model was _overkill_ for most newbie programmers. There was just one too many ways to blow your head off by C++'s powerful object model (think..pointers, references, new/delete, virtual destructors, 'smart pointer', exception handling was immature, copy constructors, assignment operators, operator overloading, reckless use of STL with pointers versus static objects, etc etc etc), and 3) 95% of software out there isn't system software (OS's, drivers, embedded) but application software. Hell, even for embedded nowadays one can use J2ME, and it works admirably well. This means if and when Java or a language like Java with enough similarity with C/C++ came by and removed all the pain points of its predecessors, it was bound to succeed.
Java _stormed_, not just merely took over, but literally stormed the programming world much, as I understand it even though it's a bit before my time, like COBOL did. When I started my first job, 1996 as a fresh grad, C++ reigned supreme still for _application_ software.
Slowly but surely, with the mass commercialization of the internet, the Java tornado came over the C++ camp, and blew it away (or I should say converted it, en masse).
Java hit & solved some extremely important painpoints with C++. No one ever accused C++ of being inferior as a language, as a matter of fact, the STL has yet to be repeated in Java (and no, generics aren't same as STL - STL yields more power), however, its demise was inevitable, again IMHO (the asshole talks now
Java succeeded. It did not miss any opportunities. You can elaborate on the benefits of more dynamic languages today, like Ruby, Lisp, whatever, but as it stands, de facto, Java is the standard today for most web applications (and it is making huge inroads into embedded even realtime applications too).
Spoken like a true capitalist...
Yes, I suppose from your viewpoint, it is 'fair'. It is also 'fair' if he agreed to work for free in exchange for an H1B and an eventual permanent residence (a.k.a. "green card"), while his company files bogus papers with the USCIS (formerly known as INS) that he is getting paid prevailing wage, or better yet, he or she is laundering his salary into the company's books which the company pays him out of, thus technically agreeing on a 'fair' salary, correct?
While he's doing this, they can pretty much ditch him at any time, and unless he finds another company that will sponsor him for an H1B immediately within a month or so of losing his other job, he has to depart the country soon thereafter and apply for jobs in the U.S. from overseas, or worst, he has to resort, if able and willing, to agreeing on a sham marriage so he can stay here, and pursue the American dream.
Some or all of this falls under the definition of 'fair', it just really depends whether you are on the giving or receiving and of all this fairness.
Well, that is an excellent generalization of the matter at hand. However, not more than a small fraction of that 300 million (if you trust Wikipedia - it does reference the Bureau of Labor Statistics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_ demographics), approximately around 600k are actual practicioners of the profession (software engineering/programming/computer science/engineering related job titles).
So the pool that MS is choosing from is 600k, most of which, if you go by official unemployment statistics in the U.S., is gainfully employed 95% of the time. Given that the USA is the center of the world for IT, it follows to speculate that more jobs are generated here for IT than anywhere else, which possibly means there could be a shortage of U.S. based qualified talent, which leaves them few options - hiring H-1B's. Given that CS enrollment is on the decline (just look at how many articles on Slashdot have been on that issue alone "why software is hard", etc etc), a shortage of qualified people is probably a hard fact by now... I have yet to find anyone with a CS degree good enough to earn their keeps that has been unemployed for longer than 3 months..... if that says anything to you.
You can play politics all you want with this issue, as you just did by generalizing it, but I'm sure those who are in charge of hiring can paint you a slightly different picture.
To Bill Gates' point - H1B's that get hired by U.S. companies are required to pay the prevailing wage for the profession the H1B is being hired in, for the region they reside in. I immigrated into the U.S. via the H1B route (I'm a citizen now and I also did my undergraduate in CS here), and have been able to verify that the prevailing wage was indeed paid to me while I was an H1B.
;) (for now).
There is also another law that states that no more than 15% of your workforce can be H1-B based. This law is meant to protect U.S. citizens from being displaced by H1-B's and to assure that only really critical roles can be filled with H1-B workers. No one is going to hire an HR person on an H-1B (well unless they are super critical in an HR-kind of way to the company).
Another noteworthy thing to mention is, prevailing wage != FMV (fair market value) wage, at least in my experience. This difference between the two may amount to _some_ savings, but I doubt it is as significant as, let's say, hiring a foreign Indian worker in India at 1/2 or less the salary.
Speaking of hiring offshore - this may or may not prove to be a value added proposition - if you have some seriously senior, super-technical project managers who can divvy up a project into many well-defined/well-bounded specific tasks (e.g. write code for login/logout procedures for a webapp based on Tomcat, using JAAS as the authentication/mechanism, task #2, integrate JAAS with Active Directory on Windows Server, etc.), delegating these tasks to off-shore people, it could work. But this only works in a mature environment like Microsoft probably. It could work in smaller companies too, but it's much riskier, and it could inhibit the company's growth.
Offshoring is overrated. Hiring local, U.S. talent as well as H1B is much better value. Well, that's my opinion anyway, and I'm sticking to it
I agree with most, save #1 - I took calculus, didn't really ace it, got B's overall, and I didn't go as far with calculus as someone who was doing CE or EE, however to say that it is completely unneeded isn't true. Maybe there aren't direct applications of what one learns in calculus, but the analytical skills one develops when soplving calculus problems are,well IMHO, invaluable. I can't say the same about writing english prose, studying biology/ecology or playing tennis/soccer/swimming, which all have their benefits of course in aiding your intellect/health.
:), I won't say which one.....
:).
The math driven subjects, where math or a form of math (discrete math is the basis of CS) is used to describe actual problems are the building block of what you as an engineer will do later on when solving "real" problems in the "real" world. Any subject matter (despite genetic predesiposition like "raw intelligence") that helps you break down/understand/solve problems in CS (or other similar disciplines where analytical reasoning is a must) can be called a necessary part of the curriculum.
If we just stuck to the CS core strictly, then you can freely shave off 2 years from the overall college education, and be done with most of what you need to know for the 'real world'.
Now, you can argue that this may be useful in some way but only if you want to turn programming into a vocation, as someone else pointed above - teach people ONLY CS principles, nothing else and you'd have a quicker turnaround of graduates in up to 2 years who can do one thing and one thing only, but they would be blind to everything else. Granted, one can not know everything, but not developing an 'independent mind' (as Chomsky likes to call it) while in college or soon thereafter with all of the education you've been assigned to complete in your college curriculum, is in my opinion an intellectual sin.
Only much later in my programming career (I graduated in CS) I realized the importance of human behaviour, language, economics, management, etc. Before, I squarely fit in one of your points above
Anyway, the college experience, regardless of whether you pick a super geeky major like CS/CE/EE or something more left brained, is supposed to offer a bit more than just knowing what buttons to push... my opinion only
> usually not measurable in ecnomic terms.
How else are they measurable, please enlighten me? So what if Saddam is out of power if the US isn't going to see real economic benefit? I suppose you can justify the war based on some perceived threat from Iraq to the US in some distant, unlikely future scenario... Call me skeptical, but I never thought Iraq posed any danger to the U.S. directly. As far as indirectly...well, that's the economic scenario, which is an indirect threat. Militarily, unless you can launch ballistic missiles from camelbacks, I can't see how he threatened anything.
We were talking about war, so I saw it fit to ask about our current war on terror. I guess I 'hijacked' it, in your opinion... To me, it was still on-topic, tangential, but on topic...(war).
I obviously liked something about your "half-assed realizations", otherwise I would not have replied.
> I never said they didn't perform a valid and important purpose, however they often go too far...
and I was somehow supposed to be able to deduce this based on your one liner.... Glad you clarified it now.
Well, coming from Slashdot I didn't really expect anything more... Try this on for size - if it weren't for legal, sales or marketing - you can take your superior technical ideas and shove them where the sun don't shine....
Please don't treat or mod one liners as Insightful... It insults the intelligence of many, many people. I understand the medium of conversation is biased toward geeks, but in all fairness there should be some objective/fact based discussion rather than just opinions....
I believe it is YouTube's 1.6B acquisiton by Google that really put the final nail in Real's coffin...
:).
Real was a great company. I know someone who used to work there. I'm willing to bet that executives at Real shit a brick when they heard of GOOG's YouTube purchase.... Real could've been the next YouTube...
Sort of tangential to your message, but definitely worth mentioning
Microsoft released a service pack for VS.NET 2005 for Vista - perhaps that might solve the issues you are having? Wild guess, but worth upgrading if you (or anyone else) haven't already...
Dude, that was so funny, I was in tears by the time I read "it really shows" :)... I even submitted your comment to seeononslash. Wonderful humour!
> individuals will be able to engage in rational discussion
I don't think so. You're expecting too much of Americans.
So, in your opinion, what conditions could be called favorable as a condition for exiting Iraq? Has the expense of Iraq been recouped as of yet? Has the invasion of Iraq paid off then? What good does invading a country do if we can't say with some certainty that it paid off.
> any bias in primary sources MUST be recognised and commented on as the work produced will be meaningless otherwise.
:).. keeps it simple and unchangeable over longer periods of time. The only thing that changes in sciene is someone's mistaken premise gets replaced by a more correct one that then either doesn't change or gets changed very infrequently.
/. signature probably contains the my most honest opinion of history as a subject :)...
Then that makes the historian's job very difficult. If you can not merely stick to listing facts alone without discussing the context (e.g. ideas at the time that generated those facts) in which they appear and/or happen, the scope of your job becomes enormous. I much prefer sticking to hard/tangible topics like science, engineering, etc
This is perhaps why I used to hate history so much, as it was mostly taught in some interpretive manner, as though it was the victors of any war or those who were at an economic peak at the time that were writing it. Not that there's anything 'wrong' with this, but the highly subjective aspect of history is something I could never digest.... (thus my inborn hate toward it, and thus my current profession - software engineer).
My
Heh, you may not like the answer to this, but I've seen a few in my life, as I have a countryman friend of mine who is an interventional cardiologist who has let me watch a few taped ones. He lives/operates out of Kissimmee, FL. He never does anything but pay full attention to the patient while doing any kind of procedure...
> How does a national ID standard limit liberty any more that the existing standard set by the state of Maine or any of the other
> 49 states? How does an ID database with your name prevent you from doing anything that you can do today. (not to mention that
> you are already in a Federal database, probably several like Social Security, IRS and so on)
Your right not to share anything, including personal information, with anyone under the blue sky is inalienable, whether you admit, recognize, like it or not. The fact that you are willing to give this up because you were compelled to do so by commercial or governmental interests does not reduce or nullify this God given right of "selfishness", or the right not to share.
The problem, with you in particular, is that you have been successfully desensitized to this right, to the point where you've given it up. You may not value this right, but rest assured, millions or possibly billions of others do.
> Because it will be harder for Abu Mohammed to fake.
This is a moot point. Most, if not all, ids can be faked as far as the actual piece of paper or plastic goes, regardless of how complex it is. This is why we do not rely on the document alone. When you fill out an I-9 form (Employment Eligibility Verification) at your new job, they typically ask you to present either a permanent resident card, or a work-type visa, or if you're a citizen, a passport or birth certificate. All of these documents, to a sufficiently technical/resourceful/skillful/malicious person, are relatively easy to fake. What gets you caught cheating (or telling the truth, in case you were)is the verification process that follows upon signing (thus by, swearing that what you put down is genuine) and submitting the I-9 form.
This is why basing security around objects is a lame, futile attempt of obtaining security. Can you build an impenetrable safe? Is there such thing as an impenetrable safe? Is there such a thing as an unfakeable ID? Security isn't about building bigger safes, or guns, or better ID cards - it is a process (and yeah, it costs money too).
> Uh, yeah it is. We have speed limits to keep me safe. I have to wear a seatbelt to keep me safe. I can't drink and drive to keep
> me (and you) safe... How is this any different?
Uh, no, it is not. Speed limits exist for one and only one purpose - it is the easiest way for the government to collect excess revenue/profits (that, and to keep insurance companies happy, since they're in cahoots with the gov't). How difficult do you think is for a traffic cop to fill his monthly quota? Speed, contrary to popular belief, does not kill. Your stupid behaviour, however, does, can, and will put you out of commission. This is a very, very important distinction most "reasonable" people fail to make. I regularly drive over the speed limit, have been driving over 15 years, and the most I've had is a fender bender in a parking lot (not my fault too). Am I or you any less safe because I drive over the speed limit (so far)? You could argue that I may die because I drive faster than the posted limit, but then again, a piano could fall on my head as I step out of the office too...
You really need to think before you respond with knee-jerky arguments that make no sense.
> But the central issue already has a name--it's called "common carrier." ISPs need to be held to a standard that is content- and author-neutral. My Web site or e-mail or video should not be able
> to be blocked or slowed based simply on what it says or who wrote it. I don't care about the technology that gets it there--just get it there and don't let me be discriminated against.
Then it's really not about priority queueing (QoS) or bandwidth allocation, but about First Amendment rights.
The initial, and I might even say continued, reaction of Network Neutrality advocates was a knee-jerk reaction to QoS - they considered it a slippery slope, a potential door through which content discrimination can be pushed through. And as far as that goes, they have a valid point. If your access to _any_ content you desire to access or broadcast on the internet is in any way abridged because you aren't paying more than X, Y or Z (whoever they may be), then your rights guaranteed by our 200+ old constitution are indeed violated.
However, if queueing VoIP traffic introduces a slight _lag_ (which in 99% of cases it won't, unless your network (neighborhood, e.g.) node is hogging bandwidth at max utilization) in your porn downloading (or broadcasting) activities because QoS is required for VoIP, then your rights to view your porn aren't abridged. They're just slightly delayed, and rightly so.
People to this day still confuse QoS with some form of abridging the freedom of speech. These are two distinct issues - one hardly has anything to do with the other unless QoS is used to abridge your freedom of speech. But guess what - ISPs don't and have never needed QoS to abridge your freedom of speech/expression, and had they ever done so, it would not have gone unnoticed for the last 12 years eversince the internet got massively popular among consumers.
That's what Kahn is warning about - using regulation to stifle technical innovation (such as last mile QoS) because of the people's inability to understand issues of a highly technical nature. Knee jerk reaction at best. Misguided at worst.
> Have you ever listened to the radio while driving? Do you think your driving has suffered because of the radio?
Sure, but I have yet to see a cardiologist perform angioplasty while listening to his iPod and expect safe results.
Lastly, it's not about whether it degrades performance - it's about whether it looks good..
... we need that fiber to the home and/or DOCSIS 2.0/3.0 soon before we're unable to view even simple web pages.
Then education should also teach humility in science, not just seeking to prove or disprove something, because you always run that ugly risk of being disproven at age 85 after a lifetime of work on some particular idea, whether you like it, admit it or not.
The only time scientists can be objective is when they're dealing in facts and ideas regarding what it is they're working on. The minute you bring them out of their comfort zone, they're the worst kind of sheep there is for great many things that do not fit in their micro-worldview.
So do you think physicists will eventually find what they're looking for? Can we be happy with not knowing the ultimate cause of the universe, time etc? Or do we simply give in to beliefs?
:) (EmbeddedJanitor, I like that nick, I gotta tell ya - it's very modest).
I think your little passage there neatly described the threshold between physics and metaphysics. Too bad some people are publicity whores, manipulator and money extortionists so they play on the unknowng or the fear of the unknown in people for profit, instead of actually contributing something valid and verifiable.
I'd like to think that even Einstein was probably content with not knowing it all, in the final analysis (whatever that may have been for him)... so did he give in to "God" in the end? Just curious on what your opinion is
That's what RUP (Rational Unified Process, now owned by IBM) is all about - iterative & incremental development.
Following RUP + SCRUM based approach has done wonders for multiple projects where I currently work. It seems to work every time, if everyone is on board, daily engr. meetings are conducted to check on status, or adjust expectations if something is taking longer than expected/calculated. But because the breakdown of tasks is such that we have brief sprints, realistic, well defined smaller tasks, and management knows exactly where we are with development at any point in time, it seems to work very very well (at least for us).
The day where you design/capture everything up front for a complex system, and then just build it out as if it's set in stone, are officially over. Software programmers today and software programmers 20 years ago, are two different beasts (probably same with hardware engineers, though I'm a CS major, not EE/CE).
Geeks are a market too. Ok, not a big one, but does something really have to be in demand by 10 million people at least before you provide it?
It's all about Dell's bottom line I suppose..
Rather than jumping through hoops like this user did to get rid of the default Windows install, why is it so difficult for Dell to just include a "No operating system installed" option when customizing their desktop/notebook products? You can have it default to a pre-installed version of Windows, but if someone just didn't want an OS preinstalled on their Dell, how does that violate anything? Can anyone shed some light on this?