Is social life a factor? what a DUMB fucking question! Despite the stereotype, the fact is that most engineers really do lead active lives beyond work. Additionally, they're likely to be logical people, who like to live in places that aren't insane.
I think that Utah is truly one of the scariest states in the republic. The line between church and state isn't just fuzzy, it's been erased, and the moronic liquor laws are just one embodiment of that problem.
I can safely say I'd never, ever move to Utah, not even to marry my cousin (which is legal there, when you turn 50).
Getting a co-op isn't about getting a kickass job. It's about having a shitty job in business, and learning how businesses work. The lessons you'll learn will tend to be more of the "how to be an effective employee" type than the "gee whiz cool" type.
Think about this... you're getting paid to learn how to work. Companies don't hire co-ops to get anything productive done, they do it to do a favor to the co-ops.
It's a great game they're playing, and I respect the way they're playing it. All the slashdroids whine that companies should use technical means to secure information instead of legal means. DirecTV did just that, and they caught most of the people.
As for my perspective, I have a DirecTV platinum subscription, or whatever they hell they call it, yet I hack my service. Why? Because it's fun.
They got one of my cards, and didn't get four others. This wasn't the final 'game over' for everybody, just for the script kiddies of the card hacking world.
As for the legality of it all... who cares? This shit is fun!
And before one judges, one needs to find out why the degree is lacking. I know a guy who was in an Ivy League school, when his mother got terminally ill with cancer. He dropped out so as to reduce his family's financial burden, and started working, but he never stopped learning. When he came to a topic that he couldn't learn on his own he read everything he could, asked those who were knowledgeable in the field and even sat in on a few classes, so as to steal a little education.
He's not an architect, but I'd let him build my house.
I'd bet that the professional programmers who DON'T have degrees in CS tend to consider themselves better programmers than the degree holders.
The key word in that sentence is 'tend'. Out of the two best programmers that I know personally, one has a doctrait, the other dropped out of a fine institution. The key is that they both know how to learn, and how to apply knowledge generally.
CS degrees don't prove anything, unfortunately. Too many CS grads got the degree because they wanted a job when they graduated, not because they enjoy algorithmic design, and are skilled with logic and organization.
At my workplace we have everything from doctors to people who didn't graduate. The level of education has very little correlation to the quality of code they produce. We have people who didn't graduate who write well documented, well designed code, and people with graduates who constantly have bugs because they never learned to check for edge conditions. I'll admit, I've yet to work with a Doctor who wrote bad code.
The problem is that it's hard to tell who, by nature, is an engineer. Yes, I'll admit, an engineering degree gives some credence to the concept that they'll be a reasonable programmer, but it's far from proof of anything.
You know exactly what I mean by 'engineer by nature'. They're the kid that always figured out how everything worked, much to their parents chagrin. The ones with an inherent ability to comprehend a problem, and analyze it, no matter what the field. Unfortunately, there's a shortage of those people.
I feel no guilt about owning a good stereo or a decent TV.
You don't know what I do for a living, how I make my money, what charities I give time or money to, or anything else, yet you've decided that I'm evil. You have no ideas what steps I take to help the environment, the sick, the arts or anything, yet you've decided that you know exactly who I am.
How sad is that? That because I thought it amusing to defend the position that television can be fun, and entertaining, that you've declared that I'm a selfish, insecure, money-driven person, who dislikes strangers, and doesn't care about social issues. And by sad, I mean it's sad for you, not me.
I'm not going to argue whether you're right or wrong. I know exactly who I am. I'm not the kind of person who looks at some superficial information, like a person's TV viewing habits, and decides they know everything about them.
YOU DO NOT KNOW ME. and you never will. It's obvious, because I can't stand people like you. People who make judgments about a person without nearly enough information to understand them, or to know what they do.
Welcome to the real world, where a good stereo doesn't equal a lack of social responsibility. Get a fucking life, and stop judging people. Judging other people's lives won't make your, or anybody else's life any better.
Man, just an FYI, I was laughing my ass off while posting that. As for your meta-complaint... that's even more hilarious! A complaint, about my complaint, both of which are put forth in a forum of no consequence.
It truly was a genius who noted 'If complaining could change the world, slashdot would've created world peace by now'.
Movies are better on the big screen? Sure in theory, but in reality, BULL FUCKING SHIT. I love goin' to the movies, but at home I have about 50 movie channels, PLUS pay-per-view. I can sit on my couch, with a bunch of my friends, we can drink, we can smoke, we can eat cheesesteaks, you get the point. Not to mention that I can do this at 3am, if I want to.
Also, if the movie sucks, it's channel up or down, and we've got a new movie, or if we miss something, we hit rewind on the TiVo, and we watch it again, instead my friend pissing off half the theatre when they miss some scene for whatever reason.
As for the argument that a setup like this is way too expensive, no way. You can do something passable for $2k, something nice for $5k, or something fucking amazing for $10k. Save the earth by selling your car and buying a bike, and use the extra dough you'll pick up to get yourself a decent system.
Then sports, you completely discount sports because you don't watch sports. How the FUCK can you not watch sports? I mean, I can understand not liking some games... American football might have too many rules, or maybe Hockey is too violent for your refined sensitivities, or you're a racist mofo who can't stand to watch Basketball, but there's not a single sport you like? I'm not a huge sports fan, but there's something great about a mess of friends watching TV, drinking beers, cheering for some sports team, whether they care or not. Even if my girlfriend does choose her team based on the center's name, it's still damned fun.
It seems you don't understand the concept of passive entertainment... It's the kind you need when you got so caught up in the code last night that you slept under your desk for two hours, then you coded for another 20 hours before going home. That weekend comes, and you need passive entertainment.
As for the web being better than CNN and all, are you crazy? My TV turns itself on to CNN every weekday morning... I groggily wake up, and without sitting, pointing, clicking or concentrating, I get some rough idea of what's going on in the world. This while brushing my teeth.
As for good shows? If you can spend a month with a full DirecTV feed, and not find anything good on, then you're just a snob. I mean, you've got Discovery, TLC, National Geographic, History, Comedy Central (Battlebots! The Man Show! Win Ben Stein's Money), Food network (Iron Chef!), you can watch gov't proceedings on the CSPANs, watch the market on Bloomberg, watch sports on a shitload of different channels, then there's the occasionally good stuff on the major networks, and on Scifi, BBCa and such.
Claims that there's nothing interesting on television are today's 'holier than thou' declaration. It's a popular statement that you're better than me, because you don't watch TV. Well FUCK YOU, I watch TV. I also read books, watch movies, shoot pool, read journals/magazines, drink beers, explore subway tunnels, party, go see a concert, or do anything else that I think might entertain me for a while.
You follow that up with another lame comment that if your memory is good you only need to see something once. FUCK YOU you arrogant loser. For some reason the kids at school must not have beat you properly as a child. Ever watch a little show called the Simpson's? If you can honestly name, from memory, after one viewing, EVERY joke, EVERY cultural reference, then I'll concede that you're one smart-ass mofo. Until then, I have you in the category of arrogant dumbass. That's the beauty of that show, for me. I've probably seen every damned episode, most of them a couple times, but when you throw two years between each viewing of the same episode, you forget the amusing details. Even if you remember the plot, it's still damned funny, because the jokes are still solid.
Get a life, TV only sucks if you're too cheap to buy access to good TV. I used to balk at paying $100/mo for good TV, cuz I don't watch much TV. Turns out TV is pretty fucking cool, once there's enough choices. The only downside is that when you're in some god-awful country, and the only two english channels are CNN and National Geographic, you probably already saw the National Geographic special that's on.
Anyway, you probably have to go to the opera now or something. Not that I have a problem with opera, I actually kind of like it. You just seem like the kind of prick who claims he is *ONLY* entertained by the opera, since it's the only form of entertainment that is intelligent enough for you. (despite the fact that opera is pretty fuckin' dirty, in reality.... worse than most movies, really)
I noted, immediately after my speed of light comment that I had made obvious errors, on purpose. I know that c is only constant in a vacuum, and I'm aware of Hau's previous work, and I'm aware that the speed of light is depandant on the refractive index of the material through which it is passing. That was, in fact, my obvious error. After all, have you ever heard the words 'fancy undergraduate education' said without sarcasm?
You're missing the point. Josephson is not arguing that cold fusion is a current reality anymore than I'm arguing that light travels at an absolute constant velocity. That would be moronic.
The point I'm trying to make is that all non-incremental technological development has seemed completely impossible, until it happened. Over history, every major scientific innovation shattered the idea of the obviously correct, or incorrect.
It's dangerous to create a culture, where scientists are afraid to experiment with the obviously incorrect, a culture which exists today, and which the book voo-doo science promotes.
Remember there was a time, not long ago, when the idea of something smaller than an atom was preposterous. The word itself, 'atom', has a root that means 'indivisible'. Then Rutherford came along, and suddenly we had 'elementary particles', which again were the smallest, simplest things in this universe. We understood matter perfectly, we knew all it's properties. There were electrons, protons and neutrons, everything else was horseshit. Then Dirac got this insane idea about anti-particles... insane until Anderson proved him right, by finding the 'positron'. Time went on, and we had leptons, baryons, and mesons. We understood what they were, what kinds of them existed, and that they were the smallest thing in the universe. Then dammit, we were wrong again, those wacky quarks came up.
I know you already know that, but I hope you see my point. Everything we know was once thought rediculous. Scientists have a natural arrogance, for they understand their part of the universe so completely that they couldn't ever be wrong, after all, the research was valid.
It's dangerous to challenge this assumption, because unless you're 100% right, you'll be a laughingstock in the scientific community. That's horrible. That's the problem. That's why we cannot dismiss voodoo science as voodoo by any intuitive means. That's why it's a good idea to try to prove correct, hypotheses which have been proven incorrect, especially in cutting-edge environments.
If we're not willing to occasionally question the facts, we might as well go get a barrel of leeches next time we get sick, because we'll never make any more revolutionary discoveries. We'll only make easy discoveries, and that would be a tragedy.
15 years without a working device.... for a project that requires massive funding to have a possibility. For cold fusion to work, it would require hundreds of scientists to say 'This is an area worth exploring'. Something that doesn't happen despite the alleged "open-mindedness" of scientists. You don't get funding by investigating ideas which are "obviously voodoo". You get funding by proceeding incrementally, down previously explored paths.
Josephson has a point, which you make beautifully. You claim to back scientific reasoning, yet you dismiss cold fusion out of hand because of a 15 year gap. Perhaps you should visit www.fixedearth.com, and learn that copernicus was wrong, too.
I'm not saying that every voodoo science is real, most of them aren't. I'm claiming that there's no way to tell fact from fiction, except to do thorough analysis, using all available information. "obviously untrue" things are proven true all the time, and vice versa.
I'm certain you'll dismiss me out of hand, as you've dismissed Josephson, and that's sad. You miss the point by arguing against the specific points that Josephson mentions. His point is that validating a mentality, in which new ideas are dismissed out of hand, even with preliminary evidence, is dangerous.
An example that's in the news now, light has been completely stopped by Hau, and another independant team. Obviously, this is untrue, yes? After all, I learned in my fancy undergraduate education that the speed of light was a constant. (In case you didn't notice, the flaws in my reasoning are quite purposeful.) Therefore, this technology does not exist. It's voodoo.
After changing my UA string so I could get access to this guy's wonderful site, I discovered even more foolproof evidence that this guy is slightly dumber than your average loaf of bread.
He actually has an article called 'The One' with the tagline 'Hard facts that prove which is the best scripting language'. This test "proves" that JScript is the best scripting language, for server and client (out of a set of JScript and VBScript). He also apparently invented the idea of client-side form validation, and I'd wager uses it instead of, not in addition to server side form validation.
The only truly interesting thing about this article, was giving me another person to put on my 'morons' list, so I don't accidentally ever hire this guy for something.
Diesel has been doing this for some time, as has Tommy Hilfiger, and numerous other companies. Maybe when you saw those 'Diesel' signs lying around you thought it was related to the fuel? No, it's related to the clothes. I think I first noticed it in about 96 or 97. Not sure how much it was done before then, but it's been done to death since then.
Because I can either write code that detects that status change (instead of just forcing the new status into config), shuts down daemons appropriately, and reconfigures firewall rules, etc, then send that through system integration, then through QA, or I can reboot. Given that the former would probably cost about $100k/release, just rebooting saves around $400k/year, in exchange for (literally) about 10 CPU seconds. Given that the cost/CPU second is fractions of pennies, it's a pretty easy choice.
No offense, but while power considerations should definitely be entered into the server equation, they're far from the deciding factor. The fact that the Athlon provides superior performance for many tasks should also be entered into the equation.
After all, what good is a server room filled with cool-running PII-350 mobile processors, when your application demands the performance of a 1GHz PIII, 850Mhz Athlon or 700Mhz Xeon?
Maybe I'm wrong, but don't most people purchase servers by determining their application needs, then finding a hardware platform that provides those needs? At least in my experience, the hardware cost isn't even considered as a factor, as you either need something, or you don't.
As for the MP support, Athlon hasn't released it yet, but the design kicks some Intel MP arse. Basically it uses Alpha-style 'only lock what each CPU needs locked' resource sharing instead of Intel-style 'lock fucking everything, we like contention' resource sharing.
Don't get me wrong, I love my Intel box, but servers might not be the right application for *this* generation of Intel chips. The door swings both ways.
The argument that SysV is easier than BSD setup is laughable at best. At my dayjob I'm the release manager for a large BSD based project. It's easy as pie, you edit rc.conf, reboot, and that's how the configuration program works.
This isn't to say that SysV is harder, instead of editing one file, you create some symlinks. Slightly more convoluted than setting a variable to expand to YES or NO, but certainly feasible.
To this point, there's another guy who takes care of the Linux portion of our product, and he has no troubles either. This with both of us having thousands servers 'round the world.
The fact of the matter is, if you can't handle any given startup method, you probably shouldn't be working on the servers. Maybe you should consider making a powerpoint presentation, showing your expected decrease in defects/KLOC after all projects are written in Java, or something. I've heard rumours that directors are good at that kind of thing.
Slashdot Mirror
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010225.html is the correct link for the APoD picture of the giant neutrino detector. That site's worth checking out further though, lot's of interesting pics and info like sand dunes on mars, and sonic booms.
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
Is social life a factor? what a DUMB fucking question! Despite the stereotype, the fact is that most engineers really do lead active lives beyond work. Additionally, they're likely to be logical people, who like to live in places that aren't insane.
I think that Utah is truly one of the scariest states in the republic. The line between church and state isn't just fuzzy, it's been erased, and the moronic liquor laws are just one embodiment of that problem.
I can safely say I'd never, ever move to Utah, not even to marry my cousin (which is legal there, when you turn 50).
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
Getting a co-op isn't about getting a kickass job. It's about having a shitty job in business, and learning how businesses work. The lessons you'll learn will tend to be more of the "how to be an effective employee" type than the "gee whiz cool" type.
Think about this... you're getting paid to learn how to work. Companies don't hire co-ops to get anything productive done, they do it to do a favor to the co-ops.
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
Home of the Free(tm).
We invented freedom, and we copyrighted it. You may license it for a small (enormous) fee.
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
Good thing you were wearing a cheap suit to protect yourself!
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
It's a great game they're playing, and I respect the way they're playing it. All the slashdroids whine that companies should use technical means to secure information instead of legal means. DirecTV did just that, and they caught most of the people.
As for my perspective, I have a DirecTV platinum subscription, or whatever they hell they call it, yet I hack my service. Why? Because it's fun.
They got one of my cards, and didn't get four others. This wasn't the final 'game over' for everybody, just for the script kiddies of the card hacking world.
As for the legality of it all... who cares? This shit is fun!
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
No offense, but what the fuck are you talking about? You're refuting claims which were never made. Perhaps you should run for congress.
My point was that the talented, meticulous non-college-grad programmer exists. Period. Not that he's common, nothing else.
The rest of your argument, well you're debating the voices in your head, buddy.
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
And before one judges, one needs to find out why the degree is lacking. I know a guy who was in an Ivy League school, when his mother got terminally ill with cancer. He dropped out so as to reduce his family's financial burden, and started working, but he never stopped learning. When he came to a topic that he couldn't learn on his own he read everything he could, asked those who were knowledgeable in the field and even sat in on a few classes, so as to steal a little education.
He's not an architect, but I'd let him build my house.
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
The key word in that sentence is 'tend'. Out of the two best programmers that I know personally, one has a doctrait, the other dropped out of a fine institution. The key is that they both know how to learn, and how to apply knowledge generally.
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
CS degrees don't prove anything, unfortunately. Too many CS grads got the degree because they wanted a job when they graduated, not because they enjoy algorithmic design, and are skilled with logic and organization.
At my workplace we have everything from doctors to people who didn't graduate. The level of education has very little correlation to the quality of code they produce. We have people who didn't graduate who write well documented, well designed code, and people with graduates who constantly have bugs because they never learned to check for edge conditions. I'll admit, I've yet to work with a Doctor who wrote bad code.
The problem is that it's hard to tell who, by nature, is an engineer. Yes, I'll admit, an engineering degree gives some credence to the concept that they'll be a reasonable programmer, but it's far from proof of anything.
You know exactly what I mean by 'engineer by nature'. They're the kid that always figured out how everything worked, much to their parents chagrin. The ones with an inherent ability to comprehend a problem, and analyze it, no matter what the field. Unfortunately, there's a shortage of those people.
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
and don't delude yourself into thinking you know anything about me. my soul is funky fresh.
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
I feel no guilt about owning a good stereo or a decent TV.
You don't know what I do for a living, how I make my money, what charities I give time or money to, or anything else, yet you've decided that I'm evil. You have no ideas what steps I take to help the environment, the sick, the arts or anything, yet you've decided that you know exactly who I am.
How sad is that? That because I thought it amusing to defend the position that television can be fun, and entertaining, that you've declared that I'm a selfish, insecure, money-driven person, who dislikes strangers, and doesn't care about social issues. And by sad, I mean it's sad for you, not me.
I'm not going to argue whether you're right or wrong. I know exactly who I am. I'm not the kind of person who looks at some superficial information, like a person's TV viewing habits, and decides they know everything about them.
YOU DO NOT KNOW ME. and you never will. It's obvious, because I can't stand people like you. People who make judgments about a person without nearly enough information to understand them, or to know what they do.
Welcome to the real world, where a good stereo doesn't equal a lack of social responsibility. Get a fucking life, and stop judging people. Judging other people's lives won't make your, or anybody else's life any better.
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
Man, just an FYI, I was laughing my ass off while posting that. As for your meta-complaint... that's even more hilarious! A complaint, about my complaint, both of which are put forth in a forum of no consequence.
It truly was a genius who noted 'If complaining could change the world, slashdot would've created world peace by now'.
Thanks for the comedy!
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
that's a dope fucking troll! word, trollman!
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
Movies are better on the big screen? Sure in theory, but in reality, BULL FUCKING SHIT. I love goin' to the movies, but at home I have about 50 movie channels, PLUS pay-per-view. I can sit on my couch, with a bunch of my friends, we can drink, we can smoke, we can eat cheesesteaks, you get the point. Not to mention that I can do this at 3am, if I want to.
Also, if the movie sucks, it's channel up or down, and we've got a new movie, or if we miss something, we hit rewind on the TiVo, and we watch it again, instead my friend pissing off half the theatre when they miss some scene for whatever reason.
As for the argument that a setup like this is way too expensive, no way. You can do something passable for $2k, something nice for $5k, or something fucking amazing for $10k. Save the earth by selling your car and buying a bike, and use the extra dough you'll pick up to get yourself a decent system.
Then sports, you completely discount sports because you don't watch sports. How the FUCK can you not watch sports? I mean, I can understand not liking some games... American football might have too many rules, or maybe Hockey is too violent for your refined sensitivities, or you're a racist mofo who can't stand to watch Basketball, but there's not a single sport you like? I'm not a huge sports fan, but there's something great about a mess of friends watching TV, drinking beers, cheering for some sports team, whether they care or not. Even if my girlfriend does choose her team based on the center's name, it's still damned fun.
It seems you don't understand the concept of passive entertainment... It's the kind you need when you got so caught up in the code last night that you slept under your desk for two hours, then you coded for another 20 hours before going home. That weekend comes, and you need passive entertainment.
As for the web being better than CNN and all, are you crazy? My TV turns itself on to CNN every weekday morning... I groggily wake up, and without sitting, pointing, clicking or concentrating, I get some rough idea of what's going on in the world. This while brushing my teeth.
As for good shows? If you can spend a month with a full DirecTV feed, and not find anything good on, then you're just a snob. I mean, you've got Discovery, TLC, National Geographic, History, Comedy Central (Battlebots! The Man Show! Win Ben Stein's Money), Food network (Iron Chef!), you can watch gov't proceedings on the CSPANs, watch the market on Bloomberg, watch sports on a shitload of different channels, then there's the occasionally good stuff on the major networks, and on Scifi, BBCa and such.
Claims that there's nothing interesting on television are today's 'holier than thou' declaration. It's a popular statement that you're better than me, because you don't watch TV. Well FUCK YOU, I watch TV. I also read books, watch movies, shoot pool, read journals/magazines, drink beers, explore subway tunnels, party, go see a concert, or do anything else that I think might entertain me for a while.
You follow that up with another lame comment that if your memory is good you only need to see something once. FUCK YOU you arrogant loser. For some reason the kids at school must not have beat you properly as a child. Ever watch a little show called the Simpson's? If you can honestly name, from memory, after one viewing, EVERY joke, EVERY cultural reference, then I'll concede that you're one smart-ass mofo. Until then, I have you in the category of arrogant dumbass. That's the beauty of that show, for me. I've probably seen every damned episode, most of them a couple times, but when you throw two years between each viewing of the same episode, you forget the amusing details. Even if you remember the plot, it's still damned funny, because the jokes are still solid.
Get a life, TV only sucks if you're too cheap to buy access to good TV. I used to balk at paying $100/mo for good TV, cuz I don't watch much TV. Turns out TV is pretty fucking cool, once there's enough choices. The only downside is that when you're in some god-awful country, and the only two english channels are CNN and National Geographic, you probably already saw the National Geographic special that's on.
Anyway, you probably have to go to the opera now or something. Not that I have a problem with opera, I actually kind of like it. You just seem like the kind of prick who claims he is *ONLY* entertained by the opera, since it's the only form of entertainment that is intelligent enough for you. (despite the fact that opera is pretty fuckin' dirty, in reality.... worse than most movies, really)
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
I noted, immediately after my speed of light comment that I had made obvious errors, on purpose. I know that c is only constant in a vacuum, and I'm aware of Hau's previous work, and I'm aware that the speed of light is depandant on the refractive index of the material through which it is passing. That was, in fact, my obvious error. After all, have you ever heard the words 'fancy undergraduate education' said without sarcasm?
You're missing the point. Josephson is not arguing that cold fusion is a current reality anymore than I'm arguing that light travels at an absolute constant velocity. That would be moronic.
The point I'm trying to make is that all non-incremental technological development has seemed completely impossible, until it happened. Over history, every major scientific innovation shattered the idea of the obviously correct, or incorrect.
It's dangerous to create a culture, where scientists are afraid to experiment with the obviously incorrect, a culture which exists today, and which the book voo-doo science promotes.
Remember there was a time, not long ago, when the idea of something smaller than an atom was preposterous. The word itself, 'atom', has a root that means 'indivisible'. Then Rutherford came along, and suddenly we had 'elementary particles', which again were the smallest, simplest things in this universe. We understood matter perfectly, we knew all it's properties. There were electrons, protons and neutrons, everything else was horseshit. Then Dirac got this insane idea about anti-particles... insane until Anderson proved him right, by finding the 'positron'. Time went on, and we had leptons, baryons, and mesons. We understood what they were, what kinds of them existed, and that they were the smallest thing in the universe. Then dammit, we were wrong again, those wacky quarks came up.
I know you already know that, but I hope you see my point. Everything we know was once thought rediculous. Scientists have a natural arrogance, for they understand their part of the universe so completely that they couldn't ever be wrong, after all, the research was valid.
It's dangerous to challenge this assumption, because unless you're 100% right, you'll be a laughingstock in the scientific community. That's horrible. That's the problem. That's why we cannot dismiss voodoo science as voodoo by any intuitive means. That's why it's a good idea to try to prove correct, hypotheses which have been proven incorrect, especially in cutting-edge environments.
If we're not willing to occasionally question the facts, we might as well go get a barrel of leeches next time we get sick, because we'll never make any more revolutionary discoveries. We'll only make easy discoveries, and that would be a tragedy.
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
15 years without a working device.... for a project that requires massive funding to have a possibility. For cold fusion to work, it would require hundreds of scientists to say 'This is an area worth exploring'. Something that doesn't happen despite the alleged "open-mindedness" of scientists. You don't get funding by investigating ideas which are "obviously voodoo". You get funding by proceeding incrementally, down previously explored paths.
Josephson has a point, which you make beautifully. You claim to back scientific reasoning, yet you dismiss cold fusion out of hand because of a 15 year gap. Perhaps you should visit www.fixedearth.com, and learn that copernicus was wrong, too.
I'm not saying that every voodoo science is real, most of them aren't. I'm claiming that there's no way to tell fact from fiction, except to do thorough analysis, using all available information. "obviously untrue" things are proven true all the time, and vice versa.
I'm certain you'll dismiss me out of hand, as you've dismissed Josephson, and that's sad. You miss the point by arguing against the specific points that Josephson mentions. His point is that validating a mentality, in which new ideas are dismissed out of hand, even with preliminary evidence, is dangerous.
An example that's in the news now, light has been completely stopped by Hau, and another independant team. Obviously, this is untrue, yes? After all, I learned in my fancy undergraduate education that the speed of light was a constant. (In case you didn't notice, the flaws in my reasoning are quite purposeful.) Therefore, this technology does not exist. It's voodoo.
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
I love seeing a banner ad for altavista search engine 3.0, along with an article that notes that altavista can't make decent search engines anymore.
At least we know that Malda isn't letting advertisers control his opinions.
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
my guess it was bullshit, but i'd be very interested to be proven wrong.
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
He actually has an article called 'The One' with the tagline 'Hard facts that prove which is the best scripting language'. This test "proves" that JScript is the best scripting language, for server and client (out of a set of JScript and VBScript). He also apparently invented the idea of client-side form validation, and I'd wager uses it instead of, not in addition to server side form validation.
The only truly interesting thing about this article, was giving me another person to put on my 'morons' list, so I don't accidentally ever hire this guy for something.
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
I'm from the Philly suburbs as well. What town has this? Nobody I know of voted that way? I actually used lever machines. (Doylestown.)
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
Diesel has been doing this for some time, as has Tommy Hilfiger, and numerous other companies. Maybe when you saw those 'Diesel' signs lying around you thought it was related to the fuel? No, it's related to the clothes. I think I first noticed it in about 96 or 97. Not sure how much it was done before then, but it's been done to death since then.
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
Because I can either write code that detects that status change (instead of just forcing the new status into config), shuts down daemons appropriately, and reconfigures firewall rules, etc, then send that through system integration, then through QA, or I can reboot. Given that the former would probably cost about $100k/release, just rebooting saves around $400k/year, in exchange for (literally) about 10 CPU seconds. Given that the cost/CPU second is fractions of pennies, it's a pretty easy choice.
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
No offense, but while power considerations should definitely be entered into the server equation, they're far from the deciding factor. The fact that the Athlon provides superior performance for many tasks should also be entered into the equation.
After all, what good is a server room filled with cool-running PII-350 mobile processors, when your application demands the performance of a 1GHz PIII, 850Mhz Athlon or 700Mhz Xeon?
Maybe I'm wrong, but don't most people purchase servers by determining their application needs, then finding a hardware platform that provides those needs? At least in my experience, the hardware cost isn't even considered as a factor, as you either need something, or you don't.
As for the MP support, Athlon hasn't released it yet, but the design kicks some Intel MP arse. Basically it uses Alpha-style 'only lock what each CPU needs locked' resource sharing instead of Intel-style 'lock fucking everything, we like contention' resource sharing.
Don't get me wrong, I love my Intel box, but servers might not be the right application for *this* generation of Intel chips. The door swings both ways.
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
The argument that SysV is easier than BSD setup is laughable at best. At my dayjob I'm the release manager for a large BSD based project. It's easy as pie, you edit rc.conf, reboot, and that's how the configuration program works.
This isn't to say that SysV is harder, instead of editing one file, you create some symlinks. Slightly more convoluted than setting a variable to expand to YES or NO, but certainly feasible.
To this point, there's another guy who takes care of the Linux portion of our product, and he has no troubles either. This with both of us having thousands servers 'round the world.
The fact of the matter is, if you can't handle any given startup method, you probably shouldn't be working on the servers. Maybe you should consider making a powerpoint presentation, showing your expected decrease in defects/KLOC after all projects are written in Java, or something. I've heard rumours that directors are good at that kind of thing.
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"Don't trolls get tired?"