Damn right. "Let us use your valuable time by showing you a bunch of slides, then have you ask questions at the end." Steve said right at the beginning that he should just walk out if they didn't want his feedback (not WOULD, but SHOULD; he was telling them exactly how he could be most useful to them).
I work with scientists, and everytime management tries the "listen to my hour presentation of irrelevant slides, and don't ask questions", the old-timers just say "Fuck that" and get on with getting down to brass tacks. More often then not, it is insightful. They aren't potted plants.
I started out on a TRS-80 Model 1, Level I. It had 4k of RAM, and a manual that taught BASIC. I would type in my BASIC programs until I couldn't add more characters on a single line, due to all the memory being used. Then I'd delete comments, or remove spaces to get a few more bytes. I had no storage (I later bought a cassette tape "storage" device for like $90), so every night I'd turn it off, erasing all my work for the day. The back of the machine got so hot, I feared leaving it on without being around it in case it caught fire.
Eventually, I got my parents to pay hundreds of bucks to get it upgraded to Level II (required taking it in to a special Radio Shack, where a technician soldered in new memory chips, and replaced some ROMs).
Ah, the good old days. Wish I'd gotten an Atari 800, though.:)
Obviously "oohp" didn't read the post you responded to. That said, it is not inappropriate to use a release candidate on production servers, especially when the rate of rc releases was a slow as it was. If the RC fixes a specific problem you are having, or offers a specific improvement you could really use, it is worth investigating. There are also issues of security to be concerned about; the iperm and networking bugs that exist in 2.4.20.
The main point is that one should do a small test deployment, and some heavy testing, before a wider deployment. There a probably few, if any, user mode level compatibility problems between 2.4.20 and 2.4.21, so reverting back to 2.4.20 should be fairly easy if there are problems. It all depends on the situation.
And on a related note, what is the state of the art for high pixel response time. About two years ago there was talk about modifying the voltage to a non-linear cruve to minimize switching times. For applications we have, we would really need at least 60 Hz (effective) refresh rates, or better. Is there anything on the market that uses the new technology? (hmm, guess I should be asking the industry, not slashdot)
The guy expressing 'shock', is an administrator. He is the chief at NASA Ames, where I work, and part of his job is to 'interface' with the public. That sometimes (often?) leads to statements that would make a scientifically minded person cringe. I expect these comments will be widely reported, and widley condemned as the NASA scientists being incompetant...
Exactly. As someone who develops in-house software, the frontmost question in managements mind is, "And how LONG will this take?". This ties in directly to cost, ease of transition, support, etc.
Outside companies will at least have a track record to show how long it will take. Unless the in-house people have a credible record for delivering things, of this type, on time and under budget, it is a long-shot.
I'm always proposing "super cool" projects. They would be much better than many solutions we have purchased. Also, I could never finish all of them, or even get most to the stage where they are most relevant. That is not all my fault; management often makes last minute decisions and can't always define their long term needs. But that is the way of the world. I'd prefer we hire more in-house people, but that budget doesn't exist right now.
I just reinstalled SS2 to finish playing from where I left off a couple years ago (graduate school intervened). I was always bit disappointed with the models, and with my current machine I have horsepower to spare.
No need to wait for Doom 3, I can start getting creeped out RIGHT NOW! (With the funky movements of the original models, the more detailed version will probably be VERY disturbing)
Wow. Is the river really navigable by oceangoing ships, all the way up to the dam? Do they have some sort of loch, or do they have to unload and go (briefly) overland to get to ships on the man-made lake?
Does this mean we should randomly perturb our quicksort inputs to help them sort in polynomial time? That intuitively makes sense. For a worst case quicksort input (typically a reverse sorted input), you could randomly permute the values to makes it O(N log N) rather than O(N). Cool.
Another famous one in the computer science field, was Huffman coding. As a graduate student, David Huffman (and the class) were early on given the choice of taking the final or doing a report on one of a few problems the professor outlined. The problems seemed straightforward, but the professor (Robert Fano of M.I.T., I believe) had assigned them because were unsolved problems; the idea being that the student would do the research, figure out that they were hard problems, and give a report on what research had been done to try and solve them.
Huffman didn't do the research, just spent weeks thinking about it, and eventually, when he had decided to give up and study for the test, the answer came to him and he realized the solution was really quite trivial (the famous "greedy algorithm" for constructing optimal minimum redundancy codes).
On the day of presentation, Huffman strode to the board, described the problem to the class, and totally unaware that it had not previously been solved (despite much effort), wrote the simple algorithm for constructing the codes on the chalkboard.
One of the more interesting pieces of 'lore' about the inventor of the simplex method, George Dantzig, is that while in graduate school he showed up late for class and wrote down the pair of problems on the board, thinking they were an assignment.
He struggled for a while, and finally turned his results into to the professor. However, the problems had been two famous unsolved problems in the field, and Dantzig had effectively solved them.
While perhaps embellished (and not the only example of students solving 'unsolved' problems), it has become a parable for showing the power of unprejudiced thought. Occasionally it is mis-stated that he invented the simplex method to solve these problems, when in fact, he did that a couple of years afterwards.
Well, an internet search didn't turn up any conclusive data, but I found a page that indicated a guy bought some of these pens, reversed engineere them, then started making and selling them. He said the secret ingredient was iodine, and that it did react with the starch in the paper.
Eventually, he had to stop making the "counterfeit" counterfeit detector pens, due to patent issues (I suppose, in principle, one could look up the patent).
At least that is slightly better than a bleach detector, but one could still easily coat your counterfeits with a mild starch solution (assuming all this is true).
On a side note, the ads for these pens all indicate that you make a small mark, and it turns yellow or brown, and eventually disappears. The only place I go where they regularly use the pens, the woman makes a *big* swipe across the bill, with a thick tipped pen, and it turns black and doesn't disappear. So either my bills are fake (and they are letting them pass), or their pen is different. That is why I mentioned ruining the bills. Maybe they have some "fake" pens.
Those fucking pens are the *STUPIDEST* things I've ever heard of. Besides having the effect of destroying the currency (after several pen strokes, the bills need to be destroyed and new ones circulated), they don't do anything other than check for the presence of bleach in the paper. Anyone serious about counterfeiting can easily used bleached paper (or coat it in bleach).
The sad thing is that the new bills are equipped with much better counterfeit prevention/detection methods than afforded by the stupid pen, and by training cash register personnel with the pen, we are discouraging them from using the newer features.
I hope you are right. I'm considering an ATI card for use on some graphics development we are doing (after swearing to NEVER touch them again, to do absolutely ATROCIOUS drivers in past times). I still am targeting Nvidia as my main line supported platform, but it seems I can no longer ignore ATI. I just hope it doesn't become a quagmire.
Sorry for the delay in responding (work and all). I read some stuff recently (within the past week or so), that talked about this issue specifically.
My recollection is that voters who had been crossed off the list (because they had the same names as felons), had been informed of the error and told they could, in fact, vote. And at hearings held in the following two years, no one had come forward to state that they had been denied their right to vote. (Of course, those who had been denied, might not have been willing or able to come forward, or the report could be wrong.)
Sadly, I can't find the sources for that (maybe if I dug harder in my browser cache, but I'm not at home). Perhaps others could find it, if anyone is still reading.
In any case, I'll concede that I can't offer any more evidence at the moment than my flawed memory.
In the event that it is a close call, Florida state law says that there must be 1 and exactly 1 recount.
I call 'bullshit!', and request that you cite a source for this statement.
Immediately after the initial count (favoring Bush by 1,784), an automatic recount was started (pusuant to section 102.141(4) of the Florida Election Code). This recount (approx two days), gave Bush a 327 vote margin of victory.
Due to the discrepancy, the Florida Democratic Election Committee, under section 102.166 of the Florida Elction Code, requested a manual recount (authorized by section 102.166(4)), to be done in some of the most populous counties (which Gore had won). Asking for recounts in a few counties is not an exceptional circumstance (asking for a statewide manual recount would be, for logistical reasons alone)
First a smaller sample recount in these counties was done (to determine if a full recount was warranted). The full recount then proceeded, but was going to take so much time that it was going to pass the certification deadline (November 14, one week).
The secretary of state, Katheleen Harris, had the authority and discretion to extend the deadline, in order to receive the results.
She chose to NOT extend the deadline, and if you assume her reasons were political (I concede that both "sides" will disagree on this issue), this is really the first point where political control of the state starts to possibly affect the outcome of the election. Earlier events were all lawful, done in a non-partisan way (in close races, asking for a recount is not uncommon; that is WHY there are laws covering it)
There is, of course, much more to be said. I am sick of people distorting the events of this time period. It is a part of our HISTORY, and we should at least get it factually correct. Luckily, there are a few books and other sources that give a reasonably undistorted timeline (at least, as best as I can tell)
As far as your "Christian" comments, I have no response. They are so paralogical as to make everything you say suspect.
I'm the worlds biggest Bush basher (please, no jokes... Okay, maybe just one or two), but I think the issue you mention has been discredited as a valid complaint (ie. it didn't happen like popularly re-reported, and has not been shown to have been a likely contributor to Gore's loss).
That said, the Supreme Court's decision in the matter is still a shameful mark on American history ('no precedent' indeed).
I'm happy to hear specific and credible evidence to the contrary. (seriously)
Slashdot Mirror
Damn right. "Let us use your valuable time by showing you a bunch of slides, then have you ask questions at the end." Steve said right at the beginning that he should just walk out if they didn't want his feedback (not WOULD, but SHOULD; he was telling them exactly how he could be most useful to them).
I work with scientists, and everytime management tries the "listen to my hour presentation of irrelevant slides, and don't ask questions", the old-timers just say "Fuck that" and get on with getting down to brass tacks. More often then not, it is insightful. They aren't potted plants.
You don't collect unemployment when you "quit". Only when you are "layed off" (ie. fired by "no fault of your own").
I started out on a TRS-80 Model 1, Level I. It had 4k of RAM, and a manual that taught BASIC. I would type in my BASIC programs until I couldn't add more characters on a single line, due to all the memory being used. Then I'd delete comments, or remove spaces to get a few more bytes. I had no storage (I later bought a cassette tape "storage" device for like $90), so every night I'd turn it off, erasing all my work for the day. The back of the machine got so hot, I feared leaving it on without being around it in case it caught fire.
:)
Eventually, I got my parents to pay hundreds of bucks to get it upgraded to Level II (required taking it in to a special Radio Shack, where a technician soldered in new memory chips, and replaced some ROMs).
Ah, the good old days. Wish I'd gotten an Atari 800, though.
Obviously "oohp" didn't read the post you responded to. That said, it is not inappropriate to use a release candidate on production servers, especially when the rate of rc releases was a slow as it was. If the RC fixes a specific problem you are having, or offers a specific improvement you could really use, it is worth investigating. There are also issues of security to be concerned about; the iperm and networking bugs that exist in 2.4.20.
The main point is that one should do a small test deployment, and some heavy testing, before a wider deployment. There a probably few, if any, user mode level compatibility problems between 2.4.20 and 2.4.21, so reverting back to 2.4.20 should be fairly easy if there are problems. It all depends on the situation.
Just saw that shitty movie for the first time last week. I HAD hoped to put the ululating out of my mind... Thanks, pal.
Get off your butt and rent it.
Yes, Master Bates.
(inside joke for those who watched the TV series)
And on a related note, what is the state of the art for high pixel response time. About two years ago there was talk about modifying the voltage to a non-linear cruve to minimize switching times. For applications we have, we would really need at least 60 Hz (effective) refresh rates, or better. Is there anything on the market that uses the new technology? (hmm, guess I should be asking the industry, not slashdot)
The guy expressing 'shock', is an administrator. He is the chief at NASA Ames, where I work, and part of his job is to 'interface' with the public. That sometimes (often?) leads to statements that would make a scientifically minded person cringe. I expect these comments will be widely reported, and widley condemned as the NASA scientists being incompetant...
Exactly. As someone who develops in-house software, the frontmost question in managements mind is, "And how LONG will this take?". This ties in directly to cost, ease of transition, support, etc.
Outside companies will at least have a track record to show how long it will take. Unless the in-house people have a credible record for delivering things, of this type, on time and under budget, it is a long-shot.
I'm always proposing "super cool" projects. They would be much better than many solutions we have purchased. Also, I could never finish all of them, or even get most to the stage where they are most relevant. That is not all my fault; management often makes last minute decisions and can't always define their long term needs. But that is the way of the world. I'd prefer we hire more in-house people, but that budget doesn't exist right now.
I just reinstalled SS2 to finish playing from where I left off a couple years ago (graduate school intervened). I was always bit disappointed with the models, and with my current machine I have horsepower to spare.
No need to wait for Doom 3, I can start getting creeped out RIGHT NOW! (With the funky movements of the original models, the more detailed version will probably be VERY disturbing)
The dam is still "curing", and giving off heat. However, the lake helps to dissipate that heat quite well.
Wow. Is the river really navigable by oceangoing ships, all the way up to the dam? Do they have some sort of loch, or do they have to unload and go (briefly) overland to get to ships on the man-made lake?
Actually, the Bible was a beta version. The Quran was the official release. Dianetics is the rewrite from scratch.
How did they do that? I just assumed they essentially dressed up a stove to look like a countertop and really fried the eggs.
Yeah, I meant O(N^2), but was posting when tired. :)
Does this mean we should randomly perturb our quicksort inputs to help them sort in polynomial time? That intuitively makes sense. For a worst case quicksort input (typically a reverse sorted input), you could randomly permute the values to makes it O(N log N) rather than O(N). Cool.
Another famous one in the computer science field, was Huffman coding. As a graduate student, David Huffman (and the class) were early on given the choice of taking the final or doing a report on one of a few problems the professor outlined. The problems seemed straightforward, but the professor (Robert Fano of M.I.T., I believe) had assigned them because were unsolved problems; the idea being that the student would do the research, figure out that they were hard problems, and give a report on what research had been done to try and solve them.
Huffman didn't do the research, just spent weeks thinking about it, and eventually, when he had decided to give up and study for the test, the answer came to him and he realized the solution was really quite trivial (the famous "greedy algorithm" for constructing optimal minimum redundancy codes).
On the day of presentation, Huffman strode to the board, described the problem to the class, and totally unaware that it had not previously been solved (despite much effort), wrote the simple algorithm for constructing the codes on the chalkboard.
The professor was, understandably, stunned.
One of the more interesting pieces of 'lore' about the inventor of the simplex method, George Dantzig, is that while in graduate school he showed up late for class and wrote down the pair of problems on the board, thinking they were an assignment.
He struggled for a while, and finally turned his results into to the professor. However, the problems had been two famous unsolved problems in the field, and Dantzig had effectively solved them.
While perhaps embellished (and not the only example of students solving 'unsolved' problems), it has become a parable for showing the power of unprejudiced thought. Occasionally it is mis-stated that he invented the simplex method to solve these problems, when in fact, he did that a couple of years afterwards.
Well, an internet search didn't turn up any conclusive data, but I found a page that indicated a guy bought some of these pens, reversed engineere them, then started making and selling them. He said the secret ingredient was iodine, and that it did react with the starch in the paper.
Eventually, he had to stop making the "counterfeit" counterfeit detector pens, due to patent issues (I suppose, in principle, one could look up the patent).
At least that is slightly better than a bleach detector, but one could still easily coat your counterfeits with a mild starch solution (assuming all this is true).
On a side note, the ads for these pens all indicate that you make a small mark, and it turns yellow or brown, and eventually disappears. The only place I go where they regularly use the pens, the woman makes a *big* swipe across the bill, with a thick tipped pen, and it turns black and doesn't disappear. So either my bills are fake (and they are letting them pass), or their pen is different. That is why I mentioned ruining the bills. Maybe they have some "fake" pens.
Those fucking pens are the *STUPIDEST* things I've ever heard of. Besides having the effect of destroying the currency (after several pen strokes, the bills need to be destroyed and new ones circulated), they don't do anything other than check for the presence of bleach in the paper. Anyone serious about counterfeiting can easily used bleached paper (or coat it in bleach).
The sad thing is that the new bills are equipped with much better counterfeit prevention/detection methods than afforded by the stupid pen, and by training cash register personnel with the pen, we are discouraging them from using the newer features.
I hope you are right. I'm considering an ATI card for use on some graphics development we are doing (after swearing to NEVER touch them again, to do absolutely ATROCIOUS drivers in past times). I still am targeting Nvidia as my main line supported platform, but it seems I can no longer ignore ATI. I just hope it doesn't become a quagmire.
Sorry for the delay in responding (work and all). I read some stuff recently (within the past week or so), that talked about this issue specifically.
My recollection is that voters who had been crossed off the list (because they had the same names as felons), had been informed of the error and told they could, in fact, vote. And at hearings held in the following two years, no one had come forward to state that they had been denied their right to vote. (Of course, those who had been denied, might not have been willing or able to come forward, or the report could be wrong.)
Sadly, I can't find the sources for that (maybe if I dug harder in my browser cache, but I'm not at home). Perhaps others could find it, if anyone is still reading.
In any case, I'll concede that I can't offer any more evidence at the moment than my flawed memory.
In the event that it is a close call, Florida state law says that there must be 1 and exactly 1 recount.
I call 'bullshit!', and request that you cite a source for this statement.
Immediately after the initial count (favoring Bush by 1,784), an automatic recount was started (pusuant to section 102.141(4) of the Florida Election Code). This recount (approx two days), gave Bush a 327 vote margin of victory.
Due to the discrepancy, the Florida Democratic Election Committee, under section 102.166 of the Florida Elction Code, requested a manual recount (authorized by section 102.166(4)), to be done in some of the most populous counties (which Gore had won). Asking for recounts in a few counties is not an exceptional circumstance (asking for a statewide manual recount would be, for logistical reasons alone)
First a smaller sample recount in these counties was done (to determine if a full recount was warranted). The full recount then proceeded, but was going to take so much time that it was going to pass the certification deadline (November 14, one week).
The secretary of state, Katheleen Harris, had the authority and discretion to extend the deadline, in order to receive the results.
She chose to NOT extend the deadline, and if you assume her reasons were political (I concede that both "sides" will disagree on this issue), this is really the first point where political control of the state starts to possibly affect the outcome of the election. Earlier events were all lawful, done in a non-partisan way (in close races, asking for a recount is not uncommon; that is WHY there are laws covering it)
There is, of course, much more to be said. I am sick of people distorting the events of this time period. It is a part of our HISTORY, and we should at least get it factually correct. Luckily, there are a few books and other sources that give a reasonably undistorted timeline (at least, as best as I can tell)
As far as your "Christian" comments, I have no response. They are so paralogical as to make everything you say suspect.
Sources?
I'm the worlds biggest Bush basher (please, no jokes... Okay, maybe just one or two), but I think the issue you mention has been discredited as a valid complaint (ie. it didn't happen like popularly re-reported, and has not been shown to have been a likely contributor to Gore's loss).
That said, the Supreme Court's decision in the matter is still a shameful mark on American history ('no precedent' indeed).
I'm happy to hear specific and credible evidence to the contrary. (seriously)