If you were dumped in the middle of the wilderness, could you split the atom?
My point is, if things go bad, we lack even the most basic skills that our ancestors of 200 hundred years ago took for granted: the ability to hunt and find food, the ability to build shelter, the ability to find clean water (that was MUCH easier even 50 years ago), the ability to make fire.
The dire circumstance that I referred to is not just that we are running into some very nasty times but also we don't have the skills we will require to survive them.
I wasn't talking about the fragile ecosystems, I was particularly referring to the fragile infrastructure that keeps 6.5 billion people alive.
Changes in temperature will royally screw up agriculture. Food will be very difficult to come by if most of the truly productive agriculture areas become deserts. And the not so productive areas for agriculture - Africa for example - are very volatile areas; armies don't stop fighting when they're trampling crops.
So let me ask you this: if you couldn't get food from a supermarket, could you still eat? Can you name at least 100 edible plants that grow within a one mile radius of your home? Can you hunt, kill skin and dress a deer without any manufactured implements?
Orange and banana groves in Ontario, well, maybe. But then that doesn't really increase the amount of food since there are already orchards all over Ontario (I have four fruit trees and six grape vines in my backyard in Toronto).
But there isn't going to be any wheat in Nunavut any time soon. Soil profiles in the tudra are very poor. You need somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 years (depending on your source) of grasses growing, dying, rotting into the ground, fixing nitrogen and building up a proper soil profile before you can grow wheat or any other major crop.
So if you're thinking that we'll be OK because agriculture can just shift northward away from the desertification, think again. The limit for agriculture for the foreseeable future is the tree line where the tundra starts.
Isn't that what the dinosaurs said about 65 million years ago?
Actually, the climate will change and we might adapt or we might die. As a species we've never faced quite so dire a threat (global warming can cause a whole host of issues from extreme weather, desertification of croplands, freezing in other wise warm areas due to changing ocean currents, and many other things) combined with such a fragile infrastructure (all but a handful of the human population depends on agriculture for their food sources).
Just because the Earth has been through a lot doesn't mean the we will survive it.
For that matter, that's Google's real motto. And IBM. And WalMart. And every other company. Hell, I'm an independent consultant and have my own company consisting of me, and my motto is "Total World Domination" (it doesn't seem to be going very well).
Which came first - Rolling Stone Magazine, The Rolling Stones, or the song "Like a Rolling Stone". No one seems to know.
They were all named after the song "The Rolling Stone Blues" by Muddy Waters. The order was: The Rolling Stones (1962), Like a Rolling Stone (1965) and Rolling Stone magazine (1967). (dates from Wikipedia).
Right! I had to get up in the morning, at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, buy a phone for twenty-nine hours a day down mall and pay mallowner for permission to buy it, and when we got home, our dad would kill us and dance about on our graves, singing Hallelujah!
We seem to have a fundamental disagreement: you believe that human rights are inherent, I believe that they are cultural. So let me ask you this: how do you know that freedom of expression is a fundamental human right? (for the sake of simplicity, I'm going to stick to that one right)
My position is that it isn't because very few societies throughout history have recognized it as such. To assume that all of these societies were somehow wrong in not recognizing that assumes: 1. we are morally superior 2. we are more intelligent 3. there has been some vast conspiracy throughout history by "the man" to put people down
What exactly is your position? How do you know that freedom of expression is an absolute right?
Still don't see how that changes the fact that printf is O(1) wrt n.
So you can exploit a bug in printf. So what? Not to mention the fact that my code didn't use an extremely long chunk of memory with arbitrary content. There's a very big difference between malloc'ing some random chunk of memory and specifying a literal string.
Do you really believe that if these rights were truly inherent, the Chinese would be too stupid to figure that out? Or are they too morally bankrupt to care?
The fact is, every society finds a way to strike a balance between individual freedom and collective welfare.
Freedom of speech allows us to explore ideas and possibly improve society; but contrast that with the possibility that speech will incite riots, screw up the economy, cause untold suffering. Which side do you fall on? Do you gamble on free speech and take the possible benefits with the risks? Or do you disallow free speech forgoing both the benefits and the risks?
Age-old traditions in the West have taken us in one direction. Age-old traditions in China have promoted the other path. Neither is right or wrong. Each is just different.
And how exactly did freedom of speech become basic human rights? Because the American Bill of Rights (or a document from some other country) said so?
The fact is that these "basic human rights" are actually cultural values. Specifically our cultural values.
Remember that every "basic human right" runs up against another "basic human right". In this case, the Chinese seem to believe that the right of everybody to live in a safe, secure and stable society is more important that the right to freedom of speech. That is a choice to be made by the Chinese depending on their cultural values; not by the West based on ours.
You're right, of course. I should have used the term: Western European, American, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand as well as a few other Pacific islands, some South American countries, and probably a few others I missed.
In my own defense, I used the term American three times in my post and didn't want to type that unwieldy phrase even once.
I don't expect US corporations to impose US laws on foreign soil
So if that's the case, what did Yahoo do wrong? They handed over the name of a person who had committed a crime to the proper authorities.
The rights regarding freedom of speech that you are promoting are American law. You can argue all you want that they are universal human rights, but they're not. They're part of American culture and the American legal system
The problem I've seen with graduates of DeVry and all of the other schools like DeVry (ITT, ICS, etc.) is that they don't teach any computer science.
You've said that you understand a lot of the theory behind computer science. My experience with DeVry grads is that that would be a first. You also say that DeVry teaches how to apply analysis/design/programming skills to buisnesses. Sorry again. I've never seen analysis or design from any of these schools. They all want to start coding on day one of the project.
I once asked someone from one of these schools about what he had learned in regards to analysis and design. He told me that in his course they had one day for analysis, design, business etiquette and basic business skills (running meeting, writing memos). One day? How thick are your written specs before you start coding? How many meetings do you hold with your users before you even start designing?
Finally, if you really know CS theory, a quick quiz. What is the order of this algorithm:
for (int i=0;i<n;i++)
for (int j=0;j<i;j++)
printf("Hello World\n");
a. n
b. n log n
c. n^2
This whole thing has sounded pretty harsh, but I've dealt with a lot of people over the past years who got into programming because it seemed like a good gig where they could make a lot of money fast but had no real interest in building good software. Nobody ever told them there was a lot more to programming than what they learned in school. Even with the best business skills in the world, your code either works or it doesn't. If an engineer has great business skills but his bridges constantly fall down, they don't call him a great engineer. The same goes for software.
Most cities were founded a long time ago when the potential for disaster was far outweighed by the cost of maintaining a city inland.
New Orleans, as an example, is still the most important port in the Americas because it sits near the mouth of the Mississippi. The same holds true for most large coastal cities.
Even now, being able to ship things into and out of a city by boat is much cheaper than by rail or truck. That's why interior cities can't compete with coastal cities. The cost of shipping food and other materials to a huge population in Denver would overwhelm the government's shipping subsidy programs (mostly spent on rail and road maintenance and subsidizing oil).
Slashdot Mirror
If you were dumped in the middle of the wilderness, could you split the atom?
My point is, if things go bad, we lack even the most basic skills that our ancestors of 200 hundred years ago took for granted: the ability to hunt and find food, the ability to build shelter, the ability to find clean water (that was MUCH easier even 50 years ago), the ability to make fire.
The dire circumstance that I referred to is not just that we are running into some very nasty times but also we don't have the skills we will require to survive them.
I wasn't talking about the fragile ecosystems, I was particularly referring to the fragile infrastructure that keeps 6.5 billion people alive.
Changes in temperature will royally screw up agriculture. Food will be very difficult to come by if most of the truly productive agriculture areas become deserts. And the not so productive areas for agriculture - Africa for example - are very volatile areas; armies don't stop fighting when they're trampling crops.
So let me ask you this: if you couldn't get food from a supermarket, could you still eat? Can you name at least 100 edible plants that grow within a one mile radius of your home? Can you hunt, kill skin and dress a deer without any manufactured implements?
If things go bad, can you survive?
Not really.
Orange and banana groves in Ontario, well, maybe. But then that doesn't really increase the amount of food since there are already orchards all over Ontario (I have four fruit trees and six grape vines in my backyard in Toronto).
But there isn't going to be any wheat in Nunavut any time soon. Soil profiles in the tudra are very poor. You need somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 years (depending on your source) of grasses growing, dying, rotting into the ground, fixing nitrogen and building up a proper soil profile before you can grow wheat or any other major crop.
So if you're thinking that we'll be OK because agriculture can just shift northward away from the desertification, think again. The limit for agriculture for the foreseeable future is the tree line where the tundra starts.
The climate will change and we'll adapt.
Isn't that what the dinosaurs said about 65 million years ago?
Actually, the climate will change and we might adapt or we might die. As a species we've never faced quite so dire a threat (global warming can cause a whole host of issues from extreme weather, desertification of croplands, freezing in other wise warm areas due to changing ocean currents, and many other things) combined with such a fragile infrastructure (all but a handful of the human population depends on agriculture for their food sources).
Just because the Earth has been through a lot doesn't mean the we will survive it.
For that matter, that's Google's real motto. And IBM. And WalMart. And every other company. Hell, I'm an independent consultant and have my own company consisting of me, and my motto is "Total World Domination" (it doesn't seem to be going very well).
Competition leads to innovation because you are trying to steal the other guys business. In other words: trying to kill him.
Which came first - Rolling Stone Magazine, The Rolling Stones, or the song "Like a Rolling Stone". No one seems to know.
They were all named after the song "The Rolling Stone Blues" by Muddy Waters. The order was: The Rolling Stones (1962), Like a Rolling Stone (1965) and Rolling Stone magazine (1967). (dates from Wikipedia).
Right! I had to get up in the morning, at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold
poison, buy a phone for twenty-nine hours a day down mall and pay mallowner for permission to buy it, and when we got home,
our dad would kill us and dance about on our graves, singing Hallelujah!
But what idiot is going to upgrade their hardware for Windows Vista?
....
I haven't upgraded since Windows XP. And before that it was all the way back to Windows 2000. And before that
uh oh. I gues it's time to upgrade.
oops, sorry. my bad.
But how can we mod you funny when, frankly, it wasn't.
I think I might have a -1, troll sitting around here somehwere. Will that do?
Ummmm....
Louisiana is a state.
I know that and I'm not even American.
We seem to have a fundamental disagreement: you believe that human rights are inherent, I believe that they are cultural. So let me ask you this: how do you know that freedom of expression is a fundamental human right? (for the sake of simplicity, I'm going to stick to that one right)
My position is that it isn't because very few societies throughout history have recognized it as such. To assume that all of these societies were somehow wrong in not recognizing that assumes:
1. we are morally superior
2. we are more intelligent
3. there has been some vast conspiracy throughout history by "the man" to put people down
What exactly is your position? How do you know that freedom of expression is an absolute right?
Still don't see how that changes the fact that printf is O(1) wrt n.
So you can exploit a bug in printf. So what? Not to mention the fact that my code didn't use an extremely long chunk of memory with arbitrary content. There's a very big difference between malloc'ing some random chunk of memory and specifying a literal string.
How arrogant you are!!!
Do you really believe that if these rights were truly inherent, the Chinese would be too stupid to figure that out? Or are they too morally bankrupt to care?
The fact is, every society finds a way to strike a balance between individual freedom and collective welfare.
Freedom of speech allows us to explore ideas and possibly improve society; but contrast that with the possibility that speech will incite riots, screw up the economy, cause untold suffering. Which side do you fall on? Do you gamble on free speech and take the possible benefits with the risks? Or do you disallow free speech forgoing both the benefits and the risks?
Age-old traditions in the West have taken us in one direction. Age-old traditions in China have promoted the other path. Neither is right or wrong. Each is just different.
And how exactly did freedom of speech become basic human rights? Because the American Bill of Rights (or a document from some other country) said so?
The fact is that these "basic human rights" are actually cultural values. Specifically our cultural values.
Remember that every "basic human right" runs up against another "basic human right". In this case, the Chinese seem to believe that the right of everybody to live in a safe, secure and stable society is more important that the right to freedom of speech. That is a choice to be made by the Chinese depending on their cultural values; not by the West based on ours.
printf is not dependent on n.
(You almost caught me on that one).
You're right, of course. I should have used the term: Western European, American, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand as well as a few other Pacific islands, some South American countries, and probably a few others I missed.
In my own defense, I used the term American three times in my post and didn't want to type that unwieldy phrase even once.
And just for the record, I'm Canadian.
I don't expect US corporations to impose US laws on foreign soil
So if that's the case, what did Yahoo do wrong? They handed over the name of a person who had committed a crime to the proper authorities.
The rights regarding freedom of speech that you are promoting are American law. You can argue all you want that they are universal human rights, but they're not. They're part of American culture and the American legal system
The problem I've seen with graduates of DeVry and all of the other schools like DeVry (ITT, ICS, etc.) is that they don't teach any computer science.
You've said that you understand a lot of the theory behind computer science. My experience with DeVry grads is that that would be a first. You also say that DeVry teaches how to apply analysis/design/programming skills to buisnesses. Sorry again. I've never seen analysis or design from any of these schools. They all want to start coding on day one of the project.
I once asked someone from one of these schools about what he had learned in regards to analysis and design. He told me that in his course they had one day for analysis, design, business etiquette and basic business skills (running meeting, writing memos). One day? How thick are your written specs before you start coding? How many meetings do you hold with your users before you even start designing?
Finally, if you really know CS theory, a quick quiz. What is the order of this algorithm:
for (int i=0;i<n;i++)
for (int j=0;j<i;j++)
printf("Hello World\n");
a. n
b. n log n
c. n^2
This whole thing has sounded pretty harsh, but I've dealt with a lot of people over the past years who got into programming because it seemed like a good gig where they could make a lot of money fast but had no real interest in building good software. Nobody ever told them there was a lot more to programming than what they learned in school. Even with the best business skills in the world, your code either works or it doesn't. If an engineer has great business skills but his bridges constantly fall down, they don't call him a great engineer. The same goes for software.
Ummmm.....
Did anybody notice that this poster and the article he's replying to are THE SAME PERSON.
What the hell kind of troll is this?
If you look a little harder, you'll notice that the source is Reuters (that's Reuters not 'MS'Reuters).
Not to mention that the ultimate source for the article is the FSF.
OMG, the FSF is spreading FUD against free software. What will we do?!?
Looks like I'm going to have to change my sig!!
Most cities were founded a long time ago when the potential for disaster was far outweighed by the cost of maintaining a city inland.
New Orleans, as an example, is still the most important port in the Americas because it sits near the mouth of the Mississippi. The same holds true for most large coastal cities.
Even now, being able to ship things into and out of a city by boat is much cheaper than by rail or truck. That's why interior cities can't compete with coastal cities. The cost of shipping food and other materials to a huge population in Denver would overwhelm the government's shipping subsidy programs (mostly spent on rail and road maintenance and subsidizing oil).
you can start learning, show demonstrable skill
Isn't that pretty much a description of certification?