Whether or not "naturally evolved" languages work best, as long as everyone writes stuff that they personally can read is absolutely the wrong goal!
Everyone should write code (and I would define "code" in this sense to include documentation) that anyone can read. (OK, maybe your grandmother can't read it, but any competent programmer with a knowledge of the problem you are trying to solve should be able to follow your logic.) That doesn't necessarily imply there should be arbitrary, ironclad rules about indentation policy or variable naming or forms of idiomatic expression. But writing code for yourself is absolutely a prescription for disaster; aside from the obvious possibility that someone else may someday want to maintain or extend your code, you have to consider the likelihood that even you will be unable to follow your own code six months or six years down the road. (I've experienced this agony firsthand many, many, many times in nearly 20 years of on-and-off programming. I'm usually pretty good about documentation and unit tests at this point, but once in a while I get lazy and slip and I kick myself for days afterward when I realize the trouble I could've saved myself if I hadn't been sloppy.)
To use your own analogy to natural languages, writing code should be not unlike writing an essay. That is, a writer chooses a way to make his points that his readers will be able to understand. That does not by any means preclude the writer from having an individual voice and choosing phrases that he happens to like, as long as he gets those points across. But an essay that only makes sense to its author and is unstructured gibberish to anyone else is pretty much useless. Same goes for code. You need to wake up to the reality that code has, in addition to its purely objective end (i.e. perform this task), a strong communicative purpose.
I actually don't believe the bulk of global warming alarmism, but I feel compelled to point out that your comment is severely flawed. First of all, one data point (i.e., one cold winter) does not a trend make. Even if there were strong global warming, that doesn't mean that there wouldn't be occasional exceptions to that pattern. (And by the way, it's been a beautiful and unusually warm winter here in Seattle:-)
Second, global warming does not simply mean "warmer winters". It means warmer average temperatures across the globe as a whole (most of which is water, remember), which could have dramatic effects to either warm or cool specific areas if ocean currents were to shift, for example. One possible scenario is that hotter years would be hotter and cooler years would be cooler -- i.e., that global warming spreads the extremes of climate at both the bottom and the top end.
Third, your analogy between weather forecasting and climate forecasting is incorrect. Your analogy to predicting the state of the stock market is actually an interesting one, as it's very hard to predict where the DJIA (or any individual stock) will close tomorrow or next week, but it's not unreasonable to make a prediction like this: In 200 years the DJIA will be at least 10x and perhaps as much as 100x what it is now. (I pulled those numbers out of my ass; they are probably way too low.) Your prediction could still be wrong, of course, but my point is that sometimes longer-term trends are easier to identify than short-term ones because the underlying drivers are not obscured by unpredictable short-term fluctuations.
As I mentioned in the beginning, we're on the same side of the argument here. I just think that you should choose the arguments that defend the anti-global-warming position a lot more accurately so you don't end up making us all look stupid.
I mean, here in Seattle, which is not exactly renowned for its warm tropical climate (though it ain't Michigan either), my winter electric bill is running somewhat under $20 a month. And everything in here is electric: heat, stove, water heater, the whole enchilada. Admittedly my apt. is only maybe 800 sq ft and I don't like to turn the place into a hothouse, but still, I'm not complaining...
I suspect that a worldwide consensus to take action against global warming (if it indeed exists and is a threat) is exceedingly unlikely, no matter how dire the predictions (or reality) become. Just look at the interests involved. On the one hand, rich nations like the U.S. are not going to willingly compromise their lifestyles and economic (and political and military) power. You can yell all you want about how bad things are going to get 50 years from now, but the vast majority of people will continue their consumption-heavy lifestyles for two reasons. First, they're making decisions that require choosing tradeoffs between easy-to-perceive short-term benefits (having a bigger car, or better climate control in their office, or whatever) against a subtle, uncertain, long-term, hard-to-quantify threat. Deferred gratification is a tough sell. Second, there's a "tragedy of the commons" element of this scenario: If you "cheat" a little bit and emit more greenhouse gases than you should, nobody will ever really notice, and your marginal contribution to global warming will be minimal, but you'll be able to enjoy a lifestyle that you may consider better than your neighbors who are more cautious about their practices. Of course, it's when everyone adopts that attitude that we run into trouble.
Developing nations are similarly not going to limit greenhouse-gas emissions since doing so would only increase the relative gap between them and the richer countries. Plus, they have the further moral argument that it's the rich countries that are polluting disproportionately.
I can see two ways out of this. One is to accept that emissions are simply going to happen, and find technological ways of mitigating them -- whether by increasing the earth's overall albedo or planting lots more trees to soak up CO2 (and combat deforestation to boot) or something else people much smarter than me might think up.
Furthermore, I think we must get real and acknowledge that people's behavior will change only if it's in their own perceived self-interest. There are two ways I see to accomplish that. One is a social way via peer pressure and so forth; you make it unacceptable to do things that contribute to global warming. But that's a little hard because, while you may be able to berate your friend because he bought a gas-guzzling SUV, you probably don't know what kind of insulation he has or whether he turns down the heaters at night. Basically, too many behaviors are hidden.
So my suggestion is to appeal to people's craven economic self-interest. Build models that account for the true long-term cost of the following activities, among others: Generating 1kWh of electricity by natural gas / nuclear / hydro / whatever; burning 1 gallon of gas in your car; and so on. By "true long-term cost" I mean you'd actually have to find a way to put numbers not just on the raw materials and the processing/operation, but on factors like long-term storage of nuclear by-products and risk of contimation of water tables; loss of fishing stock and biodiversity caused by dams; insurance losses caused by rising sea levels and medical costs incurred by rising malaria transmission if global warming comes to pass; and on and on and on. It's hard to define the cost of something as amorphous as damaging an ecosystem, but there are techniques that can be used to estimate how people value things in relative terms and then come up with a number. Similarly, we don't have a good idea how accurate our climate models are, but there are various types of Monte Carlo / game theory techniques that should allow differnet sorts of approximations to be taken into account.
Anyway, I'm not a mathematician or an economist, but my idea is that you get to a bottom line where you can say something like this: The true, fully-loaded cost of a gallon of gas is $8.45. The true, fully-loaded cost of a kilowatt-hour of electricity is $0.67 cents for hydro vs. $0.54 for nuclear, or whatever. You'll note that these numbers are, by and large, an order of magnitude larger than what we pay for these things today. I suspect that we are indeed underestimating costs by about that factor today because we don't consider the "total cost of ownership" for various technologies.
Now, charging people 5-10x their current power rates or gas prices is probably politically unfeasible. But imagine what would happen if we did: Wow, would people have an incentive to change their behavior. Is it really worth an extra $200 a month to cool your house to 68 degrees instead of 70 degrees? Is it really worth $5 of gas to drive down to the store so you can pick up a quart of milk? I'd sure think twice and consider alternatives (well, I already DO walk to the store, but that's primarily because I don't like the fact that I'm starting to feel my waistline slowly expanding each year and I could use the exercise:-)
I'm sure it's a pipe dream, but it seems like the logical solution to the problem to me...
It drives me nuts that the various utilities companies (phone, gas, electric, etc) all make you pay the postage on the bills now.
Pay your bills online and you'll pretty much never have to pay postage again. About the only physical checks I write any more are rent (since it just goes in the manager's dropbox down the hall) and tax payments (since I want a postmark and proof of mailing).
My bank charges me $5 a month for online bill payment, but that's probably about what I'd spend on stamps anyway and it's vastly more convenient.
Re:...but will it keep up with the upgrades?
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Congress shouldn't have any real jurisdiction here in the first place, but that aside, I figure anything that slows down and/or reduces the likelihood of new TLD deployment is good.
Why? It doesn't really solve any problems, and is just a convenient way for registrars and lawyers to make more money. Consider: Who do you think is going to buy Amazon.biz, or Amazon.pro? Either Amazon.com will -- or some domain squatter will get there first, and then Amazon will have to go sue them.
Besides, it just adds to consumer confusion. What if slashdot.org and slashdot.info pointed to two totally different sites with different purposes? What good would that serve?
Adding.name seems logical at first blush, except it doesn't change the fact that there are still going to be a lot more people with a given name than there are domains that correspond to that name. So one lucky guy will get mikesmith.name, and the other 450,000 Mike Smiths around the world will still be SOL.
And who on earth thought of.aero? By that logic, why not.space (OK, maybe mir.space, hubble-telescope.space would be kinda cool) or.sea?
It is an heresy to let people vote remotely.
You can't vote like you'd order a pizza.
I guess you've never voted by absentee ballot. Here in King County (Seattle, WA), more people voted absentee in the last election than actually marched down to polls.
As for research, well, ain't the Web wonderful? I sat in front of my computer for an afternoon with the sample ballot and read pretty much every opinion piece I could find, pro and con, on every ballot initiative. I was better informed in this election than in any election I've ever voted in previously. And when I was done with my ballot, I dropped it in the mail and off it went.
I was living in New York during the hot summer a year or two ago when the city was having all kinds of power problems. Woke up one morning, went into the bathroom to do the business, and realized that the lights were only glowing at about 75% of their usual intensity. No way I was getting anywhere near 120VAC! Walked into the living room and was, er, englightened as I saw smoke billowing from the power station down the block and a small army of firefighters and big red trucks preparing to mount their offensive...
Yeah, sure, that "interruptible power" scheme works great if you are a manufacturing facility turning out a few million bucks' worth of product a day. Or a commercial bank. Or the local RBOC. Or Amazon.com...
...Onan generators? Isn't Onan the Biblical dude whom God put to death for committing the sin of self-gratification?
Not to be too cheeky here, but if I were a corporation I'm not sure I'd name my products after someone whose name is associated with spanking the monkey!
We all know the reason California is out of power is because of all those energy-sucking PCs.
We also know that Americans continue to grow obese at an alarming rate, and that sedentary individuals such as computer operators and programmers are particularly prone to gaining unwanted weight.
Ladies and gentlemen, you can solve BOTH of these crippling problems with one fantastic new product from Preposterous Corporation!
The Preposterous Power-Cycle(TM) is a specially modified stationary bicycle with an attached generator that produces electrical power as you pedal! Just hook the Power-Cycle(TM) to your desktop computer and voila -- not only can you burn calories and keep fit while working, you can help to reduce California's energy crisis by becoming an environmentally-friendly "human power plant"!
The Power-Cycle(TM) features a real-time display that shows how much power you are delivering to your system. Like a mountain bike, it offers 24 gears, so you can optimize your pedaling rate to your computer's energy needs. Planning to start a floating-point intensive calculation that you will make your Pentium III consume an extra 20 watts? Just upshift to a higher gear so you get more current with each turn of the crank!
The Preposterous Power-Cycle(TM) even includes a built-in 100 kVA uninterruptible power supply that charges as you pedal, so that your computer won't run out of power and crash if you need to step away for a moment to use the restroom. Trust us, the Preposterous Corporation has thought of everything!
Order your Preposterous Power-Cycle(TM) now, and lose weight while you save the environment! Operators are standing by!
And, if you order now, we'll even include a Preposterous Potato Battery absolutely free!
OK, say you're Intel... you have tens of thousands of employees and a bunch of multi-billion-dollar fabs, all of which are highly dependent on the continued supply of AC power to your facilities. The grid goes down. What kind of contingency plans do you have in place to protect against that? Obviously UPSs alone aren't enough; at the very least, I would assume they'd be backed by a bunch of honkin' diesel (?) generators. Or do any really big tech companies have their own micro-power plants using, say, gas turbines?
Is there anyone out there in the/. community who has real knowledge about the measures that big tech companies with mission-critical operations take to mitigate against grid outages?
Yeah, like maybe utilities should really be deregulated so that they can charge consumers in proportion to the actual cost of producing/purchasing power. For those of you who haven't been paying attention, the big problem in California is that utilities don't have enough capacity to meet demand in peak periods, so they need to buy power from other places at very high spot-market prices (since electricity obviously can't be "saved up" from periods when demand is lower than generating capacity)... yet the prices the utilities can charge consumers are still fixed even as the cost of that power rockets into the stratosphere. As a result:
Consumers have no real incentive to reduce power use during peak periods, because it doesn't cost them personally (it's a classic tragedy-of-the-commons situation)
Simultaneously, utilities can't make any money, which kind of makes it difficult for them to build new plants to meet the demand.
Yes, I agree conservation is a crucial goal. But it's not enough. First off, the government shouldn't be running around decreeing what is "useless disposable crap" and what isn't. Let consumers decide by exercising the vast power their pocketbooks. Or if DickBlonalds Crappy Smeal toys are costing an inordinate amount of power to produce, fine, pass the cost of the power on to the company, which will in turn have to pass it on to consumers, who will maybe decide they don't need the things so much after all. Secondly, California's population and economy is continuing to grow rapidly, and power plants take time to build. So even if conservation measures were to cut energy use significantly, thus eliminating the short-term possibility of blackouts for customers and bankruptcy for the utilities, it won't really solve the fundamental imbalance: the state isn't generating close to enough power to meet its long-term needs.
The lawyers cite statistics showing that just 2.6 percent of Microsoft's approximately 22,000 employees, and just 1.6 percent of its 5,155 managers, are black. "The numbers illustrate that Microsoft is guilty of some of the most egregious discrimination in corporate America," Hoffler said.
Actually, the numbers by themselves illustrate very little. I don't deny the possibility that Microsoft might indeed have discriminated against the plaintiffs (though I find it quite unlikely, and in any case it's for the courts to decide); however, the lawyers' heated rhetoric is unjustified. Data from the National Science Foundation shows that blacks make up only about 3 percent of all scientists and engineers, or 4 percent of computer and mathematical scientists. It also points out that "Black scientists and engineers have, on average, a lower level of educational attainment than scientists and engineers of other racial/ethnic groups". Of course, not *every* MS employee is an engineer, but the bottom line is that the percentages of MS employees who are black may not really be far out of line with the percentages in the pool of qualified candidates.
I've encountered this personally: In my prior position as a senior manager at a big dot-com, I, and the managers reporting to me, interviewed many hundreds of candidates. But although there was a lot of ethnic diversity in that group, I could count on one hand (and probably with fingers left over) the number of black candidates we saw.
The real issue, of course, is that for one reason or another black students are not choosing to enter technical fields at the same rate as other ethnicities -- not only whites, but Asians and Indians. To some extent that's undoubtedly a personal choice, but I'm sure it also has a lot to do with educational opportunities and cultural norms. I do believe this industry is generally pragmatic about its need to simply hire smart, hard-working people, and is thus rather accommodating about people regardless of ethnicity, sex, sexual preference, even disability; the one real exception is probably age. I'm expect most hiring managers would tell you they'd love to have more qualified black candidates -- or more qualified candidates, period! So the real question is, what can we do to address the root causes that turn blacks away from technical careers to begin with?
An Open Letter from Jacques Nasser, CEO of Ford Motor Company:
My Fellow Americans,
I am writing on behalf of the 800,000 individuals employed by the automobile industry in the United States to express my grave concern that car dealers' habit of selling "used" or "previously owned" vehicles will significantly harm sales of new vehicles.
At the moment, when customers walk into a dealership, a salesman tells them that they may, in addition to buying a new vehicle, buy or sell used vehicles. In fact, to encourage them to buy used vehicles, dealerships offer the used vehicles at lower prices than new ones, and conversely they may offer trade-in incentives that encourage them to sell their previous vehicle. This means that another buyer may then purchase that vehicle instead of a new vehicle.
Some of the used cars available in dealerships nationwide are very recent models. A quick review of newspaper classified ads from dealerships reveals that the following vehicles (among what appear to be thousands of others) are available: 2001 911 Carrera 4 by Porsche, the 2001 328is by BMW, and the 2001 Explorer by Ford. And it's not even 2001 yet!
As you know, these used-car sales earn no payment for the manufacturers of the vehicles in question. Only the seller and the dealer are paid. In addition, the dealers do not appear to have taken any precautions to prevent sales of stolen vehicles or other cars not intended for resale.
I understand that dealers wish to provide customers with all manner of service, including the ability to buy and sell used vehicles. However, these practices can have a significantly deleterious effect on new car sales. If dealers' aggressive promotion of used car sales becomes popular among U.S. consumers, this service will cut directly into sales of new cars, harming manufacturers, the people who work for them, and the many millions of Americans who hold stock in them either directly or through mutual funds.
We're all in this business together. Without automobile manufacturers producing a large number of new vehicles every year, dealers' sales will certainly suffer. If automobile manufacturers and their employees aren't sufficiently compensated for their work, however, then more and more companies will fail and their employees will be forced to find new jobs or draw government assistance if widespread economic depression ensues. For the sake of manufacturers, auto-company employees, dealers, automobile drivers, and the good citizens of this country, a compromise must be found that will not discourage automobile manufacturers from building new cars or consumers from buying them.
We believe the compromise is simple and straightforward: restrict the sales of used cars to collectible models. We have no objection to dealerships that buy or sell Model Ts from consumers, for example, but we cannot condone the exchange of nearly-new vehicles or vehicles that are still being manufactured. Consumers must understand that a vehicle is not simply steel and aluminum and leather, but is an expression of the long research and development process, the intensely creative and competitive design cycle -- the intellectual property, if you will -- of hard-working Americans just like themselves. But as long as a consumer can buy a used 1998 Suburban for a lower price than a new 2001 Suburban, America's manufacturing economy will be deeply threatened.
Sincerely,
Jacques Nasser, CEO, Ford Motor Company
...or, some would argue in the case of the Dvorak keyboard, hoaxes. Business schools that are still using any of these examples are, unfortunately, promulgating misinformation. The "I use it becaue everybody else does" argument is based on a phenomenon known as "network effects" (i.e., as the network of users of a technology grows, the value of the technology typically grows on the order of n^2 rather than linearly with n, fax machines being the traditional example). The supposed first-mover-but-inferior-technology advantage is described as "path dependence".
Anyway, on to the fun part: Demolishing the myths. The Dvorak keyboard may indeed be more "logical" than QWERTY, but it doesn't seem anybody can actually cite any well-controlled, objective studies that demonstrate superior performance. Most of the early claims of its alleged superiority were provided by none other than the keyboard designer (and patent-holder -- no economic self-interest there!) August Dvorak himself.
Here is an article by two economists that rather thoroughly demolishes the claimed superiority of Dvorak. Discussing the results of one controlled comparison test:
In the first phase of Strong's experiment ten government typists were retrained on the Dvorak keyboard. It took well over twenty-five days of four-hour-a-day training for these typists to catch up to their old Qwerty speed. (Compare this to the claim David makes about the Navy study's results that the full retraining costs were recovered in ten days.) When the typists had finally caught up to their old speed Strong began the second phase of the experiment. The newly trained Dvorak typists continued training and a group of ten Qwerty typists began a parallel program to improve their skills. In this second phase the Dvorak typists progressed less quickly with further Dvorak training than did Qwerty typists training on Qwerty keyboards.
Strong's study does leave some questions unanswered. Because it uses experienced typists it cannot tell us whether beginning Dvorak typists could be trained more quickly than beginning Qwerty typists.
Of course, since all of us here (I assume) learned on Qwerty keyboards, that final caveat really doesn't matter.
And there's more from the same piece -- this time from someone who is strong Dvorak supporter:
He cites a 1973 study based on six typists at Western Electric where after 104 hours of training on DSK, typists were 2.6 percent faster than they had been on Qwerty. Similarly Yamada reports that in a 1978 study at Oregon State University after 100 hours of training typists were up to 97.6 percent of their old Qwerty speed.
As for the oft-cited VHS vs. Betamax debate, there are numerous problems with the argument that the inferior, but first-to-market technology won. First is that Betamax was actually first to market -- 1975 vs. 1977. Second is that, picture quality aside, VHS was superior to Betamax in one critical dimension that consumers valued: Recording time. The original Betamax format only allowed one hour recordings, vs. four hours for VHS. Thus VHS allowed recording of an entire film, or even an entire American football game, on one cassette. Ad copy made a big deal about this capability. Third is that it's not even clear that Betamax offered the alleged advantage in video quality: In four reviews in Consumer Reports, the Betamax was judged superior to VHS twice, VHS superior to Betamax once, and both equivalent once. Taken together, these factors gave VHS a decisive advantage.
I can't add anything to the Mac-Windows discussion that this audience won't have heard, but I think everyone recognizes that there were far more factors that led to the dominance of Wintel than the fact that it was simply first while Macs were technically better. Certainly lots of us here will remember how Apple used to command truly exorbitant prices for its systems, how it refused to license the OS to give people choices, how its systems lacked expandability, how DOS/Windows systems were compatible with existing software, how Apple abused developers while Microsoft showed them the love, how IBM and other PC manufacturers had strong relationships with brand specifiers in the businesses that were still buying most PCs at that time. Was the MacOS circa, say, 1986 technically superior to Windows at that time? Yeah, sure. But most people weren't buying an OS, they were buying an entire computer -- and looked at as a whole, the outcome of the Wintel-vs.-Mac battle is entirely reasonable without invoking the dubious path-dependence argument.
For freakish reasons I was admitted to the intensive-care unit at the local hospital while I was a freshman in college, and my thoughtful roommates brought me some flowers conveniently wrapped in a "vase" made up of a rolled-up issue of Penthouse. Sitting in the hospital all day is pretty boring, and I was repeatedly tempted to open up the magazine and start, um, you know, reading the articles. But somehow the knowledge that electrocardiogram equipment was transmitting my heartbeat in real time to the nurses' station outside my door presented a bit of a hurdle to my plans for entertaining myself: Every time I contemplated leafing through the magazine, I started wondering how the nurses would react if they suddenly saw my heart rate jump from maybe 60 beats per minute to 120 or so. I had visions of a klaxon going off and a whole team of doctors and nurses rushing in to man the crash cart, only to realize that the "Code Blue" was actually just me checking out some blue pictures. Of course, I know that crash carts are generally used when your heart *stops*, but that minor detail didn't do much to reduce the sensation that I was indeed attached to a Porn Alarm(TM).
Another report on the study indicates that "Maximum cell phone use was at least an hour per day for five or more years, and no brain-cancer link was found even at that level."
The wording of that statement is a little confusing to me, but in any case it doesn't sound like the study was limited to 2-hour-per-month users.
However, if I may go off on a rant here, the thing I don't understand about this issue is why anybody actually cares, other than to get into arguments at cocktail parties and here on Slashdot. If you are worried about your cell phone causing cancer, then don't use it, or use it less, or get a phone with lower emissions levels. I suppose if we eventually discover that cell-phone use increases the risk of developing a brain tumor by 2%, lots of people will run around screaming and decide to stop using them -- even though many of those same people would (were there no cancer risk) happily chat on their cell phone while driving, an activity that probably causes an order-of-magnitude increase in the likelihood of an accident. Or maybe Congress will pass legislation so that every U.S. cell-phone buyer will get a Surgeon General's warning, like a pack of cigarettes... every time you turn it, and once every six hours thereafter, the display will say "Warning: Using this device may be hazardous to your health. If you agree to accept this risk, press SEND to continue."
Yeah, I think that presenting hard-core CS and using something like Scheme for people who just need an operational knowledge of computers and computer programming (like business majors) is probably a mistake. It's a little like teaching people mechanical engineering when they were expecting Driver's Ed. Too bad the course guide and/or syllabus were not clearer up front about who the class is really for -- sounds like your brother (I'm assuming he's a computer guy rather than one of the business majors) should have some fun. I *do* think this is the right way to go for people who are seriously considering a CS degree or perhaps something related like EE.
Adding a.xxx TLD would solve nothing. Even assuming that lawmakers could have jurisdiction to fine operators that did not voluntarily comply (they'd obviously just move their hosting to some country that didn't care what the U.S. thinks), you make the assumption that there is some single, universal definition of "porn" that applies worldwide. This is completely incorrect. Different countries, and even different communities within a single country, have different standards for decency. Maybe you think Playboy is risque enough to qualify for.xxx status even though it shows only nudity and no depictions or simulations of sex acts. Fine. Many Europeans, who tend to be much more accustomed to open depictions of nudity in advertisements and on television, could well disagree. On the other hand, a fundamentalist Islamic country like Iran could well consider even pictures of a woman in a bikini to exceed the bounds of propriety.
The fundamental problem here is first defining "porn" (or other objectionable material) in such a way that it will never exclude material that citizens are indeed allowed to access, and second dealing with the reality that the definition of objectionable varies dramatically from place to place on a Net that is worldwide. Justice Potter Stewart of the U.S. Supreme Court once claimed that he can't define pornography, but that "I know it when I see it". Unfortunately, that doesn't exactly provide for a clear delineation between something that would be allowed in.com versus.xxx, even disregarding the global implications of a scheme like this.
CS should be about computer science more than computer programming. Students need to be learning about algorithms, data structures, big-O, proofs of correctness, modularity, and so on -- concepts that will benefit them in any language they later choose to employ -- rather than get bound up in the syntactical nuances of any particular language or environment. Sometimes I think that rather than use a language that actually has likely commercial applications, such as C++ or Java, the courses should be based in something obscure but transparent such as Scheme (as in Abelson & Sussman's classic Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs) or a variant of the hypothetical machine language that Knuth proposes in The Art of Computer Programming.
Though I must add, from my experience as a former employer of Web developers, that I wish every high-school CS student learned at least basic regular expression syntax. (Maybe they do now; it's been more than a decade since I took the CS APs.) Regular expressions are one of the single most powerful and productive constructs I've encountered in all of computing, and they are also a great vehicle for learning about things like state machines.
Make the site useful. Ideally I don't just want to passively read information, but to actually do something like apply online for that new business license. Give me tools that will let me avoid picking up the phone or driving down to the office and standing in line all day.
Make it consistent (and simple). Standardize page layouts, so there's always an easy way to tell where you are, get home, search, etc. Others have mentioned the importance of things like accessibility and printer-friendliness.
View it from the user's perspective, which is probably either task-based (I want to get a driver's license) or demographic-based (I'm a small business owner, what do I need to know?). Don't organize it based on the internal structure of the government -- I don't want to have to know which department to deal with, I just want to get things done.
Consider exploiting non-Web interactivity with things like mailing lists. For an employer it might be very useful to be able to, say, sign up for notification by e-mail whenever labor laws change.
And some smaller specific things:
Put a date on every page, and if information has been superseded, indicate it clearly.
Provide contact information (e-mail, phone, fax, etc.) for every individual.
You probably are a good enough Webmaster to know this, but check your logs to see what pages people are actually looking at, what kind of errors they're encountering, what sort of searches they're performing.
Ideally, I'd suggest you do some informal usability testing with real users, i.e. constituents. I'd bet you could find civic organizations whose members would be happy to donate a little time to provide feedback on how they would actually use the site and to critique potential structures.
seriously! cell phones and freebie calculators have 'em, but on those expensive telephone handsets in every office in the U.S. you're screwed if you misdial one digit -- you have to start all over. WHY?
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone should write code (and I would define "code" in this sense to include documentation) that anyone can read. (OK, maybe your grandmother can't read it, but any competent programmer with a knowledge of the problem you are trying to solve should be able to follow your logic.) That doesn't necessarily imply there should be arbitrary, ironclad rules about indentation policy or variable naming or forms of idiomatic expression. But writing code for yourself is absolutely a prescription for disaster; aside from the obvious possibility that someone else may someday want to maintain or extend your code, you have to consider the likelihood that even you will be unable to follow your own code six months or six years down the road. (I've experienced this agony firsthand many, many, many times in nearly 20 years of on-and-off programming. I'm usually pretty good about documentation and unit tests at this point, but once in a while I get lazy and slip and I kick myself for days afterward when I realize the trouble I could've saved myself if I hadn't been sloppy.)
To use your own analogy to natural languages, writing code should be not unlike writing an essay. That is, a writer chooses a way to make his points that his readers will be able to understand. That does not by any means preclude the writer from having an individual voice and choosing phrases that he happens to like, as long as he gets those points across. But an essay that only makes sense to its author and is unstructured gibberish to anyone else is pretty much useless. Same goes for code. You need to wake up to the reality that code has, in addition to its purely objective end (i.e. perform this task), a strong communicative purpose.
Second, global warming does not simply mean "warmer winters". It means warmer average temperatures across the globe as a whole (most of which is water, remember), which could have dramatic effects to either warm or cool specific areas if ocean currents were to shift, for example. One possible scenario is that hotter years would be hotter and cooler years would be cooler -- i.e., that global warming spreads the extremes of climate at both the bottom and the top end.
Third, your analogy between weather forecasting and climate forecasting is incorrect. Your analogy to predicting the state of the stock market is actually an interesting one, as it's very hard to predict where the DJIA (or any individual stock) will close tomorrow or next week, but it's not unreasonable to make a prediction like this: In 200 years the DJIA will be at least 10x and perhaps as much as 100x what it is now. (I pulled those numbers out of my ass; they are probably way too low.) Your prediction could still be wrong, of course, but my point is that sometimes longer-term trends are easier to identify than short-term ones because the underlying drivers are not obscured by unpredictable short-term fluctuations.
As I mentioned in the beginning, we're on the same side of the argument here. I just think that you should choose the arguments that defend the anti-global-warming position a lot more accurately so you don't end up making us all look stupid.
I mean, here in Seattle, which is not exactly renowned for its warm tropical climate (though it ain't Michigan either), my winter electric bill is running somewhat under $20 a month. And everything in here is electric: heat, stove, water heater, the whole enchilada. Admittedly my apt. is only maybe 800 sq ft and I don't like to turn the place into a hothouse, but still, I'm not complaining...
Developing nations are similarly not going to limit greenhouse-gas emissions since doing so would only increase the relative gap between them and the richer countries. Plus, they have the further moral argument that it's the rich countries that are polluting disproportionately.
I can see two ways out of this. One is to accept that emissions are simply going to happen, and find technological ways of mitigating them -- whether by increasing the earth's overall albedo or planting lots more trees to soak up CO2 (and combat deforestation to boot) or something else people much smarter than me might think up.
Furthermore, I think we must get real and acknowledge that people's behavior will change only if it's in their own perceived self-interest. There are two ways I see to accomplish that. One is a social way via peer pressure and so forth; you make it unacceptable to do things that contribute to global warming. But that's a little hard because, while you may be able to berate your friend because he bought a gas-guzzling SUV, you probably don't know what kind of insulation he has or whether he turns down the heaters at night. Basically, too many behaviors are hidden.
So my suggestion is to appeal to people's craven economic self-interest. Build models that account for the true long-term cost of the following activities, among others: Generating 1kWh of electricity by natural gas / nuclear / hydro / whatever; burning 1 gallon of gas in your car; and so on. By "true long-term cost" I mean you'd actually have to find a way to put numbers not just on the raw materials and the processing/operation, but on factors like long-term storage of nuclear by-products and risk of contimation of water tables; loss of fishing stock and biodiversity caused by dams; insurance losses caused by rising sea levels and medical costs incurred by rising malaria transmission if global warming comes to pass; and on and on and on. It's hard to define the cost of something as amorphous as damaging an ecosystem, but there are techniques that can be used to estimate how people value things in relative terms and then come up with a number. Similarly, we don't have a good idea how accurate our climate models are, but there are various types of Monte Carlo / game theory techniques that should allow differnet sorts of approximations to be taken into account.
Anyway, I'm not a mathematician or an economist, but my idea is that you get to a bottom line where you can say something like this: The true, fully-loaded cost of a gallon of gas is $8.45. The true, fully-loaded cost of a kilowatt-hour of electricity is $0.67 cents for hydro vs. $0.54 for nuclear, or whatever. You'll note that these numbers are, by and large, an order of magnitude larger than what we pay for these things today. I suspect that we are indeed underestimating costs by about that factor today because we don't consider the "total cost of ownership" for various technologies.
Now, charging people 5-10x their current power rates or gas prices is probably politically unfeasible. But imagine what would happen if we did: Wow, would people have an incentive to change their behavior. Is it really worth an extra $200 a month to cool your house to 68 degrees instead of 70 degrees? Is it really worth $5 of gas to drive down to the store so you can pick up a quart of milk? I'd sure think twice and consider alternatives (well, I already DO walk to the store, but that's primarily because I don't like the fact that I'm starting to feel my waistline slowly expanding each year and I could use the exercise :-)
I'm sure it's a pipe dream, but it seems like the logical solution to the problem to me...
Pay your bills online and you'll pretty much never have to pay postage again. About the only physical checks I write any more are rent (since it just goes in the manager's dropbox down the hall) and tax payments (since I want a postmark and proof of mailing).
My bank charges me $5 a month for online bill payment, but that's probably about what I'd spend on stamps anyway and it's vastly more convenient.
if (($target{speed_kmh} > 25000) && ($target{temperature_k} > 10000))
{$target{type} = 'ICBM'}
elsif (($target{speed_kmh} < 30) && ($target{temperature_k} < 350))
{$target{type} = 'bird'}
foreach (%target)
{&vaporize if ($_{type} eq 'ICBM')}
Why? It doesn't really solve any problems, and is just a convenient way for registrars and lawyers to make more money. Consider: Who do you think is going to buy Amazon.biz, or Amazon.pro? Either Amazon.com will -- or some domain squatter will get there first, and then Amazon will have to go sue them.
Besides, it just adds to consumer confusion. What if slashdot.org and slashdot.info pointed to two totally different sites with different purposes? What good would that serve?
Adding .name seems logical at first blush, except it doesn't change the fact that there are still going to be a lot more people with a given name than there are domains that correspond to that name. So one lucky guy will get mikesmith.name, and the other 450,000 Mike Smiths around the world will still be SOL.
And who on earth thought of .aero? By that logic, why not .space (OK, maybe mir.space, hubble-telescope.space would be kinda cool) or .sea?
I guess you've never voted by absentee ballot. Here in King County (Seattle, WA), more people voted absentee in the last election than actually marched down to polls.
As for research, well, ain't the Web wonderful? I sat in front of my computer for an afternoon with the sample ballot and read pretty much every opinion piece I could find, pro and con, on every ballot initiative. I was better informed in this election than in any election I've ever voted in previously. And when I was done with my ballot, I dropped it in the mail and off it went.
Effective 01/12/2001 at 00:17 (PST of course)
I was living in New York during the hot summer a year or two ago when the city was having all kinds of power problems. Woke up one morning, went into the bathroom to do the business, and realized that the lights were only glowing at about 75% of their usual intensity. No way I was getting anywhere near 120VAC! Walked into the living room and was, er, englightened as I saw smoke billowing from the power station down the block and a small army of firefighters and big red trucks preparing to mount their offensive...
Yeah, sure, that "interruptible power" scheme works great if you are a manufacturing facility turning out a few million bucks' worth of product a day. Or a commercial bank. Or the local RBOC. Or Amazon.com...
Not to be too cheeky here, but if I were a corporation I'm not sure I'd name my products after someone whose name is associated with spanking the monkey!
We also know that Americans continue to grow obese at an alarming rate, and that sedentary individuals such as computer operators and programmers are particularly prone to gaining unwanted weight.
Ladies and gentlemen, you can solve BOTH of these crippling problems with one fantastic new product from Preposterous Corporation!
The Preposterous Power-Cycle(TM) is a specially modified stationary bicycle with an attached generator that produces electrical power as you pedal! Just hook the Power-Cycle(TM) to your desktop computer and voila -- not only can you burn calories and keep fit while working, you can help to reduce California's energy crisis by becoming an environmentally-friendly "human power plant"!
The Power-Cycle(TM) features a real-time display that shows how much power you are delivering to your system. Like a mountain bike, it offers 24 gears, so you can optimize your pedaling rate to your computer's energy needs. Planning to start a floating-point intensive calculation that you will make your Pentium III consume an extra 20 watts? Just upshift to a higher gear so you get more current with each turn of the crank!
The Preposterous Power-Cycle(TM) even includes a built-in 100 kVA uninterruptible power supply that charges as you pedal, so that your computer won't run out of power and crash if you need to step away for a moment to use the restroom. Trust us, the Preposterous Corporation has thought of everything!
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Is there anyone out there in the /. community who has real knowledge about the measures that big tech companies with mission-critical operations take to mitigate against grid outages?
Yes, I agree conservation is a crucial goal. But it's not enough. First off, the government shouldn't be running around decreeing what is "useless disposable crap" and what isn't. Let consumers decide by exercising the vast power their pocketbooks. Or if DickBlonalds Crappy Smeal toys are costing an inordinate amount of power to produce, fine, pass the cost of the power on to the company, which will in turn have to pass it on to consumers, who will maybe decide they don't need the things so much after all. Secondly, California's population and economy is continuing to grow rapidly, and power plants take time to build. So even if conservation measures were to cut energy use significantly, thus eliminating the short-term possibility of blackouts for customers and bankruptcy for the utilities, it won't really solve the fundamental imbalance: the state isn't generating close to enough power to meet its long-term needs.
Actually, the numbers by themselves illustrate very little. I don't deny the possibility that Microsoft might indeed have discriminated against the plaintiffs (though I find it quite unlikely, and in any case it's for the courts to decide); however, the lawyers' heated rhetoric is unjustified. Data from the National Science Foundation shows that blacks make up only about 3 percent of all scientists and engineers, or 4 percent of computer and mathematical scientists. It also points out that "Black scientists and engineers have, on average, a lower level of educational attainment than scientists and engineers of other racial/ethnic groups". Of course, not *every* MS employee is an engineer, but the bottom line is that the percentages of MS employees who are black may not really be far out of line with the percentages in the pool of qualified candidates.
I've encountered this personally: In my prior position as a senior manager at a big dot-com, I, and the managers reporting to me, interviewed many hundreds of candidates. But although there was a lot of ethnic diversity in that group, I could count on one hand (and probably with fingers left over) the number of black candidates we saw.
The real issue, of course, is that for one reason or another black students are not choosing to enter technical fields at the same rate as other ethnicities -- not only whites, but Asians and Indians. To some extent that's undoubtedly a personal choice, but I'm sure it also has a lot to do with educational opportunities and cultural norms. I do believe this industry is generally pragmatic about its need to simply hire smart, hard-working people, and is thus rather accommodating about people regardless of ethnicity, sex, sexual preference, even disability; the one real exception is probably age. I'm expect most hiring managers would tell you they'd love to have more qualified black candidates -- or more qualified candidates, period! So the real question is, what can we do to address the root causes that turn blacks away from technical careers to begin with?
My Fellow Americans,
I am writing on behalf of the 800,000 individuals employed by the automobile industry in the United States to express my grave concern that car dealers' habit of selling "used" or "previously owned" vehicles will significantly harm sales of new vehicles.
At the moment, when customers walk into a dealership, a salesman tells them that they may, in addition to buying a new vehicle, buy or sell used vehicles. In fact, to encourage them to buy used vehicles, dealerships offer the used vehicles at lower prices than new ones, and conversely they may offer trade-in incentives that encourage them to sell their previous vehicle. This means that another buyer may then purchase that vehicle instead of a new vehicle.
Some of the used cars available in dealerships nationwide are very recent models. A quick review of newspaper classified ads from dealerships reveals that the following vehicles (among what appear to be thousands of others) are available: 2001 911 Carrera 4 by Porsche, the 2001 328is by BMW, and the 2001 Explorer by Ford. And it's not even 2001 yet!
As you know, these used-car sales earn no payment for the manufacturers of the vehicles in question. Only the seller and the dealer are paid. In addition, the dealers do not appear to have taken any precautions to prevent sales of stolen vehicles or other cars not intended for resale.
I understand that dealers wish to provide customers with all manner of service, including the ability to buy and sell used vehicles. However, these practices can have a significantly deleterious effect on new car sales. If dealers' aggressive promotion of used car sales becomes popular among U.S. consumers, this service will cut directly into sales of new cars, harming manufacturers, the people who work for them, and the many millions of Americans who hold stock in them either directly or through mutual funds.
We're all in this business together. Without automobile manufacturers producing a large number of new vehicles every year, dealers' sales will certainly suffer. If automobile manufacturers and their employees aren't sufficiently compensated for their work, however, then more and more companies will fail and their employees will be forced to find new jobs or draw government assistance if widespread economic depression ensues. For the sake of manufacturers, auto-company employees, dealers, automobile drivers, and the good citizens of this country, a compromise must be found that will not discourage automobile manufacturers from building new cars or consumers from buying them.
We believe the compromise is simple and straightforward: restrict the sales of used cars to collectible models. We have no objection to dealerships that buy or sell Model Ts from consumers, for example, but we cannot condone the exchange of nearly-new vehicles or vehicles that are still being manufactured. Consumers must understand that a vehicle is not simply steel and aluminum and leather, but is an expression of the long research and development process, the intensely creative and competitive design cycle -- the intellectual property, if you will -- of hard-working Americans just like themselves. But as long as a consumer can buy a used 1998 Suburban for a lower price than a new 2001 Suburban, America's manufacturing economy will be deeply threatened.
Sincerely,
Jacques Nasser, CEO, Ford Motor Company
Anyway, on to the fun part: Demolishing the myths. The Dvorak keyboard may indeed be more "logical" than QWERTY, but it doesn't seem anybody can actually cite any well-controlled, objective studies that demonstrate superior performance. Most of the early claims of its alleged superiority were provided by none other than the keyboard designer (and patent-holder -- no economic self-interest there!) August Dvorak himself.
Here is an article by two economists that rather thoroughly demolishes the claimed superiority of Dvorak. Discussing the results of one controlled comparison test:
Of course, since all of us here (I assume) learned on Qwerty keyboards, that final caveat really doesn't matter.And there's more from the same piece -- this time from someone who is strong Dvorak supporter:
As for the oft-cited VHS vs. Betamax debate, there are numerous problems with the argument that the inferior, but first-to-market technology won. First is that Betamax was actually first to market -- 1975 vs. 1977. Second is that, picture quality aside, VHS was superior to Betamax in one critical dimension that consumers valued: Recording time. The original Betamax format only allowed one hour recordings, vs. four hours for VHS. Thus VHS allowed recording of an entire film, or even an entire American football game, on one cassette. Ad copy made a big deal about this capability. Third is that it's not even clear that Betamax offered the alleged advantage in video quality: In four reviews in Consumer Reports, the Betamax was judged superior to VHS twice, VHS superior to Betamax once, and both equivalent once. Taken together, these factors gave VHS a decisive advantage.
I can't add anything to the Mac-Windows discussion that this audience won't have heard, but I think everyone recognizes that there were far more factors that led to the dominance of Wintel than the fact that it was simply first while Macs were technically better. Certainly lots of us here will remember how Apple used to command truly exorbitant prices for its systems, how it refused to license the OS to give people choices, how its systems lacked expandability, how DOS/Windows systems were compatible with existing software, how Apple abused developers while Microsoft showed them the love, how IBM and other PC manufacturers had strong relationships with brand specifiers in the businesses that were still buying most PCs at that time. Was the MacOS circa, say, 1986 technically superior to Windows at that time? Yeah, sure. But most people weren't buying an OS, they were buying an entire computer -- and looked at as a whole, the outcome of the Wintel-vs.-Mac battle is entirely reasonable without invoking the dubious path-dependence argument.
For freakish reasons I was admitted to the intensive-care unit at the local hospital while I was a freshman in college, and my thoughtful roommates brought me some flowers conveniently wrapped in a "vase" made up of a rolled-up issue of Penthouse. Sitting in the hospital all day is pretty boring, and I was repeatedly tempted to open up the magazine and start, um, you know, reading the articles. But somehow the knowledge that electrocardiogram equipment was transmitting my heartbeat in real time to the nurses' station outside my door presented a bit of a hurdle to my plans for entertaining myself: Every time I contemplated leafing through the magazine, I started wondering how the nurses would react if they suddenly saw my heart rate jump from maybe 60 beats per minute to 120 or so. I had visions of a klaxon going off and a whole team of doctors and nurses rushing in to man the crash cart, only to realize that the "Code Blue" was actually just me checking out some blue pictures. Of course, I know that crash carts are generally used when your heart *stops*, but that minor detail didn't do much to reduce the sensation that I was indeed attached to a Porn Alarm(TM).
The wording of that statement is a little confusing to me, but in any case it doesn't sound like the study was limited to 2-hour-per-month users.
However, if I may go off on a rant here, the thing I don't understand about this issue is why anybody actually cares, other than to get into arguments at cocktail parties and here on Slashdot. If you are worried about your cell phone causing cancer, then don't use it, or use it less, or get a phone with lower emissions levels. I suppose if we eventually discover that cell-phone use increases the risk of developing a brain tumor by 2%, lots of people will run around screaming and decide to stop using them -- even though many of those same people would (were there no cancer risk) happily chat on their cell phone while driving, an activity that probably causes an order-of-magnitude increase in the likelihood of an accident. Or maybe Congress will pass legislation so that every U.S. cell-phone buyer will get a Surgeon General's warning, like a pack of cigarettes... every time you turn it, and once every six hours thereafter, the display will say "Warning: Using this device may be hazardous to your health. If you agree to accept this risk, press SEND to continue."
Yeah, I think that presenting hard-core CS and using something like Scheme for people who just need an operational knowledge of computers and computer programming (like business majors) is probably a mistake. It's a little like teaching people mechanical engineering when they were expecting Driver's Ed. Too bad the course guide and/or syllabus were not clearer up front about who the class is really for -- sounds like your brother (I'm assuming he's a computer guy rather than one of the business majors) should have some fun. I *do* think this is the right way to go for people who are seriously considering a CS degree or perhaps something related like EE.
The fundamental problem here is first defining "porn" (or other objectionable material) in such a way that it will never exclude material that citizens are indeed allowed to access, and second dealing with the reality that the definition of objectionable varies dramatically from place to place on a Net that is worldwide. Justice Potter Stewart of the U.S. Supreme Court once claimed that he can't define pornography, but that "I know it when I see it". Unfortunately, that doesn't exactly provide for a clear delineation between something that would be allowed in .com versus .xxx, even disregarding the global implications of a scheme like this.
Though I must add, from my experience as a former employer of Web developers, that I wish every high-school CS student learned at least basic regular expression syntax. (Maybe they do now; it's been more than a decade since I took the CS APs.) Regular expressions are one of the single most powerful and productive constructs I've encountered in all of computing, and they are also a great vehicle for learning about things like state machines.
And some smaller specific things:
Ideally, I'd suggest you do some informal usability testing with real users, i.e. constituents. I'd bet you could find civic organizations whose members would be happy to donate a little time to provide feedback on how they would actually use the site and to critique potential structures.
seriously! cell phones and freebie calculators have 'em, but on those expensive telephone handsets in every office in the U.S. you're screwed if you misdial one digit -- you have to start all over. WHY?