As someone who is responsible for hiring people, and being an ace programmer myself, I can say that any good developer won't show it in the resume. I personally have had a history of a lot of job changes. I mean to stay, but something pisses me off and I split. While it might seem egocentric, for me to say so, I don't have to hold on to a job because I need to have it. My last COO treated the development department, and particularly me as head of it like crap. In two weeks I had a job- not just any job, but one with more pay, less hours, and better management. I'm inclined to think that other aces don't put up with crap either.
The other thing I mentioned and will elaborate on is that you can't judge people by the resume. Get everyone in, meet them. Geeks are not great at self-promotion. They are more about structure and technology than self-promotion. These are skilled bit-smiths, not word-smiths. Often they have hints of autism that make them evaluate the world differently. Look for these quirks and see if the attitude and previous experience will work for you.
Also, think about what you need in terms of ability, not prior knowledge. Everyone can learn, but HOW you learn is more important. Its the difference between "I don't know how so I cant" and "what do I need to know so I can?" "Geniuses" either invest an exhorbinate amoutn of time or pick things up quickly. I'm personally the pick-things-up-quickly kind.
Thanks for the correction. I will adjust my logic accordingly. For the record, Paul never said this, I just put it together, evidently hearing it from an incorrect source.
The limiting of the consideration of candidates to those who are likely to win is wrong, and does not produce the government of desired characteristics. We are asked to vote for the one who best represents our position. That idea - that we put forward the candidates that represents us the best is the fundamental construct of the representative democracy.
If we vote for who we think will win, then it is nothing more than a popularity contest, with the media controlling who is popular. If effect you become a proxy of the media. In order to keep the idea of a representative democracy working, we need to vote for who best represents our interests.
I remember a time when the internet was claimed to be a democratizing power. It was supposed to restore the power to the people. Now we are complaining that Ron Paul supporters are too vocal. I find it ironic that the tech savvy of us are now rejecting this democratizing power.
I am a Ron Paul supporter, and I realize his ideas might seem crazy, but they are based on sound numbers. All of the money collected in the personal income tax goes to pay for interest on the national debt. There is no reason why with a reduced federal government and responsible spending that we can't eliminate the personal income tax.
When Ron Paul talks about canceling or reducing these federal entities, it is important to note that these are longer term goals, and won't be accomplished in a day. When these federal entities go away, this leaves more money to you and your local jurisdiction (states) where your money can be put to better use rather than being spent on a federal bureaucracy with minimal effectiveness. Here's an example. My sister is a public school teacher. She gets to deal with "No Child Left Behind". She hates it because it amounts to no child is failed. The act does not provide for any better education, but it forces teachers to doctor the numbers to look like success is happening. This clearly is not right. But what do you expect from a government that aims to educate ONLY 10% of the kids in D.C.? (10% is the number they calculated to have an operational city (D.C.) in 20 years.) Any local jurisdiction would find that figure appalling.
The biggest problem with Ron Paul isn't his ideas. He doesn't go into enough detail for the masses to understand them.
By using WebKit, and with KDE/Qt switching to WebKit, and Apple already using WebKit, GNOME gets to use a very popular web core. This effectively divides the internet either as I.E., WebKit or Mozilla. By being part of the WebKit crowd, you get to ride the wave of Safari compatibility. I see the consolidation as good as eventually we should have the internet divided into I.E. or WebKit. I do expect some grumbling from Mozilla peeps, which have their own top-notch core. But the fewer cores the web devs need to support, the better.
Seriously. We had a good thing going until 1913, when we got the income tax and the federal reserve. We sold the country out to the bankers. Anything that keeps them in control -- including pulling back from the brink, only keeps them in control. We have to run it into the ground so that people will say never again will we let our incomes be taxed. Never again will we allow money to not be backed by metal. Never again will we let it get _this_ bad. Only then will we value what we once had: true freedom.
First, interst on bank accounts never out paces inflation by very much. The banks just can't afford it. They exist on the cash flow between loan interest (income) and paying interest (outgo). The inflation rate will be added to interest income and will be leveraged against the paying interest. If the paying interest is less than inflation, the bank is making money.
Value is an always will be speculative. The problem with having a fiat currency (with no metals backing) is the value is completely subjective. At least with metals, there is an international market value, set by the market. With fiat currency the value of the money is up to those who control it. In the U.S. it is the Federal Reserve (FR), which as I pointed out is not part of the government. All the economic woes of this country are controlled by 12 or so private banks. Each bank can have appreciable effect when acting alone, but are devastating when in working in concert. The government has NO control over the FR, though it can apply some pressure. Obviously any entity created by an act of congress can be destroyed by an act of congress. The problem is once created it is hard to argue for is dissolve.
The choice is simple: let bankers who never have your best interest in mind control the economy, or let free markets do it where you and everyone else are an active participants. When bankers control your money, it falls to 4% of what it was in 100 years. I don't see gold falling to 4%... ever.
Finally your last statement... Well it is never profitable to take out a loan unless it is applied in a way that the return out-paces the interest on it. This is rarely true for anything, but recently there have been properties who came close to breaking even. Houses purchased in the late 90s/early 2000s have tripled in some markets. This approaches the cost of the loan in totality in today's dollars. You essentially live in a house for free. Sure you pay the bank every month, the the appreciation is equal to what you pay. This of course won't be sustained, but it is interesting to note that it can happen.
Gold in 1913 was $20.67 an oz, today that number is $438.82 after correcting for inflation. Right now the market is at $894.90, meaning that gold has doubled in _real_ value over the last 94 years. The problem with the way you measured things above, is that you measured it through inflation, so you see a compounded effect of national currency fluctuations and market fluctuations. You should remember that golds is a global market and that other national currencies may not have seen the same valuations despite being in the same market.
There is also the flat-loan fee, which is based on the amount of money lent, which can be divided up and paid as the loan gets paid... oh wait, that is interest. But with modern interest, if you pay it off early you get a break on the sceduled interest... So modern interest is better.
No matter what way you cut it, the lender is going to get theirs.
Charging interest is not evil. Charging interest is something you can do once you've gotten your own money, found a credible debtor, and made allowances for your non-use of the money. It is very clean, plain, and well understood.
The only other way to create an atmosphere of lending is to base the return off of the return of the money. This happens today when an investor invests in a company. He can get his investment out, but also gets a part of the company - a reward for enabling the enterprise. Also, a stock can issue dividends, which are left over profits. However, interest is very easy to calculate. To figure out the loan fee, it is some percentage of the enterprise, and this requires a valuation that can be difficult or arbitrary, also this is subject to timing provisions.
Also, loaning money for something like a car would not attract investors because they invariably depreciate. However, families need a car to get around and to function. The interest charged is of little importance when the challenge is putting food on the table a and a roof over heads.
So you see, interest is optional, but we're so better off with it. You just have to convert yourself from debtor to creditor.;-)
In the olden days "dollar bills" wire actually silver or gold certificates. You could trade these paper certificates for the actual gold or silver. Prior to this, you'd carry it in a coin purse. But the paper money while more subject to wear, was lighter and literally more flexible and therefore comfortable. A US Dollar was based off the Spanish dollar and was settled on 371.25 grains of.999 fine silver officially by the government, with a gold standard following.
This limited inflation (the only way to deflate the currency was to send bankers to the hills to mine metals) and was real value.
Then in 1913 two things happened: we got the Federal Reserve and the 16th amendment. These two institutions, both once non-existent, rule the country today. With the creation of the FR the US borrowed money from the FR ]]at interest[[ setting up a positive feedback loop of inflation. In order to do this they also had to decouple the money from the metal backing, which was completed in 197[2?] under Richard Nixon. If you want to see real inflation, it is measured in the M3 statistic, which the Fed stopped publishing recently. But you can see it here Instead of talking inflation, the Fed tries to talk CPI - which is an aggregate from several industries. Notably absent is the mortgage market, which ask anyone, its costs have doubled in the the past 5 years. But the CPI leaves this out, and only includes rents, which have stayed disproportionately low because of all the house seekers.
Today the paper you move about is as valuable as those bits in the computer. If the word "certificate" appeared on them it would be completely a different situation. You could go to the bank and get metal, whose value wouldn't ever go down. But now, you can't expect to leave $30,000 in the bank and have the same buying power 10 years later. Over the last 90 years, the dollar has fallen to just $0.04 of its original value, as valued by the silver market.
But getting back on topic - any kind of calamity that shakes the confidence of Americans will affect the buying power of the dollar. Not a new vein of gold, not a run on banks, not a stock market crash. The only absolute value is cold hard cash. And by cold and hard I mean a metal.
--Epilogue--
I often wonder what all this means int he grand scheme. If you have money, this is an issue. If you have debt, it is actually a good thing because debts are paid off with future, depreciated money, and they take that money at face value. (Which an old bill is rarely worth.) The key here is to have one foot in both areas: pay off debts with inflating currency and have your investments in metals-backed currency.
There has been a movement to inflation-proof currency, known as the Liberty dollar. These were negotiable certificates which actually were redeemable for metal. The Federal Reserve shut it down and seized all the silver, because this, while completely legal, are the one thing a person can do to retain control and live outside the system. If it ever got popular (and I believe it would, particularly in times of inflation) the Federal Reserve would have competition that couldn't be influenced by it. The important thing to note is that it would be no different of a situation than America, pre-1913.
Finally, note that the Federal Reserve is not Federal (it is private) nor is it a Reserve (it holds nothing - the gold it once held is unaccounted for.) The only worse-named entity is Social Security.
Full disclosure: I am a Qt Developer (user) I do not work for TrollTech
The new Qt4.4 (due 1Q2008) has QtConcurrent, a set of classes that make multi-core processing trivial.
From the docs:
The QtConcurrent namespace provides high-level APIs that make it possible to write multi-threaded programs without using low-level threading primitives such as mutexes, read-write locks, wait conditions, or semaphores. Programs written with QtConcurrent automaticallly adjust the number of threads used according to the number of processor cores available. This means that applications written today will continue to scale when deployed on multi-core systems in the future.
QtConcurrent includes functional programming style APIs for parallel list prosessing, including a MapReduce and FilterReduce implementation for shared-memory (non-distributed) systems, and classes for managing asynchronous computations in GUI applications:
* QtConcurrent::map() applies a function to every item in a container, modifying the items in-place.
* QtConcurrent::mapped() is like map(), except that it returns a new container with the modifications.
* QtConcurrent::mappedReduced() is like mapped(), except that the modified results are reduced or folded into a single result.
* QtConcurrent::filter() removes all items from a container based on the result of a filter function.
* QtConcurrent::filtered() is like filter(), except that it returns a new container with the filtered results.
* QtConcurrent::filteredReduced() is like filtered(), except that the filtered results are reduced or folded into a single result.
* QtConcurrent::run() runs a function in another thread.
* QFuture represents the result of an asynchronous computation.
* QFutureIterator allows iterating through results available via QFuture.
* QFutureWatcher allows monitoring a QFuture using signals-and-slots.
* QFutureSynchronizer is a convenience class that automatically synchronizes several QFutures.
* QRunnable is an abstract class representing a runnable object.
* QThreadPool manages a pool of threads that run QRunnable objects.
This makes multi-core programming almost a no-brainer.
You need to do some pair programming. Yes, I hated it at first and I thought it was silly. But after a short time, and having generated high quality code, I realized that there is some value to XP. I still prefer to NOT do it, but by not doing it you are depriving yourself of learning from someone else's thought processes. With one person as the coder, and the other playing the devil's advocate you can learn about what you fail to consider. With enough time, you can ask yourself: "what would my partner comment on?" Being able to do that will undoubtedly help your code.
It is easy to get offended when people make comments at first, until you switch places and you realize everyone gets comments on their code. Eventually you should be proud of the code that was done together because it will be better than the other parts of the program. Once that happens, then you should see pair programming as a means to an end.
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself , nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
One, and only one actually on the current contract.
Then he has announced his scheme: $4 for a digital album (lossy compression) Additional $$ for tangible media (CD) and more $$ for artwork. You buy as much as you want, but you start with $4 for the songs - which can be processed/transacted on the cheap. He stands to make way more money at $4 an album than he does at $15 with the record company.
After his current contract is fulfilled (one more original album), he intends to do the following: Distribute music for $4/album If you want a physical something (i.e. CD, CD+case, CD+case+addt'l album art), you can pay for that separately.
Geeks are the few people who are able to anticipate the systemic effects of fuzzy interfaces. We want your code to be tight, our top and bottom-half handlers to be short, our scheduling systems to be fair. We demand the same things of our government: minimal waste, only do what is needed, and no special class citizens. I've studied a good deal of American history (out of school) and I have learned what the original function of government is (in America) it was to protect the RIGHTS of the people. The problem today is we feel the government should do so much more. This is akin to blending kernel and user space. Most of the time, we can accomplish the effect, and would desire it, but we don't see it as the role of the government. When you bring the government into it, the costs get socialized, that is, distributed on everyone in the form of taxes that we can't really control or object to. Generally, anything that does not fit the role of protecting rights comes at a financial advantage to someone, and that advantage is gleamed off the backs of the tax payer. Why should I pay for airline bail outs? Why should we bail out lenders who made stupid lending decisions? I am paying for all of that in my taxes. Why should I be deprived of my money because someone else made bad decisions. I can understand that the industry itself is needed, but now we have set precedent for the next time. Lenders will be further encouraged to make bad decisions, the airlines will give million dollar bonuses, and we'll have to pay for their bailouts again in our taxes. Same thing goes for New Orleans. All the nostalgia is worth nothing to a city on the water where much if it sits under water. Yet we let people rebuild. I am ok with that - you have the right to be dumb - as long as they don't use my tax money and instead use their private money or insurance money.
Then there is the war. We announced we'd be pumping $20B into Saudi Arabia in the form of arms, and then we announce a $30B deal with Israel. When will we realize pumping military hardware into the middle east isn't going to fix anything. It certainly hasn't fixed it since we started...
Our sense of entitlement is growing in this country, and we (as a nation) think the government should provide it. But nothing is further from the truth. Some people now say that health care is a RIGHT. It really isn't you have to remember that 'health care' is an industry that invents new ways for us to spend money. It is a pink elephant in the herd of gray elephants. No other 'right' invents new ways you can spend it. No other 'right' would interfere with others as much. Rights are internal. It is something that natural law or the government allows you do do in special cases that could not normally be done. It is instead a convenience, as you could accomplish it simply by spending more - yourself - on your health insurance (Which we still will all do, just in the form of taxes -- See the funding section of the national health care bill). And if we bring this back to what the kernel of government is supposed to do, we find it's not a right, and the government should have no involvement in it, because it is accomplishable by a user-space program.
And I think this best sums it up: Libertarians see the government as a kernel, and the rest of Americans see the government more of a service that provides the same comprehensive service our parents provided us before we moved out. I call this "transference syndrome" because the person cannot fathom being responsible for themselves so they move the parental role to the government.
Any man made institution, be it governmental or religious attempts to be an authority, and is a consolidation of power. These institutions may not seek power themselves at first, but will eventually attract those seeing power. Then these institutions are infiltrated by these individuals and the corruption begins...
It is important to always question authority and anything else that is presented as authority. It doesn't matter if it is the Constitution of the US, or a Bible. Find out what authority is really possessed and how relevant the words are. For those who think the Bible is the original word of God, you have to look at how the words got to your brain. They were laid on the page by the publisher, who probably took some liberty when they copied from another text, and that text took some liberties from the scroll it came from... It all goes back to these gospels that were written 40-400 years after Jesus. If they were really eye witness accounts, then they would agree, but the Gospels of Mark and Matthew don't agree, even though they tell the same story. On top of that, there were many other gospels that never got included in the Bible. The reason is the church (an authority;-) ) choose which gospels it would have in its bible because you had to pay people to copy these texts by hand. Eventually, a common set emerged and they not make up the Bible. Was it wight for the many churches to exclude any gospel? These are supposed to be holier books.. I guess some are holier than others...
If you have not done so, read "Mythical Man-Month". Its dated, but oh so good. Also, "Peopleware". "Joel on Software" is really good as well. Now you'll be responsible not for code, but operations.
The other paradigm shift is you have to have/develop people skills. Remember people are people and not resources. And people are very illogical in the majority of things that they do. Their situation will begin to differ greatly from yours. You'll care more about deadlines and schedules. You'll be pressured to work your subordinates harder. I fullly reject the idea of pressure in the conventional management sense - instead go with goal alignment. You'll get better results and people will be happier.
There's so much more, but I'm still figuring it out. Just don't fail to realize that politics and tact has become so much more important in your day-to-day. Computers don't care about that kind of stuff so you've probably not had to deal much with it, but it is the largest thing you have to learn.
Slashdot Mirror
As someone who is responsible for hiring people, and being an ace programmer myself, I can say that any good developer won't show it in the resume. I personally have had a history of a lot of job changes. I mean to stay, but something pisses me off and I split. While it might seem egocentric, for me to say so, I don't have to hold on to a job because I need to have it. My last COO treated the development department, and particularly me as head of it like crap. In two weeks I had a job- not just any job, but one with more pay, less hours, and better management. I'm inclined to think that other aces don't put up with crap either.
The other thing I mentioned and will elaborate on is that you can't judge people by the resume. Get everyone in, meet them. Geeks are not great at self-promotion. They are more about structure and technology than self-promotion. These are skilled bit-smiths, not word-smiths. Often they have hints of autism that make them evaluate the world differently. Look for these quirks and see if the attitude and previous experience will work for you.
Also, think about what you need in terms of ability, not prior knowledge. Everyone can learn, but HOW you learn is more important. Its the difference between "I don't know how so I cant" and "what do I need to know so I can?" "Geniuses" either invest an exhorbinate amoutn of time or pick things up quickly. I'm personally the pick-things-up-quickly kind.
Don't forget to run a virtual machine ,and in that a browser, with the disk image on the encrypted volume for easy deletion.
And, if you are super crazy, encrypt that partion too.
Thanks for the correction. I will adjust my logic accordingly. For the record, Paul never said this, I just put it together, evidently hearing it from an incorrect source.
The limiting of the consideration of candidates to those who are likely to win is wrong, and does not produce the government of desired characteristics. We are asked to vote for the one who best represents our position. That idea - that we put forward the candidates that represents us the best is the fundamental construct of the representative democracy.
If we vote for who we think will win, then it is nothing more than a popularity contest, with the media controlling who is popular. If effect you become a proxy of the media. In order to keep the idea of a representative democracy working, we need to vote for who best represents our interests.
I remember a time when the internet was claimed to be a democratizing power. It was supposed to restore the power to the people. Now we are complaining that Ron Paul supporters are too vocal. I find it ironic that the tech savvy of us are now rejecting this democratizing power.
I am a Ron Paul supporter, and I realize his ideas might seem crazy, but they are based on sound numbers. All of the money collected in the personal income tax goes to pay for interest on the national debt. There is no reason why with a reduced federal government and responsible spending that we can't eliminate the personal income tax.
When Ron Paul talks about canceling or reducing these federal entities, it is important to note that these are longer term goals, and won't be accomplished in a day. When these federal entities go away, this leaves more money to you and your local jurisdiction (states) where your money can be put to better use rather than being spent on a federal bureaucracy with minimal effectiveness. Here's an example. My sister is a public school teacher. She gets to deal with "No Child Left Behind". She hates it because it amounts to no child is failed. The act does not provide for any better education, but it forces teachers to doctor the numbers to look like success is happening. This clearly is not right. But what do you expect from a government that aims to educate ONLY 10% of the kids in D.C.? (10% is the number they calculated to have an operational city (D.C.) in 20 years.) Any local jurisdiction would find that figure appalling.
The biggest problem with Ron Paul isn't his ideas. He doesn't go into enough detail for the masses to understand them.
By using WebKit, and with KDE/Qt switching to WebKit, and Apple already using WebKit, GNOME gets to use a very popular web core. This effectively divides the internet either as I.E., WebKit or Mozilla. By being part of the WebKit crowd, you get to ride the wave of Safari compatibility. I see the consolidation as good as eventually we should have the internet divided into I.E. or WebKit. I do expect some grumbling from Mozilla peeps, which have their own top-notch core. But the fewer cores the web devs need to support, the better.
Seriously. We had a good thing going until 1913, when we got the income tax and the federal reserve. We sold the country out to the bankers. Anything that keeps them in control -- including pulling back from the brink, only keeps them in control. We have to run it into the ground so that people will say never again will we let our incomes be taxed. Never again will we allow money to not be backed by metal. Never again will we let it get _this_ bad. Only then will we value what we once had: true freedom.
We have to kill the country to save it.
My apologies to Duke Leto II.
Your logic is flawed in so many ways.
First, interst on bank accounts never out paces inflation by very much. The banks just can't afford it. They exist on the cash flow between loan interest (income) and paying interest (outgo). The inflation rate will be added to interest income and will be leveraged against the paying interest. If the paying interest is less than inflation, the bank is making money.
Value is an always will be speculative. The problem with having a fiat currency (with no metals backing) is the value is completely subjective. At least with metals, there is an international market value, set by the market. With fiat currency the value of the money is up to those who control it. In the U.S. it is the Federal Reserve (FR), which as I pointed out is not part of the government. All the economic woes of this country are controlled by 12 or so private banks. Each bank can have appreciable effect when acting alone, but are devastating when in working in concert. The government has NO control over the FR, though it can apply some pressure. Obviously any entity created by an act of congress can be destroyed by an act of congress. The problem is once created it is hard to argue for is dissolve.
The choice is simple: let bankers who never have your best interest in mind control the economy, or let free markets do it where you and everyone else are an active participants. When bankers control your money, it falls to 4% of what it was in 100 years. I don't see gold falling to 4%... ever.
Finally your last statement... Well it is never profitable to take out a loan unless it is applied in a way that the return out-paces the interest on it. This is rarely true for anything, but recently there have been properties who came close to breaking even. Houses purchased in the late 90s/early 2000s have tripled in some markets. This approaches the cost of the loan in totality in today's dollars. You essentially live in a house for free. Sure you pay the bank every month, the the appreciation is equal to what you pay. This of course won't be sustained, but it is interesting to note that it can happen.
Gold in 1913 was $20.67 an oz, today that number is $438.82 after correcting for inflation. Right now the market is at $894.90, meaning that gold has doubled in _real_ value over the last 94 years. The problem with the way you measured things above, is that you measured it through inflation, so you see a compounded effect of national currency fluctuations and market fluctuations. You should remember that golds is a global market and that other national currencies may not have seen the same valuations despite being in the same market.
There is also the flat-loan fee, which is based on the amount of money lent, which can be divided up and paid as the loan gets paid... oh wait, that is interest. But with modern interest, if you pay it off early you get a break on the sceduled interest... So modern interest is better.
No matter what way you cut it, the lender is going to get theirs.
Charging interest is not evil. Charging interest is something you can do once you've gotten your own money, found a credible debtor, and made allowances for your non-use of the money. It is very clean, plain, and well understood.
;-)
The only other way to create an atmosphere of lending is to base the return off of the return of the money. This happens today when an investor invests in a company. He can get his investment out, but also gets a part of the company - a reward for enabling the enterprise. Also, a stock can issue dividends, which are left over profits. However, interest is very easy to calculate. To figure out the loan fee, it is some percentage of the enterprise, and this requires a valuation that can be difficult or arbitrary, also this is subject to timing provisions.
Also, loaning money for something like a car would not attract investors because they invariably depreciate. However, families need a car to get around and to function. The interest charged is of little importance when the challenge is putting food on the table a and a roof over heads.
So you see, interest is optional, but we're so better off with it. You just have to convert yourself from debtor to creditor.
And you do it with fake money.
.999 fine silver officially by the government, with a gold standard following.
In the olden days "dollar bills" wire actually silver or gold certificates. You could trade these paper certificates for the actual gold or silver. Prior to this, you'd carry it in a coin purse. But the paper money while more subject to wear, was lighter and literally more flexible and therefore comfortable. A US Dollar was based off the Spanish dollar and was settled on 371.25 grains of
This limited inflation (the only way to deflate the currency was to send bankers to the hills to mine metals) and was real value.
Then in 1913 two things happened: we got the Federal Reserve and the 16th amendment. These two institutions, both once non-existent, rule the country today. With the creation of the FR the US borrowed money from the FR ]]at interest[[ setting up a positive feedback loop of inflation. In order to do this they also had to decouple the money from the metal backing, which was completed in 197[2?] under Richard Nixon. If you want to see real inflation, it is measured in the M3 statistic, which the Fed stopped publishing recently. But you can see it here Instead of talking inflation, the Fed tries to talk CPI - which is an aggregate from several industries. Notably absent is the mortgage market, which ask anyone, its costs have doubled in the the past 5 years. But the CPI leaves this out, and only includes rents, which have stayed disproportionately low because of all the house seekers.
Today the paper you move about is as valuable as those bits in the computer. If the word "certificate" appeared on them it would be completely a different situation. You could go to the bank and get metal, whose value wouldn't ever go down. But now, you can't expect to leave $30,000 in the bank and have the same buying power 10 years later. Over the last 90 years, the dollar has fallen to just $0.04 of its original value, as valued by the silver market.
But getting back on topic - any kind of calamity that shakes the confidence of Americans will affect the buying power of the dollar. Not a new vein of gold, not a run on banks, not a stock market crash. The only absolute value is cold hard cash. And by cold and hard I mean a metal.
--Epilogue--
I often wonder what all this means int he grand scheme. If you have money, this is an issue. If you have debt, it is actually a good thing because debts are paid off with future, depreciated money, and they take that money at face value. (Which an old bill is rarely worth.) The key here is to have one foot in both areas: pay off debts with inflating currency and have your investments in metals-backed currency.
There has been a movement to inflation-proof currency, known as the Liberty dollar. These were negotiable certificates which actually were redeemable for metal. The Federal Reserve shut it down and seized all the silver, because this, while completely legal, are the one thing a person can do to retain control and live outside the system. If it ever got popular (and I believe it would, particularly in times of inflation) the Federal Reserve would have competition that couldn't be influenced by it. The important thing to note is that it would be no different of a situation than America, pre-1913.
Finally, note that the Federal Reserve is not Federal (it is private) nor is it a Reserve (it holds nothing - the gold it once held is unaccounted for.) The only worse-named entity is Social Security.
Well, I guess the answer is not 42, else the simulation would have stopped by now.
That is of course, only likely if the same question was asked. So now the question becomes what question was asked?
I propose we design a simulation to come up with the answer to that question.
CS Majors:
Does this mean that alternate realities are other entries in the dynamic function's table?
Full disclosure: I am a Qt Developer (user) I do not work for TrollTech
The new Qt4.4 (due 1Q2008) has QtConcurrent, a set of classes that make multi-core processing trivial.
From the docs:
The QtConcurrent namespace provides high-level APIs that make it possible to write multi-threaded programs without using low-level threading primitives such as mutexes, read-write locks, wait conditions, or semaphores. Programs written with QtConcurrent automaticallly adjust the number of threads used according to the number of processor cores available. This means that applications written today will continue to scale when deployed on multi-core systems in the future.
QtConcurrent includes functional programming style APIs for parallel list prosessing, including a MapReduce and FilterReduce implementation for shared-memory (non-distributed) systems, and classes for managing asynchronous computations in GUI applications:
* QtConcurrent::map() applies a function to every item in a container, modifying the items in-place.
* QtConcurrent::mapped() is like map(), except that it returns a new container with the modifications.
* QtConcurrent::mappedReduced() is like mapped(), except that the modified results are reduced or folded into a single result.
* QtConcurrent::filter() removes all items from a container based on the result of a filter function.
* QtConcurrent::filtered() is like filter(), except that it returns a new container with the filtered results.
* QtConcurrent::filteredReduced() is like filtered(), except that the filtered results are reduced or folded into a single result.
* QtConcurrent::run() runs a function in another thread.
* QFuture represents the result of an asynchronous computation.
* QFutureIterator allows iterating through results available via QFuture.
* QFutureWatcher allows monitoring a QFuture using signals-and-slots.
* QFutureSynchronizer is a convenience class that automatically synchronizes several QFutures.
* QRunnable is an abstract class representing a runnable object.
* QThreadPool manages a pool of threads that run QRunnable objects.
This makes multi-core programming almost a no-brainer.
You need to do some pair programming. Yes, I hated it at first and I thought it was silly. But after a short time, and having generated high quality code, I realized that there is some value to XP. I still prefer to NOT do it, but by not doing it you are depriving yourself of learning from someone else's thought processes. With one person as the coder, and the other playing the devil's advocate you can learn about what you fail to consider. With enough time, you can ask yourself: "what would my partner comment on?" Being able to do that will undoubtedly help your code.
It is easy to get offended when people make comments at first, until you switch places and you realize everyone gets comments on their code. Eventually you should be proud of the code that was done together because it will be better than the other parts of the program. Once that happens, then you should see pair programming as a means to an end.
Note, that the above amendment is from the US Bill of Rights. This is a British Act.
I posted it for the benefit of Americans here who may endure similar assaults on their rights.
How soon we forget...
Article the seventh [Amendment V]
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself , nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
See this article: number 5
There are conversion kits... like for driver's ed. classes
1) Reflection. Reflect your signature (and heat signature) to the right seat... it may work, it may not.
2) I bet these cameras will only look for a passenger in the right seat, so drive from the right seat.
Fundamentally this system is flawed because it expects a passenger to be in the front right seat.
One, and only one actually on the current contract.
Then he has announced his scheme:
$4 for a digital album (lossy compression)
Additional $$ for tangible media (CD) and more $$ for artwork. You buy as much as you want, but you start with $4 for the songs - which can be processed/transacted on the cheap. He stands to make way more money at $4 an album than he does at $15 with the record company.
He already has announced his scheme:
After his current contract is fulfilled (one more original album), he intends to do the following:
Distribute music for $4/album
If you want a physical something (i.e. CD, CD+case, CD+case+addt'l album art), you can pay for that separately.
Geeks are the few people who are able to anticipate the systemic effects of fuzzy interfaces. We want your code to be tight, our top and bottom-half handlers to be short, our scheduling systems to be fair. We demand the same things of our government: minimal waste, only do what is needed, and no special class citizens. I've studied a good deal of American history (out of school) and I have learned what the original function of government is (in America) it was to protect the RIGHTS of the people. The problem today is we feel the government should do so much more. This is akin to blending kernel and user space. Most of the time, we can accomplish the effect, and would desire it, but we don't see it as the role of the government. When you bring the government into it, the costs get socialized, that is, distributed on everyone in the form of taxes that we can't really control or object to. Generally, anything that does not fit the role of protecting rights comes at a financial advantage to someone, and that advantage is gleamed off the backs of the tax payer. Why should I pay for airline bail outs? Why should we bail out lenders who made stupid lending decisions? I am paying for all of that in my taxes. Why should I be deprived of my money because someone else made bad decisions. I can understand that the industry itself is needed, but now we have set precedent for the next time. Lenders will be further encouraged to make bad decisions, the airlines will give million dollar bonuses, and we'll have to pay for their bailouts again in our taxes. Same thing goes for New Orleans. All the nostalgia is worth nothing to a city on the water where much if it sits under water. Yet we let people rebuild. I am ok with that - you have the right to be dumb - as long as they don't use my tax money and instead use their private money or insurance money.
Then there is the war. We announced we'd be pumping $20B into Saudi Arabia in the form of arms, and then we announce a $30B deal with Israel. When will we realize pumping military hardware into the middle east isn't going to fix anything. It certainly hasn't fixed it since we started...
Our sense of entitlement is growing in this country, and we (as a nation) think the government should provide it. But nothing is further from the truth. Some people now say that health care is a RIGHT. It really isn't you have to remember that 'health care' is an industry that invents new ways for us to spend money. It is a pink elephant in the herd of gray elephants. No other 'right' invents new ways you can spend it. No other 'right' would interfere with others as much. Rights are internal. It is something that natural law or the government allows you do do in special cases that could not normally be done. It is instead a convenience, as you could accomplish it simply by spending more - yourself - on your health insurance (Which we still will all do, just in the form of taxes -- See the funding section of the national health care bill). And if we bring this back to what the kernel of government is supposed to do, we find it's not a right, and the government should have no involvement in it, because it is accomplishable by a user-space program.
And I think this best sums it up: Libertarians see the government as a kernel, and the rest of Americans see the government more of a service that provides the same comprehensive service our parents provided us before we moved out. I call this "transference syndrome" because the person cannot fathom being responsible for themselves so they move the parental role to the government.
This ebookwill touch on it, among other things.
Even though many people don't know much about Buddhism, the image they have of the Buddha is not too far off base.
Any man made institution, be it governmental or religious attempts to be an authority, and is a consolidation of power. These institutions may not seek power themselves at first, but will eventually attract those seeing power. Then these institutions are infiltrated by these individuals and the corruption begins...
;-) ) choose which gospels it would have in its bible because you had to pay people to copy these texts by hand. Eventually, a common set emerged and they not make up the Bible. Was it wight for the many churches to exclude any gospel? These are supposed to be holier books.. I guess some are holier than others...
It is important to always question authority and anything else that is presented as authority. It doesn't matter if it is the Constitution of the US, or a Bible. Find out what authority is really possessed and how relevant the words are. For those who think the Bible is the original word of God, you have to look at how the words got to your brain. They were laid on the page by the publisher, who probably took some liberty when they copied from another text, and that text took some liberties from the scroll it came from... It all goes back to these gospels that were written 40-400 years after Jesus. If they were really eye witness accounts, then they would agree, but the Gospels of Mark and Matthew don't agree, even though they tell the same story. On top of that, there were many other gospels that never got included in the Bible. The reason is the church (an authority
If you have not done so, read "Mythical Man-Month". Its dated, but oh so good. Also, "Peopleware". "Joel on Software" is really good as well. Now you'll be responsible not for code, but operations.
The other paradigm shift is you have to have/develop people skills. Remember people are people and not resources. And people are very illogical in the majority of things that they do. Their situation will begin to differ greatly from yours. You'll care more about deadlines and schedules. You'll be pressured to work your subordinates harder. I fullly reject the idea of pressure in the conventional management sense - instead go with goal alignment. You'll get better results and people will be happier.
There's so much more, but I'm still figuring it out. Just don't fail to realize that politics and tact has become so much more important in your day-to-day. Computers don't care about that kind of stuff so you've probably not had to deal much with it, but it is the largest thing you have to learn.