Not entirely true. Algorithms are simple, yes. Addition and multiplication. The idea is also very elegant. BUT - math requires VERY STRONG background, at a level of a very good university or more likely graduate level.
I took a grad course on it and implemented it and some parts of JPEG2000 as the final project.
JPEG 2000 *compression* (after you do wavelet transformation) though is a nightmare. I read only a proposal (which wasn't even public domain at the time, but prof was on the comitee) and it was hideously complex - not math-wise but it uses tons of engineering tricks. Took me forever to translate it into a program. Kinda like Microsoft COM - I read first 50 pages in a breeze, very nice and good ideas, but when they started talking about REAL LIFE implementation, I had to drop the book. Sufficient to say is that with 10 years of C experience I had to look TWICE before concluding that it was indeed C (well, C++) code.
Well excuse me for living in a country where drug tests for work are uncommon. Okay, urine sample is not that intrusive. Btw, saying that you don't "HAVE" to take the test... is like saying that you "DON'T" have to work. That's right, you're completely free to die of hunger on the street (well, not on the street, cops won't like that, die somewhere else) because eventually no company will let you work without test. Just as "free speech" stops to be free if you have no practical means of exercising it.
Sticking needle in my flesh to get out blood for test is NOT more intrusive than writing in a field in a form????
>Or what about other irresponsible actions / >landing in jail? Do you think it really helps a >company when one of their employees gets in this >sort of situation?
Excuse me??? Who CARES of it helps them or not? Do *THEY* care if you don't get a bonus not because although you did your fair share of work, the company on the whole did not? Or let me put it another way, maybe soon they will be asking if anyone in your *FAMILY* has a history of violence, drug abuse etc. Because, it is really embarrasing if your brother kills someone and gets on the news, oh no, shareholders don't like that.
Oh, but I forgot that there is no such thing as "private life" in US. You belong to your company. You don't have free time. Oh, and please don't even *LOOK* at that girl at the front desk for more than 1.5 seconds (or whatever the law prescribed).
AMD had a lot of trouble with yields earlier, in pre-Athlon era. For the last year or so, however, they have no trouble supplying their cpu's on time and in volume. Intel, on the other hand, was having problems supplying Coppermines recently. Just look at the availability of higher speed parts from both companies this winter/spring. DELL is the only big OEM company that isn't shipping Athlon systems. They almost did it once but then backed off. Rumors are that Intel was very "persuasive" in helping them back off. The only real problem with Athlon is chipset. Incompatibility problems are more frequent with Athlon motherboards then with ones based on Intel's own chipsets, although the situation is much better now then it was 6 months ago. Still, Intel has the edge there - and in SSE vs 3DNow! support -, although their own 820/840 is nothing but disaster. But with Thunderbirds/Durons, new chipset from AMD is coming so the situation might change.
.com IS a country. "In money we trust". "You can't make 'unfounded' accusations against a company. If we say you did it, you must present evidence as to otherwise yourself. You're considered guilty until proven not to." 'Work of an employee is company's property (as is the employee btw.) etc...
I have installed linux at the end (last 4-5 gigs) of my 30G hard drive, which already had W2K and W98. It's on a logical partition. According to SUSE manual, W2K boot loader can boot linux but usually not from logical partition; it didn't work for me. My question is, if I now add LILO, will it be able to launch ALL THREE operating systems? I seem to remember it can boot from logical partitions, and I know it can boot W98, but can it boot W2K?
is so that we can DOWNLOAD the @#$@&!$ driver in less than eternity minus a day. If they were open, I could get them from a number of sites. For a company that just got $200x10^6 from MS, they sure got a narrow pipe to the net.
Maybe I missed it, but where is the document describing theory behind this technique? I learned about mp3 last year on a graduate course, I know about DCT and wavelets and acoustics so I'd really like to look what his model is like.
Ensemble studious made both AOE and AOE2. Microsoft was "only" a publisher.
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I'm trying to find answer for that question for some time now, but can't seem to find any posts explaining the legal background for deCSS or CPHack or that Canadian internet-TV broadcaster bowing to US courts. All I see here on Slashdot in past two years are a bunch of geeks asking these same questions, and I have not seen A SINGLE LAWYER posting here. I find it extremely frustrating not being able to find the answers here; while Slashdot posters are generally very logical and are asking really good questions their guesses as to answers to legal stuff are useless - you can't use logic for that.
I can't see any other explanation than that the US will "ask" the other country to "deliver" that person to them and then put them on trial in the US (they don't care how you got there). US de facto rules the world so there are very few countries that would deny them this "favor". In effect, if you don't live in the US you don't have any right the US person has (namely low taxes and high salaries) but God forbid you actually do something against them. Because their laws still apply to you; you get all the punishment but none of the benefits/protections. And if someone thinks I'm trolling (I'm not even sure what a troll is), they better give some real "legal" explanation. There are (8 billion - 300 million) people living outside of US and lots of them are very interested to find out why do the US laws apply to them (or rather only the criminal section).
Ever heard of Half-Life? Written using licensed Quake/Quake2 engine by a couple of ex-Microsoft developers? One of the most bug-free games I've seen in a long time, full of cool details that so many companies never consider adding in their products. Also one of the highest ranked games ever - with this I don't really agree, the game isn't THAT good but lots of folks do think it is. Anyhow, it is obvious that some M$ guys are made of the right stuff. What's the percentage I wouldn't dare guess but hiring one might not be the worst idea in the world.
It's easy to earn a lot of money in CS field by just utilizing logical thinking, and no more math than elementary school (preferably you should also have some or all of the negative qualities that make a successful businessman). And that' good for lots of people because math can be hard. Even if it's not hard for you, why bother when you don't need it?
Math can be hard. For example, I never grasped the techniques for solving higher order nonlinear differential equations, although I didn't have much problems with multiple integrals, rot, div, nabla, delta and similar operators (used eg. in Maxwell's equations, english symbols are probably different), Fourier transforms and such. I had mostly excellent teachers, but still, some areas are just plain hard. Not everyone is a genius, or has the necessary concentration.
Physics was always my favorite subject. As a kid I always wanted to become a theoretical physicyst. However, I studied to be an electrical engineer instead. While there is A LOT of hard core physics and maths there, it isn't the same thing as particle physics (in terms of being basic). And guess what I do now? Software design.
I have noticed the same trend that one of the question-askers mentioned: almost all the brightest minds of my generation that I knew went into computer science, although it's physics that badly needs a breakthrough these days. I saw that 10 yeras ago so it's nothing new. As I saw it then, to succeed in CS (and math) you only need a good sense of logic. To suceeed in physics, you also need a good sense of the world around you. It's not the same. Even if you're doing research in areas of physics that are not "common sense" there is still some undescribable skill that helps you search for ideas pointing to solutions, skill that isn't logic; of course, logic will be applied when evaluating that idea through formulas.
However, real life CS and theoretical CS are very, very, very different, for most people. Theoretical CS can utilize some quite tricky math. For no particular reason I'm trying to get masters degree in CS, and I recently had a course in multimedia, where we read some articles about wavelet transforms (will be used for JPEG 2000). Now, I have excellent math background but that looked REALLY intimidating. However, after reading article 3-4-5 times, and reading some additional material, I finally started seeing WHY and HOW. Nedless to say, it is fascinating. And I implemented some of it for my class project. Do you know how easy is to program it? +, -, * is all you need! This actually highlights differences between real-life jobs and academia. Programmer will get a table and a formula, and will use his brain to optimize it for time, without ever bothering with complex math behind it - math that actually makes a lot of sense if you spend some time pondering it.
It could be also the influence of the Western society. Money is everything. Except for small amount of die-hard scientist (out of already small amount of highly intelligent people), everyone else wants money, and with money comes everything else. Besides, look at US Science Fiction, or even games. Do you know what is the most popular thing to do in Half-Life? Killing scientists! They even have "Scientist Killing Clubs" web sites , mods and such. "Hey, it's fun!" Disgusting. I don't have to wonder why people don't bother being scientists any more. Or wonder why even though thanks to my class I now know how MP3 works, I'll still continue working on my lame-ass job fixing somebody else's C/C++ mistakes instead for a local company doing MP3 software.
There was a poll (or survey) done a few months back in Canada, and the result was that Vancouver is the most tolerant city in the country, not Montreal.
I know that in practice it's harder than that. However, I do believe that the situation in Canada is better, if for no other reason because a lot of people are immigrants too (frequently non-white, non-Christian). Plus, as I say, courts *do* follow the law on this (or Charter of Rights); well, unless media doesn't report on failed cases. There isn't much more government can do short of introducing laws that would establish statutory holidays according to one's faith; and that probably wouldn't work. Why? Well, what's to stop an atheist from choosing holidays of a faith that has most of them? And then, faiths that have less holidays would surely complain. Unless you introduce "padding" days off for those, of course.
From the understanding-of-cultures point of view it would be best to observe *ALL* holidays, let people know each other. You don't have to do their ceremonies of course, just understand and respect them. Fat chance, however, in a society obsessed with money that's trying really hard to stop you from enjoying days off even on those few holidays that exist now.
I personally think that making up for lost time (or having to take unpaid leave) is the reason most non-Christians complain; they don't get the option to work on Christmas instead. That, and the whole Christmas hype (sales).
I don't know about US but in Canada there's law about freedom of religious expression. I'm quite sure you can get your day off if you need it for such purpose. True, some non-christian religions customs cannot be crammed in a "day off" framework, e.g. Ramadan lasts for a month I believe although you can work during it, just have to observe fasting and eat only selected food in the evening and involves prayers in the morning and evening (forgive if I'm wrong) but I am sure something can be worked out.
There are well known court cases where people used freedom of rel. expr. to defeat things like bicycle helmet bylaws (Sikhs want to wear turbans instead). Don't blame others for not getting a day off if you don't ask for one. If you need a lawyer, your community will usually stand behind you.
Now I'm NOT sure if that would come as paid day off or unpaid day off.
However, the tone of the post was definitely overboard and quite insulting to Christians, so I'm inclined to write it off as a flamebait.
You're on the right track, intelligentsia has been used in marxism. I was highly surprised when I first saw that word in english. Anyhow, according to what we learned in school marxism classes (while they existed), intelligentsia was the broadly-defined educated class. The focus was mostly on the avantgarde (if you see it as such) subset leaning towards revolutionary ideas - in practice, probably, those who adopted Marxism, just as you said. So the avantgarde intelligentsia *did* imply a clique of like-minded souls. At this point I cannot remember if at some point people stopped using the "avantgarde" attribute assuming it's implied which would change the meaning of the word. I started writing this reply with that in mind, but now it seems to me that the dictionary is right after all.
As for equating software with art, this whole discussion is raising some questions in me that I though I already knew answers to. Software certainly is art in the same way sculpting or composing or writing is. However, I learned a lot about human nature from books and from music. From software, I learned only how to curse people who wrote it;). Either I am missing something or I need to rethink my definition of art. Software is an expression of creativity (and self-realisation of course) just as the more conventional art is, but it does not seem to give a broad insight into human psyche or nature. It's a mix of engineering and creativity, but then the question is whether just any creative act can be called "art" or are there any additional requirements? I do think there are substantial differences between traditional art and programming.
"The standard of living and life expectancy (if you think thats important; a lot of people I know do."
There was a saying "better grave than slave" among demonstrants in my ex-country rejecting government's pact with Nazis in 1941.
As for standard of living... I really wonder what good is having a house when your job duties allow you at most to sleep there - any other type of job is unlikely to provide you with funds for house anyway. True, people worked more and in much worse conditions 100 years ago but give them time... 12+ hrs trend is back. And you'll live longer to enjoy it. In clean shirt and breathing clean air, but still a slave.
That was the first thing I saw, too. Posthuman?! Now, either in that literal sense, or maybe posthumane? But that would imply that this century was "humane". Not any more than couple dozen previous ones. Or are we going to create a new species with genetic engineering? That would explain it.
Re:A good argument for moderating articles, this i
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The number of people who were showing up at city squares when witches were burnt and Inquisition-marked "criminals" executed, and who cheered during those gruesome events can hardly be called "few" or minority. Now, whether people at large were responsible for being "put into frenzy" by their leaders, or whether they share responsibility with those leaders, that is a hard question. There is a saying that people have governments that they deserve. Tolstoy's thinking on that subject in "War and Peace" would indicate that any nation's endeavours are joint ventures of leaders and their flock. As for communism being the source of all evil, I can hardly agree with that. I don't know the exact number that died in gulags but let's not forget many innocent people killed in this century's "justified" western executed or incited wars, coups and interventions either. There is no perfect system and I doubt so many people in west would find their lives comfortable today if there weren't for the threat of communism. It is true, however, that religion didn't only promote hatred. Far from that. As an atheist, I was always fascinated with the percentage of great minds that believed in God. Almost every great writer had not only believed in God, but used his faith to elevate his work into higher spheres. Before I moved to West and started spending my time playing games instead of thinking, I was questioning my own lack of faith every now and then. Most of the greatest achievements of human mind were inspired by faith. At the same time, most of the greatest horrors in history came from the same source. Make of it what you will, or read Clarke's "The Final Odyssey" for a very logical prediction of how technological advancement will shape the human civilization. But, I don't think religious leaders should be consulted about genome research. God forbid! And, regardless of how scared am I about it, research on this or anything else will continue, and there's nothing we can do. That's why nowdays I play games, not read or think too much.
Last time I used java last year. SDK's were free, and you could use them to create commercial apps if you wanted. I maybe wrong, but I don't think so. I am now trying to download this thing. After 10 attempts I managed to guess my uid/password. I want 1.2.x for linux, so I click on it. Then, I get the license agreement. In it we have the following (quote):
3.4 Licensee shall have no right to use the Licensed Software for productive or commercial use.
If I am getting it right, I am not at liberty to use jdk to e.g. develop a commercial application in java and sell it (not a derivative of jdk, just an applet or something). Does that mean that only way to build commercial apps on Java these days is to BUY an IDE? Productive use, does that cover even school work? So let's get this straight, I can't use jdk for school projects, can't use it for writing commercial stuff, so then, what *can* I use it for? To learn java? (Isn't that "productive" use as well?) Someone please correct me here. Or is this just because it's a release candidate, and restrictions will be lifted for non-beta?
I work in Canada, only in two companies so far, but from what I've heard, many companies in Vancouver have that same policy - if you work overtime, you get equal time off. That's one of the options, another is to get paid overtime.
UT is still more fun that Q3. Unless retail Q3 is drastically different than demos, UT stands out as more fun game (faster, more furious, cooler and more diverse weapons, great levels) than Q3. ID's network code is probably better but I wouldn't play any game if the ping is >100ms... There are better things to do then getting frustrated because you're getting toasted and can't do a thing about it. And I can tell you that dedicated server maintenance on my dual linux box is much nicer with Unreal Tournament. I can check up on things from work if I want/need to. There's nothing wrong with Q3, UT just looks and plays more polished. But, those bot lines is Q3 are just great: "What kind of shot was that, you stinking frag farmer?!". It blows away UT's "You suck!".
Salaries in Vancouver are $40k, 50k and 60k for entry, mid, and senior levels respectively. That is just a general rule from a guy I know who is conducting interviews. Just few weeks ago a big company offered $58k to a fresh BCIT grad (I'm not sure whether it's degree or just a diploma, but the institution is well regarded in the industry), granted, for electrical engineering work not sw but the guy has no experience other than internship. I get $51k with 6yrs of experience doing C/C++ on UNIX as an Electrical Eng. gone SW Designer (with experience in real-time telephony, Oracle, GUI, TCP/IP etc.) which I think is low - but it didn't seem low last year as I earned $44k before that. There was a jump in salaries this year, and there was a jump a year before. I think I saw your post, that you make like $74k as a contractor, without free time. I don't know how's contracting industry here, but I do know some people make a lot of money doing that. The industry itself is not nearly as developed as in Toronto or Ottawa, there are less jobs, but should be no problem to find a job for a person with experience. Beware though, there's plenty of rain, and I mean plenty. Vancouver is literally paradise on Earth during a brief summer but otherwise it's mostly rain. Our provincial government is probably among the worst in the country as well, trafic is very bad, public transit is slow and tax money goes to wrong projects (well, subject to debate). At least it's not cold. On the other hand, if you like snow sports, they are all within 1/2 hour drive and are open good portion of the year.
Slashdot Mirror
Not entirely true.
Algorithms are simple, yes. Addition and multiplication.
The idea is also very elegant.
BUT - math requires VERY STRONG background, at a level of a very good university or more likely graduate level.
I took a grad course on it and implemented it and some parts of JPEG2000 as the final project.
JPEG 2000 *compression* (after you do wavelet transformation) though is a nightmare. I read only a proposal (which wasn't even public domain at the time, but prof was on the comitee) and it was hideously complex - not math-wise but it uses tons of engineering tricks. Took me forever to translate it into a program. Kinda like Microsoft COM - I read first 50 pages in a breeze, very nice and good ideas, but when they started talking about REAL LIFE implementation, I had to drop the book. Sufficient to say is that with 10 years of C experience I had to look TWICE before concluding that it was indeed C (well, C++) code.
Well excuse me for living in a country where drug tests for work are uncommon. Okay, urine sample is not that intrusive.
Btw, saying that you don't "HAVE" to take the test... is like saying that you "DON'T" have to work. That's right, you're completely free to die of hunger on the street (well, not on the street, cops won't like that, die somewhere else) because eventually no company will let you work without test. Just as "free speech" stops to be free if you have no practical means of exercising it.
You mean, he won't have that same girfriend then?
Sticking needle in my flesh to get out blood for test is NOT more intrusive than writing in a field in a form????
>Or what about other irresponsible actions / >landing in jail? Do you think it really helps a >company when one of their employees gets in this >sort of situation?
Excuse me??? Who CARES of it helps them or not? Do *THEY* care if you don't get a bonus not because although you did your fair share of work, the company on the whole did not? Or let me put it another way, maybe soon they will be asking if anyone in your *FAMILY* has a history of violence, drug abuse etc. Because, it is really embarrasing if your brother kills someone and gets on the news, oh no, shareholders don't like that.
Oh, but I forgot that there is no such thing as "private life" in US. You belong to your company. You don't have free time. Oh, and please don't even *LOOK* at that girl at the front desk for more than 1.5 seconds (or whatever the law prescribed).
Jeez.
AMD had a lot of trouble with yields earlier, in pre-Athlon era. For the last year or so, however, they have no trouble supplying their cpu's on time and in volume. Intel, on the other hand, was having problems supplying Coppermines recently. Just look at the availability of higher speed parts from both companies this winter/spring.
DELL is the only big OEM company that isn't shipping Athlon systems. They almost did it once but then backed off. Rumors are that Intel was very "persuasive" in helping them back off.
The only real problem with Athlon is chipset. Incompatibility problems are more frequent with Athlon motherboards then with ones based on Intel's own chipsets, although the situation is much better now then it was 6 months ago. Still, Intel has the edge there - and in SSE vs 3DNow! support -, although their own 820/840 is nothing but disaster. But with Thunderbirds/Durons, new chipset from AMD is coming so the situation might change.
.com IS a country.
"In money we trust".
"You can't make 'unfounded' accusations against a company. If we say you did it, you must present evidence as to otherwise yourself. You're considered guilty until proven not to."
'Work of an employee is company's property (as is the employee btw.)
etc...
I have installed linux at the end (last 4-5 gigs) of my 30G hard drive, which already had W2K and W98. It's on a logical partition. According to SUSE manual, W2K boot loader can boot linux but usually not from logical partition; it didn't work for me. My question is, if I now add LILO, will it be able to launch ALL THREE operating systems? I seem to remember it can boot from logical partitions, and I know it can boot W98, but can it boot W2K?
is so that we can DOWNLOAD the @#$@&!$ driver in less than eternity minus a day. If they were open, I could get them from a number of sites. For a company that just got $200x10^6 from MS, they sure got a narrow pipe to the net.
Maybe I missed it, but where is the document describing theory behind this technique? I learned about mp3 last year on a graduate course, I know about DCT and wavelets and acoustics so I'd really like to look what his model is like.
Ensemble studious made both AOE and AOE2.
Microsoft was "only" a publisher.
I'm trying to find answer for that question for some time now, but can't seem to find any posts explaining the legal background for deCSS or CPHack or that Canadian internet-TV broadcaster bowing to US courts. All I see here on Slashdot in past two years are a bunch of geeks asking these same questions, and I have not seen A SINGLE LAWYER posting here. I find it extremely frustrating not being able to find the answers here; while Slashdot posters are generally very logical and are asking really good questions their guesses as to answers to legal stuff are useless - you can't use logic for that.
I can't see any other explanation than that the US will "ask" the other country to "deliver" that person to them and then put them on trial in the US (they don't care how you got there). US de facto rules the world so there are very few countries that would deny them this "favor". In effect, if you don't live in the US you don't have any right the US person has (namely low taxes and high salaries) but God forbid you actually do something against them. Because their laws still apply to you; you get all the punishment but none of the benefits/protections.
And if someone thinks I'm trolling (I'm not even sure what a troll is), they better give some real "legal" explanation. There are (8 billion - 300 million) people living outside of US and lots of them are very interested to find out why do the US laws apply to them (or rather only the criminal section).
Ever heard of Half-Life? Written using licensed Quake/Quake2 engine by a couple of ex-Microsoft developers? One of the most bug-free games I've seen in a long time, full of cool details that so many companies never consider adding in their products. Also one of the highest ranked games ever - with this I don't really agree, the game isn't THAT good but lots of folks do think it is. Anyhow, it is obvious that some M$ guys are made of the right stuff. What's the percentage I wouldn't dare guess but hiring one might not be the worst idea in the world.
It's easy to earn a lot of money in CS field by just utilizing logical thinking, and no more math than elementary school (preferably you should also have some or all of the negative qualities that make a successful businessman).
And that' good for lots of people because math can be hard. Even if it's not hard for you, why bother when you don't need it?
Math can be hard. For example, I never grasped the techniques for solving higher order nonlinear differential equations, although I didn't have much problems with multiple integrals, rot, div, nabla, delta and similar operators (used eg. in Maxwell's equations, english symbols are probably different), Fourier transforms and such. I had mostly excellent teachers, but still, some areas are just plain hard. Not everyone is a genius, or has the necessary concentration.
Physics was always my favorite subject. As a kid I always wanted to become a theoretical physicyst.
However, I studied to be an electrical engineer instead. While there is A LOT of hard core physics and maths there, it isn't the same thing as particle physics (in terms of being basic). And guess what I do now? Software design.
I have noticed the same trend that one of the question-askers mentioned: almost all the brightest minds of my generation that I knew went into computer science, although it's physics that badly needs a breakthrough these days. I saw that 10 yeras ago so it's nothing new. As I saw it then, to succeed in CS (and math) you only need a good sense of logic. To suceeed in physics, you also need a good sense of the world around you. It's not the same. Even if you're doing research in areas of physics that are not "common sense" there is still some undescribable skill that helps you search for ideas pointing to solutions, skill that isn't logic; of course, logic will be applied when evaluating that idea through formulas.
However, real life CS and theoretical CS are very, very, very different, for most people. Theoretical CS can utilize some quite tricky math. For no particular reason I'm trying to get masters degree in CS, and I recently had a course in multimedia, where we read some articles about wavelet transforms (will be used for JPEG 2000). Now, I have excellent math background but that looked REALLY intimidating. However, after reading article 3-4-5 times, and reading some additional material, I finally started seeing WHY and HOW. Nedless to say, it is fascinating. And I implemented some of it for my class project. Do you know how easy is to program it? +, -, * is all you need! This actually highlights differences between real-life jobs and academia. Programmer will get a table and a formula, and will use his brain to optimize it for time, without ever bothering with complex math behind it - math that actually makes a lot of sense if you spend some time pondering it.
It could be also the influence of the Western society. Money is everything. Except for small amount of die-hard scientist (out of already small amount of highly intelligent people), everyone else wants money, and with money comes everything else. Besides, look at US Science Fiction, or even games. Do you know what is the most popular thing to do in Half-Life? Killing scientists! They even have "Scientist Killing Clubs" web sites , mods and such. "Hey, it's fun!" Disgusting. I don't have to wonder why people don't bother being scientists any more. Or wonder why even though thanks to my class I now know how MP3 works, I'll still continue working on my lame-ass job fixing somebody else's C/C++ mistakes instead for a local company doing MP3 software.
There was a poll (or survey) done a few months back in Canada, and the result was that Vancouver is the most tolerant city in the country, not Montreal.
I do hear and read it's a nice city, though.
I know that in practice it's harder than that. However, I do believe that the situation in Canada is better, if for no other reason because a lot of people are immigrants too (frequently non-white, non-Christian). Plus, as I say, courts *do* follow the law on this (or Charter of Rights); well, unless media doesn't report on failed cases. There isn't much more government can do short of introducing laws that would establish statutory holidays according to one's faith; and that probably wouldn't work. Why? Well, what's to stop an atheist from choosing holidays of a faith that has most of them? And then, faiths that have less holidays would surely complain. Unless you introduce "padding" days off for those, of course.
From the understanding-of-cultures point of view it would be best to observe *ALL* holidays, let people know each other. You don't have to do their ceremonies of course, just understand and respect them. Fat chance, however, in a society obsessed with money that's trying really hard to stop you from enjoying days off even on those few holidays that exist now.
I personally think that making up for lost time (or having to take unpaid leave) is the reason most non-Christians complain; they don't get the option to work on Christmas instead. That, and the whole Christmas hype (sales).
I don't know about US but in Canada there's law about freedom of religious expression. I'm quite sure you can get your day off if you need it for such purpose. True, some non-christian religions customs cannot be crammed in a "day off" framework, e.g. Ramadan lasts for a month I believe although you can work during it, just have to observe fasting and eat only selected food in the evening and involves prayers in the morning and evening (forgive if I'm wrong) but I am sure something can be worked out.
There are well known court cases where people used freedom of rel. expr. to defeat things like bicycle helmet bylaws (Sikhs want to wear turbans instead). Don't blame others for not getting a day off if you don't ask for one. If you need a lawyer, your community will usually stand behind you.
Now I'm NOT sure if that would come as paid day off or unpaid day off.
However, the tone of the post was definitely overboard and quite insulting to Christians, so I'm inclined to write it off as a flamebait.
You're on the right track, intelligentsia has been used in marxism. I was highly surprised when I first saw that word in english. Anyhow, according to what we learned in school marxism classes (while they existed), intelligentsia was the broadly-defined educated class. The focus was mostly on the avantgarde (if you see it as such) subset leaning towards revolutionary ideas - in practice, probably, those who adopted Marxism, just as you said. So the avantgarde intelligentsia *did* imply a clique of like-minded souls. At this point I cannot remember if at some point people stopped using the "avantgarde" attribute assuming it's implied which would change the meaning of the word. I started writing this reply with that in mind, but now it seems to me that the dictionary is right after all.
;). Either I am missing something or I need to rethink my definition of art. Software is an expression of creativity (and self-realisation of course) just as the more conventional art is, but it does not seem to give
As for equating software with art, this whole discussion is raising some questions in me that I though I already knew answers to. Software certainly is art in the same way sculpting or composing or writing is. However, I learned a lot about human nature from books and from music. From software, I learned only how to curse people who wrote it
a broad insight into human psyche or nature. It's a mix of engineering and creativity, but then the question is whether just any creative act can be called "art" or are there any additional requirements? I do think there are substantial differences between traditional art and programming.
"The standard of living and life expectancy (if you think thats important; a lot of people I know do."
There was a saying "better grave than slave" among demonstrants in my ex-country rejecting government's pact with Nazis in 1941.
As for standard of living... I really wonder what good is having a house when your job duties allow you at most to sleep there - any other type of job is unlikely to provide you with funds for house anyway. True, people worked more and in much worse conditions 100 years ago but give them time... 12+ hrs trend is back. And you'll live longer to enjoy it. In clean shirt and breathing clean air, but still a slave.
That was the first thing I saw, too. Posthuman?!
Now, either in that literal sense, or maybe posthumane? But that would imply that this century was "humane". Not any more than couple dozen previous ones.
Or are we going to create a new species with genetic engineering? That would explain it.
The number of people who were showing up at city squares when witches were burnt and Inquisition-marked "criminals" executed, and who cheered during those gruesome events can hardly be called "few" or minority.
Now, whether people at large were responsible for being "put into frenzy" by their leaders, or whether they share responsibility with those leaders, that is a hard question. There is a saying that people have governments that they deserve. Tolstoy's thinking on that subject in "War and Peace" would indicate that any nation's endeavours are joint ventures of leaders and their flock.
As for communism being the source of all evil, I can hardly agree with that. I don't know the exact number that died in gulags but let's not forget many innocent people killed in this century's "justified" western executed or incited wars, coups and interventions either. There is no perfect system and I doubt so many people in west would find their lives comfortable today if there weren't for the threat of communism.
It is true, however, that religion didn't only promote hatred. Far from that. As an atheist, I was always fascinated with the percentage of great minds that believed in God. Almost every great writer had not only believed in God, but used his faith to elevate his work into higher spheres. Before I moved to West and started spending my time playing games instead of thinking, I was questioning my own lack of faith every now and then.
Most of the greatest achievements of human mind were inspired by faith. At the same time, most of the greatest horrors in history came from the same source. Make of it what you will, or read Clarke's "The Final Odyssey" for a very logical prediction of how technological advancement will shape the human civilization. But, I don't think religious leaders should be consulted about genome research. God forbid!
And, regardless of how scared am I about it, research on this or anything else will continue, and there's nothing we can do. That's why nowdays I play games, not read or think too much.
Last time I used java last year. SDK's were free, and you could use them to create commercial apps if you wanted. I maybe wrong, but I don't think so.
I am now trying to download this thing. After 10 attempts I managed to guess my uid/password. I want 1.2.x for linux, so I click on it. Then, I get the license agreement. In it we have the following (quote):
3.4 Licensee shall have no right to use the Licensed Software for productive or commercial use.
If I am getting it right, I am not at liberty to use jdk to e.g. develop a commercial application in java and sell it (not a derivative of jdk, just an applet or something).
Does that mean that only way to build commercial apps on Java these days is to BUY an IDE?
Productive use, does that cover even school work?
So let's get this straight, I can't use jdk for school projects, can't use it for writing commercial stuff, so then, what *can* I use it for? To learn java? (Isn't that "productive" use as well?)
Someone please correct me here.
Or is this just because it's a release candidate, and restrictions will be lifted for non-beta?
I work in Canada, only in two companies so far, but from what I've heard, many companies in Vancouver have that same policy - if you work overtime, you get equal time off. That's one of the options, another is to get paid overtime.
UT is still more fun that Q3. Unless retail Q3 is drastically different than demos, UT stands out as more fun game (faster, more furious, cooler and more diverse weapons, great levels) than Q3. ID's network code is probably better but I wouldn't play any game if the ping is >100ms... There are better things to do then getting frustrated because you're getting toasted and can't do a thing about it.
And I can tell you that dedicated server maintenance on my dual linux box is much nicer with Unreal Tournament. I can check up on things from work if I want/need to.
There's nothing wrong with Q3, UT just looks and plays more polished. But, those bot lines is Q3 are just great: "What kind of shot was that, you stinking frag farmer?!". It blows away UT's "You suck!".
Salaries in Vancouver are $40k, 50k and 60k for entry, mid, and senior levels respectively. That is just a general rule from a guy I know who is conducting interviews. Just few weeks ago a big company offered $58k to a fresh BCIT grad (I'm not sure whether it's degree or just a diploma, but the institution is well regarded in the industry), granted, for electrical engineering work not sw but the guy has no experience other than internship. I get $51k with 6yrs of experience doing C/C++ on UNIX as an Electrical Eng. gone SW Designer (with experience in real-time telephony, Oracle, GUI, TCP/IP etc.) which I think is low - but it didn't seem low last year as I earned $44k before that. There was a jump in salaries this year, and there was a jump a year before.
I think I saw your post, that you make like $74k as a contractor, without free time. I don't know how's contracting industry here, but I do know some people make a lot of money doing that.
The industry itself is not nearly as developed as in Toronto or Ottawa, there are less jobs, but should be no problem to find a job for a person with experience.
Beware though, there's plenty of rain, and I mean plenty. Vancouver is literally paradise on Earth during a brief summer but otherwise it's mostly rain. Our provincial government is probably among the worst in the country as well, trafic is very bad, public transit is slow and tax money goes to wrong projects (well, subject to debate). At least it's not cold. On the other hand, if you like snow sports, they are all within 1/2 hour drive and are open good portion of the year.
That is SO true... Last time I read something that good was from classic literature.