My god, this article is so 1811. Are all the automated milling machines going to replace human workers now? Shall we throw our shoes into them and break them?
How do I get to be a futurist? Is there some kind of application process? Because if it has good benefits, I'd like to sit around all day long and make predictions about the future, also without understanding the technologies that will constitute it.
Those of us who actually do AI stuff for a living, know far better than this.
Okay, so what are you going to do about that paranoia? Use OpenBSD? That's too bad, because the NSA has already inserted cryptospy code into the distribution without Theo's knowledge. Oh, so you'll just compile it yourself from the sources, and read and review them all yourself? Too bad because your compiler has code in it that secretly inserts itself when it detects compilation of the OpenBSD kernel. Oh, but you're going to review all the compiler source code yourself and do a Canadian cross to build a clean compiler which you will then use to build a clean OpenBSD kernel from source? Too bad, because Bernstein has been paid gold in a secret numbered bank account in Thailand to insert a bug that will only manifest when it checks the installation of a new kernel on your machine.
Eventually, you have to put your tinfoil hat away and figure out how to get some work done on that there computer. Paranoia has a useful limit.
I started using OpenBSD in 1998. It was a viable, timely competitor to Linux at the time, especially for building firewalls as such.
OpenBSD is a great example of what happens when you make life too difficult for end users and administrators in the name of Security. OpenBSD has never embraced the most recent release of anything -- if it's new, by definition it's insecure and it can't be trusted. Ergo, if you have to demonstrate the latest technology in whatever you're doing, you start with a Linux distribution.
From the article: "We wanted a tool that would fit on installation media, which meant minimizing code size and external dependencies." That's the breakage mode, in a nutshell. NO ONE in the world has been clamoring for an OpenBSD signing tool that runs on a floppy. But the designers are imagining the user requirements based on their own biases. This way lies the death of any commercial or open source software product.
It's extremely common for bright young inexperienced programmers to take this attitude toward existing projects or code, so much so that I'm surprised that this is the only situation in which you've encountered this behavior.
A manager's job is to take this arrogant kid and groom him so that he can be used productively in a team environment. If he's already talking about how much your code sucks then he's got a bit to learn about presenting contrary opinions in a respectful way. All the same, you need to keep your ego in check so that his good ideas (if he has any) can be applied productively to solving the company's problems.
You start with him the way you do all new guys: assign him a small piece of the code and limit his job to refactoring or rewriting a portion of it. Make sure everything's marked in source control before you let him loose. And have him give a general presentation at the end (at the source code as well as the project level) as to why his changes have improved things. Reward him for playing nice with others and chastise him for being arrogant or a lone gun. And give him bigger jobs as he proves he can handle them.
My basic rule is to listen for as long as possible before overruling a junior programmer's opinion. Make sure that he has his chance to give his say. But after hearing it, take the counsel of your own 10 years over his if your opinions diverge. Experience does matter and there's really any substitute for it.
Instead of following the pattern on here of recommending this programming language or that, I'll suggest a different course.
First, choose a very specific field of work. Video games, insurance, pinnipeds, ASIC design... something.
Second, look at the development technologies and tools that exist in that field and are used frequently and common. Games use C++ and assembly, ASICs use Verilog, pinniped databases are written in.NET.
Third, focus on learning the technologies that are used in your particular field of interest.
This will permit you to have a marketable skill in precisely the area of programming you want to accomplish.
I am aware that many programmers consider themselves "generalists" -- and heck, I do too. But the field of programming is now sufficiently wide that ALL programmers must, to an extent, specialize. Of course you can always apply your generalist knowledge to solving one-off problems. Instead, I suggest you focus on a particular area of expertise related to your dream job.
Fox News's darling for collecting poll data about political events is Rasmussen Reports. In Rasmussen Reports's methodology, they make a series of random, pre-recorded calls to landline telephones. One sensible theory says that people who still have landline phones, and who take the time to do an automated random phone poll, tend to be older and retired. These people typically vote conservatively, thus causing Rasmussen's findings to be skewed conservatively.
Likewise, any sort of "polling" of Twitter results will probably not be statistically interesting, because not everyone uses Twitter. I find it utterly unsurprising that Twitter people discuss Obama far more frequently than Romney. However I don't think that these numbers can be extrapolated to the general election in any way.
You didn't mention other business apps like accounting and other admin functions, but I put in a vote for early virtualization of all your core apps, using VMware or Redhat or whatever your favorite virtualization platform is. When we founded our little company, we installed Quickbooks and SugarCRM and Perforce and a couple other business process apps on virtual machines, and that turned out to be a big win later on.
The thing I don't get about all these consumer-grade audio products hawking 96k sound are why engineers, who should know better, are attracted to them. It's as though we came out with a new TV that displays past the wavelengths of visible colors into the ultraviolet spectrum. Sold, presumably, with the tag line, "Our new plasma television reproduces all the colors that you CAN'T see... but BEES CAN!" Likewise, dogs in your household may appreciate an upgrade to 96k sound, but if humans cannot physiologically perceive sounds above about 22-23 kHz... then why... why...
This is incorrect. Interpolating an audio signal using using lerp or Bezier or whatever will introduce auditory artifacts in the upper frequencies of the sound. The only mathematically correct way to upsample a signal is to perform the transformation into frequency space and then resynthesize the signal at the desired frequency with a lowpass filter.
Parent seemed looked like a troll, sounded like a troll and smelled like a troll, but there's actually some careful causal reasoning in there. Mod parent up please.
Harvard's current endowment is approximately $32B. This is approximately the amount of equity in Kraft Foods or in Coca-Cola or in Oracle.
Harvard is an enormously profitable corporation with a small side business involving handing out diplomas. For Harvard's libraries (underfunded though the department may be) to complain about the cost of anything, given the college's $38,415 undergraduate tuition this year, constitutes the pinnacle of hypocrisy.
As I read the correspondence I tried to put myself in the position of Dr. Campaigne, and tried to figure out whether what Nash was saying made any sense. I confess that Nash's presentational style made me feel as though I was reading what Nash himself referred to as "a crank or circle-squarer". The core of Nash's invention is a squiggly, messy node graph of colored lines demonstrating a manually obfuscated binary function. But the importance of his communication is the importance of P vs. NP functions, which Nash communicated very very obliquely. Nash's Unabomber handwritten font didn't help him either.
I feel bad that I would have made the same mistake that Campaigne did. But I think nearly anyone would have.
Any engineering manager with a bit of history can tell you that the really, really, really good engineers for one highly narrow topical area -- say, for example, optimizing FFT transforms on an obscure ARM architecture variant -- tend to not be entirely normal human beings. In truth, many of what we consider to be brilliant asocial geeks are probably high-functioning autistic spectrum people.
"And by denying the public access to a work of art that they helped create is not within his rights, even though he owns the rights."
I'd like to mark the quoted article, this Slashdot post, and all follow-up messages as "Troll," please. The article was written specifically to be controversial and generate discussion; the article was reposted on Slashdot for the same reason; and there will be plenty of post activity on here for that reason as well.
But the honest to Jebus bottom line is that nobody gives a crap which version has Darth saying NOOOO and which one does not.
Let's get Slashdot back to reviewing Linux distros and making spurious legal arguments. Thanks very much.
The following comment is provided in the Bugzilla source code to developers who may be confused by this behaviour: Zarro Boogs Found This is just a goofy way of saying that there were no bugs found matching your query. When asked to explain this message, Terry Weissman (an early Bugzilla developer) had the following to say: I've been asked to explain this... way back when, when Netscape released version 4.0 of its browser, we had a release party. Naturally, there had been a big push to try and fix every known bug before the release. Naturally, that hadn't actually happened. (This is not unique to Netscape or to 4.0; the same thing has happened with every software project I've ever seen.) Anyway, at the release party, T-shirts were handed out that said something like "Netscape 4.0: Zarro Boogs". Just like the software, the T-shirt had no known bugs. Uh-huh. So, when you query for a list of bugs, and it gets no results, you can think of this as a friendly reminder. Of *course* there are bugs matching your query, they just aren't in the bugsystem yet... --Terry Weissman
The information in this post is common knowledge for everyone working in production in the game industry. It's considered standard nowadays for most AAA titles to schedule and design for ten hours of non-repetitive gameplay. I suspect this is only a surprise to people who don't work in the industry.
People do not consider replayability when purchasing a game. People purchase games based on advertising, game reviews, word of mouth, and tie-ins to existing franchises. Game reviews typically only consider the first hour or so of gameplay.
There's a lot of people on this thread demanding 40+ hours of gameplay per game. The truth is that VERY FEW gamers actually play their games in this style. This is one of those cases where, as a game developer, you have to ignore what people say, and watch what they actually do.
esr's original analogy of the cathedral and the bazaar is not applicable to types of social networks. He was using the concept exclusively to describe software development models. "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." Unless you are capable of going into Facebook and rearranging the data tables and making your own facebook, you can't apply the concept directly here. Ergo it's a stretch to call any social network anything but a cathedral.
...as to how Google suddenly became indebted to provide these services.
The implication with these posts is that we're already dependent on Google for free calendar, email and a bunch of other stuff. And if Google suddenly cuts off those services for one reason or another, Google is bad.
I can't see how Google+ -- which is not even technically out of beta -- is a service that Google is morally required to provide to anyone. Same thing for Google's other search services.
If you're using Google's services, you're in Google's house and you should expect to play entirely by their rules. Google is far less evil than a lot of companies are.
Maybe someone can explain the logical leap between "this corporate service is/was partially free" and "I am entitled to use this service on my own terms".
Slashdot Mirror
My god, this article is so 1811. Are all the automated milling machines going to replace human workers now? Shall we throw our shoes into them and break them?
How do I get to be a futurist? Is there some kind of application process? Because if it has good benefits, I'd like to sit around all day long and make predictions about the future, also without understanding the technologies that will constitute it.
Those of us who actually do AI stuff for a living, know far better than this.
Bingo! And the fact that you couldn't perceive that is entirely hilarious.
When you can't run the software that your job requires on them.
Okay, so what are you going to do about that paranoia? Use OpenBSD? That's too bad, because the NSA has already inserted cryptospy code into the distribution without Theo's knowledge. Oh, so you'll just compile it yourself from the sources, and read and review them all yourself? Too bad because your compiler has code in it that secretly inserts itself when it detects compilation of the OpenBSD kernel. Oh, but you're going to review all the compiler source code yourself and do a Canadian cross to build a clean compiler which you will then use to build a clean OpenBSD kernel from source? Too bad, because Bernstein has been paid gold in a secret numbered bank account in Thailand to insert a bug that will only manifest when it checks the installation of a new kernel on your machine.
Eventually, you have to put your tinfoil hat away and figure out how to get some work done on that there computer. Paranoia has a useful limit.
Yes, and people are developing games for the Sega Dreamcast as well. Existence is not the same as professional viability.
I started using OpenBSD in 1998. It was a viable, timely competitor to Linux at the time, especially for building firewalls as such.
OpenBSD is a great example of what happens when you make life too difficult for end users and administrators in the name of Security. OpenBSD has never embraced the most recent release of anything -- if it's new, by definition it's insecure and it can't be trusted. Ergo, if you have to demonstrate the latest technology in whatever you're doing, you start with a Linux distribution.
From the article: "We wanted a tool that would fit on installation media, which meant minimizing code size and external dependencies." That's the breakage mode, in a nutshell. NO ONE in the world has been clamoring for an OpenBSD signing tool that runs on a floppy. But the designers are imagining the user requirements based on their own biases. This way lies the death of any commercial or open source software product.
It's extremely common for bright young inexperienced programmers to take this attitude toward existing projects or code, so much so that I'm surprised that this is the only situation in which you've encountered this behavior.
A manager's job is to take this arrogant kid and groom him so that he can be used productively in a team environment. If he's already talking about how much your code sucks then he's got a bit to learn about presenting contrary opinions in a respectful way. All the same, you need to keep your ego in check so that his good ideas (if he has any) can be applied productively to solving the company's problems.
You start with him the way you do all new guys: assign him a small piece of the code and limit his job to refactoring or rewriting a portion of it. Make sure everything's marked in source control before you let him loose. And have him give a general presentation at the end (at the source code as well as the project level) as to why his changes have improved things. Reward him for playing nice with others and chastise him for being arrogant or a lone gun. And give him bigger jobs as he proves he can handle them.
My basic rule is to listen for as long as possible before overruling a junior programmer's opinion. Make sure that he has his chance to give his say. But after hearing it, take the counsel of your own 10 years over his if your opinions diverge. Experience does matter and there's really any substitute for it.
Instead of following the pattern on here of recommending this programming language or that, I'll suggest a different course.
First, choose a very specific field of work. Video games, insurance, pinnipeds, ASIC design... something.
Second, look at the development technologies and tools that exist in that field and are used frequently and common. Games use C++ and assembly, ASICs use Verilog, pinniped databases are written in .NET.
Third, focus on learning the technologies that are used in your particular field of interest.
This will permit you to have a marketable skill in precisely the area of programming you want to accomplish.
I am aware that many programmers consider themselves "generalists" -- and heck, I do too. But the field of programming is now sufficiently wide that ALL programmers must, to an extent, specialize. Of course you can always apply your generalist knowledge to solving one-off problems. Instead, I suggest you focus on a particular area of expertise related to your dream job.
Best of luck.
Fox News's darling for collecting poll data about political events is Rasmussen Reports. In Rasmussen Reports's methodology, they make a series of random, pre-recorded calls to landline telephones. One sensible theory says that people who still have landline phones, and who take the time to do an automated random phone poll, tend to be older and retired. These people typically vote conservatively, thus causing Rasmussen's findings to be skewed conservatively.
Likewise, any sort of "polling" of Twitter results will probably not be statistically interesting, because not everyone uses Twitter. I find it utterly unsurprising that Twitter people discuss Obama far more frequently than Romney. However I don't think that these numbers can be extrapolated to the general election in any way.
Another vote here for Google Apps and Docs.
You didn't mention other business apps like accounting and other admin functions, but I put in a vote for early virtualization of all your core apps, using VMware or Redhat or whatever your favorite virtualization platform is. When we founded our little company, we installed Quickbooks and SugarCRM and Perforce and a couple other business process apps on virtual machines, and that turned out to be a big win later on.
The thing I don't get about all these consumer-grade audio products hawking 96k sound are why engineers, who should know better, are attracted to them. It's as though we came out with a new TV that displays past the wavelengths of visible colors into the ultraviolet spectrum. Sold, presumably, with the tag line, "Our new plasma television reproduces all the colors that you CAN'T see... but BEES CAN!" Likewise, dogs in your household may appreciate an upgrade to 96k sound, but if humans cannot physiologically perceive sounds above about 22-23 kHz... then why... why...
This is incorrect. Interpolating an audio signal using using lerp or Bezier or whatever will introduce auditory artifacts in the upper frequencies of the sound. The only mathematically correct way to upsample a signal is to perform the transformation into frequency space and then resynthesize the signal at the desired frequency with a lowpass filter.
See https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/resample/ for more information on why curve fitting is incorrect.
Parent seemed looked like a troll, sounded like a troll and smelled like a troll, but there's actually some careful causal reasoning in there. Mod parent up please.
Harvard's current endowment is approximately $32B. This is approximately the amount of equity in Kraft Foods or in Coca-Cola or in Oracle.
Harvard is an enormously profitable corporation with a small side business involving handing out diplomas. For Harvard's libraries (underfunded though the department may be) to complain about the cost of anything, given the college's $38,415 undergraduate tuition this year, constitutes the pinnacle of hypocrisy.
Class of '91, gentlemen.
As I read the correspondence I tried to put myself in the position of Dr. Campaigne, and tried to figure out whether what Nash was saying made any sense. I confess that Nash's presentational style made me feel as though I was reading what Nash himself referred to as "a crank or circle-squarer". The core of Nash's invention is a squiggly, messy node graph of colored lines demonstrating a manually obfuscated binary function. But the importance of his communication is the importance of P vs. NP functions, which Nash communicated very very obliquely. Nash's Unabomber handwritten font didn't help him either.
I feel bad that I would have made the same mistake that Campaigne did. But I think nearly anyone would have.
Mod parent up please.
Yet another failure of Slashdotters to research a topic before posting.
Russell L. Anderson made robots play ping pong at AT&T Bell Labs in 1988:
http://www.ieeecss.org/CSM/library/1989/feb1989/w15-21.pdf
Any engineering manager with a bit of history can tell you that the really, really, really good engineers for one highly narrow topical area -- say, for example, optimizing FFT transforms on an obscure ARM architecture variant -- tend to not be entirely normal human beings. In truth, many of what we consider to be brilliant asocial geeks are probably high-functioning autistic spectrum people.
Havok is a physics engine commonly used in video games. It was originally developed by Steven Collins while at Trinity College in Dublin.
Mod parent up +1 for truth.
"And by denying the public access to a work of art that they helped create is not within his rights, even though he owns the rights."
I'd like to mark the quoted article, this Slashdot post, and all follow-up messages as "Troll," please. The article was written specifically to be controversial and generate discussion; the article was reposted on Slashdot for the same reason; and there will be plenty of post activity on here for that reason as well.
But the honest to Jebus bottom line is that nobody gives a crap which version has Darth saying NOOOO and which one does not.
Let's get Slashdot back to reviewing Linux distros and making spurious legal arguments. Thanks very much.
Oh how the times have changed. For info about QA for Netscape 4.0, see this short refresher course:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zarro_boogs
--- cut here --
The following comment is provided in the Bugzilla source code to developers who may be confused by this behaviour: ... way back when, when Netscape released version 4.0 of its browser, we had a release party. Naturally, there had been a big push to try and fix every known bug before the release. Naturally, that hadn't actually happened. (This is not unique to Netscape or to 4.0; the same thing has happened with every software project I've ever seen.) Anyway, at the release party, T-shirts were handed out that said something like "Netscape 4.0: Zarro Boogs". Just like the software, the T-shirt had no known bugs. Uh-huh. So, when you query for a list of bugs, and it gets no results, you can think of this as a friendly reminder. Of *course* there are bugs matching your query, they just aren't in the bugsystem yet...
Zarro Boogs Found
This is just a goofy way of saying that there were no bugs found matching your query. When asked to explain this message, Terry Weissman (an early Bugzilla developer) had the following to say:
I've been asked to explain this
--Terry Weissman
The information in this post is common knowledge for everyone working in production in the game industry. It's considered standard nowadays for most AAA titles to schedule and design for ten hours of non-repetitive gameplay. I suspect this is only a surprise to people who don't work in the industry.
People do not consider replayability when purchasing a game. People purchase games based on advertising, game reviews, word of mouth, and tie-ins to existing franchises. Game reviews typically only consider the first hour or so of gameplay.
There's a lot of people on this thread demanding 40+ hours of gameplay per game. The truth is that VERY FEW gamers actually play their games in this style. This is one of those cases where, as a game developer, you have to ignore what people say, and watch what they actually do.
esr's original analogy of the cathedral and the bazaar is not applicable to types of social networks. He was using the concept exclusively to describe software development models. "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." Unless you are capable of going into Facebook and rearranging the data tables and making your own facebook, you can't apply the concept directly here. Ergo it's a stretch to call any social network anything but a cathedral.
...as to how Google suddenly became indebted to provide these services.
The implication with these posts is that we're already dependent on Google for free calendar, email and a bunch of other stuff. And if Google suddenly cuts off those services for one reason or another, Google is bad.
I can't see how Google+ -- which is not even technically out of beta -- is a service that Google is morally required to provide to anyone. Same thing for Google's other search services.
If you're using Google's services, you're in Google's house and you should expect to play entirely by their rules. Google is far less evil than a lot of companies are.
Maybe someone can explain the logical leap between "this corporate service is/was partially free" and "I am entitled to use this service on my own terms".