Smart american kids with $$$ go to MIT. Smart canadian kids with $$$ go to UofW. Smart kids from anywhere without money drop out of highschool and troll slashdot.
Theres a very big difference between booksmart and applied smart.
While im sure all of these participents are very good programmers and incredible mathmeticians, I'm fairly sure a lot of them wouldn't be able to tell you how to take two files on a Unix OS, and list only lines that appear in both in a single commandline.
Note, most of the problems are basically math or physics problems. Sure, if I knew the math, no problem writing the code. But all those problems are simply advanced math. Ask one of these guys wether they prefer poll() to select() on a pre-2.4 linux kernel, and see how they respond.
I was told (in Waterloo, by the way) when I was 17 that I had more applied knowledge of the internet than most UofW university grads that came in to interview for that position. At that point, I was both incredibly disturbed, and incredibly happy. Now I'm just disturbed, considering how much more I have to learn, three years later.
Not commenting on the speach, the issue of "arists" complaining about MP3's is accually quite amusing.
Most artists really dont care about MP3s. The fact is, it costs them virtually nothing. It is only the record companies that care about mp3s. As I understand it, the artist usually gets relatively minimal money from a record - generally a small percentage such as %5 - simply because the recording company says
"We put up the money for your $30,000 recording studio stint. We put up the money for your $10,000 music video. We put up the money for the distribution of your album. You're famous now, go make your money some other way."
Most "artists" make their money from touring, endorsements, and generally working their asses off. The ones that accually care about mp3s are being anal, because mp3s make arists more popular, and sells tickets to their show.
Radius of the Earth is around 6360 kilometers give or take. Projected target area of the Earth is therefore about 0.12 billion square kilometers. So the probability this class of object would collide with teh earth is roughly.12/667 or around 1/5600.
After reading the entire article, I have a few comments directed at Mr Joel Spolsky, since I am sure he will be reading.
You have what I would call a superiority complex. I would say that is completely normal for a technically inclined or computer competant person. One thing you dont have, which is quite evident in your last statement, is a simple respect for your peers.
Now, I may not directly consider you a peer, for the simple fact that we differ on a number of simple comparitive issues. You are stuck in the past. Since you will most definitely ask for some type of proof of this, allow me to explain.
In your responce to the question regarding the recode of a fortran program, you responded:
First of all, yes, you should hold onto a program in FORTRAN "just because it works." Don't even talk to me about spending money replacing something that works.
Do you hold on to an old 286, even though it could easily crash purely because of its old-hardware, just because it works? Do you hold on to a 1982 Toyota Corolla, just because it works? No. For the safety of you data, and for the safty of your family, you go and get new stuff.
Of course, your responce will be well, programs dont degrade with time. I say they do. Allow me to elaborate once again.
I've worked on a number of programming projects. One of which works perfectly, but we are still planning a complete rewrite of. For a matter of context, I'll involve the name. The Bahamut IRCd happens to be presently supporting over 130,000 simultanious connections between about 30 servers. It will probably be quite good until well over 200,000 connections. But we're rewriting it anyway. Because we've learned one thing the hard way. Dont wait for problems to come to you. Just because your software works fine with 10,000 users, doesnt mean its going to scale to 11,000 users.
Programming in *any* arena is not cut and dry. Programs are *never* "perfect", as you as a software developer should know. If you've worked on any project of any reasonable size, then you realize that there is a point where picking through old code to improve software isnt worth your time, and you can simply rewrite the whole damn thing to do what you want and accually have spent less time doing it.
In addition to that, we produce carbon dioxide thru processes like, say, breathing. Carbon dioxide is what plants breathe with. More C02 means more plants! Oh no!!!
Oh my god! of course! thats it! who cares if we burn down all the rainforests, cut down all the big redwood forests in BC. All we have to do is start breathing more, and hey, all the plants will come back!
have been completely and absolutely disappointing. You would accually expect slashdot users to have some sembelence of clue, considering we're generally talking about issues far more complex than simple common sense.
How many of you have been to china? Seen any pictures of the Yangzte River? Ever been up close enough to it to see the wonderful color it is? How about the fact that China planned to divert another river using nuclear weapons.
Now, lets get away from China, regardless of the fact that they are 1/6th the worlds population. The greenhouse effect is not a myth. I cannot believe the level of ignorance being shown on here. Hell, considering we're supposed to be at least partially enlightened a generation.
I feel incredibly confident about the world my children will grow up in. Lets hope we get some interplanetary space travel developed, or at least make contact, otherwise we'll right screwed.
Toss out ICANN, give all the responcibility to another exisiting organization, and hope for the best. Why does this not impress me.
The fact of the matter is that the internet as a whole cannot be properly managed, unless the world as a whole starts co-operating. Right now, you've got each country carrying out its own laws on the internet, and meanwhile conflicting laws between countries are allowing virtually no semblence of consistancy or even proper causality. Trying to organize something as "big" as the internet without a consistant causality is always going to be impossible.
What needs to happen, regardless of ICANN or ARIN or any other "internet regulation group", is some type of international agreement on what the internet entails. It was easy when the internet was just starting to pop up on the international platform, but now this global network needs global management - not national management.
On the specifics on what was said about ICANN, I agree, partly. ICANN in its present form shouldnt live on. Theres a complete lack of direction, and it appears to be bumbling about like it cant decide what to do. I doubt we'll ever quite get over the mess its made.
I ordered probably around 8 rackmountable dell machines with redhat preinstalled in 2001. If M$ was pressuring them to avoid using linux, then they obviously didnt do a good job.
Hate to make a plug for a former employer.. but Planet-Intra has a good product that wont cost you much and will do the job well. You can buy the product or you can rent the space on their servers to keep your stuff.
If we for one second try and return to pre-TOS times in the development of star trek, we loose the value of it. Star Trek has brought some of the greatest ideas to science fiction, some of which during their conception were only figments of imagination. These ideas and culture have provided different societal perspective on science. The idea of transporters back in the 60s was revolutionary and not because it was a 'neat' idea. Now, with the advent of quantum physics, some of the ideas that Gene Roddenberry originally thought up are being proven scientifically possible.
We've already looked forward to a certain level with star trek, why should we now place restrictions on our imagination by placing the series previous to its predecessor. The Paramount Execs should be pushing the series forward, not backwards. The series should be based 100 years AFTER voyager and the TNG era, at a bare minimum. The ingenuity is lost otherwise.
not nessecarily commenting on the multi-threading issue, kernels 2.4.x have substantially better socket handling... there were articles floating around on slashdot and linux.com a while back about a DALnet server breaking 38,000 simulatious active open sockets at one time. Linux has done wonders with their 2.4.x tcp/ip stack.. until recently, nobody even considered linux's stack worthy of an attempt at an IRC server of any reasonable size.
If the authors of these RFCs would have at least consulted with any of the [other?] major networks before releasing them, perhaps they would have been implemented. Since they did not, the RFCs you listed are virtually defunct.
I feel like pointing out a few small issues in this. One, EFnet hasnt been the biggest network around for quite a while. DALnet overtook EFnet over 18 months ago, and regularly breaks 80,000 users online and averages substantially more users at any given time.
Additionally, this "UIN" solution was proposed by EFnet coders, and im not exactly too fond of it.
Lets say i get bored one day and mix together a wide variety of different songs into a rediculously long track that happens to have a few bars in it that match one of these banned sections? How is this fair to aspiring producers, DJs, and the bored people of society? If this is the case, it seems it is virging on infringing on my rights.
At this point, quantum technology is obviously in its early years, and applying quantum technology to computers would imho only be the start to many more advanced technologies.
I have read that the applications of quantum tech are much more widespread than most people relize. For example, it has been proven that one can measure the width of a human hair using a laser with quantum enhansments without the laser touching the hair whatsoever. They have also successfully 'teleported' a single atom instantly from one place to another (about 100 feet from the origin).
There are many more possibilities in the future of quantum technologies, and I think quantum computing is probably going to be the least of these achievements - even if it may be the first.
A good read, however fiction, is Micheal Cricton's 'Timeline', which covers some facts regarding quantum tech at this point, and also goes into some ideas of where things could progress to.
Considering the point that the internet is at now, allowing slightly over 4 billion (2^32) simultanious connections, we are far from reaching a peak. IPV4's limitations on the amount of devices that can be connected is severely limiting the internet from reaching its 'peak'.
We wont even realize the full potential of the internet for the next 25-30 years, decades after IPV6 allows for an enormously larger amount of address space (2^128). It will be a mere 10-15 years before the DoS kiddies can burn down your house because you took their IRC nick. I personally will never own an internet-compatible toaster oven, however readily availible they will be in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
Smart american kids with $$$ go to MIT.
Smart canadian kids with $$$ go to UofW.
Smart kids from anywhere without money drop out of highschool and troll slashdot.
Theres a very big difference between booksmart and applied smart.
While im sure all of these participents are very good programmers and incredible mathmeticians, I'm fairly sure a lot of them wouldn't be able to tell you how to take two files on a Unix OS, and list only lines that appear in both in a single commandline.
Note, most of the problems are basically math or physics problems. Sure, if I knew the math, no problem writing the code. But all those problems are simply advanced math. Ask one of these guys wether they prefer poll() to select() on a pre-2.4 linux kernel, and see how they respond.
I was told (in Waterloo, by the way) when I was 17 that I had more applied knowledge of the internet than most UofW university grads that came in to interview for that position. At that point, I was both incredibly disturbed, and incredibly happy. Now I'm just disturbed, considering how much more I have to learn, three years later.
Could someone post a link with an ASCII/Postscript/html converted list of problems?
Most artists really dont care about MP3s. The fact is, it costs them virtually nothing. It is only the record companies that care about mp3s. As I understand it, the artist usually gets relatively minimal money from a record - generally a small percentage such as %5 - simply because the recording company says
Most "artists" make their money from touring, endorsements, and generally working their asses off. The ones that accually care about mp3s are being anal, because mp3s make arists more popular, and sells tickets to their show.
Sure, if space was flat. Think gravity.
You have what I would call a superiority complex. I would say that is completely normal for a technically inclined or computer competant person. One thing you dont have, which is quite evident in your last statement, is a simple respect for your peers.
Now, I may not directly consider you a peer, for the simple fact that we differ on a number of simple comparitive issues. You are stuck in the past. Since you will most definitely ask for some type of proof of this, allow me to explain.
In your responce to the question regarding the recode of a fortran program, you responded:
Do you hold on to an old 286, even though it could easily crash purely because of its old-hardware, just because it works? Do you hold on to a 1982 Toyota Corolla, just because it works? No. For the safety of you data, and for the safty of your family, you go and get new stuff.
Of course, your responce will be well, programs dont degrade with time. I say they do. Allow me to elaborate once again.
I've worked on a number of programming projects. One of which works perfectly, but we are still planning a complete rewrite of. For a matter of context, I'll involve the name. The Bahamut IRCd happens to be presently supporting over 130,000 simultanious connections between about 30 servers. It will probably be quite good until well over 200,000 connections. But we're rewriting it anyway. Because we've learned one thing the hard way. Dont wait for problems to come to you. Just because your software works fine with 10,000 users, doesnt mean its going to scale to 11,000 users.
Programming in *any* arena is not cut and dry. Programs are *never* "perfect", as you as a software developer should know. If you've worked on any project of any reasonable size, then you realize that there is a point where picking through old code to improve software isnt worth your time, and you can simply rewrite the whole damn thing to do what you want and accually have spent less time doing it.
Oh my god! of course! thats it! who cares if we burn down all the rainforests, cut down all the big redwood forests in BC. All we have to do is start breathing more, and hey, all the plants will come back!
you cant honestly be that dense, can you?
How many of you have been to china? Seen any pictures of the Yangzte River? Ever been up close enough to it to see the wonderful color it is? How about the fact that China planned to divert another river
using nuclear weapons.
Now, lets get away from China, regardless of the fact that they are 1/6th the worlds population. The greenhouse effect is not a myth. I cannot believe the level of ignorance being shown on here. Hell, considering we're supposed to be at least partially enlightened a generation.
I feel incredibly confident about the world my children will grow up in. Lets hope we get some interplanetary space travel developed, or at least make contact, otherwise we'll right screwed.
rant--;
The fact of the matter is that the internet as a whole cannot be properly managed, unless the world as a whole starts co-operating. Right now, you've got each country carrying out its own laws on the internet, and meanwhile conflicting laws between countries are allowing virtually no semblence of consistancy or even proper causality. Trying to organize something as "big" as the internet without a consistant causality is always going to be impossible.
What needs to happen, regardless of ICANN or ARIN or any other "internet regulation group", is some type of international agreement on what the internet entails. It was easy when the internet was just starting to pop up on the international platform, but now this global network needs global management - not national management.
On the specifics on what was said about ICANN, I agree, partly. ICANN in its present form shouldnt live on. Theres a complete lack of direction, and it appears to be bumbling about like it cant decide what to do. I doubt we'll ever quite get over the mess its made.
I ordered probably around 8 rackmountable dell machines with redhat preinstalled in 2001. If M$ was pressuring them to avoid using linux, then they obviously didnt do a good job.
Hate to make a plug for a former employer.. but Planet-Intra has a good product that wont cost you much and will do the job well. You can buy the product or you can rent the space on their servers to keep your stuff.
We've already looked forward to a certain level with star trek, why should we now place restrictions on our imagination by placing the series previous to its predecessor. The Paramount Execs should be pushing the series forward, not backwards. The series should be based 100 years AFTER voyager and the TNG era, at a bare minimum. The ingenuity is lost otherwise.
not nessecarily commenting on the multi-threading issue, kernels 2.4.x have substantially better socket handling... there were articles floating around on slashdot and linux.com a while back about a DALnet server breaking 38,000 simulatious active open sockets at one time. Linux has done wonders with their 2.4.x tcp/ip stack.. until recently, nobody even considered linux's stack worthy of an attempt at an IRC server of any reasonable size.
is it just me, or does apple seem to beat everyone else to all the cool-yet-useless features in hardware and software
If the authors of these RFCs would have at least consulted with any of the [other?] major networks before releasing them, perhaps they would have been implemented. Since they did not, the RFCs you listed are virtually defunct.
Additionally, this "UIN" solution was proposed by EFnet coders, and im not exactly too fond of it.
Lets say i get bored one day and mix together a wide variety of different songs into a rediculously long track that happens to have a few bars in it that match one of these banned sections? How is this fair to aspiring producers, DJs, and the bored people of society? If this is the case, it seems it is virging on infringing on my rights.
I have read that the applications of quantum tech are much more widespread than most people relize. For example, it has been proven that one can measure the width of a human hair using a laser with quantum enhansments without the laser touching the hair whatsoever. They have also successfully 'teleported' a single atom instantly from one place to another (about 100 feet from the origin).
There are many more possibilities in the future of quantum technologies, and I think quantum computing is probably going to be the least of these achievements - even if it may be the first.
A good read, however fiction, is Micheal Cricton's 'Timeline', which covers some facts regarding quantum tech at this point, and also goes into some ideas of where things could progress to.
We wont even realize the full potential of the internet for the next 25-30 years, decades after IPV6 allows for an enormously larger amount of address space (2^128). It will be a mere 10-15 years before the DoS kiddies can burn down your house because you took their IRC nick. I personally will never own an internet-compatible toaster oven, however readily availible they will be in the future.