Having worked with a wide variety of developers I can say I've found little correlation between formal education and ability, and I come from a top CS school. All the theory in the world is great, but at the end of the day if you can't apply it you're just not going to be a good developer. I know all the theory behind how a car works. But put a wrench in my hands and I'm stripping bolts. Likewise, the four best and most knowledgable developers I know are:
1. A fraternity brother of mine who dropped out of college his freshman year. 2. A curent co-worker who is entirely self-taught and has a little bit of college education. 3. A former co-worker who has a degree in English, having taken no math or computer science classes in college, and is entirely self-taught. 4. A former co-worker who has a GED, but has a passion for software development.
Remember, all the education in the world will not overcome lack of talent. The college experience provides more enrichment in other areas, the social and networking aspects alone doing much to prepare you for life. But it appears the original poster has already gained much of the benefit he is likely to have from college.
I live in Cape Coral, FL, which was hit pretty good by Charley last year. We had no power for three days, and there were many areas that took several weeks to get power back. Let me tell you, there are many things you take for granted. Roads were blocked by trees for awhile, and gasoline was scarce. One of my co-workers didn't have power (or water, since he was on a well).
If you've ever done any primitive camping, I would treat this the same way. Expect there to be little to no clean water available. This is huge, and probably your biggest concern. Bring plenty of distilled water, and also consider bringing equipment to purify water when you run out. This can be bought anywhere you can get camping supplies. I'm not sure how badly Slidell was hit, but it's possible power has not returned, so make sure you have flashlights with plenty of batteries, and candles. A Coleman stove will be invaluable if you want hot food, but if you can live on jerky, dried fruit, and trail mix it will make things simpler. Get yourself a good map of the area, and pay attention to as much news from there as you can to try to identify impassable routes or areas you just don't want to be in. Finally, expect gasoline to be in short supply, so fill up before you get there if you can and drive as little as possible.
Granted, I have no idea what kind of facilities will be available to relief workers. It may very well be that there is lodging, food, and water available. It's just best not to count on it, and to be prepared to rough it quite a bit.
When Hurricane Charley hit last year, I was without power for three days. It may be inefficient, but I could have saved a couple hundred bucks in groceries easily.
Uh... nuclear capability does not mean you have the means to cause any widespread damage with your ordinance. This is a response to current times, where newer nuclear powers have the technology but not the volume of weapons. North Korea, for example, is a country small enough that striking them would remove them from the map, and therefore nullify their ability to mount a retaliatory strike.
This is all moot, anyway -- I can't see this being any more than a message that says, "We have a LOT more toys than you do, and we could end you before you even blink."
That's quite a spurrious argument there, bud. Stabbing people and taking their money causes DEMONSTRABLE harm. Tell me how much damage one unit of CO2 does, show me just one chemical equation, and I'll buy into your sky is falling hysteria.
This highlights one of the big drawbacks of outsourcing. It also could be the deathknell of a lot of call center outsourcing.
I know there will be cynics who will want to say corporations won't care about this so much. But don't underestimate the fear of class-action suits that drives many corporate policies we see today. Especially with the recent reforms in identity theft protection we've seen.
I swear we see this article get recycled on ZDNet, Wired, and the like every time the next big thing in gaming consoles comes out. Remember how the X-Box was going to put Sony and PC games out of business?
I think until we see massive changes in interface devices, the game market will still tend to be stratified by genre.
I am an owner of both game consoles and a PC. Certain games I prefer on the console, such as sports games, driving games, action games, etc. However, I prefer playing FPS games on my PC, probably since that's where I cut my teeth. To this day I still can't get used to Halo on the X-Box, but I play fairly well on the PC version. Additionally, I can't imagine strategy and role-playing games on anything but a PC. Navigating the menus is so klugey on a console, and keyboard shortcuts can be paramount.
And that doesn't even broach the issue of expansion packs, patches, etc. All of which are much more convenient with PC games.
That said, while the PC game market will probably take a bit of a downturn with the release of the next gen of gaming consoles, don't expect it to stay down for very long. The end is hardly nigh.
How is it that the United States is pressuring a country into a policy it doesn't adopt? Just curious. Does anyone really think the US would support a policy that would cripple its IT industry?
This tax is a typical socialist answer to a problem that doesn't exist, not the "corporate way of messing things up."
The article itself is very misleading, and it is obvious you have taken it at face value. I just read the patent's claims, and I don't see where these critics are coming from. This invention is not a protocol. In fact, I don't really where see the comparison between it and IPv6 holds water. If anything, it appears to be an attempt to improve upon or simplify DHCP, and is based on IPv4 -- both of which were referenced as prior art in the application.
I know the going modus operandi around here is to latch onto any article that attempts to bash Microsoft, but at least do a little fact-checking before you do so.
It doesn't smell like legislation that will never be passed to me. Probably because it was signed into law by Ohio's governor on 2/1. At the risk of stating the obvious, Ohio has no interest whatsoever in limiting fraud. They just finally found a way to pull in some heavy licensing fees from what was previously an untouchable pool of money.
Sorry, didn't add as a link in my post...
on
Fun Tabletop Games?
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· Score: 3, Informative
There needs to be some kind of deterrent to filing frivolous patents like this. Take away the arguments about innovativeness, prior art, and obviousness. It was part of the first release of.NET, correct? This means the invention was marketed for over a year prior to the patent application, which invalidates the application right there.
Google certainly has the capital to fight this (typically, litigation runs at about $1-2M per year), or at least drag it out for a long time.
The end result we eventually will see all depends on how strongly Microsoft feels Google is infringing, and how well they feel their patent will stand up in court. It won't be until after discovery that they have a better picture of the strength of their case.
After that, one of three things will happen:
1. They'll decide Google's argument has a strong foundation, and settle with them out of court. Google will pretty much get a "free license" out of the deal, and Microsoft solidifies their patent.
2. They decide to let the dice roll and take it to court, where the judge finds in their favor. This means Google has to either cease and desist, or start paying for it. It will also solidify Microsoft's patent.
3. Microsoft loses their court case. This basically invalidates their patent (even if the validity is upheld, but infringement is not), since anyone would probably be able to come up with the same arguments as Google.
The first two scenarios would eliminate the rest of the playing field. It's not like it is a very high-profile or life-changing product, but for principle's sake let's hope for the third one.
OK. Why don't you take the lead on that? First thing, turn off your computer, as well as anything else that consumes power in your residence. It is likely your electricity is produced using some method that pollutes the environment. Let's see, what else is out -- driving, grocery shopping, and generally participating in society. Better stop breathing, too. CO2 is a greenhouse gas after all.
It's easy to lambaste people for not wanting to take action on what we have been handed by the science community. However, it seems to be overlooked that cutting back on pollution even by marginal amounts would drastically affect everyone's lives (and not just giant corporations). This is why you need good, measurable empirical research when making decisions. Not computer models.
The real irony is that we're all discussing this in a forum that is totally dependent on fossil-produced electricity.
1. Develop hypothesis. 2. Devise MEASURABLE observations in attempt to support hypothesis. 3. Reject hypothesis when an observation refutes it. 4. When enough observations have supported hypothesis without being refuted, you have a theory.
The reason we see so much debate around global warming is that the scientific process seems to be circumvented. It should be a simple equation: for every X of greenhouse gas, we have Y of warming. Through all this debate, where is such an equation?
Why should we worry about materials coming in from Canada? They have such foolproof border security. We've never had terrorists enter the US through Canada. Oh, wait...
Without ownership, it's difficult to assign culpability when a security flaw is found. Far more flaws have been revealed in MS software than in Linux, but part of the reason is that Microsoft's market share makes them the far bigger target. It should be interesting to see how security plays out as Linux distros gain greater market penetration.
This just doesn't hold a lot of water. For one, all assumptions are being using 2000 census data as the baseline for demographics. Anyone who lives in Florida knows how outdated even year-old data is. Since 2000, I have seen my town (in a touchscreen county, no less) grow from 90,000 to nearly 130,000. The inference appears to be that the irregularities stem not from massive population growth that is unaccounted for in their study, but from "ghost votes" that somehow got into the system.
Look at the actual data. Here's what you'll see. Throwing out the non-Republican and non-Democratic votes (i.e. only counting votes for Bush and votes for Kerry), Bush picked up between 1 and 5 points on Kerry vs. his performance in 2000 against Gore, losing 1 point in Miami and Collier counties and with an outlier of 7 points gained in Sumter county, which is a majore Republican stronghold.
In non-electronic counties, the ground Bush gained was far more dramatic, many counties showing 7, 8, and upwards of 12 point gains. The most Kerry gained in any county was one point.
The point is this. In touchscreen counties, representing about 3.9 million votes, Bush picked up 2 percentage points on his opponent based on the 2000 election. In non-touchscreen counties, representing about 3.6 million votes, he picked up about 3 percentage points. I know this isn't a fancy statistical analysis, but to me this doesn't really point to any irregularities.
It is naive to think we'll ever have a perfect ballot count in any election. There will always be some results that appear to be in error, some that are fraudulent (like the Chicago cemetery voting for JFK), and some that are simply statistical anomalies but are not the result of either of the former.
Whether or not the actual outcome was good, it is at least fortunate the election was not close enough for the aforementioned variances to make a difference, or we'd have a mess like the 2000 election. Essentially Gore and Bush battled to a statistical tie in that election. There was no reliable way to insure undervotes, overvotes, hanging chads, non-votes, etc. were properly counted as it required too much inference from potentially biased vote counters. So we had to go with the official numbers. But make no mistake about it -- they probably could have found just as many anomalous ballots in other counties that went against Gore.
The fact is, there is a percentage of people out there who are completely incapable of following even the simplest instructions. It's only magnified when an election's margins are razor-thin. The irony is the least competent of our voters ended up being the potential deciding votes. How scary is that?
Slashdot Mirror
Having worked with a wide variety of developers I can say I've found little correlation between formal education and ability, and I come from a top CS school. All the theory in the world is great, but at the end of the day if you can't apply it you're just not going to be a good developer. I know all the theory behind how a car works. But put a wrench in my hands and I'm stripping bolts. Likewise, the four best and most knowledgable developers I know are:
1. A fraternity brother of mine who dropped out of college his freshman year.
2. A curent co-worker who is entirely self-taught and has a little bit of college education.
3. A former co-worker who has a degree in English, having taken no math or computer science classes in college, and is entirely self-taught.
4. A former co-worker who has a GED, but has a passion for software development.
Remember, all the education in the world will not overcome lack of talent. The college experience provides more enrichment in other areas, the social and networking aspects alone doing much to prepare you for life. But it appears the original poster has already gained much of the benefit he is likely to have from college.
First, let me applaud you for your efforts.
I live in Cape Coral, FL, which was hit pretty good by Charley last year. We had no power for three days, and there were many areas that took several weeks to get power back. Let me tell you, there are many things you take for granted. Roads were blocked by trees for awhile, and gasoline was scarce. One of my co-workers didn't have power (or water, since he was on a well).
If you've ever done any primitive camping, I would treat this the same way. Expect there to be little to no clean water available. This is huge, and probably your biggest concern. Bring plenty of distilled water, and also consider bringing equipment to purify water when you run out. This can be bought anywhere you can get camping supplies. I'm not sure how badly Slidell was hit, but it's possible power has not returned, so make sure you have flashlights with plenty of batteries, and candles. A Coleman stove will be invaluable if you want hot food, but if you can live on jerky, dried fruit, and trail mix it will make things simpler. Get yourself a good map of the area, and pay attention to as much news from there as you can to try to identify impassable routes or areas you just don't want to be in. Finally, expect gasoline to be in short supply, so fill up before you get there if you can and drive as little as possible.
Granted, I have no idea what kind of facilities will be available to relief workers. It may very well be that there is lodging, food, and water available. It's just best not to count on it, and to be prepared to rough it quite a bit.
When Hurricane Charley hit last year, I was without power for three days. It may be inefficient, but I could have saved a couple hundred bucks in groceries easily.
Uh... nuclear capability does not mean you have the means to cause any widespread damage with your ordinance. This is a response to current times, where newer nuclear powers have the technology but not the volume of weapons. North Korea, for example, is a country small enough that striking them would remove them from the map, and therefore nullify their ability to mount a retaliatory strike.
This is all moot, anyway -- I can't see this being any more than a message that says, "We have a LOT more toys than you do, and we could end you before you even blink."
That's quite a spurrious argument there, bud. Stabbing people and taking their money causes DEMONSTRABLE harm. Tell me how much damage one unit of CO2 does, show me just one chemical equation, and I'll buy into your sky is falling hysteria.
This highlights one of the big drawbacks of outsourcing. It also could be the deathknell of a lot of call center outsourcing.
I know there will be cynics who will want to say corporations won't care about this so much. But don't underestimate the fear of class-action suits that drives many corporate policies we see today. Especially with the recent reforms in identity theft protection we've seen.
How is it that Star Wars fans can make better movies than George Lucas?
I swear we see this article get recycled on ZDNet, Wired, and the like every time the next big thing in gaming consoles comes out. Remember how the X-Box was going to put Sony and PC games out of business?
I think until we see massive changes in interface devices, the game market will still tend to be stratified by genre.
I am an owner of both game consoles and a PC. Certain games I prefer on the console, such as sports games, driving games, action games, etc. However, I prefer playing FPS games on my PC, probably since that's where I cut my teeth. To this day I still can't get used to Halo on the X-Box, but I play fairly well on the PC version. Additionally, I can't imagine strategy and role-playing games on anything but a PC. Navigating the menus is so klugey on a console, and keyboard shortcuts can be paramount.
And that doesn't even broach the issue of expansion packs, patches, etc. All of which are much more convenient with PC games.
That said, while the PC game market will probably take a bit of a downturn with the release of the next gen of gaming consoles, don't expect it to stay down for very long. The end is hardly nigh.
The stories could also be adapted so that they take place much longer after Jedi than Zahn's novels.
How is it that the United States is pressuring a country into a policy it doesn't adopt? Just curious. Does anyone really think the US would support a policy that would cripple its IT industry?
This tax is a typical socialist answer to a problem that doesn't exist, not the "corporate way of messing things up."
I'll bet Bruce Willis could dig deeper with just a shovel.
The article itself is very misleading, and it is obvious you have taken it at face value. I just read the patent's claims, and I don't see where these critics are coming from. This invention is not a protocol. In fact, I don't really where see the comparison between it and IPv6 holds water. If anything, it appears to be an attempt to improve upon or simplify DHCP, and is based on IPv4 -- both of which were referenced as prior art in the application.
I know the going modus operandi around here is to latch onto any article that attempts to bash Microsoft, but at least do a little fact-checking before you do so.
It doesn't smell like legislation that will never be passed to me. Probably because it was signed into law by Ohio's governor on 2/1. At the risk of stating the obvious, Ohio has no interest whatsoever in limiting fraud. They just finally found a way to pull in some heavy licensing fees from what was previously an untouchable pool of money.
Munchkin Fu homepage
Steve Jackson has a "Munchkin" series of beer & pretzel games. I picked up Munchkin Fu, and it's a riot.
http://www.sjgames.com/munchkin/munchkinfu/
There needs to be some kind of deterrent to filing frivolous patents like this. Take away the arguments about innovativeness, prior art, and obviousness. It was part of the first release of .NET, correct? This means the invention was marketed for over a year prior to the patent application, which invalidates the application right there.
Google certainly has the capital to fight this (typically, litigation runs at about $1-2M per year), or at least drag it out for a long time.
The end result we eventually will see all depends on how strongly Microsoft feels Google is infringing, and how well they feel their patent will stand up in court. It won't be until after discovery that they have a better picture of the strength of their case.
After that, one of three things will happen:
1. They'll decide Google's argument has a strong foundation, and settle with them out of court. Google will pretty much get a "free license" out of the deal, and Microsoft solidifies their patent.
2. They decide to let the dice roll and take it to court, where the judge finds in their favor. This means Google has to either cease and desist, or start paying for it. It will also solidify Microsoft's patent.
3. Microsoft loses their court case. This basically invalidates their patent (even if the validity is upheld, but infringement is not), since anyone would probably be able to come up with the same arguments as Google.
The first two scenarios would eliminate the rest of the playing field. It's not like it is a very high-profile or life-changing product, but for principle's sake let's hope for the third one.
OK. Why don't you take the lead on that? First thing, turn off your computer, as well as anything else that consumes power in your residence. It is likely your electricity is produced using some method that pollutes the environment. Let's see, what else is out -- driving, grocery shopping, and generally participating in society. Better stop breathing, too. CO2 is a greenhouse gas after all.
It's easy to lambaste people for not wanting to take action on what we have been handed by the science community. However, it seems to be overlooked that cutting back on pollution even by marginal amounts would drastically affect everyone's lives (and not just giant corporations). This is why you need good, measurable empirical research when making decisions. Not computer models.
The real irony is that we're all discussing this in a forum that is totally dependent on fossil-produced electricity.
Didn't science used to work like this?
1. Develop hypothesis.
2. Devise MEASURABLE observations in attempt to support hypothesis.
3. Reject hypothesis when an observation refutes it.
4. When enough observations have supported hypothesis without being refuted, you have a theory.
The reason we see so much debate around global warming is that the scientific process seems to be circumvented. It should be a simple equation: for every X of greenhouse gas, we have Y of warming. Through all this debate, where is such an equation?
Provided Trillian doesn't leech off of Messenger's image processing, that is.
Regardless, I really dig the Wikipedia mouseovers in Trillian.
Why should we worry about materials coming in from Canada? They have such foolproof border security. We've never had terrorists enter the US through Canada. Oh, wait...
Without ownership, it's difficult to assign culpability when a security flaw is found. Far more flaws have been revealed in MS software than in Linux, but part of the reason is that Microsoft's market share makes them the far bigger target. It should be interesting to see how security plays out as Linux distros gain greater market penetration.
Apparently their assumption was that if Bush gained ground against his opponent, that represents a voting irregularity.
This just doesn't hold a lot of water. For one, all assumptions are being using 2000 census data as the baseline for demographics. Anyone who lives in Florida knows how outdated even year-old data is. Since 2000, I have seen my town (in a touchscreen county, no less) grow from 90,000 to nearly 130,000. The inference appears to be that the irregularities stem not from massive population growth that is unaccounted for in their study, but from "ghost votes" that somehow got into the system.
Look at the actual data. Here's what you'll see. Throwing out the non-Republican and non-Democratic votes (i.e. only counting votes for Bush and votes for Kerry), Bush picked up between 1 and 5 points on Kerry vs. his performance in 2000 against Gore, losing 1 point in Miami and Collier counties and with an outlier of 7 points gained in Sumter county, which is a majore Republican stronghold.
In non-electronic counties, the ground Bush gained was far more dramatic, many counties showing 7, 8, and upwards of 12 point gains. The most Kerry gained in any county was one point.
The point is this. In touchscreen counties, representing about 3.9 million votes, Bush picked up 2 percentage points on his opponent based on the 2000 election. In non-touchscreen counties, representing about 3.6 million votes, he picked up about 3 percentage points. I know this isn't a fancy statistical analysis, but to me this doesn't really point to any irregularities.
It is naive to think we'll ever have a perfect ballot count in any election. There will always be some results that appear to be in error, some that are fraudulent (like the Chicago cemetery voting for JFK), and some that are simply statistical anomalies but are not the result of either of the former.
Whether or not the actual outcome was good, it is at least fortunate the election was not close enough for the aforementioned variances to make a difference, or we'd have a mess like the 2000 election. Essentially Gore and Bush battled to a statistical tie in that election. There was no reliable way to insure undervotes, overvotes, hanging chads, non-votes, etc. were properly counted as it required too much inference from potentially biased vote counters. So we had to go with the official numbers. But make no mistake about it -- they probably could have found just as many anomalous ballots in other counties that went against Gore.
The fact is, there is a percentage of people out there who are completely incapable of following even the simplest instructions. It's only magnified when an election's margins are razor-thin. The irony is the least competent of our voters ended up being the potential deciding votes. How scary is that?