The place where I'm working as a research assistant develops a very well known software for structural engineers.
And they use a lot of finite element analysis, fluid dynamics and tonnes of other complex math stuff. This is serious graphics programming, with a generous dose of engineering math and physics.
My summer internship is at a well known lab in a desert - where again, I'm going to be working on AI stuff - mostly mathematical.
And maybe that is the reason why a lot of other programmers did not get the RA or the internship - they thought merely programming could get all the jobs:)
My point is merely to highlight that knowing the math and the basics is just as essential in computer science as it is in any other subject, say civil or mechanical engineering.
How often in real life do you use something like clock cycles and memory management for most of the stuff in IT?
Don't get me wrong - I know how important this stuff is. However, for most programming tasks, knowing the paging size or the clock cycle or the best algorithm at hand does not matter.
Because out there, you are going to be designing databases and coding stuff that can be looked up from Google in a minute or two. And all the other stuff that you need in the industry really comes from experience, something that you never really learn until you go out there and work.
And for niche tasks, you will always have people who went to school to learn it - both the segments cater to very different requirements of the industry.
There are advantages and disadvantages to both, school cannot teach you experience and experience will not equal school.
The unfortunate thing is, whether or not its illegal, people have been convinced that it is.
Like an earlier poster indicated, in a lot of countries, sharing music with friends and family is not wrong - its perfectly acceptable and you cannot be litigated against for that. However, its only here in the US that we are told sharing is wrong. Hey kids, be greedy.
Its like books - I buy one, I can lend it to friends and family to read (okay, maybe not the perfect analogy, but you get the idea). I can make copies for myself, if my Mom wants to have parts of it, I can photocopy that and send it to her. I wonder when the publisher's cartel in the US is going to make sharing and lending of books illegal.
And coming to your example of a loaf of bread - did you know that you can be pardoned in Brazil for stealing food if you are hungry and penniless?:) Wonder where things like mercy, sharing and compassion went in the American laws. The way of the dodo I suppose.
Nobody NEEDS music. It's not a basic need. Neither is that computer you're sitting in front of.
Don't be ridiculous. You're comparing an item of entertainment value with an item of convenience. And today, computers are not even items of convenience, they are tools in our lives - akin to pen and paper, hammer and chisel. There is a big difference.
And you could just stop using your computer. You don't NEED it.
Yes he does. Its like telling a car mechanic that he does not need his tools. Sure, there are alternatives. So what would you rather have him do? Flip Burgers?
Yes. You have a choice between blaming a market-raping corporate cartel and 13 year-old Brittney-listeners.
Thirteen year old listeners have something called -P-A-R-E-N-T-S- who can tell their kids whats good music? How about good old classical music, for a change? But oh no! Daddy dearest is busy flaming away on Slashdot, so will let baby listen to whatever she wants.
And blame it all because he's helpless.
Because the only thing that's fair is playing by rules the RIAA has bought and paid for?
Well, its *their* money - that *they* acquired from bands that *chose* to be with them - that *you* paid for and helped grow. So, if you do not like it, do not listen to their music. Plain and simple. Yeah, it sucks. But hey, welcome to Capitalism!
"The people's good is the highest law." -Cicero
Bah! Idealism never helped anybody. Get real.
Btw - what was the point of the whole Washington link?
Basically, when you search for Tetris, you get some friendly information on how they had removed the link because of DMCA. They give you more information here.
What is it with people who do not want to come up with an original and new idea, and make good movies? They just seem to want to rip ideas off, from books, videogames or whatever it is that they can find and make a quick buck.
There seem to be very few original works, especially when it comes to mainstream movies.
Originality - that seems to be a thing of the past.
If they are my rights, don't I have the right to do what I want with them?
If I hold the right to doing Foo Bar, can I not decide whom I license it to, and how I license it?
Or just because I own intellectual property, does it require of me to "actively pursue" everyone, no matter whether or not I think they are free to use it?
I know the latter is the case for copyright claims, but does IP fall in the same category?
Number two: What is to be gained by going after the Gimp? Want to becoming the next SCO? Only there is even less money in the Gimp than in Linux.
Nothing. Except that this would set a VERY bad precedent.
People will start suing works that are OpenSource all over the place citing some vague-o patents that they may not even have claims to, and kill such projects.
If a conglomerate of litigation happy powerful companies got together, they can cause quite a harm, and fuck things up.
Its not the fact that they are targeting Gimp *in particular* thats wrong - its the fact that they are targeting anybody at all (okay, anybody OpenSource).
NF: Would a free software program that stores images in JPG format, like the GIMP, be violating your IP rights by using JPG?
Noonan: That's a difficult question, I don't have the answer to that. I have to defer that to our legal team. Of course, just to be safe, it might be wise for the GIMP developers (as well as all other open source image processing projects which use JPG) to volunteer to donate a percentage of their revenues to Forgent Networks.
WTF?! What revenues? The developers are getting donations and the like for the contributions they are making by working for free. This is plain ridiculous, people are putting in their free time to help develop software that will benefit everyone, and giving it away for free.
And jackasses like this want a piece of the pie? What about the good old days when knowledge belonged to the world, and people put out their works for everyone else to use?
Yet another reasons how patents are blatantly misused. First of all, its not even sure if they have the rights that they claim to have. At the very least, they could have spared non-commercial entities.
Stuff like this gets me worked up to no end.
The statement notes that at least two other companies (Philips and Lucent) are similarly claiming to have patents that relate to portions of the original JPEG standard, and expresses disappointment that some organisations are trying to cash in on what was developed to be a license and royalty-free standard.
And what has been contributed by the OpenSource community to benefit everyone else, is being made useless by pointless litigations.
Remember kids - We now live in an era where giving away knowledge and helping people is WRONG! You need to be greedy, patent all your stuff, sue your Mom and kill your neighbour's dog is RIGHT.
The proper answer, from a physics perspective, is "no", because while you're applying a certain force to the weight to hold it up, the distance through which you move it is zero, so that work = force * 0 = 0.
Nope. You have the force of gravity acting upon your hand, and you are doing work to stay put in that position. You did not frame the problem completely - when the system includes another object (Earth) exerting an opposing force, it's no longer as simple as force * distance.
Re:Then again, does the book violate the DMCA?
on
Hardware Hacking
·
· Score: 1
Thanks for the calm, rational and respectful reply.
Look at the bid history. It looks like he ended the listing early. And if that page were to be believed, the retractors have stated that they have been unable to get in touch with the seller.
And immediately thereafter, an "ad" for this gets posted on Slashdot? Makes you wonder you know...
but the general shift towards conscientious geeks is a good and proper thing which often functions for the benefit of all.
I would say that geeks have always been conscientious - just that they preferred to ignore the implications of technological progress over social consequences, which is probably a good thing.
The thing is that, technology and good-will do not always necessarily overlap. I've quote a favourite quote of mine by HL Mencken here -
The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate. Consider, for example, two of them: mere insatiable curiosity and the desire to do good. The latter is put high above the former, and yet it is the former that moves one of the most useful men the human race has yet produced: the scientific investigator. What actually urges him on is not some brummagem idea of Service, but a boundless, almost pathological thirst to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret.... His prototype is not the liberator releasing slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but a dog sniffing tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes. -- H. L. Mencken
The question is - do you vote for progress or social justification? I say progress, because most social justifications are trivial and arise only out of sensationalism. Agreed, some are perhaps important, but for the most part they hinder technology rather than other encourage it.
And as a geek, I would rather vote for technology.
Why call Google to encrypt your mail? If you are that concerned, you could go ahead and encrypt it yourself.
And if you are not bothered to do it on your own, or are not concerned enough about security, then you have no business complaining about Google.
Like the parent poster said, if you do not like Gmail, do not use it. What did you expect? Somebody off the street to come and give you an e-mail account with the coolest features for free with almost nothing from your side? Well guess what, in real life there is no such thing as free lunch.
And as for the "masses" out there, there's probably way more information floating around in the form of spyware and the like that gather data, than through something like Gmail.
This is the problem if you are the biggest guy around - everyone finds some reason or the other to pick on you.
He is right about the freak-out factor, but then for all you know, its probably a ploy from competitors to put Google at a disadvantage (you never know!).
And besides, if you are that concerned about secure information, plain e-mail is akin to sending confidential information on a postcard.
If you want confidentiality, encrypt your stuff. Why should Google do it for you? If you are that concerned, go ahead and do it yourself.
Encryption is a serious resource overhead - and encrypting for a very large number of people/subscribers (which Google will most certainly have) for very large amounts of data (which again, Google does and will have) is going to be a serious drain of resources.
And it is true - now even for the simplest things, Google is getting picked on. Despite the fact that they are perhaps the most benign (yet) of all the corporates out there. I guess people need someone to rant about. And sugarcoat it all with, "I love Google, but..."
I do not know the position that you are seeking to apply, but if you are looking for any engineering position with a 4 year bachelor's degree in something like engineering or the sciences, you would get about $55,000 at HP (starting salary).
I've heard that Intel pays a little more, but maybe not more than $60k.
It would really depend on how much experience you have, what is it that you are looking for, the area you seek to work in and your degree.
It would really depend on the major that you would be choosing.
If its going to be something related to CS, then it would not matter. However, GTech does have some specific programs in CS that are highly ranked (HCI, and Information Security for instance).
GTech is quite highly ranked for most engineering courses, and I would imagine UoM to be just as good.
Look up the rankings, and if there is not much of a difference, choose UoM.
Although GTech is a great school, the social scene here sucks:) There are almost no women, and its a typical geek tech school. Work load is quite heavy, and you hardly have time for a social life. I do not know about UoM in that aspect, though.
Maybe you should take that into consideration too;-)
Actually that would depend on where you would be working after you graduate.
For instance, I go to school at a reasonably good tech school (Georgia Tech). In and around Atlanta, GATech grads are usually paid more than say, someone from University of Georgia or Georgia State University simply because - (a) GTech is a higher ranked Univ (b) Its harder to get in and survive in GTech than at the other two places.
The point is that, having gone to a good school and come out of it alive requires a certain amount of commitment and hardwork. I'm not saying that it is not so in other schools, but it would definitely be way harder to survive at MIT than it would be at Foo Bar Community College, that is all.
Happens on almost all HP Notebooks that I've seen so far.
My HP Pavilion has weird interference on the LCD (very minor - you can see it only if your screen is set to black), and it makes a very unique noise when there is any cellphone activity (incoming calls/messages/whatever).
We've this augmented reality setup for a class, and the (HP) notebooks in the lab have the same problem too. What we did notice later on was that, this even affected our actual ARD recordings - I'm guessing perhaps the equipment used are sensitive to this sort of thing.
Slashdot Mirror
But I agree, it'd be quite difficult to climb Arafat ...
:-|
That was uncalled for, you insensitive clod
Must...clean...mental...eye... ARGH!
(Math doesn't exist in the real world).
:)
This isn't quite as big a deal in programming.
The place where I'm working as a research assistant develops a very well known software for structural engineers.
And they use a lot of finite element analysis, fluid dynamics and tonnes of other complex math stuff. This is serious graphics programming, with a generous dose of engineering math and physics.
My summer internship is at a well known lab in a desert - where again, I'm going to be working on AI stuff - mostly mathematical.
And maybe that is the reason why a lot of other programmers did not get the RA or the internship - they thought merely programming could get all the jobs
My point is merely to highlight that knowing the math and the basics is just as essential in computer science as it is in any other subject, say civil or mechanical engineering.
Ah, my undergrad was in ECE and my MS is in CS, so that way I have the best and worst of both the worlds :)
How often in real life do you use something like clock cycles and memory management for most of the stuff in IT?
Don't get me wrong - I know how important this stuff is. However, for most programming tasks, knowing the paging size or the clock cycle or the best algorithm at hand does not matter.
Because out there, you are going to be designing databases and coding stuff that can be looked up from Google in a minute or two. And all the other stuff that you need in the industry really comes from experience, something that you never really learn until you go out there and work.
And for niche tasks, you will always have people who went to school to learn it - both the segments cater to very different requirements of the industry.
There are advantages and disadvantages to both, school cannot teach you experience and experience will not equal school.
You are right.
And people forget that until a while ago, IBM were the evil monopolistic corporation and Microsoft was the underdog who fought the behemoth.
Funny how times change so quickly.
The unfortunate thing is, whether or not its illegal, people have been convinced that it is.
:) Wonder where things like mercy, sharing and compassion went in the American laws. The way of the dodo I suppose.
Like an earlier poster indicated, in a lot of countries, sharing music with friends and family is not wrong - its perfectly acceptable and you cannot be litigated against for that. However, its only here in the US that we are told sharing is wrong. Hey kids, be greedy.
Its like books - I buy one, I can lend it to friends and family to read (okay, maybe not the perfect analogy, but you get the idea). I can make copies for myself, if my Mom wants to have parts of it, I can photocopy that and send it to her. I wonder when the publisher's cartel in the US is going to make sharing and lending of books illegal.
And coming to your example of a loaf of bread - did you know that you can be pardoned in Brazil for stealing food if you are hungry and penniless?
Nobody NEEDS music. It's not a basic need. Neither is that computer you're sitting in front of.
Don't be ridiculous. You're comparing an item of entertainment value with an item of convenience. And today, computers are not even items of convenience, they are tools in our lives - akin to pen and paper, hammer and chisel. There is a big difference.
And you could just stop using your computer. You don't NEED it.
Yes he does. Its like telling a car mechanic that he does not need his tools. Sure, there are alternatives. So what would you rather have him do? Flip Burgers?
Yes. You have a choice between blaming a market-raping corporate cartel and 13 year-old Brittney-listeners.
Thirteen year old listeners have something called -P-A-R-E-N-T-S- who can tell their kids whats good music? How about good old classical music, for a change? But oh no! Daddy dearest is busy flaming away on Slashdot, so will let baby listen to whatever she wants.
And blame it all because he's helpless.
Because the only thing that's fair is playing by rules the RIAA has bought and paid for?
Well, its *their* money - that *they* acquired from bands that *chose* to be with them - that *you* paid for and helped grow. So, if you do not like it, do not listen to their music. Plain and simple. Yeah, it sucks. But hey, welcome to Capitalism!
"The people's good is the highest law." -Cicero
Bah! Idealism never helped anybody. Get real.
Btw - what was the point of the whole Washington link?
I had posted this in my journal a while back.
Basically, when you search for Tetris, you get some friendly information on how they had removed the link because of DMCA. They give you more information here.
And here is a screenshot of the said search.
What is it with people who do not want to come up with an original and new idea, and make good movies? They just seem to want to rip ideas off, from books, videogames or whatever it is that they can find and make a quick buck.
There seem to be very few original works, especially when it comes to mainstream movies.
Originality - that seems to be a thing of the past.
Oh well, enough rant for a day.
If they are my rights, don't I have the right to do what I want with them?
If I hold the right to doing Foo Bar, can I not decide whom I license it to, and how I license it?
Or just because I own intellectual property, does it require of me to "actively pursue" everyone, no matter whether or not I think they are free to use it?
I know the latter is the case for copyright claims, but does IP fall in the same category?
And in related news, Darth McBride steps down from SCO to join Forgent as their new CEO.
Following this, Forgent has issued licensing claims to Adobe, Pixar, Kodak and a few other companies.
"Share a moment, share a life, for just $699!" is the new tagline for the company.
Number two: What is to be gained by going after the Gimp? Want to becoming the next SCO? Only there is even less money in the Gimp than in Linux.
Nothing. Except that this would set a VERY bad precedent.
People will start suing works that are OpenSource all over the place citing some vague-o patents that they may not even have claims to, and kill such projects.
If a conglomerate of litigation happy powerful companies got together, they can cause quite a harm, and fuck things up.
Its not the fact that they are targeting Gimp *in particular* thats wrong - its the fact that they are targeting anybody at all (okay, anybody OpenSource).
From the article --
NF: Would a free software program that stores images in JPG format, like the GIMP, be violating your IP rights by using JPG?
Noonan: That's a difficult question, I don't have the answer to that. I have to defer that to our legal team.
Of course, just to be safe, it might be wise for the GIMP developers (as well as all other open source image processing projects which use JPG) to volunteer to donate a percentage of their revenues to Forgent Networks.
WTF?! What revenues? The developers are getting donations and the like for the contributions they are making by working for free. This is plain ridiculous, people are putting in their free time to help develop software that will benefit everyone, and giving it away for free.
And jackasses like this want a piece of the pie? What about the good old days when knowledge belonged to the world, and people put out their works for everyone else to use?
Yet another reasons how patents are blatantly misused. First of all, its not even sure if they have the rights that they claim to have. At the very least, they could have spared non-commercial entities.
Stuff like this gets me worked up to no end.
The statement notes that at least two other companies (Philips and Lucent) are similarly claiming to have patents that relate to portions of the original JPEG standard, and expresses disappointment that some organisations are trying to cash in on what was developed to be a license and royalty-free standard.
And what has been contributed by the OpenSource community to benefit everyone else, is being made useless by pointless litigations.
Remember kids - We now live in an era where giving away knowledge and helping people is WRONG! You need to be greedy, patent all your stuff, sue your Mom and kill your neighbour's dog is RIGHT.
The proper answer, from a physics perspective, is "no", because while you're applying a certain force to the weight to hold it up, the distance through which you move it is zero, so that work = force * 0 = 0.
Nope. You have the force of gravity acting upon your hand, and you are doing work to stay put in that position. You did not frame the problem completely - when the system includes another object (Earth) exerting an opposing force, it's no longer as simple as force * distance.
Thanks for the calm, rational and respectful reply.
:-p
Dude!!! Welcome to Slashdot
Look at the bid history. It looks like he ended the listing early. And if that page were to be believed, the retractors have stated that they have been unable to get in touch with the seller.
And immediately thereafter, an "ad" for this gets posted on Slashdot? Makes you wonder you know...
In SOVIET RUSSIA, a Fridge walks to YOU!!!
:-/
However, in America, chicks still avoid you, even if you try otherwise
True. As always, the human is the weakest link :)
Quoteth the poster -
but the general shift towards conscientious geeks is a good and proper thing which often functions for the benefit of all.
I would say that geeks have always been conscientious - just that they preferred to ignore the implications of technological progress over social consequences, which is probably a good thing.
The thing is that, technology and good-will do not always necessarily overlap. I've quote a favourite quote of mine by HL Mencken here -
The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate. Consider, for example, two of them: mere insatiable curiosity and the desire to do good. The latter is put high above the former, and yet it is the former that moves one of the most useful men the human race has yet produced: the scientific investigator. What actually urges him on is not some brummagem idea of Service, but a boundless, almost pathological thirst to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret.... His prototype is not the liberator releasing slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but a dog sniffing tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes.
-- H. L. Mencken
The question is - do you vote for progress or social justification? I say progress, because most social justifications are trivial and arise only out of sensationalism. Agreed, some are perhaps important, but for the most part they hinder technology rather than other encourage it.
And as a geek, I would rather vote for technology.
Why call Google to encrypt your mail? If you are that concerned, you could go ahead and encrypt it yourself.
And if you are not bothered to do it on your own, or are not concerned enough about security, then you have no business complaining about Google.
Like the parent poster said, if you do not like Gmail, do not use it. What did you expect? Somebody off the street to come and give you an e-mail account with the coolest features for free with almost nothing from your side? Well guess what, in real life there is no such thing as free lunch.
And as for the "masses" out there, there's probably way more information floating around in the form of spyware and the like that gather data, than through something like Gmail.
This is the problem if you are the biggest guy around - everyone finds some reason or the other to pick on you.
He is right about the freak-out factor, but then for all you know, its probably a ploy from competitors to put Google at a disadvantage (you never know!).
And besides, if you are that concerned about secure information, plain e-mail is akin to sending confidential information on a postcard.
If you want confidentiality, encrypt your stuff. Why should Google do it for you? If you are that concerned, go ahead and do it yourself.
Encryption is a serious resource overhead - and encrypting for a very large number of people/subscribers (which Google will most certainly have) for very large amounts of data (which again, Google does and will have) is going to be a serious drain of resources.
And it is true - now even for the simplest things, Google is getting picked on. Despite the fact that they are perhaps the most benign (yet) of all the corporates out there. I guess people need someone to rant about. And sugarcoat it all with, "I love Google, but..."
I do not know the position that you are seeking to apply, but if you are looking for any engineering position with a 4 year bachelor's degree in something like engineering or the sciences, you would get about $55,000 at HP (starting salary).
I've heard that Intel pays a little more, but maybe not more than $60k.
It would really depend on how much experience you have, what is it that you are looking for, the area you seek to work in and your degree.
It would really depend on the major that you would be choosing.
:) There are almost no women, and its a typical geek tech school. Work load is quite heavy, and you hardly have time for a social life. I do not know about UoM in that aspect, though.
;-)
If its going to be something related to CS, then it would not matter. However, GTech does have some specific programs in CS that are highly ranked (HCI, and Information Security for instance).
GTech is quite highly ranked for most engineering courses, and I would imagine UoM to be just as good.
Look up the rankings, and if there is not much of a difference, choose UoM.
Although GTech is a great school, the social scene here sucks
Maybe you should take that into consideration too
Excellent post.
Sir, hats off to you! Just added you as a friend.
Actually that would depend on where you would be working after you graduate.
:)
For instance, I go to school at a reasonably good tech school (Georgia Tech). In and around Atlanta, GATech grads are usually paid more than say, someone from University of Georgia or Georgia State University simply because - (a) GTech is a higher ranked Univ (b) Its harder to get in and survive in GTech than at the other two places.
The point is that, having gone to a good school and come out of it alive requires a certain amount of commitment and hardwork. I'm not saying that it is not so in other schools, but it would definitely be way harder to survive at MIT than it would be at Foo Bar Community College, that is all.
But then again, I could be wrong
Happens on almost all HP Notebooks that I've seen so far.
My HP Pavilion has weird interference on the LCD (very minor - you can see it only if your screen is set to black), and it makes a very unique noise when there is any cellphone activity (incoming calls/messages/whatever).
We've this augmented reality setup for a class, and the (HP) notebooks in the lab have the same problem too. What we did notice later on was that, this even affected our actual ARD recordings - I'm guessing perhaps the equipment used are sensitive to this sort of thing.