I think by law she is expected to confiscate fake IDs - I could be wrong, though.
In fact, she mentions it in her blog, as well (emphasis mine):
See, I collect the fake ID's by confiscating them from underage people who attempt to buy alcohol. I've been informed that I'm required to do this. I don't mind because frankly, our bar is for adults, and not a NYU undergrad hangout. My bar has not had a problem with underage drinking, only other bars that my bar's owner also owns. I have never knowingly served a minor, and never will. Enough of my friends work in the service industry in the neighborhood that if I don't confiscate the ID's, I'm putting their jobs and livelihoods at risk.
Actually, several Mom & Pop stores that I know post bounced checks on their walls after scrubbing out the account numbers and other details. While not the same as pictures, they usually do contain personal information (e.g. name & address) of the person.
The idea is that if your check bounces, they lose money and have a right to tell that to the world.
If the CEO is retiring soon, then he has little incentive to do right by the company in the long run, and plenty of incentive to play games to increase the stock price in the short term (so he can sell off his shares after the price goes up).
Well, not entirely true. Manipulating it and dumping it right afterwards could lead you to be liable for insider-trading fraud. In fact, lately the SEC has been coming down quite hard on folks practicing securities fraud in any form.
You're right about the investors bit, of course, but I just wanted to point this part out.
The one thing I will agree to is that Apple notebooks have some of the best battery lives I've seen.
Everytime I've used an iBook or a Powerbook, I'm amazed at how long the battery lasts. While some other brands (e.g. Dell) have decent battery life compared to others (e.g. HP and Toshiba, at least in my experience), I'm always knocked off by Apple notebooks' battery life.
Now if only Apple notebooks had two mouse buttons instead of hacks around it.:)
The thing is, Slashdot took off the Scientology crap because they were served a legal notice.
Also, Slashdot also provided a detailed writeup on what had happened, why they were taking down the said comments (which happened to paste entire texts) and gave some pointers on finding the said information.
Which is completely different from Digg removing the story and not telling anyone about it (until of course the users discovered it). And their response was an after-the-fact event, made worse by the fact that Digg receives sponsorship for Diggnation from the very folks this thing seems to piss off.
The two are completely different, and Slashdot did it right. Digg did not do it right and the users are revolting. More power to them.
Ah, if you are looking at VTK based software, you should look at MayaVi. It lets you do some fantastic scientific visualization and has a neat GUI, too. And oh, you can also do some really cool CFD stuff with it. Check out the screenshots.
Back in the day, I used to be friends with the guy who did this stuff (met him at one of the LUGs). Turns out that he's now a prof at one of the better schools in India.
Anyway, Mathematica rocks, too. There is a lot more that you can do and it has some pretty neat capabilities. Besides, the strength of Mathematica is not merely the engine, it is the libraries and the wealth of demos and code out there.
Not disagreeing with that, but I am talking about convenience.
For instance, I needed a webcam quite urgently - so I went to eBay and found a good, cheap one. It was small, good, had white LEDs and cost me $9.99 plus shipping. It came with a driver CD and works like a charm on Windows but does not on Linux.
Now, the same goes for the $2.50 bluetooth dongle that I purchased off eBay. Or for a slew of other USB devices that I use.
Most hardware is designed to work with Windows, for whatever reason. The moment I have to worry about whether or not my hardware works, you are taking away my options. That was my point.
You missed the point entirely. I'm not blaming the manufacturers - I'm blaming you.
I got that.
When you bought hardware, you bought hardware designed for windows. Then you were upset when it didn't work properly with Linux.
No, that is my point. I care about the best hardware for my needs - if Linux is not supported, I will use what is supported. Do not expect me to use something solely for the purpose of running $OS. I will use whatever serves my needs best, and if a small percentage of the OSes do not support that hardware, too bad. If I buy a notebook, I am more concerned about the best bang for my buck, not a compromise to get Linux running. Anyone who thinks that people would be willing to compromise buying a particular piece of hardware *just* because it won't work on an OS is cut off from reality. The fact that I even have to consider that takes $OS off the list.
If you buy a distributor for a Chevy 350 and try to install it in a Ford 351, it won't fit. Is that Chevy's fault? Ford's? No, it's yours.
Go say that to a hot-rodder. And please spare me the ridiculous car analogies.
Most hardware out there works on Windows - the ones that work on Linux *also* work on Windows. And you're missing my point completely - you are having me care about my hardware. As an end user, I only care that I can buy the best hardware and that it runs. If you can't do that, it is the OS' loss.
And not that don't have Linux running - I do run Linux on some boxes, it's just not my thing for regular day-to-day usage. For the desktop, Windows beats Linux hands down any day. I only wish that Linux folks understood that it is not my problem that a hardware is not supported - if Linux cannot run it, I will buy the hardware anyway. I will simply not use Linux.
I'm horribly tired of this argument, which is made from a position of ignorance.
Actually, it's one made from the position of bad experience - as far as I've known, I've had hardware problems with Linux and while I've had the occasional problem with Windows, it never has been that bad. While blaming the manufacturers game is all fun and dandy, it does not solve my problem. The OS should not decide what hardware I buy and that is a fundamental problem. As an end user, I do not care whose fault it is - and I should not have to.
All the so-called solutions aren't good since it's not OS-Based solutions!.
Excuse me? Cygwin may not be, but Monad is an OS shell. In fact, if you are admin, you can pretty much do anything on Monad. Hell, it even has pipes like on *nix. Perhaps you should try it first, before passing judgement.
I think that an OS should be intuitive, and require as little expertise as possible to use.
The problem with Linux is that it is impossible to get it to do what you want without some serious tweaking, and that usually requires you to either type something in a terminal or edit a file. As long as that is the case, Windows will always be considered superior just because of the ease of use.
It's not the fact that my grandma can use it, it's the fact that my grandma can *install* and use it that's important to me (or at least that I can guide her through the phone). Linux cannot yet do that effectively.
I do not use desktops and own only notebooks - it's hell getting things to work in Linux. Want the widescreen resolution? Wireless? Sound? Video card? USB? Firewire? That printer? At least a few of those would require me to tweak the system to make things work, if at all. At that point, I give up. It's not because I cannot but because I do not want to.
The system should never mess up to the point that I will have to open terminal and do something. Or require that I know even a single shell command to make things work. The moment that happens, it just isn't really user-friendly. It's geek-friendly, but not friendly enough for the common person to use it.
I think there is a little computer programmer in all of us - programming by itself isn't particularly hard, it's just the esoteric knowledge that is hard to master. Of course, actual CS is different (graphics, algorithms, machine learning, theory, network algorithms) but programming isn't particularly special.
Besides, everybody in every area does some amount of programming these days - embedded programming for chips and the like, programming in electronics for FPGAs and ICs, simulation and modelling in physics, mathematics, finance and economics etc. I programming is a useful skill to have, but isn't very special in and of itself.
And for historical examples more in programming, we can cite sentient AI
I doubt the development of sentient AI is related to programming; it's got more to do with other areas such as machine learning, statistics, cognitive science and the like.
A lot of companies offshore do have employees with fake resumes. I know people from several "top" offshoring companies with resumes that look good but are full of crap. In a lot of countries (including India), your ability is gauged to be proportional to the length of your resume - you will find people with 4-5 page resumes and it gets ridiculous. If you have several years of experience and/or are a PhD with a godawful number of publications, two or three pages. Else, just give me a page long resume and nothing more. Of course, I am in R&D and usually people are sometimes asked to submit their CVs, which can be as long as they like.
Secondly, these companies (HCL, TCS, Wipro, Infosys) hire engineers from all over the place. For instance, I know people who studied material sciences or marine engineering working as IT contractors or consultants. How much sense does it make? Of course, the reason they are hired is because you assume that having an engineering degree is representative of some level of analytical/quantitative skills. Which, of course, isn't always true because their hiring is a function of their academic performance. Once again, it boils down to the fact that academic performance != skill, which becomes especially true in an goal/achievement-oriented culture like India.
On top of this, a lot of companies are known to add people to more than one project at a time. So, while you are technically a part of the project, you do not really do much. At the end of the day, your resume mentions several projects over a frame of just a few years, but you haven't really deserve putting them there.
Add all this and you have the average resume from one of these companies looking way better than the average US kid. Any surprise then, that these kids aren't getting hired?
(I'm not saying that all of this is true for everybody; obviously there are exceptions and some are better/worse than others, but there is definitely a significant percentage of people for whom this is true.)
Exactly. While programming is not the only aspect of computer science, it is easily the most important.
I disagree.
Programming is in fact a very small portion of Computer Science. Actual CS is more math than anything else (theoretical CS, graphics, algorithms, graph theory, routing algorithms, optimization, machine learning, statistical models, simulation and modelling etc).
Now, IT is something else, but please do not say that programming is the most important aspect of computer science.
What does equality as in ability have to do with equality as in quantity? Absolutely nothing: try again.
Equality as in ability is also not particularly true. I'm very good at handling quantitative tasks, but I suck at qualitative tasks. My girlfriend, even though she is an engineer, is extremely good at both. On the other hand, I am a lot faster and creative with my solutions than she is.
There are people I know compared to whom I am most certainly better skilled in every way. Similarly, I also know several people who are definitely better skilled at most things than I will ever be.
We are all not really equal. Some are bigger, some are smaller, some are smarter, some are born rich, some have oodles of luck (Malachi Constant comes to mind) while some just are sad blokes. And equality as a quantity is not necessarily true, either. I mean, if it were, we should have as many physicists as there are law majors, should we not?
It is one thing to treat everybody equal, but it's an entirely different thing to cast a blanket statement of equal ability over folks.
Now, there maybe women who are better than men in what men are supposedly good at and vice versa, but that doesn't mean much, either. At the end of the day, ability isn't the only factor, it is also interest. Someone who is very good at physics but loves English literature may be mediocre in their literature skills, but would never love physics the way they would love English - notwithstanding the fact that they are good at Physics.
To blindly equate ability with just skill is ridiculous because some of the best physicists and mathematicians I know aren't necessarily the smartest but are the most persistent.
A woman who may have the knack for the sciences but has spent her entire life doing English literature has already lost the opportunity to hone her mathematical and analytical skills over the years in physics. And that would not happen unless she really *liked* the subject.
I'm guessing that is the point the OP was trying to make.
And oh, as a subscriber, notifying editors about mistakes in the post usually works - but for whatever reason, our beloved editor Zonk seems not to do anything about it.
Slashdot Mirror
In fact, she mentions it in her blog, as well (emphasis mine):
Actually, several Mom & Pop stores that I know post bounced checks on their walls after scrubbing out the account numbers and other details. While not the same as pictures, they usually do contain personal information (e.g. name & address) of the person.
The idea is that if your check bounces, they lose money and have a right to tell that to the world.
"Ihr Papieren, bitte!"
Does that do it for you? History often repeats itself, and people often fail to learn from it.
You're right about the investors bit, of course, but I just wanted to point this part out.
You know, I had mod points and was going to mod it +1 sad, but I simply *had* to tell you that. :)
Sad, that.
The one thing I will agree to is that Apple notebooks have some of the best battery lives I've seen.
:)
Everytime I've used an iBook or a Powerbook, I'm amazed at how long the battery lasts. While some other brands (e.g. Dell) have decent battery life compared to others (e.g. HP and Toshiba, at least in my experience), I'm always knocked off by Apple notebooks' battery life.
Now if only Apple notebooks had two mouse buttons instead of hacks around it.
Exactly.
It's not right, but it's not a crime -- after all, virtual killing (i.e. games) isn't a crime.
Wil McCarthy has an interesting book called Hacking Matter, which talks about Quantum Dots and explains a bunch of applications.
Quite an interesting read, and well written. And I think you can download the book online at his website, as well.
Highly recommended - entertaining, informative read.
The thing is, Slashdot took off the Scientology crap because they were served a legal notice.
Also, Slashdot also provided a detailed writeup on what had happened, why they were taking down the said comments (which happened to paste entire texts) and gave some pointers on finding the said information.
Which is completely different from Digg removing the story and not telling anyone about it (until of course the users discovered it). And their response was an after-the-fact event, made worse by the fact that Digg receives sponsorship for Diggnation from the very folks this thing seems to piss off.
The two are completely different, and Slashdot did it right. Digg did not do it right and the users are revolting. More power to them.
The fortune cookie at the bottom of the page reads -
"Anyone attempting to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin." -- John Von Neumann
Indeed.
Ah, if you are looking at VTK based software, you should look at MayaVi. It lets you do some fantastic scientific visualization and has a neat GUI, too. And oh, you can also do some really cool CFD stuff with it. Check out the screenshots.
Back in the day, I used to be friends with the guy who did this stuff (met him at one of the LUGs). Turns out that he's now a prof at one of the better schools in India.
Anyway, Mathematica rocks, too. There is a lot more that you can do and it has some pretty neat capabilities. Besides, the strength of Mathematica is not merely the engine, it is the libraries and the wealth of demos and code out there.
Not disagreeing with that, but I am talking about convenience.
For instance, I needed a webcam quite urgently - so I went to eBay and found a good, cheap one. It was small, good, had white LEDs and cost me $9.99 plus shipping. It came with a driver CD and works like a charm on Windows but does not on Linux.
Now, the same goes for the $2.50 bluetooth dongle that I purchased off eBay. Or for a slew of other USB devices that I use.
Most hardware is designed to work with Windows, for whatever reason. The moment I have to worry about whether or not my hardware works, you are taking away my options. That was my point.
Go say that to a hot-rodder. And please spare me the ridiculous car analogies.
Most hardware out there works on Windows - the ones that work on Linux *also* work on Windows. And you're missing my point completely - you are having me care about my hardware. As an end user, I only care that I can buy the best hardware and that it runs. If you can't do that, it is the OS' loss.
And not that don't have Linux running - I do run Linux on some boxes, it's just not my thing for regular day-to-day usage. For the desktop, Windows beats Linux hands down any day. I only wish that Linux folks understood that it is not my problem that a hardware is not supported - if Linux cannot run it, I will buy the hardware anyway. I will simply not use Linux.
Thank you. My thoughts exactly.
I think that an OS should be intuitive, and require as little expertise as possible to use.
The problem with Linux is that it is impossible to get it to do what you want without some serious tweaking, and that usually requires you to either type something in a terminal or edit a file. As long as that is the case, Windows will always be considered superior just because of the ease of use.
It's not the fact that my grandma can use it, it's the fact that my grandma can *install* and use it that's important to me (or at least that I can guide her through the phone). Linux cannot yet do that effectively.
I do not use desktops and own only notebooks - it's hell getting things to work in Linux. Want the widescreen resolution? Wireless? Sound? Video card? USB? Firewire? That printer? At least a few of those would require me to tweak the system to make things work, if at all. At that point, I give up. It's not because I cannot but because I do not want to.
The system should never mess up to the point that I will have to open terminal and do something. Or require that I know even a single shell command to make things work. The moment that happens, it just isn't really user-friendly. It's geek-friendly, but not friendly enough for the common person to use it.
What about Monad Shell?
Not Bash, but definitely a good shell. Besides, you can always install Cygwin on Windows.
Besides, everybody in every area does some amount of programming these days - embedded programming for chips and the like, programming in electronics for FPGAs and ICs, simulation and modelling in physics, mathematics, finance and economics etc. I programming is a useful skill to have, but isn't very special in and of itself.
I doubt the development of sentient AI is related to programming; it's got more to do with other areas such as machine learning, statistics, cognitive science and the like.
In British English (and in Indian English, afaik), mathematics is referred to as maths. In the US, it's referred to as math.
Just a difference in terminology.
Sadly, this is true.
A lot of companies offshore do have employees with fake resumes. I know people from several "top" offshoring companies with resumes that look good but are full of crap. In a lot of countries (including India), your ability is gauged to be proportional to the length of your resume - you will find people with 4-5 page resumes and it gets ridiculous. If you have several years of experience and/or are a PhD with a godawful number of publications, two or three pages. Else, just give me a page long resume and nothing more. Of course, I am in R&D and usually people are sometimes asked to submit their CVs, which can be as long as they like.
Secondly, these companies (HCL, TCS, Wipro, Infosys) hire engineers from all over the place. For instance, I know people who studied material sciences or marine engineering working as IT contractors or consultants. How much sense does it make? Of course, the reason they are hired is because you assume that having an engineering degree is representative of some level of analytical/quantitative skills. Which, of course, isn't always true because their hiring is a function of their academic performance. Once again, it boils down to the fact that academic performance != skill, which becomes especially true in an goal/achievement-oriented culture like India.
On top of this, a lot of companies are known to add people to more than one project at a time. So, while you are technically a part of the project, you do not really do much. At the end of the day, your resume mentions several projects over a frame of just a few years, but you haven't really deserve putting them there.
Add all this and you have the average resume from one of these companies looking way better than the average US kid. Any surprise then, that these kids aren't getting hired?
(I'm not saying that all of this is true for everybody; obviously there are exceptions and some are better/worse than others, but there is definitely a significant percentage of people for whom this is true.)
I just find it way easier to pay an tax preparer to do it for me.
Easier and less of a headache. Besides, they tend to get you more savings than you would by yourself.
Exactly. While programming is not the only aspect of computer science, it is easily the most important.
I disagree.
Programming is in fact a very small portion of Computer Science. Actual CS is more math than anything else (theoretical CS, graphics, algorithms, graph theory, routing algorithms, optimization, machine learning, statistical models, simulation and modelling etc).
Now, IT is something else, but please do not say that programming is the most important aspect of computer science.
Equality as in ability is also not particularly true. I'm very good at handling quantitative tasks, but I suck at qualitative tasks. My girlfriend, even though she is an engineer, is extremely good at both. On the other hand, I am a lot faster and creative with my solutions than she is.
There are people I know compared to whom I am most certainly better skilled in every way. Similarly, I also know several people who are definitely better skilled at most things than I will ever be.
We are all not really equal. Some are bigger, some are smaller, some are smarter, some are born rich, some have oodles of luck (Malachi Constant comes to mind) while some just are sad blokes. And equality as a quantity is not necessarily true, either. I mean, if it were, we should have as many physicists as there are law majors, should we not?
It is one thing to treat everybody equal, but it's an entirely different thing to cast a blanket statement of equal ability over folks.
Now, there maybe women who are better than men in what men are supposedly good at and vice versa, but that doesn't mean much, either. At the end of the day, ability isn't the only factor, it is also interest. Someone who is very good at physics but loves English literature may be mediocre in their literature skills, but would never love physics the way they would love English - notwithstanding the fact that they are good at Physics.
To blindly equate ability with just skill is ridiculous because some of the best physicists and mathematicians I know aren't necessarily the smartest but are the most persistent.
A woman who may have the knack for the sciences but has spent her entire life doing English literature has already lost the opportunity to hone her mathematical and analytical skills over the years in physics. And that would not happen unless she really *liked* the subject.
I'm guessing that is the point the OP was trying to make.
And oh, as a subscriber, notifying editors about mistakes in the post usually works - but for whatever reason, our beloved editor Zonk seems not to do anything about it.