It's not really a proof, but violence has been decreasing in the U.S. for 20 years which is coincident with the huge increase in video game playing. So it seems a reasonable conjecture that video games reduce violence. Possible reasons include kids working out their aggression in a virtual world and kids simply having loads of fun. Having loads of fun keeps them off the streets and reduces their interaction with criminals. There might be some unstable people who confuse the real world and the game world, but so far it seems pretty clear that video games are not a disaster for public safety.
Nice discussion! I have run OpenVPN over port 80 TCP in order to get past a firewall. It worked but a little later I tried port 80 UDP. It worked better. I was happy to discover an unblocked UDP port for my needs.
There are 2 mechanisms which the C library uses to return memory to the OS. First if a certain amount of memory at the end of the data segment is free, it can reduce the size of the data segment. Second (known to work under Linux) if a process allocates large amounts (like 128KB) the memory allocator can use a different form of memory allocation (mmap for Linux). When this large block is freed it can be immediately returned to the OS. I was suggesting a way that memory could remain allocated. The original intent behind malloc retaining freed memory within a process was to allow the process to re-use the memory for subsequent allocations. This concept can be abused by processes which allocate different sized blocks leaving internal fragmentation with many chunks of memory too small to use. I would expect programmers for long running programs to guard against this problem. If I were writing Firefox I would try to compartmentalize the memory used for a tab so that all memory for a tab would be released to the OS when the tab was closed. I have read that Firefox has adopted a different allocator which may have solved the problem. I too have not studied Firefox code, but I expect that they do pretty well.
I wasn't really trying to refute your point. I was referring to someone who might have something like a lot of tabs open requiring lots of RAM, possibly running Javascript. Subsequently after closing most of the JS tabs, I would expect Chrome to use less RAM than Firefox under the same scenario. There might clearly be cases where the opposite is true. The memory usage charts you linked to are interesting. I am surprised that Chrome uses twice as much RAM. I would expect the code for the program to be present in memory once for all the Chrome processes which would mean the usage should be similar. I don't believe the article told how they measured RAM usage. It is also interesting that after dropping back to 1 tab, Firefox made it back to the same size as Chrome. This would seem to mean than Firefox under Windows is actually giving RAM back to the OS. I am unsure of Windows details, but it is cool if it does. My intent was to offer some explanation for how the first person mentioning RAM issues with Firefox might have noticed something real. The description given seems to match my assessment. Usage varies. As cheap as RAM is the real solution is to buy more RAM. Neither browser should be much of a memory hog with 16 GB.
Chrome runs a separate process for each window. I'm pretty sure Firefox is 1 process. With 1 process normally freeing memory does not return it to the OS. So closing a Firefox tab would not really shrink the Firefox process, while closing a Chrome tab would end a process and return its memory to the OS for re-use. It makes sense that Chrome might be better memory usage after extended use.
I have read several articles about the "standards" in Florida and Virginia. This article fails to make things clear. The race based standards are supposed to be used to assess the effectiveness of teaching, not to determine whether individual students pass or fail. The requirements for an individual student to pass are the same regardless of race. The goal for No Child Left Behind is to have 100% of the kids achieve at grade level on standardized tests. Now imagine that you teach at an all black school. Without attributing causes it would be very hard for 100% of those students to reach grade level in 5 years or so. If you taught at an all Asian school, getting to 100% in 5 years would be far easier. So let's assume that the black school went up from 40% to 70%, while the Asian school went from 70% to 80%. Did the teachers at the black school do a good job or a bad job. I would call going up 30% pretty good.
The problem with the article is it leaves the impression that students will make passing grades with lower scores based on being members of certain races. This would be discriminatory and hopefully the courts would agree and change that.
Now making the goals for schools (not individual students) based on race has some merit. I think that a better solution would be to base the goal on each school's current performance level. This leaves race out of the analysis and is fairer to schools with different socio-economic backgrounds. A school with students from poor families is likely to have lower performance than a school whose students have professional parents (doctors, lawyers, engineers,...). This will be true regardless of their racial mix. Now if someone from the affected states would suggest different goals for different schools, perhaps they can eliminate a stupid plan.
It isn't unique to CS, but it is more pronounced. I think it is because with CS there is a bigger dichotomy between people that "get it' and people that are just inherently incapable of the complex abstract reasoning needed for programming. Additionally, CS tends to attract people more comfortable dealing with "things" than with people, so they often lack the social skills to temper their arrogance when it is inappropriate.
Abstraction is a relative thing. I started out in Math and started a Ph.D. program in Math and decided the abstraction had gone a little far. I recall one class where the professor proved the existence of "Ghost Sets" before Halloween. Of course existence in Math means a logical conclusion based on some premises. As far as I can tell, there is no practical relation between Ghost Sets and the real world. I eventually got a M.S. in Math and a Ph.D. in Computer Science. For me the CS concepts seemed pretty concrete (well, excepting Theory of Computation). On the other hand high school algebra is too abstract for a lot of people. Having taught CS I agree that there is a big difference between the people who get it and those who don't.
I totally agree about plumbers. I can do most labor around my house, but I limit plumbing to replacing toilet floats and flappers. I have tried working with copper tubing and compression fittings and decided that I could afford to pay a plumber.
No, unfortunately by your own standards you are arrogant here. Its how you deliver the information. Patience and tolerance for ignorance go a long way towards people having respect for your knowledgebase.
I consult for a living. Having the knowledge is the relatively easy part. Being able to deliver it to the client in a way which will allow them to understand their ignorance, and the content of your information bolus, without making them feel stupid and inferior... That takes diplomacy, and compassion, and work. When you can interact with others on a subject which you are expert in and they are not, without making them feel inferior and imparting part of your knowledge to them at the same time, then you are a success.
Go, Chuck! I would mod your comment up if I had points.
The percentage not paying income tax was about 34% in 2000. The big change is largely a result of the Bush tax cuts. Now the party which instituted the change complains about their own policy.
It is also a bit dishonest to complain about these people as paying no taxes. Many of these are retirees who have spent a lifetime paying taxes and most of the others pay Social Security and a host of other taxes. It would be interesting to learn the percentage of total taxes paid by these "non-payers" and compare that to Romney. I doubt that reliable numbers can be found but I expect that a majority of Americans pay a higher percentage of total taxes than Romney who complained about the 47%.
The concept of people voting themselves more money out of the general tax fund is interesting. This is precisely why so many wealthy people are "investing" in this election.
Perhaps sudden release of an enormous amount of C02. Suppose this works fairly well. We could sequester carbon for 50 years and then something could happen like another meteor from Mars and damage the refrigeration required. BAM! Sudden global climate chaos. Perhaps people will survive with the carbon intact for hundreds of years and society could degenerate. Then it would be a matter of time before lack of maintenance leads to failure.
I think we would be much better off seeking sequestration in soil enrichment through compost. Another possibility might be to stir up some of the ocean bottom in the dead part of the Pacific and stimulate life there.
How about taxing short term capital gains at a high rate to discourage usec trading? Stock held for very short times is not really beneficial to society. The fast traders are siphoning money from the market. They should be taxed enough to force them to look for another job.
Obama has been President while the Republicans have been the party of "NO". They have blocked numerous attempts to revive the economy with the obvious goal being to leave the economy in the ditch which poor leadership got us into. So, while Obama has been President, saying that he was in charge for the last 3.5 years is ignoring the facts.
One has to wonder why the $2 trillion+ in taxes we pay every year don't buy us as much influence over the legislative process as $100,000 in campaign contributions by various corporate interests. Why aren't election campaigns funded by tax dollars instead of private donations?
Excellent point! My way of stating this is that those who buy our government through various contributions are getting control of the biggest economy and largest army on the planet for a dirt cheap price.
With a western government involved, is it much more of a stretch to include assistance from Microsoft and even the AV companies? These companies might feel a sense of duty and might earn a lot of money to boot.
Just think in 2032 all these silly patents will have expired and software will be free from this legal nightmare. Unless -- the government extends the life span of patents to 40 years or there might be a whole slew of new patents for quantum computers or computers with monkey brain memory. You know in your heart that this is all non-productive and unfair. You also know that our corporatocracy will never give up any perceived monopoly powers.
Well, I doubt that the factions could agree on anything, but I think, in the interests of providing information, Google could place both Persian Gulf and Arabian Gulf in the same part of the ocean. The labels are somewhat meaningless anyway since there is in truth only 1 ocean on the planet.
No, I'm not suggesting that the current system is ideal. I'm suggesting using print-on-demand services like CreateSpace to produce cheaper textbooks. The author can sell a book for about $30 and make more money per copy. Also the author can sell a digital copy on Amazon and B&N for $9.99 and make 70% on Amazon and 65% on B&N. There are other similar digital alternatives. This allows competition for book production. Authors across the nation can compete for part of the California market, based on price and quality. I see no need for California to subsidize the effort.
I have self-published an assembly language textbook, so I am somewhat familiar with the choices. There is no real need for textbooks to be mass-produced and sold by the big publishers. The Internet and modern technology offer better alternatives.
There are 2 big questions: How to get instructors to try an author-published book and how to get instructors to care about the students' money. An individual author trying to sell an inexpensive book can't afford to send out thousands of free copies. Competing with the big publishers is hard, but I see this as part of the solution.
So we have finally realized that lasers make sense for long-distance communications. Isn't this likely to have been realized by aliens a long time ago? I think this is why SETI hasn't found alien signals. The aliens use laser or possibly something better. We are unlikely to detect any civilizations more advanced than our own over radio.
I'm 58 and still do a lot of programming. It is in the nature of the job to keep learning. I teach CS at a a university and learn new things regularly. I dove into shader languages and the new style of GL programming this spring. I think I can learn fairly readily, though I do get a little tired of looking up things I already know perfectly well how to do in C/C++. I assume this comes with experience more than simply age. 40 is fairly young for thinking you might be a little old for learning new things. I hope to remain capable of learning new things until I die. Having my brain start to malfunction is not a happy thought.
Some of the posts mention that experienced programmers can bring better solutions to the the table. This is true for those who work and study. It is not a natural result of aging or of continuing to program the same type of application over and over again. This kind of thinking usually results from having worked on a variety of project requiring different solution techniques.
Programming was simpler when I started in 1976. On my first job I recall reading the ANSI standard manual for Fortran 77. It was short enough that I knew essentially the whole language. C++ is probably about 10 times more language to learn than Fortran 77 and I don't think I have it all memorized. Added to that is the enormity of libraries available. Any libraries I used on the first job were locally developed and extremely small (16 bit computers with 64KB program size). Today the library possibilities are endless. No one can be an expert in all the libraries available for C++. The essential requirement for success in programming (other than programming skill) is the willingness to learn.
I seriously doubt that most people with 35 years programming experience would be much better than 25 year olds with 10 years experience. I think I am pretty good, but the best of the graduates from our program are probably pretty close to equal in skill by 25. Age may bring wisdom, but not even that is guaranteed.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not really a proof, but violence has been decreasing in the U.S. for 20 years which is coincident with the huge increase in video game playing. So it seems a reasonable conjecture that video games reduce violence. Possible reasons include kids working out their aggression in a virtual world and kids simply having loads of fun. Having loads of fun keeps them off the streets and reduces their interaction with criminals. There might be some unstable people who confuse the real world and the game world, but so far it seems pretty clear that video games are not a disaster for public safety.
Nice discussion! I have run OpenVPN over port 80 TCP in order to get past a firewall. It worked but a little later I tried port 80 UDP. It worked better. I was happy to discover an unblocked UDP port for my needs.
There are 2 mechanisms which the C library uses to return memory to the OS. First if a certain amount of memory at the end of the data segment is free, it can reduce the size of the data segment. Second (known to work under Linux) if a process allocates large amounts (like 128KB) the memory allocator can use a different form of memory allocation (mmap for Linux). When this large block is freed it can be immediately returned to the OS. I was suggesting a way that memory could remain allocated. The original intent behind malloc retaining freed memory within a process was to allow the process to re-use the memory for subsequent allocations. This concept can be abused by processes which allocate different sized blocks leaving internal fragmentation with many chunks of memory too small to use. I would expect programmers for long running programs to guard against this problem. If I were writing Firefox I would try to compartmentalize the memory used for a tab so that all memory for a tab would be released to the OS when the tab was closed. I have read that Firefox has adopted a different allocator which may have solved the problem. I too have not studied Firefox code, but I expect that they do pretty well.
I wasn't really trying to refute your point. I was referring to someone who might have something like a lot of tabs open requiring lots of RAM, possibly running Javascript. Subsequently after closing most of the JS tabs, I would expect Chrome to use less RAM than Firefox under the same scenario. There might clearly be cases where the opposite is true. The memory usage charts you linked to are interesting. I am surprised that Chrome uses twice as much RAM. I would expect the code for the program to be present in memory once for all the Chrome processes which would mean the usage should be similar. I don't believe the article told how they measured RAM usage. It is also interesting that after dropping back to 1 tab, Firefox made it back to the same size as Chrome. This would seem to mean than Firefox under Windows is actually giving RAM back to the OS. I am unsure of Windows details, but it is cool if it does. My intent was to offer some explanation for how the first person mentioning RAM issues with Firefox might have noticed something real. The description given seems to match my assessment. Usage varies. As cheap as RAM is the real solution is to buy more RAM. Neither browser should be much of a memory hog with 16 GB.
Chrome runs a separate process for each window. I'm pretty sure Firefox is 1 process. With 1 process normally freeing memory does not return it to the OS. So closing a Firefox tab would not really shrink the Firefox process, while closing a Chrome tab would end a process and return its memory to the OS for re-use. It makes sense that Chrome might be better memory usage after extended use.
I have read several articles about the "standards" in Florida and Virginia. This article fails to make things clear. The race based standards are supposed to be used to assess the effectiveness of teaching, not to determine whether individual students pass or fail. The requirements for an individual student to pass are the same regardless of race. The goal for No Child Left Behind is to have 100% of the kids achieve at grade level on standardized tests. Now imagine that you teach at an all black school. Without attributing causes it would be very hard for 100% of those students to reach grade level in 5 years or so. If you taught at an all Asian school, getting to 100% in 5 years would be far easier. So let's assume that the black school went up from 40% to 70%, while the Asian school went from 70% to 80%. Did the teachers at the black school do a good job or a bad job. I would call going up 30% pretty good.
The problem with the article is it leaves the impression that students will make passing grades with lower scores based on being members of certain races. This would be discriminatory and hopefully the courts would agree and change that.
Now making the goals for schools (not individual students) based on race has some merit. I think that a better solution would be to base the goal on each school's current performance level. This leaves race out of the analysis and is fairer to schools with different socio-economic backgrounds. A school with students from poor families is likely to have lower performance than a school whose students have professional parents (doctors, lawyers, engineers, ...). This will be true regardless of their racial mix. Now if someone from the affected states would suggest different goals for different schools, perhaps they can eliminate a stupid plan.
I'm pretty sure that's not unique to CS students.
It isn't unique to CS, but it is more pronounced. I think it is because with CS there is a bigger dichotomy between people that "get it' and people that are just inherently incapable of the complex abstract reasoning needed for programming. Additionally, CS tends to attract people more comfortable dealing with "things" than with people, so they often lack the social skills to temper their arrogance when it is inappropriate.
Abstraction is a relative thing. I started out in Math and started a Ph.D. program in Math and decided the abstraction had gone a little far. I recall one class where the professor proved the existence of "Ghost Sets" before Halloween. Of course existence in Math means a logical conclusion based on some premises. As far as I can tell, there is no practical relation between Ghost Sets and the real world. I eventually got a M.S. in Math and a Ph.D. in Computer Science. For me the CS concepts seemed pretty concrete (well, excepting Theory of Computation). On the other hand high school algebra is too abstract for a lot of people. Having taught CS I agree that there is a big difference between the people who get it and those who don't.
I totally agree about plumbers. I can do most labor around my house, but I limit plumbing to replacing toilet floats and flappers. I have tried working with copper tubing and compression fittings and decided that I could afford to pay a plumber.
No, unfortunately by your own standards you are arrogant here. Its how you deliver the information. Patience and tolerance for ignorance go a long way towards people having respect for your knowledgebase.
I consult for a living. Having the knowledge is the relatively easy part. Being able to deliver it to the client in a way which will allow them to understand their ignorance, and the content of your information bolus, without making them feel stupid and inferior... That takes diplomacy, and compassion, and work. When you can interact with others on a subject which you are expert in and they are not, without making them feel inferior and imparting part of your knowledge to them at the same time, then you are a success.
Go, Chuck! I would mod your comment up if I had points.
http://www.roboromney.com
Thanks. Now I can generate the Romney I really like.
The percentage not paying income tax was about 34% in 2000. The big change is largely a result of the Bush tax cuts. Now the party which instituted the change complains about their own policy.
It is also a bit dishonest to complain about these people as paying no taxes. Many of these are retirees who have spent a lifetime paying taxes and most of the others pay Social Security and a host of other taxes. It would be interesting to learn the percentage of total taxes paid by these "non-payers" and compare that to Romney. I doubt that reliable numbers can be found but I expect that a majority of Americans pay a higher percentage of total taxes than Romney who complained about the 47%.
The concept of people voting themselves more money out of the general tax fund is interesting. This is precisely why so many wealthy people are "investing" in this election.
Perhaps sudden release of an enormous amount of C02. Suppose this works fairly well. We could sequester carbon for 50 years and then something could happen like another meteor from Mars and damage the refrigeration required. BAM! Sudden global climate chaos. Perhaps people will survive with the carbon intact for hundreds of years and society could degenerate. Then it would be a matter of time before lack of maintenance leads to failure.
I think we would be much better off seeking sequestration in soil enrichment through compost. Another possibility might be to stir up some of the ocean bottom in the dead part of the Pacific and stimulate life there.
RFC 906 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc906) from 1984 described booting over a network.
How about taxing short term capital gains at a high rate to discourage usec trading? Stock held for very short times is not really beneficial to society. The fast traders are siphoning money from the market. They should be taxed enough to force them to look for another job.
Obama has been President while the Republicans have been the party of "NO". They have blocked numerous attempts to revive the economy with the obvious goal being to leave the economy in the ditch which poor leadership got us into. So, while Obama has been President, saying that he was in charge for the last 3.5 years is ignoring the facts.
One has to wonder why the $2 trillion+ in taxes we pay every year don't buy us as much influence over the legislative process as $100,000 in campaign contributions by various corporate interests. Why aren't election campaigns funded by tax dollars instead of private donations?
Excellent point! My way of stating this is that those who buy our government through various contributions are getting control of the biggest economy and largest army on the planet for a dirt cheap price.
Now people can drive while watching porn...
Write once, run anywhere? Didn't they say that about Fortran? Write it all in Fortran and get off my lawn.
With a western government involved, is it much more of a stretch to include assistance from Microsoft and even the AV companies? These companies might feel a sense of duty and might earn a lot of money to boot.
Just think in 2032 all these silly patents will have expired and software will be free from this legal nightmare. Unless -- the government extends the life span of patents to 40 years or there might be a whole slew of new patents for quantum computers or computers with monkey brain memory. You know in your heart that this is all non-productive and unfair. You also know that our corporatocracy will never give up any perceived monopoly powers.
Well, I doubt that the factions could agree on anything, but I think, in the interests of providing information, Google could place both Persian Gulf and Arabian Gulf in the same part of the ocean. The labels are somewhat meaningless anyway since there is in truth only 1 ocean on the planet.
No, I'm not suggesting that the current system is ideal. I'm suggesting using print-on-demand services like CreateSpace to produce cheaper textbooks. The author can sell a book for about $30 and make more money per copy. Also the author can sell a digital copy on Amazon and B&N for $9.99 and make 70% on Amazon and 65% on B&N. There are other similar digital alternatives. This allows competition for book production. Authors across the nation can compete for part of the California market, based on price and quality. I see no need for California to subsidize the effort.
I have self-published an assembly language textbook, so I am somewhat familiar with the choices. There is no real need for textbooks to be mass-produced and sold by the big publishers. The Internet and modern technology offer better alternatives.
There are 2 big questions: How to get instructors to try an author-published book and how to get instructors to care about the students' money. An individual author trying to sell an inexpensive book can't afford to send out thousands of free copies. Competing with the big publishers is hard, but I see this as part of the solution.
>> that members of the open-source community have long disputed.
>Has long disputed. The community itself is singular.
The noun of the clause being criticized is "members" which is plural, so "have" is appropriate.
So we have finally realized that lasers make sense for long-distance communications. Isn't this likely to have been realized by aliens a long time ago? I think this is why SETI hasn't found alien signals. The aliens use laser or possibly something better. We are unlikely to detect any civilizations more advanced than our own over radio.
I'm 58 and still do a lot of programming. It is in the nature of the job to keep learning. I teach CS at a a university and learn new things regularly. I dove into shader languages and the new style of GL programming this spring. I think I can learn fairly readily, though I do get a little tired of looking up things I already know perfectly well how to do in C/C++. I assume this comes with experience more than simply age. 40 is fairly young for thinking you might be a little old for learning new things. I hope to remain capable of learning new things until I die. Having my brain start to malfunction is not a happy thought.
Some of the posts mention that experienced programmers can bring better solutions to the the table. This is true for those who work and study. It is not a natural result of aging or of continuing to program the same type of application over and over again. This kind of thinking usually results from having worked on a variety of project requiring different solution techniques.
Programming was simpler when I started in 1976. On my first job I recall reading the ANSI standard manual for Fortran 77. It was short enough that I knew essentially the whole language. C++ is probably about 10 times more language to learn than Fortran 77 and I don't think I have it all memorized. Added to that is the enormity of libraries available. Any libraries I used on the first job were locally developed and extremely small (16 bit computers with 64KB program size). Today the library possibilities are endless. No one can be an expert in all the libraries available for C++. The essential requirement for success in programming (other than programming skill) is the willingness to learn.
I seriously doubt that most people with 35 years programming experience would be much better than 25 year olds with 10 years experience. I think I am pretty good, but the best of the graduates from our program are probably pretty close to equal in skill by 25. Age may bring wisdom, but not even that is guaranteed.