That doesn't sound like data mining, nor complicated data mining even... just a simple markoff-chain driven text generator would do. Anything more complicated than that wouldn't be data mining either, but rather computer linguistics.
I don't think this bill will go very far, as it'd actually create a monopoly of the standard with the highest level of restrictions and virtually eliminate competition.
And even though there'd be great economic interest in creating a standard with a higher level of restriction than the one in use, it'd be a difficult market since you risk loosing all potential customers when a better competing standard is actually introduced.
The problem with getting minimum wage but sharing on the company profits is that employees aren't always in a decisive position when it comes to a company success.
I feel that bonuses are important in making sure that employees do their best, but it shouldn't go the other way, because then your making employees pay the cost of bad management/sales/etc.
The "$.99 a song" model favours punk records with less than 2 min a track over symphonic rock extravaganzas that would deliver eighty solid minutes of music at $2.97
How's that for market distortion?
That sounds to me as a layman's (i.e. journalist's) understanding of a quantum computer. Quantum computers can test all branches of a brute force algoritm at once (well, not exactly... but something close to that), and perhaps that can be interpreted as "running all applications simultaneously".
Also, AFAIK quantum computers should eventually run on virtually no power... and I see no reason for them not to be small, even if existing quantum computers are huge lab installations.
I use CVS for reusable components, though I intend to switch to subversion at some point.
For storing small algorithms, some simple functions missing from the development frameworks I work with (STL, MFC, JScript libraries), idioms, sample code, known bugs, etc. I have my own wiki server, and thoroughly recommend it. There are many ways to implement a wiki server... I, myself, use Mediawiki, which is the wiki software used to run wikipedia.
Advantages of a Wiki server: It provides versioning, everyone at my company can read it or edit it, it allows me to define it's structure as I go, it has it's own search engine, and reusing code is as simple as:
1 - Browse
2 - Copy
3 - Paste
4 -...
5 - Profit??
Word documents, along with other proprietary formats, especially ones which may or may not be able to be opened with future software, are a bad idea for information transfer.
I'm all for transferring PDF files instead of Word.DOCs, yet it worries me much more to be able to store the file in an editable format than to transfer or print it right now.
So... in that area, I find a much bigger need for an open standard format (in case anyone wonders HTML doesn't cut it either).
They note how television broadcasters are interested in this kind of technology to prohibit the loss of distribution rights to things like the Olympics."
Yeah, and sooner or later media execs will start restricting access to movie or music sites to local consumers, in order to be able to control international release dates just like they do in conventional media.
The problem with this is that in the *internet age*, people in the farthest reaches of the world (I live in Argentina, so I should know...) are exposed to all the hype sourrounding movie or CD releases, just like everybody else...
... an example? LOTR won't premiere here until january 17th... so, who can blame all the people desperately trying to download it through File Sharing systems?
Media companies should realize that delaying releases just doesn't cut it as in the snail mail times.
I guess I hate banner ads just like the average user, and have learned to usually just ignore them. However, it might interest all banner-ad people to know I have found myself clicking-through on some banner ads lately. I guess the last were a couple of Think-Geek ads. Why? They showed me, right away, the product advertised. In one case it was a digital camera, and the banner ad showed me enoguh details about it for me to click through for more information.
So I guess that the guidelines that apply to banner ads and myself are:
Show the goods : If the banner ad shows a photo or description with data of the product right away, instead of trying to lure 'clickers' with a too good to be true offer, it's honesty might be appreciated.
Link right : Links in banners should lead to the page describing the product advertised (when applicable). For instance, if I click on a banner ad for a digital camera at Think-Geek, the link should lead me to it, and not to the main page, or a more general 'offers of the week' page.
As a side not, I'd like to point out that whenever I fill web site surveys, that try to target the ads, the 'activities and hobbies' lists usually just don't cut it. For instance, I might tick the 'travel' box, as I like travelling around. Yet, I do budget travelling, and only to specific locations. I'm definitelly not interested in an offer from the Club Med or a car rental company. I could say similar things about ticking the 'music', 'movies' or 'computers' check boxes.
What's funny is that they actually expect the extra twenty cents to "(...)deter music pirates from illegally duplicating recorded works(...)".
Yeah right... like someone would go and buy a full price record (for a relatively big sum) just because the extra 21 cents makes the cost of blank media JUST TOO HIGH!!! I remember people making illegal copies when CDs were like almost twenty times more expensive than they are now (at least here in Argentina, where a new CD costs about 20-22 U$S and blank media goes for as low as.5 U$S).
Besides, if they're worried about losses due to napster, they should tax big hard drives and MP3 players, because I bet that's where most MP3 files end up.
Plus, if Vodafone can break the encryption, it wasn't really encrypted in the first place.
I mean, to give the customers a real sense of security, there shouldn't be any "copies" of the encryption keys except the ones on the phones. Else, in the end, you're trusting the encryption on a system administrator and a handful of technicians.
I took a small course in my university on quantum computers, lead by a physics professor. Right now, it seems, most advances in the theorical field (the technology seems to involve a mix of physics and chemistry) deal with quantum physics and linear algebra (is it called that in the states? I mean calculations on vectors, linear spaces, etc.) You should really get a solid grip on those subjects before advancing on Quantum computers.
I bet that if the Cybiko catches on, a patch will soon appear to allow the 'hop through my palm' feature be blocked. I, for one, would block it right away... why would I want other people to use my bandwith (potentially abusing it), and eat up my batteries with transmisions?
Don't get me wrong... I *know* that the same concept allows the internet (or the GNUTella network, for that matter) be what it is today... But if I'm away from home and have the need to access an email, check the news, or write a memo,
it'd be no good to have slow net access or run out of batteries because a couple of kids wanted to play Cybiko-Doom through my PDA.
I reckon something like this might happen in most companies trying to use XP.
One of it's preconcepts seems to be that the programmers are good (even *equally* good perhaps).
Though I happen to like the idea behind XP, I'd also like working at a company at which I could trust the code I've written to anyone else... I would never consider *that* where I work!:)
Regarding the person that destroyed your GF's code while refactoring, I'd like to point out that the book 'Refactoring' by Martin Fowler (Addison Wesley) is a must read. The refactoring techniques proposed are based on making sure that the code keeps working just like it did. It's also necessary to rely heavily on GOOD unit tests. The thing I like about Beck's approach, is that though it tries to shrink the time you spend designing while increasing the time you spend programming, it also tries to do things very methodically, leaving little to chance.
Most I learned about *good* coding I got from an OOP course I took. There are a couple of factors that explain this:
* In every Smalltalk environment most of the source is open.
* The code for the main methods of the main classes is mostly standard... probably as pretty as it can be.
* Code sharing is a *must* in the smalltalk community, hence good programmers try to make code very easy to understand (the best kind of code, in my opinion).
* Certain features of the language (inheritance, polymorphism, code blocks, etc.) make for very modular code and very short and to the point methods.
If you're interested in OOP you should give Smalltalk a look... there are many freely available environments, like Squeak, Smalltalk Express, Dolphin Smalltalk, etc. I also recommend Kent Beck's 'Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns' which is a very good coding style guide that mostly applies to smalltalk, though you can apply a couple of the rules it presents to Java and C++'. Also, the book 'Refactoring' by Martin Fowler (Addison Wesley) is worth a look, as it teaches (with Java examples, tough it also applies to C++ and Smalltalk) how to make code that's easy to change, easy to read, non-redundant and very modularized.
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That doesn't sound like data mining, nor complicated data mining even... just a simple markoff-chain driven text generator would do. Anything more complicated than that wouldn't be data mining either, but rather computer linguistics.
I don't think this bill will go very far, as it'd actually create a monopoly of the standard with the highest level of restrictions and virtually eliminate competition.
And even though there'd be great economic interest in creating a standard with a higher level of restriction than the one in use, it'd be a difficult market since you risk loosing all potential customers when a better competing standard is actually introduced.
The problem with getting minimum wage but sharing on the company profits is that employees aren't always in a decisive position when it comes to a company success. I feel that bonuses are important in making sure that employees do their best, but it shouldn't go the other way, because then your making employees pay the cost of bad management/sales/etc.
The "$.99 a song" model favours punk records with less than 2 min a track over symphonic rock extravaganzas that would deliver eighty solid minutes of music at $2.97 How's that for market distortion?
Everything I needed to know, I learned in Pacman.
That sounds to me as a layman's (i.e. journalist's) understanding of a quantum computer. Quantum computers can test all branches of a brute force algoritm at once (well, not exactly... but something close to that), and perhaps that can be interpreted as "running all applications simultaneously". Also, AFAIK quantum computers should eventually run on virtually no power... and I see no reason for them not to be small, even if existing quantum computers are huge lab installations.
I use CVS for reusable components, though I intend to switch to subversion at some point. For storing small algorithms, some simple functions missing from the development frameworks I work with (STL, MFC, JScript libraries), idioms, sample code, known bugs, etc. I have my own wiki server, and thoroughly recommend it. There are many ways to implement a wiki server... I, myself, use Mediawiki, which is the wiki software used to run wikipedia. Advantages of a Wiki server: It provides versioning, everyone at my company can read it or edit it, it allows me to define it's structure as I go, it has it's own search engine, and reusing code is as simple as: 1 - Browse 2 - Copy 3 - Paste 4 - ...
5 - Profit??
A C=128 I always used in C=64 mode, both for learning BASIC and gaming (before that I had a Mattel Intellevision for games).
So... in that area, I find a much bigger need for an open standard format (in case anyone wonders HTML doesn't cut it either).
The problem with this is that in the *internet age*, people in the farthest reaches of the world (I live in Argentina, so I should know...) are exposed to all the hype sourrounding movie or CD releases, just like everybody else...
Media companies should realize that delaying releases just doesn't cut it as in the snail mail times.
However, it might interest all banner-ad people to know I have found myself clicking-through on some banner ads lately. I guess the last were a couple of Think-Geek ads. Why? They showed me, right away, the product advertised. In one case it was a digital camera, and the banner ad showed me enoguh details about it for me to click through for more information.
So I guess that the guidelines that apply to banner ads and myself are:
As a side not, I'd like to point out that whenever I fill web site surveys, that try to target the ads, the 'activities and hobbies' lists usually just don't cut it. For instance, I might tick the 'travel' box, as I like travelling around. Yet, I do budget travelling, and only to specific locations. I'm definitelly not interested in an offer from the Club Med or a car rental company. I could say similar things about ticking the 'music', 'movies' or 'computers' check boxes.
What's funny is that they actually expect the extra twenty cents to "(...)deter music pirates from illegally duplicating recorded works(...)". Yeah right... like someone would go and buy a full price record (for a relatively big sum) just because the extra 21 cents makes the cost of blank media JUST TOO HIGH!!! I remember people making illegal copies when CDs were like almost twenty times more expensive than they are now (at least here in Argentina, where a new CD costs about 20-22 U$S and blank media goes for as low as .5 U$S).
Besides, if they're worried about losses due to napster, they should tax big hard drives and MP3 players, because I bet that's where most MP3 files end up.
Plus, if Vodafone can break the encryption, it wasn't really encrypted in the first place.
I mean, to give the customers a real sense of security, there shouldn't be any "copies" of the encryption keys except the ones on the phones. Else, in the end, you're trusting the encryption on a system administrator and a handful of technicians.
I took a small course in my university on quantum computers, lead by a physics professor. Right now, it seems, most advances in the theorical field (the technology seems to involve a mix of physics and chemistry) deal with quantum physics and linear algebra (is it called that in the states? I mean calculations on vectors, linear spaces, etc.) You should really get a solid grip on those subjects before advancing on Quantum computers.
I bet that if the Cybiko catches on, a patch will soon appear to allow the 'hop through my palm' feature be blocked. I, for one, would block it right away... why would I want other people to use my bandwith (potentially abusing it), and eat up my batteries with transmisions?
Don't get me wrong... I *know* that the same concept allows the internet (or the GNUTella network, for that matter) be what it is today... But if I'm away from home and have the need to access an email, check the news, or write a memo,
it'd be no good to have slow net access or run out of batteries because a couple of kids wanted to play Cybiko-Doom through my PDA.
I reckon something like this might happen in most companies trying to use XP. :)
One of it's preconcepts seems to be that the programmers are good (even *equally* good perhaps).
Though I happen to like the idea behind XP, I'd also like working at a company at which I could trust the code I've written to anyone else... I would never consider *that* where I work!
Regarding the person that destroyed your GF's code while refactoring, I'd like to point out that the book 'Refactoring' by Martin Fowler (Addison Wesley) is a must read. The refactoring techniques proposed are based on making sure that the code keeps working just like it did. It's also necessary to rely heavily on GOOD unit tests. The thing I like about Beck's approach, is that though it tries to shrink the time you spend designing while increasing the time you spend programming, it also tries to do things very methodically, leaving little to chance.
Most I learned about *good* coding I got from an OOP course I took. There are a couple of factors that explain this:
* In every Smalltalk environment most of the source is open.
* The code for the main methods of the main classes is mostly standard... probably as pretty as it can be.
* Code sharing is a *must* in the smalltalk community, hence good programmers try to make code very easy to understand (the best kind of code, in my opinion).
* Certain features of the language (inheritance, polymorphism, code blocks, etc.) make for very modular code and very short and to the point methods.
If you're interested in OOP you should give Smalltalk a look... there are many freely available environments, like Squeak, Smalltalk Express, Dolphin Smalltalk, etc. I also recommend Kent Beck's 'Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns' which is a very good coding style guide that mostly applies to smalltalk, though you can apply a couple of the rules it presents to Java and C++'. Also, the book 'Refactoring' by Martin Fowler (Addison Wesley) is worth a look, as it teaches (with Java examples, tough it also applies to C++ and Smalltalk) how to make code that's easy to change, easy to read, non-redundant and very modularized.