Are brilliant 15-year-old computer geeks running the world, upending existing institutions?
In a word, no.
Some have argued that geeks and nerds are committing a form of social parricide, turning on their parents and almost all other elders, as clueless, hostile and incompetent.
When did kids *not* regard their elders as "clueless, hostile, and incompetent" - and when did their elders not feel likewise about them? Never. It's basically a flavor of egocentrism: everyone thinks that they're devoting their energies to the most important things that are happening in the world. If they care about the relative "merit" of Britney Spears vs. Christina Aguilera, how could you *not* care? You must be an out-of-it doofus if you don't. If IMing and its shorthand are second nature to them, how could it be so difficult for you to get the knack? You must be a total boob. Striking closer to home, how could anyone in their right mind not know that Linux is better than Windows, or not care about the erosion of our liberties represented by the DMCA, or not be up-to-the-minute current on the latest crypto/infosec technology? Such people must be "clueless" indeed, right?
There is, however, one thing that's different about the current situation: on the net, nobody knows you're a dog. Anyone can pass themselves off as an expert, if they know just a tiny bit more than the people around them. There are millions of pseudo-experts out there on the net, and even more millions of totally ignorant people feeding the pseudo-experts' egos. As long as the pseudo-experts stay just one tiny step ahead of the people seeking their advice, the shallowness of their knowledge might not become apparent. That's particularly easy to do in the computer field, still more so in open source, when a reasonably intelligent person can dig in and find the answer to a specific question, and then lay claim to total mastery of that whole area of knowledge - with almost no danger of their ruse being discovered. Consultants have been doing this to corporations for decades. Now anyone can do it. The real barrier that has been broken is not the barrier to expertise itself, but to all-but-unassailable claims of expertise.
teaching cops conflict resolution might be helpful.
They often do receive such training. How many protesters do?
The real problem is that protests are viewed as a problem and no one gives a damn about what's being protested.
Yes, it is a shame that often no one - most notably most of the protesters - seems to care about the issues. Every protest I attend, it seems like the majority are there for the adrenaline rush, or publicity, or the social scene - anything but the issues.
Less snidely, the police are expected to be dispassionate regarding the issues under protest. They are not there for the issues; they are there to preserve public safety and the law. You might not like that, you might not like the laws, but there it is.
What the hell are cops doing protecting the corporations against the point of view of protestors?
That's not what they're doing. They're not protecting points of view; they're protecting people, and laws, and sometimes property, against inappropriate expressions of a POV. As mentioned before, they are dispassionate wrt the issues, and concerned only with preventing criminal acts - including politically motivated criminal acts.
The cops are following orders -- but who the hell is giving the order?
Proximately, the civil authorities. Ultimately ourselves, through our duly elected representatives. If you don't like it, elect someone else. This is a (representative) democracy, not rule of whoever shouts loudest.
Who's protecting the protestors?
Those same police. I almost wish that some corporation would be stupid enough to hire their own goons, so you could see those very same police protecting the protesters - which they most assuredly would do. What a conundrum that would create for the self-righteous cop haters.
Corporations should hire their own security.
They do, and that's why the protesters prefer to misbehave in public places. They're too cowardly to risk getting their asses kicked on private property with little or no legal recourse, so instead they subject the public to all the BS they claim is directed at the corporations.
"I would trust the judgment of trained law-enforcement professionals trying to maintain public order and public safety over that of a younger, immature, less circumspect agitator."
Basically, this quote says "Everyone participating in the protest is wrong and just an agitator - a malcontent - someone who we should lock up anyway."
No, it does not. There are plenty of pigs in the world, and there are also plenty of punks. Overall, though, the average policeman has far better training and discipline than the average rioter, and is motivated to preserve rather than undermine public safety. One might reasonably disagree with the colonel's overall views regarding correct balance between protest and public safety, but mis-paraphrasing him like that only makes you - and by extension your "side" - look dishonest.
Only some of them. What the colonel was probably getting at was that, in addition to all of the civil rights they legitimately and properly have, many people extend those rights in invalid ways or assume the existence of rights that do not in fact exist. For example, the right of free expression does not extend to arbitrary destructive or dangerous acts, no matter what pseudo-political excuse the perpetrators concoct. The colonel's point is quite valid.
Where's your evidence that 'they're just cheaper'???
You really should have read the article that this whole discussion is about, before you asked that. Consider these example quotes:
Sun Microsystems, a firm often cited by ITAA analyst (and later Senate Immigration Subcomittee staffer) Stuart Anderson as paying fair wages to foreign nationals, has boasted of employing programmers in Russia at ``bargain prices.'' [section 9.2.4]
an employer need only pay the prevailing wage for programmers in general, rather than the prevailing wage for, say, Java programmers. Thus the employer gets a Java programmer for the price of a generic programmer [section 9.2.5]
Note also that many H-1B workers have stated that after they are hired, they become ``indentured servants'' (see below) and may not get raises in salary like U.S. citizen/permanent resident workers do [section 9.2.5]
Silicon Valley headhunter Linda Tuerk said that in her experience, employers are saving a lot of money by hiring H-1B workers, no matter what the rules say.
``Companies are firing older, more-expensive workers - people making 80 grand - and they can turn right around and hire two people right off the plane for 45 grand each,'' Tuerk said
Silicon Valley headhunter Linda Tuerk said that in her experience, employers are saving a lot of money by hiring H-1B workers, no matter what the rules say. ``Companies are firing older, more-expensive workers - people making 80 grand - and they can turn right around and hire two people right off the plane for 45 grand each,'' Tuerk said [section 9.2.6]
An industry analyst in Bangalore, India quoted by MSNBC News in August 1997 also says that Indian programmers imported to the U.S. under the H-1B program make 30% less than their American peers. [section 9.2.7]
Note that an H-1B employee is essentially immobile during the years while the greencard is pending, thus refuting ITAA's argument that H-1Bs who are exploited in terms of salary can simply move to another job. [section 9.3.3]
It's not hard to find more in that vein, if you look. For example:
According to the USDOL, 80% of H-1B holders earn less than $50,000/year. In 1999, the median wage for H-1B holders in computer fields was $47,000. (For comparison, half of all IT professionals make more than $54,000 according to "InformationWeek".) [from http://www.programmersguild.org/Guild/H1BFAQ.htm]
A University of Michigan dean told of a prevailing wage of $66,851 for someone with an applications programmer degree...The prevailing wage listed for the Tata [Indian H1B job shop] employees at UCSD is $33,370. [from http://psyche.uthct.edu/nes/wwwboard/messages/174. html]
Admittedly, this is not quite the sort of hard data I myself would like to see. It is, however, far more convincing than the "evidence" you have offered for the opposing point of view. Where the hell is your proof? I guess it's possible that you and your "boatloads" represent the luckiest percentile or two of H1B workers. It's also possible that what seems like "boatloads" to you would be mere flotsam to others. Either way, I see no reason to accept your word over that of the other sources I've cited, and I see no reason why any other rational person would do so.
I'm on an H1B. I earn a boatload of money doing it
Good for you. Unfortunately, anecdotes are like assholes - everyone has 'em, and they're totally useless as a basis for debate. Would you like to bet on whether your "boatload" is typical or anomalous for those on H1B visas? If the latter, whose supposition would you say is flawed?
Can you suggest other words that (a) rhyme with "nerds" and "matters" and (b) express the appropriate degree of contempt for Slashdot vermin like yourself? No, didn't think so. Fuck off.
I'm inclined to agree with the poster who said you're a control-freak micro-managing jackass, for the following two reasons:
Among the candidates you rejected, there is no mention whatsoever of any attempt by you to gauge their overall capability. It's all about very narrowly defined, specific skills, like an obstacle course you set up to watch them run. This tactic and the likely real motivations behind it are explicitly addressed in the article, which you obviously didn't read (thus failing exactly the kind of specific-knowledge test you so delight in administering to others).
With regard to the consultant you did hire, there's no mention of judging the results of his work. Instead, it sounds like you just jumped into second-guessing him from day one, overriding what were probably mere style issues in the code etc. Managers should never assume they're better coders than those they manage. If you're spending that much time trying to do their jobs, you're obviously not doing your own. You should seek reassignment.
If you really feel you're such an alpha geek, get back in the trenches instead of being such a REMF (Rear Echelon Mother Fucker, from the military). What you're doing now is very one-sided. There's none of your code out there for them to critique, and you're the guy who decides raises or promotions so they can't afford to piss you off by responding to your criticism as you deserve. It's a power trip, pure and simple, and just reading about it makes my blood pressure rise. I shudder to think how infuriating and frustrating it is for those with the misfortune to work for you.
Secondly, let's consider this:
it doesn't take many times being burned by the "hire any bum off the street, just fill this technical position" attitude before you develop a very healthy caution about hiring the wrong person
So how does this justify hiring H1B workers instead of locals? Remember, that was the original topic. Is that H1B worker "the right person"? Will they be able to run through your little obstacle course any better than the local applicants you rejected? I doubt it. They're just cheaper. Suddenly it's not about skills after all, it's about dollars. It's also, IMO, often about hiring people who won't be threats to your own position or prestige. There's a group where I work that hires lots of foreigners, mostly Chinese and Indian/Pakistani. These folks are often underpaid for the work to do, and are afraid to complain much about that or anything else because the bosses have control over their visas. The bosses know that, too, and use the knowledge to act like feudal lords. You'd probably love that, wouldn't you? Upper management sees that payroll is low, so they don't mind, but in the meantime that group continues to put out inferior products because nobody dares to challenge the honchos' bad decisions. It's the high-tech equivalent of union-busting, and it's really quite sickening to watch.
Re:Because Ruby Rocks! :-)
on
Why not Ruby?
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· Score: 2
Often you're asking a class for a piece of data, and the class has the option of recomputing the data each time the accessor is called (easy to code) or caching the result as an instance variable
Often? No. Recomputed instance variables like that are *vastly* outnumbered by instance variables that are simply read and written, by one or two orders of magnitude. Why optimize for the extremely rare case? The same effect can be had with explicit accessors, which also give a clear signal to the programmer that there might be side effects and don't double your stack size by filling the stack with accessor frames (yes, it matters in some environments). A convenient notation for accessor functions would be nice for when they are appropriate, but making them the default is just a mistake.
You say there is a potential for abuse of accessors... what is it?
Any non-trivial accessor function might have side effects, including not just obvious side effects such as modification of a global but also delays (causing timeouts elsewhere in the code) or locking errors. Such problems, "hidden" in what the programmer might think is a simple variable access, can be a pain to debug. Besides that, there's always some idiot who thinks it's clever to override an accessor in a way that's incompatible with the original class designer's intent - leading to even "spookier" kinds of errors. Accessor functions have their uses, but using them safely requires more care than I give the average programmer credit for. Again, they should be available but not the default.
Re:Prioritizing efficiency
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Why not Ruby?
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· Score: 2
making run-time efficiency a significant language evaluation criteria is a mistake. What's critical is programming-time efficiency
That is correct but, as I already pointed out, language and implementation efficiency can sometimes affect efficiency issue if the programmer has to go outside the language and leave its semantic benefits behind to get adequate performance.
The commentary regarding variable punctuation is in the same league as negative criticism of python's indentation scoping mechanism
Again correct, and if you had read my other post on this topic you might have noticed that I already pointed out that both criticisms are similarly pointless. I only mentioned it because it was being touted as an *advantage* of Ruby when in fact - like Python's indentation - it's an unnecessary fixable/avoidable wart. In fact my point was rather anti-fascist, in that I explicitly objected to the way Ruby forces people to adhere to what should be a voluntary convention.
Your comments might be a lot more welcome if you'd try reading what you're responding to, and/or not paraphrasing others' previous statements as though they were your own unique insights.
For me, a good scripting language must have three features:
Clean syntax and a sane underlying conceptual model.
Sufficient power to perform complex tasks within the language itself.
A good extension interface so that you can write code in other languages and integrate it cleanly with the script language when necessary.
As it turns out, Perl and Tcl both fail with regard to #1 and #3, so I use Python. Ruby seems fully competitive to Python with regard to #1 and #2; sure, I find the use of variable punctuation to indicate scope abominable, but a lot of people loathe Python's use of indentation to indicate program structure, so I'm happy to call the race even.
That leaves #3 as the most important aspect distinguishing Ruby from Python. Does anyone know of a good description of Ruby's extension interface, or perhaps a good example of an extension module? I've become pretty comfortable with Python's extension interface, but there's some room for improvement. If Ruby's extension interface is cleaner and/or more powerful than Python's, then I might actually consider it as an alternative for my next project. Probably not, because it seems highly unlikely that Ruby's extension interface is *so* superior to Python's that it justifies the time investment and short-term loss of productivity that switching would inevitably require. The key point though, is not about what *I* as an established Python user might do. What's more important is how I should answer the next time *someone else* asks me which language to learn or use. If Ruby can meet this standard, my recommendation might well be to go with Ruby (even as I continue to use Python myself).
Re:Because Ruby Rocks! :-)
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Why not Ruby?
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· Score: 3
Everything is an object.
Such orthogonality has aesthetic merit, but is bad for performance. There are a lot of things one can do to reduce the cost, but there is a cost.
variable punctuation determines scope, not type
Variable punctuation is evil regardless of whether it determines scope or type. Sure, some people like putting an MFC-ish "m_" before member names etc., and they should be free to do so, but they shouldn't be forced to do so by the language.
Reading or writing from a class attribute is always a method call.
Again the performance issue rears its ugly head, and also the issue of assignments etc. having side effects. Sure, it can be "cool" to overload access/modification, e.g. to enforce range/consistency limits or to create "magic" variables such as r/theta when what you're really storing is x/y. However, the cost and potential for abuse aren't worth it. You can already get almost the same effect with explicit accessor functions, or with a keyword attached to declarations. People who really like being able to go in after the fact and change the semantics of an assignment in one of their classes can just always use the keyword; people who want to be able to do the same for other people's classes generally have no business doing so lest they cause all sorts of "spooky" failures when they violate the class implementation's internal dependencies.
BTW, I'm not really that hung up on performance, in the usual sense. If your application doesn't run fast enough in an interpreted (including byte-code interpreted) language, you should profile, refactor, and rewrite necessary portions in native code. However, I am concerned with performance in the sense that I hate to see billions upon billions of cycles wasted for little or no functional benefit. Machine cycles are cheap, but programmer cycles aren't. If a language runs 10% faster then that might be enough for some large number of applications, so instead of all that refactoring and rewriting I just mentioned the programmers can spend more time on adding features or making the program more robust.
Under the US Constitution I, as a US citizen, have certain inalienable rights pertaining to free speech (among other things).
That is correct. As I pointed out in my last post, the government has a responsibility to protect those rights, and that responsibility supersedes treaties and agreements like Hague.
A treaty that (may be) signed that I have had no say in can not over rule the laws I live by.
This is where you go astray. The same constitition that grants you the aforementioned inalienable rights also defines a form of government in which your duly elected representatives may enact and enforce laws, enter into treaties, etc. on your behalf, without consulting you. "Your say" is to take the initiative in informing those representatives of your wishes, and/or vote for someone else if you feel that you are not being adequately or properly represented. The idea that you are not bound by laws to which you did not personally and explicitly consent is ridiculous.
Similar concerns have been raised in recent controversies involving the death penalty. There are countries that will refuse to extradite criminals to the US if they believe those criminals are likely to be subject to the death penalty. This group includes some of the US's closest allies, and countries with whom the US has specific agreements or even treaties. Those countries don't care. They are willing to stand up for their view of a basic human right not to be executed by the state, superseding even alliances and treates.
Why is this relevant? Because it's all about rights, and about governments' responsibility to protect the rights of their citizens (and, occasionally, others). Would any US court, legislature, or executive agree to enforce other nations' laws that it believes violate basic rights? I doubt it. They know that the people (i.e. the voters) really like their rights, and will deeply resent having those rights trampled on. For example, American anti-gambling laws might be held to apply to a British site because, while there's no law against gambling in Britain, there's no constitutional right to gamble either. However, if the Chinese or Singaporeans expect the US to enforce their laws against criticism of the government they'll be disappointed, because we *do* have a constitutional right to free speech.
Looked at in one way, the laws a country might enforce under Hague would practically consist of the union of signatories' laws, minus those that the country in question considers to violate citizens' rights. Intellectual property laws, however you feel about them, are likely to remain in that set; I don't know of any country that considers the use of someone else's ideas or expressions to be a basic right. Slander and such are trickier. I'm still trying to sort through the issues of procedure, standing, limitations of rights under local law, etc. so I don't know how that one might play out.
As when he wrote about LambdaMOO, Dibbell has no idea whatsoever what he's talking about. Here are some examples.
the vast genre of fantasy fiction is, along with sci-fi, one of the two great narrative flows feeding the Nerd Nation's imaginative life, and nobody doubts that Tolkien single-handedly invented it
Lots of people, even among Tolkien's most devoted fans, would dispute the claim that Tolkien invented the genre. World-building fantasy has existed as a continuous tradition for millenia, from some of the earliest known writings to contemporaries of Tolkien such as Fritz Lieber and Lloyd Alexander. Tolkien's work brought this genre back into the mainstream from a relative backwater, but nobody in their right mind would claim he invented it.
Tolkien's take on "human existence"? A hard gig, certainly, full of danger and tough decisions, but fortunately not enough to threaten the wise Gandalf, the noble Aragorn, the sly Saruman, or any of Tolkien's other characters with more than the occasional moment of psychological complexity.
It's true that many of Tolkien's main characters are pretty "flat" and that even accounts for much of their appeal to younger readers. However, a closer reading will reveal more complexity than Dibbell gives credit for. Aragorn, Boromir, and Gandalf are not entirely unconflicted. The ambivalence of many elves and half-elves - Glorfindel, Elrond, Celeborn - is worthy of some thought. The corruption or degeneration of several characters - Theoden, Denethor, Saruman - is complex and interesting. Perhaps the most interesting character is Gollum; I used to spend many evenings wondering what must have been going on inside that slimy little head. If you go beyond LoTR and read the Silmarillion you find even more complex, conflicted characters. There's plenty of psychological complexity to Tolkien's work, if you're willing to read instead of skimming.
Strip away his meaning and what is left? Well, Middle Earth itself.
How absurd. You can't strip away the other elements, because it is those elements that make Middle Earth special. The peoples, the language, the history - all of those things considered rightly or wrongly to be the subject of allegory - are what makes Middle Earth more compelling and memorable than so many other laughable attempts at fantasy world-building.
Ick. I wish mutt would *die*, because of the broken way it puts the message body into an attachment. It's really annoying when I get mail from a mutt user and I have to open the attachment just to see the message text.
Spelling: aluminum, steel. Yeah, I know, you probably think spelling doesn't matter, but misspelling the core terms in what you're talking about makes you look like an idiot.
As the article you obviously didn't read thoroughly enough points out, aluminum is not stronger than steel in the way that matters. Pound for pound, aluminum has a 4-5% higher tensile strength than steel. However, the pound of aluminum will have a much greater volume, which means a wider cable, which means greater stresses from wind etc. and from ice in colder climates. Aluminum is also notoriously brittle, and has a smaller difference between yield vs. ultimate tensile strength. In other words, it will break where steel will stretch, and again the difference becomes even more important at lower temperatures. In conclusion, then, while aluminum does have advantages over steel for some applications, it is inferior to steel as a load-carrier for power lines.
It would actually be interesting to see the same sorts of comparisons between steel and the proposed glass fiber. Some kinds of glass have amazing tensile strength, but it's not clear whether those kinds are compatible with data transmission and glass in general is even more notoriously brittle than aluminum. It's likely to be far more complicated than "X is stronger than Y".
AMT is Alternative Minimum Tax. It's basically a whole parallel tax system meant to ensure that rich people don't take advantage of loopholes in the regular system to reduce their taxes to ridiculously low levels. In other words, it's basically an admission by the IRS that the regular tax system is broken. The reason you don't hear more about it is that it doesn't kick in at all until you reach a certain income level, so it only affects a relatively small percentage of taxpayers - though a phenomenon basically identical to "bracket creep" is causing that percentage to increase steadily.
The problem is that, in their zeal to close regular-system loopholes in the AMT, the IRS has in some cases gone too far. The situation with unrealized gains from buying and holding incentive stock options is just one example. It's tempting to say "tough luck, you should have sold before the end of the year" (thus deriving a loss after exercise that offsets the gain at exercise) but that's not entirely fair. The IRS has created a strong tax incentive to hold for a year, by treating long- and short-term capital gains differently. Given that it's their own attempt at social engineering that creates that incentive to hold, it seems unfair for them to turn around and smack people for doing so.
I think a lot of what's being said here is pretty off-base. I think the Maori people have every right to complain about the misappropriation and commoditization of cultural symbols. Where they go wrong is in treating those symbols as intellectual property. It's not. Words and images etc. already in common use - in any language - are not copyrightable and that's that. You can't claim copyright retroactively.
IMO Lego should offer to donate some of the profits from sale of the game to charities that help Polynesian people - not just Maori, BTW. Suits like this are the stock in trade of a few opportunistic pricks who have spent years taking advantage of their brown skin to line their own pockets with extortionate lawsuits, ruining the NZ economy in the process and generally doing exactly nothing to preserve Maori culture or improve the lot of the average Maori on the street. By making an offer to contribute to legitimate Polynesian-indigene causes and organizations, Lego would both be performing a culturally sensitive humanitarian act and showing up the charlatans for what they are (when they refuse to accept such a settlement because it doesn't make them rich).
Well done. It's too bad that the vast majority of this readership wouldn't recognize satire if it knocked them down and sat on them, because that was a fine example.
Slashdot Mirror
In a word, no.
When did kids *not* regard their elders as "clueless, hostile, and incompetent" - and when did their elders not feel likewise about them? Never. It's basically a flavor of egocentrism: everyone thinks that they're devoting their energies to the most important things that are happening in the world. If they care about the relative "merit" of Britney Spears vs. Christina Aguilera, how could you *not* care? You must be an out-of-it doofus if you don't. If IMing and its shorthand are second nature to them, how could it be so difficult for you to get the knack? You must be a total boob. Striking closer to home, how could anyone in their right mind not know that Linux is better than Windows, or not care about the erosion of our liberties represented by the DMCA, or not be up-to-the-minute current on the latest crypto/infosec technology? Such people must be "clueless" indeed, right?
There is, however, one thing that's different about the current situation: on the net, nobody knows you're a dog. Anyone can pass themselves off as an expert, if they know just a tiny bit more than the people around them. There are millions of pseudo-experts out there on the net, and even more millions of totally ignorant people feeding the pseudo-experts' egos. As long as the pseudo-experts stay just one tiny step ahead of the people seeking their advice, the shallowness of their knowledge might not become apparent. That's particularly easy to do in the computer field, still more so in open source, when a reasonably intelligent person can dig in and find the answer to a specific question, and then lay claim to total mastery of that whole area of knowledge - with almost no danger of their ruse being discovered. Consultants have been doing this to corporations for decades. Now anyone can do it. The real barrier that has been broken is not the barrier to expertise itself, but to all-but-unassailable claims of expertise.
They often do receive such training. How many protesters do?
Yes, it is a shame that often no one - most notably most of the protesters - seems to care about the issues. Every protest I attend, it seems like the majority are there for the adrenaline rush, or publicity, or the social scene - anything but the issues.
Less snidely, the police are expected to be dispassionate regarding the issues under protest. They are not there for the issues; they are there to preserve public safety and the law. You might not like that, you might not like the laws, but there it is.
That's not what they're doing. They're not protecting points of view; they're protecting people, and laws, and sometimes property, against inappropriate expressions of a POV. As mentioned before, they are dispassionate wrt the issues, and concerned only with preventing criminal acts - including politically motivated criminal acts.
Proximately, the civil authorities. Ultimately ourselves, through our duly elected representatives. If you don't like it, elect someone else. This is a (representative) democracy, not rule of whoever shouts loudest.
Those same police. I almost wish that some corporation would be stupid enough to hire their own goons, so you could see those very same police protecting the protesters - which they most assuredly would do. What a conundrum that would create for the self-righteous cop haters.
They do, and that's why the protesters prefer to misbehave in public places. They're too cowardly to risk getting their asses kicked on private property with little or no legal recourse, so instead they subject the public to all the BS they claim is directed at the corporations.
No, it does not. There are plenty of pigs in the world, and there are also plenty of punks. Overall, though, the average policeman has far better training and discipline than the average rioter, and is motivated to preserve rather than undermine public safety. One might reasonably disagree with the colonel's overall views regarding correct balance between protest and public safety, but mis-paraphrasing him like that only makes you - and by extension your "side" - look dishonest.
Only some of them. What the colonel was probably getting at was that, in addition to all of the civil rights they legitimately and properly have, many people extend those rights in invalid ways or assume the existence of rights that do not in fact exist. For example, the right of free expression does not extend to arbitrary destructive or dangerous acts, no matter what pseudo-political excuse the perpetrators concoct. The colonel's point is quite valid.
You really should have read the article that this whole discussion is about, before you asked that. Consider these example quotes:
It's not hard to find more in that vein, if you look. For example:
Admittedly, this is not quite the sort of hard data I myself would like to see. It is, however, far more convincing than the "evidence" you have offered for the opposing point of view. Where the hell is your proof? I guess it's possible that you and your "boatloads" represent the luckiest percentile or two of H1B workers. It's also possible that what seems like "boatloads" to you would be mere flotsam to others. Either way, I see no reason to accept your word over that of the other sources I've cited, and I see no reason why any other rational person would do so.
Good for you. Unfortunately, anecdotes are like assholes - everyone has 'em, and they're totally useless as a basis for debate. Would you like to bet on whether your "boatload" is typical or anomalous for those on H1B visas? If the latter, whose supposition would you say is flawed?
Can you suggest other words that (a) rhyme with "nerds" and "matters" and (b) express the appropriate degree of contempt for Slashdot vermin like yourself? No, didn't think so. Fuck off.
I'm inclined to agree with the poster who said you're a control-freak micro-managing jackass, for the following two reasons:
If you really feel you're such an alpha geek, get back in the trenches instead of being such a REMF (Rear Echelon Mother Fucker, from the military). What you're doing now is very one-sided. There's none of your code out there for them to critique, and you're the guy who decides raises or promotions so they can't afford to piss you off by responding to your criticism as you deserve. It's a power trip, pure and simple, and just reading about it makes my blood pressure rise. I shudder to think how infuriating and frustrating it is for those with the misfortune to work for you.
Secondly, let's consider this:
So how does this justify hiring H1B workers instead of locals? Remember, that was the original topic. Is that H1B worker "the right person"? Will they be able to run through your little obstacle course any better than the local applicants you rejected? I doubt it. They're just cheaper. Suddenly it's not about skills after all, it's about dollars. It's also, IMO, often about hiring people who won't be threats to your own position or prestige. There's a group where I work that hires lots of foreigners, mostly Chinese and Indian/Pakistani. These folks are often underpaid for the work to do, and are afraid to complain much about that or anything else because the bosses have control over their visas. The bosses know that, too, and use the knowledge to act like feudal lords. You'd probably love that, wouldn't you? Upper management sees that payroll is low, so they don't mind, but in the meantime that group continues to put out inferior products because nobody dares to challenge the honchos' bad decisions. It's the high-tech equivalent of union-busting, and it's really quite sickening to watch.
Often? No. Recomputed instance variables like that are *vastly* outnumbered by instance variables that are simply read and written, by one or two orders of magnitude. Why optimize for the extremely rare case? The same effect can be had with explicit accessors, which also give a clear signal to the programmer that there might be side effects and don't double your stack size by filling the stack with accessor frames (yes, it matters in some environments). A convenient notation for accessor functions would be nice for when they are appropriate, but making them the default is just a mistake.
Any non-trivial accessor function might have side effects, including not just obvious side effects such as modification of a global but also delays (causing timeouts elsewhere in the code) or locking errors. Such problems, "hidden" in what the programmer might think is a simple variable access, can be a pain to debug. Besides that, there's always some idiot who thinks it's clever to override an accessor in a way that's incompatible with the original class designer's intent - leading to even "spookier" kinds of errors. Accessor functions have their uses, but using them safely requires more care than I give the average programmer credit for. Again, they should be available but not the default.
That is correct but, as I already pointed out, language and implementation efficiency can sometimes affect efficiency issue if the programmer has to go outside the language and leave its semantic benefits behind to get adequate performance.
Again correct, and if you had read my other post on this topic you might have noticed that I already pointed out that both criticisms are similarly pointless. I only mentioned it because it was being touted as an *advantage* of Ruby when in fact - like Python's indentation - it's an unnecessary fixable/avoidable wart. In fact my point was rather anti-fascist, in that I explicitly objected to the way Ruby forces people to adhere to what should be a voluntary convention.
Your comments might be a lot more welcome if you'd try reading what you're responding to, and/or not paraphrasing others' previous statements as though they were your own unique insights.
For me, a good scripting language must have three features:
As it turns out, Perl and Tcl both fail with regard to #1 and #3, so I use Python. Ruby seems fully competitive to Python with regard to #1 and #2; sure, I find the use of variable punctuation to indicate scope abominable, but a lot of people loathe Python's use of indentation to indicate program structure, so I'm happy to call the race even.
That leaves #3 as the most important aspect distinguishing Ruby from Python. Does anyone know of a good description of Ruby's extension interface, or perhaps a good example of an extension module? I've become pretty comfortable with Python's extension interface, but there's some room for improvement. If Ruby's extension interface is cleaner and/or more powerful than Python's, then I might actually consider it as an alternative for my next project. Probably not, because it seems highly unlikely that Ruby's extension interface is *so* superior to Python's that it justifies the time investment and short-term loss of productivity that switching would inevitably require. The key point though, is not about what *I* as an established Python user might do. What's more important is how I should answer the next time *someone else* asks me which language to learn or use. If Ruby can meet this standard, my recommendation might well be to go with Ruby (even as I continue to use Python myself).
Such orthogonality has aesthetic merit, but is bad for performance. There are a lot of things one can do to reduce the cost, but there is a cost.
Variable punctuation is evil regardless of whether it determines scope or type. Sure, some people like putting an MFC-ish "m_" before member names etc., and they should be free to do so, but they shouldn't be forced to do so by the language.
Again the performance issue rears its ugly head, and also the issue of assignments etc. having side effects. Sure, it can be "cool" to overload access/modification, e.g. to enforce range/consistency limits or to create "magic" variables such as r/theta when what you're really storing is x/y. However, the cost and potential for abuse aren't worth it. You can already get almost the same effect with explicit accessor functions, or with a keyword attached to declarations. People who really like being able to go in after the fact and change the semantics of an assignment in one of their classes can just always use the keyword; people who want to be able to do the same for other people's classes generally have no business doing so lest they cause all sorts of "spooky" failures when they violate the class implementation's internal dependencies.
BTW, I'm not really that hung up on performance, in the usual sense. If your application doesn't run fast enough in an interpreted (including byte-code interpreted) language, you should profile, refactor, and rewrite necessary portions in native code. However, I am concerned with performance in the sense that I hate to see billions upon billions of cycles wasted for little or no functional benefit. Machine cycles are cheap, but programmer cycles aren't. If a language runs 10% faster then that might be enough for some large number of applications, so instead of all that refactoring and rewriting I just mentioned the programmers can spend more time on adding features or making the program more robust.
That is correct. As I pointed out in my last post, the government has a responsibility to protect those rights, and that responsibility supersedes treaties and agreements like Hague.
This is where you go astray. The same constitition that grants you the aforementioned inalienable rights also defines a form of government in which your duly elected representatives may enact and enforce laws, enter into treaties, etc. on your behalf, without consulting you. "Your say" is to take the initiative in informing those representatives of your wishes, and/or vote for someone else if you feel that you are not being adequately or properly represented. The idea that you are not bound by laws to which you did not personally and explicitly consent is ridiculous.
Similar concerns have been raised in recent controversies involving the death penalty. There are countries that will refuse to extradite criminals to the US if they believe those criminals are likely to be subject to the death penalty. This group includes some of the US's closest allies, and countries with whom the US has specific agreements or even treaties. Those countries don't care. They are willing to stand up for their view of a basic human right not to be executed by the state, superseding even alliances and treates.
Why is this relevant? Because it's all about rights, and about governments' responsibility to protect the rights of their citizens (and, occasionally, others). Would any US court, legislature, or executive agree to enforce other nations' laws that it believes violate basic rights? I doubt it. They know that the people (i.e. the voters) really like their rights, and will deeply resent having those rights trampled on. For example, American anti-gambling laws might be held to apply to a British site because, while there's no law against gambling in Britain, there's no constitutional right to gamble either. However, if the Chinese or Singaporeans expect the US to enforce their laws against criticism of the government they'll be disappointed, because we *do* have a constitutional right to free speech.
Looked at in one way, the laws a country might enforce under Hague would practically consist of the union of signatories' laws, minus those that the country in question considers to violate citizens' rights. Intellectual property laws, however you feel about them, are likely to remain in that set; I don't know of any country that considers the use of someone else's ideas or expressions to be a basic right. Slander and such are trickier. I'm still trying to sort through the issues of procedure, standing, limitations of rights under local law, etc. so I don't know how that one might play out.
As when he wrote about LambdaMOO, Dibbell has no idea whatsoever what he's talking about. Here are some examples.
Lots of people, even among Tolkien's most devoted fans, would dispute the claim that Tolkien invented the genre. World-building fantasy has existed as a continuous tradition for millenia, from some of the earliest known writings to contemporaries of Tolkien such as Fritz Lieber and Lloyd Alexander. Tolkien's work brought this genre back into the mainstream from a relative backwater, but nobody in their right mind would claim he invented it.
It's true that many of Tolkien's main characters are pretty "flat" and that even accounts for much of their appeal to younger readers. However, a closer reading will reveal more complexity than Dibbell gives credit for. Aragorn, Boromir, and Gandalf are not entirely unconflicted. The ambivalence of many elves and half-elves - Glorfindel, Elrond, Celeborn - is worthy of some thought. The corruption or degeneration of several characters - Theoden, Denethor, Saruman - is complex and interesting. Perhaps the most interesting character is Gollum; I used to spend many evenings wondering what must have been going on inside that slimy little head. If you go beyond LoTR and read the Silmarillion you find even more complex, conflicted characters. There's plenty of psychological complexity to Tolkien's work, if you're willing to read instead of skimming.
How absurd. You can't strip away the other elements, because it is those elements that make Middle Earth special. The peoples, the language, the history - all of those things considered rightly or wrongly to be the subject of allegory - are what makes Middle Earth more compelling and memorable than so many other laughable attempts at fantasy world-building.
BZZZT! Wrong. I know the standards, and it's mutt that's in error. Thanks for playing.
Ick. I wish mutt would *die*, because of the broken way it puts the message body into an attachment. It's really annoying when I get mail from a mutt user and I have to open the attachment just to see the message text.
You mean "spelled", right? Sorry, couldn't resist.
Sometimes, but it's certainly not spelled "alluminum" and "steal" was just laughable.
It's not quite the same thing, but there are some interesting tensile-strength comparisons - including a type of glass fiber - here.
Spelling: aluminum, steel. Yeah, I know, you probably think spelling doesn't matter, but misspelling the core terms in what you're talking about makes you look like an idiot.
As the article you obviously didn't read thoroughly enough points out, aluminum is not stronger than steel in the way that matters. Pound for pound, aluminum has a 4-5% higher tensile strength than steel. However, the pound of aluminum will have a much greater volume, which means a wider cable, which means greater stresses from wind etc. and from ice in colder climates. Aluminum is also notoriously brittle, and has a smaller difference between yield vs. ultimate tensile strength. In other words, it will break where steel will stretch, and again the difference becomes even more important at lower temperatures. In conclusion, then, while aluminum does have advantages over steel for some applications, it is inferior to steel as a load-carrier for power lines.
It would actually be interesting to see the same sorts of comparisons between steel and the proposed glass fiber. Some kinds of glass have amazing tensile strength, but it's not clear whether those kinds are compatible with data transmission and glass in general is even more notoriously brittle than aluminum. It's likely to be far more complicated than "X is stronger than Y".
AMT is Alternative Minimum Tax. It's basically a whole parallel tax system meant to ensure that rich people don't take advantage of loopholes in the regular system to reduce their taxes to ridiculously low levels. In other words, it's basically an admission by the IRS that the regular tax system is broken. The reason you don't hear more about it is that it doesn't kick in at all until you reach a certain income level, so it only affects a relatively small percentage of taxpayers - though a phenomenon basically identical to "bracket creep" is causing that percentage to increase steadily.
The problem is that, in their zeal to close regular-system loopholes in the AMT, the IRS has in some cases gone too far. The situation with unrealized gains from buying and holding incentive stock options is just one example. It's tempting to say "tough luck, you should have sold before the end of the year" (thus deriving a loss after exercise that offsets the gain at exercise) but that's not entirely fair. The IRS has created a strong tax incentive to hold for a year, by treating long- and short-term capital gains differently. Given that it's their own attempt at social engineering that creates that incentive to hold, it seems unfair for them to turn around and smack people for doing so.
Only under AMT.
I think a lot of what's being said here is pretty off-base. I think the Maori people have every right to complain about the misappropriation and commoditization of cultural symbols. Where they go wrong is in treating those symbols as intellectual property. It's not. Words and images etc. already in common use - in any language - are not copyrightable and that's that. You can't claim copyright retroactively.
IMO Lego should offer to donate some of the profits from sale of the game to charities that help Polynesian people - not just Maori, BTW. Suits like this are the stock in trade of a few opportunistic pricks who have spent years taking advantage of their brown skin to line their own pockets with extortionate lawsuits, ruining the NZ economy in the process and generally doing exactly nothing to preserve Maori culture or improve the lot of the average Maori on the street. By making an offer to contribute to legitimate Polynesian-indigene causes and organizations, Lego would both be performing a culturally sensitive humanitarian act and showing up the charlatans for what they are (when they refuse to accept such a settlement because it doesn't make them rich).
Well done. It's too bad that the vast majority of this readership wouldn't recognize satire if it knocked them down and sat on them, because that was a fine example.