> Sadly colleges are handling this by letting kids fail in their first year for not knowing what they were really getting into when they took up a science or engineering major.
Are colleges really failing that many students who would succeed at a degree if only given a few extra chances? I don't think we could run any more introductory courses if that's what you meant. We do run a programme for school kids that can give them an idea what university is like, but we're limited in how many kids we can do that for (just out of resources), and surely that's down to the school to handle.
If we did let poor-performing students continue onwards through university, do you genuinely think we'd see many more graduates? It's tragic to see someone waste 9+ months of their life (and a year's fees) if they drop out mid-late first year, to let someone continue to waste 1-2 further years if we know they're unlikely to succeed seems frankly immoral.
Are we going to just accept a list posted on the Internet that someone claims is from Anonymous? Are they suggesting they have any proof, or just a list?
Companies tend to release products in local markets first because it's simpler, but I don't see why Boeing would otherwise give a particular preference to the US...
As a general rule I don't even list things on my CV (resume) that I have less than two years experience in, these days...
I'm willing to accept this is the case for startups wanting the latest buzzword filled technology, but a LOT of places are happy at a much slower pace.
I used to think like that. Y'know what; I've got a limited number of productive hours in the week. I have vastly more feature requests than I have time (mine or my team's). I'm not abstracting it 7 layers deep for lolz, I'm doing it because it lets me keep each layer at something easier to grasp, and therefore less likely to have bugs in.
There's a balance with these things always, but I object to the implication that developers get to decide between abstracting code, or having more free time.
Also, this isn't the kernel we're talking about, this is the entire Android API (which I believe includes much of the JVM libraries in there as well as its own UI). Yes, it's really big.
> A single ebook or netbook can replace all the books needed.
And cost more, before you pay for all of that content. Which is DRMed to avoid a second hand market (although this is improving, to be fair).
> The Internet is, among its other uses, a wonderful repository of the collective human knowledge. I learned most of what I know from there. Teaching the children how to use it might be the most important skill they will ever learn.
Research skills are something important and schools should teach. I find it difficult to accept that they're so complex that they require constant practice, though. Also, focusing children on learning from the Internet leaves them (and working at a university, this really is a big issue) stumbling when they're looking for something not on the Internet (and frequently, beyond the grasp anything beyond the grasp of Google).
If you've got an infinite budget, technology is very useful, yes. However, on a limited budget I find it challenging to accept that the money is generally better spent on technology instead of teachers. There are things that simply are much more effective on computer (anything that is described well by animation, for example), but we shouldn't be blindly throwing technology at education.
It's not that bad, thankfully (but still quite bad). It's easy to convert between ePub and Mobipocket ( http://calibre-ebook.com/ does so rather well and is free), as they're both HTML at the core anyway. The only real issues are book-specific parts like handling pagination or footnotes, where the standards (where there is one) tend to be incompatible extensions to HTML.
Both ePub and Mobipocket (which Kindle uses) are HTML based at the core already. Download your files from Google Docs as HTML, import into Sigil ( http://code.google.com/p/sigil/ ) and you'll be 90% of the way towards an e-book.
All this refers to is Amazon adding more bits of HTML to the parts Kindle supports.
Jump to page 34 (as numbered). Then 64, then 95. Note it's actually a running theme. So, essentially, it's a kinda quirky way of showing I've spent a lot of time looking at the company. Even then, it was a VERY high risk gamble, and one I was only willing to take because I had a job I was trying to move up from, rather than just frantically searching for a job.
Still, doing a lot of background research on a company and trying to reflect that in your covering letter and resume (CV if you're in the UK) is good advice.
Brilliant, now try making it run on OpenBSD. Too weird? How about OS X?
Well done, you used a tool appropriate to the job, and got a good result. I've written C# apps to integrate with MS Office, platform-agnostic server apps in Java, high performance stuff in C, text processing tools in Perl and text adventures in Inform. In all cases, the language fitted what I wanted to do, well, but that doesn't make it inherently better than another language in some grand scheme of things.
> there's tons of Java exploits out there but none for.NET
What, language-level exploits in Java? Care to give an example?
> Java development is light years behind.NET and C#.
Erm. Hey, quick, distraction! Behind you! *runs*
Seriously though, yes Java lags behind in features. Cross-platform development; Java runs on Windows, Linux, the BSDs, Blackberry phones, Android (well, it's a close varient) and frankly pretty much everything else too. I'll admit game development in Java is decidedly mixed (I believe, anyway, have never tried it myself).
Ultimately, there's a lot of code out there in Java, and it's not at all a bad platform, the world does not move on just because something a bit better comes out.
Actually, they're charging £2.25/GB for overage ( http://www.timico.co.uk/soho/ip_connectivity/adsl ), although Timico have the most insane pricing I've seen in an ISP. Two lines on their 50GB/month service (£22 each) are a cheaper option than their 100GB/month server (£50).
A much saner (business) pricing example can be found from Demon: http://www.demon.net/broadband/business-broadband - if you're in an exchange with LLU, £19/month gets you a 200GB allowance during peak hours and unlimited off-peak. If you're not on an LLU exchange (and this also says volumes about BT's pricing), £30/month gets you a 100GB allowance during peak hours (and did I mention the line speed is a quarter of the LLU package?)
> Except the time and effort required to produce a song, movie, book, picture, or any other creative work is not zero.
For bonus points, much of the "freely" produced content is paid for indirectly by copyright material. A lot of creative people paid by a day job in copyright-based industries then create this material in their free time.
This also ignores the huge time investment to become good at many of these areas (I've been coding for nearly two decades now, and still learn new skills on a regular basis).
> If copying was legal, art would probably increasingly be crowd-funded before creation, but a meager living wage for everyone would really let artist just about not starve and enable passionate people to keep doing their art.
So... you're happy with the trickle of creative output that people insanely dedicated enough to create content under your "meagre living wage" would be able to produce?
Who do you fund? How do you decide what's worth funding and what isn't? What guarantees do you have of a quality result? How do you get the best stuff out to people (if this seems like a silly question, go wandering through the free apps in the Android market store - there's some great stuff off in the depths, but can you be bothered finding it)?
> I'm not gonna worry my pretty little head trying to calculate numbers, but I'm sure the math is solid.
You want to reduce everyone working on copyright-based industries to a "meagre wage" and hope crowd-sourcing pays even that, but have no idea of what's involved, beyond a feeling of intuition?
What you're suggesting massacres future creative production in return for short term gain. There are substantially better suggestions (someone else's point about 7 year copyrights, for example - long enough to sell a copy to most people who really want a product, without being long enough to let them sit back and live off something they did once).
Slashdot Mirror
Frequently intrigued how many people miss that much of the US constitution was written to provide rights people didn't have in the UK...
If you think OS choice is the biggest issue with academic network security, you clearly haven't met enough academics...
> Sadly colleges are handling this by letting kids fail in their first year for not knowing what they were really getting into when they took up a science or engineering major.
Are colleges really failing that many students who would succeed at a degree if only given a few extra chances? I don't think we could run any more introductory courses if that's what you meant. We do run a programme for school kids that can give them an idea what university is like, but we're limited in how many kids we can do that for (just out of resources), and surely that's down to the school to handle.
If we did let poor-performing students continue onwards through university, do you genuinely think we'd see many more graduates? It's tragic to see someone waste 9+ months of their life (and a year's fees) if they drop out mid-late first year, to let someone continue to waste 1-2 further years if we know they're unlikely to succeed seems frankly immoral.
Are we going to just accept a list posted on the Internet that someone claims is from Anonymous? Are they suggesting they have any proof, or just a list?
This doesn't seem entirely flawless...
...because they paid for it?
Companies tend to release products in local markets first because it's simpler, but I don't see why Boeing would otherwise give a particular preference to the US...
As a general rule I don't even list things on my CV (resume) that I have less than two years experience in, these days...
I'm willing to accept this is the case for startups wanting the latest buzzword filled technology, but a LOT of places are happy at a much slower pace.
> It's the laziness of programmers
I used to think like that. Y'know what; I've got a limited number of productive hours in the week. I have vastly more feature requests than I have time (mine or my team's). I'm not abstracting it 7 layers deep for lolz, I'm doing it because it lets me keep each layer at something easier to grasp, and therefore less likely to have bugs in.
There's a balance with these things always, but I object to the implication that developers get to decide between abstracting code, or having more free time.
Also, this isn't the kernel we're talking about, this is the entire Android API (which I believe includes much of the JVM libraries in there as well as its own UI). Yes, it's really big.
> A single ebook or netbook can replace all the books needed.
And cost more, before you pay for all of that content. Which is DRMed to avoid a second hand market (although this is improving, to be fair).
> The Internet is, among its other uses, a wonderful repository of the collective human knowledge. I learned most of what I know from there. Teaching the children how to use it might be the most important skill they will ever learn.
Research skills are something important and schools should teach. I find it difficult to accept that they're so complex that they require constant practice, though. Also, focusing children on learning from the Internet leaves them (and working at a university, this really is a big issue) stumbling when they're looking for something not on the Internet (and frequently, beyond the grasp anything beyond the grasp of Google).
If you've got an infinite budget, technology is very useful, yes. However, on a limited budget I find it challenging to accept that the money is generally better spent on technology instead of teachers. There are things that simply are much more effective on computer (anything that is described well by animation, for example), but we shouldn't be blindly throwing technology at education.
It's not that bad, thankfully (but still quite bad). It's easy to convert between ePub and Mobipocket ( http://calibre-ebook.com/ does so rather well and is free), as they're both HTML at the core anyway. The only real issues are book-specific parts like handling pagination or footnotes, where the standards (where there is one) tend to be incompatible extensions to HTML.
Both ePub and Mobipocket (which Kindle uses) are HTML based at the core already. Download your files from Google Docs as HTML, import into Sigil ( http://code.google.com/p/sigil/ ) and you'll be 90% of the way towards an e-book.
All this refers to is Amazon adding more bits of HTML to the parts Kindle supports.
> Anyone who isn't an idiot knows that the earth's climate is ALWAYS changing (and always has been).
Also, earthquakes & tornadoes are totally not humanity's fault, so we shouldn't plan around them either.
That they're endearingly quirky was the idea I was trying to give :)
As much as I'd like to suggest it's a generally applicable idea, it's actually very specific to the company. Grab the recruitment guide:
http://www.red-gate.com/our-company/careers/book-of-red-gate
Jump to page 34 (as numbered). Then 64, then 95. Note it's actually a running theme. So, essentially, it's a kinda quirky way of showing I've spent a lot of time looking at the company. Even then, it was a VERY high risk gamble, and one I was only willing to take because I had a job I was trying to move up from, rather than just frantically searching for a job.
Still, doing a lot of background research on a company and trying to reflect that in your covering letter and resume (CV if you're in the UK) is good advice.
I interviewed with Red Gate earlier this year (made a complete wreck of the interview, turns out travelling down on the day was a horrific idea).
I'm fairly certain I got to interview because I mentioned in my covering letter that I liked talking to the coffee machine.
They're just that sort of company.
This is a fair point. Of the people mining my social network data, I think governments (yours, mine, whatever) are the least of my problems.
Lets go with the second, no half measures! Also, that'll raise average IQ to 160, as a neat bonus!
(I'm aware that's now how IQ works, don't worry)
Flogging? Wimp! We should merely shoot the lowest 10% every year to weed out those who are holding the others back! Second chances be damned...
I certainly would, given how often anything that doesn't sell out at pre-order is apparently a failure :(
Brilliant, now try making it run on OpenBSD. Too weird? How about OS X?
Well done, you used a tool appropriate to the job, and got a good result. I've written C# apps to integrate with MS Office, platform-agnostic server apps in Java, high performance stuff in C, text processing tools in Perl and text adventures in Inform. In all cases, the language fitted what I wanted to do, well, but that doesn't make it inherently better than another language in some grand scheme of things.
> resource and memory hog
Got anything to show it's worse than .Net?
> there's tons of Java exploits out there but none for .NET
What, language-level exploits in Java? Care to give an example?
> Java development is light years behind .NET and C#.
Erm. Hey, quick, distraction! Behind you! *runs*
Seriously though, yes Java lags behind in features. Cross-platform development; Java runs on Windows, Linux, the BSDs, Blackberry phones, Android (well, it's a close varient) and frankly pretty much everything else too. I'll admit game development in Java is decidedly mixed (I believe, anyway, have never tried it myself).
Ultimately, there's a lot of code out there in Java, and it's not at all a bad platform, the world does not move on just because something a bit better comes out.
Actually, they're charging £2.25/GB for overage ( http://www.timico.co.uk/soho/ip_connectivity/adsl ), although Timico have the most insane pricing I've seen in an ISP. Two lines on their 50GB/month service (£22 each) are a cheaper option than their 100GB/month server (£50).
A much saner (business) pricing example can be found from Demon: http://www.demon.net/broadband/business-broadband - if you're in an exchange with LLU, £19/month gets you a 200GB allowance during peak hours and unlimited off-peak. If you're not on an LLU exchange (and this also says volumes about BT's pricing), £30/month gets you a 100GB allowance during peak hours (and did I mention the line speed is a quarter of the LLU package?)
> Except the time and effort required to produce a song, movie, book, picture, or any other creative work is not zero.
For bonus points, much of the "freely" produced content is paid for indirectly by copyright material. A lot of creative people paid by a day job in copyright-based industries then create this material in their free time.
This also ignores the huge time investment to become good at many of these areas (I've been coding for nearly two decades now, and still learn new skills on a regular basis).
> If copying was legal, art would probably increasingly be crowd-funded before creation, but a meager living wage for everyone would really let artist just about not starve and enable passionate people to keep doing their art.
So... you're happy with the trickle of creative output that people insanely dedicated enough to create content under your "meagre living wage" would be able to produce?
Who do you fund? How do you decide what's worth funding and what isn't? What guarantees do you have of a quality result? How do you get the best stuff out to people (if this seems like a silly question, go wandering through the free apps in the Android market store - there's some great stuff off in the depths, but can you be bothered finding it)?
> I'm not gonna worry my pretty little head trying to calculate numbers, but I'm sure the math is solid.
You want to reduce everyone working on copyright-based industries to a "meagre wage" and hope crowd-sourcing pays even that, but have no idea of what's involved, beyond a feeling of intuition?
What you're suggesting massacres future creative production in return for short term gain. There are substantially better suggestions (someone else's point about 7 year copyrights, for example - long enough to sell a copy to most people who really want a product, without being long enough to let them sit back and live off something they did once).
Exactly. I hear a lot of about "Oh, the UK has such and such a speed" and "BT promises xyz".
Y'know what? I'm on an "up to" 24mbs line, which actually gives me 10mbs, BT provides "up to" 8mbs in this area, which is actually more like 2-4.
Yes, some areas get really really fast connections, but don't be fooled into thinking that this is UK-wide.
Do you remember when Square Enix released nothing but brilliant games?
Seen FFXIV?
That's their second MMO. This is Bioware's first. I'm not saying it will be terrible, but I am saying I'm not holding out a lot of hope here.
My Bioware history is a bit wobbly, but have they even released multiplayer games before?