Whites score on average about 30 points below Asians on the SAT I math, and blacks score on average about 106 points below whites. If you look at the distribution curve, it's even more striking. Only a few hundred blacks per year have SAT I math scores above 700. A 700 Math SAT is about the minimum for a serious CS degree.
That's reality, like it or not.
But *why* this is reality? Because of differences in intelligence (unlikely IMHO) or differences in environment, e.g. upbringing, opportunities etc etc.
With only a few hundred votes to decide between Gore & Bush in Florida & thus the presidency, it is obvious that your individual vote can be extremely important. Especially if you are registered to vote in Florida.
If you see one of your best people walking out the door at 6:00 pm, try to think why you haven't challenged that person with an interesting project.
Maybe your best people have a life. Maybe they are married, have kids, or have hobbies. Maybe they work on a really cool open source project outside work. Maybe they have better things to do than dedicate every waking hour to your ever so important project... maybe they are smarter than you think!
And finally, maybe they are good enough or smart enough to accomplish more than what's required from 8 am - 6 pm. And you just want to extract every last ounce of servitude you can. Not a nice way to treat people.
I hope you're not advocating the "the world is 6000 years old" fallacy. Believing in that the world is God's creation does not require that.
I'm not advocating any particular age of the universe. I just find it interesting the way it gets a billion years older every few years. 6000 years seems pretty short to me, but it may not be a fallacy, I don't know. We've been "trained" into thinking it must be extremely old, though, which leads us to scornfully discredit claims to a young universe.
Personally, I don't see how creationism is totally unacceptable for educated, reasonably intelligent people.
I agree. As someone with degrees in mathematics, physics and computer science up to masters level, I find creationism perfectly acceptable.
I think that the probability of things being as they are occurring by chance are so vanishingly small that believing in a Creator is a more reasonable option by far. This is of course why the age of the universe keeps getting revised to even more billions of years than it is already - to increase that vanishingly small probability. After all, if the earth is 15 billion years old (or whatever), surely *anything* could have evolved. The trick is to have such long time periods as to be incomprehensible.
I've written a LGPL'd Java FTP library. It's been downloaded maybe 1000-2000 times, but I've received no more than about 10 emails. My impression is that you receive an email every 100-500 downloads.
This is quite possibly good news - people have downloaded and used the library, and have no problems with it. There's not really a need to contact the author unless you want an enhancement of some sort.
It is interesting how on one hand television advertising pulls in huge revenues and is obviously thought to alter people's behavior, but violent movies apparently don't. I wonder why?
I don't know what the contracting market is like in the US, but here in London there are loads of contracts for good money.
If a client wants to exploit me they must pay through the nose to do it. If I've had enough by the end of the contract, I can leave, find another contract, take a holiday, or a break, whatever. *I'm* in control, not them.
I don't care about being made redundant, if I get bored I move on. The only downside is I must do all my training myself. But I make at least double what I could as a permie and I'm having a great time.
It's the same think that happens with airline crashes. They may make the news every time but you've got a way higher chance of being killed every time you get in your car!
Curiously enough, this is not the case. Airlines love to quote safety figures based on miles or km travelled. Airplanes are indeed safer on that basis. But a single trip on an airplane is actually more dangerous than a single trip in a car. A good article in New Scientist a few months ago discussed this.
I'm not commenting on control of things you own. I just think that a "tit for tat" legalese approach in this instance is petty and pointless. No matter what you think of their "cease and desist" letters.
Yes, they do. One previous employer of mine has developed their entire front-end for an ERP in Delphi - dozens, maybe hundreds of sophisticated GUI modules. About 50 Delphi programmers have been working for 3 yrs on this one...
I know Reuters here in London still have enormous amounts of Pascal code they maintain and enhance.
I moved to London from Brisbane, Australia at the beginning of 1998. As far as IT jobs go, it is absolutely booming. Salaries and contract rates are going up. There are quite a few dot coms too. The only fly in the ointment is the new IR35 legislation which makes it significantly less attractive to contract in the UK.
The UK lifestyle is not nearly as good as that in Australia, particularly in London. Very high living costs, poor weather and a big dirty city. But there is a lot of culture, a lot to see and the rest of Europe isn't far away.
"In the case of Baan, their technology is not necessarily their strong point! Thats why the company isn't worth anything. Open Sourcing their technology at this point will only give everyone something to laugh at. I mean, seriously, their stuff has probably been thrown together over 10+ years. There probably isn't even anyone left who can compile it"
Yes, it would be many thousands of person years of development. Hopefully, their build processes are well documented and so even if their build teams have left they can still build it.
"ERP Software is still in the era of vt100's and those green and white stripy A3 fanfold printouts"
Most ERP packages now offer GUI clients and many offer Web clients.
"But the fact is that ERP is something that only large companies need, and they are unlikely to embrace open source for something like this"
Just FYI, SAP does have an edition aimed at small to medium sized companies of only a few employees, but it isn't their main market.
I agree, open source seems very unlikely for ERP applications - the size, complexity and specialist knowledge makes it very difficult. If the big consulting firms don't take it on, it is unlikely to be used. License fees aren't important to ERP companies, consulting on a massive scale is.
These things aren't (currently) written in C, C++ or Java either. Non-sexy Cobol mostly.
The major cost of an ERP is not the software licensing. It is the installation and configuration.
A consultant doesn't walk in and install something like SAP, Peoplesoft or BAAN. A team of 50 consultants working for 12-24 months work fulltime to get it up and running.
The business often re-engineers many of their business processes to fit in with the vendor's view of the world.
It would be decidedly non-trivial to rip out one ERP and replace it with another. It would be extremely expensive and could break the business.
Also, a typical ERP application has many millions of lines of code, and many of them are written in Cobol. Not necessarily the most attractive proposition to the typical open source developer.
Yeah, the British spooks did invent Diffie-Helman and RSA in the '70s, but at GCHQ (Government Communication Headquarters), not Bletchley Park. oops. sorry, you're right.
Really? I thought the benefit of RSA was that it allowed public Key encryption, that could not usefully be broken even if you knew the algorithm and decryption key. The whole idea of public key encryption was revolutionary at the time, and it took a long time to progress from the theory to an actual algorithm that worked.
According to *The Code Book* by Simon Singh, the folks at Bletchley Park independently invented public key encryption before RSA did. Unfortunately it could not be publicised or patented, as it was a military secret.
Slashdot Mirror
But *why* this is reality? Because of differences in intelligence (unlikely IMHO) or differences in environment, e.g. upbringing, opportunities etc etc.
Maybe your best people have a life. Maybe they are married, have kids, or have hobbies. Maybe they work on a really cool open source project outside work. Maybe they have better things to do than dedicate every waking hour to your ever so important project ... maybe they are smarter than you think!
And finally, maybe they are good enough or smart enough to accomplish more than what's required from 8 am - 6 pm. And you just want to extract every last ounce of servitude you can. Not a nice way to treat people.
Worse still, most of them could quote from it!
The entire project (10 million pounds worth) was canned the Tuesday after I left.
I'm not advocating any particular age of the universe. I just find it interesting the way it gets a billion years older every few years. 6000 years seems pretty short to me, but it may not be a fallacy, I don't know. We've been "trained" into thinking it must be extremely old, though, which leads us to scornfully discredit claims to a young universe.
I agree. As someone with degrees in mathematics, physics and computer science up to masters level, I find creationism perfectly acceptable.
I think that the probability of things being as they are occurring by chance are so vanishingly small that believing in a Creator is a more reasonable option by far. This is of course why the age of the universe keeps getting revised to even more billions of years than it is already - to increase that vanishingly small probability. After all, if the earth is 15 billion years old (or whatever), surely *anything* could have evolved. The trick is to have such long time periods as to be incomprehensible.
This is quite possibly good news - people have downloaded and used the library, and have no problems with it. There's not really a need to contact the author unless you want an enhancement of some sort.
It is interesting how on one hand television advertising pulls in huge revenues and is obviously thought to alter people's behavior, but violent movies apparently don't. I wonder why?
Here in London a 35 hour week is quite common, at least on paper. And 5-6 weeks annual leave.
If a client wants to exploit me they must pay through the nose to do it. If I've had enough by the end of the contract, I can leave, find another contract, take a holiday, or a break, whatever. *I'm* in control, not them.
I don't care about being made redundant, if I get bored I move on. The only downside is I must do all my training myself. But I make at least double what I could as a permie and I'm having a great time.
Curiously enough, this is not the case. Airlines love to quote safety figures based on miles or km travelled. Airplanes are indeed safer on that basis. But a single trip on an airplane is actually more dangerous than a single trip in a car. A good article in New Scientist a few months ago discussed this.
I'm not commenting on control of things you own. I just think that a "tit for tat" legalese approach in this instance is petty and pointless. No matter what you think of their "cease and desist" letters.
Today is September 15, but there isn't any more details on the site. Is this challenge really happening?
Well, I can't find its web site. I suspect that it is a self appointed title. He might be trying to usurp my task force :-)
Bruce Blackshaw
Chief Special Agent
First International Free Computing Task Force
Yes, they do. One previous employer of mine has developed their entire front-end for an ERP in Delphi - dozens, maybe hundreds of sophisticated GUI modules. About 50 Delphi programmers have been working for 3 yrs on this one ...
I know Reuters here in London still have enormous amounts of Pascal code they maintain and enhance.
A friendly, relaxed city of about 1.2 million people. Cheap housing and cost of living. Plenty of IT work. Great lifestyle. Lots of beaches close by.
Sigh, but I'm now living & working in London ...
For jobs, check out Jobserve.com
The UK lifestyle is not nearly as good as that in Australia, particularly in London. Very high living costs, poor weather and a big dirty city. But there is a lot of culture, a lot to see and the rest of Europe isn't far away.
For more on my experiences see my e-book
"In the case of Baan, their technology is not necessarily their strong point! Thats why the company isn't worth anything. Open Sourcing their technology at this point will only give everyone something to laugh at. I mean, seriously, their stuff has probably been thrown together over 10+ years. There probably isn't even anyone left who can compile it"
Yes, it would be many thousands of person years of development. Hopefully, their build processes are well documented and so even if their build teams have left they can still build it.
"ERP Software is still in the era of vt100's and those green and white stripy A3 fanfold printouts"
Most ERP packages now offer GUI clients and many offer Web clients.
"But the fact is that ERP is something that only large companies need, and they are unlikely to embrace open source for something like this"
Just FYI, SAP does have an edition aimed at small to medium sized companies of only a few employees, but it isn't their main market.
I agree, open source seems very unlikely for ERP applications - the size, complexity and specialist knowledge makes it very difficult. If the big consulting firms don't take it on, it is unlikely to be used. License fees aren't important to ERP companies, consulting on a massive scale is.
These things aren't (currently) written in C, C++ or Java either. Non-sexy Cobol mostly.
The major cost of an ERP is not the software licensing. It is the installation and configuration.
A consultant doesn't walk in and install something like SAP, Peoplesoft or BAAN. A team of 50 consultants working for 12-24 months work fulltime to get it up and running.
The business often re-engineers many of their business processes to fit in with the vendor's view of the world.
It would be decidedly non-trivial to rip out one ERP and replace it with another. It would be extremely expensive and could break the business.
Also, a typical ERP application has many millions of lines of code, and many of them are written in Cobol. Not necessarily the most attractive proposition to the typical open source developer.
Open source relies on professionals contributing their time and skills freely.
"Open media" a la Katz won't be a reality until journalists are doing the same thing.
Until then much "open media" just leeches information from closed media sources. This is particularly so for genre such as news reporting.
why pay to see someone's ads that you don't want to see? Install some filtering software.
So how many things do you own?
Yeah, the British spooks did invent Diffie-Helman and RSA in the '70s, but at GCHQ (Government Communication Headquarters), not Bletchley Park.
oops. sorry, you're right.
Really? I thought the benefit of RSA was that it allowed public Key encryption, that could not usefully be broken even if you knew the algorithm and decryption key.
The whole idea of public key encryption was revolutionary at the time, and it took a long time to progress from the theory to an actual algorithm that worked.
According to *The Code Book* by Simon Singh, the folks at Bletchley Park independently invented public key encryption before RSA did. Unfortunately it could not be publicised or patented, as it was a military secret.