If you're talking about C++, you should really be throwing an exception for errors (otherwise known as exceptional conditions). Return codes went out of style a long time ago and are considered poor design when you have alternatives
Now, if only I could convince my project lead of that. Had to totally uglify the interface of the component I was working on because I couldn't throw exceptions. Never mind that there was absolutely no way my component could handle any errors.
The requirement may not exist outside your memory of a short chat with the customer.
If the requirement isn't captured somewhere, it's not a requirement... it's a suggestion. Other than that, I agree completely with the rest of your post.
NASA does outsource everything. NASA for the most part is a management organization. Most of the engineering is done by contractors. And, because of the unique constraints of spacecraft (mainly, the necessity to get as much effectiveness out of every gram of mass as is possible), they are by necessity one-off designs. An adaptable design is one that cuts out optimizations in order to provide genericity. Spacecraft right now are the equivalent of hand-coded assembly... they don't do much, but they're very good at what they do. Maybe when the cost-to-orbit drops some more we can start building more modular spacecraft, but for now we have to optimize to reduce weight.
Because the fail-safe in the case of a foothold scenario is a nuclear bomb. If the bad guys manage to take control of significant portions of the SGC, they set off a nuke. The nuke collapses significant portions of the mountain onto both the bad guys and the gate. Finishes off the bad guys in the base, and buries the gate so they can't send more.
I would say especially for a genius plus. I'm not quite that smart, though I am significantly enough above average that I have the same problem. If you can't tell whether or not your audience will understand, you wind up either not explaining enough, in which case they feel stupid and are embarrassed that they don't understand and get irritated with you for making them look stupid, or you explain too much, in which case they get irritated with you for treating them like a moron. There's a very fine line between the two. Getting the perfect balance is extremely difficult, and requires a special level of patience and understanding of people. Which unfortunately, is something that being above average in intelligence often leaves you without.
If an Aibo can recognize an object, it's storing that information as a set of parameters. It's this set of parameters that it's communicating... RGB values, distance, direction (do Aibos have inertial guidance?) velocity, vector.... it's just data. No nouns and verbs here.
But, at its heart, isn't that exactly what concrete words do in human language--communicate parameters about the world we live in? After all, the word "red" describes the sensation of a specific range of light frequencies. The Aibo's simply have a different perception of the actual underlying meanings of the words, that's all. Now abstract concepts, those are something different altogether.
A spacecraft is only useful when it's in space. While certainly the lives of the astronauts are more important that the Hubble, assuming we could get the astronauts home safely if the orbiter couldn't make it back, I say fix the Hubble.
At my employer (an unnamed aerospace/defense contractor), the policy is no electronic devices that haven't been approved by Security. Granted, once they're approved (which basically means putting a non-asset tag on them) they don't seem to inspect them on their way out... at least not if you don't have clearance for anything other than proprietary data. 'Course I decided that it wasn't worth the hassle to even try to get something approved, since I've only worked there a month, so what I know of the policy is what I heard in the 1 hour security briefing on my first day... I figure, as long as I don't bring anything in or out, I don't have anything to worry about.
I was kinda under the impression he was talking about his fellow engineering majors... I know I was shocked at my classmates' inability to do anything but follow the magic incantations they got from the professor... few of them seemed interested or capable of figuring out what was going on without being explicitly told.
Do a multi-chambered bong, with one chamber spinning so the water stays at one end... just make sure that the water is below the axis, so you can put the connection between the two chambers there... Of course, now you're gonna have to put a screen on top of the bud, so it doesn't fly away. My, but this is complicated. I wish I had some weed so I could actually figure this out...
Um, I don't think he meant a beer bong. Of course, fire's weird in zero-g, too... so you'd probably still have problems with the bowl going out.
Re:Where is "religious fundementalism" in US govt?
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You really should've chosen a more reputable article. That one looks just as crazy as the people you're arguing against. Why is it that so many liberals can't seem to avoid making themselves look as foolish as the neocons?
She claimed that the British are particularly good at hacking as they have "the perfect temperament to be hackers--technically skilled, slightly disrespectful of authority, and just a touch of criminal behavior."
Used to be, that described Americans just as well. It's a shame we've become such sheep that the stuffy old British;) are more independent-minded than we.
That was Lockheed's fault. Yes, NASA should've caught the mistake in a design review, and that was poor project management on their part, but the fact is Lockheed didn't follow the software interface specification.
"Hey, let's close that door from inside!"
Actually makes sense, considering the inside of the spacecraft will usually be pressurized compared to the outside. The real problem was the fact that they were pressurizing with 100% O2, and that no one investigated why they were having communication problems.
"Yeah, it'll hold on re-entry"
That was management, not the engineers and rocket scientists. The engineers and rocket scientists didn't know enough either way, since they couldn't get management to authorize on orbit imagery to take a look at the damage.
In summary, almost all of NASA's failures have been due to management, not the scientists and engineers.
By that definition abortion would be legal up until around age 3-5, or whenever humans are capable of walking around and finding stuff to eat and drink on their own.
Babies cannot "live independently" without a parent to care for them.
But they don't require that food and drink be provided by the mother. So, they are capable of living "independenly of the mother", which is what the GP implied.
Technically, credit unions are non-profit, so that "middleman's" premium covers operating expenses. The rest of the interest charged on the loan is plowed back into dividends for the members. Most of those operating expenses are wages for the credit union workers and rent on facilities.
As far as membership is concerned, many modern credit unions have such broad fields of membership that the membership requirement is fairly easy to fill... the credit union I worked for could accept members from anyone who worked for a company that was a member of one of three chambers of commerce, plus several specific employers. So, in the three locations where they had branches, pretty much anyone with a job who walked in could open an account. There are many other credit unions with even broader charters. Also, if their charter covers a large, multinational company, then they're often large and multinational themselves.
Actually, they're proofs of concept, which means the contenders don't have to develop a vehicle to deliver the landers to the moon... they can simulate the lunar landing on earth. That makes the prize a lot more attainable for a private startup venture than requiring them also to build up a lunar capable launch infrastructure.
As such, Armadillo would actually be an excellent contender for this prize, considering their current design is a really souped up lander in the first place.
Funny. I just checked the phone I just bought this weekend, and hadn't thought of turning off the the GPS tracking yet, and it turns out it's set to only turn on when I dial 911. By default. Now, certainly you don't have a problem with emergency services being able to find you when you call, do you? Unless you're calling 911 to report a crime you just committed yourself, that is.
Take off the tin foil, my friend. I think the sun has fried your brain.
Just thought I'd post so you feel a little better. I started out as a theatre major in 1996, a degree that I never finished. I took a year off and did nothing. I started school again as a CS major, at a different school. I went to that school for a year, and then got a job as a sysadmin, and basically dropped out again for another two and half years. I lost that job in August of 2003, and went back to school again, at yet another school. I just graduated this spring with my B.S. in Software Engineering, and am starting a job with a major aerospace firm, writing software for satellites.
Even though I'm now 28, and didn't have a stellar (though it was mostly acceptable... I partied a little too much when I was a theatre major:) academic career, virtually no experience as a developer (I have the sysadmin experience, but nothing that I feel really applies to what I'll be doing at my new employer), and for all intents and purposes look like someone who starts things and never finishes them, I made it into what (I hope:) is an excellent job, without even really trying to look for it (they found my resume somewhere and contacted me... they don't even know how they got it:). With your military experience, you'll look like a much better hire than I did. Not to discourage you from going into law, because you're right, we need all the tech-savvy geek-bred lawyers we can get, but don't count yourself out as a developer if you want to do it.
To be perfectly honest, I would say that the lack of productivity has come from your failure to listen to Guppy. Every single one of his statements can be backed up directly in the Constitution itself. It's not even necessary to go into case law for the basics. You, on the other hand have changed definitions when convenient to fit your argument, and failed to cite anything other than Wikipedia, which great as it is, is not a primary source.
It seems the US educators truly are failing to teach political science properly. I would certainly agree that at this point withdrawal from the union would be suicide for any state, since there is no way they could possibly win against the federal army and (unless it was New Jersey;) the other 49 states wouldn't allow them to just slink away. However, that does not mean that the individual states do not have that right. The states do conduct foreign diplomacy, certainly not with the effectiveness of the nation as a whole (since they have ceded the power to negotiate binding treaties to the federal government), but it does happen. Recently, Jennifer Granholm, the governor of Michigan visited Japan as part of a bid to bring more Japanese investment (specifically a new Toyota plant) to the state. California's Proposition 187 could also be construed (though arguably not as clearly) as foreign diplomacy, in that the majority of its impact falls upon foreign nationals.
You also claim that the states don't get to pick the president. Actually, they do. Each state holds its own separate election, according to its own separate election standards. Each candidate is required to file the necessary paperwork and petitions in every single state to appear on the ballot. The individual states have agreed to hold their general elections on the same date so as to make it easier to administer the election, but I believe some have begun to allow early voting, which again is in their power. If you are unable to vote in your state, you are not allowed to simply cast your vote in another state; you must fill out an absentee ballot and send it to your state's Department of State (or equivalent). When the votes have been tabulated in a state, that state declares the number of electors for each candidate (each state may nominate one elector for each representative it sends to the House of Representatives, and one for each Senator). At this time, in all 50 states, the winner of the popular vote receives all of the electors for that state, though there is nothing in the Constitution to require it.
Certainly, for not being independent, the states of the US wield a considerable amount of power, more than the provinces in more unitary governments such as France or the UK. While they do not fully fit the definition of a nation-state, they surely are more than just provinces.
Which only works well if you're using a non-recursive build system. See Recursive Make Considered Harmful. Basically, in a traditional recursive make build, make doesn't really know all of the dependencies, so it can't find much parallelism at all and you wind up not really spawning that many additional threads. I didn't reread the article, so I don't remember at what point the parallelism stops working, but I seem to recall that it broke down at pretty low levels.
However, it's probably still pretty cool if your build is non-recursive. I haven't found many large builds that are, though so I don't really know.
University of Michigan--Dearborn has one of the first ABET accredited Software Engineerng MS programs. You get to choose your focus, and can take classes both in the CS department and the Electrical/Computer Engineering department. Or, if you really want to get into hardware, you could just go the ECE department and get an MS in computer engineering. But you won't do as much programming in ECE, and the ECE department sucks when it comes to teaching it.
There are other accredited MSSE programs out there too... Embry-Riddle is the only other one I know off the top of my head (because I was looking into going there).
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Now, if only I could convince my project lead of that. Had to totally uglify the interface of the component I was working on because I couldn't throw exceptions. Never mind that there was absolutely no way my component could handle any errors.
If the requirement isn't captured somewhere, it's not a requirement... it's a suggestion. Other than that, I agree completely with the rest of your post.
NASA does outsource everything. NASA for the most part is a management organization. Most of the engineering is done by contractors. And, because of the unique constraints of spacecraft (mainly, the necessity to get as much effectiveness out of every gram of mass as is possible), they are by necessity one-off designs. An adaptable design is one that cuts out optimizations in order to provide genericity. Spacecraft right now are the equivalent of hand-coded assembly... they don't do much, but they're very good at what they do. Maybe when the cost-to-orbit drops some more we can start building more modular spacecraft, but for now we have to optimize to reduce weight.
Because the fail-safe in the case of a foothold scenario is a nuclear bomb. If the bad guys manage to take control of significant portions of the SGC, they set off a nuke. The nuke collapses significant portions of the mountain onto both the bad guys and the gate. Finishes off the bad guys in the base, and buries the gate so they can't send more.
I would say especially for a genius plus. I'm not quite that smart, though I am significantly enough above average that I have the same problem. If you can't tell whether or not your audience will understand, you wind up either not explaining enough, in which case they feel stupid and are embarrassed that they don't understand and get irritated with you for making them look stupid, or you explain too much, in which case they get irritated with you for treating them like a moron. There's a very fine line between the two. Getting the perfect balance is extremely difficult, and requires a special level of patience and understanding of people. Which unfortunately, is something that being above average in intelligence often leaves you without.
And a humanoid robot chasing your mother-in-law is a nightmare how?
Because she's still in the dream.
He didn't say you didn't go to college. He said you missed it. Quite easy to do while doing silly things like getting degrees and such.
But, at its heart, isn't that exactly what concrete words do in human language--communicate parameters about the world we live in? After all, the word "red" describes the sensation of a specific range of light frequencies. The Aibo's simply have a different perception of the actual underlying meanings of the words, that's all. Now abstract concepts, those are something different altogether.
A spacecraft is only useful when it's in space. While certainly the lives of the astronauts are more important that the Hubble, assuming we could get the astronauts home safely if the orbiter couldn't make it back, I say fix the Hubble.
At my employer (an unnamed aerospace/defense contractor), the policy is no electronic devices that haven't been approved by Security. Granted, once they're approved (which basically means putting a non-asset tag on them) they don't seem to inspect them on their way out... at least not if you don't have clearance for anything other than proprietary data. 'Course I decided that it wasn't worth the hassle to even try to get something approved, since I've only worked there a month, so what I know of the policy is what I heard in the 1 hour security briefing on my first day... I figure, as long as I don't bring anything in or out, I don't have anything to worry about.
I was kinda under the impression he was talking about his fellow engineering majors... I know I was shocked at my classmates' inability to do anything but follow the magic incantations they got from the professor... few of them seemed interested or capable of figuring out what was going on without being explicitly told.
Do a multi-chambered bong, with one chamber spinning so the water stays at one end... just make sure that the water is below the axis, so you can put the connection between the two chambers there... Of course, now you're gonna have to put a screen on top of the bud, so it doesn't fly away. My, but this is complicated. I wish I had some weed so I could actually figure this out...
Um, I don't think he meant a beer bong. Of course, fire's weird in zero-g, too... so you'd probably still have problems with the bowl going out.
You really should've chosen a more reputable article. That one looks just as crazy as the people you're arguing against. Why is it that so many liberals can't seem to avoid making themselves look as foolish as the neocons?
Used to be, that described Americans just as well. It's a shame we've become such sheep that the stuffy old British
"Iches == centimeters"
That was Lockheed's fault. Yes, NASA should've caught the mistake in a design review, and that was poor project management on their part, but the fact is Lockheed didn't follow the software interface specification.
"Hey, let's close that door from inside!"
Actually makes sense, considering the inside of the spacecraft will usually be pressurized compared to the outside. The real problem was the fact that they were pressurizing with 100% O2, and that no one investigated why they were having communication problems.
"Yeah, it'll hold on re-entry"
That was management, not the engineers and rocket scientists. The engineers and rocket scientists didn't know enough either way, since they couldn't get management to authorize on orbit imagery to take a look at the damage.
In summary, almost all of NASA's failures have been due to management, not the scientists and engineers.
By that definition abortion would be legal up until around age 3-5, or whenever humans are capable of walking around and finding stuff to eat and drink on their own.
Babies cannot "live independently" without a parent to care for them.
But they don't require that food and drink be provided by the mother. So, they are capable of living "independenly of the mother", which is what the GP implied.
Technically, credit unions are non-profit, so that "middleman's" premium covers operating expenses. The rest of the interest charged on the loan is plowed back into dividends for the members. Most of those operating expenses are wages for the credit union workers and rent on facilities.
As far as membership is concerned, many modern credit unions have such broad fields of membership that the membership requirement is fairly easy to fill... the credit union I worked for could accept members from anyone who worked for a company that was a member of one of three chambers of commerce, plus several specific employers. So, in the three locations where they had branches, pretty much anyone with a job who walked in could open an account. There are many other credit unions with even broader charters. Also, if their charter covers a large, multinational company, then they're often large and multinational themselves.
Actually, they're proofs of concept, which means the contenders don't have to develop a vehicle to deliver the landers to the moon... they can simulate the lunar landing on earth. That makes the prize a lot more attainable for a private startup venture than requiring them also to build up a lunar capable launch infrastructure.
As such, Armadillo would actually be an excellent contender for this prize, considering their current design is a really souped up lander in the first place.
Funny. I just checked the phone I just bought this weekend, and hadn't thought of turning off the the GPS tracking yet, and it turns out it's set to only turn on when I dial 911. By default. Now, certainly you don't have a problem with emergency services being able to find you when you call, do you? Unless you're calling 911 to report a crime you just committed yourself, that is.
Take off the tin foil, my friend. I think the sun has fried your brain.
Just thought I'd post so you feel a little better. I started out as a theatre major in 1996, a degree that I never finished. I took a year off and did nothing. I started school again as a CS major, at a different school. I went to that school for a year, and then got a job as a sysadmin, and basically dropped out again for another two and half years. I lost that job in August of 2003, and went back to school again, at yet another school. I just graduated this spring with my B.S. in Software Engineering, and am starting a job with a major aerospace firm, writing software for satellites.
Even though I'm now 28, and didn't have a stellar (though it was mostly acceptable... I partied a little too much when I was a theatre major:) academic career, virtually no experience as a developer (I have the sysadmin experience, but nothing that I feel really applies to what I'll be doing at my new employer), and for all intents and purposes look like someone who starts things and never finishes them, I made it into what (I hope:) is an excellent job, without even really trying to look for it (they found my resume somewhere and contacted me... they don't even know how they got it:). With your military experience, you'll look like a much better hire than I did. Not to discourage you from going into law, because you're right, we need all the tech-savvy geek-bred lawyers we can get, but don't count yourself out as a developer if you want to do it.
To be perfectly honest, I would say that the lack of productivity has come from your failure to listen to Guppy. Every single one of his statements can be backed up directly in the Constitution itself. It's not even necessary to go into case law for the basics. You, on the other hand have changed definitions when convenient to fit your argument, and failed to cite anything other than Wikipedia, which great as it is, is not a primary source.
It seems the US educators truly are failing to teach political science properly. I would certainly agree that at this point withdrawal from the union would be suicide for any state, since there is no way they could possibly win against the federal army and (unless it was New Jersey;) the other 49 states wouldn't allow them to just slink away. However, that does not mean that the individual states do not have that right. The states do conduct foreign diplomacy, certainly not with the effectiveness of the nation as a whole (since they have ceded the power to negotiate binding treaties to the federal government), but it does happen. Recently, Jennifer Granholm, the governor of Michigan visited Japan as part of a bid to bring more Japanese investment (specifically a new Toyota plant) to the state. California's Proposition 187 could also be construed (though arguably not as clearly) as foreign diplomacy, in that the majority of its impact falls upon foreign nationals.
You also claim that the states don't get to pick the president. Actually, they do. Each state holds its own separate election, according to its own separate election standards. Each candidate is required to file the necessary paperwork and petitions in every single state to appear on the ballot. The individual states have agreed to hold their general elections on the same date so as to make it easier to administer the election, but I believe some have begun to allow early voting, which again is in their power. If you are unable to vote in your state, you are not allowed to simply cast your vote in another state; you must fill out an absentee ballot and send it to your state's Department of State (or equivalent). When the votes have been tabulated in a state, that state declares the number of electors for each candidate (each state may nominate one elector for each representative it sends to the House of Representatives, and one for each Senator). At this time, in all 50 states, the winner of the popular vote receives all of the electors for that state, though there is nothing in the Constitution to require it.
Certainly, for not being independent, the states of the US wield a considerable amount of power, more than the provinces in more unitary governments such as France or the UK. While they do not fully fit the definition of a nation-state, they surely are more than just provinces.
Which only works well if you're using a non-recursive build system. See Recursive Make Considered Harmful. Basically, in a traditional recursive make build, make doesn't really know all of the dependencies, so it can't find much parallelism at all and you wind up not really spawning that many additional threads. I didn't reread the article, so I don't remember at what point the parallelism stops working, but I seem to recall that it broke down at pretty low levels.
However, it's probably still pretty cool if your build is non-recursive. I haven't found many large builds that are, though so I don't really know.
Well, then we'll just have to build a dyson sphere that encloses both us and the sun, and move that at c. Then we'll be ok.
University of Michigan--Dearborn has one of the first ABET accredited Software Engineerng MS programs. You get to choose your focus, and can take classes both in the CS department and the Electrical/Computer Engineering department. Or, if you really want to get into hardware, you could just go the ECE department and get an MS in computer engineering. But you won't do as much programming in ECE, and the ECE department sucks when it comes to teaching it.
There are other accredited MSSE programs out there too... Embry-Riddle is the only other one I know off the top of my head (because I was looking into going there).
Disclaimer: My BSSE is from UM-D