Honestly, when the judge asks OJ to try on the gloves do you think he's going to just pull them on and say 'Wow! They fit!' The school board member had a pre-meditated motivation to proof that the tests are worthless- do you really think he tried? I heard this story on NPR where he was claiming that none of his 'scientist friends' use the math you find on these tests, which is so untrue as to be absurd, unless of course all of his scientist friends are 'political' scientists.
FTR I am not a fan of standardized tests but the confirmation bias in this whole story makes it nothing more than crappy journalism.
1. Linux!=Ubuntu 2. This new-fangled commenting system: Why is there no 'Reply' link right below the story- I had to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page. I'm getting way too old for this.
If I can put my $0.02 in, I'd say to be on the lookout for more apps developed using the concurrency runtime in MSRS. Speaking as someone who works with it every day, I have to admit it took a while to get used to the task/message port paradigm. Once you grok it, though, it's an extremely powerful and elegant way to write parallelized code. Imagine writing multithreaded code without your trusty mutex primitives and condition variables, and where in most cases C#'s lock {} is useless. Objects implement service contracts, and mutual exclusion is enforced by defining interleaves over message handlers. Tasks (very light-weight execution contexts) can be instantiated using anonymous delegates, and the runtime automagically instantiates as many threads as you need, depending on your hardware.
One of my most valued internet 'possessions' is my slashdot UID < 5000. It's amazing to think about how much has changed in 10 years. Keep up the great work!
Ok, so what if your robot is fooled by some obscure optical illusions-- other 'illusions' (or for lack of a better term, optical phenomena) are far more problematic- consider the problem of recognizing that you're looking at a mirror and not just a big room. Or the problem of 'seeing' the subtle reflections cast by a transparent medium like a window, in order to recognize the presence of an obstacle. Speaking as someone who's done a fair amount of work on autonomous robot exploration, these are big unsolved problems for robots equipped with off-the-shelf cameras.
DISCLAIMER: I am a former MSFTie and I held an R&D position, although not in MSR. This is all speculation on my part and not based on any tangible insider info...
Some thoughts: 0. This sounds more like a development lab than an expansion of MSR. More and more the company is expanding its research away from MSR and into product groups. See Live Labs or adCenter labs as good examples. 1. MSFT pays good money for top-tier programmers and developers- more salary and better benefits than you'll find just about anywhere. Add to this the cost of relocating international researchers and it's mind-boggling to think about how much money they throw at attracting talent. 2. Vancouver is a natural choice to locate a new facility- high quality of life, proximity to Redmond, and most importantly a relatively deep talent pool- *especially in game programming*. MSFT is one of the few kids on the block that can compete directly with EA for top talent and it makes sense to set up shop in their back yard. There's no indication that this will be a game studio but I'd put some money on that bet. 3. MSFT can spin this as an immigration issue all they want, as it suits their political agenda, but the truth is that there is a large, growing, highly educated segment of the talent pool that has no interest in moving to the US, at any price.
As an aside, it is a common belief amongst Canuck MSFTies that there are more University of Waterloo grads at MSFT than any other alma mater. I don't know the actual numbers but I'm more than willing to believe it based on my encounters there. It would cost the company a whole lot less to relocate their annual recruits from Waterloo and other Canadian schools to a Canadian development center. Pardon me, centre, eh?
You've never heard of easy urpmi? I just update the mirror and run 'urpmi.update -a'. I've had smooth upgrades all the way from Mandrake 9.2 to Mdv 2007.
For a long time I had total OCD when it came to checking mail, 'reading the news', and often found myself interrupting playing with my daughter to 'just check my messages'. I've definitely found that stress plays a big role- when things got stressful at work, I became more compulsive about checking the messages, which probably only served to increase my stress.
The official policy in my home is to turn off the switch on weekends. I'd say I'm only 25% successful at it, but it definitely makes a big difference. People here are right when they talk about priorities, but OCD is a tough mindset to kick. The compulsiveness is just that, an incredibly strong compulsion to 'just check my messages'. Resisting that compulsion is almost as destructive as giving in- you have a really hard time giving your kids the attention they deserve, simply because your brain is focused on something else.
I'd challenge anyone here who reads mail/the web on weekends to kick the habit. Unless you serve in some mission critical capacity (say, where reading/. on weekends is essential to national security), you will improve your quality of life enormously. If you do have a mission critical job- just get a pager.
I'm not an expert but fertility has been declining precipitously in N. American males and it's more prevalent in rural areas. The working hypothesis is that pesticides play a role (rural inhabitants have much higher exposure), as some have the effect of mimicing estrogen. Declining testosterone is probably part of the same effect.
Speaking as someone who just moved to the US from Canada, I'm stunned by the extent to which credit checks impact everything from renting an apt to getting a cell phone. I had my credit checked for the first time in ten years in Canada last month as I was putting together a car loan. Conversely, a month in the US has yielded two credit checks for really mundane purchases- why doesn't a credit card suffice for a cell phone? For all the places I've rented in Canada I've never had a credit check, just a reference from my previous landlord. Likewise, car insurance, renter's insurance, etc, etc just need a credit card. If you've got a credit card, which indicates that your credit history is good enough for a bank to take a risk on you, why isn't it good enough for a vendor?
Vonage is indeed doing an IPO and they announced a few days ago that US customers are eligible to buy in. However, the site linked in this story looks like a phishing scam.
It's sad to see them go, and not just for their cool h/w. This is the company that brought us OpenGL and, for a long time, the only useful STL documentation on the web (not to mention Irix had a working c++ compiler). I can almost forgive them for IRIX 6.5.
I agree 100%. The only media conspiracy at work here is the one where all the journalists who would cover this story were too drunk to file before press time. I suspect the AP story was written and filed before the event took place.
Slashdot Mirror
Water is a colorless and odorless liquid, ingested at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle.
Just sayin.
Ok, I'm wrong about this- most likely the bookstore...
Could be cultural but my money is on several thousand spammer-created accounts using the same password.
Honestly, when the judge asks OJ to try on the gloves do you think he's going to just pull them on and say 'Wow! They fit!' The school board member had a pre-meditated motivation to proof that the tests are worthless- do you really think he tried? I heard this story on NPR where he was claiming that none of his 'scientist friends' use the math you find on these tests, which is so untrue as to be absurd, unless of course all of his scientist friends are 'political' scientists.
FTR I am not a fan of standardized tests but the confirmation bias in this whole story makes it nothing more than crappy journalism.
In the absence of paradigm-shifting results, Nobel reduces to a lifetime achievement award.
Best clean-up I ever did was a Norton install done by my father-in-law's 'computer guy', complete with trojan masquerading as a key generator.
If we never tried anything new because people don't know how to do it yet then we'd still be banging rocks together to make dinner.
... or using Imperial units of meas... oh, wait, nevermind.
Oh, that's an easy one. It's turtles all the way down.
Once you know C you can learn any language. ;-)
Richard Dawkins offers his views: Lying for Jesus?
1. Linux!=Ubuntu
2. This new-fangled commenting system: Why is there no 'Reply' link right below the story- I had to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page. I'm getting way too old for this.
If I can put my $0.02 in, I'd say to be on the lookout for more apps developed using the concurrency runtime in MSRS. Speaking as someone who works with it every day, I have to admit it took a while to get used to the task/message port paradigm. Once you grok it, though, it's an extremely powerful and elegant way to write parallelized code. Imagine writing multithreaded code without your trusty mutex primitives and condition variables, and where in most cases C#'s lock {} is useless. Objects implement service contracts, and mutual exclusion is enforced by defining interleaves over message handlers. Tasks (very light-weight execution contexts) can be instantiated using anonymous delegates, and the runtime automagically instantiates as many threads as you need, depending on your hardware.
One of my most valued internet 'possessions' is my slashdot UID < 5000. It's amazing to think about how much has changed in 10 years. Keep up the great work!
Ok, so what if your robot is fooled by some obscure optical illusions-- other 'illusions' (or for lack of a better term, optical phenomena) are far more problematic- consider the problem of recognizing that you're looking at a mirror and not just a big room. Or the problem of 'seeing' the subtle reflections cast by a transparent medium like a window, in order to recognize the presence of an obstacle. Speaking as someone who's done a fair amount of work on autonomous robot exploration, these are big unsolved problems for robots equipped with off-the-shelf cameras.
DISCLAIMER: I am a former MSFTie and I held an R&D position, although not in MSR. This is all speculation on my part and not based on any tangible insider info...
Some thoughts:
0. This sounds more like a development lab than an expansion of MSR. More and more the company is expanding its research away from MSR and into product groups. See Live Labs or adCenter labs as good examples.
1. MSFT pays good money for top-tier programmers and developers- more salary and better benefits than you'll find just about anywhere. Add to this the cost of relocating international researchers and it's mind-boggling to think about how much money they throw at attracting talent.
2. Vancouver is a natural choice to locate a new facility- high quality of life, proximity to Redmond, and most importantly a relatively deep talent pool- *especially in game programming*. MSFT is one of the few kids on the block that can compete directly with EA for top talent and it makes sense to set up shop in their back yard. There's no indication that this will be a game studio but I'd put some money on that bet.
3. MSFT can spin this as an immigration issue all they want, as it suits their political agenda, but the truth is that there is a large, growing, highly educated segment of the talent pool that has no interest in moving to the US, at any price.
As an aside, it is a common belief amongst Canuck MSFTies that there are more University of Waterloo grads at MSFT than any other alma mater. I don't know the actual numbers but I'm more than willing to believe it based on my encounters there. It would cost the company a whole lot less to relocate their annual recruits from Waterloo and other Canadian schools to a Canadian development center. Pardon me, centre, eh?
I suspect that most candidates for cancer would have died of heart disease first.
What is this 'click' you speak of? Is that some kind of gopher client? I typed 'man click' but nothing came up...
You've never heard of easy urpmi? I just update the mirror and run 'urpmi.update -a'. I've had smooth upgrades all the way from Mandrake 9.2 to Mdv 2007.
For a long time I had total OCD when it came to checking mail, 'reading the news', and often found myself interrupting playing with my daughter to 'just check my messages'. I've definitely found that stress plays a big role- when things got stressful at work, I became more compulsive about checking the messages, which probably only served to increase my stress.
/. on weekends is essential to national security), you will improve your quality of life enormously. If you do have a mission critical job- just get a pager.
The official policy in my home is to turn off the switch on weekends. I'd say I'm only 25% successful at it, but it definitely makes a big difference. People here are right when they talk about priorities, but OCD is a tough mindset to kick. The compulsiveness is just that, an incredibly strong compulsion to 'just check my messages'. Resisting that compulsion is almost as destructive as giving in- you have a really hard time giving your kids the attention they deserve, simply because your brain is focused on something else.
I'd challenge anyone here who reads mail/the web on weekends to kick the habit. Unless you serve in some mission critical capacity (say, where reading
My $0.02.
I'm not an expert but fertility has been declining precipitously in N. American males and it's more prevalent in rural areas. The working hypothesis is that pesticides play a role (rural inhabitants have much higher exposure), as some have the effect of mimicing estrogen. Declining testosterone is probably part of the same effect.
Speaking as someone who just moved to the US from Canada, I'm stunned by the extent to which credit checks impact everything from renting an apt to getting a cell phone. I had my credit checked for the first time in ten years in Canada last month as I was putting together a car loan. Conversely, a month in the US has yielded two credit checks for really mundane purchases- why doesn't a credit card suffice for a cell phone? For all the places I've rented in Canada I've never had a credit check, just a reference from my previous landlord. Likewise, car insurance, renter's insurance, etc, etc just need a credit card. If you've got a credit card, which indicates that your credit history is good enough for a bank to take a risk on you, why isn't it good enough for a vendor?
The gist of the report is that the NAS has combined data from several sources to shrink the error bars.
Vonage is indeed doing an IPO and they announced a few days ago that US customers are eligible to buy in. However, the site linked in this story looks like a phishing scam.
... to mirror the STL progammer's guide (for personal use, of course).
It's sad to see them go, and not just for their cool h/w. This is the company that brought us OpenGL and, for a long time, the only useful STL documentation on the web (not to mention Irix had a working c++ compiler). I can almost forgive them for IRIX 6.5.
I agree 100%. The only media conspiracy at work here is the one where all the journalists who would cover this story were too drunk to file before press time. I suspect the AP story was written and filed before the event took place.