I currently work full time and attend school part time. My major is CS and I can tell you that a LOT of these people graduating with degrees understand the theory but can't grasp the concept when it comes to implementing them.
As someone who has programmed on the side for nearly half of my life, I find that a lot of algorithms I am learning about I already figured out or picked up as I wrote programs or looked at other people's code. Data structures is nothing new after you learn how a 3d engine works and write your own. Even software engineering, you may do for fun to see how fast you can write programs. The only difference between myself and a buddy that graduates with a CS degree? He knows the proper names to call everything. Give me a book and I'll be able to tell you the same thing. Is $12,000 worth that? Not in my eyes.
Unfortunately, I am being passed over for recent graduates or someone with the same experience and a degree. Therefore, I am spending $12,000 so my resume will at least make it past HR. Sad huh?
whats with everyone and the gpl? its not the holy grail, in fact if i were to start a software company i would not go with a gpl license if i were to release any kind of source code. it seems open, but its very restrictive and slows innovation.
i wrote this in 2 seconds, but it duplicates what the original post does. you need string::random, you could roll your own but i'm lazy and counterstrike is calling my name. enjoy!
i asked someone else this same question.. really, what is the big deal about a breath test? it takes a few seconds and it proves that you are sober. the only time i can imagine you'd want to avoid a breathalizer is when you know you have been drinking and are afraid of being convicted. okay, it may be unreasonable, but its no different than having your bags go through an xray machine at an airport terminal. you know you don't have any weapons on you, so you don't mind doing it with the peace of mind that if someone else foolishly does so, they will be caught. if you don't like it the airport thing, don't fly. if you don't like the breathalizer thing, don't drive. if you REALLY don't like it, band together with a few million citizens and get the law changed.
Driving is dangerous under the best of circumstances, and you have been a more dangerous driver than a drunk more than twice in your lifetime by being sleepy, lost, distracted or inexperienced
This is true. Hence why if you get a reckless driving ticket in most states, it carries possible loss of license and jailtime penalties. Kill someone while you're searching your floor for a cd, and you'll get a sentence similar to what a drunk driver would get (of course this depends on the judge/jury).
Change zoning laws so that every place of living or drinking is accessible by realistic public transportation.
If you can't get a taxi to take you home, then walk. If you can't walk, then you shouldn't be out drinking, should you?
driving on public roadways is not a right. on your own private property you can setup the indy 5000 if you wanted to. the government setup laws to using public roads. if you don't like them, contact your senator with a few thousand other people and change the law.
its illegal at 0.01 if you are visibly intoxicated. i know people who blew a 0.04 but were still convicted of a DUI because they were not able to properly operate a motor vehicle. there is a hard limit where regardless of your tolerance, you shouldn't drive, which i agree with. even if you are the hardest drinker, if you BAC is 0.08, your reaction time will be altered. Now, I don't know if a breathalizer is the best way to check your BAC (i never researched them so I don't know if results can be skewed with gum, swishing alcohol in your mouth, etc.), but if you get a blood test and are found above the legal limit, you shouldn't be driving. You agree to all of this when you get your drivers license.
Cops DO patrol, but you need to realize they can't be everywhere at once. If you pull cops away from local bars, then you have an unknown amount of drunk drivers who think they can make it home without being stopped. Put a cop there, they think twice. Hypotheically speaking, if the cop wasn't watching the bar, how can you prove she/he would have been on the street where your sister was hit? Your argument should be for more police on patrol AS WELL AS police that watch for drunk drivers as they leave the bar. Checkpoints also serve as deterrents to driving drunk (ask anyone from the DC metro area about that).
As for refusing a breathalizer, what would you gain from doing so? If you're sober, then the breathalizer would prove this. Driving isn't a right, you have to be licensed. They set rules, you choose to follow them. If you don't, then walk, use public transportation, teleport. Driving on public roadways is not a right.
Even though you are starting to go off topic with this, you can't get a DUI for standing outside of a local pub waiting for a taxi. In fact, I have never been harassed by a cop waiting for a taxi. The most it escalates to is a cop coming to me saying "You need to leave now" and i respond "I will when my taxi arrives". I know a good lawyer if they want to arrest me for that (you should too if you are worried about the same thing).
i may be wrong then, i was in staten island, nyt once upon a time and witnessed three cars run the same red light. the first car ran the light right after it turned red and i saw one single flash as it crossed the stop line. the next two cars were closer together and both times they went off as they crossed the stop line.
my thinking was, if the device is working properly, it will photograph you crossing the stop line when there is a red light. thats the only thing you need to prove. if you were sitting in the intersection and the light changes to red, you didn't run a redlight. if the light turns red, and you cross the stop line, you're guilty.
whats the point? on most highways the normal flow of traffic is generally between 65-75mph, setting the speed limit to 55 doesn't really help much except when a police cruiser heads onto the highway which will cause everyone to do the speed limit until she/he leaves again. in the event of an accident, it is usually hard to prove that someone was going 5-10 over the speed limit and the accident either doesn't result in a ticket or a light slap on the wrist (failure to brake, change lanes without a signal, etc.) unless extreme speed/damage is involved.
so yes, there may be more damage, but everyone is already doing it. at least automakers are getting the hint and making safer cars.
re too many variables in your story that weakens your argument. was the car driving on the sidewalk for an extended period of time? did he veer off road and run into her? was it a hit and run? how do you know his BAC but then say the cops couldn't catch him? someone with that kind of BAC would be slurring their words even slightly. plus depending on the time of day, an accident involved on a sidewalk should warrant at least a breathalizer, but more than likely would also include blood tests. if that didn't happen, i would have sued the police department for negligance.
someone who has a BAC of 0.08 and has never drank before will drive just as, if not worse, than an alcoholic with a BAC of 0.18. I say this because there was a time when I had to drive my car while i was rather intoxicated but didn't drive like a telltale drunk driver*, yet one of my friends can't have more than 2 drinks before losing her sense of balance. watching bars for someone who's weaving as they leave makes me feel better than no cops around at all letting more drunk drivers on the road. at least the drunks see the cops and think twice before driving off.
and at least your sister survived, it's much much much harder to cope when a loved one is lost to something as stupid as a drunk driver.
-dk
*before you flame me, i never drive drunk, i was on private property in the woods in some remote part of the country far from any kind of civilization. i was able to tell the way i drove from the markings in the grass the next day. the only person i could have possibly injured was myself. given the options i had, it was safer than waiting out the effects of the alcohol
The first shot will show your car behind the stop line (not in the intersection) and a red signal. The second will show your car in the intersection with the light still red. The photos are timestamped.
no way, have you seen them work? at least at night, all the ones i see take one picture and thats when you're in the middle of the intersection. now it may take it from multiple angles, but unless more than one car goes through the light, its only taking the one picture of you in the intersection.
and to the grandparent post, yes you have access to the pictures if you go to court. send the DA a certified letter asking for the evidence they will be using in court. if they don't give it to you, request an extension for your hearing and ask for the evidence during your trial. if they don't give it to you, appeal it and say you were denied due process.
okay, your post is wrong in more than one place. first of all, almost all radar guns are now calibrated before the cruiser leaves the precinct. tuning forks for radar guns are cheap and plentiful. maybe in a ghost town in the midwest your defense of uncalibrated equipment may fly.
next, i don't agree with the speed limits in most places. in a lot of places, most of the traffic flows at a higher speed anyway. if you actually do the speed limit, in some cases, you are putting yourself in more danger. there is no proof that going 10-15 over the speed limit increases my potential for getting into an accident. in fact, when speed limits are increased, accident rates tend to decline. morons weaving in and out of traffic aren't causing danger by speeding, they are causing danger by driving recklessly. i could drive the speed limit and weave and it'd just be as bad as if i was doing 10-15 over.
i hope everyone milks this for all its worth. traffic court operates very differently than regular courts, in which the police officer's word goes for almost anything. a lot of cops tend to give people tickets knowing they won't fight it, thus its revenue for the city and judges will turn a blind eye to it.
just out of curosity, what makes the software half bad for you. i don't use aol server regularly, but i didn't have any complaints when i did use it briefly. there still aren't any aim clients that 100% replicate the features in aim. winamp 5. netscape, okay so they may have butchered it here, but if it weren't for aol netscape wouldn't exist anymore.
I think we're just supposed to hate the ISP aspect of AOL, even though that is getting better too. Their software has never been half bad. I have been a big fan of AIM (up until 5.2 or so when they included the WildTangent crap), and even the original design of the AOL client was quite interesting. AOL Server proved itself, but it wasn't free. Now that AVS is open, we can see some more interesting projects spawned off of it (xmms/noatun plugins anyone?). I think they're trying to show the world that we shouldn't hate AOL, just the users.
and if you use the same hardware from 96, you will notice similar lack of alternatives for it, relatively speaking. haiku, reactos, etc. will not run on anything older than a pentium. why should it be any different for sparc? lets let obsolete hardware become obsolete and stop computing in the stone age.
Haiku is a bad example, as the os is not mature. You can always say the BSD's, or even semi-stable operating systems like Syllable and SkyOS (i think may prove to be a serious competitor to windows). Haiku is similiar to projects like Xen and ReactOS which could kill the Microsoft dominince, but they are no where near ready for primetime. I say this now, Linux will not replace windows as far as desktops go. Not until something kills XOrg/XFree86 (hint: appserver from syllable/atheos does windowing the right way and provides easy hooks for remote windowing ala X)...
Working file transfer or direct connect would be nice. Before you start flaming me, I have four seperate machines that run GAIM at home all on different operating systems. None of them can transfer files or establish a direct connect connection. Now, if I start forwarding ports, then it'll work but my friends will get bored within a few minutes and say its easier to use AOL's AIM client. In the long run its easier on me too since I don't have to act as support for them "why won't my buddy expressions show up?" "how do i do xxxx".
I do not push Open Source onto people, I push (usually free) productive software onto people. If it happens to be open source, so be it. For instance, I will tell my parents to use Microsoft Office, but would recommend Open Office to my sisters. My dad can't go to a presentation with the VP of his company with a staroffice (or staroffice-converted-to-powerpoint) presentation, but my sister can easily convert her thesis to a word format that would print at a local kinkos. So it all depends on the person.
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You may find this of interesting reading
I currently work full time and attend school part time. My major is CS and I can tell you that a LOT of these people graduating with degrees understand the theory but can't grasp the concept when it comes to implementing them.
As someone who has programmed on the side for nearly half of my life, I find that a lot of algorithms I am learning about I already figured out or picked up as I wrote programs or looked at other people's code. Data structures is nothing new after you learn how a 3d engine works and write your own. Even software engineering, you may do for fun to see how fast you can write programs. The only difference between myself and a buddy that graduates with a CS degree? He knows the proper names to call everything. Give me a book and I'll be able to tell you the same thing. Is $12,000 worth that? Not in my eyes.
Unfortunately, I am being passed over for recent graduates or someone with the same experience and a degree. Therefore, I am spending $12,000 so my resume will at least make it past HR. Sad huh?
-dk
I thought Linux was a clone of unix. now we're saying linux is unix?
whats with everyone and the gpl? its not the holy grail, in fact if i were to start a software company i would not go with a gpl license if i were to release any kind of source code. it seems open, but its very restrictive and slows innovation.
-dk
Mod parent up! Mod this post funny!
-dk
geniusj!
i asked someone else this same question.. really, what is the big deal about a breath test? it takes a few seconds and it proves that you are sober. the only time i can imagine you'd want to avoid a breathalizer is when you know you have been drinking and are afraid of being convicted. okay, it may be unreasonable, but its no different than having your bags go through an xray machine at an airport terminal. you know you don't have any weapons on you, so you don't mind doing it with the peace of mind that if someone else foolishly does so, they will be caught. if you don't like it the airport thing, don't fly. if you don't like the breathalizer thing, don't drive. if you REALLY don't like it, band together with a few million citizens and get the law changed.
-dk
Driving is dangerous under the best of circumstances, and you have been a more dangerous driver than a drunk more than twice in your lifetime by being sleepy, lost, distracted or inexperienced
This is true. Hence why if you get a reckless driving ticket in most states, it carries possible loss of license and jailtime penalties. Kill someone while you're searching your floor for a cd, and you'll get a sentence similar to what a drunk driver would get (of course this depends on the judge/jury).
Change zoning laws so that every place of living or drinking is accessible by realistic public transportation.
If you can't get a taxi to take you home, then walk. If you can't walk, then you shouldn't be out drinking, should you?
-dk
driving on public roadways is not a right. on your own private property you can setup the indy 5000 if you wanted to. the government setup laws to using public roads. if you don't like them, contact your senator with a few thousand other people and change the law.
-dk
its illegal at 0.01 if you are visibly intoxicated. i know people who blew a 0.04 but were still convicted of a DUI because they were not able to properly operate a motor vehicle. there is a hard limit where regardless of your tolerance, you shouldn't drive, which i agree with. even if you are the hardest drinker, if you BAC is 0.08, your reaction time will be altered. Now, I don't know if a breathalizer is the best way to check your BAC (i never researched them so I don't know if results can be skewed with gum, swishing alcohol in your mouth, etc.), but if you get a blood test and are found above the legal limit, you shouldn't be driving. You agree to all of this when you get your drivers license.
Cops DO patrol, but you need to realize they can't be everywhere at once. If you pull cops away from local bars, then you have an unknown amount of drunk drivers who think they can make it home without being stopped. Put a cop there, they think twice. Hypotheically speaking, if the cop wasn't watching the bar, how can you prove she/he would have been on the street where your sister was hit? Your argument should be for more police on patrol AS WELL AS police that watch for drunk drivers as they leave the bar. Checkpoints also serve as deterrents to driving drunk (ask anyone from the DC metro area about that).
As for refusing a breathalizer, what would you gain from doing so? If you're sober, then the breathalizer would prove this. Driving isn't a right, you have to be licensed. They set rules, you choose to follow them. If you don't, then walk, use public transportation, teleport. Driving on public roadways is not a right.
Even though you are starting to go off topic with this, you can't get a DUI for standing outside of a local pub waiting for a taxi. In fact, I have never been harassed by a cop waiting for a taxi. The most it escalates to is a cop coming to me saying "You need to leave now" and i respond "I will when my taxi arrives". I know a good lawyer if they want to arrest me for that (you should too if you are worried about the same thing).
-dk
i may be wrong then, i was in staten island, nyt once upon a time and witnessed three cars run the same red light. the first car ran the light right after it turned red and i saw one single flash as it crossed the stop line. the next two cars were closer together and both times they went off as they crossed the stop line.
my thinking was, if the device is working properly, it will photograph you crossing the stop line when there is a red light. thats the only thing you need to prove. if you were sitting in the intersection and the light changes to red, you didn't run a redlight. if the light turns red, and you cross the stop line, you're guilty.
whats the point? on most highways the normal flow of traffic is generally between 65-75mph, setting the speed limit to 55 doesn't really help much except when a police cruiser heads onto the highway which will cause everyone to do the speed limit until she/he leaves again. in the event of an accident, it is usually hard to prove that someone was going 5-10 over the speed limit and the accident either doesn't result in a ticket or a light slap on the wrist (failure to brake, change lanes without a signal, etc.) unless extreme speed/damage is involved.
so yes, there may be more damage, but everyone is already doing it. at least automakers are getting the hint and making safer cars.
-dk
re too many variables in your story that weakens your argument. was the car driving on the sidewalk for an extended period of time? did he veer off road and run into her? was it a hit and run? how do you know his BAC but then say the cops couldn't catch him? someone with that kind of BAC would be slurring their words even slightly. plus depending on the time of day, an accident involved on a sidewalk should warrant at least a breathalizer, but more than likely would also include blood tests. if that didn't happen, i would have sued the police department for negligance.
someone who has a BAC of 0.08 and has never drank before will drive just as, if not worse, than an alcoholic with a BAC of 0.18. I say this because there was a time when I had to drive my car while i was rather intoxicated but didn't drive like a telltale drunk driver*, yet one of my friends can't have more than 2 drinks before losing her sense of balance. watching bars for someone who's weaving as they leave makes me feel better than no cops around at all letting more drunk drivers on the road. at least the drunks see the cops and think twice before driving off.
and at least your sister survived, it's much much much harder to cope when a loved one is lost to something as stupid as a drunk driver.
-dk
*before you flame me, i never drive drunk, i was on private property in the woods in some remote part of the country far from any kind of civilization. i was able to tell the way i drove from the markings in the grass the next day. the only person i could have possibly injured was myself. given the options i had, it was safer than waiting out the effects of the alcohol
The first shot will show your car behind the stop line (not in the intersection) and a red signal. The second will show your car in the intersection with the light still red. The photos are timestamped.
no way, have you seen them work? at least at night, all the ones i see take one picture and thats when you're in the middle of the intersection. now it may take it from multiple angles, but unless more than one car goes through the light, its only taking the one picture of you in the intersection.
and to the grandparent post, yes you have access to the pictures if you go to court. send the DA a certified letter asking for the evidence they will be using in court. if they don't give it to you, request an extension for your hearing and ask for the evidence during your trial. if they don't give it to you, appeal it and say you were denied due process.
-dk
blah blah blah i am not a lawyer, etc.
i would also like to state driving after drinking is stupid, and its a shame to see DUI offenders getting off on this. :(
-dk
okay, your post is wrong in more than one place. first of all, almost all radar guns are now calibrated before the cruiser leaves the precinct. tuning forks for radar guns are cheap and plentiful. maybe in a ghost town in the midwest your defense of uncalibrated equipment may fly.
next, i don't agree with the speed limits in most places. in a lot of places, most of the traffic flows at a higher speed anyway. if you actually do the speed limit, in some cases, you are putting yourself in more danger. there is no proof that going 10-15 over the speed limit increases my potential for getting into an accident. in fact, when speed limits are increased, accident rates tend to decline. morons weaving in and out of traffic aren't causing danger by speeding, they are causing danger by driving recklessly. i could drive the speed limit and weave and it'd just be as bad as if i was doing 10-15 over.
i hope everyone milks this for all its worth. traffic court operates very differently than regular courts, in which the police officer's word goes for almost anything. a lot of cops tend to give people tickets knowing they won't fight it, thus its revenue for the city and judges will turn a blind eye to it.
-dk
just out of curosity, what makes the software half bad for you. i don't use aol server regularly, but i didn't have any complaints when i did use it briefly. there still aren't any aim clients that 100% replicate the features in aim. winamp 5. netscape, okay so they may have butchered it here, but if it weren't for aol netscape wouldn't exist anymore.
-dk
its called offtopic dicussion. you must be new to slashdot...
-dk
I think we're just supposed to hate the ISP aspect of AOL, even though that is getting better too. Their software has never been half bad. I have been a big fan of AIM (up until 5.2 or so when they included the WildTangent crap), and even the original design of the AOL client was quite interesting. AOL Server proved itself, but it wasn't free. Now that AVS is open, we can see some more interesting projects spawned off of it (xmms/noatun plugins anyone?). I think they're trying to show the world that we shouldn't hate AOL, just the users.
-dk
and if you use the same hardware from 96, you will notice similar lack of alternatives for it, relatively speaking. haiku, reactos, etc. will not run on anything older than a pentium. why should it be any different for sparc? lets let obsolete hardware become obsolete and stop computing in the stone age.
-dk
Haiku is a bad example, as the os is not mature. You can always say the BSD's, or even semi-stable operating systems like Syllable and SkyOS (i think may prove to be a serious competitor to windows). Haiku is similiar to projects like Xen and ReactOS which could kill the Microsoft dominince, but they are no where near ready for primetime. I say this now, Linux will not replace windows as far as desktops go. Not until something kills XOrg/XFree86 (hint: appserver from syllable/atheos does windowing the right way and provides easy hooks for remote windowing ala X)...
-dk
Mod parent up! Mod this post funny
-dk
Working file transfer or direct connect would be nice. Before you start flaming me, I have four seperate machines that run GAIM at home all on different operating systems. None of them can transfer files or establish a direct connect connection. Now, if I start forwarding ports, then it'll work but my friends will get bored within a few minutes and say its easier to use AOL's AIM client. In the long run its easier on me too since I don't have to act as support for them "why won't my buddy expressions show up?" "how do i do xxxx".
I do not push Open Source onto people, I push (usually free) productive software onto people. If it happens to be open source, so be it. For instance, I will tell my parents to use Microsoft Office, but would recommend Open Office to my sisters. My dad can't go to a presentation with the VP of his company with a staroffice (or staroffice-converted-to-powerpoint) presentation, but my sister can easily convert her thesis to a word format that would print at a local kinkos. So it all depends on the person.
-dk
apparently its troll tuesday, just one more reason to stay off the forums of slashdot...