There really are great kids who have been handed poorly-equipped parents by a crueler fate than your own.
Finding the heart to absorb some of their personal angst whilst moving the class forward in spite of the aggressively self-promotional behaviour is THE key challenge of teaching a PUBLIC school - the principle purpose of which is to address the vicious cycles in society by which the feeble beget the more feeble.
Its a lofty calling, and both difficult and under-appreciated (to say nothing of misunderstood).
Right you are. Suspend / sleep is a recipe for instant disaster:
HOWEVER
If every computer slept on a regular basis, I have to believe the computer/software companies that could manage it succesfully would survive, and the rest would quickly be pummelled into conformance.
In short, it may take a unified movement toward sleepy-computing for it to work well, as individual break-outs will be punished by going it alone.
The maximum risk is limited by the amount of fuel in the battery, not the chamber.
The device has inertia, and can accumulate the energy produced by the fuel in combustion.
I presume that the maximum energy available at any one time is limited by the physics (which does not include the rated revolution - but rather includes the melting speed, or the equilibrium speed - that is the speed at which the losses due to friction and inefficiency equals the energy being input by the fuel.)
The speed is high, but the mass surrounding the turbine relative to the momentum of the turbine, would generally prevent a dangerous projectile; however, should a crack occur first in the shell, followed by a shattering of the turbine, pieces could be expelled at a good velocity - in the end, it appears the temperature of the projectile would be a greater risk than it's speed.
Right, I was thinking you could require 20 seconds before accepting the capcha, and then timing out after 40, but this could still be proxied in real time.
The challenge might be to show a quick succession of letters and require a single keystroke reply to each in turn.
if javascript were used on the web page to create the imagery, it might be difficult to proxy, and if timing were critical and limited, the delays could be noticeable.
imagine a simple animated gif, with a java key capture. the letters/pairs/trios are shown in some timed sequence and compared to the responding keystrokes, this would test in principle, both the latency of the connection, and the latency of the reader - here again suggesting that second languages might have a rather pronounced latency in responding to English word patterns.
To be culturally exclusive, one might used obvious objects and ask for the first letter of each. That is the kind of thing that natives, even non-mathematical natives can do fairly quickly while non-natives would always need the time induced by internal translation.
Of course - by that definition, the US is the single most significant terrorist enterprise, and the nuclear attack on the non-combatant civilian population of Japan is the single greatest act of terrorism.
Killing civilians in disproportionate numbers is the the defining "tactic" of "Terror" to which you so vaguely refer.
Unless you are positing a tautology in which you get to decide which tactics are those of terrorists "after" you look at the color of their skin, religion, etc...
I would challenge anyone to define terrorist in a manner which does not put the US at the top of the chart.
(And btw - I'm not saying that the US was morally wrong to end a war by those means - I'm only saying that terrorism is in the eyes of the beholder, and it appears in this current era to serve as a mask to the genuine complaints being raised. Indeed - entire regions of the globe find the US to have imposed its will in a manner which deprived them of certain human rights, and they applaud and participate in a violent reaction. Condemn that if you will, but try to do so in language which is informed by the US history - ie the Revolutionary War, the Genocide of the Prior Inhabitants, The use of the A-bomb to decimate civilian populations, the use of chemical warfare in Vietnam, the cover-up and justification of torture by the President's attorney, etc...
I would suggest that "Terrorism" may be more humane than many other forms of war - as the actual casualties are much lower - with an effort to break an opponent economically, rather than say by genocide as in the US v. Indians, or by Genocide and in the US a-bomb v Nagasaki, etc...
The US did install dictators in the oil-rich countries, and has prevented the democracy that matters - that is some equal access to economic opportunity. Do these regions not have the same right to protest this intrusion into their human rights by some measure of violence as did the US? - It is all well and good to argue that everyone should "jist git along", but that is not the History of the world, that is not how the US, democracy, freedom of speech, equality for race, sex, and creed, have been established.
So I'm going to end by calling "theo-racism" - I think your comment belies a different standard for the same behavior which turns on "who" not "what", and I thinks it's increasingly clear that "Arab-Islamic" is the Race-Religion pair which is the victim of a double-standard.
This is a good point, and one I've contemplated before.
I would agree that the fourth doesn't apply to "private persons". But I would also agree that "Corporations" are more a state-creation than a non-state entity. Every right of a Corporation is granted by the state - for a valid state interest whether profitable tax-production, or non-profit social benefit. I think it is not entirely unreasonable to hold state-created entities fully accountable to comply with the United States Constitution. The Bill of Rights is a good guide which I seek to uphold as a private individual - and should therefore not be an unreasonable duty to impose of state-created corporate entities. Of course - Elitist Universities could no longer give "legacy" preference to the children of non-Jews/non blacks and other forms of continuing discrimination, but this seems a small price to pay for upholding a national Constitution.
As for the privacy of searches - I suggest that a user is entitled to the degree of anonymity which is apparent on the particular page into which the search terms are entered. If the page - to a reasonable person - appears to be a private transaction - it ought to be respected. I think an argument could be made that a search engine is both a doctor and a lawyer in practice, and that with respect to searches of a medical or legal nature, the same rights of privacy may be inferred. The right to the assistance of council has been interpreted to require those who provide council to do so in confidence - the same is true for medical care.
So - while I think the legal arguments previously given are sound, I also see the potential for new precedents which would protect privacy based on content rather than certification.
If they destroy the tape - it would create a criminal offense on the part of the police. They will return the tape, and they will suffer a proper litigation for overreaching, and then compounding the overreaching with seizing the petition for redress, and in so many ways violating the individuals civil rights. If a minority is involved here - it could be elevated to a hate crime. Hopefully the police will be duly chastened, and the voters will respond to the million dollar cost by voting out the police chief.
The sane response is to borrow an ice cream truck. The noise is universally accepted - it is irritating beyond description, and will attract kids. I think it is the safe and appropriate answer to your problem.
SolFocus just closed a 25 million dollar funding to research little parabolic mirrors and how these could be used to stop global warming (by generating solar electricity). I suggest the OP dream up a solution to a big problem, and then get it funded. Perhaps it is the dismal *results* of the government science which is responsible for the current lack of interest in Science. I join your concern over the loss of scientific enthusiasm in the US, we differ perhaps mostly in how we might be inclined to solve it. I suggest more private research with the tangible goal of solving real problems - you seem to prefer the kind of esoteric studies which find their way into Ph.D's - perhaps this is the problem - that Ph.D's are expected to operate in the novel conceptual realm - rather than solving - for example the pedestrian economic issues surrounding the use of Solar energy.
Thanks for the dialogue - I admit to giving your position more thought.
There may be a natural ebb and flow of research in which periods of significant advancement in "pure" research is natural followed by a focus on putting the new information to use. My sense is that we currently have more "pure" information than we can use, so the relative value of more would appear lower. For example, we know how to put tons of data through a fiber - but no one has a fiber in their home - and very few have fiber at work, so the social impact of cramming 1,000 times more data onto a fiber would appear low. I think we (ie those alive today) are faced with some utilitarian challenges - such as energy, water, environment, radicalism, resource disparity, etc, and I personally feel that we have more unused theory than practical solutions to these real issues, and we are better served by practical solutions at this juncture.
but private organizations - like the American Cancer Society, and your own personal - willy nilly research coop - certainly could fill the void. Why should governments (ie taxpayers) engage in research that no rational people care enough about to invest their OWN money?
What if the government - rather than taking our money and spending it badly - would instead give individuals the power to invest that money in research which they believe will benefit their lives.
On a dollar for dollar basis - private research ie Space One, X Prize, Google, Xerox will outpace centralized government efforts a hundredfold.
The Space program really is not as impressive to me as is the computer - had we focussed on the computer - rather than landing on the moon - we might have experienced the gains in productivity sooner.
My comment is meant to protest the use of *my* money to fund pie-in-the-sky research. If you *want* your money to fund that - its a free country - but non-utilitarian research should not in my opinion be government funded - nor I notice is it very often privately funded. This is as it should be.
If you truly believe you have a great idea - *you* should do the research and enlighten the world - but it's not very practical for everyone with the desire to be a mad professor (with or without any ideas of their own) to be well paid by my tax dollars.
Too often "researchers" have wasted tax-payer's money playing with cockemany schemes just shy of perpetual motion, cold fusion, water-powered cars, and related hubris. If you want to investigate the unproven - you will probably need to find the money somewhere other than my back pocket - or the back pockets of well-managed investments.
Real life is 90% hard work and 10% new - unfinished - pie-in-the-sky cockamany what-if scenarios. If you want real pay - you might try real life. If starving student is your true aim - you might be able to hop from one useless project to the next eternally.
Cancel the damn credit card account if necessary (ie lose the card, report it missing and request a new card).
Also dispute any charges against the card with which you disagree. at that point, it is the job of the credit card company to ensure that reasonable evidence exists of this "contract".
Also call them with a voice recorder. Inform them that the account has been cancelled, and that any future charges against the Credit Card will be reported as fraudulent - then release the ensuing endless conversation on the net. If it's a classic case of brow-beating - they will fire the guy, apologize, and enroll in customer sensitivity classes.
Yes - stellar advice. Works wonderful throughout the world - look at how we treated the Indians - they respected the us and made a peace treaty with the us, and the us ran them out on the trail of tears; oh yeah - and the slaves were probably all victims of resrespecting authority.
Yes - in your lilly-white gated community, if you tip your fedora to the cops and never question the discrimination de jur, you will probably not have your flat flattened. but if you happen to embrace an unpopular economic theory; stand by to be victimized.
By the way - please continue to enjoy the freedoms which people such as yourself have not and could never have defended, advanced, or invented. The ignorant are blessed with the same liberties as those by whose toil, vigilance, perception, and sacrifice - all personal freedoms are maintained.
It doesn't really matter if there is more to the story or not - the important fact is that the police are trying to set a precedent that one cannot - in one's own home - operate a camera for the purpose of defending one's self against aggressors. If we allow civil rights to be eroded for others - the erosion will quickly spread to one's own front door.
No, the more obvious use would be to stop the popperazi. plebs can't afford this technology, but celebs could, and it would pay for itself in proper licensing fees for approved celeb photos.
The only thing you lack is a criminally inflated balance sheet, and plenty of OPM (Other people's money) to throw at politicians in order to get a secret private meeting with the Dickster so he can insure that the government's energy policy is tilted to favor your endlessly corrupt business model.
I think you leap too quickly to the conclusion that moving jobs overseas is moral ambiguous. If companies want to sell in the US - I believe that the people whose lives are on the line to defend the US are entitled to a high priority in the job market. If a company wants to sell in india - that's great - they _should_ give the jobs to locals, but there is a moral right of people to have a place at the table in their own country when their economy is creating the jobs in the first place. If the rest of the World wants a first-rate country - they can follow our lead - create a rule of law - not a theocracy - for example, hold corruption accountable - etc etc, but to move jobs out of the economy which pays for them, while saddling that economy with the other related costs of your business is wrong, and should be discouraged in the strongest sense.
An over-reliance on user-selected libraries reduces the utility of a language as a framework for the community-related aspects of a language - which I suggest are in most cases far more important than the language itself. For example the ability of google to return sample code in language x which solves problem y is a community-related aspect of the language.
"Libraries" in the sense of randomly selected language mutations decreases the usefulness of solutions as they are often dependant on certain framework modifications.
Another example of this problem is partial-ownership arrangements, such as web-hosting - in which langauge extensions are chosen at random by the hosting provider - here again, a solution which could work under the langauge fails because a mutation in the extension list.
(A hard example would be the storage of images (blobs) in PostGreSql which is considered by most DB's to be a stock problem, but has three of more equally non-standard solutions in PostgreSQL.)
VS.NET (for all the crimes of the parent company) provides a comprehensive framework for so many vital functions - that the future value of the "language" will be exponentially higher than library-dependant cousins.
I'd buy that argument for Europe - where it's generally cold or colder. In much of the world however - the big energy cost is cooling - and the real concern is how to build a house with minimal Heating AND Cooling costs. Your Duron probably isn't going to help much. Although I do recall a night spent in Kiev with every electric device running simply for the heat of it.
The rare commodity comes first - this is just an admission that he views customers as abundant and talent as insufficient.
A realization which could spell the "peak" of technology outsourcing. As more customers realize there really isn't that much gold in them-thar-hills, outsourcing will slow.
Prediction:
The US trains more people with good IT and English skills than India - therefore a temporary excess of talent in India will be quickly tapped. (This is evidence that this has already occurred.) Moreover - if perks are required to get talent - then prices aren't far behind. My guess is that demand for IT in the US will soon rise sharply due to restrictions in outsourced labor combined with stupid immigration policies ie give me (only) the poor.
I would disagree. I think the argument that jpg files are a "series of instructions" is pretty strong - the same is true with MPEG - which is based on JPG. These highly compressed formats are instructions which cause a virtual machine (decompressor) to perform deterministic functions (a signal output). Say what you want about taxes (while driving on the best roads in the world - in a safe - and rational society) - but the argument that digital media are not deterministic instructions for a computing device is not a solid argument. Frankly - I'm in favor of MORE CONSUMPTION taxes - because it will ease both immigration and importation imbalances. Viva the internet tax.
Slashdot Mirror
There really are great kids who have been handed poorly-equipped parents by a crueler fate than your own.
Finding the heart to absorb some of their personal angst whilst moving the class forward in spite of the aggressively self-promotional behaviour is THE key challenge of teaching a PUBLIC school - the principle purpose of which is to address the vicious cycles in society by which the feeble beget the more feeble.
Its a lofty calling, and both difficult and under-appreciated (to say nothing of misunderstood).
Here's to those who succeed!
AIK
Right you are. Suspend / sleep is a recipe for instant disaster:
HOWEVER
If every computer slept on a regular basis, I have to believe the computer/software companies that could manage it succesfully would survive, and the rest would quickly be pummelled into conformance.
In short, it may take a unified movement toward sleepy-computing for it to work well, as individual break-outs will be punished by going it alone.
AIK
The maximum risk is limited by the amount of fuel in the battery, not the chamber.
The device has inertia, and can accumulate the energy produced by the fuel in combustion.
I presume that the maximum energy available at any one time is limited by the physics (which does not include the rated revolution - but rather includes the melting speed, or the equilibrium speed - that is the speed at which the losses due to friction and inefficiency equals the energy being input by the fuel.)
The speed is high, but the mass surrounding the turbine relative to the momentum of the turbine, would generally prevent a dangerous projectile; however, should a crack occur first in the shell, followed by a shattering of the turbine, pieces could be expelled at a good velocity - in the end, it appears the temperature of the projectile would be a greater risk than it's speed.
AIK
Right,
I was thinking you could require 20 seconds before accepting the capcha, and then timing out after 40, but this could still be proxied in real time.
The challenge might be to show a quick succession of letters and require a single keystroke reply to each in turn.
if javascript were used on the web page to create the imagery, it might be difficult to proxy, and if timing were critical and limited, the delays could be noticeable.
imagine a simple animated gif, with a java key capture. the letters/pairs/trios are shown in some timed sequence and compared to the responding keystrokes, this would test in principle, both the latency of the connection, and the latency of the reader - here again suggesting that second languages might have a rather pronounced latency in responding to English word patterns.
To be culturally exclusive, one might used obvious objects and ask for the first letter of each. That is the kind of thing that natives, even non-mathematical natives can do fairly quickly while non-natives would always need the time induced by internal translation.
AIK
Of course - by that definition, the US is the single most significant terrorist enterprise, and the nuclear attack on the non-combatant civilian population of Japan is the single greatest act of terrorism.
...
...
...
Killing civilians in disproportionate numbers is the the defining "tactic" of "Terror" to which you so vaguely refer.
Unless you are positing a tautology in which you get to decide which tactics are those of terrorists "after" you look at the color of their skin, religion, etc
I would challenge anyone to define terrorist in a manner which does not put the US at the top of the chart.
(And btw - I'm not saying that the US was morally wrong to end a war by those means - I'm only saying that terrorism is in the eyes of the beholder, and it appears in this current era to serve as a mask to the genuine complaints being raised. Indeed - entire regions of the globe find the US to have imposed its will in a manner which deprived them of certain human rights, and they applaud and participate in a violent reaction. Condemn that if you will, but try to do so in language which is informed by the US history - ie the Revolutionary War, the Genocide of the Prior Inhabitants, The use of the A-bomb to decimate civilian populations, the use of chemical warfare in Vietnam, the cover-up and justification of torture by the President's attorney, etc
I would suggest that "Terrorism" may be more humane than many other forms of war - as the actual casualties are much lower - with an effort to break an opponent economically, rather than say by genocide as in the US v. Indians, or by Genocide and in the US a-bomb v Nagasaki, etc
The US did install dictators in the oil-rich countries, and has prevented the democracy that matters - that is some equal access to economic opportunity. Do these regions not have the same right to protest this intrusion into their human rights by some measure of violence as did the US? - It is all well and good to argue that everyone should "jist git along", but that is not the History of the world, that is not how the US, democracy, freedom of speech, equality for race, sex, and creed, have been established.
So I'm going to end by calling "theo-racism" - I think your comment belies a different standard for the same behavior which turns on "who" not "what", and I thinks it's increasingly clear that "Arab-Islamic" is the Race-Religion pair which is the victim of a double-standard.
Best regards,
AIK
This is a good point, and one I've contemplated before.
I would agree that the fourth doesn't apply to "private persons". But I would also agree that "Corporations" are more a state-creation than a non-state entity. Every right of a Corporation is granted by the state - for a valid state interest whether profitable tax-production, or non-profit social benefit. I think it is not entirely unreasonable to hold state-created entities fully accountable to comply with the United States Constitution. The Bill of Rights is a good guide which I seek to uphold as a private individual - and should therefore not be an unreasonable duty to impose of state-created corporate entities. Of course - Elitist Universities could no longer give "legacy" preference to the children of non-Jews/non blacks and other forms of continuing discrimination, but this seems a small price to pay for upholding a national Constitution.
As for the privacy of searches - I suggest that a user is entitled to the degree of anonymity which is apparent on the particular page into which the search terms are entered. If the page - to a reasonable person - appears to be a private transaction - it ought to be respected. I think an argument could be made that a search engine is both a doctor and a lawyer in practice, and that with respect to searches of a medical or legal nature, the same rights of privacy may be inferred. The right to the assistance of council has been interpreted to require those who provide council to do so in confidence - the same is true for medical care.
So - while I think the legal arguments previously given are sound, I also see the potential for new precedents which would protect privacy based on content rather than certification.
AIK
When the price of a new laptop is $300, then $100 for a used piece seems not beyond the realm of reasonability.
AIK
If they destroy the tape - it would create a criminal offense on the part of the police. They will return the tape, and they will suffer a proper litigation for overreaching, and then compounding the overreaching with seizing the petition for redress, and in so many ways violating the individuals civil rights. If a minority is involved here - it could be elevated to a hate crime. Hopefully the police will be duly chastened, and the voters will respond to the million dollar cost by voting out the police chief.
AIK
The sane response is to borrow an ice cream truck. The noise is universally accepted - it is irritating beyond description, and will attract kids. I think it is the safe and appropriate answer to your problem.
AIK
SolFocus just closed a 25 million dollar funding to research little parabolic mirrors and how these could be used to stop global warming (by generating solar electricity). I suggest the OP dream up a solution to a big problem, and then get it funded. Perhaps it is the dismal *results* of the government science which is responsible for the current lack of interest in Science. I join your concern over the loss of scientific enthusiasm in the US, we differ perhaps mostly in how we might be inclined to solve it. I suggest more private research with the tangible goal of solving real problems - you seem to prefer the kind of esoteric studies which find their way into Ph.D's - perhaps this is the problem - that Ph.D's are expected to operate in the novel conceptual realm - rather than solving - for example the pedestrian economic issues surrounding the use of Solar energy.
Thanks for the dialogue - I admit to giving your position more thought.
AIK
There may be a natural ebb and flow of research in which periods of significant advancement in "pure" research is natural followed by a focus on putting the new information to use. My sense is that we currently have more "pure" information than we can use, so the relative value of more would appear lower. For example, we know how to put tons of data through a fiber - but no one has a fiber in their home - and very few have fiber at work, so the social impact of cramming 1,000 times more data onto a fiber would appear low. I think we (ie those alive today) are faced with some utilitarian challenges - such as energy, water, environment, radicalism, resource disparity, etc, and I personally feel that we have more unused theory than practical solutions to these real issues, and we are better served by practical solutions at this juncture.
- AIK
but private organizations - like the American Cancer Society, and your own personal - willy nilly research coop - certainly could fill the void. Why should governments (ie taxpayers) engage in research that no rational people care enough about to invest their OWN money?
AIK
That's not true.
I suggest a thought experiment:
What if the government - rather than taking our money and spending it badly - would instead give individuals the power to invest that money in research which they believe will benefit their lives.
On a dollar for dollar basis - private research ie Space One, X Prize, Google, Xerox will outpace centralized government efforts a hundredfold.
The Space program really is not as impressive to me as is the computer - had we focussed on the computer - rather than landing on the moon - we might have experienced the gains in productivity sooner.
AIK
My comment is meant to protest the use of *my* money to fund pie-in-the-sky research. If you *want* your money to fund that - its a free country - but non-utilitarian research should not in my opinion be government funded - nor I notice is it very often privately funded. This is as it should be.
If you truly believe you have a great idea - *you* should do the research and enlighten the world - but it's not very practical for everyone with the desire to be a mad professor (with or without any ideas of their own) to be well paid by my tax dollars.
AIK
I agree,
Too often "researchers" have wasted tax-payer's money playing with cockemany schemes just shy of perpetual motion, cold fusion, water-powered cars, and related hubris. If you want to investigate the unproven - you will probably need to find the money somewhere other than my back pocket - or the back pockets of well-managed investments.
Real life is 90% hard work and 10% new - unfinished - pie-in-the-sky cockamany what-if scenarios. If you want real pay - you might try real life. If starving student is your true aim - you might be able to hop from one useless project to the next eternally.
Best luck on whichever you choose.
AIK
Right
This is the best route.
Cancel the damn credit card account if necessary (ie lose the card, report it missing and request a new card).
Also dispute any charges against the card with which you disagree. at that point, it is the job of the credit card company to ensure that reasonable evidence exists of this "contract".
Also call them with a voice recorder.
Inform them that the account has been cancelled, and that any future charges against the Credit Card will be reported as fraudulent - then release the ensuing endless conversation on the net. If it's a classic case of brow-beating - they will fire the guy, apologize, and enroll in customer sensitivity classes.
AIK
Yes - stellar advice. Works wonderful throughout the world - look at how we treated the Indians - they respected the us and made a peace treaty with the us, and the us ran them out on the trail of tears; oh yeah - and the slaves were probably all victims of resrespecting authority.
Yes - in your lilly-white gated community, if you tip your fedora to the cops and never question the discrimination de jur, you will probably not have your flat flattened. but if you happen to embrace an unpopular economic theory; stand by to be victimized.
By the way - please continue to enjoy the freedoms which people such as yourself have not and could never have defended, advanced, or invented. The ignorant are blessed with the same liberties as those by whose toil, vigilance, perception, and sacrifice - all personal freedoms are maintained.
It doesn't really matter if there is more to the story or not - the important fact is that the police are trying to set a precedent that one cannot - in one's own home - operate a camera for the purpose of defending one's self against aggressors. If we allow civil rights to be eroded for others - the erosion will quickly spread to one's own front door.
AIK
No, the more obvious use would be to stop the popperazi. plebs can't afford this technology, but celebs could, and it would pay for itself in proper licensing fees for approved celeb photos.
AIK
The only thing you lack is a criminally inflated balance sheet, and plenty of OPM (Other people's money) to throw at politicians in order to get a secret private meeting with the Dickster so he can insure that the government's energy policy is tilted to favor your endlessly corrupt business model.
AIK
I think you leap too quickly to the conclusion that moving jobs overseas is moral ambiguous. If companies want to sell in the US - I believe that the people whose lives are on the line to defend the US are entitled to a high priority in the job market. If a company wants to sell in india - that's great - they _should_ give the jobs to locals, but there is a moral right of people to have a place at the table in their own country when their economy is creating the jobs in the first place. If the rest of the World wants a first-rate country - they can follow our lead - create a rule of law - not a theocracy - for example, hold corruption accountable - etc etc, but to move jobs out of the economy which pays for them, while saddling that economy with the other related costs of your business is wrong, and should be discouraged in the strongest sense.
AIK
An over-reliance on user-selected libraries reduces the utility of a language as a framework for the community-related aspects of a language - which I suggest are in most cases far more important than the language itself. For example the ability of google to return sample code in language x which solves problem y is a community-related aspect of the language.
"Libraries" in the sense of randomly selected language mutations decreases the usefulness of solutions as they are often dependant on certain framework modifications.
Another example of this problem is partial-ownership arrangements, such as web-hosting - in which langauge extensions are chosen at random by the hosting provider - here again, a solution which could work under the langauge fails because a mutation in the extension list.
(A hard example would be the storage of images (blobs) in PostGreSql which is considered by most DB's to be a stock problem, but has three of more equally non-standard solutions in PostgreSQL.)
VS.NET (for all the crimes of the parent company) provides a comprehensive framework for so many vital functions - that the future value of the "language" will be exponentially higher than library-dependant cousins.
two bits.
AIK
I'd buy that argument for Europe - where it's generally cold or colder. In much of the world however - the big energy cost is cooling - and the real concern is how to build a house with minimal Heating AND Cooling costs. Your Duron probably isn't going to help much. Although I do recall a night spent in Kiev with every electric device running simply for the heat of it.
AIK
Agreed,
The rare commodity comes first - this is just an admission that he views customers as abundant and talent as insufficient.
A realization which could spell the "peak" of technology outsourcing. As more customers realize there really isn't that much gold in them-thar-hills, outsourcing will slow.
Prediction:
The US trains more people with good IT and English skills than India - therefore a temporary excess of talent in India will be quickly tapped. (This is evidence that this has already occurred.) Moreover - if perks are required to get talent - then prices aren't far behind. My guess is that demand for IT in the US will soon rise sharply due to restrictions in outsourced labor combined with stupid immigration policies ie give me (only) the poor.
AIK
I would disagree. I think the argument that jpg files are a "series of instructions" is pretty strong - the same is true with MPEG - which is based on JPG. These highly compressed formats are instructions which cause a virtual machine (decompressor) to perform deterministic functions (a signal output). Say what you want about taxes (while driving on the best roads in the world - in a safe - and rational society) - but the argument that digital media are not deterministic instructions for a computing device is not a solid argument. Frankly - I'm in favor of MORE CONSUMPTION taxes - because it will ease both immigration and importation imbalances. Viva the internet tax.
AIK
I believe OpenVPN is written using OpenSSH - so cake and eat it too?
AIK