There is a glut of new and exciting ways to bounce light. We have lenses and fresnel mirrors in conical or linear; funnel mirrors, holograms, diffraction grates, and concentric funnel mirrors. (I am the very picture of a modern...)
I think we've safely reached the point where novel can no longer be consider a useful parameter.
What is the cost - and what is the efficiency? longevity etc...
At some level, we find ourselves on a Titanic, and in need of a solution to a problem with significant time and resource constraints.
I submit that this proposal, like so many in the same camp, does more to run out the clock, than it does to advance the ball.
EPRI has reported that Heliostats with salt storage and steam power is the least expensive means to a post-oil world. Unless this technology can demonstrate some advantage relative to the gold standard; I think its noise.
To your point, there is no real market for neighborhood solar; and there is no social benefit for wasting tax dollars on roof-toys - or anything other than the best-of-breed solutions.
Right, most of the trucks driving around in a Solar Farm aren't replacing hydraulic pistons (which operate at one cycle per day).
The trucks are cleaning the surfaces. This technology won't require cleaning because why?
They have achieved 40x concentration; but there is no cell currently manufactured which is cost competitive at 40 suns. If you find one - there are hundreds of ways to concentrate light to 40x.
The reason concentrators are 1000x is because that is precisely where III-V cells are most economic.
Also no discussion of module efficiency. This puts the tech in a class with nanotech, which are equally quiet about their efficiency.
Indeed the disturbingly inaccurate use of the term effeciency by the author suggests a weak grasp of the subject.
Certainly short-term hoarding can occur; and I think its not unreasonable to conclude that many people in the market are securing contracts for oil far in excess of their future ability to consume that oil. Devices which consume oil can only be built so fast. Even cars, which can be built quickly, consume small amounts of oil per engine, as they are mostly idled. So "Real Demand" for oil can increase only if there is an increase in the production of oil-consuming devices - This means more engine plants or plastics/fertilizer plants - and I have a strong suspicion that there really are not significantly more engines being made today than say two years ago.
It could reasonably be argued that hoarding is unacceptable behavior in a resource-constrained economy; It can also be expected that those hoarding oil now - and causing economic losses, will be dumping later, and causing even more economic losses. These price swings are not a net-sum gain in which lost jobs are recreated, and lost wages are repaid when the price of oil swings back the other way. Market stability is what is best for the most people. So I would recommend a cap on Hoarding, which would mean that futures contracts must be tied to means of consumption. Airlines would be allowed to purchase only the oil they can consume for example, and Goldman Sachs would not.
- New languages have been invented of course (esperanto) with little success. The value of a language comes in part from its specificity, and in part its broad user-base. Thus any language will be a compromise of the two.
Yes - I was able to piece together an awkward phrase which means "Pyhrric victory avoided" but its a phrase, and not a word. "Pyhrric" even is a reference to a person, which is oblique at best, and almost useless in the context of the average voter (5 of 6 of whom can't place Iraq on a map).
I'm not a FSF-type as I tend to advocate in favor of IP rights rather than against them. But language deficiency wrinkles interest me.
I think the point is well made: It is said - that Eskimos have 6 words for "snow" while Hawaii has only one word for "weather". I would appear the nature of languages to sustain words which are used often while shedding words which are not. The worst case scenario for a language may well be "conflation" because the conflation of terms does not create an opportunity for a new and more clear word to emerge - rather it imprisons both words in a perpetual confusion.
Just because a language/could/ be used to express an idea - doesn't mean that it doesn't have weaknesses. Far more importantly, the inhabitants of a single language are often cognitively imprisoned by the limitations, conflations, and ambiguities of their one language.
Our language for example contemplates - winning and losing - there really is no way for the American-English-only people to accept a resolution of intractable problems - such as are common in the middle-east - unless it can be celebrated in terms of "victory" and "defeat." "Pyhrric victory" is not a native concept - and has no place in common thought or discourse - more importantly, the idea of a "Pyhrric victory avoided" cannot be reduced to a commonly recognized sound-bite. Thus, in some languages - it is "simpler" to advocate for "never surrender" than it is to promote "the benefits of avoiding a quagmire". Weaknesses in a language have a direct and limiting effect on the peoples those languages serve.
I think you've cotton-on to the interesting wrinkle.
Starbucks has enough control of the network to provide access without the technical compliance of Tmobile. Notice that Tmobile has not "interrupted" service. It would seem that if TMobile were the provider, their first option in the event of nonpayment - would be to shut down the power switch.
It appears that Tmobile doesn't have command and control of the network.
I wanted to point out that a number of their competitors (Panera Bread being one) have offered free wifi years ago. Their market share has dropped while at the same time, WiFi has become more and more popular with consumers. I doubt that Starbucks has any real choice here but to "Offer" free wifi, and pay the damn piper (Tmobile) as just punishment for having off-loaded the WiFi in the beginning.
Shame on Starbucks, and shame on their shareholders for having attempted to rape and pillage consumers for WiFi. May their Stock rot in hell.
I agree, This short coming of video on digital cameras should be loudly proclaimed from the dumb-as-turd consumer review sites (yes dpreview).
I mean who cares more about the millisecond it takes from camera to boot, or whether the camera can zoom in on your child when she's soloing in the school concert?
And don't tell me the video is a second-class citizen on my still camera -
As for motor noise, so it slowly, hell do it slowly anyway; who wants jumpy zoom?
If dpreview had been beating up on cameras makers for this feature, they wouldn't be so far behind.
My experience with overseas engineers is that the products don't match customers needs very well UNLESS consumers are particularly squeky.
We build these products ourselves of course, but they a fiddling with currency - so its tricky at best.
Ouch, before carping about the prefix in someone else's, you should take out the adjective from your own.
Turns out it's not a "Firmware Change" either anymore than running a bootable linux CD under vmware on your mactop is a firmware hack. What it is - and this is a critical point for warranty concerns, is the ability to/temporarily/ ammend the active program for the duration of a single boot. It does not as you suggest change the firmware, which by definition is the nonvolatile program memory contained in the device. The original firmware remains safely ensconced in its usual place, it is merely substituted in whole or part with code from the boot "disk" - until the system is rebooted.
Ah, That's really a great question - how in short - do so many AC generators all cooperate together to feed a synchronized grid?
When you figure this question was solved some 100 years before the first transistor, you can begin to appreciate how fundamentally simple, and yet tantalizingly obviousness the solution actually is.
What was used is a centrifugal steam value. When the turbine is spinning too slow - which occurs when the demand for energy exceeds the supply - the valve opens and sends more steam to the turbine. The generators will turn in lock step with the grid, if the experience a load, they will DECELERATE the grid, if they experience a power input, they will ACCELERATE the grid frequency, as each generator experiences the frequency in speed-of-light time, the system communicates the load situation in real time - all demands send a signal to all the turbines to pass more steam.
Now to islanding.
If you want to know what percent of the total generating capacity a single input represents, you vary your power output by five percent in either direction and measure the effect on the grid frequency. If you are the only generator, the effect on the grid will be five percent, if you are the tail on the end of a much larger dog, the effect on the grid frequency will be negligible. To put this another way - you inject a signal into the grid and see if the signal is absorbed by the grid, or not.
There seems to be a bright line between "borrowing general themes and ideas - which are morbidly few in number" and encroaching on the "Real Names" of particular characters after they have been proven commercial success. One has to ask, is this "Harry Potter Enc" a new and novel work, or merely a recombination of exact quotes from the single most successful fiction series (short of the King James Bible) in history?
Let a million writers resurrect the Genre of heroes flying in clouds, the liberal application of curses, and the avoidances of curses by temporary martyrdom - in short the substance of the Bible - in various forms; but these writers can and should distiguish their work by the use of original names for their characters. This author made no effort to develop novel characters.
GoDaddy wants the site to success beyond its wildest dreams, nothing screams "gotta-click-internet" like censorship, especially if it doesn't involve censorship for obscenities sake...
I'll be sure to visit when it comes back up - not like they can take it down for very long...
AIK (Arrested for picking up litter in NC - you bet I'll visit)
No one is suggesting that Wikipedia isn't a cool collection of link, and abstracts on mundane and sterile topics such as the canard you've trotted out here.
What people are suggesting is that Wikipedia is not what it claims to be, a neutral collection of verifiable facts, and is rather a collection of facts highly selected and censored, whitewashed, and otherwise secretly dictated by a few individuals for personal and pecuniary interests.
Rat poison is less than.01% arsenic, I suspect Wikipedia may be a mixture of bait (the article you mention) and payload - a few key facts buried, hidden, censored, whitewashed, etc...
Since the Boom, there has been a huge number of students pressing themselves into the Computer Mold. I'm a bit skeptical of the results of this effort, or more precisely, of the assertion that University can "create" a native computer speaker. They say "you can't teach tall" - which is a very efficient way to point out that the advantage in Basketball goes more often to those born "tall" who learn the game, rather than those who learn the game in the hopes of also becoming tall.
I suspect again that there are aspects of computer programming which universities can't provide, and further I suspect that talent in computers is self-selected against college.
Basically the hours at colledge are long, and the pay is horrid. Real work experience pays better, and may in every respect result in a better rounded candidate, so the choice to "waste" time in school, when not wasting time by joining a "real" company (HP, Google, Microsoft were all started by "drop-outs")
Perhaps the IP slogan closely mirrors Timothy Leary's famous line, "Tune-in, turn-on, drop out". This seems to be the route of smart talent.
Best, AIK
P.S. Yes, you're right the US has a far more elitist strain in its schools that the rest of the world. (We continue to discriminate against minorities and jews through "Legacy Preference" - which translates if your white non-jewish dad went to our school. you're probably a better student than someone whose daddy did not go to our school.
Anyone can learn trees, lists, state machines, and whatnot.
The choice might be stated:
Is a self-learning programmer more likely to brush up on multithreading and be successful - or Is someone who got a legacy preference to an ivy league school, and "participated" in "group projects" likely to have what it takes in the real world?
I suspect that college is where rich parents send their predominately white kids to ensure they have better than fair odds at a cushy job.
I would grant that IDE and Languages often incorporate the lessons learned; However, in the context of the question - which is presumably "working on interesting problems". I'm not persuaded by a naked quote alone, that inspiration is most likely to be dispensed in a classroom setting.
Classrooms, in my experience, are an awful way to learn a language. Living in a country however, and particularly growing up in one, is a far better approach to acquiring effective language skills.
Programming may well be closer to a linguistic skill than it is to a scientific one.
It may even be that schools lodge programming into a "rational" framework, perhaps even a logical part of the brain; while learning by doing, may instill the skillset into a more fluid and instinctive manner. Human language is taken to be an adaptation of neural constructs previously optimized for mapping. If language is a different skill than "Science" & Math, It may make a great deal of difference whether programming is acquired "by doing", or by "instruction". Language may be described as a series of rules, but only in retrospect: for native speakers, language is largely inexplicable, meaning it exists in a framework which is super-rational - a framework which is more highly performing in terms of speed and depth, than purely rational thinking. I play several instruments, and while I know a variety of "rules" and the mechanisms of each instrument, the actual playing of the instrument cannot be performed by a process of contemplating these rules. The playing of an instrument must be fully subsumed into the mind, such that the "tool" can fairly be described as an extension of one's body - requiring very little real-time cognitive thought. This allows the performer to concentrate on the higher-order aspects, volume, tone, temp, expression etc... Perhaps by analogy, good programmers are able to commit certain programming tasks to the sub-conscience level, and as a consequence maintain focus on architecture etc... In a multi-threaded world, being able to visualize the chaos without function charts, being able to evolve objects with a balance of simpicity and code reuse. These are quite probably capabilities which, while they can be spoken of in a classroom, can likely only be absorbed by significant utilization and practice.
- So while "Shoulder of Giants" implies that we should study our predecessors - I would argue that "practice" makes perfect, and that the analogy of a musical talent, may be more important, to the success of a project, than the analogy of "scientific principle". Your mileage may differ.
The Liberal-controlled press invented this story, even dragging out stock photos, to try to convince voters that Nuclear Power is not reliable. Surely, we at Slashdot know beyond all doubt that Nuclear Power is reliable, fundamentally reliable, and reliable above all other forms of energy. Moreover, it is "Safe and Clean" so if you see any more stories about radiation leaks, and plutonium being flown over the US in an unsecured airplane, don't fall for it. The Left is just making up lies to discredit the one socialist program we Republican love best - single-payer-nuclear-insurance_&_ subsidy_program. Government does energy best, so anytime the government decides winners, the best technology wins out. Worked for Corn and Stalin, works for nuclear power. No other form of privately-developed-power provides as much power as the government-funded nuclear industry - so nuclear is better, and more reliable damn it.
(Nobody takes a rate to the bank. - eh) Many counties employ zero-net-change-adjustments, which means they change to rate to collect the same amount year to year. Rates can be artificially lower in California because the property values are artificially higher (by virtue of a speculative component).
Right - I expect $5,000 in property taxes is pretty much the mean - which I think is the point, since the fee for a patent is roughly $5,000 in real money, which is of course, to say nothing of the total confiscation which occurs over 20 years.
1. The Tax on IP is the Patent Fees, 1,000 here, 5,000 here, and pretty soon you're talking real money. How many of you pay $5,000 in property tax? 2. The Full Confiscation of IP after 20 Years. So take your property and amortize a 20 year buyout, you'll find your effective taxes are the same as your present mortgage. That is effectively a ~6-8% tax on IP. 3. Property Flight. If California posed a 2% tax on IP, every IP holder would move their paper office to Delaware - oops they already did. If Delaware imposed a tax on IP, they would move the IP to Sri Lanka. You tax things that can't run.
"Being in the business of free speech" means that one's occupation might not exists were it not for the first amendment. This is absolutely true of CNN, among so many others.
I think your point might be that CNN spends a great deal of money moving its employees around to parts of the world its viewers find interesting, and that they don't want to complete with themselves, by having unauthorized account materialize at their expense, but without their editorial control, and advertising revenue.
I'm suggesting its a dagerous reputation to be seen as censoring speech, when you rely so heavily on it yourself. The next time someone sues CNN for slander, CNN will claim free speech, and then have this example thrown in their face, you mean free speech as in firing employees for blogging?
I think the problem for CNN is "controlling the message" They want to be in a position of deciding whose speech gets heard. They want in short to be the "censor".
This private Blog threated their role as censorist-in-chief.
Those of us who find the first amendment justifiable, believe we are better served having to wade through the crap (like the quotes you invent) than we would be to have a single media outlet run and controlled by "El Decido" (As coincidentally is the case in present Russia)
If this author wrote crap on the internet, he had added nothing but a speck of noise to an ocean of cacophony, but if CNN is making an unaashed effort at content-selective censorship - that is very very important. I didn't read the posts which caused this uproar, I don't need to, they are irrelevant. What is relevant is the actions of CNN.
Clearly many employees at CNN blog. Should CNN want to enforce the rules, they by all means can, but they must terminate all employees which can so easily be shown to be in equal violation. But no, they showed their hand when they pointed out that he was being terminated for a particular opinion. That won't pass muster. Employees can't be fired for their opinions on a variety of topics, including religion, race, gender, etc... surely these op eds wade into a variety of protected speech regions. Once CNN targets speech, they're toast. CNN is in the business of free speech, if they deny their bread and butter to other's their credibility goes down the toilet. - and they lose a lawsuit, silly decision...
In order for GPS to get a fix at all, it must very closely monitor some dozen satellites, and detect very small differences in time between radio signals.
If the degree of required accuracy in the time domain is a measure of "real-time" requirements, I would have put the GPS very near the top. Laser scanning, also very high. Sonar systems are a few orders of magnitude lower. CD players require very high-speed reactions, and MP3 players wouldn't be terrible useful if they couldn't keep a beat.
Sure, the UI of all these things may be soft, but the core tech seems tightly time-bound.
Was I the only one surprised by the authors assertion that GPS is not a real-time operation? Last I checked GPS was one of the most time-critical operations in regular consumer use?
I agree, who has time to WATCH stuff, I mean when you could read it. I find a video less engaging, and mosty a negative experience, it would probably spawn a seperate browser window which will then spawn a codec download, which will then spawn a reboot required, and - where was I?
Not Hugo, Ceasar. Ceasar Chavez unionized the agriworkers. This improves the lives of workers, but raises the costs; you seem to be arguing that we should bust unions by importing non-union products. I'm suggesting that isn't fair to workers in the US. If a forign government has a true advantage, ie a better climate, for production, and AND AANNDD they are willing to trade equally, then "Free" trade is a mutual benefit; however, if the advantage is fewer restrictions on worker and environmental exploitation, that is not a true benefit.
If Free Markets are only figuring out the most exploitative environment of production, they are just cheating.
You've misstated my ethical hypothesis: which is that the accumulation of currency is Hoarding under a trading scheme in which China, for example, trades tangible goods to the US for intangible currency, while declining to return that currency for the intangible goods it consumes/from/ the US.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a glut of new and exciting ways to bounce light. We have lenses and fresnel mirrors in conical or linear; funnel mirrors, holograms, diffraction grates, and concentric funnel mirrors. (I am the very picture of a modern...)
I think we've safely reached the point where novel can no longer be consider a useful parameter.
What is the cost - and what is the efficiency? longevity etc ...
At some level, we find ourselves on a Titanic, and in need of a solution to a problem with significant time and resource constraints.
I submit that this proposal, like so many in the same camp, does more to run out the clock, than it does to advance the ball.
EPRI has reported that Heliostats with salt storage and steam power is the least expensive means to a post-oil world. Unless this technology can demonstrate some advantage relative to the gold standard; I think its noise.
To your point, there is no real market for neighborhood solar; and there is no social benefit for wasting tax dollars on roof-toys - or anything other than the best-of-breed solutions.
AIK
Right, most of the trucks driving around in a Solar Farm aren't replacing hydraulic pistons (which operate at one cycle per day).
The trucks are cleaning the surfaces. This technology won't require cleaning because why?
They have achieved 40x concentration; but there is no cell currently manufactured which is cost competitive at 40 suns. If you find one - there are hundreds of ways to concentrate light to 40x.
The reason concentrators are 1000x is because that is precisely where III-V cells are most economic.
Also no discussion of module efficiency. This puts the tech in a class with nanotech, which are equally quiet about their efficiency.
Indeed the disturbingly inaccurate use of the term effeciency by the author suggests a weak grasp of the subject.
Certainly short-term hoarding can occur; and I think its not unreasonable to conclude that many people in the market are securing contracts for oil far in excess of their future ability to consume that oil. Devices which consume oil can only be built so fast. Even cars, which can be built quickly, consume small amounts of oil per engine, as they are mostly idled. So "Real Demand" for oil can increase only if there is an increase in the production of oil-consuming devices - This means more engine plants or plastics/fertilizer plants - and I have a strong suspicion that there really are not significantly more engines being made today than say two years ago.
It could reasonably be argued that hoarding is unacceptable behavior in a resource-constrained economy; It can also be expected that those hoarding oil now - and causing economic losses, will be dumping later, and causing even more economic losses. These price swings are not a net-sum gain in which lost jobs are recreated, and lost wages are repaid when the price of oil swings back the other way. Market stability is what is best for the most people. So I would recommend a cap on Hoarding, which would mean that futures contracts must be tied to means of consumption. Airlines would be allowed to purchase only the oil they can consume for example, and Goldman Sachs would not.
Who knows? Workable?
AIK
- New languages have been invented of course (esperanto) with little success. The value of a language comes in part from its specificity, and in part its broad user-base. Thus any language will be a compromise of the two.
Yes - I was able to piece together an awkward phrase which means "Pyhrric victory avoided" but its a phrase, and not a word. "Pyhrric" even is a reference to a person, which is oblique at best, and almost useless in the context of the average voter (5 of 6 of whom can't place Iraq on a map).
I'm not a FSF-type as I tend to advocate in favor of IP rights rather than against them. But language deficiency wrinkles interest me.
Take care...
AIK
Doubting this will help...
/could/ be used to express an idea - doesn't mean that it doesn't have weaknesses. Far more importantly, the inhabitants of a single language are often cognitively imprisoned by the limitations, conflations, and ambiguities of their one language.
I think the point is well made: It is said - that Eskimos have 6 words for "snow" while Hawaii has only one word for "weather".
I would appear the nature of languages to sustain words which are used often while shedding words which are not. The worst case scenario for a language may well be "conflation" because the conflation of terms does not create an opportunity for a new and more clear word to emerge - rather it imprisons both words in a perpetual confusion.
Just because a language
Our language for example contemplates - winning and losing - there really is no way for the American-English-only people to accept a resolution of intractable problems - such as are common in the middle-east - unless it can be celebrated in terms of "victory" and "defeat." "Pyhrric victory" is not a native concept - and has no place in common thought or discourse - more importantly, the idea of a "Pyhrric victory avoided" cannot be reduced to a commonly recognized sound-bite. Thus, in some languages - it is "simpler" to advocate for "never surrender" than it is to promote "the benefits of avoiding a quagmire". Weaknesses in a language have a direct and limiting effect on the peoples those languages serve.
American in Kiev
I think you've cotton-on to the interesting wrinkle.
Starbucks has enough control of the network to provide access without the technical compliance of Tmobile.
Notice that Tmobile has not "interrupted" service. It would seem that if TMobile were the provider, their first option in the event of nonpayment - would be to shut down the power switch.
It appears that Tmobile doesn't have command and control of the network.
I wanted to point out that a number of their competitors (Panera Bread being one) have offered free wifi years ago. Their market share has dropped while at the same time, WiFi has become more and more popular with consumers. I doubt that Starbucks has any real choice here but to "Offer" free wifi, and pay the damn piper (Tmobile) as just punishment for having off-loaded the WiFi in the beginning.
Shame on Starbucks, and shame on their shareholders for having attempted to rape and pillage consumers for WiFi. May their Stock rot in hell.
I agree,
This short coming of video on digital cameras should be loudly proclaimed from the dumb-as-turd consumer review sites (yes dpreview).
I mean who cares more about the millisecond it takes from camera to boot, or whether the camera can zoom in on your child when she's soloing in the school concert?
And don't tell me the video is a second-class citizen on my still camera -
As for motor noise, so it slowly, hell do it slowly anyway; who wants jumpy zoom?
If dpreview had been beating up on cameras makers for this feature, they wouldn't be so far behind.
My experience with overseas engineers is that the products don't match customers needs very well UNLESS consumers are particularly squeky.
We build these products ourselves of course, but they a fiddling with currency - so its tricky at best.
ramble ramble...
Ouch,
/temporarily/ ammend the active program for the duration of a single boot. It does not as you suggest change the firmware, which by definition is the nonvolatile program memory contained in the device. The original firmware remains safely ensconced in its usual place, it is merely substituted in whole or part with code from the boot "disk" - until the system is rebooted.
before carping about the prefix in someone else's, you should take out the adjective from your own.
Turns out it's not a "Firmware Change" either anymore than running a bootable linux CD under vmware on your mactop is a firmware hack.
What it is - and this is a critical point for warranty concerns, is the ability to
Ah,
That's really a great question - how in short - do so many AC generators all cooperate together to feed a synchronized grid?
When you figure this question was solved some 100 years before the first transistor, you can begin to appreciate how fundamentally simple, and yet tantalizingly obviousness the solution actually is.
What was used is a centrifugal steam value. When the turbine is spinning too slow - which occurs when the demand for energy exceeds the supply - the valve opens and sends more steam to the turbine. The generators will turn in lock step with the grid, if the experience a load, they will DECELERATE the grid, if they experience a power input, they will ACCELERATE the grid frequency, as each generator experiences the frequency in speed-of-light time, the system communicates the load situation in real time - all demands send a signal to all the turbines to pass more steam.
Now to islanding.
If you want to know what percent of the total generating capacity a single input represents, you vary your power output by five percent in either direction and measure the effect on the grid frequency. If you are the only generator, the effect on the grid will be five percent, if you are the tail on the end of a much larger dog, the effect on the grid frequency will be negligible. To put this another way - you inject a signal into the grid and see if the signal is absorbed by the grid, or not.
Hope that helps,
There seems to be a bright line between "borrowing general themes and ideas - which are morbidly few in number" and encroaching on the "Real Names" of particular characters after they have been proven commercial success. One has to ask, is this "Harry Potter Enc" a new and novel work, or merely a recombination of exact quotes from the single most successful fiction series (short of the King James Bible) in history?
Let a million writers resurrect the Genre of heroes flying in clouds, the liberal application of curses, and the avoidances of curses by temporary martyrdom - in short the substance of the Bible - in various forms; but these writers can and should distiguish their work by the use of original names for their characters. This author made no effort to develop novel characters.
That's a bright enough line for my taste.
GoDaddy wants the site to success beyond its wildest dreams, nothing screams "gotta-click-internet" like censorship, especially if it doesn't involve censorship for obscenities sake...
...
I'll be sure to visit when it comes back up - not like they can take it down for very long
AIK (Arrested for picking up litter in NC - you bet I'll visit)
foolish post period.
.01% arsenic, I suspect Wikipedia may be a mixture of bait (the article you mention) and payload - a few key facts buried, hidden, censored, whitewashed, etc ...
No one is suggesting that Wikipedia isn't a cool collection of link, and abstracts on mundane and sterile topics such as the canard you've trotted out here.
What people are suggesting is that Wikipedia is not what it claims to be, a neutral collection of verifiable facts, and is rather a collection of facts highly selected and censored, whitewashed, and otherwise secretly dictated by a few individuals for personal and pecuniary interests.
Rat poison is less than
Been There, got the teeshirt.
AIK
Since the Boom, there has been a huge number of students pressing themselves into the Computer Mold.
I'm a bit skeptical of the results of this effort, or more precisely, of the assertion that University can "create" a native computer speaker.
They say "you can't teach tall" - which is a very efficient way to point out that the advantage in Basketball goes more often to those born "tall" who learn the game, rather than those who learn the game in the hopes of also becoming tall.
I suspect again that there are aspects of computer programming which universities can't provide, and further I suspect that talent in computers is self-selected against college.
Basically the hours at colledge are long, and the pay is horrid. Real work experience pays better, and may in every respect result in a better rounded candidate, so the choice to "waste" time in school, when not wasting time by joining a "real" company (HP, Google, Microsoft were all started by "drop-outs")
Perhaps the IP slogan closely mirrors Timothy Leary's famous line, "Tune-in, turn-on, drop out". This seems to be the route of smart talent.
Best,
AIK
P.S. Yes, you're right the US has a far more elitist strain in its schools that the rest of the world. (We continue to discriminate against minorities and jews through "Legacy Preference" - which translates if your white non-jewish dad went to our school. you're probably a better student than someone whose daddy did not go to our school.
Anyone can learn trees, lists, state machines, and whatnot.
The choice might be stated:
Is a self-learning programmer more likely to brush up on multithreading and be successful - or
Is someone who got a legacy preference to an ivy league school, and "participated" in "group projects" likely to have what it takes in the real world?
I suspect that college is where rich parents send their predominately white kids to ensure they have better than fair odds at a cushy job.
no?
AIK
RE" Shoulders of Giants.
This assertion should not go unchallenged.
I would grant that IDE and Languages often incorporate the lessons learned;
However, in the context of the question - which is presumably "working on interesting problems". I'm not persuaded by a naked quote alone, that inspiration is most likely to be dispensed in a classroom setting.
Classrooms, in my experience, are an awful way to learn a language. Living in a country however, and particularly growing up in one, is a far better approach to acquiring effective language skills.
Programming may well be closer to a linguistic skill than it is to a scientific one.
It may even be that schools lodge programming into a "rational" framework, perhaps even a logical part of the brain; while learning by doing, may instill the skillset into a more fluid and instinctive manner. Human language is taken to be an adaptation of neural constructs previously optimized for mapping. If language is a different skill than "Science" & Math, It may make a great deal of difference whether programming is acquired "by doing", or by "instruction". Language may be described as a series of rules, but only in retrospect: for native speakers, language is largely inexplicable, meaning it exists in a framework which is super-rational - a framework which is more highly performing in terms of speed and depth, than purely rational thinking. I play several instruments, and while I know a variety of "rules" and the mechanisms of each instrument, the actual playing of the instrument cannot be performed by a process of contemplating these rules. The playing of an instrument must be fully subsumed into the mind, such that the "tool" can fairly be described as an extension of one's body - requiring very little real-time cognitive thought. This allows the performer to concentrate on the higher-order aspects, volume, tone, temp, expression etc... Perhaps by analogy, good programmers are able to commit certain programming tasks to the sub-conscience level, and as a consequence maintain focus on architecture etc... In a multi-threaded world, being able to visualize the chaos without function charts, being able to evolve objects with a balance of simpicity and code reuse. These are quite probably capabilities which, while they can be spoken of in a classroom, can likely only be absorbed by significant utilization and practice.
- So while "Shoulder of Giants" implies that we should study our predecessors - I would argue that "practice" makes perfect, and that the analogy of a musical talent, may be more important, to the success of a project, than the analogy of "scientific principle". Your mileage may differ.
Best,
Aik
The Liberal-controlled press invented this story, even dragging out stock photos, to try to convince voters that Nuclear Power is not reliable.
Surely, we at Slashdot know beyond all doubt that Nuclear Power is reliable, fundamentally reliable, and reliable above all other forms of energy. Moreover, it is "Safe and Clean" so if you see any more stories about radiation leaks, and plutonium being flown over the US in an unsecured airplane, don't fall for it. The Left is just making up lies to discredit the one socialist program we Republican love best - single-payer-nuclear-insurance_&_ subsidy_program. Government does energy best, so anytime the government decides winners, the best technology wins out. Worked for Corn and Stalin, works for nuclear power. No other form of privately-developed-power provides as much power as the government-funded nuclear industry - so nuclear is better, and more reliable damn it.
AIK
Thanks,
(Nobody takes a rate to the bank. - eh) Many counties employ zero-net-change-adjustments, which means they change to rate to collect the same amount year to year. Rates can be artificially lower in California because the property values are artificially higher (by virtue of a speculative component).
Right - I expect $5,000 in property taxes is pretty much the mean - which I think is the point, since the fee for a patent is roughly $5,000 in real money, which is of course, to say nothing of the total confiscation which occurs over 20 years.
AIK
What a positively uninformed presupposition.
1. The Tax on IP is the Patent Fees, 1,000 here, 5,000 here, and pretty soon you're talking real money. How many of you pay $5,000 in property tax?
2. The Full Confiscation of IP after 20 Years. So take your property and amortize a 20 year buyout, you'll find your effective taxes are the same as your present mortgage. That is effectively a ~6-8% tax on IP.
3. Property Flight. If California posed a 2% tax on IP, every IP holder would move their paper office to Delaware - oops they already did. If Delaware imposed a tax on IP, they would move the IP to Sri Lanka. You tax things that can't run.
sheesh...
AIK
"Being in the business of free speech" means that one's occupation might not exists were it not for the first amendment. This is absolutely true of CNN, among so many others.
I think your point might be that CNN spends a great deal of money moving its employees around to parts of the world its viewers find interesting, and that they don't want to complete with themselves, by having unauthorized account materialize at their expense, but without their editorial control, and advertising revenue.
I'm suggesting its a dagerous reputation to be seen as censoring speech, when you rely so heavily on it yourself.
The next time someone sues CNN for slander, CNN will claim free speech, and then have this example thrown in their face, you mean free speech as in firing employees for blogging?
There goes a sympathetic jury no?
AIK
I think you have it very wrong.
I think the problem for CNN is "controlling the message" They want to be in a position of deciding whose speech gets heard. They want in short to be the "censor".
This private Blog threated their role as censorist-in-chief.
Those of us who find the first amendment justifiable, believe we are better served having to wade through the crap (like the quotes you invent) than we would be to have a single media outlet run and controlled by "El Decido" (As coincidentally is the case in present Russia)
If this author wrote crap on the internet, he had added nothing but a speck of noise to an ocean of cacophony, but if CNN is making an unaashed effort at content-selective censorship - that is very very important. I didn't read the posts which caused this uproar, I don't need to, they are irrelevant. What is relevant is the actions of CNN.
Clearly many employees at CNN blog. Should CNN want to enforce the rules, they by all means can, but they must terminate all employees which can so easily be shown to be in equal violation. But no, they showed their hand when they pointed out that he was being terminated for a particular opinion. That won't pass muster. Employees can't be fired for their opinions on a variety of topics, including religion, race, gender, etc ... surely these op eds wade into a variety of protected speech regions. Once CNN targets speech, they're toast. CNN is in the business of free speech, if they deny their bread and butter to other's their credibility goes down the toilet. - and they lose a lawsuit, silly decision...
AIK
In order for GPS to get a fix at all, it must very closely monitor some dozen satellites, and detect very small differences in time between radio signals.
If the degree of required accuracy in the time domain is a measure of "real-time" requirements, I would have put the GPS very near the top. Laser scanning, also very high. Sonar systems are a few orders of magnitude lower. CD players require very high-speed reactions, and MP3 players wouldn't be terrible useful if they couldn't keep a beat.
Sure, the UI of all these things may be soft, but the core tech seems tightly time-bound.
Best,
AIK
Was I the only one surprised by the authors assertion that GPS is not a real-time operation?
Last I checked GPS was one of the most time-critical operations in regular consumer use?
What say you?
I agree, who has time to WATCH stuff, I mean when you could read it.
I find a video less engaging, and mosty a negative experience, it would probably spawn a seperate browser window which will then spawn a codec download, which will then spawn a reboot required, and - where was I?
AIK
Not Hugo, Ceasar. Ceasar Chavez unionized the agriworkers. This improves the lives of workers, but raises the costs; you seem to be arguing that we should bust unions by importing non-union products. I'm suggesting that isn't fair to workers in the US. If a forign government has a true advantage, ie a better climate, for production, and AND AANNDD they are willing to trade equally, then "Free" trade is a mutual benefit; however, if the advantage is fewer restrictions on worker and environmental exploitation, that is not a true benefit.
/from/ the US.
If Free Markets are only figuring out the most exploitative environment of production, they are just cheating.
You've misstated my ethical hypothesis: which is that the accumulation of currency is Hoarding under a trading scheme in which China, for example, trades tangible goods to the US for intangible currency, while declining to return that currency for the intangible goods it consumes
AIK