C) The product is provided free of charge and you didn't pay Google a single cent for it.
No, what you mean is, money was not exchanged directly between the user of Chrome and Google. You still pay through your nose, through advertising, collection of personal data etc etc etc. Saying that we don't pay for this kind of thing is simply disingenious - at the end of the day, advertising is paid for by the customers, since the companies pass on the expense to the customer, so we have to pay for crap that does not benefit us, and which in most cases does not even benefit the companies that use the adverts, since most people learn to become numb to adverts. The way I see it, advertisers on the web are simply parasites.
In fact, this won't stop at merely recognising faces that are partially obscured - in the not so distant future, they will be able to recognise faces that are completely absent!
We live in the safest age ever and there is epidemic of paranoia around every little thing, especially around children.
I'm not sure what your agenda is here, but when you compare to just 50 years ago, I am sure you will recognise that where criminal gangs 50 years ago were mostly localised, except perhaps for a few, like the Mafia, the internet has now made it trivially easy to organise anything across the globe, be it pedophile rings, drug kartels, people smuggling or terrorism. 50 years ago, when people were scared of pedophiles, they would be on the look-out for a grubby middle aged man in the neighbourhood (as inaccurate as that image may have been), but now we know that there is huge market in child abuse organised across the globe, so people's children in the supposedly safe neighbourhood can be targeted by grubby perverts in every nation of the world.
So, is the world safer for children? It is true that society in many countries care better for children now than 50 years ago; education and medical care are more available and so on, but certain dangers have now become a lot more sinister than they were.
As much as hippies like to pretend there's something you can do in your home to help the environment, this is not a US problem.
Oh, grow up, why don't you? Just like climate change and pollution, deforestation is a global problem in a global economy: when you go and buy things made from illegally or irresponsibly cut timber, you are contributing to the global problem of deforestation, whether you like to admit it or not. And becasue of the way the sacred 'free market' works, consumers in the rich nations keep buying cheap, so the producers keep sourcing the cheapest wood, which very often turns out to be illegally cut in vulnerable, wild forest. So there are things you could do: insist on buying things that are sourced locally, for example. And start taking an interest, would be another good move.
And then, you should try to gain some insight into what the hippies were and the legacy you now enjoy. Yes, they were naive and quite often misguided, but a lot of the freedoms you now take for granted were not at all obvious rights back in the 1960es; the hippie-movement played a significant role in changing this. I don't have a problem with people not seeing things my way - I could after all be mistaken, it wouldn't be the first time - but I find it hard to respect arguments that are simply based on wilful ignorance and prejudice.
I agree they aren't being respectful, but then again why should they?
Well, for one thing, when you express yourself like a crude fool, you shouldn't be surprised when people perceive as one. As for Ada Lovelace - why should you respect her? You mean, you don't already know? Or is it that you can see past the fact that she expressed herself in the style and terms that were regarded as appropriate for her time? Read a few books of contemporary authors, and you'll see. Well, perhaps not, but at least you'll then have had the opportunity.
Many of her views on the nature of science and perhaps especially maths, were spot on - it isn't enough to know the equations or how to write code; to really understand, you need imagination and intuition - here's a quote that's attributed to Einstein (you do respect him?):
âoeImagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.â
And "intuition" is just another word for "abstraction": the process of "summing up" the essence of a class of concepts into a single, new concept - which lies at the very heart of mathmatics. Take natural numbers: a number is the essential quality that is common to all sets that are equivalent under isomorphism (in the category of sets: bijections). When we understand an abstraction without having to go into technical details like this, we call it intuition. So, don't scoff at imagination and intuition.
Almost every time I see an expert complaining about a product, it ends up looking like a fanatic blowing a legitimate but rare issue far out of proportion.
That may be so, but perhaps it would be worth listening to the expert and following his or her reasoning, rather than just dismissing it out of hand? Being experts, they have probably put a good deal of thought into their opinion, and perhaps what they are talking about is a symptom of a wider problem? A few tens of thousands of networked baby-monitors is not a big problem, although it might be for the families that have them, but the total amount of poorly secured network gadgets is potentially huge, and all of them represent a security risk - together they may amount to a serious problem.
It may be the case that the risk of one of these things is low - say, 1 in 10000, for example - but if there are 2 billion of them, just to choose a number, it ends up being a problem for 200K units. If each of these cases constitute a loss of $1000, we're looking at $200 million. I would say that is a significant problem. It is all too common for people to dismiss something out of hand just because it sounds silly and they can't be bothered to think it through.
People don't care about your pet project.
As a put-down remark, it's fairly feeble, I think. First of all, I don't have a pet project - certainly not when it comes to networked gadgets - I simply stay away from them unless I can see a clear justification for them, and in most cases I would probably build them myself. And of course, if I had a pet project, there would in be somebody who cared: me. And whether anybody else was interested or not would not be at the centre of my attention - I don't have hobbies to attract the approval of others.
Silliness aside, until manufacturers have to pay the price in the marketplace for their crappy wares, they won't bother to do it right.
Well, yes, but isn't it a bit naive to think that 'the Market' will magically make them pay? Society - the state, if you will - has to step in and make it very painful for the owners and CEOs of these companies; they quite often seem to take on the attitude of criminals, that 'we are entitled to make money by whatever means, and screw the consequences for others'. Let me emphasise this a bit: it should cost the CEO and other managers, AS WELL AS the major share holders, of a company dearly, if they allow their company to make money by selling crap like this.
This kind of thing also flags up the whole idea of IoT as being desperately stupid; hackers will find ways through any security measures, even the best, if they want to, we know that, and the producers of IoT gadgets don't seem more than vaguely interested in implementing the best practices. On top of that, we hope to rely on the wit of consumers, who by and large don't have any idea about what network security is? What could possibly go wrong?
We have to get the problems with internet scammers and other criminals under control before we proceed with IoT; otherwise, people are going to lose the fundamentally important confidence in all online business - and that would cause significant problems, I think is fair to say.
Are the only "solution" and Envirowackos won't go for them.
Bravo! By using obscure, mock-insider terms like 'nukes' and insulting people who care about the environment, you have paved the way for constuctive dialogue; success is assured. How would we ever overcome our differences and solve our communal problems if we didn't have people like you?
Meanwhile... the Quran is the actual scripture of Islam; if it was found to have existed *before* the founder existed (let alone wrote it, received it from Heaven, whatever)? That's kind of like kicking the pillars out from under a rather delicate tower... it would be akin to finding a written account of Jesus' life that carbon-dates to 30-40 BCE... now *that* would be faith-shaking.
Faith, in all religions, is designed to shake off facts that don't fit; that's they are religions, not science. There are many ways to work an earlier date into the doctrine, if needed, don't you worry. Just look at how Jehovah's Witnesses have handled the repeated failure of the end of the world to manifest itself; and they are by no means the only ones. So spare your glee; and any way, I think it is poor form, trying to make your own religion look better by pointing to potential weaknesses in others. You wouldn't need to gloat, if you really believed that what you stand for is better.
You are right, of course. What amazes me is the fact that there are people in this forum who have modded your comment 'Funny'. Personally, I can't see anything funny in knowing that we as a society, because of our almost complete lack of concern for what crap we are spilling in the environment, cause millions of birds to die a slow, agonizing death. I challenge anybody - especially the idiots who think it is funny - to eat a couple of broken plastic spoons every day and tell me they enjoy the process of dying from pierced intestines.
Apart from whether one should feel a normal level of empathy towards wildlife or not, it is actually a significant issue. It is scientifically well established that different parts of the environment are closely connected - we talk about food webs, for one thing. We know that taking out just one, significant part of the food web can have a dramatic effect on everything, sometimes in surprising ways; a common theme, though, is that when it happens, it introduces instability, and when it finally settles down again, it is a much lower levels than before and with much lower species diversity.
Yet, we keep playing with these things, refusing to open our eyes and ears, like there was no tomorrow; I just hope we don't turn out to be right in that respect.
Such things really does count against visiting the US compared to taking a week on a beach somewhere else.
It does, indeed. However, common sense would suggest that less intrusive measures would be applied than barcode tattoos if it ever got to this; in fact, common sense suggests that this sort of thing will never be more than the extreme views of a stupid poitician out to grab attention.
There are two things in what you say. One is the fact that many would be visitors stay away from America because of the news coming out. That is a real shame - America has a lot of interesting, impressive and beautiful things to see, and Americans are very nice people, in most cases. Unfortunately, there's also this massive, dark side that looms large in people's consciousness; I have, over the years, seem many, worrying stories in European news about people coming to the states as ordinary tourists and having extremely bad experiences. Things like one Danish young family, who did what all Danes do: go to a small restaurant, leaving the pram with their baby right outside the window where they could keep an eye. So, did criminals snatch it? Not at all, the police turned up, the couple ended up having to fight a long, hard battle in court against losing their child 'for neglect'. That is one couple, whose friends and family will never go to the States again. It is such a shame, because you guys could do a lot better.
The other thing is the question of making people identifiable - to be honest, I wouldn't mind being 'chip-marked' like many pets and horses are now. There are situations where you would definitely like to be identifiable, like if you're found unconscious without ID somewhere. Or perhaps more likely, as a simple convenience; it would be good if I never had to worry about remembering my passport or driving licence. I'm not worried about being monitored - anyone who carries a mobile around is being monitored, and probably hasn't a clue about what is being collected about them. I had a quick look at what is in my phone (Samsung) - something like tens of apps that I have not installed, and which have permission to snoop into everything including using GPS, microphone, camera and networking. If that doesn't worry me, why would I worry about being passively monitored by 'the government' in other ways, by a chip or similar means? At least they don't sell my data to scammers, the way private companies do. I think.
I didn't have the patience to read through the whole article in detail, but I didn't see anything about how long back the study had checked - this may be important for the reulst. Eksperiments in psychology must be particularly difficult to set up and evaluate rigorously, and I suspect we weren't too good at it in the early years. Even in modern, physical medicine, where there now good practices, it can be very difficult to get strong data.
There's something I've never figured out about this particular theory. All life, even some sort of "patient zero" alien life, had to arise from non-organic substances somewhere, right? If it can happen once, then it should be able to happen any number of times given a set of similar conditions. Given the size of the universe, and even our own galaxy, that's like to be a *lot* of places.
I think you are right, and probably most researchers of this subject would agree. My personal feeling is that life didn't happen because of some amazingly unlikely combination of lucky accidents, it happened because it was likely enough that it must happen almost anywhere the conditionas are right. There is a book that you might enjoy - "The Vital Question" by Nick Lane; a bit technical, but that's why I like it. According to him, prokaryotic life more or less has to happen, but he isn't so sure that eukaryotes are likely to evolve (I disagree, but that's another matter).
As such, why would anyone think it's more plausible for a chunk of life to hitch a ride on some piece of space debris, and then survive re-entry on a coincidentally habitable planet on which it can flourish... than for life to have sprung into existence here, where obviously conditions were optimal for it (or at least life as we know it)?
As far as I understand it, the current thinking is not so much that life evolved in just one place and then travelled as cells or spores to other places, but that a suprisingly large proportion of the molecules needed for life have evolved in the dustclouds around newly formed stars. Panspermia in some form could still have played a large role as well, as it isn't implausible that cells or spores could have been blasted off their home planet and survived the journey / we already know of some on our own planet that could potentially make it.
I have to wonder if the enthusiasm for this theory is partially based on the admittedly exciting prospect that we could be the descendants of exotic alien lifeforms rather than some homegrown slime mold.
Could be, but I think it also has a lot to do with the fact that until fairly recently, we didn't have any really detailed ideas about the first cells might have evolved, and there was a widespread feeling that it was a very improbable event, so the idea of life arising in only a single or a few places and then spreading out was attractive. We now know much more, and it seems like life must be widespread, maybe even universal.
I couldn't agree more - a team leader doesn't necessarily need to be be the expert in everything the team does. That kind of leader will too easily become a fly-fscking micromanager. A great way to lead. if you can pull it off, is what I call 'leading by ignorance'.
What it means is, you build you relationship on your professed ignorance, like you are saying "I don't understand this, could you explain". Real experts love to explain to anybody who is genuinely interested, sometimes in excruciating detail, about their favourite subject, and they love to help you make the best decision. As the manager it is your job to make the final decision, of course, so you'll be the one balancing up all the inputs you receive from the team and you'll be the link to the world of suits. By being genuinely interested, but standing back a bit from the technical issues, you tell the team that you respect them, and that is pure gold to any engineer.
Heh, I get it - anybody disagrees is a complete idiot, am I right? You should check the newspapers from Europe from around the time, among other things. Apparently the whole world outside of your close knit circle are idiots. No wonder the world is in such a sorry state.
We've known this family is full of lying scum for at least 20 years.
Have we? Funny you should say that, because in much of the world outside the US, Clinton was widely admired as one of the better presidents; in fact, he received standing ovations, not least in response to what people perceived as the dignified way he handled the vicious attacks in connection with the Lewinsky affair. Maybe it is only in a narrow circle of extremist Republicans that "we have always known...."?
American politicians seem to be universally hated by Americans - or at least by the opposition. It is a strange thing that you guys can find anybody who is willing to run at all; you would have to be either a masochist or stupid to wish to be exposed to that sort of treatment, where even the smallest error is viciously attacked and nothing is ever forgiven - in God's own Country, where the teachings of Christ are said to be held in respect.
According to the article, this device is supposed to use 'magnetic beads' to remove toxins; it is very light on actual detail, and judging on what is in the article, it sounds bogus to me. Magnetism works on magnetic materials - organic molecules like toxins are not likely to be magnetic, so how it that supposed to work? It reminds me of the bizarre superstition that claims that you can somehow clean or soften your household water with a magnet; that doesn't work either - if it was that simple, it would be in pretty much universal use.
I hope there is more to it than what I have listed above; the Wyss Institute as such appears to be genuine enough.
I assume you mean customers when you say "consumers"?
I have been a database developer and effectively dba for well over a decade, and I have worked with Oracle (from ver 6) as well as DB2, Sybase, Informix and MySQL. In my experience, Oracle win by a respectable margin on many fronts. I find their management interfaces better, nearly everything is visible in special views, for example. Their OCI API is not simple, but it is well worth learning. Their documentation is unparalleled for its thoroughness (but not all that easy to get into), and I have found their support team responsive and professional, although their support contracts are expensive. And the fact that you can freely download their database servers and use them for development and testing, is brilliant.
I don't really know why people seem to be so hostile towards Oracle; they may have their reasons, but I would be surprised if it was because of the things I've seen mentioned here.
After years of union with the same person, isn't that normal to want another body? Isn't that a natural and physical need?
No, I don't think it is. At least, not from my point of view. I'm married and would never ever consider cheating.
I have to say, I think it is probably very natural and normal to feel the temptation. But cheating is cheating - if you made a promise, you have to keep it or else make a clean break. And calling it 'a physical need' is just an attempt to say that it isn't your fault that you are a cheat. The right way to go about it is to decide whether your marriage is good enough for you want to work on repairing the things that are not working, or else to get a divource; otherwise you are simply trying to get something without having to pay for it.
I don't know who Mr Duggar is, and by the sound of it, I wouldn't really want to know him. But, it is sad fact that the ones who speak out the loudest against 'sin' are the ones who have most trouble staying away from it. However, cheating on your spouse or partner is plainly wrong - not because any supposed sanctity of marriage or because haveing several sex partners is wrong as such, but because when you get married or enter a partnership, you make a promise, explicitly or implicitly, to stay faithful - unless you explicitly agree that not doing so is OK. Being trustworthy is what it is about, and it is fundamentally important, not just in a family, but also in the wider society. Business, among other things, runs on trust. As they saying goes, a man is only as good as his word.
The only "social media" you need to be active on as a senior dev is LinkedIn.
I was on LinkedIn for a while, and it was worthless, IMO. I only got two kinds of contacts: From people who wanted me to follow their vanity blog, and from employment agents who seemed unable to read the parts of my CV that said "no Windows, no contracts", because all they had to offer was 6 month contracts and mostly for crappy Windows positions.That, and 'DevOps', which seems to stand for "a person who has vast knowledge about everything, but is willing to work in an assembly line style setup for a pittance". Social media is for navel-grazers.
Yep: it is important, to keep your skills and problem domain modern, unless you want to be constrained to an ever-shrinking niche.
However, the constant focus on programming languages is probably misplaced. We should concentrate on programming skill instead, and as senior developers, we should know a lot about design patterns. That is why technologies like C++ templates and Boost, or Java EE, are still very important: they provide a standardised platform for using design patterns and frameworks. They are also very difficult to fully master, but that gives an advantage to anyone who does.
I'm not sure I can follow you here - what have castrated bulls got to do with the issue?;-)
But back to the matter at hand; I'm not sure this is about what is legal or not in Denmark. Danish police are not in general known for their open-mindedness; it isn't a quality that looms large in the selection criteria for the force. So, they tend to be small-minded rule followers, who are reluctant to investigate the crimes of the powerful and rich. As a consequence, Danish police are not really regarded with much respect by the Danes, and when smal-minded people are in a position of power that doesn't earn them respect, they become bullies; they go after the ones that are easy targets and easily scared.
So, should what these two have done be illegal? Probably not. But is it illegal in Denmark? I'm no expert, but I would be surprised if it really is.
I think this is to some extent a consequence of living in a country where more serious crime isn't really abundant.
The idea that I would give email addresses to editors that came back to me in order to review my own papers not only never occurred to me, it seems like it would require a researcher with absolutely no ethics or morals whatsoever.
Well, true; a certain proportion of any group are likely to be liars, cheats, parasites etc. I'm not sure about the complete lack of ethics or morals, though - it is not difficult to imagine a path from 'excusable inaccuracies' to full blown fraud, and when you're measured on the volume of articles rather than the quality of your research, then it isn't surprising that you may occasionally start taking shortcuts to make your results look better. The thing is, when you have taken the first step down that slippery road, it quickly becomes impossible to turn back without your whole career exploding in your face - so you carry on.
I think we need not just a better way to manage reasearch results - peer review comes from a time when scientists were few and far between, and when most of them came from the upper crust of society, where concepts like honour were literally beaten into them at school with a blunt instrument. I don't suggest a return to that, of course, but I think a rigorous course in ethics for students of science would be a place to start. Not so much to instill some sort of unthinking adherence to a code of conduct, but to teach people to reason and think critically about these issues before they are in a situation where the pressure tempts them to make the wrong decision.
I might actually vote for him because of this policy. Never thought I would say that.
Donald Trump is a populist - you should be careful what you wish for. He emits these statements that seems to reflect the public mood, and he appears to be a successful business man - but being good with business is not really a measure of how well you will handle government. Business is fundamentally undemocratic - except possibly in Chinese, state-owned businesses - so how good will he be at "doing democracy"? The only thing I know about him is that he is a business man, and there seems to be some controversy over how good he actually was at the actual business part (there is little doubt that he managed to hold on to a lot of money).
And, of course, government is not all about money - the state is not supposed to make a profit, after all. Even in Europe, the state is not allowed to compete against private businesses; I am sure you sympathise with the concept. So why do you want your government run as a business? The answer is - you don't. The government, even in the US, is there to serve the interests of society (although it doesn't always feel that way) - a business only serves itself. There are some who would advocate running the state as a public, limited company, with all citizens owning shares in the state - the problem is that it would quickly become a "democracy" where the rich became much bigger shareholders than the ordinary citizen. Some have a suspicion that this is exactly what has already taken place in America behind the scenes.
Slashdot Mirror
C) The product is provided free of charge and you didn't pay Google a single cent for it.
No, what you mean is, money was not exchanged directly between the user of Chrome and Google. You still pay through your nose, through advertising, collection of personal data etc etc etc. Saying that we don't pay for this kind of thing is simply disingenious - at the end of the day, advertising is paid for by the customers, since the companies pass on the expense to the customer, so we have to pay for crap that does not benefit us, and which in most cases does not even benefit the companies that use the adverts, since most people learn to become numb to adverts. The way I see it, advertisers on the web are simply parasites.
In fact, this won't stop at merely recognising faces that are partially obscured - in the not so distant future, they will be able to recognise faces that are completely absent!
We live in the safest age ever and there is epidemic of paranoia around every little thing, especially around children.
I'm not sure what your agenda is here, but when you compare to just 50 years ago, I am sure you will recognise that where criminal gangs 50 years ago were mostly localised, except perhaps for a few, like the Mafia, the internet has now made it trivially easy to organise anything across the globe, be it pedophile rings, drug kartels, people smuggling or terrorism. 50 years ago, when people were scared of pedophiles, they would be on the look-out for a grubby middle aged man in the neighbourhood (as inaccurate as that image may have been), but now we know that there is huge market in child abuse organised across the globe, so people's children in the supposedly safe neighbourhood can be targeted by grubby perverts in every nation of the world.
So, is the world safer for children? It is true that society in many countries care better for children now than 50 years ago; education and medical care are more available and so on, but certain dangers have now become a lot more sinister than they were.
As much as hippies like to pretend there's something you can do in your home to help the environment, this is not a US problem.
Oh, grow up, why don't you? Just like climate change and pollution, deforestation is a global problem in a global economy: when you go and buy things made from illegally or irresponsibly cut timber, you are contributing to the global problem of deforestation, whether you like to admit it or not. And becasue of the way the sacred 'free market' works, consumers in the rich nations keep buying cheap, so the producers keep sourcing the cheapest wood, which very often turns out to be illegally cut in vulnerable, wild forest. So there are things you could do: insist on buying things that are sourced locally, for example. And start taking an interest, would be another good move.
And then, you should try to gain some insight into what the hippies were and the legacy you now enjoy. Yes, they were naive and quite often misguided, but a lot of the freedoms you now take for granted were not at all obvious rights back in the 1960es; the hippie-movement played a significant role in changing this. I don't have a problem with people not seeing things my way - I could after all be mistaken, it wouldn't be the first time - but I find it hard to respect arguments that are simply based on wilful ignorance and prejudice.
I agree they aren't being respectful, but then again why should they?
Well, for one thing, when you express yourself like a crude fool, you shouldn't be surprised when people perceive as one. As for Ada Lovelace - why should you respect her? You mean, you don't already know? Or is it that you can see past the fact that she expressed herself in the style and terms that were regarded as appropriate for her time? Read a few books of contemporary authors, and you'll see. Well, perhaps not, but at least you'll then have had the opportunity.
Many of her views on the nature of science and perhaps especially maths, were spot on - it isn't enough to know the equations or how to write code; to really understand, you need imagination and intuition - here's a quote that's attributed to Einstein (you do respect him?):
âoeImagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.â
And "intuition" is just another word for "abstraction": the process of "summing up" the essence of a class of concepts into a single, new concept - which lies at the very heart of mathmatics. Take natural numbers: a number is the essential quality that is common to all sets that are equivalent under isomorphism (in the category of sets: bijections). When we understand an abstraction without having to go into technical details like this, we call it intuition. So, don't scoff at imagination and intuition.
Almost every time I see an expert complaining about a product, it ends up looking like a fanatic blowing a legitimate but rare issue far out of proportion.
That may be so, but perhaps it would be worth listening to the expert and following his or her reasoning, rather than just dismissing it out of hand? Being experts, they have probably put a good deal of thought into their opinion, and perhaps what they are talking about is a symptom of a wider problem? A few tens of thousands of networked baby-monitors is not a big problem, although it might be for the families that have them, but the total amount of poorly secured network gadgets is potentially huge, and all of them represent a security risk - together they may amount to a serious problem.
It may be the case that the risk of one of these things is low - say, 1 in 10000, for example - but if there are 2 billion of them, just to choose a number, it ends up being a problem for 200K units. If each of these cases constitute a loss of $1000, we're looking at $200 million. I would say that is a significant problem. It is all too common for people to dismiss something out of hand just because it sounds silly and they can't be bothered to think it through.
People don't care about your pet project.
As a put-down remark, it's fairly feeble, I think. First of all, I don't have a pet project - certainly not when it comes to networked gadgets - I simply stay away from them unless I can see a clear justification for them, and in most cases I would probably build them myself. And of course, if I had a pet project, there would in be somebody who cared: me. And whether anybody else was interested or not would not be at the centre of my attention - I don't have hobbies to attract the approval of others.
Silliness aside, until manufacturers have to pay the price in the marketplace for their crappy wares, they won't bother to do it right.
Well, yes, but isn't it a bit naive to think that 'the Market' will magically make them pay? Society - the state, if you will - has to step in and make it very painful for the owners and CEOs of these companies; they quite often seem to take on the attitude of criminals, that 'we are entitled to make money by whatever means, and screw the consequences for others'. Let me emphasise this a bit: it should cost the CEO and other managers, AS WELL AS the major share holders, of a company dearly, if they allow their company to make money by selling crap like this.
This kind of thing also flags up the whole idea of IoT as being desperately stupid; hackers will find ways through any security measures, even the best, if they want to, we know that, and the producers of IoT gadgets don't seem more than vaguely interested in implementing the best practices. On top of that, we hope to rely on the wit of consumers, who by and large don't have any idea about what network security is? What could possibly go wrong?
We have to get the problems with internet scammers and other criminals under control before we proceed with IoT; otherwise, people are going to lose the fundamentally important confidence in all online business - and that would cause significant problems, I think is fair to say.
Are the only "solution" and Envirowackos won't go for them.
Bravo! By using obscure, mock-insider terms like 'nukes' and insulting people who care about the environment, you have paved the way for constuctive dialogue; success is assured. How would we ever overcome our differences and solve our communal problems if we didn't have people like you?
Meanwhile... the Quran is the actual scripture of Islam; if it was found to have existed *before* the founder existed (let alone wrote it, received it from Heaven, whatever)? That's kind of like kicking the pillars out from under a rather delicate tower... it would be akin to finding a written account of Jesus' life that carbon-dates to 30-40 BCE... now *that* would be faith-shaking.
Faith, in all religions, is designed to shake off facts that don't fit; that's they are religions, not science. There are many ways to work an earlier date into the doctrine, if needed, don't you worry. Just look at how Jehovah's Witnesses have handled the repeated failure of the end of the world to manifest itself; and they are by no means the only ones. So spare your glee; and any way, I think it is poor form, trying to make your own religion look better by pointing to potential weaknesses in others. You wouldn't need to gloat, if you really believed that what you stand for is better.
You are right, of course. What amazes me is the fact that there are people in this forum who have modded your comment 'Funny'. Personally, I can't see anything funny in knowing that we as a society, because of our almost complete lack of concern for what crap we are spilling in the environment, cause millions of birds to die a slow, agonizing death. I challenge anybody - especially the idiots who think it is funny - to eat a couple of broken plastic spoons every day and tell me they enjoy the process of dying from pierced intestines.
Apart from whether one should feel a normal level of empathy towards wildlife or not, it is actually a significant issue. It is scientifically well established that different parts of the environment are closely connected - we talk about food webs, for one thing. We know that taking out just one, significant part of the food web can have a dramatic effect on everything, sometimes in surprising ways; a common theme, though, is that when it happens, it introduces instability, and when it finally settles down again, it is a much lower levels than before and with much lower species diversity.
Yet, we keep playing with these things, refusing to open our eyes and ears, like there was no tomorrow; I just hope we don't turn out to be right in that respect.
Such things really does count against visiting the US compared to taking a week on a beach somewhere else.
It does, indeed. However, common sense would suggest that less intrusive measures would be applied than barcode tattoos if it ever got to this; in fact, common sense suggests that this sort of thing will never be more than the extreme views of a stupid poitician out to grab attention.
There are two things in what you say. One is the fact that many would be visitors stay away from America because of the news coming out. That is a real shame - America has a lot of interesting, impressive and beautiful things to see, and Americans are very nice people, in most cases. Unfortunately, there's also this massive, dark side that looms large in people's consciousness; I have, over the years, seem many, worrying stories in European news about people coming to the states as ordinary tourists and having extremely bad experiences. Things like one Danish young family, who did what all Danes do: go to a small restaurant, leaving the pram with their baby right outside the window where they could keep an eye. So, did criminals snatch it? Not at all, the police turned up, the couple ended up having to fight a long, hard battle in court against losing their child 'for neglect'. That is one couple, whose friends and family will never go to the States again. It is such a shame, because you guys could do a lot better.
The other thing is the question of making people identifiable - to be honest, I wouldn't mind being 'chip-marked' like many pets and horses are now. There are situations where you would definitely like to be identifiable, like if you're found unconscious without ID somewhere. Or perhaps more likely, as a simple convenience; it would be good if I never had to worry about remembering my passport or driving licence. I'm not worried about being monitored - anyone who carries a mobile around is being monitored, and probably hasn't a clue about what is being collected about them. I had a quick look at what is in my phone (Samsung) - something like tens of apps that I have not installed, and which have permission to snoop into everything including using GPS, microphone, camera and networking. If that doesn't worry me, why would I worry about being passively monitored by 'the government' in other ways, by a chip or similar means? At least they don't sell my data to scammers, the way private companies do. I think.
I didn't have the patience to read through the whole article in detail, but I didn't see anything about how long back the study had checked - this may be important for the reulst. Eksperiments in psychology must be particularly difficult to set up and evaluate rigorously, and I suspect we weren't too good at it in the early years. Even in modern, physical medicine, where there now good practices, it can be very difficult to get strong data.
There's something I've never figured out about this particular theory. All life, even some sort of "patient zero" alien life, had to arise from non-organic substances somewhere, right? If it can happen once, then it should be able to happen any number of times given a set of similar conditions. Given the size of the universe, and even our own galaxy, that's like to be a *lot* of places.
I think you are right, and probably most researchers of this subject would agree. My personal feeling is that life didn't happen because of some amazingly unlikely combination of lucky accidents, it happened because it was likely enough that it must happen almost anywhere the conditionas are right. There is a book that you might enjoy - "The Vital Question" by Nick Lane; a bit technical, but that's why I like it. According to him, prokaryotic life more or less has to happen, but he isn't so sure that eukaryotes are likely to evolve (I disagree, but that's another matter).
As such, why would anyone think it's more plausible for a chunk of life to hitch a ride on some piece of space debris, and then survive re-entry on a coincidentally habitable planet on which it can flourish... than for life to have sprung into existence here, where obviously conditions were optimal for it (or at least life as we know it)?
As far as I understand it, the current thinking is not so much that life evolved in just one place and then travelled as cells or spores to other places, but that a suprisingly large proportion of the molecules needed for life have evolved in the dustclouds around newly formed stars. Panspermia in some form could still have played a large role as well, as it isn't implausible that cells or spores could have been blasted off their home planet and survived the journey / we already know of some on our own planet that could potentially make it.
I have to wonder if the enthusiasm for this theory is partially based on the admittedly exciting prospect that we could be the descendants of exotic alien lifeforms rather than some homegrown slime mold.
Could be, but I think it also has a lot to do with the fact that until fairly recently, we didn't have any really detailed ideas about the first cells might have evolved, and there was a widespread feeling that it was a very improbable event, so the idea of life arising in only a single or a few places and then spreading out was attractive. We now know much more, and it seems like life must be widespread, maybe even universal.
Who wants a check from Ashely Madison sent to their home or work?
Their employees, presumably.
I couldn't agree more - a team leader doesn't necessarily need to be be the expert in everything the team does. That kind of leader will too easily become a fly-fscking micromanager. A great way to lead. if you can pull it off, is what I call 'leading by ignorance'.
What it means is, you build you relationship on your professed ignorance, like you are saying "I don't understand this, could you explain". Real experts love to explain to anybody who is genuinely interested, sometimes in excruciating detail, about their favourite subject, and they love to help you make the best decision. As the manager it is your job to make the final decision, of course, so you'll be the one balancing up all the inputs you receive from the team and you'll be the link to the world of suits. By being genuinely interested, but standing back a bit from the technical issues, you tell the team that you respect them, and that is pure gold to any engineer.
Heh, I get it - anybody disagrees is a complete idiot, am I right? You should check the newspapers from Europe from around the time, among other things. Apparently the whole world outside of your close knit circle are idiots. No wonder the world is in such a sorry state.
We've known this family is full of lying scum for at least 20 years.
Have we? Funny you should say that, because in much of the world outside the US, Clinton was widely admired as one of the better presidents; in fact, he received standing ovations, not least in response to what people perceived as the dignified way he handled the vicious attacks in connection with the Lewinsky affair. Maybe it is only in a narrow circle of extremist Republicans that "we have always known...."?
American politicians seem to be universally hated by Americans - or at least by the opposition. It is a strange thing that you guys can find anybody who is willing to run at all; you would have to be either a masochist or stupid to wish to be exposed to that sort of treatment, where even the smallest error is viciously attacked and nothing is ever forgiven - in God's own Country, where the teachings of Christ are said to be held in respect.
According to the article, this device is supposed to use 'magnetic beads' to remove toxins; it is very light on actual detail, and judging on what is in the article, it sounds bogus to me. Magnetism works on magnetic materials - organic molecules like toxins are not likely to be magnetic, so how it that supposed to work? It reminds me of the bizarre superstition that claims that you can somehow clean or soften your household water with a magnet; that doesn't work either - if it was that simple, it would be in pretty much universal use.
I hope there is more to it than what I have listed above; the Wyss Institute as such appears to be genuine enough.
I assume you mean customers when you say "consumers"?
I have been a database developer and effectively dba for well over a decade, and I have worked with Oracle (from ver 6) as well as DB2, Sybase, Informix and MySQL. In my experience, Oracle win by a respectable margin on many fronts. I find their management interfaces better, nearly everything is visible in special views, for example. Their OCI API is not simple, but it is well worth learning. Their documentation is unparalleled for its thoroughness (but not all that easy to get into), and I have found their support team responsive and professional, although their support contracts are expensive. And the fact that you can freely download their database servers and use them for development and testing, is brilliant.
I don't really know why people seem to be so hostile towards Oracle; they may have their reasons, but I would be surprised if it was because of the things I've seen mentioned here.
After years of union with the same person, isn't that normal to want another body? Isn't that a natural and physical need?
No, I don't think it is. At least, not from my point of view. I'm married and would never ever consider cheating.
I have to say, I think it is probably very natural and normal to feel the temptation. But cheating is cheating - if you made a promise, you have to keep it or else make a clean break. And calling it 'a physical need' is just an attempt to say that it isn't your fault that you are a cheat. The right way to go about it is to decide whether your marriage is good enough for you want to work on repairing the things that are not working, or else to get a divource; otherwise you are simply trying to get something without having to pay for it.
I don't know who Mr Duggar is, and by the sound of it, I wouldn't really want to know him. But, it is sad fact that the ones who speak out the loudest against 'sin' are the ones who have most trouble staying away from it. However, cheating on your spouse or partner is plainly wrong - not because any supposed sanctity of marriage or because haveing several sex partners is wrong as such, but because when you get married or enter a partnership, you make a promise, explicitly or implicitly, to stay faithful - unless you explicitly agree that not doing so is OK. Being trustworthy is what it is about, and it is fundamentally important, not just in a family, but also in the wider society. Business, among other things, runs on trust. As they saying goes, a man is only as good as his word.
The only "social media" you need to be active on as a senior dev is LinkedIn.
I was on LinkedIn for a while, and it was worthless, IMO. I only got two kinds of contacts: From people who wanted me to follow their vanity blog, and from employment agents who seemed unable to read the parts of my CV that said "no Windows, no contracts", because all they had to offer was 6 month contracts and mostly for crappy Windows positions.That, and 'DevOps', which seems to stand for "a person who has vast knowledge about everything, but is willing to work in an assembly line style setup for a pittance". Social media is for navel-grazers.
Yep: it is important, to keep your skills and problem domain modern, unless you want to be constrained to an ever-shrinking niche.
However, the constant focus on programming languages is probably misplaced. We should concentrate on programming skill instead, and as senior developers, we should know a lot about design patterns. That is why technologies like C++ templates and Boost, or Java EE, are still very important: they provide a standardised platform for using design patterns and frameworks. They are also very difficult to fully master, but that gives an advantage to anyone who does.
Bullocks
I'm not sure I can follow you here - what have castrated bulls got to do with the issue? ;-)
But back to the matter at hand; I'm not sure this is about what is legal or not in Denmark. Danish police are not in general known for their open-mindedness; it isn't a quality that looms large in the selection criteria for the force. So, they tend to be small-minded rule followers, who are reluctant to investigate the crimes of the powerful and rich. As a consequence, Danish police are not really regarded with much respect by the Danes, and when smal-minded people are in a position of power that doesn't earn them respect, they become bullies; they go after the ones that are easy targets and easily scared.
So, should what these two have done be illegal? Probably not.
But is it illegal in Denmark? I'm no expert, but I would be surprised if it really is.
I think this is to some extent a consequence of living in a country where more serious crime isn't really abundant.
The idea that I would give email addresses to editors that came back to me in order to review my own papers not only never occurred to me, it seems like it would require a researcher with absolutely no ethics or morals whatsoever.
Well, true; a certain proportion of any group are likely to be liars, cheats, parasites etc. I'm not sure about the complete lack of ethics or morals, though - it is not difficult to imagine a path from 'excusable inaccuracies' to full blown fraud, and when you're measured on the volume of articles rather than the quality of your research, then it isn't surprising that you may occasionally start taking shortcuts to make your results look better. The thing is, when you have taken the first step down that slippery road, it quickly becomes impossible to turn back without your whole career exploding in your face - so you carry on.
I think we need not just a better way to manage reasearch results - peer review comes from a time when scientists were few and far between, and when most of them came from the upper crust of society, where concepts like honour were literally beaten into them at school with a blunt instrument. I don't suggest a return to that, of course, but I think a rigorous course in ethics for students of science would be a place to start. Not so much to instill some sort of unthinking adherence to a code of conduct, but to teach people to reason and think critically about these issues before they are in a situation where the pressure tempts them to make the wrong decision.
I might actually vote for him because of this policy. Never thought I would say that.
Donald Trump is a populist - you should be careful what you wish for. He emits these statements that seems to reflect the public mood, and he appears to be a successful business man - but being good with business is not really a measure of how well you will handle government. Business is fundamentally undemocratic - except possibly in Chinese, state-owned businesses - so how good will he be at "doing democracy"? The only thing I know about him is that he is a business man, and there seems to be some controversy over how good he actually was at the actual business part (there is little doubt that he managed to hold on to a lot of money).
And, of course, government is not all about money - the state is not supposed to make a profit, after all. Even in Europe, the state is not allowed to compete against private businesses; I am sure you sympathise with the concept. So why do you want your government run as a business? The answer is - you don't. The government, even in the US, is there to serve the interests of society (although it doesn't always feel that way) - a business only serves itself. There are some who would advocate running the state as a public, limited company, with all citizens owning shares in the state - the problem is that it would quickly become a "democracy" where the rich became much bigger shareholders than the ordinary citizen. Some have a suspicion that this is exactly what has already taken place in America behind the scenes.