Wadwha also offers some get-real advice to those whose hair is beginning to grey: 1) Move up the ladder into management, architecture, or design; switch to sales or product management; jump ship and become an entrepreneur. 2) If you're going to stay in programming, realize that the deck is stacked against you, so be prepared to earn less as you gain experience. 3) Keep your skills current -- to be coding for a living when you're 50, you'll need to be able to out-code the new kids on the block.
There is some truth in this, but it is only half of it. Personally, I have only ever movedup in salary over my career, and I have been able to avoid management so far - I am now 52.
The thing about keeping current - for one thing, it isn't as hard as it sounds; I have recently taken to PHP and Java coding, which I have spent about a week learning. Not from scratch, of course, since I have a couple of decades of experience with C and C++ (and a million other things...)
But as far as I can see, there are quite a few elderly gentlemen around whose great strength is that they are very, very familiar with MVS and COBOL, both of which allegedly died "years ago".
There is little in the world of SW that I find more disgusting than these "screw you around while you type" features, like, search as you type, autocorrect in wordprocessors, and now "Instant Search". I really hate it when producers of code think they can outsmart the user; programs are tools, tools are not supposed to take the initiative - the user should be in control. Just imagine your circular saw taking the initiative to remove that finger of yours, that is so obviously in the way.
You can always tell when people have been using the autocorrection feature, cause the text is full of correctly spelled, wrong words. The right way to use a spellchecker is to first write the text, then run it through the spellchecker, so you think about what is going on. And the correct way to search for things is to write your search expression, then perform the search.
Right, that's the rant for today, now get back to your work and stop slacking off.
I know where it comes from, historically: the anti-abortionists.
But what makes it so silly is that the same people who oppose this very often approve of the destruction of human life on the grand scale in the form of war, executions or by standing idly by when when those less fortunate than themselves die in misery.
Stemcells, embryonic or otherwise, are just cells. Human stemcells are admittedly human, but they die anyway all the time; we kill human cells all the time simply by living - when you eat food, cells are abraded off your mouth and digested, when you touch something, you leave skincells to die on every surface etc. And in a sense every cell in a body is "embryonic" since it is ultimately derived from an embryo.
I can follow people's sentiment when they are against abortion - it does look rather like killing a newborn baby in some cases - but a newly formed embryo contains less human cells than what you shed when you blow your nose. Nothing to get sentimental about, really.
I wouldn't think Cleveland would spend money on "smart trash carts" unless there were some truth to this claim.
On top of that, I think it is shameful that this discussion is always dragged down to the level of whether it is "profitable". Money is neither the answer not the question here; it is a matter of changing behaviours that are obviously damaging to the environment. We have seen over the last many decades to centuries, that if money is the only parameter, then the environment loses out. Hell, it was even the case 10,000 years ago, when it was common to chase a herd of animals over a cliff's edge because it was a bit easier, and everyone got to stuff their guts - and to hell with the fact that 95% of the meat was left to rot.
We now have the insight to try to avoid that kind of shortsighted idiocy, and forcing people to recycle seems to be the only option left, since simple, common sense doesn't seem to work. When you are up against a mentality where people get into their SUV, drive half a mile to the supermarket to buy a bag of snacks and then dump the rubbish out of the window on the way home, how can you hope to "educate" people?
How about we judge you on your performance instead?
This is of course very sympathetic; however, one has to recognise that there are circumstances where this is not enough; in a reality where you can sometimes be sued for sneezing in the wrong way, it is sometimes important to have very detailed records, that will stand up in court. This is not to say that it is necessary in every case, but one size simply doesn't fit all.
When the talk falls on the subject of surveillance, it always occurs to me that the discussion misses a fundamental point: that the relationship between employer and employee is based on trust. Both sides trust each other to fulfill their part; when the employer starts surveilling everything you do, it is difficult not to see it as mistrust - which is odd, since very often they trust you to handle some of the most sensitive and valuable assets of the company, while at the same time they are paranoid about whether you go to loo to often. Something doesn't quite add up there.
"freedom of expression is pretty much a myth these days". They were as wrong then as you are now.
Well said - I always feel that freedom of expression depends more on personal courage than on any guarantee embedded in law. The American Constitution says you have freedom of speech, but how much is that worth when there are people with the power and money to shut you up anyway? And how much is your freedom worth if you dare not be free? Nobody can force people to be free.
I find that can make a lot of things much more entertaining - it is the way it makes patterns of colour wander across the screen and everything else. Failing that, perhaps read on below.
It is so boring and un-stimulating that I usually skip it entirely, pass the testing off to someone else, or even worse, if I absolutely have to test, I do a very poor job at it. I know I'm not that lazy, as I can spend hours on end writing software, but there's something about testing that makes my mind constantly want to wander off and think about something else. Does anyone have any tips on how I can make non-automated testing a little bit more stimulating so I can at least begin to form a habit of doing so?
I can sympathise with that entirely; but I think it is a matter of attitude - any task can be seen either as a chore or an interesting challenge. If you start on a job expecting yourself to do badly, then of course you will; But think of it like this: when you write a program, you have to plan how you will handle ranges of input values, how to react to this or that event etc - this is no different from planning how to test something, and if you think about how you can test your code afterwards from the very beginning, you can make that part easier.
When I start on a biggish application, I identify the basic bits of functionality, which I implement in the form of simple command line tools. At the end I join them together in a graphical interface that is little more than a frontend to call commandline utilities. Why? Because it is easy to make automatic test scripts for each of the commandline programs, and it is easy to predict what the outcome of each test should be.
It helps if you make notes on the way, as if you were going to teach somebody else via email; things like "The reason I do it this way is...", and "when you do like this, it should react like that". You have to do this while you are writing the code, because that is when you have this hot idea in your mind.
But due to the size of the web, and the large number of different devices that access it, is it even possible to legislate something of this nature? Or should we rely on education and peer pressure on the various manufacturers?
It is always possible to pass legislation; some seem to pass it like they pass wind. Whether it is going to have any effect, let alone the intended effect, is always the big question.
Education will have to be the way forward, but one has to be realistic - the web is to a great extent a visual medium, and much as one may sympathise with the plight of blind people, no amount of good intentions will make them see, and they are never going to experience the world exactly as a fully sighted person. And I don't think these exercises in "accessibility" are meant that way - the goal must be to make the resources on the web accessible enough that blind people are not unfairly excluded from the potential benefits, especially when it comes to public services (libraries, health care, etc)
I am deeply saddened to hear about your plight; it reminds of my own losses.
Perhaps I am a Galaxy-class jerk for saying so, but really, death is the time to let go. When my time comes, in perhaps not as many years as I would like, what I hope is that my children will put me aside and get on with things; the best memory about this old geezer is probably to know that I taught them many of the life-skills they use every day. That and perhaps a few pictures and letters.
Sorry if I sound a bit terse; I still find it hard to write about. Don't die with your loved ones; they really don't want you to.
...using relational databases for pretty common scientific tasks sucks badly performance-wise.
Well, it has never been a secret that relational databases do not performs as well as e.g. a bespoke ISAM or hash-indexed data-file, mostly due to the fact that it involves interpretation of of SQL. But then the main purpose of SQL databases has never been to optimise raw performance - rather the idea is to provide maximum, logical flexibility. The beauty of relational databases is that you can change both data annd metadata at the wave of a hand, where you in the high-performing, bespoke database have to go and rewrite significant amounts of code.
At the end of the day you choose your tools to fit your needs, or at least that is what you ought to do.
As for the OP's question: the main problem seems to be one of having to rename and move stuff; this is clearly the area where SQL is strongest.
In fact, one of the main problems is friction. Perhaps the most economic solution would be Teflon Tyres; this would also increase road safety over time, as it will tend to remove the more aggressive drivers from traffic.
How does a little egg on the Governments face = endangering troops?
Oh, come on now.
I am as happy as the next man to see the government - any government - exposed when they are playing dirty, and I am not denying that there are things in those documents that ought to brought out in the light. But - what they have done is something like:
1) steal a wad of secret documents (and taking documents that don't belong to you can only be called stealing, even if you sympathise with the action)
2) uncritically publish them on a web-server that is visible to everybody on the planet, without even considering that the documents contain enough information to allow the enemy to identify and locate our secret operatives, thereby endangering the lives of individuals as well as the success of whatever operations they were involved in
This clearly goes beyond justifiable whistleblowing or "a little egg on somebody's face".
According to this, it would seem that people who are more promiscuous choose iPhone. Of course, "more sex" sounds like "more fun", but promiscuity may simply mean that a person is more superficial and less willing to commit themself - ie less responsible and thoughtful, perhaps.
And perhaps this agrees well with the idea that if you are superficial, you will just grab the iPhone, because "it is cool", because "everyone says so". Whereas if you are less superficial you look at all phone models available and buy the one that seems to give you best value for money - which isn't the iPhone.
... the Web is where people will be learning within a few years...
This from the guy who predicted that nobody would ever need more than 640K or something like that?
What you can learn from the internet alone is "information" - but there is as difference between "knowing about" and "understanding". If you read about, say, fungi, you get to know about fungi; but you may never be able to go out in nature, pick up a toadstool and then determine with any certainty what species it is, since you don't really understand what is important when looking at fungi - fungi is a particular point in case, since they are notoriously variable and you REALLY need practical experience, learned from another person who knows. Get it wrong, and...
And that is what you get at university: you get to interact with tutors, teachers and so forth, who can say "No, no, you are thinking along the wrong lines, this is what you should do..." On top of that there are all the other skills that you need to learn, which are not formalised or taught in any way: the social skills that are taken for granted, but which are potentially different for each discipline; the practical experience, of which there is so much more than most realise, even in a subject like mathematics; building up personal relations and contacts that you are going to need later on in your career; and so on.
Apart from the obvious technical issues, like trying to maintain a sensible connection when your access point keeps disappearing - how does this count as free? If you are forced to watch adverts, aren't you paying? In two ways, actually: One is that you are spending your time fighting against unwanted claims at your attention - this makes you less productive. The other way is that the advertisers are paid by companies, who then pass the bill on to the luckless customer who has to buy their products. I'd rather just pay directly - at least that way I can see how much I pay.
And tell you what - I don't believe in the dogma that companies have to advertise in order to survive - which all too often is just an excuse for excessive, intrusive and dishonest harassment. As far as I am concerned, a company that has a worthwhile product doesn't need much more than "word of mouth" (in a generalised sense). Advertising agencies should be shut down by force and their staff be made to perform some meaningful work, like eg collecting dogshit or polishing kerbs in downtown Chigago.
Just because technology makes things easy doesnt mean it should be done.
What you say is probably true - but I think it is beside the point I am trying to make. It is nice they have decided to turn off that best and stopped wasting money on something as monstrously useless, but it make little difference. The database was part of an attempt to address some serious problems - they still need to be addressed, and it is still going to cost serious money.
But since you bring it up, I think there is a more fundamental problem here: why does anyone think that Cameron is going to make a huge difference? Does he have powers of insight, such as have never been seen before, so that we are never again going to start huge, badly managed IT projects that never achieve their intended potential? I mean, Jesus was the son of God himself, or so they say, yet 2000 years later we have churches that routinely abuse children - but Cameron can make things work from now on? Let's not be so bloody naive, at least.
I would like to know where are you getting your information about what Labour would have done, because it is the first time I hear thwy would have undone their labour of love of 13 years of lost oportunities.
Newspapers, television,...
Whether they would eventually have shut down a big, lumbering, wasteful and inefficient database - who knows? Despite the pricetag, it is only a detail in the overall picture: the economy. When you have debts that huge, you have to make serious savings somewhere. that is the same whichever party you have in power.
I am not saying that I would prefer to have Labour in government; the sad truth is that both the big parties have repeatedly demonstrated that they are the same mediocre to poor personalities as everybody else, whose horizon stops where their own ambitions for power ends. Cameron and Clegg are doing well now, but in a few years they will just as mired down in idiocy as Labour was.
Perhaps the UK coalition government really is winding back Big Brother, as they had promised to do? Does seem unlikely
Yeah, right. Not that Cameron and Clegg are particularly bad for the country; but the situation right now is what dictates what the government does - Labour would have done exactly the same, give or take a few details. It makes no real difference.
But in my experience, when they talk about cutting back "big government" or "curbing the nanny state", what they mean is that they want to take power away from elected bodies who are in principle directly responsible to the people, and transfer it to some that are neither elected nor accountable. So we have less "nanny state" (ie. governmental bodies open to scrutiny under the FOIA) and more "private initiative" (ie. companies, which are not covered by the FOIA, and are governed by an impenetrable network of financial interests - who knows, perhaps they are people like Rupert Murdoch and Mohamed al Fayed, both of whom enjoy a certain notoriety in UK)
Being a democratically minded person myself, I don't really understand those that keep repeating the mantra about "Nanny State" and "Big Government". I suspect they are either the ones that would benefit directly from no being subjected to too much scrutiny, or just very, very naive.
Hmm, I'm not I like this. Has anybody considered the security impact of this? Pi being a proper irrational number is bound to have, as substrings of digits in it's decimal representation, all possible combinations of characters represented as eg. UTF-8, so somebody could easily find all passwords currently in use in there, lined up alphabetically. Somebody clearly hasn't thought this through.
There are rather many performers of early music compared to listeners
Hmm, this may be because modern and classic (or should I say "newer classic"?) music are more "elitist" in many ways - although most people could probably learn to play it moderately OK-ish, there is a huge gap up to the professional musician. On the other hand, renaissance lute music is more balanced, in a way, in the sense that it is technically quite complex, but still not so difficult that most people couldn't achieve great satisfaction from playing, and the distance up to the very best lutenists doesn't seem quite so daunting.
Interestingly, there is a disproportionate number of amateur lutenists with a background in the exact sciences.
Certainly if by "Classical" you mean "the usual suspects" or the "popular tunes" (a concept that is certain to make the real connoisseur shudder - not that I am one). Personally, I am a big fan of renaissance lute music, and for a specialised area as that, you have to attend the fora that exist for that sort of things; people there will know where to go and find what you want. Probably.
"In the case of a fire alarm, immediately leave the building and go to the Assembly Point. Do not stop to pick up belongings or put on your clothes, and don't use the lift.
Yes. Not because it's inherently better (it's not), but because it's what students can expect to be exposed to for the rest of their lives/careers. So they might as well become used to it.
I disagree. The first duty - possibly the only duty - of a teacher should be to teach their subject in the best way possible. Just because people believe it is much better/easier to use some tech media doesn't mean that it is. Take Powerpoint presentations, for example: most people think this is an effective way of communicating, but studies have shown that in fact, the speech and what goes on on the slides disturb each other, so the audience actually get less out of it. Add to that, of course, the effect of a bad set of slides and a speaker who can't present, and you have something in an altogether different league of horror.
And apart from that, teaching is not just about presenting a subject to a class, it is also about meeting the students where they are, mentally, as individuals - all these cool blogs and what have you are not adequate for that; it is too much of a one size fits all. Some students have brilliant ideas, but are afraid of looking stupid, so they need to be enticed out of hiding; others are not nearly as clever as they like to think and probably need to be slowed own a bit with a sledge hammer to their foreheads. "Cool tech" just isn't up to the challenge, and a teacher can all too easily waste lots of time trying to (badly) master all the coolness.
Slashdot Mirror
Wadwha also offers some get-real advice to those whose hair is beginning to grey: 1) Move up the ladder into management, architecture, or design; switch to sales or product management; jump ship and become an entrepreneur. 2) If you're going to stay in programming, realize that the deck is stacked against you, so be prepared to earn less as you gain experience. 3) Keep your skills current -- to be coding for a living when you're 50, you'll need to be able to out-code the new kids on the block.
There is some truth in this, but it is only half of it. Personally, I have only ever movedup in salary over my career, and I have been able to avoid management so far - I am now 52.
The thing about keeping current - for one thing, it isn't as hard as it sounds; I have recently taken to PHP and Java coding, which I have spent about a week learning. Not from scratch, of course, since I have a couple of decades of experience with C and C++ (and a million other things...)
But as far as I can see, there are quite a few elderly gentlemen around whose great strength is that they are very, very familiar with MVS and COBOL, both of which allegedly died "years ago".
... to not use Google.
There is little in the world of SW that I find more disgusting than these "screw you around while you type" features, like, search as you type, autocorrect in wordprocessors, and now "Instant Search". I really hate it when producers of code think they can outsmart the user; programs are tools, tools are not supposed to take the initiative - the user should be in control. Just imagine your circular saw taking the initiative to remove that finger of yours, that is so obviously in the way.
You can always tell when people have been using the autocorrection feature, cause the text is full of correctly spelled, wrong words. The right way to use a spellchecker is to first write the text, then run it through the spellchecker, so you think about what is going on. And the correct way to search for things is to write your search expression, then perform the search.
Right, that's the rant for today, now get back to your work and stop slacking off.
I know where it comes from, historically: the anti-abortionists.
But what makes it so silly is that the same people who oppose this very often approve of the destruction of human life on the grand scale in the form of war, executions or by standing idly by when when those less fortunate than themselves die in misery.
Stemcells, embryonic or otherwise, are just cells. Human stemcells are admittedly human, but they die anyway all the time; we kill human cells all the time simply by living - when you eat food, cells are abraded off your mouth and digested, when you touch something, you leave skincells to die on every surface etc. And in a sense every cell in a body is "embryonic" since it is ultimately derived from an embryo.
I can follow people's sentiment when they are against abortion - it does look rather like killing a newborn baby in some cases - but a newly formed embryo contains less human cells than what you shed when you blow your nose. Nothing to get sentimental about, really.
I wouldn't think Cleveland would spend money on "smart trash carts" unless there were some truth to this claim.
On top of that, I think it is shameful that this discussion is always dragged down to the level of whether it is "profitable". Money is neither the answer not the question here; it is a matter of changing behaviours that are obviously damaging to the environment. We have seen over the last many decades to centuries, that if money is the only parameter, then the environment loses out. Hell, it was even the case 10,000 years ago, when it was common to chase a herd of animals over a cliff's edge because it was a bit easier, and everyone got to stuff their guts - and to hell with the fact that 95% of the meat was left to rot.
We now have the insight to try to avoid that kind of shortsighted idiocy, and forcing people to recycle seems to be the only option left, since simple, common sense doesn't seem to work. When you are up against a mentality where people get into their SUV, drive half a mile to the supermarket to buy a bag of snacks and then dump the rubbish out of the window on the way home, how can you hope to "educate" people?
How about we judge you on your performance instead?
This is of course very sympathetic; however, one has to recognise that there are circumstances where this is not enough; in a reality where you can sometimes be sued for sneezing in the wrong way, it is sometimes important to have very detailed records, that will stand up in court. This is not to say that it is necessary in every case, but one size simply doesn't fit all.
When the talk falls on the subject of surveillance, it always occurs to me that the discussion misses a fundamental point: that the relationship between employer and employee is based on trust. Both sides trust each other to fulfill their part; when the employer starts surveilling everything you do, it is difficult not to see it as mistrust - which is odd, since very often they trust you to handle some of the most sensitive and valuable assets of the company, while at the same time they are paranoid about whether you go to loo to often. Something doesn't quite add up there.
"freedom of expression is pretty much a myth these days". They were as wrong then as you are now.
Well said - I always feel that freedom of expression depends more on personal courage than on any guarantee embedded in law. The American Constitution says you have freedom of speech, but how much is that worth when there are people with the power and money to shut you up anyway? And how much is your freedom worth if you dare not be free? Nobody can force people to be free.
I find that can make a lot of things much more entertaining - it is the way it makes patterns of colour wander across the screen and everything else. Failing that, perhaps read on below.
It is so boring and un-stimulating that I usually skip it entirely, pass the testing off to someone else, or even worse, if I absolutely have to test, I do a very poor job at it. I know I'm not that lazy, as I can spend hours on end writing software, but there's something about testing that makes my mind constantly want to wander off and think about something else. Does anyone have any tips on how I can make non-automated testing a little bit more stimulating so I can at least begin to form a habit of doing so?
I can sympathise with that entirely; but I think it is a matter of attitude - any task can be seen either as a chore or an interesting challenge. If you start on a job expecting yourself to do badly, then of course you will; But think of it like this: when you write a program, you have to plan how you will handle ranges of input values, how to react to this or that event etc - this is no different from planning how to test something, and if you think about how you can test your code afterwards from the very beginning, you can make that part easier.
When I start on a biggish application, I identify the basic bits of functionality, which I implement in the form of simple command line tools. At the end I join them together in a graphical interface that is little more than a frontend to call commandline utilities. Why? Because it is easy to make automatic test scripts for each of the commandline programs, and it is easy to predict what the outcome of each test should be.
It helps if you make notes on the way, as if you were going to teach somebody else via email; things like "The reason I do it this way is ...", and "when you do like this, it should react like that". You have to do this while you are writing the code, because that is when you have this hot idea in your mind.
But due to the size of the web, and the large number of different devices that access it, is it even possible to legislate something of this nature? Or should we rely on education and peer pressure on the various manufacturers?
It is always possible to pass legislation; some seem to pass it like they pass wind. Whether it is going to have any effect, let alone the intended effect, is always the big question.
Education will have to be the way forward, but one has to be realistic - the web is to a great extent a visual medium, and much as one may sympathise with the plight of blind people, no amount of good intentions will make them see, and they are never going to experience the world exactly as a fully sighted person. And I don't think these exercises in "accessibility" are meant that way - the goal must be to make the resources on the web accessible enough that blind people are not unfairly excluded from the potential benefits, especially when it comes to public services (libraries, health care, etc)
I am deeply saddened to hear about your plight; it reminds of my own losses.
Perhaps I am a Galaxy-class jerk for saying so, but really, death is the time to let go. When my time comes, in perhaps not as many years as I would like, what I hope is that my children will put me aside and get on with things; the best memory about this old geezer is probably to know that I taught them many of the life-skills they use every day. That and perhaps a few pictures and letters.
Sorry if I sound a bit terse; I still find it hard to write about. Don't die with your loved ones; they really don't want you to.
...using relational databases for pretty common scientific tasks sucks badly performance-wise.
Well, it has never been a secret that relational databases do not performs as well as e.g. a bespoke ISAM or hash-indexed data-file, mostly due to the fact that it involves interpretation of of SQL. But then the main purpose of SQL databases has never been to optimise raw performance - rather the idea is to provide maximum, logical flexibility. The beauty of relational databases is that you can change both data annd metadata at the wave of a hand, where you in the high-performing, bespoke database have to go and rewrite significant amounts of code.
At the end of the day you choose your tools to fit your needs, or at least that is what you ought to do.
As for the OP's question: the main problem seems to be one of having to rename and move stuff; this is clearly the area where SQL is strongest.
In fact, one of the main problems is friction. Perhaps the most economic solution would be Teflon Tyres; this would also increase road safety over time, as it will tend to remove the more aggressive drivers from traffic.
How does a little egg on the Governments face = endangering troops?
Oh, come on now.
I am as happy as the next man to see the government - any government - exposed when they are playing dirty, and I am not denying that there are things in those documents that ought to brought out in the light. But - what they have done is something like:
1) steal a wad of secret documents (and taking documents that don't belong to you can only be called stealing, even if you sympathise with the action)
2) uncritically publish them on a web-server that is visible to everybody on the planet, without even considering that the documents contain enough information to allow the enemy to identify and locate our secret operatives, thereby endangering the lives of individuals as well as the success of whatever operations they were involved in
This clearly goes beyond justifiable whistleblowing or "a little egg on somebody's face".
According to this, it would seem that people who are more promiscuous choose iPhone. Of course, "more sex" sounds like "more fun", but promiscuity may simply mean that a person is more superficial and less willing to commit themself - ie less responsible and thoughtful, perhaps.
And perhaps this agrees well with the idea that if you are superficial, you will just grab the iPhone, because "it is cool", because "everyone says so". Whereas if you are less superficial you look at all phone models available and buy the one that seems to give you best value for money - which isn't the iPhone.
Just speculating, idly, as it were.
Exponential growth is not sustainable.
- because unlimited growth is not sustainable on a planet of finite size.
... the Web is where people will be learning within a few years ...
This from the guy who predicted that nobody would ever need more than 640K or something like that?
What you can learn from the internet alone is "information" - but there is as difference between "knowing about" and "understanding". If you read about, say, fungi, you get to know about fungi; but you may never be able to go out in nature, pick up a toadstool and then determine with any certainty what species it is, since you don't really understand what is important when looking at fungi - fungi is a particular point in case, since they are notoriously variable and you REALLY need practical experience, learned from another person who knows. Get it wrong, and ...
And that is what you get at university: you get to interact with tutors, teachers and so forth, who can say "No, no, you are thinking along the wrong lines, this is what you should do..." On top of that there are all the other skills that you need to learn, which are not formalised or taught in any way: the social skills that are taken for granted, but which are potentially different for each discipline; the practical experience, of which there is so much more than most realise, even in a subject like mathematics; building up personal relations and contacts that you are going to need later on in your career; and so on.
Apart from the obvious technical issues, like trying to maintain a sensible connection when your access point keeps disappearing - how does this count as free? If you are forced to watch adverts, aren't you paying? In two ways, actually: One is that you are spending your time fighting against unwanted claims at your attention - this makes you less productive. The other way is that the advertisers are paid by companies, who then pass the bill on to the luckless customer who has to buy their products. I'd rather just pay directly - at least that way I can see how much I pay.
And tell you what - I don't believe in the dogma that companies have to advertise in order to survive - which all too often is just an excuse for excessive, intrusive and dishonest harassment. As far as I am concerned, a company that has a worthwhile product doesn't need much more than "word of mouth" (in a generalised sense). Advertising agencies should be shut down by force and their staff be made to perform some meaningful work, like eg collecting dogshit or polishing kerbs in downtown Chigago.
Just because technology makes things easy doesnt mean it should be done.
What you say is probably true - but I think it is beside the point I am trying to make. It is nice they have decided to turn off that best and stopped wasting money on something as monstrously useless, but it make little difference. The database was part of an attempt to address some serious problems - they still need to be addressed, and it is still going to cost serious money.
But since you bring it up, I think there is a more fundamental problem here: why does anyone think that Cameron is going to make a huge difference? Does he have powers of insight, such as have never been seen before, so that we are never again going to start huge, badly managed IT projects that never achieve their intended potential? I mean, Jesus was the son of God himself, or so they say, yet 2000 years later we have churches that routinely abuse children - but Cameron can make things work from now on? Let's not be so bloody naive, at least.
I would like to know where are you getting your information about what Labour would have done, because it is the first time I hear thwy would have undone their labour of love of 13 years of lost oportunities.
Newspapers, television, ...
Whether they would eventually have shut down a big, lumbering, wasteful and inefficient database - who knows? Despite the pricetag, it is only a detail in the overall picture: the economy. When you have debts that huge, you have to make serious savings somewhere. that is the same whichever party you have in power.
I am not saying that I would prefer to have Labour in government; the sad truth is that both the big parties have repeatedly demonstrated that they are the same mediocre to poor personalities as everybody else, whose horizon stops where their own ambitions for power ends. Cameron and Clegg are doing well now, but in a few years they will just as mired down in idiocy as Labour was.
Wow, you really do believe in the freedom and dignity of the individual, don't you?
Perhaps the UK coalition government really is winding back Big Brother, as they had promised to do? Does seem unlikely
Yeah, right. Not that Cameron and Clegg are particularly bad for the country; but the situation right now is what dictates what the government does - Labour would have done exactly the same, give or take a few details. It makes no real difference.
But in my experience, when they talk about cutting back "big government" or "curbing the nanny state", what they mean is that they want to take power away from elected bodies who are in principle directly responsible to the people, and transfer it to some that are neither elected nor accountable. So we have less "nanny state" (ie. governmental bodies open to scrutiny under the FOIA) and more "private initiative" (ie. companies, which are not covered by the FOIA, and are governed by an impenetrable network of financial interests - who knows, perhaps they are people like Rupert Murdoch and Mohamed al Fayed, both of whom enjoy a certain notoriety in UK)
Being a democratically minded person myself, I don't really understand those that keep repeating the mantra about "Nanny State" and "Big Government". I suspect they are either the ones that would benefit directly from no being subjected to too much scrutiny, or just very, very naive.
Hmm, I'm not I like this. Has anybody considered the security impact of this? Pi being a proper irrational number is bound to have, as substrings of digits in it's decimal representation, all possible combinations of characters represented as eg. UTF-8, so somebody could easily find all passwords currently in use in there, lined up alphabetically. Somebody clearly hasn't thought this through.
There are rather many performers of early music compared to listeners
Hmm, this may be because modern and classic (or should I say "newer classic"?) music are more "elitist" in many ways - although most people could probably learn to play it moderately OK-ish, there is a huge gap up to the professional musician. On the other hand, renaissance lute music is more balanced, in a way, in the sense that it is technically quite complex, but still not so difficult that most people couldn't achieve great satisfaction from playing, and the distance up to the very best lutenists doesn't seem quite so daunting.
Interestingly, there is a disproportionate number of amateur lutenists with a background in the exact sciences.
Certainly if by "Classical" you mean "the usual suspects" or the "popular tunes" (a concept that is certain to make the real connoisseur shudder - not that I am one). Personally, I am a big fan of renaissance lute music, and for a specialised area as that, you have to attend the fora that exist for that sort of things; people there will know where to go and find what you want. Probably.
"In the case of a fire alarm, immediately leave the building and go to the Assembly Point.
Do not stop to pick up belongings or put on your clothes, and don't use the lift.
Thank you,
Your Fire Warden"
Yes. Not because it's inherently better (it's not), but because it's what students can expect to be exposed to for the rest of their lives/careers. So they might as well become used to it.
I disagree. The first duty - possibly the only duty - of a teacher should be to teach their subject in the best way possible. Just because people believe it is much better/easier to use some tech media doesn't mean that it is. Take Powerpoint presentations, for example: most people think this is an effective way of communicating, but studies have shown that in fact, the speech and what goes on on the slides disturb each other, so the audience actually get less out of it. Add to that, of course, the effect of a bad set of slides and a speaker who can't present, and you have something in an altogether different league of horror.
And apart from that, teaching is not just about presenting a subject to a class, it is also about meeting the students where they are, mentally, as individuals - all these cool blogs and what have you are not adequate for that; it is too much of a one size fits all. Some students have brilliant ideas, but are afraid of looking stupid, so they need to be enticed out of hiding; others are not nearly as clever as they like to think and probably need to be slowed own a bit with a sledge hammer to their foreheads. "Cool tech" just isn't up to the challenge, and a teacher can all too easily waste lots of time trying to (badly) master all the coolness.