If you think no-limit poker is simply a massive computational problem, then you don't know anything about poker.
Anything that is purely skill can eventually be solved by a computer? Are you nuts?
Anything that is purely MATHEMATICAL skill can eventually be solved by a computer. But "skill" is not necessarily computational. Especially in the no-limit/pot-limit case.
Seriously, go read some books around no-limit and pot-limit gambling. You'll quickly find that the "edge" in these games isn't about the numbers.
Oh... a computer can bluff. But let's qualify that. A computer can bluff BADLY.
A computer bluff would be the equivalent of some donkey randomly throwing a massive bet out there hoping for a bunch of folds.
But a computer isn't going to know that "John Doe" across the table just took a huge bad beat, is tired, is close to the end of his bankroll... and then bluff based on that information.
A computer simply isn't going to know all of the information and nuances necessary in order to execute a truly good bluff.
"Fairly decent"? You mean they lose and are close to break-even, right? They are still losers. There isn't a no-limit/pot-limit bot in existence that wins over the long run. Let's be clear about that point.
And most of these bots are run at micro-limits. You won't see these no-limit/pot-limits bots running at $5-$10, $20-40, or $50-$100. Why? Because these bots suck.
If you know of a no-limit/pot-limit bot that consistently wins over the long haul, please post a link.
I'm not saying I'm great at it. Not at all. I'm not great at baseball, either, but I'm a fairly good student of its strategy. Same with poker.
I'm not suggesting an AI can't tell when someone is overbetting. "Overbetting" is a simple computation. Detecting an overbet is simply looking at the bet compared to the pot-odds and the potential hands of the bettor.
I *am* suggesting that an AI is not going to be able to determine if a professional player is overbetting in order to bluff... or in order to incite a call.
Let's be clear. Computer programs do not "learn". All they do is examine history and then make some computational decision based on historical probability.
Any professional poker player will absolutely tear that strategy apart. Because poker pros are all about playing the weaknesses of their opponent.
I'm not sure why anyone thinks this is such a feat. In LIMIT hold'em, bluffing, psychological aspects, and implied odds are diminished to the point of meaning next to nothing. It is almost a purely computational game. So, yes, a computer can play technically "perfect".
There are already poker "bots" out there that will play pretty much perfectly when it comes to Limit Hold'em. I'm not sure why this is so different.
I want to see this team of academics write some code that will beat a human at *No-Limit* Hold'em. Or maybe *Pot-Limit* Omaha. NEVER going to happen.
I don't care how well such a program is coded... it will absolutely buckle under the pressure of a professional who constantly bets half his stack on nothing. The machine would turn into a professional folding station that only plays AA, KK, or AK. Guess what? That strategy isn't winning any games or any period of time in a no-limit or pot-limit world.
GREAT movie, but Paltrow doesn't work...
on
Iron Man Released
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· Score: 1
I have to say it was very good. Robert Downey Junior is simply an unbelievable character actor. He played the role flawlessly. He plays the main character with exactly the same personality portrayed in the comic.
A previous poster said this was the best Marvel-based comic movie ever. I will say this certainly at least as good as Spiderman I.
But where this movie (and other Marvel-based movies) has an issue is getting actresses who can play the female counterpart roles. Kirsten Dunst was GREAT in Spiderman. Gwyneth Paltrow is pretty bad in this movie -- she's a horrible character actor. Meanwhile, Jeff Bridges -- fantastic.
As great as Iron Man is, I look forward to the new Incredible Hulk. I really want to see what Edward Norton (one of the greatest character actors of this generation) does with Bruce Banner.
Exactly the same thing with the Ubuntu release. All hype. And then a release comes and it's (knowingly) buggy as hell.
Doesn't shipping with a beta web browser that is known to be broken and extremely unstable enough evidence? I can't even print in their version of Firefox 3 without the browser crashing.
Wireless support (especially in laptops) is (yet again) a nightmare. No progress really has been made. Wext is insufficient in many cases. Ndiswrapper doesn't work a lot of the time. Gnome or KDE network manager doesn't work sometimes and doesn't have enough configurability.
Hot (and even cold sometimes) laptop docking support is again non-existent or broken. Especially if you have an external monitor. So corporate usage isn't possible.
So back to KDE -- same kind of thing. Incomplete or broken features for two releases now. Some very basic things were knowingly overlooked in order to have time to add unimportant polish.
When is "desktop Linux" going to figure out that getting the basic stuff correct and solid along with ease-of-use is the important thing. Nail that first, and then add on all of the polish.
If you are a desktop user who is using wired networking or *very light* wireless on a very popular card -- just uninstall Firefox 3 (how the fuck do they go out with a buggy, unstable, can't print version of Firefox) and replace it with Firefox 2 -- then you're fine.
However, if you are a laptop user who wants to use wireless (say on a corporate or university laptop) -- forget it. I own two laptops with popular internal wireless chipsets (one Dell and one IBM), and neither run properly in WPA(2) with PEAP in various combos (TKIP, GTC, etc). This is a complete showstopper.
NetworkManager is completely broke. So you end up having to try wicd. If wicd doesn't work, then you are stuck running wpa_supplicant from init.d or ifup/down scripts. And at that point, you'll probably realize that the wext driver isn't good enough and then have to resort to ndiswrapper -- and that probably won't work, either. TERRIBLE. Welp... there goes all of your laptop users.
From what I've read, supposedly these things (buggy wext driver, broken NetworkManager) are going to be worked out in the 8.10 timeframe.
Desktop users download and rejoice -- laptop users (who use more than brain-dead WEP), stick with your XP installs until later.
Aside from obvious apps it doesn't have, Linux also doesn't have good enough hardware support. I use Linux at home on my desktop (Ubuntu), however, on my work laptop (Dell D620), I have tried four different Linux distributions -- only to fail on wireless.
Linux still doesn't know how to handle the laptop. Until Linux is able to easily handle things like docking stations, external monitors, and 802.11 WPA connections on common wireless chipsets... Linux on the desktop isn't going anywhere fast.
If sensible individuals in the organization are starting to question whether or not the platform needs to be replaced, then it probably does. Because usually those discussions don't come about unless you've hit a wall of some sort: performance, unavailability of employees with those skills, incompatability, unsupportability, deprecation, et cetera.
When you start to experience those things in your platform, its usually time to start an exit strategy.
I'm not trying to offend you, but a couple of things made me really curious about your post.
First of all, you have been moving around all over the place inside of the realm. Too much. It seems like you haven't found a subject area that you are actually comfortable with. Most people tend to find something that they "like the most" and do it really well, get better at it, and ultimately master it. You haven't done this, yet. That's a problem.
The first thing I would recommend you do is to choose an area of IT that you enjoy... and master it.
Then, once you have mastered a part of the landscape... you are ready to ask yourself if you want to _manage_ that landscape and the people within it. *That* is a very difficult question not to be taken lightly. I don't think you are anywhere near ready to answer that question. I manage software developers for a living... and let me tell you... its an extremely difficult fucking job. It can be *very* rewarding when done well, but it is HARD.
If you do make the jump early, you are going to fail. Make no mistake about it. Take your time.
I doubt you fired him for profanity. I think the outcome would have been the same if he had said "I refuse to take a single look at code". You refuse to do your work, you're out. No matter how you phrase it. As I said before. I didn't fire him solely for the profanity. It was how he used it.
Also, we should probably distinguish between vulgarity and profanity. The two are different. The guy was totally vulgar, over the line, and ultimately, that's what he got fired for.
In the end, if someone does something that has the potential to bring a sexual harassment lawsuit, is seen (or heard) by a lot of people, and is acknowledged by a couple of people on the team as being completely vulgar and offensive -- you are probably going to be fired in most circumstances. At a minimum, put on a warning with a one-strike-and-you-are-out-rule. And rightfully so, I think.
I'm in the real world. In the real world, you don't walk around saying whatever you want without consequence. In an office environment, you at least need to be courteous of the environment. The swearing wasn't the issue as much as what he was saying. I had two people hit me up afterwards about how offended they were. If you work in an environment where the overt mention of licking assholes can be tolerated -- and you like it -- then fine.
Where do you draw the line? What if the guy said, "Hey, I'd rather suck a dick than look at code." ? Would that be over the line? Hell, if you only draw the line at someone who doesn't do the work, then I'd hate to be where you work. Its probably a free-for-all where people are constantly sexually harassed, overtly offended, and complete disrespected. Sorry, but that's not the kind of environment that I want to be a part of.
I know people who got fired for profanity, as well. In fact, I fired one myself. But the context of the profanity was the problem and not the profanity.
In the case of the guy I fired, it was during a post-mortem review for a project. Probably 15 people in the room. He said, "I'd rather lick a dirty asshole than have to look at code." Five minutes after the meeting, the guy was fired. Although, I'd have fired him if he said, "I'd rather lick a dirty anus..."
When people create a hostile work environment through their words, they should be axed. But I don't think profanity itself is the issue.
The issue is that *a lot of times* profanity is used in conjunction with verbally creating a hostile work environment.
I work in the software field, but I'm nowhere near an academic scientist, mathematician or any such thing.
Several years back, I had a moderate interest in audio componentry. As a result, I was just curious about acoustics and what the proper way to set speakers up, how to set ranges/cutoffs, et cetera.
In the library, I found an author, Manfred Schroeder, who was a world-recognized expert on acoustics. But when I was browsing his books, the one I ended up taking home with me was "Fractals, Chaos, and Power Laws."
This work is the single best scientific book that I've ever seen. I am not a religious person, but this book literally brought science and nature together for me. The book communicates concepts such as symmetry, iteration, and fractal dimensions in ways that are not just understandable... but are FELT.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a great scientific read. It will make you look at nature and the world in a way that you never did before.
I've been a development manager for five years now after holding architect, software development, and software consulting positions for a decade. Here is a list of things that new development managers will learn the hard way -- regardless of how perceptive or proactive someone thinks they are:
1) Your first priority is doing what is right for the company. If you are just trying to always "be the great guy" to your team, you are a horrible manager and horrible for the company. Do the right thing for the company and the rest will follow.
2) You are not an architect anymore. - Let the architects and software developers design and write the software. Your job is to ensure that the team has what they need to do their job.
3) You are not a coder anymore. - Put practices in place which allow the software developers and architects to keep code quality high.
4) You are not an individual contributor anymore. - Your own achievements are solely based on the achievements of your team. You did your job well if you team did a good job.
4) You have to give negative feedback. - People need to know when they are screwing up. If somebody has body odor, you need to tell them to clean it up. If somebody is consistently late, you have to tell them to get their asses in on time. If somebody is a negativist, you have to tell them to get a better attitude. If someone is surfing too much, you have to tell them to stop. If some coder is going off in the weeds chasing butterflies and losing track of a feature, you need to tell that person to get back on task. The worst kind of conflict is ignored feedback.
5) You have to give positive feedback. - When somebody does a good job, tell them. If someone kicked ass on a feature, tell them. If someone finds a hairy defect and fixes it, give praise. If someone works long hours one day, give them a free day off, or give them a gift certificate to take the family out. Whatever.
6) The "open door" policy is lazy bullshit. You have to have frequent informal one-on-one meetings. - People need to venue to vent, ask questions, voice concerns, et cetera. All people. Even the quiet ones. Be proactive and give your team a predictable place to do that. You will offset a lot of potential risks this way.
That's all I can think of off the top of my head. I was a shitty manager at first. Over the years, I have learned each one of the above lessons -- usually after a serious screwup.
Good luck to you new software development managers. I truly believe it is the hardest job in software engineering. But stick with it. Once you get good at it... it can be very fulfilling.
Its not circular logic. I was in your shoes a lot of years ago. And I thought the same thing. Then I learned.
You need to go to a big company. Period. Several companies will hire new graduates, train them, give a decent wage and benefits. Companies like Cisco, IBM, et cetera. All of them hire new graduates. But smaller companies don't have the capability, training, and infrastructure to support the care and feeding of new graduate.
After two or three years at a company, you will be able to get a job a most places, and off you go. But you need to earn your stripes, man. Right out of school, you just aren't going to get into the places that the good programmers go to.
So go to the big boys, apply, earn your stripes, pay those dues... and we'll see you in the workforce in a few years.
*Single* paper ballots are the best way... where the candidate/proposition options are listed, and the voter marks the item they want to vote for on the exact same sheet. The paper ballot should also be posted in the voting booth so the voter can ensure that their paper ballot matches the ballot that they themselves have.
At the end of the day, these are counted by machine. If a recount is necessitated, then two things are verified at the recount: 1) that all of the options listed on the paper ballots are valid and not altered, and 2) that the actual vote count itself is correct.
People don't *think* time is a human construct. It *is* a human construct. Let's be clear. "Time" is a way of indicating when something either has happened or will happen. It is also a way of indicating the duration of an occurrence. It is nothing more. And that word was created by humans to describe exactly what I said.
Where things have gone awry is where some individuals have redefined time as being a component of location. Not just that, but that a location itself is actually the union of a physical and temporal location. Space-time.
Your example of moving the paperweight isn't time travel. It is an example of regular physics. The force of your hand, pushing the paperweight, the inertia of the surface, the transference of energy. Its nothing more than normal physics. Time doesn't matter beans in that example... unless you care to just denote when that event occurred.
I'm not sure why we try to turn the concept of "time" (which began as just measurement for an event occurrence) into a conceptual "location" that something might be able to travel to.
I really think this concept is the poster child example of Don Quixote chasing windmills.
Someone may call bullshit on me and say that they said the same thing about the earth being flat. But I'm not sure that argument applies. At least in that situation, we could build a boat, and float until we fell of the earth or didn't fall off the earth.
Dude, you aren't even saying what the article is. From TFA:
"... the fact that two photons can be created in such a way that they behave as a single object, even if they are separated by large distances. In behaving in this way they are acting as a teleportation machine because any changes to one causes similar changes to the other. The way this is done is via a third photon, which is teleported from the photon in the transmitting station to the photon in the receiver.
In the process, the third photon becomes entangled with the transmitting photon and so carries its quantum information to the receiving photon, which interacts with the third photon in such a way that it becomes identical to it - hence the information is successfully transmitted."
Now, they do a convenient job of redefining teleportation by saying that the receiver behaves like the transmitter -- therefore it is teleportation. That isn't teleportation in any real sense. Creating a similar quantum state isn't teleportation. Making a clump of matter behave like an originating clump of matter isn't teleportation.
Let's be clear. Teleportation, as we define it in the sci-fi sense, is the moving matter from one place to another instantaneously. That's not what this article describes.
You're comparing a "windless ship" to the concept of sci-fi teleportation? I have to call bullshit on you. I totally understand the point that you're making -- yesterday's windless ship is today's teleportation -- but I don't quite think those concepts/leaps are very equal.
First off, I've never slammed an article headline in all the time I've been here at Slashdot, but I'm doing it now. How in the hell is transmitting data even remotely a step in the direction of transmitting matter? Puhleeze. A step closer to teleporting matter would be to vaporize a small animal and then "shoot" the particles 89 miles away -- perhaps.
Secondly, as others have posted, it ain't gonna happen. Teleporting matter by breaking it down and reconstructing it on the other end ain't going to happen. There are so many holes in that approach that its not funny.
I read a couple of interesting magazine articles on teleportation, and the key to teleportation is really time travel. Teleportation would be sending someone on a time-ride, bending the space-time continuum, have them "arrive" at the exact physical destination but still in the same temporal location in which they left. That is the key. However, the big problem with this approach is that the matter being transported will still age the amount of time is took the "time ride" to occur. Still, any teleportation is a feat the will probably never be accomplished.
But let me go on record as saying that rather than for science to focus focusing on teleportation or time travel seems moronic. How about we just focus on building some kind of high-speed passenger transport mechanism that travels at supersonic speeds (something like Mach 3 or Mach 4)?
Personally, I'd be just fine if I could go from Los Angeles to New York in one hour. And that seems like a much more achievable goal.
Junior to mid-level programmers (those in the field less than five years)... please do yourself a huge favor -- check your ego and read the book "Code Complete" by Steve McConnell. (Hell, *all* programmers should do it).
That single book will teach you to write maintainable, understandable, and clean code. It has examples in C, Pascal, and Ada, but the concepts contained within are applicable to all programming languages (except for maybe brainfuck and whitespace). It will also teach you what bad code looks like (coding horrors).
Make no mistake. This book is the definitive work on how to write good code.
Slashdot Mirror
If you think no-limit poker is simply a massive computational problem, then you don't know anything about poker.
Anything that is purely skill can eventually be solved by a computer? Are you nuts?
Anything that is purely MATHEMATICAL skill can eventually be solved by a computer. But "skill" is not necessarily computational. Especially in the no-limit/pot-limit case.
Seriously, go read some books around no-limit and pot-limit gambling. You'll quickly find that the "edge" in these games isn't about the numbers.
Oh... a computer can bluff. But let's qualify that. A computer can bluff BADLY.
A computer bluff would be the equivalent of some donkey randomly throwing a massive bet out there hoping for a bunch of folds.
But a computer isn't going to know that "John Doe" across the table just took a huge bad beat, is tired, is close to the end of his bankroll... and then bluff based on that information.
A computer simply isn't going to know all of the information and nuances necessary in order to execute a truly good bluff.
"Fairly decent"? You mean they lose and are close to break-even, right? They are still losers. There isn't a no-limit/pot-limit bot in existence that wins over the long run. Let's be clear about that point.
And most of these bots are run at micro-limits. You won't see these no-limit/pot-limits bots running at $5-$10, $20-40, or $50-$100. Why? Because these bots suck.
If you know of a no-limit/pot-limit bot that consistently wins over the long haul, please post a link.
I'm not saying I'm great at it. Not at all. I'm not great at baseball, either, but I'm a fairly good student of its strategy. Same with poker.
I'm not suggesting an AI can't tell when someone is overbetting. "Overbetting" is a simple computation. Detecting an overbet is simply looking at the bet compared to the pot-odds and the potential hands of the bettor.
I *am* suggesting that an AI is not going to be able to determine if a professional player is overbetting in order to bluff... or in order to incite a call.
Let's be clear. Computer programs do not "learn". All they do is examine history and then make some computational decision based on historical probability.
Any professional poker player will absolutely tear that strategy apart. Because poker pros are all about playing the weaknesses of their opponent.
I'm not sure why anyone thinks this is such a feat. In LIMIT hold'em, bluffing, psychological aspects, and implied odds are diminished to the point of meaning next to nothing. It is almost a purely computational game. So, yes, a computer can play technically "perfect".
There are already poker "bots" out there that will play pretty much perfectly when it comes to Limit Hold'em. I'm not sure why this is so different.
I want to see this team of academics write some code that will beat a human at *No-Limit* Hold'em. Or maybe *Pot-Limit* Omaha. NEVER going to happen.
I don't care how well such a program is coded... it will absolutely buckle under the pressure of a professional who constantly bets half his stack on nothing. The machine would turn into a professional folding station that only plays AA, KK, or AK. Guess what? That strategy isn't winning any games or any period of time in a no-limit or pot-limit world.
I have to say it was very good. Robert Downey Junior is simply an unbelievable character actor. He played the role flawlessly. He plays the main character with exactly the same personality portrayed in the comic.
A previous poster said this was the best Marvel-based comic movie ever. I will say this certainly at least as good as Spiderman I.
But where this movie (and other Marvel-based movies) has an issue is getting actresses who can play the female counterpart roles. Kirsten Dunst was GREAT in Spiderman. Gwyneth Paltrow is pretty bad in this movie -- she's a horrible character actor. Meanwhile, Jeff Bridges -- fantastic.
As great as Iron Man is, I look forward to the new Incredible Hulk. I really want to see what Edward Norton (one of the greatest character actors of this generation) does with Bruce Banner.
Exactly the same thing with the Ubuntu release. All hype. And then a release comes and it's (knowingly) buggy as hell.
Doesn't shipping with a beta web browser that is known to be broken and extremely unstable enough evidence? I can't even print in their version of Firefox 3 without the browser crashing.
Wireless support (especially in laptops) is (yet again) a nightmare. No progress really has been made. Wext is insufficient in many cases. Ndiswrapper doesn't work a lot of the time. Gnome or KDE network manager doesn't work sometimes and doesn't have enough configurability.
Hot (and even cold sometimes) laptop docking support is again non-existent or broken. Especially if you have an external monitor. So corporate usage isn't possible.
So back to KDE -- same kind of thing. Incomplete or broken features for two releases now. Some very basic things were knowingly overlooked in order to have time to add unimportant polish.
When is "desktop Linux" going to figure out that getting the basic stuff correct and solid along with ease-of-use is the important thing. Nail that first, and then add on all of the polish.
WPA Personal is the key there. That's easy, brain-dead WPA.
In a corporate or university environment, they'll run WPA Enterprise which includes PEAP and some other layer of authentication and key exchange.
That's where it gets borked all to hell.
If you are a desktop user who is using wired networking or *very light* wireless on a very popular card -- just uninstall Firefox 3 (how the fuck do they go out with a buggy, unstable, can't print version of Firefox) and replace it with Firefox 2 -- then you're fine.
However, if you are a laptop user who wants to use wireless (say on a corporate or university laptop) -- forget it. I own two laptops with popular internal wireless chipsets (one Dell and one IBM), and neither run properly in WPA(2) with PEAP in various combos (TKIP, GTC, etc). This is a complete showstopper.
NetworkManager is completely broke. So you end up having to try wicd. If wicd doesn't work, then you are stuck running wpa_supplicant from init.d or ifup/down scripts. And at that point, you'll probably realize that the wext driver isn't good enough and then have to resort to ndiswrapper -- and that probably won't work, either. TERRIBLE. Welp... there goes all of your laptop users.
From what I've read, supposedly these things (buggy wext driver, broken NetworkManager) are going to be worked out in the 8.10 timeframe.
Desktop users download and rejoice -- laptop users (who use more than brain-dead WEP), stick with your XP installs until later.
Aside from obvious apps it doesn't have, Linux also doesn't have good enough hardware support. I use Linux at home on my desktop (Ubuntu), however, on my work laptop (Dell D620), I have tried four different Linux distributions -- only to fail on wireless.
Linux still doesn't know how to handle the laptop. Until Linux is able to easily handle things like docking stations, external monitors, and 802.11 WPA connections on common wireless chipsets... Linux on the desktop isn't going anywhere fast.
If sensible individuals in the organization are starting to question whether or not the platform needs to be replaced, then it probably does. Because usually those discussions don't come about unless you've hit a wall of some sort: performance, unavailability of employees with those skills, incompatability, unsupportability, deprecation, et cetera.
When you start to experience those things in your platform, its usually time to start an exit strategy.
I'm not trying to offend you, but a couple of things made me really curious about your post.
First of all, you have been moving around all over the place inside of the realm. Too much. It seems like you haven't found a subject area that you are actually comfortable with. Most people tend to find something that they "like the most" and do it really well, get better at it, and ultimately master it. You haven't done this, yet. That's a problem.
The first thing I would recommend you do is to choose an area of IT that you enjoy... and master it.
Then, once you have mastered a part of the landscape... you are ready to ask yourself if you want to _manage_ that landscape and the people within it. *That* is a very difficult question not to be taken lightly. I don't think you are anywhere near ready to answer that question. I manage software developers for a living... and let me tell you... its an extremely difficult fucking job. It can be *very* rewarding when done well, but it is HARD.
If you do make the jump early, you are going to fail. Make no mistake about it. Take your time.
Also, we should probably distinguish between vulgarity and profanity. The two are different. The guy was totally vulgar, over the line, and ultimately, that's what he got fired for.
In the end, if someone does something that has the potential to bring a sexual harassment lawsuit, is seen (or heard) by a lot of people, and is acknowledged by a couple of people on the team as being completely vulgar and offensive -- you are probably going to be fired in most circumstances. At a minimum, put on a warning with a one-strike-and-you-are-out-rule. And rightfully so, I think.
I'm in the real world. In the real world, you don't walk around saying whatever you want without consequence. In an office environment, you at least need to be courteous of the environment. The swearing wasn't the issue as much as what he was saying. I had two people hit me up afterwards about how offended they were. If you work in an environment where the overt mention of licking assholes can be tolerated -- and you like it -- then fine.
Where do you draw the line? What if the guy said, "Hey, I'd rather suck a dick than look at code." ? Would that be over the line? Hell, if you only draw the line at someone who doesn't do the work, then I'd hate to be where you work. Its probably a free-for-all where people are constantly sexually harassed, overtly offended, and complete disrespected. Sorry, but that's not the kind of environment that I want to be a part of.
I know people who got fired for profanity, as well. In fact, I fired one myself. But the context of the profanity was the problem and not the profanity.
In the case of the guy I fired, it was during a post-mortem review for a project. Probably 15 people in the room. He said, "I'd rather lick a dirty asshole than have to look at code." Five minutes after the meeting, the guy was fired. Although, I'd have fired him if he said, "I'd rather lick a dirty anus..."
When people create a hostile work environment through their words, they should be axed. But I don't think profanity itself is the issue.
The issue is that *a lot of times* profanity is used in conjunction with verbally creating a hostile work environment.
I work in the software field, but I'm nowhere near an academic scientist, mathematician or any such thing.
Several years back, I had a moderate interest in audio componentry. As a result, I was just curious about acoustics and what the proper way to set speakers up, how to set ranges/cutoffs, et cetera.
In the library, I found an author, Manfred Schroeder, who was a world-recognized expert on acoustics. But when I was browsing his books, the one I ended up taking home with me was "Fractals, Chaos, and Power Laws."
This work is the single best scientific book that I've ever seen. I am not a religious person, but this book literally brought science and nature together for me. The book communicates concepts such as symmetry, iteration, and fractal dimensions in ways that are not just understandable... but are FELT.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a great scientific read. It will make you look at nature and the world in a way that you never did before.
I've been a development manager for five years now after holding architect, software development, and software consulting positions for a decade. Here is a list of things that new development managers will learn the hard way -- regardless of how perceptive or proactive someone thinks they are:
1) Your first priority is doing what is right for the company. If you are just trying to always "be the great guy" to your team, you are a horrible manager and horrible for the company. Do the right thing for the company and the rest will follow.
2) You are not an architect anymore. - Let the architects and software developers design and write the software. Your job is to ensure that the team has what they need to do their job.
3) You are not a coder anymore. - Put practices in place which allow the software developers and architects to keep code quality high.
4) You are not an individual contributor anymore. - Your own achievements are solely based on the achievements of your team. You did your job well if you team did a good job.
4) You have to give negative feedback. - People need to know when they are screwing up. If somebody has body odor, you need to tell them to clean it up. If somebody is consistently late, you have to tell them to get their asses in on time. If somebody is a negativist, you have to tell them to get a better attitude. If someone is surfing too much, you have to tell them to stop. If some coder is going off in the weeds chasing butterflies and losing track of a feature, you need to tell that person to get back on task. The worst kind of conflict is ignored feedback.
5) You have to give positive feedback. - When somebody does a good job, tell them. If someone kicked ass on a feature, tell them. If someone finds a hairy defect and fixes it, give praise. If someone works long hours one day, give them a free day off, or give them a gift certificate to take the family out. Whatever.
6) The "open door" policy is lazy bullshit. You have to have frequent informal one-on-one meetings. - People need to venue to vent, ask questions, voice concerns, et cetera. All people. Even the quiet ones. Be proactive and give your team a predictable place to do that. You will offset a lot of potential risks this way.
That's all I can think of off the top of my head. I was a shitty manager at first. Over the years, I have learned each one of the above lessons -- usually after a serious screwup.
Good luck to you new software development managers. I truly believe it is the hardest job in software engineering. But stick with it. Once you get good at it... it can be very fulfilling.
Its not circular logic. I was in your shoes a lot of years ago. And I thought the same thing. Then I learned.
You need to go to a big company. Period. Several companies will hire new graduates, train them, give a decent wage and benefits. Companies like Cisco, IBM, et cetera. All of them hire new graduates. But smaller companies don't have the capability, training, and infrastructure to support the care and feeding of new graduate.
After two or three years at a company, you will be able to get a job a most places, and off you go. But you need to earn your stripes, man. Right out of school, you just aren't going to get into the places that the good programmers go to.
So go to the big boys, apply, earn your stripes, pay those dues... and we'll see you in the workforce in a few years.
*Single* paper ballots are the best way... where the candidate/proposition options are listed, and the voter marks the item they want to vote for on the exact same sheet. The paper ballot should also be posted in the voting booth so the voter can ensure that their paper ballot matches the ballot that they themselves have.
At the end of the day, these are counted by machine. If a recount is necessitated, then two things are verified at the recount: 1) that all of the options listed on the paper ballots are valid and not altered, and 2) that the actual vote count itself is correct.
_This_ is the most simple and elegant solution.
People don't *think* time is a human construct. It *is* a human construct. Let's be clear. "Time" is a way of indicating when something either has happened or will happen. It is also a way of indicating the duration of an occurrence. It is nothing more. And that word was created by humans to describe exactly what I said.
Where things have gone awry is where some individuals have redefined time as being a component of location. Not just that, but that a location itself is actually the union of a physical and temporal location. Space-time.
Your example of moving the paperweight isn't time travel. It is an example of regular physics. The force of your hand, pushing the paperweight, the inertia of the surface, the transference of energy. Its nothing more than normal physics. Time doesn't matter beans in that example... unless you care to just denote when that event occurred.
I'm not sure why we try to turn the concept of "time" (which began as just measurement for an event occurrence) into a conceptual "location" that something might be able to travel to.
I really think this concept is the poster child example of Don Quixote chasing windmills.
Someone may call bullshit on me and say that they said the same thing about the earth being flat. But I'm not sure that argument applies. At least in that situation, we could build a boat, and float until we fell of the earth or didn't fall off the earth.
Now, they do a convenient job of redefining teleportation by saying that the receiver behaves like the transmitter -- therefore it is teleportation. That isn't teleportation in any real sense. Creating a similar quantum state isn't teleportation. Making a clump of matter behave like an originating clump of matter isn't teleportation.
Let's be clear. Teleportation, as we define it in the sci-fi sense, is the moving matter from one place to another instantaneously. That's not what this article describes.
You're comparing a "windless ship" to the concept of sci-fi teleportation? I have to call bullshit on you. I totally understand the point that you're making -- yesterday's windless ship is today's teleportation -- but I don't quite think those concepts/leaps are very equal.
First off, I've never slammed an article headline in all the time I've been here at Slashdot, but I'm doing it now. How in the hell is transmitting data even remotely a step in the direction of transmitting matter? Puhleeze. A step closer to teleporting matter would be to vaporize a small animal and then "shoot" the particles 89 miles away -- perhaps.
Secondly, as others have posted, it ain't gonna happen. Teleporting matter by breaking it down and reconstructing it on the other end ain't going to happen. There are so many holes in that approach that its not funny.
I read a couple of interesting magazine articles on teleportation, and the key to teleportation is really time travel. Teleportation would be sending someone on a time-ride, bending the space-time continuum, have them "arrive" at the exact physical destination but still in the same temporal location in which they left. That is the key. However, the big problem with this approach is that the matter being transported will still age the amount of time is took the "time ride" to occur. Still, any teleportation is a feat the will probably never be accomplished.
But let me go on record as saying that rather than for science to focus focusing on teleportation or time travel seems moronic. How about we just focus on building some kind of high-speed passenger transport mechanism that travels at supersonic speeds (something like Mach 3 or Mach 4)?
Personally, I'd be just fine if I could go from Los Angeles to New York in one hour. And that seems like a much more achievable goal.
Junior to mid-level programmers (those in the field less than five years)... please do yourself a huge favor -- check your ego and read the book "Code Complete" by Steve McConnell. (Hell, *all* programmers should do it).
That single book will teach you to write maintainable, understandable, and clean code. It has examples in C, Pascal, and Ada, but the concepts contained within are applicable to all programming languages (except for maybe brainfuck and whitespace). It will also teach you what bad code looks like (coding horrors).
Make no mistake. This book is the definitive work on how to write good code.