In all seriousness, most of the business-people and employers I know despair at the state of public education because they need free-thinking creative people to meet the demands of a more challenging, knowledge-based workplace.
Then why won't they hire them?
I call bullshit. The bottom line is that they like creative free-thinkers as long as they (a) are easily controlled within specific channels the employer needs, (b) are provided for free by the taxpayers (or better yet, the worker paying for their education themselves), and (c) can pay them cheaply. If these criteria are not met, they find someone less creatively free-thinking and bitch and moan about the "sorry state of education" all the way to the bank so they can get the political powers that be to do a better job of (b) -- and no, we don't want to pay any more taxes for you to do it either, thank you very much -- you can tax our creative, free-thinking workers for that, please. I can't believe that someone as educated as you hasn't heard of the phrase "lip service".
The problem with that argument is that over a lifetime, a university education pays itself back in increased earnings many times over.
I believe you got the tense there wrong. The verb is "payed", because what you are talking about is past results.
As with most investments, past performace is not an indication of future performance, especially with a new economy that seems to be sending the most aggregately remunerative jobs of the past (high-tech, white collar jobs) overseas without providing replacements. My gut feel says that those who get a college degree over the next few years vs. getting experience in trades may be making a poor economic investment.
BTW, I hope to be proved wrong, since my son starts College next year.
That's good, because Goldwater was about the last real conservative the GOP had. The rest has been flirtation with Liberalism in the late 60's to late 70's and a wierd sort of religious and cultural radicalism since then that I find hard to characterize as conservatism (and I know what that is, having grown up in a conservative household in a conservative area of the country).
In any case, as a fellow PCP (though on a different side) I salute you for your contribution to our democracy, even though I hope your side loses:-).
It is highly improbable that a typist intending to write "your" would have it turn up as "you're" or vice versa. Insertion (or deletion) of two letters in disparate locations within a word is not likely. It is not a typo, but a grammo (and one that is made all too often at that).
I find the initial poster's explanation much more convincing.
OK. Someone tell me how this is better than the P-1000 series from Fujitsu?
Although it weighs 0.1 pounds less and has a (slightly) faster processor, it also is 1 inch wider (though its screen - non-touch pad, BTW - is an inch narrower), it's battery life is shorter, and it doesn't have a built-in modem and cabled ethernet socket. All-in-all, I don't see a lot of difference and what is different seems to be worse. Oh yeah, the P-1000 is also less expensive at $1200 and doesn't need a third party to retrofit for English use.
If it's possible for MIT to exist for so long in the 60s, 70s charging a tuition of $5000, why not now?Because 60 nm fabs cost a hell of a lot more than 90 nm fabs. Multiply that by all of the toys in all the departments at MIT and you got a real ball crusher of a problem. It's one that's hitting all of the research institutions. As we discover and technologically exhaust all of the "easy and cheap" things that means we have to spend more money to get to the rest.
Because most of them are smart enough to understand that it's a lot easier and better to get a marketing degree or law degree than to get a CS degree and have your job outsourced.
it is a truth about human nature, not a proof of discrimination. People in general do feel comfortable working with people who are "like them" in some abstract sense.
That's the point - people do naturally discriminate. We also naturally attack and kill others like us. We also tend to herd into tribes and kill those of other (arbitrarily formed) tribes.
Society advances when we fight against our "human nature" to try to achieve something "better". Afirmative action is one way of attacking this "truth of human nature" - unless you want to say that this particular "truth" should not be combatted (if so, explain why).
I don't know what the solution is - and I doubt there is one - but enforced discrimination isn't it.
Why do you believe this? Why not enforced discrimination? We enforce discriminiation all the time. Try going into a women's restroom without getting arrested if you don't believe me.
The fact is that discrimination is both widespread and persistant and it hurts people today. The fact that we have no perfect solution today doesn't mean we don't use an imperfect solution while we hack about for a better one tomorrow. The discrimination used as a remedy is relatively benign and has had a positive impact on the live of many of those who have been discriminated against historically.
Granted, it's more likely that a better solution today would be more oriented towards socioeconomic status rather than race, but I'm not going to advocate throwing out a remedy that seems to be working just because it's not perfect (and before you say that the solution is not working, you better check your statistics and not go with your philosophical beliefs).
I have no sympathy for people who want government to distort economics.
What the fsck?
Of course goverments distort economics. It's what they're there for. In fact, the "free" market (if left to its own devices) would be completely antithetic to rights and freedoms. If the government did not distort economics, I could hire someone to have you killed (and vice versa). I could hire people to hold you hostage until you signed your property over to me. I could break contracts and thereby increase my economic gain at your expense with impunity. The government distorts economics *all the time*. And good thing, too. You just have a different idea of where it should stop. So get off your high horse.
The problem is that if you've got a circular loop of, say, 15 objects, and a reference to a single object. The GC can't get rid of the fourteen other objects (or whatever part of them are actually redundant) because there exist references to them all. If that ciruclar reference were not present, then the GC can destruct all the objects without direct references.
GC's don't start collecting from random objects. All real GC's start from a known set of objects called the root set, usually the VM's globals and stacks. All items reachable from the root set are retained while the others are reclaimed. Since your hypothetical set of circular references are not reachable from anywhere but themselves (and, by extension, from the root set), they will not be reached and, therefore, reclaimed. If they are pointed to by somewhere reachable from the root set, they are not garbage and are retained.
In short, your post shows that you don't understand the difference between a reference counted system and a garbage collected system - a sad state that we often see in Windows programmers, too long exposed to COM, and in some Unix hackers whose exposure to languages is limited to ones having reference counting as a faux method for real storage management becuase it (a) is slower, (b) doesn't work reliably, and (c) is easily understandable by the programmer who thinks that malloc and free are the height of memory management technology.
Python is different from Lisp in a lot of ways. It's really not a functional language...
And this shows you don't know squat about Lisp. Lisp is not merely a functional language - it is a multi-paradigm language with facilities for functional, procedural, declarative, pattern-driven, and object-oriented programming paradigms. Plus all of those features are well-integrated in a common syntactic base.
Or, to put it in a way all you Xtreme dooods can understand, "Common Lisp is da bomb..."
And I have been a professional C developer and I know C++, Objective C, Fortran, Cobol, Ruby, Haskell, sed, awk, Korn shell, Bourne shell, DTKsh, C shell. I've written in just about every language you can name.
Learn Lisp and you'll understand where just about every cool langage you mention above gets its good points. Then we'll talk...
We used to script most of our processes (digital chip design) with Perl.... This is one of the biggest problems I have with Lisp (after reading Paul Graham's other articles, I bought this ANSI Common Lisp Book and printed out out 'On Lisp'). It's a fascinating language, but it looks to incredibly dense.
Remember that a lot of early CAE system were written in Lisp. Look at tech reports from CMU, MIT, Stanford, and Berkley (or even DAC Proceedings) from the early 80's. You'll be surprised at the number of parentheses you see.
This was another reason (besides DoD funded expert systems projects) why Lisp machines were viable at the time - they were needed to run graphically intense IC design systems. This history is the foundation of interchange formats like EDIF.
One is derogatory, as in "George W. Bush is the so-called President of the United States."
Is this relly derogatory, or just a sarcastic commentary on our system of elected leaders, or is it a recognition that he's not doing a very good job? It could mean many things, but derogatory is not the first way I'd describe it.
The chip can switch between different networks and frequencies; it is capable of tuning and tweaking itself.
I don't see how this has anything to do with the 90 nm process. We've had the technology to do this for quite a while. Just have the right frequency divider on the VFO for demod and you have the frequency switching. Run it over the bands sequentially and you've got autodetect. Program one or two algorithms into the firmware and you have all the tweaking you'd ever need. Is this just some other chip they happened to mention when the new 90nm Xeons came out? Because, quite honestly, I don't see why you couldn't do the same thing on a less refined process already (and probably with less cost and more stability).
"What, you won't let me cross dress in work? I'LL SUE YOU!!!"
As long as they were doing a good job writing code, why would you care what they wore at work? Most cross dressers I've seen have better taste in clothes than most geeks I've known, anyhow...
Where did I say I live on this mythical plane? Most of my work has been involved with the same bad code you describe.
I have on one occasion worked with a person whose code was so good he didn't need this stuff. He *was* that good. And I doubt I'll get another chance to work with someone *that* good again. That's the difference between an average hacker and a "great" hacker.
And, yes, the code *was* understandable and well-organized enough that it was self-documenting.
Maintaining old code, debugging, writing tests etc are all crucial to delivering software...
I see you've never worked with a great hacker.
Code written by a great hacker usually doesn't need maintenance because it already does the right thing. If it does need maintenance, it is modular enough that adding new functionality is not an onerous or time-consuming task.
As for debugging and writing tests, a great hacker's code is so clean and so defect free, they don't need to spend a lot of time debugging and writing test cases will simply diminish returns.
That being said, maybe one in a thousand programmers is great hacker. Their rarity and general non-availability explains why the rest of us believe that the maintenance, debugging, and test writing to cope with the badth of our pitiful code is necessary.
The difference is that the current Democrats won't send your kids to fight in a war designed to make corporations money. They draw the line at body counts. For Republicans 's'all good as long as Haliburton gets its cut.
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Then why won't they hire them?
I call bullshit. The bottom line is that they like creative free-thinkers as long as they (a) are easily controlled within specific channels the employer needs, (b) are provided for free by the taxpayers (or better yet, the worker paying for their education themselves), and (c) can pay them cheaply. If these criteria are not met, they find someone less creatively free-thinking and bitch and moan about the "sorry state of education" all the way to the bank so they can get the political powers that be to do a better job of (b) -- and no, we don't want to pay any more taxes for you to do it either, thank you very much -- you can tax our creative, free-thinking workers for that, please. I can't believe that someone as educated as you hasn't heard of the phrase "lip service".
I believe you got the tense there wrong. The verb is "payed", because what you are talking about is past results.
As with most investments, past performace is not an indication of future performance, especially with a new economy that seems to be sending the most aggregately remunerative jobs of the past (high-tech, white collar jobs) overseas without providing replacements. My gut feel says that those who get a college degree over the next few years vs. getting experience in trades may be making a poor economic investment.
BTW, I hope to be proved wrong, since my son starts College next year.
That's good, because Goldwater was about the last real conservative the GOP had. The rest has been flirtation with Liberalism in the late 60's to late 70's and a wierd sort of religious and cultural radicalism since then that I find hard to characterize as conservatism (and I know what that is, having grown up in a conservative household in a conservative area of the country).
In any case, as a fellow PCP (though on a different side) I salute you for your contribution to our democracy, even though I hope your side loses :-).
It is highly improbable that a typist intending to write "your" would have it turn up as "you're" or vice versa. Insertion (or deletion) of two letters in disparate locations within a word is not likely. It is not a typo, but a grammo (and one that is made all too often at that).
I find the initial poster's explanation much more convincing.
Attachment is the root of all sufferring and, ultimately, death. See the skull beneath the ruby tresses and you will be liberated.
Although it weighs 0.1 pounds less and has a (slightly) faster processor, it also is 1 inch wider (though its screen - non-touch pad, BTW - is an inch narrower), it's battery life is shorter, and it doesn't have a built-in modem and cabled ethernet socket. All-in-all, I don't see a lot of difference and what is different seems to be worse. Oh yeah, the P-1000 is also less expensive at $1200 and doesn't need a third party to retrofit for English use.
So again, why is this news?
If it's possible for MIT to exist for so long in the 60s, 70s charging a tuition of $5000, why not now?Because 60 nm fabs cost a hell of a lot more than 90 nm fabs. Multiply that by all of the toys in all the departments at MIT and you got a real ball crusher of a problem. It's one that's hitting all of the research institutions. As we discover and technologically exhaust all of the "easy and cheap" things that means we have to spend more money to get to the rest.
Because most of them are smart enough to understand that it's a lot easier and better to get a marketing degree or law degree than to get a CS degree and have your job outsourced.
That's the point - people do naturally discriminate. We also naturally attack and kill others like us. We also tend to herd into tribes and kill those of other (arbitrarily formed) tribes.
Society advances when we fight against our "human nature" to try to achieve something "better". Afirmative action is one way of attacking this "truth of human nature" - unless you want to say that this particular "truth" should not be combatted (if so, explain why).
Why do you believe this? Why not enforced discrimination? We enforce discriminiation all the time. Try going into a women's restroom without getting arrested if you don't believe me.
The fact is that discrimination is both widespread and persistant and it hurts people today. The fact that we have no perfect solution today doesn't mean we don't use an imperfect solution while we hack about for a better one tomorrow. The discrimination used as a remedy is relatively benign and has had a positive impact on the live of many of those who have been discriminated against historically.
Granted, it's more likely that a better solution today would be more oriented towards socioeconomic status rather than race, but I'm not going to advocate throwing out a remedy that seems to be working just because it's not perfect (and before you say that the solution is not working, you better check your statistics and not go with your philosophical beliefs).
What the fsck?
Of course goverments distort economics. It's what they're there for. In fact, the "free" market (if left to its own devices) would be completely antithetic to rights and freedoms. If the government did not distort economics, I could hire someone to have you killed (and vice versa). I could hire people to hold you hostage until you signed your property over to me. I could break contracts and thereby increase my economic gain at your expense with impunity. The government distorts economics *all the time*. And good thing, too. You just have a different idea of where it should stop. So get off your high horse.
GC's don't start collecting from random objects. All real GC's start from a known set of objects called the root set, usually the VM's globals and stacks. All items reachable from the root set are retained while the others are reclaimed. Since your hypothetical set of circular references are not reachable from anywhere but themselves (and, by extension, from the root set), they will not be reached and, therefore, reclaimed. If they are pointed to by somewhere reachable from the root set, they are not garbage and are retained.
In short, your post shows that you don't understand the difference between a reference counted system and a garbage collected system - a sad state that we often see in Windows programmers, too long exposed to COM, and in some Unix hackers whose exposure to languages is limited to ones having reference counting as a faux method for real storage management becuase it (a) is slower, (b) doesn't work reliably, and (c) is easily understandable by the programmer who thinks that malloc and free are the height of memory management technology.
And this shows you don't know squat about Lisp. Lisp is not merely a functional language - it is a multi-paradigm language with facilities for functional, procedural, declarative, pattern-driven, and object-oriented programming paradigms. Plus all of those features are well-integrated in a common syntactic base.
Or, to put it in a way all you Xtreme dooods can understand, "Common Lisp is da bomb..."
Learn Lisp and you'll understand where just about every cool langage you mention above gets its good points. Then we'll talk...
Remember that a lot of early CAE system were written in Lisp. Look at tech reports from CMU, MIT, Stanford, and Berkley (or even DAC Proceedings) from the early 80's. You'll be surprised at the number of parentheses you see.
This was another reason (besides DoD funded expert systems projects) why Lisp machines were viable at the time - they were needed to run graphically intense IC design systems. This history is the foundation of interchange formats like EDIF.
Is this relly derogatory, or just a sarcastic commentary on our system of elected leaders, or is it a recognition that he's not doing a very good job? It could mean many things, but derogatory is not the first way I'd describe it.
So G. Booch is "jazzed" about this? Knocks him down a notch in my estimation...
I know I'm being a tad naive, but aren't paychecks supposed to come from customers?
Oh... You're that kind of company (one without any real product or customers yet). I see... Let us all know how that works out for you, OK?
I don't see how this has anything to do with the 90 nm process. We've had the technology to do this for quite a while. Just have the right frequency divider on the VFO for demod and you have the frequency switching. Run it over the bands sequentially and you've got autodetect. Program one or two algorithms into the firmware and you have all the tweaking you'd ever need. Is this just some other chip they happened to mention when the new 90nm Xeons came out? Because, quite honestly, I don't see why you couldn't do the same thing on a less refined process already (and probably with less cost and more stability).
I guess Bruce Wayne can also use the Batmobile to relax by plowing the south 40 after a long night of fighting crime.
As long as they were doing a good job writing code, why would you care what they wore at work? Most cross dressers I've seen have better taste in clothes than most geeks I've known, anyhow...
I have on one occasion worked with a person whose code was so good he didn't need this stuff. He *was* that good. And I doubt I'll get another chance to work with someone *that* good again. That's the difference between an average hacker and a "great" hacker.
And, yes, the code *was* understandable and well-organized enough that it was self-documenting.
I see you've never worked with a great hacker.
Code written by a great hacker usually doesn't need maintenance because it already does the right thing. If it does need maintenance, it is modular enough that adding new functionality is not an onerous or time-consuming task.
As for debugging and writing tests, a great hacker's code is so clean and so defect free, they don't need to spend a lot of time debugging and writing test cases will simply diminish returns.
That being said, maybe one in a thousand programmers is great hacker. Their rarity and general non-availability explains why the rest of us believe that the maintenance, debugging, and test writing to cope with the badth of our pitiful code is necessary.
The difference is that the current Democrats won't send your kids to fight in a war designed to make corporations money. They draw the line at body counts. For Republicans 's'all good as long as Haliburton gets its cut.
I'm sure he meant to type "acaduhmic". But, in any case, the post was a high point of my day, humor-wise. My hat's off to the original poster.