I produce such code, and while I do not consider myself to be a rock star, I do work faster than most other developers, let alone project teams. Way faster. (Compared against project teams on smallish tasks, I'd say the factor is not x10 but exceeds x100)
What I discovered is that there is a need for crappy throwaway code, far greater than I thought. Prototypes, proof of concept products, budget solutions, anything people want to play with until they are happy enough to turn it over to a professional developer team and say "build me this". I even build production code from time to time. My boss understands that if the code needs fixing or updating, he can hire someone like me to fix it on the cheap (fast and small teams equal €€€ saved). Doing the math, he finds that building solid, supportable code and getting it into support with he regular teams looks a lot more sustainable on paper, but in practice is less flexible and vastly more expensive.
Of course this doesn't apply to every situation. Luckily I have a clever boss who understands this and knows what kind of coder is called for. Good work if you can get it.
Nice idea, but won't this help poachers as well? At the least the public app will help them to locate
- elephants
- park rangers
- the cameras themselves
What Nokia lacked was a understanding of how to market products other than normal phones.
Nokia lacked an understanding of products other than normal phones, period. To them, a smart phone was a regular phone with PDA functions bolted on, and it showed in the design of their products. The reverse is more accurate: a smart phone is a PDA that happens to have the ability to make calls. Their mobile OS looked interesting but I think their strength is in hardware; and I would have loved to see a Nokia Android phone.
What's wrong with the Gherkin? I can see why some people object to having an old city's skyline marred by skyscrapers, but if we're going to erect tall buildings anyway, I much prefer this over the next rectangular glass-and-steel slab.
If your speed limits do not serve the end of public safety, then your limits need to be revised.
That is the wrong kind of thinking. My point is that rigidly enforcing speed limits (which in itself may indeed constitute some local optimum value) does not necessarily improve road safety. While it may be good to set a speed limit of 100km/h on a certain road, it might make little sense to ding people for doing 104 (the current threshold here in NL) or even 114. I recently had the opportunity to observe the difference between a loosely interpreted and tightly interpreted speed limit, thanks to the police doing daily and highly visible speed checks on a road I drive over for my daily commute. Before the checks, a few people might do 90 on that road, most more or less stuck to the limit of 100, while a few did 110 in the fast lane, with a very small minority doing over 120. In this case, traffic flows smoothly, merging and overtaking was easy as well. But when the cops started their speed trap, people kept to the limit of 100kmh religiously. In busy traffic the result was that changing lanes became much more difficult, traffic flowed much less smoothly, and with everyone closely matching each other's speed, they had a tendency to drive too close together as well. In this case, rigidly keeping to the speed limit actually decreases traffic safety.
Making a speed limiter mandatory has the following downsides:
- It imposes a cost on vehicle owners
- It removes our freedom to exceed the speed limit if conditions and circumstances allow (and as I have argued, that speed limit is a means (and a crappy one at that), not an end.
- It introduces an additional point of failure into vehicles, and a potentially dangerous one at that.
The burden of proof is on the state in this case: proof that the upside (increased traffic safety, not adherence to the law) outweighs the downsides. Given the current statistics on traffic fatalities, I have serious doubts about the effectiveness of this proposal. Even the best case scenario does not merit a trial.
Question nr. 3 is actually the first one to ask: "What problem are we addressing here?". Then you can start discussing if the pros outweigh the cons.
But the main issue is: EU commissioners and national MPs are my elected (well, sort of) representatives charged with managing certain aspects of running the country. They are not my parents. The highway code is not a set of moral values, but they are increasingly treated as such. In reality the should be regarded as a means to an end, that end being road safety, and enforcement of that code should reflect that. Rigidly applying the speed limits does little to serve that goal.
By the way, if this gets implemented, I will install a backlit 80km/h sign in my rear window, so I can flash it at tailgaters, making their speed control system hit the brakes. All in good fun.
That's actually the sentiment amongst many young students. Why work hard at a STEM major when a business or law degree is likely to result in higher pay and higher social standing? Quotation needed? Ask students who are still deciding what to major in.
Around here, starting salaries for someone with a master's in STEM subjects is actually decent and on par or exceeding non STEM masters. The upward potential is pretty bad though, and in most cases you'll have to switch to management to improve your pay grade; there's few jobs for experienced scientists that actually pay well.
Besides the fact that it's useful to repackage this function as an app (you can check the arrival time from home / the bar / your office and wait for the bus there instead of at the stop), the guy hardly deserves to be sued into the ground for not being innovative enough, in what looks like to be a case without merit. And that's the crux of the issue: you can sue anyone for patent infringement, and even if your case has mo merit whatsoever, you can still extort the defendant over legal fees. Pay the $500, pcik your target, any target, and offer to settle for half of what the defendant would pay in legal fees. Profit!
What if the guy actually comes up with a truly innovative app instead? You can be sure that the same patent trolls will be all over him as soon as he makes a buck.
Heavier-than-air flight got started pretty much because of private enterprise. Government was quick to exploit the new possibilities it afforded (especially around the wars) but the truckloads of government cash did not come in before privately funded R&D paved the way. And even Columbus' idea of a westward route to Asia carried a profit motive. Half of the cost of his voyages was put up by private investors. There is no reason to believe either of those things would not have happened if government hadn't stepped in. The fact that they did step in doesn't change this, even if it did provide a boost.
There are vast riches to be had from space. The problem is that it'll take many years and huge outlays of cash before we can get at them, and even then it will be a seriously risky undertaking; not something investors will jump on eagerly. Tyson argues that you can't find private funding for something that won't pay out for decades, with a good chance it will not pay out at all, and he has a good point there. I wouldn't invest in a privately funded Mars colony (I might sponsor one but that's not the same thing). However, it may well turn out that there are profits to be found on the stepping stones towards the end-goal: a Mars colony. Significantly lowering launch costs (which Musk explicitly mentioned as one of the goals of SpaceX) may bring them enough revenue and investors to finance the next step.
When robots do all the work, Marx' old question about the ownership of the means of production (and of raw materials and land) becomes acutely relevant. If the top 1% own the robots, the 99% is pretty much useless. Robots will be able to provide the masses with a minimum of housing and comforts to keep them placated, and there will be a small middle class of researchers, technicians and entertainers, but that'll be it. Not a very bright future... When robots do all the work, socialism suddenly starts to look a lot more attractive (I never though I'd write those words).
No. Texting is in fact a great tool for a delivery service: the dispatcher sends a message whenever convenient, and the delivery guy reads it whenever it is safe; much better than calling. In your example, if there is an explicit directive to read texts as they come in instead of parking safely first, or an implicit rule to respond to a incoming text as soon as possible, even while driving, then the employer is clearly at fault. For wilfully creating an unsafe work environment, but not for the simple act of sending a text message to an employee while driving.
Even so. I should be able to send a text to a driver even if I know for sure he is driving at that time. A text message can be left alone until it is safe to read it, and the responsibility of waiting to read the message until it can be done safely is 100â... the responsibility of the recipient.
My prediction: there will be special "diamond lane" type of roads made specially for autonomous cars. At first it might be because the autonomous driving function isn't fully trusted unless it is in a controlled environment (i.e. in a separate lane). But soon it will ne used to use self-driving to best advantage: the special lane will allow autonomous vehicles to drive at 1.5x the speed limit, bumper to bumber (in clusters of 15 cars or so). The "must get there quicker" crowd will be happy to engage the autopilot if it lets them go faster.
Most people here (NL) think the same about our government. That's because most of us do not have high stake dealings with our government; we get a passport, renew our driver's license, ask for a permit to build a garage on our property. That's about it. I am also not aware of any top-level corruption going on; our country has fair elections and I can believe that few or no politicians and high placed officials are taking bribes.
However there is plenty of corruption at city hall, when the stakes go up. Small bribes to lubricate building permits for a house or place of business, payments to fix zoning issues, and substantial rewards in kind for granting large development contracts are commonplace. Most people never see any of this, but once you set foot in the world of construction you'll find a lot, and many people even talk about it openly.
"Skynet ran over my dog!" GP is right in that such an accident will be a marketing disaster... but it will only be a temporary one. However I am less worried about PR than about pet owners or parents suing the crap out of Google. If a human driver runs over your kid, there's only so much cash to be had from the driver, besides a jury might well rule that it was an accident and that the driver was not at fault. But in case of driverless cars, an accident translates readily into a defective product in the eyes of a jury, letting the grieving parents tap into a limitless corporate account. After all, if the product wasn't defective, it would avoid all accidents except those where someone would go out of their way to cause one.
If a site requires Facebook Connect, I am out of there (and I'll let them know why). It is nice to offer it as a convenient option for people with FB accounts, as long as there are alternative ways to log in.
Like it or not, Facebook is a very popular platform and companies find that it brings in a lot of traffic... they are not going to ditch it. However I do wish they'd stop using FB as their main presence on the web, instead of linking from FB to their own site.
Facebook isn't really a technology company, yet. They have encountered and solved some interesting challenges around databases, data centers adn that sort of stuff, and like Amazon they may turn that into a business. But so far their business is just marketing and advertising.
Perhaps they are looking to recoup some of the investment by doing limited-edition runs. The process itself is probably pretty pricey as well. If that puts the price tag at 22k GBP, then that's where the "nonsense" comes in. I suspect that fewer people will pay 22k for a "3d printed replica" than will pay that for a "limited edition, museum-approved Relievo".
Of course that won't last. The museum will probably start selling scaled down replicas at more affordable prices, and when that happens it won't take long for accurate scans to find their way to the Pirate Bay. At some point you'll be able to print those at your local Kinko's.
Stalin was also right: there really were people sabotaging the nation's 5 year plans and/or plotting to overthrow him. It's not really a consolation to those who were falsely accused. And in that case we're talking actual traitors and saboteurs; one has to wonder to which of the McCarthy commies that label could be applied. It seems more of a case of "disagree with me = treason".
The dictionary defines McCarthyism thus: 1. the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, especially of pro-Communist activity, in many instances unsupported by proof or based on slight, doubtful, or irrelevant evidence.
2. the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism.
The current definition seems pretty accurate to me, even if there really were a couple of communists.
Slashdot Mirror
I produce such code, and while I do not consider myself to be a rock star, I do work faster than most other developers, let alone project teams. Way faster. (Compared against project teams on smallish tasks, I'd say the factor is not x10 but exceeds x100)
What I discovered is that there is a need for crappy throwaway code, far greater than I thought. Prototypes, proof of concept products, budget solutions, anything people want to play with until they are happy enough to turn it over to a professional developer team and say "build me this". I even build production code from time to time. My boss understands that if the code needs fixing or updating, he can hire someone like me to fix it on the cheap (fast and small teams equal €€€ saved). Doing the math, he finds that building solid, supportable code and getting it into support with he regular teams looks a lot more sustainable on paper, but in practice is less flexible and vastly more expensive.
Of course this doesn't apply to every situation. Luckily I have a clever boss who understands this and knows what kind of coder is called for. Good work if you can get it.
Nice idea, but won't this help poachers as well? At the least the public app will help them to locate
- elephants
- park rangers
- the cameras themselves
What Nokia lacked was a understanding of how to market products other than normal phones.
Nokia lacked an understanding of products other than normal phones, period. To them, a smart phone was a regular phone with PDA functions bolted on, and it showed in the design of their products. The reverse is more accurate: a smart phone is a PDA that happens to have the ability to make calls. Their mobile OS looked interesting but I think their strength is in hardware; and I would have loved to see a Nokia Android phone.
That's right. Thankfully it's not our half...
What's wrong with the Gherkin? I can see why some people object to having an old city's skyline marred by skyscrapers, but if we're going to erect tall buildings anyway, I much prefer this over the next rectangular glass-and-steel slab.
That is the wrong kind of thinking. My point is that rigidly enforcing speed limits (which in itself may indeed constitute some local optimum value) does not necessarily improve road safety. While it may be good to set a speed limit of 100km/h on a certain road, it might make little sense to ding people for doing 104 (the current threshold here in NL) or even 114. I recently had the opportunity to observe the difference between a loosely interpreted and tightly interpreted speed limit, thanks to the police doing daily and highly visible speed checks on a road I drive over for my daily commute. Before the checks, a few people might do 90 on that road, most more or less stuck to the limit of 100, while a few did 110 in the fast lane, with a very small minority doing over 120. In this case, traffic flows smoothly, merging and overtaking was easy as well. But when the cops started their speed trap, people kept to the limit of 100kmh religiously. In busy traffic the result was that changing lanes became much more difficult, traffic flowed much less smoothly, and with everyone closely matching each other's speed, they had a tendency to drive too close together as well. In this case, rigidly keeping to the speed limit actually decreases traffic safety.
Making a speed limiter mandatory has the following downsides:
- It imposes a cost on vehicle owners
- It removes our freedom to exceed the speed limit if conditions and circumstances allow (and as I have argued, that speed limit is a means (and a crappy one at that), not an end.
- It introduces an additional point of failure into vehicles, and a potentially dangerous one at that.
The burden of proof is on the state in this case: proof that the upside (increased traffic safety, not adherence to the law) outweighs the downsides. Given the current statistics on traffic fatalities, I have serious doubts about the effectiveness of this proposal. Even the best case scenario does not merit a trial.
Question nr. 3 is actually the first one to ask: "What problem are we addressing here?". Then you can start discussing if the pros outweigh the cons.
But the main issue is: EU commissioners and national MPs are my elected (well, sort of) representatives charged with managing certain aspects of running the country. They are not my parents. The highway code is not a set of moral values, but they are increasingly treated as such. In reality the should be regarded as a means to an end, that end being road safety, and enforcement of that code should reflect that. Rigidly applying the speed limits does little to serve that goal.
By the way, if this gets implemented, I will install a backlit 80km/h sign in my rear window, so I can flash it at tailgaters, making their speed control system hit the brakes. All in good fun.
That's actually the sentiment amongst many young students. Why work hard at a STEM major when a business or law degree is likely to result in higher pay and higher social standing? Quotation needed? Ask students who are still deciding what to major in.
Around here, starting salaries for someone with a master's in STEM subjects is actually decent and on par or exceeding non STEM masters. The upward potential is pretty bad though, and in most cases you'll have to switch to management to improve your pay grade; there's few jobs for experienced scientists that actually pay well.
Besides the fact that it's useful to repackage this function as an app (you can check the arrival time from home / the bar / your office and wait for the bus there instead of at the stop), the guy hardly deserves to be sued into the ground for not being innovative enough, in what looks like to be a case without merit. And that's the crux of the issue: you can sue anyone for patent infringement, and even if your case has mo merit whatsoever, you can still extort the defendant over legal fees. Pay the $500, pcik your target, any target, and offer to settle for half of what the defendant would pay in legal fees. Profit!
What if the guy actually comes up with a truly innovative app instead? You can be sure that the same patent trolls will be all over him as soon as he makes a buck.
Heavier-than-air flight got started pretty much because of private enterprise. Government was quick to exploit the new possibilities it afforded (especially around the wars) but the truckloads of government cash did not come in before privately funded R&D paved the way. And even Columbus' idea of a westward route to Asia carried a profit motive. Half of the cost of his voyages was put up by private investors. There is no reason to believe either of those things would not have happened if government hadn't stepped in. The fact that they did step in doesn't change this, even if it did provide a boost.
There are vast riches to be had from space. The problem is that it'll take many years and huge outlays of cash before we can get at them, and even then it will be a seriously risky undertaking; not something investors will jump on eagerly. Tyson argues that you can't find private funding for something that won't pay out for decades, with a good chance it will not pay out at all, and he has a good point there. I wouldn't invest in a privately funded Mars colony (I might sponsor one but that's not the same thing). However, it may well turn out that there are profits to be found on the stepping stones towards the end-goal: a Mars colony. Significantly lowering launch costs (which Musk explicitly mentioned as one of the goals of SpaceX) may bring them enough revenue and investors to finance the next step.
When robots do all the work, Marx' old question about the ownership of the means of production (and of raw materials and land) becomes acutely relevant. If the top 1% own the robots, the 99% is pretty much useless. Robots will be able to provide the masses with a minimum of housing and comforts to keep them placated, and there will be a small middle class of researchers, technicians and entertainers, but that'll be it. Not a very bright future... When robots do all the work, socialism suddenly starts to look a lot more attractive (I never though I'd write those words).
No. Texting is in fact a great tool for a delivery service: the dispatcher sends a message whenever convenient, and the delivery guy reads it whenever it is safe; much better than calling. In your example, if there is an explicit directive to read texts as they come in instead of parking safely first, or an implicit rule to respond to a incoming text as soon as possible, even while driving, then the employer is clearly at fault. For wilfully creating an unsafe work environment, but not for the simple act of sending a text message to an employee while driving.
Even so. I should be able to send a text to a driver even if I know for sure he is driving at that time. A text message can be left alone until it is safe to read it, and the responsibility of waiting to read the message until it can be done safely is 100â... the responsibility of the recipient.
My prediction: there will be special "diamond lane" type of roads made specially for autonomous cars. At first it might be because the autonomous driving function isn't fully trusted unless it is in a controlled environment (i.e. in a separate lane). But soon it will ne used to use self-driving to best advantage: the special lane will allow autonomous vehicles to drive at 1.5x the speed limit, bumper to bumber (in clusters of 15 cars or so). The "must get there quicker" crowd will be happy to engage the autopilot if it lets them go faster.
Most people here (NL) think the same about our government. That's because most of us do not have high stake dealings with our government; we get a passport, renew our driver's license, ask for a permit to build a garage on our property. That's about it. I am also not aware of any top-level corruption going on; our country has fair elections and I can believe that few or no politicians and high placed officials are taking bribes.
However there is plenty of corruption at city hall, when the stakes go up. Small bribes to lubricate building permits for a house or place of business, payments to fix zoning issues, and substantial rewards in kind for granting large development contracts are commonplace. Most people never see any of this, but once you set foot in the world of construction you'll find a lot, and many people even talk about it openly.
"Skynet ran over my dog!" GP is right in that such an accident will be a marketing disaster... but it will only be a temporary one. However I am less worried about PR than about pet owners or parents suing the crap out of Google. If a human driver runs over your kid, there's only so much cash to be had from the driver, besides a jury might well rule that it was an accident and that the driver was not at fault. But in case of driverless cars, an accident translates readily into a defective product in the eyes of a jury, letting the grieving parents tap into a limitless corporate account. After all, if the product wasn't defective, it would avoid all accidents except those where someone would go out of their way to cause one.
If a site requires Facebook Connect, I am out of there (and I'll let them know why). It is nice to offer it as a convenient option for people with FB accounts, as long as there are alternative ways to log in.
Like it or not, Facebook is a very popular platform and companies find that it brings in a lot of traffic... they are not going to ditch it. However I do wish they'd stop using FB as their main presence on the web, instead of linking from FB to their own site.
Funny you should mention that. Someone said that if you step back and look at what FB actually is... you'll be looking at AOL 2.0
Facebook isn't really a technology company, yet. They have encountered and solved some interesting challenges around databases, data centers adn that sort of stuff, and like Amazon they may turn that into a business. But so far their business is just marketing and advertising.
To what extent would the microwave beam be attenuated by weather (clouds etc)?
Perhaps they are looking to recoup some of the investment by doing limited-edition runs. The process itself is probably pretty pricey as well. If that puts the price tag at 22k GBP, then that's where the "nonsense" comes in. I suspect that fewer people will pay 22k for a "3d printed replica" than will pay that for a "limited edition, museum-approved Relievo".
Of course that won't last. The museum will probably start selling scaled down replicas at more affordable prices, and when that happens it won't take long for accurate scans to find their way to the Pirate Bay. At some point you'll be able to print those at your local Kinko's.
Stalin was also right: there really were people sabotaging the nation's 5 year plans and/or plotting to overthrow him. It's not really a consolation to those who were falsely accused. And in that case we're talking actual traitors and saboteurs; one has to wonder to which of the McCarthy commies that label could be applied. It seems more of a case of "disagree with me = treason".
The dictionary defines McCarthyism thus:
1. the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, especially of pro-Communist activity, in many instances unsupported by proof or based on slight, doubtful, or irrelevant evidence.
2. the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism.
The current definition seems pretty accurate to me, even if there really were a couple of communists.
My advice: don't try it before you knock it.
A quick search will turn up various articles. Here's one, citing other interesting reading material.