If you sell a million copies of the upgrade to Office eXtra Pricey at $100 each, thats (think, think, think) $100,000,000. I'd not mind making a hundred million for a stupid goof.
If there are, as another post claims, 100,000,000 users, that means they can make $10 billion. While I'm not paranoid enough to think they did it deliberately, it sure looks to me like that would be a good strategy for making a profit. And since the EULA clearly states "We don't claim this will do anything for anyone ever and we ain't responsible anyway." there'd be no recourse.
I'd far prefer to have this available in a printed/bound copy, but the pdf will make for good reading on those long winter nights.
In any case, this is an excellent book, a fun read and well worth buying or downloading. Start with Schneier's "Applied Cryptography" and continue with this. There is a fair amount of mathematics which may seem intimidating at first glance, but which is relatively accessible with a bit of work.
If you're at all interested in cryptography - read this.
"A corporation has no soul to damn and no body to kick" (variously "kill", "punish").
This comes from the Baron Thurlow, the Lord Chancellor of England in the 1700's and as far as I can tell (http://www.xrefer.com) the full and
correct quote is :
"Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned, they therefore do as they like."
Or you might prefer this from Ambrose Bierce :
"Corporation: an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility."
A while back (I won't say how big a while), I was working on a fairly large project - happily not one with seriously bad time pressure. I'd been trying to work out a bug for a day or three and was very tired.
Suddenly I had the fix - it involved just exchanging two lines. I compiled and ran it and the bug I was chasing was gone. So I went home.
The next day the bug was back.
But by then I'd forgotten what I had done (in part, I suspect because of the fatigue) and how to unfix it. (Yes, I did know about source code control systems - but I was very tired, relieved and really wanted a beer to (um) celebrate. I learned my lesson, I assure you.)
Two weeks later I found the problem - exchanging those two lines was very wrong indeed. But it did fix a few simple cases. (The real problem was elsewhere.)
So it took two weeks to fix a problem made (in about two minutes) when I was very tired. This is probably a sigma or two out from the mean, but hardly unknown.
My experience since has been that people work far more effectively with good sleep, rest, food and all that.
On a related note, I've also found that when faced with one of those tough bugs, or when dealing with a hard design problem - that taking a day to go for a hike or a long bike ride will usually save far more time than it takes. Managers never quite seem to understand that though.
Naxos.com sells audio books on CD-ROM (a good thing for me since I have very bad cassette tape karma) and I've found that Proust's "In search of lost time" is often pretty good for bringing on sleep.
Oh, and I was also going to suggest that web searches for "The Secretary Problem" will give all and sundry an interesting and slightly different slant on the whole thing.
A quick check at google turns up (among many others) this good read :
Having sat on both sides of the table (being at the moment on the interviewee side as I'm looking for a job) here's my two cents worth (and worth every bit of sense you can get out of it too).
I don't trust exam type things - especially with pen and paper and looking at specific skills. Indeed, I personally don't tend to care much about specific skills - the organization may need those today, but what about next year? Things change.
The "here's a puzzle, stand at the board and talk about it" is always a good way to find out what how the person works - but don't just go for the right answer - go for the method and how the person reacts to getting stuck and to hints. (On one such exam (PHD qualifiers actually) I got stuck completely and spent an uncomfortable amount of time trying to unstick myself - but when the examiner said "how about this" - I saw the answer immediately and said "Ah..." It was the "Ah" that the examiner had been seeking. )
I do always ask about a previous project that they enjoyed, and about one they hated (these can be school type projects). For each I try to find out what was the best part, the hardest problem, the worst part... And I'll usually encourage them to talk about team problems as well.
Finally, in the case that the interviewee is undergoing a number of interviews with people in the organization) I encourage interviewees to just relax and take the time with me to decompress (to the extent that they can) and try to just chat about whatever. This gives me a chance to find out if they can talk and know something besides geekdom - which I think is a nice plus.
But you might want to do just the opposite of my ideas - I've managed to make some quite wonderful mistakes. One of my favorites was very talented, but very inexperienced - he had the bright notion that it would be a good thing to send a 2000+ line program to the compiler writers and insist there was a bug in the compiler because it didn't work.
Hmm, come to think of it, that would be a good question : "Have you ever found a bug in a compiler? - How do you know?"
How about getting the FSF and GNU organizations involved. If they could get addresses (numbers, whatever) for the Lord Great Poo Bahs at Unnamed-Evil-Megalithic-Corporation, their stockholders and users, such organizations could SMS them over and over and over with nice short messages (examples generated at random) :
MS Word is Better than Vi ! Oracle makes SQL Server look like S--T! Solaris Rules! Linux Beats Windows!
In a similar vein (but Seriously Illegal - only done by experienced stock manipulators on closed courses - do NOT try this at home) one could SMS anonymous messages to users in the financial districts such as:
I've been a college professor type for a bit and in contemplating
Yet Another Commencement Address, and its trite cliches and
nonsense about the future I decided to write my own - not that
anyone would ever ask me to actually present such a thing. (The
observation that many of the faculty present were doing things
other than listening (reading, correcting papers, listening to CDs)
probably contributed to my determination to do it.)
But after I wrote it, I realized that could serve equally well as a
"Welcome to College Pep Talk".
Or maybe taken to induce vomiting. (Do not do that if you've
recently ingested caustic materials.)
Most quotes unattributed. Think of it as an exercise for the interested reader.
Jefu does A Commencement (Leaving College and Starting a Life, or Starting College) Speech.
Never go to the supermarket and pay in nickels. Now, pennies -
that's a different story.
"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent."
If someone insults or offends you, its your job to figure out
what it is in you that is reacting. Only then should you hit
them on the top of their pointly little head.
Ask yourself why someone is buying a shopping cart full of sugar.
Is there a guy in the ceiling tile factory who checks the tiles
to make sure the holes are in the right places?
Randomness. Good. Fun.. Do things sometimes on the flip of a coin -
or the roll of dice. But dont bet on roulette.
Think for yourself. Be ready to _listen_ to everyone else. Or
at least to appear to. Sometimes its easier to listen by email.
Try something from time to time that bores you. Try it seriously,
dont just kid yourself.
"A corporation has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked."
Try something from time to time that annoys you. Try it seriously,
don't just kid yourself.
"Guns don't kill people. Physics kills people."
Imagination is often the best place for revenge - practice thinking
of good (however impractical or hazardous) revenge schemes. Funny is
best. Up to you to decide who to tell about them.
Think for yourself. Find your own ways to react to things. Stick
your tongue out.
Imagine the possibilities in Liquid Oxygen and Spam.
"First thing we do, lets kill all the lawyers."
Everyone needs to be kicked from time to time. Remember this when
someone kicks you. Kicking back is optional.
Its more fun and effective to attack using humour. Self defense is
difficult when everyone is laughing.
Write checks and fill in offical forms with bright green ink. Use
the French revolutionary calender if possible.
Keep on learning. Take night classes. Teach yourself. Don't stop.
Write funny poems. Be careful who you show them to.
Go to a nude beach. Get nekkid. Look around. Are you really
that beautiful? Or that ugly?
Think for yourself. Learn something new, let simmer. Repeat
until dead.
Cultivate a bunch of people that share your general interests and whom
you trust (the internet is great for this). Its all the better if
some are smarter than you. When one of them suggests something -
follow it up. Make your own suggestions.
Be bizarre.
Bi Bezarre.
Bee bazaar. (Careful not to get stung.)
Practice writing about what you like and why. Write reviews for
IMDB.com, for Amazon.com... Write about what you hate. Avoid lists
of "the 100 best...."
John Wayne was a draft dodger - or was he?. J. Edger Hoover was
a crossdresser - or was he?
"Where would we be without the agitators of the world
attaching the electrodes of knowledge to the nipples of
ignorance?"
When you write or speak (in your native language) remember
that its your language so use it as you will. Remember Yoda,
talks oddly he does, yet wise he is.
Watch movies with subtitles from time to time. Its much easier
in the theatre than on TV.
Remember that everyone rises to their own level of incompetence
so what they say may be a reflection of that incompetence. Remember
- you're doing the same thing.
Find a quiet place of your own that you can retreat to. Keep it
private.
Dont tell ANYONE your PIN number, or your computer passwords. You may
be in love today - but tomorrow? Keep a checking account separate
from your partner. Establish credit in your own name.
That goes double for women.
Cross your sevens. Cross your Z's.
Watch old movies, read books written more than 50 years ago,
listen to Chinese/African/experimental music. Avoid Tom Jones
and the later Elvis.
Fourteen year old's can and will circumvent most any security
on your TV, your computer and whatever else you want to keep
secret when motivated. Lock up that gun, and those (um)
interesting photos, oh - dont forget that dildo.
Your education is YOURS. Don't let anyone steal it from you
this includes parents, faculty, advisors and meddling idiots
of all flavors (most all of whom are well meaning). .
Make a complete fool of yourself at least once a month. Find new
ways to do it.
Nothing you learn seriously is wasted. A class where you
just cram crap into your head so you can vomit up onto the exams is a
waste of time and perfectly good vomit.
If God starts speaking to you directly, you might try Thorazine.
Challenge your professors - thats what they're there for.
Otherwise you could just read the textbook. Be sure to use
reason, information and reasonable amounts of politeness. If
they say "lets take this out of the class", shut up and do so.
If they get all defensive and cranky, shut up and drop the
class - they probably know less than you and will take it out
on you with low grades.
Your manager is there to help you to get the job done - so he
really works for you. He won't think so.
Collect because you like stuff - not to make money. Cultivate
good taste and you may still make money.
Try something new every so often. Try something you
tried before and didn't like. Do it seriously - your tastes may
have changed.
"It is easier to get forgiveness than permission."
Avoid foods with "surprise" in their names.
Practice that willing suspension of disbelief thing. Believe
everything someone says as long as you're listening/talking to them
(or taking their course). After that think for yourself. (Hey,
its a Theme!)
If you label something as nonsense without reason, your label is
probably nonsense.
"You never really learn anything, you just get used to it."
Think for yourself. Just cuz its written in a book, put on TV
or told to you by your favorite trust-in-me-i-know-the-truth
authority, doesn't mean its true. Though if Yoda says it true is,
true must it be.
Get started NOW on an exercise program that you like and that works
for you. Don't stop. Each time you do it gets harder to start
again.
"Alice in Wonderland is the best book for novices on anything."
If the supermarket line gets long, just leave your cart (basket) and
walk out. Put ice cream in the cart first.
If you go to the supermarket and pay in nickels, someone may be
thinking about throwing melted ice cream from that abandoned shopping
cart over there at you. First practice getting ice cream out
of your clothes.
Insincere compliments are obviously fake. Find a sincere compliment
even if it takes some work. "You have such a cool smile." is pretty
general purpose.
Accept compliments with "Thank you." You are not required to
compliment back. Honest. But when you can compliment someone
else, do so.
Make intricate, tall and balancy piles of rocks. Avoid Jenga.
Crosswords are a great thing to take into meetings so you can look
like you're taking notes. If someone peeks over your shoulder
ask them what the word is for 13 across.
Meetings that last more than an hour become pointless. Nothing
more will get done.
"For every complex problem, there is a simple solution - which is
invariably wrong."
The internet MAY become a world changing technology or it may become
just an electronic equivalent of a strip mall. If you only use it
for the corporate web sites, we'll be lucky if it gets as
good as a strip mall.
"Its not done when you've put everything in, its done when you have
taken everything out."
Leave an occasional surprise for people. F'rinstance, put a dollar bill
where it will be found eventually - but not soon. Build a replica
of Stonehenge in the woods a ways away from a trail. Bury that jar
of pennies somewhere.
Try cryptic crosswords. But don't try the ones in the Atlantic till
you're sure you're ready - they're scary.
"Think of it as evolution in action."
Feel free to dislike someone. And you will. Remember that everyone
else is free to dislike you. And someone will. Pity them for failing
to appreciate you properly.
If you dont understand it, look it up. If you still don't understand
it - study it. If you still don't understand it, teach it. If you
still don't understand it, perhaps you have attained the Buddha nature.
Remember the Snark. Tell people things three times. If they haven't
heard you by then they're not likely to ever hear you.
"Do Not Meddle In The Affairs Of Dragons For You Are Crunchy And Good
With Ketchup"
"Do not meddle in the affairs of Unix, for it is subtle and quick to
core dump."
"Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will
piss on your computer"
"Do not meddle in the affairs of professors, for they are subtle and
quick to flunk you"
"Do not meddle in the affairs of artists, for this is satire and you
would look good in lingerie."
"Do not meddle in the affairs of cyborgs for you are conductive and
can support 110 volts"
Running jokes either don't go on long enough, or go on too
long. Sometimes both at once.
Read the New Yorker - or at least look at the cartoons.
Don't get arrested for posession.
"Do not meddle in the affairs of the drug warriers, for they
are morally certain and quick to use asset forfeiture."
Condoms are good. Use them. You know how. If you don't know how, go
no further. AIDS is a nasty way to die.
Make a New Years resolution to never make another New Years resolution.
"On the internet, no one knows you're a dog."
Be ready to ignore all those around you. Do you really believe
they're smarter than you? Similarly don't copy on exams. Are you sure
that that person over there knows the right answer? Really?
"I say its spinach and I say to hell with it."
If you have no idea what to write for a paper or an essay question,
try limericks or a funny essay on the topic. Or find a good
argument to support a bizarre conclusion. Probably best not to
do this on a business proposal.
"God must have had an inordinate fondness for beetles, since he
made so many of them."
More than three people will have trouble making a decision. Even
"Which restaurant?"
Waitrons walk out of the room with your credit card. Hmmm.
Send presents to people you like when you find the Right Thing. Don't
shop, just wait for the Right Thing to jump out at you. There's no
point in waiting for a holiday - they can use a lift Right Now. If
you find the Right Thing for someone who is not all that close and its
not overly expensive, do it anyway - just anonymously.
Find holes in the rules.
When you're in a restaurant, its easier to pick up the check than to
argue about it. But make sure everyone takes their turn. Going to the
bathroom when the check arrives is not a good strategy. On the other
hand extended and noisy disputes about who ordered what can provide
good comedy for the other patrons.
From time to time, overtip.
"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by
stupidity."
As I read the microsoft page there, it looks like you have to sign the non-disclosure agreement before you can even see the license - does this mean you cant disclose the licensing terms?
I did not always agree with Dijkstra's opinions, but reading what he had to say was always stimulating and enlightening. Even more, many of his writings have stayed with me over the years.
I'll have to admit though that one of my favorite Dijkstra quotes is:
"It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC; as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."
I'm confused (not a rare thing, actually), in fortran you can emulate a turing machine with the tape being a big array (up to the maximum array size you can allocate), if necessary, you can write the tape out to disk, and do all the operations on a small window on the tape in memory.
But, really, you can't do any better in any language I know. The tape will always be finite, and of some maximum size. So you are always limited by that.
Anyway, any closed finite computer is little more than a big finite state machine.
Fortran is still alive and kicking - there are good optimizing compilers for Fortran on a number of machines and a number of good libraries for it.
However, I distrust Fortran personally - a number of years back I took a course in non-linear optimization - the course focussed on well behaved objective functions (smooth, a single optimum...) and the prof had some sample Fortran code that used his favorite optimum finder.
He gave us an example and the answer. But his version was running on one architecture, compiler and OS - I did not have easy access to that machine, though I did to others. I ported the program to those other machines (mostly a question of fiddling output statements and similar more or less trivial changes - the algorithm was still the same). I eventually ran it on six machines (architectures, compilers...) and got six different answers - three of these were close, the other three were substantially different from each other - and the original answer was one of the outliers.
I tried to figure out what the code was doing to see if I could find out where the error was creeping in. The code used pretty much every icky Fortran construct possible (multiple loops ending at a single statement, odd traversals of arrays, and the like) and of course not a comment to be seen. After about a week I gave it up as a bad job.
Yup, this was only one program, but my sampling of fortran code shows it as more typical than not.
There are a couple of interesting alternatives. One is Sisal - a very interesting language that attacks numeric problems more directly than Fortran (see sourceforge for the current Sisal project). Some measurements showed Sisal as being more than competitive with Fortran and other such languages and it seems quite possible that it could take advantage of the processing power in a clustered environment. When I tried to do some image processing algorithms in Sisal it took about two days to write error free code and another day to write code that outperformed my original C code.
Another is APL. I've not been able to verify this recently, but I once heard that there was an APL interpreter that extended APL with some basic numeric operations (matrix inversion and the like are built in) that would pass off the hairy stuff to optimized routines. Admittedly, APL is an interesting language to learn, but it does provide wonderous array manipulation primatives.
I liked the following statement in the original article :
"spammers and their nemeses agree: the United States needs a federal spam law."
The way things are going (UCITA, DMCA...) I can see it now - it will be called the SPAM act (for Spam Protects American Marketers) and will forbid filters, require users to read all spam and prohibit any complaints in response.
The article is pretty good overall and does say some nice things about Linux. But we should all admit that for most users the Linux GUI interfaces are not the best.
Not that I like the Windows GUI -- I don't. Its not consistent across apps and its almost impossible to customize or extend. The Mac interface is much better for most users - it takes a relatively short time to learn and is very consistent.
I think there are two things Linux really needs for GUI stuff - one is a standard base (and not xt or the athena widgets) of GUI constructors that produce more or less consistent UI's for most apps - this exists within GNOME and within KDE, but use apps from both? Hmmmm.
And I think this GUI stuff needs to come with decent defaults, but with moderate customization for "power users" and powerful ways to override them for the people who push things to the limit.
Personally, I say "Bring Back GWM!" -- just make it easier to customize. (Loved those infinite workspace windows.)
I'm an emacs user (with fallbacks to vi for some quick editing tasks) but have used (at one point or another) pretty much every style of editor available (from teco to ed to notepad to who-knows-what), and I find emacs (xemacs or emacs) the most convenient and powerful. I've written elisp to both extend the editor and solve once-off problems. I use it on unix and in windows and would use it by preference on any platform where I need to edit things extensively. Indeed, I find emacs to be a better editor than many language specific IDE's.
As a free speech advocate in general, I don't believe that kiddie porn, explosives recipies, blasphemy or much of anything else should be censored.
Do I like all these things? No. But I do believe that the proponents of censoring them are both missing the complexity of the problem itself and its implications for the internet as a whole.
After all, if the Catholic church (via the Italian constabulary, or even using Vatican rules (after all the Vatican does claim to be an independent state)) can censor what it wants, anyone who disagrees with Catholic doctrine should be able to censor the Catholic church.
The notion of a contentless internet - sending only informationless messages around (probably all one bits) is intriguing in its own way.
Its also worth noting that the mi2g people are offering security services, so the interesting ambiguities in their report are clearly a way to attract new business.
Why not be sure that every threat to privacy (be it microsoft or gpl'ed software or whomever) is explained clearly (for the layman)in a press release and faxed out to major news organizations and sympathetic (or possibly sympathetic) governments. If there are more than three or four a week, it would probably be best to group them together and to send them in a single report to avoid verwhelming them.
In particular, it would be good to note whenever it applies how fast the open source community has come up with a response.
Counter FUD with openness, clarity, and publicity - after all microsoft and similar corporations have things like CNN and MSNBC.
Not science fiction, but worthwhile :
joyce - for Ulysses
gaddis - a frolic of his own, jr
becket - waiting for godot
steinbeck - grapes of wrath (and some others)
tennessee williams (assorted)
knuth - assorted
feynman - lectures on physics
pynchon - crying of lot 49, vineland (and for the truly brave) gravity's rainbow
strunk and white - the elements of style
Slashdot Mirror
If you sell a million copies of the upgrade to Office eXtra Pricey at $100 each, thats (think, think, think) $100,000,000. I'd not mind making a hundred million for a stupid goof.
If there are, as another post claims, 100,000,000 users, that means they can make $10 billion. While I'm not paranoid enough to think they did it deliberately, it sure looks to me like that would be a good strategy for making a profit. And since the EULA clearly states "We don't claim this will do anything for anyone ever and we ain't responsible anyway." there'd be no recourse.
I'd far prefer to have this available in a printed/bound copy, but the pdf will make for good reading on those long winter nights.
In any case, this is an excellent book, a fun read and well worth buying or downloading. Start with Schneier's "Applied Cryptography" and continue with this. There is a fair amount of mathematics which may seem intimidating at first glance, but which is relatively accessible with a bit of work.
If you're at all interested in cryptography - read this.
"A corporation has no soul to damn and no body to kick" (variously "kill", "punish").
This comes from the Baron Thurlow, the Lord Chancellor of England in the 1700's and as far as I can tell (http://www.xrefer.com) the full and correct quote is :
"Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned, they therefore do as they like."
Or you might prefer this from Ambrose Bierce :
"Corporation: an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility."
More at http://www.endgame.org/primer-quotes.html. These quotes (naturally) apply to HP, to MS, to Dell, Red Hat and so on
Your manager is at best a fool.
A while back (I won't say how big a while), I was working on a fairly large project - happily not one with seriously bad time pressure. I'd been trying to work out a bug for a day or three and was very tired.
Suddenly I had the fix - it involved just exchanging two lines. I compiled and ran it and the bug I was chasing was gone. So I went home.
The next day the bug was back.
But by then I'd forgotten what I had done (in part, I suspect because of the fatigue) and how to unfix it. (Yes, I did know about source code control systems - but I was very tired, relieved and really wanted a beer to (um) celebrate. I learned my lesson, I assure you.)
Two weeks later I found the problem - exchanging those two lines was very wrong indeed. But it did fix a few simple cases. (The real problem was elsewhere.)
So it took two weeks to fix a problem made (in about two minutes) when I was very tired. This is probably a sigma or two out from the mean, but hardly unknown.
My experience since has been that people work far more effectively with good sleep, rest, food and all that.
On a related note, I've also found that when faced with one of those tough bugs, or when dealing with a hard design problem - that taking a day to go for a hike or a long bike ride will usually save far more time than it takes. Managers never quite seem to understand that though.
Naxos.com sells audio books on CD-ROM (a good thing for me since I have very bad cassette tape karma) and I've found that Proust's "In search of lost time" is often pretty good for bringing on sleep.
Oh, and I was also going to suggest that web searches for "The Secretary Problem" will give all and sundry an interesting and slightly different slant on the whole thing.
A quick check at google turns up (among many others) this good read :
http://www.math.grin.edu/~gum/papers/secretary/
Having sat on both sides of the table (being at the moment on the interviewee side as I'm looking for a job) here's my two cents worth (and worth every bit of sense you can get out of it too).
I don't trust exam type things - especially with pen and paper and looking at specific skills. Indeed, I personally don't tend to care much about specific skills - the organization may need those today, but what about next year? Things change.
The "here's a puzzle, stand at the board and talk about it" is always a good way to find out what how the person works - but don't just go for the right answer - go for the method and how the person reacts to getting stuck and to hints.
(On one such exam (PHD qualifiers actually) I got stuck completely and spent an uncomfortable amount of time trying to unstick myself - but when the examiner said "how about this" - I saw the answer immediately and said "Ah..." It was the "Ah" that the examiner had been seeking. )
I do always ask about a previous project that they enjoyed, and about one they hated (these can be school type projects). For each I try to find out what was the best part, the hardest problem, the worst part... And I'll usually encourage them to talk about team problems as well.
Finally, in the case that the interviewee is undergoing a number of interviews with people in the organization) I encourage interviewees to just relax and take the time with me to decompress (to the extent that they can) and try to just chat about whatever. This gives me a chance to find out if they can talk and know something besides geekdom - which I think is a nice plus.
But you might want to do just the opposite of my ideas - I've managed to make some quite wonderful mistakes. One of my favorites was very talented, but very inexperienced - he had the bright notion that it would be a good thing to send a 2000+ line program to the compiler writers and insist there was a bug in the compiler because it didn't work.
Hmm, come to think of it, that would be a good question : "Have you ever found a bug in a compiler? - How do you know?"
How about getting the FSF and GNU organizations involved. If they could get addresses (numbers, whatever) for the Lord Great Poo Bahs at Unnamed-Evil-Megalithic-Corporation, their stockholders and users, such organizations could
:
:
SMS them over and over and over with nice short messages (examples generated at random) :
MS Word is Better than Vi !
Oracle makes SQL Server look like S--T!
Solaris Rules!
Linux Beats Windows!
In a similar vein (but Seriously Illegal - only done by experienced stock manipulators on closed courses - do NOT try this at home) one could SMS anonymous messages to users in the financial districts such as
"Doo Doo Corporation Joins Enron in SEC Investigation, Billions Rumoured Stolen."
And finally with anonymity comes the fun of
"Joe Doe, Your Candidate for Senator, likes Sheep! Visit http://xxx.yyy.zzz for video!'
Your nice prose haiku, though perhaps unformatted, was still quite striking.
Though perhaps disliked
Joke Haiku have existed
Beyond and Before
So, undoubtedly
Complete Elimination
Is Futile At Best
The Internet will
Survive this too, Other threats
Are Far More dange'rous
Our slashdot haiku
Great poetry they are not
But no trees are gone
English major pomes
Small presses delight "They're good!"
Clearcuts thence result
I've been a college professor type for a bit and in contemplating Yet Another Commencement Address, and its trite cliches and nonsense about the future I decided to write my own - not that anyone would ever ask me to actually present such a thing. (The observation that many of the faculty present were doing things other than listening (reading, correcting papers, listening to CDs) probably contributed to my determination to do it.)
But after I wrote it, I realized that could serve equally well as a "Welcome to College Pep Talk".
Or maybe taken to induce vomiting. (Do not do that if you've recently ingested caustic materials.)
Most quotes unattributed. Think of it as an exercise for the interested reader.
Jefu does A Commencement (Leaving College and Starting a Life, or Starting College) Speech.
Never go to the supermarket and pay in nickels. Now, pennies - that's a different story.
"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent."
If someone insults or offends you, its your job to figure out what it is in you that is reacting. Only then should you hit them on the top of their pointly little head.
Ask yourself why someone is buying a shopping cart full of sugar.
Is there a guy in the ceiling tile factory who checks the tiles to make sure the holes are in the right places?
Randomness. Good. Fun.. Do things sometimes on the flip of a coin - or the roll of dice. But dont bet on roulette.
Think for yourself. Be ready to _listen_ to everyone else. Or at least to appear to. Sometimes its easier to listen by email.
Try something from time to time that bores you. Try it seriously, dont just kid yourself.
"A corporation has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked."
Try something from time to time that annoys you. Try it seriously, don't just kid yourself.
"Guns don't kill people. Physics kills people."
Imagination is often the best place for revenge - practice thinking of good (however impractical or hazardous) revenge schemes. Funny is best. Up to you to decide who to tell about them.
Think for yourself. Find your own ways to react to things. Stick your tongue out.
Imagine the possibilities in Liquid Oxygen and Spam.
"First thing we do, lets kill all the lawyers."
Everyone needs to be kicked from time to time. Remember this when someone kicks you. Kicking back is optional.
Its more fun and effective to attack using humour. Self defense is difficult when everyone is laughing.
Write checks and fill in offical forms with bright green ink. Use the French revolutionary calender if possible.
Keep on learning. Take night classes. Teach yourself. Don't stop.
Write funny poems. Be careful who you show them to.
Go to a nude beach. Get nekkid. Look around. Are you really that beautiful? Or that ugly?
Think for yourself. Learn something new, let simmer. Repeat until dead.
Cultivate a bunch of people that share your general interests and whom you trust (the internet is great for this). Its all the better if some are smarter than you. When one of them suggests something - follow it up. Make your own suggestions.
Be bizarre.
Bi Bezarre.
Bee bazaar. (Careful not to get stung.)
Practice writing about what you like and why. Write reviews for IMDB.com, for Amazon.com ... Write about what you hate. Avoid lists
of "the 100 best...."
John Wayne was a draft dodger - or was he?. J. Edger Hoover was a crossdresser - or was he?
"Where would we be without the agitators of the world attaching the electrodes of knowledge to the nipples of ignorance?"
When you write or speak (in your native language) remember that its your language so use it as you will. Remember Yoda, talks oddly he does, yet wise he is.
Watch movies with subtitles from time to time. Its much easier in the theatre than on TV.
Remember that everyone rises to their own level of incompetence so what they say may be a reflection of that incompetence. Remember - you're doing the same thing.
Find a quiet place of your own that you can retreat to. Keep it private.
Dont tell ANYONE your PIN number, or your computer passwords. You may be in love today - but tomorrow? Keep a checking account separate from your partner. Establish credit in your own name. That goes double for women.
Cross your sevens. Cross your Z's.
Watch old movies, read books written more than 50 years ago, listen to Chinese/African/experimental music. Avoid Tom Jones and the later Elvis.
Fourteen year old's can and will circumvent most any security on your TV, your computer and whatever else you want to keep secret when motivated. Lock up that gun, and those (um) interesting photos, oh - dont forget that dildo.
Your education is YOURS. Don't let anyone steal it from you this includes parents, faculty, advisors and meddling idiots of all flavors (most all of whom are well meaning). .
Make a complete fool of yourself at least once a month. Find new ways to do it.
Nothing you learn seriously is wasted. A class where you just cram crap into your head so you can vomit up onto the exams is a waste of time and perfectly good vomit.
If God starts speaking to you directly, you might try Thorazine.
Challenge your professors - thats what they're there for. Otherwise you could just read the textbook. Be sure to use reason, information and reasonable amounts of politeness. If they say "lets take this out of the class", shut up and do so. If they get all defensive and cranky, shut up and drop the class - they probably know less than you and will take it out on you with low grades.
Your manager is there to help you to get the job done - so he really works for you. He won't think so.
Collect because you like stuff - not to make money. Cultivate good taste and you may still make money.
Try something new every so often. Try something you tried before and didn't like. Do it seriously - your tastes may have changed.
"It is easier to get forgiveness than permission."Avoid foods with "surprise" in their names.
Practice that willing suspension of disbelief thing. Believe everything someone says as long as you're listening/talking to them (or taking their course). After that think for yourself. (Hey, its a Theme!)
If you label something as nonsense without reason, your label is probably nonsense.
"You never really learn anything, you just get used to it."
Think for yourself. Just cuz its written in a book, put on TV or told to you by your favorite trust-in-me-i-know-the-truth authority, doesn't mean its true. Though if Yoda says it true is, true must it be.
Get started NOW on an exercise program that you like and that works for you. Don't stop. Each time you do it gets harder to start again.
"Alice in Wonderland is the best book for novices on anything."
If the supermarket line gets long, just leave your cart (basket) and walk out. Put ice cream in the cart first.
If you go to the supermarket and pay in nickels, someone may be thinking about throwing melted ice cream from that abandoned shopping cart over there at you. First practice getting ice cream out of your clothes.
Insincere compliments are obviously fake. Find a sincere compliment even if it takes some work. "You have such a cool smile." is pretty general purpose.
Accept compliments with "Thank you." You are not required to compliment back. Honest. But when you can compliment someone else, do so.
Make intricate, tall and balancy piles of rocks. Avoid Jenga.
Crosswords are a great thing to take into meetings so you can look like you're taking notes. If someone peeks over your shoulder ask them what the word is for 13 across.
Meetings that last more than an hour become pointless. Nothing more will get done.
"For every complex problem, there is a simple solution - which is invariably wrong."
The internet MAY become a world changing technology or it may become just an electronic equivalent of a strip mall. If you only use it for the corporate web sites, we'll be lucky if it gets as good as a strip mall.
"Its not done when you've put everything in, its done when you have taken everything out."
Leave an occasional surprise for people. F'rinstance, put a dollar bill where it will be found eventually - but not soon. Build a replica of Stonehenge in the woods a ways away from a trail. Bury that jar of pennies somewhere.
Try cryptic crosswords. But don't try the ones in the Atlantic till you're sure you're ready - they're scary.
"Think of it as evolution in action."
Feel free to dislike someone. And you will. Remember that everyone else is free to dislike you. And someone will. Pity them for failing to appreciate you properly.
If you dont understand it, look it up. If you still don't understand it - study it. If you still don't understand it, teach it. If you still don't understand it, perhaps you have attained the Buddha nature.
Remember the Snark. Tell people things three times. If they haven't heard you by then they're not likely to ever hear you.
"Do Not Meddle In The Affairs Of Dragons For You Are Crunchy And Good With Ketchup"
"Do not meddle in the affairs of Unix, for it is subtle and quick to core dump."
"Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer"
"Do not meddle in the affairs of professors, for they are subtle and quick to flunk you"
"Do not meddle in the affairs of artists, for this is satire and you would look good in lingerie."
"Do not meddle in the affairs of cyborgs for you are conductive and can support 110 volts"
Running jokes either don't go on long enough, or go on too long. Sometimes both at once.
Read the New Yorker - or at least look at the cartoons.
Don't get arrested for posession.
"Do not meddle in the affairs of the drug warriers, for they are morally certain and quick to use asset forfeiture."
Condoms are good. Use them. You know how. If you don't know how, go no further. AIDS is a nasty way to die.
Make a New Years resolution to never make another New Years resolution.
"On the internet, no one knows you're a dog."
Be ready to ignore all those around you. Do you really believe they're smarter than you? Similarly don't copy on exams. Are you sure that that person over there knows the right answer? Really?
"I say its spinach and I say to hell with it."
If you have no idea what to write for a paper or an essay question, try limericks or a funny essay on the topic. Or find a good argument to support a bizarre conclusion. Probably best not to do this on a business proposal.
"God must have had an inordinate fondness for beetles, since he made so many of them."
More than three people will have trouble making a decision. Even "Which restaurant?"
Waitrons walk out of the room with your credit card. Hmmm.
Send presents to people you like when you find the Right Thing. Don't shop, just wait for the Right Thing to jump out at you. There's no point in waiting for a holiday - they can use a lift Right Now. If you find the Right Thing for someone who is not all that close and its not overly expensive, do it anyway - just anonymously.
Find holes in the rules.
When you're in a restaurant, its easier to pick up the check than to argue about it. But make sure everyone takes their turn. Going to the bathroom when the check arrives is not a good strategy. On the other hand extended and noisy disputes about who ordered what can provide good comedy for the other patrons.
From time to time, overtip.
"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
All of the above is true.
All of the above is false.
"You are a fluke of the Universe."
Its all up to you.
As I read the microsoft page there, it looks like you have to sign the non-disclosure agreement before you can even see the license - does this mean you cant disclose the licensing terms?
I did not always agree with Dijkstra's opinions, but reading what he had to say was always stimulating and enlightening. Even more, many of his writings have stayed with me over the years.
I'll have to admit though that one of my favorite Dijkstra quotes is
"It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC; as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."
OK.
I'm confused (not a rare thing, actually), in fortran you can emulate a turing machine with the tape being a big array (up to the maximum array size you can allocate), if necessary, you can write the tape out to disk, and do all the operations on a small window on the tape in memory.
But, really, you can't do any better in any language I know. The tape will always be finite, and of some maximum size. So you are always limited by that.
Anyway, any closed finite computer is little more than a big finite state machine.
Fortran is still alive and kicking - there are good optimizing compilers for Fortran on a number of machines and a number of good libraries for it.
However, I distrust Fortran personally - a number of years back I took a course in non-linear optimization - the course focussed on well behaved objective functions (smooth, a single optimum...) and the prof had some sample Fortran code that used his favorite optimum finder.
He gave us an example and the answer. But his version was running on one architecture, compiler and OS - I did not have easy access to that machine, though I did to others. I ported the program to those other machines (mostly a question of fiddling output statements and similar more or less trivial changes - the algorithm was still the same). I eventually ran it on six machines (architectures, compilers...) and got six different answers - three of these were close, the other three were substantially different from each other - and the original answer was one of the outliers.
I tried to figure out what the code was doing to see if I could find out where the error was creeping in. The code used pretty much every icky Fortran construct possible (multiple loops ending at a single statement, odd traversals of arrays, and the like) and of course not a comment to be seen. After about a week I gave it up as a bad job.
Yup, this was only one program, but my sampling of fortran code shows it as more typical than not.
There are a couple of interesting alternatives. One is Sisal - a very interesting language that attacks numeric problems more directly than Fortran (see sourceforge for the current Sisal project). Some measurements showed Sisal as being more than competitive with Fortran and other such languages and it seems quite possible that it could take advantage of the processing power in a clustered environment. When I tried to do some image processing algorithms in Sisal it took about two days to write error free code and another day to write code that outperformed my original C code.
Another is APL. I've not been able to verify this recently, but I once heard that there was an APL interpreter that extended APL with some basic numeric operations (matrix inversion and the like are built in) that would pass off the hairy stuff to optimized routines. Admittedly, APL is an interesting language to learn, but it does provide wonderous array manipulation primatives.
I liked the following statement in the original article :
"spammers and their nemeses agree: the United States needs a federal spam law."
The way things are going (UCITA, DMCA...) I can see it now - it will be called the SPAM act (for Spam Protects American Marketers) and will forbid filters, require users to read all spam and prohibit any complaints in response.
Here's a challenge. Learn Haskell, enough to be minimally productive, at least in three days. (Or for that matter J or APL).
All I can say is "Thats Dr. Faggot to you."
The article is pretty good overall and does say some nice things about Linux. But we should all admit that for most users the Linux GUI interfaces are not the best.
Not that I like the Windows GUI -- I don't. Its not consistent across apps and its almost impossible to customize or extend. The Mac interface is much better for most users - it takes a relatively short time to learn and is very consistent.
I think there are two things Linux really needs for GUI stuff - one is a standard base (and not xt or the athena widgets) of GUI constructors that produce more or less consistent UI's for most apps - this exists within GNOME and within KDE, but use apps from both? Hmmmm.
And I think this GUI stuff needs to come with decent defaults, but with moderate customization for "power users" and powerful ways to override them for the people who push things to the limit.
Personally, I say "Bring Back GWM!" -- just make it easier to customize. (Loved those infinite workspace windows.)
I'm an emacs user (with fallbacks to vi for some quick editing tasks) but have used (at one point or another) pretty much every style of editor available (from teco to ed to notepad to who-knows-what), and I find emacs (xemacs or emacs) the most convenient and powerful. I've written elisp to both extend the editor and solve once-off problems. I use it on unix and in windows and would use it by preference on any platform where I need to edit things extensively. Indeed, I find emacs to be a better editor than many language specific IDE's.
As a free speech advocate in general, I don't believe that kiddie porn, explosives recipies, blasphemy or much of anything else should be censored.
Do I like all these things? No. But I do believe that the proponents of censoring them are both missing the complexity of the problem itself and its implications for the internet as a whole.
After all, if the Catholic church (via the Italian constabulary, or even using Vatican rules (after all the Vatican does claim to be an independent state)) can censor what it wants, anyone who disagrees with Catholic doctrine should be able to censor the Catholic church.
The notion of a contentless internet - sending only informationless messages around (probably all
one bits) is intriguing in its own way.
Its also worth noting that the mi2g people are offering security services, so the interesting ambiguities in their report are clearly a way to attract new business.
Why not be sure that every threat to privacy (be it microsoft or gpl'ed software or whomever) is explained clearly (for the layman)in a press release and faxed out to major news organizations and sympathetic (or possibly sympathetic) governments. If there are more than three or four a week, it would probably be best to group them together and to send them in a single report to avoid verwhelming them.
In particular, it would be good to note whenever it applies how fast the open source community has come up with a response.
Counter FUD with openness, clarity, and publicity - after all microsoft and similar corporations have things like CNN and MSNBC.
Not science fiction, but worthwhile :
joyce - for Ulysses
gaddis - a frolic of his own, jr
becket - waiting for godot
steinbeck - grapes of wrath (and some others)
tennessee williams (assorted)
knuth - assorted
feynman - lectures on physics
pynchon - crying of lot 49, vineland (and for the truly brave) gravity's rainbow
strunk and white - the elements of style