"Since when did computers become so infallible such that the customer is always wrong? " Since companies (ALL, including yours and mine) advertise that they have the solutions to people's problems (for less money than you would think!). If the truth about programming bugs and incomplete features, operating system bugs, hardware bugs and network bugs was brought into the full light of day almost no one would buy a product (for the money asked). How many licenses, in the small type, admit that the product is not warranted to be fit for any use? Most. All advertising is a lie and people have been manipulated by that advertising to the point of believing it. (Yes I have examples, as you do, but this post is already too long:) )
No, I wouldn't hire black hats. A person's ethics don't change a whole lot after their childhood and if they think that it is fine to damage and steal stuff as a teenager (no matter what stuff, computer related or not) then they will still think that there is no problem with that as an adult. Why give them an opportunity to do that when they've "had a bad day"?
Since I haven't yet seen my main objection to HR posted, I'll add it in for the archives: What do you do first and most when reading code? Try to figure out what is happening at that point. The first thing you should run into is a variable name that is descriptive and will help this out. After all else fails, when debugging, you would check the type. However, HR is backwards in that the type appears prominently first and slows down the normal understanding of the purpose of the code. Not a big deal, but one more thing to make debugging more difficult.
The path was over mountains, through ravines, around boulders, the path was supplied on a CD a couple of hours before the race and couldn't be programmed in, collision avoidance AI had to be included and it had to be done at 30 mph, a high speed for what was almost off-road driving. This was ( and IS ) HARD!
The article points out how ISPs will ignore their rules when the spammers slip them a little extra cash. And then, at the head of the Slashdot list of comments, the most violently anti-Microsoft site I know has: a Microsoft ad!
Programming was my hobby until it became my profession. Now gardening is my hobby. Digging holes, mixing dirt, matching activities to the season: not at all like programming and therefore a good break from it. If you HAVE to get geeky, though, finding exactly the right soil for each plant is a very difficult problem: pH, organic content, trace minerals, etc. I'm currently working on getting azaleas exactly right in my shady yard. Very enjoyable!
The new Scott Adams Dilbert book ( The Way of the Weasel - and no, I'm not going to look it up on Amazon for you! ) has a small section on six sigma madness, if you need perspective.
I'll second the Nature Conservancy as one I've supported financially for years. The links listed should answer questions about why they are tops. Also, many of the problems are the result of overpopulation. Check out Zero Population Growth ( www.zpg.org ) though they've changed their name to the Population Connection. Finally, support a group for local concerns. They are easier to support with the gift of time, and results are more obvious. In this regard I support the Audubon Naturalist Society, which concerns itself with the middle-Atlantic states in which I live. ( They are a different organization than the Audubon Society ). Any contribution of time or money to any of the organizations is better than none at all.
You're right. I just checked. The URL comes off a printout of their page I got last year. It had good tech details about the nature of the stone. FWIW, I just checked www.moissanite.com and it works, though I haven't checked it in detail to see if they have info beyond the ads. Barry
My wife has chosen Moissanite due to a very bad experience with a local mall-jeweler. The certified diamond she bought was enclosed with a "certificate" that, upon checking with IGI was found to be fraudulent. She got her money back only after some stressful discussions with the store. We then saw an article in the Washington Post discussing a "new diamond simulate" by Charles and Colvard. It has all of the same properties as a diamond but is actually more brilliant. The best news is that it is being sold at a fraction of the cost of a good diamond. Since it looks as good and lasts as long, and you understand the political problems with diamonds, including the artificially elevated prices, then Moissanite is a great alternative. Check out some tech details at www.4facets.com/news2000.htm Barry
You can't think about something unless you have someTHING to think ABOUT. I would think a student would be turned off really soon by philosophy without his being able to DO something. I've really enjoyed programming and now approach the abstract books with interest since I can relate to the problems that they discuss. And I DID learn programming by having an idea of a program, then looking up the code that would allow me to do it, but the two went hand-in-hand. If I could only think of what I wanted my program to do and couldn't ( for a long time ) do anything about it, I would have quit long ago. (I'm a self-taught programmer currently working in industry.)
I was expecting someone to comment on the statement in the story that said that the panels of the roof were constructed so exactly it was done with "zero tolerance". If that passed muster with the writers on the web site and/., what else can't be believed about the story??
Martin Gardner's answer to this was that if they were square they could be turned on edge and fall down the (square) hole. My answer has always been "Because manholes are round."
You say: A really good administrator and network architect can create a secure, robust, and fully functional environment
today, right now, with off the shelf products (OpenBSD to start).
Yes, and a REALLY GOOD programmer won't have buffer overflows or memory leaks, and a REALLY GOOD secretary won't reveal private data by social engineering or click on email attachments, and a REALLY GOOD..., oh, never mind.
Any security policy that depends on the whole human race suddenly getting genetically superior to what it is now is a non-starter.
You say "Claims that it was fundamentally different should be treated as extraordinary, requiring extraordinary evidence." That's quite an extraordinary, all inclusive claim! Do you have any extraordinary evidence for that statement that extraordinary evidence is required? This debating point is discussed by Alvaro Caso on p. 37 of the Jan/Feb 2002 Skeptical Inquirer.
Getting back to the science, why do you believe that the long light path would change the nature of the light? ( Ignoring Doppler shifts, reddening by scattering, etc. )
Barry
I know that this is/. where everybody is desperate for Windows to fail, but my home W98 only crashes once every few months when someone on the internet tries to force thru something my Netscape 3.0 doesn't know how to handle. W2K at work, where I program C++ and occasionally screw up a pointer and get a memory leak, only crashes about once a year. The irritating part to me is that posters take seriously the myth that Windows always crashes and fill up many non-humor discussions with such talk. ( And, no, I'm not happy about the security problems, but that is a different topic than the mythical frequent crashes. )
I have to work every day BUT Christmas and New Years during Dec - May. Next holiday: Memorial Day at the end of May. On the flip side, the job is very enjoyable ( programming C++ ) in an unusually good environment ( private office with a door that closes, almost no meetings ). So, even tho I have to work Christmas eve and New Years eve, it's fine!
Slashdot Mirror
"Since when did computers become so infallible such that the customer is always wrong? " :) )
Since companies (ALL, including yours and mine) advertise that they have the solutions to people's problems (for less money than you would think!). If the truth about programming bugs and incomplete features, operating system bugs, hardware bugs and network bugs was brought into the full light of day almost no one would buy a product (for the money asked). How many licenses, in the small type, admit that the product is not warranted to be fit for any use? Most. All advertising is a lie and people have been manipulated by that advertising to the point of believing it. (Yes I have examples, as you do, but this post is already too long
No, I wouldn't hire black hats. A person's ethics don't change a whole lot after their childhood and if they think that it is fine to damage and steal stuff as a teenager (no matter what stuff, computer related or not) then they will still think that there is no problem with that as an adult. Why give them an opportunity to do that when they've "had a bad day"?
"Is it just me or does everything kill lab rats?"
Do you mean: Is it just YOU that kills lab rats? No , some others have killed lab rats, too.
Since I haven't yet seen my main objection to HR posted, I'll add it in for the archives: What do you do first and most when reading code? Try to figure out what is happening at that point. The first thing you should run into is a variable name that is descriptive and will help this out. After all else fails, when debugging, you would check the type. However, HR is backwards in that the type appears prominently first and slows down the normal understanding of the purpose of the code. Not a big deal, but one more thing to make debugging more difficult.
The path was over mountains, through ravines, around boulders, the path was supplied on a CD a couple of hours before the race and couldn't be programmed in, collision avoidance AI had to be included and it had to be done at 30 mph, a high speed for what was almost off-road driving. This was ( and IS ) HARD!
I don't think that Norm would object if I corrected his current address to:
413 Poinsettia Ave., San Mateo, CA 94403-2803
The article points out how ISPs will ignore their rules when the spammers slip them a little extra cash. And then, at the head of the Slashdot list of comments, the most violently anti-Microsoft site I know has: a Microsoft ad!
Programming was my hobby until it became my profession. Now gardening is my hobby. Digging holes, mixing dirt, matching activities to the season: not at all like programming and therefore a good break from it. If you HAVE to get geeky, though, finding exactly the right soil for each plant is a very difficult problem: pH, organic content, trace minerals, etc. I'm currently working on getting azaleas exactly right in my shady yard. Very enjoyable!
The new Scott Adams Dilbert book ( The Way of the Weasel - and no, I'm not going to look it up on Amazon for you! ) has a small section on six sigma madness, if you need perspective.
I'll second the Nature Conservancy as one I've supported financially for years. The links listed should answer questions about why they are tops. Also, many of the problems are the result of overpopulation. Check out Zero Population Growth ( www.zpg.org ) though they've changed their name to the Population Connection. Finally, support a group for local concerns. They are easier to support with the gift of time, and results are more obvious. In this regard I support the Audubon Naturalist Society, which concerns itself with the middle-Atlantic states in which I live. ( They are a different organization than the Audubon Society ). Any contribution of time or money to any of the organizations is better than none at all.
You're right. I just checked. The URL comes off a printout of their page I got last year. It had good tech details about the nature of the stone. FWIW, I just checked www.moissanite.com and it works, though I haven't checked it in detail to see if they have info beyond the ads.
Barry
My wife has chosen Moissanite due to a very bad experience with a local mall-jeweler. The certified diamond she bought was enclosed with a "certificate" that, upon checking with IGI was found to be fraudulent. She got her money back only after some stressful discussions with the store. We then saw an article in the Washington Post discussing a "new diamond simulate" by Charles and Colvard. It has all of the same properties as a diamond but is actually more brilliant. The best news is that it is being sold at a fraction of the cost of a good diamond. Since it looks as good and lasts as long, and you understand the political problems with diamonds, including the artificially elevated prices, then Moissanite is a great alternative. Check out some tech details at www.4facets.com/news2000.htm
Barry
It's an object if it has been instantiated and takes up RAM! But I've never seen an object fly, so, no, I've never seen a UFO!
You can't think about something unless you have someTHING to think ABOUT. I would think a student would be turned off really soon by philosophy without his being able to DO something. I've really enjoyed programming and now approach the abstract books with interest since I can relate to the problems that they discuss. And I DID learn programming by having an idea of a program, then looking up the code that would allow me to do it, but the two went hand-in-hand. If I could only think of what I wanted my program to do and couldn't ( for a long time ) do anything about it, I would have quit long ago. (I'm a self-taught programmer currently working in industry.)
I was expecting someone to comment on the statement in the story that said that the panels of the roof were constructed so exactly it was done with "zero tolerance". If that passed muster with the writers on the web site and /., what else can't be believed about the story??
Martin Gardner's answer to this was that if they were square they could be turned on edge and fall down the (square) hole.
My answer has always been "Because manholes are round."
Now, how was that calculated? Benoit Mandelbrot would sniff LOUDLY about the length of a coastline!
You say: A really good administrator and network architect can create a secure, robust, and fully functional environment
today, right now, with off the shelf products (OpenBSD to start).
Yes, and a REALLY GOOD programmer won't have buffer overflows or memory leaks, and a REALLY GOOD secretary won't reveal private data by social engineering or click on email attachments, and a REALLY GOOD..., oh, never mind.
Any security policy that depends on the whole human race suddenly getting genetically superior to what it is now is a non-starter.
You say "Claims that it was fundamentally different should be treated as extraordinary, requiring extraordinary evidence." That's quite an extraordinary, all inclusive claim! Do you have any extraordinary evidence for that statement that extraordinary evidence is required? This debating point is discussed by Alvaro Caso on p. 37 of the Jan/Feb 2002 Skeptical Inquirer.
Getting back to the science, why do you believe that the long light path would change the nature of the light? ( Ignoring Doppler shifts, reddening by scattering, etc. )
Barry
I know that this is /. where everybody is desperate for Windows to fail, but my home W98 only crashes once every few months when someone on the internet tries to force thru something my Netscape 3.0 doesn't know how to handle. W2K at work, where I program C++ and occasionally screw up a pointer and get a memory leak, only crashes about once a year. The irritating part to me is that posters take seriously the myth that Windows always crashes and fill up many non-humor discussions with such talk. ( And, no, I'm not happy about the security problems, but that is a different topic than the mythical frequent crashes. )
I have to work every day BUT Christmas and New Years during Dec - May. Next holiday: Memorial Day at the end of May. On the flip side, the job is very enjoyable ( programming C++ ) in an unusually good environment ( private office with a door that closes, almost no meetings ). So, even tho I have to work Christmas eve and New Years eve, it's fine!