"However there isn't a way to track some problematic pathogens. For many diseases, there is a political aspect that prevents authorities from excercising their ability to contain the germ. HIV is the most obvious example of a virus that is so inherently related to a specific set of behaviors that it ought to be a simple matter of monitoring infected persons and preventing the disease from spreading. Unfortunately, the bearers of the virus claim that their right to these behaviors trumps the public health and safety risk posed by the virus."
"so inherently related to a specific set of behaviors" HIV is not currently restricted to any particular sub-section of sexual behaviour. The comment might, possibly, statistically, nearly, approach partial correctness in parts of the US, but not in the world."
Emphasize "currently".
I think you may be missing the point. Today's situation is in part due to the "different" approach taken with HIV 20+ years ago compared to other sexually transmitted diseases such as gonorrhoea and syphilis.
I didn't know if I was going to buy a Nikon D70 or Canon Rebel. I was looking at the specs and both were pretty good. I guess Nikon made my choice fairly easy.
Are you going to save the images from the Canon in TIFF or JPeg? You do know the Nikon outputs those formats as well? Their NEF format is only for highly specialzed pro applications.
Most geeks don't care about OSS. Most Linux users don't really care, they just want an inexpensive generic Unix box. Don't confuse OSS users with OSS zealots.
I'd wager that most geeks will care more about picture quality than who wrote their software.
Then there is the pesky little detail that Gimp users could simply have the camera save the image in a different format. OSS users do have access to images from their Nikons.
Programming is what the gp was suggesting the holder of an advanced degree should be better at: "If Master's or Doctorate degrees (which typically involve a major project that gives real programming experience) don't qualify you to do more than fix bugs, what does?"
People with phds should be looking for research jobs
Pure research positions are few. More likely they should be interested in teaching at a University as well.
A person's ability to architect depends on the area they studied. If they have a phd in software engineering, they'd likely be good at architecting.
No, not without practical experience.
Also, if they studied algorithms, they could easily out design seasoned programmers.
In theory, yes, in practice, no. You just don't encounter many situations where someone with a BS, years of experience in the domain at hand, and a copy of Knuth volume 3 is insufficient.
Don't get me wrong, I have a Master's in CS. I don't regret getting it. I have friends who earned their Master's as well. We are all great designers and programmers but our work experiences and independent studies had more to do with that than our respective Master's programs. The Master's program made me a far better researcher (and by that I mean digging through academic and professional journals to find someone who has worked on your problem at hand) but the need to spend a day or two in the stacks at a local research library are very rare.
In my experience, both with my undergraduate and graduate classmates, and with those I interviewed for programming positions, there are two types of CS grads. The first is the CS grad who got into the field because they have an inherent interest in programming. The second is the CS grad who got into it because they were told it was a good career path. The latter group is not necessarily bad. A lab partner once surprised me with poo poo'ing the idea of getting a MS CS, he said he would rather get an MBA. My naive reaction was oh god, the dark side. Now he went on to start his own software business, not a dot-bomb - a business that developed and sold an actual product, and he did quite well. He didn't need to be the best coder around, but having a decent technical background was invaluable for his business.
Unfortunately my former lab partner is the exception not the rule. When hiring I look for those with an inherent interest in coding. One metric is to ask what they did outside of class assignments. I don't care how goofy or stupid their homebrew project was, and getting them comfortable enough to tell me about it can be challenging, but the fact that they sat down in front of a computer on their own time and coded something that worked merely to satisy their own curiosity or desire is telling. The CS grad who can only tell me about his/her homework assignments goes to the bottom of the pile.
Another way to get off the bottom of the pile is to do some kind of internship or co-op job.
You must have not been paying attention when he said it's the grad students -- not "22-year-old[s] with a CS degree" that are the ones who are overqualified. If Master's or Doctorate degrees (which typically involve a major project that gives real programming experience) don't qualify you to do more than fix bugs, what does?
As someone with a Master's and someone with friends with Master's from different Universities I can safely say you are wrong. A Master's does not really add much to your qualification outside of the topic you did your research in. As for the project/thesis, it's a lot of work for school but not much compared to a job. Especially since it is generally a solo project. The real value of a job candidate with a Master's is that they have a greater pre-disposition to go research a complicated problem than just start writing code.
Also there are very good reasons to start recent grads doing maintenance. First, they generally have exaggerated opinions of themselves and their code quality is sometimes low ("big" fish in a small pond). Maintenance can help correct that, it can give them a broader perspective, exposure to larger scale projects, introduce them to the local coding and design standards, and possibly most important of all they learn the domain specific knowledge for the job. Once you have worked on a product/project you are better qualified to expand it or work on the next version.
In short, the University does not demonstrate you are qualified to do a job. It demonstrates that you are qualified to learn to do a job, that you are able to complete long and sometimes boring tasks.
I dunno about that, somehow real cruise ships manage to pay all their staff, keep the ship operational, AND make a huge profit while selling off cruises for $500 A WEEK!
You are ignoring the casino. The $500 basically covers the ships expenses. The casino is where the profits come from.
Also, $500 for a week on ship, lets be incredibly generous and cut that in half since the ship will be spartan compared to the pleasure cruise. How much do you think a week in India or wherever will cost? Far less that $250.
"They would never allow that. non-US citizens would take the boats and make a run for the US coast. Not just the low-pay programmers but especially the support crew, the cooks, the maids, the janitors, etc."
LOL what, you don't think real cruise ships use staff from other countries? Are they all jumping ship soon as it's within swimming distance of the US?
The post I responded to suggested that small boats would be available for entertainment purposes. Cruise ship have no such offering.
Cruise ships have security to control access to passenger areas, the deck, debarkation points, etc. Keeping staff from jumping ship is something they have already taken into consideration.
"What makes you think a controversial ship like this would be allowed in? Ships have been turned away. Not only for security and immigration reasons but for simple political reasons."
They don't have to bring the entire ship in, that'd be stupid. I'm sure they'll have a smaller yacht or two tethered for voyages to shore.
Irrelevant. The small boat is just as vulnerable to denial due to security or political reasons.
Re:"Paltry" is probably a poor choice of words
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GCC 4.0.0 Released
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No, no, and no, jackass! Max OS X Tiger was compiled with gcc 4. Hence all Mac users do not depend on gcc 4. That is not 40 million and counting...it is currently zero. Give it a rest!
So all the production Linux server and embedded devices do not count either since they are not currently running gcc 4.0.0 code. Using your logic all that counts are the few hobbyists who have recompiled their boxes.
Re:"Paltry" is probably a poor choice of words
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GCC 4.0.0 Released
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My earlier post said the gp was right about embedded devices but wrong about desktop/servers. No one is arguing embedded devices.
Re:"Paltry" is probably a poor choice of words
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GCC 4.0.0 Released
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Your sample size is insignificant
Re:"Paltry" is probably a poor choice of words
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GCC 4.0.0 Released
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Aside from the fact that you are missing the point that gcc builds Mac OS X so the customers are users, your tangent applies equally well to all those Unix servers. Binaries tend to get built elsewhere and then deployed. The servers generally aren't running gcc either, and if properly secured probably don't even have it installed.
... I assume these extensions you speak of don't involve automatically adding threads to a program...
Actually they do just that. You put a #pragma omp before a for loop to have it implemented using threads. You put another #pragma omp before access to a shared variable to have access serialized. You never code to a specific API. The compiler automatically generates pthread calls, Win32 calls, etc as appropriate. Your code is portable. Lawrence Livermore has some nice examples but the seem to be down right now, www.llnl.gov.
Re:"Paltry" is probably a poor choice of words
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GCC 4.0.0 Released
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· Score: 2, Insightful
You have no concept of numbers. Both Linux and mac are minor on the desktop but close to 50% of the backend of the internet is handled by unix or unix like systems (not including apple). The vast majority of which use gcc or some derivative.
My concept of numbers is probably fine. Try this, desktops dwarf servers and such. So your 50% of a small number is not all that meaningful.;-)
Threading is not as bad as you make it seem. The language extensions are becoming "standardized" via OpenMP, something heavily pushed by both Intel and AMD. Intel and MS compilers already support it. First thing I'm going to go looking for in the gcc 4.0.0 docs is any reference to OpenMP.
Your post is about as weak as the gp, it merely differs in polarity, and deserver negative moderation about the same.
"Paltry" is probably a poor choice of words
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GCC 4.0.0 Released
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There are a hell of a lot more users that depend on GCC then the paltry Apple userbase.
I don't wish to start a flamewar, zealots of both sides please go play elsewhere, but Apple probably has more users than Linux, and every other Unix box combined is probably dwarfed by Linux. If "paltry" applies to Apple then it probably applies to Linux and Unix in general.
Ummmm - where do you think the FAA gets its weather data, anyway?
The bill will not prevent one federal agency from accessing the data of another. It will only prevent the public from having direct access to raw NOAA data.
Don't forget that they can have things that the Navy doesn't have. Things like swimming pools, racquetball courts, bowling alleys, high class restaurants and movie theaters. If they are smart they will have a lecture hall with guest speakers like Donald Knuth (I don't know if he personally would go, but speakers of his class). Not to mention live bands.
Outsourcing is about saving money. The whole idea is probably a non-starter since running and maintaining a ship is expensive, even when at anchor. Now add the luxuries you are talking about and the expense grows even more. They can only do what their billing can afford.
Since they are not moving (at least not far, if they want to be close to LA) they don't have to worry about people swimming/diving in the ocean around the ship.
Untrue, currents could quickly take you away from the ship.
You could take a boat and go fishing, or just fish off the side of the ship. Have to be careful to remain in international waters, but that isn't too hard if you pay attention.
They would never allow that. non-US citizens would take the boats and make a run for the US coast. Not just the low-pay programmers but especially the support crew, the cooks, the maids, the janitors, etc.
If it were me I'd make this into a real cruise ship, and travel a little.
Fuel is a major expense, something that has to be paid from billings.
When an executive wants to meet with his underlings he boards in L.A.
What makes you think a controversial ship like this would be allowed in? Ships have been turned away. Not only for security and immigration reasons but for simple political reasons.
Slashdot Mirror
"However there isn't a way to track some problematic pathogens. For many diseases, there is a political aspect that prevents authorities from excercising their ability to contain the germ. HIV is the most obvious example of a virus that is so inherently related to a specific set of behaviors that it ought to be a simple matter of monitoring infected persons and preventing the disease from spreading. Unfortunately, the bearers of the virus claim that their right to these behaviors trumps the public health and safety risk posed by the virus."
"so inherently related to a specific set of behaviors" HIV is not currently restricted to any particular sub-section of sexual behaviour. The comment might, possibly, statistically, nearly, approach partial correctness in parts of the US, but not in the world."
Emphasize "currently".
I think you may be missing the point. Today's situation is in part due to the "different" approach taken with HIV 20+ years ago compared to other sexually transmitted diseases such as gonorrhoea and syphilis.
Maybe Nikon made their choice because they were being twats
;-)
Are you saying geeks don't like twats?
I didn't know if I was going to buy a Nikon D70 or Canon Rebel. I was looking at the specs and both were pretty good. I guess Nikon made my choice fairly easy.
Are you going to save the images from the Canon in TIFF or JPeg? You do know the Nikon outputs those formats as well? Their NEF format is only for highly specialzed pro applications.
We geeks ...
Most geeks don't care about OSS. Most Linux users don't really care, they just want an inexpensive generic Unix box. Don't confuse OSS users with OSS zealots.
I'd wager that most geeks will care more about picture quality than who wrote their software.
Then there is the pesky little detail that Gimp users could simply have the camera save the image in a different format. OSS users do have access to images from their Nikons.
With an attitude towards the community like yours I won't consider even purchasing a Nikon camera
;-)
As if a typical open source zealot could afford a Nikon anyway.
Why are they doing the proprietary bit in the first place? Wouldn't they want their product to be as widely useable as possible?
Widely used by photographers and graphic artists, but not widely used by Kodak and other competing camera manufacturers.
Project coder != company in most circumstances.
True, but they may only differ by licensing fee, not whether they are eligible for access.
Well I'm developing Cold Fusion* in my spare time, Hire me!
;-)
Well show me your cold fusion reactor control software.
Please stop comparing cs phd's with programmers.
Programming is what the gp was suggesting the holder of an advanced degree should be better at: "If Master's or Doctorate degrees (which typically involve a major project that gives real programming experience) don't qualify you to do more than fix bugs, what does?"
People with phds should be looking for research jobs
Pure research positions are few. More likely they should be interested in teaching at a University as well.
A person's ability to architect depends on the area they studied. If they have a phd in software engineering, they'd likely be good at architecting.
No, not without practical experience.
Also, if they studied algorithms, they could easily out design seasoned programmers.
In theory, yes, in practice, no. You just don't encounter many situations where someone with a BS, years of experience in the domain at hand, and a copy of Knuth volume 3 is insufficient.
Don't get me wrong, I have a Master's in CS. I don't regret getting it. I have friends who earned their Master's as well. We are all great designers and programmers but our work experiences and independent studies had more to do with that than our respective Master's programs. The Master's program made me a far better researcher (and by that I mean digging through academic and professional journals to find someone who has worked on your problem at hand) but the need to spend a day or two in the stacks at a local research library are very rare.
In my experience, both with my undergraduate and graduate classmates, and with those I interviewed for programming positions, there are two types of CS grads. The first is the CS grad who got into the field because they have an inherent interest in programming. The second is the CS grad who got into it because they were told it was a good career path. The latter group is not necessarily bad. A lab partner once surprised me with poo poo'ing the idea of getting a MS CS, he said he would rather get an MBA. My naive reaction was oh god, the dark side. Now he went on to start his own software business, not a dot-bomb - a business that developed and sold an actual product, and he did quite well. He didn't need to be the best coder around, but having a decent technical background was invaluable for his business.
Unfortunately my former lab partner is the exception not the rule. When hiring I look for those with an inherent interest in coding. One metric is to ask what they did outside of class assignments. I don't care how goofy or stupid their homebrew project was, and getting them comfortable enough to tell me about it can be challenging, but the fact that they sat down in front of a computer on their own time and coded something that worked merely to satisy their own curiosity or desire is telling. The CS grad who can only tell me about his/her homework assignments goes to the bottom of the pile.
Another way to get off the bottom of the pile is to do some kind of internship or co-op job.
You must have not been paying attention when he said it's the grad students -- not "22-year-old[s] with a CS degree" that are the ones who are overqualified. If Master's or Doctorate degrees (which typically involve a major project that gives real programming experience) don't qualify you to do more than fix bugs, what does?
As someone with a Master's and someone with friends with Master's from different Universities I can safely say you are wrong. A Master's does not really add much to your qualification outside of the topic you did your research in. As for the project/thesis, it's a lot of work for school but not much compared to a job. Especially since it is generally a solo project. The real value of a job candidate with a Master's is that they have a greater pre-disposition to go research a complicated problem than just start writing code.
Also there are very good reasons to start recent grads doing maintenance. First, they generally have exaggerated opinions of themselves and their code quality is sometimes low ("big" fish in a small pond). Maintenance can help correct that, it can give them a broader perspective, exposure to larger scale projects, introduce them to the local coding and design standards, and possibly most important of all they learn the domain specific knowledge for the job. Once you have worked on a product/project you are better qualified to expand it or work on the next version.
In short, the University does not demonstrate you are qualified to do a job. It demonstrates that you are qualified to learn to do a job, that you are able to complete long and sometimes boring tasks.
Been there, done that, "I swear to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States ..."
I dunno about that, somehow real cruise ships manage to pay all their staff, keep the ship operational, AND make a huge profit while selling off cruises for $500 A WEEK!
You are ignoring the casino. The $500 basically covers the ships expenses. The casino is where the profits come from.
Also, $500 for a week on ship, lets be incredibly generous and cut that in half since the ship will be spartan compared to the pleasure cruise. How much do you think a week in India or wherever will cost? Far less that $250.
"They would never allow that. non-US citizens would take the boats and make a run for the US coast. Not just the low-pay programmers but especially the support crew, the cooks, the maids, the janitors, etc."
LOL what, you don't think real cruise ships use staff from other countries? Are they all jumping ship soon as it's within swimming distance of the US?
The post I responded to suggested that small boats would be available for entertainment purposes. Cruise ship have no such offering.
Cruise ships have security to control access to passenger areas, the deck, debarkation points, etc. Keeping staff from jumping ship is something they have already taken into consideration.
"What makes you think a controversial ship like this would be allowed in? Ships have been turned away. Not only for security and immigration reasons but for simple political reasons."
They don't have to bring the entire ship in, that'd be stupid. I'm sure they'll have a smaller yacht or two tethered for voyages to shore.
Irrelevant. The small boat is just as vulnerable to denial due to security or political reasons.
No, no, and no, jackass! Max OS X Tiger was compiled with gcc 4. Hence all Mac users do not depend on gcc 4. That is not 40 million and counting...it is currently zero. Give it a rest!
So all the production Linux server and embedded devices do not count either since they are not currently running gcc 4.0.0 code. Using your logic all that counts are the few hobbyists who have recompiled their boxes.
My earlier post said the gp was right about embedded devices but wrong about desktop/servers. No one is arguing embedded devices.
Your sample size is insignificant
Aside from the fact that you are missing the point that gcc builds Mac OS X so the customers are users, your tangent applies equally well to all those Unix servers. Binaries tend to get built elsewhere and then deployed. The servers generally aren't running gcc either, and if properly secured probably don't even have it installed.
... I assume these extensions you speak of don't involve automatically adding threads to a program ...
Actually they do just that. You put a #pragma omp before a for loop to have it implemented using threads. You put another #pragma omp before access to a shared variable to have access serialized. You never code to a specific API. The compiler automatically generates pthread calls, Win32 calls, etc as appropriate. Your code is portable. Lawrence Livermore has some nice examples but the seem to be down right now, www.llnl.gov.
You have no concept of numbers. Both Linux and mac are minor on the desktop but close to 50% of the backend of the internet is handled by unix or unix like systems (not including apple). The vast majority of which use gcc or some derivative.
;-)
My concept of numbers is probably fine. Try this, desktops dwarf servers and such. So your 50% of a small number is not all that meaningful.
Threading is not as bad as you make it seem. The language extensions are becoming "standardized" via OpenMP, something heavily pushed by both Intel and AMD. Intel and MS compilers already support it. First thing I'm going to go looking for in the gcc 4.0.0 docs is any reference to OpenMP.
Your post is about as weak as the gp, it merely differs in polarity, and deserver negative moderation about the same.
There are a hell of a lot more users that depend on GCC then the paltry Apple userbase.
I don't wish to start a flamewar, zealots of both sides please go play elsewhere, but Apple probably has more users than Linux, and every other Unix box combined is probably dwarfed by Linux. If "paltry" applies to Apple then it probably applies to Linux and Unix in general.
You are right about embedded devices though.
Ummmm - where do you think the FAA gets its weather data, anyway?
The bill will not prevent one federal agency from accessing the data of another. It will only prevent the public from having direct access to raw NOAA data.
Workaround: Learn to read FAA weather reports. It will be a little difficuly to take away access through that channel.
4) Unauthorized broadcasting
So it will be illegal for them to distribute "pirated" software and mp3s. The coast guard could sail out their to enforce things.
Don't forget that they can have things that the Navy doesn't have. Things like swimming pools, racquetball courts, bowling alleys, high class restaurants and movie theaters. If they are smart they will have a lecture hall with guest speakers like Donald Knuth (I don't know if he personally would go, but speakers of his class). Not to mention live bands.
Outsourcing is about saving money. The whole idea is probably a non-starter since running and maintaining a ship is expensive, even when at anchor. Now add the luxuries you are talking about and the expense grows even more. They can only do what their billing can afford.
Since they are not moving (at least not far, if they want to be close to LA) they don't have to worry about people swimming/diving in the ocean around the ship.
Untrue, currents could quickly take you away from the ship.
You could take a boat and go fishing, or just fish off the side of the ship. Have to be careful to remain in international waters, but that isn't too hard if you pay attention.
They would never allow that. non-US citizens would take the boats and make a run for the US coast. Not just the low-pay programmers but especially the support crew, the cooks, the maids, the janitors, etc.
If it were me I'd make this into a real cruise ship, and travel a little.
Fuel is a major expense, something that has to be paid from billings.
When an executive wants to meet with his underlings he boards in L.A.
What makes you think a controversial ship like this would be allowed in? Ships have been turned away. Not only for security and immigration reasons but for simple political reasons.