Yeah, just what the 3rd world needs - computers. Not non-corrupt governments and basic infrastructure... yeah, computers, that's the ticket!
Repeat after me.. "The third world is not a single place that has all the same problems". I'm tired of this idea that all third world countries everyone is starving, the government is corrupt, etc. That's certainly true in many very poor countries, but the "third world" is a hugely diverse place that has different problems depending on which country you're talking about.
(512MB is insufficient, even for this computers purposes)
Why? I think you can very easily fit enough into 512MB of flash ram to have a web-browser, word processor, chat, e-book reader, and several e-books. What's the purpose you envision where 512MB of storage isn't enough? Why not put on a cheap screen and add a reasonable amount of storage, and probably still end up lower priced?
Because it's supposed to be mostly for reading text, and it's also supposed to be cheap. The high resolution is only in monochrome mode. I'd expect the color resolution to be a lot lower.
He was asking permission long before there were "gangsta rappers"; Prince has always refused to grant permission, so he paradied his videos, because video images have much weaker protections. Parady is not a magic wand that protects everything you do in its name..
No it's not, but it's also very clear that what Weird Al does IS protected by fair use. It's probbably not a lot of fun being sued all the time, even though you know you'll win the suit.
And finally, as for your last paragraph, "Even those are set by government standards bodies," well, the IAU _IS_ a standards body, and it is in fact THE standards body for astronomy that determines official names of celestial objects and such.:)
Well, I think naming celestial bodies is something that should be voted on, since it's basically a popularity contest and also it's something people need to agree on. Having 15 different names for Mars doesn't work very well because you need to refer to the damn thing. That's fine and fits well with other things that are voted on. But voting on a definition of an unscientific word? That's a bit odd. I don't think the definition of a planet is really a standard at all, as standards have value in themselves. Everyone has to agree on the definition of a gram otherwise there's chaos. There's about as much reason for everyone to agree on the definition of a planet as there is for everyone to agree on the definition of a chair.
The only defining characteristics about Pluto are its mass, orbit, composition, etc. Those are real properties of it, not subjective definitions.
Classifications should and are decided by majority. By standaadizing what is a planet and what is a dwarf planet, scientists can now speak the same language and communicate more effectively
Well, classifications should also be decided by evidence and inquiry. No one votes on the definition of an electron. Do taxonomists vote on moving a species from one genus to another genus? Classifications should also have scientific value. What's the scientific value of classifying something as a dwarf planet vs classifying it as a planet?
Standards should be set for things like units of measurement like grams, newtons, and meters. Even those are set by government standards bodies and not just voted on by thousands of people like this was an election.
I fail to see how Pluto's planetary status benefits any special intrest groups or political parties.
I don't think that's what the GP post is arguing. The point is that once scientists step into the realm of "voting for a definition", they've stepped outside the realm of science. For the GP poster that sullys scientists reputation as trying to find truth, and in a way it sullies the publics view of science in general.
It's an interesting argument. I'm not really sure what the IAU really does, so I'm unsure of whether to completely agree with the GP. But I will say that voting on something in science is a clear admission that this isn't a scientific question. A scientific question is answered by inquiry and evidence, not voting.
Part of science is accurate classification. We can't label something just because we want to.
Very true. Unfortunately there's no clear scientific definition of what a planet is. As far as I've heard there's really little need for a scientific definition of a planet, other than to answer the question "how many planets orbit our sun?". If there were a clear definition then no one would be arguing about it for this long and not come to some consensus.
A planet isn't like an electron. An electron is an elementary particle and has well defined properties like charge, mass, spin, etc that define it. Defining what a planet is is more like trying to officially define what a chair is. There's large agreement on the obvious ones, but more disagreement when you start leaving the bounds of the more common chair designs.
Here's a copy of a letter I sent off to myword@foxnews.com. I wonder if anyone there will get it:
That article about Pluto not being a planet has to be one of the funniest things I've seen you produce yet. I couldn't stop laughing! The notion of having to "unlearn" something just kills me. What a perfect example of Truthiness, and how appropriate that it appears on your print version of "The Word".
I also have a question for you. How long have you been writing under the pen name "John Gibson"? Or is John Gibson your real name, and Stephen Colbert is your stage name? Just curious.
Keep up the good work, and I'll be sure to catch you on The Report.
Geez, look at the internals of almost any consumer device, or look at a house under construction, or... etc. It's true of almost anything where the manufacturer/builder can wrap a pretty skin around it that will hold up for a minimal amount of time. That's why there are things like electrical codes and building codes and inspectors. Software isn't quite there yet, except in certain critical fields like avionics. If commercial software had to have something equivalent to a UL certification, the whole field would collapse overnight.
The difference in those fields is that the flaws will eventually come out. Buildings will fall down, fires will start from bad electrical, etc. With software it may take an expert to look into the code to find that it's totally un-maintainable. It's also widely agreed on what makes shoddy work. That's not necessarily the case with software. What's shoddy work to one person may be golden brilliant code to another.
You mean people should call and ask permission like Weird Al does?
Weird Al asks permission because he doesn't want to make any enemies, especially among the gangsta rappers. I don't know much about the music industry, but I'm guessing it's relatively small. If you start pissing off powerful people in it, you might not have a career for very long.
Funny, when Barney first came out I remember a lot of people making fun of him. I've only seen clips of him, but he's pretty annoying to anyone over the age of 8 or 9. Why do you think there's so many parody sights?
My impression is that there's multiple registrars that can sell all domains, and you can freely transfer ownership between them. So say you owned pussy.org with Network Solutions and they suddenly got bought out by Jerry Fallwell and he decides to charge 1 billion dollars/year for pussy.org because he hates uhh... cats. What's to prevent you from transfering the domain over the goDaddy before the domain expires? They then charge you the same $12 a year (or whatever they normally charge)? Unless all the registrars collude on certain domains, I don't see how it's possible for a single registrar to hold people hostage.
Ahh.. more voodoo interview techniques. They all amount to "If you can't do thing-X I think is super-important, you suck!". Strangely thing-X is different for each interviewer, but yet they act like it's a Universal.
It probbably shouldn't bother me that people like you have these weird tests that you think can peer into the heart of any programmer, but it does. Programming is kind of weird in that something can outwardly function, but yet be terribly coded. I don't know of many other fields where this is true. I guess that's why people are always looking for these voodoo indicators of whether someone is a good programmer or not.
And come to think of it, since Java doesn't have pointers, it would stand to reason it can't have linked lists either.
Actually Java has linked lists implemented as part of the standard library. It's a pretty dumb question in Java since all you'd do is call Collections.reverse(yourLinkedList) to reverse the LinkedList.
It'e interesting, but all your questions assume a certain mentality that's probbably similar to you're own mentality. Are you sure you're selecting for quality programmers, and not just people that think like yourself?
That can be a good thing, and a bad thing. If everyone thinks you like you, you'll probbably all get along quite well and be able to communicate easily. But you're also likely to all make the same mistakes over and over.
The most interesting part of the responses in this article are all the varied little voodoo that people use to separate the "good" developers from the "bad" developers. Some people seem to focus on the technical questions, i.e. if you can't write an algorithm that reverses a linked-list in 10 minutes, you stink. Ignoring the fact that not all languages even have linked list data structures in them. Also ignoring the fact that a lot of programming values higher level architecture and maintainability over what often amounts to minor details like re-inventing the linked list. Lots of people modded this highly though, so it's a continuing belief.
Others seem to focus in on the "n years experience doesn't matter one bit!!!" Well, yes and no. Obviously there's people that've been around 20 years and learned nothing. But everything else being equal the person with 20 years experience is probbably going to better than the kid straight out of college.
Then there's the "I can smell how good/bad you are from your attitude!" camp. Even in an interview where you're standing right in front of someone this isn't exactly easy. If you think you can do this from a short "Ask Slashdot" post, you've got some real learning to do. I suggest you read up on taking things out of context, writing for an audience, and limiting article length.
In general there's a lot of judgemental replies to this article. Personally I see this as reflecting a lot of insecurity. So many people jump all over the place to try to find the lower quality programmers, as if that makes you a better programmer. There's a lot of good replies offering real advice too, but I find the variety of "interview voodoo" techniques a lot more interesting. Essentially there seems to be no agreement at all on how to seperate the wheat from the chaff.
Frankly I don't know what the magic bullet is to seperate the good from the bad. I guess I'd want to look at stuff the developer has actually done. Often that's impossible since most code is closed-source, and not available to future employers.
If I take your comments out of context I'd probbably weed you out in an interview as well. You assume a lot from what amounts to candid responses usually reserved to your friends over a beer. It's really not that uncommon to come out of an interview and think "What the hell was all that about?", and then want to ask others if they've had similar experiences and what they did/would do.
It sounds like you're filling in all the gaps of who the poster is with your own personal biases. That's usually not a good idea, especially when you've never even met the person and are relying on a one paragraph writeup of an experience.
In the end they didn't hire me, I laughed when the recruiter told me they thought I couldn't solve their problems. Two years later the project they were going to hire me for was canceled as a failure, a project I could have helped them wrap up in less than a year (faster if I could have taught someone else to help me).
From what it sounds like you're VERY lucky you weren't hired by SBC. From everything I hear the big telecomms are like working for hulking dinosaurs. Everything you've said seems to confirm this. If they would have hired you my guess is you'd just become frustrated at them refusing to accept a different way of doing things. Companies like these aren't used to listening to one guy who has a different approach (that very well may save the project).
Given that most liberals espouse a nuanced, shades-of-gray worldview, that seems especially monochrome.
Voting is inherently binary, especially in this country. If you vote for a candidate, then you support them. There's no "I voted 49% Bush, 30% Kerry, 10% Nader, 9% nutjob, and 1% Mickey Mouse, so MOST of my support is for not-Bush". You don't get to complain 2 years that you don't support the guy you voted for, especially when he hasn't changed his tune from the previous 4 years. Maybe you don't like Bush very much, but you still voted the guy into office. Excuse me if I hold the conservatives responsible for him being in office right now, but it's just simple mathematics.
One of my main reasons was that my wife is a doctor and there was no way I was going to vote for a malpractice lawyer. Beyond that, flawed as Bush is, he was closer to what I wanted than Kerry. Maybe not a lot, but a little. It doesn't mean I support him, though.
Umm.. what? You could have voted for Mickey Mouse, nobody, or some nutjob third party candidate. But, you decided to vote for G-dub. At least have the courage to stand by your choices and not try to weasel out of them by trying to have it both ways. You can't vote for someone who's supported policies which you dislike for 4 years, then claim you don't support them. Obviously you do support G-dub, even though you were only voting for your more preferred candidate. In the rest of the world we call that "supporting the current administration".
So you trust anonymous ISP employees and unknown website owners, but you don't trust your neighbors?
Basically, yes. ISPs have policies against looking at peoples internet traffic without reason, and have penalties like getting fired for sniffing internet traffic. My neighbors have no policies, no penalties, and no monitoring of what they're sniffing. I don't particularly want them reading all my email. There's nothing all that particularly interesting to see, but I value my privacy.
I mean, call me old-fashioned, but we are people exactly because we have the full spectrum of emotions, all of which have influenced our society and creativity.
What if there were people that already had this genetic difference naturally. Are they somehow less than human?
The problem as I see it is that unhappiness is often what fuels innovation. If everyone is sitting around completely content with their lives all the time, who's going to come up with anything new?
That's not bad, but it's a one way authentication only. The bank knows that you're who you say you are, but you can't be sure the website you've connected to is actually the bank. A clever attacker could intercept your transactions and redirect you to a website with a similar name. The attacker could even get a valid signed certificate by a recognized certificate authority. Make the website look identical to the real website, gather the login information from the unsuspecting user, and then act like the site it broken.
This is why we need two way authentication. Signed certificates just aren't enough to protect against fraud.
This is why you read my actual question. Does this solution meet both my conditions? i.e. do I get a static IP address (not one behind a NAT), and can I get my WRT54G to work with it?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, just what the 3rd world needs - computers. Not non-corrupt governments and basic infrastructure... yeah, computers, that's the ticket!
Repeat after me.. "The third world is not a single place that has all the same problems". I'm tired of this idea that all third world countries everyone is starving, the government is corrupt, etc. That's certainly true in many very poor countries, but the "third world" is a hugely diverse place that has different problems depending on which country you're talking about.
(512MB is insufficient, even for this computers purposes)
Why? I think you can very easily fit enough into 512MB of flash ram to have a web-browser, word processor, chat, e-book reader, and several e-books. What's the purpose you envision where 512MB of storage isn't enough?
Why not put on a cheap screen and add a reasonable amount of storage, and probably still end up lower priced?
Because it's supposed to be mostly for reading text, and it's also supposed to be cheap. The high resolution is only in monochrome mode. I'd expect the color resolution to be a lot lower.
He was asking permission long before there were "gangsta rappers"; Prince has always refused to grant permission, so he paradied his videos, because video images have much weaker protections. Parady is not a magic wand that protects everything you do in its name..
No it's not, but it's also very clear that what Weird Al does IS protected by fair use. It's probbably not a lot of fun being sued all the time, even though you know you'll win the suit.
And finally, as for your last paragraph, "Even those are set by government standards bodies," well, the IAU _IS_ a standards body, and it is in fact THE standards body for astronomy that determines official names of celestial objects and such.
Well, I think naming celestial bodies is something that should be voted on, since it's basically a popularity contest and also it's something people need to agree on. Having 15 different names for Mars doesn't work very well because you need to refer to the damn thing. That's fine and fits well with other things that are voted on. But voting on a definition of an unscientific word? That's a bit odd. I don't think the definition of a planet is really a standard at all, as standards have value in themselves. Everyone has to agree on the definition of a gram otherwise there's chaos. There's about as much reason for everyone to agree on the definition of a planet as there is for everyone to agree on the definition of a chair.
The only defining characteristics about Pluto are its mass, orbit, composition, etc. Those are real properties of it, not subjective definitions.
Classifications should and are decided by majority. By standaadizing what is a planet and what is a dwarf planet, scientists can now speak the same language and communicate more effectively
Well, classifications should also be decided by evidence and inquiry. No one votes on the definition of an electron. Do taxonomists vote on moving a species from one genus to another genus? Classifications should also have scientific value. What's the scientific value of classifying something as a dwarf planet vs classifying it as a planet?
Standards should be set for things like units of measurement like grams, newtons, and meters. Even those are set by government standards bodies and not just voted on by thousands of people like this was an election.
Thanks. You've provided the context to actually understand the article (something Slashdot articles are missing all too often).
I fail to see how Pluto's planetary status benefits any special intrest groups or political parties.
I don't think that's what the GP post is arguing. The point is that once scientists step into the realm of "voting for a definition", they've stepped outside the realm of science. For the GP poster that sullys scientists reputation as trying to find truth, and in a way it sullies the publics view of science in general.
It's an interesting argument. I'm not really sure what the IAU really does, so I'm unsure of whether to completely agree with the GP. But I will say that voting on something in science is a clear admission that this isn't a scientific question. A scientific question is answered by inquiry and evidence, not voting.
Part of science is accurate classification. We can't label something just because we want to.
Very true. Unfortunately there's no clear scientific definition of what a planet is. As far as I've heard there's really little need for a scientific definition of a planet, other than to answer the question "how many planets orbit our sun?". If there were a clear definition then no one would be arguing about it for this long and not come to some consensus.
A planet isn't like an electron. An electron is an elementary particle and has well defined properties like charge, mass, spin, etc that define it. Defining what a planet is is more like trying to officially define what a chair is. There's large agreement on the obvious ones, but more disagreement when you start leaving the bounds of the more common chair designs.
Geez, look at the internals of almost any consumer device, or look at a house under construction, or... etc. It's true of almost anything where the manufacturer/builder can wrap a pretty skin around it that will hold up for a minimal amount of time. That's why there are things like electrical codes and building codes and inspectors. Software isn't quite there yet, except in certain critical fields like avionics. If commercial software had to have something equivalent to a UL certification, the whole field would collapse overnight.
The difference in those fields is that the flaws will eventually come out. Buildings will fall down, fires will start from bad electrical, etc. With software it may take an expert to look into the code to find that it's totally un-maintainable. It's also widely agreed on what makes shoddy work. That's not necessarily the case with software. What's shoddy work to one person may be golden brilliant code to another.
You mean people should call and ask permission like Weird Al does?
Weird Al asks permission because he doesn't want to make any enemies, especially among the gangsta rappers. I don't know much about the music industry, but I'm guessing it's relatively small. If you start pissing off powerful people in it, you might not have a career for very long.
So...they...choose...to...sue...to...uphold...som
Funny, when Barney first came out I remember a lot of people making fun of him. I've only seen clips of him, but he's pretty annoying to anyone over the age of 8 or 9. Why do you think there's so many parody sights?
My impression is that there's multiple registrars that can sell all domains, and you can freely transfer ownership between them. So say you owned pussy.org with Network Solutions and they suddenly got bought out by Jerry Fallwell and he decides to charge 1 billion dollars/year for pussy.org because he hates uhh... cats. What's to prevent you from transfering the domain over the goDaddy before the domain expires? They then charge you the same $12 a year (or whatever they normally charge)? Unless all the registrars collude on certain domains, I don't see how it's possible for a single registrar to hold people hostage.
Ahh.. more voodoo interview techniques. They all amount to "If you can't do thing-X I think is super-important, you suck!". Strangely thing-X is different for each interviewer, but yet they act like it's a Universal.
It probbably shouldn't bother me that people like you have these weird tests that you think can peer into the heart of any programmer, but it does. Programming is kind of weird in that something can outwardly function, but yet be terribly coded. I don't know of many other fields where this is true. I guess that's why people are always looking for these voodoo indicators of whether someone is a good programmer or not.
And come to think of it, since Java doesn't have pointers, it would stand to reason it can't have linked lists either.
Actually Java has linked lists implemented as part of the standard library. It's a pretty dumb question in Java since all you'd do is call Collections.reverse(yourLinkedList) to reverse the LinkedList.
It'e interesting, but all your questions assume a certain mentality that's probbably similar to you're own mentality. Are you sure you're selecting for quality programmers, and not just people that think like yourself?
That can be a good thing, and a bad thing. If everyone thinks you like you, you'll probbably all get along quite well and be able to communicate easily. But you're also likely to all make the same mistakes over and over.
The most interesting part of the responses in this article are all the varied little voodoo that people use to separate the "good" developers from the "bad" developers. Some people seem to focus on the technical questions, i.e. if you can't write an algorithm that reverses a linked-list in 10 minutes, you stink. Ignoring the fact that not all languages even have linked list data structures in them. Also ignoring the fact that a lot of programming values higher level architecture and maintainability over what often amounts to minor details like re-inventing the linked list. Lots of people modded this highly though, so it's a continuing belief.
Others seem to focus in on the "n years experience doesn't matter one bit!!!" Well, yes and no. Obviously there's people that've been around 20 years and learned nothing. But everything else being equal the person with 20 years experience is probbably going to better than the kid straight out of college.
Then there's the "I can smell how good/bad you are from your attitude!" camp. Even in an interview where you're standing right in front of someone this isn't exactly easy. If you think you can do this from a short "Ask Slashdot" post, you've got some real learning to do. I suggest you read up on taking things out of context, writing for an audience, and limiting article length.
In general there's a lot of judgemental replies to this article. Personally I see this as reflecting a lot of insecurity. So many people jump all over the place to try to find the lower quality programmers, as if that makes you a better programmer. There's a lot of good replies offering real advice too, but I find the variety of "interview voodoo" techniques a lot more interesting. Essentially there seems to be no agreement at all on how to seperate the wheat from the chaff.
Frankly I don't know what the magic bullet is to seperate the good from the bad. I guess I'd want to look at stuff the developer has actually done. Often that's impossible since most code is closed-source, and not available to future employers.
If I take your comments out of context I'd probbably weed you out in an interview as well. You assume a lot from what amounts to candid responses usually reserved to your friends over a beer. It's really not that uncommon to come out of an interview and think "What the hell was all that about?", and then want to ask others if they've had similar experiences and what they did/would do.
It sounds like you're filling in all the gaps of who the poster is with your own personal biases. That's usually not a good idea, especially when you've never even met the person and are relying on a one paragraph writeup of an experience.
In the end they didn't hire me, I laughed when the recruiter told me they thought I couldn't solve their problems. Two years later the project they were going to hire me for was canceled as a failure, a project I could have helped them wrap up in less than a year (faster if I could have taught someone else to help me).
From what it sounds like you're VERY lucky you weren't hired by SBC. From everything I hear the big telecomms are like working for hulking dinosaurs. Everything you've said seems to confirm this. If they would have hired you my guess is you'd just become frustrated at them refusing to accept a different way of doing things. Companies like these aren't used to listening to one guy who has a different approach (that very well may save the project).
Given that most liberals espouse a nuanced, shades-of-gray worldview, that seems especially monochrome.
Voting is inherently binary, especially in this country. If you vote for a candidate, then you support them. There's no "I voted 49% Bush, 30% Kerry, 10% Nader, 9% nutjob, and 1% Mickey Mouse, so MOST of my support is for not-Bush". You don't get to complain 2 years that you don't support the guy you voted for, especially when he hasn't changed his tune from the previous 4 years. Maybe you don't like Bush very much, but you still voted the guy into office. Excuse me if I hold the conservatives responsible for him being in office right now, but it's just simple mathematics.
One of my main reasons was that my wife is a doctor and there was no way I was going to vote for a malpractice lawyer. Beyond that, flawed as Bush is, he was closer to what I wanted than Kerry. Maybe not a lot, but a little. It doesn't mean I support him, though.
Umm.. what? You could have voted for Mickey Mouse, nobody, or some nutjob third party candidate. But, you decided to vote for G-dub. At least have the courage to stand by your choices and not try to weasel out of them by trying to have it both ways. You can't vote for someone who's supported policies which you dislike for 4 years, then claim you don't support them. Obviously you do support G-dub, even though you were only voting for your more preferred candidate. In the rest of the world we call that "supporting the current administration".
So you trust anonymous ISP employees and unknown website owners, but you don't trust your neighbors?
Basically, yes. ISPs have policies against looking at peoples internet traffic without reason, and have penalties like getting fired for sniffing internet traffic. My neighbors have no policies, no penalties, and no monitoring of what they're sniffing. I don't particularly want them reading all my email. There's nothing all that particularly interesting to see, but I value my privacy.
I mean, call me old-fashioned, but we are people exactly because we have the full spectrum of emotions, all of which have influenced our society and creativity.
What if there were people that already had this genetic difference naturally. Are they somehow less than human?
The problem as I see it is that unhappiness is often what fuels innovation. If everyone is sitting around completely content with their lives all the time, who's going to come up with anything new?
That's not bad, but it's a one way authentication only. The bank knows that you're who you say you are, but you can't be sure the website you've connected to is actually the bank. A clever attacker could intercept your transactions and redirect you to a website with a similar name. The attacker could even get a valid signed certificate by a recognized certificate authority. Make the website look identical to the real website, gather the login information from the unsuspecting user, and then act like the site it broken.
This is why we need two way authentication. Signed certificates just aren't enough to protect against fraud.
This is why you read my actual question. Does this solution meet both my conditions? i.e. do I get a static IP address (not one behind a NAT), and can I get my WRT54G to work with it?