You know, when I looked at this list, I found myself disappointed. Sure, there are some big important guys, but software is more than about applications and the big picture. It's also about the technology, and creating new abstractions. And in a lot of ways, the guy who first invented debugging is a lot more important to the success of computer science than anybody listed there.
It may be because I'm an old fart, but I remember the excitement of learning each new abstraction, either as I discovered it, or as it was invented. And it seemed to me that the creation of those abstractions are the really great deeds of computer science. Maybe nobody knows who had those break-through moments first, but I'm sure that they occured, and they seem to be to the the Great Moments in computer science.
1) The first guy to think "I shouldn't have to rewire, I should be able to write instructions that rewire it for me" - i.e., the assembler moment
2) The first guy to realize "I'm not just re-wiring this, I'm describing an procedure for it to use" - the FORTRAN moment
3) The first guy to ask "Why can't I used the same procedure from different places in my code" - the subroutine moment
4) The first guy to say "I should be able to use the subroutine in the program it already knows" - the library moment
5) The first guy to ask "Why do I have to be the one writing down the results?" - the printer moment
6) The first guy to realize "This isn't just a calculator, it's also a controller!" - the embedded moment
7) The first guy to realize "This isn't just a calculator, it's also a storage system!" - the database moment
8) The first guy to realize "This isn't just a calculator, it's also a communication system!" - the network moment
9) The first guy to realize "I'm not just submitting instructions for it to process - it's submiting instructions back for me to process!" - the interactive moment
10) The first guy to think "Why can't it do something else while its waiting?" - the multitasking moment
11) The first guy to think "Why can't it show me more context while I work?" - the full-screen moment
And finally...
12) The first guy to think "Man, why can't this thing show me some chicks?" - the porn moment
The NYTimes (and its ilk) are a horde of lying liars who'll print (or broadcast) anything to win, baby. Here's what today's column by John Leo has to say about the "paper of record", among others:
In July, a Senate intelligence committee and an official British investigation both concluded that President Bush had been on firm ground when he spoke the famous 16 words in his 2003 State of the Union message (that the British had learned Saddam Hussein had sought to acquire uranium in Africa). When the 16 words appeared to be untrue, the press endlessly trumpeted them, often on the front page, but when Bush drew heavy support from the two investigations, you could hardly find the news with a magnifying glass. In the New York Times, the British report was carried way inside the paper and read like a muddled translation from classical Urdu. This seems to happen a lot when the Times is forced to report news it doesn't like. On July 25, the Washington Post press critic, Howard Kurtz, reported that his newspaper had carried 96 references to the issue when Bush appeared to be wrong and only two after the revelation that he looked to be right. The totals for the three major networks and three elite newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, were 302 before and nine after. According to Kurtz, CBS never did get around to mentioning that the investigations had supported the president.
This will turn out the same way. Over and over charges like this get flung at Bush, and each and every time he comes up smelling like a rose. When you people understand - he's not a scoundrel like Clinton, he's honestly doing the right things for the right reasons!
This film is a must-see for Kurt Vonnegut fans. Vonnegut references are abound, including allusions to "Slaughterhouse Five" and "Breakfast of Champions" as well as a plot point concept (Ice-9) borrowed from "Cat's Cradle." In "The Recruit," Ice-9 isn't a crystal of ice that will freeze the world overnight. Instead, Ice-9 is a virus that will infect and disable any electrical equipment that is interconnected - which is everything.
Google is my friend - wouldn't you like google to be your friend too?
This sounds more like a fishing thing than a ball game to me. So what do fishermen say when they catch something - "Hey, pass me another beer"? Or maybe the other guy should critize: "Pretty small - throw that one back!"
That's true, I haven't been. I've heard conflicting things, but I think I'll have to visit and judge for myself. ps: don't hold it against me, but if I'm in the neighborhood anyway, I'll probably visit NZ too..
It's good to have fun, but it's better to make sense. For example, why bring up your nationality, or the example of some other Brazilian? The post I reply to talked about "american lives", "the American Way of Life", and
"american citizens", so that's what I addressed.
As for your story about a Brazilian being detained for three days incommunicato - well, he should be glad he wasn't flying to France, where a guy was
stuck in the terminal for 16 years. The fact is, every nation has border controls, and if someone suspicious is trying to get in, I want them to stop them. Either way, his story has nothing to do with the topic being discussed, which is stopping people at the ticket counter.
Really, this is all too tiresome to go thru in detail. Me, terrorized? You don't know me very well, do you? The world "has turned an ugly fac[e] toward USA"? Gee, and what was the face turned toward us during the G-8 summits a few years ago? How about the protests about debt relief? Or the pickets outside the airbases in Germany? Or the attacks on McDonald's franchises in France? The world is filled with jealous malcontents, and we are always going to be their target. The good news is that we designed the computer they use to connect to the Internet we created to coordinate the working on the banner that they print using the inkjets that we sell.
Finally, your comments about security show how little you understand it. Where to start...? Okay, the lock on your front door can be picked - so you might as well leave it unlocked, right? The goal of security is not perfect security, it is enough security. What we did before was inadequate, so we need to do more. If these additional measures are inadequate, then we'll do more again. But by your logic, we shouldn't do anything, because some guy on slashdot fantasized a storyline that defeated any measure except grounding all planes. Get real!
You remember when your mom said that all the kids hated and picked on you because they were jealous? Well, she was lying then, but in some cases it's the truth. As the most powerful, most influential, richest, strongest and best country in the world, we do get a bit of jealousy. This is only natural... and it isn't recent. You may be recent. But I've traveled the world for the last 20+ years, and I've heard similar sentiments from teenagers and ne'er-do-wells everywhere I've been.
There was a slight change, of course, after the Soviet empire collapsed. Before that, we did get a bit more sympathy from those familiar with that alternative. Believe me, if the world had gone the other way, you'd... well, you might have had similar complaints, but you'd be whispering them to your buddys in a tenement basement somewhere, huddled around a candle.
In any case, I suggest you stop worrying about the U.S.A., and start worrying about your inferiority complex... because we're going to be at the top of the food chain for a long time yet.
Oh please! What are you, some kind of trust fund baby or something, that the worst pain you can imagine is being delayed at the ticket counter?
Terrorists want terror. It is their means to control those that they hate. The fact that we have been successful at preventing any more terrorist attacks on these shores is the only reason that you or anyone else would dare to complain about these elementary precautions.
But it's all about the principle of the thing, right? Then I suppose you think that anybody with a handful of cash should be about the get aboard any plane - no ids, no names, no baggage check, no xray, no metal detectors, - nothing, right? Because aren't all these precautions a pain too? And "those who would give up essential liberties", etc, right?
Oh, you're used to these checks, so those don't count. Well, breath into a paper bag, Henrietta - these checks are just more of the same. Once the system gets wrung out, you'll forget about them too....
I get so tired of this bullshit. So you say that Bush ordered the CIA to do this or that.... yet every investigation every which way has turned up nothing - no undue influence, no attempts at undue influence.
Not convinced? Fine, how about his - the director of the CIA was George Tenet, a Clinton appointee. He was definitely not a GWB loyalist or anything like that. So do you really see Bush walking up to this guy and pressuring him to do *anything* that could come back to haunt him?
Okay, fine - you'll believe anything of Bush. But to make that work, you also have to believe it of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Powell. Not one of them has ever been accused of being stupid, and sticking your neck out like that would be stupid indeed. This same point applies to those idiots who say that Bush "lied" about WMDs in Iraq. Even assuming that everyone listed above is pure evil, do you really believe any of them is stupid enought to have lied without a plan to make the lie come true?
The facts don't support your thesis, and neither does reason. So get off it!
You are simply wrong. Here is the relevant data from the I.R.S.
I would include a nice table showing everything for the lazy, but since stupid/. prevents that. How about this: over the last forty years, the Corporate Income Tax provided the following percentages of that years IRS collections:
in 2003, 10%
in 1993, 11.18%
in 1983, 9.85%
in 1973, 16.42%
As you can see, the percentages have held fairly steady over recent years, including "the last half-decade" (nice try, Bush hater). The big change in percentages happened back at the end of the 70's.
Speaking of which, is anyone over the age of 30 just amazed at what a different world this is from the 80's? Sure, communist menace is substituted by 'terrorist menace' but at least MAD is less likely.
Why do you think Reagan's funeral got such reverent coverage? I was against him at the time, but I was wrong, and he was right. He truly changed the world for the better. Personally, I believe that in 20 years, we'll look back and say the same for W.
I know that replying is pointless. Nevertheless...
To begin with, the FBI cannot request any documents or records without first getting judicial permission. That permission must come in the form of an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court -- a federal court specializing in counterterrorism and international intelligence that was created by Congress during the Carter administration. No judge on that court is going to authorize government agents to spy on a citizen merely because of his reading or web-surfing habits. Why not? Because the law forbids it. Which law? Why, the Patriot Act.
I purchased a Sony Walkman in 1986. The first one broke in less than a month, but I took it back and got a free replacement that works to this day. I used to listen to it at work, and often "paused" it (which kept spinning the disc) and forgot about it, leaving it running over night, over weekends, and even over vacations. Never had any problem with it. I used to be amazed at the reliability, but really isn't that how things should be?
The people estimating 33% are just guessing, and are probably wrong. According to page of 11 of this year's special report from taxfoundation.org, the average Californian's tax burden as a percentage of income in 2004 is about 28.4%, and that includes everything. The rate for a family of 3 with 45k usd is probably lower than that.
I don't know your situation (obviously) but page 13 of that same report mentions that Canada's "Tax Freedom day" - the day that the average Canadian has earned enough to pay all of the taxes for that year - in 2003 fell in the 178th day of the year, June 27th. That's even worse than Britain's "TFD", which will be on the 163th day of the year, June 11th. Contrast that with the US "TFD", which was on April 11th. So the US tax rates are lower than Canada's after al - lower by a couple of months!
Of course, they are all still way too high. Even God Almighty only asks for a tithe.
I see. So because it doesn't benefit you, or at least doesn't benefit you immediately, that makes it worthless.
The fact is that the globalization is growing, and international travel is increasingly important - if only so we can go visit our jobs. Flying from Boston to, say, Bangalore is currently a nightmare experience. So yay for faster planes!
What's most amusing about all this hand-wringing here and in other "liberal" bastions is that, in this instance, government is tightening regulations on mega-corporations. Isn't that always a good thing from the liberal point of view?
The FCC ruling only apply to broadcast media. The deal that broadcasters make is that they agree to follow the FCC rules, and the FCC grants then a monopoly on a part of the broadcast spectrum. This agreement is entirely voluntary - stop broadcasting, and you can say anything you want!
These megacorporations make billions of dollars from their monopolies, and all they have to do is keep their content above a very low standard. Personally, I'm offended even by the "clean" content - I find it generally childish and moronic - so this isn't about me. What it is about is the great majority of Americans, who do not go around swearing, who do not hang around others who swear, and who do not want their children listening to people swear. Sure, they could change channels or stop watching/listening all together - but they shouldn't have to: It's their spectrum too!
When I was a defense contractor and we had military customers in for reviews, we would give them lunch - usually a buffet of some kind - but would put out a basket so that they could pay what they thought the lunch was worth.
I have to give the Joes credit, they generally kicked in some reasonable amount - a few bucks each - evne though the company feed the rest of us too, and it would have been impossible for any accountant to tell if the Joes paid "enough".
If this seems like jumping thru hoops, you have no idea how seriously the military takes its rules.
IMO, you have correctly identified the cure problem - bad doctors. While anyone can make a mistake, some people make a lot more of them than others. A nice objective measure of that occurred in New York State. From this, about half-way down:
Risk-adjusted mortality rates following coronary artery bypass graft surgery are published for individual hospitals and physicians in the State. Between 1989 and 1992, a 41 percent decrease in risk-adjusted mortality in the State was documented (Hannan et al., 1994).
Did public knowledge of their performance cause doctors and hospitals to do a better job? That's what the quoted paper implies... but there's a simpler, less cynical answer: maybe people just stopped going to the worst doctors and hospitals, and so they died less often.
On a personal note: I found similar results when I did research before my own back surgery. I wish I could find it on the net, but basically its showed the infection rates and other negative outcomes tend to correlate strongly to individual doctors, hospitals, and sometimes even to specific operating rooms(!). So ask a lot of questions before you have any procedure done. Hospitals have stats on everything, so they already know this stuff - they just don't want to make it public. Unfortunately, that only leaves lawsuits as a way to weed out the worst ones.
Hey, you'll love this. According to
NASA's 2005 Budget Request, the FY2004 total was about $15.378 Billion. Whoa, a lot of money, right?
But according to
this 2003 article, "Pet owners are expected to lavish $31.5 billion on their animals" - more than twice that total!
Hey, you got to take care of your pets and all that - nobody's arguing that. But people have to have a sense of proportion. We spend less on NASA than we spend on dogfood? Then maybe the cost-benefit ratio makes a little more sense.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, when I looked at this list, I found myself disappointed. Sure, there are some big important guys, but software is more than about applications and the big picture. It's also about the technology, and creating new abstractions. And in a lot of ways, the guy who first invented debugging is a lot more important to the success of computer science than anybody listed there.
It may be because I'm an old fart, but I remember the excitement of learning each new abstraction, either as I discovered it, or as it was invented. And it seemed to me that the creation of those abstractions are the really great deeds of computer science. Maybe nobody knows who had those break-through moments first, but I'm sure that they occured, and they seem to be to the the Great Moments in computer science.
1) The first guy to think "I shouldn't have to rewire, I should be able to write instructions that rewire it for me" - i.e., the assembler moment
2) The first guy to realize "I'm not just re-wiring this, I'm describing an procedure for it to use" - the FORTRAN moment
3) The first guy to ask "Why can't I used the same procedure from different places in my code" - the subroutine moment
4) The first guy to say "I should be able to use the subroutine in the program it already knows" - the library moment
5) The first guy to ask "Why do I have to be the one writing down the results?" - the printer moment
6) The first guy to realize "This isn't just a calculator, it's also a controller!" - the embedded moment
7) The first guy to realize "This isn't just a calculator, it's also a storage system!" - the database moment
8) The first guy to realize "This isn't just a calculator, it's also a communication system!" - the network moment
9) The first guy to realize "I'm not just submitting instructions for it to process - it's submiting instructions back for me to process!" - the interactive moment
10) The first guy to think "Why can't it do something else while its waiting?" - the multitasking moment
11) The first guy to think "Why can't it show me more context while I work?" - the full-screen moment
And finally...
12) The first guy to think "Man, why can't this thing show me some chicks?" - the porn moment
This sounds more like a fishing thing than a ball game to me. So what do fishermen say when they catch something - "Hey, pass me another beer"? Or maybe the other guy should critize: "Pretty small - throw that one back!"
That's true, I haven't been. I've heard conflicting things, but I think I'll have to visit and judge for myself. ps: don't hold it against me, but if I'm in the neighborhood anyway, I'll probably visit NZ too..
As for your story about a Brazilian being detained for three days incommunicato - well, he should be glad he wasn't flying to France, where a guy was stuck in the terminal for 16 years. The fact is, every nation has border controls, and if someone suspicious is trying to get in, I want them to stop them. Either way, his story has nothing to do with the topic being discussed, which is stopping people at the ticket counter.
Really, this is all too tiresome to go thru in detail. Me, terrorized? You don't know me very well, do you? The world "has turned an ugly fac[e] toward USA"? Gee, and what was the face turned toward us during the G-8 summits a few years ago? How about the protests about debt relief? Or the pickets outside the airbases in Germany? Or the attacks on McDonald's franchises in France? The world is filled with jealous malcontents, and we are always going to be their target. The good news is that we designed the computer they use to connect to the Internet we created to coordinate the working on the banner that they print using the inkjets that we sell.
Finally, your comments about security show how little you understand it. Where to start...? Okay, the lock on your front door can be picked - so you might as well leave it unlocked, right? The goal of security is not perfect security, it is enough security. What we did before was inadequate, so we need to do more. If these additional measures are inadequate, then we'll do more again. But by your logic, we shouldn't do anything, because some guy on slashdot fantasized a storyline that defeated any measure except grounding all planes. Get real!
There was a slight change, of course, after the Soviet empire collapsed. Before that, we did get a bit more sympathy from those familiar with that alternative. Believe me, if the world had gone the other way, you'd... well, you might have had similar complaints, but you'd be whispering them to your buddys in a tenement basement somewhere, huddled around a candle.
In any case, I suggest you stop worrying about the U.S.A., and start worrying about your inferiority complex... because we're going to be at the top of the food chain for a long time yet.
Terrorists want terror. It is their means to control those that they hate. The fact that we have been successful at preventing any more terrorist attacks on these shores is the only reason that you or anyone else would dare to complain about these elementary precautions.
But it's all about the principle of the thing, right? Then I suppose you think that anybody with a handful of cash should be about the get aboard any plane - no ids, no names, no baggage check, no xray, no metal detectors, - nothing, right? Because aren't all these precautions a pain too? And "those who would give up essential liberties", etc, right?
Oh, you're used to these checks, so those don't count. Well, breath into a paper bag, Henrietta - these checks are just more of the same. Once the system gets wrung out, you'll forget about them too....
Not convinced? Fine, how about his - the director of the CIA was George Tenet, a Clinton appointee. He was definitely not a GWB loyalist or anything like that. So do you really see Bush walking up to this guy and pressuring him to do *anything* that could come back to haunt him?
Okay, fine - you'll believe anything of Bush. But to make that work, you also have to believe it of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Powell. Not one of them has ever been accused of being stupid, and sticking your neck out like that would be stupid indeed. This same point applies to those idiots who say that Bush "lied" about WMDs in Iraq. Even assuming that everyone listed above is pure evil, do you really believe any of them is stupid enought to have lied without a plan to make the lie come true?
The facts don't support your thesis, and neither does reason. So get off it!
I would include a nice table showing everything for the lazy, but since stupid /. prevents that. How about this: over the last forty years, the Corporate Income Tax provided the following percentages of that years IRS collections:
in 2003, 10%
in 1993, 11.18%
in 1983, 9.85%
in 1973, 16.42%
As you can see, the percentages have held fairly steady over recent years, including "the last half-decade" (nice try, Bush hater). The big change in percentages happened back at the end of the 70's.
"+5 Interesting" my sweet fanny!
Why do you think Reagan's funeral got such reverent coverage? I was against him at the time, but I was wrong, and he was right. He truly changed the world for the better. Personally, I believe that in 20 years, we'll look back and say the same for W.
A youth hostel would seem like an ideal addition to a computer musesum. The museum would get more visitors, and the kids would get a place to crash.
If you really want to know the truth, it is out there...
You worry too much. Don't think of it as dying, think of it as upgrading the motherboard.
I purchased a Sony Walkman in 1986. The first one broke in less than a month, but I took it back and got a free replacement that works to this day. I used to listen to it at work, and often "paused" it (which kept spinning the disc) and forgot about it, leaving it running over night, over weekends, and even over vacations. Never had any problem with it. I used to be amazed at the reliability, but really isn't that how things should be?
I don't know your situation (obviously) but page 13 of that same report mentions that Canada's "Tax Freedom day" - the day that the average Canadian has earned enough to pay all of the taxes for that year - in 2003 fell in the 178th day of the year, June 27th. That's even worse than Britain's "TFD", which will be on the 163th day of the year, June 11th. Contrast that with the US "TFD", which was on April 11th. So the US tax rates are lower than Canada's after al - lower by a couple of months!
Of course, they are all still way too high. Even God Almighty only asks for a tithe.
"Well, I for one... welcome our new overrated, boringly repetitive joke-making overlords - not!"
The fact is that the globalization is growing, and international travel is increasingly important - if only so we can go visit our jobs. Flying from Boston to, say, Bangalore is currently a nightmare experience. So yay for faster planes!
The FCC ruling only apply to broadcast media. The deal that broadcasters make is that they agree to follow the FCC rules, and the FCC grants then a monopoly on a part of the broadcast spectrum. This agreement is entirely voluntary - stop broadcasting, and you can say anything you want!
These megacorporations make billions of dollars from their monopolies, and all they have to do is keep their content above a very low standard. Personally, I'm offended even by the "clean" content - I find it generally childish and moronic - so this isn't about me. What it is about is the great majority of Americans, who do not go around swearing, who do not hang around others who swear, and who do not want their children listening to people swear. Sure, they could change channels or stop watching/listening all together - but they shouldn't have to: It's their spectrum too!
I have to give the Joes credit, they generally kicked in some reasonable amount - a few bucks each - evne though the company feed the rest of us too, and it would have been impossible for any accountant to tell if the Joes paid "enough".
If this seems like jumping thru hoops, you have no idea how seriously the military takes its rules.
On a personal note: I found similar results when I did research before my own back surgery. I wish I could find it on the net, but basically its showed the infection rates and other negative outcomes tend to correlate strongly to individual doctors, hospitals, and sometimes even to specific operating rooms(!). So ask a lot of questions before you have any procedure done. Hospitals have stats on everything, so they already know this stuff - they just don't want to make it public. Unfortunately, that only leaves lawsuits as a way to weed out the worst ones.
Bad news for India!
Heh. Nice of you to say so, but it's not a problem - I've got a nice inheritance coming, apparently.
But according to this 2003 article, "Pet owners are expected to lavish $31.5 billion on their animals" - more than twice that total!
Hey, you got to take care of your pets and all that - nobody's arguing that. But people have to have a sense of proportion. We spend less on NASA than we spend on dogfood? Then maybe the cost-benefit ratio makes a little more sense.
On the contrary, The King James Dictionary on Studylight.org says that meek means "Gentle; tender; free from pride." So does the one at Blue Letter Bible.
The Greek Concordance with Strong's Numbering says that the word in Matthew 5:5 was originally (in Greek) "praus", which it translates as "mild, i.e. (by implication) humble".
So in that spirit may I humbly suggest that you or your professor are perhaps mistaken.