M: Oh look, this isn't an argument. A: Yes it is. M: No it isn't. It's just contradiction. A: No it isn't. M: It is! A: It is not. M: Look, you just contradicted me. A: I did not. M: Oh you did!! A: No, no, no. M: You did just then. A: Nonsense! M: Oh, this is futile! A: No it isn't. M: I came here for a good argument. A: No you didn't; no, you came here for an argument. M: An argument isn't just contradiction. A: It can be. M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition. A: No it isn't. M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction. A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position. M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.' A: Yes it is! M: No it isn't! A: Yes it is! M: Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.
As for Swedish law, there are no provisions preventing prosecutors from interrogating suspects abroad. Doing so is, in fact, a routine matter. An example: In late 2010, at roughly the same time that Ms. Ny decided to issue a European Arrest Warrant for Assange, Swedish police officers went to Serbia to interview a well-known gangster suspected of involvement in an armed robbery.
In a radio interview last Friday, a Swedish professor emeritus of international law, Ove Bring, confirmed that there are no legal obstacles whatsoever preventing Ms. Ny from questioning Assange in London. When asked why the prosecutor would not do so, Professor Bring responded that ”it’s a matter of prestige not only for prosecutors, but for the Swedish legal system”
Not really. People who treat insurance that way don't understand insurance. The point of insurance isn't to win some sort of lottery. On average, you will pay more for your insurance premium than you will for your claims. What insurance does is let you take an existing, expensive risk, and ameliorate it over time.
Take home insurance. Say your home and contents is worth $100,000. The existing risk is that if your house burns down, you're up for a $100,000 bill to replace everything. Say the premiums for your home insurance are $110,000 over your lifetime. Bad deal, right? You'll lose $10,00 dollars. You might as well self-insure - put what you would pay in premiums aside, and use them to fund reconstruction if the worst happens. Except that the fire could happen in the first year of your insurance, in which case you've only got $2000 set aside. You're pretty much screwed. Unless you have insurance.
If you expect enough money on-hand to replace the insured item at any given time, and if using it is not going to significantly impact you, you shouldn't get insurance - you're almost always better off self-insuring. That's one of the many reasons those "extended warranty" things on consumer appliances are a massive rip-off. But for high-expense risks (say, hitting someone with your car and being up for their medial bill, or home insurance), unless you're very wealthy, insurance can be a wise decision.
I'm not sure why you're comparing RoR and NodeJS to PHP and Java
Because the OP was saying the only way you can get a job in development is to follow the new hotness. I was demonstrating that actually, there are more jobs for older technologies than there are for the new, faddish ones.
I don't want tiny buttons on my phone, because my input device (my fingers) are fat and clunky. On my desktop, I can deal with smaller buttons because my mouse is far more precise. I don't want buttons scaled up to 1000 pixels wide on my desktop, just because they need to be 200 pixels wide on my phone to make touch workable.
But yes, it is possible to design interfaces that take into account a few different variables (resolution, viewing distance, input precision, etc) and algorithmically modify the UI to suit any given permutation of those variables.
So are the languages on the desktop - but they're not changing fast enough that remaining relatively current is particularly difficult. I still see more job advertisements for PHP and Java than I do for Ruby on Rails or NodeJS.
Also the fads comd and go, if the current fad is web sites with scripting language of the day, and you don't know web stuff, then all those jobs pass you by no matter how good a programmer you are.
Some of the people that do the best with getting jobs are the dabblers, quickly learning the rudiments of something and then moving on in a few years when fashions change; client/server turns into palm pilot apps turns into web design turns into mobile apps, etc.
Yes, people who never believed this new-fangled interweb "fad" was going anywhere, or never bothered learning any new technology after they left tertiary education because gosh darn it if C was good enough for Kernighan, it should be good enough for everyone - they might find it hard to get a job.
Lawyers need to keep up-to-date on precedent, accountants need to know the latest tax changes, and doctors need to follow the latest developments in medicine. A developer needs to keep up with the changing nature of technology.
Not to mention building the first electronic computer in Australia (and the fifth in the world), developing the polymer banknotes used in Australia and many other countries in the region, building the Parkes Radio Telescope (which was used to help capture transmissions from the moon landing), developing Aeroguard, creating flu treatments...they've done a little bit more than write a bit of code and file for patents.
WiFi is the result of a standardisation process in which many people and organisations contributed technology.
Yes, but not the CSIRO; from all evidence, it was an example of convergent evolution, much like calculus - both the IEEE and CSIRO came to the same conclusions as regarding the best way of handling indoor interference, its just that CSIRO did it first, and patented it. Then the IEEE produced their standard without checking for patents, and unknowingly incorporated patented technology in it.
My understanding is that the CSIRO patent and general claim that Australia "invented wifi" is perceived as nonsense, and CSIRO is seen as little better than a patent troll.
That "understanding" seems to derive from sour grapes over the fact that some other country is exploiting the patent system the US has forced on the rest of the world. Personally, I think that the fact that an entirely unrelated entity managed to duplicate the patent without relying in CSIRO's knowledge should be proof of it not being sufficiently non-obvious - but there are thousands of US patents that I have to pay for that would be invalidated by that same standard, so the US can just suck it up. The game is stupid, but it was them who wrote the rules.
Also, CSIRO has been around since 1926, long before the IEEE even existed, and is responsible for a vast amount of scientific research. Calling them a patent troll is like calling Bell Labs a patent troll.
What you're saying is that he should have analysed all the data before he leaked it. Releasing it piecemeal as he vetted each cable would have been impractical - once he started releasing information, the data would have been secured, logs would have been checked, he'd have been caught, and any information he had not yet leaked would go back in the safe.
It would have taken years for him to read through all the cables - years in which, if he was caught, the facts he uncovered may have been buried again. Instead, he took the only practical route - dump all the cables, get them out while he could, and enlist the help of a third party with experience in such things to help him vet the documents.
Obviously, that's an absurd suggestion, but you've offered nothing in the way of a solution to the problem you describe. Hell, you have not even offered a half-assed analysis of why it takes so long for a password reset. I have not seen things so bad that it took a week to get that done, but I have seen it take hours.
How the hell would I know? I'm not in the IT department - I'm a user on that system. Moreover, it's a windows environment, which I have no knowledge nor interest in. I have no idea, nor do I care. If you expect your users to perform a systemic analysis of your IT department to determine why the turn around time is so long, methinks you're expecting too much.
If we can handle this with an average response time of 7 business days then why can't your company do so with 1/10 the demands?... maybe I should ask where you work as I could be relieved not to have ulcers?
Yeah, waiting a week to get an expired password reset is precisely what I mean when I say going through IT is slow.
Yes. That doesn't mean that it's IT's fault. At my current workplace, we have 150+ people, and 2 IT people. Getting stuff through IT is slow. However, the problem isn't with IT - they don't get to set their own budget.
The vast majority of published authors are, in a way. They're paid up-front with an advance, and never see royalties because their books don't sell enough. Ok, it's not quite "paid by the hour", but it is paid upfront with no perpetual royalties.
The royalties only benefit the publisher, and some few authors who sell enough numbers to earn back their advance. It's pretty much identical to the Kickstarter type model - the only difference is the source of the funds (one large publisher vs many small individuals).
You'd probably have to switch to a Kickstarter-like model. The prospective author uploads a high-level summary of what he wants to write. People who want to read it donate a couple bucks. The author then writes something and releases it for free. This would probably work, at least in a sense, but it'd be hard to fund longer works this way. You'd get a lot of short stories, novellas, and serials. I've got nothing against those formats, but I do like to have some diversity.
Naw. New authors would probably be limited to those categories, because they wouldn't attract a lot of funding, and they'd couldn't afford to be locked in to a novel-length commitment for a pittance.
Established authors (either established via the traditional publishers, or by getting a reputation in the shorter formats) could probably get a novel kickstarted. Genre superstars, like George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, or J. K. Rowling could probably be funded almost instantaneously.
The problem with Kickstarter, I imagine, is the whole direct-to-the-public aspect of it. Novels are often notoriously late (looking at you GRRM) and some fans can get really obstreperous about it.
Really? Pretty much everyone I know agrees that Casino Royale and Skyfall have been some of the best Bond movies. Compared to, say, Moonraker, there's no competition.
And it makes you look illiterate. What the GP actually said was:
80-year old grandmother to a four year old presents an equal probability of trouble
Pointing out that there is an extreme end to the age scale of terrorists doesn't demonstrate that people at those extremes have an equal probability of being a terrorist. The 64 year old woman, and the 11 year old kid - are they a representative sample, or a statistical outlier? Because if they're outliers, you've just proved the GPs point for him.
Slashdot Mirror
As for Swedish law, there are no provisions preventing prosecutors from interrogating suspects abroad. Doing so is, in fact, a routine matter
Reading comprehension FTW.
M: Oh look, this isn't an argument.
A: Yes it is.
M: No it isn't. It's just contradiction.
A: No it isn't.
M: It is!
A: It is not.
M: Look, you just contradicted me.
A: I did not.
M: Oh you did!!
A: No, no, no.
M: You did just then.
A: Nonsense!
M: Oh, this is futile!
A: No it isn't.
M: I came here for a good argument.
A: No you didn't; no, you came here for an argument.
M: An argument isn't just contradiction.
A: It can be.
M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
A: No it isn't.
M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.
A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'
A: Yes it is!
M: No it isn't!
A: Yes it is!
M: Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.
I suggest you learn a fact or two instead of repeating bullshit.
Good advice. I suggest you take it:
As for Swedish law, there are no provisions preventing prosecutors from interrogating suspects abroad. Doing so is, in fact, a routine matter. An example: In late 2010, at roughly the same time that Ms. Ny decided to issue a European Arrest Warrant for Assange, Swedish police officers went to Serbia to interview a well-known gangster suspected of involvement in an armed robbery.
In a radio interview last Friday, a Swedish professor emeritus of international law, Ove Bring, confirmed that there are no legal obstacles whatsoever preventing Ms. Ny from questioning Assange in London. When asked why the prosecutor would not do so, Professor Bring responded that ”it’s a matter of prestige not only for prosecutors, but for the Swedish legal system”
Because defending a thesis is better at demonstrating an understanding of the source material than simply summarizing in a neutral point-of-view.
Not really. People who treat insurance that way don't understand insurance. The point of insurance isn't to win some sort of lottery. On average, you will pay more for your insurance premium than you will for your claims. What insurance does is let you take an existing, expensive risk, and ameliorate it over time.
Take home insurance. Say your home and contents is worth $100,000. The existing risk is that if your house burns down, you're up for a $100,000 bill to replace everything. Say the premiums for your home insurance are $110,000 over your lifetime. Bad deal, right? You'll lose $10,00 dollars. You might as well self-insure - put what you would pay in premiums aside, and use them to fund reconstruction if the worst happens. Except that the fire could happen in the first year of your insurance, in which case you've only got $2000 set aside. You're pretty much screwed. Unless you have insurance.
If you expect enough money on-hand to replace the insured item at any given time, and if using it is not going to significantly impact you, you shouldn't get insurance - you're almost always better off self-insuring. That's one of the many reasons those "extended warranty" things on consumer appliances are a massive rip-off. But for high-expense risks (say, hitting someone with your car and being up for their medial bill, or home insurance), unless you're very wealthy, insurance can be a wise decision.
It was modded up funny, not insightful
I'm not sure why you're comparing RoR and NodeJS to PHP and Java
Because the OP was saying the only way you can get a job in development is to follow the new hotness. I was demonstrating that actually, there are more jobs for older technologies than there are for the new, faddish ones.
It's a bit more complicated than that.
I don't want tiny buttons on my phone, because my input device (my fingers) are fat and clunky. On my desktop, I can deal with smaller buttons because my mouse is far more precise. I don't want buttons scaled up to 1000 pixels wide on my desktop, just because they need to be 200 pixels wide on my phone to make touch workable.
But yes, it is possible to design interfaces that take into account a few different variables (resolution, viewing distance, input precision, etc) and algorithmically modify the UI to suit any given permutation of those variables.
So are the languages on the desktop - but they're not changing fast enough that remaining relatively current is particularly difficult. I still see more job advertisements for PHP and Java than I do for Ruby on Rails or NodeJS.
Also the fads comd and go, if the current fad is web sites with scripting language of the day, and you don't know web stuff, then all those jobs pass you by no matter how good a programmer you are.
Some of the people that do the best with getting jobs are the dabblers, quickly learning the rudiments of something and then moving on in a few years when fashions change; client/server turns into palm pilot apps turns into web design turns into mobile apps, etc.
Yes, people who never believed this new-fangled interweb "fad" was going anywhere, or never bothered learning any new technology after they left tertiary education because gosh darn it if C was good enough for Kernighan, it should be good enough for everyone - they might find it hard to get a job.
Lawyers need to keep up-to-date on precedent, accountants need to know the latest tax changes, and doctors need to follow the latest developments in medicine. A developer needs to keep up with the changing nature of technology.
Not to mention building the first electronic computer in Australia (and the fifth in the world), developing the polymer banknotes used in Australia and many other countries in the region, building the Parkes Radio Telescope (which was used to help capture transmissions from the moon landing), developing Aeroguard, creating flu treatments...they've done a little bit more than write a bit of code and file for patents.
WiFi is the result of a standardisation process in which many people and organisations contributed technology.
Yes, but not the CSIRO; from all evidence, it was an example of convergent evolution, much like calculus - both the IEEE and CSIRO came to the same conclusions as regarding the best way of handling indoor interference, its just that CSIRO did it first, and patented it. Then the IEEE produced their standard without checking for patents, and unknowingly incorporated patented technology in it.
My understanding is that the CSIRO patent and general claim that Australia "invented wifi" is perceived as nonsense, and CSIRO is seen as little better than a patent troll.
That "understanding" seems to derive from sour grapes over the fact that some other country is exploiting the patent system the US has forced on the rest of the world. Personally, I think that the fact that an entirely unrelated entity managed to duplicate the patent without relying in CSIRO's knowledge should be proof of it not being sufficiently non-obvious - but there are thousands of US patents that I have to pay for that would be invalidated by that same standard, so the US can just suck it up. The game is stupid, but it was them who wrote the rules.
Also, CSIRO has been around since 1926, long before the IEEE even existed, and is responsible for a vast amount of scientific research. Calling them a patent troll is like calling Bell Labs a patent troll.
What you're saying is that he should have analysed all the data before he leaked it. Releasing it piecemeal as he vetted each cable would have been impractical - once he started releasing information, the data would have been secured, logs would have been checked, he'd have been caught, and any information he had not yet leaked would go back in the safe.
It would have taken years for him to read through all the cables - years in which, if he was caught, the facts he uncovered may have been buried again. Instead, he took the only practical route - dump all the cables, get them out while he could, and enlist the help of a third party with experience in such things to help him vet the documents.
Well, Britain is about 5% Islamic now, so I wouldn't be surprised if there's a commonality of attitudes on the lunatic fringe.
Obviously, that's an absurd suggestion, but you've offered nothing in the way of a solution to the problem you describe. Hell, you have not even offered a half-assed analysis of why it takes so long for a password reset. I have not seen things so bad that it took a week to get that done, but I have seen it take hours.
How the hell would I know? I'm not in the IT department - I'm a user on that system. Moreover, it's a windows environment, which I have no knowledge nor interest in. I have no idea, nor do I care. If you expect your users to perform a systemic analysis of your IT department to determine why the turn around time is so long, methinks you're expecting too much.
If we can handle this with an average response time of 7 business days then why can't your company do so with 1/10 the demands? ... maybe I should ask where you work as I could be relieved not to have ulcers?
Yeah, waiting a week to get an expired password reset is precisely what I mean when I say going through IT is slow.
Yes. That doesn't mean that it's IT's fault. At my current workplace, we have 150+ people, and 2 IT people. Getting stuff through IT is slow. However, the problem isn't with IT - they don't get to set their own budget.
Not as much as ancient tomatoes did - many of those were toxic.
So the fact that you can't do it equates to you being not allowed to do it?
I'm gonna find the bastard who's not allowed me to be a pro athlete and sue him for decades of lost income.
The vast majority of published authors are, in a way. They're paid up-front with an advance, and never see royalties because their books don't sell enough. Ok, it's not quite "paid by the hour", but it is paid upfront with no perpetual royalties.
The royalties only benefit the publisher, and some few authors who sell enough numbers to earn back their advance. It's pretty much identical to the Kickstarter type model - the only difference is the source of the funds (one large publisher vs many small individuals).
You'd probably have to switch to a Kickstarter-like model. The prospective author uploads a high-level summary of what he wants to write. People who want to read it donate a couple bucks. The author then writes something and releases it for free. This would probably work, at least in a sense, but it'd be hard to fund longer works this way. You'd get a lot of short stories, novellas, and serials. I've got nothing against those formats, but I do like to have some diversity.
Naw. New authors would probably be limited to those categories, because they wouldn't attract a lot of funding, and they'd couldn't afford to be locked in to a novel-length commitment for a pittance.
Established authors (either established via the traditional publishers, or by getting a reputation in the shorter formats) could probably get a novel kickstarted. Genre superstars, like George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, or J. K. Rowling could probably be funded almost instantaneously.
The problem with Kickstarter, I imagine, is the whole direct-to-the-public aspect of it. Novels are often notoriously late (looking at you GRRM) and some fans can get really obstreperous about it.
And you got Quantum of Solace
Really? Pretty much everyone I know agrees that Casino Royale and Skyfall have been some of the best Bond movies. Compared to, say, Moonraker, there's no competition.
BTW should I mention even libertarian with conservative leaning sites like instapundit think this is horseshit?
Um, saying libertarian sites think expansive police powers are horseshit doesn't really say much
And it makes you look illiterate. What the GP actually said was:
80-year old grandmother to a four year old presents an equal probability of trouble
Pointing out that there is an extreme end to the age scale of terrorists doesn't demonstrate that people at those extremes have an equal probability of being a terrorist. The 64 year old woman, and the 11 year old kid - are they a representative sample, or a statistical outlier? Because if they're outliers, you've just proved the GPs point for him.