If free: can be used for research, doesn't just freeze up somewhere for years. There's a really slim chance it can help someone in need (very slim, though).
If not free: some random company is feeding itself on your sense of insecurity.
Sorry, I should have prefaced it by saying that these are my opinions only for commercial ventures. If it's a govt. run thing for use by any needy person, I'd be all for it. Sadly such a set up did not exist where I live.
Cord blood banking seems to be a scam. I considered it briefly for our kid, but reading quite a bit about it, decided not to do it.
Here's why:
1. Stem cells similar to those present in cord blood are easily obtained from our own (adult) blood if/when the need arises.
2. Very low chance that they will be useful to siblings/parents/other relatives.
3. No guarantee of how well these cells survive in the cryogenic environment. No guarantee from the banks of backup plans in case of failure.
4. All fancy stuff (about regenerating organs) from the cells is science fiction so far.
5. Medical science could find alternative ways to cure your conditions by then.
6. The bank guys are great at emotional blackmail --- like giving the greatest gift to your newborn, and being a bad parent otherwise. I had one guy who told me that I might even make money selling it in future. Shame on him.
Hopefully the public is starting to wise up and we can build new nuclear plants again
Ummmm... not in my backyard. Actually, nuclear plants, apart from being highly dangerous (I needn't even stress chernobyl), and these days, terrorist targets, are bad for many reasons : 1. Uranuim mining is absolutely unsafe for workers 2. Radiation levels near plants cannot be contained easily, 3, and most importantly, there is no good way to get rid of the waste, not for thousands of years.
This, in addition to the problems that are expected to arise for the amounts of lead that will be required in the car batteries. It seems that the reprocessing/smelting/leakage arising from lead in these batteries will be more harmful (if electric cars catch on and become popular) than what leaded petrol used to be. (The other options such as nickel/cadmium/lithium are even more poisonous and dangerous).
Of course, technology could overcome this, but it hasn't yet.
The solutions were very elegant, but very difficult to debug and very difficult to reason about.
The difficulty of debugging scheme arises from the fact that it isn't a statically typed language. Errors such as trying to get the cdr of an atom are caught only at runtime (unless you've got some sort of "soft" typing as done in Dr. Scheme environments, for example). As opposed to this, Caml/SML/Haskell are typed languages, and that avoids a major source of errors and debugging. Once you're past the typechecker, the errors are all logical (no programming language can help you there).
As for difficulty to reason about, well, notwithstanding the claims of FP coders that all FP programs are self-documenting, it can get quite difficult once you have to deal with higher-order functions that have escaping values. Functional programming is often combinator heavy and trying to read someone elses code is not always easy (I don't have an equal amount of experience with OO/Procedural/Functional paradigms to give a sensible comparison).
don't think about the pee-brained morons on the other end.
Perhaps that's one of the problems : thinking of nonprogrammers/nongeeks as "pee-brained morons". What is "normal" to a programmer might be completely alien to, say, an end-user such as an office secretary. The feel of familiarity that standardised GUI gives is probably one of the many reasons that nonspecialists seem to prefer Windows. All the buttons/menus are at very similar places for most applications.
The article says " because of the complexity of an operating system, reducing functionality was not a simple process and every modification would have to be thoroughly tested.
So why would it make sense to spend more money in making these reductions? Why not just give the standard package? I'm missing something here.
So you're saying porn guys are better at math than RIAA guys? Is that the naked truth? This is indeed revealing. Thanks, you bare the facts so well. I guess there is no point in trying to clothe these figures.
I've read in quite a few places that it seems he didn't really make that statement, and that it's just an urban legend.
The anti-spam technology, on the other hand, might be based on being able to factor primes
And we'll probably be doing the same stuff for ages to come, if companies are to keep making money by reinventing the wheel. I don't see *popular* programming languages/intermediate formats/runtime environments having undergone any particularly significant change in quite a few years now. I don't see what.NET (no MS bashing intended here) with all its runtime/intermediate format/etc.. has done that is substantially different than what has existed before. (AND XML crap doesn't count at all as any kind of progress, IMHO).
Is it something that will require using Outlook on Windows to work? Alternatively, will I be force to use some MS software just to send mail to people who are using MS based web/mail/etc client/server programs?
buying a box of Cappucino-flavored All-Bran for my wife when we were honeymooning
Not that I have much experience with this kind of thing, but is All-Bran really what people buy their spouses while honeymooning?
not the other 203 that supported the U.S.
203? I'd be impressed to see a list of countries that's just half as long. BTW, only countries that
did send troops (and Saudi Arabia and Turkey) get to share the spoils. Rest of the countries get zilch.
Unfortunately, they're difficult to come by. I'd suggest the close substitute that I have, the Pentax ZX-M. I've been using it for quite some time now, and other than the "infinite time exposure", I pretty much get most of the things that I want to experiment with. It does have time/aperture priority modes which I used earlier to help me, but soon you will be happier just experimenting with the fully manual mode. Given the fact that it cost much lesser than most other cameras, it's a great deal for a student on a tight budget.
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If free: can be used for research, doesn't just freeze up somewhere for years. There's a really slim chance it can help someone in need (very slim, though). If not free: some random company is feeding itself on your sense of insecurity.
Sorry, I should have prefaced it by saying that these are my opinions only for commercial ventures. If it's a govt. run thing for use by any needy person, I'd be all for it. Sadly such a set up did not exist where I live.
Cord blood banking seems to be a scam. I considered it briefly for our kid, but reading quite a bit about it, decided not to do it. Here's why: 1. Stem cells similar to those present in cord blood are easily obtained from our own (adult) blood if/when the need arises. 2. Very low chance that they will be useful to siblings/parents/other relatives. 3. No guarantee of how well these cells survive in the cryogenic environment. No guarantee from the banks of backup plans in case of failure. 4. All fancy stuff (about regenerating organs) from the cells is science fiction so far. 5. Medical science could find alternative ways to cure your conditions by then. 6. The bank guys are great at emotional blackmail --- like giving the greatest gift to your newborn, and being a bad parent otherwise. I had one guy who told me that I might even make money selling it in future. Shame on him.
Hopefully the public is starting to wise up and we can build new nuclear plants again
Ummmm... not in my backyard. Actually, nuclear plants, apart from being highly dangerous (I needn't even stress chernobyl), and these days, terrorist targets, are bad for many reasons : 1. Uranuim mining is absolutely unsafe for workers 2. Radiation levels near plants cannot be contained easily, 3, and most importantly, there is no good way to get rid of the waste, not for thousands of years.
This, in addition to the problems that are expected to arise for the amounts of lead that will be required in the car batteries. It seems that the reprocessing/smelting/leakage arising from lead in these batteries will be more harmful (if electric cars catch on and become popular) than what leaded petrol used to be. (The other options such as nickel/cadmium/lithium are even more poisonous and dangerous).
Of course, technology could overcome this, but it hasn't yet.
The solutions were very elegant, but very difficult to debug and very difficult to reason about.
The difficulty of debugging scheme arises from the fact that it isn't a statically typed language. Errors such as trying to get the cdr of an atom are caught only at runtime (unless you've got some sort of "soft" typing as done in Dr. Scheme environments, for example). As opposed to this, Caml/SML/Haskell are typed languages, and that avoids a major source of errors and debugging. Once you're past the typechecker, the errors are all logical (no programming language can help you there).
As for difficulty to reason about, well, notwithstanding the claims of FP coders that all FP programs are self-documenting, it can get quite difficult once you have to deal with higher-order functions that have escaping values. Functional programming is often combinator heavy and trying to read someone elses code is not always easy (I don't have an equal amount of experience with
OO/Procedural/Functional paradigms to give a sensible comparison).
don't think about the pee-brained morons on the other end.
Perhaps that's one of the problems : thinking of nonprogrammers/nongeeks as "pee-brained morons". What is "normal" to a programmer might be completely alien to, say, an end-user such as an office secretary. The feel of familiarity that standardised GUI gives is probably one of the many reasons that nonspecialists seem to prefer Windows. All the buttons/menus are at very similar places for most applications.
The article says "
because of the complexity of an operating system, reducing functionality was not a simple process and every modification would have to be thoroughly tested.
So why would it make sense to spend more money in making these reductions? Why not just give the standard package? I'm missing something here.
So you're saying porn guys are better at math than RIAA guys? Is that the naked truth? This is indeed revealing. Thanks, you bare the facts so well. I guess there is no point in trying to clothe these figures.
Wish you a very safe and enjoyable journey.
I've read in quite a few places that it seems he didn't really make that statement, and that it's just an urban legend.
The anti-spam technology, on the other hand, might be based on being able to factor primes
If you want to sound professional you do not tell someone to stop wasting your time in a letter.
Since when is calling a spade a spade unprofessional?
And we'll probably be doing the same stuff for ages to come, if companies are to keep making money by reinventing the wheel. I don't see *popular* programming languages/intermediate formats/runtime environments having undergone any particularly significant change in quite a few years now. I don't see what .NET (no MS bashing intended here) with all its runtime/intermediate format/etc.. has done that is substantially different than what has existed before. (AND XML crap doesn't count at all as any kind of progress, IMHO).
Is it something that will require using Outlook on Windows to work? Alternatively, will I be force to use some MS software just to send mail to people who are using MS based web/mail/etc client/server programs?
Wasn't it Maezel's chess player? ( (Prose by Edgar Allan Poe here)
buying a box of Cappucino-flavored All-Bran for my wife when we were honeymooning
Not that I have much experience with this kind of thing, but is All-Bran really what people buy their spouses while honeymooning?
I don't know what will be more lame:
Or finding that Post Cereal came up with a decaf-flavoured version of the same thing.
not the other 203 that supported the U.S.
203? I'd be impressed to see a list of countries that's just half as long. BTW, only countries that did send troops (and Saudi Arabia and Turkey) get to share the spoils. Rest of the countries get zilch.
What Microsoft? I only know BechtelOS and HalliburtonOS.
I think her motto should have been "Who would Jesus spam?". WWJS?
I guess next thing they'll ask IBM and all linux users to prove in court that they did not have anything to do with the DOS attack.
Unfortunately, they're difficult to come by. I'd suggest the close substitute that I have, the Pentax ZX-M. I've been using it for quite some time now, and other than the "infinite time exposure", I pretty much get most of the things that I want to experiment with. It does have time/aperture priority modes which I used earlier to help me, but soon you will be happier just experimenting with the fully manual mode. Given the fact that it cost much lesser than most other cameras, it's a great deal for a student on a tight budget.
Hey, Alex Chiu was right after all!!
So how many friends do you still have left?
Turned out that a neutron had stolen it. But he never went to jail. He was never charged.