The front-line techies are usually just script monkeys. It's the 2nd and 3rd tier guys who actually know a thing or two, and will be writing the scripts and updating those databases. If Dell(or whoever) had the foresight to set up some kind of direct-access form or support-suggestion location, I think there might be a number of people who would like to share their hints. Let the upper level techs dissect that info, and then filter it back out to the front-line guys/gals.
Or you're bored and instead of going to a play or an art museum like an "educated" person, you just get drunk and screw:) (with apologies to Jimmy Buffett)
You're absolutely right! We have to control this population explosion right now! Let's start together. You go to the cliff and jump off, I'll be right behind you. I promise.
I understand the "concepts" thing, but the courses need to be sure they're teaching the CORRECT concepts. Many people seem to come away with "If I type this, some magic happens, and things work", rather than knowing what's going on. I've also watched and helped many people learn how to program, and found that this is what they come away with if they don't have the more base concepts and are thrown right into a high level language. First off they want immediate results, then they need to understand how it works, and then they should move into larger projects. The trick is just in making sure the immediate results part doesn't serve to give them false understanding.
Scheme is a freaky damn language. I still can't get my head all the way around it, maybe because I learned C/C++ first off. I understand the list processing, the recursive loops, etc. But some of the things people do with it still seem semi-magical. Maybe I need to look at it again after taking a break from it for a while.
Multiplication, subtraction, addition and division are central to all numeric math. That isn't formulaic. We don't start kids with "Just put 2 where you see X in 2*5X+8 and put it into your calculator, then give me the answer", which is basically what Java and other high level languages do. We teach them how the numbers work together, and THEN we work on abstracting out that concept into algebra and other higher level concepts.
That code he wrote was clean, concise, easy to understand and debug and change. It was just wrong. The coder obviously didn't realize that implicitly creating a new object like that automatically allocates more memory. Until you've had to allocate memory manually, this kind of thing is never really driven home. It works great for small apps, but not industrial strength ones. C/C++ and the concepts they teach you are still necessary, even in the 4G languages.
All of which serve to confuse a new programmer. Garbage collection is a great tool, but it's not one that should be used without knowing what it does. Many new Java programmers make horrid mistakes because they don't understand this.
Let them learn the small programs on C/C++, let them know what the computer does, then give them the power tools to build bigger, more powerful programs that will actually run well.
I've seen more people be completely baffled by the idisynchrosies of Java and other "high level" languages. They start getting it much more when they use C/C++ and see how arrays and so on are actually handled in memory. You can make a Java app a complete pig if you have no inkling of what's going on behind the scenes, and that's why most Java apps suck. They're not coded by people who use the features of Java, etc. as a tool, they're coded by people who use those features as a crutch. Start 'em off with BASIC, show them some C++ so they can get results, ASM so they know what's going on at machine level, and then onto the OO design for big programs. OOP really isn't useful until you hit the big, GUI programs anyway.
They're non-combatants until the bomb in their truck goes off, and by that time it's too late for the troops. The problem with "non-combatants" as you put it is that they look very much like the "combatants", and the "combatants" keep it that way because they want to be able to blend in and hide in the main population.
You have NO FUCKING CLUE what intelligence was behind that attack on that truck. Nor do I. But I don't think most Americans, even in the military, would want to kill someone without a decent idea that they might mean harm. And I also know that there are a number of people in that region who would kill any westerner without a second thought because they're serving Allah, and guess what? They look just like everyone else until you're dead. You aren't living that reality, and it's very easy to criticize it when you aren't. Take a step back and try seeing things from the other side once in a while. It might just open your eyes to how shitty people are in general. But if someone's gonna die because someone wants to be shitty, I'd rather it be them than me. There would be a lot more dead people in Iraq if we just wanted to kill indiscriminately.
Nope. Just a much higher violent crime rate. Most people seem to think this is because of the lack of protection that a person in the UK definitely doesn't have, but a person in the US may or may not have. Additional links:
If you don't need all that extra crap, turn it off. You can turn off the theme support in XP, as well as tons of other services you don't really need. I even do that on computers with "plenty" of RAM because I run a lot of programs at once, and it really helps the performance. Look here for some info on which ones are safe to turn off, depending on your setup.
I think it's more that the people who read the WSJ quite possibly don't know this. My parents or my brother wouldn't. Most casual users wouldn't. Sometimes what's obvious to one person highly entrenched in a "culture" isn't at all obvious to someone outside of it.
Oh, like this? Jesus, search Google before you say something stupid. That took me all of 2 seconds.
If you ever think you have a great idea, chances are someone else has thought of it first.
I have Excel 2003, and it does the same damn thing. It puts up multiple buttons on the toolbar, which is ok, except that the main close button on any one of them is a fucking global close. You have to hit the lower close button, though every other part of the interface hints to you that it's a totally separate window. His criticism is well placed, and your apologizing for MS is not.
You actually think that many people lived past 40 in those times? You sir are sorely mistaken. Hell, the average life expectancy was below 50 until around 1901our average life expectancy NOW is just 77 years. They might have lived until about 70 at the very, very most, not in the "quite likely" realm.
He never said RFID wasn't evil. But falsely demonizing something is stupid, and it's why evolution and science in general are under assault by the religious. We all know that RFID is evil... her explanation just isn't why it is.
Not to mention that he dismisses Red Hat in favor of Oracle. I don't use RH, but if you look in the kernel, they've got a TON of stuff they've done. I highly respect them for that.
We had a similar lab at my school. Being a CS student, I actually used an SSH tunnel to a random machine in our block of machines to run mozilla over so I could get access to all the school subscribed journals and such at home.
If they had let, say, a telnet server or web server on there, that's a different story. But SSH is relatively safe. It's designed specifically to be a safe way of accessing a computer remotely.
Slashdot Mirror
The front-line techies are usually just script monkeys. It's the 2nd and 3rd tier guys who actually know a thing or two, and will be writing the scripts and updating those databases. If Dell(or whoever) had the foresight to set up some kind of direct-access form or support-suggestion location, I think there might be a number of people who would like to share their hints. Let the upper level techs dissect that info, and then filter it back out to the front-line guys/gals.
Or you're bored and instead of going to a play or an art museum like an "educated" person, you just get drunk and screw :)
(with apologies to Jimmy Buffett)
You're absolutely right! We have to control this population explosion right now! Let's start together. You go to the cliff and jump off, I'll be right behind you. I promise.
I understand the "concepts" thing, but the courses need to be sure they're teaching the CORRECT concepts. Many people seem to come away with "If I type this, some magic happens, and things work", rather than knowing what's going on. I've also watched and helped many people learn how to program, and found that this is what they come away with if they don't have the more base concepts and are thrown right into a high level language. First off they want immediate results, then they need to understand how it works, and then they should move into larger projects. The trick is just in making sure the immediate results part doesn't serve to give them false understanding.
Scheme is a freaky damn language. I still can't get my head all the way around it, maybe because I learned C/C++ first off. I understand the list processing, the recursive loops, etc. But some of the things people do with it still seem semi-magical. Maybe I need to look at it again after taking a break from it for a while.
Multiplication, subtraction, addition and division are central to all numeric math. That isn't formulaic. We don't start kids with "Just put 2 where you see X in 2*5X+8 and put it into your calculator, then give me the answer", which is basically what Java and other high level languages do. We teach them how the numbers work together, and THEN we work on abstracting out that concept into algebra and other higher level concepts.
That code he wrote was clean, concise, easy to understand and debug and change. It was just wrong. The coder obviously didn't realize that implicitly creating a new object like that automatically allocates more memory. Until you've had to allocate memory manually, this kind of thing is never really driven home. It works great for small apps, but not industrial strength ones. C/C++ and the concepts they teach you are still necessary, even in the 4G languages.
All of which serve to confuse a new programmer. Garbage collection is a great tool, but it's not one that should be used without knowing what it does. Many new Java programmers make horrid mistakes because they don't understand this.
Let them learn the small programs on C/C++, let them know what the computer does, then give them the power tools to build bigger, more powerful programs that will actually run well.
I've seen more people be completely baffled by the idisynchrosies of Java and other "high level" languages. They start getting it much more when they use C/C++ and see how arrays and so on are actually handled in memory. You can make a Java app a complete pig if you have no inkling of what's going on behind the scenes, and that's why most Java apps suck. They're not coded by people who use the features of Java, etc. as a tool, they're coded by people who use those features as a crutch. Start 'em off with BASIC, show them some C++ so they can get results, ASM so they know what's going on at machine level, and then onto the OO design for big programs. OOP really isn't useful until you hit the big, GUI programs anyway.
His view can't be that great with his cranio-rectal insertion issues...
They're non-combatants until the bomb in their truck goes off, and by that time it's too late for the troops. The problem with "non-combatants" as you put it is that they look very much like the "combatants", and the "combatants" keep it that way because they want to be able to blend in and hide in the main population.
You have NO FUCKING CLUE what intelligence was behind that attack on that truck. Nor do I. But I don't think most Americans, even in the military, would want to kill someone without a decent idea that they might mean harm. And I also know that there are a number of people in that region who would kill any westerner without a second thought because they're serving Allah, and guess what? They look just like everyone else until you're dead. You aren't living that reality, and it's very easy to criticize it when you aren't. Take a step back and try seeing things from the other side once in a while. It might just open your eyes to how shitty people are in general. But if someone's gonna die because someone wants to be shitty, I'd rather it be them than me. There would be a lot more dead people in Iraq if we just wanted to kill indiscriminately.
Nope. Just a much higher violent crime rate. Most people seem to think this is because of the lack of protection that a person in the UK definitely doesn't have, but a person in the US may or may not have. Additional links:
US DOJ
NewsMax
The Weekly Standard
Get off your "Britain is better" high horse, because it's completely wrong.
If you don't need all that extra crap, turn it off. You can turn off the theme support in XP, as well as tons of other services you don't really need. I even do that on computers with "plenty" of RAM because I run a lot of programs at once, and it really helps the performance. Look here for some info on which ones are safe to turn off, depending on your setup.
I think it's more that the people who read the WSJ quite possibly don't know this. My parents or my brother wouldn't. Most casual users wouldn't. Sometimes what's obvious to one person highly entrenched in a "culture" isn't at all obvious to someone outside of it.
Oh, like this? Jesus, search Google before you say something stupid. That took me all of 2 seconds.
If you ever think you have a great idea, chances are someone else has thought of it first.
I have Excel 2003, and it does the same damn thing. It puts up multiple buttons on the toolbar, which is ok, except that the main close button on any one of them is a fucking global close. You have to hit the lower close button, though every other part of the interface hints to you that it's a totally separate window. His criticism is well placed, and your apologizing for MS is not.
Doesn't Wine run the MS Office apps fairly well any more? That'd cut down on having the actual separate machine for email at least...
You actually think that many people lived past 40 in those times? You sir are sorely mistaken. Hell, the average life expectancy was below 50 until around 1901our average life expectancy NOW is just 77 years. They might have lived until about 70 at the very, very most, not in the "quite likely" realm.
He never said RFID wasn't evil. But falsely demonizing something is stupid, and it's why evolution and science in general are under assault by the religious. We all know that RFID is evil... her explanation just isn't why it is.
It's not that it's a novel idea, it's that the technology necessary is actually becoming possible now
Not to mention that he dismisses Red Hat in favor of Oracle. I don't use RH, but if you look in the kernel, they've got a TON of stuff they've done. I highly respect them for that.
For those who don't know, parent is referring to the Chewbacca Defense
That summary reads like any number one of my first attempts at writing:
It doesn't look as though things have made significant advances since then.
I'd be ok if it just didn't select anything, and made the user decide on one or the other. If they hit cancel, that meant "no"
We had a similar lab at my school. Being a CS student, I actually used an SSH tunnel to a random machine in our block of machines to run mozilla over so I could get access to all the school subscribed journals and such at home.
If they had let, say, a telnet server or web server on there, that's a different story. But SSH is relatively safe. It's designed specifically to be a safe way of accessing a computer remotely.