Woah -- no it's flipping not "better" if it's domestic, it's still people suffering. People just like you, trying to live their lives. To say that Chinese people "deserve" brain damage because the Chinese government is of questionable character is callous in the extreme. Indeed, apparently remaining domestic perpetuated their use, whereas export exposed the problem, so at least there is some awareness. That being the case I would argue it's better for the entire world if the products are exported.
No one deserves to suffer because of the actions of their government. Think about our own international image and what has happened to it over the past decade. Do you feel like you deserve to be shot because of the actions of your government? Even though you have infinitely more control over your government than those Chinese do over theirs?
Private enterprise failed here just as much -- the retailers had just as much opportunity to discover cadmium contamination and didn't do it . I tell you what, you name the private corporation that could handle vetting all of our imports.
While you're chewing on that -- how are those government-built roads, government-run civil services, and food quality that improved measurably after government regulation treating you? Government isn't always the answer, but neither is privatization. Anti-corporate sentiment is at an all-time high, and it is richly deserved.
I've seen a lot of pro- and anti- Wal-Mart nonsense in this section of the comments, and I almost just breezed by, but now I'm glad I didn't; yours is actually the best idea I've heard in a while.
How many people know that cadmium is a poison? Do you think that the jewelry in question had a warning label on it that said something to the effect of "this product is toxic and will cause brain damage"? Do you even think there was an acknowledgment that the products contained cadmium at all? Of course not. No one is going out and "buying cadmium based products." That's ridiculous. You're trying to excuse what is either criminal fraud or criminal negligence.
So you are claiming that the stories that appear have a 'bias' towards Apple? On what basis? To what effect? You as of this posting link an iPhone app review site in your sig; is that part of the bias?
Your flatscreen TV is the functional equivalent of the theater screen plus the theater projector. The magic bits that let the glasses show you 3D are in the projector -- the 'guts' of your TV have to be able to produce a special kind of image to show on the screen.
And if you would have read that section before jumping down the guy's throat, you would have noted that the section exists specifically to discredit the idea that the wagon-wheel effect is observable under continuous illumination, instead being in all cases attributable to factors that reproduce an externally stroboscopic effect. You are the one guilty of not reading the source material and your hostility is therefore even further to your discredit.
If the price of all food except for white rice was set (arbitrarily) at $5,000/oz. would that be ok? I mean, it would be your fault if you paid for anything besides white rice. People should not have to do without things they want in order to eliminate corruption. That some do is noble, and laudable besides. But it doesn't mean it's ok for practices to continue, just because not all people choose the same of the two evils.
or pursuits which will never produce anything of use (e.g. SETI@HOME).
Guys! This guy here knows ahead of time which scientific endeavors will produce results! Finally, an oracle to guide us!
Also, you are not a final authority on whether my CPU cycles are productive.
Do you like software? Do you know what it takes to compile a modern codebase? Do you like the internet? Have you ever balanced load on a webserver? There are plenty of jobs that are still CPU-bound and benefit people. Although now that I think about it, you're probably just going to dismiss the internet as group-think brainwashing, or some other nonsense.
Plenty of companies are making strides for more efficient processors, including the generation directly after the one you are using. Your anti-progress-mentality is hurting the planet a lot more than the things you cry out against.
Not all background noise is from outside the ears. I have a condition (tinnitus? sp?) whereby there is a constant ringing in my ears, and so silence has the ability to drive me absolutely batty. I have to run a fan when I sleep, and any time I'm trying to work music is my constant companion. More than that, though, the music keeps me motivated -- I take a lot of energy from the music I listen to.
Yes, generic drivers can run components with generic interfaces. You are talking about a lowest-common-denominator driver model, and the performance you gain by using assembly is lost manifold by not supporting the specific feature sets of hardware.
Look, I love writing in C because it lets me hit the iron. But in the real world, development time costs money, and even as a customer I'd rather have a slightly bloated (say) IDE tomorrow than use a pared-down platform-locked lean-and-mean that came out in two years and cost twice as much. Moreover, by the time it came out computer advancements would have made that bloated IDE less so.
Yes, bloat is a disease. But so is over-optimization, and starting off with assembly is the worst symptom.
Companies don't know how to manage money anymore. Long term gains (like a productive group with experience working together) are traded for short term gains (advertising gimmicks) so often that nowadays it's just the expected mode of operation.
I don't know too much about Pandemic Studios in particular, but I've been hearing about a LOT of layoffs at EA, and at the same time it's almost like they are throwing money away on brand placement. No company ever thinks to improve their bottom line by steadily generating quality product anymore. The money that goes into solid development is always the dregs of money first given to analysts and marketers.
I'm normally not a foaming-at-the-mouth anti-establishment labor-theory humanist, but things like this (especially with the oft-cited 'global economy') really and truly make me sick.
Re: bubbles, that's rather what I was saying. Circles very close to true exist in nature. The spherical formation of bubbles itself is the result of a couple of very basic laws. Of course nature doesn't 'care' what pi is, but that doesn't change the value. What do you suppose the ratios of diameter to circumference were before there were observers? Putting a number to it didn't change anything; that's almost the point of mathematics, to describe things in a way that doesn't rely upon them.
Re: flat space, it's true that the locally measured value changes with the curvature of space, but even in the absence of flat space, with access to only a few points of curvature, it would become obvious what the value in an undisturbed medium would be.
Math is simply the observation of what is already there, and what has always been there. No one 'invented' pi -- it's just and simply the measuring of a value that's been there all along. All we did was put a name to it.
I would claim that the ratio of a circle to its diameter is independent of being observed, or indeed there being an observer. I would also claim that the laws of geometry, probability and topology are universal and also do not depend on the existence of observers, let alone their ability to perform maths.
Since the existance of a perfect circle depends on the thoughts of an observer, the ratio of the diameter to the circumference of such an object must depend on there being an observer. Nature can produce approximate circles, but not perfect ones.
Radioactive decay follows an exponential decay curve. It will have done so long before anyone could add, let alone handle irrational numbers like e.
"Exponential decay curve" and "irrational numbers" are two different concepts. (1/2)^N is an exponential decay curve -- which defines the half-life of a radioactive substance. For no integer value of N is the result "irrational".
This puts me firmly in the category of maths being discovered, not invented.
Right destination, wrong reason.
The circles Nature creates can be approximate only because the "perfect" circle is constant. No perfect circle = no circle = no approximate circles (what is a circle?). The immutables have existed for all time.
The remark about irrational numbers is irrelevant to the point about exponential decay, but for this reason pi has always been a universal constant. All manner of physical relations involve second, third, and fourth roots, which of course easily gives rise to irrational numbers.
It's like a company that donates $20,000 to a charity then spends $50,000 to advertise it in the media. Gov't shouldn't be 'bragging' about spending money.
I get what you're saying... but in the situation you describe, didn't the charity still come out $20k ahead?
? I never said programmers were bricklayers. Programming might have conceptual similarities to the idea of building-blocks, but it's a demanding and difficult skill to learn and one that takes a lot of talent to master. (Disclaimer: I don't know anything about how hard it is to actually lay bricks.) It's to no one's discredit to be a programmer any more than it's to their credit to be a computer scientist. They're different things.
Perhaps the confusion arises from some implied criticism of vocational education. That's neither intended nor, I think, reasonable. To my mind (and maybe I'm just crazy) vocational education focuses on the teaching of skills used in a vocation, hence the name, and includes work experience. University education, on the other hand, focuses on teaching of a universal view of subjects, hence the name, and includes independent study and theorizing.
One is doing, and one is thinking. Sometimes doing requires a lot of thinking, and sometimes thinking requires a lot of doing, but the goals are different.
A lot of the problem, here, and a lot of the heat in the comments to this article comes, I think, from preconceptions of value. For some reason, people think going to a 4-year college makes you smart, and going to a vocational college makes you dumb, and nothing could be farther from the truth. They are simply educations with different goals. Both are valuable, and I have no end of respect for both.
I get so tired of listening to people that think they have more insight, knowledge, and hard experience than the thousands of truly talented and bright people out there getting things done.
You're wrong. You're being closed-minded and short-sighted. People with advanced higher education from acclaimed universities have proven that they are more capable and more open-minded than you. People with advanced higher education from any university have a chance of having proved the same. Our "scienec" is no more or less embryonic than it ever has been. You are insulting the hard work that many truly intelligent and talented people have done over the history of our race while you sit back and reap its benefits. It is a good thing, truly, that intelligence and benevolence oft go hand in hand.
Partially, I think it depends on what kind of software you're writing.
(The following statistics are made-up. Cope with that somehow, and don't bother "correcting" them.)
Percentage writing software using source control tools (something which was NOT taught): 95%
Percentage writing software that deals with the moving and counting of money: 35%
Percentage writing software using calculus: 2%
By any reasonable measure, CS courses should teach source control LONG before they get to calculus. If they're going to teach a problem domain (and don't be fooled, that's all calculus is in your example), they should be teaching GAAP long before they get around to calculus.
There's no excuse for requiring calculus.
Woah. Back up.
Source control doesn't need to be 'taught' any more than using an IDE does. It's a tool you use to get the job done. Did you have as much trouble with source control as you did with Calculus? You probably think source control is harder, but you mastered it because that's where your talents are, right? Nonsense. Source control is just something you use. There was maybe a one hour session in one of my courses about it, and that was plenty. I personally had learned about it long ago, when I was learning about programming (not to be confused with CS).
There's no excuse for not knowing source control -on your own-.
Re: Calculus, it's interesting to me that the ONLY people who ever think Calculus shouldn't be required are the people who had trouble with it. But, see, you weren't taking programming, so the amount of programming done with calculus doesn't matter one bit. You were taking Computer -Science-, and in case the name didn't leap out at you, it is a formal scientific field, and almost every problem it presents can be approached with higher mathematics.
You are trying to fit a round peg in a square hole, and trying to convince everyone else to round out the hole for you. Congratulations on your job and success, but not so much on condescending to people looking to use what they learned.
He didn't say anything about being a programmer. CS is not about programming. Let me repeat it again for you. CS is not about programming. The job you are in has little to do with Computer Science. Computers are not little pocket calculators. They are hugely complex and adaptable devices, and software written for them is developed in several layers. The very state-space the software is developed in is complex enough to be analyzed. Programming is not solving problems, and solving problems is not programming, for anything more complex than projects a student might undertake on their own. Ad hoc development practices might work for a nifty web app or that cool shell utility you wrote in the dorm. It does NOT work for real-world problems.
One more time: CS is not about programming. You took a theoretical degree in an applied field and then went to apply vocational training. Your success has nothing to do with your education or your inability to succeed in calculus. If anything, you argue strongly FOR formalized education.
This is disingenuous. None of those things you mentioned tell a falsehood. What you are doing is extrapolating and making assumptions -- which places the fault on the person who (apparently) believes a person's breath smells like mint naturally. The actual lies that you are trying to justify are something else entirely.
Sex is never an emotionless act. I sympathize with the guy's regret and feel he has become much bigger for it. This "if it's fun it's fun" business is ignoring the realities of humanity -- these are people, not toys you buy at the dollar store.
What if one of them reported bad blocks and then "crapped out" afterwards? Wouldn't that mean two of them reported two bad blocks, and then two crapped out entirely, resulting in a total of three? Set theory. Think about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Woah -- no it's flipping not "better" if it's domestic, it's still people suffering. People just like you, trying to live their lives. To say that Chinese people "deserve" brain damage because the Chinese government is of questionable character is callous in the extreme. Indeed, apparently remaining domestic perpetuated their use, whereas export exposed the problem, so at least there is some awareness. That being the case I would argue it's better for the entire world if the products are exported.
No one deserves to suffer because of the actions of their government. Think about our own international image and what has happened to it over the past decade. Do you feel like you deserve to be shot because of the actions of your government? Even though you have infinitely more control over your government than those Chinese do over theirs?
Private enterprise failed here just as much -- the retailers had just as much opportunity to discover cadmium contamination and didn't do it . I tell you what, you name the private corporation that could handle vetting all of our imports.
While you're chewing on that -- how are those government-built roads, government-run civil services, and food quality that improved measurably after government regulation treating you? Government isn't always the answer, but neither is privatization. Anti-corporate sentiment is at an all-time high, and it is richly deserved.
I've seen a lot of pro- and anti- Wal-Mart nonsense in this section of the comments, and I almost just breezed by, but now I'm glad I didn't; yours is actually the best idea I've heard in a while.
How many people know that cadmium is a poison? Do you think that the jewelry in question had a warning label on it that said something to the effect of "this product is toxic and will cause brain damage"? Do you even think there was an acknowledgment that the products contained cadmium at all? Of course not. No one is going out and "buying cadmium based products." That's ridiculous. You're trying to excuse what is either criminal fraud or criminal negligence.
So you are claiming that the stories that appear have a 'bias' towards Apple? On what basis? To what effect? You as of this posting link an iPhone app review site in your sig; is that part of the bias?
Your flatscreen TV is the functional equivalent of the theater screen plus the theater projector. The magic bits that let the glasses show you 3D are in the projector -- the 'guts' of your TV have to be able to produce a special kind of image to show on the screen.
And if you would have read that section before jumping down the guy's throat, you would have noted that the section exists specifically to discredit the idea that the wagon-wheel effect is observable under continuous illumination, instead being in all cases attributable to factors that reproduce an externally stroboscopic effect. You are the one guilty of not reading the source material and your hostility is therefore even further to your discredit.
If the price of all food except for white rice was set (arbitrarily) at $5,000/oz. would that be ok? I mean, it would be your fault if you paid for anything besides white rice. People should not have to do without things they want in order to eliminate corruption. That some do is noble, and laudable besides. But it doesn't mean it's ok for practices to continue, just because not all people choose the same of the two evils.
or pursuits which will never produce anything of use (e.g. SETI@HOME).
Guys! This guy here knows ahead of time which scientific endeavors will produce results! Finally, an oracle to guide us!
Also, you are not a final authority on whether my CPU cycles are productive.
Do you like software? Do you know what it takes to compile a modern codebase? Do you like the internet? Have you ever balanced load on a webserver? There are plenty of jobs that are still CPU-bound and benefit people. Although now that I think about it, you're probably just going to dismiss the internet as group-think brainwashing, or some other nonsense.
Plenty of companies are making strides for more efficient processors, including the generation directly after the one you are using. Your anti-progress-mentality is hurting the planet a lot more than the things you cry out against.
Not all background noise is from outside the ears. I have a condition (tinnitus? sp?) whereby there is a constant ringing in my ears, and so silence has the ability to drive me absolutely batty. I have to run a fan when I sleep, and any time I'm trying to work music is my constant companion. More than that, though, the music keeps me motivated -- I take a lot of energy from the music I listen to.
Yes, generic drivers can run components with generic interfaces. You are talking about a lowest-common-denominator driver model, and the performance you gain by using assembly is lost manifold by not supporting the specific feature sets of hardware.
Look, I love writing in C because it lets me hit the iron. But in the real world, development time costs money, and even as a customer I'd rather have a slightly bloated (say) IDE tomorrow than use a pared-down platform-locked lean-and-mean that came out in two years and cost twice as much. Moreover, by the time it came out computer advancements would have made that bloated IDE less so.
Yes, bloat is a disease. But so is over-optimization, and starting off with assembly is the worst symptom.
This makes sense. EA is strapped for cash. It's not like they just designed, developed, leased, furnished, and staffed a couple of storefronts on prime real estate to advertise one game to a limited audience.
Companies don't know how to manage money anymore. Long term gains (like a productive group with experience working together) are traded for short term gains (advertising gimmicks) so often that nowadays it's just the expected mode of operation.
I don't know too much about Pandemic Studios in particular, but I've been hearing about a LOT of layoffs at EA, and at the same time it's almost like they are throwing money away on brand placement. No company ever thinks to improve their bottom line by steadily generating quality product anymore. The money that goes into solid development is always the dregs of money first given to analysts and marketers.
I'm normally not a foaming-at-the-mouth anti-establishment labor-theory humanist, but things like this (especially with the oft-cited 'global economy') really and truly make me sick.
So you can't 'solve' a riddle if anyone else has ever solved it? Can you not 'solve' a puzzle if anyone else has ever solved it?
Re: bubbles, that's rather what I was saying. Circles very close to true exist in nature. The spherical formation of bubbles itself is the result of a couple of very basic laws. Of course nature doesn't 'care' what pi is, but that doesn't change the value. What do you suppose the ratios of diameter to circumference were before there were observers? Putting a number to it didn't change anything; that's almost the point of mathematics, to describe things in a way that doesn't rely upon them.
Re: flat space, it's true that the locally measured value changes with the curvature of space, but even in the absence of flat space, with access to only a few points of curvature, it would become obvious what the value in an undisturbed medium would be.
Math is simply the observation of what is already there, and what has always been there. No one 'invented' pi -- it's just and simply the measuring of a value that's been there all along. All we did was put a name to it.
I would claim that the ratio of a circle to its diameter is independent of being observed, or indeed there being an observer. I would also claim that the laws of geometry, probability and topology are universal and also do not depend on the existence of observers, let alone their ability to perform maths.
Since the existance of a perfect circle depends on the thoughts of an observer, the ratio of the diameter to the circumference of such an object must depend on there being an observer. Nature can produce approximate circles, but not perfect ones.
Radioactive decay follows an exponential decay curve. It will have done so long before anyone could add, let alone handle irrational numbers like e.
"Exponential decay curve" and "irrational numbers" are two different concepts. (1/2)^N is an exponential decay curve -- which defines the half-life of a radioactive substance. For no integer value of N is the result "irrational".
This puts me firmly in the category of maths being discovered, not invented.
Right destination, wrong reason.
The circles Nature creates can be approximate only because the "perfect" circle is constant. No perfect circle = no circle = no approximate circles (what is a circle?). The immutables have existed for all time.
The remark about irrational numbers is irrelevant to the point about exponential decay, but for this reason pi has always been a universal constant. All manner of physical relations involve second, third, and fourth roots, which of course easily gives rise to irrational numbers.
If you discover the answer to a riddle, haven't you solved the riddle?
It's like a company that donates $20,000 to a charity then spends $50,000 to advertise it in the media. Gov't shouldn't be 'bragging' about spending money.
I get what you're saying... but in the situation you describe, didn't the charity still come out $20k ahead?
? I never said programmers were bricklayers. Programming might have conceptual similarities to the idea of building-blocks, but it's a demanding and difficult skill to learn and one that takes a lot of talent to master. (Disclaimer: I don't know anything about how hard it is to actually lay bricks.) It's to no one's discredit to be a programmer any more than it's to their credit to be a computer scientist. They're different things.
Perhaps the confusion arises from some implied criticism of vocational education. That's neither intended nor, I think, reasonable. To my mind (and maybe I'm just crazy) vocational education focuses on the teaching of skills used in a vocation, hence the name, and includes work experience. University education, on the other hand, focuses on teaching of a universal view of subjects, hence the name, and includes independent study and theorizing.
One is doing, and one is thinking. Sometimes doing requires a lot of thinking, and sometimes thinking requires a lot of doing, but the goals are different.
A lot of the problem, here, and a lot of the heat in the comments to this article comes, I think, from preconceptions of value. For some reason, people think going to a 4-year college makes you smart, and going to a vocational college makes you dumb, and nothing could be farther from the truth. They are simply educations with different goals. Both are valuable, and I have no end of respect for both.
Generalize much?
I get so tired of listening to people that think they have more insight, knowledge, and hard experience than the thousands of truly talented and bright people out there getting things done.
You're wrong. You're being closed-minded and short-sighted. People with advanced higher education from acclaimed universities have proven that they are more capable and more open-minded than you. People with advanced higher education from any university have a chance of having proved the same. Our "scienec" is no more or less embryonic than it ever has been. You are insulting the hard work that many truly intelligent and talented people have done over the history of our race while you sit back and reap its benefits. It is a good thing, truly, that intelligence and benevolence oft go hand in hand.
Partially, I think it depends on what kind of software you're writing.
(The following statistics are made-up. Cope with that somehow, and don't bother "correcting" them.)
Percentage writing software using source control tools (something which was NOT taught): 95%
Percentage writing software that deals with the moving and counting of money: 35%
Percentage writing software using calculus: 2%
By any reasonable measure, CS courses should teach source control LONG before they get to calculus. If they're going to teach a problem domain (and don't be fooled, that's all calculus is in your example), they should be teaching GAAP long before they get around to calculus.
There's no excuse for requiring calculus.
Woah. Back up.
Source control doesn't need to be 'taught' any more than using an IDE does. It's a tool you use to get the job done. Did you have as much trouble with source control as you did with Calculus? You probably think source control is harder, but you mastered it because that's where your talents are, right? Nonsense. Source control is just something you use. There was maybe a one hour session in one of my courses about it, and that was plenty. I personally had learned about it long ago, when I was learning about programming (not to be confused with CS).
There's no excuse for not knowing source control -on your own-.
Re: Calculus, it's interesting to me that the ONLY people who ever think Calculus shouldn't be required are the people who had trouble with it. But, see, you weren't taking programming, so the amount of programming done with calculus doesn't matter one bit. You were taking Computer -Science-, and in case the name didn't leap out at you, it is a formal scientific field, and almost every problem it presents can be approached with higher mathematics.
You are trying to fit a round peg in a square hole, and trying to convince everyone else to round out the hole for you. Congratulations on your job and success, but not so much on condescending to people looking to use what they learned.
He didn't say anything about being a programmer. CS is not about programming. Let me repeat it again for you. CS is not about programming. The job you are in has little to do with Computer Science. Computers are not little pocket calculators. They are hugely complex and adaptable devices, and software written for them is developed in several layers. The very state-space the software is developed in is complex enough to be analyzed. Programming is not solving problems, and solving problems is not programming, for anything more complex than projects a student might undertake on their own. Ad hoc development practices might work for a nifty web app or that cool shell utility you wrote in the dorm. It does NOT work for real-world problems.
One more time: CS is not about programming. You took a theoretical degree in an applied field and then went to apply vocational training. Your success has nothing to do with your education or your inability to succeed in calculus. If anything, you argue strongly FOR formalized education.
This is disingenuous. None of those things you mentioned tell a falsehood. What you are doing is extrapolating and making assumptions -- which places the fault on the person who (apparently) believes a person's breath smells like mint naturally. The actual lies that you are trying to justify are something else entirely.
Sex is never an emotionless act. I sympathize with the guy's regret and feel he has become much bigger for it. This "if it's fun it's fun" business is ignoring the realities of humanity -- these are people, not toys you buy at the dollar store.
What if one of them reported bad blocks and then "crapped out" afterwards? Wouldn't that mean two of them reported two bad blocks, and then two crapped out entirely, resulting in a total of three? Set theory. Think about it.