Did we not learn anything from "The Simpsons?" Once you give the dolphins an inch they will rise up and take back the land, pushing all of humanity out to sea! Granting them personhood is the first step to our eventual doom. DOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!
There was this article in Wired magazine talking about space junk and bringing them down with a giant tether. It seems like the balloon idea might work with large pieces of junk, but it seems like the bigger threat are the small pieces no larger than a few inches. The article stated that the ISS had a few close calls with some pieces of junk no larger than a baseball that could have caused massive damage if it hit the station. We can't tied a balloon or tether to every little piece out there. We need a giant space vacuum like this one!
I'm reading a lot of posts about the effectiveness of this new regulation -- how doable it will be, overpopulation, manufacturing costs, etc. But I think many of you are missing one large point. That is, it's none of the government's business how a television set is made! I feel like today everyone is running around asking whether we can do something that we forget to ask whether we should do it. I know, it's a stupid television. But it's just one more step in the over-regulation of our lives and the loss of our freedoms.
Look, if this is really such an issue then a television manufacturer could just release low-energy models of their products. If people think they are a good deal then they will buy them. I know that if I saw two equal television sets but one said that I will save $50/year on energy costs then I would be tempted to buy it. If the manufacturers sell enough then perhaps they will make more low-energy models or convert their entire line to it. It's how a free market works.
My Netflix queue is already 200+ movies long. I'm watching movies for the first time that came out 20+ years ago. So I don't really care if it takes another month for the DVD release because I have plenty of other movies to watch. I can't think of many situations where I absolutely need to watch a certain movie and I will be in that one-month, money-suck period. I'm sure the great majority of netflix and other movie renters fall into the same category.
I say we let the studio's try this and let the market decide. If it doesn't bother too many people and they make a little more money then fine. If no one likes it and they see a continued decline in sales then they will get the message and drop the idea. The one big fear is that they see a decline in sales and don't get the message and then go whining all the way up the hill to the congressmen that they own.
SUPER is extremely powerful while having every available function made as obvious as possible (and all have float-over hints), making it also useful as a training device for learning audio and video compression and conversion.
So true. I just finished converting my wedding videos from uncompressed DV to MPEGII and Super was the only application that provided me the options I wanted. I know that it is just a front end, but I got so frustrated with other applications (especially commercial ones) that did not give me the options I wanted. I'm not a big fan of templates that other programs seem to use (like "convert to iPod", "convert to DVD", etc.) because they always leave out one or two important options.
Super has now earned a prominent spot in my software collection and I hope they integrate the new ffmpeg functionality soon.
If you want something to last indefinitely then you have to store it in multiple locations. You will need to store it on a hard drive that is either in a RAID configuration or is backed up on another drive. You will also want to back it up somewhere online (http://www.mozy.com is a good one). Over the course of 20+ years it is completely possible that a fire or earthquake could wipe out your home so you need to have everything backed up on a remote site. You could also back things up on a family or friend's computer if you trust them (or you encrypt the data). In general, you want the media backed up on several different physical media and in multiple locations. Since it is so cheap to store data on multiple mediums in multiple locations, there really isn't any reason not to.
As time goes on and new formats come out and old ones die, you will have to convert those files from one format to another. If these files are in some sort of proprietary format (not recommended), then also backup the installer to the application that is needed to read them. However, a DVD iso image should stick around for a while and it's not like the format will just disappear overnight. But if another format becomes "THE STANDARD" then I'm sure there will be tools for converting DVDs to that format.
While I do agree that teaching the fundamentals are important for a CS education, I think people put too much emphasis on the actual language that is taught. Is it important to know about sorting algorithms, pointers, memory allocation? Of course it is. Is it important to actually write programs that use those principles? Again, of course. But is it important to spend all night dealing with memory allocation issues in an interface design class or artificial intelligence? No, probably not. Just like in industry, schools need to use the languages that make the most sense for the topic being taught. That might be java in some caes, C in others, perl, python, etc. To get my CS degree, I had classes that used Lisp, C, C++, Java, and even Perl. I think that makes me a much more flexible programmer than someone who only used one of the "hard core" languages.
What really needs to be taught in college is how to design and write maintainable code. When I got out of school I was so used to the "one week and then forget" projects that I really didn't know how to write programms that would need to change and be refactored over time. I didn't know how to get reqirements from customers and what questions to ask to make sure I was building the program correctly. IMHO, those are the skills that need to be taught in school over learning the particulars of a specific language since languages will morph and change over time. Foundations will remain the same.
They forgot to mention those stickers that you can put on your cell phone battery that will magically boost your reception. While they aren't as expensive as a Q-ray bracelet, I'm sure they make up for it in volume.
I tell people that anti-virus software is like medicine -- don't take it if you're not sick!
I use another medical saying -- "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". I would much rather have someone put up with a slightly slower computer or an odd (but usually documented) malfunction than to spend hours fixing their machine because they ran an executible from an email of unknown origin. And while this is far from a scientific, I've never had problems using AVG (or other non "big name" brands). But since this is slashdot, a one person sample set is more than enough to be "conclusive".
Although online storage is great for protecting against a physical disaster, it's simply too clumsy right now to be used effectively
I've been super paranoid about losing my data, especially if my backup drive dies, is stolen, or the earth opens up and swallows my apartment. But I had the same issues as you as to finding a good online storage company. At the risk of sounding like an advertisement, try Mozy. It's cheap ($5/month for unlimited storage) and has a pretty unobtrusive backup desktop client. Yeah, the initial upload of data took a while, but now my incremental backups only take a few minutes each night. It's main purpose is backup, so it's not like an online hard drive where you can access your data anywhere. Oh, and if you do have a major disaster, you can get your data on DVDs too (for a price). It's good peace of mind for $5/month.
NASA, particularly astronauts, have always been held to a much higher standard than the typical employee at some company. During the Apollo program, astronauts needed to stay on very strict schedules and routines or they risked losing their spot in the mission rotation. This also went for the astronaut's wife and family where they also had to keep their noses clean. But keeping to those high standards took a huge toll on astronauts and their families. I believe several of them got divorced and one's wife committed suicide (someone want to check me on this?) because of the pressure to always present this perfect, "everything is fine" facade. But at the same time, the media back in the 60's and 70's covered up a lot of the missteps of astronauts and the program in order to preserve their status and reputations and keep money going to NASA and the space program.
But yes, NASA has had a great history of screening the right people. And historically people have done their best to make NASA look good (since we were racing against the Ruskies for such a long time). But in today's media environment, every misstep is sensationalized and exaggerated because that's how media outlets make money.
They would survive without Jobs since they now have some momentum in certain areas such as digital music and consumer electronics. As long as they make incremental, evolutionary improvements to their already-existing popular products, they will do fine. Now that they have a name with things like the iPod, they just need to make sure that it remains perceived as "cooler" than the other devices which means making small changes (bigger screens, touchscreens, higher capacity, smaller size, etc.). They might get in trouble if Jobs was replaced by someone who wanted to take the company in a "completely new direction". Just look at HP as an example of what new directions can do to a good company. Or look at what almost happened to Apple when they let Steve go before.
When I graduated from college I had the same thoughts. I couldn't imagine that my school programming projects were going to prepare me for the "real" world of programming. After all, you are probably making the jump from projects that last one or two weeks with a handful of programming partners to projects that last months and years with possibly hundreds of people working on them. So you ask, how can I possibly make such a giant leap? The good news is that it's not like any company is going to make you lead programmer of a multi-million dollar project for your first job out of college. You'll probably get some pretty well-contained, narrowly-defined projects to work on to start. But over time you will get more responsibilities and work on more critical pieces of code.
I've worked with a lot of programmers just out of school. We sort of have to re-educate them to think about their decisions in a more global context. They are no longer working on projects that get tossed once they are graded, but ones that might be used for years to come. I'm only 4 years out of school myself, but I feel that I've learned a lot on the job that I never learned in school. So what use is a CS degree? It teaches you to think like an engineer. I believe a software company hires someone out of college, not for what they know, but for what the company can teach them. All that theory will actually come in handy because it taught you how to think and approach problems. So in short, don't worry about it.
The RIAA, with their army of lawyers, has been trying to shut down Kaaza and it's owner, Sherman Networks, for years. However, that company is spread out all over the world with everyone passing the buck on who is actually responsible for that program. The company has operated this shell game in a way that they escape various local and national laws and don't fall into any one's jurisdiction. So if the RIAA has been unable to get Sherman Networks to appear in court, how will a smaller groups of lawyers be able to do it in a class action lawsuit? And to add, this class-action isn't very rock-solid either.
You didn't mention what you are coding, only what language you are using. To me, the program is just as important as the language. In general, I would take Perl over.NET any day of the year. However, if the perl job was just writing little scripts all day long while the.NET job were larger, more complex applications, I would be tempted to take the.NET job.
Also, keep in mind that technologies change over time. Don't assume that if you start out in perl you will always be using Perl. You may start a job using perl, but a year or two later you find yourself working in Python, Lua, or Ruby. The perl company may start some new project and realize that perl is not the ideal language for it. That is why it is important to choose a company also for its culture. I've worked for a large software company before and didn't have such a great time since I was just a small cog in a giant machine. When I switched jobs, I took a cut in pay (since I was also jumping industries) but enjoyed the new company so much more. Like they say, if you can, choose the job that you would do for free because you'll be so much happier in the long run.
In a computer science class I can understand how using Linux is not a burden - ie learning difficult intricate details of the computer in order to use it is ok
I think the whole point is to lock down the machines so that there are no intricate details to understand. The school is looking on how it can take away all administrator access to these machines and lock them down. What the students will mostly likely be left with is a desktop with a web browser and text editor icon. In other words, the user experience will be just about the same on either a locked-down Linux or Windows machine so the school should go with whatever choice is the most secure and easiest to setup/maintain (based on the knowledge-base of the administrators).
Let's remember that system administration is hard and includes a lot of intricate details. But we're not talking about system administration. Saying that a locked-down computer is too complicated for high school students to use is like saying that TiVo is too complex just because it is based on Linux.
Microsoft switching to Linux would totally undermine their method of gaining and maintaining marketshare
I don't know if that is entirely accurate. I just came from the future and found the following memo. Sure, this was meant to be more for entertainment than some deep analysis on the future of Microsoft. But it does make you think that the future of Microsoft is not in doing everything their way and from the ground up, but instead let others deal with the low-level stuff and they can focus on what they are really selling -- a GUI with lots of bells and whistles. Looking at Vista development, how much easier would it have been to use a tried-and-true Unix security and permissions model and focus their attention on how to provide the user with the best interactive environment?
Yes! It is so nice to see someone actually use some history in his/her argument to show that a lot of what we face is nothing new. Unfortunately, people have a tendancy to think that the time in which they live is the most important time in history and that everything they do is somehow new or novel. Thank you for reminding people that this world does have a history that didn't just start the day G.W.B. took office. It's a shame that you will be modded down as a troll because you acknowledge that there is, in fact, a war going on.
You're so correct. I wonder how quickly people will forget events like the Sony rootkit when the PS3 hits the shelves. It seems like any conversation about the XBox involves commentary about Windows and other Microsoft products. But when people talk about the PS3 no one ever drags in commentary about Sony music, their proprietary music players, etc.
But considering that we live in a world where people forget what a politician is saying this week directly contradicts what he/she said last week, it's hardly surprising (don't know why I threw that in...I guess I'm just frustrated with politicians lately).
So, I see a lot of "But my hard drive stores 500 GB at a fraction of the price" comments. However, a flash drive can be yet another level of caching that sits between memory and the hard drive. The order of data access would then become L* cache, RAM, flash drive, hard drive. 32 GB is plenty of space to load the OS and run normal apps like a web browser, email client, etc. So, instead of writing a page/swap file out to the hard drive, one would be able to write it out to the flash drive instead. This would result in faster reads and not consume as much power (think laptops). Also, since it's persistent (unlike RAM) then you could have better computer boot times. Basically the mechanical hard drive becomes a type of nearline storage device that gets accessed later (and less often) in the pipeline. Does that make any sense? I often fell asleep in my OS class in college.
Isn't there a human in the processing chain somewhere? Doesn't someone have to physically open the envelop and scan the application? It seems like that is the logical place to check for potentially fraudulent applications. I don't believe that step is automated, but then again I've never worked at a place that needs to process thousands of letter a day. Or is it that the person getting paid minimum wage to open and scan letters could care less if someone is committing fraud?
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Did we not learn anything from "The Simpsons?" Once you give the dolphins an inch they will rise up and take back the land, pushing all of humanity out to sea! Granting them personhood is the first step to our eventual doom. DOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!
There was this article in Wired magazine talking about space junk and bringing them down with a giant tether. It seems like the balloon idea might work with large pieces of junk, but it seems like the bigger threat are the small pieces no larger than a few inches. The article stated that the ISS had a few close calls with some pieces of junk no larger than a baseball that could have caused massive damage if it hit the station. We can't tied a balloon or tether to every little piece out there. We need a giant space vacuum like this one!
I'm reading a lot of posts about the effectiveness of this new regulation -- how doable it will be, overpopulation, manufacturing costs, etc. But I think many of you are missing one large point. That is, it's none of the government's business how a television set is made! I feel like today everyone is running around asking whether we can do something that we forget to ask whether we should do it. I know, it's a stupid television. But it's just one more step in the over-regulation of our lives and the loss of our freedoms.
Look, if this is really such an issue then a television manufacturer could just release low-energy models of their products. If people think they are a good deal then they will buy them. I know that if I saw two equal television sets but one said that I will save $50/year on energy costs then I would be tempted to buy it. If the manufacturers sell enough then perhaps they will make more low-energy models or convert their entire line to it. It's how a free market works.
My Netflix queue is already 200+ movies long. I'm watching movies for the first time that came out 20+ years ago. So I don't really care if it takes another month for the DVD release because I have plenty of other movies to watch. I can't think of many situations where I absolutely need to watch a certain movie and I will be in that one-month, money-suck period. I'm sure the great majority of netflix and other movie renters fall into the same category.
I say we let the studio's try this and let the market decide. If it doesn't bother too many people and they make a little more money then fine. If no one likes it and they see a continued decline in sales then they will get the message and drop the idea. The one big fear is that they see a decline in sales and don't get the message and then go whining all the way up the hill to the congressmen that they own.
SUPER is extremely powerful while having every available function made as obvious as possible (and all have float-over hints), making it also useful as a training device for learning audio and video compression and conversion.
So true. I just finished converting my wedding videos from uncompressed DV to MPEGII and Super was the only application that provided me the options I wanted. I know that it is just a front end, but I got so frustrated with other applications (especially commercial ones) that did not give me the options I wanted. I'm not a big fan of templates that other programs seem to use (like "convert to iPod", "convert to DVD", etc.) because they always leave out one or two important options.
Super has now earned a prominent spot in my software collection and I hope they integrate the new ffmpeg functionality soon.
If you want something to last indefinitely then you have to store it in multiple locations. You will need to store it on a hard drive that is either in a RAID configuration or is backed up on another drive. You will also want to back it up somewhere online (http://www.mozy.com is a good one). Over the course of 20+ years it is completely possible that a fire or earthquake could wipe out your home so you need to have everything backed up on a remote site. You could also back things up on a family or friend's computer if you trust them (or you encrypt the data). In general, you want the media backed up on several different physical media and in multiple locations. Since it is so cheap to store data on multiple mediums in multiple locations, there really isn't any reason not to.
As time goes on and new formats come out and old ones die, you will have to convert those files from one format to another. If these files are in some sort of proprietary format (not recommended), then also backup the installer to the application that is needed to read them. However, a DVD iso image should stick around for a while and it's not like the format will just disappear overnight. But if another format becomes "THE STANDARD" then I'm sure there will be tools for converting DVDs to that format.
While I do agree that teaching the fundamentals are important for a CS education, I think people put too much emphasis on the actual language that is taught. Is it important to know about sorting algorithms, pointers, memory allocation? Of course it is. Is it important to actually write programs that use those principles? Again, of course. But is it important to spend all night dealing with memory allocation issues in an interface design class or artificial intelligence? No, probably not. Just like in industry, schools need to use the languages that make the most sense for the topic being taught. That might be java in some caes, C in others, perl, python, etc. To get my CS degree, I had classes that used Lisp, C, C++, Java, and even Perl. I think that makes me a much more flexible programmer than someone who only used one of the "hard core" languages.
What really needs to be taught in college is how to design and write maintainable code. When I got out of school I was so used to the "one week and then forget" projects that I really didn't know how to write programms that would need to change and be refactored over time. I didn't know how to get reqirements from customers and what questions to ask to make sure I was building the program correctly. IMHO, those are the skills that need to be taught in school over learning the particulars of a specific language since languages will morph and change over time. Foundations will remain the same.
They forgot to mention those stickers that you can put on your cell phone battery that will magically boost your reception. While they aren't as expensive as a Q-ray bracelet, I'm sure they make up for it in volume.
I use another medical saying -- "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". I would much rather have someone put up with a slightly slower computer or an odd (but usually documented) malfunction than to spend hours fixing their machine because they ran an executible from an email of unknown origin. And while this is far from a scientific, I've never had problems using AVG (or other non "big name" brands). But since this is slashdot, a one person sample set is more than enough to be "conclusive".
One word: Lawyers.
I've been super paranoid about losing my data, especially if my backup drive dies, is stolen, or the earth opens up and swallows my apartment. But I had the same issues as you as to finding a good online storage company. At the risk of sounding like an advertisement, try Mozy. It's cheap ($5/month for unlimited storage) and has a pretty unobtrusive backup desktop client. Yeah, the initial upload of data took a while, but now my incremental backups only take a few minutes each night. It's main purpose is backup, so it's not like an online hard drive where you can access your data anywhere. Oh, and if you do have a major disaster, you can get your data on DVDs too (for a price). It's good peace of mind for $5/month.
NASA, particularly astronauts, have always been held to a much higher standard than the typical employee at some company. During the Apollo program, astronauts needed to stay on very strict schedules and routines or they risked losing their spot in the mission rotation. This also went for the astronaut's wife and family where they also had to keep their noses clean. But keeping to those high standards took a huge toll on astronauts and their families. I believe several of them got divorced and one's wife committed suicide (someone want to check me on this?) because of the pressure to always present this perfect, "everything is fine" facade. But at the same time, the media back in the 60's and 70's covered up a lot of the missteps of astronauts and the program in order to preserve their status and reputations and keep money going to NASA and the space program.
But yes, NASA has had a great history of screening the right people. And historically people have done their best to make NASA look good (since we were racing against the Ruskies for such a long time). But in today's media environment, every misstep is sensationalized and exaggerated because that's how media outlets make money.
They would survive without Jobs since they now have some momentum in certain areas such as digital music and consumer electronics. As long as they make incremental, evolutionary improvements to their already-existing popular products, they will do fine. Now that they have a name with things like the iPod, they just need to make sure that it remains perceived as "cooler" than the other devices which means making small changes (bigger screens, touchscreens, higher capacity, smaller size, etc.). They might get in trouble if Jobs was replaced by someone who wanted to take the company in a "completely new direction". Just look at HP as an example of what new directions can do to a good company. Or look at what almost happened to Apple when they let Steve go before.
When I graduated from college I had the same thoughts. I couldn't imagine that my school programming projects were going to prepare me for the "real" world of programming. After all, you are probably making the jump from projects that last one or two weeks with a handful of programming partners to projects that last months and years with possibly hundreds of people working on them. So you ask, how can I possibly make such a giant leap? The good news is that it's not like any company is going to make you lead programmer of a multi-million dollar project for your first job out of college. You'll probably get some pretty well-contained, narrowly-defined projects to work on to start. But over time you will get more responsibilities and work on more critical pieces of code.
I've worked with a lot of programmers just out of school. We sort of have to re-educate them to think about their decisions in a more global context. They are no longer working on projects that get tossed once they are graded, but ones that might be used for years to come. I'm only 4 years out of school myself, but I feel that I've learned a lot on the job that I never learned in school. So what use is a CS degree? It teaches you to think like an engineer. I believe a software company hires someone out of college, not for what they know, but for what the company can teach them. All that theory will actually come in handy because it taught you how to think and approach problems. So in short, don't worry about it.
The RIAA, with their army of lawyers, has been trying to shut down Kaaza and it's owner, Sherman Networks, for years. However, that company is spread out all over the world with everyone passing the buck on who is actually responsible for that program. The company has operated this shell game in a way that they escape various local and national laws and don't fall into any one's jurisdiction. So if the RIAA has been unable to get Sherman Networks to appear in court, how will a smaller groups of lawyers be able to do it in a class action lawsuit? And to add, this class-action isn't very rock-solid either.
Also, keep in mind that technologies change over time. Don't assume that if you start out in perl you will always be using Perl. You may start a job using perl, but a year or two later you find yourself working in Python, Lua, or Ruby. The perl company may start some new project and realize that perl is not the ideal language for it. That is why it is important to choose a company also for its culture. I've worked for a large software company before and didn't have such a great time since I was just a small cog in a giant machine. When I switched jobs, I took a cut in pay (since I was also jumping industries) but enjoyed the new company so much more. Like they say, if you can, choose the job that you would do for free because you'll be so much happier in the long run.
I think the whole point is to lock down the machines so that there are no intricate details to understand. The school is looking on how it can take away all administrator access to these machines and lock them down. What the students will mostly likely be left with is a desktop with a web browser and text editor icon. In other words, the user experience will be just about the same on either a locked-down Linux or Windows machine so the school should go with whatever choice is the most secure and easiest to setup/maintain (based on the knowledge-base of the administrators).
Let's remember that system administration is hard and includes a lot of intricate details. But we're not talking about system administration. Saying that a locked-down computer is too complicated for high school students to use is like saying that TiVo is too complex just because it is based on Linux.
I don't know if that is entirely accurate. I just came from the future and found the following memo. Sure, this was meant to be more for entertainment than some deep analysis on the future of Microsoft. But it does make you think that the future of Microsoft is not in doing everything their way and from the ground up, but instead let others deal with the low-level stuff and they can focus on what they are really selling -- a GUI with lots of bells and whistles. Looking at Vista development, how much easier would it have been to use a tried-and-true Unix security and permissions model and focus their attention on how to provide the user with the best interactive environment?
Yes! It is so nice to see someone actually use some history in his/her argument to show that a lot of what we face is nothing new. Unfortunately, people have a tendancy to think that the time in which they live is the most important time in history and that everything they do is somehow new or novel. Thank you for reminding people that this world does have a history that didn't just start the day G.W.B. took office. It's a shame that you will be modded down as a troll because you acknowledge that there is, in fact, a war going on.
I completely agree. I propose that the government sets up a unit testing standard that all new laws must pass! That way laws like this will fail at:
assertTrue(NewLaw.lawWillBeEnforced())
And if it passes that, then it will surely fail this one:
assertTrue(NewLaw.isEnforceable())
Yeah unit testing! It's not just computer geeks anymore.
For those of us who only mildly follow the video game world, how is bringing American developers to the console market a bad thing?
But considering that we live in a world where people forget what a politician is saying this week directly contradicts what he/she said last week, it's hardly surprising (don't know why I threw that in...I guess I'm just frustrated with politicians lately).
So, I see a lot of "But my hard drive stores 500 GB at a fraction of the price" comments. However, a flash drive can be yet another level of caching that sits between memory and the hard drive. The order of data access would then become L* cache, RAM, flash drive, hard drive. 32 GB is plenty of space to load the OS and run normal apps like a web browser, email client, etc. So, instead of writing a page/swap file out to the hard drive, one would be able to write it out to the flash drive instead. This would result in faster reads and not consume as much power (think laptops). Also, since it's persistent (unlike RAM) then you could have better computer boot times. Basically the mechanical hard drive becomes a type of nearline storage device that gets accessed later (and less often) in the pipeline. Does that make any sense? I often fell asleep in my OS class in college.
Isn't there a human in the processing chain somewhere? Doesn't someone have to physically open the envelop and scan the application? It seems like that is the logical place to check for potentially fraudulent applications. I don't believe that step is automated, but then again I've never worked at a place that needs to process thousands of letter a day. Or is it that the person getting paid minimum wage to open and scan letters could care less if someone is committing fraud?
You've been browsing through the Clinton years haven't you?