Speaking as a Canadian, I think this is a great idea! We must realize that in the age of Google, even supposedly public information can bring about serious privacy concerns when published to the internet.
The point is NOT to make it impossible for people to match court cases to actual people, but rather to help prevent Google (or any other search engine) from making that match. Because if Google can make that match, then that court case will continuously rise to the top of search results for your name. And at that point, it doesn't really matter if you're innocent or not -- the impression is damaging alone.
I'd like to see them do the same for political donations as well.
I fully agree with everything you've said, but invite you to re-read my post as you seem to be disagreeing with stuff I haven't said. Clearly, if he leaves his laptop in a busy food court at the local grub mall and it gets stolen, then he should absolutely be help responsible.
But office security is another thing. The key question, as you say, is what's the company's policy? So long as he follows that it shouldn't be his concern if his laptop gets stolen from his desk overnight. And since there's undoubtibly a company policy, then asking a question like this on Slashdot is silly and pointless.
I'm just going to take a wild guess here but assuming the workplace is more or less secure, then the company policy probably isn't for everyone to lock laptops up at night in ventilated metal boxes. Perhaps the poster is a security saint, but more than likely he's just upset that he lost his office and is raising a stink.
Honestly, this sounds like someone who's just bitter about losing their office to a cubicle and causing a stink.
Your laptop and associated paraphernalia are the property of your company. If they happen to find legs then that's an issue for your company to deal with, not you. Hopefully you back up your data, so if your laptop does grow legs it's just a day or two to get up and running with a new lappy.
Besides, your co-workers are in the same position, so if they're not reporting thefts then you probably won't be either. And if there is a problem of theft in your office then perhaps you should be pushing your manager to make your workplace more secure, rather just just your workspace.
Applied math is a good bet. Operations Research ("OR"), as Wikipedia defines it, is "an interdisciplinary science which uses scientific methods like mathematical modeling, statistics, and algorithms to decision making in complex real-world problems which are concerned with coordination and execution of the operations within an organization." It's a mixture of math, stats, CS, and engineering.
There's OR applications in areas such as health-care, environmental management, forestry management, transportation, and much more. Environmental management, in particular, is something that operations research is going to play a huge role as government and industry focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
And because there's such a practical role towards it, there's plenty of support from government and industry, not just in terms of jobs at the end but also scholarships, fellowships, etc. Ask around a math, CS, or engineering department! I'm sure it won't be hard to find someone who can point you in the right direction.
No. There's certainly an art to programming, whether it be formatting your code so it's readable and maintainable, or choosing the correct algorithm to use.
Great computer scientists are the ones who come up with elegant solutions to a problem, not just hack together something that works. That's art, not science.
Besides which, if math (the godfather of CS) is good enough to be considered an art, then I'm happy to hear others consider computer science an art as well.
Everyone should read "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman. It's an excellent read and makes a convincing argument about how television has dumbed down education and public discourse. If you ever wanted to know what McLuhan was really talking about when he said "The medium is the message", then look no further.
A lot of what he says is directly applicable to the discussion happening here. In short, the medium of videogames is not suited to teaching anything remotely deep. If we want to limit what we teach our kids to a few interesting facts and sound bytes, then videogames are the perfect way to do it.
But it we want our kids to truly appreciate what they're learning and to leave with anything meaningful, then we're going to require that they spend some time pouring over a textbook. A good education demands that the student suffers a bit, but that doesn't mean its a bad thing.
It's like taking piano lessons: you need to slog through all the theory and tedious scales before you can play anything useful and interesting. Using videogames to teach is like showing a student how to pick out "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on a piano, and calling it a music education.
I'm well aware that the eating of shell fish was Old Testament law. I simply don't believe you can pick and choose the laws you want to abide by. And since Leviticus always seems to get trotted out by religious conservatives, I think it's important to note that if you're going to accept some of the teachings in the bible, then you've got to accept them all, not just the ones that are convenient to you.
What does the New Testament say? Not a heck of a lot. There is one passage that is seen as particularily daming by religious conservatives, and that would be Romans 1:26-27. But the letters that Paul wrote tend to be very tricky to translate because they are missing a great deal of context.
What you are reading is a reply to a letter by someone or to an unknown news event. His writings have been used to condem Jews, women, blacks, slaves... the list goes on and on. Some people believe he was writing about pagan ceremonies that involved homosexual rituals.
Since the original Greek sources say very little about homosexuality, so it's likely that agendas by religious leaders have been pushed into translations over the years.
My point is that the passage is not a good example of the NT condeming homosexuality. Other references tend to be religious conservatives reaching for examples and not definitive proof that the Bible condems homosexuality.
Obviously, neither of us are going to get anywhere convincing each other we're correct on this matter, so I'm happy to leave the conversation at this point. I've said my peace.
I do hope that you don't attribute any of my comments are a personal attack, I'm just trying to tell the other side of the story. Disagreements are what makes free speech wonderful, no?
As a gay man, I'd like to remind everyone spouting nonsense about the Bible hating homosexuals that God Hates Shrimp just as much as he supposedly hates me.
Speaking as a Canadian, I'm more scared of my igloo caving in or getting run over by a polar bear while crossing the street than being the victim of a gun crime.
The hand cutting thing has become quite profitable for the Canadian government though. Many native tribes use severed hands for their demonic rituals. It offsets the cost of buying leeches for our free health care.
As far as I can tell, here's the SCO/IBM problem... I'm sure many/.ers will correct me if I'm wrong.:-)
Sequent made a contract with SCO many years ago. The important part of the contract, according to SCO, is this (taken from the press release, empahsis mine):
SCO's System V UNIX contract allowed Sequent to prepare derivative works and modifications of System V software "provided the resulting materials were treated as part of the Original [System V] Software." Restrictions on use of the Original System V Software include the requirement of confidentiality, a prohibition against transfer of ownership, and a restriction against use for the benefit of third parties.
Now IBM has its own seperate license for developing AIX, their UNIX brand which doesn't have that whole "resulting materials were treated as part of the original software" clause. Basically, IBM's contract allows it to derive all it wants and SCO does not own it.
Sequent develops some nifty NUMA and RCU multi-processor code for its version of UNIX. But IBM goes and buys Sequent. Sometime later, IBM adds said nifty code to Linux.
Here's where the legality of IBM's move comes into question... as previously mentioned, IBM is allowed to go and create derived works from UNIX and retain ownership of said works. Because it owns the work, its allowed to add that work into Linux.
But SCO claims the RCU/NUMA code was developed under Sequent's contract, which means that derrived work is owned by SCO, and not IBM. Ergo, IBM should not have been allowed to add the code to Linux.
That's what I make of it anyways. Whether SCO has a case or not is up to the lawyers/courts to decide.
I used Susan Epp's "Discrete Mathematics with Applications" two years ago for my introductory descrete math course. Its hard to find used copies of this book because most students from my university (UNB) do not sell the book after, it's really that good.
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking as a Canadian, I think this is a great idea! We must realize that in the age of Google, even supposedly public information can bring about serious privacy concerns when published to the internet. The point is NOT to make it impossible for people to match court cases to actual people, but rather to help prevent Google (or any other search engine) from making that match. Because if Google can make that match, then that court case will continuously rise to the top of search results for your name. And at that point, it doesn't really matter if you're innocent or not -- the impression is damaging alone. I'd like to see them do the same for political donations as well.
I fully agree with everything you've said, but invite you to re-read my post as you seem to be disagreeing with stuff I haven't said. Clearly, if he leaves his laptop in a busy food court at the local grub mall and it gets stolen, then he should absolutely be help responsible.
But office security is another thing. The key question, as you say, is what's the company's policy? So long as he follows that it shouldn't be his concern if his laptop gets stolen from his desk overnight. And since there's undoubtibly a company policy, then asking a question like this on Slashdot is silly and pointless.
I'm just going to take a wild guess here but assuming the workplace is more or less secure, then the company policy probably isn't for everyone to lock laptops up at night in ventilated metal boxes. Perhaps the poster is a security saint, but more than likely he's just upset that he lost his office and is raising a stink.
Honestly, this sounds like someone who's just bitter about losing their office to a cubicle and causing a stink.
Your laptop and associated paraphernalia are the property of your company. If they happen to find legs then that's an issue for your company to deal with, not you. Hopefully you back up your data, so if your laptop does grow legs it's just a day or two to get up and running with a new lappy.
Besides, your co-workers are in the same position, so if they're not reporting thefts then you probably won't be either. And if there is a problem of theft in your office then perhaps you should be pushing your manager to make your workplace more secure, rather just just your workspace.
Applied math is a good bet. Operations Research ("OR"), as Wikipedia defines it, is "an interdisciplinary science which uses scientific methods like mathematical modeling, statistics, and algorithms to decision making in complex real-world problems which are concerned with coordination and execution of the operations within an organization." It's a mixture of math, stats, CS, and engineering.
There's OR applications in areas such as health-care, environmental management, forestry management, transportation, and much more. Environmental management, in particular, is something that operations research is going to play a huge role as government and industry focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
And because there's such a practical role towards it, there's plenty of support from government and industry, not just in terms of jobs at the end but also scholarships, fellowships, etc. Ask around a math, CS, or engineering department! I'm sure it won't be hard to find someone who can point you in the right direction.
No. There's certainly an art to programming, whether it be formatting your code so it's readable and maintainable, or choosing the correct algorithm to use.
Great computer scientists are the ones who come up with elegant solutions to a problem, not just hack together something that works. That's art, not science.
Besides which, if math (the godfather of CS) is good enough to be considered an art, then I'm happy to hear others consider computer science an art as well.
Everyone should read "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman. It's an excellent read and makes a convincing argument about how television has dumbed down education and public discourse. If you ever wanted to know what McLuhan was really talking about when he said "The medium is the message", then look no further.
A lot of what he says is directly applicable to the discussion happening here. In short, the medium of videogames is not suited to teaching anything remotely deep. If we want to limit what we teach our kids to a few interesting facts and sound bytes, then videogames are the perfect way to do it.
But it we want our kids to truly appreciate what they're learning and to leave with anything meaningful, then we're going to require that they spend some time pouring over a textbook. A good education demands that the student suffers a bit, but that doesn't mean its a bad thing.
It's like taking piano lessons: you need to slog through all the theory and tedious scales before you can play anything useful and interesting. Using videogames to teach is like showing a student how to pick out "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on a piano, and calling it a music education.
I'm well aware that the eating of shell fish was Old Testament law. I simply don't believe you can pick and choose the laws you want to abide by. And since Leviticus always seems to get trotted out by religious conservatives, I think it's important to note that if you're going to accept some of the teachings in the bible, then you've got to accept them all, not just the ones that are convenient to you. What does the New Testament say? Not a heck of a lot. There is one passage that is seen as particularily daming by religious conservatives, and that would be Romans 1:26-27. But the letters that Paul wrote tend to be very tricky to translate because they are missing a great deal of context. What you are reading is a reply to a letter by someone or to an unknown news event. His writings have been used to condem Jews, women, blacks, slaves... the list goes on and on. Some people believe he was writing about pagan ceremonies that involved homosexual rituals. Since the original Greek sources say very little about homosexuality, so it's likely that agendas by religious leaders have been pushed into translations over the years. My point is that the passage is not a good example of the NT condeming homosexuality. Other references tend to be religious conservatives reaching for examples and not definitive proof that the Bible condems homosexuality. Obviously, neither of us are going to get anywhere convincing each other we're correct on this matter, so I'm happy to leave the conversation at this point. I've said my peace. I do hope that you don't attribute any of my comments are a personal attack, I'm just trying to tell the other side of the story. Disagreements are what makes free speech wonderful, no?
As a gay man, I'd like to remind everyone spouting nonsense about the Bible hating homosexuals that God Hates Shrimp just as much as he supposedly hates me.
Speaking as a Canadian, I'm more scared of my igloo caving in or getting run over by a polar bear while crossing the street than being the victim of a gun crime.
The hand cutting thing has become quite profitable for the Canadian government though. Many native tribes use severed hands for their demonic rituals. It offsets the cost of buying leeches for our free health care.
As far as I can tell, here's the SCO/IBM problem... I'm sure many /.ers will correct me if I'm wrong. :-)
Sequent made a contract with SCO many years ago. The important part of the contract, according to SCO, is this (taken from the press release, empahsis mine):
SCO's System V UNIX contract allowed Sequent to prepare derivative works and modifications of System V software "provided the resulting materials were treated as part of the Original [System V] Software." Restrictions on use of the Original System V Software include the requirement of confidentiality, a prohibition against transfer of ownership, and a restriction against use for the benefit of third parties.
Now IBM has its own seperate license for developing AIX, their UNIX brand which doesn't have that whole "resulting materials were treated as part of the original software" clause. Basically, IBM's contract allows it to derive all it wants and SCO does not own it.
Sequent develops some nifty NUMA and RCU multi-processor code for its version of UNIX. But IBM goes and buys Sequent. Sometime later, IBM adds said nifty code to Linux.
Here's where the legality of IBM's move comes into question... as previously mentioned, IBM is allowed to go and create derived works from UNIX and retain ownership of said works. Because it owns the work, its allowed to add that work into Linux.
But SCO claims the RCU/NUMA code was developed under Sequent's contract, which means that derrived work is owned by SCO, and not IBM. Ergo, IBM should not have been allowed to add the code to Linux.
That's what I make of it anyways. Whether SCO has a case or not is up to the lawyers/courts to decide.
I used Susan Epp's "Discrete Mathematics with Applications" two years ago for my introductory descrete math course. Its hard to find used copies of this book because most students from my university (UNB) do not sell the book after, it's really that good.