It's better that way - you really don't want the pool of contenders to be "lookit me! I'm a GENIUS!!!!" types...
"Well guys, it looks like all our applicants this year are total friggin' nutbars. We've narrowed it down to Doc Brown with some sort of Flux Craptacular or something and Alex Chiu....This brings me to an important point - do we have to give away this money? I mean, can't we just rent out Scores for a week or something?"
I wonder if people will describe the outsourcing trend by taking a cue from the allegedly cute US-to-India film industry comparisons and using the phrase "Silicon Bali"...
May be a problem for someone who is poor and has to have two jobs at a time.
it definitely would be a problem for someone who has to work two jobs - they wouldn't have a few hours of free time each day, and thus would fail the 'if' clause and the rest of the comment would not pertain to them.
Now if you are born poor you will most likely stay poor
Whoa. I am a liberal in most cases, but this is just crap. If you have access to the internet and >= 3 or 4 free hours a day and don't have a learning disability, you have (within epsilon of) no excuses. In the case of something like computer science, there is (not even within epsilon of) zero excuse for your aptitude other than your desire and the amount of work you put in. It sounds just as romantic as the quote I am responding to, but it's true; if you plug someone in to the internet, they can learn about almost anything they want and in all probability be great at it - they just have to work.
Will these cheap and private enterprise driven launches lead to many more privately owned satellites in low earth orbit? Just wondering as this would have many very practical applications as well as leading to intense crowding in LEO. Just a thought.
"Ooh, an original Yggdrasil CD-ROM! This is extremely rare; you should consider yourself very lucky."
"Yeah I found it in my parents' attic underneath a copy of VRML Unleashed and The 1994 Complete Internet Yellow Pages. I have some other stuff I was hoping you'd look at too..."
Why do I get the feeling that the following scene will be rather common among the professors present at this event:
Clerk:"Uh, Sir, the American Express card didn't work either. All of your credit cards are totally blank."
Scientist Guy: "Son of a BITCH!"
SCIENTIST GUY then proceeds to consciously attract a crowbar from the Crowbar Aisle to his hands via his newfound magnetic powers and beat CLERK senseless.
On a similar note, which should a computer consider more similar, a scrambled interior, or an erroneous interior? For example, which of these two are most similar: emxalpe, example, exame
Context would be key here, I think. Whereas it's relatively simple to see that "emaxlpe" is a mispelling (although a relatively unlikely one, given the layout of the qwerty keyboard - the computer would be wise to know about that too and factor it into its decisions), without context I dont think we could decide whether "exame" is a misspelling of "example" or "examine" or, again relatively unlikely, "exam" with an extra "e". This is part of the reason that I think DWIM computing will come about if and only if a computer's ability to understand context and the outside world does.
On the other hand, do we really want computers to Do What We Mean?
"HAL, put "Finish Tax Form" on my schedule for today." "I'm sorry, Dave - don't you mean 'Watch DVDs while worrying about tax deadline?' "
*hangs head* "Yes."
Sophos Acquires Anti-Spam Specialist ActiveState for $23 million in cash". I didn't even know ActiveState was into anti-spam! What will this mean for their ActivePerl or ActivePython products?"
It means they will be able to consolidate their debt and significantly lower their monthly payments, of course...
Linus and Alan Cox must've said something to light a fire under the EU's ass! Maybe they mentioned off-hand that they had been hanging out with ESR and were starting to take a "liking" to firearms...:P
Slashdot Mirror
"Well guys, it looks like all our applicants this year are total friggin' nutbars. We've narrowed it down to Doc Brown with some sort of Flux Craptacular or something and Alex Chiu....This brings me to an important point - do we have to give away this money? I mean, can't we just rent out Scores for a week or something?"
I wonder if people will describe the outsourcing trend by taking a cue from the allegedly cute US-to-India film industry comparisons and using the phrase "Silicon Bali"...
Bonus points for using the word "fuck" twice and "shit" once, but being thoughtful enough to ambiguously asterisk out the 'e' in "circle-jerk".
Re-elected baby!!
This development has the potential to offer hundreds of thousands of slashdotters a world of new opportunities for Not Getting Laid.
But the user interface is going to be terrible...
In a related story, the number of borrowable copies of Short Stories to Read While You Kayak jumped up 7,000%...
Approximately 30 seconds before "Breaking News: Tony is GAY" appears on the screen and the entire high school soccer team falls over laughing.
it definitely would be a problem for someone who has to work two jobs - they wouldn't have a few hours of free time each day, and thus would fail the 'if' clause and the rest of the comment would not pertain to them.
Whoa. I am a liberal in most cases, but this is just crap. If you have access to the internet and >= 3 or 4 free hours a day and don't have a learning disability, you have (within epsilon of) no excuses. In the case of something like computer science, there is (not even within epsilon of) zero excuse for your aptitude other than your desire and the amount of work you put in. It sounds just as romantic as the quote I am responding to, but it's true; if you plug someone in to the internet, they can learn about almost anything they want and in all probability be great at it - they just have to work.
I have the solution: satellite condoms.
"Yeah I found it in my parents' attic underneath a copy of VRML Unleashed and The 1994 Complete Internet Yellow Pages. I have some other stuff I was hoping you'd look at too..."
"...Stradawhovius?"
Clerk:"Uh, Sir, the American Express card didn't work either. All of your credit cards are totally blank."
Scientist Guy: "Son of a BITCH!"
SCIENTIST GUY then proceeds to consciously attract a crowbar from the Crowbar Aisle to his hands via his newfound magnetic powers and beat CLERK senseless.
ok maybe not that last part though...
Context would be key here, I think. Whereas it's relatively simple to see that "emaxlpe" is a mispelling (although a relatively unlikely one, given the layout of the qwerty keyboard - the computer would be wise to know about that too and factor it into its decisions), without context I dont think we could decide whether "exame" is a misspelling of "example" or "examine" or, again relatively unlikely, "exam" with an extra "e". This is part of the reason that I think DWIM computing will come about if and only if a computer's ability to understand context and the outside world does.
On the other hand, do we really want computers to Do What We Mean?
"HAL, put "Finish Tax Form" on my schedule for today."
"I'm sorry, Dave - don't you mean 'Watch DVDs while worrying about tax deadline?' "
*hangs head* "Yes."
t3h f|3xiBi|+y 0f teh hu/\/\@n /\/\inD 0\/\/ns j00!
Cripes! It's a crummy commercial!
"Think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of them are dumber than that!" - George Carlin
Yes, I know he's confusing the mean with the median, but it's still funny :)
SELECT * FROM bugs ?
"Honey where are we parked?"
"space 3-16-47...or was that 3-17-46??"
It means they will be able to consolidate their debt and significantly lower their monthly payments, of course...
dammit, if we could only squeeze an "A" in to "E=MC Squared"!!
stick that in your pipe and grep it!
Linus and Alan Cox must've said something to light a fire under the EU's ass! Maybe they mentioned off-hand that they had been hanging out with ESR and were starting to take a "liking" to firearms... :P
*dodges hurricane-force rotten tomatoes*
it means I'm using Cygwin. :P