I began with Java when it was married to the Netscape browser (remember Netscape?) I knew it would be a big deal once that happened.
But then Flash came in and knocked Java out of the Browser market. Then Sun tried to turn it into an Enterprise language and grew the complexity of the development environment by leaps and bounds. I got sick of it and pulled out of Java development.
I have another peeve. Why is Oracle only interested in attracting the young developers? What's wrong with those of us over 40? I will always be able to write better, cleaner, more bug-free code than some young upstart. Did I miss something here? I'll run rings around any 20-somethings anytime of night or day.
I guess it would scare some young managers that I've been doing software longer than they've been alive. I've gotten really good at it. I know more languages than I care to count, and done just about everything imaginable in the world of Software. The questions that they typically ask at interviews is indicative of the fact that the younger in the crowd just don't get it. If I don't know a particular system, just give me a day or two and I'll be completely proficient in it. Language, API, framework -- it doesn't bloody matter.
You'd think they would want a "quick-study" autodidact like me, but a lot of them don't. I just don't get it. No bother. Don't need them anymore. And thank goodness for that!
now just imagine how badly they fuck up when they aren't talking about one of your areas of expertise!
Even if it's not my area of expertise, I usually know something about it if it has to do with Science or Technology. And yes, they screw up there as well. Drives me frelling nuts.
The shielding in microwave ovens is not that good. It knocks out my cell phone's bluetooth every-time I get near it while it's warming something yummy up for me.
Yes. In fact, the very 911 operations manual they were going nuts about could be ordered by anyone and sent to you via snail mail for something like $20 or so. Kinda silly.
Wow, I didn't know that! Could you try tracing my microwave oven, please? Just to give you a bit of a head start, it's 800W, and I'll probably be using it tonight around 7pm, somewhere in the UK.
Ok, Sm@r1 @$$, how about any electronic communications device? Is that better?
And actually, if I knew the exact signature of your microwave oven, that would be traceable too, from a certain distance, at least. If you're in a big city, you have safety in numbers, of course. If you were living out in the wilderness using a microwave, I could just zero in on any microwave source in the frequency range of typical microwave ovens, and that would be you.
I think I should write this book, just for the sheer fun of it! Then I recall what happened to Steve Jackson Games, and all they did was an RPG. Nevermind...
Yet another idiot who does not understand how the Internet works.
Rule No. 1: NEVER log on from your hideout directly if you are on the run! At least use proxies, but I wouldn't even trust them under those circumstances.
Cygwin has some issues: notably: it won't work on 64 bit windows *anything*. So as much as I'd love to run it, no bites for what is probably a good portion of the slashie crowd. Virtualbox can do it, but at that point I highly doubt running putty is the concern. I don't get why someone would need an x-session for putty anyway though, putty runs natively on windows - maybe it's my lack of understanding the reasoning/purpose to do so or something.
If they want to run an X-Windws client through the Putty connection, they'd need it.
Besides, I find Putty's terminal emulation to be a bit lacking in some areas.
All of my life I've had to deal with people falsely accusing me of just about everything you can imagine. And it was always due to paranoia. It finally took its toll in causing me to miss out on millions of dollars and the destruction of my marriage.
And this was without a "Good Samaritan Law".
People are inherently stupid. They see things that simply aren't there. They perceive things though their own past traumas and the like. If they get a silly notion in their heads, sometimes all logic is thrown out if the silly notion really bugs them. Such simple logic as "did I really see this guy do anything?
The "Good Samaritan Law" may have "good intentions", but we all know what the "road to Hell" is paved with!
I have to say, I am now glad I don't live in California, which up till now was looking good as a state I might want to live in. Now, "no way in hell" are the words that come to mind.
Gotta love our culture of hyper-paranoia. A child-abuser behind every door, a terrorist in ever-other plane seat, and now this.
I do have one solution to this mess: expatriation. Even China is beginning to look like a better option.
I have a big issue with the notion of someone else deciding what I "need to know". That's my decision to make, and now I have the power of choice, thanks to the Internet. I can pull from the BBC news, Asian Times, and a number of other sources around the world to get a real balance of what is going on that is not wholly dependent on one news organization's -- or even one country's -- biases.
Lately, Haiti has been in the news, and for good reason. The problem I have is that I think Haiti is over-reported. Every major news site pounces on the same bit of news I've already read elsewhere, and they are of course dropping other news I might be a bit more interested in. When every news outlet everywhere ALL decide I "need to know" news X, that's a personal affront.
And more importantly, someone is deciding what it is I "DON'T need to know". That's even worse, because if they choose not to publish it, I can't make the choice for myself. But that's the beauty of "citizen journalism" -- that coverage is unfiltered and raw, and I can get to it before some editor decides to drop it unto the floor. Case in point: The G20 summit in Pittsburgh and how the police there attacked the University of Pittsburgh students. There were lots of videos uploaded to YouTube about what was really happening in the streets -- a lot that I never saw on the major news outlets like CNN and FOX. Students that had nothing to do with the protests were being gassed, tasered, and chased around their own campus. You'd think that should've gotten a lot of attention by the news as something we need to know. Nope.
There is bound to be a high false positive rate with this system. Out of millions of people that will be profiled by this system per day, how many actual terrorist are there? Perhaps one or two a year?
Would actual terrorists behave or have other characteristics all that different that would definitively distinguish them from millions of others? I don't think so.
So really, in their efforts to find a needle in a haystack, many innocent people are going to be harassed.
Also, also with the needle in the haystack issue, I don't see this system effective in catching all actual terrorists, since they will be doing their best to "blend in" with the crowd and not stick out anyway.
So expect to have high failure rates of both type 1 and type 2 natures.
And so, the billions of dollars to deploy this system is justified how?
Not to mention all the civil rights issues with the government monitoring your biometrics without your consent or knowledge. Who knows what will be done with the data, and how it may affect you in the future? There are expectations of privacy violations here, which will be fought out in the courts.
Meanwhile, another "terrorist" will go "BOO", and you'll see hearings and blame-pointing and everything else at why this high-tech expensive system failed to catch the needle in a very big haystack "terrorist".
And now I am about to cause the paranoid US to spend billions more: BOO.
Just how much material in colleges come in Braille?
Ever heard of Braille terminals? If it's plain text or HTML, it can be rendered and read by the blind. If it's DRMed, Flashified or in a Kindle, it can't.
If it is text being sent to Kindle, it can also be sent to the Braille terminal. If it's Flash, you're screwed anyway if you're blind, Kindle or not.
Just how much material in colleges come in Braille? Do every textbook the profs might use have a Braille version? Every book in the library? No? I didn't think so.
So, this is about politics (as usual) than anything else.
I've got a beef against Kindle in particular, but nothing to do with "accessibility". Amazon has the power to delete content from your Kindle at will, and have done so. I don't like that and therefore I refuse to use the device myself.
But if others are OK with Amazon having that kind of power over their content, more power to them.
That issue aside, I'd much rather have all of my books in electronic format -- much lighter, can carry far more, and they can get updated if information in them happens to be incorrect, out of date, etc.
Cannot the blind use special laptops to access the same information? Would seem a simple enough solution. Or maybe it's too simple. Gotta do something far more dramatic, like hold everyone else back. Shame on you for being able to see!!!!
Seriously, I would have reservations about hiring someone who had an AOL email address. Yahoo and GMail are fine. Personal domain name email address would be a plus. Email address at their current place of employment would be a bit off-putting, but tolerable.
I just can't see sophisticated software engineers, DBAs, systems engineers, of anyone else in IT carrying an AOL email address with a straight face.
People *choosing* to post details of their lives online does has nothing to do with rights to privacy (or should not). Privacy involves protecting person A's details from being seen/used/compromised by person/institution/agency B.
But if person A elects to make some aspect of his life public, then obviously there is no "expectation of privacy" of the details person A wilfully made public. However, person A may wish to keep other details of his life private, and his rights to do so should not be compromised in any way by those details he made public, sans some illegal activity or intent to do harm to others.
And of course, if something is "illegal", that does not necessarily proffer a waive to one's rights to privacy. It all depends on whether or not the "illegal" thing is justified or not. There are all kinds of bad laws and practices that should be removed.
I have never had a problem with mathematics, as is evidenced by the fact that I managed to teach myself calculus by age 13. I can pick up mathematics quickly, and have dabbled in a wide variety of math topics from matrices to advanced calculus to number theory to fractals and chaos theory too... even touched a bit on lie algebras. I have yet to find my limits.
Mathematics, unlike the poster, was my first love. My interests in computers grew directly out of my love for mathematics.
Alas, not everyone is so predisposed. I have never taken a "math course" outside of high-school, and was bored to tears by what the high-school had to offer. Oh well.
Enough of me tooting my own horn, the math courses you choose to take, beyond the fundamental stuff like logic, set theory, and discrete systems, should reflect your eventual goals with your computer science/software engineering career. If you want to delve into, say, bioinformatics, you will need some stuff, for instance, with combinatorics, just for starters. If you are going into physics, then obviously all the calculus and vector courses you can get your hands on will be your focus. If you just want to work in boring IT departments or deal with databases, then you'll need some database theory - related courses, etc.
If you want to be able to do anything and everything, then go broad and deep. But you really have to *love* mathematics. Math can be extremely fun; the way it's typically taught would lead you to believe otherwise. It all depends on the teacher. Forget high-school math -- totally useless.
The UAVs I'm aware of aren't big enough to carry a lot of freight. But why not just use a conventional craft for that, anyway? A real pilot can think and act when an unforeseen problem arises, and perhaps save lives. If a UAV develops a technical glitch, either due to a software defect, RFI, or something else unforeseen, it can crash anywhere.
Slashdot Mirror
So, it helps to have a strong passion to get you through the necessary time it will take.
Oh, did I mention physics, biology, and the French Revolution?
But then Flash came in and knocked Java out of the Browser market. Then Sun tried to turn it into an Enterprise language and grew the complexity of the development environment by leaps and bounds. I got sick of it and pulled out of Java development.
I have another peeve. Why is Oracle only interested in attracting the young developers? What's wrong with those of us over 40? I will always be able to write better, cleaner, more bug-free code than some young upstart. Did I miss something here? I'll run rings around any 20-somethings anytime of night or day.
I guess it would scare some young managers that I've been doing software longer than they've been alive. I've gotten really good at it. I know more languages than I care to count, and done just about everything imaginable in the world of Software. The questions that they typically ask at interviews is indicative of the fact that the younger in the crowd just don't get it. If I don't know a particular system, just give me a day or two and I'll be completely proficient in it. Language, API, framework -- it doesn't bloody matter.
You'd think they would want a "quick-study" autodidact like me, but a lot of them don't. I just don't get it. No bother. Don't need them anymore. And thank goodness for that!
now just imagine how badly they fuck up when they aren't talking about one of your areas of expertise!
Even if it's not my area of expertise, I usually know something about it if it has to do with Science or Technology. And yes, they screw up there as well. Drives me frelling nuts.
The shielding in microwave ovens is not that good. It knocks out my cell phone's bluetooth every-time I get near it while it's warming something yummy up for me.
Yes. In fact, the very 911 operations manual they were going nuts about could be ordered by anyone and sent to you via snail mail for something like $20 or so. Kinda silly.
All things electronic can be trace
Wow, I didn't know that! Could you try tracing my microwave oven, please? Just to give you a bit of a head start, it's 800W, and I'll probably be using it tonight around 7pm, somewhere in the UK.
Ok, Sm@r1 @$$, how about any electronic communications device? Is that better?
And actually, if I knew the exact signature of your microwave oven, that would be traceable too, from a certain distance, at least. If you're in a big city, you have safety in numbers, of course. If you were living out in the wilderness using a microwave, I could just zero in on any microwave source in the frequency range of typical microwave ovens, and that would be you.
I think they probably meant his IP address. You know reporters. They never get the technology nor the science right.
I think I should write this book, just for the sheer fun of it! Then I recall what happened to Steve Jackson Games, and all they did was an RPG. Nevermind...
All things electronic can be traced, including (and especially) cell phones! They triangulate your location from the receiving towers.
Rule No. 1: NEVER log on from your hideout directly if you are on the run! At least use proxies, but I wouldn't even trust them under those circumstances.
Cygwin has some issues: notably: it won't work on 64 bit windows *anything*. So as much as I'd love to run it, no bites for what is probably a good portion of the slashie crowd. Virtualbox can do it, but at that point I highly doubt running putty is the concern. I don't get why someone would need an x-session for putty anyway though, putty runs natively on windows - maybe it's my lack of understanding the reasoning/purpose to do so or something.
If they want to run an X-Windws client through the Putty connection, they'd need it.
Besides, I find Putty's terminal emulation to be a bit lacking in some areas.
God, no sane person uses cygwin.
Putty and MingX is the way to go.
Cygwin is just a horrible horrible excuse for a collection of ports.
These days, I simply run Linux as the host system and run Windows in a hypervisor. Best of both worlds (except for games).
And this was without a "Good Samaritan Law".
People are inherently stupid. They see things that simply aren't there. They perceive things though their own past traumas and the like. If they get a silly notion in their heads, sometimes all logic is thrown out if the silly notion really bugs them. Such simple logic as "did I really see this guy do anything?
The "Good Samaritan Law" may have "good intentions", but we all know what the "road to Hell" is paved with!
I have to say, I am now glad I don't live in California, which up till now was looking good as a state I might want to live in. Now, "no way in hell" are the words that come to mind.
Gotta love our culture of hyper-paranoia. A child-abuser behind every door, a terrorist in ever-other plane seat, and now this.
I do have one solution to this mess: expatriation. Even China is beginning to look like a better option.
I don't know about Putty, but you can install CygwinX, and run ssh in an x-session, and actually run X applications on your Windows desktop that way.
So true.
Lately, Haiti has been in the news, and for good reason. The problem I have is that I think Haiti is over-reported. Every major news site pounces on the same bit of news I've already read elsewhere, and they are of course dropping other news I might be a bit more interested in. When every news outlet everywhere ALL decide I "need to know" news X, that's a personal affront.
And more importantly, someone is deciding what it is I "DON'T need to know". That's even worse, because if they choose not to publish it, I can't make the choice for myself. But that's the beauty of "citizen journalism" -- that coverage is unfiltered and raw, and I can get to it before some editor decides to drop it unto the floor. Case in point: The G20 summit in Pittsburgh and how the police there attacked the University of Pittsburgh students. There were lots of videos uploaded to YouTube about what was really happening in the streets -- a lot that I never saw on the major news outlets like CNN and FOX. Students that had nothing to do with the protests were being gassed, tasered, and chased around their own campus. You'd think that should've gotten a lot of attention by the news as something we need to know. Nope.
Or 72 virgin (really big) Black Widow spiders.
Would actual terrorists behave or have other characteristics all that different that would definitively distinguish them from millions of others? I don't think so.
So really, in their efforts to find a needle in a haystack, many innocent people are going to be harassed.
Also, also with the needle in the haystack issue, I don't see this system effective in catching all actual terrorists, since they will be doing their best to "blend in" with the crowd and not stick out anyway.
So expect to have high failure rates of both type 1 and type 2 natures.
And so, the billions of dollars to deploy this system is justified how?
Not to mention all the civil rights issues with the government monitoring your biometrics without your consent or knowledge. Who knows what will be done with the data, and how it may affect you in the future? There are expectations of privacy violations here, which will be fought out in the courts.
Meanwhile, another "terrorist" will go "BOO", and you'll see hearings and blame-pointing and everything else at why this high-tech expensive system failed to catch the needle in a very big haystack "terrorist".
And now I am about to cause the paranoid US to spend billions more: BOO.
Ever heard of Braille terminals? If it's plain text or HTML, it can be rendered and read by the blind. If it's DRMed, Flashified or in a Kindle, it can't.
If it is text being sent to Kindle, it can also be sent to the Braille terminal. If it's Flash, you're screwed anyway if you're blind, Kindle or not.
So, this is about politics (as usual) than anything else.
I've got a beef against Kindle in particular, but nothing to do with "accessibility". Amazon has the power to delete content from your Kindle at will, and have done so. I don't like that and therefore I refuse to use the device myself.
But if others are OK with Amazon having that kind of power over their content, more power to them.
That issue aside, I'd much rather have all of my books in electronic format -- much lighter, can carry far more, and they can get updated if information in them happens to be incorrect, out of date, etc.
Cannot the blind use special laptops to access the same information? Would seem a simple enough solution. Or maybe it's too simple. Gotta do something far more dramatic, like hold everyone else back. Shame on you for being able to see!!!!
I just can't see sophisticated software engineers, DBAs, systems engineers, of anyone else in IT carrying an AOL email address with a straight face.
But if person A elects to make some aspect of his life public, then obviously there is no "expectation of privacy" of the details person A wilfully made public. However, person A may wish to keep other details of his life private, and his rights to do so should not be compromised in any way by those details he made public, sans some illegal activity or intent to do harm to others.
And of course, if something is "illegal", that does not necessarily proffer a waive to one's rights to privacy. It all depends on whether or not the "illegal" thing is justified or not. There are all kinds of bad laws and practices that should be removed.
Mathematics, unlike the poster, was my first love. My interests in computers grew directly out of my love for mathematics.
Alas, not everyone is so predisposed. I have never taken a "math course" outside of high-school, and was bored to tears by what the high-school had to offer. Oh well.
Enough of me tooting my own horn, the math courses you choose to take, beyond the fundamental stuff like logic, set theory, and discrete systems, should reflect your eventual goals with your computer science/software engineering career. If you want to delve into, say, bioinformatics, you will need some stuff, for instance, with combinatorics, just for starters. If you are going into physics, then obviously all the calculus and vector courses you can get your hands on will be your focus. If you just want to work in boring IT departments or deal with databases, then you'll need some database theory - related courses, etc.
If you want to be able to do anything and everything, then go broad and deep. But you really have to *love* mathematics. Math can be extremely fun; the way it's typically taught would lead you to believe otherwise. It all depends on the teacher. Forget high-school math -- totally useless.
The UAVs I'm aware of aren't big enough to carry a lot of freight. But why not just use a conventional craft for that, anyway? A real pilot can think and act when an unforeseen problem arises, and perhaps save lives. If a UAV develops a technical glitch, either due to a software defect, RFI, or something else unforeseen, it can crash anywhere.