That reminds me of a true story. A long time ago, I attended RPI, which (at the time at least) had a radio station not known for its large audience. The programming was often very specialized, and one such show was hosted by Greek students. Not fraternity-style Greeks, but real Greeks -- the kind who use "pi" and "sigma" to spell words.
I should also add that the community of Greek students on the RPI campus was quite small. It was so small at the time that the vice-president of the Greek Students' Association was Italian. (I am not making this up.)
At any moment, their radio show was estimated to have an audience of about six. And sure enough, or at least so I was told, one of its DJs muttered, on the air, in perfectly audible Greek, "Hey, help me figure out how to control this fucking thing!"
Yes, WRPI did get an angry off-campus phone call.
Thffpt. Does anyone know how to say "life sucks, wear a helmet" in Greek?
One of the storied stereotypes of the hacker domain is that of the nabbed "black hat" being impressed Into a "white hat" role. (Think Leonardo DiCaprio's role in "Catch Me If You Can".) However, the US armed forces no longer offer service as an alternative to prison (last I checked anyway), even though it offers a hacker in such a position the best deal he or she may ever get.
Would you seriously consider trying to exploit the talents of convicted hackers if you thought those talents could be a viable asset?
This is by far the most sensible comment on this thread (though it had some close competitors, to be fair).
It's no secret that every major decision maker knows that we need the cheap labor, unless we're all suddenly willing one day to pay $300 for that head of lettuce. (IIRC only Mike Huckabee was brutally frank about it, and that was not a message his target audience wanted.) What's more, these same people, and various media types like Mr. Dobbs, know full well that illegals = ratings.
Remember the big backlash against illegals in 1994 (the one that got Prop 187 passed in California)? The end result of that tidal wave of outrage was.. nothing. We're seeing something simliar today: Joe Sixpack is venting, blaming Latino "job-theives" because of circumstances beyond his (or anyone else's) control. And there are vested interests in this country that don't want him to pay attention to the real root causes. It's a lot easier to Latino-bait than to urge Mr. Sixpack to get off his dead ass and get re-trained.
Look, the whole issue won't go away, even if such a fence somehow worked. The only way IMO to get rid of illegals would be to wipe out all minimum wage laws in this country. Joe Sixpack can then keep his job.. though his benefits would evaporate overnight and his take-home pay would sink and condemn his family to third-world wage levels for generations. (But hey, jobs for Americans, right?)
We're willing in the end to put with the situation for cheap labor. The free market has spoken. And when it speaks, it doesn't care if you appreciate what it says or not.
and some like the Defense Information Systems Agency (whoever they are) own multiple blocks! That's an awful lot of addresses.
Sounds like an interesting way to put a dent in the US current account deficit. The gummint is sitting on a scarce resource that a lot of well-heeled corporations would be willing to pay for.
And then the US government can move to IPv6 shortly after sale, leaving the buyers with devalued assets. (Psych!!!)
I've listened to the show, and frankly, it's just one flavor of the canned crap that's used to feed the herd that still listens to commercial radio.
Limbaugh may get the occasional zinger or two, but to be honest, he's as dumbed down as Your Friendly Morning DJ (tm). Junk, from whatever source, is still junk.
The spooky thing to me is that his listeners consider themselves incredibly well-informed, even tho' they're getting their opinions from one talk show host (who does, and let's admit it, have a history of getting his facts wrong). This makes as much sense as claming to have refined musical tastes because your local Clear Channel classic-rock DJ constantly plays "Stairway to Heaven".
Actually, the "trickling upward" concerns innovation (business or technological), not capital. That is, if someone in the developing world finds a better, faster, cheaper way to accomplish task X, the same process should (in theory anyway) benefit producers and consumers in the developed world. If it works over there, use it over here.
This is where the concept gets a bit fuzzy IMO, especially since it incorporates that current, trendy business mantra, "innovation". But at least it beats the current plan, which vacillates between exploitation and total disregard.
First, it's Muhammand Yunus, not Yukos. He was never AFAICT connected with a defunct Russian oil producer.;)
The concept of "sustainable enterprise" is starting to gain traction in the marketplace of ideas, if only because the alternatives are rather unappealing. The sound-bite version of this idea is that, if the poorer 5/6-ths of the world's population became entrepreneurial, and found better, cheaper ways to use our limited supply of natural resources, those of us at the top of the pyramid would also benefit. In this respect, capitalism (as we know it at least) would seek to do good and do well at the same time. (Another famous proponent of this approach is Professor C. K. Prahalad.)
Pure free-market theorists despise this idea, as most believe that only self-interest should govern economic decisions in order to maximize the greater good. This view, however, fails in practice, since it cannot account for information asymetry (where all "players" don't have equal access to all information about the "game"), let alone the wildly unequal access to capital among the world's populations.
Shamless karma-burning plug time: Check out this site for more info. (Yes, I'm a Kenan-Flagler alum. Go Heels.)
One of my first assignments straight out of grad school was at IBM, writing device drivers for OS/2 2.0. I was actually quite impressed with it. It had a few odd hiccups here and there (mainly the Microsoft-ish naming conventions for system call functions, the plethora of said entry points, the single event queue per process), but it was quite nice to write for. It even had POSIX compliance, and an X server.
It's a damn shame, because within IBM at the time there were a LOT of people who wanted to write the Office-killer for OS/2, a LOT of people who wanted to evangelize it, and a LOT of people who were willing to go the distance to allow it to thrive. (There was a rumor that a developer in Boca Raton actually died in front of his keyboard. Just a rumor, it turned out, but the poor guy did pass away.)
There was a time, when Warp came out, that some of us thought that upper management finally managed to learn something about marketing. It didn't last, as you know; that was 1995 after all.
The real crime was that OS/2 was a project replete with the work of technically skilled, dedicated developers, none of whom ever got to see the acceptance of their work in the marketplace, thanks to the arrogance and ineptitude of various product managers.
Moral of the story: Marketing isn't everything that matters. It's sometimes the only thing.
I'd give Americans a goal: Energy independence within ten years.
Even a failure would go a long way in stabilizing and/or jump-starting the economy, curbing global warming, and keeping our citizens from funding terror indirectly.
I don't want more poor people driving. Or more rich people.
I would prefer it if MUCH fewer people needed to drive in the first place.
As I write this, I'm living in one American suburb, working in another, and am forced to burn fossil fuels just to buy a gallon of milk at the nearest store. I'm dependent on liquified dinosaurs. Walking to said shop from my house would probably only take 15 minutes tops, if a safe footpath existed. (I don't consider a freeway overpass without a pedestrain walkway to be adequate, thank you.) But no-o-o-o, my country decided to build communities around a single point of failure, the availability of cheap hydrocarbons.
The only reason why the new Tata may be a positive development for us in the West is if its energy-saving techniques actually make it to our markets. Otherwise, it's just another case of the inefficient, resource-hungry American lifestyle being appropriated overseas -- and in case you're wondering, no, that is not good news for this planet.
"Hatred" my ass. Read the sig if you need further clues.
As a lowly grad student, my CS department decided that it would move its undergrad intro courses from Pascal to C. I thought this was a huge mistake, as C is not a beginner's language, unlike Pascal.
In the end, market forces dictated the final decision. A lot of the undergrads wanted to become C programmers, not because they were interested in programming, or the language; they wanted the resume bullet of knowing C. (This was long before Java existed, you see.)
It was like that old joke where a rude patron shows up at a diner, and yells at the nearest waitress, "hey lady, make me a cheeseburger!".. only to have the waitress look at him and say "okay, poof, you're now a cheeseburger" before walking away. Instead, you had students yelling "hey, prof, make me a C programmer". (Were the students were as skilled at C at the end of the course? Yeah, sure, and the rude customer was suddenly tasty with ketchup too.)
It seems not much has changed since then. A lot of people who really shouldn't be programming (let alone for a living) are learning Java. They have no regard to the care and craft required of solid software construction. (I see this a LOT in offshore development teams as well as in new grads.)
Ouch. I really wish you put the NSFW flag on The Other Family.
To be honest, the few captions I did see weren't all that funny, and certainly not as funny as the old "Dysfunctional Family Circus" of the '90s. IIRC, the DFC was just one guy moderating submissions from everyone who cared to submit a caption. I think Andy Ihnatko was a big contributor to it back then.
And the DFC was wildly NSFW. It eventually added its own cast of unsavory characters to the strip, like the unseen (Thank God!) Uncle Roy.
Sadly, the owner of the site won't even release an archive of the old captions, so all of the hilarity is gone forever (sob).
Sorry about the bust-up, but I agree about teachers' days etc. I have close relations in the field, and I have no idea why they put up with what they do, for so little. And they work in a pretty decent school district (Wake County, NC), not some festering shithole in the middle of nowhere.
It boils down to really, really loving what you do, I suppose. There sure as hell is no other incentive.
Teachers might average standard 8-hour days if you take summer vacation into account for an entire year. (You would too if, for example, you put it 16-hour days for 6 months straight, then left the workforce for the next six months.) It wouldn't surprise me if they averaged more.
What's so wonderful about manned exploration of space anyway?
Transporting humans and all of their environmental requirements is ridiculously expensive. The risk for the travelers is ultimate. Alternatively, unmanned missions can go not only where no one has gone before, but also where no one will ever be able to go (e.g. the Venutian surface), and for a fraction of the cost.
The only upside from a manned mission is that we feel all warm and fuzzy when our heroes return from the voyage. Big deal.
Sounds odd to say, but I'm with Congress on this one. I just wish they'd taken it farther.
Slashdot Mirror
That reminds me of a true story. A long time ago, I attended RPI, which (at the time at least) had a radio station not known for its large audience. The programming was often very specialized, and one such show was hosted by Greek students. Not fraternity-style Greeks, but real Greeks -- the kind who use "pi" and "sigma" to spell words.
I should also add that the community of Greek students on the RPI campus was quite small. It was so small at the time that the vice-president of the Greek Students' Association was Italian. (I am not making this up.)
At any moment, their radio show was estimated to have an audience of about six. And sure enough, or at least so I was told, one of its DJs muttered, on the air, in perfectly audible Greek, "Hey, help me figure out how to control this fucking thing!"
Yes, WRPI did get an angry off-campus phone call.
Thffpt. Does anyone know how to say "life sucks, wear a helmet" in Greek?
Naaah.. it'll just sing "I'm in the Mood for Love" in a cracking voice instead of crooning "Daisy".
..when the silly 'tards have trouble identifying a laptop.
One of the storied stereotypes of the hacker domain is that of the nabbed "black hat" being impressed Into a "white hat" role. (Think Leonardo DiCaprio's role in "Catch Me If You Can".) However, the US armed forces no longer offer service as an alternative to prison (last I checked anyway), even though it offers a hacker in such a position the best deal he or she may ever get.
Would you seriously consider trying to exploit the talents of convicted hackers if you thought those talents could be a viable asset?
This is by far the most sensible comment on this thread (though it had some close competitors, to be fair).
It's no secret that every major decision maker knows that we need the cheap labor, unless we're all suddenly willing one day to pay $300 for that head of lettuce. (IIRC only Mike Huckabee was brutally frank about it, and that was not a message his target audience wanted.) What's more, these same people, and various media types like Mr. Dobbs, know full well that illegals = ratings.
Remember the big backlash against illegals in 1994 (the one that got Prop 187 passed in California)? The end result of that tidal wave of outrage was.. nothing. We're seeing something simliar today: Joe Sixpack is venting, blaming Latino "job-theives" because of circumstances beyond his (or anyone else's) control. And there are vested interests in this country that don't want him to pay attention to the real root causes. It's a lot easier to Latino-bait than to urge Mr. Sixpack to get off his dead ass and get re-trained.
Look, the whole issue won't go away, even if such a fence somehow worked. The only way IMO to get rid of illegals would be to wipe out all minimum wage laws in this country. Joe Sixpack can then keep his job.. though his benefits would evaporate overnight and his take-home pay would sink and condemn his family to third-world wage levels for generations. (But hey, jobs for Americans, right?)
We're willing in the end to put with the situation for cheap labor. The free market has spoken. And when it speaks, it doesn't care if you appreciate what it says or not.
Idiots. You'd think they'd just post a bawling Chris Crocker yelling "Leave Muhammad alone!" and be done with it..
and some like the Defense Information Systems Agency (whoever they are) own multiple blocks! That's an awful lot of addresses.
Sounds like an interesting way to put a dent in the US current account deficit. The gummint is sitting on a scarce resource that a lot of well-heeled corporations would be willing to pay for.
And then the US government can move to IPv6 shortly after sale, leaving the buyers with devalued assets. (Psych!!!)
I've listened to the show, and frankly, it's just one flavor of the canned crap that's used to feed the herd that still listens to commercial radio.
Limbaugh may get the occasional zinger or two, but to be honest, he's as dumbed down as Your Friendly Morning DJ (tm). Junk, from whatever source, is still junk.
The spooky thing to me is that his listeners consider themselves incredibly well-informed, even tho' they're getting their opinions from one talk show host (who does, and let's admit it, have a history of getting his facts wrong). This makes as much sense as claming to have refined musical tastes because your local Clear Channel classic-rock DJ constantly plays "Stairway to Heaven".
Actually, the "trickling upward" concerns innovation (business or technological), not capital. That is, if someone in the developing world finds a better, faster, cheaper way to accomplish task X, the same process should (in theory anyway) benefit producers and consumers in the developed world. If it works over there, use it over here.
This is where the concept gets a bit fuzzy IMO, especially since it incorporates that current, trendy business mantra, "innovation". But at least it beats the current plan, which vacillates between exploitation and total disregard.
First, it's Muhammand Yunus, not Yukos. He was never AFAICT connected with a defunct Russian oil producer. ;)
The concept of "sustainable enterprise" is starting to gain traction in the marketplace of ideas, if only because the alternatives are rather unappealing. The sound-bite version of this idea is that, if the poorer 5/6-ths of the world's population became entrepreneurial, and found better, cheaper ways to use our limited supply of natural resources, those of us at the top of the pyramid would also benefit. In this respect, capitalism (as we know it at least) would seek to do good and do well at the same time. (Another famous proponent of this approach is Professor C. K. Prahalad.)
Pure free-market theorists despise this idea, as most believe that only self-interest should govern economic decisions in order to maximize the greater good. This view, however, fails in practice, since it cannot account for information asymetry (where all "players" don't have equal access to all information about the "game"), let alone the wildly unequal access to capital among the world's populations.
Shamless karma-burning plug time: Check out this site for more info. (Yes, I'm a Kenan-Flagler alum. Go Heels.)
Nope. He just had to leave Los Angeles.
If this guy has a legitimate legal defense fund, I'd throw a few bucks his way.
(I won't throw money at "John Doe" though. X's bass player probably has enough cash as it is... )
One of my first assignments straight out of grad school was at IBM, writing device drivers for OS/2 2.0. I was actually quite impressed with it. It had a few odd hiccups here and there (mainly the Microsoft-ish naming conventions for system call functions, the plethora of said entry points, the single event queue per process), but it was quite nice to write for. It even had POSIX compliance, and an X server.
It's a damn shame, because within IBM at the time there were a LOT of people who wanted to write the Office-killer for OS/2, a LOT of people who wanted to evangelize it, and a LOT of people who were willing to go the distance to allow it to thrive. (There was a rumor that a developer in Boca Raton actually died in front of his keyboard. Just a rumor, it turned out, but the poor guy did pass away.)
There was a time, when Warp came out, that some of us thought that upper management finally managed to learn something about marketing. It didn't last, as you know; that was 1995 after all.
The real crime was that OS/2 was a project replete with the work of technically skilled, dedicated developers, none of whom ever got to see the acceptance of their work in the marketplace, thanks to the arrogance and ineptitude of various product managers.
Moral of the story: Marketing isn't everything that matters. It's sometimes the only thing.
I'd give Americans a goal: Energy independence within ten years.
Even a failure would go a long way in stabilizing and/or jump-starting the economy, curbing global warming, and keeping our citizens from funding terror indirectly.
As I read the comments, the quote-of-the-day at the bottom of the page now reads "Now I am depressed.."
I don't want more poor people driving. Or more rich people.
I would prefer it if MUCH fewer people needed to drive in the first place.
As I write this, I'm living in one American suburb, working in another, and am forced to burn fossil fuels just to buy a gallon of milk at the nearest store. I'm dependent on liquified dinosaurs. Walking to said shop from my house would probably only take 15 minutes tops, if a safe footpath existed. (I don't consider a freeway overpass without a pedestrain walkway to be adequate, thank you.) But no-o-o-o, my country decided to build communities around a single point of failure, the availability of cheap hydrocarbons.
The only reason why the new Tata may be a positive development for us in the West is if its energy-saving techniques actually make it to our markets. Otherwise, it's just another case of the inefficient, resource-hungry American lifestyle being appropriated overseas -- and in case you're wondering, no, that is not good news for this planet.
"Hatred" my ass. Read the sig if you need further clues.
As a lowly grad student, my CS department decided that it would move its undergrad intro courses from Pascal to C. I thought this was a huge mistake, as C is not a beginner's language, unlike Pascal.
In the end, market forces dictated the final decision. A lot of the undergrads wanted to become C programmers, not because they were interested in programming, or the language; they wanted the resume bullet of knowing C. (This was long before Java existed, you see.)
It was like that old joke where a rude patron shows up at a diner, and yells at the nearest waitress, "hey lady, make me a cheeseburger!".. only to have the waitress look at him and say "okay, poof, you're now a cheeseburger" before walking away. Instead, you had students yelling "hey, prof, make me a C programmer". (Were the students were as skilled at C at the end of the course? Yeah, sure, and the rude customer was suddenly tasty with ketchup too.)
It seems not much has changed since then. A lot of people who really shouldn't be programming (let alone for a living) are learning Java. They have no regard to the care and craft required of solid software construction. (I see this a LOT in offshore development teams as well as in new grads.)
Oh well. Thanks for keeping me employed, folks.
Ouch. I really wish you put the NSFW flag on The Other Family.
To be honest, the few captions I did see weren't all that funny, and certainly not as funny as the old "Dysfunctional Family Circus" of the '90s. IIRC, the DFC was just one guy moderating submissions from everyone who cared to submit a caption. I think Andy Ihnatko was a big contributor to it back then.
And the DFC was wildly NSFW. It eventually added its own cast of unsavory characters to the strip, like the unseen (Thank God!) Uncle Roy.
Sadly, the owner of the site won't even release an archive of the old captions, so all of the hilarity is gone forever (sob).
And most folks in the entertainment industry have figured this out.
Case in point: Michael Keaton, whose real name is Michael Douglas.
I would've liked to have seen one of the ultimate wielder of light sabres standing in front of a green screen myself...
Sorry about the bust-up, but I agree about teachers' days etc. I have close relations in the field, and I have no idea why they put up with what they do, for so little. And they work in a pretty decent school district (Wake County, NC), not some festering shithole in the middle of nowhere.
It boils down to really, really loving what you do, I suppose. There sure as hell is no other incentive.
Teachers might average standard 8-hour days if you take summer vacation into account for an entire year. (You would too if, for example, you put it 16-hour days for 6 months straight, then left the workforce for the next six months.) It wouldn't surprise me if they averaged more.
Looks like I struck a nerve.
Crybabies..
It isn't, but oddly enough everyone who has bought one also supports Ron Paul.
What is Mars trying to hide?
Santa Claus, you dope.
What's so wonderful about manned exploration of space anyway?
Transporting humans and all of their environmental requirements is ridiculously expensive. The risk for the travelers is ultimate. Alternatively, unmanned missions can go not only where no one has gone before, but also where no one will ever be able to go (e.g. the Venutian surface), and for a fraction of the cost.
The only upside from a manned mission is that we feel all warm and fuzzy when our heroes return from the voyage. Big deal.
Sounds odd to say, but I'm with Congress on this one. I just wish they'd taken it farther.