As I like to say, there is no such thing as The Internet. It simply DOES NOT EXIST as an entity you can point to. What is called The Internet is nothing more than the voluntary interconnection of private (and some public) networks throughout the world, using a standardized methodology to facilitate that interconnection.
When people state that they want to control the Internet, and then mention ICANN as some entity that they must take over, they simply show their ignorance. Especially if they don't mention ARIN, IETF, W3C, and numerous other entities which have just as much, if not more, influence on the nature of the Internet.
Under Abraham Lincoln, newspaper publishers who printed articles which pissed off Lincoln were thrown into prison, and since he suspended habeus corpus, they remained there for the duration of the war, with no trial, no charges, no appearance before a judge.
Yet Lincoln today is respected as one of the greatest presidents, despite his trampling of the rights of citizens of this nation.
Now, what has changed in "recent years?"
Yes, you disagree with the "enemy combatant thing." Hell, I disagree with somebody being locked away without access to at least judicial oversight, in PARTICULAR if it happens domestically. But, in times of war, the government has ALWAYS claimed extraordinary powers, and the courts have basically always deferred. Prisoners captured in theaters of combat have always been detained for the duration of the war, and generally not tried judicially. The only question one needs to answer is whether this is a time of war. The courts are addressing that, the process is working fine.
Regarding the Internet, I'd trust the US government far more than most any other governmental body, for one reason: in the United States, we still believe that governed, controlled and constrained is not the natural state of man. Yes, the view has certainly been tempered over the years, but still holds. In most other nations, "the Government" is seen as legitimately having control over EVERY last aspect of man's existence on this planet, whether or not that government chooses to exercise that control. Here, advocates for constraint of the Internet would first need to pose, and answer, the question of WHETHER it should be controlled, and whether such control is within the legitimate power of the government to exercise. Elsewhere, that question is generally presumed to be moot.
Uh, my starting salary with a CS degree, over a decade ago, well before the boom, was $42500. That was at a huge company (makes cell phones, radios, used to make TVs...) with a huge dictatorial HR department (fired people without even their boss knowing first) setting strict pay scales based on national averages and so on.
So, over a decade later, the starting salary for a new college grad has fallen, while the cost of that education has grown far more than inflation?
The only reason that WHOIS data is public in the first place is that when ICANN was being set up the competing registrars insisted that the rules should allow them to see Network solution's customer list so they could spam them with transfer offers.
Uh, not. I used to register domains way back when it was totally free. I have a VERY low number InterNIC handle. WHOIS data has, so long as I have been on the Internet (and the NSFnet, and ARPAnet, hell, even BITnet (Because It's Time!)) been public data.
When I was at Purdue in CS, we had to write a machine emulator, for a VAX I think. It was the companion to a CEE course, which you likely took; I forget the numbers of both. We wrote our emulator in, of all things, Pascal. We had to program in assembly and then hand translate that into binary, and manually create the binary files to feed into the emulator. It would crank, and dump the memory image to disk. We then had to look through the memory image to figure out what happened.
Later, in a compiler course, we had to compile a subset of C++ to SPARC asm, and also use an emulator to execute that, and also do a memory dump analysis, though we did have pseudo ops to display output too.
Also, we didn't really have any classes that taught languages and programming, per se, other than the entry level CS courses which taught using Pascal. I learned C in a EE course, FORTRAN when I was still in Aero (switching from AAE to CS, I already knew FORTRAN & C). We learned C++ specifically for a compiler course, for most of us our first time using a language supporting OO at the language level; of course, it was just a cross compiler from C++ to C, at that time. Other languages, specifically for those courses.
Something also for you to realize is the caliber of the education you receive at Purdue. In the many years since I've left there and worked professionally, I have worked with many fellow professionals from many universities. The CS program, and the EE/CEE programs, at Purdue are among the very top. I worked at Cray Research, back in the day when Seymour was still around. They recruited heavily from Purdue for a reason: they trusted two PU CEE interns enough to be solely responsible for developing the pre-hardware emulator for the first MPP Cray machine, used for porting the OS and testing the architecture. Also at Xerox, and Motorola; also heavy Purdue recruitment. I've been in the position to interview and evaluate a good number of candidates from many universities, and I can say that Purdue is very much top tier.
Unfortunately, lots of other universities don't have "real" CS/CEE programs. A good number are degree mills, producing graduates narrowly educated, and not well equipped to learn new technologies and methodologies throughout their career, because they were never challenged and never exposed. I have run into "CS" graduates who learned in nothing but a pure MS GUI environment, using IDEs, who never were taught how computers really work, how to develop language translation/compilers, how to develop an operating system. There are CS graduates who never have touched a Un*x command line. It's sad. The Internet driven tech bubble has, perversely, devalued CS as a curriculum it seems.
Exactly. I race... I just cannot get into the Tack Tick. There's something about the fluid compass, the motion corresponding with the boat, and the quick and easy ability to figure out tacks and course changes.
I also race cars sometimes... there's a reason analog instruments are preferred. A *very* quick glance down instantly tells you what you need to know, almost without taking your eyes off the track. A pressure driven analog oil gauge can tell you information about the condition of your engine from the motion of the needle, something you wouldn't get from a digital instrument.
That is the argument being made, and it is not a bad thing nor a bad argument... except for one thing. The cost of products can, do, and will fall. What cannot really fall greatly is the cost of real property: homes, rental property, so on. I don't know about where you live, but where I live, an average home, in decent condition (1970s crappy flooring and carpeting, old appliances, needs work) costs about $250-275k. In Boston, I hear it is like $450k. Then you have California, New York...
For the people who bought houses years ago and had their property go from $100k to $350k (like our landlord), it isn't that big of a deal if the value of their house falls some.
But, for the people who purchased recently, they have a lot of their money tied up in that house. They have a big mortgage, especially if they took the 3%/5% downpayment option and bought during the recent cheap mortgage craze.
So, the dollar weakens. Prices for goods (food, cars, etc.) decrease, making lower wages still liveable. But, how about the people who have a big mortgage (tons and tons of people here) and whose careers experience a "downward adjustment" in wage? Suddenly, the mortgage isn't sustainable. They have to sell. But, the house isn't worth as much as it was when they bought it. We have a problem.
My fear is that this will happen, to a lot of people. It could be very, very damaging to our economy. I know that here in Chicago, it has started happening, on a small, but accelerating scale. Foreclosures are up, and home prices have stopped climbing through the roof. New construction of high-value real estate is sitting vacant, and the prices of some projects have fallen before a single unit has sold. There is a *lot* of money tied up in real property, which presumes that the value of that real property goes up, not down.
When I entered college in 1988, it was into the engineering program at Purdue. We all took freshman engineering courses, and then applied to our particular desired school of engineering. My freshman engineering had lots of Chinese and Indian students, and even more as TAs. I then entered the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, to be a rocket scientist. Not as many Indians, but still, lots of Chinese. I took a number of AAE, EE, ChemE, physics, math, and so on courses: still lots of Chinese and Indians. I decided I didn't like AAE so much after 2.5 years, it didn't look like we'd be heading to the stars anytime soon, and the cold war was ending anyway, so I switched to Interdisciplinary Engineering to figure it all out, and then finally to CS with a double major in ancient history. Well, still, lots and lots of Chinese and Indian students in those CS and math courses, and more as TAs. Not so many in history.
That was what, fifteen (OMG) years ago. Lots of engineers have gotten jobs since then. Lots of CS grads have gotten jobs (even before the Bubble). I don't think that your criteria is that great of an indicator. There have always been tons of foreign students in our quality engineering and science schools, because we have among the best schools on the planet. The Chinese sent their best and brightest to us for graduate school. I imagine they still do.
My suggestion is to do what you like doing. Attend a real university, not a vocational school pretending to be a university. Take a broad set of elective courses which challenge you, not just the easy 100 or 200 level courses to meet your elective requirements. It will better prepare you for the future. If it takes longer, then stay for another year. Don't be one of those techies, like so many in school when I was there, who only wanted to take the 'practical' courses in their particular major, and moaned about 'having' to take philosophy, history, literature. Don't be so focused on a set of skills that will be stagnant before you realize it. A broadly educated person, with good communication skills, exposed to a variety of subjects at more than the survey level, is better able to adapt when things change, like they are doing right now.
And one more thing... invest in your own education. Take courses periodically to keep updated. The globalisation of the economy has, obviously, accelerated the trends of the past. We aren't going to have the kind of run our parents had in their careers. People need to be pro-active in being prepared for the day that their once high-level job descends to a commodity, because that day will come surprisingly fast, as lots of people are learning unfortunately.
Being from the UK, it may also have to do with that Commonwealth thing (you know, the last vestige of the British Empire). Is movement among those Commonwealth nations made easier?
The problem is not that things change. Things always change, always have, always will. The problem is becoming how fast they change in the realm of knowledge and skilled professions. We need to adapt to that. Our educational system is set up such that to become 'highly-trained' costs a great deal of money. As industries are increasingly able to transition work globally to where-ever it is cheapest in an increasingly short timeframe, it may result in people who train for a seemingly good skillset finding that their skills are no longer natively in demand, before they are even able to pay for the training, which will likely be funded largely by loans. Industry states that there is a lack of 'highly-trained' individuals in various capacities. But if industry continues to rapidly seek the floor for those skills, what happens to the people who have to change careers, say, five times (considering the useful life time of the once 'highly-trained' IT career, this is not unlikely), each time re-training, and each time not earning enough during the useful phase of their skillset to pay for the education on top of the expenses of living?
This is happening on the fringes currently, but it will expand and only accelerate. That is the future we are entering. It's not necessarily a bad thing. It, however, is not the future our nation is prepared to deal with. The general educated populace here is accustomed to being like their parents: you go to college when you are 18, you rack up some debt, you get a degree, you get a job, pay off your debt, progress in your career. If this model changes dramatically, as it appears to be doing, then we need to really change our education system to match. In an increasingly technology driven world, nearly any person with a 'knowledge' job will need to have constant professional training, to keep up, let alone stay ahead of the curve. Yet in the drive, driven by fierce global competition, to always seek out the lowest possible cost of labor, will business really pay for this? The lean years of today, where training and education budgets have become severely restricted, are likely going to be lessons not soon forgotten. Employees will likely be expected to fund their own on-going education themselves more and more.
This is what we need to come to grips with in the 21st century: life-long, serious professional education, not just seminars and week-long 'training.' Training like what doctors and such currently get, but now, for everybody. It is the only thing that will 'solve' the problem that any knowledge career is subject to being moved elsewhere in a rather short timeframe. We need to come to grips with how we are going to structure and fund this, as it is a burden that could crush one individual, and indeed be life destroying, unless we want to become a waning society where people are disposable once their usefulness has expired.
Ahem, real democracy? A real democracy is one where the people vote directly on all issues. Almost nobody has that, or wants that. About the best you can get is a representative democracy. The American system is closer to true democracy than what most of Europe has. In your common parliamentary system, your prime ministers are not voted on by the nation as a whole. They are indirectly chosen, appointed by an elected body. The guy only has to win his home district. That's not "real" democracy. Hell, lots of you still have *hereditory* KINGS and QUEENS, whether ceremonial or not. Then you have all the appointed councils of the EU making the important decisions. You have councils of Prime Ministers, appointed by legislators, who are then sitting on EU panels, introducing yet another level of indirection. Where is the accountability? And Giscard's proposed EU permanent president, exactly when would the citizens of the EU as a whole get a chance to vote directly for that person? The EU Commission: appointed. The EU Council: appointed. Goofy rotating "presidencies." Complex double majority voting rules. You are calling this "real" democracy? You better try a lot harder.
Imagine, Europeans have the gall to criticize the American electoral college system and our quirks. They should maybe take a quick little peek in the mirror.
Larry (I'm glad to see that you signed your name too, Asshole!)
Re:I forgot-The system is at Edwards AFB
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Where exactly did you get your numbers regarding WMD exports? I did some digging, couldn't find much.
This first link is for conventional weapons, not WMD, but I still found it fascinating. See http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/mil_con_arm_ex p_cap
That is conventional arms exports ranked per capita, which I think is a pretty good measure of how a society overall ranks in exporting arms, in the sense of how much EACH INDIVIDUAL is in theory involved.
#1 - Macedonia! #2 - Sweden! #3 - Jordan #4 - Norway #5 - Israel #6 - Angola #7 - France #8 - Botswana #9 - United Kingdom #10 - United States
I was getting worried there, we almost didn't make the top ten! Even France beat us!
In absolute dollar terms:
#1 - United States #2 - China #3 - France #4 - United Kingdom #5 - India
Russia isn't in the list anywhere, which must be a mistake though.
The European Union? Those guys who can't decide how they're going to vote on things, let alone on some "constitution?" Who basically have no military? Who break their fundamental laws (national debt) when convenient for the big powers, but leave their little members out in the cold otherwise? The morons who pay to shuttle their "parliament" between two different countries simply to stroke the ego of their least emotionally secure member?
Thanks, I'll pass.
Larry
Re:Culture of Empire vs. Culture of Exploration.
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Athens? You would compare us to a loose confederation of city-states who constantly waged war on one another, and then their neighbors? It took Philip to make it one nation.
Rome? I'd be happy to be compared to the Republic. Representative (for the times, and especially after the Assembly and the Tribunes), yet stable, government, a healthy fear of concentrated power (the dueling equality of the consuls), (generally) peaceful transfers of power, the establishment that law must be written and must be known to the people, religious tolerance, rights for women (property, divorce), theatrical public jury trials that would make us proud, and so on. Now, the Empire... that's a different beast.
As for NASA, get real. NASA and the military have long been intertwined. All the initial astronauts were military, and the military was deeply involved in the initial launch programs. The Space Shuttle from conception was designed to meet military needs. NASA has long had a hard science wing, but as an organization, it has always had an extremely strong bond with the military. Considering that one of the most fundamental purposes of our federal government is defending us from external threats, it isn't at all inappropriate.
And corporations? The founders did not propose to eliminate artificial personhood or limited liability. They sought to strongly prevent corporations from being involved in politics, and otherwise limit them, such as banning monopolies. Good ideas. Especially when you consider the corrupt form of corporation with which the founders and people of the time were most familiar, the officially state sanctioned corporation, often a monopoly, granted via an act of state to a favored party with contacts. Like much else in history, this needs to be seen in the proper context.
But the concept of people joining together into a single entity with a single legal voice (a single corporal entity: incorporation) is an absolute requirement for larger-scale economic development. Limited liability and our bankruptcy laws are fundamental to to our economic success. If people were not protected from excessive personal damage when they invest their money, we would still be a localized craftsman economy. Which may be nice in some respects, but not in the respect that you'd have a much lower standard of living, little to no vacation, working six or seven days a week, and our technological progress would have slowed to a crawl.
What makes an economy move is risk. People have to take risk. If by risking a thousand dollars to invest into a business, I then became liable for all actions of that business, up to my total net worth, a rational person would not take that risk. If people didn't pool their money to form business ventures like that, where would we be? In the United States, we have created a culture that encourages risk, and does not excessively penalize failure. We permit people to run up debt, and then when they fail erase that debt through bankruptcy, leaving them enough personal property and assets to start over again. Just as important, our culture does not attach a stigma to failure to nearly the same degree that others do (such as western Europe). That is a good thing. Creative, driven people here are able to fly high, and fall low, but not low enough that they cannot fly high again.
The problem is not those core concepts. The problem is on the periphery: how we treat corruption, how we permit corporations to behave. And on those peripherial issues, we most definitely need reform.
Exactly about men. Most men know squat about construction, cars, technology, and so on. They just act like they know, for ego.
Then of course you have men like me:-), of whom Robert Heinlein would be proud: know how to tear an engine and transmission down and rebuild, my dad is a general contractor building spec so I can basically build a house (and I'm really good at digging ditches and hauling bricks), I have a wooden sailboat (with no motor) so I can really sail and do woodworking, my mom made me take horseback riding starting at the age of eight so I'm an expert equestrian, have raced cars, currently race boats, double majored in CS and ancient history... can cook a little, sew a little (got a sweet 1940s Singer machine). For most things I buy (except clothes), I'm a salesman's worst nightmare, and I am *SO* ready for the downfall of civilization.:-)
What exactly does your aunt do? A jigsaw with power measured in "horses" is one damn big piece of equipment! The world's best jig saw, the Bosch 1587, draws 5amps, about.25 hp. Electric nail driver? Pnuematic is the only way to go, much faster and lighter. But needs a compressor. And finally, the "easier to do it by hand" bit is sad. When I started woodworking, I got power everything too. Then I discovered that hand tools often are easier, faster, and more satisfying than power tools. Lighter, quick setup, more control, so on. Get your aunt a couple nice hand planes (Lie-Nielsen, Clifton) (jack and rabbet block to start), chisels (Two Cherries), and some sharpening stones, and a *good* quality rip and crosscut handsaw set. If she's really into woodwork (as it sounds), she'll love you. People do it backwards these days. They should buy the power tools only after learning the skills by hand. I wish I had.
As nice as that sounds to people who Hate(tm) George Bush with a passion, the reason given by NASA was safety: due to our desire to avoid losing another shuttle and crew, there needs to be a way to examine and possibly fix damage prior to re-entry. The orbit of Hubble and the orbit of the space station preclude going to both in the same mission. Meaning, going to Hubble means having no possible safe harbor at the ISS if damage is sustained on lift-off. Meaning, if there is damage during a Hubble mission, the shuttle crew is condemned to death unless we spend tons of money to provide a means to do extra-vehicular damage assessment and repair for that sole mission.
The next generation space telescope is going up next decade. Now that NASA has realized that the Space Shuttle isn't the Ryder rental truck to space and has re-discovered an intense focus on safety, they decided that the cost of maintaining Hubble for an extra five years before it burns up just isn't the risk.
But nah, let's not be rational. Let's Just Blame George!!
I say we go on a Holy Secular Crusade, rampaging about the world armed with Compassion, Justice, Superior Might and Firepower, toppling Cruel and Corrupt governments, freeing their downtrodden people from Tyrants, and installing True Bushian American Administrations to oversee our new Protectorates until the Sovereignty of the People can be Restored, feeding the poor masses, lifting them from poverty, and enlightening them with the One True Path to Everlasting Happiness: Constitutional Democracy expressed through Proportional Representation, Market-based Capitalism, a generous Welfare State, and blind adherence to International Legitimacy (granted solely by the consensus of the all-knowing and wise China, Russia, France, Britain and the United States).
It's the only way to save the village and those poor starving villagers!
Those are hazard avoidance cameras. They are not meant to produce "science" images. They are there to provide a wide viewing angle of what is around the rover's front and rear, to provide, well, hazard avoidance.
Environmentalism is not stupid. Wanting to protect the environment is selfish though, in that it helps to preserve our lives. That isn't a bad thing, it's a great thing.
What is bad are knee-jerk, ignorant, Luddite environmentalists. Worse, they are capable of generating enough ill-founded concern in the ignorant general populace to kill off projects that would make our lives better (nuclear energy) or expand our horizons of knowledge (nuclear power in space).
Has nobody here read about the proposals? This is Slashdot, but I would expect at least a few people to inject some accurate information.
Bush hasn't proposed raising the NASA budget by 100% or something. He has proposed raising it by about 5%, and REDIRECTING funds internally toward the GOAL of returning to the moon, and later going to Mars. He has proposed replacing the shuttle with an Apollo-like capsule system and an upper stage payload system, like Saturn provided, freeing up the 3.5 BILLION spent per year on the shuttles. That money would be used toward development of NEW technology, rather than maintaining and refitting the 1970 era shuttles.
So, we are talking about 5% growth in the NASA budget, which already is pretty small in the overal federal budget, and moving existing funds around to more productive uses, uses which would promote research and development of new technology.
Sounds QUITE reasonable to me, and it actually gives NASA a MISSION again, as opposed to being some low orbit trucking company.
Actually, the high standard of living in the United States was largely built locally. It is only in the last thirty years or so that the US has begun using other nations as cheap labor pools. (The Europeans started in what, the 1500s with their colonies?) Prior to that, basically all US manufacturing was done in the US, all innovation was home-grown, so on. We grew so much with that model that we had to import tons of labor. The post WWII economic boom was built on us growing our economy back after the lean war years, and having a global market that was able to digest our abundance of goods because their economies were shattered after the war. But even before the turmoil of WWII and the Great Depression, the US was growing incredibly fast, raising the standard of living for most everybody here.
What is happening now is that we (meaning Western civilization, not just the US) are reaping the liberalism we have been pushing for so very long. Liberal trade policies, promoting stable foreign governments, stable global monetary policy, so on. We have lifted the poor nations up, because we thought that as they gained stability and a transparent economy, we would gain market places, letting our economies grow to feed global demand. Problem is, the pace of poor nations improving themselves is pretty fast. And they are, or will shortly, be capable of competing with Western nations on an equal footing in most arenas. They will be able to feed their own demand, and export their own goods, cheaper than we could produce them.
Unless we are going to return to barriers on the flow of goods and capital, this is inevitable. A free global economy will result in corporations competing in a "race to the bottom" trying to squeeze the cost out of everything in an attempt to crush their competition. The cost of everything is falling as a result... but only labor has a brain and a mouth and can complain as they get squeezed too. Solution? We learn to deal with it, we erect barriers, whether tarriff, or global environmental/labor regulations that push poor nations back down the ladder some and retard their growth, or we bomb some third-world countries and put them "back in their place" as nothing more than low-skill servants of the West. Choices, choices...
Slashdot Mirror
Precisely.
As I like to say, there is no such thing as The Internet. It simply DOES NOT EXIST as an entity you can point to. What is called The Internet is nothing more than the voluntary interconnection of private (and some public) networks throughout the world, using a standardized methodology to facilitate that interconnection.
When people state that they want to control the Internet, and then mention ICANN as some entity that they must take over, they simply show their ignorance. Especially if they don't mention ARIN, IETF, W3C, and numerous other entities which have just as much, if not more, influence on the nature of the Internet.
Larry
Under Abraham Lincoln, newspaper publishers who printed articles which pissed off Lincoln were thrown into prison, and since he suspended habeus corpus, they remained there for the duration of the war, with no trial, no charges, no appearance before a judge.
Yet Lincoln today is respected as one of the greatest presidents, despite his trampling of the rights of citizens of this nation.
Now, what has changed in "recent years?"
Yes, you disagree with the "enemy combatant thing." Hell, I disagree with somebody being locked away without access to at least judicial oversight, in PARTICULAR if it happens domestically. But, in times of war, the government has ALWAYS claimed extraordinary powers, and the courts have basically always deferred. Prisoners captured in theaters of combat have always been detained for the duration of the war, and generally not tried judicially. The only question one needs to answer is whether this is a time of war. The courts are addressing that, the process is working fine.
Regarding the Internet, I'd trust the US government far more than most any other governmental body, for one reason: in the United States, we still believe that governed, controlled and constrained is not the natural state of man. Yes, the view has certainly been tempered over the years, but still holds. In most other nations, "the Government" is seen as legitimately having control over EVERY last aspect of man's existence on this planet, whether or not that government chooses to exercise that control. Here, advocates for constraint of the Internet would first need to pose, and answer, the question of WHETHER it should be controlled, and whether such control is within the legitimate power of the government to exercise. Elsewhere, that question is generally presumed to be moot.
Larry
Uh, my starting salary with a CS degree, over a decade ago, well before the boom, was $42500. That was at a huge company (makes cell phones, radios, used to make TVs...) with a huge dictatorial HR department (fired people without even their boss knowing first) setting strict pay scales based on national averages and so on.
So, over a decade later, the starting salary for a new college grad has fallen, while the cost of that education has grown far more than inflation?
Larry
Yes... I once had a 5.something GPA in CS. I believe it changed to a 4.0 scale in the early 90s.
Larry
The only reason that WHOIS data is public in the first place is that when ICANN was being set up the competing registrars insisted that the rules should allow them to see Network solution's customer list so they could spam them with transfer offers.
Uh, not. I used to register domains way back when it was totally free. I have a VERY low number InterNIC handle. WHOIS data has, so long as I have been on the Internet (and the NSFnet, and ARPAnet, hell, even BITnet (Because It's Time!)) been public data.
Larry
When I was at Purdue in CS, we had to write a machine emulator, for a VAX I think. It was the companion to a CEE course, which you likely took; I forget the numbers of both. We wrote our emulator in, of all things, Pascal. We had to program in assembly and then hand translate that into binary, and manually create the binary files to feed into the emulator. It would crank, and dump the memory image to disk. We then had to look through the memory image to figure out what happened.
Later, in a compiler course, we had to compile a subset of C++ to SPARC asm, and also use an emulator to execute that, and also do a memory dump analysis, though we did have pseudo ops to display output too.
Also, we didn't really have any classes that taught languages and programming, per se, other than the entry level CS courses which taught using Pascal. I learned C in a EE course, FORTRAN when I was still in Aero (switching from AAE to CS, I already knew FORTRAN & C). We learned C++ specifically for a compiler course, for most of us our first time using a language supporting OO at the language level; of course, it was just a cross compiler from C++ to C, at that time. Other languages, specifically for those courses.
Something also for you to realize is the caliber of the education you receive at Purdue. In the many years since I've left there and worked professionally, I have worked with many fellow professionals from many universities. The CS program, and the EE/CEE programs, at Purdue are among the very top. I worked at Cray Research, back in the day when Seymour was still around. They recruited heavily from Purdue for a reason: they trusted two PU CEE interns enough to be solely responsible for developing the pre-hardware emulator for the first MPP Cray machine, used for porting the OS and testing the architecture. Also at Xerox, and Motorola; also heavy Purdue recruitment. I've been in the position to interview and evaluate a good number of candidates from many universities, and I can say that Purdue is very much top tier.
Unfortunately, lots of other universities don't have "real" CS/CEE programs. A good number are degree mills, producing graduates narrowly educated, and not well equipped to learn new technologies and methodologies throughout their career, because they were never challenged and never exposed. I have run into "CS" graduates who learned in nothing but a pure MS GUI environment, using IDEs, who never were taught how computers really work, how to develop language translation/compilers, how to develop an operating system. There are CS graduates who never have touched a Un*x command line. It's sad. The Internet driven tech bubble has, perversely, devalued CS as a curriculum it seems.
Larry
Exactly. I race... I just cannot get into the Tack Tick. There's something about the fluid compass, the motion corresponding with the boat, and the quick and easy ability to figure out tacks and course changes.
I also race cars sometimes... there's a reason analog instruments are preferred. A *very* quick glance down instantly tells you what you need to know, almost without taking your eyes off the track. A pressure driven analog oil gauge can tell you information about the condition of your engine from the motion of the needle, something you wouldn't get from a digital instrument.
There are lots of times that analog is superior.
Larry
That is the argument being made, and it is not a bad thing nor a bad argument... except for one thing. The cost of products can, do, and will fall. What cannot really fall greatly is the cost of real property: homes, rental property, so on. I don't know about where you live, but where I live, an average home, in decent condition (1970s crappy flooring and carpeting, old appliances, needs work) costs about $250-275k. In Boston, I hear it is like $450k. Then you have California, New York...
For the people who bought houses years ago and had their property go from $100k to $350k (like our landlord), it isn't that big of a deal if the value of their house falls some.
But, for the people who purchased recently, they have a lot of their money tied up in that house. They have a big mortgage, especially if they took the 3%/5% downpayment option and bought during the recent cheap mortgage craze.
So, the dollar weakens. Prices for goods (food, cars, etc.) decrease, making lower wages still liveable. But, how about the people who have a big mortgage (tons and tons of people here) and whose careers experience a "downward adjustment" in wage? Suddenly, the mortgage isn't sustainable. They have to sell. But, the house isn't worth as much as it was when they bought it. We have a problem.
My fear is that this will happen, to a lot of people. It could be very, very damaging to our economy. I know that here in Chicago, it has started happening, on a small, but accelerating scale. Foreclosures are up, and home prices have stopped climbing through the roof. New construction of high-value real estate is sitting vacant, and the prices of some projects have fallen before a single unit has sold. There is a *lot* of money tied up in real property, which presumes that the value of that real property goes up, not down.
Larry
When I entered college in 1988, it was into the engineering program at Purdue. We all took freshman engineering courses, and then applied to our particular desired school of engineering. My freshman engineering had lots of Chinese and Indian students, and even more as TAs. I then entered the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, to be a rocket scientist. Not as many Indians, but still, lots of Chinese. I took a number of AAE, EE, ChemE, physics, math, and so on courses: still lots of Chinese and Indians. I decided I didn't like AAE so much after 2.5 years, it didn't look like we'd be heading to the stars anytime soon, and the cold war was ending anyway, so I switched to Interdisciplinary Engineering to figure it all out, and then finally to CS with a double major in ancient history. Well, still, lots and lots of Chinese and Indian students in those CS and math courses, and more as TAs. Not so many in history.
That was what, fifteen (OMG) years ago. Lots of engineers have gotten jobs since then. Lots of CS grads have gotten jobs (even before the Bubble). I don't think that your criteria is that great of an indicator. There have always been tons of foreign students in our quality engineering and science schools, because we have among the best schools on the planet. The Chinese sent their best and brightest to us for graduate school. I imagine they still do.
My suggestion is to do what you like doing. Attend a real university, not a vocational school pretending to be a university. Take a broad set of elective courses which challenge you, not just the easy 100 or 200 level courses to meet your elective requirements. It will better prepare you for the future. If it takes longer, then stay for another year. Don't be one of those techies, like so many in school when I was there, who only wanted to take the 'practical' courses in their particular major, and moaned about 'having' to take philosophy, history, literature. Don't be so focused on a set of skills that will be stagnant before you realize it. A broadly educated person, with good communication skills, exposed to a variety of subjects at more than the survey level, is better able to adapt when things change, like they are doing right now.
And one more thing... invest in your own education. Take courses periodically to keep updated. The globalisation of the economy has, obviously, accelerated the trends of the past. We aren't going to have the kind of run our parents had in their careers. People need to be pro-active in being prepared for the day that their once high-level job descends to a commodity, because that day will come surprisingly fast, as lots of people are learning unfortunately.
Larry
Being from the UK, it may also have to do with that Commonwealth thing (you know, the last vestige of the British Empire). Is movement among those Commonwealth nations made easier?
Larry
The problem is not that things change. Things always change, always have, always will. The problem is becoming how fast they change in the realm of knowledge and skilled professions. We need to adapt to that. Our educational system is set up such that to become 'highly-trained' costs a great deal of money. As industries are increasingly able to transition work globally to where-ever it is cheapest in an increasingly short timeframe, it may result in people who train for a seemingly good skillset finding that their skills are no longer natively in demand, before they are even able to pay for the training, which will likely be funded largely by loans. Industry states that there is a lack of 'highly-trained' individuals in various capacities. But if industry continues to rapidly seek the floor for those skills, what happens to the people who have to change careers, say, five times (considering the useful life time of the once 'highly-trained' IT career, this is not unlikely), each time re-training, and each time not earning enough during the useful phase of their skillset to pay for the education on top of the expenses of living?
This is happening on the fringes currently, but it will expand and only accelerate. That is the future we are entering. It's not necessarily a bad thing. It, however, is not the future our nation is prepared to deal with. The general educated populace here is accustomed to being like their parents: you go to college when you are 18, you rack up some debt, you get a degree, you get a job, pay off your debt, progress in your career. If this model changes dramatically, as it appears to be doing, then we need to really change our education system to match. In an increasingly technology driven world, nearly any person with a 'knowledge' job will need to have constant professional training, to keep up, let alone stay ahead of the curve. Yet in the drive, driven by fierce global competition, to always seek out the lowest possible cost of labor, will business really pay for this? The lean years of today, where training and education budgets have become severely restricted, are likely going to be lessons not soon forgotten. Employees will likely be expected to fund their own on-going education themselves more and more.
This is what we need to come to grips with in the 21st century: life-long, serious professional education, not just seminars and week-long 'training.' Training like what doctors and such currently get, but now, for everybody. It is the only thing that will 'solve' the problem that any knowledge career is subject to being moved elsewhere in a rather short timeframe. We need to come to grips with how we are going to structure and fund this, as it is a burden that could crush one individual, and indeed be life destroying, unless we want to become a waning society where people are disposable once their usefulness has expired.
Larry
Ahem, real democracy? A real democracy is one where the people vote directly on all issues. Almost nobody has that, or wants that. About the best you can get is a representative democracy. The American system is closer to true democracy than what most of Europe has. In your common parliamentary system, your prime ministers are not voted on by the nation as a whole. They are indirectly chosen, appointed by an elected body. The guy only has to win his home district. That's not "real" democracy. Hell, lots of you still have *hereditory* KINGS and QUEENS, whether ceremonial or not. Then you have all the appointed councils of the EU making the important decisions. You have councils of Prime Ministers, appointed by legislators, who are then sitting on EU panels, introducing yet another level of indirection. Where is the accountability? And Giscard's proposed EU permanent president, exactly when would the citizens of the EU as a whole get a chance to vote directly for that person? The EU Commission: appointed. The EU Council: appointed. Goofy rotating "presidencies." Complex double majority voting rules. You are calling this "real" democracy? You better try a lot harder.
Imagine, Europeans have the gall to criticize the American electoral college system and our quirks. They should maybe take a quick little peek in the mirror.
Larry (I'm glad to see that you signed your name too, Asshole!)
http://www.spacetoday.net/getsummary.php?id=640
Where exactly did you get your numbers regarding WMD exports? I did some digging, couldn't find much.
x p_cap
This first link is for conventional weapons, not WMD, but I still found it fascinating. See http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/mil_con_arm_e
That is conventional arms exports ranked per capita, which I think is a pretty good measure of how a society overall ranks in exporting arms, in the sense of how much EACH INDIVIDUAL is in theory involved.
#1 - Macedonia!
#2 - Sweden!
#3 - Jordan
#4 - Norway
#5 - Israel
#6 - Angola
#7 - France
#8 - Botswana
#9 - United Kingdom
#10 - United States
I was getting worried there, we almost didn't make the top ten! Even France beat us!
In absolute dollar terms:
#1 - United States
#2 - China
#3 - France
#4 - United Kingdom
#5 - India
Russia isn't in the list anywhere, which must be a mistake though.
Larry
The European Union? Those guys who can't decide how they're going to vote on things, let alone on some "constitution?" Who basically have no military? Who break their fundamental laws (national debt) when convenient for the big powers, but leave their little members out in the cold otherwise? The morons who pay to shuttle their "parliament" between two different countries simply to stroke the ego of their least emotionally secure member?
Thanks, I'll pass.
Larry
Athens? You would compare us to a loose confederation of city-states who constantly waged war on one another, and then their neighbors? It took Philip to make it one nation.
Rome? I'd be happy to be compared to the Republic. Representative (for the times, and especially after the Assembly and the Tribunes), yet stable, government, a healthy fear of concentrated power (the dueling equality of the consuls), (generally) peaceful transfers of power, the establishment that law must be written and must be known to the people, religious tolerance, rights for women (property, divorce), theatrical public jury trials that would make us proud, and so on. Now, the Empire... that's a different beast.
As for NASA, get real. NASA and the military have long been intertwined. All the initial astronauts were military, and the military was deeply involved in the initial launch programs. The Space Shuttle from conception was designed to meet military needs. NASA has long had a hard science wing, but as an organization, it has always had an extremely strong bond with the military. Considering that one of the most fundamental purposes of our federal government is defending us from external threats, it isn't at all inappropriate.
And corporations? The founders did not propose to eliminate artificial personhood or limited liability. They sought to strongly prevent corporations from being involved in politics, and otherwise limit them, such as banning monopolies. Good ideas. Especially when you consider the corrupt form of corporation with which the founders and people of the time were most familiar, the officially state sanctioned corporation, often a monopoly, granted via an act of state to a favored party with contacts. Like much else in history, this needs to be seen in the proper context.
But the concept of people joining together into a single entity with a single legal voice (a single corporal entity: incorporation) is an absolute requirement for larger-scale economic development. Limited liability and our bankruptcy laws are fundamental to to our economic success. If people were not protected from excessive personal damage when they invest their money, we would still be a localized craftsman economy. Which may be nice in some respects, but not in the respect that you'd have a much lower standard of living, little to no vacation, working six or seven days a week, and our technological progress would have slowed to a crawl.
What makes an economy move is risk. People have to take risk. If by risking a thousand dollars to invest into a business, I then became liable for all actions of that business, up to my total net worth, a rational person would not take that risk. If people didn't pool their money to form business ventures like that, where would we be? In the United States, we have created a culture that encourages risk, and does not excessively penalize failure. We permit people to run up debt, and then when they fail erase that debt through bankruptcy, leaving them enough personal property and assets to start over again. Just as important, our culture does not attach a stigma to failure to nearly the same degree that others do (such as western Europe). That is a good thing. Creative, driven people here are able to fly high, and fall low, but not low enough that they cannot fly high again.
The problem is not those core concepts. The problem is on the periphery: how we treat corruption, how we permit corporations to behave. And on those peripherial issues, we most definitely need reform.
Larry
Exactly about men. Most men know squat about construction, cars, technology, and so on. They just act like they know, for ego.
:-), of whom Robert Heinlein would be proud: know how to tear an engine and transmission down and rebuild, my dad is a general contractor building spec so I can basically build a house (and I'm really good at digging ditches and hauling bricks), I have a wooden sailboat (with no motor) so I can really sail and do woodworking, my mom made me take horseback riding starting at the age of eight so I'm an expert equestrian, have raced cars, currently race boats, double majored in CS and ancient history... can cook a little, sew a little (got a sweet 1940s Singer machine). For most things I buy (except clothes), I'm a salesman's worst nightmare, and I am *SO* ready for the downfall of civilization. :-)
Then of course you have men like me
Larry
What exactly does your aunt do? A jigsaw with power measured in "horses" is one damn big piece of equipment! The world's best jig saw, the Bosch 1587, draws 5amps, about .25 hp. Electric nail driver? Pnuematic is the only way to go, much faster and lighter. But needs a compressor. And finally, the "easier to do it by hand" bit is sad. When I started woodworking, I got power everything too. Then I discovered that hand tools often are easier, faster, and more satisfying than power tools. Lighter, quick setup, more control, so on. Get your aunt a couple nice hand planes (Lie-Nielsen, Clifton) (jack and rabbet block to start), chisels (Two Cherries), and some sharpening stones, and a *good* quality rip and crosscut handsaw set. If she's really into woodwork (as it sounds), she'll love you. People do it backwards these days. They should buy the power tools only after learning the skills by hand. I wish I had.
Larry
*Cough* Bullshit *Cough*
As nice as that sounds to people who Hate(tm) George Bush with a passion, the reason given by NASA was safety: due to our desire to avoid losing another shuttle and crew, there needs to be a way to examine and possibly fix damage prior to re-entry. The orbit of Hubble and the orbit of the space station preclude going to both in the same mission. Meaning, going to Hubble means having no possible safe harbor at the ISS if damage is sustained on lift-off. Meaning, if there is damage during a Hubble mission, the shuttle crew is condemned to death unless we spend tons of money to provide a means to do extra-vehicular damage assessment and repair for that sole mission.
The next generation space telescope is going up next decade. Now that NASA has realized that the Space Shuttle isn't the Ryder rental truck to space and has re-discovered an intense focus on safety, they decided that the cost of maintaining Hubble for an extra five years before it burns up just isn't the risk.
But nah, let's not be rational. Let's Just Blame George!!
Larry
I say we go on a Holy Secular Crusade, rampaging about the world armed with Compassion, Justice, Superior Might and Firepower, toppling Cruel and Corrupt governments, freeing their downtrodden people from Tyrants, and installing True Bushian American Administrations to oversee our new Protectorates until the Sovereignty of the People can be Restored, feeding the poor masses, lifting them from poverty, and enlightening them with the One True Path to Everlasting Happiness: Constitutional Democracy expressed through Proportional Representation, Market-based Capitalism, a generous Welfare State, and blind adherence to International Legitimacy (granted solely by the consensus of the all-knowing and wise China, Russia, France, Britain and the United States).
It's the only way to save the village and those poor starving villagers!
Larry
Those are hazard avoidance cameras. They are not meant to produce "science" images. They are there to provide a wide viewing angle of what is around the rover's front and rear, to provide, well, hazard avoidance.
Larry
Environmentalism is not stupid. Wanting to protect the environment is selfish though, in that it helps to preserve our lives. That isn't a bad thing, it's a great thing.
What is bad are knee-jerk, ignorant, Luddite environmentalists. Worse, they are capable of generating enough ill-founded concern in the ignorant general populace to kill off projects that would make our lives better (nuclear energy) or expand our horizons of knowledge (nuclear power in space).
Larry
Has nobody here read about the proposals? This is Slashdot, but I would expect at least a few people to inject some accurate information.
Bush hasn't proposed raising the NASA budget by 100% or something. He has proposed raising it by about 5%, and REDIRECTING funds internally toward the GOAL of returning to the moon, and later going to Mars. He has proposed replacing the shuttle with an Apollo-like capsule system and an upper stage payload system, like Saturn provided, freeing up the 3.5 BILLION spent per year on the shuttles. That money would be used toward development of NEW technology, rather than maintaining and refitting the 1970 era shuttles.
So, we are talking about 5% growth in the NASA budget, which already is pretty small in the overal federal budget, and moving existing funds around to more productive uses, uses which would promote research and development of new technology.
Sounds QUITE reasonable to me, and it actually gives NASA a MISSION again, as opposed to being some low orbit trucking company.
Larry
Actually, the high standard of living in the United States was largely built locally. It is only in the last thirty years or so that the US has begun using other nations as cheap labor pools. (The Europeans started in what, the 1500s with their colonies?) Prior to that, basically all US manufacturing was done in the US, all innovation was home-grown, so on. We grew so much with that model that we had to import tons of labor. The post WWII economic boom was built on us growing our economy back after the lean war years, and having a global market that was able to digest our abundance of goods because their economies were shattered after the war. But even before the turmoil of WWII and the Great Depression, the US was growing incredibly fast, raising the standard of living for most everybody here.
What is happening now is that we (meaning Western civilization, not just the US) are reaping the liberalism we have been pushing for so very long. Liberal trade policies, promoting stable foreign governments, stable global monetary policy, so on. We have lifted the poor nations up, because we thought that as they gained stability and a transparent economy, we would gain market places, letting our economies grow to feed global demand. Problem is, the pace of poor nations improving themselves is pretty fast. And they are, or will shortly, be capable of competing with Western nations on an equal footing in most arenas. They will be able to feed their own demand, and export their own goods, cheaper than we could produce them.
Unless we are going to return to barriers on the flow of goods and capital, this is inevitable. A free global economy will result in corporations competing in a "race to the bottom" trying to squeeze the cost out of everything in an attempt to crush their competition. The cost of everything is falling as a result... but only labor has a brain and a mouth and can complain as they get squeezed too. Solution? We learn to deal with it, we erect barriers, whether tarriff, or global environmental/labor regulations that push poor nations back down the ladder some and retard their growth, or we bomb some third-world countries and put them "back in their place" as nothing more than low-skill servants of the West. Choices, choices...
Larry
Unless it pays less than your unemployment benefits...