I only recently discovered that you can use Google for units conversion. You can type: 451 furlongs/fortnight in km/hr
and you get back: 451 (furlongs / fortnight) = 0.270020143 km / hr
or type: 387 btu/hr in watts
and get: 387 (btu / hr) = 113.418504 Watts
I have always understood invention to mean something that is created or put together for the first time, whereas a discovery is learning something that existed prior to humans learning about it.
To discover is to uncover is to learn. To invent is to create something new.
Yeah, in some respects "engineering" does describe what (great) programmers do, but there are two aspects...
At the finest level of detail, in a small function or block of code (3 to 10? lines), it does turn into a craft; it is like building furniture; all pieces fit together with all the others. (Of course, if a programmer takes this approach at any but the finest level, he isn't a hacker or an engineer - he is a fool.)
I am in Calgary, which is full of real engineers - you know, the people who spend years learning about all sorts of things, then wear the steel ring signifying that they take legal responsibility for what they design. This is one of the ancient professions and its practioners take a dim view of titles like "Sanitation Engineer" and "Network Engineer". I don't like to usurp the title of an ancient profession.
On a side note, in my experience real engineers generally make lousy programmers (at least, if their job is being an engineer) - they tend to write software that handles the immediate problem this afternoon and God help you if you want to make the code more general later.
When you get right down to it, engineering is about applying standard or safe practice to a new problem, whereas, the essence of software development is seeing the fundamental simplicity in a complex real-world situation, and developing something based this view.
A good program is extensible because it reflects the fundamental simplicity (of the abstracted view) of the real world. A good bridge or dam or oil refinery does not generally have to be extensible.
If your development can be done by resources following a methodology, fine. Hire them by the pound and make sure they follow the methodology.
Some development is more difficult, it has aspects that, if implemented by resources, will yield an unmaintainable, bloated mess. That is when you need developers who can see through the maze of complexity and develop reliable, understandable, maintainable, extensible code. That is when you need a craftsman.
One characteristic of great programmers: they love to program.
What is the proportion between the genes where we know what they do, compared to the total in some genome? Are there bacteria where they basically know how the genome works? Not just "this gene causes this protein to be produced", but actually "this gene causes this characteristic of the organism".
What about the human genome?
I heard a lot of hype about "mapping" the human genome, but I always got the impression that it was like mapping a highway system. They now have a map of where all the highways go, but they don't where anything is in relation to these highways.
Joe Sixpack should never have to put more than 10 cents in his account, because presumably he's e-mailing people who don't mind getting his e-mails, and they won't even take the 10 cents.
Joe Sixpack is going to be pissed if his 10 cents keep disappearing. He sure as hell isn't going back to Circuit City - he just gave them $60 and his computer is doing that stupid shit again. And, on top of it all, he keeps getting nickled and dimed to death from this stupid email system.
Another aspect: As long as the system is not universal (in a domain range?), spammers can still keep hijacking boxes to use as remailers - they just need to hijack a larger number of boxes.
If a standard way of doing this is implemented on Windows, and joe-sixpack's box is hijacked by a worm that resends spam and always agrees to post the bond (using the standard Windows technique), then joe-sixpack's supply of money for bonds will disappear pretty fast.
Even if joe-sixpack only makes $5 available, he is going to be pissed if it keeps disappearing.
Right... he should patch his machine to prevent worms, but we are talking about
joe-sixpack here...
If you add something to an image, or take something out by replacing a region of the image with something else, you get a boundary. If the boundary is a line ("cut and paste"), it can be visible to the eye and statistical approaches could detect it.
So you use smoothing and feathering to turn the boundary into a region. This can make the change harder to detect by eye, but the boundary would presumably look different than parts of the original image, statistically, (the changes from one pixel to the next) - a region that has been smoothed will be smoother.
Presumably, this will lead to better smoothing and feathering techniques, maybe using (more) pseudo-randomness - slight additional random changes from one pixel to the next, but randomness that has the same statistical properties as adjacent parts of the original image.
I seem to recall that Edison invented the alarm clock so that he could sleep on the job (as a night watchman, I think) but wake up before the supervisor came around.
Sorta like Green Peace opposing roads into wilderness areas - if there are no people, an area is pristine; once there are people there, it's desecrated.
People are part of nature!
The idea that huge areas of wilderness should be unavailable to people is disgusting.
...after it starts to fall a few feet. It's going to slow on the way up, then speed up again on the way down.
Sure, relative to the Earth, the shell will slow down as it rises and then speed up as it falls.
But, relative to the shell (ignoring air drag), the shell and everything in it are in free-fall and have no acceleration.
If you were in the shell with no windows or devices that interacted with the Earth, what experiments could you perform to detect when your speed, relative to the Earth, went to zero and then started increasing in the opposite direction?
Once the shell is no longer being pushed by the gas, the acceleration is going to be zero (or slightly negative as a result of air drag).
An accelerometer could be used to calculate the muzzle velocity of the shell. You could use this to estimate the maximum elevation. But once the thing is in free fall, an accelerometer isn't going to tell you much.
This works better for programming than net-admin, but...
If you want to establish some C++ experience, develop an initial version of something useful (no matter what), license it as Open Source software, and create a website for the project. If it is for Unix/Linux, getting it listed on Freshmeat.net adds some credibility. If you can get other people interested in contributing to the project, that really looks good (but this can be difficult to do).
On your resume, you describe the your work on the project under a heading like 'Development Experience'. It isn't as good as having work you can describe as 'Professional Experience' but it is a lot better than nothing. And for prospective employers that would like to see some samples of your code, you can put some key stuff directly on pages on the web-site. Put the URL in your resume.
I think that this is a legitimate way of getting hobby programming into the experience part of your resume.
I don't know that Aeron chairs are necessary, but decent chairs are extremely important for some people. They don't have to be that expensive; they just have to be the right shape to hold the small of your back together.
I can sit in a good chair for hours. In a bad chair, after about fifteen minutes, I have to get up every five minutes because my back hurts so much.
Saving a couple of hundred bucks on a chair and having an expensive worker in pain is not saving money!
You know, those interviews where most of it is based on recalling how you handled some particular sort of situation in the past.
I find it extremely difficult to recall particular past instances, whereas I have no difficulty talking about how I would handle a hypothetical situation.
My mind is deeply into classes; instances are transitory things that are hardly worth remembering.
I have this software - anyone who wants it can have it for free.
I can provide hardware - anyone who wants it can have it for free.
The incremental cost of letting one more person use your software is zero (basically); the incremental cost of building someone some hardware is not zero.
... if there is actually a market for these things, it seems to me that they could be made and sold for a lot less than $1700. A few competitors and the price could go way down.
On the other hand, it is hard to see that there would be that big a market for the thing, considering the amount of your time it consumes (split up into 10 minute chunks).
Re:Reap what you sow
on
The 3Com Saga
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Paying other companies to develop products for you to put your name on... this is a business model that can be duplicated by any business that has (or can raise) the money.
It sort of reminds me of paying people to build buildings for you to put your name on... If they took it one step further and used other people's money, they could be the Donald Trump of electronics.
Slashdot Mirror
Stored procedures can be good for programming logic that uses the database and that should be the same across multiple applications.
451 furlongs/fortnight in km/hr and you get back:
451 (furlongs / fortnight) = 0.270020143 km / hr
or type: 387 btu/hr in watts
and get: 387 (btu / hr) = 113.418504 Watts
To discover is to uncover is to learn. To invent is to create something new.
At the finest level of detail, in a small function or block of code (3 to 10? lines), it does turn into a craft; it is like building furniture; all pieces fit together with all the others. (Of course, if a programmer takes this approach at any but the finest level, he isn't a hacker or an engineer - he is a fool.)
I am in Calgary, which is full of real engineers - you know, the people who spend years learning about all sorts of things, then wear the steel ring signifying that they take legal responsibility for what they design. This is one of the ancient professions and its practioners take a dim view of titles like "Sanitation Engineer" and "Network Engineer". I don't like to usurp the title of an ancient profession.
On a side note, in my experience real engineers generally make lousy programmers (at least, if their job is being an engineer) - they tend to write software that handles the immediate problem this afternoon and God help you if you want to make the code more general later.
When you get right down to it, engineering is about applying standard or safe practice to a new problem, whereas, the essence of software development is seeing the fundamental simplicity in a complex real-world situation, and developing something based this view.
A good program is extensible because it reflects the fundamental simplicity (of the abstracted view) of the real world. A good bridge or dam or oil refinery does not generally have to be extensible.
If your development can be done by resources following a methodology, fine. Hire them by the pound and make sure they follow the methodology.
Some development is more difficult, it has aspects that, if implemented by resources, will yield an unmaintainable, bloated mess. That is when you need developers who can see through the maze of complexity and develop reliable, understandable, maintainable, extensible code. That is when you need a craftsman.
One characteristic of great programmers: they love to program.
What about the human genome?
I heard a lot of hype about "mapping" the human genome, but I always got the impression that it was like mapping a highway system. They now have a map of where all the highways go, but they don't where anything is in relation to these highways.
I always thought that patents were for inventions, not discoveries (no matter how many zillions of dollars are spent doing the discovering).
Joe Sixpack is going to be pissed if his 10 cents keep disappearing. He sure as hell isn't going back to Circuit City - he just gave them $60 and his computer is doing that stupid shit again. And, on top of it all, he keeps getting nickled and dimed to death from this stupid email system.
Another aspect: As long as the system is not universal (in a domain range?), spammers can still keep hijacking boxes to use as remailers - they just need to hijack a larger number of boxes.
Isn't this only going to really amount to anything if it does turn into a new Gnome fork?
Even if joe-sixpack only makes $5 available, he is going to be pissed if it keeps disappearing.
Right... he should patch his machine to prevent worms, but we are talking about joe-sixpack here...
So you use smoothing and feathering to turn the boundary into a region. This can make the change harder to detect by eye, but the boundary would presumably look different than parts of the original image, statistically, (the changes from one pixel to the next) - a region that has been smoothed will be smoother.
Presumably, this will lead to better smoothing and feathering techniques, maybe using (more) pseudo-randomness - slight additional random changes from one pixel to the next, but randomness that has the same statistical properties as adjacent parts of the original image.
Laziness is the father of invention.
People are part of nature!
The idea that huge areas of wilderness should be unavailable to people is disgusting.
Sure, relative to the Earth, the shell will slow down as it rises and then speed up as it falls.
But, relative to the shell (ignoring air drag), the shell and everything in it are in free-fall and have no acceleration. If you were in the shell with no windows or devices that interacted with the Earth, what experiments could you perform to detect when your speed, relative to the Earth, went to zero and then started increasing in the opposite direction?
An accelerometer could be used to calculate the muzzle velocity of the shell. You could use this to estimate the maximum elevation. But once the thing is in free fall, an accelerometer isn't going to tell you much.
If you want to establish some C++ experience, develop an initial version of something useful (no matter what), license it as Open Source software, and create a website for the project. If it is for Unix/Linux, getting it listed on Freshmeat.net adds some credibility. If you can get other people interested in contributing to the project, that really looks good (but this can be difficult to do).
On your resume, you describe the your work on the project under a heading like 'Development Experience'. It isn't as good as having work you can describe as 'Professional Experience' but it is a lot better than nothing. And for prospective employers that would like to see some samples of your code, you can put some key stuff directly on pages on the web-site. Put the URL in your resume.
I think that this is a legitimate way of getting hobby programming into the experience part of your resume.
I don't know that Aeron chairs are necessary, but decent chairs are extremely important for some people. They don't have to be that expensive; they just have to be the right shape to hold the small of your back together.
I can sit in a good chair for hours. In a bad chair, after about fifteen minutes, I have to get up every five minutes because my back hurts so much.
Saving a couple of hundred bucks on a chair and having an expensive worker in pain is not saving money!
Now, I think this is the lifetime of the usual shorter-lived mesons, but still...
I find it extremely difficult to recall particular past instances, whereas I have no difficulty talking about how I would handle a hypothetical situation.
My mind is deeply into classes; instances are transitory things that are hardly worth remembering.
ESR has a Continuity Page for his projects.
So, obviously no one cares about your stupid game, but if you aren't interested in her phone call, you're an asshole.
- I have this software - anyone who wants it can have it for free.
- I can provide hardware - anyone who wants it can have it for free.
The incremental cost of letting one more person use your software is zero (basically); the incremental cost of building someone some hardware is not zero.On the other hand, it is hard to see that there would be that big a market for the thing, considering the amount of your time it consumes (split up into 10 minute chunks).
It sort of reminds me of paying people to build buildings for you to put your name on... If they took it one step further and used other people's money, they could be the Donald Trump of electronics.