All your patent portfolio is likely to tell me is that I don't get to have 100% of your skills and abilities after I've hired you. NDA's and non-compete agreements can only go so far to alleviate a hiring manager's concerns in this area.
Funny you mention NDAs and non-competes... surely any dev is burdened with accumulated NDAs and trade secrets from previous employers? Why is there a difference when that employer is self-?
one example -- I have a large photo portfolio; if I go to work for someone, and they're aware of my existing body of work, and they want to use a piece I have for a project, is this something I should have already addressed at the job interview?
I can't think of any photographer who would open up his entire portfolio on entering contracted employment, because when that employment ends, he may well be self-employed again, and that would essentially put him starting from zero.
The problem here, though, is that while your employer can get a photograph of a similar subject and composition, you've basically blocked out a whole technique, and worse, a technique you're familiar with. You're essentially interfering with your own ability to do your job. Of course, if you had developed that patent in the name of another company, you would be just as blocked, but it wouldn't be you doing the blocking. This should not make a difference, but we don't live in a fair world.
Back when I was in university, it was taken for granted that programming would become a non-specialist skill because the biggest difficulty in dev was knowledge transfer. How do you get a software team to understand in months what took the guys doing the job four years of university education and five years of experience? So CS professors all basically agreed that computers would never reach their potential if the programming skills never migrated to the subject matter experts. The bottleneck is the teachers. Until the teachers can teach coding, kids can't be taught coding in schools. But who's teaching the teachers to program? No-one.
Personally, I think the long-term solution isn't more "days/weeks/months of code" with specific directions, or a new language necessarily; but the requirement for all teacher training colleges to include programming training as a mandatory part of the course for would-be teachers.
That is absolute fucking horse shit. The best coders I've ever worked with are American.
Sorry, but that's absolute fucking horse shit. The best coders I've ever worked with are Scottish.
This is probably because I live in Scotland so it's pretty much inevitably true. The same would hold for you. My problem with trusting you as a code dev is that you appear ignorant of statistical effects. The best coders I've worked with understand stats. Sadly most coders don't.
Their stock gains its value from the profits of their companies. The companies profit more when they pay their workers less. Is it hard to grasp the relationship?
Heck, I'm a Sys Admin and I don't know how to program! Sure, I understand the basic concepts of what coding is and can write a shell script or a batch file (I'm getting into Powershell too). But I don't consider that programming.
If you leave computers to one side for a moment and you think about the word "programming", it is very close in meaning to "scheduling", and batch scripting revolves around scheduling. If you think about the Unix model, a lot of early programming was just a matter of manipulating multiple command-line tools. Now if you look inside a book on C (either A Book on C or any other book on C), you'll find that procedural programming is very, very similar to the Unix command line in a lot of ways, except that instead of a restricted toolset of grep etc, we now have libraries that carry out millions of different functions.
Shell scripting really is exactly the same as any other form of programming, except that it is typically only used for small programs.
I believe your problem is that you have confused "programming" with "software development", but I suppose that's the English language's fault. In the same way that not everyone who can write is a "writer" (ie a journalist or author), not everyone who can program is a "programmer" (ie software developer).
But a basic level of skill in programming (in particular shell scripting) can make any worker more productive, as it lets them process their own data. When I was working in corporate IT management I had user to process, and where my non-coder colleagues were reading records manually out of Active Directory
in the GUI, I just dumped everything to CSV and knocked up a quick script to filter the rows. A took one morning to iterate through revisions of the script until it did what I want, with my boss suggesting that I was wasting my time and should be working. After lunch, I started "working" and was finished in a couple of hours. It was supposed to be a three day job. There are many tasks that can be automated that way, if only the worker knew how to.
And just like you can't simply pump more people into med school to end up with more doctors, you cannot pump more people into computer schools to get more programmers. Programming isn't middle management, you can't simply take any simpleton and expect them to be able to learn how to do it.
If your assertion is true, then there is something deeply wrong with the programming field. If it takes what is effectively a defective human brain to code, then our programming languages are wrong. Time to rewrite computing then...?
Scratch introduces kids to a decades-old style of programming that is well past its sell-by date. Let's write a proper functional programming language without all the imperative hacks that SML, Scala etc have and teach the next generation of programmers to think in terms of the problem to be solved, not how a typical CPU works.
This new definition of AI is several steps down from what Minski, McCarthy and company were aiming for. While this work is the direct descendent of theirs, and is often significant and sometimes impressive in its own right, there is an odor of self-congratulatory aggrandizement about the current usage.
In which case, there must have been an "odor of self-congratulatory aggrandizement" about Minsky (I haven't studied AI in general since 1998, but at least I know how to spell his name) because the guys working on it now are a lot nearer to what he was aiming for when he started out.
Now remind me (as I said, I haven't read the name Marvin Minsky since 98) was he a strong or a weak AI advocate?
Does your brain do pattern matching? Yes, it does. Therefore they are artificially modelling a process involved in human (and animal) intelligence. Would you prefer that they called it "synthetic psychology"? "Computation neuroscience"? "Electronic subconcious studies"?
Listen, asshole: I started this digital shit back when Moby Dick was a minnow and I've watched the wilting of the definition of AI over the years.
I didn't write the definition I cited, right?
True, but you also didn't highlight the first definition, the definition the dictionary compilers thought was more important: "a branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behavior in computers."
Visual pattern recognition is intelligent behaviour. Unless your definition of intelligence is predicated exclusively on higher-order reasoning and free will.
But identifying the difference between a '6' and a '9'? I agree that this is 'AI' as much as me heating something in the microwave makes me a chef.
This isn't 'AI' as far as I'm concerned. It's neat, it's cool. But it aint AI.
You're forgetting one important factor: they did it in a quantum computer. Do you know how difficult those things are to build? Do you appreciate that this makes them expensive? And can you see how this would mean that all the quantum computers in existence are very very small in terms of component numbers compared to computers that work within the bounds of Newtonian physics?
The machine they used has 4 quantum bits. 4 quantum bits! That really is very little computing power. And with that they did a non-negligible task.
But the important thing isn't that this was a breakthrough in AI research, it was that quantum computing reduced the task from polynomial time to logarithmic. I think the summary calling this "a significant improvement" is a bit of an understatement.
Finally, I realized that switching to electric charging stations would enable small companies without a massive oil distribution network (or even the local electric utility) to compete, and make their margins a lot smaller.
But there's a heck of an up-front cost to setting up a fast charger, and as the most important place for these is on major trunk roads, you're looking at planned infrastructure -- not just any old Tom, Dick or Harry can set up a service station on a UK motorway, for instance -- there has to be a proven requirement for capacity at the site, and then it is franchised out. Smaller petrol station companies almost never get these concessions.
Are you also going to ask for references for a single individual killed by other solid objects or similar size and weight? Newton's laws don't have to be proven individually for every single configuration of matter, you know.
Yay! Now we can break free of the oil and gas companies evil grasp by using electricity... that will up the demand for oil and gas powered electricity generation. And what with all the transmission losses and efficiency problems, we'll make life difficult for the oil and gas companies by forcing them to sell us more of their stuff. Seriously, if the oil companies have been suppressing EV technologies, their shareholders should be suing the CEOs for professional incompetence.
Anything can be achieved with a big enough array of capacitors. A motorway (en_US:freeway) charging station won't have constant demand, so not only would it be acceptable to charge up supercapacitors between cars, but also desirable -- plugging a charger like that straight into the mains is going to generate a heck of a spike, and it'll put a humungous strain on your transformers. (I know -- they use energon, not Li-ion.)
As I'm saying all over this thread, TFA is about programming languages, not user applications. Incompatibility in user space happens when the application gets unmaintainable and new code can't be added without breaking old code, because the old code is poorly understood and poorly programmed. If you don't know how the code works, not only is it unmaintainable, but its behaviour is not replicable. The problem is in the programming, and possibly even in the programming language. Cleaner, neater programming paradigms would make maintenance easier, and increase the backwards compatibility of user applications.
Slashdot Mirror
All your patent portfolio is likely to tell me is that I don't get to have 100% of your skills and abilities after I've hired you. NDA's and non-compete agreements can only go so far to alleviate a hiring manager's concerns in this area.
Funny you mention NDAs and non-competes... surely any dev is burdened with accumulated NDAs and trade secrets from previous employers? Why is there a difference when that employer is self-?
All this "farming" nonsense interferes with my natural right to hunt and gather.
About time too -- I'm sick of all these "businesses" with their "processes". Just let me do my bloody job!
one example -- I have a large photo portfolio; if I go to work for someone, and they're aware of my existing body of work, and they want to use a piece I have for a project, is this something I should have already addressed at the job interview?
I can't think of any photographer who would open up his entire portfolio on entering contracted employment, because when that employment ends, he may well be self-employed again, and that would essentially put him starting from zero.
The problem here, though, is that while your employer can get a photograph of a similar subject and composition, you've basically blocked out a whole technique, and worse, a technique you're familiar with. You're essentially interfering with your own ability to do your job. Of course, if you had developed that patent in the name of another company, you would be just as blocked, but it wouldn't be you doing the blocking. This should not make a difference, but we don't live in a fair world.
No he's not, he's absolutely right.
Back when I was in university, it was taken for granted that programming would become a non-specialist skill because the biggest difficulty in dev was knowledge transfer. How do you get a software team to understand in months what took the guys doing the job four years of university education and five years of experience? So CS professors all basically agreed that computers would never reach their potential if the programming skills never migrated to the subject matter experts. The bottleneck is the teachers. Until the teachers can teach coding, kids can't be taught coding in schools. But who's teaching the teachers to program? No-one.
Personally, I think the long-term solution isn't more "days/weeks/months of code" with specific directions, or a new language necessarily; but the requirement for all teacher training colleges to include programming training as a mandatory part of the course for would-be teachers.
That is absolute fucking horse shit. The best coders I've ever worked with are American.
Sorry, but that's absolute fucking horse shit. The best coders I've ever worked with are Scottish.
This is probably because I live in Scotland so it's pretty much inevitably true. The same would hold for you. My problem with trusting you as a code dev is that you appear ignorant of statistical effects. The best coders I've worked with understand stats. Sadly most coders don't.
Their stock gains its value from the profits of their companies. The companies profit more when they pay their workers less. Is it hard to grasp the relationship?
Heck, I'm a Sys Admin and I don't know how to program! Sure, I understand the basic concepts of what coding is and can write a shell script or a batch file (I'm getting into Powershell too). But I don't consider that programming.
If you leave computers to one side for a moment and you think about the word "programming", it is very close in meaning to "scheduling", and batch scripting revolves around scheduling. If you think about the Unix model, a lot of early programming was just a matter of manipulating multiple command-line tools. Now if you look inside a book on C (either A Book on C or any other book on C), you'll find that procedural programming is very, very similar to the Unix command line in a lot of ways, except that instead of a restricted toolset of grep etc, we now have libraries that carry out millions of different functions.
Shell scripting really is exactly the same as any other form of programming, except that it is typically only used for small programs.
I believe your problem is that you have confused "programming" with "software development", but I suppose that's the English language's fault. In the same way that not everyone who can write is a "writer" (ie a journalist or author), not everyone who can program is a "programmer" (ie software developer).
But a basic level of skill in programming (in particular shell scripting) can make any worker more productive, as it lets them process their own data. When I was working in corporate IT management I had user to process, and where my non-coder colleagues were reading records manually out of Active Directory in the GUI, I just dumped everything to CSV and knocked up a quick script to filter the rows. A took one morning to iterate through revisions of the script until it did what I want, with my boss suggesting that I was wasting my time and should be working. After lunch, I started "working" and was finished in a couple of hours. It was supposed to be a three day job. There are many tasks that can be automated that way, if only the worker knew how to.
And just like you can't simply pump more people into med school to end up with more doctors, you cannot pump more people into computer schools to get more programmers. Programming isn't middle management, you can't simply take any simpleton and expect them to be able to learn how to do it.
If your assertion is true, then there is something deeply wrong with the programming field. If it takes what is effectively a defective human brain to code, then our programming languages are wrong. Time to rewrite computing then...?
Scratch introduces kids to a decades-old style of programming that is well past its sell-by date. Let's write a proper functional programming language without all the imperative hacks that SML, Scala etc have and teach the next generation of programmers to think in terms of the problem to be solved, not how a typical CPU works.
I am beginning to sense the coming Kurzweil Singularity...
I switched to Dragon Naturally Speaking years ago....
In Soviet Russia, you imagine a Beowulf cluster of f*** beta, you Microsoft shill/Apple fanboi/Linux neckbeard.
Simplest variation of the Turing test on the planet: imitating slashdot posters.
This new definition of AI is several steps down from what Minski, McCarthy and company were aiming for. While this work is the direct descendent of theirs, and is often significant and sometimes impressive in its own right, there is an odor of self-congratulatory aggrandizement about the current usage.
In which case, there must have been an "odor of self-congratulatory aggrandizement" about Minsky (I haven't studied AI in general since 1998, but at least I know how to spell his name) because the guys working on it now are a lot nearer to what he was aiming for when he started out.
Now remind me (as I said, I haven't read the name Marvin Minsky since 98) was he a strong or a weak AI advocate?
Does your brain do pattern matching? Yes, it does. Therefore they are artificially modelling a process involved in human (and animal) intelligence. Would you prefer that they called it "synthetic psychology"? "Computation neuroscience"? "Electronic subconcious studies"?
I am extremely tired of that whole field.
I don't think you really care enough to have thought of a better term, do you?
Listen, asshole: I started this digital shit back when Moby Dick was a minnow and I've watched the wilting of the definition of AI over the years.
I didn't write the definition I cited, right?
True, but you also didn't highlight the first definition, the definition the dictionary compilers thought was more important: "a branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behavior in computers."
Visual pattern recognition is intelligent behaviour. Unless your definition of intelligence is predicated exclusively on higher-order reasoning and free will.
But identifying the difference between a '6' and a '9'? I agree that this is 'AI' as much as me heating something in the microwave makes me a chef.
This isn't 'AI' as far as I'm concerned. It's neat, it's cool. But it aint AI.
You're forgetting one important factor: they did it in a quantum computer. Do you know how difficult those things are to build? Do you appreciate that this makes them expensive? And can you see how this would mean that all the quantum computers in existence are very very small in terms of component numbers compared to computers that work within the bounds of Newtonian physics?
The machine they used has 4 quantum bits. 4 quantum bits! That really is very little computing power. And with that they did a non-negligible task.
But the important thing isn't that this was a breakthrough in AI research, it was that quantum computing reduced the task from polynomial time to logarithmic. I think the summary calling this "a significant improvement" is a bit of an understatement.
Are those consumables cost to the retailer, or the manufacture cost?
Finally, I realized that switching to electric charging stations would enable small companies without a massive oil distribution network (or even the local electric utility) to compete, and make their margins a lot smaller.
But there's a heck of an up-front cost to setting up a fast charger, and as the most important place for these is on major trunk roads, you're looking at planned infrastructure -- not just any old Tom, Dick or Harry can set up a service station on a UK motorway, for instance -- there has to be a proven requirement for capacity at the site, and then it is franchised out. Smaller petrol station companies almost never get these concessions.
Are you also going to ask for references for a single individual killed by other solid objects or similar size and weight? Newton's laws don't have to be proven individually for every single configuration of matter, you know.
Yay! Now we can break free of the oil and gas companies evil grasp by using electricity... that will up the demand for oil and gas powered electricity generation. And what with all the transmission losses and efficiency problems, we'll make life difficult for the oil and gas companies by forcing them to sell us more of their stuff. Seriously, if the oil companies have been suppressing EV technologies, their shareholders should be suing the CEOs for professional incompetence.
Anything can be achieved with a big enough array of capacitors. A motorway (en_US:freeway) charging station won't have constant demand, so not only would it be acceptable to charge up supercapacitors between cars, but also desirable -- plugging a charger like that straight into the mains is going to generate a heck of a spike, and it'll put a humungous strain on your transformers. (I know -- they use energon, not Li-ion.)
Commercial charging stations.
That's a bit harsh. It could have been a typo, or he could have just had a crap teacher in high school physics.
As I'm saying all over this thread, TFA is about programming languages, not user applications. Incompatibility in user space happens when the application gets unmaintainable and new code can't be added without breaking old code, because the old code is poorly understood and poorly programmed. If you don't know how the code works, not only is it unmaintainable, but its behaviour is not replicable. The problem is in the programming, and possibly even in the programming language. Cleaner, neater programming paradigms would make maintenance easier, and increase the backwards compatibility of user applications.