There is an article in New Scientist that went into some statistics related to this.
Basically researchers found that the the disease was detected much later in well educated people, which accounted for the fact that well educated people deteriorate more rapidly. i.e. the underlying cause of the disease progresses at the same average rate in everyone, but it is likely to be detected in later stages of the disease for those with a higher education.
Unfortunately I couldn't fund an online copy of the article, only the intro:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg188253 01.300&feedId=health_rss20
The best programmers I know have the ability to talk to a customer and then produce something that does what the customer wants. Many developers lack ability to turn needs into software. The nerd/geek stereotype as someone unable to communicate exists for a reason. That defines the opportunity.
I would suggest you try and concentrate on more practical and inter-personal skills than the curriculum above because you would most likely enjoy it more, and you are likely to be able to deliver software of value to an employer.
Of course, you might decide you need to get a degree to get a foot in the door (I wasted my time on a degree, but it got me a job!).
They understand the power of words.
Microsoft groks how to get the masses to associate a particular term to their benefit. I would expect them to have marketers working to evilly twist the meaning of open, free, and Linux.
Microsoft also seem to spend a lot of time and effort embacing and extending common or popular terms: eg:
I believe that only poor programmers comment their code poorly (useless comments, out-of-date comments, etc).
Because of this belief I make an effort to write comments which will assist understanding of any code. (Not saying I am a great programmer, but I care enough to try to be).
Given the amount of 'buzz' about AOP, I am surprised to not see any comments from anyone in the trenchs with some experiences using it. Anyone?
Aspects: I've read about them, I've heard about them, but I am sceptical as whether the benefits actually come about. Are the debugging, side-effects, and perhaps unobvious program flow worth the gains?
<dig>Maybe we have scared all the Java programmers away?</dig>
1) Everyone uses the same construct to ensure everything is freed properly on routine exit,
2) If you see an alloc not inside a try then you immediately check for a leak,
3) There are fewer stylistic clashes over how *abnormal* conditions are passed at a programmer level (error management needs to be consistent; reading other peoples code becomes easier).
For *non-critical* projects I alloc everything at the top, have one try and free everything at the bottom so no nasty indenting (only works well if code you are using has a rule of avoiding throwing exceptions in constructors e.g. using initialiser function that can throw exception instead of doing everything in the constructor).
The journalism on this issue has me wondering if there is not an evil company pushing PR splinters into Linus or Linux from behind the scenes...
A couple of articles appear to have gone a long way towards blowing up an issue - with the open source community being dragged into a non-existent 'fight'!
Thank you/.ers for not joining in and posting days-of-our-lives comments.
Start up a reputable sounding company that takes FOSS software, relabels it (FireFox -> Fox Internet Explorer) and sells it.
Donate half of any revenues to the software developers and everyone is happy!
The important things are to make no changes to the software except for relabeling the most visible parts, so that all FOSS supporters know that it is the same version, and are happy to point 'corporate' clients to the 'commercial' software!!!
Poor example - scientifically disprovable!
on
Blink
·
· Score: 1
A single counterexample - idiot savants that definitely do not use traditional 'logic' - but know if a number is prime or not.
In 1964 Horwitz and coworkers presented a paper at an American Psychiatric Association meeting describing two extraordinary identical twin brother savants whose calendar calculating and memory abilities remain as astonishing today as they were then. The twins had a calendar calculating span that extended over 40,000 years. They also remembered the weather for every day of their adult life.
They traded 20 digit prime numbers for amusement but could not do the simplest of arithmetic.
Oliver Sacks (who writes wonderful books on the mind) writes of these (or another) set of twins doing the same thing. They were trading 10 (?) digit primes. He told them some larger primes (12 digit?), which stopped them in their tracks, for five minutes and then they started trading bigger primes!
You twist your hand left and right, up and down (see the little animated GIF on the site - http://www.gyration.com/images/motion2.gif).
Strangly enough it is intuitive and it feels natural - I think they are tres cool (I want one - but damn thats expensive - especially in NZ's funky banana republic play-money!).
'Implied social rules' are what makes the world go round.
You seem to be advocating doing whatever suits you:
- Taking that bag of apples at the side of a rural road without paying the $1 asked for on the billboard (That'll teach em not to use a stupid business model)
- spitting on the apples at the supermarket because you like to.
The fact that you can do something doesn't mean you should. Bob uses advertising and you know that the ads pay for his site, therefore if you use his site it is ethical to view the adverts.
Obviously the rules here are all grey, but I think if everyone had your attitude, the world would be a worse place to live.
I had LASIK done on one eye, so that I have an excellent basis for before and after comparison.
I think that many people are unaware of the underlying problem with LASIK: The surface does not end up smoothly curved, but with bumps, ripples and dimples, like looking through an uneven pane of glass, and no glasses or contacts can then fix this problem. This is most noticable at night because the pupil is much more open/dilated, but in any high contrast situation it is noticable.
Most people have both eyes done and they cannot give you a unbiased opinion. Just as if you get a new prescription you are surprised how everything is ultra clear - you never notice the degradation over time because you have nothing to compare against.
In fact it is really easy to verify that the problem is uneveness for those that have had the surgery done. At night look at a point bright light and rotate your head left/right. You will see the stellation pattern rotate as you turn your head. Alternatively keep your head still and bring a peice of card or your hand across your eye (very close to your face). Depending on the direction you bring the card in from, you will change the shape of the stellation pattern (and you can thus work out physically where the worse areas of uneveness are).
If the surgery gave you the wrong focus point but perfectly shaped, then there would be no stellation pattern, instead the light is symmetrically blurred out of focus (try it on a good eye when not wearing your contact or glass!).
The biggest gripe I have with the surgery is that with the eye I had LASIK done on it is not as good at looking at monitors as the un-LASIKed eye - especially for high contrast text - which really sucks.
My vision in the un-LASIKed eye is -6 diopter ( both were the same) and with a contact I can see much better detail in all situations with that eye as compared to the eye that has had the surgery.
I spoke with the surgeon afterwards and he said that the amount of laser ablation is not measured, there is no feedback as it is ablated, instead a controlled amount of power is delivered to each coordinate on the surface of the eye. Because there is no feedback, the actual amount of ablation can and does vary across the surface, and so you do not end up with an even surface. Although he or I could be wrong here, as I haven't looked into the underlying reasons, and he is a surgeon not a LASIK manufacturer. This was three years ago, but people still talk about the night vision problem, so newer machines have not resolved the underlying issues.
I think there is a place for the surgery:
- If you are doing it for sports (Doom III is not a sport, neither is Slashdot).
- If you have serious astigmatism that cannot be corrected with contacts or glasses.
- If you cannot wear contacts (lets face it, glasses are just not sexy).
Anyone thinking of getting it done, I would suggest do one eye at a time so you have a true comparison. Be warned: They may put pressure on you to get both done at once (it is very hard to tell a specialist surgeon what you want when they say doing both is recommended). I am sure their underlying reasons for any pressure are not surgical reasons, but are for their interests.
Cheers
I think the world will be a better place when babies start having 16 toes and fingers. Then we can get rid of this crazy decimal system, and replace it with a sane one!
The hammer is your friend
on
Debugging
·
· Score: 1
There is something sublime about knowing when to use a big hammer to fix something.
I fixed the oven door by hitting it hard enough near the hinge to fix the problem of a slightly worn part - oh so satisfying!
Of course I wouldn't admit to any times I might have used a hammer and completely screwed something up!
A phoneline in a small coastal town went dead every month. The engineer finally clicked that it was based on the phase of the moon: The tide is slightly higher for the full moon, and seawater was seeping into a junction box with a faulty seal on the cable connection.
I would have loved to see the AHAH moment on his face!
Slashdot Mirror
There is an article in New Scientist that went into some statistics related to this.
3 01.300&feedId=health_rss20
Basically researchers found that the the disease was detected much later in well educated people, which accounted for the fact that well educated people deteriorate more rapidly. i.e. the underlying cause of the disease progresses at the same average rate in everyone, but it is likely to be detected in later stages of the disease for those with a higher education.
Unfortunately I couldn't fund an online copy of the article, only the intro: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18825
I disable all animated gifs - browsing is soooo must more peaceful now!
r /
I use the extension:
http://chrispederick.com/work/firefox/webdevelope
There might be other solutions, but that extension is just awesome if you do any web development.
The best programmers I know have the ability to talk to a customer and then produce something that does what the customer wants. Many developers lack ability to turn needs into software. The nerd/geek stereotype as someone unable to communicate exists for a reason. That defines the opportunity.
I would suggest you try and concentrate on more practical and inter-personal skills than the curriculum above because you would most likely enjoy it more, and you are likely to be able to deliver software of value to an employer.
Of course, you might decide you need to get a degree to get a foot in the door (I wasted my time on a degree, but it got me a job!).
Microsoft groks how to get the masses to associate a particular term to their benefit. I would expect them to have marketers working to evilly twist the meaning of open, free, and Linux.
Microsoft also seem to spend a lot of time and effort embacing and extending common or popular terms: eg:
Windows
SQL server
XP
Word
I believe that only poor programmers comment their code poorly (useless comments, out-of-date comments, etc).
Because of this belief I make an effort to write comments which will assist understanding of any code. (Not saying I am a great programmer, but I care enough to try to be).
Given the amount of 'buzz' about AOP, I am surprised to not see any comments from anyone in the trenchs with some experiences using it. Anyone?
Aspects: I've read about them, I've heard about them, but I am sceptical as whether the benefits actually come about. Are the debugging, side-effects, and perhaps unobvious program flow worth the gains?
<dig>Maybe we have scared all the Java programmers away?</dig>
1) Everyone uses the same construct to ensure everything is freed properly on routine exit, 2) If you see an alloc not inside a try then you immediately check for a leak, 3) There are fewer stylistic clashes over how *abnormal* conditions are passed at a programmer level (error management needs to be consistent; reading other peoples code becomes easier). For *non-critical* projects I alloc everything at the top, have one try and free everything at the bottom so no nasty indenting (only works well if code you are using has a rule of avoiding throwing exceptions in constructors e.g. using initialiser function that can throw exception instead of doing everything in the constructor).
The journalism on this issue has me wondering if there is not an evil company pushing PR splinters into Linus or Linux from behind the scenes...
/.ers for not joining in and posting days-of-our-lives comments.
A couple of articles appear to have gone a long way towards blowing up an issue - with the open source community being dragged into a non-existent 'fight'!
Thank you
His wife is going to hear about that for years
Until he gets Alzheimers, or she decide's she's had enough and poisons his breakfast cup o' tea!
Shouldn't we be encouraging companies to pay???
Start up a reputable sounding company that takes FOSS software, relabels it (FireFox -> Fox Internet Explorer) and sells it.
Donate half of any revenues to the software developers and everyone is happy!
The important things are to make no changes to the software except for relabeling the most visible parts, so that all FOSS supporters know that it is the same version, and are happy to point 'corporate' clients to the 'commercial' software!!!
Oliver Sacks (who writes wonderful books on the mind) writes of these (or another) set of twins doing the same thing. They were trading 10 (?) digit primes. He told them some larger primes (12 digit?), which stopped them in their tracks, for five minutes and then they started trading bigger primes!
Tools | Options | Downloads | Plugins
Untick PDF.
Now whenever you click on a PDF link you are prompted if you want to view it in Adobe PDF viewer.
Works for me!
It is a gyro you don't move it up and down.
You twist your hand left and right, up and down (see the little animated GIF on the site - http://www.gyration.com/images/motion2.gif).
Strangly enough it is intuitive and it feels natural - I think they are tres cool (I want one - but damn thats expensive - especially in NZ's funky banana republic play-money!).
'Implied social rules' are what makes the world go round.
You seem to be advocating doing whatever suits you:
- Taking that bag of apples at the side of a rural road without paying the $1 asked for on the billboard (That'll teach em not to use a stupid business model)
- spitting on the apples at the supermarket because you like to.
The fact that you can do something doesn't mean you should. Bob uses advertising and you know that the ads pay for his site, therefore if you use his site it is ethical to view the adverts.
Obviously the rules here are all grey, but I think if everyone had your attitude, the world would be a worse place to live.
I had LASIK done on one eye, so that I have an excellent basis for before and after comparison. I think that many people are unaware of the underlying problem with LASIK: The surface does not end up smoothly curved, but with bumps, ripples and dimples, like looking through an uneven pane of glass, and no glasses or contacts can then fix this problem. This is most noticable at night because the pupil is much more open/dilated, but in any high contrast situation it is noticable. Most people have both eyes done and they cannot give you a unbiased opinion. Just as if you get a new prescription you are surprised how everything is ultra clear - you never notice the degradation over time because you have nothing to compare against. In fact it is really easy to verify that the problem is uneveness for those that have had the surgery done. At night look at a point bright light and rotate your head left/right. You will see the stellation pattern rotate as you turn your head. Alternatively keep your head still and bring a peice of card or your hand across your eye (very close to your face). Depending on the direction you bring the card in from, you will change the shape of the stellation pattern (and you can thus work out physically where the worse areas of uneveness are). If the surgery gave you the wrong focus point but perfectly shaped, then there would be no stellation pattern, instead the light is symmetrically blurred out of focus (try it on a good eye when not wearing your contact or glass!). The biggest gripe I have with the surgery is that with the eye I had LASIK done on it is not as good at looking at monitors as the un-LASIKed eye - especially for high contrast text - which really sucks. My vision in the un-LASIKed eye is -6 diopter ( both were the same) and with a contact I can see much better detail in all situations with that eye as compared to the eye that has had the surgery. I spoke with the surgeon afterwards and he said that the amount of laser ablation is not measured, there is no feedback as it is ablated, instead a controlled amount of power is delivered to each coordinate on the surface of the eye. Because there is no feedback, the actual amount of ablation can and does vary across the surface, and so you do not end up with an even surface. Although he or I could be wrong here, as I haven't looked into the underlying reasons, and he is a surgeon not a LASIK manufacturer. This was three years ago, but people still talk about the night vision problem, so newer machines have not resolved the underlying issues. I think there is a place for the surgery: - If you are doing it for sports (Doom III is not a sport, neither is Slashdot). - If you have serious astigmatism that cannot be corrected with contacts or glasses. - If you cannot wear contacts (lets face it, glasses are just not sexy). Anyone thinking of getting it done, I would suggest do one eye at a time so you have a true comparison. Be warned: They may put pressure on you to get both done at once (it is very hard to tell a specialist surgeon what you want when they say doing both is recommended). I am sure their underlying reasons for any pressure are not surgical reasons, but are for their interests. Cheers
I think the world will be a better place when babies start having 16 toes and fingers. Then we can get rid of this crazy decimal system, and replace it with a sane one!
There is something sublime about knowing when to use a big hammer to fix something. I fixed the oven door by hitting it hard enough near the hinge to fix the problem of a slightly worn part - oh so satisfying! Of course I wouldn't admit to any times I might have used a hammer and completely screwed something up!
A phoneline in a small coastal town went dead every month. The engineer finally clicked that it was based on the phase of the moon: The tide is slightly higher for the full moon, and seawater was seeping into a junction box with a faulty seal on the cable connection. I would have loved to see the AHAH moment on his face!