Completely seriously, post your wedding list on Slashdot.
We'd like to show the appreciation of this fun forum and the affection us Geeks feel for you in a material way. So post your (extensive) list of desired wedding gifts online and watch the Slashdot effect as it provides you with a million toast racks.
All the people saying "use a search engine" in more or less civil tones, shut it !
I'm interested in the questions that get asked here. I wouldn't have thought to ask this one, and it's nice to see the answers - if you think the answer is self evident, move along.
Google et al will tell you a lot, but they won't tell you if the supplier is any good - that's the sort of insight that Slashdot is good at giving.
This sort of "Use a search engine, don't ask here" is the sort of unfriendly BS that will drive new people away from any site. We all have the occasional stupid question.
I do not recommend Sony VAIO - because of their device driver support. I bought a Sony Picturebook PCG-C1F at a not-cheap price, and upgraded to Win2K when it came out. No support from VAIO for this, it is "not recommended".
I contacted their tech support people before buying the thing and was told that they would be making drivers available.
When I contact them now, they tell me that they have no planned date for releasing drivers. Specifically, it's the built-in camera that's not supported - everything else works a treat.
Because they won't produce drivers the laptop's effective lifetime for me was about 6 months.
The only effective remedy that I have is to never buy from Sony again, and to always suggest to colleagues and friends that they buy from other manufacturers.
This is stuff that I get asked a lot, so to date I would reckon that several tens of thousands of dollars of sales have gone to other manufacturers as a result of poor software support.
Your final argument seems to me to ignore the case where a company is a user of an Open Source tool, but discovers a need for an extension to it.
Sure, the company can develop the extension and keep it internally, but they then have the cost of ongoing maintenance of that tool. Give it back to the project and it ceases to be your problem.
This is particularly true of infrastructure-type software. log4j is the particular example I have in mind - your competitors won't be crushed by the strategic magic that ties you into some comparatively obscure sink for logging information, so you lose nothing by giving the solution away and gain a return in reduced maintenance costs (and perhaps a few intangible PR benefits).
Well, I could argue that Java (current favourite language) isn't arbitrary, but it isn't, so I won't.
At some point sure you'll hit fundamental and arbitrary stuff in either case.
But in most good (imho) programming languages there are relatively few, and everything else is defined in terms of them - and it's fairly easy to determine how the big exciting stuff (main()) works in terms of the axiomatic stuff (int, +, *)
I'm dimly aware that most mathematical disciplines are built in a similarly rigorous way, but because there's no obvious way to go from "obscure greek letter that I can't even pronounce" to the stuff about which I DO know about, I find it somewhat inaccessible.
A bit late for a reply, but that's a fair question. I didn't mean the spoken language of mathematics so much as the symbols with which it is represented and manipulated.
The thing that I like about most current programming languages is their degree of modularity; I can look at a piece of software and (assuming I have the source code) see something like:
doThis();
doThat();
And I know that I will be able to investigate those functions (or procedures, or methods, or subroutines, whatever) and determine what they're made of.
It may be more functions, in which case I can drill down further. Eventually I'll hit something that I understand if I understand the language regardless of whether I understand the program, the base of the code. The axioms, if you like. So while the user defined bits of the program (function and variable names and so forth) can be as arbitrary as a badger in light aircraft, really only the fundamentals of the language (which I can reasonably be expected to learn and understand in detail) are truly opaque given the contextual information that is available to me.
In mathematics, there is no such clarity. Each symbol is individually defined, often to multiple meanings depending upon context. There is no consistent way in which I can drill down to a definition of each symbol in terms of the basics, the axioms. So, to my mind, these symbols are arbitrary.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that such definitions are impossible, or unavailable, just that they're not available from one known source and they're not defined in one consistent way. And that seems to me to be what the article is describing, and it's why I'm excited by the idea: finally I can find out how the bits of math I am interested in work in the light of the bits I already understand - guaranteed.
I hope I've clarified my terms adequately - if you think I've demonstrated my ignorance even more clearly feel free to drop me a line by email.
D.
Believe it or not I want to work with interesting and exciting technologies during working hours as well as in my spare time.
This looks interesting, I'm currently looking for a job, hence I would like to combine the two.
My spare time is already full enough (of techy and non-techy things) that I'm unlikely to find the time to learn a new language.
Don't make presumptions about my motivations - I'm quit my job two weeks ago specifically so I could play with some of the technologies that interested me instead of the (lucrative) ones that didn't.
Are there any jobs going that would require me to learn and apply this ?
One of the things that has always put me off "real" mathematics is the degree to which its language is arbitrary - for a programming geek this is maddening.
Anyone know how widespread this Metamath thing is (in or out of Academia) - as with any language if I'm going to invest my own time in learning this I would prefer to have a clearer idea of how long it's likely to be around, what calibre of people currently contribute to it, and how rigorous the review process is.
Given Microsoft's unique position in the browser marketplace, why do they not run their own certificate servers and include themselves as one of the default certificate authorities ?
It's not as if they show much concern about breaking compatibility with other browsers (even earlier versions of their own) so what's going on ?
You have no industry experience, or your resume is no good. Since you're "right out of college" I'm guessing it's the former. Not that I have a solution for you (sorry).
Nor am I implying anything about your skillset - it's just tough the first time. After that if you're any good things are easier (or indeed if you aren't).
Absolutely. Don't underestimate the appeal of interesting work and (especially) a worthy cause.
I'm on an H1 visa so I'm probably not in your target group, but as with most people my salary is negotiable. If the work is interesting and there are sufficient incentives I'll pull it down.
For an academic and/or charitable environment I'll bring it down a long way.
Above all else I choose my work by considering the people who I will work with, another likely selling point.
So some of those programmers on Biiig salaries are probably more accessible than you might imagine. No, they're probably not looking in the help wanted ads, but sites like Dice and Computerjobs are where you can find an contact them. You'll spend a little time, but aside from that the cost is negligible since any techy worth your time will have an email address.
And if you can handle visa issues, drop me a line !
The only minor quibble I have here is that W2K really is huge steaming piles more stable than any other microsoft os I've used, and god help me I've been subjected to everything except WinME (pronounce with the same emphasis as 'fsck me') and WinCE.
You know, I don't actually want all those whizzy extras on my DVDs. What I want is to be able to buy the film.
I wish the distribution companies would save the 'making of' snippets and actor biographies for the special-edition re-releases. I don't care if the collectors 'have' to buy the film twice to maintain the complete collection; serves them right for being so anal.
Just get on with releasing When Harry Met Sally (out in January, woohoo!), The Godfather, and other classics so I can watch them untrimmed and unflickery at home.
What are you talking about ? Half the Monty Python sketches were making fun of the copywriting of the day, and Blackadder was sending up British History. If that isn't "referential" what is ??
You're just moaning because The Simpsons is referring to pop culture instead of something more esoteric. You're entitled to dislike the thing, but "They don't make 'em like they used to" is a tired old song.
Most comedy is "about" something. Sometimes the idea is strong enough that it will support an entire series (I'll grant you Fawlty Towers is in this category) and sometimes it's not. Hardly a terrible fault.
So is the new star trek any better or worse than the old one ? Have another look in 20 years and they'll both be better than whatever remake just hit your screens/holoprojector/neural implant.
Right now the laptop, cell phone, pager, and Palm KILL me when I'm in an airport
You are so right. People behind me in the queue issue death threats while they wait for me to unload all of the gizmos into the X-ray machine at Heathrow
Beeeep Sir, Tazers should be carried in hand luggage only...
The problem with phones that double as PDAs is that they have too large a screen to be comfortably held to your ear, OR they have too small a screen to be really useable.
The solution: hands free. If you don't care about annoying colleagues/your privacy, then use it in loud-speaker mode. If you do, plug in a headset.
If you do this, you don't have to make it conform to the shape of your head, so the screen can be pocket sized and it can be flat - without making it ergonomically despicable.
I didn't notice where he said they should "beg". As far as I could tell he just said they should ask. Since he seems, essentially, to be putting the legal and moral point of view as he sees it, this isn't unreasonable.
And if the KDE people don't want to play the game, then letting RMS have the last word would be the most effective way to achieve that.
I don't like Gnome, I call my OS of preference "Linux", not "GNU/Linux", and I loathe Emacs, but that doesn't make RMS a bad person. On the contrary, his views are, on the whole, admirable as are his efforts.
A good musician shouldn't have too much trouble with this
There are plenty of organists playing in large churches and cathedrals who don't get to hear what they're playing until they're several seconds further into the piece
With a conductor it would be perfectly practical, though probably not as good as a conventional performance.
Since my stuff was being shipped out by my new employers, the cheapest option for me was to buy a voltage transformer (Maplins sell these for about 50 quid) to convert US voltage (& socket) to UK. Don't forget you'll need to buy this BEFORE you leave.
Then get a cheap VCR and connect that to your TV via the SCART socket. NOTE the output of your US VCR will be composite video through "Phono" style connectors, so you will need to buy a suitable cable - again BEFORE you leave.
However, if you're not especially fond of your TV or it's going to be expensive to ship it out, remember that consumer electronics are rather cheaper in the US; as a rule of thumb just change the pound sign to a dollar sign and the exchange rate will do the rest;-)
Check out some US stores to get a feel for prices - BestBuy.Com seems ok, but this isn't especially a plug for them.
That's about it. Now, does anyone know why american light switches are all upside down... ?
You know this is kind of baffling I don't think I've ever bought a DVD that had a trailed that you were forced to watch. The copyright message, yes, but that's it. Which films should I be steering clear of ?
Well, in the real world I generally at least get the choice to buy my house, car, what-have-you. Often by borrowing the money from someone else of course.
It is not unreasonable that the right to own something (particularly a hard physical thing that you can't copy in ten minutes with a blank CDR) should be more expensive than the right to borrow it for some determined period of time
And for me at least (no car, no house, just loads of books) the flexibility of leasing is its justification; if I get itchy feet I can move house or swap cars at a moment's notice.
Hmm. Well, circumstances would seem to support your view; there aren't many alternative languages for the JVM therefore it can't be easy to do.
On the other hand, I can't imagine having much difficulty implementing a C compiler in Java, therefore I wouldn't have thought that byte code had any inherent restrictions to prevent you from so doing.
Having used C and C++ extensively, I would always choose Java over these where execution speed was not imperative. And if speed were of prime importance I wouldn't be likely (even with these results) to use a bytecode environment.
So I don't really need alternatives; maybe this is the reason few exist ?
Slashdot Mirror
Taco
Completely seriously, post your wedding list on Slashdot.
We'd like to show the appreciation of this fun forum and the affection us Geeks feel for you in a material way. So post your (extensive) list of desired wedding gifts online and watch the Slashdot effect as it provides you with a million toast racks.
Dave.
All the people saying "use a search engine" in more or less civil tones, shut it !
I'm interested in the questions that get asked here. I wouldn't have thought to ask this one, and it's nice to see the answers - if you think the answer is self evident, move along.
Google et al will tell you a lot, but they won't tell you if the supplier is any good - that's the sort of insight that Slashdot is good at giving.
This sort of "Use a search engine, don't ask here" is the sort of unfriendly BS that will drive new people away from any site. We all have the occasional stupid question.
I do not recommend Sony VAIO - because of their device driver support. I bought a Sony Picturebook PCG-C1F at a not-cheap price, and upgraded to Win2K when it came out. No support from VAIO for this, it is "not recommended".
I contacted their tech support people before buying the thing and was told that they would be making drivers available.
When I contact them now, they tell me that they have no planned date for releasing drivers. Specifically, it's the built-in camera that's not supported - everything else works a treat.
Because they won't produce drivers the laptop's effective lifetime for me was about 6 months.
The only effective remedy that I have is to never buy from Sony again, and to always suggest to colleagues and friends that they buy from other manufacturers.
This is stuff that I get asked a lot, so to date I would reckon that several tens of thousands of dollars of sales have gone to other manufacturers as a result of poor software support.
I hope others repeat this tactic.
Your final argument seems to me to ignore the case where a company is a user of an Open Source tool, but discovers a need for an extension to it.
Sure, the company can develop the extension and keep it internally, but they then have the cost of ongoing maintenance of that tool. Give it back to the project and it ceases to be your problem.
This is particularly true of infrastructure-type software. log4j is the particular example I have in mind - your competitors won't be crushed by the strategic magic that ties you into some comparatively obscure sink for logging information, so you lose nothing by giving the solution away and gain a return in reduced maintenance costs (and perhaps a few intangible PR benefits).
Well, I could argue that Java (current favourite language) isn't arbitrary, but it isn't, so I won't.
At some point sure you'll hit fundamental and arbitrary stuff in either case.
But in most good (imho) programming languages there are relatively few, and everything else is defined in terms of them - and it's fairly easy to determine how the big exciting stuff (main()) works in terms of the axiomatic stuff (int, +, *)
I'm dimly aware that most mathematical disciplines are built in a similarly rigorous way, but because there's no obvious way to go from "obscure greek letter that I can't even pronounce" to the stuff about which I DO know about, I find it somewhat inaccessible.
A bit late for a reply, but that's a fair question. I didn't mean the spoken language of mathematics so much as the symbols with which it is represented and manipulated.
The thing that I like about most current programming languages is their degree of modularity; I can look at a piece of software and (assuming I have the source code) see something like:
doThis();
doThat();
And I know that I will be able to investigate those functions (or procedures, or methods, or subroutines, whatever) and determine what they're made of.
It may be more functions, in which case I can drill down further. Eventually I'll hit something that I understand if I understand the language regardless of whether I understand the program, the base of the code. The axioms, if you like. So while the user defined bits of the program (function and variable names and so forth) can be as arbitrary as a badger in light aircraft, really only the fundamentals of the language (which I can reasonably be expected to learn and understand in detail) are truly opaque given the contextual information that is available to me.
In mathematics, there is no such clarity. Each symbol is individually defined, often to multiple meanings depending upon context. There is no consistent way in which I can drill down to a definition of each symbol in terms of the basics, the axioms. So, to my mind, these symbols are arbitrary.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that such definitions are impossible, or unavailable, just that they're not available from one known source and they're not defined in one consistent way. And that seems to me to be what the article is describing, and it's why I'm excited by the idea: finally I can find out how the bits of math I am interested in work in the light of the bits I already understand - guaranteed.
I hope I've clarified my terms adequately - if you think I've demonstrated my ignorance even more clearly feel free to drop me a line by email. D.
Believe it or not I want to work with interesting and exciting technologies during working hours as well as in my spare time.
This looks interesting, I'm currently looking for a job, hence I would like to combine the two.
My spare time is already full enough (of techy and non-techy things) that I'm unlikely to find the time to learn a new language.
Don't make presumptions about my motivations - I'm quit my job two weeks ago specifically so I could play with some of the technologies that interested me instead of the (lucrative) ones that didn't.
Are there any jobs going that would require me to learn and apply this ?
One of the things that has always put me off "real" mathematics is the degree to which its language is arbitrary - for a programming geek this is maddening.
Anyone know how widespread this Metamath thing is (in or out of Academia) - as with any language if I'm going to invest my own time in learning this I would prefer to have a clearer idea of how long it's likely to be around, what calibre of people currently contribute to it, and how rigorous the review process is.
All else aside it does look fun though
Given Microsoft's unique position in the browser marketplace, why do they not run their own certificate servers and include themselves as one of the default certificate authorities ?
It's not as if they show much concern about breaking compatibility with other browsers (even earlier versions of their own) so what's going on ?
Why ?
You have no industry experience, or your resume is no good. Since you're "right out of college" I'm guessing it's the former. Not that I have a solution for you (sorry).
Nor am I implying anything about your skillset - it's just tough the first time. After that if you're any good things are easier (or indeed if you aren't).
Unlike French in France, or say (to make an example in our own hemisphere) Quebec, for instance.
France is in the same hemisphere as Quebec.
Just a quibble
Though of course Microsoft would have you believe that in the beginning was the Word...
I'm on an H1 visa so I'm probably not in your target group, but as with most people my salary is negotiable. If the work is interesting and there are sufficient incentives I'll pull it down.
For an academic and/or charitable environment I'll bring it down a long way.
Above all else I choose my work by considering the people who I will work with, another likely selling point.
So some of those programmers on Biiig salaries are probably more accessible than you might imagine. No, they're probably not looking in the help wanted ads, but sites like Dice and Computerjobs are where you can find an contact them. You'll spend a little time, but aside from that the cost is negligible since any techy worth your time will have an email address.
And if you can handle visa issues, drop me a line !
The only minor quibble I have here is that W2K really is huge steaming piles more stable than any other microsoft os I've used, and god help me I've been subjected to everything except WinME (pronounce with the same emphasis as 'fsck me') and WinCE.
I wish the distribution companies would save the 'making of' snippets and actor biographies for the special-edition re-releases. I don't care if the collectors 'have' to buy the film twice to maintain the complete collection; serves them right for being so anal.
Just get on with releasing When Harry Met Sally (out in January, woohoo!), The Godfather, and other classics so I can watch them untrimmed and unflickery at home.
You're just moaning because The Simpsons is referring to pop culture instead of something more esoteric. You're entitled to dislike the thing, but "They don't make 'em like they used to" is a tired old song.
Most comedy is "about" something. Sometimes the idea is strong enough that it will support an entire series (I'll grant you Fawlty Towers is in this category) and sometimes it's not. Hardly a terrible fault.
So is the new star trek any better or worse than the old one ? Have another look in 20 years and they'll both be better than whatever remake just hit your screens/holoprojector/neural implant.
You are so right. People behind me in the queue issue death threats while they wait for me to unload all of the gizmos into the X-ray machine at Heathrow
Beeeep Sir, Tazers should be carried in hand luggage only...
The solution: hands free. If you don't care about annoying colleagues/your privacy, then use it in loud-speaker mode. If you do, plug in a headset.
If you do this, you don't have to make it conform to the shape of your head, so the screen can be pocket sized and it can be flat - without making it ergonomically despicable.
Am I right, or am I right ?
And if the KDE people don't want to play the game, then letting RMS have the last word would be the most effective way to achieve that.
I don't like Gnome, I call my OS of preference "Linux", not "GNU/Linux", and I loathe Emacs, but that doesn't make RMS a bad person. On the contrary, his views are, on the whole, admirable as are his efforts.
Give him a break.
There are plenty of organists playing in large churches and cathedrals who don't get to hear what they're playing until they're several seconds further into the piece
With a conductor it would be perfectly practical, though probably not as good as a conventional performance.
Since my stuff was being shipped out by my new employers, the cheapest option for me was to buy a voltage transformer (Maplins sell these for about 50 quid) to convert US voltage (& socket) to UK. Don't forget you'll need to buy this BEFORE you leave.
Then get a cheap VCR and connect that to your TV via the SCART socket. NOTE the output of your US VCR will be composite video through "Phono" style connectors, so you will need to buy a suitable cable - again BEFORE you leave.
However, if you're not especially fond of your TV or it's going to be expensive to ship it out, remember that consumer electronics are rather cheaper in the US; as a rule of thumb just change the pound sign to a dollar sign and the exchange rate will do the rest ;-)
Check out some US stores to get a feel for prices - BestBuy.Com seems ok, but this isn't especially a plug for them.
That's about it. Now, does anyone know why american light switches are all upside down... ?
You know this is kind of baffling
I don't think I've ever bought a DVD that had a trailed that you were forced to watch. The copyright message, yes, but that's it.
Which films should I be steering clear of ?
Well, in the real world I generally at least get the choice to buy my house, car, what-have-you. Often by borrowing the money from someone else of course.
It is not unreasonable that the right to own something (particularly a hard physical thing that you can't copy in ten minutes with a blank CDR) should be more expensive than the right to borrow it for some determined period of time
And for me at least (no car, no house, just loads of books) the flexibility of leasing is its justification; if I get itchy feet I can move house or swap cars at a moment's notice.
Hmm. Well, circumstances would seem to support your view; there aren't many alternative languages for the JVM therefore it can't be easy to do.
On the other hand, I can't imagine having much difficulty implementing a C compiler in Java, therefore I wouldn't have thought that byte code had any inherent restrictions to prevent you from so doing.
Having used C and C++ extensively, I would always choose Java over these where execution speed was not imperative. And if speed were of prime importance I wouldn't be likely (even with these results) to use a bytecode environment.
So I don't really need alternatives; maybe this is the reason few exist ?