When it's evolution, it's OK to use a list of proponents as a show of it's righteousness. Now if the topic was Global Warming, I don't think the same approach would be accepted.
Some members of the US National Academy of Engineering have predicted that Artificial Intelligence will reach the level of humans in around 20 years.
The 1960's called, they want their prediction back...
1965, H. A. Simon: "[M]achines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can do"
1967, Marvin Minsky: "Within a generation... the problem of creating 'artificial intelligence' will substantially be solved."
What makes this even more surreal is the juxtaposition of advertising text in the flow of the article, which I included for the fun of it.
...
(Review) - To this day, I still have to smile when new Linux users decide to take the plunge because they want the cool looking visual effects that Beryl offers. To some limited degree, I can understand the motivation. The stunning videos on YouTube are certainly compelling to those who have never tried to use the setup themselves. Unfortunately, there are still some valid reasons for sticking with the alternatives for the time being. Let's explore some of the issues that I have found with using Beryl.
Pretty, But In Beta. Even assuming you follow the official how-to and not those half-baked tutorials you see floating around, the end result can easily be broken with the blink of an eye. Or rather, an install of a Beryl update. Yes, it's true, updating Beta software can break things, especially when it is your window manager. Because of this, I tend to keep the Beryl repositories commented out only to keep an eye out for any security reasons. Even from the stable updates, I have completely hosed X on more than one occasion. If it works and there is no compelling reason to upgrade - leave it be!
The main point here is that Beryl is very much a beta product. It really kills me to see people spend so much time to get this running when the "wow" factor wears off fairly quickly.
Web Apps Can Never Be Desktop Replacements
What Works and What Doesn't With Beryl. Since I have not tried Beryl on other distributions other than Ubuntu Edgy, the following is not to be seen as a blanket statement. With that said, you will find that some tasks are not well suited for this 3D wonderland. An example? How about anything with OpenGL! Sure, I can run Second Life while cruising around in my world of Beryl. However, the fact remains that it runs so poorly that I'm then forced to use a separate login session. Yes, even switching back to Metacity from the Beryl Manager, thus ensuring things are back to their two dimensional selves, I continue to feel the lag in my system resources when running Second Life and the like.
Then we have the word count in Open Office Write. Obviously, this is something that I use on a daily basis. Unfortunately, it only works about a third of the time (not tested with Feisty yet) when using version 2.04 of the office suite.
And finally, we have the fun of setting up your configuration wrong only to discover that you cannot get pop-up alerts for spell check and other similar items, turn up behind the main browser window. I'm not blaming Beryl on this one, but the end-user. Regardless though, it is still annoying.
Is Beryl Worth Trying? Yes, I believe that Beryl is most certainly worth trying - as a separate session and not the only one you have. I say this as I grow tired of the "running with an ATI card and my drivers don't work" crowd are far too often the bloggers you read about when bad mouthing how "difficult" Beryl is to setup.
GoodBye Windows XP Forever and Ever
In truth, Beryl is easy enough for the average Windows/Mac power user to breeze through once they understand the following.
Get your video driver from this utility. Also consider using a NVIDIA card, if at all possible.
Stick to a tutorial with proven success (Ubuntu Edgy). In my case, I opted to take the XGL route. You may, however, choose to try the AIGLX path instead. I personally use XGL, as I have never had a problem getting it to run - not once. If you can cut and paste with the right mouse click into a terminal window, you can do this. The only area that takes a little trial and error is the startup script. The worst that can happen here is that it does not start Beryl after you do a Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to restart X.
Make sure you are closely following the directions. Since this is for Ubuntu, you may wish to search for another tutorial if you are looking to
More along the lines of math, philosophy and cyberpunk, you might want to give Rudy Rucker a try. I read The 57th Franz Kafka back in the day, which is a collection of short stories. I see that Gnarl! includes all those stories and then some.
My wife is Type 1 and checks herself regularly. She prefers the type of device that allows alternative measurement sites - arm, leg, etc. I don't remember the name of the meter she is using at the moment. That's not important.
What is important is to understand the makeup of the people who aer using diabetes testing equipment. In my wife's case she had at one time a device that could upload readings into a computer, I dutifully set it all up and showed her how to use it. She's not the nerd that I am however, and only used the upload did the graphing one or two times.
She said it was more time that she had to spend managing her diabetes and was not interested in that. My take is that it's about as fun as balancing your check book.
So my suggestion, as the spouse of a type 1 diabetic, is to keep it simple. If you have the bells and whistles, my guess is that maybe 10% of the users of the device will try them, and probably 5% of your users will use them regularly. Some market research can validate or refute these SWAG numbers.
As as others have mentioned - non-intrusive monitoring is the thing to shoot for. Then tie that into automatic dosing of insulin and you've got the artifical, external, closed loop replacement for diabetes.
Re:get in trouble for having a motorized "vehicle"
on
E-bike E-xperiences?
·
· Score: 1
Riding a motorcycle to work IS the funnest thing. If you are in a state that allows lane splitting (like California) you can get through craptacular cage traffic fairly easily. Makes the commute much more fun.
On the way home, when you need some stress relief, you take the "long way home" through your favorite windy road.
Good idea. A quick round of "count the computers you encounter in a day" or something like that would encourage participation from the audience (kids, not parents.) With the age of your audience, you'll want to avoid the situation where you're doing all the talking and the kids are bored out of their minds.
Sadly, one of the things you should talk about to kids this age is (in IT terms) "acceptible use." I'd say something along the lines of reinforcing with kids (and the parent) that users can do a lot of things with computers, but a few of those things may not be safe for them. The kids should understand that parents or teachers will provide them with instructions on what is allowed and not allowed when kids use computers in home or school settings. I'm referring to things that would help keep kids safe from predatory people.
Sorry to be alarmist, but here are two examples:
My step-daughter, 12 years old at the time, had bveen given the talk about not giving out private information online. In spite of this she gave out her phone number to someone online. When the person called my wife answered and talked to the person. He was not the 13 year old boy that he had told my step-daughter he was; his real age was off by probably 20 years. We then iterated the safety issue of what she had done and as a consequence she couldn't use IMs or email for 2 weeks.
I got an Instant Message from my 11 year old niece; her newly chosen screen name was "SmoothnPink99." The screen name had some meaning to her that was innocent, but of course might mean something else to an unsavory character. I called my sister and let her know politely that her daughter had a new screen name that is not the best choice to a pre-teen girl.
So bad stuff can happen to kids while online.
I'm not saying this is the only thing you should talk about, just suggesting that you speak a few sentences on the subject. The point is parents, teachers, etc., have some say in what kids at that age should and should not do when using a computer, what information the kids should not disclose, etc. You don't have to spell it all out in gory details, just say enough to make the point that a responsible adult can and should help set guidelines.
Debian 3.1 (Sarge) should be out within a few weeks. Given the release lifecycle of Debian 3.0 (woody, released on July 19, 2002 and still getting security updates) this might not be a bad choice for you in terms of availability of long term security updates.
One of the main focuses of Sarge was a greatly improved installer; easier to set up, updates with
Grrrr. why do half the people here not get it? (oh yeah, this is/.) No one has said anything about internet servers in Redmond as the sole and exclusive host for any such product. What MS is talking about is servers on a company's private intranet.
All you doomsayers shouting "ohmigawd, this means Bill Gates will be able to read every document I create" should take a deep breath, and actually give Sharepoint and Office a spin. Then come back here to/. and point out which FOSS applications have the capabilities that Sharepoint does.
I like the underdog and FOSS as much as anyone else here, but I am also able to give credit where credit is due. We use Sharepoint at work, and it has features that allow us to get things done that we couldn't do with standalone MS Office or any of the various FOSS clones.
Bring on the anti-MS mods. You'll all think I'm an MS-fanboy and mod into obscurity without a second thought.
My objection to your previous post was that you seemed to make this a political party issue instead of a national security issue. Take away the partisanship and you raise an interesting issue. The export of financial information seems like a risk on a couple of different levels.
You can even take the national security aspect out of the argument. When you look at giving a third party access to intellectual property, you should be looking at a risk assessment to determine what are the possibilities that there will be unauthorized disclosure, and what you will do to mitigate the risk.
Having been involved in various outsourcing activities, I've done the risk assessment exercises. The approach is the same if you are talking about outsourcing the production of your company annual report, your call center activities, the development of your software, or sensitive customer information (like your banking example.) If disclosure of the information would put you, or your company in a risk position, you need to deal with it or not disclose. The government isn't really needed to oversee what you are doing here if you do your job right.
If a company outsources the production of their annual report to some goo-backs from the future and they use the information to do some insider trading before your financials are announced publically, you deserve the full force and effect of SEC laws that prohibit leaking insider information. I would think the same approach would be valid for financial code.
So I guess I'm arguing for the more libertarian approach of letting corporations make their business decisions with full knowledge of the penalties for messing it up. Not a real-world scenario perhaps, but (IMO) the way it should be done.
And why would this be something the GOP should do? Sounds like you are asking for the gummint to do something to limit and control decisions that businesses can make. Smells like something that's right up the Dem's alley.
If your time is worth anything, you are better off just buying a cheap keyboard than trying to make something. Is $4 (plus $5 shipping) too much to spend on a keyboard? Otherwise, find one of those computer shows that comes into town periodically and pick up a used one.
I'm usually one of the first in line when it comes time to try and make something, but this request seems like too much bother compared to the alternatives.
Oracle Standard Edition One list price: $4,999 USD, from Oracle's USA price list. You can run this version on a host with up to two processors.
Microsoft SQL Server Standard Edition price: $4,999 per processor.
When looking at commerical database server packages, these prices aren't bad. $5K for Oracle on a high-end dual processor system can get quite a bit of work done.
I was aware that you were referring to a two year associates degree as opposed to a four year Bachelor of Science degree in an Engineering discipline from a college or university. I am also in violent agreement that an associates degree in CET does not equal a Bachelors degree in CS, EE or Computer Engineering.
What's your point? The original question was about whether to get a CET - which was stated as a cross between a CS and Electrical Engineering degree. Maybe I'm assuming the original question is referring to a four year Bachelors degree and you're assuming it's a two year associates degree.
If that's the case, at the risk of pissing off a lot of readers here, I suggest the 4 year Bachelors degree is the way to go. The things that make you employable with a two year associates degree will also make you employable with a four year Bachelors degree. You will have a lot more opportunity with a four year degree. Anecdotally, in the business unit in which I work, we have 4 people with associate degrees and 76 people with at least a Bachelors degree. That ratio probably applies through out the 15,000 people working for my employer.
Very few people who graduate with Engineering degrees actually do the Professionsal Engineer exams for their state. This is usually something that Civil Engineering majors might do, some jobs in the construction industry look favorably on this.
It seems to my a physicist would say something very different than what you are saying regarding applied versus theoretical approaches. Physics in the theorical aspect of science, Engineering is the applied science.
Your equation example is also off the mark. An Engineer would first analyze the variables of a situation that affect a problem, then determine which approach is required that best addresses the variables of the problem. At this point, using an equation to solve a problem is trvial, it's understanding how to set up the problem and how to apply the proper approach that is the differentiator here.
Let's face it, engineering technology degree holders are in competition with the bosses' nephew who needs a job after flunking out of college and says he can "fix computers" or "make a web page". It's a tough market to be in. To be fair, Engineering degree holders are facing competition from the ET people who excel at hteir jobs, and from overseas engineers who will do their job cheaper.
My advice - get the degree in the field you like. CS/EE majors don't need to wait on tables after college - you just need to make sure you are more employable than your peers.
My employer looks at a number of things that are not related your GPA, which school you went to, etc., when looking at new college grads:
1. Work ethic - are you willing to take responsibility for getting your work done, asking questions when you don't know something, willing to contribute when you have a good idea?
2. Ability to work in a team - we don't have any individual projects. Work with the team, try to get along with your co-workers.
3. language skills - do you speak a second language? In the industry in which I'm employed, a second language is very helpful, our customers are from all over the northern Hemisphere. A willingness to travel goes along with the language skills.
4. "business common sense" - like it or not, we're all in this for a profit. The path to this is keeping customers happy while making common sense business decisions.
It's my bet that if you can exhibit a number of these skills after you finish your BS degree, you should have no problem with getting a decent job. So while working through your CET degree, look for opportunities to improve your skills in these areas.
Based on the interview, Rob seems like a typical developer. Answers to questions are short and sweet, no marketing buzzwords. Does seem to have a lot of M$ religion though.
This is being handled by M$ in a most interesting way; most likely all be design. This is not (IMHO) a project that escaped from Redmond, they have a plan in mind. The question is - is this a "hip fake" to the OSS community to fool everyone while they finalize their master plan of world domination of all computers everywhere, or is it an example of M$ recognizing the value of OSS and using it when it makes sense?
Slashdot Mirror
Is it ironic that the anarchist whines about comments to his blog story getting out of control?
Riiiight. Nationalization will make these industries better just like it made the ___________ industry better.
Go ahead, fill in the blank. I'll wait.
When it's evolution, it's OK to use a list of proponents as a show of it's righteousness. Now if the topic was Global Warming, I don't think the same approach would be accepted.
The 1960's called, they want their prediction back...
1965, H. A. Simon: "[M]achines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can do" ... the problem of creating 'artificial intelligence' will substantially be solved."
1967, Marvin Minsky: "Within a generation
What makes this even more surreal is the juxtaposition of advertising text in the flow of the article, which I included for the fun of it.
...
(Review) - To this day, I still have to smile when new Linux users decide to take the plunge because they want the cool looking visual effects that Beryl offers. To some limited degree, I can understand the motivation. The stunning videos on YouTube are certainly compelling to those who have never tried to use the setup themselves. Unfortunately, there are still some valid reasons for sticking with the alternatives for the time being. Let's explore some of the issues that I have found with using Beryl.
Pretty, But In Beta. Even assuming you follow the official how-to and not those half-baked tutorials you see floating around, the end result can easily be broken with the blink of an eye. Or rather, an install of a Beryl update. Yes, it's true, updating Beta software can break things, especially when it is your window manager. Because of this, I tend to keep the Beryl repositories commented out only to keep an eye out for any security reasons. Even from the stable updates, I have completely hosed X on more than one occasion. If it works and there is no compelling reason to upgrade - leave it be!
The main point here is that Beryl is very much a beta product. It really kills me to see people spend so much time to get this running when the "wow" factor wears off fairly quickly.
Web Apps Can Never Be Desktop Replacements
What Works and What Doesn't With Beryl. Since I have not tried Beryl on other distributions other than Ubuntu Edgy, the following is not to be seen as a blanket statement. With that said, you will find that some tasks are not well suited for this 3D wonderland. An example? How about anything with OpenGL! Sure, I can run Second Life while cruising around in my world of Beryl. However, the fact remains that it runs so poorly that I'm then forced to use a separate login session. Yes, even switching back to Metacity from the Beryl Manager, thus ensuring things are back to their two dimensional selves, I continue to feel the lag in my system resources when running Second Life and the like.
Then we have the word count in Open Office Write. Obviously, this is something that I use on a daily basis. Unfortunately, it only works about a third of the time (not tested with Feisty yet) when using version 2.04 of the office suite.
And finally, we have the fun of setting up your configuration wrong only to discover that you cannot get pop-up alerts for spell check and other similar items, turn up behind the main browser window. I'm not blaming Beryl on this one, but the end-user. Regardless though, it is still annoying.
Is Beryl Worth Trying? Yes, I believe that Beryl is most certainly worth trying - as a separate session and not the only one you have. I say this as I grow tired of the "running with an ATI card and my drivers don't work" crowd are far too often the bloggers you read about when bad mouthing how "difficult" Beryl is to setup.
GoodBye Windows XP Forever and Ever
In truth, Beryl is easy enough for the average Windows/Mac power user to breeze through once they understand the following.
Get your video driver from this utility. Also consider using a NVIDIA card, if at all possible.
Stick to a tutorial with proven success (Ubuntu Edgy). In my case, I opted to take the XGL route. You may, however, choose to try the AIGLX path instead. I personally use XGL, as I have never had a problem getting it to run - not once. If you can cut and paste with the right mouse click into a terminal window, you can do this. The only area that takes a little trial and error is the startup script. The worst that can happen here is that it does not start Beryl after you do a Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to restart X.
Make sure you are closely following the directions. Since this is for Ubuntu, you may wish to search for another tutorial if you are looking to
Far Cry AI is nice; scales up with your computer. Drop more RAM in your rig and the AI gets smarter.
More along the lines of math, philosophy and cyberpunk, you might want to give Rudy Rucker a try. I read The 57th Franz Kafka back in the day, which is a collection of short stories. I see that Gnarl! includes all those stories and then some.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Rucker
"Quick, give me the number for 9-1-1!"
What is important is to understand the makeup of the people who aer using diabetes testing equipment. In my wife's case she had at one time a device that could upload readings into a computer, I dutifully set it all up and showed her how to use it. She's not the nerd that I am however, and only used the upload did the graphing one or two times.
She said it was more time that she had to spend managing her diabetes and was not interested in that. My take is that it's about as fun as balancing your check book.
So my suggestion, as the spouse of a type 1 diabetic, is to keep it simple. If you have the bells and whistles, my guess is that maybe 10% of the users of the device will try them, and probably 5% of your users will use them regularly. Some market research can validate or refute these SWAG numbers.
As as others have mentioned - non-intrusive monitoring is the thing to shoot for. Then tie that into automatic dosing of insulin and you've got the artifical, external, closed loop replacement for diabetes.
On the way home, when you need some stress relief, you take the "long way home" through your favorite windy road.
Good idea. A quick round of "count the computers you encounter in a day" or something like that would encourage participation from the audience (kids, not parents.) With the age of your audience, you'll want to avoid the situation where you're doing all the talking and the kids are bored out of their minds.
Sorry to be alarmist, but here are two examples:
My step-daughter, 12 years old at the time, had bveen given the talk about not giving out private information online. In spite of this she gave out her phone number to someone online. When the person called my wife answered and talked to the person. He was not the 13 year old boy that he had told my step-daughter he was; his real age was off by probably 20 years. We then iterated the safety issue of what she had done and as a consequence she couldn't use IMs or email for 2 weeks.
I got an Instant Message from my 11 year old niece; her newly chosen screen name was "SmoothnPink99." The screen name had some meaning to her that was innocent, but of course might mean something else to an unsavory character. I called my sister and let her know politely that her daughter had a new screen name that is not the best choice to a pre-teen girl.
So bad stuff can happen to kids while online.
I'm not saying this is the only thing you should talk about, just suggesting that you speak a few sentences on the subject. The point is parents, teachers, etc., have some say in what kids at that age should and should not do when using a computer, what information the kids should not disclose, etc. You don't have to spell it all out in gory details, just say enough to make the point that a responsible adult can and should help set guidelines.
One of the main focuses of Sarge was a greatly improved installer; easier to set up, updates with
and .All you doomsayers shouting "ohmigawd, this means Bill Gates will be able to read every document I create" should take a deep breath, and actually give Sharepoint and Office a spin. Then come back here to /. and point out which FOSS applications have the capabilities that Sharepoint does.
I like the underdog and FOSS as much as anyone else here, but I am also able to give credit where credit is due. We use Sharepoint at work, and it has features that allow us to get things done that we couldn't do with standalone MS Office or any of the various FOSS clones.
Bring on the anti-MS mods. You'll all think I'm an MS-fanboy and mod into obscurity without a second thought.
You can even take the national security aspect out of the argument. When you look at giving a third party access to intellectual property, you should be looking at a risk assessment to determine what are the possibilities that there will be unauthorized disclosure, and what you will do to mitigate the risk.
Having been involved in various outsourcing activities, I've done the risk assessment exercises. The approach is the same if you are talking about outsourcing the production of your company annual report, your call center activities, the development of your software, or sensitive customer information (like your banking example.) If disclosure of the information would put you, or your company in a risk position, you need to deal with it or not disclose. The government isn't really needed to oversee what you are doing here if you do your job right.
If a company outsources the production of their annual report to some goo-backs from the future and they use the information to do some insider trading before your financials are announced publically, you deserve the full force and effect of SEC laws that prohibit leaking insider information. I would think the same approach would be valid for financial code.
So I guess I'm arguing for the more libertarian approach of letting corporations make their business decisions with full knowledge of the penalties for messing it up. Not a real-world scenario perhaps, but (IMO) the way it should be done.
My guess as to your real beef ...
To be fair, there was some POSIX compliance stuff involved on which DEC/Digital/Compaq/HP based the name change, but come on.
I'm usually one of the first in line when it comes time to try and make something, but this request seems like too much bother compared to the alternatives.
... what is the sound of your web server in the throes of the /. effect? 10 minutes after the story has been posted and the article is MIA.
Microsoft SQL Server Standard Edition price: $4,999 per processor. When looking at commerical database server packages, these prices aren't bad. $5K for Oracle on a high-end dual processor system can get quite a bit of work done.
Or Micheal Moorcock-inspired songs from Blue Oyster Cult like "Black Blade", "The Great Sun Jester" and "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" (which is of course on the Heavy Metal soundtrack.)
Kansas was always a good listen too; especially the last two tracks from Masque.
Ah ... the memories ...
What's your point? The original question was about whether to get a CET - which was stated as a cross between a CS and Electrical Engineering degree. Maybe I'm assuming the original question is referring to a four year Bachelors degree and you're assuming it's a two year associates degree.
If that's the case, at the risk of pissing off a lot of readers here, I suggest the 4 year Bachelors degree is the way to go. The things that make you employable with a two year associates degree will also make you employable with a four year Bachelors degree. You will have a lot more opportunity with a four year degree. Anecdotally, in the business unit in which I work, we have 4 people with associate degrees and 76 people with at least a Bachelors degree. That ratio probably applies through out the 15,000 people working for my employer.
It seems to my a physicist would say something very different than what you are saying regarding applied versus theoretical approaches. Physics in the theorical aspect of science, Engineering is the applied science.
Your equation example is also off the mark. An Engineer would first analyze the variables of a situation that affect a problem, then determine which approach is required that best addresses the variables of the problem. At this point, using an equation to solve a problem is trvial, it's understanding how to set up the problem and how to apply the proper approach that is the differentiator here.
Let's face it, engineering technology degree holders are in competition with the bosses' nephew who needs a job after flunking out of college and says he can "fix computers" or "make a web page". It's a tough market to be in. To be fair, Engineering degree holders are facing competition from the ET people who excel at hteir jobs, and from overseas engineers who will do their job cheaper.
My employer looks at a number of things that are not related your GPA, which school you went to, etc., when looking at new college grads:
1. Work ethic - are you willing to take responsibility for getting your work done, asking questions when you don't know something, willing to contribute when you have a good idea?
2. Ability to work in a team - we don't have any individual projects. Work with the team, try to get along with your co-workers.
3. language skills - do you speak a second language? In the industry in which I'm employed, a second language is very helpful, our customers are from all over the northern Hemisphere. A willingness to travel goes along with the language skills.
4. "business common sense" - like it or not, we're all in this for a profit. The path to this is keeping customers happy while making common sense business decisions.
It's my bet that if you can exhibit a number of these skills after you finish your BS degree, you should have no problem with getting a decent job. So while working through your CET degree, look for opportunities to improve your skills in these areas.
This is being handled by M$ in a most interesting way; most likely all be design. This is not (IMHO) a project that escaped from Redmond, they have a plan in mind. The question is - is this a "hip fake" to the OSS community to fool everyone while they finalize their master plan of world domination of all computers everywhere, or is it an example of M$ recognizing the value of OSS and using it when it makes sense?