I got a BSCS degree back in 2003 and I can tell you that it is very much still relevant. You're right, the specific languages, API's, and even architectures have changed dramatically in 10 years, but the fundamentals are all still there. Learning the 2003 vintage of C++ was not so useful (except as an exercise in how to approach programming problems generally), but learning algorithm complexity analysis is timeless. And I'm sure there are more advanced process schedulers in operating systems these days, but they are still being scheduled out there in the background. And so on, and so on.
My great "aha!" moment in my CS degree was when I realized that the specific tool they were teaching in any given class was basically irrelevant - it was just a means to teaching an important concept. Trade schools teach you tools, universities teach you how those tools work. The real value in my BSCS degree was in teaching me how to think about and solve CS problems. That has been invaluable.
From what I understand Square is a credit card processing service, which means they fall under certain other regulations. Not quite the same as banks, but certainly not out in the wild west as far as regulations go. I've known several small business owners who used them for credit card payments for a while now and both owners and customers seemed happy enough with the results.
It certainly opens up the door for phishing scams where you spam Square with spoofed header transfer requests and hope that some percentage of people who get the legit emails from Square fill out the form and complete the transfer. But in and of itself it is not any more risky that Paypal or giving out your credit card info over SSL to a trusted company.
Pepper Potts fell into an inferno, and the wonder drug not only healed her, but grew her hair back with the same haircut and combed it.
Hell, in The Fifth Element, Leeloo was regenerated from the DNA in her charred, severed hand with her long, tussled, orange hair, wrist tattoo and memories intact.
In defense of the Fifth Element though, they did handwave that with some BS about densely packed "infinite genetic knowledge" which could easily mean the "tattoo" is actually a genetically engineered pigmentation design that looks like a tattoo to the casual observer, with fire engine red being the "natural" hair color for such a being, and what the hell, maybe that includes distributed DNA-based storage of memories up to and including the crash. I mean, the whole movie is magi-tech based and played for ridiculousness.
In the second, when the enterprise is falling to earth, all of the crew should have been weightless.
If they're not weightless in space, why would they be weightless in free-fall? I mean, the engines weren't working but that doesn't mean the artificial gravity McGuffin was offline.
I do believe it must be every person's right to refuse medical treatment, including vaccines.
If you've got an infectious disease that has outbreak potential, most legal systems allow doctors to detain you for treatment.
But those same legal systems do not allow the doctors to force treatment upon you. It is one thing to restrict a person's liberty for the good of the many, it is something entirely more invasive to intrude upon a person's body against their will. There was an interesting United States case a few years back where the courts refused to compel removal of a bullet from a suspect's body even though it was likely to be evidence because forced removal was too intrusive a procedure.
Now, none of this applies in the immediate case, because kids are not themselves competent to make medical decisions and the parents were in disagreement. Consensus from the medical community makes sense as a tiebreaker. This is a straight up parental rights case.
What complete muppet designed USB, a frequent plug-unplug connector by nature, to have orientation?
Can you name any frequent plug-unplug data cable standard that was multi-orientation before the Lightning connector?
The iPod shuffle uses (or used in earlier models at least) a TRS connecter (standard 3.5mm audio jack) for analog audio output, digital data input, and charging.
Backups don't always work - that's why you test them. This time they did not work - much better that you experience problems when you anticipate them than when everything else is going wrong, too.
That's also why you don't do a test restore into your production environment. Testing backups 101.
The major problem is that people who make a profession of gaming the system (like your sister apparently) will always bilk it in horrifically fraudulent ways no matter the restrictions and checks you put into place. The upshot though is that people like that are in the tiny minority. And the difficulty is finding the balance between tightening restrictions to reduce waste and fraud, while still not making it so complex that people that legitimately need it like the single mother working two part time jobs getting food stamps and some cash aid to make up the difference, can still manage to get the help that they need.
Quicksort is already implemented a thousand times, so there's no need to implement it again, just find which library you need.
Quicksort is nice because it plays a little nicer with sequential data (improving cache hit rates and such), but unless you have a proper (and complicated) function for choosing the cut value, it ends up with an O(n^2) complexity in the worst case. HeapSort and MergeSort are guaranteed to run in O(nlogn) time, and while MergeSort requires O(nlogn) memory to operate in (while still playing nice with sequential reads), HeapSort does all of its sorting in place in the original array at the expense of trashing sequencing. All of the above need to be taught and understood by the student before being trusted with any serious algorithm work. The lessons you will learn from the tradeoffs and benefits of these three sorting algorithms translates well into absolutely everything else you may want to do in programming.
Did this make anyone else think of the Burbclaves in Snow Crash? For this to work properly, these guys would have actual police powers (or be open to massive liability suits that police officers are shielded from as a matter of course). The only way to do this is to set up autonomous city-states a la Burbclave franchises. This should turn out well...
Kind of like every time there's a problem with a plane they roll out "Miracle on the Hudson" Capt. Sullenberger?
That really doesn't bother me. I mean, yeah it shows a complete lack of understanding and valuation of expert opinion on the part of the news guys doing that, but if someone is skilled and lucky enough to do what Sullenberger did in ditching that plane on having everyone survive... Well, I would say such a person deserves not to have to work at a real job much more than some random celebrity bimbo who's biggest accomplishment in life is a trashy sex tape that got out on the internet. At least Sully actually did something useful.
He's not paid to interpret the law, he's paid to enforce it. The law says no texting while driving, even at a red light. It doesn't go on to say unless the police officer witnessing it decides it's safe and ignores it. On the other hand, cops do have broad discretion because you can't possibly stop all of the offenses you see happening on any given day.
I can tell you that California certainly *taxes* you on the unsubsidized price. $299 for the 32GB phone, turns into $360 with tax because the tax is computed off of the full $749 price tag. And I recall Sprint got into some financial difficulty with the 4S launch because of all the up front money they had to pay to Apple which took Sprint over a year to earn back off of subscriptions.
Cops are generally exempted from such laws. It's not hypocritical if the law specifically allows them to do what they're doing. It's hypocritical if they enforce a law against you while breaking it themselves. Also, it's not unreasonable to assume that people who have been specifically trained in defensive driving techniques and how and when to safely use electronic equipment (which a cop car is *jam* packed with) would be better able to make a judgement call as to the safety of using such equipment than, say, a random person trying to update their Facebook status while plowing into a minivan and taking out a family of four. Just saying.
Yeah, see you're responding to one of the grandparent or great gp posts. This discussion is not so much about mobile anymore, but about the abomination that was PAE and AWE (long may it stay dead and never return ever).
I like this idea a LOT. Security would go WAY down, lines would speed up, the searches would be polite. If a plane blew up, the airline would get sued for about a figure that an actuary could neatly estimate. They'd only inconvenience their customers up to a point where the chance that they'd lose repeat business was cost-effective. Perfect.
Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
Narrator: You wouldn't believe.
Woman on plane: Which car company do you work for?
butt bombers (wasn't there one of those in Saudi Arabia?)
Abdullah Hassan Al Aseery and it failed because his body basically shielded the intended target from the blast. Kind of like a twisted version of throwing yourself on the grenade.
There may well be a debate to be had about third party witnesses and the fifth amendment, but this entire issue in Risen's case is subordinate to the *first* amendment issue of freedom of the press, which should absolutely give him the right to protect a confidential source. I know that the government has tried to shove that aside for their own purposes, but Risen's right not to testify needs to be a first, not fifth, amendment issue.
Yes, but the person being stared at is almost exclusively female. If the person being stared at was male then...I think about 99% of society would find that at least mildly creepy. The sexist part of it has to do with the objectification of the female body, not the gender of the person doing the staring.
Slashdot Mirror
I got a BSCS degree back in 2003 and I can tell you that it is very much still relevant. You're right, the specific languages, API's, and even architectures have changed dramatically in 10 years, but the fundamentals are all still there. Learning the 2003 vintage of C++ was not so useful (except as an exercise in how to approach programming problems generally), but learning algorithm complexity analysis is timeless. And I'm sure there are more advanced process schedulers in operating systems these days, but they are still being scheduled out there in the background. And so on, and so on.
My great "aha!" moment in my CS degree was when I realized that the specific tool they were teaching in any given class was basically irrelevant - it was just a means to teaching an important concept. Trade schools teach you tools, universities teach you how those tools work. The real value in my BSCS degree was in teaching me how to think about and solve CS problems. That has been invaluable.
From what I understand Square is a credit card processing service, which means they fall under certain other regulations. Not quite the same as banks, but certainly not out in the wild west as far as regulations go. I've known several small business owners who used them for credit card payments for a while now and both owners and customers seemed happy enough with the results.
It certainly opens up the door for phishing scams where you spam Square with spoofed header transfer requests and hope that some percentage of people who get the legit emails from Square fill out the form and complete the transfer. But in and of itself it is not any more risky that Paypal or giving out your credit card info over SSL to a trusted company.
And micro/mini-USB isn't what he was referring to, son.
Pepper Potts fell into an inferno, and the wonder drug not only healed her, but grew her hair back with the same haircut and combed it.
Hell, in The Fifth Element, Leeloo was regenerated from the DNA in her charred, severed hand with her long, tussled, orange hair, wrist tattoo and memories intact.
In defense of the Fifth Element though, they did handwave that with some BS about densely packed "infinite genetic knowledge" which could easily mean the "tattoo" is actually a genetically engineered pigmentation design that looks like a tattoo to the casual observer, with fire engine red being the "natural" hair color for such a being, and what the hell, maybe that includes distributed DNA-based storage of memories up to and including the crash. I mean, the whole movie is magi-tech based and played for ridiculousness.
In the second, when the enterprise is falling to earth, all of the crew should have been weightless.
If they're not weightless in space, why would they be weightless in free-fall? I mean, the engines weren't working but that doesn't mean the artificial gravity McGuffin was offline.
I do believe it must be every person's right to refuse medical treatment, including vaccines.
If you've got an infectious disease that has outbreak potential, most legal systems allow doctors to detain you for treatment.
But those same legal systems do not allow the doctors to force treatment upon you. It is one thing to restrict a person's liberty for the good of the many, it is something entirely more invasive to intrude upon a person's body against their will. There was an interesting United States case a few years back where the courts refused to compel removal of a bullet from a suspect's body even though it was likely to be evidence because forced removal was too intrusive a procedure.
Now, none of this applies in the immediate case, because kids are not themselves competent to make medical decisions and the parents were in disagreement. Consensus from the medical community makes sense as a tiebreaker. This is a straight up parental rights case.
What complete muppet designed USB, a frequent plug-unplug connector by nature, to have orientation?
Can you name any frequent plug-unplug data cable standard that was multi-orientation before the Lightning connector?
The iPod shuffle uses (or used in earlier models at least) a TRS connecter (standard 3.5mm audio jack) for analog audio output, digital data input, and charging.
Backups don't always work - that's why you test them. This time they did not work - much better that you experience problems when you anticipate them than when everything else is going wrong, too.
That's also why you don't do a test restore into your production environment. Testing backups 101.
The major problem is that people who make a profession of gaming the system (like your sister apparently) will always bilk it in horrifically fraudulent ways no matter the restrictions and checks you put into place. The upshot though is that people like that are in the tiny minority. And the difficulty is finding the balance between tightening restrictions to reduce waste and fraud, while still not making it so complex that people that legitimately need it like the single mother working two part time jobs getting food stamps and some cash aid to make up the difference, can still manage to get the help that they need.
Quicksort is already implemented a thousand times, so there's no need to implement it again, just find which library you need.
Quicksort is nice because it plays a little nicer with sequential data (improving cache hit rates and such), but unless you have a proper (and complicated) function for choosing the cut value, it ends up with an O(n^2) complexity in the worst case. HeapSort and MergeSort are guaranteed to run in O(nlogn) time, and while MergeSort requires O(nlogn) memory to operate in (while still playing nice with sequential reads), HeapSort does all of its sorting in place in the original array at the expense of trashing sequencing. All of the above need to be taught and understood by the student before being trusted with any serious algorithm work. The lessons you will learn from the tradeoffs and benefits of these three sorting algorithms translates well into absolutely everything else you may want to do in programming.
Did this make anyone else think of the Burbclaves in Snow Crash? For this to work properly, these guys would have actual police powers (or be open to massive liability suits that police officers are shielded from as a matter of course). The only way to do this is to set up autonomous city-states a la Burbclave franchises. This should turn out well...
that "flat", pastel, square look. Like, Windows 8. Or new iOS.
There needs to be a word for this: eliminating functionality in the name of creating a "new" way of doing things.
I think of it as the PukeUI - in that it makes me want to vomit when I see it.
Kind of like every time there's a problem with a plane they roll out "Miracle on the Hudson" Capt. Sullenberger?
That really doesn't bother me. I mean, yeah it shows a complete lack of understanding and valuation of expert opinion on the part of the news guys doing that, but if someone is skilled and lucky enough to do what Sullenberger did in ditching that plane on having everyone survive... Well, I would say such a person deserves not to have to work at a real job much more than some random celebrity bimbo who's biggest accomplishment in life is a trashy sex tape that got out on the internet. At least Sully actually did something useful.
He's not paid to interpret the law, he's paid to enforce it. The law says no texting while driving, even at a red light. It doesn't go on to say unless the police officer witnessing it decides it's safe and ignores it. On the other hand, cops do have broad discretion because you can't possibly stop all of the offenses you see happening on any given day.
Yeah, ground based jammers just make it easy for an ARM to come a knockin'
OR WEAPONS SYSTEMS.
Well, great, I guess now I'll never get my iMissileLauncher....
I can tell you that California certainly *taxes* you on the unsubsidized price. $299 for the 32GB phone, turns into $360 with tax because the tax is computed off of the full $749 price tag. And I recall Sprint got into some financial difficulty with the 4S launch because of all the up front money they had to pay to Apple which took Sprint over a year to earn back off of subscriptions.
Cops are generally exempted from such laws. It's not hypocritical if the law specifically allows them to do what they're doing. It's hypocritical if they enforce a law against you while breaking it themselves. Also, it's not unreasonable to assume that people who have been specifically trained in defensive driving techniques and how and when to safely use electronic equipment (which a cop car is *jam* packed with) would be better able to make a judgement call as to the safety of using such equipment than, say, a random person trying to update their Facebook status while plowing into a minivan and taking out a family of four. Just saying.
Yeah, see you're responding to one of the grandparent or great gp posts. This discussion is not so much about mobile anymore, but about the abomination that was PAE and AWE (long may it stay dead and never return ever).
I like this idea a LOT. Security would go WAY down, lines would speed up, the searches would be polite. If a plane blew up, the airline would get sued for about a figure that an actuary could neatly estimate. They'd only inconvenience their customers up to a point where the chance that they'd lose repeat business was cost-effective. Perfect.
Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
Narrator: You wouldn't believe.
Woman on plane: Which car company do you work for?
Narrator: A major one.
butt bombers (wasn't there one of those in Saudi Arabia?)
Abdullah Hassan Al Aseery and it failed because his body basically shielded the intended target from the blast. Kind of like a twisted version of throwing yourself on the grenade.
That's not perpetual, that's just good for ~5 billion years or so.
There may well be a debate to be had about third party witnesses and the fifth amendment, but this entire issue in Risen's case is subordinate to the *first* amendment issue of freedom of the press, which should absolutely give him the right to protect a confidential source. I know that the government has tried to shove that aside for their own purposes, but Risen's right not to testify needs to be a first, not fifth, amendment issue.
Yes, but the person being stared at is almost exclusively female. If the person being stared at was male then...I think about 99% of society would find that at least mildly creepy. The sexist part of it has to do with the objectification of the female body, not the gender of the person doing the staring.