If coding is like typing for you, you've never done any real programming. Coding is about thinking out elegant solutions to interesting problems. I don't think that's boring at all.
I have a Ph.D. in CS, and although I am highly respected by my colleagues, and currently involved in interesting projects, it did not help me much when looking for work. During various job interviews I got the impression that years of experience in the software business is considered more valuable than a Ph.D. When I did get hired, the interviewer actually had a Ph.D. himself, so he did see the value. If you look at CS job descriptions, a Ph.D. is almost never a requirement, except for university positions and some research positions, but those are scarce (in the current economy). So, a Ph.D. is no guarantee for an interesting job. There are lots of Ph.D.'s out there doing work that they are overqualified for.
A Ph.D. is really a training program for an academic career, not for a business career. The subject of a Ph.D. is often highly specialised or even obscure. So, unless you happen to know (and if you have a choice for a Ph.D. subject) what research area will become important at the big software companies in three or four years time, the subject of your Ph.D. is irrelevant, or even detrimental, for your career. (That also goes for university careers: its very difficult to fight your way into a different specialisation).
That said, I loved my time as a Ph.D. student and post-doc researcher. You should only do a Ph.D. if you are passionate about a subject. So, if you have the opportunity to do a Ph.D. and you can afford to do it, and you are inspired by the subject and driven enough to finish it, then go for it. But it's not necessarily a good career move.
The ISP replaced it with another weak password? What? welkom02? Why not a strong password? Strong passwords do not have to be hard to remember or type, see: http://xkcd.com/936/
Phones and tablet computers already have a 'start page' in the form of the launcher screen with live widgets. I guess iGoogle makes less sense on those platforms. On the desktop, it is possible to customize your desktop with live widgets, but I most people I know don't bother (including myself, I like a clean desktop). I suppose that with Windows 8 people will get used to having launcher with live widgets again. Microsoft has been pushing the idea of a live desktop for a while. I suppose Gnome and KDE will follow suit too, sooner or later.
Religion teaches moral values in a way that Law can't
or immoral values... religion can and has been used to indoctrinate people with anything. Anyway, Sharia is not a religion, but a set of laws (inspired by religion, but so is Western law). And laws don't enforce themselves! You need a police and a justice system for that, which Iraq didn't have at the time.
Software engineering is more than just coding and testing. It about getting exact requirements from the client; documentation and boring paperwork (always more paperwork!), collaboration, time management...
You could say software engineering is coding with the fun taken out of it. My advice: try to get a in house job in a tech firm, where the 'client' are technical people who know what they need, and to whom interesting problems and clever algorithms matter. That way you'll spend more time coding and less time on paperwork and moving buttons in a user interface.
Everyone knows the law was created by aliens, to prevent humans from becoming a successful space-going race. Also, some crazies say the law was created created by God. To prevent humans from becoming a successful heaven-going race. Haaa aaah haaaaaaa.
Yes, lets STOP EVERYTHING because some bankers fucked up their bookkeeping.
Sadly, the parent post is probably right, that is what's going to happen to this project.
Let's fire all scientists and stop funding whatever makes society worth while, like schools and social security and infrastructure and such nonsense. Instead, let's write big checks to the banks that caused all this mess and lower taxes for high incomes like bank directors.
Before the internet (or more accurately, before internet access was common, say, the 90s) nobody had an interest to control your computer. Software makers just wanted you to buy their software, so they tried to make good software. Viruses, typically made by pranksters and spread via floppies, were mostly annoying, and in the worst case destroyed your data.
Wide spread use of internet access opened up the possibility for internet commerce, and crime. Now big corporations have an interest in your data, so they can profile you and manipulate you into buying their products. They want control over your computer so you can only buy and run their products. Viruses and malware are also after your data, or want to control your computer for illegal purposes (sending spam). The government wants to watch your computer to catch criminals and enemies of the state.
It's not for nothing that the brick bible website has this warning:
"The Bible contains material some may consider morally objectionable and/or inappropriate for children. These labels identify stories containing: nudity, sexual content, violence, cursing"
I'm not a physicist, and I couldn't understand most of the paper, but what it seems to suggest is that a quantum state must be somehow represented or stored in a physical object. So the quantum state is not simply a statistical description of how particles interact, but is something 'real' that interacts with particles.
I would guess this physical object would take the form of a particle and also take the form of a wave, i.e. a wave-particle or whatever you call it, like many other physical objects.
The problem with that is, if the patented source code is c++, does that mean a Java or Haskell implementation is not covered by the patent? Or another c++ implementation that uses completely different data structures? When is an algorithm or an implementation of an algorithm different enough not to be covered by a patent?
The worst is: the patent offices are not able to answer these questions either. As long as they cannot answer these questions, they should not be allowed to issue software patents, or hardware patents, or perhaps any patents at all.
No, he's basically saying: Why research something that will never be used? No company is going to invest huge sums in technology that cannot be patented. A university cannot be expected (and will not get funded!) to work out the details needed for mass production, or run the expensive trials needed for FDA approval.
A production process for a car can be patented, but not if you want to use the car for scientific research. Also, if the production process offends any one, sane or insane, then it is not patentable.
Arbitrary???
Patents are means to stimulate innovation, not stifle it!
A scientists ask the question: can it be done? and then starts tinkering. If it works, the answer is yes. If he doesn't succeed, the question is still open. Ask an engineer the same question, he will either say yes, and then build it, or say no, and move on. Or in the worst case, the engineer says yes, and then fails. The scientist of course can never fail - only get negative results. Cheap trick.
The author of TFA is simply having problems FINDING his 'big ideas'. I believe there are plenty of great ideas out there, and and plenty of thinkers too. But you have to look in the right place. I suspect that the author, and in general the media, and perhaps all of us, are simply not very good at sifting through the surge of information available to us with social networking, news feeds, the web, etc. Or, perhaps, he's not very good at identifying 'big ideas'. What is a 'big idea' anyway?
I think the author is confusing ideas, scientific theories and ideologies. An idea is nice, but not necessarily valuable. Scientific theories (if they stand scrutiny) are ideas that enable us to understand and shape the world around us, and are therefore valuable. There are plenty of new and possibly useful scientific ideas out there, but you need to look in scientific journals or popular science magazines. And you need to be somewhat knowledgeable the scientific field to understand them. The author calls Einsteins work a 'great idea' but does he understand it? I suspect he calls it a great idea because it resulted in the A-bomb and nuclear power, but that doesn't per se make it a greater idea than new theories, for example the hypothetical Higgs boson (which, who knows, might give us anti-gravity technology or FTL space travel?).
Ideologies, on the other hand, are not valuable like scientific theories. In fact, some ideologies have kindled hatred, caused wars, held back prosperity etc. There are more benign ideologies, promoting things like 'equal rights' and 'peace' and 'save the planet', but these are very generic and obvious wishes, not practical ideas. Ideologies that prescribe ' the way' for obtaining these goods are often dangerous when followed through, because they are not based on science. Ideologies cannot be proved right or wrong, their value is not easily shown, and can be thought up by quite stupid people and still become popular. Perhaps the author finds that ideologies are getting less attention? That would not be such a bad thing. Unfortunately, there are still plenty of hateful ideologies and backward religions - they make the news all the time. And I have no doubt that there will be plenty popular and potentially harmful ideologies in the future.
All other ideas are just opinions. And there are plenty of those (with merit or without) on twitter, facebook, blogs, magazines, newspapers, etc. See for example TFA.
with the source code out, it should be easy to plug the security holes that the spyware uses, and it should be easy to generate hashes and heuristics for virus scanners to detect spyware on infected computers. In theory anyway.
The source code, design, and structure of HAMSTER free software are trade secrets except software licensed under GNU GPL 3.0, LGPL, MPL, BSD-licensed or Free components used to compile. You will not disassemble, decompile, or reverse engineer it, in whole except to the extent expressly permitted by law or except GNU GPL 3.0, LGPL, MPL, BSD-licensed or Free components used to compile HAMSTER free software. You will not use HAMSTER free software for illegal purposes. You will comply with all export laws. HAMSTER free software is licensed, not sold.
---
Sorry guys, you can't have GPL'd code and trade secrets in one piece of software.
Yes, these drugs were originally created to cure a specific disorder, however, it seems to me that many psychiatrists take a rather experimental approach to prescribing drugs;they try lots of different drugs on a patient until the patient stops complaining. To cure the side effects, they just add some more drugs to the cocktail. I've seen this happen to a close friend who's stared out with mild depression, was put on various psychoactive drugs, developed various other disorders (I believe due to these drugs) and who almost killed herself by taking an overdose.
My impression is that psychiatrists do not really know how to diagnose and cure people. I'm not saying these doctors are stupid. Clinical psychology / psychiatry is perhaps one of the most difficult studies and i believe it is basically still in its experimental stage. Definitions and practice are changing all the time. It does seem that definitions of mental disorders are blurring and people are diagnosed a disorders more and more frequently.
Drug companies are cleverly making use of the doctor's confusion by pushing lots of drugs on the market of which the effects are not really predictable, giving false hope to doctors and patients.
Slashdot Mirror
If coding is like typing for you, you've never done any real programming. Coding is about thinking out elegant solutions to interesting problems. I don't think that's boring at all.
Thank you. This is the truth and no mistake. Amen.
I have a Ph.D. in CS, and although I am highly respected by my colleagues, and currently involved in interesting projects, it did not help me much when looking for work. During various job interviews I got the impression that years of experience in the software business is considered more valuable than a Ph.D. When I did get hired, the interviewer actually had a Ph.D. himself, so he did see the value. If you look at CS job descriptions, a Ph.D. is almost never a requirement, except for university positions and some research positions, but those are scarce (in the current economy). So, a Ph.D. is no guarantee for an interesting job. There are lots of Ph.D.'s out there doing work that they are overqualified for.
A Ph.D. is really a training program for an academic career, not for a business career. The subject of a Ph.D. is often highly specialised or even obscure. So, unless you happen to know (and if you have a choice for a Ph.D. subject) what research area will become important at the big software companies in three or four years time, the subject of your Ph.D. is irrelevant, or even detrimental, for your career. (That also goes for university careers: its very difficult to fight your way into a different specialisation).
That said, I loved my time as a Ph.D. student and post-doc researcher. You should only do a Ph.D. if you are passionate about a subject. So, if you have the opportunity to do a Ph.D. and you can afford to do it, and you are inspired by the subject and driven enough to finish it, then go for it. But it's not necessarily a good career move.
The ISP replaced it with another weak password? What? welkom02? Why not a strong password? Strong passwords do not have to be hard to remember or type, see: http://xkcd.com/936/
Phones and tablet computers already have a 'start page' in the form of the launcher screen with live widgets. I guess iGoogle makes less sense on those platforms. On the desktop, it is possible to customize your desktop with live widgets, but I most people I know don't bother (including myself, I like a clean desktop). I suppose that with Windows 8 people will get used to having launcher with live widgets again. Microsoft has been pushing the idea of a live desktop for a while. I suppose Gnome and KDE will follow suit too, sooner or later.
Seems that's what this blogger is saying. I am a consumer, we all are, and I happen to love the CLI.
6 months? Big deal. That's just the normal delay to get something published in a peer reviewed journal. For some journals it can take up to a year.
Religion teaches moral values in a way that Law can't
or immoral values... religion can and has been used to indoctrinate people with anything. Anyway, Sharia is not a religion, but a set of laws (inspired by religion, but so is Western law). And laws don't enforce themselves! You need a police and a justice system for that, which Iraq didn't have at the time.
Software engineering is more than just coding and testing. It about getting exact requirements from the client; documentation and boring paperwork (always more paperwork!), collaboration, time management...
You could say software engineering is coding with the fun taken out of it. My advice: try to get a in house job in a tech firm, where the 'client' are technical people who know what they need, and to whom interesting problems and clever algorithms matter. That way you'll spend more time coding and less time on paperwork and moving buttons in a user interface.
Everyone knows the law was created by aliens, to prevent humans from becoming a successful space-going race.
Also, some crazies say the law was created created by God. To prevent humans from becoming a successful heaven-going race. Haaa aaah haaaaaaa.
Antarctica is heating up too you know. This Christmas they had the warmest day ever recorded, at -12.5 degrees Celcius.
Yes, lets STOP EVERYTHING because some bankers fucked up their bookkeeping.
Sadly, the parent post is probably right, that is what's going to happen to this project.
Let's fire all scientists and stop funding whatever makes society worth while, like schools and social security and infrastructure and such nonsense. Instead, let's write big checks to the banks that caused all this mess and lower taxes for high incomes like bank directors.
rant, rant, rant, sigh....
The internet, that's what happened.
Before the internet (or more accurately, before internet access was common, say, the 90s) nobody had an interest to control your computer. Software makers just wanted you to buy their software, so they tried to make good software. Viruses, typically made by pranksters and spread via floppies, were mostly annoying, and in the worst case destroyed your data.
Wide spread use of internet access opened up the possibility for internet commerce, and crime. Now big corporations have an interest in your data, so they can profile you and manipulate you into buying their products. They want control over your computer so you can only buy and run their products. Viruses and malware are also after your data, or want to control your computer for illegal purposes (sending spam). The government wants to watch your computer to catch criminals and enemies of the state.
It's not for nothing that the brick bible website has this warning:
"The Bible contains material some may consider morally objectionable and/or inappropriate for children. These labels identify stories containing: nudity, sexual content, violence, cursing"
It's a very good question.
I'm not a physicist, and I couldn't understand most of the paper, but what it seems to suggest is that a quantum state must be somehow represented or stored in a physical object. So the quantum state is not simply a statistical description of how particles interact, but is something 'real' that interacts with particles.
I would guess this physical object would take the form of a particle and also take the form of a wave, i.e. a wave-particle or whatever you call it, like many other physical objects.
The problem with that is, if the patented source code is c++, does that mean a Java or Haskell implementation is not covered by the patent? Or another c++ implementation that uses completely different data structures? When is an algorithm or an implementation of an algorithm different enough not to be covered by a patent?
The worst is: the patent offices are not able to answer these questions either. As long as they cannot answer these questions, they should not be allowed to issue software patents, or hardware patents, or perhaps any patents at all.
No, he's basically saying: Why research something that will never be used? No company is going to invest huge sums in technology that cannot be patented. A university cannot be expected (and will not get funded!) to work out the details needed for mass production, or run the expensive trials needed for FDA approval.
A production process for a car can be patented, but not if you want to use the car for scientific research. Also, if the production process offends any one, sane or insane, then it is not patentable.
Arbitrary???
Patents are means to stimulate innovation, not stifle it!
A scientists ask the question: can it be done? and then starts tinkering. If it works, the answer is yes. If he doesn't succeed, the question is still open.
Ask an engineer the same question, he will either say yes, and then build it, or say no, and move on. Or in the worst case, the engineer says yes, and then fails.
The scientist of course can never fail - only get negative results. Cheap trick.
Damn you Apple/GNU fan boys. This is worse than Vi/Emacs.
How do you measure 732km between underground bunkers directly? There's no line of sight.
The author of TFA is simply having problems FINDING his 'big ideas'. I believe there are plenty of great ideas out there, and and plenty of thinkers too. But you have to look in the right place. I suspect that the author, and in general the media, and perhaps all of us, are simply not very good at sifting through the surge of information available to us with social networking, news feeds, the web, etc. Or, perhaps, he's not very good at identifying 'big ideas'. What is a 'big idea' anyway?
I think the author is confusing ideas, scientific theories and ideologies. An idea is nice, but not necessarily valuable. Scientific theories (if they stand scrutiny) are ideas that enable us to understand and shape the world around us, and are therefore valuable. There are plenty of new and possibly useful scientific ideas out there, but you need to look in scientific journals or popular science magazines. And you need to be somewhat knowledgeable the scientific field to understand them. The author calls Einsteins work a 'great idea' but does he understand it? I suspect he calls it a great idea because it resulted in the A-bomb and nuclear power, but that doesn't per se make it a greater idea than new theories, for example the hypothetical Higgs boson (which, who knows, might give us anti-gravity technology or FTL space travel?).
Ideologies, on the other hand, are not valuable like scientific theories. In fact, some ideologies have kindled hatred, caused wars, held back prosperity etc. There are more benign ideologies, promoting things like 'equal rights' and 'peace' and 'save the planet', but these are very generic and obvious wishes, not practical ideas. Ideologies that prescribe ' the way' for obtaining these goods are often dangerous when followed through, because they are not based on science. Ideologies cannot be proved right or wrong, their value is not easily shown, and can be thought up by quite stupid people and still become popular. Perhaps the author finds that ideologies are getting less attention? That would not be such a bad thing. Unfortunately, there are still plenty of hateful ideologies and backward religions - they make the news all the time. And I have no doubt that there will be plenty popular and potentially harmful ideologies in the future.
All other ideas are just opinions. And there are plenty of those (with merit or without) on twitter, facebook, blogs, magazines, newspapers, etc. See for example TFA.
with the source code out, it should be easy to plug the security holes that the spyware uses, and it should be easy to generate hashes and heuristics for virus scanners to detect spyware on infected computers. In theory anyway.
From their EULA: (http://hamstersoft.com/eula)
RESTRICTIONS
The source code, design, and structure of HAMSTER free software are trade secrets except software licensed under GNU GPL 3.0, LGPL, MPL, BSD-licensed or Free components used to compile. You will not disassemble, decompile, or reverse engineer it, in whole except to the extent expressly permitted by law or except GNU GPL 3.0, LGPL, MPL, BSD-licensed or Free components used to compile HAMSTER free software. You will not use HAMSTER free software for illegal purposes. You will comply with all export laws. HAMSTER free software is licensed, not sold.
---
Sorry guys, you can't have GPL'd code and trade secrets in one piece of software.
Yes, these drugs were originally created to cure a specific disorder, however, it seems to me that many psychiatrists take a rather experimental approach to prescribing drugs;they try lots of different drugs on a patient until the patient stops complaining. To cure the side effects, they just add some more drugs to the cocktail. I've seen this happen to a close friend who's stared out with mild depression, was put on various psychoactive drugs, developed various other disorders (I believe due to these drugs) and who almost killed herself by taking an overdose.
My impression is that psychiatrists do not really know how to diagnose and cure people. I'm not saying these doctors are stupid. Clinical psychology / psychiatry is perhaps one of the most difficult studies and i believe it is basically still in its experimental stage. Definitions and practice are changing all the time. It does seem that definitions of mental disorders are blurring and people are diagnosed a disorders more and more frequently.
Drug companies are cleverly making use of the doctor's confusion by pushing lots of drugs on the market of which the effects are not really predictable, giving false hope to doctors and patients.
Beware of well meaning psychiatrists.