It might be better to plead guilty and serve your time than wait for the trial. If you are accused of something petty (1 year?), this would have to cross your mind. That could contribute to the 99.8%. That and the fact that you figure you're already screwed and might as well cut your losses.
Oh yeah, the US was such a world power in the 19th century. Um, no. We didn't become a world power until the 20th century. Not until after WWI probably. (You could argue the turn of the century when we fought Spain I guess.)
What's to keep an engineer (or the company) from making a special case out of the search for "nigritude ultramarine?" The day before the contest ends, they copy the pages of the top 100 to use for research and then they point the top search to whoever they want....
Ah, that would be awesome. I'd love to see all of these people trying so hard for something and they find out that they have no control over it in the end.
Straight from the Source: Perspectives from the African Free and Open Source Software Movement
A bridges.org article in collaboration with the Tactical Technology Collective.
For a software developer working in Africa, Philip Mbogo's problem is as basic as it gets: "I don't have a computer," he said. "I have to go for unpaid work in order just to get on a computer." Internet access is also an expensive rarity, so he counts himself fortunate to work as an intern at an Internet service provider where he takes as much advantage of the bandwidth as he can. "Anything I can get I download. I even got [a Linux distribution called] Debian, which takes two days [to download]."
African software developers face many obstacles as they struggle to work in this field. But these "coders", as a group, form a community marked less by their frustration and isolation than by their perseverance and resolve. This theme dominated AfricaSource, a workshop held in Namibia in March 2004 and organised by the Tactical Technology Collective, AllAfrica Foundation and SchoolNet Namibia. The meeting in the small town of Okahandja of 40 software developers from 25 countries was for many the first chance to collaborate and compare notes.
Lack of access to the means and tools of production is the issue African programmers most commonly identify as the greatest barrier to success in their work. But at this event, coders got a chance to share the innovative ways they work around the problem. "We buy computer parts bit by bit. In the space of three or four months we have a computer," says Ayeni Samuel Olaoluwa, a web developer from Nigeria, who saves up to 50% this way. Another method he has devised is keeping his freelance clients' work on computers he uses as part of his day job. "I am able to hide stuff on the server, but when I leave the company I'm in trouble."
The prohibitive costs of bandwidth and hardware are an obstruction most programmers face, but it affects coders most seriously at the time they are preparing to enter the job market. Without the opportunity to earn salaries that would help them afford equipment of their own, ambitious market entrants eager for work face the prospect of successive, often unpaid, internships just to prove their skills.
This predicament is widespread across Africa, says Ghanaian Guido Sohne, "There are not enough projects available to work on to employ the available talent.... In most African countries IT is not part of the economic production process. It's actually more expensive to computerise your accounting system than to hire more people to do it manually." So when programmers do find jobs, a large percentage tend to find themselves ushered into system administration and technical roles, where they are overworked and their skills are underutilised.
This situation might be a consequence of the fact that a coder's skill is not accorded the value it deserves. Isaiah Makwakwa finds himself in this bind. When the computer science graduate first joined SDNP Malawi, the UN's sustainable development program, his work stimulated him. He automated a billing system for the administration of the.mw domain and maintained the webserver and mail systems. However, over time and as budgets became tighter, managers added client support to his job description. "User support grew to be the biggest part of my job," he says.
The flood of work helping people solve problems on their desktops gradually overshadowed his programming duties, but Makwakwa's manager failed to implement a plan that would have protected and leveraged the value of Makwakwa's skills, which are rarer and far less transferable than the troubleshooting talent he was being called upon to use.
Makwakwa's case is not unique, and it certainly is not exclusive to Africa. As the number of computerised workpl
I am an avid fan of MOM, MOO, and MOO2, but please don't tell me that Master of Orion 3 was not difficult. It was so confusing that I couldn't even figure out the whole colonization thing properly. Some times I would colonize and some times my ships would just kind of hang out. There were so many things to tweak but you never knew what they were doing. Maybe one day, I'll go back and try it again, but I uninstalled it to save room on my PC (I have beaten these other games, plenty, and a couple XComs to boot).
Sidebar: Please bring on MOM2! Are there any OSS sequels to MOM?
In the article, they mentioned 2- and 4-core chips coming out in 2005 and 2006. How long will it take the unix and windows operating systems to take full advantage of all the cores? Are they already there? Does software running on these systems need to be specially written and/or compiled in order to take advantage of the multiple cores or will they mostly serve to handle multitasking?
Most of the products that come out of Chandler, AZ are named after Arizona geologic features. Their codenames are chosen so that there is no possible infringement. Since it is not possible to trademark geological features (or Biblical/historical features), they are safe bets. As the previous poster noted, there is some work going on at their [relatively] new site in Isreal.
If Ford had issued a recall for the said defect and the thief did not bring their vehicle in (why would he, he'd probably be arrested), then the fault is on the "customer," not Ford. IANAL, but I don't imagine anyone convicting Ford because a criminal wouldn't bring a stolen car in to be serviced.
Even if Ford did not announce the recall, I don't know if they would be liable. Passengers are at the liability of the driver. The driver was using the vehicle illegally, so I'm not sure that he would have any basis for a claim.
There was a case in Florida where some teenagers (maybe in their early 20s) had removed a stop sign as a prank. When there was later a fatal accident there, they were charged and convicted of manslaughter.
I know this isn't exactly the same thing because it is a little more direct than the case you outlined above, but I think that it is indirect enough to set a precedent.
Here is the case from Florida.
The charges were later dropped after prosecuters decided not to challenge the appeal. However, the appeal was on technical grounds. The precedent set here is that if you were the who pulled the sign out you were guilty of manslaughter.
You're clearly speaking for yourself. (I will speak up for myself below - personal opinion follows:)
Personally, I don't want anyone getting my bank account numbers, credit card numbers, tax information, etc. because a couple people who don't do these things don't mind if someone screws around on *their* computer. I will use my own judgment as to what is appropriate on *my*
computer.
Basically, I will grant some programs that I trust the ability to "anonymously track bugs" or maybe allow a program like SETI or Mersenne Prime Search. I would be willing to fill out a survey at the time of download, from a web page - not an app running on my PC. I do not expect any ads to randomly come to my PC from the internet. The only company that has a right to do this would be my ISP (maybe), and I would quickly switch. None of my personal information should ever be transmitted without my express consent. Anything else amounts to identity theft or the enabling of such.
I think that one of the successes of the Zelda dynasty is that you can kind of identify with the characters and say, "I would like to have this adventure." How many people ever wanted to be a fat plumber battling mushrooms and turtles (by jumping on them no less)? Give me a sword.
Zelda seems to have the same staying power as Final Fantasy, except they appeal to different types of fans (with significant overlap mind you). The FF fans are probably the ones that are more likely to play PnP and they probably immerse themselves in many other CRPGs. The Zelda fans (from the NES days) are probably the ones who preferred games like Contra, TMNT, XMen, etc. but were actually interested in a more involving plot mixed in with their action.
Now that I've said all that, I realize how much some people are going to disagree with what distinguishes Zelda from other games. Personally, I liked the fact that even though you had to go through a certain list of tasks, you could, to a degree, do them out-of-order, and sometimes this made the game a lot more interesting. (It can be especially tricky/frustrating in games where you have to go back and search a low-level dungeon because you couldn't get to a certain room before.)
IANAAE = I am nonetheless ambiguous and equivocal?
googling on 'ianaae':
IANAAE (AE == "Aeronautical Engineer")
I am not an acronym expert
I am not an aeronautical engineer
I Am Not An Acoustics Engineer
I Am Not An Aeronitics Engineer
I am not an ASUS engineer
I am not an alpha expert
Does anyone know where I can get the connections between C64 and a TV? I believe that it is the same connection that my Radio Shack Pong system uses. I would like to be able to use both of these. (Don't you think that a pong tournament would augment an 80s party?)
Do these special games/controllers allow for 2 players, like some of the upcoming Atari games will?
I don't know what you mean by bloody electrons (is that a British thing?).
As far as potential applications - they are numerous. Without thinking very hard a couple came immediately to mind.
(1) Electro-magnets - there are a lot of applications in medical and theoretical physics that require strong magnetic fields. Assuming that high-temp superconductors can be found whose properties don't break down under higher magnetic fields, superconductors could be used to create magnets stronger than any that we currently have.
(2) Particle detectors. If you have a superconducting loop and a charged particle passes through it, it will induce an EMF on the loop, causing a current to circulate. Since there is no resistance (i.e. no signal degradation), the current is much easier to detect and measure.
(3) MagLev anyone? Not on tape I guess, but levitating trains would be really nice. Then again, the previous ideas probably don't work very well with tape, but anything that helps move the field forward is bound to help.
I'm sure there are plenty of more interesting applications than these.
Not entirely true. I realized that in order to be a well-rounded geek, I needed to read some Asimov (how I managed to go 26 years without doing so is a mystery - perhaps I wasn't ready). I started with Prelude and have now begun the 5th book (in the original ordering), Foundation and Earth.
I think the problem is that you are dismayed by the general masses. If you remember Asimov's books, he doesn't seem to put much stock in the intelligence of people as their size increases. x being population (mob size): lim[as x->Inf] Avg.Int(x) -> 3 (that's for all you D&D freaks!)
I bet you that there are a lot of nerds and children of nerds who are still picking up the "classics." Don't kid yourself, SF has never been dominant in the mainstream.
(1) Calculators are very specialized and do many important tasks very quickly. Complex algebra is very important in engineering, physics, etc. I can get a very quick response for a cosine of a complex number or complex^complex. I've ever tried EasyCalc, so maybe you can tell me if it handles all of the different capabilities of these new calculators. (My examples are VERY trivial since my calculators are a couple of years old).
(2) Not everyone can afford to have a laptop to carry around, much less do you want to add that weight to all of the notebooks and textbooks that you already need (I'm thinking more of high school than college, but both apply).
(3) To be honest, when I am programming away on a project at work, home, whatever I like to have a calculator beside me. I also keep notebooks handy because there are a lot of things that I like to figure out by hand (geometric problems, etc.).
I have written implementations for the rijndael algorithm in [proprietary] assembly, verilog, c, and c++ and if I could have just used a library call*, I would too. Can't blame the guy. It takes the focus away from the all of the complicated math and puts in onto the new work he has done.
*the c/c++ implementations were for understanding the algorithm and checking data from verilog and assembly runs. I know that there was code that I could have downloaded off the internet somewhere, but I prefer to use features of the core language when possible.
C# is very rich, like Java (because it is so very much like Java, except to the people who get religious about one or the other). I agree with many of the other posters that it is better to have a language that is easier to program in and better structured to prevent errors when writing in it. (C# has a great debugging feature - you can get the exact line number of the error. It is part of the Exception object. Forgive my ignorance if this is in Java too).
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It might be better to plead guilty and serve your time than wait for the trial. If you are accused of something petty (1 year?), this would have to cross your mind. That could contribute to the 99.8%. That and the fact that you figure you're already screwed and might as well cut your losses.
Oh yeah, the US was such a world power in the 19th century. Um, no. We didn't become a world power until the 20th century. Not until after WWI probably. (You could argue the turn of the century when we fought Spain I guess.)
What's to keep an engineer (or the company) from making a special case out of the search for "nigritude ultramarine?" The day before the contest ends, they copy the pages of the top 100 to use for research and then they point the top search to whoever they want....
Ah, that would be awesome. I'd love to see all of these people trying so hard for something and they find out that they have no control over it in the end.
Here is a copy of the summary from http://www.bridges.org/africasource/summary.html
.mw domain and maintained the webserver and mail systems. However, over time and as budgets became tighter, managers added client support to his job description. "User support grew to be the biggest part of my job," he says.
Straight from the Source: Perspectives from the African Free and Open Source Software Movement
A bridges.org article in collaboration with the Tactical Technology Collective.
For a software developer working in Africa, Philip Mbogo's problem is as basic as it gets: "I don't have a computer," he said. "I have to go for unpaid work in order just to get on a computer." Internet access is also an expensive rarity, so he counts himself fortunate to work as an intern at an Internet service provider where he takes as much advantage of the bandwidth as he can. "Anything I can get I download. I even got [a Linux distribution called] Debian, which takes two days [to download]."
African software developers face many obstacles as they struggle to work in this field. But these "coders", as a group, form a community marked less by their frustration and isolation than by their perseverance and resolve. This theme dominated AfricaSource, a workshop held in Namibia in March 2004 and organised by the Tactical Technology Collective, AllAfrica Foundation and SchoolNet Namibia. The meeting in the small town of Okahandja of 40 software developers from 25 countries was for many the first chance to collaborate and compare notes.
Lack of access to the means and tools of production is the issue African programmers most commonly identify as the greatest barrier to success in their work. But at this event, coders got a chance to share the innovative ways they work around the problem. "We buy computer parts bit by bit. In the space of three or four months we have a computer," says Ayeni Samuel Olaoluwa, a web developer from Nigeria, who saves up to 50% this way. Another method he has devised is keeping his freelance clients' work on computers he uses as part of his day job. "I am able to hide stuff on the server, but when I leave the company I'm in trouble."
The prohibitive costs of bandwidth and hardware are an obstruction most programmers face, but it affects coders most seriously at the time they are preparing to enter the job market. Without the opportunity to earn salaries that would help them afford equipment of their own, ambitious market entrants eager for work face the prospect of successive, often unpaid, internships just to prove their skills.
This predicament is widespread across Africa, says Ghanaian Guido Sohne, "There are not enough projects available to work on to employ the available talent.... In most African countries IT is not part of the economic production process. It's actually more expensive to computerise your accounting system than to hire more people to do it manually." So when programmers do find jobs, a large percentage tend to find themselves ushered into system administration and technical roles, where they are overworked and their skills are underutilised.
This situation might be a consequence of the fact that a coder's skill is not accorded the value it deserves. Isaiah Makwakwa finds himself in this bind. When the computer science graduate first joined SDNP Malawi, the UN's sustainable development program, his work stimulated him. He automated a billing system for the administration of the
The flood of work helping people solve problems on their desktops gradually overshadowed his programming duties, but Makwakwa's manager failed to implement a plan that would have protected and leveraged the value of Makwakwa's skills, which are rarer and far less transferable than the troubleshooting talent he was being called upon to use.
Makwakwa's case is not unique, and it certainly is not exclusive to Africa. As the number of computerised workpl
I noticed that Martin Kotulla's "email" address is http://www.softmaker.de. Doesn't that make this an unabashed sails pitch to /. users?
Yeah, they've got their tool kicking OO's butt, but they've also chosen the benchmarks.
I see that the beta is free, but will it stay that way? That's one of the biggest reasons to choose OO (unless you are just an OSS fanatic).
I am an avid fan of MOM, MOO, and MOO2, but please don't tell me that Master of Orion 3 was not difficult. It was so confusing that I couldn't even figure out the whole colonization thing properly. Some times I would colonize and some times my ships would just kind of hang out. There were so many things to tweak but you never knew what they were doing. Maybe one day, I'll go back and try it again, but I uninstalled it to save room on my PC (I have beaten these other games, plenty, and a couple XComs to boot). Sidebar: Please bring on MOM2! Are there any OSS sequels to MOM?
In the article, they mentioned 2- and 4-core chips coming out in 2005 and 2006. How long will it take the unix and windows operating systems to take full advantage of all the cores? Are they already there? Does software running on these systems need to be specially written and/or compiled in order to take advantage of the multiple cores or will they mostly serve to handle multitasking?
Most of the products that come out of Chandler, AZ are named after Arizona geologic features. Their codenames are chosen so that there is no possible infringement. Since it is not possible to trademark geological features (or Biblical/historical features), they are safe bets. As the previous poster noted, there is some work going on at their [relatively] new site in Isreal.
If Ford had issued a recall for the said defect and the thief did not bring their vehicle in (why would he, he'd probably be arrested), then the fault is on the "customer," not Ford. IANAL, but I don't imagine anyone convicting Ford because a criminal wouldn't bring a stolen car in to be serviced. Even if Ford did not announce the recall, I don't know if they would be liable. Passengers are at the liability of the driver. The driver was using the vehicle illegally, so I'm not sure that he would have any basis for a claim.
There was a case in Florida where some teenagers (maybe in their early 20s) had removed a stop sign as a prank. When there was later a fatal accident there, they were charged and convicted of manslaughter.
I know this isn't exactly the same thing because it is a little more direct than the case you outlined above, but I think that it is indirect enough to set a precedent.
Here is the case from Florida. The charges were later dropped after prosecuters decided not to challenge the appeal. However, the appeal was on technical grounds. The precedent set here is that if you were the who pulled the sign out you were guilty of manslaughter.
You're clearly speaking for yourself. (I will speak up for myself below - personal opinion follows:)
Personally, I don't want anyone getting my bank account numbers, credit card numbers, tax information, etc. because a couple people who don't do these things don't mind if someone screws around on *their* computer. I will use my own judgment as to what is appropriate on *my* computer.
Basically, I will grant some programs that I trust the ability to "anonymously track bugs" or maybe allow a program like SETI or Mersenne Prime Search. I would be willing to fill out a survey at the time of download, from a web page - not an app running on my PC. I do not expect any ads to randomly come to my PC from the internet. The only company that has a right to do this would be my ISP (maybe), and I would quickly switch. None of my personal information should ever be transmitted without my express consent. Anything else amounts to identity theft or the enabling of such.
I think that one of the successes of the Zelda dynasty is that you can kind of identify with the characters and say, "I would like to have this adventure." How many people ever wanted to be a fat plumber battling mushrooms and turtles (by jumping on them no less)? Give me a sword.
Zelda seems to have the same staying power as Final Fantasy, except they appeal to different types of fans (with significant overlap mind you). The FF fans are probably the ones that are more likely to play PnP and they probably immerse themselves in many other CRPGs. The Zelda fans (from the NES days) are probably the ones who preferred games like Contra, TMNT, XMen, etc. but were actually interested in a more involving plot mixed in with their action.
Now that I've said all that, I realize how much some people are going to disagree with what distinguishes Zelda from other games. Personally, I liked the fact that even though you had to go through a certain list of tasks, you could, to a degree, do them out-of-order, and sometimes this made the game a lot more interesting. (It can be especially tricky/frustrating in games where you have to go back and search a low-level dungeon because you couldn't get to a certain room before.)
IANAAE = I am nonetheless ambiguous and equivocal?
googling on 'ianaae':
IANAAE (AE == "Aeronautical Engineer")
I am not an acronym expert
I am not an aeronautical engineer
I Am Not An Acoustics Engineer
I Am Not An Aeronitics Engineer
I am not an ASUS engineer
I am not an alpha expert
Does anyone know where I can get the connections between C64 and a TV? I believe that it is the same connection that my Radio Shack Pong system uses. I would like to be able to use both of these. (Don't you think that a pong tournament would augment an 80s party?) Do these special games/controllers allow for 2 players, like some of the upcoming Atari games will?
I don't know what you mean by bloody electrons (is that a British thing?).
As far as potential applications - they are numerous. Without thinking very hard a couple came immediately to mind.
(1) Electro-magnets - there are a lot of applications in medical and theoretical physics that require strong magnetic fields. Assuming that high-temp superconductors can be found whose properties don't break down under higher magnetic fields, superconductors could be used to create magnets stronger than any that we currently have.
(2) Particle detectors. If you have a superconducting loop and a charged particle passes through it, it will induce an EMF on the loop, causing a current to circulate. Since there is no resistance (i.e. no signal degradation), the current is much easier to detect and measure.
(3) MagLev anyone? Not on tape I guess, but levitating trains would be really nice. Then again, the previous ideas probably don't work very well with tape, but anything that helps move the field forward is bound to help.
I'm sure there are plenty of more interesting applications than these.
pr0n will never be the same....
Not entirely true. I realized that in order to be a well-rounded geek, I needed to read some Asimov (how I managed to go 26 years without doing so is a mystery - perhaps I wasn't ready). I started with Prelude and have now begun the 5th book (in the original ordering), Foundation and Earth.
I think the problem is that you are dismayed by the general masses. If you remember Asimov's books, he doesn't seem to put much stock in the intelligence of people as their size increases. x being population (mob size): lim[as x->Inf] Avg.Int(x) -> 3 (that's for all you D&D freaks!)
I bet you that there are a lot of nerds and children of nerds who are still picking up the "classics." Don't kid yourself, SF has never been dominant in the mainstream.
Sorry. I have to disagree with you.
(1) Calculators are very specialized and do many important tasks very quickly. Complex algebra is very important in engineering, physics, etc. I can get a very quick response for a cosine of a complex number or complex^complex. I've ever tried EasyCalc, so maybe you can tell me if it handles all of the different capabilities of these new calculators. (My examples are VERY trivial since my calculators are a couple of years old).
(2) Not everyone can afford to have a laptop to carry around, much less do you want to add that weight to all of the notebooks and textbooks that you already need (I'm thinking more of high school than college, but both apply).
(3) To be honest, when I am programming away on a project at work, home, whatever I like to have a calculator beside me. I also keep notebooks handy because there are a lot of things that I like to figure out by hand (geometric problems, etc.).
will enable all major Microsoft Windows applications to run
Yeah, but who decides what the major applications are?
I have written implementations for the rijndael algorithm in [proprietary] assembly, verilog, c, and c++ and if I could have just used a library call*, I would too. Can't blame the guy. It takes the focus away from the all of the complicated math and puts in onto the new work he has done. *the c/c++ implementations were for understanding the algorithm and checking data from verilog and assembly runs. I know that there was code that I could have downloaded off the internet somewhere, but I prefer to use features of the core language when possible. C# is very rich, like Java (because it is so very much like Java, except to the people who get religious about one or the other). I agree with many of the other posters that it is better to have a language that is easier to program in and better structured to prevent errors when writing in it. (C# has a great debugging feature - you can get the exact line number of the error. It is part of the Exception object. Forgive my ignorance if this is in Java too).