Operating systems, database design, computer architecture, networking, and data structures all don't fall under math; rather it's part of what gives computer science its identity.
I would love to see computer science get its own identity. When I did my major I concetrated on all the theory classes that my school offered because I understood that those are the most important as I felt learning a programming language is mostly trivial. The problem is that 90% of people who enter a CS program do not do so because they wish to understand computer science they wish to have a way to get a career. It is these people that I think would benefit from a degree in math while taking a couple programming classes along the way.
The approach is what I'm concerned about, CS as a science needs to move entirely away from practicality(ie programming skills) and be based solely in theory. And today what we call CS should just be reduced to a couple classes that math majors interested in becoming programmers take. My main justification for this was that while we had some great CS students at my school the best programmers were the ones that had a thourough understanding of math. Some of them were even math majors getting CS minors and they were far superior intelectually when it came to problem solving and creating software than the strictly CS people.
Furthermore, If i were in the position of hiring a programmer, I'd value a math degree over a CS degree anyday.
We had the one extra class to get a Math minor as well. I suppose my point is that a math minor isn't enough. Too many people can slip through a math minor without having adequate problem solving skills. I didn't get the math minor by the way, I felt that I had already developed what I needed from a math education. Some might call it arrogance but I felt I understood my strengths and weaknesses. So I took several indepedent studies and an internship(I knew i wasn't professional/mature enough for the real world yet). But from my experience the majority of programmers that todays colleges push through the grad ceremony don't have the critical thinking skills that can be effectively learned through a math major.
I agree with you about C++ which I first learned in highschool, intro to programming, programming and AP computer science all of which used C++. This made learning all future languages basically a breeze(aside from Lisp, nothing really prepares your for that). I also think you agree with me(i could be mistaken) on the broader point that programming classes are useful, but a course load saturated with different languages is just useless. My college offered, Java, C++, VB, Cobol, and an intro to assembly class. The required cirruculum takes you through 2 semesters of java, 1 of C++, 1 of VB and the intro to assembly class. Most students would take 2 semesters of VB and then the cobol class so they could get out of taking the theory based courses:(advanced discrete math, modeling and simulation, etc).
When I was going to college I had originally wanted to major in Chemistry, but I decided that CS was easier and I figured I'd get a job sooner and without going beyond for the 4 year BS degree. Fast forward 4 years, I have my degree and a programming job and I see now that CS was a mistake. Not because I wish I majored in Chemistry but because a degree in CS is as far as I'm concerned silly. Programming is easy, with the right mindset and problem solving skills picking up a programming language is cake. I was hired without any experience(actually had never seen any of it before) in the language I was going to use and within two days I started producing useful code.
My advice to protential computer scientists, is major in Math and take a couple programming classes. Math is far more useful and prepares people more completely for the problem solving skills needed for a career in programming. Computer Science is far too cobbled together from other disciplines right now, it honestly lacks identity. The formula now is, (some)Math + (a tiny bit of)Engineering + (a lot of)Programming = CS. CS should be a concentration under a Math degree.
Benchmarks have little to do with my choice of CPU, likewise price has little to do with my choice of CPU. I'm mainly interested in the ability of that chip to run quietly and at a reasonable temperature for a lengthy period of time. I've had one AMD, an athlon xp chip. The machine frustrates me to no end, its hot, its loud(since im using many fans in order to keep it from overheating and i dont want to pay uber $$ to buy special whisper quiet fans).
With that in mind I find these flamewars very annoying since I don't care what you think is the best chip based on 'performance', since honestly there aint much difference between the two as far as how quickly my programs load, or how well my games look(dependent mainly on video card, which i do care alot about performance benchmarks). Id much rather have a comp that doesnt act like a noisy space heater. Which is why I'll go with intel from now on. Once AMD produces chips that don't require as much cooling as they do I'll consider them again.
Again you fail to see the practical so I will have to enumerate it for you. The election is 'called' prior to absentee ballots being counted. You claim that called means nothing, but in most cases when it is called either by tv networks or those counting before they get to the absentee ballots the 'losing' candidate calls the 'winning' candidate to say "congrats you win, I'm going to make my concession speech now". The loser concedes by making a public announcement that he/she is backing out of the race.
You can make all claims you want about 'called' being gibberish but in practice what I said is true. In most elections the loser concedes before adsentee ballots are even counted. Now I dunno about you but if they are counted after its already over, I hardly consider that my vote was COUNTED(in the more idealistic sense, that it made a difference).
Furthermore, if you were doing the counting and in your town you had the voting machine results and candidate A won by 3000 votes but you only have 1000 absentee ballots, are you going to bother counting them? You can say yes all you want but you know what that is not your full time job and you aren't getting paid enough to sit and count those votes for fun, when it means absolutely nothing, so you are going to probably just say ok.. candidate A got 60% so ill assume that the absentee ballots were 60% for A and then divvy up the rest accordingly.
Also the public concession speech is very important despite what happened in the last election. If candidates didn't do that based on honor we could very likely have big problems. I know I wouldn't want court battles each time, its dangerous for our freedom if such takes place at each election.
Your freedom to say things about him stops exactly at the start of his rights to a fair treatment and to not be humiliated.
What grants him the right not to be humiliated by me? I wasn't aware that I couldn't say your fat, I don't like you go away. Unless of course, I was an employer, a landlord, etc. and was using that as an excuse to deny him those services that he was attempting to get from me. But as an equal citizen to him, I'd expect I can say whatever I want to him. Also I'm pretty sure if its all true he has no claim in court about how it damages his character. I'm pretty sure its all true I mean afterall he is stupid enough to be wasting tons of tax payer dollars on privelous lawsuits.
Do you mean running it on a 3GHz computer or running in slow motion on a several year old computer that runs WinXP fine?
What several year old comp runs 'linux' or xwindows in slow motion? My thinkpad 560 which by the way is a p-166 with mmx, 32 megs of ram, runs linux and xwindows fine and dandy. I wonder what would happen if i put xp on it.. Slowest comp I had linux running on was a 386. Using a 2.4.8 kernel, and a standard Debian install.(this ran so slow that I had to disable the login timeout action otherwise it was impossible for it to do the md5 shadow password stuff before that 30sec timeout) Try running windows xp on that thing with similiar success.
Historically, absentee ballots are counted after an election is called, and only to make the final tally official.
Doing a quick search to substantiate my claims this is the first thing i came up with. THIS Like I said, In most cases your absentee vote won't be counted.(technically it is counted after the election is already called for one candidate or the other.) So next time before you start yer barking do some research.
Historically, absentee ballots are counted after an election is called, and only to make the final tally official.
Doing a quick search to substantiate my claims this is the first thing i came up with. THIS Like I said, In most cases your absentee vote won't be counted.(technically it is counted after the election is already called for one candidate or the other.) So next time before you start yer barking do some research. Just because you spit some nonsense about when there SUPPOSED to be counted, that don't mean it happens like that.
Absentee ballots aren't counted unless the election is close. So in most cases your vote won't be counted at all, ESPECIALLY if you use an absentee ballot.
It actually may be the closest we get to time travel as well (want to see the future? just hybernate for 100 years)
After 100 years of hibernation you'd probably be dead of old age. If alive you would certainly be unable to move your limbs because of deteriation of your muscles. Its like when people enter comas they age and lose muscle tissue. Perhaps you should think of it more as I'm going to sleep for a few months so I won't be bored(and yes while asleep you age). Rather than, look at me some magic is gonna keep me suspended like they did in that cool movie!!! l33tz0r!!!!
Does the OSS/FS community really need to care about getting patents? Let's for a moment assume someone was able to "patent linux" and then say all you people can't use that. It wouldn't change much aside from coporate adoption going away. You or I would still be using/developing that and sharing it via p2p or with easy to find websites operating in the face of the patent until these websites are shutdown. Without a doubt in order to enforce those patents on the world would require substantial financial resources, probably resources that no company would be able to expend. They would crumble against what would be an unprecedented level of civil dissobedience. So before the OSS/FS community goes and wastes time and effort getting software patents they should just consider the possibility that the important OSS projects are bigger than the patent and could probably just ignore it.
Re:'Detecting a pulse' for those who don't have on
on
Living Without a Pulse
·
· Score: 1
Except maybe since its a mechanical heart, it will just tell you that the pump is still working. The person may be somewhat dead by then with the pump still circulating the blood and keeping the person at least seem moderately alive.
"The magnets are constructed of an incredibly powerful rare-earth material: neodymium-iron-boron."
Found that in this description of the pSeries model.
Although "rare" hardly means rare when it comes to talking about "rare-earth metals". Since rare-earth means any element of the lanthanide series. But something could be both rare and rare-earth.
Perhaps if you RTF Short Form which is provided as a link in the slasdot posting you would notice that you get a payback of $50, they charge you a dollar if you want that mailed in checkform. Its nice that everyone sees 0.35 and pisses and moans about it without doing a paltry amount of research(clicking on the links provided for your convenience).
You are speaking as though NASA is a company that gets profit. NASA is a government agency and so nothing is "lucrative" for them, all the money they get they spend on research/equipment. The cost of project doesn't really matter to them, they would probably prefer to only do missions that produce great scientific results, but its not like they are going to go bankrupt if they spend all their money on magic beans. However, if they mess up or the general populace loses interest, then their funding will go down. So the benefit of manned spaceflight is that its interesting and will result in them getting more money from taxpayers(which they can funnel to more meaningful research while keeping up a facade that the money is being spent on manned space travel).
If NASA is said to have a profit it is definitely not money, there profit if anything would be considered scientific advancement. In which case it can be shown that in fact Robots are MORE "lucrative" than manned spaceflight as robotic missions have resulted in much more scientific gain throughout the years. The solution would be to trumpet manned spaceflight and do new and interesting things with it in order to increase their budget via increased interest and popularity. While actually spending this increased budget on robots and more useful scientific research.
The point Dan O'Dowd should be making is that by US contractors making closed source embedded military systems they can embed these systems with bugs, holes, and other sabotage to give the US an unfair upperhand against the countries it sells this technology to.(This may not be a bad thing as the US has a bad habit of selling/giving weapons to a country then sending soldiers to get shot by those very weapons 10 years later) But if a transparent and open system is used other countries can look for that and have the potential for finding these holes and fixing them, which would be bad for the domination of the US militarily.
Dan fails to see the other side of the issue that, with open and transparent code, it is possible for many more people to help find these problems, instead of relying on the coders that initially developed the code. In my experience people are notoriously bad at evaluating their own code for bugs. After all, they wrote the buggy solution in the first place and assumed it was good when they wrote it. By opening up the code it alleviates this problem, by putting the error checking and bug searching in the hands of people that have no ego to protect or personal bias towards the code produced.
You should read some of the previous replies but I'll mention here again anyway. The Patriot Act is NOT about terrorism. It was ushered in under the pretense that it will make us safer and protect us from terrorism but in fact law enforcement agencies can invoke most powers granted by the Patriot Act whenever they damn well please. The continued misconception about this act is very disheartening, since its obvious that most of you are still in the fantasy world of we are safer because the government made a nifty law that nabs terrorists. When in fact, they just used terrorism as an excuse to push this act through granting them(law enforcement) powers that they have been after for years. J Edgar Hoover would have loved this act, since it would legitimize all the previously criminal activity that he was involved in, namely the unwarranted spying on american citizens through illegal wiretaps and surrveilance.
I wasn't aware that all rules should apply to each company equally and universally. What is an acceptable practice for Apple isn't nessecarily acceptable for MS and this is backed by good and sound logic. MS is a monopoly that has a detrimental effect on consumers, and therefore they shouldn't be allowed to expand their monopoly. Apple however is not a monopoly and their closed format DRM poses *no* threat to consumers at large. If Apple's close format DRM is not considered good it is at least acceptable practice while any offering of a closed DRM by MS would be a dangerous prospect.
Let's say we ignore our current concerns with putting that stuff up in the air(cost and danger) and suppose we have found a safe and cheap method to get that to the sun, there is still something we must consider: Should we dispose of the material to a place where it can never be retrieved(the sun)? Its possible that we might find a way to refine or use the waste effectively 100 years from now but because we sent it away into the sun to be effectively destroyed, we no longer have that resource. Before we go tossing away our limited supply of resources we should at least consider this possibility.
I'm a huge Apple fanboy and this makes me pretty happy. I would expect that Apple would want to encourage this sort of thing and help Real along in doing so. If the iPod plays every mainstream format then they will be more likely to continue dominating mp3 device sales. Apple could simply charge Real a tiny fee per song in order to make it complient with the iPod technology. In doing so Apple now gets a tiny kick back on every single legit song that Real sells, this would probably only be a few cents, but profit margins are so small on the downloaded songs that this would be a pretty sweet deal for Apple, they would be making a tiny bit of dough on them Real downloads without all the work and bullshit. Further securing their position as top dog of the computer music market.
Before they fire up the lawyers, I hope they at least consider the possibility that maybe they should care more about enhancing the usability of the iPod rather than using its current status as leader to create a dependence on Apple only legit downloads.
Yoko as Arwen would imply that Yoko is good, but we all know that Yoko is the most evil creature to inhabit (middle)earth and as such should be Sauron. Foolish eltoyoboyo, she broke up the damn Beatles and you want to make her Arwen? Blasphemy.
There are still Mahogany trees, even the true Honduras type. If you would like to purchase some there is a tree farm in Costa Rica that sells them and provides growing services. They cost $3,517 per 100 trees.
All this legislation is way out of control. It's insane that we have to put up with this kind of crap. When is some sane individual going to come along and say hey as long as your not using that for profit have a blast. I still have yet to see evidence that shows media trading(movie,tv show,music on p2p) has any adverse effect on the profits of these companys.
Furthermore, not allowing time shifting is just a crazily stupid idea. Thats tantamount to saying, "look its nice that you like the show but you missed out, you were at work, picking up the kids, doing whatever, and now the penalty for not making time for our show is your not allowed to see it unless you happen to catch a rerun(usually same time but off season, so you are likely to miss that one too) or buy the DVD/VHS several years from now"(if ever, I'm still waiting for the Legend of Brisco County Jr. DVD's - Bruce Campbell rocks). It's odd that they aren't simply happy that they have fans that are loyal enough to make sure they don't miss a single episode.
The GPL is great and all but it still doesn't change the fact that we need some major copyright reform in the law books. The current stance makes no sense, and allows things like the DMCA. Possibly the copyright laws should be rearranged so that GPL style protection is de facto under the law and when you release something you have to specify that you dont want that to be free. Its nice to have some legality but ultimately a license doesn't change the fact that we need reform so that the benefits of GPL can be accepted as the standard.
Slashdot Mirror
I would love to see computer science get its own identity. When I did my major I concetrated on all the theory classes that my school offered because I understood that those are the most important as I felt learning a programming language is mostly trivial. The problem is that 90% of people who enter a CS program do not do so because they wish to understand computer science they wish to have a way to get a career. It is these people that I think would benefit from a degree in math while taking a couple programming classes along the way.
The approach is what I'm concerned about, CS as a science needs to move entirely away from practicality(ie programming skills) and be based solely in theory. And today what we call CS should just be reduced to a couple classes that math majors interested in becoming programmers take. My main justification for this was that while we had some great CS students at my school the best programmers were the ones that had a thourough understanding of math. Some of them were even math majors getting CS minors and they were far superior intelectually when it came to problem solving and creating software than the strictly CS people.
Furthermore, If i were in the position of hiring a programmer, I'd value a math degree over a CS degree anyday.
I agree with you about C++ which I first learned in highschool, intro to programming, programming and AP computer science all of which used C++. This made learning all future languages basically a breeze(aside from Lisp, nothing really prepares your for that). I also think you agree with me(i could be mistaken) on the broader point that programming classes are useful, but a course load saturated with different languages is just useless. My college offered, Java, C++, VB, Cobol, and an intro to assembly class. The required cirruculum takes you through 2 semesters of java, 1 of C++, 1 of VB and the intro to assembly class. Most students would take 2 semesters of VB and then the cobol class so they could get out of taking the theory based courses:(advanced discrete math, modeling and simulation, etc).
My advice to protential computer scientists, is major in Math and take a couple programming classes. Math is far more useful and prepares people more completely for the problem solving skills needed for a career in programming. Computer Science is far too cobbled together from other disciplines right now, it honestly lacks identity. The formula now is, (some)Math + (a tiny bit of)Engineering + (a lot of)Programming = CS. CS should be a concentration under a Math degree.
With that in mind I find these flamewars very annoying since I don't care what you think is the best chip based on 'performance', since honestly there aint much difference between the two as far as how quickly my programs load, or how well my games look(dependent mainly on video card, which i do care alot about performance benchmarks). Id much rather have a comp that doesnt act like a noisy space heater. Which is why I'll go with intel from now on. Once AMD produces chips that don't require as much cooling as they do I'll consider them again.
You can make all claims you want about 'called' being gibberish but in practice what I said is true. In most elections the loser concedes before adsentee ballots are even counted. Now I dunno about you but if they are counted after its already over, I hardly consider that my vote was COUNTED(in the more idealistic sense, that it made a difference).
Furthermore, if you were doing the counting and in your town you had the voting machine results and candidate A won by 3000 votes but you only have 1000 absentee ballots, are you going to bother counting them? You can say yes all you want but you know what that is not your full time job and you aren't getting paid enough to sit and count those votes for fun, when it means absolutely nothing, so you are going to probably just say ok.. candidate A got 60% so ill assume that the absentee ballots were 60% for A and then divvy up the rest accordingly.
Also the public concession speech is very important despite what happened in the last election. If candidates didn't do that based on honor we could very likely have big problems. I know I wouldn't want court battles each time, its dangerous for our freedom if such takes place at each election.
What grants him the right not to be humiliated by me? I wasn't aware that I couldn't say your fat, I don't like you go away. Unless of course, I was an employer, a landlord, etc. and was using that as an excuse to deny him those services that he was attempting to get from me. But as an equal citizen to him, I'd expect I can say whatever I want to him. Also I'm pretty sure if its all true he has no claim in court about how it damages his character. I'm pretty sure its all true I mean afterall he is stupid enough to be wasting tons of tax payer dollars on privelous lawsuits.
What several year old comp runs 'linux' or xwindows in slow motion? My thinkpad 560 which by the way is a p-166 with mmx, 32 megs of ram, runs linux and xwindows fine and dandy. I wonder what would happen if i put xp on it.. Slowest comp I had linux running on was a 386. Using a 2.4.8 kernel, and a standard Debian install.(this ran so slow that I had to disable the login timeout action otherwise it was impossible for it to do the md5 shadow password stuff before that 30sec timeout) Try running windows xp on that thing with similiar success.
Heres mine:
Historically, absentee ballots are counted after an election is called, and only to make the final tally official.
Doing a quick search to substantiate my claims this is the first thing i came up with. THIS Like I said, In most cases your absentee vote won't be counted.(technically it is counted after the election is already called for one candidate or the other.) So next time before you start yer barking do some research.
Doing a quick search to substantiate my claims this is the first thing i came up with. THIS Like I said, In most cases your absentee vote won't be counted.(technically it is counted after the election is already called for one candidate or the other.) So next time before you start yer barking do some research. Just because you spit some nonsense about when there SUPPOSED to be counted, that don't mean it happens like that.
Absentee ballots aren't counted unless the election is close. So in most cases your vote won't be counted at all, ESPECIALLY if you use an absentee ballot.
After 100 years of hibernation you'd probably be dead of old age. If alive you would certainly be unable to move your limbs because of deteriation of your muscles. Its like when people enter comas they age and lose muscle tissue. Perhaps you should think of it more as I'm going to sleep for a few months so I won't be bored(and yes while asleep you age). Rather than, look at me some magic is gonna keep me suspended like they did in that cool movie!!! l33tz0r!!!!
Does the OSS/FS community really need to care about getting patents? Let's for a moment assume someone was able to "patent linux" and then say all you people can't use that. It wouldn't change much aside from coporate adoption going away. You or I would still be using/developing that and sharing it via p2p or with easy to find websites operating in the face of the patent until these websites are shutdown. Without a doubt in order to enforce those patents on the world would require substantial financial resources, probably resources that no company would be able to expend. They would crumble against what would be an unprecedented level of civil dissobedience. So before the OSS/FS community goes and wastes time and effort getting software patents they should just consider the possibility that the important OSS projects are bigger than the patent and could probably just ignore it.
Except maybe since its a mechanical heart, it will just tell you that the pump is still working. The person may be somewhat dead by then with the pump still circulating the blood and keeping the person at least seem moderately alive.
Found that in this description of the pSeries model.
Although "rare" hardly means rare when it comes to talking about "rare-earth metals". Since rare-earth means any element of the lanthanide series. But something could be both rare and rare-earth.
Perhaps if you RTF Short Form which is provided as a link in the slasdot posting you would notice that you get a payback of $50, they charge you a dollar if you want that mailed in checkform. Its nice that everyone sees 0.35 and pisses and moans about it without doing a paltry amount of research(clicking on the links provided for your convenience).
If NASA is said to have a profit it is definitely not money, there profit if anything would be considered scientific advancement. In which case it can be shown that in fact Robots are MORE "lucrative" than manned spaceflight as robotic missions have resulted in much more scientific gain throughout the years. The solution would be to trumpet manned spaceflight and do new and interesting things with it in order to increase their budget via increased interest and popularity. While actually spending this increased budget on robots and more useful scientific research.
Lucrative: producing a good profit
Dan fails to see the other side of the issue that, with open and transparent code, it is possible for many more people to help find these problems, instead of relying on the coders that initially developed the code. In my experience people are notoriously bad at evaluating their own code for bugs. After all, they wrote the buggy solution in the first place and assumed it was good when they wrote it. By opening up the code it alleviates this problem, by putting the error checking and bug searching in the hands of people that have no ego to protect or personal bias towards the code produced.
You should read some of the previous replies but I'll mention here again anyway. The Patriot Act is NOT about terrorism. It was ushered in under the pretense that it will make us safer and protect us from terrorism but in fact law enforcement agencies can invoke most powers granted by the Patriot Act whenever they damn well please. The continued misconception about this act is very disheartening, since its obvious that most of you are still in the fantasy world of we are safer because the government made a nifty law that nabs terrorists. When in fact, they just used terrorism as an excuse to push this act through granting them(law enforcement) powers that they have been after for years. J Edgar Hoover would have loved this act, since it would legitimize all the previously criminal activity that he was involved in, namely the unwarranted spying on american citizens through illegal wiretaps and surrveilance.
I wasn't aware that all rules should apply to each company equally and universally. What is an acceptable practice for Apple isn't nessecarily acceptable for MS and this is backed by good and sound logic. MS is a monopoly that has a detrimental effect on consumers, and therefore they shouldn't be allowed to expand their monopoly. Apple however is not a monopoly and their closed format DRM poses *no* threat to consumers at large. If Apple's close format DRM is not considered good it is at least acceptable practice while any offering of a closed DRM by MS would be a dangerous prospect.
Let's say we ignore our current concerns with putting that stuff up in the air(cost and danger) and suppose we have found a safe and cheap method to get that to the sun, there is still something we must consider: Should we dispose of the material to a place where it can never be retrieved(the sun)? Its possible that we might find a way to refine or use the waste effectively 100 years from now but because we sent it away into the sun to be effectively destroyed, we no longer have that resource. Before we go tossing away our limited supply of resources we should at least consider this possibility.
Before they fire up the lawyers, I hope they at least consider the possibility that maybe they should care more about enhancing the usability of the iPod rather than using its current status as leader to create a dependence on Apple only legit downloads.
Yoko as Arwen would imply that Yoko is good, but we all know that Yoko is the most evil creature to inhabit (middle)earth and as such should be Sauron. Foolish eltoyoboyo, she broke up the damn Beatles and you want to make her Arwen? Blasphemy.
There are still Mahogany trees, even the true Honduras type. If you would like to purchase some there is a tree farm in Costa Rica that sells them and provides growing services. They cost $3,517 per 100 trees.
Furthermore, not allowing time shifting is just a crazily stupid idea. Thats tantamount to saying, "look its nice that you like the show but you missed out, you were at work, picking up the kids, doing whatever, and now the penalty for not making time for our show is your not allowed to see it unless you happen to catch a rerun(usually same time but off season, so you are likely to miss that one too) or buy the DVD/VHS several years from now"(if ever, I'm still waiting for the Legend of Brisco County Jr. DVD's - Bruce Campbell rocks). It's odd that they aren't simply happy that they have fans that are loyal enough to make sure they don't miss a single episode.
The GPL is great and all but it still doesn't change the fact that we need some major copyright reform in the law books. The current stance makes no sense, and allows things like the DMCA. Possibly the copyright laws should be rearranged so that GPL style protection is de facto under the law and when you release something you have to specify that you dont want that to be free. Its nice to have some legality but ultimately a license doesn't change the fact that we need reform so that the benefits of GPL can be accepted as the standard.