what would you do if you were a disabled and mentally retarded orphan?
That is one of the few cases where I agree that programs like Social Security are required. Those programs shouldn't be available to the general populus, only those that really need them - the exceptions instead of the rule. This would also make such programs more easily fundable and solvent.
The only thing we're arguing about here, then, is what qualifies as "disabled" or "retarded."
We need to come up with a national approach to retirement/etc benefits that works for everybody - not just those who are both good at earning money AND good at investing it.
National programs that are extended to the general populus will never be sustainable and will result in either insolvency or the destruction of the nation and/or currency.
I would only extend benefits to those who are incapable of work, or to supplement those who cannot earn a decent basic income. Today that would be a fairly insignificant portion of the GDP.
Agreed on the first two; disagree on the last. So no, a very small minority (probably well under 10%) would qualify. It's just not sustainable to do otherwise.
Define "decent basic income". You'll have all ranges from "at poverty level" to "I want a million dollars per year" depending on who you talk to. So it's just a non-starter. That's not to say that some programs (e.g Food Stamps) shouldn't compensate for "poverty level and below", but the kind of program we're discussing above can't sustain anything other than "those that are completely and provably incapable of work" - and "incapable" does not mean "too lazy" but being legally disabled (even temporarily).
As much as I might like to make it work on an honor system, people are generally too corrupt to do so; therefore it (sadly) has to be testable with legal consequences for fraud.
With steady advances in technology and increased specialization in the workforce we just keep raising the bar for the kinds of skills and talents somebody needs to have to earn their own way. Eventually, not even you would have been able to hold down a job.
False. Advanced in Technology does not necessitate increased specialization. The only thing that really drives the "raising the bar" issue here is inflation and the long held beliefs that you have to have inflation - you can't keep the currency stable or have deflation.
The US has barely any inflation at all, and for anybody who works for a living a little inflation isn't a big deal.
The inflation over the last 100 years is substantial; especially the inflation in the last 35 years is substantial.
Prices go up, but so do wages. Their retirement funds might have problems, but most people don't have those anyway.
There is nothing that dictates that wages and prices HAVE to go up; only economists. A well balanced economic system would not require inflation.
When I look around me I see tons of specialization as a result of technological advances.
There is that in white collar jobs.
Nobody works as a general laborer these days.
This goes to show how out-of-touch you are. Get your head out of the sand.
There's lots of people doing general labor - look at the construction sites, janitors, cleaning staff. It's REQUIRED that someone fill those positions until we get sufficiently advanced robots to do it for us - which is still a very long way off. Many economists point to these areas as why we need illegal immigrants because they think it is below the level of any citizen to do those jobs; an attitude that does have to change.
"You didn't get a permit from us about writing a map, so we will ask you to share the map with us."
So it's known that Airline pilots don't learn to fly in India; they come to the US to learn to fly.
Why? Because there are too many permits required to fly any where it's just not feasible to learn in India.
Ironically, Windows 8.1 was also the first time in 20 years they decided to remove the Start menu from the "unchanged" OS...
When Microsoft introduced the start menu they got no end of ridicule about how non-intuitive it was to press start to shut down. Now in 8.1 you have a big power-button right beside your account picture right on the main start screen, and people can't find it... sigh..
Start Screen? Never used it.
If I get a Win8/WinServe2012 system, first thing I do is install ClamShell. Never see the Start Screen after that, but it brings a lot of saneness to the UI; fortunately I don't have to go the Control Panel much as that would still be a foo bar with some settings only in the "Classic" Control Panel and others only in the settings wizard available through the Start Screen. In the end, no matter what I do it's a PITA to use.
what would you do if you were a disabled and mentally retarded orphan?
That is one of the few cases where I agree that programs like Social Security are required. Those programs shouldn't be available to the general populus, only those that really need them - the exceptions instead of the rule. This would also make such programs more easily fundable and solvent.
We need to come up with a national approach to retirement/etc benefits that works for everybody - not just those who are both good at earning money AND good at investing it.
National programs that are extended to the general populus will never be sustainable and will result in either insolvency or the destruction of the nation and/or currency.
With steady advances in technology and increased specialization in the workforce we just keep raising the bar for the kinds of skills and talents somebody needs to have to earn their own way. Eventually, not even you would have been able to hold down a job.
False. Advanced in Technology does not necessitate increased specialization. The only thing that really drives the "raising the bar" issue here is inflation and the long held beliefs that you have to have inflation - you can't keep the currency stable or have deflation.
Historically, inflation and deflation act together to maintain a stable currency. Currently we're operating under deluded policies that try to only have one without the other.
Rather than thinking about services that are good enough, consider what is currently not possible with limited bandwidth?
Agreed. But P2P applications (e.g BitTorrent, and what remains of Napster/etc) and similar systems to push that. ISPs fought back with limits.
We still don't have perfect realtime video calls. As the need to deal with low bandwidth has allowed advancements in efficient codecs, so to has the processing requirements of endpoints to handle the codec. Allowing for less intensive codecs that use more bandwidth would enable better experience.
Not necessarily as that might propogate pretty quickly. That kind of attitude is also what led to the very extensive bloat in disk utilization among applications, especially those targetting Windows Users.
Its main advantage is its ability to integrate sensor information from multiple sources. But this does not warrant building a hugely expensive fighter from scratch. Put the same system on an F18 and F16 and you will have even more capable fighter.
The F-35, AKA Joint Strike Fighter, is more akin to what happened to the Space Shuttle - it's a single aircraft that is suppose to meet the needs of all the different branches. This also why the Space shuttle was such a brick to fly, so costly, and had wings. Hopefully the F-35 won't meet the same end.
Exactly. The Office file formats are still extremely ubiquitous in the business world, and if you use something like LibreOffice to modify them, the formatting of the documents is almost guaranteed to go crazy, without you possibly not even knowing it, and ultimately losing customers. I'm sorry, but it has just been incredibly practical decision to just install the fucking Microsoft Office. Of course this UK Cabinet's decision is another step towards open standards, so I guess that's good.
Outside of bookmarks in Writer I find OpenOffice/LibreOffice to generate more compliant documents to Microsoft's tools than Microsoft's tools do.
They're also typically smaller even when saved in the Microsoft formats.
Oh, hell. I have no interest in being interviewed by Microsoft. If the hiring manager decides to hire his drinking buddy, he needs to interview four other candidates before he can do that. I had five Microsoft recruiters pulled that stunt in 2005, leading me by the nose for a whole month before telling me that all the drinking buddies got hired. I'll hang up on any recruiter who mentions Microsoft to me.
I did a couple rounds with Microsoft a couple years back, namely to see how long it would take them to read the website linked to on my resume that had a big rant on the evils on Microsoft. No intention on working there, but was nice for a comparison; though I think what killed it was my Win2k laptop crashing in the middle of the interview.
That said, that was one of the only series of interactions I had for working at Microsoft that was not through a representative that was on the H1B or sounded like it. Almost every recruiter for them was from India.
In the end, there is only one big corporation left, and it's hard to distinguish between it and the government. It's not far away now.
Feels good, right?
And then they made RoboCop, and we all know how that went...
The only reason any of this is problem is that we continue to stupidly tie benefits and retirement to employment. Nobody, especially higher ups, wants to have that conversation in this country.
If being a full time employee simply meant you work more hours than a part time employee and had nothing else associated with it, a good number of people would be better off having two or three part time jobs. Less burn out, more job mobility,and in particular less immediate consequences to getting fired or laid off from a particular job. THAT is the reason big employers are against a national or single payer insurance system and why they demonize the very notion of national retirement benefits even though those things would reduce their costs. They would reduce their power even more, and they just can't have that.
Forget about employers...I wouldn't want a national system. I don't want Social Security, yet I'm forced to participate in that told I'll get money that I'll certainly never see.
No, my retirement portfolio is entirely independent of any employer or the government. And I'd rather keep it that way.
Now what I would change is that I prefer to have the retirement portfolio be entirely subsized by post-tax dollars instead of pre-tax dollars. Why? Because with pre-tax dollars you have to pay the taxes on it when you take the money out, at the future tax rates; while the post-tax dollars are tax-free down the road because you've already paid the tax on them. However, my CPA wife uses both to get us the best tax benefits for any given year.
What will be telling is if they do the same to the DSL customers in the near future as well.
DSL works over high frequencies in existing copper phone lines. Far more physical bandwidth is typically allocated to the downstream than to the upstream. Balancing this out would reduce download speeds in favor of upload speeds. Are you sure implementing SHDSL wouldn't require rolling trucks and mailing modems?
Except Businesses have had access to higher speed symetric DSL for a lot longer; though that's typically a dedicated line instead of one sharing its bandwidth with a voice line.
Well, NetFlix could also enter into agreements with ever backbone provider, thereby forcing Verizon to either do the same to everyone or start upgrading
This brings to the question of why Netflix has chosen to deal with Verizon instead of with Level3 directly in the first place ?
Even if Netflix didn't know of the existence of Level3 (which I find too ludicrous to be possible) that they had signed up with Verizon, they could have changed the situation right now by dealing directly with Level3, and why wait anymore ?
NetFlix has contracts with lots of folks - Level3 included. These are with respect to pushing content from NetFlix over the backbone into various networks.
NetFlix also promotes having a CDN end-point within an ISP's network to alleviate the need for as much peering; which is what I believe the NetFlix-Verizon deal was about, which Verizon may have (or may not have, we don't really know) charged NetFlix for installing in the datacenters/hubs/central-offices.
However, the fact that NetFlix has done that, which should IMPROVE speed on Verizon's network, and there are still major issues shows that there is something else wrong with Verizon's network. Of course, they might rely on the back bone having sufficient capacity to pull down the information over the CDN too; or it might be that NetFlix installs a direct pipe for the CDNs, we don't know the details. Most likely NetFlix has a contracted pipe with a Level3 interconnect to these, and that is why we're hearing all about it between Level3 and Verizon as Verizon doesn't want to increase their interconnects with Level3 over which those CDN systems are suppose to operate.
But that's just a bit of (educated) guess work as I don't know the details of the Netflix-Verizon arrangement or the network layouts or the NetFlix CDN provisions.
No. Try the 1930's through the 1970/1980's. It wasn't until the 1960's that things started to filter down enough that you didn't need as much background in to the computer systems, and some where in the 1970's/early-1980's it became what you knew, namely as the micro-computer (aka PC, Macintosh inclusive) took over.
However, prior that - and even during the 1980's in corporate environments - most every programmer had to know a lot about the Electric Engineering of the computer. Most all of them had EE degrees; some had math degrees; a fewer had the new CS degree (started in the 1970's, but not really popular until the 1990's; I think the first CS program was late 1960's, circa 1968).
biggest problem with upload is you send it over free links with Tier 1 networks, or you pay them to take your traffic. with all the user generated stuff now like Twitch, flickr, video calling and other services where you want a fast upload speed that's a lot of data to be paying for.
with the current L3/Verizon dispute i wonder if they struck a deal where verizon will allow the connections to be upgraded for netflix to work on their network in exchange for L3 taking all their uploaded data for free.
Hmm...that actually makes for an interesting case.
So Level3 basically pointed out the issue with User focused ISP's - that they're asymetric and would never provide the ability for those ISPs to compete in the peering arrangements that back-bone providers have. So now if they go to being symetric, it would allow the users to do more and possibly try to combat what the ISP (e.g Verizon) thinks is a fallacy but they can only prove if they make all their links symetric.
Problem for the ISP is users don't really upload a whole lot any way. So it's not going to change anything for a while. It may get Level3 to drop the "symetric vs asymetric" part of their argument, but it won't change the amount of traffic going from the ISP to back-bone provider.
What will be telling is if they do the same to the DSL customers in the near future as well. Otherwise they are still primarily an asymetric provider as they have more DSL than FiOS customers.
Question is: Will Verizon only do this temporarily as part of an argument with Level3? If so, expect a change in the future when their plan doesn't work out. If not, then hopefully other ISPs will follow in order to "compete".
Find locations where you will hurt Verizon customers, and cut the cables. Do so publicly. Precondition repair on upgrades of Verizon's network as you direct.
If Verizon doesn't want network neutrality, then punish their customers.
Well, NetFlix could also enter into agreements with ever backbone provider, thereby forcing Verizon to either do the same to everyone or start upgrading.
Just saying, there's multiple ways to skin the pig that is Verizon...and AT&T for that matter.
Honestly, the fact that they are even available for testing means that some criminals will use them, even if they are outlawed.
As to the specific points raised:
It discussed issues such as letting criminals shoot while the car drives (silly in my opinion, apparently they haven't heard of "partners" or considered requiring such cars have a police controlled "slow down" command),
Slow down command won't mean a thing when the criminals rip out the necessary parts to make it moot or reprogram it to do something - ignore the command, do the opposite, or even blow up the vehicle.
the use of such vehicles as guided bullets (safeties again should stop this), and loading it with explosives and using it as a guided missile. This last concern is the only one that I considered a real issue, but even that is not significantly more dangerous than loading up a regular van full of explosives with a timer, then setting the timer to explode before you leave the vehicle next to a school, etc.
True, aside from it being a "guided" missile - just set a target in the GPS and off it goes....again, the potential is there and criminals won't allow it to stop just because of a "slow down" or "stop" command. They'll figure out a way to override that before using it.
And again, if they really wanted to do it the technology is already out there and nothing is going to stop them from using it if they really wanted to.
Software engineering has a tendency to enshrine ivory tower principles, that - although sound and logical, can end up making your project large, slow bloated and excessively encapsulated. I'm happy that NASA and the DoD both use it, those things need to be rock solid, but it just doesn't make sense for a lot of businesses where being first to market is more important than any code refactoring issues you might have 2 years down the track. Being slow to market might mean you don't even have a business 12 months from now.
Good programmers know when to lay on the engineering and when to pull out the stops and slap something together that does the job "just good enough". That's part of what makes it an art, not a science.
NASA/DoD does a form of Software Engineering based on Engineering principles from other disciplines, namely mechanical and electrical engineering. Much of what they do there doesn't really apply to Software.
What we need to do is define Software Engineering in a manner that is practical for everyone to do it such that no one has any kind of excuse not to do it. To me, it's a matter of doing software in a very discipined manner and has nothing to do with whether you've documented every function at 30 different layers for 10 different stake holders across 5 different organizations.
Pretty sure you're asking a facetious question but for those who don't know (like myself prior to Saturday night, walking through N4 with my brother): Hotblack Desiato is the name of a North London estate agent (Realtor for the merkins), which was adopted by Douglas Adams for the name of the frontman of plutonium rock band Disaster Area.
As is Ford Prefect, which was the name of a Ford car in the UK (1930s-1960s). It's not, as most Americans think, a purposeful mis-spelling of Perfect.
It was written for UK audiences, and poorly Americanized. Half the jokes in there only work in the UK because of cultural issues.
I'd rather it not be "Americanized"...yes, not all jokes transfer, but it's still good as it is.
"Of course, all of this was done in software designed by people without any engineering experience at all...go figure."
You don't need to have an engineering degree to write a price of software that implements calculations and algorithms that are needed for an engineering project. Programmers turn math, algorithms, business methods, ideas and the like into code. That's our skill, understanding your needs and expressing it in a way a computer can understand.
I was just noting the irony.
That said, I would personally put forward that people doing programming in the real world need a software engineering degree, not a computer science degree as you don't do computer science when writing real-world applications - you apply the principles of Computer Science in an disciplined/engineering methodology.
But then, software engineering as a discipline is in such poor shape that it is not really helpful to anyone but NASA and DOD as currently defined, and that needs to change.
The problem domain isn't "monitoring plants with only an AA battery for power" though. It's a host capable of running Linux and assorted toolchains for embedded software development. I know that there are systems for all kinds of applications and the power envelopes they prescribe. That's not the issue. The issue is that someone proclaimed that "electricity is expensive. Douche bag." And that's not true. Electricity is cheap. Cheaper than hardware which is incredibly cheap itself. And that holds true even for the very low end, where a tiny amount of energy is sold in an expensive package, but a finished system will still cost more than the batteries it takes to run it for a couple of years before it is replaced, yet the hardware is sold at prices which almost make the devices disposable. For perspective: How many smartphones does the average person buy per year? Still think a low to mid range quad core desktop system is expensive?
So I do development and I want to cut my costs down. I presently have a desktop at home with a 600W supply and a server with a 250W supply, as well as laptops with 60-90W supplies. As I use the desktop for other things (e.g playing DVDs, Netflix, etc.) I'm satisfied to leave it for now; laptops might get replaced by tablets or chromebooks.
But the server? I keep it on a UPS, and would love to be able to keep it up for a very long time. On the UPS it would only get between 10-30 minutes if power fails (APC 1500). I am very interested in switching it out for a few lower power devices. In fact, I'm targetting replacing it with 3 devices (a Rasberry Pi for authentication, a Udoo for disk storage, and a Routerboard for firewall support) with a total power envelope of 50W.
Do I still intend to do software development on the server? Yes.
Do I still intend to do DNS, DHCP, Samba, WebServers, etc on the server? Yes.
But you know what - unless I'm building something targetting a mainframe, some heavy video driven application (e.g games, autocad, etc) then I really don't need a very powerful system. Point being - a beagleboard, Udoo, or Rasberry Pi really is sufficient for most people doing software development....well, unless you're trying to use Eclipse or Visual Studios, but then you're just asking for trouble.
There's a different between learning to build a basic house and a skysraper. Only the best civil engineers are ever going to do the latter.
I'd be amazed if a Civil Engineer could design a skyscraper, and I'd be more amazed at the firm and its insurance backer that allowed them to, and the construction company that did it.
Why? A Civic Engineer doesn't design skyscapers. They decide only where the skyscapers can go and make sure the location can support it.
It's the structural engineer that designs the skyscaper based on the concepts from the architectural engineer that the client wanted to put in the space that the civic engineer told them they had on the land they own.
Of course, all of this was done in software designed by people without any engineering experience at all...go figure.
"In the old days there was a respected profession of application programming. There was a minority of elite system programmers who built infrastructure and tools that empowered the majority of application programmers.
I think this is more of deluded statement than anything.
In the old days you typically had to have an Electrical Engineering degree to do programming - at a time when having a college degree was not the norm.
This only filtered out of that circle as geeks took interest before college and tools became easier and costs were greatly reduced.
The point: programming has always been done by a small group - the "elite" - at any time in the history of computer systems.
Our goal was to allow regular people without extensive training to easily and quickly build useful software. This was the spirit of languages like COBOL, Visual Basic, and HyperCard. Elegant tools for a more civilized age. Before the dark times before the web."
Again, progress has certainly occurred towards this, but the fact of the matter is that most people are not interested in being creative the way programming requires you to be. They'll be happy to play around with HyperCard or Excel long enough to get some basic thing done, but they'll be atleast equally happy to pass it on to some one so they can focus on what their actual job in stead of trying to figure out how to make a fancy little graph.
"The web is just an enormous stack of kluges upon hacks upon misbegotten designs. This Archaeology of Errors is no place for the application programmers of old: it takes a skilled programmer with years of experience just to build simple applications on today’s web. What a waste. Twenty years of expediency has led the web into a technical debt crisis."
Many of those things are because of people not skilled enough making the decisions - not understanding what's there and trying to fix it, only to realize later when they do understand it better that they royally screwed it up.
java was only "the most popular" because it was force fed to people who didn't want it.
I don't think you understand how schools and their curriculae work. Nobody is holding a gun to the collective and independently-operated heads of CS departments to demand which language they use for beginner courses.
Java was historically chosen because it was a safe option; used widely in industry, decent documentation and tools, it supports good programming practices, and it provides reasonably powerful options while being relatively beginner friendly. Java largely replaced C and C++, which are not beginner friendly.
Funny...Java only lasted may be 10 years as the "first" language for CS curriculae. C++ laster longer (15+ years), and C longer than that.
Now unlike with C and C++ they did find bigger issues with Java being the first course - as upper level classes (e.g Networking) found they had to teach kids C/C++ first before they could get into the course material. Not to say that won't still be an issue with Python...it'll probably have its own layer of issues.
Needless to say, if I had to learn programming my freshman year of college I would rather have had Python than Java. (I didn't; I learned to program in High School in a far superior manner than taught at the college level; but that's beside the point here.)
Didn't airbus get yelled at for not stopping the pilot from ripping of the vertical stabilizer.
If so, it goes to the central idea behind Airbus designs, which is the very European mentality of design by committee and the government knows best.
Remember, Airbus is a conglomerate of nearly all the European nations.
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what would you do if you were a disabled and mentally retarded orphan?
That is one of the few cases where I agree that programs like Social Security are required. Those programs shouldn't be available to the general populus, only those that really need them - the exceptions instead of the rule. This would also make such programs more easily fundable and solvent.
The only thing we're arguing about here, then, is what qualifies as "disabled" or "retarded."
We need to come up with a national approach to retirement/etc benefits that works for everybody - not just those who are both good at earning money AND good at investing it.
National programs that are extended to the general populus will never be sustainable and will result in either insolvency or the destruction of the nation and/or currency.
I would only extend benefits to those who are incapable of work, or to supplement those who cannot earn a decent basic income. Today that would be a fairly insignificant portion of the GDP.
Agreed on the first two; disagree on the last. So no, a very small minority (probably well under 10%) would qualify. It's just not sustainable to do otherwise.
Define "decent basic income". You'll have all ranges from "at poverty level" to "I want a million dollars per year" depending on who you talk to. So it's just a non-starter. That's not to say that some programs (e.g Food Stamps) shouldn't compensate for "poverty level and below", but the kind of program we're discussing above can't sustain anything other than "those that are completely and provably incapable of work" - and "incapable" does not mean "too lazy" but being legally disabled (even temporarily).
As much as I might like to make it work on an honor system, people are generally too corrupt to do so; therefore it (sadly) has to be testable with legal consequences for fraud.
With steady advances in technology and increased specialization in the workforce we just keep raising the bar for the kinds of skills and talents somebody needs to have to earn their own way. Eventually, not even you would have been able to hold down a job.
False. Advanced in Technology does not necessitate increased specialization. The only thing that really drives the "raising the bar" issue here is inflation and the long held beliefs that you have to have inflation - you can't keep the currency stable or have deflation.
The US has barely any inflation at all, and for anybody who works for a living a little inflation isn't a big deal.
The inflation over the last 100 years is substantial; especially the inflation in the last 35 years is substantial.
Prices go up, but so do wages. Their retirement funds might have problems, but most people don't have those anyway.
There is nothing that dictates that wages and prices HAVE to go up; only economists. A well balanced economic system would not require inflation.
When I look around me I see tons of specialization as a result of technological advances.
There is that in white collar jobs.
Nobody works as a general laborer these days.
This goes to show how out-of-touch you are. Get your head out of the sand.
There's lots of people doing general labor - look at the construction sites, janitors, cleaning staff. It's REQUIRED that someone fill those positions until we get sufficiently advanced robots to do it for us - which is still a very long way off. Many economists point to these areas as why we need illegal immigrants because they think it is below the level of any citizen to do those jobs; an attitude that does have to change.
"You didn't get a permit from us about writing a map, so we will ask you to share the map with us."
So it's known that Airline pilots don't learn to fly in India; they come to the US to learn to fly.
Why? Because there are too many permits required to fly any where it's just not feasible to learn in India.
Ironically, Windows 8.1 was also the first time in 20 years they decided to remove the Start menu from the "unchanged" OS...
When Microsoft introduced the start menu they got no end of ridicule about how non-intuitive it was to press start to shut down. Now in 8.1 you have a big power-button right beside your account picture right on the main start screen, and people can't find it... sigh..
Start Screen? Never used it.
If I get a Win8/WinServe2012 system, first thing I do is install ClamShell. Never see the Start Screen after that, but it brings a lot of saneness to the UI; fortunately I don't have to go the Control Panel much as that would still be a foo bar with some settings only in the "Classic" Control Panel and others only in the settings wizard available through the Start Screen. In the end, no matter what I do it's a PITA to use.
what would you do if you were a disabled and mentally retarded orphan?
That is one of the few cases where I agree that programs like Social Security are required. Those programs shouldn't be available to the general populus, only those that really need them - the exceptions instead of the rule. This would also make such programs more easily fundable and solvent.
We need to come up with a national approach to retirement/etc benefits that works for everybody - not just those who are both good at earning money AND good at investing it.
National programs that are extended to the general populus will never be sustainable and will result in either insolvency or the destruction of the nation and/or currency.
With steady advances in technology and increased specialization in the workforce we just keep raising the bar for the kinds of skills and talents somebody needs to have to earn their own way. Eventually, not even you would have been able to hold down a job.
False. Advanced in Technology does not necessitate increased specialization. The only thing that really drives the "raising the bar" issue here is inflation and the long held beliefs that you have to have inflation - you can't keep the currency stable or have deflation.
Historically, inflation and deflation act together to maintain a stable currency. Currently we're operating under deluded policies that try to only have one without the other.
Rather than thinking about services that are good enough, consider what is currently not possible with limited bandwidth?
Agreed. But P2P applications (e.g BitTorrent, and what remains of Napster/etc) and similar systems to push that. ISPs fought back with limits.
We still don't have perfect realtime video calls. As the need to deal with low bandwidth has allowed advancements in efficient codecs, so to has the processing requirements of endpoints to handle the codec. Allowing for less intensive codecs that use more bandwidth would enable better experience.
Not necessarily as that might propogate pretty quickly. That kind of attitude is also what led to the very extensive bloat in disk utilization among applications, especially those targetting Windows Users.
Its main advantage is its ability to integrate sensor information from multiple sources. But this does not warrant building a hugely expensive fighter from scratch. Put the same system on an F18 and F16 and you will have even more capable fighter.
The F-35, AKA Joint Strike Fighter, is more akin to what happened to the Space Shuttle - it's a single aircraft that is suppose to meet the needs of all the different branches. This also why the Space shuttle was such a brick to fly, so costly, and had wings. Hopefully the F-35 won't meet the same end.
Exactly. The Office file formats are still extremely ubiquitous in the business world, and if you use something like LibreOffice to modify them, the formatting of the documents is almost guaranteed to go crazy, without you possibly not even knowing it, and ultimately losing customers. I'm sorry, but it has just been incredibly practical decision to just install the fucking Microsoft Office. Of course this UK Cabinet's decision is another step towards open standards, so I guess that's good.
Outside of bookmarks in Writer I find OpenOffice/LibreOffice to generate more compliant documents to Microsoft's tools than Microsoft's tools do. They're also typically smaller even when saved in the Microsoft formats.
Oh, hell. I have no interest in being interviewed by Microsoft. If the hiring manager decides to hire his drinking buddy, he needs to interview four other candidates before he can do that. I had five Microsoft recruiters pulled that stunt in 2005, leading me by the nose for a whole month before telling me that all the drinking buddies got hired. I'll hang up on any recruiter who mentions Microsoft to me.
I did a couple rounds with Microsoft a couple years back, namely to see how long it would take them to read the website linked to on my resume that had a big rant on the evils on Microsoft. No intention on working there, but was nice for a comparison; though I think what killed it was my Win2k laptop crashing in the middle of the interview.
That said, that was one of the only series of interactions I had for working at Microsoft that was not through a representative that was on the H1B or sounded like it. Almost every recruiter for them was from India.
This only remotely makes sense if the jobs are interchangeable.
Isn't that what every economist will tell you? Or that they could be retrained for the "new" positions?
In the end, there is only one big corporation left, and it's hard to distinguish between it and the government. It's not far away now. Feels good, right?
And then they made RoboCop, and we all know how that went...
The only reason any of this is problem is that we continue to stupidly tie benefits and retirement to employment. Nobody, especially higher ups, wants to have that conversation in this country.
If being a full time employee simply meant you work more hours than a part time employee and had nothing else associated with it, a good number of people would be better off having two or three part time jobs. Less burn out, more job mobility,and in particular less immediate consequences to getting fired or laid off from a particular job. THAT is the reason big employers are against a national or single payer insurance system and why they demonize the very notion of national retirement benefits even though those things would reduce their costs. They would reduce their power even more, and they just can't have that.
Forget about employers...I wouldn't want a national system. I don't want Social Security, yet I'm forced to participate in that told I'll get money that I'll certainly never see.
No, my retirement portfolio is entirely independent of any employer or the government. And I'd rather keep it that way.
Now what I would change is that I prefer to have the retirement portfolio be entirely subsized by post-tax dollars instead of pre-tax dollars. Why? Because with pre-tax dollars you have to pay the taxes on it when you take the money out, at the future tax rates; while the post-tax dollars are tax-free down the road because you've already paid the tax on them. However, my CPA wife uses both to get us the best tax benefits for any given year.
What will be telling is if they do the same to the DSL customers in the near future as well.
DSL works over high frequencies in existing copper phone lines. Far more physical bandwidth is typically allocated to the downstream than to the upstream. Balancing this out would reduce download speeds in favor of upload speeds. Are you sure implementing SHDSL wouldn't require rolling trucks and mailing modems?
Except Businesses have had access to higher speed symetric DSL for a lot longer; though that's typically a dedicated line instead of one sharing its bandwidth with a voice line.
Well, NetFlix could also enter into agreements with ever backbone provider, thereby forcing Verizon to either do the same to everyone or start upgrading
This brings to the question of why Netflix has chosen to deal with Verizon instead of with Level3 directly in the first place ?
Even if Netflix didn't know of the existence of Level3 (which I find too ludicrous to be possible) that they had signed up with Verizon, they could have changed the situation right now by dealing directly with Level3, and why wait anymore ?
NetFlix has contracts with lots of folks - Level3 included. These are with respect to pushing content from NetFlix over the backbone into various networks.
NetFlix also promotes having a CDN end-point within an ISP's network to alleviate the need for as much peering; which is what I believe the NetFlix-Verizon deal was about, which Verizon may have (or may not have, we don't really know) charged NetFlix for installing in the datacenters/hubs/central-offices.
However, the fact that NetFlix has done that, which should IMPROVE speed on Verizon's network, and there are still major issues shows that there is something else wrong with Verizon's network. Of course, they might rely on the back bone having sufficient capacity to pull down the information over the CDN too; or it might be that NetFlix installs a direct pipe for the CDNs, we don't know the details. Most likely NetFlix has a contracted pipe with a Level3 interconnect to these, and that is why we're hearing all about it between Level3 and Verizon as Verizon doesn't want to increase their interconnects with Level3 over which those CDN systems are suppose to operate.
But that's just a bit of (educated) guess work as I don't know the details of the Netflix-Verizon arrangement or the network layouts or the NetFlix CDN provisions.
If the mid-1980's is "the old days"...
No. Try the 1930's through the 1970/1980's. It wasn't until the 1960's that things started to filter down enough that you didn't need as much background in to the computer systems, and some where in the 1970's/early-1980's it became what you knew, namely as the micro-computer (aka PC, Macintosh inclusive) took over.
However, prior that - and even during the 1980's in corporate environments - most every programmer had to know a lot about the Electric Engineering of the computer. Most all of them had EE degrees; some had math degrees; a fewer had the new CS degree (started in the 1970's, but not really popular until the 1990's; I think the first CS program was late 1960's, circa 1968).
biggest problem with upload is you send it over free links with Tier 1 networks, or you pay them to take your traffic. with all the user generated stuff now like Twitch, flickr, video calling and other services where you want a fast upload speed that's a lot of data to be paying for.
with the current L3/Verizon dispute i wonder if they struck a deal where verizon will allow the connections to be upgraded for netflix to work on their network in exchange for L3 taking all their uploaded data for free.
Hmm...that actually makes for an interesting case.
So Level3 basically pointed out the issue with User focused ISP's - that they're asymetric and would never provide the ability for those ISPs to compete in the peering arrangements that back-bone providers have. So now if they go to being symetric, it would allow the users to do more and possibly try to combat what the ISP (e.g Verizon) thinks is a fallacy but they can only prove if they make all their links symetric.
Problem for the ISP is users don't really upload a whole lot any way. So it's not going to change anything for a while. It may get Level3 to drop the "symetric vs asymetric" part of their argument, but it won't change the amount of traffic going from the ISP to back-bone provider.
What will be telling is if they do the same to the DSL customers in the near future as well. Otherwise they are still primarily an asymetric provider as they have more DSL than FiOS customers.
Question is: Will Verizon only do this temporarily as part of an argument with Level3? If so, expect a change in the future when their plan doesn't work out. If not, then hopefully other ISPs will follow in order to "compete".
Find locations where you will hurt Verizon customers, and cut the cables. Do so publicly. Precondition repair on upgrades of Verizon's network as you direct. If Verizon doesn't want network neutrality, then punish their customers.
Well, NetFlix could also enter into agreements with ever backbone provider, thereby forcing Verizon to either do the same to everyone or start upgrading.
Just saying, there's multiple ways to skin the pig that is Verizon...and AT&T for that matter.
As to the specific points raised:
It discussed issues such as letting criminals shoot while the car drives (silly in my opinion, apparently they haven't heard of "partners" or considered requiring such cars have a police controlled "slow down" command),
Slow down command won't mean a thing when the criminals rip out the necessary parts to make it moot or reprogram it to do something - ignore the command, do the opposite, or even blow up the vehicle.
the use of such vehicles as guided bullets (safeties again should stop this), and loading it with explosives and using it as a guided missile. This last concern is the only one that I considered a real issue, but even that is not significantly more dangerous than loading up a regular van full of explosives with a timer, then setting the timer to explode before you leave the vehicle next to a school, etc.
True, aside from it being a "guided" missile - just set a target in the GPS and off it goes....again, the potential is there and criminals won't allow it to stop just because of a "slow down" or "stop" command. They'll figure out a way to override that before using it.
And again, if they really wanted to do it the technology is already out there and nothing is going to stop them from using it if they really wanted to.
Software engineering has a tendency to enshrine ivory tower principles, that - although sound and logical, can end up making your project large, slow bloated and excessively encapsulated. I'm happy that NASA and the DoD both use it, those things need to be rock solid, but it just doesn't make sense for a lot of businesses where being first to market is more important than any code refactoring issues you might have 2 years down the track. Being slow to market might mean you don't even have a business 12 months from now.
Good programmers know when to lay on the engineering and when to pull out the stops and slap something together that does the job "just good enough". That's part of what makes it an art, not a science.
NASA/DoD does a form of Software Engineering based on Engineering principles from other disciplines, namely mechanical and electrical engineering. Much of what they do there doesn't really apply to Software.
What we need to do is define Software Engineering in a manner that is practical for everyone to do it such that no one has any kind of excuse not to do it. To me, it's a matter of doing software in a very discipined manner and has nothing to do with whether you've documented every function at 30 different layers for 10 different stake holders across 5 different organizations.
As is Ford Prefect, which was the name of a Ford car in the UK (1930s-1960s). It's not, as most Americans think, a purposeful mis-spelling of Perfect.
It was written for UK audiences, and poorly Americanized. Half the jokes in there only work in the UK because of cultural issues.
I'd rather it not be "Americanized"...yes, not all jokes transfer, but it's still good as it is.
"Of course, all of this was done in software designed by people without any engineering experience at all...go figure."
You don't need to have an engineering degree to write a price of software that implements calculations and algorithms that are needed for an engineering project. Programmers turn math, algorithms, business methods, ideas and the like into code. That's our skill, understanding your needs and expressing it in a way a computer can understand.
I was just noting the irony. That said, I would personally put forward that people doing programming in the real world need a software engineering degree, not a computer science degree as you don't do computer science when writing real-world applications - you apply the principles of Computer Science in an disciplined/engineering methodology.
But then, software engineering as a discipline is in such poor shape that it is not really helpful to anyone but NASA and DOD as currently defined, and that needs to change.
The problem domain isn't "monitoring plants with only an AA battery for power" though. It's a host capable of running Linux and assorted toolchains for embedded software development. I know that there are systems for all kinds of applications and the power envelopes they prescribe. That's not the issue. The issue is that someone proclaimed that "electricity is expensive. Douche bag." And that's not true. Electricity is cheap. Cheaper than hardware which is incredibly cheap itself. And that holds true even for the very low end, where a tiny amount of energy is sold in an expensive package, but a finished system will still cost more than the batteries it takes to run it for a couple of years before it is replaced, yet the hardware is sold at prices which almost make the devices disposable. For perspective: How many smartphones does the average person buy per year? Still think a low to mid range quad core desktop system is expensive?
So I do development and I want to cut my costs down. I presently have a desktop at home with a 600W supply and a server with a 250W supply, as well as laptops with 60-90W supplies. As I use the desktop for other things (e.g playing DVDs, Netflix, etc.) I'm satisfied to leave it for now; laptops might get replaced by tablets or chromebooks.
But the server? I keep it on a UPS, and would love to be able to keep it up for a very long time. On the UPS it would only get between 10-30 minutes if power fails (APC 1500). I am very interested in switching it out for a few lower power devices. In fact, I'm targetting replacing it with 3 devices (a Rasberry Pi for authentication, a Udoo for disk storage, and a Routerboard for firewall support) with a total power envelope of 50W.
Do I still intend to do software development on the server? Yes.
Do I still intend to do DNS, DHCP, Samba, WebServers, etc on the server? Yes.
But you know what - unless I'm building something targetting a mainframe, some heavy video driven application (e.g games, autocad, etc) then I really don't need a very powerful system. Point being - a beagleboard, Udoo, or Rasberry Pi really is sufficient for most people doing software development....well, unless you're trying to use Eclipse or Visual Studios, but then you're just asking for trouble.
There's a different between learning to build a basic house and a skysraper. Only the best civil engineers are ever going to do the latter.
I'd be amazed if a Civil Engineer could design a skyscraper, and I'd be more amazed at the firm and its insurance backer that allowed them to, and the construction company that did it.
Why? A Civic Engineer doesn't design skyscapers. They decide only where the skyscapers can go and make sure the location can support it.
It's the structural engineer that designs the skyscaper based on the concepts from the architectural engineer that the client wanted to put in the space that the civic engineer told them they had on the land they own.
Of course, all of this was done in software designed by people without any engineering experience at all...go figure.
Somebody didn't read the article:
"In the old days there was a respected profession of application programming. There was a minority of elite system programmers who built infrastructure and tools that empowered the majority of application programmers.
I think this is more of deluded statement than anything. In the old days you typically had to have an Electrical Engineering degree to do programming - at a time when having a college degree was not the norm. This only filtered out of that circle as geeks took interest before college and tools became easier and costs were greatly reduced. The point: programming has always been done by a small group - the "elite" - at any time in the history of computer systems.
Our goal was to allow regular people without extensive training to easily and quickly build useful software. This was the spirit of languages like COBOL, Visual Basic, and HyperCard. Elegant tools for a more civilized age. Before the dark times before the web."
Again, progress has certainly occurred towards this, but the fact of the matter is that most people are not interested in being creative the way programming requires you to be. They'll be happy to play around with HyperCard or Excel long enough to get some basic thing done, but they'll be atleast equally happy to pass it on to some one so they can focus on what their actual job in stead of trying to figure out how to make a fancy little graph.
"The web is just an enormous stack of kluges upon hacks upon misbegotten designs. This Archaeology of Errors is no place for the application programmers of old: it takes a skilled programmer with years of experience just to build simple applications on today’s web. What a waste. Twenty years of expediency has led the web into a technical debt crisis."
Many of those things are because of people not skilled enough making the decisions - not understanding what's there and trying to fix it, only to realize later when they do understand it better that they royally screwed it up.
java was only "the most popular" because it was force fed to people who didn't want it.
I don't think you understand how schools and their curriculae work. Nobody is holding a gun to the collective and independently-operated heads of CS departments to demand which language they use for beginner courses.
Java was historically chosen because it was a safe option; used widely in industry, decent documentation and tools, it supports good programming practices, and it provides reasonably powerful options while being relatively beginner friendly. Java largely replaced C and C++, which are not beginner friendly.
Funny...Java only lasted may be 10 years as the "first" language for CS curriculae. C++ laster longer (15+ years), and C longer than that.
Now unlike with C and C++ they did find bigger issues with Java being the first course - as upper level classes (e.g Networking) found they had to teach kids C/C++ first before they could get into the course material. Not to say that won't still be an issue with Python...it'll probably have its own layer of issues.
Needless to say, if I had to learn programming my freshman year of college I would rather have had Python than Java. (I didn't; I learned to program in High School in a far superior manner than taught at the college level; but that's beside the point here.)
Didn't airbus get yelled at for not stopping the pilot from ripping of the vertical stabilizer.
If so, it goes to the central idea behind Airbus designs, which is the very European mentality of design by committee and the government knows best. Remember, Airbus is a conglomerate of nearly all the European nations.