I have every sympathy for the guy - I feel he has every reason to pursue his goal, and that your comments (while clearly an honest attempt to inject some sobriety) may be a little too discouraging.
I say I have every sympathy because I'm in the exact same position, save that I'm in my mid-twenties. I coasted through school, college, uni just doing what seemed easiest because, basically, I was very intelligent and immature, and just wanted my adolescence to continue indefinitely.
It's only over the last couple of years that I've started to wake up and realise how important it is for me to pursue a career that interests me if I'm going to have a fulfilling work-life. I have comparable experiences to this man, a similar level of enthusiasm and understanding (very broad, but not very deep), and I also have enough experience of coding to lose any romanticism I might have once held about it - but I still find it deeply intriguing and attractive! Ask yourself: why did you get into programming? Was it a big misguided mistake? Are you so jaded by it that you regret your career choice now? Of course not. I appreciate that you don't want to see this guys hopes worn down by a career which is often falsely portrayed, but you must admit you're still passionate about your work, yes?
Although you may not realise it, your attitude is somewhat elitist - you suggest that someone who's only dabbled in the field does not truly understand things, and is clearly not motivated enough to make a good go of it. ("Like those people who suddenly shave their heads and say they've always been into punk" - High Fidelity)
Be fair. People do change, and as long as he's kept his mind supple and receptive through continued learning and mental activity, he shouldn't find it too much of a struggle to pick these things up. Speaking as someone who's recently started a part-time CompSci degree, I can say that it's your motivation and attitude that makes all the difference.
Ability is nothing without character. If he really wants this career, and has the discipline to clear all the hurdles, he should find that his experience of life and zeal for the subject will see him in good stead when he enters the workplace.
Still, you do make valid points. I just wouldn't want them to discourage him if he's serious.
Are you serious? It's the British (as in Bulldog) way, surely! Something making you feel edgy and uncomfortable as a nation? Too polite to deal with the topic openly? Get some students to do something high-profile and tasteless to make it funny! Works every time.
Cambridge Uni. Assassins Guild. One enterprising guy dropped a massive polystyrene block on his target's head from a balcony (it was a safe, basically).
I've always been of the opinion that games reviews are becoming increasingly inflated, but it's too easy to look at this in a sceptical "Fanboys have no sense of proportion" light.
Bear in mind that the games industry is not static. Not only are the technologies and concepts used in games and development constantly evolving and improving, but the budgets and resources being thrown at them far outstrip those seen 20, 10, even 5 years ago.
Inevitably this causes the leading edge of the games market to progress faster than our sense of cynicism and ennui, so we are more and more impressed with each new release. That's what ultimately gives a game a great score - how impressive is it? Scores for big releases will tend more and more towards the higher end (especially if we try to rate games comparitively with other fairly recent releases).
The term review inflation is surprisingly accurate in that regard but, while steady economic inflation is not a problem, it is troublesome in reviews where there is a fixed range of possible scores. The dollar can become worth 1% of its original value and there's no issue - as long as it's in line with market growth and currency values in other economies - becuase its value is defined by the market-perception of its value and has no technical limits. The star-rating system in reviews is inherently fixed, so inflation is a bugger.
Allowing the rating-system to inflate freely would get around this problem, but then you're looking at free-flux exchange-rates between reviewers and the issue of fitting 210 stars into a box-out and, frankly, the only sensible answer is for peeps to grow up and take everything they read with a pinch of salt. Hey, it's a valuable life-lesson. Learn to read, dammit.
Anyone remember the scare about the NSA commissioning programs that could pull together information on individuals from all over t'interweb and produce coherent, intelligent reports on behaviour patterns etc? The idea being that all of this data is available, but it's so massive and disparate that it would be almost futile to draw anything useful from it.
Researchers at Columbia University are combining the processing power of the human brain with computer vision to develop a novel device that will allow people to search through images ten times faster than they can on their own.
So, basically completely the opposite to the/. description, to whit:
it uses the extremely powerful visual recognition ability of the human brain and couples it with a computer's raw processing power
.
I picked that up within 5 seconds of clicking the link. Sort it out, editors.
"What do you mean Flash Gordon approaching??? ACTIVATE THE LIGHTNING SHIELD!"
Well, somebody had to say it.
In other news, it has been revealed that the NSA has been compiling an extensive dossier on Brian Blessed. Spokesmen stated that his recent instructions for airborne associates to "DIIIIIIIIIVE!!" while boarding flight AJA-10 gave them cause for concern.
This is my point. What would be the consequences of such inaction? Basically, the EU is seen to be powerless against mega-corporations. The law is subject to corporations, not the other way around. M$ would be perceived as above the law in the EU! Big, big trouble...
The only way the EU could actually enforce this would be to threaten, essentially, trade sanctions. But how heavily is the government, industrial and home market of every EU country saturated with M$ products? So they can't even impose anything worth a damn without incurring massively detrimental consequences themselves.
1. Finally Hollywood have worked out how to take advantage of technology (instead of the other way around). This may, I suspect, actually get some people into legally downloading copyrighted content. Maybe.
2. How much is this gonna cost? Unless it's significantly cheaper than purchasing a DVD, I doubt it'll take the world by storm - there is a certain trust in the DVD format. No mention of prices in TFA - any clues?
3...
BitTorrent is building a video store from which customers can download movies at speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second, according to the company.
1 Gigabit? That's a bit of an outrageous claim, isn't it? Obviously, BitTorrent speed increases with current download demand, but hang on: 1 Gigabit???. Who has that kind of connection speed, exactly?
Still, it really is encouraging to see major distributors at last display recognition of the fact that these tools and programs are not criminal; they can be put to both lawful and illegal use, and harnessing them is far more productive than trying to suppress them.
"It's okay folks, this is just an informal investigation (tm) so just, you know... go about your usual illegal activities, or whatever. Just pretend I'm not here."
This would be wonderful as a RAM replacement IF it scaled up enough. Trouble is, RAM has been a necessary computer component for years, so it was inevitable that it would get cheaper & smaller as the necessary manufacturing processes were refined.
This has an awfully long way to come, so it's not going to be adopted wide-scale as a RAM replacement in PCs - at least not straight away. How long would it take the production of this stuff to get up to a competitive scale?
It might work its way in eventually:
1. Small MRAM chips used in phones, PDAs, A/V devices to store state, speeding up boot-time.
2. Pervades handheld-electronics market - becomes ubiquitous enough to scale up and improve manufacturing processes
3. Eventually finds some server-use to improve operation (maybe mirroring RAM periodically to recover quickly from crash, whatever)
4. Finally works its way onto desktop motherboards
(5. Profit?)
Seriously though, this is hardly going to make waves for some time.
Correct me if I'm wrong (in which case, sorry), but I though mozzies could detect the increased CO2 concentration from suckable creatures in the air from something in the region of a mile away? At least, females can.
Okay, I could be wrong, but David Attenborough is like the voice of God to me, so I'll need some convincing.
It's true that maintained (ie non-private) schools do have huge autonomy in how they spend their budget and manage their IT, as long as they support the National Curriculum effectively.
However, most Primary schools are not large enough to employ anyone with any decent knowledge of IT, and overwhelmingly they surrender part of their budget to the Schools IT Service run by their Local Authority in order to sort these things out. More importantly, they don't have the time or expertise to even look into these things! Even Secondary (High) schools depend on the local IT Support service to some degree - for hardware and network support, if nothing else.
So, it's down to the LA - the Local Authority, your friendly county/district/borough/city council or Unitary Authority - to drive innovation and intelligent software choice in schools. And what do they do?
Well, yes, they're predominantly in bed with big corporations who have established enterprise sales, support and service structures in place to get the big council contracts. Now, generally the Schools IT Support teams are somewhat independent from the Corporate IT bods, but seldom are they entirely separate and there is usually a noticeable cross-over. My personal dilemma is that, while I support schools, I myself am supported by the Corporate IT team, and depend on them for my office workstation. The result? Thanks to Council IT Policy, I am forced to use MS for OS, Office and every other flavour of software and as a result, am only able to significantly support schools in the same software.
Oh, believe me, I would dearly love to get them using OpenOffice.org (which, irritatingly, Capita Education Services - the biggest UK supplier of Schools Management Information Software - do not support), Linux, Firefox, whatever, but because I'm part of this big horrible organisation, my hands are tied and so are the schools'.
The latest initiative from the government is to open up competition between various Council IT services so schools can go over the border and get their IT support & training from Bogcaster Council instead of Tadminster, but in effect this has virtually no impact since - as I mentioned before - most schools don't have the time or inclination to go hunting around. If it's not dropped in their laps, most schools won't actively seek change as it makes life busier and harder in the short-term.
In short: No, this report will not make any difference at all.
The current intention is to patch the crack. However, senior officials insist that unless the problem grows "significantly worse" over the next few days then they see no reason to issue the patch until the second Tuesday of the month.
Actually, the thing most people fear about the dentist is needles-in-the-mouth. They're an uncomfortable and sometimes shockingly painful experience (depending on the dentist and the location of the injection), and it's the act of deliberately subjecting yourself to pain that gets a lot of people worked up. All the other fears tend to be associative.
Root-canal and other invasive surgery notwithstanding (and I'm going through a lot of that right now, thank you very much), if this technology can allow minor surgery - fillings, mainly - to be undertaken without needles, I daresay it'll be a brilliant breakthrough. If the patient feels confident they are not going to feel pain, they won't be (as) afraid.
That being said, my latest dentist is a sodding genius, who managed to perform a re-root-treatment without anaesthetic, and without pain, within an hour.
Now that does interest me. If they can show the same level of industrious innovation that they have in other fields, I'm excited about the impact this may have on the server-market, if nothing else.
I just hope that, if they are developing chips in-house (and if they are, I expect them to be cheap and powerful), they are less tight-fisted than they are with their other technical innovations. A new power-player in the CPU market would be great for us end-users
Seriously though, if they start manufacturing all their own hardware from scratch, they're probably going to be more independent than any major computer-based international in recent history. *exaggeration ends*
Looks to me like Lineage 1 is supplanted by Lineage 2 for a while (there's a fairly clear transfer of membership from one curve to the other) and then both take a massive steady hit in the wake of WoW.
Slashdot Mirror
I have every sympathy for the guy - I feel he has every reason to pursue his goal, and that your comments (while clearly an honest attempt to inject some sobriety) may be a little too discouraging.
I say I have every sympathy because I'm in the exact same position, save that I'm in my mid-twenties. I coasted through school, college, uni just doing what seemed easiest because, basically, I was very intelligent and immature, and just wanted my adolescence to continue indefinitely.
It's only over the last couple of years that I've started to wake up and realise how important it is for me to pursue a career that interests me if I'm going to have a fulfilling work-life. I have comparable experiences to this man, a similar level of enthusiasm and understanding (very broad, but not very deep), and I also have enough experience of coding to lose any romanticism I might have once held about it - but I still find it deeply intriguing and attractive! Ask yourself: why did you get into programming? Was it a big misguided mistake? Are you so jaded by it that you regret your career choice now? Of course not. I appreciate that you don't want to see this guys hopes worn down by a career which is often falsely portrayed, but you must admit you're still passionate about your work, yes?
Although you may not realise it, your attitude is somewhat elitist - you suggest that someone who's only dabbled in the field does not truly understand things, and is clearly not motivated enough to make a good go of it. ("Like those people who suddenly shave their heads and say they've always been into punk" - High Fidelity)
Be fair. People do change, and as long as he's kept his mind supple and receptive through continued learning and mental activity, he shouldn't find it too much of a struggle to pick these things up. Speaking as someone who's recently started a part-time CompSci degree, I can say that it's your motivation and attitude that makes all the difference.
Ability is nothing without character. If he really wants this career, and has the discipline to clear all the hurdles, he should find that his experience of life and zeal for the subject will see him in good stead when he enters the workplace.
Still, you do make valid points. I just wouldn't want them to discourage him if he's serious.
Then the nawty trojan horsies sneak down your Internet tubes and steal your bank.
Are you serious? It's the British (as in Bulldog) way, surely! Something making you feel edgy and uncomfortable as a nation? Too polite to deal with the topic openly? Get some students to do something high-profile and tasteless to make it funny! Works every time.
Cambridge Uni. Assassins Guild. One enterprising guy dropped a massive polystyrene block on his target's head from a balcony (it was a safe, basically).
Bear in mind that the games industry is not static. Not only are the technologies and concepts used in games and development constantly evolving and improving, but the budgets and resources being thrown at them far outstrip those seen 20, 10, even 5 years ago.
Inevitably this causes the leading edge of the games market to progress faster than our sense of cynicism and ennui, so we are more and more impressed with each new release. That's what ultimately gives a game a great score - how impressive is it? Scores for big releases will tend more and more towards the higher end (especially if we try to rate games comparitively with other fairly recent releases).
The term review inflation is surprisingly accurate in that regard but, while steady economic inflation is not a problem, it is troublesome in reviews where there is a fixed range of possible scores. The dollar can become worth 1% of its original value and there's no issue - as long as it's in line with market growth and currency values in other economies - becuase its value is defined by the market-perception of its value and has no technical limits. The star-rating system in reviews is inherently fixed, so inflation is a bugger.
Allowing the rating-system to inflate freely would get around this problem, but then you're looking at free-flux exchange-rates between reviewers and the issue of fitting 210 stars into a box-out and, frankly, the only sensible answer is for peeps to grow up and take everything they read with a pinch of salt. Hey, it's a valuable life-lesson. Learn to read, dammit.
Anyone remember the scare about the NSA commissioning programs that could pull together information on individuals from all over t'interweb and produce coherent, intelligent reports on behaviour patterns etc? The idea being that all of this data is available, but it's so massive and disparate that it would be almost futile to draw anything useful from it.
Seems kind of obsolete now, doesn't it.
So, basically completely the opposite to the /. description, to whit:
.I picked that up within 5 seconds of clicking the link. Sort it out, editors.
Kinda like discussing Bronte during Maths to make it "less about numbers", isn't it?
"What do you mean Flash Gordon approaching??? ACTIVATE THE LIGHTNING SHIELD!"
Well, somebody had to say it.
In other news, it has been revealed that the NSA has been compiling an extensive dossier on Brian Blessed. Spokesmen stated that his recent instructions for airborne associates to "DIIIIIIIIIVE!!" while boarding flight AJA-10 gave them cause for concern.
Please god, someone make me stop...
I won't be impressed until they split the atom. Now THAT will be a shiny pin.
Heh heh.
Oooh, I hope there's someone at Brussels reading this thread, getting ideas...
This is my point. What would be the consequences of such inaction? Basically, the EU is seen to be powerless against mega-corporations. The law is subject to corporations, not the other way around. M$ would be perceived as above the law in the EU! Big, big trouble...
The only way the EU could actually enforce this would be to threaten, essentially, trade sanctions. But how heavily is the government, industrial and home market of every EU country saturated with M$ products? So they can't even impose anything worth a damn without incurring massively detrimental consequences themselves.
Think this through, seriously. It's frightening.
What happens if they don't pay?
2. How much is this gonna cost? Unless it's significantly cheaper than purchasing a DVD, I doubt it'll take the world by storm - there is a certain trust in the DVD format. No mention of prices in TFA - any clues?
3...
"It's okay folks, this is just an informal investigation (tm) so just, you know... go about your usual illegal activities, or whatever. Just pretend I'm not here."
Where did they think all that suction comes from in a vacuum?
Pfft! Stupid scientists.
This would be wonderful as a RAM replacement IF it scaled up enough. Trouble is, RAM has been a necessary computer component for years, so it was inevitable that it would get cheaper & smaller as the necessary manufacturing processes were refined.
This has an awfully long way to come, so it's not going to be adopted wide-scale as a RAM replacement in PCs - at least not straight away. How long would it take the production of this stuff to get up to a competitive scale?
It might work its way in eventually:
1. Small MRAM chips used in phones, PDAs, A/V devices to store state, speeding up boot-time.
2. Pervades handheld-electronics market - becomes ubiquitous enough to scale up and improve manufacturing processes
3. Eventually finds some server-use to improve operation (maybe mirroring RAM periodically to recover quickly from crash, whatever)
4. Finally works its way onto desktop motherboards
(5. Profit?)
Seriously though, this is hardly going to make waves for some time.
Correct me if I'm wrong (in which case, sorry), but I though mozzies could detect the increased CO2 concentration from suckable creatures in the air from something in the region of a mile away? At least, females can.
Okay, I could be wrong, but David Attenborough is like the voice of God to me, so I'll need some convincing.
(or LA, as LEAs have been rebranded)
It's true that maintained (ie non-private) schools do have huge autonomy in how they spend their budget and manage their IT, as long as they support the National Curriculum effectively.
However, most Primary schools are not large enough to employ anyone with any decent knowledge of IT, and overwhelmingly they surrender part of their budget to the Schools IT Service run by their Local Authority in order to sort these things out. More importantly, they don't have the time or expertise to even look into these things! Even Secondary (High) schools depend on the local IT Support service to some degree - for hardware and network support, if nothing else.
So, it's down to the LA - the Local Authority, your friendly county/district/borough/city council or Unitary Authority - to drive innovation and intelligent software choice in schools. And what do they do?
Well, yes, they're predominantly in bed with big corporations who have established enterprise sales, support and service structures in place to get the big council contracts. Now, generally the Schools IT Support teams are somewhat independent from the Corporate IT bods, but seldom are they entirely separate and there is usually a noticeable cross-over. My personal dilemma is that, while I support schools, I myself am supported by the Corporate IT team, and depend on them for my office workstation. The result? Thanks to Council IT Policy, I am forced to use MS for OS, Office and every other flavour of software and as a result, am only able to significantly support schools in the same software .
Oh, believe me, I would dearly love to get them using OpenOffice.org (which, irritatingly, Capita Education Services - the biggest UK supplier of Schools Management Information Software - do not support), Linux, Firefox, whatever, but because I'm part of this big horrible organisation, my hands are tied and so are the schools'.
The latest initiative from the government is to open up competition between various Council IT services so schools can go over the border and get their IT support & training from Bogcaster Council instead of Tadminster, but in effect this has virtually no impact since - as I mentioned before - most schools don't have the time or inclination to go hunting around. If it's not dropped in their laps, most schools won't actively seek change as it makes life busier and harder in the short-term.
In short: No, this report will not make any difference at all.
Actually, the thing most people fear about the dentist is needles-in-the-mouth. They're an uncomfortable and sometimes shockingly painful experience (depending on the dentist and the location of the injection), and it's the act of deliberately subjecting yourself to pain that gets a lot of people worked up. All the other fears tend to be associative.
Root-canal and other invasive surgery notwithstanding (and I'm going through a lot of that right now, thank you very much), if this technology can allow minor surgery - fillings, mainly - to be undertaken without needles, I daresay it'll be a brilliant breakthrough. If the patient feels confident they are not going to feel pain, they won't be (as) afraid.
That being said, my latest dentist is a sodding genius, who managed to perform a re-root-treatment without anaesthetic, and without pain, within an hour.
Actually, I was thinking:
"The same thing we do every night, Brain..."
"What do you think you're doing, Pinky?"
Now that does interest me. If they can show the same level of industrious innovation that they have in other fields, I'm excited about the impact this may have on the server-market, if nothing else.
I just hope that, if they are developing chips in-house (and if they are, I expect them to be cheap and powerful), they are less tight-fisted than they are with their other technical innovations. A new power-player in the CPU market would be great for us end-users
Seriously though, if they start manufacturing all their own hardware from scratch, they're probably going to be more independent than any major computer-based international in recent history. *exaggeration ends*
Looks to me like Lineage 1 is supplanted by Lineage 2 for a while (there's a fairly clear transfer of membership from one curve to the other) and then both take a massive steady hit in the wake of WoW.