Computer science is about understanding what can and cannot be done with a computer
I have to disagree with you. It's about what can and can't be done with computation. As Dijkstra said, "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."
This isn't merely splitting hairs. You're talking about computers as "machines, tools" which of necessity are particular engineering solutions to the question of how to manipulate bits. No wonder you can't see this area of activity as a science. It's not. But what of that? Your premise was flawed to begin with.
If instead we take computer science as being about computation - which, by the way, we should note with due respect is how most computer science departments at most universities see themselves - a fundamentally different landscape emerges. The contribution of computer science is similar to other sciences: they provide intellectual tools which we use to better understand the nature of the physical and mathematical and computational universe that exists or could hypothetically exist.
It's no accident that computer science, as a distinct discipline, grew out of mathematics here on Planet Earth. But it's not hard to imagine, elsewhere in the universe, computer science arriving first on the scene and mathematics eventually branching off as a subdiscipline. Since the universe itself doesn't impose an ordering principle here, it's a matter of perspective as to what you choose as the starting point.
During its short lifetime as a formal discipline, computer science has taken a very important, and distinctive, place among the sciences. The progress of a large part of scientific research now depends on it. Scientists rely heavily on computational models to explore claims about the physical universe. Though the perspective which gives rise to these models is distinctive enough to be worthy of a separate discipline, the process is essentially no different than using mathematical models. Likewise, from a scientific perspective, the physical realization of these models is irrelevant.
Here we see another reminder that computer science is not the same as computer engineering. Even in the early history of computer science, Alonzo Church, Kurt GÃdel, Alan Turing, and many others were able to make enormously significant contributions to the field at a time when physical realizations of computation did not yet exist. So, while you're entitled to a personal taxonomy which excludes such individuals from being regarded computer scientists, I think you'll find yourself pretty much on your own.
Doctor Who is not so much science fiction as a kind of theatrical sitcom based on a certain set of premises. If you keep that in mind, you'll be more able to enjoy its many interesting quirks and it's - ahem - relaxed pace.
Occasionally, depending on the writer, a given script makes reference to some genuine science, or at any rate a tenable line of speculation. Other times it's utter nonsense. What's more, the production often finds a way to allude to the fact of it being nonsense, whether through a stray comment muttered by the Doctor, or by outrageously ridiculous costumes or pompous dialogue.
The real question regarding a given episode, therefore, is whether it's good theatre?
The answer is highly variable. Some episodes are just great at first encounter. They stand on their own merits. With others, it depends in part on context. An episode might not seem to have much on the go, except when you can see it as a counterpoint to one which preceded it. This often happens during a transition between doctors. Over the first few episodes, the new actor has to establish a new character whose quirks are distinctive and yet somehow create a familiar impression. Wit is a large part of it.
Given a complete choice of episodes, but being constrained to watch only a select few of them, you could do worse than to choose the very first and last of each doctor. That will give you a sense of how the series has developed, and what the characters are like. These are also the episodes which are most likely to have been worked on the hardest. There are better episodes than these scattered here and there, but I can't say that I've ever found a pattern to them. Even the better writers have their off days. I agree with the general sentiment that Tom Baker made an outstanding Doctor, as did Jon Pertwee, but inevitably some of those episodes were not as strong as others.
Given the choice between (A) a manager who listens to me and takes care of all the organizational overhead so that I can focus on my work, and (B) a manager who challenges me or competes with me on every technical decision, I'll take (A) any day.
Yeah, sure, I'd like the best of both worlds, of course I would. A mentor would be very nice. But we're talking about a list of priorities. If I really wanted to be in a mentoring environment, I'd be back in academic research. You don't find people of that calibre in industry, not most places, and if you do, they're narcissistic jerks most of the time. That's been my experience, anyway. Maybe a few of you have been luckier. If so, count your blessings!
Just for the record, I don't see this as insulting to anyone, except perhaps really lazy people.
Same thing happened when I bought a truck. Suddenly all sorts of people who I didn't particularly regard as friends were wanting to buy me coffee in exchange for me helping them to move a household across town. My answer: thanks for the coffee. Now about my driving fee, it's $150 per hour, I don't lift anything, and I'll need a $5000 cash damage deposit in advance. If you're okay with that, great. Otherwise, check the phone book under "Moving and Storage" or "Truck Rentals".
For a country founded on the concept of "no taxation without representation", the US shows remarkably consistent disregard for the laws of other nations, even when it comes to the basic matter of sovereign self governance. What certain US lobbyists in their wilful ignorance call "copyright piracy" may well be what our laws have been careful to designate as "fair use".
For example, in Canada we pay a levy on blank media. The recording industry insisted on this as compensation for the possibility that such media might be used, not to make original art or to perform filesystem backups, but to record copyrighted material. The government agreed, and consumers paid. Offer, acceptance, exchange of consideration. In this country, that's called a contract. And it's binding. Government and consumers have kept their part of the bargain. Now the industry can keep its.
And if the US counterpart of that industry isn't happy about this state of affairs, well boo fucking hoo. Its shortsightedness and greed is not our problem to solve.
Not just hardware failures but any sort of scheduled physical change as well. Among other things: device upgrades; server, switch and router installation and removal; cabling changes; backup media changes; UPS maintenance; rack moves.
The last data center maintenance I did, we had to move "only" seven rack's worth of gear from one floor to another. It took place in four carefully-planned phases spanning two months of time. We had eight people working at it for the first week, then the two senior guys pretty much every other day for the remaining time. This, I must emphasize, was to accomplish no functional change whatever. It was just the groundwork.
Once that was done, then we could finally start in on the long backlog of upgrade and redesign tasks that had previously been impractical due to lack of space. During the course of that redesign, lots of things broke, VLANs for example. Every device of significance was on a remote power switch, but they kind of don't work too well if you can't find a switch to talk to them through.
Much more important, in my experience, is that a CLI provides essential modularity and composability that a GUI does not.
That's a win for documentation, because a precise example in the use of a CLI can be easily transcribed. Almost equivalently, it can be wrapped in a script for accurate reuse, or composed as part of a complete automated solution. You can build regression tests into it along the way.
You can't do any of that with a GUI. All you can do is train people to click and click over again, never quite the same way twice, telling them to watch out for this or that indicator on the screen, which may or not be visible in the scrolling window at any particular time, all in the name of repeatability. It's absolutely perverse. And very few people who have exclusively used GUIs have any interest in learning that there could be a better way.
I get that, to them, clicking on a GUI makes them feel useful and involved. They would have done well in the middle ages, copying books by hand.
You're saying that Barack Obama instructed the Justice Department to obtain this information?
Wow, that's like no other government I've ever seen, and I've lived and paid taxes in a lot of countries. Mostly, what I've seen is governments that are not under the effective control of any one person. Most large bureacracies are so ponderous that even very deliberate changes in official policy have marginal effect on entrenched attitudes and behavior. But I guess the United States must be an exception. Obama has some special power to change all this, a power that he's failing to exercise?
The myth - as with so many others, it seems to me - arises from relatively junior people bringing their unquestioned practices and prejudices in from the Microsoft world.
I see it all the time. Often it's a "reach for the GUI" reflex toward making something work. A Unix veteran would look for a config file, would save the original version of the file before experimentally investigating, would then restore the original file if the investigation came up empty. A Windows veteran would simply click on things in the application to see if it made any difference, and after whatever success or failure emerges from the experiment, would then walk away, having tracelessly changed that application from its original state.
Yep. Of couse, you could say the same thing about awk too.
Both are a bit hard on the brain, but when used judiciously can reduce a string-processing problem to its simplest form. They're good examples of specialized languages.
I'd like to say the same of Perl, but in practice I've found that more Perl scripts are badly written than all other scripting languages combined. Sure, Perl is hard on the brain, but apparently not enough to discourage misuse.
An editorial complains about some coffee shops in New York which have taken to restricting the use of devices which the management feels might bother patrons. The editorial suggests that it would be better to return to 16th century conventions wherein coffee houses became forums for loudly expressing disaffection and dissent.
In other news, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has resigned and handed over power to the military, ousted by a historic 18-day wave of pro-democracy demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of Egyptians who demanded his removal.
I'm no lawyer, but having been the officer of two corporations I take a personal interest in how such officers may be exposed to liability through actions against the corporations. To quote the local statute:
Duties of directors and officers
142 (1) A director or officer of a company, when exercising the powers and performing the functions of a director or officer of the company, as the case may be, must
(a) act honestly and in good faith with a view to the best interests of the company,
(b) exercise the care, diligence and skill that a reasonably prudent individual would exercise in comparable circumstances,
(c) act in accordance with this Act and the regulations, and
(d) subject to paragraphs (a) to (c), act in accordance with the memorandum and articles of the company.
...
The courts can go after the officers even after the corporation is long gone. And while it's common for corporations to carry insurance to protect officers acting in good faith, that protection certainly does not extend to unlawful acts.
Fair enough. Health care is not a place for elaborate gimmicks.
Of course we've developed all sorts of devices which improve health care. Thermometers, for example, take away subjective guesswork. Monitoring instruments allow effective and economical observation of acute-care patients, at least insofar as various simple measurable symptoms are concerned.
All that is great. Bedside light switches are great, for that matter. And $100,000 goes a long way when buying equipment of that kind.
Now consider a medical device whose substantial function is to look somewhat like a living being. This device does not provide care. Except in cases of fairly advanced dementia, nobody is fooled. Its monitoring ability, if any, is no better than existing devices. Very considerable work is needed to provide a suitable environment for a mobile robot.
In short, it's a solution looking for a problem. I get that. I managed a robotics research lab for 12 years. We're always on the lookout for possible applications of our research. Sometimes we overreach ourselves. This seems to be one of those times.
Any competent navigator knows to treat GPS as a tool for verifying where you are. Period.
Unless all other means of verification (visual, compass, sextant, RDF, depth sounder, radar, LORAN, dead reckoning) are unavailable, you should never rely on GPS alone.
Boaters should be particularly suspicious of GPS devices which instruct them to "take next exit right after overpass".
One would expect a chain with a halfway decent customer service/PR department to try and address the issues, not launch lawsuits.
Agreed. And... it's a restaurant chain. That shifts matters considerably, in my opinion. I can understand how a single small restaurant can feel itself exceedingly vulnerable to criticism. Fair criticism and fair praise are how a restaurant becomes known, so any decent restaurant will welcome both, but unfair or malicious treatment is another matter. It can really hurt real people.
A restaurant chain, on the other hand, is not at all the same as a hardworking chef or two and a few staff. It's a corporation, not part of the neighborhood but parasitic of it. As a matter of personal taste, I despise such places. And I can see no valid reason why that point of view should not be protected speech.
Slashdot Mirror
It's interesting to recall that object-oriented programming originated in discrete-event simulation, which is all about parallelism.
Computer science is about understanding what can and cannot be done with a computer
I have to disagree with you. It's about what can and can't be done with computation. As Dijkstra said, "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."
This isn't merely splitting hairs. You're talking about computers as "machines, tools" which of necessity are particular engineering solutions to the question of how to manipulate bits. No wonder you can't see this area of activity as a science. It's not. But what of that? Your premise was flawed to begin with.
If instead we take computer science as being about computation - which, by the way, we should note with due respect is how most computer science departments at most universities see themselves - a fundamentally different landscape emerges. The contribution of computer science is similar to other sciences: they provide intellectual tools which we use to better understand the nature of the physical and mathematical and computational universe that exists or could hypothetically exist.
It's no accident that computer science, as a distinct discipline, grew out of mathematics here on Planet Earth. But it's not hard to imagine, elsewhere in the universe, computer science arriving first on the scene and mathematics eventually branching off as a subdiscipline. Since the universe itself doesn't impose an ordering principle here, it's a matter of perspective as to what you choose as the starting point.
During its short lifetime as a formal discipline, computer science has taken a very important, and distinctive, place among the sciences. The progress of a large part of scientific research now depends on it. Scientists rely heavily on computational models to explore claims about the physical universe. Though the perspective which gives rise to these models is distinctive enough to be worthy of a separate discipline, the process is essentially no different than using mathematical models. Likewise, from a scientific perspective, the physical realization of these models is irrelevant.
Here we see another reminder that computer science is not the same as computer engineering. Even in the early history of computer science, Alonzo Church, Kurt GÃdel, Alan Turing, and many others were able to make enormously significant contributions to the field at a time when physical realizations of computation did not yet exist. So, while you're entitled to a personal taxonomy which excludes such individuals from being regarded computer scientists, I think you'll find yourself pretty much on your own.
Doctor Who is not so much science fiction as a kind of theatrical sitcom based on a certain set of premises. If you keep that in mind, you'll be more able to enjoy its many interesting quirks and it's - ahem - relaxed pace.
Occasionally, depending on the writer, a given script makes reference to some genuine science, or at any rate a tenable line of speculation. Other times it's utter nonsense. What's more, the production often finds a way to allude to the fact of it being nonsense, whether through a stray comment muttered by the Doctor, or by outrageously ridiculous costumes or pompous dialogue. The real question regarding a given episode, therefore, is whether it's good theatre?
The answer is highly variable. Some episodes are just great at first encounter. They stand on their own merits. With others, it depends in part on context. An episode might not seem to have much on the go, except when you can see it as a counterpoint to one which preceded it. This often happens during a transition between doctors. Over the first few episodes, the new actor has to establish a new character whose quirks are distinctive and yet somehow create a familiar impression. Wit is a large part of it.
Given a complete choice of episodes, but being constrained to watch only a select few of them, you could do worse than to choose the very first and last of each doctor. That will give you a sense of how the series has developed, and what the characters are like. These are also the episodes which are most likely to have been worked on the hardest. There are better episodes than these scattered here and there, but I can't say that I've ever found a pattern to them. Even the better writers have their off days. I agree with the general sentiment that Tom Baker made an outstanding Doctor, as did Jon Pertwee, but inevitably some of those episodes were not as strong as others.
[Ray] Nimmer is the real deal. He wrote the definitive treatise on copyright law.
You're thinking of David Nimmer. Ray Nimmer has lots of credentials too, but he's a different guy.
Given the choice between (A) a manager who listens to me and takes care of all the organizational overhead so that I can focus on my work, and (B) a manager who challenges me or competes with me on every technical decision, I'll take (A) any day.
Yeah, sure, I'd like the best of both worlds, of course I would. A mentor would be very nice. But we're talking about a list of priorities. If I really wanted to be in a mentoring environment, I'd be back in academic research. You don't find people of that calibre in industry, not most places, and if you do, they're narcissistic jerks most of the time. That's been my experience, anyway. Maybe a few of you have been luckier. If so, count your blessings!
Slashdot needs a like button.
In other news, I believe that waking up to an alarm clock is hazardous to my health.
Best example of "high-maintenance relationship" I've heard all year!
Just for the record, I don't see this as insulting to anyone, except perhaps really lazy people.
Same thing happened when I bought a truck. Suddenly all sorts of people who I didn't particularly regard as friends were wanting to buy me coffee in exchange for me helping them to move a household across town. My answer: thanks for the coffee. Now about my driving fee, it's $150 per hour, I don't lift anything, and I'll need a $5000 cash damage deposit in advance. If you're okay with that, great. Otherwise, check the phone book under "Moving and Storage" or "Truck Rentals".
Well said!
For a country founded on the concept of "no taxation without representation", the US shows remarkably consistent disregard for the laws of other nations, even when it comes to the basic matter of sovereign self governance. What certain US lobbyists in their wilful ignorance call "copyright piracy" may well be what our laws have been careful to designate as "fair use".
For example, in Canada we pay a levy on blank media. The recording industry insisted on this as compensation for the possibility that such media might be used, not to make original art or to perform filesystem backups, but to record copyrighted material. The government agreed, and consumers paid. Offer, acceptance, exchange of consideration. In this country, that's called a contract. And it's binding. Government and consumers have kept their part of the bargain. Now the industry can keep its.
And if the US counterpart of that industry isn't happy about this state of affairs, well boo fucking hoo. Its shortsightedness and greed is not our problem to solve.
Not just hardware failures but any sort of scheduled physical change as well. Among other things: device upgrades; server, switch and router installation and removal; cabling changes; backup media changes; UPS maintenance; rack moves.
The last data center maintenance I did, we had to move "only" seven rack's worth of gear from one floor to another. It took place in four carefully-planned phases spanning two months of time. We had eight people working at it for the first week, then the two senior guys pretty much every other day for the remaining time. This, I must emphasize, was to accomplish no functional change whatever. It was just the groundwork.
Once that was done, then we could finally start in on the long backlog of upgrade and redesign tasks that had previously been impractical due to lack of space. During the course of that redesign, lots of things broke, VLANs for example. Every device of significance was on a remote power switch, but they kind of don't work too well if you can't find a switch to talk to them through.
Much more important, in my experience, is that a CLI provides essential modularity and composability that a GUI does not.
That's a win for documentation, because a precise example in the use of a CLI can be easily transcribed. Almost equivalently, it can be wrapped in a script for accurate reuse, or composed as part of a complete automated solution. You can build regression tests into it along the way.
You can't do any of that with a GUI. All you can do is train people to click and click over again, never quite the same way twice, telling them to watch out for this or that indicator on the screen, which may or not be visible in the scrolling window at any particular time, all in the name of repeatability. It's absolutely perverse. And very few people who have exclusively used GUIs have any interest in learning that there could be a better way.
I get that, to them, clicking on a GUI makes them feel useful and involved. They would have done well in the middle ages, copying books by hand.
“I need to focus on [...] rebuilding my reputation."
Hey, it's never too late to start.
You're saying that Barack Obama instructed the Justice Department to obtain this information?
Wow, that's like no other government I've ever seen, and I've lived and paid taxes in a lot of countries. Mostly, what I've seen is governments that are not under the effective control of any one person. Most large bureacracies are so ponderous that even very deliberate changes in official policy have marginal effect on entrenched attitudes and behavior. But I guess the United States must be an exception. Obama has some special power to change all this, a power that he's failing to exercise?
So apparently 84% of US adults are happy with CFLs. Then again, 84% of US adults have an IQ less than 116.
The myth - as with so many others, it seems to me - arises from relatively junior people bringing their unquestioned practices and prejudices in from the Microsoft world.
I see it all the time. Often it's a "reach for the GUI" reflex toward making something work. A Unix veteran would look for a config file, would save the original version of the file before experimentally investigating, would then restore the original file if the investigation came up empty. A Windows veteran would simply click on things in the application to see if it made any difference, and after whatever success or failure emerges from the experiment, would then walk away, having tracelessly changed that application from its original state.
Yep. Of couse, you could say the same thing about awk too.
Both are a bit hard on the brain, but when used judiciously can reduce a string-processing problem to its simplest form. They're good examples of specialized languages.
I'd like to say the same of Perl, but in practice I've found that more Perl scripts are badly written than all other scripting languages combined. Sure, Perl is hard on the brain, but apparently not enough to discourage misuse.
An editorial complains about some coffee shops in New York which have taken to restricting the use of devices which the management feels might bother patrons. The editorial suggests that it would be better to return to 16th century conventions wherein coffee houses became forums for loudly expressing disaffection and dissent.
In other news, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has resigned and handed over power to the military, ousted by a historic 18-day wave of pro-democracy demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of Egyptians who demanded his removal.
Does it really solve the problem to design a credit card that's insufficient for validating itself?
So, you're saying this about the IETF as well? Because that's the model of governance being talked about here.
You seem to have confused public sector employment with governance. They're completely different concepts.
The courts can go after the officers even after the corporation is long gone. And while it's common for corporations to carry insurance to protect officers acting in good faith, that protection certainly does not extend to unlawful acts.
"We want humans caring for us, not machines"
Fair enough. Health care is not a place for elaborate gimmicks.
Of course we've developed all sorts of devices which improve health care. Thermometers, for example, take away subjective guesswork. Monitoring instruments allow effective and economical observation of acute-care patients, at least insofar as various simple measurable symptoms are concerned.
All that is great. Bedside light switches are great, for that matter. And $100,000 goes a long way when buying equipment of that kind.
Now consider a medical device whose substantial function is to look somewhat like a living being. This device does not provide care. Except in cases of fairly advanced dementia, nobody is fooled. Its monitoring ability, if any, is no better than existing devices. Very considerable work is needed to provide a suitable environment for a mobile robot.
In short, it's a solution looking for a problem. I get that. I managed a robotics research lab for 12 years. We're always on the lookout for possible applications of our research. Sometimes we overreach ourselves. This seems to be one of those times.
Any competent navigator knows to treat GPS as a tool for verifying where you are. Period.
Unless all other means of verification (visual, compass, sextant, RDF, depth sounder, radar, LORAN, dead reckoning) are unavailable, you should never rely on GPS alone.
Boaters should be particularly suspicious of GPS devices which instruct them to "take next exit right after overpass".
One would expect a chain with a halfway decent customer service/PR department to try and address the issues, not launch lawsuits.
Agreed. And... it's a restaurant chain. That shifts matters considerably, in my opinion. I can understand how a single small restaurant can feel itself exceedingly vulnerable to criticism. Fair criticism and fair praise are how a restaurant becomes known, so any decent restaurant will welcome both, but unfair or malicious treatment is another matter. It can really hurt real people.
A restaurant chain, on the other hand, is not at all the same as a hardworking chef or two and a few staff. It's a corporation, not part of the neighborhood but parasitic of it. As a matter of personal taste, I despise such places. And I can see no valid reason why that point of view should not be protected speech.