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User: ncmathsadist

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Comments · 97

  1. Re:Jacks-of-all-Trades original quotation on Does the World Need Polymaths? (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    Blast this stupid cliche.

  2. Yes, it does. on Does the World Need Polymaths? (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    People whose talents and competencies span several areas create new areas of inquiry and they stimulate connections. A criticism often leveled against modern academic inquiry is that of siloization: people retreat into little mutually unintelligible niches and hide there. The need for them will never be obviated. They add elan, brilliance, and lustre to our intellectual world.

  3. reality check on Ask Slashdot: How Can You Teach Programming To Schoolchildren? · · Score: 1

    America has turned on its schools like a pack of rabid dogs. They elect legislatures that are cutting salaries and benefits. Americans are contemptuous of teachers and think they should just be underpaid babysitters. Schools are not quality-minded organizations; they want to hire on the cheap and to provide an "adequate" educational experience. They feature lousy working conditions and paltry salaries. In many states, there are no dependent health benefits for family members of teachers unless they pay hundreds of dollars a month for them. Yep, teaching is no longer a career. It's a gig you do before going to law or medical school.

    Companies are having trouble recruiting programmers at $80K/yr. A typical starting salary for a new teacher is under $40K in a lot of states. Many newer teachers must moonlight to make ends meet in addition to the avalanche of off-hours work that is often required. For these reasons, [you've been chopped] I don't think schools will take up teaching programming on a wide scale. This is a not happening. We have a problem, Houston. And no one has the slightest bit of interest in solving it.

  4. Re:Yeah yeah on George Lucas Criticizes the Force Awakens (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    Entirely correct.

  5. Time to pay attention on Chinese Compiling "Facebook" of US Government Employees · · Score: 1

    America has tolerated too many belligerent cyberattacks from China and Russia. It is time to draw on the computing talent in this country to create a counterinsurgency against these agents and to deal with them straight-on. Enough.

  6. Re:STL on Was Linus Torvalds Right About C++ Being So Wrong? · · Score: 1

    Precisely! Aren't the C++ arabesques tortured, opaque and disgusting??

  7. I am with Torvalds on Was Linus Torvalds Right About C++ Being So Wrong? · · Score: 1

    C++ is like a house that has gone through many additions. It has become grotesquely verbose. It is riddled with awful constructs like dynamic cast and "casting away constness." I still like C a lot. It is small, fast, smart and, sometmes, merciless. But that's OK. It's OO cousin has become a steatopygean monster.

  8. Schools on The Importance of Deleting Old Stuff · · Score: 1

    I work in a school. When a term or a year closes, I do a big deletion of email that becomes moot at the end of that term or school year. A year-end cleanout often ends up with my inbox being chopped about 75%. If you have frequent senders who send mails with temporary topicality, you can sort by sender and get rid of their older mails.

  9. Cruz and Science? on Ted Cruz To Oversee NASA and US Science Programs · · Score: 0

    Why don't we hire chimpanzees to do experimental brain surgery? Same reason you don't ask Cruz to do this job.

  10. OINK on AOL Reverses Course On 401K Match; CEO Apologizes · · Score: 1

    Yet another tiresome example of the first class pig also known as Tyrannosaurus Executivus Capitus Vugaris. The greed of this disgusting species is breathtaking.

  11. common sense on Could Technology Create Modern-Day 'Leper Colonies'? · · Score: 2

    If wandering into a neighborhood means you are likely to get car-jacked or to have your skull caved in and you wallet taken, someone warning you not to go there is doing a service. If the local residents don't like the opprobrium, they can fix the problem. There is no right to behave like an animal and expect others to put up with it.

  12. Huh? on Bill Gates Seeking Patent To Make Shakespeare Less Boring · · Score: 1

    Shakespeare? Boring?? What?

  13. Go away health wowsers. on Excess Coffee May Be Linked To Early Death · · Score: 1

    Every god-damned week yet another contradictory finding comes out about health or nutrition by yet some other tiresome wowser. Here is my message wowsers: BUZZ OFF.

  14. Re:obviously a lie then on New Study Suggests No Shortage of American STEM Graduates · · Score: 2

    This is exactly right. The American business establishment has been busting down wages furiously since the '70s. This accounts for a big chunk of the huge wealth transfer to the "top 1%". Business has used illegal immigrants from the third world to lower the wages of semi and unskilled workers to very low levels in real terms. They do the same thing by hiring people from India and Russia on H1Bs to lower the wages of tech workers. This is a naked scheme of exploitation that has been going on for a very long time. It is abetted by both political parties; said parties are amply lubricated for their troubles.

  15. fascinating, Captain on Santorum Calls Democrats 'Anti-Science' · · Score: 1

    This .... from the arrantly anti-intellectual knownothing far-right republicans? The foolishness of Santorum's gibberings has me gasping for air.

  16. Epilepsy can be fatal on Programming Prodigy Arfa Karim Passes Away At 16 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes, epilepsy can be fatal. It can shut down the central nervous system, starve the brain and other vital organs of oxygen, causing death. That just happened here to a very promising young student here in North Carolina. I convey my condolences to the family. There is no crueler cut of life than having to bury a child.

  17. Re:Thank you on Dennis Ritchie, Creator of C Programming Language, Passed Away · · Score: 1

    Indeed. It lacks Java's paternalism.

  18. Thank you on Dennis Ritchie, Creator of C Programming Language, Passed Away · · Score: 1

    The elegance and minimality of the C language is a testament to the genius of its creators. Dennis Ritchie played a key role in the development of C and of UNIX. To him, I say, "thank you" for his roles in these great achievements. My sympathies to his family and his friends.

  19. Wait a minute!!! on Your State University Doesn't Want You · · Score: 1

    Electorates in almost every state have put people in office who have been hacking away at state university budgets. They are saying loudly and clearly, "We do not want to support the public university system. It is a bad use of our dollars." So, what do the universities do? They see that the support from the state is dropping precipitously, so they look for ways to stay solvent.

    If you are complaining about this, maybe you are the problem. Americans have asked for their state governments to be slashed. That isn't free. Now state services will be slashed too. The 20 kilobuck annual in-state tuition will be a reality by the end of the decade. No one seems to care about that. So grow up and live with your choices.

  20. useful and often ugly on The Great JavaScript Debate: Improve It Or Kill It · · Score: 1

    Debugging JavaScript is nightmarish. Code with flaws just fails to work. JavaScript's weak typing allows lots of errors to pass silently and create hours of frustrating work. Yes, it is the lingua franca of the web. But it can be frustrating, surly and opaque to work with.

  21. Re:Makes sense to me on Western Washington Univ. Considers Cutting Computer Science · · Score: 1

    Tell that to my students who have multiple job offers from places like SAS, Microsoft and Google.

  22. Re:I would support it if... on Draft Proposal Would Create Agency To Tax Cars By the Mile · · Score: 1

    This comment is right. To collect a mileage tax, a huge bureaucracy is needed and every vehicle must be read every year. How hard is it to disable an odometer? Not very. The incentive to cheat is massive. And the cheaters will win big.

    All the infrastructure needed to collect gas tax is in place. It does not involve every American filling out (yet) another tax form each year. No new enforcement apparatus is necessary. Gas usage is an excellent indicator of a driver's share of wear and tear on the roads. Do you really want to gob-smack Americans who drive fuel-efficient vehicles? This is a subsidy for the SUV set.

    Raise the gas tax for the legitimate cost of maintaining the roads. Most people know that bad roads are far more costly than gasoline. I used to spend over a grand a year on repairing the underside of my car whilst driving New Jersey's pothole-infested roads. Investing in such things as smart signals could save us all a lot of gas, anguish and money in the end.

    This is a solution in desperate search of a problem.

    Mr. Obama, kick it to the curb before it becomes a bludgeon with which the republicans will beat you fiercely. There are other ways for you to more productively spend energy and political capital.

  23. Welcome to North Carolina on Are We Too Reliant On GPS? · · Score: 1

    Here signs are illegible, missing, misleading or nonsensical because of our highly competent (heh-heh) DOT. No road goes in ANY direction here and, as a result, all navigation is point to point. Businesses and people do not put numbers on their houses or buildings. You are screwed without a GPS here.

  24. bah humbug! on Geek Culture Will Never Die...or Be Popular · · Score: 1

    Bah humbug! Geekdom may or may not pay attention to popular culture. Many of us geeks are totally indifferent and ignore this flatulent blast of stupidity. What is popular "culture" anyway? Tits wiggling on a video screen?? Stuff and nonsense.

  25. Huzzah! on Inventors of Unix Win Japan Prize · · Score: 1

    Congratulations to these two! It is richly deserved.