Oh, also, what sidewalk? I'm talking about country roads on the extreme east side of Tucson. Roads like Freeman, Tanque Verde Loop, Old Spanish Trail, et cetera. These are roads that have bike lanes in both directions, but very little shoulder beyond that. And certainly no sidewalks. This isn't the center of town, or whatever you're imagining, I'm talking about. Of course I run on the sidewalk where there is one. Anyway, your post is a major misfire. You assume multiple things that aren't true. I'm sorry to hear about your bad experiences.
Lol. Well, I run in the "correct" direction in the bicycle lane, with the flow of automotive and bicycle traffic. In this way, I'm no different than a slow moving bike. Seriously. Think about it. Yes, that's right: there are traffic complexities even within a bike lane!
It's been years since I've logged into Slashdot and commented, but I have to say a few words regarding cyclists. I live in Tucson, Arizona, one of the better cities in the U.S. as far as bicycle lanes and places for cyclists to ride. I don't ride a bicycle; I don't even own one. I'm a runner, and I often find myself running along the side of roads, including in bicycle lanes. Over the course of the last four years, I've never had a bicyclist who wasn't courteous, usually yelling "runner!" to those coming up behind them. Cyclists have always given me plenty of room, and I've heard plenty of "doing good!" and other comments of encouragement from them, as they pass me. Likewise in higher traffic areas, where there are traffic lights, cars and pedestrians, I've seen (with just a few exceptions) cyclists obey the traffic laws and ride courteously around pedestrians.
The problem, at least here in Tucson, isn't cyclists. The problem is the motorists. Somehow I get the feeling this is the case in every city in America.
Ok, over the last couple weeks, several stories have made their way into the news about cybersecurity.
These stories overstate the threat, and, in particular, only serve to loudly announce things which are already well known. For example, the fact that DoD systems are probed continuously by the Chinese. But! That's always been true. Where were all the alarming sounding news reports last year? Two years ago? Ten years ago? Where was Jay Rockefeller's Senate bill, S. 773, which aims to restrict Internet freedom in the United States in previous years? We can all expect the media heat to increase even more as the public is whipped into a frenzy of fear, and then comes to accept that we need the Federal Government to restrict our Internet freedom--for our own safety, of course!
As these stories come through Slashdot, we all bicker amongst ourselves as to how grave the threat is. Or where it's coming from. Or how we might combat it. It's so predictable. And while we're distracted with these irrelevant (although admittedly interesting in some cases) discussions, Senate and House bills are moving through our Congress right now which I consider to be "Patriot Acts" for the Internet. Nobody is talking about those, though.
We get what we deserve when we demand nothing at all.
I read a book not too long ago called Higher Order Perl, which highlights how natural functional programming in Perl is.
That's right. Perl has pretty nice syntactical support for functional programming, too. The object-oriented stuff is bolted on, clumsily, in my opinion. But functional Perl is just as natural as imperative Perl.
I've been writing Perl for eight years, although much less in the last few years, but this familiarity makes the transition from imperative (or what most programmers actually do, which is combine imperative and OOP styles, esp. in languages where the OOP part is bolted on, like Perl and PHP) to functional pretty simple.
I had meant to use functional Perl as a stepping stone to OCaml and Haskell. But now I'm having too much fun with functional Perl...there's just no way this can end well... =D
Well, the man obviously has some kind of inseperable bond to bad grammar. It must symbolize control for Taco, and to correct grammar is to "give in to the man." It's too bad he's chosen that battle, is all I can say, because it does create a genuine distraction for the reader. In the final analysis, as Ted Koppel would say, it's a negative for the site, not for any political reasons, but simply because the medium is the written word, the experience is linguistic in nature and mangled language is therefore a mangled experience. Now that's a very puritanical view, but some degree of that should be considered by anyone who writes to a user base of any size or any demographic.
Well, to the untrained Western ear, Asian accents sound essentially the same. But I can hear a German or a Russian or a French accent 10 miles away. It has to do with linguistic similarities. Same (mostly) alphabet and everything. And for the record, I can't tell a Western person's nationality by looking at them anymore than an Asian person. It's the accents, not the appearances, as you presume.
Oh, c'mon. That was a choice. A B.S. would have not allowed me to achieve minors in German and philosophy...without getting close to 170 credits. I had 150 as it was. But not taking a second course in physics and a chemistry lab hardly removes me from rigorous territory. It was also a choice to take so much computer science (which didn't advance my degree, strictly speaking). You might almost say I went to college to learn.
From the Article: "Find a way to teach engineering to verbally oriented students who can't learn math by sense of smell."
I've gone back and forth and back again on this...and right now I'm of the mind that if you can't learn math by sense of smell, well, na-na-na, hey-hey-hey goodbye. Nobody held my hand through Asian, Russian, German and Indian math and computer science profs and incompetent grad student assistants and a myriad of other difficulties (in getting a BA mathematics). Yeah, it's not a perfect world, but if this kid was half as smart as he thinks he is, he'd have made it despite any obstacles. I mean, he kept going on about being a "verbal" learner...and if you're out there, dude, math is not a "verbal" topic...just FYI.
Well right. But what I'm saying about Pi that makes it interesting is that it's both everything and nothing. It's lack of a pattern makes it (the digits, I mean) not that useful. Fascinating to obssessive types, of course, but that's about it.
But, it's also everything in the sense that if one would encode a language like English into numerals and then if one could somehow zoom to the appropriate sequence within Pi's digits, one would find, for instance, the Declaration of Independence.
That's an excellent point. I think; I don't really understand that much about physics.
If the digits in Pi are not random, they are at least completely unpredictable. Now, to a mathematician, I'm not sure there's a difference, but it might be significant in physics.
since computer programs aren't random, the encryption and decryption process is not random, and attempts to crack programs are not random. If the programs surrounding a Pi encoded message were truly random, then Pi might be more suitable than the program generated psuedo random numbers.
However, my point is simply this: if you as a programmer do nothing but code up spec, well there's not very much value in that any more, in terms of what the market will bear. Mind you, I believe strongly in supporting American IT workers myself, but that means squat. I'm seeing so much work go to Russia and other former USSR hotspots, it's just insane.
The best thing a technical person can do for their employer, and hence for themselves both in terms of respect and gratitude and monetary compensation, is to do extra things that add value to the bottom line.
For instance, if you're not involved in the analysis and design phase of software, maybe watch the market more closely so as to know what suggestions to make in terms of features and design. If you're not a programmer, then look into ways to add value by improving the company website; maybe freshen up some content, add an RSS feed, or look for ways to improve the aesthetics and page copy of a conversion page (such as a point of purchase page, for example). Look for ways to improve conversions from affiliate lead sources.
I know how easy it is to go "down the rabbit hole" when writing code. You get lost in the code. You dream about it; it's the only thing you think about. And it pretty much has to be that way. I try and periodically take some time off from writing code for short intervals specifically to come up for air, so to speak.
But most significantly, realize that everyone arrives at work precisely to add value to the company's bottom line. Everyone arrives at work in order to solve the problems to which they are assigned. There is certainly nothing unique about IT in that manner.
However, if you're truly being treated like a pariah, I would ask, who is responsible for "casting" you in such a unfavorable light? It could be office politics. And of course, there's always the chance that you're too much like the IT guy in those Jimmy Fallon SNL sketches.
Well, that's not really spam, per se. Spam is much more insideous than that. This is some gnarly blog spam. Just one example, and not even the most nefarious I've seen.
That's an interesting question, but I think they may be able to make a reasonable business model out of just the ads. That is, supposing they continue to have so much dominance. The ad model doesn't scale down too well, in terms of true viability and not "vacation money."
I've been singing the high praises of Urchin 6 (this is the promo piece) since I first saw it. Urchin 5 in and of itself is pretty addictive. The ROI tracking stuff and some of the other analyses that 6 provides will do wonders in terms of consolidating report generation and I suppose now AdSense and AdWords and things like that will be part of the package as well.
I for one, welcome our web analytics search data ROI overlords.
Is how there is absolutely ZERO discussion of the artists themselves. What do they want? Not even an issue. How can we help make sure they are supported and that we, the labels, can keep them as talent in our stable? Not an issue. And you'd think that second one would be; you'd think that the long term implications of keeping good talent happy and keeping consumers happy and buying would enter this thought process
The term I heard used today was "inducement." Basically, can it be argued that Grokster induces crime. I sure hope this thing is laughed out of court because, while I understand that physical world analogies fail and it's more complicated than a lot of folks will admit, the precedent that would be set if software is found to be inherently criminal would have the potential to set us into a freakin dark ages.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, also, what sidewalk? I'm talking about country roads on the extreme east side of Tucson. Roads like Freeman, Tanque Verde Loop, Old Spanish Trail, et cetera. These are roads that have bike lanes in both directions, but very little shoulder beyond that. And certainly no sidewalks. This isn't the center of town, or whatever you're imagining, I'm talking about. Of course I run on the sidewalk where there is one. Anyway, your post is a major misfire. You assume multiple things that aren't true. I'm sorry to hear about your bad experiences.
Lol. Well, I run in the "correct" direction in the bicycle lane, with the flow of automotive and bicycle traffic. In this way, I'm no different than a slow moving bike. Seriously. Think about it. Yes, that's right: there are traffic complexities even within a bike lane!
It's been years since I've logged into Slashdot and commented, but I have to say a few words regarding cyclists. I live in Tucson, Arizona, one of the better cities in the U.S. as far as bicycle lanes and places for cyclists to ride. I don't ride a bicycle; I don't even own one. I'm a runner, and I often find myself running along the side of roads, including in bicycle lanes. Over the course of the last four years, I've never had a bicyclist who wasn't courteous, usually yelling "runner!" to those coming up behind them. Cyclists have always given me plenty of room, and I've heard plenty of "doing good!" and other comments of encouragement from them, as they pass me. Likewise in higher traffic areas, where there are traffic lights, cars and pedestrians, I've seen (with just a few exceptions) cyclists obey the traffic laws and ride courteously around pedestrians. The problem, at least here in Tucson, isn't cyclists. The problem is the motorists. Somehow I get the feeling this is the case in every city in America.
about those torture memos with all this swine flu brouhaha, haven't we?
Ok, over the last couple weeks, several stories have made their way into the news about cybersecurity.
These stories overstate the threat, and, in particular, only serve to loudly announce things which are already well known. For example, the fact that DoD systems are probed continuously by the Chinese. But! That's always been true. Where were all the alarming sounding news reports last year? Two years ago? Ten years ago? Where was Jay Rockefeller's Senate bill, S. 773, which aims to restrict Internet freedom in the United States in previous years? We can all expect the media heat to increase even more as the public is whipped into a frenzy of fear, and then comes to accept that we need the Federal Government to restrict our Internet freedom--for our own safety, of course!
As these stories come through Slashdot, we all bicker amongst ourselves as to how grave the threat is. Or where it's coming from. Or how we might combat it. It's so predictable. And while we're distracted with these irrelevant (although admittedly interesting in some cases) discussions, Senate and House bills are moving through our Congress right now which I consider to be "Patriot Acts" for the Internet. Nobody is talking about those, though.
We get what we deserve when we demand nothing at all.
I read a book not too long ago called Higher Order Perl, which highlights how natural functional programming in Perl is. That's right. Perl has pretty nice syntactical support for functional programming, too. The object-oriented stuff is bolted on, clumsily, in my opinion. But functional Perl is just as natural as imperative Perl. I've been writing Perl for eight years, although much less in the last few years, but this familiarity makes the transition from imperative (or what most programmers actually do, which is combine imperative and OOP styles, esp. in languages where the OOP part is bolted on, like Perl and PHP) to functional pretty simple. I had meant to use functional Perl as a stepping stone to OCaml and Haskell. But now I'm having too much fun with functional Perl...there's just no way this can end well... =D
Where does the release of Chinese Democracy fit into this timeline? =D
That's true. What's more, stealing computer time was arguably much worse than stealing Gates' software since copying costs nobody anything.
Well, the man obviously has some kind of inseperable bond to bad grammar. It must symbolize control for Taco, and to correct grammar is to "give in to the man." It's too bad he's chosen that battle, is all I can say, because it does create a genuine distraction for the reader. In the final analysis, as Ted Koppel would say, it's a negative for the site, not for any political reasons, but simply because the medium is the written word, the experience is linguistic in nature and mangled language is therefore a mangled experience. Now that's a very puritanical view, but some degree of that should be considered by anyone who writes to a user base of any size or any demographic.
Well, to the untrained Western ear, Asian accents sound essentially the same. But I can hear a German or a Russian or a French accent 10 miles away. It has to do with linguistic similarities. Same (mostly) alphabet and everything. And for the record, I can't tell a Western person's nationality by looking at them anymore than an Asian person. It's the accents, not the appearances, as you presume.
Oh, c'mon. That was a choice. A B.S. would have not allowed me to achieve minors in German and philosophy...without getting close to 170 credits. I had 150 as it was. But not taking a second course in physics and a chemistry lab hardly removes me from rigorous territory. It was also a choice to take so much computer science (which didn't advance my degree, strictly speaking). You might almost say I went to college to learn.
From the Article: "Find a way to teach engineering to verbally oriented students who can't learn math by sense of smell."
I've gone back and forth and back again on this...and right now I'm of the mind that if you can't learn math by sense of smell, well, na-na-na, hey-hey-hey goodbye. Nobody held my hand through Asian, Russian, German and Indian math and computer science profs and incompetent grad student assistants and a myriad of other difficulties (in getting a BA mathematics). Yeah, it's not a perfect world, but if this kid was half as smart as he thinks he is, he'd have made it despite any obstacles. I mean, he kept going on about being a "verbal" learner...and if you're out there, dude, math is not a "verbal" topic...just FYI.
The NM plague fact sheet says bobcats and other predators can catch the plague from eating rodents.
Nintendo Patent Insanity
Well right. But what I'm saying about Pi that makes it interesting is that it's both everything and nothing. It's lack of a pattern makes it (the digits, I mean) not that useful. Fascinating to obssessive types, of course, but that's about it.
But, it's also everything in the sense that if one would encode a language like English into numerals and then if one could somehow zoom to the appropriate sequence within Pi's digits, one would find, for instance, the Declaration of Independence.
That's an excellent point. I think; I don't really understand that much about physics. If the digits in Pi are not random, they are at least completely unpredictable. Now, to a mathematician, I'm not sure there's a difference, but it might be significant in physics.
since computer programs aren't random, the encryption and decryption process is not random, and attempts to crack programs are not random. If the programs surrounding a Pi encoded message were truly random, then Pi might be more suitable than the program generated psuedo random numbers.
"Paris, what do you think of the OSS movement?"
"That's hot."
"Hot...Alright, what about the pengiun mascot, do you think it fits Linux or what are your feelings on that?"
"That's hot."
"Also....hot. OK, let me ask you this, what would you think of dinner with me tonight?"
"That's hot."
"Are you listening at all?"
"That's hot."
That can be true.
However, my point is simply this: if you as a programmer do nothing but code up spec, well there's not very much value in that any more, in terms of what the market will bear. Mind you, I believe strongly in supporting American IT workers myself, but that means squat. I'm seeing so much work go to Russia and other former USSR hotspots, it's just insane.
The best thing a technical person can do for their employer, and hence for themselves both in terms of respect and gratitude and monetary compensation, is to do extra things that add value to the bottom line.
For instance, if you're not involved in the analysis and design phase of software, maybe watch the market more closely so as to know what suggestions to make in terms of features and design. If you're not a programmer, then look into ways to add value by improving the company website; maybe freshen up some content, add an RSS feed, or look for ways to improve the aesthetics and page copy of a conversion page (such as a point of purchase page, for example). Look for ways to improve conversions from affiliate lead sources.
I know how easy it is to go "down the rabbit hole" when writing code. You get lost in the code. You dream about it; it's the only thing you think about. And it pretty much has to be that way. I try and periodically take some time off from writing code for short intervals specifically to come up for air, so to speak.
But most significantly, realize that everyone arrives at work precisely to add value to the company's bottom line. Everyone arrives at work in order to solve the problems to which they are assigned. There is certainly nothing unique about IT in that manner.
However, if you're truly being treated like a pariah, I would ask, who is responsible for "casting" you in such a unfavorable light? It could be office politics. And of course, there's always the chance that you're too much like the IT guy in those Jimmy Fallon SNL sketches.
Well, that's not really spam, per se. Spam is much more insideous than that. This is some gnarly blog spam. Just one example, and not even the most nefarious I've seen.
That's an interesting question, but I think they may be able to make a reasonable business model out of just the ads. That is, supposing they continue to have so much dominance. The ad model doesn't scale down too well, in terms of true viability and not "vacation money."
This leads me to wonder: what about blogger.com? There's just as much dubious "blogging" going on there as anywhere.
I've been singing the high praises of Urchin 6 (this is the promo piece) since I first saw it. Urchin 5 in and of itself is pretty addictive. The ROI tracking stuff and some of the other analyses that 6 provides will do wonders in terms of consolidating report generation and I suppose now AdSense and AdWords and things like that will be part of the package as well.
I for one, welcome our web analytics search data ROI overlords.
Is how there is absolutely ZERO discussion of the artists themselves. What do they want? Not even an issue. How can we help make sure they are supported and that we, the labels, can keep them as talent in our stable? Not an issue. And you'd think that second one would be; you'd think that the long term implications of keeping good talent happy and keeping consumers happy and buying would enter this thought process
The term I heard used today was "inducement." Basically, can it be argued that Grokster induces crime. I sure hope this thing is laughed out of court because, while I understand that physical world analogies fail and it's more complicated than a lot of folks will admit, the precedent that would be set if software is found to be inherently criminal would have the potential to set us into a freakin dark ages.
I mean, it's already happening.