Since we seem to be outsourcing our parenting into schools, why don't we go one step further and outsource teaching to India? Kids could dial a call-centre every day to get their new dose of government mandated knowledge for that day. This would save a ton of money we could then spend on invading random countries.
The only problem with this approach is that people in India would be too sensible to teach creationism as science.
Indeed. This is why skills which are hard to systematize tend to be a lot more valuable.
I spend a lot of time trying to tell undergraduate computer scientists that a lot of geeks can learn to code, but far fewer geeks can learn to communicate with people in order to find out what needs to be coded and that this is therefore a much more marketable skill. Of course, most don't listen.
People seem to be very sensitive about computers doing things they think only humans should be able to do. They dismiss defeating a chess grand master or the Turing Test as toy problems.
I did an AI degree in the mid 90s and one of the things we covered was the definition of intelligence. After running through a few unsatisfactory definitions, my conclusion was that people used intelligence to mean whatever could be done better by a human being than anything else...
Actually, my favourite definition of intelligence, partly because of its succinctness, is "productive laziness".
It's a bit of a pity that the more successful a source of information like Wikipedia becomes, the more likely it is that some twat is going to try and adopt it for their own ends.
Maybe they've got it backwards. Personally, I spend a lot of my day hitting the "check new mail" button - if somebody mails me, I can respond to that, rather than doing actual work.
but, if we talk about managed languages, I'd go straight for Python or Common Lisp.
I've heard a few people saying this. Is Common Lisp really an industrial strength development tool? I thought it was just for functional programming acolytes and emacs power users.
I live on the small Northern European island. Maybe this is because of the "special relationship" but I feel sad about what is happening to the US. They genuinely saved the day in WW2 and they've been trying to recapture that moment of glory ever since. Some of their efforts have been successful but several high profile failures have cost them their reputation, as well as a great deal of money.
For all their failings, I believe that the things the US ostensibly stands for - liberty, equality and the belief that you can achieve anything if you work for it - are a good role model for the world. I feel a little nervous about a world where the US has allowed stupid leaders to bleed away all their power and we have to find another buttress against the casual cruelty of China and a resurgent Russia.
I met a graphic designer on a train a few months ago who said that Indian design companies were using European designers to get there processes in place. They would invite these people over on favourable contracts and find out everything about how a design company should be run. The deals were often not as favourable as the designers first thought, but by the time they'd left their host company had already learned an awful lot from them.
This woman was a bit paranoid and anti-foreign but it did have a hint of plausibility about it.
I guess it's all a continuous cycle. I wonder whether within my lifetime, the US will go from world dominance to scratching around for a world role. It only took about 40 years for the British Empire to go from "sun never setting" to "small island in Northern Europe".
It used to be the case that good programmers were relatively scarce and that if you had a good CS degree, you could be guaranteed a good job. Now, China and India are packed to the gunwhales with programmers and other technology people who are just as capable of producing cutting edges technology and willing to work at a fraction of the cost.
This must be true in other modern disciplines as well. How are the Western economies ever going to compete, once the East gets properly established?
I agree with this very much. Adverts try to persuade us that we can buy our way to happiness, but actually (mega cliche approaching) the best things in life are free.
I like all your examples of things to do as well, although I'm not all that keen on brothels.
Big butts and missing teeth were also common for that era.
Isn't it great how we can rue the fact that nobody wants to have sex with us geeks even though we're ever-so-smart yet at the same time get hung up on whether women have big butts or missing teeth?
I'm not having a go at you particularly - I think most geeks think like this.
In the Victorian era, the celebrities of the time were engineers and scientists - the people who shaped the world, rather than the vapid, talentless bimbos we celebrate today. We can only hope that at some point in the future, it will once again be cool to be smart.
Man, I wish I was born in the Victorian era. Sigh.
That's preposterous. How do you explain the large number of hard-core computing people who are converting to Mac because they like the balance between usability and Unix?
I regard the drones who buy a Dell machine with Vista as a good deal more trance-like than somebody "thinking different".
What really depresses me is seeing the general public in interview and their complacency and dismissiveness about global climate change. People's sense of entitlement is astonishing: "I work hard so I have the right to a low-cost long-haul flight," even if we've done without that "right" for thousands of years and those flights are ultimately destroying the planet.
There is also the huge number of people who believe that the consensus of thousands of scientists on climate change is a "global conspiracy" and their fear that it may eventually mean, shock horror, more taxes. This from people who will never know hunger, get free education and health care and live in the extreme safety and tranquiltiy of a developed nation. If you think I'm making this up, try looking at the "Have Your Say" debates on the BBC News web page.
It really is enough to make me think this is a good idea.
I suppose this is probably a hoary old chestnut, but I always wonder how long we can be kept on the upgrade band-wagon. Up until quite recently, I ran a Windows 98 machine because it did most of the things I needed it to do. I could connect to the web, make SSH connections, write Word documents and play (older) games. It also had a really small install and ran on a crappy old machine.
For people who don't need the latest and greatest hardware support, where is the motivation to upgrade at all? I suppose there are probably security issues with the older Windows versions, but I think you can avoid a lot of this by being careful; something which will probably still be necessary with Windows 2060.
This argument applies even further with application software like Word. I'm not sure I've noticed any of Word's new features since they started underlining my spelling errors, and yet there have been quite a few major (expensive) version since then. Other than version incompatibility and the fact that everybody else is upgrading, why do we need a new version?
Great attitude there, buddy. I'm sure it's that kind of "can-do" spirit which helped the US to come to the forefront of technology... and then start dropping behind again as they get complacent.
It's a bit like the auto-market. Lobbying congress to stop them imposing stricter fuel restrictions has meant that many US made cars are illegal everywhere else in the world. Anybody who doesn't like it can damn well buy something else... so they do. In huge numbers.
(Yes, I know this example is from An Inconvenient Truth. Just because Al Gore is a bit sanctimonious doesn't mean he's wrong).
Flamebait? What the fuck is wrong with you?? All he did was state an opinion! But of course on Slashdot we can't stand even mild criticism of the blessed-OS-of-the-enlightened-ones.
If Linux won the desktop war and got 100% share, what on earth would people on Slashdot talk about? Probably how it was all much better when Linux was exclusive and we didn't have to put up with so many n00bs. Or we'd all start using BSD instead to prove how l33t we are.
I gather Qantas are under a lot of pressure from Emirates for popular Europe-Australia routes. Emirates have a young fleet with very good facilities - the best on-demand system I've seen anyway. Some people have complained that Emirates takes subsidies from the sheikhs of Dubai, although the Wikipedia page for Emirates says that this is not the case.
I think Bill Moyers said it best when he said this:
"[Ruper Murdoch] worst offense with Fox news is not even its baldly partisan agenda. Far worse is the travesty he's made of its journalism. Fox news huffs and puffs, pontificates and proclaims, but does little serious original reporting."
Slashdot Mirror
Since we seem to be outsourcing our parenting into schools, why don't we go one step further and outsource teaching to India? Kids could dial a call-centre every day to get their new dose of government mandated knowledge for that day. This would save a ton of money we could then spend on invading random countries.
The only problem with this approach is that people in India would be too sensible to teach creationism as science.
Peter
It's much easier to measure bad communication skills ("hey, that guy is a dick") than bad code ("well, it seems to work at the moment").
Peter
I certainly wish I could spend more of my time talking to people who don't enjoy coding more than they enjoy talking to people.
Sigh.
Peter
Indeed. This is why skills which are hard to systematize tend to be a lot more valuable.
I spend a lot of time trying to tell undergraduate computer scientists that a lot of geeks can learn to code, but far fewer geeks can learn to communicate with people in order to find out what needs to be coded and that this is therefore a much more marketable skill. Of course, most don't listen.
Peter
People seem to be very sensitive about computers doing things they think only humans should be able to do. They dismiss defeating a chess grand master or the Turing Test as toy problems.
I did an AI degree in the mid 90s and one of the things we covered was the definition of intelligence. After running through a few unsatisfactory definitions, my conclusion was that people used intelligence to mean whatever could be done better by a human being than anything else...
Actually, my favourite definition of intelligence, partly because of its succinctness, is "productive laziness".
Peter
It's a bit of a pity that the more successful a source of information like Wikipedia becomes, the more likely it is that some twat is going to try and adopt it for their own ends.
Peter
Maybe they've got it backwards. Personally, I spend a lot of my day hitting the "check new mail" button - if somebody mails me, I can respond to that, rather than doing actual work.
Peter
but, if we talk about managed languages, I'd go straight for Python or Common Lisp.
I've heard a few people saying this. Is Common Lisp really an industrial strength development tool? I thought it was just for functional programming acolytes and emacs power users.
Peter
I live on the small Northern European island. Maybe this is because of the "special relationship" but I feel sad about what is happening to the US. They genuinely saved the day in WW2 and they've been trying to recapture that moment of glory ever since. Some of their efforts have been successful but several high profile failures have cost them their reputation, as well as a great deal of money.
For all their failings, I believe that the things the US ostensibly stands for - liberty, equality and the belief that you can achieve anything if you work for it - are a good role model for the world. I feel a little nervous about a world where the US has allowed stupid leaders to bleed away all their power and we have to find another buttress against the casual cruelty of China and a resurgent Russia.
Peter
I met a graphic designer on a train a few months ago who said that Indian design companies were using European designers to get there processes in place. They would invite these people over on favourable contracts and find out everything about how a design company should be run. The deals were often not as favourable as the designers first thought, but by the time they'd left their host company had already learned an awful lot from them.
This woman was a bit paranoid and anti-foreign but it did have a hint of plausibility about it.
I guess it's all a continuous cycle. I wonder whether within my lifetime, the US will go from world dominance to scratching around for a world role. It only took about 40 years for the British Empire to go from "sun never setting" to "small island in Northern Europe".
Peter
It used to be the case that good programmers were relatively scarce and that if you had a good CS degree, you could be guaranteed a good job. Now, China and India are packed to the gunwhales with programmers and other technology people who are just as capable of producing cutting edges technology and willing to work at a fraction of the cost.
This must be true in other modern disciplines as well. How are the Western economies ever going to compete, once the East gets properly established?
Peter
I agree with this very much. Adverts try to persuade us that we can buy our way to happiness, but actually (mega cliche approaching) the best things in life are free.
I like all your examples of things to do as well, although I'm not all that keen on brothels.
Peter
Big butts and missing teeth were also common for that era.
Isn't it great how we can rue the fact that nobody wants to have sex with us geeks even though we're ever-so-smart yet at the same time get hung up on whether women have big butts or missing teeth?
I'm not having a go at you particularly - I think most geeks think like this.
Peter
In the Victorian era, the celebrities of the time were engineers and scientists - the people who shaped the world, rather than the vapid, talentless bimbos we celebrate today. We can only hope that at some point in the future, it will once again be cool to be smart.
Man, I wish I was born in the Victorian era. Sigh.
Peter
That's preposterous. How do you explain the large number of hard-core computing people who are converting to Mac because they like the balance between usability and Unix?
I regard the drones who buy a Dell machine with Vista as a good deal more trance-like than somebody "thinking different".
Peter
Does this mean that turtle neck wearing goatie bearded design weenies will start calling themselves Unix geeks?
Peter
Many thanks for this. My office-mates now use this as the catch-all reply to any of my "the world sucks" type rants.
Peter
Anybody can have a supercomputer on the cheap because the definition of supercomputer changes every 3 seconds.
Peter
What really depresses me is seeing the general public in interview and their complacency and dismissiveness about global climate change. People's sense of entitlement is astonishing: "I work hard so I have the right to a low-cost long-haul flight," even if we've done without that "right" for thousands of years and those flights are ultimately destroying the planet.
There is also the huge number of people who believe that the consensus of thousands of scientists on climate change is a "global conspiracy" and their fear that it may eventually mean, shock horror, more taxes. This from people who will never know hunger, get free education and health care and live in the extreme safety and tranquiltiy of a developed nation. If you think I'm making this up, try looking at the "Have Your Say" debates on the BBC News web page.
It really is enough to make me think this is a good idea.
Peter
I suppose this is probably a hoary old chestnut, but I always wonder how long we can be kept on the upgrade band-wagon. Up until quite recently, I ran a Windows 98 machine because it did most of the things I needed it to do. I could connect to the web, make SSH connections, write Word documents and play (older) games. It also had a really small install and ran on a crappy old machine.
For people who don't need the latest and greatest hardware support, where is the motivation to upgrade at all? I suppose there are probably security issues with the older Windows versions, but I think you can avoid a lot of this by being careful; something which will probably still be necessary with Windows 2060.
This argument applies even further with application software like Word. I'm not sure I've noticed any of Word's new features since they started underlining my spelling errors, and yet there have been quite a few major (expensive) version since then. Other than version incompatibility and the fact that everybody else is upgrading, why do we need a new version?
Peter
Great attitude there, buddy. I'm sure it's that kind of "can-do" spirit which helped the US to come to the forefront of technology... and then start dropping behind again as they get complacent.
It's a bit like the auto-market. Lobbying congress to stop them imposing stricter fuel restrictions has meant that many US made cars are illegal everywhere else in the world. Anybody who doesn't like it can damn well buy something else... so they do. In huge numbers.
(Yes, I know this example is from An Inconvenient Truth. Just because Al Gore is a bit sanctimonious doesn't mean he's wrong).
Peter
Flamebait? What the fuck is wrong with you?? All he did was state an opinion! But of course on Slashdot we can't stand even mild criticism of the blessed-OS-of-the-enlightened-ones.
If Linux won the desktop war and got 100% share, what on earth would people on Slashdot talk about? Probably how it was all much better when Linux was exclusive and we didn't have to put up with so many n00bs. Or we'd all start using BSD instead to prove how l33t we are.
Peter
I gather Qantas are under a lot of pressure from Emirates for popular Europe-Australia routes. Emirates have a young fleet with very good facilities - the best on-demand system I've seen anyway. Some people have complained that Emirates takes subsidies from the sheikhs of Dubai, although the Wikipedia page for Emirates says that this is not the case.
Peter
Well done GOP propaganda drone. Have a cookie.
I think Bill Moyers said it best when he said this:
"[Ruper Murdoch] worst offense with Fox news is not even its baldly partisan agenda. Far worse is the travesty he's made of its journalism. Fox news huffs and puffs, pontificates and proclaims, but does little serious original reporting."
Peter
As a side benefit, you become a proficient player of the penny whistle.
Peter