heh, nice catch, it should have been 'cite'. I blame my lack of sleep this weekend for such a silly mistake. On the bright side, the lack of sleep was caused by the presence of a newly rescued dog. New Dog > Sleep.
it's not about downloading a song. The price of downloaded music is well established at $0.99 (or less). DISTRIBUTING is the issue and unless she has logs which show exactly how many times she distributed it, she can fuck off.
Actually, if this case is like many of the others, and the RIAA has proof that she distributed the song to Media Sentry, then they have proof that she distributed the content to 1 other person, a single copy right violation.
It's just a civil case, so they don't have to prove absolutely that she distributed to hundreds of people, but they have to make some effort at showing that there were more distributions than just the single unauthorized distribution that they authorized...
Because the default page is set to Index.PHP, the theme system in the HTML sites an open source PHP theme tool, the content of the body sites another PHP based CMS...
I'm assuming the rest of your post is written using some blend of cliche, sarcasm, and humor, so I'll leave that to a chuckle;)
Virgin Founder, Sir Richard Branson and SpaceShipOne designer, Burt Rutan, today pulled back the hangar doors on the new WhiteKnightTwo (WK2) carrier aircraft that will ferry SpaceShipTwo and thousands of private astronauts, science packages and payload on the first stage of the Virgin Galactic sub-orbital space experience.
The rollout represents another major milestone in Virgin Galactic's quest to launch the world's first private, environmentally benign, space access system for people, payload and science.
Christened "EVE" in honor of Sir Richard's mother, who performed the official naming ceremony, WK2 is both visually remarkable and represents ground-breaking aerospace technology. It is the world's largest all carbon composite aircraft and many of its component parts have been built using composite materials for the very first time. At 140 ft, the wing spar is the longest single carbon composite aviation component ever manufactured.
Driven by a demanding performance specification set by Virgin Galactic, WK2 has a unique heavy lift, high altitude capability and an open architecture driven design which provides for maximum versatility in the weight, mass and volume of its payload potential. It has the power, strength and maneuverability to provide for pre space-flight, positive G force and zero G astronaut training as well as a lift capability which is over 30% greater than that represented by a fully crewed SpaceShipTwo. The vehicle has a maximum altitude over 50,000 ft and its U.S. coast-to-coast range will allow the spaceship to be ferried on long duration flights.
An all carbon composite vehicle of this size represents a giant leap for a material technology that has already been identified as a key contributor to the increasingly urgent requirement by the commercial aviation sector for dramatically more fuel efficient aircraft. Powered by four Pratt and Whitney PW308A engines, which are amongst the most powerful, economic and efficient available, WK2 is a mold breaker in carbon efficiency and the epitome of 21st century aerospace design and technology.
The twin fuselage and central payload area configuration allow for easy access to WK2 and to the spaceship for passengers and crew; the design also aids operational efficiencies and turnaround times. WK2 will be able to support up to four daily space flights, is able to carry out both day and night time operations and is equipped with a package of highly advanced avionics.
1. believe me, PHP by itself runs on more webservers and sites than all the.NET languages put together. Probably more than.NET languages and ASP/classic too!
As I stated, change the metrics and you can get what ever answer you like. Open the poll to all applications, not just web sites, and.Net (especially if you combine ASP/classic stuff too) pushes even better. Limit it back to Open Source projects, and the MS tools drop significantly. Look at closed source solutions, and MS dominates. Like I said, you can look at any specific segment of the programming world and see a skew.
2. Silverlight is a client-side technology. IIS/apache doesn't come into it. A silverlight discussion would be MS supporting it on Firefox on Linux.
I actually do all of my silverlight development using Firefox.;) But what would be nice is WCF/ASP.Net server side on Apache, I should have clarified on that in my initial post, but Silverlight is way more entertaining to talk about;)
3. MS is the market leader only in certain segments of the IT marketplace. For webserving, Apache has been dominant for, well, since forever. MS is catchign up as they provide 'incentives' for some providers - eg Myspace, GoDaddy etc, which you'll see on the netcraft stats.
Very true! But MS/IIS has some great tools and features that Apache is lacking, namely, ease of configuration and maintenance. Apache has improved a lot over the years, and I still prefer it for it's stability and scalability. But honestly, the IIS server I've been working off of for the last year and a half hasn't given me a single issue. And I love the fact that MS's drive to make inroads in the web serving market is forcing them to improve IIS. Just as Apple's resurgence in the PC realm is forcing them to improve Windows (even if Vista missed the mark).
4. The problem is that you'd never get.NET on Linux, which is Apache's native platform. Though Apache runs on Windows I guess MS may be trying to get developers to program in.NET using Apache and they be as locked in to Windows server platform as if they had stuck with IIS. I think this is the goal for this sponsorship.
Actually, there is the Mono project, which seems to be getting a decent bit of positive attention from MS. And there is also the Moonlight project, which is aiming to bring Silverlight to Linux as well, although I'm not of it's state or scope.
If you choose PHP then you can choose any platform you like.
I like PHP, it's a handy language for putting together websites and CMS sites. Would I use it to create a web based desktop application? not a chance. Same for Javascript/Flash, a great combination, and it makes some tasks impressively simple, but it falls flat on it's face for more complex systems. Sure, you could develop significant applications using it, but it would be a nightmere (IMO) to maintain. Silverlight is also not a cure-all invention, but it does give me access to a solid vector based graphics system, an amazing multi-media library, a huge portion of the.Net library, and integrated support for ASP.Net web services. It is no where near as refined as the desktop environment, but for a beta product, it's not bad. And the Beta 2 release added a lot of the tools and refinements that Beta 1 was missing. If they continue on their current path, the production release will be something pretty impressive.
Oh yeah, I drank that coolaide. But I'll keep browsing in FF, writing in Open Office, and a copy of Sharp Dev handy just incase MS tries to screw me;)
excuse me, but if you say this, i have no option but laughing over it with my ass. i dont know any decent way to put it. youre totally unaware of what the web is built with.
Okay, so it was a slight hyperbole;) The combined presence of VB.Net/C#/ASP.Net and the rest of the.Net language does by most measures, out weigh PHP, Ruby, or Pearl individually in terms of distribution and use. But it's all arm chair statistics anyway, change the metrics and you can easily show any single element out performing any other single element.
The point, hyperbole aside, still stands. Do you feel that if a product is of lesser popularity, it should be forsaken in favor of the market leader?
Should MS drop the idea of Silverlight all together because you can do much of the same functionality with a combination of javascript and flash, and that is currently the most popular way to fulfill that functionality?
Should MS drop IIS all together because Apache is the market leader?
Should Mozilla just pack it up and go home because IE is the market leader?
Should all of the Linux distro call it quits because Windows is the market leader?
In all cases, the answer is NO. A wide variety of tools, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, gives us the best opportunity to pick the correct one for any given situation. If, by investing in the Apache community, MS manages to get better.Net and Silverlight functionality on Apache, it gives us yet another option for tools to use.
I'm failing to see how this would be a bad thing(tm). MS gets their tools on another plat form, the Apache community gets a free lunch, so to say, and us developers get more options. Like I said above, so long as MS's "contributions" to Apache do not result in closed source code, I'm all for it.
So you are saying we should scratch PHP, Ruby, and Pearl off as well because they don't have nearly the penetration or recognition of.Net?
Silverlight 2* is still pretty low-key, but it's in Beta (a real beta, not the "this thing isn't ever going to leave beta" definition that Google likes to use). But I keep hearing more and more bounce back from developers, and the head hunters are starting to pick up on it too. When SL2 is released, it's going to rally up some decent press, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if MS's goal here is to push for SL support on Apache.
-Rick
*Silverlight 1/1.1 is in production, but it was create more as a feasibility study, the attention it drew was sufficient to motivate MS into doing a full managed code version: Silverlight 2. And it is on its way to becoming quite a nice product!
So they're using the court system to figure out who to punish for doing something entirely legal?
I could see it if Daniel was under contract for the tickets, but if they just give him tickets with no stipulations, why should they get to enjoy the power of the courts and tax payer funding?
Wouldn't it have been cheaper just to buy the tickets off the guy, and as soon as you find out who is selling them, negate those tickets, then, as the buyer, refuse to pay for the now worthless tickets?
Woh, no money, no lawyers, and the seller gets screwed out of his tickets for trying to sell them. Done.
So let me get this straight... you are lobbying for an elimination of competition, collusion, and handing a controlling interest of Apache over to MS?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for compatibility between IIS and Apache, but to beg for either one of them to get snuffed out seems like an awfully huge risk.
36 miles to a large grocery store. One with highly competitive prices and a much larger selection.
We have a decent sized grocery store in town, maybe 2-3 miles away. The prices are a bit higher, and the selection isn't quite as nice, but we can manage to feed ourselves from it. But any time we are looking for something specific that is out side of the most profitable lines, it means driving in to the larger store.
And we have a little quicky-mart 3 blocks away we can go to for milk and bread, but it costs twice as much there as the place 3 miles away.
I'd say this situation is very common in the US. Sure, inside a larger city you will be closer to all of the standard services, but if you live in a smaller community, or out in the country, you deal with lesser services, or you drive to the larger cities for greater services.
And then you have to balance out the cost differences. Is the additional fuel I burn going an extra 30 miles to the larger store going to cost more than the savings I get from paying less for my groceries?
For the vast majority of Americans, the word "go" is synonymous with "drive".
There are some exceptions though, public transportation is decent in some areas. When I lived in Washington, DC, I only ever drove in town when I was going out to party (return trips were after the metro shut down for the night). But almost everything else I did I could walk or take the metro system for. I had some friends from New York city who said they hated having a car, parking was impossible, and when someone stole their car after 3 months of living in an apartment, they took the insurance money and just stuck to the subway and buses.
It's a matter of semantics. It implies that the category of "programming" is lesser to the category of "computer scientist" because it has a lower requirement of math.
It's about the difference between saying, "I don't care for your favorite band's music" and "Your favorite band sucks". Both mean the same thing, but the phrasing of one was designed to be inflammatory and insulting.
In any case, even if you reword his initial statement in a non-inflammatory way, such as saying "programming has a lower requirement level in knowledge and practical ability of mathematics..." I would still argue that such a statement is false.
Both the fields of "programming" and computer science are so incredibly broad, such a generalization is almost guaranteed to be false even with out further investigation. And even just a cursory glance through a handful of "programming" careers can show you just how critical a high level understanding of mathematics is.
LOL, I'll admit it, I had to google 'Chelsea tractors';)
I've never been to the UK, but I did spend a bit of time in Germany and a year in Japan. All in all, driving in the US vs driving in Germany (Frankfurt) and Japan is looked at in entirely different lights.
For example, my round trip commute is 64 miles. Even in my VW Golf TDI I'm still looking at about 1.5 gallons a day and that's if I go straight to and from work. Going to a theater is a 40 mile round trip. Going to a large grocery is a 36 mile trip.
When I was in Germany, the family I lived with had 1 car, and it was only driven on rainy days and weekends. Every other day it was bicycles and foot. I walked to school, I walked to the train station, I walked to the beer gardens.... mmm beer gardens... where was I? Oh yeah, the whole time I was in Germany, I think I road in a car maybe 5 times, twice for the air port, once to head to Bavaria, again to head for France, and one other time that had little to do with driving;) So even though gas was twice as expensive as I was use to (I think it was about 1.30DM/l) we drove so little that it didn't matter.
Same thing in Japan. I road in a car twice the whole time I was in Japan. Everything else was walking or mass/arranged transit.
So driving a 12MPG hog sucks, but driving it 10 miles round trip or only on weekends isn't nearly as bad as racking up 15,000 miles a year commuting here in the US. Sure, some people can afford $3000-5000 annual gas bills, but me? I'd much rather dive something that cuts that bill way back, even if it is function over form.
Eh, the market sustained $4/gallon US average. There is no reason for the price to drop below that unless consumption drops due to life style impact or competition.
None of them suck at math. But that's not the OP's point.
Funny, the line "You can only get away with being a programmer while sucking at math" sure sounds like he is implying that programmers suck at math.
A game developer can get away with not knowing about texture models and normal maps because the people at Unreal have done the hard work already.
A game developer, in this case, I'll assume you are actually refering to a 3-d modeler or artist, is not a programmer. The person who wrote the normals calculation engine for the UT game engine how ever, IS a programmer, not a computer scientist.
A person who writes Excel scripts for an accounting division can be forgiven for forgetting how to optimally calculate a standard deviation, because the folks have Microsoft has taken care of it.
Again, making a spread sheet in Excel does not make you a programmer. Some of the greatest Excel masters I know are actually research scientists and haven't a clue when it comes to programming. How ever, the programmers who developed Excel, including the person responsible for implementing the standard deviation formula, were programmers, not scientists. The formula for standard deviation had been hypothesized, tested, and proven long before computers had been invented.
Its like asking, "Who's better at tennis, the average member of the USTA or the average member of the general public?"
I would liken that statement to this one: "Who's better at making bad analogies, a brick, or a nuclear submarine?"
What you are describing is an algae reactor, and yes, they have many perks as far as control and purity of the algae over raceway ponds. They have one significant down side though; Cost. Ponds can be build for a fraction of the cost, and at a much larger volume. Unfortunately, you're not going to fit an algae pond next to a power plant in NY City.
It's all relatively new stuff, so there haven't been a whole lot of published studies on cost analysis and feasibility. The investment cost is huge and at this point, the pay off is not guaranteed as it is still an untested technology (at large scale). So adoption is slow:/
My objection was not with his point 1. My object was to:
You can only get away with being a programmer while sucking at math because of the many layers of abstractions that have been built on top of the math. The math is still at the bottom, but we now have higher-level, more right-brained ways of expressing that math.
Which implies that Computer Scientists are better at math, and that programmers as a whole, suck at math.
Which is hardly true. Tell the computer programmers who wrote the physics engine for Unreal that they suck at math. Tell the computer programmers actively working on getting raytracing engines into the main stream that they suck at math. Tell the computer programmers working on accounting applications tracking billions of dollars through complex business requirements that they suck at math.
A nice response, I agree with much of what you said, with one exception:
and mechanics and automobile designers both work with cars.
I don't believe that accurate describes the correlation between Programmers and Computer Scientists.
The 'Computer Scientist' of the automobile industry are the material engineers that determine what compounds to make components out of to best perform their specific duty. For instance, designing a ceramic piston to replace a traditional steal one in high compression non-nitrous engines, or developing an aluminum block with steal sleeves to replace traditional cast iron block, or designing a 2nd catalytic converter to take advantage of a lower temperature with a different chemical reaction to reduce emissions. None of those tasks require any significant knowledge of the automobile as a whole, but do require significant knowledge of their specific scientific field.
The 'Computer Programmer' of the automobile industry are the vehicle designers. They take the tools and devices the 'Computer Scientists' have made available to them and build something whole and functional out of it.
The 'Application Administrators' and 'Support' are the rough equivalent of the Mechanics of the automobile industry. Sure, if there's a design problem, they'll kick it back up to the programmers, but for configuration and maintenance, they handle the bulk of it.
My apologies for being confrontational, I've met my fair share of egotistical 'computer scientists' who were so proud of their brand new' life altering' linked list logic... So usually when people pull out the "programmers are lesser than computer scientists" argument, I jump to the defensive side;)
A prototypical CS problem is "Traveling Salesman". Writing a program to route a salesman over a series of cities would be a programming problem.
Actually, the Traveling Salesman is a logic problem, and has been completed many times on paper long before it became an academic tool for making CS students sweat out writing a process to execute a series of known formulas.
I think the 12 hungry philosophers with 11 spoons is much better example of a prototypical CS problem as it involves a specific set of logic, multi-threading, locks, and requires significantly more knowledge about the language you are working with than the Traveling Salesman example.
My original post may have been poorly worded, but the intent remains. A "computer scientist" is not a better programmer than a "software developer". I can introduce you to good and bad developers inside academia, in public service/military, and in the private sector. I also feel that the term "computer scientist" is grossly abused.
If I recall correctly, the 230 MPG rating was based on the Plug-in electric/gas hybrid.
The challenge of determining the actual MPG of a PE/Gas hybrid is that when you start driving, you are running almost entirely off of electric, and as you drive longer and longer, the gas engine has to contribute more and more.
So on a 1 mile drive, where the engine never even turns on, you are driving a an infinite MPG, but obviously, this isn't a practical way to advertise the car. I believe the 230 MPG number was taken at about 100-150 miles and was based on average commutes. So if you drive it LESS than 100 miles, you'll get more than 230 MPG, if you drive it more than 150 miles between recharging, you'll get less than 230 MPG. If I recall correctly, it bottomed out at ~100MPG after 300 miles of driving, but driving it on Gas alone I have a feeling would not be a pleasant experience (the words 'gutless-pig' come to mind).
Actually, all that math is an abstraction of electronics, and electronics is just an abstraction of physics.
So "researchers" are no more Computer Scientist that "programmers" are because neither of them comprehend the entirety of the physics that are driving the electrons that make it possible for that computer to do the math that has been abstracted to a high level 'English-like' readable language./sarcasm
Really, intra-software industry pissing matches are just humorous. There is no significant difference in skill levels of programmers and researchers. Only the knowledge of the application's focus changes. And for as complex as modeling some new mathematical equation may be, I can present you with a mile long list of tax codes, international trade law, federal regulation, incentive programs, etc... that can make a "simple" accounting program just as complex.
I'm part of the 'OMGFOURFIFTYAFUCKINGGALLON' group, and I'm okay with its appearance. Paint it black, throw a skull and flame job on it, and I'll drive it.
The question that pops into my mind after reading your post is:
Would you shop at "Ye Ole' Nike Blacksmith"? Would you venture forth to save Prince Sony? Would you have the intestinal fortitude to sit at an inn with architectural features and iconography identical to that of a Pizza Hut?
If there were integrated marketing merged into these free games, would you still be willing to play them (for free of course). Knowing that your viewing of integrated advertisement would be offsetting the server side costs?
Slashdot Mirror
heh, nice catch, it should have been 'cite'. I blame my lack of sleep this weekend for such a silly mistake. On the bright side, the lack of sleep was caused by the presence of a newly rescued dog. New Dog > Sleep.
-Rick
it's not about downloading a song. The price of downloaded music is well established at $0.99 (or less). DISTRIBUTING is the issue and unless she has logs which show exactly how many times she distributed it, she can fuck off.
Actually, if this case is like many of the others, and the RIAA has proof that she distributed the song to Media Sentry, then they have proof that she distributed the content to 1 other person, a single copy right violation.
It's just a civil case, so they don't have to prove absolutely that she distributed to hundreds of people, but they have to make some effort at showing that there were more distributions than just the single unauthorized distribution that they authorized...
-Rick
How do you know?
Because the default page is set to Index.PHP, the theme system in the HTML sites an open source PHP theme tool, the content of the body sites another PHP based CMS...
I'm assuming the rest of your post is written using some blend of cliche, sarcasm, and humor, so I'll leave that to a chuckle ;)
-Rick
The site seems to have been built using .NET, so it may be a record, but is hardly surprising.
The site is written in PHP, not .Net.
-Rick
The text came up fine for me, even most of the images were available after a few refreshes. TFA as follows:
(Virgin Galactic) - WhiteKnightTwo launch vehicle for SpaceShipTwo heralds a new era in aerospace fuel efficiency, performance and versatility
http://www.virgingalactic.com/pressftp/content/Presspacks/VMSeveBransonRutan_thumb.jpg
Mojave Air and Spaceport, California
Virgin Founder, Sir Richard Branson and SpaceShipOne designer, Burt Rutan, today pulled back the hangar doors on the new WhiteKnightTwo (WK2) carrier aircraft that will ferry SpaceShipTwo and thousands of private astronauts, science packages and payload on the first stage of the Virgin Galactic sub-orbital space experience.
http://www.virgingalactic.com/pressftp/content/Presspacks/VMS%20Eve%20tow_thumb.jpg
The rollout represents another major milestone in Virgin Galactic's quest to launch the world's first private, environmentally benign, space access system for people, payload and science.
http://www.virgingalactic.com/pressftp/content/Presspacks/In%20Air%20Banking_thumb.jpg
Christened "EVE" in honor of Sir Richard's mother, who performed the official naming ceremony, WK2 is both visually remarkable and represents ground-breaking aerospace technology. It is the world's largest all carbon composite aircraft and many of its component parts have been built using composite materials for the very first time. At 140 ft, the wing spar is the longest single carbon composite aviation component ever manufactured.
http://www.virgingalactic.com/pressftp/content/Presspacks/VMS%20Eve%20rollout_thumb.jpg
Driven by a demanding performance specification set by Virgin Galactic, WK2 has a unique heavy lift, high altitude capability and an open architecture driven design which provides for maximum versatility in the weight, mass and volume of its payload potential. It has the power, strength and maneuverability to provide for pre space-flight, positive G force and zero G astronaut training as well as a lift capability which is over 30% greater than that represented by a fully crewed SpaceShipTwo. The vehicle has a maximum altitude over 50,000 ft and its U.S. coast-to-coast range will allow the spaceship to be ferried on long duration flights.
http://www.virgingalactic.com/pressftp/content/Presspacks/VMS%20Eve%20bow_thumb.jpg
An all carbon composite vehicle of this size represents a giant leap for a material technology that has already been identified as a key contributor to the increasingly urgent requirement by the commercial aviation sector for dramatically more fuel efficient aircraft. Powered by four Pratt and Whitney PW308A engines, which are amongst the most powerful, economic and efficient available, WK2 is a mold breaker in carbon efficiency and the epitome of 21st century aerospace design and technology.
The twin fuselage and central payload area configuration allow for easy access to WK2 and to the spaceship for passengers and crew; the design also aids operational efficiencies and turnaround times. WK2 will be able to support up to four daily space flights, is able to carry out both day and night time operations and is equipped with a package of highly advanced avionics.
http://www.virgingalactic.com/pressftp/content/Presspacks/Galactic%20Girl_thumb.jpg
Large numbers of VIP's, media and more than 100 fully signed-up future Virgin Galactic astronauts flew into Mo
1. believe me, PHP by itself runs on more webservers and sites than all the .NET languages put together. Probably more than .NET languages and ASP/classic too!
As I stated, change the metrics and you can get what ever answer you like. Open the poll to all applications, not just web sites, and .Net (especially if you combine ASP/classic stuff too) pushes even better. Limit it back to Open Source projects, and the MS tools drop significantly. Look at closed source solutions, and MS dominates. Like I said, you can look at any specific segment of the programming world and see a skew.
2. Silverlight is a client-side technology. IIS/apache doesn't come into it. A silverlight discussion would be MS supporting it on Firefox on Linux.
I actually do all of my silverlight development using Firefox. ;) But what would be nice is WCF/ASP.Net server side on Apache, I should have clarified on that in my initial post, but Silverlight is way more entertaining to talk about ;)
3. MS is the market leader only in certain segments of the IT marketplace. For webserving, Apache has been dominant for, well, since forever. MS is catchign up as they provide 'incentives' for some providers - eg Myspace, GoDaddy etc, which you'll see on the netcraft stats.
Very true! But MS/IIS has some great tools and features that Apache is lacking, namely, ease of configuration and maintenance. Apache has improved a lot over the years, and I still prefer it for it's stability and scalability. But honestly, the IIS server I've been working off of for the last year and a half hasn't given me a single issue. And I love the fact that MS's drive to make inroads in the web serving market is forcing them to improve IIS. Just as Apple's resurgence in the PC realm is forcing them to improve Windows (even if Vista missed the mark).
4. The problem is that you'd never get .NET on Linux, which is Apache's native platform. Though Apache runs on Windows I guess MS may be trying to get developers to program in .NET using Apache and they be as locked in to Windows server platform as if they had stuck with IIS. I think this is the goal for this sponsorship.
Actually, there is the Mono project, which seems to be getting a decent bit of positive attention from MS. And there is also the Moonlight project, which is aiming to bring Silverlight to Linux as well, although I'm not of it's state or scope.
If you choose PHP then you can choose any platform you like.
I like PHP, it's a handy language for putting together websites and CMS sites. Would I use it to create a web based desktop application? not a chance. Same for Javascript/Flash, a great combination, and it makes some tasks impressively simple, but it falls flat on it's face for more complex systems. Sure, you could develop significant applications using it, but it would be a nightmere (IMO) to maintain. Silverlight is also not a cure-all invention, but it does give me access to a solid vector based graphics system, an amazing multi-media library, a huge portion of the .Net library, and integrated support for ASP.Net web services. It is no where near as refined as the desktop environment, but for a beta product, it's not bad. And the Beta 2 release added a lot of the tools and refinements that Beta 1 was missing. If they continue on their current path, the production release will be something pretty impressive.
Oh yeah, I drank that coolaide. But I'll keep browsing in FF, writing in Open Office, and a copy of Sharp Dev handy just incase MS tries to screw me ;)
-Rick
excuse me, but if you say this, i have no option but laughing over it with my ass. i dont know any decent way to put it. youre totally unaware of what the web is built with.
Okay, so it was a slight hyperbole ;) The combined presence of VB.Net/C#/ASP.Net and the rest of the .Net language does by most measures, out weigh PHP, Ruby, or Pearl individually in terms of distribution and use. But it's all arm chair statistics anyway, change the metrics and you can easily show any single element out performing any other single element.
The point, hyperbole aside, still stands. Do you feel that if a product is of lesser popularity, it should be forsaken in favor of the market leader?
Should MS drop the idea of Silverlight all together because you can do much of the same functionality with a combination of javascript and flash, and that is currently the most popular way to fulfill that functionality?
Should MS drop IIS all together because Apache is the market leader?
Should Mozilla just pack it up and go home because IE is the market leader?
Should all of the Linux distro call it quits because Windows is the market leader?
In all cases, the answer is NO. A wide variety of tools, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, gives us the best opportunity to pick the correct one for any given situation. If, by investing in the Apache community, MS manages to get better .Net and Silverlight functionality on Apache, it gives us yet another option for tools to use.
I'm failing to see how this would be a bad thing(tm). MS gets their tools on another plat form, the Apache community gets a free lunch, so to say, and us developers get more options. Like I said above, so long as MS's "contributions" to Apache do not result in closed source code, I'm all for it.
-Rick
So you are saying we should scratch PHP, Ruby, and Pearl off as well because they don't have nearly the penetration or recognition of .Net?
Silverlight 2* is still pretty low-key, but it's in Beta (a real beta, not the "this thing isn't ever going to leave beta" definition that Google likes to use). But I keep hearing more and more bounce back from developers, and the head hunters are starting to pick up on it too. When SL2 is released, it's going to rally up some decent press, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if MS's goal here is to push for SL support on Apache.
-Rick
*Silverlight 1/1.1 is in production, but it was create more as a feasibility study, the attention it drew was sufficient to motivate MS into doing a full managed code version: Silverlight 2. And it is on its way to becoming quite a nice product!
So they're using the court system to figure out who to punish for doing something entirely legal?
I could see it if Daniel was under contract for the tickets, but if they just give him tickets with no stipulations, why should they get to enjoy the power of the courts and tax payer funding?
Wouldn't it have been cheaper just to buy the tickets off the guy, and as soon as you find out who is selling them, negate those tickets, then, as the buyer, refuse to pay for the now worthless tickets?
Woh, no money, no lawyers, and the seller gets screwed out of his tickets for trying to sell them. Done.
-Rick
If it gets .Net and Silverlight support to Apache, Embrace away!
-Rick
So let me get this straight... you are lobbying for an elimination of competition, collusion, and handing a controlling interest of Apache over to MS?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for compatibility between IIS and Apache, but to beg for either one of them to get snuffed out seems like an awfully huge risk.
-Rick
Even if you follow the plaintiff's argument, who cares who Daniel is? All that matters is who Daniel gives the tickets too.
-Rick
36 miles to a large grocery store. One with highly competitive prices and a much larger selection.
We have a decent sized grocery store in town, maybe 2-3 miles away. The prices are a bit higher, and the selection isn't quite as nice, but we can manage to feed ourselves from it. But any time we are looking for something specific that is out side of the most profitable lines, it means driving in to the larger store.
And we have a little quicky-mart 3 blocks away we can go to for milk and bread, but it costs twice as much there as the place 3 miles away.
I'd say this situation is very common in the US. Sure, inside a larger city you will be closer to all of the standard services, but if you live in a smaller community, or out in the country, you deal with lesser services, or you drive to the larger cities for greater services.
And then you have to balance out the cost differences. Is the additional fuel I burn going an extra 30 miles to the larger store going to cost more than the savings I get from paying less for my groceries?
For the vast majority of Americans, the word "go" is synonymous with "drive".
There are some exceptions though, public transportation is decent in some areas. When I lived in Washington, DC, I only ever drove in town when I was going out to party (return trips were after the metro shut down for the night). But almost everything else I did I could walk or take the metro system for. I had some friends from New York city who said they hated having a car, parking was impossible, and when someone stole their car after 3 months of living in an apartment, they took the insurance money and just stuck to the subway and buses.
-Rick
It's a matter of semantics. It implies that the category of "programming" is lesser to the category of "computer scientist" because it has a lower requirement of math.
It's about the difference between saying, "I don't care for your favorite band's music" and "Your favorite band sucks". Both mean the same thing, but the phrasing of one was designed to be inflammatory and insulting.
In any case, even if you reword his initial statement in a non-inflammatory way, such as saying "programming has a lower requirement level in knowledge and practical ability of mathematics..." I would still argue that such a statement is false.
Both the fields of "programming" and computer science are so incredibly broad, such a generalization is almost guaranteed to be false even with out further investigation. And even just a cursory glance through a handful of "programming" careers can show you just how critical a high level understanding of mathematics is.
-Rick
LOL, I'll admit it, I had to google 'Chelsea tractors' ;)
I've never been to the UK, but I did spend a bit of time in Germany and a year in Japan. All in all, driving in the US vs driving in Germany (Frankfurt) and Japan is looked at in entirely different lights.
For example, my round trip commute is 64 miles. Even in my VW Golf TDI I'm still looking at about 1.5 gallons a day and that's if I go straight to and from work. Going to a theater is a 40 mile round trip. Going to a large grocery is a 36 mile trip.
When I was in Germany, the family I lived with had 1 car, and it was only driven on rainy days and weekends. Every other day it was bicycles and foot. I walked to school, I walked to the train station, I walked to the beer gardens.... mmm beer gardens... where was I? Oh yeah, the whole time I was in Germany, I think I road in a car maybe 5 times, twice for the air port, once to head to Bavaria, again to head for France, and one other time that had little to do with driving ;) So even though gas was twice as expensive as I was use to (I think it was about 1.30DM/l) we drove so little that it didn't matter.
Same thing in Japan. I road in a car twice the whole time I was in Japan. Everything else was walking or mass/arranged transit.
So driving a 12MPG hog sucks, but driving it 10 miles round trip or only on weekends isn't nearly as bad as racking up 15,000 miles a year commuting here in the US. Sure, some people can afford $3000-5000 annual gas bills, but me? I'd much rather dive something that cuts that bill way back, even if it is function over form.
-Rick
Eh, the market sustained $4/gallon US average. There is no reason for the price to drop below that unless consumption drops due to life style impact or competition.
-Rick
None of them suck at math. But that's not the OP's point.
Funny, the line "You can only get away with being a programmer while sucking at math" sure sounds like he is implying that programmers suck at math.
A game developer can get away with not knowing about texture models and normal maps because the people at Unreal have done the hard work already.
A game developer, in this case, I'll assume you are actually refering to a 3-d modeler or artist, is not a programmer. The person who wrote the normals calculation engine for the UT game engine how ever, IS a programmer, not a computer scientist.
A person who writes Excel scripts for an accounting division can be forgiven for forgetting how to optimally calculate a standard deviation, because the folks have Microsoft has taken care of it.
Again, making a spread sheet in Excel does not make you a programmer. Some of the greatest Excel masters I know are actually research scientists and haven't a clue when it comes to programming. How ever, the programmers who developed Excel, including the person responsible for implementing the standard deviation formula, were programmers, not scientists. The formula for standard deviation had been hypothesized, tested, and proven long before computers had been invented.
Its like asking, "Who's better at tennis, the average member of the USTA or the average member of the general public?"
I would liken that statement to this one: "Who's better at making bad analogies, a brick, or a nuclear submarine?"
-Rick
What you are describing is an algae reactor, and yes, they have many perks as far as control and purity of the algae over raceway ponds. They have one significant down side though; Cost. Ponds can be build for a fraction of the cost, and at a much larger volume. Unfortunately, you're not going to fit an algae pond next to a power plant in NY City.
It's all relatively new stuff, so there haven't been a whole lot of published studies on cost analysis and feasibility. The investment cost is huge and at this point, the pay off is not guaranteed as it is still an untested technology (at large scale). So adoption is slow :/
-Rick
My objection was not with his point 1. My object was to:
You can only get away with being a programmer while sucking at math because of the many layers of abstractions that have been built on top of the math. The math is still at the bottom, but we now have higher-level, more right-brained ways of expressing that math.
Which implies that Computer Scientists are better at math, and that programmers as a whole, suck at math.
Which is hardly true. Tell the computer programmers who wrote the physics engine for Unreal that they suck at math. Tell the computer programmers actively working on getting raytracing engines into the main stream that they suck at math. Tell the computer programmers working on accounting applications tracking billions of dollars through complex business requirements that they suck at math.
-Rick
A nice response, I agree with much of what you said, with one exception:
and mechanics and automobile designers both work with cars.
I don't believe that accurate describes the correlation between Programmers and Computer Scientists.
The 'Computer Scientist' of the automobile industry are the material engineers that determine what compounds to make components out of to best perform their specific duty. For instance, designing a ceramic piston to replace a traditional steal one in high compression non-nitrous engines, or developing an aluminum block with steal sleeves to replace traditional cast iron block, or designing a 2nd catalytic converter to take advantage of a lower temperature with a different chemical reaction to reduce emissions. None of those tasks require any significant knowledge of the automobile as a whole, but do require significant knowledge of their specific scientific field.
The 'Computer Programmer' of the automobile industry are the vehicle designers. They take the tools and devices the 'Computer Scientists' have made available to them and build something whole and functional out of it.
The 'Application Administrators' and 'Support' are the rough equivalent of the Mechanics of the automobile industry. Sure, if there's a design problem, they'll kick it back up to the programmers, but for configuration and maintenance, they handle the bulk of it.
My apologies for being confrontational, I've met my fair share of egotistical 'computer scientists' who were so proud of their brand new' life altering' linked list logic... So usually when people pull out the "programmers are lesser than computer scientists" argument, I jump to the defensive side ;)
-Rick
A prototypical CS problem is "Traveling Salesman". Writing a program to route a salesman over a series of cities would be a programming problem.
Actually, the Traveling Salesman is a logic problem, and has been completed many times on paper long before it became an academic tool for making CS students sweat out writing a process to execute a series of known formulas.
I think the 12 hungry philosophers with 11 spoons is much better example of a prototypical CS problem as it involves a specific set of logic, multi-threading, locks, and requires significantly more knowledge about the language you are working with than the Traveling Salesman example.
My original post may have been poorly worded, but the intent remains. A "computer scientist" is not a better programmer than a "software developer". I can introduce you to good and bad developers inside academia, in public service/military, and in the private sector. I also feel that the term "computer scientist" is grossly abused.
-Rick
If I recall correctly, the 230 MPG rating was based on the Plug-in electric/gas hybrid.
The challenge of determining the actual MPG of a PE/Gas hybrid is that when you start driving, you are running almost entirely off of electric, and as you drive longer and longer, the gas engine has to contribute more and more.
So on a 1 mile drive, where the engine never even turns on, you are driving a an infinite MPG, but obviously, this isn't a practical way to advertise the car. I believe the 230 MPG number was taken at about 100-150 miles and was based on average commutes. So if you drive it LESS than 100 miles, you'll get more than 230 MPG, if you drive it more than 150 miles between recharging, you'll get less than 230 MPG. If I recall correctly, it bottomed out at ~100MPG after 300 miles of driving, but driving it on Gas alone I have a feeling would not be a pleasant experience (the words 'gutless-pig' come to mind).
-Rick
Actually, all that math is an abstraction of electronics, and electronics is just an abstraction of physics.
So "researchers" are no more Computer Scientist that "programmers" are because neither of them comprehend the entirety of the physics that are driving the electrons that make it possible for that computer to do the math that has been abstracted to a high level 'English-like' readable language. /sarcasm
Really, intra-software industry pissing matches are just humorous. There is no significant difference in skill levels of programmers and researchers. Only the knowledge of the application's focus changes. And for as complex as modeling some new mathematical equation may be, I can present you with a mile long list of tax codes, international trade law, federal regulation, incentive programs, etc... that can make a "simple" accounting program just as complex.
-Rick
I'm part of the 'OMGFOURFIFTYAFUCKINGGALLON' group, and I'm okay with its appearance. Paint it black, throw a skull and flame job on it, and I'll drive it.
-Rick
The question that pops into my mind after reading your post is:
Would you shop at "Ye Ole' Nike Blacksmith"? Would you venture forth to save Prince Sony? Would you have the intestinal fortitude to sit at an inn with architectural features and iconography identical to that of a Pizza Hut?
If there were integrated marketing merged into these free games, would you still be willing to play them (for free of course). Knowing that your viewing of integrated advertisement would be offsetting the server side costs?
-Rick