IBM's proprietary architecture (Microchannel), and proprietary operating system (OS/2) - where are they now? The sad thing is that they really were good for their day - it's just that they cost too much.
A long time ago, I had a chance to work with a former-salesman turned development-manager at IBM about the dress code in the company. To set the image in your mind, IBM had announced that it was relaxing the dress code a bit for employees who did not meet customers on a regular basis (i.e. the people he was managing), yet he was still wearing the white shirt, suit and tie.
He reason for sticking with the suit and tie made perfect sense to me (paraphrased version because it has been 14 years since I had this conversation):
Ninty-five percent of your customers do not care whether you wear the suit and tie, or not - they will buy from you, anyway, just because you are with IBM. The other five percent expect you to project a certain image, and if you do not meet that expectation, they will not buy from you. If you are happy with only getting 95% of the sales that you could be getting, then there is no need for you to wear the tie.
I thought about it for a while, and I reached a simple conclusion based on the details of my life - I loathe ties, enough that I would be willing to sacrifice that 5% of my possible business. Someone else in the same sales role would have made the sale to that 5%, beating me out in performance, and/or making the difference between the company going broke, or the company staying afloat. Ergo, I needed to stay out of sales, and stick to the areas where I could effectively work without a tie.
Simple, right? Then, in 1993, I applied for a job with a small company that expected it's developers to dress in the suit and tie. They were so petty that they never even sent me a formal rejection letter when they decided not to hire me . . . my "sin" was that I have a beard.
The exact quote about the reason why I was not hired was, "People with a beard have something to hide."
In fact, that statement was true (I do not like looking at my double-chin in the mirror, and I have a scar from a high-school fistfight that the moustache hair covers enough that I can forget about that part of my life), but it was the reason why I was not hired at a company . . . in an economy that was better than it currently is.
A few months later, that company screwed over several of my friends, so I was actually glad that they did not hire me . . . or *I* would have been in the same boat.
The point (to the original author) is - do you get a visible tattoo, and cut yourself off from 5% of your possible employers? That limits you to only 95% of the possibles, but if they hired you with the tattoo, then you will probably "fit in" with the corporate culture. But you still end up eliminating that 5% of all potential employers, right off the top.
(Incidentally, I chose the 95% route. I've known people who worked for pressed white shirt, pressed suit and pressed tie lawyers, and they universally hated their jobs and their bosses - eliminating them from the potential pool of employers up front saved a lot of time, I believe.)
When I logged in today and saw the "insightful" moderation, I asked roughly the same question you did. Any Meta-Moderators out there? My comment really didn't deserve what it got...
Interesting analogy. Of course, I live in Kentucky where Paul "The Love Gov" Patton is our current Governor. I can think of several reporters that I think would be better Governors that he is/was.
Reversing your analogy a bit, do you really think that ESR is corrupt? Taking over our government is an expensive proposition, with time and money spent in campaigns, or time and money spent in impeaching the bozos that need to get out. Taking control of the Jargon file from ESR is intensely simple - he has copies of the older versions available, and has clearly stated that you can take it and do with it as you will. Cost? One website and a few hours to copy the files.
No, it is not (usually) a reporter's job to replace the "failing" person, but they certainly can if they so choose.
If the gang at NTK are so wound up about this, there is a simple solution - create a fork of the Jargon File (and maintain it, themselves). Quoting from the introduction:
This document (the Jargon File) is in the public domain, to be freely used, shared, and modified.
So... they have a choice between whining about what ESR has done, or doing something about it, and they chose to whine.
Heh. I guess I'm whining about them whining about ESR. Pot. Kettle. Oopsie.
This is my personal experience... treat the following like you would with any anecdote - with suspicion.
I observe Lent every year - not out of some sense of religious need, but to help me break "bad habits." I find it much easier to give something up when other people around me are giving things up, and if I can kick a bad habit for 48 days, it is easy to keep on kicking it.
Last year's target for me was caffeine - no Colas, no Tea, no Excedren (read the label on that pain-killer!) nothing. I had the usual headache for the first couple of days, which then wore off.
Some background: I have had a consistent problem with leg cramps for years. It was especially bad after exercise - play three games of volleyball on a Friday night, and a few hours later my legs would cramp so strongly that I would have to lever them against a wall to get them to stop hurting. I took to taking pre-emptive doses of aspirin . . . and really stepped up my consumption of Gatorade and water on the days of the games, just to be able to play.
Lent starts on a Wednesday, so my first volleyball league match was two days after going off caffeine - and for the first time in months, I did not cramp up after the game. This continued through the following six weeks of that season.
When Lent ended, I fell off the wagon, and went right back to my colas. The following Friday, my leg cramps were back with a vengeance. When I recovered, I decided to lay off the caffeine again, just to see if there was a correlation (or to see if I was imagining things), and to date, the leg cramps are gone.
Was it caffeine, or something else that I was consuming? I have no idea. All I know is that I avoid them as much as possible, now, and I do not even remember the last time that a leg cramp woke me up at night.
So, it seems that some group of people in Texas is more interested in the representation (spin-doctoring) of their employees than they are in the sanctity of the "Engineer" title. To that group of people I say: boo-f'in-hoo.
Some personal background on myself, before I launch into the tirade: My father was an engineer. I received a Bachelor's of Science from an engineering school (my state does not license Software Engineers). I married (and later divorced) a Mechanical Engineer. I have worked as a programmer for a large auto manufacturer (where I kept crossing the border-line between programming and the Industrial Engineering discipline) and a small software company (where we crossed into the realm of the Chemical Engineering discipline), and ultimately settled into management over a programming group. I took, and passed, the Engineer-in-Training test in 1990 (mainly, to see if I could do it). I have met and worked with software engineers - these were 1960s-era programmers from IBM that had worked on the various NASA space programs.
I am NOT an Engineer. I am barely a programmer, these days.
A few others in the CS department at my university took the EiT at the same time as I did, and each one of us that passed that test that day managed to knock some poor Civil or Mechanical Engineering student into the "failing grade" category. These are people that I do not want designing buildings, nor bridges nor nuclear power plants - so, even though I could not become an Professional Engineer, I did my part in making sure that someone who should not become a PE... would not become a PE.
If I read the original article correctly, Mr. Kester seems to think that having "150 engineers" instead of "150 programmers" is better simply because of the way customers perceive the title. I agree with him, since the title "engineer" actually means something. Had he said "10 engineers and 140 programmers," I would have been right with him. However, he seems to want to give the title to everyone who can bang on a keyboard, just because it sounds better to a customer. That is something that I expect from marketing - hype anything for a quick buck now, and to hell with the future effects of our actions.
Marketing is precisely the wrong reason to give someone an "Engineer" title. Proven skill and experience is the right way.
My straw-man example is the MCSE certification program. When Microsoft first started this program, getting the certification was not easy. The people who did pass knew what they were doing, and had proven it, so having the MCSE was enough to tip the balance when a company was selection between candidates X and Y. Then, people looking for new jobs got wind that the MCSE was the reason X was hired over Y, so they started clamouring to get the MCSE. Microsoft relaxed the difficulty (making it easier for people to get their MCSEs) and started making more money on the program. For a while, having the MCSE was still enough to tip the balance in favor of an application, but then hiring managers started noticing that the new people with a MCSE certification were not nearly as good as the originals were, and having that certification has become a reason to tip the balance against candidate X and in favor of Y.
So, Texas - please do the right thing, and create a Professional Software Engineering discipline in your state - and make it VERY difficult to get. The existing engineers from the other disciplines will respect that, and the marketing bozos of the world will (eventually) figure out that it helps them, too.
January 19, 2038 - the 32-bit integer based on the Unix Epoch rolls over. Y2K got attention from the mainstream media because the numbers were nice and round, but after all the predictions of doom (read: hype) and the lack of visible incidents (because they all happened in between 1996 and 1999) for the media to report on, no one will care enough to handle the 2038 problem.
Unless we can give it a snappy name - maybe Y2KXXXVIII, to mix roman and arabic numerals with the metric system `=).
A theory, based on the Leonids
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Do Comets go Poof?
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· Score: 2, Informative
Leonid meteor storms happen when Earth passes through clouds of dusty debris shed by comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle when it comes close to the Sun every 33 years. This year our planet is heading for close encounters with four such clouds. They bubbled off Tempel-Tuttle in 1699, 1766, 1799 and 1866.
The same article goes on to mention that, in 1998, we passed through a cloud shed by that comet in 1333. Unless Tempel-Tuttle is picking up new material when it is at the apogee of it's 33 year orbit, then we are witnessing a comet slowly go *poof* - the material is not vanishing into oblivion, though - it is being left behind as space pollution.
The same goes for the Perseids (comet Swift-Tuttle), and every other meteor shower that the Earth plows through each year.
It's too bad that the original article did not mention this - was the real-life data overlooked, or did the model take this into account, and it still shows that 99% of the expected comets are missing?
It has been a while since I have pulled out my copy of the album Signals (Rush, 1982) - but the very last song on that album is going to be on my request list for the local DJs this week - since it is about the awe that they felt surrounding the first flight of Columbia - the very same awe that I felt back then.
The song is (c) 1982, Core Music Publishing:
- - - - -
Countdown
Lit up with anticipation We arrive at the launching site The sky is still dark, nearing dawn On the Florida coastline
Circling choppers slash the night With roving searchlight beams This magic day when super-science Mingles with the bright stuff of dreams
Floodlit in the hazy distance The star of this unearthly show Venting vapours, like the breath Of a sleeping white dragon
Crackling speakers, voices tense Resume the final count All systems check, T minus nine As the sun and the drama start to mount
The air is charged A humid, motionless mass The crowds and the cameras, The cars full of spectators pass Excitement so thick you could cut it with a knife Technology...high, on the leading edge of life
The earth beneath us starts to tremble With the spreading of a low black cloud A thunderous roar shakes the air Like the whole world exploding
Scorching blast of golden fire As it slowly leaves the ground Tears away with a mighty force The air is shattered by the awesome sound
Like a pillar of cloud The smoke lingers high in the air In fascination With the eyes of the world We stare...
Small businesses that don't have the resources to maintain an investigation will have their reputations ruined
</Quote>
I'm sorry, but if the choice is between their reputation and not knowing that some joker out there can steal my hard-earned cash at a moment's notice because he has my credit card information, I think I'd choose wrecking their reputation.
it's also unclear how mission-critical systems, properly cut off from the outside world, would become infected in the first place
That's easy - unless the machine is unplugged, sealed in cement and at teh bottom of the ocean, *someone* is going to bring his special program from him and will install it on the box.
Unless you post a guard on every box at all times, someone is going to play with it and screw it up.
Or steal it. One guy was so brazen that he came into a training class, and removed RAM from the machines while the class was going on. We found out about it a little while later when the person giving the class called us to ask when were were going to send the guy back to "finish working on the machines."
"Uh, what guy?"
"The guy that you sent out, earlier!"
"We didn't send anyone out . .."
The point is, with 5000 employees in a manufacturing plant, we had the occasional problem where one of our critical systems would drop off-line because someone wanted to plug in their coffee machine, or play his solitaire on OS/2, or decided that they really wanted to chill down their alcohol in that nice, air-conditioned cabinet during the summr months . . . and Cruise Ships will have that many employees. All it takes is *ONE* idiot, and you end up in the press . . .
The primary factor that making Human Fiungerprinting such an effective tool is that they grow back. Mar a fingerprint, and a few days later, it will return. Cover it in superglue, and a few days later it will return.
The only want to permanently mar a fingerprint is to cut the finger off, and even then, you still have a distinctive palm print that can be used to identify you.
Gun fingerprints can permanently marred, and never grow back, as others have suggested. It is even possible to change the "fingerprint" of a gun and (mostly) restore it, if you happen to have spare parts available. This operation takes a few minutes, and is permanent.
So, although you might catch the lazy criminals with this technique, a guy like you have in Washington would not be caught using the fingerprint.
Well, boss, if it is that important to you, then it should be important enough to you to pay me time and a half overtime for every hour worked past 40 each week.
Mr. Shermer's list is very interesting, and is missing a few of the more controversial ones that he could have said. However, had I been given a survey with those flimsy descriptions, I would have answered, "yes" to several of the items.
30 percent of adult Americans believe that UFOs are space vehicles from other civilizations; 60 percent believe in ESP; 40 percent think that astrology is scientific; 32 percent believe in lucky numbers; 70 percent accept magnetic therapy as scientific; and 88 percent accept alternative medicine
Let's go down his list, shall we?
Do I believe that UFOs are space vehicles?
No, not really. There have been so many hoaxes and misinterpreted natural phenomena that my natural reaction to UFO reports is, "nah". However, the rules of logic say that if "X is true most of the time" it does not follow that "X is true all of the time". I accept that there is a slim chance that we have been visited, beause I have not been able to personally discount each and every case. So, depending on how vague the wording on the survey is, I may have had to answer "yes".
60 percent believe in ESP
First, you have to define "ESP" before this question makes sense. Although many forms of ESP have been discredited over the years, I have nagging doubts that there may be *something* that is valid somewhere in the whole morass, so I have not fully discounted the possibility of ESP. I do, however, happen to agree with Dr. Feynman about ESP - it would take a lot of convincing for me to start believing in a specific form of ESP - maybe 10,000 tests with identical results, and surviving scrutiny of the Amazing Randy.
Yet still, I have not discounted ESP entirely, because I have suddenly decided to drop down to the speed limit several times, only to see the police with the radar gun a few minutes later. So I started keeping track - and to date, my "urge to slow down" ratio of "with police to no police in the area" is running about 3:1. So, I do believe.
32 percent believe in lucky numbers
I am quite convinced that, with 6 billion people on the planet, there will be at least one person who always chooses a number, and wins more often than an average distribution accounts for. For that person, there is a "lucky number". And, although I am not that person, his life does affect mine, as he shows up on the news, or she shows up and wins the pot, or whatever.
It is a vague connection, but again, it depends on the survey question. I do believe in lucky numbers, for a very tiny number of humans, since statistically, there *should* be at least 1 such person.
70 percent accept magnetic therapy as scientific
There is well-documented medical research that indicates that a patient's attitude can drastically affect their recovery from certain illnesses. Magnetic Therapy can easily stumble into this, "the patient believes that they are better, and as a result, they are better" category.
Now, having said that, I suspect that there may be something to magnetic therapy in certain cases. The trick is figuring out what those cases are. One of my teachers in engineering school proved that, as you move, you generated a slight voltage difference between your head and your feet (due to movement through the earth's magnetic field, and due to the curvature effect that causes your head to move slightly father than your feet do). Magnets will disrupt that slight field.
Is it a tiny effect? Sure. Does that tiny effect have an impact? I have no idea - I do not have the equipment necessary to tackle that kind of experiment. Can we ignore it? Well, doesn't humankind have a history of ignoring "tiny effects" as "negligable" and finding out several hundred years later than those "tiny effects" are really important? Oops, I would have to answer, "yes" again.
88 percent accept alternative medicine
And with this one, he nicely cripples his own argument. There have been too many conflicting scientific studies in the medical profession; too many times the "answer" one month has become the "laughing stock" of the next.
Well, as a result, I accept that today's "alternative" medicine can, in fact, become tomorrow's "accepted practice". ALl you have to do is look back at the political cartoons that were drawn around the time that cowpox was shown to prevent smallpox - it was completely against the medical practices of the day to intentionally infect someone with a disease. Yet, as a result of someone's brazen foray into an "alternative", that disease is basically wiped out.
Hmmm. I may think that 90% of alternative medicines these days are bunk, but that leaves the others. -------
So, here I am at the end of my rant, and I have answered a kind of a "yes" to each one of his points. I guess that I just believe in weird things.
Rainbow's _Long Live Rock and Roll_ was released in 1978. When my casette tape finally expired two years ago, I went to buy a CD - and saw that it was being sold at the same FULL RETAIL.
This is an album that they are not advertising, and that they have not advertised since the creation of the CD format . . . the band is long since disbanded . . . so what money are the recouping, here? Yes, there are small royalty payments that must be made, but
CD-Rs in my town are down to $.30 each if you buy in bulk, and you have to think that the record companies get them cheaper than that.
The costs of making that album were recovered by 1985 (if not earlier) - and that was 17 YEARS ago.
Unfortunately, even though I have been voting by not spending my dollars, other people's voices have been overpowering my silence in the market.
*sigh*.
Re:when CS teachers go stupid
on
Pet Bugs?
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· Score: 1
Back in the days of VAX/VMS, and multiple class user accounts one the same machine, a teching assistant at the University of Louisville had his Pascal programming class open a data file, read the contents of the file, and write a new file with some calculation.
Of course, he made his data file W:RWE, so that any joe schmoe could overwrite the contents of the file. It's amazing how many times the base data file was blown away by malfunctioning code written by neophyte programmers . . . and how many times I reloaded the original contents of the data file those over the next two days.
The truly sad part is that I wasn't even in the guy's class - I was a student consultant in the computer center, and his students were coming to me to beg for help when their code that was working just fine 5 minutes ago suddenly started blowing up.
I finally found the guy on Saturday and talked him into fixing the file protections, but by then we had figured out the three people who were trashing the file and had gotten them to fix their code.
One comment at the end of the article caught my attention:
We now have it in our power to have a magnitude-8 or -9 war. In the aftermath of such an event, no one would say that war is demographically irrelevant. After a war of magnitude 9.8, no one would say anything at all.
This points out a comparison problem within the original research - it does not take into account the population increases over time. For example, somewhere in the mid-1600s, London had a population of 600,000 people, while it currently has a population near 7,000,000. That is the difference between a magnitude-5.7 and a magnitude-6.8 event, using the given scale.
Would factoring in the population growth curve enhance or reduce the apparent randomness of the data?
Cornell has the legal text for the Fair Use Doctrine on-line here.
Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106(3), the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord.
In other words, the original author of the work has no rights at all to dictate to me whether I can resell a book that I legally purchased from him.
I worked at one of Ford Motor Company's top-earning manufacturing plants in 1997, and the numbers that I saw indicated that they were earning about $5,000 on a $30,000 vehicle... *before* things like warranty costs were taken into account.
So, instead of 90% profit 10% cost, the real numbers are more like 10% profit, 90% cost. There was a time when you could earn more money by keeping your money in the bank...
Isaac Asimov wrote several essays about the influence his stories and ideas had over the modern scientific and industrial thought - including industrial robotics, the Big Bang theory, and what he felt were his own embarassing oversights. They are collected in Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection.
Slashdot Mirror
IBM's proprietary architecture (Microchannel), and proprietary operating system (OS/2) - where are they now? The sad thing is that they really were good for their day - it's just that they cost too much.
A long time ago, I had a chance to work with a former-salesman turned development-manager at IBM about the dress code in the company. To set the image in your mind, IBM had announced that it was relaxing the dress code a bit for employees who did not meet customers on a regular basis (i.e. the people he was managing), yet he was still wearing the white shirt, suit and tie.
He reason for sticking with the suit and tie made perfect sense to me (paraphrased version because it has been 14 years since I had this conversation):
I thought about it for a while, and I reached a simple conclusion based on the details of my life - I loathe ties, enough that I would be willing to sacrifice that 5% of my possible business. Someone else in the same sales role would have made the sale to that 5%, beating me out in performance, and/or making the difference between the company going broke, or the company staying afloat. Ergo, I needed to stay out of sales, and stick to the areas where I could effectively work without a tie.
Simple, right? Then, in 1993, I applied for a job with a small company that expected it's developers to dress in the suit and tie. They were so petty that they never even sent me a formal rejection letter when they decided not to hire me . . . my "sin" was that I have a beard.
The exact quote about the reason why I was not hired was, "People with a beard have something to hide."
In fact, that statement was true (I do not like looking at my double-chin in the mirror, and I have a scar from a high-school fistfight that the moustache hair covers enough that I can forget about that part of my life), but it was the reason why I was not hired at a company . . . in an economy that was better than it currently is.
A few months later, that company screwed over several of my friends, so I was actually glad that they did not hire me . . . or *I* would have been in the same boat.
The point (to the original author) is - do you get a visible tattoo, and cut yourself off from 5% of your possible employers? That limits you to only 95% of the possibles, but if they hired you with the tattoo, then you will probably "fit in" with the corporate culture. But you still end up eliminating that 5% of all potential employers, right off the top.
(Incidentally, I chose the 95% route. I've known people who worked for pressed white shirt, pressed suit and pressed tie lawyers, and they universally hated their jobs and their bosses - eliminating them from the potential pool of employers up front saved a lot of time, I believe.)
When I logged in today and saw the "insightful" moderation, I asked roughly the same question you did. Any Meta-Moderators out there? My comment really didn't deserve what it got ...
Interesting analogy. Of course, I live in Kentucky where Paul "The Love Gov" Patton is our current Governor. I can think of several reporters that I think would be better Governors that he is/was.
Reversing your analogy a bit, do you really think that ESR is corrupt? Taking over our government is an expensive proposition, with time and money spent in campaigns, or time and money spent in impeaching the bozos that need to get out. Taking control of the Jargon file from ESR is intensely simple - he has copies of the older versions available, and has clearly stated that you can take it and do with it as you will. Cost? One website and a few hours to copy the files.
No, it is not (usually) a reporter's job to replace the "failing" person, but they certainly can if they so choose.
Or, rather, "attacking the dictionary".
If the gang at NTK are so wound up about this, there is a simple solution - create a fork of the Jargon File (and maintain it, themselves). Quoting from the introduction:
So ... they have a choice between whining about what ESR has done, or doing something about it, and they chose to whine.
Heh. I guess I'm whining about them whining about ESR. Pot. Kettle. Oopsie.
This is my personal experience ... treat the following like you would with any anecdote - with suspicion.
I observe Lent every year - not out of some sense of religious need, but to help me break "bad habits." I find it much easier to give something up when other people around me are giving things up, and if I can kick a bad habit for 48 days, it is easy to keep on kicking it.
Last year's target for me was caffeine - no Colas, no Tea, no Excedren (read the label on that pain-killer!) nothing. I had the usual headache for the first couple of days, which then wore off.
Some background: I have had a consistent problem with leg cramps for years. It was especially bad after exercise - play three games of volleyball on a Friday night, and a few hours later my legs would cramp so strongly that I would have to lever them against a wall to get them to stop hurting. I took to taking pre-emptive doses of aspirin . . . and really stepped up my consumption of Gatorade and water on the days of the games, just to be able to play.
Lent starts on a Wednesday, so my first volleyball league match was two days after going off caffeine - and for the first time in months, I did not cramp up after the game. This continued through the following six weeks of that season.
When Lent ended, I fell off the wagon, and went right back to my colas. The following Friday, my leg cramps were back with a vengeance. When I recovered, I decided to lay off the caffeine again, just to see if there was a correlation (or to see if I was imagining things), and to date, the leg cramps are gone.
Was it caffeine, or something else that I was consuming? I have no idea. All I know is that I avoid them as much as possible, now, and I do not even remember the last time that a leg cramp woke me up at night.
*plonk*
...
My hosts file has a brand new route of:
0.0.0.0 www.unicast.com
And, each site that gives me a nice 15 second ad will join unicast in there, along with dear old doubleclick
Quoting the article:
So, Blackboard has known for at least 1.3 years, possibly longer
So, it seems that some group of people in Texas is more interested in the representation (spin-doctoring) of their employees than they are in the sanctity of the "Engineer" title. To that group of people I say: boo-f'in-hoo.
Some personal background on myself, before I launch into the tirade: My father was an engineer. I received a Bachelor's of Science from an engineering school (my state does not license Software Engineers). I married (and later divorced) a Mechanical Engineer. I have worked as a programmer for a large auto manufacturer (where I kept crossing the border-line between programming and the Industrial Engineering discipline) and a small software company (where we crossed into the realm of the Chemical Engineering discipline), and ultimately settled into management over a programming group. I took, and passed, the Engineer-in-Training test in 1990 (mainly, to see if I could do it). I have met and worked with software engineers - these were 1960s-era programmers from IBM that had worked on the various NASA space programs.
I am NOT an Engineer. I am barely a programmer, these days.
A few others in the CS department at my university took the EiT at the same time as I did, and each one of us that passed that test that day managed to knock some poor Civil or Mechanical Engineering student into the "failing grade" category. These are people that I do not want designing buildings, nor bridges nor nuclear power plants - so, even though I could not become an Professional Engineer, I did my part in making sure that someone who should not become a PE ... would not become a PE.
If I read the original article correctly, Mr. Kester seems to think that having "150 engineers" instead of "150 programmers" is better simply because of the way customers perceive the title. I agree with him, since the title "engineer" actually means something. Had he said "10 engineers and 140 programmers," I would have been right with him. However, he seems to want to give the title to everyone who can bang on a keyboard, just because it sounds better to a customer. That is something that I expect from marketing - hype anything for a quick buck now, and to hell with the future effects of our actions.
Marketing is precisely the wrong reason to give someone an "Engineer" title. Proven skill and experience is the right way.
My straw-man example is the MCSE certification program. When Microsoft first started this program, getting the certification was not easy. The people who did pass knew what they were doing, and had proven it, so having the MCSE was enough to tip the balance when a company was selection between candidates X and Y. Then, people looking for new jobs got wind that the MCSE was the reason X was hired over Y, so they started clamouring to get the MCSE. Microsoft relaxed the difficulty (making it easier for people to get their MCSEs) and started making more money on the program. For a while, having the MCSE was still enough to tip the balance in favor of an application, but then hiring managers started noticing that the new people with a MCSE certification were not nearly as good as the originals were, and having that certification has become a reason to tip the balance against candidate X and in favor of Y.
So, Texas - please do the right thing, and create a Professional Software Engineering discipline in your state - and make it VERY difficult to get. The existing engineers from the other disciplines will respect that, and the marketing bozos of the world will (eventually) figure out that it helps them, too.
January 19, 2038 - the 32-bit integer based on the Unix Epoch rolls over. Y2K got attention from the mainstream media because the numbers were nice and round, but after all the predictions of doom (read: hype) and the lack of visible incidents (because they all happened in between 1996 and 1999) for the media to report on, no one will care enough to handle the 2038 problem.
Unless we can give it a snappy name - maybe Y2KXXXVIII, to mix roman and arabic numerals with the metric system `=).
The same article goes on to mention that, in 1998, we passed through a cloud shed by that comet in 1333. Unless Tempel-Tuttle is picking up new material when it is at the apogee of it's 33 year orbit, then we are witnessing a comet slowly go *poof* - the material is not vanishing into oblivion, though - it is being left behind as space pollution.
The same goes for the Perseids (comet Swift-Tuttle), and every other meteor shower that the Earth plows through each year.
It's too bad that the original article did not mention this - was the real-life data overlooked, or did the model take this into account, and it still shows that 99% of the expected comets are missing?
It has been a while since I have pulled out my copy of the album Signals (Rush, 1982) - but the very last song on that album is going to be on my request list for the local DJs this week - since it is about the awe that they felt surrounding the first flight of Columbia - the very same awe that I felt back then.
The song is (c) 1982, Core Music Publishing:
- - - - -
Countdown
Lit up with anticipation
We arrive at the launching site
The sky is still dark, nearing dawn
On the Florida coastline
Circling choppers slash the night
With roving searchlight beams
This magic day when super-science
Mingles with the bright stuff of dreams
Floodlit in the hazy distance
The star of this unearthly show
Venting vapours, like the breath
Of a sleeping white dragon
Crackling speakers, voices tense
Resume the final count
All systems check, T minus nine
As the sun and the drama start to mount
The air is charged
A humid, motionless mass
The crowds and the cameras,
The cars full of spectators pass
Excitement so thick you could cut it with a knife
Technology...high, on the leading edge of life
The earth beneath us starts to tremble
With the spreading of a low black cloud
A thunderous roar shakes the air
Like the whole world exploding
Scorching blast of golden fire
As it slowly leaves the ground
Tears away with a mighty force
The air is shattered by the awesome sound
Like a pillar of cloud
The smoke lingers high in the air
In fascination
With the eyes of the world
We stare...
also:
Just some thoughts . . .
<Quote>
Small businesses that don't have the resources to maintain an investigation will have their reputations ruined
</Quote>
I'm sorry, but if the choice is between their reputation and not knowing that some joker out there can steal my hard-earned cash at a moment's notice because he has my credit card information, I think I'd choose wrecking their reputation.
That's easy - unless the machine is unplugged, sealed in cement and at teh bottom of the ocean, *someone* is going to bring his special program from him and will install it on the box.
Unless you post a guard on every box at all times, someone is going to play with it and screw it up.
Or steal it. One guy was so brazen that he came into a training class, and removed RAM from the machines while the class was going on. We found out about it a little while later when the person giving the class called us to ask when were were going to send the guy back to "finish working on the machines."
"Uh, what guy?"
"The guy that you sent out, earlier!"
"We didn't send anyone out . . ."
The point is, with 5000 employees in a manufacturing plant, we had the occasional problem where one of our critical systems would drop off-line because someone wanted to plug in their coffee machine, or play his solitaire on OS/2, or decided that they really wanted to chill down their alcohol in that nice, air-conditioned cabinet during the summr months . . . and Cruise Ships will have that many employees. All it takes is *ONE* idiot, and you end up in the press . . .
The primary factor that making Human Fiungerprinting such an effective tool is that they grow back. Mar a fingerprint, and a few days later, it will return. Cover it in superglue, and a few days later it will return.
The only want to permanently mar a fingerprint is to cut the finger off, and even then, you still have a distinctive palm print that can be used to identify you.
Gun fingerprints can permanently marred, and never grow back, as others have suggested. It is even possible to change the "fingerprint" of a gun and (mostly) restore it, if you happen to have spare parts available. This operation takes a few minutes, and is permanent.
So, although you might catch the lazy criminals with this technique, a guy like you have in Washington would not be caught using the fingerprint.
And it would cost a lot of money to implement.
Just reply to him this way:
Mr. Shermer's list is very interesting, and is missing a few of the more controversial ones that he could have said. However, had I been given a survey with those flimsy descriptions, I would have answered, "yes" to several of the items.
Let's go down his list, shall we?
No, not really. There have been so many hoaxes and misinterpreted natural phenomena that my natural reaction to UFO reports is, "nah". However, the rules of logic say that if "X is true most of the time" it does not follow that "X is true all of the time". I accept that there is a slim chance that we have been visited, beause I have not been able to personally discount each and every case. So, depending on how vague the wording on the survey is, I may have had to answer "yes".
First, you have to define "ESP" before this question makes sense. Although many forms of ESP have been discredited over the years, I have nagging doubts that there may be *something* that is valid somewhere in the whole morass, so I have not fully discounted the possibility of ESP. I do, however, happen to agree with Dr. Feynman about ESP - it would take a lot of convincing for me to start believing in a specific form of ESP - maybe 10,000 tests with identical results, and surviving scrutiny of the Amazing Randy.
Yet still, I have not discounted ESP entirely, because I have suddenly decided to drop down to the speed limit several times, only to see the police with the radar gun a few minutes later. So I started keeping track - and to date, my "urge to slow down" ratio of "with police to no police in the area" is running about 3:1. So, I do believe.
I am quite convinced that, with 6 billion people on the planet, there will be at least one person who always chooses a number, and wins more often than an average distribution accounts for. For that person, there is a "lucky number". And, although I am not that person, his life does affect mine, as he shows up on the news, or she shows up and wins the pot, or whatever.
It is a vague connection, but again, it depends on the survey question. I do believe in lucky numbers, for a very tiny number of humans, since statistically, there *should* be at least 1 such person.
There is well-documented medical research that indicates that a patient's attitude can drastically affect their recovery from certain illnesses. Magnetic Therapy can easily stumble into this, "the patient believes that they are better, and as a result, they are better" category.
Now, having said that, I suspect that there may be something to magnetic therapy in certain cases. The trick is figuring out what those cases are. One of my teachers in engineering school proved that, as you move, you generated a slight voltage difference between your head and your feet (due to movement through the earth's magnetic field, and due to the curvature effect that causes your head to move slightly father than your feet do). Magnets will disrupt that slight field.
Is it a tiny effect? Sure. Does that tiny effect have an impact? I have no idea - I do not have the equipment necessary to tackle that kind of experiment. Can we ignore it? Well, doesn't humankind have a history of ignoring "tiny effects" as "negligable" and finding out several hundred years later than those "tiny effects" are really important? Oops, I would have to answer, "yes" again.
And with this one, he nicely cripples his own argument. There have been too many conflicting scientific studies in the medical profession; too many times the "answer" one month has become the "laughing stock" of the next.
Well, as a result, I accept that today's "alternative" medicine can, in fact, become tomorrow's "accepted practice". ALl you have to do is look back at the political cartoons that were drawn around the time that cowpox was shown to prevent smallpox - it was completely against the medical practices of the day to intentionally infect someone with a disease. Yet, as a result of someone's brazen foray into an "alternative", that disease is basically wiped out.
Hmmm. I may think that 90% of alternative medicines these days are bunk, but that leaves the others.
-------
So, here I am at the end of my rant, and I have answered a kind of a "yes" to each one of his points. I guess that I just believe in weird things.
Rainbow's _Long Live Rock and Roll_ was released in 1978. When my casette tape finally expired two years ago, I went to buy a CD - and saw that it was being sold at the same FULL RETAIL.
This is an album that they are not advertising, and that they have not advertised since the creation of the CD format . . . the band is long since disbanded . . . so what money are the recouping, here? Yes, there are small royalty payments that must be made, but
Unfortunately, even though I have been voting by not spending my dollars, other people's voices have been overpowering my silence in the market.
*sigh*.
Back in the days of VAX/VMS, and multiple class user accounts one the same machine, a teching assistant at the University of Louisville had his Pascal programming class open a data file, read the contents of the file, and write a new file with some calculation.
Of course, he made his data file W:RWE, so that any joe schmoe could overwrite the contents of the file. It's amazing how many times the base data file was blown away by malfunctioning code written by neophyte programmers . . . and how many times I reloaded the original contents of the data file those over the next two days.
The truly sad part is that I wasn't even in the guy's class - I was a student consultant in the computer center, and his students were coming to me to beg for help when their code that was working just fine 5 minutes ago suddenly started blowing up.
I finally found the guy on Saturday and talked him into fixing the file protections, but by then we had figured out the three people who were trashing the file and had gotten them to fix their code.
sigh
One comment at the end of the article caught my attention:
This points out a comparison problem within the original research - it does not take into account the population increases over time. For example, somewhere in the mid-1600s, London had a population of 600,000 people, while it currently has a population near 7,000,000. That is the difference between a magnitude-5.7 and a magnitude-6.8 event, using the given scale.
Would factoring in the population growth curve enhance or reduce the apparent randomness of the data?
Cornell has the legal text for the Fair Use Doctrine on-line here.
In other words, the original author of the work has no rights at all to dictate to me whether I can resell a book that I legally purchased from him.
At least, not in the United States, he does not.
Games Magazine is still going strong, and still has the fake ad in every issue.
Speaking of them in the past-tense is a bit unfair ...
I worked at one of Ford Motor Company's top-earning manufacturing plants in 1997, and the numbers that I saw indicated that they were earning about $5,000 on a $30,000 vehicle ... *before* things like warranty costs were taken into account.
So, instead of 90% profit 10% cost, the real numbers are more like 10% profit, 90% cost. There was a time when you could earn more money by keeping your money in the bank ...
Isaac Asimov wrote several essays about the influence his stories and ideas had over the modern scientific and industrial thought - including industrial robotics, the Big Bang theory, and what he felt were his own embarassing oversights. They are collected in Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection.
Asimov Credits Capek, by the way ...