I had a cron job automatically downloading US satellite weather data. It checked every hour at 15 minutes past the hour. I was using someone's Unix shell script. Does that count?
Yes, I also had a channel switch from UHF to VHF. I'd build a nice UHF antenna that worked perfectly until they switched. Now I've got to build another VHF antenna for one station.
I don't think that I have a preference for an environment -- as long as I get to chose it.
BTW, my students laugh, but I often describe what I call "programmer's high", the equivalent of runner's high. No mind altering substances involved, just getting in a groove where I write perfect code at high speed with an endorphin high. I can't say any particular environment does it, but I know when I'm there.
It does work. We do the jar-full-of-candy thing every Christmas. I've calculated the average of all guesses both times and came really close -- within 10 the last time. Things like this drove the eugenics people [like Galton] crazy.
Of course, my brother-in-law saw my guess and added one to it to win.
It's not how smart you are, it's knowing who's smart!
Using wine is a stop-gap measure for running Windows apps on Linux. All users of wine (and I am one) should write to their applications' developers and let them know that they would like native Linux support. Yes, please send a letter to Microsoft....
Part of the problem is that we don't teach science, we teach a little biology, a little chemistry, a little physics....
What we need to do is give a broader picture that covers the gamut. It's easy for creation scientists [yes, an oxymoron] to play at the edges of science and convince people who don't see it as a whole.
I mean, how many ways are there to prove the universe is older than 6,000 years old? If you refuse to accept one of these ways, the whole scientific structure would fall apart -- it's all tied together. Pull one string out and it'd all fall apart.
You're forgetting the concept of herd immunity and the fact that older adults just don't have that good of a response to flu vaccines. Restricting flu vaccines to 70+ people would result in lots of younger people having the flu that wouldn't kill them, but they would infect lots of older people who don't have a good response to the vaccine -- killing them.
Try the tech support at the SAS institute. They pick up on the second ring and the recorded message has two options -- old or new problem. New problems gets you an answer in under four rings. Then someone [a person!] directs your call to the tech support person for that problem, and she picks up within four rings. Then they answer the question. If they can't [rare], it gets answered by email in one day. I've never encountered better, and they're in North Carolina.
I was wondering if someone would mention Niven and Pournelle. "Footfall" actually has a couple of SF writer teams gathered to evaluate the alien threat in the novel.
To make this a bit broader than "actuary", consider statistics or biostatistics in general. A masters degree in stats gets you 40+ for a starting salary, usually as a statistical programmer/data analyst. Are you willing to go beyond a bachelor's degree?
Start at the bottom and work your way up. The Elements of Style is good for sentence structure and once you can write good sentences, you can then work on writing good paragraphs. Then you work on structuring a document.
My freshman english class used a book called "Readings for Writers" which was very good for the paragraph and document level aspects of writing.
Then, of course, there's reading. Read anything that will keep your interest. Of course, we might want to limit it to reading stuff written by people who can write, which might not include a lot of stuff written on the web....
Slashdot Mirror
I had a cron job automatically downloading US satellite weather data. It checked every hour at 15 minutes past the hour. I was using someone's Unix shell script. Does that count?
Yes, I also had a channel switch from UHF to VHF. I'd build a nice UHF antenna that worked perfectly until they switched. Now I've got to build another VHF antenna for one station.
I don't think that I have a preference for an environment -- as long as I get to chose it.
BTW, my students laugh, but I often describe what I call "programmer's high", the equivalent of runner's high. No mind altering substances involved, just getting in a groove where I write perfect code at high speed with an endorphin high. I can't say any particular environment does it, but I know when I'm there.
It does work. We do the jar-full-of-candy thing every Christmas. I've calculated the average of all guesses both times and came really close -- within 10 the last time. Things like this drove the eugenics people [like Galton] crazy.
Of course, my brother-in-law saw my guess and added one to it to win.
It's not how smart you are, it's knowing who's smart!
Part of the problem is that we don't teach science, we teach a little biology, a little chemistry, a little physics....
What we need to do is give a broader picture that covers the gamut. It's easy for creation scientists [yes, an oxymoron] to play at the edges of science and convince people who don't see it as a whole.
I mean, how many ways are there to prove the universe is older than 6,000 years old? If you refuse to accept one of these ways, the whole scientific structure would fall apart -- it's all tied together. Pull one string out and it'd all fall apart.
You're forgetting the concept of herd immunity and the fact that older adults just don't have that good of a response to flu vaccines. Restricting flu vaccines to 70+ people would result in lots of younger people having the flu that wouldn't kill them, but they would infect lots of older people who don't have a good response to the vaccine -- killing them.
Try the tech support at the SAS institute. They pick up on the second ring and the recorded message has two options -- old or new problem. New problems gets you an answer in under four rings. Then someone [a person!] directs your call to the tech support person for that problem, and she picks up within four rings. Then they answer the question. If they can't [rare], it gets answered by email in one day. I've never encountered better, and they're in North Carolina.
I was wondering if someone would mention Niven and Pournelle. "Footfall" actually has a couple of SF writer teams gathered to evaluate the alien threat in the novel.
To make this a bit broader than "actuary", consider statistics or biostatistics in general. A masters degree in stats gets you 40+ for a starting salary, usually as a statistical programmer/data analyst. Are you willing to go beyond a bachelor's degree?
I've got the Intel Pro/Wireless and switched to Knoppix to get it to configure without scouring the net for a driver.
There has actually been a disturbing trend where authors are asked to pay, by the page, for publication in peer-reviewed journals.
There is a diatribe by Ellen Goodman on "Nightmare Feature Creep" in the Boston Globe that echoes the same sentiments. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion /oped/articles/2006/05/26/nightmare_of_feature_cre ep
Start at the bottom and work your way up. The Elements of Style is good for sentence structure and once you can write good sentences, you can then work on writing good paragraphs. Then you work on structuring a document.
My freshman english class used a book called "Readings for Writers" which was very good for the paragraph and document level aspects of writing.
Then, of course, there's reading. Read anything that will keep your interest. Of course, we might want to limit it to reading stuff written by people who can write, which might not include a lot of stuff written on the web....
It's actually not that bad with a laptop. You can change the angle, distance and brightness, so it's tolerable for quite some time.