I began working in the early 2000s. I can attest that things were much easier. I got my first job programming because someone needed and entry level programmer and heard I liked programming. No one gives this generation of kids that sort of break anymore.
Exactly. It will be one day, just not right now. New products need curb appeal. A cool factor. It's really hard to wow a first time user with a product filled with ads. Once they get enough users things will change. The original google search engine did the exact same thing. Once it was in common usage they started inserting "sponsored links." First you develop the technology, get everyone to use it, THEN you squeeze them.
They are going to eat some costs. This is like video game console development. You eat some costs upfront to get the entire ecosystem out there. They did the same thing with Android. Facebook did the exact same thing. If the platform is a cesspool of ads, no one will want to use it. Once it's in widespread use they can do what they want with it. I doubt they have a lot of interest in developing hardware either. They want to get the ecosystem into widespread usage any way possible, then take a step back and be the masters of that ecosystem, letting everyone else do the work for them. Then they'll begin figuring out how to integrate ads, but that is 5 years away I'm sure. Ads are like step 30 and they've just barely reached step 1.
This story has a long history. Basically these places were operating with a variety of names (cafes, arcades, sweepstakes, probably others) for many years. They operated based on loopholes in Florida law and their sole purpose was for gambling. A very large one got shut down because they crossed the line from simply unethical to illegal. They were operating under the premise they were a veterans benefit organization and not actually giving veterans and significant amounts of money. The lieutenant governor was involved with the company somehow so the story exploded. Rick Scott is already wildly unpopular and the Florida Republican party is on the path to possibly losing 2014 so the hammer came down to make a point that the legislature can still get things done.
It's pretty telling that the company that was shut down was run mostly by lawyers. They operated along the cracks and loopholes of Florida laws. These places are usually in poor and retired neighborhoods so I'm not that sad to see them go away. Maybe if we can do something about the "WE BUY GOLD" and check cashing places we can start to clean up these communities.
I don't think it's such a black and white issue. There needs to be specific algorithms for determining speed limits. In America, speed limits vary WILDLY from county to county for equivalent roads. I'll give an anecdotal story...
Where I live, there was a road that had a speed limit of 35mph. All the state guidelines said the speed limit should be faster. It was 35mph because the mayor lived on that road and he blocked it every time anyone tried to raise it. When he left office, all of a sudden it was 40mph. So all the people that got tickets for going 40mph on that road were in the wrong 6 months ago, but are not wrong now? Nothing has changed except a sign. The road is no more or less safe.
In the Gainesville, FL area the surrounding towns know there are a lot of people passing through that don't know the local speed limits (that's where the University of Florida is). That area of Florida is very poor and for some small towns, speeding tickets are a significant source of revenue. They will do things like post a 35mph limit, then soon after a jump to 50mph within a few hundred feet. When people see the 50mph sign they begin to speed up even though 50mph doesn't technically begin until the point of the sign. They hide behind billboards trying to see how fast they can clock you before you've technically reached the new speed limit.
While in most places it's illegal to have an official ticket quota, I know for a fact all tactics just shy of a quota are used. I've heard of whiteboards with all officers tickets for the month on display for all to see. Enforcement programs get very aggressive during times of budget shortfall. There needs to be a disconnect between funds raised by the legal system and where they go. If the money stopped going to police departments and say directly to the federal government, the police departments would lose motivation to try and cheat people out of money.
This seems like a late 90's solution to email spam. Why not a system that prescreens the call with a welcome message from you. This would trip some sort of probabilistic model that matches known waveforms of audio data that are robocallers. If after a few second delay it doesn't match anything, let the call through. Phone numbers in your contacts list are automatically let through. *123 reports a caller as a robocall at anytime during the call if one gets through. Anti-spam companies already have a good deal of the staff needed to implement this sort of thing. My guess is not enough people are affected by this to think this tech will be profitable.
What he did was about as dangerous as drunk driving. So unless we're ready to start sentencing people to 30 months for first offense drunk driving, it's not an appropriate sentence.
That's exactly how they are here in Florida. The reason for this legislation in the first place is that the lieutenant government was involved with a company that was operating one of these places under the cover that they were helping veterans. It turns out they were giving almost none of the money to any veterans associations. The really important part that very few in the media are reporting is that they were mostly run by lawyers. They knew exactly where the line for legality was and operated within inches of it for years. It wasn't until they got greedy and crossed it that they were caught.
They had to make a lot of noise about it because the lieutenant governor and a trashy company got caught screwing veterans. This was for the "someone should do something about that" crowd.
These things have been around a long time. I remember when one first popped up about 8 years ago. My friends and I went to it and were amazed that they were legal. Instead of straight cash they paid out visa gift cards. Then about 4 years ago the zoning board approved one in my immediate area. Once they realized the name "arcade" was a cover for gambling, they immediately rescinded.
The reason this is news is because our lieutenant governor was involved with a company that managed to take it to a new low. They operated these things under the guise that it was some sort of organization helping veterans. I think that was the last straw. After the bust, this legislation was introduced and quickly passed. It was completely reactionary and I'm sure poorly written due to the quickness with which it passed.
As I said before, these things have been around for years. I must have at least a dozen near mean in the counties that allow it. Everyone knew they were shady, so no one can act like they are surprised by their existence.
For about $30 dollars you could connect an AVR to a serial enabled lcd and use a PS/2 keyboard. Run it on rechargeable batteries. I did this exact thing years back when I was studying communications protocols. My guess is that even if you don't have the skills to put together such a thing, if you contacted sparkfun and told then what you're trying to do, someone experienced would donate the 4 hours it would take them to design and program this.
The line between discipline and abuse was crossed when he lost control. He was hitting her out of anger, not because he thought the resulting punishment would make her a more responsible member of society.
My CS degree was at least 2/3 math and theory (maybe more). Calculus, Probability, Automata theory, Discrete math, Data Structures, Algorithms, Logic, Abstract Algebra. We could get some vocational type programming for electives (the building database apps with.net type) but the math prevailed. It was also disturbing that the article seemed to lump programmers and IT staff together. There are IT degrees out there now and they will prepare you pretty well, but they are basically vocational degrees that the course material will have changed every 5 years. Today's CS degree has mostly the same theory it did 20 years ago.
I should clear some things up. 1000 computers is the total supported. At any given time only a few are being replaced. That $1000 includes a pretty generous warranty and monitor. The warranty is pretty much a given with Dell as they don't sell parts for their computers very long on their website. We get about 5 years out of a computer and the 18 month reference was so we minimize the number of configurations floating around. If a machine breaks, we can say it's config 2010 and pull a part from that shelf. Also, consider that we already have staff and it would be considered "soft time."
For longevity, current backup systems are just silly. They are simply just not abstracted enough. For REAL archival what's needed is an active system like the Internet but one that guarantees n redundancy. Perhaps a p2p like system with nodes backing up files. This abstracts away whether they are going on SATA, IDE, SCSI, Tape, whatevs. The local machine handles all the hardware details. When newer, better, cheaper technology comes along, the old data is automatically able to propagate onto the new storage mechanisms. I see this all the time working in the IT industry. I have backups from 10 years ago I can not read because we no longer have a working tape drive to read it. We need to separate ourselves from the hardware.
What the hell did these students do 10 years ago? AFAIK two semesters of English and perhaps 1 semester of literature are the norm at every reputable college in the U.S. If their English is too poor for your physics exam, they probably have no hope of graduating.
The fact he doesn't have a Ph.D is misleading. He has a bunch of bachelor and masters degrees. Pretty darn difficult ones if you ask me. Perhaps he saw more value in learning a bunch of related subjects pretty well instead of specializing. Regardless, he is definitely a product of the traditional university system.
This didn't help the cause. I had a school project with 5 people and we decided to use wave. After awhile we got tired of waiting for invites and just bought them off ebay. Unlike other google products, wave is only useful within wave. Google voice is still in invite mode, but I can text people without google voice. Gmail (when it was invite only a number of years ago) could still email other people. Google wave is only useful if ALL the people in your group have it and the barrier of entry was just too high. Even when you had an account and could invite other people, it took a few days for them to receive their invite.
You sir, are my hero. I've never been able to put into words exactly why I hate 3D, but you have. People keep comparing 3D to the sound and color advancements, but they don't take away from a movie. 3D does. 3D actually makes the movie worse for me. Not because of the headaches, or glasses, or anything like that, but because it looks so fake and in no way anything my brain has seen in the real world.
I don't think it's as vague as everyone is making it to be. Since his department is paying the IT department it most likely means data on a windows network through CIFS that is backed up and redundant. This is a common thing.
I was able to generate some errors by putting carefully crafted data into a website form once. I notified the company that made the software and their two programmers were such arrogant jackasses. "Oh well they are stored procedures so it's not a problem." I was so annoyed at their arrogance I got permission to attempt to crack the website and basically got full access to the box and all the data and a lot of data on their network through windows file sharing (sql server had some stored procedures to execute files if I remember correct, this was like 3 years ago) in about 20 minutes. Oh yeah, this software stored all of my company's employee medical records and as it was hosted stored all their other clients medical records as well.
The moral is that security is a very complex beast. They kept asking what product they could buy to fix this and I just laughed. They bought some McAfee product in the end that only masked the problem. Input needs to be completely sanitized and relying on tricks like stored procedures for security is a band aid. McAfee products don't protect against security holes due to logic mistakes.
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I began working in the early 2000s. I can attest that things were much easier. I got my first job programming because someone needed and entry level programmer and heard I liked programming. No one gives this generation of kids that sort of break anymore.
So, it's a project with a computer that happens to run on a slightly slower processor. If this ran on a mini-itx no one would even mention that part.
Exactly. It will be one day, just not right now. New products need curb appeal. A cool factor. It's really hard to wow a first time user with a product filled with ads. Once they get enough users things will change. The original google search engine did the exact same thing. Once it was in common usage they started inserting "sponsored links." First you develop the technology, get everyone to use it, THEN you squeeze them.
They are going to eat some costs. This is like video game console development. You eat some costs upfront to get the entire ecosystem out there. They did the same thing with Android. Facebook did the exact same thing. If the platform is a cesspool of ads, no one will want to use it. Once it's in widespread use they can do what they want with it. I doubt they have a lot of interest in developing hardware either. They want to get the ecosystem into widespread usage any way possible, then take a step back and be the masters of that ecosystem, letting everyone else do the work for them. Then they'll begin figuring out how to integrate ads, but that is 5 years away I'm sure. Ads are like step 30 and they've just barely reached step 1.
It was reactionary to a bigger scandal that happened here. I doubt they were very careful. It passed pretty quickly.
This story has a long history. Basically these places were operating with a variety of names (cafes, arcades, sweepstakes, probably others) for many years. They operated based on loopholes in Florida law and their sole purpose was for gambling. A very large one got shut down because they crossed the line from simply unethical to illegal. They were operating under the premise they were a veterans benefit organization and not actually giving veterans and significant amounts of money. The lieutenant governor was involved with the company somehow so the story exploded. Rick Scott is already wildly unpopular and the Florida Republican party is on the path to possibly losing 2014 so the hammer came down to make a point that the legislature can still get things done.
It's pretty telling that the company that was shut down was run mostly by lawyers. They operated along the cracks and loopholes of Florida laws. These places are usually in poor and retired neighborhoods so I'm not that sad to see them go away. Maybe if we can do something about the "WE BUY GOLD" and check cashing places we can start to clean up these communities.
I don't think it's such a black and white issue. There needs to be specific algorithms for determining speed limits. In America, speed limits vary WILDLY from county to county for equivalent roads. I'll give an anecdotal story...
Where I live, there was a road that had a speed limit of 35mph. All the state guidelines said the speed limit should be faster. It was 35mph because the mayor lived on that road and he blocked it every time anyone tried to raise it. When he left office, all of a sudden it was 40mph. So all the people that got tickets for going 40mph on that road were in the wrong 6 months ago, but are not wrong now? Nothing has changed except a sign. The road is no more or less safe.
In the Gainesville, FL area the surrounding towns know there are a lot of people passing through that don't know the local speed limits (that's where the University of Florida is). That area of Florida is very poor and for some small towns, speeding tickets are a significant source of revenue. They will do things like post a 35mph limit, then soon after a jump to 50mph within a few hundred feet. When people see the 50mph sign they begin to speed up even though 50mph doesn't technically begin until the point of the sign. They hide behind billboards trying to see how fast they can clock you before you've technically reached the new speed limit.
While in most places it's illegal to have an official ticket quota, I know for a fact all tactics just shy of a quota are used. I've heard of whiteboards with all officers tickets for the month on display for all to see. Enforcement programs get very aggressive during times of budget shortfall. There needs to be a disconnect between funds raised by the legal system and where they go. If the money stopped going to police departments and say directly to the federal government, the police departments would lose motivation to try and cheat people out of money.
This seems like a late 90's solution to email spam. Why not a system that prescreens the call with a welcome message from you. This would trip some sort of probabilistic model that matches known waveforms of audio data that are robocallers. If after a few second delay it doesn't match anything, let the call through. Phone numbers in your contacts list are automatically let through. *123 reports a caller as a robocall at anytime during the call if one gets through. Anti-spam companies already have a good deal of the staff needed to implement this sort of thing. My guess is not enough people are affected by this to think this tech will be profitable.
What he did was about as dangerous as drunk driving. So unless we're ready to start sentencing people to 30 months for first offense drunk driving, it's not an appropriate sentence.
That's exactly how they are here in Florida. The reason for this legislation in the first place is that the lieutenant government was involved with a company that was operating one of these places under the cover that they were helping veterans. It turns out they were giving almost none of the money to any veterans associations. The really important part that very few in the media are reporting is that they were mostly run by lawyers. They knew exactly where the line for legality was and operated within inches of it for years. It wasn't until they got greedy and crossed it that they were caught.
They had to make a lot of noise about it because the lieutenant governor and a trashy company got caught screwing veterans. This was for the "someone should do something about that" crowd.
These things have been around a long time. I remember when one first popped up about 8 years ago. My friends and I went to it and were amazed that they were legal. Instead of straight cash they paid out visa gift cards. Then about 4 years ago the zoning board approved one in my immediate area. Once they realized the name "arcade" was a cover for gambling, they immediately rescinded.
The reason this is news is because our lieutenant governor was involved with a company that managed to take it to a new low. They operated these things under the guise that it was some sort of organization helping veterans. I think that was the last straw. After the bust, this legislation was introduced and quickly passed. It was completely reactionary and I'm sure poorly written due to the quickness with which it passed.
As I said before, these things have been around for years. I must have at least a dozen near mean in the counties that allow it. Everyone knew they were shady, so no one can act like they are surprised by their existence.
For about $30 dollars you could connect an AVR to a serial enabled lcd and use a PS/2 keyboard. Run it on rechargeable batteries. I did this exact thing years back when I was studying communications protocols. My guess is that even if you don't have the skills to put together such a thing, if you contacted sparkfun and told then what you're trying to do, someone experienced would donate the 4 hours it would take them to design and program this.
Ugh, you mean 0 to 255?
The line between discipline and abuse was crossed when he lost control. He was hitting her out of anger, not because he thought the resulting punishment would make her a more responsible member of society.
My CS degree was at least 2/3 math and theory (maybe more). Calculus, Probability, Automata theory, Discrete math, Data Structures, Algorithms, Logic, Abstract Algebra. We could get some vocational type programming for electives (the building database apps with .net type) but the math prevailed. It was also disturbing that the article seemed to lump programmers and IT staff together. There are IT degrees out there now and they will prepare you pretty well, but they are basically vocational degrees that the course material will have changed every 5 years. Today's CS degree has mostly the same theory it did 20 years ago.
I should clear some things up. 1000 computers is the total supported. At any given time only a few are being replaced. That $1000 includes a pretty generous warranty and monitor. The warranty is pretty much a given with Dell as they don't sell parts for their computers very long on their website. We get about 5 years out of a computer and the 18 month reference was so we minimize the number of configurations floating around. If a machine breaks, we can say it's config 2010 and pull a part from that shelf. Also, consider that we already have staff and it would be considered "soft time."
For longevity, current backup systems are just silly. They are simply just not abstracted enough. For REAL archival what's needed is an active system like the Internet but one that guarantees n redundancy. Perhaps a p2p like system with nodes backing up files. This abstracts away whether they are going on SATA, IDE, SCSI, Tape, whatevs. The local machine handles all the hardware details. When newer, better, cheaper technology comes along, the old data is automatically able to propagate onto the new storage mechanisms. I see this all the time working in the IT industry. I have backups from 10 years ago I can not read because we no longer have a working tape drive to read it. We need to separate ourselves from the hardware.
What the hell did these students do 10 years ago? AFAIK two semesters of English and perhaps 1 semester of literature are the norm at every reputable college in the U.S. If their English is too poor for your physics exam, they probably have no hope of graduating.
The story should have just been "do you agree/disagree with ebonics? Discuss."
The fact he doesn't have a Ph.D is misleading. He has a bunch of bachelor and masters degrees. Pretty darn difficult ones if you ask me. Perhaps he saw more value in learning a bunch of related subjects pretty well instead of specializing. Regardless, he is definitely a product of the traditional university system.
This didn't help the cause. I had a school project with 5 people and we decided to use wave. After awhile we got tired of waiting for invites and just bought them off ebay. Unlike other google products, wave is only useful within wave. Google voice is still in invite mode, but I can text people without google voice. Gmail (when it was invite only a number of years ago) could still email other people. Google wave is only useful if ALL the people in your group have it and the barrier of entry was just too high. Even when you had an account and could invite other people, it took a few days for them to receive their invite.
You sir, are my hero. I've never been able to put into words exactly why I hate 3D, but you have. People keep comparing 3D to the sound and color advancements, but they don't take away from a movie. 3D does. 3D actually makes the movie worse for me. Not because of the headaches, or glasses, or anything like that, but because it looks so fake and in no way anything my brain has seen in the real world.
I don't think it's as vague as everyone is making it to be. Since his department is paying the IT department it most likely means data on a windows network through CIFS that is backed up and redundant. This is a common thing.
I was able to generate some errors by putting carefully crafted data into a website form once. I notified the company that made the software and their two programmers were such arrogant jackasses. "Oh well they are stored procedures so it's not a problem." I was so annoyed at their arrogance I got permission to attempt to crack the website and basically got full access to the box and all the data and a lot of data on their network through windows file sharing (sql server had some stored procedures to execute files if I remember correct, this was like 3 years ago) in about 20 minutes. Oh yeah, this software stored all of my company's employee medical records and as it was hosted stored all their other clients medical records as well.
The moral is that security is a very complex beast. They kept asking what product they could buy to fix this and I just laughed. They bought some McAfee product in the end that only masked the problem. Input needs to be completely sanitized and relying on tricks like stored procedures for security is a band aid. McAfee products don't protect against security holes due to logic mistakes.