You know, I first got started programming when I happened upon a left hand basic cartridge with an Atari 400 for $5 at a garage sale. It came with an attachable floppy disk drive that was DOA. Countless hours would be spent with a small black and white TV with me writing procedures. Should the power turn off, all that work was lost.
Despite growing up below the poverty line working on farms, I was able to go to college with enough grants based on need. This is where our paths diverge... and I would not automatically assume that my four year degree at the University of Minnesota would make me a better programmer than yourself or anyone who taught themselves to code. But the important point of this is that when I interview (and I've held interviews for programmers to come onto my team many times) the interviewer is looking for you to prove that you will be a self motivated asset to the team. If you can put MIT or some prestigious school, they often lower their required threshold of proof. If you put U of MN there is still proof required -- after all there are some ~50k students at the U of MN and as such it would be entirely possible for some idiot to be herded through with the other cattle. So they just need to make sure I am not this idiot -- or at least not in the area they need me for. Now, when you have institution to back up your claim of skills, the proof requirement quickly becomes insurmountable.
So I will issue you a challenge and I will target the Ruby language and Rails framework. This probably isn't the best option for a job seeker (I think some Java with maybe Spring Framework would be better suited for a position) but this could result in proof. If you want reading material for any of these steps, I recommend the Pragmatic Programmer series on Ruby and Ruby on Rails (used it is quite cheap but here is a free alternative).
Step One: Learn Ruby. Ruby is a functional language that is very simple and easy to learn but difficult to completely master. The flexibility of the language seems to continually leave me with more and more options at my disposal. From mixins to domain specific languages, it just keeps on giving. I'm guessing with your background you're going to notice that some things in Ruby are slow. This is okay. As computers have gotten beefier, programmers have sacrificed performance and (to a large degree) memory in order to make code easier to maintain and write.
Step Two: Learn Rails. Rails is a very extensive framework that is again easy to learn. That tutorial should show you how to master concepts like quickly creating a CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) application for a blog or recipes (I forget). From here you have to use your imagination. Make something that is CRUD or some mutation of CRUD to demonstrate that you know how to utilize and extend this concept. You might use census data and experiment with new UI toys like Processing or HTML5's Canvas element. I think if you have access to some mildly interesting data that building a site you'd like to share would be a great idea (even if it is just in CRUD format). But get it to a state where you're proud of it.
Step Four: Host your project on Heroku. You might buy a domain name if you're open to $12/year. I don't know how far you want to take this part. But get it so that people can access it.
Ask Slashdot: Am I Too Old To Learn New Programming Languages?
Barring extreme physical exertion and danger, you're never too old for anything. If you're too old to learn something new, you might as well lay down in your grave and wait for death on the grounds that adopting a fatalistic attitude toward new experiences basically ensures you're done with life. That's my opinion anyway. Seriously, if you can't do something new, what exactly are you looking forward to?
I do have an important question though: how did you come to begin programming? I am unfamiliar with what would have been available paths back in those days. Did you get a degree via courses in logic and mathematics? Trade school? Taught yourself? Mentored?
I believe Pascal is closest to a procedural language and Delphi is the object oriented equivalent? So that's a somewhat diverse start. Are you familiar with concepts like (but not limited to): closures, sets, Big O Notation and understand the difference between a framework and a library? These are things that I might not use daily coding Ruby and Java but I remember from school and I feel better prepare me for learning any new (or old) language. If you aren't familiar with these things, it might pay to consider taking refresher courses at a nearby college to brush up on them. I don't know how viable this suggestion is but on the grounds of learning new languages, it has proved invaluable to me in understanding why language creators made the choices they did.
Should I try to learn web development (html, xhtml, css, php, python, ruby)? Should I learn Java and/or C#?
Personally I would suggest Ruby on Rails with CSS for a solid UI. You're going to need to know concepts like RESTful interfaces and it might take some getting used to letting the Rails automagic do things for you but the resources are plentiful and free. It sounds like it will be totally out of your comfort zone and that's probably a good thing if you're up to the challenge.
Should I go back to PM work even if I do not like it that much?
In today's economy? Why not make two resumes: PM and Programmer. If PM skills pay the bills, hop on it and work on programming as a side hobby. If the right Programmer position comes up and the pay is good, consider it but don't set yourself up for failure or take too large a risk if your home/dependents/nestegg are at stake.
Modified, Harmless HIV Used
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Cancer Cured By HIV
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· Score: 5, Informative
Two fairly important adjectives that were for some reason omitted from the summary are listed in the article:
In the Penn experiment, the researchers removed certain types of white blood cells that the body uses to fight disease from the patients. Using a modified, harmless version of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, they inserted a series of genes into the white blood cells. These were designed to make to cells target and kill the cancer cells. After growing a large batch of the genetically engineered white blood cells, the doctors injected them back into the patients.
Emphasis mine. The summary almost makes it sound like the researchers just used HIV as we know it... it's almost humorous to think that a doctor might say "The treatment was a success, you no longer have cancer... but..." "BUT WHAT?" "Well, we sorta had to inject you with the HIV in order to take care of it." Obviously this is not the case.
"With the winding down of Google Labs, Google will discontinue App Inventor as a Google product and will open source the code. Additionally, because of App Inventor’s success in the education space, we are exploring opportunities to support the educational use of App Inventor on an open source platform."
I think it's pretty obvious what happened here. Because of close brushes with violating their "do no evil" mantra, Larry and Sergey have actually perfected time travel in order to ensure that no present actions result in future evil.
As a result, the first subject has been sent into the future to report back only negative results from Google's products. When he returned beaten and battered and bruised, he declared that support and extensions of the App Inventor must be halted. Instead of assisting in learning, App Inventor gave uneducated kids the power of super hackers -- creating applications that could be viruses and malware. The explosion of malware on mobile phones sent markets reeling and devastated the world economy... and then, one fateful morning, as a particularly evil hacker was using App Inventor to build a smarter botnet he had the idea to use App Inventor to create an App that simply used App Inventor to progenate. And he succeeded in making it 0.000001% smarter than he himself was. And so it set out using App Inventor to make more programs that used App Inventor to make programs that were 0.000001% smarter than their parent program.
Nothing to fear, right? RIGHT?
A few quadrillion iterations later (which Google's servers handled without any problem) and App Inventor had infected every system in the world. The result was a super brilliant application that could predict and see everything by harnessing the computation power of every implemented Turing Machine in the world. Therefore, Google had to kill App Inventor now while it still had the chance.
Larry and Sergey debated for hours whether App Inventor was inherently evil or the application of App Inventor. What was worse, was that Larry was convinced that if App Inventor was not left to run its course then mankind would face an even more evil post-apocalyptic future past that when Microsoft's.NET Inventor overtook it.
And so they came up with a simple, elegant solution that would shift all the blame onto the entire world should App Inventor become the end of mankind: open source it.
Well, I apologize, I assure you that I have no affiliation with Garden Networks and, yes, their free service uses Tor -- which I think is largely German based if I'm not mistaken. I would imagine that would be better for Turkish users but who knows. I thought their protocol was novel but if you say they suck in China, I'll take your word on it.
Then you go as far as to say the OP should help fund this NGO. Enough for the government to classify him as a danger to national security / terrorist / whatever.
"Help fund this NGO" is not really what I said. I'm pretty sure I suggested raising awareness and, assuming Garden Networks is giving them free premium service, send any extra money their way. I said "you might" and cautioned against it if any risk was involved. I do not want to come across as saying anyone should do anything. You know if you start a pamphlet activity with a large and diverse group, it's going to be kind of hard for them to classify everyone participating as "national security / terrorist / whatever." I mean, cower in your homes in fear is good advice? Don't seek assistance from your fellow countrymen while you have the internet and you can? I guess you and I have different desired levels of resistance to impending oppression. If they're gonna take away your most powerful form of communication, I would not advise waiting and doing something about it later.
IMHO it's much better to get that $2.99 VPN (I've seen them even cheaper) and claim you just wanted to talk to your Facebook friends abroad than to get involved with these type of NGO's.
$3 a month is nothing for me but I was under the impression that the IMF had screwed up Turkey's economy for a while by some sort of disinflation plan and it's not like their median household income is exactly stellar. Hit the wealthy neighborhoods with pamphlets asking for donations and spread the word... just like I volunteer to do here in the United States for charities and causes like cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.
You know, there's not a lot of ways other than VPN and the other ways usually aren't as secure. The last link provided covers most of the bases -- albeit in subpar English. So I guess what I would suggest is you contacting a not-for profit like Garden Networks and ask them to grant Turks the same status as Chinese users in that you don't have to subscribe to use their premium servers. Their gTunnel application seems straight forward and intuitive and appears secure. It appears that users in China, Kuwait and Iran enjoy it so I imagine you shouldn't have any problems either.
Furthering that idea, you might pass out "awareness" pamphlets while asking for donations to "keep the internet uncensored" and then pay for your pamphlets and donate the rest of that money to Garden Networks. I don't fully know what level of risk that might entail in Turkey, I certainly would not suggest that to a Chinese citizen.
I will say that it is conceivably possible for your government to go insane and block ranges of IP addresses so that you cannot access Garden Network's premium servers or Tor nodes... that would be pretty extensive however.
The Financial Times estimates that as many as 250,000 patents are at stake in a smartphone. Industry titans like Microsoft, Nokia, and Apple have tens of thousands of patents each, but Google's portfolio is reportedly on the low end — 'under 1,000.'
Luckily patents are not created equally and I would imagine that companies decades older than Google and with far more product lines, areas of business, etc have more patents. Is this really grounds for assuming Android is teetering upon a rain slick precipice of darkness?
I think patents are kind of like nuclear warheads and mutually assured destruction requires only that you have a couple thousand strategically positioned with MIRV... er Lawyer guidance modules. Legions and legions of lawyers. Row upon row of mindless litigant bastards that will close ranks when one of their number is befallen by a fatal case of morals or common sense.
Others have told me that the financial gain of publishing an academic book may be up to 700 USD. In comparison to current Scandinavian wages that really means very little, so I don’t think that earning another 700 USD should be a motive to restrict the access to one’s thoughts.
First of all I would like to commend you and thank you for this sentiment.
Is the open source community boycotting ebook formats, as Richard Stallman has proposed?
I don't understand, Stallman decries e-book formats that aren't open. There are many open e-book formats--including ePub. Granted, there are tools out there that allow you (to varying degrees of success like Calibre) to crack and convert to these formats but why bother? As you can see in that table, most everyone supports PDF. You are misunderstanding Stallman's gripe. It's not that we are boycotting e-books, it's that e-book makers are trying to carve out their own proprietary section of the electronic market, reader and creators included. So let them take their ball and play elsewhere. As you noted in your blog, this isn't the only problem:
Most ebook-readers out there so not implement the Epub-standard perfectly. That means that although one has an Epub that follows all the standards, one can be quite sure that it will not display properly on all the readers. Kovid Goyal, the creator of the Calibre ebook management software has done a good job in creating conversion scripts that create Epubs for all the different readers. Unfortunately they do this by breaking compatibility with the standard, and many distribution sites will only check whether your Epub complies to the standards and not whether the book will actually look good in the reader.
Most readers handle PDF, I would just stick to the output of LaTeX. I might suggest that your expectations are misdirected at the open source community and might be better directed at the makers of readers that apparently force you to break standards. It's the IE6 conundrum all over again.
Stallman didn't suggest boycotting ebook formats, just the DRM associated with them (big surprise there). The problem you are experiencing is that sometimes it's difficult to go from one open standard to another. The tools are lacking in maturity and I'm guessing that since my Android phone can easily display PDFs for me that there's not a lot of people demanding this ePub support that apparently needs multiple flavors for each device (and Calibre helps you with this). The tools exist but they'll only get you so far and I think the really special stuff that LaTeX does well is what you'll find yourself needing to fine tune in the end product. Look at how long it's taken LaTeX to get that beautiful and I think you'll discover that making a magical cure-all converter to ${random format} can be a non-trivial task.
If you start a kickstarter and get your university to donate hosting to making an open free market for any academic papers in any open format, I'd definitely throw in $20 (I've spent about $200 on kickstarter in the past two years). Either that or maybe throw your lot in with arxiv and work with them to fund more format support?
'I think anonymity on the Internet has to go away. People behave a lot better when they have their real names down. I think people hide behind anonymity and they feel like they can say whatever they want behind closed doors.'
This quote makes it sound like this is a very recent realization and that this problem hasn't existed since the beginning of the internet. Furthermore, it totally overlooks one half of the double edged sword of anonymity online. You may retain your privacy through anonymity, you may be safer from stalkers and thieves by remaining anonymous and you can speak without fear of retaliation -- whether that be deserved (the only cases Randi Zuckerberg seems to be able to conjure up) or undeserved.
I mean, we're posting on a site that seems to handle anonymity just fine. Is it impossible for Facebook to spend the effort to discover how they could accomplish the same thing?
Furthermore what in the world is she saying "on the Internet" for? Here's an idea: you stick to Facebook and the rest of the sovereign internet will follow or not follow your lead.
And yet further, I would argue that implementing a verification system is more complicated and more risky than simply dealing with spam and trolls in an intuitive way. Do you propose we each have some secret identification string that establishes our true identity on a given site? And when those are lifted wholesale by a foreign entity what then, Randi?
Side rant: Holy nepotism, Batman! Hey, Mark, did you ever think that maybe Facebook wouldn't be so hated and being thrashed so much in Public Relations if the person in charge of it actually earned that position by merit? How do I know your sister didn't achieve this position by merit? If she was good enough to hold this high of a position at one of the most valuable internet companies, she would have known to issue a non-statement on anonymity as she would have researched this problem just a little bit more than relying on her psychology degree to say "Gee, people are jerks when they can say whatever they want--let's just stop that." She didn't offer a solution and all she did was piss a bunch of people off. GO TEAM ZUCKERBERG!
Of course they wouldn't want the possibility of anonymity. That makes their information collection services that much less useful for targeted advertising.
You really think they care about my name when they target me for advertising? If an ad uses my name, it's creepy and a little frightening. If an ad tells me about a store in my neighborhood having a coupon, I just might click on it to print it off. They shouldn't care of I'm using my real name, they should care more about my interests, my location, what concerts I like, etc. That's how targeted advertising works. It has nothing to do with a user's true identity. Ask any marketer. They want a collection of that information and they don't want to associate it with a name because that's when you get into the privacy violation realm.
What in the world does a user's name do for targeted advertising?
It's been a while since I've perused CatB but from the article:
The Bazaar was likened to the slightly chaotic but powerful collective approach behind the development of open source software.
The Cathedral represented the traditional, closed, corporate approach to software development.
Um, I'm a little confused on their definition of the Cathedral. From Wikipedia (and also from my memory):
* The Cathedral model, in which source code is available with each software release, but code developed between releases is restricted to an exclusive group of software developers. GNU Emacs and GCC are presented as examples.
* The Bazaar model, in which the code is developed over the Internet in view of the public. Raymond credits Linus Torvalds, leader of the Linux kernel project, as the inventor of this process. Raymond also provides anecdotal accounts of his own implementation of this model for the Fetchmail project.
GNU Emacs and GCC were the "traditional, closed, corporate approach to software development"? That's news to me!
I don't follow nor agree with this adaptation of CatB to social networks... nor do I think the author of this article fully read CatB.
Then Why Are We Seeing the Same Negative Effects?
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Debt Deal Reached
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Yes, but when using your checkbook you take the value of the currency as a given. A state has (limited) control over the value of it's currency (by limiting or expanding the available sum of printed money), thereby it also has (again, limited) control over the value of it's own dept. Now you might say that playing with the value of the currency can have complex consequences, and that would be true. Still, macro economics work differently than micro economics.
I completely agree that the analogy is not perfect (never is). What I'm asking is why, if people like Cheney said that "Reagan proved deficits don't matter" then why are we seeing negative effects? Suddenly we're concerned about our AAA rating? Why should we care? Deficits don't matter, right? If you're saying that a checkbook deficit and national deficit are two completely different things then why are we seeing a threat of losing our credit rating and other money problems that are associated with drowning yourself in debt on a personal level?
Could Someone Help Me Out With This?
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Debt Deal Reached
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I don't spend more money than I take in. I see commercials for people like that who have credit card debt because they couldn't do some simple balancing and see that they were spending more than they made. Why on Earth are we still implementing tax cuts and deficit spending?! Have we given up any hope of ever getting out of the red as a country?
This is very basic math... so basic that when you're taught how to balance a checkbook in high school, they don't even teach it in Math class. It's a general life skill and our country is failing at life in general.
This is like counting the number of times the word 'denier' appears in the rebuttal. Both sides call each other names.
But I didn't see the word 'denier' in the rebuttal. All I saw was the footnote:
* Mind you, of course, I use the word "denier" quite a bit when discussing this topic, but in this case the shoe fits. When you deny overwhelming evidence, you’re a denier. Scientists trying to tell people what the science is telling them aren’t alarmists. They’re scientists. And as you can see from what other climate scientists are saying, what the Forbes article is based on apparently isn’t good science.
This two labels are equally dangerous in addressing global warming. This isn't a problem that half the world can solve without the help of the other half. By using either of these two terms, you're invoking a with-us-or-against-us mentality that is dangerous. Since these two labels are diametrically opposed, it does nobody any good to use them. Dismissing studies on global warming as 'alarmist' doesn't allow any information to be garnered from these reports which is really sad. Dismissing opponents as 'denialist' doesn't allow you to differentiate between people who acknowledge climate change but don't think it's man made and people who deny any climate change at all. Which is also very sad, there's people that want to do something about climate change but aren't sold that we're the cause of it. Why shut them out?
Like most things in life, this isn't black and white. By polarizing everyone involved, you halt the flow of information and push back the date where we can work together to solve this problem. There is a whole spectrum of solutions that lie in front of us, using the terms 'denialist' or 'alarmist' prevents us from selecting one of them as a cohesive group looking to move forward.
I applaud The Bad Astronomer from refraining from using the label 'denialist' as often as the original article used 'alarmist' (easily once per paragraph). I don't know why he included that footnote... I thought he had made an effective point without resorting to name-calling.
Right up through most of the 1990s power ratings differentiated models within a given manufacturer's lineup, but that's barely true anymore. In those days the least expensive models had 20 or 30 watts a channel, but now most low- to midprice receivers have around 100 watts per channel. For example, Pioneer's least expensive receiver, the VSX-521 ($250) is rated at 80 watts a channel; its VSX-1021 ($550) only gets you to 90 watts: and by the time you reach the VSX-53 ($1,100) you're only up to 110 watts per channel! Doubling the budget to $2,200 gets you 140 watts per channel from their SC-37 receiver. Denon's brand-new $5,500 AVR-5308CI delivers 150 watts per channel! The 31-year-old Pioneer SX-1980 receiver Butterworth wrote about was rated at 270 watts per channel. He tested the Pioneer and confirmed the specifications: "It delivered 273.3 watts into 8 ohms and 338.0 watts into 4 ohms." It's a stereo receiver, but it totally blew away Denon's state-of-the-art flagship model in terms of power delivery!
Emphasis mine. So I noticed that you didn't adjust the SX-1980's price into 2010 dollars so let's ask Wikipedia about the cost of an SX-1980 in today's dollars:
Its retail price in 1978 was $1295.00. According to the average historical price of gold, it would have listed for an equivalent of $8199.42 in 2010.
Okay. Show me that industry wide receivers that cost in excess of eight grand are vastly inferior to the SX-1980 and we'll have a conversation. What's the Yamaha RX-V1800 cost these days? One grand? Am I surprised your blind listening test found something that costs over eight times that amount sounds better?
Here's what you're noticing: the market of people who want to sink ten grand into a receiver (just the receiver alone!) isn't big enough for them to waste their time making the absolutely perfect everything just in the name of sound quality. You're going to design the circuit board and power output entirely devoted to sound quality? Not if you're only going to sell a hundred units.
I have a lot of audiophile friends but I don't often hear "Gee, I wish they sold an eight thousand dollar receiver devoted to sound quality so I could really blow some money to climb from the 90th to 98th percentile of sound quality."
Although they most certainly will, they don't have to. I think that the comic book corpus is deeper than you think. Fables was highly enjoyable to me and The Sandman wasn't bad. Are they perfect for a movie adaptation? Maybe not. But I can think of many comics with great story lines that aren't common household names. I really wouldn't mind seeing more comic book movies like The Watchmen. I guess the primary problem with that is they would most certainly have to be rated R and that stunts your market. I can think of examples suitable for children like Percy Gloom that I think Pixar could really run with... of course, these aren't traditional superhero constructs (neither was The Watchmen), they're more complex than that.
I think that if Hollywood and the comic publishers had more fairly compensated the original artists that they wouldn't be facing a lack of material. Here's a research exercise I'll leave to the reader: Who personally profited more from Spiderman: ${Sony CEO} or co-creator Jack Kirby (and his estate)? If a large enough percentage of profit is pumped back into the creators, you'd see an explosion of people vying for that market with new and original ideas.
More and more with the creative art that I consume I strive to make purchases directly from the artist themselves because we have the internet and the internet enables this so why not? Hollywood and their accounting methods are absolutely horrible about this so why should I worry that they're not going to have anymore comic books left to rape soon?
You can't even get a permit let a lone build a nuclear or coal power plant because of EPA regulations and red tape.
You're not going to hear much sympathy from me. I've been to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, I've seen what natural water should look like. By my own first hand account, there is none of that on the East Coast.
It's like watching a race between two people running and one person get's hit by a car every third step they take and acting surprised the other runner is doing so well. It's a rigged race and the desired outcome shouldn't be a huge surprise.
The way I see it, is it's more like two people racing and one person pouring crude oil along the entire race path and then sliding on it with a sled and beating the person that's trying to run through it. Meanwhile the people who live near the race track are drinking shit in their water. Think I'm making that up? Go ask the residents of West Virginia who get to watch their entire state terraformed into slag. PA's natural gas boon could result in the same thing if we don't have that evil evil evil "red tape."
This is good news (except for Poland, who for SOME reason is holding out on releasing their numbers).
Isn't it obvious? Poland's numbers show that in twenty years, they're going to be the only ones on Earth with cold left. Siberia and Minnesota? Completely out of cold by 2031. Think of it. People will climb over themselves to get to the cold in Poland. China will buy cold pipeline through countries just to have access to it. Europe will be cast back into World War II-like conflict, you might even see England trade a piece of Poland back to the Ruskies just to end the conflict again. Barrels of crude cold will start trading at massively high prices. Ice cubes will be traded illegally on the street like crack until they've all melted. Obama's already foolishly dropped all of the United States' reserves to lessen the suffering during this heat wave--what are we going to do? Canada can easily blockade us from Alaska and claim what is left of the Inuit Cold for their own.
You're probably saying "Oh, America will just do what it always does and get shitfaced instead of worrying about that." How? We won't have any cold for our drinks. What, you're going to drink room temperature wine? Sure and afterward be sure to stick your tannin coated tongue out so everyone knows you're French.
Poland is trying to keep this strategic advantage hidden from the rest of the world. Gentlemen, I think the question here today is not how can we defer or lessen global warming but instead how quickly can we take Poland by surprise with unilateral action from land, air and sea. You might argue that we cannot afford a third war but I say that greedy selfish Poland has brought this upon themselves.
Announcer 1: "I'd like to welcome all our viewers to this auspicious event..." Announcer 2: "That's right, Tom, as the attendees roll up we're likely to see some--oh wait, who's that getting out of that limo as we speak?" Announcer 1: "I believe that's former CEO of Diebold Walden O'Dell." Announcer 2: "Yes, yes it is, that's certainly a 2004 Bush/Haliburten logo on the side of his limo!" Announcer 1: "A good start to the evening but who is this chauffeuring himself around?" Announcer 2: "Well, the person handing his keys to the valet right now is none other than Darl McBride!" Announcer 1: "You know, you wouldn't believe it but these people -- these infamous people sound so large in print and yet they look and act just like regular people. No fake smiles here." Announcer 2: "You know, McBride has fallen on some hard times but rest assured that he will be back to his full potential at some point in his career." Announcer 1: "I do not believe it. Is that Jack Thompson right behind McBride?" Announcer 2: "Well, somebody take a picture, I don't think these two titans have ever even been seen together." Announcer 1: "I will never forget Jack Thompson's disbarment from practicing law in Florida. Clearly, there walks a man willing to sacrifice it all." Announcer 2: "And, oh, look at this newcomer. Some say he will walk away with the golden trucker hat tonight, Tom. It is none other than Aaron Barr." Announcer 1: "The man that exemplified being a dbag to such a degree, he was not afraid to literally rip the constitution out of its display case and wipe his ass with it publicly. Words cannot describe the feeling of awe I am experiencing right now." Announcer 2: "His swagger, his grease-backed hair, his beady eyes, the way they shift back and fourth. I'm trying hard to describe this prima donna but I am failing. No other person in my life has caused me to want to turn and lay tracks anymore than this magnificent dbag." Announcer 1: "Well, that means a lot, you hosted the Serial Murderer Awards two years ago, right?" Announcer 2: "That's right, the 2009 Stabbies." Announcer 1: "Well, this is just going to be one amazing night with Aaron Barr vying for 2011 dbag of the year."
It looks like you've been involved in many projects. I've got about 10 different side projects (outside of work) going on at any given time in several different realms. How often do you decide it's time to end a project so that you can focus on a better project? Have any projects that you devoted a lot of time to result in nothing or have all come to fruition in one way or another? What is your criteria for this?
No, because it was dissolved in 1991. Could the SVR, FSB or GRU infiltrate LulzSec? Sure, why not? I'm sure anyone could infiltrate the group as long as you're willing to play their game.
From the short video on their site (youtube alternate), it appears that this technology relies on a DNA template across thousands or millions of wells on a chip that emits hydrogen ions every time a base is incorporated into a DNA strand by a polymerase. I'm not a biologist but it looks like a pretty neat idea and I certainly hope it works as well as they say it does. I guess even if your sensor isn't that great at classifying between A, G, C or T then you can just build more wells on the chip and look at the statistics. I'm not sure how they ensure that one process is going on in each cell but I'm hoping this yields some cheap and fast accuracy. This would be a huge boon for research -- hell you could start up some hobby work very quickly and (relatively) cheaply since it's such a straight forward process.
I'm sick of people proffering this and only this as a reason to Google+ growth. There is something more to it, after all, iTunes Ping isn't Facebook either. Why didn't they balloon up to 20 million in two weeks?
There's features that are importantly different like friends can't post on my "wall" in G+ and managing and restricting circles is easier for me in G+ than managing and restricting lists was in FB. Google did some things wrong at first and they've corrected some but I'm hoping for a much lighter UI at some point. Or even just the option to not have all the circle animations.
Furthermore the "autofacerecognition" crap that Facebook made opt-in by default was really scary for me personally. I don't doubt Google's ability to do something similar but so far the privacy problems have been negligible compared to getting Zuckerpunched with something worse and worse each month. All of Facebook isn't bad, in some ways G+ is much like it. But at least take the time to enumerate what the advantages are to you.
Ya got me. It's true. On my desk right now are newspaper clippings and recorded VHS tapes about mining exploitation. I have a doctorate in the ethics of mining from a semi-reputable online academy. Basically my life consists of this: I wake up and log onto Slashdot and try to offer informative posts and pretend like I'm really a software developer. Usually Toxic West Virginia is playing in another browser window. I sit and wait and wait until anything mildly related to mining is posted and then I get a huge rager and my hands start to shake. It's almost too much for my fingers to kiss the keyboard with my sweet sweet dissent against the big bad evil. It's a long running ruse that was about to pay off until you meddling anonymous cowards caught me in the act.
I live solely for the moment that something barely intersects with mining on Slashdot. Mining forums? That's for chumps. I spread Rock's word on the very website that is rife with unbelievers.
Either that's the case OR -- and stay with me here -- I heard the very recent This American Life on NPR, got online to read up on it myself and somehow recalled that brief investigation when I read this in the article:
It was created to to educate, explore, and examine our nation’s struggle with mountain top removal coal mines, coal fired power production, and alternative energies...
And I thought I might relay this very recent dispute to the readers.
That last possibility is just far too absurd though.
I apologize for trying to remind everyone about the present and ongoing human factor in mining -- even non-mountain top destroying mining.
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You know, I first got started programming when I happened upon a left hand basic cartridge with an Atari 400 for $5 at a garage sale. It came with an attachable floppy disk drive that was DOA. Countless hours would be spent with a small black and white TV with me writing procedures. Should the power turn off, all that work was lost.
... and I would not automatically assume that my four year degree at the University of Minnesota would make me a better programmer than yourself or anyone who taught themselves to code. But the important point of this is that when I interview (and I've held interviews for programmers to come onto my team many times) the interviewer is looking for you to prove that you will be a self motivated asset to the team. If you can put MIT or some prestigious school, they often lower their required threshold of proof. If you put U of MN there is still proof required -- after all there are some ~50k students at the U of MN and as such it would be entirely possible for some idiot to be herded through with the other cattle. So they just need to make sure I am not this idiot -- or at least not in the area they need me for. Now, when you have institution to back up your claim of skills, the proof requirement quickly becomes insurmountable.
Despite growing up below the poverty line working on farms, I was able to go to college with enough grants based on need. This is where our paths diverge
So I will issue you a challenge and I will target the Ruby language and Rails framework. This probably isn't the best option for a job seeker (I think some Java with maybe Spring Framework would be better suited for a position) but this could result in proof. If you want reading material for any of these steps, I recommend the Pragmatic Programmer series on Ruby and Ruby on Rails (used it is quite cheap but here is a free alternative).
Step One: Learn Ruby. Ruby is a functional language that is very simple and easy to learn but difficult to completely master. The flexibility of the language seems to continually leave me with more and more options at my disposal. From mixins to domain specific languages, it just keeps on giving. I'm guessing with your background you're going to notice that some things in Ruby are slow. This is okay. As computers have gotten beefier, programmers have sacrificed performance and (to a large degree) memory in order to make code easier to maintain and write.
Step Two: Learn Rails. Rails is a very extensive framework that is again easy to learn. That tutorial should show you how to master concepts like quickly creating a CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) application for a blog or recipes (I forget). From here you have to use your imagination. Make something that is CRUD or some mutation of CRUD to demonstrate that you know how to utilize and extend this concept. You might use census data and experiment with new UI toys like Processing or HTML5's Canvas element. I think if you have access to some mildly interesting data that building a site you'd like to share would be a great idea (even if it is just in CRUD format). But get it to a state where you're proud of it.
Step Three: Github. Put your source on Github.
Step Four: Host your project on Heroku. You might buy a domain name if you're open to $12/year. I don't know how far you want to take this part. But get it so that people can access it.
Now once you've iterated over that a bunch
Ask Slashdot: Am I Too Old To Learn New Programming Languages?
Barring extreme physical exertion and danger, you're never too old for anything. If you're too old to learn something new, you might as well lay down in your grave and wait for death on the grounds that adopting a fatalistic attitude toward new experiences basically ensures you're done with life. That's my opinion anyway. Seriously, if you can't do something new, what exactly are you looking forward to?
I do have an important question though: how did you come to begin programming? I am unfamiliar with what would have been available paths back in those days. Did you get a degree via courses in logic and mathematics? Trade school? Taught yourself? Mentored?
I believe Pascal is closest to a procedural language and Delphi is the object oriented equivalent? So that's a somewhat diverse start. Are you familiar with concepts like (but not limited to): closures, sets, Big O Notation and understand the difference between a framework and a library? These are things that I might not use daily coding Ruby and Java but I remember from school and I feel better prepare me for learning any new (or old) language. If you aren't familiar with these things, it might pay to consider taking refresher courses at a nearby college to brush up on them. I don't know how viable this suggestion is but on the grounds of learning new languages, it has proved invaluable to me in understanding why language creators made the choices they did.
Should I try to learn web development (html, xhtml, css, php, python, ruby)? Should I learn Java and/or C#?
Personally I would suggest Ruby on Rails with CSS for a solid UI. You're going to need to know concepts like RESTful interfaces and it might take some getting used to letting the Rails automagic do things for you but the resources are plentiful and free. It sounds like it will be totally out of your comfort zone and that's probably a good thing if you're up to the challenge.
Should I go back to PM work even if I do not like it that much?
In today's economy? Why not make two resumes: PM and Programmer. If PM skills pay the bills, hop on it and work on programming as a side hobby. If the right Programmer position comes up and the pay is good, consider it but don't set yourself up for failure or take too large a risk if your home/dependents/nestegg are at stake.
In the Penn experiment, the researchers removed certain types of white blood cells that the body uses to fight disease from the patients. Using a modified, harmless version of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, they inserted a series of genes into the white blood cells. These were designed to make to cells target and kill the cancer cells. After growing a large batch of the genetically engineered white blood cells, the doctors injected them back into the patients.
Emphasis mine. The summary almost makes it sound like the researchers just used HIV as we know it ... it's almost humorous to think that a doctor might say "The treatment was a success, you no longer have cancer ... but ..." "BUT WHAT?" "Well, we sorta had to inject you with the HIV in order to take care of it." Obviously this is not the case.
from TFA:
"With the winding down of Google Labs, Google will discontinue App Inventor as a Google product and will open source the code. Additionally, because of App Inventor’s success in the education space, we are exploring opportunities to support the educational use of App Inventor on an open source platform."
I think it's pretty obvious what happened here. Because of close brushes with violating their "do no evil" mantra, Larry and Sergey have actually perfected time travel in order to ensure that no present actions result in future evil.
... and then, one fateful morning, as a particularly evil hacker was using App Inventor to build a smarter botnet he had the idea to use App Inventor to create an App that simply used App Inventor to progenate. And he succeeded in making it 0.000001% smarter than he himself was. And so it set out using App Inventor to make more programs that used App Inventor to make programs that were 0.000001% smarter than their parent program.
.NET Inventor overtook it.
As a result, the first subject has been sent into the future to report back only negative results from Google's products. When he returned beaten and battered and bruised, he declared that support and extensions of the App Inventor must be halted. Instead of assisting in learning, App Inventor gave uneducated kids the power of super hackers -- creating applications that could be viruses and malware. The explosion of malware on mobile phones sent markets reeling and devastated the world economy
Nothing to fear, right? RIGHT?
A few quadrillion iterations later (which Google's servers handled without any problem) and App Inventor had infected every system in the world. The result was a super brilliant application that could predict and see everything by harnessing the computation power of every implemented Turing Machine in the world. Therefore, Google had to kill App Inventor now while it still had the chance.
Larry and Sergey debated for hours whether App Inventor was inherently evil or the application of App Inventor. What was worse, was that Larry was convinced that if App Inventor was not left to run its course then mankind would face an even more evil post-apocalyptic future past that when Microsoft's
And so they came up with a simple, elegant solution that would shift all the blame onto the entire world should App Inventor become the end of mankind: open source it.
This is pretty poor advice.
Well, I apologize, I assure you that I have no affiliation with Garden Networks and, yes, their free service uses Tor -- which I think is largely German based if I'm not mistaken. I would imagine that would be better for Turkish users but who knows. I thought their protocol was novel but if you say they suck in China, I'll take your word on it.
Then you go as far as to say the OP should help fund this NGO. Enough for the government to classify him as a danger to national security / terrorist / whatever.
"Help fund this NGO" is not really what I said. I'm pretty sure I suggested raising awareness and, assuming Garden Networks is giving them free premium service, send any extra money their way. I said "you might" and cautioned against it if any risk was involved. I do not want to come across as saying anyone should do anything. You know if you start a pamphlet activity with a large and diverse group, it's going to be kind of hard for them to classify everyone participating as "national security / terrorist / whatever." I mean, cower in your homes in fear is good advice? Don't seek assistance from your fellow countrymen while you have the internet and you can? I guess you and I have different desired levels of resistance to impending oppression. If they're gonna take away your most powerful form of communication, I would not advise waiting and doing something about it later.
IMHO it's much better to get that $2.99 VPN (I've seen them even cheaper) and claim you just wanted to talk to your Facebook friends abroad than to get involved with these type of NGO's.
$3 a month is nothing for me but I was under the impression that the IMF had screwed up Turkey's economy for a while by some sort of disinflation plan and it's not like their median household income is exactly stellar. Hit the wealthy neighborhoods with pamphlets asking for donations and spread the word ... just like I volunteer to do here in the United States for charities and causes like cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.
You know, there's not a lot of ways other than VPN and the other ways usually aren't as secure. The last link provided covers most of the bases -- albeit in subpar English. So I guess what I would suggest is you contacting a not-for profit like Garden Networks and ask them to grant Turks the same status as Chinese users in that you don't have to subscribe to use their premium servers. Their gTunnel application seems straight forward and intuitive and appears secure. It appears that users in China, Kuwait and Iran enjoy it so I imagine you shouldn't have any problems either.
... that would be pretty extensive however.
Furthering that idea, you might pass out "awareness" pamphlets while asking for donations to "keep the internet uncensored" and then pay for your pamphlets and donate the rest of that money to Garden Networks. I don't fully know what level of risk that might entail in Turkey, I certainly would not suggest that to a Chinese citizen.
I will say that it is conceivably possible for your government to go insane and block ranges of IP addresses so that you cannot access Garden Network's premium servers or Tor nodes
The Financial Times estimates that as many as 250,000 patents are at stake in a smartphone. Industry titans like Microsoft, Nokia, and Apple have tens of thousands of patents each, but Google's portfolio is reportedly on the low end — 'under 1,000.'
Luckily patents are not created equally and I would imagine that companies decades older than Google and with far more product lines, areas of business, etc have more patents. Is this really grounds for assuming Android is teetering upon a rain slick precipice of darkness?
... er Lawyer guidance modules. Legions and legions of lawyers. Row upon row of mindless litigant bastards that will close ranks when one of their number is befallen by a fatal case of morals or common sense.
I think patents are kind of like nuclear warheads and mutually assured destruction requires only that you have a couple thousand strategically positioned with MIRV
Others have told me that the financial gain of publishing an academic book may be up to 700 USD. In comparison to current Scandinavian wages that really means very little, so I don’t think that earning another 700 USD should be a motive to restrict the access to one’s thoughts.
First of all I would like to commend you and thank you for this sentiment.
Is the open source community boycotting ebook formats, as Richard Stallman has proposed?
I don't understand, Stallman decries e-book formats that aren't open. There are many open e-book formats--including ePub. Granted, there are tools out there that allow you (to varying degrees of success like Calibre) to crack and convert to these formats but why bother? As you can see in that table, most everyone supports PDF. You are misunderstanding Stallman's gripe. It's not that we are boycotting e-books, it's that e-book makers are trying to carve out their own proprietary section of the electronic market, reader and creators included. So let them take their ball and play elsewhere. As you noted in your blog, this isn't the only problem:
Most ebook-readers out there so not implement the Epub-standard perfectly. That means that although one has an Epub that follows all the standards, one can be quite sure that it will not display properly on all the readers. Kovid Goyal, the creator of the Calibre ebook management software has done a good job in creating conversion scripts that create Epubs for all the different readers. Unfortunately they do this by breaking compatibility with the standard, and many distribution sites will only check whether your Epub complies to the standards and not whether the book will actually look good in the reader.
Most readers handle PDF, I would just stick to the output of LaTeX. I might suggest that your expectations are misdirected at the open source community and might be better directed at the makers of readers that apparently force you to break standards. It's the IE6 conundrum all over again.
Stallman didn't suggest boycotting ebook formats, just the DRM associated with them (big surprise there). The problem you are experiencing is that sometimes it's difficult to go from one open standard to another. The tools are lacking in maturity and I'm guessing that since my Android phone can easily display PDFs for me that there's not a lot of people demanding this ePub support that apparently needs multiple flavors for each device (and Calibre helps you with this). The tools exist but they'll only get you so far and I think the really special stuff that LaTeX does well is what you'll find yourself needing to fine tune in the end product. Look at how long it's taken LaTeX to get that beautiful and I think you'll discover that making a magical cure-all converter to ${random format} can be a non-trivial task.
If you start a kickstarter and get your university to donate hosting to making an open free market for any academic papers in any open format, I'd definitely throw in $20 (I've spent about $200 on kickstarter in the past two years). Either that or maybe throw your lot in with arxiv and work with them to fund more format support?
'I think anonymity on the Internet has to go away. People behave a lot better when they have their real names down. I think people hide behind anonymity and they feel like they can say whatever they want behind closed doors.'
This quote makes it sound like this is a very recent realization and that this problem hasn't existed since the beginning of the internet. Furthermore, it totally overlooks one half of the double edged sword of anonymity online. You may retain your privacy through anonymity, you may be safer from stalkers and thieves by remaining anonymous and you can speak without fear of retaliation -- whether that be deserved (the only cases Randi Zuckerberg seems to be able to conjure up) or undeserved.
I mean, we're posting on a site that seems to handle anonymity just fine. Is it impossible for Facebook to spend the effort to discover how they could accomplish the same thing?
Furthermore what in the world is she saying "on the Internet" for? Here's an idea: you stick to Facebook and the rest of the sovereign internet will follow or not follow your lead.
And yet further, I would argue that implementing a verification system is more complicated and more risky than simply dealing with spam and trolls in an intuitive way. Do you propose we each have some secret identification string that establishes our true identity on a given site? And when those are lifted wholesale by a foreign entity what then, Randi?
Side rant: Holy nepotism, Batman! Hey, Mark, did you ever think that maybe Facebook wouldn't be so hated and being thrashed so much in Public Relations if the person in charge of it actually earned that position by merit? How do I know your sister didn't achieve this position by merit? If she was good enough to hold this high of a position at one of the most valuable internet companies, she would have known to issue a non-statement on anonymity as she would have researched this problem just a little bit more than relying on her psychology degree to say "Gee, people are jerks when they can say whatever they want--let's just stop that." She didn't offer a solution and all she did was piss a bunch of people off. GO TEAM ZUCKERBERG!
Of course they wouldn't want the possibility of anonymity. That makes their information collection services that much less useful for targeted advertising.
You really think they care about my name when they target me for advertising? If an ad uses my name, it's creepy and a little frightening. If an ad tells me about a store in my neighborhood having a coupon, I just might click on it to print it off. They shouldn't care of I'm using my real name, they should care more about my interests, my location, what concerts I like, etc. That's how targeted advertising works. It has nothing to do with a user's true identity. Ask any marketer. They want a collection of that information and they don't want to associate it with a name because that's when you get into the privacy violation realm.
What in the world does a user's name do for targeted advertising?
The Bazaar was likened to the slightly chaotic but powerful collective approach behind the development of open source software.
The Cathedral represented the traditional, closed, corporate approach to software development.
Um, I'm a little confused on their definition of the Cathedral. From Wikipedia (and also from my memory):
* The Cathedral model, in which source code is available with each software release, but code developed between releases is restricted to an exclusive group of software developers. GNU Emacs and GCC are presented as examples.
* The Bazaar model, in which the code is developed over the Internet in view of the public. Raymond credits Linus Torvalds, leader of the Linux kernel project, as the inventor of this process. Raymond also provides anecdotal accounts of his own implementation of this model for the Fetchmail project.
GNU Emacs and GCC were the "traditional, closed, corporate approach to software development"? That's news to me!
... nor do I think the author of this article fully read CatB.
I don't follow nor agree with this adaptation of CatB to social networks
Yes, but when using your checkbook you take the value of the currency as a given. A state has (limited) control over the value of it's currency (by limiting or expanding the available sum of printed money), thereby it also has (again, limited) control over the value of it's own dept. Now you might say that playing with the value of the currency can have complex consequences, and that would be true. Still, macro economics work differently than micro economics.
I completely agree that the analogy is not perfect (never is). What I'm asking is why, if people like Cheney said that "Reagan proved deficits don't matter" then why are we seeing negative effects? Suddenly we're concerned about our AAA rating? Why should we care? Deficits don't matter, right? If you're saying that a checkbook deficit and national deficit are two completely different things then why are we seeing a threat of losing our credit rating and other money problems that are associated with drowning yourself in debt on a personal level?
As an engineer that uses math on a daily basis, the more I read about the rising debt the more confused I am. It seems that a strategy of Reagan's was to take in less money in taxes than the government spends and this strategy has been intact for far too long. So if you're trying to balance a budget, how in the hell do you justify spending way more money than you take in? Either you have to raise taxes or cut spending. It's pretty clear that Clinton was the only president to break from this norm since then and now we're shocked that our debt crises get worse and worse every term?
... so basic that when you're taught how to balance a checkbook in high school, they don't even teach it in Math class. It's a general life skill and our country is failing at life in general.
I don't spend more money than I take in. I see commercials for people like that who have credit card debt because they couldn't do some simple balancing and see that they were spending more than they made. Why on Earth are we still implementing tax cuts and deficit spending?! Have we given up any hope of ever getting out of the red as a country?
This is very basic math
This is like counting the number of times the word 'denier' appears in the rebuttal. Both sides call each other names.
But I didn't see the word 'denier' in the rebuttal. All I saw was the footnote:
* Mind you, of course, I use the word "denier" quite a bit when discussing this topic, but in this case the shoe fits. When you deny overwhelming evidence, you’re a denier. Scientists trying to tell people what the science is telling them aren’t alarmists. They’re scientists. And as you can see from what other climate scientists are saying, what the Forbes article is based on apparently isn’t good science.
This two labels are equally dangerous in addressing global warming. This isn't a problem that half the world can solve without the help of the other half. By using either of these two terms, you're invoking a with-us-or-against-us mentality that is dangerous. Since these two labels are diametrically opposed, it does nobody any good to use them. Dismissing studies on global warming as 'alarmist' doesn't allow any information to be garnered from these reports which is really sad. Dismissing opponents as 'denialist' doesn't allow you to differentiate between people who acknowledge climate change but don't think it's man made and people who deny any climate change at all. Which is also very sad, there's people that want to do something about climate change but aren't sold that we're the cause of it. Why shut them out?
... I thought he had made an effective point without resorting to name-calling.
Like most things in life, this isn't black and white. By polarizing everyone involved, you halt the flow of information and push back the date where we can work together to solve this problem. There is a whole spectrum of solutions that lie in front of us, using the terms 'denialist' or 'alarmist' prevents us from selecting one of them as a cohesive group looking to move forward.
I applaud The Bad Astronomer from refraining from using the label 'denialist' as often as the original article used 'alarmist' (easily once per paragraph). I don't know why he included that footnote
Right up through most of the 1990s power ratings differentiated models within a given manufacturer's lineup, but that's barely true anymore. In those days the least expensive models had 20 or 30 watts a channel, but now most low- to midprice receivers have around 100 watts per channel. For example, Pioneer's least expensive receiver, the VSX-521 ($250) is rated at 80 watts a channel; its VSX-1021 ($550) only gets you to 90 watts: and by the time you reach the VSX-53 ($1,100) you're only up to 110 watts per channel! Doubling the budget to $2,200 gets you 140 watts per channel from their SC-37 receiver. Denon's brand-new $5,500 AVR-5308CI delivers 150 watts per channel! The 31-year-old Pioneer SX-1980 receiver Butterworth wrote about was rated at 270 watts per channel. He tested the Pioneer and confirmed the specifications: "It delivered 273.3 watts into 8 ohms and 338.0 watts into 4 ohms." It's a stereo receiver, but it totally blew away Denon's state-of-the-art flagship model in terms of power delivery!
Emphasis mine. So I noticed that you didn't adjust the SX-1980's price into 2010 dollars so let's ask Wikipedia about the cost of an SX-1980 in today's dollars:
Its retail price in 1978 was $1295.00. According to the average historical price of gold, it would have listed for an equivalent of $8199.42 in 2010.
Okay. Show me that industry wide receivers that cost in excess of eight grand are vastly inferior to the SX-1980 and we'll have a conversation. What's the Yamaha RX-V1800 cost these days? One grand? Am I surprised your blind listening test found something that costs over eight times that amount sounds better?
Here's what you're noticing: the market of people who want to sink ten grand into a receiver (just the receiver alone!) isn't big enough for them to waste their time making the absolutely perfect everything just in the name of sound quality. You're going to design the circuit board and power output entirely devoted to sound quality? Not if you're only going to sell a hundred units.
I have a lot of audiophile friends but I don't often hear "Gee, I wish they sold an eight thousand dollar receiver devoted to sound quality so I could really blow some money to climb from the 90th to 98th percentile of sound quality."
Although they most certainly will, they don't have to. I think that the comic book corpus is deeper than you think. Fables was highly enjoyable to me and The Sandman wasn't bad. Are they perfect for a movie adaptation? Maybe not. But I can think of many comics with great story lines that aren't common household names. I really wouldn't mind seeing more comic book movies like The Watchmen. I guess the primary problem with that is they would most certainly have to be rated R and that stunts your market. I can think of examples suitable for children like Percy Gloom that I think Pixar could really run with ... of course, these aren't traditional superhero constructs (neither was The Watchmen), they're more complex than that.
I think that if Hollywood and the comic publishers had more fairly compensated the original artists that they wouldn't be facing a lack of material. Here's a research exercise I'll leave to the reader: Who personally profited more from Spiderman: ${Sony CEO} or co-creator Jack Kirby (and his estate)? If a large enough percentage of profit is pumped back into the creators, you'd see an explosion of people vying for that market with new and original ideas.
More and more with the creative art that I consume I strive to make purchases directly from the artist themselves because we have the internet and the internet enables this so why not? Hollywood and their accounting methods are absolutely horrible about this so why should I worry that they're not going to have anymore comic books left to rape soon?
You can't even get a permit let a lone build a nuclear or coal power plant because of EPA regulations and red tape.
You're not going to hear much sympathy from me. I've been to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, I've seen what natural water should look like. By my own first hand account, there is none of that on the East Coast.
So let's see here, after some shallow checking on Google News we have: Frack water to be dumped in Niagara Falls, the EPA has been completely ignoring Anacostia River pollution and the dead zone in the Chesapeake is growing. And that's just news from the last couple of days. How can I be upset that the EPA wants to tie up companies in "red tape" when this is happening in our country? Why don't the solar companies get the same red tape? Oh, right, they don't produce a byproduct that is often dumped in nearby water. I'm sure the site of solar panel farms suffers the same environmental scrutiny that your poor "hobbled" coal and nuclear power facilities face. It's just that the byproducts and environmental effects appear to be okay for local residents.
It's like watching a race between two people running and one person get's hit by a car every third step they take and acting surprised the other runner is doing so well. It's a rigged race and the desired outcome shouldn't be a huge surprise.
The way I see it, is it's more like two people racing and one person pouring crude oil along the entire race path and then sliding on it with a sled and beating the person that's trying to run through it. Meanwhile the people who live near the race track are drinking shit in their water. Think I'm making that up? Go ask the residents of West Virginia who get to watch their entire state terraformed into slag. PA's natural gas boon could result in the same thing if we don't have that evil evil evil "red tape."
This is good news (except for Poland, who for SOME reason is holding out on releasing their numbers).
Isn't it obvious? Poland's numbers show that in twenty years, they're going to be the only ones on Earth with cold left. Siberia and Minnesota? Completely out of cold by 2031. Think of it. People will climb over themselves to get to the cold in Poland. China will buy cold pipeline through countries just to have access to it. Europe will be cast back into World War II-like conflict, you might even see England trade a piece of Poland back to the Ruskies just to end the conflict again. Barrels of crude cold will start trading at massively high prices. Ice cubes will be traded illegally on the street like crack until they've all melted. Obama's already foolishly dropped all of the United States' reserves to lessen the suffering during this heat wave--what are we going to do? Canada can easily blockade us from Alaska and claim what is left of the Inuit Cold for their own.
You're probably saying "Oh, America will just do what it always does and get shitfaced instead of worrying about that." How? We won't have any cold for our drinks. What, you're going to drink room temperature wine? Sure and afterward be sure to stick your tannin coated tongue out so everyone knows you're French.
Poland is trying to keep this strategic advantage hidden from the rest of the world. Gentlemen, I think the question here today is not how can we defer or lessen global warming but instead how quickly can we take Poland by surprise with unilateral action from land, air and sea. You might argue that we cannot afford a third war but I say that greedy selfish Poland has brought this upon themselves.
Announcer 1: "I'd like to welcome all our viewers to this auspicious event ..."
Announcer 2: "That's right, Tom, as the attendees roll up we're likely to see some--oh wait, who's that getting out of that limo as we speak?"
Announcer 1: "I believe that's former CEO of Diebold Walden O'Dell."
Announcer 2: "Yes, yes it is, that's certainly a 2004 Bush/Haliburten logo on the side of his limo!"
Announcer 1: "A good start to the evening but who is this chauffeuring himself around?"
Announcer 2: "Well, the person handing his keys to the valet right now is none other than Darl McBride!"
Announcer 1: "You know, you wouldn't believe it but these people -- these infamous people sound so large in print and yet they look and act just like regular people. No fake smiles here."
Announcer 2: "You know, McBride has fallen on some hard times but rest assured that he will be back to his full potential at some point in his career."
Announcer 1: "I do not believe it. Is that Jack Thompson right behind McBride?"
Announcer 2: "Well, somebody take a picture, I don't think these two titans have ever even been seen together."
Announcer 1: "I will never forget Jack Thompson's disbarment from practicing law in Florida. Clearly, there walks a man willing to sacrifice it all."
Announcer 2: "And, oh, look at this newcomer. Some say he will walk away with the golden trucker hat tonight, Tom. It is none other than Aaron Barr."
Announcer 1: "The man that exemplified being a dbag to such a degree, he was not afraid to literally rip the constitution out of its display case and wipe his ass with it publicly. Words cannot describe the feeling of awe I am experiencing right now."
Announcer 2: "His swagger, his grease-backed hair, his beady eyes, the way they shift back and fourth. I'm trying hard to describe this prima donna but I am failing. No other person in my life has caused me to want to turn and lay tracks anymore than this magnificent dbag."
Announcer 1: "Well, that means a lot, you hosted the Serial Murderer Awards two years ago, right?"
Announcer 2: "That's right, the 2009 Stabbies."
Announcer 1: "Well, this is just going to be one amazing night with Aaron Barr vying for 2011 dbag of the year."
No link to original source? And original source is supposedly Chinese state-run media??
Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.
Here is a link from the English China Daily which is state run. And here's a tabloid branch of the People's Daily running the story but usually this paper focuses on global issues.
It looks like you've been involved in many projects. I've got about 10 different side projects (outside of work) going on at any given time in several different realms. How often do you decide it's time to end a project so that you can focus on a better project? Have any projects that you devoted a lot of time to result in nothing or have all come to fruition in one way or another? What is your criteria for this?
Could the KGB Infiltrate LulzSec?
No, because it was dissolved in 1991. Could the SVR, FSB or GRU infiltrate LulzSec? Sure, why not? I'm sure anyone could infiltrate the group as long as you're willing to play their game.
From the short video on their site (youtube alternate), it appears that this technology relies on a DNA template across thousands or millions of wells on a chip that emits hydrogen ions every time a base is incorporated into a DNA strand by a polymerase. I'm not a biologist but it looks like a pretty neat idea and I certainly hope it works as well as they say it does. I guess even if your sensor isn't that great at classifying between A, G, C or T then you can just build more wells on the chip and look at the statistics. I'm not sure how they ensure that one process is going on in each cell but I'm hoping this yields some cheap and fast accuracy. This would be a huge boon for research -- hell you could start up some hobby work very quickly and (relatively) cheaply since it's such a straight forward process.
Why is Google+ growing so quickly?
Because it's not Facebook...
I'm sick of people proffering this and only this as a reason to Google+ growth. There is something more to it, after all, iTunes Ping isn't Facebook either. Why didn't they balloon up to 20 million in two weeks?
There's features that are importantly different like friends can't post on my "wall" in G+ and managing and restricting circles is easier for me in G+ than managing and restricting lists was in FB. Google did some things wrong at first and they've corrected some but I'm hoping for a much lighter UI at some point. Or even just the option to not have all the circle animations.
Furthermore the "autofacerecognition" crap that Facebook made opt-in by default was really scary for me personally. I don't doubt Google's ability to do something similar but so far the privacy problems have been negligible compared to getting Zuckerpunched with something worse and worse each month. All of Facebook isn't bad, in some ways G+ is much like it. But at least take the time to enumerate what the advantages are to you.
I live solely for the moment that something barely intersects with mining on Slashdot. Mining forums? That's for chumps. I spread Rock's word on the very website that is rife with unbelievers.
Either that's the case OR -- and stay with me here -- I heard the very recent This American Life on NPR, got online to read up on it myself and somehow recalled that brief investigation when I read this in the article:
It was created to to educate, explore, and examine our nation’s struggle with mountain top removal coal mines, coal fired power production, and alternative energies ...
And I thought I might relay this very recent dispute to the readers.
That last possibility is just far too absurd though.
I apologize for trying to remind everyone about the present and ongoing human factor in mining -- even non-mountain top destroying mining.