I'm guessing you didn't make it to the third paragraph, or perhaps missed the gist of it. I actually agree with you.
What would be more useful than today's tablets is cheap, large-format color e-book reader that can comfortably and effectively display technical books, and I think it's important that they NOT be able to surf the web or run distracting apps. Until then, I don't think we're ready either.
nvidia did much more egregious deceptive marketing well over a decade ago in the GeForce4 MX, which didn't have programmable shaders like the GeForce3 series. I actually learned about it because the company where I worked was fooled into buying one of these for my computer, when the program I was using required one of the higher-spec devices. That misleading advertising actually did real financial damage, at least in my company's case, both in lost productivity and in replacing the hardware.
That really bothered me, and I started buying ATI cards for a time after that, since I didn't want to reward a company for underhanded behavior. I only started buying nvidia again quite a few years after that since the ATI drivers were giving me more trouble than they were worth.
This is not quite as bad, but it definitely smells a bit the same. A "mistake", really? I'm betting they wouldn't have made a "mistake" in underestimating their card's performance. Marketing at it's finest.
Buy a Pi for every kid. Education is what the Pi is for.
A Pi is great for learning about computers and technology. A tablet is more useful when learning about general subjects, and has a more appropriate form factor, since they need to be carried home.
Tablets are not a bad idea for the classroom. They could replace the students physical books and eliminate a lot of paperwork. There are also significant educational advantages. Each tablet can carry a small library of books, not just a backpack-full. And data is easily cross-referenced - the definition of any word can be looked up in an instant just by holding your finger down on it, for instance. Hyperlinks to additional topics of interest (like in Wikipedia), reward curiosity and exploration. I've found such features be very helpful on my own e-reader.
But frankly, they'd need to come down in price quite a bit first, probably with low-end models that are more appropriate for mass distribution. Apple devices are decidedly high-end, and as such, aren't really the best choice for a mass market deployment. The devices don't need to be sexy. All they really need is large-screen color e-book readers, with just enough horsepower to show static text and images. The ability to surf the web is an unneeded distraction, not a benefit for these devices. Laptops can be made readily available for research purposes. I'm thinking something between the current generation of e-book readers and tablets would be ideal. Also, perhaps most importantly, the schools need the proper infrastructure, training, and management systems in place to take advantage of these devices - which is may be the hardest part.
It's really only a matter of time before this sort of thing happens on a large scale, but I just don't think we're quite there yet. I'm guessing that within a decade we'll hit a technological and economic sweet spot that will make it happen for real. I think the LA school district jumped the gun, and was focused on the wrong things that are important for actual learning.
Heh, yeah, I remember the hoopla about 4th Generation Languages, which ultimately got watered down to the point that they redefining new languages as "4GL", and then started talking about 5th Generation Languages. Of course, the goalposts have been moved again, going so far as to claim that Prologue is a 5GL, rather than what it is, which is a 3GL with some fairly unique syntax and concepts. Naturally, these ended up being just as difficult to use and as complex as 3rd generation languages, so they've never really caught on in a big way.
I think it is more like "don't think because you learned a reasonably valuable skill that that skill can't be devalued through, or replaced by, automation." It's a pattern that has repeated itself throughout history as machines replaced human labor.
Every skill replaced by machines has been more about rote mechanical or mental labor, where essentially the same job is being performed every day. The assembly line factory worker is an obvious choice, as is the laborer who hand-wove textiles or dug in the field with hand tools. On the mental side, it's obvious that AI would probably be better at finding patterns in trends when looking at financial markets or diagnosing illnesses (even though these probably wouldn't replace jobs, but supplement then). But these are all jobs that involve tasks, no matter how complex, that don't change much from day to day. This is where both mechanization and computer-powered solutions excel.
There are human-powered jobs that still aren't automated, because they require a combination of human intelligence and dexterous physiques. Construction is a good example. They can do more with less because of mechanization and software, but the human can't be taken out of the loop, probably not within our lifetimes, because every single building or structure they create tends to be unique in some way. Even 3D printing a house wouldn't replace all the construction workers, just a portion of them.
Software is sort of like that. Every program that's written is solving a new and slightly different problem than the one previous. If not, it's generalized to the point that any differences can be expressed with pure data. A large part of software development is also communication with a client and trying to build software that suites their needs. Until an AI is advanced enough to understand human needs, I don't see how it can custom-build software to suit their needs either.
Actually, I see the future as AI being an invaluable aid to diagnostics. In theory, they should actually be much better at it than humans, with nearly an infallible knowledge base of case history and how subtle clues may play a part in a bigger pattern.
I agree that the notion of them replacing doctors seems improbable. I'm not sure I quite share your take on the typical doctor - they're just a generalist rather than a specialist, but are still very highly trained compared to most jobs. The problem is that doctors may not keep up on the cutting edge of what medical knowledge knows, and there's where the AI can really help.
The doctors will use this as a tool (just like any other), and then check to make sure the diagnosis makes sense. Moreover, the doctors will be invaluable in helping to fine-tune the system, putting feedback in on any mistaken diagnosis. Finally, it's ultimately the doctors that will be making the final decision. Essentially, the AI will be there to alert them to the possibility of more rare and mysterious illnesses that are hard to detect by typical means.
There may be cases where the AI can be used to *avoid* going to the doctor in the first place, if they symptoms are mild or benign enough - that is, ensuring they can go to an appropriate facility instead of costly emergency care units. That would actually be a useful cost-saving measure.
Gamers have the opposite expectation. After all, they're used to *released* software that isn't nearly ready for prime time. Hell, they tend to think that the company may still make major changes at beta - which in fact, actually happens sometimes. So, worry not. They're pushing in the opposite direction.
Also, in many cases, large, corporate brand names in Japan are used for a wide variety of products, unlike many American brands. Think about Yamaha, and how many different types of products they create: Motorcycles, boats, snowmobiles, musical instruments, automobile engines, industrial robots, electronics, scooters, and probably a bunch more I can't think of. American companies may have a parent company, but often retain a market-specific brand name rather than taking on the parent company name.
"Researchers and writers jealous of massive demand and high wages of programmers, predict doom and gloom for those that picked a reasonably lucrative career path". Or perhaps "You programmed all this shit that's taking our jobs away... you'll get yours too someday!" Of course, the article is paywalled, so I can't see how ridiculous and speculative it is for myself. Or rather, I wouldn't bother to pay.
Most of the examples in the article covered things like writing passable articles on local sports stories. That's a little bit different than the work I do, thank you, which isn't copy-paste crapola or rattling out statistics surrounded by fluff. It's the sort of stuff I get headaches designing and thinking about for days on end, spend time rewriting and optimizing, and talking about with other programmer friends when I come up with a really elegant solution. It's trying to figure out how to do things that no one else has actually done before, and doing it with very demanding constraints of size and speed.
Maybe some jobs can be automated away, but I'd probably have a hard time calling them real programming jobs if that's the case. A lot of programming is about creative problems solving, not just pure logic, which is just the means to an end. If a "robot" can do that before I'm dead, I'll eat my hat.
I took a quick peek at the specs on the LS-100, and yeah, it looks nice (especially the improved battery life). Well, I've been out of the loop for a couple of years. I'm not surprised if things have moved on. The H4N has been around a while, after all.
Actually, a more accurate translation is "thou shalt not murder". In ancient Hebrew, killing (harag) and murder (ratzah) are different words, and the commandment uses the latter. See? Point proven!
Generally, I don't perceive aggressiveness as an inherently negative trait, just... a dangerous one, akin to dynamite. If used properly, aggressiveness can propel civilization forward in healthy competition. Use incorrectly, it can indeed destroy civilization.
One could argue that the United States' moon shot was extremely aggressive, as it was a direct counter to the Soviet's aggressive move into space ahead of us. Yet I'd guess most would argue that the space race ultimately ended up being a positive endeavor. Likewise, the modern trend of building a world's tallest skyscraper could be viewed as aggressive. They're built not out of logical economics, but a desire to proclaim a region's or company's technical and cultural prowess to the world. I feel this is also a positive channeling of human aggression as well. It pushes us to expand our technical horizons and take enormous risks.
Obviously, we all know what the downside of aggression is: anger, violence, rape, murder, war, genocide. But part of being blessed with intelligence means that we can make a conscious choice about how we direct our inner aggression, and work to improve ourselves by harnessing it. Societal influence is a very key component in helping shape a civilization, and as we raise our children, we teach them to channel their inherent aggression into positive activities that can benefit both themselves and others.
Yeah, that's why I mentioned "lightweight" field recordings, meaning situations when you can't or didn't bring more expensive gear. I don't think any pro would use just that if they could lug in their high-end equipment - especially not the built-in microphones. I was just pointing out that even a $200 device (let alone a several thousand dollar Sound Devices field recorder) doesn't really seem to have problems with standard SD card noise, which it seems coincides with your experience as well.
It seems relatively useless, as far as I can tell. You can buy a Zoom H4N (well regarded by professional audio guys for lightweight field recording) for $200 and just use a normal card. The electronics are all carefully shielded in professional professional gear. And of course, once the audio data is transformed into digital, there's no real issue. The data is digital at that point of course, and not subject to electronic noise.
The term "computer error" doesn't imply that the computer made a mistake on it's own, since computers obviously have no independent judgment. Rather, it's simply used to subdivide all errors between "user errors" and errors found within the hardware or software, or "computer errors". Your argument is akin to saying "There's no such thing as a human, because all humans are actually mammals".
I don't believe that for a second. It might not be of primary concern but I have zero doubt that if you went to MIT or Carnegie Mellon and graduated with an IT related degree, it WILL factor into the hiring decision at Google.
Sure, it absolutely factors into a hiring decision. Your degree is important for getting in the door initially without any initial experience, of course, or perhaps for standing out among equally qualified candidates. However, if you have a few years of experience, people generally stop caring about where you went to school or (occasionally) even if you went to school at all, because at that point your work record should speak for itself.
Whenever I was asked to evaluate candidates, my criteria in order of importance was:
* Work History (have they proven they can do this job) * Personality (will they get along with the team) * Technical competence (can they do the job as demonstrated with code samples and tests) * Education (formal training with some breadth is never a bad thing)
Hopkins defended the adware, saying that it “helps users find and discover products visually” and “instantly analyzes images on the web and presents identical and similar product offers that may have lower prices.”
I mean, damn... How stupid do they think people are, that they can actually present this adware as a positive thing for consumers?
Even though Hopkins says the company has stopped installing the software on computers, it appears that’s only “temporary” until the company behind the software makes some tweaks to stop pop-ups.
Aaand... they're just going to tweak it so it's less noticeable. Nice. This software creates a potential man-in-the-middle attack by installing it's own signed certificate on your system so it can show embedded ads even if you have a secure connection. Nasty, nasty stuff from a privacy concern. This could easily become malware if not for the "good graces" of whatever code it's running or site that's intercepting your connection.
I hate to say this, but I really think we're going to need some new comprehensive privacy and advertising laws. I'm usually one to let the market shake itself out first and see what happens, but we've ended up here, with companies showing absolutely no restraint on how far they're willing to go to extract your personal data for marketing purposes.
Until we get such laws, I will never again purchase computer hardware from a large vendor like this (at least, Lenovo is forever out). For the last few years, I've been using a local boutique shop that specializes in custom computer builds. One of their nicest "features" is that they don't install any extra crapware on your system - only the bare minimum OS and tools, which is almost unheard of today. I'm willing to pay a bit more for that service, since they don't get subsidized by horrible stuff like this adware.
Yeah, same here... pretty much called it in the last article about this. It's sort of unbelievable, though, in some way, that no one stops to think of security and privacy ramifications of these things though. Yet it happens time after time after time.
I wonder if it's perhaps an engineer-type mentality that gets so focused on building cool new things, they just don't stop to think about how those new things can be abused or exploited to do bad things. Like when Microsoft decided to embed scripting-type functionality in all their Office documents, and now *whee*, we've got document-based trojans. Then they had to clamp down on all that scripting. Or how Adobe turned on scripting functionality by default in PDFs, giving us a crapload of exploits for a feature very few people ever used. Result - you have to turn off scripting to stay safe when reading PDFs, and eventually browsers took it upon themselves to do it safely for you. I guess engineers don't typically think like baddies, figuring out how to use technology to hurt people or steal from them.
This is not privacy-related data they're exploiting on purpose, because it doesn't do any good from a marketing standpoint. The only other explanation is that it's just an oversight. It's not the first time, and it probably won't be the last. On the other hand, given the fact that the NSA still collects all of our traffic, and US Citizens aren't up in arms about it, maybe they're correct in calculating that most people just don't give a damn about that sort of thing outside of a vocal minority.
Yeah, different societies are sort of weird that way, with varying levels of technology in specific areas, even if they're otherwise roughly equivalent. One example: I've heard that many Japanese homes use minimal insulation and don't have central heating. Instead, they use portable kerosene heaters or heated tables called a "kotatsu", which always struck me as rather primitive, if somewhat quaint. Then again, they'd probably laugh at how primitive our toilets are, despite all our other high-tech gadgets.
Here in the US, we have decades-old credit card systems that refuse to go anywhere, probably because any fraud was taken care of by the card issuers. As such, there was no real consumer pressure to fix it - from our perspective, it was mostly fine. My guess is that the credit card companies figured the fraud costs were not worth the upgrade hassle. Notice how fast things change once the rules of liability change.
Java on the backend is about as secure as you can get. Letting Java run in your browser, however, is just as insecure as letting any other untrusted code run on your browser.
Yep, I didn't make that distinction clear. There's nothing wrong with Java on the server. Actually, there's nothing wrong with Java on the client either, as long as it's not in the browser plugin.
I'll disagree with your assertion that Java in the browser is "just as insecure" as any other untrusted code run on your browser, though. By nearly any metric, it's much less secure than Javascript, or even ActionScript (Flash), which itself had a pretty long history of nasty security issues.
Every SSD has a limited number of writes. That hasn't changed. Wear leveling algorithms ensures that normal users will never be faced with that issue under normal use, though. In other words, unless you have some very specialized scenario where you're writing massive amounts of data continuously, it's really not an issue. Keep in mind that also, even if you happened to hit the write limit twenty years from now, all your data should still be readable.
Reliability is a bit harder of a metric to cover, because there's no way to measure reliability except in aggregate: large number of drives over many years of operation. How would a reviewer with one or two devices to test determine reliability? Over the week or so they tested, it was likely 100% reliable.
I have nothing against Java either, but I think making it web-facing has been something of a disaster from a security standpoint. And let's face it, security isn't a high-priority feature up until you're breached, and then it becomes a critical feature. If you disable the Java web plugin on the client, the language itself really has a lot going for it. If it didn't, so many programmers wouldn't still be using it today - according to some rankings, it's the most popular language right after C, and just before PHP and Javascript.
Fortunately, given the fact that we have dozens of reasonably popular languages to choose from, and even more obscure ones, we don't have to pick one language to do everything. In fact, it's downright silly to think that one language ever could do it all. The reason we have so many languages to begin with is because there are so many diverse programming challenges and environments in the modern world, and every language has specific strengths and weaknesses.
I read "sledgehammer" as "security nightmare". It's sort of sad when something completely eclipses Adobe Flash for sheer number and seriousness of security issues. As of a year ago, Java accounted for over 90% of all recent web-based exploits. It's a real problem, because so many enterprise applications rely on old and insecure versions of the Java runtime. It may be that security issues are what actually ends up completely killing Java on the client - besides the simple fact that the trend is simply moving away from plugins because of their inconvenience and proprietary nature.
Yep, that wasn't too long ago. Ballmer was, of course, actually talking more about the GPL license and it's "viral" nature, as they viewed it. Microsoft has previously been forced to release source code when GPU code was found in one of it's products.
Interestingly, it's a very different Microsoft today, having realized that iOS and Android have destroyed them in the mobile space, and with Linux as a very strong competitor in the server market. You see them now even porting some of their most important properties (Office, Outlook,.NET, etc) to competing platforms, which would have seemed unbelievable just six or seven years ago. Competition is a good thing.
AlienBrain is pretty expensive, and all the companies I've worked for have preferred to keep the code and binary assets in sync using a common repository for both assets and code. So, I can't really comment on it since I haven't used it.
Git and Mercurial are great for source assets, but not so great for managing binary assets. I use Mercurial myself for my own game project, and the problem is that there's no real way to trim excess binary data bloat from the history, so the repository tends to grow huge, and this becomes a problem when everyone needs a local copy of the repository on their machine.
Moreover, Perforce is much better at being able to define subsets of required data to pull, even within the same repository. For instance, artists and designers don't need access to the source code of the project, while the programmers probably don't need access to the raw art files used to generate the in-game assets.
It's not impossible use distributed version control or SVN, but I've just found Perforce to be superior for very large projects with mixed source and binary data. For most code-only projects, especially for widely distributed projects, Git or Mercurial are probably superior solutions. The fact that they're free probably doesn't hurt, as Perforce licenses cost hundreds of dollars per seat per year.
If someone didn't want to pay for Perforce licensing, I'd probably suggest Mercurial next. While not as popular as Git, it's a lot friendlier on Windows machines and has excellent and easy to use front-ends or Explorer integration.
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I'm guessing you didn't make it to the third paragraph, or perhaps missed the gist of it. I actually agree with you.
What would be more useful than today's tablets is cheap, large-format color e-book reader that can comfortably and effectively display technical books, and I think it's important that they NOT be able to surf the web or run distracting apps. Until then, I don't think we're ready either.
nvidia did much more egregious deceptive marketing well over a decade ago in the GeForce4 MX, which didn't have programmable shaders like the GeForce3 series. I actually learned about it because the company where I worked was fooled into buying one of these for my computer, when the program I was using required one of the higher-spec devices. That misleading advertising actually did real financial damage, at least in my company's case, both in lost productivity and in replacing the hardware.
That really bothered me, and I started buying ATI cards for a time after that, since I didn't want to reward a company for underhanded behavior. I only started buying nvidia again quite a few years after that since the ATI drivers were giving me more trouble than they were worth.
This is not quite as bad, but it definitely smells a bit the same. A "mistake", really? I'm betting they wouldn't have made a "mistake" in underestimating their card's performance. Marketing at it's finest.
Buy a Pi for every kid. Education is what the Pi is for.
A Pi is great for learning about computers and technology. A tablet is more useful when learning about general subjects, and has a more appropriate form factor, since they need to be carried home.
Tablets are not a bad idea for the classroom. They could replace the students physical books and eliminate a lot of paperwork. There are also significant educational advantages. Each tablet can carry a small library of books, not just a backpack-full. And data is easily cross-referenced - the definition of any word can be looked up in an instant just by holding your finger down on it, for instance. Hyperlinks to additional topics of interest (like in Wikipedia), reward curiosity and exploration. I've found such features be very helpful on my own e-reader.
But frankly, they'd need to come down in price quite a bit first, probably with low-end models that are more appropriate for mass distribution. Apple devices are decidedly high-end, and as such, aren't really the best choice for a mass market deployment. The devices don't need to be sexy. All they really need is large-screen color e-book readers, with just enough horsepower to show static text and images. The ability to surf the web is an unneeded distraction, not a benefit for these devices. Laptops can be made readily available for research purposes. I'm thinking something between the current generation of e-book readers and tablets would be ideal. Also, perhaps most importantly, the schools need the proper infrastructure, training, and management systems in place to take advantage of these devices - which is may be the hardest part.
It's really only a matter of time before this sort of thing happens on a large scale, but I just don't think we're quite there yet. I'm guessing that within a decade we'll hit a technological and economic sweet spot that will make it happen for real. I think the LA school district jumped the gun, and was focused on the wrong things that are important for actual learning.
Heh, yeah, I remember the hoopla about 4th Generation Languages, which ultimately got watered down to the point that they redefining new languages as "4GL", and then started talking about 5th Generation Languages. Of course, the goalposts have been moved again, going so far as to claim that Prologue is a 5GL, rather than what it is, which is a 3GL with some fairly unique syntax and concepts. Naturally, these ended up being just as difficult to use and as complex as 3rd generation languages, so they've never really caught on in a big way.
I think it is more like "don't think because you learned a reasonably valuable skill that that skill can't be devalued through, or replaced by, automation." It's a pattern that has repeated itself throughout history as machines replaced human labor.
Every skill replaced by machines has been more about rote mechanical or mental labor, where essentially the same job is being performed every day. The assembly line factory worker is an obvious choice, as is the laborer who hand-wove textiles or dug in the field with hand tools. On the mental side, it's obvious that AI would probably be better at finding patterns in trends when looking at financial markets or diagnosing illnesses (even though these probably wouldn't replace jobs, but supplement then). But these are all jobs that involve tasks, no matter how complex, that don't change much from day to day. This is where both mechanization and computer-powered solutions excel.
There are human-powered jobs that still aren't automated, because they require a combination of human intelligence and dexterous physiques. Construction is a good example. They can do more with less because of mechanization and software, but the human can't be taken out of the loop, probably not within our lifetimes, because every single building or structure they create tends to be unique in some way. Even 3D printing a house wouldn't replace all the construction workers, just a portion of them.
Software is sort of like that. Every program that's written is solving a new and slightly different problem than the one previous. If not, it's generalized to the point that any differences can be expressed with pure data. A large part of software development is also communication with a client and trying to build software that suites their needs. Until an AI is advanced enough to understand human needs, I don't see how it can custom-build software to suit their needs either.
Actually, I see the future as AI being an invaluable aid to diagnostics. In theory, they should actually be much better at it than humans, with nearly an infallible knowledge base of case history and how subtle clues may play a part in a bigger pattern.
I agree that the notion of them replacing doctors seems improbable. I'm not sure I quite share your take on the typical doctor - they're just a generalist rather than a specialist, but are still very highly trained compared to most jobs. The problem is that doctors may not keep up on the cutting edge of what medical knowledge knows, and there's where the AI can really help.
The doctors will use this as a tool (just like any other), and then check to make sure the diagnosis makes sense. Moreover, the doctors will be invaluable in helping to fine-tune the system, putting feedback in on any mistaken diagnosis. Finally, it's ultimately the doctors that will be making the final decision. Essentially, the AI will be there to alert them to the possibility of more rare and mysterious illnesses that are hard to detect by typical means.
There may be cases where the AI can be used to *avoid* going to the doctor in the first place, if they symptoms are mild or benign enough - that is, ensuring they can go to an appropriate facility instead of costly emergency care units. That would actually be a useful cost-saving measure.
Gamers have the opposite expectation. After all, they're used to *released* software that isn't nearly ready for prime time. Hell, they tend to think that the company may still make major changes at beta - which in fact, actually happens sometimes. So, worry not. They're pushing in the opposite direction.
Also, in many cases, large, corporate brand names in Japan are used for a wide variety of products, unlike many American brands. Think about Yamaha, and how many different types of products they create: Motorcycles, boats, snowmobiles, musical instruments, automobile engines, industrial robots, electronics, scooters, and probably a bunch more I can't think of. American companies may have a parent company, but often retain a market-specific brand name rather than taking on the parent company name.
Meh. I'd read this as:
"Researchers and writers jealous of massive demand and high wages of programmers, predict doom and gloom for those that picked a reasonably lucrative career path". Or perhaps "You programmed all this shit that's taking our jobs away... you'll get yours too someday!" Of course, the article is paywalled, so I can't see how ridiculous and speculative it is for myself. Or rather, I wouldn't bother to pay.
Most of the examples in the article covered things like writing passable articles on local sports stories. That's a little bit different than the work I do, thank you, which isn't copy-paste crapola or rattling out statistics surrounded by fluff. It's the sort of stuff I get headaches designing and thinking about for days on end, spend time rewriting and optimizing, and talking about with other programmer friends when I come up with a really elegant solution. It's trying to figure out how to do things that no one else has actually done before, and doing it with very demanding constraints of size and speed.
Maybe some jobs can be automated away, but I'd probably have a hard time calling them real programming jobs if that's the case. A lot of programming is about creative problems solving, not just pure logic, which is just the means to an end. If a "robot" can do that before I'm dead, I'll eat my hat.
I took a quick peek at the specs on the LS-100, and yeah, it looks nice (especially the improved battery life). Well, I've been out of the loop for a couple of years. I'm not surprised if things have moved on. The H4N has been around a while, after all.
Actually, a more accurate translation is "thou shalt not murder". In ancient Hebrew, killing (harag) and murder (ratzah) are different words, and the commandment uses the latter. See? Point proven!
Generally, I don't perceive aggressiveness as an inherently negative trait, just... a dangerous one, akin to dynamite. If used properly, aggressiveness can propel civilization forward in healthy competition. Use incorrectly, it can indeed destroy civilization.
One could argue that the United States' moon shot was extremely aggressive, as it was a direct counter to the Soviet's aggressive move into space ahead of us. Yet I'd guess most would argue that the space race ultimately ended up being a positive endeavor. Likewise, the modern trend of building a world's tallest skyscraper could be viewed as aggressive. They're built not out of logical economics, but a desire to proclaim a region's or company's technical and cultural prowess to the world. I feel this is also a positive channeling of human aggression as well. It pushes us to expand our technical horizons and take enormous risks.
Obviously, we all know what the downside of aggression is: anger, violence, rape, murder, war, genocide. But part of being blessed with intelligence means that we can make a conscious choice about how we direct our inner aggression, and work to improve ourselves by harnessing it. Societal influence is a very key component in helping shape a civilization, and as we raise our children, we teach them to channel their inherent aggression into positive activities that can benefit both themselves and others.
Yeah, that's why I mentioned "lightweight" field recordings, meaning situations when you can't or didn't bring more expensive gear. I don't think any pro would use just that if they could lug in their high-end equipment - especially not the built-in microphones. I was just pointing out that even a $200 device (let alone a several thousand dollar Sound Devices field recorder) doesn't really seem to have problems with standard SD card noise, which it seems coincides with your experience as well.
It seems relatively useless, as far as I can tell. You can buy a Zoom H4N (well regarded by professional audio guys for lightweight field recording) for $200 and just use a normal card. The electronics are all carefully shielded in professional professional gear. And of course, once the audio data is transformed into digital, there's no real issue. The data is digital at that point of course, and not subject to electronic noise.
The term "computer error" doesn't imply that the computer made a mistake on it's own, since computers obviously have no independent judgment. Rather, it's simply used to subdivide all errors between "user errors" and errors found within the hardware or software, or "computer errors". Your argument is akin to saying "There's no such thing as a human, because all humans are actually mammals".
I don't believe that for a second. It might not be of primary concern but I have zero doubt that if you went to MIT or Carnegie Mellon and graduated with an IT related degree, it WILL factor into the hiring decision at Google.
Sure, it absolutely factors into a hiring decision. Your degree is important for getting in the door initially without any initial experience, of course, or perhaps for standing out among equally qualified candidates. However, if you have a few years of experience, people generally stop caring about where you went to school or (occasionally) even if you went to school at all, because at that point your work record should speak for itself.
Whenever I was asked to evaluate candidates, my criteria in order of importance was:
* Work History (have they proven they can do this job)
* Personality (will they get along with the team)
* Technical competence (can they do the job as demonstrated with code samples and tests)
* Education (formal training with some breadth is never a bad thing)
And here's the kicker:
Hopkins defended the adware, saying that it “helps users find and discover products visually” and “instantly analyzes images on the web and presents identical and similar product offers that may have lower prices.”
I mean, damn... How stupid do they think people are, that they can actually present this adware as a positive thing for consumers?
Even though Hopkins says the company has stopped installing the software on computers, it appears that’s only “temporary” until the company behind the software makes some tweaks to stop pop-ups.
Aaand... they're just going to tweak it so it's less noticeable. Nice. This software creates a potential man-in-the-middle attack by installing it's own signed certificate on your system so it can show embedded ads even if you have a secure connection. Nasty, nasty stuff from a privacy concern. This could easily become malware if not for the "good graces" of whatever code it's running or site that's intercepting your connection.
I hate to say this, but I really think we're going to need some new comprehensive privacy and advertising laws. I'm usually one to let the market shake itself out first and see what happens, but we've ended up here, with companies showing absolutely no restraint on how far they're willing to go to extract your personal data for marketing purposes.
Until we get such laws, I will never again purchase computer hardware from a large vendor like this (at least, Lenovo is forever out). For the last few years, I've been using a local boutique shop that specializes in custom computer builds. One of their nicest "features" is that they don't install any extra crapware on your system - only the bare minimum OS and tools, which is almost unheard of today. I'm willing to pay a bit more for that service, since they don't get subsidized by horrible stuff like this adware.
Yeah, same here... pretty much called it in the last article about this. It's sort of unbelievable, though, in some way, that no one stops to think of security and privacy ramifications of these things though. Yet it happens time after time after time.
I wonder if it's perhaps an engineer-type mentality that gets so focused on building cool new things, they just don't stop to think about how those new things can be abused or exploited to do bad things. Like when Microsoft decided to embed scripting-type functionality in all their Office documents, and now *whee*, we've got document-based trojans. Then they had to clamp down on all that scripting. Or how Adobe turned on scripting functionality by default in PDFs, giving us a crapload of exploits for a feature very few people ever used. Result - you have to turn off scripting to stay safe when reading PDFs, and eventually browsers took it upon themselves to do it safely for you. I guess engineers don't typically think like baddies, figuring out how to use technology to hurt people or steal from them.
This is not privacy-related data they're exploiting on purpose, because it doesn't do any good from a marketing standpoint. The only other explanation is that it's just an oversight. It's not the first time, and it probably won't be the last. On the other hand, given the fact that the NSA still collects all of our traffic, and US Citizens aren't up in arms about it, maybe they're correct in calculating that most people just don't give a damn about that sort of thing outside of a vocal minority.
Yeah, different societies are sort of weird that way, with varying levels of technology in specific areas, even if they're otherwise roughly equivalent. One example: I've heard that many Japanese homes use minimal insulation and don't have central heating. Instead, they use portable kerosene heaters or heated tables called a "kotatsu", which always struck me as rather primitive, if somewhat quaint. Then again, they'd probably laugh at how primitive our toilets are, despite all our other high-tech gadgets.
Here in the US, we have decades-old credit card systems that refuse to go anywhere, probably because any fraud was taken care of by the card issuers. As such, there was no real consumer pressure to fix it - from our perspective, it was mostly fine. My guess is that the credit card companies figured the fraud costs were not worth the upgrade hassle. Notice how fast things change once the rules of liability change.
Java on the backend is about as secure as you can get. Letting Java run in your browser, however, is just as insecure as letting any other untrusted code run on your browser.
Yep, I didn't make that distinction clear. There's nothing wrong with Java on the server. Actually, there's nothing wrong with Java on the client either, as long as it's not in the browser plugin.
I'll disagree with your assertion that Java in the browser is "just as insecure" as any other untrusted code run on your browser, though. By nearly any metric, it's much less secure than Javascript, or even ActionScript (Flash), which itself had a pretty long history of nasty security issues.
Every SSD has a limited number of writes. That hasn't changed. Wear leveling algorithms ensures that normal users will never be faced with that issue under normal use, though. In other words, unless you have some very specialized scenario where you're writing massive amounts of data continuously, it's really not an issue. Keep in mind that also, even if you happened to hit the write limit twenty years from now, all your data should still be readable.
Reliability is a bit harder of a metric to cover, because there's no way to measure reliability except in aggregate: large number of drives over many years of operation. How would a reviewer with one or two devices to test determine reliability? Over the week or so they tested, it was likely 100% reliable.
Oops, that's "GPL code", not "GPU code", of course.
I have nothing against Java either, but I think making it web-facing has been something of a disaster from a security standpoint. And let's face it, security isn't a high-priority feature up until you're breached, and then it becomes a critical feature. If you disable the Java web plugin on the client, the language itself really has a lot going for it. If it didn't, so many programmers wouldn't still be using it today - according to some rankings, it's the most popular language right after C, and just before PHP and Javascript.
Fortunately, given the fact that we have dozens of reasonably popular languages to choose from, and even more obscure ones, we don't have to pick one language to do everything. In fact, it's downright silly to think that one language ever could do it all. The reason we have so many languages to begin with is because there are so many diverse programming challenges and environments in the modern world, and every language has specific strengths and weaknesses.
I read "sledgehammer" as "security nightmare". It's sort of sad when something completely eclipses Adobe Flash for sheer number and seriousness of security issues. As of a year ago, Java accounted for over 90% of all recent web-based exploits. It's a real problem, because so many enterprise applications rely on old and insecure versions of the Java runtime. It may be that security issues are what actually ends up completely killing Java on the client - besides the simple fact that the trend is simply moving away from plugins because of their inconvenience and proprietary nature.
Yep, that wasn't too long ago. Ballmer was, of course, actually talking more about the GPL license and it's "viral" nature, as they viewed it. Microsoft has previously been forced to release source code when GPU code was found in one of it's products.
Interestingly, it's a very different Microsoft today, having realized that iOS and Android have destroyed them in the mobile space, and with Linux as a very strong competitor in the server market. You see them now even porting some of their most important properties (Office, Outlook, .NET, etc) to competing platforms, which would have seemed unbelievable just six or seven years ago. Competition is a good thing.
AlienBrain is pretty expensive, and all the companies I've worked for have preferred to keep the code and binary assets in sync using a common repository for both assets and code. So, I can't really comment on it since I haven't used it.
Git and Mercurial are great for source assets, but not so great for managing binary assets. I use Mercurial myself for my own game project, and the problem is that there's no real way to trim excess binary data bloat from the history, so the repository tends to grow huge, and this becomes a problem when everyone needs a local copy of the repository on their machine.
Moreover, Perforce is much better at being able to define subsets of required data to pull, even within the same repository. For instance, artists and designers don't need access to the source code of the project, while the programmers probably don't need access to the raw art files used to generate the in-game assets.
It's not impossible use distributed version control or SVN, but I've just found Perforce to be superior for very large projects with mixed source and binary data. For most code-only projects, especially for widely distributed projects, Git or Mercurial are probably superior solutions. The fact that they're free probably doesn't hurt, as Perforce licenses cost hundreds of dollars per seat per year.
If someone didn't want to pay for Perforce licensing, I'd probably suggest Mercurial next. While not as popular as Git, it's a lot friendlier on Windows machines and has excellent and easy to use front-ends or Explorer integration.