So basically, you knocked out that comment after reading the headline - but without bothering to read even the first line, which explained it. Let me help you out there:
anyone who bought a product online
So this clearly refers to ONLINE PURCHASES. Ones where you are depended on the seller's description and require that to be accurate: neither over-selling the product nor lying about its state, condition or fitness for purpose. In these cases the seller clearly has an advantage and this extension tot he law is meant to rebalance the trading positions.
A used Tektronix or Hameg scope will beat the pants off of any PC-based toy
Looking on eBay, a s/h HAMEG will start at 5 times the budget specified in the original question. Even more once shipping charges are added. So while you may be correct: that a "proper" 'scope will beat one of the PC scopes, your solution fails due to completely missing the price constraints.
And if you want to provision equipment for a whole class of students, finding s/h gear piecemeal on the internet is not a practical solution, since it doesn't scale beyond one or two "lucky" buyers.
Let's have this program join a few forums (and maybe Facebook, too. Though twitter would just be too easy). If it manages to convince other forum members, or not get found out, that will tell you a lot about the level of online discourse but very little about the state of artificial intelligence.
Some (mostly arts and humanities graduates) would say that the degree course is a goal in its own right. That they study to better themselves, to "grow", to realise a dream or for self-fulfillment.
They will not tell you that they studied medieval engish literature, or history of art in order to get a job - although that won't stop them whining on about how well qualified (but for what) they are and how much they know, so why are they in dead-end jobs?
So if they really are prepared to take a 3 year course, rack up 5 or 6 figures of debt and lose 3 years off the jobs market - ending up just as useful as a 18 y/o school leaver, just for self-fulfillment - it's probably just as well that they never get close to a professional position where their good judgement would be called for.
If these humanities graduates were numerate as well as literate, they'd easily be able to calculate that supply far outstrips demand.
If the only jobs for freshly minted PhDs is teaching the next generation of students (even supposing that most are only there to study for fun - and have neither the intention nor the motivation to try and get a degree-based job), then it will quickly become obvious to them that filling the "dead mens' shoes" is a suckers game. Given the low to zero growth in humanities departments, there simply aren't enough vacancies created every year.
The biggest shame is that this comes as a surprise to so many of them AFTER they've graduated.
Yes. This is more than "a small computer". The size of this device, coupled with its onboard WiFi is one of its basic properties. Although there have been smaller "computers": PIC devices would be a good example, the functionality of this is the game changer and could make it ubiquitous in pretty much any electronic gadget.
I would hope that the next version would focus on getting the power consumption down. A tiny little computer is no use if it needs a shopping cart to haul its batteries around.
It occurs to me that this is just the sort of device that the Raspberry Pi people could very well have come up with in the 2 or 3 years since since the Model A and B were developed. It's a shame they never took the concept further.
Mozilla has ensured that unlike Google devices, non-US developers won’t be deprived of the devices. The phone will be shipped free of cost anywhere in the world except for Japan
There are already far more books "out there" than one person could ever read. Adding to that pile is more of a marketing feat than it is filling a need (apart from the author's need to make money).
The same applies to TV programmes. We have many more channels broadcasting repeats than we get new material. In percentage terms most programmes have been broadcast before - either a day or two before, or months / year before (and in the case of Friends or some other "channel stuffing" series, are broadcast on many channels, multiple times per day and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
So what's the point in making more? Either TV or books. The amount we have seems to be sufficient for our needs, and if we ever get bored with the constant repeats on TV, we could always pick up a novel... a 50 or 100 year old novel. AKA "a classic".
economy figures that are on average 19% lower than the government figures
So long as ALL the official figures are equally inaccurate, the ranking still feeds into the choice of which cars are the more fuel-efficient and which are less so.
Therefore it makes little difference whether the figures are exactly what one would expect (though nobody is ever that naive) or out by a factor of two. You'd still expect that the little runabout with a 80 MPG "official" figure would be cheaper to keep topped up than an 30 MPG gas-guzzler.
As it is, few people take much notice of figures: official or not. It plays a small part in the overall choice (somewhere below what colour the car is) and is only part of the overall consideration of running costs + servicing costs.
You cannot really be active in a forum and start over as too many people will find similarities in your posting styles
But there are so many forums - few of which are any better than any other - though some are more popular. So there would be no reason to start a new account on the same one (even if you'd got banned) you were on previously - and for forums with thousands of contributors, I doubt that anyone would notice if you did. If people really do only post for their own entertainment (which might be a more truthful reason than the conceit that they have something IMPORTANT to say) then they'd just switch to a new forum and post their stuff there.
I can't speak about global warming, but I do have experience on some forums and (shock) I do get downvotes on occasion; Does it deter me? no! Does it encourage me? Again, no. Why not? Because I am not personally invested in the audience and I am not trying to "win" any arguments - or trying to convert any of those stranger to my own beliefs - just like I would never stand on a soap box and start preaching. Sometimes I post simply for LOLs and sometimes I post to "have my say" and other times I regard posting as just a way of carrying on an open conversation that others may join in - just like talking to people at a party. But I'm too realistic to think that anyone who reads my stuff is a "fan" or respects my views, or even understands what I say. I would suggest that most posters are similarly motivated and that if there was a hostile group who continually criticised them, they'd most to a more welcoming forum.
it's not clear whom the negatively-rated posters are trying to impress
They aren't trying to impress anybody. Since nobody knows before they post whether any given post is going to be upvoted or downvoted (OK, it is possible: simple even to craft posts that will reliably achieve broad acceptance or anger on pretty much any forum), there's little incentive for trying to impress. It's also impossible to predict which forum members will see a post and which will choose to judge it by voting.
As it is, I suspect that a large number of up or down votes are obtained simply from the biases and beliefs of the voting population - and that hardly anyone is impressed or influenced by what they read on internet forums (any more) - and even fewer people care whether a bunch of people they've never met hold a strong opinion in agreement or disagreement with what they have said.
it's not uncommon for forums to record both up-votes and down-votes separately. While a lot of places - like slashdot - record only the arithmetic total (up-votes minus down-votes) there are places that do it properly - recognising that *any* vote can be considered a good thing. Just like in real life: the worst you can have is apathy.
authors of negatively-evaluated content contribute more
So if you want to increase the number of posts to your forum, down-vote everybody?
I guess this is the problem when people try to apply the psychology of the real-world to entirely made-up worlds, or forums. Places where nobody really has any idea about the true identity (or identities) of the participants - and where reputation counts for little: since anyone can "press the button" and start again with a new identity - placing a value of zero on their forum-persona's reputation.
There are two majors costs to any burglary, what's taken and the damage done. From people I know who have been robbed, the cost of repairing the damage outweighs the cost of a stolen laptop or camera that was taken.
So, once a burglary has got in to your house most of the problem has already occurred. Even if your insurance pays there is a major inconvenience in making the claim, fighting the assessment and getting the repairs performed to your satisfaction. Best to prevent the whole possibility of that happening.
How do you keep bad people out of your house? Alarms, cameras (oh joy! you can watch the video of your home being wrecked), trackers - all irrelevant and with little deterrent value. If you want to stop people even trying to get in to your home, get a dog. A big, noisy dog.
If you can't get a dog (here comes the geek bit), get a recording of a dog. Hook it up to a PIR and an Arduino and have it play when anyone approaches the property. If you can arrange a stereo playback, process the soundtrack to make it appear as if the dog is moving around the house. If you want to go for extra "realism", rig up a weight attached to a motor that thumps the front door - the higher up the door, the bigger the dog appears to be - as if the dog had its paws on the door. You need LOUD and you need LONG. A recording that stops after a few seconds won't convince anyone. Especially if it replays exactly the same track each time.
Finally, keep the pitch of the barking low. Nobody's scared of a squeaky little mutt. But if you slow it down, the animal sounds a lot larger and scarier.
On any public transport system, there is a significant number of people who spend the journey time applying makeup, nail varnish and other vanity products.
According to the device's website: shipping expected in spring 2015
So, essentially, right now, they have nothing except a website and some 3D graphics. Please re-run the story in a year or so if/when this thing gets off the ground and there is some actionable information to back it up.
I agree. Most lists and forums take a dim view of repeated questions, ones that are "obvious" and ones that the small minority of helpful posters feel are irrelevant. As you say, there is no guaranteed response time - if you get any response at all - and no guarantee that the responses you do receive will be correct or even on-topic.
Those are why people pay for support. Those are the factors that companies value and the time (equates very closely to money) taken to both supply the requested information, try out all the dead-end, time-wasting, misdirections or re-setting the question can run into $$$-thousands, especially when the replies given are wrong.
Contrast that with the support you get from a reputable organisation: "Oh yes, I'll just call up your configuration... OK, The error log shows... which means... So you need to do.... to fix the problem. You can download the software to do that from our website, here's the link... Goodbye".
Provided you have chosen your suppliers wisely, not based on headline cost, that level of interaction will be entirely familiar to you. Sadly, very few customers are used to, or expect, such high standards.
While reading the article I instantly recognised the situation the guy was describing. However, I believe he has misinterpreted the concerns of his employers.
Most managers who have had any dealings with a software rollout know two things:
First is that they won't actually get what they think they have specified
Second is that there will be problems (see point #1), overruns, differences between what's required and what's delivered and that getting the software functional is only a small part of the job. The rest is integration, training the users, supporting the thing for 5+++ years, implementing upgrades and bug-fixes
These managers also know that once a project has been signed off, the money has, just that moment, been spent. Companies don't think of money, they think of budgets - so once you have gone through the approvals process and got your budget and your go-ahead the project is effectively a sunk cost, but one that has not yet delivered anything. As a consequence the manager in charge of the project will be deemed to have failed if he/she needs to go back and ask for more, in order to deliver the project.
So, in their minds they want insurance - and indemnity - above all else. Even above cost savings. They want to know that in return for $<megabucks> that when things start to go wrong, their commercial relationship with "the vendor" entitles them to get support, advice, expertise, fixes, customisations, training, documentation and upgrades. Those will all form part of the cost-case and whoever approves the case will expect, maybe even require, that those items are included and form part of the contract. As they know that there will be the need to call upon those services. If all they get for using "free" software is a pile of code, then that is usually the smallest part of the project and often the least expensive, too. The real cost, over the project lifetime comes with all the extras and services they get from their vendor - but which "free" software is very poor at providing, and absolutely does not guarantee.
If you go to get approval for a project of any significant size, not having included those items will mark you out as, at best, a newby and at worse: completely unsuitable to be managing a project. It's like if you buy a car. The cost of the vehicle is only one aspect. The cost of servicing, fuel, taxes and depreciation are major factors that should be included in the plan. That they aren't is just an indication of how poorly most people approach a major purchase - and why they'd never make a project manager.
If you teach a 10 year old to write "code", that won't help them in 8 or 10 years time when they try to apply for a job. The "code" technology will have moved on in that time, so the stuff they learned a decade ago will be obsolete. The knowledge that a professional programmer has, has a half-life of a few years: maybe as long as 5 years in some areas - possibly as a short as 1 or 2 in rapidly developing fields of work.
Since nobody can tell what skills will be needed in the next decade, learning a particular coding language, the "learning to code" is almost certainly teaching the wrong language to children. It would be far better to teach them basic maths, basic logic and how to think in abstract terms - rather than focusing on tangible, here and now, stuff that will produce children who can blink an LED on a Raspberry Pi today, but will have no clue about hw to deal with the "AI on a chip" they might be faced with when they start their professional careers.
When I started my first job after graduating, the job description didn't even exist when I started my university course. So what is the chance that teaching 5 or 10 year children a specific computing skill will be relevant to their career prospects in 10-15 years time?
20% effectively useless jobs? The number seems to be on the low side as in my place there are more than that who have the word manager in their title. When you group them with all the other time wasters and incompetents, it must be nearer 50%, as a lot of those individuals only work to feed each others' roles.
Slashdot Mirror
The guy says:
I'm not looking to start a new career as a programmer—I already have a career
So forget a strategic language to base a career on, he just wants to get stuff done
anyone who bought a product online
So this clearly refers to ONLINE PURCHASES. Ones where you are depended on the seller's description and require that to be accurate: neither over-selling the product nor lying about its state, condition or fitness for purpose. In these cases the seller clearly has an advantage and this extension tot he law is meant to rebalance the trading positions.
A used Tektronix or Hameg scope will beat the pants off of any PC-based toy
Looking on eBay, a s/h HAMEG will start at 5 times the budget specified in the original question. Even more once shipping charges are added. So while you may be correct: that a "proper" 'scope will beat one of the PC scopes, your solution fails due to completely missing the price constraints.
And if you want to provision equipment for a whole class of students, finding s/h gear piecemeal on the internet is not a practical solution, since it doesn't scale beyond one or two "lucky" buyers.
Let's have this program join a few forums (and maybe Facebook, too. Though twitter would just be too easy). If it manages to convince other forum members, or not get found out, that will tell you a lot about the level of online discourse but very little about the state of artificial intelligence.
They will not tell you that they studied medieval engish literature, or history of art in order to get a job - although that won't stop them whining on about how well qualified (but for what) they are and how much they know, so why are they in dead-end jobs?
So if they really are prepared to take a 3 year course, rack up 5 or 6 figures of debt and lose 3 years off the jobs market - ending up just as useful as a 18 y/o school leaver, just for self-fulfillment - it's probably just as well that they never get close to a professional position where their good judgement would be called for.
If the only jobs for freshly minted PhDs is teaching the next generation of students (even supposing that most are only there to study for fun - and have neither the intention nor the motivation to try and get a degree-based job), then it will quickly become obvious to them that filling the "dead mens' shoes" is a suckers game. Given the low to zero growth in humanities departments, there simply aren't enough vacancies created every year.
The biggest shame is that this comes as a surprise to so many of them AFTER they've graduated.
Or would I?
You would, but you'd put the closing tag first.
I would hope that the next version would focus on getting the power consumption down. A tiny little computer is no use if it needs a shopping cart to haul its batteries around.
It occurs to me that this is just the sort of device that the Raspberry Pi people could very well have come up with in the 2 or 3 years since since the Model A and B were developed. It's a shame they never took the concept further.
Unless you're Japanese:
Mozilla has ensured that unlike Google devices, non-US developers won’t be deprived of the devices. The phone will be shipped free of cost anywhere in the world except for Japan
There are already far more books "out there" than one person could ever read. Adding to that pile is more of a marketing feat than it is filling a need (apart from the author's need to make money).
The same applies to TV programmes. We have many more channels broadcasting repeats than we get new material. In percentage terms most programmes have been broadcast before - either a day or two before, or months / year before (and in the case of Friends or some other "channel stuffing" series, are broadcast on many channels, multiple times per day and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
So what's the point in making more? Either TV or books. The amount we have seems to be sufficient for our needs, and if we ever get bored with the constant repeats on TV, we could always pick up a novel ... a 50 or 100 year old novel. AKA "a classic".
economy figures that are on average 19% lower than the government figures
So long as ALL the official figures are equally inaccurate, the ranking still feeds into the choice of which cars are the more fuel-efficient and which are less so.
Therefore it makes little difference whether the figures are exactly what one would expect (though nobody is ever that naive) or out by a factor of two. You'd still expect that the little runabout with a 80 MPG "official" figure would be cheaper to keep topped up than an 30 MPG gas-guzzler.
As it is, few people take much notice of figures: official or not. It plays a small part in the overall choice (somewhere below what colour the car is) and is only part of the overall consideration of running costs + servicing costs.
You cannot really be active in a forum and start over as too many people will find similarities in your posting styles
But there are so many forums - few of which are any better than any other - though some are more popular. So there would be no reason to start a new account on the same one (even if you'd got banned) you were on previously - and for forums with thousands of contributors, I doubt that anyone would notice if you did. If people really do only post for their own entertainment (which might be a more truthful reason than the conceit that they have something IMPORTANT to say) then they'd just switch to a new forum and post their stuff there.
I can't speak about global warming, but I do have experience on some forums and (shock) I do get downvotes on occasion; Does it deter me? no! Does it encourage me? Again, no. Why not? Because I am not personally invested in the audience and I am not trying to "win" any arguments - or trying to convert any of those stranger to my own beliefs - just like I would never stand on a soap box and start preaching. Sometimes I post simply for LOLs and sometimes I post to "have my say" and other times I regard posting as just a way of carrying on an open conversation that others may join in - just like talking to people at a party. But I'm too realistic to think that anyone who reads my stuff is a "fan" or respects my views, or even understands what I say. I would suggest that most posters are similarly motivated and that if there was a hostile group who continually criticised them, they'd most to a more welcoming forum.
it's not clear whom the negatively-rated posters are trying to impress
They aren't trying to impress anybody. Since nobody knows before they post whether any given post is going to be upvoted or downvoted (OK, it is possible: simple even to craft posts that will reliably achieve broad acceptance or anger on pretty much any forum), there's little incentive for trying to impress. It's also impossible to predict which forum members will see a post and which will choose to judge it by voting.
As it is, I suspect that a large number of up or down votes are obtained simply from the biases and beliefs of the voting population - and that hardly anyone is impressed or influenced by what they read on internet forums (any more) - and even fewer people care whether a bunch of people they've never met hold a strong opinion in agreement or disagreement with what they have said.
it's not uncommon for forums to record both up-votes and down-votes separately. While a lot of places - like slashdot - record only the arithmetic total (up-votes minus down-votes) there are places that do it properly - recognising that *any* vote can be considered a good thing. Just like in real life: the worst you can have is apathy.
authors of negatively-evaluated content contribute more
So if you want to increase the number of posts to your forum, down-vote everybody?
I guess this is the problem when people try to apply the psychology of the real-world to entirely made-up worlds, or forums. Places where nobody really has any idea about the true identity (or identities) of the participants - and where reputation counts for little: since anyone can "press the button" and start again with a new identity - placing a value of zero on their forum-persona's reputation.
So, once a burglary has got in to your house most of the problem has already occurred. Even if your insurance pays there is a major inconvenience in making the claim, fighting the assessment and getting the repairs performed to your satisfaction. Best to prevent the whole possibility of that happening.
How do you keep bad people out of your house? Alarms, cameras (oh joy! you can watch the video of your home being wrecked), trackers - all irrelevant and with little deterrent value. If you want to stop people even trying to get in to your home, get a dog. A big, noisy dog.
If you can't get a dog (here comes the geek bit), get a recording of a dog. Hook it up to a PIR and an Arduino and have it play when anyone approaches the property. If you can arrange a stereo playback, process the soundtrack to make it appear as if the dog is moving around the house. If you want to go for extra "realism", rig up a weight attached to a motor that thumps the front door - the higher up the door, the bigger the dog appears to be - as if the dog had its paws on the door. You need LOUD and you need LONG. A recording that stops after a few seconds won't convince anyone. Especially if it replays exactly the same track each time.
Finally, keep the pitch of the barking low. Nobody's scared of a squeaky little mutt. But if you slow it down, the animal sounds a lot larger and scarier.
On any public transport system, there is a significant number of people who spend the journey time applying makeup, nail varnish and other vanity products.
Now a new device called Cue
According to the device's website: shipping expected in spring 2015
So, essentially, right now, they have nothing except a website and some 3D graphics. Please re-run the story in a year or so if/when this thing gets off the ground and there is some actionable information to back it up.
Some simple steps for success ...
I agree. Most lists and forums take a dim view of repeated questions, ones that are "obvious" and ones that the small minority of helpful posters feel are irrelevant. As you say, there is no guaranteed response time - if you get any response at all - and no guarantee that the responses you do receive will be correct or even on-topic.
Those are why people pay for support. Those are the factors that companies value and the time (equates very closely to money) taken to both supply the requested information, try out all the dead-end, time-wasting, misdirections or re-setting the question can run into $$$-thousands, especially when the replies given are wrong.
Contrast that with the support you get from a reputable organisation: "Oh yes, I'll just call up your configuration ... OK, The error log shows ... which means ... So you need to do .... to fix the problem. You can download the software to do that from our website, here's the link ... Goodbye".
Provided you have chosen your suppliers wisely, not based on headline cost, that level of interaction will be entirely familiar to you. Sadly, very few customers are used to, or expect, such high standards.
Most managers who have had any dealings with a software rollout know two things:
First is that they won't actually get what they think they have specified
Second is that there will be problems (see point #1), overruns, differences between what's required and what's delivered and that getting the software functional is only a small part of the job. The rest is integration, training the users, supporting the thing for 5+++ years, implementing upgrades and bug-fixes
These managers also know that once a project has been signed off, the money has, just that moment, been spent. Companies don't think of money, they think of budgets - so once you have gone through the approvals process and got your budget and your go-ahead the project is effectively a sunk cost, but one that has not yet delivered anything. As a consequence the manager in charge of the project will be deemed to have failed if he/she needs to go back and ask for more, in order to deliver the project.
So, in their minds they want insurance - and indemnity - above all else. Even above cost savings. They want to know that in return for $<megabucks> that when things start to go wrong, their commercial relationship with "the vendor" entitles them to get support, advice, expertise, fixes, customisations, training, documentation and upgrades. Those will all form part of the cost-case and whoever approves the case will expect, maybe even require, that those items are included and form part of the contract. As they know that there will be the need to call upon those services. If all they get for using "free" software is a pile of code, then that is usually the smallest part of the project and often the least expensive, too. The real cost, over the project lifetime comes with all the extras and services they get from their vendor - but which "free" software is very poor at providing, and absolutely does not guarantee.
If you go to get approval for a project of any significant size, not having included those items will mark you out as, at best, a newby and at worse: completely unsuitable to be managing a project. It's like if you buy a car. The cost of the vehicle is only one aspect. The cost of servicing, fuel, taxes and depreciation are major factors that should be included in the plan. That they aren't is just an indication of how poorly most people approach a major purchase - and why they'd never make a project manager.
Will we teach kids a bunch of propriety toolchains that will be obsolete and disused by the time they get into the real world? Guessing yes
The answer is to teach them COBOL. That seems to keep running and running.
miss out on potential opportunities and careers
If you teach a 10 year old to write "code", that won't help them in 8 or 10 years time when they try to apply for a job. The "code" technology will have moved on in that time, so the stuff they learned a decade ago will be obsolete. The knowledge that a professional programmer has, has a half-life of a few years: maybe as long as 5 years in some areas - possibly as a short as 1 or 2 in rapidly developing fields of work.
Since nobody can tell what skills will be needed in the next decade, learning a particular coding language, the "learning to code" is almost certainly teaching the wrong language to children. It would be far better to teach them basic maths, basic logic and how to think in abstract terms - rather than focusing on tangible, here and now, stuff that will produce children who can blink an LED on a Raspberry Pi today, but will have no clue about hw to deal with the "AI on a chip" they might be faced with when they start their professional careers.
When I started my first job after graduating, the job description didn't even exist when I started my university course. So what is the chance that teaching 5 or 10 year children a specific computing skill will be relevant to their career prospects in 10-15 years time?
WTF is that?
About 10 hours too long.
20% effectively useless jobs? The number seems to be on the low side as in my place there are more than that who have the word manager in their title. When you group them with all the other time wasters and incompetents, it must be nearer 50%, as a lot of those individuals only work to feed each others' roles.
There may be only three categories, but there's nothing to say he only fits one of them