You'll never get americans to give up their guns: they're all too afraid. What are they so scared of? Yup, all the (other) people with guns. The comments about gun shops and firing ranges being the "safest" places demonstrates this very well. The gun-owners feel safest when surrounded by guns. However when they are out in the big, nasty, world they feel insecure that other people might have weapons they can't see, so the urge to protect themselves becomes very strong.
Obviously, if nobody in the USA had a gun, this level of fear should be reduced, but it's irrational and doesn't work like that. Hence they all keep their guns and that induces more fear - so they feel the need for more and bigger guns, just as a sort of "safety blanket" (as almost none of them are ever fired in the real world) - which, of course, escalates the problem.
It's all because they're all so scared of each other.
all the brownie points and the bigger raise and the better office
And they're welcome to it. Along with all the added pressure, politics and satisfaction
Managers also have a far higher risk of redundancy (as no-one can actually see them produce anything) and lower job security as they are more expensive employees. I already earn more than I can reasonably spend and am quite capable of delivering on targets in a sensible number of hours in a 5 day a week.
How many cars are currently filling up with petrol in Suffolk (the county where SIzewell B is situated) right at this second?
Yes, this is the point that all the electric car makers either miss or ignore.
Petrol has a massive energy density (party due to being able to use air as a "free" oxidiser). In simple energy terms it "contains" about 33M Joules per litre - or 2GJ in a standard tankful. Try to transfer 2GJ of energy into an electric car's battery in the time it takes to fill your tank and you realise just how convenient a liquid fuel is.
And people have started to do every normal activity we would do on the Internet through those two portals because it costs them zero
If there are billions of people who are prevented, by cost contraints, from accessing the internet I have to wonder whether FB and Google are executing their strategies for purely altruistic reasons, as part of a long-term (decades?) strategy, as a means of making a fast buck, or simply because the other guy is doing it - and they don't want to be left behind?.
Altruism I can understand. But making FB the home page of a continent or two... is tht really a benefit of the people receiving free internet?
If people have no money, would there be any profit to be made by pushing advertisements to them. Would there even be retailers or wholesalers with products they could buy - given the lack of delivery infrastructure.
If the plan is, that with internet access, the people in these poor areas will become rich and will then start buying stuff they see in advertisements - would that necessarily be to their benefit? Or would the companies providing these services be more like the East India Company in the 18th century - and be indulging in a bit of commercial imperialism?
There are plenty of other single or dual processor boards that will run Linux or Android, that are out already. Some are considerably cheaper. Unless the 64-bit Intel architecture is spectacularly more efficient than the A10, A13 and A20s we have access to already it's difficult to see what this board has that the Cubies and Olimex's don't already provide.
Where the cooking instructions are vague, wrong and refer to an early beta version of "grub" and only work if you have exactly the same cooker as the inventor. Where you have to spend half a day growing your own ingredients, just so's it is "free". Where the size and shape of the plate you need changes every 6 months and none of the cutlery matches. As for the list of contents, all it says is:
Bribing the manufacturer?
They are paying £5.5 Mil to support the MS products on 800,000 computers for an extra year. At ('cuse me, this one needs fingers and toes)... £6.87 per computer per year - wassat? about 10 US. Sounds like an absolute bargain to me.
The only thing windows does that linux doesn't is...
This is just completely wrong.
The biggest thing that windows provides to the NHS is continuity. The second most important feature (a corollary) is a trained user base - one that knows the in's and out's, bug, vagiaries and shortcuts of the existing system. Following on from that is a known, compatible set of hardware that interfaces with all the other systems (after years of development, testing and debugging) and importantly: is reliable in a life-or-death environment where patients wellbeing is at stake.
which will soon change if valve is sucessful
Valve? Seriously? you're talking about playing little computer games in a hospital environment?
better to imitate very closely gamertags of players who *are* intimidating
essentially mimicking nature, where lots of animals, bugs and plants take on the form of nasty, poisonous entities in the hope that looking like a badass will stop them getting eaten.
up and coming gamers will choose their own handles in future, both to intimidate opponents
Most newbies won't have the experience to choose a good name - hell: most parents don't even have that skill. They will also bring all their own fears, preconceptions and biases to the naming party, too. So most of them will choose names that give the impression of a callow youth trying to grossly overcompensate for their (obvious) inadequacies.
Not only are these individuals easy to spot, their choices are more likely to make them targets for scorn and derision rather than convey the impression they are better than they really are.
Programmers (for want of a better term) start off writing Hello World and progress on from there. It doesn't matter much what IDE or language they write it in, the path they (we?) follow is still the same.
Once they have demonstrated the basic skill of:
10 Print "Hello"
20 GOTO 10
They are considered part of the "community" - programmers. They aren't.
As an example, take all the interest in the Raspberry Pi. An SBC intended to "teach kids how to program". In reality, most "kids" manage to get an LED to flash. According to the agenda, they are now programmers - the same same sorts of people who can write encryption algorithms, update software on Mars rovers and implement share-trading systems. It's like saying that if you can nail two pieces of wood together, you're a carpenter: here's your table saw (mind your fingers!) now go and build me a house.
The Linux community is little or no help either. With it's inaccurate and lazy view "with open source anyone can change it". What rubbish - nearly as stupid as "anyone can become president". It completely misses the point that 99% of the population wouldn't know where to start and most programmers are at the nailing 2 pieces of wood stage - despite their job titles and salaries and have neither the level of technical skill or experience, nor the correct, professional, approach to the subject.
Until we realise that the hard part of the job is design and the coding is the implementation, we'll continue to get new applications of the form:
Your application has just deleted all your dataOK?
But rights work both ways. You have a right to (limited: you can't say anything you like) free speech in america - but I, and anyone else, also have the right to not listen, to disagree with you, to think you're talking b/s and definitely we all have the right to not repeat some or all of what you say.
Provided a website doesn't falsely attribute something to you (or worse: to me) that wasn't what was said it can, just like newspapers do all the time, choose what to publish and what not to. If that changes the tone or meaning of a piece of "free speech", well: too bad - that's *their* free speech, too.
... streaming is more convenient for almost all users
Except for the ones who don't / won't / can't stream. Not every Netflix user (or person on the planet, for that matter) knows how to, or likes to, or has the internet access or bandwidth to stream HD video.
That there is still some demand for DVDs to buy demonstrates this very clearly.
Most code will not fall into the "elegant" category. The reason is that real-life software has to deal with exceptions, language crocks, patches/modifications and bug-fixes. It is also subject to the constraints, limitations and ugliness of whatever it has to run on and interface with (no program is an island entire of itself Every program is a piece of the continent, A part of the main() [ John Dunne] ).
Therefore the only place you'll find elegant code is in a book about algorithms, where the idea is presented in isolation and not subject to the practicalities of real-world environments
You should seriously consider giving up. Nothing hard is worth doing.
Nothing hard is worth doing? I don't think there's anything particularly difficult in finding a design for a 3D printable Yoda on the web, rushing off to the shop and buying a 3D printer and then proudly displaying the fruits of your "labour".
If you want a challenge, spend a fraction of the price on a small lathe and take the time to teach yourself how to use it correctly.
Personally I can't think of anything that I'd need to print - that would work first time.
Sure, it's possible to print out a load of old crap, just for the fun of saying "I made that" (just as small children are so proud of their scribblings), but surely we're all past that stage by adulthood?
The things I *would* like to fabricate would be plastic or metal parts that is part of a larger assmebly, but has broken. In that case, it's much harder to measure every dimension, put it into a design package, print off a sample, see where it doesn't fit, modify the design and repeat the whole process until I get one solitary example that fits, performs and doesn't contain any manufacturing flaws that weaken it.
Far better to start with a piece of stock material and remove excess, bit by bit, until you get the fit you require. All the tools and materials are readily available now. Although that doesn't have any "geek" qualities: it's simply old-fashioned manual dexterity and skill.
If we want to find the most likely cause of the plane going missing, a sensible question might be: In what situation would this be the best location to "disappear" a large jet?
For example: if you wanted to steal it, intact, is there anywhere else in the world where the combination of remoteness, lack of radar coverage, getting "your" aircrew on board and easy (without much technology) landing and concealment would offer a greater chance of success?
If there are places that would make the theft easier to get away with, then maybe it would rule out that particular possibility for the disappearance.
Just go through the list of possibilites until this location bubbles up to the top, then assume you've got the reason - search accordingly.
Though if we're talking outright, bare-faced lies I would suggest anytime someone tells you "two weeks" in response to a when or how long they *know* they are lying. 2 weeks is close enough to not cause panic, but far enough away to be forgotten or for more delays to "come up". If someone does tell you that, reckon on 3 months - minimum.
The job was simple: As accurately and quickly as possible, add up sets of two-digit numbers in a 4-minute math sprint.
So really the article is bogus as they are two different things (and if you think otherwise, it's probably because you've only every done arthimetic and don't really know what mathematics is).
As it is, anyone in the UK who's ever watched Countdown will have been disabused very rapidly of any anti-woman bias in arthimetic skills.
There isn't a single piece of software that would cause me to die if it would cease to exist
So your car doesn't have an engine management unit, then? If that ceased to exist at the wrong moment, I'm pretty sure you'd die. Likewise autopilot software (or pretty much any aeronautical software) if you were airborne when it happened.
We know from the pattern of "upgrades" that smart TVs get (i.e. none, or maybe one if there's a major bug) that once a manufacturer has your money any relationship has ended. We should expect no less from smart devices. They will work with whatever software/firmware they were released with and when that dies, gets corrupted, becomes obsolete or a hard-wired IP address disappears, you will basically have a brick. Or, if you're lucky. a brick that still has some manually selectable functions.
If smart devices *do* get all the security bells and whistles that appear to be de-rigeur, then it's unlikely they will even be hackable or user-upgradable when ther short, short lives come to their inevitable end.
Slashdot Mirror
You'll never get americans to give up their guns: they're all too afraid. What are they so scared of? Yup, all the (other) people with guns. The comments about gun shops and firing ranges being the "safest" places demonstrates this very well. The gun-owners feel safest when surrounded by guns. However when they are out in the big, nasty, world they feel insecure that other people might have weapons they can't see, so the urge to protect themselves becomes very strong.
Obviously, if nobody in the USA had a gun, this level of fear should be reduced, but it's irrational and doesn't work like that. Hence they all keep their guns and that induces more fear - so they feel the need for more and bigger guns, just as a sort of "safety blanket" (as almost none of them are ever fired in the real world) - which, of course, escalates the problem.
It's all because they're all so scared of each other.
all the brownie points and the bigger raise and the better office
And they're welcome to it. Along with all the added pressure, politics and satisfaction
Managers also have a far higher risk of redundancy (as no-one can actually see them produce anything) and lower job security as they are more expensive employees. I already earn more than I can reasonably spend and am quite capable of delivering on targets in a sensible number of hours in a 5 day a week.
How many cars are currently filling up with petrol in Suffolk (the county where SIzewell B is situated) right at this second?
Yes, this is the point that all the electric car makers either miss or ignore.
Petrol has a massive energy density (party due to being able to use air as a "free" oxidiser). In simple energy terms it "contains" about 33M Joules per litre - or 2GJ in a standard tankful. Try to transfer 2GJ of energy into an electric car's battery in the time it takes to fill your tank and you realise just how convenient a liquid fuel is.
And people have started to do every normal activity we would do on the Internet through those two portals because it costs them zero
If there are billions of people who are prevented, by cost contraints, from accessing the internet I have to wonder whether FB and Google are executing their strategies for purely altruistic reasons, as part of a long-term (decades?) strategy, as a means of making a fast buck, or simply because the other guy is doing it - and they don't want to be left behind?.
Altruism I can understand. But making FB the home page of a continent or two ... is tht really a benefit of the people receiving free internet?
If people have no money, would there be any profit to be made by pushing advertisements to them. Would there even be retailers or wholesalers with products they could buy - given the lack of delivery infrastructure.
If the plan is, that with internet access, the people in these poor areas will become rich and will then start buying stuff they see in advertisements - would that necessarily be to their benefit? Or would the companies providing these services be more like the East India Company in the 18th century - and be indulging in a bit of commercial imperialism?
There are plenty of other single or dual processor boards that will run Linux or Android, that are out already. Some are considerably cheaper. Unless the 64-bit Intel architecture is spectacularly more efficient than the A10, A13 and A20s we have access to already it's difficult to see what this board has that the Cubies and Olimex's don't already provide.
Let's put it in perspective. The NHS budget is about £130 Billion yes: billion a year. £5.5 million represents about 20 minutes of cash burn.
Or maybe just eat some Ubuntu
Ahhh, yes the Ubuntu meal analogy.
Where the cooking instructions are vague, wrong and refer to an early beta version of "grub" and only work if you have exactly the same cooker as the inventor. Where you have to spend half a day growing your own ingredients, just so's it is "free". Where the size and shape of the plate you need changes every 6 months and none of the cutlery matches. As for the list of contents, all it says is:
may contain nuts
Bribing the manufacturer? They are paying £5.5 Mil to support the MS products on 800,000 computers for an extra year. At ('cuse me, this one needs fingers and toes) ... £6.87 per computer per year - wassat? about 10 US. Sounds like an absolute bargain to me.
The only thing windows does that linux doesn't is ...
This is just completely wrong.
The biggest thing that windows provides to the NHS is continuity. The second most important feature (a corollary) is a trained user base - one that knows the in's and out's, bug, vagiaries and shortcuts of the existing system. Following on from that is a known, compatible set of hardware that interfaces with all the other systems (after years of development, testing and debugging) and importantly: is reliable in a life-or-death environment where patients wellbeing is at stake.
which will soon change if valve is sucessful
Valve? Seriously? you're talking about playing little computer games in a hospital environment?
better to imitate very closely gamertags of players who *are* intimidating
essentially mimicking nature, where lots of animals, bugs and plants take on the form of nasty, poisonous entities in the hope that looking like a badass will stop them getting eaten.
Gaming imitating life! Nice.
up and coming gamers will choose their own handles in future, both to intimidate opponents
Most newbies won't have the experience to choose a good name - hell: most parents don't even have that skill. They will also bring all their own fears, preconceptions and biases to the naming party, too. So most of them will choose names that give the impression of a callow youth trying to grossly overcompensate for their (obvious) inadequacies.
Not only are these individuals easy to spot, their choices are more likely to make them targets for scorn and derision rather than convey the impression they are better than they really are.
So to reduce the risk of a heart attack, just get more sleep.
YahooTube
That is all
Once they have demonstrated the basic skill of:
10 Print "Hello"
20 GOTO 10
They are considered part of the "community" - programmers. They aren't. As an example, take all the interest in the Raspberry Pi. An SBC intended to "teach kids how to program". In reality, most "kids" manage to get an LED to flash. According to the agenda, they are now programmers - the same same sorts of people who can write encryption algorithms, update software on Mars rovers and implement share-trading systems. It's like saying that if you can nail two pieces of wood together, you're a carpenter: here's your table saw (mind your fingers!) now go and build me a house.
The Linux community is little or no help either. With it's inaccurate and lazy view "with open source anyone can change it". What rubbish - nearly as stupid as "anyone can become president". It completely misses the point that 99% of the population wouldn't know where to start and most programmers are at the nailing 2 pieces of wood stage - despite their job titles and salaries and have neither the level of technical skill or experience, nor the correct, professional, approach to the subject.
Until we realise that the hard part of the job is design and the coding is the implementation, we'll continue to get new applications of the form:
Your application has just deleted all your data OK?
it applies to ALL in America.
But rights work both ways. You have a right to (limited: you can't say anything you like) free speech in america - but I, and anyone else, also have the right to not listen, to disagree with you, to think you're talking b/s and definitely we all have the right to not repeat some or all of what you say.
Provided a website doesn't falsely attribute something to you (or worse: to me) that wasn't what was said it can, just like newspapers do all the time, choose what to publish and what not to. If that changes the tone or meaning of a piece of "free speech", well: too bad - that's *their* free speech, too.
Except for the ones who don't / won't / can't stream. Not every Netflix user (or person on the planet, for that matter) knows how to, or likes to, or has the internet access or bandwidth to stream HD video.
That there is still some demand for DVDs to buy demonstrates this very clearly.
Most code will not fall into the "elegant" category. The reason is that real-life software has to deal with exceptions, language crocks, patches/modifications and bug-fixes. It is also subject to the constraints, limitations and ugliness of whatever it has to run on and interface with (no program is an island entire of itself Every program is a piece of the continent, A part of the main() [ John Dunne] ).
Therefore the only place you'll find elegant code is in a book about algorithms, where the idea is presented in isolation and not subject to the practicalities of real-world environments
You should seriously consider giving up. Nothing hard is worth doing.
Nothing hard is worth doing? I don't think there's anything particularly difficult in finding a design for a 3D printable Yoda on the web, rushing off to the shop and buying a 3D printer and then proudly displaying the fruits of your "labour".
If you want a challenge, spend a fraction of the price on a small lathe and take the time to teach yourself how to use it correctly.
Personally I can't think of anything that I'd need to print - that would work first time.
Sure, it's possible to print out a load of old crap, just for the fun of saying "I made that" (just as small children are so proud of their scribblings), but surely we're all past that stage by adulthood?
The things I *would* like to fabricate would be plastic or metal parts that is part of a larger assmebly, but has broken. In that case, it's much harder to measure every dimension, put it into a design package, print off a sample, see where it doesn't fit, modify the design and repeat the whole process until I get one solitary example that fits, performs and doesn't contain any manufacturing flaws that weaken it.
Far better to start with a piece of stock material and remove excess, bit by bit, until you get the fit you require. All the tools and materials are readily available now. Although that doesn't have any "geek" qualities: it's simply old-fashioned manual dexterity and skill.
If we want to find the most likely cause of the plane going missing, a sensible question might be:
In what situation would this be the best location to "disappear" a large jet?
For example: if you wanted to steal it, intact, is there anywhere else in the world where the combination of remoteness, lack of radar coverage, getting "your" aircrew on board and easy (without much technology) landing and concealment would offer a greater chance of success? If there are places that would make the theft easier to get away with, then maybe it would rule out that particular possibility for the disappearance.
Just go through the list of possibilites until this location bubbles up to the top, then assume you've got the reason - search accordingly.
This time it will work.
Though if we're talking outright, bare-faced lies I would suggest anytime someone tells you "two weeks" in response to a when or how long they *know* they are lying. 2 weeks is close enough to not cause panic, but far enough away to be forgotten or for more delays to "come up". If someone does tell you that, reckon on 3 months - minimum.
The job was simple: As accurately and quickly as possible, add up sets of two-digit numbers in a 4-minute math sprint.
So really the article is bogus as they are two different things (and if you think otherwise, it's probably because you've only every done arthimetic and don't really know what mathematics is).
As it is, anyone in the UK who's ever watched Countdown will have been disabused very rapidly of any anti-woman bias in arthimetic skills.
There isn't a single piece of software that would cause me to die if it would cease to exist
So your car doesn't have an engine management unit, then? If that ceased to exist at the wrong moment, I'm pretty sure you'd die. Likewise autopilot software (or pretty much any aeronautical software) if you were airborne when it happened.
Support? Why would they care?
We know from the pattern of "upgrades" that smart TVs get (i.e. none, or maybe one if there's a major bug) that once a manufacturer has your money any relationship has ended. We should expect no less from smart devices. They will work with whatever software/firmware they were released with and when that dies, gets corrupted, becomes obsolete or a hard-wired IP address disappears, you will basically have a brick. Or, if you're lucky. a brick that still has some manually selectable functions.
If smart devices *do* get all the security bells and whistles that appear to be de-rigeur, then it's unlikely they will even be hackable or user-upgradable when ther short, short lives come to their inevitable end.
Do not allow them to connect to anything. I know it sounds trivial, but sometimes the only remedy for "Doctor, when I do it hurts" is to stop doing