What percentage of the offsets go to his salary? (Hint: it's not very large.) Are staffing costs built into the formulae used to compute how much carbon is offset by each dollar spent? (Hint: yes they are.)
Tree-planting is just one of the things they do. I'm not sure what the rest are, but last time I looked there's a whole range. But yeah- if the offsets don't do what they advertise then Gore buying them doesn't offset his lifestyle.
That's the point of buying offsets. At least, if you think they work as advertised. Gore's lifestyle puts out X units of carbon; he buys offsets to bring that number down to zero so that he's not actually polluting.
They should have told Intuit, "Design the healthcare exchange website for us or we'll pay someone else to build an 'official' TurboTax competitor. Also we'll pay you $400M."
True that. For more questionable data I just searched for "java", "c++", "visual basic", "ruby" and "python" at LinkedIn, limiting the search to within 50 miles of my residence, which is a "moderately" tech heavy medium sized city. Omitted "C" because it generated too many false positives:
Is it possible to objectively measure "relegated to the decaying margins of the software industry"? How might one do that? TIOBE market share? Number of new projects choosing to use the language? Something else?
Ditto. You'll know Java's in trouble when the College Board replaces it as the language used in the AP Computer Science Exam. When that happens, it will be because they've identified some other language that has two qualities: 1) considered appropriate in a teaching context, and 2) is actually used in industry or is thought to be on a path to quick adoption. The only possible replacement I see on the horizon is Python.
One can make a credible case that Java's decline in market share is due to the "market" for programming languages becoming more diverse over time. Let's consider the languages with the largest market share in 2001, which is the farthest back the TIOBE graph goes:
The baseline decline for languages that enjoyed wide popularity in 2001 seems to be 15%. Java is declining, but seems to be doing no worse than C++ and Visual Basic are. (Which is perhaps damning with faint praise.) However, unlike C++ and Visual Basic, Java is declining from a position of dominance (at least in terms of TIOBE metrics).
IMO, if any language should be worried it's Ruby. Ruby is already less than half as popular (1.5%) as it was at the peak (4%), and it's more-or-less eclipsed by Python. There are some credible reasons to prefer Java to Python/Ruby in certain contexts (e.g. Android, where it's the only game in town). There aren't many strong reasons to prefer Ruby to Python, esp. given the larger Python development community makes it easier to hire devs.
Was meant to be a response to Opportunist's post, not Kyosuke's. Opportunist seemed to be arguing that "getting rid of all the pedophiles" should only make one feel safer if one is a child.
'The problem wasn't that we stopped listening to customers," said one former RIM insider. "We believed we knew better what customers needed long term than they did."
It seems like the best scenario is for a company to actually know what customers need long-term better than they (the customers) do. Customers don't always know what they really want. They know they want some things, but those things may not actually be what would serve them best. You need to listen to your customers; you also need to ignore some of their suggestions / demands when they (the suggestions or demands) suck. I'm reminded of this:
As crazy and wrong as this guy is, his claim isn't completely out of left field. One of my physics teachers in high school (who had worked as an engineer at Bell Helicopter) related the story that, apparently, some of the helicopters initially used in the Viet Nam conflict happened to vibrate at the resonant frequency of the human kidney, causing pilots to experience organ damage. They had to add material to the seats to cancel out the vibrations. Here's a page from the Canadian equivalent of the U.S.'s OSHA:
I found learning and using Ruby to be decidedly "not fun". This stemmed more from the language itself than from the available materials. Why's guide was an irritating manifesto.
After listening to the frustrations of our iOS devs working to get our app ready for iOS 7, I'm waiting a couple of months before upgrading. Give lazy app producers time to patch their stuff before taking the plunge. Or maybe I'll just wait until 7.0.1 / 7.1.
...scales up to 96 TB w/ an expansion device and easily fits in a suburban. Using their estimate for travel time from NY to LA that comes to ~0.66 GB/s or ~6.6 Gbps. Fiber beats that by a factor of six. However, since they're standard NAS devices, you should be able to access them to read the data w/o much trouble, and you could probably cram six of them in a suburban.
The guy who's a 5 is going to generate solutions that are a 5, whether the problem is a 7 or a 2. Even easy problems can be solved poorly. (Which means they may not be that "easy" after all). Few problems are so trivial that the 9 guy can't produce a solution that's superior to what the 5 guy would produce.
There's plenty of complexity in Eclipse, but if all you want to do is create a simple project, run it, and watch the console output then it's not that hard. An added benefit is that whatever the student learns about the IDE at least has the potential to be relevant, which isn't the case with DrJava.
Slashdot Mirror
What percentage of the offsets go to his salary? (Hint: it's not very large.) Are staffing costs built into the formulae used to compute how much carbon is offset by each dollar spent? (Hint: yes they are.)
Tree-planting is just one of the things they do. I'm not sure what the rest are, but last time I looked there's a whole range. But yeah- if the offsets don't do what they advertise then Gore buying them doesn't offset his lifestyle.
That's the point of buying offsets. At least, if you think they work as advertised. Gore's lifestyle puts out X units of carbon; he buys offsets to bring that number down to zero so that he's not actually polluting.
Supposedly he buys carbon offsets to bring his footprint down to zero.
They should have told Intuit, "Design the healthcare exchange website for us or we'll pay someone else to build an 'official' TurboTax competitor. Also we'll pay you $400M."
True that. For more questionable data I just searched for "java", "c++", "visual basic", "ruby" and "python" at LinkedIn, limiting the search to within 50 miles of my residence, which is a "moderately" tech heavy medium sized city. Omitted "C" because it generated too many false positives:
Java: 273
C++: 160
Visual Basic: 52
Ruby: 82
Python: 173
For extra fun:
Android: 58
iOS: 67
The TIOBE data or my summary?
My employer has had real trouble hiring an Android dev to back me up. Totally anecdotal, but there you go.
Is it possible to objectively measure "relegated to the decaying margins of the software industry"? How might one do that? TIOBE market share? Number of new projects choosing to use the language? Something else?
Ditto. You'll know Java's in trouble when the College Board replaces it as the language used in the AP Computer Science Exam. When that happens, it will be because they've identified some other language that has two qualities: 1) considered appropriate in a teaching context, and 2) is actually used in industry or is thought to be on a path to quick adoption. The only possible replacement I see on the horizon is Python.
One can make a credible case that Java's decline in market share is due to the "market" for programming languages becoming more diverse over time. Let's consider the languages with the largest market share in 2001, which is the farthest back the TIOBE graph goes:
Java: ~26.5%
C: ~20.0%
C++: ~14.0%
Visual Basic: ~8.0%
Now let's check out each of those language's current market share:
Java: 16.15%
C: 16.98%
C++: 8.66%
Visual Basic: 4.84%
Now we can look at the deltas, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of original share:
Java: -10.35% (~39% decline)
C: -3.02% (~15% decline)
C++: -5.34% (~38% decline)
Visual Basic: -3.16% (39.5% decline)
The baseline decline for languages that enjoyed wide popularity in 2001 seems to be 15%. Java is declining, but seems to be doing no worse than C++ and Visual Basic are. (Which is perhaps damning with faint praise.) However, unlike C++ and Visual Basic, Java is declining from a position of dominance (at least in terms of TIOBE metrics).
IMO, if any language should be worried it's Ruby. Ruby is already less than half as popular (1.5%) as it was at the peak (4%), and it's more-or-less eclipsed by Python. There are some credible reasons to prefer Java to Python/Ruby in certain contexts (e.g. Android, where it's the only game in town). There aren't many strong reasons to prefer Ruby to Python, esp. given the larger Python development community makes it easier to hire devs.
Talk about alphabet soup! Or, in this case, alphanumeric soup.
Was meant to be a response to Opportunist's post, not Kyosuke's. Opportunist seemed to be arguing that "getting rid of all the pedophiles" should only make one feel safer if one is a child.
Or have children. Or plan to ever have children. Or have nieces or nephews you care about.
It seems like the best scenario is for a company to actually know what customers need long-term better than they (the customers) do. Customers don't always know what they really want. They know they want some things, but those things may not actually be what would serve them best. You need to listen to your customers; you also need to ignore some of their suggestions / demands when they (the suggestions or demands) suck. I'm reminded of this:
http://youtu.be/Hvn9k8dnhjI
As crazy and wrong as this guy is, his claim isn't completely out of left field. One of my physics teachers in high school (who had worked as an engineer at Bell Helicopter) related the story that, apparently, some of the helicopters initially used in the Viet Nam conflict happened to vibrate at the resonant frequency of the human kidney, causing pilots to experience organ damage. They had to add material to the seats to cancel out the vibrations. Here's a page from the Canadian equivalent of the U.S.'s OSHA:
http://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/phys_agents/vibration/vibration_intro.html
And durability.
Oh, I thought we were talking about Original Licensed Thermal Power.
http://www.acronymfinder.com/Original-Licensed-Thermal-Power-(nuclear)-(OLTP).html
Google lies!
I found learning and using Ruby to be decidedly "not fun". This stemmed more from the language itself than from the available materials. Why's guide was an irritating manifesto.
After listening to the frustrations of our iOS devs working to get our app ready for iOS 7, I'm waiting a couple of months before upgrading. Give lazy app producers time to patch their stuff before taking the plunge. Or maybe I'll just wait until 7.0.1 / 7.1.
What if added the stipulation that the data must be transferred in a single filesystem. This thing:
...scales up to 96 TB w/ an expansion device and easily fits in a suburban. Using their estimate for travel time from NY to LA that comes to ~0.66 GB/s or ~6.6 Gbps. Fiber beats that by a factor of six. However, since they're standard NAS devices, you should be able to access them to read the data w/o much trouble, and you could probably cram six of them in a suburban.
http://www.synology.com/products/product.php?product_name=DS2413%2B
Because it represented the opportunity to reap enormous profits. Get that going for space and you'll see people explore it.
The guy who's a 5 is going to generate solutions that are a 5, whether the problem is a 7 or a 2. Even easy problems can be solved poorly. (Which means they may not be that "easy" after all). Few problems are so trivial that the 9 guy can't produce a solution that's superior to what the 5 guy would produce.
Define 'safe'.
There's plenty of complexity in Eclipse, but if all you want to do is create a simple project, run it, and watch the console output then it's not that hard. An added benefit is that whatever the student learns about the IDE at least has the potential to be relevant, which isn't the case with DrJava.