Stop and think what you're saying. The child in this post felt incredibly insecure. He had to assert himself some how to gain acceptance from his peers that would have given him a lot of grief.
I did not antagonise this child, nor did I go around boasting, as I said I was actually trying to do worse than my potential in an effort to fit in.
You disgust me, with your attitude of tolerance towards schoolyard violence. I know, deep down, you wish you could have abused me yourself - that is exactly what your post is saying.
This is a very common story with talented individuals. I hit the brick wall of having to work when switching high schools. My brother is hitting the same wall at university.
Everybody in life has to work to succeed, the question is when will this lesson sink in? For those with lesser talents that comes fairly early on, and can lead them well through the rest of their career. For others it comes later and is a harder demon to expel.
Then you get those who never learn to work. They fool around in classes, they lose, continue to lose, and end up in their adult life always losing.
Why does it take 'study' to reach this obvious conclusion?
In an age of "political correctness" and avoiding lawsuits the only thing a Government can accept is a "study".
Any time you divide people up (e.g. male/female, white/black, young/old, bright/slow) offence will be taken. So statistics must be used to back up any conclusions.
Where a conclusive statistical study does not exist a Government is forced to treat everyone as equals. Thus a study is required if segregating people based on academic performance is the best thing for the people.
I did terribly at sport at school. As a result I was not offered positions in any sports teams, and instead had to partake in "social sports" which were not competitive.
Did this affect me? Am I upset I wasn't treated as an equal, or giving copious amounts of extra coaching? Sure, I'd have loved to be talented at sports when I was young, but the fact was that I wasn't.
Turns out, later in life, I discovered an enjoyment for sports. I go to the gym, ride my bicycle, have a go at things.
All adults have the opportunity to work on something they didn't enjoy as kids. They can start reading history books, or re-learn some basic mathematics. That's the beauty of being an adult!
So why force kids into something they don't want at a young age? All the teachers will get is additional hostility and resistance.
When I started high school I was the dux of the grade (split up across 5 classes). It was a boys school, and academic performance was looked down upon, so I was roughed up a fair bit, and was actually trying NOT to do well, but like it or not I still came dux.
The next year the Year Advisor thought it might be fun to take the worst performing kid from the bottom class and put him in the top class.
Guess who he targetted for a fight every day? That's right, the best performing kid in the top class - me.
So one day he gives me a good going over on the station after school.
Finally my parents woke up and sent me to a different school.
Needless to say I don't believe in mixing the stupid and lazy with the bright and talented. Physical assault is just not on, even between kids.
In an age where we are more and more dependent on electronics, radio (e.g. mobile phones), and satellite radio services (e.g. GPS), it is an incredible fluke that we are not being unduly affected by the sun's radiation.
Though I'm glad the threat of solar flares and radiation is being taken seriously (e.g. NASA's STEREO project) I do wonder if at least some of the technology we thrive under won't fail miserably when the next solar maximum takes place?
Very possible.. banking coders tend to be rather cowboy-ish in my limited experience of Investment Banking companies in the UK and Australia.
In a short 5 week stint in an investment bank in Australia I was shocked at the way my manager at the time would order the DBA to "just authorise" some SQL query he'd written on the production database.
The idea of having a DBA authorise a query on the production databases was to prevent stupid things from happening.. but all too often I saw these safety systems bypassed at a human level.
If you want reliable safe systems, I'd bet on telecommunications companies rather than banks.
Did you not get my comment about Forward Error Correction? Perhaps I should have said that I'd studied Electrical Engineering, and then subsequently explained that Forward Error Correction is the application of principles that add redundancy to information so that errors can be corrected. Duplicating information is a form of Forward Error Correction. Please please please look it up before correcting somebody about something you don't understand.
In all seriousness, the problem is not the knowledge a laser can travel that far; its whether you can create precise enough targeting equipment.
A radio signal might be more of a splatter, but at least if you point it "over there" with enough power behind it, it will get there.
Actually the real problems will be error-correction and error-detection. When a signal takes 3 minutes or more to arrive at the destination one would hope it is all intact because it is going to take a long time to re-request a packet. Can you imagine trying to set TTL on your PC to handle a TCP stream with a destination minutes away (you'd probably run out of memory). Well obviously TCP is not the right protocol for this kind of stream. But no matter what protocol is used there is no simple way for the sender to KNOW that the data arrived at the destination in any short period of time.
The problem of delays in verification could be removed with using advanced forward-error-correction (FEC), but again, this is not perfect. And the amount of FEC required would no doubt be significant to deal with the occasional asteroid passing through the beam.
The article wasn't debating whether the PC would exist, but it pointed out that the PC won't have the dominance it has had. Which makes sense really; most people want to play games, and e-mail. Not too many people at home actually make use of spreadsheets, even when preparing tax returns.
So if we have a dedicated games device at home, and a mobile phone that can browse the web and access e-mail then that's most of the technology the average punter will want/need.
Of course I expect most slashdot readers to still want their PCs..
I've tried to privately register every single one of my domains, and end up paying more for what is effectively "not listing my number in the telephone book", just because I don't want SPAM.
I say scrap whois. But still make registration of e-mail mandatory so the registrar can still contact domain owners.
I would guess the real-world equivalent is car registration (number) plates. In most countries the name and address of the registration plate owner is not publicly available presumably to deter road-rage from translating to home attacks; something a domain name owner may also be wary of.
We have a problem. Management theory of late has tossed aside conventional wisdom of taking on graduates, training them within the organisation. Instead companies either contract out work, or seek only experienced "useful" staff. Trouble is those of us with experience are doing very well as the supply of other experienced individuals slows.
Those doing MBAs.. please consider the benefits of graduate staff. Yes they cannot do anything useful the day they get out into the real world. But in the long run technology companies will need experience or end up paying dearly for it.
A country cannot do badly by having too many educated people.
But my question is: will I have to shut down all my prism applications if I want to restart the browser engine? Or will all prism apps run as a separate instance..
All Tier 1, Tier 2, and I would guess most Tier 3 internet service providers already use MPLS switches in the backbone. Their job is to provide flow-switched paths (much like ATM) over large WANs. The PE (Provider Edge) switches then hand the traffic to conventional routers that have to deal with the computational load of the massive routing table for the internet.
Flow based routing doesn't provide all the answers. Something at the edge still has to classify each incoming packet into an appropriate flow.
You can think of a flow-based network like a motorway/freeway. As you enter the network, you know you are going to city "yyyy" and hence you must get off at exit 52. As you pass each exit the only question to be asked is "are you getting off at this exit?", not "what is the street address you are going to?". The latter is a question to be asked once you get off the motorway/freeway and enter suburbia.
As it is impractical to travel on motorways/freeways entirely for one's journey (Los Angeles being the exception) so it is impractical to assume flow based routing is the solution to all problems.
The other problem with CCTV is that it has spawned a new, youthful, generation who almost permanently wear hooded jackets and tops when outside (also known as "hoodies"). Children instinctively know they can avoid repercussions and intimidating behaviour as they hide their faces.
Combine that with Police so weighed down by red tape and documentation that crime actually increases, not decreases.
At the end of the day criminals are like bacteria, they adapt. When penicillin was first introduced it had a powerful effect on bacterial infections, but bacteria has adapted, just as criminals adapt.
University math killed my interest in university maths! We had a lecturer go on about something I'm sure he didn't understand, and certainly couldn't teach. Before that I was ahead of the curve in maths my entire educational career.
Meh, engineering is simpler, anyway.. just round everything to the nearest 10%..
You also completely missed the sarcasm in my post. At least when Religion makes up theories we all know them to be bunk. When individuals come up with wild theories with no proof or even slight believability about them then it is important for one to retain a healthy scepticism.
But I think rational discussion won't assist my purpose here. Too many individuals saw the word Religion and went nuts!
My post was serious, not flamebait, but because you disagree you not only mod me incorrectly, but you log in as an Anonymous Coward to comment, even though that's in direct contravention of slashdot policies.
Slashdot Mirror
What a denigrating post.
Stop and think what you're saying. The child in this post felt incredibly insecure. He had to assert himself some how to gain acceptance from his peers that would have given him a lot of grief.
I did not antagonise this child, nor did I go around boasting, as I said I was actually trying to do worse than my potential in an effort to fit in.
You disgust me, with your attitude of tolerance towards schoolyard violence. I know, deep down, you wish you could have abused me yourself - that is exactly what your post is saying.
Tell me, how many people have you bullied?
This is a very common story with talented individuals. I hit the brick wall of having to work when switching high schools. My brother is hitting the same wall at university.
Everybody in life has to work to succeed, the question is when will this lesson sink in? For those with lesser talents that comes fairly early on, and can lead them well through the rest of their career. For others it comes later and is a harder demon to expel.
Then you get those who never learn to work. They fool around in classes, they lose, continue to lose, and end up in their adult life always losing.
In an age of "political correctness" and avoiding lawsuits the only thing a Government can accept is a "study".
Any time you divide people up (e.g. male/female, white/black, young/old, bright/slow) offence will be taken. So statistics must be used to back up any conclusions.
Where a conclusive statistical study does not exist a Government is forced to treat everyone as equals. Thus a study is required if segregating people based on academic performance is the best thing for the people.
Maybe so, but they are far more predisposed to physical abuse and violence.
I did terribly at sport at school. As a result I was not offered positions in any sports teams, and instead had to partake in "social sports" which were not competitive.
Did this affect me? Am I upset I wasn't treated as an equal, or giving copious amounts of extra coaching? Sure, I'd have loved to be talented at sports when I was young, but the fact was that I wasn't.
Turns out, later in life, I discovered an enjoyment for sports. I go to the gym, ride my bicycle, have a go at things.
All adults have the opportunity to work on something they didn't enjoy as kids. They can start reading history books, or re-learn some basic mathematics. That's the beauty of being an adult!
So why force kids into something they don't want at a young age? All the teachers will get is additional hostility and resistance.
When I started high school I was the dux of the grade (split up across 5 classes). It was a boys school, and academic performance was looked down upon, so I was roughed up a fair bit, and was actually trying NOT to do well, but like it or not I still came dux.
The next year the Year Advisor thought it might be fun to take the worst performing kid from the bottom class and put him in the top class.
Guess who he targetted for a fight every day? That's right, the best performing kid in the top class - me.
So one day he gives me a good going over on the station after school.
Finally my parents woke up and sent me to a different school.
Needless to say I don't believe in mixing the stupid and lazy with the bright and talented. Physical assault is just not on, even between kids.
Microsoft stopped innovating on a functional front, and instead put their development effort into licensing and digital restriction technology.
So how could any future operating system from Microsoft be better? It could only be more restrictive.
I would happily meet you, and then test out your theory, this time you on foot while I drive my car behind you.
No doubt you will not complain when I drive into the back of you. So let's make a date, I'm keen to treat you like you treat others!!!
In an age where we are more and more dependent on electronics, radio (e.g. mobile phones), and satellite radio services (e.g. GPS), it is an incredible fluke that we are not being unduly affected by the sun's radiation.
Though I'm glad the threat of solar flares and radiation is being taken seriously (e.g. NASA's STEREO project) I do wonder if at least some of the technology we thrive under won't fail miserably when the next solar maximum takes place?
If you don't have a .emacs file then you kind of missed the point with Emacs.
Of particular benefit is a function like:
(global-set-key [A-f10] 'electric-buffer-list)
which binds a key to a function.
Very possible.. banking coders tend to be rather cowboy-ish in my limited experience of Investment Banking companies in the UK and Australia.
In a short 5 week stint in an investment bank in Australia I was shocked at the way my manager at the time would order the DBA to "just authorise" some SQL query he'd written on the production database.
The idea of having a DBA authorise a query on the production databases was to prevent stupid things from happening.. but all too often I saw these safety systems bypassed at a human level.
If you want reliable safe systems, I'd bet on telecommunications companies rather than banks.
Did you not get my comment about Forward Error Correction? Perhaps I should have said that I'd studied Electrical Engineering, and then subsequently explained that Forward Error Correction is the application of principles that add redundancy to information so that errors can be corrected. Duplicating information is a form of Forward Error Correction. Please please please look it up before correcting somebody about something you don't understand.
Actually the real problems will be error-correction and error-detection. When a signal takes 3 minutes or more to arrive at the destination one would hope it is all intact because it is going to take a long time to re-request a packet. Can you imagine trying to set TTL on your PC to handle a TCP stream with a destination minutes away (you'd probably run out of memory). Well obviously TCP is not the right protocol for this kind of stream. But no matter what protocol is used there is no simple way for the sender to KNOW that the data arrived at the destination in any short period of time.
The problem of delays in verification could be removed with using advanced forward-error-correction (FEC), but again, this is not perfect. And the amount of FEC required would no doubt be significant to deal with the occasional asteroid passing through the beam.
The article wasn't debating whether the PC would exist, but it pointed out that the PC won't have the dominance it has had. Which makes sense really; most people want to play games, and e-mail. Not too many people at home actually make use of spreadsheets, even when preparing tax returns.
So if we have a dedicated games device at home, and a mobile phone that can browse the web and access e-mail then that's most of the technology the average punter will want/need.
Of course I expect most slashdot readers to still want their PCs..
I have to agree.
I've tried to privately register every single one of my domains, and end up paying more for what is effectively "not listing my number in the telephone book", just because I don't want SPAM.
I say scrap whois. But still make registration of e-mail mandatory so the registrar can still contact domain owners.
I would guess the real-world equivalent is car registration (number) plates. In most countries the name and address of the registration plate owner is not publicly available presumably to deter road-rage from translating to home attacks; something a domain name owner may also be wary of.
Monitoring communities of interest is no doubt something of interest there..
We have a problem. Management theory of late has tossed aside conventional wisdom of taking on graduates, training them within the organisation. Instead companies either contract out work, or seek only experienced "useful" staff. Trouble is those of us with experience are doing very well as the supply of other experienced individuals slows.
Those doing MBAs.. please consider the benefits of graduate staff. Yes they cannot do anything useful the day they get out into the real world. But in the long run technology companies will need experience or end up paying dearly for it.
A country cannot do badly by having too many educated people.
But my question is: will I have to shut down all my prism applications if I want to restart the browser engine? Or will all prism apps run as a separate instance..
All Tier 1, Tier 2, and I would guess most Tier 3 internet service providers already use MPLS switches in the backbone. Their job is to provide flow-switched paths (much like ATM) over large WANs. The PE (Provider Edge) switches then hand the traffic to conventional routers that have to deal with the computational load of the massive routing table for the internet.
Flow based routing doesn't provide all the answers. Something at the edge still has to classify each incoming packet into an appropriate flow.
You can think of a flow-based network like a motorway/freeway. As you enter the network, you know you are going to city "yyyy" and hence you must get off at exit 52. As you pass each exit the only question to be asked is "are you getting off at this exit?", not "what is the street address you are going to?". The latter is a question to be asked once you get off the motorway/freeway and enter suburbia.
As it is impractical to travel on motorways/freeways entirely for one's journey (Los Angeles being the exception) so it is impractical to assume flow based routing is the solution to all problems.
The other problem with CCTV is that it has spawned a new, youthful, generation who almost permanently wear hooded jackets and tops when outside (also known as "hoodies"). Children instinctively know they can avoid repercussions and intimidating behaviour as they hide their faces.
Combine that with Police so weighed down by red tape and documentation that crime actually increases, not decreases.
At the end of the day criminals are like bacteria, they adapt. When penicillin was first introduced it had a powerful effect on bacterial infections, but bacteria has adapted, just as criminals adapt.
Fatality!
University math killed my interest in university maths! We had a lecturer go on about something I'm sure he didn't understand, and certainly couldn't teach. Before that I was ahead of the curve in maths my entire educational career.
Meh, engineering is simpler, anyway.. just round everything to the nearest 10%..
OK you're plainly stupid; I get that.
You also completely missed the sarcasm in my post. At least when Religion makes up theories we all know them to be bunk. When individuals come up with wild theories with no proof or even slight believability about them then it is important for one to retain a healthy scepticism.
But I think rational discussion won't assist my purpose here. Too many individuals saw the word Religion and went nuts!
Maybe it's an American thing; Yanks don't get subtlety; do you think I was actually promoting religion? NO! Duh!
My post was serious, not flamebait, but because you disagree you not only mod me incorrectly, but you log in as an Anonymous Coward to comment, even though that's in direct contravention of slashdot policies.
Incredible. What's your username, coward?