When I learned programming my Dad took us to a skiing trip in the Slovak mountains - small cottage in the woods with a simple wood stove, nearest shop was 30 minute walk through the hills in deep snow, and whole days were spent skiing. The nights, however, we spent programming - with a pencil and an eraser ("the most important tool of a good programmer", my Dad said), and he was my compiler, debugger and processor, executing my handwritten programs for me and pointing out mistakes:)
Interesting thought, that we would have these rights if there was no Absolute Law or something similar. What would lead us to conclude that everyone has the right to Liberty, for example? Is it a matter of taking a vote about it? And if the majority vote against, could they then imprison the minority? I live in Europe and one thing I envy the US Constitution is the way rights are defined - that they are given by an Absolute and therefore cannot be voted away:)
Please mod parent up. I know this is Slashdot but seriously... where does the idea that teaching is "basic" come from? And how come someone who has reviewed appropriate literature and proven the GP most likely wrong is not modded higher already?
> Meanwhile we need to ask ourselves - if we're creating this simulation based on the human brain, then what are the odds that some form of consciousness dwells within it?
If there's a consciousness in the simulation, then consciousness is just a result of a deterministic calculation, isn't it? In that case, what's the point of "asking ourselves"? Our consciousness would also be just a deterministic process so we can ask all we want but the answers we will arrive at are already given and we could not change them no matter how hard we "tried to think it through"... yawn:)
My understanding is that MEGA work by encrypting your data client-side within the browser, so the only thing that could happen to the said shopping list is getting lost, but until it is sent back to your browser and decrypted there even Dotcom cannot read it - that's the main reason why they cannot provide you with a password reset feature. They have a bug bounty program for finding holes in this setup. I do not trust the guy either but I think that this kind of arrangement, while having a side effect of protecting him from liability for users' content, also helps keep my data more secure. OTOH I know Slashdot is full of people more knowledgeable with the matter, so I do not mind hearing more from someone who can poke a few holes in their model:)
I hope this is not too off-topic, but Mega has recently (and very quietly, without even a mention on their blog) released a Windows sync client - a significant step in being feature-complete compared to their less-encrypted competition of Dropbox, Google Drive or Microsoft SkyDrive.
I think Stross' article has many weak arguments, and one strong one - deflation. Thank you for explaining why it's important. As a side note, however - perhaps there was no need to call other human beings "BTCtards".
If profit is not necessary, could you give me one reason why anyone would fund a startup? Could you explain how to build a factory if the bank won't give you a loan? How to expand internationally once you've invested all your personal wealth into your business? Why would someone risk being a business owner and not an employee?
See, all these are things that are typically solved by equity investment, or (partly) giving up your ownership, and these investors, for the large risk they are taking, expect a return - profit. Interestingly, as an example, in Islamic finance it is okay to turn profit but it's forbidden to give loans and ask for interest which is understood as making money without taking a risk.
Or, in other words - the business generates value for customers (otherwise they would not buy its products), for employees (who get wages), for loan providers (because you pay interest on your loans) and finally for owners who are running the largest risk - a risk that there won't be anything left to pay for their investment in the company. You would suggest to let them take losses but not have the option of getting profits... and I think it would not work:)
This seems quite innocent and hugely useful at the same time - can anyone see the angle from which the rights holders will most likely try to attack his effort?:)
Spreadsheet software such as Excel or Calc are very good examples of flow-based programming, and it seems non-programmers can cope with it. However, we all know how hard it is to get larger-scale projects in Excel to work:)
Assuming that you protect your phone from the random thief, I would recommend installing a tracing app and leaving the phone unlocked - a locked phone will just encourage the thief to hard reset it or turn it off immediately. Same with a laptop - I had some tracing software installed but unfortunately I forgot to enable the guest account so the thief could not use the laptop... and therefore never gave me a chance to locate it.
It sounds like you want FireGPG or Mailvelope. Too bad the first one is discontinued and the second one is not ready for Firefox yet, just Chrome. Is there a widely used browser plugin I missed?
Plain English: Although their revenue has grown, they are still making losses. It may seem, from a certain point of view, like they are earning a bit of profit for each of their shares, but that's only if you adjust the figures in a way that is not allowed by official accounting standards.
Yes, perhaps a good predictor now, but only up to the moment when results of these polls are widely publicized... and some company offers to manipulate the trending words for a price?
I was unpleasantly surprised that Scratch 2.0 cannot be downloaded and run on my computer - I had to run it "from the cloud". It's so sad because I really wanted to use it with my kids when we were offline, and the new Scratch has a lot of what I missed from the older version 1.4 for years, making it much more useful to actually teach my kids programming: the ability to easily clone objects in runtime, lists as a data type, and the ability to create custom blocks. At least they're saying that an offline editor will arrive sometime this summer....
Unfortunately, accoring to the Wikipedia entry, RISUG is an experimental method going through trials in India and struggling with the number of volunteers. As much as I'd love this method to be available, currently it is not and there have not been many news about it in the last couple of years.
I was in a small cottage in snowy Slovak mountains for a skiing holiday with my brother and Dad, twenty minutes walk from the ski lift and from the nearest houses and a small grocery shop. In the evening, Dad cooked some pudding and added canned strawberries, then we sat down and he explained about the importance of having the right programming tools - a sharp pencil and a really good eraser. There, next to the fireplace, he taught me Pascal.
My first program printed out numbers from one to ten. It was written on large sheet of paper but had to have correct indentation, and the role of compiler, processor and screen was left to my Dad who patiently wrote the numbers next to each other without spaces - just like he should. Thanks, Dad!
That, and also two more things. First, when I bookmark I tend to add keywords that will help me find the content when I cannot rely on Google keywords (e.g. I read an interesting article about flying robots somewhere but I would not be able to find it using Google - too many false positives). Second, I'd really like to preserve the bookmarked pages as they are today, since they tend to disappear after a time. However, I cannot seem to find a suitable Firefox plugin that is going to save my bookmarks as either HTML archives or PDF files... has anyone had the same problem?
It's interesting to see how we IT people think that others should really understand the technical details of what we do. Have you considered that finance people have their important details as well (e.g. debenture covenant conditions), sales people have important details (leads and pipeline management), manufacturing people have important details (inventory levels management)?
One of the arts of running a company is having people on the board who know when to talk detail and when to talk the big picture. And just because we like and know the IT detail does not mean that everyone on the board should.
I do a lot of work with both IT and corporate strategies, and trust me - just because someone doesn't understand Six Sigma, activity-based management, balanced scorecards, PESTLE analysis or the concept of value, and just because at the top level of the company many factors are hard to define and manage, does not mean that they are not important.
I have a related question - would anyone know about a set od programming challenges/tasks/problems (possibly funny, interesting or connected by a story) to solve, for kids? Whether it is Scratch or anything else I find it much easier to teach my kids when we have something to sink our teeth into...
Slashdot Mirror
When I learned programming my Dad took us to a skiing trip in the Slovak mountains - small cottage in the woods with a simple wood stove, nearest shop was 30 minute walk through the hills in deep snow, and whole days were spent skiing. The nights, however, we spent programming - with a pencil and an eraser ("the most important tool of a good programmer", my Dad said), and he was my compiler, debugger and processor, executing my handwritten programs for me and pointing out mistakes :)
Interesting thought, that we would have these rights if there was no Absolute Law or something similar. What would lead us to conclude that everyone has the right to Liberty, for example? Is it a matter of taking a vote about it? And if the majority vote against, could they then imprison the minority? I live in Europe and one thing I envy the US Constitution is the way rights are defined - that they are given by an Absolute and therefore cannot be voted away :)
Please mod parent up. I know this is Slashdot but seriously... where does the idea that teaching is "basic" come from? And how come someone who has reviewed appropriate literature and proven the GP most likely wrong is not modded higher already?
If there's a consciousness in the simulation, then consciousness is just a result of a deterministic calculation, isn't it? In that case, what's the point of "asking ourselves"? Our consciousness would also be just a deterministic process so we can ask all we want but the answers we will arrive at are already given and we could not change them no matter how hard we "tried to think it through"... yawn :)
My understanding is that MEGA work by encrypting your data client-side within the browser, so the only thing that could happen to the said shopping list is getting lost, but until it is sent back to your browser and decrypted there even Dotcom cannot read it - that's the main reason why they cannot provide you with a password reset feature. They have a bug bounty program for finding holes in this setup. I do not trust the guy either but I think that this kind of arrangement, while having a side effect of protecting him from liability for users' content, also helps keep my data more secure. OTOH I know Slashdot is full of people more knowledgeable with the matter, so I do not mind hearing more from someone who can poke a few holes in their model :)
I hope this is not too off-topic, but Mega has recently (and very quietly, without even a mention on their blog) released a Windows sync client - a significant step in being feature-complete compared to their less-encrypted competition of Dropbox, Google Drive or Microsoft SkyDrive.
I think Stross' article has many weak arguments, and one strong one - deflation. Thank you for explaining why it's important. As a side note, however - perhaps there was no need to call other human beings "BTCtards".
Posting to undo a mistaken mod. Your comment is great!
I am a teacher and that's exactly what I have been thinking for many years. One of the things that changed my opinion was Daphne Koller's TED talk
If profit is not necessary, could you give me one reason why anyone would fund a startup? Could you explain how to build a factory if the bank won't give you a loan? How to expand internationally once you've invested all your personal wealth into your business? Why would someone risk being a business owner and not an employee? See, all these are things that are typically solved by equity investment, or (partly) giving up your ownership, and these investors, for the large risk they are taking, expect a return - profit. Interestingly, as an example, in Islamic finance it is okay to turn profit but it's forbidden to give loans and ask for interest which is understood as making money without taking a risk. Or, in other words - the business generates value for customers (otherwise they would not buy its products), for employees (who get wages), for loan providers (because you pay interest on your loans) and finally for owners who are running the largest risk - a risk that there won't be anything left to pay for their investment in the company. You would suggest to let them take losses but not have the option of getting profits... and I think it would not work :)
This seems quite innocent and hugely useful at the same time - can anyone see the angle from which the rights holders will most likely try to attack his effort? :)
Posting to undo my mistakenr mod.
Spreadsheet software such as Excel or Calc are very good examples of flow-based programming, and it seems non-programmers can cope with it. However, we all know how hard it is to get larger-scale projects in Excel to work :)
Assuming that you protect your phone from the random thief, I would recommend installing a tracing app and leaving the phone unlocked - a locked phone will just encourage the thief to hard reset it or turn it off immediately. Same with a laptop - I had some tracing software installed but unfortunately I forgot to enable the guest account so the thief could not use the laptop... and therefore never gave me a chance to locate it.
Phones have strong seasonal sales variations around Christmas - e.g. here, so your point is quite weak.
It sounds like you want FireGPG or Mailvelope. Too bad the first one is discontinued and the second one is not ready for Firefox yet, just Chrome. Is there a widely used browser plugin I missed?
And if they were members of the SEA, would the SEA say anything different?
Plain English: Although their revenue has grown, they are still making losses. It may seem, from a certain point of view, like they are earning a bit of profit for each of their shares, but that's only if you adjust the figures in a way that is not allowed by official accounting standards.
Yes, perhaps a good predictor now, but only up to the moment when results of these polls are widely publicized... and some company offers to manipulate the trending words for a price?
I was unpleasantly surprised that Scratch 2.0 cannot be downloaded and run on my computer - I had to run it "from the cloud". It's so sad because I really wanted to use it with my kids when we were offline, and the new Scratch has a lot of what I missed from the older version 1.4 for years, making it much more useful to actually teach my kids programming: the ability to easily clone objects in runtime, lists as a data type, and the ability to create custom blocks. At least they're saying that an offline editor will arrive sometime this summer....
Unfortunately, accoring to the Wikipedia entry, RISUG is an experimental method going through trials in India and struggling with the number of volunteers. As much as I'd love this method to be available, currently it is not and there have not been many news about it in the last couple of years.
My first program printed out numbers from one to ten. It was written on large sheet of paper but had to have correct indentation, and the role of compiler, processor and screen was left to my Dad who patiently wrote the numbers next to each other without spaces - just like he should. Thanks, Dad!
That, and also two more things. First, when I bookmark I tend to add keywords that will help me find the content when I cannot rely on Google keywords (e.g. I read an interesting article about flying robots somewhere but I would not be able to find it using Google - too many false positives). Second, I'd really like to preserve the bookmarked pages as they are today, since they tend to disappear after a time. However, I cannot seem to find a suitable Firefox plugin that is going to save my bookmarks as either HTML archives or PDF files... has anyone had the same problem?
It's interesting to see how we IT people think that others should really understand the technical details of what we do. Have you considered that finance people have their important details as well (e.g. debenture covenant conditions), sales people have important details (leads and pipeline management), manufacturing people have important details (inventory levels management)? One of the arts of running a company is having people on the board who know when to talk detail and when to talk the big picture. And just because we like and know the IT detail does not mean that everyone on the board should. I do a lot of work with both IT and corporate strategies, and trust me - just because someone doesn't understand Six Sigma, activity-based management, balanced scorecards, PESTLE analysis or the concept of value, and just because at the top level of the company many factors are hard to define and manage, does not mean that they are not important.
I have a related question - would anyone know about a set od programming challenges/tasks/problems (possibly funny, interesting or connected by a story) to solve, for kids? Whether it is Scratch or anything else I find it much easier to teach my kids when we have something to sink our teeth into...