It's not a case of commenting being hard. My issue with comments is that after a while, if not at the beginning, they can only ever be wrong. That is, as time goes by the likelihood of a comment being wrong increases unacceptably and one thing worse than no comments is wrong comments.
Our policy is to write formally simple code with comments reserved for the occasions when the code is bizarro, for performance or becuase it is doing something tricky. Basically to stop people from "fixing" the non-conformant code.
We also completely document the functions in shared library headers to provide a doxygened contract for library users.
I think the poster's distinction between left and right with regard to the position on ID cards and things like CC TV monitoring is mistaken. The issue is big government vs little government and when taken in that context the Labour party is exactly the party that I would expect to push for ID cards and monitoring.
The main issue for politics in the socialist democracies of Europe and the Commonwealth (Aus, NZ, Canada etc) is that there is an overriding push to the centre for economic policy since there is almost no way of "arguing" against the tenets of economic rationalism in the Global Economy. Interest rates, Budget deficit are more or less out of the control of the government (well whilst technically in control, to use fiscal policy unfettered has been shown to be ordinarily problematic). Which means the battle ground for politics has turned to how the government spends money (the extent and quality of the welfare state) and how they collect it (who pays what tax).
Since there are so few actual issues, it is almost impossible for the parties to distinguish themselves. Most people attribute this to the fact that the parties are equally crap. The reality is, I think, much more benign. The function of government is so well established that it is only around the edges that can be tuned and the distinguishing features of the left and right are unable do do this "tuning" in such a way that they are different enough to justify someone changing their vote.
Obviously, radical changes in structure are possible. In the UK the most recent was Thatcher's attack on the labour market to free up the structural rigidity that was stifling the economy. But there was the NHS before that and others before that. In Australia, the massive changes to industrial relations (the labout market) that are impending are the natural successor to the extensive deregulation that has already taken place. These radical changes in structure are usually the result of "great leaders" (I don't mean good I just mean influential) and it seems to me that these structural changes are the result of the left and right ideological differences. One would never find the labour party in any of these economies advocating the kind of industrial reform being contemplated in Australia and once the reform is complete the left may well regain power to add a little "sugar" to the recipe that the right has formulated. As a result the swinging between left and right in the Liberal Democracies is a very marginal thing in general since there are so few "fundamental" differences remaining to distingush them.
This begs an obvious question in my view and that is; "Are there new 'big ticket' items that the left and right can use to distinguish themselves?".
From my perspective it is less the left and the right that is the axis on which the new big issues are based and more liberal -> totalitarian and the answer is yes. The EFF acts in the space where I think many of these issues will be defined. So it is a very important organisation to add to the Corporatist landscape since it is the influence of these corporate groups (environmentalists, human rights campaigners, business groups, etc etc) that provide a second channel for the influence of political agenda within the democracies of which we speak.
The problem I have always had with backwards time travel is not the grandfather paradox but the conservation of energy problem. Let us assume that backwards time travel is possible. At the point I depart, I am made up of a certain amount of energy (in the form of a bunch of electrons protons neutrons etc). But if I travel back in time, the same energy would exist in some other form (be it me or the flower I pick for my grandmother). I would have thought that it is this duallity that is more difficult to deal ith than the grandfather paradox.
The whole "confidential" thing is just another one of the ways that the BBC is leading the world in the use of multi channel digital broadcasting. They (not alone, not the first) have recognised the value in the behind the scenes info to the fans. So, they show the program at 7pm Saturday night) on their flagship channel bbc1 and then imediately after they show the "documentary" about the just aired episode's making on one one of their new channels, bbc3. Other shows use the "XShow confidential" thing, and indeed the bbc may not have invented it, but it is great for them to see that for the marginal cost of an extra video crew and a few interviews with cast and crew in down time that can get another hour (maybe it is 30 minutes) of value out of each episode, and maybe boost the DVD sales by increasing the content quota.
I don't normally get to watch the doco (usually I am having to sprint out the door as soon as the episode is over in order to not be late for Saturday nights entertainment, but it is a fabulous idea.
And that is why Dune is still one of the finest pieces of "universe construction" even today. The author recognised this dilemma back in the mid sixties and resoved the "energy weapon" paradox by creating a shielding technology that lead to an instantaneous detonation at both the weapon and target end of the beam. I am not concerned about the actually feasibility of this arrangement (it is actually pretty flawed) nor the fact that it is all based on fantasy physics, but it shows that the author can resolve these issues if they are good enough.
No, no, no, no, no. A government spending any money on proprietary software, Microsoft or otherwise, can _never_ be spending money in a wise way. The real issue with Free Software and Government expenditure is that with every cent spent on developing a Free Software solution, it is a cent spent increasing the "assets" of society overall.
Look at it from a technical perspective. Any corporate entity that delivers a software product to the public sector has to generate a return on the captial required to make the software. I shall be very generous and say that that return is in the order of 10% (the low end of the traditional return on capital). That means that of every dollar paid by the public sector, 10% is going to someone elses capital and that someone else is a private individual (in the end). Secondly any "intellectual capital" that results from the development of the product will likely reside with the vendor. If that is not the case then the IC either resides with the public sector or it is sent into the public domain. The latter of these scenarios is the best outcome since it means that this factor simply returns to zero as an input to the equation. Finally all the other revenue that is sent out of the public sector into the vendors supply chain is revenue that is lost to the public sector, taxes aside. If each of those dollars stayed in the public secotr the multiplier effect of that expenditure would boost the overall status of the economy as a whole rather than just the private capital of the vendor chain.
Look at it this way. Keynes highlighted the public sector ability to stimulate the economy via the use of fiscal policy and that by doing so they could reap the benefits of the inflationary effect of this spending to eventually repay the amount spent in the first place. To some extent this approach has been discredited due to the risk of true inflation that results from unfettered public sector expenditure. However if we agree that the public sector needs to spend X dollars on solving a problem with software, regardless of whether X is greater or lesser with Free Software when compared to Proprietary Software, it is better that that money be spent of free software because much more of X will feed directly into the economy (and all that entails) and much less of X will need to be spent the next time that software problem needs to be solved if the money is _invested_ in developing/enhancing Free Software solutions to the problem. This is before even considering the Return on Capital amount that must by definition be lost to the public sector by the use of Proprietary solutions.
Even if you will argue that expatriation of some of that expenditure will happen with Free Software, the overall social surpolus will not be damaged since the output of that capital will still be available to the original economy.
"Alternatively you can just point out that free markets tend to work best when the parties involved in a transaction have as information as possible"
Not just tend, but information is necessary for the existence of a free market. Indeed one of the most valid criticisms of free market microeconomics (well even macro actually) is the assumption about perfect information. Without it, the market cannot be free.
If you are looking for something to get you a job, you probably have all you need already. In all the resumes I read for the purposes of hiring, the degree is just a qualifier. That it is Comp Sci is a plus but no additional program will improve things much further.
If you are keen on doing education for the sake of education then pick a program that _you_ will enjoy. Once you have jumped the hurdle, motivation is the hardest commodity to find and three years for a degree program (well probably two given one degree already) is a long time to be doing something for which you have little motivation.
Oh look would you people just grow up. Farscape is shit. Don't misunderstand, I love it, but it's shit. It was never a prime time show (particularly in Oz), it should never have been put on in prime time because it would never appeal to a wide enough mainstream audience to justify prime time advertising costs. What's scary is that it more effective for them to put guthy/renker home shopping shit on between 2am and 5am rather than just streaming all the great series that we miss in Oz (SF, drama, comedy, whatever) or even making Rage a daily thing (VideoHits overnight seems to wax and wane with the phases of the moon whenever I get the chance to be back in Oz for a visit).
The acting is wooden/hammish, the writing is quirky but mainly average and if you don't dig SF, it will bore the crap out of you because you have no empathy for anyone nor their situation. Now just becuase it is so much better than any frelling Star Trek episode does not meant that it is good enough for a general audience. With the bar as low as it has been by comparison everything about farscape is exceptional. Which is probably why we love it so much
The same is true for almost every show I love, B5, Farscape, NewsRadio, UFO, Dr Who, the list is extensive, I accept that my tastes are non mainstream and I timeshift via being essentially nocternal or recording stuff.
Whilst you are right about the origins of the "Fatal Flaw", Greek Tragedy, I think it is protagonist rather than hero that would better describe the main character in a Greek Tragedy. IIRC the critical feature is that only by recognising and then addressing the flaw does the protagaist gain redemption and at which point promptly dies (seems kind of tragic to me).
I can only hope for his families sake that Linus remains unaware of any fatal flaw he may have or at least if he becomes aware he steadfastly refuses to address it. Alternatively it might just be that his life isn't a greek tragedy and so he is safe no matter what his fate.
This is the post that made the problem make sense to me so it is the one to which I will respond. It seems that the problem is as much a "defect" as it is a "scheme" by Ebay.
Clearly their algorithm says, price improvement is an amendment and all amendments lose time priority. I have implemented one or two auction algorithms in my time, none quite like ebay, so I haven't thought hard about keeping time priority whilst price improving a "disguised" best price, but I can imagine that the algorithm, whilst simple in abstract, might prove non trivial to fit into their model.
How does the saying go; never attribute to malice that which can be explained by [ignornance, incompetence, etc etc]
Look this really isn't such a big deal. The worst case scenario is that google cannot charge per click but has to use some other metric to determine fees, either flat, per "presentation" or some other related metric.
Why is pay per click good? Well there can be only two reasons;
(1) It lowers the legitimate threshold of entry to make affordable something that would otherwise be unaffordable. In other words by using pay per click they can offer a service to someone who would otherwise be unable to afford it
(2) It enables Google to generate extraordinary profits (ie overcharge).
If someone is happy to pay per click because there is some "perception" that a click is something inherently valuable then the fact that these clicks are becoming (or have become) less valuable is merely a correction that returns adWords to the standard advertising channels where "viewers" are the only statistical measure available. However, if the real reason that Google cares is (2) then they deserve nothing.
In fact even if clicks become valueless, there are many other metrics that Google can use that will mean they can be even more precise with their pricing model than the broadcast advertisers. Things like page views per geographical region or service provider etc etc etc.
Be grateful for the discipline that not having root access brings you.
Be grateful that you do not have root access because that way you cannot fsck things up as root. The day you fsck things up as root on an important machine is the day you will appreciate all those times you couldn't do it before.
Be grateful that all the shitty problems that are associated witht the things you want to be root for are someone elses problem. Think of it like a Service Level Agreement, you get to demand things of them without (so much) having to worry about how they have to accoplish them.
You never want to be root on a system if you can avoid it. Particularly a production system (and the web server in question ain't one of them unless it controls the campus reactor or cyclotron or something). The fear that being root in a mission critical place is a thing to behold and from which to run away at the earliest possible opportunity.
I think your dining venue analogy is interesting, but flawed. The proprietary vs free issue is not about how the meal was prepared it is what you are entitled to do with it once you have it. In a proprietary restauraunt you must do with the meal what the chef said. If they demanded that you must have peas, potato and beef in each mouthful then that's what you must have. The fact that you have the capability to eat all your peas first and then do beef and mash together is irrelevant you must consume the meal as the seller intended and God forbid if you wanted to take any excess home!! In a free restaurant you would be entitled to enjoy the plate in front of you as you see fit. Sure you can take the chef's recommendation and indeed that recommendation may be valid but it is up to you. Alternatively, in a free restaurant all the meals come with the recipe so you can take it away with you and roll your own if you want to (replacing the nutmeg in the taters with the cinnamon you prefer).
But the choice of consumption is the real distinction. Not that you get to roll your own (I only ever do that when I cannot get a package), but that once a particular meal has been delivered, the consumer has the unfettered right to consume it as they see fit, in whatever way they see fit.
Well, I am not so sure about your analysis. I think that amongst certain circles the young lean left but those circles are not particularly large (Univerisities being the place were your view holds most water).
It is true that the polls can get it very wrong, but you forget that it is the pollsters JOB to get it right and so they have an incentive to design a method that will capture the right answer.
Interestingly enough there is another pool of statistics that are extremely useful in assessing the results of elections and it is the bookmakers. When taken in conjunction with the polsters, it really does suggest a republican win. In Australia (where recently they had a national election) the polls and the bookies presented an interesting combination of results. Because of the nature of the system in Australia, there are two metrics for the measurement of the result, one is the "which party would you vote for" and the other is "which leader would you like to have as prime minister". The "party" vote was closish, with the incumbent a few percent preferred, but the "leader" vote was vastly in favour of the incumbent, like about 45% to 30%. The bookies showed a strong result in favour of the incumbent and it was effectively a landslide for the incumbant with them being returned to power with an increased majority. A result which made the whinnying left weep tears of blood, but I digress.
A quick google, found three bookmakers, all showing a strong lead to the republicans. I think it would be hard to find a bookmaker showing pro democrat odds. Now remember that this is not becuase the bookies care who wins, they are just reflecting where the money goes. In other words they have a _truly_ impartial factor in the odds they show, they have no "survey question" bias, and in many cases they are offing spread books which means they are not even offering the odds themselves but it is the other punters.
Now this is not fool proof, there is a lot of the money in these books that will be influenced by the polls, and it is almost certainly the case that they are not being used as a hedge against the result, but the diversity of sources saying "republican win" does seem to suggest that there is an increasingly slim chance of the democrats pulling it off.
Which then brings us to the electoral college. Some will argue that it is a huge problem, causing all sorts of bias and peverting the results of the election, well, here we have the joy of a single winner in a federal system (ie where there can be only one winner but a diverse series of "electorates"). I think that it is important for some kind of protection of the minority view in a democracy and if you are going to have a plebescite election of president in a country the size of the USA then some kind of electoral college is necessary in order to do that. I can think of better ways of doing it. I am sure we all can, but even the left will have to admit that if Bush is such a diabolical leader and the republicans such a morally bankrupt administration and that they "stole" the last election, then the current polling and likely result tomorrow should scare the shit out of them because maybe, just maybe it is they who are out of step with the view of a majority of the electorate (and by that i don't mean people).
Look, don't get me wrong, I think Bush is a crap president (you haven't really had a good one since, well, probably FD Rooseveldt, some might argue Kennedy or Reagan, but hey that's the joy of debate). I also think that Kerry will probably make a better one, but the information available to predict electorate behaviour all seems to suggest a Republican win.
It's not water from the Thames, it is water from a company called "Thames Water" that provides water in the UK (originally from the Thames river valley) I would imagine that none of this water is from the Thames itself, and certainly the catchment area and resevoirs are much more widely distributed than just the Thames.
As the original paper points out, tap water is actually validated to a much higher standard than all of that bottled crap people pay for.
The fact you associate class with income proves the original posters point. Class is dead (in America at least, that is if it ever lived there at all!). If your income defines your class then by changing income you move class, this is not the class war about which Marx was so keenly interested.
I believe class does exist in other places, notably the UK, but then it was always much stronger there to start with. However even there, the impact of class is much less "structural" and as a result less able to fire the revolution for which Marx agitated.
Indeed Marx proffered the idea that a sufficiently motivated middle class (the working class are too preoccupied with living to be able to worry about the state of their human condition) is the key to expiditing a the arrival of the revolution. This situation, being too busy with ones sustenance to worry about ones condition, is largely non-existent in the welfare states of the western liberal democracies. Even the truly poor in these societies are vastly better off than the working class Marx looked to liberate. I believe that their lack of agitation would probably break Marx's heart, but then I don't really care because I think he was a crank whose good ideas were defeated by an unwavering attachment to some fundamentally damaged premises.
The fundamental problem with the utility metaphor for the internet is that it is a two way connection. We do not pass our household water discharge into the same stream as the drinking water we get out of the tap (well, at least not directly:-). We do not feed gas into the pipe that arrives at our home nore do we pump electricity back into the grid.
In those remote circumstances when customers of utulities do feed back into the "system" there are legal or pricing constraints to control the quality of their inputs. It is this last point that is missed by the "utility model" advocates.
I cannot agree with the author. As with any comparison with history, he is reviewing the current state of the world with the distilled excellence of the historical essayists. His criticism of the essay form as it is used in education must be an American thing becuse it ain't my experience, Aus high school education and Economics and Law degrees at university with all the above requiring essays none of which really match the form described by the author. Several even presented diverse opportunity to offer interesting points of view. The best ones I ever wrote (in terms of the pleasure to write and the grade the mostly received) were the ones where original thought was possible.
The death of the essayist is caused by the purpose of the esay being supplanted by several alternative media channels. In particular "non news" current affairs broadcasting (radio and TV) that provide the forum for the public discourse that was at the root of many of the essayists for the style of which the author appears to pine.
This is all such a crock. Leisure time did not exist until the Victorian Age. Without leisure every aspect of ones existence is focussed on sustenance the only reason for the absence of stress in that existence is the complete absence of anything against which to compare the intolerable burden of everyday life.
SO in less than than 150 years, the litany of benefits that are derived from all this "stress" are so extensive (and taken for granted); zero infant mortality, life expectancy, health, leisure, that to make a comparison between the life of the factory worker today and 100 years ago (even in america) stress, regardless of it's apparent magnitude is a very small price to pay.
Further, the Data Protection Act would make it an offence to misuse the data as feared by the original poster. The check is there. The balance is there.
As for whether it is a good thing or not, I think good, because I am one of those that believes that there is a legitimate reduction in privacy in public spaces, but there are other views of equal merit.
as for the effecacy of the cameras in "impacting" (reducing, deterring, convicting) the statistics from the proponents and opponents tend to cancel each other out in the difficult to measure "deterring and reducing" categories, but the conviction category (including guilty pleas) is increased enourmously by the presence of CCTV (http://www.privacy.org/pi/activities/cctv/cctv_fa q.html). But I think what is most undeniable is that citizens do feel safer when moving about in a CCTV area and that, fallacy or not, is the kicker since the perception of risk has become artificially inflated in the past 30 years and correcting that is a good thing.
No, you are wrong, he is talking about cognac glasses. It is you who is extending it to be what is in them.
He is wrong because cognac glasses are _not_ like CD's. Valenti's argument is disingenuous at best and a wilful lie at worst (perhaps it is completely ignorant at worst but will give him the benefit of that doubt). There is no way to provide a corollary in the real world for what the MPAA etc stand for because what they stand for is a crock 'o' shit.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not a case of commenting being hard. My issue with comments is that after a while, if not at the beginning, they can only ever be wrong. That is, as time goes by the likelihood of a comment being wrong increases unacceptably and one thing worse than no comments is wrong comments.
Our policy is to write formally simple code with comments reserved for the occasions when the code is bizarro, for performance or becuase it is doing something tricky. Basically to stop people from "fixing" the non-conformant code.
We also completely document the functions in shared library headers to provide a doxygened contract for library users.
Other than that, nada.
I think the poster's distinction between left and right with regard to the position on ID cards and things like CC TV monitoring is mistaken. The issue is big government vs little government and when taken in that context the Labour party is exactly the party that I would expect to push for ID cards and monitoring.
The main issue for politics in the socialist democracies of Europe and the Commonwealth (Aus, NZ, Canada etc) is that there is an overriding push to the centre for economic policy since there is almost no way of "arguing" against the tenets of economic rationalism in the Global Economy. Interest rates, Budget deficit are more or less out of the control of the government (well whilst technically in control, to use fiscal policy unfettered has been shown to be ordinarily problematic). Which means the battle ground for politics has turned to how the government spends money (the extent and quality of the welfare state) and how they collect it (who pays what tax).
Since there are so few actual issues, it is almost impossible for the parties to distinguish themselves. Most people attribute this to the fact that the parties are equally crap. The reality is, I think, much more benign. The function of government is so well established that it is only around the edges that can be tuned and the distinguishing features of the left and right are unable do do this "tuning" in such a way that they are different enough to justify someone changing their vote.
Obviously, radical changes in structure are possible. In the UK the most recent was Thatcher's attack on the labour market to free up the structural rigidity that was stifling the economy. But there was the NHS before that and others before that. In Australia, the massive changes to industrial relations (the labout market) that are impending are the natural successor to the extensive deregulation that has already taken place. These radical changes in structure are usually the result of "great leaders" (I don't mean good I just mean influential) and it seems to me that these structural changes are the result of the left and right ideological differences. One would never find the labour party in any of these economies advocating the kind of industrial reform being contemplated in Australia and once the reform is complete the left may well regain power to add a little "sugar" to the recipe that the right has formulated. As a result the swinging between left and right in the Liberal Democracies is a very marginal thing in general since there are so few "fundamental" differences remaining to distingush them.
This begs an obvious question in my view and that is; "Are there new 'big ticket' items that the left and right can use to distinguish themselves?".
From my perspective it is less the left and the right that is the axis on which the new big issues are based and more liberal -> totalitarian and the answer is yes. The EFF acts in the space where I think many of these issues will be defined. So it is a very important organisation to add to the Corporatist landscape since it is the influence of these corporate groups (environmentalists, human rights campaigners, business groups, etc etc) that provide a second channel for the influence of political agenda within the democracies of which we speak.
I guess the sound of all that grass growing must drive you nuts
The problem I have always had with backwards time travel is not the grandfather paradox but the conservation of energy problem. Let us assume that backwards time travel is possible. At the point I depart, I am made up of a certain amount of energy (in the form of a bunch of electrons protons neutrons etc). But if I travel back in time, the same energy would exist in some other form (be it me or the flower I pick for my grandmother). I would have thought that it is this duallity that is more difficult to deal ith than the grandfather paradox.
The whole "confidential" thing is just another one of the ways that the BBC is leading the world in the use of multi channel digital broadcasting. They (not alone, not the first) have recognised the value in the behind the scenes info to the fans. So, they show the program at 7pm Saturday night) on their flagship channel bbc1 and then imediately after they show the "documentary" about the just aired episode's making on one one of their new channels, bbc3. Other shows use the "XShow confidential" thing, and indeed the bbc may not have invented it, but it is great for them to see that for the marginal cost of an extra video crew and a few interviews with cast and crew in down time that can get another hour (maybe it is 30 minutes) of value out of each episode, and maybe boost the DVD sales by increasing the content quota.
I don't normally get to watch the doco (usually I am having to sprint out the door as soon as the episode is over in order to not be late for Saturday nights entertainment, but it is a fabulous idea.
And that is why Dune is still one of the finest pieces of "universe construction" even today. The author recognised this dilemma back in the mid sixties and resoved the "energy weapon" paradox by creating a shielding technology that lead to an instantaneous detonation at both the weapon and target end of the beam. I am not concerned about the actually feasibility of this arrangement (it is actually pretty flawed) nor the fact that it is all based on fantasy physics, but it shows that the author can resolve these issues if they are good enough.
No, no, no, no, no. A government spending any money on proprietary software, Microsoft or otherwise, can _never_ be spending money in a wise way. The real issue with Free Software and Government expenditure is that with every cent spent on developing a Free Software solution, it is a cent spent increasing the "assets" of society overall.
Look at it from a technical perspective. Any corporate entity that delivers a software product to the public sector has to generate a return on the captial required to make the software. I shall be very generous and say that that return is in the order of 10% (the low end of the traditional return on capital). That means that of every dollar paid by the public sector, 10% is going to someone elses capital and that someone else is a private individual (in the end). Secondly any "intellectual capital" that results from the development of the product will likely reside with the vendor. If that is not the case then the IC either resides with the public sector or it is sent into the public domain. The latter of these scenarios is the best outcome since it means that this factor simply returns to zero as an input to the equation. Finally all the other revenue that is sent out of the public sector into the vendors supply chain is revenue that is lost to the public sector, taxes aside. If each of those dollars stayed in the public secotr the multiplier effect of that expenditure would boost the overall status of the economy as a whole rather than just the private capital of the vendor chain.
Look at it this way. Keynes highlighted the public sector ability to stimulate the economy via the use of fiscal policy and that by doing so they could reap the benefits of the inflationary effect of this spending to eventually repay the amount spent in the first place. To some extent this approach has been discredited due to the risk of true inflation that results from unfettered public sector expenditure. However if we agree that the public sector needs to spend X dollars on solving a problem with software, regardless of whether X is greater or lesser with Free Software when compared to Proprietary Software, it is better that that money be spent of free software because much more of X will feed directly into the economy (and all that entails) and much less of X will need to be spent the next time that software problem needs to be solved if the money is _invested_ in developing/enhancing Free Software solutions to the problem. This is before even considering the Return on Capital amount that must by definition be lost to the public sector by the use of Proprietary solutions.
Even if you will argue that expatriation of some of that expenditure will happen with Free Software, the overall social surpolus will not be damaged since the output of that capital will still be available to the original economy.
Agreed. Very fresh. I liked the characterisations and the story hooked me. Definitely a winning start
"Alternatively you can just point out that free markets tend to work best when the parties involved in a transaction have as information as possible"
Not just tend, but information is necessary for the existence of a free market. Indeed one of the most valid criticisms of free market microeconomics (well even macro actually) is the assumption about perfect information. Without it, the market cannot be free.
If you are looking for something to get you a job, you probably have all you need already. In all the resumes I read for the purposes of hiring, the degree is just a qualifier. That it is Comp Sci is a plus but no additional program will improve things much further.
If you are keen on doing education for the sake of education then pick a program that _you_ will enjoy. Once you have jumped the hurdle, motivation is the hardest commodity to find and three years for a degree program (well probably two given one degree already) is a long time to be doing something for which you have little motivation.
Oh look would you people just grow up. Farscape is shit. Don't misunderstand, I love it, but it's shit. It was never a prime time show (particularly in Oz), it should never have been put on in prime time because it would never appeal to a wide enough mainstream audience to justify prime time advertising costs. What's scary is that it more effective for them to put guthy/renker home shopping shit on between 2am and 5am rather than just streaming all the great series that we miss in Oz (SF, drama, comedy, whatever) or even making Rage a daily thing (VideoHits overnight seems to wax and wane with the phases of the moon whenever I get the chance to be back in Oz for a visit).
The acting is wooden/hammish, the writing is quirky but mainly average and if you don't dig SF, it will bore the crap out of you because you have no empathy for anyone nor their situation. Now just becuase it is so much better than any frelling Star Trek episode does not meant that it is good enough for a general audience. With the bar as low as it has been by comparison everything about farscape is exceptional. Which is probably why we love it so much
The same is true for almost every show I love, B5, Farscape, NewsRadio, UFO, Dr Who, the list is extensive, I accept that my tastes are non mainstream and I timeshift via being essentially nocternal or recording stuff.
Whilst you are right about the origins of the "Fatal Flaw", Greek Tragedy, I think it is protagonist rather than hero that would better describe the main character in a Greek Tragedy. IIRC the critical feature is that only by recognising and then addressing the flaw does the protagaist gain redemption and at which point promptly dies (seems kind of tragic to me).
I can only hope for his families sake that Linus remains unaware of any fatal flaw he may have or at least if he becomes aware he steadfastly refuses to address it. Alternatively it might just be that his life isn't a greek tragedy and so he is safe no matter what his fate.
This is the post that made the problem make sense to me so it is the one to which I will respond. It seems that the problem is as much a "defect" as it is a "scheme" by Ebay.
Clearly their algorithm says, price improvement is an amendment and all amendments lose time priority. I have implemented one or two auction algorithms in my time, none quite like ebay, so I haven't thought hard about keeping time priority whilst price improving a "disguised" best price, but I can imagine that the algorithm, whilst simple in abstract, might prove non trivial to fit into their model.
How does the saying go; never attribute to malice that which can be explained by [ignornance, incompetence, etc etc]
Look this really isn't such a big deal. The worst case scenario is that google cannot charge per click but has to use some other metric to determine fees, either flat, per "presentation" or some other related metric.
Why is pay per click good? Well there can be only two reasons;
(1) It lowers the legitimate threshold of entry to make affordable something that would otherwise be unaffordable. In other words by using pay per click they can offer a service to someone who would otherwise be unable to afford it
(2) It enables Google to generate extraordinary profits (ie overcharge).
If someone is happy to pay per click because there is some "perception" that a click is something inherently valuable then the fact that these clicks are becoming (or have become) less valuable is merely a correction that returns adWords to the standard advertising channels where "viewers" are the only statistical measure available. However, if the real reason that Google cares is (2) then they deserve nothing.
In fact even if clicks become valueless, there are many other metrics that Google can use that will mean they can be even more precise with their pricing model than the broadcast advertisers. Things like page views per geographical region or service provider etc etc etc.
Be grateful.
Be grateful for the discipline that not having root access brings you.
Be grateful that you do not have root access because that way you cannot fsck things up as root. The day you fsck things up as root on an important machine is the day you will appreciate all those times you couldn't do it before.
Be grateful that all the shitty problems that are associated witht the things you want to be root for are someone elses problem. Think of it like a Service Level Agreement, you get to demand things of them without (so much) having to worry about how they have to accoplish them.
You never want to be root on a system if you can avoid it. Particularly a production system (and the web server in question ain't one of them unless it controls the campus reactor or cyclotron or something). The fear that being root in a mission critical place is a thing to behold and from which to run away at the earliest possible opportunity.
I think your dining venue analogy is interesting, but flawed. The proprietary vs free issue is not about how the meal was prepared it is what you are entitled to do with it once you have it. In a proprietary restauraunt you must do with the meal what the chef said. If they demanded that you must have peas, potato and beef in each mouthful then that's what you must have. The fact that you have the capability to eat all your peas first and then do beef and mash together is irrelevant you must consume the meal as the seller intended and God forbid if you wanted to take any excess home!! In a free restaurant you would be entitled to enjoy the plate in front of you as you see fit. Sure you can take the chef's recommendation and indeed that recommendation may be valid but it is up to you. Alternatively, in a free restaurant all the meals come with the recipe so you can take it away with you and roll your own if you want to (replacing the nutmeg in the taters with the cinnamon you prefer).
But the choice of consumption is the real distinction. Not that you get to roll your own (I only ever do that when I cannot get a package), but that once a particular meal has been delivered, the consumer has the unfettered right to consume it as they see fit, in whatever way they see fit.
Well, I am not so sure about your analysis. I think that amongst certain circles the young lean left but those circles are not particularly large (Univerisities being the place were your view holds most water).
It is true that the polls can get it very wrong, but you forget that it is the pollsters JOB to get it right and so they have an incentive to design a method that will capture the right answer.
Interestingly enough there is another pool of statistics that are extremely useful in assessing the results of elections and it is the bookmakers. When taken in conjunction with the polsters, it really does suggest a republican win. In Australia (where recently they had a national election) the polls and the bookies presented an interesting combination of results. Because of the nature of the system in Australia, there are two metrics for the measurement of the result, one is the "which party would you vote for" and the other is "which leader would you like to have as prime minister". The "party" vote was closish, with the incumbent a few percent preferred, but the "leader" vote was vastly in favour of the incumbent, like about 45% to 30%. The bookies showed a strong result in favour of the incumbent and it was effectively a landslide for the incumbant with them being returned to power with an increased majority. A result which made the whinnying left weep tears of blood, but I digress.
A quick google, found three bookmakers, all showing a strong lead to the republicans. I think it would be hard to find a bookmaker showing pro democrat odds. Now remember that this is not becuase the bookies care who wins, they are just reflecting where the money goes. In other words they have a _truly_ impartial factor in the odds they show, they have no "survey question" bias, and in many cases they are offing spread books which means they are not even offering the odds themselves but it is the other punters.
Now this is not fool proof, there is a lot of the money in these books that will be influenced by the polls, and it is almost certainly the case that they are not being used as a hedge against the result, but the diversity of sources saying "republican win" does seem to suggest that there is an increasingly slim chance of the democrats pulling it off.
Which then brings us to the electoral college. Some will argue that it is a huge problem, causing all sorts of bias and peverting the results of the election, well, here we have the joy of a single winner in a federal system (ie where there can be only one winner but a diverse series of "electorates"). I think that it is important for some kind of protection of the minority view in a democracy and if you are going to have a plebescite election of president in a country the size of the USA then some kind of electoral college is necessary in order to do that. I can think of better ways of doing it. I am sure we all can, but even the left will have to admit that if Bush is such a diabolical leader and the republicans such a morally bankrupt administration and that they "stole" the last election, then the current polling and likely result tomorrow should scare the shit out of them because maybe, just maybe it is they who are out of step with the view of a majority of the electorate (and by that i don't mean people).
Look, don't get me wrong, I think Bush is a crap president (you haven't really had a good one since, well, probably FD Rooseveldt, some might argue Kennedy or Reagan, but hey that's the joy of debate). I also think that Kerry will probably make a better one, but the information available to predict electorate behaviour all seems to suggest a Republican win.
It's not water from the Thames, it is water from a company called "Thames Water" that provides water in the UK (originally from the Thames river valley) I would imagine that none of this water is from the Thames itself, and certainly the catchment area and resevoirs are much more widely distributed than just the Thames.
As the original paper points out, tap water is actually validated to a much higher standard than all of that bottled crap people pay for.
The fact you associate class with income proves the original posters point. Class is dead (in America at least, that is if it ever lived there at all!). If your income defines your class then by changing income you move class, this is not the class war about which Marx was so keenly interested.
I believe class does exist in other places, notably the UK, but then it was always much stronger there to start with. However even there, the impact of class is much less "structural" and as a result less able to fire the revolution for which Marx agitated.
Indeed Marx proffered the idea that a sufficiently motivated middle class (the working class are too preoccupied with living to be able to worry about the state of their human condition) is the key to expiditing a the arrival of the revolution. This situation, being too busy with ones sustenance to worry about ones condition, is largely non-existent in the welfare states of the western liberal democracies. Even the truly poor in these societies are vastly better off than the working class Marx looked to liberate. I believe that their lack of agitation would probably break Marx's heart, but then I don't really care because I think he was a crank whose good ideas were defeated by an unwavering attachment to some fundamentally damaged premises.
The fundamental problem with the utility metaphor for the internet is that it is a two way connection. We do not pass our household water discharge into the same stream as the drinking water we get out of the tap (well, at least not directly :-). We do not feed gas into the pipe that arrives at our home nore do we pump electricity back into the grid.
In those remote circumstances when customers of utulities do feed back into the "system" there are legal or pricing constraints to control the quality of their inputs. It is this last point that is missed by the "utility model" advocates.
I cannot agree with the author. As with any comparison with history, he is reviewing the current state of the world with the distilled excellence of the historical essayists. His criticism of the essay form as it is used in education must be an American thing becuse it ain't my experience, Aus high school education and Economics and Law degrees at university with all the above requiring essays none of which really match the form described by the author. Several even presented diverse opportunity to offer interesting points of view. The best ones I ever wrote (in terms of the pleasure to write and the grade the mostly received) were the ones where original thought was possible.
The death of the essayist is caused by the purpose of the esay being supplanted by several alternative media channels. In particular "non news" current affairs broadcasting (radio and TV) that provide the forum for the public discourse that was at the root of many of the essayists for the style of which the author appears to pine.
$0.02
Stephen Jay Gould
(or Lamarck, take your pick)
This is all such a crock. Leisure time did not exist until the Victorian Age. Without leisure every aspect of ones existence is focussed on sustenance the only reason for the absence of stress in that existence is the complete absence of anything against which to compare the intolerable burden of everyday life.
SO in less than than 150 years, the litany of benefits that are derived from all this "stress" are so extensive (and taken for granted); zero infant mortality, life expectancy, health, leisure, that to make a comparison between the life of the factory worker today and 100 years ago (even in america) stress, regardless of it's apparent magnitude is a very small price to pay.
Further, the Data Protection Act would make it an offence to misuse the data as feared by the original poster. The check is there. The balance is there.
a q.html). But I think what is most undeniable is that citizens do feel safer when moving about in a CCTV area and that, fallacy or not, is the kicker since the perception of risk has become artificially inflated in the past 30 years and correcting that is a good thing.
As for whether it is a good thing or not, I think good, because I am one of those that believes that there is a legitimate reduction in privacy in public spaces, but there are other views of equal merit.
as for the effecacy of the cameras in "impacting" (reducing, deterring, convicting) the statistics from the proponents and opponents tend to cancel each other out in the difficult to measure "deterring and reducing" categories, but the conviction category (including guilty pleas) is increased enourmously by the presence of CCTV (http://www.privacy.org/pi/activities/cctv/cctv_f
No, you are wrong, he is talking about cognac glasses. It is you who is extending it to be what is in them.
He is wrong because cognac glasses are _not_ like CD's. Valenti's argument is disingenuous at best and a wilful lie at worst (perhaps it is completely ignorant at worst but will give him the benefit of that doubt). There is no way to provide a corollary in the real world for what the MPAA etc stand for because what they stand for is a crock 'o' shit.