Young whippersnappers! Back in *my* day, we were meta-agnostics! We couldn't even be sure if it was *possible* not to be not sure about the existence of god.
There's nothing cooler than money. When "cool geeks" in the USA no longer have to compete with "cool geeks" in India making $5/hr, you'll see many more "cool geeks" in the USA.
Believe anything else and you're either delusional or trying to sell something.
And why NOT tank the whole industry? That's what capitalism does well. It punishes failure and rewards success. If AIG disappeared tomorrow, I'm sure others would step in and provide the same service more cheaply and safely. Same with banks, for that matter.
The explanation is simplistic. The solution is not. Single payer systems like Canada's work in virtually every other capitalist democracy. Are they perfect and trouble free? No. Are they better than ours? It would seem so (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_compared#Cross-country_comparisons). Saying that this wouldn't work *here* is just a way of saying that Americans are too stupid and lame to do what virtually every other advanced industrialized country has done.
The simple, logical, thing would be to adopt a proven system that already works. That's not happening. Guess why?
Capitalistic democracies survive as such until the most successful capitalists (e.g. banks, insurance companies) determine that the most profitable thing to do is purchase the government. In the USA, this has happened. Our legislators have been bought. Our media has been bought (http://www.mediachannel.org/ownership/moguls-printable-150dpi.pdf) by many of the same organizations.
I would love to see the emails and financial records of all publicly traded companies forced to go open source, worldwide. I am dead certain it won't happen.
I've tested software for about 15 years. I can tell you from experience that THE most buggy, nasty, ill designed applications I've ever tested were written in C++.
The world is more than performance. For many, many application, the blazing speed of pointers on a local application simply *don't* *matter*.
Unless I needed to process large chunks of binary data in real time, I'd use anything else but C++. For a web application, I am *sure* that the downtime due to crashes, memory loss, uninitialized pointers and all the other dreck that each and every C++ programmer is convinced never happens to *them* would cost more time, cycles and energy than a perfectly functional PHP application.
Computer languages exist to make tools get stuff done, not as temples dedicated to the genius of the individual programmer whose main talent is mental masturbation through obfuscation..Net has made my job remarkably easier even though programming isn't my primary job. I can cobble up some rather remarkable tools to do what I need more quickly and easily than I could in either Java, C or C++.
For smaller scope tasks, there's nothing wrong with Virtual Box, but when you start running 50+ machines, you just need something like ESXi server. I've never used the web interface and don't plan to. We always use the Windows client.
Agreed. We run a test automation farm of about 60 virtual machines using VMWare server. It rocks. I'm thinking of setting it up on a machine at home and running multiple Window's machines on it. Very, very cool technology.
When it works
Which it often doesn't. There are bugs in the Linux underpinning the application, bugs in the application, bugs in Windows, bugs in our application and bugs in the automated testing system used to test our application. Not just bugs, but daemons, and they're *not* well behaved.
Steal public code. Sell as private closed application. Welcome to Open Source Land kids!
Yes, you and a thousand other basement dwellers worldwide can write "open source" code that will be used in private companies for their personal gain using your labor.
Ludicrous pricing is the name of the game. Just look at the Kindle. The Kindle is priced the same as a netbook, a netbook which could easily be modified to be a reader AND is a general purpose device.
Any justified pricing there? No. Sales, however are great.
I was thinking yesterday (unusual, but it happens) that if you had a 10 by 10 kilometer plate of some material that acted on the kasimir force like a diode does to electrons, that you might get unidirectional force from vacuum energy. Not a lot, but over a decade, it would add up. You'd essentially have a quantum "sail."
One more dang illegal. Spewing green glowing stuff everywhere. Those dang Kryptonian rockets. They're *so* messy. Well, there goes the neighborhood....
Excuse me, I must go back to my secret lair now and shine my hairless head.
If I remember right (i.e. I'm too lazy to google it just now), optic nerve throughput is about 3MB/sec. which isn't much until you consider that it's on about 16 hours a day or about 172,800 meg per day of visual information transferred, processed and spat back out again in the form of photoshopped celebrity pictures and LOL cats.
Why golly, quite right. I was wrong to have contracted herpes, or searched for back pain, which might eventually lead an insurance company to claim that I had a pre-existing condition (If you don't think that's possible, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you...).
I suppose my emails to an ex-girlfriend prior to marriage constitute "wrong" too and in a divorce case, could be subpoenaed as evidence.
And of course, criticizing my boss, local politician, local realtor or God Forbid, Google(!) is just so wrong....
How did this guy get out of college, much less become an executive?
Nobody will revolt as long as food, shelter, television and mind altering drugs are cheap and widely available. Even in places like Haiti, which has much worse conditions than the USA, no significant part of the population is revolting.
That being said, I'm skeptical that our new soviet planners in the Congress of Goldman Sachs can continue that happy situation indefinitely. Central economic planning tends to fail eventually.
Well, thanks then. I'll take your stocks, bonds, REITs, life insurance and the cash in your wallet, which after all, are all fundamentally just imaginary.
John Varley's series "Titan, Wizard, and Demon" mention cocaine and alcohol use rather extensively.
"When Harlie was One" by David Gerrold describes many instances of marijuana use. Indeed, the book begins with the protagonist, an artificial intelligence named HARLIE, that has learned to make itself "high."
Gene Wolf's Torturer series mentions ancient books in a library that after opening cause the reader to experience brightly colored visions. There are also numerous references to drugs in his work, "The Fifth head of Cerebrus".
R.A. Lafferty wrote a short story (Snuffles) about a small planet that goes through a hallucinogenic cycle.
Slashdot Mirror
regret the defeat of our former microbial underlords.
Young whippersnappers! Back in *my* day, we were meta-agnostics! We couldn't even be sure if it was *possible* not to be not sure about the existence of god.
There. Fixed that for you.
There's nothing cooler than money. When "cool geeks" in the USA no longer have to compete with "cool geeks" in India making $5/hr, you'll see many more "cool geeks" in the USA.
Believe anything else and you're either delusional or trying to sell something.
And why NOT tank the whole industry? That's what capitalism does well. It punishes failure and rewards success. If AIG disappeared tomorrow, I'm sure others would step in and provide the same service more cheaply and safely. Same with banks, for that matter.
The explanation is simplistic. The solution is not. Single payer systems like Canada's work in virtually every other capitalist democracy. Are they perfect and trouble free? No. Are they better than ours? It would seem so (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_compared#Cross-country_comparisons). Saying that this wouldn't work *here* is just a way of saying that Americans are too stupid and lame to do what virtually every other advanced industrialized country has done.
The simple, logical, thing would be to adopt a proven system that already works. That's not happening. Guess why?
Capitalistic democracies survive as such until the most successful capitalists (e.g. banks, insurance companies) determine that the most profitable thing to do is purchase the government. In the USA, this has happened. Our legislators have been bought. Our media has been bought (http://www.mediachannel.org/ownership/moguls-printable-150dpi.pdf) by many of the same organizations.
I would love to see the emails and financial records of all publicly traded companies forced to go open source, worldwide. I am dead certain it won't happen.
C++ is an atom bomb in the hands of a chimp.
I've tested software for about 15 years. I can tell you from experience that THE most buggy, nasty, ill designed applications I've ever tested were written in C++.
The world is more than performance. For many, many application, the blazing speed of pointers on a local application simply *don't* *matter*.
Unless I needed to process large chunks of binary data in real time, I'd use anything else but C++. For a web application, I am *sure* that the downtime due to crashes, memory loss, uninitialized pointers and all the other dreck that each and every C++ programmer is convinced never happens to *them* would cost more time, cycles and energy than a perfectly functional PHP application.
Yup, you nailed it.
Computer languages exist to make tools get stuff done, not as temples dedicated to the genius of the individual programmer whose main talent is mental masturbation through obfuscation. .Net has made my job remarkably easier even though programming isn't my primary job. I can cobble up some rather remarkable tools to do what I need more quickly and easily than I could in either Java, C or C++.
It's that bag of dope I was hiding from my Mom in 1973!
Man, was I high!
In other news, moons only indigenous life destroyed by rocket. Film at 11!
Which is the problem with military outsourcing in general. The goal is "make a profit" instead of "protect the country."
Halliburton is not in the defense business to defend. They're in the defense business to make money.
But I always wash my hands afterwards.
For smaller scope tasks, there's nothing wrong with Virtual Box, but when you start running 50+ machines, you just need something like ESXi server. I've never used the web interface and don't plan to. We always use the Windows client.
It's a *joke*
Agreed. We run a test automation farm of about 60 virtual machines using VMWare server. It rocks. I'm thinking of setting it up on a machine at home and running multiple Window's machines on it. Very, very cool technology.
When it works
Which it often doesn't. There are bugs in the Linux underpinning the application, bugs in the application, bugs in Windows, bugs in our application and bugs in the automated testing system used to test our application. Not just bugs, but daemons, and they're *not* well behaved.
Every day is a new adventure! :)
It's just "extreme outsourcing."
Can't beat the price, eh?
1) Try learning to capitalize and punctuate. You might actually at least appear credible.
2) Have some more Kool-aid. They've got plenty on Fox "news."
Steal public code. Sell as private closed application. Welcome to Open Source Land kids!
Yes, you and a thousand other basement dwellers worldwide can write "open source" code that will be used in private companies for their personal gain using your labor.
Cheers!
Ludicrous pricing is the name of the game. Just look at the Kindle. The Kindle is priced the same as a netbook, a netbook which could easily be modified to be a reader AND is a general purpose device.
Any justified pricing there? No. Sales, however are great.
I was thinking yesterday (unusual, but it happens) that if you had a 10 by 10 kilometer plate of some material that acted on the kasimir force like a diode does to electrons, that you might get unidirectional force from vacuum energy. Not a lot, but over a decade, it would add up. You'd essentially have a quantum "sail."
Possible? Or do I just need more coffee?
One more dang illegal. Spewing green glowing stuff everywhere. Those dang Kryptonian rockets. They're *so* messy. Well, there goes the neighborhood....
Excuse me, I must go back to my secret lair now and shine my hairless head.
If I remember right (i.e. I'm too lazy to google it just now), optic nerve throughput is about 3MB/sec. which isn't much until you consider that it's on about 16 hours a day or about 172,800 meg per day of visual information transferred, processed and spat back out again in the form of photoshopped celebrity pictures and LOL cats.
Why golly, quite right. I was wrong to have contracted herpes, or searched for back pain, which might eventually lead an insurance company to claim that I had a pre-existing condition (If you don't think that's possible, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you...).
I suppose my emails to an ex-girlfriend prior to marriage constitute "wrong" too and in a divorce case, could be subpoenaed as evidence.
And of course, criticizing my boss, local politician, local realtor or God Forbid, Google(!) is just so wrong....
How did this guy get out of college, much less become an executive?
Nobody will revolt as long as food, shelter, television and mind altering drugs are cheap and widely available. Even in places like Haiti, which has much worse conditions than the USA, no significant part of the population is revolting.
That being said, I'm skeptical that our new soviet planners in the Congress of Goldman Sachs can continue that happy situation indefinitely. Central economic planning tends to fail eventually.
Well, thanks then. I'll take your stocks, bonds, REITs, life insurance and the cash in your wallet, which after all, are all fundamentally just imaginary.
Dune (The spice, eh?)
John Varley's series "Titan, Wizard, and Demon" mention cocaine and alcohol use rather extensively.
"When Harlie was One" by David Gerrold describes many instances of marijuana use. Indeed, the book begins with the protagonist, an artificial intelligence named HARLIE, that has learned to make itself "high."
Gene Wolf's Torturer series mentions ancient books in a library that after opening cause the reader to experience brightly colored visions. There are also numerous references to drugs in his work, "The Fifth head of Cerebrus".
R.A. Lafferty wrote a short story (Snuffles) about a small planet that goes through a hallucinogenic cycle.
That's off the top of my head, for starters.