Comment Re:HTTPS (Score 1) 379
Isn't this public key encryption? You DO know how that works right? Even if the eavesdropper has the public key (transmitted across the wire), it won't do jack. Think of it as 1-way encryption.
Isn't this public key encryption? You DO know how that works right? Even if the eavesdropper has the public key (transmitted across the wire), it won't do jack. Think of it as 1-way encryption.
I was hoping to see some intelligent discussion of the pros/cons of choosing careers in science, but of course this is Slashdot, and all career discussions must degenerate into bashing mangers, finance, and boo-hooing the dangers of outsourcing. So let me inject some positive and rational comments into this mess.
The financial industry is full of climbers, and it sucks to work with those people. Smart people get jammed into confining roles with no ability to solve problems or exercise creativity. I know some really smart people who have left finance to return to academia, leaving behind $500K+ salaries. Almost everyone I know who works in finance/accounting hates their job or boss.
There are plenty of jobs outside of management that pay livable wages. Live within your means, and find a spouse who makes a decent living too. Americans are so damn greedy they don't understand that driving an economy car and living in a normal house doesn't mean that you are poor.
Finally, outsourcing. HAHAHAHAHA. Having seen it in action, I think it's hilarious that people feel threatened by it. Sorry folks, American and European universities still churn out the best qualified engineers in the world. The people willing to work for $5
My friends who work in science (PhD candidates, receiving full-tuition and stipends) get drunk on Tuesday nights. They travel to conferences in San Francisco and Prague. They set their own hours and work on stuff that means the world to them. There is some guidance in their research but they call the shots and decide what to research. That is pretty damn cool. One of my friends has parents who are professors and they sure do alright.
If you want to work in science, or engineering, don't listen to the Slashdot haters. There is plenty of opportunity left in this world, just work hard and get your stuff done; you can make a living doing something that you enjoy.
He won the 2007 Scripps National Spelling Bee also.
that leave students in high debt for jobs that pay little
The majority of liberal arts programs would fall into that category.
Depends... Remember folks, mathematics, statistics, chemistry, geology, and even computer science are available at liberal arts colleges.
Don't hate on the liberal arts. Sure there are plenty of bullshit majors, but I do feel much more well-rounded in my education. Technically-minded people forget that you don't need to make a living based off what you went to college for. People skills can be just as valuable as programming skills. College is simply a rite-of-passage into the adulthood for some, rather than a vocational school. And to be blunt most people are too dumb (and socially capable?) to be engineers.
(my liberal arts experience)
The uni that I graduated from allowed you to take any of those majors for a B.A. (liberal arts) or B.S. (college of engineering). Liberal arts math was actually harder; much more theoretical and you were allowed only a basic scientific calculator. Instead of taking 2 semesters physics, which isn't of tremendous use to non-engineers, you were allowed to take 4 semesters of foreign language. Finally, I got to choose the upper-level classes I wanted to take for CSCI, rather than having to take a predetermined emphasis/track, e.g. "Computer systems programming", "Web programming", which actually allowed me to take harder graduate-level classes.
Do you know how the FBI has operated since its inception? Google the FBI and MLK Jr. , the FBI and communists, the FBI and 1960s radicals. I don't know why people don't realize this is business as usual.
why the does America exist?
For the same reason as always, to line the pockets of the richest 5% while subduing the people with fantastic lies about "Freedom". The easiest early example would be The Sedition Act of 1798, which effectively made anti-government speech treasonous. We are a nation of hypocrites; our leaders rule under the principle of doublethink, whereby "Freedom" enjoy supreme lip-service, but truly must it exist only to keep the masses docile and in servitude.
American "Freedom" as you are taught in school is A LIE; it is pandering and idealistic. It ignores the fact that our founding fathers decreed that "All men shall be created equal" while holding slaves. It glances over the MANY instances of genocide of American Indians. You'll never read about the times that people have been imprisoned or worse for practicing freedom of speech. America is a great country, but you must understand that the common notion of a worsening state of affairs is a product of ignorance.
what if you hold a button to track with your eyes?
As someone with mounting RSI problems, who has tried everything short of surgery, this will be a godsend if it is available within 5 years.
that made the best
Past tense. They no longer do. No matter how much "geek cred" their OS has for using QT or whatever Nokia phones use nowadays (haven't even seen one for years), the company is in crisis. Just because us geeks like something, doesn't mean the general public or shareholders will. Windows mobile in the past was absolute garbage, but it looks like their new OS could at least be a contender.
The metric system is the tool of the devil, my car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!
Recent graduates should be making just above minimum wage until they've proven themselves to be anything other than completely incompetent.
Nah, that's what interviews are for. Technical questions and coding exercises are much more fair in this respect.
As someone who worked shitty programming and IT jobs for ~$10
Recent graduates are, in general, absolutely terrible.
I went to a school with a pretty good CSCI program. The breakdown was like 15% - 20% talented programmers, 30% average programmers, and 50% below-average.
The talented programmers were competent; could probably step into any job and perform at a level consistent with a mid-level programmer, minus the ins-and-outs of the languages. The average programmers were suited to be junior-level programmers. The below-average were suited to helpdesk / QA.
pay some idiot kid [...] because they managed to pull a passing grade on a few practice exercises in C# in college
Yea? And its also insane to pay some dumb-ass senior who can barely fucking program javascript just because they have 10 years of experience programming shitty code elsewhere. I worked with dozens of people who were making 80k+ doing just that, how many kids do you know making senior level salary for doing what you described?
Before this disintegrates into the inevitable slew of religion bashing...
From TFA:
laws of physics contain various constants that have very specific, mysterious values that nobody can explain
Maybe its because mathematics is (often) an approximation. You can hide oodles of complexity with a constant, especially in a system that is not understood i.e. the universe.
One explanation is that this is pure accident and that there is no deeper reason for the coincidence. Another idea is that there is some deeper law of nature, which we have yet to discover, that sets the constants as they are. Yet another is that the constants can take more or less any value in an infinite multitude of universes. In ours, they are just right, which is why we have been able to evolve to observe them.
Wow that's convincing. So basically, constants are either random, hiding complexity, or rooted in some string theory nonsense about infinite parallel universes. Oh yea, or they are created and tuned by God/gods/FSM, which is what this "evidence" claims to refute.
the constants have been fine-tuned by some unseen omnipotent being who has set them up in a way that maximises the amount of life that form
The constant expressing the universe's rate of expansion is positive, however:
Page says that a slightly negative value of the constant would maximize this process.
And this is it. Some dude ran some simulations on a computer, simulations of a poorly understood system. And from this, we can conclude that our universe is not designed for life to exist. And yet here we are.
Theoretical physics is planted mid-way between science and pseudoscience. The field seems to be in its infancy, much like chemistry was in the early 1700s. This experiment isn't much different than the one that proved the existence of "phlogiston". Much of the evidence is "proven" without an understanding of the underlying principles, just on the basis of logical jumps and conclusions.
after 6 hours of calculation
Holy moley, my unoptimized naive (backtracking) solution written in C would solve the hardest puzzles in under 30 seconds, on my 900mhz netbook no less. What language did you write it in (not trolling here)?
Manufacturer automotive electronics are a ripoff. For example, look at an OEM GPS unit. On a new car, it will cost you $1000 - $3000 vs. $200 for a top-end Garmin aftermarket (external) unit. Even the in-dash aftermarket units are substantially less.
Now that cars have aluminum VVT engines, heated seats, anti-lock, and traction control, car manufacturers are running out of shinny new mechanical features to market. Solution? Cram shit like Microsoft Sync into cars.
I don't want any more infotainment technology in vehicles; I deal with enough assholes tapping at their smartphones during my commute.
it's far more likely this would be used to track fleeing suspects
On what? A moped? Its got a (reported) top speed of 42 mph... It seems like a waste of money to me.
The only sensible use seems to be equipping it with FLIR and using it to find suspects who are hiding outdoors. Even though SCOTUS has ruled that it is unconstitutional to use FLIR for fly-over searches (think indoor marijuana grow operations), I suspect that this is an ulterior motive behind the purchase. In which case, you should be concerned about your privacy because these FLIR cameras can literally peer into your bedroom.
Why is this making the news now? This study has been debunked for a while; I saw a PBS frontline program in May that cast substantial doubt upon the veracity of Wakefield's findings.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/vaccines/view/
As mentioned in the above program, dozens of studies have already failed to duplicate Wakefield's findings. Essentially, he blamed autism on a mercury-base preservative that was found in vaccines administered to babies. Even though there was no proof that this preservative had anything to do with autism, manufacturers ceased to use it in vaccines, but this only caused the anti-vaccine to go hypothesis hunting once more.
Ummm.... no
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/26472/?p1=A1 (How to hack the energy grid for fun and profit)
It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster. - Voltaire
