Forgot your password?

typodupeerror

Comment: Re:Game (Score 1) 374

by vigmeister (#43635203) Attached to: Why US Mileage Ratings Are So Inaccurate

Doesn't this translate into some kind of propaganda to influence what people care about when buying a car?

Have we collectively decided as a society that we are willing to compromise further on free speech to reduce emissions and fuel consumption (manufacturers should be free to decide how to advertise their cars)?

For the record: I do not deny climate change or its anthropogenic components - I just think the solution is to tax fuel, enforce truth in advertising (to prevent fraud) and wait for the technological breakthroughs that will make us look like luddites...

Comment: Re:Don't Bother (Score 1) 183

by vigmeister (#42827943) Attached to: Summer Programming Courses Before Heading Off To College?

This, but with a different conclusion. Learning programming meant I was able to do a different degree while working in the software industry and taking electives or doing a minor in CS. Eventually I ended up being competent in both areas which led to opportunities to dabble in an exponentially larger set of subjects...

Comment: Engineering student? (Score 1) 183

by vigmeister (#42827893) Attached to: Summer Programming Courses Before Heading Off To College?

For a student with a strong math/science background, MATLAB might be useful to learn especially if he decides to pursue engineering. It helps you to learn fundamental programming (at least procedural programming) concepts while not requiring too much time to get up an running. The symbolic toolbox along with more traditional capabilities will also give him a massive leg up in doing assignments and projects because he can focus on learning concepts in most of his classes rather than executing procedural mathematical techniques (matrix operations and PDEs, I am looking at you...).
P.S. I know a TI-xx can do some of this, but calculators are the slide rules of the 21st century...

Comment: Re:As a professional, I would say... (Score 0) 183

by vigmeister (#42827787) Attached to: Summer Programming Courses Before Heading Off To College?

Having been a successful programmer for 35 years, I would discount the value of touch typing. It has been my experience that thinking is far more important than typing skills. Fast typing helps, but I think your son would find this boring.

Ah, see what you did here? A is useless. B is more important than A. (Which is orthogonal to whether A is useful in itself.) (And now the admission.) A helps, but is boring.

You missed the implication that learning to think would be a better use of the kid's summer than learning ho to type even though the latter helps...

Comment: Car analogy (Score 1) 232

by vigmeister (#42802937) Attached to: Making Sure Interviews Don't Turn Into Free Consulting

This is silly... It's like a car mechanic who will not diagnose your problem and starts talking about his skills and expertise. Most places give you a free quote to have you as a customer. Lawyers and doctors charge for the first consult too and you could take that approach by *BEING* a consultant rather than interviewing for a job. Or you could tell the interviewer to fuck off as opposed to taking your hour of consulting (worth $100 or so for a decently salaried position) and considering that an investment into your job hunt. Of course, if you are looking for a job, your time is probably worth far less to you, so make a grown up judgement call as to whether the odds of getting a job are worth taking the insurmountable risk of *gasp* working for free *gasp*!

Cheers!

Comment: Re:Wow. (Score 1) 438

by vigmeister (#37641052) Attached to: DHS Goes Ahead With 'Pre-Crime' Detection Project

Simple answer: No one (probably not even you) expects them to be 100% correct*. If I am forcibly isolated and "helped" because their classifier uses 16 bit inputs from the temperature sensor and not 32, I wouldn't accept the shitty quality of life that I expect to have because my gait makes me fall more than 3 std. deviations outside the defined "average human being".

Paranoid corollary: By defining what is "not criminally psychotic", we are fundamentally influencing opportunities for reproduction. Thereby, the fitness function involved in natural evolution has an additional term introduced by those who decide what constitutes "normal". This leads to a severe risk of targeting a minority population with certain quirks as "criminally psychotic" and therefore 'cleansing' the population of this minority.

Due to the above arguments, I would say that even if you gave the "chosen ones" the best possible quality of life, this would have unforeseen effects of human evolution and I do not want to risk that. I agree that life is unfair, but being born with a propensity for crime is like having a handicap. I know this is insensitive, but having to give people in wheelchairs the same opportunities for employment possibly lowers overall productivity, but that is what I treasure in society - knowing that losing my legs tomorrow does not immediately turn my life into a total bag of shit - these rules would make my life suck a little bit lesser than it otherwise would.

* The criteria for "criminally psychotic" would be generated by psychologists (or other humans) or statistically which have the weaknesses of subjectivity and uncertainty respectively. Neither can be 100% sure of anything. Throw in the fact that we have no fucking idea whatsoever how many people with "criminal psychosis" actually commit crimes and I am really unnerved by Pre-crime detection.

Arguments based on culpability for your thoughts and human profiling are wonderfully described in almost every dystopian novel - I believe the required reading for your geek card (at least 1984 and Brave New World) ought to cover these arguments.

Cheers!

Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer.

Working...