Comment Sentences? (Score 1) 158
I thought the judicial system has the monopoly on that!
I thought the judicial system has the monopoly on that!
During 2001 the IPCC made a number of predictions as to what would happen as a result of the climate change. At the time their results were widely mocked and ignored by the "climate change deniers" circles.
It now turns out that the actual effects measured today are _worse_ than what was predicted. For example, the rise of the ocean level is 80% greater.
I think people should concentrate on the larger picture -- the predicted effects are happening. The whole CRU emails issue is peanuts and only diverts the attention from the real issue, even if we assume that everything that is being claimed there is true.
The vCloud API (http://www.vmware.com/solutions/cloud-computing/vcloud-api.html) is a protocol for placing VMs into a cloud, managing them, and downloading them back when needed. It was published at the last VMworld using a very liberal license and has been submitted to DMTF for standardization. While it has been initiated by VMware, the vCloud API has been designed to be implementation-agnostic and could be implemented over Xen or other hypervisors.
The whole idea is for people to be able to download the data/VMs that they have in one cloud and move it easily to another if they desire to do so. In short, this is the opposite of Hotel California.
> As the idea about competition in architecture... well, the ones who can't code
Heh. I have awards from both IOI and ACM (gold medals, etc) and have significant industry experience, so I feel that I know what I am talking about
Most programmers apparently believe that the best way to make a scalable application is to (re)write it in assembler. The responses to my post seem to prove that point. Perhaps architecture/design competition is more necessary than I thought.
Software Development consists of several relatively independent skills:
- programming (knowing how to use the tools)
- algorithms
- architecture and design
- knowledge of processes (development methodologies, etc)
- enabling teamwork (allowing many developers to work together)
etc.
The IOI competition is for high-school students and tests mainly the 'algorithms' aspect.
The ACM competition is for college students and tests mainly the programming aspect. (strange, one would think that the aims of those two would be reversed)
There does not seem to be a big competition for testing the architecture and design abilities, although arguably they are even more important (unless you count the Real World competition). Part of the difficulty perhaps is that it is tricky to come up with an objective measurement. An approach that I have been using is the following:
- give a task and provide plenty of time
- at 50% of the time change the requirements of the task slightly
- at 90% of the time change the requirements significantly
If proper design has been used, then making appropriate modifications would be easy and the task would be accomplished in time. This closely mirrors the situations in reality.
FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed -- it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer. -- A.J. Perlis