Comment Sentences? (Score 1) 158
I thought the judicial system has the monopoly on that!
Comment Look at the larger picture (Score 4, Informative) 1011
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.
Comment vCloud API Standard -- ability to move elsewhere (Score 1) 250
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.
Comment Re:Testing architecture and design (Score 1) 74
> 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.
Comment Testing architecture and design (Score 2, Insightful) 74
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.
FOSS Development As Economic Stimulus 365
heybus writes "Economist Dean Baker, best known for calling the housing bust and warning of the ensuing economic collapse, has just published his recommendations for how to allocate President-elect Obama's estimated $800 billion economic stimulus plan. Among other things, Baker calls for juicing the economy with $2 billion worth of government spending to support the development of free and open source software. Baker's idea is similar to the New Deal federal arts and writers' projects: the government would fund projects as long as they produce freely available code. In addition to employing programmers, 'the savings [to consumers] in the United States alone could easily exceed the cost of supporting software development.'"
Flying Car Ready To Take Off 315
ChazeFroy writes "The first flying automobile, equally at home in the sky or on the road, is scheduled to take to the air next month. If it survives its first test flight, the Terrafugia Transition, which can transform itself from a two-seater road car to a plane in 15 seconds, is expected to land in showrooms in about 18 months' time. Terrafugia claims it will be able to fly up to 500 miles on a single tank of unleaded petrol at a cruising speed of 115mph. Even at $200,000 per automobile, they have already received 40 orders."
Comment Make it interesting (Score 2, Insightful) 276
This is misguided. Students should be taught how to write viruses that infect other viruses.
Submission + - Web Companies Lag in Climate Consciousness (readwriteweb.com)
ReadWriteWeb writes: "Climate Counts, which launched on June 19th, is a non-profit website that rates corporations based on their environmental impact. They use a 22-item scorecard that asks questions like "Is there top-level support for climate change action?" and "Does the company require suppliers to take climate change action or give preference to those that do?"
It would seem that web companies (at least large corporations involved in the web) mostly have a long way to go toward helping clean up the environment. Only News Corp., Yahoo! and Microsoft on this list scored favorable ratings. Google scored a rating of "Starting," meaning that they are heading in the right direction but have a long way to go. Also scoring poorly was Apple, which has come under fire for their environmental track record before. This is disappointing, especially given that former US Vice President Al Gore, one of the world's most prominent environmental activists, sits on Apple's Board of Directors."
It would seem that web companies (at least large corporations involved in the web) mostly have a long way to go toward helping clean up the environment. Only News Corp., Yahoo! and Microsoft on this list scored favorable ratings. Google scored a rating of "Starting," meaning that they are heading in the right direction but have a long way to go. Also scoring poorly was Apple, which has come under fire for their environmental track record before. This is disappointing, especially given that former US Vice President Al Gore, one of the world's most prominent environmental activists, sits on Apple's Board of Directors."
