"While a satellite may be a moon, the Moon is not a satellite ..." - Spocks world

see http://www.mathpages.com/home/...

"The Best Broccoli of Your Life" http://www.amateurgourmet.com/... .

How we cook and prepare our foods makes a difference too.

If you spend even a little effort with raw foods they can be appealing, consider how much processing goes into making a doughnut.

When learning isn't it partly accepting ( "learn and shut up") and critical thinking.

Here's a Feynman quote, he is much more eloquent than I will ever be:

'What do we mean by “understanding” something? We can imagine that this complicated array of moving things which constitutes “the world” is something like a great chess game being played by the gods, and we are observers of the game. We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics. Even if we knew every rule, however, we might not be able to understand why a particular move is made in the game, merely because it is too complicated and our minds are limited. If you play chess you must know that it is easy to learn all the rules, and yet it is often very hard to select the best move or to understand why a player moves as he does. So it is in nature, only much more so. '

Quote from Australian Politician (and mining rich guy) Clive Palmer ".. because they shoot their own people, they haven't got a justice system and they want to take over this country,"

I thought at first he could have talking about the US, especially after spending time reading Slashdot lately .

But of course it was China and he has since apologized: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-...

As parent suggests
Simply this :
- emails are not for urgent work that's what radios or phones are for.

alas poor groklaw

I guess the phrase is "I'm not a racist, but ..."

Was trying to mod parent up and got distracted and entered "Redundant", so I rant a bit instead.

If low level memory management is so relevant how about:
    - punch card writing
    - being able to spot errors from a copy of the entire printed source (yes I remember the days when this was the quickest way)

Being able to program in C doesn't make you the greatest and Java has plenty of scope for you to need to learn deeper concepts:
  - out of memory exceptions when heap in consumed by objects references not being released you need to understand garbage collection
  - Swing programming means you need to understand concurrent programming techniques

Overall I am much happier not spending a few days tracking a misbehaving pointer that is causing random seeming memory stomping, those really were the bad old days.

>Agile processes just make it worse by not even attempting to nail down requirements beforehand
I agree agile is not for every project, such as building a bridge should be a full speced and reviewed design before you start work.
However "your" description of agile sounds more like a terrible version of waterfall process to me.

>it's more important to be able to show progress than actually know what we're supposed to end up with
I would use an agile process where the client or clients don't know what exactly they want.

> and don't you dare document anything because it's going to change anyway" along with the idea that it's okay to spend thousands of dollars completely rewriting > stuff as the requirements continue to change
You should definitely have an idea about what you are trying to end up with but getting it exactly correct is highly unlikely, that's where early feedback an agile process can get you back on track.
What ever process you are using should support your development not hinder or prevent it.

>It's impossible to properly engineer a product when you don't even know what the product is in advance.
Properly engineered works only happen when nearly everything is known, this could be achieved in different ways:
    * spending "thousands of dollars", trying to learn about what you could need through meetings and discussion and reviews.
    * spending "thousands of dollars", producing working software that you can use to discover what the clients do need.

I've worked on both projects lately and the first way seems to have had heaps more false starts.

and yet you have time to post on slashdot ... ;)

I think ETAGS are a closer match to version numbers

HTTP includes "If-None-Match"

I'd like to welcome our hyperspace highway building alien overlords ...

It's just that I am not so entertained by the government ...

Maybe he could have said the parking meter was broken in that street and called for them to repair it ...

Oh I see

http://www.zdnet.com.au/blogs/fullduplex/soa/Blog-Does-Conroy-s-FUD-make-a-Ludd-of-Rudd-/0,139033349,339295006,00.htm