Progressively disclosing required fields is silly. Doing it two fields at a time is asinine.
79 karma · joined April 14, 2009
2. Don't worry about the impact of switching majors or programs. I started my school in the computer engineering program, hated it ~2.5 years in, and switched around a bit. I'm now graduating with a degree in pure mathematics. Study what you love -- the jobs will come.
I'm afraid I'm starting to ramble, so let me get to the main point -- what you study means nothing after you graduate. Where you study means (almost) nothing. What matters is who you meet along the way, and your actual accomplishments while in university.
Study what you love. Meet facility, upperclassmen, and other students. Work on writing something cool and useful. You will get more out of school than if you spent your time grinding for a perfect GPA.
I would imagine you are correct. However, conventional manufacturing practices are not solely high volume operations, and can be implemented with fewer resources.
>[T]hese are basically the same arguments people made about cellphones and they turned out to be better option than trying to deploy the simple and robust technology of landlines.
Cellphones don't cost $15k per village, nor do they require training to use special computer programs, or a constant supply of raw materials.
If they did, you can bet that they wouldn't turn out to be a better option ;)
>I suggest ad-hoc communication and manufacturing technology may be the best thing in an ad-hoc economy.
I agree, provided the technology becomes sufficiently inexpensive and robust.
But for today, use that cash to leave the community with an extra pallet of parts, instruction on how to maintain the well, and the rest to educate the people.
Ultimately, I share your optimistic view. The technology will be there someday. We just can't force it in the meantime.
The focus should be on simplifying the technology these communities need and making it more robust, as well as showing people in the community how to repair and maintain it.
Not to mention that this technology would represent another point of failure -- sure, you could print out parts for the well, but what happens when the roof over the printer fails and everything gets soaked by a monsoon.
However, if memory serves, Facebook does not link back to your account if friends tag you in their photos, and you have tagged photos marked as private.
I may misunderstand your problem, but I fail to see where Facebook is leaking any information.
http://www.mscs.dal.ca/~selinger/md5collision/ has some great, and very scary examples.
I think that's a very important distinction that you have mentioned.
There will always be positions for skilled professionals. I'd go one step beyond that and say that there will also always be positions for unskilled workers in fields that must remain local - construction, food preparation, etc.
Other unskilled workers need to be careful -- white or blue collar.
>The fact of the matter is that most forms of real knowledge, including self-knowledge, come from the effort to struggle with and master the brute reality of material objects — loosening a bolt without stripping its threads, or backing a semi rig into a loading dock. All these activities, if done well, require knowledge both about the world as it is and about yourself, and your own limitations.
I think that most programmers can agree that mastering programming is much of the same -- struggling with and finally mastering the known - and unknown - limitations of the tools we are using. In that regard, we are doing exactly what the mechanic does.
You could rightly argue that the knowledge the mechanic gets can be applied in far more places -- bolts hold the world together, and understanding how to properly loosen one can come in handy. That tricky LDAP bug I solved yesterday doesn't apply to many other places.
The article goes on to discuss the process of rebuilding an engine -- an intricate, hands on task. But the description also points to the mental problem solving that takes place. The mechanic must have a mental model of an engine, so that seeing a small distortion or a slight bend raises an alarm of future problems. Programmers use those same mental models on a daily basis.
My father always says that you don't pay a mechanic to fix your car. You pay a mechanic for their knowledge - their ability to recognize odd operating conditions, their ability to know the internal processes and figure out where the system is failing. That's a good mechanic, and that sounds like a good programmer to me.
I'm not trying to claim that all programmers could be good mechanics, or that the opposite is true -- I almost needed a good mechanic to replace my thermostat, and that's about as simple as it gets! I just think that much more overlap exists between these fields than we might believe.
However, since astalavista was the site in question, you will probably be safer to visit after the hack.
Is your claim that a company must invent something from whole cloth to be "innovative"?
You've made me so nervous about everything I thought was true that I did a hg revert and am looking at gpgme bindings.
You've done a good deed, I think.
It's going to be difficult to make a computer architecture that approaches the parallel ability of the human brain.
Personally, I don't think businesses should implement half-baked security features -- and password request forms are as half-baked as it gets.
The best solution would be for important sites (my bank, my stockbroker, ...) to make me come into their office with documentation if I forget my password.
The problem, unfortunately, gets more difficult for "unimportant" sites... frankly, short of relying on a centralized ID provider that can ensure identity in person, there isn't a good answer.
In my experience, if the interviewer seems to be trapped by assumptions, they aren't. ;)
Sources like Wikipedia or other encyclopedias are good for beginning to understand the topic, and finding relevant primary sources.
And Jeff used an insecure password on both the "evil site" and his Open ID provider.
The attacker only had access to Jeff's hash because he had access to a site that Jeff used.
Get your GED and get into higher education. If a uni. won't take you immediately, take some classes at a local community college and look to transfer up.
College is much more enjoyable than high school -- you might actually learn something ;)
I'm 22, in a university, and already regretting not focusing more on my studies. But I know if I don't get them done now, it'll never happen.
Some other shell replacements exist, but I've never tried any of them.
I'd say the majority of us web people aren't working for sites as large and important as Facebook -- thus, we can't dictate anything to our users. We can, however, benefit from the anti-IE6 momentum they create.
Killing IE6 has to start from the top.