^Linux may not be too difficult, but people certainly don't want it unless they are nerd-in-extremus. I've logged my share of computer hours, even a few years of computer science, and I won't touch Linux with a 40-foot pole.

I've programmed in Java, Python, PHP, SQL and just started screwing around with LUA (for WoW addons ).

I tried a bit of Java Server Pages when I took computer science, but man I could not get the hang of them at all.

I'm taking a class on Flash and php now, but for the record I hate flash like the plague. Hopefully I'll get over this once it does what I tell it to do, but for now: raaaahhr!

I do Winform and Web development in .NET using VB, ADO, XML, and all that other fun stuff. In the past I have coded in good old BASIC (with line numbers), Pascal, and COBOL. I also did some other mainframe language crap about ten years ago now, and I don't remember a thing about it anymore.

Current boning up on my C# skills. I have always been able to read code samples written in it easily, but I want to make myself more marketable and start coding my apps in C# on a regular basis. I'm an old Visual Basic throwback guy, but unfortunately it has instilled poor coding habits in myself.

It wasn't until .NET came along that I really started taking advantage of and seeing the benefits to OOP.

I currently have my BS in Computer Science. Would love to get my MS some day.

I'm on my third semester of Computer Science at university, so
*hugs self*

>> ^EDD:
^Dear GeeSussFreek,
you call yourself a scientist. That is fine. However, I will warn you right away that many on this website would question your devotion to scientific method based on your username alone - tell me, is it a coincidence that it's pronounced exactly like "Jesus-Freak"? I'm asking this (rather rhetorical) question because religious fanatics claiming to be scientists are often proponents of Intelligent Design, which is (I'll be frank here) a load of steaming bull excrement. I hope you are not one of this fold, because I've had my share of "dialogue" with these folks, and it has never, ever resembled anything like a reasoned, structured discourse.
With my worries laid before you, my response is this:
there are many fields of science and from your short stay on the Sift you would apparently style yourself as a jack-of-all-trades (economics, military, political science, theoretical and quantum physics, chemistry, just to name a few of which you've shared your opinion). Yet, it would also appear that you may be master of nothing.
A scientist (especially one talking about science and scientific method) would not ever, under any circumstances, attempt to draw their own definitions of FACT. Or any concept previously and universally known, for that matter. Me, I was taught what general as well as specific definitions of 'fact' are in secondary school. It would appear your "science diploma studies" have taught you nothing of this. Scientific fact feeds directly back from scientific method, which includes fancy notions such as peer review, one which has unfortunately so far eluded the scope of ID proponents. In science, fact may at times not be the absolute truth, it's what's agreed upon by the informed public. Our knowledge in most advanced fields of study can never be perfect and complete, but the ones most often making this claim are religious folks, saying that scripture "has all the answers".
Now, mass. My oh my.
Mass, assuming we're talking about gravitational mass, not inertial-7th-grade-physics-mass here, is the interaction of gravitational fields. In other words, yes, gravity. The same concept you differentiated, indicating exactly how much you understand of this and that I have no need to go into supergravity, supersymmetry and duality and start actually looking things up. Thanks for that. Oh, and by the way - mass is not created. Neither is matter, for that matter.
Continuing on-
regarding your nonplussed ideas about quantum theories, I have to disappoint you a little bit - it's still discernible, natural science; it hasn't obliterated all previous theories in physics; in fact, I dare you name three it has. Yes, the math involved is a 'bit' harder, the conjectures deeper and at times wilder, but scientific method is still applied.
You also said: "The fact is, that science doesn't deal with facts and has no method of proving things true, only methods of proving them false."
First of all, I LOVE your use of "fact" in this sentence, just love it. Anyway, hypocrisy aside, all we need, is a YES/NO or a TRUE/FALSE experiment. Their initial assumption will either be true, and they will PROVE something to be true, or it will be wrong, and they will prove that it is wrong. Works both ways, just like logic's supposed to, in your brain.
In conclusion, I return to my initial lines:
"You call yourself a scientist. That is most definitely not fine."


So, because I am a Christian, I can not be science minded. Thats a weak assertion. Moreover, its a showing of the new bigot mind set against any of those who have a different mind set. It is the new thing. To expect me to tolerate and be tolerant of your ideas, but the same latitude is not relayed back. I wouldn't count someone out just cause they called themselves agnosticfreak, would you? But that isn't the point of this conversation.

Intelligent design is crap. I never even mentioned it here, but yet, you rolled me into an automatic assumption that I believe that...I don't, its a fundamentally bad idea of applying impartial physical interpretations of the world and using those to apply to a metaphysic's of the creators doing. This is bad, it is not even an theory, but thanks for the assumption.

And thanks for the unmerited attack on my interests, I won't return the favor.

In your third paragraph, you totally just reiterate what I always said that science has no claim to absolute truth, so I will take that as a consesion on your part, but then you automatically assume that I do agree that ID is a valid theory in which I believe, which you are wrong. So I will take your concession and your incorrect assumption and slide right by your personal attacks for the moment.

As for mass, I was trying to show that even the simple idea of where the mass of an atom, the most simple idea in particle physics; in a unknown. So in effect, the basis of our understanding of particle physics is incomplete and yet we call things on the higher level facts, and I object to the terminology, just as one might also object to a Christian saying that God being real is a fact...its just a misuse of the language. I also object to things being called laws, but it is more of language that we are talking about on these things. There is a connotative and denotative meaning obviously, but I still think the terms are misleading. So my battle was over terminology abuse in this case.

You talk about the scientific method again. I would like to bring attention to the scientific method 2 problems that very prominent people in science have had with similar instances of rules in empirical practice. First, was one of my heroes, Alan Turing. His problem was one in computer science (my field btw) where he was trying to prove or disprove the ability to make a program that could test if other programs terminate (ie not suffer from an infinite loop). The problem was, you could make such a program, but you would have to then turn that program back on itself to make sure that it also terminates. This presents a problem. Because we still don't know if the program terminates. So, the problem was that there was no way to verify the thing that was created to verify things. Thus, the proof showed that there is no way to create a program that can test of other programs terminate.

Likewise, there was formerly a school of thought that has now all but vanished called the Verification theory( I believe this was the term, correct me if you know better). The verification method heralded that unless something could be empirically verified, it is meaningless. However, the same thing that happed in Mr. Turrings proof destroyed this idea as well for when we tried to verify the Verification theory, there was no verification to be had. So, I use the same argument on the Scientific method as to show its level of truth is very low indeed. It is a Theory that can not be turned back to proof itself. It rests on arbitrary principles that seem good...and they are good for lots of things, but truth is not one of them. The Scientific theory can not show itself to be truth using the scientific method. In fact, quantum physics shows us more and more that the very act of observation changes the data. In other words, sciences attempts to claim things being the way they are might only be so because they looked, not because they are actually that way. Once again, the problem of phenomena and Noumea.

You then use a classic example of why I choose my battle of language with science. It is impossible to prove something truth with science. Things are truth in science until they are not...which is no truth at all. Can you name one idea from 200 years ago that that isn't radically different from today? In essence, those proven theories weren't proven at all, they can only be disproved. Science only deals with negative evidence, not positive. Things will always be revised in science, and more over, we never really know when they won't need to be revised again; and thus this is why science can never have a claim to have a TOE (theory of everything) because you don't ever know when you know everything...you don't know when every fact is accounted for, every essence of the whole is taken into account...it is an unknowable thing (from the standpoint of absolute knowledge).

*edited out cause Internet people can't be trusted with humility*. However, I don't think my claims are baseless, and I attempted to have a civil talk about them. If I came off as rude or condescending in my first reply, then I do apologies as this was not my intent. I have a real eagerness to talk about such topics openly and freely on the sift because we have some very intelligent people here and normally some pretty good discourse (we are many stars above the youtube crowd). I look forward to perhaps a more civil reply in the future Hopefully I have covered all your points here, I tried my best.

Edit: spelling

Wow, hard to watch this...im only at the 2 min marker

So black holes mass is unmesurable? Gee, seems like it would be close to about the same as the star that blew up. Those are some major bags under his eyes? Does he sleep of just dream up crazy anti-science dribble?

Scientists IE freemasons...wth? I got a degree in computer science...so now IM a freemason, who knew?

Via Neatorama:

Surprise! There's a Third YouTube Co-Founder

Before there was YouTube, there was ... a dating site called Tune In Hook Up?! Yes, that was the first version of YouTube that completely failed (Source: article by Jim Hopkins at USA Today, from where I shamelessly, um, co-opted the heading).

The YouTube we all know and love got started when former Paypal employees Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim wanted to share some videos from a dinner party only to realize that the video clip was too huge for email. Posting the video online wasn't easy either - since video websites back then accept some but not all video clip formats.

So the trio went to create YouTube in 2005 - and a little over a year later, the website streamed 100 million videos per day and got 70,000 videos uploaded per day (roughly 1 per second). It was the fastest growing website in the history of the Internet. It was estimated that in 2007, YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000!

Hurley and Chen sold the company to Google for a cool $1.65 billion ... so what happened to Jawed? He left active role at the company to be a graduate student in computer science before it was sold (but he didn't leave empty handed - Jawed got about $64 million in stocks when YouTube was acquired by Google).

Oh, and of course: the first video clip on YouTube was uploaded at 8:27 pm on Saturday April 23rd, 2005. It was of Jawed himself (shot by Yakov Lapitsky) at the San Diego Zoo.

OK, this is A-Grade terrible parenting. This kid is going to grow up to be a little thug.

Why?

a) He's 5 and they're letting him play counterstrike... a game about shooting people dead, in a realistic setting with blood and all... great.
b) They all laugh and gloat when he shoots the guy (poor sportsmanship by the sounds of the guys there)
c) The kid says 'Shut up Dad'... so he already has no respect for his parents, brilliant... brilliant.
d) His dad's final laugh 'Heh Heh Heh Heh'... you can TELL he's a competitive jock dick who loves reveling in others misfortunes and will goad his kids to be competitive jocks too.

I have three kids, two of which can play computer games (3 1/2 and almost 5), it will be many years before they are allowed to play a game like this. They currently play games like Thomas and Friends or Lego Star Wars or Tonka to the Rescue (or whatever that game is called) or Audiosurf. Nothing with real violence at all... (and even with lego style violence like in Star Wars you can see the effects in their play).

And their play time is REALLY limited. They were allowed to play for 10 mins or so a day if they wanted, but now my eldest is on a 'break' for a week due to carrying on like nothing else because he wanted to play again in the same day.

They're too young to spend much time on a pc. play with lego, play in the garden, read a book etc. etc.

I love computer games, I have a Computer Science Degree, I make my living coding. I didn't touch a computer until I was 7 (well, there wasn't really any ability to until the mighty ZX Spectrum in 1983), and so while I'm happy for them to be familiar with PCs, enjoy the occasional game, I do not want them to be hanging for their next game at all.

I feel sorry for this kid, I really do.

My name is Dan, everybody knows me as dan gandhi, even though that is not my legal name.

I am in my 30s (I don't keep track anymore, nov 74 if you want to do the math). I'm a straight-white-male living in Pittsburgh PA. with my S.O. who teaches elementary school as a sub, while trying to start a web/graphic design business.

I do lots of little things for $$, some web work, writing js and php code for my S.O.'s web business. Currently I'm refurbishing a house that we plan to rent out.

I spend far too much time on my computer, which is where I spend most of my fun time surfing the web and playing games on my linux box.

I'm a college dropout, studied computer "science" for a few years, until I lost interest in what they wanted to teach me (I also started getting laid, which put a serious dent in my already minimal interest in academics). I never learned how to do things which I do not enjoy.

Ok, so I did an Engineering (and computer science) degree at uni, and I know I did all this stuff

Can I remember any of it now?

Nope, not a jot... haven't used it in 8 years, and it's completely left the building.

No, let's be fair, show all sides of EVERY issue.

When a classroom teaches elementary students how to be careful of adult predators they should also have to get a class taught by NAMBLA.

In history class let's get some Neo Nazis in there to explain the other side of WW 2.

For every computer science class there should be an Amish run class.

Of course it would take a couple hundred years to complete a basic education which included all sides of everything but it would be FAIR... Right?

>> ^DrPawn:
The question about how to sort a million 3 digit integers is interesting and misleading.

I think he said 32bit integers, not 3 digit integers. Radix sort, or in the absence of associated data, simple counting, as you suggest, would be very bigO efficient in that case.

>> ^HaricotVert:
There is never a good reason to do a Bubble Sort. The only reason anyone ever learns it is because it is used as an "easy" introduction to writing algorithms in Computer Science 101 courses.

Bubblesort is not always the wrong answer. For instance if "efficient" means using only 32Million bits RAM, two 32bit registers (plus the hacky use of an execution counter), and a few dozen lines of assembly, you can't really implement anything else. The answer is based on the constraints.

That being said, now that I think about it, loading and dumping an R-B tree is logically equivalent to quicksort, which does seem like the best general solution.

There is never a good reason to do a Bubble Sort. The only reason anyone ever learns it is because it is used as an "easy" introduction to writing algorithms in Computer Science 101 courses. Bubble Sort just happens to be a brute-force method that mimics the way some people would manually sort a random list of integers given unlimited time and paper. At the very least, for a O(n^2) algorithm, you can go with Insertion Sort which is guaranteed to perform faster or equal given the same data set, with the same amount of memory usage.

As for the actual algorithm that would be used, Quicksort is probably the most obvious choice, although they did not specify what their sorting goal was, so "It depends." is probably a fine answer.

LOL, yeah, as I mentioned on the post, my bad on saying "bad call" - I didn't read carefully either and didn't notice you were quoting there.

I love sift live *weapons.

In reply to this comment by jonny:
You must've have missed this comment. I didn't discard it - I returned it.