On 17-2-2009 17:41, St. wrote:
> 
>   Personally, I think there's a whole lot of good things to come yet. I 
> wonder what the very last invention ever would be?
> 
>     ~Steve~

Either something that explodes unexpectedly or a black hole.

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"andrel" <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message 
news:499### [at] hotmailcom...
> On 17-2-2009 17:41, St. wrote:
>>
>>   Personally, I think there's a whole lot of good things to come yet. I 
>> wonder what the very last invention ever would be?
>>
>>     ~Steve~
>
> Either something that explodes unexpectedly

   Yes, like those two nuke subs that collided, (was it last week?)

    Imagine if they'd have exploded. What would we be doing right now?


 > or a black hole.

   But that's not an invention, or do you mean, (in the future), an invented 
black hole?

     ~Steve~

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>> I'm still impressed about the guy who got a grant to find out whether 
>> or not a duck's quack really does echo. WTF?
> 
> I am not sure that is true.

Well, I saw the team interviewed on the local news station, together 
with the duck they used for their experiments. The researcher (who 
looked like a lad from down the pub to me) stated that a duck's quack 
does, in fact, echo, and it is merely that ducks are not usually found 
in places where you would expect to find echoes.

> Anyway I saw it both on Brainiac and on 
> Mythbusters tried and falsified.

Unsurprisingly.

>> Surfing Wikipedia for a few hours is one thing. Somehow finding and 
>> actually reading academic papers is much harder. (I failed epically at 
>> this last time around...)
> 
> I still think you should try. But there is the problem of that BSc.
> BTW I am also not very good at reading papers. I have this problem that 
> I get distracted by possibly unrelated ideas popping into my head so 
> often that I can hardly finish a sentence. The only place I can read 
> seems to be in bath. That cuts the reading time to about an hour per 
> week. I should read at least 4 or 5 hours so...

Some of the papers on GHC are really well-written. (Mind you, I showed 
you SPJ's advice on writing a paper, right?)

>>>> Yes, but does anybody actually employ PhDs? Most of the ones I know 
>>>> of still hang around universities...
> 
> There should be a couple in your company. At least in the US, but given 
> what you do, also at least one in the UK. (if there isn't one, that may 
> explain some things).

Our boss sometimes introduces himself as "Doctor". OTOH, he's an idiot. 
And a self-important idiot at that.

>> (Of course, it's not like they have labels on them, so I can't be 
>> sure...) Most of the people who work here have degrees.
> 
> What degrees would that be?

Chemistry, mostly.

>> Most worryingly, I don't think anybody I met at uni had a PhD 
>> either... o_O
> 
> Could be. In other disciplines than computer science it is quite rare 
> not to have mainly PhD's in the staff.

Most of our staff seemed to be random Polish/Scandinavian/Ethiopian 
people with a vague grasp of English.

Not that I wish to imply that not speaking English is a bad thing, but 
when you're paid to speak to people in English, it would seem a 
necessary job requirement...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Invisible wrote:
> I very much doubt you can actually do a PhD in "doing cool stuff with a 
> computer". It's a tad vague, eh?

The way it works (here at least) is that there is someone who is sponsoring 
and tutoring you called your "adviser". He has a particular area of interest 
(like compiler construction, network protocols, or whatever), and he helps 
you pick a topic that would be interesting, publishable, etc.

So what you need to do if you want a PhD in something you find interesting 
is go to universities and find out what potential advisers are interested 
in. You won't be able to do a PhD on Haskell compiler optimizations if 
nobody at the university is interested in compilers.

> My course was 4 years too, but it was only a BSc. I might be wrong about 
> the MSc requirement, but that's what I heard.

I said that's true of the places I looked in the US, and someone 
contradicted me and said the UK works differently.

> Besides, don't you have to, like, spend years searching through the 
> library to find every piece of work that has ever been written about 
> your subject,

No. That's why you have an adviser. He tells you where to look for related 
information. There's a lot of reading and understanding, and you need to 
summarize it enough to show why what you're doing is different, but that's 
about it.

> ancient sage to consult on the works on the Ancient Masters to see if 
> they have anything relevant to add?

That's why they invented university libraries. :-)

> I don't think I could do that from my desk at work.

I was often met with astounded surprised when I mentioned that I was paying 
my own tuition. You don't need a job to get a PhD if you get accepted.

> Meh. I doubt it. It seems everybody just asks "how many years' coding 
> experience do you have?" and "what are your customer service skills like?"

You'd be applying for different jobs.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

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Invisible wrote:
> Meh. I doubt it. It seems everybody just asks "how many years' coding 
> experience do you have?" and "what are your customer service skills like?"

Oh, btw, all that research and climbing mountains to see the sages and 
stuff? They're the people that hire you when you graduate. Part of the PhD 
is being in touch with hundreds of people interested in working on the same 
thing you are.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

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Invisible wrote:
> Surfing Wikipedia for a few hours is one thing. Somehow finding and 
> actually reading academic papers is much harder. (I failed epically at 
> this last time around...)

If you already know how to do this, you wouldn't need to learn it. Figuring 
out how to find and read academic papers is part of what you learn.

> Most worryingly, I don't think anybody I met at uni had a PhD either... o_O

None of the professors had PhD's?  Heck, the science teachers in my high 
school had PhDs.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

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St. wrote:
>   Personally, I think there's a whole lot of good things to come yet. I 
> wonder what the very last invention ever would be?

Grey goo.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

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St. wrote:
> "andrel" <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message 
> news:499### [at] hotmailcom...
>> On 17-2-2009 17:41, St. wrote:
>>>   Personally, I think there's a whole lot of good things to come yet. I 
>>> wonder what the very last invention ever would be?
>>>
>>>     ~Steve~
>> Either something that explodes unexpectedly
> 
>    Yes, like those two nuke subs that collided, (was it last week?)
> 
>     Imagine if they'd have exploded. What would we be doing right now?

Assuming you mean if the weapons went off - not much chance of that. I 
reckon those subs could be completely destroyed by a variety of 
accidents/hostilities and the nukes still wouldn't go off. They need to 
be set off deliberately.

>  > or a black hole.
> 
>    But that's not an invention, or do you mean, (in the future), an invented 
> black hole?

Maybe like the black holes those sciern-tists are going to create in the 
LHC and irresponsibly wipe us off the map, or so I read in the papers ;-)

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On 17-2-2009 19:39, Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> I very much doubt you can actually do a PhD in "doing cool stuff with 
>> a computer". It's a tad vague, eh?
> 
> The way it works (here at least) is that there is someone who is 
> sponsoring and tutoring you called your "adviser". He has a particular 
> area of interest (like compiler construction, network protocols, or 
> whatever), and he helps you pick a topic that would be interesting, 
> publishable, etc.

Things work sometimes a bit different here. I did mine while working on 
some projects. Though graduation was not part of the job description, 
after some years my choice was write a thesis or look for another job. I 
didn't want to do either, but chose the lesser evil.
In our lab it is not uncommon if a lab technician gets a PhD. Then again 
we do have some very good ones.

> So what you need to do if you want a PhD in something you find 
> interesting is go to universities and find out what potential advisers 
> are interested in. You won't be able to do a PhD on Haskell compiler 
> optimizations if nobody at the university is interested in compilers.
> 
>> My course was 4 years too, but it was only a BSc. I might be wrong 
>> about the MSc requirement, but that's what I heard.
> 
> I said that's true of the places I looked in the US, and someone 
> contradicted me and said the UK works differently.

As far as I know it you need a MSc or equivalent in the Netherlands. 
Though things have shifted a bit, perhaps 4 years of BSc may be 
equivalent to something here. Andy graduated before the European 
normalization of grades, so I would need to ask foreign affairs in his 
case.

>> Besides, don't you have to, like, spend years searching through the 
>> library to find every piece of work that has ever been written about 
>> your subject,
> 
> No. That's why you have an adviser. He tells you where to look for 
> related information. There's a lot of reading and understanding, and you 
> need to summarize it enough to show why what you're doing is different, 
> but that's about it.
> 
>> ancient sage to consult on the works on the Ancient Masters to see if 
>> they have anything relevant to add?
> 
> That's why they invented university libraries. :-)

Actually the citable history for many students is whatever is on-line. 
Nobody uses the library anymore. Unfortunately people are scanning in 
old years of the main journals.

>> I don't think I could do that from my desk at work.
> 
> I was often met with astounded surprised when I mentioned that I was 
> paying my own tuition. You don't need a job to get a PhD if you get 
> accepted.
> 
>> Meh. I doubt it. It seems everybody just asks "how many years' coding 
>> experience do you have?" and "what are your customer service skills 
>> like?"
> 
> You'd be applying for different jobs.

I agree, he is looking for the wrong jobs ;) He looks for jobs where he 
can do things that he thinks are interesting. He should look for a job 
in something that he is good in, make himself irreplaceable and grow 
from there. That may look like the long path, but staying with his 
current job won't bring him anywhere either.

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andrel wrote:
> Actually the citable history for many students is whatever is on-line. 
> Nobody uses the library anymore. Unfortunately people are scanning in 
> old years of the main journals.

Wow, that sucks. I can't imagine paying for myself subscriptions to every 
lame-ass journal I ever had to look something up in.  It's almost criminal 
how places like IEEE and ACM will take your work, publish it, then charge 
you to have a copy of it.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message