Ah, but now we get to have the classic discussion of whether the value of baby-proofing the language outweighs making the language easier to program in.. I'm a bit in favor ease of programming, type-safety be damned, because I don't make these kind of mistakes too often. But if I was a manager, it would depend on my level of confidence in my employees..
As I work with more and more people with real engineering degrees, I start to question where the "engineer worship" comes from.. Yes, I wish I had learned some of that fancy hardware stuff and the extra math, but being an engineer doesn't necessarily mean you can code any better than a CS person. In fact, I've noticed that most engineers just give a blank stare when you ask them about topics like algorithm complexity. They've learned some other difficult material, for sure, but that doesn't make them experts in everything.
Wow, they actually look at your GPA? For CS majors going to a programming interview usually just involves questions like "do you know C-pound?", "Do you have 10 years experience with Windows 2008", and "We're looking for Agile programmers; can you touch your toe to your nose?"
I'm not meaning MIT.. Thats an exception, and frankly a MS there is worth more to an employer than a PhD at a state school. Think Harvard, Stanford, Yale, etc.
Undergrads at prestigious universities are just the suckers that pay for all the R&D the grad students do. Do yourself a favor and research the undergrad programs in your state. There's a good chance you'll find an excellent program at a fraction of the cost. Of course you won't get the brand name recognition.. But you also won't be in debt the rest of your life.
Firstly, shoplifting takes significantly more work than sitting at home and double clicking a song name. When you shoplift, there's more danger of getting caught (or at least perceived).
So you're saying that killing someone by shooting them in the head in broad daylight should have a smaller penalty than poisoning them, because it involves more risk of being caught?
I don't mean to be ignorant or trollish, but isn't this a good thing for Oracle?
Oracle wouldn't make any money out of Open Office and now ( or soon ) they will not have the burden of it.
Yep, and that's exactly what Oracle thinks about everything they bought from Sun (aside from the patents they plan to use to sue Google). It just sucks for all of us peons is all.
It's also recently been suggested by a study saying that about 1-4% of our DNA is Homo neanderthalensis - so even had THEY been the dominant species it's likely that 1-4% of their DNA today would be Homo Sapien.
Either way you slice it, any of the intelligent species on Earth appear to have a common ancestor. So whether we killed off other intelligent forms of life and thats why there aren't any is moot: none of the other animal kingdoms have shown anything along the scale that humans have, or else we'd be competing with them like we did with Neanderthals. Or there'd be intelligent oceanic life, or something along those lines.
Just picking a nit.. I'm pretty sure there's only one animal kingdom that we know of. Also, I'm pretty sure that Neanderthal story was debunked. Too bad, it would be kinda cool to find out the two species interbred. Oh well, we still have the hobbit people to make up fantastical stories about..
As many have already pointed out, the purpose of a company, particularly a government-funded company built to achieve a particular goal, is arguably not solely profit. Also, as others have pointed out, the people who ride the trains are not the only ones who benefit from them, and thus a strong case can be made for subsidizing them. Now, personally I don't give a crap about Amtrak, and I think it's horribly mismanaged. But judging any sort of public work solely on its profitability is asinine.
Funny thing about the field of Ethics.. It's like a building without a foundation. Even once you recursively trace back beliefs to the arguments for/against them, you eventually hit on a core belief that person takes as an axiom. The problem is that, unlike math, we can't agree on what the axioms are. Thus the entire field of Ethics exists without a foundation.
Now understand, this is not to say that Ethics is meaningless, worthless, or anything like that. Utilitarianism and Humanism are two (or one, depending on how you think of it) fairly successful formal ethical systems. There's probably some more recent advances in ethics that eclipse these, but I only minored in Philosophy, and my focus was not on Ethics, so I don't know what they are.
Also, John Q. Public really does think quite a bit about this stuff. The problem is that most people assume that everyone else shares their core axiomatic beliefs, and that's just not the case.
Though the state of school chairs could definitely be improved (at least the ones circa 1989-2001 when I was in school), cost is a huge factor, and too much comfort will just put them to sleep.
I boil down to only this: Amtrak is a company. It should survive or fail without help from the government. I didn't say anything about the countries entire train system.
And the reason you disagree is because you start with different premises. Your argument is:
P1.) Amtrack's purpose is to make a profit
P2.) Amtrack did not make a profit
C.) Amtrack failed.
His argument is:
P1.) Amtrack's purpose is to provide public transportation.
P2.) Amtrack has provided public transportation.
C.) Amtrack succeeded
No, corporations are well-defined legal entities. Their purpose is to make money, and nothing else. The day you can send a corporation to jail is the day I'll consider a corporation a person.
They can sue, but that doesn't matter after the election when their pet congressman is in office. Also, you're still overlooking the basic point that CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE. Say it with me now, CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE. CORPORATIONS DO NOT HAVE RIGHTS. I have no problem with a corporation releasing an endorsement of a candidate, and I'm even willing to let them spread lies. But they must do so under their own brand. Anything else is a blatant ploy to hijack the electoral system.
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Ah, but now we get to have the classic discussion of whether the value of baby-proofing the language outweighs making the language easier to program in.. I'm a bit in favor ease of programming, type-safety be damned, because I don't make these kind of mistakes too often. But if I was a manager, it would depend on my level of confidence in my employees..
As I work with more and more people with real engineering degrees, I start to question where the "engineer worship" comes from.. Yes, I wish I had learned some of that fancy hardware stuff and the extra math, but being an engineer doesn't necessarily mean you can code any better than a CS person. In fact, I've noticed that most engineers just give a blank stare when you ask them about topics like algorithm complexity. They've learned some other difficult material, for sure, but that doesn't make them experts in everything.
Well, in fairness, a function means something very different to a mathematician than a programmer.. Also, IIRC, in BASIC they're called subroutines.
That's okay, most professional programmers don't know how to write code, so they'll fit right in.
Don't pat yourself on the back too hard, you'll damage your spine.
Wow, they actually look at your GPA? For CS majors going to a programming interview usually just involves questions like "do you know C-pound?", "Do you have 10 years experience with Windows 2008", and "We're looking for Agile programmers; can you touch your toe to your nose?"
Err, BS i mean
I'm not meaning MIT.. Thats an exception, and frankly a MS there is worth more to an employer than a PhD at a state school. Think Harvard, Stanford, Yale, etc.
Undergrads at prestigious universities are just the suckers that pay for all the R&D the grad students do. Do yourself a favor and research the undergrad programs in your state. There's a good chance you'll find an excellent program at a fraction of the cost. Of course you won't get the brand name recognition.. But you also won't be in debt the rest of your life.
Firstly, shoplifting takes significantly more work than sitting at home and double clicking a song name. When you shoplift, there's more danger of getting caught (or at least perceived).
So you're saying that killing someone by shooting them in the head in broad daylight should have a smaller penalty than poisoning them, because it involves more risk of being caught?
Ah, if only I had mod points.
Arg, I'm tired.. I meant to comment on the "large numbers" not being so large.
These figures very clearly show that large numbers of people are willing to pay for quality journalism in digital formats
If 0.1% of a country being willing to pay for it can be considered a success for a major newspaper..
I don't mean to be ignorant or trollish, but isn't this a good thing for Oracle?
Oracle wouldn't make any money out of Open Office and now ( or soon ) they will not have the burden of it.
Yep, and that's exactly what Oracle thinks about everything they bought from Sun (aside from the patents they plan to use to sue Google). It just sucks for all of us peons is all.
It's also recently been suggested by a study saying that about 1-4% of our DNA is Homo neanderthalensis - so even had THEY been the dominant species it's likely that 1-4% of their DNA today would be Homo Sapien.
Either way you slice it, any of the intelligent species on Earth appear to have a common ancestor. So whether we killed off other intelligent forms of life and thats why there aren't any is moot: none of the other animal kingdoms have shown anything along the scale that humans have, or else we'd be competing with them like we did with Neanderthals. Or there'd be intelligent oceanic life, or something along those lines.
Just picking a nit.. I'm pretty sure there's only one animal kingdom that we know of. Also, I'm pretty sure that Neanderthal story was debunked. Too bad, it would be kinda cool to find out the two species interbred. Oh well, we still have the hobbit people to make up fantastical stories about..
As many have already pointed out, the purpose of a company, particularly a government-funded company built to achieve a particular goal, is arguably not solely profit. Also, as others have pointed out, the people who ride the trains are not the only ones who benefit from them, and thus a strong case can be made for subsidizing them. Now, personally I don't give a crap about Amtrak, and I think it's horribly mismanaged. But judging any sort of public work solely on its profitability is asinine.
Funny thing about the field of Ethics.. It's like a building without a foundation. Even once you recursively trace back beliefs to the arguments for/against them, you eventually hit on a core belief that person takes as an axiom. The problem is that, unlike math, we can't agree on what the axioms are. Thus the entire field of Ethics exists without a foundation.
Now understand, this is not to say that Ethics is meaningless, worthless, or anything like that. Utilitarianism and Humanism are two (or one, depending on how you think of it) fairly successful formal ethical systems. There's probably some more recent advances in ethics that eclipse these, but I only minored in Philosophy, and my focus was not on Ethics, so I don't know what they are.
Also, John Q. Public really does think quite a bit about this stuff. The problem is that most people assume that everyone else shares their core axiomatic beliefs, and that's just not the case.
Though the state of school chairs could definitely be improved (at least the ones circa 1989-2001 when I was in school), cost is a huge factor, and too much comfort will just put them to sleep.
I boil down to only this: Amtrak is a company. It should survive or fail without help from the government. I didn't say anything about the countries entire train system.
And the reason you disagree is because you start with different premises. Your argument is:
P1.) Amtrack's purpose is to make a profit
P2.) Amtrack did not make a profit
C.) Amtrack failed.
His argument is:
P1.) Amtrack's purpose is to provide public transportation.
P2.) Amtrack has provided public transportation.
C.) Amtrack succeeded
The BBC is pretty objective. And they don't have much of an entrenched interest, since they really don't care what we do.
No dice. Most political differences are a result of disagreement of premises, not conclusions. No amount of formal logic is going to help that.
True enough.
No, corporations are well-defined legal entities. Their purpose is to make money, and nothing else. The day you can send a corporation to jail is the day I'll consider a corporation a person.
They can sue, but that doesn't matter after the election when their pet congressman is in office. Also, you're still overlooking the basic point that CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE. Say it with me now, CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE. CORPORATIONS DO NOT HAVE RIGHTS. I have no problem with a corporation releasing an endorsement of a candidate, and I'm even willing to let them spread lies. But they must do so under their own brand. Anything else is a blatant ploy to hijack the electoral system.
There's a difference between posting under a pseudonym and posting as someone else.