Here's a clue: There can be agnostic atheists and gnostic atheits. Just as there can be agnostic theists and gnostic theists. The two concepts:
* believing/disbelieving the existence of God and * believing that the existance of God can/cannot be known or proven
are orthogonal, even if they are philosophically related.
As an aside, "agnostics" who feel the need to bash atheists are just as tiring as atheists who bash religious people or religious people who bash everybody else. Which isn't all surprising, because the need to put other people down is a character trait and not dependent on any belief system.
There's nothing dogmatic about atheism. If God were to magically appear and make a convincing case that he's really real, then most atheists would probably concede that they were wrong.
We just don't think it's going to happen, ever.
Agnostics don't have a monopoly on open-mindedness.
You don't state facts, you're cherry-picking them. The claim that Mohammed had sex with Aisha at age 9 is disputed. Others have put her at 14 to 15. While this seems weird today, applying 21st-century standards to the 7th century is disingenuous at best.
You also conveniently ignore what Aisha did after Mohammed's death to advance the power of women in Beduin society at that time and that she is revered as a role model by millions of women around the world today. They probably all hate themselves in your view, right?
Not to mention that if you go by the evil things done by men in the name of religion, all religions are equally guilty. Fortunately, humans are good at compartmentalizing, religious people probably more so.
The electricity that comes out of my outlet might come from a coal plant, but that's not the point. The fact is, if I consume X kWh in a year my provider will put the same amount of electricity into the grid. If more people have a contract with a provider of renewable energy, the ratio of electricity that is generated from renewable sources increases.
Of course, once electricity is put into the grid there's no way to distinguish it from other sources. But electricity is electricity. There's no point-of-original labeling with electrons because they are indistinguishable. Compare that to meat for example, where the origin can have an impact on the quality.
What you say is probably true in rural communities, but in cities the utilities lay the groundwork when the house is built and/or renovated.
For example, it's very common to see cable outlets that are plugged making them unusable in new apartments. Installation consists of a guy removing the plug.
Yes, but the amount of gas or electricity that is put in by the companies is dependent on how many customers they have.
Let's say, 100 people have a contract with company A and use X kWh per month. 200 people have a contract with company B and use Y kWh per month. Company A has to provide X kWh into the grid and will bill its customers for that. Likewise, company B has to put Y kWh into the grid and will bill its customers for that.
Notice that I didn't mention who owns the pipes and maintains the grid. It could by company A or B or none of them. Also, for any given customer it doesn't matter if the electricity he gets comes from company A or B. Because electrons are electrons after all.
This is how it works in Germany, and the system works really well. There's actual competition and consumer satisfaction is high.
Nope, as the other poster has mentioned, here in Germany the consumer chooses his provider and depending on where you live you can choose between a dozen or so suppliers. Also, switching is very easy. Basically, all you have to do is fill out a form with your new supplier and he will take care of everything else.
The system actually works really well. There's real competition and it's hassle-free.
I, for example, have a contract with a provider that provides 100% renewable energy into the grid. And I only pay about a Euro more per month than I paid before.
It is exceptionally rare to have a choice for electrical providers. Ditto for gas and cable. Probably 99% of the U.S. population is served by one or fewer telephone companies, one or fewer cable company, and one or fewer natural gas providers.
I just want to point out that this doesn't have to be the case. In Germany there's a lot of competition among different electricity providers and there are more and more gas providers propping up, too. The way it works is that the last mile is either contracted out by the city or owned by the city outright. But the consumer can purchase his electricity from any company that he wants to. This has been great for consumers, because they can really choose a contract that services their specific needs, like household size. Or you can shave of a few cents by choosing online billing. And for the environmentally conscious, you can choose a provider that supplies 100% renewable energy.
Also, switching is super easy. Just fill out a form with your new provider of choice and give him your old contract number with your current provider. The new provider will take care of everything else, as mandated by law. Our politicians actually did something right in this case.
Doesn't surprise me a bit
on
Sleep Mailing
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· Score: 1
I've apparently made calls to other people at 8 in the morning without remembering it 2 hours later. In fact, I was quite confused when they referenced the earlier call, I didn't believe them at first. But I figured that my cell phone log isn't lying to me. I was told that I was quite intelligible, too. Oh yeah, before somebody asks, I wasn't high or on sleeping meds, although I might have gone to bed late.
You're wrong, collective action can be legally justified when an individual taking the same action is not.
The most salient example is the use of force. The state reserves the right to do that, which is the basis for the both the police and the criminal justice system. Individual use of force is prohibited by the state with the exception of self-defense.
Assigning morality to collective action doesn't make a whole lot of sense in any case, because morality is an inherently individual judgement.
Even with a large file only the differences can be retransmitted with bittorrent, provided that the overall filesize doesn't change. At startup, bittorrent will verify the local data and then discard and redownload the chunks that don't match the checksum in the torrent file.
But rsync would be a better solution in this scenario as it was explicitly designed for such a use and will handle changes to the file much better.
1. Texting may be cheaper than a call. 2. Texting makes no noise (think movie theater). 3. Texting is asynchronous, so the other person can reply at his/her leisure.
The real question is: Why would somebody pay for a cell phone plan that charges for *received* text messages? Only in the US!
For a high school student you seem to know an awful lot about the economy. I'd bet good money that your perspective will change once you have kids to support and the company you work for goes belly up because of management's mistakes.
The answer depends mostly on the source I'm copying from, and has little to do with the code I'm pasting into.
Are you sure? If I paste code, I want it to be indented according to the surrounding code. Let's say, the pasted code is just a couple of statements with no indentation, but you're inside a three-times nested if block. Do you want the code pasted with no indentation as copied, or do you want it indented so it visually fits inside the if block?
There's a simple fix - just change the Python spec to mandate four spaces for indentation. Then this entire issue simply disappears.
I'm trying to argue that with the right tools there is no issue. But we may have to agree to disagree.
Your editor should see that the the current code block is indented with 4 spaces and convert the pasted code to this indentation style on the fly. It should also be smart enough to figure out that you're working on Python code and adapt its settings itself. No intervention necessary.
As I said, even Vim can do this (1). So does TextMate, a popular OS X editor. These aren't even dedicated IDEs and if they can do it, there's no excuse for your editor not doing it.
And yes, I want my tools to make an educated guess as often as they can, because that's what they are there for: To save me time by automating monotonous and highly repetitive tasks.
Also, if your professor uses 3 spaces for indentation and you only use Python in his class, you might want to consider adapting to his style.
(1) It's been a while, but I think that set autoindent smartindent does the trick.
Okay, I think I understand your problem. I guess you're using bad tools then. Even Vim is smart enough to adapt the indentation of pasted code, you just have to tell it how. A modern IDE will almost always change indentation according to the relevant standard. Your beef shouldn't be with Python, which gracefully handles different styles, but with your editor that creates bad code.
An easy fix to your problem would be telling your editor to auto-convert every tab to 4 spaces. Then your code would be compatible with your professor's code.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't know what you're talking about.
Here's a clue: There can be agnostic atheists and gnostic atheits. Just as there can be agnostic theists and gnostic theists. The two concepts:
* believing/disbelieving the existence of God and
* believing that the existance of God can/cannot be known or proven
are orthogonal, even if they are philosophically related.
As an aside, "agnostics" who feel the need to bash atheists are just as tiring as atheists who bash religious people or religious people who bash everybody else. Which isn't all surprising, because the need to put other people down is a character trait and not dependent on any belief system.
There's nothing dogmatic about atheism. If God were to magically appear and make a convincing case that he's really real, then most atheists would probably concede that they were wrong.
We just don't think it's going to happen, ever.
Agnostics don't have a monopoly on open-mindedness.
The spreadsheet application can only do spreadsheets.
To the contrary, I bet most spreadsheets today are turing-complete, meaning they can conceivably simulate any computer program.
It's not called general purpose computer for nothing, you know.
Where do you get your facts? Since the Islamic revolution Iran has fought exactly one war, which was started by Iraq.
Also, what is your personal interest in seeing the Iranian government collapse?
Great work! Not only is he stuck with a 50k phone bill, but now his internet bill will skyrocket as well thanks to the slashdotting of his site.
Are you his competitor by any chance?
I thought the warheads were American as well. Of course, the truly paranoid might worry about the existence of a kill switch in the missiles.
Considering that the UK lease their submarine nukes from the US, the availability of the Windows source is probably the least of their problems.
You allow the students to take the laptop home, yet expect to be able to lock down the machines? Good luck with that!
I'd rather spent the money on more and/or better teachers.
You don't state facts, you're cherry-picking them. The claim that Mohammed had sex with Aisha at age 9 is disputed. Others have put her at 14 to 15. While this seems weird today, applying 21st-century standards to the 7th century is disingenuous at best.
You also conveniently ignore what Aisha did after Mohammed's death to advance the power of women in Beduin society at that time and that she is revered as a role model by millions of women around the world today. They probably all hate themselves in your view, right?
Not to mention that if you go by the evil things done by men in the name of religion, all religions are equally guilty. Fortunately, humans are good at compartmentalizing, religious people probably more so.
Your zealous focus on Islam betrays your hate.
The electricity that comes out of my outlet might come from a coal plant, but that's not the point. The fact is, if I consume X kWh in a year my provider will put the same amount of electricity into the grid. If more people have a contract with a provider of renewable energy, the ratio of electricity that is generated from renewable sources increases.
Of course, once electricity is put into the grid there's no way to distinguish it from other sources. But electricity is electricity. There's no point-of-original labeling with electrons because they are indistinguishable. Compare that to meat for example, where the origin can have an impact on the quality.
What you say is probably true in rural communities, but in cities the utilities lay the groundwork when the house is built and/or renovated.
For example, it's very common to see cable outlets that are plugged making them unusable in new apartments. Installation consists of a guy removing the plug.
Yes, but the amount of gas or electricity that is put in by the companies is dependent on how many customers they have.
Let's say, 100 people have a contract with company A and use X kWh per month. 200 people have a contract with company B and use Y kWh per month. Company A has to provide X kWh into the grid and will bill its customers for that. Likewise, company B has to put Y kWh into the grid and will bill its customers for that.
Notice that I didn't mention who owns the pipes and maintains the grid. It could by company A or B or none of them. Also, for any given customer it doesn't matter if the electricity he gets comes from company A or B. Because electrons are electrons after all.
This is how it works in Germany, and the system works really well. There's actual competition and consumer satisfaction is high.
Nope, as the other poster has mentioned, here in Germany the consumer chooses his provider and depending on where you live you can choose between a dozen or so suppliers. Also, switching is very easy. Basically, all you have to do is fill out a form with your new supplier and he will take care of everything else.
The system actually works really well. There's real competition and it's hassle-free.
I, for example, have a contract with a provider that provides 100% renewable energy into the grid. And I only pay about a Euro more per month than I paid before.
It is exceptionally rare to have a choice for electrical providers. Ditto for gas and cable. Probably 99% of the U.S. population is served by one or fewer telephone companies, one or fewer cable company, and one or fewer natural gas providers.
I just want to point out that this doesn't have to be the case. In Germany there's a lot of competition among different electricity providers and there are more and more gas providers propping up, too. The way it works is that the last mile is either contracted out by the city or owned by the city outright. But the consumer can purchase his electricity from any company that he wants to. This has been great for consumers, because they can really choose a contract that services their specific needs, like household size. Or you can shave of a few cents by choosing online billing. And for the environmentally conscious, you can choose a provider that supplies 100% renewable energy.
Also, switching is super easy. Just fill out a form with your new provider of choice and give him your old contract number with your current provider. The new provider will take care of everything else, as mandated by law. Our politicians actually did something right in this case.
I've apparently made calls to other people at 8 in the morning without remembering it 2 hours later. In fact, I was quite confused when they referenced the earlier call, I didn't believe them at first. But I figured that my cell phone log isn't lying to me. I was told that I was quite intelligible, too. Oh yeah, before somebody asks, I wasn't high or on sleeping meds, although I might have gone to bed late.
You're wrong, collective action can be legally justified when an individual taking the same action is not.
The most salient example is the use of force. The state reserves the right to do that, which is the basis for the both the police and the criminal justice system. Individual use of force is prohibited by the state with the exception of self-defense.
Assigning morality to collective action doesn't make a whole lot of sense in any case, because morality is an inherently individual judgement.
That depends on the size of the changes. If only a few MB of the 4GB change then there wouldn't be much flooding.
Even with a large file only the differences can be retransmitted with bittorrent, provided that the overall filesize doesn't change. At startup, bittorrent will verify the local data and then discard and redownload the chunks that don't match the checksum in the torrent file.
But rsync would be a better solution in this scenario as it was explicitly designed for such a use and will handle changes to the file much better.
Amen, brother! I couldn't agree more.
Check again. Prices for an iPhone 3G are 590 Euro (8 GB) or 675 Euro (16 GB) in Germany. These have no simlock and sell without a contract.
PS: When will Slashdot finally support Unicode!
A few reasons:
1. Texting may be cheaper than a call.
2. Texting makes no noise (think movie theater).
3. Texting is asynchronous, so the other person can reply at his/her leisure.
The real question is: Why would somebody pay for a cell phone plan that charges for *received* text messages? Only in the US!
For a high school student you seem to know an awful lot about the economy. I'd bet good money that your perspective will change once you have kids to support and the company you work for goes belly up because of management's mistakes.
The answer depends mostly on the source I'm copying from, and has little to do with the code I'm pasting into.
Are you sure? If I paste code, I want it to be indented according to the surrounding code. Let's say, the pasted code is just a couple of statements with no indentation, but you're inside a three-times nested if block. Do you want the code pasted with no indentation as copied, or do you want it indented so it visually fits inside the if block?
There's a simple fix - just change the Python spec to mandate four spaces for indentation. Then this entire issue simply disappears.
I'm trying to argue that with the right tools there is no issue. But we may have to agree to disagree.
Your editor should see that the the current code block is indented with 4 spaces and convert the pasted code to this indentation style on the fly. It should also be smart enough to figure out that you're working on Python code and adapt its settings itself. No intervention necessary.
As I said, even Vim can do this (1). So does TextMate, a popular OS X editor. These aren't even dedicated IDEs and if they can do it, there's no excuse for your editor not doing it.
And yes, I want my tools to make an educated guess as often as they can, because that's what they are there for: To save me time by automating monotonous and highly repetitive tasks.
Also, if your professor uses 3 spaces for indentation and you only use Python in his class, you might want to consider adapting to his style.
(1) It's been a while, but I think that set autoindent smartindent does the trick.
Okay, I think I understand your problem. I guess you're using bad tools then. Even Vim is smart enough to adapt the indentation of pasted code, you just have to tell it how. A modern IDE will almost always change indentation according to the relevant standard. Your beef shouldn't be with Python, which gracefully handles different styles, but with your editor that creates bad code.
An easy fix to your problem would be telling your editor to auto-convert every tab to 4 spaces. Then your code would be compatible with your professor's code.