Yeah, that's called "realism." People in real life often rarely grow sufficiently large backbones to "do the right thing" either, particularly when they're threatened and running for their lives.
Sadly, for many people, all it takes is the "right thing" being inconvenient. It doesn't take life threatening situations or serious threats to their welfare. It just takes the "right thing" being the more inconvenient path. I wish it weren't so but I've seen it too many times to believe otherwise - try living in a condo and you'll see it all the time. But what most often makes me realize this is when someone behaves otherwise and does "the right thing" even at some cost to themself, and then I'm hit at how infrequently I see that occur.
Do you tell your boss he's a fucking idiot and that you think you could do a better job than him?
LOL yep, done that more than once. But only when it was true lol.
add to that a tolerance for vindictive assholery too... or the willingness to out asshole the guy(s) with power over you...
And the ability/willingness to choke back the truth when it tries to escape your throat...
hardest thing I ever had to do as a Ph.D. student was not tell one of my committee members how frigging stupid he was when he asked a question that was answered by the previous 10 minutes of explanation in my defence... sort of like:
me: and so if you put hot air in the balloon it expands and rises off the ground
him: Hmmmm, well so do you think that we could get the balloon to rise off the ground if we put hot air in it?
That example is only slightly over-simplified btw.
The problem for which you are suggesting a solution goes well beyond GUI's or software in general or even computers in general. Before a product is released the designer(s) should be forced to actually use the product they have designed for an extended period. Because half the crap out in the world has obviously not undergone that simple test.
Like the cup holder on GM vans when I bought mine - you pull it out of the center console and it has two spots for cups. The two spots are open to each other so if one cup leaks then the non-leaking one will also drip when you pick it up. Put anything heavy in the holder or press down on it with even a little pressure and it suddenly gives way canting forward about 45 degrees. When it is out in the operating position it obscures the controls for rear window defrost, fog lights and rear wiper. When it is out it obscures the cigarette lighters - which are otherwise quite useful even if you don't smoke. All this is obvious very quickly but either the designers didn't catch it or management didn't care. I find products like that all the time and every time my wish is that the designer be forced to use the product for a lengthy period.
There's no real problem with time travel as (the flowing river of) time is very likely an illusion created by the human mind in its attempt to put order to chaos. No time => no time travel. Solved! And relativity and relativistic effects sure become a lot more palatable once you eliminate the idea of time.
Wait a minute. You purchased two drives for use in a critical application and they had to work with a particular controller you already owned - and you didn't test the configuration when you received the units but instead waited months and until the need was critical??? Geez, I wouldn't be broadcasting that around too loudly if I were you.
OK. The way most people use the word causality implies a deterministic process, and usually also one where time moves in a specific direction (even though there is no fundamental reason that we can't run the projector backwards). Or put another way causality requires 100% repeatability and by implication deterministic predictability - or vice versa if you prefer. It seems to me that QM doesn't rely on causality in that way.
I don't disagree with your comment, or your analysis of the intent of the other comment - although I'm not sure that there are no practical, or other, benefits to asking inherently unanswerable questions. And yes I agree "Science" has improved our lives in very real and practical ways - I think it is not so clear we should extend that realization to then thinking that science should only ask practical questions or even questions that are practical to answer. The question asked by a theorist today may be practical to answer a century from now and the path from now to then could be very interesting.
For example it seems to me that despite being "only" a philosopher Zeno had something to offer mathematicians and physicists for many centuries and we are still wrestling with the different implications of a continuous or discrete universe. I also think interesting questions that seem to have no reasonable answer may have something to tell us about the fundamental nature of the universe - or the fundamental limitations of human cognition. One of the significant differences between science and philosophy is that while science primarily limits itself to asking "what happens" philosophy does not adopt that restriction.
But anyway, to drag this back to my original objection, when one person asks: How do you know what your observing isn't all an illusion?
the response: Because I'm a thinking being engaged with the world around me, not a navel-gazing mystic.
isn't insightful or an answer to the question that was asked. But it is not that response that bothers me. I am bothered by the moderators thinking insightful a response that basically boils down to "because I choose not to believe that". Ahhhh, maybe I'm just extra grumpy today;)
A similar conjecture was described in a SciAm issue about (guessing) 2-3 years ago - that our observable 3D universe might actually be a 2D universe where our perception is creating a the illusion of a third dimension that doesn't really exist. But IIRC it required the universe to have negative curvature.
I don't think it is the finiteness that is the issue but rather that it is discrete rather than continuous and that the level at which the discrete nature generates observable artefacts is much larger that had heretofore been assumed/predicted.
Because I'm a thinking being engaged with the world around me, not a navel-gazing mystic.
get modded insightful 3??? It isn't insightful, it's an avoidance of the question being asked. Even if you read into the comment meaning that isn't there, but might reasonably be thought to have been intended, it still isn't insightful. Sheesh.
It may not be typical usage but I have a need for three freezers to run off one circuit. The freezers are efficient enough that total power consumption in a day can easily be handled by the one 15 amp circuit. But if two or more freezers kick in simultaneously they would/could blow the circuit breaker. Having an overall controller decide when they get to kick in would solve that problem.
Nothing in the exploration of space requires such nonsense self-depravation
Would that be just the usual manual self-depravation or something more high-tech and automated?
> Flour Torillas and refried beans is a remarkable compact food
Hmmm, yes, a regular diet of beans in a small closed environment... should do wonders for the social atmosphere on the craft. OTOH I suppose the byproducts of digestion could be a source of fuel for the craft.
Yeah my understanding is that crimes "of moral turpitude" (and unfortunately being caught with a single joint falls into that category along with child molestation) get you banned and, in the case of possession, it takes at least 20 years of bi-annual reports and applications before they let it drop. But other minor crimes they don't seem to worry about so much - at least that's what I was told - things may have changed and of course ymmv.
Canadians entering the states (who are driving, not flying) do not need anything other than a valid drivers license and a clean criminal record (which they look up upon entering).
Are you sure about the criminal record part? I know more than one person with a record and they enter the US by car without problems.
Well you see all you have to do is tell them that you are entering so you can pay child support arrears and bob's-your-uncle you're in. Of course that only works for men.
In the early '80s there were no "older" programmers unless you were talking mainframe data processing.
And all the programmers who had been working on lab computers for more than a decade by then. Those machines were called mini-computers and they had reached the size/complexity of vaxen by the early 80's. And workstations had been around for a while by the early 80's as well.
I already replied to this but one other point is this... there are the people who bear the cost of developing software and there are the people who bear the cost of using the software. The greater the separation between the latter group and the former group the more likely that the software will have problems.
Partly it is a result of the shortened lifespan of a piece of software. When I started out most software would be used for years so whoever was footing the bill could see the point of spending some significant effort in developing it. Now things don't last as long so it's not seen as being worth investing a lot of development effort in a project. And that's true of so many other things besides software, for example, appliances.
Another factor is that powerful IDE's and other development tools enable developers to write code that they do not completely understand. This will date me but in my very first course we were given an assignment that was due in a week. We were only able to compile and execute code once per day and not at all on weekends - so you got 4 tries to get it right. That really taught desk checking and understanding your code. After that course the next thing I did was volunteer to work for free in this lab because they had a PDP-8 I could program. The development cycle on that went something like this (all through a 10 CPS ASR33 Teletype with paper tape reader/punch):
turn on computer
toggle in basic boot loader through front panel switches
use basic boot loader to load real loader
load text editor program
type in program source or read source tape and make edits
punch source program onto paper tape
load in 1st pass of assembler
have assembler make first pass over source tape and create tables in memory
load in 2nd pass of assembler
have assembler make second pass over source tape
assembler punches out binary tape
load in binary tape of your program
start program
try and debug program through console switches and single stepping cpu
if bug found try to patch executable live in memory through front console and continue or restart program
if patching not possible but machine not crashed then goto step 4
else turn power off and go to step 1.
That was maybe three hours per iteration for a modest assembler source program. It wasn't a whole lot different if you
were using the available Fortran, Algol etc. compilers since they generally had 2 or 3 passes as well and
sometimes output assembler rather than executable code, which would then mean going to step 7 above. Or they might output linkable binary which would mean loading a 2 pass linker, binary library tapes etc. etc.
The point is that there was a lot of time between steps and you generally used it to understand your program better, which led to programs with few if any bugs.
Of course things are different today but I still retain a lot of that "know what you are doing and why before you compile" attitude.
Sometimes my customers complain because such development does result in a larger bill. Eventually they find they are happy though because their maintenance costs are zero or close to it. I went through this recently with one customer - thought I wouldn't hear from them again because they had been very unhappy with the bill. A good year or so later they came back, quite happy because they had discovered all the new abilities they had with the software, and asking me to look at it because they thought they might have discovered the first bug. They hadn't but the interesting point is that they had never before experienced running any significantly complex piece of software and not finding bugs/problems on a regular basis.
The direct and consequential costs of software bugs can be staggering. Even so it is very difficult to really convince someone that reducing maintenance is a huge cost benefit making it well worth spending more up front on development costs. They will nod their heads and then want to go the way with the cheapest initial outlay.
And more than three decades ago we had time-sharing systems, interactive systems etc. that worked reliably. They ran on main-frames that didn't crash - although if you got all the disk drives seek
You don't need light to be safe at night - a least that's what my dog keeps telling me.
More seriously, where I live the lights are going full bore all night until dawn and there is virtually nobody out after 3am - it's a complete waste. At the least street lamps could only illuminate downward and be triggered by motion or thermal sensors.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, that's called "realism." People in real life often rarely grow sufficiently large backbones to "do the right thing" either, particularly when they're threatened and running for their lives.
Sadly, for many people, all it takes is the "right thing" being inconvenient. It doesn't take life threatening situations or serious threats to their welfare. It just takes the "right thing" being the more inconvenient path. I wish it weren't so but I've seen it too many times to believe otherwise - try living in a condo and you'll see it all the time. But what most often makes me realize this is when someone behaves otherwise and does "the right thing" even at some cost to themself, and then I'm hit at how infrequently I see that occur.
Do you tell your boss he's a fucking idiot and that you think you could do a better job than him?
LOL yep, done that more than once. But only when it was true lol.
add to that a tolerance for vindictive assholery too... or the willingness to out asshole the guy(s) with power over you...
And the ability/willingness to choke back the truth when it tries to escape your throat... hardest thing I ever had to do as a Ph.D. student was not tell one of my committee members how frigging stupid he was when he asked a question that was answered by the previous 10 minutes of explanation in my defence... sort of like:
me: and so if you put hot air in the balloon it expands and rises off the ground
him: Hmmmm, well so do you think that we could get the balloon to rise off the ground if we put hot air in it?
That example is only slightly over-simplified btw.
The problem for which you are suggesting a solution goes well beyond GUI's or software in general or even computers in general. Before a product is released the designer(s) should be forced to actually use the product they have designed for an extended period. Because half the crap out in the world has obviously not undergone that simple test.
Like the cup holder on GM vans when I bought mine - you pull it out of the center console and it has two spots for cups. The two spots are open to each other so if one cup leaks then the non-leaking one will also drip when you pick it up. Put anything heavy in the holder or press down on it with even a little pressure and it suddenly gives way canting forward about 45 degrees. When it is out in the operating position it obscures the controls for rear window defrost, fog lights and rear wiper. When it is out it obscures the cigarette lighters - which are otherwise quite useful even if you don't smoke. All this is obvious very quickly but either the designers didn't catch it or management didn't care. I find products like that all the time and every time my wish is that the designer be forced to use the product for a lengthy period.
There's no real problem with time travel as (the flowing river of) time is very likely an illusion created by the human mind in its attempt to put order to chaos. No time => no time travel. Solved! And relativity and relativistic effects sure become a lot more palatable once you eliminate the idea of time.
Wait a minute. You purchased two drives for use in a critical application and they had to work with a particular controller you already owned - and you didn't test the configuration when you received the units but instead waited months and until the need was critical??? Geez, I wouldn't be broadcasting that around too loudly if I were you.
OK. The way most people use the word causality implies a deterministic process, and usually also one where time moves in a specific direction (even though there is no fundamental reason that we can't run the projector backwards). Or put another way causality requires 100% repeatability and by implication deterministic predictability - or vice versa if you prefer. It seems to me that QM doesn't rely on causality in that way.
I don't disagree with your comment, or your analysis of the intent of the other comment - although I'm not sure that there are no practical, or other, benefits to asking inherently unanswerable questions. And yes I agree "Science" has improved our lives in very real and practical ways - I think it is not so clear we should extend that realization to then thinking that science should only ask practical questions or even questions that are practical to answer. The question asked by a theorist today may be practical to answer a century from now and the path from now to then could be very interesting.
For example it seems to me that despite being "only" a philosopher Zeno had something to offer mathematicians and physicists for many centuries and we are still wrestling with the different implications of a continuous or discrete universe. I also think interesting questions that seem to have no reasonable answer may have something to tell us about the fundamental nature of the universe - or the fundamental limitations of human cognition. One of the significant differences between science and philosophy is that while science primarily limits itself to asking "what happens" philosophy does not adopt that restriction.
But anyway, to drag this back to my original objection, when one person asks: ;)
How do you know what your observing isn't all an illusion?
the response:
Because I'm a thinking being engaged with the world around me, not a navel-gazing mystic.
isn't insightful or an answer to the question that was asked. But it is not that response that bothers me. I am bothered by the moderators thinking insightful a response that basically boils down to "because I choose not to believe that". Ahhhh, maybe I'm just extra grumpy today
A similar conjecture was described in a SciAm issue about (guessing) 2-3 years ago - that our observable 3D universe might actually be a 2D universe where our perception is creating a the illusion of a third dimension that doesn't really exist. But IIRC it required the universe to have negative curvature.
I don't think it is the finiteness that is the issue but rather that it is discrete rather than continuous and that the level at which the discrete nature generates observable artefacts is much larger that had heretofore been assumed/predicted.
How the hell does
Because I'm a thinking being engaged with the world around me, not a navel-gazing mystic.
get modded insightful 3??? It isn't insightful, it's an avoidance of the question being asked. Even if you read into the comment meaning that isn't there, but might reasonably be thought to have been intended, it still isn't insightful. Sheesh.
I don't think all branches of science, well let's say all branches of Physics, require causality.
It may not be typical usage but I have a need for three freezers to run off one circuit. The freezers are efficient enough that total power consumption in a day can easily be handled by the one 15 amp circuit. But if two or more freezers kick in simultaneously they would/could blow the circuit breaker. Having an overall controller decide when they get to kick in would solve that problem.
Have you ever looked at a cow? What made some poor bastard decide to milk that huge, stinking thing? Yep. Hunger!
Well it could also have been seeing calves feeding and making the connection to human babies feeding and the light bulb, or tallow wick, going on.
Nothing in the exploration of space requires such nonsense self-depravation
Would that be just the usual manual self-depravation or something more high-tech and automated?
> Flour Torillas and refried beans is a remarkable compact food
Hmmm, yes, a regular diet of beans in a small closed environment... should do wonders for the social atmosphere on the craft. OTOH I suppose the byproducts of digestion could be a source of fuel for the craft.
Yeah my understanding is that crimes "of moral turpitude" (and unfortunately being caught with a single joint falls into that category along with child molestation) get you banned and, in the case of possession, it takes at least 20 years of bi-annual reports and applications before they let it drop. But other minor crimes they don't seem to worry about so much - at least that's what I was told - things may have changed and of course ymmv.
Canadians entering the states (who are driving, not flying) do not need anything other than a valid drivers license and a clean criminal record (which they look up upon entering).
Are you sure about the criminal record part? I know more than one person with a record and they enter the US by car without problems.
Well you see all you have to do is tell them that you are entering so you can pay child support arrears and bob's-your-uncle you're in. Of course that only works for men.
In the early '80s there were no "older" programmers unless you were talking mainframe data processing.
And all the programmers who had been working on lab computers for more than a decade by then. Those machines were called mini-computers and they had reached the size/complexity of vaxen by the early 80's. And workstations had been around for a while by the early 80's as well.
I already replied to this but one other point is this... there are the people who bear the cost of developing software and there are the people who bear the cost of using the software. The greater the separation between the latter group and the former group the more likely that the software will have problems.
Partly it is a result of the shortened lifespan of a piece of software. When I started out most software would be used for years so whoever was footing the bill could see the point of spending some significant effort in developing it. Now things don't last as long so it's not seen as being worth investing a lot of development effort in a project. And that's true of so many other things besides software, for example, appliances.
Another factor is that powerful IDE's and other development tools enable developers to write code that they do not completely understand. This will date me but in my very first course we were given an assignment that was due in a week. We were only able to compile and execute code once per day and not at all on weekends - so you got 4 tries to get it right. That really taught desk checking and understanding your code. After that course the next thing I did was volunteer to work for free in this lab because they had a PDP-8 I could program. The development cycle on that went something like this (all through a 10 CPS ASR33 Teletype with paper tape reader/punch):
That was maybe three hours per iteration for a modest assembler source program. It wasn't a whole lot different if you were using the available Fortran, Algol etc. compilers since they generally had 2 or 3 passes as well and sometimes output assembler rather than executable code, which would then mean going to step 7 above. Or they might output linkable binary which would mean loading a 2 pass linker, binary library tapes etc. etc.
The point is that there was a lot of time between steps and you generally used it to understand your program better, which led to programs with few if any bugs.
Of course things are different today but I still retain a lot of that "know what you are doing and why before you compile" attitude.
Sometimes my customers complain because such development does result in a larger bill. Eventually they find they are happy though because their maintenance costs are zero or close to it. I went through this recently with one customer - thought I wouldn't hear from them again because they had been very unhappy with the bill. A good year or so later they came back, quite happy because they had discovered all the new abilities they had with the software, and asking me to look at it because they thought they might have discovered the first bug. They hadn't but the interesting point is that they had never before experienced running any significantly complex piece of software and not finding bugs/problems on a regular basis.
The direct and consequential costs of software bugs can be staggering. Even so it is very difficult to really convince someone that reducing maintenance is a huge cost benefit making it well worth spending more up front on development costs. They will nod their heads and then want to go the way with the cheapest initial outlay.
And more than three decades ago we had time-sharing systems, interactive systems etc. that worked reliably. They ran on main-frames that didn't crash - although if you got all the disk drives seek
Nothing weird about dogs and cats living together... you know, as long as it's platonic and everything *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*
"Farnham's Freehold" has the answer to that question. It's been a long time so that spelling might be a little off but I don't think so.
What about two-fours?
When was the last time you used an IP address instead of a domain name?
This morning when I was testing one of my printers that is directly connected to the lan.
You don't need light to be safe at night - a least that's what my dog keeps telling me.
More seriously, where I live the lights are going full bore all night until dawn and there is virtually nobody out after 3am - it's a complete waste. At the least street lamps could only illuminate downward and be triggered by motion or thermal sensors.