2. I haven't known any "sneering arrogant IT guys". The IT guys I've met have been normal, helpful human beings.
I have, just over 20 years ago (1989) on a VMS course in Manchester, England (yes, the world of "Life On Mars"). Most attendees were from one company -- not the one I worked for, and they really were "sneering" and "arrogant" -- and odious and sexist. The course was almost pulled half way through when a female presenter -- a regular presenter on the course who had presented it countless times before with no problems -- refused point blank to teach the class because of some really, seriously out of order barracking. In 35 years in engineering I've never seen anything like it before or since. I think it's significant that they were a "pack", all from the same company.
Fucking Gods! The is the most sexists post I've seen in slashdot in ages! But its aimed at men so it ok right?
Women are not more intelligent than men, statistics prove it. Women simply have different options and opportunities.
And neurosceince also shows that on average they have different skills and different motivations. But people get upset when that's pointed out becuase they don't understand the "on average" bit.
Nobody in the UK ever has to spend half a day at the UK equivalent of the DMV unless they work there. Vehicle registrations are dealt with by main post offices (or online, of course) and by post. Do it when you're in town, 20 minutes tops if you pick a busy time, more likely 5.
I really wish people could understand that the only way people find out about new music is to hear it.
What would happen if they got their way and it was no longer possible for people to trade or share music?
It would be possible for you to hear music. But only the music that they chose for you.
From your description it sounds as if it's an algorithm that's more general than just GPS. Maybe it works for all hyperbolic positioning systems, or maybe even for all positioning systems. I'd look at the journals and conferences of the Institute of Navigation and Royal Institute of Navigation.
It's much, much harder with media that claims to be unbiased, but of course, is -- because all of them are. The BBC being the perfect example. They claim to be unbiased, but are very much not. It is, however, often hard to tell what their underlying spin is. Thus, I would never ever trust one single thing they say.
Actually, it's not hard to read through the BBC's bias once you realise where it comes from. Because of the way it is set up and regulated, it is in a near permanent state of fear of being accused of bias, which means that it tends to give disproportionate prominence to the views of those most likely to complain. That means that somebody who says the Earth is flat gets equal time to somebody who says that it's round (exaggerating here, but that's the mechanism at work). Once you realise that, it's usually not hard to tell which views are those of people who know what's going on and which views are the screwballs'. What you can be pretty sure of with the BBC is that they don't make their news stories up, because the regulators come down on them like a ton of bricks if they do. Unlike the press, which invents news with impunity.
Only becasue somebody has probably patented "A means of generating shading with an absence of color by setting the R, G and B elements of the shading to identical values between 0 and 0xFF, not including the boundary values themselves which are covered by separate patents".
Also there are many people who are born with ambiguous genitalia, and not all are surgically "assigned" to one sex or the other. Sure, they will have a genetic gender, but they might not know it and anyway it's not what the medical records need to show.
But assuming the worst and trying to design a system that'll allow people's names to be Chinese characters when you don't do business in China, have presence in China, or ever ever plan to? That's ridiculous.
No, but making a conscious design decision not to accommodate names in non-Roman character sets, and documenting that in the specification, is sensible.
If you don't even HAVE a name, then I submit you're crazier than the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince.
The discussion gives examples of people who don't have names, such as somebody born into slavery in the Sudan. In that case, it's not the person who is crazy. Do you need to account for that in your data entry? Well, it depends. If it's online sales then the chances are that that person will never be a customer. If you're doing a missing persons database for a relief agency, though, you probably need to find a way to account for them. So no, you don't have to address all of the cases that the author mentions, but if you're smart you'll at least consider whether you should in your particular context.
And when a Chinese woman gets married she usually prepends her husband's family name to hers. My wife's name is Lo Chan Suk Kuen. The Lo is the Chinese form of my family name, "Chan" is her family name and "Suk Kuen" is her given name. None of them is a middle name.
Yes, there are people and entities that do not fit into a normal name slot in a database, and no, I don't care at all because it hasn't been a problem for anything I've written in the last thrity years.
Well, you don't know of any problems it has caused. The people who couldn't do business with you or your employer (or who could, but found it annoying) probably just quietly went elsewhere with their business. Sure, you're not going to account for every case the RA mentions, but I think he's right: not handling a particular case should be a definite design decision, not simply a lack of thought.
Historically the same, but they've diverged in time. Like "Bullen" and "Boleyn", "Rowe" and "Roe", and lots of others. Same origin, but bearers of those names are likely to get at least frustrated if you get them wrong.
On a completely different subject, though: Why is it that when you travel to the US, you get asked questions like "Are you coming to the US to commit an act of terror?" Does anybody expect to hear anything other than "No" in answer? Is it simply a sort of idiotic bullying tactic - treating you like a fool by forcing you to answer silly questions that clearly nobody takes serious?
My understanding is that it's because the standard of proof required to deport you for lying on the entry form is considerably less than that required to convict you of any offence relating to planning a terrorist act.
I said "successfully". As has been repeatedly pointed out in this thread a simple 2-d curve doesn't work, because the effect on revenue depends on the mix of different types of taxation and also on external factors such as the tax regime in supplier and customer countries, the ease with which your key businesses can be offshored, the overall state of the global economy and countless other factors. Martin Gardner's meme is correct. You might get a nice curve like Laffer's if you could completely isolate a single economy and completely control absolutely all parameters in that economy. There might even be a case in which the optimum level comes out at 15%. But in any real economy it will be as tangled as Gardner's meme because as you change the overall level of taxation (even if you only have one single type of tax -- just income tax, for instance, and no corporation tax, capital gains tax, inheritance tax, purchase tax, etc.) loads of other things will independently change and you will not move along the theoretical curve.
Thanks for the Gardner link, by the way -- I couldn't remember if that graph was his or Ian Stewart's.
And at the outset I suggested that a limitation of the Laffer curve is that it only has a single independent variable. There are loads of ways to change the overall taxation level, and they won't all have the same economic effect.
The strangest situation I've seen the default ideas on tax increases used is on cigarette and other "sin" taxes. The legislators claim that they want to reduce smoking by increasing cigarette taxes by 10%, and then they simultaneously claim that revenue from cigarette taxes will increase by 10%.
It's the bit about reducing smoking that's bogus. The government knows that cigarettes are a textbook case of a highly inflexible good, demand for which is very unresponsive to price changes.
For reference, the tax theory in question is the Laffer curve. The idea is that at 0% tax the tax revenue is 0, and at 100% tax the tax revenue is zero (because it's not worth anybody's while to work within the system), so the optimum level of tax must be somewhere in-between. The interesting thing about this theory (aside from the fact that it assumes only a single independent variable) is that it is only ever trotted out to suggest that taxes are too high and that lowering them will increase revenue. Never to suggest that taxes are too low and that increasing them will increase tax revenue, although unless somebody has successfully plotted the curve (nobody has) then it supports either theory just as well (unless you are already at the 0% or 100% point). The original "lowering taxes grows the economy and thus increases the tax base" is just wishful thinking without a solid economic model and knowledge of where you are in that model. Oh, and for "tax revenue" you can substitute pretty much any measure of economic success you like. All this economic model actually predicts if that lowering taxes might grow the economy, might shrink it, or might leave it the same.
Its probably to late to make a large enough batch that are 180 degrees out of phase with the ones currently being used, but for next time, making 50% of them out of phase would make them self-quieting.
Maybe a ringtone or mp3 that is 180 degrees out could be quickly deployed.
Two negatives make a positive, and two positives make a negative. Yeah, right.
Slashdot Mirror
They remember Watson and Crick, but not Rosalind Franklin.
And not Raymond Gosling. And not Jerry Donohue. And not Linus Pauling. And not -- er, what was your point again?
No wonder all worthy Nobel Prize winners, all Field Medal winners, all Chess Masters, greatest technologists, all greatest writers are Men.
So the first person to be awarded two Nobel prizes clearly wasn't "worthy". I think the problem is with your narrow conception of "worth".
2. I haven't known any "sneering arrogant IT guys". The IT guys I've met have been normal, helpful human beings.
I have, just over 20 years ago (1989) on a VMS course in Manchester, England (yes, the world of "Life On Mars"). Most attendees were from one company -- not the one I worked for, and they really were "sneering" and "arrogant" -- and odious and sexist. The course was almost pulled half way through when a female presenter -- a regular presenter on the course who had presented it countless times before with no problems -- refused point blank to teach the class because of some really, seriously out of order barracking. In 35 years in engineering I've never seen anything like it before or since. I think it's significant that they were a "pack", all from the same company.
Fucking Gods! The is the most sexists post I've seen in slashdot in ages! But its aimed at men so it ok right?
Women are not more intelligent than men, statistics prove it. Women simply have different options and opportunities.
And neurosceince also shows that on average they have different skills and different motivations. But people get upset when that's pointed out becuase they don't understand the "on average" bit.
Nobody in the UK ever has to spend half a day at the UK equivalent of the DMV unless they work there. Vehicle registrations are dealt with by main post offices (or online, of course) and by post. Do it when you're in town, 20 minutes tops if you pick a busy time, more likely 5.
The media need to grow some stones and call out Apple and these Apple fanatics.
But how would that help their advertising revenues?
I really wish people could understand that the only way people find out about new music is to hear it. What would happen if they got their way and it was no longer possible for people to trade or share music?
It would be possible for you to hear music. But only the music that they chose for you.
From your description it sounds as if it's an algorithm that's more general than just GPS. Maybe it works for all hyperbolic positioning systems, or maybe even for all positioning systems. I'd look at the journals and conferences of the Institute of Navigation and Royal Institute of Navigation.
It's much, much harder with media that claims to be unbiased, but of course, is -- because all of them are. The BBC being the perfect example. They claim to be unbiased, but are very much not. It is, however, often hard to tell what their underlying spin is. Thus, I would never ever trust one single thing they say.
Actually, it's not hard to read through the BBC's bias once you realise where it comes from. Because of the way it is set up and regulated, it is in a near permanent state of fear of being accused of bias, which means that it tends to give disproportionate prominence to the views of those most likely to complain. That means that somebody who says the Earth is flat gets equal time to somebody who says that it's round (exaggerating here, but that's the mechanism at work). Once you realise that, it's usually not hard to tell which views are those of people who know what's going on and which views are the screwballs'. What you can be pretty sure of with the BBC is that they don't make their news stories up, because the regulators come down on them like a ton of bricks if they do. Unlike the press, which invents news with impunity.
There is no grey area here.
Only becasue somebody has probably patented "A means of generating shading with an absence of color by setting the R, G and B elements of the shading to identical values between 0 and 0xFF, not including the boundary values themselves which are covered by separate patents".
Irish yes. Scots don't have the O' prefix unless their family earlier migrated from Ireland.
Also there are many people who are born with ambiguous genitalia, and not all are surgically "assigned" to one sex or the other. Sure, they will have a genetic gender, but they might not know it and anyway it's not what the medical records need to show.
But assuming the worst and trying to design a system that'll allow people's names to be Chinese characters when you don't do business in China, have presence in China, or ever ever plan to? That's ridiculous.
No, but making a conscious design decision not to accommodate names in non-Roman character sets, and documenting that in the specification, is sensible.
If you don't even HAVE a name, then I submit you're crazier than the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince.
The discussion gives examples of people who don't have names, such as somebody born into slavery in the Sudan. In that case, it's not the person who is crazy. Do you need to account for that in your data entry? Well, it depends. If it's online sales then the chances are that that person will never be a customer. If you're doing a missing persons database for a relief agency, though, you probably need to find a way to account for them. So no, you don't have to address all of the cases that the author mentions, but if you're smart you'll at least consider whether you should in your particular context.
No, sir, you cannot have an irrational number for a name.
A Life of Pi?
And when a Chinese woman gets married she usually prepends her husband's family name to hers. My wife's name is Lo Chan Suk Kuen. The Lo is the Chinese form of my family name, "Chan" is her family name and "Suk Kuen" is her given name. None of them is a middle name.
Sure it counts. The question was about numbers in the name, not digits or numerals.
Seven of Nine?
Yes, there are people and entities that do not fit into a normal name slot in a database, and no, I don't care at all because it hasn't been a problem for anything I've written in the last thrity years.
Well, you don't know of any problems it has caused. The people who couldn't do business with you or your employer (or who could, but found it annoying) probably just quietly went elsewhere with their business. Sure, you're not going to account for every case the RA mentions, but I think he's right: not handling a particular case should be a definite design decision, not simply a lack of thought.
Historically the same, but they've diverged in time. Like "Bullen" and "Boleyn", "Rowe" and "Roe", and lots of others. Same origin, but bearers of those names are likely to get at least frustrated if you get them wrong.
On a completely different subject, though: Why is it that when you travel to the US, you get asked questions like "Are you coming to the US to commit an act of terror?" Does anybody expect to hear anything other than "No" in answer? Is it simply a sort of idiotic bullying tactic - treating you like a fool by forcing you to answer silly questions that clearly nobody takes serious?
My understanding is that it's because the standard of proof required to deport you for lying on the entry form is considerably less than that required to convict you of any offence relating to planning a terrorist act.
I said "successfully". As has been repeatedly pointed out in this thread a simple 2-d curve doesn't work, because the effect on revenue depends on the mix of different types of taxation and also on external factors such as the tax regime in supplier and customer countries, the ease with which your key businesses can be offshored, the overall state of the global economy and countless other factors. Martin Gardner's meme is correct. You might get a nice curve like Laffer's if you could completely isolate a single economy and completely control absolutely all parameters in that economy. There might even be a case in which the optimum level comes out at 15%. But in any real economy it will be as tangled as Gardner's meme because as you change the overall level of taxation (even if you only have one single type of tax -- just income tax, for instance, and no corporation tax, capital gains tax, inheritance tax, purchase tax, etc.) loads of other things will independently change and you will not move along the theoretical curve.
Thanks for the Gardner link, by the way -- I couldn't remember if that graph was his or Ian Stewart's.
And at the outset I suggested that a limitation of the Laffer curve is that it only has a single independent variable. There are loads of ways to change the overall taxation level, and they won't all have the same economic effect.
The strangest situation I've seen the default ideas on tax increases used is on cigarette and other "sin" taxes. The legislators claim that they want to reduce smoking by increasing cigarette taxes by 10%, and then they simultaneously claim that revenue from cigarette taxes will increase by 10%.
It's the bit about reducing smoking that's bogus. The government knows that cigarettes are a textbook case of a highly inflexible good, demand for which is very unresponsive to price changes.
For reference, the tax theory in question is the Laffer curve. The idea is that at 0% tax the tax revenue is 0, and at 100% tax the tax revenue is zero (because it's not worth anybody's while to work within the system), so the optimum level of tax must be somewhere in-between. The interesting thing about this theory (aside from the fact that it assumes only a single independent variable) is that it is only ever trotted out to suggest that taxes are too high and that lowering them will increase revenue. Never to suggest that taxes are too low and that increasing them will increase tax revenue, although unless somebody has successfully plotted the curve (nobody has) then it supports either theory just as well (unless you are already at the 0% or 100% point). The original "lowering taxes grows the economy and thus increases the tax base" is just wishful thinking without a solid economic model and knowledge of where you are in that model. Oh, and for "tax revenue" you can substitute pretty much any measure of economic success you like. All this economic model actually predicts if that lowering taxes might grow the economy, might shrink it, or might leave it the same.
Its probably to late to make a large enough batch that are 180 degrees out of phase with the ones currently being used, but for next time, making 50% of them out of phase would make them self-quieting.
Maybe a ringtone or mp3 that is 180 degrees out could be quickly deployed.
Two negatives make a positive, and two positives make a negative. Yeah, right.
Like this? "Yeah, right" is about right.