Oh, for God's sake. This is excellent science; it's very rare that scientists in an observational science (such as paleontology) get the chance to do such elegant experimental work, and they should be applauded for finding a way to do so.
... about how evil and "cowardly" terrorists are, how we have to stand firm against them, never negotiate, never give into their demands, etc. And then they want us to limit our lives in assorted stupid ways because if we don't, "Oh no! The terrorists will get us!" Anyone see the contradiction here?
I'm not offended, exactly; just concerned that I see a lot of disparagement of liberal arts educations on/., and in techie forums generally, and it bugs me. It's not a personal thing -- I have a math BS and CS MS, and am currently working on a biostatistics PhD. But I have a lot of respect for the liberal arts grads I've worked with and learned from.
Perhaps you can explain to us how the arctic ice, floating in the ocean, could raise the sea level by melting?
Everyone else reading this can go grab some ice cubes, put them in a glass, and fill it to the brim with water, and watch as it DOES NOT OVERFLOW when the ice is melted.
Eureka, d00d.
Jesus H. Christ. This chestnut comes up in every single discussion of global warming and rising sea levels, and every single time, the dumbass posting it dances around thumping his chest to prove how much smarter he is than all those whacko environmentalist types who don't understand that ice floats.
Listen up, dumbass: most of the ice isn't floating. Most of it is sitting on Greenland, which is a very, very big island (pay attention, dumbass, I'm using some big words here) and on Antarctica, which is a continent. (Do you understand "continent," dumbass? I know it has a lot of syllables, so I'll go slowly.) That means that, if it melts, water which isn't in the ocean right now -- in any form, solid or liquid -- will be in the ocean, and that means (are you still with me? I know this is tough for you, but try to follow along) sea levels will rise.
Chew that over, and get back to us when you learn to think. Dumbass.
Although I agree with most of what you say, I'm a little disturbed by your hostility towards liberal arts education ("BAs in Medieval History and Philosophy"). Someone with a good liberal arts degree may not know anything about the technical side of things, but ought to be smart enough to hire people who do, and listen to them. IMO a big part of the problem is with people who start their educations in subjects like "management," and never break out of that mold. Business school: college for people who are scared of real work! My point is, don't confuse subjects which, though non-technical, are genuine intellectual pursuits requiring intelligence and discipline with the mindless pseudo-intellectual crap that characterizes MBAs and their ilk.
The advances in communication have sadly made it easier and easier for predators to engage in criminal activity.
Please provide evidence that this is so. I don't mean nattering about MTV and video games; I mean actual hard evidence that children are more likely now to be molested, abducted, abused, etc. than in the pre-cell-phone, pre-internet era.
I doubt you can. And I doubt anyone else can either.
Think about it this way: if you measure c the way you'd normally measure velocties, say in meters / second, then you get c^2 in units of meters^2/seconds^2. (IIRC, c ~= 3 * 10^8 m/s, so c^2 ~= 9 * 10^16 m^2/s^2). But let's say you want to measure velocity in units such that c = 1 -- say, measure it in light-seconds/second. Then c^2 = 1 ls^2/s^2, this is true.
But a light-second is huge, and a light-second squared is even huger. In fact, of course, 1 ls ~= 3 * 10^8 m, and thus 1 ls^2 ~= 9 * 10^16 m^2. (Again, IIRC.) Try translating that into units that make sense on an earthly scale: if I throw a 1 kg weight at you at 1 m/s, you're going to feel the impact when you catch it. Now think about that scaled up by almost 17 orders of magnitude.
These Earth-borne creatures are red because of the propensity of life on Earth to use iron as a key component in blood. I would expect that Martian creatures would have copper coursing through their veins.
Um... you know why Mars is the "Red Planet," right? All that red stuff lying around everywhere?
1) Because in 1976, even a Republican President could call for an expensive nationwide effort and people would say, "Yeah, that makes sense." In 2005, the Rand-at-home / Torquemada-abroad wackos currently running the Republican Party would scream bloody murder. Unless you could find some way to tie it into the War On Terror, Evolution, And Gay Marriage, of course.
2) There are at least two answers to this one. First is that in 1976, we didn't have nearly enough information to know whether or not swine flu was the same as the 1918 strain; it was just a guess, and that guess may (I have no idea whether this is the case or not) have been proved wrong with the knowledge we now have. Second, there's no reason to believe that avian flu is the same strain as the 1918 variety; the fear is that it could be as bad as the 1918-19 pandemic, not that it's the exact same disease.
Rocket science isn't science either; it's engineering. Of course, there's no subject called "rocket science" -- people who want to be "rocket scientists" study aerospace engineering.
That being said, although of course computers are synthetic, there are times when modern systems are so complex and unpredictable that they feel like something from the natural world, and thus a scientific approach is the one that works in practice. The best hackers think very much like scientists, and it's no surprise that increasingly scientists are becoming hackers as well. The irony here is that this is the kind of thinking that CS tries to discourage.
In this circumstance the Governments job is to protect the general public from those that would do it harm. Do you really want to make that harder than it needs to be ?
Maybe his boss isn't naive, but just... wait for it... a decent human being?!?
*gasp*
It happens, you know.
Re:Its a matter of perspective
on
Pay vs. Happiness
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
one of the founding principles of contemporary organizational behaviour theory states that pay is completely independant of employee happiness... working at Taco Bell for minimum wage might actually be fun
One strongly suspects that the founders of "contemporary organizational theory" have never actually had to try to support themselves and/or their families on minimum wage.
Well, it may be "normal terminology" in your world, but it's stupid terminology. "Entry level" to me and every other person who speaks English rather than Buzzword means exactly that: brand-new, wet behind the ears doesn't know much, but is willing and has the potential to learn. There is no such thing as an entry level position with 2-3 years experience. It's an oxymoron. Calling this an entry level position and then asking for that level of experience is pretty much guaranteed to get you people who aren't qualified at any level.
Saying "the experience doesn't have to formal" -- what the hell does that mean? So maybe the guy's been maintaining his personal web page with PHP and MySQL for a couple of years; are you going to accept that? If so, that's great, but don't expect other people to interpret it that way.
First of all, the entire "National Security vs. Free Speech argument" far, far predates 9/11 and the Patriot Act; in the US, it goes back over two centuries, at least to the Alien and Sedition Acts. Second, the use of Free Speech Zones has expanded dramatically since 9/11. And third, what happened in Seattle (rather overblown in the reporting, I suspect) was the action of a small group of organized vandals; to abrogate the entire assembly clause of the First Amendment on that basis is absurd. The Bill of Rights is designed to make it hard for the government to control people; that may be unfortunate from some people's POV, but the alternative is much worse.
Here is a pretty good explanation. It's important to note that they are, under the current administration, almost always kept completely out of the President's sight and hearing.
Does anyone have an example of speech being restricted that is not solely designed to prevent the dissemination of information that could result in harm to U.S. troops or citizens?
I defy you to explain to me how "free speech zones" prevent harm to anybody, or are anything but a blatant exercise of power on the government's part for power's sake.
Bingo. It's very easy for Americans and Western Europeans to look at China and say, "Oh, they're Communists, that explains it." But they're not any more, by any reasonable definition. The scary thing to me, as an American, is how quickly China and America are converging on the "authoritarian capitalist" model; to pull out the obligatory Orwell reference, I suspect that right now it's the turn of Oceania and Eastasia to gang up on Eurasia. Somewhere down the line, of course, the alignment (both political and philosophical) will change; it always does.
Any of those sentences is perfectly understandable by a speaker of either British and American English, and in fact I've heard all those forms on both sides of the Atlantic. One or the other may be more common in one location than the other, but it's by no means exclusive.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, for God's sake. This is excellent science; it's very rare that scientists in an observational science (such as paleontology) get the chance to do such elegant experimental work, and they should be applauded for finding a way to do so.
[shrug] You either get why pure knowledge is important, or you don't. If you don't, no explanation anyone can give is going to help.
... the clockwork owl in Clash of the Titans?
Clearly the ancient Greeks had mechanical technology beyond even modern capabilities!
So ... when did Wikipedia start charging you $12 to read about fettucine alfredo? Or, um, anything else?
Right. That's what I thought.
Microsoft is like the youngest uncle at the family renions, too young to know that he's too old to be hanging out with the kids anymore.
You just made my day with that line. Thanks.
... about how evil and "cowardly" terrorists are, how we have to stand firm against them, never negotiate, never give into their demands, etc. And then they want us to limit our lives in assorted stupid ways because if we don't, "Oh no! The terrorists will get us!" Anyone see the contradiction here?
Ah hah. I didn't know that about Fiorina.
/., and in techie forums generally, and it bugs me. It's not a personal thing -- I have a math BS and CS MS, and am currently working on a biostatistics PhD. But I have a lot of respect for the liberal arts grads I've worked with and learned from.
I'm not offended, exactly; just concerned that I see a lot of disparagement of liberal arts educations on
Perhaps you can explain to us how the arctic ice, floating in the ocean, could raise the sea level by melting?
Everyone else reading this can go grab some ice cubes, put them in a glass, and fill it to the brim with water, and watch as it DOES NOT OVERFLOW when the ice is melted.
Eureka, d00d.
Jesus H. Christ. This chestnut comes up in every single discussion of global warming and rising sea levels, and every single time, the dumbass posting it dances around thumping his chest to prove how much smarter he is than all those whacko environmentalist types who don't understand that ice floats.
Listen up, dumbass: most of the ice isn't floating. Most of it is sitting on Greenland, which is a very, very big island (pay attention, dumbass, I'm using some big words here) and on Antarctica, which is a continent. (Do you understand "continent," dumbass? I know it has a lot of syllables, so I'll go slowly.) That means that, if it melts, water which isn't in the ocean right now -- in any form, solid or liquid -- will be in the ocean, and that means (are you still with me? I know this is tough for you, but try to follow along) sea levels will rise.
Chew that over, and get back to us when you learn to think. Dumbass.
Although I agree with most of what you say, I'm a little disturbed by your hostility towards liberal arts education ("BAs in Medieval History and Philosophy"). Someone with a good liberal arts degree may not know anything about the technical side of things, but ought to be smart enough to hire people who do, and listen to them. IMO a big part of the problem is with people who start their educations in subjects like "management," and never break out of that mold. Business school: college for people who are scared of real work! My point is, don't confuse subjects which, though non-technical, are genuine intellectual pursuits requiring intelligence and discipline with the mindless pseudo-intellectual crap that characterizes MBAs and their ilk.
The advances in communication have sadly made it easier and easier for predators to engage in criminal activity.
Please provide evidence that this is so. I don't mean nattering about MTV and video games; I mean actual hard evidence that children are more likely now to be molested, abducted, abused, etc. than in the pre-cell-phone, pre-internet era.
I doubt you can. And I doubt anyone else can either.
9 != 18.
Think about it this way: if you measure c the way you'd normally measure velocties, say in meters / second, then you get c^2 in units of meters^2/seconds^2. (IIRC, c ~= 3 * 10^8 m/s, so c^2 ~= 9 * 10^16 m^2/s^2). But let's say you want to measure velocity in units such that c = 1 -- say, measure it in light-seconds/second. Then c^2 = 1 ls^2/s^2, this is true.
But a light-second is huge, and a light-second squared is even huger. In fact, of course, 1 ls ~= 3 * 10^8 m, and thus 1 ls^2 ~= 9 * 10^16 m^2. (Again, IIRC.) Try translating that into units that make sense on an earthly scale: if I throw a 1 kg weight at you at 1 m/s, you're going to feel the impact when you catch it. Now think about that scaled up by almost 17 orders of magnitude.
These Earth-borne creatures are red because of the propensity of life on Earth to use iron as a key component in blood. I would expect that Martian creatures would have copper coursing through their veins.
... you know why Mars is the "Red Planet," right? All that red stuff lying around everywhere?
Um
It's rust. AKA "iron oxide."
1) Because in 1976, even a Republican President could call for an expensive nationwide effort and people would say, "Yeah, that makes sense." In 2005, the Rand-at-home / Torquemada-abroad wackos currently running the Republican Party would scream bloody murder. Unless you could find some way to tie it into the War On Terror, Evolution, And Gay Marriage, of course.
2) There are at least two answers to this one. First is that in 1976, we didn't have nearly enough information to know whether or not swine flu was the same as the 1918 strain; it was just a guess, and that guess may (I have no idea whether this is the case or not) have been proved wrong with the knowledge we now have. Second, there's no reason to believe that avian flu is the same strain as the 1918 variety; the fear is that it could be as bad as the 1918-19 pandemic, not that it's the exact same disease.
Rocket science isn't science either; it's engineering. Of course, there's no subject called "rocket science" -- people who want to be "rocket scientists" study aerospace engineering.
That being said, although of course computers are synthetic, there are times when modern systems are so complex and unpredictable that they feel like something from the natural world, and thus a scientific approach is the one that works in practice. The best hackers think very much like scientists, and it's no surprise that increasingly scientists are becoming hackers as well. The irony here is that this is the kind of thinking that CS tries to discourage.
In this circumstance the Governments job is to protect the general public from those that would do it harm. Do you really want to make that harder than it needs to be ?
Sic transit gloria America.
... and that, children, is why there's so much shitty bloatware. Good night.
Maybe his boss isn't naive, but just ... wait for it ... a decent human being?!?
*gasp*
It happens, you know.
one of the founding principles of contemporary organizational behaviour theory states that pay is completely independant of employee happiness ... working at Taco Bell for minimum wage might actually be fun
One strongly suspects that the founders of "contemporary organizational theory" have never actually had to try to support themselves and/or their families on minimum wage.
Well, it may be "normal terminology" in your world, but it's stupid terminology. "Entry level" to me and every other person who speaks English rather than Buzzword means exactly that: brand-new, wet behind the ears doesn't know much, but is willing and has the potential to learn. There is no such thing as an entry level position with 2-3 years experience. It's an oxymoron. Calling this an entry level position and then asking for that level of experience is pretty much guaranteed to get you people who aren't qualified at any level.
Saying "the experience doesn't have to formal" -- what the hell does that mean? So maybe the guy's been maintaining his personal web page with PHP and MySQL for a couple of years; are you going to accept that? If so, that's great, but don't expect other people to interpret it that way.
First of all, the entire "National Security vs. Free Speech argument" far, far predates 9/11 and the Patriot Act; in the US, it goes back over two centuries, at least to the Alien and Sedition Acts. Second, the use of Free Speech Zones has expanded dramatically since 9/11. And third, what happened in Seattle (rather overblown in the reporting, I suspect) was the action of a small group of organized vandals; to abrogate the entire assembly clause of the First Amendment on that basis is absurd. The Bill of Rights is designed to make it hard for the government to control people; that may be unfortunate from some people's POV, but the alternative is much worse.
Here is a pretty good explanation. It's important to note that they are, under the current administration, almost always kept completely out of the President's sight and hearing.
Does anyone have an example of speech being restricted that is not solely designed to prevent the dissemination of information that could result in harm to U.S. troops or citizens?
I defy you to explain to me how "free speech zones" prevent harm to anybody, or are anything but a blatant exercise of power on the government's part for power's sake.
Bingo. It's very easy for Americans and Western Europeans to look at China and say, "Oh, they're Communists, that explains it." But they're not any more, by any reasonable definition. The scary thing to me, as an American, is how quickly China and America are converging on the "authoritarian capitalist" model; to pull out the obligatory Orwell reference, I suspect that right now it's the turn of Oceania and Eastasia to gang up on Eurasia. Somewhere down the line, of course, the alignment (both political and philosophical) will change; it always does.
Any of those sentences is perfectly understandable by a speaker of either British and American English, and in fact I've heard all those forms on both sides of the Atlantic. One or the other may be more common in one location than the other, but it's by no means exclusive.