Typical Vox article, where "pro-Trump" = "racist". Continuing to deny even the remotest possibility that Hillary! was just too corrupt for many people to swallow, and that she is indicative of the political elite orchestrating the presidential election.
Bernie was never meant to be a real threat to Hillary! but the D constituents are just as fed up with the 1% as anyone else. Even without those carefully crafted primary rules, Bernie almost got out of control. The R side of the equation didn't have those rules in place, so Jeb did get displaced. That left Trump-the-outsider running against Hillary!-the-corrupt, and that's why he won.
It seems to me that even progressive publications like Vox would see through what's going on here. It's no longer (only) progressive vs. conservative. This is a different battle, orthogonal to the first one: it's the political elite pulling the levers behind the scenes, vs. actually having control of your own government.
Oh, yes, another technology that's fine to use, because you have nothing to hide. Let's put a GPS on your car as well, and log everywhere you drive. After all, it will help catch criminals, and it should bother law abiding citizens.
This technology has been around for so long that we've come to accept it, but seriously: think about it. Every document that you print can be tracked back to you, along with the exact time that you printed it. This may be only a small part of it, but it is part of the totalitarian wet-dream.
The KKK probably mostly votes Republican, but most Republicans are not members of the KKK. Same with the alt-right.
The alt-right, in simplest terms, says: multiculturalism doesn't actually work. Mixing cultures leads to conflict. Furthermore they believe specifically that Western culture is threatened by multiculturalism, because too many migrants from non-western cultures are being accepted, and failing to integrate.
There's nothing particularly racist about that. There may well be something racist in the progressive position that everyone except westerners should strive to preserve their culture.
I'm sure that arbitration can be abused. However, until the US fixes its damned court system, companies have no choice but to insist on this.
Personal example: I used to run a small company that produced a niche ERP system. Our Swiss attorney told us: Whatever you do, never sell to a customer in the US." We made one exception. We sold the system to a small organization that was just determined it was what they needed. A few months later, for reasons we were not privy to, the company fired someone who was a major user of the system. So she goes to a lawyer, to sue us, because she lost her job. I mean, really, WTF?
The tort system is a lottery, and both lawyers and plaintiffs use it as one - hoping to strike it rich off the back of someone else. The lawyers are the ones to tell their clients "no, you don't have a case, go get a life". A lawyer who takes a frivolous case to court should be fined, and required to personally pay the other side's legal expenses.
I'm so tired of the progressive crowd saying "let's you take in a few million refugees", but somehow never in their neighborhoods. So this is the chance for the progressives to put their guest rooms where their mouths are.
I hope that this is done fairly, i.e., Airbnb doesn't just front for housing that was already designated for refugees. If so, then we will see just how many liberals really practice what they preach.
I predict that the offers of rooms will be very sparse, but I am willing to be proven wrong.
A drink or two a week? That's light drinking. I think you must move in social circles where people rarely drink at all.
In southern Germany, for example, it's not at all unusual to have a beer with your lunch, and another with dinner. In France or Italy, it will be a glass of wine - about the same amount of alcohol. That's 1-2 drinks per day, every day. Plus a couple of extra drinks with your buddies on Friday or Saturday. That's average, or moderate drinking in cultures where alcohol is a normal part of life. I'm typing this in the evening, after work, while sipping my second beer of the day.
As in all things in life, there's a trade-off. Alcohol helps people relax after a stressful day. It also has a few health benefits (or some of the other things contained in drinks do). However, it's also not great for your liver, and possibly your brain, and alcohol abuse is a possibility. Life's a bitch, and then you die.
We've had this discussion before. There is just no need for Twitter to have more than 50 employees, in which case they would be rolling in money. Nearly 4000 employees, scattered over I-don't-know-how-many international offices? Stupid.
It was probably growth in an attempt to pump the stock price. Without the unrealistic VC expectations, Twitter wouldn't have a valuation anywhere over $100 million, and probably not that. But then - given what Twitter actually is - it really shouldn't be valued that high anyway.
A valuation of $50 million for a 50 person company would already be very good. They would have a stable business, and be quite the money spinner. But that's not good enough. The MBA and marketing idiots only have one word in their vocabulary: "growth". A business without growth is something they seem utterly incapable of comprehending.
I kept up with technology pretty much across the board, 10 years ago or so. But eventually you realize that
(a) this isn't part of your job - your employer only cares about particular things, which may or may not be modern
(b) you have a life, possibly a family, and that needs to be a priority as well
(c) there's too much to keep up with, and anyway, it's not possible to know what will stay important. Look ing only at programming languages: Java 8 was a big change, Javascript looks nothing like it did 10 years ago, is Ruby important? Rust? Scala?
Eventually you get tired of it. Yet another programming language, when you've used 20, and played with 20 more? It gets tiresome, and really, I haven't seen anything really innovative for ages, it's all just young folk reinventing old ideas.
I don't know the answer, but blithely saying you should keep up with the everything on your own time isn't very realistic.
I actually have no real opinion on the bill. It seems likely that the bill has been proposed more as a publicity stunt than anything else. Which is only possible, because LGBT issues have been blown so totally out of proportion.
- On the one side: This is an incredibly rare problem, once you filter out the attention seekers who don't actually have gender dysphoria. There is no need for a law that is relevant to only maybe 1 person in 20,000.
- On the other side, if someone has this unusual medical condition, and has to walk through the "wrong" restroom door, the world will not end. Which toilet they pee in should not be a social or political statement. They need to get over themselves.
In support of the latter: The gym I go to rents itself out for special events. Sometimes these are men's clubs, sometimes they are women's clubs. When that happens, it is quite normal - at a men's event - for the men to use both the men's and women's locker rooms. For a women's event, I presume it is equally normal for the women to also use both locker rooms. No one is going to get cooties. The damned sign on the door is only important if you are seeking a reason to be offended.
Someone who is truly transgender is someone whose physical development followed their genes, but whose brain development somehow (for reasons not yet understood) took the opposite path. This is true "gender dysphoria", and occurs in less than 0.01% of the population, or one person in 2000.
From these, we can realistically subtract some unknown (but probably large) proportion of people who come to terms with their physical reality, who simply function as homosexuals. This is an important group, because transgender surgery is serious stuff, and still fails to produce satisfactory genetalia of the opposite gender. If at all possible, it's better to leave a healthy body alone. Those people with gender dysphoria who absolutely cannot come to terms with their physical bodies, then transition, with the help of hormones and surgery.
For these few people affected, this should be a private matter between them and their doctors. There will inevitably be an awkward phase, between identifying their problems and completing their transitions, where it's not clear which restroom door they need to walk through. If we simply state that they need to use the door that matches their current, physical genitalia, that is surely the smallest of annoyances in the larger context. If they can "pass" and choose to use the other restroom, no one will know or care. There is no reason for any of this to be any sort of big issue.
So why _is_ it such a big issue?
I think the reason is this: We have whole boatloads of activists, who think it's cool and progressive to plaster people's private sexual problems all over the news, the internet, and social media. It's also trendy for people with unusual sexual preferences or predilections to demand some sort of public recognition. Likely there are also a lot of mentally disturbed narcissists who are just using this as a way of seeking attention. What all of these groups refuse to understand is that no one cares and who or what they have sex with, or how they sexually feel at any given moment. That's their business, and no one else wants to hear about it.
In the words of David Chappelle: "I support anyone’s right to be who they are inside, but to what degree do I have to participate in your self-image?"
The activists, the "in your face" crowd, are doing their cause a lot more harm than good. The irritation they are generating is going to backfire. That's the reason for laws like the one in TFA, just one aspect of the inevitable backlash.
First, on the side of the students: It is perfectly fine to copy code snippets. How do I safely hash a password? Unless it's a computer security course, students shouldn't be reinventing code like that. That's when you go to StackOverflow and find the canned answer from an expert. Some students (and professors) are confused about this.
Ok, with that out of the way: When plagiarism does happen, it is generally pretty blatant. Two solutions submitted, identical except for the renamed variables. It's almost insulting, that they think I won't notice. Alternatively, they pay someone else to write the program, and then cannot answer even the simplest questions about how it works.
But even if they manage to sneak a plagiarized solution through: how stupid can you be?!?! If students aren't writing the programs themselves, they will fail the exam, where copying isn't an option any more. Or, even worse, they manage to scrape through the first year exams. If they get into their sophomore year, they are allowed to fail a course and repeat it a second time. This is horrible, because they drag out the pain for 3 or 4 or 5 years before failing out of the program.
What a waste of their lives. If they can't handle the material, they're only doing themselves damage by dragging things out. Plagiarism in a technical field, where ultimately you either have the skills or not - and this will be discovered - is just unbelievably dumb.
If you're going to institute a UBI, you have to give everyone the choice to use the money as they see fit.
You know, if that would actually happen, I might support UBI. But it won't. Some people will blow their money in the first week, wind up homeless and starving, and people will want the government to step in and rescue them. So we'll wind up with UBI *and* all of the old programs.
Really, I think the approach being taken in Georgia is not bad. They are adding a work requirement to their welfare programs. It's not onerous - for example, you can pick a listed charity and volunteer 20 hours/week. What's fascinating is this: something around half of the people have decided to drop off the welfare roles. They must not have been too hungry after all...
I'd just like to point out that this is a long-running story. As with all complex issues, there are two sides.
Yes, Google has to provide a certain amount of information to the government, as part of its government contracts. however, they have already provided quite a lot of information. The DoL is now looking for historical information, and wants to interview a wide range of employees throughout the company. This is beyond the usual level of stuff that government contractors have to provide.
The DoL claims that this is because they find discrepancies in male/female pay at Google. Now, I have zero knowledge of Google's internal pay practices, but on the face of it, this is extraordinarily unlikely. First of all, the IT industry wage-gap has already been thoroughly debunked: a gap only exists if you deliberately ignore things like years taken off for childcare, which result in less experience and missed promotion opportunities. Second, Google is big enough, and under enough observation, that their HR department will be extraordinarily careful about issues like this.
All of which leads me to suspect that there's a hidden motive here. Maybe someone in the DoL is trying to make a name for themselves? Maybe there's a private lawsuit waiting in the wings, hoping for a big settlement? Maybe someone is just hoping to be bought off, possibly via a revolving door? Dunno what the agenda is, but I'll give odds that it's something at least borderline corrupt on the part of the DoL...
It's true enough, the measure passed (FWIW, I voted against it). It's a stupid, knee-jerk reaction, still a follow-on from Fukushima.
However, in the current European political climate, constructing new nuclear reactors isn't possible anyway. People are too risk averse, there's far too much NIMBY-ness, we *still* don't have a proper solution for long-term waste storage (more NIMBY-ness), fuel-reprocessing barely exists - the whole situation is just impossible. The UK claims they're going to build some new nuclear plants: buy your popcorn now, because it's going to be long show, and most likely they will never happen.
So forbidding new plants from being built here doesn't really matter. And anyway, the law can just as easily be changed back, should the political climate for nuclear improve.
No, the biggest problem with the vote that happened yesterday are subsidies: More subsidies for renewables, more subsidies for renovating old buildings, replacing heating systems, etc.. These subsidies totally distort the market, and there are already people speculating on them, because apparently they will be retroactive. Also, it's kind of hilarious: some of the subsidies are to correct the damage done by previous subsidies. When the nuclear plants were originally built, the government subsidized electrical (resistance) heating systems, because electricity was going to be so cheap. Now, it will pay you to get rid of your electrical heating system and put in something else. And in 20 or 30 years, it will be something else again. Stupid.
The worst aspect of these subsidies is: they are, in the end, just income redistribution. Why does Hans get money from Fred, just because Fred has a new house and Hans bought an old one? Or because Fred invested in a good heating system, and Hans bought a crappy one that he now wants to replace?
US prosecution is a bit laughable. Assange did not steal any documents - they were given to him. As a non-US citizen, not resident in the US, all of whose actions took place outside of the US: he is clearly not subject to US jurisdiction.
I'm sure the US would love to prosecute him, but doing so would be a mockery of justice.
First, get antibiotics out of agriculture, where they're given _all_ _the_ _time_ as a preventative measure. Stupid.
Second, why exactly should access be "fair"? TFA complains on moment that there's no economic incentive, and then promptly demands fairness. Get real. Life isn't fair. But what the rich can buy today will be available to the rest of us tomorrow.
Remember 2001. This is just the next stock market bubble. It will pop. just like the last one did.
The symptoms are the same, too. Crazy startups (especially in Silicon Valley), getting $millions in funding, and yet anyone looking from a distance can see that they have zero chance of ever making money. Stupidly high market values for companies making thumping losses every quarter. For whatever reason, it all turns into a lottery: this little startups hoping some big boy like Google or Apple will buy them out. Even stupider: the big companies keep doing exactly that.
TFA is even better than the summary - allegations of absolutely incredible misbehavior. The interesting thing is: There's not any wiggle room: the craziest allegations can be easily proven (like: sending a email around the office with your STD test results).
That said, neutral journalism it's not. The allegations are very clearly heterosexual allegations (men interested in women). So when the author writes:
the employees allegedly had a “kink room” in the office that contained a bed and was intended to “encourage sexual intercourse in the office.” Male employees allegedly used the room for its intended purpose...
then it is absolutely wrong to write that "male" employees used the room, because they will have used it together with their female sexual partners. Which makes one suspect that this is not a men-harrassing-women problem, but more generally an entirely inappropriate, sexually-loaded work environment, with both men and women acting out in unprofessional ways.
In any case, time will definitely tell, because there's no hiding some of the stuff that is alleged. Either proof exists, or it doesn't.
If some publication is going to write about a scientific article, shouldn't they get a journalist with some vague understanding of science to do the writing? Just as an example, this kind of leaps out at the reader:
"Nitrogen oxides are released into the air from motor vehicle exhaust or the burning of coal and fossil fuels, producing tiny soot particles and smog."
Soot is carbon. NOx does not contain carbon, nor can it create carbon. Also, what is the difference between "motor vehicle exhaust" and "burning fossil fuels"?
As far as the scientific article itself is concerned, it seems a bit obvious. Everyone already knows that the testing standards do not reflect real-world driving conditions. If they only find that "more than half" of the light-duty vehicles emit more pollution in real world condition than in testing conditions, that's actually better than I would have expected.
The conclusion: "Adopting and enforcing next-generation standards...could nearly eliminate real-world diesel-related NOx emissions" assumes that such standards are actually achievable. From the cheating scandals, it appears that the current standards are already on the edge - more stringent standards may not be realistic.
WTF is the federal government doing, micromanaging cafeterias in local schools?
Even more bizarre: it isn't even the (entirely counterproductive) Department of Education doing this, but the Department of Agriculture. Aren't they supposed to manage farm subsidies and the like?
Dear Mr. Trump: Please drain the swamp like you promised. Regulations like this have no reason to exist in the first place.
Geez, I know this is Slashdot, but really. The guy did have a second copy, but it died - as copies do - at the worst possible instant. In this case, basically as the Mega servers were being seized. Should he have had a 3rd copy? A 4th? Sure, but that's not the point.
The point is: the US government seized servers containing data from thousands and thousands of users. The US government has made no provisions at all for people to retrieve their property. This is theft, plain and simple.
Consider this in meatspace: The government raids a restaurant thought to be violating health regulations. They seize all property in the restaurant: not only stuff belonging to the business, but the wallets, purses and bags belonging to the customers. The restaurant is in limbo - that's bad enough - but why should the customers' private property be seized and never released.
Of course, this is the same country that allows asset forfeiture. I'm sure your wallet is guilty of some crime or other...
Functional programming is a fine enough paradigm. It can be very educational to look at a problem from a different perspective? imperative, object-oriented, functional, logical, etc.. Hence, yes, functional programming is a very useful thing. I think every programmer should give functional programming a try.
However: Mixing paradigms within a programming language makes code more difficult to understand, and generally leads to language bloat. It's worse, when the underlying language fundamentally cannot support the paradigm.
Prime example: Java + Lambdas. Java does not support working with code the same way you work with data, which is what functional languages are all about. With reflection, Java allows limited inspection of functionality, but no manipulation. Java lambdas are a way of faking one aspect of functional programming: the ability to pass code as a parameter. However, you aren't actually passing code as a parameter. If you were, then you could alter the value of that parameter at runtime, like you can any other variable. Instead, you're just letting Java fill in some blanks at compile-time, because the interface you select has only one abstract method. This is syntactic sugar that kinda, sorta looks like functional programming, but actually isn't. As such, Java lambdas are a really stupid idea. Anyone who has used them thinks they've done functional programming, but they actually have not.
It's all nice and stuff that Steve Ballmer wants to do this. However, the government really should be doing this itself. Government accounting should meet the same standards as business accounting. Why? Because it is just as important, if not more so. Furthermore, all accounts should be fully public. Why? Because it's our money the government is spending.
For the poster who said that this is too much work: This is what every business in the country has to do. If it's too complicated, the government could consider simplifying things. But the government wants clarity in business accounts, for tax purposes. And we - the citizens - want clarity in seeing how the government spends our taxes. Sauce. Goose. Gander.
Won't happen, of course, because it would become much more difficult to hide pork. Ballmer's idea isn't going to work, because he will be unable to get the information that really counts.
Slashdot Mirror
Typical Vox article, where "pro-Trump" = "racist". Continuing to deny even the remotest possibility that Hillary! was just too corrupt for many people to swallow, and that she is indicative of the political elite orchestrating the presidential election.
Bernie was never meant to be a real threat to Hillary! but the D constituents are just as fed up with the 1% as anyone else. Even without those carefully crafted primary rules, Bernie almost got out of control. The R side of the equation didn't have those rules in place, so Jeb did get displaced. That left Trump-the-outsider running against Hillary!-the-corrupt, and that's why he won.
It seems to me that even progressive publications like Vox would see through what's going on here. It's no longer (only) progressive vs. conservative. This is a different battle, orthogonal to the first one: it's the political elite pulling the levers behind the scenes, vs. actually having control of your own government.
Oh, yes, another technology that's fine to use, because you have nothing to hide. Let's put a GPS on your car as well, and log everywhere you drive. After all, it will help catch criminals, and it should bother law abiding citizens.
This technology has been around for so long that we've come to accept it, but seriously: think about it. Every document that you print can be tracked back to you, along with the exact time that you printed it. This may be only a small part of it, but it is part of the totalitarian wet-dream.
Alt-right is not racist, get a clue.
The KKK probably mostly votes Republican, but most Republicans are not members of the KKK. Same with the alt-right.
The alt-right, in simplest terms, says: multiculturalism doesn't actually work. Mixing cultures leads to conflict. Furthermore they believe specifically that Western culture is threatened by multiculturalism, because too many migrants from non-western cultures are being accepted, and failing to integrate.
There's nothing particularly racist about that. There may well be something racist in the progressive position that everyone except westerners should strive to preserve their culture.
I'm sure that arbitration can be abused. However, until the US fixes its damned court system, companies have no choice but to insist on this.
Personal example: I used to run a small company that produced a niche ERP system. Our Swiss attorney told us: Whatever you do, never sell to a customer in the US." We made one exception. We sold the system to a small organization that was just determined it was what they needed. A few months later, for reasons we were not privy to, the company fired someone who was a major user of the system. So she goes to a lawyer, to sue us, because she lost her job. I mean, really, WTF?
The tort system is a lottery, and both lawyers and plaintiffs use it as one - hoping to strike it rich off the back of someone else. The lawyers are the ones to tell their clients "no, you don't have a case, go get a life". A lawyer who takes a frivolous case to court should be fined, and required to personally pay the other side's legal expenses.
I'm very serious: what a great idea!
I'm so tired of the progressive crowd saying "let's you take in a few million refugees", but somehow never in their neighborhoods. So this is the chance for the progressives to put their guest rooms where their mouths are.
I hope that this is done fairly, i.e., Airbnb doesn't just front for housing that was already designated for refugees. If so, then we will see just how many liberals really practice what they preach.
I predict that the offers of rooms will be very sparse, but I am willing to be proven wrong.
A drink or two a week? That's light drinking. I think you must move in social circles where people rarely drink at all.
In southern Germany, for example, it's not at all unusual to have a beer with your lunch, and another with dinner. In France or Italy, it will be a glass of wine - about the same amount of alcohol. That's 1-2 drinks per day, every day. Plus a couple of extra drinks with your buddies on Friday or Saturday. That's average, or moderate drinking in cultures where alcohol is a normal part of life. I'm typing this in the evening, after work, while sipping my second beer of the day.
As in all things in life, there's a trade-off. Alcohol helps people relax after a stressful day. It also has a few health benefits (or some of the other things contained in drinks do). However, it's also not great for your liver, and possibly your brain, and alcohol abuse is a possibility. Life's a bitch, and then you die.
Heck, you can die from drinking too much water.
We've had this discussion before. There is just no need for Twitter to have more than 50 employees, in which case they would be rolling in money. Nearly 4000 employees, scattered over I-don't-know-how-many international offices? Stupid.
It was probably growth in an attempt to pump the stock price. Without the unrealistic VC expectations, Twitter wouldn't have a valuation anywhere over $100 million, and probably not that. But then - given what Twitter actually is - it really shouldn't be valued that high anyway.
A valuation of $50 million for a 50 person company would already be very good. They would have a stable business, and be quite the money spinner. But that's not good enough. The MBA and marketing idiots only have one word in their vocabulary: "growth". A business without growth is something they seem utterly incapable of comprehending.
If they're doing so well, they must be making good money. So why, exactly, do they need to raise another $100 million?
The valuation they're talking about is nuts. Truly, the next Internet bubble is not far from bursting...
I kept up with technology pretty much across the board, 10 years ago or so. But eventually you realize that
(a) this isn't part of your job - your employer only cares about particular things, which may or may not be modern
(b) you have a life, possibly a family, and that needs to be a priority as well
(c) there's too much to keep up with, and anyway, it's not possible to know what will stay important. Look ing only at programming languages: Java 8 was a big change, Javascript looks nothing like it did 10 years ago, is Ruby important? Rust? Scala?
Eventually you get tired of it. Yet another programming language, when you've used 20, and played with 20 more? It gets tiresome, and really, I haven't seen anything really innovative for ages, it's all just young folk reinventing old ideas.
I don't know the answer, but blithely saying you should keep up with the everything on your own time isn't very realistic.
Oh, and get off my lawn.
I actually have no real opinion on the bill. It seems likely that the bill has been proposed more as a publicity stunt than anything else. Which is only possible, because LGBT issues have been blown so totally out of proportion.
- On the one side: This is an incredibly rare problem, once you filter out the attention seekers who don't actually have gender dysphoria. There is no need for a law that is relevant to only maybe 1 person in 20,000.
- On the other side, if someone has this unusual medical condition, and has to walk through the "wrong" restroom door, the world will not end. Which toilet they pee in should not be a social or political statement. They need to get over themselves.
In support of the latter: The gym I go to rents itself out for special events. Sometimes these are men's clubs, sometimes they are women's clubs. When that happens, it is quite normal - at a men's event - for the men to use both the men's and women's locker rooms. For a women's event, I presume it is equally normal for the women to also use both locker rooms. No one is going to get cooties. The damned sign on the door is only important if you are seeking a reason to be offended.
Oops...typo. Obviously 0.01% is 1 person in 10000
Someone who is truly transgender is someone whose physical development followed their genes, but whose brain development somehow (for reasons not yet understood) took the opposite path. This is true "gender dysphoria", and occurs in less than 0.01% of the population, or one person in 2000.
From these, we can realistically subtract some unknown (but probably large) proportion of people who come to terms with their physical reality, who simply function as homosexuals. This is an important group, because transgender surgery is serious stuff, and still fails to produce satisfactory genetalia of the opposite gender. If at all possible, it's better to leave a healthy body alone. Those people with gender dysphoria who absolutely cannot come to terms with their physical bodies, then transition, with the help of hormones and surgery.
For these few people affected, this should be a private matter between them and their doctors. There will inevitably be an awkward phase, between identifying their problems and completing their transitions, where it's not clear which restroom door they need to walk through. If we simply state that they need to use the door that matches their current, physical genitalia, that is surely the smallest of annoyances in the larger context. If they can "pass" and choose to use the other restroom, no one will know or care. There is no reason for any of this to be any sort of big issue.
So why _is_ it such a big issue?
I think the reason is this: We have whole boatloads of activists, who think it's cool and progressive to plaster people's private sexual problems all over the news, the internet, and social media. It's also trendy for people with unusual sexual preferences or predilections to demand some sort of public recognition. Likely there are also a lot of mentally disturbed narcissists who are just using this as a way of seeking attention. What all of these groups refuse to understand is that no one cares and who or what they have sex with, or how they sexually feel at any given moment. That's their business, and no one else wants to hear about it.
In the words of David Chappelle: "I support anyone’s right to be who they are inside, but to what degree do I have to participate in your self-image?"
The activists, the "in your face" crowd, are doing their cause a lot more harm than good. The irritation they are generating is going to backfire. That's the reason for laws like the one in TFA, just one aspect of the inevitable backlash.
I see this among my students as well.
First, on the side of the students: It is perfectly fine to copy code snippets. How do I safely hash a password? Unless it's a computer security course, students shouldn't be reinventing code like that. That's when you go to StackOverflow and find the canned answer from an expert. Some students (and professors) are confused about this.
Ok, with that out of the way: When plagiarism does happen, it is generally pretty blatant. Two solutions submitted, identical except for the renamed variables. It's almost insulting, that they think I won't notice. Alternatively, they pay someone else to write the program, and then cannot answer even the simplest questions about how it works.
But even if they manage to sneak a plagiarized solution through: how stupid can you be?!?! If students aren't writing the programs themselves, they will fail the exam, where copying isn't an option any more. Or, even worse, they manage to scrape through the first year exams. If they get into their sophomore year, they are allowed to fail a course and repeat it a second time. This is horrible, because they drag out the pain for 3 or 4 or 5 years before failing out of the program.
What a waste of their lives. If they can't handle the material, they're only doing themselves damage by dragging things out. Plagiarism in a technical field, where ultimately you either have the skills or not - and this will be discovered - is just unbelievably dumb.
If you're going to institute a UBI, you have to give everyone the choice to use the money as they see fit.
You know, if that would actually happen, I might support UBI. But it won't. Some people will blow their money in the first week, wind up homeless and starving, and people will want the government to step in and rescue them. So we'll wind up with UBI *and* all of the old programs.
Really, I think the approach being taken in Georgia is not bad. They are adding a work requirement to their welfare programs. It's not onerous - for example, you can pick a listed charity and volunteer 20 hours/week. What's fascinating is this: something around half of the people have decided to drop off the welfare roles. They must not have been too hungry after all...
I'd just like to point out that this is a long-running story. As with all complex issues, there are two sides.
Yes, Google has to provide a certain amount of information to the government, as part of its government contracts. however, they have already provided quite a lot of information. The DoL is now looking for historical information, and wants to interview a wide range of employees throughout the company. This is beyond the usual level of stuff that government contractors have to provide.
The DoL claims that this is because they find discrepancies in male/female pay at Google. Now, I have zero knowledge of Google's internal pay practices, but on the face of it, this is extraordinarily unlikely. First of all, the IT industry wage-gap has already been thoroughly debunked: a gap only exists if you deliberately ignore things like years taken off for childcare, which result in less experience and missed promotion opportunities. Second, Google is big enough, and under enough observation, that their HR department will be extraordinarily careful about issues like this.
All of which leads me to suspect that there's a hidden motive here. Maybe someone in the DoL is trying to make a name for themselves? Maybe there's a private lawsuit waiting in the wings, hoping for a big settlement? Maybe someone is just hoping to be bought off, possibly via a revolving door? Dunno what the agenda is, but I'll give odds that it's something at least borderline corrupt on the part of the DoL...
It's true enough, the measure passed (FWIW, I voted against it). It's a stupid, knee-jerk reaction, still a follow-on from Fukushima.
However, in the current European political climate, constructing new nuclear reactors isn't possible anyway. People are too risk averse, there's far too much NIMBY-ness, we *still* don't have a proper solution for long-term waste storage (more NIMBY-ness), fuel-reprocessing barely exists - the whole situation is just impossible. The UK claims they're going to build some new nuclear plants: buy your popcorn now, because it's going to be long show, and most likely they will never happen.
So forbidding new plants from being built here doesn't really matter. And anyway, the law can just as easily be changed back, should the political climate for nuclear improve.
No, the biggest problem with the vote that happened yesterday are subsidies: More subsidies for renewables, more subsidies for renovating old buildings, replacing heating systems, etc.. These subsidies totally distort the market, and there are already people speculating on them, because apparently they will be retroactive. Also, it's kind of hilarious: some of the subsidies are to correct the damage done by previous subsidies. When the nuclear plants were originally built, the government subsidized electrical (resistance) heating systems, because electricity was going to be so cheap. Now, it will pay you to get rid of your electrical heating system and put in something else. And in 20 or 30 years, it will be something else again. Stupid.
The worst aspect of these subsidies is: they are, in the end, just income redistribution. Why does Hans get money from Fred, just because Fred has a new house and Hans bought an old one? Or because Fred invested in a good heating system, and Hans bought a crappy one that he now wants to replace?
US prosecution is a bit laughable. Assange did not steal any documents - they were given to him. As a non-US citizen, not resident in the US, all of whose actions took place outside of the US: he is clearly not subject to US jurisdiction.
I'm sure the US would love to prosecute him, but doing so would be a mockery of justice.
First, get antibiotics out of agriculture, where they're given _all_ _the_ _time_ as a preventative measure. Stupid.
Second, why exactly should access be "fair"? TFA complains on moment that there's no economic incentive, and then promptly demands fairness. Get real. Life isn't fair. But what the rich can buy today will be available to the rest of us tomorrow.
Remember 2001. This is just the next stock market bubble. It will pop. just like the last one did.
The symptoms are the same, too. Crazy startups (especially in Silicon Valley), getting $millions in funding, and yet anyone looking from a distance can see that they have zero chance of ever making money. Stupidly high market values for companies making thumping losses every quarter. For whatever reason, it all turns into a lottery: this little startups hoping some big boy like Google or Apple will buy them out. Even stupider: the big companies keep doing exactly that.
TFA is even better than the summary - allegations of absolutely incredible misbehavior. The interesting thing is: There's not any wiggle room: the craziest allegations can be easily proven (like: sending a email around the office with your STD test results).
That said, neutral journalism it's not. The allegations are very clearly heterosexual allegations (men interested in women). So when the author writes:
the employees allegedly had a “kink room” in the office that contained a bed and was intended to “encourage sexual intercourse in the office.” Male employees allegedly used the room for its intended purpose...
then it is absolutely wrong to write that "male" employees used the room, because they will have used it together with their female sexual partners. Which makes one suspect that this is not a men-harrassing-women problem, but more generally an entirely inappropriate, sexually-loaded work environment, with both men and women acting out in unprofessional ways.
In any case, time will definitely tell, because there's no hiding some of the stuff that is alleged. Either proof exists, or it doesn't.
If some publication is going to write about a scientific article, shouldn't they get a journalist with some vague understanding of science to do the writing? Just as an example, this kind of leaps out at the reader:
"Nitrogen oxides are released into the air from motor vehicle exhaust or the burning of coal and fossil fuels, producing tiny soot particles and smog."
Soot is carbon. NOx does not contain carbon, nor can it create carbon. Also, what is the difference between "motor vehicle exhaust" and "burning fossil fuels"?
As far as the scientific article itself is concerned, it seems a bit obvious. Everyone already knows that the testing standards do not reflect real-world driving conditions. If they only find that "more than half" of the light-duty vehicles emit more pollution in real world condition than in testing conditions, that's actually better than I would have expected.
The conclusion: "Adopting and enforcing next-generation standards...could nearly eliminate real-world diesel-related NOx emissions" assumes that such standards are actually achievable. From the cheating scandals, it appears that the current standards are already on the edge - more stringent standards may not be realistic.
WTF is the federal government doing, micromanaging cafeterias in local schools?
Even more bizarre: it isn't even the (entirely counterproductive) Department of Education doing this, but the Department of Agriculture. Aren't they supposed to manage farm subsidies and the like?
Dear Mr. Trump: Please drain the swamp like you promised. Regulations like this have no reason to exist in the first place.
Geez, I know this is Slashdot, but really. The guy did have a second copy, but it died - as copies do - at the worst possible instant. In this case, basically as the Mega servers were being seized. Should he have had a 3rd copy? A 4th? Sure, but that's not the point.
The point is: the US government seized servers containing data from thousands and thousands of users. The US government has made no provisions at all for people to retrieve their property. This is theft, plain and simple.
Consider this in meatspace: The government raids a restaurant thought to be violating health regulations. They seize all property in the restaurant: not only stuff belonging to the business, but the wallets, purses and bags belonging to the customers. The restaurant is in limbo - that's bad enough - but why should the customers' private property be seized and never released.
Of course, this is the same country that allows asset forfeiture. I'm sure your wallet is guilty of some crime or other...
Functional programming is a fine enough paradigm. It can be very educational to look at a problem from a different perspective? imperative, object-oriented, functional, logical, etc.. Hence, yes, functional programming is a very useful thing. I think every programmer should give functional programming a try.
However: Mixing paradigms within a programming language makes code more difficult to understand, and generally leads to language bloat. It's worse, when the underlying language fundamentally cannot support the paradigm.
Prime example: Java + Lambdas. Java does not support working with code the same way you work with data, which is what functional languages are all about. With reflection, Java allows limited inspection of functionality, but no manipulation. Java lambdas are a way of faking one aspect of functional programming: the ability to pass code as a parameter. However, you aren't actually passing code as a parameter. If you were, then you could alter the value of that parameter at runtime, like you can any other variable. Instead, you're just letting Java fill in some blanks at compile-time, because the interface you select has only one abstract method. This is syntactic sugar that kinda, sorta looks like functional programming, but actually isn't. As such, Java lambdas are a really stupid idea. Anyone who has used them thinks they've done functional programming, but they actually have not.
It's all nice and stuff that Steve Ballmer wants to do this. However, the government really should be doing this itself. Government accounting should meet the same standards as business accounting. Why? Because it is just as important, if not more so. Furthermore, all accounts should be fully public. Why? Because it's our money the government is spending.
For the poster who said that this is too much work: This is what every business in the country has to do. If it's too complicated, the government could consider simplifying things. But the government wants clarity in business accounts, for tax purposes. And we - the citizens - want clarity in seeing how the government spends our taxes. Sauce. Goose. Gander.
Won't happen, of course, because it would become much more difficult to hide pork. Ballmer's idea isn't going to work, because he will be unable to get the information that really counts.