Assertions allow the programmer to do checking for conditions that would indicate a bug in the code, in an attempt to identify the problem sooner, as the sooner you see the problem, the easier it is to find and fix.
Having assertions only exist in debug code is also an important principle, that actually allows them to be more useful. For example, if I have some very low-level routine that is time critical, I am not going to want to do parameter validation in the low level routine, particularly if bad parameters are reflective of a bug in the calling code.
The assert allows me to do robust checking for programmer-errors, while not screwing up the performance of the released product. For example, in an object ref-counting scheme, I have asserts all over the place in the low-level ref-counting mechanisms to ensure that nobody tries to do something like add-ref the object once it's destruction sequence has started, and various other programmer-errors.
I don't want these sort of checks in the release code. Another example -- I want the C-Runtime library in debug mode to validate all the parameters that I pass it as best as it can, but I would be REALLY pissed if it were doing those checks in release mode, since it would effectively slow down code of mine that is known to be bug-free.
As a general rule, asserts should be used to identify conditions that in theory can't exist, or that indicate an error on the part of the caller.
This topic seems to have produced the highest level of stupid replies I have ever seen on Slashdot (and that's saying something).
Stupid ideas like the corporations are getting all the money, not the artists, therefore it is ok to steal stuff, since the corporations don't deserve copyright protections anyways.
Stupid ideas like I won't buy anything that has DRM, when the reality is that virtually everybody has at least one of the major gaming consoles.
Stupid ideas like once I buy it I can do anything I want with it, including giving it out to everybody I want.
The stupid-meter is off the chart on this topic. The fact is that a lot more people than the artist have a vested and legitimate interest in making money in this business. Whether you like it or not, the technology is going to catch up and we are going to have a strong (and fair) DRM scheme eventually.
It may take decades, but eventually stealing copyrighted materials will be as difficult as stealing a book is today. And that's the way it should be. If you don't like it, you don't have to buy the product.
If the copyright owner could come up with some scheme that only allowed you to access their content from inside your car during daylight hours, then more power to them. You may not like it, but that's a decision you are free to make before you buy the product.
Personally, I pay $4 to be able to watch a movie for 5 days only (blockbuster rental), or I pay $15 to be able to watch it as long as I want. If they can come up with a scheme whereby I can pay $8 and watch it all I want, but only from my home TV, that's fine with me too.
Do whatever the hell they want. I am the consumer and can decide for myself whether I am willing to put up with their restrictions for the price I am paying.
Gee, where have I heard that argument before. Oh yeah, I was modded down for it a couple days ago for suggesting that Linux has less hacks and seems more stable only because it has far less desktop volume.
As much as copyright holders would love you to buy multiple copies of their product for use in the home, car and mp3-player, all their crying about copyright infringement really has little to do with that aspect of it.
Virtually every DRM scheme people are toying around with has provisions for making personal copies such as use in an MP3 player. The primary concern of people like the RIAA is the people who never pay a penny for the content in the first place.
Everybody knows that 95+% of the MP3's being traded on the internet are probably blatant copyright violations. Sure, you can come up with examples where this is not the case, but you are a fool if you think that tiny fraction is what the RIAA is really worried about.
Unfortunately, given the current state of technology, it's virtually impossible to let you freely copy things within fair-use law, without also making it possible for the content to be mass-distributed in violation of copyright laws.
So what ends up happening is the baby gets thrown out with the bath water. If you were really concerned about this issue, you would try to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.
Start by supporting some DRM scheme, instead of a knee-jerk reaction that any sort of limits are a violation of your rights. The content-owners have rights too, and DRM schemes are a reasonable compromise between protecting their rights, as well as yours.
Seems to me the ones being the most unreasonable here are the ones with the least vested interest. Forgive me if I am not sympathetic to your cry.
Agreed, this is really a matter for the State Department to handle. If Microsoft feels some foreign country is imposing unfair restrictions on their business practices there, then the only remedy Microsoft has is to petition the US Government to put pressure on the EU. There are countless agreements between the US and the EU regarding trade.
The EU fine could arguably be called a tariff, and ultimately the WTO may have to chime in on this.
Oh, I wasn't commenting to you specifically, just noting that my post was moderated down for being a 'troll'. Which is pretty typical whenever I express any opinion that doesn't tow the party line. No wonder all you lemmings think alike here.
Nice, I always love the way that any dissenting opinion (that is, any opinion that doesn't worship linux) gets flagged as a troll. Is the linux-community ego really that fragile?
I never mentioned anything about security through obscurity. I merely asserted that Windows is a much bigger target for hackers and it's flaws often make CNN headline news; unlike Linux. As such, problems appear more rampant than they really are compared to Linux, which largely gets a pass, both in terms of the amount of effort being put into exploiting it, and the amount of attention it gets when it is exploited.
I further asserted that this extra scruitiny that Windows gets has led to vast improvements in Windows security and stability. This process will continue. If Linux is ever to make it more mainstream, it too is going to have to go through this process. You are fooling yourself if you think it has even been remoted tested the way Windows has.
The problem with Linux is that it isn't mainstream enough to garner much hacker-attention. Linux really isn't any better than Windows when it comes to security, they just live a happy place where they don't get near the hacker-assault that Windows gets.
The more mainstream linux becomes, the more security issues that will surface. We see the same thing happening with programs like Firefox. When first released, all the talk is about how much more secure and reliable it is than IE, but then when it actually gets popular enough to start to get people's attention, the hacks and vulnerabilities start coming out of the woodwork.
It's taken Microsoft a while to get to where they are, but they have made some serious in-roads in the areas of security and reliability. For all the Linux communities crying about flaws in Microsoft products, it's very much the pot calling the kettle black. The only difference is the Linux crowd hasn't figured out where their problems are yet. Their time will come.
In the meantime, Microsoft's products are being harded in the refiners fire of the mass market. I seriously doubt in the coming years that Linux will be able to keep pace, since they simply don't have the volume for proof-of-quality for me.
As others have noted, the PS3 supporting Blu-Ray is probably all it will take to make movie makers produce Blu-Ray compatible content.
The other thing Blu-Ray has going for it is that Sony has a big stake in both sides of the equation.
If Sony DVD players only support Blu-Ray, it will be difficult for other content-publishers to ignore that market share, particularly since the movie-studios really don't have a dog in this fight.
Then, Sony is also a major studio, soon to own MGM as well. If Sony only produces it's content in Blu-Ray format, the other electronic manufacturers will have to support it and create hardware that will support either format. Unlike Universal Studios and Paramount, etc, Sony can get away with this because they do have a dog in this fight, that being their electronics division.
So, Sony Pictures will be willing to give up some market share to support the format, whereas the other studios supporting HD-DVD ultimately will not be willing, since they don't have any stake in the other side of the equation.
The only reason the other studios are even chiming in on this discussion is because they are trying to limit the power of Sony. They have no significant vested interest as Sony does.
If Sony manages to get the hardware makers producers players that support both formats, it will only be a matter of time before nobody produces anything but Blu-Ray content.
In a more general sense, liberal refers to people who want change from the status quo, and conservative refers to people who want things to remain as they are or were.
So, in America, liberal's are those who want a more socialist agenda (among other things), since we tend to not to be that way now. In Europe where they are already heavily socialist, liberal means something completely different. Likewise for every other country in the world like Russia.
When I lived in London, they had a group called the Metropoliton Police Vehicle Removal Unit. This was a special parking enforcement group that travelled around town, doing a different area every few days. It was facinating to watch them work during lunchtime. They prided themsevles on how quickly they could remove an illegally parked car.
They had a flat-bed truck with a small crane on it, which had a X shaped thing on it with cables running off of each end of the X. They had a complete crew working the truck. They would drive up next to the the target vehicle, a couple guys would hop out and throw these harnesses onto each wheel while another guy operated the crane to life-over the vehicle, and yet another guy hooked the crane-straps to the harnesses. They would then life the vehicle onto the flat bed truck in drive off. I timed them and they were in and out in less than 2 minutes. Really quite fun to watch.
It's supply and demand really. It's not that the guy making 10 times as much money works 10 times harder. It's that the guy has certain skills that the company thinks are vital. He is that highly paid because people with this particular skill are sufficiently rare.
Now, you can certainly debate whether the person in question actually does have the skill, or whether that skill is really that valueable to the company, but you can't really argue the principle involved. Companies aren't in the business of paying more for something than they think they have to.
Last I looked, Derek Jeter didn't have a 10 times better batting average than the typical MLB player...
Modded funny, but it makes a VERY good point. If firing people is the way to make money as so many posts here claim is the motivation, then why don't they just fire everybody and make a fortune?
The truth is that to impress investors, companies need to expand and increase total revenue. Total revenue matters far more than profitability. If you can show 30% growth year over year, you will be very attractive to investors, even if you are only breaking even or even losing money.
To this end, companies tend to hire people, start up additional products, do all sorts of things to expand. When they actually fire people, it's usually because they either absolutely have to, or they are just trimming the bad (less desirable) apples as I mentioned in another post.
"Isn't is amazing, truly spectacularly amazing that these exhaustively qualified people who had such sparkling resumes and fantastic employment histories only months ago when they were hired suddenly turn out to be incompetent around layoff time?"
Happens all the time. I've hired people who look great on paper, but then end up not working out for various reasons. Sometimes it's not competence per se, sometimes it's their work-habits, sometimes they are simply difficult for the other team members to work with.
Whatever the reason, the company is perfectly within their rights to get rid of the person and try to find someone better. Often times employers hire more people than they need, then prune off the ones they like the least. Repeating this process over and over is an effective way for the company to raise the employee quality over time.
Sometimes the layoff process is really what it is claimed to be, an arbitrary scaling back due to changing or unforseen business needs.
I know people like to think they deserve to keep a job once they get it for however long they are meeting the job description, but thinking that way is best left to the communists.
Nothing gets the slashdot geeks fired up quite as much as a good firing. I'll tell you a little secret -- most every large company does this. They hire people like crazy, then every couple years they fire all the ones that didn't work out as a group and call it a layoff.
Doing it this way prevents all sorts of legal issues where people sue for getting fired without cause. If they are part of a group layoff, the company can simply call it scaling back the workforce and largely indemnify themselves.
Most of those fired would likely have been fired months ago when it was determined that they were incompetent, but doing it that way is too messy. Having been through many of these 'cycles' at the company I work for, I always find it interesting that within one month of the firing, the company is once again hiring again, only those fired are inelligable for re-employment for a minimum of one-year (company policy -- sneaky sneaky).
This whole thing is likely little more than a company getting rid of the bad apples without having to worry about the lawyers.
I don't think it's a case of women not being as capable at these fields of study, but more a function of them not being as motivated to the subject matter.
Women and men are different. They prioritize things differently, and these priorities manifest themselves overtly as differing activities and interests.
Sure, there are plenty of exceptions, but we are talking about the average tendency of women and men as a whole.
Now, I have no idea how much of this is cultural versus genetic, but there is little to no doubt in my mind that a healthy chunk of it is due to genetics.
Historically speaking, the human species evolved with men and women playing certain roles. Both roles were likely vitally important to the survival of the species.
Women tend to be drawn more toward motherhood and nurturing of children, whereas men tend to be drawn more toward providing. I suspect over the millenias, women that were not genetically wired to be drawn to this end effectively got weeded out through a natural selection process.
Now days, society provides an infrastructure whereby women can pursue these other interests and still effectively reproduce. As such, I suspect that over the coming centuries, we will see a reversal of this process, whereby women who are genetically inclined to math and sciences become more abundant.
I suspect it will probably never fully balance itself though. This is all fine and dandy, but it doesn't change where we are now; that is, we are living in a world where men on-average are better at math and science. There is no shame in this for women, it's not an indication of any fault they have; merely an acknowledgement that priorities are different.
Certainly being politically correct serves a purpose in that it potentially speeds up the rebalancing process; however, from a science-talk point of view, as this professor has indicated, we should be intellectually honest about where we are right now.
It's not a question of statistics, it's a question of principle (I know, it's hard for liberals to get their head around this concept, but try).
Let's say China went nuts and decided one day to announce that they are going to kidnap and kill one American citizen every day just for the hell of it. Now, statistically speaking, 365 dead Americans is trivial. More people died in car wrecks just over Thanksgiving weekend this year.
The only way we could realistically stop China from doing this is to spend billions if not trillions of dollars going to war against them. That amount of money could surely be used to better save far more than 365 lives, right?
So following your flawed logic, the appropriate course of action would be to simply ignore the 365 dead Americans each year, since more lives could be saved spending the money elsewhere.
That may make sense to you, but for most people I know would be willing to sacrafice an unlimited amount of money and countless (millions perhaps) lives to defend the principle that China should not be allowed to do that.
PSP is far closer to being PlayStation 2 powerful, not 1. Is it at least a little bit cooler now? I've played the PSP and it is nothing short of awesome.
Thinking about it some more, another way to say the same thing that might be easier to follow is that votes become increasingly difficult to get the higher the percentage of vote you already have is. For example, it is likely easier for Bush to go from 35% to 40% of the vote in a particular county than it would be him for him to go from 60% to 65% of the vote in some other county.
In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if was easier to go from 30% to 35% than it would be to go from 60% to 61%....
I read their report thinking it would be fairly conclusive, but was surprised to find that they simply ignore obvious things in their analysis. In their findings section they write:
"Its impact was proportional to the Democratic support in the county, i.e., it was especially large in Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade."
Let's face it, 40% of people are solid Democrat and 40% of people are solid Republican (generally), that leaves 20% so called swing voters. In counties that went heavily Democratic in 2000, that meant that those swing voters broke largely Democratic. In counties that went largely Repulican, those swing voters broke more heavily Republican.
If Bush is to do better in 2004 than in 2000, it would be logical to assume that swing-voters tilted more his way than before (as the partisans aren't changing their vote anyways). In counties that Bush won most of the swing voters in 2000, I wouldn't expect to see much of an increase in 2004, since the swing-voters had already broken his way in that county in the previous election. And correspondingly, we see little increase (even a slight decrease in some cases) in Bush's results in counties that he won in 2000.
Correspondingly, in counties that he lost in 2000, swing voters broke heavily Democratic. That means that if swing-voters are more likely to be breaking Republican in 2004, the effect of such a trend would be much more apparent in counties where they didn't break for him last time (since the counties they did break for him have already gone his way).
This observation is further supported by the notion that those 20% of swing voters likely have some pre-disposition to party affiliation already, meaning the actual number of truly swing voters is likely quite small.
As far as electronic vs paper goes, that is largely just due to heavily Democratic counties like those listed above switching to electronic voting whereas more rural counties that went heavily Bush remained paper ballots. This is likely due to the fact that Democrats were cry-babies about paper voting in 2000.
They do an analysis based on ethinicity and income to try and eliminate those as explanations, yet they don't analyze the obvious conclusion that heaviliy Democratic counties were more likely swing to Bush than heavily Republican counties were like to swing even more Bush.
But what if I can't push the chad through on the paper ballot?:( Or what if forget how to use my pencil? Or what if the lead breaks? I'm thinking I better just stick with the computer.
The Germans were against all of Reagans policies as well, yet it was those very policies that put the final nail in the coffin of the Soviet Union and allowed Germany to become one country again. Let's face it, the Germans don't always know what's best for them.
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Assertions allow the programmer to do checking for conditions that would indicate a bug in the code, in an attempt to identify the problem sooner, as the sooner you see the problem, the easier it is to find and fix.
Having assertions only exist in debug code is also an important principle, that actually allows them to be more useful. For example, if I have some very low-level routine that is time critical, I am not going to want to do parameter validation in the low level routine, particularly if bad parameters are reflective of a bug in the calling code.
The assert allows me to do robust checking for programmer-errors, while not screwing up the performance of the released product. For example, in an object ref-counting scheme, I have asserts all over the place in the low-level ref-counting mechanisms to ensure that nobody tries to do something like add-ref the object once it's destruction sequence has started, and various other programmer-errors.
I don't want these sort of checks in the release code. Another example -- I want the C-Runtime library in debug mode to validate all the parameters that I pass it as best as it can, but I would be REALLY pissed if it were doing those checks in release mode, since it would effectively slow down code of mine that is known to be bug-free.
As a general rule, asserts should be used to identify conditions that in theory can't exist, or that indicate an error on the part of the caller.
This topic seems to have produced the highest level of stupid replies I have ever seen on Slashdot (and that's saying something).
Stupid ideas like the corporations are getting all the money, not the artists, therefore it is ok to steal stuff, since the corporations don't deserve copyright protections anyways.
Stupid ideas like I won't buy anything that has DRM, when the reality is that virtually everybody has at least one of the major gaming consoles.
Stupid ideas like once I buy it I can do anything I want with it, including giving it out to everybody I want.
The stupid-meter is off the chart on this topic. The fact is that a lot more people than the artist have a vested and legitimate interest in making money in this business. Whether you like it or not, the technology is going to catch up and we are going to have a strong (and fair) DRM scheme eventually.
It may take decades, but eventually stealing copyrighted materials will be as difficult as stealing a book is today. And that's the way it should be. If you don't like it, you don't have to buy the product.
If the copyright owner could come up with some scheme that only allowed you to access their content from inside your car during daylight hours, then more power to them. You may not like it, but that's a decision you are free to make before you buy the product.
Personally, I pay $4 to be able to watch a movie for 5 days only (blockbuster rental), or I pay $15 to be able to watch it as long as I want. If they can come up with a scheme whereby I can pay $8 and watch it all I want, but only from my home TV, that's fine with me too.
Do whatever the hell they want. I am the consumer and can decide for myself whether I am willing to put up with their restrictions for the price I am paying.
Gee, where have I heard that argument before. Oh yeah, I was modded down for it a couple days ago for suggesting that Linux has less hacks and seems more stable only because it has far less desktop volume.
As much as copyright holders would love you to buy multiple copies of their product for use in the home, car and mp3-player, all their crying about copyright infringement really has little to do with that aspect of it.
Virtually every DRM scheme people are toying around with has provisions for making personal copies such as use in an MP3 player. The primary concern of people like the RIAA is the people who never pay a penny for the content in the first place.
Everybody knows that 95+% of the MP3's being traded on the internet are probably blatant copyright violations. Sure, you can come up with examples where this is not the case, but you are a fool if you think that tiny fraction is what the RIAA is really worried about.
Unfortunately, given the current state of technology, it's virtually impossible to let you freely copy things within fair-use law, without also making it possible for the content to be mass-distributed in violation of copyright laws.
So what ends up happening is the baby gets thrown out with the bath water. If you were really concerned about this issue, you would try to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.
Start by supporting some DRM scheme, instead of a knee-jerk reaction that any sort of limits are a violation of your rights. The content-owners have rights too, and DRM schemes are a reasonable compromise between protecting their rights, as well as yours.
Seems to me the ones being the most unreasonable here are the ones with the least vested interest. Forgive me if I am not sympathetic to your cry.
Agreed, this is really a matter for the State Department to handle. If Microsoft feels some foreign country is imposing unfair restrictions on their business practices there, then the only remedy Microsoft has is to petition the US Government to put pressure on the EU. There are countless agreements between the US and the EU regarding trade.
The EU fine could arguably be called a tariff, and ultimately the WTO may have to chime in on this.
It's still a lot of money, and ultimately it just turns into a tax on the European people. If I were Microsoft, the math would go a little like this:
costOfEuropeanWindows += ($1.8billion / unitsSoldPerYearInEurope);
Oh, I wasn't commenting to you specifically, just noting that my post was moderated down for being a 'troll'. Which is pretty typical whenever I express any opinion that doesn't tow the party line. No wonder all you lemmings think alike here.
Nice, I always love the way that any dissenting opinion (that is, any opinion that doesn't worship linux) gets flagged as a troll. Is the linux-community ego really that fragile?
I never mentioned anything about security through obscurity. I merely asserted that Windows is a much bigger target for hackers and it's flaws often make CNN headline news; unlike Linux. As such, problems appear more rampant than they really are compared to Linux, which largely gets a pass, both in terms of the amount of effort being put into exploiting it, and the amount of attention it gets when it is exploited.
I further asserted that this extra scruitiny that Windows gets has led to vast improvements in Windows security and stability. This process will continue. If Linux is ever to make it more mainstream, it too is going to have to go through this process. You are fooling yourself if you think it has even been remoted tested the way Windows has.
The problem with Linux is that it isn't mainstream enough to garner much hacker-attention. Linux really isn't any better than Windows when it comes to security, they just live a happy place where they don't get near the hacker-assault that Windows gets.
The more mainstream linux becomes, the more security issues that will surface. We see the same thing happening with programs like Firefox. When first released, all the talk is about how much more secure and reliable it is than IE, but then when it actually gets popular enough to start to get people's attention, the hacks and vulnerabilities start coming out of the woodwork.
It's taken Microsoft a while to get to where they are, but they have made some serious in-roads in the areas of security and reliability. For all the Linux communities crying about flaws in Microsoft products, it's very much the pot calling the kettle black. The only difference is the Linux crowd hasn't figured out where their problems are yet. Their time will come.
In the meantime, Microsoft's products are being harded in the refiners fire of the mass market. I seriously doubt in the coming years that Linux will be able to keep pace, since they simply don't have the volume for proof-of-quality for me.
As others have noted, the PS3 supporting Blu-Ray is probably all it will take to make movie makers produce Blu-Ray compatible content.
The other thing Blu-Ray has going for it is that Sony has a big stake in both sides of the equation.
If Sony DVD players only support Blu-Ray, it will be difficult for other content-publishers to ignore that market share, particularly since the movie-studios really don't have a dog in this fight.
Then, Sony is also a major studio, soon to own MGM as well. If Sony only produces it's content in Blu-Ray format, the other electronic manufacturers will have to support it and create hardware that will support either format. Unlike Universal Studios and Paramount, etc, Sony can get away with this because they do have a dog in this fight, that being their electronics division.
So, Sony Pictures will be willing to give up some market share to support the format, whereas the other studios supporting HD-DVD ultimately will not be willing, since they don't have any stake in the other side of the equation.
The only reason the other studios are even chiming in on this discussion is because they are trying to limit the power of Sony. They have no significant vested interest as Sony does.
If Sony manages to get the hardware makers producers players that support both formats, it will only be a matter of time before nobody produces anything but Blu-Ray content.
In a more general sense, liberal refers to people who want change from the status quo, and conservative refers to people who want things to remain as they are or were.
So, in America, liberal's are those who want a more socialist agenda (among other things), since we tend to not to be that way now. In Europe where they are already heavily socialist, liberal means something completely different. Likewise for every other country in the world like Russia.
When I lived in London, they had a group called the Metropoliton Police Vehicle Removal Unit. This was a special parking enforcement group that travelled around town, doing a different area every few days. It was facinating to watch them work during lunchtime. They prided themsevles on how quickly they could remove an illegally parked car.
They had a flat-bed truck with a small crane on it, which had a X shaped thing on it with cables running off of each end of the X. They had a complete crew working the truck. They would drive up next to the the target vehicle, a couple guys would hop out and throw these harnesses onto each wheel while another guy operated the crane to life-over the vehicle, and yet another guy hooked the crane-straps to the harnesses. They would then life the vehicle onto the flat bed truck in drive off. I timed them and they were in and out in less than 2 minutes. Really quite fun to watch.
They even hauled away mini-vans that way.
It's supply and demand really. It's not that the guy making 10 times as much money works 10 times harder. It's that the guy has certain skills that the company thinks are vital. He is that highly paid because people with this particular skill are sufficiently rare.
Now, you can certainly debate whether the person in question actually does have the skill, or whether that skill is really that valueable to the company, but you can't really argue the principle involved. Companies aren't in the business of paying more for something than they think they have to.
Last I looked, Derek Jeter didn't have a 10 times better batting average than the typical MLB player...
Modded funny, but it makes a VERY good point. If firing people is the way to make money as so many posts here claim is the motivation, then why don't they just fire everybody and make a fortune?
The truth is that to impress investors, companies need to expand and increase total revenue. Total revenue matters far more than profitability. If you can show 30% growth year over year, you will be very attractive to investors, even if you are only breaking even or even losing money.
To this end, companies tend to hire people, start up additional products, do all sorts of things to expand. When they actually fire people, it's usually because they either absolutely have to, or they are just trimming the bad (less desirable) apples as I mentioned in another post.
"Isn't is amazing, truly spectacularly amazing that these exhaustively qualified people who had such sparkling resumes and fantastic employment histories only months ago when they were hired suddenly turn out to be incompetent around layoff time?"
Happens all the time. I've hired people who look great on paper, but then end up not working out for various reasons. Sometimes it's not competence per se, sometimes it's their work-habits, sometimes they are simply difficult for the other team members to work with.
Whatever the reason, the company is perfectly within their rights to get rid of the person and try to find someone better. Often times employers hire more people than they need, then prune off the ones they like the least. Repeating this process over and over is an effective way for the company to raise the employee quality over time.
Sometimes the layoff process is really what it is claimed to be, an arbitrary scaling back due to changing or unforseen business needs.
I know people like to think they deserve to keep a job once they get it for however long they are meeting the job description, but thinking that way is best left to the communists.
Nothing gets the slashdot geeks fired up quite as much as a good firing. I'll tell you a little secret -- most every large company does this. They hire people like crazy, then every couple years they fire all the ones that didn't work out as a group and call it a layoff.
Doing it this way prevents all sorts of legal issues where people sue for getting fired without cause. If they are part of a group layoff, the company can simply call it scaling back the workforce and largely indemnify themselves.
Most of those fired would likely have been fired months ago when it was determined that they were incompetent, but doing it that way is too messy. Having been through many of these 'cycles' at the company I work for, I always find it interesting that within one month of the firing, the company is once again hiring again, only those fired are inelligable for re-employment for a minimum of one-year (company policy -- sneaky sneaky).
This whole thing is likely little more than a company getting rid of the bad apples without having to worry about the lawyers.
I don't think it's a case of women not being as capable at these fields of study, but more a function of them not being as motivated to the subject matter.
Women and men are different. They prioritize things differently, and these priorities manifest themselves overtly as differing activities and interests.
Sure, there are plenty of exceptions, but we are talking about the average tendency of women and men as a whole.
Now, I have no idea how much of this is cultural versus genetic, but there is little to no doubt in my mind that a healthy chunk of it is due to genetics.
Historically speaking, the human species evolved with men and women playing certain roles. Both roles were likely vitally important to the survival of the species.
Women tend to be drawn more toward motherhood and nurturing of children, whereas men tend to be drawn more toward providing. I suspect over the millenias, women that were not genetically wired to be drawn to this end effectively got weeded out through a natural selection process.
Now days, society provides an infrastructure whereby women can pursue these other interests and still effectively reproduce. As such, I suspect that over the coming centuries, we will see a reversal of this process, whereby women who are genetically inclined to math and sciences become more abundant.
I suspect it will probably never fully balance itself though. This is all fine and dandy, but it doesn't change where we are now; that is, we are living in a world where men on-average are better at math and science. There is no shame in this for women, it's not an indication of any fault they have; merely an acknowledgement that priorities are different.
Certainly being politically correct serves a purpose in that it potentially speeds up the rebalancing process; however, from a science-talk point of view, as this professor has indicated, we should be intellectually honest about where we are right now.
It's not a question of statistics, it's a question of principle (I know, it's hard for liberals to get their head around this concept, but try).
Let's say China went nuts and decided one day to announce that they are going to kidnap and kill one American citizen every day just for the hell of it. Now, statistically speaking, 365 dead Americans is trivial. More people died in car wrecks just over Thanksgiving weekend this year.
The only way we could realistically stop China from doing this is to spend billions if not trillions of dollars going to war against them. That amount of money could surely be used to better save far more than 365 lives, right?
So following your flawed logic, the appropriate course of action would be to simply ignore the 365 dead Americans each year, since more lives could be saved spending the money elsewhere.
That may make sense to you, but for most people I know would be willing to sacrafice an unlimited amount of money and countless (millions perhaps) lives to defend the principle that China should not be allowed to do that.
PSP is far closer to being PlayStation 2 powerful, not 1. Is it at least a little bit cooler now? I've played the PSP and it is nothing short of awesome.
Thinking about it some more, another way to say the same thing that might be easier to follow is that votes become increasingly difficult to get the higher the percentage of vote you already have is. For example, it is likely easier for Bush to go from 35% to 40% of the vote in a particular county than it would be him for him to go from 60% to 65% of the vote in some other county.
In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if was easier to go from 30% to 35% than it would be to go from 60% to 61%....
I read their report thinking it would be fairly conclusive, but was surprised to find that they simply ignore obvious things in their analysis. In their findings section they write:
"Its impact was proportional to the Democratic support in the county, i.e., it was especially large in Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade."
Let's face it, 40% of people are solid Democrat and 40% of people are solid Republican (generally), that leaves 20% so called swing voters. In counties that went heavily Democratic in 2000, that meant that those swing voters broke largely Democratic. In counties that went largely Repulican, those swing voters broke more heavily Republican.
If Bush is to do better in 2004 than in 2000, it would be logical to assume that swing-voters tilted more his way than before (as the partisans aren't changing their vote anyways). In counties that Bush won most of the swing voters in 2000, I wouldn't expect to see much of an increase in 2004, since the swing-voters had already broken his way in that county in the previous election. And correspondingly, we see little increase (even a slight decrease in some cases) in Bush's results in counties that he won in 2000.
Correspondingly, in counties that he lost in 2000, swing voters broke heavily Democratic. That means that if swing-voters are more likely to be breaking Republican in 2004, the effect of such a trend would be much more apparent in counties where they didn't break for him last time (since the counties they did break for him have already gone his way).
This observation is further supported by the notion that those 20% of swing voters likely have some pre-disposition to party affiliation already, meaning the actual number of truly swing voters is likely quite small.
As far as electronic vs paper goes, that is largely just due to heavily Democratic counties like those listed above switching to electronic voting whereas more rural counties that went heavily Bush remained paper ballots. This is likely due to the fact that Democrats were cry-babies about paper voting in 2000.
They do an analysis based on ethinicity and income to try and eliminate those as explanations, yet they don't analyze the obvious conclusion that heaviliy Democratic counties were more likely swing to Bush than heavily Republican counties were like to swing even more Bush.
Amateurs....
I bet Spain wishes they had gotten a video tape...
But what if I can't push the chad through on the paper ballot? :( Or what if forget how to use my pencil? Or what if the lead breaks? I'm thinking I better just stick with the computer.
The Germans were against all of Reagans policies as well, yet it was those very policies that put the final nail in the coffin of the Soviet Union and allowed Germany to become one country again. Let's face it, the Germans don't always know what's best for them.