While reinstating the long form census may not be big news, the scrapping of it certainly was.
As for it showing up on Slashdot, well it does involve a government shift from being ideologically opposed to the long form census to one that demands it in order to inform policy. (I'm not going to go as far as declaring that it was a Harper government conspiracy, but their attitude certainly made it look that way to left leaning individuals.) Many people are also opposed to the long form census because of privacy or anti-government attitudes. Both of these topics are running themes on Slashdot, even if they aren't purely technological in this case.
The use of calculators were strictly forbidden in my physics courses during the late 1990's, so I asked my instructors if I could use a slide rule during exams. They said yes, so I did. It was a lot of fun to whip out that slide rule on an otherwise stressful day.
Or simply create documentaries focusing upon more balanced development teams.
I can definitely see how many people would think that programming is indifferent or hostile to women. Online, those who bellow loudest tend to have sexist attitudes (one way or the other). If you look at documentaries, a lot of them are dominated by men to the point that the inclusion of women frequently appears to be a token gesture. While the groups being featured may be dominated by men, it certainly does not present an impression of inclusion.
1) It will be much harder to find individuals willing to do certain categories of high risk or menial labor. You would end up having to pay a LOT more.
This is already the case. Higher risk occupations already pay well above the minimum wage, even for unskilled labour. Outside of the service sector, menial labour typically pays above minimum wage as well. In many cases, particularly for high risk or physically demanding work, the labourer can earn more than many professionals do.
2) Inflation for certain goods and services could eat away any gains that a system like this could bring.
In many parts of the world, there are preexisting price controls. This is particularly true for rent and utilities. This is partially true for some agricultural products. In a sense, it is true for home prices (i.e. control of interest rates). That pretty much leaves luxury items. I highly doubt that anyone would suggest that a basic income covers those.
They had the assigned textbook, and a list of suggested textbooks. Either way, the instructor assigned their own problems, usually a mix from the instructor's manual and of their own creation. In the case of readings, they gave the topic and (in the case of the assigned textbook) section numbers for the current and prior editions. The student was by no means obligated to buy the assigned or recommended textbooks. They could use a book of their own choosing, online resources, or simply rely upon lectures.
University is different from primary or secondary school. While students are expected to meet certain requirements for learning, learning is mostly the responsibility of the student.
Some school boards do try to attract male teachers for the younger grades. Some recreation programs do try to target attract male leaders for programs that serve children. Many parents and children appreciate male role models for their children, particularly if they have boys. Many children appreciate male teachers and recreation program leaders as well.
The stereotypes certainly exist, but they are not universal. Men do have to be somewhat more careful because of those stereotypes, so it is better to work in group settings where you won't be alone with one or two children (e.g. you probably won't see much encouragement on the babysitting front, but child care settings are fine). On the whole though, the biggest thing preventing men from entering these fields are men themselves. Some of it is based upon overblown fears. Like I said, you won't face allegations if you don't work with children alone. Some of it is purely practical. Few men want to work in these fields because they don't pay very much. And that's before you face societal pressures as to what men should and shouldn't be.
I loved the concept of the show and found it very entertaining. I enjoyed how they demonstrated the testing of myths from hypotheses to conclusion, how the revisited myths based on viewer input, and how they did stuff that was just plain too expensive or too dangerous for the typical person to do. Yet I stopped watching it for one simple reason: they seemed to over emphasize the dangerous stuff and that just got plain boring after a time. So thank you for everything you did, and yes thank you for moving on.
Notice that the original post said "well served" and "affordable" public transportation. I realize that isn't the case in a lot of cities. It certainly isn't the case for the city that I live in. On the other hand, many major urban centres have transit that fits both categories. By the time you factor in the costs of owning a vehicle, that squandering of money may very well be squandering time as well (i.e. you have to work more to pay more). Depending upon where you live and work, you may even be squandering time directly. Many cities have transit systems that bypass traffic altogether. Light rail and subways are the clearest examples in the richest of large cities. Yet even smaller and less affluent cities frequently have dedicated bus lanes that bypass traffic on express routes that offer fewer stops for passengers and red lights.
Then, as other people have noted, how a passenger uses their time is important. Multitasking while driving is a gawd awful idea. Students frequently catch up on their readings. Other people use the time to relax: read books, do puzzles, listen to music, watch videos, play games, or anything else that doesn't disrupt other passengers. Even if it is just down time, it can be valuable.
I'm not saying that transit is valuable for all people or under all circumstances. Yet for some people in some circumstances, it is significantly better than owning a private vehicle.
I certainly have no interest in upgrading. My only Windows PC is used for gaming, and some light work when I want to use a larger screen. I'm happy with the setup, and don't want anyone except myself to mess around with it. Thus far, this has proven to be the case even though some people are reporting very different experiences.
Which leaves me wondering: are these reports over dramatized or do they reflect actions on Microsoft's end? I certainly wouldn't put it past Microsoft. They certainly have a multitude of motivations to move their customers onto the latest OS. On the other hand, it is possible for these reports to be honest and misrepresent Microsoft. Windows is a complex OS and it is possible to inadvertently misconfigure things or misread a prompt, resulting in undesired results without really realizing how it came about.
The "no such thing as a free lunch" rule doesn't actually work. Sometimes there are free lunches. Other times, you are paying for the lunch, but the people offering the lunch want you to pay more than advertised. At the end of the day, you have to look at it on a case by case basis. In some cases, it will be rather obvious (e.g. businesses expecting to generate revenues from free services). In other cases, it won't be obvious.
I've seen computer scientists conduct their research without writing a single line of code. I'm not sure what the situation is these days, but a lot of computer science was applied mathematics that focussed upon the development of algorithms. While most computer scientists had the option to implement their algorithms, some could not because they did not have the hardware to work with (e.g. quantum computation).
The problem with subscriptions is that you're giving them personal data that you wouldn't be giving them otherwise, data which is more valuable than the stuff gathered from advertising alone. There are also few guarantees that they won't contract out user tracking even there is no explicit advertising. Even the privacy policies aren't worth the paper they're not printed on. Most include a clause that they can change the terms at any time and most include a clause that they can share the data that they collect with their "partners". Such clauses are dangerous even if the company is entirely trustworthy since it only takes the sale of the company to change what "partners" mean or to change the terms of service.
So thank you but no thank you on subscriptions. It's not money that's the issue here, at least not for me. Heck, it's not even advertising that's the issue. I run ad blockers on my devices to minimize the amount of personal data that is leaked. It has nothing at all to do with the actual advertising.
That was my first thought too. Just to add to it, who is to say that they would let you in even if you did have enough time to make it to the shelter? If the world has collapsed to a state where bomb shelters are necessary, chance are very high that the legal system would have far more pressing issues to deal with.
I suspect that it is because Cortana allegedly sends data back to Microsoft's servers for processing. For people who don't trust Microsoft, it is easy to equate this to spying even if there is no evidence of Microsoft using the transmitted data for anything other than fulfilling user requests and to improve the functionality as well as reliability of their products.
That being said, those Microsoft haters are useful. While their information may be unreliable, they are helping to inform people of Microsoft's data gather practices. Once people know about those practices, they can search for more reliable sources of information to determine how Microsoft's data gathering affects them.
I haven't used NetBSD in years, but one of its selling points was portability. Perhaps portability is less relevant in our more homogenous world, but it still has a place.
Sorry, but your prejudices aren't always correct. I work in a workplace where the men, for the most part, are more "sensitive". Granted, I prefer to call their behaviour professional. On the other hand, the women (again, for the most part) are insensitive. I'm not talking about the stereotypical women style of insensitive either. I'm talking about the stereotypical men style of insensitive.
Workplace culture is defined by the workplace, not necessarily by the stereotypes within the culture as a whole.
The example that I gave assumed that copyright law does not exist. That is to say that everything is in the public domain. The GPL could not exist in that world since the GPL requires copyright law. If you don't have the GPL, you can't force people to distribute the modified source code.
The organizer seems to be focussing on ticket sales as his source of revenue, but there is also mention of serving themed shots and drinks. Alcohol is expensive and surely he was not giving that away for free. It can also be a good revenue generator. I wonder how that fits into how much revenue he would have, and whether it would end up being profitable?
(Note: I'm not saying that this would be a hugely profitable event because of those drinks. I am suggesting that there are important details being left out, details which mean that this is more than a simple fandom party.)
Oddly enough, RMS depends upon the very same copyright laws in order to validate the GPL. Without those laws, so that everything would be in the public domain, people would be able to get anything and everything free for all eternity. On the other hand, they would lose some of the rights that the GPL grants. That includes access to the source code. That would be a world in which someone could publish a program with source code, then a third party could modify the source code and only ship binaries. In other words, the modified sources would more-or-less be treated as a trade secret.
Copyright can be used for good or for ill. Thankfully there are some people like RMS who do the former.
Does it make sense? Not really. As the HaD author pointed out: creating your own boards is more hazardous, offers fewer options for multilayer boards, and is less precise.
On the other hand, we are talking about HaD. If the point was to get a device that does what we want of it, we could buy almost anything off the shelf and sites like HaD would have very little rational for existence. More critically the environment of learning, creativity, independence, and (insert your motivation to make/hack/DIY) would have very little rationale.
You only have to live in various cities to see the impact of this. I've lived in cities where you could literally go to a neighbourhood store and have access to a decent supply of components. I have also lived in cities where you would have to go across town to get something as simple as a resistor. I'll let you guess which places had thriving environments for everything from amateur to professional hardware development, and which ones had a bunch of people talking out of their assess about what they were going to develop.
Of course China seems to take this a step further. The best Canadian cities that I've been in may provide the resources for product development or small scale production for industrial applications, but they won't get you much further.
The wonderful thing about microcontroller project boards is the reduced barrier of entry to electronics. The downside is that everything is a programming and physical interfacing project. The end result is that very few people are equipped to think about the electronics behind digital logic and analog design. Indeed, the only reason why I (as a younger person) even have a clue about what you're talking about is because I took a very-much-outdated-by-the-time course on developing instrumentation in university. Even though I could recreate a clock without microcontrollers from basic principles and data sheets, it would be a far-from-optimal design simply because that level of design has limited application in the modern world. (Obviously people still need that level of knowledge to design microconollers and such, but that is a very limited segment of engineers and scientists -- nevermind the general population.)
I honestly cannot see a downside to this hoax. Plan A, set yourself up for a future in engineering. Plan B, if the hoax is discovered, set yourself up for a future in business school.
More seriously though, a lot of people were sympathetic to the headlines because it mirrors our own fears. At least, that was the case for me. I'm the type of person who mails my neatly packed and disconnected electronic components ahead of me whenever I have to fly somewhere. Why? Because the risk of having some ill informed airport security agent misinterpreting my hobby is too risky. Heck, I've been questioned about not-so-common (but equally not-so-uncommon) consumer electronics, such as graphics tablets. Now I wouldn't go so far as being afraid about bringing my electronics projects to school, but: (a) I'm an adult who has had background checks to work within public schools, and (b) my skin is the perfect shade to be unsuspicious (i.e. not brown, nor pasty).
Ad blockers are pretty much a necessity on mobile networks.
Don't feel guilty about using them either. Ads cost real money on mobile networks because they eat into your quota. They also degrade your device's performance and track your behaviour. Don't dismiss that last point as the cost of free services. While the network is public, your device is private. You should have the right to control which network requests your device does and does not make, as well as control which code executes on it. All of this talk about ads funding websites and behaviour tracking being used to improve the relevance of ads is pure nonsense. If it was about funding websites with relevant ads, they would simply display ads based upon the content of the website.
Given how much modern society depends upon computers, it would be a good thing if there was more exposure. To use your example of managing finances, a little knowledge of programming can enable people to use spreadsheets more effectively. Likewise, a little knowledge of computer architecture can help people make their electronics purchasing decisions more effectively.
Then again, programmer appreciation day isn't about encouraging people to write professional level code (or even amateurish code). It is about recognizing the contributions of programmers. Programmers contribute a lot. It ranges from the games and media software that entertains us, to the applications that contribute to business and science, to the embedded software that is essential to communications and infrastructure and industry. In other words, programmers make our lives better at both a personal level and societal level.
Do I think that we need a day to appreciate programmers? No. But I do think that we should appreciate the people who contribute to society, rather than highlighting their faults (which is what we tend to do when we complain about things that don't work as we think they should).
Slashdot Mirror
While reinstating the long form census may not be big news, the scrapping of it certainly was.
As for it showing up on Slashdot, well it does involve a government shift from being ideologically opposed to the long form census to one that demands it in order to inform policy. (I'm not going to go as far as declaring that it was a Harper government conspiracy, but their attitude certainly made it look that way to left leaning individuals.) Many people are also opposed to the long form census because of privacy or anti-government attitudes. Both of these topics are running themes on Slashdot, even if they aren't purely technological in this case.
The use of calculators were strictly forbidden in my physics courses during the late 1990's, so I asked my instructors if I could use a slide rule during exams. They said yes, so I did. It was a lot of fun to whip out that slide rule on an otherwise stressful day.
Or simply create documentaries focusing upon more balanced development teams.
I can definitely see how many people would think that programming is indifferent or hostile to women. Online, those who bellow loudest tend to have sexist attitudes (one way or the other). If you look at documentaries, a lot of them are dominated by men to the point that the inclusion of women frequently appears to be a token gesture. While the groups being featured may be dominated by men, it certainly does not present an impression of inclusion.
1) It will be much harder to find individuals willing to do certain categories of high risk or menial labor. You would end up having to pay a LOT more.
This is already the case. Higher risk occupations already pay well above the minimum wage, even for unskilled labour. Outside of the service sector, menial labour typically pays above minimum wage as well. In many cases, particularly for high risk or physically demanding work, the labourer can earn more than many professionals do.
2) Inflation for certain goods and services could eat away any gains that a system like this could bring.
In many parts of the world, there are preexisting price controls. This is particularly true for rent and utilities. This is partially true for some agricultural products. In a sense, it is true for home prices (i.e. control of interest rates). That pretty much leaves luxury items. I highly doubt that anyone would suggest that a basic income covers those.
They had the assigned textbook, and a list of suggested textbooks. Either way, the instructor assigned their own problems, usually a mix from the instructor's manual and of their own creation. In the case of readings, they gave the topic and (in the case of the assigned textbook) section numbers for the current and prior editions. The student was by no means obligated to buy the assigned or recommended textbooks. They could use a book of their own choosing, online resources, or simply rely upon lectures.
University is different from primary or secondary school. While students are expected to meet certain requirements for learning, learning is mostly the responsibility of the student.
Some school boards do try to attract male teachers for the younger grades. Some recreation programs do try to target attract male leaders for programs that serve children. Many parents and children appreciate male role models for their children, particularly if they have boys. Many children appreciate male teachers and recreation program leaders as well.
The stereotypes certainly exist, but they are not universal. Men do have to be somewhat more careful because of those stereotypes, so it is better to work in group settings where you won't be alone with one or two children (e.g. you probably won't see much encouragement on the babysitting front, but child care settings are fine). On the whole though, the biggest thing preventing men from entering these fields are men themselves. Some of it is based upon overblown fears. Like I said, you won't face allegations if you don't work with children alone. Some of it is purely practical. Few men want to work in these fields because they don't pay very much. And that's before you face societal pressures as to what men should and shouldn't be.
I loved the concept of the show and found it very entertaining. I enjoyed how they demonstrated the testing of myths from hypotheses to conclusion, how the revisited myths based on viewer input, and how they did stuff that was just plain too expensive or too dangerous for the typical person to do. Yet I stopped watching it for one simple reason: they seemed to over emphasize the dangerous stuff and that just got plain boring after a time. So thank you for everything you did, and yes thank you for moving on.
Notice that the original post said "well served" and "affordable" public transportation. I realize that isn't the case in a lot of cities. It certainly isn't the case for the city that I live in. On the other hand, many major urban centres have transit that fits both categories. By the time you factor in the costs of owning a vehicle, that squandering of money may very well be squandering time as well (i.e. you have to work more to pay more). Depending upon where you live and work, you may even be squandering time directly. Many cities have transit systems that bypass traffic altogether. Light rail and subways are the clearest examples in the richest of large cities. Yet even smaller and less affluent cities frequently have dedicated bus lanes that bypass traffic on express routes that offer fewer stops for passengers and red lights.
Then, as other people have noted, how a passenger uses their time is important. Multitasking while driving is a gawd awful idea. Students frequently catch up on their readings. Other people use the time to relax: read books, do puzzles, listen to music, watch videos, play games, or anything else that doesn't disrupt other passengers. Even if it is just down time, it can be valuable.
I'm not saying that transit is valuable for all people or under all circumstances. Yet for some people in some circumstances, it is significantly better than owning a private vehicle.
I certainly have no interest in upgrading. My only Windows PC is used for gaming, and some light work when I want to use a larger screen. I'm happy with the setup, and don't want anyone except myself to mess around with it. Thus far, this has proven to be the case even though some people are reporting very different experiences.
Which leaves me wondering: are these reports over dramatized or do they reflect actions on Microsoft's end? I certainly wouldn't put it past Microsoft. They certainly have a multitude of motivations to move their customers onto the latest OS. On the other hand, it is possible for these reports to be honest and misrepresent Microsoft. Windows is a complex OS and it is possible to inadvertently misconfigure things or misread a prompt, resulting in undesired results without really realizing how it came about.
The "no such thing as a free lunch" rule doesn't actually work. Sometimes there are free lunches. Other times, you are paying for the lunch, but the people offering the lunch want you to pay more than advertised. At the end of the day, you have to look at it on a case by case basis. In some cases, it will be rather obvious (e.g. businesses expecting to generate revenues from free services). In other cases, it won't be obvious.
I've seen computer scientists conduct their research without writing a single line of code. I'm not sure what the situation is these days, but a lot of computer science was applied mathematics that focussed upon the development of algorithms. While most computer scientists had the option to implement their algorithms, some could not because they did not have the hardware to work with (e.g. quantum computation).
The problem with subscriptions is that you're giving them personal data that you wouldn't be giving them otherwise, data which is more valuable than the stuff gathered from advertising alone. There are also few guarantees that they won't contract out user tracking even there is no explicit advertising. Even the privacy policies aren't worth the paper they're not printed on. Most include a clause that they can change the terms at any time and most include a clause that they can share the data that they collect with their "partners". Such clauses are dangerous even if the company is entirely trustworthy since it only takes the sale of the company to change what "partners" mean or to change the terms of service.
So thank you but no thank you on subscriptions. It's not money that's the issue here, at least not for me. Heck, it's not even advertising that's the issue. I run ad blockers on my devices to minimize the amount of personal data that is leaked. It has nothing at all to do with the actual advertising.
That was my first thought too. Just to add to it, who is to say that they would let you in even if you did have enough time to make it to the shelter? If the world has collapsed to a state where bomb shelters are necessary, chance are very high that the legal system would have far more pressing issues to deal with.
I suspect that it is because Cortana allegedly sends data back to Microsoft's servers for processing. For people who don't trust Microsoft, it is easy to equate this to spying even if there is no evidence of Microsoft using the transmitted data for anything other than fulfilling user requests and to improve the functionality as well as reliability of their products.
That being said, those Microsoft haters are useful. While their information may be unreliable, they are helping to inform people of Microsoft's data gather practices. Once people know about those practices, they can search for more reliable sources of information to determine how Microsoft's data gathering affects them.
I haven't used NetBSD in years, but one of its selling points was portability. Perhaps portability is less relevant in our more homogenous world, but it still has a place.
Sorry, but your prejudices aren't always correct. I work in a workplace where the men, for the most part, are more "sensitive". Granted, I prefer to call their behaviour professional. On the other hand, the women (again, for the most part) are insensitive. I'm not talking about the stereotypical women style of insensitive either. I'm talking about the stereotypical men style of insensitive.
Workplace culture is defined by the workplace, not necessarily by the stereotypes within the culture as a whole.
The example that I gave assumed that copyright law does not exist. That is to say that everything is in the public domain. The GPL could not exist in that world since the GPL requires copyright law. If you don't have the GPL, you can't force people to distribute the modified source code.
The organizer seems to be focussing on ticket sales as his source of revenue, but there is also mention of serving themed shots and drinks. Alcohol is expensive and surely he was not giving that away for free. It can also be a good revenue generator. I wonder how that fits into how much revenue he would have, and whether it would end up being profitable?
(Note: I'm not saying that this would be a hugely profitable event because of those drinks. I am suggesting that there are important details being left out, details which mean that this is more than a simple fandom party.)
Oddly enough, RMS depends upon the very same copyright laws in order to validate the GPL. Without those laws, so that everything would be in the public domain, people would be able to get anything and everything free for all eternity. On the other hand, they would lose some of the rights that the GPL grants. That includes access to the source code. That would be a world in which someone could publish a program with source code, then a third party could modify the source code and only ship binaries. In other words, the modified sources would more-or-less be treated as a trade secret.
Copyright can be used for good or for ill. Thankfully there are some people like RMS who do the former.
Does it make sense? Not really. As the HaD author pointed out: creating your own boards is more hazardous, offers fewer options for multilayer boards, and is less precise.
On the other hand, we are talking about HaD. If the point was to get a device that does what we want of it, we could buy almost anything off the shelf and sites like HaD would have very little rational for existence. More critically the environment of learning, creativity, independence, and (insert your motivation to make/hack/DIY) would have very little rationale.
You only have to live in various cities to see the impact of this. I've lived in cities where you could literally go to a neighbourhood store and have access to a decent supply of components. I have also lived in cities where you would have to go across town to get something as simple as a resistor. I'll let you guess which places had thriving environments for everything from amateur to professional hardware development, and which ones had a bunch of people talking out of their assess about what they were going to develop.
Of course China seems to take this a step further. The best Canadian cities that I've been in may provide the resources for product development or small scale production for industrial applications, but they won't get you much further.
Yes.
The wonderful thing about microcontroller project boards is the reduced barrier of entry to electronics. The downside is that everything is a programming and physical interfacing project. The end result is that very few people are equipped to think about the electronics behind digital logic and analog design. Indeed, the only reason why I (as a younger person) even have a clue about what you're talking about is because I took a very-much-outdated-by-the-time course on developing instrumentation in university. Even though I could recreate a clock without microcontrollers from basic principles and data sheets, it would be a far-from-optimal design simply because that level of design has limited application in the modern world. (Obviously people still need that level of knowledge to design microconollers and such, but that is a very limited segment of engineers and scientists -- nevermind the general population.)
I honestly cannot see a downside to this hoax. Plan A, set yourself up for a future in engineering. Plan B, if the hoax is discovered, set yourself up for a future in business school.
More seriously though, a lot of people were sympathetic to the headlines because it mirrors our own fears. At least, that was the case for me. I'm the type of person who mails my neatly packed and disconnected electronic components ahead of me whenever I have to fly somewhere. Why? Because the risk of having some ill informed airport security agent misinterpreting my hobby is too risky. Heck, I've been questioned about not-so-common (but equally not-so-uncommon) consumer electronics, such as graphics tablets. Now I wouldn't go so far as being afraid about bringing my electronics projects to school, but: (a) I'm an adult who has had background checks to work within public schools, and (b) my skin is the perfect shade to be unsuspicious (i.e. not brown, nor pasty).
Ad blockers are pretty much a necessity on mobile networks.
Don't feel guilty about using them either. Ads cost real money on mobile networks because they eat into your quota. They also degrade your device's performance and track your behaviour. Don't dismiss that last point as the cost of free services. While the network is public, your device is private. You should have the right to control which network requests your device does and does not make, as well as control which code executes on it. All of this talk about ads funding websites and behaviour tracking being used to improve the relevance of ads is pure nonsense. If it was about funding websites with relevant ads, they would simply display ads based upon the content of the website.
Given how much modern society depends upon computers, it would be a good thing if there was more exposure. To use your example of managing finances, a little knowledge of programming can enable people to use spreadsheets more effectively. Likewise, a little knowledge of computer architecture can help people make their electronics purchasing decisions more effectively.
Then again, programmer appreciation day isn't about encouraging people to write professional level code (or even amateurish code). It is about recognizing the contributions of programmers. Programmers contribute a lot. It ranges from the games and media software that entertains us, to the applications that contribute to business and science, to the embedded software that is essential to communications and infrastructure and industry. In other words, programmers make our lives better at both a personal level and societal level.
Do I think that we need a day to appreciate programmers? No. But I do think that we should appreciate the people who contribute to society, rather than highlighting their faults (which is what we tend to do when we complain about things that don't work as we think they should).