Not necessarily related, but IMHO interesting: The US Navy has had to deal with fishing boats intentionally dragging their lines across cables many times. Around their Japanese bases, the US had a couple of data lines strewn along the ocean floor. If the lines were cut, the Navy would have to fix them. To do that, they had to keep fishing boats out of the area when they were working, so they would compensate the fishermen.
Obvious Japanese fisherman's solution: 1) Drag anchor across US data line. 2) Skip work and receive generous compensation. 3) $ Profit $
I've met software engineers that I'd be happy to refer to as "software engineers". I've also met code-monkeys that will happily claim "software engineer" status. Canada's upholding some standard for the term engineer is spot on. Get a degree and proper accreditation, and then you get your title. This may sound egotistical, but it's unfortunate that, here in the US, describing myself as an "electrical engineer" distinguishes me only slightly from the "sanitation engineer" that hauls off my recyclables once a week.
They invented new base pairs, not "new replicating genetic code." Also, even if they *did* invent a "new replicating genetic code" calling it cancer is preposterous The description called it a new genetic code. TFA announced that it was successfully replicating - Apparently a real hurdle. And I didn't call it cancer, I just pointed out that new replicating genetic codes certainly sound like cancer and justifies the silly "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag. This sounds like exciting science, but is also a field not to be taken too lightly.
Do we really only perceive biologists as madmen who want to do evil experients [sic] for the heck of it? No. But, even though I think that it's enormously cool what these folks did, the "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag seems appropriate here. While reading TFA, I couldn't help but think: "Scientists have created an unnatural but successfully replicating new genetic code? Did we just re-invent cancer?" Followed soon after by: "Cool!"
I find it absolutely unbelievable that they "refused to speak English except to the profs." Sorry that I'm unbelievable. Most of my friends in high school were second-generation-Chinese - I was a Grade-A nerd in the San Francisco Bay Area. I was an outsider, but they treated me OK. The grad students I refer to (with the exception of one - I'll get to him in a minute) completely cold-shouldered us. I (and others) approached them trying to be friendly. They literally pretended not to understand us and responded in Mandarin (I think - could be Cantonese - what the hell do I know?) Knowing that they attended English-speaking classes and corresponded with the profs, that's the most effective way I can imagine to communicate: "Fuck you. I don't want to talk to you now or ever." The only way that I knew that the posters were Mao's poetry was because I happened to wind up assigned to share a small partition with one of them. One day when it was just the two of us, I decided again to bridge the communication gap and asked him what the poster said. He told me that it was Mao's poetry. To the best of my recollection, that was the longest conversation I had with any member of the group, despite many attempts.
If you've got a better theory for their behavior, I'd love to hear it. Nobody but us is still reading this thread. But, I'm not racist or xenophobic - Just confused and a little creeped out by the Chinese students in my EE grad school. I'd swear Scout's Honor, but I was never a scout...
I cannot express how closely you've just relayed so many of the arguments I've had... The only exception being that I've often substituted "..." for "I still don't believe X" just waiting for the other person to either "get it" or give up.
When you happen upon a man arguing with a mule, which of the two looks foolish?
Good point - Several groups like to find the holes in the fence. Incidentally, flying a plane into a building occurred to me when I was 7 or 8 (mid-eighties), but I cheated. Spoiler alert! It's the climax to Richard Bachman's (Steven King's) The Running Man (originally published 1982.) From what I hear, the same concept showed up in publication many times before the big day. Much more terrible ideas have occurred to me since, but fortunately that's encouraged in my field.
P.S. Don't judge The Running Man by the movie. The story's worth buying - The movie's not worth sitting down for.
I know enough Mandarin (I think - it may be Cantonese) to say "Hello", "How are you?", and "Thank you". As for cricket, I know that blocking the "wicket" is good, that scoring 100 points at a single at-bat is called a century, and that it takes forever for a game to finish and is brutally boring to watch. IMHO, I know plenty of both.
Not sure. I admit that my statement that the posters were "all over" their side of the office was exaggeration on my part - There were only a couple. But, all of them refused to speak English except to the profs. The best explanation that I've heard so far was that, perhaps, there was either one honest devotee and many too frightened to differ and wind up McCarthy'ed or that they were all too paranoid to be honest with each other and just blow off the PRC.
Are you a nuclear engineer? I'm an EE by education and work in Los Alamos, NM. Many of us here occasionally need to visit Einstein's world. This town has changed since the Manhattan Project, but surprisingly little.
Definitely Mao. I may have exaggerated "all over", but it was most certainly Mao. I can't speculate as to their motivation for hanging them, but they appeared to be displayed proudly.
Speaking of Ayyash, his assassination was one of the most elegant killings that Mossad ever carried out. Although not officially confirmed by Israel, Mossad apparently swapped his phone with one laden with explosives, called him to confirm his identity, and then blew it up in his ear. Much cleaner (although much more work and more dangerous) than their current method of using helicopters to blow up their enemies cars while they're stuck in traffic.
I'm sure if you were studying in China you'd be speaking English to your American friends It didn't bother me at all that they spoke their native language with each other. What was strange was that they refused to talk with the other students. They would literally act like they didn't know English unless they were speaking with the profs.
A+B=C is a "rule", just as "obey god" is I'm not sure that it's fair to equate an engineer's "rules" with a religious fundamentalist's "rules". Engineers have models of how stuff works. They use those models as appropriate and adjust them when necessary per a new situation or acquisition of new data.
I live in Newton's world even though I know that his "rules" are a little flawed. I occasionally need to visit Einstein's world because I'm doing something weird. No problem. However, if Newton's world were written in scripture, then any situation requiring Einstein's stuff would be painfully ignored or explained away through magic.
Think frustrated engineers. Engineers that have been western educated and know how to build modern stuff. That's the reason that the US funds so many joint engineering programs with Russia. It's not that we expect them to necessarily pay themselves off in any meaningful way. We just want the highly educated foreign bomb-builders kept occupied and funded doing something relatively non-violent. Unfortunately, I do not know of any similar programs with the middle east (although they'd be a heckuva lot cheaper than war...)
About 1/4-1/3 of my EE graduate school was comprised of Indians/Pakistanis here in the US to study. They were great - Other than a strange obsession with Cricket, perfectly agreeable folks. However, there was another 1/4-1/3 here to study from China that were much harder to get along with. They refused to speak English except with the professors and had posters of Mao along with his poetry all over the half of the graduate-student office that they dominated. I don't want to sound xenophobic, but it was very strange.
Engineers do tend to try to put things into precise terms--black and white, right and wrong Precise, maybe, but I'm not so sure about black/white and right/wrong. One of the first things that I learned in engineering is that the optimal solution is almost always somewhere between the extremes. But, once I identify that optimal point, I defy anyone to try to convince me that it lies somewhere else.
Many of the engineers I've known in college were absolutely convinced of tehir [sic] superiority and absolute rightness in all things. I suspect that's part of the issue. I'm an EE with a long-standing history of blowing stuff up. That said, I now work primarily trying to keep stuff from blowing up (or at least blowing up in some controlled environment.) Engineers make good terrorist candidates. They tend to: * Be intelligent and educated (Or if not intelligent, obsessive enough to make it through a tough school-path) * Have superiority complexes ("I know what's right and all differing opinions are wrong and should be corrected") * Be good problem solvers ("If I wanted to get around this security system, here's what I'd do...") * Know everything necessary to make good bombs
No offense taken - Hopefully my son will learn not to do idiotic things like this just like I should have from my father. Quoth my father: "If nothing else, maybe I can serve as a bad example."
There was nothing that said it was dangerous to chew on the cord while it was plugged in! A bit off-topic, but I'll burn a little karma. I can personally testify that putting a hot phone-line across your tongue is very unpleasant. (Combination of having the bad habit of stripping wires with my teeth and being flaky enough to have forgotten that I'd plugged the line in in the other room to gauge length.) I did, however, have the good taste to sue neither the phone company nor the manufacturer of the reel of phone cable.
I'd hate to think that I'm part of the reason all of those warnings are on there...
How important is energy efficiency to a ship that carries its own nuclear reactor? Can a modern warship afford to just toss around power however it feels appropriate? I really know very little about it, but I assume that they're carrying around plenty of spare capacity.
Slashdot Mirror
No!
I brought this keyboard with my own hard-earned dollars and I'll make as many typos as I damned well please.
You get digg. If you prefer digg, the address is: http://www.digg.com/.
Although I agree - An automated dupe checker seems appropriate for things like this...
Not necessarily related, but IMHO interesting:
The US Navy has had to deal with fishing boats intentionally dragging their lines across cables many times. Around their Japanese bases, the US had a couple of data lines strewn along the ocean floor. If the lines were cut, the Navy would have to fix them. To do that, they had to keep fishing boats out of the area when they were working, so they would compensate the fishermen.
Obvious Japanese fisherman's solution:
1) Drag anchor across US data line.
2) Skip work and receive generous compensation.
3) $ Profit $
I've met software engineers that I'd be happy to refer to as "software engineers". I've also met code-monkeys that will happily claim "software engineer" status. Canada's upholding some standard for the term engineer is spot on. Get a degree and proper accreditation, and then you get your title. This may sound egotistical, but it's unfortunate that, here in the US, describing myself as an "electrical engineer" distinguishes me only slightly from the "sanitation engineer" that hauls off my recyclables once a week.
If you've got a better theory for their behavior, I'd love to hear it. Nobody but us is still reading this thread. But, I'm not racist or xenophobic - Just confused and a little creeped out by the Chinese students in my EE grad school. I'd swear Scout's Honor, but I was never a scout...
Cheers.
I cannot express how closely you've just relayed so many of the arguments I've had... The only exception being that I've often substituted "..." for "I still don't believe X" just waiting for the other person to either "get it" or give up.
When you happen upon a man arguing with a mule, which of the two looks foolish?
Good point - Several groups like to find the holes in the fence. Incidentally, flying a plane into a building occurred to me when I was 7 or 8 (mid-eighties), but I cheated. Spoiler alert! It's the climax to Richard Bachman's (Steven King's) The Running Man (originally published 1982.) From what I hear, the same concept showed up in publication many times before the big day. Much more terrible ideas have occurred to me since, but fortunately that's encouraged in my field.
P.S.
Don't judge The Running Man by the movie. The story's worth buying - The movie's not worth sitting down for.
I know enough Mandarin (I think - it may be Cantonese) to say "Hello", "How are you?", and "Thank you". As for cricket, I know that blocking the "wicket" is good, that scoring 100 points at a single at-bat is called a century, and that it takes forever for a game to finish and is brutally boring to watch. IMHO, I know plenty of both.
Not sure. I admit that my statement that the posters were "all over" their side of the office was exaggeration on my part - There were only a couple. But, all of them refused to speak English except to the profs. The best explanation that I've heard so far was that, perhaps, there was either one honest devotee and many too frightened to differ and wind up McCarthy'ed or that they were all too paranoid to be honest with each other and just blow off the PRC.
Definitely Mao. I may have exaggerated "all over", but it was most certainly Mao. I can't speculate as to their motivation for hanging them, but they appeared to be displayed proudly.
Speaking of Ayyash, his assassination was one of the most elegant killings that Mossad ever carried out. Although not officially confirmed by Israel, Mossad apparently swapped his phone with one laden with explosives, called him to confirm his identity, and then blew it up in his ear. Much cleaner (although much more work and more dangerous) than their current method of using helicopters to blow up their enemies cars while they're stuck in traffic.
I live in Newton's world even though I know that his "rules" are a little flawed. I occasionally need to visit Einstein's world because I'm doing something weird. No problem. However, if Newton's world were written in scripture, then any situation requiring Einstein's stuff would be painfully ignored or explained away through magic.
About 1/4-1/3 of my EE graduate school was comprised of Indians/Pakistanis here in the US to study. They were great - Other than a strange obsession with Cricket, perfectly agreeable folks. However, there was another 1/4-1/3 here to study from China that were much harder to get along with. They refused to speak English except with the professors and had posters of Mao along with his poetry all over the half of the graduate-student office that they dominated. I don't want to sound xenophobic, but it was very strange.
* Be intelligent and educated (Or if not intelligent, obsessive enough to make it through a tough school-path)
* Have superiority complexes ("I know what's right and all differing opinions are wrong and should be corrected")
* Be good problem solvers ("If I wanted to get around this security system, here's what I'd do...")
* Know everything necessary to make good bombs
No offense taken - Hopefully my son will learn not to do idiotic things like this just like I should have from my father. Quoth my father:
"If nothing else, maybe I can serve as a bad example."
If you're shopping for a Fleshlight that sets things on fire, you've got some real issues to sort out...
I'd hate to think that I'm part of the reason all of those warnings are on there...
How important is energy efficiency to a ship that carries its own nuclear reactor? Can a modern warship afford to just toss around power however it feels appropriate? I really know very little about it, but I assume that they're carrying around plenty of spare capacity.