My personal experience indicates that like so many things, social life is a matter of training, experience and desire.
Training and experience, yes, but the real question is why do you have that desire?
Think of an obvious analogy, a castrated animal has no desire for sex. Perhaps the amygdala produces some hormone that causes desire for social interaction. Social training and experience would be the result of that.
Mathematical ability is the same way, one needs training, experience, and desire to become good at math. As a matter of fact, one needs these three elements to become good at *anything*. So, what's the element that causes one to have desire to be good at one field rather than another?
Disinformation or uncertainty as to the present condition of their activities can only benefit them, especially if it causes the enemy to underestimate their power.
More importantly, it causes people to doubt their capabilities. If there existed a consensus that the Iranian nuclear project poses a danger to the whole world, there would be pressure to stop that project at any cost. If they are perceived as incompetent bunglers no one will take them seriously and the nuclear program will continue.
Why the hell Siemens is running Windows for such kind of application, to begin with?
My question exactly. Twenty years ago the standard system for such applications was the VAX/VMS and I still have to see any successful virus for the VAX/VMS. There have existed many proof-of-concept viruses and worms written for VMS, sure, but never one that caused any widespread damage.
There's a good analysis of the reasons for this here. In simple words, VMS is not quite as user-friendly as Windows and that makes all the difference.
That's the reason why I wish the "year of Linux on the desktop" will never come. We don't need an Eternal September on the Linux desktop.
Is there any part of my post you don't understand?
Yes, the part where you actually try to answer. It's very easy to say "You are full of shit", the difficult part is addressing the issues.
I think your answer is very much an endorsement of the points I was raising. PC people don't try to reason the arguments, they always call "Bullshit" to everything that doesn't suit their own preconceived view of reality.
The only study I've seen correlating race and intelligence used IQ (which is somewhat ethnocentric)
The *only* study you've ever seen correlating race and intelligence? Wow, you must have just arrived from an alien world, right?
There have been gajillions studies published correlating race and intelligence. However, this field is so politically polarized that you cannot expect any coherence, either the studies are political propaganda or the reviews are political propaganda.
This is an unfortunate situation, because it leaves the most vulnerable citizens to their own fate. It's funny how the PC crowd who insists to give equal access to buildings for people who have walking disabilities are the same who pretend that intelligence handicaps do not exist.
If people drop out of school and have problems getting even a car detailing or fast food job, that's proof enough that they have some reasoning disability. Instead of arguing from a politically polarized opinion whether this is due to nature or nurture, shouldn't we try to find a solution for this problem?
Arguing about "poverty or education level" biases is ridiculous, it disregards cause and effect. Poverty is much more likely to be a consequence of low intelligence than the cause, after all who wants to live in poverty? Same for education level, any smart person would work against odds to get an education. If you measure intelligence in such a way that all possible consequences of low intelligence are eliminated then, sure, you'll find that everyone has exactly the same intelligence level. But you aren't helping anyone that way.
Let's try to find the cause of low intelligence. If it's racially related, then let's find a biochemical cure, if Africans, or any other genetic group, have low intelligence due to race, let's develop some medicine that will allow them to have normal intelligence.
It's exactly the same as Northern Europeans need to treat their skins with sun blockers to avoid skin cancer in situations where people of African descent can tolerate the effects of the sun without ill effects. What's wrong with that?
You said "2 ohms is typical".... Parent you replied to has pointed out - 2 MEGAohms is what's clearly shown on the meter. You should go back to school - you need a literary degree.
No, YOU need a literary degree. What I said is that the photo is merely illustrative, and does not pretend to be an accurate rendering of the measurement.
He wrote: "It's hard to get a good reading, without scraping all the paint away. But that's a connection... remember that's how it powers the light. Depending on your contact you can see some pretty low values"
Two megohms isn't usually what's called "pretty low", so the conclusion is that what the photo shows is not the lowest he got. Please note that he mentioned "depending on your contact", so it's not always he saw low values.
It's not easy to get correct measurements in very low resistances, that's why my Fluke 189 multimeter has an option to display the lowest value read during a given interval.
Hard disks have enough shielding to be immune to external magnetic fields, but floppy disks were a different story.
There was a meeting room where I worked that had a steel white board. The eraser had a magnet behind the felt surface, so it stuck to the board. It happened quite often that someone left floppies on the table and then distractedly put the eraser over them. The result: instantly reformatted disks.
First, his meter's reading 2 Megaohms, not 2 Ohms. I guess he's not much of an "Electronics Person"
Maybe he's not much of a "Photography Person". It's not easy to snap the shot while holding two probes in contact with the metal hooks. The photo is there to give an idea of how it went, it's not supposed to be an accurate document of the measured value.
The "non-electronic" persons are those who calculated the electric resistance of the metal hooks. I got my EE degree in 1979 and have been an electronic hobbyist since 1969 and I know that 2 ohms is typical of what you may get from measuring a short circuit. There's always some dirt and oxide around, it's not usual to read the true resistance of the metal itself.
There was a time when project names were chosen to be cute acronyms. I work with digital signal processing where there are algorithms named MUSIC, for "MUltiple SIgnal Classification", and ESPRIT, for "Estimation of Signal Parameters via Rotational Invariance Techniques".
Today it's better to have Google-friendly names, i.e. names that are unique. Every time when I start a new project name now I first google the name, if it gets any results I change the name. This is priceless for little-known projects, because any extra words you have to add to a search limit the results you get.
In the two examples I cited above, adding the word "algorithm" will return what you want, but how many pages are there in the web that mention MUSIC and ESPRIT without the word "algorithm"? Those pages are lost in the Google noise.
I have a similar experience when we were installing some computers in a hydro power station control center. The old control system used electromechanical relays, so it was quite robust, but the digital computers kept crashing. There were some 500 kV lines right going over the control center, so it was assumed they were causing enough interference to crash the computers.
After months of studies, it was decided that shielding the control center was the only solution. However there was a problem, the large glass window to the observation hall. Someone mentioned that there existed a transparent conductive paint, so they called a paint supplier:
-"Hello, I'm looking for some invisible paint, to paint glass"
They hung up without an answer at the other side...
Steel wool will catch fire with any battery. When I was a kid I used to do it with 9 volts because the terminals are both on the same side, but I experimented with a 1.5 V C cell and a bit of wire and it worked.
you don' t understand the difference between living off a public cul-de-sac, where you have to find, drive to, and observe for an extended to observe activity, where maybe 30 people, mostly neighbors and workers (cable, television, maintenance, yard) may visit, and to which *you can likely observe who visits the neighborhood*.......versus over 100million people can see in a span of 7 weeks, including your address and location, with complete, untraceable anonymity (Google does not reveal visited IPs and even if they did, that's easy to circumvent).......is a little hard to comprehend. Actually, it's astounding. Are you a moron and stupid?
If it's unremarkable in person it's equally unremarkable on the internet.
Those same 100 million people who are able to see it on the internet are also able to travel to that same cul-de-sac if they wished to. But why would they want?
Why would anyone want to browse through Street View until they get to some boring little alley somewhere? And, assuming someone does that, what's the probability that they will get specifically to your own little cul-de-sac, instead of some other random place among the thousands or millions of little streets that are on Street View?
Unless you use the Streisand effect to bring public attention to your place, there's about the same probability that someone will look at it in Google as there is that some stranger will go there in person.
You're playful with your significant other in a secluded, but public, spot. You see someone coming. What do you do?
Do the same thing when you see the Google street view car coming, it's not a secret car. It has "Google street view" signs all around and some very distinctive cameras on top, you can't miss seeing it coming.
Virtual sex is not family friendly... it is somehow hard to make babies like that
In other news, the "House & Garden" magazine is not family friendly because it's hard to buy a house if you see pictures of houses. Also, the "Car & Driver" magazine was found to be not car friendly, because people will not buy a car if they see the picture of one.
I don't want to start a perl versus python war.. ok, I will.
I think it's funny how a discussion on Ruby drifts into a Perl vs Python war, and at this point this is the post with most answers.
Not to dismiss Ruby, but perhaps surpassing CPAN in absolute numbers does not mean everything.
I have used Perl in the past, now I use mostly Python for all quick programming and a lot of other applications, as a matter of fact I use Python almost exclusively, except for those parts where nothing but C will do. And I must say that the "batteries included" philosophy of Python is working fine for me.
Why not Ruby? In my case it's personal taste alone that made me prefer Python. All in all, I have seen many good analyses of Python vs Ruby that present good arguments for Ruby, but in my case, for my own particular uses, I found Python to be more to my taste. Simpler syntax, cleaner and easier to read for one thing. For instance, the overuse of the "end" word reminds me of Fortran, "END" what? If it isn't obvious at a glance it's wasting my time. Another common argument for Ruby is Rails, but Django has been working fine for me under Python.
In conclusion, Ruby is great, but I prefer Python. However Perl is obviously not dead, yet.
Do you think 500 Stalinists are any better than 500 Nazis?
Simo Häyhä was the epitome of the true patriot freedom fighter. He used in the most skillful way whatever equipment he had to fight enemy soldiers that came from a dictatorship super power to invade a small democratic country.
As Winston Churchill said in his "House of Many Mansions" speech, "Only Finland-superb, nay, sublime-in the jaws of peril-Finland shows what free men can do. The service rendered by Finland to mankind is magnificent. They have exposed, for all the world to see, the military incapacity of the Red Army and of the Red Air Force. Many illusions about Soviet Russia have been dispelled in these few fierce weeks of fighting in the Arctic Circle. Everyone can see how Communism rots the soul of a nation; how it makes it abject and hungry in peace, and proves it base and abominable in war. We cannot tell what the fate of Finland may be, but no more mournful spectacle could be presented to what is left to civilized mankind than that this splendid Northern race should be at last worn down and reduced to servitude worse than death by the dull brutish force of overwhelming numbers. If the light of freedom which still burns so brightly in the frozen North should be finally quenched, it might well herald a return to the Dark Ages, when every vestige 6f human progress during two thousand years would be engulfed."
I doubt there is much risk of cancer: cancer is when cells don't respond to normal apoptosis signals and keep growing.
You don't need to remove the TTL, just reset it every fifty years or so.
A drug that restores the telomeres in each cell could be applied when needed, and then the telomeres would be shortened again at each cell division in the normal way.
Slashdot Mirror
Still wrapping my head around "sex by surprise"
If I were trying to make "sex by surprise" with someone I would not want s/he to give me head. There can be painful consequences if the victim bites.
My personal experience indicates that like so many things, social life is a matter of training, experience and desire.
Training and experience, yes, but the real question is why do you have that desire?
Think of an obvious analogy, a castrated animal has no desire for sex. Perhaps the amygdala produces some hormone that causes desire for social interaction. Social training and experience would be the result of that.
Mathematical ability is the same way, one needs training, experience, and desire to become good at math. As a matter of fact, one needs these three elements to become good at *anything*. So, what's the element that causes one to have desire to be good at one field rather than another?
Then again, he's talking to people on slashdot. Something tells me it's rather unlikely they're on his lawn....
He's talking to me. I'm standing on his lawn right now, browsing Slashdot on my wifi-enabled netbook.
Disinformation or uncertainty as to the present condition of their activities can only benefit them, especially if it causes the enemy to underestimate their power.
More importantly, it causes people to doubt their capabilities. If there existed a consensus that the Iranian nuclear project poses a danger to the whole world, there would be pressure to stop that project at any cost. If they are perceived as incompetent bunglers no one will take them seriously and the nuclear program will continue.
Why the hell Siemens is running Windows for such kind of application, to begin with?
My question exactly. Twenty years ago the standard system for such applications was the VAX/VMS and I still have to see any successful virus for the VAX/VMS. There have existed many proof-of-concept viruses and worms written for VMS, sure, but never one that caused any widespread damage.
There's a good analysis of the reasons for this here. In simple words, VMS is not quite as user-friendly as Windows and that makes all the difference.
That's the reason why I wish the "year of Linux on the desktop" will never come. We don't need an Eternal September on the Linux desktop.
Is there any part of my post you don't understand?
Yes, the part where you actually try to answer. It's very easy to say "You are full of shit", the difficult part is addressing the issues.
I think your answer is very much an endorsement of the points I was raising. PC people don't try to reason the arguments, they always call "Bullshit" to everything that doesn't suit their own preconceived view of reality.
The only study I've seen correlating race and intelligence used IQ (which is somewhat ethnocentric)
The *only* study you've ever seen correlating race and intelligence? Wow, you must have just arrived from an alien world, right?
There have been gajillions studies published correlating race and intelligence. However, this field is so politically polarized that you cannot expect any coherence, either the studies are political propaganda or the reviews are political propaganda.
This is an unfortunate situation, because it leaves the most vulnerable citizens to their own fate. It's funny how the PC crowd who insists to give equal access to buildings for people who have walking disabilities are the same who pretend that intelligence handicaps do not exist.
If people drop out of school and have problems getting even a car detailing or fast food job, that's proof enough that they have some reasoning disability. Instead of arguing from a politically polarized opinion whether this is due to nature or nurture, shouldn't we try to find a solution for this problem?
Arguing about "poverty or education level" biases is ridiculous, it disregards cause and effect. Poverty is much more likely to be a consequence of low intelligence than the cause, after all who wants to live in poverty? Same for education level, any smart person would work against odds to get an education. If you measure intelligence in such a way that all possible consequences of low intelligence are eliminated then, sure, you'll find that everyone has exactly the same intelligence level. But you aren't helping anyone that way.
Let's try to find the cause of low intelligence. If it's racially related, then let's find a biochemical cure, if Africans, or any other genetic group, have low intelligence due to race, let's develop some medicine that will allow them to have normal intelligence.
It's exactly the same as Northern Europeans need to treat their skins with sun blockers to avoid skin cancer in situations where people of African descent can tolerate the effects of the sun without ill effects. What's wrong with that?
The big drawback is that once they're lit you have no control, you can't turn them off, or even throttle them down.
Something I've always wondered, if one of the shuttle's SRBs fails to lit and the other one starts up, what happens?
Most girls are whores.
The above statement doesn't imply that I pay for sex,
Only to the extent that it doesn't imply that you have sex.
If you had, you'd have to pay for it. Your admitted knowledge of girls is too limited to assume otherwise.
You said "2 ohms is typical"....
Parent you replied to has pointed out - 2 MEGAohms is what's clearly shown on the meter.
You should go back to school - you need a literary degree.
No, YOU need a literary degree. What I said is that the photo is merely illustrative, and does not pretend to be an accurate rendering of the measurement.
He wrote: "It's hard to get a good reading, without scraping all the paint away. But that's a connection... remember that's how it powers the light. Depending on your contact you can see some pretty low values"
Two megohms isn't usually what's called "pretty low", so the conclusion is that what the photo shows is not the lowest he got. Please note that he mentioned "depending on your contact", so it's not always he saw low values.
It's not easy to get correct measurements in very low resistances, that's why my Fluke 189 multimeter has an option to display the lowest value read during a given interval.
Hard disks have enough shielding to be immune to external magnetic fields, but floppy disks were a different story.
There was a meeting room where I worked that had a steel white board. The eraser had a magnet behind the felt surface, so it stuck to the board. It happened quite often that someone left floppies on the table and then distractedly put the eraser over them. The result: instantly reformatted disks.
First, his meter's reading 2 Megaohms, not 2 Ohms. I guess he's not much of an "Electronics Person"
Maybe he's not much of a "Photography Person". It's not easy to snap the shot while holding two probes in contact with the metal hooks. The photo is there to give an idea of how it went, it's not supposed to be an accurate document of the measured value.
The "non-electronic" persons are those who calculated the electric resistance of the metal hooks. I got my EE degree in 1979 and have been an electronic hobbyist since 1969 and I know that 2 ohms is typical of what you may get from measuring a short circuit. There's always some dirt and oxide around, it's not usual to read the true resistance of the metal itself.
There was a time when project names were chosen to be cute acronyms. I work with digital signal processing where there are algorithms named MUSIC, for "MUltiple SIgnal Classification", and ESPRIT, for "Estimation of Signal Parameters via Rotational Invariance Techniques".
Today it's better to have Google-friendly names, i.e. names that are unique. Every time when I start a new project name now I first google the name, if it gets any results I change the name. This is priceless for little-known projects, because any extra words you have to add to a search limit the results you get.
In the two examples I cited above, adding the word "algorithm" will return what you want, but how many pages are there in the web that mention MUSIC and ESPRIT without the word "algorithm"? Those pages are lost in the Google noise.
I have a similar experience when we were installing some computers in a hydro power station control center. The old control system used electromechanical relays, so it was quite robust, but the digital computers kept crashing. There were some 500 kV lines right going over the control center, so it was assumed they were causing enough interference to crash the computers.
After months of studies, it was decided that shielding the control center was the only solution. However there was a problem, the large glass window to the observation hall. Someone mentioned that there existed a transparent conductive paint, so they called a paint supplier:
-"Hello, I'm looking for some invisible paint, to paint glass"
They hung up without an answer at the other side...
Steel wool will catch fire with any battery. When I was a kid I used to do it with 9 volts because the terminals are both on the same side, but I experimented with a 1.5 V C cell and a bit of wire and it worked.
you don' t understand the difference between living off a public cul-de-sac, where you have to find, drive to, and observe for an extended to observe activity, where maybe 30 people, mostly neighbors and workers (cable, television, maintenance, yard) may visit, and to which *you can likely observe who visits the neighborhood*.... ...versus over 100million people can see in a span of 7 weeks, including your address and location, with complete, untraceable anonymity (Google does not reveal visited IPs and even if they did, that's easy to circumvent).... ...is a little hard to comprehend. Actually, it's astounding. Are you a moron and stupid?
If it's unremarkable in person it's equally unremarkable on the internet.
Those same 100 million people who are able to see it on the internet are also able to travel to that same cul-de-sac if they wished to. But why would they want?
Why would anyone want to browse through Street View until they get to some boring little alley somewhere? And, assuming someone does that, what's the probability that they will get specifically to your own little cul-de-sac, instead of some other random place among the thousands or millions of little streets that are on Street View?
Unless you use the Streisand effect to bring public attention to your place, there's about the same probability that someone will look at it in Google as there is that some stranger will go there in person.
You're playful with your significant other in a secluded, but public, spot. You see someone coming. What do you do?
Do the same thing when you see the Google street view car coming, it's not a secret car. It has "Google street view" signs all around and some very distinctive cameras on top, you can't miss seeing it coming.
Virtual sex is not family friendly... it is somehow hard to make babies like that
In other news, the "House & Garden" magazine is not family friendly because it's hard to buy a house if you see pictures of houses. Also, the "Car & Driver" magazine was found to be not car friendly, because people will not buy a car if they see the picture of one.
condoms? I'll leave that to your imagination.
No, thanks. I'd rather not imagine that.
open-toed women's dress shoes would be a no-no?
It says so on page 9, among the instructions for women:
"Chaussures fermées, noires et classiques"
Translation: "closed shoes, black and classic".
With a name like that, life in school must have been hell for him.
I don't want to start a perl versus python war.. ok, I will.
I think it's funny how a discussion on Ruby drifts into a Perl vs Python war, and at this point this is the post with most answers.
Not to dismiss Ruby, but perhaps surpassing CPAN in absolute numbers does not mean everything.
I have used Perl in the past, now I use mostly Python for all quick programming and a lot of other applications, as a matter of fact I use Python almost exclusively, except for those parts where nothing but C will do. And I must say that the "batteries included" philosophy of Python is working fine for me.
Why not Ruby? In my case it's personal taste alone that made me prefer Python. All in all, I have seen many good analyses of Python vs Ruby that present good arguments for Ruby, but in my case, for my own particular uses, I found Python to be more to my taste. Simpler syntax, cleaner and easier to read for one thing. For instance, the overuse of the "end" word reminds me of Fortran, "END" what? If it isn't obvious at a glance it's wasting my time. Another common argument for Ruby is Rails, but Django has been working fine for me under Python.
In conclusion, Ruby is great, but I prefer Python. However Perl is obviously not dead, yet.
well maybe if he had shot 500 Nazis.....
Do you think 500 Stalinists are any better than 500 Nazis?
Simo Häyhä was the epitome of the true patriot freedom fighter. He used in the most skillful way whatever equipment he had to fight enemy soldiers that came from a dictatorship super power to invade a small democratic country.
As Winston Churchill said in his "House of Many Mansions" speech, "Only Finland-superb, nay, sublime-in the jaws of peril-Finland shows what free men can do. The service rendered by Finland to mankind is magnificent. They have exposed, for all the world to see, the military incapacity of the Red Army and of the Red Air Force. Many illusions about Soviet Russia have been dispelled in these few fierce weeks of fighting in the Arctic Circle. Everyone can see how Communism rots the soul of a nation; how it makes it abject and hungry in peace, and proves it base and abominable in war. We cannot tell what the fate of Finland may be, but no more mournful spectacle could be presented to what is left to civilized mankind than that this splendid Northern race should be at last worn down and reduced to servitude worse than death by the dull brutish force of overwhelming numbers. If the light of freedom which still burns so brightly in the frozen North should be finally quenched, it might well herald a return to the Dark Ages, when every vestige 6f human progress during two thousand years would be engulfed."
I doubt there is much risk of cancer: cancer is when cells don't respond to normal apoptosis signals and keep growing.
You don't need to remove the TTL, just reset it every fifty years or so.
A drug that restores the telomeres in each cell could be applied when needed, and then the telomeres would be shortened again at each cell division in the normal way.
If vegetables are good for your health it does not mean meat is bad.
I eat both neat and vegetables, when people try to guess my age they normally undershoot by ten to fifteen years.