Incidentally, same as this "Made with Code" nonsense. Most people cannot learn to code to any significant degree and many of those remaining cannot learn to code well. Having these people on a project usually results in negative performance by them, i.e. cleaning up the mess they make costs significantly more money that the worth of anything they created. We desperately need fewer people to learn how to code. Instead we need to make sure only those that actually have the required talent learn how to do it professionally. The others cannot get there, no matter what.
It's fine if they don't, and can't. They still need to try to learn, for several reasons.
The most important reason the masses should take at least one programming class is to learn what a computer is capable of. Most people wouldn't know a for loop if it bit them. If they took a programming class, they would at least learn that computers are good at doing repetitious things, and this is how it's done. They may not ever be able to write a coherent program, but at least they can see what's possible. Most people view computers as the magic talking box with a screen you can touch to make it do stuff. (As opposed to the past several generations who viewed televisions as the magic talking box with knobs you could touch to make it do stuff.) A programming class, even a bonehead programming class, would give people an inkling of what's happening inside the magic box, and maybe, just maybe, get them to ask a programmer for help with automating tasks.
The second reason is to make people find out, by experience, that programming is hard. Right now there's a pervasive belief that programming must be easy. After all, my cousin's sister's kid does it. How hard can it be? That boy used to shove peas up his nose. Unless people actually try to write a program, they haven't the faintest inkling how difficult it is. Maybe if they try, they'll finally figure out why programmers cost more than MBAs. Or should.
When Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., installed solar panels a few years ago, for example, the local utility, Dominion Virginia Power, threatened legal action. The utility said that only it could sell electricity in its service area.
I wish they had sued. They would have lost as a matter of law, without risk of a jury trial.
I can just see the hearing now.
"Your honor, I'd like to enter into evidence Exhibit A: a solar powered calculator from Dollar General. "Your honor, I'd like to enter into evidence Exhibit B: a solar powered yard light from Home Depot. "Your honor, I'd like to enter into evidence Exhibit C: a gasoline generator from Harbor Freight. "These products are legal in the state of Virginia, are they not? And they all generate electricity? So we're agreed that my client purchased equipment, and not electricity?"
"Yeah, case dismissed, with prejudice. Plaintiff to pay defendant's court costs and attorneys fees."
And how do presume the spamfilter will work with all the content being encrypted? This is not well thought out.
Spambots don't even bother to speak SMTP correctly, which is why greylisting is so effective. Do you think they're going to start signing their spam? I doubt it. It becomes more grist for the Bayesian mill: no encryption, spam probability goes up.
Florida is a good thousand miles away from the Texas launch facility. It would take more fuel to continue downrange and land in Florida than it would to turn back and land in Texas. Florida might be a good landing site for a recoverable Falcon Heavy center stage, but they're likely only around 100mi down range by first stage cutoff.
I'm just quoting SpaceX's own statements. One supposes it's pretty cheap to just fall downrange, when you're that high and going that fast. I suspect they've done the math. I suspect you haven't.
People are just waiting for this technology in Bumfuck Nowhere like they've been waiting for "home automation" all these years.
I've been waiting for "home automation" for years, and by that I mean digital control of my electrical outlets. I even have some X10 equipment that I've been using every day for more than a decade. I only have it because I got it during their $10 for a four-pack promotion, around the turn of the millenium. I've never bought any at the regular price.
Having just now looked at their web site for the first time in 6 or 8 years, I see they finally got a web designer who wasn't an SEO spam specialists crossed with the design sensibilities of a used car salesman. That's a step up. They now have a module integrated into an outlet, which is a another step up, but it's still overpriced and undoubtedly is even flakier than the big boxy modules I have (and which they still sell, identical to the modules I have). Still, the protocol lacks any security whatsoever, so in this day and age, it probably isn't wise to use it at all.
What advantage could this site possibly have over Cape Canaveral?
Let's not forget that SpaceX intends to reuse their first stage. While the Falcon 9 is being built to be able to return to its own launch pad, the fuel reserve necessarily reduces payload capacity. Launching from south Texas allows for an alternative. Instead of returning to its own pad, the first stage could land at Canaveral. This has been the general idea for some time now. It recovers some of the lost payload capacity by allowing an easier landing. Being at nearly the same latitude makes the process that much easier.
The downside is still being vulnerable to the vagaries of scheduling at Canaveral. One supposes it's worth the hassle to avoid building yet another booster and nine more engines.
Ok, the LEGO set is independent of this prototype. But it's available this month. Here is the original proposal on Lego Ideas. Buy your own minifig exosuit! You know you want to.
I was going to keep quiet in this thread, but I couldn't let this pass.
They vote for the person they believe will best represent those interests.
No, they don't. They really really REALLY don't. This has been empirically proven. They vote for the guy with the best hair. They vote for the guy with the best smile. They vote for the guy with the best handshake. They vote for the guy with the "right" tag after his name. They vote for the guy who says all the correct trigger phrases they've been conditioned to respond to. The very LAST thing they do is vote for the person they believe will best represent their interests. That literally isn't a criteria. And yes, I included the "they believe" phrase on purpose. Anybody who can do arithmetic can prove that the vast majority of the country has been voting for people who do not actually represent their interests. It's worse than that. They don't even vote for people they (erroneously) believe will represent their interests. The hair and the smile and the square jaw get the vote, and if asked why, the answer is, "Because I just liked him. He seemed nice. Trustworthy."
More often than not, they don't really understand what would be in their own interests. Most of them have been continuously exposed to a giant propaganda machine literally since birth (young adults vote in line with their parents, almost universally). Most of them are unable to see through the most basic levels of the propaganda machine, the parts that say, "Do this because if you do, you will be a good person." Only a few of them have to be convinced by the more sophisticated modes of the propaganda machine, the parts that get all tricky and use reverse psychology. (That would be the mode that works on Slashdot. You rebels you.) Interests? Interests run in last place in terms of what people vote for. People vote for image and for their hot button single issues and that's all.
Japan is a dying country with no resources. China is a growing country with a hell of a lot of resources. Which country do you want to do business with?
The only one that manufacturers capacitors worth a damn?
The fact that you mentioned 'bra burners' is interesting as it is actually a myth.
Wait, what? Snopes severely overstated that one.
Bra burning was quite real. Perhaps the origin is mythological, but if that's the case, life imitated art in a hurry, and kept at it for quite some time. My mother has personal memories of protests where bras were burned at the University of Chicago, and two different family friends the same age have similar memories from other places. It was quite real. It made the nightly news. Video exists. Yes some of that video is Hollywood depictions of fictional feminists, but not all of it. Not by a long shot.
That you know how it works doesn't change the fact that you didn't actually implement it as a solution for China's air pollution before he did.
Of course I didn't. I don't live in China. I live in a country that enforces air purity laws. It's a blindingly obvious solution to a problem I don't have.
Maybe someone else can comment on this, but it looks like SLS will be more expensive and costly than anything else, giving us less for more money. Why even waste time developing this when we can use SpaceX, the Deltas, Atlas and so on, perhaps human rated versions of these.
Because national security.
Thiokol makes the solid fuel for the Shuttle and SLS solid fueled boosters. They make that same fuel for ICBMs. ICBMs have to be periodically replaced. Using NASA's budget is a way to hide some defense spending by paying Thiokol to work on civilian space, when really the point is to maintain the active skill in chemistry and manufacturing to be able to make new ICBMs. ICBMs don't have to be replaced often enough. Thiokol did their work too well, and met the Air Force requirements for shelf life. Shuttle and SLS make sure people who know how to make ICBM fuel don't wander off.
These are devout Muslims we're talking about here. You didn't have to write the politically correct updated version of the phrase. The classic version is much more precise: one man, one vote, one time.
I'm usually against but-the-book rants in movies but I definitely agree on this. I gave up on the hobbit series being plausibly good as soon as I saw preview footage involving Radagast the Brown.
Fucking rabbit sleigh ride. That was unconscionable.
I'll take the Battle of Five Armies, and I'll take the Extended Super Collector's Director's Edition WTF 95 Hour version too. It's all fine. Peter Jackson can knock himself out.
And then I will download the Kerr fanedit that takes all that footage and makes it reasonably match the book. No pathetic attempt at elf-dwarf romance, no whacky dragon chase scenes, no orc invasion of Lake Town, no running fight down the river, no motherfucking rabbit sleighs. And no whatever stupid shit they feel obliged to stick into Battle of the Five Armies.
There will probably be an hour and forty five minutes of footage left. One solid Tolkein movie. And that's how it should be.
...and the recent annoucement of layoffs there does not bode well.
It bodes quite well. It was the end of a review period and it was less than 5% of the work force. Specifically, the ones who really weren't cutting it. SpaceX has stated they expect to end the year with a 20% increase in head count, even after this week's trimming. In other words, they're choosy about who works for them. Not especially news. They wouldn't be doing what they're doing if their hiring practices worked any other way.
Sigh... Sometimes I don't know why I bother posting on/. anymore.
Probably because you're a bloviating idiot who thought the death blow of your argument was 1/3, which is rational. Yes, I CAN produce a formula which is precisely and exactly pi: C/D. Having an infinite number of decimal digits does not make pi infinite. Represent it any of several other ways and no infinite series appears.
Why is everyone so uncomfortable with the idea that something can be lost forever?
Because no one has figured out how to get the equations of quantum mechanics to work in only one direction without breaking them. And those equations are on really solid ground at this point, or your CPU wouldn't work.
If we're exceptionally lucky, rationalizing quantum mechanics and general relativity will finally reveal what time is and why everything in the universe appears to only proceed in one 'direction' in time. Don't hold your breath though. It's going to take a very strange kind of mind to figure that out, and such minds that are still in contact with reality are difficult to come by.
It just strikes me as fatuous and arrogant that humans think the universe has to work a certain rational, logical, way...
The equations of quantum mechanics work really well. The equations of relativity work really well. Plug either into the other and you get nonsense.
Anybody paying attention could conclude the universe doesn't work in a certain rational logical way.
They certainly do! It's just not something you can model perfectly. And just because we can't create a perfect model - or completely understand a thing or concept doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
You got that backwards. A perfect circle is perfectly described with pi, which is irrational, not infinite. It's something you can model perfectly, because you can use this creature called pi in your equation, but it's not something you can manufacture perfectly since even if you're capable of Planck-scale manufacturing, you can't do sub-Planck-scale manufacturing, and there ends your quest for perfection.
Generally speaking the models are much more perfect than reality.
I'm your shareholder. And I have a zero tolerance for drunk bozos who drive the company into the ground that I own.
Oh what a wonderful fantasy world you live in. Where is this mythical responsible shareholder holding the feet of executives to the fire?
*crickets*
Fund managers are the only shareholders that get a seat at the table. YOU are not invited. YOU won't make it through the door, with your 150 shares. YOU would be mistaken for the hired help if you dared show up, and told to bring the coffee, because you're obviously not wearing a $3000 suit.
Meanwhile those wearing those suits are very best buds with the executives you would like to dismiss. They all went to the same schools together. They all played on the same sports teams together. They all raped the same cheerleaders together. It's a tight little club, and you aren't in it, so your opinion of executive performance amounts to a hill of beans.
So why do all the media call the SU-25 a fighter? Maybe it's just standard incompetence and ignorance, but you should always ask "cui bono?"
I'm going with standard ignorance and incompetence on this one. SU-27 is just too much like SU-25. Editing is haaaard.</whine> Witness the valiant (and consistently failed efforts) of our very own Slashdot editors.
So there is no way that guest can use these systems to make requests, people still have to call the front desk to get more towels. Guests have no way of knowing about other services the hotel is offering.
Be careful what you wish for. If any one of those companies you named latches on to that idea, they'll create an app that interfaces with their system. And it will demand access to EVERYTHING in your phone, watch everything you do, spam the shit out of your entire contact list, and otherwise do its best to make the NSA look as benign as a curious neighbor.
Likewise for the app they don't just provide to the maid, but demand the maid install.
Slashdot Mirror
Incidentally, same as this "Made with Code" nonsense. Most people cannot learn to code to any significant degree and many of those remaining cannot learn to code well. Having these people on a project usually results in negative performance by them, i.e. cleaning up the mess they make costs significantly more money that the worth of anything they created. We desperately need fewer people to learn how to code. Instead we need to make sure only those that actually have the required talent learn how to do it professionally. The others cannot get there, no matter what.
It's fine if they don't, and can't. They still need to try to learn, for several reasons.
The most important reason the masses should take at least one programming class is to learn what a computer is capable of. Most people wouldn't know a for loop if it bit them. If they took a programming class, they would at least learn that computers are good at doing repetitious things, and this is how it's done. They may not ever be able to write a coherent program, but at least they can see what's possible. Most people view computers as the magic talking box with a screen you can touch to make it do stuff. (As opposed to the past several generations who viewed televisions as the magic talking box with knobs you could touch to make it do stuff.) A programming class, even a bonehead programming class, would give people an inkling of what's happening inside the magic box, and maybe, just maybe, get them to ask a programmer for help with automating tasks.
The second reason is to make people find out, by experience, that programming is hard. Right now there's a pervasive belief that programming must be easy. After all, my cousin's sister's kid does it. How hard can it be? That boy used to shove peas up his nose. Unless people actually try to write a program, they haven't the faintest inkling how difficult it is. Maybe if they try, they'll finally figure out why programmers cost more than MBAs. Or should.
When Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., installed solar panels a few years ago, for example, the local utility, Dominion Virginia Power, threatened legal action. The utility said that only it could sell electricity in its service area.
I wish they had sued. They would have lost as a matter of law, without risk of a jury trial.
I can just see the hearing now.
"Your honor, I'd like to enter into evidence Exhibit A: a solar powered calculator from Dollar General.
"Your honor, I'd like to enter into evidence Exhibit B: a solar powered yard light from Home Depot.
"Your honor, I'd like to enter into evidence Exhibit C: a gasoline generator from Harbor Freight.
"These products are legal in the state of Virginia, are they not? And they all generate electricity? So we're agreed that my client purchased equipment, and not electricity?"
"Yeah, case dismissed, with prejudice. Plaintiff to pay defendant's court costs and attorneys fees."
And how do presume the spamfilter will work with all the content being encrypted? This is not well thought out.
Spambots don't even bother to speak SMTP correctly, which is why greylisting is so effective. Do you think they're going to start signing their spam? I doubt it. It becomes more grist for the Bayesian mill: no encryption, spam probability goes up.
Florida is a good thousand miles away from the Texas launch facility. It would take more fuel to continue downrange and land in Florida than it would to turn back and land in Texas. Florida might be a good landing site for a recoverable Falcon Heavy center stage, but they're likely only around 100mi down range by first stage cutoff.
I'm just quoting SpaceX's own statements. One supposes it's pretty cheap to just fall downrange, when you're that high and going that fast. I suspect they've done the math. I suspect you haven't.
People are just waiting for this technology in Bumfuck Nowhere like they've been waiting for "home automation" all these years.
I've been waiting for "home automation" for years, and by that I mean digital control of my electrical outlets. I even have some X10 equipment that I've been using every day for more than a decade. I only have it because I got it during their $10 for a four-pack promotion, around the turn of the millenium. I've never bought any at the regular price.
Having just now looked at their web site for the first time in 6 or 8 years, I see they finally got a web designer who wasn't an SEO spam specialists crossed with the design sensibilities of a used car salesman. That's a step up. They now have a module integrated into an outlet, which is a another step up, but it's still overpriced and undoubtedly is even flakier than the big boxy modules I have (and which they still sell, identical to the modules I have). Still, the protocol lacks any security whatsoever, so in this day and age, it probably isn't wise to use it at all.
What advantage could this site possibly have over Cape Canaveral?
Let's not forget that SpaceX intends to reuse their first stage. While the Falcon 9 is being built to be able to return to its own launch pad, the fuel reserve necessarily reduces payload capacity. Launching from south Texas allows for an alternative. Instead of returning to its own pad, the first stage could land at Canaveral. This has been the general idea for some time now. It recovers some of the lost payload capacity by allowing an easier landing. Being at nearly the same latitude makes the process that much easier.
The downside is still being vulnerable to the vagaries of scheduling at Canaveral. One supposes it's worth the hassle to avoid building yet another booster and nine more engines.
Ok, the LEGO set is independent of this prototype. But it's available this month. Here is the original proposal on Lego Ideas. Buy your own minifig exosuit! You know you want to.
I was going to keep quiet in this thread, but I couldn't let this pass.
They vote for the person they believe will best represent those interests.
No, they don't. They really really REALLY don't. This has been empirically proven. They vote for the guy with the best hair. They vote for the guy with the best smile. They vote for the guy with the best handshake. They vote for the guy with the "right" tag after his name. They vote for the guy who says all the correct trigger phrases they've been conditioned to respond to. The very LAST thing they do is vote for the person they believe will best represent their interests. That literally isn't a criteria. And yes, I included the "they believe" phrase on purpose. Anybody who can do arithmetic can prove that the vast majority of the country has been voting for people who do not actually represent their interests. It's worse than that. They don't even vote for people they (erroneously) believe will represent their interests. The hair and the smile and the square jaw get the vote, and if asked why, the answer is, "Because I just liked him. He seemed nice. Trustworthy."
More often than not, they don't really understand what would be in their own interests. Most of them have been continuously exposed to a giant propaganda machine literally since birth (young adults vote in line with their parents, almost universally). Most of them are unable to see through the most basic levels of the propaganda machine, the parts that say, "Do this because if you do, you will be a good person." Only a few of them have to be convinced by the more sophisticated modes of the propaganda machine, the parts that get all tricky and use reverse psychology. (That would be the mode that works on Slashdot. You rebels you.) Interests? Interests run in last place in terms of what people vote for. People vote for image and for their hot button single issues and that's all.
Japan is a dying country with no resources. China is a growing country with a hell of a lot of resources. Which country do you want to do business with?
The only one that manufacturers capacitors worth a damn?
The fact that you mentioned 'bra burners' is interesting as it is actually a myth.
Wait, what? Snopes severely overstated that one.
Bra burning was quite real. Perhaps the origin is mythological, but if that's the case, life imitated art in a hurry, and kept at it for quite some time. My mother has personal memories of protests where bras were burned at the University of Chicago, and two different family friends the same age have similar memories from other places. It was quite real. It made the nightly news. Video exists. Yes some of that video is Hollywood depictions of fictional feminists, but not all of it. Not by a long shot.
Well there's your problem! God has no part in an IT management plan.
Yeah, the other guy has it well in hand.
That you know how it works doesn't change the fact that you didn't actually implement it as a solution for China's air pollution before he did.
Of course I didn't. I don't live in China. I live in a country that enforces air purity laws. It's a blindingly obvious solution to a problem I don't have.
Maybe someone else can comment on this, but it looks like SLS will be more expensive and costly than anything else, giving us less for more money. Why even waste time developing this when we can use SpaceX, the Deltas, Atlas and so on, perhaps human rated versions of these.
Because national security.
Thiokol makes the solid fuel for the Shuttle and SLS solid fueled boosters. They make that same fuel for ICBMs. ICBMs have to be periodically replaced. Using NASA's budget is a way to hide some defense spending by paying Thiokol to work on civilian space, when really the point is to maintain the active skill in chemistry and manufacturing to be able to make new ICBMs. ICBMs don't have to be replaced often enough. Thiokol did their work too well, and met the Air Force requirements for shelf life. Shuttle and SLS make sure people who know how to make ICBM fuel don't wander off.
One person, one vote, one time
These are devout Muslims we're talking about here. You didn't have to write the politically correct updated version of the phrase. The classic version is much more precise: one man, one vote, one time.
I'm usually against but-the-book rants in movies but I definitely agree on this. I gave up on the hobbit series being plausibly good as soon as I saw preview footage involving Radagast the Brown.
Fucking rabbit sleigh ride. That was unconscionable.
I'll take the Battle of Five Armies, and I'll take the Extended Super Collector's Director's Edition WTF 95 Hour version too. It's all fine. Peter Jackson can knock himself out.
And then I will download the Kerr fanedit that takes all that footage and makes it reasonably match the book. No pathetic attempt at elf-dwarf romance, no whacky dragon chase scenes, no orc invasion of Lake Town, no running fight down the river, no motherfucking rabbit sleighs. And no whatever stupid shit they feel obliged to stick into Battle of the Five Armies.
There will probably be an hour and forty five minutes of footage left. One solid Tolkein movie. And that's how it should be.
... much shorter summaries.
Bennett thinks being long-winded makes it better because he still writes like a middle school kid. Gotta make that page count requirement!
...and the recent annoucement of layoffs there does not bode well.
It bodes quite well. It was the end of a review period and it was less than 5% of the work force. Specifically, the ones who really weren't cutting it. SpaceX has stated they expect to end the year with a 20% increase in head count, even after this week's trimming. In other words, they're choosy about who works for them. Not especially news. They wouldn't be doing what they're doing if their hiring practices worked any other way.
Sigh... Sometimes I don't know why I bother posting on /. anymore.
Probably because you're a bloviating idiot who thought the death blow of your argument was 1/3, which is rational. Yes, I CAN produce a formula which is precisely and exactly pi: C/D. Having an infinite number of decimal digits does not make pi infinite. Represent it any of several other ways and no infinite series appears.
I suggest you listen to and watch a musician's description.
I'll be here waiting so you can prove me wrong.
Done and done.
Why is everyone so uncomfortable with the idea that something can be lost forever?
Because no one has figured out how to get the equations of quantum mechanics to work in only one direction without breaking them. And those equations are on really solid ground at this point, or your CPU wouldn't work.
If we're exceptionally lucky, rationalizing quantum mechanics and general relativity will finally reveal what time is and why everything in the universe appears to only proceed in one 'direction' in time. Don't hold your breath though. It's going to take a very strange kind of mind to figure that out, and such minds that are still in contact with reality are difficult to come by.
It just strikes me as fatuous and arrogant that humans think the universe has to work a certain rational, logical, way...
The equations of quantum mechanics work really well. The equations of relativity work really well. Plug either into the other and you get nonsense.
Anybody paying attention could conclude the universe doesn't work in a certain rational logical way.
They certainly do! It's just not something you can model perfectly. And just because we can't create a perfect model - or completely understand a thing or concept doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
You got that backwards. A perfect circle is perfectly described with pi, which is irrational, not infinite. It's something you can model perfectly, because you can use this creature called pi in your equation, but it's not something you can manufacture perfectly since even if you're capable of Planck-scale manufacturing, you can't do sub-Planck-scale manufacturing, and there ends your quest for perfection.
Generally speaking the models are much more perfect than reality.
I'm your shareholder. And I have a zero tolerance for drunk bozos who drive the company into the ground that I own.
Oh what a wonderful fantasy world you live in. Where is this mythical responsible shareholder holding the feet of executives to the fire?
*crickets*
Fund managers are the only shareholders that get a seat at the table. YOU are not invited. YOU won't make it through the door, with your 150 shares. YOU would be mistaken for the hired help if you dared show up, and told to bring the coffee, because you're obviously not wearing a $3000 suit.
Meanwhile those wearing those suits are very best buds with the executives you would like to dismiss. They all went to the same schools together. They all played on the same sports teams together. They all raped the same cheerleaders together. It's a tight little club, and you aren't in it, so your opinion of executive performance amounts to a hill of beans.
But where to try them would be tricky, given the large number of Dutch passengers on the plane.
What's tricky about it? War criminals are traditionally tried in The Hague.
There are now reports of monitored chatter among the separatists where they figured out it was civilian instead of military after the shoot down.
Yup. And you can listen to it yourself here, complete with subtitles.
Slashdot readers who speak English and Russian are invited to comment on the quality of the translation.
So why do all the media call the SU-25 a fighter? Maybe it's just standard incompetence and ignorance, but you should always ask "cui bono?"
I'm going with standard ignorance and incompetence on this one. SU-27 is just too much like SU-25. Editing is haaaard.</whine> Witness the valiant (and consistently failed efforts) of our very own Slashdot editors.
So there is no way that guest can use these systems to make requests, people still have to call the front desk to get more towels. Guests have no way of knowing about other services the hotel is offering.
Be careful what you wish for. If any one of those companies you named latches on to that idea, they'll create an app that interfaces with their system. And it will demand access to EVERYTHING in your phone, watch everything you do, spam the shit out of your entire contact list, and otherwise do its best to make the NSA look as benign as a curious neighbor.
Likewise for the app they don't just provide to the maid, but demand the maid install.
Uugh.