Yeah, contrary to what the OP said, I'd think that far more scientists would need to know statistics than calculus.
There are far more scientific fields which involve knowing basic statistics than basic calculus.
For example: scientists should know whether the results of their experiment/study/research are really statistically significant before they make big claims to the Media.
Ketamine being able to give people "NDE" in some cases doesn't disprove or prove heaven.
NDEs might be interesting to investigate, but from a scientific perspective claiming it explains Heaven would be stretching things at this point (but might get you more funding:) ).
Just because someone messes with your PC and causes it show a "shutdown sequence" screen (or "Blue Screen of Death"[1]) only tells you certain things about your PC.
[1] Of course for humans it's apparently more likely to be "bright tunnel of death".
> I decided to risk it, but I don't see any pictures at all when I click.
Maybe you just downloaded child porn that had image height and width set to 1 or 2.
That's how you get people in jail for possessing child porn. You don't do stupid stuff like break into houses.
It's amazing how many people simply click on stuff.
For instance, many people keep clicking on my sig link, it's not child porn but they should really learn to be more careful. If they keep clicking on random links, one day they might just click on child porn and end up in deep shit.
> I use Word 2007 at work and it is very buggy. If I had my way, I would not use it, even OOo is better.
I agree Word 2007 is buggy. But OOo is NOT better. It's far buggier.
FWIW, it's not so much the bugs in Word 2007 that annoy me than the way it does formatting and selection of certain stuff. Yes I know you can customize the behaviour but I still find I have to "battle" with it a bit too often.
OpenOffice on the other hand has rather blatant bugs like these:
Launch openoffice writer. Type three lines of: "This is a test testing 1 2 3"
Select one of the lines.
Press ctrl-f.
Enter test in the "search for" field Enter foo in the "replace with" field Click on More Options. Click on current selection only. Click on replace.
Bug: openoffice replaces the ENTIRE selection with "foo", instead of the first found term.
It is not possible to search and replace terms within a selection. You either have the entire selection replaced (if you click replace), or openoffice forgets your initial selection (if you click find).
> Now, his children have had the trauma of seeing the police come and take their dad away for no reason
Yeah I find it ironic that a lot of this "protect the children" stuff often traumatizes or hurts the kids more.
Just like when they arrest kids for sending nude pictures of _themselves_. Or when some 15 year old's 17 year old boyfriend gets jailed for X years and she gets told what they did together (consensually) was child molestation...
IMO, children would even be less scarred if they happened to be exposed to some random pervert's genitals, than if they were exposed to the Government, especially at a tender age.
With the former, all the parents have to say is - that guy is sick, and there are such sick people in the world, just avoid them where possible, and most kids will take it OK.
Whereas, if the cops come and arrest your dad, and all sorts of bad things are said about him, it's bound to be more traumatizing. And if he actually loses his job, your family is going to have a rather different lifestyle.
> Why the fuck are they even allowed to be voted in to represent that district if they don't know anything about the goddamned district they are supposed to be representing???
AFAIK, whether they know anything or not is irrelevant, as long as:
1) They manage to run as a candidate. 2) They get voted in. 3) They aren't disqualified for whatever reason.
There are some restrictions and requirements on who can be a candidate, but I doubt "knowing stuff" is a requirement.
They could always have make a supertasking test an integral part of the driving test. You have to take it, but you don't have to pass that section to get a normal license. You only need to pass it to qualify for a supertasking license.
The supertasking test must be hard enough so that you must drive BETTER than the average driver while "supertasking" to pass.
If you make the test hard enough, the supertaskers who pass are more likely to be killed/maimed by the "39 out of 40" than the other way round. Yes, even on their "bad days". After all, I'm sure the top rally driver will still drive better than me even if he's sick, tired and chatting on the phone.
BUT just because you qualify doesn't mean you automatically get that license! You have to pay extra for this license so that you can optionally put a sticker on your car (so the cops don't waste time stopping you for multitasking as long as you are still driving safely and obeying the rules). Otherwise you get a normal license like everyone else - even though you can supertask you're not allowed to. Knowing the way many drivers behave, the supertaskers might find not putting the sticker on makes for a better driving experience...
The main benefit of this is not so that the supertaskers can brag and supertask. But so that the 39 out of 40 can know how badly they suck at multitasking.
Having the 39/40 know that _we_ (not other people) suck at driving should make the roads (and sidewalks etc) safer.
> he in fact did very much demand that his students take personal initiative
Which doesn't go with the: "people should just help themselves" concept that the AC was pushing.
Students did better when Escalante was around than when Escalante wasn't around.
Therefore Escalante made a difference to students.
Therefore the AC's statement: "If you don't continually strive to do better on your own, then that's your problem and you should be shunned by everyone who can take a little bit of initiative and learn things on their own." is at odds with what Escalante did.
A few students can "learn things on their own", but Escalante got entire classes to "learn things on their own".
Basically a crap/average teacher can just get out of a way and the smart/motivated ones will do well without any other help.
A good teacher is not good because the smart ones do well, but because the below average or even the worst ones do better than "normal" average. (A good teacher is also good if he/she can influence the smart ones to do amazingly great stuff but that is a different topic;) ).
Anyone can make a shiny item shine, just by cleaning and polishing it a bit. Making lumps of charcoal shine on the other hand...
Escalante's example is nearly opposite of what you're proposing. It's about someone caring enough about OTHERs and improving their situation dramatically.
You on the other hand are barking up the "people should just help themselves" tree.
> But wiretapping at the ISP level doesn't help if their victims use HTTPS or SSL IMAP/POP like pretty much all Gmail (and Yahoo?) users do.
1) Yahoo mail is not encrypted. Only the login is. So it is possible to sniff the session credentials (cookies etc) and do stuff like change the passwords.
And it's not just Yahoo. None of them (Yahoo, Hotmail, Google) allowed you to use https for the entire email session, including Gmail, until the recent Google hack incident.
The banks I use don't even allow you to access their main pages via https. Which does make it hard to get a known trusted login page to log in to the bank.
Yes their login forms submit stuff via https, but how does that help if you've already got a tampered login form?
2) The browser makers put in lots of CA certs but do nothing to help you realize that the server's cert has changed[1], or the server's CA has changed, or the server CA country has changed...
As a result doing stuff securely is hard - the service providers and browser makers aren't helping.
The real bug is Mozilla doesn't _help_ you realize and figure out that a cert has been changed for no good reason.
Yes the way to do it won't work 100% for the average person. But the average person will get pwned anyway.
So in this case, Mozilla should help the ones who care about security - warning people that the server cert has been changed rather early, or worse the CA has changed, or even worse the CA has changed AND the new CA is in a different country.
But no, the Mozilla developers still haven't lifted a finger to help. Not even after 5 years.
The critical change is when a new cert comes in signed by a *different* CA. In the event that this is a bad situation, both CAs can disclaim by pointing the finger at each other. The bad CA just shrugs and says "I followed my established and audited procedures...." In practice, even a little finger pointing will break any semblance of CAs backing up their words.
> some of us realize that individuals effectively have no say in democracy.
You do have some say, just not 100%. Your say is the percentage of your vote/total voting. After all, why should your voice be louder than others?
The alternative is stuff like Dictatorships where one particular individual (or a small bunch of people) has 100% of the votes.
Now whether the individuals in democracies are making the right choice is a different matter, but it is THEIR vote to use stupidly or wisely.
More than 98% of the votes went to the candidates of the Two Parties in the past two US presidential elections. So from the Two Parties perspective, they're doing things great - between the two of them they have 98% of the voters (the rest aren't voting and so don't count).
If the voters actually would have preferred some other candidate they should figured who that candidate is and voted for them. So what if that candidate doesn't win. If the percentage drops a lot from 98%, you can be sure the Two Parties will start changing some policies. Because if all the voters who could vote but didn't voted for "someone else", that someone else would have been the President.
if they didn't actually like any of the candidates but not a single one of the voters had the ability and willingness to run as an alternative candidate, then it's still a case of the voters getting the best there is. Just too bad the best isn't very good.
No, the problem is when you're in a situation where you need to use Oracle and deal with all that licensing stuff, instead of being able to use something like Postgresql.
Slashdot Mirror
> We just don't need nearly as many firefighters these days
Just need a few more precious pet cats stuck up trees.
Yeah, contrary to what the OP said, I'd think that far more scientists would need to know statistics than calculus.
There are far more scientific fields which involve knowing basic statistics than basic calculus.
For example: scientists should know whether the results of their experiment/study/research are really statistically significant before they make big claims to the Media.
Ketamine being able to give people "NDE" in some cases doesn't disprove or prove heaven.
:) ).
NDEs might be interesting to investigate, but from a scientific perspective claiming it explains Heaven would be stretching things at this point (but might get you more funding
Just because someone messes with your PC and causes it show a "shutdown sequence" screen (or "Blue Screen of Death"[1]) only tells you certain things about your PC.
[1] Of course for humans it's apparently more likely to be "bright tunnel of death".
> Yes, but how can pedophilia, as an orientation, not end in child abuse?
;).
> Are you saying that there are celibate pedophiles?
Easy solution then: we get them to hang out in Slashdot.
In China I believe the family of the executed used to have to pay for the bullet.
;).
That somewhat reduced the costs to the rest of the taxpayers who weren't related
> I decided to risk it, but I don't see any pictures at all when I click.
Maybe you just downloaded child porn that had image height and width set to 1 or 2.
That's how you get people in jail for possessing child porn. You don't do stupid stuff like break into houses.
It's amazing how many people simply click on stuff.
For instance, many people keep clicking on my sig link, it's not child porn but they should really learn to be more careful. If they keep clicking on random links, one day they might just click on child porn and end up in deep shit.
Yeah, and I suppose the fine print in your "sleep with your wife" contract would have the "does not include having sex with her, in whatever form".
> two 15-year-olds recording themselves is still, legally, child porn. Who's harmed?
The 15 year olds, when they get arrested and jailed...
That'll scar them for life I bet, even if they are eventually acquitted.
Hey it's Fox News, what do you expect?
If they actually provided clear accurate information, you'd fall off your chair in surprise, forget treadmills...
> I use Word 2007 at work and it is very buggy. If I had my way, I would not use it, even OOo is better.
I agree Word 2007 is buggy. But OOo is NOT better. It's far buggier.
FWIW, it's not so much the bugs in Word 2007 that annoy me than the way it does formatting and selection of certain stuff. Yes I know you can customize the behaviour but I still find I have to "battle" with it a bit too often.
OpenOffice on the other hand has rather blatant bugs like these:
Launch openoffice writer.
Type three lines of: "This is a test testing 1 2 3"
Select one of the lines.
Press ctrl-f.
Enter test in the "search for" field
Enter foo in the "replace with" field
Click on More Options.
Click on current selection only.
Click on replace.
Bug: openoffice replaces the ENTIRE selection with "foo", instead of the first found term.
It is not possible to search and replace terms within a selection. You either have the entire selection replaced (if you click replace), or openoffice forgets your initial selection (if you click find).
This bug has been around for ages: http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=15501
I can't be bothered to see if it's still present in 3.2.
Just go the the openoffice bug site and look at the open bugs there and you'll see how behind they are. But hey it's free...
> Now, his children have had the trauma of seeing the police come and take their dad away for no reason
Yeah I find it ironic that a lot of this "protect the children" stuff often traumatizes or hurts the kids more.
Just like when they arrest kids for sending nude pictures of _themselves_. Or when some 15 year old's 17 year old boyfriend gets jailed for X years and she gets told what they did together (consensually) was child molestation...
IMO, children would even be less scarred if they happened to be exposed to some random pervert's genitals, than if they were exposed to the Government, especially at a tender age.
With the former, all the parents have to say is - that guy is sick, and there are such sick people in the world, just avoid them where possible, and most kids will take it OK.
Whereas, if the cops come and arrest your dad, and all sorts of bad things are said about him, it's bound to be more traumatizing. And if he actually loses his job, your family is going to have a rather different lifestyle.
> Why the fuck are they even allowed to be voted in to represent that district if they don't know anything about the goddamned district they are supposed to be representing???
AFAIK, whether they know anything or not is irrelevant, as long as:
1) They manage to run as a candidate.
2) They get voted in.
3) They aren't disqualified for whatever reason.
There are some restrictions and requirements on who can be a candidate, but I doubt "knowing stuff" is a requirement.
So the people are getting what they want. They just don't happen to want the same thing as you do.
And so > 95% of the votes goes to the "Two Parties" party- who are clearly doing a satisfactory job according to the voters.
They should make multitasking part of the driving test - all prospective drivers have to take that part, they don't have to pass it though:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1602530&cid=31698588
That should make the average driver know how bad they are. They may still believe they are above average, but a mere above average still sucks ;).
They could always have make a supertasking test an integral part of the driving test. You have to take it, but you don't have to pass that section to get a normal license. You only need to pass it to qualify for a supertasking license.
The supertasking test must be hard enough so that you must drive BETTER than the average driver while "supertasking" to pass.
If you make the test hard enough, the supertaskers who pass are more likely to be killed/maimed by the "39 out of 40" than the other way round. Yes, even on their "bad days". After all, I'm sure the top rally driver will still drive better than me even if he's sick, tired and chatting on the phone.
BUT just because you qualify doesn't mean you automatically get that license! You have to pay extra for this license so that you can optionally put a sticker on your car (so the cops don't waste time stopping you for multitasking as long as you are still driving safely and obeying the rules). Otherwise you get a normal license like everyone else - even though you can supertask you're not allowed to. Knowing the way many drivers behave, the supertaskers might find not putting the sticker on makes for a better driving experience...
The main benefit of this is not so that the supertaskers can brag and supertask. But so that the 39 out of 40 can know how badly they suck at multitasking.
Having the 39/40 know that _we_ (not other people) suck at driving should make the roads (and sidewalks etc) safer.
> he in fact did very much demand that his students take personal initiative
;) ).
Which doesn't go with the: "people should just help themselves" concept that the AC was pushing.
Students did better when Escalante was around than when Escalante wasn't around.
Therefore Escalante made a difference to students.
Therefore the AC's statement: "If you don't continually strive to do better on your own, then that's your problem and you should be shunned by everyone who can take a little bit of initiative and learn things on their own." is at odds with what Escalante did.
A few students can "learn things on their own", but Escalante got entire classes to "learn things on their own".
Basically a crap/average teacher can just get out of a way and the smart/motivated ones will do well without any other help.
A good teacher is not good because the smart ones do well, but because the below average or even the worst ones do better than "normal" average. (A good teacher is also good if he/she can influence the smart ones to do amazingly great stuff but that is a different topic
Anyone can make a shiny item shine, just by cleaning and polishing it a bit. Making lumps of charcoal shine on the other hand...
Escalante's example is nearly opposite of what you're proposing. It's about someone caring enough about OTHERs and improving their situation dramatically.
You on the other hand are barking up the "people should just help themselves" tree.
Hmm, ok I guess my memory was bad then.
I thought I recalled it redirecting me from https to http when I tried it a while back.
There's "Certificate Patrol" for Mozilla Firefox.
But I'm not sure how trustworthy that is. You could look at the source code and the data (I'm not so sure how to check the initial database/config).
> But wiretapping at the ISP level doesn't help if their victims use HTTPS or SSL IMAP/POP like pretty much all Gmail (and Yahoo?) users do.
1) Yahoo mail is not encrypted. Only the login is. So it is possible to sniff the session credentials (cookies etc) and do stuff like change the passwords.
And it's not just Yahoo. None of them (Yahoo, Hotmail, Google) allowed you to use https for the entire email session, including Gmail, until the recent Google hack incident.
The banks I use don't even allow you to access their main pages via https. Which does make it hard to get a known trusted login page to log in to the bank.
Yes their login forms submit stuff via https, but how does that help if you've already got a tampered login form?
2) The browser makers put in lots of CA certs but do nothing to help you realize that the server's cert has changed[1], or the server's CA has changed, or the server CA country has changed...
As a result doing stuff securely is hard - the service providers and browser makers aren't helping.
[1] See the discussion here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=286107
The real bug is Mozilla doesn't _help_ you realize and figure out that a cert has been changed for no good reason.
Yes the way to do it won't work 100% for the average person. But the average person will get pwned anyway.
So in this case, Mozilla should help the ones who care about security - warning people that the server cert has been changed rather early, or worse the CA has changed, or even worse the CA has changed AND the new CA is in a different country.
But no, the Mozilla developers still haven't lifted a finger to help. Not even after 5 years.
See this:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=286107
And comment #5 and rest of discussion.
Quote:
Ian Grigg 2005-03-15 12:14:26 PST
#4. I'd agree with that.
The critical change is when a new cert comes in signed by a *different* CA. In
the event that this is a bad situation, both CAs can disclaim by pointing the
finger at each other. The bad CA just shrugs and says "I followed my
established and audited procedures...." In practice, even a little finger
pointing will break any semblance of CAs backing up their words.
> This sort of setup is very much a niche market for gaming, but pretty useful for commercial flight simulators or display walls.
Wonder what it takes to do stuff like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8-kqovVjss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdbINlqjTUI
> some of us realize that individuals effectively have no say in democracy.
You do have some say, just not 100%. Your say is the percentage of your vote/total voting. After all, why should your voice be louder than others?
The alternative is stuff like Dictatorships where one particular individual (or a small bunch of people) has 100% of the votes.
Now whether the individuals in democracies are making the right choice is a different matter, but it is THEIR vote to use stupidly or wisely.
More than 98% of the votes went to the candidates of the Two Parties in the past two US presidential elections. So from the Two Parties perspective, they're doing things great - between the two of them they have 98% of the voters (the rest aren't voting and so don't count).
If the voters actually would have preferred some other candidate they should figured who that candidate is and voted for them. So what if that candidate doesn't win. If the percentage drops a lot from 98%, you can be sure the Two Parties will start changing some policies. Because if all the voters who could vote but didn't voted for "someone else", that someone else would have been the President.
if they didn't actually like any of the candidates but not a single one of the voters had the ability and willingness to run as an alternative candidate, then it's still a case of the voters getting the best there is. Just too bad the best isn't very good.
Yeah that's why I'd want a car that uses good old fashioned keys instead of parts of my body.
Insurance will pay for the car. They may pay for the finger too, but I'm a bit more attached to my body parts than my car.
And I prefer to keep it that way.
No, the problem is when you're in a situation where you need to use Oracle and deal with all that licensing stuff, instead of being able to use something like Postgresql.