Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
The only thing that annoys me more than people who refuse to analyze anything quantitatively, is those who insist on creating meaningless metrics so they can pretend to be analyzing everything quantitatively. It's the B-school and accounting mentality - you're all scientific and stuff if you attach a number to everything, no matter how you come up with that number.
Sounds good. Let's start small though to demonstrate the practicality of it. Let's unite the US and Canada. Two countries with the longest undefended border in the world. No hostilities between them in 150 years. Very similar culture and background. Common language except for a French speaking minority that the new country could accommodate as well as Canada can. Should be easy.
Get back to me when that's done, and then we can talk about adding the rest of the world.
There are some amazing evangelists for global trade because there are some that truly believe this to be the path to world peace
That'd be funny if it weren't such a serious issue. It's exactly what people said during the first so-called great age of free trade (late 19th and early 20th centuries). People were saying that in 1913. By 1914, WWI had thoroughly disproved the theory.
This is not a treaty, where ratification requires 2/3 of the senate. If accepted by the US it will be a congressional-executive agreement, which can be passed in the same way as an ordinary law. I think the distinction is bogus, but since CEA's have been accepted and approved by the courts since the Jefferson administration, I don't think they're going away.
The worst part of this is that it had to be leaked. The whole process by which these "agreements" are negotiated shouldn't be allowed in a democratic society. You leak secrets, and there should be nothing secret about these negotiations. Please spare me any "diplomatic requirements" BS. This is not a peace treaty where secrecy of negotiations might be necessary to get the thing done, or at least get it done relatively quickly.
These negotiations should be no different than the way "negotiations" are handled in the legislature of a representative government - all completely public, and proposed bills available to anyone. You can even watch congress on TV if you can stay awake long enough. Why should this be any different?
I think some public journals have managed it, but its difficult. Optics Express is one excellent example.
Good to hear that at least there has been some success, but I hope the next journal picks a better name "Optics Express" sounds like a place you'd go to get glasses in a hurry.
Complex applications are already built from a series of simple declarative statements.
I'm not being pedantic, as I'll be first to say that software buzzwords are not used consistently, but what you call declarative I believe they'd call imperative, as in "do this", whereas declarative is "this is the way it is (or I want it to be)". I don't know Prolog, but I believe that's considered declarative, as opposed to imperative (which describes most languages, C/C++, Java, Python, etc.).
Haskell, which I do know, is considered at least partly declarative. You declare the relationships between variables, and the compiler figures out how to compute the stuff. For that reason, you can make the declarations in any order. For example:
x = foo y y = bar 3.14
is legal, but doesn't work the same as in imperative languages. All "variables" are immutable, and hence can only be assigned a value once (essentially initialization). In the above, y is computed first, then x is calculated using that value of y. The order of the declarations doesn't matter.
its genetic and or environmental... there is a history of Autism being blamed on whatever is convenient to blame it on
Which is it? Is autism a real neurological condition, caused by genetic and/or environmental factors, or is it a BS diagnosis used to excuse poor parenting?
there is a history of Autism being blamed on whatever is convenient to blame it on, rather than addressing the real issues, which when you get down to it, is about supporting the person in question, so they are more able to interact with people on a normal level
So having autism per se isn't a real issue? It's not neurological? Or is it such a mild neurological condition that the only "real issue" is "supporting the person in question"?
Your autism is mild. It may cause you anxiety, social difficulties and whatnot, but so can a million other things. If the spectrum went no further than your level, it would be a diagnosis of questionable value, and it wouldn't be more troublesome, or more difficult to treat than anxiety, social difficulties (oops, disorder), etc., not associated with an autism diagnosis.
Don't talk about your situation as though it had much to do with severe autism though - the kind where many of its sufferers can't speak, may have compulsions so severe that they cause severe bodily harm to themselves, and can never be left unsupervised. Comparing your condition to that is like comparing feeling a little blue to being so depressed you're about to jump off a bridge. Stop acting as though your situation allows you to speak authoritatively about the entire autism spectrum.
I am not the asshole, the real assholes are the parents who do not provide the required support to their kids and their answer to their kids behavioural issues is to keep them constantly duped up on ritalin and always look to blame it on something, rather than providing a healthier environment for their kids.
Whose experience are you talking about? If it's yours, then unless you were seriously abused and neglected, stop feeling sorry for yourself and blaming your parents for all your problems. If you're talking about others, I find it hard to take it seriously. "They're bad parents" is the oldest catch-all way to explain what you don't understand. With autism "blame the parents" has a particularly illustrious history, dating back to the old, damn science and pull a "psychological explanation" out of your ass, refrigerator mom theory.
their answer to their kids behavioural issues is to keep them constantly duped up on ritalin
Ritalin is generally used to treat ADHD, not autism. Risperidone is the most common pharmaceutical treatment, and also the only medication for which autism symptom treatment is an on-label use.
It would be nice if you used some name other than "Anonymous Coward" if you want to participate in protracted debates. If you're the OP though, and claim to also have an ADHD diagnosis, I agree that ADHD is a very questionable and certainly wildly overused diagnosis. Hence its "treatment" is often questionable. ADHD is not autism.
Titanium is abundant, but the cost of refining it is high. Various outfits have been working on reducing that cost. If they ever succeed, inexpensive metallic titanium will be nice to have. Goodbye stainless steel, hello titanium. The cost of working (machining, etc.) the stuff will probably still be high since it's a bitch to work with, but stainless steel ain't no picnic either.
I think they understand completely that it is in the corporation's best interests to have disproportionate penalties for online activism compared to meatspace activism.
Corporations best interests? Funny, I thought we were supposed to have "government of the people, by the people, for the people". Ok, no, I was never that naive, however I found it interesting that you wrote "corporation's best interests". Maybe you'll backpedal and say "corporations have investors who are people" or whatever. If you do, it won't be believable because the first remark someone makes is the most honest and provides the best insight into their thinking. Backpedaling is meaningless.
P.S. What would happen to a modern politician who said that corporations should be "strangled in their crib"? Dismissed as some left wing fanatic or something, right? Either considered dangerous or, more effectively, ignored. That says something about modern American thinking, because in the early days of the Republic such a politician wrote the Declaration of Independence and became the third President of the United States. I'm becoming more and more disgusted by the disparity between the struggle for liberty that we're taught about starting in frickin' grade school, and the plutocratic sycophancy of contemporary America.
I disagree w/ the GP. It's reasonable that this is illegal, but... "up to 15 years in jail and a $500,000 fine" is insane. Get a good lawyer, and you can probably get away with less for murder. Armed robbery? Piece of cake. Yes I know they haven't been sentenced yet, but just the threat of sentences like that is absurd. It takes it from the government prosecuting a crime (in which no one was injured and even the founder of the "victim" company is asking for leniency) to the government saying "we can do whatever we like to you". Whole different animal. The first is a legitimate function of the government, and the latter is a step towards authoritarianism.
As for damage, FTA:
PayPal's website was down for an hour on 8 December and another brief period on 9 December. The company estimates the damage caused by the attack was $5.5 million
That $5.5M was probably calculated in the absurd way that such business losses are usually calculated. For example, if someone steals the source to a proprietary OS, then even if they do nothing with it, the "cost" is calculated as the entire cost of developing the OS. Right, they never made any sales and will never make any sales in the future.
The selective prosecution aspect of it is absurd too. Forget the fact that they're only prosecuting 14 of the participants. Search on "William K. Black". Far from being some fringe character, he was a major official the the OCC (Office of the Controller of the Currency - one of the banking regulators) when the S&L crisis blew up. He helped establish the case law on control fraud, and they obtained over 1000 criminal convictions. He's the ultimate "been there, done that, hence speak with authority" kind of guy. According to Black (many other knowledgeable people think this as well), the more recent financial meltdown, which makes the S&L crisis look like petty theft, has all the hallmarks of the same type of control fraud. Number of convictions for control fraud: 0. Number of attempted prosecutions: 0. Now that's selective. You don't really expect me to have any respect for federal prosecutors, or more importantly their past or current bosses, do you?
Power transformers use inductive coupling; things like this typically use resonant inductive coupling. It's an important distinction. It's why the windings of a power transformer have to be very close together, whereas this sort of thing can tolerate much greater separation and still maintain a reasonable efficiency.
Nevertheless the article is amazingly short on information about how this tech is innovative, and why it's not just an application of something that's been in use for well over a century (e.g. Tesla coils). I'm not saying it isn't innovative, but you certainly can't tell that from the article.
this looks like another case of the US having a different perception of things from the rest of the world
Since barge is a word in English, it's a matter of definition and usage in English, rather than perception of a language independent idea. Hence "rest of the world" in this case means other people in countries using English as their primary language. Despite the roots of the language in some obscure country, Americans constitute a majority of people in countries using English as their primary language. We win!
A large, long lasting and profitable company that takes pride in its work is worth more to a CEO than the bottom line or how big his yacht is or how many whores he can screw.
Either that, or the board, the stockholders, and the employees keep his ass in line.
by people that never really worked [in their] entire life
That's the politics of envy. Screwing people and pushing propaganda are hard work. I think the Koch's and their ilk are undercompensated. You should get on your knees and thank [insert preferred deity] for these job creators.
Their offshore engineers are some of the best in the world. They are truly amazing. (Their ability to host two of the biggest international ocean engineering conferences in the world next year should speak to that... the fact that they are both at the same time, does not speak highly of their scheduling abilities, though.)
Doesn't sound much different from various other communist countries, like the old USSR. Great engineering hampered by idiotic bureaucracy. The reason for the success of free countries isn't better engineers or scientists, but in greater freedom to tell people where to stick it (a joke, but of the "more truth is said in jest" kind).
Slashdot Mirror
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
The only thing that annoys me more than people who refuse to analyze anything quantitatively, is those who insist on creating meaningless metrics so they can pretend to be analyzing everything quantitatively. It's the B-school and accounting mentality - you're all scientific and stuff if you attach a number to everything, no matter how you come up with that number.
Sounds good. Let's start small though to demonstrate the practicality of it. Let's unite the US and Canada. Two countries with the longest undefended border in the world. No hostilities between them in 150 years. Very similar culture and background. Common language except for a French speaking minority that the new country could accommodate as well as Canada can. Should be easy.
Get back to me when that's done, and then we can talk about adding the rest of the world.
There are some amazing evangelists for global trade because there are some that truly believe this to be the path to world peace
That'd be funny if it weren't such a serious issue. It's exactly what people said during the first so-called great age of free trade (late 19th and early 20th centuries). People were saying that in 1913. By 1914, WWI had thoroughly disproved the theory.
make it part of a treaty
This is not a treaty, where ratification requires 2/3 of the senate. If accepted by the US it will be a congressional-executive agreement, which can be passed in the same way as an ordinary law. I think the distinction is bogus, but since CEA's have been accepted and approved by the courts since the Jefferson administration, I don't think they're going away.
The worst part of this is that it had to be leaked. The whole process by which these "agreements" are negotiated shouldn't be allowed in a democratic society. You leak secrets, and there should be nothing secret about these negotiations. Please spare me any "diplomatic requirements" BS. This is not a peace treaty where secrecy of negotiations might be necessary to get the thing done, or at least get it done relatively quickly.
These negotiations should be no different than the way "negotiations" are handled in the legislature of a representative government - all completely public, and proposed bills available to anyone. You can even watch congress on TV if you can stay awake long enough. Why should this be any different?
I think some public journals have managed it, but its difficult. Optics Express is one excellent example.
Good to hear that at least there has been some success, but I hope the next journal picks a better name "Optics Express" sounds like a place you'd go to get glasses in a hurry.
Complex applications are already built from a series of simple declarative statements.
I'm not being pedantic, as I'll be first to say that software buzzwords are not used consistently, but what you call declarative I believe they'd call imperative, as in "do this", whereas declarative is "this is the way it is (or I want it to be)". I don't know Prolog, but I believe that's considered declarative, as opposed to imperative (which describes most languages, C/C++, Java, Python, etc.).
Haskell, which I do know, is considered at least partly declarative. You declare the relationships between variables, and the compiler figures out how to compute the stuff. For that reason, you can make the declarations in any order. For example:
x = foo y
y = bar 3.14
is legal, but doesn't work the same as in imperative languages. All "variables" are immutable, and hence can only be assigned a value once (essentially initialization). In the above, y is computed first, then x is calculated using that value of y. The order of the declarations doesn't matter.
its genetic and or environmental ... there is a history of Autism being blamed on whatever is convenient to blame it on
Which is it? Is autism a real neurological condition, caused by genetic and/or environmental factors, or is it a BS diagnosis used to excuse poor parenting?
there is a history of Autism being blamed on whatever is convenient to blame it on, rather than addressing the real issues, which when you get down to it, is about supporting the person in question, so they are more able to interact with people on a normal level
So having autism per se isn't a real issue? It's not neurological? Or is it such a mild neurological condition that the only "real issue" is "supporting the person in question"?
Your autism is mild. It may cause you anxiety, social difficulties and whatnot, but so can a million other things. If the spectrum went no further than your level, it would be a diagnosis of questionable value, and it wouldn't be more troublesome, or more difficult to treat than anxiety, social difficulties (oops, disorder), etc., not associated with an autism diagnosis.
Don't talk about your situation as though it had much to do with severe autism though - the kind where many of its sufferers can't speak, may have compulsions so severe that they cause severe bodily harm to themselves, and can never be left unsupervised. Comparing your condition to that is like comparing feeling a little blue to being so depressed you're about to jump off a bridge. Stop acting as though your situation allows you to speak authoritatively about the entire autism spectrum.
I am not the asshole, the real assholes are the parents who do not provide the required support to their kids and their answer to their kids behavioural issues is to keep them constantly duped up on ritalin and always look to blame it on something, rather than providing a healthier environment for their kids.
Whose experience are you talking about? If it's yours, then unless you were seriously abused and neglected, stop feeling sorry for yourself and blaming your parents for all your problems. If you're talking about others, I find it hard to take it seriously. "They're bad parents" is the oldest catch-all way to explain what you don't understand. With autism "blame the parents" has a particularly illustrious history, dating back to the old, damn science and pull a "psychological explanation" out of your ass, refrigerator mom theory.
their answer to their kids behavioural issues is to keep them constantly duped up on ritalin
Ritalin is generally used to treat ADHD, not autism. Risperidone is the most common pharmaceutical treatment, and also the only medication for which autism symptom treatment is an on-label use.
It would be nice if you used some name other than "Anonymous Coward" if you want to participate in protracted debates. If you're the OP though, and claim to also have an ADHD diagnosis, I agree that ADHD is a very questionable and certainly wildly overused diagnosis. Hence its "treatment" is often questionable. ADHD is not autism.
At the end of the day it is about how the brain is wired, Its psychological at is its foundation.
If it's about how the brain is wired, then it's neurological, not psychological. Autism is generally classified as a neurological disorder.
Titanium is abundant, but the cost of refining it is high. Various outfits have been working on reducing that cost. If they ever succeed, inexpensive metallic titanium will be nice to have. Goodbye stainless steel, hello titanium. The cost of working (machining, etc.) the stuff will probably still be high since it's a bitch to work with, but stainless steel ain't no picnic either.
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.
-- W.C. Fields
With that in mind, is it a good idea to get people to continue to engage in futile endeavors? Who says quitting is always a bad thing.
P.S. I started to write this as a joke, but now I'm not so sure. For all we glorify perseverance, sometimes it's idiotic.
You mean like HSBC got for laundering billions for drug smugglers and terrorists?
I think they understand completely that it is in the corporation's best interests to have disproportionate penalties for online activism compared to meatspace activism.
Corporations best interests? Funny, I thought we were supposed to have "government of the people, by the people, for the people". Ok, no, I was never that naive, however I found it interesting that you wrote "corporation's best interests". Maybe you'll backpedal and say "corporations have investors who are people" or whatever. If you do, it won't be believable because the first remark someone makes is the most honest and provides the best insight into their thinking. Backpedaling is meaningless.
P.S. What would happen to a modern politician who said that corporations should be "strangled in their crib"? Dismissed as some left wing fanatic or something, right? Either considered dangerous or, more effectively, ignored. That says something about modern American thinking, because in the early days of the Republic such a politician wrote the Declaration of Independence and became the third President of the United States. I'm becoming more and more disgusted by the disparity between the struggle for liberty that we're taught about starting in frickin' grade school, and the plutocratic sycophancy of contemporary America.
I disagree w/ the GP. It's reasonable that this is illegal, but ... "up to 15 years in jail and a $500,000 fine" is insane. Get a good lawyer, and you can probably get away with less for murder. Armed robbery? Piece of cake. Yes I know they haven't been sentenced yet, but just the threat of sentences like that is absurd. It takes it from the government prosecuting a crime (in which no one was injured and even the founder of the "victim" company is asking for leniency) to the government saying "we can do whatever we like to you". Whole different animal. The first is a legitimate function of the government, and the latter is a step towards authoritarianism.
As for damage, FTA:
PayPal's website was down for an hour on 8 December and another brief period on 9 December. The company estimates the damage caused by the attack was $5.5 million
That $5.5M was probably calculated in the absurd way that such business losses are usually calculated. For example, if someone steals the source to a proprietary OS, then even if they do nothing with it, the "cost" is calculated as the entire cost of developing the OS. Right, they never made any sales and will never make any sales in the future.
The selective prosecution aspect of it is absurd too. Forget the fact that they're only prosecuting 14 of the participants. Search on "William K. Black". Far from being some fringe character, he was a major official the the OCC (Office of the Controller of the Currency - one of the banking regulators) when the S&L crisis blew up. He helped establish the case law on control fraud, and they obtained over 1000 criminal convictions. He's the ultimate "been there, done that, hence speak with authority" kind of guy. According to Black (many other knowledgeable people think this as well), the more recent financial meltdown, which makes the S&L crisis look like petty theft, has all the hallmarks of the same type of control fraud. Number of convictions for control fraud: 0. Number of attempted prosecutions: 0. Now that's selective. You don't really expect me to have any respect for federal prosecutors, or more importantly their past or current bosses, do you?
Power transformers use inductive coupling; things like this typically use resonant inductive coupling. It's an important distinction. It's why the windings of a power transformer have to be very close together, whereas this sort of thing can tolerate much greater separation and still maintain a reasonable efficiency.
Nevertheless the article is amazingly short on information about how this tech is innovative, and why it's not just an application of something that's been in use for well over a century (e.g. Tesla coils). I'm not saying it isn't innovative, but you certainly can't tell that from the article.
Fear not, nerds can forgive - once.
Wow, talk about Poe's law...
The scary thing is that you might be right about Poe's law applying.
Since you mention neocons, what you should have said was "dinosaurs do coinhabit the earth with man".
this looks like another case of the US having a different perception of things from the rest of the world
Since barge is a word in English, it's a matter of definition and usage in English, rather than perception of a language independent idea. Hence "rest of the world" in this case means other people in countries using English as their primary language. Despite the roots of the language in some obscure country, Americans constitute a majority of people in countries using English as their primary language. We win!
A large, long lasting and profitable company that takes pride in its work is worth more to a CEO than the bottom line or how big his yacht is or how many whores he can screw.
Either that, or the board, the stockholders, and the employees keep his ass in line.
use their ship as a legal workaround for US immigration law
What a shame we won't put the navy to good use. It would also be a great opportunity to test the Mk 48 ADCAP under real conditions.
Why should reality stand in the way of ideology?
by people that never really worked [in their] entire life
That's the politics of envy. Screwing people and pushing propaganda are hard work. I think the Koch's and their ilk are undercompensated. You should get on your knees and thank [insert preferred deity] for these job creators.
Their offshore engineers are some of the best in the world. They are truly amazing. (Their ability to host two of the biggest international ocean engineering conferences in the world next year should speak to that... the fact that they are both at the same time, does not speak highly of their scheduling abilities, though.)
Doesn't sound much different from various other communist countries, like the old USSR. Great engineering hampered by idiotic bureaucracy. The reason for the success of free countries isn't better engineers or scientists, but in greater freedom to tell people where to stick it (a joke, but of the "more truth is said in jest" kind).
They would starve otherwise. South Korea's economy basically relies on their engineering ability.
Do you have anything to support that statement.