I do think that this remark is unfair to NASA. It is kind of like the difference between building a laptop computer today or in the 60's. Now you can get them for a grand or two, then it would have been prohibitively expensive if not totally impossible. The time is right for cheap space travel, but it is only possible today because of the trail blazing efforts of NASA and the USSR.
Re:Similarities between democrat party, communists
on
Joe Trippi Interviewed
·
· Score: 1
I have to say that I was about to post similar sentiments, except you said them so much better than I would. Like you, I am very much inspired by Bush, I also totally disagreed with just about everything that Dean stood for, but I really admired Dean's candor and honesty. Amongst my more liberal friends, I defintely felt that they really wanted Dean, but voted for Kerry because he seemed to be the best hope of defeating Bush.
It is very clear to me what both Bush and Dean stand for. I can love them or hate them, but I know exactly what I am getting with both of them. But with Kerry - well if he wins the election I just don't know what will happen. For example, what will Kerry do about Iraq? Will he quickly exit - will he stay until the job is finished - or will it be some other policy that is in between these? I just don't know.
NAMI at http://www.nami.org can be a very helpful resource. You may find that as a relative of someone who is mentally ill, that it is hard to really find out what is going on from her doctors. I am currently attending a "Family to family" seminar, which is very helpful in understanding schizophrenia, and also in understanding some of the obstacles you will face with the health profession.
You should also look at the book "I am Not Sick I Don't Need Help!" by Xavier Amador, which gives some extremely useful advice concerning patients compliance (or lack thereof) with taking medication.
The prognosis is not so good. Unless there is some miracle cure that is found - and I see nothing on the horizon - this is a problem that will remain with your sister for the rest of her life. I felt that the first half of the movie "A Beautiful Mind" did a good job of showing how the onset of schizophrenia shows up, but I felt that the second half did a poor job of showing how schizophrenics could "cure" themselves. My opinion is that the current medications are the way to go. They do have some bad side effects, but not as bad as the disease. The disease will slowly get worse as time goes on, but medication seems to slow its progress.
Finally, one of the very newest medications (I am thinking particularly of "Abilify") avoids the problems with many of the anti-schizophrenia medications (e.g. weight gain, a flat personality). Your sister may not be able to tolerate this medication, and it seems that the most effective medication differs from patient to patient.
I would have thought that everyone would have figured this one out. I saw it on a movie called "The Core." Basically, the center of the earth has stopped moving. Our only hope is to send down some kind of manned underground machine and detonate nuclear weapons.
Oxenhielm responded to the criticism by saying that the journal that accepted her work, which now owns the copyright, is responsible for any errors.
As one who has refereed math papers, I think that this is not true. When I am sent a letter asking me to referee, I am asked to comment on how important the result is, and I am asked to assess how correct the paper is, but often I am explicitly told that errors in the paper are the responsibility of the author, and not the referee.
I have heard that you guys are running a very useful website where I can get information about how to find other web sites (called sitefinder or something like that). Would you be so kind as to provide for me the URL for this website?
I did some code generating in my program xkbset, which is a CLI program to set various parameters of the XKB features of X Window. The program is a bit like xset, and so one might write a line like:
xkbset bouncekeys 4 -mousekeys sticky -twokey
to set various parameters. Well basically the program is a loop that goes through argv interpreting the arguments using a bunch of if statements (just like the internal structure of xset). It seemed like way to much work to write all these if statements, so I wrote a "configuration" file that defines the various arguments, and a perl script that turned the configuration file into a C program.
It was a home grown code generation attempt. I really am quite pleased with it, and it is the only open source program I have written that people actually seem to use (mostly people with Toshiba laptops that need to get rid of key bouncing problems).
The question that interests mathematicians (i.e. the definition of random that I have used) is this. In the base 10 representation of pi, consider the number of digits less than the Nth digit that are 0. Does the ratio of this number to N converge to 1/10 as N converges to infinity? Consider the same question with any other base and/or digit? Numbers with this property are often called "normal numbers."
Nobody has a clue as to the answer to this question.
I believe that there was even a previous slashdot article on this very question.
It seems to me that you completely missed my point. I was not suggesting which ammendment might fully support the Sonny Bono Act. Rather I was asking that if the Supreme Court were to interprete some part of the constitution to contradict the Sonny Bono Act, then which part of the constitution should be changed or removed so as to allow the Sonny Bono Act to stand.
That is to say, from the little I know about this Act, I personally disagree with it. But it does seem to me that using the Supreme Court to strike it down is a misuse of the constitution.
Basically the problem as I see it is that an intellectual elite will control more and more the laws of the land, by overly broadly interpreting the constitution. There are certain very basic rights that should be upheld by a constitution, but the rest needs to be left to the democratically elected parts of the government. Otherwise the common person will find that he/she has less and less control over their laws, and that they are at the mercy of those who think they know better.
OK, I don't have a problem with the Supreme Court rejecting any laws if they go against the constitution. I do understand that one must have checks and balances, and as another poster said, pure democracy can lend itself to evil.
Where I have the problem is that the constitution is interpreted very broadly so that it covers subjects which are perhaps beyond their scope. It seems to me that the judges quite often make a decision based a lot on what they would like to happen rather than what the constitution actually says. To do this, they take the constitution and stretch it to places that it should go.
Indeed suppose the rest of the government felt so strongly about the copyright law that they decided to make it constitutional. What ammendment would they make to cause this to happen?
An example that made me think about this was the Supreme Court's recent decision that executing people with low IQ was unconstitutional. They overturned a decision that the Supreme Court had made many years earlier. In the write up about their decision, the assenting judges said that times had changed, and that now public opinion was much more against executing people with low IQ. This struck me as odd - it seems to me that the Supreme Court decisions should not be a popularity contest. Don't get me wrong, I agree that we should not execute people with low IQs. But I don't think that the Supreme Court should be making this decision (at least not on the basis of what they wrote).
You know what bothers me about this case is the way people are trying to knock down this copywrite law. I don't have any problem with people saying that the law is wrong - I can definitely see their point. But it does bother me that they try to say it is unconstitutional. It seems to me that they are really pushing the limits of what the first ammendment might or might not be supposed to be saying. Ultimately, if they succeed in getting this law declared unconstitutional, it would seem to me that actually they have circumvented democracy.
Really, it seems to me that the proper way to reverse this law is to attempt to convince the electorate that the law is wrong, and have the democratically elected bodies reverse the law.
Jenkins is upset because this particular show sterotyped him. But as he describes how badly he answered his critics, he does exactly the same to them - he stereotypes them.
Really, the questions he was asked are exactly the kinds of questions that concerned parents are asking, and he needs to be able to answer them in the debate - not afterwards in his own article which does not allow both sides to present their cases.
"First, can I attach a shrinkwap license to anything? It seems well accepted for software. But what about apples? Can I enforce a shrinkwrap agreement that says you won't sell the apple to somebody else?"
You already get it with many items like candy - if you buy a huge bag of candy, often each piece will have "not for resale" written on it.
I have a different view. I think that ethics is the reason that America is great. I think economic wealth is not a function of the system used, be it capitalism, communism, or whatever, but rather based on the desire for a large and influencial proportion of the population to be honest - and honest for its own sake, not just for profit. For example, we see the failure of capitalism in many countries in the world (like the ex-communist nations) - because there is so much fraud in these countries that who would actually even try to start a business.
I think that in the USA that ethics is beginning to become a commodity to be traded like anything else. Hopefully the recent financial problems will wake people up, but if not I think that in a few decades or so that the USA will no longer be the super power it is now.
I created a couple of open source programs. I have had very little feedback - a few suggestions for improvements, and a few people that say they use it (like the number of emails received can be counted on one hand).
I think that maybe your primary concern should be how to get other people to be interested.
What I usually really wish for when I read someone elses code is this: I would like a paragraph or two at the beginning giving an overview. This overview should first describe why this code exists - what problem it is meant to solve - how it fits into the general scheme of things. Secondly, it should explain in general terms how it works.
As to the details of how it works - well, as they say well written code should be self explanatory, so I don't think this is so necessary. But well written code can never replace the overview.
Slashdot Mirror
"Either you manage and design around it or fail. NASA management still often chooses the latter."
I find this remark very unfair. It is a really nasty snide attitude to it, like "we are perfect - why can't you be."
Come on guys, NASA is trying to do some really difficult and ground breaking stuff here. Cut them some slack.
I do think that this remark is unfair to NASA. It is kind of like the difference between building a laptop computer today or in the 60's. Now you can get them for a grand or two, then it would have been prohibitively expensive if not totally impossible. The time is right for cheap space travel, but it is only possible today because of the trail blazing efforts of NASA and the USSR.
I have to say that I was about to post similar sentiments, except you said them so much better than I would. Like you, I am very much inspired by Bush, I also totally disagreed with just about everything that Dean stood for, but I really admired Dean's candor and honesty. Amongst my more liberal friends, I defintely felt that they really wanted Dean, but voted for Kerry because he seemed to be the best hope of defeating Bush.
It is very clear to me what both Bush and Dean stand for. I can love them or hate them, but I know exactly what I am getting with both of them. But with Kerry - well if he wins the election I just don't know what will happen. For example, what will Kerry do about Iraq? Will he quickly exit - will he stay until the job is finished - or will it be some other policy that is in between these? I just don't know.
I year or two ago, this simple program used to do the same for FreeBSD:
#include <stdio.h>
main() {
FILE *f;
while (1) {
f = popen("date","r");
}
}
You should also look at the book "I am Not Sick I Don't Need Help!" by Xavier Amador, which gives some extremely useful advice concerning patients compliance (or lack thereof) with taking medication.
The prognosis is not so good. Unless there is some miracle cure that is found - and I see nothing on the horizon - this is a problem that will remain with your sister for the rest of her life. I felt that the first half of the movie "A Beautiful Mind" did a good job of showing how the onset of schizophrenia shows up, but I felt that the second half did a poor job of showing how schizophrenics could "cure" themselves. My opinion is that the current medications are the way to go. They do have some bad side effects, but not as bad as the disease. The disease will slowly get worse as time goes on, but medication seems to slow its progress.
Finally, one of the very newest medications (I am thinking particularly of "Abilify") avoids the problems with many of the anti-schizophrenia medications (e.g. weight gain, a flat personality). Your sister may not be able to tolerate this medication, and it seems that the most effective medication differs from patient to patient.
I would have thought that everyone would have figured this one out. I saw it on a movie called "The Core." Basically, the center of the earth has stopped moving. Our only hope is to send down some kind of manned underground machine and detonate nuclear weapons.
As one who has refereed math papers, I think that this is not true. When I am sent a letter asking me to referee, I am asked to comment on how important the result is, and I am asked to assess how correct the paper is, but often I am explicitly told that errors in the paper are the responsibility of the author, and not the referee.
Dear Verisign,
I have heard that you guys are running a very useful website where I can get information about how to find other web sites (called sitefinder or something like that). Would you be so kind as to provide for me the URL for this website?
Best, a user
In Britain (where this article originates) a billion is 1,000,000,000,000.
I did some code generating in my program xkbset, which is a CLI program to set various parameters of the XKB features of X Window. The program is a bit like xset, and so one might write a line like:
# xk bset
xkbset bouncekeys 4 -mousekeys sticky -twokey
to set various parameters. Well basically the program is a loop that goes through argv interpreting the arguments using a bunch of if statements (just like the internal structure of xset). It seemed like way to much work to write all these if statements, so I wrote a "configuration" file that defines the various arguments, and a perl script that turned the configuration file into a C program.
It was a home grown code generation attempt. I really am quite pleased with it, and it is the only open source program I have written that people actually seem to use (mostly people with Toshiba laptops that need to get rid of key bouncing problems).
http://www.math.missouri.edu/~stephen/software/
(Somehow there is an extra space added in the URL between the k and the b - it shouldn't be there.)
In 1991, he became one of thirty living Laureates of the Business Hall of Fame.
The submitter must have read this too quickly, and presumed that Laureates refered to a Nobel prize.
The question that interests mathematicians (i.e. the definition of random that I have used) is this. In the base 10 representation of pi, consider the number of digits less than the Nth digit that are 0. Does the ratio of this number to N converge to 1/10 as N converges to infinity? Consider the same question with any other base and/or digit? Numbers with this property are often called "normal numbers."
Nobody has a clue as to the answer to this question.
I believe that there was even a previous slashdot article on this very question.
Here is a proof that Pi is irrational.
A number can be irrational but still have non-random digits. For example
0.101001000100001000001.....
is irrational.
It seems to me that you completely missed my point. I was not suggesting which ammendment might fully support the Sonny Bono Act. Rather I was asking that if the Supreme Court were to interprete some part of the constitution to contradict the Sonny Bono Act, then which part of the constitution should be changed or removed so as to allow the Sonny Bono Act to stand.
That is to say, from the little I know about this Act, I personally disagree with it. But it does seem to me that using the Supreme Court to strike it down is a misuse of the constitution.
Basically the problem as I see it is that an intellectual elite will control more and more the laws of the land, by overly broadly interpreting the constitution. There are certain very basic rights that should be upheld by a constitution, but the rest needs to be left to the democratically elected parts of the government. Otherwise the common person will find that he/she has less and less control over their laws, and that they are at the mercy of those who think they know better.
You make a good point. Thanks.
OK, I don't have a problem with the Supreme Court rejecting any laws if they go against the constitution. I do understand that one must have checks and balances, and as another poster said, pure democracy can lend itself to evil.
Where I have the problem is that the constitution is interpreted very broadly so that it covers subjects which are perhaps beyond their scope. It seems to me that the judges quite often make a decision based a lot on what they would like to happen rather than what the constitution actually says. To do this, they take the constitution and stretch it to places that it should go.
Indeed suppose the rest of the government felt so strongly about the copyright law that they decided to make it constitutional. What ammendment would they make to cause this to happen?
An example that made me think about this was the Supreme Court's recent decision that executing people with low IQ was unconstitutional. They overturned a decision that the Supreme Court had made many years earlier. In the write up about their decision, the assenting judges said that times had changed, and that now public opinion was much more against executing people with low IQ. This struck me as odd - it seems to me that the Supreme Court decisions should not be a popularity contest. Don't get me wrong, I agree that we should not execute people with low IQs. But I don't think that the Supreme Court should be making this decision (at least not on the basis of what they wrote).
You know what bothers me about this case is the way people are trying to knock down this copywrite law. I don't have any problem with people saying that the law is wrong - I can definitely see their point. But it does bother me that they try to say it is unconstitutional. It seems to me that they are really pushing the limits of what the first ammendment might or might not be supposed to be saying. Ultimately, if they succeed in getting this law declared unconstitutional, it would seem to me that actually they have circumvented democracy.
Really, it seems to me that the proper way to reverse this law is to attempt to convince the electorate that the law is wrong, and have the democratically elected bodies reverse the law.
Well, just my opinion.
Jenkins is upset because this particular show sterotyped him. But as he describes how badly he answered his critics, he does exactly the same to them - he stereotypes them.
Really, the questions he was asked are exactly the kinds of questions that concerned parents are asking, and he needs to be able to answer them in the debate - not afterwards in his own article which does not allow both sides to present their cases.
"First, can I attach a shrinkwap license to anything? It seems well accepted for software. But what about apples? Can I enforce a shrinkwrap agreement that says you won't sell the apple to somebody else?"
You already get it with many items like candy - if you buy a huge bag of candy, often each piece will have "not for resale" written on it.
I have a different view. I think that ethics is the reason that America is great. I think economic wealth is not a function of the system used, be it capitalism, communism, or whatever, but rather based on the desire for a large and influencial proportion of the population to be honest - and honest for its own sake, not just for profit. For example, we see the failure of capitalism in many countries in the world (like the ex-communist nations) - because there is so much fraud in these countries that who would actually even try to start a business.
I think that in the USA that ethics is beginning to become a commodity to be traded like anything else. Hopefully the recent financial problems will wake people up, but if not I think that in a few decades or so that the USA will no longer be the super power it is now.
Try out some real hard math problems here.
I created a couple of open source programs. I have had very little feedback - a few suggestions for improvements, and a few people that say they use it (like the number of emails received can be counted on one hand).
I think that maybe your primary concern should be how to get other people to be interested.
nedit does soft wrap.
What I usually really wish for when I read someone elses code is this: I would like a paragraph or two at the beginning giving an overview. This overview should first describe why this code exists - what problem it is meant to solve - how it fits into the general scheme of things. Secondly, it should explain in general terms how it works.
As to the details of how it works - well, as they say well written code should be self explanatory, so I don't think this is so necessary. But well written code can never replace the overview.