My first computer was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 16k which I upgraded later to 48k. One of the first things I bought for it was a Pascal and a Forth compiler. Man, Forth rocked. Awesome language.
For this self-control and self-discipline, people would first and foremost have to know the effect it has on them. And that's the problem: They cannot know that.
College is for many people the first time they can get away from their parents. For the first time without constant supervision. And hence of course the first time they can actually get in touch with the things their parents don't approve of. Whether that's drugs, booze or other "bad" behaviour, one thing is certain: They will indulge. Often to excess.
Ordinarily, I'd agree with you. That's what I always tell my American friends, too. But this study has been done in the Netherlands. The drinking age is 18 (used to be 16 like in Germany, IIRC) and Dutch teenagers, much like any European teenagers are much more independent and self-reliant than their American counterparts. Helicopter parenting, while it does exist, is not very prevalent in Western or Northern Europe.
I, of course, absolutely agree with your original statement, but I also think the GP wanted to point out the much more important ethical aspect: should we build and use machines for something that is such a profoundly human activity, i.e. the communication and exchange of ideas? Taking the Kantian approach here as you so eloquently pointed out in your post: Since I as an essay writer (and reader, FWIW) expect to communicate with humans, using machines for either or both of these tasks contradicts the very purpose of such communication, thus violating the categorical imperative.
As someone who graded hundreds of essays while serving as a teaching assistant for a senior-level engineering ethics course, I have to say that I find your lack of integrity rather appalling.
As someone who served on the IEEE ethics committee I find your appeal to argumentum ab auctoritate rather appalling. You should know the distinction between ethics and morals. One could make the Utilitarianist case, in which (arguably) the behavior cited is morally OK. One could also make the Kantian argument that (arguably) comes closer to what you were condoning.
Regardless of how much time the TAs did or didn't spend on the essays, however, the students had the same obligations, and rightfully so.
As an assignment for your ethics class: please elaborate, under which ethical systems, the above statement holds true or not, and why.
Ah, I remember. Atic Atac. Moon Buggy. The Hobbit. All great games. But of course the coolest thing was to program that sucker. I always liked the Basic dialect better than Commodore's (which was far more popular in my school), and even liked the weird tokenized entry method. But the real game changer for me was when I bought (yes, bought!) a Pascal and a Forth compiler. Man, Forth rocked. It still is one of my favorite programming languages.
Funny enough, my father was really opposed to me getting one, so an (older) friend of mine had to buy one for me and "lend" it to me until my father finally gave up and let me outright own it. A Ph.D. in EE later I'd say it was a good investment...
Too bad at some point my brother ended up with it and rather than giving it back for proper conservation he discarded it. I miss it dearly.
You expressly referred to the differential in power between employee and corporation, which is completely irrelevant to this story.
It may or may not be relevant to this story (it'll be very interesting to see how this plays out). It is, however, very relevant to the argument I was commenting on, which tried to establish an analogy between an employer/employee relationship and a relationship between consenting adults.
BTW there already exist "whistleblower laws" to protect government employees from being fired for pointing out ways that a government bureaucracy is behaving outside of bounds.
I am very well aware of that. I just pointed out to you that, from your original post, you did not seem to be aware that the TSA belongs to a different branch of government than the judiciary and that this fact invalidates your original argument of the TSA being "unable to act as an impartial referee".
If those existing laws did not work to protect her (a dubious assumption, considering, as others have pointed out, that there was less than a week from her sending her letter to a congressperson and her firing), what makes you think that another law would do any better?
Since I am aware of existing whistleblower legislation, I did not advocate for any new or additional laws. In my original comment, I just argued against the assumption that legislation regulating the relationship between employers and employees is unnecessary because it equates to a relationship between consenting adults. And obviously, Congress agrees with me.
Excuse me for assuming the the USA had a system of checks and balances. The last time I checked, the TSA was part of the executive branch, and has to abide by laws that the legislative branch created. So we have two branches here, one making laws, one carrying them out. Wait, why don't we create a third branch as an arbiter, let's call it the judiciary?
Ah, nice. Latching on to the one thing I've neglected for the sake of argument, and for that sake only. Thanks for biting.
This is where the power differential kicks in. Your relationship with your employer is not symmetric. The potential impact on the employer is much lower than on the employee. That's why you need an impartial arbiter or a union (yeah, I know, good luck with that...)
And since you mention the word "friend" here, let me say that you'd be a pretty crappy friend who dumps someone you care about without trying to help him first, which is exactly what the agent tried to do in this case. Also, in this case, this is not only a matter between the employer and employee, because the safety of a third party is affected. As such, it becomes a matter of public safety and an ethical issue. Responsibility also means not just walking away from a bad situation.
Nope. Because the US is (mostly, there are obvious and absurd exceptions) governed in a way that assumes consenting adults can engage in mutually beneficial relationships without a nanny telling them what to do as if they were five year old children. In Europe most laws are written to the point where they assume the ordinary citizenry are mentally handicapped five year olds that needs to be monitored, watched and told what to do at all times by responsible adults.
I prefer the government treat me as an adult.
Are nanny analogies now the new car analogies on Slashdot?
Anyways, here's what's wrong with that picture:
Let's ignore the massive differential in power between a corporation/employer and an employee for a second and accept for the sake of argument that your assumption of both parties being consenting adults is valid. Of both parties in this case, only one acted responsibly, and that is the employee. The TSA chose to throw a tantrum worthy of a five year old and go "Lalala, I can't hear you!". At that point, I'd like to have a mechanism in place to make both parties behave responsibly. And that, pretty much, is the definition of a law (to lay down what "responsible behavior" is) and this subsequently implies it must be enforced by an impartial entity (judge, jury, whatever is customary in your local law system).
Isn't that the way it's supposed to work even in the USA? Why is everybody so afraid of laws and regulations when time and time again experience shows that especially those with a lot of power act like 5-year-olds any time they can get away with it?
Yay! I've been waiting for a decent notification framework to become part of MacOS ever since Growl screwed up mightily after moving to the App Store. Also now I don't have to tweak Mail every single time a new version comes out just to have decent e-mail notification. Was about time...
I keep seeing people shocked about this trend and I just don't get it. Don't THEY feel paranoid if their kids happen to be in an unreachable situation?
If people feel paranoid about this, something's wrong. Good parenting should enable your kids to handle "unreachable situations" (whatever that is). You should have trust in your kids' ability to grow into an independent person. Granted, a cell phone is a convenient thing to have and I accept that argument, but if you need it to ease your paranoia, then the issue is more with you rather than the kid.
but for math geeks FORTRAN is probably the easiest language to get from pencil-n-paper to computer. Math functions in FORTRAN translate nicely from their paper counter parts.
Nope, the easiest one for that purpose would actually be MATLAB (or octave, for that matter). If you want decent O-O with that, you can also use PyLab. Anyone who needs FORTRAN for whatever reason down the road can easily pick it up having been exposed to any of the above, but it should not be taught as a first programming language.
OK, here's what's going to happen: initially, the publishers will charge low bulk rates to get everyone to switch over. After that, they'll introduce higher, per-student access fees. Oh, yeah, and don't even think about mixing and matching online books from different publishers. Fees for a single book will be so exorbitant, that the only way you'll be able to afford this is to buy the whole K-12 package. Just ask any university librarian about that business model...
Motors aren't the only reason for low power factors. Non-linear loads such as switched power supplies and, yes, CFLs, also decrease the power factor. If residential homes are doing this on a large scale (and transition to CFL or LED will accelerate this), the utilities will have to deal with it. It is likely that they will eventually start charging residential customers based on PF as well, once they have the infrastructure in place to reliably measure it. See here, for example: http://ecmweb.com/mag/electric_perplexed_pq_issues_3/
Then why do utilities require power factor correction for large load customers? The higher currents required increase the stress on the distribution system due to ohmic losses, which the power company has to eat, among others. Maybe it's time to revisit your power textbook.
Just a note: Knowing how much of the planet is covered in water is *not* scientific literacy. That is trivia knowledge. [..]
Scientific literacy would be understanding (1) how to research science you need (2) how to conduct a proper experiment[..]
While this is obviously not a scientific statement, I would, however, guess that the correlation between someone knowing those facts and the same person being scientifically literate is rather strong. So, measuring scientific literacy by a quick survey like this is both faster and cheaper than a more elaborate test while still giving you reasonably accurate results.
when I go to the command line and I want to add a user, do I type: ADDUSER nschubach ADD USER nschubach ADD ID nschubach ADD LOGIN nschubach LOGIN ADD nschubach LOGINID ADD nschubach USER ADD nschubach
USERADD nschubach
If it was in the GUI, there would simply be a text field and a button.
Well, actually there is a CLI equivalent to this. It is called command line completion. Just hit the tab key and you are presented with a set of alternatives. So, while your point for a GUI is well taken and while it is not quite the same as with a GUI, it is a reasonable remedy of the problem you presented.
Now don't get me started, however, on the point that in Ubuntu useradd and adduser don't do the same thing...
Slashdot Mirror
My first computer was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 16k which I upgraded later to 48k. One of the first things I bought for it was a Pascal and a Forth compiler. Man, Forth rocked. Awesome language.
For this self-control and self-discipline, people would first and foremost have to know the effect it has on them. And that's the problem: They cannot know that.
College is for many people the first time they can get away from their parents. For the first time without constant supervision. And hence of course the first time they can actually get in touch with the things their parents don't approve of. Whether that's drugs, booze or other "bad" behaviour, one thing is certain: They will indulge. Often to excess.
Ordinarily, I'd agree with you. That's what I always tell my American friends, too. But this study has been done in the Netherlands. The drinking age is 18 (used to be 16 like in Germany, IIRC) and Dutch teenagers, much like any European teenagers are much more independent and self-reliant than their American counterparts. Helicopter parenting, while it does exist, is not very prevalent in Western or Northern Europe.
Let me offer an amendment here:
No language shall be counted towards the foreign language requirement, for which an EBNF does not exist.
Wow, since when are formal and human languages the same thing? Oh wait, they aren't.
Excellent reply. A+. ;-)
I, of course, absolutely agree with your original statement, but I also think the GP wanted to point out the much more important ethical aspect: should we build and use machines for something that is such a profoundly human activity, i.e. the communication and exchange of ideas? Taking the Kantian approach here as you so eloquently pointed out in your post: Since I as an essay writer (and reader, FWIW) expect to communicate with humans, using machines for either or both of these tasks contradicts the very purpose of such communication, thus violating the categorical imperative.
As someone who graded hundreds of essays while serving as a teaching assistant for a senior-level engineering ethics course, I have to say that I find your lack of integrity rather appalling.
As someone who served on the IEEE ethics committee I find your appeal to argumentum ab auctoritate rather appalling. You should know the distinction between ethics and morals. One could make the Utilitarianist case, in which (arguably) the behavior cited is morally OK. One could also make the Kantian argument that (arguably) comes closer to what you were condoning.
Regardless of how much time the TAs did or didn't spend on the essays, however, the students had the same obligations, and rightfully so.
As an assignment for your ethics class: please elaborate, under which ethical systems, the above statement holds true or not, and why.
Ah, I remember. Atic Atac. Moon Buggy. The Hobbit. All great games. But of course the coolest thing was to program that sucker. I always liked the Basic dialect better than Commodore's (which was far more popular in my school), and even liked the weird tokenized entry method. But the real game changer for me was when I bought (yes, bought!) a Pascal and a Forth compiler. Man, Forth rocked. It still is one of my favorite programming languages.
Funny enough, my father was really opposed to me getting one, so an (older) friend of mine had to buy one for me and "lend" it to me until my father finally gave up and let me outright own it. A Ph.D. in EE later I'd say it was a good investment...
Too bad at some point my brother ended up with it and rather than giving it back for proper conservation he discarded it. I miss it dearly.
You expressly referred to the differential in power between employee and corporation, which is completely irrelevant to this story.
It may or may not be relevant to this story (it'll be very interesting to see how this plays out). It is, however, very relevant to the argument I was commenting on, which tried to establish an analogy between an employer/employee relationship and a relationship between consenting adults.
BTW there already exist "whistleblower laws" to protect government employees from being fired for pointing out ways that a government bureaucracy is behaving outside of bounds.
I am very well aware of that. I just pointed out to you that, from your original post, you did not seem to be aware that the TSA belongs to a different branch of government than the judiciary and that this fact invalidates your original argument of the TSA being "unable to act as an impartial referee".
If those existing laws did not work to protect her (a dubious assumption, considering, as others have pointed out, that there was less than a week from her sending her letter to a congressperson and her firing), what makes you think that another law would do any better?
Since I am aware of existing whistleblower legislation, I did not advocate for any new or additional laws. In my original comment, I just argued against the assumption that legislation regulating the relationship between employers and employees is unnecessary because it equates to a relationship between consenting adults. And obviously, Congress agrees with me.
Excuse me for assuming the the USA had a system of checks and balances. The last time I checked, the TSA was part of the executive branch, and has to abide by laws that the legislative branch created. So we have two branches here, one making laws, one carrying them out. Wait, why don't we create a third branch as an arbiter, let's call it the judiciary?
Ah, nice. Latching on to the one thing I've neglected for the sake of argument, and for that sake only. Thanks for biting.
This is where the power differential kicks in. Your relationship with your employer is not symmetric. The potential impact on the employer is much lower than on the employee. That's why you need an impartial arbiter or a union (yeah, I know, good luck with that...)
And since you mention the word "friend" here, let me say that you'd be a pretty crappy friend who dumps someone you care about without trying to help him first, which is exactly what the agent tried to do in this case. Also, in this case, this is not only a matter between the employer and employee, because the safety of a third party is affected. As such, it becomes a matter of public safety and an ethical issue. Responsibility also means not just walking away from a bad situation.
Nope. Because the US is (mostly, there are obvious and absurd exceptions) governed in a way that assumes consenting adults can engage in mutually beneficial relationships without a nanny telling them what to do as if they were five year old children. In Europe most laws are written to the point where they assume the ordinary citizenry are mentally handicapped five year olds that needs to be monitored, watched and told what to do at all times by responsible adults.
I prefer the government treat me as an adult.
Are nanny analogies now the new car analogies on Slashdot?
Anyways, here's what's wrong with that picture:
Let's ignore the massive differential in power between a corporation/employer and an employee for a second and accept for the sake of argument that your assumption of both parties being consenting adults is valid. Of both parties in this case, only one acted responsibly, and that is the employee. The TSA chose to throw a tantrum worthy of a five year old and go "Lalala, I can't hear you!". At that point, I'd like to have a mechanism in place to make both parties behave responsibly. And that, pretty much, is the definition of a law (to lay down what "responsible behavior" is) and this subsequently implies it must be enforced by an impartial entity (judge, jury, whatever is customary in your local law system).
Isn't that the way it's supposed to work even in the USA? Why is everybody so afraid of laws and regulations when time and time again experience shows that especially those with a lot of power act like 5-year-olds any time they can get away with it?
Yay! I've been waiting for a decent notification framework to become part of MacOS ever since Growl screwed up mightily after moving to the App Store. Also now I don't have to tweak Mail every single time a new version comes out just to have decent e-mail notification. Was about time...
I'm all for putting Maker's into schools, but wouldn't they have to lower the drinking age for that?
I keep seeing people shocked about this trend and I just don't get it. Don't THEY feel paranoid if their kids happen to be in an unreachable situation?
If people feel paranoid about this, something's wrong. Good parenting should enable your kids to handle "unreachable situations" (whatever that is). You should have trust in your kids' ability to grow into an independent person. Granted, a cell phone is a convenient thing to have and I accept that argument, but if you need it to ease your paranoia, then the issue is more with you rather than the kid.
but for math geeks FORTRAN is probably the easiest language to get from pencil-n-paper to computer. Math functions in FORTRAN translate nicely from their paper counter parts.
Nope, the easiest one for that purpose would actually be MATLAB (or octave, for that matter). If you want decent O-O with that, you can also use PyLab. Anyone who needs FORTRAN for whatever reason down the road can easily pick it up having been exposed to any of the above, but it should not be taught as a first programming language.
OK, here's what's going to happen: initially, the publishers will charge low bulk rates to get everyone to switch over. After that, they'll introduce higher, per-student access fees. Oh, yeah, and don't even think about mixing and matching online books from different publishers. Fees for a single book will be so exorbitant, that the only way you'll be able to afford this is to buy the whole K-12 package. Just ask any university librarian about that business model...
Motors aren't the only reason for low power factors. Non-linear loads such as switched power supplies and, yes, CFLs, also decrease the power factor. If residential homes are doing this on a large scale (and transition to CFL or LED will accelerate this), the utilities will have to deal with it. It is likely that they will eventually start charging residential customers based on PF as well, once they have the infrastructure in place to reliably measure it. See here, for example: http://ecmweb.com/mag/electric_perplexed_pq_issues_3/
Then why do utilities require power factor correction for large load customers? The higher currents required increase the stress on the distribution system due to ohmic losses, which the power company has to eat, among others. Maybe it's time to revisit your power textbook.
Just a note: Knowing how much of the planet is covered in water is *not* scientific literacy. That is trivia knowledge. [..]
Scientific literacy would be understanding (1) how to research science you need (2) how to conduct a proper experiment[..]
While this is obviously not a scientific statement, I would, however, guess that the correlation between someone knowing those facts and the same person being scientifically literate is rather strong. So, measuring scientific literacy by a quick survey like this is both faster and cheaper than a more elaborate test while still giving you reasonably accurate results.
when I go to the command line and I want to add a user, do I type:
ADDUSER nschubach
ADD USER nschubach
ADD ID nschubach
ADD LOGIN nschubach
LOGIN ADD nschubach
LOGINID ADD nschubach
USER ADD nschubach
USERADD nschubach
If it was in the GUI, there would simply be a text field and a button.
Well, actually there is a CLI equivalent to this. It is called command line completion. Just hit the tab key and you are presented with a set of alternatives. So, while your point for a GUI is well taken and while it is not quite the same as with a GUI, it is a reasonable remedy of the problem you presented.
Now don't get me started, however, on the point that in Ubuntu useradd and adduser don't do the same thing...