In general, the byproducts serve another purpose. Cow's milk is produced in order to feed calves. Eggs are a reproductive mechanism. It's still taking something that doesn't belong to you, specifically because you *can't* ask the animal for permission. If a person was mute, they would still own their stuff. This philosophy only works, of course, if you grant animals the right to self-ownership.
Perhaps I should have said that my statement is the consensus among most of the vegans with which I associate?
I'm willing to keep an open mind about your statement, but it would be nice to have some examples. Specifically it is important to me not to be misinformed, and to not base my decisions on superstition.
I have to also wonder how different the world would be if all humans were vegan. Utopia or distopia? I'm thinking there are at least a few aspects of the latter -- a lot of the nature preserves in this country where hunting is allowed probably wouldn't exist. Nobody would have a reason to want to preserve them.
It would certainly be different. The change would be gradual, however, so I suspect that there would be enough time for us to adapt as societies. There's no way that meat would go out of demand overnight, right?
As to your first point, well, refrigeration works well enough for me (and most of the people reading this board). There are also other methods of preservation that don't rely on the cold. Besides... just because someone else can't practically be vegan is no reason for those that can to shun it.
It isn't very ethical to fly fruits and vegetables around the world so supply your diet with enough nutrients to make up for the lack of meat.
Aren't you concerned about global warming and the effect it has on polar bears and other critters?
But I guess being part of the richest demographic in the history of humanity lets you pick and choose which moral/ethical choices fit your lifestyle.
Not eating meat is not and has never been an option to a vast number of people, especially in colder regions where you can not live year round on the available vegetable matter.
To answer your first question, I think it is undesirable to eat things that have to travel a long way in order to get to you. However, this seems like a separate issue, and one that can be avoided by purchasing local produce. As far as I know, there isn't much that I eat that can only be grown halfway across the world.
While it may be true that for some of the world it's not a practical option, I suspect that it *is* a viable option for most of the people reading this board. And frankly, even if there are some people who can't practically be vegan, that's not a reason that the rest of us can't be.
By the way, buying plants to eat is often cheaper than buying animal products. It's the other way around if you're talking about heavily processed vegan food, because there's less demand for it. This is one of the reasons I cook.
I'm not quite sure why you made the assumption that I don't buy locally grown produce when I can. Do you?
I do understand this point of view. I absolutely hate it when people try to force their views on me... religious ones, for example. The difference, I feel, is that I can show measurable harm (ie. suffering of the animal) as a consequence of the thing I'm trying to prevent.
Anyway, that aside, I'd ask you to at least try to understand why someone else might be trying to treat it like it's *not* a personal choice. Consider the person who feels that an animal life is nearly, or exactly as valuable as a person's life. They feel that keeping livestock is like kidnapping... that butchering is as bad as human murder. If your neighbor was keeping human hostages, I suspect you wouldn't defend their actions as a "personal choice." Basically, just because you *can* do something, doesn't make it "right" to do it. If someone else tried to deny you your basic rights, you probably wouldn't feel it was just a "personal choice" that they were making.
Also consider that most vegans were not born vegan. In fact, I suspect that many vegans (myself, at the very least), were quite anti-vegan before we started down this path. It often takes very strong influences (emotional, scientific or otherwise) to change so fundamental a habit.
This said, I've been fairly convinced (by a very smart friend) that the way to get more people to go along with the better treatment of animals is to develop synthetic meat, milk and eggs. It's just a more practical solution than trying to get everyone to see my own views, which will probably never happen anyway. If it's not economically practical to raise real livestock compared to growing a steak in a lab, it seems like the problem will mostly solve itself.
I promise to try to answer this question in a way that's not preachy. However, I *am* vegan, so filter my post in whatever way suits you.
On that note, there's another couple things that's always bugged me. Why do some vegetarians eat fish and/or chicken but not duck or lamb, and I'm not talking about the dietary-consideration kind? And why do some (ie. vegans) go as far as to not eat animal products like eggs, milk and the like, including from "ethical" sources? Because I have never had a rational, coherent argument with a vegan. I'm pretty close to just dumping them in the "ewww intestines" category.
While I can't speak for all vegans, the general consensus is that we don't eat byproducts (milk, eggs, honey, etc) from humanely raised animals because it's not freely given. It's still unnecessary exploitation, in our opinion. This is why breastmilk is vegan (it is freely given), but cow's milk is not. I'm quite happy that you didn't come out with the "cows would be in pain if we didn't milk them" argument. I get that one a lot, from people who haven't done much research on biology (this wasn't a dig, I promise).
As for your other points, I'll touch on a couple of them, if you don't mind.
Reason 3: It's unethical to cause suffering. Thus it is unethical to eat meat. Now we're getting somewhere! So if in the future we hooked up newly born cows to a Virtual Reality system ala. the matrix, where there was no suffering, disconnected cows would remain virtually in the world (no percieved death or loss) and execution was done painlessly and with the cow blissfuly unaware, it'd be okay to eat meat? Somehow I don't think a real vegan's going to say yes. So what's the real reason?
Er... no. Again, in my own personal opinion, it's about reducing exploitation. Would it be ethical to do this to people? Most people would claim that it is not. When one asks why it's okay to kill an animal but not a person, one often gets the answer that humans are smarter. Yet, when you ask if they would treat a mentally retarded person as an animal, it seems to be out of the question.
In general, my stance is that we should grant, to as many beings as *practical,* the "rights" of life and self-ownership. I don't want rabbits to be able to vote, because they're not capable (so far as we know) of agreeing to societal contracts. However, we generally afford those basic rights to anyone.
Frankly, the decision to grant the rights of life and self-ownership to humans only seems a bit arbitrary. At one point there was certainly a practical aspect to this, but I doubt many people (at least in the USA where I am, and many other parts of the world) would be able to claim much hardship if they gave up animal products.
Reason 4: It's unethical to kill. What, now plants aren't life?
Reason 5: Plants aren't on the same level as human beings. Then why are cows? Rabbits? Sheep? Birds? Insects? Where is this magical, arbitrary line that says it's okay to eat a pumpkin but not to eat a fish?
Again, the objective is "as much as is practical." It's fairly easy to live without eating animals, or their byproducts. As far as I know, it's not at all practical to live without eating plants.
As for the ethics of killing plants: If you're really concerned about it, the best way you could reduce the killing of plants is to stop eating animals. The energy conversion rates are astoundingly bad. Look it up if you don't believe me.
Reason 6: Meat is bad for you. Citation needed. Last I heard you need a meticulous diet of a huge array of vegetables (something that no human could have done pre-civilisation) to maintain a healthy vegan life. We've been eating meat since the dawn of man, literally, and yet here we are living just as long as the average vegetarian. However, this is the only reason on the list I could accept as being non-retarded. If you honestly think y
Re:Hey, remember when Ender's Game was good?
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Ender in Exile
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· Score: 1
Frankly, I think it's a mistake to believe that the majority should decide everything. For example, no matter how many people vote "yes" on it, we should not be able to vote to kill all redheads. We should not be able to vote to keep interracial marriages from taking place (and frankly, a lot of the arguments I've seen against same-sex marriage are exactly the same as the ones against interracial marriage). Trust me, you do not want the majority dictating your personal life.
The problem is, some people are voting that way because they're worried that the government is going to come in and make their churches marry same-sex couples. Get that out of your head right now. We're talking about the government definition of marriage, and not about what goes on in the church. Until someone can give me some evidence of *measurable* harm that allowing same-sex marriage would cause, I will continue to think that the entire position is bogus.
Besides, who gets to define marriage? Do you want a marriage trademark or something? Which religion gets to define it?
Re:Hey, remember when Ender's Game was good?
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Ender in Exile
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· Score: 1
Personally, I thought that the His Dark Materials series (Golden Compass, Subtle Knife, and Amber Spyglass) where a lot more preachy than Narnia was. By the time you get to Amber Spyglass the series is practicably hitting you in the face with the preaching.
(Not to get too off-topic, but...) I agree with you, but I was willing to put up with the preachiness because I found the world portrayed in those books to be thoroughly captivating. Narnia was neat, but I didn't really think the characters had real depth.
Oh, and just so I'm not *completely* off-topic, I actually liked the whole Ender Wiggin series.
Re:Except that agile methods were developed...
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Microsoft Lauds Scrum
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· Score: 1
Reading through these, I started to wonder why the opinions expressed were all so different from my own experiences with agile methodologies. While I'm sure some people are indeed speaking without actually trying it first, they can't all be doing that. What then occurred to me is the idea that maybe the problem in these cases is organizational. In a typical business, decisions are not made at the scope that they affect; they are typically made at the top (or at least, higher than they need to be), and handed down. How can a process be truly agile when the decision making surrounding it isn't?
I work at a company where each decision is made at the level at which it applies. If something is at a development level, the "General Company" has no reason to make a decision about it. If you're interested, the decision-making process we use is called Sociocracy (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocracy if you're interested), and it has worked wonders so far. Developers don't have to get bogged down by approval layers, and more generalized workers aren't burdened with the need to make too many decisions. This works very well with agile methodologies, as decisions can be changed on the fly to suit the client's needs.
The thing about leadership is that it will always exist in one form or another. The difference here is that in companies, leadership is imposed artificially throughout the organization. If you had, say, an organization where decisions were made at their appropriate scope, and leadership emerged naturally (and with the buy-in of those around said leaders), well, we might not have so many people complaining about "leadership."
I, of course, haven't read the book you mentioned, so I'm not sure what it would have to say about the points I'm trying to make.
Perhaps I misunderstood your point, but here is my answer:
In XP (I realize that there are other agile methods), the client is supposed to be on-site. Thus, the client can answer these questions whenever they come up. I realize that not all clients will want to spend their days sitting around a bunch of developers, but believe me when I say it actually helps quite a bit. Have you found otherwise?
As part of a team which has quite successfully used XP:
It sounds to me like there was some misconception about the processes and principles surrounding XP here. XP claims that out of the four following variables of software development, only one is generally variable:
- Length of project - Budget of project - Code Quality - Scope of project
The length and budget of a project are often fixed, and developers should not be required to sacrifice code quality. Therefore, the scope of the project is where one can gain the most flexibility.
Part of being able to change the requirements each and every day is that priorities will get shuffled around. This means that some "requirements" will fall off the end of the project in favor of other features, or changes to already implemented features. The customers I work with are greatly appreciative of this power.
I would say that if a project is going "over time" or "over budget," then the client and developers are not working together well enough to determine what will provide the client with the best business value.
As for estimates, we generally work under the assumption that estimates are not promises. That's even why a developer is supposed to give an estimate quality. So I could say... hey client, this looks like it will take a day, but my estimate is a shot in the dark. Thus, the client knows that it might take three days instead, and prioritize it accordingly.
In return, the client is supposed to leave the technical decisions to the developers (like, for example, when to refactor chunks of code). Some customers understand this, and some need help in order to do so.
Anyway. XP probably isn't for everyone. Some people like the process, some don't. I'm not going to claim it's the *best,* but of the approaches I've taken, I haven't found a better one. If you're curious, yes. My team does work on both large and small projects, and XP seems to work equally well.
Above all else, remember that XP preaches local adaptation, rather than the blind following of procedure. But if it stops being agile, then you're not really following XP.
If you have more information that you'd like to provide, it would be interesting to hear about the details (if you can give them) of your "failed" projects.
I'm also an RPI student. I suspect that they actually used one of those other file indexing 'services' in order to pick out the file sharing they didn't like. I'm sure you know which ones I'm talking about. Once Phynd began requiring an RPI IP, other services popped up to prevent it. While these may be morally worse, they can be used as a tool to keep an eye on the campus network as a whole. I suspect that this is why they haven't been targeted.
I've known some pretty bad teenage drivers. I've also known just as many bad non-teen drivers. Maybe this should be mandatory for non-teens as well (Yes I realize it's not mandatory for anyone yet) just so they have to deal with the annoying noise when they do something wrong.
Imagine how embarassing that would be while driving the family somewhere... but I bet "parents" would protest to that.
Or maybe I'm just stupid...
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Pet Bugs?
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This is pretty non-specific since it was for a college programming project a while ago.
I was using VC++ and trying to input from the keyboard. I don't remember why I used the particular function that I used, but... anyway. There were a series of inputs in a while loop. For some reason, the first time you input something, it would duplicate the carriage return (causing the second input to consist of just a carriage return). But each following input, even though it was going through the same thing... would act normally.
I know that wasn't so clear, but hey, my mind is fried from doing years of this stuff.
Also consider that one advantage of hiring Open Source programmers is that they may be (depending on what they have worked on) more accustomed to working on collective code. (I realize that starting from scratch on a project is not that common any more, but it does happen).
And as others have said... everyone has to make a living some how.
I remember programming a C64 as a child. It was great for learning, but after a while I wanted something else. And I heard about Assembly. So I saved my pennies and bought a program which would compile my programs.
I spent a lot of time trying to learn the language, which I didn't ever really understand. Then one day I finished making this program that would format a disk for you. I was so proud of myself.
Then I made the mistake of leaving the disk holding the compiler in the disk drive when I ran this new format program...
Oops. That was the end of my assembly programming experience until I got to college.
Anyway, back on topic. Just for my 2 cents... Basic is a good starter language in my opinion. This could be because I went right from Basic to C++ and don't really know any others. Yes, I'm ashamed of myself.
Guess what I'm trying to say is that, if you give them a simple programming language like that, and they at least find it interesting, they'll probably figure out a way to learn the more complicated languages later in life. Maybe ask them what they want to learn?
A nickel atom is made up of a bunch of particles and a whole lot of empty space. If dark matter comes in particles with a size significantly smaller than that of a nickel atom and the forces involved don't push them too far apart, I would guess that the density of dark matter could be very large.
Could be wrong... but last I knew black was a color. Or rather, the absence of photons bouncing off an object. I'm not quite sure what else they'd call it.
Maybe. It does seem to me in what science I have read that they seem to be coming up with a lot of explanations that are "convenient" but very complicated. What are they up to now, 11 dimensions?
The problem is, when we can't directly observe things, we have to guess. And slowly these false guesses will be weeded out, and other more correct ones will eventually take their place. It'll take a while.
I think, though, that all of this science will in some way help us. They may disprove their own theories eventually, who knows. We'll figure it out some day. And if we don't... then we'll have something to think about for the rest of existence.
I should really read up on this, but I've always been curious as to how they know exactly how much dark matter they think exists. I mean, it it light bending, gravitational interaction or what?
Is it possible that this matter is maybe some form of elementary particle that doesn't give off other particles (ie, the smallest particle which would not give off photons) and that's why we can't see it? Just my own questions on the subject. Wish I knew more about it.
Slashdot Mirror
In general, the byproducts serve another purpose. Cow's milk is produced in order to feed calves. Eggs are a reproductive mechanism. It's still taking something that doesn't belong to you, specifically because you *can't* ask the animal for permission. If a person was mute, they would still own their stuff. This philosophy only works, of course, if you grant animals the right to self-ownership.
Perhaps I should have said that my statement is the consensus among most of the vegans with which I associate?
I'm willing to keep an open mind about your statement, but it would be nice to have some examples. Specifically it is important to me not to be misinformed, and to not base my decisions on superstition.
I have to also wonder how different the world would be if all humans were vegan. Utopia or distopia? I'm thinking there are at least a few aspects of the latter -- a lot of the nature preserves in this country where hunting is allowed probably wouldn't exist. Nobody would have a reason to want to preserve them.
It would certainly be different. The change would be gradual, however, so I suspect that there would be enough time for us to adapt as societies. There's no way that meat would go out of demand overnight, right?
As to your first point, well, refrigeration works well enough for me (and most of the people reading this board). There are also other methods of preservation that don't rely on the cold. Besides... just because someone else can't practically be vegan is no reason for those that can to shun it.
It isn't very ethical to fly fruits and vegetables around the world so supply your diet with enough nutrients to make up for the lack of meat.
Aren't you concerned about global warming and the effect it has on polar bears and other critters?
But I guess being part of the richest demographic in the history of humanity lets you pick and choose which moral/ethical choices fit your lifestyle.
Not eating meat is not and has never been an option to a vast number of people, especially in colder regions where you can not live year round on the available vegetable matter.
To answer your first question, I think it is undesirable to eat things that have to travel a long way in order to get to you. However, this seems like a separate issue, and one that can be avoided by purchasing local produce. As far as I know, there isn't much that I eat that can only be grown halfway across the world.
While it may be true that for some of the world it's not a practical option, I suspect that it *is* a viable option for most of the people reading this board. And frankly, even if there are some people who can't practically be vegan, that's not a reason that the rest of us can't be.
By the way, buying plants to eat is often cheaper than buying animal products. It's the other way around if you're talking about heavily processed vegan food, because there's less demand for it. This is one of the reasons I cook.
I'm not quite sure why you made the assumption that I don't buy locally grown produce when I can. Do you?
I do understand this point of view. I absolutely hate it when people try to force their views on me... religious ones, for example. The difference, I feel, is that I can show measurable harm (ie. suffering of the animal) as a consequence of the thing I'm trying to prevent.
Anyway, that aside, I'd ask you to at least try to understand why someone else might be trying to treat it like it's *not* a personal choice. Consider the person who feels that an animal life is nearly, or exactly as valuable as a person's life. They feel that keeping livestock is like kidnapping... that butchering is as bad as human murder. If your neighbor was keeping human hostages, I suspect you wouldn't defend their actions as a "personal choice." Basically, just because you *can* do something, doesn't make it "right" to do it. If someone else tried to deny you your basic rights, you probably wouldn't feel it was just a "personal choice" that they were making.
Also consider that most vegans were not born vegan. In fact, I suspect that many vegans (myself, at the very least), were quite anti-vegan before we started down this path. It often takes very strong influences (emotional, scientific or otherwise) to change so fundamental a habit.
This said, I've been fairly convinced (by a very smart friend) that the way to get more people to go along with the better treatment of animals is to develop synthetic meat, milk and eggs. It's just a more practical solution than trying to get everyone to see my own views, which will probably never happen anyway. If it's not economically practical to raise real livestock compared to growing a steak in a lab, it seems like the problem will mostly solve itself.
I promise to try to answer this question in a way that's not preachy. However, I *am* vegan, so filter my post in whatever way suits you.
On that note, there's another couple things that's always bugged me. Why do some vegetarians eat fish and/or chicken but not duck or lamb, and I'm not talking about the dietary-consideration kind? And why do some (ie. vegans) go as far as to not eat animal products like eggs, milk and the like, including from "ethical" sources? Because I have never had a rational, coherent argument with a vegan. I'm pretty close to just dumping them in the "ewww intestines" category.
While I can't speak for all vegans, the general consensus is that we don't eat byproducts (milk, eggs, honey, etc) from humanely raised animals because it's not freely given. It's still unnecessary exploitation, in our opinion. This is why breastmilk is vegan (it is freely given), but cow's milk is not. I'm quite happy that you didn't come out with the "cows would be in pain if we didn't milk them" argument. I get that one a lot, from people who haven't done much research on biology (this wasn't a dig, I promise).
As for your other points, I'll touch on a couple of them, if you don't mind.
Reason 3: It's unethical to cause suffering. Thus it is unethical to eat meat.
Now we're getting somewhere! So if in the future we hooked up newly born cows to a Virtual Reality system ala. the matrix, where there was no suffering, disconnected cows would remain virtually in the world (no percieved death or loss) and execution was done painlessly and with the cow blissfuly unaware, it'd be okay to eat meat? Somehow I don't think a real vegan's going to say yes. So what's the real reason?
Er... no. Again, in my own personal opinion, it's about reducing exploitation. Would it be ethical to do this to people? Most people would claim that it is not. When one asks why it's okay to kill an animal but not a person, one often gets the answer that humans are smarter. Yet, when you ask if they would treat a mentally retarded person as an animal, it seems to be out of the question.
In general, my stance is that we should grant, to as many beings as *practical,* the "rights" of life and self-ownership. I don't want rabbits to be able to vote, because they're not capable (so far as we know) of agreeing to societal contracts. However, we generally afford those basic rights to anyone.
Frankly, the decision to grant the rights of life and self-ownership to humans only seems a bit arbitrary. At one point there was certainly a practical aspect to this, but I doubt many people (at least in the USA where I am, and many other parts of the world) would be able to claim much hardship if they gave up animal products.
Reason 4: It's unethical to kill.
What, now plants aren't life?
Reason 5: Plants aren't on the same level as human beings.
Then why are cows? Rabbits? Sheep? Birds? Insects? Where is this magical, arbitrary line that says it's okay to eat a pumpkin but not to eat a fish?
Again, the objective is "as much as is practical." It's fairly easy to live without eating animals, or their byproducts. As far as I know, it's not at all practical to live without eating plants.
As for the ethics of killing plants: If you're really concerned about it, the best way you could reduce the killing of plants is to stop eating animals. The energy conversion rates are astoundingly bad. Look it up if you don't believe me.
Reason 6: Meat is bad for you.
Citation needed. Last I heard you need a meticulous diet of a huge array of vegetables (something that no human could have done pre-civilisation) to maintain a healthy vegan life. We've been eating meat since the dawn of man, literally, and yet here we are living just as long as the average vegetarian. However, this is the only reason on the list I could accept as being non-retarded. If you honestly think y
Frankly, I think it's a mistake to believe that the majority should decide everything. For example, no matter how many people vote "yes" on it, we should not be able to vote to kill all redheads. We should not be able to vote to keep interracial marriages from taking place (and frankly, a lot of the arguments I've seen against same-sex marriage are exactly the same as the ones against interracial marriage). Trust me, you do not want the majority dictating your personal life.
The problem is, some people are voting that way because they're worried that the government is going to come in and make their churches marry same-sex couples. Get that out of your head right now. We're talking about the government definition of marriage, and not about what goes on in the church. Until someone can give me some evidence of *measurable* harm that allowing same-sex marriage would cause, I will continue to think that the entire position is bogus.
Besides, who gets to define marriage? Do you want a marriage trademark or something? Which religion gets to define it?
Personally, I thought that the His Dark Materials series (Golden Compass, Subtle Knife, and Amber Spyglass) where a lot more preachy than Narnia was. By the time you get to Amber Spyglass the series is practicably hitting you in the face with the preaching.
(Not to get too off-topic, but...) I agree with you, but I was willing to put up with the preachiness because I found the world portrayed in those books to be thoroughly captivating. Narnia was neat, but I didn't really think the characters had real depth.
Oh, and just so I'm not *completely* off-topic, I actually liked the whole Ender Wiggin series.
Reading through these, I started to wonder why the opinions expressed were all so different from my own experiences with agile methodologies. While I'm sure some people are indeed speaking without actually trying it first, they can't all be doing that. What then occurred to me is the idea that maybe the problem in these cases is organizational. In a typical business, decisions are not made at the scope that they affect; they are typically made at the top (or at least, higher than they need to be), and handed down. How can a process be truly agile when the decision making surrounding it isn't?
I work at a company where each decision is made at the level at which it applies. If something is at a development level, the "General Company" has no reason to make a decision about it. If you're interested, the decision-making process we use is called Sociocracy (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocracy if you're interested), and it has worked wonders so far. Developers don't have to get bogged down by approval layers, and more generalized workers aren't burdened with the need to make too many decisions. This works very well with agile methodologies, as decisions can be changed on the fly to suit the client's needs.
Just a thought.
The thing about leadership is that it will always exist in one form or another. The difference here is that in companies, leadership is imposed artificially throughout the organization. If you had, say, an organization where decisions were made at their appropriate scope, and leadership emerged naturally (and with the buy-in of those around said leaders), well, we might not have so many people complaining about "leadership."
I, of course, haven't read the book you mentioned, so I'm not sure what it would have to say about the points I'm trying to make.
Perhaps I misunderstood your point, but here is my answer:
In XP (I realize that there are other agile methods), the client is supposed to be on-site. Thus, the client can answer these questions whenever they come up. I realize that not all clients will want to spend their days sitting around a bunch of developers, but believe me when I say it actually helps quite a bit. Have you found otherwise?
As part of a team which has quite successfully used XP:
It sounds to me like there was some misconception about the processes and principles surrounding XP here. XP claims that out of the four following variables of software development, only one is generally variable:
- Length of project
- Budget of project
- Code Quality
- Scope of project
The length and budget of a project are often fixed, and developers should not be required to sacrifice code quality. Therefore, the scope of the project is where one can gain the most flexibility.
Part of being able to change the requirements each and every day is that priorities will get shuffled around. This means that some "requirements" will fall off the end of the project in favor of other features, or changes to already implemented features. The customers I work with are greatly appreciative of this power.
I would say that if a project is going "over time" or "over budget," then the client and developers are not working together well enough to determine what will provide the client with the best business value.
As for estimates, we generally work under the assumption that estimates are not promises. That's even why a developer is supposed to give an estimate quality. So I could say... hey client, this looks like it will take a day, but my estimate is a shot in the dark. Thus, the client knows that it might take three days instead, and prioritize it accordingly.
In return, the client is supposed to leave the technical decisions to the developers (like, for example, when to refactor chunks of code). Some customers understand this, and some need help in order to do so.
Anyway. XP probably isn't for everyone. Some people like the process, some don't. I'm not going to claim it's the *best,* but of the approaches I've taken, I haven't found a better one. If you're curious, yes. My team does work on both large and small projects, and XP seems to work equally well.
Above all else, remember that XP preaches local adaptation, rather than the blind following of procedure. But if it stops being agile, then you're not really following XP.
If you have more information that you'd like to provide, it would be interesting to hear about the details (if you can give them) of your "failed" projects.
I have to agree. As much as I prefer to use open source software, I have to say that I respect MicroSoft's desire to decide their own code policies.
Huh. This post really doesn't serve a purpose.
Er... first person, I mean. Oops.
I know a number of people who enjoy a game called BZFlag in that manner... (kind of a 3rd person/tank shooter game).
I'm also an RPI student. I suspect that they actually used one of those other file indexing 'services' in order to pick out the file sharing they didn't like. I'm sure you know which ones I'm talking about. Once Phynd began requiring an RPI IP, other services popped up to prevent it. While these may be morally worse, they can be used as a tool to keep an eye on the campus network as a whole. I suspect that this is why they haven't been targeted.
Wow... looking at the grammar and punctuation in my last post... sorry.
I've known some pretty bad teenage drivers. I've also known just as many bad non-teen drivers. Maybe this should be mandatory for non-teens as well (Yes I realize it's not mandatory for anyone yet) just so they have to deal with the annoying noise when they do something wrong.
Imagine how embarassing that would be while driving the family somewhere... but I bet "parents" would protest to that.
This is pretty non-specific since it was for a college programming project a while ago.
I was using VC++ and trying to input from the keyboard. I don't remember why I used the particular function that I used, but... anyway. There were a series of inputs in a while loop. For some reason, the first time you input something, it would duplicate the carriage return (causing the second input to consist of just a carriage return). But each following input, even though it was going through the same thing... would act normally.
I know that wasn't so clear, but hey, my mind is fried from doing years of this stuff.
Guess you could say *I'm* the biggest bug...
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Also consider that one advantage of hiring Open Source programmers is that they may be (depending on what they have worked on) more accustomed to working on collective code. (I realize that starting from scratch on a project is not that common any more, but it does happen).
And as others have said... everyone has to make a living some how.
I remember programming a C64 as a child. It was great for learning, but after a while I wanted something else. And I heard about Assembly. So I saved my pennies and bought a program which would compile my programs.
I spent a lot of time trying to learn the language, which I didn't ever really understand. Then one day I finished making this program that would format a disk for you. I was so proud of myself.
Then I made the mistake of leaving the disk holding the compiler in the disk drive when I ran this new format program...
Oops. That was the end of my assembly programming experience until I got to college.
Anyway, back on topic. Just for my 2 cents... Basic is a good starter language in my opinion. This could be because I went right from Basic to C++ and don't really know any others. Yes, I'm ashamed of myself.
Guess what I'm trying to say is that, if you give them a simple programming language like that, and they at least find it interesting, they'll probably figure out a way to learn the more complicated languages later in life. Maybe ask them what they want to learn?
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A nickel atom is made up of a bunch of particles and a whole lot of empty space. If dark matter comes in particles with a size significantly smaller than that of a nickel atom and the forces involved don't push them too far apart, I would guess that the density of dark matter could be very large.
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Could be wrong... but last I knew black was a color. Or rather, the absence of photons bouncing off an object. I'm not quite sure what else they'd call it.
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Maybe. It does seem to me in what science I have read that they seem to be coming up with a lot of explanations that are "convenient" but very complicated. What are they up to now, 11 dimensions?
The problem is, when we can't directly observe things, we have to guess. And slowly these false guesses will be weeded out, and other more correct ones will eventually take their place. It'll take a while.
I think, though, that all of this science will in some way help us. They may disprove their own theories eventually, who knows. We'll figure it out some day. And if we don't... then we'll have something to think about for the rest of existence.
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I should really read up on this, but I've always been curious as to how they know exactly how much dark matter they think exists. I mean, it it light bending, gravitational interaction or what?
Is it possible that this matter is maybe some form of elementary particle that doesn't give off other particles (ie, the smallest particle which would not give off photons) and that's why we can't see it? Just my own questions on the subject. Wish I knew more about it.
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