One of the greatest movies on mathematics ever. A Disney masterpiece that transcends all grades to show how very complex math concepts appear everywhere around us.
Everyone should check Donald in Mathmagic Land out. It's
one of the best movies I ever saw in grade school and I still remember it to this day.
I posted this before in a related debate, and since it applies here, I'm will use it in response to Illserve.
**
It is not our business to run around the world ensuring that all workers are treated according to OUR standards, RIGHT NOW. All countries do things differently and for very different reasons. These people work at these wages because it's better than not working at any wages and children in Nike factories would be pretty pissed if their factory was shut down so that *you* could sleep easier at night.
I would like to respond to those of you that agree with this opinion.
The above quote, which I believe is not true based on personal discussions
with Vietnamese immigrants, takes a very myopic view of the situation.
The reason most of these companies are able to set up sweatshops is
that they not only exploit the labor situation, but the poverty
of the government as well. Sadly, especially in Vietnam, most
of the politicians there are more than ready to take a bribe
and sell out the populous to Nike or any company bringing
American Dollars. This type of corruption is really what prevents
change. When it becomes profitable for dictatorships like Vietnam
to sell their people out, they will do so and any company that buys
into this situation is complicit in perpetuating it.
There was a time in the United States before child labor laws
when American children were the ones working in sweat shops.
Factories owners were probably using the same arguments then
as some of you are using now. "We're giving these children wages.
Some of them are supporting their whole family. How dare you
liberals try to take that away." In some sense these arguments
are true. But in the big picture, what America had was a situation
where it became advantageous to a family to send its children into
sweatshops and for the government to allow it to continue, and
any scenario of short term profitability will perpetuate itself
unless it is banned outright.
Let me illustrate with the following extreme example:
Mr. Nguyen wants to sell Mr. Rockefeller his son Troung's kidney for
$10,000. This $10,000 will be a great help to his family in
Vietnam, much more than the extra kidney will be to the child.
Why don't we allow such an exchange to take place? All
of the above is true, and their are probably thousands
of third world citizens who would take advantage of
such an offer. I have no doubt there are some here who think
this type of thing should be allowed. I am, however,
absolutely against it for the following reasons:
Children do what their parents ask them do to. When
the parents are poor and desperate, they are willing
to put their children though great hardships for the
sake of themselves and the family(A prominent example
of this is young girls and boys sold into prostitution
in Thailand). Maybe you cannot prevent it, but it IS IN
YOUR POWER not to personally promote it by buying from
a company that exploits these types of situations when
you are aware of it.
Slippery slope. Usually I try to reject slippery
slope arguments, but the possibility of exploitation
by middlemen in recruiting/threatening organ donors,
bidding down the price of an organ, etc. is very
real( For example, the underground market
for babies). In regards to sweatshops, these middlemen
are in the form of the politicians who not only provide
the permits, they probably also will act on behalf of
the company to keep wages depressed and squash worker's
demands for better conditions.
It is unfortunate that the simple act of buying something
as innocuous as tennis shoes has to be viewed in the context
of a moral or immoral act. I certainly know that I haven't
lived a perfect life. But if you are going to buy from Nike,
understand the implications of what you are doing, and don't try to
rationalize it to the point that you think you're doing
some Vietnamese sweatshop worker a favor. You're not.
I have never seen this mentioned, but my special trick for commenting is to reference as much as possible the book or paper where I got the algorithm. Many of us who have been graduate students have gotten into the habit of obsessively referencing anything we have written because we know the frustration of forgetting the source of a particular fact. This should also be done with code.
An added bonus to this is that you have the book reference do the documenting for you which will likely be better anyway since the original paper can use fonts, symbols, greek letters, etc., to clearly express an equation rather than just text.
Here is an example of my Free Software FEA code.: /* This program calculates the eigenvalues of a tridiagonal
matrix using the QR with Wilkinson shift. It is taken from
the algorithms 5.1.3, 8.3.2 and 8.3.3 given in "Matrix Computations",
by Golub, page 216, 420, 421.
I have made a significant amount of optimization to take
advantage of the tridiagonal stucture of T.
Updated 9/2/00
SLFFEA source file
Version: 1.3
Copyright (C) 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 San Le
The source code contained in this file is released under the
terms of the GNU Library General Public License.
*/
.
.
.
#define BIG 1.0e+12 #define SMALL 1.0e-12 #define SMALLER 1.0e-20
int matXT(double *, double *, double *, int, int, int);
int givens( double *a, double *b) {/* This is algorithm 5.1.3 */
double tau, c, s, fb, fa;
1) I wanted to repay Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds and
all the other Free Software writers for giving me a cheap/free
Unix with all the tools and ESPECIALLY THE COMPILER.
2) I write numerical software(Finite Element Analysis) and
am dependent on the fact that numerical techniques such as
Gauss Quadrature, LU decomposition, the Method of Conjugate Gradients,
Lanczos Method of tridiagonalizing a matrix, and the QR algorithm,
are all open and free for me to use. Scientific computing would
be dead if these techniques were closed off due to patents or
hidden in the proprietary code of some company.
3) Companies ask programmers and engineers to sign non-disclosure
agreements(NDA). With Free Software I can:
a) Create a body of work before becoming employed which
I can take anywhere that will override the unfair parts of a
broadly drawn NDA. Releasing it as Free Software makes
it public.
b) Other programmers can do the same. If they add to the work
can say they are legally bound( at least by the GPL) to
contribute back to the code and therefore, will be able to
have these contributions go with them to their next job.
4) Keeping things secret and closed is self-defeating, especially in
science. I say this from personal experience of working in
academia. Anyone who does science knows that even under the best
circumstances where one has access to every equation, journal,
expert in the field, etc. it is still a very difficult process. Let's
not make it worse by hiding source.
*It must suck for these people working in these
*sweatshops to be making the highest real wages
*in their country.
I would like to respond to those of you that agree with this opinion.
The above quote, which I believe is not true based on personal discussions
with Vietnamese immigrants, takes a very myopic view of the situation.
The reason most of these companies are able to set up sweatshops is
that they not only exploit the labor situation, but the poverty
of the government as well. Sadly, especially in Vietnam, most
of the politicians there are more than ready to take a bribe
and sell out the populous to Nike or any company bringing
American Dollars. This type of corruption is really what prevents
change. When it becomes profitable for dictatorships like Vietnam
to sell their people out, they will do so and any company that buys
into this situation is complicit in perpetuating it.
There was a time in the United States before child labor laws
when American children were the ones working in sweat shops.
Factories owners were probably using the same arguments then
as some of you are using now. "We're giving these children wages.
Some of them are supporting their whole family. How dare you
liberals try to take that away." In some sense these arguments
are true. But in the big picture, what America had was a situation
where it became advantageous to a family to send its children into
sweatshops and for the government to allow it to continue, and
any scenario of short term profitability will perpetuate itself
unless it is banned outright.
Let me illustrate with the following extreme example:
Mr. Nguyen wants to sell Mr. Rockefeller his son Troung's kidney for
$10,000. This $10,000 will be a great help to his family in
Vietnam, much more than the extra kidney will be to the child.
Why don't we allow such an exchange to take place? All
of the above is true, and their are probably thousands
of third world citizens who would take advantage of
such an offer. I have no doubt there are some here who think
this type of thing should be allowed. I am, however,
absolutely against it for the following reasons:
Children do what their parents ask them do to. When
the parents are poor and desperate, they are willing
to put their children though great hardships for the
sake of themselves and the family(A prominent example
of this is young girls and boys sold into prostitution
in Thailand). Maybe you cannot prevent it, but it IS IN
YOUR POWER not to personally promote it by buying from
a company that exploits these types of situations when
you are aware of it.
Slippery slope. Usually I try to reject slippery
slope arguments, but the possibility of exploitation
by middlemen in recruiting/threatening organ donors,
bidding down the price of an organ, etc. is very
real( For example, the underground market
for babies). In regards to sweatshops, these middlemen
are in the form of the politicians who not only provide
the permits, they probably also will act on behalf of
the company to keep wages depressed and squash worker's
demands for better conditions.
It is unfortunate that the simple act of buying something
as innocuous as tennis shoes has to be viewed in the context
of a moral or immoral act. I certainly know that I haven't
lived a perfect life. But if you are going to buy from Nike,
understand the implications of what you are doing, and don't try to
rationalize it to the point that you think you're doing
some Vietnamese sweatshop worker a favor. You're not.
>Yow. whoa there. >8.3 restriction under win95? er... >that's DOS's restriction, not Win95's.
A subtle point to be sure, but Win95 only hides the fact that it only allows for 8.3 filenames, unlike Win98 which I think reformats your HD to 32 bit, so filenames can actually be larger.
I consider whatever I see when I open up a shell as the operating system's filename limitation, and if Win95 is limited by DOS, then it is a limit of Win95 as well.
Now if you are able to truly have larger filenames for your installation of Win95, then that's another story.
>Just out of interest, how come it took you >a day to port some GLUT code to Windows? I >thought that GLUT code compiles out of the >box on Windows and on Linux and on Mac and >on...
You are mostly right. The reason it takes me so long is partly due to my ignorance of MSVC++ ( Also, I need to change all file names to the 8.3 name restriction under Windows 95) and a few quirks of MSVC++(you need #include windows.h), and some variable names aren't allowed, but otherwise, it is very straighforward.
Slashdot Mirror
Another film I just remembered from my childhood is: The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics It won Chuck Jones an Oscar and remains one of the most visually impressive presentations of geometry ever.
One of the greatest movies on mathematics ever. A Disney masterpiece that transcends all grades to show how very complex math concepts appear everywhere around us.
Everyone should check Donald in Mathmagic Land out. It's one of the best movies I ever saw in grade school and I still remember it to this day.
I posted this before in a related debate, and since it applies here, I'm will use it in response to Illserve.
**
It is not our business to run around the world ensuring that all workers are treated according to OUR standards, RIGHT NOW. All countries do things differently and for very different reasons. These people work at these wages because it's better than not working at any wages and children in Nike factories would be pretty pissed if their factory was shut down so that *you* could sleep easier at night.
I would like to respond to those of you that agree with this opinion.
The above quote, which I believe is not true based on personal discussions with Vietnamese immigrants, takes a very myopic view of the situation.
The reason most of these companies are able to set up sweatshops is that they not only exploit the labor situation, but the poverty of the government as well. Sadly, especially in Vietnam, most of the politicians there are more than ready to take a bribe and sell out the populous to Nike or any company bringing American Dollars. This type of corruption is really what prevents change. When it becomes profitable for dictatorships like Vietnam to sell their people out, they will do so and any company that buys into this situation is complicit in perpetuating it.
There was a time in the United States before child labor laws when American children were the ones working in sweat shops. Factories owners were probably using the same arguments then as some of you are using now. "We're giving these children wages. Some of them are supporting their whole family. How dare you liberals try to take that away." In some sense these arguments are true. But in the big picture, what America had was a situation where it became advantageous to a family to send its children into sweatshops and for the government to allow it to continue, and any scenario of short term profitability will perpetuate itself unless it is banned outright.
Let me illustrate with the following extreme example:
Mr. Nguyen wants to sell Mr. Rockefeller his son Troung's kidney for $10,000. This $10,000 will be a great help to his family in Vietnam, much more than the extra kidney will be to the child.
Why don't we allow such an exchange to take place? All of the above is true, and their are probably thousands of third world citizens who would take advantage of such an offer. I have no doubt there are some here who think this type of thing should be allowed. I am, however, absolutely against it for the following reasons:
-
Children do what their parents ask them do to. When
the parents are poor and desperate, they are willing
to put their children though great hardships for the
sake of themselves and the family(A prominent example
of this is young girls and boys sold into prostitution
in Thailand). Maybe you cannot prevent it, but it IS IN
YOUR POWER not to personally promote it by buying from
a company that exploits these types of situations when
you are aware of it.
-
Slippery slope. Usually I try to reject slippery
slope arguments, but the possibility of exploitation
by middlemen in recruiting/threatening organ donors,
bidding down the price of an organ, etc. is very
real( For example, the underground market
for babies). In regards to sweatshops, these middlemen
are in the form of the politicians who not only provide
the permits, they probably also will act on behalf of
the company to keep wages depressed and squash worker's
demands for better conditions.
It is unfortunate that the simple act of buying something as innocuous as tennis shoes has to be viewed in the context of a moral or immoral act. I certainly know that I haven't lived a perfect life. But if you are going to buy from Nike, understand the implications of what you are doing, and don't try to rationalize it to the point that you think you're doing some Vietnamese sweatshop worker a favor. You're not.I have never seen this mentioned, but my special trick for commenting
is to reference as much as possible the book or paper where I got the
algorithm. Many of us who have been graduate students have gotten
into the habit of obsessively referencing anything we have
written because we know the frustration of forgetting the source of a
particular fact. This should also be done with code.
An added bonus to this is that you have the book reference do the
documenting for you which will likely be better anyway since the original
paper can use fonts, symbols, greek letters, etc., to clearly express an
equation rather than just text.
Here is an example of my Free
Software FEA code.:
matrix using the QR with Wilkinson shift. It is taken from
the algorithms 5.1.3, 8.3.2 and 8.3.3 given in "Matrix Computations",
by Golub, page 216, 420, 421.
I have made a significant amount of optimization to take
advantage of the tridiagonal stucture of T.
Updated 9/2/00
SLFFEA source file
Version: 1.3
Copyright (C) 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 San Le
The source code contained in this file is released under the
terms of the GNU Library General Public License.
*/
.
.
.
#define BIG 1.0e+12
#define SMALL 1.0e-12
#define SMALLER 1.0e-20
int matXT(double *, double *, double *, int, int, int);
int givens( double *a, double *b)
{
*/
double tau, c, s, fb, fa;
fb = fabs(*b);
fa = fabs(*a);
.
.
.
Because:
...
1) I wanted to repay Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds and
all the other Free Software writers for giving me a cheap/free
Unix with all the tools and ESPECIALLY THE COMPILER.
2) I write numerical software(Finite Element Analysis) and
am dependent on the fact that numerical techniques such as
Gauss Quadrature, LU decomposition, the Method of Conjugate Gradients,
Lanczos Method of tridiagonalizing a matrix, and the QR algorithm,
are all open and free for me to use. Scientific computing would
be dead if these techniques were closed off due to patents or
hidden in the proprietary code of some company.
3) Companies ask programmers and engineers to sign non-disclosure
agreements(NDA). With Free Software I can:
a) Create a body of work before becoming employed which
I can take anywhere that will override the unfair parts of a
broadly drawn NDA. Releasing it as Free Software makes
it public.
b) Other programmers can do the same. If they add to the work
can say they are legally bound( at least by the GPL) to
contribute back to the code and therefore, will be able to
have these contributions go with them to their next job.
4) Keeping things secret and closed is self-defeating, especially in
science. I say this from personal experience of working in
academia. Anyone who does science knows that even under the best
circumstances where one has access to every equation, journal,
expert in the field, etc. it is still a very difficult process. Let's
not make it worse by hiding source.
And on and on
*It must suck for these people working in these
*sweatshops to be making the highest real wages
*in their country.
I would like to respond to those of you that agree with this opinion.
The above quote, which I believe is not true based on personal discussions with Vietnamese immigrants, takes a very myopic view of the situation.
The reason most of these companies are able to set up sweatshops is that they not only exploit the labor situation, but the poverty of the government as well. Sadly, especially in Vietnam, most of the politicians there are more than ready to take a bribe and sell out the populous to Nike or any company bringing American Dollars. This type of corruption is really what prevents change. When it becomes profitable for dictatorships like Vietnam to sell their people out, they will do so and any company that buys into this situation is complicit in perpetuating it.
There was a time in the United States before child labor laws when American children were the ones working in sweat shops. Factories owners were probably using the same arguments then as some of you are using now. "We're giving these children wages. Some of them are supporting their whole family. How dare you liberals try to take that away." In some sense these arguments are true. But in the big picture, what America had was a situation where it became advantageous to a family to send its children into sweatshops and for the government to allow it to continue, and any scenario of short term profitability will perpetuate itself unless it is banned outright.
Let me illustrate with the following extreme example:
Mr. Nguyen wants to sell Mr. Rockefeller his son Troung's kidney for $10,000. This $10,000 will be a great help to his family in Vietnam, much more than the extra kidney will be to the child.
Why don't we allow such an exchange to take place? All of the above is true, and their are probably thousands of third world citizens who would take advantage of such an offer. I have no doubt there are some here who think this type of thing should be allowed. I am, however, absolutely against it for the following reasons:
-
Children do what their parents ask them do to. When
the parents are poor and desperate, they are willing
to put their children though great hardships for the
sake of themselves and the family(A prominent example
of this is young girls and boys sold into prostitution
in Thailand). Maybe you cannot prevent it, but it IS IN
YOUR POWER not to personally promote it by buying from
a company that exploits these types of situations when
you are aware of it.
-
Slippery slope. Usually I try to reject slippery
slope arguments, but the possibility of exploitation
by middlemen in recruiting/threatening organ donors,
bidding down the price of an organ, etc. is very
real( For example, the underground market
for babies). In regards to sweatshops, these middlemen
are in the form of the politicians who not only provide
the permits, they probably also will act on behalf of
the company to keep wages depressed and squash worker's
demands for better conditions.
It is unfortunate that the simple act of buying something as innocuous as tennis shoes has to be viewed in the context of a moral or immoral act. I certainly know that I haven't lived a perfect life. But if you are going to buy from Nike, understand the implications of what you are doing, and don't try to rationalize it to the point that you think you're doing some Vietnamese sweatshop worker a favor. You're not.>Yow. whoa there.
>8.3 restriction under win95? er...
>that's DOS's restriction, not Win95's.
A subtle point to be sure, but Win95 only
hides the fact that it only allows for 8.3
filenames, unlike Win98 which I think reformats
your HD to 32 bit, so filenames can actually
be larger.
I consider whatever I see when I open up a shell
as the operating system's filename limitation,
and if Win95 is limited by DOS, then it is a limit
of Win95 as well.
Now if you are able to truly have larger filenames
for your installation of Win95, then that's
another story.
>Just out of interest, how come it took you
>a day to port some GLUT code to Windows? I
>thought that GLUT code compiles out of the
>box on Windows and on Linux and on Mac and
>on...
You are mostly right. The reason it takes me
so long is partly due to my ignorance of MSVC++
( Also, I need to change all file names to the
8.3 name restriction under Windows 95) and
a few quirks of MSVC++(you need #include
windows.h), and some variable
names aren't allowed, but otherwise, it is
very straighforward.
I wrote some FEA software whose graphics
portion is completely built
on Mesa/OpenGL and there are plenty of good
reasons to use it.
1)Completely open in terms of API
2)Supported by GNU/Linux, Unix(through
Mesa) and Microsoft(included in MSVC++).
3)Books are pretty good.
I was able to even build a crude button system
with the GLUT library, and porting to Windows only
took 1 day.
There are some limitations, but overall, the
design is pretty logical and relatively easy
to learn.
San Le
slffea AT juno.com
slffea.com