I could also argue that whatever power(s) that be may not yet have decided to reveal themselves or are waiting for us to find them and are absolutely fuming that we are so easily misled by false prophets. For any definition of a deity that could be pleased by a particular action there exists a defintion of a deity who would be displeased by it. If recognizing the correct deity and the particular way they want us to behave is truely as important as people tend to believe then the reason for your decision had better be pretty solid. If an engineer believes that it is ok for important decisions to be based upon personal emotional responses and intuition without being able to back up such decisions with repeatable tests, then I want to know which cars, bridges, and medical devices they were responsible for designing. It's fine to take your best guess at something as a starting point, that's part of science as well, but if you expect to apply your ideas or communicate them to others you had better have an objective justification and a way of consistently and repeatably demonstrating your assertions.
Many religions speak of instances of deities lashing out against faithless individuals. Many religions also have accounts of the 'faithful' themselves taking it upon themselves to invoke gods will upon the non-believers for the betterment of mankind. This isn't just a game where you can hedge your bets, pick a faith, and hope it's the right one (assuming a right one exists or has even been discovered). Even if it were, your best bet would be to start every day by saying: "To any or all placate-able deities (or just really powerful entities), I pay you my respect that you please look upon the Earth with favor, spare us your wrath for another day, and help me on this science project." If that sounds absurd, it's no worse than picking any single faith on the grounds that you are no worse off. While the roulette wheel approach might seem harmless, people take faith seriously and the impacts of the decisions they make based on it have real effects on the lives of others.
I'll admit that coder attractiveness is going in the direction of blind cave fish, but in the long run isn't it a small price to pay for all the precious... I mean productive development tools?
Problem is, leaving something as good as how it was found is subjective. Ever seen the controller on a game console set up in an electronics store? Which of the thousands of people who used that controller ought to be responsible for replacing it in my house? That's an extreme example, however I _have_ friends who somehow managed to wear out their Super Nintendo controllers to the point of failure. My standards for how I treat my property and what I consider to be inconsequential levels of wear and tear are likely different than yours. Semi-related to the topic at hand, does coming into my house and smoking pot count as 'leaving it as good as it was found'? You might even agree with me that stinking up my house detracts from my ability to enjoy my own home, but not everyone would be so courteous. Close knit communities are keen to be wary of outsiders who may not share their standards of courtesy when making use of their property. The diversity of people and attitudes in the US is one of its greatest strengths, but it's also why I'm not leaving my door unlocked any time soon.
Odds are, either you or someone you care about will make a mistake that will come to harm you or them at some point in your or their life. Perhaps they knew better, perhaps they didn't, they may not have even had a choice but are you content to write them off as simply suffering the consequences of their actions? I don't know the answer to that, perhaps you would be content but many of us would like to help those who are suffering, irrespective of the cause.
I tend to agree, but if we eliminated all of the potential flame-fest topics on Slashdot there would probably be a heck of a lot less articles to read. Honestly, for topics like this that I know are going to be a landmine sometimes I'll just read the article and skip the discussion. In this case, I wanted to say something to cancel the unintended moderation I made on this post, lol.
I held out as long as I could but ended up buying a new PC with Vista on it a few months before Windows 7 came out. People still get all excited when someone mentions Vista but it has run smoothly for me in that time. I think I've gotten it to bluescreen once when I was messing around with some drivers that I shouldn't have been. I play games on it and lately Rift hasn't been working too well with my video card however each time the video driver messes up Vista manages to restart the driver without bluescreening or interfering with my other applications. If the features of Windows 8 are enough to entice me I'll probably skip 7. If however it looks like dodging Metro is going to be too much of a pain or cause to many side effects I may just upgrade to Windows 7.
We are choosing an operating system to fit our needs. We just don't like the window managment system that is packaged alongside this particular release of the operating system. If a user of a Linux system didn't want to build from scratch and found a distro that had the capabilities they needed but didn't like the window manager they could install the distro and do the swap in the same manner.
I know right?!?! I feel so much more productive using applications that are full-screen only and use highly visible 48 point fonts! Plus, the extra large tile interface allows me to select which program I want to run by slamming my forehead into my touchscreen!
Yes, for the 1x1 case what you state is true and MATLAB will have no problem regardless of which operator you use. MATLAB will never yell at you for using the wrong version of the operator unless an actual operation is performed that doesn't make sense for the operator you specified. The only real issues arise when both versions of the operator can be computed and the developer chose the wrong one since it will silently produce an unintended result (it is valid to multiply two same-sized square matrices via element-wise or via matrix multiplication but likely with VERY different results). The complaint is regarding which operation * should specify. Since MATLAB was designed as a platform for matrix computation they choose for * to specify matrix multiplication.
I started toying around with QBASIC when I was around 8 but was always frustrated about why my attempts to write code to work with graphics didn't run as efficiently as I thought it ought to. At the time I felt like the holy grail would be to learn C so that I could do some more advanced graphics programming. The problem I discovered was that C was a PITA to learn unaided (and be able to do the type of things I wanted to do). It wasn't even that the language was that confusing so much as troubleshooting code that won't compile / link / run. Linker errors in particular baffled me as a newb, particularly since I just assumed that if I had example C code it should just work.
That said, I think C (or any language really) would be a fine beginner language for an 11-year old IF there is hands-on guidance available from someone who knows what they are doing. I'm not saying an instructor would be necessary, just the ability to step in and provide some guidance. The REAL determining factor to what language he learns should be related to what type of software he would like to write. Back in college I downloaded the SDK for the original Half-Life and poked around writing C++ code to add new items and features to the core game. Even something as simple as tweaking existing code to alter the behavior of a weapon in the game was a learning experience in working with actual code and provided immediate satisfying feedback in terms of seeing how it impacted the game.
I'd recommend starting by helping him search around for an existing project that is related to his interests (that is entirely or partially open-source of course). Pick out a book based on the language that project uses (I'm somewhat partial to the Deitel and Deitel books but don't have a strong preference) and help him get the code initially built and running. He'll probably write a few standalone Hello-World applications first but from there can jump into tweaking an actual working project.
One last thing I'll say is to not get too hung up on picking the perfect beginner language for fear that a particular language wouldn't be as useful to him in the future. I took a course in high school where we spent two weeks at a time to learn various different languages such as x86 assembly, COBOL, Fortran, Pascal, Visual Basic, JavaScript, etc. I hardly use ANY of those languages in my current work but I found that the more languages I learned the easier learning new languages became. Every language you learn gives you a glimpse into the different ways you can write code to solve problems. Even if you never use that language again it broadens your perspective and gives you additional experience to draw upon when deciding the best language to use to approach a programming task.
Because it is true. The term "ionizing radiation" is not just causal lingo, it is very specifically defined as radiation that is capable of liberating an electron from an atom thus producing an ion. This is not the case for lower frequency electromagnetic radiation such as that produced by mobile phones. Any potential health effects resulting from mobile phone use would have to be due to an entirely different mechanism.
It's intimidating, some tail is just too hot to be had. It plays against the snake's feelings of inadequacy. The moral of the story is that you've just got to keep slithering out of your hole in the ground every morning, keep searching for that hot tail, and don't be afraid to strike when you find it!
You are also exposed to infrasound from car traffic, household appliances, and your own beating heart. As for the intensity of the sound, there are already regulations for how close wind turbines can be placed to residences to control for this.
I tend to agree, however imagine where humanity would be if we had to wait for individuals with a 'pristine' sense of ethics and values to advance the course of human development. Personally, I think it is too often that we are told stories of the heroes / founding fathers in history that are bleached clean of the 'imperfections' that make/made them human.
I think that is ACs point. The only thing that makes even multiples of powers of 10 special is due to our base-10 number system. Just don't tell the metric-system folks, thinking that 10 is special seems to bring them so much joy I'd hate to spoil it.
From an educational perspective, I would argue that showing steps should be directly related to the technique being taught. So for long division there should be a line showing each partial division step (or whatever you call it). For problems that utilize division, but where division isn't being taught, the steps might not be needed but it really comes down to the particular instructors teaching style.
I wholly agree and offer some additional examples.
As a teachers assistant in college I tried to grade papers the way I would want to have my papers graded. If students had an answer that was wrong or off by a bit I could justify giving some points if prior steps showed proper application of the techniques being taught. If very few or no steps are shown then I may have limited or no basis to award partial credit. Additionally, if a student showed their work (clearly) then I could often help identify the step where they went astray and mark it as such. Not all graders or instructors go to these lengths, but without showing work you eliminate the possibility.
As an engineer I still value when people show their work. The level of detail that should be shown will naturally vary but the burden of sifting through more detail will almost always outweigh the burden of not having enough. If a conclusion turns out to be false in a classroom you don't get credit. If a conclusion turns out to be false in the workplace you need to fix it. The amount of time it takes to troubleshoot the source of an error will generally be directly proportional to the amount of detail the engineer that came to that conclusion preserved in documentation.
What does it mean to distribute data obtained illegally? It's just data isn't it? They caught the theif and he gave you back all of your ones and zeros even, what everyone else has is just a copy and all copyright law was abolished, remember? Even with an "all-or-nothing" copyright law where obtaining data illegally is protected you'll need to prove that you have NEVER sold or given any of that information to ANYONE because I could argue that the copy I have was given to me by someone else who you sold or gave that data to legally, and not from the theif.
Who said I was interested in buying it? I got all I needed from the free hair samples you left in my car last week. By the way, I was sorry to hear about the robbery at your home. It's unfortunate that the robber uploaded all of your private data to a file sharing site, but at least they caught him and made him compensate you for the cost of the media. On the plus side someone got a hold of that novel you were working on and even fixed the downer ending you were in the middle of writing. It was a real hit and the guy is already getting donations to write a sequel. I'm not sure I'll read that one though, he says it's going to contain a lot of crossover elements from his favorite anime.
It will still maintain that accuracy, just within its own inertial frame of reference. As long as the scientists using the clock are able to account for this in their experimental setup and analytical models then they should be able to retain that accuracy.
Didn't Wile E. Coyote commission the construction of one of these to help propel himself so that he could catch the Road Runner? We could try asking him how that worked out before we commit to building our own.
I'd agree regarding "Recently used apps" as I basically live from this list. Any shortcomings of the old start menu were largely minor issues due to the fact I almost never had to browse it. My #1 complaint about the new UI is the jarring transition from the windows I'm working with to the application selector page. On a PC I'm not constrained to a small screen. I like working in an environment where I am able to have multiple non-fullscreen windows open at any given time. From what I've read though even though the registry setting to disable Metro was removed from the consumer preview I suspect Microsoft may re-add support for this just due to customer feedback. Then again, they never did back down on that horrid ribbon interface they added to their Office suite...
Slashdot Mirror
I could also argue that whatever power(s) that be may not yet have decided to reveal themselves or are waiting for us to find them and are absolutely fuming that we are so easily misled by false prophets. For any definition of a deity that could be pleased by a particular action there exists a defintion of a deity who would be displeased by it. If recognizing the correct deity and the particular way they want us to behave is truely as important as people tend to believe then the reason for your decision had better be pretty solid. If an engineer believes that it is ok for important decisions to be based upon personal emotional responses and intuition without being able to back up such decisions with repeatable tests, then I want to know which cars, bridges, and medical devices they were responsible for designing. It's fine to take your best guess at something as a starting point, that's part of science as well, but if you expect to apply your ideas or communicate them to others you had better have an objective justification and a way of consistently and repeatably demonstrating your assertions.
Many religions speak of instances of deities lashing out against faithless individuals. Many religions also have accounts of the 'faithful' themselves taking it upon themselves to invoke gods will upon the non-believers for the betterment of mankind. This isn't just a game where you can hedge your bets, pick a faith, and hope it's the right one (assuming a right one exists or has even been discovered). Even if it were, your best bet would be to start every day by saying: "To any or all placate-able deities (or just really powerful entities), I pay you my respect that you please look upon the Earth with favor, spare us your wrath for another day, and help me on this science project." If that sounds absurd, it's no worse than picking any single faith on the grounds that you are no worse off. While the roulette wheel approach might seem harmless, people take faith seriously and the impacts of the decisions they make based on it have real effects on the lives of others.
I'll admit that coder attractiveness is going in the direction of blind cave fish, but in the long run isn't it a small price to pay for all the precious... I mean productive development tools?
Problem is, leaving something as good as how it was found is subjective. Ever seen the controller on a game console set up in an electronics store? Which of the thousands of people who used that controller ought to be responsible for replacing it in my house? That's an extreme example, however I _have_ friends who somehow managed to wear out their Super Nintendo controllers to the point of failure. My standards for how I treat my property and what I consider to be inconsequential levels of wear and tear are likely different than yours. Semi-related to the topic at hand, does coming into my house and smoking pot count as 'leaving it as good as it was found'? You might even agree with me that stinking up my house detracts from my ability to enjoy my own home, but not everyone would be so courteous. Close knit communities are keen to be wary of outsiders who may not share their standards of courtesy when making use of their property. The diversity of people and attitudes in the US is one of its greatest strengths, but it's also why I'm not leaving my door unlocked any time soon.
Odds are, either you or someone you care about will make a mistake that will come to harm you or them at some point in your or their life. Perhaps they knew better, perhaps they didn't, they may not have even had a choice but are you content to write them off as simply suffering the consequences of their actions? I don't know the answer to that, perhaps you would be content but many of us would like to help those who are suffering, irrespective of the cause.
I tend to agree, but if we eliminated all of the potential flame-fest topics on Slashdot there would probably be a heck of a lot less articles to read. Honestly, for topics like this that I know are going to be a landmine sometimes I'll just read the article and skip the discussion. In this case, I wanted to say something to cancel the unintended moderation I made on this post, lol.
I held out as long as I could but ended up buying a new PC with Vista on it a few months before Windows 7 came out. People still get all excited when someone mentions Vista but it has run smoothly for me in that time. I think I've gotten it to bluescreen once when I was messing around with some drivers that I shouldn't have been. I play games on it and lately Rift hasn't been working too well with my video card however each time the video driver messes up Vista manages to restart the driver without bluescreening or interfering with my other applications. If the features of Windows 8 are enough to entice me I'll probably skip 7. If however it looks like dodging Metro is going to be too much of a pain or cause to many side effects I may just upgrade to Windows 7.
We are choosing an operating system to fit our needs. We just don't like the window managment system that is packaged alongside this particular release of the operating system. If a user of a Linux system didn't want to build from scratch and found a distro that had the capabilities they needed but didn't like the window manager they could install the distro and do the swap in the same manner.
I know right?!?! I feel so much more productive using applications that are full-screen only and use highly visible 48 point fonts! Plus, the extra large tile interface allows me to select which program I want to run by slamming my forehead into my touchscreen!
Yes, for the 1x1 case what you state is true and MATLAB will have no problem regardless of which operator you use. MATLAB will never yell at you for using the wrong version of the operator unless an actual operation is performed that doesn't make sense for the operator you specified. The only real issues arise when both versions of the operator can be computed and the developer chose the wrong one since it will silently produce an unintended result (it is valid to multiply two same-sized square matrices via element-wise or via matrix multiplication but likely with VERY different results). The complaint is regarding which operation * should specify. Since MATLAB was designed as a platform for matrix computation they choose for * to specify matrix multiplication.
The bus traveling music that accompanies Peter in the Family Guy episode where he wishes for his own theme music.
At around 0:50 in this poorly captured clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN9GAApDpsw
Or, perhaps the bus theme music in Earthbound: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVv5CuKgAzg
I started toying around with QBASIC when I was around 8 but was always frustrated about why my attempts to write code to work with graphics didn't run as efficiently as I thought it ought to. At the time I felt like the holy grail would be to learn C so that I could do some more advanced graphics programming. The problem I discovered was that C was a PITA to learn unaided (and be able to do the type of things I wanted to do). It wasn't even that the language was that confusing so much as troubleshooting code that won't compile / link / run. Linker errors in particular baffled me as a newb, particularly since I just assumed that if I had example C code it should just work.
That said, I think C (or any language really) would be a fine beginner language for an 11-year old IF there is hands-on guidance available from someone who knows what they are doing. I'm not saying an instructor would be necessary, just the ability to step in and provide some guidance. The REAL determining factor to what language he learns should be related to what type of software he would like to write. Back in college I downloaded the SDK for the original Half-Life and poked around writing C++ code to add new items and features to the core game. Even something as simple as tweaking existing code to alter the behavior of a weapon in the game was a learning experience in working with actual code and provided immediate satisfying feedback in terms of seeing how it impacted the game.
I'd recommend starting by helping him search around for an existing project that is related to his interests (that is entirely or partially open-source of course). Pick out a book based on the language that project uses (I'm somewhat partial to the Deitel and Deitel books but don't have a strong preference) and help him get the code initially built and running. He'll probably write a few standalone Hello-World applications first but from there can jump into tweaking an actual working project.
One last thing I'll say is to not get too hung up on picking the perfect beginner language for fear that a particular language wouldn't be as useful to him in the future. I took a course in high school where we spent two weeks at a time to learn various different languages such as x86 assembly, COBOL, Fortran, Pascal, Visual Basic, JavaScript, etc. I hardly use ANY of those languages in my current work but I found that the more languages I learned the easier learning new languages became. Every language you learn gives you a glimpse into the different ways you can write code to solve problems. Even if you never use that language again it broadens your perspective and gives you additional experience to draw upon when deciding the best language to use to approach a programming task.
Because it is true. The term "ionizing radiation" is not just causal lingo, it is very specifically defined as radiation that is capable of liberating an electron from an atom thus producing an ion. This is not the case for lower frequency electromagnetic radiation such as that produced by mobile phones. Any potential health effects resulting from mobile phone use would have to be due to an entirely different mechanism.
It's intimidating, some tail is just too hot to be had. It plays against the snake's feelings of inadequacy. The moral of the story is that you've just got to keep slithering out of your hole in the ground every morning, keep searching for that hot tail, and don't be afraid to strike when you find it!
You are also exposed to infrasound from car traffic, household appliances, and your own beating heart. As for the intensity of the sound, there are already regulations for how close wind turbines can be placed to residences to control for this.
http://www.thestar.com/business/article/738734--wind-gets-clean-bill-of-health
...or sooner.
I tend to agree, however imagine where humanity would be if we had to wait for individuals with a 'pristine' sense of ethics and values to advance the course of human development. Personally, I think it is too often that we are told stories of the heroes / founding fathers in history that are bleached clean of the 'imperfections' that make/made them human.
I think that is ACs point. The only thing that makes even multiples of powers of 10 special is due to our base-10 number system. Just don't tell the metric-system folks, thinking that 10 is special seems to bring them so much joy I'd hate to spoil it.
From an educational perspective, I would argue that showing steps should be directly related to the technique being taught. So for long division there should be a line showing each partial division step (or whatever you call it). For problems that utilize division, but where division isn't being taught, the steps might not be needed but it really comes down to the particular instructors teaching style.
I wholly agree and offer some additional examples.
As a teachers assistant in college I tried to grade papers the way I would want to have my papers graded. If students had an answer that was wrong or off by a bit I could justify giving some points if prior steps showed proper application of the techniques being taught. If very few or no steps are shown then I may have limited or no basis to award partial credit. Additionally, if a student showed their work (clearly) then I could often help identify the step where they went astray and mark it as such. Not all graders or instructors go to these lengths, but without showing work you eliminate the possibility.
As an engineer I still value when people show their work. The level of detail that should be shown will naturally vary but the burden of sifting through more detail will almost always outweigh the burden of not having enough. If a conclusion turns out to be false in a classroom you don't get credit. If a conclusion turns out to be false in the workplace you need to fix it. The amount of time it takes to troubleshoot the source of an error will generally be directly proportional to the amount of detail the engineer that came to that conclusion preserved in documentation.
What does it mean to distribute data obtained illegally? It's just data isn't it? They caught the theif and he gave you back all of your ones and zeros even, what everyone else has is just a copy and all copyright law was abolished, remember? Even with an "all-or-nothing" copyright law where obtaining data illegally is protected you'll need to prove that you have NEVER sold or given any of that information to ANYONE because I could argue that the copy I have was given to me by someone else who you sold or gave that data to legally, and not from the theif.
Who said I was interested in buying it? I got all I needed from the free hair samples you left in my car last week. By the way, I was sorry to hear about the robbery at your home. It's unfortunate that the robber uploaded all of your private data to a file sharing site, but at least they caught him and made him compensate you for the cost of the media. On the plus side someone got a hold of that novel you were working on and even fixed the downer ending you were in the middle of writing. It was a real hit and the guy is already getting donations to write a sequel. I'm not sure I'll read that one though, he says it's going to contain a lot of crossover elements from his favorite anime.
It will still maintain that accuracy, just within its own inertial frame of reference. As long as the scientists using the clock are able to account for this in their experimental setup and analytical models then they should be able to retain that accuracy.
Didn't Wile E. Coyote commission the construction of one of these to help propel himself so that he could catch the Road Runner? We could try asking him how that worked out before we commit to building our own.
I'd agree regarding "Recently used apps" as I basically live from this list. Any shortcomings of the old start menu were largely minor issues due to the fact I almost never had to browse it. My #1 complaint about the new UI is the jarring transition from the windows I'm working with to the application selector page. On a PC I'm not constrained to a small screen. I like working in an environment where I am able to have multiple non-fullscreen windows open at any given time. From what I've read though even though the registry setting to disable Metro was removed from the consumer preview I suspect Microsoft may re-add support for this just due to customer feedback. Then again, they never did back down on that horrid ribbon interface they added to their Office suite...