I agree with the grandparent as well those rewards programs can be VERY VERY good if your careful. Make sure you understand the fee structure on them, make sure you buy the right things on the right cards. Don't hate us players.
In that case, you shouldn't hate those of us who will play the game and avoid the paying credit card fees by paying cash.
In a game with winners and losers, it is always more fun if you win. Otherwise you're missing the point of the game. That doesn't mean you can't have fun and still lose.
Definitely not true. I would have much more fun playing a game against a capable opponent and losing than against a weak opponent and winning.
Well, Congress right now is mostly controlled by two political parties, one of which wants to raise taxes and spend more money than we've got, and the other of which wants to lower taxes and spend more money than we've got.
As long as people keep voting these lunatics into office, this is going to keep happening.
And honestly, I don't see that stopping before the US economy completely collapses. I only hope it takes long enough to do so that I won't be around for it.
If it had been one of my friends, I would have reported it too. (Well, first I would have told my friend to make it right himself -- and then reported it if he refused.) Just because I like a person doesn't mean that they can dodge their responsibility for the damage they caused.
The main justification for preferring the metric system over the 'english' system, at least for everyday non-technical use, was that the metric units were generally in multiples of 10 and were therefore easier to mentally manipulate to convert between mass, volume, and length. Now, with digital helpers everywhere, the ease of managing unit conversions is irrelevant and the impetus for changing to the metric system is gone. Moreover, we like the familiarity of our psi, pounds, degrees fahrenheit, miles per gallon, ounces, and teaspoons, etc for everyday use. Scientists and the military switched over to metric units years ago.
Even without computers and similar to assist in conversions, the fact of the matter is that the average person doesn't do unit conversions very often. I can only think of two cases where I do it regularly. The first is cooking, since sometimes it's useful to be able to switch between teaspoons, tablespoons, and cups. Maybe metric would make this simpler, and maybe not -- I haven't ever used metric-labeled measurings spoons or cups for cooking, so I don't really know.
The other time I have to convert between units is time -- and, of course, the time units aren't base-10 in the metric system either.
There's a good argument for switching, but trying to get people to switch because it will make conversions easier isn't going to go anywhere. As you noted, people who actually frequently do unit conversions -- scientists, engineers, and so forth -- have generally moved to metric already.
Maybe people on SlashDot will finally learn that scientific notation and the metric system make it easier to not make stupid mistakes while communicating measurements. Really, "136.4 degrees" ? Come on, put some scale with that, n00b.
Even if they had specified degrees fahrenheit, it would still be wrong, since the original measurement didn't have that level of precision. It's the same mistake that has everyone thinking that normal body temperature is exactly 98.6 degrees F.
Second, Linus's policy is that of the above, never is a kernel change allowed to break a userland app.
While I don't doubt (reading quickly through the description of what happened) that this change was bad, a policy that "kernel changes can never break a userland app" seems like a bit of an odd statement to make.
In my experience (and I do do development in environments where this comes up frequently), it is not at all unusual for applications to either rely on buggy behavior of another piece of code, or to make unwarranted assumptions about how another piece of code works, that happens to be valid under some circumstances but not others. If an application does not properly handle the documented behavior of an interface, then the application is broken.
In the case of the kernel, it's impossible to validate every single piece of userland software out there will not break due to a change in behavior, and although it can be best to maintain compatibility whenever possible, at some point that can become either impossible or impractical.
Now, if the policy is that you don't break applications that are following the documented kernel interface -- well, then that makes a lot more sense.
Given that most European countries have laws against selling pornography to minors (albeit that exactly what is banned and what is not depends on the specific country and culture, ranging from more strict to more lax than the laws in the U.S.), perhaps you should consult with people closer to home?
Look at the inverse; where states pass new laws prohibiting some new type of behavior... texting and driving for example. Is that counter-productive? Of course it isn't.
It would be if there was federal law that explicitly legalized texting and driving.
We need more states to be pioneers in repealing antiquated/obsolete laws otherwise those laws may never change.
States can't repeal federal laws, except through their legislative representatives.
It may not be a complete solution, but it certainly deals with one of the major problems with having state laws against something that you don't actually want to be banned: specifically, the expenditure of state taxpayer funds in policing, prosecuting, and incarcerating people for doing something that you don't actually want to be prohibited. So, incomplete solution I can see. Counterproductive? I don't see that.
It's not an "incomplete solution;" it's a total non-solution. If you want to repeal state laws prohibiting marijuana use, that's one thing -- but these laws that are under discussion explicitly try to legalize something that is illegal under federal law. Not only do they give a false sense of security to people who are violating the federal law, but they distract attention from the need to change the federal laws, and their licensing and taxation requirements are a complete waste of resouces. That's counterproductive.
It means that cannabis users in Washington and Colorado will feel more at ease as they go about their legal pastime.
Except it's not a legal pastime. Passing state laws to "legalize" something that is still illegal under federal law is counterproductive. Much better is to send representatives to Washington who will change the federal laws.
...state that has already said that, under state law, that's legal.
State law cannot make something legal which is illegal under federal law. You would think the president of the U.S. would know that.
If he really had some guts, he would call for Congress to change the federal law to match what the citizens of the U.S. support. At the very least, it's fairly clear that a majority of voters are in support of medical use of marijuana.
Most states allow/require you to use a checking or saving account (direct deposit) to pay or receive refunds. Imagine freezing your checking account (no more debit card, ATM, checks or online bill pay through your bank, until you have a new account). Switching banks or bank account numbers is time consuming and tedious. Think of all the direct deposit or online bill pays that have to be updated.
Yeah, it will be painful. But there's really no alternative. "Identity theft monitoring" is going to be only marginally effective at preventing problems, at best. The only real option is to make the information that the attackers gained useless, by getting rid of those accounts.
if a senator says vaccines are bad, a parent decides not to vaccinate their kids, and people then die as a result,
You could make the argument that anyone that makes a life-or-death decision based on the statement of an American politician deserves exactly what they get. It's not like it's any secret that every word that comes out of their mouths is a lie.
I'd consider it a pretty shitty curriculum that didn't teach the basics of the periodic table.
I won't argue with that.
All I have is my experience, but anecdotally (as someone who did briefly teach science at the high school level) I can tell you that the students that I taught did not know the first thing about the periodic table, and it would not have been included in the remainder of their schooling.
But it was only given special attention because it is under attack. I'm sure that scientists and well reasoned people would defend physics if people were trying to pass laws requiring science teachers to teach the controversy of flying elves making things fall vs the "theory of gravity"
I'm sure that this is true. Don't think that I am defending those who are trying to change curriculums to promote "intelligent design" -- they're equally guilty of using evolution in education as a proxy for attacking their political enemies.
In reality, this is not a "religious" issue. As long as people keep framing this as a "religion against science" issue, nothing will be solved -- to the detriment of the students in our educational system who should get the chance to get a comprehensive science education.
That argument still doesn't make sense, and I say that as somebody who took your basic high school biology.
For example, take 1 cell part, the nucleus. Well, to explain a nucleus, you pretty much have to explain DNA. To explain what DNA is or why we have it, you have to go into genetics. As soon as you get into genetics, you have to look at variation, sexual reproduction, and errors. And then it's a very short leap towards describing effective versus really lousy variations, and from there to natural selection. And bingo, you have Darwin's theory of evolution.
Or you can dissect a frog. Well, why is it that a frog has some of the same internal organs that humans do?
Or you can look at basic human anatomy. Try to explain why (some) humans have an appendix, wisdom teeth, or the ability to wiggle their ears without looking at the evolutionary relationships between humans and other primates.
These are survey courses. Sure, you can get to evolution from just about any topic in biology. That doesn't mean you have to. All of the topics you mentioned are perfectly good sequences of study, but I don't see any strong argument for them to be required -- there are lots of other directions that you can go, that would be just as rewarding to the students.
Most introductory biology courses focus on the mechanics of organisms, and while learning about evolution can be helpful there, I don't see it as being required.
Define introductory. In the UK it's always been taught to 14-15 year olds for at least the last 30 years to my knowledge. It's not the first thing you learn in biology, but it's certainly something that you learn before mandatory schooling comes to an end.
This is a circular argument -- you're saying that the reason why evolution is a particularly important topic in introductory biology is because it's something that gets taught in introductory biology.
By "introductory biology," I mean the first biology course that students take. Typically in a U.S. high school, students are required to take a one-year biology course. Additional biology (or related) courses may be offered, but are not generally required.
First off, I don't think that evolution is "unimportant." I think that its promotion within political debates to be the central topic of science education is unwarranted.
And I certainly don't share your belief that evolution is unimportant. It's not the only, not the most important theory in science. But it is definately one of the biggies. Given that biology is one of the core scientific subjects, and understanding evolution is pretty important within that.
Can you articulate why you think that it is all that important for it to be given emphasis in a typical public school curriculum? Honestly, I have trouble coming up with a reasonable argument for that. Most introductory biology courses focus on the mechanics of organisms, and while learning about evolution can be helpful there, I don't see it as being required.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with the grandparent as well those rewards programs can be VERY VERY good if your careful. Make sure you understand the fee structure on them, make sure you buy the right things on the right cards. Don't hate us players.
In that case, you shouldn't hate those of us who will play the game and avoid the paying credit card fees by paying cash.
In a game with winners and losers, it is always more fun if you win. Otherwise you're missing the point of the game. That doesn't mean you can't have fun and still lose.
Definitely not true. I would have much more fun playing a game against a capable opponent and losing than against a weak opponent and winning.
Making it a pure skills-based game is only fun for the one with the best skill, assuming fun should have anything to do with games.
Only if you equate "fun" with "winning."
more and more heavily armed and suffer the consequences
Such as the murder rate going down.
That's a pretty serious consequence for any politician looking to scare the voters.
Well, Congress right now is mostly controlled by two political parties, one of which wants to raise taxes and spend more money than we've got, and the other of which wants to lower taxes and spend more money than we've got.
As long as people keep voting these lunatics into office, this is going to keep happening.
And honestly, I don't see that stopping before the US economy completely collapses. I only hope it takes long enough to do so that I won't be around for it.
Some friends he has.
If it had been one of my friends, I would have reported it too. (Well, first I would have told my friend to make it right himself -- and then reported it if he refused.) Just because I like a person doesn't mean that they can dodge their responsibility for the damage they caused.
Not evolution
Obviously this is intelligent design.
How many people will need a smartphone to calculate a rounded-to-a-nickel price?
Most Americans. I'd give you an exact number, but I don't have my smartphone right now.
The main justification for preferring the metric system over the 'english' system, at least for everyday non-technical use, was that the metric units were generally in multiples of 10 and were therefore easier to mentally manipulate to convert between mass, volume, and length. Now, with digital helpers everywhere, the ease of managing unit conversions is irrelevant and the impetus for changing to the metric system is gone. Moreover, we like the familiarity of our psi, pounds, degrees fahrenheit, miles per gallon, ounces, and teaspoons, etc for everyday use. Scientists and the military switched over to metric units years ago.
Even without computers and similar to assist in conversions, the fact of the matter is that the average person doesn't do unit conversions very often. I can only think of two cases where I do it regularly. The first is cooking, since sometimes it's useful to be able to switch between teaspoons, tablespoons, and cups. Maybe metric would make this simpler, and maybe not -- I haven't ever used metric-labeled measurings spoons or cups for cooking, so I don't really know.
The other time I have to convert between units is time -- and, of course, the time units aren't base-10 in the metric system either.
There's a good argument for switching, but trying to get people to switch because it will make conversions easier isn't going to go anywhere. As you noted, people who actually frequently do unit conversions -- scientists, engineers, and so forth -- have generally moved to metric already.
What do you call someone trying to undermine the country?
I'm pretty sure that the answer to that question is "a politician."
Maybe people on SlashDot will finally learn that scientific notation and the metric system make it easier to not make stupid mistakes while communicating measurements. Really, "136.4 degrees" ? Come on, put some scale with that, n00b.
Even if they had specified degrees fahrenheit, it would still be wrong, since the original measurement didn't have that level of precision. It's the same mistake that has everyone thinking that normal body temperature is exactly 98.6 degrees F.
Second, Linus's policy is that of the above, never is a kernel change allowed to break a userland app.
While I don't doubt (reading quickly through the description of what happened) that this change was bad, a policy that "kernel changes can never break a userland app" seems like a bit of an odd statement to make.
In my experience (and I do do development in environments where this comes up frequently), it is not at all unusual for applications to either rely on buggy behavior of another piece of code, or to make unwarranted assumptions about how another piece of code works, that happens to be valid under some circumstances but not others. If an application does not properly handle the documented behavior of an interface, then the application is broken.
In the case of the kernel, it's impossible to validate every single piece of userland software out there will not break due to a change in behavior, and although it can be best to maintain compatibility whenever possible, at some point that can become either impossible or impractical.
Now, if the policy is that you don't break applications that are following the documented kernel interface -- well, then that makes a lot more sense.
Given that most European countries have laws against selling pornography to minors (albeit that exactly what is banned and what is not depends on the specific country and culture, ranging from more strict to more lax than the laws in the U.S.), perhaps you should consult with people closer to home?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_by_region#Europe
Look at the inverse; where states pass new laws prohibiting some new type of behavior... texting and driving for example. Is that counter-productive? Of course it isn't.
It would be if there was federal law that explicitly legalized texting and driving.
We need more states to be pioneers in repealing antiquated/obsolete laws otherwise those laws may never change.
States can't repeal federal laws, except through their legislative representatives.
It may not be a complete solution, but it certainly deals with one of the major problems with having state laws against something that you don't actually want to be banned: specifically, the expenditure of state taxpayer funds in policing, prosecuting, and incarcerating people for doing something that you don't actually want to be prohibited. So, incomplete solution I can see. Counterproductive? I don't see that.
It's not an "incomplete solution;" it's a total non-solution. If you want to repeal state laws prohibiting marijuana use, that's one thing -- but these laws that are under discussion explicitly try to legalize something that is illegal under federal law. Not only do they give a false sense of security to people who are violating the federal law, but they distract attention from the need to change the federal laws, and their licensing and taxation requirements are a complete waste of resouces. That's counterproductive.
It means that cannabis users in Washington and Colorado will feel more at ease as they go about their legal pastime.
Except it's not a legal pastime. Passing state laws to "legalize" something that is still illegal under federal law is counterproductive. Much better is to send representatives to Washington who will change the federal laws.
...state that has already said that, under state law, that's legal.
State law cannot make something legal which is illegal under federal law. You would think the president of the U.S. would know that.
If he really had some guts, he would call for Congress to change the federal law to match what the citizens of the U.S. support. At the very least, it's fairly clear that a majority of voters are in support of medical use of marijuana.
Most states allow/require you to use a checking or saving account (direct deposit) to pay or receive refunds. Imagine freezing your checking account (no more debit card, ATM, checks or online bill pay through your bank, until you have a new account). Switching banks or bank account numbers is time consuming and tedious. Think of all the direct deposit or online bill pays that have to be updated.
Yeah, it will be painful. But there's really no alternative. "Identity theft monitoring" is going to be only marginally effective at preventing problems, at best. The only real option is to make the information that the attackers gained useless, by getting rid of those accounts.
if a senator says vaccines are bad, a parent decides not to vaccinate their kids, and people then die as a result,
You could make the argument that anyone that makes a life-or-death decision based on the statement of an American politician deserves exactly what they get. It's not like it's any secret that every word that comes out of their mouths is a lie.
But you'd also have to go through a few contortions not to mention evolution in a biology course, treating it a bit like the elephant in the room.
This is something of a false dichotomy -- there is middle ground between not mentioning it and making it the central part of the science curriculum.
I'd consider it a pretty shitty curriculum that didn't teach the basics of the periodic table.
I won't argue with that.
All I have is my experience, but anecdotally (as someone who did briefly teach science at the high school level) I can tell you that the students that I taught did not know the first thing about the periodic table, and it would not have been included in the remainder of their schooling.
But it was only given special attention because it is under attack. I'm sure that scientists and well reasoned people would defend physics if people were trying to pass laws requiring science teachers to teach the controversy of flying elves making things fall vs the "theory of gravity"
I'm sure that this is true. Don't think that I am defending those who are trying to change curriculums to promote "intelligent design" -- they're equally guilty of using evolution in education as a proxy for attacking their political enemies.
In reality, this is not a "religious" issue. As long as people keep framing this as a "religion against science" issue, nothing will be solved -- to the detriment of the students in our educational system who should get the chance to get a comprehensive science education.
That argument still doesn't make sense, and I say that as somebody who took your basic high school biology.
For example, take 1 cell part, the nucleus. Well, to explain a nucleus, you pretty much have to explain DNA. To explain what DNA is or why we have it, you have to go into genetics. As soon as you get into genetics, you have to look at variation, sexual reproduction, and errors. And then it's a very short leap towards describing effective versus really lousy variations, and from there to natural selection. And bingo, you have Darwin's theory of evolution.
Or you can dissect a frog. Well, why is it that a frog has some of the same internal organs that humans do?
Or you can look at basic human anatomy. Try to explain why (some) humans have an appendix, wisdom teeth, or the ability to wiggle their ears without looking at the evolutionary relationships between humans and other primates.
These are survey courses. Sure, you can get to evolution from just about any topic in biology. That doesn't mean you have to. All of the topics you mentioned are perfectly good sequences of study, but I don't see any strong argument for them to be required -- there are lots of other directions that you can go, that would be just as rewarding to the students.
Most introductory biology courses focus on the mechanics of organisms, and while learning about evolution can be helpful there, I don't see it as being required.
Define introductory. In the UK it's always been taught to 14-15 year olds for at least the last 30 years to my knowledge. It's not the first thing you learn in biology, but it's certainly something that you learn before mandatory schooling comes to an end.
This is a circular argument -- you're saying that the reason why evolution is a particularly important topic in introductory biology is because it's something that gets taught in introductory biology.
By "introductory biology," I mean the first biology course that students take. Typically in a U.S. high school, students are required to take a one-year biology course. Additional biology (or related) courses may be offered, but are not generally required.
First off, I don't think that evolution is "unimportant." I think that its promotion within political debates to be the central topic of science education is unwarranted.
And I certainly don't share your belief that evolution is unimportant. It's not the only, not the most important theory in science. But it is definately one of the biggies. Given that biology is one of the core scientific subjects, and understanding evolution is pretty important within that.
Can you articulate why you think that it is all that important for it to be given emphasis in a typical public school curriculum? Honestly, I have trouble coming up with a reasonable argument for that. Most introductory biology courses focus on the mechanics of organisms, and while learning about evolution can be helpful there, I don't see it as being required.