And in other news: Regarding last week's article about the carpenter that won 1,000,000$ in the lottery, there were a few errors: It wasn't the carpenter, but the barber; it wasn't 1,000,000$, but 10,000$; and he didn't win, but lose. Other then that, everything is correct.
Well, at least the home owner RTFA! That's how he knew how much it's worth and thus was able to be nervous. "You see kids? This is why you should always read the articles!!!"
Actually in physics 101 we did a class exercise to calculate the fine for driving in the speed necessary to make the red look green. I don't remember the details, but it was pretty expensive. I think I'd prefer the fine for passing a red light.
P.S. I'm sure you noticed that you moved offsubject from Heisenberg to doppler, but who cares!:)
The other day I was driving my car and a cop pulled me over. "Do you know how fast you were driving?" asked the cop. "No, but I know exactly where I am!"
Well, that guy will probably won't be head of a multi-million dollar making investment house. He will get there only after working (successfully) in the industry for a couple of decades. And if he gets there after only a few years, then I guess he is really good at what he does.. and thus not part of the usually party going MBAs -> less replaceable.
Most people miss an important point regarding salaries, and you actually referred to it passingly: Salaries are not given because of how much money you make or how directly you are connected to the money making portion of the business - you are paid for how hard it is to replace you. The teller in the bank is very important for the bank's profits. If there were no tellers, a significant portion of the bank's revenues would be lost. But, replacing a teller is easy. There are not so many requirements from a teller regarding former education/experience and the on job training is quite easy. On the other extreme, the CEO of the company is very hard to replace. He worked and studied years to be able to do his job (well, ideally) and the on job experience is invaluable and thus makes him hard to replace. When a CEO is replaced there is a period of unsteadiness in the company. Programmers are somewhere in the middle. It does not matter that they are the one that actually wrote the program. They are part of the profit-making machine in the same way that the marketing person that closed the deal and the catering guy that brought the food are critical to the proper operation of the company (don't know about you, but if the catering stopped catering, then my entire workplace will stop working:) ). What does matter is how hard it is to replace said programmer, and this depends on the complexity of the software he wrote. Maybe he wrote Pacman which is a simple program but brought lots of revenues or maybe he wrote the next version of Office all by himself. I don't know. The latter is very hard to replace and should be paid accordingly, while if the former is being paid 150k, then he should say thank you and STFU.* Bottom line, throwing numbers like: I make 150k a year while my boss makes 10x is pointless. The important thing is how invaluable you are. If you leaving will cause major problems to the company, they should pay more. If not, than you should stop complaining.
* - Yes, I read the summery, and he codes algorithms for financial institutes, I gave those examples just to clarify my general point. No, I did not RTFA, problems?:)
So downloading a song without paying for it, although you should, is okay, but selling a song is wrong? And I thought the OP was skewing things to fit you needs...
A few years ago there was the scare about monosodium glutamate (MSG). In my country some food companies started writing on the packaging "does not contain MSG!". A few consumer advocacy groups made them stop it because it misled the public. This message made people think that other brands has MSG and that MSG is harmful, when in fact there was no evidence to that affect. The problem with warnings like that is that people tend to use them as facts to support their false beliefs. It is already hard enough to convince people that emissions from cell phones are not harmful (correction - there is no evidence that they cause harm). The job would be ten-folds harder when they go "Oh, but if it's not harmful, then why are the companies forced into publishing their emission levels?". The logic will be that if they are forced to display the info, then it is probably meaningful -> cell phones are bad! Laws and regulations are (at least in theory) in place to protect the people from things that are bad for them, not to help spread around FUD.
FTFA: "the US military says the chance of injury from the system is 0.1%. It's already been tested more than 11,000 times" So, there has already been eleven injuries from that?"
From the person I replied to:
"More worryingly - statistically when used on a crowd of 1000 people, one will be injured."
So, yes, somebody talked about the injuries caused by this weapon, and I replied regarding it. I myself don't have the time nor the patience to talk about whether it is good or bad for the army to disperse crowds, so that is why I restricted myself to this topic. If you want to talk about "the bigger issue", you can look at some of my other posts in this thread, I mentioned my thoughts in a nutshell. I'm sorry that I cannot sit down to write an entire argument about the issue you raised.
Since we are talking about (hopefully) unarmed crowds, it is less of an issue. I really hope soldiers don't start using these weapons against someone who is attacking them with a gun (or someone armed with a banana - oblig. ref.).
Me? I'm not from the US, I'm not in Afghanistan. Just because I posted my opinion regarding the development of a non-lethal crowd-dispersing weapon does not mean I am for or against the US war in Afghanistan. I will leave my opinion regarding that issue to myself.
2) Is this weapon AUTHORIZED for use against US civilian
Don't know. Can be interesting to find out.
3) do you think the feeling of pain will lower the unrest ?
No. I don't think it will, but I still think I prefer this weapon to bullets.
No, I'm just saying that since the case is a bit more complicated than "The army is a strawman", I would like to focus on the choice of weapon used, assuming the dispersing of crowds is justified. If you want to claim that all cases in which the army tried to disperse a crowd were unjustified, then I guess I have to say you are a bit overreaching. See this comment for a nice opinion about those who think that "everything the police/army does is bad".
Like I said in a comment before the question of whether the army should be dispersing crowds is a complex one, and I don't want to go into it. Just as a thought experiment, if a bunch of soldiers are in a patrol through the streets of Baghdad and an unarmed crowd charges at them wanting to catch the and beat the living s&^@ out of them, maybe lynch them and kill them, should the soldiers do something or leave it to the local law authorities? I'm sure there are plenty of scenarios in war zones that an action is needed from the army, although it is better not to use live weapons and these scenarios are when these weapons are useful. I'm positive you could give me example of cases when the army tried to disperse a crowd it shouldn't have, but is not the point. Assuming dispersing is needed, what is the best device to use? This is what I was referring to. The ethics of crowd dispersion are complex and cannot be simply cataloged into simple Good/Bad folders. We are not talking about areas where the army is denying the assembly of simple, quiet, law-abiding citizens. The places where this device will be used (Afghanistan, Iraq) are not so nice and peaceful as your comment seem to suggest.
Actually, I wanted to add a disclaimer at the end of my post stating that I was talking about what to use in order to disperse a crowd and I do not want to go into the discussion of whether we should be dispersing those crowds. I believe it is a much larger discussion and it is not a Yes/No question since there are many different situations, in some of which the army should intervene and in some (most?) not. Since I didn't write it before, I'm saying it now: please reply to what I said. If you want to discuss the ethics/politics/morals of dispersing crowds, start your own goddamn thread:)
I just love it. Once, a long long time ago, people were upset that the army uses lethal weapons to disperse unarmed crowds in conflict areas. So the army sits down to develop non-lethal weapons - they cost more than guns, they are usually harder to operate (sorry, no citation) and place the soldiers in more danger (you are safer if you just shoot the opponent). What happens? Is everyone happy that the army is trying to lower the death counts in those conflict areas? No, people complain: "This is not safe", "this causes cataracts", "this hurts someone in 0.1% of the cases" (notice: injury, not death), "this makes them unhappy", "this causes chronic impotency". I mean, WTF? yes, we want to find safer weapons*, but let's give them some slack, at least they stopped using friggin' bullets in their friggin' heads!
Well, you still have HCV, chlamydia, Syphillis, Gonorrhea, HPV, HSV-2, Chancroid, Candidia, Tinea Cruris, Trichonomas and a few others to worry about, but go ahead, man!
It's even more problematic than that. Do you know how many different parasites are out there infecting humans world-wide? If you test the correlation between infection rates and world cup victories for all of them, you can be sure you will find some sort of correlation for one of them out of pure chance. This is the problem you get in every research when you compare too many variables.
I agree they are less abstract definitions, but still: Why one ten-millionth and not one millionth? Why equator to pole and not pole to pole? Why temperature of melting ice and not room temperature? No, I'm not trying to nitpick, and I do believe the SI/Metric system is a lot more logical than the imperial definitions, but since less arbitrary is (too me) like less pregnant, I still believe both systems have some basis that is arbitrary (just not the king's stinking foot).
Actually, all of the SI units are arbitrary. Second and Meter were defined centuries ago and only later standardized according to "speed of light, properties of atoms, etc." when those became known and quantified. So a meter is no better than yard and a second is good only because, luckily, no one thought of another unit of time. They are now considered "better" because they are part of the SI system. I agree that part of the reason that the SI system used meters and not yards is because it is a more logical system (yes, I know, and political reasons), but that does not change the basic premise: kilograms, like meters, pounds and all the rest are arbitrary measures and the fact the kg hasn't been defined yet by other universal constant* doesn't make it less useful than other SI units. So, I say Yes to kilograms and No to pounds!
* The funny thing is that originally a gram was defined by the weight of water in a set volume (cube of 1/100 of a meter) - so it could have been standardized with universal constants. Guess they have their reasons.
Although the space program had (has) it's share of fuck-ups, I would be hesitant to jump up and yell aloud: "Everyone is stupid, I just had a great idea no one else thought of before". I mean, what you say sounds reasonable, but if hundreds of scientist didn't provide for some sort of space tug, they probably had some reason, other than plain stupidity. Some possible reasons I can think of from the top of my head (at 3:00AM; disclaimer - IANAS*): 1) The frequency of such missed dockings is too low to justify the cost. 2) It is cheaper to send another probe than to have a space tug ready at all times - Remember that mass is money in space, and also you have maintenance to consider. 3) The technology for the space tug is not safe enough - it could be unpleasant if one of the astronauts gets marooned on the space tug. Please don't try to refute the above points. I am not saying this are the reasons, those were just examples.
You may be right and nobody thought about some sort of contingency plan for such a scenario, but I would check it before marching around and talking about "half-assed manner".
Slashdot Mirror
And in other news: Regarding last week's article about the carpenter that won 1,000,000$ in the lottery, there were a few errors: It wasn't the carpenter, but the barber; it wasn't 1,000,000$, but 10,000$; and he didn't win, but lose. Other then that, everything is correct.
News - You gotta love it!
Well, at least the home owner RTFA! That's how he knew how much it's worth and thus was able to be nervous.
"You see kids? This is why you should always read the articles!!!"
Actually in physics 101 we did a class exercise to calculate the fine for driving in the speed necessary to make the red look green. I don't remember the details, but it was pretty expensive. I think I'd prefer the fine for passing a red light.
P.S. I'm sure you noticed that you moved offsubject from Heisenberg to doppler, but who cares! :)
The other day I was driving my car and a cop pulled me over.
"Do you know how fast you were driving?" asked the cop.
"No, but I know exactly where I am!"
Well, that guy will probably won't be head of a multi-million dollar making investment house. He will get there only after working (successfully) in the industry for a couple of decades. And if he gets there after only a few years, then I guess he is really good at what he does.. and thus not part of the usually party going MBAs -> less replaceable.
Most people miss an important point regarding salaries, and you actually referred to it passingly: Salaries are not given because of how much money you make or how directly you are connected to the money making portion of the business - you are paid for how hard it is to replace you. :) ). What does matter is how hard it is to replace said programmer, and this depends on the complexity of the software he wrote. Maybe he wrote Pacman which is a simple program but brought lots of revenues or maybe he wrote the next version of Office all by himself. I don't know. The latter is very hard to replace and should be paid accordingly, while if the former is being paid 150k, then he should say thank you and STFU.*
The teller in the bank is very important for the bank's profits. If there were no tellers, a significant portion of the bank's revenues would be lost. But, replacing a teller is easy. There are not so many requirements from a teller regarding former education/experience and the on job training is quite easy. On the other extreme, the CEO of the company is very hard to replace. He worked and studied years to be able to do his job (well, ideally) and the on job experience is invaluable and thus makes him hard to replace. When a CEO is replaced there is a period of unsteadiness in the company.
Programmers are somewhere in the middle. It does not matter that they are the one that actually wrote the program. They are part of the profit-making machine in the same way that the marketing person that closed the deal and the catering guy that brought the food are critical to the proper operation of the company (don't know about you, but if the catering stopped catering, then my entire workplace will stop working
Bottom line, throwing numbers like: I make 150k a year while my boss makes 10x is pointless. The important thing is how invaluable you are. If you leaving will cause major problems to the company, they should pay more. If not, than you should stop complaining.
* - Yes, I read the summery, and he codes algorithms for financial institutes, I gave those examples just to clarify my general point. No, I did not RTFA, problems? :)
So downloading a song without paying for it, although you should, is okay, but selling a song is wrong? And I thought the OP was skewing things to fit you needs...
A few years ago there was the scare about monosodium glutamate (MSG). In my country some food companies started writing on the packaging "does not contain MSG!". A few consumer advocacy groups made them stop it because it misled the public. This message made people think that other brands has MSG and that MSG is harmful, when in fact there was no evidence to that affect.
The problem with warnings like that is that people tend to use them as facts to support their false beliefs. It is already hard enough to convince people that emissions from cell phones are not harmful (correction - there is no evidence that they cause harm). The job would be ten-folds harder when they go "Oh, but if it's not harmful, then why are the companies forced into publishing their emission levels?". The logic will be that if they are forced to display the info, then it is probably meaningful -> cell phones are bad!
Laws and regulations are (at least in theory) in place to protect the people from things that are bad for them, not to help spread around FUD.
From the OP:
FTFA: "the US military says the chance of injury from the system is 0.1%. It's already been tested more than 11,000 times"
So, there has already been eleven injuries from that?"
From the person I replied to:
"More worryingly - statistically when used on a crowd of 1000 people, one will be injured."
So, yes, somebody talked about the injuries caused by this weapon, and I replied regarding it.
I myself don't have the time nor the patience to talk about whether it is good or bad for the army to disperse crowds, so that is why I restricted myself to this topic.
If you want to talk about "the bigger issue", you can look at some of my other posts in this thread, I mentioned my thoughts in a nutshell. I'm sorry that I cannot sit down to write an entire argument about the issue you raised.
Since we are talking about (hopefully) unarmed crowds, it is less of an issue. I really hope soldiers don't start using these weapons against someone who is attacking them with a gun (or someone armed with a banana - oblig. ref.).
Since I've posted, I can't mod you up - someone should!
1) why the heck are you *STILL* in afghanistan ?
Me? I'm not from the US, I'm not in Afghanistan. Just because I posted my opinion regarding the development of a non-lethal crowd-dispersing weapon does not mean I am for or against the US war in Afghanistan. I will leave my opinion regarding that issue to myself.
2) Is this weapon AUTHORIZED for use against US civilian
Don't know. Can be interesting to find out.
3) do you think the feeling of pain will lower the unrest ?
No. I don't think it will, but I still think I prefer this weapon to bullets.
No, I'm just saying that since the case is a bit more complicated than "The army is a strawman", I would like to focus on the choice of weapon used, assuming the dispersing of crowds is justified. If you want to claim that all cases in which the army tried to disperse a crowd were unjustified, then I guess I have to say you are a bit overreaching.
See this comment for a nice opinion about those who think that "everything the police/army does is bad".
If you let the RIAA do the math, I'd say about 1.5 trillion lives.
Like I said in a comment before the question of whether the army should be dispersing crowds is a complex one, and I don't want to go into it. Just as a thought experiment, if a bunch of soldiers are in a patrol through the streets of Baghdad and an unarmed crowd charges at them wanting to catch the and beat the living s&^@ out of them, maybe lynch them and kill them, should the soldiers do something or leave it to the local law authorities?
I'm sure there are plenty of scenarios in war zones that an action is needed from the army, although it is better not to use live weapons and these scenarios are when these weapons are useful. I'm positive you could give me example of cases when the army tried to disperse a crowd it shouldn't have, but is not the point. Assuming dispersing is needed, what is the best device to use? This is what I was referring to.
The ethics of crowd dispersion are complex and cannot be simply cataloged into simple Good/Bad folders. We are not talking about areas where the army is denying the assembly of simple, quiet, law-abiding citizens. The places where this device will be used (Afghanistan, Iraq) are not so nice and peaceful as your comment seem to suggest.
Actually, I wanted to add a disclaimer at the end of my post stating that I was talking about what to use in order to disperse a crowd and I do not want to go into the discussion of whether we should be dispersing those crowds. I believe it is a much larger discussion and it is not a Yes/No question since there are many different situations, in some of which the army should intervene and in some (most?) not. :)
Since I didn't write it before, I'm saying it now: please reply to what I said. If you want to discuss the ethics/politics/morals of dispersing crowds, start your own goddamn thread
I just love it. Once, a long long time ago, people were upset that the army uses lethal weapons to disperse unarmed crowds in conflict areas. So the army sits down to develop non-lethal weapons - they cost more than guns, they are usually harder to operate (sorry, no citation) and place the soldiers in more danger (you are safer if you just shoot the opponent).
What happens? Is everyone happy that the army is trying to lower the death counts in those conflict areas? No, people complain: "This is not safe", "this causes cataracts", "this hurts someone in 0.1% of the cases" (notice: injury, not death), "this makes them unhappy", "this causes chronic impotency". I mean, WTF? yes, we want to find safer weapons*, but let's give them some slack, at least they stopped using friggin' bullets in their friggin' heads!
* - Safer weapon - the oxymoron of the year!
Latest? *cough* Kin *cough*
Well, close enough: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1BJfDvSITY
Well, you still have HCV, chlamydia, Syphillis, Gonorrhea, HPV, HSV-2, Chancroid, Candidia, Tinea Cruris, Trichonomas and a few others to worry about, but go ahead, man!
It's even more problematic than that. Do you know how many different parasites are out there infecting humans world-wide? If you test the correlation between infection rates and world cup victories for all of them, you can be sure you will find some sort of correlation for one of them out of pure chance. This is the problem you get in every research when you compare too many variables.
I agree they are less abstract definitions, but still: Why one ten-millionth and not one millionth? Why equator to pole and not pole to pole? Why temperature of melting ice and not room temperature?
No, I'm not trying to nitpick, and I do believe the SI/Metric system is a lot more logical than the imperial definitions, but since less arbitrary is (too me) like less pregnant, I still believe both systems have some basis that is arbitrary (just not the king's stinking foot).
P.S. I hope I rationally disagreed. (re: sig).
Which is probably why they stopped using the above definition. Thank for the info.
Actually, all of the SI units are arbitrary. Second and Meter were defined centuries ago and only later standardized according to "speed of light, properties of atoms, etc." when those became known and quantified. So a meter is no better than yard and a second is good only because, luckily, no one thought of another unit of time. They are now considered "better" because they are part of the SI system.
I agree that part of the reason that the SI system used meters and not yards is because it is a more logical system (yes, I know, and political reasons), but that does not change the basic premise: kilograms, like meters, pounds and all the rest are arbitrary measures and the fact the kg hasn't been defined yet by other universal constant* doesn't make it less useful than other SI units.
So, I say Yes to kilograms and No to pounds!
* The funny thing is that originally a gram was defined by the weight of water in a set volume (cube of 1/100 of a meter) - so it could have been standardized with universal constants. Guess they have their reasons.
Although the space program had (has) it's share of fuck-ups, I would be hesitant to jump up and yell aloud: "Everyone is stupid, I just had a great idea no one else thought of before". I mean, what you say sounds reasonable, but if hundreds of scientist didn't provide for some sort of space tug, they probably had some reason, other than plain stupidity. Some possible reasons I can think of from the top of my head (at 3:00AM; disclaimer - IANAS*):
1) The frequency of such missed dockings is too low to justify the cost.
2) It is cheaper to send another probe than to have a space tug ready at all times - Remember that mass is money in space, and also you have maintenance to consider.
3) The technology for the space tug is not safe enough - it could be unpleasant if one of the astronauts gets marooned on the space tug.
Please don't try to refute the above points. I am not saying this are the reasons, those were just examples.
You may be right and nobody thought about some sort of contingency plan for such a scenario, but I would check it before marching around and talking about "half-assed manner".
* IANAS - I am not a scientist.