Never mind English, there are lots of paths to learning it in most countries. Not so the other way.
Yes there are. College courses and immersion programs about. Not having a way to learn a foreign language while living in a developed country == first world problem.
How about a scheme for those of us who want to learn some other, relatively minor language, where it is difficult to even find basic texts outside its native country?
The scheme involves become a linguist and travel abroad. For such things, there are no easy-to-get, get-lean-or-rich-by-taking-a-pill schemes.
I'll say the following based on my experience (I started my career with only a AA degree, and later I earned by BS and went to grad school).
"I've got about a year of computer science classes under my belt along with countless hours of independent online and tech book learning. I can put together a secure login-driven Web site using PHP and MySQL. (I have a personal project on GitHub and a personal Web site.) I really enjoyed my Web development class, so I've spent a lot of time honing those skills and trying to learn new technologies. I still have a ways to go, though. I've been designing Web sites for more than 10 years, writing basic PHP forms for about 5 or 6 years and only gotten seriously into PHP/MySQL the last 1 or 2 years on and off. I'm fluent with HTML and CSS, but I really like back-end development.
If you are doing a CS degree, you need to clearly put in your head that there is more than web development in CS. If you really want to do back-end development, you need to disabuse yourself of the notions that come with basic front-end web design. I'm not trying to be an ass, but everything that you mentioned is assumed to be very fundamental knowledge. That alone won't get you to open most doors.
I was hoping I might be able to get a job as a junior Web developer, but even those require 2+ years of experience and a list of technologies as long as my arm.
That is the sad states of technology nowadays. As I mentioned before, I started my career with a AA degree in the early 90's. That was the time when companies starting tightening the requisites. I saw the writings on the wall, and I kept studying until I got my 4-year degree in CS, and then went to grad school.
I honestly believe 70% of work done in IT (be it sysadmin or development) does not require a full-blown degree in Computer Science. Sadly, nowadays, there is no fucking way anyone can get a decent IT or development job without a 4-year degree. It is what it is, and we cannot wish it away.
Internships usually require students to be in their junior or senior year
It has been like that even during the times when a AA degree would get you an entry level programming position.
, so that doesn't seem to be an option for me. Recruiters are responding to my resume on various sites, but it's always for someone more experienced. Should I forget about trying to find a junior Web developer position after only one year of computer science classes?"
Yes, because only one year of CS classes just won't cut it. It didn't cut it before, it won't cut it now. Consider that there are a lot of people with degrees already that are looking for a job. That will be your competition, so you know that the odds are against you... for now.
What I did then, and what you can do now is to get a part-time job at your college in the computer lab, be it by tutoring, teaching or just regular IT maintenance. If you can get close to the sysadmins at your CS department, pester them until you get a job with them. There is always lots of programming opportunities in terms of sysadmin automation.
If you are lucky, they'll be working with a bug tracking system, and that exposure will put you ahead of many people upon graduation. When you work part-time for the CS department, you begin to meet people. Those connections have the potential to open doors in terms of internships when you get to your junior year.
Don't look at your CS department as just a source of courses to take, but a venue where to make professional connections. That is what I did, and it has paid itself a million times over the length of my professional life.
The pure theory CS people may be up for coding, but without other experience, they don't have the skills or knowledge necessary for system or network technician, admin, or engineering roles in IT, for sure; entry level helpdesk, perhaps, not unlike the IT skill level I would expect of an ITT/Devry graduate.
There's no pure theory CS curriculum I know of that includes specialized things that IT people have to know just to get started, such as: What a/27 is, and what Netmask/IP to configure the Windows machine with when I tell you I have assigned the VLAN a/28, and you need to give that computer the last IP address in 10.0.0.48/28, with.49 as default gw. What RAID10 is -- more importantly, how to set one up, how DNS works.... what file to edit and what changes to make to create a reverse DNS entry for X.Y.Z.W; the list goes on as much as you like.
There is no such "pure theory CS curriculum" to begin with. Every curriculum I've seen provides some type of IT-related courses at the junior and senior level. And the top-notch CS schools (think MIT or Stanford) provide hands-on curriculum in say, Robotics or Machine Learning... which obviously might not fall into the typical realm of IT, but CS was never about IT to begin with.
I've never lived in Japan, but I've visited there many times over the last decade, and I disagree that it isn't "overcrowded." I never felt like I could be alone in Tokyo (I.e. >20m from another human). In addition, have you even used the Tokyo Metro during rush hour? Shinjuku station?
Well, he lived there, so most likely his answer would be in the affirmative.
They really do use polls on people, and you're packed in like a goddamm sardine. That's not life, that's not living. That's being a meat popsicle. No thanks.
That's a subjective position. It's your right to have it of course, but it is still subjective. I've been in Tokyo and Yokohama, and at first, the sight of so many people during rush hour is quite shocking. But people adapt. Outside of the monster commute (be it packed like a sardine or stuck on the expressway for 1+ hour... one way as it is the norm in many American cities), people adapt and seek/get what they want.
The trade-off of the sardine commute is in living in a vibrant, elegant and financially rich (and relatively crime free) megapolis with all the benefits that come with it. I never really had a need of a car, not even for grocery shopping. There was a pharmacy on the first floor of the building where I was living, and a grocery store on the first floor of the building next door... and so on and so on...
... and the nice thing about the Japanese way of life is that most stores, even the smallest ones, have a delivery service. You buy your stuff, in bulk if you one, pay $10 (1000-something yen IIRC), and voila they'll deliver it to your apartment. Every major train/subway station/nexus has a mall so shopping (and buying delivery) is also conveniently located.) Try to do that anywhere in the US.
Here in the US we trade for space, which will always feel much better than the sardine commute, but then again, we have to drive just to get toilet paper. Few cities have trains for commute so a commute is not only long, but also physically consuming. When you get used to it, you can go zzz while standing in a Tokyo sardine commute. Try doing that when driving.
And there there is the lack of crime. And the level of education that you encounter, customer service, etc, etc, etc. We don't have that here, and yet, we will call this life, but their way of life is not "life"? WTF?
At the end of the day, we are dealing with subjective perceptions here. And you are entitled to it, so long as you acknowledge how subjective you are.
I would imagine that Japan's cities will stay as crowded as ever for a long time. As the population in the countryside thins out and becomes greyer, what young people there are will flock to the cities for better opportunities. So, you'll have densely populated cities and an increasingly empty rest of the country.
This. People who claim Japan overcrowded are only looking at numbers without the appropriate context. Japan is no small nation (just slightly smaller than California), and there is a lot, a lot of empty, rural spaces. Overcrowding might be a problem in the cities, but then again, Japanese cities are very well organized and clean so that overcrowding is not really an issue (I know, I've been there.)
But the country as a whole is not overcrowded as it has the capacity to feed and clothe its population my modern, developed standards, a capacity that will have for the rest of this century and the next... barring Godzilla or something.
What saved money? They went with Linux despite it costing more than the MS alternative - it was buried in the fourth paragraph of the linked-to article.
Rather than send fewer dollars to the US, they spent more dollars and hired local Munich companies to handle the migration.
Money was saved by spending more on the local economy </ECO101>
Libertarian chooses unregulated cab. Said unregulated cab hits pedestrian. Insurance company of unregulated cab says 'your policy is for personal use only, we are not paying'. Who pays for pedestrian's injuries, the libertarian?
The Libertarian chooses not to give a flying frak about the pedestrian. That is the "beauty" of such an ideology and the power of making choices </sarcasm>
I'm pretty sure you missed his point. He wasn't specifically talking about Powerpoint being used, just the fact that NASA was talking while the Russians were doing. It wasn't until Russia did something that NASA stopped just talking and did something about it. You got caught up on one word in his whole statement and missed the point.
That is because he was more involved in a Quixotic quest to find strawmen to beat into the ground than in reading the content of said post:/
"Patrick Lin of California Polytechnic State University explores one of the ethical problems autonomous car developers are going to have to solve: crash prioritization.
> Space X doesn't have to build their components in 40 different states and in order to please 40 congressmen and get the funding etc.
Are you sure about that? It's still congress that decides NASA's budget. I'm sure congress knows where SpaceX's factories are. So long as NASA is SpaceXs biggest customer what makes you think they are immune to politics?
The same things that prevent the Government (one of the biggest customers of Oracle and Microsoft) from arm-bending said companies into setting up shops in Watchamacalahootie, North Montanabraska. Space X is just a COTS provider, not a custom development as-per-contract-won contractor like Lockheed Martin or Raytheon. Different rules apply.
I doubt SpaceX would thrive if NASA was defunded.
It would simply move shop somewhere. There are plenty of civilian/multinational space agencies with the capability of launching rockets (and with respective markets) : European Space Agency, Agência Espacial Brasileira, UK Space Agency, Canadian Space Agency, German Aerospace Center, Indian Space Research Organization, Israeli Space Agency, Italian Space Agency, Korea Aerospace Research Institute, Argentina's space program, Indonesia's space program, etc, etc, etc.
Though none of these agencies compare in term of mu$cle to NASA, they are not chump money either. And the list above doesn't mention the Russian and Chinese space programs as it only list space programs of nations with which we do not have potential conflicts.
We need to disabuse ourselves from the notion that the US is the only shop in town. It is the largest, but it is neither the only one, nor does it eclipse all others combine.
That is a cold-war notion that the sooner we get rid of it out of mental systems, the better. You do not need the biggest market, you simply need a viable one from where to, no pun intended, launch yourself. More than two decades of globalization and continuous technical improvement in other markets should have given us the clue already.
not at all, it's happened before. And there was this little thing in the 1930s called the "dust bowl", guess that hot and dry spell was caused by model-T emissions. And sea level rise has been going on for 12,000 years since the last ice age, and for much of that time at a greater rate than now.
This chicken littles have lost what little credibility they might have had, it's sad because there are so many other downsides to carbon pollution that are quite verifiable in the here and now.
Dude, in the name of Baal, educate yourself. The Dust Bowl was man-made. Excessive agriculture in a steppe (which is what the Great Plains are) will do that to you.
Why should it be? Hurricanes do not happen every year. We get a hurricane-spell for a few years in a row followed by years of inactivity. It has been like that since, I dunno, always?
maybe for you, but for a lot of people you have to pay them more to live in a place with no Starbucks, no Whole Foods Market, no sushi, no thai food
and generally any place where the only kinds of restaurants are american food
Have you ever heard of a phrase that goes like this? "Just fucking google it"?
I have a hard time thinking Montana folks would have difficulties finding organic food. Plus sushi and thai foods are pretty much as American now as chicken pie, you find them everywhere except in the poorest of towns (not isolated, but poorest, poorest != isolated.).
The only concern I would have to relocate to a state like Montana is the ability to live in a cosmopolitan city with several 4-year degree college options for my kids as well as the ease or difficulty of international travel (I prefer not to switch from one airplane to another, thank you very much.) Other than that, overpriced food staples are not the epitome of eclectic living.
Correct. As someone who was born and grew up in Latin America, Brazil (and all the governments and politicians south of the border) are full of shit. It is all talk about liberty, freedoms and crap. They are not the enlightened, poor-caring technocrats they like to paint themselves for the ruminant masses.
People in the US complain about its political classes and the disinterested voting masses. Ha! Latin America is much, much worse than that. I used to dream it would change. It won't. Not in my life time. It is not an environment where my kids will grow, thank ${DEITY:-FSM} for that.
Children are growing up with tablets now. By the time they get to school they will have become so used to simplistic touchscreen interfaces that teachers might find it challenging to turn their minds to the internals of the computers they use.
Isn't that the eternal challenge of teaching computing anyways? We have been churning CS grads who cannot understand the idea of an array of functions to pointers, or understand why assembly language programming require us to move values to registers before carrying ops on them.
The problem might look different now than before due to the different type of interfaces or gadgets. But the core of the problem remains the same. It is not the nature of interfaces and gadgets, but the nexus where competent teaching, curricula and interested students meet.
And how many of those "poor" people have cable television?
And how many of them have, *gasp*, refrigerators? Imagine some of these *poor* people having computers!!!!
That was sarcasm by the way.
See, the thing is, some might have, but many do not. I know I didn't for the first 15 years of my life in this country. Similarly, a lot of people live in rental communities that already come with a cable bundle that you cannot opt out.
Say "oh well, they could live somewhere cheaper?" Yeah, they can live in a trailer on in a dilapidated ghetto. Certain utilities that might look like luxuries to you are non-optional. And the cost of having cable or a TV is peanuts compared to the cost of eating healthy.
I mean, shit, my wife and I spend a lot of money in getting organic foods for our family, our children. Then there is the processing that comes with it.
Although were are in above the 10% household income bracket, with significant savings and pretty much free of debt, we are very, very frugal. We aim to spend no more than $200 a week in eating (pretty much we don't eat out, it is just pure food-stock shopping).
We have done the math and we could slash by possibly half per week if we didn't buy organic/health food. That is $100 a week of taxable income (whereas the *cable* non-opt-out fee on a condominium, at least in the region I live, is about $30 to $40 a month
Meaning, your ZOMG-poor-people-has-cable non-sequitur is approximately a 10th of what people would spend on organic food.
Read that again. $100 a week of non-taxable income. $400 a moth. $4800 a year. At least! That is $4800 a year that you gobble when trying to feed your family healthy and organically. Money that you burn... and that you get taxed on when IRS time comes.
Yes, you get your default deduction tables, but we are talking cash flow here, on a week by week basis. I can take that.
People that can afford to eat health can take that.
The poor people that you tried to vilify with your cable comment, they cannot take that.
Yes but how can a person know to accept that model without first learning the model?
1. By being aware of it (considering the enormous hoopla that it generates in the media and politics), and
2. By referencing to professional authority.
Hypothetically speaking, when a doctor tells me that I might be at risk of prostate cancer due to X/Y conditions, I do not need to know the exact model by which prostate cells can become carcinogenic due to X/Y factors. I rely on the doctor's authority on the subject.
My grandma back in my country of origin (a very poor third world country) never finished elementary school. She is a very simple person, but she is aware of things like evolution and the Big Bang Theory (there are shows and news about these topics going on for decades on TV and radio, even in Third World countries). So, 1) she is aware of them.
And 2) though she does not understand the principles, she has always said that one should listen to the people who know more about a topic, be it science or milking cows.
That such thinking is not common place in a 1st world country like the US, that is something I find troubling and disturbing.
So why poll the general public about this question when most the general public really only knows what they were told to recite in school or what they saw on Nova?
Hmmm, to gauge if people actually pay attention what they recite in school or in Nova (as opposed to what type of panties Kim Kardashian wore on her gazillion-dollar wedding. It is not rocket science you know.
"Acceptance of science" partially means do you trust what the popular theories are as presented in the media without actually doing the math or analyzing the data yourself
If you (the generic "you") cannot do the math yourself (I mean, can you do the math - the whole math - behind the Big Bang Model?), and if the popular theories are "popular" in the sense that they are presented by the bulk of the scientific community and/or typically reputable educational shows like Nova, Discovery, Frontline or Scientific America (and not "popular" as in "It is not in the Bible, I heard it on the 700 Club" or "I saw it on A&E or in 'Nazis vs Zombie Aliens' on H2), then the answer is... fucking duh, yes.
, and it partially means have you heard of this topic before so that you even know what scientists tend to think about it.
Well, it does work with smoking. Scientists overwhelmingly think (and have shown) that smoking causes cancer.
So then, why it is not acceptable to rely on experienced opinion for vaccination, evolution and cosmological models of the universe?
The people who refuse to see this are typically motivated by unsubstantiated fear (vaccination will give you the cooties, mercury and autism!!!) or religious dogma (it's not in the Bible!!!!).
Don't ALL scientists doubt the Big Bang and other models for the universe in the sense that they are all subject to comparison with observations? If a model conflicts with observation, the model either must be dropped or modified.
Science isn't about believing something to be true.
It's going to be hilarious when openly gay people join your workforce en mass.
Where I work, several of my colleagues are openly gay and simple statistics suggest that some are gay but not open about it.
There are zero issues. You are wrong.
Yeah, because your personal anecdotal evidence is representative of working conditions everywhere. Good that your place of work is not filled with homophobic assholes, but for that piece of anecdotal evidence, I can enumerate half a dozen I've personally witnessed where gay people have been subjected to a hostile environment.
Slashdot Mirror
Never mind English, there are lots of paths to learning it in most countries. Not so the other way.
Yes there are. College courses and immersion programs about. Not having a way to learn a foreign language while living in a developed country == first world problem.
How about a scheme for those of us who want to learn some other, relatively minor language, where it is difficult to even find basic texts outside its native country?
The scheme involves become a linguist and travel abroad. For such things, there are no easy-to-get, get-lean-or-rich-by-taking-a-pill schemes.
"I've got about a year of computer science classes under my belt along with countless hours of independent online and tech book learning. I can put together a secure login-driven Web site using PHP and MySQL. (I have a personal project on GitHub and a personal Web site.) I really enjoyed my Web development class, so I've spent a lot of time honing those skills and trying to learn new technologies. I still have a ways to go, though. I've been designing Web sites for more than 10 years, writing basic PHP forms for about 5 or 6 years and only gotten seriously into PHP/MySQL the last 1 or 2 years on and off. I'm fluent with HTML and CSS, but I really like back-end development.
If you are doing a CS degree, you need to clearly put in your head that there is more than web development in CS. If you really want to do back-end development, you need to disabuse yourself of the notions that come with basic front-end web design. I'm not trying to be an ass, but everything that you mentioned is assumed to be very fundamental knowledge. That alone won't get you to open most doors.
I was hoping I might be able to get a job as a junior Web developer, but even those require 2+ years of experience and a list of technologies as long as my arm.
That is the sad states of technology nowadays. As I mentioned before, I started my career with a AA degree in the early 90's. That was the time when companies starting tightening the requisites. I saw the writings on the wall, and I kept studying until I got my 4-year degree in CS, and then went to grad school.
I honestly believe 70% of work done in IT (be it sysadmin or development) does not require a full-blown degree in Computer Science. Sadly, nowadays, there is no fucking way anyone can get a decent IT or development job without a 4-year degree. It is what it is, and we cannot wish it away.
Internships usually require students to be in their junior or senior year
It has been like that even during the times when a AA degree would get you an entry level programming position.
, so that doesn't seem to be an option for me. Recruiters are responding to my resume on various sites, but it's always for someone more experienced. Should I forget about trying to find a junior Web developer position after only one year of computer science classes?"
Yes, because only one year of CS classes just won't cut it. It didn't cut it before, it won't cut it now. Consider that there are a lot of people with degrees already that are looking for a job. That will be your competition, so you know that the odds are against you... for now. What I did then, and what you can do now is to get a part-time job at your college in the computer lab, be it by tutoring, teaching or just regular IT maintenance. If you can get close to the sysadmins at your CS department, pester them until you get a job with them. There is always lots of programming opportunities in terms of sysadmin automation.
If you are lucky, they'll be working with a bug tracking system, and that exposure will put you ahead of many people upon graduation. When you work part-time for the CS department, you begin to meet people. Those connections have the potential to open doors in terms of internships when you get to your junior year.
Don't look at your CS department as just a source of courses to take, but a venue where to make professional connections. That is what I did, and it has paid itself a million times over the length of my professional life.
Sadly, some people in IT do :/
what about the pure theory CS people?
The pure theory CS people may be up for coding, but without other experience, they don't have the skills or knowledge necessary for system or network technician, admin, or engineering roles in IT, for sure; entry level helpdesk, perhaps, not unlike the IT skill level I would expect of an ITT/Devry graduate.
There's no pure theory CS curriculum I know of that includes specialized things that IT people have to know just to get started, such as: What a /27 is, and what Netmask/IP to configure the Windows machine with when I tell you I have assigned the VLAN a /28, and you need to give that computer the last IP address in 10.0.0.48/28, with .49 as default gw. What RAID10 is -- more importantly, how to set one up, how DNS works.... what file to edit and what changes to make to create a reverse DNS entry for X.Y.Z.W; the list goes on as much as you like.
There is no such "pure theory CS curriculum" to begin with. Every curriculum I've seen provides some type of IT-related courses at the junior and senior level. And the top-notch CS schools (think MIT or Stanford) provide hands-on curriculum in say, Robotics or Machine Learning ... which obviously might not fall into the typical realm of IT, but CS was never about IT to begin with.
I've never lived in Japan, but I've visited there many times over the last decade, and I disagree that it isn't "overcrowded." I never felt like I could be alone in Tokyo (I.e. >20m from another human). In addition, have you even used the Tokyo Metro during rush hour? Shinjuku station?
Well, he lived there, so most likely his answer would be in the affirmative.
They really do use polls on people, and you're packed in like a goddamm sardine. That's not life, that's not living. That's being a meat popsicle. No thanks.
That's a subjective position. It's your right to have it of course, but it is still subjective. I've been in Tokyo and Yokohama, and at first, the sight of so many people during rush hour is quite shocking. But people adapt. Outside of the monster commute (be it packed like a sardine or stuck on the expressway for 1+ hour... one way as it is the norm in many American cities), people adapt and seek/get what they want.
The trade-off of the sardine commute is in living in a vibrant, elegant and financially rich (and relatively crime free) megapolis with all the benefits that come with it. I never really had a need of a car, not even for grocery shopping. There was a pharmacy on the first floor of the building where I was living, and a grocery store on the first floor of the building next door... and so on and so on...
Here in the US we trade for space, which will always feel much better than the sardine commute, but then again, we have to drive just to get toilet paper. Few cities have trains for commute so a commute is not only long, but also physically consuming. When you get used to it, you can go zzz while standing in a Tokyo sardine commute. Try doing that when driving.
And there there is the lack of crime. And the level of education that you encounter, customer service, etc, etc, etc. We don't have that here, and yet, we will call this life, but their way of life is not "life"? WTF?
At the end of the day, we are dealing with subjective perceptions here. And you are entitled to it, so long as you acknowledge how subjective you are.
I would imagine that Japan's cities will stay as crowded as ever for a long time. As the population in the countryside thins out and becomes greyer, what young people there are will flock to the cities for better opportunities. So, you'll have densely populated cities and an increasingly empty rest of the country.
This. People who claim Japan overcrowded are only looking at numbers without the appropriate context. Japan is no small nation (just slightly smaller than California), and there is a lot, a lot of empty, rural spaces. Overcrowding might be a problem in the cities, but then again, Japanese cities are very well organized and clean so that overcrowding is not really an issue (I know, I've been there.)
But the country as a whole is not overcrowded as it has the capacity to feed and clothe its population my modern, developed standards, a capacity that will have for the rest of this century and the next... barring Godzilla or something.
What saved money? They went with Linux despite it costing more than the MS alternative - it was buried in the fourth paragraph of the linked-to article.
Rather than send fewer dollars to the US, they spent more dollars and hired local Munich companies to handle the migration.
Money was saved by spending more on the local economy </ECO101>
Libertarian chooses unregulated cab. Said unregulated cab hits pedestrian. Insurance company of unregulated cab says 'your policy is for personal use only, we are not paying'. Who pays for pedestrian's injuries, the libertarian?
The Libertarian chooses not to give a flying frak about the pedestrian. That is the "beauty" of such an ideology and the power of making choices </sarcasm>
I hate it when I get forget to close the quote brackets right.
I thought that there was a preview step that you had to go through to post comments. How is it that you skipped it?
It's called "forgetting a critical step" :/
I'm pretty sure you missed his point. He wasn't specifically talking about Powerpoint being used, just the fact that NASA was talking while the Russians were doing. It wasn't until Russia did something that NASA stopped just talking and did something about it. You got caught up on one word in his whole statement and missed the point.
That is because he was more involved in a Quixotic quest to find strawmen to beat into the ground than in reading the content of said post :/
"Patrick Lin of California Polytechnic State University explores one of the ethical problems autonomous car developers are going to have to solve: crash prioritization.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
It is not a new notion, and the ethics of it have been more or less resolved and understood for quite some time. So I fail to see why this is new.
I hate it when I get forget to close the quote brackets right.
> Space X doesn't have to build their components in 40 different states and in order to please 40 congressmen and get the funding etc.
Are you sure about that? It's still congress that decides NASA's budget. I'm sure congress knows where SpaceX's factories are. So long as NASA is SpaceXs biggest customer what makes you think they are immune to politics? The same things that prevent the Government (one of the biggest customers of Oracle and Microsoft) from arm-bending said companies into setting up shops in Watchamacalahootie, North Montanabraska. Space X is just a COTS provider, not a custom development as-per-contract-won contractor like Lockheed Martin or Raytheon. Different rules apply.
I doubt SpaceX would thrive if NASA was defunded.
It would simply move shop somewhere. There are plenty of civilian/multinational space agencies with the capability of launching rockets (and with respective markets) : European Space Agency, Agência Espacial Brasileira, UK Space Agency, Canadian Space Agency, German Aerospace Center, Indian Space Research Organization, Israeli Space Agency, Italian Space Agency, Korea Aerospace Research Institute, Argentina's space program, Indonesia's space program, etc, etc, etc.
Though none of these agencies compare in term of mu$cle to NASA, they are not chump money either. And the list above doesn't mention the Russian and Chinese space programs as it only list space programs of nations with which we do not have potential conflicts.
We need to disabuse ourselves from the notion that the US is the only shop in town. It is the largest, but it is neither the only one, nor does it eclipse all others combine.
That is a cold-war notion that the sooner we get rid of it out of mental systems, the better. You do not need the biggest market, you simply need a viable one from where to, no pun intended, launch yourself. More than two decades of globalization and continuous technical improvement in other markets should have given us the clue already.
not at all, it's happened before. And there was this little thing in the 1930s called the "dust bowl", guess that hot and dry spell was caused by model-T emissions. And sea level rise has been going on for 12,000 years since the last ice age, and for much of that time at a greater rate than now.
This chicken littles have lost what little credibility they might have had, it's sad because there are so many other downsides to carbon pollution that are quite verifiable in the here and now.
Dude, in the name of Baal, educate yourself. The Dust Bowl was man-made. Excessive agriculture in a steppe (which is what the Great Plains are) will do that to you.
And you don't think that's weird?
Why should it be? Hurricanes do not happen every year. We get a hurricane-spell for a few years in a row followed by years of inactivity. It has been like that since, I dunno, always?
Read the last sentence of the summary. Something can be said without saying it.
You are reading it wrong. The sentence suggest future potential (and which would obviously require future research/improvement/refinement.)
Not. The. Same. Thing.
maybe for you, but for a lot of people you have to pay them more to live in a place with no Starbucks, no Whole Foods Market, no sushi, no thai food
and generally any place where the only kinds of restaurants are american food
Have you ever heard of a phrase that goes like this? "Just fucking google it"?
I have a hard time thinking Montana folks would have difficulties finding organic food. Plus sushi and thai foods are pretty much as American now as chicken pie, you find them everywhere except in the poorest of towns (not isolated, but poorest, poorest != isolated.).
The only concern I would have to relocate to a state like Montana is the ability to live in a cosmopolitan city with several 4-year degree college options for my kids as well as the ease or difficulty of international travel (I prefer not to switch from one airplane to another, thank you very much.) Other than that, overpriced food staples are not the epitome of eclectic living.
Missing link and words When even a modest house is $1,000,000 in San Francisco, you don't have to wonder.....
Cold, hard facts like those where the ones that quickly disabused my wife and I from the notion of relocating our entire family to the Bay Area.
they are full of shit. .
Correct. As someone who was born and grew up in Latin America, Brazil (and all the governments and politicians south of the border) are full of shit. It is all talk about liberty, freedoms and crap. They are not the enlightened, poor-caring technocrats they like to paint themselves for the ruminant masses.
People in the US complain about its political classes and the disinterested voting masses. Ha! Latin America is much, much worse than that. I used to dream it would change. It won't. Not in my life time. It is not an environment where my kids will grow, thank ${DEITY:-FSM} for that.
Understanding computers in one thing. Understanding how to program them is something else entirely.
Thank you. This is one point that so-called technocrats in this site seem to miss routinely.
Children are growing up with tablets now. By the time they get to school they will have become so used to simplistic touchscreen interfaces that teachers might find it challenging to turn their minds to the internals of the computers they use.
Isn't that the eternal challenge of teaching computing anyways? We have been churning CS grads who cannot understand the idea of an array of functions to pointers, or understand why assembly language programming require us to move values to registers before carrying ops on them.
The problem might look different now than before due to the different type of interfaces or gadgets. But the core of the problem remains the same. It is not the nature of interfaces and gadgets, but the nexus where competent teaching, curricula and interested students meet.
And how many of those "poor" people have cable television?
And how many of them have, *gasp*, refrigerators? Imagine some of these *poor* people having computers!!!!
That was sarcasm by the way.
See, the thing is, some might have, but many do not. I know I didn't for the first 15 years of my life in this country. Similarly, a lot of people live in rental communities that already come with a cable bundle that you cannot opt out.
Say "oh well, they could live somewhere cheaper?" Yeah, they can live in a trailer on in a dilapidated ghetto. Certain utilities that might look like luxuries to you are non-optional. And the cost of having cable or a TV is peanuts compared to the cost of eating healthy.
I mean, shit, my wife and I spend a lot of money in getting organic foods for our family, our children. Then there is the processing that comes with it.
Although were are in above the 10% household income bracket, with significant savings and pretty much free of debt, we are very, very frugal. We aim to spend no more than $200 a week in eating (pretty much we don't eat out, it is just pure food-stock shopping).
We have done the math and we could slash by possibly half per week if we didn't buy organic/health food. That is $100 a week of taxable income (whereas the *cable* non-opt-out fee on a condominium, at least in the region I live, is about $30 to $40 a month
Meaning, your ZOMG-poor-people-has-cable non-sequitur is approximately a 10th of what people would spend on organic food.
Read that again. $100 a week of non-taxable income. $400 a moth. $4800 a year. At least! That is $4800 a year that you gobble when trying to feed your family healthy and organically. Money that you burn... and that you get taxed on when IRS time comes.
Yes, you get your default deduction tables, but we are talking cash flow here, on a week by week basis. I can take that.
People that can afford to eat health can take that.
The poor people that you tried to vilify with your cable comment, they cannot take that.
Here, have a read and educate yourself: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Yes but how can a person know to accept that model without first learning the model?
1. By being aware of it (considering the enormous hoopla that it generates in the media and politics), and
2. By referencing to professional authority.
Hypothetically speaking, when a doctor tells me that I might be at risk of prostate cancer due to X/Y conditions, I do not need to know the exact model by which prostate cells can become carcinogenic due to X/Y factors. I rely on the doctor's authority on the subject.
My grandma back in my country of origin (a very poor third world country) never finished elementary school. She is a very simple person, but she is aware of things like evolution and the Big Bang Theory (there are shows and news about these topics going on for decades on TV and radio, even in Third World countries). So, 1) she is aware of them.
And 2) though she does not understand the principles, she has always said that one should listen to the people who know more about a topic, be it science or milking cows.
That such thinking is not common place in a 1st world country like the US, that is something I find troubling and disturbing.
So why poll the general public about this question when most the general public really only knows what they were told to recite in school or what they saw on Nova?
Hmmm, to gauge if people actually pay attention what they recite in school or in Nova (as opposed to what type of panties Kim Kardashian wore on her gazillion-dollar wedding. It is not rocket science you know.
"Acceptance of science" partially means do you trust what the popular theories are as presented in the media without actually doing the math or analyzing the data yourself
If you (the generic "you") cannot do the math yourself (I mean, can you do the math - the whole math - behind the Big Bang Model?), and if the popular theories are "popular" in the sense that they are presented by the bulk of the scientific community and/or typically reputable educational shows like Nova, Discovery, Frontline or Scientific America (and not "popular" as in "It is not in the Bible, I heard it on the 700 Club" or "I saw it on A&E or in 'Nazis vs Zombie Aliens' on H2), then the answer is ... fucking duh, yes.
, and it partially means have you heard of this topic before so that you even know what scientists tend to think about it.
Well, it does work with smoking. Scientists overwhelmingly think (and have shown) that smoking causes cancer.
So then, why it is not acceptable to rely on experienced opinion for vaccination, evolution and cosmological models of the universe?
The people who refuse to see this are typically motivated by unsubstantiated fear (vaccination will give you the cooties, mercury and autism!!!) or religious dogma (it's not in the Bible!!!!).
Don't ALL scientists doubt the Big Bang and other models for the universe in the sense that they are all subject to comparison with observations? If a model conflicts with observation, the model either must be dropped or modified.
Science isn't about believing something to be true.
Obligatory
It's going to be hilarious when openly gay people join your workforce en mass.
Where I work, several of my colleagues are openly gay and simple statistics suggest that some are gay but not open about it.
There are zero issues. You are wrong.
Yeah, because your personal anecdotal evidence is representative of working conditions everywhere. Good that your place of work is not filled with homophobic assholes, but for that piece of anecdotal evidence, I can enumerate half a dozen I've personally witnessed where gay people have been subjected to a hostile environment.