The thing that always gets me is the "cell phones but not other device" allowed until you reach the gate. How is is that, during the flight, cell phones send signals to the flight control and radar telling them to turn on their human masters, but everything else is okay, while once the plane is on the ground, cell phones are okay, but somehow if I use an mp3 player that DOESN'T have a phone plan attached to it, arcs of lightning will shoot out and melt everyone's eyeballs.
My lease agreement says the landlord is responsible for making all repairs: even if I were permitted to, I am not obligated to. To connect this back to the main point, only FOSS software should be exempt by this logic, since a security hole in a product which cannot be altered is one which the user has no power over
The door to my apartment is in the habit of blowing open during strong winds even when "locked" unless we carefully move the bolt in when the door is positioned correctly. My landlord will not fix it: he doesn't claim a reason, just never gets around to it. If the door blows open, and someone steals our stuff, I should be able to sue the landlord by arguing that his negligence lead to the conditions under which I was burgled: the door would have remained shut if he furnished the apartment with a working door.
Everything is stuff that matters to someone. Some things are things that matter to most people. On a football news site, I wouldn't expect to see a story about OEM. I wouldn't expect to see a football story here. I would expect to see in both places stories about important issues which may be only tangentially related to the main theme of the website. Some nerds care about things besides computers and Battlestar Galactica.
The point is all methods involve reconvolving three color channels: claiming that the three filter method is "simulated" color while....uh, some *other* method is "true" color is a little weird to me
Yyyyeah...they're not "altering" the photo. What they're doing is balancing the color so that people can know what they are seeing. The reason for this is that the Martian atmosphere has radically different color properties from that of our own. What this means is that visible observations cannot be made reliably: for example, a red rock on mars may not actually be red as we understand the color, and so conclusions geoloists make based on a color may be erroneous, because they are basing those conclusions on colors observed under earth's sky.
Moreover, why exactly is chatting and emailing "striving to maintain contact" as opposed to "contact." Why does having friends online, if you clearly enjoy them enough to talk to them heavily, mean you're sad?
Dude, there's something wrong with you. When food prices go up, meat prices go up MORE. It scales, it doesn't add. If the price of all commodities double, suddenly you don't have enough left over to buy meat after buying your staples (because, as much as it may disturb you, meat is not a staple, it is indeed a luxury food. Grains and root vegetables are the most important and nutritious, followed very far behind by animal products). Do you really think people will continue to eat beef after the best we can afford is that traditionally reserved for dog food? And do you really think people will be content with eating meat a few times a year while turning their noses up at synthetic substitutes? What kind of world do you live in where humans are willing to contort their own comfort just to support some weird prejudice you seem to have against eating things without cute faces?
As for the price of a vegetarian diet, you should check again. "Fresh fruits and vegetables" are not something unique to a vegetarian diet, nor are they the thing that vegetarians fill their diet with in lieu of meat. What they DO fill it with, high protein cereal grains and legumes, are indeed much cheaper than meat (Oats, which are up to 26% whole protein comparable to legumes and soy, goes for about 80c a pound, and that's the cost to the consumer). If you try to eat apples and lettuce to replace meat, you're an idiot, and deserve to have your diet bankrupt you. If, however, you eat small but regular portions of fresh vegetables, you will be healthier, no matter where you derive your protein from.
And this is backed up historically: poor people couldn't afford meat. If you think that poor people will be poorer if they don't eat meat now, you've either never been poor, or you're poor because you're retarded.
And as for algae and insects: insects indeed have served and continue to serve as a source of protein for many societies present and past. And people already eat seaweed in the form of nori, which has historically been an important source of nutrients traditionally derived from marine sources. Though I don't imagine you've read this far, and are probably off getting stuff from the dollar menu. "Wow" you are saying "only a dollar for a cheeseburger! Let's see those tree-hugging vegetarians get a balanced meal for so little. I just have to eat four or five of these a day, and I'll be well fed AND have just barely enough to pay off my bariatry deductible."
It depends what you want to do (not just what you discipline is, but exactly what you are doing. Do you want to develop a rendering engine? Yes, calculus, and probably linear algebra. Do you want to just use existing libraries to animate stuff? That requires considerably less)), and how good you want to be at it. I do some scientific software development, and almost every package I use involves calculus in some way. But icebike is right, I usually never see the calculus, or have to do actual differentiation or anything like that. However, if something goes wrong, I DO need to use my knowledge of calculus to understand exactly what is up.
Interpolation, functions, and linear algebra seem pretty usefule for anyone doing graphics, and are covered (Aside from the LA) in most calculus courses: again, not because you will be using them all the time, but because when something goes wrong it is often attributable to some error you made in understanding these principles. Think of it as being a pit mechanic versus working in a repair garage: usually a member of a pit crew doesn't have to rebuild a transmission, but they should at least know how it works and be able to tell where subtler problems are coming from, and usually they know much more than that. Programming is composed of tools: you don't need to know how they work to use them, but you really should.
That said, calculus is something everyone should really have some experience in. It's a freshman level course at most unviersities and isn't that much more difficult than algebra. And yes, most people won't be using calculus in the sense that they can take a homework problem and use it on the job, but again, education is not training, and you need both to succeed.
This is a list of fatwas against relatively high profile journalists and authors, not people on YouTube. Who hasn't at one time or another wanted to issue a fatwa against Jerry Falwell anyway? The Rushdie thing is only such a big deal because the Ayatollah issued the fatwa. It's a long leap from "theocracies targeting citizens for making openly seditious statements" to "jihadists trolling youtube for frat boys to behead"
actually, yeah, most of us would be out on our asses if our employers caught us looking at porn. The reason people tag links NSFW is because you can get fired for even accidentally clicking on non-pornographic nudity.
Reading technical manuals does not require reading skills, it requires technical skills. And the vast majority of tradesmen do not learn their trade from perusing the technical manual, but from experience combined with occasional reference. I have WORKED under successful carpenters and plumbers who did attend high school, let alone graduate.
And you mention the caveat "some of the modern heating, cooling, and water systems." Are you under the impression that all carpenters and plumbers are capable of designing and building complex mansions with heated floors and integrated thermostats? Some carpenters build small houses, some plumbers fit houses with toilets, sinks, and that's about it. And even the ones who are designing pool house complexes with showers you can turn on from your iPhone very probably did not learn how to read the complicated technical manuals from writing an essay on "A Separate Peace."
And is that supposed to be a dig at me, because I correctly posited that a high level of conventional education is not a prerequisite for a tradesman as a facietious counterpoint to the above comment? I am curious to know in what manner I have conveyed a literary deficiency, and more seriously, I am concerned that I have given the impression of decrying the status of tradesmen by implying a low level of formal education. In this debate, I did not think it necessary to reassure my audience of my belief that the degree to which a person utilizes their formal education is not a measure of their status.
Why does a carpenter need to be able to read "The Giver" or "Animal Farm?" I actually worked as a carpenter's apprentice for nearly a year. Yes you need to be able to follow words, but you sure didn't need to extract meaning from text: your reading level barely needs to surpass the fifth grade, and as I mention, members of these trades have historically been quite competent, and many of them were functionally illiterate. And moreover the point is moot, since I was providing a facietious counterexample to a person who claims education is unecessary, and by extension all of English past the fifth grade is useless. When does a carpenter have to write an essay?
Really now. This presupposes that the point of education is to provide students with things they will "use." If this were the case, why not just send students to trade school? No one really "needs" to learn how to read anything more advanced than a children's book, especially if they're a carpenter or plumber. You don't need to know history, you don't need to know anything, really, except what your job is. Except the point of creating an educated populace isn't to provide students with tools they will always use every day, but to extend their perception of the world in a way which allows them to engage in it effectively. A poor understanding of science is what makes people object to the "theory" of evolution, a poor understanding of math is why phony quantum mechanics treatises fly off the shelf, and a poor understanding of history makes people believe that the Northern US didn't practice slavery, that the declaration of independence was the founding document of our country, and that cavemen rode on dinosaurs.
No, the point of educating people is not so that, one day, they will go "aha!" and use their knowledge of geometric series or the battle of Gettysburg to found a company and make a million dollars, but to ensure that the constituents of the very influential body politic (in a democratic society) are capable of interacting effectively with their world. While you will never be asked to solve for X in your daily life, you will likely be asked to apply similar concepts, and you will definitely be asked to use your knowledge of, for example, plotting of functions, to understand things like graphs which are presented to the public by the media in ways which are either unintuitive or outright deceptive.
The same arguments in the TFA could easily have been applied, in an earlier time, to literacy: there are historically plenty of people who lived long, happy lives who never knew how to read. However, it is essential in today's society, because our commitment to a literate society has gone hand in hand with out commitment to an advanced society capable of effective and efficient engagement and contribution to the experience and knowledge of our collective self. Mathematical literacy, of an increasingly advanced degree, is a similar requisite in the modern society, where the sheer amount of information available grows larger and more formidable every day. In such a time, it is the duty of us as a community to ensure all persons are capable of effectively interacting with and utilizing this information. To do less, simply because the individuals prove recalcitrant, or might find ways to ignore our information rich society, is to condemn ourselves to mean regions of social existence, consciousness, and ultimately human experience.
I was never saying that was an inappropriate reason to adminster a dress code. Like I said, it is "unprofessional", which is a slight more tactful way of phrasing it. However, it is inappropriate to do it in front of another lab member. What the grandparent should have done is to administer the reprimands separately, and made every effort to disconnect the episode of sexual harassment from the dress code infractions. The problem with doing otherwise is that even if, at the end of the conversation you say "well, the harasser is at fault" you are still implying that the dress code infraction in some way led to the episode of harassment. It is perfectly acceptable to classify modes of dress as "distracting" but not as "the cause of sexual harassment". The things which lead to an episode of sexual harassment dwell entirely in the harasser: external factors are a mere rationalization. I fully believe that the harasser in this and the majority of cases would have behaved inappropriately towards the girl even if she were dressed like a nun.
To use a less contentious example from my own workplace: a lab mate left a pair of leather gloves near a base bath. Another lab member, assuming these were intended for use in the base bath, used them to retrieve some glassware. The gloves themselves were ruined, and while the second lab member was thankfully unharmed, they had committed a serious safety infraction and put themselves in dan. Now it is true both parties are at fault: the leather gloves are to be stored near the glass mill, not the base bath. The first lab member had broken the policy of appropriate glove storage. However, the second lab member should have been operating with knowledge of appropriate glove usage and not stuck their hands into caustic solution protected by gloves which are barely even waterproof. While both are at fault, they are at fault for different things, and to hold the first lab member responsible for the danger the second placed themselves in due to their own negligence is not appropriate.
In other words, while the actions of the first party may precipitate the actions of the second, if it can reasonably be assumed that said action would not be precipitated in a normal person (i.e., disobeying the dress code may distract a coworker, however it can be reasonably assumed that it would not cause said coworker to begin sexually harassing you) it is not appropriate to hold that person responsible for the ultimate result, any more than cutting off a car containing a fleeing drug-debtor makes you responsible for his eventual murder at the hands of a Columbian coke-lord.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't carnival of souls the ICP mythology? Why doesn't he sue them?
So then why are ALL electronic devices allowed during flight, but cell phones disallowed? Wouldn't you want the noisy stuff quiet at all times?
The thing that always gets me is the "cell phones but not other device" allowed until you reach the gate. How is is that, during the flight, cell phones send signals to the flight control and radar telling them to turn on their human masters, but everything else is okay, while once the plane is on the ground, cell phones are okay, but somehow if I use an mp3 player that DOESN'T have a phone plan attached to it, arcs of lightning will shoot out and melt everyone's eyeballs.
that's right! You heard me! POSSIBLY NOT AT ALL
My lease agreement says the landlord is responsible for making all repairs: even if I were permitted to, I am not obligated to. To connect this back to the main point, only FOSS software should be exempt by this logic, since a security hole in a product which cannot be altered is one which the user has no power over
The door to my apartment is in the habit of blowing open during strong winds even when "locked" unless we carefully move the bolt in when the door is positioned correctly. My landlord will not fix it: he doesn't claim a reason, just never gets around to it. If the door blows open, and someone steals our stuff, I should be able to sue the landlord by arguing that his negligence lead to the conditions under which I was burgled: the door would have remained shut if he furnished the apartment with a working door.
Everything is stuff that matters to someone. Some things are things that matter to most people. On a football news site, I wouldn't expect to see a story about OEM. I wouldn't expect to see a football story here. I would expect to see in both places stories about important issues which may be only tangentially related to the main theme of the website. Some nerds care about things besides computers and Battlestar Galactica.
or whatever the hell "which is" is. It's not a valid use of the semicolon, in any case
Semicolons replace conjunctions, not prepositions.
This is also stuff that matters.
The point is all methods involve reconvolving three color channels: claiming that the three filter method is "simulated" color while....uh, some *other* method is "true" color is a little weird to me
Yyyyeah...they're not "altering" the photo. What they're doing is balancing the color so that people can know what they are seeing. The reason for this is that the Martian atmosphere has radically different color properties from that of our own. What this means is that visible observations cannot be made reliably: for example, a red rock on mars may not actually be red as we understand the color, and so conclusions geoloists make based on a color may be erroneous, because they are basing those conclusions on colors observed under earth's sky.
If anyone's interested, another scene is shown with and without white balance here: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120815.html
...you mean, like every camera? Ever?
Moreover, why exactly is chatting and emailing "striving to maintain contact" as opposed to "contact." Why does having friends online, if you clearly enjoy them enough to talk to them heavily, mean you're sad?
Dude, there's something wrong with you. When food prices go up, meat prices go up MORE. It scales, it doesn't add. If the price of all commodities double, suddenly you don't have enough left over to buy meat after buying your staples (because, as much as it may disturb you, meat is not a staple, it is indeed a luxury food. Grains and root vegetables are the most important and nutritious, followed very far behind by animal products). Do you really think people will continue to eat beef after the best we can afford is that traditionally reserved for dog food? And do you really think people will be content with eating meat a few times a year while turning their noses up at synthetic substitutes? What kind of world do you live in where humans are willing to contort their own comfort just to support some weird prejudice you seem to have against eating things without cute faces?
As for the price of a vegetarian diet, you should check again. "Fresh fruits and vegetables" are not something unique to a vegetarian diet, nor are they the thing that vegetarians fill their diet with in lieu of meat. What they DO fill it with, high protein cereal grains and legumes, are indeed much cheaper than meat (Oats, which are up to 26% whole protein comparable to legumes and soy, goes for about 80c a pound, and that's the cost to the consumer). If you try to eat apples and lettuce to replace meat, you're an idiot, and deserve to have your diet bankrupt you. If, however, you eat small but regular portions of fresh vegetables, you will be healthier, no matter where you derive your protein from.
And this is backed up historically: poor people couldn't afford meat. If you think that poor people will be poorer if they don't eat meat now, you've either never been poor, or you're poor because you're retarded.
And as for algae and insects: insects indeed have served and continue to serve as a source of protein for many societies present and past. And people already eat seaweed in the form of nori, which has historically been an important source of nutrients traditionally derived from marine sources. Though I don't imagine you've read this far, and are probably off getting stuff from the dollar menu. "Wow" you are saying "only a dollar for a cheeseburger! Let's see those tree-hugging vegetarians get a balanced meal for so little. I just have to eat four or five of these a day, and I'll be well fed AND have just barely enough to pay off my bariatry deductible."
no cuz hurrdurr SpaceX
It depends what you want to do (not just what you discipline is, but exactly what you are doing. Do you want to develop a rendering engine? Yes, calculus, and probably linear algebra. Do you want to just use existing libraries to animate stuff? That requires considerably less)), and how good you want to be at it. I do some scientific software development, and almost every package I use involves calculus in some way. But icebike is right, I usually never see the calculus, or have to do actual differentiation or anything like that. However, if something goes wrong, I DO need to use my knowledge of calculus to understand exactly what is up.
Interpolation, functions, and linear algebra seem pretty usefule for anyone doing graphics, and are covered (Aside from the LA) in most calculus courses: again, not because you will be using them all the time, but because when something goes wrong it is often attributable to some error you made in understanding these principles. Think of it as being a pit mechanic versus working in a repair garage: usually a member of a pit crew doesn't have to rebuild a transmission, but they should at least know how it works and be able to tell where subtler problems are coming from, and usually they know much more than that. Programming is composed of tools: you don't need to know how they work to use them, but you really should.
That said, calculus is something everyone should really have some experience in. It's a freshman level course at most unviersities and isn't that much more difficult than algebra. And yes, most people won't be using calculus in the sense that they can take a homework problem and use it on the job, but again, education is not training, and you need both to succeed.
This is a list of fatwas against relatively high profile journalists and authors, not people on YouTube. Who hasn't at one time or another wanted to issue a fatwa against Jerry Falwell anyway? The Rushdie thing is only such a big deal because the Ayatollah issued the fatwa. It's a long leap from "theocracies targeting citizens for making openly seditious statements" to "jihadists trolling youtube for frat boys to behead"
Here is the actual link. It is actually quite SFW! Enjoy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatse.cx
actually, yeah, most of us would be out on our asses if our employers caught us looking at porn. The reason people tag links NSFW is because you can get fired for even accidentally clicking on non-pornographic nudity.
Yeah, because our manufacturing and construction industry is really booming.
Reading technical manuals does not require reading skills, it requires technical skills. And the vast majority of tradesmen do not learn their trade from perusing the technical manual, but from experience combined with occasional reference. I have WORKED under successful carpenters and plumbers who did attend high school, let alone graduate.
And you mention the caveat "some of the modern heating, cooling, and water systems." Are you under the impression that all carpenters and plumbers are capable of designing and building complex mansions with heated floors and integrated thermostats? Some carpenters build small houses, some plumbers fit houses with toilets, sinks, and that's about it. And even the ones who are designing pool house complexes with showers you can turn on from your iPhone very probably did not learn how to read the complicated technical manuals from writing an essay on "A Separate Peace."
And is that supposed to be a dig at me, because I correctly posited that a high level of conventional education is not a prerequisite for a tradesman as a facietious counterpoint to the above comment? I am curious to know in what manner I have conveyed a literary deficiency, and more seriously, I am concerned that I have given the impression of decrying the status of tradesmen by implying a low level of formal education. In this debate, I did not think it necessary to reassure my audience of my belief that the degree to which a person utilizes their formal education is not a measure of their status.
Why does a carpenter need to be able to read "The Giver" or "Animal Farm?" I actually worked as a carpenter's apprentice for nearly a year. Yes you need to be able to follow words, but you sure didn't need to extract meaning from text: your reading level barely needs to surpass the fifth grade, and as I mention, members of these trades have historically been quite competent, and many of them were functionally illiterate. And moreover the point is moot, since I was providing a facietious counterexample to a person who claims education is unecessary, and by extension all of English past the fifth grade is useless. When does a carpenter have to write an essay?
Really now. This presupposes that the point of education is to provide students with things they will "use." If this were the case, why not just send students to trade school? No one really "needs" to learn how to read anything more advanced than a children's book, especially if they're a carpenter or plumber. You don't need to know history, you don't need to know anything, really, except what your job is. Except the point of creating an educated populace isn't to provide students with tools they will always use every day, but to extend their perception of the world in a way which allows them to engage in it effectively. A poor understanding of science is what makes people object to the "theory" of evolution, a poor understanding of math is why phony quantum mechanics treatises fly off the shelf, and a poor understanding of history makes people believe that the Northern US didn't practice slavery, that the declaration of independence was the founding document of our country, and that cavemen rode on dinosaurs.
No, the point of educating people is not so that, one day, they will go "aha!" and use their knowledge of geometric series or the battle of Gettysburg to found a company and make a million dollars, but to ensure that the constituents of the very influential body politic (in a democratic society) are capable of interacting effectively with their world. While you will never be asked to solve for X in your daily life, you will likely be asked to apply similar concepts, and you will definitely be asked to use your knowledge of, for example, plotting of functions, to understand things like graphs which are presented to the public by the media in ways which are either unintuitive or outright deceptive.
The same arguments in the TFA could easily have been applied, in an earlier time, to literacy: there are historically plenty of people who lived long, happy lives who never knew how to read. However, it is essential in today's society, because our commitment to a literate society has gone hand in hand with out commitment to an advanced society capable of effective and efficient engagement and contribution to the experience and knowledge of our collective self. Mathematical literacy, of an increasingly advanced degree, is a similar requisite in the modern society, where the sheer amount of information available grows larger and more formidable every day. In such a time, it is the duty of us as a community to ensure all persons are capable of effectively interacting with and utilizing this information. To do less, simply because the individuals prove recalcitrant, or might find ways to ignore our information rich society, is to condemn ourselves to mean regions of social existence, consciousness, and ultimately human experience.
I was never saying that was an inappropriate reason to adminster a dress code. Like I said, it is "unprofessional", which is a slight more tactful way of phrasing it. However, it is inappropriate to do it in front of another lab member. What the grandparent should have done is to administer the reprimands separately, and made every effort to disconnect the episode of sexual harassment from the dress code infractions. The problem with doing otherwise is that even if, at the end of the conversation you say "well, the harasser is at fault" you are still implying that the dress code infraction in some way led to the episode of harassment. It is perfectly acceptable to classify modes of dress as "distracting" but not as "the cause of sexual harassment". The things which lead to an episode of sexual harassment dwell entirely in the harasser: external factors are a mere rationalization. I fully believe that the harasser in this and the majority of cases would have behaved inappropriately towards the girl even if she were dressed like a nun.
To use a less contentious example from my own workplace: a lab mate left a pair of leather gloves near a base bath. Another lab member, assuming these were intended for use in the base bath, used them to retrieve some glassware. The gloves themselves were ruined, and while the second lab member was thankfully unharmed, they had committed a serious safety infraction and put themselves in dan. Now it is true both parties are at fault: the leather gloves are to be stored near the glass mill, not the base bath. The first lab member had broken the policy of appropriate glove storage. However, the second lab member should have been operating with knowledge of appropriate glove usage and not stuck their hands into caustic solution protected by gloves which are barely even waterproof. While both are at fault, they are at fault for different things, and to hold the first lab member responsible for the danger the second placed themselves in due to their own negligence is not appropriate.
In other words, while the actions of the first party may precipitate the actions of the second, if it can reasonably be assumed that said action would not be precipitated in a normal person (i.e., disobeying the dress code may distract a coworker, however it can be reasonably assumed that it would not cause said coworker to begin sexually harassing you) it is not appropriate to hold that person responsible for the ultimate result, any more than cutting off a car containing a fleeing drug-debtor makes you responsible for his eventual murder at the hands of a Columbian coke-lord.