Being mathematically accurate does not mean that it's a reasonable metric. GDP is not a measure of government spending. Comparing a subset of government spending to a measure of something other than government spending is meaningless without prior knowledge of other facts, like the ratio of total government spending to GDP, for example. It's comparing apples to bushels: you have to know how many apples in a bushel before the comparison makes any sense. That makes it unreasonable.
In addition, there's no possible reason for Clapper to be using that specific metric, even if it were reasonable. The argument can be made that comparing entitlement and defense spending to GDP can be informative, because those two subsets of spending can be used as proxies for, respectively, the income of a certain population subset and the health of a manufacturing industry subset. But unless you're suggesting that the intelligence community represents an important share either of the population or of industry, then comparing its budget to GDP is not informative. It's simply being used as a tool to lower people's perception of the amount of money being spent. It's a comparison made to obfuscase, not to inform. That makes it laughable.
I loved when Clapper tried to minimize the number by saying that it accounts for "less than 1% of GDP". Not 1% of government revenues, not 1% of the government's total budget. 1% of fucking GDP is his chosen comparison. That's like someone claiming they're not an alcoholic because they only drink one bottle a day, and Jack Daniels makes thousands!
As a former Slashdot editor, what are your thoughts on the current state of this site, as compared to in the past? Were there true "glory days" compared to today, or is that simply grass-is-greener nostalgia? Do you have any comments or suggestions for the current editing team?
it keeps him in the limelight, and continues to discredit the administration.
Actually, an article like this helps the administration's angle. "He stayed at the Russian embassy" needs only the smallest of spin-jobs to become "He was working for the Russians the whole time."
Galileo's not the only Great Man of Science to gain his fame out of sheer assholery. Louis Pasteur, for example, "proved" the nonexistence of spontaneous generation by falsifying his notes and by forcing a prominent critic, Felix Pouchet, to withdraw from experimental competition by a combination of intimidation and biased "independent" panels. Later science proved that Pasteur had the right general idea, of course, but in his specific experiments facing off against Pouchet (the famous "swan-necked flasks") he was actually mistaken. Had Pasteur not been such an asshole, Pouchet would not have withdrawn from competition and would have won.
It just goes to show that sociopaths running the world is not a new phenomenon.
But instead of improving their technology so they could see parallax motion, they spent their scientific energies devising epicycles.
To be fair, they believed the stars to be near enough that any parallax motion would be easily and obviously visible without improved technology. When weighed against having to massively expand the size of the universe, epicycles actually were the simpler concept.
I don't understand why "gorilla arm" has become such an issue with touchscreens when teachers have been using chalkboards/markerboards for decades.
Moreover, I can see exactly where Mr. Musk is coming from. The new generation of 3d drafting programs is moving away from the monotonous "line, define length + angle, new line, define length + angle ad nauseam" into a more dynamic "stretch + mold"-type UI. The one that I've worked with is called SpaceClaim. The most common comment I've heard is "it's like shaping play-doh on a computer screen." The second-most common comment I've heard is "it would work so much better if I could just grab it instead of using annoying, ambiguous mouse clicks."
The Stark-style hologram thing really is the intuitive answer to people's issues with the new drafting paradigm. With Mr. Musk being at the forefront of modern engineering, I'm sure he's seen those issues, and I applaud him for taking the steps to solve them. If "gorilla arm" happens as a result, then maybe we as engineers should stop being pussies and get some stronger arms.
I don't know...have you ever been brought to your ankles? If something brings you to your knees, you can just stand right back up again. But roll an ankle, and man, that's like a week of limping and constant pain!
I'm not attacking him so much as I'm attacking Matt McGrath, the author of the article. Mr. Schneider has two claims - that water is leaking everywhere, and that the spent fuel pools may be cracked. Mr. McGrath takes both claims at face value and proceeds to go full tabloid-tard.
The article starts by taking Schneider's first claim as its thesis, introducing Schneider as an independent consultant. It then sets the stage by discussing the water storage tanks (it has a nice picture of storage tank proliferation) before veering back to Schneider's claim, which has almost nothing to do with the storage tanks. It re-introduces Schneider, for some reason (are we supposed to have forgotten him by that point? The way it introduces him, it almost seems to imply that this is a second consultant saying it, when it's the exact same guy), and makes absolutely no mention of how he knows that water is leaking everywhere. He mentions that a flowrate can't be measured, which seems plausible, but can't he at least estimate? If he's detected it happening, he should be able to at least ballpark something. "Unmeasurable" sounds like a guess.
Then it cuts to Shunichi Tanaka, the head of the regulatory authority. Mr. Tanaka (Mr. Shunichi? Don't know which is the family name) gives a quote that basically says "It's good to be prepared for any contingency." The article takes his neutral, measured statement as support for Mr. Schneider's claim of disaster.
After twisting Tanaka's words into support for Schneider, and an extensive discussion of the consequences should Schneider's claim be true, McGrath jumps back to him to close with a second claim, one even more doomsdayish than the previous. Of course, Schneider starts with the words "There is absolutely no guarantee that there isn't...", which are some of the greatest weasel words ever thought up to claim that the sky was falling.
McGrath takes an unverified claim, proclaims it as true, twists neutral words to fit that claim, discusses the awful consequences of the claim, and then finishes up with an even bigger one. It's the epitome of tabloid journalism.
I'm not disputing that the situation is serious, given that even TEPCO agreed to up the incident level.
But this entire article reads like a piece of tabloid trash:
"It's really bad!" says a famous anti-nuclear activist (aka an "independent consultant").
"It's even worse!" says the same activist/consultant.
"It could be bad; we don't know. We should be prepared, though," says a former regulatory official.
"Holy crap, if that first guy's assumptions are right, then we're in deep shit!" says an oceanographer.
"I didn't even tell you the worst part!" continues the first guy. "This completely unrelated thing might possibly be happening and then we're dooooooomed!!"
Some form of natural predator insect would be advantageous, in conjunction with mechanical removal methods, like the traps.
Depends on which infestation you prefer, as the bedbug's most common natural predator is the cockroach.
There's also the masked hunter, which actively hunts bedbugs and doesn't carry disease. But they're generally solitary (in my experience at least) and not common enough to make an impact on the bedbug population, unless you specifically bred them for it I guess. Also, they'll give you a nasty bite if you piss them off, and they get stuck in the same stickytraps you'd lay for the bedbugs (since they walk onto the sticky to try and eat the trapped bugs).
"I haven't taken a leadership position because I don't want to. I like being a developer, not a manager, and I want to stay as close as I can to the work."
It's not a bad thing to assume that, in 14 years of work, you would acquire skills that you'd be able to pass on to others. You'd naturally assume a mentorship position, with leadership organically flowing out of mentorship. But that doesn't have to happen, and as long as you convince the interviewer that a lack of desire for leadership doesn't have to correlate with a lack of desire for work, you should be OK.
It's a hostile question, sure, but those come with the territory in looking for a job. As with most other hostile questions, the best way to disarm it is to politely disagree with the inherent assumption.
Ants, flies, cockroaches, dust mites, etc. are not bedbugs. Bedbugs are not drawn to filth. They might use trash strewn about as a hiding place, but "clean that mess up or you'll get bedbugs!" is just not true. Bedbugs are drawn to you, because you are their food source. They spread by hitchhiking on clothes, luggage, etc. from an infested area to an uninfested area. Hotels are prime breeding and distribution spots. Or, if you live in an apartment complex or building, they'll spread between the walls from apartment to apartment.
If you really want to avoid getting bedbugs, the best thing you can do isn't to keep your room meticulously clean. It's to put your clothes and luggage in the dryer as soon as you return home after spending a night in a hotel.
They're working on this. Beauveria bassiana is a parasitic fungus that infests arthropods. It's already used against aphids and termites, and is being investigated for use on mosquitoes and bedbugs.
Slashdot Mirror
4 Hours, I can get threw the day, but I can't do much
5 Hours, I am am at reduced functionally
Only got 5 hours last night, eh?
Being mathematically accurate does not mean that it's a reasonable metric. GDP is not a measure of government spending. Comparing a subset of government spending to a measure of something other than government spending is meaningless without prior knowledge of other facts, like the ratio of total government spending to GDP, for example. It's comparing apples to bushels: you have to know how many apples in a bushel before the comparison makes any sense. That makes it unreasonable.
In addition, there's no possible reason for Clapper to be using that specific metric, even if it were reasonable. The argument can be made that comparing entitlement and defense spending to GDP can be informative, because those two subsets of spending can be used as proxies for, respectively, the income of a certain population subset and the health of a manufacturing industry subset. But unless you're suggesting that the intelligence community represents an important share either of the population or of industry, then comparing its budget to GDP is not informative. It's simply being used as a tool to lower people's perception of the amount of money being spent. It's a comparison made to obfuscase, not to inform. That makes it laughable.
I loved when Clapper tried to minimize the number by saying that it accounts for "less than 1% of GDP". Not 1% of government revenues, not 1% of the government's total budget. 1% of fucking GDP is his chosen comparison. That's like someone claiming they're not an alcoholic because they only drink one bottle a day, and Jack Daniels makes thousands!
As a former Slashdot editor, what are your thoughts on the current state of this site, as compared to in the past? Were there true "glory days" compared to today, or is that simply grass-is-greener nostalgia? Do you have any comments or suggestions for the current editing team?
Can they record and save the impulse patterns? I can see it now - just pop on my brain-stimulating hat, hit play, and I can finally Dougie!
it keeps him in the limelight, and continues to discredit the administration.
Actually, an article like this helps the administration's angle. "He stayed at the Russian embassy" needs only the smallest of spin-jobs to become "He was working for the Russians the whole time."
Galileo's not the only Great Man of Science to gain his fame out of sheer assholery. Louis Pasteur, for example, "proved" the nonexistence of spontaneous generation by falsifying his notes and by forcing a prominent critic, Felix Pouchet, to withdraw from experimental competition by a combination of intimidation and biased "independent" panels. Later science proved that Pasteur had the right general idea, of course, but in his specific experiments facing off against Pouchet (the famous "swan-necked flasks") he was actually mistaken. Had Pasteur not been such an asshole, Pouchet would not have withdrawn from competition and would have won.
It just goes to show that sociopaths running the world is not a new phenomenon.
But instead of improving their technology so they could see parallax motion, they spent their scientific energies devising epicycles.
To be fair, they believed the stars to be near enough that any parallax motion would be easily and obviously visible without improved technology. When weighed against having to massively expand the size of the universe, epicycles actually were the simpler concept.
I don't understand why "gorilla arm" has become such an issue with touchscreens when teachers have been using chalkboards/markerboards for decades.
Moreover, I can see exactly where Mr. Musk is coming from. The new generation of 3d drafting programs is moving away from the monotonous "line, define length + angle, new line, define length + angle ad nauseam" into a more dynamic "stretch + mold"-type UI. The one that I've worked with is called SpaceClaim. The most common comment I've heard is "it's like shaping play-doh on a computer screen." The second-most common comment I've heard is "it would work so much better if I could just grab it instead of using annoying, ambiguous mouse clicks."
The Stark-style hologram thing really is the intuitive answer to people's issues with the new drafting paradigm. With Mr. Musk being at the forefront of modern engineering, I'm sure he's seen those issues, and I applaud him for taking the steps to solve them. If "gorilla arm" happens as a result, then maybe we as engineers should stop being pussies and get some stronger arms.
Then don't play pay-to-win games. League of Legends, for example, is not a pay-to-win game.
So...don't give the company your credit card number, then. You don't have to avoid the entire game just because it includes microtransactions.
I don't know...have you ever been brought to your ankles? If something brings you to your knees, you can just stand right back up again. But roll an ankle, and man, that's like a week of limping and constant pain!
I'm not attacking him so much as I'm attacking Matt McGrath, the author of the article. Mr. Schneider has two claims - that water is leaking everywhere, and that the spent fuel pools may be cracked. Mr. McGrath takes both claims at face value and proceeds to go full tabloid-tard.
The article starts by taking Schneider's first claim as its thesis, introducing Schneider as an independent consultant. It then sets the stage by discussing the water storage tanks (it has a nice picture of storage tank proliferation) before veering back to Schneider's claim, which has almost nothing to do with the storage tanks. It re-introduces Schneider, for some reason (are we supposed to have forgotten him by that point? The way it introduces him, it almost seems to imply that this is a second consultant saying it, when it's the exact same guy), and makes absolutely no mention of how he knows that water is leaking everywhere. He mentions that a flowrate can't be measured, which seems plausible, but can't he at least estimate? If he's detected it happening, he should be able to at least ballpark something. "Unmeasurable" sounds like a guess.
Then it cuts to Shunichi Tanaka, the head of the regulatory authority. Mr. Tanaka (Mr. Shunichi? Don't know which is the family name) gives a quote that basically says "It's good to be prepared for any contingency." The article takes his neutral, measured statement as support for Mr. Schneider's claim of disaster.
After twisting Tanaka's words into support for Schneider, and an extensive discussion of the consequences should Schneider's claim be true, McGrath jumps back to him to close with a second claim, one even more doomsdayish than the previous. Of course, Schneider starts with the words "There is absolutely no guarantee that there isn't...", which are some of the greatest weasel words ever thought up to claim that the sky was falling.
McGrath takes an unverified claim, proclaims it as true, twists neutral words to fit that claim, discusses the awful consequences of the claim, and then finishes up with an even bigger one. It's the epitome of tabloid journalism.
I'm not disputing that the situation is serious, given that even TEPCO agreed to up the incident level.
But this entire article reads like a piece of tabloid trash:
"It's really bad!" says a famous anti-nuclear activist (aka an "independent consultant").
"It's even worse!" says the same activist/consultant.
"It could be bad; we don't know. We should be prepared, though," says a former regulatory official.
"Holy crap, if that first guy's assumptions are right, then we're in deep shit!" says an oceanographer.
"I didn't even tell you the worst part!" continues the first guy. "This completely unrelated thing might possibly be happening and then we're dooooooomed!!"
One ten-trillionth is 1x10^-13, so 0.1 picoseconds like GP said. Also backed up by the wiki page on vanadium dioxide.
What the article doesn't mention is the Nazi fighter plane that Mr. Wambolt was using the geese to bring down.
I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne...
A person who's drinking really crappy whiskey and doesn't want to taste the methanol.
Some form of natural predator insect would be advantageous, in conjunction with mechanical removal methods, like the traps.
Depends on which infestation you prefer, as the bedbug's most common natural predator is the cockroach.
There's also the masked hunter, which actively hunts bedbugs and doesn't carry disease. But they're generally solitary (in my experience at least) and not common enough to make an impact on the bedbug population, unless you specifically bred them for it I guess. Also, they'll give you a nasty bite if you piss them off, and they get stuck in the same stickytraps you'd lay for the bedbugs (since they walk onto the sticky to try and eat the trapped bugs).
"I haven't taken a leadership position because I don't want to. I like being a developer, not a manager, and I want to stay as close as I can to the work."
It's not a bad thing to assume that, in 14 years of work, you would acquire skills that you'd be able to pass on to others. You'd naturally assume a mentorship position, with leadership organically flowing out of mentorship. But that doesn't have to happen, and as long as you convince the interviewer that a lack of desire for leadership doesn't have to correlate with a lack of desire for work, you should be OK.
It's a hostile question, sure, but those come with the territory in looking for a job. As with most other hostile questions, the best way to disarm it is to politely disagree with the inherent assumption.
In other news, I post too slowly.
No, a coilgun and a gauss gun are the same thing. "Putting the slug on rails and running a charge across it" is a railgun.
*sigh*
Ants, flies, cockroaches, dust mites, etc. are not bedbugs. Bedbugs are not drawn to filth. They might use trash strewn about as a hiding place, but "clean that mess up or you'll get bedbugs!" is just not true. Bedbugs are drawn to you, because you are their food source. They spread by hitchhiking on clothes, luggage, etc. from an infested area to an uninfested area. Hotels are prime breeding and distribution spots. Or, if you live in an apartment complex or building, they'll spread between the walls from apartment to apartment.
If you really want to avoid getting bedbugs, the best thing you can do isn't to keep your room meticulously clean. It's to put your clothes and luggage in the dryer as soon as you return home after spending a night in a hotel.
I was going more for the "Sweden is helping us with Assange, while Russia isn't helping with Snowden" angle.
Anyone else notice that instead of going to Russia, Obama decided to visit Sweden?
They're working on this. Beauveria bassiana is a parasitic fungus that infests arthropods. It's already used against aphids and termites, and is being investigated for use on mosquitoes and bedbugs.