Even more to the point - an elevator doesn't "know" someone is in it if you don't press a button. It isn't trying to "guess" what you want, it isn't aware there are any passengers.
This is wrong. Most elevators have for a long time now been equipped with pressure sensors in the floors.
The original was the copy machine that after a jam would insist that you "remove the original" without the ability to sense that there was no original sheet on the copier.
Second-guessing systems go back further than this. Elevators that would automatically go to the ground floor unless you pushed a button, jukeboxes with a mechanical memory that would pick the song-before-the-last (thus if no-one inserted a coin and made a choice, they would be stuck alternating between two irritating songs, wearing the records out), but the oldest are likely bibles, where the page width varied slightly by design, so by rifling you would more often end up at popular passages.
So when the guy who calls the police claims to have killed one hostage already and is talking about burning down the building before committing suicide, the default response should be "I don't believe you"?
The default response should be that they have understood what he said, and try to get a negotiator involved before hanging up.
At this point, they have a tip that needs to be investigated with urgency. They should not make assumptions that it's either true or false, but determine whether it is. And that determination should never be made by anyone holding a weapon or battering ram. Their job is to take people down, not to determine whether they themselves are wasteful.
Except if they stopped using swat teams to respond and someone really was being held at gunpoint, as a hostage in their own home? You'd likely create a scenario where the officer who goes in to verify it's not just another prank call winds up getting everyone involved killed.
Why send an officer? First, observe from afar. If it is determined without doubt that a crime is going in, take actions to stop it. Whether that is a hostage negotiator, sharp shooter, tear gas or other. If you see that people mill around, grilling, playing croquet and having a good time, you can also safely assume that a report of multiple gunshots and people down is downright false. If it cannot be determined, send someone non-threatening with training in determining what is going on.
But keep the armed police out of range until it's determined whether they're needed. And for the love of everything that's good, don't make they hyped up swat goons determine whether force is needed. They are uniquely ill suited for that.
Your mistake is assuming that there IS a hostage situation. It's one of many possibilities. First response must be to find out whether something is going on, and if so, what. A swat team is what you send in if and only if you need someone taken down, not to determine whether it's needed. That's not their job, and they are exceptionally bad at it.
Exerpt: Medieval religious leaders in Europe did not support the use of zero, van der Hoek said. They saw it as satanic. "God was in everything that was. Everything that was not was of the devil," she said.
Wallin points out that the Italian government was suspicious of Arabic numbers and outlawed the use of zero. Merchants continued to use it illegally and secretively, and the Arabic word for zero, "sifr," brought about the word "cipher," which not only means a numeric character, but also came to mean "code."
I also highly recommend Charles Seife's book "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea".
How is this piece of binary thinking modded insightful?
You know, society.
Yes, and that is important too. It's not an "either/or" thing. The genes have the highest chance of propagating when the individual manages to find an equilibrium between altruism and selfishness, not when he or she is on either end of the spectrum.
In general, "and don't get caught" is a useful (but certainly not the only) qualifier. I'm quite sure that both you and I are products of many instances of cheating, and there are probably quite a few thieves and murderers back in the genetic tree of ancestors too. What they did paid off, else we wouldn't be here.
However, being so much of an asshole that people take extra precautions and you do get caught or ostracised is not useful.
Let alone Slashdot covers this, but did the Washington Post seriously dedicate column inches to this?!!!!!!!
Summer is here, and dries up riverbeds and news. It used to be that newspapers would then post front page material like "Cucumbers are now ripe!" or people's birthdays.
No, being an asshole is not a mental disorder, it's an evolutionary advantage, as long as it's no more assholey than will be tolerated by others. You exist because some of your ancestors were assholes who stole someone else's food, or screwed someone else's spouse.
With the long scale, it's easy to understand what the name represents: billion = 10^(6 * bi) = 10^12 trillion = 10^(6 * tri) = 10^15... septillion = 10^(6 * sept) = 10^42
With the short scale, it's harder to remember, as it's two operations: billion = 10^(3 + 3 * bi) = 10^9 trillion = 10^(3 + 3 * tri) = 10^12... septillion = 10^(3 + 3 * sept) = 10^24
Also, with we need the long scale to fully appreciate the following gruk:
Nature, it seems, is the popular name
for milliards and milliards and milliards of particles playing their infinite game
of billiards and billiards and billiards. -- Piet Hein
At any rate, "thousand millions" is unambiguous in both scales, so highly recommended.
I think you will find out that most species "understand zero" if it is about the number of predators in sight.
This seems like a far more likely explanation, and yes, I did read through the original post. My take is that the scientists here jumped to conclusions based on confirmation bias, and could just as easily have "proven" that they bees had a concept of 3/7.
The numerical zero exists thousand(s?) of years longer than a 12 hour numerical clock, which we have how long? 200 years?
You got this exactly wrong, I'm afraid. Sundials have been used since antiquity. Mechanical clocks came around in the 1300s, and were widespread by the 1500s. But Arabic numerals with a zero were resisted throughout the middle ages (partially for religious reasons; where there's nothing, there's no god, and god is everywhere went the argument), and only became commonplace in the 1600s. Before then, Roman numerals were used by almost everyone in the Western world. Which is why old clock faces have Roman numerals. Note that Roman numerals lack a symbol for zero.
People in many countries still say "twelve oh five" instead of "zero oh five" for five minutes after midnight, to avoid the zero.
That is wrong again. They don't avoid the zero. They count like they are taught, they have two periods 12 hours long, one is the AM period, the other is the PM period, wow that was easy again.
Easy because it's wrong. The lowest value of a clock is one o'clock, and the highest is twelve fifty-nine fifty-nine. But the clock starts at noon/midnight, not 1. People borrow the twelve from the preceding 12-hour period. Back when the 12 hour clock came to be, the numerical system in use did not have a zero.
Understanding quantity is a useful survival trait, I don't understand why some scientists find it so amazing that animals understand the concept of "none".
Because humans have had a very difficult time with the concept. There are still many remnants of this aversion to empty sets. Many if not most people start counting at 1, not 0. The Jesus figure was said to have risen on the third day, less than two days after he died, because they counted the zero day as 1. A musical third is two whole notes apart from the base note, not three. Roman numerals don't have a zero. There is no year 0. 1BC was followed by 1AD. People in many countries still say "twelve oh five" instead of "zero oh five" for five minutes after midnight, to avoid the zero. Children (and some adults) have difficulties conceptualizing empty sets, like "Alice and Bob each have a herd of animals. Alice's herd has zero horses. Bob's herd has zero cows.", and understanding how zero horses and zero cows relate even if different.
You're going to get it. So what good is a test if it can't tell you if you're going to get it early on?
It's good for those selling expensive MRI tests or $60,000/year cancer medication that makes minimal difference in longevity but often a severely degraded life quality. Incidentally, the same that fund studies like these...
I thought the consensus was that screening for prostate cancer was not recommended for ANYONE because detection and treatment rarely leads to overall better outcomes.
This is not true! Many a golf club membership and Lexus have been financed by detecting prostate cancer. Do you want to deprive the poor doctors and pharmaceutical investors from their honest source of income?
"True agile" developers have to master how to implement changes in small steps: increasing throughput means implementing more small steps in the same time.
A problem is that some work is monolithic in nature and cannot be partially released. This is particularly true the closer you get to the hardware side of things. Agile fails when it tries to jump a chasm in three small steps.
Attempting to divide it into even smaller pieces isn't going to solve the inherent denial that some things cannot be split.
Nor that when something can be split, it doesn't mean it should, even under pressure. Getting certifications for N components one at a time, for example, takes longer, costs more, and at the end, should you reach it, you need to get a certification for the whole anyhow. Or you should not split security into a separate task that risks not getting done until there's been a release without security. That's bad. And I've seen it happen more than once.
The "No True Scotsman" fallacy is one of the most annoying things about Agile. "You're not doing it right" has become a mantra for explaining away any shortcomings, of which there are more than a few.
If it's embraced by the entire organization, that just makes it worse. The more parts you split something into, the greater the overhead becomes, at all levels.
Just as I would expect those who would foolishly attempt to legislate personal behavior would learn a little about the unintended consequences from attempts to do so in the past and present, where the solution is of greater harm than the original problem.
Yeah, but who gets to decide what "greater harm" means? The god-botherers who believe all life is sacred?
Slashdot Mirror
Still I sleep better with a nice dead bolt and a chair against the door.
A good sized dog in the hallway works even better.
Even more to the point - an elevator doesn't "know" someone is in it if you don't press a button. It isn't trying to "guess" what you want, it isn't aware there are any passengers.
This is wrong. Most elevators have for a long time now been equipped with pressure sensors in the floors.
The original was the copy machine that after a jam would insist that you "remove the original" without the ability to sense that there was no original sheet on the copier.
Second-guessing systems go back further than this. Elevators that would automatically go to the ground floor unless you pushed a button, jukeboxes with a mechanical memory that would pick the song-before-the-last (thus if no-one inserted a coin and made a choice, they would be stuck alternating between two irritating songs, wearing the records out), but the oldest are likely bibles, where the page width varied slightly by design, so by rifling you would more often end up at popular passages.
Okay, so one person has apparently been murdered
I think you have some problems understanding words like "apparently". What makes it apparent?
So when the guy who calls the police claims to have killed one hostage already and is talking about burning down the building before committing suicide, the default response should be "I don't believe you"?
The default response should be that they have understood what he said, and try to get a negotiator involved before hanging up.
At this point, they have a tip that needs to be investigated with urgency. They should not make assumptions that it's either true or false, but determine whether it is. And that determination should never be made by anyone holding a weapon or battering ram. Their job is to take people down, not to determine whether they themselves are wasteful.
Except if they stopped using swat teams to respond and someone really was being held at gunpoint, as a hostage in their own home? You'd likely create a scenario where the officer who goes in to verify it's not just another prank call winds up getting everyone involved killed.
Why send an officer?
First, observe from afar. If it is determined without doubt that a crime is going in, take actions to stop it. Whether that is a hostage negotiator, sharp shooter, tear gas or other.
If you see that people mill around, grilling, playing croquet and having a good time, you can also safely assume that a report of multiple gunshots and people down is downright false.
If it cannot be determined, send someone non-threatening with training in determining what is going on.
But keep the armed police out of range until it's determined whether they're needed. And for the love of everything that's good, don't make they hyped up swat goons determine whether force is needed. They are uniquely ill suited for that.
Your mistake is assuming that there IS a hostage situation. It's one of many possibilities. First response must be to find out whether something is going on, and if so, what.
A swat team is what you send in if and only if you need someone taken down, not to determine whether it's needed. That's not their job, and they are exceptionally bad at it.
There's enough blame to go around.
But the best thing to do would be to stop sending swat teams as first response.
Here's a good article: https://www.livescience.com/27...
Exerpt:
Medieval religious leaders in Europe did not support the use of zero, van der Hoek said. They saw it as satanic. "God was in everything that was. Everything that was not was of the devil," she said.
Wallin points out that the Italian government was suspicious of Arabic numbers and outlawed the use of zero. Merchants continued to use it illegally and secretively, and the Arabic word for zero, "sifr," brought about the word "cipher," which not only means a numeric character, but also came to mean "code."
I also highly recommend Charles Seife's book "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea".
How is this piece of binary thinking modded insightful?
You know, society.
Yes, and that is important too. It's not an "either/or" thing. The genes have the highest chance of propagating when the individual manages to find an equilibrium between altruism and selfishness, not when he or she is on either end of the spectrum.
In general, "and don't get caught" is a useful (but certainly not the only) qualifier. I'm quite sure that both you and I are products of many instances of cheating, and there are probably quite a few thieves and murderers back in the genetic tree of ancestors too. What they did paid off, else we wouldn't be here.
However, being so much of an asshole that people take extra precautions and you do get caught or ostracised is not useful.
Let alone Slashdot covers this, but did the Washington Post seriously dedicate column inches to this?!!!!!!!
Summer is here, and dries up riverbeds and news. It used to be that newspapers would then post front page material like "Cucumbers are now ripe!" or people's birthdays.
No, being an asshole is not a mental disorder, it's an evolutionary advantage, as long as it's no more assholey than will be tolerated by others. You exist because some of your ancestors were assholes who stole someone else's food, or screwed someone else's spouse.
To me the long scale seems more logical
Indeed.
With the long scale, it's easy to understand what the name represents: ...
billion = 10^(6 * bi) = 10^12
trillion = 10^(6 * tri) = 10^15
septillion = 10^(6 * sept) = 10^42
With the short scale, it's harder to remember, as it's two operations: ...
billion = 10^(3 + 3 * bi) = 10^9
trillion = 10^(3 + 3 * tri) = 10^12
septillion = 10^(3 + 3 * sept) = 10^24
Also, with we need the long scale to fully appreciate the following gruk:
Nature, it seems, is the popular name
for milliards and milliards and milliards
of particles playing their infinite game
of billiards and billiards and billiards.
-- Piet Hein
At any rate, "thousand millions" is unambiguous in both scales, so highly recommended.
Truly. If they are this desperate to get posts up now, I predict a chapter 11 can't be far off.
I think you will find out that most species "understand zero" if it is about the number of predators in sight.
This seems like a far more likely explanation, and yes, I did read through the original post. My take is that the scientists here jumped to conclusions based on confirmation bias, and could just as easily have "proven" that they bees had a concept of 3/7.
Less is less, and if less is good, go for less.
The numerical zero exists thousand(s?) of years longer than a 12 hour numerical clock, which we have how long? 200 years?
You got this exactly wrong, I'm afraid. Sundials have been used since antiquity. Mechanical clocks came around in the 1300s, and were widespread by the 1500s. But Arabic numerals with a zero were resisted throughout the middle ages (partially for religious reasons; where there's nothing, there's no god, and god is everywhere went the argument), and only became commonplace in the 1600s. Before then, Roman numerals were used by almost everyone in the Western world. Which is why old clock faces have Roman numerals. Note that Roman numerals lack a symbol for zero.
That is wrong again. They don't avoid the zero. They count like they are taught, they have two periods 12 hours long, one is the AM period, the other is the PM period, wow that was easy again.
Easy because it's wrong.
The lowest value of a clock is one o'clock, and the highest is twelve fifty-nine fifty-nine. But the clock starts at noon/midnight, not 1. People borrow the twelve from the preceding 12-hour period. Back when the 12 hour clock came to be, the numerical system in use did not have a zero.
Understanding quantity is a useful survival trait, I don't understand why some scientists find it so amazing that animals understand the concept of "none".
Because humans have had a very difficult time with the concept.
There are still many remnants of this aversion to empty sets. Many if not most people start counting at 1, not 0.
The Jesus figure was said to have risen on the third day, less than two days after he died, because they counted the zero day as 1.
A musical third is two whole notes apart from the base note, not three.
Roman numerals don't have a zero.
There is no year 0. 1BC was followed by 1AD.
People in many countries still say "twelve oh five" instead of "zero oh five" for five minutes after midnight, to avoid the zero.
Children (and some adults) have difficulties conceptualizing empty sets, like "Alice and Bob each have a herd of animals. Alice's herd has zero horses. Bob's herd has zero cows.", and understanding how zero horses and zero cows relate even if different.
You're going to get it. So what good is a test if it can't tell you if you're going to get it early on?
It's good for those selling expensive MRI tests or $60,000/year cancer medication that makes minimal difference in longevity but often a severely degraded life quality. Incidentally, the same that fund studies like these...
Fortunately if caught early there are effective treatments.
Care to back up that claim, especially the word "effective"?
I thought the consensus was that screening for prostate cancer was not recommended for ANYONE because detection and treatment rarely leads to overall better outcomes.
This is not true! Many a golf club membership and Lexus have been financed by detecting prostate cancer. Do you want to deprive the poor doctors and pharmaceutical investors from their honest source of income?
"True agile" developers have to master how to implement changes in small steps: increasing throughput means implementing more small steps in the same time.
A problem is that some work is monolithic in nature and cannot be partially released. This is particularly true the closer you get to the hardware side of things.
Agile fails when it tries to jump a chasm in three small steps.
Attempting to divide it into even smaller pieces isn't going to solve the inherent denial that some things cannot be split.
Nor that when something can be split, it doesn't mean it should, even under pressure.
Getting certifications for N components one at a time, for example, takes longer, costs more, and at the end, should you reach it, you need to get a certification for the whole anyhow.
Or you should not split security into a separate task that risks not getting done until there's been a release without security. That's bad. And I've seen it happen more than once.
The "No True Scotsman" fallacy is one of the most annoying things about Agile. "You're not doing it right" has become a mantra for explaining away any shortcomings, of which there are more than a few.
If it's embraced by the entire organization, that just makes it worse. The more parts you split something into, the greater the overhead becomes, at all levels.
Just as I would expect those who would foolishly attempt to legislate personal behavior would learn a little about the unintended consequences from attempts to do so in the past and present, where the solution is of greater harm than the original problem.
Yeah, but who gets to decide what "greater harm" means? The god-botherers who believe all life is sacred?