Once, a local tire company had a huge tire sale, and printed my phone number instead of theirs as the contact. I was getting phone numbers for (the now defunct) "Mark Morris Tires" for months. Fortunately, they didn't come after me looking for stolen tires. The punchline is that they actually did it twice, reusing the art for the prior ad a year later, after I had called them and complained!
Working in an environment that uses email and instant messaging constantly knocks me out of 'flow' state. Check email mornings, and after lunch. Disable instant message clients.
Sadly, they get older. Just like code. Tell your lil friend that you can't compare babies to grandmothers, at least on a beauty scale. Also, tell her that there are compensations to being a grandmother, like being able to deal with the world in a rational way...
Most people can program a dog to do their business outside. Some people can program dogs to do complex tasks like herd sheep. It doesn't take special tools. It only takes patience and a bit of knowledge.
The problem with programming computers is that they are far too general. There are TOO MANY things you can do with C++ and a linux box. Dogs, on the other hand, have a fairly simple user interface, respond to voice commands, and only do certain things (which they do amazingly well).
So, I submit that the problem isn't making tools to enable people to be smarter about programming computers. It is making computers dumb enough and specific enough so they are like dogs. A particular species of computer should do one or two things, have a simple interface, and do the things it does very well. It should be obvious what can and can't be done with it. It should be able to learn from you, mistakes and all, and average over all the attempts to teach it. Once we have systems like that, then almost anybody will be able to 'program' their computers.
FizzBuzz is mostly a test of whether people can understand a specification. If they can, they can just type it in. If they can't, then you don't want to hire them.
This is completely true, but nobody with a gun will believe it. That is because humans are, in general, unable to apply base rate statistics to themselves. People typically consider themselves 'above average' in all things, and so reason that base rate statistics do not apply to them. This is a well known cognitive bias. See Thinking Fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman.
Why doesn't somebody port python into a browser as a scripting language? Seems like a much more powerful language, it is easy to read and use, and has reasonable scope rules. This is a no-brainer for a company like Google, that uses python for lots of things already. If chrome was programmable in python (with appropriate security modifications) it would destroy JS in about 20 minutes.
(Actually, I'd prefer lisp, ala elisp, but that is simply too scary for most people to contemplate, I suppose)
Neil Armstrong, my here. I would love to fly there someday and see those footsteps in the lunar dust, if the micrometeroids have not destroyed it. They'll probably put up a velvet rope around it to keep us tourist riff-raff away. If only. I wish. I truly wish. [Fly me to the moon!!!;>) ]
NASA has strict regulations on what can be touched on the moon, as I recently found out while working on the Lunar-X prize. I wanted our vehicle to spring launch 20 or so tetrahedrons with cameras, and was shouted down due to huge amounts of paperwork that would be supposedly be required...
Some people are more prone to infection than others. In particular, the elderly, those on chemotherapy or taking radiation, etc. However, most folks are not like this. In fact, I've heard tell that allergies and asthma have been linked to keeping kids too clean. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis
Everybody gets high blood pressure as they age. It takes time, but nearly everybody in western society gets it. Now, why is that? I suspect that obesity is similar, in that it takes a while for some people. It is very fast in others (witness child obesity rates), and for some, it never happens because they die of something else before it occurs.
My guess is that there is some long-term chronic disease of western society that causes this, and people have different susceptibilities to it. It could be any number of things, but 'being a lard ass' probably isn't one of them. That is a symptom, not a cause.
There are probably lots of reasons for overweight. However, your sister's experience of gaining weight after massive doses of antibiotics could be related to the killing of your family's favorable biotics while in the hospital. I'm guessing that there are different strains of bacteria and yeast that typically inhabit the gut, that use different nutrients. We need them to help digest food, but they are symbiotic, and take what they need from the food. If that includes something that we also need, that makes the body believe that it isn't getting enough food, and that causes it to crave more.
It is a well known phenomena that obesity is 'catching'; that people who hang with fat people get fat. Some of that may be psychological, but it may also be related to passing on gut bacteria to others.
My own experience is that I was 'cured' of overweight by pancreatic disease. I eat as much or more as I used to eat, but I don't gain weight. For whatever reason, I don't digest more than I can use after my surgery. Now, isn't that strange? I went from 280 to 220, and have stayed there for a year. My digestion patterns are completely different, which is annoying, but the secret is probably pancreatic enzymes, which are now released at sub-optimal times, thus screwing up my ability to digest food. If that can happen to me after surgery, it can certainly happen to people as a simple genetic variation. Some people don't digest everything they eat, like me, but they don't require surgery for it to happen.
Another thing I'd like to say is that folks who don't have this problem simply can't understand it. They say things like 'well, I can stop eating when I'm still hungry, why can't you'? They can't really understand the situation where one just can't stop thinking about food. Their definition of 'hungry' is different. For example, there is a genetic disease called Prader-Willi syndrome, which cause the body to believe it is starving ALL THE TIME, and which causes gross overweight in its victims. If that can happen, it shows that there are ways to trick the brain into thinking it is hungry when it should not be. This problem is way more complicated that a simple-minded 'energy in = energy out' approach is capable of understanding.
I love Agile technology! Best way I know of to kill all productivity before you leave a company for its competitor! It sounds like such a good idea that folks don't realize it prevents large teams from cooperating, or even communicating. Generates lots of ant-hills out of one large ant-hill, and thereby starts wars and misery on a large and unprecedented scale. Great stuff! I hope everybody starts using it (except my company)
I would submit that the reliability of brakes on cars is far more important to the public than the reliability of guns, but that has not prevented anti-lock brakes, which are clearly more complex than drum brakes.
It is actually true that mentally ill people account for LESS violence, per capita, than the supposedly sane. The sad truth is that if the shooter did not have easy access to his mother's guns, he would still be alive, and so would his mother, and all the others he killed. It really IS about guns. You can't make crazy people sane, but you CAN limit guns in society. Lots of countries do it, and they don't have these sorts of problems.
Clip size is not the issue, I'll agree. it is the existence of clips. ALL semi-automatic weapons (including semi-automatic handguns) should be banned. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that only those weapons that were sanctioned by the 2nd amendment (muskets) should be allowed in public hands. You can hunt with them, you can overthrow the redcoats with them, etc. You can protect yourself with them, should you be attacked by another musket-wielding opponent. They have bayonets that can be used for defense, and to roast your kill on. A fine weapon, but hard to use in an 18 child massacre.
9 kids died in this country from malnutrition (taken from the US yearly average of 1 in 100,000 deaths per year) that day. While this shooting is a tragedy, it's just media glamorizing it that's making headlines.
Agreed. The real problem is handguns and handgun violence.
All firearm deaths in 2011:
Number of deaths: 31,347
Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.2
(from the cdc website here: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm)
It seems like I hear about mass murders by crazies far more often than I hear about mistaken identity killings by police these days.
I think that having guns in the hands of everybody so they can protect themselves against this nearly nonexistent threat also means that when people get mad on the freeway, or have a beef with their neighbor, it will be much more likely to result in a murder than if they have to use a kitchen clever or a golf club.
They were semi-automatic rifles, which did not have a burst or full auto mode, as you said. However, it turns out that the main issue is with the number of bullets one can fire without a reload, not in being fully automatic.
The military actually encourages semi-automatic mode in combat, because it is generally more accurate than fully automatic mode.
Slashdot Mirror
see Paraquat Pot
Once, a local tire company had a huge tire sale, and printed my phone number instead of theirs as the contact. I was getting phone numbers for (the now defunct) "Mark Morris Tires" for months. Fortunately, they didn't come after me looking for stolen tires. The punchline is that they actually did it twice, reusing the art for the prior ad a year later, after I had called them and complained!
Working in an environment that uses email and instant messaging constantly knocks me out of 'flow' state. Check email mornings, and after lunch. Disable instant message clients.
Fructose
Sadly, they get older. Just like code. Tell your lil friend that you can't compare babies to grandmothers, at least on a beauty scale. Also, tell her that there are compensations to being a grandmother, like being able to deal with the world in a rational way...
Most people can program a dog to do their business outside. Some people can program dogs to do complex tasks like herd sheep. It doesn't take special tools. It only takes patience and a bit of knowledge.
The problem with programming computers is that they are far too general. There are TOO MANY things you can do with C++ and a linux box. Dogs, on the other hand, have a fairly simple user interface, respond to voice commands, and only do certain things (which they do amazingly well).
So, I submit that the problem isn't making tools to enable people to be smarter about programming computers. It is making computers dumb enough and specific enough so they are like dogs. A particular species of computer should do one or two things, have a simple interface, and do the things it does very well. It should be obvious what can and can't be done with it. It should be able to learn from you, mistakes and all, and average over all the attempts to teach it. Once we have systems like that, then almost anybody will be able to 'program' their computers.
but can you generate that code with an emacs macro? :)
FizzBuzz is mostly a test of whether people can understand a specification. If they can, they can just type it in. If they can't, then you don't want to hire them.
This is completely true, but nobody with a gun will believe it. That is because humans are, in general, unable to apply base rate statistics to themselves. People typically consider themselves 'above average' in all things, and so reason that base rate statistics do not apply to them. This is a well known cognitive bias. See Thinking Fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman.
Why doesn't somebody port python into a browser as a scripting language? Seems like a much more powerful language, it is easy to read and use, and has reasonable scope rules. This is a no-brainer for a company like Google, that uses python for lots of things already. If chrome was programmable in python (with appropriate security modifications) it would destroy JS in about 20 minutes.
(Actually, I'd prefer lisp, ala elisp, but that is simply too scary for most people to contemplate, I suppose)
Team Phoenicia. R.I.P.
Neil Armstrong, my here. I would love to fly there someday and see those footsteps in the lunar dust, if the micrometeroids have not destroyed it. They'll probably put up a velvet rope around it to keep us tourist riff-raff away. If only. I wish. I truly wish. [Fly me to the moon!!! ;>) ]
NASA has strict regulations on what can be touched on the moon, as I recently found out while working on the Lunar-X prize. I wanted our vehicle to spring launch 20 or so tetrahedrons with cameras, and was shouted down due to huge amounts of paperwork that would be supposedly be required...
See this for more info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd
Some people are more prone to infection than others. In particular, the elderly, those on chemotherapy or taking radiation, etc. However, most folks are not like this. In fact, I've heard tell that allergies and asthma have been linked to keeping kids too clean. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis
The obesity epidemic started when Richard Simmons became popular. There is a direct correlation. Coincidence? I think not!
Everybody gets high blood pressure as they age. It takes time, but nearly everybody in western society gets it. Now, why is that? I suspect that obesity is similar, in that it takes a while for some people. It is very fast in others (witness child obesity rates), and for some, it never happens because they die of something else before it occurs.
My guess is that there is some long-term chronic disease of western society that causes this, and people have different susceptibilities to it. It could be any number of things, but 'being a lard ass' probably isn't one of them. That is a symptom, not a cause.
There are probably lots of reasons for overweight. However, your sister's experience of gaining weight after massive doses of antibiotics could be related to the killing of your family's favorable biotics while in the hospital. I'm guessing that there are different strains of bacteria and yeast that typically inhabit the gut, that use different nutrients. We need them to help digest food, but they are symbiotic, and take what they need from the food. If that includes something that we also need, that makes the body believe that it isn't getting enough food, and that causes it to crave more.
It is a well known phenomena that obesity is 'catching'; that people who hang with fat people get fat. Some of that may be psychological, but it may also be related to passing on gut bacteria to others.
My own experience is that I was 'cured' of overweight by pancreatic disease. I eat as much or more as I used to eat, but I don't gain weight. For whatever reason, I don't digest more than I can use after my surgery. Now, isn't that strange? I went from 280 to 220, and have stayed there for a year. My digestion patterns are completely different, which is annoying, but the secret is probably pancreatic enzymes, which are now released at sub-optimal times, thus screwing up my ability to digest food. If that can happen to me after surgery, it can certainly happen to people as a simple genetic variation. Some people don't digest everything they eat, like me, but they don't require surgery for it to happen.
Another thing I'd like to say is that folks who don't have this problem simply can't understand it. They say things like 'well, I can stop eating when I'm still hungry, why can't you'? They can't really understand the situation where one just can't stop thinking about food. Their definition of 'hungry' is different. For example, there is a genetic disease called Prader-Willi syndrome, which cause the body to believe it is starving ALL THE TIME, and which causes gross overweight in its victims. If that can happen, it shows that there are ways to trick the brain into thinking it is hungry when it should not be. This problem is way more complicated that a simple-minded 'energy in = energy out' approach is capable of understanding.
I love Agile technology! Best way I know of to kill all productivity before you leave a company for its competitor! It sounds like such a good idea that folks don't realize it prevents large teams from cooperating, or even communicating. Generates lots of ant-hills out of one large ant-hill, and thereby starts wars and misery on a large and unprecedented scale. Great stuff! I hope everybody starts using it (except my company)
I would submit that the reliability of brakes on cars is far more important to the public than the reliability of guns, but that has not prevented anti-lock brakes, which are clearly more complex than drum brakes.
Nobody died in that attack, probably because the guy didn't have a semi-automatic weapon at his disposal.
It is actually true that mentally ill people account for LESS violence, per capita, than the supposedly sane. The sad truth is that if the shooter did not have easy access to his mother's guns, he would still be alive, and so would his mother, and all the others he killed. It really IS about guns. You can't make crazy people sane, but you CAN limit guns in society. Lots of countries do it, and they don't have these sorts of problems.
Clip size is not the issue, I'll agree. it is the existence of clips. ALL semi-automatic weapons (including semi-automatic handguns) should be banned. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that only those weapons that were sanctioned by the 2nd amendment (muskets) should be allowed in public hands. You can hunt with them, you can overthrow the redcoats with them, etc. You can protect yourself with them, should you be attacked by another musket-wielding opponent. They have bayonets that can be used for defense, and to roast your kill on. A fine weapon, but hard to use in an 18 child massacre.
9 kids died in this country from malnutrition (taken from the US yearly average of 1 in 100,000 deaths per year) that day. While this shooting is a tragedy, it's just media glamorizing it that's making headlines.
Agreed. The real problem is handguns and handgun violence.
All firearm deaths in 2011:
Number of deaths: 31,347
Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.2
(from the cdc website here: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm)
It seems like I hear about mass murders by crazies far more often than I hear about mistaken identity killings by police these days.
I think that having guns in the hands of everybody so they can protect themselves against this nearly nonexistent threat also means that when people get mad on the freeway, or have a beef with their neighbor, it will be much more likely to result in a murder than if they have to use a kitchen clever or a golf club.
They were semi-automatic rifles, which did not have a burst or full auto mode, as you said. However, it turns out that the main issue is with the number of bullets one can fire without a reload, not in being fully automatic.
The military actually encourages semi-automatic mode in combat, because it is generally more accurate than fully automatic mode.