Don't know why a college gymnast or lacrosse player needs to be paid a salary to play a sport in college. Some of the best get scholarships, but for most that's not why they do it. They do it because they like it, and they get a chance to compete against the best. And it probably helped their admissions application as well, as should an activity they put so much effort at excelling in, no different from a student of theater, violin, speech, etc.
What the hell are you talking about? I clearly mentioned one in my post. Two others on the baseball team and swimming team are both MDs. Three more are attorneys, two more were investment bankers last I heard. Am I going to drop names? To an anonymous coward on slashdot? Please fuck off.
Someone will doubtless mention the linebacker friend with a 4.0 in astrophysics they knew in college, but there are thousands of college athletes just in D-I sports. You should be able to come up with a hundred examples or more of kids just like that.
I could *easily* come up with over 100 examples of smart student-athletes from my graduating class. Hell, I could come up with about 15 examples of smart Division I athletes just from my freshman dorm (which had 50 students total). My roommate got a 1400 on his SAT, majored in economics, and then ended up playing pro football for a few years before an injury ended his career.
And this college also happens to have a pretty decent athletic program, having won the Director's Cup the last 17 years in a row, so don't bother saying it's not possible to do both well on a large scale.
Less than 1% of college football players ever play professional football, and most of the ones who don't knew they would never go that far. Other sports have even lower percentages (or no pro leagues). For every hotshot pro prospect squeaking by in "sports management" there are a hundred other student athletes using their abilities to help pay for an education (and more often than not with much less than a full ride).
It doesn't even make sense at face value, and in fact, is just untrue. There are only 5 major HDD manufacturers these days, anyway: Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital.
Samsung: 5 years. Toshiba: 3 or 5 years, depending on product line. Hitachi: all over the map (1-5 years), but most seem to be 3 years. WD: Dropping some warranties from 3 to 2 years now.
So, Seagate, *which* other drive manufacturerS were you aligning with by dropping (some) HDD warranties to 1 year?? Or did you just mean "aligning" as in collusion?
It is legal to grow them in a number of states. Then again, it's legal to grow cannabis in a few states - just the latter is rarely done for its hemp fiber, so the US govt does tend to police it more:)
Maybe somewhat surprisingly papaver somniferum is the same species used for my favorite bagel topping and Afghanistan's largest cash crop. It's all about the "variety".
Kale, cauliflower, broccoli, and cabbage are all the same species, as well - just some seriously different varieties.
And, actually, cannabis sativa is grown widely for industrial uses like rope and textiles, etc. They just use the subspecies/variety "sativa" (which is available as seeds in many countries, as its THC content is too low to be useful as a drug - the US is just idiotic and/or bought by the cotton industry and doesn't allow growing it, while still being the #1 importer of hemp). Subspecies "indica", on the other hand, does have other popular uses...
Anyway, it is still kind of funny that they were selling Disney-branded poppy seeds. Not illegal, but funny:)
Oh, and body weight isn't necessarily the best indicator of dosing. I'm not an expert, but I'd think that you'd also need to consider how the drug is partitioned in the body - if it is more lipid-soluble then body fat might matter more, and so on
Yep, many drug dosages are supposed to be calculated based on "ideal" or "lean" body mass - which makes prescribing the correct dosage more complicated for significantly obese patients.
There are also some drugs that have very little mass-dependence - for example, those metabolized/cleared by your liver are far more dependent on liver function than body mass (which is one of the main reasons why children, elderly, and those with certain health issues need a lower dose of some drugs).
In a free market, there's probably no pharmaceutical that could cost more than $3 a day (excluding harvested biological products, of course).
Amazing how people always ignore R&D when talking about drug costs.
A big part of the reason some drugs (especially, say, cancer drugs where the market is fairly small) are so expensive is that they cost a couple billion dollars to develop and test, and the money for those efforts has to come from somewhere.
If you are talking about "free market" as in no government regulations of safety or liability, then they would probably be significantly less expensive, and significantly more dangerous.
If you are talking about "free market" as in no patent protection for any drugs developed, then a large number of modern pharmaceuticals would not even exist...
Growing poppies isn't illegal, making narcotics from them is illegal. I'm sure commercially available poppy varieties in your local garden center have a very low concentration of opium compared to those bred specifically for drug production.
If growing poppies for aesthetic or culinary use was illegal, the DEA would be pretty busy with the gardening and bagel industries...
Oxycontin has its reputation for a reason - it's both one of the most effective painkillers available, and one of the most addictive.
I know at least 2 people who became seriously addicted to oxycontin after having been prescribed it. Specifically, my uncle had severe pain due to complications of meningitis, and it was by far the most effective drug for him. Unfortunately, It doesn't take long to build up a psychological and physiological addiction to it. In the end, overcoming this was possibly worse overall than the meningitis...
Google has also contributed more open source code by volume than almost any other company.
And while they may not have contributed back that much of their server-based Linux changes (which neither you nor I even know how extensively changed the GPL kernel code is anyway - a lot of their work is in *new* userspace code for distribution, monitoring, etc), they *have* open sourced one of the most interesting and successful new Linux distributions in years - Android (and its 15 million odd lines of code between the kernel, drivers, userspace, APIs, etc). As you said, legally, they are 100% in the clear (so "abuse" is really not an accurate term) and morally, I'm sure they sleep just fine at night.
helping people on how to work with a computer might like learning them to fish.
Except computers are significantly less nutritious. The basic necessities for quality of life (food, medicine, clothes, shelter) are still much more about money than time.
Using your time to teach (or volunteer in so many other ways) is admirable, but you do also have to look at the opportunity cost. For someone who makes $100+ an hour (or equivalent) working a demanding job and then donating to a charity might be more effective overall than volunteering their time.
Anyway, you make a good point, not disputing it (the OP saying "your time is not valuable" is just incorrect) - but in many cases you time *is* less valuable than your money...
I like to think of it as like the difference between a fighter jet or attack helicopter and a tank. The former cost a lot more in construction, maintenance, and training, so it's worth using more exotic technologies and materials to "increase survivability". And tanks don't have jump jets:)
But hey, it's sci-fi, they can make up whatever bizarre explanation they want. And they do... "ferro-fibrous armor over endosteel"? Heh.
For work we tested WiFi and Powerline networking reliability under a bunch of conditions, distances, floors, etc when deciding whether to go with WiFi or Powerline for a wireless video streaming extender.
About 15-20 people brought home both and subjected them to some scripted tests while running microwaves, TVs, fluorescent floor lamps, electric ovens, blenders, and more (and for power, direct plugged through power strips, etc)
Very little significantly affected the performance of the WiFi beyond the distance, number of walls/floors in between, and the number/proximity of other WiFi networks (if I remember, 2.4GHz phones had some minor effect, too).
On the other hand, lamps, plasma TVs, microwaves, blenders, and many other devices plugged into A/C really messed up the powerline adaptors.
The weirdest result was with microwaves, actually - while for some people it degraded powerline performance, for a few others it actually *improved* bandwidth by a significant (10%?) bit.
In the end we went with WiFi - the results were just much more predictable and the sources of interference well understood...
But it's the Wii that sees the most time as a streaming device, with Wii owners using their consoles to stream video a third of the time.
The fact that a Wii is used for streaming 33 *percent* of the time has nothing to do with the *amount* of time spent streaming. It's not only possible, but very likely that XBox and PS3 users spend a lot more total time using their consoles than Wii users.
Sigh. Bug != careless mistake. Bug = software not working as intended. Sometimes it's a silly mistake, sometimes it's an architectural flaw, and sometimes it's not even your code.
Even if a developer's code is 100% correct, there can still be bugs in an application due to the libraries used, the operating system, the compiler, even the hardware. I have worked around issues with all of those in application code before - in the end it doesn't matter if it was your fault or not, hopefully you have good QA that finds even the obscure, intermittent problems, and you make sure it doesn't happen any more.
You missed punctuation at the end of your third sentence. While I understood it, a computer might not. That's a mistake or bug, whatever you want to call it. Some feel secure enough not to care.
Anyway, I don't think most programmers avoid responsibility, they just have QA report their mistake/bug and then they fix it. Big f-ing deal. It's not "too much to test", it's tested by the testers. It's not "kicking the can", it's letting those who specialize in testing do their job.
Again, you clearly are not a real developer (or if you are not the OP, you are not a developer *either*:) If you were, you would have gone through at least one marathon bug fixing session before an important release (and of course often the bugs found & fixed weren't even in code you wrote). And even if not, if you are somehow claiming "good" programmers don't make mistakes, there are by your definition no "good" programmers so you should probably stop using your computer right now.
Programmers who care about the quality of code they write also care about the quality of the QA department who tests it. I have made literally hundreds of mistakes (or more?) in my career resulting in many bug reports that I have fixed. And as a result of that, I have developed software being happily used by millions of people every day. I seriously doubt you can say the same.
What a ridiculous comment. You are clearly not a software developer. I guess that's why you posted AC...
Even the best programmers make mistakes - but they also write unit tests to find them and functional tests to find issues with systems/integration. Even given that, a developer would still need to thorougly test (in various automated or manual ways) their work to make sure there are no bugs in a complex system - and the point of QA is both that they have expertise in that area, and it's not worth higher paid developers' time to go through all of those tests themselves.
Yeah, the reporter (and then the submitter) somehow interpreted the company's press release about a cadmium free QD-LED display to mean normal LCD displays contained cadmium. And then to make it worse the submitter tried to expand on this misinformation by quoting one exemption for a single company's special purpose LED and wrongly applying that to a whole industry and regulatory body. Sigh.
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Modded overrated? Lockheed has a lot of employees...
unless the fuckwit social conservatives manage to derail it because it might lead to "...an increase in sexual activity..."
You mean social conservatives like these? If anything, that would probably make it even more popular with them as an off-label prescription...
Not if they keep crashing all of the ones that were built... at this rate there won't be many left to upgrade...
Still trolling? Or a different AC?
Don't know why a college gymnast or lacrosse player needs to be paid a salary to play a sport in college. Some of the best get scholarships, but for most that's not why they do it. They do it because they like it, and they get a chance to compete against the best. And it probably helped their admissions application as well, as should an activity they put so much effort at excelling in, no different from a student of theater, violin, speech, etc.
What the hell are you talking about? I clearly mentioned one in my post. Two others on the baseball team and swimming team are both MDs. Three more are attorneys, two more were investment bankers last I heard. Am I going to drop names? To an anonymous coward on slashdot? Please fuck off.
Someone will doubtless mention the linebacker friend with a 4.0 in astrophysics they knew in college, but there are thousands of college athletes just in D-I sports. You should be able to come up with a hundred examples or more of kids just like that.
I could *easily* come up with over 100 examples of smart student-athletes from my graduating class. Hell, I could come up with about 15 examples of smart Division I athletes just from my freshman dorm (which had 50 students total). My roommate got a 1400 on his SAT, majored in economics, and then ended up playing pro football for a few years before an injury ended his career.
And this college also happens to have a pretty decent athletic program, having won the Director's Cup the last 17 years in a row, so don't bother saying it's not possible to do both well on a large scale.
Less than 1% of college football players ever play professional football, and most of the ones who don't knew they would never go that far. Other sports have even lower percentages (or no pro leagues). For every hotshot pro prospect squeaking by in "sports management" there are a hundred other student athletes using their abilities to help pay for an education (and more often than not with much less than a full ride).
It doesn't even make sense at face value, and in fact, is just untrue. There are only 5 major HDD manufacturers these days, anyway: Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital.
Samsung: 5 years.
Toshiba: 3 or 5 years, depending on product line.
Hitachi: all over the map (1-5 years), but most seem to be 3 years.
WD: Dropping some warranties from 3 to 2 years now.
So, Seagate, *which* other drive manufacturerS were you aligning with by dropping (some) HDD warranties to 1 year?? Or did you just mean "aligning" as in collusion?
It is legal to grow them in a number of states. Then again, it's legal to grow cannabis in a few states - just the latter is rarely done for its hemp fiber, so the US govt does tend to police it more :)
Maybe somewhat surprisingly papaver somniferum is the same species used for my favorite bagel topping and Afghanistan's largest cash crop. It's all about the "variety".
Kale, cauliflower, broccoli, and cabbage are all the same species, as well - just some seriously different varieties.
And, actually, cannabis sativa is grown widely for industrial uses like rope and textiles, etc. They just use the subspecies/variety "sativa" (which is available as seeds in many countries, as its THC content is too low to be useful as a drug - the US is just idiotic and/or bought by the cotton industry and doesn't allow growing it, while still being the #1 importer of hemp). Subspecies "indica", on the other hand, does have other popular uses...
Anyway, it is still kind of funny that they were selling Disney-branded poppy seeds. Not illegal, but funny :)
Oh, and body weight isn't necessarily the best indicator of dosing. I'm not an expert, but I'd think that you'd also need to consider how the drug is partitioned in the body - if it is more lipid-soluble then body fat might matter more, and so on
Yep, many drug dosages are supposed to be calculated based on "ideal" or "lean" body mass - which makes prescribing the correct dosage more complicated for significantly obese patients.
There are also some drugs that have very little mass-dependence - for example, those metabolized/cleared by your liver are far more dependent on liver function than body mass (which is one of the main reasons why children, elderly, and those with certain health issues need a lower dose of some drugs).
In a free market, there's probably no pharmaceutical that could cost more than $3 a day (excluding harvested biological products, of course).
Amazing how people always ignore R&D when talking about drug costs.
A big part of the reason some drugs (especially, say, cancer drugs where the market is fairly small) are so expensive is that they cost a couple billion dollars to develop and test, and the money for those efforts has to come from somewhere.
If you are talking about "free market" as in no government regulations of safety or liability, then they would probably be significantly less expensive, and significantly more dangerous.
If you are talking about "free market" as in no patent protection for any drugs developed, then a large number of modern pharmaceuticals would not even exist...
Growing poppies isn't illegal, making narcotics from them is illegal. I'm sure commercially available poppy varieties in your local garden center have a very low concentration of opium compared to those bred specifically for drug production.
If growing poppies for aesthetic or culinary use was illegal, the DEA would be pretty busy with the gardening and bagel industries...
Oxycontin has its reputation for a reason - it's both one of the most effective painkillers available, and one of the most addictive.
I know at least 2 people who became seriously addicted to oxycontin after having been prescribed it. Specifically, my uncle had severe pain due to complications of meningitis, and it was by far the most effective drug for him. Unfortunately, It doesn't take long to build up a psychological and physiological addiction to it. In the end, overcoming this was possibly worse overall than the meningitis...
Google has also contributed more open source code by volume than almost any other company.
And while they may not have contributed back that much of their server-based Linux changes (which neither you nor I even know how extensively changed the GPL kernel code is anyway - a lot of their work is in *new* userspace code for distribution, monitoring, etc), they *have* open sourced one of the most interesting and successful new Linux distributions in years - Android (and its 15 million odd lines of code between the kernel, drivers, userspace, APIs, etc). As you said, legally, they are 100% in the clear (so "abuse" is really not an accurate term) and morally, I'm sure they sleep just fine at night.
helping people on how to work with a computer might like learning them to fish.
Except computers are significantly less nutritious. The basic necessities for quality of life (food, medicine, clothes, shelter) are still much more about money than time.
Using your time to teach (or volunteer in so many other ways) is admirable, but you do also have to look at the opportunity cost. For someone who makes $100+ an hour (or equivalent) working a demanding job and then donating to a charity might be more effective overall than volunteering their time.
Anyway, you make a good point, not disputing it (the OP saying "your time is not valuable" is just incorrect) - but in many cases you time *is* less valuable than your money...
And pro-DCMA, to boot. Yikes.
I like to think of it as like the difference between a fighter jet or attack helicopter and a tank. The former cost a lot more in construction, maintenance, and training, so it's worth using more exotic technologies and materials to "increase survivability". And tanks don't have jump jets :)
But hey, it's sci-fi, they can make up whatever bizarre explanation they want. And they do... "ferro-fibrous armor over endosteel"? Heh.
For work we tested WiFi and Powerline networking reliability under a bunch of conditions, distances, floors, etc when deciding whether to go with WiFi or Powerline for a wireless video streaming extender.
About 15-20 people brought home both and subjected them to some scripted tests while running microwaves, TVs, fluorescent floor lamps, electric ovens, blenders, and more (and for power, direct plugged through power strips, etc)
Very little significantly affected the performance of the WiFi beyond the distance, number of walls/floors in between, and the number/proximity of other WiFi networks (if I remember, 2.4GHz phones had some minor effect, too).
On the other hand, lamps, plasma TVs, microwaves, blenders, and many other devices plugged into A/C really messed up the powerline adaptors.
The weirdest result was with microwaves, actually - while for some people it degraded powerline performance, for a few others it actually *improved* bandwidth by a significant (10%?) bit.
In the end we went with WiFi - the results were just much more predictable and the sources of interference well understood...
But it's the Wii that sees the most time as a streaming device, with Wii owners using their consoles to stream video a third of the time.
The fact that a Wii is used for streaming 33 *percent* of the time has nothing to do with the *amount* of time spent streaming. It's not only possible, but very likely that XBox and PS3 users spend a lot more total time using their consoles than Wii users.
Sigh... you just have no understanding of 30th century materials science, do you? ;)
I've owned cars with no trunk but I never saw a car with a rear seat and a trunk too small for a laptop...
Umm, hatchbacks? Station wagons? SUVs? There are a few of each of those on the road these days ;)
Sigh. Bug != careless mistake. Bug = software not working as intended. Sometimes it's a silly mistake, sometimes it's an architectural flaw, and sometimes it's not even your code.
Even if a developer's code is 100% correct, there can still be bugs in an application due to the libraries used, the operating system, the compiler, even the hardware. I have worked around issues with all of those in application code before - in the end it doesn't matter if it was your fault or not, hopefully you have good QA that finds even the obscure, intermittent problems, and you make sure it doesn't happen any more.
You missed punctuation at the end of your third sentence. While I understood it, a computer might not. That's a mistake or bug, whatever you want to call it. Some feel secure enough not to care.
Anyway, I don't think most programmers avoid responsibility, they just have QA report their mistake/bug and then they fix it. Big f-ing deal. It's not "too much to test", it's tested by the testers. It's not "kicking the can", it's letting those who specialize in testing do their job.
Again, you clearly are not a real developer (or if you are not the OP, you are not a developer *either* :) If you were, you would have gone through at least one marathon bug fixing session before an important release (and of course often the bugs found & fixed weren't even in code you wrote). And even if not, if you are somehow claiming "good" programmers don't make mistakes, there are by your definition no "good" programmers so you should probably stop using your computer right now.
Programmers who care about the quality of code they write also care about the quality of the QA department who tests it. I have made literally hundreds of mistakes (or more?) in my career resulting in many bug reports that I have fixed. And as a result of that, I have developed software being happily used by millions of people every day. I seriously doubt you can say the same.
What a ridiculous comment. You are clearly not a software developer. I guess that's why you posted AC...
Even the best programmers make mistakes - but they also write unit tests to find them and functional tests to find issues with systems/integration. Even given that, a developer would still need to thorougly test (in various automated or manual ways) their work to make sure there are no bugs in a complex system - and the point of QA is both that they have expertise in that area, and it's not worth higher paid developers' time to go through all of those tests themselves.
Yeah, the reporter (and then the submitter) somehow interpreted the company's press release about a cadmium free QD-LED display to mean normal LCD displays contained cadmium. And then to make it worse the submitter tried to expand on this misinformation by quoting one exemption for a single company's special purpose LED and wrongly applying that to a whole industry and regulatory body. Sigh.