The sun IS burning hotter. NASA is detecting upward temperature trends on Mars and I really don't think that is amendable to human intervention. The temprature on Mars doesn't depend on our CO2 emission levels, whether or not you drive a hybrid car or if we ratify the Kyoto Treaty.
Didn't you know, the increased CO2 emissions have increased the Earths mass attracting Mars closer to the Earth and therefore closer to the sun and causing the martian atmosphere to heat up. You see anything "Bad" that happens in the universe is caused by humans and its all YOUR FAULT!
Inserting cuss words into an otherwise almost logical argument makes you sound every bit as much of an idiot.
Thank you!
I fail to see why people seem to think that resorting to profanity makes their points stronger when in fact it makes them look like an idiot who can't think of a find a more intelligent way to express themselves.
I don't think a symbolic language has much if anything to do with it.
In fact Singapore which does much better on math exams than the US has English as its national language. I don't know if there are other commonly used symbolic languages or not (one would think chinese would be popular). I also know that Thai is a phoenetic language and not symbolic in the same respect as Chinese or Japanese.
I'm a little bit familiar with the math curricula used in Singapore, and I prefer it over more common curricula (like Saxon). The reason I prefer it is that where American texts seem to emphasise skills (memorizing tables) the singapore curricula emphasis understanding. I.e. what does it mean to add 2 + 2. Not simply regurgitating "2+2=4". OK so most kids understand this one. But did anyone ever explain that multiplication was simply iterated addition or did they just say memorize the table?
Don't get me wrong mechanical skills are important but understanding mathematics is more important in the long run.
A problem with implimenting a similar system in the US is that very few americans are trained to be mathematical thinkers.
I'm a math grad student at a major university and the students we get who want to teach elementary school are fritening. They tend to be the whiniest students and completely unwilling to think or learn. If I here the phrase "I'm never going to teach this to my n-year olds" again I'll scream. These people tend to be afraid of mathematics and hostile to it. And I believe they pass that on to their students, which contributes greatly to the problem.
Of course American parents aren't completely innocent either.
Every time I hear this tired gripe, "Republicans are hostile to science." I think of the Super Conducting Super Collider which would have been the worlds largest particle accelerator (20 TeV) and would have at least shed some insight on the Higgs boson and the origins of the Universe.
The project was approved by the Reagan administration in 1987. During the first congress of Clintons first term in 1993 the project was summarily killed. I might point out that at the time both Houses of congress were under Democratic control. So I find it difficult to blame those ludite Republicans.
Accountability should be held on the parents, they should force their children to learn for their own good. Blame decreasing accountability on parents for decreasing academic excellence, don't blame the teachers. While there are a few bad teachers, there are a lot more good teachers.
I agree that dissinterested parents account for large part of the problem. But the public school system certainly shares quite a bit of blame.
Don't tell me that most teachers are competent. I teach Freshman Mathematics at a large state University. It's frightening what these high school graduates don't know. They should not be allowed to graduate that ignorant. Many of them made straight "A's" in their high school math classes.
And you've obviously never had the displeasure of tutoring an Elementary Ed major in mathematics. As a group these people refuse to learn and refuse to think. They're resentful of the fact that they have to take a Freshman/Sophomore level math course and seem to try to learn as little as possible and think not at all. If I hear "I'm not going to teach this to my (absurdly young age) year olds!" again, I think I'll scream.
Math for El-Ed majors has a very bad reputation among math departments, because those who take the course are those who despise education the most and they teach this to their students when they are allowed to teach.
I think this probably comes from Article I Section 5:
Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections,
Returns and Qualifications of its own Members, and a Majority of each shall constitute a Quorum to do Business; but a smaller Number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the Attendance of absent Members, in such Manner, and under such Penalties as each House may provide
It seems there's also a clause granting Congress oversight in the case of Presidential electors as well but I can't seem to find it.
I also believe that congress has codified what it considers a fair election and that HAVA is a part of the that codification.
Basically what congress can do is say "follow these rules and we'll accept your results".
The issue with the president is a bit different since there is no constitutional provision that the president be popularly elected in the first place.
The current system DOES NOT guarantee that one candidate will get a majority of the electoral vote.
For example if Mr. Bush were to carry the states Maine, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Alaska and Mr. Kerry where to carry the rest then the electoral vote would be split 269-269 and the vote would go to the House.
The current system isn't truly winner-take-all. Two states Maine and Nebraska (I believe) have a system in which a candidate gets one electoral vote for each congressional district he carries and two for the state at large.
And of course there is a referendum in Colorado this year to split the electoral vote in a way similar to what is suggested i.e. for each ninth of the popular vote a candidate receives he get's one electoral vote. Can you imagine the fights over round off errors? *shudder*.
In a Field (Like the Reals) 0 is assumed to exist and have the property that x+0=0+x for every x in the field. And the additive inverse of x denoted -x is defined to be the element of the field that when added to x yields the additive identity, 0. i.e x+(-x)=(-x)+x=0.
Thats 2 of the 8 field axioms.
In the construction of the Reals 0 is defined to be the empty set and
1={0} , the set containing the empty set 2={0,1} 3={0,1,2}
Let's not forget that brilliant 19 year old who wrote the BASIC interpreter for the Altair 88, Bill Gates.
Gates must have just sat down and started dumping bits in. He couldn't have had a list of opcodes or even seen a BASIC interpreter before otherwise that would be stealing.
How long did this project take Gates anyway? I believe it was less than a year.
On thing I haven't seen mentioned is sales Taxes. Unless you live in one of the few states that don't have a sales tax when you buy the product you pay the sales tax on full retail price. However when you get the rebate you are not refunded the amount of the sales tax.
So for example on the $100 dollar rebate I just sent in, I spent an extra $8 dollars on sales taxes.
I have a Western Union Clock I inhereted from my grandfather.
Whats a Western Union Clock?
It's a big round self-winding pendulum clock. Apparently they were ordered from western union. Someone would come install this clock on the wall with a single wire coming from the back the wire would supply power for the winding mechanism and (This is the cool/relevant part) every hour on the hour a signal would come through the wire and the minute hand on the clock would jump to 12 giving a fairly accurate clock.
What I've wanted to do for a while if find a way to get my computer to send the hour signal to the clock so it would have atomi "accuracy" at least on the hour:)
Yeah that sounds right. We we're just talking about this earlier this week. I can't remember the length of the sessions.
For those interested, representatives are elected for exactly one session and I think senators are elected for 2 sessions for which reps are paid $7,000 per session and senators $9,000 per session. That's their entire pay! Yes that's the right number of zeros.
And of course the legislature will propose several ammendments to the state constitution again.
Yeah I know its off-topic but I thought it might be of interest
The Physics department head at the college I attended was constantly doing High school demos.
One I found interesting involved a long aluminum pipe a steel cylinder just small enough to fit in the pipe and a cylindrical magnet (or cylider containing a magnet) of the same size.
First demonstate that the magnet is not attracted to the aluminum by pressing against the pipe.
Then drop the steel slug through the pipe. It should slide through unhindered and quickly fall out the other side.
Now drop the magnet through the pipe. The moving magnet will induce an electric field in the pipe which in turn induces a magnetic field and slows the magnet. And hence it falls very slowly.
Then of course there are the two syringes of different diameter coupled by a plastic tube to illustrate hydraulics.
First off, these fields aren't as dead as the SF article suggests: topology is a very big game right now with high-level particle theory. I don't pretend to understand it, but building 'topological field theories' is something people spend a good chunk of time trying to do. Although this research probably isn't directly applicable, it's neccessary to push a field generally before you get to something specifically good.
Actually a sub-field (Oh the puns I could make too much algebra lately) of topology, Knot Theory, seems to be making inroads into Biology which is kind of ironic when you consider that Knot Theory was invented for chemists; it was believed that molecules were formed by atoms "knotting" themselves toghether. Anyway It turns out that DNA is very tightly knotted inside the nucleus of the cell and viruses seem to operate by knotting and unknotting DNA. Do I need to explain the implications here? Can you see the headline: "Mathematicians cure the common cold?":)
My favorite example: Even though Copernicus didn't really do anything for us but give us a few interplanetary probes, a useless moonshot of two, and slightly improved timetables, most people would be happy to know that the earth goes around the sun, not vice versa, not because it's USEFUL, but because it's TRUE.
Actually truth is kinda relative here. One could reasonably make the argument that the Earth is the center of the universe. In an infinite universe every point is the center. And I believe that an model similar to Brah's will work i.e. the Sun rotates around the Earth and all other planets rotate around the Sun. However, the Sun centered model is MUCH simpler.
What's being challenged here are regulations NOT laws. Its a legal distinction. A regulation is effectively a law that is decreed by a federal agency FAA, EPA, FDA, etc. Laws have the majority consent of Congress and aren't vetoed.
I've often wondered about the Constitionality of Federal regulations since they are de facto legislation and Article 1 Section 1 of the US constition states:
All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.
And I've no knowledge of a clause that allows Congress to delegate these powers to the Exectutive Branch. Perhaps this is what the suit should be about.
Around the turn of the century a famous mathematician named Robert L. Moore introduced what has come to be known as the Moore method for teaching.
In this method the students are asked to solve certain problems but given very few resources and stricly forbidden to discuss problems with other students or using the library etc. Students caught doing so were immediatley given an 'F' in the course.
The Moore method is very good at producing thinkers, people with excellent problem solving skills.
Perhaps the Department is using a similar aproach for its introductory courses.
Or you could just convince the ignorant masses that there really is a global catastrophe coming and put them on the rockets first... After we've shot them off into space, we have the whole planet to ourselves.
Nope that wouldn't work. We'd lose the telephone dissenfectors and die from a disease transmitted by the dirty telephones.:)
If you guys read the IPCC report, the seas appear to be rising to a total of 10 meters in 100 years, that means a meter per 10 years. Imagine what that does to a seashore area.
The report or the summary touted (and written) by politicians? They are two very different entities? Besides what do you know of the background of the writers of the report? Always check your sources!
3ft every ten years?! Am I to understand that that is what they are measuring now? If that where true most beaches would be underwater by now!
A 3 ft raise in sea level would be very noticable. It would submerge the jettys on Galveston Island and the sea would be up the seawall. (I've seen the sea over a 10ft sea wall in a Tropical storm).
So are sea levels only rising in certain places or did they find a 8.3mm raise over the course of a month and extrapolate. Did they take the early reading at low tide and the latter at high tide or during a storm? Do you KNOW how the data was collected?
My point is this statement sounds absolutly preposterous. And I'm just waiting for the UN to admit that the reason they think sea levels are rising is because Gilligan is using the Professors measuring stick to set his lobster traps in deeper water.
I've been thinking about Red Hat quite a bit lately. It being the most popular linux ditribution and having recently had my first encounter with Red Hat 5.2. And this post gives me the chance to voice my veiws.
I want to point out before I go any farther that I have experience with only two distributions, Red Hat and Slackware. I've been using Slackware since early 1995 and have only had a few encounters with Red Hat.
First the installation process. I've installed Red Hat on two machines.
I find the Red Hat install to be nearly as frustrating as a windows install. (What's that did he say Linux is easier to install than windows? Surely not. YES I did.)
My first hang up was the Disk Druid which I tried to use to repartion the drive. I don't remember what I tried but I just couldn't get it to work. I personally find fdisk much easier to use. Perhaps because fdisk doesn't even pretend to be "intuative" while the disk druid does. fdisk is driven by many criptic comands but it does offer help and if you know anything about disk partions (which you should if you're going to attempt to repartion a drive) the help is quite good. As a matter of fact the prompt is (press m for help). So it's hard to miss the help. Of course I should point out here that slackware starts with a prompt and you must setup your partions by yourself. I don't think there are even any hint that you should do so. Anyway enough about partions. Onto the install...
Next came the intallation. Red Hat gave me a list of software. I picked the complete listing or whatever it was. Any way I got a list of package names with no real explanation. Slackware by contrast gives some description of the software in all modes and detailed descriptions in newbie mode (of course it auto instal's more in newbie mode). I didn't know what much of the software Red Hat was offering was so I took my best guess.
Next came the setup. Red Hat set up X, my sound card and my network perfectly without any real hassle. (However I know it's not always that good with X). The Slackware install doesn't even attempt to set up X or the sound card. As for the network it does a good job but doesn't detect the ethernet card and set up conf.modules like Red Hat does.
Now I had my new Red Hat system. First I booted it up and there was quota's turned on. Then I see appletalk and ipx drivers. I didn't install those nor did i indicate in any way that i wanted them. Why do the people at Red Hat think I need networking capabilty with an apple (or NetWare). If I did then I would be savvy enough to install it myself.
Anyway, I logged in to complete the next task that I always do when insatalling a new system. If I remember right I had installed the kernel source with the rest of the system so I did a cd to /usr/src/linux typed make menuconfig and got an error. ( I may have actually got the error when i later typed make zImage. I don't remember.) It seems that will all the junk Red Hat had installed It hadn't installed the include files needed to compile just about anything. So I had to trod through the rpms and find what I needed installed it typed make and another error. This process continued for 3 or 4 cycles.
Anyway I got the kernal built and then tried to configure the system. I looked in/etc/rc.d/ and instead of about 8 shell scripts like I'm accustomed to with Slackware there where about a dozen directories full of files. I never did find out where quota's where being turned on. To me the structure of the rc files seemed needlessly complex I suspect that it's there to accomadate linuxconf.
Next I added a user. And after typing add user I had to delete the special group it had made for me and change the setting in /etc/passwd. (Whose braindead idea was this?) I've also heard that caldera does something similar. Personally I want groups.
OK so now I started X. One of the first things I wanted to do was run gimp. It segfaulted. So I got the source and recompiled gimp. Still a segfault. This is about the time I gave up on Red Hat.
Another thing I hate is all the software that can only be found in an RPM form. Yes it is obnoxious. If you do download the rpm executables and try to run them, you'll be running them against an incomplete rpm database and asking for trouble. Why couldn't Red Hat use a system more compatable with tar.gz. After all a RPM is symply a gziped cpio file with a header. Couldn't they have made that header a special file in a tarball? (Slackware does come with a rpm2targz script but it is a little buggy).
I guess to sumarize this rant. I don't hate Red Hat. My major gripes are about the install. Red Hat assume's way too much. It's designed to pander to the uneducated and ignores the expert. It also panders to the uneducated in a way that makes it difficult to learn by hiding the files that should be edited. (I personally prefer vi as a sytem configuration tool.) Slackware is also guilty of this to a lesser extent.
Who decide what is installed by default and what isn't? They're decisions seem rather strange to me. Install all the networking software possible and enable quota's. Is this really necessary on a desktop machine?
OK so to the gripe I have about both Slackware and Red Hat. They both by default enable most network services that have to be turned off manually. It would be nice if they gave you a choice as to whether or not to turn on telnet or netstat etc.
I think I'll end this here. I could go on but this already too long.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean ... I can finally stop washing my hair!
Gecko as on OS? Be serious. Use a real operating system like emacs.
The sun IS burning hotter. NASA is detecting upward temperature trends on Mars and I really don't think that is amendable to human intervention. The temprature on Mars doesn't depend on our CO2 emission levels, whether or not you drive a hybrid car or if we ratify the Kyoto Treaty.
Didn't you know, the increased CO2 emissions have increased the Earths mass attracting Mars closer to the Earth and therefore closer to the sun and causing the martian atmosphere to heat up. You see anything "Bad" that happens in the universe is caused by humans and its all YOUR FAULT!
If you really want one try Vigor.
Inserting cuss words into an otherwise almost logical argument makes you sound every bit as much of an idiot.
Thank you!
I fail to see why people seem to think that resorting to profanity makes their points stronger when in fact it makes them look like an idiot who can't think of a find a more intelligent way to express themselves.
I don't think a symbolic language has much if anything to do with it.
In fact Singapore which does much better on math exams than the US has English as its national language. I don't know if there are other commonly used symbolic languages or not (one would think chinese would be popular). I also know that Thai is a phoenetic language and not symbolic in the same respect as Chinese or Japanese.
I'm a little bit familiar with the math curricula used in Singapore, and I prefer it over more common curricula (like Saxon). The reason I prefer it is that where American texts seem to emphasise skills (memorizing tables) the singapore curricula emphasis understanding. I.e. what does it mean to add 2 + 2. Not simply regurgitating "2+2=4". OK so most kids understand this one. But did anyone ever explain that multiplication was simply iterated addition or did they just say memorize the table?
Don't get me wrong mechanical skills are important but understanding mathematics is more important in the long run.
A problem with implimenting a similar system in the US is that very few americans are trained to be mathematical thinkers.
I'm a math grad student at a major university and the students we get who want to teach elementary school are fritening. They tend to be the whiniest students and completely unwilling to think or learn. If I here the phrase "I'm never going to teach this to my n-year olds" again I'll scream. These people tend to be afraid of mathematics and hostile to it. And I believe they pass that on to their students, which contributes greatly to the problem.
Of course American parents aren't completely innocent either.
Every time I hear this tired gripe, "Republicans are hostile to science." I think of the Super Conducting Super Collider which would have been the worlds largest particle accelerator (20 TeV) and would have at least shed some insight on the Higgs boson and the origins of the Universe.
The project was approved by the Reagan administration in 1987. During the first congress of Clintons first term in 1993 the project was summarily killed. I might point out that at the time both Houses of congress were under Democratic control. So I find it difficult to blame those ludite Republicans.
Accountability should be held on the parents, they should force their children to learn for their own good. Blame decreasing accountability on parents for decreasing academic excellence, don't blame the teachers. While there are a few bad teachers, there are a lot more good teachers.
I agree that dissinterested parents account for large part of the problem. But the public school system certainly shares quite a bit of blame.
Don't tell me that most teachers are competent. I teach Freshman Mathematics at a large state University. It's frightening what these high school graduates don't know. They should not be allowed to graduate that ignorant. Many of them made straight "A's" in their high school math classes.
And you've obviously never had the displeasure of tutoring an Elementary Ed major in mathematics. As a group these people refuse to learn and refuse to think. They're resentful of the fact that they have to take a Freshman/Sophomore level math course and seem to try to learn as little as possible and think not at all. If I hear "I'm not going to teach this to my (absurdly young age) year olds!" again, I think I'll scream.
Math for El-Ed majors has a very bad reputation among math departments, because those who take the course are those who despise education the most and they teach this to their students when they are allowed to teach.
It seems there's also a clause granting Congress oversight in the case of Presidential electors as well but I can't seem to find it.
I also believe that congress has codified what
it considers a fair election and that HAVA is a part of the that codification.
Basically what congress can do is say "follow these rules and we'll accept your results".
The issue with the president is a bit different since there is no constitutional provision that the president be popularly elected in the first place.
This reminded me of another report done by the same group regarding misperceptions people had based upon their source of news, most notibly Fox News:
;)
So what did they say about people whose primary news source is slashdot?
these backwater bastards are 99% pro-bush/pro-neocon/pro-racial purity who have nothing more than 4 more years of bush in their hearts.
That's an interesting statement about a state that voted for Gore in 2000 and will almost certainly go to Kerry in 2004.
The current system DOES NOT guarantee that one candidate will get a
majority of the electoral vote.
For example if Mr. Bush were to carry the states Maine, Virginia,
North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Michigan, Ohio,
Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas,
Louisiana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma,
Texas, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Alaska
and Mr. Kerry where to carry the rest then the electoral vote would be
split 269-269 and the vote would go to the House.
You can verify this at http://www.opinionjournal.com/ecc/calculator.htm.
The current system isn't truly winner-take-all. Two states Maine and
Nebraska (I believe) have a system in which a candidate gets one
electoral vote for each congressional district he carries and two for
the state at large.
And of course there is a referendum in Colorado this year to split the
electoral vote in a way similar to what is suggested i.e. for each
ninth of the popular vote a candidate receives he get's one electoral
vote. Can you imagine the fights over round off errors? *shudder*.
No.
In a Field (Like the Reals) 0 is assumed to exist and have the property that x+0=0+x for every x in the field. And the additive inverse of x denoted -x is defined to be the element of the field that when added to x yields the additive identity, 0. i.e
x+(-x)=(-x)+x=0.
Thats 2 of the 8 field axioms.
In the construction of the Reals 0 is defined to be the empty set and
1={0} , the set containing the empty set
2={0,1}
3={0,1,2}
etc.
Let's not forget that brilliant 19 year old who wrote the BASIC interpreter for the Altair 88, Bill Gates.
Gates must have just sat down and started dumping bits in. He couldn't have had a list of opcodes or even seen a BASIC interpreter before otherwise that would be stealing.
How long did this project take Gates anyway? I believe it was less than a year.
Let me guess. When decoded that barcode says "Paul is dead." are something similar. After all He IS barefoot in the picture. :)
On thing I haven't seen mentioned is sales Taxes. Unless you live in one of the few states that don't have a sales tax when you buy the product you pay the sales tax on full retail price. However when you get the rebate you are not refunded the amount of the sales tax.
So for example on the $100 dollar rebate I just sent in, I spent an extra $8 dollars on sales taxes.
I guess the state govenments love this.
This is slightly off topic but related.
I have a Western Union Clock I inhereted from my grandfather.
Whats a Western Union Clock?
It's a big round self-winding pendulum clock. Apparently they were ordered from western union. Someone would come install this clock on the wall with a single wire coming from the back the wire would supply power for the winding mechanism and (This is the cool/relevant part) every hour on the hour a signal would come through the wire and the minute hand on the clock would jump to 12 giving a fairly accurate clock.
What I've wanted to do for a while if find a way to get my computer to send the hour signal to the clock so it would have atomi "accuracy" at least on the hour
Yeah that sounds right. We we're just talking about this earlier this week. I can't remember the length of the sessions.
For those interested, representatives are elected for exactly one session and I think senators are elected for 2 sessions for which reps are paid $7,000 per session and senators $9,000 per session. That's their entire pay! Yes that's the right number of zeros.
And of course the legislature will propose several ammendments to the state constitution again.
Yeah I know its off-topic but I thought it might be of interest
The Physics department head at the college I attended was constantly doing High school demos.
One I found interesting involved a long aluminum pipe a steel cylinder just small enough to fit in the pipe and a cylindrical magnet (or cylider containing a magnet) of the same size.
First demonstate that the magnet is not attracted to the aluminum by pressing against the pipe.
Then drop the steel slug through the pipe. It should slide through unhindered and quickly fall out the other side.
Now drop the magnet through the pipe. The moving magnet will induce an electric field in the pipe which in turn induces a magnetic field and slows the magnet. And hence it falls very slowly.
Then of course there are the two syringes of different diameter coupled by a plastic tube to illustrate hydraulics.
First off, these fields aren't as dead as the SF article suggests: topology is a very big game right now with high-level particle theory. I don't pretend to understand it, but building 'topological field theories' is something people spend a good chunk of time trying to do. Although this research probably isn't directly applicable, it's neccessary to push a field generally before you get to something specifically good.
Actually a sub-field (Oh the puns I could make too much algebra lately) of topology, Knot Theory, seems to be making inroads into Biology which is kind of ironic when you consider that Knot Theory was invented for chemists; it was believed that molecules were formed by atoms "knotting" themselves toghether. Anyway It turns out that DNA is very tightly knotted inside the nucleus of the cell and viruses seem to operate by knotting and unknotting DNA. Do I need to explain the implications here? Can you see the headline: "Mathematicians cure the common cold?" :)
My favorite example: Even though Copernicus didn't really do anything for us but give us a few interplanetary probes, a useless moonshot of two, and slightly improved timetables, most people would be happy to know that the earth goes around the sun, not vice versa, not because it's USEFUL, but because it's TRUE.
Actually truth is kinda relative here. One could reasonably make the argument that the Earth is the center of the universe. In an infinite universe every point is the center. And I believe that an model similar to Brah's will work i.e. the Sun rotates around the Earth and all other planets rotate around the Sun. However, the Sun centered model is MUCH simpler.
Gotta run Topology Qualifier in 3 hours!!
What's being challenged here are regulations NOT laws. Its a legal distinction. A regulation is effectively a law that is decreed by a federal agency FAA, EPA, FDA, etc. Laws have the majority consent of Congress and aren't vetoed.
I've often wondered about the Constitionality of Federal regulations since they are de facto legislation and Article 1 Section 1 of the US constition states:
All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.
And I've no knowledge of a clause that allows Congress to delegate these powers to the Exectutive Branch. Perhaps this is what the suit should be about.
Around the turn of the century a famous mathematician named Robert L. Moore introduced what has come to be known as the Moore method for teaching.
In this method the students are asked to solve certain problems but given very few resources and stricly forbidden to discuss problems with other students or using the library etc. Students caught doing so were immediatley given an 'F' in the course.
The Moore method is very good at producing thinkers, people with excellent problem solving skills.
Perhaps the Department is using a similar aproach for its introductory courses.
Or you could just convince the ignorant masses that there really is a global catastrophe coming and put them on the rockets first... After we've shot them off into space, we have the whole planet to ourselves.
Nope that wouldn't work. We'd lose the telephone dissenfectors and die from a disease transmitted by the dirty telephones. :)
Sorry I know its offtopic. but I couldn't resist.
If you guys read the IPCC report, the seas appear to be rising to a total of 10 meters in 100 years, that means a meter per 10 years. Imagine what that does to a seashore area.
The report or the summary touted (and written) by politicians? They are two very different entities? Besides what do you know of the background of the writers of the report? Always check your sources!
3ft every ten years?! Am I to understand that that is what they are measuring now? If that where true most beaches would be underwater by now!
A 3 ft raise in sea level would be very noticable. It would submerge the jettys on Galveston Island and the sea would be up the seawall. (I've seen the sea over a 10ft sea wall in a Tropical storm).
So are sea levels only rising in certain places or did they find a 8.3mm raise over the course of a month and extrapolate. Did they take the early reading at low tide and the latter at high tide or during a storm? Do you KNOW how the data was collected?
My point is this statement sounds absolutly preposterous. And I'm just waiting for the UN to admit that the reason they think sea levels are rising is because Gilligan is using the Professors measuring stick to set his lobster traps in deeper water.
I've been thinking about Red Hat quite a bit lately. It being the most
popular linux ditribution and having recently had my first encounter
with Red Hat 5.2. And this post gives me the chance to voice my veiws.
I want to point out before I go any farther that I have experience
with only two distributions, Red Hat and Slackware. I've been using
Slackware since early 1995 and have only had a few encounters with
Red Hat.
First the installation process. I've installed Red Hat on two
machines.
I find the Red Hat install to be nearly as frustrating as a windows
install. (What's that did he say Linux is easier to install than
windows? Surely not. YES I did.)
My first hang up was the Disk Druid which I tried to use to repartion
the drive. I don't remember what I tried but I just couldn't get it
to work. I personally find fdisk much easier to use. Perhaps because
fdisk doesn't even pretend to be "intuative" while the disk druid
does. fdisk is driven by many criptic comands but it does offer help
and if you know anything about disk partions (which you should if
you're going to attempt to repartion a drive) the help is quite
good. As a matter of fact the prompt is (press m for help). So it's
hard to miss the help. Of course I should point out here that
slackware starts with a prompt and you must setup your partions by
yourself. I don't think there are even any hint that you should do
so. Anyway enough about partions. Onto the install...
Next came the intallation. Red Hat gave me a list of software. I
picked the complete listing or whatever it was. Any way I got a list
of package names with no real explanation. Slackware by contrast
gives some description of the software in all modes and detailed
descriptions in newbie mode (of course it auto instal's more in newbie
mode). I didn't know what much of the software Red Hat was offering
was so I took my best guess.
Next came the setup. Red Hat set up X, my sound card and my network
perfectly without any real hassle. (However I know it's not always that
good with X). The Slackware install doesn't even attempt to set up X
or the sound card. As for the network it does a good job but doesn't
detect the ethernet card and set up conf.modules like Red Hat does.
Now I had my new Red Hat system. First I booted it up and there was
quota's turned on. Then I see appletalk and ipx drivers. I didn't
install those nor did i indicate in any way that i wanted them. Why do
the people at Red Hat think I need networking capabilty with an
apple (or NetWare). If I did then I would be savvy enough to install
it myself.
Anyway, I logged in to complete the next task that I always do when
insatalling a new system. If I remember right I had installed the
kernel source with the rest of the system so I did a cd to
/usr/src/linux typed make menuconfig and got an error. ( I may have
actually got the error when i later typed make zImage. I don't
remember.) It seems that will all the junk Red Hat had installed It
hadn't installed the include files needed to compile just about
anything. So I had to trod through the rpms and find what I needed
installed it typed make and another error. This process continued for
3 or 4 cycles.
Anyway I got the kernal built and then tried to configure the
system. I looked in
like I'm accustomed to with Slackware there where about a dozen
directories full of files. I never did find out where quota's where
being turned on. To me the structure of the rc files seemed needlessly
complex I suspect that it's there to accomadate linuxconf.
Next I added a user. And after typing add user I had to delete the
special group it had made for me and change the setting in
/etc/passwd. (Whose braindead idea was this?) I've also heard that
caldera does something similar. Personally I want groups.
OK so now I started X. One of the first things I wanted to do was run
gimp. It segfaulted. So I got the source and recompiled gimp. Still a
segfault. This is about the time I gave up on Red Hat.
Another thing I hate is all the software that can only be found in an
RPM form. Yes it is obnoxious. If you do download the rpm executables
and try to run them, you'll be running them against an incomplete rpm
database and asking for trouble. Why couldn't Red Hat use a system
more compatable with tar.gz. After all a RPM is symply a gziped cpio
file with a header. Couldn't they have made that header a special file
in a tarball? (Slackware does come with a rpm2targz script but it is a
little buggy).
I guess to sumarize this rant. I don't hate Red Hat. My major gripes
are about the install. Red Hat assume's way too much. It's designed to
pander to the uneducated and ignores the expert. It also panders to
the uneducated in a way that makes it difficult to learn by hiding the
files that should be edited. (I personally prefer vi as a sytem
configuration tool.) Slackware is also guilty of this to a lesser
extent.
Who decide what is installed by default and what isn't? They're
decisions seem rather strange to me. Install all the networking
software possible and enable quota's. Is this really necessary on a
desktop machine?
OK so to the gripe I have about both Slackware and Red Hat. They both
by default enable most network services that have to be turned off
manually. It would be nice if they gave you a choice as to whether or
not to turn on telnet or netstat etc.
I think I'll end this here. I could go on but this already too long.