What you're talking about is called the "central limit theorem", which holds for the summation of iid (independent, identically distributed) random variables of any kind of distribution with finite mean and variance.
I'm not in the life sciences, but I don't believe it's been "proven" that homosexuality is caused by a hormonal difference. I think that they have found correlations between homosexuality and the size of one of the glands in the brain (I think it's the adrenal gland...it's the one that affects hunger, thirst, and sexual drive). Correlation doesn't imply causation; the classical example, which seems to come up in every intro to psych course, is the correlation between incidences of rape and consumption of ice cream. They are correlated, but one doesn't cause the other (they have a common cause, both increase in the summertime). So, you can't say a priori that homosexuality is *caused* by differences in the adrenal glands of homosexuals: they might have another, common cause, or it's even possible that homosexuality causes a change in the adrenal gland! (Perhaps something which is more common in homosexual lifestyle causes this. Maybe homosexuals eat more Thai food or something. I don't know any openly homosexual people, so I won't pretend to guess what it could be) At any rate, I don't believe that a biological basis for homosexuality is accepted by the scientific community at large.
As for the arguments for and against homosexuality being *natural*; as others have mentioned here, I think this line of reasoning is misguided. *Natural* doesn't necessarily mean *right* or *good* or *moral*. We do many things that aren't natural: cook our food, wear clothing, fly in airplanes, etc. Just because nobody else in the animal kingdom does these things, doesn't make them wrong. Likewise, even if homosexuality is a natural thing, that doesn't necessarily make it right. Rats have been observed to murder each other without apparent cause, so does that make it natural, and therefore OK, for us to murder without cause? I don't think the personal decision on whether or not homosexuality is moral should be based on whether or not it's natural.
(For the record, I'm straight, and I don't think homosexuality is immoral. Then again, I'm Canadian. I also think that homosexuality does have a biological cause, but don't ask me to prove it.) ---
Categorizing and generalization aren't just properties of "the world today" (marketing people aside). Human beings break down the world into easily digestible chunks so we can deal with it. It's just part of our nature. Admittedly, in many situations the world doesn't present itself as something that can be broken down into neat little categories, but that doesn't mean that human beings will stop doing it.
I'm not defending the generalization of any group (geeks included), but I am explaining it as human nature, and not simply a product of the "mainstream media", though they may exacerbate it.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a great book about (among other things) how we tend to slice things up in Western culture. ---
I'm going to have to disagree. First of all, we're talking about technical terminology, not ordinary language. Technical terminology exists because, by definition, technical terms require unambiguous meaning. This is what distinguishes them from ordinary language, and which is why jargon is, unfortunately, essential in areas like science. Physics, for example, requires very precise definitions of energy, momentum, etc. These terms aren't permitted to "evolve" like ordinary language does, they can only be changed by an explicit consensus of the community.
Second of all, the terminology isn't being re-defined in this case, it's simply being restricted to one of two possible interpretations, the one which is consistent with the rest of the metric system. I don't think it's going to blow away the whole computer industry if we force KB and MB to refer strictly to powers of 10.
Then again, we're talking about one of the only places of the world that was incapable of incoporating the metric system into their society, so maybe this humble Canadian is hoping for too much of the U.S. ----
The difference between software piracy and more conventional theft (like shoplifting), is the difference between 'harming' another and 'wronging' another.
I think everybody knows what 'harming' means. If you walk into a store and take a piece of merchandise, you've harmed the owner of the store. However, if you copy a piece of software, you haven't harmed the software company (unless you would've bought the software otherwise), since the company is no worse off for you copying it.
However, you can 'wrong' somebody without harming them. A simple example is the act of eavesdropping. Slashdot frequenters tend to be acutely vocal about their right to privacy. If telephone operators listened in on your conversations (but never acted on this information), then they wouldn't be harming you. But, you would be 'wronged', and you'd probably be pretty pissed if you ever found out about it. So certain laws are in place to prevent individuals from being wronged, even if they aren't harmed. It is in this sense that software piracy is illegal. You are wronging the developers of the software by illegally copying and using their software.
I think the reason there is so much debate on this issue is that many people simply don't think that using pirated software is 'wronging' the company. I wonder if it would be consolation to them if somebody who was spying on you (listening on your telephone conversations, watching you change through your window, etc.) didn't think it was 'wronging' you to spy. It isn't your place to decide which laws apply to you, and which don't. If you truly believe that it should be your right to use software you wouldn't normally buy or couldn't afford, then maybe you should try changing the laws.
I don't want to come off as holier-than-thou. I've certainly used my share of pirated software in my time. However, it's important to point out how software piracy is immoral, even if it isn't like shoplifting.
(And for those who don't like the term 'piracy', I think you're being a bit silly. When I talk of 'highway robbery', I don't think of a storeowner holding me up at gunpoint!) --------
Did anyone catch the article in IEEE Spectrum a few months ago on the etymology of "kludge"? IIRC, it seems that this term was NOT used pejoratively in the navy, but referred to a complex device. There was a very amusing (apocryphal) anecdote about a sailor whose official title was "Kludgemeister, first class". I don't think kludgemeister would catch on, but it sounds cool to me.
If a "hack" can be a bad thing, but a hacker can be a term of esteem, the same concept could apply to kludgemeister. I also like "Code Warrior", but I don't think Metrowerks would like losing their trademark because the term entered the venacular. -------
I'm not a physics majour, but I think you're abusing the language a bit to prove your point.
If you were somehow able to get an electron to *stop*, you'd know its velocity precisely, and so the uncertainty in its position would be infinite. It wouldn't necessarily be anywhere NEAR the nucleus in question.
Besides, it isn't quite proper to say that electrons avoid colliding with nuclei because the elctrons are moving. You should say it's because they can only occupy certain energy states. If electrons simply orbited nuclei like the Earth orbits the Sun, they WOULD eventually spiral into their respective nuclei, and the universe wouldn't have lasted very long. -------
Not sure about CS, but in CE (computer engineering) at McGill it's mostly UNIX, though this is changing, unfortunately.
When I started at McGill, everbody in EE and CE was using the UNIX (SPARC) computer lab, and almost nobody used the PC labs. Now, the NT lab is almost always full, and the UNIX lab is almost always empty. The new guys don't even get UNIX accounts, and don't know how to navigate UNIX (making the OS course quite the culture shock, I would imagine).
When I took OS at McGill, the prof. was a huge MS hater. As you can expect, it was all UNIX. In fact, for the last assignment we had to modify the Linux scheduler and observe task-switching performance (there was much logistical fun in giving a class of 80 students root privileges so they could recompile and install a kernel...)
However, that prof has since left. In last semester's class, the assignments were all written by the T.A. I think most of them were in UNIX, except the last one, which (I believed) used NT fibers (the assignment had to do with designing a scheduler for a multiprocessor system, I think). The reason he used NT is that, for what he wanted to do with the students, it was easier to learn from the Microsoft documentation than from the Linux documentation.
Aside from the slow trend away from UNIX, I think there's a lesson there. There's a lot of things you can blame MS for, but I think their documentation system is MUCH easier to read than good ol' UNIX man pages. --
Crime up 30% in Australia
on
Why Kids Kill
·
· Score: 1
That's a nice statistic, but without context, it's meaningless. Have they done studies to show that the CAUSE of the increase is the gun control laws? And, if it turns out that it isn't the gun control laws that have caused the increase, then it must be due to some other factor. Then, how do you know if it wouldn't have increased even MORE without the laws.
Statistics without context are meaningless.
--
myth: "no school shootings in Canada"
on
Why Kids Kill
·
· Score: 1
He wasn't a student. One of the reasons he reacted is because he didn't get into the school, and he thought that women had taken his place.
Slashdot Mirror
What you're talking about is called the "central limit theorem", which holds for the summation of iid (independent, identically distributed) random variables of any kind of distribution with finite mean and variance.
My cablemodem works just fine in Linux. Why shouldn't it? All I need is for Linux to recognize my ethernet card and do DHCP properly.
I'm not in the life sciences, but I don't believe it's been "proven" that homosexuality is caused by a hormonal difference. I think that they have found correlations between homosexuality and the size of one of the glands in the brain (I think it's the adrenal gland...it's the one that affects hunger, thirst, and sexual drive). Correlation doesn't imply causation; the classical example, which seems to come up in every intro to psych course, is the correlation between incidences of rape and consumption of ice cream. They are correlated, but one doesn't cause the other (they have a common cause, both increase in the summertime). So, you can't say a priori that homosexuality is *caused* by differences in the adrenal glands of homosexuals: they might have another, common cause, or it's even possible that homosexuality causes a change in the adrenal gland! (Perhaps something which is more common in homosexual lifestyle causes this. Maybe homosexuals eat more Thai food or something. I don't know any openly homosexual people, so I won't pretend to guess what it could be) At any rate, I don't believe that a biological basis for homosexuality is accepted by the scientific community at large.
As for the arguments for and against homosexuality being *natural*; as others have mentioned here, I think this line of reasoning is misguided. *Natural* doesn't necessarily mean *right* or *good* or *moral*. We do many things that aren't natural: cook our food, wear clothing, fly in airplanes, etc. Just because nobody else in the animal kingdom does these things, doesn't make them wrong. Likewise, even if homosexuality is a natural thing, that doesn't necessarily make it right. Rats have been observed to murder each other without apparent cause, so does that make it natural, and therefore OK, for us to murder without cause? I don't think the personal decision on whether or not homosexuality is moral should be based on whether or not it's natural.
(For the record, I'm straight, and I don't think homosexuality is immoral. Then again, I'm Canadian. I also think that homosexuality does have a biological cause, but don't ask me to prove it.)
---
Categorizing and generalization aren't just properties of "the world today" (marketing people aside). Human beings break down the world into easily digestible chunks so we can deal with it. It's just part of our nature. Admittedly, in many situations the world doesn't present itself as something that can be broken down into neat little categories, but that doesn't mean that human beings will stop doing it.
I'm not defending the generalization of any group (geeks included), but I am explaining it as human nature, and not simply a product of the "mainstream media", though they may exacerbate it.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a great book about (among other things) how we tend to slice things up in Western culture.
---
I'm going to have to disagree. First of all, we're talking about technical terminology, not ordinary language. Technical terminology exists because, by definition, technical terms require unambiguous meaning. This is what distinguishes them from ordinary language, and which is why jargon is, unfortunately, essential in areas like science. Physics, for example, requires very precise definitions of energy, momentum, etc. These terms aren't permitted to "evolve" like ordinary language does, they can only be changed by an explicit consensus of the community.
Second of all, the terminology isn't being re-defined in this case, it's simply being restricted to one of two possible interpretations, the one which is consistent with the rest of the metric system. I don't think it's going to blow away the whole computer industry if we force KB and MB to refer strictly to powers of 10.
Then again, we're talking about one of the only places of the world that was incapable of incoporating the metric system into their society, so maybe this humble Canadian is hoping for too much of the U.S.
----
The difference between software piracy and more conventional theft (like shoplifting), is the difference between 'harming' another and 'wronging' another.
I think everybody knows what 'harming' means. If you walk into a store and take a piece of merchandise, you've harmed the owner of the store. However, if you copy a piece of software, you haven't harmed the software company (unless you would've bought the software otherwise), since the company is no worse off for you copying it.
However, you can 'wrong' somebody without harming them. A simple example is the act of eavesdropping. Slashdot frequenters tend to be acutely vocal about their right to privacy. If telephone operators listened in on your conversations (but never acted on this information), then they wouldn't be harming you. But, you would be 'wronged', and you'd probably be pretty pissed if you ever found out about it. So certain laws are in place to prevent individuals from being wronged, even if they aren't harmed. It is in this sense that software piracy is illegal. You are wronging the developers of the software by illegally copying and using their software.
I think the reason there is so much debate on this issue is that many people simply don't think that using pirated software is 'wronging' the company. I wonder if it would be consolation to them if somebody who was spying on you (listening on your telephone conversations, watching you change through your window, etc.) didn't think it was 'wronging' you to spy. It isn't your place to decide which laws apply to you, and which don't. If you truly believe that it should be your right to use software you wouldn't normally buy or couldn't afford, then maybe you should try changing the laws.
I don't want to come off as holier-than-thou. I've certainly used my share of pirated software in my time. However, it's important to point out how software piracy is immoral, even if it isn't like shoplifting.
(And for those who don't like the term 'piracy', I think you're being a bit silly. When I talk of 'highway robbery', I don't think of a storeowner holding me up at gunpoint!)
--------
Did anyone catch the article in IEEE Spectrum a few months ago on the etymology of "kludge"? IIRC, it seems that this term was NOT used pejoratively in the navy, but referred to a complex device. There was a very amusing (apocryphal) anecdote about a sailor whose official title was "Kludgemeister, first class". I don't think kludgemeister would catch on, but it sounds cool to me.
If a "hack" can be a bad thing, but a hacker can be a term of esteem, the same concept could apply to kludgemeister. I also like "Code Warrior", but I don't think Metrowerks would like losing their trademark because the term entered the venacular.
-------
I'm not a physics majour, but I think you're abusing the language a bit to prove your point.
If you were somehow able to get an electron to *stop*, you'd know its velocity precisely, and so the uncertainty in its position would be infinite. It wouldn't necessarily be anywhere NEAR the nucleus in question.
Besides, it isn't quite proper to say that electrons avoid colliding with nuclei because the elctrons are moving. You should say it's because they can only occupy certain energy states. If electrons simply orbited nuclei like the Earth orbits the Sun, they WOULD eventually spiral into their respective nuclei, and the universe wouldn't have lasted very long.
-------
Not sure about CS, but in CE (computer engineering) at McGill it's mostly UNIX, though this is changing, unfortunately.
When I started at McGill, everbody in EE and CE was using the UNIX (SPARC) computer lab, and almost nobody used the PC labs. Now, the NT lab is almost always full, and the UNIX lab is almost always empty. The new guys don't even get UNIX accounts, and don't know how to navigate UNIX (making the OS course quite the culture shock, I would imagine).
When I took OS at McGill, the prof. was a huge MS hater. As you can expect, it was all UNIX. In fact, for the last assignment we had to modify the Linux scheduler and observe task-switching performance (there was much logistical fun in giving a class of 80 students root privileges so they could recompile and install a kernel...)
However, that prof has since left. In last semester's class, the assignments were all written by the T.A. I think most of them were in UNIX, except the last one, which (I believed) used NT fibers (the assignment had to do with designing a scheduler for a multiprocessor system, I think). The reason he used NT is that, for what he wanted to do with the students, it was easier to learn from the Microsoft documentation than from the Linux documentation.
Aside from the slow trend away from UNIX, I think there's a lesson there. There's a lot of things you can blame MS for, but I think their documentation system is MUCH easier to read than good ol' UNIX man pages.
--
That's a nice statistic, but without context, it's meaningless. Have they done studies to show that the CAUSE of the increase is the gun control laws? And, if it turns out that it isn't the gun control laws that have caused the increase, then it must be due to some other factor. Then, how do you know if it wouldn't have increased even MORE without the laws.
Statistics without context are meaningless.
--
He wasn't a student. One of the reasons he reacted is because he didn't get into the school, and he thought that women had taken his place.