I'm sorry, my brain just doesn't do it, and I wasn't willing to cheat at the course. I'm guessing most people like me either cheated to pass the class, or switched majors. Part of my problem was that it was a huge hit to my self-esteem and affected all my other classes as well, though... I take full responsibility for that-- I really should have just switched majors.
Maybe you're right: maybe a lot of people can cope with it.
But what good reason is there for CS to exclude the people who can't?
For the sort of people who study Computer Science, calculus isn't difficult, and calculus is a basic tool for any kind of science. Even a medical degree or a psychology degree will require it if you want to be able to make measurements and interpret the results.
What you are looking for is not a science degree but a vocational programming course.
and with the exception of perhaps the UK, we certainly remember our friends more than they remember us.
Incorrect. The country I'm currently living in has gone along on all your post WW2 military adventures that others were invited to: Korea, Vietnam, Gulf war, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan. They might assume that they will be remembered for such loyalty, but we know better don't we?
RealityMaster, these hysterical rants about anti Americanism and about foreigners being inferior any time some damn furner disagrees with one of you guys about regardless what subject reflect badly on you all.
These days it's like anything short of complete and utter blind devotion to all things American is considered ungrateful and anti American.
If Russia joined, it would be subservient to the central EU government
There is no central EU government. The member states have a say in decisions based on their population size.
Russia is roughly a Germany plus a France in population size. Or a France, Britain and half an Italy. Or a Germany, Spain and Benelux. Basically, decisions would be made in Moscow, so this is why one European country can be absolutely sure it will never (willingly) be allowed to join the EU, and that is Russia.
'Allow' isn't the issue. Switzerland (the 'hole') and Norway (the 'foreskin') don't want to join, Ukraine isn't ready, and Russia obviously can't join as that would come down to the EU joining Russia.
The EC is much better at standing up to badly behaved companies than America.
Well, standing up to badly behaved American companies.
Selection bias. Unless the target of their actions is an American company, you will never hear about it.
ING and Royal Bank of Scotland, two of the largest financial institutions in the world, have been ordered to split up in the past few weeks. As these companies don't make gadgets, and aren't American, this news doesn't belong on slashdot, so you aren't aware of it. The EC deals with the European market, and as such primarily with European companies. You will never hear about it, it's not newsworthy in the US any more than news about Walmart is in Europe.
I'm glad we have scientific evidence to back it up, but did anyone believe this wasn't the case? Is anybody surprised by these findings?
I'm extremely surprised, and in fact very suspicious of this finding, for the simple reason that newborns are unable to control the noises they make. They're not even aware that that sound is coming from their own tiny mouths, or even that they have a mouth.
Babies have to learn what their senses mean and what their bodies can do. They don't know they have hands, and may be frightened of those little things wiggling in their field of vision, or their grasping reflex might cause them to claw their own eyes, which is unpleasant and makes them cry, but it doesn't occur to them that they can stop doing it. They may be scared of the sound of their own crying, but it doesn't occur to them that they can just stop. It's not until about 6 to 8 weeks after birth before they slowly start to realize that the weird sensation in their ears happens every time they cry, and that they have some control over this process. Gradually over the course of months they discover new sounds they can make, and like to practice those for hours on end, until they discover a new one and start to practice that.
The suggestion that newborns immediately after birth have the ability to control their vocal cords enough to imitate what they hear, be it on a conscious or subconscious level, not only goes against the literature I've read about the subject, but also against my own observations. My English 'speaking' baby cries just like my brother and I did when we were German 'speaking' babies. Not surprising, since he looks just like me as a baby, and I looked like my brother as a baby, so all three of us probably had a similarly shaped mouth and vocal cords.
I say cut our military spending until it's twice what China's is. That will save us around half a trillion per year.
That's a per capita spending lower than the average lefty liberal euro hippy commune state. You can't even maintain aircraft carriers on such a budget, let alone order new stuff.
In many states and countries, gambling is illegal or otherwise controlled.
Over here, gambling is only allowed in government controlled casinos, and all forms of online gambling are illegal.
Of course you can't stop people from using gambling sites hosted abroad, but such sites are considered criminal organizations. I doubt a programmer would be arrested on conspiracy charges just for having worked on gambling related software, but companies that require a background check might not want to take the risk, if another candidate doesn't have such a shady past.
Myself, I don't like gambling, so as with everything I don't like, I feel it should be banned:)
The only thing i get from this is "My life sucks, I hate my job so much ill publicly state i don't code when i don't have to. Oh and here... a pelican eating a rabbit."
That grey monster devouring a sweet little bunny wabbit is a grey herron!
This despicable monster is a plague worse than the biblical locusts. Swarms of these screeching monsters peck at pets and small children, make an awful mess pulling anything edible out of the garbage containers, and cover the city with their immense splashes of their foul, abrasive excrement. You think pigeon poop is a problem? A herron poops puddles the size of a pigeon! Oh and the screeching! Have you ever heard one of these monsters sing? Inflate a balloon, then stretch the nozzle while you slowly deflate it. Imagine that sound getting married and having a child with the screeching of a dinosaur from a 1950's movie, that's what it sounds like.
The worst part is, you can't do a damn thing about them. You can't shoot them because burocrats in Brussels think these freaky miscreants are 'rare' and 'protected'. You know what, these feathered meat golems only seem rare, because they all seem to have flocked to these parts.
To be fair, quite a lot of us Brits forget that there are many quite different native languages, let alone accents, on these fair and drizzly isles. English is arguaby the language of some fairly recent immigrants who were invited in to do a job and then didn't want to go home again afterwards.
It doesn't surprise me. I'm from the UK, and "Visiting the US" was always one of those things on my life's "to-do" list - seeing New York, going to the West Coast, visiting friends in Washington state, maybe even driving Route 66 one day if I had money enough and time.
But now? Well, I've heard enough horror stories by now from friends and colleagues about entering the USA that, despite me having no criminal convictions whatsoever, I'm afraid it ain't on my "to-do" list any more.
If you're from a Visa waiver country, you'll find entering the US in Atlanta or San Francisco is only a bit of trouble; nothing close to the soul destroying experience of having to run the gauntlet at Heathrow. I'll never set foot at that place ever again. If you're going to the UK, fly to Paris and take the train, it's an infinitely less depressing experience. I don't have anything nice to say about entering the country at JFK airport either. If you have to make a change over there, allow two or three hours for 'Homeland Security', and an almost realistic danger of developing the delusion that Heathrow isn't so bad after all in comparison.
Students these days don't even learn how to cut their own quills anymore, their knowledge of Latin is practically non existent, and many of them can't even recite the old testament from memory. Kids are just not adequately prepared for the universities of the late 18th century this way.
Now on a more serious note: cursive handwriting is practically illegible. When done with care, it can look classy, but it's difficult to read, and just not serious or business-like. In this day and age, handwriting is for post-it notes, not for anything formal. If you want others to read your handwriting, use print. It you enjoy cursive handwriting, join a calligraphy class.
You would think plagues and other horrible diseases should be eradicated not preserved to experiment with later. Take small pox it was supposed to be eradicated but they just won't let it die . But curing diseases would be a bad business model and lead to their eventual unemployment.
Smallpox was a virus that could only infect humans. With most humans immunized, it has nowhere else to go and it disappeared. Yersinia pestis can't be eradicated. It's a bacterium that is endemic among rodents. You would have to exterminate rodents from the wild in most of Eurasia and North America and still not completely eradicate it.
If I understand correctly, the plague wasn't transmitted from human to human, but rather from lice to humans. Since lice are nowhere near as prevalent as they used to be, you don't normally have to fear an outbreak.
The author makes a convincing argument that the Black Death was actually spread by droplet based transmission.
The plague never went away. Even after the last pandemic, people still have been contracting the plague. Yersinia pestis is still endemic among rodents in Europe, Asia and the USA. Small outbreaks, with the exact same symptoms still occur today from time to time. The history of this disease is extremely well documented, and not at all controversial.
When the infection reaches the lungs it's called Pneumonic plague, it spreads via droplets and is extremely contageous. When it infects the lymph nodes, it's called Bubonic plague. It's the same disease, just in a different organ. When the infection reaches the blood, it's called Septic Plague.
It's not as dangerous now, because we don't commonly share our homes with rodents and lice anymore, and with prompt treatment with antibiotics, the prognosis is decent.
Now I haven't read that book that you linked to, so I don't know what arguments they make, but a hypothesis that states that the black death was a different disease with the exact same symptoms as a very well known and documented disease that still occurs today seems needlessly complicated to me.
and the article glosses over that MOST water supplies in the USA are so heavily chlorinated, that the chance of this happening are nearly ZERO.
So if you have well water, you're hosed.
All the chlorination does is make the water taste and smell bad.
If you want to sterilize the water, you'll need to add so much chlorine that the water becomes dangerous to drink. Screw chlorination, it's disgusting and completely pointless.
Many people don't notice it anymore because they're so used to it that they forget what water is supposed to taste and smell like. Leave the country for some time, and when you come back, and taste the tap water, you'll find yourself buying bottled water.
Second, there's the social cost. You're either teaching them that "This routine physical activity we're requiring you to engage in is so dangerous it could *kill you* and you need to wear one of these to be safe," or "Our society is so ridiculously litigious and cowardly that this is what it's come to." That generation's going to be even more fucked up than the one that thought the TSA sounded like a good idea.
I wonder if any of you ever exercise? It has nothing to do with safety, or with big brother spying on your kid.
Using a heart rate monitor is a very common tool in training for endurance sports such as running and cycling, both to make the training more effective and to measure your progress over time.
Most people haven't had the flu in years. Most people also call any heavy cold a 'flu'. Now when experts describe the symptoms of swine flu as 'mild', most people think of a cold, meaning having the sniffles for a few days.
People who have recently experienced the actual flu remember that 'oh yeah, that used up two years worth of my sick leave last year', or 'oh yeah, that's what put mom in intensive care last winter'.
A mortality rate of 0.1% sounds like no risk at all, but if a third of the population gets it during an epidemic, that means 300000 people dead. The 99.9% survivors include people who needed intensive care, anti viral treatment, weeks on a respirator.
Most people don't bother to get flu shots, because they (probably rightly) assume that the flu wouldn't kill them. They forget that while it might not kill them, they are likely to infect a dozen others, who each infect a dozen others, etc, some of which include someone's newborn baby, or someone's grandpa, or a pregnant woman, or a kid with asthma, all of whom run a much greater risk than 0.1%
Have you seen the American Embassy in Amsterdam? The American people should honor anybody who burns it down.
Damn Nazi architechture.
Huh? There is no embassy in Amsterdam, the embassy is in The Hague. There is a consulate in Amsterdam, which has a 19th century architecture. With a double ram-proof steel bar fence, a snipers nest and a squad of heavily armed guards.
(iirc, accross the street, there is an Italian consulate, with a welcome sign, a neat little garden, no fence and no visible guards.)
It was apparently good enough to fool everyone for quite a while.
Not everyone, just Dutch people, and only for 40 years. Since everything tends to happen there 40 years later than in the rest of the world, it's safe to say this hoax could not have worked elsewhere.
Why don't we just say that fat people are worse than Hitler and be done with it?
Indeed, Hitler at least wasn't fat.
He cheated though, receiving daily amphetamine injections, so he may have been a porker inside, much in the way he claimed to be Aryan inside, despite his short stature and swarthy appearance.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, my brain just doesn't do it, and I wasn't willing to cheat at the course. I'm guessing most people like me either cheated to pass the class, or switched majors. Part of my problem was that it was a huge hit to my self-esteem and affected all my other classes as well, though... I take full responsibility for that-- I really should have just switched majors.
Maybe you're right: maybe a lot of people can cope with it.
But what good reason is there for CS to exclude the people who can't?
For the sort of people who study Computer Science, calculus isn't difficult, and calculus is a basic tool for any kind of science. Even a medical degree or a psychology degree will require it if you want to be able to make measurements and interpret the results.
What you are looking for is not a science degree but a vocational programming course.
and with the exception of perhaps the UK, we certainly remember our friends more than they remember us.
Incorrect.
The country I'm currently living in has gone along on all your post WW2 military adventures that others were invited to: Korea, Vietnam, Gulf war, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan. They might assume that they will be remembered for such loyalty, but we know better don't we?
RealityMaster, these hysterical rants about anti Americanism and about foreigners being inferior any time some damn furner disagrees with one of you guys about regardless what subject reflect badly on you all.
These days it's like anything short of complete and utter blind devotion to all things American is considered ungrateful and anti American.
If Russia joined, it would be subservient to the central EU government
There is no central EU government. The member states have a say in decisions based on their population size.
Russia is roughly a Germany plus a France in population size. Or a France, Britain and half an Italy. Or a Germany, Spain and Benelux. Basically, decisions would be made in Moscow, so this is why one European country can be absolutely sure it will never (willingly) be allowed to join the EU, and that is Russia.
If they allow Russia and Norway and Ukraine to join the EU, that penis will disappear. Like so: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Europe_(orthographic_projection).svg
'Allow' isn't the issue. Switzerland (the 'hole') and Norway (the 'foreskin') don't want to join, Ukraine isn't ready, and Russia obviously can't join as that would come down to the EU joining Russia.
The EC is much better at standing up to badly behaved companies than America.
Well, standing up to badly behaved American companies.
Selection bias. Unless the target of their actions is an American company, you will never hear about it.
ING and Royal Bank of Scotland, two of the largest financial institutions in the world, have been ordered to split up in the past few weeks. As these companies don't make gadgets, and aren't American, this news doesn't belong on slashdot, so you aren't aware of it. The EC deals with the European market, and as such primarily with European companies. You will never hear about it, it's not newsworthy in the US any more than news about Walmart is in Europe.
I'm glad we have scientific evidence to back it up, but did anyone believe this wasn't the case? Is anybody surprised by these findings?
I'm extremely surprised, and in fact very suspicious of this finding, for the simple reason that newborns are unable to control the noises they make. They're not even aware that that sound is coming from their own tiny mouths, or even that they have a mouth.
Babies have to learn what their senses mean and what their bodies can do. They don't know they have hands, and may be frightened of those little things wiggling in their field of vision, or their grasping reflex might cause them to claw their own eyes, which is unpleasant and makes them cry, but it doesn't occur to them that they can stop doing it. They may be scared of the sound of their own crying, but it doesn't occur to them that they can just stop. It's not until about 6 to 8 weeks after birth before they slowly start to realize that the weird sensation in their ears happens every time they cry, and that they have some control over this process. Gradually over the course of months they discover new sounds they can make, and like to practice those for hours on end, until they discover a new one and start to practice that.
The suggestion that newborns immediately after birth have the ability to control their vocal cords enough to imitate what they hear, be it on a conscious or subconscious level, not only goes against the literature I've read about the subject, but also against my own observations. My English 'speaking' baby cries just like my brother and I did when we were German 'speaking' babies. Not surprising, since he looks just like me as a baby, and I looked like my brother as a baby, so all three of us probably had a similarly shaped mouth and vocal cords.
I say cut our military spending until it's twice what China's is. That will save us around half a trillion per year.
That's a per capita spending lower than the average lefty liberal euro hippy commune state. You can't even maintain aircraft carriers on such a budget, let alone order new stuff.
Why would it be a black mark?
In many states and countries, gambling is illegal or otherwise controlled.
Over here, gambling is only allowed in government controlled casinos, and all forms of online gambling are illegal.
Of course you can't stop people from using gambling sites hosted abroad, but such sites are considered criminal organizations. I doubt a programmer would be arrested on conspiracy charges just for having worked on gambling related software, but companies that require a background check might not want to take the risk, if another candidate doesn't have such a shady past.
Myself, I don't like gambling, so as with everything I don't like, I feel it should be banned :)
The only thing i get from this is "My life sucks, I hate my job so much ill publicly state i don't code when i don't have to. Oh and here... a pelican eating a rabbit."
That grey monster devouring a sweet little bunny wabbit is a grey herron!
This despicable monster is a plague worse than the biblical locusts. Swarms of these screeching monsters peck at pets and small children, make an awful mess pulling anything edible out of the garbage containers, and cover the city with their immense splashes of their foul, abrasive excrement. You think pigeon poop is a problem? A herron poops puddles the size of a pigeon! Oh and the screeching! Have you ever heard one of these monsters sing? Inflate a balloon, then stretch the nozzle while you slowly deflate it. Imagine that sound getting married and having a child with the screeching of a dinosaur from a 1950's movie, that's what it sounds like.
The worst part is, you can't do a damn thing about them. You can't shoot them because burocrats in Brussels think these freaky miscreants are 'rare' and 'protected'. You know what, these feathered meat golems only seem rare, because they all seem to have flocked to these parts.
To be fair, quite a lot of us Brits forget that there are many quite different native languages, let alone accents, on these fair and drizzly isles. English is arguaby the language of some fairly recent immigrants who were invited in to do a job and then didn't want to go home again afterwards.
That could never happen again these days
It doesn't surprise me. I'm from the UK, and "Visiting the US" was always one of those things on my life's "to-do" list - seeing New York, going to the West Coast, visiting friends in Washington state, maybe even driving Route 66 one day if I had money enough and time.
But now? Well, I've heard enough horror stories by now from friends and colleagues about entering the USA that, despite me having no criminal convictions whatsoever, I'm afraid it ain't on my "to-do" list any more.
If you're from a Visa waiver country, you'll find entering the US in Atlanta or San Francisco is only a bit of trouble; nothing close to the soul destroying experience of having to run the gauntlet at Heathrow. I'll never set foot at that place ever again. If you're going to the UK, fly to Paris and take the train, it's an infinitely less depressing experience. I don't have anything nice to say about entering the country at JFK airport either. If you have to make a change over there, allow two or three hours for 'Homeland Security', and an almost realistic danger of developing the delusion that Heathrow isn't so bad after all in comparison.
Students these days don't even learn how to cut their own quills anymore, their knowledge of Latin is practically non existent, and many of them can't even recite the old testament from memory. Kids are just not adequately prepared for the universities of the late 18th century this way.
Now on a more serious note: cursive handwriting is practically illegible. When done with care, it can look classy, but it's difficult to read, and just not serious or business-like. In this day and age, handwriting is for post-it notes, not for anything formal. If you want others to read your handwriting, use print. It you enjoy cursive handwriting, join a calligraphy class.
You would think plagues and other horrible diseases should be eradicated not preserved to experiment with later. Take small pox it was supposed to be eradicated but they just won't let it die . But curing diseases would be a bad business model and lead to their eventual unemployment.
Smallpox was a virus that could only infect humans. With most humans immunized, it has nowhere else to go and it disappeared. Yersinia pestis can't be eradicated. It's a bacterium that is endemic among rodents. You would have to exterminate rodents from the wild in most of Eurasia and North America and still not completely eradicate it.
If I understand correctly, the plague wasn't transmitted from human to human, but rather from lice to humans. Since lice are nowhere near as prevalent as they used to be, you don't normally have to fear an outbreak.
Not necessarily.
The author makes a convincing argument that the Black Death was actually spread by droplet based transmission.
The plague never went away. Even after the last pandemic, people still have been contracting the plague. Yersinia pestis is still endemic among rodents in Europe, Asia and the USA. Small outbreaks, with the exact same symptoms still occur today from time to time. The history of this disease is extremely well documented, and not at all controversial.
When the infection reaches the lungs it's called Pneumonic plague, it spreads via droplets and is extremely contageous. When it infects the lymph nodes, it's called Bubonic plague. It's the same disease, just in a different organ. When the infection reaches the blood, it's called Septic Plague.
It's not as dangerous now, because we don't commonly share our homes with rodents and lice anymore, and with prompt treatment with antibiotics, the prognosis is decent.
Now I haven't read that book that you linked to, so I don't know what arguments they make, but a hypothesis that states that the black death was a different disease with the exact same symptoms as a very well known and documented disease that still occurs today seems needlessly complicated to me.
bah, copied the link from the wrong tab. This is the right one:
age of the average gamer is 33
Here on Ars Technica: age of the average gamer is 33
It shouldn't surprise you terribly, as it's an expensive hobby
Don't they have an 18+ rating for games in Australia?
Polls consistently show that the vast majority of gamers are adults.
and the article glosses over that MOST water supplies in the USA are so heavily chlorinated, that the chance of this happening are nearly ZERO.
So if you have well water, you're hosed.
All the chlorination does is make the water taste and smell bad.
If you want to sterilize the water, you'll need to add so much chlorine that the water becomes dangerous to drink. Screw chlorination, it's disgusting and completely pointless.
Many people don't notice it anymore because they're so used to it that they forget what water is supposed to taste and smell like. Leave the country for some time, and when you come back, and taste the tap water, you'll find yourself buying bottled water.
Second, there's the social cost. You're either teaching them that "This routine physical activity we're requiring you to engage in is so dangerous it could *kill you* and you need to wear one of these to be safe," or "Our society is so ridiculously litigious and cowardly that this is what it's come to." That generation's going to be even more fucked up than the one that thought the TSA sounded like a good idea.
I wonder if any of you ever exercise? It has nothing to do with safety, or with big brother spying on your kid.
Using a heart rate monitor is a very common tool in training for endurance sports such as running and cycling, both to make the training more effective and to measure your progress over time.
Some quick googling: scroll down to the table
Yup,...it'd be a pretty Odd man that eats a Maori. Pretty tough buggers those.
Tough? You're probably cooking them too fast. Have you tried preparing one sous-vide ?
Isn't it just influenza?
Most people haven't had the flu in years. Most people also call any heavy cold a 'flu'. Now when experts describe the symptoms of swine flu as 'mild', most people think of a cold, meaning having the sniffles for a few days.
People who have recently experienced the actual flu remember that 'oh yeah, that used up two years worth of my sick leave last year', or 'oh yeah, that's what put mom in intensive care last winter'.
A mortality rate of 0.1% sounds like no risk at all, but if a third of the population gets it during an epidemic, that means 300000 people dead. The 99.9% survivors include people who needed intensive care, anti viral treatment, weeks on a respirator.
Most people don't bother to get flu shots, because they (probably rightly) assume that the flu wouldn't kill them. They forget that while it might not kill them, they are likely to infect a dozen others, who each infect a dozen others, etc, some of which include someone's newborn baby, or someone's grandpa, or a pregnant woman, or a kid with asthma, all of whom run a much greater risk than 0.1%
1 semester of "Linux" is a required course at my college
Have you seen the American Embassy in Amsterdam? The American people should honor anybody who burns it down.
Damn Nazi architechture.
Huh? There is no embassy in Amsterdam, the embassy is in The Hague. There is a consulate in Amsterdam, which has a 19th century architecture. With a double ram-proof steel bar fence, a snipers nest and a squad of heavily armed guards.
(iirc, accross the street, there is an Italian consulate, with a welcome sign, a neat little garden, no fence and no visible guards.)
It was apparently good enough to fool everyone for quite a while.
Not everyone, just Dutch people, and only for 40 years. Since everything tends to happen there 40 years later than in the rest of the world, it's safe to say this hoax could not have worked elsewhere.
Why don't we just say that fat people are worse than Hitler and be done with it?
Indeed, Hitler at least wasn't fat.
He cheated though, receiving daily amphetamine injections, so he may have been a porker inside, much in the way he claimed to be Aryan inside, despite his short stature and swarthy appearance.