It was never meant as more than an illustration of 'curved space' and how that might affect motion, which would be easy for lay-people to follow intuitively.
Also, all theories are 'fundamentally flawed'; we all know that. The best we can hope for, using the scientific method, is that we can discover more and more of the flaws and get rid of them. That is the fundamental insigt one needs to understand science: we knows we are wrong, but we have a method that brings us a little closer to the truth, if just we keep working on it. And even a flawed model can be useful, if the flaws are not too big for practical purposes.
How does a non-technical manager add value to a team of self-motivated software developers?
By leaving? But, more seriously, a good, non-technical manager can actually be of value to a technical team, if he understands his role, which is it to take care of all the non-technical management - and nothing else.
To illustrate: I once had a manager who used to say "leading programmers is like herding cats", which brilliantly demonstrates that he doesn't understand programmers, leadership and cats. Firstly, thinking that "leading" is similar to "herding" means that you believe your staff are no more than non-thinking cattle. But programmers ARE a bit like cats - they have a mind of their own and see you as their equals - at best. The secret to leading cats - and to any good leadership - is to treat them with genuine respect, so they get to trust you, and never try to hem them in without a very good reason, because they will just walk away. You have to be the sort of person they want to follow.
Most non-technical managers just aren't the kind of person a techie would want to follow, sadly. I suppose at least part of the reason is that in order to be successful in a management career, you have to have a rather conformist mindset; you need to be somebody who likes rules and feels that it is wrong to question them. A technical career, on the other hand, requires you to ask critical questions all the time - you can see how that might make the relationship difficult.
Language is an amazing thing, especially Australian English; there is hardly a word in the dictionary that isn't somehow a profanity in Australia (http://www.koalanet.com.au/australian-slang.html):
Root (verb and noun) : synonym for f*ck in nearly all its senses: "I feel rooted"; "this washing machine is rooted"; "(s)he's a good root". A very useful word in fairly polite company. Root rat : somebody who is constantly looking for sex. Wombat : somebody who eats, roots and leaves (see also root)
It never ceases to amaze me that religious people - Christians - seem to be so almost universally against contraception. Is it really better to be born into a lifetime of guaranteed, hopeless poverty and suffering, than simply not being brought into existence at all? I wonder what those 'blessed' with that existence would say, if the faith-mongers would care enough listen? Religion is not necessarily evil, but when your personal opinion gets to be called 'faith' and becomes more important that real life and real people, then it is hard to think of any other word for it.
I think, to be fair, that this bit of research is pretty inconsequential. Most people simply don't have the insight to understand what evolution is about - as evidenced by much of the discussion on this forum. It's like accepting general relativity or quantum mechanics - if you believe or disbelieve simply because the group you associate with believes or disbelieves, then it is no better than following the fashion of the day.
The danger in a democracy, however, is that there is a risk that popular sentiment can influence scientific research indirectly, through funding and otherwise; for that reason alone, science should work at being more appealing and to the public. It shouldn't be hard, either - just point out how all the benefits we enjoy today are directly connected to science in general. Without the insights of QM and GR we would have no computers and other modern electronics; without those and the insight of the theory of evolution, we would have very little modern medicine: no cure for bacterial infections, and we wouldn't now be just on the verge of cracking cancer, genetic diseases, Alzheimer and viruses, just to mention a few.
... teens actually interact less face-to-face than earlier generations...
I wonder how old you are? Not far out of your teens?
This is not to belittle your opinions, but although the article doesn't present any evidence, it is something that rings true to me, having grown up in a pre-PC and -internet age. When I was a child, it was common - expected, even - that you let your children go out on their own every day after school without worrying much about what they got up to. I never once got driven to school - I had a bicycle, and it was only about 3 km (a couple of miles, for the metrically challenged) along a country lane with only the occasional lorry barreling past. And what do children do when they are on their own? They find other children their age and play, working out their social skills together.
But nowadays parents molly-cuddle their children, so they hardly ever get to scrape a knee or get into minor trouble - get themselves good and dirty. I don't think they lack social skills so much as the freedom and opportunity to take responsibility for their own lives - there is always a parent to head off any trouble they might get into, until they move away from home, and they find themselves unprepared for the amounts of shit that cascades into their lives. Social media and games wouldn't be so attractive, if they weren't such a convenient way to get away from over-protective parents, I think.
This sounds like an advert for Apple, simply. Already for that reason alone, I am not going to read the articles.
Calling what I suspect is just a souped up fashion statement a "work horse", is probably just a symptom of cluelessness. And wanting to do the same with Windows supports that diagnosis. A "work horse" is a big, sweaty and dirty animal, not a dainty thing to take on a fashionable stroll along the promenade; and a souped up Macintosh or PC is more like a rich kid's toy car than a tractor. I don't know if you have noticed, but you don't often see a Ferrari pulling a plough - there's a reason for that.
As for the price - for $10000 you could get a decent sized Dell PowerEdge server; or even a Sun SPARC, IBM pSeries or HP if that takes your fancy. All of them are real work horses and all run operating systems that are meant for real work. True, you can't play games on them, and they don't pull chicks, but it is amazing how often that is not a major concern when you need to hold down a job.
Internet users have sadly grown used to having their every click and scroll measured by advertisers...
Have they? I haven't - instead, I have installed things like NoScript, AdBlocker and other, and I use them to good effect. I always block all illustrations from sites that I find annoying - in fact, I mostly block the whole site with a wildcard. I only ever allow JavaScript temporarily - true, I have to reload many sites several times, but it works for me, and I rarely have to tolerate any of the obnoxious crap that others have to learn to ignore.
Wouldn't it be nice if it wasn't necessary? I can't for my life see why advertisers keep believing that they get value for their money when they so blatantly intrude on people's attention. The only effect it has on me is, that I make sure not to buy crap that has been pushed in this manner.
Sure, it's great that there may be better support for developing games on Linux in the future, but I am not sure it makes all that much difference. It certainly won't to me, if all it means is that we are going to have the existing games ported Linux. I stopped taking an interest in games long ago, because there is no true innovation - it is always just about more 'relistic' graphics, more 'stunning' effects etc; but the actual games underneath haven't really developed since the very beginning.
What I'd really like to see is a type of social game that is strongly focused on learning and experimentation, something that will stretch and develop your academic skills. Examples:
- You are part of a team of researchers working together, trying to learn the secrets of some advanced, scientific subject - something above high-school level.
- You are creating a new universe, designing physical laws etc. Can you create life - and what is the definition of life in your universe?
- You are a hero, you are on a quest to find a treasure and probably kill a number of monsters. But your world is not quite what you are used to. Space is not Euclidean, it may not even be a smooth manifold - the topology may not be Hausdorff, and you are influenced by force fields that are... different. You only know that the laws of logic are valid. Probably.
First of all - I admire and respect your sentiment, and it is something I strive towards as well, although I am less modest about its merits. To me, this is what science is all about, on the philosophical plane.
But about making a joke - I think all good humour strives to win over the ones that are on the receiving end of the joke. We know it is never fully successful - there are plenty of people who are well-prepared to take offence of anything they hear - but the intent of good humour is always friendly, and as a result, a lot of people accept it as humour, even if they feel it is rather naughty.
If I may tire you with an anecdote: A couple of months ago there was a program on the BBC, starring Anne Widdecombe, who is very much one for spotting an offence - taking it to heart; she is a Christian and feels that her faith is beleaguered on all fronts, and is being ridiculed. She was particularly upset by the scene in "Life of Brian" where a group of people have been crucified and start singing "Always look at the bright side of life". However, she also interviewed some prominent priest or theologian (don't remember the name), who said that to him, this was one of the most epically funny things he had ever seen in his life.
... It's that people don't get to have a right to not be offended....
This is where I felt he said that people don't have a right to be offended - on re-reading, I can see that it may be interpreted differently: that he protests against people not being allowed to feel offended. Mea culpa; I should have read it more carefully.
It's not that nobody should ever be offended by a joke. It's that people don't get to have a right to not be offended. If you're not offending someone, you didn't say anything of value. The point of free speech is to cause people to question their deeply held beliefs, which invariably will leads to taking offense, or they wouldn't be deeply held beliefs.
Wow, what astonishing insights you have on offer. Yes, all good humour plays in the region bordering on the offensive, but saying that people don't have right to be offended is plain idiocy. After all, what is the point of offending, if people don't get offended?
However, "offensive" is not the same as "humour" - good humour is when you are able to persuade the "victim" that you are playing, that you want them you to laugh with you.
I don't think this problems is limited to 'coding', whatever that means. It is easy to learn something, when you are motivated; so finding things that motivate students is crucial. Personally, I am not convinced that making games is the best motivation - initially it will sound very interesting, but as soon as it turns out that the game you are able to make is not going to be the all-singing, all-dancing version of your favourite game, the motivation is replaced by disappointment.
I suspect it is a lot easier to start with something more realistic, that the student is already interested in. From my own background: when I was about 12 or 13 years old, I got very interested in astrology (yes, I know, I know, but that's not the point here); however, it was difficult and expensive to get hold of the all-important tables of planetary positions. So, I taught myself to write BASIC programs for the school's computer, I learned enough about how the planets moved to satisfy my limited understanding, and I made a program that would calculate planetary positions of a sort. From there it was easy to continue - the first step is always the hardest.
A little postscript for those who are jumping up and down over my mention of astrology: yes, I agree that it is bogus. However, it motivated me at the time, and I still have a certain fondness for the subject. And I still read my daily horoscope - otherwise, how else would I know how I feel today?
I think, in this whole debate there is a lot of confused issues.
Yes, eagles are important in the eco-system as top-level predators, but they are not the only important thing; they are just "iconic", whatever that means (it probably just means they sell better ). But all part of the environment are important - including conckroaches, rats and intestinal parasites; they are just not so "iconic". It is the balance that is important, the totality.
Humans are also part of the environment, and we are not always harmful. Quite a lot of the landscapes we try to preserve are man-made; humans keep cattle; cattle eat everything over a certain height, opening op the landscape for a large number of small species that would not otherwise survive there, etc.
Also, we are not the only species with a potentially negative impact on the environment; but we do seem to be the only species with the ability to understand the impact we have. And with that understanding comes, of course, the opportunity to make an informed choice. Some would say we have a moral obligation to make the best choice, according to our undestanding.
What a strange world, where on the one hand, people are increasingly paranoid about 'government' or 'corporations' snooping at our private lives, and on the other, the self-same people are mad about iPad, iPhone, Google Glass, etc - all of which are constantly giving away their privacy. And of course, when you point this out in a public forum, you get hit by the mod-censorship. So much for people's love of freedom and the right to speek. Ironic, really.
No, I had to look it up too. Apparently it is about teenage rebellion and was published in 1951, at a time just before being a teenager was seen as something different that deserved a name for itself; as far as I remember, the term "teenager" is relatively new, and the idea that teenagers would reject the ideas of their parents was surprising, to say the least. On that background, perhaps it isn't surprising that it was a powerful book at the time, but I feel the subject is somewhat dated now. The "youth revolution" in the 60es was about the widespread feeling that the parent generation had let their children down, on one hand being far too controlling and restrictive, while on the other hand not caring about them and guiding them in a world where everything seemed to be teetering on the brink. And the 50es was where it started, with Rock'n'Roll and teeange culture.
I love this socialist half-paradise, where Wall Street profits are privatized, gigantic losses from gambling with people's deposits are publicly insured, and intellectual works are treated like a turkey thrown into a pit filled with hyenas.
I love your graphic description, but you should get your concepts straight. Wall Street wouldn't have existed in a Socialist state, and they would have been more likely to socialise than privatise.
...target one person, such as a specific foreign citizen on an H-1B visa
Perhaps in the US; however we don't have that particular concept in Europe, but still see the same problem. Recently, there has been a large number of web-business startups advertising for skillsets that simply don't exist - or are not likely to be found anywhere - such as "5 years' experience with AWS, puppet, Jenkins and vSphere".
I mean, these tools may have been around for longer than 5 years, but cloud computing has only really taken off here in the last couple of years, I think; how would anybody have built up that much experience with them? And you can see these jobs being advertised over and over by different agencies, so they simply can't find the people they thnik they need. The likeliest explanation is that these companies don't understand that hiring engineers is a long-term investment, and that no matter how clever a new guy is, he/she will need specific training and it will take time. Even a factory worker at an old-fashioned assembly line needs to be trained, and software engineering is more complex than that.
Recycling is only a poor excuse for not addressing the problem, which is that we produce things that are meant to be thrown out immediately, such as plastic bags. It isn't impossible to live without those things - there are in fact shops around, where you can buy at least some things unwrapped. It is only a matter of making the effort and being a tiny bit creative.
It is of course illegal to not hire somebody simply because of their age, but that is what goes on all the time. Many if us have been in that situation, one way or another. Personally, I got "made redundant" - which means that tecnically, that position should no longer be required, but funny enough, they hired a younger guy in his late twenties to do my job. Only, it was in 'another' department. I'd been there for over 10 years, won awards and generally had briiliant feed-back from my colleagues, and was loyal and hard-working.
It has taken me 7 months to secure a new job. I have been to how many interviews? 20, maybe 30; it generally goes like this: they seem my CV and love it. I have a telehone interview and they love me for my skills and experience. I come to a face to face, and have a very good conversation. And then I get a rejection because of some minor triviality, like 'not enough in-depth knowledge of what-ever' - something that is clearly not the real reason: namely, that I am 'old', ie. over 50.
And that is such a ridiculous reason on all levels. Even when I was a child, 50 was not 'old', and you were expected to work until you were about 65 - even in manual labour. I have ages of experience with UNIX, Linux, C, C++, Oracle, DB2,... - even Fortran and COBOL, and I am physically stronger and more agile than a large proportion of younger developers. According to the stats, I have some 30 - 40 years of healthy and productive life ahead of me, and according to other stats, society will very soon not be able to care for the pensioners, if people have to retire at an age of just 50. Or 60, or even 70, for that matter. This is going to hit those also, who idiotically won't offer employment to middle-aged people, because if society struggles financially, then the value of everybody's savings will be hit, and that ultimately means your retirement money.
Owning land requires money which requires some job other than hunting and foraging
Up to a point, old chap. The privileged few that own the vast majority of land have rarely had their hands out of their pockets, except to hold a cocktail.
Also there is absolutely no way that this planet can support 7 billion people (or even 1 billion) via hunting and foraging
Depends on what you forage for. If you'll settle for insects and grass, then who knows?
It is very easy to stir these young men up into an anti-Japanese frenzy
It is indeed easy to stir just about ANY young man up; as you ought to remember, if you ever were one.
Apart from that, China has particular reason to feel resentful about Japan, who occupied China in a particularly atrocious way during WWII. And who, unlike Germany, have never lifted a finger to prosecute their war criminals, AFAIK; in fact, they seem to worship them like heroes.
Would it be wise to fight Japan? Certainly not, but I don't think the US are going to involved if they scrap over a desolate island or two, as the US are already engaged elsewhere.
The impact on global climate would be NOTHING MEASURABLE whatsoever
Ah, the good old "It ain't perfect, so I won't have it" fallacy. I can't imagine anybody thinking that this in itself has a significant impact, but that isn't the purpose - it is about starting on the journey. It may be a ten thousand mile journey, but if you don't take the first step, you will never start moving. And unless your body is of a somewhat unusual configuration, you will not be able to do it in one, easy stride. So, get off your backside and start moving forward.
I have seen some of the answers given by other people, and many seem to miss the point of floating point calculations. Floating point is by its very nature imprecise, and when you choose to use it, you have to keep that in mind - the task you want to perform must be one where a certain degree of imprecision does not matter. What you are after is not exact reproducibility, but simply that your results stay within accepted error margins, and depending on the nature of your calculations, these may be very wide - I believe you can still find astronimical measurements where ther error margin is something like +/- 200%.
However, it is a misconception to equate "maths" with "doing numbers", as only a fairly minor part of mathematics have to with numbers; and there are, in fact, computer tools out there for non-numerical calculations, like GAP (http://www.gap-system.org/). And although I haven't seen Mathematica for many years, I believe one of its main features is the ability to solve equations symbolically - ie without numerical caulculations - the result of which is going to be either correct and therefore precise, or incorrect.
Slashdot Mirror
I have never like it as an analogy either.
It was never meant as more than an illustration of 'curved space' and how that might affect motion, which would be easy for lay-people to follow intuitively.
Also, all theories are 'fundamentally flawed'; we all know that. The best we can hope for, using the scientific method, is that we can discover more and more of the flaws and get rid of them. That is the fundamental insigt one needs to understand science: we knows we are wrong, but we have a method that brings us a little closer to the truth, if just we keep working on it. And even a flawed model can be useful, if the flaws are not too big for practical purposes.
How does a non-technical manager add value to a team of self-motivated software developers?
By leaving? But, more seriously, a good, non-technical manager can actually be of value to a technical team, if he understands his role, which is it to take care of all the non-technical management - and nothing else.
To illustrate: I once had a manager who used to say "leading programmers is like herding cats", which brilliantly demonstrates that he doesn't understand programmers, leadership and cats. Firstly, thinking that "leading" is similar to "herding" means that you believe your staff are no more than non-thinking cattle. But programmers ARE a bit like cats - they have a mind of their own and see you as their equals - at best. The secret to leading cats - and to any good leadership - is to treat them with genuine respect, so they get to trust you, and never try to hem them in without a very good reason, because they will just walk away. You have to be the sort of person they want to follow.
Most non-technical managers just aren't the kind of person a techie would want to follow, sadly. I suppose at least part of the reason is that in order to be successful in a management career, you have to have a rather conformist mindset; you need to be somebody who likes rules and feels that it is wrong to question them. A technical career, on the other hand, requires you to ask critical questions all the time - you can see how that might make the relationship difficult.
Language is an amazing thing, especially Australian English; there is hardly a word in the dictionary that isn't somehow a profanity in Australia (http://www.koalanet.com.au/australian-slang.html):
Root (verb and noun) : synonym for f*ck in nearly all its senses: "I feel rooted"; "this washing machine is rooted"; "(s)he's a good root". A very useful word in fairly polite company.
Root rat : somebody who is constantly looking for sex.
Wombat : somebody who eats, roots and leaves (see also root)
It never ceases to amaze me that religious people - Christians - seem to be so almost universally against contraception. Is it really better to be born into a lifetime of guaranteed, hopeless poverty and suffering, than simply not being brought into existence at all? I wonder what those 'blessed' with that existence would say, if the faith-mongers would care enough listen? Religion is not necessarily evil, but when your personal opinion gets to be called 'faith' and becomes more important that real life and real people, then it is hard to think of any other word for it.
I think, to be fair, that this bit of research is pretty inconsequential. Most people simply don't have the insight to understand what evolution is about - as evidenced by much of the discussion on this forum. It's like accepting general relativity or quantum mechanics - if you believe or disbelieve simply because the group you associate with believes or disbelieves, then it is no better than following the fashion of the day.
The danger in a democracy, however, is that there is a risk that popular sentiment can influence scientific research indirectly, through funding and otherwise; for that reason alone, science should work at being more appealing and to the public. It shouldn't be hard, either - just point out how all the benefits we enjoy today are directly connected to science in general. Without the insights of QM and GR we would have no computers and other modern electronics; without those and the insight of the theory of evolution, we would have very little modern medicine: no cure for bacterial infections, and we wouldn't now be just on the verge of cracking cancer, genetic diseases, Alzheimer and viruses, just to mention a few.
... teens actually interact less face-to-face than earlier generations ...
I wonder how old you are? Not far out of your teens?
This is not to belittle your opinions, but although the article doesn't present any evidence, it is something that rings true to me, having grown up in a pre-PC and -internet age. When I was a child, it was common - expected, even - that you let your children go out on their own every day after school without worrying much about what they got up to. I never once got driven to school - I had a bicycle, and it was only about 3 km (a couple of miles, for the metrically challenged) along a country lane with only the occasional lorry barreling past. And what do children do when they are on their own? They find other children their age and play, working out their social skills together.
But nowadays parents molly-cuddle their children, so they hardly ever get to scrape a knee or get into minor trouble - get themselves good and dirty. I don't think they lack social skills so much as the freedom and opportunity to take responsibility for their own lives - there is always a parent to head off any trouble they might get into, until they move away from home, and they find themselves unprepared for the amounts of shit that cascades into their lives. Social media and games wouldn't be so attractive, if they weren't such a convenient way to get away from over-protective parents, I think.
This sounds like an advert for Apple, simply. Already for that reason alone, I am not going to read the articles.
Calling what I suspect is just a souped up fashion statement a "work horse", is probably just a symptom of cluelessness. And wanting to do the same with Windows supports that diagnosis. A "work horse" is a big, sweaty and dirty animal, not a dainty thing to take on a fashionable stroll along the promenade; and a souped up Macintosh or PC is more like a rich kid's toy car than a tractor. I don't know if you have noticed, but you don't often see a Ferrari pulling a plough - there's a reason for that.
As for the price - for $10000 you could get a decent sized Dell PowerEdge server; or even a Sun SPARC, IBM pSeries or HP if that takes your fancy. All of them are real work horses and all run operating systems that are meant for real work. True, you can't play games on them, and they don't pull chicks, but it is amazing how often that is not a major concern when you need to hold down a job.
Internet users have sadly grown used to having their every click and scroll measured by advertisers ...
Have they? I haven't - instead, I have installed things like NoScript, AdBlocker and other, and I use them to good effect. I always block all illustrations from sites that I find annoying - in fact, I mostly block the whole site with a wildcard. I only ever allow JavaScript temporarily - true, I have to reload many sites several times, but it works for me, and I rarely have to tolerate any of the obnoxious crap that others have to learn to ignore.
Wouldn't it be nice if it wasn't necessary? I can't for my life see why advertisers keep believing that they get value for their money when they so blatantly intrude on people's attention. The only effect it has on me is, that I make sure not to buy crap that has been pushed in this manner.
Sure, it's great that there may be better support for developing games on Linux in the future, but I am not sure it makes all that much difference. It certainly won't to me, if all it means is that we are going to have the existing games ported Linux. I stopped taking an interest in games long ago, because there is no true innovation - it is always just about more 'relistic' graphics, more 'stunning' effects etc; but the actual games underneath haven't really developed since the very beginning.
What I'd really like to see is a type of social game that is strongly focused on learning and experimentation, something that will stretch and develop your academic skills. Examples:
- You are part of a team of researchers working together, trying to learn the secrets of some advanced, scientific subject - something above high-school level.
- You are creating a new universe, designing physical laws etc. Can you create life - and what is the definition of life in your universe?
- You are a hero, you are on a quest to find a treasure and probably kill a number of monsters. But your world is not quite what you are used to. Space is not Euclidean, it may not even be a smooth manifold - the topology may not be Hausdorff, and you are influenced by force fields that are ... different. You only know that the laws of logic are valid. Probably.
First of all - I admire and respect your sentiment, and it is something I strive towards as well, although I am less modest about its merits. To me, this is what science is all about, on the philosophical plane.
But about making a joke - I think all good humour strives to win over the ones that are on the receiving end of the joke. We know it is never fully successful - there are plenty of people who are well-prepared to take offence of anything they hear - but the intent of good humour is always friendly, and as a result, a lot of people accept it as humour, even if they feel it is rather naughty.
If I may tire you with an anecdote: A couple of months ago there was a program on the BBC, starring Anne Widdecombe, who is very much one for spotting an offence - taking it to heart; she is a Christian and feels that her faith is beleaguered on all fronts, and is being ridiculed. She was particularly upset by the scene in "Life of Brian" where a group of people have been crucified and start singing "Always look at the bright side of life". However, she also interviewed some prominent priest or theologian (don't remember the name), who said that to him, this was one of the most epically funny things he had ever seen in his life.
... It's that people don't get to have a right to not be offended. ...
This is where I felt he said that people don't have a right to be offended - on re-reading, I can see that it may be interpreted differently: that he protests against people not being allowed to feel offended. Mea culpa; I should have read it more carefully.
It's not that nobody should ever be offended by a joke. It's that people don't get to have a right to not be offended. If you're not offending someone, you didn't say anything of value. The point of free speech is to cause people to question their deeply held beliefs, which invariably will leads to taking offense, or they wouldn't be deeply held beliefs.
Wow, what astonishing insights you have on offer. Yes, all good humour plays in the region bordering on the offensive, but saying that people don't have right to be offended is plain idiocy. After all, what is the point of offending, if people don't get offended?
However, "offensive" is not the same as "humour" - good humour is when you are able to persuade the "victim" that you are playing, that you want them you to laugh with you.
I don't think this problems is limited to 'coding', whatever that means. It is easy to learn something, when you are motivated; so finding things that motivate students is crucial. Personally, I am not convinced that making games is the best motivation - initially it will sound very interesting, but as soon as it turns out that the game you are able to make is not going to be the all-singing, all-dancing version of your favourite game, the motivation is replaced by disappointment.
I suspect it is a lot easier to start with something more realistic, that the student is already interested in. From my own background: when I was about 12 or 13 years old, I got very interested in astrology (yes, I know, I know, but that's not the point here); however, it was difficult and expensive to get hold of the all-important tables of planetary positions. So, I taught myself to write BASIC programs for the school's computer, I learned enough about how the planets moved to satisfy my limited understanding, and I made a program that would calculate planetary positions of a sort. From there it was easy to continue - the first step is always the hardest.
A little postscript for those who are jumping up and down over my mention of astrology: yes, I agree that it is bogus. However, it motivated me at the time, and I still have a certain fondness for the subject. And I still read my daily horoscope - otherwise, how else would I know how I feel today?
I think, in this whole debate there is a lot of confused issues.
Yes, eagles are important in the eco-system as top-level predators, but they are not the only important thing; they are just "iconic", whatever that means (it probably just means they sell better ). But all part of the environment are important - including conckroaches, rats and intestinal parasites; they are just not so "iconic". It is the balance that is important, the totality.
Humans are also part of the environment, and we are not always harmful. Quite a lot of the landscapes we try to preserve are man-made; humans keep cattle; cattle eat everything over a certain height, opening op the landscape for a large number of small species that would not otherwise survive there, etc.
Also, we are not the only species with a potentially negative impact on the environment; but we do seem to be the only species with the ability to understand the impact we have. And with that understanding comes, of course, the opportunity to make an informed choice. Some would say we have a moral obligation to make the best choice, according to our undestanding.
What a strange world, where on the one hand, people are increasingly paranoid about 'government' or 'corporations' snooping at our private lives, and on the other, the self-same people are mad about iPad, iPhone, Google Glass, etc - all of which are constantly giving away their privacy. And of course, when you point this out in a public forum, you get hit by the mod-censorship. So much for people's love of freedom and the right to speek. Ironic, really.
Just imagine the potential of this - "It is no use logging in - you are going to meet a tall, dark stranger ..."
No, I had to look it up too. Apparently it is about teenage rebellion and was published in 1951, at a time just before being a teenager was seen as something different that deserved a name for itself; as far as I remember, the term "teenager" is relatively new, and the idea that teenagers would reject the ideas of their parents was surprising, to say the least. On that background, perhaps it isn't surprising that it was a powerful book at the time, but I feel the subject is somewhat dated now. The "youth revolution" in the 60es was about the widespread feeling that the parent generation had let their children down, on one hand being far too controlling and restrictive, while on the other hand not caring about them and guiding them in a world where everything seemed to be teetering on the brink. And the 50es was where it started, with Rock'n'Roll and teeange culture.
I love this socialist half-paradise, where Wall Street profits are privatized, gigantic losses from gambling with people's deposits are publicly insured, and intellectual works are treated like a turkey thrown into a pit filled with hyenas.
I love your graphic description, but you should get your concepts straight. Wall Street wouldn't have existed in a Socialist state, and they would have been more likely to socialise than privatise.
...target one person, such as a specific foreign citizen on an H-1B visa
Perhaps in the US; however we don't have that particular concept in Europe, but still see the same problem. Recently, there has been a large number of web-business startups advertising for skillsets that simply don't exist - or are not likely to be found anywhere - such as "5 years' experience with AWS, puppet, Jenkins and vSphere".
I mean, these tools may have been around for longer than 5 years, but cloud computing has only really taken off here in the last couple of years, I think; how would anybody have built up that much experience with them? And you can see these jobs being advertised over and over by different agencies, so they simply can't find the people they thnik they need. The likeliest explanation is that these companies don't understand that hiring engineers is a long-term investment, and that no matter how clever a new guy is, he/she will need specific training and it will take time. Even a factory worker at an old-fashioned assembly line needs to be trained, and software engineering is more complex than that.
Recycling is only a poor excuse for not addressing the problem, which is that we produce things that are meant to be thrown out immediately, such as plastic bags. It isn't impossible to live without those things - there are in fact shops around, where you can buy at least some things unwrapped. It is only a matter of making the effort and being a tiny bit creative.
Well, two words, in a dirty combination.
It is of course illegal to not hire somebody simply because of their age, but that is what goes on all the time. Many if us have been in that situation, one way or another. Personally, I got "made redundant" - which means that tecnically, that position should no longer be required, but funny enough, they hired a younger guy in his late twenties to do my job. Only, it was in 'another' department. I'd been there for over 10 years, won awards and generally had briiliant feed-back from my colleagues, and was loyal and hard-working.
It has taken me 7 months to secure a new job. I have been to how many interviews? 20, maybe 30; it generally goes like this: they seem my CV and love it. I have a telehone interview and they love me for my skills and experience. I come to a face to face, and have a very good conversation. And then I get a rejection because of some minor triviality, like 'not enough in-depth knowledge of what-ever' - something that is clearly not the real reason: namely, that I am 'old', ie. over 50.
And that is such a ridiculous reason on all levels. Even when I was a child, 50 was not 'old', and you were expected to work until you were about 65 - even in manual labour. I have ages of experience with UNIX, Linux, C, C++, Oracle, DB2, ... - even Fortran and COBOL, and I am physically stronger and more agile than a large proportion of younger developers. According to the stats, I have some 30 - 40 years of healthy and productive life ahead of me, and according to other stats, society will very soon not be able to care for the pensioners, if people have to retire at an age of just 50. Or 60, or even 70, for that matter. This is going to hit those also, who idiotically won't offer employment to middle-aged people, because if society struggles financially, then the value of everybody's savings will be hit, and that ultimately means your retirement money.
Owning land requires money which requires some job other than hunting and foraging
Up to a point, old chap. The privileged few that own the vast majority of land have rarely had their hands out of their pockets, except to hold a cocktail.
Also there is absolutely no way that this planet can support 7 billion people (or even 1 billion) via hunting and foraging
Depends on what you forage for. If you'll settle for insects and grass, then who knows?
It is very easy to stir these young men up into an anti-Japanese frenzy
It is indeed easy to stir just about ANY young man up; as you ought to remember, if you ever were one.
Apart from that, China has particular reason to feel resentful about Japan, who occupied China in a particularly atrocious way during WWII. And who, unlike Germany, have never lifted a finger to prosecute their war criminals, AFAIK; in fact, they seem to worship them like heroes.
Would it be wise to fight Japan? Certainly not, but I don't think the US are going to involved if they scrap over a desolate island or two, as the US are already engaged elsewhere.
The impact on global climate would be NOTHING MEASURABLE whatsoever
Ah, the good old "It ain't perfect, so I won't have it" fallacy. I can't imagine anybody thinking that this in itself has a significant impact, but that isn't the purpose - it is about starting on the journey. It may be a ten thousand mile journey, but if you don't take the first step, you will never start moving. And unless your body is of a somewhat unusual configuration, you will not be able to do it in one, easy stride. So, get off your backside and start moving forward.
I have seen some of the answers given by other people, and many seem to miss the point of floating point calculations. Floating point is by its very nature imprecise, and when you choose to use it, you have to keep that in mind - the task you want to perform must be one where a certain degree of imprecision does not matter. What you are after is not exact reproducibility, but simply that your results stay within accepted error margins, and depending on the nature of your calculations, these may be very wide - I believe you can still find astronimical measurements where ther error margin is something like +/- 200%.
However, it is a misconception to equate "maths" with "doing numbers", as only a fairly minor part of mathematics have to with numbers; and there are, in fact, computer tools out there for non-numerical calculations, like GAP (http://www.gap-system.org/). And although I haven't seen Mathematica for many years, I believe one of its main features is the ability to solve equations symbolically - ie without numerical caulculations - the result of which is going to be either correct and therefore precise, or incorrect.