Spending an extra 5 minutes now to verify the documentation for a function you call can save days later on.
Not always. Case in point: I found the following code after a day and a half debugging (note that the dest and src addresses are guaranteed to be overlapping):
// delete the record. Supposes memcpy is implemented increasing. memcpy(p+i, p+i+rec_size, env_size-(i+rec_size));
The problem was obvious to me once I narrowed down the area of the bug and saw the comment. So was the idiocy of the dumbass that knew memcpy wasn't safe for overlapping regions and did it anyway. I guess this only proves that bad developers are bad developers.
It's not as simple as that. Sure, everyone is going to have bugs in their code, but some are much worse than others. No accountability at all can be just as detestable as incessant finger-pointing.
You're assuming that devices and the software on them are inherently insecure and can never be made secure. Instead you rely on walled gardens created and cultivated by the companies that are selling you those devices and that software (or at least controlling your access to that software). Granted, security is hard to do right, but what makes you think Apple or Google are so much better at it with their App stores than anyone else? And if they are so good at it, why don't they just make their OSes secure enough to obviate that excuse for the walled gardens in the first place?
Here in Texas at least, this extends to basic courtesy. I'm continually astounded at how polite people generally are in person but how few of them are courteous enough when in their cars to even use their turn signals. Vehicle code issues aside, signalling is an act of common courtesy like saying "please" and "thank you", and when in the anonimity of their cars, otherwise exceedingly polite people abondon said politeness.
Except that from the linked story: "But ruminant animals such as cattle can safely ingest a wide variety of feedstuffs that chickens and hogs can't." The gummi worms story was about feeding cows, not pigs.
Your slashdot example is idiotic. This is a self-selected group of "nerds" who would be expected to be above average at learning skills like programming.
I know from personal experience with my wife and daughter that some people just are not cut out to do any sort of software development. They don't naturally think in terms of the logical steps required to find and implement an elegant solution. If you made their food dependent on their usable code output, they might learn enough to survive, but they would be very hungry.
I encourage you to peruse some of the free apps in the app store of your choice. There's no shortage of almost completely unusable garbage there from "programmers" who figure anyone can write an app. A lot of people might be able to write an app, but not anyone can write a good app. In this case, these are people who had a desire to code well and still could not. Likewise books in the Kindle store. The assumption that a decent grasp of spoken language is enough to weave a compelling story is quite obviously fallacious.
If you're so sure programmers are nothing special, then let me pick a few to write the flight control software for the next plane you fly on or the engine and brake control software of your car or the user interface software of your TV (okay, that last one might be a bad example given some of the crap I've seen in things like TVs, but that helps make my point).
Energy is extracted from the wind and used elsewhere, same as with wave energy and solar. Slowing down the wind or waves or absorbing heat from the sun will all have a non-zero effect local to the harvesting mechanism. For example, harvesting a significant amount of wave energy might change beach dynamics or tidal flows or whatever, maybe in a negative way. Maybe the impact is negligible. That kind of thing needs to be reasonably well understood, or we might end up in the future with the same sort of problem we are facing now with fossil fuels and greenhouse gases. Or we might be able to use the effects in a beneficial way if we understand them well enough. We humans have a history of barreling ahead without really considering the long-term effects we might create. I realize it's wishful thinking that we will change that behavior in any significant way, but at least I can point at this conversation and disclaim any responsibility for future catastrophes.
Effects of multiple wind farms: since the net result of one is zero, the net result of many will be zero.
The net result can't possibly be zero, energy is being extracted from the system. Now it may very well be that, as another poster suggested, the amount of energy being extracted is so small as to have no net measurable effect, and while that may be understood to the the case on a very small scale, I personally don't have a good intuitive feel for that when you scale up to many gigawatts. Extrapolating the effects from a very small wind farm to a massive one (on a global scale) would seem imprudent to me. I'm not completely ignorant in the matter, but neither have I researched it in enough depth to satisfy my curiosity. Your response of "it's zero, now go away troll!" doesn't help. Perhaps you have pointers to some research or even just some well-written articles from science journalists to back your opinion. Your personal intuition doesn't count any more than mine does.
I have similar questions about all-electric cars. Sure, an electric car emits effectively zero emissions when it's driving around, but the energy to move it around came from somewhere. Given our current power infrastructure, it's far from clear to me just how much better an electric car is from a fossil fuel car. My intuition is that it likely is measurably better, but I'd really like some science that backs that up. I think the larger benefit to electric cars is that any improvements made to power plant efficiency and cleanliness directly translates to less emissions attributable to the electric cars that are already on the road, but I'm nowhere near convinced that today's electric cars are significantly superior to the higher fuel efficiency internal combustion cars. That doesn't mean I'm an anti-electric car troll. It used to be that critical thinking and skepticism were valued, especially in scientific discussions, and not considered the hallmark of trolls and shills and subjected to automatic ridicule.
However, putting up sufficient wind power means we can reduce the use of other kinds of power which actually do have a negative effect on climate (from our POV.)
Certainly. And given the difficulty in deploying wind farms on a massive scale (on the ground or in the atmosphere), there will be plenty of time for scientists to measure and understand the possible effects of such scaled-up deployments. Despite the propensity of the anti-science religious right to use scientific skepticism as an argument against science in general, that's how science must always be conducted.
Rather than attacking as a troll someone for asking what was likely an innocent question based out of ignorance (not stupidity as you so arrogantly suggested), it might be more constructive to simply point out their ignorance and maybe even point them in the direction of some useful materials to educate themselves. Reflexively calling them a troll or stupid just eliminates any credibility you might have had, at least in my opinion.
That line of reasoning is almost completely non-sensical and doesn't really deserve a response.
But "anti-Apple fanboyism"? "Fanboyism" involves an irrational devotion (or repulsion in this case) to a product or company. A reasoned explanation for liking or disliking a product or company does not automatically elevate someone to fanboy status. I think you making that claim only exposes your own fanboyism.
Apple's walled-garden approach makes me queasy, but not enough to dissuede me from considering their products. But their offensive (in both senses of the word) legal attacks are too much for me to further consider purchasing their products. Samsung, Motorola and others are heading in the same direction with all the lawsuits filed all over the world. I'm looking for a tablet for myself and find that Android-based tablets may be my only option, although the fragmentation and version update issues in that market concern me greatly and have kept me from making a choice. And waiting for a Microsoft Surface tablet is out of the question. While I take offense at being characterized as an anti-Apple fanboy, I'll proudly wear the anti-MS fanboy label. I just don't like MS and am not inclined to bother with explaining why (I do have a number of reasons, but it's easier to just hate them).
I stand corrected (multiple times). Perhaps instead of "most valuable company in the world, EVER", I should have said "a company as phenomenally successful as Apple (in valuation)". Serves me right for only half paying attention to the media reports about Apple being the highest-valued company, I really should know better.
I'm in a similar boat. I write good code because I care about the quality of my work. I generally have fewer defects in my code, but that doesn't make me a "rock star". In my experience, in any group sufficiently large, the real "rock star" is easily identifiable as the developer who just seems to know eveything and can offer accurate and useful advice without having to go off and research anything. More often than not, that developer actually doesn't do a whole lot of implementation, they're spending too much time guiding all the other developers in the right (technical) direction. What development they do is usually on the really hairy parts that require simultaneously very broad and very deep knowledge of the system.
I'm with you. When the most valuable company in the world, EVER, goes whining to the courts because another company has phones with "pinch zooming" and "rubber-band scrolling", I cannot respect that company and will avoid their products. I mean really, how many iPhone purchases honestly didn't happen because Samsung had these features? Certainly they would have played zero role in any decision I have or would have made.
There are four iPods and an iPad in my household, but those are the last Apple products I'll willingly buy (with a wife and kids, can't really say absolutely never). I'll be getting a smartphone and likely a small tablet for myself soon and won't even consider an iPhone or iPad, with Apple's legal behavior being responsible for going from "would consider" to "no freaking way".
So should we get rid of any clothes we have that might offend someone? Bumper stickers? Sikhs will need to stop wearing their headdresses so they don't stand out and possibly make someone uncomfortable on a train or bus or plain. And just forget about burqas or other traditional dress from non-Western cultures (do you think people would be more concerned about a guy wearing lederhosen or a woman wearing a burqa, given no difference in behavior between the two?).
I'm not typically a fan of slippery-slope thinking, but if you pay attention, you'll realize we've already slid well down that slope. Posts like yours demonstrate that quite clearly. It's now okay to be forced to self-censor, and those that don't (and who clearly are not breaking any laws) deserve some or all of the blame. Does it bother you at all that you have to be careful about which shirt you might be wearing when you go on a flight? It bothers me.
And on a side note, it's actually nice to get a view of the TSA where they aren't portrayed as stupid brainless vindictive security drones. Given the overwhelmingly negative portrayal they get here on/., it's a good thing to be reminded that they are people and that some of them, at least, can do their jobs in a reasonably respectful way.
If I had mod points I would mod this up. This is the exact point I made the last time this subject was discussed on/.. I have not RTFA, but I have to wonder if they just asked people how much time they spent working when outside of normal working hours, or if they also took into account the amount of time they spent not working during normal working hours. I wonder if, on average, number of hours spent working hasn't really changed.
That said, I do what a previous poster suggested, which is to pull work email when I want to. I don't even own a smartphone, and I have to make a conscious effort to check email on my iPod. I put in a small number of hours in the evening because that kind of schedule suits me. So I fall into that "enjoy their job flexibility" group without giving up anything to my employer.
You make very good points. My comments may have been overly influenced by the state of SW patents and the current attitude (on the part of conservatives, mostly) against even basic research being funded by the government. I do think there is a better balance to be had. I'm also not convinced that the core "inventions" of these particular patents could not have been made via well-funded basic research. But then I'm not expert in this field to really know.
Saying "the government" this and "the government" that masks the fact that the government is made of of people who make decisions based on a number of motivating factors, not the least of which is getting reelected. So blaming "the government" is deflecting the true issue, which is that the general populace in this country have been poorly educated (maliciously or not, depending on which side of the aisle you sit on) as to the importance of funding science in a significant way and making the results openly available. Throw in a significant helping of a "shove your taxes up your a$$ and keep your hands off MY money" mentality, and funding for public research dries up. We vote for whomever says they will let us keep more of our money without regard for the long term costs of the resulting policies, which we are ill-equipped to evaluate (hence our general dependence on a political party and/or religion to tell us how to think).
Having that open research available does not, as some here seem to want to argue, stifle the fires of inovation, it provides fuel for it. Availability of more knowledge begets ever more knowledge, and there will be ways to profit from that without having to lock it all up in the safes of mega-corporations. Think about where medical science and big pharma is today without having had to previously patent genes. And is anyone seriously going to argue that big pharma will just abandon all research based on gene therapies if these patents are disallowed? Really?
I only really use algebra and maybe some trig from high school for the vast majority of what I do as a software engineer working mostly on embedded systems. Without a very strong grounding in those subjects, I wouldn't be able to do what I do.
But that doesn't mean that high school math is sufficient. Without the calculus and discrete math classes I had, I don't think I would have nearly as strong a basis in the "lower" levels of math that I need regularly, even though I remember very little calculus. And to be perfectly honest, I feel at a disadvantage at times in not having a broader knowledge of some of the higher math concepts. That would provide me with a richer tool set from which to pull solutions. But that can be said also for other fields entirely, like biology. Many of the more interesting problem solutions require interdisciplinary knowledge; think about genetic algorithms and such. I haven't the first clue about genetic algorithms so they don't exist in my toolbox, which is unfortunate.
So the question of what math is used by SW engineers on a daily basis won't necessarily get you a useful answer. As cliche as it sounds, the broader your knowledge base, the better able you will be to solve types of problems that you can't possibly anticipate while you're in school, even if you know exactly what field you want to go into. I don't regret a single second of the math classes I took; on the contrary, I wish I had taken more (especially after taking the Crypto class from Coursera).
Find a lightweight aluminum box at a craft store (try the rubber stamp aisle) that will fit the e-reader, line it with some foam from the same store for a snug but not tight fit, then put the e-reader in a ziplock bag inside the box. That should protect it from just about anything you can throw at it. Should be very inexpensive, also. If it gets broken, you've got bigger problems to worry about.
My wife has used her Kindle in the bathtub inside a ziplock bag without any complaints. A clean ziplock does not obscure the screen enough to really even notice.
Will these discoveries lead us down a path to confirming life on other planets? Wouldn't that be a good story that might make people care about science?
Actually, I think the possibility of discovering life on other planets is exactly what drives a disappointingly large percentage of the population to *not* care about science. Might mess with their whole world view and all that. Some of them haven't fully accepted the round-earth-orbiting-the-sun thing, life eveloving on other planets would just lead to apoplexy.
I suppose it was inevitable that someone would ask this question, although I would have thought it would be pretty worn out at this point. The phrasing of your question implies that one side has to be right and the other wrong, which is a false dichotomy. Provocative dress, either male or female, is not appropriate in many workplaces, especially professional cube-farms. The offender should be told to be more moderate. But provocative dress does not green-light ape-ish behavior, either. Discipline is appropriate in both cases. And I don't think one should have any bearing on the other, mostly in the sense that, for example, how a woman is dressed should have no bearing on how serious sexually harassing remarks from a male coworker might be taken.
Balance. I don't want to work in a toxic environment, but nor do I want to work in a completely sterile one. Over 20+ years of my career, I've never had to work in either sort of environment. I'm not aware of a single complaint in all of that time among my peers (so any complaints that may have occurred would have been between a very small group about a very specific incident, not about the general culture). At one job, we all had to attend mandatory sexual harassment training, but that was mostly in response to the lawsuit brought by the HR VP/former mistress of the CEO. I'm sure that in that time, things were said that offended some (even me), but not so much as to warrant a complaint, and certainly not endemic to the culture.
There may be a somewhat justified fear of having to live in sterile environments simply because, of the two extremes, the sterile one doesn't raise the specter of lawsuits. Society is too quick to impose zero-tolerance rules to avoid any chance of litigation (look at some of the ridiculous crap that happens in schools--suspensions for carrying Midol? Really?). That hasn't invaded any place where I've worked, but then as a rule, everyone I've worked with has been respectful in the workplace (and believe me, some of them were real jerks outside of work, definitely not the kind of people I would socialize with). Perhaps I've just been very lucky, but I hope not.
It is true I am generalizing the issue. It is impossible to address any sort of sociological issue without generalizing to some extent. Not all "feminists" do the things I say. Enough do, though, and the ones who aren't do not exactly make much effort to address the problems I stated. They simply prefer to shrug and act like it is the local color.
Okay, I can't disagree with this point. I really dislike PETA and the NRA because of their public extremism and tend to view the whole organization in a negative way. But I try to be careful not to extrapolate from too small a sample size. I know a member of PETA personally who does not espouse such extreme views, and since I haven't personally talked to a large percentage of members, I'm unwilling to assume they all match the profile painted mostly by the media (not blaming the media, they just tend to report the more extreme actions and beliefs of the group). On the flip side, I'm not willing to give the organization as a whole the benefit of the doubt, either.
There is a very real problem and it is not the fact we have a patriarchal or matriarchal society: it is that we have double standards and guilt. We have feminists (not just women, men as well) who believe women should be treated better but equal, and then we have men who feel somehow that they make atone for some sin by repeating it. I say no. If you want equality, you need to pony up for equality. If I have to deal with bullshit, so do you. Sorry, but that's equality. If you do not want that, then what you want is re-arranged inequality.
I don't really understand why you think women, in order to be treated equally, have to put up with sexist bullshit. You back up that supposition with the false argument that you have to put up with bullshit, so they should also. You *don't* have to put up with bullshit any more than I do. You have the same recourse they do if you feel like the environment you are in is unreasonably abusive in any way. For example, if I was in a group of all non-blacks and some or many of the members were openly racist, I would not tolerate that. In your view I should just suck it up and quit my job because I don't agree with the majority. I hope you can see how wrong that view is.
The really difficult thing in this discussion is where to draw the line between acceptable and non-acceptable behavior. There are those (like you) who would rather not have a line at all and make all behavior acceptable, which I think is a response to the belief (real or perceived) that there are those who want the line so tightly draw that almost all behavior is unacceptable. Neither is correct, there has to be a reasonable middle ground. Unfortunately, there's far too little actual reason these days, so perhaps I'm asking way too much.
"How many interviews have you been on where the interviewer explained that all your potential coworkers like to make raunchy jokes and talk about female body parts, and if you don't like that kind of environment then you should quit the interview process? I more than positively sure you've never had such an interview. So how is this hypothetical interviewee supposed to know what the environment is like when they accept a position (ignoring the fact that the company would almost surely be sued for intimidating/offending/harassing a job applicant)?"
I would say asking is a good start. It is in fact quite easy to ask a number of questions which would smoothly express the situation, if you are likely to be easily bothered by it. Further, there are a number of ways to dance around the topic on the employer's part, too; but I do believe it ought to be considered the interviewee's responsibility here. If they are the ones who are going to be easily offended, it falls upon them to decide if the situation is for them. Not everyone else to adapt to shield them from all possible offense.
That's not the world we live in. If I were interviewing a woman (or
I didn't mean to imply that I was discriminated against or harassed, only that I had the "opportunity" to get a better appreciation for what it's like to be in the minority. I never felt obviously discriminated against and was very careful not to let any paranoia (and I'm certain there was some) override documentable observations. It's hard not to feel like maybe someone from the majority might be looked upon more favorably at review time or whatnot, but that is likely as much due to internal prejudices (however slight) as reality, at least in my case.
Slashdot Mirror
Spending an extra 5 minutes now to verify the documentation for a function you call can save days later on.
Not always. Case in point: I found the following code after a day and a half debugging (note that the dest and src addresses are guaranteed to be overlapping):
// delete the record. Supposes memcpy is implemented increasing.
memcpy(p+i, p+i+rec_size, env_size-(i+rec_size));
The problem was obvious to me once I narrowed down the area of the bug and saw the comment. So was the idiocy of the dumbass that knew memcpy wasn't safe for overlapping regions and did it anyway. I guess this only proves that bad developers are bad developers.
It's not as simple as that. Sure, everyone is going to have bugs in their code, but some are much worse than others. No accountability at all can be just as detestable as incessant finger-pointing.
Also it's harder for a girl to ignore a wall post in front of all her friends ...
Now there's an auspicious start to a long-lasting relationship.
You're assuming that devices and the software on them are inherently insecure and can never be made secure. Instead you rely on walled gardens created and cultivated by the companies that are selling you those devices and that software (or at least controlling your access to that software). Granted, security is hard to do right, but what makes you think Apple or Google are so much better at it with their App stores than anyone else? And if they are so good at it, why don't they just make their OSes secure enough to obviate that excuse for the walled gardens in the first place?
Here in Texas at least, this extends to basic courtesy. I'm continually astounded at how polite people generally are in person but how few of them are courteous enough when in their cars to even use their turn signals. Vehicle code issues aside, signalling is an act of common courtesy like saying "please" and "thank you", and when in the anonimity of their cars, otherwise exceedingly polite people abondon said politeness.
Except that from the linked story: "But ruminant animals such as cattle can safely ingest a wide variety of feedstuffs that chickens and hogs can't." The gummi worms story was about feeding cows, not pigs.
Your slashdot example is idiotic. This is a self-selected group of "nerds" who would be expected to be above average at learning skills like programming.
I know from personal experience with my wife and daughter that some people just are not cut out to do any sort of software development. They don't naturally think in terms of the logical steps required to find and implement an elegant solution. If you made their food dependent on their usable code output, they might learn enough to survive, but they would be very hungry.
I encourage you to peruse some of the free apps in the app store of your choice. There's no shortage of almost completely unusable garbage there from "programmers" who figure anyone can write an app. A lot of people might be able to write an app, but not anyone can write a good app. In this case, these are people who had a desire to code well and still could not. Likewise books in the Kindle store. The assumption that a decent grasp of spoken language is enough to weave a compelling story is quite obviously fallacious.
If you're so sure programmers are nothing special, then let me pick a few to write the flight control software for the next plane you fly on or the engine and brake control software of your car or the user interface software of your TV (okay, that last one might be a bad example given some of the crap I've seen in things like TVs, but that helps make my point).
Energy is extracted from the wind and used elsewhere, same as with wave energy and solar. Slowing down the wind or waves or absorbing heat from the sun will all have a non-zero effect local to the harvesting mechanism. For example, harvesting a significant amount of wave energy might change beach dynamics or tidal flows or whatever, maybe in a negative way. Maybe the impact is negligible. That kind of thing needs to be reasonably well understood, or we might end up in the future with the same sort of problem we are facing now with fossil fuels and greenhouse gases. Or we might be able to use the effects in a beneficial way if we understand them well enough. We humans have a history of barreling ahead without really considering the long-term effects we might create. I realize it's wishful thinking that we will change that behavior in any significant way, but at least I can point at this conversation and disclaim any responsibility for future catastrophes.
Effects of multiple wind farms: since the net result of one is zero, the net result of many will be zero.
The net result can't possibly be zero, energy is being extracted from the system. Now it may very well be that, as another poster suggested, the amount of energy being extracted is so small as to have no net measurable effect, and while that may be understood to the the case on a very small scale, I personally don't have a good intuitive feel for that when you scale up to many gigawatts. Extrapolating the effects from a very small wind farm to a massive one (on a global scale) would seem imprudent to me. I'm not completely ignorant in the matter, but neither have I researched it in enough depth to satisfy my curiosity. Your response of "it's zero, now go away troll!" doesn't help. Perhaps you have pointers to some research or even just some well-written articles from science journalists to back your opinion. Your personal intuition doesn't count any more than mine does.
I have similar questions about all-electric cars. Sure, an electric car emits effectively zero emissions when it's driving around, but the energy to move it around came from somewhere. Given our current power infrastructure, it's far from clear to me just how much better an electric car is from a fossil fuel car. My intuition is that it likely is measurably better, but I'd really like some science that backs that up. I think the larger benefit to electric cars is that any improvements made to power plant efficiency and cleanliness directly translates to less emissions attributable to the electric cars that are already on the road, but I'm nowhere near convinced that today's electric cars are significantly superior to the higher fuel efficiency internal combustion cars. That doesn't mean I'm an anti-electric car troll. It used to be that critical thinking and skepticism were valued, especially in scientific discussions, and not considered the hallmark of trolls and shills and subjected to automatic ridicule.
However, putting up sufficient wind power means we can reduce the use of other kinds of power which actually do have a negative effect on climate (from our POV.)
Certainly. And given the difficulty in deploying wind farms on a massive scale (on the ground or in the atmosphere), there will be plenty of time for scientists to measure and understand the possible effects of such scaled-up deployments. Despite the propensity of the anti-science religious right to use scientific skepticism as an argument against science in general, that's how science must always be conducted.
Rather than attacking as a troll someone for asking what was likely an innocent question based out of ignorance (not stupidity as you so arrogantly suggested), it might be more constructive to simply point out their ignorance and maybe even point them in the direction of some useful materials to educate themselves. Reflexively calling them a troll or stupid just eliminates any credibility you might have had, at least in my opinion.
That line of reasoning is almost completely non-sensical and doesn't really deserve a response.
But "anti-Apple fanboyism"? "Fanboyism" involves an irrational devotion (or repulsion in this case) to a product or company. A reasoned explanation for liking or disliking a product or company does not automatically elevate someone to fanboy status. I think you making that claim only exposes your own fanboyism.
Apple's walled-garden approach makes me queasy, but not enough to dissuede me from considering their products. But their offensive (in both senses of the word) legal attacks are too much for me to further consider purchasing their products. Samsung, Motorola and others are heading in the same direction with all the lawsuits filed all over the world. I'm looking for a tablet for myself and find that Android-based tablets may be my only option, although the fragmentation and version update issues in that market concern me greatly and have kept me from making a choice. And waiting for a Microsoft Surface tablet is out of the question. While I take offense at being characterized as an anti-Apple fanboy, I'll proudly wear the anti-MS fanboy label. I just don't like MS and am not inclined to bother with explaining why (I do have a number of reasons, but it's easier to just hate them).
I stand corrected (multiple times). Perhaps instead of "most valuable company in the world, EVER", I should have said "a company as phenomenally successful as Apple (in valuation)". Serves me right for only half paying attention to the media reports about Apple being the highest-valued company, I really should know better.
I'm in a similar boat. I write good code because I care about the quality of my work. I generally have fewer defects in my code, but that doesn't make me a "rock star". In my experience, in any group sufficiently large, the real "rock star" is easily identifiable as the developer who just seems to know eveything and can offer accurate and useful advice without having to go off and research anything. More often than not, that developer actually doesn't do a whole lot of implementation, they're spending too much time guiding all the other developers in the right (technical) direction. What development they do is usually on the really hairy parts that require simultaneously very broad and very deep knowledge of the system.
I'm with you. When the most valuable company in the world, EVER, goes whining to the courts because another company has phones with "pinch zooming" and "rubber-band scrolling", I cannot respect that company and will avoid their products. I mean really, how many iPhone purchases honestly didn't happen because Samsung had these features? Certainly they would have played zero role in any decision I have or would have made.
There are four iPods and an iPad in my household, but those are the last Apple products I'll willingly buy (with a wife and kids, can't really say absolutely never). I'll be getting a smartphone and likely a small tablet for myself soon and won't even consider an iPhone or iPad, with Apple's legal behavior being responsible for going from "would consider" to "no freaking way".
So should we get rid of any clothes we have that might offend someone? Bumper stickers? Sikhs will need to stop wearing their headdresses so they don't stand out and possibly make someone uncomfortable on a train or bus or plain. And just forget about burqas or other traditional dress from non-Western cultures (do you think people would be more concerned about a guy wearing lederhosen or a woman wearing a burqa, given no difference in behavior between the two?).
I'm not typically a fan of slippery-slope thinking, but if you pay attention, you'll realize we've already slid well down that slope. Posts like yours demonstrate that quite clearly. It's now okay to be forced to self-censor, and those that don't (and who clearly are not breaking any laws) deserve some or all of the blame. Does it bother you at all that you have to be careful about which shirt you might be wearing when you go on a flight? It bothers me.
And on a side note, it's actually nice to get a view of the TSA where they aren't portrayed as stupid brainless vindictive security drones. Given the overwhelmingly negative portrayal they get here on /., it's a good thing to be reminded that they are people and that some of them, at least, can do their jobs in a reasonably respectful way.
If I had mod points I would mod this up. This is the exact point I made the last time this subject was discussed on /.. I have not RTFA, but I have to wonder if they just asked people how much time they spent working when outside of normal working hours, or if they also took into account the amount of time they spent not working during normal working hours. I wonder if, on average, number of hours spent working hasn't really changed.
That said, I do what a previous poster suggested, which is to pull work email when I want to. I don't even own a smartphone, and I have to make a conscious effort to check email on my iPod. I put in a small number of hours in the evening because that kind of schedule suits me. So I fall into that "enjoy their job flexibility" group without giving up anything to my employer.
You make very good points. My comments may have been overly influenced by the state of SW patents and the current attitude (on the part of conservatives, mostly) against even basic research being funded by the government. I do think there is a better balance to be had. I'm also not convinced that the core "inventions" of these particular patents could not have been made via well-funded basic research. But then I'm not expert in this field to really know.
Saying "the government" this and "the government" that masks the fact that the government is made of of people who make decisions based on a number of motivating factors, not the least of which is getting reelected. So blaming "the government" is deflecting the true issue, which is that the general populace in this country have been poorly educated (maliciously or not, depending on which side of the aisle you sit on) as to the importance of funding science in a significant way and making the results openly available. Throw in a significant helping of a "shove your taxes up your a$$ and keep your hands off MY money" mentality, and funding for public research dries up. We vote for whomever says they will let us keep more of our money without regard for the long term costs of the resulting policies, which we are ill-equipped to evaluate (hence our general dependence on a political party and/or religion to tell us how to think).
Having that open research available does not, as some here seem to want to argue, stifle the fires of inovation, it provides fuel for it. Availability of more knowledge begets ever more knowledge, and there will be ways to profit from that without having to lock it all up in the safes of mega-corporations. Think about where medical science and big pharma is today without having had to previously patent genes. And is anyone seriously going to argue that big pharma will just abandon all research based on gene therapies if these patents are disallowed? Really?
I only really use algebra and maybe some trig from high school for the vast majority of what I do as a software engineer working mostly on embedded systems. Without a very strong grounding in those subjects, I wouldn't be able to do what I do.
But that doesn't mean that high school math is sufficient. Without the calculus and discrete math classes I had, I don't think I would have nearly as strong a basis in the "lower" levels of math that I need regularly, even though I remember very little calculus. And to be perfectly honest, I feel at a disadvantage at times in not having a broader knowledge of some of the higher math concepts. That would provide me with a richer tool set from which to pull solutions. But that can be said also for other fields entirely, like biology. Many of the more interesting problem solutions require interdisciplinary knowledge; think about genetic algorithms and such. I haven't the first clue about genetic algorithms so they don't exist in my toolbox, which is unfortunate.
So the question of what math is used by SW engineers on a daily basis won't necessarily get you a useful answer. As cliche as it sounds, the broader your knowledge base, the better able you will be to solve types of problems that you can't possibly anticipate while you're in school, even if you know exactly what field you want to go into. I don't regret a single second of the math classes I took; on the contrary, I wish I had taken more (especially after taking the Crypto class from Coursera).
Find a lightweight aluminum box at a craft store (try the rubber stamp aisle) that will fit the e-reader, line it with some foam from the same store for a snug but not tight fit, then put the e-reader in a ziplock bag inside the box. That should protect it from just about anything you can throw at it. Should be very inexpensive, also. If it gets broken, you've got bigger problems to worry about.
My wife has used her Kindle in the bathtub inside a ziplock bag without any complaints. A clean ziplock does not obscure the screen enough to really even notice.
Somehow this reminds me of Dora the Explorer when she stares at the audience waiting for an answer.
I wish I had moderator points right now just for this comment. +2 hilarious.
+1 insightful for the post as a whole.
Will these discoveries lead us down a path to confirming life on other planets? Wouldn't that be a good story that might make people care about science?
Actually, I think the possibility of discovering life on other planets is exactly what drives a disappointingly large percentage of the population to *not* care about science. Might mess with their whole world view and all that. Some of them haven't fully accepted the round-earth-orbiting-the-sun thing, life eveloving on other planets would just lead to apoplexy.
I suppose it was inevitable that someone would ask this question, although I would have thought it would be pretty worn out at this point. The phrasing of your question implies that one side has to be right and the other wrong, which is a false dichotomy. Provocative dress, either male or female, is not appropriate in many workplaces, especially professional cube-farms. The offender should be told to be more moderate. But provocative dress does not green-light ape-ish behavior, either. Discipline is appropriate in both cases. And I don't think one should have any bearing on the other, mostly in the sense that, for example, how a woman is dressed should have no bearing on how serious sexually harassing remarks from a male coworker might be taken.
Balance. I don't want to work in a toxic environment, but nor do I want to work in a completely sterile one. Over 20+ years of my career, I've never had to work in either sort of environment. I'm not aware of a single complaint in all of that time among my peers (so any complaints that may have occurred would have been between a very small group about a very specific incident, not about the general culture). At one job, we all had to attend mandatory sexual harassment training, but that was mostly in response to the lawsuit brought by the HR VP/former mistress of the CEO. I'm sure that in that time, things were said that offended some (even me), but not so much as to warrant a complaint, and certainly not endemic to the culture.
There may be a somewhat justified fear of having to live in sterile environments simply because, of the two extremes, the sterile one doesn't raise the specter of lawsuits. Society is too quick to impose zero-tolerance rules to avoid any chance of litigation (look at some of the ridiculous crap that happens in schools--suspensions for carrying Midol? Really?). That hasn't invaded any place where I've worked, but then as a rule, everyone I've worked with has been respectful in the workplace (and believe me, some of them were real jerks outside of work, definitely not the kind of people I would socialize with). Perhaps I've just been very lucky, but I hope not.
It is true I am generalizing the issue. It is impossible to address any sort of sociological issue without generalizing to some extent. Not all "feminists" do the things I say. Enough do, though, and the ones who aren't do not exactly make much effort to address the problems I stated. They simply prefer to shrug and act like it is the local color.
Okay, I can't disagree with this point. I really dislike PETA and the NRA because of their public extremism and tend to view the whole organization in a negative way. But I try to be careful not to extrapolate from too small a sample size. I know a member of PETA personally who does not espouse such extreme views, and since I haven't personally talked to a large percentage of members, I'm unwilling to assume they all match the profile painted mostly by the media (not blaming the media, they just tend to report the more extreme actions and beliefs of the group). On the flip side, I'm not willing to give the organization as a whole the benefit of the doubt, either.
There is a very real problem and it is not the fact we have a patriarchal or matriarchal society: it is that we have double standards and guilt. We have feminists (not just women, men as well) who believe women should be treated better but equal, and then we have men who feel somehow that they make atone for some sin by repeating it. I say no. If you want equality, you need to pony up for equality. If I have to deal with bullshit, so do you. Sorry, but that's equality. If you do not want that, then what you want is re-arranged inequality.
I don't really understand why you think women, in order to be treated equally, have to put up with sexist bullshit. You back up that supposition with the false argument that you have to put up with bullshit, so they should also. You *don't* have to put up with bullshit any more than I do. You have the same recourse they do if you feel like the environment you are in is unreasonably abusive in any way. For example, if I was in a group of all non-blacks and some or many of the members were openly racist, I would not tolerate that. In your view I should just suck it up and quit my job because I don't agree with the majority. I hope you can see how wrong that view is.
The really difficult thing in this discussion is where to draw the line between acceptable and non-acceptable behavior. There are those (like you) who would rather not have a line at all and make all behavior acceptable, which I think is a response to the belief (real or perceived) that there are those who want the line so tightly draw that almost all behavior is unacceptable. Neither is correct, there has to be a reasonable middle ground. Unfortunately, there's far too little actual reason these days, so perhaps I'm asking way too much.
"How many interviews have you been on where the interviewer explained that all your potential coworkers like to make raunchy jokes and talk about female body parts, and if you don't like that kind of environment then you should quit the interview process? I more than positively sure you've never had such an interview. So how is this hypothetical interviewee supposed to know what the environment is like when they accept a position (ignoring the fact that the company would almost surely be sued for intimidating/offending/harassing a job applicant)?"
I would say asking is a good start. It is in fact quite easy to ask a number of questions which would smoothly express the situation, if you are likely to be easily bothered by it. Further, there are a number of ways to dance around the topic on the employer's part, too; but I do believe it ought to be considered the interviewee's responsibility here. If they are the ones who are going to be easily offended, it falls upon them to decide if the situation is for them. Not everyone else to adapt to shield them from all possible offense.
That's not the world we live in. If I were interviewing a woman (or
I didn't mean to imply that I was discriminated against or harassed, only that I had the "opportunity" to get a better appreciation for what it's like to be in the minority. I never felt obviously discriminated against and was very careful not to let any paranoia (and I'm certain there was some) override documentable observations. It's hard not to feel like maybe someone from the majority might be looked upon more favorably at review time or whatnot, but that is likely as much due to internal prejudices (however slight) as reality, at least in my case.