I'm wondering what other groups are out there, and what they do to help boost the number of women in CS.
Given the number of idiotic sexist posts on this topic, it seems the best way to help boost the retention rate of women in CS is to equip them with sturdy pieces of wood for bashing clues into the heads of fools.
Seriously. To all female/.ers, on behalf of the more rational possessors of Y chromosomes, I'd like to apologize for all the sexist gits in this thread.
I like my e-mail client and my calendar separate, thank you very much, just like I like my e-mail client and my browser separate, and my e-mail client and my text editor separate. It's good that they can talk to one another, yes; but gluing them together is a lousy idea.
Not the "base state", but the one any true revolution would aim to achieve. (What kind of idiot would fight to impose anything other than a democracy on himself?!)
Depends on how you define "democracy", I suppose.
If we take it in its original meaning, "government by the citizens", then we must understand that that can include all sorts of repressive practices against non-citizens - the Athenians kept slaves, after all. Just keep citizenship a rare priviledge. (Of course, there's always conscription of the non-citizens to keep your armies full.) It works depressingly well.
"Democracy for me, slavery for you" is not an uncommon theme of revolutions.
Shortly before Lincoln was elected it began to become clear that the number of "free" states was going to out pace the number of slave states so the slave states wanted to pass legislation changing the location of the Masson-Dixon line (the line above which the US was "free" and below which it was "slave").
The Mason-Dixon line is the border between Pennsylvania and Maryland (and other parts of Maryland's border). It was surveyed in the 1700s, before the American Revolution.
While Pennsylvania was a free state and Maryland a slave state (but one of the few that did not secede), no one was looking to move the Mason-Dixon line.
However, the term "Mason-Dixon line" did come to be use colloquially but inaccurately to mean the extended and winding line between free and slave states.
The primary issue of the civil war wasn't slavery - it was the balance of power between the federal government and individual states.
But the issue to which the questionable authority was applied was slavery. The argument wasn't over federal versus state taxation, or which level of government should regulate the cotton trade!
The burning issue was whether slave states could get new states to join their immoral institution. As the territories settled out to the advantage of abolitionists, slaveowners saw no room for the expansion, of their toxic ideology. So they eventually resorted to what we would today undoubtedly label terrorism - the attack on Fort Sumpter.
The issue of states rights vs. the federal government didn't correspond very well with abolition vs. slavery. Dred Scott and the fugitive slave laws trampled states rights, and there were abolitionists who cried for secession. ("No union with slaveholders!") It's well past time to stop romanticizing the civil war as having anything to do with states' rights - it only damages modern arguments to check federal power.
The "Confederacy" was a terrorist organization devoted to race slavery. They managed to draw many ordinary people in, with good propaganda - but so did the Nazis, so has Al Qaeda.
That some otherwise intelligent people still think they had any validity is a sad sign.
If you go "up" (away from Earth) at 100 mph for 800 hours, then deccelerate by 100mph. What happens?
Gravity pulls you to to Earth, just as it would pull in any body with zero velocity that was 80,000 miles away. My physics is too rusty to say offhand how long it takes you to crater or what your impact speed is.
I say bah. I grew up in the '70's, I'm a pretty typical smart geek, and guess what? I was exposed to the same lead from pollution (or worse) than the kids today are.
But where did you grow up? Kids growing up in poor urban areas typically get much more exposure.
And of course, we might be even smarter geeks if it wasn't for lead exposure.
Re:Reindeer DNA
on
Ancient DNA
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
On an interesting side note, reindeer is one of the few words that doesn't follow the "I before E except after C"
There are many exceptions if you don't use the complete rule:
I before E
Except after C
Or when sounded as A
As in "neighbor" or "sleigh"
"Reindeer" of course being a "sounded as A" case.
There are still enough exceptions - "weird", "seize", "caffeine", "protein", "either", "height" and so on - that some people say the "rule" is nothing of the kind and should be thrown out.
Then why is it against the law to compete with them? If they're able to be run as business, then let them be run as a business and face some competition.
They get a monopoly on first class mail in exchange for a "universal service" obligation. UPS or FedEx can say "We don't deliver to that area, it's not profitable".
1. True, but perhaps that's because they (the regime, not the general people) have been too busy raping and torturing critics (and their families) of the regime, torturing underperforming athletes, fighting Kurds, oppressing Shiites, warring with Iran, and invading Kuwait.
If a government oppressing its citizens is justification for unilateral foriegn invasion, boy howdy, get ready 'cause every nation on earth will start fighting every other nation.
Would another nation - say, Great Britian - have been justified in invading the US in 1850 to end slavery, or in 1950 to end segregation, or in 1942 to end internment of Japanese Americans?
There are way of encouraging less oppressive governance in other nations short of invading them.
Yes, Hussein's government was oppressive and if a stable benign democracy grows in its place that will be a good thing. That's a big fat honking if, though.
Iraq's wars with Iran and Kuwait are long over, and claiming any connection to the U.S. attack is a non sequitor.
2. You're positive of this? How do you know? Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Maybe now we'll find out. We certainly weren't going to find out while the UN conducted its searches.
Maybe you've got a nuke in your basement. Maybe you don't. After we level your house then we'll know for sure.
The existence of an Iraqi aresenal of WMD has become the political equivalent of an unfalsifiable hypothesis. "You inspector didn't find anything? See, that just proves how tricky these guys are..."
Nor is it within the legitimate authority of the U.S. to determine whether the possibility of an Iraqi arsenal justfies an invasion.
There is something to be said of a piece of software that can be "proved" via mathematical theory to work, than one that has been developed in a Object Oriented/Procedual language.
Only a very limited set of programs can be proved - the Halting Problem tells us that there's no general way to take a piece of code and know if it's correct or not, only a possibility of an ad hoc proof in some cases. And where proof is possible, the proof is complex enough that you can't rely on it being correct, any more than you can on the original program being correct. All you've done is change the notation of the problem, really.
This has nothing to do with Functional vs. Imperitive (Procedural) programming languages - algorithms in Imperitive languages can also be proved.
A name is essentially something that can be used to map to a person or to something important.
Under that definition, a cell phone number, business number, or telephone in a home with one person, qualifies as a name.
Uniqueness also isn't a huge issue, because there are other ways around it. For example, think about how many people in your circle of friends have the same name, and then think about how you distinguish them when they do.
Right....
You tell your phone, "Call Tom."
"Tom who?"
"Tom Swiss"
"There are 128 people named `Tom Swiss' listed nationally."
"Call Tom Swiss in Baltimore."
"Do you want the computer geek in Catonsville, or the lawyer in Towson?"
"Computer geek."
"Dialing..."
It sounds to me like you're nostalgic for the days of operator dialing.
Firstly, telephones shouldn't normally be the addressee.
I often call a number and wish to speak to either member of a couple. Say I want to call Alice and Bob to let them know about the party this weekend - I don't care which one I speak to. This is hardly an exceptional case.
People should be the addressee. Secondly, people shouldn't have to have numbers, they should have names.
Names are not unique identifiers. You want a name->number mapping, use a PDA or your phone's built-in number list. It's an extra-network affair.
Aren't Von Neumann machines self-replicating devices, which AFAIK we don't have?
Von Neumann was smart enough that there is more than one thing named after him. A Von Neumann machine is a self-replicator. A Von Neumann architecture is a computer architecture where programs and data are stored in the same manner.
Sometimes the latter is also referred to as a Von Neumann machine.
A "BB" is a small ball bearing. "BB" usually means it's being shot at something (from a "BB gun" air rifle, or sometime from a slingshot), rather than used at a friction-reducing device.
Socialism: Moderate left-wing totalitarian government, usually post-nationalist, where people smarter than you spend your money to save you from yourself.
No.
Socialism: an economic system in which capital is controlled by workers (the people who use the capital to get stuff done). Comes in free-market and command-economy flavors. Contrast to capitalism, where capital is controlled by state-designated owners.
It's sad that the legacy of Palmer, McCarthy, and Hoover thrives to the extent that most Americans think socialist -> totalitarian.
Well..Dude, I have no idea what half the things you're talking (COINTELPRO, RICO) about are.
Vigilance, eternal, liberty, price of. Your ignorance will not protect you.
These are all well-documented activities of the federal government, and every American should be aware of them. A half-hour with Google would be very educational.
COINTELPRO was the FBI's covert program of spying on anyone to the left of J. Edgar Hoover. This included tapes of Martin Luther King's sex life. The Senate later found that
...The acts taken interfered with the First Amendment rights of citizens. They were explicitly intended to deter citizens from joining groups, "neutralize" those who were already members, and prevent or inhibit the expression of ideas.
...The tactics used against Americans often risked and sometimes caused serious emotional, economic, or physical damage. Actions were taken which were designed to break up marriages, terminate funding or employment, and encourage gang warfare between violent rival groups. Due process of law forbids the use of such covert tactics, whether the victims are innocent law-abiding citizens or members of groups suspected of involvement in violence.
...The sustained use of such tactics by the FBI in an attempt to destroy Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., violated the law and fundamental human decency.
RICO (the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act), a law supposedly targeted at the Mafia that has been used instead to unconstitutionally seize assests without a trail, and turn minor crimes into federal felonies.
There are both very trustworthy and very untrustworthy people in and out of the government. My bro-in-law works for the state dept. and is a very good, trustworthy person. You have no more or less reason to trust him than I do Mr. Maher Hawash, no?
There is a world of difference between trusting a person, and trusting an organization.
And pray tell...what rights did the victims of real terrorists and serial killers have? What happened to their rights?
While rhetorically arousing, your question is a complete non sequitor. We're talking about the legal rights of people accused by the state of crimes. If you were accused of shooting me, would you think it was ok if you were deprived of your legal right to trial by jury to prove your innocence, because I was deprived of my moral right to life?
Apparently, the law allows for what's going on.
No, it doesn't. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It demands due processs, a speady and public trial, and all the other rights and liberties that we're (or at least used to be) proud of.
What reason should I have to trust one more than the other?
Dude. We're talking about the government of the United States of America. The people who brought you COINTELPRO, MK-ULTRA, the War on (some) Drugs, the "police action" in Vietnam, Operation "Just Cause", Camp X-ray, RICO, Waco...the list goes on.
The available evidence suggests that any person with a lick of sense should trust a randomly choosen loon from the local mental hospital more than trusting agents of the federal government.
Well, we also hear all the time about people who were "quiet", "good neighbors", etc. that go postal or turn out to be serial murderers, etc. I'll contribute money, time, support, etc. when I have good reason to...
The good reason is due process. Something which even serial killers and real terrorists are entitled to.
And so, since 9/11, has every business in New York been sealing up all their electronic equipment with plastic and tape each evening, then un-sealing it the next morning, then re-sealing it, etc?
Probably not. But I do remember that the first PC my father bought back in the mid-80s, a Victor 9000, did come with a dust cover...
Convoluted it is, and all hope of humor is gone if it needs explaining, but for those scratching their heads:
He signs his post, "J. Green Giant". Jolly Green Giant. Big green guy from frozen vegetable commericials. Could perhaps be a giant humanoid plant.
Boxers. Men trying to have kids often switch from briefs to boxers (and sometimes take more radical steps) to keep the testicles a little cooler and thus produce more sperm.
So, the plant-man Jolly Green Giant is conscious that his "biological clock" is ticking. Wants to have kids before it's too late. So he takes measures including changing underwear styles to increase fertility.
I love my Tivo and am happy to pay the Tivo company for my listings and updates, but if they go out of business i'm not to worried because the Tivo is an open system.
Actually, the Replay has been pretty well reverse-engineered. I think that even if the company goes belly up, enough is understood about the protocol for something to be hacked up to keep mine running
Slashdot Mirror
Given the number of idiotic sexist posts on this topic, it seems the best way to help boost the retention rate of women in CS is to equip them with sturdy pieces of wood for bashing clues into the heads of fools.
Seriously. To all female /.ers, on behalf of the more rational possessors of Y chromosomes, I'd like to apologize for all the sexist gits in this thread.
A bloated e-mail client.
I like my e-mail client and my calendar separate, thank you very much, just like I like my e-mail client and my browser separate, and my e-mail client and my text editor separate. It's good that they can talk to one another, yes; but gluing them together is a lousy idea.
Depends on how you define "democracy", I suppose.
If we take it in its original meaning, "government by the citizens", then we must understand that that can include all sorts of repressive practices against non-citizens - the Athenians kept slaves, after all. Just keep citizenship a rare priviledge. (Of course, there's always conscription of the non-citizens to keep your armies full.) It works depressingly well. "Democracy for me, slavery for you" is not an uncommon theme of revolutions.
The Mason-Dixon line is the border between Pennsylvania and Maryland (and other parts of Maryland's border). It was surveyed in the 1700s, before the American Revolution.
While Pennsylvania was a free state and Maryland a slave state (but one of the few that did not secede), no one was looking to move the Mason-Dixon line.
However, the term "Mason-Dixon line" did come to be use colloquially but inaccurately to mean the extended and winding line between free and slave states.
But the issue to which the questionable authority was applied was slavery. The argument wasn't over federal versus state taxation, or which level of government should regulate the cotton trade!
The burning issue was whether slave states could get new states to join their immoral institution. As the territories settled out to the advantage of abolitionists, slaveowners saw no room for the expansion, of their toxic ideology. So they eventually resorted to what we would today undoubtedly label terrorism - the attack on Fort Sumpter.
The issue of states rights vs. the federal government didn't correspond very well with abolition vs. slavery. Dred Scott and the fugitive slave laws trampled states rights, and there were abolitionists who cried for secession. ("No union with slaveholders!") It's well past time to stop romanticizing the civil war as having anything to do with states' rights - it only damages modern arguments to check federal power.
The "Confederacy" was a terrorist organization devoted to race slavery. They managed to draw many ordinary people in, with good propaganda - but so did the Nazis, so has Al Qaeda.
That some otherwise intelligent people still think they had any validity is a sad sign.
Gravity pulls you to to Earth, just as it would pull in any body with zero velocity that was 80,000 miles away. My physics is too rusty to say offhand how long it takes you to crater or what your impact speed is.
But where did you grow up? Kids growing up in poor urban areas typically get much more exposure.
And of course, we might be even smarter geeks if it wasn't for lead exposure.
There are many exceptions if you don't use the complete rule:
I before E
Except after C
Or when sounded as A
As in "neighbor" or "sleigh"
"Reindeer" of course being a "sounded as A" case.
There are still enough exceptions - "weird", "seize", "caffeine", "protein", "either", "height" and so on - that some people say the "rule" is nothing of the kind and should be thrown out.
They get a monopoly on first class mail in exchange for a "universal service" obligation. UPS or FedEx can say "We don't deliver to that area, it's not profitable".
If a government oppressing its citizens is justification for unilateral foriegn invasion, boy howdy, get ready 'cause every nation on earth will start fighting every other nation.
Would another nation - say, Great Britian - have been justified in invading the US in 1850 to end slavery, or in 1950 to end segregation, or in 1942 to end internment of Japanese Americans?
There are way of encouraging less oppressive governance in other nations short of invading them.
Yes, Hussein's government was oppressive and if a stable benign democracy grows in its place that will be a good thing. That's a big fat honking if, though.
Iraq's wars with Iran and Kuwait are long over, and claiming any connection to the U.S. attack is a non sequitor.
Maybe you've got a nuke in your basement. Maybe you don't. After we level your house then we'll know for sure.
The existence of an Iraqi aresenal of WMD has become the political equivalent of an unfalsifiable hypothesis. "You inspector didn't find anything? See, that just proves how tricky these guys are..."
Nor is it within the legitimate authority of the U.S. to determine whether the possibility of an Iraqi arsenal justfies an invasion.
Only a very limited set of programs can be proved - the Halting Problem tells us that there's no general way to take a piece of code and know if it's correct or not, only a possibility of an ad hoc proof in some cases. And where proof is possible, the proof is complex enough that you can't rely on it being correct, any more than you can on the original program being correct. All you've done is change the notation of the problem, really.
This has nothing to do with Functional vs. Imperitive (Procedural) programming languages - algorithms in Imperitive languages can also be proved.
Programming is hard. Nothing can change that.
I hadn't used it in quite a while either, just re-activated my account for one auction I found through a multi-site search engine.
I usually look for stuff on Yahoo! auctions if I'm shopping for second-hand electronics and stuff. Where do you look besides eBay?
Under that definition, a cell phone number, business number, or telephone in a home with one person, qualifies as a name.
Right....
You tell your phone, "Call Tom."
"Tom who?"
"Tom Swiss"
"There are 128 people named `Tom Swiss' listed nationally."
"Call Tom Swiss in Baltimore."
"Do you want the computer geek in Catonsville, or the lawyer in Towson?"
"Computer geek."
"Dialing..."
It sounds to me like you're nostalgic for the days of operator dialing.
I often call a number and wish to speak to either member of a couple. Say I want to call Alice and Bob to let them know about the party this weekend - I don't care which one I speak to. This is hardly an exceptional case.
Names are not unique identifiers. You want a name->number mapping, use a PDA or your phone's built-in number list. It's an extra-network affair.
Von Neumann was smart enough that there is more than one thing named after him. A Von Neumann machine is a self-replicator. A Von Neumann architecture is a computer architecture where programs and data are stored in the same manner.
Sometimes the latter is also referred to as a Von Neumann machine.
A "BB" is a small ball bearing. "BB" usually means it's being shot at something (from a "BB gun" air rifle, or sometime from a slingshot), rather than used at a friction-reducing device.
Actually, the problem with the Hindenburg was that it's skin was painted with something very like thermite.
No.
Socialism: an economic system in which capital is controlled by workers (the people who use the capital to get stuff done). Comes in free-market and command-economy flavors. Contrast to capitalism, where capital is controlled by state-designated owners.
It's sad that the legacy of Palmer, McCarthy, and Hoover thrives to the extent that most Americans think socialist -> totalitarian.
Vigilance, eternal, liberty, price of. Your ignorance will not protect you.
These are all well-documented activities of the federal government, and every American should be aware of them. A half-hour with Google would be very educational.
COINTELPRO was the FBI's covert program of spying on anyone to the left of J. Edgar Hoover. This included tapes of Martin Luther King's sex life. The Senate later found that
RICO (the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act), a law supposedly targeted at the Mafia that has been used instead to unconstitutionally seize assests without a trail, and turn minor crimes into federal felonies.
There is a world of difference between trusting a person, and trusting an organization.
While rhetorically arousing, your question is a complete non sequitor. We're talking about the legal rights of people accused by the state of crimes. If you were accused of shooting me, would you think it was ok if you were deprived of your legal right to trial by jury to prove your innocence, because I was deprived of my moral right to life?
No, it doesn't. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It demands due processs, a speady and public trial, and all the other rights and liberties that we're (or at least used to be) proud of.
Dude. We're talking about the government of the United States of America. The people who brought you COINTELPRO, MK-ULTRA, the War on (some) Drugs, the "police action" in Vietnam, Operation "Just Cause", Camp X-ray, RICO, Waco...the list goes on.
The available evidence suggests that any person with a lick of sense should trust a randomly choosen loon from the local mental hospital more than trusting agents of the federal government.
The good reason is due process. Something which even serial killers and real terrorists are entitled to.
Just for accuracy, the lyric is "Oh, say does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave / Over the land of the free, and the home of the brave?"
Probably not. But I do remember that the first PC my father bought back in the mid-80s, a Victor 9000, did come with a dust cover...
Convoluted it is, and all hope of humor is gone if it needs explaining, but for those scratching their heads:
He signs his post, "J. Green Giant". Jolly Green Giant. Big green guy from frozen vegetable commericials. Could perhaps be a giant humanoid plant.
Boxers. Men trying to have kids often switch from briefs to boxers (and sometimes take more radical steps) to keep the testicles a little cooler and thus produce more sperm.
So, the plant-man Jolly Green Giant is conscious that his "biological clock" is ticking. Wants to have kids before it's too late. So he takes measures including changing underwear styles to increase fertility.