"the AUD is worth more than the USD for the first time in history"
Oh my. I feel old. I predate history!
I believe back in the early 80's, when I was in high school, that the AUD was more than the USD. It dropped way below overnight when the Oz government devalued the AUD. My economics teacher even predicted the devaluation and I believe made some money on currency speculation.
I'd just like to point out that in the comments at the bottom of the Guardian article is a comment from EMoonTX.
She says why she signed the letter, and goes on to discuss C.S. Lewis's thoughts on the matter that "confusion between degrees of merit and differences". If she posted her comment on slashdot, I'd give it a +1 insightful or +1 informative. Well worth the read. I won't copy and paste it here since it's just as easy to follow the link above.
Does anybody know one of those free online class sites with a decent set of math classes, preferably geared more toward programmers?
I already have a degree in computing, but I've gone back to study a BSc in Math. Most people studying with me, to supplement the given material, make use of the Khan Academy http://www.khanacademy.org/ and also the MIT OpenCourseWare http://videolectures.net/mit_ocw/
Khan Academy is good for reinforcing concepts, but the MIT OpenCourseWare is really good for straight out teaching.
I love the Classical Mechanics lectures by Walter Lewin - he's an amazing lecturer, although you'll already have to be good with calculus and differential equations to be able to easily follow.
MIT also has single and multivariable calculus, linear algebra and differential equations courses. If you completed all of them, you'll have a great basis for further math.
I'm sure that someone here has taken those classes in person and can vouch for how good they are.
Have you ever been to North Dakota or Texas?... does not make them nearly the same culturally.
Hang on, are you really saying that you think that the differences between North Dakota and Texas are similar to the differences to Monaco and Singapore?
Really?
I've been to Singapore and Monaco, and I can tell you that an Asian culture is vastly different to a southern European culture. I've been to Texas, but I've never been to North Dakota, so you could be right, but I'm highly skeptical.
At last tally, there are approximately 251 million passenger vehicles on the road. Also, deaths due to drunk driving are just under 14,000 per year. That equates to less than.006% of highway deaths caused by drunk drivers.
If 14,000 were caused by drunk driving, then that makes it closer to 50% of deaths caused by drunk driving, or at least far more than 0.006% by a few orders of magnitude.
In addition to the French lines, there are high speed lines from Paris to London (England) and Brussels (Belgium) - and is being extended to Amsterdam (The Netherlands). This adds hundreds of kilometers to the length of the lines.
Sure, you'll need to change trains in Paris, but the networks are connected.
The MSG episode was almost on par with a MythBusters experiment.
Not very scientific. All it proved that there are a random number of wackos out there.
MSG is my favourite flavouring, but I can't take large amounts. I found this out one night after eating in a cheap Chinese place. After getting over 1/2 through a dish, I started to feel funny, I stood up, took one step, then passed out, waking up on the floor after landing face first and proceeded to vomit up the meal. I was taken to hospital, mainly do to the head injury. Since then, I've been able to determine that having foods with MSG can make me sick, and I've learnt how to limit the amounts I take in so I don't get sick.
Now, I can't easily tell if food has MSG in it, but if it does have, and I eat enough of it, then I'll start to feel sick, and then I'll know.
Just because that something is difficult to test, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Personally, I think the guy in the story is probably a total loon, but it just may be possible. Double blind tests are what are needed.
Tech jobs in France require english just like anywhere else.
Although this is true, is you have any position that has some contact weend users, then most of these people will only speak limited English, and so the companies will prefer if you speak French.
This is from first hand knowledge. Meeting with end users in northern France, the management spoke English, but the normal workers spoke only a little or no English, and so the meetings would have to be conducted in French.
£500 is a typical countracting rate, plus or minus 20% would cover the typical rates of most IT contractors. This would easily put him above 95% of the UK population.
It's obvious that he's a sad person who, and the reason for his post was to boast how much money he's earning.
My guess it's probably his first contract and he's so excited he has to tell everyone.
Driving on the road and track are totally different. I would never consider doing what I do on the track on a normal road.
better finishing your braking as early as possible so that you can get back on the power a bit
No. I you can get back on the power, then you've slowed down too much. You want to have the car almost float around the corner, right on the limit of grip.
If you're really good, like a pro driver, then you will brake just the right amount. If you're not a Hamilton (or even a Button), then if you finish your braking in the entry, if you're too slow you can ease off the braking, if you're too fast you brake a little harder. This was taught to me by a German ex-rally driver, Wolfgang Weber (www.wwmotorsport.de He currently holds the wet lap record at the full Nurburgring F1 track plus northern loop). At a track like Spa, it can make the difference of up to 5 seconds a lap.
Better to get on the power early than get on the brakes late?
Of course, slow in, fast out is the best strategy for most corners, but what I'm talking about is more fine tuning the cornering, trying to shave a tenth of a second off a corner. Over 30 corners, that's 3 seconds.
Braking down and selecting the appropriate gear before a corner is...
I have to say, I'm amazed. You actually know what you're talking about. If I had mod points today, I would have modded this post up.
Most people in general have little idea on the dynamics of their car, and as can be seen in the disucssion on this article, like to think that their limited experience is gospel.
Obviously computer games are totally different from real life in that you can't feel the car reacting around you,
I've played lots of games on PC, Xbox, PS2, and I have to tell you that the biggest part of driving is the feel of the car, and although you can do things like learn brake points for a track, it's not going to help you too much. All of the games I've played, when I take a car that I know, the handling in the game is nothing like real life.
with RWD, but after learning basic stuff like braking before corners rather than on them
Yes, but a more advanced technique is to finish your braking in the first half of the corner. It's harder to control the car, but you'll go faster.
I do want to go to a racetrack myself at some point.
Track days are the best thing you can do to improve your driving. Save up and go. For your first time, make sure that you get a session of instruction. Every track day has some pros to give instruction.
If you happen to be in Spa, Belgium in Oct, I'll be happy to let you be a passanger for a few laps. I'll be picking up an Exige Sport 260 just before then.
A dollar a day gets you a meal with rice and some vegetbles. The people who are in dire trouble are the ones on less than 50 cents a day, they have rice, no vegetables and not always a meal. The people on $1-$2/day get to have some meat with their rice and vegetables.
You would rather we completely ignore the lower income 50% of the world (who would benefit from free software), because 1% of the world have bigger problems?
Well, I'm just as self-absorbed as the next westerner, and sometime I honestly find it hard to even care about the thrid world, but one thing I don't like is willful ignorance.
According to The Economist, edition April 19th-25th 2008, page 31, there are over 1 billion people living on $1 a day, and a further 1.5 billion people living on $1 to $2 dollars a day.
That's 2 1/2 billion people living on less thqn $2/day!
You want to retract that "1% of the world have bigger problems"?
Because destroying the country's ability to produce food internally is a bad idea. What happens when externally produced food skyrockets in price, or worse, is not available at all?
The same thing you do when it happens to other commodities, such as oil, you invade.
I mean, what's the point of being the only super power if you can't use it to take wha you want.
I would imagine that their Accounts Payable department would be more shocked. But then again, maybe actually understanding the difference between 'receivable' and 'payable'
Speak for yourself, I have all of my payments put through as AR credit notes, that way I can get past the approval limits set up in AP!
Now, so long as those pesky SOX auditors don't notice......
Communist, dictatorship, democratic (but tied to big business) who cares... people get repressed everywhere, just some are more open about it than others...
I'm sitting about 400m from NATO's headquaters. As long as I don't end up glowing in the dark, then I'm happy. Not pointing the nukes at my house was the best thing that has happened in the 90s.
OK, so bird flu gets more press than normal human strains.
I think the question is not is bird flu more dangerous than normal flu, but what will happen if bird flu infects people and then mutates.
Normal human strains of flu have been around for a long time, sometime mutates into something really bad. We have had a lot of experience of this, and there are a lot of infection models.
We know nothing of what will happen if bird flu gets into humans and mutates because it hasn't yet happened (although there is conjecture that this is what happend with the flu outbreak during the great war).
It's just like saying that those NASA people are wasting money tracking asteroids, as mankind hasn't suffered a big asteroid strike, and it's all hype. I would rather have some people looking into these things and generating hype, instead of directing their resources into something else (like preventing car accidents) even though it would give a better lives saved to dollar ratio.
problem they have unreasonably high expectations about their kids. It is frequent to hire a private teacher to work with the kid, to find many extra exercises for them like swimming, studying foreign languages (even at the age of 3!), etc.
My son is 3 1/2, he is fluent in French, English and understands some Dutch. He has gone swimming once a week for the last 2 years and loves it - he make us take him extra times on the weekend or Friday night as well.
We don't take up much of his free time at all. We have no special expectations. He is never forced to do anything 5except brush his teeth).
I can't see what gives you the right to pass judgment on other people. Unless to know specifically what goes on, you're just making it up. At best, you know a few parents well enough tosay that they are stressing their children, unless you have a Phd and studied thousands of children.
My guess is that at teh age of 4, the children are yet to exeprience any stress. If they don't want to do something, they won't do it. Only when they are older and they can be forced to do things against their will they will experience achievement related stress.
Back from my university days, when we were using VAX 11/780s and DG with DG_UX. I've kept my emails and old usenet postings, and just kept transfering them to each new computer.
And my quota on the VAX was 500 blocks (250k). Enough to compile my assignments, but not enough for all of my email.
> would spawn the 'OMGZ SILLY KIDZ' thread lol.
But it was good for "... back in my day" bait. I mean, really don't you think that you are a little young to bring up a back in my day story?
You don't see me going around saying how low my userid is, do you?
Slashdot Mirror
"the AUD is worth more than the USD for the first time in history"
Oh my. I feel old. I predate history!
I believe back in the early 80's, when I was in high school, that the AUD was more than the USD. It dropped way below overnight when the Oz government devalued the AUD.
My economics teacher even predicted the devaluation and I believe made some money on currency speculation.
Thanks for the links.
I'd just like to point out that in the comments at the bottom of the Guardian article is a comment from EMoonTX.
She says why she signed the letter, and goes on to discuss C.S. Lewis's thoughts on the matter that "confusion between degrees of merit and differences". If she posted her comment on slashdot, I'd give it a +1 insightful or +1 informative. Well worth the read. I won't copy and paste it here since it's just as easy to follow the link above.
Does anybody know one of those free online class sites with a decent set of math classes, preferably geared more toward programmers?
I already have a degree in computing, but I've gone back to study a BSc in Math. Most people studying with me, to supplement the given material, make use of the Khan Academy http://www.khanacademy.org/
and also the MIT OpenCourseWare http://videolectures.net/mit_ocw/
Khan Academy is good for reinforcing concepts, but the MIT OpenCourseWare is really good for straight out teaching.
I love the Classical Mechanics lectures by Walter Lewin - he's an amazing lecturer, although you'll already have to be good with calculus and differential equations to be able to easily follow.
MIT also has single and multivariable calculus, linear algebra and differential equations courses. If you completed all of them, you'll have a great basis for further math.
I'm sure that someone here has taken those classes in person and can vouch for how good they are.
Have you ever been to North Dakota or Texas? ... does not make them nearly the same culturally.
Hang on, are you really saying that you think that the differences between North Dakota and Texas are similar to the differences to Monaco and Singapore?
Really?
I've been to Singapore and Monaco, and I can tell you that an Asian culture is vastly different to a southern European culture. I've been to Texas, but I've never been to North Dakota, so you could be right, but I'm highly skeptical.
At last tally, there are approximately 251 million passenger vehicles on the road. Also, deaths due to drunk driving are just under 14,000 per year. That equates to less than .006% of highway deaths caused by drunk drivers.
There were 30,797 road fatalities in 2009, according to your government ( http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx/ ).
If 14,000 were caused by drunk driving, then that makes it closer to 50% of deaths caused by drunk driving, or at least far more than 0.006% by a few orders of magnitude.
Math isn't one of your strong points, is it?
In addition to the French lines, there are high speed lines from Paris to London (England) and Brussels (Belgium) - and is being extended to Amsterdam (The Netherlands). This adds hundreds of kilometers to the length of the lines.
Sure, you'll need to change trains in Paris, but the networks are connected.
Man, $225 for a book, that's damn expensive.
You can find the international edition of the same book for under £50 from amazon.co.uk, that's less than $80.
What's the difference in the costs? Can't be the printing, the contents is the same.
It looks like collusion in the US education market is ripping off US students.
May I suggest the Open University in the UK? (www.open.ac.uk)
The course M120 is a great introductory course in math. It covers all of the basics that you need before taking on any higher level math.
Everything is online.
You might even be able to do a credit transfer to your current qualification.
The course is in English, the tutors speak English.
There's no exam, only assignments.
The MSG episode was almost on par with a MythBusters experiment.
Not very scientific. All it proved that there are a random number of wackos out there.
MSG is my favourite flavouring, but I can't take large amounts. I found this out one night after eating in a cheap Chinese place. After getting over 1/2 through a dish, I started to feel funny, I stood up, took one step, then passed out, waking up on the floor after landing face first and proceeded to vomit up the meal. I was taken to hospital, mainly do to the head injury. Since then, I've been able to determine that having foods with MSG can make me sick, and I've learnt how to limit the amounts I take in so I don't get sick.
Now, I can't easily tell if food has MSG in it, but if it does have, and I eat enough of it, then I'll start to feel sick, and then I'll know.
Just because that something is difficult to test, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Personally, I think the guy in the story is probably a total loon, but it just may be possible. Double blind tests are what are needed.
Tech jobs in France require english just like anywhere else.
Although this is true, is you have any position that has some contact weend users, then most of these people will only speak limited English, and so the companies will prefer if you speak French.
This is from first hand knowledge. Meeting with end users in northern France, the management spoke English, but the normal workers spoke only a little or no English, and so the meetings would have to be conducted in French.
drop you all in some irrelevant and expendable place like .... Belgium ... and let you slug it out,
Fine. Come over here. We're used to other people fighting there battles here.
We can probably find some more space for another war cemetery.
£500 is a typical countracting rate, plus or minus 20% would cover the typical rates of most IT contractors. This would easily put him above 95% of the UK population.
It's obvious that he's a sad person who, and the reason for his post was to boast how much money he's earning.
My guess it's probably his first contract and he's so excited he has to tell everyone.
Driving on the road and track are totally different. I would never consider doing what I do on the track on a normal road.
better finishing your braking as early as possible so that you can get back on the power a bit
No. I you can get back on the power, then you've slowed down too much. You want to have the car almost float around the corner, right on the limit of grip.
If you're really good, like a pro driver, then you will brake just the right amount. If you're not a Hamilton (or even a Button), then if you finish your braking in the entry, if you're too slow you can ease off the braking, if you're too fast you brake a little harder. This was taught to me by a German ex-rally driver, Wolfgang Weber (www.wwmotorsport.de He currently holds the wet lap record at the full Nurburgring F1 track plus northern loop). At a track like Spa, it can make the difference of up to 5 seconds a lap.
Better to get on the power early than get on the brakes late?
Of course, slow in, fast out is the best strategy for most corners, but what I'm talking about is more fine tuning the cornering, trying to shave a tenth of a second off a corner. Over 30 corners, that's 3 seconds.
Braking down and selecting the appropriate gear before a corner is ...
I have to say, I'm amazed. You actually know what you're talking about. If I had mod points today, I would have modded this post up.
Most people in general have little idea on the dynamics of their car, and as can be seen in the disucssion on this article, like to think that their limited experience is gospel.
Obviously computer games are totally different from real life in that you can't feel the car reacting around you,
I've played lots of games on PC, Xbox, PS2, and I have to tell you that the biggest part of driving is the feel of the car, and although you can do things like learn brake points for a track, it's not going to help you too much. All of the games I've played, when I take a car that I know, the handling in the game is nothing like real life.
with RWD, but after learning basic stuff like braking before corners rather than on them
Yes, but a more advanced technique is to finish your braking in the first half of the corner. It's harder to control the car, but you'll go faster.
I do want to go to a racetrack myself at some point.
Track days are the best thing you can do to improve your driving. Save up and go. For your first time, make sure that you get a session of instruction. Every track day has some pros to give instruction.
If you happen to be in Spa, Belgium in Oct, I'll be happy to let you be a passanger for a few laps. I'll be picking up an Exige Sport 260 just before then.
A dollar a day gets you a meal with rice and some vegetbles. The people who are in dire trouble are the ones on less than 50 cents a day, they have rice, no vegetables and not always a meal. The people on $1-$2/day get to have some meat with their rice and vegetables.
You would rather we completely ignore the lower income 50% of the world (who would benefit from free software), because 1% of the world have bigger problems?
Well, I'm just as self-absorbed as the next westerner, and sometime I honestly find it hard to even care about the thrid world, but one thing I don't like is willful ignorance.
According to The Economist, edition April 19th-25th 2008, page 31, there are over 1 billion people living on $1 a day, and a further 1.5 billion people living on $1 to $2 dollars a day.
That's 2 1/2 billion people living on less thqn $2/day!
You want to retract that "1% of the world have bigger problems"?
"sk8er boi" from December 2002
I agree. I think the FIFA 2003 idea is just totally rubbish.
I remember first seeing her around then on MCM, a French language music
video channel.
Because destroying the country's ability to produce food internally is a bad idea. What happens when externally produced food skyrockets in price, or worse, is not available at all?
The same thing you do when it happens to other commodities, such as oil, you invade.
I mean, what's the point of being the only super power if you can't use it to take wha you want.
My Lotus Elise has the engine mid-mounted, which really means it is in the back, since there's bugger-all space in the boot.
Lots of sports cars have engines over or behind the rear axle.
I would imagine that their Accounts Payable department would be more shocked. But then again, maybe actually understanding the difference between 'receivable' and 'payable'
......
Speak for yourself, I have all of my payments put through as AR credit notes, that way I can get past the approval limits set up in AP!
Now, so long as those pesky SOX auditors don't notice
Communist, dictatorship, democratic (but tied to big business) who cares... people get repressed everywhere, just some are more open about it than others...
I'm sitting about 400m from NATO's headquaters. As long as I don't end up glowing in the dark, then I'm happy. Not pointing the nukes at my house was the best thing that has happened in the 90s.
OK, so bird flu gets more press than normal human strains.
I think the question is not is bird flu more dangerous than normal flu, but what will happen if bird flu infects people and then mutates.
Normal human strains of flu have been around for a long time, sometime mutates into something really bad. We have had a lot of experience of this, and there are a lot of infection models.
We know nothing of what will happen if bird flu gets into humans and mutates because it hasn't yet happened (although there is conjecture that this is what happend with the flu outbreak during the great war).
It's just like saying that those NASA people are wasting money tracking asteroids, as mankind hasn't suffered a big asteroid strike, and it's all hype. I would rather have some people looking into these things and generating hype, instead of directing their resources into something else (like preventing car accidents) even though it would give a better lives saved to dollar ratio.
problem they have unreasonably high expectations about their kids. It is frequent to hire a private teacher to work with the kid, to find many extra exercises for them like swimming, studying foreign languages (even at the age of 3!), etc.
My son is 3 1/2, he is fluent in French, English and understands some Dutch. He has gone swimming once a
week for the last 2 years and loves it - he make us take him extra times on the weekend or Friday
night as well.
We don't take up much of his free time at all. We have no special expectations. He is never
forced to do anything 5except brush his teeth).
I can't see what gives you the right to pass judgment on other people. Unless to know
specifically what goes on, you're just making it up. At best, you know a few parents well
enough tosay that they are stressing their children, unless you have a Phd and studied
thousands of children.
My guess is that at teh age of 4, the children are yet to exeprience any stress. If they
don't want to do something, they won't do it. Only when they are older and they can be
forced to do things against their will they will experience achievement related stress.
> Oh yeah, and I'm 19. thx parent
You know, I really do have files older than you.
Back from my university days, when we were using
VAX 11/780s and DG with DG_UX. I've kept my emails
and old usenet postings, and just kept transfering
them to each new computer.
And my quota on the VAX was 500 blocks (250k). Enough to
compile my assignments, but not enough for all of my email.
> would spawn the 'OMGZ SILLY KIDZ' thread lol.
But it was good for "... back in my day" bait. I mean, really
don't you think that you are a little young to bring up a
back in my day story?
You don't see me going around saying how low my userid is, do
you?