I never made the distinction of being paid by merit. I want ALL teachers to get paid more, so that there is more competition to become a teacher. We wont get rid of the bad teachers immediately, but they will be much easier to recognize.
Dawkins, myself, and I dare say most other atheists see the point exactly. The point, if you had ever actually read the introductory chapter of any Dawkins writings on religion, is that there is no difference between the hypothesis of God and the hypothesis of 'god'. The scientific and logical argument against either is exactly the same, and will always be so until actual scientific evidence of god or God is presented in a verifiable and repeatable experiment.
There is no debate, because there are ZERO arguments for the existence of God or god that have any kind of scientific data to back them up. Dawkins himself has stopped debating publicly with fundamentalist Christians because they disgrace the concept of logical argument. You can't argue with someone who fully accepts the inherent hypocrisy of their point of view. The debate is over before it even starts.
No president, atheist or fundamentalist Christian, would ever take away your right to worship.
What I dream for is a country in which our government enforces my right to NOT worship!
Religious leaders have been very successful in manipulating politicians into blurring the boundary between religion and science, and ironically, it does as much harm to religion as it does to science.
Competent teachers are just as supportive of the teacher's union as incompetent ones. Everyone wants job security. Competent teachers probably want it more so than incompetent ones, because they don't want asses like the one in TFA to be able to teach in the first place. If you want competent teachers, pay them what they deserve AND support the teacher's union. Sure, it will take a little while to weed out the morons that should never have been teachers anyway. The point of the matter is that competent teachers choose to go into other fields, or choose to hold out for more prestigious positions in universities, etc., because public school teachers simply don't get paid enough.
Here's some great books that have nothing to do with the actual programming of GUIs, but are invaluable when it comes to designing them well. Most problems programmers have with programming user interfaces will disappear once you have a firm grasp of how you want your data to be displayed in the first place.
"User Interface Design for Programmers" - Joel Spolsky
There are several AI techniques that have been around for decades that the gambit system is based on. They're generally called "Rule-based expert systems", but there are several variations. Once you read up on the power of these systems, you'll find the gambit system incredibly limiting (no && rules???). At least they let you set precedence, but they really need a hierarchical gambit system to bring it to the next level.
>> Sony made DVD a standard and Blu-ray will, aside from an unprecedented problem occurring, be the new delivery media for high definition movies. Why would last generation be any different than this one, barring a huge screw up?
Precedent is not set by a single iteration. I would ask what reasoning would lead you to believe that the next generation would be the *same* as the last. Also, your correlation is flawed. Why would you believe that the PS2 created the DVD standard? DVDs had been out for quite some time before the PS2. I would argue that the boom of digital video created a huge surge in PS2 purchases, not the other way around. Now that everything is digital, the only benefit consumers can see from any next-generation standard is capacity. HD-DVD and BluRay have about the same capacity, so where is the drive to choose one over the other?
Besides, the Xbox360 with HD-DVD beat the PS3 to market by a decent time margin, whereas the PS2 beat the Xbox to market by a huge margin (in my memory at least). What about the present situation makes you think that the playing field is at all aligned with the same forces that were at work 5-6 years ago?
Sucks... But that's the way it is. Computer languages have always strived towards human-readable form. The "Latest & Greatest" aren't there because they're more efficient, they're there because you can develop well-designed code faster. Modern languages are pattern-oriented (although so are some older languages, i.e. Smalltalk), which decreases design overhead. They also provide dramatically improved debugging and automated testing facilities.
Career programming is about productivity. With modern languages, I can write 90% of what is necessary in half the time and 1/10 the code. Then if profiling reveals a bottleneck in some algorithm that can't be optimized due to the language, there are several language-dependent options I can consider. Hardware is so fast and cheap now that I haven't needed to drop into assembler in years. Embedded systems are a whole other story, but that's not what you were talking about.
The biggest problem with software engineering today is unnecessary optimization. Starting a new project in C when Ruby, Java, or C# will perform exactly the same is about the worst thing you could do to the future maintainers of your project. C# and Ruby, for example, allow you to call C code from a native DLL if you absolutely need it. I have written a large amount of scientific and simulation software, and I have never needed to do so.
I was a big fan of FF 1-3 on the SNES, and then I played FFX. It was the first 3D FF that I was inclined to buy, mainly because of the awe-inspiring cutscenes (for the time), and incredible area detail. I also have studied classical music my entire life, and composition/arranging since college, so I feel I can comment on this matter.
I feel that the battle system and the music in FFXII are superb. One of the most annoying aspects of random encounters is that they break up the music. The new system lets you listen throughout an entire area. I've found myself humming and whistling the FFXII themes this entire week after playing non-stop last weekend. The music is very well composed, and interesting in that it manages to be highly melodic and atmospheric simultaneously. That is not easy to do.
I, for one, actually appreciate that FFXII has managed to tastefully include thematic material from earlier FF games. It appeals to the nostalgic culture that I believe the series owes much of its acclaim to. If you don't like it, well, it's not like it wasn't expected.
If I have any criticism of the Gambit system, it's that it doesn't let you combine gambits together (i.e. if A && B then heal). More control is needed to achieve truly user-defined automation.
That would be completely dependent on the frequency of power cycling the device.
I challenge you to present a device that you turn on and off so often that it saves a significant amount of energy.
Now on the other hand, many people leave computers/electronics/lights on because the mechanical stresses of turning them on and off frequently can cause physical damage to the device. If you factor in the cost of replacing/repairing the device due to physical damage, then you may have an argument for a very small selection of devices.
Centripetal forces are proportional to the square of the velocity (F = m * v^2 / r)
So we take this and add the force of the linear acceleration:
Linear acceleration forces are constant for constant acceleration (F = m * a = 2 * m * d / t^2)
So for a given velocity, the centripetal force is going to be determined by the desired velocity and the radius of the circle, whereas the linear acceleration force is going to depend only on the distance (or time) it takes to accelerate to the desired velocity.
I'm pretty sure kids are US citizens, and therefore have the basic civil rights that adults do. The difference is that the actions of minors are the responsibility of their parents/guardians. You cannot say that children don't have the right to 'free speech' and 'privacy', because they do. What children do not have is the right to represent themselves in court. That is the responsibility of the parents. Therefore, if a child were to sue their parents, the parents would in essence be suing themselves. Since we have a whole constitutional amendment protecting us from self-incrimination, it would be folly to follow through on that line of reasoning.
Instead, we simply make it the legal responsibility for the parents to keep their children out of harm, and give a ridiculous amount of leeway as to the definitions of 'harm' and 'keep out of'.
If your children are getting in trouble, it's your fault. Legally and ethically.
>>Oh and Guys...Lay off the compressors. You're killing the sound. With digital recording we have enormous dynamic ranges available to us. So use it!
I agree. But if you lay off the compressors and processing in most pop music, the artists would be exposed for the frauds they are. There goes 90% of the recording industry!!!
Not that I wouldn't rather be recording symphonies for a living, but those jobs are few and far between.
99% of audio production ends up in the 16bit/44.1kHz(or48kHz) domain in the end. I would say this satisfies most definitions of 'Pro-Audio'.
'Pro' is just a gimmick. A 'Pro' engineer has a working understanding of acoustics, psychoacoustics, signal processing, music, electrical engineering, and knowledge of audio history as well as a sense of current recording/broadcast styles. The equipment that a 'Pro' engineer chooses to work with is almost always based on usability, and how it will enhance/impede his creative process, as well as the creative process of the artists being heard. Ask a dozen engineers what mics they recommend based on the way they 'sound' and you'll almost always get a dozen answers. Ask a dozen engineers what mics they recommend based on durability and usefulness, and your range of answers will be much more narrow.
Audio engineering is an art, and anyone can be an artist if they take the time to practice.
I think that by 'Improving the sound', the parent wasn't necessarily talking about S/N ratio. Any processing we do to a signal (EQ/Compression/etc) is meant to 'improve' the sound, at the expense of S/N.
I would have to recommend a good dynamic microphone. Mainly because you can hammer nails with them and they'll still work fine for decades. I would explicitly not recommend ribbon microphones as they are easily damaged by shock and moving air. Dynamic microphones also tend to be cheaper, and therefore you can afford more of them (the biggest mistake you could make is to not have a complete set of backup microphones).
With dynamic microphones, however, you have to worry about proximity effect. Some engineers love the effect, some work really hard and buy extra processing gear to counteract it. You don't have that issue with condenser mics.
Finally, someone who understands that not everything is digital!!!
I worked in pro audio for many years, and sometimes ground loops will appear out of nowhere after 3 years of perfect working conditions. If your racks aren't ready to be poked and prodded at any time, then you're not going to have the hum removed by tomorrow's sound-check, and you can kiss your job goodbye because big-name touring groups just don't have time for you to be behind a rack.
The only equipment that needs to be perfectly wired and harnessed are the relatively short cable runs inside mobile racks. 500 miles in the back of a semi-truck can cause all kinds of insecure connections to become faulty, so you better make sure that vibrations and stretching aren't going to be putting any stress on solder joints. These IT people with their punch blocks don't know how easy they have it. At least the telecom guys know what wiring is about...
They come from the conductor itself initially, but since the ion emitter is a conductor, the electrons are constantly being replenished from whatever current source is powering the device. They move freely throughout the conductor's crystal lattice, which is, well, why it's called a conductor...
The way people treat energy usage, you'd think that there's never been an energy crisis.
One thing people can do is to put their other resources to work for them. Most people can't afford to retrofit a geothermal heat pump underneath their house, but there's other options!
Do you have a pool??? Think about how AC units work: they remove heat from inside of the house, and move it outside into the atmosphere. Air, being an excellent insulator, is probably the worst medium to discharge excess heat efficiently. Besides, when it's already 115 degrees outside, that inefficiency is even worse. Your compressor has to use even MORE energy to cool your home. If you pump this heat into your pool water instead, you'll increase efficiency by a disgusting amount.
I happen to know of at least one home in one of the hottest areas of California that has 42 degree air blowing out of the AC vents on 115 degree days using only 10 amps!!!! So the temperature of your pool goes up a few degrees, who cares? Some people pay extra money for pool heaters...
I want to see any commercial AC unit drawing 8-10 amps on a 115 degree day, while blowing 42 degree air into the owner's home...
Slashdot Mirror
You're by far the exception, not the norm.
Some American students don't get to it at all even by the time they're finished with high school.
You live in America, don't you?
I never made the distinction of being paid by merit. I want ALL teachers to get paid more, so that there is more competition to become a teacher. We wont get rid of the bad teachers immediately, but they will be much easier to recognize.
Dawkins, myself, and I dare say most other atheists see the point exactly. The point, if you had ever actually read the introductory chapter of any Dawkins writings on religion, is that there is no difference between the hypothesis of God and the hypothesis of 'god'. The scientific and logical argument against either is exactly the same, and will always be so until actual scientific evidence of god or God is presented in a verifiable and repeatable experiment.
There is no debate, because there are ZERO arguments for the existence of God or god that have any kind of scientific data to back them up. Dawkins himself has stopped debating publicly with fundamentalist Christians because they disgrace the concept of logical argument. You can't argue with someone who fully accepts the inherent hypocrisy of their point of view. The debate is over before it even starts.
No president, atheist or fundamentalist Christian, would ever take away your right to worship.
What I dream for is a country in which our government enforces my right to NOT worship!
Religious leaders have been very successful in manipulating politicians into blurring the boundary between religion and science, and ironically, it does as much harm to religion as it does to science.
Competent teachers are just as supportive of the teacher's union as incompetent ones. Everyone wants job security. Competent teachers probably want it more so than incompetent ones, because they don't want asses like the one in TFA to be able to teach in the first place. If you want competent teachers, pay them what they deserve AND support the teacher's union. Sure, it will take a little while to weed out the morons that should never have been teachers anyway. The point of the matter is that competent teachers choose to go into other fields, or choose to hold out for more prestigious positions in universities, etc., because public school teachers simply don't get paid enough.
Here's some great books that have nothing to do with the actual programming of GUIs, but are invaluable when it comes to designing them well. Most problems programmers have with programming user interfaces will disappear once you have a firm grasp of how you want your data to be displayed in the first place.
"User Interface Design for Programmers" - Joel Spolsky
"The Design of Everyday Things" - Donald Norman
There are several AI techniques that have been around for decades that the gambit system is based on. They're generally called "Rule-based expert systems", but there are several variations. Once you read up on the power of these systems, you'll find the gambit system incredibly limiting (no && rules???). At least they let you set precedence, but they really need a hierarchical gambit system to bring it to the next level.
>> Sony made DVD a standard and Blu-ray will, aside from an unprecedented problem occurring, be the new delivery media for high definition movies. Why would last generation be any different than this one, barring a huge screw up?
Precedent is not set by a single iteration. I would ask what reasoning would lead you to believe that the next generation would be the *same* as the last. Also, your correlation is flawed. Why would you believe that the PS2 created the DVD standard? DVDs had been out for quite some time before the PS2. I would argue that the boom of digital video created a huge surge in PS2 purchases, not the other way around. Now that everything is digital, the only benefit consumers can see from any next-generation standard is capacity. HD-DVD and BluRay have about the same capacity, so where is the drive to choose one over the other?
Besides, the Xbox360 with HD-DVD beat the PS3 to market by a decent time margin, whereas the PS2 beat the Xbox to market by a huge margin (in my memory at least). What about the present situation makes you think that the playing field is at all aligned with the same forces that were at work 5-6 years ago?
Sucks... But that's the way it is. Computer languages have always strived towards human-readable form. The "Latest & Greatest" aren't there because they're more efficient, they're there because you can develop well-designed code faster. Modern languages are pattern-oriented (although so are some older languages, i.e. Smalltalk), which decreases design overhead. They also provide dramatically improved debugging and automated testing facilities.
Career programming is about productivity. With modern languages, I can write 90% of what is necessary in half the time and 1/10 the code. Then if profiling reveals a bottleneck in some algorithm that can't be optimized due to the language, there are several language-dependent options I can consider. Hardware is so fast and cheap now that I haven't needed to drop into assembler in years. Embedded systems are a whole other story, but that's not what you were talking about.
The biggest problem with software engineering today is unnecessary optimization. Starting a new project in C when Ruby, Java, or C# will perform exactly the same is about the worst thing you could do to the future maintainers of your project. C# and Ruby, for example, allow you to call C code from a native DLL if you absolutely need it. I have written a large amount of scientific and simulation software, and I have never needed to do so.
I was a big fan of FF 1-3 on the SNES, and then I played FFX. It was the first 3D FF that I was inclined to buy, mainly because of the awe-inspiring cutscenes (for the time), and incredible area detail. I also have studied classical music my entire life, and composition/arranging since college, so I feel I can comment on this matter.
I feel that the battle system and the music in FFXII are superb. One of the most annoying aspects of random encounters is that they break up the music. The new system lets you listen throughout an entire area. I've found myself humming and whistling the FFXII themes this entire week after playing non-stop last weekend. The music is very well composed, and interesting in that it manages to be highly melodic and atmospheric simultaneously. That is not easy to do.
I, for one, actually appreciate that FFXII has managed to tastefully include thematic material from earlier FF games. It appeals to the nostalgic culture that I believe the series owes much of its acclaim to. If you don't like it, well, it's not like it wasn't expected.
If I have any criticism of the Gambit system, it's that it doesn't let you combine gambits together (i.e. if A && B then heal). More control is needed to achieve truly user-defined automation.
>> Maybe it's a free-electron laser?
Most people are not willing to have a particle accelerator with a magnetic deflection system inside of their television sets...
Oh wait! crap....
That would be completely dependent on the frequency of power cycling the device.
I challenge you to present a device that you turn on and off so often that it saves a significant amount of energy.
Now on the other hand, many people leave computers/electronics/lights on because the mechanical stresses of turning them on and off frequently can cause physical damage to the device. If you factor in the cost of replacing/repairing the device due to physical damage, then you may have an argument for a very small selection of devices.
Centripetal forces are proportional to the square of the velocity (F = m * v^2 / r)
So we take this and add the force of the linear acceleration:
Linear acceleration forces are constant for constant acceleration (F = m * a = 2 * m * d / t^2)
So for a given velocity, the centripetal force is going to be determined by the desired velocity and the radius of the circle, whereas the linear acceleration force is going to depend only on the distance (or time) it takes to accelerate to the desired velocity.
I'm pretty sure kids are US citizens, and therefore have the basic civil rights that adults do. The difference is that the actions of minors are the responsibility of their parents/guardians. You cannot say that children don't have the right to 'free speech' and 'privacy', because they do. What children do not have is the right to represent themselves in court. That is the responsibility of the parents. Therefore, if a child were to sue their parents, the parents would in essence be suing themselves. Since we have a whole constitutional amendment protecting us from self-incrimination, it would be folly to follow through on that line of reasoning.
Instead, we simply make it the legal responsibility for the parents to keep their children out of harm, and give a ridiculous amount of leeway as to the definitions of 'harm' and 'keep out of'.
If your children are getting in trouble, it's your fault. Legally and ethically.
>>Oh and Guys...Lay off the compressors. You're killing the sound. With digital recording we have enormous dynamic ranges available to us. So use it!
I agree. But if you lay off the compressors and processing in most pop music, the artists would be exposed for the frauds they are. There goes 90% of the recording industry!!!
Not that I wouldn't rather be recording symphonies for a living, but those jobs are few and far between.
99% of audio production ends up in the 16bit/44.1kHz(or48kHz) domain in the end. I would say this satisfies most definitions of 'Pro-Audio'.
'Pro' is just a gimmick. A 'Pro' engineer has a working understanding of acoustics, psychoacoustics, signal processing, music, electrical engineering, and knowledge of audio history as well as a sense of current recording/broadcast styles. The equipment that a 'Pro' engineer chooses to work with is almost always based on usability, and how it will enhance/impede his creative process, as well as the creative process of the artists being heard. Ask a dozen engineers what mics they recommend based on the way they 'sound' and you'll almost always get a dozen answers. Ask a dozen engineers what mics they recommend based on durability and usefulness, and your range of answers will be much more narrow.
Audio engineering is an art, and anyone can be an artist if they take the time to practice.
I think that by 'Improving the sound', the parent wasn't necessarily talking about S/N ratio. Any processing we do to a signal (EQ/Compression/etc) is meant to 'improve' the sound, at the expense of S/N.
I would have to recommend a good dynamic microphone. Mainly because you can hammer nails with them and they'll still work fine for decades. I would explicitly not recommend ribbon microphones as they are easily damaged by shock and moving air. Dynamic microphones also tend to be cheaper, and therefore you can afford more of them (the biggest mistake you could make is to not have a complete set of backup microphones).
With dynamic microphones, however, you have to worry about proximity effect. Some engineers love the effect, some work really hard and buy extra processing gear to counteract it. You don't have that issue with condenser mics.
Finally, someone who understands that not everything is digital!!!
I worked in pro audio for many years, and sometimes ground loops will appear out of nowhere after 3 years of perfect working conditions. If your racks aren't ready to be poked and prodded at any time, then you're not going to have the hum removed by tomorrow's sound-check, and you can kiss your job goodbye because big-name touring groups just don't have time for you to be behind a rack.
The only equipment that needs to be perfectly wired and harnessed are the relatively short cable runs inside mobile racks. 500 miles in the back of a semi-truck can cause all kinds of insecure connections to become faulty, so you better make sure that vibrations and stretching aren't going to be putting any stress on solder joints. These IT people with their punch blocks don't know how easy they have it. At least the telecom guys know what wiring is about...
They come from the conductor itself initially, but since the ion emitter is a conductor, the electrons are constantly being replenished from whatever current source is powering the device. They move freely throughout the conductor's crystal lattice, which is, well, why it's called a conductor...
The way people treat energy usage, you'd think that there's never been an energy crisis.
One thing people can do is to put their other resources to work for them. Most people can't afford to retrofit a geothermal heat pump underneath their house, but there's other options!
Do you have a pool??? Think about how AC units work: they remove heat from inside of the house, and move it outside into the atmosphere. Air, being an excellent insulator, is probably the worst medium to discharge excess heat efficiently. Besides, when it's already 115 degrees outside, that inefficiency is even worse. Your compressor has to use even MORE energy to cool your home. If you pump this heat into your pool water instead, you'll increase efficiency by a disgusting amount.
I happen to know of at least one home in one of the hottest areas of California that has 42 degree air blowing out of the AC vents on 115 degree days using only 10 amps!!!! So the temperature of your pool goes up a few degrees, who cares? Some people pay extra money for pool heaters...
I want to see any commercial AC unit drawing 8-10 amps on a 115 degree day, while blowing 42 degree air into the owner's home...
Indeed.
It costs tens of thousands of dollars to create a room with enough isolation to measure SPL that low.
It costs even more for the equipment sensitive enough to actually perform the measurement.
It takes a lot more than being an embryo to become a kid. About 9 months more and a womb, unless someone cares to correct me...
Does the book explain any methods for dealing with interoperation with other frameworks? Gnome, perhaps?
I've always found that the most useful books are the ones that provide direction on how to get your application to work well with others...
P.S. F.P.