What, specifically, do you have a problem with? Speaking in generalities? Your first paragraph reiterates my point. So if you don't have a problem with your own first paragraph, what exactly is your problem with what I said? Or are you just trolling? Excuse me if I don't feel like writing an essay about software engineering in response to someone's off-color remark.
You misunderstand what I mean: I mean that you don't need to be omniscient to be able to make a good decision about purchasing one product or the other, you only need enough information to know that one product is better than another, within some context. Being "informed", is, of course, a matter of interpretation, as you point out, but I think we can agree that in the example you bring up, actors were not "informed"-- they were "misinformed". There will still be aggregate benefits from large groups of people making sub-optimal decisions, but the market will, of course, have sub-optimal benefits. E.g., the U.S. auto market has optimized itself around the sale of SUVs. Purchasing an SUV over another type of car, however, may not be the best decision, especially within the current economic climate.
BTW, you didn't show that my logic was circular. You'd need to show that I argued that people need to be informed in order to make decisions, but that people cannot be informed without making decisions; which is obviously not what I said.
Does anyone here know if adoption of ISO standards have any insurance/liability implications? In my experience, those are the only two words that management actually listen to. E.g., Using UL-approved devices limit your liability to some extent, because people trust their judgment. Bad ISO standards undermine that trust, but if there are no repercussions for using bad standards, then I do not see how their relevance would diminish.
You know, I find that most people who slap around "software engineering" like it's a non-entity really have no idea what they're up against with software engineering. Compare the problem domain with hardware engineering and the problem domain with software engineering. One deals with the physical domain, and the other with the logical domain. Guess which one we have a better understanding of? Depending on your field in traditional engineering, you are benefiting from anywhere from a hundred years of accumulated knowledge to several thousand years of accumulated knowledge. Computer science is a new field-- "software" wasn't even invented until the 1940's!
You can bet that "software engineering" will eventually mature to the level that traditional engineering has. But give it some time.
As people here love to point out, law != ethics. Clinton lied, sure. And as you point out, he was punished for that. But do you really think that lying about fucking your intern and lying in order to massacre hundreds of thousands of people are the same thing?
Ha ha. My friends and I proposed a similar mechanism: a bumper made out of babies. Yes, we're sickos, but it serves as an interesting thought experiment.
I wonder if safety requirements + fuel requirements will lead to more unibody designs in cars. If I understand their properties, they are both lighter and stronger than the old frame + body cars.
My thinking exactly. When a cop shouts at me because I'm on the sidewalk, I figure, so what? The alternative is becoming a road pancake. So I irritate some pedestrians, but nobody gets killed, and if I make a mistake, there will only be some bruises, not death. Then again, I'm not one of those cyclists that travel at 30 mph down a sidewalk.
When I was a kid doing my paper route, on my bike, a friend called to me from across the street. I looked at him, and at the same moment, smacked into the side view mirror of a BMW. I knocked it clean off the car. Fortunately, the ram's head part of my handlebars hit the mirror, so I wasn't particularly hurt (just a little road rash). But I also didn't stick around very long to talk to the owner of the BMW. So I guess I am guilty of a hit-and-run.
When I was biking to work, I had the exact same experience. Nearly killed by a bus-- he gave me about 5 inches between the curb and his wheels. Some very careful (and frightened) leaning put me just far enough out of harm's way. Since then, they've built a bike path parallel to but completely apart from the road. Unfortunately, I no longer live there so I can't use it.
It should also be pointed out that driving habits can have a BIG impact on fuel economy. I call this "driving like an asshole".
You know when that stop light ahead of you turns green? Your engine RPM doesn't need to be near 4000 to get you to the next stop light. Yet I still see people do this every day-- driving with a lead foot. Modern ECUs are pretty good at adjusting the fuel/air mixture, but they're not that good. Gear ratios are going to be designed to be optimally fuel efficient near the middle of their RPM range, not at the top and the bottom. You're simply dumping your fuel on the ground. (CVTs may be better here-- but I don't know much about them)
In general, with cars, going faster means you're burning more fuel. Some cars have a "sweet spot"-- IIRC this is where a lot of the "55 mph" speed limits came from. That was a balance between where the engine burned fuel efficiently and where the car was travelling at a reasonable velocity. After doing some research on this, I've determined that my car basically does not have a sweet spot-- the faster you go, the more fuel you burn.
I recently purchased a Jeep Cherokee Sport. Anyone familiar with this vehicle will know that it's pretty much a gas guzzler. Why did I buy it? Well, I'm very outdoorsy (I tend to travel off-road to get to a lot of destinations), and I don't drive much during the week (I ride the commuter rail), so for me, there isn't too much of an impact on my wallet.
But I do occasionally need to drive the thing long distances, and so for the past couple of months, I've kept detailed mileage and fuel-fill records. With that, I am able to calculate my average fuel economy between fill-ups. It varied a lot more than I expected!
The EPA gives this an average fuel rating of about 16 mpg. But I've seen it swing from anywhere from 15 mpg to 24. According to my driving records, this has a lot to do with what I'm doing. Long trips at high speed put me solidly near the 16 mpg mark. But if I just drive to and from the train station, it's much higher. Why? Well, turns out this particular vehicle is hugely influenced by its drag coefficient. So even though I am probably using my engine less efficiently when driving to and from the train station (it doesn't stay at near an optimal RPM for long), the resistance from the air is diminished. So aerodynamics is another factor.
Lastly, the weekday commute for a lot of people involves alternating between creeping along at a few miles an hour and sitting at standstill. These are absolutely horrible modes for normal gasoline engines to operate in. When you're sitting there, you're burning fuel. When you're creeping, you're nowhere near the sweet spot of your vehicle. Hybrid engines, on the other hand, handle this situation beautifully. When you're sitting, unmoving in traffic, your engine is off. When you need to creep, you're running on battery power, with the engine coming on when needed. So for people who commute to major urban centers-- you might want to consider getting a hybrid.
You completely misunderstood what the parent poster is saying. He's saying that SUVs cause more of a problem than they solve. If everyone were to drive cars (and thus collide with each other, in cars) the probably of death as the driver of the car would be the same as the probability of death for the driver of the SUV in SUVscar collisions. However-- and this is the important part-- the probability of death increases if you are driving a car and you are hit by an SUV. Thus, SUVs increase the net likelihood of fatal vehicle collisions. This should make sense on an intuitive level. More massive object at the same velocity == harder to stop.
Wait-- isn't the Express version the one that inserts an annoying popup in your application? That's not very competitive, except to get students used to the IDE, but admittedly, I have not used it recently.
I'm not one of the rabid Free Marketers around here, but your logic is flawed: it does not follow that actors in a free market be omniscient for them to make informed decisions. They only need to have enough information to choose between two different products. There will still be an aggregate effect of doing so.
Let's also not forget that Free Software doesn't change the rules of the capitalism game; it's just a new twist. As people love to say, "Free (as in speech) software isn't free (as in beer)". There's a development cost. For the author of that software, the development cost may be acceptable compared to the cost of a less productive commercial tool. But he is 'paying' in some sense, with his own time. I think we're in the middle of seeing the majority of software development switch to a pay-for-support/maintenance model. Obviously, this won't happen for all kinds of software (games, niche software), but for many things, why not? It provides a steady revenue stream to the developer without having to rely on tricks like planned obsolescence, and as a result, makes developing high-quality (and thus more competitive) software a higher priority than ensuring a revenue stream.
I hate that word. What idiot tagged them sellouts? I don't even like Radiohead, but come on-- if you're a professional musician, you sell your music by definition. Labeling someone a 'sellout' for doing precisely that is to completely miss the point of being a musician. You may love someone's music, and you may feel some sense of ownership over it, but get real: it's their music. Maybe they're sick of bumming around in a van in order to add a little quality to your life.
Ted Conover covers the philosophical basis for prisons in the U.S. in his book Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing where he took a job as a "correctional officer". This book was given to me by a friend who was at C.O. at the time, and he confirmed that there is quite a bit of confusion as to what the ultimate point of prison is. In some ways, it doesn't matter-- if the people who enact the system have a particular philosophy, it doesn't mean much if that philosophy isn't shared by the correctional staff. My own impression from the contact I had with other C.O.'s is that these guys try not to think about it much-- they're there to crack skulls when people get out of line. Most of them tend to see the system as flawed and corrupt, but it's not really their problem.
Our children are stupid.
They can't do basic math, they can't spell, then have terrible grammar, they can't form complete thoughts, they don't know how to extrapolate new information based on information they already have, they are incapable of doing multi-step problems, and they are proud of it. Which is to say, they are children. Ever think that maybe teachers are just lazy? Knowledge doesn't just appear in a child's head-- it's a teacher's job to put it there. There are many factors that make doing this job hard, and probably some new ones with Google around now, but teachers have been laying the guilt on the current crop of students for being uniquely stupid for what must be millennia. I just don't buy it.
Exactly. I was initially in favor of Clinton, until I read about this, which I found to be extremely disturbing. Now, the Clintons strike me as simply masters of disingenuousness. We can't know what someone really will do in the future, but based on track record, Obama is saying and doing the right things.
Now they don't call them AI at this point but they are approaching and I would wager that when it becomes viable, people will be building MBA's in a box to determine strategic decisions. I just moved and I have some empty boxes left over. Does that count?
Slashdot Mirror
What, specifically, do you have a problem with? Speaking in generalities? Your first paragraph reiterates my point. So if you don't have a problem with your own first paragraph, what exactly is your problem with what I said? Or are you just trolling? Excuse me if I don't feel like writing an essay about software engineering in response to someone's off-color remark.
You misunderstand what I mean: I mean that you don't need to be omniscient to be able to make a good decision about purchasing one product or the other, you only need enough information to know that one product is better than another, within some context. Being "informed", is, of course, a matter of interpretation, as you point out, but I think we can agree that in the example you bring up, actors were not "informed"-- they were "misinformed". There will still be aggregate benefits from large groups of people making sub-optimal decisions, but the market will, of course, have sub-optimal benefits. E.g., the U.S. auto market has optimized itself around the sale of SUVs. Purchasing an SUV over another type of car, however, may not be the best decision, especially within the current economic climate.
BTW, you didn't show that my logic was circular. You'd need to show that I argued that people need to be informed in order to make decisions, but that people cannot be informed without making decisions; which is obviously not what I said.
Oh the irony. Speak for yourself.
Does anyone here know if adoption of ISO standards have any insurance/liability implications? In my experience, those are the only two words that management actually listen to. E.g., Using UL-approved devices limit your liability to some extent, because people trust their judgment. Bad ISO standards undermine that trust, but if there are no repercussions for using bad standards, then I do not see how their relevance would diminish.
You know, I find that most people who slap around "software engineering" like it's a non-entity really have no idea what they're up against with software engineering. Compare the problem domain with hardware engineering and the problem domain with software engineering. One deals with the physical domain, and the other with the logical domain. Guess which one we have a better understanding of? Depending on your field in traditional engineering, you are benefiting from anywhere from a hundred years of accumulated knowledge to several thousand years of accumulated knowledge. Computer science is a new field-- "software" wasn't even invented until the 1940's!
You can bet that "software engineering" will eventually mature to the level that traditional engineering has. But give it some time.
As people here love to point out, law != ethics. Clinton lied, sure. And as you point out, he was punished for that. But do you really think that lying about fucking your intern and lying in order to massacre hundreds of thousands of people are the same thing?
Ha ha. My friends and I proposed a similar mechanism: a bumper made out of babies. Yes, we're sickos, but it serves as an interesting thought experiment.
I wonder if safety requirements + fuel requirements will lead to more unibody designs in cars. If I understand their properties, they are both lighter and stronger than the old frame + body cars.
My thinking exactly. When a cop shouts at me because I'm on the sidewalk, I figure, so what? The alternative is becoming a road pancake. So I irritate some pedestrians, but nobody gets killed, and if I make a mistake, there will only be some bruises, not death. Then again, I'm not one of those cyclists that travel at 30 mph down a sidewalk.
When I was a kid doing my paper route, on my bike, a friend called to me from across the street. I looked at him, and at the same moment, smacked into the side view mirror of a BMW. I knocked it clean off the car. Fortunately, the ram's head part of my handlebars hit the mirror, so I wasn't particularly hurt (just a little road rash). But I also didn't stick around very long to talk to the owner of the BMW. So I guess I am guilty of a hit-and-run.
When I was biking to work, I had the exact same experience. Nearly killed by a bus-- he gave me about 5 inches between the curb and his wheels. Some very careful (and frightened) leaning put me just far enough out of harm's way. Since then, they've built a bike path parallel to but completely apart from the road. Unfortunately, I no longer live there so I can't use it.
It should also be pointed out that driving habits can have a BIG impact on fuel economy. I call this "driving like an asshole".
You know when that stop light ahead of you turns green? Your engine RPM doesn't need to be near 4000 to get you to the next stop light. Yet I still see people do this every day-- driving with a lead foot. Modern ECUs are pretty good at adjusting the fuel/air mixture, but they're not that good. Gear ratios are going to be designed to be optimally fuel efficient near the middle of their RPM range, not at the top and the bottom. You're simply dumping your fuel on the ground. (CVTs may be better here-- but I don't know much about them)
In general, with cars, going faster means you're burning more fuel. Some cars have a "sweet spot"-- IIRC this is where a lot of the "55 mph" speed limits came from. That was a balance between where the engine burned fuel efficiently and where the car was travelling at a reasonable velocity. After doing some research on this, I've determined that my car basically does not have a sweet spot-- the faster you go, the more fuel you burn.
I recently purchased a Jeep Cherokee Sport. Anyone familiar with this vehicle will know that it's pretty much a gas guzzler. Why did I buy it? Well, I'm very outdoorsy (I tend to travel off-road to get to a lot of destinations), and I don't drive much during the week (I ride the commuter rail), so for me, there isn't too much of an impact on my wallet.
But I do occasionally need to drive the thing long distances, and so for the past couple of months, I've kept detailed mileage and fuel-fill records. With that, I am able to calculate my average fuel economy between fill-ups. It varied a lot more than I expected!
The EPA gives this an average fuel rating of about 16 mpg. But I've seen it swing from anywhere from 15 mpg to 24. According to my driving records, this has a lot to do with what I'm doing. Long trips at high speed put me solidly near the 16 mpg mark. But if I just drive to and from the train station, it's much higher. Why? Well, turns out this particular vehicle is hugely influenced by its drag coefficient. So even though I am probably using my engine less efficiently when driving to and from the train station (it doesn't stay at near an optimal RPM for long), the resistance from the air is diminished. So aerodynamics is another factor.
Lastly, the weekday commute for a lot of people involves alternating between creeping along at a few miles an hour and sitting at standstill. These are absolutely horrible modes for normal gasoline engines to operate in. When you're sitting there, you're burning fuel. When you're creeping, you're nowhere near the sweet spot of your vehicle. Hybrid engines, on the other hand, handle this situation beautifully. When you're sitting, unmoving in traffic, your engine is off. When you need to creep, you're running on battery power, with the engine coming on when needed. So for people who commute to major urban centers-- you might want to consider getting a hybrid.
You completely misunderstood what the parent poster is saying. He's saying that SUVs cause more of a problem than they solve. If everyone were to drive cars (and thus collide with each other, in cars) the probably of death as the driver of the car would be the same as the probability of death for the driver of the SUV in SUVscar collisions. However-- and this is the important part-- the probability of death increases if you are driving a car and you are hit by an SUV. Thus, SUVs increase the net likelihood of fatal vehicle collisions. This should make sense on an intuitive level. More massive object at the same velocity == harder to stop.
Wait-- isn't the Express version the one that inserts an annoying popup in your application? That's not very competitive, except to get students used to the IDE, but admittedly, I have not used it recently.
I'm not one of the rabid Free Marketers around here, but your logic is flawed: it does not follow that actors in a free market be omniscient for them to make informed decisions. They only need to have enough information to choose between two different products. There will still be an aggregate effect of doing so.
Let's also not forget that Free Software doesn't change the rules of the capitalism game; it's just a new twist. As people love to say, "Free (as in speech) software isn't free (as in beer)". There's a development cost. For the author of that software, the development cost may be acceptable compared to the cost of a less productive commercial tool. But he is 'paying' in some sense, with his own time. I think we're in the middle of seeing the majority of software development switch to a pay-for-support/maintenance model. Obviously, this won't happen for all kinds of software (games, niche software), but for many things, why not? It provides a steady revenue stream to the developer without having to rely on tricks like planned obsolescence, and as a result, makes developing high-quality (and thus more competitive) software a higher priority than ensuring a revenue stream.
I hate that word. What idiot tagged them sellouts? I don't even like Radiohead, but come on-- if you're a professional musician, you sell your music by definition. Labeling someone a 'sellout' for doing precisely that is to completely miss the point of being a musician. You may love someone's music, and you may feel some sense of ownership over it, but get real: it's their music. Maybe they're sick of bumming around in a van in order to add a little quality to your life.
Ted Conover covers the philosophical basis for prisons in the U.S. in his book Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing where he took a job as a "correctional officer". This book was given to me by a friend who was at C.O. at the time, and he confirmed that there is quite a bit of confusion as to what the ultimate point of prison is. In some ways, it doesn't matter-- if the people who enact the system have a particular philosophy, it doesn't mean much if that philosophy isn't shared by the correctional staff. My own impression from the contact I had with other C.O.'s is that these guys try not to think about it much-- they're there to crack skulls when people get out of line. Most of them tend to see the system as flawed and corrupt, but it's not really their problem.
That's hilarious. IIRC, that's why I created my account, too! I see I'm not the only one.
Exactly. I was initially in favor of Clinton, until I read about this, which I found to be extremely disturbing. Now, the Clintons strike me as simply masters of disingenuousness. We can't know what someone really will do in the future, but based on track record, Obama is saying and doing the right things.
Or less supply. Supply and demand, remember?
How about less artfully-tortured English?