I for one am very happy about this. CFLs are presented as a benefit for the environment, but does anyone think most bulbs are disposed of properly? How many are brought back to Home Depot, for instance? Bottom line for me is the mercury. I don't like it near my children. A broken bulb is a nightmare...who wants to deal with this?: http://www2.epa.gov/cfl/cleaning-broken-cfl-0.
Moreover, I think the difference in efficiency presented always overlooks something important: In colder climates especially, much of the time the "inefficient" incandescent bulb's "wasted energy" is not wasted at all -- it is radiated as heat that helps to warm your home.
Don't think so: "If a ship is using 0.5g constant acceleration or greater, it will appear to get near the speed of light in about a year, and have traveled about half a light year in distance. For the middle of the journey the ship's speed will be roughly the speed of light, and it will slow down again to zero over a year at the end of the journey."
Thus:
After Total Distance Speed ----- -------------- ----- 1 year 0.5 light years accelerated to C 13 years 13.5 light years C 14 years 14 light years decelerated to 0
...it's the fear of the unknown. What if it's not as good as it looks? If you're making more money and gaining an hour and a half every day it's a no brainer.
As my mother always said: "Never love anything that can't love you back." A company is a perfect example of this. And you're absolutely correct that fear of the unknown is a factor. That isn't necessarilly a bad thing -- because the new job might have unknown deficiencies (as well as benefits). Its a cost-benefit analysis without full information, rather than a no brainer:
current job:
negative aspects (less pay; long commute)
positive aspects (friends, including among management)
new job:
negative aspects (no friends, others??)
positive aspects (more pay, short commute, others??)
The question is, do the known positives make up for the risk of the unknown negatives?
Configuration management of a Drupal system is an absolute mess. I've yet to see a solid set of procedures for moving code and configuration forward (dev ---> test ---> staging ---> production) when the production database (with its convoluted schema) is continually altered due to content contributions. The features module (http://drupal.org/project/features) may be the best avenue in the future, but it is nowhere near a full solution.
On an unrelated note, apparently the developers of the new FCC site don't understand how to rid their site of persistent cookies. They may want to look at adding "ini_set('session.cookie_lifetime', 0);" to their settings.php file.
There are many people (myself included) who favor other distributions (for various reasons -- including simply not wanting to go with the leading distro). But I've never heard anyone refer to Ubuntu in any such negative fashion. This post seems agenda driven.
President Obama hides his academic record, so we can only guess, but the evidence does not suggest he's any kind of genius. Consider: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=74877
Yes -- an anti-Obama editorial -- but I would ask you the same thing you asked: "Please provide evidence" that what it says isn't valid.
> there will be a significant drooling moron effect
Much like the effect that got your post modded up instead of tagged as troll/flamebait? Consider:
"whatever brain trust send these whackos their talking points"
"right-wing swamp"
"what happens in the barn stays in the barn"
"the Alaskan Christine O'Donnell"
"teabaggers"
"sit quietly on the back of the bus"
Insults and condescension through the entire message. You're like that ass in my namesake movie Forrest Gump who beats his girlfriend while complaining about Vietnam and Nixon.
My favorite distro. YaST is the big difference, IMHO -- other distros have nothing like it.
I've got OpenSuse 11.2 installed on my daughter's laptop (and Ubuntu on my wife's, but I much prefer the former); if my daughter can have all she needs to on it and not complain too much, they're definitely doing something right.
Something similar having happened to me, my personal story can perhaps provide one data point. This goes back about 20 years, but I believe I was driving a Pontiac station wagon (ironically, I also had a Toyota Corolla at the time....). I was driving along a somewhat curvy road at about 45mph, when the car started accelerating greatly. Although I repeatedly lifted my foot and tried to hit the brakes, the brakes did not seem willing to depress and the car kept accelerating.. It seemed within moments I was over 60mph, and my heart was about to burst through my chest. Then, for no apparent reason, the auto-acceleration seemed to disappear and the car was back in my control....
It has always been my hypothesis that the floor mat had became entangled with the accelerator AND possibly the brake as well. This could explain why the hitting the brake did not seem to function as expected. As it is, I could never tell that this was the case, because the car's jump in speed happened so quickly that I had no time/capability of looking down during the incident. Afterward, the mat was in a forward position, but I can't say for sure that it was the cause.
My one regret (shame?) is that I didn't think fast enough to try putting the car into neutral or pulling the key. We should really train new drivers to think about what they would do in these and related situations (e.g., if the brakes fail -- try emergency brake, low gear, etc.)
I agree with the parent post. The likelihood that this result comes from people manually making up results is nil, IMHO. By suggesting this, it just seems like Nate Silver has an ax to grind. That doesn't mean that there isn't a bias -- but the bias probably is an artifact of the survey designs and polling methodologies, not something completely nefarious.
Nate stresses that there is a lot of data -- "well over 100 polls, each of which asked an average of about 15-20 questions." However, the amount of data alone is only relevant if the data is random with respect to what is being measured (the frequency of the last digit of a response, in this case). It seems to me that this is not necessarily the case, since many of the polls ask sets of very similar questions which generate very similar answers, e.g.:
4. Do you approve or disapprove of President Barack Obama's overall job performance?
Approve 35%
Disapprove 58%
Undecided 7%
5. Do you approve or disapprove of President Obama's handling of the economy?
Approve 34%
Disapprove 58%
Undecided 8%
6. Do you approve or disapprove of President Obama's handling of health care?
Approve 33%
Disapprove 58%
Undecided 9%
In this example, what would seem to be a preponderance of 8's (the last digit of 58%), which would support Nate's bias argument, is actually just a single 8, repeated twice more in essentially identical questions.
Beyond the lack of transparency, we should be wondering about the competence and integrity of the evaluators who awarded this to a company that doesn't know that Section 508 is not part of the ADA (see http://documents.propublica.org/recovery-gov-contract-documents#p=72), but is actually part of Rehabilitation Act (http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Content&ID=12)
One thing that I think needs to be pointed out, however, is that for the odds to increase from 1/3 to 2/3, the player must know for sure that the host will *always* uncover a goat after the player's first choice irrespective of initial choice of goat vs. car. If the host's decision to uncover or not to uncover a goat is related to the player's initial choice, one can't say anything about the new odds.
What is especially disturbing to me is how many people are willing to discount the study, apparently without even reading it.
You note: "the study shows just that children born with autism are more likely to spend time watching TV"
You say this, but your statement makes no sense in the context of the authors' investigation. What they noted instead was that areas that got more rain had higher rates of autism [this precipitation explained 40% of the variance in autism]. They came up with this test because it was previously known that people watch more tv in rainy areas. Thus, precipitation is a proxy for tv viewing in the study.
Based on theory regarding the potential influence of tv watching on the development of autism, the authors presented a falsifiable hypothesis: There will be a positive correlation between precipitation and autism. They tested their hypothesis and found that the evidence supported it. They then asked for more direct studies to prove causation.
I think the study is excellent (and very disturbing)
PHP and Ruby on Rails (RoR) are both excellent choices because:
they both are interpretted languages (don't make your High School kids deal with compiling!).
they are both built for the Web, which is what your students are interested in.
they both enable rapid application development.
Ruby is very elegant (pure OO, powerful but simple, clean syntax). As many have noted, RoR is not a programming language per se but rather a Web application development framework that uses Ruby together with a lot of neat stuff (like Object Relational Mapping) that works "out-of-the-box" without configuration (if you follow design conventions). You could start your students with Ruby and then later in the term introduce RoR. Nice.
PHP is a good choice if you're not too worried about stressing pure OO (although you CAN do OO in PHP), but want to show how quickly and easily great stuff can be done on the Web. There are tons of libraries available for your students to dig in to as well.
Good luck. Glad to see you're moving away from VB!
Slashdot Mirror
I for one am very happy about this. CFLs are presented as a benefit for the environment, but does anyone think most bulbs are disposed of properly? How many are brought back to Home Depot, for instance? Bottom line for me is the mercury. I don't like it near my children. A broken bulb is a nightmare...who wants to deal with this?: http://www2.epa.gov/cfl/cleaning-broken-cfl-0.
Moreover, I think the difference in efficiency presented always overlooks something important: In colder climates especially, much of the time the "inefficient" incandescent bulb's "wasted energy" is not wasted at all -- it is radiated as heat that helps to warm your home.
Don't think so: "If a ship is using 0.5g constant acceleration or greater, it will appear to get near the speed of light in about a year, and have traveled about half a light year in distance. For the middle of the journey the ship's speed will be roughly the speed of light, and it will slow down again to zero over a year at the end of the journey."
Thus:
After Total Distance Speed
----- -------------- -----
1 year 0.5 light years accelerated to C
13 years 13.5 light years C
14 years 14 light years decelerated to 0
That's 14 years of travel at 0.5g constant-acceleration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_using_constant_acceleration#Interstellar_traveling_speeds
Just don't hit anything....
true dat
Full story:
c. 1994 to 1995
Slackware
c. 1999 to 2010
Mandrake --> Mandriva
c. 2005 to current
SUSE --> OpenSuse
c. 2006 to current
CentOS & RedHat
c. 2007 to current
Ubuntu
...it's the fear of the unknown. What if it's not as good as it looks? If you're making more money and gaining an hour and a half every day it's a no brainer.
As my mother always said: "Never love anything that can't love you back." A company is a perfect example of this. And you're absolutely correct that fear of the unknown is a factor. That isn't necessarilly a bad thing -- because the new job might have unknown deficiencies (as well as benefits). Its a cost-benefit analysis without full information, rather than a no brainer:
current job:
negative aspects (less pay; long commute)
positive aspects (friends, including among management)
new job:
negative aspects (no friends, others??)
positive aspects (more pay, short commute, others??)
The question is, do the known positives make up for the risk of the unknown negatives?
Configuration management of a Drupal system is an absolute mess. I've yet to see a solid set of procedures for moving code and configuration forward (dev ---> test ---> staging ---> production) when the production database (with its convoluted schema) is continually altered due to content contributions. The features module (http://drupal.org/project/features) may be the best avenue in the future, but it is nowhere near a full solution.
On an unrelated note, apparently the developers of the new FCC site don't understand how to rid their site of persistent cookies. They may want to look at adding "ini_set('session.cookie_lifetime', 0);" to their settings.php file.
> But now Ubuntu is the Bad Linux
Really? Says who? Link please!!
There are many people (myself included) who favor other distributions (for various reasons -- including simply not wanting to go with the leading distro). But I've never heard anyone refer to Ubuntu in any such negative fashion. This post seems agenda driven.
> No way he is a dummy
President Obama hides his academic record, so we can only guess, but the evidence does not suggest he's any kind of genius. Consider:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=74877
Yes -- an anti-Obama editorial -- but I would ask you the same thing you asked: "Please provide evidence" that what it says isn't valid.
> there will be a significant drooling moron effect
Much like the effect that got your post modded up instead of tagged as troll/flamebait? Consider:
"whatever brain trust send these whackos their talking points"
"right-wing swamp"
"what happens in the barn stays in the barn"
"the Alaskan Christine O'Donnell"
"teabaggers"
"sit quietly on the back of the bus"
Insults and condescension through the entire message. You're like that ass in my namesake movie Forrest Gump who beats his girlfriend while complaining about Vietnam and Nixon.
My favorite distro. YaST is the big difference, IMHO -- other distros have nothing like it. I've got OpenSuse 11.2 installed on my daughter's laptop (and Ubuntu on my wife's, but I much prefer the former); if my daughter can have all she needs to on it and not complain too much, they're definitely doing something right.
So they release 11.3, and your main gripe is a missing feature that .... isn't missing as of 11.2 ?
Something similar having happened to me, my personal story can perhaps provide one data point. This goes back about 20 years, but I believe I was driving a Pontiac station wagon (ironically, I also had a Toyota Corolla at the time....). I was driving along a somewhat curvy road at about 45mph, when the car started accelerating greatly. Although I repeatedly lifted my foot and tried to hit the brakes, the brakes did not seem willing to depress and the car kept accelerating.. It seemed within moments I was over 60mph, and my heart was about to burst through my chest. Then, for no apparent reason, the auto-acceleration seemed to disappear and the car was back in my control....
It has always been my hypothesis that the floor mat had became entangled with the accelerator AND possibly the brake as well. This could explain why the hitting the brake did not seem to function as expected. As it is, I could never tell that this was the case, because the car's jump in speed happened so quickly that I had no time/capability of looking down during the incident. Afterward, the mat was in a forward position, but I can't say for sure that it was the cause.
My one regret (shame?) is that I didn't think fast enough to try putting the car into neutral or pulling the key. We should really train new drivers to think about what they would do in these and related situations (e.g., if the brakes fail -- try emergency brake, low gear, etc.)
> the researchers believe is the first evidence of tool use in an invertebrate animal.
Well, granted the article notes that there are different definitions of tool use, but consider ants: e.g., Tool use by the forest ant Aphaenogaster rudis: Ecology and task allocation (http://www.springerlink.com/content/u0176rl71k572870/).
I agree with the parent post. The likelihood that this result comes from people manually making up results is nil, IMHO. By suggesting this, it just seems like Nate Silver has an ax to grind. That doesn't mean that there isn't a bias -- but the bias probably is an artifact of the survey designs and polling methodologies, not something completely nefarious.
Nate stresses that there is a lot of data -- "well over 100 polls, each of which asked an average of about 15-20 questions." However, the amount of data alone is only relevant if the data is random with respect to what is being measured (the frequency of the last digit of a response, in this case). It seems to me that this is not necessarily the case, since many of the polls ask sets of very similar questions which generate very similar answers, e.g.:
From http://strategicvision.biz/political/georgia_poll_092309.htm (800 likely voters in Georgia, aged 18+, and conducted September 18-20, 2009 by telephone)
4. Do you approve or disapprove of President Barack Obama's overall job performance?
Approve 35%
Disapprove 58%
Undecided 7%
5. Do you approve or disapprove of President Obama's handling of the economy?
Approve 34%
Disapprove 58%
Undecided 8%
6. Do you approve or disapprove of President Obama's handling of health care?
Approve 33%
Disapprove 58%
Undecided 9%
In this example, what would seem to be a preponderance of 8's (the last digit of 58%), which would support Nate's bias argument, is actually just a single 8, repeated twice more in essentially identical questions.
A quick google will point to the wrong company.... Unfortunately, TFA sometimes just specifies "Strategic Vision."
Beyond the lack of transparency, we should be wondering about the competence and integrity of the evaluators who awarded this to a company that doesn't know that Section 508 is not part of the ADA (see http://documents.propublica.org/recovery-gov-contract-documents#p=72), but is actually part of Rehabilitation Act (http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Content&ID=12)
It's not the money. It's Jerry Taylor finally getting his revenge after CentOS attacked his website. http://www.centos.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=127
Not sure it is a scam, but it is expensive:
https://www.23andme.com/store/ ($999)
http://www.decodeme.com/index/about_order ($985)
Before anyone corrects me:
odds <> probability
The probability increases from 1/3 to 2/3
The odds are actually increasing from 1:2 to 2:1
One thing that I think needs to be pointed out, however, is that for the odds to increase from 1/3 to 2/3, the player must know for sure that the host will *always* uncover a goat after the player's first choice irrespective of initial choice of goat vs. car. If the host's decision to uncover or not to uncover a goat is related to the player's initial choice, one can't say anything about the new odds.
What is especially disturbing to me is how many people are willing to discount the study, apparently without even reading it.
You note:
"the study shows just that children born with autism are more likely to spend time watching TV"
You say this, but your statement makes no sense in the context of the authors' investigation. What they noted instead was that areas that got more rain had higher rates of autism [this precipitation explained 40% of the variance in autism]. They came up with this test because it was previously known that people watch more tv in rainy areas. Thus, precipitation is a proxy for tv viewing in the study.
Based on theory regarding the potential influence of tv watching on the development of autism, the authors presented a falsifiable hypothesis: There will be a positive correlation between precipitation and autism. They tested their hypothesis and found that the evidence supported it. They then asked for more direct studies to prove causation.
I think the study is excellent (and very disturbing)
PHP and Ruby on Rails (RoR) are both excellent choices because:
Ruby is very elegant (pure OO, powerful but simple, clean syntax). As many have noted, RoR is not a programming language per se but rather a Web application development framework that uses Ruby together with a lot of neat stuff (like Object Relational Mapping) that works "out-of-the-box" without configuration (if you follow design conventions). You could start your students with Ruby and then later in the term introduce RoR. Nice.
PHP is a good choice if you're not too worried about stressing pure OO (although you CAN do OO in PHP), but want to show how quickly and easily great stuff can be done on the Web. There are tons of libraries available for your students to dig in to as well.
Good luck. Glad to see you're moving away from VB!
Just read through the responses to this, and oddly, there's not one reference to a light[heavy?]saber