As an aside, I find the fact the studios are trying to decide on the format war somewhat depressing. It's hard to see how supporting both formats and allowing consumers to make the final choice is going to cause any serious level of expense.
By my reckoning it'll cause them to double their expenses. Not only in film editing (different audio and video standards/capabilities, different media capacity), physical production, but in storage, shipping, handling and marketing costs for two formats while at the same time maintaining 'legacy' support in the form of DVDs.
The other problem with the above is the "customers" and "decision" part. The common trend amongst the proletariat these days is "Just make up your damn minds and I'll buy whatever wins!" hence the necessity for the producers to have the final say.
Personally I don't care which format wins, but I won't make any purchase, no matter how small or meaningless, until I know which format I'll be able to rely on for the next decade.
The US actively joined the war in 1941, but that doesn't mean that from a US perspective it hadn't already started in 1939. The question is really when the set of conflicts became a "World War", and from that point of view 1939, when most of the large colonial powers became involved, is probably the best answer.
Canada was involved in the war in 1939 making it a global conflict by my reckoning. Through their lend-lease program the United States was involved at that time also, but from a purely capitalistic sense.
Synchronizing fireworks displays is not "mission critical". But as the story says, it was a corrupted data file, not the OS.
Since the synchronized fireworks display was the mission, and the actual firing of said fireworks was critical, yes, the system in question was mission critical.
Wasn't there some uproar some time ago saying that digital content shouldn't be allowed on OSS platforms because of their lack of centralized control and DRM?
Are they piloting the jet from Wonder Women where the entire craft is invisible? Is there no instrumentation underneath them that would block such a straight line from the shaky hand of the laser holder?
Police helicopters do ground reconnaissance for most of their life so they have windows at or near the pilots' feet so they can see suspects, car chases, etc. on the ground more easily. Makes it dead simple for somebody to shine a laser beam up 500ft and right through the glass directly at the downward pointed eyes of the (co)pilot.
Always the excuses come out, but never accepting the existence of a problem most "users" know exists...
I realize you're trolling here and quite successfully so because you're +1 right now, but it is a problem that the Firefox developers have listened to and addressed in a very large way. I watched the memory usage on my browser while browsing large pages with lots of tables, frames, AJAX intensive, etc. and watched as Firefox actually freed up the memory it was using after it was done with it. In my tests only once did it reach over 100MB and shortly afterwards it dropped back to 60MB which is quite acceptable.
The developers have acknowledged the memory flaws in the release notes, specifically;
[Improved in Beta 2!] Memory usage: Over 300 individual memory leaks have been plugged, and a new XPCOM cycle collector completely eliminates many more. Developers are continuing to work on optimizing memory use (by releasing cached objects more quickly) and reducing fragmentation. Beta 2 includes over 30 more memory leak fixes, and 11 improvements to our memory footprint.
You'll note that page cacheing and memory fragmentation were the big thorns in the side of Firefox causing it to chew memory like it was free and unlimited and I see from practical experience that they've addressed exactly that.
Got similar from the "Intro to C++" professor I had. "I'm now showing you an array, which the school doesn't want me to teach," he said. When queried why, it turns out that the morons that the "guidance counselors indicated had high computer aptitude" couldn't wrap their heads around a basic, simple array. We had OUR education dumbed down 'cause of some kid that shouldn't have been in the class to begin with.
Oh you're telling me. In Ontario, Canada about 4 years ago we were using PII-400s with 4GB hard drives and 64MB of RAM to install Windows NT Server 4 as part of our Advanced Operating Systems course component. Suffice to say it took all class to format/install the OS. Then the instructor informs us that the next class's itinerary included formatting and re-installing NT so we could become more familiar with the installation routine.
A few of us who were expecting to delve into Linux, Windows XP, domains, etc. at the time asked if we could divert and do some other activities or atleast explore the NT server we'd already installed and he told us no, he couldn't set up individual lesson plans for select groups so we'd have to follow with the rest of the class. So we all developed mysterious illnesses the next day.
This class was an advanced component covering operating systems in an industry grade (and "industry developed") three year program and it listed no pre-requisites. Some of the people in our course couldn't even type letalone operate a modern PC - forget servers, switches, routers or the like - a word processor was fascinating and the rest of us had to suffer for it.
Our Telephony course had a mid-term required 30 page (double spaced) report due on the history, present, and future of telephony (one could easily write 300 pages but I digress). So here I am busting my hump, dissapointed in myself for only managing 26 or 27 pages, which I hole punch and hand in in a nicely coloured duo-tang on the prescribed day and what do I see from my classmates? 2, 3 and 4 page reports with a staple at the top corner, pictures galore (lots of photos of Alexander Bell, pictures of old telephones, new telephones) and due to the overwhelming complaints of the students the teacher had to give these people 'A' grades. So 4 pages double spaced with extra wide margins and 25% images with huge headers printed with 30 point font get an 'A' which completely invalidated my 27 page hand-in.
n.b. Our final exam in that class was open book in absurdia. Anything you could bring in on paper was allowed. If you could wheel a filing cabinet into the exam room it was permitted. The failure rate was more than 60% until the students whined.
No, it's just that people are THAT stupid. If you're stupid enough to follow these phishing deals, then you get what you deserve.
I think one of two things has happened here, either you mis-understand what a phishing e-mail actually is or your anti-spam mechanisms catch most of the phishing e-mails that come your way. These are not the "v14gr3" type mailings - these are often exact replicas of bank, eBay, PayPal, etc. websites and/or mailings so meticulously crafted that at times they've made me take pause to examine the headers. URLs are obfuscated in ever more clever ways and at first glance I wouldn't think anything of it and I wouldn't expect a regular neophyte to comprehend the difference.
Now when a hapless user clicks on one of the links in the e-mail they're taken to an often SSL enabled site that looks exactly like the login site they use day in, day out, where they're asked to fill in a form confirming all of their details. When they finish the site says something trite like "Thanks, your details have been confirmed, your money is now safe!" so as far as the victim is concerned they've done their small part to PREVENT fraud!
Now my bank, bless its heart, has a disclaimer on its website right at the bottom (usually off the screen when I'm entering my login credentials) that informs me in regular sized text with no added fanfare that "{$bank} will never ask you to divulge personal information such as passwords, account numbers or challenge questions and answers by email, telephone or fax. We encourage you to take a moment to learn how to protect your accounts against email fraud and how to report fraudulent emails." sandwiched in between a long blurb about their new login system and their rewards program details. This, IME, is typical.
Doesn't matter. No one connected with the RIAA mob has any accountability. Ever.
And why should they? They're going after evil people who steal from the mouths of starving artists! If this keeps up, there will be no more music! Who'd want to produce if there's no money in it for them? After all, everybody knows the draw of the Rock Star lifestyle is what it's all about! And if they can't buy any Cristal Champagne and cocaine what will they do with their time between unpaid gigs?
Until we can get rid of the general public perception that "piracy == bad" and "recording industry == good" they aren't going to face penalties.
I only hope I live to see the day where it's acknowledged that physiologically, mentally, emotionally as well as culturally Whites (Canadian, American, European), Blacks (African, islanders), Asians, Indians, Natives, etc. are all different, as a side note women and men differ along the same lines.
So which "race" is the smartest? The kindest? The fastest? The most beautiful?
If you can't answer even one of those questions with statistical certainty, please shut up.
Did I mention superiority? No, I said races and sexes are different. Since we're going from one ridiculous extreme to the other; are you inferring then that all races and both sexes are identical in every aspect?
On second thought, do you even have a definition of race that doesn't depend on where a person's ancestors lived 200 years ago?
No, you're the only one who knows the real truth. Oh, but did you notice where I said "culturally"? Do you suppose there's a slight difference in culture between Caucasians who've been in Canada for the past few decades and those who live in, say, France or Spain?
Furthermore I was differentiating because the Politically Correct types like to lump people together based on an arbitrary constant, eg. "African American". I know people from Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados and Guyana who think that's a stupid title.
But please, continue your politically correct thought policing and make sure nobody out there believes that cultural or physiological differences in people makes any difference. We're aaaaaaall the same. {wink!}
Maybe you didn't either, because the sentence just prior to the one you quoted is However, Shockley's views about the genetic superiority of whites over blacks brought the Repository for Germinal Choice notable negative publicity and discouraged other Nobel Prize winners from donating sperm.
Yes, speaking statistically based upon the data he uncovered he concluded that target group 'A' was genetically superior as a whole in comparison with target group 'B'.
If we were talking German Shepards versus Labrador Retrievers would that make his study less reprehensible? Ancient Azteks versus Ancient Egyptians? Holstein versus Guernsey cows?
The point of the matter is that because it is a politically and emotionally charged topic, and DarkOx pointed it out, it is not possible to have a rational discourse on the matter because anybody who initiates same is immediately targeted as racist and the discussion ends. It's like another Godwin's Law for societal study.
I only hope I live to see the day where it's acknowledged that physiologically, mentally, emotionally as well as culturally Whites (Canadian, American, European), Blacks (African, islanders), Asians, Indians, Natives, etc. are all different, as a side note women and men differ along the same lines.
True total equality is truly impossible in a world where all of our skills, abilities and mental faculties differ. Now if we can get over our stigma against talking about the subject maybe we can make some better progress. Until then we have to deal with political correctness, delicate sensitivities and discrimination and harassment lawsuits left right and centre.
Topically, hopefully the transistor will have some bearing on our increased understanding and tolerance.
{whew!} Never thought I'd slip past the topic police!:)
The whole point of eugenics is the idea that stupid (and therefore evolutionarily unfit) people breed faster than smart and (therefore evolutionarily fit) ones. Which from a Darwinian point of view is nonsense. Breeding means you're evolutionarily fit, passing IQ tests or learning Klingon or Vi doesn't. The right people are breeding, by definition. Elitist nerds aren't breeding, but that's not a problem with evolution, just for them.
Wow do you ever have a fixation with nerds. He wasn't talking about nerds, he was talking about successful intelligent people who come in many forms including business men/women, engineers, scientists, and any of a slew of other professional types.
Your fixation with picking up drunk chicks in a bar seems to tell me that you're on the cusp of the lower class which makes you border on the people he's talking about so I can understand why you'd take his research so personally.
As for evolutionary fitness to breed and Darwinism I think you're a tad confused. Yes, biologically all you need are one set of male and one set of female genitalia and about ten minutes with one another. Not terribly complicated. Now where Darwinism comes in is the low-income (subsidized) housing, welfare, disability, child support, child tax credits and other forms of subsidy these people get so they can continue to support themselves when otherwise their option is to starve or allow some or all of their offspring to die of starvation, sickness or exposure. Survival of the fittest is cancelled out when the weakest links are offered the highest levels of protection.
Our society is so concerned with political correctness that we need to ensure that the most poor, uneducated, pathetic and dare I say relatively useless members of our society are not only allowed to breed but that this process is fostered and coddled along so we seem more compassionate. Utter nonsense.
Now, as to your comments about picking up women in bars; what are you, a college frat kid?!? That's probably the lowest form of socialization and relationship building known to exist. Now, to clarify; are you seeking one night stands or actual long-term relationships from your alcohol spurned conquests? If the former, may you continue in happiness but also protected so as not to breed more bastard spawn. If the latter it's obviously not worked out so well for you since you seem to be so experienced on the matter. (Hint: "long term" in this context does not mean "until next Friday night when I look for some fresh meat")
Oh come on, his views are despicable. It's the standard nerd whine that other people get more sex than nerds.
Funny, I don't recall him mentioning anything to do with sex, and he was married with more than one child so he's obviously copulated with a member of the opposite sex; presumably more than once.
But rather than staying in the lab or learning to talk to people in bars (which is actually not that hard if you really are above average intelligence),
Speaking of stupid people, let's introduce alcohol to the situation and instead we get stupid, drunk, inhibitions-diminished desperate people instead! Great fun!
he wants to sterilize the competition from the 'dumb' people. Dumb being naturally defined as 'does poorly on IQ tests', which is sort of convenient for people like Shockley who did very well indeed on them.
An IQ test just happens to be a standardized way of measuring intelligence. Sure, lots of these people can plow fields or perform other monotonous tasks but his point was that they're not contributing to the overall expansion of human intellect, which is true.
Intelligence is inherited and I firmly believe that children need an atmosphere of interest in education in order to become educated and successful later in life. If a given set of parents are happy with their lot in life of minimum wage ("burger flipping") tedious jobs but have their kids, their booze, their pot and their cigarettes chances are their children are going to grow up with the same set of ideals. As I said; tying these characteristics to a person's relative levels of intelligence was controversial work but by no means despicable.
a nice, warm-sounding amplifier is not something made of transistors. It's a series of tubes.
This line is getting really old. It's also utter hogwash. The only credence I'll give to it is if you over drive a tube amp its distortion sounds less painful than an over driven solid state amp.
The argument is akin to the nuts who believe records (vinyl) are superior to CDs. Yes, vinyl has a warmth to it but that's essentially the minute hiss of the needle scraping the record surface. In other words the warmth people like about vinyl is a fundamental flaw that's just been adopted as an inherent greatness! Myself, I hate the scratching sound you get from records. Drives me up the wall.
n.b. Digital music studios can input that hiss into the background of a CD and it'll sound just so every single time it's played. Vinyl on the other hand is susceptible to a bent or worn needle, imperfections on the turntable, interruptions in the turntable's speed, warping of the disk, etc.
The problem with audiophiles is they tend to be very old and grew up with tube amps and vinyl records and have so many (tens of) thousands of dollars invested in it they have to justify it to themselves and by extension to everybody around them.
I see the same phenomenon with a friend who owns a plasma TV (one of the new ones that doesn't burn! {chortle} ) as he left a Halo 2 game paused for some time while we ate dinner and resumed playing I was able to clearly read the contents of the pause menu through the next hour or so of game play. That's "improved"?!?
I run my computer on my 60" DLP LCD Sony TV - yes, the task bar is always present at the bottom of the screen! If this were plasma I wouldn't be able to watch TV after a few days' worth of computer use! It's denial. He justifies it by telling me about some study that says plasma is more photo realistic and easier on the eyes for long term viewing blah blah. Sure thing skip.;)
If you can't figure it out, count it... 16/12/48 = 1 year, 16/12/49 = 2 years, 16/12/50 = 3 years, 16/12/51 = 4 years, 16/12/52 = 5 years, 16/12/53 = 6 years, 16/12/54 = 7 years, 16/12/55 = 8 years, 16/12/56 = 9 years, 16/12/57 = 10 years. Keep going if you still don't think that it was 60 years ago today (though you may need to take your shoes off).
Allow me to simplify starting with your premise to satisfy the nay sayers who'll still insist that it's wrong and that we proles just can't do math;
It's sad that when someone applies scientific principles to a politically charged situation they're framed as a bigot.
It is true that unskilled, poor, unintelligent people have more children. They simply have more time on their hands and less grasp of the consequences children will have on their lifestyle and they tend to have less access (voluntarily or financially) to proper modern birth control methods and hey, when you've got a lot of time on your hand sex is a great passtime!
Shockley did conclude through his research that this happens more with black families than with whites, however he proposed that all people with sub-100 IQs (no further qualification) should be paid for voluntary sterilization.
His ideas while radical at the time have been tossed around for decades. It is widely held that uneducated, unskilled people who do either no or menial labour greatly increase the chances that their children will do much of the same later in life. It's why ghetto-style atmospheres tend to be cyclical and highly self-supporting. It's also why people who "escape" from that life are notable exceptions.
The man was a scientist and one who contributed one of the most pivotal pieces of our way of life to date. That's not something that should be undermined by a piece of socio-politically charged research that he did besides.
Then again there's almost always two sides to every major scientific discovery. Einstein gave us atomic energy but he also gave us atomic weapons (for which I understand he was forever mournful). Shockley gave us something that revolutionized the way we live, work and play but he also inadvertently gave us spam and script kiddies and phishing and 419 scams and and and...:P
That's easy. When you can fit me, my wife, three daughters including car seats, and all the luggage needed for our 4 times a year trip from San Antonio to Fort Worth and back in your little Escort we'll talk. Till then I'll happily burn an extra couple dollars in gas.
If you're on a completely snow covered road all four tires are slipping. In my experience, 4wd gains you very little in those conditions except the false confidence that leads to me helping you push that piece of crap back out onto the road.
Then you need to learn how to drive an AWD / 4WD vehicle in snowy conditions because it sounds an awful lot like you're toeing the party line here.
A hint: if all four tires are turning you're doubling your chances of finding traction and greatly increase your traction when taking corners.
The problem you're referring to is yuppies who don't know how to drive in the first place believing that their [A|4]WD vehicle turns a snow covered road into dry asphalt and finding themselves nose first into a ditch. Different story altogether. I'm extremely adept at driving FWD vehicles (small hatch or compact sedan mostly) and have put many hundred thousand kms on same but boy do I ever love taking out a compact 4WD SUV on a real snow covered trip. The control and precision that system offers is simply out of this world by comparison.
Consider 20 miles per gallon, 50 miles to destination, 2.5 gallons of gas, at $3.00/gal is $7.50. (It's 50km to your destination, you get 12L/100km, how much does it cost if gas costs $1.00/L? $6.00, but good luck performing that in your head at highway speeds if I didn't give you round numbers to work with...)
50kms = half of 100kms so if I get 12l/100km and I only need to drive half of that I'll consume 6l and gas right now is about $1.00/litre so it's an easy $6.
That's the beauty of metric. It's all base-10. Slide a decimal place around and calculations are almost non-existant.
Your rant reminds me of an American gentleman who once scorned the metric system because he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that 1/4lb of meat is enough for a healthy sandwich so he doesn't have to think at the deli counter. (Strange, since that equates to 113 grams. When working in restaurants I've always made sandwiches with about 80 grams, but I suppose 113 grams or thereabouts would make a healthy sandwich. {shrug} I guess you can insert some sort of American weight stereotype here:)
Perhaps the Chryslers were bad, but regardless of that it was pretty stupid to finance the cars for terms longer than the warranty!
Pretty sad sentiment, but it's exactly why three year low-mileage leases are so popular amongst clients of the "big three". Also why satisfaction remains so high amongst their loyal buyers which is why the big three are so notorious for massively inflating their residual values far exceeding expected resale value which is why they face further financial ruination.
Some day soon the domestic makes are going to realize that it's cheaper in the long run to build a higher quality product from the start.
Daimler dumped Chrysler, but let's hope they learned a thing or two while they were there. They've already learned that if you buy stuff from Mitsubishi and combine it with Benz parts it shouldn't cost much on the warranty side after sale.
Ford bought Mazda and Volvo and Jaguar/Land Rover (HA HA HA!) hoping to learn a thing or three about quality. So far it seems to be paying off; after its recall hell with the Focus (release now, deal with the design flaws later) that became quite a rock solid reliable car. The Fusion came off the blocks a car built to a higher standard, their F-150s are, as always, built like battle tanks, the 500 and Freestyle come from Volvo (too bad both of them have lived such a short life due to being fugly) and it's slowly eeking its way into the rest of the model line-up.
GM has Toyota holding its hand, teaching it a few things about 4 cylinder engines and efficiency.
So basically by finally dropping the "@%$# THE JAPS!" lapel pins and actually learning a thing or two from our Pacific rim cousins it looks like the domestic makes might have a place in our automotive future.
Now if only they could do a thing or two about plant conditions and labour strife and maintain some Canadian/American production so the people driving around with "BUY DOMESTIC!" plate frames won't look so damned stupid anymore.
That doesn't justify it, though. I don't have a problem in particular with a newbie doing BS work (usually they're too inexperienced to really handle much of anything, so there may not be a whole lot else for them to do), but the justification you gave is terrible. The fact that a) everyone else had to go through it, and b) you can put someone through it in the future is no excuse for treating people unreasonably.
Actually that wasn't justification of any sort it was a flip comment that what comes around goes around in those situations. I didn't know I had to justify it, but now I will because you apparently don't have understanding of what real trenches work entails.
First and foremost tradesmen, military personnel, fire fighters, police officers and others who do hazardous work for a living literally put their lives in the hands of their co workers every day. This helps to form very strong bonds between them that will often extend beyond the job site. Moreover a lot of that work is blue collar and that's how blue collar workers earn the respect of their peers. Take your licks, earn your stripes and don't go crying to the boss about it and you're all right. It's not detrimental, it's not dangerous, it's a coffee run here and there, lugging the heavy gear in to and out of the job site, it's driving the crappy truck, it's cleaning the employee bathroom, it's all kinds of camaraderie that you apparently haven't the first clue about.
When I was in construction even my boss exclaimed that it was good to have a green pea around again because it saved his back for the first week (while I lugged all the gear around). It served to show me that they don't get the good pay and choice hours because they're good looking - it humbled and reminded me that they had to go through the rough stuff and when called upon they can do it again if need be even though they're more than a decade my senior on the payroll.
It has nothing to do with disrespect, in fact quite the opposite it builds a great deal of respect in a very short time.
Come on, in the tech office you can't tell me you don't have any form of differentiation between new and seasoned employees. New guys make cables, they crawl through the ceilings and crawl spaces stringing wires while the veterans plan the runs and call the shots. It's a natural part of evolution for every employee and it will always exist whether you like it or not. From what you're saying you simply wouldn't fit in to a lot of job sites anyways and you'd likely be the one who sits on the sidelines scorning those vulgar cruel bastards while they're out in the blazing heat, freezing cold, fierce winds building our roadways, sky scrapers, sports arenas, etc. as a unified team. If you can't understand any of that then stay in your white collar office with your political correctness and leave the real work to the men and all will be well.
Nothing will draw users to Linux like hand editing an xorg.conf 50 times until they get it right.
You can say that again. One of my machines dual boots XP Pro and Linux and I can't for the life of me make X.Org with KDE 3.5 recognize my keyboard and my video card (ATI Radeon 9250 Pro) at the same time. So I either get video and no keyboard or the X server simply won't start because it can't find my video device.
I'm not looking for anything fancy video wise; I just want a desktop. I also don't have a terribly fancy keyboard; just a 104 key PS/2 connected model so I don't for the life of me understand what the problem is.
It's been enough to turn me off Linux except for those rare times when I feel too confident in my computer abilities so I'll fight with it for an hour or two, give up and go back to Windows.
FWIW, I've been using Linux for a tad over a decade and this has me positively stymied. Mostly because a keyboard should just WORK and basic SVGA functionality should just WORK and I don't understand why they don't. Complicating things is the fact that widescreen monitors appear to confuse the X.org server and the radeon drivers. {sigh}
Well if it would help prove your point, we could also consider accidental deaths when people fall down stairs, or run themselves through plate glass doors and stuff like that as "engineering failures." All you've said is that you *could* arbitrarily include lots of other stuff in the "death-by-engineering" category. Not helpful, unless you're proposing *where* to draw that line.
The line is actually quite simple. When a structure fails to account for environmental factors and critically fails causing the loss of dollar value and/or human life it counts as an engineering failure. Resorting to the absurd is just that.
By the same token we can go out on all sorts of limbs and say that when a surgeon tips poorly at a restaurant and the waiter slips and falls because they're not concentrating...
Now see what you've made me do?:)
No. You've totally missed it here: Surgeon (or surgical team) to patient is a one-to-one mapping. Engineer (or engineering team) to failure event is a one-to-one mapping. Engineer to use-of-structure is a one-to-many mapping. This does not support your point.
Are you saying the death of a patient on the table is equivalent to an office building or bridge failure? We're talking literal human fatalities here, and I believe that was the GP's original point. When a surgeon bungs up one life is affected. When an engineer bungs up it can end or drastically affect the lives of many hundred if not thousand in one fell swoop.
When the towers in New York fell (again, towers engineered to withstand the impact of a 747 airliner) thousands of lives were lost because the designing engineers failed to account for the jet fuel in the wings of those planes. At the time, not quite as important as failing to account for a surgical sponge left behind a patient's spleen but in 2001 it became quite a critical error. In its wake, however, building fire proofing was re-evaluated all over the United States so it may actually save many thousands more lives but then I guess that's the idea behind this new technology in that it may also save thousands more lives.
Ah, but how many bridges or whatever does one engineer contribute significantly enough where his or her fuckup would cause a catastrohpic failure? Maybe one or two in a year? Plus, I'm guessing you don't get to have that significant of an impact on a project until you're a seasoned engineer of some sort, right? I'm guessing that not even until you're well into your engineering career do you get to be the engineer equivalent of a dev lead.
Depending on how broadly you want to look at the situation it could be dozens or even hundreds per year. What about the twin towers in New York? One could, by extension, chaulk that up to an engineering failure. After all the buildings were literally designed to resist the impact of a 747 jetliner. They apparently forgot about all the fuel contained on board said jet liners.
Bridge collapses, building/structural failures, many fires, road failures etc. can all lead back to a decision that can boil down to engineering failure or "nobody's perfect" or "engineers didn't know enough about ${problem} at the time of design" which, by extension, can count as an engineering failure.
There's also the sticky widget about over engineering. It was said that you could build a 100% perfectly earthquake proof building but it would be so cost prohibitive nobody would be willing to pay for it so you have to make certain concessions. Those concessions could some day cost many people their lives.
I don't think you can dismiss surgery as somehow being of lesser impact than major engineering feats, simply for the fact that surgery happens a lot more frequently than building a bridge.
Which happens more frequently; surgery or people driving across said bridge?
Slashdot Mirror
By my reckoning it'll cause them to double their expenses. Not only in film editing (different audio and video standards/capabilities, different media capacity), physical production, but in storage, shipping, handling and marketing costs for two formats while at the same time maintaining 'legacy' support in the form of DVDs.
The other problem with the above is the "customers" and "decision" part. The common trend amongst the proletariat these days is "Just make up your damn minds and I'll buy whatever wins!" hence the necessity for the producers to have the final say.
Personally I don't care which format wins, but I won't make any purchase, no matter how small or meaningless, until I know which format I'll be able to rely on for the next decade.
Canada was involved in the war in 1939 making it a global conflict by my reckoning. Through their lend-lease program the United States was involved at that time also, but from a purely capitalistic sense.
Since the synchronized fireworks display was the mission, and the actual firing of said fireworks was critical, yes, the system in question was mission critical.
Wasn't there some uproar some time ago saying that digital content shouldn't be allowed on OSS platforms because of their lack of centralized control and DRM?
Police helicopters do ground reconnaissance for most of their life so they have windows at or near the pilots' feet so they can see suspects, car chases, etc. on the ground more easily. Makes it dead simple for somebody to shine a laser beam up 500ft and right through the glass directly at the downward pointed eyes of the (co)pilot.
I realize you're trolling here and quite successfully so because you're +1 right now, but it is a problem that the Firefox developers have listened to and addressed in a very large way. I watched the memory usage on my browser while browsing large pages with lots of tables, frames, AJAX intensive, etc. and watched as Firefox actually freed up the memory it was using after it was done with it. In my tests only once did it reach over 100MB and shortly afterwards it dropped back to 60MB which is quite acceptable.
The developers have acknowledged the memory flaws in the release notes, specifically;
[Improved in Beta 2!] Memory usage: Over 300 individual memory leaks have been plugged, and a new XPCOM cycle collector completely eliminates many more. Developers are continuing to work on optimizing memory use (by releasing cached objects more quickly) and reducing fragmentation. Beta 2 includes over 30 more memory leak fixes, and 11 improvements to our memory footprint.You'll note that page cacheing and memory fragmentation were the big thorns in the side of Firefox causing it to chew memory like it was free and unlimited and I see from practical experience that they've addressed exactly that.
Got similar from the "Intro to C++" professor I had. "I'm now showing you an array, which the school doesn't want me to teach," he said. When queried why, it turns out that the morons that the "guidance counselors indicated had high computer aptitude" couldn't wrap their heads around a basic, simple array. We had OUR education dumbed down 'cause of some kid that shouldn't have been in the class to begin with.
Oh you're telling me. In Ontario, Canada about 4 years ago we were using PII-400s with 4GB hard drives and 64MB of RAM to install Windows NT Server 4 as part of our Advanced Operating Systems course component. Suffice to say it took all class to format/install the OS. Then the instructor informs us that the next class's itinerary included formatting and re-installing NT so we could become more familiar with the installation routine.
A few of us who were expecting to delve into Linux, Windows XP, domains, etc. at the time asked if we could divert and do some other activities or atleast explore the NT server we'd already installed and he told us no, he couldn't set up individual lesson plans for select groups so we'd have to follow with the rest of the class. So we all developed mysterious illnesses the next day.
This class was an advanced component covering operating systems in an industry grade (and "industry developed") three year program and it listed no pre-requisites. Some of the people in our course couldn't even type letalone operate a modern PC - forget servers, switches, routers or the like - a word processor was fascinating and the rest of us had to suffer for it.
Our Telephony course had a mid-term required 30 page (double spaced) report due on the history, present, and future of telephony (one could easily write 300 pages but I digress). So here I am busting my hump, dissapointed in myself for only managing 26 or 27 pages, which I hole punch and hand in in a nicely coloured duo-tang on the prescribed day and what do I see from my classmates? 2, 3 and 4 page reports with a staple at the top corner, pictures galore (lots of photos of Alexander Bell, pictures of old telephones, new telephones) and due to the overwhelming complaints of the students the teacher had to give these people 'A' grades. So 4 pages double spaced with extra wide margins and 25% images with huge headers printed with 30 point font get an 'A' which completely invalidated my 27 page hand-in.
n.b. Our final exam in that class was open book in absurdia. Anything you could bring in on paper was allowed. If you could wheel a filing cabinet into the exam room it was permitted. The failure rate was more than 60% until the students whined.
I think one of two things has happened here, either you mis-understand what a phishing e-mail actually is or your anti-spam mechanisms catch most of the phishing e-mails that come your way. These are not the "v14gr3" type mailings - these are often exact replicas of bank, eBay, PayPal, etc. websites and/or mailings so meticulously crafted that at times they've made me take pause to examine the headers. URLs are obfuscated in ever more clever ways and at first glance I wouldn't think anything of it and I wouldn't expect a regular neophyte to comprehend the difference.
Now when a hapless user clicks on one of the links in the e-mail they're taken to an often SSL enabled site that looks exactly like the login site they use day in, day out, where they're asked to fill in a form confirming all of their details. When they finish the site says something trite like "Thanks, your details have been confirmed, your money is now safe!" so as far as the victim is concerned they've done their small part to PREVENT fraud!
Now my bank, bless its heart, has a disclaimer on its website right at the bottom (usually off the screen when I'm entering my login credentials) that informs me in regular sized text with no added fanfare that "{$bank} will never ask you to divulge personal information such as passwords, account numbers or challenge questions and answers by email, telephone or fax. We encourage you to take a moment to learn how to protect your accounts against email fraud and how to report fraudulent emails." sandwiched in between a long blurb about their new login system and their rewards program details. This, IME, is typical.
And why should they? They're going after evil people who steal from the mouths of starving artists! If this keeps up, there will be no more music! Who'd want to produce if there's no money in it for them? After all, everybody knows the draw of the Rock Star lifestyle is what it's all about! And if they can't buy any Cristal Champagne and cocaine what will they do with their time between unpaid gigs?
Until we can get rid of the general public perception that "piracy == bad" and "recording industry == good" they aren't going to face penalties.
So which "race" is the smartest? The kindest? The fastest? The most beautiful?
If you can't answer even one of those questions with statistical certainty, please shut up.
Did I mention superiority? No, I said races and sexes are different. Since we're going from one ridiculous extreme to the other; are you inferring then that all races and both sexes are identical in every aspect?
On second thought, do you even have a definition of race that doesn't depend on where a person's ancestors lived 200 years ago?No, you're the only one who knows the real truth. Oh, but did you notice where I said "culturally"? Do you suppose there's a slight difference in culture between Caucasians who've been in Canada for the past few decades and those who live in, say, France or Spain?
Furthermore I was differentiating because the Politically Correct types like to lump people together based on an arbitrary constant, eg. "African American". I know people from Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados and Guyana who think that's a stupid title.
But please, continue your politically correct thought policing and make sure nobody out there believes that cultural or physiological differences in people makes any difference. We're aaaaaaall the same. {wink!}
Yes, speaking statistically based upon the data he uncovered he concluded that target group 'A' was genetically superior as a whole in comparison with target group 'B'.
If we were talking German Shepards versus Labrador Retrievers would that make his study less reprehensible? Ancient Azteks versus Ancient Egyptians? Holstein versus Guernsey cows?
The point of the matter is that because it is a politically and emotionally charged topic, and DarkOx pointed it out, it is not possible to have a rational discourse on the matter because anybody who initiates same is immediately targeted as racist and the discussion ends. It's like another Godwin's Law for societal study.
I only hope I live to see the day where it's acknowledged that physiologically, mentally, emotionally as well as culturally Whites (Canadian, American, European), Blacks (African, islanders), Asians, Indians, Natives, etc. are all different, as a side note women and men differ along the same lines.
True total equality is truly impossible in a world where all of our skills, abilities and mental faculties differ. Now if we can get over our stigma against talking about the subject maybe we can make some better progress. Until then we have to deal with political correctness, delicate sensitivities and discrimination and harassment lawsuits left right and centre.
Topically, hopefully the transistor will have some bearing on our increased understanding and tolerance.
{whew!} Never thought I'd slip past the topic police! :)
Wow do you ever have a fixation with nerds. He wasn't talking about nerds, he was talking about successful intelligent people who come in many forms including business men/women, engineers, scientists, and any of a slew of other professional types.
Your fixation with picking up drunk chicks in a bar seems to tell me that you're on the cusp of the lower class which makes you border on the people he's talking about so I can understand why you'd take his research so personally.
As for evolutionary fitness to breed and Darwinism I think you're a tad confused. Yes, biologically all you need are one set of male and one set of female genitalia and about ten minutes with one another. Not terribly complicated. Now where Darwinism comes in is the low-income (subsidized) housing, welfare, disability, child support, child tax credits and other forms of subsidy these people get so they can continue to support themselves when otherwise their option is to starve or allow some or all of their offspring to die of starvation, sickness or exposure. Survival of the fittest is cancelled out when the weakest links are offered the highest levels of protection.
Our society is so concerned with political correctness that we need to ensure that the most poor, uneducated, pathetic and dare I say relatively useless members of our society are not only allowed to breed but that this process is fostered and coddled along so we seem more compassionate. Utter nonsense.
Now, as to your comments about picking up women in bars; what are you, a college frat kid?!? That's probably the lowest form of socialization and relationship building known to exist. Now, to clarify; are you seeking one night stands or actual long-term relationships from your alcohol spurned conquests? If the former, may you continue in happiness but also protected so as not to breed more bastard spawn. If the latter it's obviously not worked out so well for you since you seem to be so experienced on the matter. (Hint: "long term" in this context does not mean "until next Friday night when I look for some fresh meat")
Funny, I don't recall him mentioning anything to do with sex, and he was married with more than one child so he's obviously copulated with a member of the opposite sex; presumably more than once.
But rather than staying in the lab or learning to talk to people in bars (which is actually not that hard if you really are above average intelligence),Speaking of stupid people, let's introduce alcohol to the situation and instead we get stupid, drunk, inhibitions-diminished desperate people instead! Great fun!
he wants to sterilize the competition from the 'dumb' people. Dumb being naturally defined as 'does poorly on IQ tests', which is sort of convenient for people like Shockley who did very well indeed on them.An IQ test just happens to be a standardized way of measuring intelligence. Sure, lots of these people can plow fields or perform other monotonous tasks but his point was that they're not contributing to the overall expansion of human intellect, which is true.
Intelligence is inherited and I firmly believe that children need an atmosphere of interest in education in order to become educated and successful later in life. If a given set of parents are happy with their lot in life of minimum wage ("burger flipping") tedious jobs but have their kids, their booze, their pot and their cigarettes chances are their children are going to grow up with the same set of ideals. As I said; tying these characteristics to a person's relative levels of intelligence was controversial work but by no means despicable.
This line is getting really old. It's also utter hogwash. The only credence I'll give to it is if you over drive a tube amp its distortion sounds less painful than an over driven solid state amp.
The argument is akin to the nuts who believe records (vinyl) are superior to CDs. Yes, vinyl has a warmth to it but that's essentially the minute hiss of the needle scraping the record surface. In other words the warmth people like about vinyl is a fundamental flaw that's just been adopted as an inherent greatness! Myself, I hate the scratching sound you get from records. Drives me up the wall.
n.b. Digital music studios can input that hiss into the background of a CD and it'll sound just so every single time it's played. Vinyl on the other hand is susceptible to a bent or worn needle, imperfections on the turntable, interruptions in the turntable's speed, warping of the disk, etc.
The problem with audiophiles is they tend to be very old and grew up with tube amps and vinyl records and have so many (tens of) thousands of dollars invested in it they have to justify it to themselves and by extension to everybody around them.
I see the same phenomenon with a friend who owns a plasma TV (one of the new ones that doesn't burn! {chortle} ) as he left a Halo 2 game paused for some time while we ate dinner and resumed playing I was able to clearly read the contents of the pause menu through the next hour or so of game play. That's "improved"?!?
I run my computer on my 60" DLP LCD Sony TV - yes, the task bar is always present at the bottom of the screen! If this were plasma I wouldn't be able to watch TV after a few days' worth of computer use! It's denial. He justifies it by telling me about some study that says plasma is more photo realistic and easier on the eyes for long term viewing blah blah. Sure thing skip. ;)
Allow me to simplify starting with your premise to satisfy the nay sayers who'll still insist that it's wrong and that we proles just can't do math;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley#Beliefs_about_populations_and_genetics
It's sad that when someone applies scientific principles to a politically charged situation they're framed as a bigot.
It is true that unskilled, poor, unintelligent people have more children. They simply have more time on their hands and less grasp of the consequences children will have on their lifestyle and they tend to have less access (voluntarily or financially) to proper modern birth control methods and hey, when you've got a lot of time on your hand sex is a great passtime!
Shockley did conclude through his research that this happens more with black families than with whites, however he proposed that all people with sub-100 IQs (no further qualification) should be paid for voluntary sterilization.
His ideas while radical at the time have been tossed around for decades. It is widely held that uneducated, unskilled people who do either no or menial labour greatly increase the chances that their children will do much of the same later in life. It's why ghetto-style atmospheres tend to be cyclical and highly self-supporting. It's also why people who "escape" from that life are notable exceptions.
The man was a scientist and one who contributed one of the most pivotal pieces of our way of life to date. That's not something that should be undermined by a piece of socio-politically charged research that he did besides.
Then again there's almost always two sides to every major scientific discovery. Einstein gave us atomic energy but he also gave us atomic weapons (for which I understand he was forever mournful). Shockley gave us something that revolutionized the way we live, work and play but he also inadvertently gave us spam and script kiddies and phishing and 419 scams and and and ... :P
Done, done, and done!
Then you need to learn how to drive an AWD / 4WD vehicle in snowy conditions because it sounds an awful lot like you're toeing the party line here.
A hint: if all four tires are turning you're doubling your chances of finding traction and greatly increase your traction when taking corners.
The problem you're referring to is yuppies who don't know how to drive in the first place believing that their [A|4]WD vehicle turns a snow covered road into dry asphalt and finding themselves nose first into a ditch. Different story altogether. I'm extremely adept at driving FWD vehicles (small hatch or compact sedan mostly) and have put many hundred thousand kms on same but boy do I ever love taking out a compact 4WD SUV on a real snow covered trip. The control and precision that system offers is simply out of this world by comparison.
50kms = half of 100kms so if I get 12l/100km and I only need to drive half of that I'll consume 6l and gas right now is about $1.00/litre so it's an easy $6.
That's the beauty of metric. It's all base-10. Slide a decimal place around and calculations are almost non-existant.
Your rant reminds me of an American gentleman who once scorned the metric system because he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that 1/4lb of meat is enough for a healthy sandwich so he doesn't have to think at the deli counter. (Strange, since that equates to 113 grams. When working in restaurants I've always made sandwiches with about 80 grams, but I suppose 113 grams or thereabouts would make a healthy sandwich. {shrug} I guess you can insert some sort of American weight stereotype here :)
Pretty sad sentiment, but it's exactly why three year low-mileage leases are so popular amongst clients of the "big three". Also why satisfaction remains so high amongst their loyal buyers which is why the big three are so notorious for massively inflating their residual values far exceeding expected resale value which is why they face further financial ruination.
Some day soon the domestic makes are going to realize that it's cheaper in the long run to build a higher quality product from the start.
Daimler dumped Chrysler, but let's hope they learned a thing or two while they were there. They've already learned that if you buy stuff from Mitsubishi and combine it with Benz parts it shouldn't cost much on the warranty side after sale.
Ford bought Mazda and Volvo and Jaguar/Land Rover (HA HA HA!) hoping to learn a thing or three about quality. So far it seems to be paying off; after its recall hell with the Focus (release now, deal with the design flaws later) that became quite a rock solid reliable car. The Fusion came off the blocks a car built to a higher standard, their F-150s are, as always, built like battle tanks, the 500 and Freestyle come from Volvo (too bad both of them have lived such a short life due to being fugly) and it's slowly eeking its way into the rest of the model line-up.
GM has Toyota holding its hand, teaching it a few things about 4 cylinder engines and efficiency.
So basically by finally dropping the "@%$# THE JAPS!" lapel pins and actually learning a thing or two from our Pacific rim cousins it looks like the domestic makes might have a place in our automotive future.
Now if only they could do a thing or two about plant conditions and labour strife and maintain some Canadian/American production so the people driving around with "BUY DOMESTIC!" plate frames won't look so damned stupid anymore.
ROTFL! So only THREE domestic models then!
Er, sorry, GM did contribute a couple things to the Toyota Matrix.. er.. Pontiac Vibe - the Delco stereo and the gawdy red instrument cluster.
Actually that wasn't justification of any sort it was a flip comment that what comes around goes around in those situations. I didn't know I had to justify it, but now I will because you apparently don't have understanding of what real trenches work entails.
First and foremost tradesmen, military personnel, fire fighters, police officers and others who do hazardous work for a living literally put their lives in the hands of their co workers every day. This helps to form very strong bonds between them that will often extend beyond the job site. Moreover a lot of that work is blue collar and that's how blue collar workers earn the respect of their peers. Take your licks, earn your stripes and don't go crying to the boss about it and you're all right. It's not detrimental, it's not dangerous, it's a coffee run here and there, lugging the heavy gear in to and out of the job site, it's driving the crappy truck, it's cleaning the employee bathroom, it's all kinds of camaraderie that you apparently haven't the first clue about.
When I was in construction even my boss exclaimed that it was good to have a green pea around again because it saved his back for the first week (while I lugged all the gear around). It served to show me that they don't get the good pay and choice hours because they're good looking - it humbled and reminded me that they had to go through the rough stuff and when called upon they can do it again if need be even though they're more than a decade my senior on the payroll.
It has nothing to do with disrespect, in fact quite the opposite it builds a great deal of respect in a very short time.
Come on, in the tech office you can't tell me you don't have any form of differentiation between new and seasoned employees. New guys make cables, they crawl through the ceilings and crawl spaces stringing wires while the veterans plan the runs and call the shots. It's a natural part of evolution for every employee and it will always exist whether you like it or not. From what you're saying you simply wouldn't fit in to a lot of job sites anyways and you'd likely be the one who sits on the sidelines scorning those vulgar cruel bastards while they're out in the blazing heat, freezing cold, fierce winds building our roadways, sky scrapers, sports arenas, etc. as a unified team. If you can't understand any of that then stay in your white collar office with your political correctness and leave the real work to the men and all will be well.
Crap.
Nothing will draw users to Linux like hand editing an xorg.conf 50 times until they get it right.
You can say that again. One of my machines dual boots XP Pro and Linux and I can't for the life of me make X.Org with KDE 3.5 recognize my keyboard and my video card (ATI Radeon 9250 Pro) at the same time. So I either get video and no keyboard or the X server simply won't start because it can't find my video device.
I'm not looking for anything fancy video wise; I just want a desktop. I also don't have a terribly fancy keyboard; just a 104 key PS/2 connected model so I don't for the life of me understand what the problem is.
It's been enough to turn me off Linux except for those rare times when I feel too confident in my computer abilities so I'll fight with it for an hour or two, give up and go back to Windows.
FWIW, I've been using Linux for a tad over a decade and this has me positively stymied. Mostly because a keyboard should just WORK and basic SVGA functionality should just WORK and I don't understand why they don't. Complicating things is the fact that widescreen monitors appear to confuse the X.org server and the radeon drivers. {sigh}
Welcome to 1998.
The line is actually quite simple. When a structure fails to account for environmental factors and critically fails causing the loss of dollar value and/or human life it counts as an engineering failure. Resorting to the absurd is just that.
By the same token we can go out on all sorts of limbs and say that when a surgeon tips poorly at a restaurant and the waiter slips and falls because they're not concentrating ...
Now see what you've made me do? :)
No. You've totally missed it here: Surgeon (or surgical team) to patient is a one-to-one mapping. Engineer (or engineering team) to failure event is a one-to-one mapping. Engineer to use-of-structure is a one-to-many mapping. This does not support your point.Are you saying the death of a patient on the table is equivalent to an office building or bridge failure? We're talking literal human fatalities here, and I believe that was the GP's original point. When a surgeon bungs up one life is affected. When an engineer bungs up it can end or drastically affect the lives of many hundred if not thousand in one fell swoop.
When the towers in New York fell (again, towers engineered to withstand the impact of a 747 airliner) thousands of lives were lost because the designing engineers failed to account for the jet fuel in the wings of those planes. At the time, not quite as important as failing to account for a surgical sponge left behind a patient's spleen but in 2001 it became quite a critical error. In its wake, however, building fire proofing was re-evaluated all over the United States so it may actually save many thousands more lives but then I guess that's the idea behind this new technology in that it may also save thousands more lives.
Depending on how broadly you want to look at the situation it could be dozens or even hundreds per year. What about the twin towers in New York? One could, by extension, chaulk that up to an engineering failure. After all the buildings were literally designed to resist the impact of a 747 jetliner. They apparently forgot about all the fuel contained on board said jet liners.
Bridge collapses, building/structural failures, many fires, road failures etc. can all lead back to a decision that can boil down to engineering failure or "nobody's perfect" or "engineers didn't know enough about ${problem} at the time of design" which, by extension, can count as an engineering failure.
There's also the sticky widget about over engineering. It was said that you could build a 100% perfectly earthquake proof building but it would be so cost prohibitive nobody would be willing to pay for it so you have to make certain concessions. Those concessions could some day cost many people their lives.
I don't think you can dismiss surgery as somehow being of lesser impact than major engineering feats, simply for the fact that surgery happens a lot more frequently than building a bridge.Which happens more frequently; surgery or people driving across said bridge?