... It infuriates me when I've walked into projects where someone messed things up so badly they were fired, and they just clean up their resume and move on like nothing happened. That would be part of the bargain with employers -- they would get quality work or compensation in the case of incompetence.
THIS. And how.
A former employer instituted a new rule that no one was allowed to provide professional recommendations for former employees.
Yet, their HR policy of requiring recommendation letters for any potential new-hire applicants remained in-place.
EXACTLY! People here can say what they want about Trump, but I think he is going to be the only candidate to put a stop to this kind of thing happening.
OK, I can't mod in this thread, so I'll reply to say, "Mark post up as Funny."
Trump made his billions the old-fashioned way. He inherited it.
All of Trump's wives have been immigrants. That just goes to show that immigrants are still coming to the US to do unpleasant jobs that no US citizen is willing to do.
Seriously. This sort of bean counter bullshit is going to continue until people no longer hesitate to drag it into the light.
Yes, sure, it's up to every company to maximize its own profits.
And its up to every company to not eat it's seed corn as well.
Thanks for saying in a single sentence what just took me two pages to say (see above).
The short answer is that human life-spans, and the rate of these socioeconomic shifts, are on about the same scale. Voters are not noticing, and investors are looking for shorter-term profits. And so the snake eats its own tail...
Attracting foreign workers shouldn't be blocked completely, but there should be a good reason for it. Someone who has skills you cannot get anywhere else. This should be reflected in the wage -- a H1B job should pay say, at least 200K/year or so.:)
+1 Insightful, folks.
Exceptional work should get exceptional pay, and if it isn't exceptional, there should be no problem finding resident workers.
I'll play both sides of the fence here:
Agreed about letting in exceptional workers. The ability of the US to use its "Brain Drain" power to bring in top-quality talent, and to retain them with a Green card eventually, has been a winning strategy on a global scale for the last century. Other countries pay to educate these people, and then the US grabs them once they have completed their nursing degree, PhD, or whatever. I only learned this when my friends back in grad school, who were almost all from abroad, would explain it to me – people from all continents but Antarctica. That is, the US has long externalized costs in this manner.
But on the flip-side: This strategy accelerated in the late 20th century, and is now out of control. H-1B visas do not result in the above — They have effectively the opposite effect. Being a politically palatable type of "guest-worker" program, most of these foreign workers (most with Bachelors or higher degrees) eventually have to leave. They take whatever skills they have learned back home with them, enhancing the workforce talent-base of their home countries. The H1-B workers are willing to undergo what is essentially a post-graduate internship; save their cash like mad; and return home wealthy and with a higher market-value to boot. Those that stay are in some cases better, but in other cases simply cheaper — they want their children to have a better life, and make this sacrifice.
Well, OK, those are the two extremes. In-between, if you have a huge burden of US student-loan debt, are home-grown, and are looking for, say, a Tenure-track University position — you are out of luck. You are too expensive. You are not wanted. You engaged in many years of voluntary poverty while working for that advanced degree. And what is your reward? . . . Ha. Nothing. Well, actually, it's punishment. You'll have significantly reduced job prospects, and then when your giant-Corp. employer brings in another batch of H1-B's, the US Social Safety Net will tell you that you are "too smartified" to qualify for any benefits to sustain your family while you look for another job. Be aware that "another job" will be something like a factory worker (I've met plenty in this position while on internships years ago). The only good bet is a position with a military contractors (requiring US Citizenship for security Clearance), but not really even there — they strongly prefer to hire "fresh-outs" because that is the cheapest labor that they can get. Experience counts against you.
There is no nationalism here — I am only summarizing decades of observations.
Everybody around the world knows that this is the case. This reversal of the situation is directly eroding the US middle and upper-middle classes (choose your definition), but slowly enough that the full effects haven't been apparent to any generation of living US voters. The end game is that, to oversimplify, the US is reversing the Brain Drain effect to the extent that its major export – un-taxed, unnoticed, and unrequited – is intellectual talent. Companies engage in this due to next-quarter focus on earnings, and not long-term strategy.
This is globalization. But maybe that's OK. Because there will never be another war *cough*, it's fine for super-national Corporations to simultaneously impoverish the average citizen of their (typically) home country, who are their biggest market. At the same time this export higher-level intellectual skills
The "Pythagorean Theorem" is not a theorem at all. Nor a theory. It is a fact. Hence, it is taught as such in high schools everywhere.
The same goes for quantum mechanics. If it was not accurate (a rigorously tested theory == fact), then your computer would not function.
And the list goes on. . .
The only real 'debate' in Climate Science is when exactly humanity's actions (causing global warming) will cause our own extinction.
Global warming is a fact —it is just reading many thermometers over a long period of time. How the effects of this will play out, "Climate Change Theory", well, no one really knows for sure — we do know it will not be pretty.
There is no controversy. Religion does not belong in public school classrooms. Well, not any more than mandatory Cosmology classes belong in church sermons. That is, these are two totally different domains. There is no overlap.
You aren't that familiar with Saudi Arabia then...
But to the extent that Saudi Arabia "rode the wave" of oil, they have actually been working to wean themselves off of it. Their economic problems might not be apparent from the outside, but unlike the US they don't make a habit of airing their laundry in public.
Saudi Arabia's leadership has a firm grasp of the reality and implications of 'Peak Oil', and they are making gigantic investments in renewable energy in response. They're diversifying in other ways as well. Their government clearly sees 'this' writing on the wall, and is responding as best they can.
If their oil dried up tomorrow, Saudi Arabia would simply disappear, and they know it. Civil insurrection would be the least of their worries...
The sorting hat is just putting these people in Slytherin.
Google "Nixon's southern strategy" for some insight on this sorting hat. over the last century the parties have nearly flip-flopped in role. It used to be that the party that became the Democrats were the party of the "evil" southern slave holders and republicans, the party of abe lincoln, were busting that up. This continued through reconstruction. Then there came a gradual flipflop culminating in FDR amd the rise of a liberal dominated government. But even their the south was still democratic. It was Nixon who set the stage to flip the south to the republicans and chose his platform accordingly. THe democratic party went into decline...
Agreed, but I would add to this the 40-year effort by the right-wing to influence policy and the public with politically-funded "Think Tanks" (a real misnomer) that spewed 'respectable-sounding articles and reports' in a long campaign to achieve a permanent political shift. This culminated in the Bush-#2-era "Project for the New American Century", with the stated goal of a permanent republican majority. They got around 10 founders into the presidential administration, which led us into a misguided war with Iraq. (It disbanded, but in reality just re-branded themselves as the "Foreign Policy Initiative".)
This hard-right swing led to the opportunity for deep pockets to fund the Tea Party. It is the Monster that they themselves created.
That is, for 40 years, sheeple were convinced to vote republican, but at the same time were being taught how to organize, so they eventually didn't need oversight any more, and were capable of starting a political movement based on uninformed and misguided beliefs & policies that played well with the rest of the sheeple. So, this long-term plan backfired, and in the end, it created its own monster, which has come back to bite them in the ass. Good.
Actually, there have been a few times (at least) where FOX News has 'accidentally' changed the R to a D when a politician has been caught in a scandal.
Funny, this reminds me of this stupid lady who tried to "school" me that Nixon was a democrat and that Kennedy was a Republican. I and several other people went so far as linking to online resources where she could go and see that indeed, Nixon was a Republican and that Kennedy was a Democrat, but she just refused to believe anything anyone was telling her...
Reminds me of a history teacher in public school who, when I mentioned the Maginot Line (of WW-II), openly mocked me in front of the entire class, saying, "I've never heard of that. There is no such thing."
Ah, puny minds and their burying of their heads in the sand.
"Never argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level, and then beat you with experience." — Sam Clemens (attributed).
In other words, don't try to reason with those who reject reason. You will only waste your breath.
What I don't get, is how did the kooky base get to decide what a Republican is? While I'm a registered independent, until 2000, I was a pretty reliable Republican voter - at least 75 percent. Mostly on financial issues. Then they party turned. First the Trotskyite neocons, then the Teabaggers took over. Now we're looking at Trump and/or Cruz?
I think Stalinist Neocons would be a more accurate term, especially with your two last examples of the demagogues Trump and Cruz.
Recall that Trotsky suddenly disappeared from USSR photographs, having been pitched into the "Memory Hole." There's one particular photo that has at least six versions, each subsequent one with a smaller group of men walking with the USSR's leader.
We all know that you can't erase anything from the internet. Add to that, in the fullness of time, that you can't burn every copy of a photo or book in existence. It is impossible, especially so from the 20th century on-wards. (Alexandria was a long time ago, before machine-duplication.)
... So they have to cater to the ultra-conservative core of the party who espouses these views.
Totally agree with your post, except for a tiny quibble: your use of the word 'core'. 'Wing' or 'fringe' would have been a more accurate term.
That is, they are not the center of the party, and do not represent republicans as a whole any more that Al Sharpton represents every person with pigmented skin. People put up with this self-appointing and self-anointing, even though it only clouds discussion. Ah well. . .
Done that, actually everyone I work with has. It's quite a common university exercise. The lecturers then like catching out the people who forget about implementing things like anti-windup.
The theory behind it is not difficult. But I'm still blown away at what can be considered off the shelf engineering these days.
Yes indeed. I used to teach a senior-level class in LabView (w/lots of hands-on bread-boarding, etc., so not just a programming class). I pushed very hard each year for at least one student group to choose, as their final project, the task of writing and implementing a PID controller, in this case to control a furnace. None of them ever took up the challenge, but instead came up with other sense-and-control projects –some of which turned out to be more difficult than making a PID-controller. I told them so after their final presentations.:-D
BTW, this was not a CS class, but one in an Engineering Department. I got high 'satisfaction' marks, but have heard through the grapevine that my class was "brutal". Good. I designed it to force them to think things through, and designed assignments to make it nearly impossible to find and re-use code someone else had written and shared on the web or ni.com. Devilish? No, just fair.
They hated me at the time, but in the end were happy, and I had top-of-Department satisfaction ratings every time. One student even went on to start his own consulting company providing LabView process-automation services.
Why the fear of the PID? The unknown, I suppose. No free PID-controller code is (or was at the time) freely available, but a few people were selling their own for around $10k. Maybe that was what frightened them off. So, in the last day of class, I also made a point of telling them that expensive solutions are not always expensive because they are too hard, but sometimes because people fear the unknown.
I work with PID controllers very frequently. I still consider them a damn amazing and neat trick of engineering. Just because something becomes common shouldn't mean that we stop marvelling at the genius thought that went behind creating it.
Yeah. Just try writing your own PID-controller algorithm from scratch. No libraries — Do it from scratch.
DOUBLE-RESPONSE POST: Mechanically, the guys in the video could have instead used some super-strong suction cups or glue. So, the cube is not necessarily a part of the robot.
When in Law School, a friend tried to frame 'fax spamming' as a Trespass to Chattels. They use your paper, ink, and equipment, after all.
If the Trespass argument held water, then perhaps it could be extended to robocalls which can, depending on your plan, use up your minutes or text credits. They'd also take up some of your answering machine or cell phone's memory.
It was a class project. I don't know if it was ever used in actual court arguments. IANAL.
That's silly. When I use a gun, I point it, pull the trigger, and boom, a paper target gets a hole in it. Why would I want something to die? That wouldn't be very nice.
If your fetish is limited to putting holes in paper targets, then why don't you use a BB gun? A blow-gun? A bow and some arrows? A pointy stick? Some well-thrown playing cards?
Oh, those would take significantly more skill, and that skill cannot easily be transferred to using the same device for easily killing people.
Note that I am not reasoning with you—That is impossible. I am pointing out your logical fallacies for everyone else.
Except that anything at 20 kHz will be a triangular wave when sampled down to 44.1 kHz for CD-pressing.
No, it won't. 20kHz will be sampled and reproduced perfectly because the signal is over-sampled, a sharp low-pass filter applied, and the resulting signal will not contain any frequency content higher than 22.05 kHz - which includes any harmonics that might be part of your "triangular wave."
Don't believe me? You can see for yourself in this video at the 5:40 mark, where Monty shows how a 20kHz frequency is reproduced perfectly using a 44.1kHz sampling rate.
It's worth your while to watch the whole video. His signal generator and oscilloscope are both analog.
Do you even know how CD's work? They are digital. They provide a discrete time-based signal of audio amplitude.
If you were in my class, I would fail you. If you were my grad student, I would cut your funding.
Take a 44.1 kHz digital sample of a 20 kHz signal. Route that signal through a "true" D/A converter to speakers (or an oscilloscope), and you will get a triangular wave, as I said before, albeit with some 'walk' due to the introduction of false harmonics to the signal. That is, phase non-uniformity == false signals beyond the Nyquist limit of the sampling rate. A low-pass filter at 44.1 kHz might clean it up, but that would be cheating. A Fourier Transform (power spectrum of the signal) would show the false harmonics, and in far greater intensity than that shown in your video. The analog oscilloscope is set to 'lock-in' mode, to represent the resultant analog wave-form based on the signal from the D/A converter that the presenter used. (It might be performing a boxcar averaging of the signal, as the modulations of intensity are quicker than the human eye can detect. I didn't bother looking at the dial settings.) A strict D/A conversion would not yield a sinusoid.
Your vaunted "oversampling" D/A conversion is in reality a fancy marketing term for "signal interpolation, fitting the signal to a sine-type function", done continuously based on some number of samples at any given moment (up to 12,000 data points) –a moving fit to a sinusoid. This 'error correction' is called CIRC.
Go back to your own example video and look at the plot shown at 7:20. Do you see where the data-points are? Do you see the sine-function that is fitted to that data stream? That is your "oversampling" in action. You see, because a CD player 'knows' that it is reproducing an audio signal, it interpolates the data-stream to fit the signal to an intensity-modulating sinusoidal wave-form. More accurately, it was the engineers who designed the Red Book specs, and dictated the specs for the CODEC, meaning here the D/A conversion of the binary EFM-encoded data on a CD to an audio signal that you get when you play a 'music' CD.
Not all signals in the world are sinusoidal, you know. This is why good scientific papers plot only data-points, or sometimes draw in a spline, while making sure to label it as "a guide to the eye." Without such notation in the caption, a paper showing a Fig. like that at 7:20 would be rejected from publication in any respectable Journal. If a manuscript's context is audio signal-processing, then there are reasonable assumptions that can be made about a wave-form that is digitally under-sampled.
Rule of thumb: You need at minimum 10 data-points per period to be able to faithfully analyze a wave-form. This applies to audio, images with periodic features, and everything else.
You'd have a point if there was any substance to the article, but there isn't. There's a quote in the article, repeated in large, bold letters, which sums up what they're saying:
...
You aren't being Cassandra. You're being the descendant of the lone nutjob who ran around in the 70s screaming that nobody should implement TCP and everyone should stick with incompatible protcols because he thought nothing good could could possibly come from a universal standard.
The article was crap. True.
I was speaking generally. I did not finish RTFA.
It just seemed an appropriate occasion to ask the question (based on the summary) – a general question. Not about net security, but about being a prescient person in general. Managers, politicians, and the general public ignore real innovations or warnings, and disregard the visionary types. They then later blame the engineers/programmers/scientists for not having 'done something sooner'.
Prime example: Douglas Engelbart of SRC International. He and his team created the computer mouse, hypertext, and bit-mapped screen displays. In 1968, these and more were displayed at the 'Mother of All Demos'. Management had little to no interest in such useless things (LOL), so it wasn't until about 20 years later that someone named Steve was given a demo — He promptly asked to license the technology (much of which was not patented, due to management's blinders).
So, it never happened to you, therefore it never happened?
Most people are sane, balanced adults, and you've been lucky to have been running into those. Problem is, all it takes is one crazy cunt who gets bored, or wants to show off her dominance and exercise the power that today's society grants to anyone who has certain genitals, and your career will be over and nothing, not even all those students you're popular with, will be able to save you. I don't with this on you, but maybe you shouldn't dismiss the experiences of people like Tim Hunt who had this happen to them.
I have indeed seen-happen what you describe.
It happened to a tenured Professor I knew. Other grad students (female) would tell me that he didn't deserve the 'Inquisition' that he got as a result of the (probably) false allegations. That is, he was popular, mainly because he was fair and amicable. It made for a very bad two years for him, but he made it through by persevering and remaining himself. The student, in this case, did lie. (She wasn't grad-school material, I guess.)
Whether I am popular, bland, or a sexist jerk in professional behavior – it does not matter in instances like you described, or the one I just did. Those are anomalies. Harassment really does happen, all the time, and in ways that many males don't understand while they are in school. It is only with the perspective of time that anyone can really see the degree to which bias is a part of the fabric of our society.
I'm still finding things – biases that go one way, and some the other.
Ah, that old wives' tale. Now I know you're a troll.:-P
I'm not an audiophile, but do know some. They are idiots. Wooden knobs, pyramids, and so on...
But really, what I said is true, based on basic audio engineering a& the physics signal-processing. Saturation of a vacuum tube (over-driving) produces a different set of harmonics than does saturation of a digital signal (which simply clips, introducing ALL harmonics). Go to Wikipedia like I told you.
That said: If you have both a high bit-rate A/D converter with a high sampling rate, when you can process the signal in any way you choose for that track of the composition. NOTE that I wrote the comment with song-making in mind – audio engineering of a track for a song to be mixed-down later, not playing-back a CD at home. There at home (in your Mom's basement), your amp & speakers just need to have a linear response — Someone else has already put the effects they want on each track, and mixed it all down wearing headphones. To reproduce that sound, you simply hit 'PLAY'.
Mostly it seems to be a bunch of guys whining they can't act like ignorant douchebags without consequences.
If by "ignorant douchebags" you mean "like normal humans" than you're pretty much spot on.
One of the astronomers in that list was punished for realizing he had emotional feelings about a student and telling her to go seek another adviser. You know, because men aren't allowed to have emotions. Also, at the same time, are too emotionless compared to women, and that's why diversity is important. In the world according to the SJW.
BS. I've had many female students, or workers I managed, "have feelings for me." Unrequited and uninvited. I just ignore it, and get on with business. They have not gone to seek other managers or advisors.
But I was describing the reverse of your point...
I have also had women above me "have feelings for me." They did not embarrass me by pointing it out and telling me to get lost. I just ignored it, and they behaved themselves (with only a single exception).
"harassment, defined as unwelcome conduct that is based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetic information (unless it's directed against a white heterosexual male, who it's impossible to discriminate against)."
Well, that is only if you are dumb enough to expect HR to do anything about it. They won't. Then, you report to higher authorities (government, the press, etc.) and possibly use the courts. This is one reason that courts exist – to address such issues.
Well, you know what to do next time someone tells you to check your privilege -- by which they mean "shut up, independent white male". That kind of aggression is primarily based on race, sex, and ability.
Saying "Check your privilege" is harassment. Report it. (Unless you're being a jerk, in which case, also re-think what you might be doing to evoke such responses—you are aware of whether you do this or not.)
This is just like when a manager's secretary would frequently tell me (presumably others not of her genetic background), "You're goin' to the back o' the bus." That was harassment, racist in this case. Such racist comments do nothing to help people get along. BTW, I left before reporting, but had reported some other, bigger issue already (whistle-blowing).
men actively avoid meeting one-on-one with women. Two people need to talk about a project? If it's a man and a woman, the man (if he has a brain) will refuse to meet anywhere but a public space. No man will mentor a women, for fear of being accused of ulterior motives. Male-dominated teams actively avoid hiring women, because doing so risks unfounded harassment complaints, gender discrimination lawsuits, etc..
BS. I advise & teach women and men (of the whole array world cultures, countries, or religions) at the graduate level in the physical sciences. I don't take notice of their gender—it is not relevant to the topic of discussion/work.
We can talk in the classroom, hallway, my office, or I can provide one-on-one instruction in a small room on a highly specialized scientific instrument (=$M's). I insist that everyone brings their chair around to my side of the desk when I live-edit their manuscripts, discussing my reasons as I go along, and also me forcing them to 'do it the hard way' if they are missing a concept. I only care that they pay attention, actively engage, and learn.
The response? Popularity. Although during editing they might hate me (I'm tough), they always learn from interactions, which is the reason they are pursuing an advanced degree. Students talk to one another, as do professionals, and everyone else in a given grouping. Word gets around.
What have I witnessed? A couple of decades ago, say, well, harassment: A million unwanted (continuing after a 'no thanks') advances, vengeance for a 'no', off-color jokes irrespective of whether there was a woman in the discussion or not, and all else this article discusses. Often, the source is a superior (manager, advisor, instructor). And today, I don't notice it, but that is because those that engage in this behavior have learned to keep it quiet. The women that have made it to the post-graduate, professor, or staff-scientist level have run this gantlet for years, and have dealt with it in their own ways (others left the field). That is, presumably non-reporting, but people do talk.
Slightly OT: I am culturally curious, and it soon becomes apparent which international students are willing, or even looking for opportunities to discuss cultural/religious/etc. differences among peoples of the world – always in a neutral manner without showing one's own position on a topic. It's one reason students go to another country!
To any woman on the receiving end of harassment:
Do not ever go to HR! HR exists to keep the university/company/organization from being sued. They are not your friend. They work for the institution. I don't know how one should best respond, but understand that it is a tightrope, career-wise.
Slashdot Mirror
... It infuriates me when I've walked into projects where someone messed things up so badly they were fired, and they just clean up their resume and move on like nothing happened. That would be part of the bargain with employers -- they would get quality work or compensation in the case of incompetence.
THIS. And how.
A former employer instituted a new rule that no one was allowed to provide professional recommendations for former employees.
Yet, their HR policy of requiring recommendation letters for any potential new-hire applicants remained in-place.
WTF?
EXACTLY! People here can say what they want about Trump, but I think he is going to be the only candidate to put a stop to this kind of thing happening.
OK, I can't mod in this thread, so I'll reply to say, "Mark post up as Funny."
Trump made his billions the old-fashioned way. He inherited it.
All of Trump's wives have been immigrants. That just goes to show that immigrants are still coming to the US to do unpleasant jobs that no US citizen is willing to do.
Seriously. This sort of bean counter bullshit is going to continue until people no longer hesitate to drag it into the light.
Yes, sure, it's up to every company to maximize its own profits.
And its up to every company to not eat it's seed corn as well.
Thanks for saying in a single sentence what just took me two pages to say (see above).
The short answer is that human life-spans, and the rate of these socioeconomic shifts, are on about the same scale. Voters are not noticing, and investors are looking for shorter-term profits. And so the snake eats its own tail...
Attracting foreign workers shouldn't be blocked completely, but there should be a good reason for it. Someone who has skills you cannot get anywhere else. This should be reflected in the wage -- a H1B job should pay say, at least 200K/year or so. :)
+1 Insightful, folks.
Exceptional work should get exceptional pay, and if it isn't exceptional, there should be no problem finding resident workers.
I'll play both sides of the fence here:
Agreed about letting in exceptional workers. The ability of the US to use its "Brain Drain" power to bring in top-quality talent, and to retain them with a Green card eventually, has been a winning strategy on a global scale for the last century. Other countries pay to educate these people, and then the US grabs them once they have completed their nursing degree, PhD, or whatever. I only learned this when my friends back in grad school, who were almost all from abroad, would explain it to me – people from all continents but Antarctica. That is, the US has long externalized costs in this manner.
But on the flip-side: This strategy accelerated in the late 20th century, and is now out of control. H-1B visas do not result in the above — They have effectively the opposite effect. Being a politically palatable type of "guest-worker" program, most of these foreign workers (most with Bachelors or higher degrees) eventually have to leave. They take whatever skills they have learned back home with them, enhancing the workforce talent-base of their home countries. The H1-B workers are willing to undergo what is essentially a post-graduate internship; save their cash like mad; and return home wealthy and with a higher market-value to boot. Those that stay are in some cases better, but in other cases simply cheaper — they want their children to have a better life, and make this sacrifice.
Well, OK, those are the two extremes. In-between, if you have a huge burden of US student-loan debt, are home-grown, and are looking for, say, a Tenure-track University position — you are out of luck. You are too expensive. You are not wanted. You engaged in many years of voluntary poverty while working for that advanced degree. And what is your reward? . . . Ha. Nothing. Well, actually, it's punishment. You'll have significantly reduced job prospects, and then when your giant-Corp. employer brings in another batch of H1-B's, the US Social Safety Net will tell you that you are "too smartified" to qualify for any benefits to sustain your family while you look for another job. Be aware that "another job" will be something like a factory worker (I've met plenty in this position while on internships years ago). The only good bet is a position with a military contractors (requiring US Citizenship for security Clearance), but not really even there — they strongly prefer to hire "fresh-outs" because that is the cheapest labor that they can get. Experience counts against you.
There is no nationalism here — I am only summarizing decades of observations.
Everybody around the world knows that this is the case. This reversal of the situation is directly eroding the US middle and upper-middle classes (choose your definition), but slowly enough that the full effects haven't been apparent to any generation of living US voters. The end game is that, to oversimplify, the US is reversing the Brain Drain effect to the extent that its major export – un-taxed, unnoticed, and unrequited – is intellectual talent. Companies engage in this due to next-quarter focus on earnings, and not long-term strategy.
This is globalization. But maybe that's OK. Because there will never be another war *cough*, it's fine for super-national Corporations to simultaneously impoverish the average citizen of their (typically) home country, who are their biggest market. At the same time this export higher-level intellectual skills
The "Pythagorean Theorem" is not a theorem at all. Nor a theory. It is a fact. Hence, it is taught as such in high schools everywhere.
The same goes for quantum mechanics. If it was not accurate (a rigorously tested theory == fact), then your computer would not function.
And the list goes on. . .
The only real 'debate' in Climate Science is when exactly humanity's actions (causing global warming) will cause our own extinction.
Global warming is a fact —it is just reading many thermometers over a long period of time. How the effects of this will play out, "Climate Change Theory", well, no one really knows for sure — we do know it will not be pretty.
There is no controversy. Religion does not belong in public school classrooms. Well, not any more than mandatory Cosmology classes belong in church sermons. That is, these are two totally different domains. There is no overlap.
You aren't that familiar with Saudi Arabia then...
But to the extent that Saudi Arabia "rode the wave" of oil, they have actually been working to wean themselves off of it. Their economic problems might not be apparent from the outside, but unlike the US they don't make a habit of airing their laundry in public.
Saudi Arabia's leadership has a firm grasp of the reality and implications of 'Peak Oil', and they are making gigantic investments in renewable energy in response. They're diversifying in other ways as well. Their government clearly sees 'this' writing on the wall, and is responding as best they can.
If their oil dried up tomorrow, Saudi Arabia would simply disappear, and they know it. Civil insurrection would be the least of their worries...
The sorting hat is just putting these people in Slytherin.
Google "Nixon's southern strategy" for some insight on this sorting hat. over the last century the parties have nearly flip-flopped in role. It used to be that the party that became the Democrats were the party of the "evil" southern slave holders and republicans, the party of abe lincoln, were busting that up. This continued through reconstruction. Then there came a gradual flipflop culminating in FDR amd the rise of a liberal dominated government. But even their the south was still democratic. It was Nixon who set the stage to flip the south to the republicans and chose his platform accordingly. THe democratic party went into decline...
Agreed, but I would add to this the 40-year effort by the right-wing to influence policy and the public with politically-funded "Think Tanks" (a real misnomer) that spewed 'respectable-sounding articles and reports' in a long campaign to achieve a permanent political shift. This culminated in the Bush-#2-era "Project for the New American Century", with the stated goal of a permanent republican majority. They got around 10 founders into the presidential administration, which led us into a misguided war with Iraq. (It disbanded, but in reality just re-branded themselves as the "Foreign Policy Initiative".)
This hard-right swing led to the opportunity for deep pockets to fund the Tea Party. It is the Monster that they themselves created.
That is, for 40 years, sheeple were convinced to vote republican, but at the same time were being taught how to organize, so they eventually didn't need oversight any more, and were capable of starting a political movement based on uninformed and misguided beliefs & policies that played well with the rest of the sheeple. So, this long-term plan backfired, and in the end, it created its own monster, which has come back to bite them in the ass. Good.
Actually, there have been a few times (at least) where FOX News has 'accidentally' changed the R to a D when a politician has been caught in a scandal.
Funny, this reminds me of this stupid lady who tried to "school" me that Nixon was a democrat and that Kennedy was a Republican. I and several other people went so far as linking to online resources where she could go and see that indeed, Nixon was a Republican and that Kennedy was a Democrat, but she just refused to believe anything anyone was telling her...
Reminds me of a history teacher in public school who, when I mentioned the Maginot Line (of WW-II), openly mocked me in front of the entire class, saying, "I've never heard of that. There is no such thing."
Ah, puny minds and their burying of their heads in the sand.
"Never argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level, and then beat you with experience." — Sam Clemens (attributed).
In other words, don't try to reason with those who reject reason. You will only waste your breath.
What I don't get, is how did the kooky base get to decide what a Republican is? While I'm a registered independent, until 2000, I was a pretty reliable Republican voter - at least 75 percent. Mostly on financial issues. Then they party turned. First the Trotskyite neocons, then the Teabaggers took over. Now we're looking at Trump and/or Cruz?
I think Stalinist Neocons would be a more accurate term, especially with your two last examples of the demagogues Trump and Cruz.
Recall that Trotsky suddenly disappeared from USSR photographs, having been pitched into the "Memory Hole." There's one particular photo that has at least six versions, each subsequent one with a smaller group of men walking with the USSR's leader.
We all know that you can't erase anything from the internet. Add to that, in the fullness of time, that you can't burn every copy of a photo or book in existence. It is impossible, especially so from the 20th century on-wards. (Alexandria was a long time ago, before machine-duplication.)
... So they have to cater to the ultra-conservative core of the party who espouses these views.
Totally agree with your post, except for a tiny quibble: your use of the word 'core'. 'Wing' or 'fringe' would have been a more accurate term.
That is, they are not the center of the party, and do not represent republicans as a whole any more that Al Sharpton represents every person with pigmented skin. People put up with this self-appointing and self-anointing, even though it only clouds discussion. Ah well. . .
Done that, actually everyone I work with has. It's quite a common university exercise. The lecturers then like catching out the people who forget about implementing things like anti-windup.
The theory behind it is not difficult. But I'm still blown away at what can be considered off the shelf engineering these days.
Yes indeed. I used to teach a senior-level class in LabView (w/lots of hands-on bread-boarding, etc., so not just a programming class). I pushed very hard each year for at least one student group to choose, as their final project, the task of writing and implementing a PID controller, in this case to control a furnace. None of them ever took up the challenge, but instead came up with other sense-and-control projects –some of which turned out to be more difficult than making a PID-controller. I told them so after their final presentations. :-D
BTW, this was not a CS class, but one in an Engineering Department. I got high 'satisfaction' marks, but have heard through the grapevine that my class was "brutal". Good. I designed it to force them to think things through, and designed assignments to make it nearly impossible to find and re-use code someone else had written and shared on the web or ni.com. Devilish? No, just fair.
They hated me at the time, but in the end were happy, and I had top-of-Department satisfaction ratings every time. One student even went on to start his own consulting company providing LabView process-automation services.
Why the fear of the PID? The unknown, I suppose. No free PID-controller code is (or was at the time) freely available, but a few people were selling their own for around $10k. Maybe that was what frightened them off. So, in the last day of class, I also made a point of telling them that expensive solutions are not always expensive because they are too hard, but sometimes because people fear the unknown.
its just a basic PID controller.
I work with PID controllers very frequently. I still consider them a damn amazing and neat trick of engineering. Just because something becomes common shouldn't mean that we stop marvelling at the genius thought that went behind creating it.
Yeah. Just try writing your own PID-controller algorithm from scratch. No libraries — Do it from scratch.
DOUBLE-RESPONSE POST: Mechanically, the guys in the video could have instead used some super-strong suction cups or glue. So, the cube is not necessarily a part of the robot.
When in Law School, a friend tried to frame 'fax spamming' as a Trespass to Chattels. They use your paper, ink, and equipment, after all.
If the Trespass argument held water, then perhaps it could be extended to robocalls which can, depending on your plan, use up your minutes or text credits. They'd also take up some of your answering machine or cell phone's memory.
It was a class project. I don't know if it was ever used in actual court arguments. IANAL.
That's silly. When I use a gun, I point it, pull the trigger, and boom, a paper target gets a hole in it. Why would I want something to die? That wouldn't be very nice.
If your fetish is limited to putting holes in paper targets, then why don't you use a BB gun? A blow-gun? A bow and some arrows? A pointy stick? Some well-thrown playing cards?
Oh, those would take significantly more skill, and that skill cannot easily be transferred to using the same device for easily killing people.
Note that I am not reasoning with you—That is impossible. I am pointing out your logical fallacies for everyone else.
No, it won't. 20kHz will be sampled and reproduced perfectly because the signal is over-sampled, a sharp low-pass filter applied, and the resulting signal will not contain any frequency content higher than 22.05 kHz - which includes any harmonics that might be part of your "triangular wave."
Don't believe me? You can see for yourself in this video at the 5:40 mark, where Monty shows how a 20kHz frequency is reproduced perfectly using a 44.1kHz sampling rate.
It's worth your while to watch the whole video. His signal generator and oscilloscope are both analog.
Do you even know how CD's work? They are digital. They provide a discrete time-based signal of audio amplitude.
If you were in my class, I would fail you. If you were my grad student, I would cut your funding.
Take a 44.1 kHz digital sample of a 20 kHz signal. Route that signal through a "true" D/A converter to speakers (or an oscilloscope), and you will get a triangular wave, as I said before, albeit with some 'walk' due to the introduction of false harmonics to the signal. That is, phase non-uniformity == false signals beyond the Nyquist limit of the sampling rate. A low-pass filter at 44.1 kHz might clean it up, but that would be cheating. A Fourier Transform (power spectrum of the signal) would show the false harmonics, and in far greater intensity than that shown in your video. The analog oscilloscope is set to 'lock-in' mode, to represent the resultant analog wave-form based on the signal from the D/A converter that the presenter used. (It might be performing a boxcar averaging of the signal, as the modulations of intensity are quicker than the human eye can detect. I didn't bother looking at the dial settings.) A strict D/A conversion would not yield a sinusoid.
Your vaunted "oversampling" D/A conversion is in reality a fancy marketing term for "signal interpolation, fitting the signal to a sine-type function", done continuously based on some number of samples at any given moment (up to 12,000 data points) –a moving fit to a sinusoid. This 'error correction' is called CIRC.
Go back to your own example video and look at the plot shown at 7:20. Do you see where the data-points are? Do you see the sine-function that is fitted to that data stream? That is your "oversampling" in action. You see, because a CD player 'knows' that it is reproducing an audio signal, it interpolates the data-stream to fit the signal to an intensity-modulating sinusoidal wave-form. More accurately, it was the engineers who designed the Red Book specs, and dictated the specs for the CODEC, meaning here the D/A conversion of the binary EFM-encoded data on a CD to an audio signal that you get when you play a 'music' CD.
Not all signals in the world are sinusoidal, you know. This is why good scientific papers plot only data-points, or sometimes draw in a spline, while making sure to label it as "a guide to the eye." Without such notation in the caption, a paper showing a Fig. like that at 7:20 would be rejected from publication in any respectable Journal. If a manuscript's context is audio signal-processing, then there are reasonable assumptions that can be made about a wave-form that is digitally under-sampled.
Rule of thumb: You need at minimum 10 data-points per period to be able to faithfully analyze a wave-form. This applies to audio, images with periodic features, and everything else.
You'd have a point if there was any substance to the article, but there isn't. There's a quote in the article, repeated in large, bold letters, which sums up what they're saying:
...
You aren't being Cassandra. You're being the descendant of the lone nutjob who ran around in the 70s screaming that nobody should implement TCP and everyone should stick with incompatible protcols because he thought nothing good could could possibly come from a universal standard.
The article was crap. True.
I was speaking generally. I did not finish RTFA.
It just seemed an appropriate occasion to ask the question (based on the summary) – a general question. Not about net security, but about being a prescient person in general. Managers, politicians, and the general public ignore real innovations or warnings, and disregard the visionary types. They then later blame the engineers/programmers/scientists for not having 'done something sooner'.
Prime example: Douglas Engelbart of SRC International. He and his team created the computer mouse, hypertext, and bit-mapped screen displays. In 1968, these and more were displayed at the 'Mother of All Demos'. Management had little to no interest in such useless things (LOL), so it wasn't until about 20 years later that someone named Steve was given a demo — He promptly asked to license the technology (much of which was not patented, due to management's blinders).
So, it never happened to you, therefore it never happened?
Most people are sane, balanced adults, and you've been lucky to have been running into those. Problem is, all it takes is one crazy cunt who gets bored, or wants to show off her dominance and exercise the power that today's society grants to anyone who has certain genitals, and your career will be over and nothing, not even all those students you're popular with, will be able to save you. I don't with this on you, but maybe you shouldn't dismiss the experiences of people like Tim Hunt who had this happen to them.
I have indeed seen-happen what you describe.
It happened to a tenured Professor I knew. Other grad students (female) would tell me that he didn't deserve the 'Inquisition' that he got as a result of the (probably) false allegations. That is, he was popular, mainly because he was fair and amicable. It made for a very bad two years for him, but he made it through by persevering and remaining himself. The student, in this case, did lie. (She wasn't grad-school material, I guess.)
Whether I am popular, bland, or a sexist jerk in professional behavior – it does not matter in instances like you described, or the one I just did. Those are anomalies. Harassment really does happen, all the time, and in ways that many males don't understand while they are in school. It is only with the perspective of time that anyone can really see the degree to which bias is a part of the fabric of our society.
I'm still finding things – biases that go one way, and some the other.
Ah, that old wives' tale. Now I know you're a troll. :-P
I'm not an audiophile, but do know some. They are idiots. Wooden knobs, pyramids, and so on...
But really, what I said is true, based on basic audio engineering a& the physics signal-processing. Saturation of a vacuum tube (over-driving) produces a different set of harmonics than does saturation of a digital signal (which simply clips, introducing ALL harmonics). Go to Wikipedia like I told you.
That said: If you have both a high bit-rate A/D converter with a high sampling rate, when you can process the signal in any way you choose for that track of the composition. NOTE that I wrote the comment with song-making in mind – audio engineering of a track for a song to be mixed-down later, not playing-back a CD at home. There at home (in your Mom's basement), your amp & speakers just need to have a linear response — Someone else has already put the effects they want on each track, and mixed it all down wearing headphones. To reproduce that sound, you simply hit 'PLAY'.
Ergh. Darn it! Yes, you're right. You win. :-P
The article lacked any substance.
I was just making a general comment. . . in the wrong forum, apparently.
Harassment is everything said, done after you have been told No or stop.
"I'm sorry , you haven't done any of the work, I have to fail you for this class."
No. Stop.
Why is this modded up? As "Funny", maybe, but not really even that.
Mostly it seems to be a bunch of guys whining they can't act like ignorant douchebags without consequences.
If by "ignorant douchebags" you mean "like normal humans" than you're pretty much spot on.
One of the astronomers in that list was punished for realizing he had emotional feelings about a student and telling her to go seek another adviser. You know, because men aren't allowed to have emotions. Also, at the same time, are too emotionless compared to women, and that's why diversity is important. In the world according to the SJW.
BS. I've had many female students, or workers I managed, "have feelings for me." Unrequited and uninvited. I just ignore it, and get on with business. They have not gone to seek other managers or advisors.
But I was describing the reverse of your point...
I have also had women above me "have feelings for me." They did not embarrass me by pointing it out and telling me to get lost. I just ignored it, and they behaved themselves (with only a single exception).
They forgot to add:
"harassment, defined as unwelcome conduct that is based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetic information (unless it's directed against a white heterosexual male, who it's impossible to discriminate against)."
Well, that is only if you are dumb enough to expect HR to do anything about it. They won't. Then, you report to higher authorities (government, the press, etc.) and possibly use the courts. This is one reason that courts exist – to address such issues.
Well, you know what to do next time someone tells you to check your privilege -- by which they mean "shut up, independent white male". That kind of aggression is primarily based on race, sex, and ability.
Saying "Check your privilege" is harassment. Report it. (Unless you're being a jerk, in which case, also re-think what you might be doing to evoke such responses—you are aware of whether you do this or not.)
This is just like when a manager's secretary would frequently tell me (presumably others not of her genetic background), "You're goin' to the back o' the bus." That was harassment, racist in this case. Such racist comments do nothing to help people get along. BTW, I left before reporting, but had reported some other, bigger issue already (whistle-blowing).
men actively avoid meeting one-on-one with women. Two people need to talk about a project? If it's a man and a woman, the man (if he has a brain) will refuse to meet anywhere but a public space. No man will mentor a women, for fear of being accused of ulterior motives. Male-dominated teams actively avoid hiring women, because doing so risks unfounded harassment complaints, gender discrimination lawsuits, etc..
BS. I advise & teach women and men (of the whole array world cultures, countries, or religions) at the graduate level in the physical sciences. I don't take notice of their gender—it is not relevant to the topic of discussion/work.
We can talk in the classroom, hallway, my office, or I can provide one-on-one instruction in a small room on a highly specialized scientific instrument (=$M's). I insist that everyone brings their chair around to my side of the desk when I live-edit their manuscripts, discussing my reasons as I go along, and also me forcing them to 'do it the hard way' if they are missing a concept. I only care that they pay attention, actively engage, and learn.
The response? Popularity. Although during editing they might hate me (I'm tough), they always learn from interactions, which is the reason they are pursuing an advanced degree. Students talk to one another, as do professionals, and everyone else in a given grouping. Word gets around.
What have I witnessed? A couple of decades ago, say, well, harassment: A million unwanted (continuing after a 'no thanks') advances, vengeance for a 'no', off-color jokes irrespective of whether there was a woman in the discussion or not, and all else this article discusses. Often, the source is a superior (manager, advisor, instructor). And today, I don't notice it, but that is because those that engage in this behavior have learned to keep it quiet. The women that have made it to the post-graduate, professor, or staff-scientist level have run this gantlet for years, and have dealt with it in their own ways (others left the field). That is, presumably non-reporting, but people do talk.
Slightly OT: I am culturally curious, and it soon becomes apparent which international students are willing, or even looking for opportunities to discuss cultural/religious/etc. differences among peoples of the world – always in a neutral manner without showing one's own position on a topic. It's one reason students go to another country!
Do not ever go to HR! HR exists to keep the university/company/organization from being sued. They are not your friend. They work for the institution. I don't know how one should best respond, but understand that it is a tightrope, career-wise.