"Coerced pray in schools" is not a "law respecting an establishment of religion". It is not even a law. Preventing students from praying is "prohibiting the free exercise thereof" as well as "abridging the freedom of speech."
What is with you people? Every time this issue comes up, somebody needs this exact point explained - the first ammendment applies to coerced prayer in school. Every time. Bonus points if you argue the point after somebody quotes SCOTUS rulings.
Doesn't work in all, heck in MANY cases. Your input assumes you know all states, and can determine everything that's dangerous.
No, I assume that I know the most common states, and that I know which of those are safe. Everything else is dangerous.
Take air traffic controller software. List all dangerous conditions.
List all safe conditions that you're willing to deal with. Everything else is declared as dangerous.
But if you want the system to deal with potentially unsafe conditions, having the hubris to assume you can identify every dangerous condition in your output state isn't reasonable except for the simplest of projects.
I can identify expected safe states and exclude everything else. That's hard, but it can be done.
Most IT jobs today deal with things that were either not invented or not commonly used 20 years ago.
And yet, most of the stuff from 20 eyars ago still applies. Amazing, huh?
People would memorize answers to obsolete questions just to pass the test, and this would not reflect on their abilities to work with current technology.
Whereas today, people memorize the answers to overly specific questions to pass a test. At least with certification you usually need to apprentice yourself.
Actually, no you can't insure even that there are no dangerous bugs.
Yes you can. The post I referred to described a way to do this by constraining outputs to known safe values. There are still bugs, but none that can hurt you.
Obviously if you could eliminate all dangerous bugs, you could (at some cost) eliminate all bugs by declaring all bugs as "dangerous" and tracking all of them down. Of course, sometimes a "bug" is not a coding error but a design or requirements flaw.
Nope, declaring a bug dangerous doesn't make it so. When I talk about dangerous bugs, I mean actual physical danger.
Ah, but any such engineer would by definition be unqualified as they would have to think they can do the impossible. First, one can't insure that there aren't any bugs in real systems using current technology (or even anything on the horizon).
Look one comment up. You can ensure that no bugs create a dangerous condition, which is different from no bugs at all.
For another example (since I didn't RTFA), I don't know if they list the irradiation device that killed at least one patient
Therac-25, and they'd better have listed it - it's damn near canonical.
In the words of the old chestnut, "If you're calm and confident when everyone around you is running around in blind panic, you clearly don't understand the situation."
Nah, I'm the only one likely to put the fire out. There's never a reason to panic.
Evolution is different in the way that it depends on the random changes, which will result in (currently) unknown results and different properties in the observed object/organism. We don't know what a particular gene mutation will do to an organism (unless it's a REALLY simple organism, but even then I doubt it), and that is what currently makes evolution a non-predictive science.
And yet, it successfully predicted antibiotic-resistant viruses.
We can make general statements as in "In case of higher toxicity this organism MAY develop immunity. But it also MAY just die out if there is currently no organisms with immunity to that toxic environment." If you take the analogy to the pool table you could say, "If I hit that yellow ball with my cue ball just so it will roll into the pocket. However, if it suddenly changes properties (rougher surface, different weight, whatever) this will change the path and the ball will miss the pocket."
And if you attempt a 5 ball combo, you may be able to predict the final state of the table, but perhaps not. Each error is magnified, and they result is unpredictable. For the same reason, we can't predict the position of the planets in 150,000 years.
I'd assume these treaties are going to get revoked once anyone starts having serious interest in extraterrestrial property, but until then his claims are about the best you'll get, aside from the UNs opinion, which many here don't seem to care much about:-)
I'd ignore them - they're pointless until people can actually settle the moon.
Erm...evolution is not predictive because it depends on the actual environmental state. Since you can't really predict environment and its state in the long term, you can't predict how a species might evolve in reaction to that state.
So does Physics. Just because you can't predict the exact result of a hard break in 8 ball pool doesn't make it non-predictive.
Salesmen have turned into an order taker, so the job has changed...but it also means that inventory has to be more malleable--since the consumer won't just take any car off the lot now.
If only it were so. The only place I've seen that works that way is fitzmall.com - they do no-haggle prices and sell in volume (multi-make, too). Most other places are either friendly salesmen that want to get you in their car or else slimy pond scum that want to take you for what they can manage. I guess it's a good thing I won't be buying a car for 2-3 years.
Please elaborate on these slaves. I know of no huge slave populations in China's history.
Maybe he meant the peasants that contribute to the GDP but are forbidden from living on the coast, or perhaps he meant the workers that built the great wall. China has a long history of scant concern for their peasant class.
Are you for anything? Or are you just against the things your friends all agree you should be against?
Speaking for me, I'm for accountable government that doesn't get off on starting wars to distract from problems at home. I'm also for a viable economy that isn't draining all the decent jobs to the third world so that C-level execs can line their pockets.
Let's see - social liberal, financial conservative, and in favor of better oversight of corporate land.
By your logic it has been even more blatantly wrong for claiming that any sex outside marriage is wrong, because in general people are naturally predisposed to lust after anyone they find sexually attractive.
There are good reasons for curtailing that stuff (in biblical times). Specifically, the number of illegitimate births would be corrosive to the social fabric. Nowadays, we have the pill and ru486 and condoms, so the rules are different. Society needs to evolve to deal with the fact that I can screw 1000 women and not get anybody pregnant or spread disease. The remaining problems with too much sex are social and need to be addressed socially.
Saying that Homosexuality is wrong and focusing so much on it seems to be a recent trend (dark ages aside). Really, why would you care if two guys are into each other? They can still contribute to society, and their lower birth rate leads to less population pressure.
Christianity just says these activities are wrong, don't engage in them, and don't entertain the desires to engage in them. It's the same with stealing, drunkenness, lying, etc.
Lying and stealing can harm others. I fail to see how being gay does.
When I get angry at someone, my physical inclination is to punch them in the face. But is that a valid defense in court against an assault and battery charge?
You're not in court for following your urges. You're in court for harming another. I disagree with Christianity for demanding that I restrict my actions with no clear reason given.
If you're going to pursue a secular morality in this line, it's going to have to be a relative morality.
All morality is relative. It's only murder that is fairly constant in being condemned.
To get back to the point, I'm a Christian, and I don't subscribe to the authoritarian, world-domination agenda of the "Christian right".
Well, they get all the press, and politicians listen to them. It sounds like you and your buddies need to knock them down a peg, just to clear the air.
No one who dies of cancer does so in a fiery ball that destroys a Billion dollars worth of infrastructure.
Meh, that's a weak argument - saying that special measures are needed to combat terrorism because they blew up the WTC ignores the fact that, for all the spectacle they caused, they didn't really kill that many people, and had as much effect as a bad ice storm or a F3 hurricane (which we get a few of each year anyway). It also ignores the fact that the new measures are fairly ineffective at their stated purpose, while making government abuse easy and inevitable. Speaking from a rational perspective, I would prefer the terrorists to the FBI, as the FBI is more likely to get me killed, or put on a no-fly list, or do something stupid that screws up my life.
Be prepared when the CEO hits the fan. He won't be there forever, keep links with Bob the CFO and Carly the insane Amazon in marketing, you never know when they will become the CEO.
I'll have you know the Amazon CEO is named jeff, not *spit* Carly!
/wouldn't want to work for Carly
//not bitter at all.
Give a geek a programming job that seems "pointless" to him and while you may get results (you are paying him, after all) they won't begin to compare to what you would get if you gave them something that piqued their curiosity.
Well duh, it's work. This applies only to a certain degree - there's always some stuff that nobody wants to do that needs doing. Management is there to make sure that stuff is done.
I have told the big-wigs, in meetings now, that we will be losing our physical security.
You could always estimate how much it would cost to compensate for the lack of physical security. Make it cost twice as much as keeping the room. If they still balk, advise them in writing of the consequences and demand a signature. Keep this offsite.
I'm a developer, and I have about 6 passwords that change irregularly, so I write them down. I would imagine that a network admin would have about 60; are you really suggesting that they be memorized?
Actualy, every time I sit down to do anything high-profile I run my hand from the keyboard, down the cord, to the back of my workstation, for the exact reason. I've also marked my keyboard.
You probably know this already, but most people don't do that.
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"Coerced pray in schools" is not a "law respecting an establishment of religion". It is not even a law. Preventing students from praying is "prohibiting the free exercise thereof" as well as "abridging the freedom of speech."
What is with you people? Every time this issue comes up, somebody needs this exact point explained - the first ammendment applies to coerced prayer in school. Every time. Bonus points if you argue the point after somebody quotes SCOTUS rulings.
Doesn't work in all, heck in MANY cases. Your input assumes you know all states, and can determine everything that's dangerous.
No, I assume that I know the most common states, and that I know which of those are safe. Everything else is dangerous.
Take air traffic controller software. List all dangerous conditions.
List all safe conditions that you're willing to deal with. Everything else is declared as dangerous.
But if you want the system to deal with potentially unsafe conditions, having the hubris to assume you can identify every dangerous condition in your output state isn't reasonable except for the simplest of projects.
I can identify expected safe states and exclude everything else. That's hard, but it can be done.
Most IT jobs today deal with things that were either not invented or not commonly used 20 years ago.
And yet, most of the stuff from 20 eyars ago still applies. Amazing, huh?
People would memorize answers to obsolete questions just to pass the test, and this would not reflect on their abilities to work with current technology.
Whereas today, people memorize the answers to overly specific questions to pass a test. At least with certification you usually need to apprentice yourself.
Actually, no you can't insure even that there are no dangerous bugs.
Yes you can. The post I referred to described a way to do this by constraining outputs to known safe values. There are still bugs, but none that can hurt you.
Obviously if you could eliminate all dangerous bugs, you could (at some cost) eliminate all bugs by declaring all bugs as "dangerous" and tracking all of them down. Of course, sometimes a "bug" is not a coding error but a design or requirements flaw.
Nope, declaring a bug dangerous doesn't make it so. When I talk about dangerous bugs, I mean actual physical danger.
Licensing for programmers would have to be done differently than it is for other professions, because the nature of the job changes much faster.
No it doesn't. 20 years per paradigm is reasonable considering the age of the profession.
The computer industry has a defacto licensing scheme already, with vendor certifications.
Vendor licenses are spotty and myopic, generally focusing on the vendor's products instead of practices and techniques.
Ah, but any such engineer would by definition be unqualified as they would have to think they can do the impossible. First, one can't insure that there aren't any bugs in real systems using current technology (or even anything on the horizon).
Look one comment up. You can ensure that no bugs create a dangerous condition, which is different from no bugs at all.
For another example (since I didn't RTFA), I don't know if they list the irradiation device that killed at least one patient
Therac-25, and they'd better have listed it - it's damn near canonical.
In the words of the old chestnut, "If you're calm and confident when everyone around you is running around in blind panic, you clearly don't understand the situation."
Nah, I'm the only one likely to put the fire out. There's never a reason to panic.
Evolution is different in the way that it depends on the random changes, which will result in (currently) unknown results and different properties in the observed object/organism. We don't know what a particular gene mutation will do to an organism (unless it's a REALLY simple organism, but even then I doubt it), and that is what currently makes evolution a non-predictive science.
And yet, it successfully predicted antibiotic-resistant viruses.
We can make general statements as in "In case of higher toxicity this organism MAY develop immunity. But it also MAY just die out if there is currently no organisms with immunity to that toxic environment." If you take the analogy to the pool table you could say, "If I hit that yellow ball with my cue ball just so it will roll into the pocket. However, if it suddenly changes properties (rougher surface, different weight, whatever) this will change the path and the ball will miss the pocket."
And if you attempt a 5 ball combo, you may be able to predict the final state of the table, but perhaps not. Each error is magnified, and they result is unpredictable. For the same reason, we can't predict the position of the planets in 150,000 years.
That's "whitelist law" for analogy: if it's on this list, you can do it. Guess where the China government weighs in?
Checkerboard - if it's on the list, you can do it, until they decide otherwise. Then it was illegal and they throw you in a hole.
Ahhh! You ended a sentence with a preposition!
Yeah, well this is English, not Latin.
I'd assume these treaties are going to get revoked once anyone starts having serious interest in extraterrestrial property, but until then his claims are about the best you'll get, aside from the UNs opinion, which many here don't seem to care much about :-)
I'd ignore them - they're pointless until people can actually settle the moon.
It's not called the Theory of Evolution because some guy just thought it up, it's called such because it has not yet been authoritively proven.
And it never will be. That's part and parcel of being a theory.
Now, in my opinion, there's nothing wrong with Intelligent Design inherently.
Nor in mine, just don't call it a theory, because it isn't.
Erm...evolution is not predictive because it depends on the actual environmental state. Since you can't really predict environment and its state in the long term, you can't predict how a species might evolve in reaction to that state.
So does Physics. Just because you can't predict the exact result of a hard break in 8 ball pool doesn't make it non-predictive.
I'm sorry, but I will not swap out my CPU and motherboard just so I can install faster cards only available in PCI-E.
You will eventually. ATI just decided to stop supporting our shrinking market segment.
Salesmen have turned into an order taker, so the job has changed...but it also means that inventory has to be more malleable--since the consumer won't just take any car off the lot now.
If only it were so. The only place I've seen that works that way is fitzmall.com - they do no-haggle prices and sell in volume (multi-make, too). Most other places are either friendly salesmen that want to get you in their car or else slimy pond scum that want to take you for what they can manage. I guess it's a good thing I won't be buying a car for 2-3 years.
Please elaborate on these slaves. I know of no huge slave populations in China's history.
Maybe he meant the peasants that contribute to the GDP but are forbidden from living on the coast, or perhaps he meant the workers that built the great wall. China has a long history of scant concern for their peasant class.
Are you for anything? Or are you just against the things your friends all agree you should be against?
Speaking for me, I'm for accountable government that doesn't get off on starting wars to distract from problems at home. I'm also for a viable economy that isn't draining all the decent jobs to the third world so that C-level execs can line their pockets.
Let's see - social liberal, financial conservative, and in favor of better oversight of corporate land.
By your logic it has been even more blatantly wrong for claiming that any sex outside marriage is wrong, because in general people are naturally predisposed to lust after anyone they find sexually attractive.
There are good reasons for curtailing that stuff (in biblical times). Specifically, the number of illegitimate births would be corrosive to the social fabric. Nowadays, we have the pill and ru486 and condoms, so the rules are different. Society needs to evolve to deal with the fact that I can screw 1000 women and not get anybody pregnant or spread disease. The remaining problems with too much sex are social and need to be addressed socially.
Saying that Homosexuality is wrong and focusing so much on it seems to be a recent trend (dark ages aside). Really, why would you care if two guys are into each other? They can still contribute to society, and their lower birth rate leads to less population pressure.
Christianity just says these activities are wrong, don't engage in them, and don't entertain the desires to engage in them. It's the same with stealing, drunkenness, lying, etc.
Lying and stealing can harm others. I fail to see how being gay does.
When I get angry at someone, my physical inclination is to punch them in the face. But is that a valid defense in court against an assault and battery charge?
You're not in court for following your urges. You're in court for harming another. I disagree with Christianity for demanding that I restrict my actions with no clear reason given.
If you're going to pursue a secular morality in this line, it's going to have to be a relative morality.
All morality is relative. It's only murder that is fairly constant in being condemned.
To get back to the point, I'm a Christian, and I don't subscribe to the authoritarian, world-domination agenda of the "Christian right".
Well, they get all the press, and politicians listen to them. It sounds like you and your buddies need to knock them down a peg, just to clear the air.
No one who dies of cancer does so in a fiery ball that destroys a Billion dollars worth of infrastructure.
Meh, that's a weak argument - saying that special measures are needed to combat terrorism because they blew up the WTC ignores the fact that, for all the spectacle they caused, they didn't really kill that many people, and had as much effect as a bad ice storm or a F3 hurricane (which we get a few of each year anyway). It also ignores the fact that the new measures are fairly ineffective at their stated purpose, while making government abuse easy and inevitable. Speaking from a rational perspective, I would prefer the terrorists to the FBI, as the FBI is more likely to get me killed, or put on a no-fly list, or do something stupid that screws up my life.
Be prepared when the CEO hits the fan. He won't be there forever, keep links with Bob the CFO and Carly the insane Amazon in marketing, you never know when they will become the CEO.
I'll have you know the Amazon CEO is named jeff, not *spit* Carly!
/wouldn't want to work for Carly
//not bitter at all.
Give a geek a programming job that seems "pointless" to him and while you may get results (you are paying him, after all) they won't begin to compare to what you would get if you gave them something that piqued their curiosity.
Well duh, it's work. This applies only to a certain degree - there's always some stuff that nobody wants to do that needs doing. Management is there to make sure that stuff is done.
I have told the big-wigs, in meetings now, that we will be losing our physical security.
You could always estimate how much it would cost to compensate for the lack of physical security. Make it cost twice as much as keeping the room. If they still balk, advise them in writing of the consequences and demand a signature. Keep this offsite.
1. Don't write down passwords.
I'm a developer, and I have about 6 passwords that change irregularly, so I write them down. I would imagine that a network admin would have about 60; are you really suggesting that they be memorized?
The cleaning, and especially security, people generally have a master key.
In a high security environment, they don't. If you need into an office where the door is locked, you have to pick the lock or drill it.
Actualy, every time I sit down to do anything high-profile I run my hand from the keyboard, down the cord, to the back of my workstation, for the exact reason. I've also marked my keyboard.
You probably know this already, but most people don't do that.