Death cannot come swiftly enough to those morons. I ride the bus every day and I get a full dose. Apparently some people don't see anything wrong with subjecting fellow passengers to an hour long conversation. There are 3 types of calls on the bus -
1. Incoming Call - Ring ring. Hello, Hi Larry, No, I'm on the bus, I'll call you when I get to the office. Bye.
2. Person gets on bus and calls - Hi, I just got on the bus, pick me up at the bus loop at 5, thanks bye.
3. Person gets on bus (ok, girl gets on bus) - talks loudly, same conversation as the one you quoted. "So she's all like get over it you know and I go like whatever and she goes.......blah de blah..." for a solid hour.
Calls #1 & #2 - no problem, they don't bother me, the person is being considerate of others. Call #3, They'll find her corpse stuffed into a culvert somewhere, and the cause of demise will be suffocation due to a cell phone lodged in the trachea. Not that I'm angry or anything. As long as the jury members are over 30 I'll never be convicted either.
Sure, cel phones on a plane, what could possibly go wrong./twitch.
Hey cool, I used to read the encyclopedia too; the World Book; Aardvark to Zymurgy.
My experience in school, up to about 1st year university science, was that I "got" stuff the first time. Whatever new concept the teacher was explaining, trig or calculus or LeChatelier's principle or whatever, once was enough. After that one explanation, I understood it. Then the teacher would explain it again, maybe in slightly different way, and a few more kids would "get" it. Once or twice more, (/me bored stiff) and few more kids would understand. Some kids just never "got" it. I still believe that we had different abilities. Your premise may have some truth to it, but it seems to say that with enough hard work and practice, anyone can play guitar like Jimi Hendrix, paint like Picasso or hit balls like Babe Ruth.
Back in high school, I handled math and science with condescending ease. By that I mean that I often was able to complete homework in class, did little "studying" before tests and scored in the upper 90s. Other students worked much harder than I did. They rewrote their notes every night, they spent hours studying for tests, their parents helped them, some had tutors at home and still the best they could get was 65 or 75 percent. I submit to you that I had "something" they lacked. You can call it "native ability" or smarts or IQ or whatever, but the point is we were differently abled _before_ we started to learn the material.
There is a painting in the national gallery in Ottawa called Voice of Fire. It consists of a red vertical stripe on a dark blue background. We paid about 2 million dollars for it. Why is this great art and why it is worth 2 million dollars? If I picked up a blank canvas, masking tape and some red and blue acrylic paint my 12 year old kid could duplicate the work in an hour. Would my identical red vertical stripe on a dark blue background be great art, and would it be worth 2 million dollars? Explain?
If you don't love being in school and learning engineering, then get out and find something you do love. If you like engineering but hate school then here is my free advice.
1. Women. You will never be in a place that has more young, attractive, available women than a university. Go get some. It is true that forming relationships can't be reduced to simple algorithms, but the rules of the game can be deduced and learned. Yes Pointdexter, even you can get laid. You're smart, right? So figure it out.
2. Textbooks & Professors are a mixed bag in every field. Deal with it.
3. Grade inflation? Who cares? Do you think a 3.5 in Sociology is worth the same as a 3.5 in Electrical Engineering? Me neither.
Bonus - This is what got me through after just about failing second year. Find a small group of people you can study with and work together to solve your weekly problem assignments. Take turns, one guy on the blackboard, everybody else follows along. If you get stuck one of the group will be able to teach you what to do next. If you make a stupid math mistake (drop a sign, whatever) someone will catch it right away.
Um...No. DC works just fine now. It didn't back a 100 years ago though. "The advantage of HVDC is the ability to transmit large amounts of power over long distances with lower capital costs and with lower losses than AC." - from the wikipedia.
AC got the head start because it's easy to use transformers to raise voltage for transmission lines (high voltage = low current = less IxIxR resistive losses) and transform back down at the user end. Now that we have modern power electronics we can use inverters to do the same with DC.
Disagree. Computers are just tools. Kids are doing what kids have always done. If the teachers are insufficiently robust to operate in this environment, they should be replaced.
Historically, neither defense nor offense is "always cheaper". The advantage has switched between offense and defense any number of times. For example, until the trebuchet came along about the 12th century, high stone walls were a good investment. Castles gave a huge advantage to defenders, which is why they were built all over Europe for about 500 years.
When defenders had muskets (muzzle loading, no rifling) they could hit a man at about 150 yards max. An attacker on foot could cover that distance in about a minute. The defenders could fire 2 to 3 times per minute at best, so you had only 2 or 3 chances to hit the attacker with your not very accurate gun before he was in hand weapon range. Fast forward a few centuries, to the american civil war. The guns now had rifling, so they were accurate to 600 to a 1000 yards. The minie ball allowed them to reload maybe 5 times a minute. Now the defender had 20 or 30 chances to hit an attacker. Huge advantage to the defender. By WWI we add machine guns, trenches, and breech loading rifles to the mix and the advantage is even more in favor of the defender. This lasts until tanks come along.
For a modern example, think terrorist (cheap) vs Homeland Security (expensive).
So your definition of "ill-behaved" is that the country's rulers horribly mistreated some of its citizens. Tell me why this definition wouldn't apply to North Korea, Burma(Myanmar), Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Syria, Cuba or China or....the list goes on and on. And why haven't we invaded them yet?
Not a flame as such, although much of what you say is flameworthy. You lack clue.
"The professional association allows them to hide behind a large entity, with deep pockets, such that any litigation against a single individual, is futile."
Um, no. The Professional Engineer Association of which I am a member has about 18000 members and we pay about $225 per year. An annual budget of $4 million is not "deep pockets" by anybody's definition, at least not when stacked up against corporate clients with several orders of magnitude more money. More to the point, the Association doesn't spend _any_ of its money defending engineers against litigation for faulty work. They do spend it pursuing discipline against incompetent or unethical members. The record of discipline against members is public, you can usually find it on their websites. Try APEGBC, PEO or APEGGA for examples. Every month we get to read about a handful of cases where somebody is disciplined for substandard work.
Point 1. I was trying to say, in my inept fashion, is that true believers often label agnostics as atheists, and that even agnostics sometimes call thenselves atheists.This is only my opinion. Yours may differ.
Point 2. As a working hypothesis "there is no god" is fine by me. I guess my point is more philosophical - that God (by definition supernatural) doesn't fit into the scientific method by which we gain knowledge. The existence or non-existence of a supernatural being can't be determined by science. After all, if we had a "theory of God" and built a "God-detector", He could simply reach out His Noodley Appendage and change the test results.
You might be more correct about atheism if the 95% of the worlds population (where did that number come from) all believed in _THE_SAME_ supreme being. Of course they don't. Not only are there many different religions with mostly mutually exclusive beliefs, but most all of the religions are themselves split by different beliefs into branches and sects and denominations and other subdivisions.
Also, I would also suggest that most of the folks who get labeled "atheists" are in fact agnostics. Do I believe in God? - No. Do I believe God doesn't exist? - No. You CAN'T prove God exists or doesn't exist, so the answer to the question - "Is there a supernatural supreme being?" is "I don't know"
OK enough ranting. OK one more. My Philosophy prof liked to provoke discussion by asking stuff like - What is the difference between religion and superstition? Is religious belief a form of mental illness? Be prepared to defend your answer.
Right you are. The only reasons to argue with a zealot are to deliberately annoy them, or (more difficult, but scores higher)use facts and reason to get close enough to one of their core beliefs that they go into cognitive dissonance.
If you want to be nice, my Mum told me a simple substitution trick - instead of saying "Bullshit", say "Amazing".
"all the Jews left the World Trade Center an hour before the planes hit" - "Amazing"
"Bill Gates will send me a dollar for every e-mail I forward to him" - "Amazing"
"God has a special plan just for me" - "Amazing" It works every time.
No belief is ever, in any way, deserving of or entitled to "Respect"
What we ought to respect is a persons right to believe whatever they like. Their beliefs can be agreed or disagreed with, applauded or ridiculed, depending on their congruence with observed reality and, yes, your own beliefs.
There are people who believe the earth is flat, that a God has decided that women should be subservient to men, or that it's ok to have sex with children. Do you automatically respect those beliefs?
Slashdot Mirror
Death cannot come swiftly enough to those morons. I ride the bus every day and I get a full dose. Apparently some people don't see anything wrong with subjecting fellow passengers to an hour long conversation. There are 3 types of calls on the bus -
..." for a solid hour.
/twitch.
1. Incoming Call - Ring ring. Hello, Hi Larry, No, I'm on the bus, I'll call you when I get to the office. Bye.
2. Person gets on bus and calls - Hi, I just got on the bus, pick me up at the bus loop at 5, thanks bye.
3. Person gets on bus (ok, girl gets on bus) - talks loudly, same conversation as the one you quoted. "So she's all like get over it you know and I go like whatever and she goes.......blah de blah
Calls #1 & #2 - no problem, they don't bother me, the person is being considerate of others. Call #3, They'll find her corpse stuffed into a culvert somewhere, and the cause of demise will be suffocation due to a cell phone lodged in the trachea. Not that I'm angry or anything. As long as the jury members are over 30 I'll never be convicted either.
Sure, cel phones on a plane, what could possibly go wrong.
Hey cool, I used to read the encyclopedia too; the World Book; Aardvark to Zymurgy.
My experience in school, up to about 1st year university science, was that I "got" stuff the first time. Whatever new concept the teacher was explaining, trig or calculus or LeChatelier's principle or whatever, once was enough. After that one explanation, I understood it. Then the teacher would explain it again, maybe in slightly different way, and a few more kids would "get" it. Once or twice more, (/me bored stiff) and few more kids would understand. Some kids just never "got" it. I still believe that we had different abilities. Your premise may have some truth to it, but it seems to say that with enough hard work and practice, anyone can play guitar like Jimi Hendrix, paint like Picasso or hit balls like Babe Ruth.
"There is no such thing as "native ability". "
?????
Back in high school, I handled math and science with condescending ease. By that I mean that I often was able to complete homework in class, did little "studying" before tests and scored in the upper 90s. Other students worked much harder than I did. They rewrote their notes every night, they spent hours studying for tests, their parents helped them, some had tutors at home and still the best they could get was 65 or 75 percent. I submit to you that I had "something" they lacked. You can call it "native ability" or smarts or IQ or whatever, but the point is we were differently abled _before_ we started to learn the material.
There is a painting in the national gallery in Ottawa called Voice of Fire. It consists of a red vertical stripe on a dark blue background. We paid about 2 million dollars for it. Why is this great art and why it is worth 2 million dollars? If I picked up a blank canvas, masking tape and some red and blue acrylic paint my 12 year old kid could duplicate the work in an hour. Would my identical red vertical stripe on a dark blue background be great art, and would it be worth 2 million dollars? Explain?
If you don't love being in school and learning engineering, then get out and find something you do love. If you like engineering but hate school then here is my free advice.
1. Women. You will never be in a place that has more young, attractive, available women than a university. Go get some. It is true that forming relationships can't be reduced to simple algorithms, but the rules of the game can be deduced and learned. Yes Pointdexter, even you can get laid. You're smart, right? So figure it out.
2. Textbooks & Professors are a mixed bag in every field. Deal with it.
3. Grade inflation? Who cares? Do you think a 3.5 in Sociology is worth the same as a 3.5 in Electrical Engineering? Me neither.
Bonus - This is what got me through after just about failing second year. Find a small group of people you can study with and work together to solve your weekly problem assignments. Take turns, one guy on the blackboard, everybody else follows along. If you get stuck one of the group will be able to teach you what to do next. If you make a stupid math mistake (drop a sign, whatever) someone will catch it right away.
Have some fun.
Um...No. DC works just fine now. It didn't back a 100 years ago though. "The advantage of HVDC is the ability to transmit large amounts of power over long distances with lower capital costs and with lower losses than AC." - from the wikipedia.
AC got the head start because it's easy to use transformers to raise voltage for transmission lines (high voltage = low current = less IxIxR resistive losses) and transform back down at the user end. Now that we have modern power electronics we can use inverters to do the same with DC.
I pay my 5 bucks, and now Steve Jobs will let me download as much as I want from iTunes for free!!! Same with Amazon. Right?
Or do you expect me to pay twicT?
In keeping with /. pedantry I would like to point out that Baron Victor von Frankenstein was the sceintist, and that the monster had no name.
Barry?. Last I heard he was still in Pickle Lake. Why, has he moved?
Why? AutoCAD and games.
If you have a number of Principle Engineers, is the one in charge the principal Principle Engineer?
sorry
Disagree. Computers are just tools. Kids are doing what kids have always done. If the teachers are insufficiently robust to operate in this environment, they should be replaced.
Trekkies not Trekkers!
Or was that the other way around? I forget now.
Screw the Romani. They should have stayed on their side of the neutral zone.
Historically, neither defense nor offense is "always cheaper". The advantage has switched between offense and defense any number of times. For example, until the trebuchet came along about the 12th century, high stone walls were a good investment. Castles gave a huge advantage to defenders, which is why they were built all over Europe for about 500 years.
When defenders had muskets (muzzle loading, no rifling) they could hit a man at about 150 yards max. An attacker on foot could cover that distance in about a minute. The defenders could fire 2 to 3 times per minute at best, so you had only 2 or 3 chances to hit the attacker with your not very accurate gun before he was in hand weapon range. Fast forward a few centuries, to the american civil war. The guns now had rifling, so they were accurate to 600 to a 1000 yards. The minie ball allowed them to reload maybe 5 times a minute. Now the defender had 20 or 30 chances to hit an attacker. Huge advantage to the defender. By WWI we add machine guns, trenches, and breech loading rifles to the mix and the advantage is even more in favor of the defender. This lasts until tanks come along.
For a modern example, think terrorist (cheap) vs Homeland Security (expensive).
So your definition of "ill-behaved" is that the country's rulers horribly mistreated some of its citizens. Tell me why this definition wouldn't apply to North Korea, Burma(Myanmar), Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Syria, Cuba or China or ....the list goes on and on. And why haven't we invaded them yet?
Yeah, thats what I thought.
AutoCAD. That's the showstopper for me.
Not a flame as such, although much of what you say is flameworthy. You lack clue.
"The professional association allows them to hide behind a large entity, with deep pockets, such that any litigation against a single individual, is futile."
Um, no. The Professional Engineer Association of which I am a member has about 18000 members and we pay about $225 per year. An annual budget of $4 million is not "deep pockets" by anybody's definition, at least not when stacked up against corporate clients with several orders of magnitude more money. More to the point, the Association doesn't spend _any_ of its money defending engineers against litigation for faulty work. They do spend it pursuing discipline against incompetent or unethical members. The record of discipline against members is public, you can usually find it on their websites. Try APEGBC, PEO or APEGGA for examples. Every month we get to read about a handful of cases where somebody is disciplined for substandard work.
"You can put your boots in the oven, but that don't make 'em biscuits"
1. Go to university and get a degree in software engineering.
2. Work a few years till you meet the requirements for registration.
3. Pass the professional practice exams and become a registered professional engineer.
4. Now you _are_ a software engineer, so now you can call yourself a software engineer.
5. Profit??
Point 1. I was trying to say, in my inept fashion, is that true believers often label agnostics as atheists, and that even agnostics sometimes call thenselves atheists.This is only my opinion. Yours may differ.
Point 2. As a working hypothesis "there is no god" is fine by me. I guess my point is more philosophical - that God (by definition supernatural) doesn't fit into the scientific method by which we gain knowledge. The existence or non-existence of a supernatural being can't be determined by science. After all, if we had a "theory of God" and built a "God-detector", He could simply reach out His Noodley Appendage and change the test results.
You might be more correct about atheism if the 95% of the worlds population (where did that number come from) all believed in _THE_SAME_ supreme being. Of course they don't. Not only are there many different religions with mostly mutually exclusive beliefs, but most all of the religions are themselves split by different beliefs into branches and sects and denominations and other subdivisions.
Also, I would also suggest that most of the folks who get labeled "atheists" are in fact agnostics. Do I believe in God? - No. Do I believe God doesn't exist? - No. You CAN'T prove God exists or doesn't exist, so the answer to the question - "Is there a supernatural supreme being?" is "I don't know"
OK enough ranting. OK one more. My Philosophy prof liked to provoke discussion by asking stuff like - What is the difference between religion and superstition? Is religious belief a form of mental illness? Be prepared to defend your answer.
Right you are. The only reasons to argue with a zealot are to deliberately annoy them, or (more difficult, but scores higher)use facts and reason to get close enough to one of their core beliefs that they go into cognitive dissonance.
If you want to be nice, my Mum told me a simple substitution trick - instead of saying "Bullshit", say "Amazing".
"all the Jews left the World Trade Center an hour before the planes hit" - "Amazing"
"Bill Gates will send me a dollar for every e-mail I forward to him" - "Amazing"
"God has a special plan just for me" - "Amazing" It works every time.
People's beliefs should NOT be respected.
No belief is ever, in any way, deserving of or entitled to "Respect"
What we ought to respect is a persons right to believe whatever they like. Their beliefs can be agreed or disagreed with, applauded or ridiculed, depending on their congruence with observed reality and, yes, your own beliefs.
There are people who believe the earth is flat, that a God has decided that women should be subservient to men, or that it's ok to have sex with children. Do you automatically respect those beliefs?