The reason is that the diamond planet is not being used to advance a political objective.
1. Scientists identify a potentially serious problem, one that could very easily lead to disaster, famine, and war. 2. Scientists study that potentially serious problem, make predictions based on their theories, and determine that so far reality is basically matching their predictions, except that the problem is even bigger than they originally thought. 3. Scientists go to politicians and the public and say "We have a serious problem if we keep doing things the way we are doing them. Here's what we need to change." (note that they don't say how they think the politicians should make that change, just that the change is needed) 4. Economists and others study the problem of how to make the change happen. They come up with one proposal that has worked in practice (cap-and-trade) and one that would work in theory (using a tax to make sure the externalities get factored into decisions).
That's about where things are now. Here's where we seem to be heading: 5. Politicians ignore the scientists and economists, because they want political donations from corporations that will have to pay those taxes or cap-and-trade costs. Some dismiss the economists' solutions as left-wing nonsense. 6. Disaster strikes as the scientists predicted. Politicians proceed to defend themselves with phrases like 'nobody could have predicted this'.
The only bias I see at work in steps 1-4 is the pro-reality bias. As far as steps 5-6, consider that politicians failed to heed the warnings of many economists back in 2005-2006 that there was a major bubble forming in housing, their inaction bought by trading firms like Goldman Sachs, and then were quite happy to state that nobody had been able to see the problem.
Swamp land. The power plant was build in the midst of swamps.
When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a power plant on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest power plant in all of Russia!
I heard some european head of state (Sarkozy perhaps) suggest that stock transactions be taxed based on speed, i.e. speculators who buy and sell very fast to make a quick buck get taxed a lot, but real investors who're in for the long run and keep their stock for a long time don't. That sounds like a great idea to me.
This concept actually was first proposed in 1972 by Nobel-winning economist James Tobin, with the idea that it would apply to currency transactions to prevent speculators from rapid trading like the kind you're describing. Basically, the concept is that with such a tax in place, traders would have to hold onto the asset long enough that they could pay for the tax, plus whatever gains they were anticipating, so that meant that they'd have to expect to own something for longer than a few minutes. There have since been discussions of applying the same idea to stocks, bonds, mortgage-backed securities, and other assets.
The purpose of that tax isn't so much to generate revenue (although this definitely would happen), it's to slow down the markets enough so that the assets could be properly valued rather than people making money on millisecond-level differences.
With regards to LIMIT, Oracle does have a couple of equivalents: 1. WHERE rownum < end
2. select * from (select S1.*, ROWNUM rn FROM ( real query ) S1 WHERE ROWNUM <= end) WHERE rn >= start
Obviously, the second syntax is a bit painful, but it works, and it has the important behavior that it doesn't calculate any of the rows that aren't returned (as Postgres says it does for LIMIT...OFFSET in 8.1, see the docs). This is important when you're selecting items 4990-5000 of a 10,000 row result set.
I've used both PostGres and Oracle - they're both pretty good at their jobs, both have their quirks, upsides, and downsides.
Without a label, how does a recording artist promote his or her music to people who don't listen to Internet radio?
Perform works live. Get your fans (who like your stuff) to convince their friends to like your stuff. Drop some recordings on Youtube, iTunes, or any other distribution network you can get your hands on.
And without a recognized music publisher, how can a songwriter be sure that his song isn't similar enough to someone else's song to attract lawsuits alleging plagiarism?*
They can't, but neither can a 'recognized music publisher' protect you from that sort of thing. Your options if accused of plagiarism are: 1. Give the accuser a cut. 2. Cease & desist like they asked. 3. Go to court, especially if they don't sound at all similar.
Continue making new music throughout your adult life. If you're a musician, that should be what you want to be doing anyways.
Until physical disability keeps you from playing your instrument competently. Arthritis, vocal polyps, etc.
Physical disability doesn't completely shut down a musician (e.g. Beethoven or Stevie Wonder). Age doesn't really stop 'em either - Paul McCartney is still performing in his late 60's. In any event, if they're really concerned about that problem, they can get disability insurance like the rest of us.
The real translation here: "The music industry prefers their stars young and naive about the business, so they don't realize how much they're getting screwed by their labels. And because we like to cast off our acts before they're 30, we'll use the fact that they're broke by the time they're 70 as a way to build support for giving us copyrights for longer."
The solutions, for musicians are: 1. Don't sign with a label. Many musicians have made it without one, and those who have signed with one generally consider them to be a really bad deal. 2. Continue making new music throughout your adult life. If you're a musician, that should be what you want to be doing anyways. 3. Promote sharing music as a way of building up your fan base. The Grateful Dead did it, MC Frontalot did it, you can do it too. 4. Did I mention that you shouldn't sign with a label?
Because much of open source is discriminatory: If you're dealing with GPL code, there is the restriction that any reuse of that has to be GPL'd (LGPL sorta doesn't have that effect, and BSD obviously doesn't).
Three strategies that most definitely work: 1. Don't buy a game right after it comes out (this also cuts down the price dramatically if you choose to buy it). Wait for the reviews and the like to percolate for a while, so you can get an idea of what the early adopters thought of it. Sure, it might not be as popular 2 years later, but it's still the same game.
2. Some gaming companies release demos, which is a perfectly legal way to try before you buy.
3. Alternately, scrap the commercial latest-and-greatest and just enjoy games that are available for free, like Battle for Wesnoth and FreeCiv. A lot of them are pretty good, replayable, portable across many OSes, and in some cases multi-player capable. You risk nothing but your free time, which is what you're using up to play games anyways.
The trouble with that plan is that an asshat driver will either: A. Not answer the phone, or B. Get even more distracted and asshat-ish because they have to answer the phone while driving.
For those thinking parent's story is just an anecdote and thus not evidence, here's a Chicago Tribune story on some real research into how common this practice is.
This would be fun at political debates, like this one:
Morbo: Morbo demands an answer to the following question: If you saw delicious candy in the hands of a small child would you seize and consume it? Jack Johnson: Unthinkable. John Jackson: I wouldn't think of it. Morbo: What about you, Mr. Nixon? I remind you you are under a truth-o-scope. Nixon's Head: Uh, well, I, uh...the question is-is vague. You don't say what kind of candy, whether anyone is watching or uh... At any rate, I certainly wouldn't harm the child.
Drat, the inequalities didn't show up thanks to Slashcode. Here's the written out version: minimum amount needed to survive wage is less than wage is less than real value added by the worker's labor.
A highly skilled, highly trained, high value, and not easily replaced worker with no assets to sell is in exactly the same predicament. She/he must (in the absence of any sort of government aid) sell their work in order to gain the income they need to survive.
The wage they get, which I described in option 1, follows this rule: minimum amount needed to survive wage real value added by the worker's labor
For the high value employee, the real value added by the worker's labor is considerably higher than that of the low value employee, so they could command a higher wage and still follow the same rule. Now, that does make a difference over the long term of course, because the high value employee can afford luxuries beyond the mere survival needs, or can save up capital and become a capitalist rather than a laborer. But it doesn't change the relationship between the employee and the employer.
A TCP class raises a disconnected exception, the stream class raises an interrupted exception, the object class raises an error exception, and the application says "There was an error." What kind, and how do I fix it?
That's because the stream class and object class both did the wrong thing with the exception they got.
What you want to do in an exception handler is fix what you can, and throw up the call chain what you can't. For instance, when the stream gets an indication that the TCP connection was disconnected, they could perhaps try to re-establish the connection, but if that doesn't work it should throw the DisconnectedException it got up to their caller until either something either fixes the problem or the application crashes. But what you don't want to do is take the DisconnectedException, replace it with a different sort of exception with less information about what broke, and and throw that.
In other words, if you hit a hammer against your thumb rather than against the nail, don't blame the hammer.
Recall, finally, that not all roles require an excellent communicator. Since computing has become cool, there are more cool people interested in computing: their ability to present themselves well (and unintimidatingly - it's easy for an interviewer to think he has an extrovert all figured out) may not make them the best for the job.
It's hard to argue, though, that communication skills don't help in IT, whether you're talking about admins, developers, QA analysts, or support:
* Admins need to be able to document what they do clearly enough so that other admins can reproduce it if need be. They also need to be able to articulate why they're doing what they're doing, so they can get the political support they need to do things like take servers offline for upgrades.
* Developers are communicating with future developers in every line of code they write. They will also be more effective if they can explain what their work does, so that others can reuse it.
* QA analysts need to be able to submit good bug reports to developers. If they can't describe the problem clearly, the developers will have a much harder time fixing it.
* Front-line tech support has to communicate with end users, who are frequently upset, kinda stupid, and definitely ignorant.
In case anyone forgot, the US gov't - and by extension the states - aren't automagically entitled to a piece of everything.
States are bound by their constitutions, which are not the same as the US Constitution. For instance, the US Constitution has nothing to say at all about public schools, and yet most states require the state to see to it that a public education system exists in their state. Basically, the way that works is that anything the US Constitution prohibits the US government from doing, the states can't do, but on the many issues on which the US constitution is silent, the states can do as they please.
3. Use that code. (No one is going to blame you for copypasta on your own project.)
Just be careful, if you distribute whatever you come up with in this process, that you follow the licensing rules - if it's GPL'd stuff you're copying, release your stuff under the GPL. If it's BSD, do whatever you want with it. If it's just on a forum somewhere, it's probably public domain and you can do what you want.
The other way you can win some trust is in the realm of documentation. For instance, if you discover (via code) that there's some incredibly useful option that's mentioned nowhere in the docs, you can write a blurb on it and see if they're interested in adding it to their online docs.
Consider a widget in a competitive market (i.e. no monopolies or oligopolies to worry about, just to simplify things) that can be produced using $10 worth of materials, a $1 depreciation on the tools and equipment, and 1 hour of time from 3 approximately equally skilled (again, for simplicity's sake) workers, that sells for $50. The $50 of the widget, therefor, contains $10 of materials, $1 of equipment, and $39 worth of labor, or $13 apiece, from the 3 workers.
But, because I as a profit-seeking capitalist want a return on my widget business investment, I actually pay my workers $9 per hour, and collect the $4 difference as profit to either take for my own personal use or reinvest in the business. My workers would rather make $9 than be unemployed (because of the choice I described earlier), so they accept the $9 wage. If this difference didn't exist between the value added by the labor and how much I pay them, I wouldn't be profiting from my business, and would sell off my equipment and invest in something else.
It's a small group of misfits, consisting of: 1. A guy with spikey hair and red armor. 2. A guy wearing some sort of ninja-like outfit who can really kick. 3. A gal wearing white robes. 4. Somebody with a pointy yellow hat and blue robes. All you can see of the face is their eyes.
They keep on going on about reviving the power of the orbs or some-such, and are carrying a wide array of crazy-looking potions and a lot of gold that they use to pay for everything.
The thing is, if you read Marx's Das Kapital (which it certainly sounds like you haven't) you'll discover that the major thrust of Marx's argument is that under a capitalist economy with completely unfettered markets, wealth gets concentrated in the hands of a few capitalists by effectively stealing value from workers. The reason for this is that if a worker has no money and nothing of value to sell except their own labor, then that worker has 2 choices: 1. Work at a wage that is below the true value of their labor, but no less than the minimum amount needed to keep that worker alive, or 2. Die of starvation, illness, or exposure.
Now, here's the question: Is the worker making the choice to take that below-value wage really making a free choice?
Slashdot Mirror
Who'd have thought there'd be that much interest in buying shrubbery?
Well, there were these knights who threatened to say "Ni" again if they didn't get one ...
The reason is that the diamond planet is not being used to advance a political objective.
1. Scientists identify a potentially serious problem, one that could very easily lead to disaster, famine, and war.
2. Scientists study that potentially serious problem, make predictions based on their theories, and determine that so far reality is basically matching their predictions, except that the problem is even bigger than they originally thought.
3. Scientists go to politicians and the public and say "We have a serious problem if we keep doing things the way we are doing them. Here's what we need to change." (note that they don't say how they think the politicians should make that change, just that the change is needed)
4. Economists and others study the problem of how to make the change happen. They come up with one proposal that has worked in practice (cap-and-trade) and one that would work in theory (using a tax to make sure the externalities get factored into decisions).
That's about where things are now. Here's where we seem to be heading:
5. Politicians ignore the scientists and economists, because they want political donations from corporations that will have to pay those taxes or cap-and-trade costs. Some dismiss the economists' solutions as left-wing nonsense.
6. Disaster strikes as the scientists predicted. Politicians proceed to defend themselves with phrases like 'nobody could have predicted this'.
The only bias I see at work in steps 1-4 is the pro-reality bias. As far as steps 5-6, consider that politicians failed to heed the warnings of many economists back in 2005-2006 that there was a major bubble forming in housing, their inaction bought by trading firms like Goldman Sachs, and then were quite happy to state that nobody had been able to see the problem.
Swamp land. The power plant was build in the midst of swamps.
When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a power plant on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest power plant in all of Russia!
I heard some european head of state (Sarkozy perhaps) suggest that stock transactions be taxed based on speed, i.e. speculators who buy and sell very fast to make a quick buck get taxed a lot, but real investors who're in for the long run and keep their stock for a long time don't. That sounds like a great idea to me.
This concept actually was first proposed in 1972 by Nobel-winning economist James Tobin, with the idea that it would apply to currency transactions to prevent speculators from rapid trading like the kind you're describing. Basically, the concept is that with such a tax in place, traders would have to hold onto the asset long enough that they could pay for the tax, plus whatever gains they were anticipating, so that meant that they'd have to expect to own something for longer than a few minutes. There have since been discussions of applying the same idea to stocks, bonds, mortgage-backed securities, and other assets.
The purpose of that tax isn't so much to generate revenue (although this definitely would happen), it's to slow down the markets enough so that the assets could be properly valued rather than people making money on millisecond-level differences.
With regards to LIMIT, Oracle does have a couple of equivalents:
1. WHERE rownum < end
2. select * from (select S1.*, ROWNUM rn FROM ( real query ) S1 WHERE ROWNUM <= end) WHERE rn >= start
Obviously, the second syntax is a bit painful, but it works, and it has the important behavior that it doesn't calculate any of the rows that aren't returned (as Postgres says it does for LIMIT...OFFSET in 8.1, see the docs). This is important when you're selecting items 4990-5000 of a 10,000 row result set.
I've used both PostGres and Oracle - they're both pretty good at their jobs, both have their quirks, upsides, and downsides.
Without a label, how does a recording artist promote his or her music to people who don't listen to Internet radio?
Perform works live. Get your fans (who like your stuff) to convince their friends to like your stuff. Drop some recordings on Youtube, iTunes, or any other distribution network you can get your hands on.
And without a recognized music publisher, how can a songwriter be sure that his song isn't similar enough to someone else's song to attract lawsuits alleging plagiarism?*
They can't, but neither can a 'recognized music publisher' protect you from that sort of thing. Your options if accused of plagiarism are:
1. Give the accuser a cut.
2. Cease & desist like they asked.
3. Go to court, especially if they don't sound at all similar.
Continue making new music throughout your adult life. If you're a musician, that should be what you want to be doing anyways.
Until physical disability keeps you from playing your instrument competently. Arthritis, vocal polyps, etc.
Physical disability doesn't completely shut down a musician (e.g. Beethoven or Stevie Wonder). Age doesn't really stop 'em either - Paul McCartney is still performing in his late 60's. In any event, if they're really concerned about that problem, they can get disability insurance like the rest of us.
The real translation here:
"The music industry prefers their stars young and naive about the business, so they don't realize how much they're getting screwed by their labels. And because we like to cast off our acts before they're 30, we'll use the fact that they're broke by the time they're 70 as a way to build support for giving us copyrights for longer."
The solutions, for musicians are:
1. Don't sign with a label. Many musicians have made it without one, and those who have signed with one generally consider them to be a really bad deal.
2. Continue making new music throughout your adult life. If you're a musician, that should be what you want to be doing anyways.
3. Promote sharing music as a way of building up your fan base. The Grateful Dead did it, MC Frontalot did it, you can do it too.
4. Did I mention that you shouldn't sign with a label?
Here's another way of putting it (with apologies to Mel Brooks):
Throw up your lunch!
Posts incorrect!
Errors? a bunch!
Front page a wreck!
You'll be surprised
You're making a French mistake.
Voila!
Because much of open source is discriminatory: If you're dealing with GPL code, there is the restriction that any reuse of that has to be GPL'd (LGPL sorta doesn't have that effect, and BSD obviously doesn't).
Three strategies that most definitely work:
1. Don't buy a game right after it comes out (this also cuts down the price dramatically if you choose to buy it). Wait for the reviews and the like to percolate for a while, so you can get an idea of what the early adopters thought of it. Sure, it might not be as popular 2 years later, but it's still the same game.
2. Some gaming companies release demos, which is a perfectly legal way to try before you buy.
3. Alternately, scrap the commercial latest-and-greatest and just enjoy games that are available for free, like Battle for Wesnoth and FreeCiv. A lot of them are pretty good, replayable, portable across many OSes, and in some cases multi-player capable. You risk nothing but your free time, which is what you're using up to play games anyways.
If you don't like games, don't buy them. The gaming industry will definitely respond to that.
The trouble with that plan is that an asshat driver will either:
A. Not answer the phone, or
B. Get even more distracted and asshat-ish because they have to answer the phone while driving.
I'm not sure it's such a great name. In the immortal words of Edsger Dijkstra, "Goto considered harmful".
For those thinking parent's story is just an anecdote and thus not evidence, here's a Chicago Tribune story on some real research into how common this practice is.
This would be fun at political debates, like this one:
Morbo: Morbo demands an answer to the following question: If you saw delicious candy in the hands of a small child would you seize and consume it?
Jack Johnson: Unthinkable.
John Jackson: I wouldn't think of it.
Morbo: What about you, Mr. Nixon? I remind you you are under a truth-o-scope.
Nixon's Head: Uh, well, I, uh...the question is-is vague. You don't say what kind of candy, whether anyone is watching or uh... At any rate, I certainly wouldn't harm the child.
Drat, the inequalities didn't show up thanks to Slashcode. Here's the written out version:
minimum amount needed to survive wage is less than wage is less than real value added by the worker's labor.
A highly skilled, highly trained, high value, and not easily replaced worker with no assets to sell is in exactly the same predicament. She/he must (in the absence of any sort of government aid) sell their work in order to gain the income they need to survive.
The wage they get, which I described in option 1, follows this rule:
minimum amount needed to survive wage real value added by the worker's labor
For the high value employee, the real value added by the worker's labor is considerably higher than that of the low value employee, so they could command a higher wage and still follow the same rule. Now, that does make a difference over the long term of course, because the high value employee can afford luxuries beyond the mere survival needs, or can save up capital and become a capitalist rather than a laborer. But it doesn't change the relationship between the employee and the employer.
A TCP class raises a disconnected exception, the stream class raises an interrupted exception, the object class raises an error exception, and the application says "There was an error." What kind, and how do I fix it?
That's because the stream class and object class both did the wrong thing with the exception they got.
What you want to do in an exception handler is fix what you can, and throw up the call chain what you can't. For instance, when the stream gets an indication that the TCP connection was disconnected, they could perhaps try to re-establish the connection, but if that doesn't work it should throw the DisconnectedException it got up to their caller until either something either fixes the problem or the application crashes. But what you don't want to do is take the DisconnectedException, replace it with a different sort of exception with less information about what broke, and and throw that.
In other words, if you hit a hammer against your thumb rather than against the nail, don't blame the hammer.
Recall, finally, that not all roles require an excellent communicator. Since computing has become cool, there are more cool people interested in computing: their ability to present themselves well (and unintimidatingly - it's easy for an interviewer to think he has an extrovert all figured out) may not make them the best for the job.
It's hard to argue, though, that communication skills don't help in IT, whether you're talking about admins, developers, QA analysts, or support:
* Admins need to be able to document what they do clearly enough so that other admins can reproduce it if need be. They also need to be able to articulate why they're doing what they're doing, so they can get the political support they need to do things like take servers offline for upgrades.
* Developers are communicating with future developers in every line of code they write. They will also be more effective if they can explain what their work does, so that others can reuse it.
* QA analysts need to be able to submit good bug reports to developers. If they can't describe the problem clearly, the developers will have a much harder time fixing it.
* Front-line tech support has to communicate with end users, who are frequently upset, kinda stupid, and definitely ignorant.
In case anyone forgot, the US gov't - and by extension the states - aren't automagically entitled to a piece of everything.
States are bound by their constitutions, which are not the same as the US Constitution. For instance, the US Constitution has nothing to say at all about public schools, and yet most states require the state to see to it that a public education system exists in their state. Basically, the way that works is that anything the US Constitution prohibits the US government from doing, the states can't do, but on the many issues on which the US constitution is silent, the states can do as they please.
3. Use that code. (No one is going to blame you for copypasta on your own project.)
Just be careful, if you distribute whatever you come up with in this process, that you follow the licensing rules - if it's GPL'd stuff you're copying, release your stuff under the GPL. If it's BSD, do whatever you want with it. If it's just on a forum somewhere, it's probably public domain and you can do what you want.
The other way you can win some trust is in the realm of documentation. For instance, if you discover (via code) that there's some incredibly useful option that's mentioned nowhere in the docs, you can write a blurb on it and see if they're interested in adding it to their online docs.
It's not in fact arbitrary.
Consider a widget in a competitive market (i.e. no monopolies or oligopolies to worry about, just to simplify things) that can be produced using $10 worth of materials, a $1 depreciation on the tools and equipment, and 1 hour of time from 3 approximately equally skilled (again, for simplicity's sake) workers, that sells for $50. The $50 of the widget, therefor, contains $10 of materials, $1 of equipment, and $39 worth of labor, or $13 apiece, from the 3 workers.
But, because I as a profit-seeking capitalist want a return on my widget business investment, I actually pay my workers $9 per hour, and collect the $4 difference as profit to either take for my own personal use or reinvest in the business. My workers would rather make $9 than be unemployed (because of the choice I described earlier), so they accept the $9 wage. If this difference didn't exist between the value added by the labor and how much I pay them, I wouldn't be profiting from my business, and would sell off my equipment and invest in something else.
It's a small group of misfits, consisting of:
1. A guy with spikey hair and red armor.
2. A guy wearing some sort of ninja-like outfit who can really kick.
3. A gal wearing white robes.
4. Somebody with a pointy yellow hat and blue robes. All you can see of the face is their eyes.
They keep on going on about reviving the power of the orbs or some-such, and are carrying a wide array of crazy-looking potions and a lot of gold that they use to pay for everything.
The thing is, if you read Marx's Das Kapital (which it certainly sounds like you haven't) you'll discover that the major thrust of Marx's argument is that under a capitalist economy with completely unfettered markets, wealth gets concentrated in the hands of a few capitalists by effectively stealing value from workers. The reason for this is that if a worker has no money and nothing of value to sell except their own labor, then that worker has 2 choices:
1. Work at a wage that is below the true value of their labor, but no less than the minimum amount needed to keep that worker alive, or
2. Die of starvation, illness, or exposure.
Now, here's the question: Is the worker making the choice to take that below-value wage really making a free choice?