On the other hand, keeping works that are an author's old shame under wraps might help keep those works from tarnishing the reputation of the same author's newer works. Case in point: Disney's Song of the South.
Having this would be extremely useful to teach courses on cultural history.
Similarly, it would be useful to have access to the Popeye cartoons referring to "Alice the Jeep", as well as the various Bugs Bunny cartoons of the WWII era, which have been censored in the name of political correctness.
In fact I would say that having this information available is critical to future cultural historians undestanding of our current era, and the whole "Political Correctness" phenomenon.
No, I'm not. I was part of the 1987 DOL study that resulted in the classification of Software Engineering/Programming as a primarily creative endeavor. Until a skilled practitioner A and skilled practitioner B will tend to come up with the same solution to a given problem more often than not, it is an art as much as it requires a high degree of training and skill.
That may be what the DOL says; that's not what happens in practice. The chance for creative work is often rare unless you get to create something new; as every good software developer should know, the vast majority of time is spent maintaining an existing code base & making small tweaks. Or dealing with planning & meetings. The time for creativity is very small indeed.
Nevertheless, they are classified "exempt". This means (1) if they agree to a fixed price contract, it doesn't matter how many hours they have to work, and (2) they are predominantly salaried, so there is no such thing as "overtime" or "hourly pay". You might as well be trying to unionize the management at GM.
[...] Other engineering disciplines also have trade unions. Why should software engineering permit somebody without the proper training to write code professionally? How often are lives made inconvenient (or worse) because of rookie/amateurish design flaws?
I think the part that you are failing to grasp here is that a lot of training can make someone a better plumber, and there is a measurable correlation which you can use to justify this position. A lot of training isn't necessarily going to make someone a better software engineer, There's not a specific set of skills you can inculcate, nor can you test that someone has these skills and is able to apply them. Unlike plumbing, where it's easy to test whether someone is cleaning both sides of a copper fitting, then applying flux, before using an acetylene torch to solder the pipe to the fitting, or Tig welding, where you can pass/fail them with a ball-peen hammer test on their weld, after it first passes visual, you can not test whether or not a software engineer will write good software. Tests are not predictive of performance, as they are in the trades.
Leadership is a trainable skill & the military knows this very well. Some people are born naturals, sure, but most everybody else can be trained. Likewise with management.
Leads and management with both the leadership skills & the software engineering background are an all-too-rare combo.
And here you miss the difference between "leader" and "tech lead". A tech lead in software engineering is someone whose direction other people follow because they have demonstrated that they know what they are doing: if you follow them, the problem is going to get solved, and it will happen on time.
Someone with military training is frequently an asset; however, their value is predominantly in project management roles, and, to a lesser extent, in people management roles. My statement of the people management role being "to a lesser extent" is made both thoughtfully and reluctantly. In the best companies I have worked with and for, the best managers were those who had been technical themselves. It's also frequently the case that these managers do not have a lot of top-down authority for anything other than human problems. For example, in Google, there is fierce internal recruiting, and because of this, if you don't like your manager, you can tell them "take a hike" and go work elsewhere within the company. Note that this is a contributing factor in Google tending to cancel products, and in them not finishing things to the point of productization; nevertheless, it's the reality of the situation that managers are reluctant to play "800 pound gorilla" to drive projects to completion, and people tend to work on whatever they find interesting (which isn't productization, among other things).
Why doesn't your asshole friend give his employees health coverage in the first place? If he had, he wouldn't have a problem now.
Because he couldn't afford to be in business at all if he were to offer coverage. He's a cash flow business, as are all functional small businesses that aren't someone's spouses hobby funded by the other spouse. He's literally two payrolls from going out of business due to the current regulatory environment for small businesses being dictated by large businesses to lobbyists and thence to the congressmen that the big businesses own. Big business does not like competition.
So, in other words your friend runs a barely viable business that can not survive another economic head wind no matter where it comes from. He is probably going out of business soon anyway but he wants to score political points by blaming it on Obamacare.
There is a slight difference between an "economic head wind" and setting up wind machines to funnel an increased amount of money to the health insurance industry middlemen instead of going to single payer. Health insurance should come from the income tax general fund, not a tax on being an employer, or you are going to end up with nothing but large companies and their peasant wage slaves.
When are people going to realize "coding" != "computer science"? (or <>, or !.equals(), or ne, etc. depending on your flavor).
I think it'll happen when you read past the Slashdot title to the summary, and realize that the article is talking about computer science and that the whole "Who Will Teach U.S. Kids To Code?" this is a fabrication of the submitter/editors.
Nothing against Java devs, but IT needs a little more than programmers in language X. There are millions speaking English, Spanish, etc., but not that many of them churn out bestsellers, or even mundane but usable prose.
This is probably the most elegant argument I have ever seen for teaching algorithms, big O notation, and other theory topics, instead of languages, which is a switch most U.S. universities made after the decision was forced by the accreditation change in the late 1980's.
And it's absolutely, totally, completely wrong.
A craftsman must know his tools.
You need to learn at least one language deeply enough that you have a feel for the calculus of the language, and how to force it to represent any CS concept you want it to represent. Ever since they stopped teaching languages as a subject because they could no longer offer credit hours for doing so, the U.S. has been mostly turning out crap coders, except at schools like Brown that have self-directed programs where you can actually still learn a language from an expert practitioner.
A secondary consideration is that, when programming in a high level language, you should know what's happening under the covers. Java and other "pointerless" languages are an incredibly poor choice for doing that. So I agree on your condemnation of teaching the Java language, but it's for a reason other than the one you cite. The best way to understand what's going on under the covers is to use a high level language which compiles to assembly, and stop after the compilation to assembly; "cc -S" does this, although C isn't the only language in this category. Which brings me to the second point: apart from learning a single high level language to a great depth, it's also necessary for the student to learn an instruction set for a particular architecture, which, given prevalence, is going to mean either x86 or ARM these days. If you can't look at the high level language and know what assembly is likely to be generated from it, you do not understand your high level language. Without a grounding in assembly language, you are never going to have an intuitive grasp of memory layout or pointers, and if you learn "pointerless" languages, particularly ones with garbage collection, you may be able to program them, but you aren't going to be able to write a runtime for them yourself, with no intrinsic idea of memory layout, reference, or management.
Which leads us to our third consideration, and the one that gets in the way of problem solving using computers as a tool, which is really what we are trying to teach when we talk about teaching "computer science" or "coding": You need to repeat the process with a second high level language that also does not target a virtual machine. Only by being able to contrast the two calculus of the different languages are you going to be able to generalize in terms of an arbitrary computer language being able to be applied to a problem set. There's a reason that mathematics courses teach both Newton and Leibnitz style calculus to students, and it has nothing to do with not being able to solve problems with one that you can with the other. It has everything to do with the ability to generalize theory across systems.
The fourth and final consideration is algorithms, big O notation, and other topics, and how to represent them in your high level language. Yes, you need to learn this, but you need to learn it in a context of a language calculus, since throughout your career, if you end up coding, you will be called upon to translate these concepts to the
Yes. Unless your job requires physical presence, then there is zero cost for a corporation to move it from a union area to a non-union area, or completely offshore, as long as they can find sufficient talent that their cost per unit work is cheaper whereveer they relocate it to. Without a physical presence requirement, there is zero leverage for a strike.
Creativity? Are you fucking kidding me?
No, I'm not. I was part of the 1987 DOL study that resulted in the classification of Software Engineering/Programming as a primarily creative endeavor. Until a skilled practitioner A and skilled practitioner B will tend to come up with the same solution to a given problem more often than not, it is an art as much as it requires a high degree of training and skill.
Why do screen writers maintain their unions? Screen writing is highly creative & it requires even less physical presence than software engineering work.
Predominantly? To keep the available talent pool limited in order to inflate their price through artificial scarcity. Try joining WGAw or WGAe with less than 24 units of writing credit, and try getting employed as a screen writer without being a member of WGAw or WGAe.
But here are some potential benefits to all parties, since you need to be spoon fed: - Professional trade certifications; most of the certification courses in the past 15 years are completely meaningless or too geared towards specific technologies.
These are useless. They are like an acting degree from a prestigious university: they are worthless compared to a track record as an actor/actress. You can have the best certifications in the industry, but you aren't going to find work if you can't act - or if you do find work, you aren't going to keep it very long, since it was a mistake.
This should include technical management & lead skills for those that are thinking of it.
I'm pretty sure the first is is spelled "M B A", and the second is something you get on merit, rather than because some idiot certified you as having had training in being tech lead. Unless you can do the work, again, the certifications are all BS. Technical fields are all meritocracies, and have zero to do with "time in grade" or other things that typically matter for career tracks in unions.
- Carving out a genuine, non-management professional career track. I'm a reasonably good developer; yet I know I'd be a terrible manager & team lead.
This already exists at successful technical companies; Novell, Apple, IBM, Google, all have this. From personal experience, IBM has had it since the at least the late 1990's. The companies which don't have it are out of business because no one good wants to work there, or they are stagnant in their growth because no one of a higher skill level wants to work there, and they get people who can "get by".
- Genuine, best-of-breed continuing education to keep good software developers *relevant* while filtering out the fads & buzzwords.
I'm going to call BS on this. "Relevant" is recruiter code for "has a resume containing the buzzwords we are looking for this week". You should also be aware that most software engineering reduces to language calculus, and there are only a couple of these that are in common use, and once you've learned the underlying principles devoid of a language binding, the language bindings really don't matter to anyone other than recruiters. A good engineer can pick up enough of a new language to be productive, as long as it matches one of the calculus with which they are already familiar, in a week or less. I don't need some stupid MSCE certification or other BS certification from a certifying authority to make me able to do the job.
OK let me point out something that tends to bug the hell out of me about
I doubt Apple or Amazon is specifying how the LEDs are made. This is a weirdness in patent law, in that you can sue the user of patent infringing part, not the manufacturer.
This is not an entirely weird idea. Specifically, if your design incorporates a CDMA part, you will have to pay a patent royalty on the use of CDMA to Qualcomm of $35. The catch is that the royalty is only due on the part if you import it into the U.S. where there is a patent in effect on CDMA, and not due in other markets where there is not a CDMA patent in effect.
So BU may have some standing here, if the off the shelf parts using their technology did not have a license from BU to use the patented technology in the manufacture of those parts; if that's the case, then a royalty must be negotiated for importation of the device manufactured in an area with no patent on the technology into a market where such a patent applies.
This is something of a dirty trick, since often the patent holders will engage in selective enforcement against people with deep pockets. I.e. you can buy the same part yourself from Digikey or other vendors, or from Chinese and Japanese vendors, and have it drop-shipped to you in the U.S., or even have devices built abroad using the part and import it into the U.S., and BU will likely not sue you until you have deep pockets.
One of the failings of patent law is that, unlike trademarks, which have to be rigorously defended for them to remain in force, patents do not require rigorous defense. Likewise, while attempting to treat IP (Intellectual Property) as real property for enforcement purposes, the courts do not recognize the doctrine of adverse use/adverse possession, in which, after a period, if not stopped from use, the user establishes an interest and therefore the owner can not contest it. It's rather like being able to "have your cake and eat it too".
Hopefully there will be some patent reform soon; meanwhile, yes, BU is playing a dirty trick by not going after "first offender first", but they are likely within their rights......assuming of course the first principle that the off the shelf parts used in the devices were not manufactured under license of the patent from BU. If that assumption is invalid, then BU is just trolling for a settlement and shouldn't be allowed to get away with it.
If Samsung integrates this before it addresses the EDID negotiation on "inactive" input channels problem that most of their televisions suffer from, then they are just adding widgets to a poorly performing product. I shouldn't have to have an input be the active input before it is willing to negotiate EDID, and the reason Samsung TVs often make poor computer monitors for Samsung computers/laptops is that they won't dod an EDID negotiation on an electrictically active channel which is not selected for input. In other words, Samsung products don't interperate, unless you connect them on the primary input channel, or unless you can select an electrically inactive input channel as the primary before attaching/powering up a device connected to it.
When Apple did the iPhone, it was done with the idea that it would be closed, have a limited set of functionality, and there would not be apps offered on it. Steve was deathly afraid of building another Newton. The reason he wanted it was because he had gone through a lot of cell phones which were no good for making phone calls.
Bringing this philosophy to televisions/LCD displays, it would be more important to make them work as televisions/LCD displays, before you go off and attempt to add programming guides, DVR capability, streaming video capability, and so on.
So I repeat: TV is overdue for an "Apple-ization": it needs to be good at its primary function before people go adding crap to it and "gilding the turd", as Woz would perhaps put it.
That's kinda the point: depending on the specific circumstance, impersonating someone over the mail could thrust you into a world of shit, so the only safe thing to do is avoid it. Good humor is good, but in this case I find the ensuing hilarity does not justify the risk.
The email was sent to a particular address; it was responded to from the address to which it was sent. The respondent nevery laid claim to "Zynga" anywhere in the response.
If there is any misrepresentation going on, it is misrepresentation of the support contact email address by Zynga. You could also argue "theft of services" by Zynga.
If you have 100 four stars you will be kicked out. The system is basically saying you need to give any driver you want to keep five stars, all the time. This makes a 5 point rating system pointless and it might as well be a boolean "Keep? Yes / No" flag that is averaged.
People other than engineers do not do the mathematical reductions like this in their head, and then act accordingly.
Personally, I never thought eBay would go anywhere, since it's not actually an auction; the mathematical reduction is "second lowest bid ceiling plus bid increment", given that you can give a bid ceiling, and it will automatically "bid" for you. But seriously, on the back end you could just insertion sort the bid ceilings, look at the first two in the table, and make the decision on that basis. I thought the OnSale model, in which actual bids were being placed, in a non-automated fashion, was more of a real auction, and that they'd own things.
But I had not taken into account that ordinary people don't do the mathematical reduction, and find the convenience of not having to watch their "bids" of more value than the actual "auctionness" of the auctions.
I imagine they have "proprietary" back end safeguards against things like "perpetually lower-than-5-rating passengers, or some other means of throwing out the outliers so that they can keep their driver pool up, in case that ever became a real issue for their business expansion. I suspect at this point, they'd rather have twice as many drivers that are unhappy about being thrown out of that role than they currently have, as a PAC to be able to have an effective block to counter the taxi interests. So if they don't have the rules behind the curtain, expect the rules in front of the curtain to change soon.
Otherwise, it occurs to me that the taxi lobby could have a few people sign up as 5 day a week riders and perpetually rate the drivers "1" in order to reduce the number of drivers below the level of viability by gaming the published rating system.
If I am a Google or Facebook or Twitter or Apple or IBM engineer, how would unionizing help me?
If they outsource my job, what are they going to do, not show up to work in protest? They're already out of work because the job is outsourced, and they'd actually prefer you NOT show up. Maybe I could camp outside their offices with a bunch of other people who lost their jobs, and wave signs, while the people who decided not to wave the signs with the res of us are out interviewing and getting the jobs which are available?
I know, they can fly us to India to picket the people who replaced us!
Perhaps the can cause Google to offer better healthcare? You know, better than they currently do, since they are currently the best in the industry. Or maybe they can get the salaries of the top Apple engineers bumped from an average of $160,000 to $160,001 a year?
Face it: People in demand do not need unions.
Unions would like to collect a per worker tax (sorry, I guess they are called "dues"?), and the benefit they give will be... uh... uh... wait, I'm sure I can think of something!
Unions work well when people are replaceable cogs in a giant machine that needs people physically present in order for the machine to function, but they have little value to technical workers, particularly people like software engineers, who are classified by the department of labor as engaging in creative work, which makes them exempt employees anyway, even if they weren't already salaried and so exempt.
Show me a *future* benefit to union membership, and then maybe we can talk. Until then, just shut up.
What do you say to the families that depended on child labor to support the family? They said they can't stay in business without putting the children to work. And the business feeds the children.
It's a bit of a strawman, but the parallels are there. It's bad for everyone in the long run to make put children to labor, it'd be a lot better for society to them to get some learning and not suffer the horrible abuse that historically came with child labor.
I'd say that if they were family owned businesses, and the children in question were from the family, that they are already exempt to a number of provisions of the child labor laws:
Agricultural jobs (e.g. family farms) are exempt from all FSLA provisions completely, including the operation of equipment like tractors, and also if there are fewer than 500 man days of work performed on the farm per year, they are also exempt from minimum wage requirements.
Sure, your friend is employing 53 people. But in today's age, going without insurance means going without healthcare. Which means that everything that's serious is an ER visit rather than "hey you should have those pulled sometime in the next year".
That's not the same as "without healthcare". Also there is a significant resurgence in health co-ops in rural communities, as the doctors don't like managed care any more than the patients. This either means pay-as-you-go with no insurance involvement at all, or monthly payments to the co-op for the promise of some minimal amount of preventative treatment.
Which is really fucking expensive to everyone else.
On a per-item basis, rather than expensive all the time, with the payments largely going into the pockets of large insurance consortiums like AIG, whose executives are currently sitting on their yaughts lighting their cigars with $100 bills from the bailout money they've received.
It's understood that there needs to be the bottom rung of the ladder for the have-nots. They need their niche to fill, and, well, shitty jobs for them to do. But we don't want companies that grow off employing the bottom rung. If your friend is at the point where he's employing 50+ people, his company is big enough to start treating them like real employees.
He does; he pays a portion of the insurance costs for each employee. The mandate requires that he pay full freight, and requires that the plan cover certain aspects which means it's no longer employee cafeteria style, and the decision for "just major medical, large deduction", et.c, is out of their hands. Luckily this doesn't kick in for under 50 employees until 2015, and hopefully 2 years is enough to restructure the business into profitability. Or, since he's close to early retirement age, just calls it quits and shuts things down anyway. Where will those people get their insurance then?
U.S. unemployment rates are currently only trending downwards because people fall off the end of the unemployment insurance, and are no longer counted as unemployed. That doesn't mean that they have jobs. I know people who have basically given up looking for work entirely after a year of unemployment, and they aren't counted either. If we did our statistics the same way, we'd be in the same ballpark as European nations (e.g. France: 11.0%, Spain: 28.8% - source http://ec.europa.eu/ 2013 numbers).
I'm not saying "don't have universal healthcare"; hell, Nixon was the first president to try to get it enacted, and Teddy Kennedy said at the end of his life that his one big regret was not working with Nixon on getting it implemented. But I am saying that it needs to be a general benefit, not something tied to the employer so that insurance companies can continue to pro
Not that this guy they hired to VP is a designer, but he has worked with designers, and he is a member of the executive committee of the French Federation of Fashion and of Ready-to-Wear of Couturiers and Fashion Designers, and a jury member for the ANDAM Fashion Awards.
Perhaps they are trying to get someone with taste to select from the many designs Jon Ivy comes up with for new products. Steve used to have him designed 12 versions of something, mocked them up, picked 2 to build out working prototypes, and then pick one. It was Steve's discrimination that made Apple products great, and maybe they are now trying to recreate it? If so, both "good for them" and "about damn time".
This seems like a misunderstanding similar to how people misunderstand how tax rates work. A properly designed system would be 6% up to $10,000 and then 5% on sales from $10,000-$20,000.
I agree. Why wasn't the mandate based on employer contribution designed that way?
Why doesn't your asshole friend give his employees health coverage in the first place? If he had, he wouldn't have a problem now.
Because he couldn't afford to be in business at all if he were to offer coverage. He's a cash flow business, as are all functional small businesses that aren't someone's spouses hobby funded by the other spouse. He's literally two payrolls from going out of business due to the current regulatory environment for small businesses being dictated by large businesses to lobbyists and thence to the congressmen that the big businesses own. Big business does not like competition.
What makes you think that if he can't afford health insurance for his employees under the mandate, that he'd magically be able to afford it under the mandate? Compliance with the mandate is the difference between 5 people being out of full time work, and 48 people having full times jobs, or 53 people not having jobs at all.
So basically you'd prefer he shut down, right? That'd make him a non-asshole in your book, putting 53 people out of work?
This was considered as an option, but actually as 3 companies, where there were 2 companies that did the bulk of the work in different domains, and then a management services company that was contracted to manage both companies.
This arrangement has a number of additional costs with it, including that the inter-company transactions get to eat additional taxes per transaction. He wasn't able to make any sort of split work on paper better than dropping below the mandate cutoff.
That said, let me explain it to you: bacteria wants to live. Bacteria will evolve to survive in places where it is not welcome. The bacteria are simple organisms, and don't like to waste space in their DNA on stupid shit just for fun. The presence of vaccines in places that they want to live is usually a problem, but they adapt to it. If the vaccines were not there, there would be no evolutionary pressure to evade the vaccines. Understand? Or do I need to break out the image macros, as stupid memes like `curolation =! causashon' is probably a better learning tool for you.
I think you need to prove causation in order to claim that what the FDA is doing is wrong and what European regulatory agencies are doing is right. Right now, we have a declaration by the OP of their opinion to that effect, with no supporting evidence.
I am not arguing that overuse of antibiotics in an organism does not result in drug resistant strains within that organism. However, it is a leap of faith to attribute an increase in drug resistant bacteria within a human population which:
(A) Works long hours to the point of physical exhaustion, and therefore, reduced immune system effectiveness (B) Works in unsanitary conditions (C) Works around sharp objects and unfinished construction materials on a daily basis (C.1) Has a tendency towards worker-worker blood contact due to cuts, scrapes, and abrasions (D) Tends to have common traffic corridors (E) Tends to have common areas for food consumption (F) Tends to have common sanitary areas, such as showers and locker rooms (G) Tends to share common tools or materials due to expense
I read the study, and did not see these factors being removed from possible bias,
I would like to see a corresponding study for European factory farm workers.
Europe does not have the rules, which the OP implies it has, against use of antibiotics; what it does have is a set of rules about *which* antibiotics may be used in this manner, and the antibiotics for livestock and human populations are intended to be, in as much as it is possible for them to be, a non-intersecting set.
A corresponding European study would, were the OP's hypothesis (which is all it is without evidence at this point) correct, be expected to have a similar profile for infections resistant to the antibiotics used on livestock, and not resistant to the antibiotics used on humans.
In other words, you'd expect the T(treatable+untreatable) infections to be the same in both populations, IFF a factory far using antibiotics were a prerequisite for development of antibiotic resistant strains, and you'd expect a difference in ratios of T(treatable) and T(untreatable) to be different between the populations.
Just to be crystal clear about the correct experimental design in this case, you would need to randomly sample a statistically significant portion of the population of individuals with MRSA infections in both populations by culturing the infection in laboratory conditions, rather than simply treating it, and then you would need to compare each culture for antibiotic resistance profile to different antibiotics to see if the European MRSA was predominantly resistant to antibiotic drugs used on livestock, but not on humans.
Participation in this study would have to imply a treatment protocol change in order to obtain bacterial samples from farm workers presenting with infection.
I really can't believe you are claiming ignorance on my behalf, when you are unable to cite such a study one way or the other, or to see the (obvious to me) possibility of an experiment that could more or less definitively answer the question on way or the other -- rather than just toting out the same old, tired argument against factory farming in the U.S. while implying at the same time it's no longer practiced in Europe (it is practice there).
I have a friend who has a company which has 53 full time employees.
He's been investigating how he can get rid of 5 of them, or at least convert them to part time, to escape this mandate.
Stair step functions have always been a problem when designing things like commission structures, and so on. If I make 6% commission on sales up to $10,000 a day, and 5% commission for sales of $20,000 a day or higher, then I get 6 cents on a dollar if I sell $10,000 or less and 5 cents on a dollar if I sell more. So if I sell $10,000, I get $600, but if I sell $10,001, I get $500.05; I don't break even until $12,000 in sales, where I make $600 again, and I don't start making money again until I start selling $12,001 ($600.05). You can be damn well sure that you aren't going to have any of your sales staff turning in total sales amounts between $10,001/day and $12,000/day, and if they are unable to get close to, but just under, the next point at which there's another stair, you can be damn sure there will be customers hearing "We're out of stock today, but we have a shipment coming in first thing tomorrow, I'll call you".
This whole "keep the insurance industry in business" welfare program for insurance companies this was a bad idea; if we are going to nationalize healthcare, we really should have gone single-payer and been done with it.
If it costs me a fine to exercise my religion and someone else, it doesn't cost them a fine, and all other things are equal, then that's charging me for the exercise of my religion.
Admittedly, it's a stupid belief that the GP is espousing, but people are free to believe whatever stupid things they want to believe.
"Europe has long ago banned the use of antibiotics in livestock, but the FDA remains behind the curve with a partial ban."
So... you have a corresponding European study that shows that the conclusions are correct by proving their factor farm workers *son't* carry drug resistant staph? Or is this another case of "correlation is not causation"?
It's not immortality until we can prevent the brain form decaying and dying.
It's still not immortality until you can prevent the new memories replacing the old memories in a way that will make you not you, but someone else after thousands of years. Information-theory-wise, immortality is a notion that doesn't make sense.
I, for one, am willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, and test that theory, by living thousands of years. Perhaps I should start a kickstarter...
The blast radius is not limited by the curvature of the earth, as dispersion of an overpressure wave of sufficient magnitude would 'hug' the earth.
The blast zone is limited by energy deposited into the atmosphere surrounding the device following the chemical reactions which remove the transparency of the air surrounding the weapon, and former weapon materials.
Your statement does not agree with the actual results observed during nuclear tests:
That has nothing to do with this library. Apple, Google, and almost any government and telecom can push arbitrary code onto your phone. Android and iPhone are both equally vulnerable. It doesn't matter how Apple runs its markets or how they review their software or how secure their OS may be; if you can't trust the update channel, you can't trust the phone.
Sure; but you post is off topic, since we are talking about this library (reread the original title, original summary, and original article, if you are confused). A flaw in this library does not imply an iPhone vulnerability.
Maintaining a nuclear arsenal is really pricy. They're full of dangerous things.
Which is why it makes sense to leave them where they are. Decommissioning is even more pricey.
And dealing with the decay that you let build up because you were too lazy to maintain them is more costly still. No, 'let them sit' is a stupid fucking idea. Far more cost effective and safe to reprocess them into reactor fuel.
The U.S. does *not* do reprocessing. It has not done reprocessing since 1977, in order to avoid creating additional weapons grade material, which might fall into terrorist hands and/or lead to nuclear proliferation:
They require LOTS of upkeep. You have to guard them. (They have the power to destroy the world after all) The infrastructure to maintain your active arsenal is massive and costs piles of money, which seems silly for something you hope to never use.
Most of the cost is military. Personally, I think guarding holes in the desert is a much finer jobs program than bombing people in the Middle East. Safer for the people who get the make-work jobs, too.
You should probably try becoming part of this century before telling us about nuclear stockpiles. We don't have nukes sitting in holes in the desert anymore,
Wrong. We have 450 land-based Minuteman III ICBMs with MIRV'ed warheads, meaning approximately 1440 warheads which are currently land based. Try doing a simple google search before you spout incorrect information:
Everyone who we care about knowing knows about our subs, just as we know about theirs.
[...]
I would suggest you take a basic economics and a history course, then learn WHY TARP actually happened rather than what your friends told you. You first need to understand that the magical failed banks failed because laws were changed that suddenly... on PAPER... made them insolvable. They were never actually doing bad, they just suddenly became illegal to operate.
TARP was needed due to de-regulation, after which banks jumped into the market for creation of derivatives, and created a bunch of worthless derivatives and sold them for real money. These were primarily collateralized debt obligations:
"committing seppuku after Fukushima made them paranoid"
That is some calloused, thinly veiled racism you felt you had to add there at the end, huh?
It's a cultural, not racial, reference which was actively relevant until 1970, and is still popularized in NHK broadcast dramas of the Shugunate Era in present-day Japan. It carries the appropriate connotation of "killing oneself over a point of honor". If you read the news reports, the U.S. Navy offered assistance in the early hours of the Fukushima incident, and were rebuffed "as a point of honor".
Would you have preferred I referred to the Hindu practice of Sati? That's also a cultural reference, and while it would be a stretch, one could argue that keeping their nuclear program shut down would be the equivalent of a woman throwing herself/being thrown on the funeral pyre of her husband out of grief.
I think a Bushido-style loss of face is a more apt metaphor for a cause of action in this case, however.
18 million sounds like peanuts. whats that, 20 patriot missiles?
6-9 Patriot missiles. Unit cost on a Patriot is 2-3 million, depending on ordinance load. Or 2 M1 Abrams main battle tanks. Or for the cost of a single F-35C Joint Strike Fighter, you could fund the entire program for over a decade.
According to the GAO, the Pentagon spends more than that per year issuing visitor badges.
Slashdot Mirror
On the other hand, keeping works that are an author's old shame under wraps might help keep those works from tarnishing the reputation of the same author's newer works. Case in point: Disney's Song of the South.
Having this would be extremely useful to teach courses on cultural history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_history
Similarly, it would be useful to have access to the Popeye cartoons referring to "Alice the Jeep", as well as the various Bugs Bunny cartoons of the WWII era, which have been censored in the name of political correctness.
In fact I would say that having this information available is critical to future cultural historians undestanding of our current era, and the whole "Political Correctness" phenomenon.
No, I'm not. I was part of the 1987 DOL study that resulted in the classification of Software Engineering/Programming as a primarily creative endeavor. Until a skilled practitioner A and skilled practitioner B will tend to come up with the same solution to a given problem more often than not, it is an art as much as it requires a high degree of training and skill.
That may be what the DOL says; that's not what happens in practice. The chance for creative work is often rare unless you get to create something new; as every good software developer should know, the vast majority of time is spent maintaining an existing code base & making small tweaks. Or dealing with planning & meetings. The time for creativity is very small indeed.
Nevertheless, they are classified "exempt". This means (1) if they agree to a fixed price contract, it doesn't matter how many hours they have to work, and (2) they are predominantly salaried, so there is no such thing as "overtime" or "hourly pay". You might as well be trying to unionize the management at GM.
[...] Other engineering disciplines also have trade unions. Why should software engineering permit somebody without the proper training to write code professionally? How often are lives made inconvenient (or worse) because of rookie/amateurish design flaws?
I think the part that you are failing to grasp here is that a lot of training can make someone a better plumber, and there is a measurable correlation which you can use to justify this position. A lot of training isn't necessarily going to make someone a better software engineer, There's not a specific set of skills you can inculcate, nor can you test that someone has these skills and is able to apply them. Unlike plumbing, where it's easy to test whether someone is cleaning both sides of a copper fitting, then applying flux, before using an acetylene torch to solder the pipe to the fitting, or Tig welding, where you can pass/fail them with a ball-peen hammer test on their weld, after it first passes visual, you can not test whether or not a software engineer will write good software. Tests are not predictive of performance, as they are in the trades.
Leadership is a trainable skill & the military knows this very well. Some people are born naturals, sure, but most everybody else can be trained. Likewise with management.
Leads and management with both the leadership skills & the software engineering background are an all-too-rare combo.
And here you miss the difference between "leader" and "tech lead". A tech lead in software engineering is someone whose direction other people follow because they have demonstrated that they know what they are doing: if you follow them, the problem is going to get solved, and it will happen on time.
Someone with military training is frequently an asset; however, their value is predominantly in project management roles, and, to a lesser extent, in people management roles. My statement of the people management role being "to a lesser extent" is made both thoughtfully and reluctantly. In the best companies I have worked with and for, the best managers were those who had been technical themselves. It's also frequently the case that these managers do not have a lot of top-down authority for anything other than human problems. For example, in Google, there is fierce internal recruiting, and because of this, if you don't like your manager, you can tell them "take a hike" and go work elsewhere within the company. Note that this is a contributing factor in Google tending to cancel products, and in them not finishing things to the point of productization; nevertheless, it's the reality of the situation that managers are reluctant to play "800 pound gorilla" to drive projects to completion, and people tend to work on whatever they find interesting (which isn't productization, among other things).
Why doesn't your asshole friend give his employees health coverage in the first place? If he had, he wouldn't have a problem now.
Because he couldn't afford to be in business at all if he were to offer coverage. He's a cash flow business, as are all functional small businesses that aren't someone's spouses hobby funded by the other spouse. He's literally two payrolls from going out of business due to the current regulatory environment for small businesses being dictated by large businesses to lobbyists and thence to the congressmen that the big businesses own. Big business does not like competition.
So, in other words your friend runs a barely viable business that can not survive another economic head wind no matter where it comes from. He is probably going out of business soon anyway but he wants to score political points by blaming it on Obamacare.
There is a slight difference between an "economic head wind" and setting up wind machines to funnel an increased amount of money to the health insurance industry middlemen instead of going to single payer. Health insurance should come from the income tax general fund, not a tax on being an employer, or you are going to end up with nothing but large companies and their peasant wage slaves.
When are people going to realize "coding" != "computer science"? (or <>, or ! .equals(), or ne, etc. depending on your flavor).
I think it'll happen when you read past the Slashdot title to the summary, and realize that the article is talking about computer science and that the whole "Who Will Teach U.S. Kids To Code?" this is a fabrication of the submitter/editors.
Nothing against Java devs, but IT needs a little more than programmers in language X. There are millions speaking English, Spanish, etc., but not that many of them churn out bestsellers, or even mundane but usable prose.
This is probably the most elegant argument I have ever seen for teaching algorithms, big O notation, and other theory topics, instead of languages, which is a switch most U.S. universities made after the decision was forced by the accreditation change in the late 1980's.
And it's absolutely, totally, completely wrong.
A craftsman must know his tools.
You need to learn at least one language deeply enough that you have a feel for the calculus of the language, and how to force it to represent any CS concept you want it to represent. Ever since they stopped teaching languages as a subject because they could no longer offer credit hours for doing so, the U.S. has been mostly turning out crap coders, except at schools like Brown that have self-directed programs where you can actually still learn a language from an expert practitioner.
A secondary consideration is that, when programming in a high level language, you should know what's happening under the covers. Java and other "pointerless" languages are an incredibly poor choice for doing that. So I agree on your condemnation of teaching the Java language, but it's for a reason other than the one you cite. The best way to understand what's going on under the covers is to use a high level language which compiles to assembly, and stop after the compilation to assembly; "cc -S" does this, although C isn't the only language in this category. Which brings me to the second point: apart from learning a single high level language to a great depth, it's also necessary for the student to learn an instruction set for a particular architecture, which, given prevalence, is going to mean either x86 or ARM these days. If you can't look at the high level language and know what assembly is likely to be generated from it, you do not understand your high level language. Without a grounding in assembly language, you are never going to have an intuitive grasp of memory layout or pointers, and if you learn "pointerless" languages, particularly ones with garbage collection, you may be able to program them, but you aren't going to be able to write a runtime for them yourself, with no intrinsic idea of memory layout, reference, or management.
Which leads us to our third consideration, and the one that gets in the way of problem solving using computers as a tool, which is really what we are trying to teach when we talk about teaching "computer science" or "coding": You need to repeat the process with a second high level language that also does not target a virtual machine. Only by being able to contrast the two calculus of the different languages are you going to be able to generalize in terms of an arbitrary computer language being able to be applied to a problem set. There's a reason that mathematics courses teach both Newton and Leibnitz style calculus to students, and it has nothing to do with not being able to solve problems with one that you can with the other. It has everything to do with the ability to generalize theory across systems.
The fourth and final consideration is algorithms, big O notation, and other topics, and how to represent them in your high level language. Yes, you need to learn this, but you need to learn it in a context of a language calculus, since throughout your career, if you end up coding, you will be called upon to translate these concepts to the
Physical presence?
Yes. Unless your job requires physical presence, then there is zero cost for a corporation to move it from a union area to a non-union area, or completely offshore, as long as they can find sufficient talent that their cost per unit work is cheaper whereveer they relocate it to. Without a physical presence requirement, there is zero leverage for a strike.
Creativity? Are you fucking kidding me?
No, I'm not. I was part of the 1987 DOL study that resulted in the classification of Software Engineering/Programming as a primarily creative endeavor. Until a skilled practitioner A and skilled practitioner B will tend to come up with the same solution to a given problem more often than not, it is an art as much as it requires a high degree of training and skill.
Why do screen writers maintain their unions? Screen writing is highly creative & it requires even less physical presence than software engineering work.
Predominantly? To keep the available talent pool limited in order to inflate their price through artificial scarcity. Try joining WGAw or WGAe with less than 24 units of writing credit, and try getting employed as a screen writer without being a member of WGAw or WGAe.
But here are some potential benefits to all parties, since you need to be spoon fed:
- Professional trade certifications; most of the certification courses in the past 15 years are completely meaningless or too geared towards specific technologies.
These are useless. They are like an acting degree from a prestigious university: they are worthless compared to a track record as an actor/actress. You can have the best certifications in the industry, but you aren't going to find work if you can't act - or if you do find work, you aren't going to keep it very long, since it was a mistake.
This should include technical management & lead skills for those that are thinking of it.
I'm pretty sure the first is is spelled "M B A", and the second is something you get on merit, rather than because some idiot certified you as having had training in being tech lead. Unless you can do the work, again, the certifications are all BS. Technical fields are all meritocracies, and have zero to do with "time in grade" or other things that typically matter for career tracks in unions.
- Carving out a genuine, non-management professional career track. I'm a reasonably good developer; yet I know I'd be a terrible manager & team lead.
This already exists at successful technical companies; Novell, Apple, IBM, Google, all have this. From personal experience, IBM has had it since the at least the late 1990's. The companies which don't have it are out of business because no one good wants to work there, or they are stagnant in their growth because no one of a higher skill level wants to work there, and they get people who can "get by".
- Genuine, best-of-breed continuing education to keep good software developers *relevant* while filtering out the fads & buzzwords.
I'm going to call BS on this. "Relevant" is recruiter code for "has a resume containing the buzzwords we are looking for this week". You should also be aware that most software engineering reduces to language calculus, and there are only a couple of these that are in common use, and once you've learned the underlying principles devoid of a language binding, the language bindings really don't matter to anyone other than recruiters. A good engineer can pick up enough of a new language to be productive, as long as it matches one of the calculus with which they are already familiar, in a week or less. I don't need some stupid MSCE certification or other BS certification from a certifying authority to make me able to do the job.
OK let me point out something that tends to bug the hell out of me about
I doubt Apple or Amazon is specifying how the LEDs are made. This is a weirdness in patent law, in that you can sue the user of patent infringing part, not the manufacturer.
This is not an entirely weird idea. Specifically, if your design incorporates a CDMA part, you will have to pay a patent royalty on the use of CDMA to Qualcomm of $35. The catch is that the royalty is only due on the part if you import it into the U.S. where there is a patent in effect on CDMA, and not due in other markets where there is not a CDMA patent in effect.
So BU may have some standing here, if the off the shelf parts using their technology did not have a license from BU to use the patented technology in the manufacture of those parts; if that's the case, then a royalty must be negotiated for importation of the device manufactured in an area with no patent on the technology into a market where such a patent applies.
This is something of a dirty trick, since often the patent holders will engage in selective enforcement against people with deep pockets. I.e. you can buy the same part yourself from Digikey or other vendors, or from Chinese and Japanese vendors, and have it drop-shipped to you in the U.S., or even have devices built abroad using the part and import it into the U.S., and BU will likely not sue you until you have deep pockets.
One of the failings of patent law is that, unlike trademarks, which have to be rigorously defended for them to remain in force, patents do not require rigorous defense. Likewise, while attempting to treat IP (Intellectual Property) as real property for enforcement purposes, the courts do not recognize the doctrine of adverse use/adverse possession, in which, after a period, if not stopped from use, the user establishes an interest and therefore the owner can not contest it. It's rather like being able to "have your cake and eat it too".
Hopefully there will be some patent reform soon; meanwhile, yes, BU is playing a dirty trick by not going after "first offender first", but they are likely within their rights... ...assuming of course the first principle that the off the shelf parts used in the devices were not manufactured under license of the patent from BU. If that assumption is invalid, then BU is just trolling for a settlement and shouldn't be allowed to get away with it.
TV is overdue for an "Apple-ization".
If Samsung integrates this before it addresses the EDID negotiation on "inactive" input channels problem that most of their televisions suffer from, then they are just adding widgets to a poorly performing product. I shouldn't have to have an input be the active input before it is willing to negotiate EDID, and the reason Samsung TVs often make poor computer monitors for Samsung computers/laptops is that they won't dod an EDID negotiation on an electrictically active channel which is not selected for input. In other words, Samsung products don't interperate, unless you connect them on the primary input channel, or unless you can select an electrically inactive input channel as the primary before attaching/powering up a device connected to it.
When Apple did the iPhone, it was done with the idea that it would be closed, have a limited set of functionality, and there would not be apps offered on it. Steve was deathly afraid of building another Newton. The reason he wanted it was because he had gone through a lot of cell phones which were no good for making phone calls.
Bringing this philosophy to televisions/LCD displays, it would be more important to make them work as televisions/LCD displays, before you go off and attempt to add programming guides, DVR capability, streaming video capability, and so on.
So I repeat: TV is overdue for an "Apple-ization": it needs to be good at its primary function before people go adding crap to it and "gilding the turd", as Woz would perhaps put it.
That's kinda the point: depending on the specific circumstance, impersonating someone over the mail could thrust you into a world of shit, so the only safe thing to do is avoid it. Good humor is good, but in this case I find the ensuing hilarity does not justify the risk.
The email was sent to a particular address; it was responded to from the address to which it was sent. The respondent nevery laid claim to "Zynga" anywhere in the response.
If there is any misrepresentation going on, it is misrepresentation of the support contact email address by Zynga. You could also argue "theft of services" by Zynga.
If you have 100 four stars you will be kicked out. The system is basically saying you need to give any driver you want to keep five stars, all the time. This makes a 5 point rating system pointless and it might as well be a boolean "Keep? Yes / No" flag that is averaged.
People other than engineers do not do the mathematical reductions like this in their head, and then act accordingly.
Personally, I never thought eBay would go anywhere, since it's not actually an auction; the mathematical reduction is "second lowest bid ceiling plus bid increment", given that you can give a bid ceiling, and it will automatically "bid" for you. But seriously, on the back end you could just insertion sort the bid ceilings, look at the first two in the table, and make the decision on that basis. I thought the OnSale model, in which actual bids were being placed, in a non-automated fashion, was more of a real auction, and that they'd own things.
But I had not taken into account that ordinary people don't do the mathematical reduction, and find the convenience of not having to watch their "bids" of more value than the actual "auctionness" of the auctions.
I imagine they have "proprietary" back end safeguards against things like "perpetually lower-than-5-rating passengers, or some other means of throwing out the outliers so that they can keep their driver pool up, in case that ever became a real issue for their business expansion. I suspect at this point, they'd rather have twice as many drivers that are unhappy about being thrown out of that role than they currently have, as a PAC to be able to have an effective block to counter the taxi interests. So if they don't have the rules behind the curtain, expect the rules in front of the curtain to change soon.
Otherwise, it occurs to me that the taxi lobby could have a few people sign up as 5 day a week riders and perpetually rate the drivers "1" in order to reduce the number of drivers below the level of viability by gaming the published rating system.
Bottom line: how would a union help me?
If I am a Google or Facebook or Twitter or Apple or IBM engineer, how would unionizing help me?
If they outsource my job, what are they going to do, not show up to work in protest? They're already out of work because the job is outsourced, and they'd actually prefer you NOT show up. Maybe I could camp outside their offices with a bunch of other people who lost their jobs, and wave signs, while the people who decided not to wave the signs with the res of us are out interviewing and getting the jobs which are available?
I know, they can fly us to India to picket the people who replaced us!
Perhaps the can cause Google to offer better healthcare? You know, better than they currently do, since they are currently the best in the industry. Or maybe they can get the salaries of the top Apple engineers bumped from an average of $160,000 to $160,001 a year?
Face it: People in demand do not need unions.
Unions would like to collect a per worker tax (sorry, I guess they are called "dues"?), and the benefit they give will be ... uh ... uh ... wait, I'm sure I can think of something!
Unions work well when people are replaceable cogs in a giant machine that needs people physically present in order for the machine to function, but they have little value to technical workers, particularly people like software engineers, who are classified by the department of labor as engaging in creative work, which makes them exempt employees anyway, even if they weren't already salaried and so exempt.
Show me a *future* benefit to union membership, and then maybe we can talk. Until then, just shut up.
What do you say to the families that depended on child labor to support the family?
They said they can't stay in business without putting the children to work. And the business feeds the children.
It's a bit of a strawman, but the parallels are there. It's bad for everyone in the long run to make put children to labor, it'd be a lot better for society to them to get some learning and not suffer the horrible abuse that historically came with child labor.
I'd say that if they were family owned businesses, and the children in question were from the family, that they are already exempt to a number of provisions of the child labor laws:
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/child-labor-laws-family-businesses-60987.html
Agricultural jobs (e.g. family farms) are exempt from all FSLA provisions completely, including the operation of equipment like tractors, and also if there are fewer than 500 man days of work performed on the farm per year, they are also exempt from minimum wage requirements.
Sure, your friend is employing 53 people. But in today's age, going without insurance means going without healthcare. Which means that everything that's serious is an ER visit rather than "hey you should have those pulled sometime in the next year".
That's not the same as "without healthcare". Also there is a significant resurgence in health co-ops in rural communities, as the doctors don't like managed care any more than the patients. This either means pay-as-you-go with no insurance involvement at all, or monthly payments to the co-op for the promise of some minimal amount of preventative treatment.
Which is really fucking expensive to everyone else.
On a per-item basis, rather than expensive all the time, with the payments largely going into the pockets of large insurance consortiums like AIG, whose executives are currently sitting on their yaughts lighting their cigars with $100 bills from the bailout money they've received.
It's understood that there needs to be the bottom rung of the ladder for the have-nots. They need their niche to fill, and, well, shitty jobs for them to do. But we don't want companies that grow off employing the bottom rung. If your friend is at the point where he's employing 50+ people, his company is big enough to start treating them like real employees.
He does; he pays a portion of the insurance costs for each employee. The mandate requires that he pay full freight, and requires that the plan cover certain aspects which means it's no longer employee cafeteria style, and the decision for "just major medical, large deduction", et.c, is out of their hands. Luckily this doesn't kick in for under 50 employees until 2015, and hopefully 2 years is enough to restructure the business into profitability. Or, since he's close to early retirement age, just calls it quits and shuts things down anyway. Where will those people get their insurance then?
U.S. unemployment rates are currently only trending downwards because people fall off the end of the unemployment insurance, and are no longer counted as unemployed. That doesn't mean that they have jobs. I know people who have basically given up looking for work entirely after a year of unemployment, and they aren't counted either. If we did our statistics the same way, we'd be in the same ballpark as European nations (e.g. France: 11.0%, Spain: 28.8% - source http://ec.europa.eu/ 2013 numbers).
I'm not saying "don't have universal healthcare"; hell, Nixon was the first president to try to get it enacted, and Teddy Kennedy said at the end of his life that his one big regret was not working with Nixon on getting it implemented. But I am saying that it needs to be a general benefit, not something tied to the employer so that insurance companies can continue to pro
They should have hired Jean-Paul Gaultier, he did all the costumes for The Fifth Element.
The Laurent designs for Daft Punk are at least comparably futuristic:
http://www.canto-photographer.com/daft-punk-yves-saint-laurent/
Not that this guy they hired to VP is a designer, but he has worked with designers, and he is a member of the executive committee of the French Federation of Fashion and of Ready-to-Wear of Couturiers and Fashion Designers, and a jury member for the ANDAM Fashion Awards.
Perhaps they are trying to get someone with taste to select from the many designs Jon Ivy comes up with for new products. Steve used to have him designed 12 versions of something, mocked them up, picked 2 to build out working prototypes, and then pick one. It was Steve's discrimination that made Apple products great, and maybe they are now trying to recreate it? If so, both "good for them" and "about damn time".
This seems like a misunderstanding similar to how people misunderstand how tax rates work. A properly designed system would be 6% up to $10,000 and then 5% on sales from $10,000-$20,000.
I agree. Why wasn't the mandate based on employer contribution designed that way?
Why doesn't your asshole friend give his employees health coverage in the first place? If he had, he wouldn't have a problem now.
Because he couldn't afford to be in business at all if he were to offer coverage. He's a cash flow business, as are all functional small businesses that aren't someone's spouses hobby funded by the other spouse. He's literally two payrolls from going out of business due to the current regulatory environment for small businesses being dictated by large businesses to lobbyists and thence to the congressmen that the big businesses own. Big business does not like competition.
What makes you think that if he can't afford health insurance for his employees under the mandate, that he'd magically be able to afford it under the mandate? Compliance with the mandate is the difference between 5 people being out of full time work, and 48 people having full times jobs, or 53 people not having jobs at all.
So basically you'd prefer he shut down, right? That'd make him a non-asshole in your book, putting 53 people out of work?
Your friend can just split it into 2 companies.
This was considered as an option, but actually as 3 companies, where there were 2 companies that did the bulk of the work in different domains, and then a management services company that was contracted to manage both companies.
This arrangement has a number of additional costs with it, including that the inter-company transactions get to eat additional taxes per transaction. He wasn't able to make any sort of split work on paper better than dropping below the mandate cutoff.
That said, let me explain it to you: bacteria wants to live. Bacteria will evolve to survive in places where it is not welcome. The bacteria are simple organisms, and don't like to waste space in their DNA on stupid shit just for fun. The presence of vaccines in places that they want to live is usually a problem, but they adapt to it. If the vaccines were not there, there would be no evolutionary pressure to evade the vaccines. Understand? Or do I need to break out the image macros, as stupid memes like `curolation =! causashon' is probably a better learning tool for you.
I think you need to prove causation in order to claim that what the FDA is doing is wrong and what European regulatory agencies are doing is right. Right now, we have a declaration by the OP of their opinion to that effect, with no supporting evidence.
I am not arguing that overuse of antibiotics in an organism does not result in drug resistant strains within that organism. However, it is a leap of faith to attribute an increase in drug resistant bacteria within a human population which:
(A) Works long hours to the point of physical exhaustion, and therefore, reduced immune system effectiveness
(B) Works in unsanitary conditions
(C) Works around sharp objects and unfinished construction materials on a daily basis
(C.1) Has a tendency towards worker-worker blood contact due to cuts, scrapes, and abrasions
(D) Tends to have common traffic corridors
(E) Tends to have common areas for food consumption
(F) Tends to have common sanitary areas, such as showers and locker rooms
(G) Tends to share common tools or materials due to expense
I read the study, and did not see these factors being removed from possible bias,
I would like to see a corresponding study for European factory farm workers.
Europe does not have the rules, which the OP implies it has, against use of antibiotics; what it does have is a set of rules about *which* antibiotics may be used in this manner, and the antibiotics for livestock and human populations are intended to be, in as much as it is possible for them to be, a non-intersecting set.
A corresponding European study would, were the OP's hypothesis (which is all it is without evidence at this point) correct, be expected to have a similar profile for infections resistant to the antibiotics used on livestock, and not resistant to the antibiotics used on humans.
In other words, you'd expect the T(treatable+untreatable) infections to be the same in both populations, IFF a factory far using antibiotics were a prerequisite for development of antibiotic resistant strains, and you'd expect a difference in ratios of T(treatable) and T(untreatable) to be different between the populations.
Just to be crystal clear about the correct experimental design in this case, you would need to randomly sample a statistically significant portion of the population of individuals with MRSA infections in both populations by culturing the infection in laboratory conditions, rather than simply treating it, and then you would need to compare each culture for antibiotic resistance profile to different antibiotics to see if the European MRSA was predominantly resistant to antibiotic drugs used on livestock, but not on humans.
Participation in this study would have to imply a treatment protocol change in order to obtain bacterial samples from farm workers presenting with infection.
I really can't believe you are claiming ignorance on my behalf, when you are unable to cite such a study one way or the other, or to see the (obvious to me) possibility of an experiment that could more or less definitively answer the question on way or the other -- rather than just toting out the same old, tired argument against factory farming in the U.S. while implying at the same time it's no longer practiced in Europe (it is practice there).
Thanks.
I have a friend who has a company which has 53 full time employees.
He's been investigating how he can get rid of 5 of them, or at least convert them to part time, to escape this mandate.
Stair step functions have always been a problem when designing things like commission structures, and so on. If I make 6% commission on sales up to $10,000 a day, and 5% commission for sales of $20,000 a day or higher, then I get 6 cents on a dollar if I sell $10,000 or less and 5 cents on a dollar if I sell more. So if I sell $10,000, I get $600, but if I sell $10,001, I get $500.05; I don't break even until $12,000 in sales, where I make $600 again, and I don't start making money again until I start selling $12,001 ($600.05). You can be damn well sure that you aren't going to have any of your sales staff turning in total sales amounts between $10,001/day and $12,000/day, and if they are unable to get close to, but just under, the next point at which there's another stair, you can be damn sure there will be customers hearing "We're out of stock today, but we have a shipment coming in first thing tomorrow, I'll call you".
This whole "keep the insurance industry in business" welfare program for insurance companies this was a bad idea; if we are going to nationalize healthcare, we really should have gone single-payer and been done with it.
And their is actually nothing illegal about that.
I think you aren't reading the same Constitution the rest of us are reading:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights#Amendments
If it costs me a fine to exercise my religion and someone else, it doesn't cost them a fine, and all other things are equal, then that's charging me for the exercise of my religion.
Admittedly, it's a stupid belief that the GP is espousing, but people are free to believe whatever stupid things they want to believe.
"Europe has long ago banned the use of antibiotics in livestock, but the FDA remains behind the curve with a partial ban."
So... you have a corresponding European study that shows that the conclusions are correct by proving their factor farm workers *son't* carry drug resistant staph? Or is this another case of "correlation is not causation"?
It's not immortality until we can prevent the brain form decaying and dying.
It's still not immortality until you can prevent the new memories replacing the old memories in a way that will make you not you, but someone else after thousands of years. Information-theory-wise, immortality is a notion that doesn't make sense.
I, for one, am willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, and test that theory, by living thousands of years. Perhaps I should start a kickstarter...
The blast radius is not limited by the curvature of the earth, as dispersion of an overpressure wave of sufficient magnitude would 'hug' the earth.
The blast zone is limited by energy deposited into the atmosphere surrounding the device following the chemical reactions which remove the transparency of the air surrounding the weapon, and former weapon materials.
Your statement does not agree with the actual results observed during nuclear tests:
http://www.labnol.org/internet/damage-caused-by-nuclear-bomb/6176/
That has nothing to do with this library. Apple, Google, and almost any government and telecom can push arbitrary code onto your phone. Android and iPhone are both equally vulnerable. It doesn't matter how Apple runs its markets or how they review their software or how secure their OS may be; if you can't trust the update channel, you can't trust the phone.
Sure; but you post is off topic, since we are talking about this library (reread the original title, original summary, and original article, if you are confused). A flaw in this library does not imply an iPhone vulnerability.
Maintaining a nuclear arsenal is really pricy. They're full of dangerous things.
Which is why it makes sense to leave them where they are. Decommissioning is even more pricey.
And dealing with the decay that you let build up because you were too lazy to maintain them is more costly still. No, 'let them sit' is a stupid fucking idea. Far more cost effective and safe to reprocess them into reactor fuel.
The U.S. does *not* do reprocessing. It has not done reprocessing since 1977, in order to avoid creating additional weapons grade material, which might fall into terrorist hands and/or lead to nuclear proliferation:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/us.html
They require LOTS of upkeep. You have to guard them. (They have the power to destroy the world after all) The infrastructure to maintain your active arsenal is massive and costs piles of money, which seems silly for something you hope to never use.
Most of the cost is military. Personally, I think guarding holes in the desert is a much finer jobs program than bombing people in the Middle East. Safer for the people who get the make-work jobs, too.
You should probably try becoming part of this century before telling us about nuclear stockpiles. We don't have nukes sitting in holes in the desert anymore,
Wrong. We have 450 land-based Minuteman III ICBMs with MIRV'ed warheads, meaning approximately 1440 warheads which are currently land based. Try doing a simple google search before you spout incorrect information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#Land-based_ICBMs
which is why we don't need as many. We just launch them from subs that no one knows where they are so they can't be taken out.
Again, incorrect. Submarines are detectable, even at maximum depth, using space-based side looking synthetic aperture radar (SAR):
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/LE13Ad01.html
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/slbm/detection.pdf
Everyone who we care about knowing knows about our subs, just as we know about theirs.
[...]
I would suggest you take a basic economics and a history course, then learn WHY TARP actually happened rather than what your friends told you. You first need to understand that the magical failed banks failed because laws were changed that suddenly ... on PAPER ... made them insolvable. They were never actually doing bad, they just suddenly became illegal to operate.
TARP was needed due to de-regulation, after which banks jumped into the market for creation of derivatives, and created a bunch of worthless derivatives and sold them for real money. These were primarily collateralized debt obligations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program#Purpose
The ability to create CDOs prior to the repeal of Glass–Steagall was based primarily on a decision by the 2nd Circuit Court:
http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/885/1034/144081/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass–Steagall_Act#Securitization.2C_CDOs.2C_and_.E2.80.9Csubprime.E2.80.9D_credit
[...Pu-239 uses...]
Or the operate on other things, which even
"committing seppuku after Fukushima made them paranoid"
That is some calloused, thinly veiled racism you felt you had to add there at the end, huh?
It's a cultural, not racial, reference which was actively relevant until 1970, and is still popularized in NHK broadcast dramas of the Shugunate Era in present-day Japan. It carries the appropriate connotation of "killing oneself over a point of honor". If you read the news reports, the U.S. Navy offered assistance in the early hours of the Fukushima incident, and were rebuffed "as a point of honor".
Would you have preferred I referred to the Hindu practice of Sati? That's also a cultural reference, and while it would be a stretch, one could argue that keeping their nuclear program shut down would be the equivalent of a woman throwing herself/being thrown on the funeral pyre of her husband out of grief.
I think a Bushido-style loss of face is a more apt metaphor for a cause of action in this case, however.
18 million sounds like peanuts. whats that, 20 patriot missiles?
6-9 Patriot missiles. Unit cost on a Patriot is 2-3 million, depending on ordinance load. Or 2 M1 Abrams main battle tanks. Or for the cost of a single F-35C Joint Strike Fighter, you could fund the entire program for over a decade.
According to the GAO, the Pentagon spends more than that per year issuing visitor badges.