I'm an occasional volunteer there, and I know LaTeX and math. So, I just took a look. Where are the math books? You got me all hot to help, and the only thing I see is Hilbert's ``Foundations of Geometry''.
It doesn't take a village to raise a kid, but it takes a society to socialize one. As the parent post implies, segregating kids away from society in ... a real school and at a real playground... prevents socialization.
Want your kid to know how to behave in the real world? Make him spend almost all his time in an artificial environment, with a bunch of young savages just like him, who have no more idea how to behave than he does. Yeah, that's the ticket.
School isn't about ``socialization'', it's about free babysitting so mama and papa can both work to get all the little luxuries that are obviously more important than the kids. All families teach their kids something at home, even if it's just: ``You're not as important to us as our jobs.''
My wife is Chinese. She has given up on distinguishing between limes and lemons in English. She has no problem with distinguishing the yellow of one from the green of the other, but (probably because of a confused teacher?) she thinks that green==lemon, and is somehow resistant to chaning that idea.
She has the same problem with distinguishing light blues from light greens that you describe. I suspect that she has cones with a slightly different response curve than mine, with the difference probably in the mid-range cones. The other possiblity is that her ``blue boosting'' mechanism is slightly different than mine. This seems a bit more plausible, since it's apparently based on something in the nervous system rather than having a different chemical in her cones.
If it is in a non-british jurisdiction all they can do is block access to it.
So, before the spamming, they got a few dozen hits a day in their server logs from Britain. After the spamming, they get a brief spike, followed, soon, by zero hits from Britain ever after. Now, how much would you pay the spammer to send out another round of spam? Blocking will work just fine.
We can imagine this being misused by evil competitors, but the British ISPs aren't idiots, and with minimal care on their part, this won't happen much. How many legitimate businesses in North Korea or Russia are doing business in the UK via intarweb? I'd guess that the number is right about zero, for both countries.
That alone means there isn't much room to go wrong.
I'll guess that most U.S. ISPs will cooperate with British ISPs if some U.S. company decides to bugger a competitor that way, so again, there won't be nearly the opportunity for problems that you might think. What will make this work is the fact that everyone is bothered enough by spam to put some effort into making it work.
... nothing more than a free knockoff of a Windows/etc counterpart (hell wasn't that the entire point of Linux in the first place)?
No, it was supposed to be a free version of Unix. Nobody wanted Windows! That's why Linus had to write his kernel to replace th MS operating system which he surely got with his fancy new 386.
... many commercial applications are buggy and have slow release times but at least they aren't 100% alpha quality with huge disclaimers that they aren't responsible...
Never read the click-through licences, have you? They all begin with something like: ``This product comes with no warrenty, including without limitation any warrenty of fitness for any particular purpose.''
It will likely get better but I can't believe he said that it wasn't as bad as I think.
Trying to make sure the people on the plane are who they say they are is pointless?
You don't remember that little 9-11 thing?
We remember it. We remember that the hijackers all had legitimate, government issued IDs in their own names. We remember that knowing who they were didn't give the government any capability, or desire, to stop them. We remember that a few of them (five?) were on a watch list, but the vast majority of them (certainly more than enough to bring down the WTC) were not.
We also remember that our government has killed far more Americans than Al Qada ever dreamed of killing. See this page. Al Qada may be more ambitious, but our government has more opportunity. Even if their intentions are good, just by accident, our government is going to do a lot of harm, so we would need to limit their power. We certainly have no reason to believe that our government's intentions are good, or that, if they were good, that they would remain that way.
Finally, trivially, we have the fact that the ID requirements allow the airlines to practice price discrimination.
Many boys are given legos. Many girls are given dolls.
Our children have dolls and legos, and play with both.
Our little boy built buildings, tall towers and vehicles with the legos. His younger sister watched us praise his efforts, and even got some direct encouragement to do that sort of thing. Still, she plays with the legos in a completely different fashion. She spends a lot of time making patterns and pretty things, and only makes vehicles and such when big brother is directing the game.
Big brother has a large box of stuffed animals, and little sister has a number of dolls. They've each gotten some dolls and stuffed animals over the years, but have traded to get what they want. The girl wanted most of the dolls, and there is only one stuffed animal that she really cares about. The little boy's stuffed critters and dolls have big fights and save the world, while the little girl's dolls play house a lot. The little boy's dolls are mostly scary action figures and those lego bionicles. Little sister owns one bionicle, that she asked for because big brother had so many and she had to have one too, but it's on permanent loan to brother because she never wants to play with it.
Our boy plays with toy guns constantly. Our little girl has some, too, but she just isn't interested in them, despite the fact that her mother and I are, and encourage her to play with them. I'd guess that the toys children get reflect what they'd ask for without any outside prompting, since our attempts to steer the children haven't been at all successful.
We don't have TV, and we don't send the kids to school, so there isn't a lot of outside influence. We have no desire to see our daughters do poorly, so we have definitely tried to push them academically in the same direction we push the boy, but they just aren't interested in the same things. Every family we know with both boys and girls has told us the same thing: boys and girls are fundamentally different, upstairs as well as down. I'm starting to think that those stereotypes are more than an accident.
... the two female profs here are both slightly mad with no life outside of work.
There you have it, in a nutshell.
I know exactly the sort of prof you're talking about; I've had classes with a couple of them myself. The male ones are ``successful'', ``driven'' or ``obsessed with his work'', while the female ones are ``slightly mad''. Same symptoms, same abilities, but the different sex leads to a different diagnosis.
It seems it's acceptable for a male to spend 10 or 15 years single-mindedly building up a reputation, then become departmental deadwood, start a family with a first or second wife, and live happily ever after. When a woman does this, it is recognized (even by other women, like seraphina) that she is slightly mad. It's no wonder that women find it difficult to go into careers like medicine and IT where that sort of obsessive behavior is required.
Oh, yes, before I forget, some of us men think it's crazy to live that way, too.
Re:thats just the start of it.
on
Linux vs. Windows
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
So, about your sig:
; -- no matter what the books say, there is no such thing as a christian soldier.
I thought the bible gave several examples of Christian soldiers? How about the Roman centurian that Peter was sent to visit, in Acts? Or is the bible not an authoritative source?
The paper seemed to fail to mention the armed robbery the guy was wanted for.
Actually, they did mention it. They also mentioned that the armed robber had already been arrested, hours earlier, when he met with his parole officer. The guy they went there after, acording to the story in the link, had an outstanding misdemeanor warrant, and is now out on $1000 (that's one thousand) bail. Probably not a big threat to the peace.
... the Phoenix fire department determined that a candle started the fire, not the tear gas.
How did they distinguish between a fire which started near the candle and a fire started by the candle? I know just a little bit about this. The first line of attack is look for the lowest burned point, since the fire spreads upward. If you find a source of ignition there (like candle wax), you first assume that caused the fire. Of course, if you know that there was another potential source, say a hot teargas cannister nearby, you'd have to do some sort of differential diagnosis. Or, you could just cover for your buddies in the sheriff's department. We have no clue which the investigator might have done.
I can't tell you how many linux nuts are uninformed about Windows, telling false me things like you can't centralize administration...
I can't do that with Windows. I don't do system administration, and so I'm not supposed to be able to. But I can tell you that none of the Windows shops where I've worked have been able to do that. I'm sure that you can do it, since you use it as an example, but the Windows admins I have known, including at least one competent one, can't or won't.
Compare to a "typical Linux" system. First off, there is no such thing. There isn't a typical Linux server.
Try Solaris, or one of the BSDs, or AIX, or Debian. They're all Unixes, they're all different, but each of them puts stuff where it belongs on that system. Talking about a ``typical linux system'' is like talking about a ``typical car''. Why, on a typical car, you don't even know which end the engine is on! But if you're talking about an early VW, you know it's in the back.
... implementing single-sign on on a
Linux-based system.
On Unix systems, this is usually done via Xterms. There is no need for a single sign-on to multiple computers, because there is no need for multiple computers. Most things that Windows fanatics claim that the Unixes can't do well are foolish workarounds that Windows forces on them. That is, Unixes don't do them well because they're unnecessary. It's like claiming that having two working legs is bad, because they get in the way when you're in your wheelchair.
You may have shell logins, but they do not correspond with e-mail usernames/passwords.
You say that as if it were a bad thing.
I'm not a sysadmin, but my home computers, and my mother's computer, all run Linux because that's easier than Windows for me to use and maintain.
Catholicism is the longest standing Christian Church , how could anyone not say that it it Christian?
The folks who say that point to the fact that the Pope receives worship (he's ``vicar of Christ'', Christ's stand-in), to the fact that they believe in salvation through works, rather than through God's grace, to the worship (though it's called ``veneration'') of saints and images, to the priests, who Paul told us we no longer need (Hebrews Chapter 7, if I recall correctly) and so on. Catholic theologians will reply: ``Yes, but...'' to each of those points, but most of the laymen probably stop at the ``Yes''.
There have been times, down through the ages, when the Catholic church fell away from God entirely. Consider the period when there were two popes, for example. At least one of them, and his followers, were apostate. As another example, the persecution of the Jews was clearly in defiance of Christ's teachings. God doesn't work through organizations and edifices, He works through individuals. When the individuals in the $DENOMINATION church lose sight of Him, He goes on with His work, using some other individuals, while the $DENOMINATION continues doing its thing, and continues calling itself Christian, in His absense. It doesn't just happen to Catholics, either. The Wesleyans, the Methodists and the Moravians are three Protestant examples which spring to my mind. Each group started out doing great things with God, and each eventually forgot their first love.
As I said above, whatever the Catholic theologians may hold, a non-Christian is far more likely to be comfortable with his nonbelief in a Catholic church than in an evangelical Protestant church.
I think that saying that the current Catholic church is not Christian is overstating the case. I think that most Catholics are not followers of Christ, but there is nothing preventing someone who comes to Christ from remaining in the Catholic church, except for their desire to go to a church where God and Christ are worshipped. If you happen to find a Catholic church where they worship God rather than His creatures, a Christian could be happy there.
Although there may be some value in this book as a cautionary tale, I'd advise against buying it for two reasons. First, Katie Tarbox doesn't seem to have learned a vital lesson from her mistake: children are dependent on their parents, and need to trust them. The young readers at whom it seems to be aimed may learn to be careful when they sneak behind their parent's backs, but that's not the right lesson to learn. Second, the publisher, Penguin, deliberately titled the book katie.com, although they knew that was the domain name of a website belonging to a British woman, who used the site to post pictures of her children for relatives to view. After the book was published, she began to get hate mail from pedophiles. Penguin has ``hijacked'' her domain, and is callously exploiting her, in the same fashion that the pervert described in this book exploited the girl who wrote it. Purchasing the book will encourage the publisher to commit more such abuses in the future.
It'll be interesting to see if they let it onto their site.
1. Canadian team launches X-Prize entry due southeast.
2. US sees incoming Canadian ballistics; President orders retalliation strikes. Canada's government is overthrown by the US in the name of the War on Terror and replaces it with a "better" democratic government.
Since our constitution requires that each state have a republican government, that shows that we didn't make Canada into a state. Too bad for them. I guess they have to keep on coming down here for health care.
3. Canadian militias revolt and succed in a coup, overthrowing the new government and militia leaders take over governmental responsibilities. Quebec, on the other hand, grasps opportunity in the chaos and officially secedes.
When the Canadians are revolting, we tell them to take a bath. They are disarmed, by their own government, so wouldn't present a threat to an invader. I begin to suspect that this message didn't really come from the future.
4. US locks down its northern borders. Canadian military immediately and successfully invades the poorly defended state of Alaska.
The Alaskan Independence party regularly gets 3 to 5% of the vote for governor, and has once elected a governor. We might invite them in, but I doubt that they could invade if they wanted to. Alaskans are not disarmed. See the previous point.
5. Russia seizes opportunity to get foothold on the North American continent and invades Alaska; Canadian forces resist, and Russia deploys its nuclear arsenal.
Twenty years ago, it was official policy that if Alaska were invaded, the U.S. would pull out of Alaska. National Guard units were to be prepared to resist on their own, without support. There was no provision made for them to link up with returning Americans... If Russia had invaded, they would have gotten Alaska back. Maybe this message did come from the future.
6. US sees ICBMs launched by Russia toward the North American continent; fearing they have allied with Canada, US retaliates, firing its arsenal at Russia as well as all other Russian-allied or communist nuclear powers.
7. Global nuclear war sends civilization back 500 years of development. The upright macaque manages to survive and begins propogation.
Let's see: 2004-500=1504. Da Vinci (Mona Lisa, 1504)Shakespeare, the Enlightenment, the Reformation (Martin Luther, 1517), Michaelangelo (starts the Cistine ceiling, 1508), the age of exploration (Columbus, 1492, et cetera). And macaques are cute, and have sense enough not to post on Slashdot. Sounds ok.
8. The international space station is caught in a space-time fissure created by nuclear resonance and the astronauts are sent into the future.
9. Planet of the Apes
Planet of the Apes? A future of bad acting and silly symbolism? Now you're scaring me.
5. Islam - bastard terrorists who pervert this religion
Well, when I read the Koran, it looked as if the bastard terrorists were good Muslims, and my decent Muslim classmates were apostate. My Muslim friends really didn't have a good argument to the contrary.
6. Christianity - priests and children
If you're talking about priests and children, then you're probably talking about Catholics rather than Christians. At most, Catholicism is a subset of Christianity. Some Protestants will tell you that Catholics aren't Christian, period.
Brohn [ Stanley Brohn, secretary of the Radio and Television Technicians Board...] said the letter sent to Broussard and others was misleading in stating that the license requirement would apply to a broad range of computer technicians and consultants, and not simply those wanting to set up home entertainment systems.
So, just maybe, they are simply trying (clumsily, but legitimately) to enforce an existing law as it was intended to be used. If they tell computer techs who aren't trying to specialize in home theater systems that they aren't subject to the tax, we'll know that the government there is honest. Or is that an oxymoron?
Of course, the idea of licensing TV repairmen is neither more nor less insane than the idea of calling computer repairmen TV repairmen. All it accomplishes is to restrict the supply and drive up the prices, hurting the very public it was ``supposed to protect''.
If the author gets flooded with mail about her predatory behavior, something might happen.
Unfortunately, probably not.
The author may be a decent person, but it won't make any difference. Penguin has all the rights to the book, and the author has only the right to do whatever they tell her to, if she wants to see a penny of royalties. Any action she can take can only hurt her; she has no leverage over her publisher.
Letters to the author may convince her that she doesn't want to write another book for Penguin, ever again, but unless she falls for another stranger in another chatroom, there probably won't be another book, anyway. Don't harrass the poor little fool.
Instead, why not contact some of Penguin's other authors, who might just have another profitable best seller in them? Try, for example, Clive Cussler, who's name shows up on Penguin's website. I can't find contact info for him, but NUMA, which he founded and is still involved with, can no doubt forward your email.
National Underwater and Marine Agency
c/o Pitch Productions
859 Hollywood Way #212
Burbank, California 91505
Tel/Fax: (818) 559-3278
pr@numa.net
doodlebug@numa.net
Perhaps if enough of us contact enough of Penguin's bestselling authors, we can convince some of them to leave Penguin. That would hurt Penguin.
Steganography. Hide your message in an image posted to alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.
You don't need stegan-what-he-said. The picture can be the message. When the picture on a webpage changes, you carry out your instructions.
Someone is going to point out that anyone stupid enough to fly a plane into a building might have difficulty with advanced topics like steganography. Someone else is going to say that the NSA can crack it. That's all nonsense: folks have been putting a candle in the window as a signal for as long as there have been candles and windows, and the internet is a far more visible yet far less obvious way to send a signal.
APA is one of the formats that Bibtex supports. I used it for a term paper once, just to be different. Even if there is never a need to reformat the entries, it's a real bother to have to make the citation, and remember to copy the entry into the appropriate place, and so on. Is the APA style one of those which requires that the entries be alphabetized and numbered? Those are nightmares to handle by hand.
We used to perform some economics experiments by hand. It was a lot of bother, but for some things which didn't fit into the market-centered straight jacket of our software, it was easier to run them by hand, and then type in the data, rather than develop and debug a new application. Running them by hand definitely removed simplicity, and added chances for error.
Tell your wife that the computer does change the data when she's not looking. But, as soon as she looks, even if she just glances at it out of the corner of her eye, it changes the data back again. Challenge her to prove you wrong.
I bet she could come up with some nifty label for that sort of belief.
The big problem with using a spreadsheet for this is that in order to write a paper, you have to enter the bibliograpic information in a different format for each journal you might submit to. Bibtex automates that, so you enter the information, and the formatting is done for you.
As I said, I use Emacs with Reftex for writing. Reftex will let me search for citations in my bibliography file. I use a key made up of the first author's family name and the year. I have innumerable papers in my bibliography file, but typically there are only a dozen or so authors whose work I'm trying to keep in mind at once. It's not hard to remember that it was the '98 paper by C-somebody, and then C*98 brings up a very short list to choose from. I can highlight the right choice, and the reference is added to the text, and the bibliography entry is added to the paper's bibliography, and I'm back to entering text, with no further action. If I want to change the citation or bibliography style, there are about 50 or more to choose from, and changing between them is trivial.
As for the filing cabinets, I dealt with that problem by keeping electronic copies. In economics, most authors post working papers on their web sites, to get quick exposure, stake out territory, get feedback, and so on. It's common to see citations of work in progress in published papers. So, I'd keep the working copies and let the library warehouse the published copies. That option may not be open to you. I think that you said that she's working in psychology? Social scientists don't seem to post their work, for some strange reason. I've been looking for some papers in the fields of education and child development, and there is essentially nothing on line. Maybe you could scan and OCR the really important drawers in the filing cabinet? Don't worry about correcting the scans: she can fix the typos in the few parts she actually wants to cut and paste. If you do the work as she actually uses the papers, it won't be a huge project.
If I need to use the citation, I can just copy it from my Excel spreadsheet. Now why would this thing be better?
This would be better because when she reads a new article, she could get the bibliography from someone else, rather than having to type it in herself.
Of course, if she has read so few papers, and does so little writing, that Excel (and Word? Ick!) work for her purposes, then this might be an exercise in gilding lillies.
I use Emacs, with reftex and bibtex, and find that it works far better for my purposes than any of the several wordprocessors I've tried. None of them, including Word and OpenOffice, can equal that combo, with LaTeX for the typesetting. They're just not up to speed, for quality of the output or ease of use.
Here it is, in several other formats. You can have postscript in two font choices, pdf, DVI, or the LaTeX source (which is ASCII with relatively unobtrusive markup).
The top title, with 3227 citations, is ``Self-Consistent Equations...'', from 1965, obviously a methods paper. The average age of the citations for it was 26 years. If you want to make a mark in your field, come up with some hot new method that everyone will use for decades.
Here are the top 100 titles from the paper, counting down from number 1 to 100:
Self-Consistent Equations...
Inhomogeneous Electron Gas
E ects of Con guration...
On the Quantum Correction...
Self-Interaction Correction to...
Interaction Between d-Shells..
Can Quantum-Mechanical
Description of Physical..
On the Interaction of Electrons...
Absence of Di usion in...
Theory of Superconductivity
Ground State of the Electron...
Simpli ed LCAO Method for...
On Gauge Invariance and... Linear Methods in Band Theory Stochastic Problems in... Crystal Statistics Special Points for Brillouin-Zone A Model of Leptons Considerations on Double... Localized Magnetic States... E ects of Double Exchange... Dynamical Model of Elementary... Forces in Molecules Motion of Electrons and Holes in... Signi cance of Electromagnetic... Coherent and Incoherent... A Simpli cation of the Hartree-... Absence of Ferromagnetism... Coherence in Spontaneous... Neutron Di raction Study of... Theory of Dynamic Critical...
Quantum Theory of Cyclotron... Absence of Mott Transition Field Dependence of...
Scaling Theory of Localization: E cacious Form for... Theory of the Role of Covalence Special Points in the Brillouin... Electronic Properties of...
Atomic Shielding Constants An Approximate Quantum... Indirect Exchange Coupling of... Unitary Symmetry and Leptonic... New Method for Calculating... Transition Temperature of... Forms of Relativistic Dynamics A Relativistic Equation for... Diatomic Molecules According... Pseudopotentials That Work:...
E ect of Invariance... Relaxation E ects...
Neutrino Oscillations in Matter On the Behavior of...
R-Matrix Theory of... Theory of Brillouin Zones...
Disordered Electronic Systems Spontaneous Emission... Magnetization of Hard... The In uence of Retardation on... Nuclear Constitution and... Correlations in Space and Time... The Dipolar Broadening of... Tunneling Between...
Reciprocal Relations in... I.
Norm-Conserving Pseudo-
potentials
Ferromagnetism in a Narrow...
Lepton Number as the Fourth...
Reciprocal Relations in II.
Radiative Corrections as the...
Intensity of Optical Absorption...
Uni ed Approach for Molecular...
Mach's Principle and a...
Weak Interactions with Lepton-...
Linear Magnetic Chains with...
Dynamical Model of Elementary...
Symmetry Behavior at Finite...
Magnetization of High-Field...
Theory of the Motion of Vortices...
Axial-Vector Vertex in...
Random-Field Instability of...
Spin Echoes
The Quantum Theory of Optical...
Magnetic Properties of Cu-Mn...
Exchange and Correlation in......Contribution of Excitons...
Dynamic Scaling of Growing
Interfaces
In ationary Universe:...
Statistical Theory of Equations...
The Inelastic Scattering of...
E ect of Correlation on...
Nucleon-Nucleus Optical-Model...
The Mechanism of Nuclear Fission
The Threshold Law for...
Conservation Laws and...
Role of Meson Current in...
Cyclotron Resonance and...
The Structure of Electronic...
Gauge Invariance and Mass. II
A Theory of Cooperative...
Solution of the Schroedinger...
Unfortunately, I can't point you to a web site. Very little of this sort of thing seems to be where Google can find it. I've been reading the history of public schools and literacy for about a year now, and I find that I have to keep digging about in footnotes, and tracking down publications by obscure historical societies, and so on. The one good side to that is that I've gotten quite friendly with the interlibrary loan people here in town.
As I recall, ``Last of the Mohicans'' sold about 6 million copies, when the U.S. population was about 30 million. If we assume that they all sold in the U.S. (they certainly didn't), that would be about one per family. It was definitely a popular book, and sold well here. It seems plausible that about half the households in the U.S. had a copy, which I think would beat Harry Potter (could be wrong on that, since I don't follow her sales figures). It certainly places them in the same best-seller category.
Remember, too, that ``Last of the Mohicans'' cost several dollars, in a time when a dollar was a good day's wages. I don't think Harry Potter would be nearly so popular as it is, if it cost $100 per copy.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm an occasional volunteer there, and I know LaTeX and math. So, I just took a look. Where are the math books? You got me all hot to help, and the only thing I see is Hilbert's ``Foundations of Geometry''.
Want your kid to know how to behave in the real world? Make him spend almost all his time in an artificial environment, with a bunch of young savages just like him, who have no more idea how to behave than he does. Yeah, that's the ticket.
School isn't about ``socialization'', it's about free babysitting so mama and papa can both work to get all the little luxuries that are obviously more important than the kids. All families teach their kids something at home, even if it's just: ``You're not as important to us as our jobs.''
She has the same problem with distinguishing light blues from light greens that you describe. I suspect that she has cones with a slightly different response curve than mine, with the difference probably in the mid-range cones. The other possiblity is that her ``blue boosting'' mechanism is slightly different than mine. This seems a bit more plausible, since it's apparently based on something in the nervous system rather than having a different chemical in her cones.
So, before the spamming, they got a few dozen hits a day in their server logs from Britain. After the spamming, they get a brief spike, followed, soon, by zero hits from Britain ever after. Now, how much would you pay the spammer to send out another round of spam? Blocking will work just fine.
We can imagine this being misused by evil competitors, but the British ISPs aren't idiots, and with minimal care on their part, this won't happen much. How many legitimate businesses in North Korea or Russia are doing business in the UK via intarweb? I'd guess that the number is right about zero, for both countries. That alone means there isn't much room to go wrong.
I'll guess that most U.S. ISPs will cooperate with British ISPs if some U.S. company decides to bugger a competitor that way, so again, there won't be nearly the opportunity for problems that you might think. What will make this work is the fact that everyone is bothered enough by spam to put some effort into making it work.
You seem to think that makes Microsoft bad. I think that means that the Indians and the Pakistanis need to grow up.
No, it was supposed to be a free version of Unix. Nobody wanted Windows! That's why Linus had to write his kernel to replace th MS operating system which he surely got with his fancy new 386.
Never read the click-through licences, have you? They all begin with something like: ``This product comes with no warrenty, including without limitation any warrenty of fitness for any particular purpose.''
It will likely get better but I can't believe he said that it wasn't as bad as I think.
He must know how badly you think?
You don't remember that little 9-11 thing?
We remember it. We remember that the hijackers all had legitimate, government issued IDs in their own names. We remember that knowing who they were didn't give the government any capability, or desire, to stop them. We remember that a few of them (five?) were on a watch list, but the vast majority of them (certainly more than enough to bring down the WTC) were not.
We also remember that our government has killed far more Americans than Al Qada ever dreamed of killing. See this page. Al Qada may be more ambitious, but our government has more opportunity. Even if their intentions are good, just by accident, our government is going to do a lot of harm, so we would need to limit their power. We certainly have no reason to believe that our government's intentions are good, or that, if they were good, that they would remain that way.
Finally, trivially, we have the fact that the ID requirements allow the airlines to practice price discrimination.
Our children have dolls and legos, and play with both.
Our little boy built buildings, tall towers and vehicles with the legos. His younger sister watched us praise his efforts, and even got some direct encouragement to do that sort of thing. Still, she plays with the legos in a completely different fashion. She spends a lot of time making patterns and pretty things, and only makes vehicles and such when big brother is directing the game.
Big brother has a large box of stuffed animals, and little sister has a number of dolls. They've each gotten some dolls and stuffed animals over the years, but have traded to get what they want. The girl wanted most of the dolls, and there is only one stuffed animal that she really cares about. The little boy's stuffed critters and dolls have big fights and save the world, while the little girl's dolls play house a lot. The little boy's dolls are mostly scary action figures and those lego bionicles. Little sister owns one bionicle, that she asked for because big brother had so many and she had to have one too, but it's on permanent loan to brother because she never wants to play with it.
Our boy plays with toy guns constantly. Our little girl has some, too, but she just isn't interested in them, despite the fact that her mother and I are, and encourage her to play with them. I'd guess that the toys children get reflect what they'd ask for without any outside prompting, since our attempts to steer the children haven't been at all successful.
We don't have TV, and we don't send the kids to school, so there isn't a lot of outside influence. We have no desire to see our daughters do poorly, so we have definitely tried to push them academically in the same direction we push the boy, but they just aren't interested in the same things. Every family we know with both boys and girls has told us the same thing: boys and girls are fundamentally different, upstairs as well as down. I'm starting to think that those stereotypes are more than an accident.
There you have it, in a nutshell.
I know exactly the sort of prof you're talking about; I've had classes with a couple of them myself. The male ones are ``successful'', ``driven'' or ``obsessed with his work'', while the female ones are ``slightly mad''. Same symptoms, same abilities, but the different sex leads to a different diagnosis.
It seems it's acceptable for a male to spend 10 or 15 years single-mindedly building up a reputation, then become departmental deadwood, start a family with a first or second wife, and live happily ever after. When a woman does this, it is recognized (even by other women, like seraphina) that she is slightly mad. It's no wonder that women find it difficult to go into careers like medicine and IT where that sort of obsessive behavior is required.
Oh, yes, before I forget, some of us men think it's crazy to live that way, too.
Actually, they did mention it. They also mentioned that the armed robber had already been arrested, hours earlier, when he met with his parole officer. The guy they went there after, acording to the story in the link, had an outstanding misdemeanor warrant, and is now out on $1000 (that's one thousand) bail. Probably not a big threat to the peace.
How did they distinguish between a fire which started near the candle and a fire started by the candle? I know just a little bit about this. The first line of attack is look for the lowest burned point, since the fire spreads upward. If you find a source of ignition there (like candle wax), you first assume that caused the fire. Of course, if you know that there was another potential source, say a hot teargas cannister nearby, you'd have to do some sort of differential diagnosis. Or, you could just cover for your buddies in the sheriff's department. We have no clue which the investigator might have done.
I can't do that with Windows. I don't do system administration, and so I'm not supposed to be able to. But I can tell you that none of the Windows shops where I've worked have been able to do that. I'm sure that you can do it, since you use it as an example, but the Windows admins I have known, including at least one competent one, can't or won't.
Compare to a "typical Linux" system. First off, there is no such thing. There isn't a typical Linux server.
Try Solaris, or one of the BSDs, or AIX, or Debian. They're all Unixes, they're all different, but each of them puts stuff where it belongs on that system. Talking about a ``typical linux system'' is like talking about a ``typical car''. Why, on a typical car, you don't even know which end the engine is on! But if you're talking about an early VW, you know it's in the back.
On Unix systems, this is usually done via Xterms. There is no need for a single sign-on to multiple computers, because there is no need for multiple computers. Most things that Windows fanatics claim that the Unixes can't do well are foolish workarounds that Windows forces on them. That is, Unixes don't do them well because they're unnecessary. It's like claiming that having two working legs is bad, because they get in the way when you're in your wheelchair.
You may have shell logins, but they do not correspond with e-mail usernames/passwords.
You say that as if it were a bad thing.
I'm not a sysadmin, but my home computers, and my mother's computer, all run Linux because that's easier than Windows for me to use and maintain.
The folks who say that point to the fact that the Pope receives worship (he's ``vicar of Christ'', Christ's stand-in), to the fact that they believe in salvation through works, rather than through God's grace, to the worship (though it's called ``veneration'') of saints and images, to the priests, who Paul told us we no longer need (Hebrews Chapter 7, if I recall correctly) and so on. Catholic theologians will reply: ``Yes, but ...'' to each of those points, but most of the laymen probably stop at the ``Yes''.
There have been times, down through the ages, when the Catholic church fell away from God entirely. Consider the period when there were two popes, for example. At least one of them, and his followers, were apostate. As another example, the persecution of the Jews was clearly in defiance of Christ's teachings. God doesn't work through organizations and edifices, He works through individuals. When the individuals in the $DENOMINATION church lose sight of Him, He goes on with His work, using some other individuals, while the $DENOMINATION continues doing its thing, and continues calling itself Christian, in His absense. It doesn't just happen to Catholics, either. The Wesleyans, the Methodists and the Moravians are three Protestant examples which spring to my mind. Each group started out doing great things with God, and each eventually forgot their first love.
As I said above, whatever the Catholic theologians may hold, a non-Christian is far more likely to be comfortable with his nonbelief in a Catholic church than in an evangelical Protestant church. I think that saying that the current Catholic church is not Christian is overstating the case. I think that most Catholics are not followers of Christ, but there is nothing preventing someone who comes to Christ from remaining in the Catholic church, except for their desire to go to a church where God and Christ are worshipped. If you happen to find a Catholic church where they worship God rather than His creatures, a Christian could be happy there.
Since our constitution requires that each state have a republican government, that shows that we didn't make Canada into a state. Too bad for them. I guess they have to keep on coming down here for health care.
3. Canadian militias revolt and succed in a coup, overthrowing the new government and militia leaders take over governmental responsibilities. Quebec, on the other hand, grasps opportunity in the chaos and officially secedes.
When the Canadians are revolting, we tell them to take a bath. They are disarmed, by their own government, so wouldn't present a threat to an invader. I begin to suspect that this message didn't really come from the future.
4. US locks down its northern borders. Canadian military immediately and successfully invades the poorly defended state of Alaska.
The Alaskan Independence party regularly gets 3 to 5% of the vote for governor, and has once elected a governor. We might invite them in, but I doubt that they could invade if they wanted to. Alaskans are not disarmed. See the previous point.
5. Russia seizes opportunity to get foothold on the North American continent and invades Alaska; Canadian forces resist, and Russia deploys its nuclear arsenal.
Twenty years ago, it was official policy that if Alaska were invaded, the U.S. would pull out of Alaska. National Guard units were to be prepared to resist on their own, without support. There was no provision made for them to link up with returning Americans ... If Russia had invaded, they would have gotten Alaska back. Maybe this message did come from the future.
6. US sees ICBMs launched by Russia toward the North American continent; fearing they have allied with Canada, US retaliates, firing its arsenal at Russia as well as all other Russian-allied or communist nuclear powers.
7. Global nuclear war sends civilization back 500 years of development. The upright macaque manages to survive and begins propogation.
Let's see: 2004-500=1504. Da Vinci (Mona Lisa, 1504)Shakespeare, the Enlightenment, the Reformation (Martin Luther, 1517), Michaelangelo (starts the Cistine ceiling, 1508), the age of exploration (Columbus, 1492, et cetera). And macaques are cute, and have sense enough not to post on Slashdot. Sounds ok.
8. The international space station is caught in a space-time fissure created by nuclear resonance and the astronauts are sent into the future.
9. Planet of the Apes
Planet of the Apes? A future of bad acting and silly symbolism? Now you're scaring me.
Well, when I read the Koran, it looked as if the bastard terrorists were good Muslims, and my decent Muslim classmates were apostate. My Muslim friends really didn't have a good argument to the contrary.
6. Christianity - priests and children
If you're talking about priests and children, then you're probably talking about Catholics rather than Christians. At most, Catholicism is a subset of Christianity. Some Protestants will tell you that Catholics aren't Christian, period.
Of course, the idea of licensing TV repairmen is neither more nor less insane than the idea of calling computer repairmen TV repairmen. All it accomplishes is to restrict the supply and drive up the prices, hurting the very public it was ``supposed to protect''.
Unfortunately, probably not.
The author may be a decent person, but it won't make any difference. Penguin has all the rights to the book, and the author has only the right to do whatever they tell her to, if she wants to see a penny of royalties. Any action she can take can only hurt her; she has no leverage over her publisher.
Letters to the author may convince her that she doesn't want to write another book for Penguin, ever again, but unless she falls for another stranger in another chatroom, there probably won't be another book, anyway. Don't harrass the poor little fool.
Instead, why not contact some of Penguin's other authors, who might just have another profitable best seller in them? Try, for example, Clive Cussler, who's name shows up on Penguin's website. I can't find contact info for him, but NUMA, which he founded and is still involved with, can no doubt forward your email.
Perhaps if enough of us contact enough of Penguin's bestselling authors, we can convince some of them to leave Penguin. That would hurt Penguin.You don't need stegan-what-he-said. The picture can be the message. When the picture on a webpage changes, you carry out your instructions.
Someone is going to point out that anyone stupid enough to fly a plane into a building might have difficulty with advanced topics like steganography. Someone else is going to say that the NSA can crack it. That's all nonsense: folks have been putting a candle in the window as a signal for as long as there have been candles and windows, and the internet is a far more visible yet far less obvious way to send a signal.
We used to perform some economics experiments by hand. It was a lot of bother, but for some things which didn't fit into the market-centered straight jacket of our software, it was easier to run them by hand, and then type in the data, rather than develop and debug a new application. Running them by hand definitely removed simplicity, and added chances for error.
Tell your wife that the computer does change the data when she's not looking. But, as soon as she looks, even if she just glances at it out of the corner of her eye, it changes the data back again. Challenge her to prove you wrong.
I bet she could come up with some nifty label for that sort of belief.
As I said, I use Emacs with Reftex for writing. Reftex will let me search for citations in my bibliography file. I use a key made up of the first author's family name and the year. I have innumerable papers in my bibliography file, but typically there are only a dozen or so authors whose work I'm trying to keep in mind at once. It's not hard to remember that it was the '98 paper by C-somebody, and then C*98 brings up a very short list to choose from. I can highlight the right choice, and the reference is added to the text, and the bibliography entry is added to the paper's bibliography, and I'm back to entering text, with no further action. If I want to change the citation or bibliography style, there are about 50 or more to choose from, and changing between them is trivial.
As for the filing cabinets, I dealt with that problem by keeping electronic copies. In economics, most authors post working papers on their web sites, to get quick exposure, stake out territory, get feedback, and so on. It's common to see citations of work in progress in published papers. So, I'd keep the working copies and let the library warehouse the published copies. That option may not be open to you. I think that you said that she's working in psychology? Social scientists don't seem to post their work, for some strange reason. I've been looking for some papers in the fields of education and child development, and there is essentially nothing on line. Maybe you could scan and OCR the really important drawers in the filing cabinet? Don't worry about correcting the scans: she can fix the typos in the few parts she actually wants to cut and paste. If you do the work as she actually uses the papers, it won't be a huge project.
This would be better because when she reads a new article, she could get the bibliography from someone else, rather than having to type it in herself.
Of course, if she has read so few papers, and does so little writing, that Excel (and Word? Ick!) work for her purposes, then this might be an exercise in gilding lillies.
I use Emacs, with reftex and bibtex, and find that it works far better for my purposes than any of the several wordprocessors I've tried. None of them, including Word and OpenOffice, can equal that combo, with LaTeX for the typesetting. They're just not up to speed, for quality of the output or ease of use.
The top title, with 3227 citations, is ``Self-Consistent Equations...'', from 1965, obviously a methods paper. The average age of the citations for it was 26 years. If you want to make a mark in your field, come up with some hot new method that everyone will use for decades.
Here are the top 100 titles from the paper, counting down from number 1 to 100:
Self-Consistent Equations... Inhomogeneous Electron Gas E ects of Con guration... On the Quantum Correction... Self-Interaction Correction to... Interaction Between d-Shells ..
Can Quantum-Mechanical
Description of Physical ..
On the Interaction of Electrons...
Absence of Di usion in...
Theory of Superconductivity
Ground State of the Electron ...
Simpli ed LCAO Method for...
On Gauge Invariance and... Linear Methods in Band Theory Stochastic Problems in... Crystal Statistics Special Points for Brillouin-Zone A Model of Leptons Considerations on Double... Localized Magnetic States... E ects of Double Exchange... Dynamical Model of Elementary... Forces in Molecules Motion of Electrons and Holes in... Signi cance of Electromagnetic... Coherent and Incoherent... A Simpli cation of the Hartree-... Absence of Ferromagnetism... Coherence in Spontaneous... Neutron Di raction Study of... Theory of Dynamic Critical...
Quantum Theory of Cyclotron... Absence of Mott Transition Field Dependence of...
Scaling Theory of Localization: E cacious Form for ... Theory of the Role of Covalence Special Points in the Brillouin... Electronic Properties of...
Atomic Shielding Constants An Approximate Quantum... Indirect Exchange Coupling of... Unitary Symmetry and Leptonic... New Method for Calculating... Transition Temperature of... Forms of Relativistic Dynamics A Relativistic Equation for... Diatomic Molecules According... Pseudopotentials That Work:...
E ect of Invariance... Relaxation E ects...
Neutrino Oscillations in Matter On the Behavior of...
R-Matrix Theory of ... Theory of Brillouin Zones...
Disordered Electronic Systems Spontaneous Emission... Magnetization of Hard... The In uence of Retardation on ... Nuclear Constitution and... Correlations in Space and Time... The Dipolar Broadening of... Tunneling Between...
Reciprocal Relations in... I.
Norm-Conserving Pseudo-
potentials
Ferromagnetism in a Narrow...
Lepton Number as the Fourth...
Reciprocal Relations in II.
Radiative Corrections as the...
Intensity of Optical Absorption...
Uni ed Approach for Molecular...
Mach's Principle and a...
Weak Interactions with Lepton-...
Linear Magnetic Chains with...
Dynamical Model of Elementary...
Symmetry Behavior at Finite...
Magnetization of High-Field...
Theory of the Motion of Vortices...
Axial-Vector Vertex in...
Random-Field Instability of...
Spin Echoes
The Quantum Theory of Optical...
Magnetic Properties of Cu-Mn...
Exchange and Correlation in... ...Contribution of Excitons...
Dynamic Scaling of Growing
Interfaces
In ationary Universe:...
Statistical Theory of Equations...
The Inelastic Scattering of...
E ect of Correlation on...
Nucleon-Nucleus Optical-Model...
The Mechanism of Nuclear Fission
The Threshold Law for...
Conservation Laws and...
Role of Meson Current in...
Cyclotron Resonance and...
The Structure of Electronic...
Gauge Invariance and Mass. II
A Theory of Cooperative...
Solution of the Schroedinger...
Dude, you misspelled unrewarded.
As I recall, ``Last of the Mohicans'' sold about 6 million copies, when the U.S. population was about 30 million. If we assume that they all sold in the U.S. (they certainly didn't), that would be about one per family. It was definitely a popular book, and sold well here. It seems plausible that about half the households in the U.S. had a copy, which I think would beat Harry Potter (could be wrong on that, since I don't follow her sales figures). It certainly places them in the same best-seller category.
Remember, too, that ``Last of the Mohicans'' cost several dollars, in a time when a dollar was a good day's wages. I don't think Harry Potter would be nearly so popular as it is, if it cost $100 per copy.