We're not at war. Only Congress can declare war, and they have not.
So we've captured "enemy combatants" without a war.
Check.
Guantanamo does not fall under US jurisdiction.
But we've got a military base there and we'd be upset if someone else claimed it as their jurisdiction.
Check.
The prisoners held in Guantanamo are mostly "enemy combantants", and no "prisoners of war."
You've swallowed the government line so deeply you can just about taste the reel can't you? I sincerely hope that whatever it is you think you've bought with the ashes of the constitution turns out to be worth it.
First, bush doing this isn't the fist time it has ever been done. Second so what.
You are part of the problem.
If someone is a terrorist and holding them indefinatly allows them to further pursue other objectives without harmign inteligence or person obtaining it then who cares?
Me.
These are human beings. People. If we know they're a "terrorist", then we have evidence that they've committed crimes heinous enough to be called "terrorist acts". Charge them with the crime, try them in a court of law where the evidence can be presented, lock them up, and throw away the key.
By approving of their detention without due process, you approve of your detention without due process if someone fitting your description robs a liquor store down the street with a stick of dynamite (you terrorist you).
The fact that you don't care about those human beings or their loss of due process in the slightest demonstrates to me that our education system truly has failed as it has produced a nation of voting age adults who have no idea what the words "freedom", "liberty", "rights", or "critical thinking" mean. The government said it, you believed it.
It frustrates me so much that sometimes I just want to cry about where this country is going. In your eyes, that probably makes me an "America hater".
Your requirements are outside of my experience. My first thought was that you could probably add the needed column types to PostgreSQL and Oracle without too much trouble, but you've still got other problems.
Usually, you select an RDBMS over other means of data storage when one of the requirements is to allow future users to ask currently unknown questions quickly. With the data sizes you're talking about, I don't think that any common means of db optimization will allow for particularly fast queries and I suspect that that requirement isn't applicable to the raw data.
When I did scientific computing at Fermilab in the early '90's, we left the raw data on tape and created a whole series of databases for analyzed results. We used a 64-bit physical/virtual addressing system to generate references back to the taped data blocks, but pretty much left the raw data alone after processing. At that point, 2.4TB was considered an unmanageable quantity of data, but we did pretty good...
Back to your problems: I've never looked at the two systems you mention, but I would suggest rethinking your data management approach at the same time you are thinking about vendors. If you want blobs over 4GB, what you want is to store metadata in the RDBMS and the data block on disk as a file. The reason most RDBMS's set the blob limit to 32kB (not 32MB) by default is to discourage mass storage of untyped data in the database.
XML databases are possibly useful if you think about them as: an elaborate bucket for storing non-normalized data via an XML interface.
If your current relational database schema is either 1) small flat files or 2) a few big tables with most/all of the data stored in "blob" columns: i.e. blobs, clobs, byte arrays, or big varchars. You might be a candidate for an XML database. I'd get two experienced DBA's to agree there was no realistic way to normalize the data, first, but that's me.
If you actually need a database (as opposed to a few files, XML or flat) and your data can be normalized (it almost always can), then a relational database will tend to provide important advantages in three areas: unforseen query handling (OLAP, data mining, etc.), scalable performance, and availability of people with the skills to maintain it.
As for the tradeoff of converting to XML, a number of the commercial RDBMS's allow you to obtain query results as XML. Though I don't know for certain how they handle inserts and updates, I suspect that there are XML equivalents for those as well. However, even if you have to completely roll your own conversion from SQL to XML, that cost is minimal against the cost of accessing the disk to fulfill the query, which both RDBMS and XMLDBMS will have to do.
In general, after working with a commercial XML database and attempting to work with another XML database written in house, I'm categorically unimpressed. I think that a lot of engineers have discounted the relational programming model without first understanding it. In my opinion, people familiar with functional and object programming models would do well to learn about relational programming with an eye to determining the appropriate model for different kinds of problems.
They wish to control sex because they want to ensure that sex serves one purpose - increasing the flock
Ah, but sex does so much more than that for those religions that put controls on it. If the religious-based morals surrounding sex are broken (and they are usually impossible not to break, i.e. Matthew 5:28), they provide a massive supply of guilt, which disempowers that person (I'm so worthless, I can't even control my biologically driven thoughts), empowering the religion and the religion's leaders.
The argument that sex is just for procreation is simply one part of those religous rules surrounding sex that help to control the flock.
I would say co-op or internship doing development (as opposed to sorting coffee-stirrers as some of my peers ended up doing) is more valuable than contributing to an open source project, but either will show that you can actually deliver something.
However, there's little stopping anyone from starting to contribute to an open source project any time they like. Getting a co-op or intern job takes a little more commitment and time...
Get yourself a nice big TFT (they're getting really cheap), and watch a DVD (or, better, Xvid) off your PC.
Er, why? This costs two to twenty times as much as just buying a TV ($250 for a very good 27" model) and a DVD player ($100 for a decent player).
The trick to "not having TV" is never hooking up an antenna or buying cable. Don't get yourself mixed up on the semantics of "a TV set" and "TV" (the visual broadcast media available on the airwaves and via several subscription avenues).
I do not "have TV" either. But I do own a television set that I use to watch movies.
Bzzzt. Thank you for playing. Unless you're Norman Bates, having your mother force you to study algebra isn't self-starting, it's just a different teacher.
You have a number of misconceptions about homeschooling. First of all, it's not all or nothing. In many cases there are still professional teachers involved (see http://www.caliva.org/ for oen form of homeschooling funded by the State of California). For most homeschooled kids, there is a local community of parents who share the responsibility of helping the kids.
Also, for most kids, homeschooling doesn't require a full time teacher equivalent. As long as most kids haven't had the thirst for learning burned out of them, all they need is occasional guidance and regular help with their questions. Don't take my word for it, look it up:)
Are you suggesting that one parent must forgo an income to homeschool their children? Perhaps she should stay barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, as well!
Actually, the proposal that my fiance and I are talking about is to scale back the amount of time I spend at my business and alter her class schedule so that one of us is home for most of the day. So, your proposal again seems to be founded on a highly distorted perception of family roles.
I went to a private college with a whole bunch of private school and homeschooled kids. Watching them deal with black students as if they were exhibits in a menagerie rather sickened me.
There are substantial subgroups within the set of people who homeschool their children. There are the very wealthy and privileged, there are the very religious, there are the parents of the disabled, there are the separatists, there are those who don't believe that public schools are effective at educating children (my fiance and I), etc. Each of these subgroups has different reasons for opting out of the public school system.
My kids will have a rich social life because I have no intention of interfering with their exploration of the world. I am an atheist, but my kids are going to go to church services for all of the world's major religions at different times in their lives (and will be encouraged to keep going if they find something interesting) because more knowledge is always better than less.
Even the most libertarian of the Founders recognized the benefits of public education
I recognize the benefits of an educated public and agree that one of the responsibilities of government is to encourage that state of affairs, but to assume that the only way for the government to achieve that is to build and maintain nonfunctional institutions that only partly succeed in patriotic propaganda seems rather wasteful of resources (good money after bad, and all that).
It's my assertion that we could probably afford to try some other things out. And we are (http://www.caliva.org/ again). The Gates foundation is helping, so I applaud Bill for that.
Not sure what you mean. I was in a public school from k-12. I'm looking at my neighbor's well adjusted homeschooled kids and seeing a much better way of doing things.
(The fact that my fiance is a PhD in education doesn't hurt).
Does that clear up my posting?
Regards, Ross
Re:Disgruntled with XML....
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Effective XML
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Well, I think EJB config files have a lot wrong with them, starting with the EJB architecture, so you won't find me defending them:)
You're right that we're using the term "config file" to mean different things, and my confusion is hereby cleared up.
One advantage that XML has over other approaches that must be included: the syntax, though heavy, is widely understood. In antlr, you have the power to create a "great, new config file language" (just using config files as an example), but other people (including IT people where the system ends up being deployed) will have to understand and maintain those files and probably don't want to learn something new when XML will suffice.
As for XML API's, DOM blows pretty hard. There's just no two ways around that. SAX parsers can actually be pretty cool, but antlr is absolutely more fun to work with (in part because of the enormously increased syntactic capture ability). Too bad "more fun" isn't usually a compelling argument to those specifying requirements...:)
Regards, Ross
Re:Disgruntled with XML....
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Effective XML
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I've seen XML used for quite a while in a number of completely inappropriate situations such as configuration data
Let me start this off by saying that I'm no fanboy of XML. If anything, I'm the local "get XML away from me" person.
But config files are one place that I actually like XML. And I like it because these files are (1) typically fairly small and (2) I don't want to have to write and debug another lexer/parser. I have a utility (castor) that handles the parser for me based on the objects I hand it. When I want to find out what the config has been set to, I ask castor for the object graph from the config file resource and I have my objects. If I want to allow users to change configuration information, the use case changes the objects, I push the objects to castor, the file is updated. There's simply no effort involved.
XML is slow, verbose, and is very easy to make unreadable, but none of these downsides affect its utility as a config file manager.
What does it allow me to do that a decent Lexer and Parser does not?
Well, my answer sounds trite: XML (with toys) gives you access to stream data without needing to put in the effort to make a lexer/parser work. Again, don't get me wrong, I think antlr is great, but it is not trivial to understand exactly what parse error caused the wrong token to be emitted. When I want simple and heavy, I'll concede to XML.
I don't think I've met an eleven year old who will gladly self-study algebra in my life.
You've never seen a homeschooled kid then. You need to burn the thirst for learning out of kids, which is one thing our public school program does very well and very quickly.
There is also a second, important goal to public education in my mind. [...] it is one of the few times during the formative periods of your life that your are forced to meet and socialize with your peers in different socioeconomic classes.
The social lessons that kids learn in public schools are the most petty, destructive, and mean spirited lessons that we could possibly give to children. The home schooled kids in my neighborhood seem much better adjusted, able to be geeks or nerds without the social pressure to not achieve or the bully's daily demands.
Admittedly, my experience is anecdotal, but I hated my experiences in public schools exactly because of the social situation that I didn't know how to play (and never developed the skill to fit into). My neighbor's kids understand what I disliked, but just don't have equivalent experiences in their social lives. These kids play with friends they've choosen from around them and from children living farther away, usually in the homeschool network. They still have fights with their friends, they still build ingroups and outgroups, they still have to deal with other children, it's just not in the context of the enforced babysitting of public school.
Most companies in India are certified CMM level 5 (the highest level) using the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) conceptual maturity model.
I worked with a "CMM Level 5" outsourcing company for the last year. When I visited the office to mentor the team on the software we were developing, I found absolutely none of the "learning organization" features that I would expect from a CMM Level 3 organization. Heck, I couldn't even find the process improvement awareness that I would expect from a CMM Level 2 organization.
They hired the people they could find and provided them with good equipment and effective communication. That was pretty much it. The amount of process mentoring going on was minimal. Most of the team crosstalk was about acquiring certifications and skills, and even that was pretty lightweight stuff. CMM Level 5 was an outright falsehood.
CMM Level 5 is very difficult to achieve, and IMHO, is of dubious value at best. The CMM rulebook denigrates what I firmly believe in: creativity and intelligence are what succeed, not conformity and the willingness to keep cranking at the wheel. NASA has CMM Level 5 teams, but those teams are still using 1980's technology because that's as fast as their process allows them to move.
Color me unimpressed (that's a shade of pale cyan:)
Effective touchpad usage requires subtle motions of the finger (just barely rolling the finger without actually sliding it, tiny slides, etc.). These motions use the muscles actually located in the finger and the palm of the hand to make these fine adjustments. Someone with Raynaud's Syndrome during an attack has very little blood flow in their fingers and loses a great deal of fine motor control as a result.
Touchpoint controllers (the eraser point), on the other hand, tend to require more force and make more use of the finger control muscles located in the hand and forearm. Most Raynaud's sufferers do not lose control over these muscles during an attack and would not find it difficult to use a touchpoint.
Full admission: I've never been comfortable with touchpads and strongly prefer the eraser button myself. Won't buy a laptop without one. Won't buy a desktop at all...
The point of the idea is you would HAVE to register.
The problem with this idea is that it directly conflicts with the Berne Convention (i.e. international copyright law). The Berne convention specifically prohibits any formality as a condition to the "enjoyment and exercise" of copyright.
In order to make your suggestion credible, you'll have to argue the benefits of the US abandoning the primary international convention on copyrights. Not that there aren't strong arguments for doing exactly that, but be aware that there are also strong arguments for remaining in compliance with the Berne convention. Primarily, we can ask that people in other countries be held to those international laws that we also respect.
Public Nudity: well, I see it as two behaviors. First, there's being nude in public. Then there's waving your cock in kid's faces. They're different behaviors, and one is hurtful while the other is innocent.
Polygamy: I'm not following your point. I don't object to polygamy, per se, and don't believe it should be illegal. However, the LDS's (Mormons) who tend to practice polygamy also tend to marry pubescent teenagers who rarely have a choice in the matter. A practice that I do have a problem with, thus my caveat.
Bestiality: In my mid-20's, I saw some bestiality porn at a stag party and the dog was definitely consenting. Hell, the dog was probably more interested than the girl. Your point is well taken, however, and I do agree that communication issues will make establishing consent more difficult. But it can clearly occur.
Incest: Incest is the act of sex between close relatives. The bottom line is that I'm not going to get upset if Billy has the hots for his aunt and she's more than a little interested herself. As for having kids from an incestuous relationship, well, it's a bad idea. Older women having children is also a severe risk factor for birth defects, and I don't see people charging the legislature trying to stop them from getting pregnant.
Drug Posession/Use: If you can't control yourself when under the influence of a chemical agent and you endanger or harm others as a result of taking it, you have turned a private matter into a public one. I have no problem criminalizing that. What I have a problem with is criminalizing someone smoking a joint to relax after a long day at work and harming nobody.
To say that the government have absolutely no place in legislating morality is no different than saying Anarchy is a great and wonderful thing.
I agree with you that laws are one attempt to codify morality and that attempts to deny this are largely doomed. However, my agreement should not be taken as agreement that laws are equivalent to morality. There are many ways of subdividing the set of moral statements. One of those is to separate public morality (where your actions have impact on one or more indiscriminate other agents) from private morality (where your actions involve just you and fully-informed, consenting other agents).
To then say that government has no business legislating the public sense of what should be private morality makes a lot more sense to me than the court's statement. To argue that the government has no business legislating public morality is a non-sequiter.
We legislate public sense of morality every day. Stuff like nudity laws, laws against polygamy, beastiality, incest. Laws against drug possession and use. Laws that say you can't lie in court. Laws against certain business practices, laws to make sure you feed your kids and don't mistreat them... etc, etc, etc.
Let's go through a little exercise and divide the issues you raise into issues of public and private morality.
public nudity - Seeing a naked person harms nobody. No harm, no foul. Private.
polygamy - Fully informed wives old enough to give consent? Private.
beastiality - If the actions are cruel: public. If not: private.
incest - Children cannot give consent: public. Adults can: private.
drug posession - Private.
drug use - Do you drive afterwards? Public. Do you sit at home and eat a lot? Private.
perjury - Public.
fraud - Public.
child endangerment - Public.
Guess which kinds of laws I'm in favor of repealing? People who violate laws covering private morality harm nobody but possibly themselves by their actions.
Interestingly (to me), the Pentium-M looks well on it's way to squashing the Pentium-4 market.
Pentium-4 was an architectural mistake conceived with the goal of pushing the MHz numbers up (since the mass market appeared to trust MHz over "MHz-equivalent" labels). AMD astonished them by finally making their alternate naming scheme credible and the plan behind the P4 went straight down the crapper.
New x86 development at Intel is largely derivative of the P3 core (the family that includes the P-M) and has largely deprecated the overheating/underperforming P4 core.
There are always "the good old days" and there have been good times for longer than humans have been keeping notes. I believe it's an artifact of the way human memory works. We try (successfully) to forget about bad times and remember the good times. As a result, unless there was some trauma that couldn't be forgotten, right here and now doesn't look quite as shiny and happy as several years ago.
What you answered was: why didn't amiga choose x86.
But the grandparent asked: why can't amiga be used on more common PPC hardware (like Mac)?
Alternate way of asking: why require the ROM when it stops the experimenter (and potential application developer) from pulling a common piece of hardware off of a nearby shelf (a mac CPU) and checking out the new AmigaOS?
I'm certainly not going to spend >$1000 to take a look (even though I owned an A1000, A500 and A2500 back in the day) when I've got two G3's collecting dust in storage that should be adequate...
a) you are ignorant of how the atheistic system works
I would assert that I know exactly what atheism is (not believing in God) and that you have constructed a model of what atheism ought to imply based on what others have told you and some of your own assumptions. Check your assumptions: they don't appear to reflect reality.
b) you choose not to exercise an aspect of the atheistic system
Well, I certainly don't seem to fit the mold of an atheist that you've got ready for me. As it turns out, I don't think you've got any insight that would make me achieving my long-term goals any more likely, so your personal position on morals turns out to be completely irrelevant to me.
[Ross]Self-defense does not impose my morals on you,
[wrf3]Nonsense. The use of force, regarldess of how you pretty it up by calling it self-defense, prevents the other person from acting according to their morality.
Ah. Then you and I are not talking the same language and my last six or so attempts to reply to you have lacked any information (from your perspective). While you choose to frame ethics, morality and force the way you currently do, you will not be able to understand people who self-determine their personal morality.
As such, I don't see any point continuing the conversation.
The computer itself seems like a steal for the specs they're claiming but their prices on CF flash are more than a little silly. You can get Sandisk Ultra II 512MB for $60 from any online meta-retailer and these guys are offering an unknown 512MB CF card for $145.
I've seen this kind of thing from several of these kinds of suppliers and I don't quite get it. They don't seem to realize that things like flash are fully commoditized and are still thinking they can get away with a 100% markup...
Oh well, if they can actually sell CF at those prices, then they deserve the money. Kudos for such a sweet, low power, inexpensive computer either way.
I bought a 5mW green laser for easier pointing at star parties, thereby bringing new people into astronomy. The fact that the beam is visible in air is the primary benefit of the green laser pointer.
Perhaps he thought it was harmless to paint an aircraft "way up in the sky", but to paint a low flying helicopter sounds like jackassery to me.
Funnily, I was at the stage of doubting 'other minds' just before becoming a Christian.
So was I, but I didn't really resolve the issue until I stopped being a Christian and was able to explore several different metaethical frameworks. The fact that I used to doubt and no longer doubt is probably responsible for the biggest improvements in my life so far.
Not sure on the consistency point. Why do you believe that. Does it help? I suppose you're basically saying that the universe is scientifically understandable?
Sort of. I just mean that I believe the universe behaves rationally, even if I don't always understand exactly why what I'm observing is rational. I'm not into the "scientistic" perspective, that the only truths worth knowing are scientific truths, but the assumption that the universe ultimately "makes sense" means that it's worth my time to make predictions and think about the future.
Aren't singularities inconsistencies - or are they consistent inconsistentcies??!.
The physics and metaphysics of singularity aren't clear, even in the cutting edge of physics research. First of all, we don't know if singularities can exist in our universe. Second, if they can exist, are they really a part of our universe or a boundary, beyond which is a different domain? In any case, we can identify portions of the universe which are clearly not influenced by a singularity and expect the universe to behave itself there, which is good enough to validate my belief and let me get on with my life.
The examples are what I picked up in a very quick google search (not being a serious biblical scholar myself). There were hundreds to choose from on the page I found, so I grabbed three that sounded particularly silly.
A garment made from different kinds of thread is verboten in Leviticus 19:19 (different versions make this out to be a sin of different severity, so yours may sound downright gentle on the subject. The New English Version seems the most succinct: "You shall not put on a garment woven with two kinds of yarn").
Slashdot Mirror
We're not at war. Only Congress can declare war, and they have not.
So we've captured "enemy combatants" without a war.
Check.
Guantanamo does not fall under US jurisdiction.
But we've got a military base there and we'd be upset if someone else claimed it as their jurisdiction.
Check.
The prisoners held in Guantanamo are mostly "enemy combantants", and no "prisoners of war."
You've swallowed the government line so deeply you can just about taste the reel can't you? I sincerely hope that whatever it is you think you've bought with the ashes of the constitution turns out to be worth it.
Regards,
Ross
First, bush doing this isn't the fist time it has ever been done. Second so what.
You are part of the problem.
If someone is a terrorist and holding them indefinatly allows them to further pursue other objectives without harmign inteligence or person obtaining it then who cares?
Me.
These are human beings. People. If we know they're a "terrorist", then we have evidence that they've committed crimes heinous enough to be called "terrorist acts". Charge them with the crime, try them in a court of law where the evidence can be presented, lock them up, and throw away the key.
By approving of their detention without due process, you approve of your detention without due process if someone fitting your description robs a liquor store down the street with a stick of dynamite (you terrorist you).
The fact that you don't care about those human beings or their loss of due process in the slightest demonstrates to me that our education system truly has failed as it has produced a nation of voting age adults who have no idea what the words "freedom", "liberty", "rights", or "critical thinking" mean. The government said it, you believed it.
It frustrates me so much that sometimes I just want to cry about where this country is going. In your eyes, that probably makes me an "America hater".
Fucking pathetic.
Ross
Your requirements are outside of my experience. My first thought was that you could probably add the needed column types to PostgreSQL and Oracle without too much trouble, but you've still got other problems.
Usually, you select an RDBMS over other means of data storage when one of the requirements is to allow future users to ask currently unknown questions quickly. With the data sizes you're talking about, I don't think that any common means of db optimization will allow for particularly fast queries and I suspect that that requirement isn't applicable to the raw data.
When I did scientific computing at Fermilab in the early '90's, we left the raw data on tape and created a whole series of databases for analyzed results. We used a 64-bit physical/virtual addressing system to generate references back to the taped data blocks, but pretty much left the raw data alone after processing. At that point, 2.4TB was considered an unmanageable quantity of data, but we did pretty good...
Back to your problems: I've never looked at the two systems you mention, but I would suggest rethinking your data management approach at the same time you are thinking about vendors. If you want blobs over 4GB, what you want is to store metadata in the RDBMS and the data block on disk as a file. The reason most RDBMS's set the blob limit to 32kB (not 32MB) by default is to discourage mass storage of untyped data in the database.
Sorry I couldn't help more.
Regards,
Ross
XML databases are possibly useful if you think about them as: an elaborate bucket for storing non-normalized data via an XML interface.
If your current relational database schema is either 1) small flat files or 2) a few big tables with most/all of the data stored in "blob" columns: i.e. blobs, clobs, byte arrays, or big varchars. You might be a candidate for an XML database. I'd get two experienced DBA's to agree there was no realistic way to normalize the data, first, but that's me.
If you actually need a database (as opposed to a few files, XML or flat) and your data can be normalized (it almost always can), then a relational database will tend to provide important advantages in three areas: unforseen query handling (OLAP, data mining, etc.), scalable performance, and availability of people with the skills to maintain it.
As for the tradeoff of converting to XML, a number of the commercial RDBMS's allow you to obtain query results as XML. Though I don't know for certain how they handle inserts and updates, I suspect that there are XML equivalents for those as well. However, even if you have to completely roll your own conversion from SQL to XML, that cost is minimal against the cost of accessing the disk to fulfill the query, which both RDBMS and XMLDBMS will have to do.
In general, after working with a commercial XML database and attempting to work with another XML database written in house, I'm categorically unimpressed. I think that a lot of engineers have discounted the relational programming model without first understanding it. In my opinion, people familiar with functional and object programming models would do well to learn about relational programming with an eye to determining the appropriate model for different kinds of problems.
Regards,
Ross
They wish to control sex because they want to ensure that sex serves one purpose - increasing the flock
Ah, but sex does so much more than that for those religions that put controls on it. If the religious-based morals surrounding sex are broken (and they are usually impossible not to break, i.e. Matthew 5:28), they provide a massive supply of guilt, which disempowers that person (I'm so worthless, I can't even control my biologically driven thoughts), empowering the religion and the religion's leaders.
The argument that sex is just for procreation is simply one part of those religous rules surrounding sex that help to control the flock.
Regards,
Ross
I would say co-op or internship doing development (as opposed to sorting coffee-stirrers as some of my peers ended up doing) is more valuable than contributing to an open source project, but either will show that you can actually deliver something.
However, there's little stopping anyone from starting to contribute to an open source project any time they like. Getting a co-op or intern job takes a little more commitment and time...
Regards,
Ross
Get yourself a nice big TFT (they're getting really cheap), and watch a DVD (or, better, Xvid) off your PC.
Er, why? This costs two to twenty times as much as just buying a TV ($250 for a very good 27" model) and a DVD player ($100 for a decent player).
The trick to "not having TV" is never hooking up an antenna or buying cable. Don't get yourself mixed up on the semantics of "a TV set" and "TV" (the visual broadcast media available on the airwaves and via several subscription avenues).
I do not "have TV" either. But I do own a television set that I use to watch movies.
Regards,
Ross
Bzzzt. Thank you for playing. Unless you're Norman Bates, having your mother force you to study algebra isn't self-starting, it's just a different teacher.
:)
You have a number of misconceptions about homeschooling. First of all, it's not all or nothing. In many cases there are still professional teachers involved (see http://www.caliva.org/ for oen form of homeschooling funded by the State of California).
For most homeschooled kids, there is a local community of parents who share the responsibility of helping the kids.
Also, for most kids, homeschooling doesn't require a full time teacher equivalent. As long as most kids haven't had the thirst for learning burned out of them, all they need is occasional guidance and regular help with their questions. Don't take my word for it, look it up
Are you suggesting that one parent must forgo an income to homeschool their children? Perhaps she should stay barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, as well!
Actually, the proposal that my fiance and I are talking about is to scale back the amount of time I spend at my business and alter her class schedule so that one of us is home for most of the day. So, your proposal again seems to be founded on a highly distorted perception of family roles.
I went to a private college with a whole bunch of private school and homeschooled kids. Watching them deal with black students as if they were exhibits in a menagerie rather sickened me.
There are substantial subgroups within the set of people who homeschool their children. There are the very wealthy and privileged, there are the very religious, there are the parents of the disabled, there are the separatists, there are those who don't believe that public schools are effective at educating children (my fiance and I), etc. Each of these subgroups has different reasons for opting out of the public school system.
My kids will have a rich social life because I have no intention of interfering with their exploration of the world. I am an atheist, but my kids are going to go to church services for all of the world's major religions at different times in their lives (and will be encouraged to keep going if they find something interesting) because more knowledge is always better than less.
Even the most libertarian of the Founders recognized the benefits of public education
I recognize the benefits of an educated public and agree that one of the responsibilities of government is to encourage that state of affairs, but to assume that the only way for the government to achieve that is to build and maintain nonfunctional institutions that only partly succeed in patriotic propaganda seems rather wasteful of resources (good money after bad, and all that).
It's my assertion that we could probably afford to try some other things out. And we are (http://www.caliva.org/ again). The Gates foundation is helping, so I applaud Bill for that.
Regards,
Ross
Not sure what you mean. I was in a public school from k-12. I'm looking at my neighbor's well adjusted homeschooled kids and seeing a much better way of doing things.
(The fact that my fiance is a PhD in education doesn't hurt).
Does that clear up my posting?
Regards,
Ross
Well, I think EJB config files have a lot wrong with them, starting with the EJB architecture, so you won't find me defending them :)
:)
You're right that we're using the term "config file" to mean different things, and my confusion is hereby cleared up.
One advantage that XML has over other approaches that must be included: the syntax, though heavy, is widely understood. In antlr, you have the power to create a "great, new config file language" (just using config files as an example), but other people (including IT people where the system ends up being deployed) will have to understand and maintain those files and probably don't want to learn something new when XML will suffice.
As for XML API's, DOM blows pretty hard. There's just no two ways around that. SAX parsers can actually be pretty cool, but antlr is absolutely more fun to work with (in part because of the enormously increased syntactic capture ability). Too bad "more fun" isn't usually a compelling argument to those specifying requirements...
Regards,
Ross
I've seen XML used for quite a while in a number of completely inappropriate situations such as configuration data
Let me start this off by saying that I'm no fanboy of XML. If anything, I'm the local "get XML away from me" person.
But config files are one place that I actually like XML. And I like it because these files are (1) typically fairly small and (2) I don't want to have to write and debug another lexer/parser. I have a utility (castor) that handles the parser for me based on the objects I hand it. When I want to find out what the config has been set to, I ask castor for the object graph from the config file resource and I have my objects. If I want to allow users to change configuration information, the use case changes the objects, I push the objects to castor, the file is updated. There's simply no effort involved.
XML is slow, verbose, and is very easy to make unreadable, but none of these downsides affect its utility as a config file manager.
What does it allow me to do that a decent Lexer and Parser does not?
Well, my answer sounds trite: XML (with toys) gives you access to stream data without needing to put in the effort to make a lexer/parser work. Again, don't get me wrong, I think antlr is great, but it is not trivial to understand exactly what parse error caused the wrong token to be emitted. When I want simple and heavy, I'll concede to XML.
Regards,
Ross
I don't think I've met an eleven year old who will gladly self-study algebra in my life.
You've never seen a homeschooled kid then. You need to burn the thirst for learning out of kids, which is one thing our public school program does very well and very quickly.
There is also a second, important goal to public education in my mind. [...] it is one of the few times during the formative periods of your life that your are forced to meet and socialize with your peers in different socioeconomic classes.
The social lessons that kids learn in public schools are the most petty, destructive, and mean spirited lessons that we could possibly give to children. The home schooled kids in my neighborhood seem much better adjusted, able to be geeks or nerds without the social pressure to not achieve or the bully's daily demands.
Admittedly, my experience is anecdotal, but I hated my experiences in public schools exactly because of the social situation that I didn't know how to play (and never developed the skill to fit into). My neighbor's kids understand what I disliked, but just don't have equivalent experiences in their social lives. These kids play with friends they've choosen from around them and from children living farther away, usually in the homeschool network. They still have fights with their friends, they still build ingroups and outgroups, they still have to deal with other children, it's just not in the context of the enforced babysitting of public school.
Regards,
Ross
Most companies in India are certified CMM level 5 (the highest level) using the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) conceptual maturity model.
:)
I worked with a "CMM Level 5" outsourcing company for the last year. When I visited the office to mentor the team on the software we were developing, I found absolutely none of the "learning organization" features that I would expect from a CMM Level 3 organization. Heck, I couldn't even find the process improvement awareness that I would expect from a CMM Level 2 organization.
They hired the people they could find and provided them with good equipment and effective communication. That was pretty much it. The amount of process mentoring going on was minimal. Most of the team crosstalk was about acquiring certifications and skills, and even that was pretty lightweight stuff. CMM Level 5 was an outright falsehood.
CMM Level 5 is very difficult to achieve, and IMHO, is of dubious value at best. The CMM rulebook denigrates what I firmly believe in: creativity and intelligence are what succeed, not conformity and the willingness to keep cranking at the wheel. NASA has CMM Level 5 teams, but those teams are still using 1980's technology because that's as fast as their process allows them to move.
Color me unimpressed (that's a shade of pale cyan
Regards,
Ross
Effective touchpad usage requires subtle motions of the finger (just barely rolling the finger without actually sliding it, tiny slides, etc.). These motions use the muscles actually located in the finger and the palm of the hand to make these fine adjustments. Someone with Raynaud's Syndrome during an attack has very little blood flow in their fingers and loses a great deal of fine motor control as a result.
Touchpoint controllers (the eraser point), on the other hand, tend to require more force and make more use of the finger control muscles located in the hand and forearm. Most Raynaud's sufferers do not lose control over these muscles during an attack and would not find it difficult to use a touchpoint.
Full admission: I've never been comfortable with touchpads and strongly prefer the eraser button myself. Won't buy a laptop without one. Won't buy a desktop at all...
Regards,
Ross
The point of the idea is you would HAVE to register.
The problem with this idea is that it directly conflicts with the Berne Convention (i.e. international copyright law). The Berne convention specifically prohibits any formality as a condition to the "enjoyment and exercise" of copyright.
In order to make your suggestion credible, you'll have to argue the benefits of the US abandoning the primary international convention on copyrights. Not that there aren't strong arguments for doing exactly that, but be aware that there are also strong arguments for remaining in compliance with the Berne convention. Primarily, we can ask that people in other countries be held to those international laws that we also respect.
Regards,
Ross
Public Nudity: well, I see it as two behaviors. First, there's being nude in public. Then there's waving your cock in kid's faces. They're different behaviors, and one is hurtful while the other is innocent.
Polygamy: I'm not following your point. I don't object to polygamy, per se, and don't believe it should be illegal. However, the LDS's (Mormons) who tend to practice polygamy also tend to marry pubescent teenagers who rarely have a choice in the matter. A practice that I do have a problem with, thus my caveat.
Bestiality: In my mid-20's, I saw some bestiality porn at a stag party and the dog was definitely consenting. Hell, the dog was probably more interested than the girl. Your point is well taken, however, and I do agree that communication issues will make establishing consent more difficult. But it can clearly occur.
Incest: Incest is the act of sex between close relatives. The bottom line is that I'm not going to get upset if Billy has the hots for his aunt and she's more than a little interested herself. As for having kids from an incestuous relationship, well, it's a bad idea. Older women having children is also a severe risk factor for birth defects, and I don't see people charging the legislature trying to stop them from getting pregnant.
Drug Posession/Use: If you can't control yourself when under the influence of a chemical agent and you endanger or harm others as a result of taking it, you have turned a private matter into a public one. I have no problem criminalizing that. What I have a problem with is criminalizing someone smoking a joint to relax after a long day at work and harming nobody.
Regards,
Ross
I agree with you that laws are one attempt to codify morality and that attempts to deny this are largely doomed. However, my agreement should not be taken as agreement that laws are equivalent to morality. There are many ways of subdividing the set of moral statements. One of those is to separate public morality (where your actions have impact on one or more indiscriminate other agents) from private morality (where your actions involve just you and fully-informed, consenting other agents).
To then say that government has no business legislating the public sense of what should be private morality makes a lot more sense to me than the court's statement. To argue that the government has no business legislating public morality is a non-sequiter.
We legislate public sense of morality every day. Stuff like nudity laws, laws against polygamy, beastiality, incest. Laws against drug possession and use. Laws that say you can't lie in court. Laws against certain business practices, laws to make sure you feed your kids and don't mistreat them... etc, etc, etc.
Let's go through a little exercise and divide the issues you raise into issues of public and private morality.
Guess which kinds of laws I'm in favor of repealing? People who violate laws covering private morality harm nobody but possibly themselves by their actions.
Regards,
Ross
Interestingly (to me), the Pentium-M looks well on it's way to squashing the Pentium-4 market.
Pentium-4 was an architectural mistake conceived with the goal of pushing the MHz numbers up (since the mass market appeared to trust MHz over "MHz-equivalent" labels). AMD astonished them by finally making their alternate naming scheme credible and the plan behind the P4 went straight down the crapper.
New x86 development at Intel is largely derivative of the P3 core (the family that includes the P-M) and has largely deprecated the overheating/underperforming P4 core.
Regards,
Ross
There are always "the good old days" and there have been good times for longer than humans have been keeping notes. I believe it's an artifact of the way human memory works. We try (successfully) to forget about bad times and remember the good times. As a result, unless there was some trauma that couldn't be forgotten, right here and now doesn't look quite as shiny and happy as several years ago.
Regards,
Ross
What you answered was: why didn't amiga choose x86.
But the grandparent asked: why can't amiga be used on more common PPC hardware (like Mac)?
Alternate way of asking: why require the ROM when it stops the experimenter (and potential application developer) from pulling a common piece of hardware off of a nearby shelf (a mac CPU) and checking out the new AmigaOS?
I'm certainly not going to spend >$1000 to take a look (even though I owned an A1000, A500 and A2500 back in the day) when I've got two G3's collecting dust in storage that should be adequate...
Regards,
Ross
A little out of order, but...
a) you are ignorant of how the atheistic system works
I would assert that I know exactly what atheism is (not believing in God) and that you have constructed a model of what atheism ought to imply based on what others have told you and some of your own assumptions. Check your assumptions: they don't appear to reflect reality.
b) you choose not to exercise an aspect of the atheistic system
Well, I certainly don't seem to fit the mold of an atheist that you've got ready for me. As it turns out, I don't think you've got any insight that would make me achieving my long-term goals any more likely, so your personal position on morals turns out to be completely irrelevant to me.
[Ross]Self-defense does not impose my morals on you,
[wrf3]Nonsense. The use of force, regarldess of how you pretty it up by calling it self-defense, prevents the other person from acting according to their morality.
Ah. Then you and I are not talking the same language and my last six or so attempts to reply to you have lacked any information (from your perspective). While you choose to frame ethics, morality and force the way you currently do, you will not be able to understand people who self-determine their personal morality.
As such, I don't see any point continuing the conversation.
Have a good one!
Ross
The computer itself seems like a steal for the specs they're claiming but their prices on CF flash are more than a little silly. You can get Sandisk Ultra II 512MB for $60 from any online meta-retailer and these guys are offering an unknown 512MB CF card for $145.
I've seen this kind of thing from several of these kinds of suppliers and I don't quite get it. They don't seem to realize that things like flash are fully commoditized and are still thinking they can get away with a 100% markup...
Oh well, if they can actually sell CF at those prices, then they deserve the money. Kudos for such a sweet, low power, inexpensive computer either way.
Regards,
Ross
I bought a 5mW green laser for easier pointing at star parties, thereby bringing new people into astronomy. The fact that the beam is visible in air is the primary benefit of the green laser pointer.
Perhaps he thought it was harmless to paint an aircraft "way up in the sky", but to paint a low flying helicopter sounds like jackassery to me.
Regards,
Ross
Funnily, I was at the stage of doubting 'other minds' just before becoming a Christian.
.
So was I, but I didn't really resolve the issue until I stopped being a Christian and was able to explore several different metaethical frameworks. The fact that I used to doubt and no longer doubt is probably responsible for the biggest improvements in my life so far.
Not sure on the consistency point. Why do you believe that. Does it help? I suppose you're basically saying that the universe is scientifically understandable?
Sort of. I just mean that I believe the universe behaves rationally, even if I don't always understand exactly why what I'm observing is rational. I'm not into the "scientistic" perspective, that the only truths worth knowing are scientific truths, but the assumption that the universe ultimately "makes sense" means that it's worth my time to make predictions and think about the future.
Aren't singularities inconsistencies - or are they consistent inconsistentcies??!
The physics and metaphysics of singularity aren't clear, even in the cutting edge of physics research. First of all, we don't know if singularities can exist in our universe. Second, if they can exist, are they really a part of our universe or a boundary, beyond which is a different domain? In any case, we can identify portions of the universe which are clearly not influenced by a singularity and expect the universe to behave itself there, which is good enough to validate my belief and let me get on with my life.
Regards,
Ross
The examples are what I picked up in a very quick google search (not being a serious biblical scholar myself). There were hundreds to choose from on the page I found, so I grabbed three that sounded particularly silly.
A garment made from different kinds of thread is verboten in Leviticus 19:19 (different versions make this out to be a sin of different severity, so yours may sound downright gentle on the subject. The New English Version seems the most succinct: "You shall not put on a garment woven with two kinds of yarn").
Regards,
Ross