I hinted a bit at that with my observation that all of the information I have about the universe I have through my senses, with all of their distortions and missing information.
We still don't know the true nature of the universe, but most of us can live happy lives with some wisdom and luck...
Morality is nothing more than personal opinion (for both the Deist and the Atheist). For the Atheist, however, the one absolute that follows from first principles is "might makes right."
Depends what you want in your life (i.e. your personal long-term goals).
If you want joy in your life, as I do, you're going to want to love and be loved by a partner, your children (if you choose to have some), and probably by a group of close friends. If you actually act in a "might makes right" manner, you have zero chance of experiening any of that. People may say they love you and fawn over you to manipulate you and your power, but they'll never love you.
Actions have consequences. Using force to get your way has substantial negative consequences. To some people, these consequences don't matter, however, I don't hear about too many of those people living long guilt-free lives into their old age.
As an aside, Bush Jr. just might be stupid enough to be a counter-example to my assertion (if he believes his own campaign rhetoric, that is)...
But they still are clearly not you, so why should you care?
Good followup, but now you're asking a question of morality, as opposed to the reasoning behind a metaphysical predicate.
Short answer: because it's normal (genetically wired into my brain) to treat other people with respect.
Longer answer (and a better answer for people who don't believe in natural causes of behavior): Because there are substantial negative consequences to behaving in a way that ignores other people's value. I enjoy the company of friends (and find their help useful on occasion), and other people are good at detecting fake friends. I like my freedom, and running people down at stoplights causes uniformed people in cars with flashing lights to lock me up, limiting my freedom.
I believe, though I can't prove, that the universe presented to me by my senses is not an artifact of my own existence but exists separately from me, is consistent and will remain consistent after I am dead. (i.e. the universe isn't a figment of my imagination).
I believe, though I can't prove, that other entities that resemble me in appearance and behavior (people) have the same kind of agency and observer status as myself and therefore have value similar in kind to myself. (i.e. contrary to the assertion of the psychopath, I believe other people really are people).
Once you accept those predicates as lemmas (and variations, like having empathy for the pain of animals, or using tools to enhance your senses), a great number of things become "very likely". However, we don't need to "prove" any of it, because there's very little value to "proven" once you have "really, really likely". All we need is enough consistency to make predictions reliable and you can live a full and happy life in this world. Most/all of the people I've observed actually demanding proof for things are those behaving defensively in a "faith-based knowledge vs. reason-based knowledge" discussion.
Yes, I am an athiest. No, I'm not hostile to Christianity or Christians: I just stopped accepting that there was a need for God and lost interest (except as a hobby of studying myth in literature and culture).
I believe, though I can't prove, that the universe presented to me by my senses is not an artifact of my own existence but exists separately from me, is consistent and will remain consistent after I am dead. (i.e. the universe isn't a figment of my imagination).
I believe, though I can't prove, that other entities that resemble me in appearance and behavior (people) have the same kind of agency and observer status as myself and therefore have value similar in kind to myself. (i.e. contrary to the assertion of the psychopath, I believe other people really are people).
Once you accept those predicates as lemmas (and variations, like having empathy for the pain of animals, or using tools to enhance your senses), a great number of things become "very likely". However, we don't need to "prove" any of it, because there's very little value to "proven" once you have "really, really likely". All we need is enough consistency to make predictions reliable and you can live a full and happy life in this world. Most/all of the people I've observed actually demanding proof for things are those behaving defensively in a "faith-based knowledge vs. reason-based knowledge" discussion.
if you're truly serious about getting into photography, before you go drop $1500 on a DSLR with a good lens, go spend a few hundred and take an intoductory photography class at your local higher-ed institue.
For the auto-didacts in the audience, go buy a couple of good books, an inexpensive camera with full manual controls (Pentax K1000 is great) and go nuts. If you've already got the fancy, shmancy DSLR, set it to "M" and don't change that setting until you're done with the books.
The reviews on Amazon are pretty helpful in selecting appropriate books for your own interests and abilities, but I always recommend "The Camera", "The Negative", and "The Print" by Ansel Adams for early reading on photography. You may not think that all of that info on silver emulsion photography would help with digital cameras, but you'd be wrong...
This is the kind of issue that you take to the University Ombudsman. The Ombudsman is paid to be the student advocate in issues of student-faculty or student-administration conflict.
If your university doesn't have an Ombudsman, find a better university, but I seriously suspect that you do have one and that (s)he can help.
His statement is the best way to evaluate new assertions. If you submit all assertions to the "proven aka 100% confidence" test, you believe nothing, because nothing can actually meet that level of confidence (except for personal existence, thanks to Descarte).
Instead, we determine if new information should be brought into our internal knowledge database (I've heard this called our "schemata") through a process of consistency testing. What we're looking for is consistency with already accepted statements (whether lemmas or conclusions). If the new statement is consistent with what we already know, the new claim is usually accepted without muss or fuss. If the claim is inconsistent, however, more interesting things happen...
We can overlook a few inconsistencies here and there (expecting them to be resolved with more information over time), but rational humans tend not to simultanously accept direct contradictions. Either the originally accepted statement or the new statement that contradicts it or both are in error. If a statement contradicts many accepted facts, a great deal of evidence will be needed to overturn all of those accepted facts and replace them with the new assertion.
Doublethink is often mentioned as an exception at this point, but most examples of "doublethink" that actually happen are really based on a low confidence in the original statement and a willingness to replace one lie with another without too much objection (some call this intelligently choosing your battles).
Getting back to your remark:
You don't get to say "this proof is not sufficient because your claim is incredible".
You are correct, that statement is nonsense, but it is your error that makes it nonsense, not his. To correct your paraphrase: you do get to say, "This evidence is not sufficient because your claim is incredible."
Sorry for the double post. The second bullet is incorrect. I meant to replace it with the last bullet, but forgot to remove the mistaken point before hitting 'Submit'.
Quotes from the abstract of the study you don't realize you're quoting:
The study findings were gathered from police reports and police interviews over a 6 year period in King's County, Washington.... A total of 743 firearm-related deaths occurred during this six-year period, 398 of which (54 percent) occurred in the residence where the firearm was kept.
Of these 398 firearm-related deaths:
There were 333 deaths called suicide, 12 that were called accidental deaths, the nine that were called justifiable homicide, 41 that were called nonjustifiable homicide, and three that Dr. Reay could not decide whether they were suicide or accidental.
Items of note:
96% (333 + 9 + 41) appear to be where the owner of the gun hit exactly what he wated to (whether justifiable or not). And personally, I don't think suicide should be a criminal act if you don't endanger anyone else.
There was no explanation in the study that explained how they determined that a firearm-related death in a household was caused by a gun owned by someone in that household.
The statistical sample was incredibly small (398 cases total).
The population studied is not representative of the US population at large. (Other people obtaining the same police records found that 62% of the homicide cases were black, 52.7% of the households had a member with an arrest record, 31.3% had a history of drug abuse, and 31.8% had a household member who had been hurt in a family fight)
The classification of justified/non-justified did not come from the FBI's uniform crime report or corrected by court cases, but from initial police reports based on their initial assessment. This study is highly atypical in it's use of such limited source material.
There is no explanation or description of events where a gun owner had their own gun used against them or a family member by someone else in even one of the deaths in the survey.
It looks to me like two doctors took numbers from a region including a depressed inner city area riddled with drug crime and extrapolated from the habits of those gun toting drug dealers the habits of all gun owners in the US (and Canada).
The assertion being made doesn't even stand up to minimal examination. After 32 years of mostly suburban existence (with six years of school in the very-low-rent parts of Cincinnati), I personally know two people who have successfully used a gun to defend themselves (neither one killed the attacker, only one fired his weapon). There are fewer accidental deaths from firearms than accidental drownings in swimming pools (about half, actually), and every accidental (and tragic) firearm death is spread all over the evening news, yet I never even heard of a single news story of the guy who tried to defend his home and had his gun stolen and used against him, a family member, or a friend.
If it's happening 43 times as often, shouldn't I have heard of one case yet? Let alone having someone I personally know be affected by the 86 such events that should have happened if the study's findings are to be credited. Reality: Events like that almost never happen. The study is deeply flawed.
For the record, I have two hunting rifles and two pistols.
The war where you are attacked and declare war on your attackers to defend yourself. Iraq did not attack us. No Iraqis attacked us. A group of mostly Saudi civillians attacked us.
When is the right time?
After you are certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are defending yourself against the right party, it may be the right time to strike back.
Someone on the playground got bullied. Joe has been known to be a bully. Should Joe be suspended from school?
Who is the right president?
Someone with sound judgement. Someone who doesn't bring personal vendetta's to the job. Someone who thinks that your sources of intelligence are to inform you, not to confirm a priori beliefs. Someone who keeps their religion private in issues of the country. Someone who doesn't think that 42% of the popular vote means a mandate from the masses. Someone who isn't going to practice more of the insane foreign policy that caused 20 people to hate America enough to kill themselves and 3000 innocents.
How long do we wait before fighting back against terrorists?
Until someone is in the process of committing a violent crime, action to punish them is prior restraint. If we go overseas and punish a foreign national, it's aggression against a sovereign nation. If we declare war with no actual reason to declare war, our actions are reprehensible and require punishment in a court of law (i.e. I'm of the opinion that Bush should be tried for war crimes).
If we don't bring them to justice do you really think they will stop trying to attack us?
If you honestly think that the children, brothers, and friends of the dead that we killed have not been made into terrorists by our actions, then you are as stupid as the previous statement sounds.
"Bringing them to justice" is just turning more foreign people who don't care about us into foreign people who hate us. None of the recent actions of the US under Bush have done anything but increase the threat of terrorist attack.
I, for one, do feel safer...
??? This only way this is possible is if you regularly watch Fox News (a.k.a. Bush's press office). Here's a little hint: Just because the President of the United States says something doesn't make it true.
I'll disagree with them and say that, if you're in a battleground state, your vote for a third party candidate is half as useful as a vote for the lesser of two evils.
True, you're not voting for either of two evils, so neither of them can count your vote as sanctioning their decisions (should they win), but by voting for the lesser of two evils, not only do you deny your vote to the more evil, but you add it to his opposition's totals.
Thereby increasing the chances still more that the lesser of two evils will be elected into office. So your vote for a third party candidate is only half as useful as it might be in defeating Bush. But you get to sleep better at night knowing that you didn't voice your support for either of the morally bankrupt individuals in the lead for President of the US.
Of course, if you're in a state that's already guaranteed to either Kerry or Bush (as I am in California), your vote is much more useful as a vote for a third party (and clearly expressing your discontent with either of the two choices presented to you) than anything else.
us in the U.S. have had it beaten over our heads that thinking America is a good country is a bad way to think
Actually, I only hear that from Bush supporters who feel that any criticism of the US government (present or historical) or US foreign policy is the same as bashing the whole country.
It's not. You don't have to be proud of everything the US has done to be a patriot. You just have to keep an eagle eye out to make sure that what you can make better you do make better. I've got a lot of problems with how native Americans were treated in the days of westward expansion. I've got a lot of problems with how the CIA has been willing to kill to support autocratic dictactors over democratically elected leaders as long as the dictator is friendly to US interests. But I still love this country.
In fact, that love is the reason why I'm so upset about the actions of the government that claims to represent me. If I didn't give a damn about the US, I probably wouldn't give a damn about what Bush does to the rest of the world.
The right wing really lives in a strange universe of their own construction. To rationalize the 50% of the country that completely disagrees with them, they've invented beliefs for the opposition that don't even make sense in their world view. Don't let me interrupt your strawman creation, but the opposition doesn't hate America, they (and I) just don't think it's being all it can be. But we're hopeful for the future.
Also, if you're already ripping apart an asteroid for valuable materials, don't forget that mass itself is a valuable material (especially in this enterprise). Pull the slag together into 10 ton pellets, slowly move them with solar sails and assemble an artificial asteroid in earth orbit out of the waste material from the mining operation.
You eliminate a lot of risks with the piecemeal approach: Single losses of pellets to accidental re-entry are not catastrophic risks to the earth (though could be bad for that city block if the pellet fails to break up and is misdirected away from the Pacific ocean). Delta-v's for in-transit pellets are long and slow which allows for lots of time to correct if the earth approach has a worst case failure.
But now we've got a chicken and egg problem. You need to get a asteroid processing system in solar orbit capable of reducing an asteroid to 10 ton pellets and sailing them back to earth without the benefit of the best way to lift it into orbit... I'm sure we'll find a way to get this started however...:)
Your design is a variant of a device I've heard called the Forward Slingshot somelinks. Which I first heard described by Robert L. Forward. Congrats are in order for co-inventing and possibly improving upon such an original concept.
I also feel that this is one of the most practical means of getting things into orbit.
An alternative means of powering the slingshot is to deliver mass (cargo) down the energy well, though you'll have to deliver enough cargo to overcome the cost of raising the next outbound payload along with all of the air friction losses on both transfers. If you're taking apart a second asteroid for raw materials, however, you'll probalby be able to find enough mass to make this practical (and it radically increases the safety of deorbiting the inbound payload, helping the practicality of that enterprise as well). A third advantage of this approach is improved stabilization of the tether during the descent phase.
So, one of the best aeronautical engineers, and a damned good pilot BOTH share the same opinion, but unnamed folks on the ground disagree... yup, solid reporting there.
It's called a financial conflict of interest, and all of the sources on the "it's no problem" side have it. Besides, Rutan is a good aeronautical engineer who did pretty good in kitplane and subsonic passenger aircraft design. His design submissions for military contracts (along with his now crashed pylon racer) all suffered from various instabilities in high speed flight.
Rutan isn't quite as smart as he thinks he is and has a large quantity of money on the line here. Either issue would cause me to consider his statements carefully. His test pilot has a large quantity of money on the line, but should be smarter than he's acting. After all, his ass is on the line too. Just because the founder and lead pilot of Scaled Composites both assured the press that Scaled Composites's X-Prize contender is A-OK, doesn't mean I have to accept their assurances.
With all of that said, I hope 1) the roll is due to a minor control failure (not a systemic design problem) 2) with two datapoints, they were able to figure it out and fix it and 3) the next flight is a roaring success.
Except that banning widespread gun usage doesn't correlate well with low violence or even gun violence. Switzerland and Canada have higher gun ownership rates than the US but lower crime and lower gun violence rates. Mexico has basically banned guns, but has among the world's highest crime rates.
I know the guns are a very visible thing to blame, but the obsessive focus on eliminating guns doesn't actually help much with the problems of crime or violence. Other aspects of a culture have a much larger impact on crime rates than gun ownership (hint: the US drug war and the criminal population that can develop with such a huge black market to fund it).
So you can get down off your high horse about your "civilized" country now. Must be nice to be able to sit there and criticize from the sideline like that. Not that I don't appreciate Portugal, cause I really really like the '97 port vintages... mmm... port...
To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
IANAA (Accountant) but I went through this process in 2001, so if the tax laws haven't changed too much in three years, here's how to avoid the crushing tax burden.
If the stock options are granted as ISOs (Incentive Stock Options) and you exercise the options immediately (before they're worth anything) and you file the right IRS form within 30 days of your exercise (don't remember the form number, but any CPA will know) and you wait at least two years between option exercise and selling them, then you will get taxed upon sale at the capital gains rate for the difference between exercise price and sale price.
Otherwise, if the value of the shares is more than $35k or so (probably higher by now), you fall into AMT, which can be very bad as you will owe taxes on the value of the shares, usually long before you have the opportunity to sell them.
That's what I meant: when you're learning to hover, there are many times it looks like the helicopter is hanging from the end of a line held by the devil.
The heli starts to drift to the right, you bank to the left and increase throttle a little, but you overcompensate and the heli rises while overshooting the zero velocity point you were hoping to hit. You drop the throttle a little and bank back to the right as the helicopter slides back down and to the left. Repeat until you get the right balance (fairly long time).
What's happening is that the pilot is overcompensating for the effects of slight wind currents on the heli. Because he's overcompensating in two dimensions, it looks like the heli is swinging around the end of a string.
In fact, that's the exact observation that my fiancee made when she watched me learning to hover...
No need. It's only 1/8 the weight of a kit you can buy, build, and fly yourself for a few c-bills: Helistar Micro Helicopter
And if you've ever tried to learn how to hover a fixed pitch micro helicopter, you'll swear to god that there's a demon yanking on it with a string. Further, fixed pitch helicopters get harder and harder to fly the smaller they get, so I'm not suprised that hover isn't completely smooth, even in a controlled environment.
As someone who owns and flies a micro-helicopter that's a bit bigger still, the video looked completely credible and believable. It looked like my copter did when I was learning to hover.
Well, I read every page of "Battlefield Earth" and it put me off LRon's writing forever. Even the stuff he wrote posthumously (ahem). At some point about halfway through, I became aware that finishing the book had become a personal challenge akin to cutting off my own arm with a rusty butter knife.
I have never read a more preposterous or worse story before or since that week. To classify it as science fiction weakens the literary credibilty of the entire genre.
If the movie was a "bad adaptation" of the book, then I can completely understand the universal revulsion of everyone who has seen it. I admit to watching five minutes of it on HBO before figuring out what in the hell I was watching and nearly breaking the remote control in half trying to change the channel moments later...
Well, it seems you're well informed about the conventional wisdom in this area. The problem is that this idea that consistency aids maintenance has never really been proven.
Actual proof is rarely available when you get into sciences, especially the "soft sciences" including psychology. If you want to get quantitative data on how source code organization may affect ease of perception, you're going to pay for the study yourself or wait for a very long while. Nothing is actually "proved" around statements like this one. So consensus based on anecdotal evidence is used as a proxy for evidence and we keep going.
In this case, in the experience of people who have had to maintain software projects they did not start, source code that is organized the same way from file to file takes a less time to understand than code which reflects a dozen different styles across the code base. Since the conventional wisdom in this case matches very closely with my personal experience, I'll stay with it until compelling evidence is presented that the conventional wisdom is wrong.
For an alternate view, try adopting a convention that everybody on the team hates. If consistency is all that matters, then it should work fine. The problem is that the alpha programmers won't get their way.
Strawman, and not a very good one.
Apparently, you missed my paragraph on how to select conventions. Conventions are normally adopted under the principle of "least argument". If everybody likes a convention, we use it. If nobody likes a convention, we don't use it. A limited-time discussion followed by a vote works great to fulfill this goal. Second, conventions are not all created equal and if "everybody on the team hates" a convention, odds are that using the proposed convention is actually a bad idea, not just contrary to the desires of the alpha programmers. If you're all using a bad convention (50 spaces per indent), the value of consistency is outweighed by the cost of the poor convention.
Hire smart people. Then, expect them to work together and trust them to be smart. If your top programmers don't like something, there's probably a good reason behind their objections.
Why? The point of the first post was not to argue all issues around conventions but to explain why they're there. The second post was to respond to an occasionally raised objection by those who really think their way is the right way.
I tend to avoid this whole line of argument by interviewing for A players. One side effect of being an A player just happens to be an almost automatic ability to adjust to conventions.
Slashdot Mirror
I hinted a bit at that with my observation that all of the information I have about the universe I have through my senses, with all of their distortions and missing information.
We still don't know the true nature of the universe, but most of us can live happy lives with some wisdom and luck...
Regards,
Ross
Morality is nothing more than personal opinion (for both the Deist and the Atheist). For the Atheist, however, the one absolute that follows from first principles is "might makes right."
Depends what you want in your life (i.e. your personal long-term goals).
If you want joy in your life, as I do, you're going to want to love and be loved by a partner, your children (if you choose to have some), and probably by a group of close friends. If you actually act in a "might makes right" manner, you have zero chance of experiening any of that. People may say they love you and fawn over you to manipulate you and your power, but they'll never love you.
Actions have consequences. Using force to get your way has substantial negative consequences. To some people, these consequences don't matter, however, I don't hear about too many of those people living long guilt-free lives into their old age.
As an aside, Bush Jr. just might be stupid enough to be a counter-example to my assertion (if he believes his own campaign rhetoric, that is)...
Regards,
Ross
But they still are clearly not you, so why should you care?
Good followup, but now you're asking a question of morality, as opposed to the reasoning behind a metaphysical predicate.
Short answer: because it's normal (genetically wired into my brain) to treat other people with respect.
Longer answer (and a better answer for people who don't believe in natural causes of behavior): Because there are substantial negative consequences to behaving in a way that ignores other people's value. I enjoy the company of friends (and find their help useful on occasion), and other people are good at detecting fake friends. I like my freedom, and running people down at stoplights causes uniformed people in cars with flashing lights to lock me up, limiting my freedom.
Regards,
Ross
To be a little more constructive than the parent:
I believe, though I can't prove, that the universe presented to me by my senses is not an artifact of my own existence but exists separately from me, is consistent and will remain consistent after I am dead. (i.e. the universe isn't a figment of my imagination).
I believe, though I can't prove, that other entities that resemble me in appearance and behavior (people) have the same kind of agency and observer status as myself and therefore have value similar in kind to myself. (i.e. contrary to the assertion of the psychopath, I believe other people really are people).
Once you accept those predicates as lemmas (and variations, like having empathy for the pain of animals, or using tools to enhance your senses), a great number of things become "very likely". However, we don't need to "prove" any of it, because there's very little value to "proven" once you have "really, really likely". All we need is enough consistency to make predictions reliable and you can live a full and happy life in this world. Most/all of the people I've observed actually demanding proof for things are those behaving defensively in a "faith-based knowledge vs. reason-based knowledge" discussion.
Yes, I am an athiest. No, I'm not hostile to Christianity or Christians: I just stopped accepting that there was a need for God and lost interest (except as a hobby of studying myth in literature and culture).
Regards,
Ross
I believe, though I can't prove, that the universe presented to me by my senses is not an artifact of my own existence but exists separately from me, is consistent and will remain consistent after I am dead. (i.e. the universe isn't a figment of my imagination).
I believe, though I can't prove, that other entities that resemble me in appearance and behavior (people) have the same kind of agency and observer status as myself and therefore have value similar in kind to myself. (i.e. contrary to the assertion of the psychopath, I believe other people really are people).
Once you accept those predicates as lemmas (and variations, like having empathy for the pain of animals, or using tools to enhance your senses), a great number of things become "very likely". However, we don't need to "prove" any of it, because there's very little value to "proven" once you have "really, really likely". All we need is enough consistency to make predictions reliable and you can live a full and happy life in this world. Most/all of the people I've observed actually demanding proof for things are those behaving defensively in a "faith-based knowledge vs. reason-based knowledge" discussion.
Regards,
Ross
if you're truly serious about getting into photography, before you go drop $1500 on a DSLR with a good lens, go spend a few hundred and take an intoductory photography class at your local higher-ed institue.
For the auto-didacts in the audience, go buy a couple of good books, an inexpensive camera with full manual controls (Pentax K1000 is great) and go nuts. If you've already got the fancy, shmancy DSLR, set it to "M" and don't change that setting until you're done with the books.
The reviews on Amazon are pretty helpful in selecting appropriate books for your own interests and abilities, but I always recommend "The Camera", "The Negative", and "The Print" by Ansel Adams for early reading on photography. You may not think that all of that info on silver emulsion photography would help with digital cameras, but you'd be wrong...
Regards,
Ross
This is the kind of issue that you take to the University Ombudsman. The Ombudsman is paid to be the student advocate in issues of student-faculty or student-administration conflict.
If your university doesn't have an Ombudsman, find a better university, but I seriously suspect that you do have one and that (s)he can help.
Regards,
Rossifer
The closest equivalent is SD card is 1GB, there is no 2GB version.
I didn't think so either until a web search yesterday yielded this 2GB SD card.
Amazing to me that a company would release such a product without any declarations about how badass they are...
Regards,
Ross
This is a ridiculus statement to make.
His statement is the best way to evaluate new assertions. If you submit all assertions to the "proven aka 100% confidence" test, you believe nothing, because nothing can actually meet that level of confidence (except for personal existence, thanks to Descarte).
Instead, we determine if new information should be brought into our internal knowledge database (I've heard this called our "schemata") through a process of consistency testing. What we're looking for is consistency with already accepted statements (whether lemmas or conclusions). If the new statement is consistent with what we already know, the new claim is usually accepted without muss or fuss. If the claim is inconsistent, however, more interesting things happen...
We can overlook a few inconsistencies here and there (expecting them to be resolved with more information over time), but rational humans tend not to simultanously accept direct contradictions. Either the originally accepted statement or the new statement that contradicts it or both are in error. If a statement contradicts many accepted facts, a great deal of evidence will be needed to overturn all of those accepted facts and replace them with the new assertion.
Doublethink is often mentioned as an exception at this point, but most examples of "doublethink" that actually happen are really based on a low confidence in the original statement and a willingness to replace one lie with another without too much objection (some call this intelligently choosing your battles).
Getting back to your remark:
You don't get to say "this proof is not sufficient because your claim is incredible".
You are correct, that statement is nonsense, but it is your error that makes it nonsense, not his. To correct your paraphrase: you do get to say, "This evidence is not sufficient because your claim is incredible."
Regards,
Ross
Sorry for the double post. The second bullet is incorrect. I meant to replace it with the last bullet, but forgot to remove the mistaken point before hitting 'Submit'.
Whoops!
Regards,
Ross
The study findings were gathered from police reports and police interviews over a 6 year period in King's County, Washington.
Of these 398 firearm-related deaths:
There were 333 deaths called suicide, 12 that were called accidental deaths, the nine that were called justifiable homicide, 41 that were called nonjustifiable homicide, and three that Dr. Reay could not decide whether they were suicide or accidental.
Items of note:
It looks to me like two doctors took numbers from a region including a depressed inner city area riddled with drug crime and extrapolated from the habits of those gun toting drug dealers the habits of all gun owners in the US (and Canada).
The assertion being made doesn't even stand up to minimal examination. After 32 years of mostly suburban existence (with six years of school in the very-low-rent parts of Cincinnati), I personally know two people who have successfully used a gun to defend themselves (neither one killed the attacker, only one fired his weapon). There are fewer accidental deaths from firearms than accidental drownings in swimming pools (about half, actually), and every accidental (and tragic) firearm death is spread all over the evening news, yet I never even heard of a single news story of the guy who tried to defend his home and had his gun stolen and used against him, a family member, or a friend.
If it's happening 43 times as often, shouldn't I have heard of one case yet? Let alone having someone I personally know be affected by the 86 such events that should have happened if the study's findings are to be credited. Reality: Events like that almost never happen. The study is deeply flawed.
For the record, I have two hunting rifles and two pistols.
Regards,
Ross
So what is the right war?
The war where you are attacked and declare war on your attackers to defend yourself. Iraq did not attack us. No Iraqis attacked us. A group of mostly Saudi civillians attacked us.
When is the right time?
After you are certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are defending yourself against the right party, it may be the right time to strike back.
Someone on the playground got bullied. Joe has been known to be a bully. Should Joe be suspended from school?
Who is the right president?
Someone with sound judgement. Someone who doesn't bring personal vendetta's to the job. Someone who thinks that your sources of intelligence are to inform you, not to confirm a priori beliefs. Someone who keeps their religion private in issues of the country. Someone who doesn't think that 42% of the popular vote means a mandate from the masses. Someone who isn't going to practice more of the insane foreign policy that caused 20 people to hate America enough to kill themselves and 3000 innocents.
How long do we wait before fighting back against terrorists?
Until someone is in the process of committing a violent crime, action to punish them is prior restraint. If we go overseas and punish a foreign national, it's aggression against a sovereign nation. If we declare war with no actual reason to declare war, our actions are reprehensible and require punishment in a court of law (i.e. I'm of the opinion that Bush should be tried for war crimes).
If we don't bring them to justice do you really think they will stop trying to attack us?
If you honestly think that the children, brothers, and friends of the dead that we killed have not been made into terrorists by our actions, then you are as stupid as the previous statement sounds.
"Bringing them to justice" is just turning more foreign people who don't care about us into foreign people who hate us. None of the recent actions of the US under Bush have done anything but increase the threat of terrorist attack.
I, for one, do feel safer...
??? This only way this is possible is if you regularly watch Fox News (a.k.a. Bush's press office). Here's a little hint: Just because the President of the United States says something doesn't make it true.
Regards,
Ross
I'll disagree with them and say that, if you're in a battleground state, your vote for a third party candidate is half as useful as a vote for the lesser of two evils.
True, you're not voting for either of two evils, so neither of them can count your vote as sanctioning their decisions (should they win), but by voting for the lesser of two evils, not only do you deny your vote to the more evil, but you add it to his opposition's totals.
Thereby increasing the chances still more that the lesser of two evils will be elected into office. So your vote for a third party candidate is only half as useful as it might be in defeating Bush. But you get to sleep better at night knowing that you didn't voice your support for either of the morally bankrupt individuals in the lead for President of the US.
Of course, if you're in a state that's already guaranteed to either Kerry or Bush (as I am in California), your vote is much more useful as a vote for a third party (and clearly expressing your discontent with either of the two choices presented to you) than anything else.
Regards,
Ross
us in the U.S. have had it beaten over our heads that thinking America is a good country is a bad way to think
Actually, I only hear that from Bush supporters who feel that any criticism of the US government (present or historical) or US foreign policy is the same as bashing the whole country.
It's not. You don't have to be proud of everything the US has done to be a patriot. You just have to keep an eagle eye out to make sure that what you can make better you do make better. I've got a lot of problems with how native Americans were treated in the days of westward expansion. I've got a lot of problems with how the CIA has been willing to kill to support autocratic dictactors over democratically elected leaders as long as the dictator is friendly to US interests. But I still love this country.
In fact, that love is the reason why I'm so upset about the actions of the government that claims to represent me. If I didn't give a damn about the US, I probably wouldn't give a damn about what Bush does to the rest of the world.
The right wing really lives in a strange universe of their own construction. To rationalize the 50% of the country that completely disagrees with them, they've invented beliefs for the opposition that don't even make sense in their world view. Don't let me interrupt your strawman creation, but the opposition doesn't hate America, they (and I) just don't think it's being all it can be. But we're hopeful for the future.
Regards,
Ross
Solar sails, time, and Newton are your friends.
:)
Also, if you're already ripping apart an asteroid for valuable materials, don't forget that mass itself is a valuable material (especially in this enterprise). Pull the slag together into 10 ton pellets, slowly move them with solar sails and assemble an artificial asteroid in earth orbit out of the waste material from the mining operation.
You eliminate a lot of risks with the piecemeal approach: Single losses of pellets to accidental re-entry are not catastrophic risks to the earth (though could be bad for that city block if the pellet fails to break up and is misdirected away from the Pacific ocean). Delta-v's for in-transit pellets are long and slow which allows for lots of time to correct if the earth approach has a worst case failure.
But now we've got a chicken and egg problem. You need to get a asteroid processing system in solar orbit capable of reducing an asteroid to 10 ton pellets and sailing them back to earth without the benefit of the best way to lift it into orbit... I'm sure we'll find a way to get this started however...
Regards,
Ross
Your design is a variant of a device I've heard called the Forward Slingshot some links. Which I first heard described by Robert L. Forward. Congrats are in order for co-inventing and possibly improving upon such an original concept.
I also feel that this is one of the most practical means of getting things into orbit.
An alternative means of powering the slingshot is to deliver mass (cargo) down the energy well, though you'll have to deliver enough cargo to overcome the cost of raising the next outbound payload along with all of the air friction losses on both transfers. If you're taking apart a second asteroid for raw materials, however, you'll probalby be able to find enough mass to make this practical (and it radically increases the safety of deorbiting the inbound payload, helping the practicality of that enterprise as well). A third advantage of this approach is improved stabilization of the tether during the descent phase.
Regards,
Ross
So, one of the best aeronautical engineers, and a damned good pilot BOTH share the same opinion, but unnamed folks on the ground disagree... yup, solid reporting there.
It's called a financial conflict of interest, and all of the sources on the "it's no problem" side have it. Besides, Rutan is a good aeronautical engineer who did pretty good in kitplane and subsonic passenger aircraft design. His design submissions for military contracts (along with his now crashed pylon racer) all suffered from various instabilities in high speed flight.
Rutan isn't quite as smart as he thinks he is and has a large quantity of money on the line here. Either issue would cause me to consider his statements carefully. His test pilot has a large quantity of money on the line, but should be smarter than he's acting. After all, his ass is on the line too. Just because the founder and lead pilot of Scaled Composites both assured the press that Scaled Composites's X-Prize contender is A-OK, doesn't mean I have to accept their assurances.
With all of that said, I hope 1) the roll is due to a minor control failure (not a systemic design problem) 2) with two datapoints, they were able to figure it out and fix it and 3) the next flight is a roaring success.
Regards,
Ross
Except that banning widespread gun usage doesn't correlate well with low violence or even gun violence. Switzerland and Canada have higher gun ownership rates than the US but lower crime and lower gun violence rates. Mexico has basically banned guns, but has among the world's highest crime rates.
I know the guns are a very visible thing to blame, but the obsessive focus on eliminating guns doesn't actually help much with the problems of crime or violence. Other aspects of a culture have a much larger impact on crime rates than gun ownership (hint: the US drug war and the criminal population that can develop with such a huge black market to fund it).
So you can get down off your high horse about your "civilized" country now. Must be nice to be able to sit there and criticize from the sideline like that. Not that I don't appreciate Portugal, cause I really really like the '97 port vintages... mmm... port...
Regards,
Ross
To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
-- Theodore Roosevelt
(any typos or misspellings are mine)
IANAA (Accountant) but I went through this process in 2001, so if the tax laws haven't changed too much in three years, here's how to avoid the crushing tax burden.
If the stock options are granted as ISOs (Incentive Stock Options) and you exercise the options immediately (before they're worth anything) and you file the right IRS form within 30 days of your exercise (don't remember the form number, but any CPA will know) and you wait at least two years between option exercise and selling them, then you will get taxed upon sale at the capital gains rate for the difference between exercise price and sale price.
Otherwise, if the value of the shares is more than $35k or so (probably higher by now), you fall into AMT, which can be very bad as you will owe taxes on the value of the shares, usually long before you have the opportunity to sell them.
Regards,
Ross
That's what I meant: when you're learning to hover, there are many times it looks like the helicopter is hanging from the end of a line held by the devil.
The heli starts to drift to the right, you bank to the left and increase throttle a little, but you overcompensate and the heli rises while overshooting the zero velocity point you were hoping to hit. You drop the throttle a little and bank back to the right as the helicopter slides back down and to the left. Repeat until you get the right balance (fairly long time).
What's happening is that the pilot is overcompensating for the effects of slight wind currents on the heli. Because he's overcompensating in two dimensions, it looks like the heli is swinging around the end of a string.
In fact, that's the exact observation that my fiancee made when she watched me learning to hover...
Regards,
Ross
No need. It's only 1/8 the weight of a kit you can buy, build, and fly yourself for a few c-bills: Helistar Micro Helicopter
And if you've ever tried to learn how to hover a fixed pitch micro helicopter, you'll swear to god that there's a demon yanking on it with a string. Further, fixed pitch helicopters get harder and harder to fly the smaller they get, so I'm not suprised that hover isn't completely smooth, even in a controlled environment.
As someone who owns and flies a micro-helicopter that's a bit bigger still, the video looked completely credible and believable. It looked like my copter did when I was learning to hover.
Regards,
Ross
Well, I read every page of "Battlefield Earth" and it put me off LRon's writing forever. Even the stuff he wrote posthumously (ahem). At some point about halfway through, I became aware that finishing the book had become a personal challenge akin to cutting off my own arm with a rusty butter knife.
I have never read a more preposterous or worse story before or since that week. To classify it as science fiction weakens the literary credibilty of the entire genre.
If the movie was a "bad adaptation" of the book, then I can completely understand the universal revulsion of everyone who has seen it. I admit to watching five minutes of it on HBO before figuring out what in the hell I was watching and nearly breaking the remote control in half trying to change the channel moments later...
Regards,
Ross
Well, it seems you're well informed about the conventional wisdom in this area. The problem is that this idea that consistency aids maintenance has never really been proven.
Actual proof is rarely available when you get into sciences, especially the "soft sciences" including psychology. If you want to get quantitative data on how source code organization may affect ease of perception, you're going to pay for the study yourself or wait for a very long while. Nothing is actually "proved" around statements like this one. So consensus based on anecdotal evidence is used as a proxy for evidence and we keep going.
In this case, in the experience of people who have had to maintain software projects they did not start, source code that is organized the same way from file to file takes a less time to understand than code which reflects a dozen different styles across the code base. Since the conventional wisdom in this case matches very closely with my personal experience, I'll stay with it until compelling evidence is presented that the conventional wisdom is wrong.
For an alternate view, try adopting a convention that everybody on the team hates. If consistency is all that matters, then it should work fine. The problem is that the alpha programmers won't get their way.
Strawman, and not a very good one.
Apparently, you missed my paragraph on how to select conventions. Conventions are normally adopted under the principle of "least argument". If everybody likes a convention, we use it. If nobody likes a convention, we don't use it. A limited-time discussion followed by a vote works great to fulfill this goal. Second, conventions are not all created equal and if "everybody on the team hates" a convention, odds are that using the proposed convention is actually a bad idea, not just contrary to the desires of the alpha programmers. If you're all using a bad convention (50 spaces per indent), the value of consistency is outweighed by the cost of the poor convention.
Hire smart people. Then, expect them to work together and trust them to be smart. If your top programmers don't like something, there's probably a good reason behind their objections.
Regards,
Ross
Why? The point of the first post was not to argue all issues around conventions but to explain why they're there. The second post was to respond to an occasionally raised objection by those who really think their way is the right way.
I tend to avoid this whole line of argument by interviewing for A players. One side effect of being an A player just happens to be an almost automatic ability to adjust to conventions.
So I rarely if ever hear it any more...
Regards,
Ross