There actually is a different name for it: ephebophilia.
pedophilia: sexual attraction to pre-pubescent individuals.
hebephilia: sexual attraction to pubescent individuals.
ephebophilia: sexual attraction to post-pubescent but still adolescent individuals (teenagers).
I freely admit to being a ephebophile (aka a "Dirty Old Man"). Teenage girls have impossibly perfect feminine bodies with all the right curves. The whole cheerleader fantasy is an ephebophilic trope in sexual literature. If you're an ass-man just walking down the street, you will admire the curve of a healthy woman's butt in front of you. If the owner of that butt happens to be 15, you're not a criminal or a pervert, you're just a healthy male with typical interests.
Very importantly: physical attraction does not imply a willingness to seduce or otherwise pursue a teenage girl. Even aside from the fact that I'm committed to a monogamous relationship (with a woman my own age), listening to what passes for conversation between teenagers is more than enough to instantly remind me that I'm admiring the figure of someone who isn't really prepared for sex with an adult. So I try not to be too obvious when admiring the hindquarters of women walking down the street.
Google is a single point of failure because of it's enormous logs of user activity. If Google was to one day say: "Yeah, we're done with the 'don't be evil' thing. It's everyone for themselves!!!" we have an awful lot of data to sell (I work for Google). Every suspicious sequence of things goes to the DOJ. Everything of interest to marketers gets sold off to them... etc.
The problem with that scenario is that that would be it for Google's future. That's the fire sale. Nobody is going to trust Google with anything after that. But it would be a big hit to privacy during the fallout from that one event and that's why Google represents a theoretical "single point of failure".
Now, do I think anything like that is likely? No. Google's employees are at least as fearful of Google's potential as the general public. You wouldn't believe the ration of shit that Google management would get if something like that were afoot. The existing protections around user data are pretty impressive and they're getting stronger every day. If there was a hint that user data protections were being subverted to make a buck, employee morale would be destroyed. Many employees (including me) work here contingent on "Don't be evil." The day Google loses "Don't be evil." is the day 20,000 employees go after that startup they were thinking about or at least warm up their resume.
There are real risks associated with the amount of data that Google has. But if I had to come up with a list of companies/organizations that I might trust with that data, based on past behavior and stated principles, it's a very short list and Google is at the top. I believed this last year (before working for Google) and I am even more confident about it now that I work here.
Are you joking? the day a board of directors would do anything for a reason other than to maximize profits, they would be sued straight away.
Over what time frame?
After World War II, Merck delivered streptomycin to Japan to treat rampant tuberculosis that had arisen in the poverty of the war economy. The Japanese couldn't afford this, so Merck synthesized, shipped, and distributed the drug at it's own substantial expense. Merck shareholders sued against this obviously unprofitable act. The shareholders lost their suit, mostly around two arguments. First, that public goodwill, though difficult to value directly, is an investment in future business. Second, that employee morale can be similarly valued as a long-term investment.
As a fairly new employee of Google, I'll assert that Google has similar motivations. Google relies on the trust of the public for it's long-term profits, so a decision that makes money today but endangers public trust is a bad business decision that would risk the wrath of the shareholders. Second, Google's employees are at least as afraid of what the company could become as the public. If there was even a hint that Google was violating the public trust employee morale would evaporate and one of the big reasons that most of us geeks work there would be gone.
In short, Google is absolutely motivated by forces other than next month's profits and they would morons if they were to sacrifice their long-term interest for short-term profits. Lucky for me, it doesn't look like Google management has any morons. Some idealists, perhaps, who didn't expect the full court press from Microsoft et. al., but that's forgivable under the "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." metric.
Absolutely. And in my opinion, those companies and organizations are "doing it wrong". My point wasn't that there aren't lots of jobs where all you do all day is code, but that anyone with skill and drive should avoid those jobs at all costs.
Each part of the SDLC can be and is divided between different people with very specific responsibilities. Not always the best solution, but sometimes unavoidable in larger corporations.
I'll go further and say that that's never the best solution and that anyone who wants to develop interesting software should make sure that their shadow never darkens the hallway at any of those anonymous corporations. Having a team of skilled craftspeople who work well together is always superior to a role-partitioned group of analysts/managers/coders/testers tossing development artifacts back and forth via channels.
I never imagined sitting in a cubicle for 8+ hours a day doing the same thing every day could be boring.
If you're spending 8 hours a day coding, you're doing it wrong. Hell, if you're spending 8 hours a day doing the any one thing, you're doing it wrong. Coding is exactly one, somewhat valuable part of software development. To implement an effective solution requires that you:
understand the problem (interact with people)
understand the external constraints (interact with people)
design an effective solution to the problem
while designing the solution, design some tests to verify that the problem is solved (and remains solved)
code the effective solution to the problem
teach other team-members about your solution to the problem (interact with people)
IMHO, effective design is the most valuable part of software development, but all of the steps above are important. Coding is just one of those steps. Also, I didn't really mention soliciting feedback (aka code reviews), though on a good team, that would be a part of the last step.
If you've got a CS degree and all you're doing is coding, you wasted about 2-3 years of your life on a four-year degree you didn't need. All you needed was an associate's degree from DeVry and you could be coding. Write software instead. It's much more interesting.
The most important way to "write software" instead of "write code" is to choose a good employer and a good team. Unfortunately, I have no simple advice for how to do that. But don't be satisfied with the first place that offers you a job. If your job seems like a crap job, it probably is. Keep looking until you find a company and a team where you feel valuable.
To be clear, you're saying people should only pay to read a book, see a movie, etc, if they end up liking it?
Sure. It's a tip for an entertaining evening. A gratuity for an excellent performance, if you will. The shame in it is how bad the deal is for the author. I'd much rather send the author/director/lead actor/whoever a "check for $12" myself and cut out the insane distribution scheme. But that's hard to do.
Which is not what he was saying nor the OP. The OP was saying you have to leave your religion if one person or even a substantial group of people who claim to be of your religion does something you don't like.
False. The OP said that if the group is heading in an objectionable direction, dissenters should leave or risk their membership being counted as tacit approval. If the leadership of the organization explicitly or tacitly endorses the objectionable behavior, and you can't change it, it's probably time to go.
It's not important if there's a kook who can claim membership but acts in a way contrary to the organization. You scorn the person, council the person, kick them out, whatever. If you're the oddball though, and the organization is the one being nasty, your continued membership in that case becomes a tacit approval of the problem.
I work for Google, so I'm biased, but here's how I see it.
I thought the whole point of Google's search engine is to (1) show advertising to users
The Google search engine is supposed to be as useful as possible to users so that they will use it. Google adds some compromises to the usability of search (aka ads) so that the resources behind search are paid for along with a healthy profit.
That's the order of priorities as they have been repeatedly described to me.
(2) encourage users to click on sponsored links
Google search provides space where advertisers can pay for space that is simultaneously useful to users (something they're interested in investigating) and to advertisers (a selling opportunity). The first part (useful to users) is what Google is motivated to enforce, because then the ads also support the original statement: "The Google search engine is supposed to be as useful as possible to users so that they will use it."
(3) profile users individually and collectively so as to better sell advertising.
I can't deny that Google uses usage data to improve the quality of search, but I'll assert that (1) everyone at Google is well aware of it's potential for "big brother" type scenarios and (2) everyone at Google is also aware that even a passing hint of misusing personal data would threaten the user trust on which Google's value is based. Google does better when people can trust Google, and I don't believe that an instance of data misuse would stay secret for more than a day. Far too many Googlers work there because they also trust Google's "don't be evil" policy. If Google was to breach user trust, employee trust would also be lost.
In conclusion: yes, Google system software is paying close attention to how you use Google. But no, it's not keeping a dossier on you. the goal of that software is most explicitly not to keep an eye on you, but to provide feedback so that the next time you use Google, it's even more useful to you.
Those lessons you are talking about with regards to asymmetrical warfare don't apply in the case of the second amendment, because it is safe to assume that the US Army would be free to smash any home-grown insurgants flat, without regard to collateral damage, because the battle-front and the home-front would be one and the same.
That is a questionable assumption. You're asking soldiers to attack people who look like them, who speak the same language, who share cultural norms, and who may be acquaintances, family members, or otherwise personally known to them.
I understand that tests of loyalty and willingness to fire under exactly these circumstances have been carried out against all US Military branches. In the study that I read, the Marines had the highest retention, followed by the Coast Guard, then the Air Force and Navy, and finally the Army. Within each branch, the more elite units were much more willing to follow orders than the rank and file. The report I read was based on tests conducted prior to 9/11, so it's very possible that the results would be different today.
What was more interesting to me was the conclusion that a significant fraction of the Army, specifically, would likely go AWOL and support a civillian uprising, providing them with up-to-date skills and all of the various equipment of the US Army (though only man-portable equipment would likely be useful while the rebels used guerrilla tactics). Based only on my personal knowledge, today's soldiers have become pretty burned out and cynical as a group after a tour, but I have no idea if that makes them more or less likely to help a domestic rebellion than the fresh soldiers of eight years ago.
I will never understand why people who are so concerned about the 2nd Amendment tend to be so contemptuous of the other nine in the Bill of Rights, and vice versa. It's all of a piece, folks. If you support all of them, you support freedom. If you pick and choose, then you support freedom only for people who think exactly like you do, which of course is no freedom at all.
That's exactly it in a nutshell. The 2nd Amendment folks think that the other amendments are mostly for uppity liberals, while the ACLU crowd wants to defend the entire Constitution except for that pesky 2nd Amendment. When I'm in conversations with either side, I get looked at like I've got a growth on my face when I suggest that they're all important as a whole and we let any of them be disregarded at our own peril.
The dithering rules drive the brick color rules (this is the rasterizing pass), so there's no conflict there. The strength rules definitely are superseded by the color rules. There's no conflict at all.
The reason the strength rules aren't as important as the color rules is that the strength rules don't affect the structure's integrity all that much. The right way to build the image is at least two layers deep. There's the image layer and then there's a structure layer, tied together with double width bricks scattered throughout the whole. The structure layer definitely disallows vertical edges lining up and provides the actual strength of the project. The only real reason to eliminate edges lining up in the image layer is to reduce the appearance of extraneous lines in the final image.
This problem is linear complexity O(N). And if I know my future co-workers at Google at all, it will be an interview question before the week is out to demonstrate why it's O(N).
1)The union is absolutely positively in favor of changes that benefit TEACHERS and STUDENTS. It cannot be otherwise.
Except that that's wrong. Unions are only in favor of changes that benefit unions. The only way the teacher's union will support a change for teachers or students is if it also benefits the union.
In this country, the teacher's union is one of several huge obstacles preventing our educational system from achieving adequacy. The biggest way it does this? The negotiation of teacher contracts that prevent school systems from firing ineffective staff. It's called tenure, but it's nothing like the process that professors have to go through to obtain academic tenure at the university level.
If a teacher can keep their job for two years, they can't be fired. That is a destructive policy, contrary to the interests of students, contrary to the interests of excellent teachers, but definitely a benefit to the union.
3)The poor state of education today has everything to do with BUDGET CUTS and the slashing of programs that promote critical and creative thinking.
We spend more than ever on a per student basis and yet, we're still fighting to achieve mediocracy. The budget isn't the problem. Private schools achieve better results with less money per pupil (on average).
If you want to retain excellent teachers: 1) fire ineffective teachers, 2) expel troublemaker students quickly, 3) keep class sizes as small as possible. That last point does have a budgetary element, but it's not all that important on it's own. Only as a part of a comprehensive rethinking of education. Rethought without unions.
Finding any one fit of lego blocks to produce a given image is linear complexity (O(N)). It's the same algorithm used in your video card to rasterize a 3-d polygon model or in photoshop to rescale an image. Definitely not NP-hard.
Growing adjacent spaces of matching color to use larger bricks isn't tough either. Use a simple run-length encoding algorithm (second pass, also O(N)) and then when you're breaking up long stretches into brick-sized stretches in the third pass, add a constraint that within a "same color stretch", a brick edge on the current line doesn't line up with a brick edge on the previous line (this pass is also O(N)).
Final cost: 3 * O(N) = O(N)
This guy's approach of determining brick size and location using simulated annealing sounds like a hammer in search of a nail. Definitely cool and fun to write, but probably not necessary to solve the problem.
Biodiesel is not vegetable oil. Vegetable oil is what you pull from the dumpster out back of the chinese food restaurant. Biodiesel is what you get after you blend that vegetable oil with methanol and sodium hydroxide at 150 deg F for an hour, decant away from the glycerin, wash to remove the soap residues, then dry (there are more elaborate processes that result in higher yield, but that's the home recipe).
Any diesel engine will run on 100% biodiesel in conditions where you could use No.2 fuel oil (road diesel). There is a risk that the biodiesel will strip rust from the interior of an old fuel tank and that rust will end up in the first fuel filter, but that's the fault of the moron who let the tank get rusty, not the biodiesel.
Corporations just don't copy and past legal stuff -- EVER.
You haven't worked with too many corporate legal departments. Those guys are masters of grabbing something that's close, giving it a quick scan for the previous parties' names, and presenting it as a beautiful contract that they spent all night getting just perfect for you.
Corporations copy and paste legal stuff all the time. In my experience, that's the normal mode of operation
When I was in India (near Bangladesh) in 2003 and was hiring a driver (who happened to be a Muslim), he did not like hearing that I was an American. He looked me over very suspiciously and asked if I liked President Bush. "I despise Bush." was my honest response. He clapped me on the back and we spent the rest of that first day in the car talking about US politics. Fantastic driver.
In my experience, being honestly curious about the culture and people around me seems to work out great. I love to let other people talk to me about whatever is interesting to them, and since it's invariably something that I know very little about, I get to learn something new.
I went with Tungsten (actually tungsten carbide in a cobalt carrier, like 99% of tungsten rings), and though the list is similar, there are a few differences between my reasons and the list you gave:
Tungsten is heavier than gold.
The finish is incredibly durable. In 20 years, wipe off the fingerprints and the finish is a mirror again.
Hospitals can't cut it off, but most know how to break it (vice grips).
It's got the atomic symbol W and a strange story around that symbol.
Last but not least: it's a neutron reflector (pretty darned geeky).
The intelligent and wealthy argue for welfare, medicare and social security because they know that a tolerable sinecure for the poor makes it very unlikely that they will have to deal with significant social unrest and the possibility of a revolution.
You're getting a return on your money, it's in the increased stability of the society around you that makes continued economic development possible. A part of India's current development problems are rooted in the growing disparities between the new wealthy and those in grinding poverty.
Today, the demand for gasoline is about 18% higher than in 1999. Refined supply is about 8% higher.
Prices are 485% higher.
In which chapter does your Jr High School textbook put that discrepancy?
Okay, so it was a freshman college textbook. Econ 101. The chapter where supply and demand curves may be steeper or shallower in some markets than in other markets.
Specifically, in energy, demand is inelastic. It takes a long time for higher prices to influence demand (people and industries require time to alter their energy consumption). This means that the short-term demand curve is essentially vertical. In the 0.5-1.0 year time frame, energy consumers will pay almost any price for energy while they figure out how to alter their consumption pattern.
So there's no discrepancy at all. Just normal freshman economics.
Slashdot Mirror
There actually is a different name for it: ephebophilia.
I freely admit to being a ephebophile (aka a "Dirty Old Man"). Teenage girls have impossibly perfect feminine bodies with all the right curves. The whole cheerleader fantasy is an ephebophilic trope in sexual literature. If you're an ass-man just walking down the street, you will admire the curve of a healthy woman's butt in front of you. If the owner of that butt happens to be 15, you're not a criminal or a pervert, you're just a healthy male with typical interests.
Very importantly: physical attraction does not imply a willingness to seduce or otherwise pursue a teenage girl. Even aside from the fact that I'm committed to a monogamous relationship (with a woman my own age), listening to what passes for conversation between teenagers is more than enough to instantly remind me that I'm admiring the figure of someone who isn't really prepared for sex with an adult. So I try not to be too obvious when admiring the hindquarters of women walking down the street.
Or even, how badly I speak anyone else's language.
(Sorry for replying to myself there)
Ah say, it's a joke son. A joke. I'll freely admit how horrifically bad I speak anyone else's language.
Google is a single point of failure because of it's enormous logs of user activity. If Google was to one day say: "Yeah, we're done with the 'don't be evil' thing. It's everyone for themselves!!!" we have an awful lot of data to sell (I work for Google). Every suspicious sequence of things goes to the DOJ. Everything of interest to marketers gets sold off to them... etc.
The problem with that scenario is that that would be it for Google's future. That's the fire sale. Nobody is going to trust Google with anything after that. But it would be a big hit to privacy during the fallout from that one event and that's why Google represents a theoretical "single point of failure".
Now, do I think anything like that is likely? No. Google's employees are at least as fearful of Google's potential as the general public. You wouldn't believe the ration of shit that Google management would get if something like that were afoot. The existing protections around user data are pretty impressive and they're getting stronger every day. If there was a hint that user data protections were being subverted to make a buck, employee morale would be destroyed. Many employees (including me) work here contingent on "Don't be evil." The day Google loses "Don't be evil." is the day 20,000 employees go after that startup they were thinking about or at least warm up their resume.
There are real risks associated with the amount of data that Google has. But if I had to come up with a list of companies/organizations that I might trust with that data, based on past behavior and stated principles, it's a very short list and Google is at the top. I believed this last year (before working for Google) and I am even more confident about it now that I work here.
Over what time frame?
After World War II, Merck delivered streptomycin to Japan to treat rampant tuberculosis that had arisen in the poverty of the war economy. The Japanese couldn't afford this, so Merck synthesized, shipped, and distributed the drug at it's own substantial expense. Merck shareholders sued against this obviously unprofitable act. The shareholders lost their suit, mostly around two arguments. First, that public goodwill, though difficult to value directly, is an investment in future business. Second, that employee morale can be similarly valued as a long-term investment.
As a fairly new employee of Google, I'll assert that Google has similar motivations. Google relies on the trust of the public for it's long-term profits, so a decision that makes money today but endangers public trust is a bad business decision that would risk the wrath of the shareholders. Second, Google's employees are at least as afraid of what the company could become as the public. If there was even a hint that Google was violating the public trust employee morale would evaporate and one of the big reasons that most of us geeks work there would be gone.
In short, Google is absolutely motivated by forces other than next month's profits and they would morons if they were to sacrifice their long-term interest for short-term profits. Lucky for me, it doesn't look like Google management has any morons. Some idealists, perhaps, who didn't expect the full court press from Microsoft et. al., but that's forgivable under the "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." metric.
In other news, plural inferior to singular. :)
Absolutely. And in my opinion, those companies and organizations are "doing it wrong". My point wasn't that there aren't lots of jobs where all you do all day is code, but that anyone with skill and drive should avoid those jobs at all costs.
I'll go further and say that that's never the best solution and that anyone who wants to develop interesting software should make sure that their shadow never darkens the hallway at any of those anonymous corporations. Having a team of skilled craftspeople who work well together is always superior to a role-partitioned group of analysts/managers/coders/testers tossing development artifacts back and forth via channels.
If you're spending 8 hours a day coding, you're doing it wrong. Hell, if you're spending 8 hours a day doing the any one thing, you're doing it wrong. Coding is exactly one, somewhat valuable part of software development. To implement an effective solution requires that you:
IMHO, effective design is the most valuable part of software development, but all of the steps above are important. Coding is just one of those steps. Also, I didn't really mention soliciting feedback (aka code reviews), though on a good team, that would be a part of the last step.
If you've got a CS degree and all you're doing is coding, you wasted about 2-3 years of your life on a four-year degree you didn't need. All you needed was an associate's degree from DeVry and you could be coding. Write software instead. It's much more interesting.
The most important way to "write software" instead of "write code" is to choose a good employer and a good team. Unfortunately, I have no simple advice for how to do that. But don't be satisfied with the first place that offers you a job. If your job seems like a crap job, it probably is. Keep looking until you find a company and a team where you feel valuable.
Sure. It's a tip for an entertaining evening. A gratuity for an excellent performance, if you will. The shame in it is how bad the deal is for the author. I'd much rather send the author/director/lead actor/whoever a "check for $12" myself and cut out the insane distribution scheme. But that's hard to do.
False. The OP said that if the group is heading in an objectionable direction, dissenters should leave or risk their membership being counted as tacit approval. If the leadership of the organization explicitly or tacitly endorses the objectionable behavior, and you can't change it, it's probably time to go.
It's not important if there's a kook who can claim membership but acts in a way contrary to the organization. You scorn the person, council the person, kick them out, whatever. If you're the oddball though, and the organization is the one being nasty, your continued membership in that case becomes a tacit approval of the problem.
Very interesting. Thank you for posting that.
I work for Google, so I'm biased, but here's how I see it.
The Google search engine is supposed to be as useful as possible to users so that they will use it. Google adds some compromises to the usability of search (aka ads) so that the resources behind search are paid for along with a healthy profit.
That's the order of priorities as they have been repeatedly described to me.
Google search provides space where advertisers can pay for space that is simultaneously useful to users (something they're interested in investigating) and to advertisers (a selling opportunity). The first part (useful to users) is what Google is motivated to enforce, because then the ads also support the original statement: "The Google search engine is supposed to be as useful as possible to users so that they will use it."
I can't deny that Google uses usage data to improve the quality of search, but I'll assert that (1) everyone at Google is well aware of it's potential for "big brother" type scenarios and (2) everyone at Google is also aware that even a passing hint of misusing personal data would threaten the user trust on which Google's value is based. Google does better when people can trust Google, and I don't believe that an instance of data misuse would stay secret for more than a day. Far too many Googlers work there because they also trust Google's "don't be evil" policy. If Google was to breach user trust, employee trust would also be lost.
In conclusion: yes, Google system software is paying close attention to how you use Google. But no, it's not keeping a dossier on you. the goal of that software is most explicitly not to keep an eye on you, but to provide feedback so that the next time you use Google, it's even more useful to you.
That would make the user experience worse for those users.
Based on that fact and everything I know about Google, that type of change: Will. Not. Happen.
(disclosure: I work for Google)
That is a questionable assumption. You're asking soldiers to attack people who look like them, who speak the same language, who share cultural norms, and who may be acquaintances, family members, or otherwise personally known to them.
I understand that tests of loyalty and willingness to fire under exactly these circumstances have been carried out against all US Military branches. In the study that I read, the Marines had the highest retention, followed by the Coast Guard, then the Air Force and Navy, and finally the Army. Within each branch, the more elite units were much more willing to follow orders than the rank and file. The report I read was based on tests conducted prior to 9/11, so it's very possible that the results would be different today.
What was more interesting to me was the conclusion that a significant fraction of the Army, specifically, would likely go AWOL and support a civillian uprising, providing them with up-to-date skills and all of the various equipment of the US Army (though only man-portable equipment would likely be useful while the rebels used guerrilla tactics). Based only on my personal knowledge, today's soldiers have become pretty burned out and cynical as a group after a tour, but I have no idea if that makes them more or less likely to help a domestic rebellion than the fresh soldiers of eight years ago.
That's exactly it in a nutshell. The 2nd Amendment folks think that the other amendments are mostly for uppity liberals, while the ACLU crowd wants to defend the entire Constitution except for that pesky 2nd Amendment. When I'm in conversations with either side, I get looked at like I've got a growth on my face when I suggest that they're all important as a whole and we let any of them be disregarded at our own peril.
The dithering rules drive the brick color rules (this is the rasterizing pass), so there's no conflict there. The strength rules definitely are superseded by the color rules. There's no conflict at all.
The reason the strength rules aren't as important as the color rules is that the strength rules don't affect the structure's integrity all that much. The right way to build the image is at least two layers deep. There's the image layer and then there's a structure layer, tied together with double width bricks scattered throughout the whole. The structure layer definitely disallows vertical edges lining up and provides the actual strength of the project. The only real reason to eliminate edges lining up in the image layer is to reduce the appearance of extraneous lines in the final image.
This problem is linear complexity O(N). And if I know my future co-workers at Google at all, it will be an interview question before the week is out to demonstrate why it's O(N).
Except that that's wrong. Unions are only in favor of changes that benefit unions. The only way the teacher's union will support a change for teachers or students is if it also benefits the union.
In this country, the teacher's union is one of several huge obstacles preventing our educational system from achieving adequacy. The biggest way it does this? The negotiation of teacher contracts that prevent school systems from firing ineffective staff. It's called tenure, but it's nothing like the process that professors have to go through to obtain academic tenure at the university level.
If a teacher can keep their job for two years, they can't be fired. That is a destructive policy, contrary to the interests of students, contrary to the interests of excellent teachers, but definitely a benefit to the union.
We spend more than ever on a per student basis and yet, we're still fighting to achieve mediocracy. The budget isn't the problem. Private schools achieve better results with less money per pupil (on average).
If you want to retain excellent teachers: 1) fire ineffective teachers, 2) expel troublemaker students quickly, 3) keep class sizes as small as possible. That last point does have a budgetary element, but it's not all that important on it's own. Only as a part of a comprehensive rethinking of education. Rethought without unions.
Finding any one fit of lego blocks to produce a given image is linear complexity (O(N)). It's the same algorithm used in your video card to rasterize a 3-d polygon model or in photoshop to rescale an image. Definitely not NP-hard.
Growing adjacent spaces of matching color to use larger bricks isn't tough either. Use a simple run-length encoding algorithm (second pass, also O(N)) and then when you're breaking up long stretches into brick-sized stretches in the third pass, add a constraint that within a "same color stretch", a brick edge on the current line doesn't line up with a brick edge on the previous line (this pass is also O(N)).
Final cost: 3 * O(N) = O(N)
This guy's approach of determining brick size and location using simulated annealing sounds like a hammer in search of a nail. Definitely cool and fun to write, but probably not necessary to solve the problem.
Biodiesel is not vegetable oil. Vegetable oil is what you pull from the dumpster out back of the chinese food restaurant. Biodiesel is what you get after you blend that vegetable oil with methanol and sodium hydroxide at 150 deg F for an hour, decant away from the glycerin, wash to remove the soap residues, then dry (there are more elaborate processes that result in higher yield, but that's the home recipe).
Any diesel engine will run on 100% biodiesel in conditions where you could use No.2 fuel oil (road diesel). There is a risk that the biodiesel will strip rust from the interior of an old fuel tank and that rust will end up in the first fuel filter, but that's the fault of the moron who let the tank get rusty, not the biodiesel.
Tricia Helfer has "less boobs" than Tricia Helfer. I just hate it when it's obvious.
You haven't worked with too many corporate legal departments. Those guys are masters of grabbing something that's close, giving it a quick scan for the previous parties' names, and presenting it as a beautiful contract that they spent all night getting just perfect for you.
Corporations copy and paste legal stuff all the time. In my experience, that's the normal mode of operation
When I was in India (near Bangladesh) in 2003 and was hiring a driver (who happened to be a Muslim), he did not like hearing that I was an American. He looked me over very suspiciously and asked if I liked President Bush. "I despise Bush." was my honest response. He clapped me on the back and we spent the rest of that first day in the car talking about US politics. Fantastic driver.
In my experience, being honestly curious about the culture and people around me seems to work out great. I love to let other people talk to me about whatever is interesting to them, and since it's invariably something that I know very little about, I get to learn something new.
I went with Tungsten (actually tungsten carbide in a cobalt carrier, like 99% of tungsten rings), and though the list is similar, there are a few differences between my reasons and the list you gave:
The intelligent and wealthy argue for welfare, medicare and social security because they know that a tolerable sinecure for the poor makes it very unlikely that they will have to deal with significant social unrest and the possibility of a revolution.
You're getting a return on your money, it's in the increased stability of the society around you that makes continued economic development possible. A part of India's current development problems are rooted in the growing disparities between the new wealthy and those in grinding poverty.
Okay, so it was a freshman college textbook. Econ 101. The chapter where supply and demand curves may be steeper or shallower in some markets than in other markets.
Specifically, in energy, demand is inelastic. It takes a long time for higher prices to influence demand (people and industries require time to alter their energy consumption). This means that the short-term demand curve is essentially vertical. In the 0.5-1.0 year time frame, energy consumers will pay almost any price for energy while they figure out how to alter their consumption pattern.
So there's no discrepancy at all. Just normal freshman economics.