This discussion so far, and the article that prompted it, is a political debate dressed up as a scientific one. What our policies need to be guided by is a scientific debate, and what we, as citizens need, is also to follow the scientific debate.
What is missing from this forum so far, and from the linked essay, is any link to the actual scientific paper in question. If we are to judge how significant this paper is, and what it means, shouldn't we be taking a look at it?
The whole drama of hidden agendas, who profits from what, the desires of individuals to get attention and upset people of one political stripe or another, are in the end irrelevant to the questions of "Is human activity affecting the climate" and "What, if anything, do we need to be doing to protect our existence". The drama affects what we end up ACTUALLY doing, so may be very significant to the outcome of the next few hundred years of human history. But our individual responsibilities are to understand the science as best we can, even if we are not climatologists.
Richard Feynmann used to bemoan the fact that reporters asking him about his work constantly tried to "dumb it down" so the average reader could understand it. His point was that, first of all, all the important stuff got lost in this process, and second, even if the "average" person couldn't follow it, there are huge numbers of scientists, engineers, and others who would be able to grasp the main points if they were actually presented.
Given the nature of this forum (we're nerds, right?) I'd love to see the actual science... if only Mr. Calder, or any of the other writers on this subject would deign to show us the actual papers, rather than giving us their predigested interpretations.
When I was a graduate student, we had two german post docs join the research group (one from east germany, on from west germany - this was after reunification). There were two jewish graduates in the group, including myself. They were both decent, good people, although we never talked about the holocaust, or anything related to that.
One night at a conference, though, up in the hotel room after a good deal of beer, one of them apologized to my jewish collegue for the holocaust. (To which my friend replied, in typical fashion, "Hey, no problem."). This guy clearly felt very bad about it, although not from anything anyone actually said or did.
The thing about the holocaust, however, was the way it sucked in the entire german culture. It wasn't that there were a few mass murderers; rather, the whole society became geared towards the genocide of "outsiders" within it. Yes, there were heroes among the people of germany, but something terrible happened within the society as a whole. The feelings of guilt are collective because the society as a whole acted. And the culture doesn't disappear, it's transmitted through the generations. It wasn't the case of a small group of individuals.
From my rather distant vantage point, and from meeting these two post docs, it's clear that as individuals and as a society, a great deal of soul searching has been done in germany. (Again, I'm sure there are plenty of individuals there who would be Nazis if the whole thing started up today.) It seems to be important for german society. And it seems to be coming from within german society - I don't see it much being imposed from without. There are plenty of German tourists in Israel- I even stayed in a German run kibbutz when I was there several years ago. Whatever Germans are doing, they are doing for their own reasons.
And the Holocaust is not yet completely in the past. There are still Nazis being hunted down today. There are still problems with people recovering art, money, and bank accounts that were seized by the Nazis.
Claims are still being fought over to this day.
If you want to see societies which have NOT acknowledged their complicity, just look at Austria and the extreme right wing politics on the rise over there. The Germans seem determined not to do it again. Given the opportunity, Austria might. Look at Hungary, which was only occupied at the tail end of the war - but thanks to help from the local population, over two thirds of the Jews there were killed. Millions died in Poland. There has been no widespread acknowledgment of complicity, and there's plenty of antisemitism in both of these countries.
I have met plenty of Germans, and had no problems with any of them. But I am pleased to see Germany still grappling with their past, of their own accord. Perhaps we could learn something.
I use BOA to do my online banking. The problem is, users expect to see instructions when they call up the website. So it's great when the page loads up, shows the sitekey, and then says "always make sure the site key is there". However, a phishing site could say "use of the site key has been discontinued", or simply omit the sitekey, and the user would then proceed anyway. It's part of the "don't read the manual" mentality, whereby we all expect to figure things out from the context. Hence, we have no expectations how something SHOULD look, which is why the sitekey is not generally effective.
I like the sitekey concept (I'm paranoid enough to use it properly, I think), but it goes against how we've been trained to use computers - which is to say, we expect to be told how to do something when it's time to do it.
Your policy, given your circumstances, sounds like a good one, and paying out the week is a very decent thing to do. The nature of the work and the competition clearly indicate what the best policy might be. (One of the places I left, someone else had quit a few months earlier, and was escorted off the premises for essentially trying to recruit).
The key is openness. Has anyone ever been upset because they gave you two weeks notice (perhaps planning to start their new job in two weeks), and ended up only getting one week of salary?
But this whole tangent is a bit off-topic. I would never sue someone for quiting -- and I highly doubt that the Submitter's former employer will have a case.
But once someone says "I'm leaving in two weeks", I cannot expect them to put 100% into their work
I've quit three times, and given three weeks notice each time. Each time I spent the first week tying up loose ends, and the second week not doing much. (In fact, on monday of the last week at a big office, my boss told me "Don't do anything important".)
Now, each time I've moved to a new job that was in a substantially different field than the one before, so there was little danger of either taking secrets or other employees with me. I feel like it worked out pretty well both for me (I got a chance to say goodbye to everyone I wanted to personally) and the company (they knew I wasn't leaving anything unfinished).
Coincidentally, we've got a guy here who's last day is today (he gave notice weeks and weeks ago, he's rather senior). He's still working, which makes me very nervous, because it shows it's going to be a big scramble when he goes. I feel a week's salary is a small price to pay for the assurance the transition is going to be smooth.
Whatever microcontroller you choose (I'm partial to the AVR ATMEGA series, but I haven't used much else), it's important to start with a good reference hardware design and software framework. When I started using the ATMEGA16, there was a long period before I got the basic functionality - LED blinking, serial port talking, and DAC and ADC working. Once I got that going, things really picked up.
I would advise that YOU get a design to that level before you present it to the students. The interested students can always "work backwards" if they are interested in that stuff, or build onto the framework to do actual robotics. (An interesting excercise might be to change the DAC chip to another manufacturer, and have them work out the code changes needed to make it work.)
Some advice on a reference framework - put in a timing loop (so they can count seconds), put in some diagnostic LEDs (one just on the power bus, some to blink to make sure the software loop is still running, maybe two or three more for general debugging). The idea is to provide useful tools. Stay away from interrupts in the code at all costs (it just adds complication, and you almost certainly don't need the response time).
As for which particular chip to use, you want something with free software tools, reasonable chip cost, and low hardware costs. The AVR is good on this front (programmer is $70, software tools are free). A nice bootloader is available at http://reza.net/avr/, although you can always use the programmer. You are stuck with C, which I like, but I don't have enough experience with high school kids (it's been a long time for me) to know if that's the best choice.
I'd disagree. I'd say the benchmark results show the performance differences in the kernel are so trivial as to be essentially zero. Which isn't a huge surprise, was there any kernel change which was suppose to improve the performance of any of these tasks?
This isn't to say that there isn't a lot of good stuff in the kernel, but mostly what these benchmarks show is that nothing affecting these particular tasks got broken.
Microsoft seems to be confident that the Vista repair process should be sufficient to solve any problems
Yeah, right. I have a new computer at work. One day it stopped working - it would boot, but was barely functional. Almost nothing would run properly, including most of the Microsoft applications. The IT guy looked in the software installs, and sure enough, the last thing installed was an automatically loaded patch from Microsoft. Of course, we couldn't uninstall it (though, boy howdy, we tried). So eventually we had to wipe and reinstall the whole damn thing. After that, my audio no longer works.
Now, there was no new hardware in there - we never opened the case - and the third party software consisted of fairly standard (if high end) engineering software. So I don't really have a lot of confidence in Microsoft's ability to make an OS that can be repaired.
Actually, I didn't get a DVD player until the price dropped to about $30. And they stopped releasing movies on VHS. So copy protection didn't really have much to do with it, but I AM certainly glad it was cracked.
When you get beyond trivial circuits, you will want to start using a schematic and PCB layout package. Learn to use the design rule checkers and what they do. It will save you a lot of trouble, and if you do anything serious, you'll use a PCB. You can order PCBs online for $60 or less (see, for example, http://www.pcbexpress.com/ among many others.)
In terms of schematic capture packages, I've used Eagle from cadsoft (http://www.cadsoftusa.com/ and am very fond of it. The free version will let you do plenty, although I use the profesional version (for work, I didn't buy it myself). There are also free software versions out there, but I haven't used them and can't comment on how well they work, but I'd encourage you to check them out.
(And that's "Printed Circuit Board", not "Polychlorinated Biphenyls"!)
One of the problems with magnetic hard drives is that it is nearly impossible to wipe information from a really determined investigator - rewritten bits don't line up with the originals, leaving the old data behind. Flash memory doesn't suffer from this - writing a bit to a zero doesn't leave any residue of the old value - even if you measure the charge on the floating gate.
Most DNA sequences are incompatible with life. For example, it is well known that Down's syndrome is caused by have three copies of chromosome 22 instead of the normal two. Why are there not syndromes associated with having three copies of chromosomes 1 through 21? Because they are not viable past a very early stage, and most spontaneously abort.
Slashdot Mirror
What is missing from this forum so far, and from the linked essay, is any link to the actual scientific paper in question. If we are to judge how significant this paper is, and what it means, shouldn't we be taking a look at it?
The whole drama of hidden agendas, who profits from what, the desires of individuals to get attention and upset people of one political stripe or another, are in the end irrelevant to the questions of "Is human activity affecting the climate" and "What, if anything, do we need to be doing to protect our existence". The drama affects what we end up ACTUALLY doing, so may be very significant to the outcome of the next few hundred years of human history. But our individual responsibilities are to understand the science as best we can, even if we are not climatologists.
Richard Feynmann used to bemoan the fact that reporters asking him about his work constantly tried to "dumb it down" so the average reader could understand it. His point was that, first of all, all the important stuff got lost in this process, and second, even if the "average" person couldn't follow it, there are huge numbers of scientists, engineers, and others who would be able to grasp the main points if they were actually presented.
Given the nature of this forum (we're nerds, right?) I'd love to see the actual science... if only Mr. Calder, or any of the other writers on this subject would deign to show us the actual papers, rather than giving us their predigested interpretations.
Funny, but the guy in the book wasn't autistic.
-Mark Twain
One night at a conference, though, up in the hotel room after a good deal of beer, one of them apologized to my jewish collegue for the holocaust. (To which my friend replied, in typical fashion, "Hey, no problem."). This guy clearly felt very bad about it, although not from anything anyone actually said or did.
The thing about the holocaust, however, was the way it sucked in the entire german culture. It wasn't that there were a few mass murderers; rather, the whole society became geared towards the genocide of "outsiders" within it. Yes, there were heroes among the people of germany, but something terrible happened within the society as a whole. The feelings of guilt are collective because the society as a whole acted. And the culture doesn't disappear, it's transmitted through the generations. It wasn't the case of a small group of individuals.
From my rather distant vantage point, and from meeting these two post docs, it's clear that as individuals and as a society, a great deal of soul searching has been done in germany. (Again, I'm sure there are plenty of individuals there who would be Nazis if the whole thing started up today.) It seems to be important for german society. And it seems to be coming from within german society - I don't see it much being imposed from without. There are plenty of German tourists in Israel- I even stayed in a German run kibbutz when I was there several years ago. Whatever Germans are doing, they are doing for their own reasons.
And the Holocaust is not yet completely in the past. There are still Nazis being hunted down today. There are still problems with people recovering art, money, and bank accounts that were seized by the Nazis. Claims are still being fought over to this day.
If you want to see societies which have NOT acknowledged their complicity, just look at Austria and the extreme right wing politics on the rise over there. The Germans seem determined not to do it again. Given the opportunity, Austria might. Look at Hungary, which was only occupied at the tail end of the war - but thanks to help from the local population, over two thirds of the Jews there were killed. Millions died in Poland. There has been no widespread acknowledgment of complicity, and there's plenty of antisemitism in both of these countries.
I have met plenty of Germans, and had no problems with any of them. But I am pleased to see Germany still grappling with their past, of their own accord. Perhaps we could learn something.
An enormous low earth orbit marshmallow. And it will get toasted on re-entry!
I like the sitekey concept (I'm paranoid enough to use it properly, I think), but it goes against how we've been trained to use computers - which is to say, we expect to be told how to do something when it's time to do it.
The key is openness. Has anyone ever been upset because they gave you two weeks notice (perhaps planning to start their new job in two weeks), and ended up only getting one week of salary?
But this whole tangent is a bit off-topic. I would never sue someone for quiting -- and I highly doubt that the Submitter's former employer will have a case.
Agreed on both points.
"Just because you have the emotional depth of a teaspoon, Ron, doesn't mean that everyone does"
-Hermione
I've quit three times, and given three weeks notice each time. Each time I spent the first week tying up loose ends, and the second week not doing much. (In fact, on monday of the last week at a big office, my boss told me "Don't do anything important".)
Now, each time I've moved to a new job that was in a substantially different field than the one before, so there was little danger of either taking secrets or other employees with me. I feel like it worked out pretty well both for me (I got a chance to say goodbye to everyone I wanted to personally) and the company (they knew I wasn't leaving anything unfinished).
Coincidentally, we've got a guy here who's last day is today (he gave notice weeks and weeks ago, he's rather senior). He's still working, which makes me very nervous, because it shows it's going to be a big scramble when he goes. I feel a week's salary is a small price to pay for the assurance the transition is going to be smooth.
I would advise that YOU get a design to that level before you present it to the students. The interested students can always "work backwards" if they are interested in that stuff, or build onto the framework to do actual robotics. (An interesting excercise might be to change the DAC chip to another manufacturer, and have them work out the code changes needed to make it work.)
Some advice on a reference framework - put in a timing loop (so they can count seconds), put in some diagnostic LEDs (one just on the power bus, some to blink to make sure the software loop is still running, maybe two or three more for general debugging). The idea is to provide useful tools. Stay away from interrupts in the code at all costs (it just adds complication, and you almost certainly don't need the response time).
As for which particular chip to use, you want something with free software tools, reasonable chip cost, and low hardware costs. The AVR is good on this front (programmer is $70, software tools are free). A nice bootloader is available at http://reza.net/avr/, although you can always use the programmer. You are stuck with C, which I like, but I don't have enough experience with high school kids (it's been a long time for me) to know if that's the best choice.
This isn't to say that there isn't a lot of good stuff in the kernel, but mostly what these benchmarks show is that nothing affecting these particular tasks got broken.
Do YOU think we need a change in our energy policy because of global warming?
Because the person configuring the filter may not be the same person using email?
Yeah, right. I have a new computer at work. One day it stopped working - it would boot, but was barely functional. Almost nothing would run properly, including most of the Microsoft applications. The IT guy looked in the software installs, and sure enough, the last thing installed was an automatically loaded patch from Microsoft. Of course, we couldn't uninstall it (though, boy howdy, we tried). So eventually we had to wipe and reinstall the whole damn thing. After that, my audio no longer works.
Now, there was no new hardware in there - we never opened the case - and the third party software consisted of fairly standard (if high end) engineering software. So I don't really have a lot of confidence in Microsoft's ability to make an OS that can be repaired.
Actually, I didn't get a DVD player until the price dropped to about $30. And they stopped releasing movies on VHS. So copy protection didn't really have much to do with it, but I AM certainly glad it was cracked.
Light doesn't travel in copper - at least not very far.
In terms of schematic capture packages, I've used Eagle from cadsoft (http://www.cadsoftusa.com/ and am very fond of it. The free version will let you do plenty, although I use the profesional version (for work, I didn't buy it myself). There are also free software versions out there, but I haven't used them and can't comment on how well they work, but I'd encourage you to check them out.
(And that's "Printed Circuit Board", not "Polychlorinated Biphenyls"!)
If you give a canadian coin to an american, they're not going to spend it once they leave the country.
But I have been so enjoying the slow death - perhaps we could string it out a little longer?
Although I just took amtrak from Philadelphia to DC, and they never asked for ID.
Do you know of any brands of archival quality CD's? I have looked in vain for such a thing.
One of the problems with magnetic hard drives is that it is nearly impossible to wipe information from a really determined investigator - rewritten bits don't line up with the originals, leaving the old data behind. Flash memory doesn't suffer from this - writing a bit to a zero doesn't leave any residue of the old value - even if you measure the charge on the floating gate.
You must be a lot of fun on a date.
I hope he opens up some first class mail soon, so we can finally get this "signing statement" crap in front of the supreme court.
Most DNA sequences are incompatible with life. For example, it is well known that Down's syndrome is caused by have three copies of chromosome 22 instead of the normal two. Why are there not syndromes associated with having three copies of chromosomes 1 through 21? Because they are not viable past a very early stage, and most spontaneously abort.