"To be frank the forty hour work week is an aberration. It certainly sounds great, I haven't had one in a dozen years. For some jobs it might make sense. Yet does it have to be across five days a week or can it be done in four or seven?"
Yeah, me too. Ten is much nicer. I'm more productive than the ones who work sixty too. Oh, and half that ten is from a hammock.
Uh huh. And where were the components made? If people think assembling the product is bad, I hate to think what conditions in the factories that make the parts might be like.
"The problem with using incident reports as a means of determining whether something is safe or not is that correlation is not causation. The fact that the autopilot came back online after four people shut off their laptops does not mean that those laptops caused the failure."
Ugh. No. It's that the plural of anecdote is not data. If you actually collected enough thorough incident reports to count as data and narrowed your question enough to actually detect a correlation, say between a particular model of cell phone and a particular kind of interference, there would be three possibilities:
a) the cell phone being on causes the interference b) the interference causes the cell phone to be on c) a third factor causes both the interference and the cell phone to be on
(b) and (c) can probably be discarded as extremely unlikely based on the lack of plausible mechanisms for interference related phenomenon causing cell phones to be turned on.
Agreed. Perhaps those of us who learned to program in Assembler are just used to not depending on the compiler to make sure we don't do anything stupid.
Sure, but you'd never write a whole application in assembler just because it was too slow in C. That's what the "Python is too slow" people are doing.
There are even a variety of excellent tools to make interfacing bits of C with Python stupid easy. With Pyrex/Cython you can take your Python code as is and slowly C-ify it until its fast enough for you. Just statically defining a variable or two often makes a big difference, and yes, you can just take your Python code and statically define a single variable using Cython.
Experiments are not anecdotes, and anecdotes are not experiments. An anecdote may be called a datum if you're in some particularly soft "sciences," but even then it's only one datum, subject to lots of noise, error and, since it's an anecdote, bias, lying and hearsay effects, so it's not sufficient to make any decisions with. It's certainly not sufficient to counter actual carefully collected data.
This is an addendum to the Mythical Man-Month. You can't make up for bad scheduling by throwing more people at the job. You ALSO can't make up for bad scheduling by throwing excessive overtime from the existing team at the job.
Moral of the story? Managers, have some basic level of competency at your job. You're getting paid enough for it.
Not if the manager isn't an idiot. The summary itself says there's good evidence people working more than 40 hours are less productive. A good manager should be sending the idiot workaholics home at 5 pm, without any company laptops or data.
No, it's harder. Lasers work very well in space and the only way to jam, or even detect that a signal is being sent, is to get between the sender and receiver.
Neutrino communications would probably be easier to jam because it's harder to produce them, and so harder to produce them at particular, and adjustable energies.
Actually, I think the guy further up who thinks the moon is hollow and aliens towed it here is going to give you a run for your money on the whole "most probable theory" thing. You guys probably read similar articles though.
Yeah, this country came along and asked me to make them a nuclear weapon, but promised they'd only use it if they were attacked. So I made it for them. And now that they're on the verge of collapse they're using it to extort their neighbours.
Slashdot Mirror
Lots of people like how wind farms look. Rich north eastern Americans seem to be an exception, not the rule.
Apple is famous.
"To be frank the forty hour work week is an aberration. It certainly sounds great, I haven't had one in a dozen years. For some jobs it might make sense. Yet does it have to be across five days a week or can it be done in four or seven?"
Yeah, me too. Ten is much nicer. I'm more productive than the ones who work sixty too. Oh, and half that ten is from a hammock.
Uh huh. And where were the components made? If people think assembling the product is bad, I hate to think what conditions in the factories that make the parts might be like.
People who can read are statistically more likely to follow instructions and not act like an ass than are people talking on cell phones.
There's not much data on ereaders yet.
Hardcover books should have to be secured too. I don't often see people who drag them onto flights though.
"The problem with using incident reports as a means of determining whether something is safe or not is that correlation is not causation. The fact that the autopilot came back online after four people shut off their laptops does not mean that those laptops caused the failure."
Ugh. No. It's that the plural of anecdote is not data. If you actually collected enough thorough incident reports to count as data and narrowed your question enough to actually detect a correlation, say between a particular model of cell phone and a particular kind of interference, there would be three possibilities:
a) the cell phone being on causes the interference
b) the interference causes the cell phone to be on
c) a third factor causes both the interference and the cell phone to be on
(b) and (c) can probably be discarded as extremely unlikely based on the lack of plausible mechanisms for interference related phenomenon causing cell phones to be turned on.
"turn off a hand-held GPS device"
Since hand-held GPS doesn't transmit anything, that's probably a particularly poor example.
Ah, no. The best feature ever. Everyone's code is either readable or doesn't run. Awesome.
If white space is driving you up the wall you're clearly using spaces instead of the tabs the diety intended.
Agreed. Perhaps those of us who learned to program in Assembler are just used to not depending on the compiler to make sure we don't do anything stupid.
Sure, but you'd never write a whole application in assembler just because it was too slow in C. That's what the "Python is too slow" people are doing.
There are even a variety of excellent tools to make interfacing bits of C with Python stupid easy. With Pyrex/Cython you can take your Python code as is and slowly C-ify it until its fast enough for you. Just statically defining a variable or two often makes a big difference, and yes, you can just take your Python code and statically define a single variable using Cython.
Experiments are not anecdotes, and anecdotes are not experiments. An anecdote may be called a datum if you're in some particularly soft "sciences," but even then it's only one datum, subject to lots of noise, error and, since it's an anecdote, bias, lying and hearsay effects, so it's not sufficient to make any decisions with. It's certainly not sufficient to counter actual carefully collected data.
This is an addendum to the Mythical Man-Month. You can't make up for bad scheduling by throwing more people at the job. You ALSO can't make up for bad scheduling by throwing excessive overtime from the existing team at the job.
Moral of the story? Managers, have some basic level of competency at your job. You're getting paid enough for it.
Not if the manager isn't an idiot. The summary itself says there's good evidence people working more than 40 hours are less productive. A good manager should be sending the idiot workaholics home at 5 pm, without any company laptops or data.
"loan wolf"
Is that anything like a loan shark?
Firing a large particle accelerator at someone? No, it's not safe. But you don't have to wait 20 years!
Kind of like how they do now with ELF?
No, it's harder. Lasers work very well in space and the only way to jam, or even detect that a signal is being sent, is to get between the sender and receiver.
Neutrino communications would probably be easier to jam because it's harder to produce them, and so harder to produce them at particular, and adjustable energies.
Just burn it. I hear paper is very... inflammable.
Yes, but we're talking about recycling paper, which is an entirely different furnace.
A signed document that's been faxed is legal, so if you're relying on a signature....
An unprinted page probably has all sorts of traces left. The hardest part about photoshopping a fax is making it look bad enough.
Actually, I think the guy further up who thinks the moon is hollow and aliens towed it here is going to give you a run for your money on the whole "most probable theory" thing. You guys probably read similar articles though.
Most of the times had at least a billion years range. Is that narrow for you?
Craters are usually dated by looking at how many craters are superimposed on them and making estimates based on expected bombardment rates.
You'd think a Slashdot poster would know the difference between the web and the Internet. Sigh.
'I thought I was giving them a shield,'
Yeah, this country came along and asked me to make them a nuclear weapon, but promised they'd only use it if they were attacked. So I made it for them. And now that they're on the verge of collapse they're using it to extort their neighbours.
Who's surprised? Patents aren't defensive.