At my high school 10 years ago, I was not allowed to take Calculus senior year. An A or B+ average was required in trigonometry to take the calculus course. Other than pushing up the schools average on the AP exams, I didn't understand why I was not allowed to take the course. Trig is a small part of differential and integral calculus. Memorizing double and half angle formulas turned out to be a waste of time anyway (my professors later in life insisted that we be able to derive them ourselves, rather than memorize...) Besides, I had passed trig anyway. Why take trig again for a better grade? I calculus needed it for the university I ended up going to.
I ended up paying out of my own pocket to take the course at a local university after school. Kind of a waste for me to be sitting in a study hall, while the class was already being taught at my high school.
In the end, it worked out for the best. A university mathematics professor is a far better qualified to teach calculus than a high school teacher. I knew plenty of teaching majors that went on to teach high school math. Compared to engineering majors, they understood very little about mathematics.
>The anthrax research is for a vaccine. In order to make a vaccine, you have to make some anthrax. To say the US 'stockpiles >bioweapons' in an abuse of both words.
Negative. The US has tons and tons of biological weapons. More than anyone else in the world.
What we have is certainly quite dangerous.
Identification to fly is insane. Knowing who someone is does not make airplanes safer. I would suggest that in fact it give us a false sense of security. Ensuring cockpits of aircraft are secure, and that bombs are not loaded or carried onto planes will make us safer.
It is clear that in the United States, the goverment cares more about WHO gets onto planes than WHAT gets onto planes. If they cared about preventing bombings, they would screen all bagage and cargo (this doesn't happen). They would also have well trained people to prevent travelers from carrying such things on aircaft (we all know this is bullshit as well).
Instead, we care about knowing who flew where and when. How exactly does this make airplanes safer? (BTW, we do this on trains too. We don't check for bombs on trains, just the names of people travelling.)
If we cared about safety, wouldn't we have metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs on trains? No - we just need to make sure you have a driver's license.
I am a pilot. Aircraft in the US are no safer now than they were 5 years ago. Trust me, I can still fly an airplane almost anywhere I want, an no one can stop this (except maybe over DC - I might get shot down).
What has changed. In the US, the Federal Goverment now knows where you are, what you are spending (National Security letters to request many/most credit card transactions), who you call (phone records are now seized, or even tapped without warrents), what books you read at the library, and who you send email to. These things would be unthinkable 5 years ago. I feel no safer on airplanes (you are still far more likely to die in a crash than at the hands of terrorists. Terrorists have been around long before Sept 11th - pilots before then all learned the sqwak codes 7700, 7600 and 7500.)
(Emergency, Comm Failure, Terrorist).
My point - National ID cards are worthless. Well funded or well motivated people will always be able to bypass them. The CIA should be good at giving someone a fake identity, right? (actually, they suck at it). Terrorists and foreign governments will always be capable of making perfect fake IDs, or killing someone and taking their ID. No on will ever have 100% confidence in the accuracy of goverment records - they are wrong far too often. (My SSN was wrong the entire time I was in the Air Force. How can the screw that up?!!!)
Hell, identity thiefs manage to impersonate MILLIONS of people a year.
All of this is ultimately the same as "gun control." It involves keeping great, detailed records on people to don't break the law. Those that do break the law (or plan to) are smart enough NOT to report such information. In the end, it gives the goverment more control, people fewer rights, and does nothing to stop terrorism.
I was in Russia last year. EVRERYONE must carry papers there. Police can search without warrents. Two planes were bombed (in the air, at the same time) while I was there. It barely made the newspapers. But, they know where you are every moment of the day (more or less). Did I feel any safer?
I don't think that Oracle is really anti-Open Source. They have released a ton of stuff, most importantly to me:
o Big memory pages for the Linux Kernel (helps with TLB misses for shared memory)
o OCFS 2, a very good clustered filesystem.
o Firewire code
o Async I/O linux support
Oracle was probably the first major database to run on Linux (version 7 worked, version 8.0 was supported). That was almost 10 years ago.
Sun used to be the bread-and butter platform for Oracle. Linux has basically replaced it.
Oracle already owns the database market. Most SAP sites already use Oracle as the database. The reality is, no matter how good their database is, they won't make any more money from it. Feature-wise, Oracle is more than 10 years ahead of MySQL. These are features I use all the time, every day.
Oracle Fin Apps is the only place their business can grow. While it isn't a great product, neither is SAP R/3. These are big bits of software. Fin Apps 11iR10.2 is about 50GB of install media. (That is a lot of code). With Oracle's acquisition of Peoplesoft and JD Edwards, SAP is really the only competetion.
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At my high school 10 years ago, I was not allowed to take Calculus senior year. An A or B+ average was required in trigonometry to take the calculus course. Other than pushing up the schools average on the AP exams, I didn't understand why I was not allowed to take the course. Trig is a small part of differential and integral calculus. Memorizing double and half angle formulas turned out to be a waste of time anyway (my professors later in life insisted that we be able to derive them ourselves, rather than memorize...) Besides, I had passed trig anyway. Why take trig again for a better grade? I calculus needed it for the university I ended up going to. I ended up paying out of my own pocket to take the course at a local university after school. Kind of a waste for me to be sitting in a study hall, while the class was already being taught at my high school. In the end, it worked out for the best. A university mathematics professor is a far better qualified to teach calculus than a high school teacher. I knew plenty of teaching majors that went on to teach high school math. Compared to engineering majors, they understood very little about mathematics.
>The anthrax research is for a vaccine. In order to make a vaccine, you have to make some anthrax. To say the US 'stockpiles >bioweapons' in an abuse of both words. Negative. The US has tons and tons of biological weapons. More than anyone else in the world. What we have is certainly quite dangerous.
Identification to fly is insane. Knowing who someone is does not make airplanes safer. I would suggest that in fact it give us a false sense of security. Ensuring cockpits of aircraft are secure, and that bombs are not loaded or carried onto planes will make us safer. It is clear that in the United States, the goverment cares more about WHO gets onto planes than WHAT gets onto planes. If they cared about preventing bombings, they would screen all bagage and cargo (this doesn't happen). They would also have well trained people to prevent travelers from carrying such things on aircaft (we all know this is bullshit as well). Instead, we care about knowing who flew where and when. How exactly does this make airplanes safer? (BTW, we do this on trains too. We don't check for bombs on trains, just the names of people travelling.) If we cared about safety, wouldn't we have metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs on trains? No - we just need to make sure you have a driver's license. I am a pilot. Aircraft in the US are no safer now than they were 5 years ago. Trust me, I can still fly an airplane almost anywhere I want, an no one can stop this (except maybe over DC - I might get shot down). What has changed. In the US, the Federal Goverment now knows where you are, what you are spending (National Security letters to request many/most credit card transactions), who you call (phone records are now seized, or even tapped without warrents), what books you read at the library, and who you send email to. These things would be unthinkable 5 years ago. I feel no safer on airplanes (you are still far more likely to die in a crash than at the hands of terrorists. Terrorists have been around long before Sept 11th - pilots before then all learned the sqwak codes 7700, 7600 and 7500.) (Emergency, Comm Failure, Terrorist). My point - National ID cards are worthless. Well funded or well motivated people will always be able to bypass them. The CIA should be good at giving someone a fake identity, right? (actually, they suck at it). Terrorists and foreign governments will always be capable of making perfect fake IDs, or killing someone and taking their ID. No on will ever have 100% confidence in the accuracy of goverment records - they are wrong far too often. (My SSN was wrong the entire time I was in the Air Force. How can the screw that up?!!!) Hell, identity thiefs manage to impersonate MILLIONS of people a year. All of this is ultimately the same as "gun control." It involves keeping great, detailed records on people to don't break the law. Those that do break the law (or plan to) are smart enough NOT to report such information. In the end, it gives the goverment more control, people fewer rights, and does nothing to stop terrorism. I was in Russia last year. EVRERYONE must carry papers there. Police can search without warrents. Two planes were bombed (in the air, at the same time) while I was there. It barely made the newspapers. But, they know where you are every moment of the day (more or less). Did I feel any safer?
I don't think that Oracle is really anti-Open Source. They have released a ton of stuff, most importantly to me: o Big memory pages for the Linux Kernel (helps with TLB misses for shared memory) o OCFS 2, a very good clustered filesystem. o Firewire code o Async I/O linux support Oracle was probably the first major database to run on Linux (version 7 worked, version 8.0 was supported). That was almost 10 years ago. Sun used to be the bread-and butter platform for Oracle. Linux has basically replaced it. Oracle already owns the database market. Most SAP sites already use Oracle as the database. The reality is, no matter how good their database is, they won't make any more money from it. Feature-wise, Oracle is more than 10 years ahead of MySQL. These are features I use all the time, every day. Oracle Fin Apps is the only place their business can grow. While it isn't a great product, neither is SAP R/3. These are big bits of software. Fin Apps 11iR10.2 is about 50GB of install media. (That is a lot of code). With Oracle's acquisition of Peoplesoft and JD Edwards, SAP is really the only competetion.