Well, for starters, I imagine that this will be funded through the government's grant rather than tuition dollars.
If it is funded from general revenue then the money comes from a mixture of tuition and subsidy. Subsidies are allocated per student, so each student is worth a certain number of tuition plus subsidy dollars to the university. The university is not compelled to spend the money it gets from a given student on that student.
That might sound hard to believe but it's true. At my alma mater the administration was much hated for allocating less money to the engineering faculties that it received from them. Basically it took some of the engineering tuition and subsidies and diverted them to other faculties like arts & medicine. We resented that a lot.
So it's very possible this Velocity thing is feeding off non-participants.
The divide between the "average" and "better" students is typically directly proportional to the amount of time/work spent studying.
That's true, but stress levels play a big role too. In the interest of full disclosure I have to admit my academic career was a story of redemption. I was the guy with the 2 pairs of pants & the mac and cheese and I flunked out because it was just too hard. At the same time lots of the other students had their own nice apartments and cars and girlfriends and shoes etc etc. and they definitely weren't as stressed out. Which can only have been good for them.
Funny thing is, after the department of Engineering Science left me for dead, Mechanical Engineering (and in particular one prof) for some reason let me in and I became a top student. So I'm living proof that you shouldn't try to pick winners. Not people that are that young and who come from such diverse circumstances.
So if you are trying to say that life's fair in school, no I don't think so. The bureaucrats that run a university have no way of knowing who fails because they lack the mental chops and who fails because they have a nervous breakdown. Allocate the funds that each student is worth to that actual student and let the chips fall where they may.
Waterloo has always fancied itself an industry supplier of productive bodies. My brother the EE went there and benefited from their work-term model. He got lots of practical experience which helped him land a job, although he took longer to get his degree than me.
I did an ME at the U of T. (Funny that the article calls Waterloo "MIT North", because U of T profs liked to call MIT "U of T South". Which is all very embarrassing, like stop with the MIT comparisons for heck's sake.)
The problem I have with this Velocity thing is: who pays and who benefits? Seems to me a chunk of everyone's tuition will go toward it, while only some will be in a position to get in. And those who can get in will be the ones who can deal with the extra work load.
In a perfect world, it would be the more clever who could handle the added work. In reality, it is the ones who have external support, like whose parents live not far away, or who come from richer families, that can focus on the work. The poor slobs who have 2 pair of pants for 4 years and who eat leftover mac & cheese for 5 days in a row wouldn't fit in.
I have no problem with elitism, it's a central component of hereditary capitalism, our beloved system. But not when the winners are being subsidized by the losers, that just strikes me as wrong.
I'm obviously biased, but I like the U of T approach: classical. Give everyone the same education and chuck them all into the market and let life sort them out. I hate the idea of university admins having the power to pick winners.
My apologies to all, I know this is bad form but here I go anyway...
A cartoon spinoff is news for nerds? Not even a science fiction cartoon?
The reason this bugs me is the last two stories I submitted were rejected. One about DARPA's oblique flying wing called Switchblade, and one about active sonic boom suppression on Gulfstream's supersonic business jet.
But a cartoon spinoff is more news worthy? I'm sorry, but this is shenanigans.
You can calculate the mass of a body by timing the orbital period of it's satelites, something which is very easy to do. There must be very accurate values for the solar and planetary masses.
One thing I thought of is the assumption in orbital mechanics that the mass of a spherical body can be replaced by a point mass at the geometric center of the sphere.
That is only exact for perfect spheres. We know that the Earth is slightly oblate. I wonder if that sort of distortion is enough to cause the observed anomalies.
Non-issue; Linux and OSS is well used within the DoD, even if not acknowledged at the highest levels. The issue always comes up, and then is shot down. They're even using commercial software from Germany (X-Ways) and many other foreign nations.
I have no doubt this is true. What I'm interested in is hearing a General and a CO's perspective.
I have some experience with the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) rules, since I'm Canadian and sometimes work for US companies that have dual-use technology. Certain people, depending on their background, are prohibited from working for certain US companies in certain roles.
The fact that FOSS often involves community support could theoretically mean someone in Iran or China could be asked to support software used by the AFCC. I know it's a stretch, but I think it would be interesting to see if the General has given any thought to this kind of thing.
I was not trying to say that you can't trust FOSS because foreign nationals may have worked on it.
Some of the "hacker" types that I understand the AFCC is looking for probably will prefer to work with Linux and Linux applications.
Due to the international nature of software like Linux that has been developed through the "free" paradigm, would this be allowed? These tools will have been produced by nationals from many different countries, perhaps even those that the United States could find itself fighting a cyber war against.
I'm curious to know if you have have any criteria that would enable you do decide when a cyber attack is an act of war. Would it be possible for some kind of action inside a network to lead to a shooting war without some kind of overt physical threat occurring first?
Does the AFCC have a mandate to pursue criminals that use information infrastructure to commit crimes, or is your group intended to defend against warlike attacks only?
If the latter is true, how would you distinguish between criminal activity and warlike activity in cyberspace?
...secure the entire 2,000-mile southern border...
I'm so old I can actually remember when the US had borders with Mexico and Canada. Now it's just the "south" and "north". Generic foreign places. Apparently there are only two places in the world, the US, and everywhere else.
And of course, the US needs to be defended from everywhere else. And of course, only Boeing and General Dynamics can do that. And of course, no cost is too high.
Who knows, Eskimo terrorists could be preparing a stealth dog sled yellow snowball assault on Minneapolis as we speak.
Remember Corel? They got taken private for a few years and then came back with an IPO. I've read this is a well known strategy for private funds to make large profits. As long as there is some value in the company's products to entice investors to buy the offering.
Could it be that the real difference between the behaviour of people represented by these two religions stems not from the teachings of the two religions, but by the fact that the average income of Muslims around the world is $3,700, while the average income in the west is $27,000.
Google's first link is to this Slashdot article which brings me to you post which brings me to Google which brings me to Slashdot whichbringsmetoGooglewhichbrings
metoSlashdotwhchbrngsmtGglwbmtSwxwxzzwxzzzwzzzzzzzzzztttt *pop*
Ok, I'm hopeless, I copied out the wrong numbers. The min energy sol'n is 55.4 deg & 26.7 mph (39 fps). The delta v is 36.4 fps. The launch time is 5/39 =.13 s. The accel is 36.4/.13 = 285 f/s^2 = 9g. Still too much for a tiger so I think my comments remain valid.
The calculations in the ref article are very simplistic, they don't prove that a tiger can jump 33 feet horizontally and 12.5 feet vertically. Obviously the tiger did it, but the calcs don't show how.
Here is something overlooked in the calcs: they say the min energy solution is to launch at 55.4 deg and 81 fps. If the tiger is running horizontally at that speed, to launch it must change it's velocity by 75.5 fps upwards and backwards (wrt the tiger). If the tiger is 5 feet long and the launch happens in one body length (assume 5 ft), that is 5/81 =.16 sec and the average acceleration is 75.5/.16 = 468 ft/sec^2 or 14g. That seems like a lot of g's for the tiger to be able to do with it's legs.
I think the answer to that is the tiger didn't really jump that high. If we assume that the tiger's CG is a 18" off the ground and it didn't jump right over the wall but rather hit the wall near the top, grabbed it with it's front legs and then scrambled over, maybe it only had to jump 7 or 8 feet high. Also, if there was a rock it could use as a sort of launch ramp, maybe the g-level at the jump would be something more believable.
When during the timespan between sperm-hits-egg and birth are they considered a unique human to regard rights towards?
There may be no absolute answer to that question. I am not aware of one.
Catholicism's answer appears based on the observation that the the zygote, barring intervention, will eventually result in an undeniably human baby. If pregnancy is equated with the responsibility of care a person has to a dependent, then the position is internally consistent.
Another position is that a woman has absolute control of her own body, and that dictating what she can or can not do to her body violates an innate right all people have to security of their person. This also strikes me as internally consistent.
So unfortunately for social peace there is bound to be eternal conflict about this. Regarding your point that the development of the embryo/fetus is a continuum, well yes it is. Since we have two defensible and diametrically opposed systems of thought that give absolute answers, it must mean there is no absolute answer. Different people will draw the line in different places.
My problem with the Pope, and I have a big one because I'm personally connected to this issue, is that his metaphysical belief system leads him and his large power system to pronounce bad things upon me and people like me. Screw that.
I don't see how you having the right to disagree logically must make the Pope wrong.
Oh, the Pope and I do more than just disagree. The manifestation of me disagreeing with him is that I do what I want. The manifestation of him disagreeing with me is for him to preach that I advocate murder. The manifestation of him disagreeing with me is that he uses the power of his pulpit to motivate millions of followers to prevent me from doing what I want. The manifestation of him disagreeing with me is for him to tell me I may not have a child of my own.
To respond to your amusing little deconstruction, point two would be that the Pope effectively says that when a sperm and an ovum combine, the resulting cell is infused with a divine magical force that makes it a human being. Therefore, says the Pope, I am not allowed to have children of my own because he believes in magic. I assert that is ridiculous. So yes, in this case, by disagreeing with me he is being ridiculous.
This meaning was easily extracted from the context, maybe you should try that next time before you get all preachy towards someone you don't know. Unless you are Catholic, in which case I guess you don't have much choice.
where a "person" is defined as an embryo at the moment of conception
This is what I completely reject. To accept that I would have to believe there is some sort of divine magic that infuses the sperm and ovum combination that makes it different from any other cell in the body. I don't believe in magic.
Since I don't believe in magic, I therefore find the Pope's reasoning to be arbitrary. And since it's arbitrary, how can you say his opposition to that kind of medicine is less ridiculous that opposition to all kinds of medicine?
I just find it awfully convenient that his arbitrary pronunciations are about things that he will never have to worry about, what with him being celibate and all.
PS -- I appreciate being called sir before being called an apologist. I'm not being sarcastic!
I respect all people, but of course.
If I may, let me get right to the root of the issue. The Pope presumes that a 4-cell embryo is a human life. I do not agree. Therefore the church's moral concerns are not my own. Rather than agree that we disagree, as a reasonable man would do, the Pope ignores differences of opinion and declares that I must accept his conclusions.
It's that sort of dictatorial bullheadedness that turns me off religion. For me it's not so much about the belief in what some call invisible sky magic and that sort of thing, it's the fact that the followers of most religions feel they are permitted to impose their will on others that disagree.
Slashdot Mirror
If it is funded from general revenue then the money comes from a mixture of tuition and subsidy. Subsidies are allocated per student, so each student is worth a certain number of tuition plus subsidy dollars to the university. The university is not compelled to spend the money it gets from a given student on that student.
That might sound hard to believe but it's true. At my alma mater the administration was much hated for allocating less money to the engineering faculties that it received from them. Basically it took some of the engineering tuition and subsidies and diverted them to other faculties like arts & medicine. We resented that a lot.
So it's very possible this Velocity thing is feeding off non-participants.
The divide between the "average" and "better" students is typically directly proportional to the amount of time/work spent studying.That's true, but stress levels play a big role too. In the interest of full disclosure I have to admit my academic career was a story of redemption. I was the guy with the 2 pairs of pants & the mac and cheese and I flunked out because it was just too hard. At the same time lots of the other students had their own nice apartments and cars and girlfriends and shoes etc etc. and they definitely weren't as stressed out. Which can only have been good for them.
Funny thing is, after the department of Engineering Science left me for dead, Mechanical Engineering (and in particular one prof) for some reason let me in and I became a top student. So I'm living proof that you shouldn't try to pick winners. Not people that are that young and who come from such diverse circumstances.
So if you are trying to say that life's fair in school, no I don't think so. The bureaucrats that run a university have no way of knowing who fails because they lack the mental chops and who fails because they have a nervous breakdown. Allocate the funds that each student is worth to that actual student and let the chips fall where they may.
Waterloo, jeesh. That's not a campus newspaper....THAT"S a campus newspaper. (Large pdf warning).
Example article titles: "White Guilt Month Set to be Best Ever" and "The Many (Retarded) Uses for Facebook". Yeah. Waterloo sucks.
Waterloo has always fancied itself an industry supplier of productive bodies. My brother the EE went there and benefited from their work-term model. He got lots of practical experience which helped him land a job, although he took longer to get his degree than me.
I did an ME at the U of T. (Funny that the article calls Waterloo "MIT North", because U of T profs liked to call MIT "U of T South". Which is all very embarrassing, like stop with the MIT comparisons for heck's sake.)
The problem I have with this Velocity thing is: who pays and who benefits? Seems to me a chunk of everyone's tuition will go toward it, while only some will be in a position to get in. And those who can get in will be the ones who can deal with the extra work load.
In a perfect world, it would be the more clever who could handle the added work. In reality, it is the ones who have external support, like whose parents live not far away, or who come from richer families, that can focus on the work. The poor slobs who have 2 pair of pants for 4 years and who eat leftover mac & cheese for 5 days in a row wouldn't fit in.
I have no problem with elitism, it's a central component of hereditary capitalism, our beloved system. But not when the winners are being subsidized by the losers, that just strikes me as wrong.
I'm obviously biased, but I like the U of T approach: classical. Give everyone the same education and chuck them all into the market and let life sort them out. I hate the idea of university admins having the power to pick winners.
My apologies to all, I know this is bad form but here I go anyway...
A cartoon spinoff is news for nerds? Not even a science fiction cartoon?
The reason this bugs me is the last two stories I submitted were rejected. One about DARPA's oblique flying wing called Switchblade, and one about active sonic boom suppression on Gulfstream's supersonic business jet.
But a cartoon spinoff is more news worthy? I'm sorry, but this is shenanigans.
You can calculate the mass of a body by timing the orbital period of it's satelites, something which is very easy to do. There must be very accurate values for the solar and planetary masses.
One thing I thought of is the assumption in orbital mechanics that the mass of a spherical body can be replaced by a point mass at the geometric center of the sphere.
That is only exact for perfect spheres. We know that the Earth is slightly oblate. I wonder if that sort of distortion is enough to cause the observed anomalies.
I have no doubt this is true. What I'm interested in is hearing a General and a CO's perspective.
I have some experience with the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) rules, since I'm Canadian and sometimes work for US companies that have dual-use technology. Certain people, depending on their background, are prohibited from working for certain US companies in certain roles.
The fact that FOSS often involves community support could theoretically mean someone in Iran or China could be asked to support software used by the AFCC. I know it's a stretch, but I think it would be interesting to see if the General has given any thought to this kind of thing.
I was not trying to say that you can't trust FOSS because foreign nationals may have worked on it.
General Lord,
Some of the "hacker" types that I understand the AFCC is looking for probably will prefer to work with Linux and Linux applications.
Due to the international nature of software like Linux that has been developed through the "free" paradigm, would this be allowed? These tools will have been produced by nationals from many different countries, perhaps even those that the United States could find itself fighting a cyber war against.
General Lord,
I'm curious to know if you have have any criteria that would enable you do decide when a cyber attack is an act of war. Would it be possible for some kind of action inside a network to lead to a shooting war without some kind of overt physical threat occurring first?
General Lord,
Does the AFCC have a mandate to pursue criminals that use information infrastructure to commit crimes, or is your group intended to defend against warlike attacks only?
If the latter is true, how would you distinguish between criminal activity and warlike activity in cyberspace?
...secure the entire 2,000-mile southern border...I'm so old I can actually remember when the US had borders with Mexico and Canada. Now it's just the "south" and "north". Generic foreign places. Apparently there are only two places in the world, the US, and everywhere else.
And of course, the US needs to be defended from everywhere else. And of course, only Boeing and General Dynamics can do that. And of course, no cost is too high.
Who knows, Eskimo terrorists could be preparing a stealth dog sled yellow snowball assault on Minneapolis as we speak.
According to this, the acceleration anomaly can't be accounted for by dark matter.
...Penalizes Schools For... "Teaching Intelligent Design" Oh please please say "Teaching Intelligent Design".
...Allowing Piracy Dhoh! So close!The Taliban say: "Help us to hide so we may launch sneak attacks on you. If you don't do this, we will launch sneak attacks on you."
Nice demand geniuses. I can think of no better use for the phrase "How about 'no' you crazy bastards?"
PS:
:)
(picture of the Prophet Mohammed)
Remember Corel? They got taken private for a few years and then came back with an IPO. I've read this is a well known strategy for private funds to make large profits. As long as there is some value in the company's products to entice investors to buy the offering.
Because their ability to restrict public broadcast is specifically written into federal copyright law:
USC 107 para (4)
The figure of 55" is built right into the exemption clauses. It looks arbitrary to me but there it is:
USC 110 para (5)(B)(i)(II)
Could it be that the real difference between the behaviour of people represented by these two religions stems not from the teachings of the two religions, but by the fact that the average income of Muslims around the world is $3,700, while the average income in the west is $27,000.
Shariaa law?
Google's first link is to this Slashdot article which brings me to you post which brings me to Google which brings me to Slashdot whichbringsmetoGooglewhichbrings metoSlashdotwhchbrngsmtGglwbmtSwxwxzzwxzzzwzzzzzzzzzztttt *pop*
Ok, I'm hopeless, I copied out the wrong numbers. The min energy sol'n is 55.4 deg & 26.7 mph (39 fps). The delta v is 36.4 fps. The launch time is 5/39 = .13 s. The accel is 36.4/.13 = 285 f/s^2 = 9g. Still too much for a tiger so I think my comments remain valid.
The calculations in the ref article are very simplistic, they don't prove that a tiger can jump 33 feet horizontally and 12.5 feet vertically. Obviously the tiger did it, but the calcs don't show how.
Here is something overlooked in the calcs: they say the min energy solution is to launch at 55.4 deg and 81 fps. If the tiger is running horizontally at that speed, to launch it must change it's velocity by 75.5 fps upwards and backwards (wrt the tiger). If the tiger is 5 feet long and the launch happens in one body length (assume 5 ft), that is 5/81 = .16 sec and the average acceleration is 75.5/.16 = 468 ft/sec^2 or 14g. That seems like a lot of g's for the tiger to be able to do with it's legs.
I think the answer to that is the tiger didn't really jump that high. If we assume that the tiger's CG is a 18" off the ground and it didn't jump right over the wall but rather hit the wall near the top, grabbed it with it's front legs and then scrambled over, maybe it only had to jump 7 or 8 feet high. Also, if there was a rock it could use as a sort of launch ramp, maybe the g-level at the jump would be something more believable.
There may be no absolute answer to that question. I am not aware of one.
Catholicism's answer appears based on the observation that the the zygote, barring intervention, will eventually result in an undeniably human baby. If pregnancy is equated with the responsibility of care a person has to a dependent, then the position is internally consistent.
Another position is that a woman has absolute control of her own body, and that dictating what she can or can not do to her body violates an innate right all people have to security of their person. This also strikes me as internally consistent.
So unfortunately for social peace there is bound to be eternal conflict about this. Regarding your point that the development of the embryo/fetus is a continuum, well yes it is. Since we have two defensible and diametrically opposed systems of thought that give absolute answers, it must mean there is no absolute answer. Different people will draw the line in different places.
My problem with the Pope, and I have a big one because I'm personally connected to this issue, is that his metaphysical belief system leads him and his large power system to pronounce bad things upon me and people like me. Screw that.
Really.
I don't see how you having the right to disagree logically must make the Pope wrong.Oh, the Pope and I do more than just disagree. The manifestation of me disagreeing with him is that I do what I want. The manifestation of him disagreeing with me is for him to preach that I advocate murder. The manifestation of him disagreeing with me is that he uses the power of his pulpit to motivate millions of followers to prevent me from doing what I want. The manifestation of him disagreeing with me is for him to tell me I may not have a child of my own.
To respond to your amusing little deconstruction, point two would be that the Pope effectively says that when a sperm and an ovum combine, the resulting cell is infused with a divine magical force that makes it a human being. Therefore, says the Pope, I am not allowed to have children of my own because he believes in magic. I assert that is ridiculous. So yes, in this case, by disagreeing with me he is being ridiculous.
This meaning was easily extracted from the context, maybe you should try that next time before you get all preachy towards someone you don't know. Unless you are Catholic, in which case I guess you don't have much choice.
This is what I completely reject. To accept that I would have to believe there is some sort of divine magic that infuses the sperm and ovum combination that makes it different from any other cell in the body. I don't believe in magic.
Since I don't believe in magic, I therefore find the Pope's reasoning to be arbitrary. And since it's arbitrary, how can you say his opposition to that kind of medicine is less ridiculous that opposition to all kinds of medicine?
I just find it awfully convenient that his arbitrary pronunciations are about things that he will never have to worry about, what with him being celibate and all.
I respect all people, but of course.
If I may, let me get right to the root of the issue. The Pope presumes that a 4-cell embryo is a human life. I do not agree. Therefore the church's moral concerns are not my own. Rather than agree that we disagree, as a reasonable man would do, the Pope ignores differences of opinion and declares that I must accept his conclusions.
It's that sort of dictatorial bullheadedness that turns me off religion. For me it's not so much about the belief in what some call invisible sky magic and that sort of thing, it's the fact that the followers of most religions feel they are permitted to impose their will on others that disagree.