The problem in the US is that electric companies have private networks, same hassle as phone networks. The network itself should be a public utility, electric companies would be contracted by the gov to maintain/improve the network and be charged a usage fee to cover gov costs. Wholesale prices are set by a gov institution, anyone can set themselves up as a retailer and sell for whatever they can get. Net metering for residential connections where the home owner gets the same price as his retail supplier charges. Additional pollution tax for dirty wholesale generators. Of course it would never fly in the US - because 'freedom'.
Kmart announced today they were also withdrawing GTAV from Aussie stores. All it demonstrates is their sales executives don't understand their average customer to the point a tiny but well organised minority can convince them that they represent the majority of customers.
Art is symbolism, it's an important evolutionary leap in the workings of the human mind. It allows our species to pass on experience to future generations that in this case have now morphed into a different species. We have refined that symbolism into language and language into math. Therefore math is actually a highly evolved art that reflects our best understanding of the universe. In fact the best mathematicians describe themselves "playing with math" and "breaking the rules" (eg: imaginary numbers).
for the first time in decades, has rendered a major update to the key formula scientists use to seek out interstellar life
The formula hasn't changed, the variables are still unknown. Someone simply used recent data to make an educated guess as to the value of one variable. The Drake equation is basically a thought experiment, it was never meant to give a real answer. People who attempt to plug in "more accurate values" are missing the point.
Sure cars are a lot safer now than in '69, consequently the Traffic Accident Commission (TAC) have mandatory safety ratings for cars, and they have heavily advertised the rating system for a couple of decades now. Also seat belts were made compulsory in Victoria in 1970, the subsequent drop in the road toll was very noticeable in the stats.
The success of the modern TAC here in Victoria is due to the bipartisan science based approach, but the on road results are why the public genuinely support them. The TAC came into it's current form in the late 80's, we know that random breath tests work because we were amongst the first in the world to introduce them. We watched our stats improve much faster than similar jurisdictions without the RBT's. A few years ago they added the drug lollypop to random testing but so far their use has been limited to the extent I haven't seen one yet despite several random tests in that period.
It's actually 3Km over in Vic (used to be 5%). I've driven in both states many times, don't notice much difference except the level of traffic in Melb is much higher than Brisbane. Sydney is the worst city to drive in, roads are narrow too.
I've been driving in Victoria since 1977, seat belts and random breath tests have been the most effective at cutting the road toll, period. Everything else just adds to that result. What they realised here in Vic 30yrs ago was that it's not sufficient to just make a law and start enforcing it, you have to change the public's attitude, unlike the 70's people are now regularly shamed by their friends and family if they choose to drink drive or fail to strap in their kids. The results of this deliberate science based effort by the TAC has been widely acclaimed as "ground breaking" by the rest of the world.
They don't, in fact they have to give Nature money and copyright to get their article published and that's after reviewers have said "this changes everything". What every researcher wants is to be published in Nature or Science, such a paper is more valuable to their career than their Phd. These journals are #1 and #2 in academic rankings because they have built up that reputation over a century or more. Yeah, their business model needs to open up but you can't blame them for being cautious, nobody wants to see either institution go belly up (other than the anti-science mob).
In most commercial shops the cost of writing and maintaining the test cases is by far the largest cost of automated testing, it's often not worth the effort in $ terms.
Management has long looked away from such auto-test robots because they can't be talked down to nor considered an FTE that can be managed to help out annual evaluations.
It's not about YOU, it's about the $$$. If test teams could be replaced by a cheaper robot, there wouldn't be any test teams.
My 5yo grand daughter has mild autism, she was diagnosed because her language skills are in the bottom 10%, very literal, doesn't get metaphors, etc, her other skills are all in the top 10%. Getting her to sit at a desk and concentrate on anything for more than five seconds is an effort. She would make a much better dancer than a tester because she simply can't "think" while sitting still.
TFA pops up every six months or so, it's a gimmick that relies on a stereotyping of Autism and a poor understanding of "real world" software testing, but autistic people still need to pay the rent.
Slower yes, but still a danger to themselves and others. Here in Oz the booze busses make you blow in the bag for booze, and lick the lollypop for drugs. Here in Victoria, the random booze busses have cut the total number of deaths on the road by over 50% in the last 25yrs (from over 700/yr down to under 300/yr), this is despite there being twice as many cars on the road. The highest death toll was in 1969 when there were something like 1/10th the number of cars on the road as there are today, no seatbelts, no breathalysers, no speed/red light cameras, ~1200 people killed a year.
why doesn't the US DOJ expend their effort prosecuting the crooks on Wall Street whole defrauded the whole world of a trillion dollars selling those bogus Credit Default Swaps that led up to the crash of 2008?
Because immoral and illegal are two different things. CDS were not illegal in 2008, and are still not illegal now. That banks suddenly stopped trusting each other in 2008 was not Wall Street's fault, it was a failure of government and ultimately a failure of the people who elected them on the mantra of deregulation.
55 here, our 25 strong department has only one person under 30, most are 40+ with 10+yrs experience in the industry. I was a cat heared for a few years in my late 30's, don't want to do it again. I'm content managing source control and hacking at code. Good pay, reasonable hours, and the only way I would lose my job is if the entire department went belly up. Having said that I work for a Japanese multinational, their overall attitude to older workers is very different to the US multinationals I've worked for here in Oz. US companies tend to think that not making project manager by age 40 is a sign of failure. However a few extra bucks for a lot more hours just didn't feel like "success" to me.
Grade 3 1967, we traded pencils for fountain pens and things became difficult. The teacher would often screw up my maths work without reading it because of my god awful penmanship. The amount of time most kids put into learning to write legible cursive far outweighs the time lost when printing. I'm not a doctor but I do write like one, consequently I print when others need to read it. The only time I use cursive nowadays is when making notes for myself, after 50yrs I think I can safely say it was a complete waste of time learning it.
OTOH - Long division is the only manual method I use. I have a CS/Maths degree but it's so long since I did short division I would have to look up the algorithm.
Calm down, nobody has stopped teaching (hand) written communication, they are just focusing on one form - printing. Cursive has never been particularly useful for clear communication, I'm in my 50's and I normally print when I write because readable cursive is an art, not a science.
Slashdot Mirror
"Gamer" demographic: Average age 35, 47% female.
The problem in the US is that electric companies have private networks, same hassle as phone networks. The network itself should be a public utility, electric companies would be contracted by the gov to maintain/improve the network and be charged a usage fee to cover gov costs. Wholesale prices are set by a gov institution, anyone can set themselves up as a retailer and sell for whatever they can get. Net metering for residential connections where the home owner gets the same price as his retail supplier charges. Additional pollution tax for dirty wholesale generators. Of course it would never fly in the US - because 'freedom'.
When I was a kid I was tazed by coffin ray. It was comparable to being zapped by the ignition coil in a car.
Kmart announced today they were also withdrawing GTAV from Aussie stores. All it demonstrates is their sales executives don't understand their average customer to the point a tiny but well organised minority can convince them that they represent the majority of customers.
Science (with a capital 'S') is a philosophy
Science (with a small 's') is a process.
Hypothesis: The fact that Science works leads people to believe it is not a philosophy.
Urinals in a fucking art gallery.
Is just symbol that annoys both of us.
Earth is orbiting the BH in the galactic plane, so wouldn't the ring of fire be seen edge on from our perspective?
for the first time in decades, has rendered a major update to the key formula scientists use to seek out interstellar life
The formula hasn't changed, the variables are still unknown. Someone simply used recent data to make an educated guess as to the value of one variable. The Drake equation is basically a thought experiment, it was never meant to give a real answer. People who attempt to plug in "more accurate values" are missing the point.
it's complete failure to prevent its stated goal
Speaking of shitty code, you do realise that expression resolves to "met its goal", right?
That "professor who went mad" was actually Lord Monckton, they say his eyes bulge out like that because his brain exploded.
I think so too, that's what happens when both sides of politics decide to attack the problem, rather than each other!
Sure cars are a lot safer now than in '69, consequently the Traffic Accident Commission (TAC) have mandatory safety ratings for cars, and they have heavily advertised the rating system for a couple of decades now. Also seat belts were made compulsory in Victoria in 1970, the subsequent drop in the road toll was very noticeable in the stats.
The success of the modern TAC here in Victoria is due to the bipartisan science based approach, but the on road results are why the public genuinely support them. The TAC came into it's current form in the late 80's, we know that random breath tests work because we were amongst the first in the world to introduce them. We watched our stats improve much faster than similar jurisdictions without the RBT's. A few years ago they added the drug lollypop to random testing but so far their use has been limited to the extent I haven't seen one yet despite several random tests in that period.
It's actually 3Km over in Vic (used to be 5%). I've driven in both states many times, don't notice much difference except the level of traffic in Melb is much higher than Brisbane. Sydney is the worst city to drive in, roads are narrow too.
I've been driving in Victoria since 1977, seat belts and random breath tests have been the most effective at cutting the road toll, period. Everything else just adds to that result. What they realised here in Vic 30yrs ago was that it's not sufficient to just make a law and start enforcing it, you have to change the public's attitude, unlike the 70's people are now regularly shamed by their friends and family if they choose to drink drive or fail to strap in their kids. The results of this deliberate science based effort by the TAC has been widely acclaimed as "ground breaking" by the rest of the world.
If only researchers didn't get compensated.
They don't, in fact they have to give Nature money and copyright to get their article published and that's after reviewers have said "this changes everything". What every researcher wants is to be published in Nature or Science, such a paper is more valuable to their career than their Phd. These journals are #1 and #2 in academic rankings because they have built up that reputation over a century or more. Yeah, their business model needs to open up but you can't blame them for being cautious, nobody wants to see either institution go belly up (other than the anti-science mob).
robot costs.
In most commercial shops the cost of writing and maintaining the test cases is by far the largest cost of automated testing, it's often not worth the effort in $ terms.
Management has long looked away from such auto-test robots because they can't be talked down to nor considered an FTE that can be managed to help out annual evaluations.
It's not about YOU, it's about the $$$. If test teams could be replaced by a cheaper robot, there wouldn't be any test teams.
My 5yo grand daughter has mild autism, she was diagnosed because her language skills are in the bottom 10%, very literal, doesn't get metaphors, etc, her other skills are all in the top 10%. Getting her to sit at a desk and concentrate on anything for more than five seconds is an effort. She would make a much better dancer than a tester because she simply can't "think" while sitting still.
TFA pops up every six months or so, it's a gimmick that relies on a stereotyping of Autism and a poor understanding of "real world" software testing, but autistic people still need to pay the rent.
Slower yes, but still a danger to themselves and others. Here in Oz the booze busses make you blow in the bag for booze, and lick the lollypop for drugs. Here in Victoria, the random booze busses have cut the total number of deaths on the road by over 50% in the last 25yrs (from over 700/yr down to under 300/yr), this is despite there being twice as many cars on the road. The highest death toll was in 1969 when there were something like 1/10th the number of cars on the road as there are today, no seatbelts, no breathalysers, no speed/red light cameras, ~1200 people killed a year.
Anarchy is not the answer to injustice.
why doesn't the US DOJ expend their effort prosecuting the crooks on Wall Street whole defrauded the whole world of a trillion dollars selling those bogus Credit Default Swaps that led up to the crash of 2008?
Because immoral and illegal are two different things. CDS were not illegal in 2008, and are still not illegal now. That banks suddenly stopped trusting each other in 2008 was not Wall Street's fault, it was a failure of government and ultimately a failure of the people who elected them on the mantra of deregulation.
When the result depends on assets, it is neither "fair or just"
55 here, our 25 strong department has only one person under 30, most are 40+ with 10+yrs experience in the industry. I was a cat heared for a few years in my late 30's, don't want to do it again. I'm content managing source control and hacking at code. Good pay, reasonable hours, and the only way I would lose my job is if the entire department went belly up. Having said that I work for a Japanese multinational, their overall attitude to older workers is very different to the US multinationals I've worked for here in Oz. US companies tend to think that not making project manager by age 40 is a sign of failure. However a few extra bucks for a lot more hours just didn't feel like "success" to me.
this guy needed psychological help more than anything
Even if he wasn't pissed at society when he wrote that, he is now!
Grade 3 1967, we traded pencils for fountain pens and things became difficult. The teacher would often screw up my maths work without reading it because of my god awful penmanship. The amount of time most kids put into learning to write legible cursive far outweighs the time lost when printing. I'm not a doctor but I do write like one, consequently I print when others need to read it. The only time I use cursive nowadays is when making notes for myself, after 50yrs I think I can safely say it was a complete waste of time learning it.
OTOH - Long division is the only manual method I use. I have a CS/Maths degree but it's so long since I did short division I would have to look up the algorithm.
Calm down, nobody has stopped teaching (hand) written communication, they are just focusing on one form - printing. Cursive has never been particularly useful for clear communication, I'm in my 50's and I normally print when I write because readable cursive is an art, not a science.