It's also dubious as to whether or not there's a problem to be solved. The strength of gravity is what it is. Perhaps the real question is why electrons are so light.
Strangely enough, we don't have a whole bunch of crime, firearm violence, or any need to keep track of who has what in their waistband.
As we should all know, the per capita violence rate in the United States is, just like pretty much everywhere else in the world, decreasing steadily over time. However, the mass shooting rate in the United States is increasing over time.
Didn't Maine have a mass shooting just this year? Around July, I think?
So does it stop being a 'theory' just because other theories base themselves off of it (i.e. it is assumed the theory 'must' be true but that it hasn't been proved) or something else? If so - and this is a genuine question not a sarcasm - when do these 'frameworks' becomes 'proofs' (if you see what I mean?) or have I missed the point of something?
Think of it this way: Group theory (in mathematics) is not a scientific theory, in the sense that it does not explain anything about the natural world. However, it is a useful language in which you can express certain aspects of scientific theories.
Quantum mechanics is the same thing. It isn't a scientific theory, it is a language in which scientific theories (e.g. Dirac's theory of the electron) can be expressed.
Classical mechanics, quantum mechanics and string “theory” are not theories, but rather frameworks.
This is an accurate statement. "Quantum mechanics" isn't a theory by itself. It's a framework in which to construct theories. So, for example, the Dirac theory of the electron is a theory built out of quantum mechanics. Quantum electrodynamics is a theory built out of quantum field theory, and so on.
The word "theory" in "quantum field theory" or "string theory" is more like the word "theory" in "group theory". Physicists use group theory, but group theory is not a scientific theory in the sense that hard sciences like physics use the term.
Typing that out makes me a little scared to think about what current military would think about such an order regarding firearm owners. Hopefully there would be enough pushback that it wouldn't happen.
Responsible firearm owners are mainstream, so there's no way that would happen. But you know something? The mainstream majority almost always doesn't need its rights protected. It's protecting the rights of minorities that makes something like of a Bill of Rights meaningful.
On that note, if you want an interesting thought experiment, imagine what would have happened if all those Japanese-American citizens were armed and were willing to use their guns to defend themselves against a government which was determined to take away their civil rights. This is, after all, one of the "gun nut" slogans, right? How well do you think that would have worked out?
I mentally put that in the category "killing". Indeed, anyone who is hunting animals and not killing and using every part of them is not a responsible hunter in my book.
(Even when you catch an undersized fish and throw it back, surely the point of fishing is killing those delicious, delicious fish.)
But then they actually have the intellectual honesty to keep to the original FBI definition [...]
If the FBI ever had a definition of "mass shooting", it's news to me. The FBI term is "mass killing". The comment that I replied to used the word "shooting", not "killing".
And in case it isn't obvious, the fact that it has to be four deaths to rise to some level of significance says a lot about how complacent the United States has become about violence.
It seems that the spying is only harassing honest citizens who not only do nothing wrong but aren't even realistically suspected of doing anything terrorist related.
You could turn that into a slogan. "If spying is legal, only the legal will be spied upon." Or something.
OK, my wording was a little unclear, but it's still true that the US has spent most of its history not involved in foreign conflicts. Let's go through a few of these...
This one is open to interpretation. In one sense, the United States was not involved in the Second Opium War. It was not allied with either side, and took no action in the conflict apart from one battle where one US ship was involved. The only other thing that happened was that a US ship was shelled, possibly by accident, and the US retaliated. This was quickly followed by a neutrality treaty. The amount of time where the US was involved in actual fighting adds up to less than two weeks (if my arithmetic is correct).
Arguably not a foreign conflict. The Phillippines was basically an American colony before and after the war.
I didn't go through all of them, but I think you can see where I'm going with this. But the central point is that if you add up the duration of all of these conflicts, it's a very small proportion of the history of the United States from 1783 to 1917.
For the most part. Something has happened to tomatoes in the last couple of years. They're all white and tasteless, and I can't work out what happened.
I'm glad you said "failing" rather than "failed". 15 years of stagnation will do that to you.
I still use Perl as a better shell script, better AWK, better Tcl, etc. It is better than those things, especially if you need features from more than one of them.
Interesting point, but when I first learned Python many years ago, I converted my set of useful Perl scripts into Python, partly as a learning exercise. I was surprised to learn that each one was smaller in terms of both number of lines. After doing a post mortem, I realized that the elimination of braces more than made up for Python's more explicit keywords.
That's interesting, and on reflection, I think you're right.
I've used a lot of programming languages. (There are over 60 mentioned on my CV.) Without getting into the language pissing contest, it suggests that "number of lines" isn't necessarily the measure of "terseness" that most people want. The main measures for me are: How much information can fit on a screen, and how much effort does it take to say what I want to say?
In modern editors with smart autoindent it takes the same number of keystrokes to do braces vs indentation-based scoping. If you're used to both and aren't deliberately writing obfuscated code, they're equally readable. The effort to write a modest-sized keyword vs a punctuation mark is also similar. So really, there's not a lot in it.
What about information density on screen? That's a bit more interesting. Basically, you're trading horizontal space for vertical space.
Is that an issue? You'd think that we have more text resolution than ever with our modern high-def screens. Most undergraduate-level terminals were 80x24 when I started out, but in the PC space, the best VESA text modes were 80x60 or 132x60, at the cost of an unreadable font. I just checked the shells that I have open, and they are 80x60. I don't believe in the 80 column limit, so my vim instances are about 120x60, and Eclipse gives me about the same. So it looks like we haven't actually advanced.
To be fair, the vast majority of that was on (allegedly) US soil against indigenous people. The United States has managed to stay out of foreign conflicts for most of its history.
People forget how hard it was to convince Americans to get involved in WW1. Of course, it all went downhill from there.
Slashdot Mirror
It's also dubious as to whether or not there's a problem to be solved. The strength of gravity is what it is. Perhaps the real question is why electrons are so light.
Ha hah, what makes you think the Capitol building isn't riddled with obscure passages...
They're called "riders".
Strangely enough, we don't have a whole bunch of crime, firearm violence, or any need to keep track of who has what in their waistband.
As we should all know, the per capita violence rate in the United States is, just like pretty much everywhere else in the world, decreasing steadily over time. However, the mass shooting rate in the United States is increasing over time.
Didn't Maine have a mass shooting just this year? Around July, I think?
So does it stop being a 'theory' just because other theories base themselves off of it (i.e. it is assumed the theory 'must' be true but that it hasn't been proved) or something else? If so - and this is a genuine question not a sarcasm - when do these 'frameworks' becomes 'proofs' (if you see what I mean?) or have I missed the point of something?
Think of it this way: Group theory (in mathematics) is not a scientific theory, in the sense that it does not explain anything about the natural world. However, it is a useful language in which you can express certain aspects of scientific theories.
Quantum mechanics is the same thing. It isn't a scientific theory, it is a language in which scientific theories (e.g. Dirac's theory of the electron) can be expressed.
Classical mechanics, quantum mechanics and string “theory” are not theories, but rather frameworks.
This is an accurate statement. "Quantum mechanics" isn't a theory by itself. It's a framework in which to construct theories. So, for example, the Dirac theory of the electron is a theory built out of quantum mechanics. Quantum electrodynamics is a theory built out of quantum field theory, and so on.
The word "theory" in "quantum field theory" or "string theory" is more like the word "theory" in "group theory". Physicists use group theory, but group theory is not a scientific theory in the sense that hard sciences like physics use the term.
Typing that out makes me a little scared to think about what current military would think about such an order regarding firearm owners. Hopefully there would be enough pushback that it wouldn't happen.
Responsible firearm owners are mainstream, so there's no way that would happen. But you know something? The mainstream majority almost always doesn't need its rights protected. It's protecting the rights of minorities that makes something like of a Bill of Rights meaningful.
On that note, if you want an interesting thought experiment, imagine what would have happened if all those Japanese-American citizens were armed and were willing to use their guns to defend themselves against a government which was determined to take away their civil rights. This is, after all, one of the "gun nut" slogans, right? How well do you think that would have worked out?
Who do you think are members of the military?
If I recall correctly, they're the ones who rounded up American citizens and sent them to internment camps in 1942.
[...] or for hunting animals [...]
I mentally put that in the category "killing". Indeed, anyone who is hunting animals and not killing and using every part of them is not a responsible hunter in my book.
(Even when you catch an undersized fish and throw it back, surely the point of fishing is killing those delicious, delicious fish.)
I think at some point it was fast enough to generate that code on the fly.
Many interpreters are embedding LLVM for JIT these days.
Prisons.. Supermax space prisons sound like a hoot.
Yeah, we could put our criminally insane evil genius supervillans there. What could possibly go wrong?
It was funny when the Meow Meow Army did it. That was 20 years ago.
The FBI term is "mass killing".
...or "mass murder", of course. I knew that.
But then they actually have the intellectual honesty to keep to the original FBI definition [...]
If the FBI ever had a definition of "mass shooting", it's news to me. The FBI term is "mass killing". The comment that I replied to used the word "shooting", not "killing".
And in case it isn't obvious, the fact that it has to be four deaths to rise to some level of significance says a lot about how complacent the United States has become about violence.
That's exactly the same as 3000 dead Americans and two gigantic skycrapers down!
372 of the victims on 9/11 were foreign nationals.
Oh, and not that this has anything to do with what you said, but over 30 were Muslim.
People who reject the Occam's Razor theorem are attempting to push a religious agenda, [...]
...which is ironic, when you consider who William of Ockham was.
Even if it's only 310, that doesn't really change the argument.
It seems that the spying is only harassing honest citizens who not only do nothing wrong but aren't even realistically suspected of doing anything terrorist related.
You could turn that into a slogan. "If spying is legal, only the legal will be spied upon." Or something.
No, the argument is that because guns can be legally obtained by terrorists, the US shouldn't let in refugees.
OK, my wording was a little unclear, but it's still true that the US has spent most of its history not involved in foreign conflicts. Let's go through a few of these...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Not a foreign conflict.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Not a foreign conflict.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Arguably not a foreign conflict, but we'll grant it for the sake of argument. One ship was involved, and the total duration was a few weeks.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This one is open to interpretation. In one sense, the United States was not involved in the Second Opium War. It was not allied with either side, and took no action in the conflict apart from one battle where one US ship was involved. The only other thing that happened was that a US ship was shelled, possibly by accident, and the US retaliated. This was quickly followed by a neutrality treaty. The amount of time where the US was involved in actual fighting adds up to less than two weeks (if my arithmetic is correct).
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (1871)
Once again, arguably not a foreign conflict. Total duration: one month.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Arguably not a foreign conflict. The Phillippines was basically an American colony before and after the war.
I didn't go through all of them, but I think you can see where I'm going with this. But the central point is that if you add up the duration of all of these conflicts, it's a very small proportion of the history of the United States from 1783 to 1917.
Australian produce is fantastic.
For the most part. Something has happened to tomatoes in the last couple of years. They're all white and tasteless, and I can't work out what happened.
Nobody liked Clippy. You don't win that one, Nostradamus.
Unfortunately, it's failing at that.
I'm glad you said "failing" rather than "failed". 15 years of stagnation will do that to you.
I still use Perl as a better shell script, better AWK, better Tcl, etc. It is better than those things, especially if you need features from more than one of them.
Interesting point, but when I first learned Python many years ago, I converted my set of useful Perl scripts into Python, partly as a learning exercise. I was surprised to learn that each one was smaller in terms of both number of lines. After doing a post mortem, I realized that the elimination of braces more than made up for Python's more explicit keywords.
That's interesting, and on reflection, I think you're right.
I've used a lot of programming languages. (There are over 60 mentioned on my CV.) Without getting into the language pissing contest, it suggests that "number of lines" isn't necessarily the measure of "terseness" that most people want. The main measures for me are: How much information can fit on a screen, and how much effort does it take to say what I want to say?
In modern editors with smart autoindent it takes the same number of keystrokes to do braces vs indentation-based scoping. If you're used to both and aren't deliberately writing obfuscated code, they're equally readable. The effort to write a modest-sized keyword vs a punctuation mark is also similar. So really, there's not a lot in it.
What about information density on screen? That's a bit more interesting. Basically, you're trading horizontal space for vertical space.
Is that an issue? You'd think that we have more text resolution than ever with our modern high-def screens. Most undergraduate-level terminals were 80x24 when I started out, but in the PC space, the best VESA text modes were 80x60 or 132x60, at the cost of an unreadable font. I just checked the shells that I have open, and they are 80x60. I don't believe in the 80 column limit, so my vim instances are about 120x60, and Eclipse gives me about the same. So it looks like we haven't actually advanced.
To be fair, the vast majority of that was on (allegedly) US soil against indigenous people. The United States has managed to stay out of foreign conflicts for most of its history.
People forget how hard it was to convince Americans to get involved in WW1. Of course, it all went downhill from there.
Damn, I wish Slashdot had +1, Poe