Agreed, except for Excel. Having to work with spreadsheets prepared by our analysts (who can wrangle a spreadsheet I worked on for hours into something I can hardly recognize that is WAY better within minutes - read "real powerusers"), seeing how easy to use these spreadsheets are and time and again finding out that the features they use just aren't there in Calc... I'd say Excel is actually aimed at the poweruser. For a 9-5 clerk Calc is just as good.
Depends on what you're doing. Powerpoint beats Impress hands down, sure, even though you can make nice presentations with both. Excel... well, for 90% of spreadsheets Calc is just as good (and don't get me started on the productivity killer called "ribbons"), but for some functions it's no match - Excel is truly the powerhorse of MS Office with no real competition. But Word? It's a PoS buggy half-baked text editor. MS was unable to fix that for the past 10 years. Writer is simply better. It does have its weaknesses, but the strengths are quite convincing. I find it more stable and the decent handling of styles makes me cringe every time I have to use Word.
In 2007 I honestly thought that the only reason MS introduced ribbons was their failure to make Word any better (along with OpenXML, introduced for the same reason). They wanted to retrain their users with something OpenOffice was unllikely to follow (because it's stupid) before Writer got so much better than Word that even average users would want to switch. After a year or two with ribbons Word users would feel sufficiently unfamiliar with Writer to make the retraining not worth the time. Add to that OpenXML quirks and Writer would be stuck in a niche. Seems to have worked. Even though my job requires Linux and I feel much more at home in that environment, I have to keep a Win7 VM with Office 2010 installed just to work with some multi-author DOCXes where small formatting details matter. I can't force others to use ODT and DOC simply does not handle some formatting that ODT and DOCX both do.
So... Presentation: MS. Document: Open. Spreadsheet: depends on your needs. The rest is niche.
I had no idea about this, but it doesn't seem one bit strange to me. You're thinking in the categories of nation states at war. A small country like Luxembourg has absolutely no way of effectively protecting itself in that scenario - it needs to rely on politics and economy as its strong points. But there are other uses of a military, not against a nation-state aggressor - and for those one fighter makes sense.
Imagine something like 9/11 in Luxembourg. Given the country's scale, the losses would be tragic (for the US as a whole the actual losses were negligible, the effect was largely terror and its political consequences). Now think - what if they got a threat one hour in advance? And had ONE fighter ready for action? The difference between one and none suddenly looks a lot different.
That's why it would also make sense to maintain a small but highly trained special force. A couple of armored vehicles (perhaps even a light tank or two). For tiny countries at the shore of a sea or lake, or even with a large river - some armed boats. This kind of army won't keep you safe against an invader, but works well against a small extremist group, a crazy man with a home-made "tank", a couple of well armed criminals who would tear your regular police force apart... It is potentially very useful. And relatively cheap.
Now, versus nation states... One thing I would consider would be to train most able-bodied citizens in guerilla tactics and have well trained special forces ready to disperse at first threat of invasion. That kind of thing can make occupying even a very small country a very costly and frustrating experience. If your neighbours know you've been doing this for years and you have good diplomats... You might get to stay neutral. You're so small, you're just not worth the trouble.
LLVM replacing GCC in Linux distros? Not anytime soon. Not even if it's better. Why? For the reasons you stated. Because of the kernel.
The kernel is not really "clean" code, as in 100% standards compliant - it's very reliant on GCC. But it's a LOT of code, not any less complex than the compiler itself. Making it compile with something else would take a lot of work./* Actually that's hardly surprising - it's the one piece of code in a GNU/Linux system which actually cares about what the compiler generates bit-by-bit, the one piece that is not isolated from the hardware by the OS layers - it IS the first layer.*/
If you can't rebuild the kernel, you don't really have a full distro. Can you think of a distro maker willing to invest enough in the kernel to make it fully LLVM compatible, including all the modules? Nope. Having two different compilers on the system is a much cheaper and easier solution.
So, GCC is not leaving any distros. But yes, LLVM might quickly become the default CC if it's better in most cases. And then GCC becomes isolated in the Linux world, relegated to the role of KCC - the kernel compiler...
That would be actually fun to watch - getting from the position of fighting for GNU/Linux to be used as the system name (with GNU/Hurd as a proof of concept that Linux is replacable without ruining the system) to being reliant on Linux as the only piece of software in the world keeping you relevant in any way...
Well... The long trials could actually make the fines more effective in this case.
Short trial = a powerful US company gets a serious fine = US diplomatic pressure (ineffective, as court decision is not that simple to undo) and all kinds of international stench... The company may or may not have to pay the fine, but nobody's happy.
Long trial = the company has enough time to realize they are going to lose. US pressure can actually be met with a good answer (make them behave and we'll see). The US doesn't really want a conflict with the EU, so the company will hears some discouraging words from the politicians they are trying to buy. The company decides it's cheaper to silence this through backpedalling. Problem fixed, the court decides to lower the fine to more traditional "slap on the wrist" level since the violation has been corrected, the company pays without even noticing in the budget... Everybody's happy.
Sometimes the punishment is not the remedy - the threat is.
What has the general World view to do with this? The local view is what matters, that's what sets the moral standards. If child prostitution is legal somewhere, most locals probably see nothing wrong with it. And that's exactly my point - to get things to change you need to influence the local view. That's something only the local government can do, through education and law (or you can wait - local view slowly follows global trends anyway). Outside pressure by people with different moral standards is rarely effective, especially in such traditional populations. Otherwise the US would have abolished capital punishment long ago.
And I will most strongly oppose this sentence:
The slavery angle is a bit off comparing past and current behaviors.
as a clear fallacy. Do you really believe we currently live in the perfect society that finally knows what is right? Because this is exactly what most people thought, throughout history. Keeping slaves used to be current behavior. Zeitgeist changes, morality fluctuates. As it does not change in global synchrony, you always get "modern" places and "backwards" places. Sometimes a while later the "modern" view is seen as "degenerate" and the "backwards" view returns.
Besides, remember e.g. Rwanda. Killing humans is even more obviously wrong, yet hundreds of thousands died for stupid reasons and the World has done too little too late. Makes this case pale in comparison.
Taiji dolphin fishermen are just conducting a legal fishing activity in their traditional way in full accordance with regulations and rules under the supervision of both the national and the prefectural governments. Therefore, we believe there are no reasons to criticize the Taiji dolphin fishery.
I fully agree with that. They are doing what they've been doing for a long time and it's completely legal - there is absolutely no reason to criticize them. But the "regulations and rules"? That's a different question.
We shouldn't be criticizing the fishermen doing their job. They are not in any way responsible for international relations. They do what they always did - people do not tend to think critically about such traditions. Since most of/. readers are probably Americans: would you freely criticize all the slave owners from your own history? Slaves were not "people". Some owners thought a bit differently - but not that much differently, the modern minds of that time would be considered unbelievably racist today. It took a long time (plus a war, but that's a detail) to change the dominant mindset.
We should be criticizing the fact that the country is not doing anything to eliminate this tradition. It won't happen overnight, but with insufficient pressure it seems that they're unwilling to make even a small step in that direction. A step only the local government (national or prefectural) can take.
Leave the fishermen alone. But don't stop pressuring their government. Hard!
I'm as strongly opposed to capital punishment as possible (yup, EU citizen).
And yet I have to agree with you. IF (and that's a very strong if) you decide it's a good idea to do this, smash the head completely and fast. No pain possible. Sure, you get the stigma for killing innocents once in a while - that's the reason I oppose this - but at the very least, even if you made a mistake, you've only shortened their life. No pain inflicted, no torture. Acceptable? Hardly. But way better than the alternatives.
I really do not understand why this is not the preferred way. Perhaps because it looks bad, it might make some viewers squeamish? Then stop pretending it's about justice - it's just retaliation. You want the victim's side to see pain, but not gore. You want the nice warm feeling of retribution, even if you're only 90% sure it went to the right person. How is that humane?
That's nice if you're testing something you can recreate in a lab or have lots of time. Sometimes you need to attempt to draw some conclusions based on a limited set of data points. In that case he's right - people too often forget that some mathematical tools need more data than others. You need to know your limits. If you're only half-sure that what you see is a car, forget about guessing the type. If you only have enough data to estimate the mean (badly), forget about variance. Standard deviation for 5 samples? Are you joking?
It gets better, I've seen one (rejected) paper taking 10 samples and trying to estimate... the Hurst coefficient. Come on! Even the mean is still blurry!
Not mentioned? To me the whole summary reads as if the suit claimed the following: "I wanted to hire a great guy for his skills, but the management made it clear that we're only reaching for foreign nations to lower costs and if I can't hire him at less-than-normal salary, I shouldn't bother - quality is not a real advantage here."
On the other hand, isn't this typical for any hiring in a "cost aware" company that a manager has to push very hard to make it clear that "yes I NEED an expensive hire, because I have no use for the people I can hire for cheap"?
Judging from TFA, you're missing one level here. The multiverse as a whole is in constant inflation. Parts of it stop that and start normal expansion - we're in one of such bubbles and that's our universe. The observable universe is the part of this bubble we can (theoretically - not necesserily with current technology) observe in any meaningful way, limited by the speed of light. There's no reason to believe that the universe (the local bubble) is as small as the observable universe.
Why limit this to products? Write some short scripts to automate your tasks, carry them across upgrades, new computers, etc. If an upgrade messes them up, what will you do? Spend the time to fix them? And if it happens again? Do it again?
Fix them as many times as you like. Me... Well, unless: 1. the fix is as simple as adding some option, command, whatever specifying that the code uses syntax/API/whatever from version X, 2. this will fix it permanently, I'm more likely to just rewrite them in a more stable language.
100% true and also the reason I still only work in Python when situation requires it. The language is incredibly easy to write in (although the whitespace-controlled flow is weird and causes problems sometimes), it could be my language of choice - but it isn't. All because of one experience.
A few years ago, 2.6 was still relatively new, but 3 was already promoted as the new thing we should be getting ready for (since it won't be 100% compatible) - a bit worrying, but what the hell. Some small client-server code for research use. Well defined interface, separate development by different authors. Not yet ready, but works fine in simple tests. Need to do an early demo - fast. Quick preparation of a scenario, check - looks good. Cool, we grab some small laptops, drives with the code and get to the airport. We have the whole evening to set it up - should be no problem.
Whoops, we don't have the root passwords! Silly us. It's too late in the night to call the owners. Fine, we'll have to use what's installed. Hmm... Both 2.4 and 2.6 available. Our testing environment had 2.5, we didn't test with any other version yet, but we should be fine, right?
Testing with 2.6. The program fails to work properly - empty answers to some calls or no reaction from the server. WTF?!? Fine, roll back to 2.4. Previous problems gone, new one appears. The responses are incomplete. Some data is skipped as if not there. WTF^2?!?
A few hours of debugging, some potentially good ideas, but we need it working in the morning. Finally, after looking where (client? server?) the bugs seem to appear with each version, we had a crazy idea. Back to original code, quick test... and we were fine, we even got some sleep. The server worked fine on 2.4. The client worked fine on 2.6. Run them on different versions... done. Happy end. Rest of the debugging after the demo.
This code worked fine with 2.5. In 2.4 - no warnings, no errors, just incorrect. In 2.6 - runs, but has problems. And these are small increments, said to be almost fully compatible - and version 3 was looming! That's when I decided that I can't trust the developers of Python for anything I might want to use a few years later. Thank you, but no.
My old programs in some other languages still mostly work, unless I used some non-standard library which evolved in an incompatible direction (and the old version conflicts with something or is vulnerable and shouldn't). And I can fix such problems without "updating" good, working code. With some changes to the makefile I can even compile a short K&R C program I've written long ago just for fun. Python versions are not real upgrades, they don't have "compatibility modes" - that's why you need more than one if you're working with old code sometimes. And I'm not talking about doing anything advanced!
That's why I think Python is a good idea broken by eager beavers. Upgrade the compiler/interpreter all you want, but treat language changes as standard versions and support old ones in the same compiler. If you play with the language expect to have problems getting users to upgrade.
Majority male area?! Perhaps in the US. I'm not from US.
Results of research conduted for the National Council of the Judiciary in my country, 2012: - 65% of judges in regional courts are female. - 61% of judges in district courts are female. - 58% of judges in apellate courts are female. Civil law, so precedents don't matter that much. The law is reasonably equal in this respect - both parents should have similar rights.
Family courts, dealing i.a. with custody matters, are not separate entities, they are part of this system. I can't find the statistics to support this, but anecdotal evidence suggests that they are the most female-dominated divisions of the courts. A male family court judge is a rarity.
Would not be the first such gamble. Until the first actual nuclear test the scientists were not entirely sure it won't ignite the whole atmosphere (burning nitrogen). All they had was "almost certainly no" - the Monte Carlo simulations are only simulations. The "micro black hole will swallow earth" controversy about the LHC was also interesting, although different - the scientists doing this were quite sure it wasn't possible, but the idea sounded intriguing to the media, leading to a swarm of interesting discussions and a lot of FUD.
If we get to the "almost certain" level of modeling the supervolcano and have the technology and knowledge to release pressure in a relatively controlled way it's a matter of risk analysis. If the eruption within a decade seems probable, the project will be launched. And yes, we might be wrong. Oops.
OTOH - how much energy would such a controlled drain release? What amount of ashes and gases? How much water would evaporate? That's actually more interesting than the "trigger" problem. Can we do it so that the effect will be acceptable, or will it be nearly as destructive to us as an actual explosion?
An intriguing thought - what if the explosion would ruin a significant part of the US (likely), a controlled drain could reduce that kind of damage a lot (likely), but the worldwide effects (chemical, climate, etc.) were very similar and disastrous (IANAVolcanologist, so perhaps). The supervolcano is on US territory. US risk analysis: do it ASAP, it's less destructive and the explosion is very likely. World risk analysis: don't do it EVER, every month without either draining or explosion is a month more for preparation. Imagine the dillema, the political tension... Ready material for a gripping novel or a blockbuster movie!
It's quite hard for me to recall any meaningful case of sexist discrimination against me, personally. Also, somehow I tend to get along well with most people, including some women with rather negative opinion about the male gender in general. Biases show most in non-personal contacts, once you get to know someone the bias is overruled by experiences with that person (even hardcore rasists sometimes accept someone of a different race as a "positive exception"). I'm writing about problems I observe, not experience.
And your firm expectation of hostility isn't a clear bias? The mote in thy brother's eye...
"Allow Java"? Sorry, but you can't really block Java if you allow scripting or redirection.
With redirection, you lose control over what the ad actually serves. You'd have to re-check it all the time. What will you do if it serves malware only to every tenth visitor? And never to yahoo IP space?
With scripting... Well, unless you have the resources to manually analyze every ad before you allow it (who would accept that much delay?), you will never be entirely sure what the code does. Static analysis can only go so far, there will always be ways to obfuscate the beejeezus out of the script in a way you cannot parse. Dynamic analysis is costly and what will you do if the code is in a way non-deterministic (includes a Java applet depending on time, random number, or whatever)? Plus, if any links appear in either analysis, see redirection, you don't know what will be served.
The only relatively secure ad service is one that only allows images (uploaded to the ad service, not linked) and text with limited markup. No scripting at all. But that's not what the advertisers want and they are the paying customers.
The most you can do is some screening of the ads and quick, effective handling of any incoming reports to minimize bad PR. It seems that this is what they do - good for them.
Sorry, but that's what happens if ads are the main source of income. In this model the ads are inherently unsafe - unless you have a very secure browser setup, but that will break some pages.
If users pay for a service, secure ads as additional income source are possible - but that's rare. Free = unsafe, sorry. Accept the risk or protect yourself.
Heh, first time in my life someone referred to me as right wing! One more proof how simple right/left divides are useless in practice.
I have met feminists who freely express this view. We didn't talk much, of course - I'm male, so my opinion didn't matter to them. Yet, they are quite rare (although, like most extremists, very vocal).
The real problem I described is generally not visible in speech, publications, etc. It shows in actual actions. It is a (probably subconscious) bias in many active feminists, who tend to disregard any anti-male discrimination, ignore it, treat as an attack, a "first world problem" or just "not their problem". I think it requires quite a lot of self-consciousness to fight biases like this.
Mix this bias in normal, less active feminist masses with the typical hyperactivity of the small group of extremists (in this case hardcore anti-male feminists) and you get exactly this face of feminism. Take this to academia, have a more formal discussion in a mixed group and you'll find the extremists very lonely, with most actual feminists probably declaring support for true equal rights.
Declaration vs. action. Cold reason vs. subconscious.
Do you know this slight feeling of shame when something surprises you and you suddenly realize the only reason it was surprising was that you subconsciously applied some stereotype you consciously find unfair? That's what I'm talking about. Our brains simplify. In this case conscious belief in equal rights and prevalence of anti-female discrimination results in prevalence of pro-female actions, which train your subconscious brain. No wonder it ends up believing "female - good, male - bad".
Cool, but the reason I wrote "in my country" is I'm not from US. Besides, I'm not looking for help (no children, no divorce), just giving an example of a rather systemic and widespread form of discrimination against men, in case some reader couldn't think of one.
And this is modded funny? Controversial, agreed, but funny?
The dominating strain of feminism doesn't give a #$%# about equality and non-discrimination in general. It's one-way only, men be damned. Sure, there's a lot more discrimination against females in general, but in cases where it works the other way around you'd expect those who constantly babble about "equal rights" to side with discriminated men, at least verbally. Not a chance.
Example from my country: in a divorce as a man you have practically zero chance for the kids to stay with you, even if the mother is absolutely unfit to care for them. Worse, your visiting hours tend to be minimal. How many females will you find in the group fighting for fathers' rights? Guess. "We want equal rights" - yeah, sure...
Not really, the question is too general - I don't think this would work well for them, it's more likely to backfire. They could however do a "No, with limited exceptions which canot be publicly revealed due to National Security".
One more observation: once actually hit and forced to react by the PR consequences they react quickly and properly. This shows that they were never incompetent about this. They knew from the start how to handle the issue properly. They just didn't give a [CENSORED].
Maybe I'm wrong, but this looks a bit hopeless from the PR side. They had a good run and failed to earn from it. Oops.
Here's hoping that he actually has some proof that they do. If so, this is a very smart move. If they say "yes we do", Congress will be forced to react immediately in some way, at least for PR reasons. If they say "no we don't" and he proves they're lying, then at least some officials will lose their jobs and/or land in jail. Just showing proof without this question would achieve very little - some fake outrage and no consequences.
If he has nothing... He's either gullible, just trying to show activity or simply hoping some proof will come up. He might be right - if there's anything like that in Snowden's documents it will soon appear if they officially deny.
See my response to Desler's second response. I was referring to today's news, not their initial response. It is a correct response and exactly what they should have done initially.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed, except for Excel. Having to work with spreadsheets prepared by our analysts (who can wrangle a spreadsheet I worked on for hours into something I can hardly recognize that is WAY better within minutes - read "real powerusers"), seeing how easy to use these spreadsheets are and time and again finding out that the features they use just aren't there in Calc... I'd say Excel is actually aimed at the poweruser. For a 9-5 clerk Calc is just as good.
Depends on what you're doing. Powerpoint beats Impress hands down, sure, even though you can make nice presentations with both. Excel... well, for 90% of spreadsheets Calc is just as good (and don't get me started on the productivity killer called "ribbons"), but for some functions it's no match - Excel is truly the powerhorse of MS Office with no real competition. But Word? It's a PoS buggy half-baked text editor. MS was unable to fix that for the past 10 years. Writer is simply better. It does have its weaknesses, but the strengths are quite convincing. I find it more stable and the decent handling of styles makes me cringe every time I have to use Word.
In 2007 I honestly thought that the only reason MS introduced ribbons was their failure to make Word any better (along with OpenXML, introduced for the same reason). They wanted to retrain their users with something OpenOffice was unllikely to follow (because it's stupid) before Writer got so much better than Word that even average users would want to switch. After a year or two with ribbons Word users would feel sufficiently unfamiliar with Writer to make the retraining not worth the time. Add to that OpenXML quirks and Writer would be stuck in a niche. Seems to have worked. Even though my job requires Linux and I feel much more at home in that environment, I have to keep a Win7 VM with Office 2010 installed just to work with some multi-author DOCXes where small formatting details matter. I can't force others to use ODT and DOC simply does not handle some formatting that ODT and DOCX both do.
So... Presentation: MS. Document: Open. Spreadsheet: depends on your needs. The rest is niche.
I had no idea about this, but it doesn't seem one bit strange to me. You're thinking in the categories of nation states at war. A small country like Luxembourg has absolutely no way of effectively protecting itself in that scenario - it needs to rely on politics and economy as its strong points. But there are other uses of a military, not against a nation-state aggressor - and for those one fighter makes sense.
Imagine something like 9/11 in Luxembourg. Given the country's scale, the losses would be tragic (for the US as a whole the actual losses were negligible, the effect was largely terror and its political consequences). Now think - what if they got a threat one hour in advance? And had ONE fighter ready for action? The difference between one and none suddenly looks a lot different.
That's why it would also make sense to maintain a small but highly trained special force. A couple of armored vehicles (perhaps even a light tank or two). For tiny countries at the shore of a sea or lake, or even with a large river - some armed boats. This kind of army won't keep you safe against an invader, but works well against a small extremist group, a crazy man with a home-made "tank", a couple of well armed criminals who would tear your regular police force apart... It is potentially very useful. And relatively cheap.
Now, versus nation states... One thing I would consider would be to train most able-bodied citizens in guerilla tactics and have well trained special forces ready to disperse at first threat of invasion. That kind of thing can make occupying even a very small country a very costly and frustrating experience. If your neighbours know you've been doing this for years and you have good diplomats... You might get to stay neutral. You're so small, you're just not worth the trouble.
LLVM replacing GCC in Linux distros? Not anytime soon. Not even if it's better. Why? For the reasons you stated. Because of the kernel.
The kernel is not really "clean" code, as in 100% standards compliant - it's very reliant on GCC. But it's a LOT of code, not any less complex than the compiler itself. Making it compile with something else would take a lot of work. /* Actually that's hardly surprising - it's the one piece of code in a GNU/Linux system which actually cares about what the compiler generates bit-by-bit, the one piece that is not isolated from the hardware by the OS layers - it IS the first layer.*/
If you can't rebuild the kernel, you don't really have a full distro. Can you think of a distro maker willing to invest enough in the kernel to make it fully LLVM compatible, including all the modules? Nope. Having two different compilers on the system is a much cheaper and easier solution.
So, GCC is not leaving any distros. But yes, LLVM might quickly become the default CC if it's better in most cases. And then GCC becomes isolated in the Linux world, relegated to the role of KCC - the kernel compiler...
That would be actually fun to watch - getting from the position of fighting for GNU/Linux to be used as the system name (with GNU/Hurd as a proof of concept that Linux is replacable without ruining the system) to being reliant on Linux as the only piece of software in the world keeping you relevant in any way...
Well... The long trials could actually make the fines more effective in this case.
Short trial = a powerful US company gets a serious fine = US diplomatic pressure (ineffective, as court decision is not that simple to undo) and all kinds of international stench... The company may or may not have to pay the fine, but nobody's happy.
Long trial = the company has enough time to realize they are going to lose. US pressure can actually be met with a good answer (make them behave and we'll see). The US doesn't really want a conflict with the EU, so the company will hears some discouraging words from the politicians they are trying to buy. The company decides it's cheaper to silence this through backpedalling. Problem fixed, the court decides to lower the fine to more traditional "slap on the wrist" level since the violation has been corrected, the company pays without even noticing in the budget... Everybody's happy.
Sometimes the punishment is not the remedy - the threat is.
What has the general World view to do with this? The local view is what matters, that's what sets the moral standards. If child prostitution is legal somewhere, most locals probably see nothing wrong with it. And that's exactly my point - to get things to change you need to influence the local view. That's something only the local government can do, through education and law (or you can wait - local view slowly follows global trends anyway). Outside pressure by people with different moral standards is rarely effective, especially in such traditional populations. Otherwise the US would have abolished capital punishment long ago.
And I will most strongly oppose this sentence:
The slavery angle is a bit off comparing past and current behaviors.
as a clear fallacy. Do you really believe we currently live in the perfect society that finally knows what is right? Because this is exactly what most people thought, throughout history. Keeping slaves used to be current behavior. Zeitgeist changes, morality fluctuates. As it does not change in global synchrony, you always get "modern" places and "backwards" places. Sometimes a while later the "modern" view is seen as "degenerate" and the "backwards" view returns.
Besides, remember e.g. Rwanda. Killing humans is even more obviously wrong, yet hundreds of thousands died for stupid reasons and the World has done too little too late. Makes this case pale in comparison.
On the other hand I have to agree with this part:
Taiji dolphin fishermen are just conducting a legal fishing activity in their traditional way in full accordance with regulations and rules under the supervision of both the national and the prefectural governments. Therefore, we believe there are no reasons to criticize the Taiji dolphin fishery.
I fully agree with that. They are doing what they've been doing for a long time and it's completely legal - there is absolutely no reason to criticize them. But the "regulations and rules"? That's a different question.
We shouldn't be criticizing the fishermen doing their job. They are not in any way responsible for international relations. They do what they always did - people do not tend to think critically about such traditions. Since most of /. readers are probably Americans: would you freely criticize all the slave owners from your own history? Slaves were not "people". Some owners thought a bit differently - but not that much differently, the modern minds of that time would be considered unbelievably racist today. It took a long time (plus a war, but that's a detail) to change the dominant mindset.
We should be criticizing the fact that the country is not doing anything to eliminate this tradition. It won't happen overnight, but with insufficient pressure it seems that they're unwilling to make even a small step in that direction. A step only the local government (national or prefectural) can take.
Leave the fishermen alone. But don't stop pressuring their government. Hard!
Thanks for resetting my mind. I was a bit stressed today, but after reading this I don't even remember why.
WTF did I just read?
I'm as strongly opposed to capital punishment as possible (yup, EU citizen).
And yet I have to agree with you. IF (and that's a very strong if) you decide it's a good idea to do this, smash the head completely and fast. No pain possible. Sure, you get the stigma for killing innocents once in a while - that's the reason I oppose this - but at the very least, even if you made a mistake, you've only shortened their life. No pain inflicted, no torture. Acceptable? Hardly. But way better than the alternatives.
I really do not understand why this is not the preferred way. Perhaps because it looks bad, it might make some viewers squeamish? Then stop pretending it's about justice - it's just retaliation. You want the victim's side to see pain, but not gore. You want the nice warm feeling of retribution, even if you're only 90% sure it went to the right person. How is that humane?
That's nice if you're testing something you can recreate in a lab or have lots of time. Sometimes you need to attempt to draw some conclusions based on a limited set of data points. In that case he's right - people too often forget that some mathematical tools need more data than others. You need to know your limits. If you're only half-sure that what you see is a car, forget about guessing the type. If you only have enough data to estimate the mean (badly), forget about variance. Standard deviation for 5 samples? Are you joking?
It gets better, I've seen one (rejected) paper taking 10 samples and trying to estimate... the Hurst coefficient. Come on! Even the mean is still blurry!
Not mentioned? To me the whole summary reads as if the suit claimed the following:
"I wanted to hire a great guy for his skills, but the management made it clear that we're only reaching for foreign nations to lower costs and if I can't hire him at less-than-normal salary, I shouldn't bother - quality is not a real advantage here."
On the other hand, isn't this typical for any hiring in a "cost aware" company that a manager has to push very hard to make it clear that "yes I NEED an expensive hire, because I have no use for the people I can hire for cheap"?
Judging from TFA, you're missing one level here. The multiverse as a whole is in constant inflation. Parts of it stop that and start normal expansion - we're in one of such bubbles and that's our universe. The observable universe is the part of this bubble we can (theoretically - not necesserily with current technology) observe in any meaningful way, limited by the speed of light. There's no reason to believe that the universe (the local bubble) is as small as the observable universe.
Why limit this to products? Write some short scripts to automate your tasks, carry them across upgrades, new computers, etc. If an upgrade messes them up, what will you do? Spend the time to fix them? And if it happens again? Do it again?
Fix them as many times as you like. Me... Well, unless:
1. the fix is as simple as adding some option, command, whatever specifying that the code uses syntax/API/whatever from version X,
2. this will fix it permanently,
I'm more likely to just rewrite them in a more stable language.
100% true and also the reason I still only work in Python when situation requires it. The language is incredibly easy to write in (although the whitespace-controlled flow is weird and causes problems sometimes), it could be my language of choice - but it isn't. All because of one experience.
A few years ago, 2.6 was still relatively new, but 3 was already promoted as the new thing we should be getting ready for (since it won't be 100% compatible) - a bit worrying, but what the hell. Some small client-server code for research use. Well defined interface, separate development by different authors. Not yet ready, but works fine in simple tests. Need to do an early demo - fast. Quick preparation of a scenario, check - looks good. Cool, we grab some small laptops, drives with the code and get to the airport. We have the whole evening to set it up - should be no problem.
Whoops, we don't have the root passwords! Silly us. It's too late in the night to call the owners. Fine, we'll have to use what's installed. Hmm... Both 2.4 and 2.6 available. Our testing environment had 2.5, we didn't test with any other version yet, but we should be fine, right?
Testing with 2.6. The program fails to work properly - empty answers to some calls or no reaction from the server. WTF?!? Fine, roll back to 2.4. Previous problems gone, new one appears. The responses are incomplete. Some data is skipped as if not there. WTF^2?!?
A few hours of debugging, some potentially good ideas, but we need it working in the morning. Finally, after looking where (client? server?) the bugs seem to appear with each version, we had a crazy idea. Back to original code, quick test... and we were fine, we even got some sleep. The server worked fine on 2.4. The client worked fine on 2.6. Run them on different versions... done. Happy end. Rest of the debugging after the demo.
This code worked fine with 2.5. In 2.4 - no warnings, no errors, just incorrect. In 2.6 - runs, but has problems. And these are small increments, said to be almost fully compatible - and version 3 was looming! That's when I decided that I can't trust the developers of Python for anything I might want to use a few years later. Thank you, but no.
My old programs in some other languages still mostly work, unless I used some non-standard library which evolved in an incompatible direction (and the old version conflicts with something or is vulnerable and shouldn't). And I can fix such problems without "updating" good, working code. With some changes to the makefile I can even compile a short K&R C program I've written long ago just for fun. Python versions are not real upgrades, they don't have "compatibility modes" - that's why you need more than one if you're working with old code sometimes. And I'm not talking about doing anything advanced!
That's why I think Python is a good idea broken by eager beavers. Upgrade the compiler/interpreter all you want, but treat language changes as standard versions and support old ones in the same compiler. If you play with the language expect to have problems getting users to upgrade.
Majority male area?! Perhaps in the US. I'm not from US.
Results of research conduted for the National Council of the Judiciary in my country, 2012:
- 65% of judges in regional courts are female.
- 61% of judges in district courts are female.
- 58% of judges in apellate courts are female.
Civil law, so precedents don't matter that much. The law is reasonably equal in this respect - both parents should have similar rights.
Family courts, dealing i.a. with custody matters, are not separate entities, they are part of this system. I can't find the statistics to support this, but anecdotal evidence suggests that they are the most female-dominated divisions of the courts. A male family court judge is a rarity.
So... You were saying?
Mod parent -1 NotApplicable.
Would not be the first such gamble. Until the first actual nuclear test the scientists were not entirely sure it won't ignite the whole atmosphere (burning nitrogen). All they had was "almost certainly no" - the Monte Carlo simulations are only simulations. The "micro black hole will swallow earth" controversy about the LHC was also interesting, although different - the scientists doing this were quite sure it wasn't possible, but the idea sounded intriguing to the media, leading to a swarm of interesting discussions and a lot of FUD.
If we get to the "almost certain" level of modeling the supervolcano and have the technology and knowledge to release pressure in a relatively controlled way it's a matter of risk analysis. If the eruption within a decade seems probable, the project will be launched. And yes, we might be wrong. Oops.
OTOH - how much energy would such a controlled drain release? What amount of ashes and gases? How much water would evaporate? That's actually more interesting than the "trigger" problem. Can we do it so that the effect will be acceptable, or will it be nearly as destructive to us as an actual explosion?
An intriguing thought - what if the explosion would ruin a significant part of the US (likely), a controlled drain could reduce that kind of damage a lot (likely), but the worldwide effects (chemical, climate, etc.) were very similar and disastrous (IANAVolcanologist, so perhaps). The supervolcano is on US territory. US risk analysis: do it ASAP, it's less destructive and the explosion is very likely. World risk analysis: don't do it EVER, every month without either draining or explosion is a month more for preparation. Imagine the dillema, the political tension... Ready material for a gripping novel or a blockbuster movie!
It's quite hard for me to recall any meaningful case of sexist discrimination against me, personally. Also, somehow I tend to get along well with most people, including some women with rather negative opinion about the male gender in general. Biases show most in non-personal contacts, once you get to know someone the bias is overruled by experiences with that person (even hardcore rasists sometimes accept someone of a different race as a "positive exception"). I'm writing about problems I observe, not experience.
And your firm expectation of hostility isn't a clear bias? The mote in thy brother's eye...
"Allow Java"? Sorry, but you can't really block Java if you allow scripting or redirection.
With redirection, you lose control over what the ad actually serves. You'd have to re-check it all the time. What will you do if it serves malware only to every tenth visitor? And never to yahoo IP space?
With scripting... Well, unless you have the resources to manually analyze every ad before you allow it (who would accept that much delay?), you will never be entirely sure what the code does. Static analysis can only go so far, there will always be ways to obfuscate the beejeezus out of the script in a way you cannot parse. Dynamic analysis is costly and what will you do if the code is in a way non-deterministic (includes a Java applet depending on time, random number, or whatever)? Plus, if any links appear in either analysis, see redirection, you don't know what will be served.
The only relatively secure ad service is one that only allows images (uploaded to the ad service, not linked) and text with limited markup. No scripting at all. But that's not what the advertisers want and they are the paying customers.
The most you can do is some screening of the ads and quick, effective handling of any incoming reports to minimize bad PR. It seems that this is what they do - good for them.
Sorry, but that's what happens if ads are the main source of income. In this model the ads are inherently unsafe - unless you have a very secure browser setup, but that will break some pages.
If users pay for a service, secure ads as additional income source are possible - but that's rare. Free = unsafe, sorry. Accept the risk or protect yourself.
Heh, first time in my life someone referred to me as right wing! One more proof how simple right/left divides are useless in practice.
I have met feminists who freely express this view. We didn't talk much, of course - I'm male, so my opinion didn't matter to them. Yet, they are quite rare (although, like most extremists, very vocal).
The real problem I described is generally not visible in speech, publications, etc. It shows in actual actions. It is a (probably subconscious) bias in many active feminists, who tend to disregard any anti-male discrimination, ignore it, treat as an attack, a "first world problem" or just "not their problem". I think it requires quite a lot of self-consciousness to fight biases like this.
Mix this bias in normal, less active feminist masses with the typical hyperactivity of the small group of extremists (in this case hardcore anti-male feminists) and you get exactly this face of feminism. Take this to academia, have a more formal discussion in a mixed group and you'll find the extremists very lonely, with most actual feminists probably declaring support for true equal rights.
Declaration vs. action. Cold reason vs. subconscious.
Do you know this slight feeling of shame when something surprises you and you suddenly realize the only reason it was surprising was that you subconsciously applied some stereotype you consciously find unfair? That's what I'm talking about. Our brains simplify. In this case conscious belief in equal rights and prevalence of anti-female discrimination results in prevalence of pro-female actions, which train your subconscious brain. No wonder it ends up believing "female - good, male - bad".
Cool, but the reason I wrote "in my country" is I'm not from US. Besides, I'm not looking for help (no children, no divorce), just giving an example of a rather systemic and widespread form of discrimination against men, in case some reader couldn't think of one.
And this is modded funny? Controversial, agreed, but funny?
The dominating strain of feminism doesn't give a #$%# about equality and non-discrimination in general. It's one-way only, men be damned. Sure, there's a lot more discrimination against females in general, but in cases where it works the other way around you'd expect those who constantly babble about "equal rights" to side with discriminated men, at least verbally. Not a chance.
Example from my country: in a divorce as a man you have practically zero chance for the kids to stay with you, even if the mother is absolutely unfit to care for them. Worse, your visiting hours tend to be minimal. How many females will you find in the group fighting for fathers' rights? Guess. "We want equal rights" - yeah, sure...
Yeah, fuck this form of feminism.
Not really, the question is too general - I don't think this would work well for them, it's more likely to backfire. They could however do a "No, with limited exceptions which canot be publicly revealed due to National Security".
One more observation: once actually hit and forced to react by the PR consequences they react quickly and properly. This shows that they were never incompetent about this. They knew from the start how to handle the issue properly. They just didn't give a [CENSORED].
Maybe I'm wrong, but this looks a bit hopeless from the PR side. They had a good run and failed to earn from it. Oops.
Here's hoping that he actually has some proof that they do. If so, this is a very smart move. If they say "yes we do", Congress will be forced to react immediately in some way, at least for PR reasons. If they say "no we don't" and he proves they're lying, then at least some officials will lose their jobs and/or land in jail. Just showing proof without this question would achieve very little - some fake outrage and no consequences.
If he has nothing... He's either gullible, just trying to show activity or simply hoping some proof will come up. He might be right - if there's anything like that in Snowden's documents it will soon appear if they officially deny.
See my response to Desler's second response. I was referring to today's news, not their initial response. It is a correct response and exactly what they should have done initially.
Dang, seems my post was really misleading...