School choice is pointless. Every parent wants the same thing - the best education for their child. A choice of bad schools is no choice at all, and a choice of good schools is irrelevant.
If there are some schools and some bad schools: Having everyone pick the good school in an area and a random set of them being successful again is no choice. The effort should be spent on bringing the bad schools up to scratch, or closing them. Not going through some pointless choice system.
School choice is on the right wing agenda, because it's stupid and pointless. Like every other item on the right wing agenda.
So people who drive cars, and therefore use public transportation less or not at all, should pay more so that people who do use the system pay less?
Absolutely! That's how you tackle congestion. The more people that use cheap public transport the less cars there are on the road.
Did you know that the American cities that used to have good public tram systems lost them because the automobile industry bought them out and scrapped them, so people had no choice but to buy a car. That misdeed needs undoing.
Uber find a way to work within whatever the local laws are. In Britain there are two classes:
1) Taxis, which have a taximeter, and drivers who have a taxi driver license. They may be hailed on the street.
2) Private hire cars, which may not have a taximeter, and must have a driver with a private hire license. They may not be hailed from the street, and must be prearranged.
Uber is using the second type of drivers. And the taxi drivers are protesting what they see as a threat to their business, by claiming the iPhone with Uber app is a taximeter. They are planning a day of disruption in London in protest.
But the authorities say Uber are breaking no laws. They are properly licensed and regulated as private hire cars and drivers. No loophole, just a newish business model.
You're free to believe that the fares should be free but not paying isn't the way to make it so. Do it politically and pay through taxes
They are doing. Civil disobedience is the primary way of getting political change. Democracy is broken in most countries.
(most of these idiots are likely youths or leftish individuals who don't work anyway)
Your bias and distain is noted. A more balanced view is that most fare dodgers are poor people. People for whom the fares are a more significant part of their income (if any).
It's an unofficial form of redistribution of wealth. And indeed that's the political argument for having it paid for out general of taxation.
Singapore on the other hand, has a consistent and well-enforced policy: sell drugs, you get executed. Note that drug usage in SG is near zero.
How do you know? An alternative theory is that the penalty just makes those that disobey the law more careful.
For a tiny city state, it seems to have an awfully busy Narcotics Bureau, with many sizable drug trafficker incidents. http://www.cnb.gov.sg/newsroom...
That's not near zero.
In any country, the number caught is a fraction of the number that are not caught. It's quite likely that the fraction is even lower in Singapore as dealers take more care.
Indeed. This cigarette drone was carrying 22 pounds of cargo. Now that's could be a serious amount of heroin or cocaine. Far more than you could stuff into even a real mule's box.
RC airplanes can only be operated whilst in sight of the operator. That means line of sight, a relatively short distance, and during daytime.
With a drone, the operator can program it in advance. Throw the thing into the air, at night, and then leave the launch site. And the drone can deliver miles away. Ad that makes a huge reduction in the chances of being caught.
Only it looks like these smugglers were too stupid to do it at night.
TFA article has a picture of the drone incoming, whilst officers wait in a field. The smugglers clearly made 2 mistakes.
1) Flying during the day. This is an autonomous drone, flying via GPS, it doesn't need to see. Fly it at night and it's far less likely to be spotted, and far harder to catch.
2) They repeated the same route. Select a random route out of several possibilities each time you fly, and even if the authorities are aware of the drone, they won't have the man-power to send officers to intercept every possible route.
Also it would be more profitable to smuggle illegal drugs this way. On the other hand that would probably be a heavier sentence if caught.
Netscape was free for non-commercial use. I don't know what percentage of businesses were honest enough to pony up the money for a commercial license, but I guess it was enough to support them in the days before MS bundled IE with Windows.
And if Slashdot existed back in 1903, they would say that the Wright brothers flight wasn't long enough to be practical. Or they didn't go 175mph, so it's not fast enough.
No wireless. Less space than a horseless-carriage. Lame.
Fuel cells work, but they are vastly more expensive than batteries. Most people just got bored of waiting for a breakthrough that would make them cheap enough to be viable.
Whilst you highlight some of the advantages of electric over diesel, I don't buy that that's the whole reason for diesel electric trains. I suggest the advantages include efficiency, just as with hybrid cars.
Why? Because the first diesel electric locomotives were shunters, and they don't power up the bogies or a train, they just push or pull. So your explanation wouldn't cover it.
I think you're making the mistake of interpreting non-literal books as having been intended as literal, and thus get a mistakenly tainted view of the Bible, and of the persons whose beliefs are rooted in it.
You call it a mistake, yet the literal truth of the bible is exactly what most evangelical and born-again Christians profess as their belief. And before the 19th century codexes were unearthed in coptic monasteries, showing that the books of the bible had changed significantly over time, pretty much all protestant Christians believed in the literal truth of the bible, and indeed that the bible was the literal word of God.
For sure for those modern Christians that accept some of the bible is "allegorical and poetical" do so because they accept that there is too much evidence against them to be literally true. It has nothing to do with interpretations of Hebrew - the coincidence of the change with the discovery of the early bible codexes gives the lie to that story. The readings of Hebrew were available long before the end of the 19th century. They were always available.
As far as bringing a dead person back to life: the Bible's authors certainly aren't claiming that's something that normally happens, nor that it's a natural even. The whole point of those resurrections was to confirm that Jesus wasn't merely a lying or deluded human.
And it's simply faith for those that believe it. The analytical mind finds no support for it.
Regarding analytical thinking vs. rationality: If you're depending on the differences in their meanings / connotations, I'm all ears, but you need to clarify your meanings. But in normal conversation, the two terms generally go hand-in-hand.
They might go "generally hand-in-hand" for the non-analytical mind. But not for the analytical mind. That's my point. The fact that you didn't distinguish the two points to a fuzziness in your thinking.
The difference? An ant or a bee is extremely rational, arguably more rational than a human, but it's not at all analytical. Everything the ant or the bee does is to ensure survival of it's genes. That's rationality. However, it is not capable of analysing it's behaviour or anything around it.
I'm not particularly playing up the difference with regard to the content of these posts. Just the fact that you repeatedly made the mistake of switching one word for another, when their meaning is related but not the same. Going back to the original topic of the need to have an analytical mind to be a good programmer, it's like not distinguishing an int from a float.
Not because it's on the wrong/. thread, but because it generally takes more than an exchange over the internet to make someone change his position on this topic.
It's as rare as hen's teeth that an exchange face to face would do so either. Almost always a belief in religion is because of either indoctrination as a child, or because a person has come to crisis in their life, such as a prison sentence, or the loss of a loved one, and they have clung on to a fantasy that has brought them comfort.
In the other direction however, education can effect a change from religious belief to atheism or agnosticism. And I don't mean specifically atheist education. I mean general education that encourages analytical thinking.
I think you're mistaken about what the Bible means by "faith". It is not belief contrary to overwhelming or clear evidence. It's the willingness to take a risk that something is true, in cases where the evidence is ambiguous or mixed.
Garden of eden? Noah's Ark with at least 2 examples of every land species? Bringing a dead person back to life? There's no ambiguous or mixed evidence. If you believe this stuff, it's blind faith. And it's the opposite of analytical thinking.
I'm not aware of anywhere in the Bible where irrationality is endorsed.
I think it's telling that I'm talking about analytical thinking, and you keep responding as if I said rationality.
We're not recommending people, we're recommending books. And the two I recommenced encourage analytical thinking, whilst the bible encourages the exact opposite. "Faith".
To be fair though, a lot of programmers do seem to like sci-fi and fantasy, so they might get something out of The Bible on that level.
Slashdot Mirror
Police academies are things that exist, and can turn uneducated bums into police officers.
In most countries that's a retrograde step.
Yes Scandinavia is different. It's civilised. Treating prisoner's responsibly is a civilised thing to do.
School choice is pointless. Every parent wants the same thing - the best education for their child. A choice of bad schools is no choice at all, and a choice of good schools is irrelevant.
If there are some schools and some bad schools: Having everyone pick the good school in an area and a random set of them being successful again is no choice. The effort should be spent on bringing the bad schools up to scratch, or closing them. Not going through some pointless choice system.
School choice is on the right wing agenda, because it's stupid and pointless. Like every other item on the right wing agenda.
You seem to be unaware that laws vary by country.
So people who drive cars, and therefore use public transportation less or not at all, should pay more so that people who do use the system pay less?
Absolutely! That's how you tackle congestion. The more people that use cheap public transport the less cars there are on the road.
Did you know that the American cities that used to have good public tram systems lost them because the automobile industry bought them out and scrapped them, so people had no choice but to buy a car. That misdeed needs undoing.
Uber find a way to work within whatever the local laws are. In Britain there are two classes:
1) Taxis, which have a taximeter, and drivers who have a taxi driver license. They may be hailed on the street.
2) Private hire cars, which may not have a taximeter, and must have a driver with a private hire license. They may not be hailed from the street, and must be prearranged.
Uber is using the second type of drivers. And the taxi drivers are protesting what they see as a threat to their business, by claiming the iPhone with Uber app is a taximeter. They are planning a day of disruption in London in protest.
But the authorities say Uber are breaking no laws. They are properly licensed and regulated as private hire cars and drivers. No loophole, just a newish business model.
And in Sweden, politicians taking money from lobbyists and crafting their laws to benefit those lobbyist's clients would be called corruption.
You're free to believe that the fares should be free but not paying isn't the way to make it so. Do it politically and pay through taxes
They are doing. Civil disobedience is the primary way of getting political change. Democracy is broken in most countries.
(most of these idiots are likely youths or leftish individuals who don't work anyway)
Your bias and distain is noted. A more balanced view is that most fare dodgers are poor people. People for whom the fares are a more significant part of their income (if any).
It's an unofficial form of redistribution of wealth. And indeed that's the political argument for having it paid for out general of taxation.
Singapore on the other hand, has a consistent and well-enforced policy: sell drugs, you get executed. Note that drug usage in SG is near zero.
How do you know? An alternative theory is that the penalty just makes those that disobey the law more careful.
For a tiny city state, it seems to have an awfully busy Narcotics Bureau, with many sizable drug trafficker incidents.
http://www.cnb.gov.sg/newsroom...
That's not near zero.
In any country, the number caught is a fraction of the number that are not caught. It's quite likely that the fraction is even lower in Singapore as dealers take more care.
Not only does it not matter, the dictionaries already say you are wrong.
http://dictionary.reference.co...
Indeed. This cigarette drone was carrying 22 pounds of cargo. Now that's could be a serious amount of heroin or cocaine. Far more than you could stuff into even a real mule's box.
RC airplanes can only be operated whilst in sight of the operator. That means line of sight, a relatively short distance, and during daytime.
With a drone, the operator can program it in advance. Throw the thing into the air, at night, and then leave the launch site. And the drone can deliver miles away. Ad that makes a huge reduction in the chances of being caught.
Only it looks like these smugglers were too stupid to do it at night.
TFA article has a picture of the drone incoming, whilst officers wait in a field. The smugglers clearly made 2 mistakes.
1) Flying during the day. This is an autonomous drone, flying via GPS, it doesn't need to see. Fly it at night and it's far less likely to be spotted, and far harder to catch.
2) They repeated the same route. Select a random route out of several possibilities each time you fly, and even if the authorities are aware of the drone, they won't have the man-power to send officers to intercept every possible route.
Also it would be more profitable to smuggle illegal drugs this way. On the other hand that would probably be a heavier sentence if caught.
e.g. have a mechanism such that if the SMS alternative is unavailable (for any reason) the sender switches back to SMS.
If that's what would make this OK, then it's OK, because that's exactly what Apple do now.
Netscape was free for non-commercial use. I don't know what percentage of businesses were honest enough to pony up the money for a commercial license, but I guess it was enough to support them in the days before MS bundled IE with Windows.
No, I'm happy to leave it there.
And if Slashdot existed back in 1903, they would say that the Wright brothers flight wasn't long enough to be practical. Or they didn't go 175mph, so it's not fast enough.
No wireless. Less space than a horseless-carriage. Lame.
The world's shortest scheduled commercial flight is just 47 seconds long, so there are some opportunities!
Indeed, aviation is the one rational use of biofuel.
Fuel cells work, but they are vastly more expensive than batteries. Most people just got bored of waiting for a breakthrough that would make them cheap enough to be viable.
Whilst you highlight some of the advantages of electric over diesel, I don't buy that that's the whole reason for diesel electric trains. I suggest the advantages include efficiency, just as with hybrid cars.
Why? Because the first diesel electric locomotives were shunters, and they don't power up the bogies or a train, they just push or pull. So your explanation wouldn't cover it.
Are you sure you wouldn't be happier as an AC?
I think you're making the mistake of interpreting non-literal books as having been intended as literal, and thus get a mistakenly tainted view of the Bible, and of the persons whose beliefs are rooted in it.
You call it a mistake, yet the literal truth of the bible is exactly what most evangelical and born-again Christians profess as their belief. And before the 19th century codexes were unearthed in coptic monasteries, showing that the books of the bible had changed significantly over time, pretty much all protestant Christians believed in the literal truth of the bible, and indeed that the bible was the literal word of God.
For sure for those modern Christians that accept some of the bible is "allegorical and poetical" do so because they accept that there is too much evidence against them to be literally true. It has nothing to do with interpretations of Hebrew - the coincidence of the change with the discovery of the early bible codexes gives the lie to that story. The readings of Hebrew were available long before the end of the 19th century. They were always available.
As far as bringing a dead person back to life: the Bible's authors certainly aren't claiming that's something that normally happens, nor that it's a natural even. The whole point of those resurrections was to confirm that Jesus wasn't merely a lying or deluded human.
And it's simply faith for those that believe it. The analytical mind finds no support for it.
Regarding analytical thinking vs. rationality: If you're depending on the differences in their meanings / connotations, I'm all ears, but you need to clarify your meanings. But in normal conversation, the two terms generally go hand-in-hand.
They might go "generally hand-in-hand" for the non-analytical mind. But not for the analytical mind. That's my point. The fact that you didn't distinguish the two points to a fuzziness in your thinking.
The difference? An ant or a bee is extremely rational, arguably more rational than a human, but it's not at all analytical. Everything the ant or the bee does is to ensure survival of it's genes. That's rationality. However, it is not capable of analysing it's behaviour or anything around it.
I'm not particularly playing up the difference with regard to the content of these posts. Just the fact that you repeatedly made the mistake of switching one word for another, when their meaning is related but not the same. Going back to the original topic of the need to have an analytical mind to be a good programmer, it's like not distinguishing an int from a float.
Not because it's on the wrong /. thread, but because it generally takes more than an exchange over the internet to make someone change his position on this topic.
It's as rare as hen's teeth that an exchange face to face would do so either. Almost always a belief in religion is because of either indoctrination as a child, or because a person has come to crisis in their life, such as a prison sentence, or the loss of a loved one, and they have clung on to a fantasy that has brought them comfort.
In the other direction however, education can effect a change from religious belief to atheism or agnosticism. And I don't mean specifically atheist education. I mean general education that encourages analytical thinking.
I think you're mistaken about what the Bible means by "faith". It is not belief contrary to overwhelming or clear evidence. It's the willingness to take a risk that something is true, in cases where the evidence is ambiguous or mixed.
Garden of eden? Noah's Ark with at least 2 examples of every land species? Bringing a dead person back to life? There's no ambiguous or mixed evidence. If you believe this stuff, it's blind faith. And it's the opposite of analytical thinking.
I'm not aware of anywhere in the Bible where irrationality is endorsed.
I think it's telling that I'm talking about analytical thinking, and you keep responding as if I said rationality.
Anyhow, this off-topic thread is going nowhere.
We're not recommending people, we're recommending books. And the two I recommenced encourage analytical thinking, whilst the bible encourages the exact opposite. "Faith".
To be fair though, a lot of programmers do seem to like sci-fi and fantasy, so they might get something out of The Bible on that level.