I don't get it with Pittsburgh. First, they tear-gas and pepper-spray their students (http://pittsburghpolice.net/category/dorms/), and now they want to tax them to death.
The "fair share" argument is a wash. Those students have been attending CMU and Pittsburgh University for decades, and only now they thought of taxing them?
Plus, Pittsburgh has not learned the stern lessons of history. Raising taxes during an economic downturn is always a bad thing to do.
I suppose Pittsburgh overran its budget with the "goon squad" it hired to mistreat the students during G20, and now it needs to find a way to pay for it. Gas'em, Mace'em, Tax'em. The Pittsburgh Way.
Besides, if the students are buying goods and services in the city, they are already paying their "fair share" in taxes. This is just plain stupid.
I find this article a bit confusing, because it speaks of "harnessing the energy of a spinning electron":
"Most energy used today is harnessed through the movement of current and is limited by the amount of heat that it produces, but the energy created by the spinning of electrons produces no heat," the university state in a press release.
Anyone who knows anything at all about quantum mechanics knows that the spin of an electron is quantized and cannot change.
The Wikipedia article has this to say about spintronics:
Electrons are spin-1/2 fermions and therefore constitute a two-state system with spin "up" and spin "down". To make a spintronic device, the primary requirements are to have a system that can generate a current of spin polarized electrons comprising more of one spin species—up or down—than the other (called a spin injector), and a separate system that is sensitive to the spin polarization of the electrons (spin detector). Manipulation of the electron spin during transport between injector and detector (especially in semiconductors) via spin precession can be accomplished using real external magnetic fields or effective fields caused by spin-orbit interaction.
This makes MUCH more sense! Reporters are always notorious for getting the science wrong.
I've been a software developer for 30 years now, and I can tell you first hand the number of women software developers I've encountered over that time I could count on one hand. And probably with a finger or two left over.
Now enter FOSS. I can't recall encountering a single female FOSS developer. Ever.
Nobody turns you down from being a FOSS developer if you can do the work. Just DO IT. 'Nuff said. The rest will attend to itself.
Now, as far as sexism in general, us men get a tough break. We're considered less than human; expendable. Who gets drafted? When they talk about causalities among the civilian population, they usually speak in terms of "women and children." What about the *men*? Don't they matter? I guess not.
Sexism floats both ways. Women will talk about men as "objects of desire" as much as men speak of women as the same. Yet, when a man does it, it's called "sexism". What is it called when women does it? Maybe I should go to a male revue and ask the ladies there.
So why do we have this double standard? Where did that come from? It's rather silly, really.
Now, having said that, there's another issue afoot. The extreme asymmetry of the number of women who participate in software development period, let alone FOSS. It's really sad in this day and age where nearly all barriers to women have been eliminated.
The article I read here did not cite any specific examples of sexism, but just whined about them. I think many things that gets called "sexism" isn't really. Especially when women do the *same thing themselves* in respect to men.
It's called human nature, and it has its evolutionary antecedents. Live with it. Enjoy it. Love it. And stop bitching about it.
If a woman is denied entry into the FOSS arena just for being a woman, that's one thing. But if someone makes an off-color statement, it's really not worth getting your nickers in a twist about it, right? Right. Because women make as many, if not more off-color statements about us men when we're not around to hear them -- and even sometimes when we are. Funny how no one brings the house down about that. Men are people too, you know, just in case you forgot.
Quite frankly, I don't see a need for yet another document format. PDFs work everywhere, and have been around for a while. It can render anything you can hope to find in a book anyway, so what more do you need?
I would've thought their may be an orbital resonance solution that wouldn't require any thrusters at all. But that may require an orbital resonance between Earth and Mars, a situation that clearly doesn't exist.
Still, there may be something exotic that could be done.
I would've thought that the MVC model would be a shoe-in for site developers looking to support both desktops and mobile devices. Just create a "view" that's tailored for mobile devices. How hard is that to do?
I don't know why they would specify "Mac or PC" with a Flash game. It ran on my Linux system just fine. They had me thinking it wouldn't work under Linux for some reason (and I do know of some Flash apps that crap out under Linux!)
I mean, I guess I'm stupid for just going by the words someone says. I'm stupid for not being able to read minds. Or to make headway with idiotically-worded statements.
You know darn well that once the government creates a massive database of our driving habits like that, they will find other uses for that data to keep tabs on us, to give it to marketers, or do possibly nefarious things to intrude upon our freedom.
It has happened in all other cases I know of where the government maintains databases on us.
I've only thought about it for a split-second and already a number of things come to mind that could be potentially chilling.
Stick with the gas tax. Your state registrations have in its databases already what vehicles you are driving.
And besides, commercial vehicles produce far more wear and tear on the roads than our individual cars do. They would gain little in the way tracking our usage in comparison. But it will open the barn doors for government to track us at a micro level.
I'm just as much a member of the tinfoil hat brigade as anyone else, but doesn't that seem a bit of a leap of logic?
It seems to me that the simplest explanation for their presence (deterring crime and identifying criminals) is in this case the best one.
Simplest explanations don't always neatly apply when you are dealing with humans. Besides, we all know how effective "deterrents" are.
And what's a "criminal"? You know, that word used to mean something, but today it can mean anything from a mass murderer to some scofflaw who never pays his parking tickets.
Look at the so-called "War on Drugs" that has been raging for decades. We see how much of a "deterrent" that has been. In fact, it's "deterred" drug use so much that most of our currency has traces of cocaine on it. Yeah, that worked really well.
Sure, but how many crimes did it prevent? I always considered cameras more of a prevention, i.e. only idiots commit crimes in front of cameras.
That would perhaps make cameras somewhat useful for prevention, if criminals were usually acting on a rationa cost-benefit analysis considering the likelihood of being caught vs. the probable profit or enjoyment resulting from their actions. And even that, only if cameras were actually effective at making it easier criminals, which gets back to the report which is discussed in TFA.
Bottom line is that cameras are more than anything security theater (or, in the jurisdiction at immediate issue in TFA, security theatre), which are pursued because they (as noted by the Home Office spokesman quoted in TFA) "help communities feel safer".
Safer? The TSA terrifies me. I would feel much safer if they weren't there. The chances of being killed by a real terrorist is so vanishingly small I'd be far, far, far more likely to die in a car accident.
TSA is a waste of time, money, and does nothing more than to give everyone a false sense of security. Everytime I have to stand there being harassed by TSA -- or any so-called security check point for that matter, I try to think of all the ways someone could get arround their silly pathetic attempts to "provide security", and scare myself at how easy it would be to do that.
And now the TSA is pushing to install T-Ray machines that can literally see through your clothes and render you naked. Which is sick really. Would you want strangers looking at your kids naked????!!!! And of course the T-ray systems are so easy to foil it's a joke, really.
The potential for abuse for this cameras is enormous. Imagine those million cameras enabled with facial recognition systems, linked to your credit card, driver's license, and a sundry of other information aggregated about you, such as your political affiliation.
Imagine that for whatever the reason the Government decides it doesn't like you. Maybe there's a state of panic where it sees a "terrorist" around every corner, and it's suspicious that you are.
So the system tracks your every move, whom you associate with, and tracks them too. After a while, the system can develop quite an elaborate social network, and can make the lives of you and your friends pure hell.
Sorry, but governments do go rouge every so often, and the US is no exception. Certainly the UK is not.
Now, true, there's no expectation for privacy when you step out of your home, but do you really want the government to be able to have that much detail of your life and social network at its beck and call?
As a Facebook Developer myself, I have something to say on this.
It would be really tough to have the type of security everyone wants, AND have these FB apps to be useful. Tradeoffs, guys. The whole idea in most of these FB apps is the sharing of data between friends, which means the Application will have access to much.
You could have fine-grained security controls exposed to the user, but this would make FB security confusing to most of its users, and it also would hamper the applications and what they can do.
And if you were to implement such stringent security procedures now, it would break many of the apps in use.
I think it's safe to say that never put anything on Facebook that you wouldn't feel comfortable with the whole world seeing. And that goes for the Internet in general.
But, every time you install an FB app, it DOES ask you if you wish to allow the app to have full access to your information. So, if you don't feel comfortable, don't click that button!
Having said that, there should also be some ethical guidelines for FB developers.
DNA isn't it, guys. Gender issues in not about the DNA exclusively. You are only talking genotype, and all sorts of things can happen during embryogenesis, etc. which may cause the phenotype to be something different from what you'd expect.
There's also issues of neural development as well, so, from the phenotype aspect, Gender is not a clear black or white.
Alas, most people don't appreciate all of the subtle nuances, and that is where the controversy slips in.
The fact that so many bills have cocaine on them is a huge testament to the failure of the silly "war on drugs" campaign the US have had going for decades.
It's plainly a waste of time, effort, and taxpayer's money. Let's end this silly "War on Drugs" and return the money to the taxpayer.
I don't consider it worthwhile to beat up on cellphone use in particular -- the issue is distraction, not the cellphone, per se. Even chatting with an passenger in your car can be enough of a distraction to cause an accident, as I've seen happen twice.
Get people to focus on paying attention to the road and their driving, and the cellphone distraction issue will take care of itself.
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The "fair share" argument is a wash. Those students have been attending CMU and Pittsburgh University for decades, and only now they thought of taxing them?
Plus, Pittsburgh has not learned the stern lessons of history. Raising taxes during an economic downturn is always a bad thing to do.
I suppose Pittsburgh overran its budget with the "goon squad" it hired to mistreat the students during G20, and now it needs to find a way to pay for it. Gas'em, Mace'em, Tax'em. The Pittsburgh Way.
Besides, if the students are buying goods and services in the city, they are already paying their "fair share" in taxes. This is just plain stupid.
"Most energy used today is harnessed through the movement of current and is limited by the amount of heat that it produces, but the energy created by the spinning of electrons produces no heat," the university state in a press release.
Anyone who knows anything at all about quantum mechanics knows that the spin of an electron is quantized and cannot change.
The Wikipedia article has this to say about spintronics:
Electrons are spin-1/2 fermions and therefore constitute a two-state system with spin "up" and spin "down". To make a spintronic device, the primary requirements are to have a system that can generate a current of spin polarized electrons comprising more of one spin species—up or down—than the other (called a spin injector), and a separate system that is sensitive to the spin polarization of the electrons (spin detector). Manipulation of the electron spin during transport between injector and detector (especially in semiconductors) via spin precession can be accomplished using real external magnetic fields or effective fields caused by spin-orbit interaction.
This makes MUCH more sense! Reporters are always notorious for getting the science wrong.
Now enter FOSS. I can't recall encountering a single female FOSS developer. Ever.
Nobody turns you down from being a FOSS developer if you can do the work. Just DO IT. 'Nuff said. The rest will attend to itself.
Now, as far as sexism in general, us men get a tough break. We're considered less than human; expendable. Who gets drafted? When they talk about causalities among the civilian population, they usually speak in terms of "women and children." What about the *men*? Don't they matter? I guess not.
Sexism floats both ways. Women will talk about men as "objects of desire" as much as men speak of women as the same. Yet, when a man does it, it's called "sexism". What is it called when women does it? Maybe I should go to a male revue and ask the ladies there.
So why do we have this double standard? Where did that come from? It's rather silly, really.
Now, having said that, there's another issue afoot. The extreme asymmetry of the number of women who participate in software development period, let alone FOSS. It's really sad in this day and age where nearly all barriers to women have been eliminated.
The article I read here did not cite any specific examples of sexism, but just whined about them. I think many things that gets called "sexism" isn't really. Especially when women do the *same thing themselves* in respect to men.
It's called human nature, and it has its evolutionary antecedents. Live with it. Enjoy it. Love it. And stop bitching about it.
If a woman is denied entry into the FOSS arena just for being a woman, that's one thing. But if someone makes an off-color statement, it's really not worth getting your nickers in a twist about it, right? Right. Because women make as many, if not more off-color statements about us men when we're not around to hear them -- and even sometimes when we are. Funny how no one brings the house down about that. Men are people too, you know, just in case you forgot.
Quite frankly, I don't see a need for yet another document format. PDFs work everywhere, and have been around for a while. It can render anything you can hope to find in a book anyway, so what more do you need?
Still, there may be something exotic that could be done.
I would've thought that the MVC model would be a shoe-in for site developers looking to support both desktops and mobile devices. Just create a "view" that's tailored for mobile devices. How hard is that to do?
Usually when they say, "PC", they really mean Windows. Just saying that it is a Flash game is sufficient.
I don't know why they would specify "Mac or PC" with a Flash game. It ran on my Linux system just fine. They had me thinking it wouldn't work under Linux for some reason (and I do know of some Flash apps that crap out under Linux!)
I mean, I guess I'm stupid for just going by the words someone says. I'm stupid for not being able to read minds. Or to make headway with idiotically-worded statements.
Well, it didn't say that.
Some people are intelligent enough to figure these things out by themselves.
Well, I guess I'm a dumbass, then.
Well, it didn't say that. That actually would make sense. But the thing is is that plastic is composed of long polymerized chains of hydrocarbons.
That's what plastic is made of!
It has happened in all other cases I know of where the government maintains databases on us.
I've only thought about it for a split-second and already a number of things come to mind that could be potentially chilling.
Stick with the gas tax. Your state registrations have in its databases already what vehicles you are driving.
And besides, commercial vehicles produce far more wear and tear on the roads than our individual cars do. They would gain little in the way tracking our usage in comparison. But it will open the barn doors for government to track us at a micro level.
It's called the Gas Tax. Why would you need anything more than that?
'nuff said.
They were all thinking with the wrong head.
Or you can return the money to the taxpayers, so that they'll have more money to spend, improving the economy!
I'm just as much a member of the tinfoil hat brigade as anyone else, but doesn't that seem a bit of a leap of logic? It seems to me that the simplest explanation for their presence (deterring crime and identifying criminals) is in this case the best one.
Simplest explanations don't always neatly apply when you are dealing with humans. Besides, we all know how effective "deterrents" are.
And what's a "criminal"? You know, that word used to mean something, but today it can mean anything from a mass murderer to some scofflaw who never pays his parking tickets.
Look at the so-called "War on Drugs" that has been raging for decades. We see how much of a "deterrent" that has been. In fact, it's "deterred" drug use so much that most of our currency has traces of cocaine on it. Yeah, that worked really well.
That would perhaps make cameras somewhat useful for prevention, if criminals were usually acting on a rationa cost-benefit analysis considering the likelihood of being caught vs. the probable profit or enjoyment resulting from their actions. And even that, only if cameras were actually effective at making it easier criminals, which gets back to the report which is discussed in TFA.
Bottom line is that cameras are more than anything security theater (or, in the jurisdiction at immediate issue in TFA, security theatre), which are pursued because they (as noted by the Home Office spokesman quoted in TFA) "help communities feel safer".
Safer? The TSA terrifies me. I would feel much safer if they weren't there. The chances of being killed by a real terrorist is so vanishingly small I'd be far, far, far more likely to die in a car accident.
TSA is a waste of time, money, and does nothing more than to give everyone a false sense of security. Everytime I have to stand there being harassed by TSA -- or any so-called security check point for that matter, I try to think of all the ways someone could get arround their silly pathetic attempts to "provide security", and scare myself at how easy it would be to do that.
And now the TSA is pushing to install T-Ray machines that can literally see through your clothes and render you naked. Which is sick really. Would you want strangers looking at your kids naked????!!!! And of course the T-ray systems are so easy to foil it's a joke, really.
Imagine that for whatever the reason the Government decides it doesn't like you. Maybe there's a state of panic where it sees a "terrorist" around every corner, and it's suspicious that you are.
So the system tracks your every move, whom you associate with, and tracks them too. After a while, the system can develop quite an elaborate social network, and can make the lives of you and your friends pure hell.
Sorry, but governments do go rouge every so often, and the US is no exception. Certainly the UK is not.
Now, true, there's no expectation for privacy when you step out of your home, but do you really want the government to be able to have that much detail of your life and social network at its beck and call?
It would be really tough to have the type of security everyone wants, AND have these FB apps to be useful. Tradeoffs, guys. The whole idea in most of these FB apps is the sharing of data between friends, which means the Application will have access to much.
You could have fine-grained security controls exposed to the user, but this would make FB security confusing to most of its users, and it also would hamper the applications and what they can do.
And if you were to implement such stringent security procedures now, it would break many of the apps in use.
I think it's safe to say that never put anything on Facebook that you wouldn't feel comfortable with the whole world seeing. And that goes for the Internet in general.
But, every time you install an FB app, it DOES ask you if you wish to allow the app to have full access to your information. So, if you don't feel comfortable, don't click that button!
Having said that, there should also be some ethical guidelines for FB developers.
There's also issues of neural development as well, so, from the phenotype aspect, Gender is not a clear black or white.
Alas, most people don't appreciate all of the subtle nuances, and that is where the controversy slips in.
DNA is not the sole determinant in someone's Gender. The issues are rather more complex than that.
It's plainly a waste of time, effort, and taxpayer's money. Let's end this silly "War on Drugs" and return the money to the taxpayer.
Get people to focus on paying attention to the road and their driving, and the cellphone distraction issue will take care of itself.