In other news, the TSA will begin ramping up security under a new no-smiles initiative. Travelers appearing too happy while traveling through the airport will be stopped and asked to undergo an intensive search, as research has shown that terrorists might smile to get past facial recognition software.*
Oh, so *that's* why TSA are such dicks all the time. If they get you to stop smiling, the software works. See, they're being assholes for our safety!
implication that phthalates and other pollutants may be affecting my unborn children, or even my ability to have children, that I'm okay with taking action even though the statistics aren't there.
And replace them with what? There aren't too many inert materials out there. Unless you're suggesting that we do away with the entire polymer industry, we need to start making intelligent choices instead of reacting emotionally to every study published by some crank researcher who sucks at math.
For one thing, it's fairly clear that these things aren't HELPING our health, so there's not any harm in getting rid of them (aside from short-term economics, which is not a powerful reason to endanger everyone)
Not true. Plastics are used all the time in medicine, including all those tubes they use to get things like medicine and air to people who need it. Unless you want them so brittle they spontaneously crack, plasticizers such as phthalates are necessary to modify the properties of the polymers to make them useful. If you ban phthalates, they have to be replaced with some other chemical.
I got the sense that his studies were very preliminary, but what interested me more was that he said plastics manufacturers were already positioning themselves to mitigate findings which would threaten them. Like funding research themselves (because that will be unbiased), lobbying to reduce funding for studies like this.
I'm not a fan of either camp - industry sponsored "research", or idiot researchers who can't do math. Which is why we should defer to people who know better, who have classified phthalates (in general) as rather safe at sane levels, based on decades of experience using them.
Basically I think the strongest reason for acting before we're sure is that either way, buisness is charging ahead with what's in it's best interests and may be clouding not only our ability to reproduce, but also our ability to even determine the effects of their meddling.
Again, "acting" sounds good until you realize that you have to offer an alternative. Reminds me of people who vote for some nebulous "change". Really? What change? What is it you wish to replace phthalates with? I'm reminded of the furor over mehyl t-butyl ether (MTBE) as an additive in gas, which people wanted to get rid of, and did - replacing it with ethanol, which worsened air pollution and drove up the cost of fuel and food. Be careful for what you wish for. Analyzing only the disadvantages of the status quo (let alone focusing on unlikely, unproven disadvantages) without comparison to a possible alternative is a terrible way to make a decision.
How can a boy though with one Y-chromosome become a girl? Does the chromosome change??
Sorry, your understanding of biology won't be tolerated here.
Just kidding - sometimes I wonder how the people who publish these articles even graduated high school. For what it's worth, some of the studies they cite have been demonstrated to have no statistical validity, including the ones that claim that exposure to a particular chemical (phthalates) cause guys to have small junk. Also, they try to make these unifying claims that "chemicals" cause these problems, when each chemical has very different properties that affect people in different ways. The stuff on PCBs is solid, but then they get vague.
I'm all for less pollution, but I don't think it helps the cause when the people leading the charge seem to not understand chemistry or biology very well.
If it wasn't for the fact that LaTeX documents that build in 10 seconds on the MBP take over a minute on the PowerBook, I'd be tempted to switch back to it.
You're not compiling the whole document every time, are you? I wrote my Ph.D. thesis (couple hundred pages with lots o' figures) in LaTeX on a Powerbook 1.25 GHz, and it certainly took me about a minute if I rebuilt the whole thing. However, if I recall I broke it up so it compiled in chunks and only rebuilt sections whose source had changed. I believe I was compiling each chapter in about 5-10 seconds, and the whole thing in about a minute if I wiped all the object files.
...if you actually do have something badly wrong with you, online resources can be invaluable. They're particularly good when you have something wrong that's rare enough that your doctors don't know what it is, presents a variety of very common symptoms, and you happen to be reasonably intelligent. Online resources can be incredibly valuable in getting an idea of what might be wrong with you, at least to know where to start looking.
In my case, I had a chronic disease for eight years that doctors proved completely unable to diagnose. Not only that, they couldn't even get me to the right specialist. Finally, after years of putting up with that, I started searching myself for a specific set of symptom combinations that are rather rare for my demographic.
As it turns out, I was able to do with google and effort that which a bunch of doctors and tests couldn't do: namely, figure out what was wrong with me. Sure, there were lots of scary things (cancers and whatnot) that I was able to easily eliminate because 1) I didn't have the right symptoms, and 2) I'd be dead by now if I had them. Eventually, I found one particular disease that matched all my symptoms.
And it's a good thing I did, because my particular illness causes chronic symptoms that eventually result in permanent damage. For me, there's no treatment but the damage can be avoided by changes in diet and such. Thankfully, the changes have worked extremely well. Without online resources, I'd probably still be bouncing from doctor to doctor, none of whom apparently have the time to do actual investigative research.
In an age in which doctors don't have time to be doctors, online resources can be invaluable. You just have to bear in mind that most of the scary syndromes described are usually very rare.
Slashdot has a very strong right-wing bias. Seriously. Read any discussion along the lines of 'Unions: good thing or bad thing?' and tell me this crowd's left-wing.
Try a discussion of the election and witness the Obama slurping. Many here are card-carrying Democrats, though there are many libertarians as already pointed out. There are very few self-described Republicans (nor am I one).
To tell you the truth, unions are kind of a legacy commitment of the democratic party. Take a poll of typical Americans who aren't union members, and I think you'll find them extremely unpopular over a broad swath of America.
The consensus here seems to be 'Unions are a Bad Thing and we should all negotiate individually with the bosses, even if that means programmers end up working 80-hour weeks with unpaid overtime'. That's pretty dedicated right-wing ideology.
I think it's more "we're sick of seeing people with no education, skills, or discernable competence using insane labor laws to strong-arm their empolyer into $30+/hour salaries and sending employers overseas." That and the fact that unions protect even the most incompetent employees, making it impossible to fire anyone for anything short of murder, and typically reward seniority over any merit. Fighting that sort of bloat and corruption isn't "dedicated right-wing ideology"; these days, the *center* doesn't like the most visible unions much (UAW, teamsters, etc), either.
That's not because unions are bad per se; they could have positive effects for both members and employers. They can make it easier to enact uniform regulations for an entire industry (airlines, for instance). Good unions also serve the role that guilds did in the middle ages. But after a few decades of increasingly anti-employer legislation, union consolidation across discernable trade definitions, and pervasive involvement of organized crime, organized labor in this country have taken a well-deserved black eye.
Working conditions and hours are something you're perfectly allowed to bring up during a job offer negotiation. Don't like the offer? Don't take the job. It's not like there are so few IT employers that they can actually collude to keep your salary down or working conditions poor. The major difference between now and the 1800s (when unions were critical) is that anti-trust laws have basically kept any employer from having any sort of upper hand in labor negotiations. We don't have those huge trusts like we used to.
A left-wing group would be all in favour of workers' collectives striving to secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof.
The central problem to your premise is how one determines what is "equitable". The only thing that could possibly do that is a free labor market. If your employer underpays you relative to your worth, some other will pay you better. The best labor policy is to do whatever necessary to maintain a free market (banning discrimination, nepotism, monopolies, and collusion), not by rigging labor rules such that a particular protected group is guaranteed more than they're worth.
I do agree with you about one thing - dividing labor laws between so-called "blue collar" employees to which they apply, and "white collar" employees to which they don't, is completely senseless. But I don't feel a pressing need to have to have some organization force me to join, take a cut of my paycheck, intimidate hard workers, tell me when I can show up for work, and shunt me into a seniority-based pay scale. No thanks.
Given the astonishing number of right-wingers usually to be found on/.
You're kidding right? Slashdot is overwhelmingly left. Not that that's good/bad, but if you think slashdot is a right-wing haven, then your right/left equilibrium is completely out of touch with reality.
You might have had this experience with any number of banks. Possibly somebody raided your mailbox for personal data, or you were careless about personal info you left online. Anybody who knows enough about you can open a credit card account in your name. A lot of fraud occurs this way. Consumers don't get stuck with the bills (usually!) but it can still cost them in terms of lost time and damaged credit ratings. Banks really ought to tighten up their procedures, but that would mean a lot less income from their (extremely profitable) credit card businesses. More cost effective to just eat the fraudulent charges.
In this case, I doubt it. Primarily because no charges were ever made, and because this happened twice, with the same bank.
Normally I'd agree it would be a usual case of identity theft, and it certainly occurred to me, but in this case I don't think so. It just makes no sense. They never made any charges despite the account being open for months, and the address signed up for was mine - so I'd find out, right? Dumpster diving doesn't make sense, since the card in question was just appalling - we're talking 20+% interest with a $100 annual fee. My credit's always been good, so I never even *get* card offers that bad. As such, I don't think it would be dumpster diving. And I'm pretty paranoid with personal data online. That doesn't mean I'm immune from the spectre of credit theft, but this doesn't seem like it. So I'm certain the mischief was on the part of the bank.
What makes more sense is that, given a commission for signing up people to a high-interest account with an obscene annual fee, lack of appropriate controls within the bank led to an employee signing me up.
I used to work doing telephone customer service for First USA Bank. In our training class, they actually encouraged us to look up the accounts of random celebrities. My whole class would come up with names and type them in to see if they had an account with us. We'd also frequently show each other particularly bad credit reports that came up on applications.
That's interesting. I believe that's the same bank that opened a credit card account for me without my knowledge, and sent me a collections notice for the annual fee plus late fees 6 months later, totaling hundreds of dollars. I'd never received an offer from them, let alone a card, nor would I accepted the thing had they done so. Oddly enough, making it go away only took about an hour on the phone, which leads me to believe it wasn't the first time they'd done this. Worse, the same thing happened the next year, making the "accident" angle a little tough to believe. I'm guessing those clowns lean on employees to basically make up accounts and forge signatures. Really cute. I regret not contacting the attorney general, because that stuff is outrageously illegal.
So basically, what you were seeing looks to have been the least illegal thing happening there.;)
Although I agree with the justice of going after them for misleading statements, I reckon all-in-all these people are better off, having got a PC with XP rather than being forced to wrestle the leviathan.
...except the point is that the point of the lawsuit is that people intending to run Vista bought the computers, and found to their chagrin that they couldn't run it. Which means they were wrestling the leviathan, just with even poorer weapons.
I do feel for them. I have a laptop I bought in April, 4GB RAM, and Vista (preinstalled) has always just been obscenely slow when doing anything like logging in, switching users, etc. Absolutely ridiculous.
I'm not sure how well you understand European history. Countries such as France, The UK, Germany, Spain and most others you see today haven't always been single entities and almost all European countries are an amalgamation of smaller countries/states who have been forced one way or another to get together for the greater good in exactly the same way the US has.
I'm aware of that. But these nations at least, for the most part, shared at least a cultural history, ethnicity, language, etc for hundreds of years. That would have distinguished them from any oppressors and made the Us vs. Them thing a lot clearer. It gets a little messy near borders (like Stasbourg, for instance) where cultures blend, and you have weirdos selling beer in corked bottles.
There's also the time factor. I can't recall the last time the English fought against an actual foreign oppressor (as opposed to a succession of the throne invited by an English faction), but I'm coming up with the Battle of Hastings in 1066 at best, which was a follow-up to the Norse invasion in the 800s. France has been loosely united as a nation for about as long - after the death of Charlemagne aka Karl der Grosse, I believe? They may have existed as looser duchies in the middle ages (varying with the strength of the king), but there was a language and culture that defined them. Similar for Germany - they may not have united until the 1800s, but there was still a common language. Spain I believe has been united since the 1500s. Point is, when you know who you are, you don't need an emblem.
Best European example I can come up with in comparison to America in terms of disparate states fighting a foreign empire is the Netherlands. They do have a rather strong emblem - though it isn't a flag, it's a color, representing the House of Orange who led the revolt against the Spanish. But they seem to display it rather a lot.;)
Another example - I can only come up with one other particular series of wars in which a series of otherwise totally independent nations fought against an "oppressor" (definition depends on perspective). That would be the crusades. What did they use to unite them? The banner of the cross.
For example the Union Jack is an amalgamation of elements from the English, Scottish, Welsh & Irish flags representing the participation of each country in the UK.
And there you have an example in which the reverse occurred to a degree - the occupying power (England) actually *won*, and sought to unify the subjects (Scotland and Wales). Kind of similar to the Soviets using the Sickle and Hammer. I wouldn't be surprised if the Scots and Welsh people weren't all that sold on Jack, though I don't have any insight there.
However, you seem to forget that the US is not the only country/nation who fought for it's independence. Other countries did that as well and they also had their flags emerge from these wars. They do not go on displaying the flag all around though. And when they do, the US tends to characterize them either as fanatics or even worse terrorists. (ok, I *might* be stretching it a bit, but you see my point, right?)
Other nations may have found other symbols; ours was a flag. I believe there are reasons for that. Other peoples generally had a much longer ethnic and cultural heritage upon which to draw for inspiration; in 1776 the 13 colonies didn't have much in common that distinguished them from Britain except a desire for self-determination. The US needed to effectively invent an identity; that's the point you're missing when referring to other countries who fought for freedom, they generally already *had* a common identity that distinguished themselves from the oppressor. I don't know of too many cases in which a group of wholly distinct states simultaneously fought for freedom from an oppressor *and* invented themselves as a united government - particularly not one in which they shared the same cultural and ethnic background as the oppressor! If you have such an example, I'm all ears. Pulling that off was a helluva longshot, and maintaining unity was critical. Not to say that a flag was the only way to accomplish that, but it seems to have worked out OK.
Moreover, a nation that is united only by a flag is not in any case a nation by definition.
See, the flag is a *symbol* of unity, a symbol of all the fighting and bloodshed that went into independence. Again, other nations/peoples have theirs; ours happens to be a flag. The French have the Bastille to symbolize their fight for freedom. I don't think that makes us less for it.
As a final note, you claim that the flag represents, between others, what you are fighting for. Do you think that applies to the wars in Afganistan, Iraq, Balkans, etc? Do you believe that these wars were fought to protect the freedom of the United States?
Two things: first, if you believe in freedom, you believe others should have it as well, and in the right situation might be willing to aid them in their cause. Second, once you have your freedom, there's nothing wrong with fighting to maintain your safety/security.
I don't want to get pinned down on defending the Iraq war - though I credit you for trying - because it wasn't a great idea. Still, if we suspend disbelief for a moment, the reasons we went to war (supposedly) were twofold: 1) WMDs that were being used to threaten us in violation of the Gulf War I peace treaty, and 2) Saddam was an oppressor against ethnic minorities. If you accept those premises, then our safety was being threatened, and some people deserved to be free, arguably justifying the cause. Nevermind there were better ways to go about it, I've already agreed it was foolish. Obviously, the stated premise for going to war has many Swiss-cheese sized holes in it (don't bother listing them, I pre-emptively agree).
But the point would be that even when it doesn't make sense, freedom (for ourselves or others) is *still* the reason used to justify fighting, which shows how ingrained the notion is for Americans. That allows the notion to be used for less pure propaganda purposes, and some people fall for it. All the time, you hear for pleas to "support the troops who are defending our freedom overseas." Is that literally true? Doubtful. But it's still ingrained in the American culture, and that's the point.
To be fair, there have been better examples of our involvement in fighting for the freedom of others. Consider WWII, in which we sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives because fascism was worth fighting against. Beyond that, consider the Marshall plan after the war, in which we rebuilt and gave freedom to our *enemies*. That's showing how much you believe in a principle.
Unlike those darned Frenchies, Poles, Russians, Spaniards, Czechs, Croats, Serbs etc. etc. who have never had to fight for their freedom from an oppressive foreign power?
Never said that - obviously many nations have had to fight occupying powers. However, all the nations you describe had established cultures during modern occupation and needed no unifying image. I specifically said we *defined our very existence and identity* while fighting for freedom and creating a nation out of nothing. That scenario doesn't describe a single one of those nations you list.
Go back and read my original post, in which I point out that the flag itself was used as an emblem to specifically unite 13 disparate colonies into a single nation. Also bear in mind that all of those peoples you mention share ethnic and cultural histories that unite them and distinguished them from any occupying power, such that no propaganda tool was necessary.
If there is any example to be made out of a nation you list, it would be the Soviet Union (as opposed to Russia), in which many disparate ethnicities were united into a single nation that was created essentially out of paper in the early-mid 1900s. That wasn't by fighting by freedom - instead by oppression - but guess what tool the good old Sovs used to attempt to unite those people? A flag with a hammer and sickle. I seem to recall them displaying it rather often.
Your point is invalid. Try again.
Your reading comprehension and basic reasoning skills are at a 3rd grade level. Fail.
To most (non-american) people that's just plain bizarre. Outside the USA, you'll only see it in dictatorships that tries to whip up unity/loyalty for to state, but obvously it's not quite the same thing here (since americans spam their surroundings with US flags by their own free will, not by a state decree).
You have to understand that the US has a history very different than that of European nations, in that we defined our very existence by fighting for our freedom. That fight was symbolized from the very beginning by the flag, whose image was used to unite the disparate colonies behind a single goal of American freedom. That flag was commissioned by George Washington, who realized that a nation and an army needed a common identity if the war for independece was to be won. Realize that, prior to that point, America was just 13 colonies. The flag was used to make them a nation.
Because of that, the flag itself has become a symbol of freedom and the fight for it. That's why our national anthem is a poem written about the flag (in the War of 1812). That's why most lasting image of WWII (for Americans) is four soldiers lifting the flag at Iwo Jima. I could go on...
As such, particularly for the military, the flag represents both who you are and what you're fighting for. Because Americans fought for their freedom and to create our very existence as a separate entity from a colonial power, our flag means a whole hell of a lot more to us than it probably does for most countries.
You always take for granted that for which you didn't have to struggle. Americans have been taught about that struggle and what it means, and many of us refuse to take freedom for granted.
As in: the procedure we usually follow is that we get a graphics designer to make some sketches on paper, and if we like them, we give them to the 3D modelling people?
Algorithmic is a much better term, I think.
I would agree, but for disambiguation purposes, I was trying to at least make clear to the confused that the term has nothing to do with the programming style used to generate the content. Which seems to be a point of great confusion.
That's what I said. It done by procedural programming = writing procedures.
The term has absolutely nothing to do with procedural programming vs. OOP. That would be an implementation issue that is far down into the weeds. The perm "procedure" here is meant much more generically to mean simply "not done by hand".
As an example, you could do procedural content generation using only OOP.
Point that the parent was making is that it doesn't have to be procedural; there are other ways of specifying algorithms for generating content.
Parent misunderstood the use of the term, or assumed that "procedural" has a fixed meaning outside of the software engineering community, which it doesn't.
What are you on about? There was a licensing conflict with Mozilla and Debian, so they forked. If anyone's doing a dick move, it's the Mozilla Foundation for being so anal about their logo.
It's trademark, they defend it or lose it. Blame the system.
I'll admit that my mathematical intuition isn't the greatest, though I can't help but think that this was intentional on Feynman's part, as to weed out those with weak mathematical skills from his freshman lectures.
Bear in mind, the classes these lectures were delivered to were at Caltech in the 60s, I believe. Those with weak mathematical skills didn't get in.
Also realize that many of the undergrad lecturers at Caltech take it as a badge of honor to see how much they can shovel at the undergrads, equating density and difficulty with learning. You might find that nearly all of the students in the class were spending quite some time poring over those lectures to figure them out - not because the profs wanted to weed them out, but because that's simply how things were/are done at Caltech. On the other hand, that's something you didn't want/need to do, valuing your own time and sanity, and not staring an "F" in the face if you didn't.
I'm in the same boat, I wouldn't have stood a prayer in that environment either.
I keep a copy of all 3 volumes on my bookshelf, as they are occasionally handy. However, I wouldn't dream of using them as my only reference.
Yeah, Feynmann wouldn't make a good reference but he's definitely entertaining and insightful. Probably about like Ambrose Bierce in that regard.
As a Classics major as an undergrad, I'm always happy to see these kind of stories. There was some wicked humour in the ancient world that is still hilarious today, from the political jibes in the plays of Aristophanes to the obscenities of Petronius' Satyricon. It's a pity that most people would never think about reading them, because one tends to assume that old literary works are dry and serious.
Nah. If this story has taught me anything, it's that if there's anything worth reading in those old sheepskins/tablets/papyrii, some modern comedian will steal it and repeat it, saving me the trouble of figuring out all the obscure cultural references from 3000 years ago.
Then there's the stupid surveys and quizzes your "friends" take then spam you to take as well. That alone is reason enough that Facebook must die a horrible death.
Sheeebus, it sounds like an unholy combination of Cosmo and chain-mail. Looks like I'm not missing anything.
Go check out Facebook. You might be surprised. Virtually everyone I know with a computer uses Facebook - more than half of my friends on FB are over 25.
Odd, I don't think any of my friends 30+ use facebook. I remember I was a few years out of college when it became popular, so I didn't get into it. But maybe that's just me and my friends.
I do agree that I'd think a lot less of someone my age using myspace than facebook. Of course, my nieces who are in college now use myspace, with no stigma attached.
I think the site going after people roughly my age is LinkedIn, though of course that's more of a professional nature. I get those invitations quite a bit, so I joined that one.
Why use Classmates.com when you have Myspace.com or Facebook.com?
Many of us who are 30+ associate those sites with the "OMG PONIES!" crowd. I'm sure that's probably changing as their userbase ages, but that's first impressions for you. If anybody my age had a myspace page, my first reaction would be that he's a total loser or way too interested in teenagers to be healthy.
Honestly, how would you replace him/her/it with a shell script that performed that badly? You'd have to write it in FORTRAN, blindfolded, while tripping on mescaline.
Finally SOMETHING that explains the original Windows XP color scheme.
Slashdot Mirror
In other news, the TSA will begin ramping up security under a new no-smiles initiative. Travelers appearing too happy while traveling through the airport will be stopped and asked to undergo an intensive search, as research has shown that terrorists might smile to get past facial recognition software.*
Oh, so *that's* why TSA are such dicks all the time. If they get you to stop smiling, the software works. See, they're being assholes for our safety!
And replace them with what? There aren't too many inert materials out there. Unless you're suggesting that we do away with the entire polymer industry, we need to start making intelligent choices instead of reacting emotionally to every study published by some crank researcher who sucks at math.
For one thing, it's fairly clear that these things aren't HELPING our health, so there's not any harm in getting rid of them (aside from short-term economics, which is not a powerful reason to endanger everyone)
Not true. Plastics are used all the time in medicine, including all those tubes they use to get things like medicine and air to people who need it. Unless you want them so brittle they spontaneously crack, plasticizers such as phthalates are necessary to modify the properties of the polymers to make them useful. If you ban phthalates, they have to be replaced with some other chemical.
I got the sense that his studies were very preliminary, but what interested me more was that he said plastics manufacturers were already positioning themselves to mitigate findings which would threaten them. Like funding research themselves (because that will be unbiased), lobbying to reduce funding for studies like this.
I'm not a fan of either camp - industry sponsored "research", or idiot researchers who can't do math. Which is why we should defer to people who know better, who have classified phthalates (in general) as rather safe at sane levels, based on decades of experience using them.
Basically I think the strongest reason for acting before we're sure is that either way, buisness is charging ahead with what's in it's best interests and may be clouding not only our ability to reproduce, but also our ability to even determine the effects of their meddling.
Again, "acting" sounds good until you realize that you have to offer an alternative. Reminds me of people who vote for some nebulous "change". Really? What change? What is it you wish to replace phthalates with? I'm reminded of the furor over mehyl t-butyl ether (MTBE) as an additive in gas, which people wanted to get rid of, and did - replacing it with ethanol, which worsened air pollution and drove up the cost of fuel and food. Be careful for what you wish for. Analyzing only the disadvantages of the status quo (let alone focusing on unlikely, unproven disadvantages) without comparison to a possible alternative is a terrible way to make a decision.
And while we're at it, is this lameness filter a fascist or what?
How can a boy though with one Y-chromosome become a girl? Does the chromosome change??
Sorry, your understanding of biology won't be tolerated here.
Just kidding - sometimes I wonder how the people who publish these articles even graduated high school. For what it's worth, some of the studies they cite have been demonstrated to have no statistical validity, including the ones that claim that exposure to a particular chemical (phthalates) cause guys to have small junk. Also, they try to make these unifying claims that "chemicals" cause these problems, when each chemical has very different properties that affect people in different ways. The stuff on PCBs is solid, but then they get vague.
I'm all for less pollution, but I don't think it helps the cause when the people leading the charge seem to not understand chemistry or biology very well.
If it wasn't for the fact that LaTeX documents that build in 10 seconds on the MBP take over a minute on the PowerBook, I'd be tempted to switch back to it.
You're not compiling the whole document every time, are you? I wrote my Ph.D. thesis (couple hundred pages with lots o' figures) in LaTeX on a Powerbook 1.25 GHz, and it certainly took me about a minute if I rebuilt the whole thing. However, if I recall I broke it up so it compiled in chunks and only rebuilt sections whose source had changed. I believe I was compiling each chapter in about 5-10 seconds, and the whole thing in about a minute if I wiped all the object files.
Been a few years, though.
Ok, how about Coke? Pepsi? Two quick ones just off the top of my head.
Intel? I would also imagine quite a few products made by P&G as well as Colgate-Palmolive. Diapers and razor blades immediately come to mind.
...if you actually do have something badly wrong with you, online resources can be invaluable. They're particularly good when you have something wrong that's rare enough that your doctors don't know what it is, presents a variety of very common symptoms, and you happen to be reasonably intelligent. Online resources can be incredibly valuable in getting an idea of what might be wrong with you, at least to know where to start looking.
In my case, I had a chronic disease for eight years that doctors proved completely unable to diagnose. Not only that, they couldn't even get me to the right specialist. Finally, after years of putting up with that, I started searching myself for a specific set of symptom combinations that are rather rare for my demographic.
As it turns out, I was able to do with google and effort that which a bunch of doctors and tests couldn't do: namely, figure out what was wrong with me. Sure, there were lots of scary things (cancers and whatnot) that I was able to easily eliminate because 1) I didn't have the right symptoms, and 2) I'd be dead by now if I had them. Eventually, I found one particular disease that matched all my symptoms.
And it's a good thing I did, because my particular illness causes chronic symptoms that eventually result in permanent damage. For me, there's no treatment but the damage can be avoided by changes in diet and such. Thankfully, the changes have worked extremely well. Without online resources, I'd probably still be bouncing from doctor to doctor, none of whom apparently have the time to do actual investigative research.
In an age in which doctors don't have time to be doctors, online resources can be invaluable. You just have to bear in mind that most of the scary syndromes described are usually very rare.
Slashdot has a very strong right-wing bias. Seriously. Read any discussion along the lines of 'Unions: good thing or bad thing?' and tell me this crowd's left-wing.
Try a discussion of the election and witness the Obama slurping. Many here are card-carrying Democrats, though there are many libertarians as already pointed out. There are very few self-described Republicans (nor am I one).
To tell you the truth, unions are kind of a legacy commitment of the democratic party. Take a poll of typical Americans who aren't union members, and I think you'll find them extremely unpopular over a broad swath of America.
The consensus here seems to be 'Unions are a Bad Thing and we should all negotiate individually with the bosses, even if that means programmers end up working 80-hour weeks with unpaid overtime'. That's pretty dedicated right-wing ideology.
I think it's more "we're sick of seeing people with no education, skills, or discernable competence using insane labor laws to strong-arm their empolyer into $30+/hour salaries and sending employers overseas." That and the fact that unions protect even the most incompetent employees, making it impossible to fire anyone for anything short of murder, and typically reward seniority over any merit. Fighting that sort of bloat and corruption isn't "dedicated right-wing ideology"; these days, the *center* doesn't like the most visible unions much (UAW, teamsters, etc), either.
That's not because unions are bad per se; they could have positive effects for both members and employers. They can make it easier to enact uniform regulations for an entire industry (airlines, for instance). Good unions also serve the role that guilds did in the middle ages. But after a few decades of increasingly anti-employer legislation, union consolidation across discernable trade definitions, and pervasive involvement of organized crime, organized labor in this country have taken a well-deserved black eye.
Working conditions and hours are something you're perfectly allowed to bring up during a job offer negotiation. Don't like the offer? Don't take the job. It's not like there are so few IT employers that they can actually collude to keep your salary down or working conditions poor. The major difference between now and the 1800s (when unions were critical) is that anti-trust laws have basically kept any employer from having any sort of upper hand in labor negotiations. We don't have those huge trusts like we used to.
A left-wing group would be all in favour of workers' collectives striving to secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof.
The central problem to your premise is how one determines what is "equitable". The only thing that could possibly do that is a free labor market. If your employer underpays you relative to your worth, some other will pay you better. The best labor policy is to do whatever necessary to maintain a free market (banning discrimination, nepotism, monopolies, and collusion), not by rigging labor rules such that a particular protected group is guaranteed more than they're worth.
I do agree with you about one thing - dividing labor laws between so-called "blue collar" employees to which they apply, and "white collar" employees to which they don't, is completely senseless. But I don't feel a pressing need to have to have some organization force me to join, take a cut of my paycheck, intimidate hard workers, tell me when I can show up for work, and shunt me into a seniority-based pay scale. No thanks.
Given the astonishing number of right-wingers usually to be found on /.
You're kidding right? Slashdot is overwhelmingly left. Not that that's good/bad, but if you think slashdot is a right-wing haven, then your right/left equilibrium is completely out of touch with reality.
You might have had this experience with any number of banks. Possibly somebody raided your mailbox for personal data, or you were careless about personal info you left online. Anybody who knows enough about you can open a credit card account in your name. A lot of fraud occurs this way. Consumers don't get stuck with the bills (usually!) but it can still cost them in terms of lost time and damaged credit ratings. Banks really ought to tighten up their procedures, but that would mean a lot less income from their (extremely profitable) credit card businesses. More cost effective to just eat the fraudulent charges.
In this case, I doubt it. Primarily because no charges were ever made, and because this happened twice, with the same bank.
Normally I'd agree it would be a usual case of identity theft, and it certainly occurred to me, but in this case I don't think so. It just makes no sense. They never made any charges despite the account being open for months, and the address signed up for was mine - so I'd find out, right? Dumpster diving doesn't make sense, since the card in question was just appalling - we're talking 20+% interest with a $100 annual fee. My credit's always been good, so I never even *get* card offers that bad. As such, I don't think it would be dumpster diving. And I'm pretty paranoid with personal data online. That doesn't mean I'm immune from the spectre of credit theft, but this doesn't seem like it. So I'm certain the mischief was on the part of the bank.
What makes more sense is that, given a commission for signing up people to a high-interest account with an obscene annual fee, lack of appropriate controls within the bank led to an employee signing me up.
I used to work doing telephone customer service for First USA Bank. In our training class, they actually encouraged us to look up the accounts of random celebrities. My whole class would come up with names and type them in to see if they had an account with us. We'd also frequently show each other particularly bad credit reports that came up on applications.
That's interesting. I believe that's the same bank that opened a credit card account for me without my knowledge, and sent me a collections notice for the annual fee plus late fees 6 months later, totaling hundreds of dollars. I'd never received an offer from them, let alone a card, nor would I accepted the thing had they done so. Oddly enough, making it go away only took about an hour on the phone, which leads me to believe it wasn't the first time they'd done this. Worse, the same thing happened the next year, making the "accident" angle a little tough to believe. I'm guessing those clowns lean on employees to basically make up accounts and forge signatures. Really cute. I regret not contacting the attorney general, because that stuff is outrageously illegal.
So basically, what you were seeing looks to have been the least illegal thing happening there. ;)
Although I agree with the justice of going after them for misleading statements, I reckon all-in-all these people are better off, having got a PC with XP rather than being forced to wrestle the leviathan.
...except the point is that the point of the lawsuit is that people intending to run Vista bought the computers, and found to their chagrin that they couldn't run it. Which means they were wrestling the leviathan, just with even poorer weapons.
I do feel for them. I have a laptop I bought in April, 4GB RAM, and Vista (preinstalled) has always just been obscenely slow when doing anything like logging in, switching users, etc. Absolutely ridiculous.
I'm not sure how well you understand European history. Countries such as France, The UK, Germany, Spain and most others you see today haven't always been single entities and almost all European countries are an amalgamation of smaller countries/states who have been forced one way or another to get together for the greater good in exactly the same way the US has.
I'm aware of that. But these nations at least, for the most part, shared at least a cultural history, ethnicity, language, etc for hundreds of years. That would have distinguished them from any oppressors and made the Us vs. Them thing a lot clearer. It gets a little messy near borders (like Stasbourg, for instance) where cultures blend, and you have weirdos selling beer in corked bottles.
There's also the time factor. I can't recall the last time the English fought against an actual foreign oppressor (as opposed to a succession of the throne invited by an English faction), but I'm coming up with the Battle of Hastings in 1066 at best, which was a follow-up to the Norse invasion in the 800s. France has been loosely united as a nation for about as long - after the death of Charlemagne aka Karl der Grosse, I believe? They may have existed as looser duchies in the middle ages (varying with the strength of the king), but there was a language and culture that defined them. Similar for Germany - they may not have united until the 1800s, but there was still a common language. Spain I believe has been united since the 1500s. Point is, when you know who you are, you don't need an emblem.
Best European example I can come up with in comparison to America in terms of disparate states fighting a foreign empire is the Netherlands. They do have a rather strong emblem - though it isn't a flag, it's a color, representing the House of Orange who led the revolt against the Spanish. But they seem to display it rather a lot. ;)
Another example - I can only come up with one other particular series of wars in which a series of otherwise totally independent nations fought against an "oppressor" (definition depends on perspective). That would be the crusades. What did they use to unite them? The banner of the cross.
For example the Union Jack is an amalgamation of elements from the English, Scottish, Welsh & Irish flags representing the participation of each country in the UK.
And there you have an example in which the reverse occurred to a degree - the occupying power (England) actually *won*, and sought to unify the subjects (Scotland and Wales). Kind of similar to the Soviets using the Sickle and Hammer. I wouldn't be surprised if the Scots and Welsh people weren't all that sold on Jack, though I don't have any insight there.
However, you seem to forget that the US is not the only country/nation who fought for it's independence. Other countries did that as well and they also had their flags emerge from these wars. They do not go on displaying the flag all around though. And when they do, the US tends to characterize them either as fanatics or even worse terrorists. (ok, I *might* be stretching it a bit, but you see my point, right?)
Other nations may have found other symbols; ours was a flag. I believe there are reasons for that. Other peoples generally had a much longer ethnic and cultural heritage upon which to draw for inspiration; in 1776 the 13 colonies didn't have much in common that distinguished them from Britain except a desire for self-determination. The US needed to effectively invent an identity; that's the point you're missing when referring to other countries who fought for freedom, they generally already *had* a common identity that distinguished themselves from the oppressor. I don't know of too many cases in which a group of wholly distinct states simultaneously fought for freedom from an oppressor *and* invented themselves as a united government - particularly not one in which they shared the same cultural and ethnic background as the oppressor! If you have such an example, I'm all ears. Pulling that off was a helluva longshot, and maintaining unity was critical. Not to say that a flag was the only way to accomplish that, but it seems to have worked out OK.
Moreover, a nation that is united only by a flag is not in any case a nation by definition.
See, the flag is a *symbol* of unity, a symbol of all the fighting and bloodshed that went into independence. Again, other nations/peoples have theirs; ours happens to be a flag. The French have the Bastille to symbolize their fight for freedom. I don't think that makes us less for it.
As a final note, you claim that the flag represents, between others, what you are fighting for. Do you think that applies to the wars in Afganistan, Iraq, Balkans, etc? Do you believe that these wars were fought to protect the freedom of the United States?
Two things: first, if you believe in freedom, you believe others should have it as well, and in the right situation might be willing to aid them in their cause. Second, once you have your freedom, there's nothing wrong with fighting to maintain your safety/security.
I don't want to get pinned down on defending the Iraq war - though I credit you for trying - because it wasn't a great idea. Still, if we suspend disbelief for a moment, the reasons we went to war (supposedly) were twofold: 1) WMDs that were being used to threaten us in violation of the Gulf War I peace treaty, and 2) Saddam was an oppressor against ethnic minorities. If you accept those premises, then our safety was being threatened, and some people deserved to be free, arguably justifying the cause. Nevermind there were better ways to go about it, I've already agreed it was foolish. Obviously, the stated premise for going to war has many Swiss-cheese sized holes in it (don't bother listing them, I pre-emptively agree).
But the point would be that even when it doesn't make sense, freedom (for ourselves or others) is *still* the reason used to justify fighting, which shows how ingrained the notion is for Americans. That allows the notion to be used for less pure propaganda purposes, and some people fall for it. All the time, you hear for pleas to "support the troops who are defending our freedom overseas." Is that literally true? Doubtful. But it's still ingrained in the American culture, and that's the point.
To be fair, there have been better examples of our involvement in fighting for the freedom of others. Consider WWII, in which we sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives because fascism was worth fighting against. Beyond that, consider the Marshall plan after the war, in which we rebuilt and gave freedom to our *enemies*. That's showing how much you believe in a principle.
Unlike those darned Frenchies, Poles, Russians, Spaniards, Czechs, Croats, Serbs etc. etc. who have never had to fight for their freedom from an oppressive foreign power?
Never said that - obviously many nations have had to fight occupying powers. However, all the nations you describe had established cultures during modern occupation and needed no unifying image. I specifically said we *defined our very existence and identity* while fighting for freedom and creating a nation out of nothing. That scenario doesn't describe a single one of those nations you list.
Go back and read my original post, in which I point out that the flag itself was used as an emblem to specifically unite 13 disparate colonies into a single nation. Also bear in mind that all of those peoples you mention share ethnic and cultural histories that unite them and distinguished them from any occupying power, such that no propaganda tool was necessary.
If there is any example to be made out of a nation you list, it would be the Soviet Union (as opposed to Russia), in which many disparate ethnicities were united into a single nation that was created essentially out of paper in the early-mid 1900s. That wasn't by fighting by freedom - instead by oppression - but guess what tool the good old Sovs used to attempt to unite those people? A flag with a hammer and sickle. I seem to recall them displaying it rather often.
Your point is invalid. Try again.
Your reading comprehension and basic reasoning skills are at a 3rd grade level. Fail.
To most (non-american) people that's just plain bizarre. Outside the USA, you'll only see it in dictatorships that tries to whip up unity/loyalty for to state, but obvously it's not quite the same thing here (since americans spam their surroundings with US flags by their own free will, not by a state decree).
You have to understand that the US has a history very different than that of European nations, in that we defined our very existence by fighting for our freedom. That fight was symbolized from the very beginning by the flag, whose image was used to unite the disparate colonies behind a single goal of American freedom. That flag was commissioned by George Washington, who realized that a nation and an army needed a common identity if the war for independece was to be won. Realize that, prior to that point, America was just 13 colonies. The flag was used to make them a nation.
Because of that, the flag itself has become a symbol of freedom and the fight for it. That's why our national anthem is a poem written about the flag (in the War of 1812). That's why most lasting image of WWII (for Americans) is four soldiers lifting the flag at Iwo Jima. I could go on...
As such, particularly for the military, the flag represents both who you are and what you're fighting for. Because Americans fought for their freedom and to create our very existence as a separate entity from a colonial power, our flag means a whole hell of a lot more to us than it probably does for most countries.
You always take for granted that for which you didn't have to struggle. Americans have been taught about that struggle and what it means, and many of us refuse to take freedom for granted.
As in: the procedure we usually follow is that we get a graphics designer to make some sketches on paper, and if we like them, we give them to the 3D modelling people? Algorithmic is a much better term, I think.
I would agree, but for disambiguation purposes, I was trying to at least make clear to the confused that the term has nothing to do with the programming style used to generate the content. Which seems to be a point of great confusion.
That's what I said. It done by procedural programming = writing procedures.
The term has absolutely nothing to do with procedural programming vs. OOP. That would be an implementation issue that is far down into the weeds. The perm "procedure" here is meant much more generically to mean simply "not done by hand".
As an example, you could do procedural content generation using only OOP.
Point that the parent was making is that it doesn't have to be procedural; there are other ways of specifying algorithms for generating content.
Parent misunderstood the use of the term, or assumed that "procedural" has a fixed meaning outside of the software engineering community, which it doesn't.
What are you on about? There was a licensing conflict with Mozilla and Debian, so they forked. If anyone's doing a dick move, it's the Mozilla Foundation for being so anal about their logo.
It's trademark, they defend it or lose it. Blame the system.
I'll admit that my mathematical intuition isn't the greatest, though I can't help but think that this was intentional on Feynman's part, as to weed out those with weak mathematical skills from his freshman lectures.
Bear in mind, the classes these lectures were delivered to were at Caltech in the 60s, I believe. Those with weak mathematical skills didn't get in.
Also realize that many of the undergrad lecturers at Caltech take it as a badge of honor to see how much they can shovel at the undergrads, equating density and difficulty with learning. You might find that nearly all of the students in the class were spending quite some time poring over those lectures to figure them out - not because the profs wanted to weed them out, but because that's simply how things were/are done at Caltech. On the other hand, that's something you didn't want/need to do, valuing your own time and sanity, and not staring an "F" in the face if you didn't.
I'm in the same boat, I wouldn't have stood a prayer in that environment either.
I keep a copy of all 3 volumes on my bookshelf, as they are occasionally handy. However, I wouldn't dream of using them as my only reference.
Yeah, Feynmann wouldn't make a good reference but he's definitely entertaining and insightful. Probably about like Ambrose Bierce in that regard.
As a Classics major as an undergrad, I'm always happy to see these kind of stories. There was some wicked humour in the ancient world that is still hilarious today, from the political jibes in the plays of Aristophanes to the obscenities of Petronius' Satyricon. It's a pity that most people would never think about reading them, because one tends to assume that old literary works are dry and serious.
Nah. If this story has taught me anything, it's that if there's anything worth reading in those old sheepskins/tablets/papyrii, some modern comedian will steal it and repeat it, saving me the trouble of figuring out all the obscure cultural references from 3000 years ago.
I'm kidding. I think.
Then there's the stupid surveys and quizzes your "friends" take then spam you to take as well. That alone is reason enough that Facebook must die a horrible death.
Sheeebus, it sounds like an unholy combination of Cosmo and chain-mail. Looks like I'm not missing anything.
Go check out Facebook. You might be surprised. Virtually everyone I know with a computer uses Facebook - more than half of my friends on FB are over 25.
Odd, I don't think any of my friends 30+ use facebook. I remember I was a few years out of college when it became popular, so I didn't get into it. But maybe that's just me and my friends.
I do agree that I'd think a lot less of someone my age using myspace than facebook. Of course, my nieces who are in college now use myspace, with no stigma attached.
I think the site going after people roughly my age is LinkedIn, though of course that's more of a professional nature. I get those invitations quite a bit, so I joined that one.
Why use Classmates.com when you have Myspace.com or Facebook.com?
Many of us who are 30+ associate those sites with the "OMG PONIES!" crowd. I'm sure that's probably changing as their userbase ages, but that's first impressions for you. If anybody my age had a myspace page, my first reaction would be that he's a total loser or way too interested in teenagers to be healthy.
Honestly, how would you replace him/her/it with a shell script that performed that badly? You'd have to write it in FORTRAN, blindfolded, while tripping on mescaline.
Finally SOMETHING that explains the original Windows XP color scheme.