Has anyone noticed that they now describe Man Made Global warming, which nobody uses anymore to describe climate change based on man made contribution, or that is, to initiate a world wide carbon tax, is now generic Climate Change?
Which, nobody will argue that climate change happens, which is I think why they are starting to try and deceive people by suggesting historic climate change is the same as mane made climate change, which there is not one shred of evidence to support, and in fact is false.
We should have no winters by now, and extreme changes in climate when Al Gore and his crony investment banker buddies were setting up a Global Carbon Exchange to make billions.
Climate Change used as a term to masquerade as Man Made Global Warming is a gigantic scam.
-Hack
Your problem is with semantics? At best, man made or not, global warming was an inaccurate description as the models all show much more than just temperature increases. There are changes in precipitation, changes in storm frequency, wider variations between summer and winter temperatures, etc.
It is quite possible that as the minority argues, what is going on is merely normal activity, even though the records as far back as can be measured never show such an increase of temperatures in such a short period of time (with the exception of the end of an ice age, which we aren't in). So, the only thing different about the last 100 years or so and the millions of years previously is this thing called the industrial revolution.
So, against overwhelming evidence, maybe the naysayers are correct, and human activity has nothing to do with climate change. Maybe they can start their own equivalent to the flat earthers.
If I were in Iowa I'd worry less about the impact of climate change on the agriculture, which will take decades versus the immediate impact diverting massive amounts of ground water into ethanol production for fuel, which scientists estimate will take centuries to replenish. Stopping climate change today won't refill the underground aquafiers and without water, there are no farms, nor rural communities to farm them.
Samoa Airlines has recently started charging people by their weight. They have a lot of large people and they fly small planes where weight makes a big difference in costs.
Unless they are very small planes, passenger weight should only make a difference on takeoff and landing. Once airborne, drag or wind resistance is a much bigger problem and it isn't impacted by the weight of the occupants.
It is interesting that when talking about weight and the cost for flying, people only look at people who are wider than the norm as if height doesn't add any extra weight.
It's not interesting at all, really. Why do I care if they need more headroom than me? I don't. It doesn't affect me at all. But when I am pressed against the glass of the window because the guy in the middle seat is overflowing 6 inches into my seat? Hell yes I care. And yes I have literally, on a regional jet, had someone sitting next to me who was so large I was pushed into the wall. Did they pay extra for my space? Did I get a discount on my reduced seating capacity? No. They could weigh 500 pounds and it would not bother me at all* if they stayed in their assigned area.
*Obviously if their weight caused safety issues for the center of gravity for the aircraft, then I would have a problem with it.
Last time I flew (just last week), there were arms between the chairs. It's kind of hard for an overweight person to flow into the next seat with arm rests in between. As for being pressed against the glass. That will be the case regardless because the seats are fixed and if a person is in the middle seat, the window seat has the least amount of room because the curvature of the fuselage. BTW, I fly 30 or more time a year and I can tell you the exit rows (wings) over the most room and most grossly overweight people do not sit there because of the need to be able to open the door. For tall people, the bulkhead seats are best (bulkhead in front, not behind).
However, if you want to guarantee ample room, there is always business class or first class, but if you are paying for coach, where the goal of the airline is to pack as many people in the plane as possible, well, you get what you pay for.
I don't see why the airlines should collect extra from people who may cause discomfort for those around them, but then not use that money to compensate the person around them.
Perhaps they should offer those seats at a discount. 50% off this seat because there is a whale in the next seat. If you've got your kid with you, maybe you could have them sit next to the whale with no real issues, and save 50% on the purchase price.
Speaking of which, do you remember back in the days when there was a difference between an adult airline ticket and a child's airline ticket? Why do we charge more for fat people, but not less for tiny people? As a point of fact, these days the airlines charge MORE for children, at least ones traveling alone. With the notable exception of Southwest, of course. Isn't it odd, how Southwest is the one notable exception to all the BS that airlines do, and that Southwest is also the one notable exception to the fact that the airlines are losing money. Hmm, must be a coincidence, nothing more to see here, move along. When will those cordwood stackers be installed in our new jets?
Nobody is saying the airlines should collect extra from anybody, well, the OP did, but I didn't. In reality, it makes no difference how much the people on the plane weigh. Planes carry so much extra fuel for a safety margin that the overweight passengers really don't figure in. Besides a favorable tailwind will offset any extra fuel from overweight passengers as will a headwind destroy any savings from all underweight passengers. At the speed planes travel, drag is a much bigger cause of fuel use than lift. No, all of this "charge extra for fat people" is one more way for people to express their personal prejudices.
I read Dcnjoe60's comment to say that his preference would be for airlines to impose an additional fee on those who have more chance of causing their fellow passengers some discomfort by not being able to remain in their allotted seat. He did admit that the airlines do care about his extra weight.
A real asshole would say that Dcnjoe60 is only trying to look out for himself at the expense of others. More rational folk would realize that Dcnjoe60's plan helps short people as much as it does tall people unless all short are also fat people. I have some personal observations that suggest that last bit to be a false premise.
Since I'm 5'8" and 170lbs, I don't think I'm trying to look out for myself. However, I do fly frequently (30 or more times per year) and deal with the public constantly and it is safe to say that there is definitely a bias against overweight people. My point was that when simply talking weight, it is a false assumption that weight concerns for airlines are simply because of overweight people. As I stated in my post, the CDC has statistics on what is an average sized person. I'm sure the airlines do, too.
There are many people that society would not consider overweight, but because they are tall, or muscular, they would exceed the average weight. If the concern is weight, then there are as many people above the average weight because they are tall than because they are overweight, at least statistically.
Gee, never heard that one before. What the people pushing these ideas don't seem to know is that it's not the tools, it's the way of thinking about a problem. I once worked at a place where we made a manager a tool that would let him create his own reports, and he immediately started adding up all flavors of apples and oranges (e.g., dollars of this and pounds of that). Then he wanted the small IT staff to help him make sense out of his reports.
Yep.
And even if they do get good at using it, now you've got a {whatever} doing "programming" (in a limited clunky "environment/language") instead of {whatever it was they were supposed to be doing}.
There's a marketing manager in my last job's company doing exactly that (not entirely unrelated to why it is my last job). I'm glad he's having fun playing programmer, but he does even less actual marketing than he was doing before...
If their job involves the collecting of data and assimilating it and compiling it into various formats, etc., as in marketing reports, and they can't get the data unless they do it them self, I'm pretty sure the organization would fault the IT shop and not the manager. Managers are usually evaluated on results and if the result is the reports, then he/she is successful.
A complex problem won't be simpler just because the tool isn't as powerful. All these ideas comes from a fundamental misunderstanding about what it is that actually makes system development hard.
But, if you break a complex problem down into it's simpler components and solve each of those components, then a simpler tool can be used on the components and the components strung together to solve the complex problem. That is how you solve a business problem in the real world. That is also how you solve a programming problem.
The ugly trick is that if you want to keep non-programmers away from something, some programmer has to take one for the team and gingerly approach whatever horrible little ad-hoc business logic problem or whatever the non-programmer was trying to solve. If dual-class programmers were in ready supply, it's not like the non-techies would be clamoring for more chances to get their hands dirty.
I don't think that is true. End users have been doing their own thing for decades. They usually just do it with spreadsheets and databases. In the old days it was Lotus and dBase, today Access and Excel. In the 90s there was a lot of VB programs written by end users that while not of professional quality, surely got the job done for their purpose.
The reason that end users get their hands dirty has nothing to do with the availability of programmers overall. It is the priority of their projects compared to the rest of the corporation's projects. In most organizations, increasing the programming staff another 10% is not going to get those smaller end user projects accomplished any sooner. Those programmers will be added to the big projects to get them finished sooner so the next big project can begin.
In many organizations, there has been a major push to decentralize IT precisely because of this. If management is going to be held accountable for timelines for projects that require programming, but that programming isn't high enough on the corporate priority list, then those business units want their own programming staff. Simply put, the manager needs to be responsible for all the resources required to complete the project. If they don't get their own staff, they will simply come up with creative internal ways to do it with end user tools.
As for IT and business logic, almost always, IT is the one that doesn't understand business logic. The end user usually has a good grasp of the business logic and how it fits into current operations. The professional programmer, on the other hand, usually wants to use existing patterns to speed up their development time, but causes the end user department to change the way it processes. In short, they forget that the user is the customer. That is why, in many organizations, IT has about the same approval rating as congress.
This isn't new. Back in the early 90s, there were various end user tools to design simple systems that used a card metaphor. Basically, you strung a bunch of cards together to build your program and for each card you told it what that card did (accepted input, made a decision, generated a report, etc.). In reality, it was building a flow chart (but not using the traditional systems). When it was all done, you hit the button and your program ran. If it needed changed, you edited the individual card or inserted new cards or removed old ones. You also had the option to open each card and tinker with the code (pascal, I think), but for the most part, each card was a black box just accepting inputs and having specified outputs.
Obviously, the programs weren't terribly sophisticated, but they were surprisingly functional and maintainable and for end users it was a lot easier than programming dBase or Lotus.
Gee, never heard that one before. What the people pushing these ideas don't seem to know is that it's not the tools, it's the way of thinking about a problem. I once worked at a place where we made a manager a tool that would let him create his own reports, and he immediately started adding up all flavors of apples and oranges (e.g., dollars of this and pounds of that). Then he wanted the small IT staff to help him make sense out of his reports.
While I understand what you are saying, it is hard to argue that Microsoft's Visual Basic and Access effectively allowed millions of non-programmers to build applications. Were they good, robust applications? Probably not, at least most of them. But at the time, those products were first released and centralized IT shops ruled, most departments would never have had their requests get high enough up the priority list to every be programmed by a "real" programmer.
Unfortunately, VB's own success killed it for the non-programmer because more and more features were added to the point that by the time it was VB.net, you needed to be a programmer to really use it and if you were, well C# provided much more functionality.
End users will find a way to get their needs met, one way or another. And, an IT shop that is viewed as thwarting a production department from being able to function won't last long in today's economic situation.
Passengers are where the weight is a real concern. Fatbodies cost the airlines money way more than life preservers. Charge by the pound.
I am by no means a fatbody, but I am tall and therefore weigh more than a person with my same build and body type who is shorter than me. I don't much care how much the person next to me weighs (though the airline does). I'd rather those who take up more horizontal space pay more than those who take up more vertical space / weight. I will say that these narrower seats concern me greatly. My hips barely fit between the arm rests I encounter now. (Not referring to the seats specifically mentioned in the article, but the more seats per row on 777 mentioned in summary)
So, if the average human adult has a height of 5'6" and a waist of 38" (those are for male and female combined), you are okay with charging extra for people who are outside the norm because their waist is too wide, but not because they are too tall? Avg weight for a human adult is 180lbs, again ignoring gender. (all of those figures come from the CDC).
It is interesting that when talking about weight and the cost for flying, people only look at people who are wider than the norm as if height doesn't add any extra weight.
Passengers are where the weight is a real concern. Fatbodies cost the airlines money way more than life preservers. Charge by the pound.
I'm pretty sure that overweight people pay for their ticket, so they don't "cost" the airline anything. It might cost more fuel to fly a plane full of 250lb individuals versus 150lb individuals, but that doesn't mean they are overweight. Maybe they are an NFL football team. Besides, a plane is designed to carry a maximum weight and it will be loaded to that maximum weight, if possible with either passengers or cargo. As such, just as much fuel will be burned. If flights were flying at capacity and they were having to add extra flights to shift the cargo, you might have a point, but that is far from the case.
Of course, as people age, even those who are healthy, they will on average be heavier than they were when they were young, so your proposal is really just a form of age discrimination.
I have to say, I was subjected to some of the most vicious onslaughts by my peers going through school. Luckily, my parents granted me with the mental fortitude and tools to survive. Not everyone can impart these skills to their children. It is not necessarily the parents fault, and certainly not the child's.
However, I struggle with the concept that bullying someone amounts to a felony. We have some very skewed laws when bullying someone is equivalent to armed robbery, and deserves 5 years in Jail. (Florida)
It is wrong, but it trivialises harder crimes.
Interestingly, the military and police uses many of these bullying techniques to extract information. It is really a form of psychological torture to get the person to break. So, are you really defending the right of these girls, or any group of bullies, to prey on weaker kids and psychologically torture them to the point that they break (in this case committing suicide)? How would that not be a felony? Most people would agree that if they physically beat the girl senseless it would be, so why is not not when they are emotionally beat senseless?
Yeah...I have a hard time seeing felony charges for "being mean".....
These girls were horrible, but they didn't kill the other girl, she killed herself.
Abuse is abuse, whether physical, emotional or psychological. Of the three, the scars of physical abuse are the easiest to heal. It wasn't too long ago that women were sent back to their abusive husbands because there weren't physical signs of the abuse. Usually, they stayed until they were killed by their abuser or their own hand or they killed their abuser, in which case they usually went to jail.
These cases are far worse than somebody "being mean." Bullying in these cases are an act of violence and until people get that, violence against weaker individuals will continue.
No amount of sympathy will bring her back, but morning her and punishing her tormentors is giving her exactly what she wanted when she killed herself. Don't encourage this behaviour, it's just a type murder that the courts can't punish.
While I understand what you are trying to say, that has got to be one of the most insensitive statements I have ever read on slashdot. Obviously, the girl was distraught and tormented enough that she saw suicide as the only way out of her pain. Obviously, it wasn't a rational decision from our perspective, but from one who works with suicide prevention, I can tell you that at the time a person is contemplating it, it makes perfect sense and all they are looking for is to make the pain stop any way they can.
Bullys and other abusers depend on the rest of us ignoring the victims. We need to do just the opposite.
But he reserved his harshest words for the girl's parents for failing to monitor her behavior
Children are sociopaths until they learn better / their frontal lobes finish developing. It's the parents who are at fault here.
I'd like a citation please. It's pretty well accepted that the "age of reason" where a child can tell right from wrong is well before the age of the girl in this story. If you are saying that a teenager has insufficient frontal lobe development, then it would hardly be her parent's fault as she would be mentally handicapped.
Except... income (including disposable) for the average American hasn't increased since the late 1960s. You have less real-world buying power now than your parents had five decades ago. While productivity has increased, your wages haven't. If the median household income had kept pace with the economy since 1970, it would now be nearly $92,000, not $50,000. (The 1% have seen their real-world income increase 240% in the same time, though.) Since 1990 the real value of minimum wage is up 21%... but cost of living in that same time is up 67%. So while your basic premise may seem sound, the data about disposable income being the cause seems to falsify that theory.
I agree with you on your technical argument, but disposable income takes into account real income plus purchasing power. If you credit is more readily available so you can finance some purchases, then you also have more disposable income. So, while real wages might not have increased to keep up with inflation, the easing of credit since the 1960s has increased the purchasing power of the consumer. As such, the basic premise still stands: When people have more funds at their disposal, they choose convenience over cost. When they have fewer funds at their disposal they choose cost over convenience. Whether those funds are wages, credit, government transfer payments or from the sale of illegal goods, doesn't matter, at least in this discussion.
The internet didn't kill the library. Library patronage was declining long before the internet. Libraries, sprang into existence because books were expensive and most people struggled to provide shelter and food for their families. Post WWII, at least in the US, things began to change and people had more disposable income. As people climbed the economic ladder, they were in a better position to purchase their own books, particularly paperbacks, trading money for convenience (as is the case with most consumer goods). This trend continued through the 1960s and 70s and really accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s as book clubs took off all over the place. It was fashionable to be reading the latest best seller and the serial model of the library couldn't support that.
All the internet did was change the purchase mode from paper to electronic versions of the media. It didn't impact the use of the library because that change had already manifested itself based on the economic wherewithal of the patrons. Interestingly enough, both the Philadelphia and New York public libraries reported significant increases in usage during the last two recessions. It would seem that even with the plethora of electronic devices to read e-books, when money is tight and one has to watch expenses, one gives up the convenience and goes back to the library.
In short, it's not technology that is causing the demise of the library, but increased disposable income.
It's a movie, get over it. The scientific community doesn't seem to get upset with movies about vampires or zombies or Hogwarts or Middle Earth, but for some reason if it's about the real world, it has to be 100% accurate. It's a movie, get over it.
People generally forget what they've learned unless they use the knowledge within a few months or so. Americans are work-aholics relatively speaking and thus will bury their head in their here-and-now work such that distant knowledge fades quickly as the immediate situation takes over.
A Just-In-Time education system may be a better approach than trying to hammer in concepts while young hoping they are hammered in deep enough to stay in. That's perhaps not a rational use of time. The 4-year university approach is obsolete, or at least needs big-time augmentation.
Actually, the 4-year university approach is excellent. We should return to it. What is obsolete and never worked well is the job skill training that masquarades as the 4-year university approach. The purpose of college/university used to be to be educated in many subjects, to be well rounded, to be a critical thinker, etc. Today, it is to get a job.
this is starting to sound interesting. could you elucidate please?
There's a number of things he could mean; but my guess is he's thinking of the digital model of a computational universe, which clashes with thermodynamics in a number of ways as opposed to the quantum model, which doesn't. (provided we figure out the whole quantum gravity debacle)
If you're interested I recommend you pick up Seth Lloyd's Programming the Universe. It's a great introduction to QM and quantum computing and is totally accessible for anyone with a high school education.
You would be correct. However, until somebody can reconcile quantum gravity, the quantum computing model of a computational universe is unworkable. As such, the only viable alternative would be the digital model, which conflicts with thermodynamics. BTW, the current quantum models can be made to work mathematically, but to do so requires accepting premises that would invalidate other accepted theories of QM. As a professor recently put it, it would require the cat to be both dead and alive while you are actually observing it. Since that can't be, unless somebody comes up with a new model, all that is left is the digital model.
This is why open source is a stupid idea. With closed source software, people have to PAY you for your WORK. With open source, everyone rips you off and you're left complaining about how they didn't contribute, with no recourse because you were dumb enough to work for free.
Then again, without open source, there would be no Steam. So, if open source is a dumb idea and Steam is based on open source, then that would make Steam a dumb idea, right?
Slashdot Mirror
Has anyone noticed that they now describe Man Made Global warming, which nobody uses anymore to describe climate change based on man made contribution, or that is, to initiate a world wide carbon tax, is now generic Climate Change?
Which, nobody will argue that climate change happens, which is I think why they are starting to try and deceive people by suggesting historic climate change is the same as mane made climate change, which there is not one shred of evidence to support, and in fact is false.
We should have no winters by now, and extreme changes in climate when Al Gore and his crony investment banker buddies were setting up a Global Carbon Exchange to make billions.
Climate Change used as a term to masquerade as Man Made Global Warming is a gigantic scam.
-Hack
Your problem is with semantics? At best, man made or not, global warming was an inaccurate description as the models all show much more than just temperature increases. There are changes in precipitation, changes in storm frequency, wider variations between summer and winter temperatures, etc.
It is quite possible that as the minority argues, what is going on is merely normal activity, even though the records as far back as can be measured never show such an increase of temperatures in such a short period of time (with the exception of the end of an ice age, which we aren't in). So, the only thing different about the last 100 years or so and the millions of years previously is this thing called the industrial revolution.
So, against overwhelming evidence, maybe the naysayers are correct, and human activity has nothing to do with climate change. Maybe they can start their own equivalent to the flat earthers.
If I were in Iowa I'd worry less about the impact of climate change on the agriculture, which will take decades versus the immediate impact diverting massive amounts of ground water into ethanol production for fuel, which scientists estimate will take centuries to replenish. Stopping climate change today won't refill the underground aquafiers and without water, there are no farms, nor rural communities to farm them.
Samoa Airlines has recently started charging people by their weight.
They have a lot of large people and they fly small planes where weight makes a big difference in costs.
Unless they are very small planes, passenger weight should only make a difference on takeoff and landing. Once airborne, drag or wind resistance is a much bigger problem and it isn't impacted by the weight of the occupants.
It is interesting that when talking about weight and the cost for flying, people only look at people who are wider than the norm as if height doesn't add any extra weight.
It's not interesting at all, really. Why do I care if they need more headroom than me? I don't. It doesn't affect me at all. But when I am pressed against the glass of the window because the guy in the middle seat is overflowing 6 inches into my seat? Hell yes I care. And yes I have literally, on a regional jet, had someone sitting next to me who was so large I was pushed into the wall. Did they pay extra for my space? Did I get a discount on my reduced seating capacity? No. They could weigh 500 pounds and it would not bother me at all* if they stayed in their assigned area.
*Obviously if their weight caused safety issues for the center of gravity for the aircraft, then I would have a problem with it.
Last time I flew (just last week), there were arms between the chairs. It's kind of hard for an overweight person to flow into the next seat with arm rests in between. As for being pressed against the glass. That will be the case regardless because the seats are fixed and if a person is in the middle seat, the window seat has the least amount of room because the curvature of the fuselage. BTW, I fly 30 or more time a year and I can tell you the exit rows (wings) over the most room and most grossly overweight people do not sit there because of the need to be able to open the door. For tall people, the bulkhead seats are best (bulkhead in front, not behind).
However, if you want to guarantee ample room, there is always business class or first class, but if you are paying for coach, where the goal of the airline is to pack as many people in the plane as possible, well, you get what you pay for.
5'6" 180 lbs is awfully fat, so I think you mean the average American not the average human.
Talk to the CDC, it's their stats. Of course, those weights and heights are not the ideals, they are actuals.
I don't see why the airlines should collect extra from people who may cause discomfort for those around them, but then not use that money to compensate the person around them.
Perhaps they should offer those seats at a discount. 50% off this seat because there is a whale in the next seat. If you've got your kid with you, maybe you could have them sit next to the whale with no real issues, and save 50% on the purchase price.
Speaking of which, do you remember back in the days when there was a difference between an adult airline ticket and a child's airline ticket? Why do we charge more for fat people, but not less for tiny people? As a point of fact, these days the airlines charge MORE for children, at least ones traveling alone. With the notable exception of Southwest, of course. Isn't it odd, how Southwest is the one notable exception to all the BS that airlines do, and that Southwest is also the one notable exception to the fact that the airlines are losing money. Hmm, must be a coincidence, nothing more to see here, move along. When will those cordwood stackers be installed in our new jets?
Nobody is saying the airlines should collect extra from anybody, well, the OP did, but I didn't. In reality, it makes no difference how much the people on the plane weigh. Planes carry so much extra fuel for a safety margin that the overweight passengers really don't figure in. Besides a favorable tailwind will offset any extra fuel from overweight passengers as will a headwind destroy any savings from all underweight passengers. At the speed planes travel, drag is a much bigger cause of fuel use than lift. No, all of this "charge extra for fat people" is one more way for people to express their personal prejudices.
I read Dcnjoe60's comment to say that his preference would be for airlines to impose an additional fee on those who have more chance of causing their fellow passengers some discomfort by not being able to remain in their allotted seat. He did admit that the airlines do care about his extra weight.
A real asshole would say that Dcnjoe60 is only trying to look out for himself at the expense of others. More rational folk would realize that Dcnjoe60's plan helps short people as much as it does tall people unless all short are also fat people. I have some personal observations that suggest that last bit to be a false premise.
Since I'm 5'8" and 170lbs, I don't think I'm trying to look out for myself. However, I do fly frequently (30 or more times per year) and deal with the public constantly and it is safe to say that there is definitely a bias against overweight people. My point was that when simply talking weight, it is a false assumption that weight concerns for airlines are simply because of overweight people. As I stated in my post, the CDC has statistics on what is an average sized person. I'm sure the airlines do, too.
There are many people that society would not consider overweight, but because they are tall, or muscular, they would exceed the average weight. If the concern is weight, then there are as many people above the average weight because they are tall than because they are overweight, at least statistically.
Gee, never heard that one before.
What the people pushing these ideas don't seem to know is that it's not the tools, it's the way of thinking about a problem. I once worked at a place where we made a manager a tool that would let him create his own reports, and he immediately started adding up all flavors of apples and oranges (e.g., dollars of this and pounds of that). Then he wanted the small IT staff to help him make sense out of his reports.
Yep.
And even if they do get good at using it, now you've got a {whatever} doing "programming" (in a limited clunky "environment/language") instead of {whatever it was they were supposed to be doing}.
There's a marketing manager in my last job's company doing exactly that (not entirely unrelated to why it is my last job). I'm glad he's having fun playing programmer, but he does even less actual marketing than he was doing before ...
If their job involves the collecting of data and assimilating it and compiling it into various formats, etc., as in marketing reports, and they can't get the data unless they do it them self, I'm pretty sure the organization would fault the IT shop and not the manager. Managers are usually evaluated on results and if the result is the reports, then he/she is successful.
A complex problem won't be simpler just because the tool isn't as powerful. All these ideas comes from a fundamental misunderstanding about what it is that actually makes system development hard.
But, if you break a complex problem down into it's simpler components and solve each of those components, then a simpler tool can be used on the components and the components strung together to solve the complex problem. That is how you solve a business problem in the real world. That is also how you solve a programming problem.
The ugly trick is that if you want to keep non-programmers away from something, some programmer has to take one for the team and gingerly approach whatever horrible little ad-hoc business logic problem or whatever the non-programmer was trying to solve. If dual-class programmers were in ready supply, it's not like the non-techies would be clamoring for more chances to get their hands dirty.
I don't think that is true. End users have been doing their own thing for decades. They usually just do it with spreadsheets and databases. In the old days it was Lotus and dBase, today Access and Excel. In the 90s there was a lot of VB programs written by end users that while not of professional quality, surely got the job done for their purpose.
The reason that end users get their hands dirty has nothing to do with the availability of programmers overall. It is the priority of their projects compared to the rest of the corporation's projects. In most organizations, increasing the programming staff another 10% is not going to get those smaller end user projects accomplished any sooner. Those programmers will be added to the big projects to get them finished sooner so the next big project can begin.
In many organizations, there has been a major push to decentralize IT precisely because of this. If management is going to be held accountable for timelines for projects that require programming, but that programming isn't high enough on the corporate priority list, then those business units want their own programming staff. Simply put, the manager needs to be responsible for all the resources required to complete the project. If they don't get their own staff, they will simply come up with creative internal ways to do it with end user tools.
As for IT and business logic, almost always, IT is the one that doesn't understand business logic. The end user usually has a good grasp of the business logic and how it fits into current operations. The professional programmer, on the other hand, usually wants to use existing patterns to speed up their development time, but causes the end user department to change the way it processes. In short, they forget that the user is the customer. That is why, in many organizations, IT has about the same approval rating as congress.
This isn't new. Back in the early 90s, there were various end user tools to design simple systems that used a card metaphor. Basically, you strung a bunch of cards together to build your program and for each card you told it what that card did (accepted input, made a decision, generated a report, etc.). In reality, it was building a flow chart (but not using the traditional systems). When it was all done, you hit the button and your program ran. If it needed changed, you edited the individual card or inserted new cards or removed old ones. You also had the option to open each card and tinker with the code (pascal, I think), but for the most part, each card was a black box just accepting inputs and having specified outputs.
Obviously, the programs weren't terribly sophisticated, but they were surprisingly functional and maintainable and for end users it was a lot easier than programming dBase or Lotus.
Gee, never heard that one before.
What the people pushing these ideas don't seem to know is that it's not the tools, it's the way of thinking about a problem. I once worked at a place where we made a manager a tool that would let him create his own reports, and he immediately started adding up all flavors of apples and oranges (e.g., dollars of this and pounds of that). Then he wanted the small IT staff to help him make sense out of his reports.
While I understand what you are saying, it is hard to argue that Microsoft's Visual Basic and Access effectively allowed millions of non-programmers to build applications. Were they good, robust applications? Probably not, at least most of them. But at the time, those products were first released and centralized IT shops ruled, most departments would never have had their requests get high enough up the priority list to every be programmed by a "real" programmer.
Unfortunately, VB's own success killed it for the non-programmer because more and more features were added to the point that by the time it was VB.net, you needed to be a programmer to really use it and if you were, well C# provided much more functionality.
End users will find a way to get their needs met, one way or another. And, an IT shop that is viewed as thwarting a production department from being able to function won't last long in today's economic situation.
Passengers are where the weight is a real concern. Fatbodies cost the airlines money way more than life preservers. Charge by the pound.
I am by no means a fatbody, but I am tall and therefore weigh more than a person with my same build and body type who is shorter than me. I don't much care how much the person next to me weighs (though the airline does). I'd rather those who take up more horizontal space pay more than those who take up more vertical space / weight. I will say that these narrower seats concern me greatly. My hips barely fit between the arm rests I encounter now. (Not referring to the seats specifically mentioned in the article, but the more seats per row on 777 mentioned in summary)
So, if the average human adult has a height of 5'6" and a waist of 38" (those are for male and female combined), you are okay with charging extra for people who are outside the norm because their waist is too wide, but not because they are too tall? Avg weight for a human adult is 180lbs, again ignoring gender. (all of those figures come from the CDC).
It is interesting that when talking about weight and the cost for flying, people only look at people who are wider than the norm as if height doesn't add any extra weight.
Passengers are where the weight is a real concern. Fatbodies cost the airlines money way more than life preservers. Charge by the pound.
I'm pretty sure that overweight people pay for their ticket, so they don't "cost" the airline anything. It might cost more fuel to fly a plane full of 250lb individuals versus 150lb individuals, but that doesn't mean they are overweight. Maybe they are an NFL football team. Besides, a plane is designed to carry a maximum weight and it will be loaded to that maximum weight, if possible with either passengers or cargo. As such, just as much fuel will be burned. If flights were flying at capacity and they were having to add extra flights to shift the cargo, you might have a point, but that is far from the case.
Of course, as people age, even those who are healthy, they will on average be heavier than they were when they were young, so your proposal is really just a form of age discrimination.
I have to say, I was subjected to some of the most vicious onslaughts by my peers going through school. Luckily, my parents granted me with the mental fortitude and tools to survive. Not everyone can impart these skills to their children. It is not necessarily the parents fault, and certainly not the child's.
However, I struggle with the concept that bullying someone amounts to a felony. We have some very skewed laws when bullying someone is equivalent to armed robbery, and deserves 5 years in Jail. (Florida)
It is wrong, but it trivialises harder crimes.
Interestingly, the military and police uses many of these bullying techniques to extract information. It is really a form of psychological torture to get the person to break. So, are you really defending the right of these girls, or any group of bullies, to prey on weaker kids and psychologically torture them to the point that they break (in this case committing suicide)? How would that not be a felony? Most people would agree that if they physically beat the girl senseless it would be, so why is not not when they are emotionally beat senseless?
Yeah...I have a hard time seeing felony charges for "being mean".....
These girls were horrible, but they didn't kill the other girl, she killed herself.
Abuse is abuse, whether physical, emotional or psychological. Of the three, the scars of physical abuse are the easiest to heal. It wasn't too long ago that women were sent back to their abusive husbands because there weren't physical signs of the abuse. Usually, they stayed until they were killed by their abuser or their own hand or they killed their abuser, in which case they usually went to jail.
These cases are far worse than somebody "being mean." Bullying in these cases are an act of violence and until people get that, violence against weaker individuals will continue.
No amount of sympathy will bring her back, but morning her and punishing her tormentors is giving her exactly what she wanted when she killed herself. Don't encourage this behaviour, it's just a type murder that the courts can't punish.
While I understand what you are trying to say, that has got to be one of the most insensitive statements I have ever read on slashdot. Obviously, the girl was distraught and tormented enough that she saw suicide as the only way out of her pain. Obviously, it wasn't a rational decision from our perspective, but from one who works with suicide prevention, I can tell you that at the time a person is contemplating it, it makes perfect sense and all they are looking for is to make the pain stop any way they can.
Bullys and other abusers depend on the rest of us ignoring the victims. We need to do just the opposite.
But he reserved his harshest words for the girl's parents for failing to monitor her behavior
Children are sociopaths until they learn better / their frontal lobes finish developing. It's the parents who are at fault here.
I'd like a citation please. It's pretty well accepted that the "age of reason" where a child can tell right from wrong is well before the age of the girl in this story. If you are saying that a teenager has insufficient frontal lobe development, then it would hardly be her parent's fault as she would be mentally handicapped.
Except ... income (including disposable) for the average American hasn't increased since the late 1960s. You have less real-world buying power now than your parents had five decades ago. While productivity has increased, your wages haven't. If the median household income had kept pace with the economy since 1970, it would now be nearly $92,000, not $50,000. (The 1% have seen their real-world income increase 240% in the same time, though.) Since 1990 the real value of minimum wage is up 21% ... but cost of living in that same time is up 67%. So while your basic premise may seem sound, the data about disposable income being the cause seems to falsify that theory.
I agree with you on your technical argument, but disposable income takes into account real income plus purchasing power. If you credit is more readily available so you can finance some purchases, then you also have more disposable income. So, while real wages might not have increased to keep up with inflation, the easing of credit since the 1960s has increased the purchasing power of the consumer. As such, the basic premise still stands: When people have more funds at their disposal, they choose convenience over cost. When they have fewer funds at their disposal they choose cost over convenience. Whether those funds are wages, credit, government transfer payments or from the sale of illegal goods, doesn't matter, at least in this discussion.
The internet didn't kill the library. Library patronage was declining long before the internet. Libraries, sprang into existence because books were expensive and most people struggled to provide shelter and food for their families. Post WWII, at least in the US, things began to change and people had more disposable income. As people climbed the economic ladder, they were in a better position to purchase their own books, particularly paperbacks, trading money for convenience (as is the case with most consumer goods). This trend continued through the 1960s and 70s and really accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s as book clubs took off all over the place. It was fashionable to be reading the latest best seller and the serial model of the library couldn't support that.
All the internet did was change the purchase mode from paper to electronic versions of the media. It didn't impact the use of the library because that change had already manifested itself based on the economic wherewithal of the patrons. Interestingly enough, both the Philadelphia and New York public libraries reported significant increases in usage during the last two recessions. It would seem that even with the plethora of electronic devices to read e-books, when money is tight and one has to watch expenses, one gives up the convenience and goes back to the library.
In short, it's not technology that is causing the demise of the library, but increased disposable income.
It's a movie, get over it. The scientific community doesn't seem to get upset with movies about vampires or zombies or Hogwarts or Middle Earth, but for some reason if it's about the real world, it has to be 100% accurate. It's a movie, get over it.
People generally forget what they've learned unless they use the knowledge within a few months or so. Americans are work-aholics relatively speaking and thus will bury their head in their here-and-now work such that distant knowledge fades quickly as the immediate situation takes over.
A Just-In-Time education system may be a better approach than trying to hammer in concepts while young hoping they are hammered in deep enough to stay in. That's perhaps not a rational use of time. The 4-year university approach is obsolete, or at least needs big-time augmentation.
Actually, the 4-year university approach is excellent. We should return to it. What is obsolete and never worked well is the job skill training that masquarades as the 4-year university approach. The purpose of college/university used to be to be educated in many subjects, to be well rounded, to be a critical thinker, etc. Today, it is to get a job.
this is starting to sound interesting. could you elucidate please?
There's a number of things he could mean; but my guess is he's thinking of the digital model of a computational universe, which clashes with thermodynamics in a number of ways as opposed to the quantum model, which doesn't. (provided we figure out the whole quantum gravity debacle)
If you're interested I recommend you pick up Seth Lloyd's Programming the Universe. It's a great introduction to QM and quantum computing and is totally accessible for anyone with a high school education.
You would be correct. However, until somebody can reconcile quantum gravity, the quantum computing model of a computational universe is unworkable. As such, the only viable alternative would be the digital model, which conflicts with thermodynamics. BTW, the current quantum models can be made to work mathematically, but to do so requires accepting premises that would invalidate other accepted theories of QM. As a professor recently put it, it would require the cat to be both dead and alive while you are actually observing it. Since that can't be, unless somebody comes up with a new model, all that is left is the digital model.
When thermodynamics is wrong, you've missed something.
If thermodynamics is correct, then a computational universe is wrong.
This is why open source is a stupid idea. With closed source software, people have to PAY you for your WORK. With open source, everyone rips you off and you're left complaining about how they didn't contribute, with no recourse because you were dumb enough to work for free.
Then again, without open source, there would be no Steam. So, if open source is a dumb idea and Steam is based on open source, then that would make Steam a dumb idea, right?