Seriously, AC. Do try to keep up with the conversation that is actually occurring , and not the one you're making up in your head. Let's go back to elementary school:
Look at how far we've come in the last few years in terms of JIT compiling. Modern JS engines both compile to native code on the fly, and retain data so they can recompile if things change dynamically. We still need to train web developers to start writing efficient code, but interpreters themselves are no longer nearly as bad as they once were.
LaTeX, meanwhile, is stuck in the dark ages. There is no reason the same basic philosophies can't be used to speed LaTeX up to real-time for basic editing, or darn quick for style-level changes.
If I may, I'd like to give an analogy and a hypothetical.
A compiler, by definition, translates one computer language into another. Typically, general purpose non-scripting languages are compiled in stages. Many compilers translate C code into assembly language first, before translating into machine code. I'm given to understand that the first C++ compilers translated into C, and then subsequently handed their result to a C compiler. This is currently how Qt works (Qt is actually a superset of C++ that gets compiled to compliant C++).
An enterprising, theory loving geek could hypothetically design a typesetting language that was cleaner and easier to work with, but which compiled to LaTeX to do the actual heavy lifting.
And I really don't see why there has not yet been a good WYSIWYG editor for LaTeX. I've not seen one, but that doesn't mean that one cannot exist. And no, I don't mean a Word clone that happens to use LaTeX. I mean a document editor that is designed to think the way LaTeX does, but doesn't force me to constantly look-up language idiosyncrasies to get any work done.
I don't know which editor it was, nor do I know if there are better alternatives. Maybe you do?
sigh. No. Again, "LaTeX is way overdue for a real editor." I don't need to deal with LaTeX very often, but it is a real pain in my rear, and I haven't found any good editors for it. It's why I avoid LaTeX whenever I possibly can.
Let me ask this: have you ever tinkered with Lilypond? It's basically LaTeX for music scores. It is renowned for its beauty. There's a reason why Musescore is trying to build a wysiwyg editor to emulate it. Then again, there's a reason people are composing using Musescore, and not Lilypond.
(And yes, Musescore is working on an output to Lilypond (experimental) which goes to my point... Why code the entire thing by hand instead of using an editor and then hand tweaking the result?)
Good web layout may start with CSS, but it doesn't stop with CSS.
Please note that I didn't call LaTeX evil. I only questioned why anybody would want to edit an entire document by hand, given a choice. There's a reason why WYSIWYG is so popular. You get instant feedback on changes that you make. You can get a feel for changes that take a hundred times longer when editing something akin to source code. LaTeX is way overdue for a real editor... Yes, even one that encourages sound design principles.
Also... what is with people trying to make LaTeX WYSIWYG? That's like trying to make an interface for driving a car by giving the driver an R/C controller.
It's better than climbing beneath the car and moving the steering rack by hand! Seriously, hand-editing of documents is extraordinarily unpractical without WYSIWYG feedback for at least 98% of all edits. Hand editing is for fine tuning only! And people wonder why LaTeX is so unpopular?
And that's assuming that climate change is CO2 driven. That's the hot issue that has gotten lots of funding. There's been a panicked rush-to-judgment that the climate is changing, and that the change is man-made. What if it is changing, but the changes aren't driven by man? Carbon sequestration won't help that hypothetical situation at all. If we're not causing it, is there anything we can or should do about it?
I've heard a lot of politically charged rhetoric from both sides claiming that the globe is warming, or no it's not. Set that aside for a minute. We know the climate changes on the Earth from time to time. I've not heard a good, rational reason why the observed changes are our doing, or what else we could do about it.
... the vast majority is watering a desert so we elsewhere can have winter vegetables -- have we said thanks?
As a group? No, you haven't. As a Northern Californian am glad to finally hear it from someone. I doubt our farmers would accept it as sufficient, though.
Actually, "bear" and "bare" are homophones, by definition, when the local accent pronounces them exactly the same. Remember, It's not the written words that are homophones, but the spoken words.
Just because you pronounce them differently, or because they historically have been pronounced differently, does not mean that they are not homophones where I live, now.
... The government is good at spending taxpayer money, but not half so good as the insurance companies are at siphoning off profits. But then, who ever heard of a government making money?
Hah. That's rich. Government isn't in the game to make a profit... for itself. It is frequently in it to make a profit for friends, relatives, or kick-backs to politicians. There are plenty of ways that "public" funds become "private" funds.
And if you think insurance companies are good at siphoning off profits... Governments are far better. They just don't pocket the money. They shift it into the "general fund", and spend it however they like. Taxes and fees rarely go away. Given long enough, they tend to become a thinly-veiled revenue grab for the general fund, even if someone swore up and down that it would never be used that way.
There are people on the right that are that idiotic. There are also people on the left that claim that government can do wrong, and how dare you look for waste, fraud, kick-backs, and other abuse.
Both sides are wrong, crazy, and stupid. And the left can quote bad science just as much as the right, they're just not called on it as often.
And how come the FDA doesn't get credit for making food and drugs in the USA among the safest in the world?
How about because they pulled a natural form of vitamin B6 from the shelves so a private company could investigate selling it as a prescription to diabetics with B6 deficiency complications?
The idea behind the FDA is good. The FDA in practice is just another regulator in bed with the private institutions it's been charged with regulating. It's the same fundamental problem that brought us the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.
"This guy looks like he's up to no good. Or he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about." Then the dispatcher asked, "O.K., and this guy — is he white, black or Hispanic?" To which Zimmerman replied, "He looks black."
A neighborhood watchman reported a suspicious person to dispatch. Dispatch then asked for a description... race specifically. So far, nothing especially outrageous.
This got edited to:
"This guy looks like he's up to no good. He looks black."
Which sounds quite racist, and really got a lot of people worked up.
So, no. Whatever started this, it wasn't a [derogatory-racial-slur] being called a [gardening-tool].
Just a heads up. Please be careful with the term "blaming the victim". It is racially charged. In an era when "the N word" has greater power to get someone fired than a pound of [insert illicit substance], it is wise to tread carefully around such phrases. That's doubly true when discussing a so-called "race" issue like the Zimmerman trial.
William Ryan coined the phrase "blaming the victim" in his 1971 book Blaming the Victim.[3][4][5][6][7] In the book, Ryan described victim blaming as an ideology used to justify racism and social injustice against black people in the United States.[6] Ryan wrote the book to refute Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1965 work The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (usually simply referred to as the Moynihan Report).
Moynihan had concluded that three centuries of horrible treatment at the hands of whites, and in particular the uniquely cruel structure of American slavery as opposed to its Latin American counterparts, had created a long series of chaotic disruptions within the black family structure which, at the time of the report, manifested itself in high rates of unwed births, absent fathers, and single mother households in black families. Moynihan then correlated these familial outcomes, which he considered undesirable, to the relatively poorer rates of employment, educational achievement, and financial success found among the black population. Moynihan advocated the implementation of government programs designed to strengthen the black nuclear family.
Ryan objected that Moynihan then located the proximate cause of the plight of black Americans in the prevalence of a family structure in which the father was often sporadically, if at all, present, and the mother was often dependent on government aid to feed, clothe, and provide medical care for her children. Ryan's critique cast the Moynihan theories as attempts to divert responsibility for poverty from social structural factors to the behaviors and cultural patterns of the poor.[8][9]
The phrase has since taken on a life of it's own. Sometimes it is entirely valid. Sometimes it is a very weak excuse. It does have a tendency to be used when "race relations" topics come up.
I've not read the Moynihan Report. I don't know if he was racist or not. His point, though, laid out in summary, is spot on -- at least as one of the enduring causes of familial poverty. (And race does run in families.) Ryan's work to discredit Moynihan (as I understand it) has done incalculable damage.
For the record, I see "broken" families where the father can participate, but chooses not to, as tragic, regardless of race. It's really not a racial issue, but a social one. There just happens to be a racial skew for historic reasons. Like domestic abuse, this too is often a learned behavior that needs to be broken by brave sons who choose to be better than their fathers.
Median income is not representative of what most people would consider 'average' income. Let me illustrate by example; Consider the following 15 numbers --
1,3,2,5,4,2,4,5,7,15,7,5,3,53,74
The average is (rounded up) 13. However, the odds of you making average are better are only 1 in 5. 4 out of 5 times, if you're given one of those random numbers, you're going to be getting a "lower than average" number. This is essentially the heart of the OWS movement, and people like you who argue about "median" income are woefully undereducated about the realities of the wealth inequity distribution problem in the United States.
You've confused Median with Mean. The mean average in your example is 12.6 . But that's not what he was talking about. He was talking about the median. The median average in your example (aka the 50th percentile) is 5. Half the values are above 5, and half are below 5.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average In colloquial language average usually means the sum of a list of numbers divided by the size of the list, in other words the arithmetic mean. However, it can alternatively mean the median, the mode, or some other central or typical value.
Now Sycraft-fu explicitly said that he was talking about median, and not "average". (I'm not about to take the time to check his numbers.) Unless you think he accidentally used mean and called it median, then you're off base here.
And with no profiteering middlemen it actually works out cheaper.
That's fine... when there's no profiteering middlemen. Just because it's socialism doesn't mean government agencies, bureaucrats, or contractors won't become profiteers.
Such a system cannot work in the state the US is currently in. We've got enough graft as it is. Maybe someday when our politicians can work together for the good of the people instead of their vanity and/or pocketbooks...
I used to think this position was paranoia*, but then I saw an episode of COPS (which I don't normally watch) where narc officers were selling something that looked like drugs, and then seizing the buyer's vehicles as forfeit. That's not what these forfeiture laws were originally intended for. Apparently, it does happen, at least in some places.
*(I still believe that most cops either don't know, or are unwilling participants during normal confiscation proceedings.)
They key is that they assume ideal conditions, which a locked strong box probably isn't.
That depends on where the box is kept. Is it in the garage, or a closet in the study? If it's kept in the house (at a constant comfortable temperature), then conditions aren't all that far from ideal.
(Also, I've heard that a firebox is more likely to survive a fire if it is kept near an outside wall. FYI)
Bacteria can share DNA with other bacteria. (I don't know if it applies here, but I don't know that it doesn't) If the DNA for this toxin jumps to a different strain of bacteria (say... Pseudomonas aeruginosa) and becomes an infection... We need to ask what this toxin does to human tissue. If it isn't harmless, we could be building a drug resistant, toxin spewing bacteria!
That's one thing that could go wrong.
(No, I didn't read the article. I'm just assuming it doesn't cover this eventuality.)
You deserve a longer reply, but I don't have time for one. In brief:
Argumentum ad absurdum
When a company owns it's own stock, who really owns the stock? Think mathematically.
It's not about what the owners should be responsible for, but who the owners should be.
There absolutely is a correlation between being publicly traded and over focusing quarterly returns. It is only a tendency, but it is sufficient to destroy many great companies and hinder our economy as a whole. See "exception that proves the rule".
I don't see "rich guy" as pejorative. I see it as way over-simplified, which was the target I was shooting for. Sorry for the confusion. "Agent of the financial sector", on the other hand, is a highly loaded and biased phrase.
I aspire to become a "rich guy" myself -- not because I'm particularly fond of luxury goods, but because I would like to drastically expand the scope of the philanthropy work that I do.
A good ideal. I don't fault you here, presuming honesty.
The more rich guys there are, the fewer poor guys there are... A rising tide lifts all boats: it's a cliche, but true.
Absolutely false. It's a common excuse, though. Increases in technology, manufacturing efficiency, employment efficiency, and the like do help everyone. Random spending by the wealthy is just as worthless as the pseudo-Keynesian random spending by the government.
Wealth ownership is as a percentage of a whole. Being wealthy is a measure as a percentage. It is a comparison against others. When someone becomes wealthy, they are only rarely increase the size of the pie. Instead, they are re-allotting the financial resources of those who can't manage their resources well, and putting them to more efficient use. Not inherently bad, but we've permitted it to run amok. I don't personally require equality share of wealth (communism, which is inherently unfair and untenable), but it would be nice to see fairness of wealth.
I'd be interested in your take: I'm under the impression that Saddam wanted to portray the illusion of having WMDs (beyond his chemical arsenal) for the purpose of elevating his standing among neighboring countries. He gambled that the US wouldn't act, and misjudged. Badly.
dont fucking pick and choose, it makes you look like a nut
Oh give me a break. This is an attacking-the-messenger fallacy. If you want to accuse him of appeal-to-authority, that's fine, but your quotes in no way invalidate his.
Further, everyone says something crazy at some time in their lives. If you try hard enough, you can find a crazy quote for anyone famous. Unless everyone, ever, have all been insane, you've got to give some lee-way.
(Besides, your James Madison quote actually makes sense. Sometime the only progress we've achieved have been from visionary merchants, and not prudent ones. It has also been said that you can only count the number of businesses that have been created, but can never count the ones that could have been, but were dissuaded by inept or corrupt governance.)
Slashdot Mirror
And understanding an analogy is like purple.
???
Seriously, AC. Do try to keep up with the conversation that is actually occurring , and not the one you're making up in your head. Let's go back to elementary school:
Lilypond is to LaTeX as Musescore is to...?
Look at how far we've come in the last few years in terms of JIT compiling. Modern JS engines both compile to native code on the fly, and retain data so they can recompile if things change dynamically. We still need to train web developers to start writing efficient code, but interpreters themselves are no longer nearly as bad as they once were.
LaTeX, meanwhile, is stuck in the dark ages. There is no reason the same basic philosophies can't be used to speed LaTeX up to real-time for basic editing, or darn quick for style-level changes.
If I may, I'd like to give an analogy and a hypothetical.
A compiler, by definition, translates one computer language into another. Typically, general purpose non-scripting languages are compiled in stages. Many compilers translate C code into assembly language first, before translating into machine code. I'm given to understand that the first C++ compilers translated into C, and then subsequently handed their result to a C compiler. This is currently how Qt works (Qt is actually a superset of C++ that gets compiled to compliant C++).
An enterprising, theory loving geek could hypothetically design a typesetting language that was cleaner and easier to work with, but which compiled to LaTeX to do the actual heavy lifting.
And I really don't see why there has not yet been a good WYSIWYG editor for LaTeX. I've not seen one, but that doesn't mean that one cannot exist. And no, I don't mean a Word clone that happens to use LaTeX. I mean a document editor that is designed to think the way LaTeX does, but doesn't force me to constantly look-up language idiosyncrasies to get any work done.
sigh. No. Again, "LaTeX is way overdue for a real editor." I don't need to deal with LaTeX very often, but it is a real pain in my rear, and I haven't found any good editors for it. It's why I avoid LaTeX whenever I possibly can.
Let me ask this: have you ever tinkered with Lilypond? It's basically LaTeX for music scores. It is renowned for its beauty. There's a reason why Musescore is trying to build a wysiwyg editor to emulate it. Then again, there's a reason people are composing using Musescore, and not Lilypond.
(And yes, Musescore is working on an output to Lilypond (experimental) which goes to my point... Why code the entire thing by hand instead of using an editor and then hand tweaking the result?)
Good web layout may start with CSS, but it doesn't stop with CSS.
Please note that I didn't call LaTeX evil. I only questioned why anybody would want to edit an entire document by hand, given a choice. There's a reason why WYSIWYG is so popular. You get instant feedback on changes that you make. You can get a feel for changes that take a hundred times longer when editing something akin to source code. LaTeX is way overdue for a real editor... Yes, even one that encourages sound design principles.
It's better than climbing beneath the car and moving the steering rack by hand! Seriously, hand-editing of documents is extraordinarily unpractical without WYSIWYG feedback for at least 98% of all edits. Hand editing is for fine tuning only! And people wonder why LaTeX is so unpopular?
And that's assuming that climate change is CO2 driven. That's the hot issue that has gotten lots of funding. There's been a panicked rush-to-judgment that the climate is changing, and that the change is man-made. What if it is changing, but the changes aren't driven by man? Carbon sequestration won't help that hypothetical situation at all. If we're not causing it, is there anything we can or should do about it?
I've heard a lot of politically charged rhetoric from both sides claiming that the globe is warming, or no it's not. Set that aside for a minute. We know the climate changes on the Earth from time to time. I've not heard a good, rational reason why the observed changes are our doing, or what else we could do about it.
As a group? No, you haven't. As a Northern Californian am glad to finally hear it from someone. I doubt our farmers would accept it as sufficient, though.
Actually, "bear" and "bare" are homophones, by definition, when the local accent pronounces them exactly the same. Remember, It's not the written words that are homophones, but the spoken words.
Just because you pronounce them differently, or because they historically have been pronounced differently, does not mean that they are not homophones where I live, now.
He's AC. He's baiting you.
How about: Because I don't own any... and I shouldn't need to for private use!
... The government is good at spending taxpayer money, but not half so good as the insurance companies are at siphoning off profits. But then, who ever heard of a government making money?
Hah. That's rich. Government isn't in the game to make a profit... for itself. It is frequently in it to make a profit for friends, relatives, or kick-backs to politicians. There are plenty of ways that "public" funds become "private" funds.
And if you think insurance companies are good at siphoning off profits... Governments are far better. They just don't pocket the money. They shift it into the "general fund", and spend it however they like. Taxes and fees rarely go away. Given long enough, they tend to become a thinly-veiled revenue grab for the general fund, even if someone swore up and down that it would never be used that way.
There are people on the right that are that idiotic. There are also people on the left that claim that government can do wrong, and how dare you look for waste, fraud, kick-backs, and other abuse.
Both sides are wrong, crazy, and stupid. And the left can quote bad science just as much as the right, they're just not called on it as often.
How about because they pulled a natural form of vitamin B6 from the shelves so a private company could investigate selling it as a prescription to diabetics with B6 deficiency complications?
The idea behind the FDA is good. The FDA in practice is just another regulator in bed with the private institutions it's been charged with regulating. It's the same fundamental problem that brought us the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.
Isn't that what started all this?
No, actually. The 911 tape seemed to show that was cut together by NBC, probably for ratings.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/upshot/nbc-fires-producer-over-edited-zimmerman-911-call-201124740.html
"This guy looks like he's up to no good. Or he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about." Then the dispatcher asked, "O.K., and this guy — is he white, black or Hispanic?" To which Zimmerman replied, "He looks black."
A neighborhood watchman reported a suspicious person to dispatch. Dispatch then asked for a description... race specifically. So far, nothing especially outrageous.
This got edited to:
"This guy looks like he's up to no good. He looks black."
Which sounds quite racist, and really got a lot of people worked up.
So, no. Whatever started this, it wasn't a [derogatory-racial-slur] being called a [gardening-tool].
Just a heads up. Please be careful with the term "blaming the victim". It is racially charged. In an era when "the N word" has greater power to get someone fired than a pound of [insert illicit substance], it is wise to tread carefully around such phrases. That's doubly true when discussing a so-called "race" issue like the Zimmerman trial.
From wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blame_the_victim
The phrase has since taken on a life of it's own. Sometimes it is entirely valid. Sometimes it is a very weak excuse. It does have a tendency to be used when "race relations" topics come up.
I've not read the Moynihan Report. I don't know if he was racist or not. His point, though, laid out in summary, is spot on -- at least as one of the enduring causes of familial poverty. (And race does run in families.) Ryan's work to discredit Moynihan (as I understand it) has done incalculable damage.
For the record, I see "broken" families where the father can participate, but chooses not to, as tragic, regardless of race. It's really not a racial issue, but a social one. There just happens to be a racial skew for historic reasons. Like domestic abuse, this too is often a learned behavior that needs to be broken by brave sons who choose to be better than their fathers.
Sorry. End of tangent.
Median income is not representative of what most people would consider 'average' income. Let me illustrate by example; Consider the following 15 numbers --
1,3,2,5,4,2,4,5,7,15,7,5,3,53,74
The average is (rounded up) 13. However, the odds of you making average are better are only 1 in 5. 4 out of 5 times, if you're given one of those random numbers, you're going to be getting a "lower than average" number. This is essentially the heart of the OWS movement, and people like you who argue about "median" income are woefully undereducated about the realities of the wealth inequity distribution problem in the United States.
You've confused Median with Mean. The mean average in your example is 12.6 . But that's not what he was talking about. He was talking about the median. The median average in your example (aka the 50th percentile) is 5. Half the values are above 5, and half are below 5.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average
In colloquial language average usually means the sum of a list of numbers divided by the size of the list, in other words the arithmetic mean. However, it can alternatively mean the median, the mode, or some other central or typical value.
Now Sycraft-fu explicitly said that he was talking about median, and not "average". (I'm not about to take the time to check his numbers.) Unless you think he accidentally used mean and called it median, then you're off base here.
That's fine... when there's no profiteering middlemen. Just because it's socialism doesn't mean government agencies, bureaucrats, or contractors won't become profiteers.
Such a system cannot work in the state the US is currently in. We've got enough graft as it is. Maybe someday when our politicians can work together for the good of the people instead of their vanity and/or pocketbooks...
I used to think this position was paranoia*, but then I saw an episode of COPS (which I don't normally watch) where narc officers were selling something that looked like drugs, and then seizing the buyer's vehicles as forfeit. That's not what these forfeiture laws were originally intended for. Apparently, it does happen, at least in some places.
*(I still believe that most cops either don't know, or are unwilling participants during normal confiscation proceedings.)
That depends on where the box is kept. Is it in the garage, or a closet in the study? If it's kept in the house (at a constant comfortable temperature), then conditions aren't all that far from ideal.
(Also, I've heard that a firebox is more likely to survive a fire if it is kept near an outside wall. FYI)
Bacteria can share DNA with other bacteria. (I don't know if it applies here, but I don't know that it doesn't) If the DNA for this toxin jumps to a different strain of bacteria (say... Pseudomonas aeruginosa) and becomes an infection... We need to ask what this toxin does to human tissue. If it isn't harmless, we could be building a drug resistant, toxin spewing bacteria!
That's one thing that could go wrong.
(No, I didn't read the article. I'm just assuming it doesn't cover this eventuality.)
You deserve a longer reply, but I don't have time for one. In brief:
Argumentum ad absurdum
When a company owns it's own stock, who really owns the stock? Think mathematically.
It's not about what the owners should be responsible for, but who the owners should be.
There absolutely is a correlation between being publicly traded and over focusing quarterly returns. It is only a tendency, but it is sufficient to destroy many great companies and hinder our economy as a whole. See "exception that proves the rule".
I don't see "rich guy" as pejorative. I see it as way over-simplified, which was the target I was shooting for. Sorry for the confusion. "Agent of the financial sector", on the other hand, is a highly loaded and biased phrase.
A good ideal. I don't fault you here, presuming honesty.
Absolutely false. It's a common excuse, though. Increases in technology, manufacturing efficiency, employment efficiency, and the like do help everyone. Random spending by the wealthy is just as worthless as the pseudo-Keynesian random spending by the government.
Wealth ownership is as a percentage of a whole. Being wealthy is a measure as a percentage. It is a comparison against others. When someone becomes wealthy, they are only rarely increase the size of the pie. Instead, they are re-allotting the financial resources of those who can't manage their resources well, and putting them to more efficient use. Not inherently bad, but we've permitted it to run amok. I don't personally require equality share of wealth (communism, which is inherently unfair and untenable), but it would be nice to see fairness of wealth.
I'd be interested in your take: I'm under the impression that Saddam wanted to portray the illusion of having WMDs (beyond his chemical arsenal) for the purpose of elevating his standing among neighboring countries. He gambled that the US wouldn't act, and misjudged. Badly.
Oh give me a break. This is an attacking-the-messenger fallacy. If you want to accuse him of appeal-to-authority, that's fine, but your quotes in no way invalidate his.
Further, everyone says something crazy at some time in their lives. If you try hard enough, you can find a crazy quote for anyone famous. Unless everyone, ever, have all been insane, you've got to give some lee-way.
(Besides, your James Madison quote actually makes sense. Sometime the only progress we've achieved have been from visionary merchants, and not prudent ones. It has also been said that you can only count the number of businesses that have been created, but can never count the ones that could have been, but were dissuaded by inept or corrupt governance.)