There is a big difference between the personal impact of what a Briton or American thinks about third world poverty and the personal impact of a resident of a Middle Eastern country blindly following the lead of their mosque's imam.
In the former case, it really does not have a significant affect on the life and future of the American or Briton or their children (think about it, if every hungry third world person vaporized at midnight, the main effect on the American or Briton would be a reduction in requests for charitable donations and a reduction in taxes to feed the now vaporized people).
In the latter case, the selection affects the voter and their family directly - make one decision and your kid may end up memorizing the Quran, and blowing themselves up on a bus somewhere, make the other decision and the same kid may end up with a BSc in biology and contribute to finding a cure for some form of cancer.
Yep, politically incorrect. Nope, not condescending (it is just brutal reality).
Note that someone in America who insists their kid get an education devoid of prevailing scientific theory because their spiritual advisor tells them to is being pretty stupid also.
(Yes, in fact I do offend on an equal opportunity basis -- and proudly so)
Umm... I think you're missing the argument here about abortion... Little of the debate has to do with "the life of the mother" (I'm sure the Republicans would agree to that) - the "health of the mother" is what the pro-choice people insist on - confident that there will be plenty of doctors specializing in abortion who will declare that "the mental health of the woman is at risk if she does not have an abortion".
One side believes that abortion (or, as you call it, medical privacy) is a right since an unborn fetus is not a "person" and should be given no consideration by the law.
The other side believes that abortion is murder since an unborn fetus is a "person" with rights and should be given protection by the law (even over the wishes of the vessel carrying it).
Then the real extremism starts...
Extremists on one side insist that it's fine to kill an unborn child partway through delivery - even if killing the same child just 500msec later would be a capital crime in many states. During this 500msec, the child's chance of survival (if not aborted) does not increase except to an infinitesimally small degree. This is a very odd concept - perhaps we should also allow parents to kill children in the first 14 days after birth in case they don't like the kid or decided kids are just too much trouble and interfere with watching Oprah?
Extremists on the other side insist that a fertilized egg is a "person" deserving full protection from being terminated. This is also a very odd concept - don't a great many of these fertilized eggs die before anyone even realizes they got fertilized? I've seen few tombstones with "Here lies a fertilized egg, Fertilized 9/11/2001, Died 9/11/2001" - if they were consistent, wouldn't we expect the same care to be given by this side to a dead fertilized egg as to Grandpa?
(I myself don't give a damn except it's clear that both extremes are wrong - I think Roe v. Wade picked a reasonable point before which the fetus should not be protected - but we should also pick a point after which the fetus is protected. In any event, I think it's a state issue, not a Federal issue (after all, if I kill you in California and you're not a Federal employee and I don't drag your body across state lines, the Federal government doesn't, and shouldn't, care). As a strong proponent of the rights guaranteed under the Constitution, I'm pretty inflexible about incursions on the Second Amendment - sometimes I look at the abortion debate and am reminded that on the Second Amendment topic I'm as extreme as either side on the abortion debate - fortunately I have the "shall not be infringed" language to back me up!)
Re:First try "show known nodes"...
on
DECnet Isn't Dead
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· Score: 1
(exposed to VMS and DECnet professionally nearly everyday since 1996) && (age = 27)
If you program in C or C++, have you noticed that all your friends keep getting older but you dont?
I wish uncqual.age was a public data member I could update so freely:)
Typically telco systems have very high uptime requirements -- what they don't have is extraordinarily high data integrity requirements. It's okay to drop calls here and there, it's not okay to give 100% of your customers no dial tone for five minutes or drop all the calls in flight once a day. I believe that the early ESS systems (and perhaps to this day) had daemons running that wandered through internal memory data structures and "fixed" broken stuff by dropping calls on the floor or whatever was necessary to keep the system up and running and not leaking memory etc.
Contrast this to many DBMS systems - here, data integrity is king and availability is often just "very important" - esp. when dealing with financial data (either corporate or consumer).
General rule: In telco, keep the system online and drop the data; in DBMS, drop the system offline and keep the data accurate. Of course in both cases, the customer still complains even if you pick the "lesser of two evils":(
(Also, of course it's impossible to build a system with 100% uptime, 100% reliability, and 100% integrity - although one can spend an infinite amount of money trying to do so. Pick how many nines you want for each attribute and put that in the requirements spec, with the awareness that nines too far on the right of the decimal point are quite expensive!)
I don't agree that software development requires mathemetical [sic] analysis to qualify as "engineering" - partially because Merriam-Webster Online (MWO) does not! Good engineering includes adhering to standards and communicating precisely, so let's look at MWO:
engineer: (3)(b) a person who is trained in or follows as a profession a branch of engineering
while...
engineering: (2)(a) the application of science and mathematics by which the properties of matter and the sources of energy in nature are made useful to people (b) the design and manufacture of complex products - software engineering
[The phrase "software engineering" above is really in angle brackets, but I've not figured out how to include literal angle brackets here]
In high risk applications (for example, most structural engineering, avionics software, and some medical software), it is appropriate to do more analysis than in low risk applications where the impact of failure is minimal (and, at worst, likely only financial). This is true when designing both software and, for example, structures. However, it is the nature of software that the cost of failure is low in most cases while in structural engineering, the opposite is true - I would assume that mechanical engineering falls between the two. Just as it would be inappropriate for a structural engineer who is designing a fence to contain a domestic canine to spend twelve person months analyzing the soil, wind loads, native fungi, and dog body momentum to design a fence that can be "proved" to last fifteen years without repair (assuming that is the requirement), it would be inappropriate for a software engineer developing a specialized word processor to spend a similar amount of time to prove that there would be no gui-poo left over in any situation. One of the most important parts of all engineering is making appropriate cost/benefit tradeoffs - the ultimate goal is to produce something, not to analyze it forever. You don't indicate what sort of mechanical engineering you do, but my experience with mechanical engineering jobs is that the engineer is often expected to make professional, non mathematical, judgments about what needs to be analyzed to what degree.
Regarding the assertion "I'm sorry, but if you don't analyze your work to prove that it works, you don't get to be an engineer."... Actually, most of the analysis done by structural engineers, and I suspect others, proves nothing about how the resulting product will perform. Most of this work is based on "givens" that the engineer assumes (such as elasticity or strength of a material) and models of the real world that are not completely accurate. As well, think about it, when was the last time you saw a mathematical proof in a mechanical design - mostly the academics measure, evaluate, and build models that "engineers" then crank through to make sure that this walkway won't collapse or this shaft won't shear under these loads. Software development, still in its relative infancy, lacks most of these models. My understanding is that models utilized in the design the Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge that collapsed in 1940 were lacking sufficient modeling of dynamics - yet surely you would consider those who designed the bridge "engineers" even though turning the crank on established practices (rather than proving that the bridge would "work") resulted in a failure?
It is patently untrue that, in general, software engineers are not accountable for their work. Maybe this is true in some companies or environments, but I've personally gotten rid of software engineers for poor quality work and I've seen many others take the plunge as well - including for a single error which cost a customer a lot of money due to a wrong answer (no injury or loss of life was involved!). I can also assure you that it is common for software engineers to retain significant responsibility for the product after it releases. First, they have
If you're overtaking a triple trailer rig when the truck driver screws up and starts to change into your lane when you're just next to/behind his cab, doesn't it seem that speeding up would be the safest bet? Taking off enough speed quickly enough to drop back behind a triple trailer rig (around 90 feet) before you get squished under it seems risky. Also, if you're accelerating forward, isn't this careless truck driver more likely to finally notice you as you're moving into the space next to/just ahead of his bumper than if you're dropping back into the very area he failed to look a second earlier?
That said, I find that on the roads I drive on, the truckers are usually by far the best drivers (they are pushy sometimes, but when you're that big you HAVE to be pushy if you're going to change lanes).
I think it's illegal for most "civilians" to own AKs in the UK so the first shouldn't be a problem. However, a truck full of guys with knives or bats might be a problem. But not to worry, once they get this device in all vehicles and have downloaded a software update to disable the "disable" switch (since it turns out people can't be trusted with such power anyway), the truck that is following you can't go any faster than you - just keep a brick in the car and when this situation arises, put it on the accelerator and don't touch the brake -- the truck won't catch you and eventually you should run across (or over) a bobby who will help you. If you're about to run out of gas, throw the brick at the attackers.
As for the baby thing - the government will just make it illegal to go into labor anywhere except in a medical facility so that problem will also go away.
Since streets are added and speed limits changed with some regularity, it will obviously be necessary to have a way of updating the "in car map" w/o user intervention.
Thus, before the system is deployed, it seems likely that the boxes will accept data via some widely deployed wireless system. By adding a serial number to each box, a little software, and allowing the police to put a "set governor max speed to 0 kph and override the disable switch for device with serial # xxx for the next 2 hours" message in the download stream, it should be pretty simple to effectively disable a car whose registration is known.
In addition to reducing the number of people who run red lights, the red light cameras are very effective at two things:
(1) Generating revenue.
(2) Increasing rear end collisions at intersections because people are SO afraid of "running" a yellow light (and sometimes because the yellow light interval is conveniently short - to understand this, see point 1)
Trading loss of freedom for personal safety is a long slippery slope and once we start down it will very, very difficult to stop.
Sorry, it's too late to worry about starting down the slippery slope in the U.S. - we're already seriously in need of ice (mud?) axes to help arrest our slide:( See Kelo v New London; See gun control laws; See...:( Heck, the U.S.
Back when we had an active draft, I think to some extent military service (or even the risk of it) was a "coming of age" experience for many males. I've talked with quite a few vets over the years that found the military experience very valuable in this regard - mostly because the military forced adult expectations and, more importantly, consequences on them. I know of a "gentleman officer" during the Vietnam conflict who was, of course, a greenhorn when he was given his command and had little idea how to implement "adult consequences" on his subordinates. But after a short time, a sergeant explained it to him how to do it - something like "Let me take care of this guy's attitude problem" - and the sergeant was quite successful (although the sounds that came from behind the building where the sergeant was teaching the lesson were, apparently, somewhat unpleasant to listen to). I don't expect that today in the era of instant news and Internet that this form of teaching would be as tolerated now.
Of course I don't think we should have a draft (and certainly not for this purpose) nor do I think this role of the draft was probably the primary vehicle through which the majority of society members came to understand their adult role.
I do question that the Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah ceremonies (or even the preparation) themselves bear much responsibility for a reduced antisocial crime rate among Jews. Those who go through these ceremonies (and, in the case of Bar Mitzvah, the rather grueling preparation) tend to be practicing Jews who, as a demographic group, have a number of other attributes that, alone, would cause them to be at lower risk for committing antisocial crimes. It is my sense that practicing Jews tend to place a high value on community ties, tend not to be low-income, tend to have a strong sense of family cohesion, tend to be indoctrinated with a standard of moral values, tend to have high educational expectations for children, and tend to come from stable homes as compared to the general population. I suspect that it is these traits, not the ceremony itself (or even preparation for it), that contributes more to the lower crime antisocial crime rate.
You seem to think you know a lot about me, without knowing a single thing about me. However, your assumptions about me are wrong on every count and your conclusions based on your assumptions are just as incorrect.
I didn't have the luxury of being born to money as you did. I graduated from college with virtually no assets and have never borrowed a penny from anyone (except from Visa/MasterCard banks and American Express for less than 45 days - but that's just for convenience). I consider myself very lucky that my parents were able to afford to pay about half of my college expenses (although, this was only through careful and prudent planning on their part - planning that included frugal spending for many years to the point we never had a television set or a stereo and I don't recall us buying a single piece of new furniture except for one bed and a mattress or two) - although, if they had not been so responsible, it turns out the state would have pretty much paid for my education. I'm not rich by anyone's definition, but I've done well enough that I'm certainly not poor by anyone's definition either. I have no guilt about what I have and don't care what you have or what you do with it or if you are guilty about it - but please don't speak for me or expect me to participate in a scheme designed to assuage yourself of any guilt you may have.
Unfortunately, I can't quite figure out what your point is since it reads more like a dailykos rant than a reasoned argument. Simply asserting that there is a class war doesn't make it so - if your assertion that there is a class war is based on assumptions as flawed as the assumptions you made about me, I can understand why you don't attempt to support your assertion.
Although I couldn't care less if you keep all your money, give it all away, or something in between, I'm just a little curious - why are you still "pretty rich"? Given your attitude, it strikes me as a bit hypocritical to have hoarded your assets rather than to have utilized them to help end the alleged class war. And don't tell me how much you donate to good causes - it's easy to give away 100 million dollars when you have 1 billion, it's even easy to give away 995 million when you have 1 billion. What is much harder is giving away 10 thousand when you have 100 thousand. Sincerity of charity is best measured not by what one gives away but by what one is left with after giving the rest away.
The greatest accomplishment by the rich in the class war was to convince the lower classes that the class war doesn't exist.
The greatest accomplishment by the elite liberals in the class war was to convince the lower classes that class war does exist so they could leverage the votes of the supposed lower classes.
There is no class war. A war implies that one party is trying to conquer another party -- oh, wait, I stand corrected -- the rich are a class specifically targeted by "lower classes" so I guess one side is waging a class war - just that the other side doesn't much care and may find it slightly amusing. Note that it would make no sense for the rich to target the lower classes - they have nothing the rich want except a willingness to work for a salary.
Also check out "House and Home Demographics" link just below map.
The area doesn't look as nice from this view and certainly not very expensive from the "House and Home Demographics" info. May not take too much to improve tax revenue (maybe a fruit stand would do it?).
Ah, the price of Federal involvement in Education... Strings are always attached. I'd like to see the Federal government get out of the business of education -- it's outside the scope of their duties. I've yet to hear a governor of a state say "We are too dumb to figure out how to educate our students", instead they say things that sound more like "We'd like more Federal money for educating our students because the citizens of my state won't reelect me if I raise taxes" - then they have the nerve to bitch about the strings attached to the money. The Feds basically place an administrative tax on the money that flows through them and back to the states - both by the overhead of the Federal bureaucracy and in "hidden costs" imposed on the states to comply with the attached strings. There certainly are "economies of scale" possible, but there's no reason that states can't get together voluntarily and, for example, develop common textbook standards to reduce the costs of textbooks and maybe, eventually, all states would participate in this and there would be one standard while in other areas (such as teacher credentialing), there might be several standards or even some states, counties, or cities that "go it alone" - each according to their voters desires.
I'm not too worried about the "100% at grade level" requirement -- it is of course impossible, but that requirement doesn't kick in until (assuming the 13 year timeframe) we have had at least two changes of administration and perhaps three. At some point before it takes affect, the requirement will be relaxed enough to make at least some more sense. If my (California earned) Federal tax dollar is being shipped to educate kids in Tennessee (which it should not be), I would expect at least some measurements of effectiveness to be attached to the dollar and, as imperfect as it is, I've not heard of anything better than testing.
I really don't get too bothered about the names of students being given to recruiters. When a male citizen (and some alien residents also) reaches 18 (in most cases) they have to register with the Selective Service anyway. With the stroke of a pen, the Feds could just change this requirement to age 17 (or 16 or whatever) so the recruiters could get a shot at talking them into serving. I'd prefer, for reasons of effectiveness and transparency, that the Feds do it this way, but I don't see a large difference in practice between the two methods.
You had a very good experience with the public schools - as many do. In fact, I had good experiences after attending private school (although I think this was largely because we lived in very upscale towns whose names you might recognize because we were always "housepoor" - my parents chose to live in the best possible area, mostly for the public schools, and had no money left over for any frivolities like television sets [making it rather difficult for me to converse with my peers about last night's hot TV show!] - many parents would not make those sacrifices). The irony of it is that with a proper voucher system, my parents could have lived in towns more in line with their income and also provided me and my siblings with a superior education AND other experiences we could not afford (such as travel).
Vouchers definitely won't solve all problems. They should always be the FULL value that the public school would have spent - else they just become a subsidy for upper middle class folks sending their kids to preppy schools. Maybe it should be required that the voucher pays for the COMPLETE education (i.e., no copays area allowed) - again to avoid becoming JUST a subsidy for middle class folks (although I have no problem with this - they pay their taxes also, but I want the program to reach the at risk community so one way to motivate that is to require that vouchers are complete payment). I would be okay with holding voucher accepting schools to a slightly higher standard (such as test scores) than the public schools (after all, a parent who bothers to select a private school cares at least a bit and a student who doesn't get kicked back to the public system due to behavioral problems is an easier student to teach).
I have friends who are teachers in the public schools and, sadly, their experiences mirror your wife's. My interest in vouchers is that it gives choice to underserved parents who care - a child's mind is a terrible thing to waste and, unfortunately, we are doing this in our public schools in many low income areas. If the parents don't care, frankly I feel it's unlikely any but the most exceptional child will truly succeed in school anyway. But, there is no reason to drag down the children whose parents DO care just because they can't afford to send their kids to private school.
We may differ on priorities - I would rather give every kid whose parents care the best possible chance even if the result is that some whose chances are slim become a little less likely to succeed (there are plenty of menial jobs available and maybe the failing kids will realize the folly of their parent's ways and the next generation will be saved).
Actually, I have thought this through a great deal - partially because I was nearly a victim of our public school system so I've had an intense interest for the many years. I was being socially promoted through a "progressive" public school system in a very liberal and fairly affluent city in California (although my family was not well off). My parents tried to get the school system to stop this since I was hopelessly lost (I was the youngest kid in the class and probably was not very mature even for my age) and just getting further and further behind - but the school said that they would not hold me back because it would harm me psychologically (I of course got this second hand years later). When I had been promoted into the third grade and couldn't read, my parents made a substantial financial sacrifice and put me in a local private school. The school tested me and would have put me back in first grade based solely on test scores but decided to put me back in second grade since I was close to that academic level and it would not make me the oldest kid in my class for the next 10 years. This private school set high expectations, didn't take excuses, swatted your butt if necessary (interestingly, I never was on the receiving end of this since it was immediately clear to me I couldn't fool the teachers in this school and I was smart enough to adapt), encouraged (even demanded) parent contact (the public school tried to avoid it, apparently on the theory that the educational elite know best and it was a waste of time to try to explain things to those not in the cabal).and provided help when needed. We moved after one year for unrelated reasons and I went back into a different public school system (one better than the previous public school system) and was immediately in the top tracts in all subjects and remained there from then on. I am very thankful that my parents could scrape together enough money to put me in a private school that didn't coddle me for one year - and I fully expect that I would have been a pretty clever criminal by now if they had not (I probably never could have recovered in order to get into college but I'm pretty smart and very good at finding the flaw in systems - a perfect set of skills for a criminal who lacks formal education). I shudder to think of what would have happened if my dad had made a couple thousand less a year since, without vouchers, my parents would have had no choice. [It appears that the private school wasn't very good about teaching me to write short paragraphs!]
I cringe when I think about the frustration that parents must feel when they understand the value of education, but are lower income and forced to accept whatever crap the public schools and teacher's union (and the other students/gang bangers) slop on their children's educational plate in schools that are little more than holding pens in some cases. I am convinced that vouchers would allow millions of children who are now underserved to get a much better education. It probably would force the public schools to segregate students more (such as via charter schools where attendance is a privilege, not a right or requirement) to avoid losing the motivated students and ending up with just the worst behaving students - but even this might help the worst students because the teachers that took on those students would be the ones who were best at motivating such kids and would focus on discipline rather then try to ignore the disruptive kids.
I don't foresee that vouchers would replace the public school system but would instead augment it - and the better the public school system is, the fewer private schools would exist. I agree that in areas with low population density, vouchers are unlikely to instill as much competition since there are too few students to support as many choices. However, this is not the case in urban areas. However, I believe that even public schools in low density areas would eventually benefit because their taxpayers would demand parity with schools that had improved due to competition.
I can say as a parent of a 11 year old this is causing more problems than it's fixing.
I'm aware of this problem and fault the tests mostly (obviously teachers are going to teach to the tests -- just as they will teach to tests if the particular school has an Algebra I test that is standardized across all sections of the class). However, to some extent, I don't care HOW the clerk at Walmart learned to figure out the can count when faced with an open, but full case, of cat food with two layers of cans where each layer is four cans by three cans. I really don't care if he understood number theory:) [I've seen a lot of amazing solutions to this problem. One was to count the top layer, can by can, and then count the bottom layer, can by can - and then do the same for every case!!! Another was to look paniced for a few seconds and reach for a calculator to type 3x4x2=. Another was to try to do it in their head -- and get 36 as the answer - glad I caught that one because I was buying several hundred dollars worth of cat food.]
I looked at sample questions from the California STAR test a couple of years ago and was not impressed. In part I was unimpressed because the more I thought about one of the questions, the less clear it was that the "obvious" correct answer was really the correct one - I could have made an equally good argument for one of the other answers as well simply by making alternate, but reasonable, assumptions about unstated conditions. However, mostly, it was just too easy and didn't emphasis understanding as much as it could have. But, for a teacher with middle or upper track students, there shouldn't have been any "teaching to the test" required -- it was just too easy. And to the lower capability student, being able to get the right answer without complete understanding is better than not even being able to follow the steps to get the answer. My hope is that the tests will get better and teachers will begin to realize that "middle of the road" and better students don't need to be "taught to the test" to ace them.
Compare our high school students with those from most of the industrialized world and you'll realize that we aren't that bright in general. What we've benefited from is a great society that enables people, but there isn't any reason that other countries can't do the same and to make matters worse the Republicans are taking us in the opposite direction.
The use of the term "bright" is vague. I have no reason to believe that high school grads in the United States are not generally as intelligent as those in other industrialized nations - but they don't appear to be as knowledgeable or well-educated. Unfortunately, a high school diploma issued in the United States in the past 25 or 30 years means almost nothing - due to social promotion and low standards, it mostly implies that the holder showed up for class for 12 years. Fortunately this is changing in many areas, but it will take a long time to have an impact on our economy.
I'm not sure if your term "great society" was meant to refer to LBJ's "reforms" in the area of poverty. If it was, I believe these very programs were part of the source of our problems with education because they made it easier for people not to work while also continuing to spawn - the children resulting from their efforts often lacked responsible adult guidance and failed to take education seriously.
Many of the educational problems of the masses today are, IMHO, largely the result of poorly performing public schools. This is certainly partially the fault of the teacher's unions who have opposed objective measurements of performance and opposed all attempts to pay/promote/fire teachers based on performance rather than seniority. Fortunately, there has been some action in this area recently and I'm hopeful that it will continue. Although the teacher's unions generally still oppose such measurements, fear of market forces and the exasperation by their employers (that would be the taxpayers) have tempered their rhetoric.
It is debatable that the "Republicans are taking us in the opposite direction". My personal view is that vouchers, which are clearly a "Republican" sponsored solution, are a reasonable way to introduce market forces into the public educational system and they should be tried aggressively. It may turn out that vouchers don't work as well as the proponents hope, but even a modest improvement would be better than nothing. I have little confidence on continuing to rely on the judgment of the professional bureaucrats who have destroyed our current public education system - they have had a LOT of chances to clean up their act yet they continue to just want more money while avoiding accountability for performance. The relationship between teacher pay and performance is not all that strong - and sometimes it is mostly the result of the most successful senior teachers (and hence better paid) being successfully wooed by the better schools which leaves the dredges of the profession in the inner city schools (yes, there are SOME good and very dedicated teachers in the inner city schools, but it appears that the flow of such teachers tends to be OUT of rather than IN to these schools). Another stance that Republicans have taken is accountability of both schools and students via objective measures (i.e., tests) and, again, I obviously think this is essential to improving the public education system.
For the record though, the problems are not entirely the educational system's fault. Unfortunately, it seems that many native born Americans don't expect their children to work all that hard in school nor do they demand it. If parents don't understand or care about the importance of education, their children's chances of success are dramatically reduced.
To clarify a bit for anyone who may not understand the history of this...
The application of the Bill of Rights (at least part of them - mostly the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th I think) to restrict of the states is the result of the judicially created "Incorporation Doctrine" (as it is now called) and has been a gradual process as the meaning of "due process" in the 14th amendment was applied to more and more cases by the SCOTUS et al.
The "Incorporation Doctrine" is controversial. Interestingly, it seems to have begun to be imposed about 1925 even though the amendment that formed the basis for it was ratified many decades earlier (1868)... Seems odd that the "true meaning" of the 14th amendment wasn't known until most of the people who actually were involved in its creation were dead.
Come on, at the limit, if there was NO demand, there would be no kiddy porn on the web. The person who puts this crap up is expecting some return on investment and I think that to achieve that return some demand is needed. Note that the ROI may be in the form of getting the occasional reciprocal pictures from other creeps, getting some $ from ads or link referrals, or just some twisted thrill from knowing that others are viewing it.
IANAL, but I think your understanding is correct. However, if they have a warrant to search for a functioning 747, I don't believe the police are allowed to look under your sofa cushions since a 747 couldn't fit there.
Although, I believe there is an exception if you're sitting on the couch as they can generally search the immediate area around the people in the house to insure these individuals don't have ready access to a weapon that could cause harm to the searchers.
Hopefully a lawyer will come along and correct the complete misinformation I just threw up all over/.!
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In the former case, it really does not have a significant affect on the life and future of the American or Briton or their children (think about it, if every hungry third world person vaporized at midnight, the main effect on the American or Briton would be a reduction in requests for charitable donations and a reduction in taxes to feed the now vaporized people).
In the latter case, the selection affects the voter and their family directly - make one decision and your kid may end up memorizing the Quran, and blowing themselves up on a bus somewhere, make the other decision and the same kid may end up with a BSc in biology and contribute to finding a cure for some form of cancer.
Yep, politically incorrect. Nope, not condescending (it is just brutal reality).
Note that someone in America who insists their kid get an education devoid of prevailing scientific theory because their spiritual advisor tells them to is being pretty stupid also.
(Yes, in fact I do offend on an equal opportunity basis -- and proudly so)
One side believes that abortion (or, as you call it, medical privacy) is a right since an unborn fetus is not a "person" and should be given no consideration by the law.
The other side believes that abortion is murder since an unborn fetus is a "person" with rights and should be given protection by the law (even over the wishes of the vessel carrying it).
Then the real extremism starts...
Extremists on one side insist that it's fine to kill an unborn child partway through delivery - even if killing the same child just 500msec later would be a capital crime in many states. During this 500msec, the child's chance of survival (if not aborted) does not increase except to an infinitesimally small degree. This is a very odd concept - perhaps we should also allow parents to kill children in the first 14 days after birth in case they don't like the kid or decided kids are just too much trouble and interfere with watching Oprah?
Extremists on the other side insist that a fertilized egg is a "person" deserving full protection from being terminated. This is also a very odd concept - don't a great many of these fertilized eggs die before anyone even realizes they got fertilized? I've seen few tombstones with "Here lies a fertilized egg, Fertilized 9/11/2001, Died 9/11/2001" - if they were consistent, wouldn't we expect the same care to be given by this side to a dead fertilized egg as to Grandpa?
(I myself don't give a damn except it's clear that both extremes are wrong - I think Roe v. Wade picked a reasonable point before which the fetus should not be protected - but we should also pick a point after which the fetus is protected. In any event, I think it's a state issue, not a Federal issue (after all, if I kill you in California and you're not a Federal employee and I don't drag your body across state lines, the Federal government doesn't, and shouldn't, care). As a strong proponent of the rights guaranteed under the Constitution, I'm pretty inflexible about incursions on the Second Amendment - sometimes I look at the abortion debate and am reminded that on the Second Amendment topic I'm as extreme as either side on the abortion debate - fortunately I have the "shall not be infringed" language to back me up!)
If you program in C or C++, have you noticed that all your friends keep getting older but you dont?
I wish uncqual.age was a public data member I could update so freely :)
Contrast this to many DBMS systems - here, data integrity is king and availability is often just "very important" - esp. when dealing with financial data (either corporate or consumer).
General rule: In telco, keep the system online and drop the data; in DBMS, drop the system offline and keep the data accurate. Of course in both cases, the customer still complains even if you pick the "lesser of two evils" :(
(Also, of course it's impossible to build a system with 100% uptime, 100% reliability, and 100% integrity - although one can spend an infinite amount of money trying to do so. Pick how many nines you want for each attribute and put that in the requirements spec, with the awareness that nines too far on the right of the decimal point are quite expensive!)
IIRC, they keep the activation charge though.
Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder - a pile of rubble after the collapse of a structure can be beautiful :)
while...
[The phrase "software engineering" above is really in angle brackets, but I've not figured out how to include literal angle brackets here]
In high risk applications (for example, most structural engineering, avionics software, and some medical software), it is appropriate to do more analysis than in low risk applications where the impact of failure is minimal (and, at worst, likely only financial). This is true when designing both software and, for example, structures. However, it is the nature of software that the cost of failure is low in most cases while in structural engineering, the opposite is true - I would assume that mechanical engineering falls between the two. Just as it would be inappropriate for a structural engineer who is designing a fence to contain a domestic canine to spend twelve person months analyzing the soil, wind loads, native fungi, and dog body momentum to design a fence that can be "proved" to last fifteen years without repair (assuming that is the requirement), it would be inappropriate for a software engineer developing a specialized word processor to spend a similar amount of time to prove that there would be no gui-poo left over in any situation. One of the most important parts of all engineering is making appropriate cost/benefit tradeoffs - the ultimate goal is to produce something, not to analyze it forever. You don't indicate what sort of mechanical engineering you do, but my experience with mechanical engineering jobs is that the engineer is often expected to make professional, non mathematical, judgments about what needs to be analyzed to what degree.
Regarding the assertion "I'm sorry, but if you don't analyze your work to prove that it works, you don't get to be an engineer."... Actually, most of the analysis done by structural engineers, and I suspect others, proves nothing about how the resulting product will perform. Most of this work is based on "givens" that the engineer assumes (such as elasticity or strength of a material) and models of the real world that are not completely accurate. As well, think about it, when was the last time you saw a mathematical proof in a mechanical design - mostly the academics measure, evaluate, and build models that "engineers" then crank through to make sure that this walkway won't collapse or this shaft won't shear under these loads. Software development, still in its relative infancy, lacks most of these models. My understanding is that models utilized in the design the Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge that collapsed in 1940 were lacking sufficient modeling of dynamics - yet surely you would consider those who designed the bridge "engineers" even though turning the crank on established practices (rather than proving that the bridge would "work") resulted in a failure?
It is patently untrue that, in general, software engineers are not accountable for their work. Maybe this is true in some companies or environments, but I've personally gotten rid of software engineers for poor quality work and I've seen many others take the plunge as well - including for a single error which cost a customer a lot of money due to a wrong answer (no injury or loss of life was involved!). I can also assure you that it is common for software engineers to retain significant responsibility for the product after it releases. First, they have
That said, I find that on the roads I drive on, the truckers are usually by far the best drivers (they are pushy sometimes, but when you're that big you HAVE to be pushy if you're going to change lanes).
As for the baby thing - the government will just make it illegal to go into labor anywhere except in a medical facility so that problem will also go away.
Thus, before the system is deployed, it seems likely that the boxes will accept data via some widely deployed wireless system. By adding a serial number to each box, a little software, and allowing the police to put a "set governor max speed to 0 kph and override the disable switch for device with serial # xxx for the next 2 hours" message in the download stream, it should be pretty simple to effectively disable a car whose registration is known.
(1) Generating revenue.
(2) Increasing rear end collisions at intersections because people are SO afraid of "running" a yellow light (and sometimes because the yellow light interval is conveniently short - to understand this, see point 1)
Sorry, it's too late to worry about starting down the slippery slope in the U.S. - we're already seriously in need of ice (mud?) axes to help arrest our slide :( See Kelo v New London; See gun control laws; See ... :( Heck, the U.S.
Of course I don't think we should have a draft (and certainly not for this purpose) nor do I think this role of the draft was probably the primary vehicle through which the majority of society members came to understand their adult role.
I do question that the Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah ceremonies (or even the preparation) themselves bear much responsibility for a reduced antisocial crime rate among Jews. Those who go through these ceremonies (and, in the case of Bar Mitzvah, the rather grueling preparation) tend to be practicing Jews who, as a demographic group, have a number of other attributes that, alone, would cause them to be at lower risk for committing antisocial crimes. It is my sense that practicing Jews tend to place a high value on community ties, tend not to be low-income, tend to have a strong sense of family cohesion, tend to be indoctrinated with a standard of moral values, tend to have high educational expectations for children, and tend to come from stable homes as compared to the general population. I suspect that it is these traits, not the ceremony itself (or even preparation for it), that contributes more to the lower crime antisocial crime rate.
I didn't have the luxury of being born to money as you did. I graduated from college with virtually no assets and have never borrowed a penny from anyone (except from Visa/MasterCard banks and American Express for less than 45 days - but that's just for convenience). I consider myself very lucky that my parents were able to afford to pay about half of my college expenses (although, this was only through careful and prudent planning on their part - planning that included frugal spending for many years to the point we never had a television set or a stereo and I don't recall us buying a single piece of new furniture except for one bed and a mattress or two) - although, if they had not been so responsible, it turns out the state would have pretty much paid for my education. I'm not rich by anyone's definition, but I've done well enough that I'm certainly not poor by anyone's definition either. I have no guilt about what I have and don't care what you have or what you do with it or if you are guilty about it - but please don't speak for me or expect me to participate in a scheme designed to assuage yourself of any guilt you may have.
Unfortunately, I can't quite figure out what your point is since it reads more like a dailykos rant than a reasoned argument. Simply asserting that there is a class war doesn't make it so - if your assertion that there is a class war is based on assumptions as flawed as the assumptions you made about me, I can understand why you don't attempt to support your assertion.
Although I couldn't care less if you keep all your money, give it all away, or something in between, I'm just a little curious - why are you still "pretty rich"? Given your attitude, it strikes me as a bit hypocritical to have hoarded your assets rather than to have utilized them to help end the alleged class war. And don't tell me how much you donate to good causes - it's easy to give away 100 million dollars when you have 1 billion, it's even easy to give away 995 million when you have 1 billion. What is much harder is giving away 10 thousand when you have 100 thousand. Sincerity of charity is best measured not by what one gives away but by what one is left with after giving the rest away.
Amen -- but let's do it before all the guns have been confiscated.
The greatest accomplishment by the elite liberals in the class war was to convince the lower classes that class war does exist so they could leverage the votes of the supposed lower classes.
There is no class war. A war implies that one party is trying to conquer another party -- oh, wait, I stand corrected -- the rich are a class specifically targeted by "lower classes" so I guess one side is waging a class war - just that the other side doesn't much care and may find it slightly amusing. Note that it would make no sense for the rich to target the lower classes - they have nothing the rich want except a willingness to work for a salary.
http://terraserver.microsoft.com/image.aspx?T=1&S= 10&Z=19&X=1412&Y=23883&W=3&qs=34+Cilley+Hill+Rd%7C Weare%7CNH%7C&Addr=34+Cilley+Hill+Rd%2C+Weare%2C+N H+03281&ALon=-71.6741883&ALat=43.1113788
(How does one insert a URL so user text rather than URL shows up?)
Also check out "House and Home Demographics" link just below map.
The area doesn't look as nice from this view and certainly not very expensive from the "House and Home Demographics" info. May not take too much to improve tax revenue (maybe a fruit stand would do it?).
I'm not too worried about the "100% at grade level" requirement -- it is of course impossible, but that requirement doesn't kick in until (assuming the 13 year timeframe) we have had at least two changes of administration and perhaps three. At some point before it takes affect, the requirement will be relaxed enough to make at least some more sense. If my (California earned) Federal tax dollar is being shipped to educate kids in Tennessee (which it should not be), I would expect at least some measurements of effectiveness to be attached to the dollar and, as imperfect as it is, I've not heard of anything better than testing.
I really don't get too bothered about the names of students being given to recruiters. When a male citizen (and some alien residents also) reaches 18 (in most cases) they have to register with the Selective Service anyway. With the stroke of a pen, the Feds could just change this requirement to age 17 (or 16 or whatever) so the recruiters could get a shot at talking them into serving. I'd prefer, for reasons of effectiveness and transparency, that the Feds do it this way, but I don't see a large difference in practice between the two methods.
Vouchers definitely won't solve all problems. They should always be the FULL value that the public school would have spent - else they just become a subsidy for upper middle class folks sending their kids to preppy schools. Maybe it should be required that the voucher pays for the COMPLETE education (i.e., no copays area allowed) - again to avoid becoming JUST a subsidy for middle class folks (although I have no problem with this - they pay their taxes also, but I want the program to reach the at risk community so one way to motivate that is to require that vouchers are complete payment). I would be okay with holding voucher accepting schools to a slightly higher standard (such as test scores) than the public schools (after all, a parent who bothers to select a private school cares at least a bit and a student who doesn't get kicked back to the public system due to behavioral problems is an easier student to teach).
I have friends who are teachers in the public schools and, sadly, their experiences mirror your wife's. My interest in vouchers is that it gives choice to underserved parents who care - a child's mind is a terrible thing to waste and, unfortunately, we are doing this in our public schools in many low income areas. If the parents don't care, frankly I feel it's unlikely any but the most exceptional child will truly succeed in school anyway. But, there is no reason to drag down the children whose parents DO care just because they can't afford to send their kids to private school.
We may differ on priorities - I would rather give every kid whose parents care the best possible chance even if the result is that some whose chances are slim become a little less likely to succeed (there are plenty of menial jobs available and maybe the failing kids will realize the folly of their parent's ways and the next generation will be saved).
I cringe when I think about the frustration that parents must feel when they understand the value of education, but are lower income and forced to accept whatever crap the public schools and teacher's union (and the other students/gang bangers) slop on their children's educational plate in schools that are little more than holding pens in some cases. I am convinced that vouchers would allow millions of children who are now underserved to get a much better education. It probably would force the public schools to segregate students more (such as via charter schools where attendance is a privilege, not a right or requirement) to avoid losing the motivated students and ending up with just the worst behaving students - but even this might help the worst students because the teachers that took on those students would be the ones who were best at motivating such kids and would focus on discipline rather then try to ignore the disruptive kids.
I don't foresee that vouchers would replace the public school system but would instead augment it - and the better the public school system is, the fewer private schools would exist. I agree that in areas with low population density, vouchers are unlikely to instill as much competition since there are too few students to support as many choices. However, this is not the case in urban areas. However, I believe that even public schools in low density areas would eventually benefit because their taxpayers would demand parity with schools that had improved due to competition.
I'm aware of this problem and fault the tests mostly (obviously teachers are going to teach to the tests -- just as they will teach to tests if the particular school has an Algebra I test that is standardized across all sections of the class). However, to some extent, I don't care HOW the clerk at Walmart learned to figure out the can count when faced with an open, but full case, of cat food with two layers of cans where each layer is four cans by three cans. I really don't care if he understood number theory :) [I've seen a lot of amazing solutions to this problem. One was to count the top layer, can by can, and then count the bottom layer, can by can - and then do the same for every case!!! Another was to look paniced for a few seconds and reach for a calculator to type 3x4x2=. Another was to try to do it in their head -- and get 36 as the answer - glad I caught that one because I was buying several hundred dollars worth of cat food.]
I looked at sample questions from the California STAR test a couple of years ago and was not impressed. In part I was unimpressed because the more I thought about one of the questions, the less clear it was that the "obvious" correct answer was really the correct one - I could have made an equally good argument for one of the other answers as well simply by making alternate, but reasonable, assumptions about unstated conditions. However, mostly, it was just too easy and didn't emphasis understanding as much as it could have. But, for a teacher with middle or upper track students, there shouldn't have been any "teaching to the test" required -- it was just too easy. And to the lower capability student, being able to get the right answer without complete understanding is better than not even being able to follow the steps to get the answer. My hope is that the tests will get better and teachers will begin to realize that "middle of the road" and better students don't need to be "taught to the test" to ace them.
The use of the term "bright" is vague. I have no reason to believe that high school grads in the United States are not generally as intelligent as those in other industrialized nations - but they don't appear to be as knowledgeable or well-educated. Unfortunately, a high school diploma issued in the United States in the past 25 or 30 years means almost nothing - due to social promotion and low standards, it mostly implies that the holder showed up for class for 12 years. Fortunately this is changing in many areas, but it will take a long time to have an impact on our economy.
I'm not sure if your term "great society" was meant to refer to LBJ's "reforms" in the area of poverty. If it was, I believe these very programs were part of the source of our problems with education because they made it easier for people not to work while also continuing to spawn - the children resulting from their efforts often lacked responsible adult guidance and failed to take education seriously.
Many of the educational problems of the masses today are, IMHO, largely the result of poorly performing public schools. This is certainly partially the fault of the teacher's unions who have opposed objective measurements of performance and opposed all attempts to pay/promote/fire teachers based on performance rather than seniority. Fortunately, there has been some action in this area recently and I'm hopeful that it will continue. Although the teacher's unions generally still oppose such measurements, fear of market forces and the exasperation by their employers (that would be the taxpayers) have tempered their rhetoric.
It is debatable that the "Republicans are taking us in the opposite direction". My personal view is that vouchers, which are clearly a "Republican" sponsored solution, are a reasonable way to introduce market forces into the public educational system and they should be tried aggressively. It may turn out that vouchers don't work as well as the proponents hope, but even a modest improvement would be better than nothing. I have little confidence on continuing to rely on the judgment of the professional bureaucrats who have destroyed our current public education system - they have had a LOT of chances to clean up their act yet they continue to just want more money while avoiding accountability for performance. The relationship between teacher pay and performance is not all that strong - and sometimes it is mostly the result of the most successful senior teachers (and hence better paid) being successfully wooed by the better schools which leaves the dredges of the profession in the inner city schools (yes, there are SOME good and very dedicated teachers in the inner city schools, but it appears that the flow of such teachers tends to be OUT of rather than IN to these schools). Another stance that Republicans have taken is accountability of both schools and students via objective measures (i.e., tests) and, again, I obviously think this is essential to improving the public education system.
For the record though, the problems are not entirely the educational system's fault. Unfortunately, it seems that many native born Americans don't expect their children to work all that hard in school nor do they demand it. If parents don't understand or care about the importance of education, their children's chances of success are dramatically reduced.
The application of the Bill of Rights (at least part of them - mostly the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th I think) to restrict of the states is the result of the judicially created "Incorporation Doctrine" (as it is now called) and has been a gradual process as the meaning of "due process" in the 14th amendment was applied to more and more cases by the SCOTUS et al.
The "Incorporation Doctrine" is controversial. Interestingly, it seems to have begun to be imposed about 1925 even though the amendment that formed the basis for it was ratified many decades earlier (1868)... Seems odd that the "true meaning" of the 14th amendment wasn't known until most of the people who actually were involved in its creation were dead.
Come on, at the limit, if there was NO demand, there would be no kiddy porn on the web. The person who puts this crap up is expecting some return on investment and I think that to achieve that return some demand is needed. Note that the ROI may be in the form of getting the occasional reciprocal pictures from other creeps, getting some $ from ads or link referrals, or just some twisted thrill from knowing that others are viewing it.
Although, I believe there is an exception if you're sitting on the couch as they can generally search the immediate area around the people in the house to insure these individuals don't have ready access to a weapon that could cause harm to the searchers.
Hopefully a lawyer will come along and correct the complete misinformation I just threw up all over /.!