Your example doesn't trigger such a common, innate heuristic. Rather, it just triggers a common mistake in applied mathematics, which is to forget about the 0th post. You're merely illustrating that people exhibit a poor comprehension of a learned, artificial skill, especially when you put them on the spot.
While I think you're right in this specific instance, the "fencepost error" does trigger the same thing, but generally with simpler forms.
For example, "I am building a fence 100 metres long with a post every 10 metres. How many posts do I need?". To this, most people immediately answer 10 since dividing 100 by 10 is amazingly trivial and generally doesn't require any conscious effort. It's not that they failed to think about the 0th post, but rather that they failed to think about the question at all since it seemed obvious (exactly as the examples in the article).
LSD is great for getting a better understanding of your subconscious processes. When you look at things on acid sometimes it's like you're seeing the thing for the first time without a lifetime of biases built up. Other times you become conscious of all the associations you have with certain things, sometimes going far back into your childhood. It's really a shame it's illegal.
As parent is AC, the comment may be overlooked by a lot of people. I fully and completely agree with this.
My first experience with a large dose of LSD I was only able to describe as having "multiple levels of consciousness" - that is, I'd be looking at something and thinking about it; while another "part of me" was simultaneously thinking about the part of me that was thinking about what I was looking at; and yet another part would be examining those thought processes and so on. At one point, I managed to count 5 distinct "processes of thought" (and later I realised it might have been six, having one counting the others).
One of the things with this kind of self-reflection is the ability to appreciate what you see/hear/experience as if it were totally new. You see something that you've seen a hundred times before and for the first time you really get a deeper understanding of it than you had before. Nothing is irrelevant, and your own constructed filters (necessary for day-to-day life, I'll happily admit) are just gone.
When my daughter was born, I considered that perhaps that's how life must be for her as a baby. She doesn't know yet what is "important to notice" and what isn't, so the filters aren't there and she can take in everything. Relatedly, I've also considered whether that perhaps aids in the learning process for children; and therefore by extension, LSD use under controlled situations can aid in the learning process for adults. It seems to help me, but I wouldn't accept my own anecdotal case and any kind of evidence without further study.
A laptop with a screen like that is almost required if you're running an IDE without a large external monitor (as in developing while away from the office).
Somebody PLEASE mod this guy up.
I'm a "software development supervisor", which means I'm both a developer and in charge of a small team of other developers. I just recently specced out some new laptops for my group and screen resolution was one of the most important criteria from EVERYONE (second to RAM; but above processor and graphics).
My team does most of the work in the office, attached to large external monitors (I also just upgraded those (except my own - I've already got an Apple Cinema Display)); but we do from time to time travel around a bit, and as such, screen real-estate on the laptops themselves is extremely important to let us actually do our jobs well.
Since we're throwing silly choices around, would you sacrifice your dauggter to save your son?
Thankfully I don't have a son to make such a decision (and only one daughter)... But it's not like I can simply choose "nothing" in this hypothetical situation - I would either make a decision or not and then the decision would be made for me. I'd rather make the decision, no matter how painful.
would you torture a Black person to save your mother? What if it was the 1840's and torturing black people was an essential part of civilization?
I'd torture anyone that I love less than my mother in order to save my mother, regardless of skin colour or other factors.
Of course, I'd also torture my mother to save my daughter.
Not saying it'd be EASY to torture anyone (and especially not some I love), but I'd do it if it were really the only choice to save someone I love even more. (which itself is all academic, since in reality these situations don't really come up all that often, if ever)
Give it up. I used an Amiga 4000 well past when it was obsolete and loved it. But I won't for a second pretend that today we haven't surpassed AmigaOS in every possible way. UI responsiveness on my $1300 macbook air is light years superior to the old 4000. I expect this, I'm happy with this. Suggesting those who were never Commodore fanboys are somehow threatened by it is lunatic.
As someone with a great fondness for memories of the classic Amiga and even purchased an AmigaOne when they first came out (now considering the X1000, but not sure yet); I have to agree with you on all points but one. We haven't surpassed AmigaOS in EVERY possible way, just almost every possible way.
The one feature that always stands out to me is the AmigaOS datatypes system. I really miss having the ability to download a simple "hey this is how PNG images are handled" file, and then being able to open and save PNGs from basically any image manipulation program and of course view them in the default Multiview application.
While the concept vaguely exists in several other systems these days, it's nowhere near as standardised or pervasive as the Amiga datatypes system was, and therefore of significantly less use.
Yes, I'm well aware that datatypes was of course not perfect - the implementation left a LOT to be desired when it came to more modern concepts like handling video streams and so on; but it's the "idea" that I miss more than the actual implementation details.
Hold on... your wife is geeky; has an eastern European accent; and multiple HP workstations in her "sewing room" amongst other computers?
Ummm... want to swap? My German wife has both installers and application shortcuts cluttering her whole desktop.
(safe to post under my own username: She doesn't read slashdot (and doesn't speak English that well)... but just in case "I'm only joking Schatz, I love you!")
Linux works best when you don't expect your computer to be nothing more than a glorified TV/typewriter. The single most important feature of Linux is that it gives you power to solve complicated problems by combining very simple tools. You don't have to rely on somebody else to solve everything for you like on Windows or Mac.
Actually, can you show me one of these "very simple tools" that exists on Linux but not on MacOS?
Personally I do use Linux for all my server needs, but my desktops and main work laptop are Macs. One of the things I love with MacOS is having the full GNU toolchain at my disposal.
A 3rd case is that some people also expand the acronym as they read them. For your SQL example you've got:
The "sequel" people
The "ess-cue-ell" people
and
The "structured query language" people
Very true... of course, the point I was making is that these would be:
"A sequel server"
"An ess-cue-ell server"
and
"A structured language query server"
(Although I doubt there are any of the latter for "SQL".) However, for many acronmyns, many people do just expand them when reading them... I, for example, usually subvocalize "IMHO" as "in my humble opinion", occasionally as "imm-hoe" and almost never as "i-em-aitch-oh"
I read it almost always as "in my humble opinion", but occasionally as "i-em-aitch-oh" and never as "imm-hoe". IANAL on the other hand, I often read as "I anal" just because it's more humorous that way.
Getting wildly offtopic, but I often have this conversation at work (speaking English in a country of mostly non-native English speakers) when I talk about "An MFP". They often ask me why I don't say "A MFP" instead.
The reasoning is that the "a" vs "an" is applied on pronunciation, not on spelling. When the next SOUND starts with a vowel, you use "an", otherwise you use "a". So, "An em-eff-pee" and "An aitch-tee-tee-pee" are correct.
Confusion can arise when in some cases some people pronounce an acronym as a word, but others pronounce only the letters. I can't imagine this being an issue with HTTP (or MFP), but SQL does immediately spring to mind. The written phrase "A SQL Server" should be read as "A sequel server"; whereas the written phrase "An SQL server" should be read as "An ess-kyoo-el server"
Outside of acronyms, your own dialect of English can also make a difference. In some dialects, the initial "H" on many words is dropped. Some dialects also drop it or pronounce it on specific words while all others follow a general rule. This leads to the "a hotel"/"an hotel" ("an 'otel") and "a herb"/"an herb" ("an 'erb") discussions that pop up from time to time.
Most moder proofers are 600 or 700 dpi. Most modern presses are 1200 dpi or more.
A printer is someone with ink stains on their sleeve and who wears a funny paper hat.
Yep, that is a pedantic correction, but you're quite right. I was using the word "printer" meaning "generic home or office device that puts ink or toner on paper"
The lines between devices get a bit blurry with the mid to high end now talking about digital presses (which aren't in any way shape or form "presses") and the low end office devices being blurred closely with home devices of course.
Printed text on paper has a DPI of 400. A monitor has a DPI of 90 or even less.
While I agree with the point you're making, I just wanted to point out that most modern printers are 600dpi (and occasionally more, although many claiming to be "1200dpi" are actually 600x1200)
Wow, that's the longest, slowest 'explosion' in history.
Or maybe, just maybe, 'explosive' is a completely wrong and stupid term to apply to current world population growth?
Hmmm... the world population is now around 1.5 times what it was when I was born. So, between the dawn of time and when I was born, the population reached 4.5 milliard people. Between then and now, it's reach 7 milliard. In what way is that NOT a population explosion?
I keep hearing from Americans and British how poorly Europe is doing. Oddly, for those of us in mainland Europe, it looks pretty good. I've got to wonder sometimes if there's some kind of bias in the news sources you guys read...
(Yes, I'm discounting Britain as part of Europe for the purposes of this statement - the British news is somewhat "different" to what the rest of us see)
a woman known basically only to English/Americans and aviation freaks
As someone who is male, neither American nor English and not particularly interested in aviation; I second that if you haven't heard of Amelia Earhart, you probably didn't pay attention in school (or live in a country that mostly ignores international history to focus too narrowly on its local history (USA does this too, for reference)); don't watch a lot of movies (even movies not about her may reference her from time to time); don't "wikipedia surf"; and are probably rather uninteresting.
I don't mean that as horribly offensive; just that even if you'd never been exposed to knowledge of who she is (which to me seems extremely unlikely on the assumption you live anywhere outside of the 3rd world - you probably just ignored/dismissed/forgot it); you could have at least done a quick Google search to find out.
and certainly in a completly different league than the Wright brothers, Neil Armstrong or even Lindbergh
I'd put her only slightly under the Wright Brothers and Armstrong for name recognition, and way above Lindbergh (when I read the name, it rang a bell, but wasn't immediately clear to me - quick Google search showed me the text "Spirit of St. Louis" and then I remembered). Note that I did say "for name recognition" - not necessarily for their achievements/activities)
What does piss me off is Burger King. I went there and decided to get a drink with my meal and they basically don't carry anything I'd drink. I'm thirsty as hell and I'm forced to drink one of their awful choices. I'm not a Pepsi or Coke guy and beyond that, they had nothing diet.
Having not been to a Burger King in North America, this actually surprises me. Burger King vs McDonalds in most of the world that I've seen, Burger King is the one more likely to offer diet/low-calorie drinks and EVERY fast food place I've ever been to has offered water as an option.
I confess I eat at McDonalds relatively often (between once a month and once every two months) but my standard meal there is generally a McChicken with a side salad and a diet coke (I like colas in general).
For reference: the countries where I've had the most experience with fast food are New Zealand, Australia, Netherlands and Germany.
It is just that parents are, except under rare and extreme circumstances, the best people to protect their children's rights.
Says who? Did they receive formal training in doing so? Why should they be better at it than someone who has?
As a father who loves his daughter dearly and would do whatever it takes to make sure she has the best life possible; I will gladly concede that I am not necessarily the best person to help her under all circumstances. I allow the state to take some of the responsibility (while keeping a very large chunk of it myself) and, with every other member of society, keep an eye on the state to make sure it's correctly doing the job that we've asked of it. My daughter is a human being with her own rights, and even if I wanted to, I should not be allowed to limit those rights beyond what society has deemed is acceptable for her own well being.
By the way, this is another area where Americans have greater liberty: their political system is more decentralised, with each state having its own laws.
So does Germany. Just our Federal laws here tend to be broader in scope than those in the US. We do however also have State laws (in each of our 16 states), so something allowed here in Lower Saxony might for example be disallowed in Bavaria, or vice-versa.
Ummmmm.... that is the one I was already referring to (and is both linked from the article (first link in the summary) and is itself the last link in the summary)
It has serious issues. For one thing it doesn't take into account a persons frame size. At 83kg and roughly 178cm, it's estimating my body fat at 20.3%, the problem though is that I have a large frame and I'm slim enough that I can just about see my ribs.
Of course, there will always be people it doesn't apply to; however you must realise that you're the exception rather than the rule. The majority of people have a "normal" frame (hence referring to it as normal) and for such people (including myself: normal frame and definitely overweight) it seems fairly suitable.
A cursory look at the app and I can see some definite uses. I've been wanting to create (mostly for my wife and myself; but theoretically for others later as open source) a personalised diet planner application based on some fuzzy logic, the "USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference" data, and user input for common/preferred/available meals. Combining it with the formula used in this simulator would be really helpful.
Unfortunately, I don't actually see the formula or source code to the app anywhere on the linked pages. Am I just missing it somewhere?
I get annoyed when people just jump straight to making a database for everything. Sometimes flat files are just a better option, so long as you don't need to run any searches.
Absolutely agreed. My day job is writing software and if I'm storing data that I know will never exceed a few MB at absolute most, has no requirements for search, and is a fairly simple structure; I FAR prefer to use CSV to any kind of database.
The best example is a single application translation table for around 25 languages. 100 strings, 25 languages - it may in theory grow up to 50 languages or so eventually and if the app gets much bigger, up to 200 strings. 200*50 = 10000 strings. At an average of around 15 bytes per string, that's ~150KB of data.
As a UTF-8 CSV text file, I can hand edit it in a run of the mill text editor; loading it in the application takes milliseconds of application startup time (at which point the whole thing sits in memory while the application runs, so it doesn't re-read it again); parsing it is trivial; and any errors introduced somehow aren't going to kill the whole file (perhaps just make one string wrong; or at worst corrupt one language (a single line of the file)). I can't count count the number of times people have told me to convert this to a SQLite database "because it's better"... very sad.
Yes, it is... and I'm not complaining, just pointing out that it's frustrating.
I don't say for a second that it's a failing of the GPL - it is indeed working as intended - I just don't particularly agree with the intention.
This is the whole point of the GPL, so you don't take someone else's work, derive something off it, then distribute the derived product in a less free way. Your payment as such for using GPL software is that if you distribute something based on it (however small) you pay the community back by distributing your source.
That's what I really don't like... the "however small" part. I write code both professionally and privately. If I choose to release something under an open licence, I avoid the GPL precisely because I know how much it's going to frustrate others in similar situations to myself. I'd far rather release my code under the LGPL, thereby ensuring the freedom of that bit of code and keeping the possibilities open for enhancements from the community but not forcing other people to open code that isn't in the slightest bit related.
If you don't want to do that, consider contacting the original author and working out a proprietary license deal, so the original author gets something (such as money) in lieu of the source code to something that extends his library.
Honestly, it's usually more work to do all that than to simply do that bit of code my own way or find another bit under a more permissive licence. I'd really LIKE to have the chance to do something like that but it's impractical under most cases. Remember that I'm talking "small bits of code" and not large complex projects. Something that I can write myself in two days isn't worth the hassle of working out licensing deals... but conversely, being able to use it straight off the bat saves me two days (do that 10 times and I've knocked a month off my project).
To give a real world example, in some of my Windows.NET projects, I make use of this IP Address control which is under the MIT Licence. I could have written it myself in a matter of a few days (with debugging/error-checking), but it saved me those few days work to use the existing code.
It would clearly be nonsensical to licence my entire Windows app under the GPL just because I wanted to use that control (which would be the only legal option if it were GPL licensed). And for that control, if it were GPL licenced, I wouldn't take the time to organise a licensing deal with the developer, because the effort of doing so would far outweigh simply writing an identical control myself.
Now, you might (quite rightly) answer that most people who release such small things don't do so under the GPL for precisely this reason. These sorts of things are almost always BSD/MIT/LGPL and so on. However, what if this was a part of a bigger project and didn't exist anywhere else. I notice in a big GPL project that they're doing one little thing that I'd like to copy from them. My app has nothing in common with the big GPL project other than this one little thing (like an IP address control for example). I can't use it. I have to re-write it myself. And that is what is frustrating.
But the awareness itself, the feeling of existing, simply knowing you exist, that isn't reducible to anything else.
I'm not entirely sure about that. The awareness, the feeling of existing, and so on could just an emergent property of the matter/energy patterns of our brains (or anything else, such as being in a simulation). The problem comes with trying to rationalise this to oneself. Since you feel that you are aware and you are doing the analysis of it, you tend to accept/assume that that "you" that's doing this analysis/thinking must be something special and unique in and of itself. This however has no rational basis other than it seeming the only way to go about things without going just a little bit mad. Being an emergent property of the structure doesn't imply it isn't in some way "real" though. I fully agree that "I think, therefore I am", however the question of what "I" am, what it means to "think" and what it means to "be" are left unanswered by this statement.
I know that's not a particularly satisfying answer, but I'm not sure I can do any better sorry...
He's usually quoted as "I think therefore I am" but apparently the proper translation was "Existence, therefore being"
Side topic, but no: the original statement was "Je pense donc je suis" and then re-written by Descartes himself later as "(ego) cogito ergo sum" - both of which are pretty clear that the best translation would be "I think therefore I am". Existence doesn't come in to it, only "being" (closely related, but not quite the same from a philosophical standpoint)
Slashdot Mirror
Your example doesn't trigger such a common, innate heuristic. Rather, it just triggers a common mistake in applied mathematics, which is to forget about the 0th post. You're merely illustrating that people exhibit a poor comprehension of a learned, artificial skill, especially when you put them on the spot.
While I think you're right in this specific instance, the "fencepost error" does trigger the same thing, but generally with simpler forms.
For example, "I am building a fence 100 metres long with a post every 10 metres. How many posts do I need?".
To this, most people immediately answer 10 since dividing 100 by 10 is amazingly trivial and generally doesn't require any conscious effort. It's not that they failed to think about the 0th post, but rather that they failed to think about the question at all since it seemed obvious (exactly as the examples in the article).
LSD is great for getting a better understanding of your subconscious processes. When you look at things on acid sometimes it's like you're seeing the thing for the first time without a lifetime of biases built up. Other times you become conscious of all the associations you have with certain things, sometimes going far back into your childhood. It's really a shame it's illegal.
As parent is AC, the comment may be overlooked by a lot of people. I fully and completely agree with this.
My first experience with a large dose of LSD I was only able to describe as having "multiple levels of consciousness" - that is, I'd be looking at something and thinking about it; while another "part of me" was simultaneously thinking about the part of me that was thinking about what I was looking at; and yet another part would be examining those thought processes and so on. At one point, I managed to count 5 distinct "processes of thought" (and later I realised it might have been six, having one counting the others).
One of the things with this kind of self-reflection is the ability to appreciate what you see/hear/experience as if it were totally new. You see something that you've seen a hundred times before and for the first time you really get a deeper understanding of it than you had before. Nothing is irrelevant, and your own constructed filters (necessary for day-to-day life, I'll happily admit) are just gone.
When my daughter was born, I considered that perhaps that's how life must be for her as a baby. She doesn't know yet what is "important to notice" and what isn't, so the filters aren't there and she can take in everything. Relatedly, I've also considered whether that perhaps aids in the learning process for children; and therefore by extension, LSD use under controlled situations can aid in the learning process for adults. It seems to help me, but I wouldn't accept my own anecdotal case and any kind of evidence without further study.
A laptop with a screen like that is almost required if you're running an IDE without a large external monitor (as in developing while away from the office).
Somebody PLEASE mod this guy up.
I'm a "software development supervisor", which means I'm both a developer and in charge of a small team of other developers. I just recently specced out some new laptops for my group and screen resolution was one of the most important criteria from EVERYONE (second to RAM; but above processor and graphics).
My team does most of the work in the office, attached to large external monitors (I also just upgraded those (except my own - I've already got an Apple Cinema Display)); but we do from time to time travel around a bit, and as such, screen real-estate on the laptops themselves is extremely important to let us actually do our jobs well.
Since we're throwing silly choices around, would you sacrifice your dauggter to save your son?
Thankfully I don't have a son to make such a decision (and only one daughter)... But it's not like I can simply choose "nothing" in this hypothetical situation - I would either make a decision or not and then the decision would be made for me. I'd rather make the decision, no matter how painful.
would you torture a Black person to save your mother? What if it was the 1840's and torturing black people was an essential part of civilization?
I'd torture anyone that I love less than my mother in order to save my mother, regardless of skin colour or other factors.
Of course, I'd also torture my mother to save my daughter.
Not saying it'd be EASY to torture anyone (and especially not some I love), but I'd do it if it were really the only choice to save someone I love even more. (which itself is all academic, since in reality these situations don't really come up all that often, if ever)
Give it up. I used an Amiga 4000 well past when it was obsolete and loved it. But I won't for a second pretend that today we haven't surpassed AmigaOS in every possible way. UI responsiveness on my $1300 macbook air is light years superior to the old 4000. I expect this, I'm happy with this. Suggesting those who were never Commodore fanboys are somehow threatened by it is lunatic.
As someone with a great fondness for memories of the classic Amiga and even purchased an AmigaOne when they first came out (now considering the X1000, but not sure yet); I have to agree with you on all points but one. We haven't surpassed AmigaOS in EVERY possible way, just almost every possible way.
The one feature that always stands out to me is the AmigaOS datatypes system. I really miss having the ability to download a simple "hey this is how PNG images are handled" file, and then being able to open and save PNGs from basically any image manipulation program and of course view them in the default Multiview application.
While the concept vaguely exists in several other systems these days, it's nowhere near as standardised or pervasive as the Amiga datatypes system was, and therefore of significantly less use.
Yes, I'm well aware that datatypes was of course not perfect - the implementation left a LOT to be desired when it came to more modern concepts like handling video streams and so on; but it's the "idea" that I miss more than the actual implementation details.
Hold on... your wife is geeky; has an eastern European accent; and multiple HP workstations in her "sewing room" amongst other computers?
Ummm... want to swap? My German wife has both installers and application shortcuts cluttering her whole desktop.
(safe to post under my own username: She doesn't read slashdot (and doesn't speak English that well)... but just in case "I'm only joking Schatz, I love you!")
its just strange to apply this convention to written english. write "a" and read "an" where its appropriate (may depend on the readers dialect)
Why on earth would that make sense?! I don't write "a apple" but pronounce it "an apple" so why would I write "a MP3 file" when I say "an MP3 file"?
With the cases like "hotel" and "herb", I accept it being written either way with the explicit concept that that is how the writer pronounces it.
Linux works best when you don't expect your computer to be nothing more than a glorified TV/typewriter. The single most important feature of Linux is that it gives you power to solve complicated problems by combining very simple tools. You don't have to rely on somebody else to solve everything for you like on Windows or Mac.
Actually, can you show me one of these "very simple tools" that exists on Linux but not on MacOS?
Personally I do use Linux for all my server needs, but my desktops and main work laptop are Macs. One of the things I love with MacOS is having the full GNU toolchain at my disposal.
A 3rd case is that some people also expand the acronym as they read them. For your SQL example you've got:
The "sequel" people
The "ess-cue-ell" people
and
The "structured query language" people
Very true... of course, the point I was making is that these would be:
"A sequel server"
"An ess-cue-ell server"
and
"A structured language query server"
(Although I doubt there are any of the latter for "SQL".) However, for many acronmyns, many people do just expand them when reading them... I, for example, usually subvocalize "IMHO" as "in my humble opinion", occasionally as "imm-hoe" and almost never as "i-em-aitch-oh"
I read it almost always as "in my humble opinion", but occasionally as "i-em-aitch-oh" and never as "imm-hoe". IANAL on the other hand, I often read as "I anal" just because it's more humorous that way.
Why? The H isn't silent, is it?
Getting wildly offtopic, but I often have this conversation at work (speaking English in a country of mostly non-native English speakers) when I talk about "An MFP". They often ask me why I don't say "A MFP" instead.
The reasoning is that the "a" vs "an" is applied on pronunciation, not on spelling. When the next SOUND starts with a vowel, you use "an", otherwise you use "a".
So, "An em-eff-pee" and "An aitch-tee-tee-pee" are correct.
Confusion can arise when in some cases some people pronounce an acronym as a word, but others pronounce only the letters. I can't imagine this being an issue with HTTP (or MFP), but SQL does immediately spring to mind. The written phrase "A SQL Server" should be read as "A sequel server"; whereas the written phrase "An SQL server" should be read as "An ess-kyoo-el server"
Outside of acronyms, your own dialect of English can also make a difference. In some dialects, the initial "H" on many words is dropped. Some dialects also drop it or pronounce it on specific words while all others follow a general rule. This leads to the "a hotel"/"an hotel" ("an 'otel") and "a herb"/"an herb" ("an 'erb") discussions that pop up from time to time.
Most moder proofers are 600 or 700 dpi. Most modern presses are 1200 dpi or more.
A printer is someone with ink stains on their sleeve and who wears a funny paper hat.
Yep, that is a pedantic correction, but you're quite right. I was using the word "printer" meaning "generic home or office device that puts ink or toner on paper"
The lines between devices get a bit blurry with the mid to high end now talking about digital presses (which aren't in any way shape or form "presses") and the low end office devices being blurred closely with home devices of course.
Read text?
Printed text on paper has a DPI of 400. A monitor has a DPI of 90 or even less.
While I agree with the point you're making, I just wanted to point out that most modern printers are 600dpi (and occasionally more, although many claiming to be "1200dpi" are actually 600x1200)
Wow, that's the longest, slowest 'explosion' in history.
Or maybe, just maybe, 'explosive' is a completely wrong and stupid term to apply to current world population growth?
Hmmm... the world population is now around 1.5 times what it was when I was born. So, between the dawn of time and when I was born, the population reached 4.5 milliard people. Between then and now, it's reach 7 milliard. In what way is that NOT a population explosion?
I keep hearing from Americans and British how poorly Europe is doing. Oddly, for those of us in mainland Europe, it looks pretty good. I've got to wonder sometimes if there's some kind of bias in the news sources you guys read...
(Yes, I'm discounting Britain as part of Europe for the purposes of this statement - the British news is somewhat "different" to what the rest of us see)
a woman known basically only to English/Americans and aviation freaks
As someone who is male, neither American nor English and not particularly interested in aviation; I second that if you haven't heard of Amelia Earhart, you probably didn't pay attention in school (or live in a country that mostly ignores international history to focus too narrowly on its local history (USA does this too, for reference)); don't watch a lot of movies (even movies not about her may reference her from time to time); don't "wikipedia surf"; and are probably rather uninteresting.
I don't mean that as horribly offensive; just that even if you'd never been exposed to knowledge of who she is (which to me seems extremely unlikely on the assumption you live anywhere outside of the 3rd world - you probably just ignored/dismissed/forgot it); you could have at least done a quick Google search to find out.
and certainly in a completly different league than the Wright brothers, Neil Armstrong or even Lindbergh
I'd put her only slightly under the Wright Brothers and Armstrong for name recognition, and way above Lindbergh (when I read the name, it rang a bell, but wasn't immediately clear to me - quick Google search showed me the text "Spirit of St. Louis" and then I remembered).
Note that I did say "for name recognition" - not necessarily for their achievements/activities)
The agnostic point of view means that it's OK to say you don't know.
The atheistic point of view means you know there isn't a God.
No it doesn't. I am an atheist. I am also an agnostic. These two things are not mutually exclusive.
What does piss me off is Burger King. I went there and decided to get a drink with my meal and they basically don't carry anything I'd drink. I'm thirsty as hell and I'm forced to drink one of their awful choices. I'm not a Pepsi or Coke guy and beyond that, they had nothing diet.
Having not been to a Burger King in North America, this actually surprises me. Burger King vs McDonalds in most of the world that I've seen, Burger King is the one more likely to offer diet/low-calorie drinks and EVERY fast food place I've ever been to has offered water as an option.
I confess I eat at McDonalds relatively often (between once a month and once every two months) but my standard meal there is generally a McChicken with a side salad and a diet coke (I like colas in general).
For reference: the countries where I've had the most experience with fast food are New Zealand, Australia, Netherlands and Germany.
It is just that parents are, except under rare and extreme circumstances, the best people to protect their children's rights.
Says who? Did they receive formal training in doing so? Why should they be better at it than someone who has?
As a father who loves his daughter dearly and would do whatever it takes to make sure she has the best life possible; I will gladly concede that I am not necessarily the best person to help her under all circumstances. I allow the state to take some of the responsibility (while keeping a very large chunk of it myself) and, with every other member of society, keep an eye on the state to make sure it's correctly doing the job that we've asked of it.
My daughter is a human being with her own rights, and even if I wanted to, I should not be allowed to limit those rights beyond what society has deemed is acceptable for her own well being.
By the way, this is another area where Americans have greater liberty: their political system is more decentralised, with each state having its own laws.
So does Germany. Just our Federal laws here tend to be broader in scope than those in the US. We do however also have State laws (in each of our 16 states), so something allowed here in Lower Saxony might for example be disallowed in Bavaria, or vice-versa.
Here, check this one out. No way to input preferred meals, but it's far more flexible than the thing in this article.
http://bwsimulator.niddk.nih.gov/
Ummmmm.... that is the one I was already referring to (and is both linked from the article (first link in the summary) and is itself the last link in the summary)
Were you intending to give a different link here?
It has serious issues. For one thing it doesn't take into account a persons frame size. At 83kg and roughly 178cm, it's estimating my body fat at 20.3%, the problem though is that I have a large frame and I'm slim enough that I can just about see my ribs.
Of course, there will always be people it doesn't apply to; however you must realise that you're the exception rather than the rule. The majority of people have a "normal" frame (hence referring to it as normal) and for such people (including myself: normal frame and definitely overweight) it seems fairly suitable.
A cursory look at the app and I can see some definite uses. I've been wanting to create (mostly for my wife and myself; but theoretically for others later as open source) a personalised diet planner application based on some fuzzy logic, the "USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference" data, and user input for common/preferred/available meals. Combining it with the formula used in this simulator would be really helpful.
Unfortunately, I don't actually see the formula or source code to the app anywhere on the linked pages. Am I just missing it somewhere?
I get annoyed when people just jump straight to making a database for everything. Sometimes flat files are just a better option, so long as you don't need to run any searches.
Absolutely agreed. My day job is writing software and if I'm storing data that I know will never exceed a few MB at absolute most, has no requirements for search, and is a fairly simple structure; I FAR prefer to use CSV to any kind of database.
The best example is a single application translation table for around 25 languages. 100 strings, 25 languages - it may in theory grow up to 50 languages or so eventually and if the app gets much bigger, up to 200 strings. 200*50 = 10000 strings. At an average of around 15 bytes per string, that's ~150KB of data.
As a UTF-8 CSV text file, I can hand edit it in a run of the mill text editor; loading it in the application takes milliseconds of application startup time (at which point the whole thing sits in memory while the application runs, so it doesn't re-read it again); parsing it is trivial; and any errors introduced somehow aren't going to kill the whole file (perhaps just make one string wrong; or at worst corrupt one language (a single line of the file)). I can't count count the number of times people have told me to convert this to a SQLite database "because it's better"... very sad.
This is the GPL working as intended.
Yes, it is... and I'm not complaining, just pointing out that it's frustrating.
I don't say for a second that it's a failing of the GPL - it is indeed working as intended - I just don't particularly agree with the intention.
This is the whole point of the GPL, so you don't take someone else's work, derive something off it, then distribute the derived product in a less free way. Your payment as such for using GPL software is that if you distribute something based on it (however small) you pay the community back by distributing your source.
That's what I really don't like... the "however small" part. I write code both professionally and privately. If I choose to release something under an open licence, I avoid the GPL precisely because I know how much it's going to frustrate others in similar situations to myself. I'd far rather release my code under the LGPL, thereby ensuring the freedom of that bit of code and keeping the possibilities open for enhancements from the community but not forcing other people to open code that isn't in the slightest bit related.
If you don't want to do that, consider contacting the original author and working out a proprietary license deal, so the original author gets something (such as money) in lieu of the source code to something that extends his library.
Honestly, it's usually more work to do all that than to simply do that bit of code my own way or find another bit under a more permissive licence. I'd really LIKE to have the chance to do something like that but it's impractical under most cases. Remember that I'm talking "small bits of code" and not large complex projects. Something that I can write myself in two days isn't worth the hassle of working out licensing deals... but conversely, being able to use it straight off the bat saves me two days (do that 10 times and I've knocked a month off my project).
To give a real world example, in some of my Windows .NET projects, I make use of this IP Address control which is under the MIT Licence. I could have written it myself in a matter of a few days (with debugging/error-checking), but it saved me those few days work to use the existing code.
It would clearly be nonsensical to licence my entire Windows app under the GPL just because I wanted to use that control (which would be the only legal option if it were GPL licensed). And for that control, if it were GPL licenced, I wouldn't take the time to organise a licensing deal with the developer, because the effort of doing so would far outweigh simply writing an identical control myself.
Now, you might (quite rightly) answer that most people who release such small things don't do so under the GPL for precisely this reason. These sorts of things are almost always BSD/MIT/LGPL and so on. However, what if this was a part of a bigger project and didn't exist anywhere else. I notice in a big GPL project that they're doing one little thing that I'd like to copy from them. My app has nothing in common with the big GPL project other than this one little thing (like an IP address control for example). I can't use it. I have to re-write it myself. And that is what is frustrating.
But the awareness itself, the feeling of existing, simply knowing you exist, that isn't reducible to anything else.
I'm not entirely sure about that. The awareness, the feeling of existing, and so on could just an emergent property of the matter/energy patterns of our brains (or anything else, such as being in a simulation). The problem comes with trying to rationalise this to oneself. Since you feel that you are aware and you are doing the analysis of it, you tend to accept/assume that that "you" that's doing this analysis/thinking must be something special and unique in and of itself. This however has no rational basis other than it seeming the only way to go about things without going just a little bit mad. Being an emergent property of the structure doesn't imply it isn't in some way "real" though. I fully agree that "I think, therefore I am", however the question of what "I" am, what it means to "think" and what it means to "be" are left unanswered by this statement.
I know that's not a particularly satisfying answer, but I'm not sure I can do any better sorry...
He's usually quoted as "I think therefore I am" but apparently the proper translation was "Existence, therefore being"
Side topic, but no: the original statement was "Je pense donc je suis" and then re-written by Descartes himself later as "(ego) cogito ergo sum" - both of which are pretty clear that the best translation would be "I think therefore I am". Existence doesn't come in to it, only "being" (closely related, but not quite the same from a philosophical standpoint)