Unpredictability is the key, or course. The method that was used looked at only the first two days submissions. Suppose you knew that the computer program doing the selection might have a bug, and that even if that bug were found the results would not be invalidated. You might try to take advantage of that bug by submitting in such a way that you get the benefit. You could submit very early, expecting the bug to pick up only early entries, or you might submit very late thinking it will pick up late bugs. You might spend a lot of time analyzing what kinds of errors are more common.
By promising a "random" selection, the government is promising that you don't need to worry about spending time on such things because they won't make any difference.
If the problem had been something less useful - like the program was grabbing every other entry - the applicants wouldn't be able to predict whether they would be picked based on anything they did or anything about their application - the result would be as good as random.
The criteria of predictability I've laid out makes sense, but it does have a weakness. It is open to argument whether a particular defect is predictable.
The judge made the right call in this case, but his criteria is perhaps overly strict - or perhaps not. I can see two different valid decisions.
Ownership does not (or should not) trump privacy. It's like installing bugs or cameras in your house to monitor your family without their knowledge.
Privacy, when you're married??? Privacy within the family? Have you ever been married or been a parent? Sorry, but that really is a family matter and the state really ought to stay the hell out of it. If I learn my wife is spying on me, of if I spy on her and she finds out, then there will be a lot of anger. But that is for us to work out. It's none of the state's business. And if I'm spying on my kids, that's purely my and my wife's decision. Whether or not you think it is wrong, it's not your decision and it's not even our elected representative's decision. It's the parents' decision.
Absolute rubbish. The difference is analogous to British and American spellings and I don't see British spellings losing out anywhere.
Good analogy.
Taiwan is not trying to be "contrary to the Chinese government", they believe they ARE the Chinese government, just like the US confederacy except they haven't officially lost the war yet.
Bad analogy. A better one would be if the British had experienced a civil war in the 1860s and the British crown managed to simultaneously lose the civil war in Britain and her colonies while capturing the United States, was as a result exiled to the United States, and then ruled the United States with an iron fist while still claiming to be the sovereign rulers of the entire British Empire.
When the American south rebelled, the leaders were home-grown rebels attempting to separate. With Taiwan, the leaders were foreigners from China attempting to regain China, and the common folk were more like the slaves having say in what the government does.
Ok, let's suppose that China does like Japan. They grow their economy up to the point where per capita GDP is slightly higher than the U.S. and then their bubble bursts leaving them about the same per capita GDP or slightly higher.
That means the Chinese economy will only be 3 times the size of America's and 6 times the size of Japan's.
How long until China declares that based on history these waters are an integral part of Chinese territory and a "core interest" of China - followed by a declarations that the presence of foreign ships in those waters hurts the feelings of all Chinese people everywhere?
The news is that Taiwan based Chungwa Telecom finally relented and let the broadcasts continue. Like corporations all over the world, Chungwa Telecom may have been either bowing to pressure or just trying to kiss up to China in order to maintain or improve access to Chinese markets.
There may have also been a more political reason. "Chungwa" means "Chinese" (more in the ethnic sense than in the sovereign state sense). When the Chinese took over Taiwan after WWII they set about trying to make the country Chinese. Nearly all the roads in major cities had their names changed from their original Taiwanese or Japanese names to Chinese names. Corporations and government agencies based in Tawian were named "China" this or "China" that. For example, the national post office of Taiwan is called "China Post". In the nineties a Taiwanese man finally got the reins of power and under his leadership the country became a democracy. Another Taiwanese man was elected to replace him when his 8 years were up. But like all two party systems the other guys (in this case the Chinese guys) eventually got back in (helped by the fact that they still controlled the bureaucracy). The second Taiwanese president has been sentenced to life in prison and they've just indicted the first one. Meanwhile the Chinese party in Taiwan has been extremely friendly to China.
There is an ongoing debate in Taiwan about whether to merge with China or remain independent. The "China" in "China Telecom" might suggest which side that corporation is on. As for the government, when this satellite issue became public, it gave them a chance to put a little distance between themselves and China (the majority of the country is Taiwanese and they don't want to merge) without irritating the Chinese too much and to look like they're supporting freedom.
It sounds like this isn’t the case, but I’d point out that “accidently” sending email to the wrong person is getting more traction as a spam and phishing technique. I’ve seen stuff recently (I have a fairly common email too) that goes way beyond the classic and obvious “hey man, here’s the projections you wanted. You were right, you should invest in SomeShitStock right away!”.
That sounds like something useful to know. I have a name that is common and I work at a large company - and since I got here first my address is the one without the middle initial. It is not uncommon for me to receive email for other people. Instead of forwarding to that person and CCing the sender, I should probably just forward the email in case someone is phishing for email addresses. I can't just delete the email because most of it is legit and important.
In which part of your scientific training did they teach you name-calling?
Do you insist on scientific proof before you do anything? Do you repeat the tests yourself to verify their accuracy? If so it must take you a long time to do anything. The rest of use realize that we have to make decisions less rigorously. Should I go get breakfast at Restaurant A where an acquaintance claims he saw a rat , or at restaurant B that has a Dept. of Health notice on the door? Hmmm... I really don't have time to test both places myself. It's not a question of science, it's a question of who I trust. Do I trust that the Dept. of Health used proper science methods? That they're not just a political agency that punishes people who don't donate to the right party or who fail to pay their bribes on time?
Science is wonderful, but we don't get to make most of our decisions that way. Even decisions that should be based on science sometimes depend on which scientists we believe.
Do you smoke? I understand that science has shown again and again that smoking is not harmful to your health. By your standards, you shouldn't consider the fact that the scientists were being paid by the tobacco industry to be "strong evidence" of anything.
How much brick code do you think gets written compared to how much glue code gets written? By definition, if the brick code is written well and can be re-used, it only gets written once. But specialized code for a particular client doesn't see much re-use. If it weren't for the need for the specialized code, frameworks like Spring and EJB wouldn't get much use. But each time those frameworks are used for specialized code represents an instance of code that isn't likely to see much re-use. And given that the user-base for such systems aren't always large, the client usually isn't willing to pay for a small number of features in code that is re-usable (but quickly obsolete - still using client server instead of a web app? Got web services in there?) compared to a large number of features in code that is pretty good.
Since nuclear energy is the only viable alternative to energy sources that are high in green house gas emissions, I can only conclude from this news that the German government has decided that either global warming is not caused by man-made greenhouse gases, or that global warming isn't all that bad.
The unwillingness of global warming alarmists to embrace nuclear energy seems to me, as someone who is not a full-time atmospheric scientist and who doesn't have 10 years to get a graduate degree in the field, to be strong evidence against the threat of man-made global warming.
A couple of problems with the analogy:
1. In manufacturing, the idea is to do the exact same thing a jillion times with the exact same result. Interchangeable parts make different rates of a production easier to deal with. In computing this isn't the case. The assembly line make be identical each of the jillion times, but the data going through it is not.
2. Manufacturing plants are expensive to build. It makes sense for an engineer to spend weeks or even months optimizing the process. We don't have that luxury for most of the code we write.
"as it is easily curable just by redistributing a small proportion of the wealth around." Unfortunately it isn't that simple. The earlier poster pointed out the example of a teacher giving a kid a coat and shoes, only to have the coat and shoes taken away by the parent. Perhaps this parent had a legit need (works outside in the cold all day while the kid is warm inside the school building) but maybe the parent was irresponsible and selfish. There are parents like that. There are parents who would sell the coat and shoes for alcohol or other drugs.
The school lunch program works great because it goes directly to the kids and solves an obvious indisputable high-priority need. But how do you solve the problem of weekends? You can provide money, but you don't know how it will be spent. Even food stamps can be bartered away.
And to the extent that you succeed in providing for all children regardless of parental involvement, you remove the burden of parenthood from the parent and the cost of what is often irresponsible (but pleasurable) behavior and thereby encourage more of the behavior.
Unfortunately poverty is not "easily curable". If it were, not only could we cure it in developed countries, I believe there is enough wealth to go around that we could cure it everywhere.
I would call that poverty, but "true poverty" to me suggests unsanitary conditions where medical help is unavailable, children have to be sold to pay bills, human waste sewers are the ditches that run by people's "houses" (which consists of cardboard boxes, tents, and the like) and other problems that are pretty much unheard of in the developed world.
Your friend, as difficult as his life was, knew where his next meal was coming from (the cafeteria every day Monday through Friday), used toilets that flush, had clean water available (from the drinking fountains at school and if he was in the US any restaurant he cold find - they're required to provide water free of charge), had emergency medical care available, etc.. He even had education available free of charge.
Yes, I did grow up in a nice suburb and I'm very thankful I didn't live your friend's childhood, but I'm even more thankful I didn't leave a truly poor childhood in another country where surviving to adulthood isn't taken for granted.
Notice that the heading of the post is "In the developed world...". So where have you seen "true poverty" in the developed world?
In the United States, education is handled locally. So even through there are districts where internet access is a rare luxury, there are other communities where it is taken for granted. In those communities, arrangements might be made for the few households that currently lack access.
Those richer communities can work out the kinks and when the poorer communities catch up in terms of internet access, the best practices will be well known. That's one of the benefits of local control of government services.
In the US most of our leaders are trained as lawyers. How many people in China were graduating with law degrees 40 to 50 years ago (anyone remember the cultural revolution?) Rule of law hasn't been practiced in China for a very long time, so being trained as a lawyer hasn't been as useful there and I suspect it has been quite risky. Suppose you had been trained as a lawyer before the communists took over. As a lawyer you would have been involved in government - making you a target when the cultural revolution came along. So if you were a talented young person 40 to 50 years ago I suspect a law degree just wasn't that attractive.
If the American south could convert to standard US gauge in only two days, why us is it taking the rest of the world so long to convert to US standard measurements? It can't be that hard to ditch the 4 syllable metric system for the more efficent 1 to 2 syllable Imperial system.
It might not have been feasible to capture him given the conditions. Or perhaps they were trying to capture him but he was shooting back, making capture impossible. Capturing is not easy in a war zone. And it is nearly impossible if the person you want to capture would rather die then surrender (I don't know if that applied to Obama, but it is possible).
It is fair to charge different rates for classes that cost more for the university to host - whether because of the professor, the equipment or anything else. But it is the classes that cost. The article suggests they'll be charging engineering students more for attending the same History class as the music major. That doesn't sound right. Not only is it unfair, but how will they handle the loads of music majors who take a lot of engineering electives for 3 years before discovering in their senior year that their true love has always been engineering?
Charging more for engineering classes isn't all bad news for engineering students. It means 1. fewer competitors, 2. you'll be able to command a higher salary if you become a professor.
Perhaps with this kind of ego boost they won't feel they need to prove their worth by conquering neighboring countries like Taiwan or annexing parts of India.
Slashdot Mirror
Unpredictability is the key, or course. The method that was used looked at only the first two days submissions. Suppose you knew that the computer program doing the selection might have a bug, and that even if that bug were found the results would not be invalidated. You might try to take advantage of that bug by submitting in such a way that you get the benefit. You could submit very early, expecting the bug to pick up only early entries, or you might submit very late thinking it will pick up late bugs. You might spend a lot of time analyzing what kinds of errors are more common.
By promising a "random" selection, the government is promising that you don't need to worry about spending time on such things because they won't make any difference.
If the problem had been something less useful - like the program was grabbing every other entry - the applicants wouldn't be able to predict whether they would be picked based on anything they did or anything about their application - the result would be as good as random.
The criteria of predictability I've laid out makes sense, but it does have a weakness. It is open to argument whether a particular defect is predictable.
The judge made the right call in this case, but his criteria is perhaps overly strict - or perhaps not. I can see two different valid decisions.
Ownership does not (or should not) trump privacy. It's like installing bugs or cameras in your house to monitor your family without their knowledge.
Privacy, when you're married??? Privacy within the family? Have you ever been married or been a parent? Sorry, but that really is a family matter and the state really ought to stay the hell out of it. If I learn my wife is spying on me, of if I spy on her and she finds out, then there will be a lot of anger. But that is for us to work out. It's none of the state's business. And if I'm spying on my kids, that's purely my and my wife's decision. Whether or not you think it is wrong, it's not your decision and it's not even our elected representative's decision. It's the parents' decision.
Absolute rubbish. The difference is analogous to British and American spellings and I don't see British spellings losing out anywhere.
Good analogy.
Taiwan is not trying to be "contrary to the Chinese government", they believe they ARE the Chinese government, just like the US confederacy except they haven't officially lost the war yet.
Bad analogy. A better one would be if the British had experienced a civil war in the 1860s and the British crown managed to simultaneously lose the civil war in Britain and her colonies while capturing the United States, was as a result exiled to the United States, and then ruled the United States with an iron fist while still claiming to be the sovereign rulers of the entire British Empire. When the American south rebelled, the leaders were home-grown rebels attempting to separate. With Taiwan, the leaders were foreigners from China attempting to regain China, and the common folk were more like the slaves having say in what the government does.
Ok, let's suppose that China does like Japan. They grow their economy up to the point where per capita GDP is slightly higher than the U.S. and then their bubble bursts leaving them about the same per capita GDP or slightly higher.
That means the Chinese economy will only be 3 times the size of America's and 6 times the size of Japan's.
How long until China declares that based on history these waters are an integral part of Chinese territory and a "core interest" of China - followed by a declarations that the presence of foreign ships in those waters hurts the feelings of all Chinese people everywhere?
The news is that Taiwan based Chungwa Telecom finally relented and let the broadcasts continue. Like corporations all over the world, Chungwa Telecom may have been either bowing to pressure or just trying to kiss up to China in order to maintain or improve access to Chinese markets.
There may have also been a more political reason. "Chungwa" means "Chinese" (more in the ethnic sense than in the sovereign state sense). When the Chinese took over Taiwan after WWII they set about trying to make the country Chinese. Nearly all the roads in major cities had their names changed from their original Taiwanese or Japanese names to Chinese names. Corporations and government agencies based in Tawian were named "China" this or "China" that. For example, the national post office of Taiwan is called "China Post". In the nineties a Taiwanese man finally got the reins of power and under his leadership the country became a democracy. Another Taiwanese man was elected to replace him when his 8 years were up. But like all two party systems the other guys (in this case the Chinese guys) eventually got back in (helped by the fact that they still controlled the bureaucracy). The second Taiwanese president has been sentenced to life in prison and they've just indicted the first one. Meanwhile the Chinese party in Taiwan has been extremely friendly to China.
There is an ongoing debate in Taiwan about whether to merge with China or remain independent. The "China" in "China Telecom" might suggest which side that corporation is on. As for the government, when this satellite issue became public, it gave them a chance to put a little distance between themselves and China (the majority of the country is Taiwanese and they don't want to merge) without irritating the Chinese too much and to look like they're supporting freedom.
Where are my mod points when I really need them???
It isn't spam, but it isn't my meat.
It sounds like this isn’t the case, but I’d point out that “accidently” sending email to the wrong person is getting more traction as a spam and phishing technique. I’ve seen stuff recently (I have a fairly common email too) that goes way beyond the classic and obvious “hey man, here’s the projections you wanted. You were right, you should invest in SomeShitStock right away!”.
That sounds like something useful to know. I have a name that is common and I work at a large company - and since I got here first my address is the one without the middle initial. It is not uncommon for me to receive email for other people. Instead of forwarding to that person and CCing the sender, I should probably just forward the email in case someone is phishing for email addresses. I can't just delete the email because most of it is legit and important.
How did you get this job where most of your code is parallel? That sounds more interesting than what I'm doing. Where do I find some jobs like it?
In which part of your scientific training did they teach you name-calling?
Do you insist on scientific proof before you do anything? Do you repeat the tests yourself to verify their accuracy? If so it must take you a long time to do anything. The rest of use realize that we have to make decisions less rigorously. Should I go get breakfast at Restaurant A where an acquaintance claims he saw a rat , or at restaurant B that has a Dept. of Health notice on the door? Hmmm... I really don't have time to test both places myself. It's not a question of science, it's a question of who I trust. Do I trust that the Dept. of Health used proper science methods? That they're not just a political agency that punishes people who don't donate to the right party or who fail to pay their bribes on time?
Science is wonderful, but we don't get to make most of our decisions that way. Even decisions that should be based on science sometimes depend on which scientists we believe.
Do you smoke? I understand that science has shown again and again that smoking is not harmful to your health. By your standards, you shouldn't consider the fact that the scientists were being paid by the tobacco industry to be "strong evidence" of anything.
How much brick code do you think gets written compared to how much glue code gets written? By definition, if the brick code is written well and can be re-used, it only gets written once. But specialized code for a particular client doesn't see much re-use. If it weren't for the need for the specialized code, frameworks like Spring and EJB wouldn't get much use. But each time those frameworks are used for specialized code represents an instance of code that isn't likely to see much re-use. And given that the user-base for such systems aren't always large, the client usually isn't willing to pay for a small number of features in code that is re-usable (but quickly obsolete - still using client server instead of a web app? Got web services in there?) compared to a large number of features in code that is pretty good.
Since nuclear energy is the only viable alternative to energy sources that are high in green house gas emissions, I can only conclude from this news that the German government has decided that either global warming is not caused by man-made greenhouse gases, or that global warming isn't all that bad.
The unwillingness of global warming alarmists to embrace nuclear energy seems to me, as someone who is not a full-time atmospheric scientist and who doesn't have 10 years to get a graduate degree in the field, to be strong evidence against the threat of man-made global warming.
A couple of problems with the analogy:
1. In manufacturing, the idea is to do the exact same thing a jillion times with the exact same result. Interchangeable parts make different rates of a production easier to deal with. In computing this isn't the case. The assembly line make be identical each of the jillion times, but the data going through it is not.
2. Manufacturing plants are expensive to build. It makes sense for an engineer to spend weeks or even months optimizing the process. We don't have that luxury for most of the code we write.
I wonder how much progress is being made on using similar technologies for detecting buried landmines so they can be safely removed.
"as it is easily curable just by redistributing a small proportion of the wealth around." Unfortunately it isn't that simple. The earlier poster pointed out the example of a teacher giving a kid a coat and shoes, only to have the coat and shoes taken away by the parent. Perhaps this parent had a legit need (works outside in the cold all day while the kid is warm inside the school building) but maybe the parent was irresponsible and selfish. There are parents like that. There are parents who would sell the coat and shoes for alcohol or other drugs.
The school lunch program works great because it goes directly to the kids and solves an obvious indisputable high-priority need. But how do you solve the problem of weekends? You can provide money, but you don't know how it will be spent. Even food stamps can be bartered away.
And to the extent that you succeed in providing for all children regardless of parental involvement, you remove the burden of parenthood from the parent and the cost of what is often irresponsible (but pleasurable) behavior and thereby encourage more of the behavior.
Unfortunately poverty is not "easily curable". If it were, not only could we cure it in developed countries, I believe there is enough wealth to go around that we could cure it everywhere.
I would call that poverty, but "true poverty" to me suggests unsanitary conditions where medical help is unavailable, children have to be sold to pay bills, human waste sewers are the ditches that run by people's "houses" (which consists of cardboard boxes, tents, and the like) and other problems that are pretty much unheard of in the developed world.
Your friend, as difficult as his life was, knew where his next meal was coming from (the cafeteria every day Monday through Friday), used toilets that flush, had clean water available (from the drinking fountains at school and if he was in the US any restaurant he cold find - they're required to provide water free of charge), had emergency medical care available, etc.. He even had education available free of charge.
Yes, I did grow up in a nice suburb and I'm very thankful I didn't live your friend's childhood, but I'm even more thankful I didn't leave a truly poor childhood in another country where surviving to adulthood isn't taken for granted.
You have clearly never known true poverty.
Notice that the heading of the post is "In the developed world...". So where have you seen "true poverty" in the developed world?
In the United States, education is handled locally. So even through there are districts where internet access is a rare luxury, there are other communities where it is taken for granted. In those communities, arrangements might be made for the few households that currently lack access.
Those richer communities can work out the kinks and when the poorer communities catch up in terms of internet access, the best practices will be well known. That's one of the benefits of local control of government services.
That sounds right.
In the US most of our leaders are trained as lawyers. How many people in China were graduating with law degrees 40 to 50 years ago (anyone remember the cultural revolution?) Rule of law hasn't been practiced in China for a very long time, so being trained as a lawyer hasn't been as useful there and I suspect it has been quite risky. Suppose you had been trained as a lawyer before the communists took over. As a lawyer you would have been involved in government - making you a target when the cultural revolution came along. So if you were a talented young person 40 to 50 years ago I suspect a law degree just wasn't that attractive.
Sounds like a Star Trek plot. Have you considered writing Sci-Fi?
If the American south could convert to standard US gauge in only two days, why us is it taking the rest of the world so long to convert to US standard measurements? It can't be that hard to ditch the 4 syllable metric system for the more efficent 1 to 2 syllable Imperial system.
It might not have been feasible to capture him given the conditions. Or perhaps they were trying to capture him but he was shooting back, making capture impossible. Capturing is not easy in a war zone. And it is nearly impossible if the person you want to capture would rather die then surrender (I don't know if that applied to Obama, but it is possible).
TFA didn't say whether the charged employees were local Chinese or foreign Taiwanese. If they were Taiwanese I wonder how this will be handled.
It is fair to charge different rates for classes that cost more for the university to host - whether because of the professor, the equipment or anything else. But it is the classes that cost. The article suggests they'll be charging engineering students more for attending the same History class as the music major. That doesn't sound right. Not only is it unfair, but how will they handle the loads of music majors who take a lot of engineering electives for 3 years before discovering in their senior year that their true love has always been engineering?
Charging more for engineering classes isn't all bad news for engineering students. It means 1. fewer competitors, 2. you'll be able to command a higher salary if you become a professor.
Perhaps with this kind of ego boost they won't feel they need to prove their worth by conquering neighboring countries like Taiwan or annexing parts of India.