Commercial air travel will become the stinky greyhound transport of economically disadvantaged masses. People with money and corporations will increasingly opt out and buy private jets causing a permanent shift in the conmercial air travel market. We'll end up with only a few carriers, and depending on how fuel prices change, vis worldwide oil supply, those carriers may end up being heavily subsidized by governments (someone correct me if this is already happening to some degree).
Cells manufacture proteins via DNA->RNA->protein. This is more analogous to a nested function application. RNAi is more analogous to removing the outer function that then prevents expression of the intended protein. The cell erases the chalk board by absorbing the unused mRNA. Indeed this points to one of the RNAi central uses - that of infering which gene is doing what - turn one or more off and see what happens to the mouse.
It's way too much of a leap to "humans can be abstracted as computer-replicable algorithms." There is still far more to learn, despite advances in genetic engineering, which by the way you are probably consuming every time you ingest a product containing corn, soy or wheat. And more practically at hand, the promise of genetic medicine brings with it the freight train of eugenics to contend with.
Once upon a time we could trust in our leaders. Once upon a time the levels of corruption were below the radar. Once upon a time can happen again when people pull their heads out of their asses, wake up and start acting like members of a democracy instead of cowed, overindulged, overentitled, ignorant 10 mpg driving automatons. All voices have merit, ultimately, and especially in balance. Until then wake up AC (gee, that says a lot right there) and take note of the fact that the country is under incredible tension. I imagine when some reduction in lunacy is achieved slashdot will recede back into the sublime waters of mostly things cool and tech.
Until then sweetheart you are free and encouraged to start your own tech only site, submit a plug to slashdot, and revel in purity.
I don't buy your reasoning. The GOP has been actively stifling all global warming and associated environmental reports at an alarming level. I don't recall ever the Ivory Tower doing anything close. They are actively stifling stem cell research. Can you really point to a specific example of universities actively and in concert working towards blocking a thrust of research?
Who is controlling those grants anyway? News Flash: It's called the NSF, NIH, and DARPA to name a few, all part of the government. A large number of research grants come from these agencies.
I'm sure you have seen some terrible politics coming out of your university. I've seen it myself. People can and will do horrible things in the fight for dwindling research funds including stealing ideas, kicking out grad students and professors bickering amongst each over whose research is more valuable. I didn't make the claim that universities are sitting in some higher more ground. But to call the evils of academia equivalent to GOP political meddling with science is ignorance.
So where is your suggestion for public education reform? That was not the point of the argument anyway. The point was that political maneuvers like NCLB are effecting a more centralized control over schools. The parent mentioned a solution was to be had in the form of education. But if education, and the content thereof becomes increasingly controlled by the agenda of a political party then that's not really education is it? It's more like indoctrination. I wouldn't want schools controlled by the political agenda of Greenpeace either.
What ever happened to just trying to educate the voters?
And will this happen when neocons are busy filing lawsuits and bullying school districts to equally politicize the contents of textbooks? What about the demands to push theology based creation myths as an equal to Darwinian theory? What about the push to wrest control of schools away from the local level with more interference from the federal level? The NCLB bullshit is already causing loads of problems and no solutions at my lat/long coordinates. An uninformed, poorly educated populace is clearly easy to control and prone to vote on emotion only - we're already in the muck of this which is why you already have witnessed simplistic and ultimately stupid logic over who to vote for.
This idea strikes me as more acknowledgment, and too late at that, of the creeping control of science by the GOP. The probability of depoliticizing science is not going to be possible any time in the near future. Science and rational thought have always been in conflict with theology. The GOP has sold itself to conservatives in exchange for power, if science is sacrificed so be it.
Two overworked and uninspired parents I know have knowingly and willingly embraced electronic entertainment for their children so as have that built in babysitter handy. One child, years into this sad experiment, is a complete failure at school, cannot concentrate on anything, cannot work for himself and has poor social skills. The other has missed the magic of reading and is impatient with schoolwork. It's almost an act of protest to reduce exposure to gameboys, tv, computers, and videos, especially knowing that when a child is in school classmates will occasionally look at him or her strangely if he or she is deprived of an xbox at home.
1) What about the millions of glossy catalogs produced at great cost and destined for inevitable landfill waste? Will the pushers be sued for printing catalogs that are inaccessible to blind consumers?
2) Why is the ref on this ruling basically an advertisement?
3) Who defines what is fair? A billion dollar corporation can afford to come up with whatever is deemed compliant if this thing is for real. What about Joe down the street following his dream and starting up an e-business selling foo with a loan from the bank - how is he supposed to come up with the funds for this as well? He can't defend against a lawsuit and I don't buy this "just take our approach and all will be fine."
I agree that it is unnecessary to call out one political group and to globally label members of that group inept and incompetent. It is a separate question entirely to judge the education of all members of government and the extent to which this informs their decision making.
But, it has been partisan politics that has interfered greatly with science for quite some time now. In particular, politicians have been bent to the will of religious groups. Yet these same groups daily depend on the fruits of science, engineering and technology for their existance. It's a cafeteria approach - they want to be able to lord over science as they see fit and coerce politicians to force a policy consistent with *their* views. This is not the way of science. Science is secular and depends crucially on adherence to the scientific method.
The relevant point made in that post is that other countries will in fact not hold themselves back with stem cell research. The breakthroughs will happen outside US soil. US citizens with means will continue to travel outside their border to seek treatment not available in their own country. One also wonders if US trained scientists will become fed up with tightening scrutiny of their work and simply themselves immigrate elsewhere to continue research as well. Although this seems preposterous given the high caliber of the US university system and laboratory facilities, I don't see it out of the realm of possibility.
No, Grishnakh. She had an interesting story. That guy did sound hostile. Hostility doesn't yield open conversation, it just yields more hostility and entrenchment into limited worldviews. And, yes, I would agree with you that most women, and for that matter, most men are pretty level-headed. I've worked with both sexes in all manner of tech environments and honestly have not ever seen much of anything remotely close to the extreme stories posted here.
Here's a funny one I witnessed. Some years ago in a computing pod a guy walked in and loudly started complimenting all the women on their perfume. This was a big Fortune 500 company, one with lots of lawyers and lots of policies. And the punch line? There wasn't one. Not one of the ladies took the bait, they all appeared to feel sorry for the guy. No complaints were filed, nothing. Later he appeared to be pretty embarrassed since no one responded to him.
The NY Times a few weeks ago had this story about resuming the practice of using prisoners as test subjects for drug research. The implicit and flawed moral reasoning draws from a notion of reduced rights, and the bogus suggestion that somehow the prisoners that agree to be tested would later be beneficiaries of the research. I disagree with these premises on two counts. First, punishment was meted at out sentencing, adding later punishment gussied up in the name of research is just that: additive. Pronounce the sentence once, and only once. Indeed, given that prison populations show a racial bias the slippery slope is overwhelmingly repugnant. Second, since when does anyone close at hand benefit when the balance of power is clearly favorable to one side? Absolute bullshit. This is not much different from corporations going into third world countries and paying a pittance for whatever resource is desired with the in time trickle down promise.
Will these same extremists start lining up at prisons to protest minimally tested medications foisted on prisoners? And, no, do not think that anyone in that situation really would be given free will to say no. Will they be able to see past their own hate and acknowledge that those same prisoners are human and according to their own reasoning of equal status to animals in medical research? I doubt it. They'll be too busy dreaming up their next act, because the black/white mentality goes quite far in its ability to rationalize and reinforce selective reasoning, in an of itself an axiomatic characterization of all extremist ideologies.
(snarking in this post as well) There's a lot of viciousness in this thread, oh wait, that's just a healthy dose of scientific skepticism from a well educated and street smart crowd who wouldn't be caught dead trying to assess games, much less speak before congress.
Maybe the NSF ought to instead rely on a select group of slashdotters to ensure scientific funding goes into the right hands! And screw peer review and congressional committees and Harvard!
So true - I mean look at Danica Patrick, in a sport that includes engineering, and how she's been shunned and marginalized because she's a woman.
Whatever you're referring to, it is not stopping her. Two recent 4th place finishes, 2005 Rookie of the Year and
Danica just signed on to a top team for the next season: http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory?id=2234056. I wouldn't
mark this shunned and marginalized.
1) At least one student will either be lazy or make repeated mistakes trying to get their submission into the correct format. Because you are the TA and have no power, students will complain to you and demand that you make a special exception for their code. You'll find yourself making multiple variations to handle all the ways people screwed up your basic turn in instructions.
2) Studying code from other people is yes time consuming, but very valuable for you as a student. You will see patterns of solutions emerge and you'll see first hand where people had problems, and where they are inefficient. This gives you excellent data to share with students during recitation. It's valuable for everyone to discuss the different ways the problem was attacked and you being in the position of seeing everyone's code can make thoughtful assessments of what were ultimately good and bad choices.
3) Spending time automating can turn into a black hole; better to just spend time automating a turn in procedure that sorts people's submissions into folders.
4) Why not put testing the code onto the student's shoulders? If you have the need for seeing output why not instead post a series of expected inputs and outputs and ask students to turn in results that document this. Yes, it is more work for them. But becoming careful about work and careful to check it before turning in is or should be a key goal in a programming course.
5) Too much automating can set you up for grief from the professor if several students privately go complain to him or her about your choice. If they perceive your methods are unfairly depriving them of points, even if it is not true, you'll get complaints and depending on the character of the prof, he or she may not defend your actions and choose to make you out as a bad TA.
6) Take care not to go against the prof, it would be advisable to directly ask what their opinion is - it is after all their class.
7) Studying the code, rather than pushing it through an automated checker, is a good way to see who might be cheating and unfairly copying code. It's also quite hysterical to see the lengths that some desperate people will go to hide this from you like changing variable names and being very fancy with comments, but logic is logic and after looking at code you'll see cheaters really easily. Unless it's a group assignment where this was allowed, cheating shouldn't be tolerated. Some TAs have automated searching for cheating in coding assignments - perhaps this might be a better use of your time.
Good luck and have fun with those late night emails begging for help 8 hours before the assignment is due...
Because the entire program is so beleagured and under the microscope at this point, it's easy to overlook that hold-ups due
to weather have occurred quite frequently. Another important factor is wind monitoring, typically done by balloons. Simulations are done at regular intervals with the up to the minute winds available data to determine potential adverse loads on the vehicle. This could possibly hold up a launch as well, completely aside from cloud cover or thunderstorm activity.
The post 2010 Space program would optimally take Cape weather and the possibility of higher hurricane frequency into account as a cost factor. Alternate launch locations may be advisable, despite the existing infrastructure built up at the Cape. Would there be any possibility of government and commercial concerns sharing responsibility and building up a different launch facility? The Richard Branson/Virgin spaceport comes to mind, http://www.spacedaily.com/news/tourism-05zt.html. Other sites in New Mexico and west Texas could be considered.
There are numerous examples of poor spelling and grammar on this site, particularly in posted comments. However, often when typos are pointed out they are fixed. Sure, a check could be done for spelling and yes, seeing duplicate threads can be annoying. If it is not such a big deal, why hasn't it been already incorporated?
In odd resonance, I recently emailed the editor of a local TV station website about a story posting. It was riddled with typos and had a couple of sentences that were not readable because of grammar errors. Not only were no corrections made, I've now noted that the site posts stories with the same problems almost daily. The Slashdot grammar errors in comparison I find more comical, especially because the milling crowd jumps on them almost immediately with varying degrees of either a joking response or viciousness.
Perhaps because the points system and karma rating on this site gives people a degree of feedback, and a measure of public shaming for bad or error-filled postings or comments, errors are responded to.
fizzix noted that the second typo was not part of his/her original story. This was a case of hasty typing and hasty posting. If enough people complain, then a few more checks might be incorporated in the future.
It was probably a quickly typed title; the other typo is in the spelling of the word inclement. This is not a question of courtesy or professionalism. Slashdot posts are not reviewed by an editor prior to submission, if they were the entire forum would take on a different, achingly slow and most likely much more boring tone.
I would venture a guess that daughter lied to the mother and indicated that the boy was a member of her school or something similar. Teenagers the world over are quite adept at modifying the truth either directly, or by omission of relevant facts. The daughter probably really didn't have any idea that this was a risky idea; her judgment, or lack thereof, is not inconsistent with her age.
Unfortunately this case is reminiscent of dating website stories. Talk to any veteran of find_your_soulmate_today.com and you'll hear multiple stories of how absolutely perfect everything seemed with match #92 until those small details of "i'm still angry at my parents, and oh yeah, I'm 48" or "yeah, it was just one felony and I got a bad judge." We evolved with social networks and we still need them. Boys and girls with exploding hormones are much more likely to keep it under control when there is some modicum of social connection.
Aside from the stupidity of the entire debacle is the base notion of requiring service providers of any stripe to perform nanny duties. I don't think we really want this do we? I don't think we really want providers of goods and services to raise their prices to cover setting up huge databases complete with incorrect activitiy monitoring. In a free market system we don't want companies to accept lower profits because of the implicit additional costs that such tracking and monitoring would incur. Consumer protection groups however have brought about safer cars, safer tools, better appliances. Hence I can't completely argue that MySpace should abstain from any responsibility. The question is where to draw the line.
Other sticky areas: people with pools can be sued if someone drowns after sneaking in, correct? Yet what about walking around a golf course and getting blinded by a stray ball? In this case it is the walker's fault to the best of my knowledge, and neither the golfer nor the course owner is liable. What about gun manufacturers? Accidental deaths happen routinely and we do not allow parents to sue gun companies for the deaths of their children.
MySpace should do more to seek out predators and kick them off, but a $30M lawsuit is not the way to bring this change. A nanny state degrades freedom, not to mention interfering with the natural laws of Darwin.
Labels and binary statements: you are seeking a reaction or feeling lazy?
I was employed by NOAA in the 80s to launch/monitor helium balloons carrying ozone measuring instruments. Not once in those years did any of the scientists at that location
ever mention much about politics or care to align themselves with anyone on either side of the political spectrum. They were by and large a well-trained,
intelligent and thoughtful group of geeks who would much rather argue about calibration errors or data comparisons from other instruments. They were not under assault by people uncomfortable with their findings. The process of science has not morphed into anything much different since then, only the reaction to it, which is looking quite brutal and unnecessarily extreme these days.
I don't think we want to tie tech career salaries so closely to something like the stock market which hinges on perception of value and investor emotion. Rather, how did lawyers and doctors build up their overpaid status? Have you or any of us ever worked with a lawyer or doctor and come away saying, "Wow, I sure received good value for my $6000"? I can possibly make the argument for specialists where only a few suppliers are available and the stakes are higher - say a brain or heart surgeon - I can't make the argument for any form of law interpreters though. There are many examples of professions earning salaries that don't seem commiserate with training, ability or value to society, for instance, how is it housing developers make millions producing cheap junk while holding hands with city politicians? You probably have four times the IQ of an average house developer, yet Joe Sunland Estates is driving the Lexus.
Let the immigrant IT workers jump through the same hoops the immigrant physical laborers do.
And also ensure that they get equally exploited, treated like shit and used as political pawns?
The H1B Visa program is not worth attacking here. $250K sounds like a well paid lawyer or doctor salary, engineers in the US have never earned this kind of money on average, even before H1B became a hot button topic.
How we wish you were here
The weather's getting warmer
Now that the trees are all cleared
There's no time for a conscience
And we recognize no crime
Yeah we got dogs and Valvoline
It's a pretty damn good time
There was one repressed do-gooder
And a few who still believed
Yes I think there were five good men here yesterday
But they were asked to leave
So we've kept the good old vices
And laboured to invent a few
With cake in vulgar surplus
We can have it and eat it, too
--Toy Matinee, 1990
I move Your Rights Online be renamed Your Rights Dismantled.
And perhaps a new category could be created entitled Restoring Your Rights.
I said readers, not posters to this particular thread. There is a difference. Perhaps you really didn't understand this. However it certainly is pathetic to make comments about flying carpets, etc.
how can such a (presumably) well educated crowd as slashdot remain so fricking ignorant about the world?
The handful of posts you are referring to are hardly reflective all of slashdot readers. And further, possession of an education does not necessarily equate to good judgment and a reasonable assessment.
the indian space research organization is single-mindedly dedicated to the development of technology that benefits civilians
Actually, this ISRO/NASA agreement is a very interesting proposition. It will be a benefit to the entire world if ISRO becomes a major player in space exploration.
yes, i understand that americans who were born before the 90s can't see anything outside the cold-war prism
Hmm. A blatantly racist and ageist sounding statement. It may suit your anger to lump everyone together and assume ignorance, but this is an act of laziness and ignorance on your part. Quite a few of us pre 90s people are not in agreement with decisions our government has made. Policy is bought by special interests, not through wise decision making by fairly elected leaders.
It's easy to armchair quarterback NASA at this point, but it's probably safe to assume that there is overwhelming pressure to make the right decision and that the decision to postpone further tweaking has not been made lightly. Fundamentally this is coming down to pressure to get on with the show and determine if this risk is a showstopper or not. They've decided that they can take the risk, and in all likelihood it is just one of many risks that have probably kept both engineers and managers in overdrive discussion for months.
The overall context is the station: shuttle is essentially a bottleneck. If shuttles can't get back to multiple flights per year, then we've got a problem. Soyuz and the Russian space program have literally saved NASA's ass in the past couple of years getting supplies up. For reasons most likely political, ESA has not been part of a solution, which is unfortunate and a separate topic. So given an unreliable shuttle program depending heavily on Soyuz, the painful decision to stop station construction and maintenance needs to happen. This makes the July launch akin to a make or break demonstration. If there is a serious problem, or another disaster, then NASA really can't look Congress in the face and make an argument for the station. Personally I haven't been able to make an argument for the station at all and would love to see a bare bones report of any sci/tech knowledge we've truly gained. As a long term reader of several NASA news listservs I see way too many fluff stories that are self congratulatory ("aren't we special? little joey dreamed of the space program his whole life and now he does X for NASA, let's all give him an internet pat on the back"), and not nearly enough along the lines of interesting experimental results or technology developments.
Slashdot Mirror
This is all part of a disturbing trend.
Commercial air travel will become the stinky greyhound transport of economically disadvantaged masses. People with money and corporations will increasingly opt out and buy private jets causing a permanent shift in the conmercial air travel market. We'll end up with only a few carriers, and depending on how fuel prices change, vis worldwide oil supply, those carriers may end up being heavily subsidized by governments (someone correct me if this is already happening to some degree).
It's also very difficult to find one of those papers that doesn't use the word "elucidate."
Cells manufacture proteins via DNA->RNA->protein. This is more analogous to a nested function application. RNAi is more analogous to removing the outer function that then prevents expression of the intended protein. The cell erases the chalk board by absorbing the unused mRNA. Indeed this points to one of the RNAi central uses - that of infering which gene is doing what - turn one or more off and see what happens to the mouse.
It's way too much of a leap to "humans can be abstracted as computer-replicable algorithms." There is still far more to learn, despite advances in genetic engineering, which by the way you are probably consuming every time you ingest a product containing corn, soy or wheat. And more practically at hand, the promise of genetic medicine brings with it the freight train of eugenics to contend with.
Once upon a time we could trust in our leaders. Once upon a time the levels of corruption were below the radar. Once upon a time can happen again when people pull their heads out of their asses, wake up and start acting like members of a democracy instead of cowed, overindulged, overentitled, ignorant 10 mpg driving automatons. All voices have merit, ultimately, and especially in balance. Until then wake up AC (gee, that says a lot right there) and take note of the fact that the country is under incredible tension. I imagine when some reduction in lunacy is achieved slashdot will recede back into the sublime waters of mostly things cool and tech.
Until then sweetheart you are free and encouraged to start your own tech only site, submit a plug to slashdot, and revel in purity.
I don't buy your reasoning. The GOP has been actively stifling all global warming and associated environmental reports at an alarming level. I don't recall ever the Ivory Tower doing anything close. They are actively stifling stem cell research. Can you really point to a specific example of universities actively and in concert working towards blocking a thrust of research?
Who is controlling those grants anyway? News Flash: It's called the NSF, NIH, and DARPA to name a few, all part of the government. A large number of research grants come from these agencies.
I'm sure you have seen some terrible politics coming out of your university. I've seen it myself. People can and will do horrible things in the fight for dwindling research funds including stealing ideas, kicking out grad students and professors bickering amongst each over whose research is more valuable. I didn't make the claim that universities are sitting in some higher more ground. But to call the evils of academia equivalent to GOP political meddling with science is ignorance.
So where is your suggestion for public education reform? That was not the point of the argument anyway. The point was that political maneuvers like NCLB are effecting a more centralized control over schools. The parent mentioned a solution was to be had in the form of education. But if education, and the content thereof becomes increasingly controlled by the agenda of a political party then that's not really education is it? It's more like indoctrination. I wouldn't want schools controlled by the political agenda of Greenpeace either.
What ever happened to just trying to educate the voters?
And will this happen when neocons are busy filing lawsuits and bullying school districts to equally politicize the contents of textbooks? What about the demands to push theology based creation myths as an equal to Darwinian theory? What about the push to wrest control of schools away from the local level with more interference from the federal level? The NCLB bullshit is already causing loads of problems and no solutions at my lat/long coordinates. An uninformed, poorly educated populace is clearly easy to control and prone to vote on emotion only - we're already in the muck of this which is why you already have witnessed simplistic and ultimately stupid logic over who to vote for.
This idea strikes me as more acknowledgment, and too late at that, of the creeping control of science by the GOP. The probability of depoliticizing science is not going to be possible any time in the near future. Science and rational thought have always been in conflict with theology. The GOP has sold itself to conservatives in exchange for power, if science is sacrificed so be it.
Two overworked and uninspired parents I know have knowingly and willingly embraced electronic entertainment for their children so as have that built in babysitter handy. One child, years into this sad experiment, is a complete failure at school, cannot concentrate on anything, cannot work for himself and has poor social skills. The other has missed the magic of reading and is impatient with schoolwork. It's almost an act of protest to reduce exposure to gameboys, tv, computers, and videos, especially knowing that when a child is in school classmates will occasionally look at him or her strangely if he or she is deprived of an xbox at home.
1) What about the millions of glossy catalogs produced at great cost and destined for inevitable landfill waste? Will the pushers be sued for printing catalogs that are inaccessible to blind consumers?
2) Why is the ref on this ruling basically an advertisement?
3) Who defines what is fair? A billion dollar corporation can afford to come up with whatever is deemed compliant if this thing is for real. What about Joe down the street following his dream and starting up an e-business selling foo with a loan from the bank - how is he supposed to come up with the funds for this as well? He can't defend against a lawsuit and I don't buy this "just take our approach and all will be fine."
I agree that it is unnecessary to call out one political group and to globally label members of that group inept and incompetent. It is a separate question entirely to judge the education of all members of government and the extent to which this informs their decision making.
But, it has been partisan politics that has interfered greatly with science for quite some time now. In particular, politicians have been bent to the will of religious groups. Yet these same groups daily depend on the fruits of science, engineering and technology for their existance. It's a cafeteria approach - they want to be able to lord over science as they see fit and coerce politicians to force a policy consistent with *their* views. This is not the way of science. Science is secular and depends crucially on adherence to the scientific method.
The relevant point made in that post is that other countries will in fact not hold themselves back with stem cell research. The breakthroughs will happen outside US soil. US citizens with means will continue to travel outside their border to seek treatment not available in their own country. One also wonders if US trained scientists will become fed up with tightening scrutiny of their work and simply themselves immigrate elsewhere to continue research as well. Although this seems preposterous given the high caliber of the US university system and laboratory facilities, I don't see it out of the realm of possibility.
No, Grishnakh. She had an interesting story. That guy did sound hostile. Hostility doesn't yield open conversation, it just yields more hostility and entrenchment into limited worldviews. And, yes, I would agree with you that most women, and for that matter, most men are pretty level-headed. I've worked with both sexes in all manner of tech environments and honestly have not ever seen much of anything remotely close to the extreme stories posted here.
Here's a funny one I witnessed. Some years ago in a computing pod a guy walked in and loudly started complimenting all the women on their perfume. This was a big Fortune 500 company, one with lots of lawyers and lots of policies. And the punch line? There wasn't one. Not one of the ladies took the bait, they all appeared to feel sorry for the guy. No complaints were filed, nothing. Later he appeared to be pretty embarrassed since no one responded to him.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0813-01.ht m
The NY Times a few weeks ago had this story about resuming the practice of using prisoners as test subjects for drug research. The implicit and flawed moral reasoning draws from a notion of reduced rights, and the bogus suggestion that somehow the prisoners that agree to be tested would later be beneficiaries of the research. I disagree with these premises on two counts. First, punishment was meted at out sentencing, adding later punishment gussied up in the name of research is just that: additive. Pronounce the sentence once, and only once. Indeed, given that prison populations show a racial bias the slippery slope is overwhelmingly repugnant. Second, since when does anyone close at hand benefit when the balance of power is clearly favorable to one side? Absolute bullshit. This is not much different from corporations going into third world countries and paying a pittance for whatever resource is desired with the in time trickle down promise.
Will these same extremists start lining up at prisons to protest minimally tested medications foisted on prisoners? And, no, do not think that anyone in that situation really would be given free will to say no. Will they be able to see past their own hate and acknowledge that those same prisoners are human and according to their own reasoning of equal status to animals in medical research? I doubt it. They'll be too busy dreaming up their next act, because the black/white mentality goes quite far in its ability to rationalize and reinforce selective reasoning, in an of itself an axiomatic characterization of all extremist ideologies.
(snarking in this post as well) There's a lot of viciousness in this thread, oh wait, that's just a healthy dose of scientific skepticism from a well educated and street smart crowd who wouldn't be caught dead trying to assess games, much less speak before congress.
Maybe the NSF ought to instead rely on a select group of slashdotters to ensure scientific funding goes into the right hands! And screw peer review and congressional committees and Harvard!
So true - I mean look at Danica Patrick, in a sport that includes engineering, and how she's been shunned and marginalized because she's a woman.
. I wouldn't
mark this shunned and marginalized.
Whatever you're referring to, it is not stopping her. Two recent 4th place finishes, 2005 Rookie of the Year and Danica just signed on to a top team for the next season: http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory?id=2234056
1) At least one student will either be lazy or make repeated mistakes trying to get their submission into the correct format. Because you are the TA and have no power, students will complain to you and demand that you make a special exception for their code. You'll find yourself making multiple variations to handle all the ways people screwed up your basic turn in instructions.
2) Studying code from other people is yes time consuming, but very valuable for you as a student. You will see patterns of solutions emerge and you'll see first hand where people had problems, and where they are inefficient. This gives you excellent data to share with students during recitation. It's valuable for everyone to discuss the different ways the problem was attacked and you being in the position of seeing everyone's code can make thoughtful assessments of what were ultimately good and bad choices.
3) Spending time automating can turn into a black hole; better to just spend time automating a turn in procedure that sorts people's submissions into folders.
4) Why not put testing the code onto the student's shoulders? If you have the need for seeing output why not instead post a series of expected inputs and outputs and ask students to turn in results that document this. Yes, it is more work for them. But becoming careful about work and careful to check it before turning in is or should be a key goal in a programming course.
5) Too much automating can set you up for grief from the professor if several students privately go complain to him or her about your choice. If they perceive your methods are unfairly depriving them of points, even if it is not true, you'll get complaints and depending on the character of the prof, he or she may not defend your actions and choose to make you out as a bad TA.
6) Take care not to go against the prof, it would be advisable to directly ask what their opinion is - it is after all their class.
7) Studying the code, rather than pushing it through an automated checker, is a good way to see who might be cheating and unfairly copying code. It's also quite hysterical to see the lengths that some desperate people will go to hide this from you like changing variable names and being very fancy with comments, but logic is logic and after looking at code you'll see cheaters really easily. Unless it's a group assignment where this was allowed, cheating shouldn't be tolerated. Some TAs have automated searching for cheating in coding assignments - perhaps this might be a better use of your time.
Good luck and have fun with those late night emails begging for help 8 hours before the assignment is due...
Cape seasonal weather variations certainly have a degree of predictability. STS-71 had similar conditions to contend with: http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/sts-7 1/mission-sts-71.html
Because the entire program is so beleagured and under the microscope at this point, it's easy to overlook that hold-ups due to weather have occurred quite frequently. Another important factor is wind monitoring, typically done by balloons. Simulations are done at regular intervals with the up to the minute winds available data to determine potential adverse loads on the vehicle. This could possibly hold up a launch as well, completely aside from cloud cover or thunderstorm activity.
The post 2010 Space program would optimally take Cape weather and the possibility of higher hurricane frequency into account as a cost factor. Alternate launch locations may be advisable, despite the existing infrastructure built up at the Cape. Would there be any possibility of government and commercial concerns sharing responsibility and building up a different launch facility? The Richard Branson/Virgin spaceport comes to mind, http://www.spacedaily.com/news/tourism-05zt.html. Other sites in New Mexico and west Texas could be considered.
There are numerous examples of poor spelling and grammar on this site, particularly in posted comments. However, often when typos are pointed out they are fixed. Sure, a check could be done for spelling and yes, seeing duplicate threads can be annoying. If it is not such a big deal, why hasn't it been already incorporated?
In odd resonance, I recently emailed the editor of a local TV station website about a story posting. It was riddled with typos and had a couple of sentences that were not readable because of grammar errors. Not only were no corrections made, I've now noted that the site posts stories with the same problems almost daily. The Slashdot grammar errors in comparison I find more comical, especially because the milling crowd jumps on them almost immediately with varying degrees of either a joking response or viciousness.
Perhaps because the points system and karma rating on this site gives people a degree of feedback, and a measure of public shaming for bad or error-filled postings or comments, errors are responded to.
fizzix noted that the second typo was not part of his/her original story. This was a case of hasty typing and hasty posting. If enough people complain, then a few more checks might be incorporated in the future.
It was probably a quickly typed title; the other typo is in the spelling of the word inclement. This is not a question of courtesy or professionalism. Slashdot posts are not reviewed by an editor prior to submission, if they were the entire forum would take on a different, achingly slow and most likely much more boring tone.
I would venture a guess that daughter lied to the mother and indicated that the boy was a member of her school or something similar. Teenagers the world over are quite adept at modifying the truth either directly, or by omission of relevant facts. The daughter probably really didn't have any idea that this was a risky idea; her judgment, or lack thereof, is not inconsistent with her age.
Unfortunately this case is reminiscent of dating website stories. Talk to any veteran of find_your_soulmate_today.com and you'll hear multiple stories of how absolutely perfect everything seemed with match #92 until those small details of "i'm still angry at my parents, and oh yeah, I'm 48" or "yeah, it was just one felony and I got a bad judge." We evolved with social networks and we still need them. Boys and girls with exploding hormones are much more likely to keep it under control when there is some modicum of social connection.
Aside from the stupidity of the entire debacle is the base notion of requiring service providers of any stripe to perform nanny duties. I don't think we really want this do we? I don't think we really want providers of goods and services to raise their prices to cover setting up huge databases complete with incorrect activitiy monitoring. In a free market system we don't want companies to accept lower profits because of the implicit additional costs that such tracking and monitoring would incur. Consumer protection groups however have brought about safer cars, safer tools, better appliances. Hence I can't completely argue that MySpace should abstain from any responsibility. The question is where to draw the line.
Other sticky areas: people with pools can be sued if someone drowns after sneaking in, correct? Yet what about walking around a golf course and getting blinded by a stray ball? In this case it is the walker's fault to the best of my knowledge, and neither the golfer nor the course owner is liable. What about gun manufacturers? Accidental deaths happen routinely and we do not allow parents to sue gun companies for the deaths of their children.
MySpace should do more to seek out predators and kick them off, but a $30M lawsuit is not the way to bring this change. A nanny state degrades freedom, not to mention interfering with the natural laws of Darwin.
Labels and binary statements: you are seeking a reaction or feeling lazy?
I was employed by NOAA in the 80s to launch/monitor helium balloons carrying ozone measuring instruments. Not once in those years did any of the scientists at that location ever mention much about politics or care to align themselves with anyone on either side of the political spectrum. They were by and large a well-trained, intelligent and thoughtful group of geeks who would much rather argue about calibration errors or data comparisons from other instruments. They were not under assault by people uncomfortable with their findings. The process of science has not morphed into anything much different since then, only the reaction to it, which is looking quite brutal and unnecessarily extreme these days.
I don't think we want to tie tech career salaries so closely to something like the stock market which hinges on perception of value and investor emotion. Rather, how did lawyers and doctors build up their overpaid status? Have you or any of us ever worked with a lawyer or doctor and come away saying, "Wow, I sure received good value for my $6000"? I can possibly make the argument for specialists where only a few suppliers are available and the stakes are higher - say a brain or heart surgeon - I can't make the argument for any form of law interpreters though. There are many examples of professions earning salaries that don't seem commiserate with training, ability or value to society, for instance, how is it housing developers make millions producing cheap junk while holding hands with city politicians? You probably have four times the IQ of an average house developer, yet Joe Sunland Estates is driving the Lexus.
Let the immigrant IT workers jump through the same hoops the immigrant physical laborers do.
And also ensure that they get equally exploited, treated like shit and used as political pawns?
The H1B Visa program is not worth attacking here. $250K sounds like a well paid lawyer or doctor salary, engineers in the US have never earned this kind of money on average, even before H1B became a hot button topic.
--Toy Matinee, 1990
I move Your Rights Online be renamed Your Rights Dismantled.
And perhaps a new category could be created entitled Restoring Your Rights.
I said readers, not posters to this particular thread. There is a difference. Perhaps you really didn't understand this. However it certainly is pathetic to make comments about flying carpets, etc.
how can such a (presumably) well educated crowd as slashdot remain so fricking ignorant about the world?
The handful of posts you are referring to are hardly reflective all of slashdot readers. And further, possession of an education does not necessarily equate to good judgment and a reasonable assessment.
the indian space research organization is single-mindedly dedicated to the development of technology that benefits civilians
Actually, this ISRO/NASA agreement is a very interesting proposition. It will be a benefit to the entire world if ISRO becomes a major player in space exploration.
yes, i understand that americans who were born before the 90s can't see anything outside the cold-war prism
Hmm. A blatantly racist and ageist sounding statement. It may suit your anger to lump everyone together and assume ignorance, but this is an act of laziness and ignorance on your part. Quite a few of us pre 90s people are not in agreement with decisions our government has made. Policy is bought by special interests, not through wise decision making by fairly elected leaders.
It's easy to armchair quarterback NASA at this point, but it's probably safe to assume that there is overwhelming pressure to make the right decision and that the decision to postpone further tweaking has not been made lightly. Fundamentally this is coming down to pressure to get on with the show and determine if this risk is a showstopper or not. They've decided that they can take the risk, and in all likelihood it is just one of many risks that have probably kept both engineers and managers in overdrive discussion for months.
The overall context is the station: shuttle is essentially a bottleneck. If shuttles can't get back to multiple flights per year, then we've got a problem. Soyuz and the Russian space program have literally saved NASA's ass in the past couple of years getting supplies up. For reasons most likely political, ESA has not been part of a solution, which is unfortunate and a separate topic. So given an unreliable shuttle program depending heavily on Soyuz, the painful decision to stop station construction and maintenance needs to happen. This makes the July launch akin to a make or break demonstration. If there is a serious problem, or another disaster, then NASA really can't look Congress in the face and make an argument for the station. Personally I haven't been able to make an argument for the station at all and would love to see a bare bones report of any sci/tech knowledge we've truly gained. As a long term reader of several NASA news listservs I see way too many fluff stories that are self congratulatory ("aren't we special? little joey dreamed of the space program his whole life and now he does X for NASA, let's all give him an internet pat on the back"), and not nearly enough along the lines of interesting experimental results or technology developments.