Do people develop emotional dependence on Texeco gas and get all zealotous when somebody mentions Chevron?
No, because all gas is pretty much the same.
Does KMart have loyal customers who sneer at Target shoppers as "communist"?
No, Target shoppers are the bourgeoisie. You pay a lot more than KMart prices for the same crap in freaked-out colors.
Do HBO viewers stick to their "chosen" channel and deride Cinemax?
Skin is skin (see Texaco comment).
Yet bring up operating systems, web browsers, programming languages...anything at all related to computers
Unlike entertainment (where more is better), it really makes sense that there will be very few operating systems, word processors, etc. The cost of training and incompatibilites between similar packages will very likely result in one dominant package in each category. And that one package should not come from Redmond.
down to such trivial choices as text editors
Use a text editor for 6+ hours per day for 10+ years, and you will not think that it is such a trivial choice. Your choice of text editor will have more impact on your life than your choice of: car, toothpaste, spouse, or gasoline. And to make matters extremely clear, emacs sucks.
The continued use of the proprietary Microsoft formats benefit me
The dominance of Microsoft formats is the biggest reason that M$ Office costs $500 per seat. If there were one file format that could be read and written properly by all office suites, then OpenOffice (free) and StarOffice ($70/seat) could be evaluated on technical merits instead of being rejected as 'I might not be able to exchange files with the rest of the world'. Then you would see the price of M$ Office drop. Still lovin' those proprietary formats?
And yet if Japan was to release films claiming to be "Hollywood Films", music that was "New Orleans Jazz" or selling "Texas BBQ Steak Mix" there would be little question of them cynically ripping off an American idea just to make a quick buck...
No, it is more like some Japanese animators coming up with an American-looking strip and telling their readers: "We don't call this a manga, we call it a 'comic strip' because it is drawn in an American style, and that is the term that Americans use for their manga."
(One instance I can think of right now is the nose bleed as shorthand for someone being sexually aroused. Is your average American likely to know that?)
We do now (thanks). The American culture (yeah, pretend that there is one top-level culture for the whole country) is a bastardized mix of hundreds (at least) of cultures. Our national culture went from English-Protestant, to WASP, to WASP+Irish+German, to mostly-European, to anything-goes.
Look at our culture now vs the 1950's. How many white American families in the 1950's had *ever* gone to a Chinese restaurant?
{Insert rant here about how no 'Chinese' restaurant in America outside of New York and San Francisco actually serves real Chinese food. Rebut rant. Loop.}
We have some familiarity with Oriental: food, art, religion, philosophy, management techniques, history, etc. All of these things have re-shaped our culture, and there is no sign that our hunger for change is slowing down. Bring on the Manga.
Note that Catholics aren't Fundamentalists. The statements about children learning that they come from a lump of clay really only apply to fundies. If your children went to Catholic school, they were taught evolution.
The largest religion in America: Catholic. The second largest religion in America: ex-Catholic.
You're right. I guess when it comes to juicy quotes, the Internet giveth and the Internet taketh away. Regardless of whether it was Watt (nope), there are fundamentalist Christians who do believe this. Many of these people expect the Rapture within their lifetimes. That kind of belief doesn't encourage long-term planning.
What ID contests against evolution, is more focused around how life 'happened,' and not necessarily the process of evolution
No. Evolution has nothing to do with the creation of life. Evolution addresses how different species came into existence after life existed. Evolution has nothing to do with whether a spark hit primordial soup and life came into being, or God snapped His fingers and life came into being. If you think the debate centers around life happening when God snapped His fingers, then why do the ID'ers want to stop teaching Evolution? Thoses two 'theories' are not at all incompatible.
A lot of people have lost sight of that and seem to be trying to turn science into the new religion.
The problem is that some religious people are trying to turn science into a religion. They say "This is what I choose to believe, and it is my right to believe these things despite all evidence. And if a bunch of my friends also believe these things, then you are discriminating against our holy beliefs if you don't teach these things in science classes."
Science is about observing the natural world and drawing conclusions. There is not room in science for "because that's the way God wants it (bttwgwi)."
* new theory: There is no such thing as Gravity. The reason that we don't all fly off into space is bttwgwi.
* new theory: Viruses don't cause influenza. Some people feel like crap and then die bttwgwi.
* new theory: Airplanes don't fly because air moving over the top of the wing creates a low-pressure zone. They stay in the air bttwgwi.
* new theory: Light is neither a particle nor a wave. The reason that you can see things is bttwgwi.
Scientists can't (and don't want to) disprove the above statements, but the statements are not scientific. Science is a technique, not a goal. This technique may never be able to answer all (or any) of the "big questions". That's OK, science isn't about "that's where we want to be, now let's find some evidence that fits". There is no room in this technique for bttwgwi. Whether it is true or not, Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory.
Re:We can all breathe a bit easier
on
Chinese Eco-Cities
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Norwegians haven't yet figured-out that driving 20 tons of steel makes up for being 'under-endowed'. Besides, most Norwegians don't believe in an immanent Rapture where all of the good people will be moved bodily into heaven. Kind of makes pollution, Global Warming, and such seem irrelevant:
In 1981, President Reagan's first secretary of the interior, James Watt, told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. "God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back," Watt said in public testimony that helped get him fired.
Then NetFlix is for you. For $18/mo, you get three at a time, and max theoretical turnaround probably means ~24 movies per month. Even at a more likely 18 movies per month, that $1 per movie.
If I go to Canada and murder someone, the US will prosecute me for it
No, they won't. The US prosecutors will know that you were outside of their jurisdiction. What we will do is extradite you to Canada for prosecution. BTW, pertaining to jurisdiction: there is no US Federal Law against murder. Homicide is prosecuted by the states, under their own laws, and only within their jurisdictions.
Being in charge of a corporation doesn't make you exempt from doing the right thing,
Unfortunately, you are wrong. Being in charge of a corporation places a legal responsibility (USA-only?) on you to maximize shareholder value within the limits of the law. Note that this is not 'within the limits of your conscience'. The only way that a CEO is allowed to spend the extra 5% on 'cleaner air, privacy rights, rights of workers in sweatshops or what have you' is if he can say to the shareholders: 'Being seen to act in this manner will increase sales, reduce costs (incl. long-term costs), and/or give us free positive publicity.'
Shareholders have sued company officers for not placing profits first.
That sounds like an absolutely horrible billing system. To add a new product to your catalog of offerings, you have to change the table structure, and probably the code that uses that table. Ick! This problem has been solved thousands (millions?) of times, and most of those solutions are better (at least from a maintenance standpoint) than the one that you describe. And no, I am not an academic and haven't been for 12 years.
Even with the way that you describe the problem (as I understand your post), it would probably be better to use rows than columns so that you script could iterate through a result set in a FOR loop to build the page, and can iterate again to see if answers were entered. This is small, simple code that doesn't require you to know the format of the survey at the coding stage (like 100 field names!)
Aside from performance, look at maintainability. If you use rows instead of columns for your questions, you can add questions without having to change your table structure! You could even have multiple kinds of survey in the same tables, one survey with 8 true/false questions and one survey with 3 t/f plus 4 numeric, etc. Just have a survey_template_id field in the top-level table, next to the subject's name.
Slashdot Mirror
No, because all gas is pretty much the same.
Does KMart have loyal customers who sneer at Target shoppers as "communist"?
No, Target shoppers are the bourgeoisie. You pay a lot more than KMart prices for the same crap in freaked-out colors.
Do HBO viewers stick to their "chosen" channel and deride Cinemax?
Skin is skin (see Texaco comment).
Yet bring up operating systems, web browsers, programming languages...anything at all related to computers
Unlike entertainment (where more is better), it really makes sense that there will be very few operating systems, word processors, etc. The cost of training and incompatibilites between similar packages will very likely result in one dominant package in each category. And that one package should not come from Redmond.
down to such trivial choices as text editors
Use a text editor for 6+ hours per day for 10+ years, and you will not think that it is such a trivial choice. Your choice of text editor will have more impact on your life than your choice of: car, toothpaste, spouse, or gasoline. And to make matters extremely clear, emacs sucks.
The dominance of Microsoft formats is the biggest reason that M$ Office costs $500 per seat. If there were one file format that could be read and written properly by all office suites, then OpenOffice (free) and StarOffice ($70/seat) could be evaluated on technical merits instead of being rejected as 'I might not be able to exchange files with the rest of the world'. Then you would see the price of M$ Office drop. Still lovin' those proprietary formats?
'let slip the dogs of war'
No, it is more like some Japanese animators coming up with an American-looking strip and telling their readers: "We don't call this a manga, we call it a 'comic strip' because it is drawn in an American style, and that is the term that Americans use for their manga."
We do now (thanks). The American culture (yeah, pretend that there is one top-level culture for the whole country) is a bastardized mix of hundreds (at least) of cultures. Our national culture went from English-Protestant, to WASP, to WASP+Irish+German, to mostly-European, to anything-goes.
Look at our culture now vs the 1950's. How many white American families in the 1950's had *ever* gone to a Chinese restaurant?
{Insert rant here about how no 'Chinese' restaurant in America outside of New York and San Francisco actually serves real Chinese food. Rebut rant. Loop.}
We have some familiarity with Oriental: food, art, religion, philosophy, management techniques, history, etc. All of these things have re-shaped our culture, and there is no sign that our hunger for change is slowing down. Bring on the Manga.
C'mon, everybody knows that Bronze Age magic is the best magic. Bronze Age science on the other hand, wasn't so hot.
Klan? Sounded Klingon to me.
The largest religion in America: Catholic. The second largest religion in America: ex-Catholic.
The flaw that exists to be exploited is in people. The tool most often and visciously used to exploit that flaw has been religion.
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities" -Voltaire
You're right. I guess when it comes to juicy quotes, the Internet giveth and the Internet taketh away. Regardless of whether it was Watt (nope), there are fundamentalist Christians who do believe this. Many of these people expect the Rapture within their lifetimes. That kind of belief doesn't encourage long-term planning.
What, you recommend holding-off pirates with a screwdriver!?!
In case you don't know: you don't get positive karma from people modding your post 'Funny'.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." --Arthur C. Clarke
No. Evolution has nothing to do with the creation of life. Evolution addresses how different species came into existence after life existed. Evolution has nothing to do with whether a spark hit primordial soup and life came into being, or God snapped His fingers and life came into being. If you think the debate centers around life happening when God snapped His fingers, then why do the ID'ers want to stop teaching Evolution? Thoses two 'theories' are not at all incompatible.
The problem is that some religious people are trying to turn science into a religion. They say "This is what I choose to believe, and it is my right to believe these things despite all evidence. And if a bunch of my friends also believe these things, then you are discriminating against our holy beliefs if you don't teach these things in science classes."
Science is about observing the natural world and drawing conclusions. There is not room in science for "because that's the way God wants it (bttwgwi)."
* new theory: There is no such thing as Gravity. The reason that we don't all fly off into space is bttwgwi.
* new theory: Viruses don't cause influenza. Some people feel like crap and then die bttwgwi.
* new theory: Airplanes don't fly because air moving over the top of the wing creates a low-pressure zone. They stay in the air bttwgwi.
* new theory: Light is neither a particle nor a wave. The reason that you can see things is bttwgwi.
Scientists can't (and don't want to) disprove the above statements, but the statements are not scientific. Science is a technique, not a goal. This technique may never be able to answer all (or any) of the "big questions". That's OK, science isn't about "that's where we want to be, now let's find some evidence that fits". There is no room in this technique for bttwgwi. Whether it is true or not, Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory.
In 1981, President Reagan's first secretary of the interior, James Watt, told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. "God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back," Watt said in public testimony that helped get him fired.
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
I am pretty sure that NetFlix has a 2-at-a-time and even a 1-at-a-time plan which is much cheaper than their standard 3-at-a-time plan.
Then NetFlix is for you. For $18/mo, you get three at a time, and max theoretical turnaround probably means ~24 movies per month. Even at a more likely 18 movies per month, that $1 per movie.
No, they won't. The US prosecutors will know that you were outside of their jurisdiction. What we will do is extradite you to Canada for prosecution. BTW, pertaining to jurisdiction: there is no US Federal Law against murder. Homicide is prosecuted by the states, under their own laws, and only within their jurisdictions.
Unfortunately, you are wrong. Being in charge of a corporation places a legal responsibility (USA-only?) on you to maximize shareholder value within the limits of the law. Note that this is not 'within the limits of your conscience'. The only way that a CEO is allowed to spend the extra 5% on 'cleaner air, privacy rights, rights of workers in sweatshops or what have you' is if he can say to the shareholders: 'Being seen to act in this manner will increase sales, reduce costs (incl. long-term costs), and/or give us free positive publicity.'
Shareholders have sued company officers for not placing profits first.
That sounds like an absolutely horrible billing system. To add a new product to your catalog of offerings, you have to change the table structure, and probably the code that uses that table. Ick! This problem has been solved thousands (millions?) of times, and most of those solutions are better (at least from a maintenance standpoint) than the one that you describe. And no, I am not an academic and haven't been for 12 years.
Even with the way that you describe the problem (as I understand your post), it would probably be better to use rows than columns so that you script could iterate through a result set in a FOR loop to build the page, and can iterate again to see if answers were entered. This is small, simple code that doesn't require you to know the format of the survey at the coding stage (like 100 field names!)
Go ahead, violate First Normal Form.
Aside from performance, look at maintainability. If you use rows instead of columns for your questions, you can add questions without having to change your table structure! You could even have multiple kinds of survey in the same tables, one survey with 8 true/false questions and one survey with 3 t/f plus 4 numeric, etc. Just have a survey_template_id field in the top-level table, next to the subject's name.