...effectively the injury/death rate is mostly effected by poor decisions by the cyclist, not the car.
This is incorrect. In any study regarding bike-car collisions I have seen, the overwhelming majority of them are caused by motorist negligence. Take a look at this study by the City of Toronto based on police reports:
It shows something like @83% of bike-car collisions were caused by the motorist, not the cyclist. This basic finding has been replicated in many other cities as well. I can't find the link at the moment, but IIRC it was like 90%+ caused by motorists in NYC.
Re:It would be safer if cyclists followed traffic
on
How Safe Is Cycling?
·
· Score: 1
Motorists are more reckless and dangerous than cyclists.
In pretty much every study conducted on bike-car accidents, the majority of them have been caused by motorists breaking the law, not cyclists. In Toronto, it's something like ~83% of bike-car collisions were the fault of the motorist, not the cyclist. You can see that data here:
The basic results have been replicated in many other cities as well. IIRC in NYC it was even worse, with like 90%+ bike-car accidents being caused by motorists...
It was conducted by a single guy (who was both subject and researcher), who is an "anti-helmet" activist (seriously). It was a sample size of 1, and it didn't control for the behaviour of the cyclist himself, or any controls at all for that matter (obviously couldn't be double-blind!).
It's completely bogus. There's no way to tell if the difference in distance was caused by the behaviour of the driver or the behaviour of the cyclist.
Additionally, he used the shady "truncated axis" technique to visually exaggerate the difference between the distances observed in the two conditions. This might be ok if the data was significant and it was pointed out that this was being done to highlight the significant difference. However, while he claimed the difference was big, he never said it was significant and he didn't provide any statistical methodology or significance metrics (e.g. p values). If the differences were significant, then why would he have not said so and included the metrics? I don't know a single scientist that would omit that. This is the kind of thing I would have failed students for when I was grading papers in grad school. There is precisely *zero* reason to visually exaggerate differences on a graph, while simultaneously omitting statistical significance analyses, unless you are being deliberately deceptive.
Check out the following link for some better information and meta-analyses:
Actually, the majority of collisions between cars and bikes are because the motorist was not following the law, not the cyclist.
Here's some data from the City of Toronto pulled from police collision reports. Something like ~83% of bike-car collisions were found to be because of driver negligence:
The same basic findings have been replicated in many other cities (you can find the data online). IIRC it was even worse in NYC, with motorists being the cause of 90%+ bike-car collisions.
I mean they might be mostly graphite, but I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that there are more hydrocarbons in the asteroid belt than on the entire planet. Sadly, wikipedia is rather thin on the detail for C-Type asteroids.
Agreed. At the company I work for we are constantly looking for new developers, and it's not because we don't get enough people applying. We get swamped in resumes. There are tons of unemployed software developers out there.
Sadly, once we interview them, we realize why they are unemployed. Most of them are basically incompetent. Finding a developer with *real* talent amidst the hordes of people claiming to be developers is very challenging.
I mean he deserves to be as well known as they are. Here's a simple test: Ask a random non-scifi fan who Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke are. I'm willing to bet they can tell you (at least to the tune of: "scifi writer"). If you asked them who PKD was, I highly doubt they would have a clue.
Simply producing a volume of brilliant work doesn't mean you're going to get the recognition you deserve for it.
I was aware of him from reading about six of his novels in a little high school library on the other side of the planet some time before he wrote "Valis"
Anecdotal
Thus I really think "millions of copies sold worldwide" trumps your "unknown":)
First, I said "almost unknown" not "unknown". Second, prove it.
I cannot find any references to sales figures for PKD's books, but in his own words (from this interview):
...there is also the very real possibility that if I tried to do the cheapo novelization I would actually fail to do it, literally could not write a commercial novel that would be something that would sell millions of copies
That interview was done in 1981 (a year before he died), "The Man in the High Castle" was published in 1962 and it's one of his most popular and known books. If it had sold "millions of copies... worldwide", you think he might have known about it. Sure, there's a slim chance it has sold millions since then, but I can't find any evidence of that and we are talking about "while he was alive". It seems you are making things up.
Thus, I really think my "almost unknown" statement (adequately supported, I believe you will find, by PKD's wikipedia entry) and PKD's own words trump your anecdotes and made up figures.
For shame moderators, for shame. Modding me down for making a factual statement?
Seriously?
I can only surmise I was modded down for the sin of simply mentioning "communism", which the moderator obviously doesn't like.
The sad thing is, I never said I did either, but I'm guessing the moderator thought so and modded me down for it.
Ironically, I don't actually like communism, but it's a simple fact that communism is an economic system, whereas democracy is a system of government. They are not the same type of thing. And therefore not mutually exclusive.
It's sad to see the day when moderators down vote someone stating the truth for simply using a word they don't like.
I get mod points at least twice a week, and for this, I am going to dedicate my next 5 mod points to modding up any positive mention of communism I see, even though I don't like communism.
He was virtually unknown while alive, spent most of his life in poverty and even though Hollywood types have been making bank off his ideas since his death, the majority of non-scifi fans still don't know his name, where they do know the name of Asimov etc...
However, even if I did accept that he was wildly successful by your definition, it doesn't change the fact that he's not appreciated as much as he should be, given the quality of his writing.
She's under-appreciated as a sci-fi authour because she says she doesn't write sci-fi, even though that's what she's best at and the rest of her work is mediocre.
He was almost unknown while he was alive, I'd never heard of him until I was an adult, and the only reason most people know about him is because Hollywood has been mining his mind-nuggets post-mortem for decades.
I'm sure the Slashdot crowd appreciates him, but I'd still say he's under-appreciated because he deserves to be up there with the likes of Asimov, Wells and Verne.
I've never understood why there isn't a larger push for geothermal power plants in Hawaii.
They have the same basic availability and access to it as Iceland and according to Wiki, Iceland gets 66% of its total energy, and 30% of its electricity supply from geothermal.
It doesn't make any sense (rational or economical) for Hawaii to get its energy from burning fossil fuels when they are literally sitting on an massive untapped energy source.
I don't think I know anyone who programs for fun, and I've worked in the software industry for over a decade
Sorry, but you probably should not be employed in the software industry. Sadly, it also seems you've spent your entire career working with mediocre programmers.
I've worked as a software developer for 15+ years, and over that time I've been project leader for a number of large software projects - and responsible for hiring new programmers.
From my experience in hiring developers over that time, I've found the single most effective question for weeding out the poor programmers from the good ones is:
What do you code for fun?
This is generally followed up by "Ok, show me some of your code (that you code for fun), and explain what it does."
Early in my career, I thought of this interview question as more of a fluff, "get to know you" question, but it invariably turned out that every crappy programmer we hired didn't code anything for fun, while, without fail, all the really amazing "super-star" programmers we hired *DID* program for fun. So now it's my goto question - I simply will not hire anyone if they can't show me *something* they've programmed for fun. I don't care what it is - a flash game or a database for identifying fungi - as long as they did it for enjoyment.
I think this question works because programming is a creative endeavour, and if you've never had the burning desire to "make a computer do X" or never had the thought "I wonder if I could make a computer do Y?" persist until you tried it - then you will never be a great programmer.
I wouldn't hire someone to produce a work of art if all the art they ever created was commissioned and they'd never created art out of inspiration, burning desire or sheer enjoyment. That would be silly. In my experience, the same holds for software developers.
All this is not to say those who don't code for fun are incompetent, I've met plenty of competent, capable programmers who don't code for fun. However, I've never met a stellar, high-achieving programmer that didn't, and none of the incompetent programmers I've met did.
I've been doing web development for over 15 years, and from my experience, the answer depends on what it is you are building.
WYSIWYG editors (dreamweaver etc...) are good for churning out simple, targeted, cookie cutter sites (e.g. online catalogs, blogs, forums etc...). You can do them fast and quickly. They are good at building straight forward templated designs. WYSIWYG editors are great at abstraction and getting things up quickly, so if you don't care about how it works "underneath" and just need to bootstrap something in a hurry, they'll do just fine. Where these tools fail is in flexibility and maintenance. If you want to target more than one or two browser variants and meet CSS, usability or accessibility standards - it's going to be a hindrance rather than a help to use a WYSIWYG editor. Code produced by these tools is always a nightmare to maintain, it's usually a garbled mess and littered with unnecessary junk. WYSIWYG editors are great if you "go with the grain" and do everything the way the tool is designed to do it, but the minute you need step "outside the box" and do something even just a little different than the way the tool expects it to be - you are in for a world of headaches and unnecessary work.
If what you are building is anything like a large complex site or a real web application, or if you are breaking ground on something new that hasn't been done before, then handcoding is definitely the way to go. Notepad++ is a fine workhorse for such a situation, with all the available plugins it can rival some of the best IDEs out there. If you want to learn more about the underlying bits and pieces, then handcoding is the way to go, there's no better way to learn. If you are working on new and innovative ideas, you really do not want to be hamstrung by using someone else's idea of how things are supposed to work.
Slashdot Mirror
...effectively the injury/death rate is mostly effected by poor decisions by the cyclist, not the car.
This is incorrect. In any study regarding bike-car collisions I have seen, the overwhelming majority of them are caused by motorist negligence. Take a look at this study by the City of Toronto based on police reports:
http://www.toronto.ca/transportation/publications/bicycle_motor-vehicle/
It shows something like @83% of bike-car collisions were caused by the motorist, not the cyclist. This basic finding has been replicated in many other cities as well. I can't find the link at the moment, but IIRC it was like 90%+ caused by motorists in NYC.
Motorists are more reckless and dangerous than cyclists.
In pretty much every study conducted on bike-car accidents, the majority of them have been caused by motorists breaking the law, not cyclists. In Toronto, it's something like ~83% of bike-car collisions were the fault of the motorist, not the cyclist. You can see that data here:
http://www.toronto.ca/transportation/publications/bicycle_motor-vehicle/
The basic results have been replicated in many other cities as well. IIRC in NYC it was even worse, with like 90%+ bike-car accidents being caused by motorists...
That's actually a myth:
https://sites.google.com/site/bicyclehelmetmythsandfacts/
You're talking about this study by Ian Walker:
http://drianwalker.com/overtaking/overtakingprobrief.pdf
The problem is that it was horribly flawed.
It was conducted by a single guy (who was both subject and researcher), who is an "anti-helmet" activist (seriously). It was a sample size of 1, and it didn't control for the behaviour of the cyclist himself, or any controls at all for that matter (obviously couldn't be double-blind!).
It's completely bogus. There's no way to tell if the difference in distance was caused by the behaviour of the driver or the behaviour of the cyclist.
Additionally, he used the shady "truncated axis" technique to visually exaggerate the difference between the distances observed in the two conditions. This might be ok if the data was significant and it was pointed out that this was being done to highlight the significant difference. However, while he claimed the difference was big, he never said it was significant and he didn't provide any statistical methodology or significance metrics (e.g. p values). If the differences were significant, then why would he have not said so and included the metrics? I don't know a single scientist that would omit that. This is the kind of thing I would have failed students for when I was grading papers in grad school. There is precisely *zero* reason to visually exaggerate differences on a graph, while simultaneously omitting statistical significance analyses, unless you are being deliberately deceptive.
Check out the following link for some better information and meta-analyses:
https://sites.google.com/site/bicyclehelmetmythsandfacts/
Actually, the majority of collisions between cars and bikes are because the motorist was not following the law, not the cyclist.
Here's some data from the City of Toronto pulled from police collision reports. Something like ~83% of bike-car collisions were found to be because of driver negligence:
http://www.toronto.ca/transportation/publications/bicycle_motor-vehicle/
The same basic findings have been replicated in many other cities (you can find the data online). IIRC it was even worse in NYC, with motorists being the cause of 90%+ bike-car collisions.
Are you sure?
I mean they might be mostly graphite, but I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that there are more hydrocarbons in the asteroid belt than on the entire planet. Sadly, wikipedia is rather thin on the detail for C-Type asteroids.
My question is why are they focusing on M-Type instead of C-Type asteroids?
Sure metal is a useful building material, but the world's energy demand is far outstripping the supply.
Bringing back a couple of carbonaceous asteroids would very likely satisfy most of our global energy requirements for the foreseeable future.
Agreed. At the company I work for we are constantly looking for new developers, and it's not because we don't get enough people applying. We get swamped in resumes. There are tons of unemployed software developers out there.
Sadly, once we interview them, we realize why they are unemployed. Most of them are basically incompetent. Finding a developer with *real* talent amidst the hordes of people claiming to be developers is very challenging.
I second this. This is the crucial point.
Would mod you up if I had any points...
What do you mean "deserves to be" he already is
I mean he deserves to be as well known as they are. Here's a simple test: Ask a random non-scifi fan who Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke are. I'm willing to bet they can tell you (at least to the tune of: "scifi writer"). If you asked them who PKD was, I highly doubt they would have a clue.
Simply producing a volume of brilliant work doesn't mean you're going to get the recognition you deserve for it.
I was aware of him from reading about six of his novels in a little high school library on the other side of the planet some time before he wrote "Valis"
Anecdotal
Thus I really think "millions of copies sold worldwide" trumps your "unknown" :)
First, I said "almost unknown" not "unknown". Second, prove it.
I cannot find any references to sales figures for PKD's books, but in his own words (from this interview):
That interview was done in 1981 (a year before he died), "The Man in the High Castle" was published in 1962 and it's one of his most popular and known books. If it had sold "millions of copies ... worldwide", you think he might have known about it. Sure, there's a slim chance it has sold millions since then, but I can't find any evidence of that and we are talking about "while he was alive". It seems you are making things up.
Thus, I really think my "almost unknown" statement (adequately supported, I believe you will find, by PKD's wikipedia entry) and PKD's own words trump your anecdotes and made up figures.
maybe when alive
Yes
long before Blade Runner was filmed
False
His name has been in pretty wide circulation for three decades
2012 - 30 (three decades) = 1982
Release date of "Blade Runner" = 25 June 1982
Three decades ago (1982) is precisely when Blade Runner was released, it is most definitely NOT "long before Blade Runner was filmed"
For shame moderators, for shame. Modding me down for making a factual statement?
Seriously?
I can only surmise I was modded down for the sin of simply mentioning "communism", which the moderator obviously doesn't like.
The sad thing is, I never said I did either, but I'm guessing the moderator thought so and modded me down for it.
Ironically, I don't actually like communism, but it's a simple fact that communism is an economic system, whereas democracy is a system of government. They are not the same type of thing. And therefore not mutually exclusive.
It's sad to see the day when moderators down vote someone stating the truth for simply using a word they don't like.
I get mod points at least twice a week, and for this, I am going to dedicate my next 5 mod points to modding up any positive mention of communism I see, even though I don't like communism.
Ooh! Wish I could mod this up!
One of my pet peeves is people that claim communism and democracy are mutually exclusive. They're not, for the same reasons you just gave.
Under != Not
He was virtually unknown while alive, spent most of his life in poverty and even though Hollywood types have been making bank off his ideas since his death, the majority of non-scifi fans still don't know his name, where they do know the name of Asimov etc...
However, even if I did accept that he was wildly successful by your definition, it doesn't change the fact that he's not appreciated as much as he should be, given the quality of his writing.
Thus, he is still very much under-appreciated.
One is sentient, the other is pretty decidedly not sentient.
"Sentient" just means the ability to have sensations. Chickens are most definitely sentient. I believe you likely meant "self-aware".
You mean since Blade Runner came out.
She's under-appreciated as a sci-fi authour because she says she doesn't write sci-fi, even though that's what she's best at and the rest of her work is mediocre.
He was almost unknown while he was alive, I'd never heard of him until I was an adult, and the only reason most people know about him is because Hollywood has been mining his mind-nuggets post-mortem for decades.
I'm sure the Slashdot crowd appreciates him, but I'd still say he's under-appreciated because he deserves to be up there with the likes of Asimov, Wells and Verne.
I've never understood why there isn't a larger push for geothermal power plants in Hawaii.
They have the same basic availability and access to it as Iceland and according to Wiki, Iceland gets 66% of its total energy, and 30% of its electricity supply from geothermal.
It doesn't make any sense (rational or economical) for Hawaii to get its energy from burning fossil fuels when they are literally sitting on an massive untapped energy source.
And which wars would those be, exactly?
I don't think I know anyone who programs for fun, and I've worked in the software industry for over a decade
Sorry, but you probably should not be employed in the software industry. Sadly, it also seems you've spent your entire career working with mediocre programmers.
I've worked as a software developer for 15+ years, and over that time I've been project leader for a number of large software projects - and responsible for hiring new programmers.
From my experience in hiring developers over that time, I've found the single most effective question for weeding out the poor programmers from the good ones is:
What do you code for fun?
This is generally followed up by "Ok, show me some of your code (that you code for fun), and explain what it does."
Early in my career, I thought of this interview question as more of a fluff, "get to know you" question, but it invariably turned out that every crappy programmer we hired didn't code anything for fun, while, without fail, all the really amazing "super-star" programmers we hired *DID* program for fun. So now it's my goto question - I simply will not hire anyone if they can't show me *something* they've programmed for fun. I don't care what it is - a flash game or a database for identifying fungi - as long as they did it for enjoyment.
I think this question works because programming is a creative endeavour, and if you've never had the burning desire to "make a computer do X" or never had the thought "I wonder if I could make a computer do Y?" persist until you tried it - then you will never be a great programmer.
I wouldn't hire someone to produce a work of art if all the art they ever created was commissioned and they'd never created art out of inspiration, burning desire or sheer enjoyment. That would be silly. In my experience, the same holds for software developers.
All this is not to say those who don't code for fun are incompetent, I've met plenty of competent, capable programmers who don't code for fun. However, I've never met a stellar, high-achieving programmer that didn't, and none of the incompetent programmers I've met did.
I've been doing web development for over 15 years, and from my experience, the answer depends on what it is you are building.
WYSIWYG editors (dreamweaver etc...) are good for churning out simple, targeted, cookie cutter sites (e.g. online catalogs, blogs, forums etc...). You can do them fast and quickly. They are good at building straight forward templated designs. WYSIWYG editors are great at abstraction and getting things up quickly, so if you don't care about how it works "underneath" and just need to bootstrap something in a hurry, they'll do just fine. Where these tools fail is in flexibility and maintenance. If you want to target more than one or two browser variants and meet CSS, usability or accessibility standards - it's going to be a hindrance rather than a help to use a WYSIWYG editor. Code produced by these tools is always a nightmare to maintain, it's usually a garbled mess and littered with unnecessary junk. WYSIWYG editors are great if you "go with the grain" and do everything the way the tool is designed to do it, but the minute you need step "outside the box" and do something even just a little different than the way the tool expects it to be - you are in for a world of headaches and unnecessary work.
If what you are building is anything like a large complex site or a real web application, or if you are breaking ground on something new that hasn't been done before, then handcoding is definitely the way to go. Notepad++ is a fine workhorse for such a situation, with all the available plugins it can rival some of the best IDEs out there. If you want to learn more about the underlying bits and pieces, then handcoding is the way to go, there's no better way to learn. If you are working on new and innovative ideas, you really do not want to be hamstrung by using someone else's idea of how things are supposed to work.
In short:
Use WYSIWYG for
Use handcoding for
If you read this article (see page 2), it's clear that his medical condition is nothing more than the removal of his wearable computer:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/14/technology/at-airport-gate-a-cyborg-unplugged.html
I bet his doctor is even the same guy named in the article.