If they are faking it, I have a tendancy to keep drilling on the topic so that it soon becomes painfully obvious that even they realize that they are faking it and we all know it. Its a great way to make sure that the guy does not expect to actually get the job
See, I have a problem with this approach. Instead of wasting everybody's time, why not just tell them frankly that they don't stand a chance and just move on? I once went to a job interview where the newspaper add had absolutely nothing to do with the actual job requirements. About 5 minutes into the interview it was obvious that I was not meant for that job, but they insisted on torturing me for 3 hours anyway. What's the f***ing point!
No. The difference is that Slovakia is a former communist state. Here in Poland nodody ever made a fuss about having to register your address with the government to get an ID card in order to do anything, because it was that way for a long time. People have to finally learn that this is an artifact from past totalitarian governments, and that it is not normal!
The problem with the "orbiting a star directly" criterion is that one could argue that any planet with moons is not orbiting the star directly, because the planet wobbles from the gravitational pull of the moon. If the moon were large enough the system could be called a binary planet system. That's why the definition of planet must also take into account twin planets orbiting each other.
The ecliptic criterion is an arbitrary human-centric idea, IMHO.
I don't understand why this is a problem. We don't complain that there are too many chemical elements or animal species, yet too many planets is somehow a bad thing. Astronomers don't have a problem with Jupiter having dozens of moons, but the Sun can only have a handful of planets. Yeah, the world is much more complicated than we previously thought. It happened many times in the history of science. Just live with it!
I agree with the other guy. The angle to the ecliptic shouldn't matter. I think we don't know enough to define "planet". What if other stars have different kinds of planets that we don't even know of. Until we learn more about extrasolar planets I think a good working definition could be something like "approximately round shaped body, diameter at least 1000 km, orbiting a star". Yes, that would include Pluto, Xena, and a bunch of others. We can have a very broad definition first and then refine it with terms such as "minor", "terrestrial", "giant", and so forth. Frankly who cares if textbooks have to be changed? Kids in school should learn that there are some minor planets out there even if they don't learn them all.
I think you missed the point. I always wonder why people try to rationalize religion and point out contradictions. There can be no logical contradiction in something that is inherently not logical. There can also be no contradiction between science and religion because they belong to different domains.
The point of religion is to make sense of everything that we are not able to make sense of rationally. In the past, this included many things such as the sun and the winds and all sorts of other "miracles". Now, science has explained a lot of this stuff, but there is no way it can answer the essential question - why? Science can explain, or attempt to explain, how everything works, but it can never give a satisfactory answer to the "why" question. Any argument you may suggest comes down to either "because that's the way it is" or "why not".
This brings forth some interesting questions. Why do you exist? What gives meaning to your life? You are free to believe that your whole existence is just an illusion created by neurons in your brain and that with the moment of your death your sentient self ceases to exist. You can believe that you exist only to satisfy your needs and procreate the next generation. However, others may find it more comforting to believe that life has a deeper meaning. Do you believe in free will? If you are just made of molecules that interact with each other and with their environment, then everything you do should be completely predictable by the laws of science. But the laws of science are ultimately non-deterministic. You can believe that everything you do is just a product of zillions of completely random events. But other people may feel that this view leaves them rather empty and are more complelled to believe that their existence is guided by free will. Yes, this is faith, but faith is the only possible way to answer the "why" question.
Now, of course, lots of people take religion too literally and misinterpret it. Christians, Muslims, and Jews kill each other when in fact they believe in the same God. Creationists blame scientists when in fact science is quite compatible with religion. But the truth is that most people do not belong to the extremes. I still think that most reasonable and well-balanced people accept the philosophical principles behind science and at the same time do have some sort of faith, which they take with a grain of salt.
Terms like "fast", "slow", or "big" are comparative. They don't mean anything without having a point of reference to compare to. Okay, so everything is slow compared to light, but just saying "light is slow" doesn't mean anything. Compared to speeds of everyday experience light is pretty damn fast. Protons can be considered huge or tiny depending on what you compare them to. Stars can also be considered huge or tiny.
But as far as science is concerned whatever may be beyond our universe is irrelevant because we have no way of observing it. It's exactly like the falling tree in a forest question.
You're not being pedantic. It could be that many people are slightly below average and a few are significantly above (kind of like a pyramid). In the extreme case everyone except one person could be below (or above) the average.
Well, you make a good point about bad drivers. I've driven in Canada and the USA, and I agree that you can drive safely faster than the speed limit in many places. But your bad car argument is wrong.
Has anyone here driven the roads in eastern Europe, more exactly Poland? Over here almost all roads are small back country roads with one lane going each way. That used to be okay in communist times when almost no one had a car. But in the last 15 years new cars started proliferating, not to mention that all the heavy trucks also have to take those roads. More cars on those small roads means that when some farmer gets in your way with his tractor going at 20 Km/h on the only road between Warsaw and Gdansk and theres a whole line of cars behind you you're going to try to pass him. But there's a bunch of cars going the other way at the same time. The result is that people go zig-zag from lane to lane interleaving other cars passing the other way. It's an absolute nightmare. Add to this the Poles' infamous propensity for alcohol and the fact that many people drive over 150 Km/h, some even faster, and you can imagine what kind of accident rate we have.
BTW, many of those accidents are brand new cars. Bad cars are certainly not the problem. Bad drivers, bad roads, bad road conditions, but especially bad driving habits are the problem.
But the devil is in the details. Most bugs are like that. If someone can't spot a bug in a one line program how are they supposed to spot the real bugs in larger programs?
The problem is that if governments cannot make extraterrestrial land claims then who's jurisdiction is it? Theoretically, a private company could build a colony on the moon and sell homes to individuals. The individuals could go live there and no government could do anything about it. Would such private colonies become self-governed entities? Granted, it's not likely to happen any time soon.
But I think the main reason why governments currently do not want to make extraterrestrial claims is that no government has the means to assert its authority over the claimed land. Think about it. No government has the means to protect its citizens or prevent them from commiting crimes while they are outside the Earth. It's as if there was no government at all. There are also other problems. Suppose that the USA claimed the Moon. For now it's just a theoretical claim, but suppose that in the future several countries start sending their own crews there. Would such "invasion" constitute a declaration of war? Is it really a threat to the USA? Would it be a threat if there were US citizens on the Moon? Governments perfer to avoid such issues until they become of practical importance, which is not yet the case. That doesn't mean it will always remain like this of course.
gravitational waves (i think) hit us in the higher order quadrupole mode, which instead of "up and down" is more like "in and out". or taking a circle and squishing it along one axis, and then the other.
2000 feet tubes...up and down...in and out... damn why do things always have to be dumbed down that way?
Re:Watch a little more closely ...
on
Deep in the Core
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· Score: 1
Look, by posting enormous messages like this you just force me to take quotes out of context. I don't care for taking your entire post apart. I'll just comment on one thing.
We used a strong military deterrence, making it very clear that any action on their part to push that brutal regime any farther out into the world would be met with overwhelming force. They got that message long enough for their regime to cumble from within.
[sigh!] Typical US-centric thinking. I happen to live in the country that the pope came from. When I used his words I was refering to the "crumble from within" part, not the "military deterrence" part. People over here had shovels and forks, while the other guys had machine guns and tanks. Violence would have only caused a bloody massacre. Never did the the pope encourage any kind of violence to overthrow the regime. He only taught people to have hope and stand together instead, and not fear the regime because the regime's power was based on fear. He drove them mad because his words were more powerful than their tanks. Eventually, history proved him right. The regime was not defeated through violence, but through peaceful resistance and unity.
Re:Watch a little more closely ...
on
Deep in the Core
·
· Score: 1
I've taken the liberty to take just this passage from your very long post as it sums it up pretty well.
Pacificism in the face of that demonstrated lunacy is (beyond being cowardly) nothing more than encouraging more of the same.
I don't feel like having a long argument about this because I don't feel it will make much of a difference anyway. However, I don't understand why you think pacifism is cowardly. Pope John Paul II once said that if we use hate to fight communists then they will come back, only under a different name. Hate entails hate. Only peace can get you out of that vicious cycle. The communists eventually lost, and he was right.
You should really read some of the late pope's teachings. It makes some very interesting reading.
Re:Watch a little more closely ...
on
Deep in the Core
·
· Score: 1
If you put a gun to his head you've just proven that you've got no arguments. If you were smart you would convince him with words instead.
Slashdot Mirror
shutdown -a
Can I have an algorithmic manager? I wouldn't tell the difference.
If they are faking it, I have a tendancy to keep drilling on the topic so that it soon becomes painfully obvious that even they realize that they are faking it and we all know it. Its a great way to make sure that the guy does not expect to actually get the job
See, I have a problem with this approach. Instead of wasting everybody's time, why not just tell them frankly that they don't stand a chance and just move on? I once went to a job interview where the newspaper add had absolutely nothing to do with the actual job requirements. About 5 minutes into the interview it was obvious that I was not meant for that job, but they insisted on torturing me for 3 hours anyway. What's the f***ing point!
No. The difference is that Slovakia is a former communist state. Here in Poland nodody ever made a fuss about having to register your address with the government to get an ID card in order to do anything, because it was that way for a long time. People have to finally learn that this is an artifact from past totalitarian governments, and that it is not normal!
That reminds me of another one. :)
It's not like you need to stop it completely from orbiting the Sun. Just break a little and let it spiral down.
The problem with the "orbiting a star directly" criterion is that one could argue that any planet with moons is not orbiting the star directly, because the planet wobbles from the gravitational pull of the moon. If the moon were large enough the system could be called a binary planet system. That's why the definition of planet must also take into account twin planets orbiting each other.
The ecliptic criterion is an arbitrary human-centric idea, IMHO.
I don't understand why this is a problem. We don't complain that there are too many chemical elements or animal species, yet too many planets is somehow a bad thing. Astronomers don't have a problem with Jupiter having dozens of moons, but the Sun can only have a handful of planets. Yeah, the world is much more complicated than we previously thought. It happened many times in the history of science. Just live with it!
I agree with the other guy. The angle to the ecliptic shouldn't matter. I think we don't know enough to define "planet". What if other stars have different kinds of planets that we don't even know of. Until we learn more about extrasolar planets I think a good working definition could be something like "approximately round shaped body, diameter at least 1000 km, orbiting a star". Yes, that would include Pluto, Xena, and a bunch of others. We can have a very broad definition first and then refine it with terms such as "minor", "terrestrial", "giant", and so forth. Frankly who cares if textbooks have to be changed? Kids in school should learn that there are some minor planets out there even if they don't learn them all.
I think you missed the point. I always wonder why people try to rationalize religion and point out contradictions. There can be no logical contradiction in something that is inherently not logical. There can also be no contradiction between science and religion because they belong to different domains.
The point of religion is to make sense of everything that we are not able to make sense of rationally. In the past, this included many things such as the sun and the winds and all sorts of other "miracles". Now, science has explained a lot of this stuff, but there is no way it can answer the essential question - why? Science can explain, or attempt to explain, how everything works, but it can never give a satisfactory answer to the "why" question. Any argument you may suggest comes down to either "because that's the way it is" or "why not".
This brings forth some interesting questions. Why do you exist? What gives meaning to your life? You are free to believe that your whole existence is just an illusion created by neurons in your brain and that with the moment of your death your sentient self ceases to exist. You can believe that you exist only to satisfy your needs and procreate the next generation. However, others may find it more comforting to believe that life has a deeper meaning. Do you believe in free will? If you are just made of molecules that interact with each other and with their environment, then everything you do should be completely predictable by the laws of science. But the laws of science are ultimately non-deterministic. You can believe that everything you do is just a product of zillions of completely random events. But other people may feel that this view leaves them rather empty and are more complelled to believe that their existence is guided by free will. Yes, this is faith, but faith is the only possible way to answer the "why" question.
Now, of course, lots of people take religion too literally and misinterpret it. Christians, Muslims, and Jews kill each other when in fact they believe in the same God. Creationists blame scientists when in fact science is quite compatible with religion. But the truth is that most people do not belong to the extremes. I still think that most reasonable and well-balanced people accept the philosophical principles behind science and at the same time do have some sort of faith, which they take with a grain of salt.
...we cannot define reality
Well, science defines reality as the set of observables. That's why the post I originally replied to is pure methaphysics.
Obviously the recording device counts as "someone listening". The point is whether something that cannot be observed in any way exists at all.
Terms like "fast", "slow", or "big" are comparative. They don't mean anything without having a point of reference to compare to. Okay, so everything is slow compared to light, but just saying "light is slow" doesn't mean anything. Compared to speeds of everyday experience light is pretty damn fast. Protons can be considered huge or tiny depending on what you compare them to. Stars can also be considered huge or tiny.
But as far as science is concerned whatever may be beyond our universe is irrelevant because we have no way of observing it. It's exactly like the falling tree in a forest question.
Steve Ballmer is going to be throwing chairs again...
You're not being pedantic. It could be that many people are slightly below average and a few are significantly above (kind of like a pyramid). In the extreme case everyone except one person could be below (or above) the average.
Well, you make a good point about bad drivers. I've driven in Canada and the USA, and I agree that you can drive safely faster than the speed limit in many places. But your bad car argument is wrong.
Has anyone here driven the roads in eastern Europe, more exactly Poland? Over here almost all roads are small back country roads with one lane going each way. That used to be okay in communist times when almost no one had a car. But in the last 15 years new cars started proliferating, not to mention that all the heavy trucks also have to take those roads. More cars on those small roads means that when some farmer gets in your way with his tractor going at 20 Km/h on the only road between Warsaw and Gdansk and theres a whole line of cars behind you you're going to try to pass him. But there's a bunch of cars going the other way at the same time. The result is that people go zig-zag from lane to lane interleaving other cars passing the other way. It's an absolute nightmare. Add to this the Poles' infamous propensity for alcohol and the fact that many people drive over 150 Km/h, some even faster, and you can imagine what kind of accident rate we have.
BTW, many of those accidents are brand new cars. Bad cars are certainly not the problem. Bad drivers, bad roads, bad road conditions, but especially bad driving habits are the problem.
But the devil is in the details. Most bugs are like that. If someone can't spot a bug in a one line program how are they supposed to spot the real bugs in larger programs?
The problem is that if governments cannot make extraterrestrial land claims then who's jurisdiction is it? Theoretically, a private company could build a colony on the moon and sell homes to individuals. The individuals could go live there and no government could do anything about it. Would such private colonies become self-governed entities? Granted, it's not likely to happen any time soon.
But I think the main reason why governments currently do not want to make extraterrestrial claims is that no government has the means to assert its authority over the claimed land. Think about it. No government has the means to protect its citizens or prevent them from commiting crimes while they are outside the Earth. It's as if there was no government at all. There are also other problems. Suppose that the USA claimed the Moon. For now it's just a theoretical claim, but suppose that in the future several countries start sending their own crews there. Would such "invasion" constitute a declaration of war? Is it really a threat to the USA? Would it be a threat if there were US citizens on the Moon? Governments perfer to avoid such issues until they become of practical importance, which is not yet the case. That doesn't mean it will always remain like this of course.
Nuclear fission remains highly risky because there is no large scale long-term waste disposal available.
There is. It's called space and already contains loads of nuclear waste.
gravitational waves (i think) hit us in the higher order quadrupole mode, which instead of "up and down" is more like "in and out". or taking a circle and squishing it along one axis, and then the other.
2000 feet tubes...up and down...in and out... damn why do things always have to be dumbed down that way?
Look, by posting enormous messages like this you just force me to take quotes out of context. I don't care for taking your entire post apart. I'll just comment on one thing.
We used a strong military deterrence, making it very clear that any action on their part to push that brutal regime any farther out into the world would be met with overwhelming force. They got that message long enough for their regime to cumble from within.
[sigh!] Typical US-centric thinking. I happen to live in the country that the pope came from. When I used his words I was refering to the "crumble from within" part, not the "military deterrence" part. People over here had shovels and forks, while the other guys had machine guns and tanks. Violence would have only caused a bloody massacre. Never did the the pope encourage any kind of violence to overthrow the regime. He only taught people to have hope and stand together instead, and not fear the regime because the regime's power was based on fear. He drove them mad because his words were more powerful than their tanks. Eventually, history proved him right. The regime was not defeated through violence, but through peaceful resistance and unity.
I've taken the liberty to take just this passage from your very long post as it sums it up pretty well.
Pacificism in the face of that demonstrated lunacy is (beyond being cowardly) nothing more than encouraging more of the same.
I don't feel like having a long argument about this because I don't feel it will make much of a difference anyway. However, I don't understand why you think pacifism is cowardly. Pope John Paul II once said that if we use hate to fight communists then they will come back, only under a different name. Hate entails hate. Only peace can get you out of that vicious cycle. The communists eventually lost, and he was right.
You should really read some of the late pope's teachings. It makes some very interesting reading.
If you put a gun to his head you've just proven that you've got no arguments. If you were smart you would convince him with words instead.
Notice the ;)