While I no doubt disagree with Dunbar on just about...everything...the Guardian article is somewhat of a hit piece. For instance, consider this quote:
Several changes include sidelining Thomas Jefferson, who favoured separation of church and state, while introducing a new focus on the "significant contributions" of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the civil war.
This makes it sound as if Jefferson was removed from the U.S. History curriculum in favor of the confederates. Jefferson was, in fact, removed from the "World History" curriculum, on the basis that his contributions were minor (on the world stage) compared ot the other Enlightment philosophers on which his views were based. This, presumably, is why Calvin was added. While he wasn't the only reformer by far, he's sort of the poster boy for the protestant reformation, which was a pretty big event in "World History". What's truly bizarre about that modification is that it throws Aquinas, Calvin and Blackstone in with all the Enlightenment guys. You can read the actual word-for-word change here.
This quote:
The new curriculum asserts that "the right to keep and bear arms" is an important element of a democratic society.
...is also fairly disingenuous. The board essentially voted to include a discussion fo the right to bear arms in a portion of the curriculum dealing with free expression and first amendment rights.
I would probably oppose almost all of the changes that were made, and I fully agree they were made with idealogical motivations, but I'd also say the Guardian has exagerrated how "crazy" the changes really are.
Some of these you'd think would be common sense, but they bear mentioning nevertheless:
1. Exhibit good hygiene. Shower at least every other day; wear deoderant; wash any clothes that directly touch your skin between wearings. Body odor does not make a good impression.
2. Dress professionally. This doesn't mean "dress up". For many environments shorts and a t-shirt is fine. If you work in such an environment, don't wear t-shirts with unprofessional logos or slogans, or that are falling apart. A good idea is to err on the side of caution during your first week or so, then adjust your casualness to whatever climate you observe.
3. Show up on time and work a full day. "On time" is usually flexible for software jobs, as long as you work a full day. Generally speaking if you're there by 9:30 nobody will look at you funny. If you must miss time unexpectedly then make sure to email your manager.
4. Don't be a jerk. There are so many ways one can be a jerk that it's not feasible to enumerate them here, but use your own judgment and err on the side of caution. Don't be unnecessarily harsh when you must offer criticism. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Don't be stingy with your time when it comes to helping coworkers. Etc.
5. Be proactive with regard to projects. If you've finished everything you've been assigned then go ahead and ask for more. As tempting as it is to sit on your ass and enjoy some "free time", eventually somebody's going to notice.
6. Do good work. Don't be the guy whose coworkers look at his code and think to themselves, "WTF?"
7. Be humble. Even if you really do represent somewhat of a local maximum. Bear in mind you are not a global maximum.
The state is giving them grant money to do climate research, and there is a state law that covers fradulent use of grant funds. It would seem to have an interest in determining whether that's taking place, no?
Will be interesting to see how (if at all) this changes when two things happen: 1) IE9 comes out with all its speed improvements, 2) HTML5 video becomes more prevalent and FF still doesn't support H.264. Note: Yes, I realize all browsers continue to offer better and better performance, but the delta between IE9 and IE8 is likely to be much larger than between Safari 4 and Safari 5, FF 3.x and FF 4, etc. IE9 may be the release with which Microsoft achieves "rough parity" with the other browsers with respect to performance.http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/05/03/1258258/IE-Market-Share-Falls-To-Historic-Low?art_pos=2#
Can you envision any scenario where a republican calling for a fraud investigation related to climate research would not be criticized as "politicizing science"? I agree that's probably what's happening in this particular case, but it seems that any call for an investigation would end up being impugned as "politicizing science" regardless of the investigation's merits.
It doesn't, but it addresses the complaint that the Arizona law forces legal immigrants to carry their "papers" around with them at all times or risk being erroneously arrested. With this sort of system in place you'd only need "opt in" once, then produce a driver's license when stopped.
Create an opt-in state registry whereby legal non-citizen residents can "prove" their legal status and map that status to a more common form of identification (e.g. driver's license). If they're stopped by police they show this *common* form of identification, which the officer can then look up in the registry to verify legal status.
It means I'm not vulnerable to two common attack vectors. Alternative browsers have security defects, sure. Possibly fewer than IE, but that's debatable. What's not debatable, though, is that they're targeted less frequently.
plus no browser protects you from social engineering attacks
Not being gullible largely protects me from social engineering attacks.
Selecting known "reliable" software from "reputable" sources isnt' effective. Eventually you will violate that rule.
I haven't violated it yet.
Any user thinking they've created an environment so perfect that they don't need AV is just deluding themselves.
I don't think my environment is "perfect". I acknowledge that I'm vulnerable to a drive-by exploit of a zero-day flaw in Firefox/Foxit/Java/Flash. I just consider the risk of that happening to be sufficiently low that the irritation of running AV outweighs its benefits.
Chances are you are infected, you just don't know it.
Doubtful. I've run a couple online scans and they came up empty. Running MBAM in safe mode comes up empty. I can account for pretty much every entry Hijack This! displays. Sure its entirely possible I've contracted a sophisticated root kit and my machine is actually acting as a bot. If so, though, I've noticed zero performance degradation or uptick in outbound bandwidth.
I'm pretty anal about performance. If my machine were acting as a bot, spewing out thousands of spam mails or running DDOS attacks, I'm "relatively" sure I'd notice. I'm not opposed to running anti-virus scans in a "one off" fashion, just to give a machine a clean bill of health. What bugs me is the "stay resident" nature of them, and how they tend to bog down everything with incessant on-the-fly scanning.
I was posting more about why I personally don't run AV. For my purposes and given my ability to follow best practices, the performance degradation from AV is a bigger annoyance than the risk of actually becoming infected. I (most of the time) back up my data, so worst case is I have to reinstall Windows and a few apps. Which, honestly, I've never had to do.
The place I used to work (small company, ~15 employees) used Macs exclusively for our developer boxes. The HR/Sales/etc. folks were also given Macs. Our production servers were either Linux or Solaris.
That would represent more "effort" than just safely running my copy of XP. So, no. Side note: I used a Mac for Java development for the last 3 years at work, so I'm not "anti-Mac".
Refraining from using IE/Outlook is sort of the same rationale as using OS X. Sure it sucks from a security point of view, but less people attack it. So using something like Chrome gives you a measure of "security through obscurity". Though, I'm a little hypocritical in this regard in that I primarily use Firefox.
Seriously. They consume CPU. They stay resident and consume usable memory. They occasionally crash and/or cause other applications not to work. And, in this situation, they break Windows. I don't use AV and have had pretty much zero issues over the last 6 years of using Windows XP. All you need to do is:
* Configure Windows update to run daily.
* Don't use IE or Outlook.
* Keep Windows Firewall active.
* Don't connect directly to the internet- sit behind a router that's configured to be (mostly) invisible.
* Don't run random things you get sent in email, on facebook, or that pop up unexpectedly while you're at a questionable website.
* If you think something's amiss, boot into safe mode and use a non-resident tool like MBAM.
The price of getting caught cheating needs to increase if you want to stop it.
That may be the case. I was just addressing your claim that "Students don't cheat because they're dishonest." My point is that dishonesty is necessary *but not sufficient* for cheating to take place. In retrospect, I think you were saying, "Dishonesty is not sufficient, in and of itself, for cheating to take place," while I was saying, "Dishonesty is necessary for cheating to take place."
I don't remember exactly what the policy was regarding cheating at my university, but I'm pretty sure it was worse than "having to retake the test". I'd say it was probably more like "you get a 0 on the test", which probably means you fail the class. If the professor kicks it up the ladder, you could also be put on some sort of academic probation, meaning a second infraction gets you kicked out of the school. On the other hand, I busted some students for cheating on minor programming assignments and the only punishment they got was a "zero" on that assignment.
While I agree with you in general that people should be aware of practical concerns, I also think that when you find something you're passionate about you can almost always support yourself with it. In the least marketable fields (e.g. "Medieval French Literature") maybe that means earning a Ph.D. and joining academia. But hey, that's still a job. As for college loans, nothing says you have to attend a super-expensive university.
Slashdot Mirror
While I no doubt disagree with Dunbar on just about...everything...the Guardian article is somewhat of a hit piece. For instance, consider this quote:
This makes it sound as if Jefferson was removed from the U.S. History curriculum in favor of the confederates. Jefferson was, in fact, removed from the "World History" curriculum, on the basis that his contributions were minor (on the world stage) compared ot the other Enlightment philosophers on which his views were based. This, presumably, is why Calvin was added. While he wasn't the only reformer by far, he's sort of the poster boy for the protestant reformation, which was a pretty big event in "World History". What's truly bizarre about that modification is that it throws Aquinas, Calvin and Blackstone in with all the Enlightenment guys. You can read the actual word-for-word change here.
This quote:
...is also fairly disingenuous. The board essentially voted to include a discussion fo the right to bear arms in a portion of the curriculum dealing with free expression and first amendment rights.
I would probably oppose almost all of the changes that were made, and I fully agree they were made with idealogical motivations, but I'd also say the Guardian has exagerrated how "crazy" the changes really are.
Is he short selling solar? More clouds, less light, etc.
Some of these you'd think would be common sense, but they bear mentioning nevertheless:
1. Exhibit good hygiene. Shower at least every other day; wear deoderant; wash any clothes that directly touch your skin between wearings. Body odor does not make a good impression.
2. Dress professionally. This doesn't mean "dress up". For many environments shorts and a t-shirt is fine. If you work in such an environment, don't wear t-shirts with unprofessional logos or slogans, or that are falling apart. A good idea is to err on the side of caution during your first week or so, then adjust your casualness to whatever climate you observe.
3. Show up on time and work a full day. "On time" is usually flexible for software jobs, as long as you work a full day. Generally speaking if you're there by 9:30 nobody will look at you funny. If you must miss time unexpectedly then make sure to email your manager.
4. Don't be a jerk. There are so many ways one can be a jerk that it's not feasible to enumerate them here, but use your own judgment and err on the side of caution. Don't be unnecessarily harsh when you must offer criticism. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Don't be stingy with your time when it comes to helping coworkers. Etc.
5. Be proactive with regard to projects. If you've finished everything you've been assigned then go ahead and ask for more. As tempting as it is to sit on your ass and enjoy some "free time", eventually somebody's going to notice.
6. Do good work. Don't be the guy whose coworkers look at his code and think to themselves, "WTF?"
7. Be humble. Even if you really do represent somewhat of a local maximum. Bear in mind you are not a global maximum.
Worth mentioning that I never claimed to be a scientist?
"On the order of" is a frequently used English idiom meaning "approximately". It need not necessarily refer to orders of magnitude.
Is it worth mentioning that the National Academy of Sciences has on the order of 2100 members, of which 255 were willing to sign this letter?
The state is giving them grant money to do climate research, and there is a state law that covers fradulent use of grant funds. It would seem to have an interest in determining whether that's taking place, no?
Will be interesting to see how (if at all) this changes when two things happen: 1) IE9 comes out with all its speed improvements, 2) HTML5 video becomes more prevalent and FF still doesn't support H.264. Note: Yes, I realize all browsers continue to offer better and better performance, but the delta between IE9 and IE8 is likely to be much larger than between Safari 4 and Safari 5, FF 3.x and FF 4, etc. IE9 may be the release with which Microsoft achieves "rough parity" with the other browsers with respect to performance.http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/05/03/1258258/IE-Market-Share-Falls-To-Historic-Low?art_pos=2#
Can you envision any scenario where a republican calling for a fraud investigation related to climate research would not be criticized as "politicizing science"? I agree that's probably what's happening in this particular case, but it seems that any call for an investigation would end up being impugned as "politicizing science" regardless of the investigation's merits.
It doesn't, but it addresses the complaint that the Arizona law forces legal immigrants to carry their "papers" around with them at all times or risk being erroneously arrested. With this sort of system in place you'd only need "opt in" once, then produce a driver's license when stopped.
Create an opt-in state registry whereby legal non-citizen residents can "prove" their legal status and map that status to a more common form of identification (e.g. driver's license). If they're stopped by police they show this *common* form of identification, which the officer can then look up in the registry to verify legal status.
I bought a 19" Sony LCD five or six years ago that's 1280x1024. That's 86 DPI if my math is right.
Current LCDs with this resolution are shipping in a max. 19" form factor. So for that resolution the worst-case DPI has remained constant.
The next highest (popular) resolution is 1440x900 available in 19" for a DPI of 89.
After that is 1600x900 on a 20" panel for a DPI of 92.
Next is 1680x1050 on a 22" panel for a DPI of 90.
Next is 1920x1080 on anything from a 21.5" to 27" panel. The most popular is 23" which yields a DPI of 96.
Next is 1920x1200 on anything from a 24" to 28" panel. The most popular is 24" which yields a DPI of 94.
Are we sure DPI has gotten lower over time? Seems roughly constant across all native resolutions, unless I just screwed up the math.
It means I'm not vulnerable to two common attack vectors. Alternative browsers have security defects, sure. Possibly fewer than IE, but that's debatable. What's not debatable, though, is that they're targeted less frequently.
Not being gullible largely protects me from social engineering attacks.
I haven't violated it yet.
I don't think my environment is "perfect". I acknowledge that I'm vulnerable to a drive-by exploit of a zero-day flaw in Firefox/Foxit/Java/Flash. I just consider the risk of that happening to be sufficiently low that the irritation of running AV outweighs its benefits.
Doubtful. I've run a couple online scans and they came up empty. Running MBAM in safe mode comes up empty. I can account for pretty much every entry Hijack This! displays. Sure its entirely possible I've contracted a sophisticated root kit and my machine is actually acting as a bot. If so, though, I've noticed zero performance degradation or uptick in outbound bandwidth.
I'm pretty anal about performance. If my machine were acting as a bot, spewing out thousands of spam mails or running DDOS attacks, I'm "relatively" sure I'd notice. I'm not opposed to running anti-virus scans in a "one off" fashion, just to give a machine a clean bill of health. What bugs me is the "stay resident" nature of them, and how they tend to bog down everything with incessant on-the-fly scanning.
I was posting more about why I personally don't run AV. For my purposes and given my ability to follow best practices, the performance degradation from AV is a bigger annoyance than the risk of actually becoming infected. I (most of the time) back up my data, so worst case is I have to reinstall Windows and a few apps. Which, honestly, I've never had to do.
True. I also run AdBlock Plus and use Foxit instead of Acrobat Reader.
The place I used to work (small company, ~15 employees) used Macs exclusively for our developer boxes. The HR/Sales/etc. folks were also given Macs. Our production servers were either Linux or Solaris.
That would represent more "effort" than just safely running my copy of XP. So, no. Side note: I used a Mac for Java development for the last 3 years at work, so I'm not "anti-Mac".
Unless the compromised website exploits a zero-day exploit in Firefox (or Flash, I guess) that allows remote code execution...I think I'm okay.
I tried that once. Oddly, all my Windows apps stopped working.
Refraining from using IE/Outlook is sort of the same rationale as using OS X. Sure it sucks from a security point of view, but less people attack it. So using something like Chrome gives you a measure of "security through obscurity". Though, I'm a little hypocritical in this regard in that I primarily use Firefox.
Seriously. They consume CPU. They stay resident and consume usable memory. They occasionally crash and/or cause other applications not to work. And, in this situation, they break Windows. I don't use AV and have had pretty much zero issues over the last 6 years of using Windows XP. All you need to do is:
* Configure Windows update to run daily.
* Don't use IE or Outlook.
* Keep Windows Firewall active.
* Don't connect directly to the internet- sit behind a router that's configured to be (mostly) invisible.
* Don't run random things you get sent in email, on facebook, or that pop up unexpectedly while you're at a questionable website.
* If you think something's amiss, boot into safe mode and use a non-resident tool like MBAM.
That may be the case. I was just addressing your claim that "Students don't cheat because they're dishonest." My point is that dishonesty is necessary *but not sufficient* for cheating to take place. In retrospect, I think you were saying, "Dishonesty is not sufficient, in and of itself, for cheating to take place," while I was saying, "Dishonesty is necessary for cheating to take place."
I don't remember exactly what the policy was regarding cheating at my university, but I'm pretty sure it was worse than "having to retake the test". I'd say it was probably more like "you get a 0 on the test", which probably means you fail the class. If the professor kicks it up the ladder, you could also be put on some sort of academic probation, meaning a second infraction gets you kicked out of the school. On the other hand, I busted some students for cheating on minor programming assignments and the only punishment they got was a "zero" on that assignment.
I'd mod this up if I hadn't already commented.
While I agree with you in general that people should be aware of practical concerns, I also think that when you find something you're passionate about you can almost always support yourself with it. In the least marketable fields (e.g. "Medieval French Literature") maybe that means earning a Ph.D. and joining academia. But hey, that's still a job. As for college loans, nothing says you have to attend a super-expensive university.
The hilarious thing about this post is that it embodies the same douchey attitude the EE students at my alma mater held towards the CS students.