Fuck doing math by hand, thats what computers are for!
I mean seriously, lets give everyone a TI-89 and teach them to use it!
Even better, make students learn a legitimate math software, like MathCAD or Maple or something
Why hold ourselves back?
Spoken like a person completely useless at math. You have to show your work by hand so the person grading the test knows that you know what you're doing. Yes, computers are good for crunching numbers and giving results, but we also need to know the numbers are correct. That comes from doing a lot of it by hand or verifying with different algorithms. The main problem with quantum computing right now is how do we verify the answers to these ridiculously large problems if all we have is one working model, D-Wave for instance? We want smarter mathematicians not ones more reliant on computers to solve problems. You will eventually get to where no one has the competency to do long division without help from a machine. That's not a good thing!
Thanks. I can obviously read Amazon reviews and such. However, I felt that the/. community probably had tastes more similar to my own, vs a bunch of kids taking algebra in high school/etc.
See, that's where you went horribly wrong. For one thing there are members on here that still swear by slide rules (I am on the fence on that one). Some will point you at calculators that would still be verboten, and then there's guys like me that have enough math to just use something like this because square roots are hard to get right in your head. You should be able to do trig without the SIN, COS and TAN buttons. Remember the Unit Circle? If you came a to geek website to ask for help with trig and conversions from a calculator and didn't expect a good amount of heckling then you should have stuck with Google.
For all the eager beavers that had to have the first PS4s I laugh at your gullibility. You are the public BETA testers. If you haven't noticed this trend in the last twenty years, here's some sage advice about new gadgets. Buy them a few months after launch once they get to Rev B or higher on their boards and more software comes out. First adopters are always the BETA testers for the hardware because of all the secrecy and money that goes into the development. Unless there's something especially good about the first units, i.e., some special edition or limited run made of gold, then the only thing you lose is juvenile bragging rights, and that doesn't last long if your Rev A model keeps BSODing. Hard to be cool with broken shit. But, have fun with your brand new, blue light pulsing space heater. I suspect that when I get my tax return in March I can walk into a store, pick a Rev B/C/D model off the shelf with three or four games and have more fun with one that doesn't hose up every boot.
I would argue against ever effing with the Moon. It kind of has some serious implications for Earth if things go horribly wrong down the road. Space stations, asteroids, or even Mars colonization don't bother me. The impact on the rest of us is negligible compared to something causing the Moon to crash into us, or it get destroyed by something stupid we did. Nope, LITFA!
FTFY. We don't think we own the entire universe. Your hyperbole aside I would have to say that most of us have grown up from the Manifest Destiny thinking you are demonstrating. As far as land appropriation goes, I would call the early peoples of North America a migrating species more than on a land grab. Most all of those peoples lived in harmony with nature and most of their neighbors. Any boundaries or claims were simply there to keep peace, not to claim ownership. The whole concept of personal property was foreign to most Native American tribes.
Why should we not mine the moon? Well for one thing it could potentially alter the mass of the moon, thereby altering the tides on Earth and screw us all. Yeah, the moon is slowly drifting away and some loss of mass might fix that, but Mars is a much safer place to colonize, mine, develop. The impact on Earth is negligible compared to what disastrous things could happen to Earth if we ef up the moon. That's why people smarter than you are in charge. Because they have the foresight to think of these things and not just dollar signs.
Homesteading is the principle by which one gains ownership of an unowned natural resources by performing an act of original appropriation. Appropriation could be enacted by putting an unowned resource to active use (as with using it to produce a product), joining it with previously acquired property or by marking it as owned (as with livestock branding).
This is how the Earth's surface, originally not "owned" by anyone, turned into what it is today. If you accept that it worked here (as most people do), then there's no reason to suspect it won't work on the moon or anywhere else.
But--and this is a big but--someone or some nation had claim to the land before the homesteaders got there. Undeveloped land in the U.S territories prior to the states being there was still claimed by the United States and by the indigenous peoples before. Today, there truly is no unclaimed land in the world, and now they are starting to claim chunks of ocean floor. So, homesteading works on undeveloped land, sure, but you still have to get past any national claims or an army will remove you. In the case of the Moon, the U.N. has declared it belonging to no one, but not all nations necessarily signed that treaty. That's not to say the others won't defend that treaty regardless.
The normal variation on that theme has to do with Governments (usually local) doing the defending for you, per the police forces. Meanwhile, Government also arbitrates between claims -- if two dudes claim the same piece of landscape for development purposes, who gets it? So, even if the Moon Treaty needs to continue keeping any one Nation from claiming ownership of the Moon or other bodies, it needs to have added to it some sort of system for arbitrating between ownership-claims made by others. And, possibly, defending its decisions. Else there will indeed be all the chaos that can result from "might makes right".
Agreed. The first thought that came to me was how do you have law and order without a nation? Are you going to have different laws on the moon for each entity's home nation? Do you treat it like the high seas and use maritime law? Whose law and order do you impose in order to secure property rights if no nation has claim to the property to begin with. I think Mr. Bigelow is a greedy bastard trying to fool people into giving him property rights that are indefensible. So, what--private security? Yeah, then we have warlords on the Moon. Nope. It's there for everyone and no one (individual, community, nation) owns the Moon. Fuck off! Go buy an asteroid past Mars and STFU!
Careful there, Z -- that might count as a "public performance" of Happy Birthday. I know you're rich, but the payment for and audience of 10 million might be kinda high.
My first thought, exactly. I really hope he got the rights secured or he might get sued for everything he's worth. Those sisters are vicious about protecting their copyright. I would have picked Row, Row, Row Your Boat before Happy Birthday. Way to teach children how to respect copyright Zuck and Bill!
So, the bomb makers just conduct their business in a house in the countryside that uses a septic tank instead of connecting to a sewer system. That's a lot of money and effort and false confidence that can be circumnavigated with great ease. Now, if they'd done this without telling anyone then they might have had an edge... Idiots.
The only edge they have is near the point at the top of their pin heads.
Well with smart meters accurate enough to tell when you are watching TV and what,
Now with these sensors knowing what you are flushing down the toilet
How about some environment monitors so they know what we exhale...
Its getting pretty creepy
I wish they would put some of these technologies to better use and bust corporations that continually pollute our environment rather than erroneously try to catch bomb makers. There are a ridiculous number of common household compounds used for cleaning that would set these sensors off (some described in an informative post above). This is a positively stupid idea. Might look good on paper, but if you stop and think for a moment the number of false positives is going to be astronomical.
Which in many cases will look like your company is out of date. I make a point of throwing out business cards in front of sales drones who hand them to me. Send me your contact details via some more modern method or do not bother, I am not your secretary.
I am going to have to counter your argument. Most of the Fortune 500 company representatives I interact with use and want business cards and still treat you like a schmoe if you don't have one. Email gets lost or buried and still does not carry the same impact a well crafted biz card does. Sure cards get lost too, but most of the people I know that get a card from someone important put them in an important place until they can transpose the information somewhere else. I still have and use business cards, although I have simplified them over the years. Plus, a business card shows you care enough about your image to spend the money on a nice card on nice card stock. What does being handed a business card have to do with being someone's secretary? OMG! I have to type an email address in and can't just hit reply. Sounds like you have an overinflated sense of self importance and I'd end-run around you to someone worth talking to.
Ok, my iPhone 4S does 1080p out through HDMI and so has every iPhone since. Better screens in some models, usually the more expensive ones. Personally, I see NFC as just another attack vector and would never use it. Better camera is subjective. Does it take better pictures or just bigger pictures? Again, I think the person behind the camera makes a big difference as well. Better software is also subjective as Android has proven to be less secure as an OS. Yep! costs less but so did VHS but that didn't make it better than Betamax.
I wouldn't be surprised if the teenager has more "phone needs" than the parent.
Ok, we had this discussion about a four year old "needing" a phone a little while back. The only teenager that "needs" a phone is one with a job or some other few logical reasons, and it would not "need" to be a smartphone. Need arises from necessity and there are few to none for an unemployed teenager. They desire/want a phone, but they have few real needs for a phone and certainly not a smartphone. Be your own parent but there are few valid, rational reasons for a teenager to have a phone and far fewer for a smartphone. Get back in your room and study! Go outside and play!
Anyone who doesn't get that should lose their geek card. "I was hot and I was hungry!" "Your mother puts license plates on your underwear? How do you sit?"
So your driveway enters directly onto an Interstate?!?! Where is that exactly (Lat and Long please)? I think you're trolling pretty hard. I've been in all but five states in the U.S. (while driving, no less) and have never seen a driveway dump onto an Interstate directly, nor a road with no other roads connecting to it but an Interstate that had houses on it. I've been through some ridiculously rural areas, too, so some photographic proof would be nice, preferably from a satellite vantage.
How do you know they don't plan to use that fork to murder someone? That cup of coffee doesn't contain illegal drugs? Their wallet doesn't contain leaked NSA secret documents?
Strawman much? Those are all pretty irrelevant for driving safety. Holding your phone in your hand in a visible manner while driving is an obvious sign of your attention being diverted from the 1.5 tonnes of steel currently hurtling around under your supposed control.
Not to mention that a cop isn't going to follow you for a time to figure out what you're doing with the phone. For the same reason they don't follow you for a time when you're speeding. They just hear the radar gun go off, look at the number and pull you over, then let the judge decide. Cops aren't judges, they're enforcers.
That is the way the California Motor Vehicle code was written. It states that ANYTHING which might interfere with your ability to drive a motor vehicle safely, which includes texting, adjusting the radio, even chewing gum for a sadly large portion of the population, is prohibited. It allows for the officer to make a judgment call based on the skills and performance of the driver in question. The anti-cell phone/texting laws are a bunch of politicians grandstanding to get attention, imagine that. There are exceptions for law enforcement persons so they can use their monitors to check vehicle plates and registration numbers. Statistics show that traffic deaths are the greatest killer of on-duty cops.
Language is like DNA: sometimes it mutates by accident, and sometimes the mutation sticks because there's no selective disadvantage.
Except when you say "maths" you sound like you have a speech impediment. Isn't math short for mathematics, which is plural to begin with? If they start saying sheeps I'm switching to entirely different native language! Sorry, I am not going to capitulate to stupid. If you want to use math as a plural use the full word, mathematics. Yeah, more syllables, but you don't sound like a nonce! Some mutations should be quashed.
If that were the case, whales would be the smartest animals on the planet, not humans. The skull-size-equals-intelligence notion went out the window a while ago. Look at birds. Some of them can use tools and have ridiculous cognitive and language abilities, small brains. Size means nothing. In the immortal words of Yoda, "Judge me by my size do you? And well you should not!"
Their happiness and contentment relies in part upon being superior to some defined "other" and they will not stop until they can perfect a reliable means of ensuring that distinction.
Yeah, we call those people assholes. Or, megalomaniacs. I prefer asshole.
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Fuck doing math by hand, thats what computers are for!
I mean seriously, lets give everyone a TI-89 and teach them to use it!
Even better, make students learn a legitimate math software, like MathCAD or Maple or something
Why hold ourselves back?
Spoken like a person completely useless at math. You have to show your work by hand so the person grading the test knows that you know what you're doing. Yes, computers are good for crunching numbers and giving results, but we also need to know the numbers are correct. That comes from doing a lot of it by hand or verifying with different algorithms. The main problem with quantum computing right now is how do we verify the answers to these ridiculously large problems if all we have is one working model, D-Wave for instance? We want smarter mathematicians not ones more reliant on computers to solve problems. You will eventually get to where no one has the competency to do long division without help from a machine. That's not a good thing!
Thanks. I can obviously read Amazon reviews and such. However, I felt that the /. community probably had tastes more similar to my own, vs a bunch of kids taking algebra in high school/etc.
See, that's where you went horribly wrong. For one thing there are members on here that still swear by slide rules (I am on the fence on that one). Some will point you at calculators that would still be verboten, and then there's guys like me that have enough math to just use something like this because square roots are hard to get right in your head. You should be able to do trig without the SIN, COS and TAN buttons. Remember the Unit Circle? If you came a to geek website to ask for help with trig and conversions from a calculator and didn't expect a good amount of heckling then you should have stuck with Google.
For all the eager beavers that had to have the first PS4s I laugh at your gullibility. You are the public BETA testers. If you haven't noticed this trend in the last twenty years, here's some sage advice about new gadgets. Buy them a few months after launch once they get to Rev B or higher on their boards and more software comes out. First adopters are always the BETA testers for the hardware because of all the secrecy and money that goes into the development. Unless there's something especially good about the first units, i.e., some special edition or limited run made of gold, then the only thing you lose is juvenile bragging rights, and that doesn't last long if your Rev A model keeps BSODing. Hard to be cool with broken shit. But, have fun with your brand new, blue light pulsing space heater. I suspect that when I get my tax return in March I can walk into a store, pick a Rev B/C/D model off the shelf with three or four games and have more fun with one that doesn't hose up every boot.
[golf claps] Well said! That greedy bastard can go buy an asteroid and shove it up his ass. Leave the thing that regulates tides on Earth alone!
I would argue against ever effing with the Moon. It kind of has some serious implications for Earth if things go horribly wrong down the road. Space stations, asteroids, or even Mars colonization don't bother me. The impact on the rest of us is negligible compared to something causing the Moon to crash into us, or it get destroyed by something stupid we did. Nope, LITFA!
That is, nobody can currently claim the moon.
FTFY. We don't think we own the entire universe. Your hyperbole aside I would have to say that most of us have grown up from the Manifest Destiny thinking you are demonstrating. As far as land appropriation goes, I would call the early peoples of North America a migrating species more than on a land grab. Most all of those peoples lived in harmony with nature and most of their neighbors. Any boundaries or claims were simply there to keep peace, not to claim ownership. The whole concept of personal property was foreign to most Native American tribes.
Why should we not mine the moon? Well for one thing it could potentially alter the mass of the moon, thereby altering the tides on Earth and screw us all. Yeah, the moon is slowly drifting away and some loss of mass might fix that, but Mars is a much safer place to colonize, mine, develop. The impact on Earth is negligible compared to what disastrous things could happen to Earth if we ef up the moon. That's why people smarter than you are in charge. Because they have the foresight to think of these things and not just dollar signs.
Homesteading is the principle by which one gains ownership of an unowned natural resources by performing an act of original appropriation. Appropriation could be enacted by putting an unowned resource to active use (as with using it to produce a product), joining it with previously acquired property or by marking it as owned (as with livestock branding). This is how the Earth's surface, originally not "owned" by anyone, turned into what it is today. If you accept that it worked here (as most people do), then there's no reason to suspect it won't work on the moon or anywhere else.
But--and this is a big but--someone or some nation had claim to the land before the homesteaders got there. Undeveloped land in the U.S territories prior to the states being there was still claimed by the United States and by the indigenous peoples before. Today, there truly is no unclaimed land in the world, and now they are starting to claim chunks of ocean floor. So, homesteading works on undeveloped land, sure, but you still have to get past any national claims or an army will remove you. In the case of the Moon, the U.N. has declared it belonging to no one, but not all nations necessarily signed that treaty. That's not to say the others won't defend that treaty regardless.
The normal variation on that theme has to do with Governments (usually local) doing the defending for you, per the police forces. Meanwhile, Government also arbitrates between claims -- if two dudes claim the same piece of landscape for development purposes, who gets it? So, even if the Moon Treaty needs to continue keeping any one Nation from claiming ownership of the Moon or other bodies, it needs to have added to it some sort of system for arbitrating between ownership-claims made by others. And, possibly, defending its decisions. Else there will indeed be all the chaos that can result from "might makes right".
Agreed. The first thought that came to me was how do you have law and order without a nation? Are you going to have different laws on the moon for each entity's home nation? Do you treat it like the high seas and use maritime law? Whose law and order do you impose in order to secure property rights if no nation has claim to the property to begin with. I think Mr. Bigelow is a greedy bastard trying to fool people into giving him property rights that are indefensible. So, what--private security? Yeah, then we have warlords on the Moon. Nope. It's there for everyone and no one (individual, community, nation) owns the Moon. Fuck off! Go buy an asteroid past Mars and STFU!
Careful there, Z -- that might count as a "public performance" of Happy Birthday. I know you're rich, but the payment for and audience of 10 million might be kinda high.
My first thought, exactly. I really hope he got the rights secured or he might get sued for everything he's worth. Those sisters are vicious about protecting their copyright. I would have picked Row, Row, Row Your Boat before Happy Birthday. Way to teach children how to respect copyright Zuck and Bill!
So, the bomb makers just conduct their business in a house in the countryside that uses a septic tank instead of connecting to a sewer system. That's a lot of money and effort and false confidence that can be circumnavigated with great ease. Now, if they'd done this without telling anyone then they might have had an edge... Idiots.
The only edge they have is near the point at the top of their pin heads.
Well with smart meters accurate enough to tell when you are watching TV and what, Now with these sensors knowing what you are flushing down the toilet How about some environment monitors so they know what we exhale ...
Its getting pretty creepy
I wish they would put some of these technologies to better use and bust corporations that continually pollute our environment rather than erroneously try to catch bomb makers. There are a ridiculous number of common household compounds used for cleaning that would set these sensors off (some described in an informative post above). This is a positively stupid idea. Might look good on paper, but if you stop and think for a moment the number of false positives is going to be astronomical.
Which in many cases will look like your company is out of date. I make a point of throwing out business cards in front of sales drones who hand them to me. Send me your contact details via some more modern method or do not bother, I am not your secretary.
I am going to have to counter your argument. Most of the Fortune 500 company representatives I interact with use and want business cards and still treat you like a schmoe if you don't have one. Email gets lost or buried and still does not carry the same impact a well crafted biz card does. Sure cards get lost too, but most of the people I know that get a card from someone important put them in an important place until they can transpose the information somewhere else. I still have and use business cards, although I have simplified them over the years. Plus, a business card shows you care enough about your image to spend the money on a nice card on nice card stock. What does being handed a business card have to do with being someone's secretary? OMG! I have to type an email address in and can't just hit reply. Sounds like you have an overinflated sense of self importance and I'd end-run around you to someone worth talking to.
Ok, my iPhone 4S does 1080p out through HDMI and so has every iPhone since. Better screens in some models, usually the more expensive ones. Personally, I see NFC as just another attack vector and would never use it. Better camera is subjective. Does it take better pictures or just bigger pictures? Again, I think the person behind the camera makes a big difference as well. Better software is also subjective as Android has proven to be less secure as an OS. Yep! costs less but so did VHS but that didn't make it better than Betamax.
I wouldn't be surprised if the teenager has more "phone needs" than the parent.
Ok, we had this discussion about a four year old "needing" a phone a little while back. The only teenager that "needs" a phone is one with a job or some other few logical reasons, and it would not "need" to be a smartphone. Need arises from necessity and there are few to none for an unemployed teenager. They desire/want a phone, but they have few real needs for a phone and certainly not a smartphone. Be your own parent but there are few valid, rational reasons for a teenager to have a phone and far fewer for a smartphone. Get back in your room and study! Go outside and play!
So it's both immoral AND unethical...
Anyone who doesn't get that should lose their geek card. "I was hot and I was hungry!" "Your mother puts license plates on your underwear? How do you sit?"
So your driveway enters directly onto an Interstate?!?! Where is that exactly (Lat and Long please)? I think you're trolling pretty hard. I've been in all but five states in the U.S. (while driving, no less) and have never seen a driveway dump onto an Interstate directly, nor a road with no other roads connecting to it but an Interstate that had houses on it. I've been through some ridiculously rural areas, too, so some photographic proof would be nice, preferably from a satellite vantage.
How do you know they don't plan to use that fork to murder someone? That cup of coffee doesn't contain illegal drugs? Their wallet doesn't contain leaked NSA secret documents?
Strawman much? Those are all pretty irrelevant for driving safety. Holding your phone in your hand in a visible manner while driving is an obvious sign of your attention being diverted from the 1.5 tonnes of steel currently hurtling around under your supposed control.
Not to mention that a cop isn't going to follow you for a time to figure out what you're doing with the phone. For the same reason they don't follow you for a time when you're speeding. They just hear the radar gun go off, look at the number and pull you over, then let the judge decide. Cops aren't judges, they're enforcers.
That is the way the California Motor Vehicle code was written. It states that ANYTHING which might interfere with your ability to drive a motor vehicle safely, which includes texting, adjusting the radio, even chewing gum for a sadly large portion of the population, is prohibited. It allows for the officer to make a judgment call based on the skills and performance of the driver in question. The anti-cell phone/texting laws are a bunch of politicians grandstanding to get attention, imagine that. There are exceptions for law enforcement persons so they can use their monitors to check vehicle plates and registration numbers. Statistics show that traffic deaths are the greatest killer of on-duty cops.
http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/
Actually, most states have similar laws. Ignorance is not a defense, btw. See my comment above about book and bookcase.
Traffic court judges are not well known for their appreciation of clever interpretation of the rules.
That's right. They will often throw the book at you while it's still in the bookcase.
Language is like DNA: sometimes it mutates by accident, and sometimes the mutation sticks because there's no selective disadvantage.
Except when you say "maths" you sound like you have a speech impediment. Isn't math short for mathematics, which is plural to begin with? If they start saying sheeps I'm switching to entirely different native language! Sorry, I am not going to capitulate to stupid. If you want to use math as a plural use the full word, mathematics. Yeah, more syllables, but you don't sound like a nonce! Some mutations should be quashed.
Skulls aren't organs, but the organ you alluded to is often called a bone.
If that were the case, whales would be the smartest animals on the planet, not humans. The skull-size-equals-intelligence notion went out the window a while ago. Look at birds. Some of them can use tools and have ridiculous cognitive and language abilities, small brains. Size means nothing. In the immortal words of Yoda, "Judge me by my size do you? And well you should not!"
Their happiness and contentment relies in part upon being superior to some defined "other" and they will not stop until they can perfect a reliable means of ensuring that distinction.
Yeah, we call those people assholes. Or, megalomaniacs. I prefer asshole.
Your title should be Best Buy's new tag line. It fits because mostly technological idiots shop there to begin with.
What are you, a jock?
Might be a Pragmatist.