Actually, the vast majority of abuse against children is committed by close family members (fathers, mothers, brothers, uncles etc). This is true of Australia as it is of every country. Now, it is true that the majority of high profile media reported cases are probably those perpetrated by the catholic church, however abuse has been rampant in every institution relating to children where oversite is absent. Recently, Rudd appologised to the men and women who had been abused in the various institutions as children. Some of these institutions were state run, and some church run. I do not support the internet filter, and I certainly do not defend the church organizations who's lack of oversite and attempts to cover up abusers lead to so much abuse. Having said that, your statement is in error in regard to the most common abuse vector.
But he hasn't done any science. Or is that your point? His book has collated a whole bunch of other peoples research to make the argument "Yeah climate change is real and human made and largly negative, BUT, our attempts at reversing it are a fools errand". I mean, this is the sort of thing you do when you write a book. He hasn't done any original research, so what is there to submit to a journal? Your creating a crazy argument "You have to submit your research to peer-review!" "But I haven't done any research..." "AHA!".
Reading that very lengthy rebuttal, one thing becomes clear. Howard Friel does not deserve our time or thought. If you are going to criticize someone's work, you need to be doubly careful that the things you take issue with are valid. Here it appears that the criticism is far less solid than the material it critisizes. This does not make the original material correct as a result, but truely; there is nothing to see here, move along.
this list actually covers what you'd need to know as a COMPUTER ENGINEER to pass the fundamentals of engineering exam
I was with you until here. My degree was in Computer Engineering, and we were never required to take fluid dynamics (Where is the Z transform in your list? In case you hadn't noticed; our controllers are all discrete since the 70's;-). Understanding the theory behind the PID controller is something that I would look for). I'm hard pressed to see how fluid dynamics would matter outside of Mechanical Engineering? I agree with your general premise that programmers in the engineering world benifit from engineering knowledge. I work in a company that makes SCADA software, and we have a mix of people from engineering and computer-science backgrounds. Some observations.
Engineers can make lousy programmers. Believe it or not, there is lot of programming theory that is important and not taught in an engineering degree. Much of the worst, most unmaintainable code I have ever seen has been written by very good engineers, who simply have no grasp of programming concepts beyond the basic. On the flip side the engineers in our team are invaluble due to their understanding of how the end-user (who are also engineers), needs to use the product to get the job done. Finally, I'd like to say that our most productive coders are guys from pure programming backgrounds. This is not to say that some of the guys from engineering backgrounds are not productive, it just seems to me that there is a particular type of person that is attracted to programming alone and can produce astonishing amounts of quality code in a short period of time. Perhaps the type of person who is attracted to engineering just isn't the conducive to this? In our company, we need the mix (and I like having the mix), but if I were creating some kind of web startup, I wouldn't employ guys with an engineering background.
I understand that it is popular to bash anything that burst forth from the loins of Microsoft, but c'mon! This is Don, The Don, this is one hard-core damned brilliant programming dude (for want of a better term). He was single handedly responsible for generics in c# (something I am greatly thankful for in my day to day work) F# is his baby; the guy is passionate about the idea of a real world practical functional language. Sometimes people use emotive language when they are talking about things that they have devoted themselves to for years. Especially when they believe that it could bring functional programming into the mainstream.
I have used F#, and personally really enjoy coding with it (and especially the different way in which solving problems in this manner makes you think). Might be a long time before it is excepted into production code though...
c'mon mods, the parent is a expressing a different view point. This does not make him/her a troll. I happen to at least agree that teaching 'outed' kids social skills is at least one arm of a solution. Seriously, troll is not a replacement for "I don't like your opinion"
The article itself states that social rejection "leads to a vicious cycle". The rejection means that social skills cannot be practised, and lower social skills leads to rejection. Couldn't this imply that bullying _causes_ poor social skills? I agree with Minwee, sometimes other kids are just dicks. Once a child is on the 'outer', it is very difficult for them to get back into the mainstream. I have personally experienced periods of social isolation in my childhood (due to moving around), and can definitly attest that this lead to difficulty in interacting with others. In my case, I 'forgot' the various social cues. Once I had friends again, the skills returned, but it is very difficult to make those friends when all your social skills are retarded.
The genitals are pretty much the same for everybody
Yeah... And yet; I'd still rather you didn't go gawking at mine thanks. Feel free to do as you will with yours, I'd just rather mine were kept off display. Freedom to choose who gets to see your ugly bits; that's freedom indeed.
Hey, but at least there is no auto cavity search machine! (gently steered by a well trained tech) Or did I miss that article?
Calvin is not a precocious child, he is an adult living in a childs world. He is you and me, without all the responsibility. For comparison, in 'Peanuts' we see adults living in an adults world (although portrayed as children). Calvin and Hobbes was not just a great comic, it transcended the genre. This was philosophy; this was art. What other comic has ruminated on the artistic validity of its genre while maintaining a wry humour? (I refer of course, to Calvin and Hobbes looking at artwork of comics, and comics of artwork). It belittles his work to think of it in the simple terms of humour for children. This was a philosopher who was able to reach a mass audience in an unprecedented fashion. I like to think that future generations will look back and recognise this work for what it is. Art.
The distinction is irrelevant. The issue with GM modified crops is that it is exactly equivalent to adding a new chemical to a food stuff. The DNA is modified to produce a new protein that acts as an insecticide; which may or may not be dangerous to human health. It is a fair and reasonable response as a consumer, to be informed that the food-stuff I am consuming contains new chemicals. Traditional food-stuffs have passed the gamut of 1000's of years of trial and error. Just as various additives to food stuffs have been found to have detrimental health effects, so to may added proteins. Is adequate testing performed? Can the GM crops be isolated? What happens when we subsquently discover that some GM crop causes significant long-term harm, but has spread beyond the intended bounds?
When it comes to the extrodinarily complexity of a plants genome, we are like in-experienced crackers trying to remove copy protection. Sometimes it works, and sometimes we screwed something that only pops up much further along.
The irony is that Rio Tinto is one of the very few companies that have played straight up in China. They do not bribe in China, and this has angered no small number of officials. In this instance the Australian executive that has been detained was born in China. This is China's way of instilling fear into other similiar Chinese born to not f**k with the motherland. I have to imagine that it will work.
Although your criticism that differing radio active isotopes is valid, it would seem that your stipulation that Cobalt-60 is more dangerous than Uranium-238 is incorrect. According to www.ead.anl.gov the lifetime cancer mortality per unit intake for ingestion of Uranium-238 is 7.5 * 10^-11. For Cobalt-60, it is 1.4 * 10^ -11. From this, it appears that Cobalt-60 is less dangerous, and hence the GP was correct in making the comparison.
Actually, online polls I have seen that were not "gamer/tech" related websites, have tended to show a fairly even split on support for R18+ clasification. Personally I found this surprising, but it may suggest a lack of understanding in the community about the issue.
Well this is the point of facebook isn't it? It's not "online for all the world to see". It's "online for all my friends and family to see". I mean, if it's just a "show the world" site, why bother with a friends list at all? Why wouldn't you just have a a home page builder ala geocities? The idea that appeals to people is to have a semi private place to share stuff with friends/family on the interweb.
Why was this modded flamebait? The scientific community is still a human institution, and thus vulnerable to the various human weaknesses. My concern is not with the science behind climate change research, it is with the politicising and extremist ideological behaviour on _both_ sides. To me, this is the issue with these emails. I know the political bullshit goes on, but it worries me when bullshit looks as though it may be influencing the scientific process. A rationalistic approach is the only hope we have for determining the actual reality of climate change, and so I don't like to see "delete that data", or "hide that trend". I don't care if the scientists in question believe they need to do this for the "greater good". I want my science to be science.
Quite a lot of money? As far as hobbies go, electronics is extremely affordable. Try "car racing", or "remote heli/plane" or even wood-working. You can make many interesting electronic projects for under $50 AU. Spend a bit more for an Arduino, and there are a nearly limitless number of projects you can build. As hobbies go, I don't think electronics can be classed as "expensive".
The issue is that our economy is geared around growth. Let's take real-estate as an example. What drives the increased prices in real-estate? Population growth. If the population stops growing, or begins to shrink, real-estate stops being a worthwhile investment. Worse, if the population appears to be going into a long term decline, the sooner you sell, the less money you will lose. This sort of thing leads to rapid colapse of economic sectors. The equations simply don't work unless growth > 0, but of course, growth cannot continue forever when resources are finite. In your example, having TV's that last longer and can be repaired, can only lead to a decrease in profits for the companies in question, and a decrease in share price. If there is no prospect of growth for the company, there is zero investor motivation to buy shares and every reason to sell now before the share price drops. Again perceived long term gradual decline would cause a rapid economic collapase. We are addicted to growth, and it seems to be a terminal problem.
Kind of missing the point of the article. The population is a function of the energy consumption which directly correlates to the economy. Ergo; reducing the population will lead to decreased energy consumption, and a collapse in the economy. This is the fundemental problem here, economic growth is directly tied to energy usage. The only way out is a radical reform of the fundemental way our economy is _defined_. Sobering research indeed.
I see this argument everytime slashdot reports on Scientology. Many ideologies that people hold to are shams but harmless (look at aromatherapy). Whether it is true or not is irrelevant and a straw man argument. The issue here is whether the organisation is causing harm and whether that harm that it does is intrinsic.
Props to whoever mantains this system that the issue does occur more frequently, but this is a problem with a simple solution. Redundancy. The system is probably too old to be configurable to automatically swap, but a simple setup with two servers allowing a manual hot-swap, is all you need. Not a difficult problem to solve.
The reason the "science" space is not interesting to the average joe, is that it lacks the "human interest". I mean, look at the mars rovers. They became much more interesting once we anthropomorphised them; tough little guys lasting way longer then we thought they could. Same thing here. We need humans for the human interest; it doesn't matter much what they do exactly, just so long as it is "against the odds", and embodies the "human spirit". And I reckon a trip around Mars will bloody well do it. Years in space, impossibly far from human contact, unable to be assisted if anything goes wrong? Yeah thats human spirit in spades, against some pretty bloody big odds. It's like the polar expeditions of yester-year, except we'll get frequent updates. I say go for it, I couldn't give shit if they land on a bit of dirt or not.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the vast majority of abuse against children is committed by close family members (fathers, mothers, brothers, uncles etc). This is true of Australia as it is of every country. Now, it is true that the majority of high profile media reported cases are probably those perpetrated by the catholic church, however abuse has been rampant in every institution relating to children where oversite is absent. Recently, Rudd appologised to the men and women who had been abused in the various institutions as children. Some of these institutions were state run, and some church run. I do not support the internet filter, and I certainly do not defend the church organizations who's lack of oversite and attempts to cover up abusers lead to so much abuse. Having said that, your statement is in error in regard to the most common abuse vector.
But he hasn't done any science. Or is that your point? His book has collated a whole bunch of other peoples research to make the argument "Yeah climate change is real and human made and largly negative, BUT, our attempts at reversing it are a fools errand". I mean, this is the sort of thing you do when you write a book. He hasn't done any original research, so what is there to submit to a journal? Your creating a crazy argument "You have to submit your research to peer-review!" "But I haven't done any research..." "AHA!".
Reading that very lengthy rebuttal, one thing becomes clear. Howard Friel does not deserve our time or thought. If you are going to criticize someone's work, you need to be doubly careful that the things you take issue with are valid. Here it appears that the criticism is far less solid than the material it critisizes. This does not make the original material correct as a result, but truely; there is nothing to see here, move along.
this list actually covers what you'd need to know as a COMPUTER ENGINEER to pass the fundamentals of engineering exam
I was with you until here. My degree was in Computer Engineering, and we were never required to take fluid dynamics (Where is the Z transform in your list? In case you hadn't noticed; our controllers are all discrete since the 70's ;-). Understanding the theory behind the PID controller is something that I would look for). I'm hard pressed to see how fluid dynamics would matter outside of Mechanical Engineering? I agree with your general premise that programmers in the engineering world benifit from engineering knowledge. I work in a company that makes SCADA software, and we have a mix of people from engineering and computer-science backgrounds. Some observations.
Engineers can make lousy programmers. Believe it or not, there is lot of programming theory that is important and not taught in an engineering degree. Much of the worst, most unmaintainable code I have ever seen has been written by very good engineers, who simply have no grasp of programming concepts beyond the basic. On the flip side the engineers in our team are invaluble due to their understanding of how the end-user (who are also engineers), needs to use the product to get the job done. Finally, I'd like to say that our most productive coders are guys from pure programming backgrounds. This is not to say that some of the guys from engineering backgrounds are not productive, it just seems to me that there is a particular type of person that is attracted to programming alone and can produce astonishing amounts of quality code in a short period of time. Perhaps the type of person who is attracted to engineering just isn't the conducive to this? In our company, we need the mix (and I like having the mix), but if I were creating some kind of web startup, I wouldn't employ guys with an engineering background.
Ahhh, the dream that a perfect process will make up for the imperfect person.
I understand that it is popular to bash anything that burst forth from the loins of Microsoft, but c'mon! This is Don, The Don, this is one hard-core damned brilliant programming dude (for want of a better term). He was single handedly responsible for generics in c# (something I am greatly thankful for in my day to day work) F# is his baby; the guy is passionate about the idea of a real world practical functional language. Sometimes people use emotive language when they are talking about things that they have devoted themselves to for years. Especially when they believe that it could bring functional programming into the mainstream. I have used F#, and personally really enjoy coding with it (and especially the different way in which solving problems in this manner makes you think). Might be a long time before it is excepted into production code though...
c'mon mods, the parent is a expressing a different view point. This does not make him/her a troll. I happen to at least agree that teaching 'outed' kids social skills is at least one arm of a solution. Seriously, troll is not a replacement for "I don't like your opinion"
The article itself states that social rejection "leads to a vicious cycle". The rejection means that social skills cannot be practised, and lower social skills leads to rejection. Couldn't this imply that bullying _causes_ poor social skills? I agree with Minwee, sometimes other kids are just dicks. Once a child is on the 'outer', it is very difficult for them to get back into the mainstream. I have personally experienced periods of social isolation in my childhood (due to moving around), and can definitly attest that this lead to difficulty in interacting with others. In my case, I 'forgot' the various social cues. Once I had friends again, the skills returned, but it is very difficult to make those friends when all your social skills are retarded.
The genitals are pretty much the same for everybody
Yeah... And yet; I'd still rather you didn't go gawking at mine thanks. Feel free to do as you will with yours, I'd just rather mine were kept off display. Freedom to choose who gets to see your ugly bits; that's freedom indeed. Hey, but at least there is no auto cavity search machine! (gently steered by a well trained tech) Or did I miss that article?
War on Privacy? Are you serious? What exactly do you have to hide or protect that would make you so paranoid?
My penis. This is the reason I wear pants. I would like to keep my penis private please.
Calvin is not a precocious child, he is an adult living in a childs world. He is you and me, without all the responsibility. For comparison, in 'Peanuts' we see adults living in an adults world (although portrayed as children). Calvin and Hobbes was not just a great comic, it transcended the genre. This was philosophy; this was art. What other comic has ruminated on the artistic validity of its genre while maintaining a wry humour? (I refer of course, to Calvin and Hobbes looking at artwork of comics, and comics of artwork). It belittles his work to think of it in the simple terms of humour for children. This was a philosopher who was able to reach a mass audience in an unprecedented fashion. I like to think that future generations will look back and recognise this work for what it is. Art.
The distinction is irrelevant. The issue with GM modified crops is that it is exactly equivalent to adding a new chemical to a food stuff. The DNA is modified to produce a new protein that acts as an insecticide; which may or may not be dangerous to human health. It is a fair and reasonable response as a consumer, to be informed that the food-stuff I am consuming contains new chemicals. Traditional food-stuffs have passed the gamut of 1000's of years of trial and error. Just as various additives to food stuffs have been found to have detrimental health effects, so to may added proteins. Is adequate testing performed? Can the GM crops be isolated? What happens when we subsquently discover that some GM crop causes significant long-term harm, but has spread beyond the intended bounds? When it comes to the extrodinarily complexity of a plants genome, we are like in-experienced crackers trying to remove copy protection. Sometimes it works, and sometimes we screwed something that only pops up much further along.
The irony is that Rio Tinto is one of the very few companies that have played straight up in China. They do not bribe in China, and this has angered no small number of officials. In this instance the Australian executive that has been detained was born in China. This is China's way of instilling fear into other similiar Chinese born to not f**k with the motherland. I have to imagine that it will work.
Although your criticism that differing radio active isotopes is valid, it would seem that your stipulation that Cobalt-60 is more dangerous than Uranium-238 is incorrect. According to www.ead.anl.gov the lifetime cancer mortality per unit intake for ingestion of Uranium-238 is 7.5 * 10^-11. For Cobalt-60, it is 1.4 * 10^ -11. From this, it appears that Cobalt-60 is less dangerous, and hence the GP was correct in making the comparison.
Actually, online polls I have seen that were not "gamer/tech" related websites, have tended to show a fairly even split on support for R18+ clasification. Personally I found this surprising, but it may suggest a lack of understanding in the community about the issue.
Well this is the point of facebook isn't it? It's not "online for all the world to see". It's "online for all my friends and family to see". I mean, if it's just a "show the world" site, why bother with a friends list at all? Why wouldn't you just have a a home page builder ala geocities? The idea that appeals to people is to have a semi private place to share stuff with friends/family on the interweb.
Why was this modded flamebait? The scientific community is still a human institution, and thus vulnerable to the various human weaknesses. My concern is not with the science behind climate change research, it is with the politicising and extremist ideological behaviour on _both_ sides. To me, this is the issue with these emails. I know the political bullshit goes on, but it worries me when bullshit looks as though it may be influencing the scientific process. A rationalistic approach is the only hope we have for determining the actual reality of climate change, and so I don't like to see "delete that data", or "hide that trend". I don't care if the scientists in question believe they need to do this for the "greater good". I want my science to be science.
Quite a lot of money? As far as hobbies go, electronics is extremely affordable. Try "car racing", or "remote heli/plane" or even wood-working. You can make many interesting electronic projects for under $50 AU. Spend a bit more for an Arduino, and there are a nearly limitless number of projects you can build. As hobbies go, I don't think electronics can be classed as "expensive".
The issue is that our economy is geared around growth. Let's take real-estate as an example. What drives the increased prices in real-estate? Population growth. If the population stops growing, or begins to shrink, real-estate stops being a worthwhile investment. Worse, if the population appears to be going into a long term decline, the sooner you sell, the less money you will lose. This sort of thing leads to rapid colapse of economic sectors. The equations simply don't work unless growth > 0, but of course, growth cannot continue forever when resources are finite. In your example, having TV's that last longer and can be repaired, can only lead to a decrease in profits for the companies in question, and a decrease in share price. If there is no prospect of growth for the company, there is zero investor motivation to buy shares and every reason to sell now before the share price drops. Again perceived long term gradual decline would cause a rapid economic collapase. We are addicted to growth, and it seems to be a terminal problem.
Kind of missing the point of the article. The population is a function of the energy consumption which directly correlates to the economy. Ergo; reducing the population will lead to decreased energy consumption, and a collapse in the economy. This is the fundemental problem here, economic growth is directly tied to energy usage. The only way out is a radical reform of the fundemental way our economy is _defined_. Sobering research indeed.
I see this argument everytime slashdot reports on Scientology. Many ideologies that people hold to are shams but harmless (look at aromatherapy). Whether it is true or not is irrelevant and a straw man argument. The issue here is whether the organisation is causing harm and whether that harm that it does is intrinsic.
Props to whoever mantains this system that the issue does occur more frequently, but this is a problem with a simple solution. Redundancy. The system is probably too old to be configurable to automatically swap, but a simple setup with two servers allowing a manual hot-swap, is all you need. Not a difficult problem to solve.
Never heard of wireshark?
I have this unusual rash. If I describe it too you in great and embarrasing detail, do you think you could diagnose me for free?
The reason the "science" space is not interesting to the average joe, is that it lacks the "human interest". I mean, look at the mars rovers. They became much more interesting once we anthropomorphised them; tough little guys lasting way longer then we thought they could. Same thing here. We need humans for the human interest; it doesn't matter much what they do exactly, just so long as it is "against the odds", and embodies the "human spirit". And I reckon a trip around Mars will bloody well do it. Years in space, impossibly far from human contact, unable to be assisted if anything goes wrong? Yeah thats human spirit in spades, against some pretty bloody big odds. It's like the polar expeditions of yester-year, except we'll get frequent updates. I say go for it, I couldn't give shit if they land on a bit of dirt or not.