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Admin
NEMSIS 2.1 dataset standard defines a series of "null codes" to be used to further clarify why a field was null:
These were required to be sent in place of blank or null for most elements.
Admin
Those that aren't pedantic douchebags aren't doing their job.
Admin
Agreed.
I recall years ago reading about a psychology experiment where kids were not allowed to be taught the meaning of words, because it could "interfere with their creativity" (or some such nonsense). They wanted to see how they interpreted things and if it was better in some way. Never did see any published results. Guess the pros couldn't tell that being creative and communicating that creativity were two different things. Or, if they "discovered" that, someone probably told them: "duh!"
On a different note, this also made me think of this scenario (someone else originated the example): Someone says: "I like to box." Another person interprets this as that someone likes to "put things in containers." Expressing that interpretation to the originator of the statement would probably yield an amusing :wtf: expression. What was originally intended in the communication is actually important - if you don't get it, you miss the whole point of what's being communicated.
Admin
Of course. What she really meant was, "I like to wrap objects around primitive data types."
Admin
Phonies
Admin
It was more or less.
There's this external evil demon army, and none of the kingdoms bother to unite against it.
Just like global warming. All the nations are too busy bickering about less important things, like nuclear arms, poverty, terrorism, and hunger.
Admin
It was banned from school for quite a while.
Admin
Yeah, like 50 years ago. Want me to remind you how censorship worked in the Eastern Bloc 50 years ago?
Besides, it was "banned" from the assigned reading lists in some schools. I can't see any instance of anyone being in any trouble for simply reading it.
Admin
The argument is that people who think Orwell is about capitalistic greed, would suddenly become offended if they realized it was about socialism. But they aren't educated enough in the social and political structures they espouse and hate.
Admin
It... is? Well that's one shitty argument you're making then. The amount of people who don't get 1984 is about "like, Soviets and stuff" is probably no bigger than the amount of people who don't know you shouldn't lick live wires.
And why would they be offended? You keep using that word...
Admin
YMBNOE
Admin
"Orwell was totally criticizing capitalist greed!"
"Um, no, actually, he was actually drawing a parallel to the oppresiveness of Soviet government, which was socialist..."
"OH MI GOSH YOU INSULTED ME AND MY MOTHER MY SISTER MY BROTHER HOW DARE YOU"
Stumped? Perhaps. In denial? Maybe. Angry? Happens. Offended?
Admin
You're spoiled by being around reasonable people.
Admin
People are crazy, but they're mostly predictably crazy. Which is why I can see "angry" or "in denial", but "offended" is straight into non sequitur TDEMSYR territory.
Admin
Did you hear. Mental health conditions are natural if they don't harm anyone else.
Admin
Which schools? How long is a while? I remember reading it in...err...11th grade? I mean, I know that various districts decide not to use it occasionally, and that's news for whatever reason.
EDIT: Wait...you replied to stuff talking about Catcher in the Rye, but then started talking about Orwell.
Admin
Never mind.... just forget I said anything.
Maybe I should have just said...
Admin
1984 was about control. The social ideology in force in the book or in your environment does not matter. The point was the average person was constantly under surveillance and could be punished by 'Big Brother' for stepping out of the accepted norm.
Again, stressing the fact: 'Big Brother' existing and enforcing the rule of the day is the point.
Kind of like what seems to be happening in various parts of the world today. I'm sure many of you could come up with examples - if you're allowed to post them. ;-)
Admin
I am pleased to read this. In a lot of the data collecting activities for which I've provided schemas, people have wanted boolean fields which have actually turned out to have at least 5 values and sometimes more, such as Yes No Not applicable (your -25) Not yet checked Could not read Also (and this reminded me of Willard van Orman Quine's definitions of bleen and grue*) some fields require a date on which the value will expire or change.
*WvOQ was arguing about the limits of knowledge and postulated the colors bleen and grue. Bleen is blue but at some future unknown date will change to green, and grue is the opposite. From a purely observational standpoint you now can't tell if a color is green or grue (though science will give you the answer, if you have enough of it.)
Admin
Orwell was a socialist, as I recall a member of the Independent Labour Party. Animal Farm is about how revolutionaries turn into oppressors. It was about how Stalin's Soviet Union was taken over by the pigs/Stalinists and eventually aligned itself with right wing states (the Soviet Union helped Hitler prepare for war - perhaps Stalin's biggest mistake.) The precise point about Stalin's Soviet Union was that it wasn't, in fact, socialist - though there were a lot of genuinely idealistic socialists and communists in it.
Orwell was recycling Yeats:
Hurrah for revolution and more cannon shot! A beggar on horseback lashes a beggar on foot. Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.
(Management methods follow a similar cycle.)
Admin
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH
What's with the jellypotato here? I keep trying to navigate to a suggested topic, and getting fired 50 posts north!
Admin
If you only can read one Orwell book, make it "down and out in London and Paris". I can guarantee, you'll never want to eat in a restaurant again.
Admin
The topic 'I'm Not Married to the Idea' still hates me, and continues to pelt me with jellypotato.
Admin
NO_REPRO :P
Admin
I once tried to enter it in the win10 thread, and it threw me over 300 posts. If I was willing to enter the likes thread, I bet it would send me to post -1000 and crash the whole forum.
But using a new tab, as always, works.
Admin
Maybe that's why I can't repro. I always do the tabbed browsing thing.
Admin
Which browser are you using?
Admin
Sleipnir. And it randomly started working right again...
Who even knows?
Admin
Point for kupfernigk. Orwell's specific target seemed to be increasing British sympathy for Stalin, who misappropriate revolutionary power for his own narcissistic purposes. Most communist/socialists speak wishfully as if Stalin were an aberration, although nothing in the system has prevented other leaders from doing exactly the same thing.
The Who summarized it much more succinctly. "Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss."
Admin
ISO 900x is fine for manufacturing, because I think it can be proven objectively that applying a consistent process to make a bunch of copies of the same thing, with the objective of improving quality, will result in higher quality.
It is debatable whether application of a "consistent process" will raise or lower the quality of the first copy of something new. The higher quality exists as a subjective generalization in the minds of a vocal customer base -- predominantly found in the old world, speaking languages with germanic roots.
Of course, everyone resents NIH, but I think there is more to it.
With the original "classic" ISO 9000, the standards for manufacturing were defined by an international standards body. With the modern ISO 9001, the standards are defined by individual manufacturers' senior management.
The common thread, from a software manufacturing perspective, is that the "consistent processes" are defined by the people with the least practical experience creating new products.
Like any other management fad.
While the ISO 9000 (family) proponents will cherry-pick from Deming's ideas, the results seem radically different to me:
Seems like another well-intentioned set of ideas which can work splendidly when applied conscientiously, but can easily end up in disaster when applied by more typical animals (like pigs).
Admin
Consistency of process can work well for manufacturing (or will consistently allow some competitor to do better than you). It is a lot more difficult for services as there are more variables involved, and can't really apply to development of new products as there's no standard process for that.
Admin
Well, Stalin wasn't the only one -- I just say that Stalin and company had Marx rolling over in his grave, screaming bloody murder about "communism abuse! communism abuse!" because I suspect that what Stalin and co. were doing was nothing like what Marx had in mind...
(Marxism, itself, is simply utterly impractical to apply to large groups of humans -- I'd like to meet the space aliens who made it work for them on a large scale, though!)
Yep.Admin
So when I read this comment, I automatically interpreted it as “[ideological warfare], is simply utterly impractical to apply to large groups of humans”, which made me lol.
But yeah, socialism definitely seems to work better as a community-level thing than a government thing.
Admin
It is well proven, though, that having a consistent process for releasing code once it's developed increases the likelihood of a successful release. And having a consistent process for testing code increases the efficiency of the testing. And having a consistent style of coding increases the maintainability of the codebase, leading to a reduced development time.
There may be a large portion of creativity in dev, but we're not fucking snowflakes. We do a lot of the same things over and over, which can be standardized and practiced.
Admin
It actually works really well at the family level. It requires that you care about the others and have reasons to want to share stuff with them and sacrifice for them. That sort of thing is very hard to scale out.
Admin
It can also work well in, for example, religious communities, where everyone shares common beliefs and goals. When the community is diverse enough that it includes a significant number of people with different goals, it ceases to be a community, and expecting behavior tied to the common good rather than individual good becomes more difficult to achieve.
Admin
Wow, you don't know my family at all.
Admin
Knowing you is probably enough, though.
Admin
If you had family members like blakey then it probably wouldn't apply, so his questioning of your statement makes perfect sense to me.
Admin
I had an appropriate qualifier that covers him.
Admin
What? "It requires that you care about the others?" Yeah, that pretty much eliminates Blakey. (Or at least his public persona.)
Admin
Families are all relative, anyway.
Admin
:snowflake: :giggity:
:frowning:
:rimshot:
I'm in an emoji mood today. :confused:
Admin
We need an :I_want_to_kill_you_for_that_terrible_pun: emoji.
Admin
:@groaner:?
Admin
That conveys "terrible pun," but not the "so bad I want to kill you" aspect. Although it happens so often that @groaner might get so annoyed with all the @mentions that he want's to kill the people responsible...
Admin
It takes a lot more than that to send @Groaner on a homicidal rampage. Mention bombs a la Worst of the Worst, or being made to use the Discourse Mobile Experience might do the trick, however.
Admin
Dozens of mentions a day, like was done to @mikeTheLiar?
Admin
IIRC, that's a low estimate.
Admin
I had like 200 emails from you dicks before I turned it off.