The reason companies don't want to pay for training is that that after a few layoffs employees have no reason to stay with a company if they can find a better job that uses their new skills.

This is one of the least informed discussions I have seen on /. Maybe folks should fight belief wars over something they know about: vim or Emacs or (your favorite editor) anyone?

Note: The former World Chess Champion Tigran V. Petrosian died in 1984.
The comments were made by grandmaster Tigran L. Petrosian, born 1984 and named after the champion.

I doubt most of the posters claiming to know why most people don't vote in many U.S. elections have any empirical data to back up what they are saying.

If the problem is that the parties are too much alike, why are there typically fewer votes cast in primaries? Primaries give voters who do align themselves with a party a chance to choose that candidate. Voters, especially in non-Federal elections, may have a better chance of knowing things about the candidates.

Personally I don't think voting should be mandatory, withholding one's vote is a legitimate choice. (However being unwilling to explore the potential consequences of your action/inaction is not the same as a considered decision to stay home on voting day.)

In my opinion mandatory voting would ultimately increase the influence of money. All the persuasive tools that are at play in the supermarket and advertising world will be brought to bear against currently non-voting/consumers. "Product placement" of candidates in movies and television anyone?

Most ballots offer a chance to write in a candidate. One can write in "None of the above." I've only felt compelled to use this option once.

As a test of theories as to why people don't vote why not try out ballot options such "I am not selecting a candidate because it wouldn't make any difference," "I am not selecting a candidate because none of them reflect my views" or just plain "I am not selecting a candidate." I doubt that this opportunity to use the system to condemn/complain about the system would dramatically attract new voters.

The preface to the collection "Killer in the Rain" discusses how Chandler repurposed plot, character and description from these short stories to create "The Big Sleep," "Farewell My Lovely," and "Lady in the Lake." The stories were originally published in pulp magazines and most were not republished until after his death. Short stories can help a writer discover her/his voice, develop characters, and possibly an audience.

A subset of a data.frame is a data.frame, unless you haven't set drop = FALSE, and "select" only one column.
By default "the result is coerced to the lowest possible dimension. The default is to drop if only one column is left, but not to drop if only one row is left."
When a result is reduced to 1 dimension its type changes, and R will throw an error if you use a data.frame method on the result.
I advise anyone using R seriously to read The R Inferno to learn to avoid the many non-obvious features of R

I agree with SerpentMage that "bad code" may in fact be accomplishing something, and that unfortunately the badness may make it difficult to understand. I also agree that if the code was put in place to handle some unusual circumstance, it probably wasn't causing unit tests to fail. (A good programmer would probably add the edge case to the unit tests.) Before deleting (or commenting out) code it is important to try and understand it, and to incorporate that understanding into your comments. For example
## Deleted code that computed the maximum possible number of subcases as maxSubcases because ## no subsequent code references maxSubcases
If you don't understand what the code is doing, you may want to ask someone with an historical understanding of the code. For example perhaps there used to be a memory problem that required a workaround, and you are dealing with code that is currently not needed.
On the other hand, maybe a fix was put in to deal with a situation that could arise again, but because the situation was rare and the fix was buggy (no surprise since it was written by the author of the maxSubcases code) the code was removed, and updates were left for a day that never came.
Running some kind of code checking software might also be useful, especially if you are using a language that doesn't require you to define variables in advance, but conveniently instantiates them for you.
There could be code that says if (maxSubcasses > 15000) { ... which will never be triggered since maxSubcasses will always be 0, though maxSubcases won't. True story: many years ago I found an obscure FORTRAN bug in which an undeclared variable had a small positive value and worked successfully as an epsilon until a change in OS caused it to have the value 0, resulting in code failure.

My first step into the world of science fiction was a copy of his "Untouched by Human Hands" which I found among my grandfathers books when I was 12.
Is Norman Spinrad underrated? He was one of my favorite "young" authors back in the early 70s

Why is that 2008 article the only reference I can find on the web to the “White-chapel Rapist”? That part of the article is quoted verbatim and discussed on many sites, yet is not independently cited.

It's not nice to frack with Mother Nature.

But after using Windows how many still admire Bill Gates?

If you are a good teacher, and love sci fi and fantasy, then I recommend doing a lot of preparation, but co-constructing the course with your students. That way you can engage their interests, and they can contribute from their own experience.

Co-constructing does not mean that you abdicate responsibility, or don't provide a format for the class. It means you get feedback from the students on the material, and themes. If your students get so excited by a theme that it motivates them to explore read more widely and think more deeply that's great.

You can also have a core of short stories and novels that everyone will read and discuss, and let students develop their own personalized reading lists. At an in-between level, students can form groups to focus on a theme or an author ...

If you let students take a strong role in the class, make sure there is a solid place for kids who are new to science fiction or are shy about taking the lead. One thing you can do early in the class is to pick out some stories that you think are likely to be new to your class and make the discussion focus on the ideas, characters etc of the text. Don't relate it to Sci Fi/Fantasy as genres at that point. By the time you talk more about genres, students will have something to go on.

If you are willing to put in the time I would set up a wiki or a google group or other format for everyone to share ideas. (This would be in addition to traditional writing assignments)

By all means give kids resources for plunging in, but don't make the point an understanding of the history and range of the genres. [Personally I think either Fantasy or Science Fiction has sufficient scope for a course and wouldn't mix them.]

I read lots of science fiction in High School because I wanted to. I even read some good science fiction in classses ( Cat's Cradle, Fahrenheit 451, A Canticle for Liebowitz). I read it because it was fun, because it stimulated my imagination, not because it was someone's idea of canon. Don't include something you would hate to read. I know people's tastes vary, but I doubt my High School English teacher really liked Silas Marner.

/. readers have made lots of great suggestions (meaning books I've read and liked) as well as ones I'll try out myself. Dive in. Here are a few short stories I read and liked way back in High School

• Philip K. Dick 'We Can Remember It For You Wholesale' [the very loose basis of the film Total Recall ]
• Robert Sheckley 'Untouched by Human Hands'
• Issac Asimov 'The Ugly Boy'
• Alfred Bester 'The Men Who Murdered Mohammed'
• Stanislav Lem 'The seventh sally or how Trurl's own Perfection lead to no good' from The Cyberiad

The title character of Asimov short story "The Ugly Boy" is a Neanderthal child subject to scientific investigation in our time. It makes a good cautionary tale for those considering cloning a species so close to our own. For me the ethical considerations against such a project outweigh the potential scientific value.