The most interesting thing that I learned is that while Buffett isn't a well philanthropist, when he dies, something like 1% of his wealth will go to his children as an inheritance, and the other 99% (currently about $39.6 billion) will go to a charatable foundation. He's told the administrator of that foundation that he wants him to try and "do something huge" with the money, not just spread it out to lots of smaller causes.
Maybe someone else has answered this, but where the hell does one park 40 billion dollars? The World Bank? T-bills? A CD? Free checking? Do you get a toaster?
(1) "What won't lead the pack is a book by a harvard-educated fiction-writing non-physician."
(2) "That is, unless you're the sort of person who considers Intelligent Design vs Evolution a genuine debate."
Umm, Crichton *is* a Harvard-educated, fiction-writing, non-physician. He has a degree from Harvard medical school, but dropped that career for writing. How is that an ad hom?
As for number 2, maybe I should have said "if you're the type of person who considers a supernatural explanation a viable competing theory to evolution, you might accept a work of fiction as a viable competitor to serious climate research" and that would be true.
I remember this same meme being around in the early 60's --- it was nuclear war then --- and in the mid-70's, with The Limits to Growth. Oh, and don't forget The Population Bomb. The expected date is always in the potential lifetime of younger readers, but comfortably in the future for older ones, and so far (note that you're reading this) it always fails to happen.
Maybe over a 30-50 year timespan, but I've been looking, and I haven't seen any science that says "the earth is looking in better shape these days."
I think the point of these doom-and-gloom scenarios are that we're really not talking about geologic time scales, here, but generational time scales.
Whether that ends up being 20 years or 200, the human race doesn't stop on the dime that it once did. When the shit hits the fan - and it will - what will that look like? Will it be episodes of starvation and catastrophic weather, or will it merely be a return to a less consumer-driven lifestyle, and rapid development of alternative energy? Something in between? Will we recognize it when it comes? Has it already started?
What won't lead the pack is a book by a harvard-educated fiction-writing non-physician. That is, unless you're the sort of person who considers Intelligent Design vs Evolution a genuine debate. Climate change debate is on similar terms.
His friend looked at the flimsy lock and remarked, "That lock is nowhere near good enough to keep out anyone who might want to get into your tent! Why, I bet I could get through that lock in less than a minute."
A minute? Christ, what a pussy.
Scissors. Two seconds. Who the fuck puts a lock on a tent?
when I tried to argue with her about a number of things, she'd repeatedly reply with "No Mac has ever been hacked or had a virus on it."
Now, at the time, I was a young nooblet and probably should have let it slide but instead I snuck into her office and opened up her Macintosh's word editing software with the intent of some lil' bastardry.
So in the face of her computer never having been hacked, you physically sat down at her computer and hacked it?
Good thing she didn't say she's never had her house broken into, or her virtue compromised.
There has been research on hydrogenase enzymes since at least the 70s. I was a student worker in Dr. Leonard Mortenson's lab at the University of Georgia in the late 80s when they were working with Fe-based hydrogenase sequencing.
Give us a story about moving from the lab to the production line. Bacteria/enzymes that produce hydrogen is nothing new.
It may sound arrogant, but it's entirely possible that Mr. Dell really had it right -- Apple's making 9.6% profit margins today, but certainly hasn't for that entire eight years. The real question isn't "how well is Apple doing right now?", but "would the stockholders be better off if they'd invested elsewhere?"
Actually, if you look at any period in comparing their stock up to today, unless you bought Dell nine years ago or earlier, Apple's stock has performed better. Plug in whatever time period you like.
I work around 30+ programmers and various other help desk folks and support teams....of which most of them have a computer at home and at least half of them have laptops.
Not a one of them has a mac. I personally do not even know anyone who owns a mac.
From this we can conclude we mac users don't need your software, we don't need your help, and likely, you don't even appreciate french coffee.
writer? (Score:3, Insightful) by _Shorty-dammit (555739) on Tue May 17, 07:31 AM (#12553174) how do people get jobs writing anything when they don't even know the difference between 'loose' and 'lose' or 'to' and 'too' or that all sentences should end with some form of puncuation? Article's somewhat interesting as far as the information goes, but this guy can't write worth a damn.
Hey, eecummings, you missed a letter.
Re:I applaud Vodafone.
on
Just a Phone?
·
· Score: 1
I, for one, am heartily sick and tired of the technology industry catering to the ill-informed desires of children rather than to the real needs of the adults who actually pay the bills.
Hahahaha! Get a vasectomy, now, buddy - you clearly aren't a parent, and are seemingly unaware that marketing - not just technology - is focused like a laser on rugrat "needs."
Next time you go to the grocery store, get on your knees, and tell me what you see: sugary, fatty, expensive food with toys included. Do the same at every store you shop at.
It's an open conspiracy. Learn to say no, just like your parents.
Isn't that Cosby's curse? I hope you have children *just like you*.
You may want to look into the possibilty that you are dealing with an emotional attachment issue (in whole or in part). A couple of the behaviors you mention are typically strong indicators of an attachment problem. They frequently show up in post-institutionalized or other children who did not have the opportunity to form emotional attachments to parents or caregivers early on in life.
Thanks for this. This is *very* interesting. He did spend an inordinate amount of time in a playpen with a care-giver while my wife and her ex-husband were separated prior to the divorce.
The Mac Mini isn't really powerful enough to playback HDTV video in realtime on it's CPU, and it only has hardware support for MPEG-2 playback. Nobody is going to want to download 30+GBs of MPEG-2 video just to watch a 30-minute video (minus commercials). So, any HDTV service would use a more advanced codec such as MPEG-4 AVC (H.264)/VP6/etc., which the Mac Mini doesn't have the power to playback.
Besides, if the Mac Mini was intended as an HDTV PVR, it would have come with a 3.5" HDD that could hold 300GBs, not a tiny drive, requiring numerous external expansion devices. Remember the iMac? Jobs would simply never put out a device that needs all sorts of add-on hardware.
Absolutely! You're describing some sort of large-scale upgrade scenario if that were to happen.
And we know Apple's not interested in some limited release/test market/upgrade/widespread release treadmill. What a pain in the ass for Apple!
Our son was, at age 1.5 yrs. "the biter" and his first fairly upscale preschool had a meeting of all parents - to which we had not been invited - and voted to kick him out. He was in and out of I think a total of eight different schools. Several of the schools kept journals of his behavior. Public school was the only place not allowed to kick anyone out. He's in the fourth grade now, and while he's entirely capable of the work intellectually (though with a deficit in handwriting skills), he can't handle some of the chaos of the classroom. He's on an IEP (individual education program) that the school is compensated for by state and federal funds, and tracks with the rest of the class, but in a different, lower student/teacher ratio setting.
We had a number of psychological evaluations as well and he performed consistently well other than when the task involved degrees of concentration - he was markedly lower - handwriting, or in social awareness issues. He's a bit locked in his own head.
As for medication, all the doctors note that almost *anyone* can benefit from the various ADD/ADHD medications, but the key for us was that the medicine allowed him to be more comfortable in his own skin and eliminated many of the behaviors that he couldn't associate with negative consequences.
Were he able to be coached in coping with various environments, or were he able to modify his own behavior where he otherwise had no clue about other people's expectations, we probably wouldn't have been so willing to medicate. The hundredth time he's come home from school or a friend's house crying, or the twentieth parent-teacher conference outlining the breadth of what were quite clearly abnormal behaviors (very few actually anger-related), it just wasn't fair to him to have him shoulder that burden, and have no tools for helping himself that he could understand.
The medicine allows him to grow up with a more normal/manageable set of challenges. But it did take us a number of tries to find a medicine that didn't make him sick, or lose his appetite, or produce wild mood swings as the meds took effect or wore off. He's currently on a daily dose of Strattera, and I think it's allowing him to have a relatively normal childhood without feeling drugged or sluggish or sleepy or nauseous or sad.
Feel free to drop me an email if you want to compare notes about anything like behaviors, feelings of copping out/giving up by medicating, school resources, etc.
You need to start him in politics young in order to build the schmoozing network he'll need to make it the rest of the way.
Ahh. But the form of sociopathy is not the charming kind. He tends to piss off people he plays with.
He's mostly interested in two things: where can he lay his hands on junk food, and what story can he weave that we'll believe e.g. "Davis is coming over, but don't worry about us. He's coming in the basement door. Hey, you still have that $5 I got for easter, right?"
I worry for the day he learns subtlety, and becomes aware of illegal/prescription drugs.
Perhaps that's because he's your step-son, and therefore you're not his 'dad'? Why would he call you that? Ever considered that might have something to do with his behaviour?
Listen, I appreciate all the attempts to re-diagnose my son, but really. I've been through almost ten years of this with school, day cares, home, pediatricians and psychologists all experiencing the same thing. It's not some big phantom conspiracy of modern life. After the initial confusion when he was very young and non-verbal, we're all working for his best interests. We want him to be happy and successful.
Don't you think I *wish* it were just something he eats, or that he resents me, or he's going through some phase, or he was just a sullen, misunderstood kid? Then I could change something about diet, or my relationship with him, or the type of exercise he gets or *something*.
The armchair quarterbacks seem to think nobody looks at themselves. That's usually the first thing we blame - what have *I* done wrong? Christ, have I created a sociopath? Have I given him tools, behaviors, strategies he can really use to make friends/decisions, or do I just sound like the grown-ups in a Charlie Brown cartoon to him? You read all the child-rearing literature. You examine your rules, your consistency, your tone, the consequences you give, your involvement in their daily routine, do I read to him enough, does he need more one-on-one time, does he need some reward system, charting, fewer snacks, more snacks, no tomatoes, no red dye - everything. You make adjustments, you communicate more, you set clear guidelines, you signal transitions earlier, you ensure there are no surprises, etc. etc.
Look, I don't doubt there are many examples out there of disaffected kids with absentee parents medicating their kids rather than parenting them, or shipping them off to military school. But as many points of intersection most kids have with society, and the checks and balances involved in prescribing medication, it's got to be a pretty determined parent and/or some conscious shopping around for Dr. Feelgood if their kid really *doesn't* have ADD/ADHD/ODD.
It's a real thing, people. Shit happens. It could be worse - he could be self-mutilating, severely mentally handicapped, internal organs messed up, on a respirator.
These are the cards he and I were dealt, and now we're just playing our hand as well as we can. Without the medicine, however, most of it would be rearranging the deck chairs.
Slashdot Mirror
They actually allow third party games for the iPod.
How come no one has made an "uncrippled" phone this easy to use? Or "uncrippled" *anything* this easy to use?
Seriously. LAMP is a great success story, but anything in the consumer space?
The most interesting thing that I learned is that while Buffett isn't a well philanthropist, when he dies, something like 1% of his wealth will go to his children as an inheritance, and the other 99% (currently about $39.6 billion) will go to a charatable foundation. He's told the administrator of that foundation that he wants him to try and "do something huge" with the money, not just spread it out to lots of smaller causes.
Maybe someone else has answered this, but where the hell does one park 40 billion dollars? The World Bank? T-bills? A CD? Free checking? Do you get a toaster?
But you use them as if them had some evidentiary value in the discussion; neither of them do.
Yes they do. They speak to credibility.
Look up "ad hominem (circumstantial)", poopsie.
(1) "What won't lead the pack is a book by a harvard-educated fiction-writing non-physician."
(2) "That is, unless you're the sort of person who considers Intelligent Design vs Evolution a genuine debate."
Umm, Crichton *is* a Harvard-educated, fiction-writing, non-physician. He has a degree from Harvard medical school, but dropped that career for writing. How is that an ad hom?
As for number 2, maybe I should have said "if you're the type of person who considers a supernatural explanation a viable competing theory to evolution, you might accept a work of fiction as a viable competitor to serious climate research" and that would be true.
And I respect people who earn it.
Ooh, nice. Two ad hominems in a paragraph.
Maybe that's your problem. You're too stupid to know what an ad hom is.
That was one. There wasn't one in my previous post.
Jeez I'm old.
I remember this same meme being around in the early 60's --- it was nuclear war then --- and in the mid-70's, with The Limits to Growth. Oh, and don't forget The Population Bomb. The expected date is always in the potential lifetime of younger readers, but comfortably in the future for older ones, and so far (note that you're reading this) it always fails to happen.
Maybe over a 30-50 year timespan, but I've been looking, and I haven't seen any science that says "the earth is looking in better shape these days."
I think the point of these doom-and-gloom scenarios are that we're really not talking about geologic time scales, here, but generational time scales.
Whether that ends up being 20 years or 200, the human race doesn't stop on the dime that it once did. When the shit hits the fan - and it will - what will that look like? Will it be episodes of starvation and catastrophic weather, or will it merely be a return to a less consumer-driven lifestyle, and rapid development of alternative energy? Something in between? Will we recognize it when it comes? Has it already started?
What won't lead the pack is a book by a harvard-educated fiction-writing non-physician. That is, unless you're the sort of person who considers Intelligent Design vs Evolution a genuine debate. Climate change debate is on similar terms.
His friend looked at the flimsy lock and remarked, "That lock is nowhere near good enough to keep out anyone who might want to get into your tent! Why, I bet I could get through that lock in less than a minute."
A minute? Christ, what a pussy.
Scissors. Two seconds. Who the fuck puts a lock on a tent?
when I tried to argue with her about a number of things, she'd repeatedly reply with "No Mac has ever been hacked or had a virus on it."
Now, at the time, I was a young nooblet and probably should have let it slide but instead I snuck into her office and opened up her Macintosh's word editing software with the intent of some lil' bastardry.
So in the face of her computer never having been hacked, you physically sat down at her computer and hacked it?
Good thing she didn't say she's never had her house broken into, or her virtue compromised.
You apparently weren't a fan of Emergency! and ate out of one of these every day at school.
Rampart! One ADAM-12!
There has been research on hydrogenase enzymes since at least the 70s. I was a student worker in Dr. Leonard Mortenson's lab at the University of Georgia in the late 80s when they were working with Fe-based hydrogenase sequencing.
Give us a story about moving from the lab to the production line. Bacteria/enzymes that produce hydrogen is nothing new.
I bought a Mac Mini because it was a cheap way to get a debugging machine for my web app. That was solely to see how it looks in a Mac browser.
Why would you care what it looks like in a Mac browser?
I only bought my boots for hiking. I use my loafers for everyday walking. Hope the bootmaker doesn't consider me a customer.
Thanks for your business. Have a nice day.
It may sound arrogant, but it's entirely possible that Mr. Dell really had it right -- Apple's making 9.6% profit margins today, but certainly hasn't for that entire eight years. The real question isn't "how well is Apple doing right now?", but "would the stockholders be better off if they'd invested elsewhere?"
a v=true&pg=ch&symb=AAPL&time=8yr&compidx=aaaaa~0&co mp=DELL&ma=0&maval=60&freq=1dy&type=2&uf=0&lf=1&in d_compind=
a v=true&pg=ch&symb=AAPL&time=7yr&compidx=aaaaa~0&co mp=DELL&ma=0&maval=60&freq=1dy&type=2&uf=0&lf=1&in d_compind=
Actually, if you look at any period in comparing their stock up to today, unless you bought Dell nine years ago or earlier, Apple's stock has performed better. Plug in whatever time period you like.
http://money.cnn.com/quote/chart/chart.html?shown
http://money.cnn.com/quote/chart/chart.html?shown
etc.
It looks like unless you owned Dell nine or more years ago, Apple beats it for a LTBH.
I work around 30+ programmers and various other help desk folks and support teams....of which most of them have a computer at home and at least half of them have laptops.
Not a one of them has a mac. I personally do not even know anyone who owns a mac.
From this we can conclude we mac users don't need your software, we don't need your help, and likely, you don't even appreciate french coffee.
writer? (Score:3, Insightful)
by _Shorty-dammit (555739) on Tue May 17, 07:31 AM (#12553174)
how do people get jobs writing anything when they don't even know the difference between 'loose' and 'lose' or 'to' and 'too' or that all sentences should end with some form of puncuation? Article's somewhat interesting as far as the information goes, but this guy can't write worth a damn.
Hey, eecummings, you missed a letter.
I, for one, am heartily sick and tired of the technology industry catering to the ill-informed desires of children rather than to the real needs of the adults who actually pay the bills.
Hahahaha! Get a vasectomy, now, buddy - you clearly aren't a parent, and are seemingly unaware that marketing - not just technology - is focused like a laser on rugrat "needs."
Next time you go to the grocery store, get on your knees, and tell me what you see: sugary, fatty, expensive food with toys included. Do the same at every store you shop at.
It's an open conspiracy. Learn to say no, just like your parents.
Isn't that Cosby's curse? I hope you have children *just like you*.
Linux is in spirit a monolithic design, and MacOS is in spirit a mach-based microkernel design.
More like Linux is like a farming co-op, XNU is Monsanto.
Or, maybe Linux is like a monkey with a spanner, and XNU is like a komodo dragon with a toothache.
No, wait. Linux is like a pulmonary thrombosis! and XNU is the dropped sponge in a gastric bypass!
Damn! OK! I admit it! My analogies have fallen, and they can't get up.
I will now explain the difference with an interpretive dance, perhaps some origami.
There might be some truth in the statement - spare the rod and spoil the child.
No. You were right the first time. It was trite.
You may want to look into the possibilty that you are dealing with an emotional attachment issue (in whole or in part). A couple of the behaviors you mention are typically strong indicators of an attachment problem. They frequently show up in post-institutionalized or other children who did not have the opportunity to form emotional attachments to parents or caregivers early on in life.
Thanks for this. This is *very* interesting. He did spend an inordinate amount of time in a playpen with a care-giver while my wife and her ex-husband were separated prior to the divorce.
Most of the symptoms are spot on. Wow.
The Mac Mini isn't really powerful enough to playback HDTV video in realtime on it's CPU, and it only has hardware support for MPEG-2 playback. Nobody is going to want to download 30+GBs of MPEG-2 video just to watch a 30-minute video (minus commercials). So, any HDTV service would use a more advanced codec such as MPEG-4 AVC (H.264)/VP6/etc., which the Mac Mini doesn't have the power to playback.
Besides, if the Mac Mini was intended as an HDTV PVR, it would have come with a 3.5" HDD that could hold 300GBs, not a tiny drive, requiring numerous external expansion devices. Remember the iMac? Jobs would simply never put out a device that needs all sorts of add-on hardware.
Absolutely! You're describing some sort of large-scale upgrade scenario if that were to happen.
And we know Apple's not interested in some limited release/test market/upgrade/widespread release treadmill. What a pain in the ass for Apple!
It's only art if it's either in black and white or has subtitles... otherwise it's porn
Jesus Christ. Is Paris Hilton considered art these days?
How about some exclusionary clause for green-cast nightvision?
Our son was, at age 1.5 yrs. "the biter" and his first fairly upscale preschool had a meeting of all parents - to which we had not been invited - and voted to kick him out. He was in and out of I think a total of eight different schools. Several of the schools kept journals of his behavior. Public school was the only place not allowed to kick anyone out. He's in the fourth grade now, and while he's entirely capable of the work intellectually (though with a deficit in handwriting skills), he can't handle some of the chaos of the classroom. He's on an IEP (individual education program) that the school is compensated for by state and federal funds, and tracks with the rest of the class, but in a different, lower student/teacher ratio setting.
We had a number of psychological evaluations as well and he performed consistently well other than when the task involved degrees of concentration - he was markedly lower - handwriting, or in social awareness issues. He's a bit locked in his own head.
As for medication, all the doctors note that almost *anyone* can benefit from the various ADD/ADHD medications, but the key for us was that the medicine allowed him to be more comfortable in his own skin and eliminated many of the behaviors that he couldn't associate with negative consequences.
Were he able to be coached in coping with various environments, or were he able to modify his own behavior where he otherwise had no clue about other people's expectations, we probably wouldn't have been so willing to medicate. The hundredth time he's come home from school or a friend's house crying, or the twentieth parent-teacher conference outlining the breadth of what were quite clearly abnormal behaviors (very few actually anger-related), it just wasn't fair to him to have him shoulder that burden, and have no tools for helping himself that he could understand.
The medicine allows him to grow up with a more normal/manageable set of challenges. But it did take us a number of tries to find a medicine that didn't make him sick, or lose his appetite, or produce wild mood swings as the meds took effect or wore off. He's currently on a daily dose of Strattera, and I think it's allowing him to have a relatively normal childhood without feeling drugged or sluggish or sleepy or nauseous or sad.
Feel free to drop me an email if you want to compare notes about anything like behaviors, feelings of copping out/giving up by medicating, school resources, etc.
You need to start him in politics young in order to build the schmoozing network he'll need to make it the rest of the way.
Ahh. But the form of sociopathy is not the charming kind. He tends to piss off people he plays with.
He's mostly interested in two things: where can he lay his hands on junk food, and what story can he weave that we'll believe e.g. "Davis is coming over, but don't worry about us. He's coming in the basement door. Hey, you still have that $5 I got for easter, right?"
I worry for the day he learns subtlety, and becomes aware of illegal/prescription drugs.
Perhaps that's because he's your step-son, and therefore you're not his 'dad'? Why would he call you that? Ever considered that might have something to do with his behaviour?
Listen, I appreciate all the attempts to re-diagnose my son, but really. I've been through almost ten years of this with school, day cares, home, pediatricians and psychologists all experiencing the same thing. It's not some big phantom conspiracy of modern life. After the initial confusion when he was very young and non-verbal, we're all working for his best interests. We want him to be happy and successful.
Don't you think I *wish* it were just something he eats, or that he resents me, or he's going through some phase, or he was just a sullen, misunderstood kid? Then I could change something about diet, or my relationship with him, or the type of exercise he gets or *something*.
The armchair quarterbacks seem to think nobody looks at themselves. That's usually the first thing we blame - what have *I* done wrong? Christ, have I created a sociopath? Have I given him tools, behaviors, strategies he can really use to make friends/decisions, or do I just sound like the grown-ups in a Charlie Brown cartoon to him? You read all the child-rearing literature. You examine your rules, your consistency, your tone, the consequences you give, your involvement in their daily routine, do I read to him enough, does he need more one-on-one time, does he need some reward system, charting, fewer snacks, more snacks, no tomatoes, no red dye - everything. You make adjustments, you communicate more, you set clear guidelines, you signal transitions earlier, you ensure there are no surprises, etc. etc.
Look, I don't doubt there are many examples out there of disaffected kids with absentee parents medicating their kids rather than parenting them, or shipping them off to military school. But as many points of intersection most kids have with society, and the checks and balances involved in prescribing medication, it's got to be a pretty determined parent and/or some conscious shopping around for Dr. Feelgood if their kid really *doesn't* have ADD/ADHD/ODD.
It's a real thing, people. Shit happens. It could be worse - he could be self-mutilating, severely mentally handicapped, internal organs messed up, on a respirator.
These are the cards he and I were dealt, and now we're just playing our hand as well as we can. Without the medicine, however, most of it would be rearranging the deck chairs.