Excuse the bad pun, but seriously people, somewhere far off the Founding Fathers are shaking their heads.
- Imagine a garrison of third-gen "Big Dogs" in every major US city, with assault rifles and thermal vision. "Don't like martial law or the new curfew? Stay inside after 8:00 pm and you'll be safe, citizen! The recession will be over soon." - Like someone else said, shoot-to-kill orders on any human-sized heat signature. - If the only remaining witness of an atrocity is a platoon of robots, and they have no video recording units installed, did the atrocity really happen? - Once the cheap and "bloodless" bombing from afar is over, the REAL fighting takes place on the ground in the rubble. This is the infantry equivalent of the ariel bomber. - Imagine waves of these floating over from China. Like the Sherman tank in WWII, you don't have to make them better than the opposition, just make them in large enough quantities.
If you don't see the use for these things, try thinking like a politician, The uses are ENDLESS. Too bad American schools don't teach Civics anymore.
You and your buddies might want to "correct" those articles.:)
Prophet Moe didn't start slitting throats and spreadin' the word until around 600 AD. This may come as a shock, but a lot of other stuff happened in the previous several thousand years of recorded human history.
"Why would not knowing a foreign language be `a manifestation of ignorance'? Sure, if you're a businessman, a diplomat or a show-off, being multilingual is beneficial. If you're a mechanic, a bank teller or a steel-mill worker, I don't see the point."
Thank you for that quintessentially American viewpoint! My friend, possessing only one linguistic format with which to communicate to your fellow man is the very DEFINITION of ignorance.
And now some random tidbits on why every American needs to learn foreign languages: (alternately titled "Why America is the Next France, Without All of that Culture and Stuff")
- As of 2006 The FBI only had 33 Arabic speakers, and even those had limited proficiency. The CIA and other government agencies are in the same boat. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001388.html)
- The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: language shapes how you see the world. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis)
- The Paris-Hilton generation: do you honestly think the TV babies of today are going to maintain, let alone expand, the prosperity created by the post WWII and baby boomer generations? Does anyone believe anymore that we haven't passed our zenith, after considering for a moment the sterling performance of our federal education system?
- Learning a foreign language will allow you and your family to emigrate to greener pastures when times get tough! Consider it an insurance policy of sorts.
- Got laid off from your fancy high-tech job? You can always switch gears and work as an interpreter: they must be in high demand, since Americans believe foreign language study has no value.
- We Americans should leave the fucking country once in a while, we might learn something! Seriously, it gets embarrassing when foreign friends refer to you as "an exceptional American" because you went to London once. And why is it that you can find German tourists everywhere in America? How many American tourists can you find in Germany? Embarrassing! NATIONALLY we need to get up off the sofa and go outside, and see what lies beyond our island fortress.
- Maybe poor Suzy Bank Teller, or Mack the Steel Worker, should do something other than stare at the TeeVee all night, every night. Maybe the more educated and affluent members of our society should do something to reverse America's strong anti-intellectual streak, rather than engaging in audio-visual or technological masturbation in turn. Maybe we should set a better example for our children, unplug the boob tube, study WITH our kids every night as well as on our own, show them that education is a luxury, a lifelong struggle, a never ending process to be cherished and valued!
- Language IS Culture. When you learn a foreign language, you also learn about foreign cultures. Inevitably you begin to compare these foreign cultures to your own. This is where the fun begins! You start to ask little questions like "Why does America have a NEGATIVE national savings rate?", "Why are we always losing wars nowadays?", "Why don't many Americans know their neighbors?", etc etc etc. You start to cue in on the things other cultures have, that ours lacks.
Foreign readers of Slashdot, please forgive my monoglot countrymen, they know not what they do.
We no longer have a logical debate in the public arena, just an endless stream of logical fallacies posing as debate. Any attempt to explain this to people like the parent poster, is of course pointless.
In times of war, people are always quick to justify special government rights and powers, and allow violation of personal liberties. Their reasoning: What good are these liberties, if the whole nation must be destroyed lest one right be violated?
However, to quote Judge Andrew Napolitano, "...when we show the government that we will not protest its abuses of the natural law and will allow it to trample our freedoms just because there is a war being waged, we create an incentive for the government to go to war."
If the enemy is an abstract notion or poorly defined, all the better. Your war will never end, and it can extend to everyone and to anything. The incentive to "Wag the Dog" is enormous, and now here we have the plot line of a cheesy action flick for the latest incident.
Never mind the obvious solution, to disconnect power plants from the net.
Welcome to the new Cyberwar. Haven't you heard? China has been attacking us daily, why they even hacked the PENTAGON!!!1!1! We have the logs here to prove it. Honest.
(HOMELAND SECURITY NOTICE: For your safety, your online activities have been recorded. Thank you, citizen, for your very real cooperation in fighting virtual-terrorism.)
...I had the bright idea of touching a 9 volt battery to my *braces*.
I couldn't tell if the bright white flash/pop that followed came from just in front of my face, or from somewhere inside my head. Painful to say the least.
If the brain were "just being efficient", then porn wouldn't be the biggest thing on the internet. Your statement phrased ANOTHER way...
"If the subject knows that the sex they are watching is fake then the brain wouldn't have to worry about filtering out sexual behavior because it is not sexual behavior. Perhaps the brain is just being efficient.
"I'd be more interested in seeing the results of people watching real sex on T.V and knowing it, or seeing the results of a child who doesn't know that fake sex in a movie is not real."
Though knowing whether its real or not may intensify the response, people still "get-off" on soft porn, action flicks, sitcoms, soap operas, etc. The id can't distinguish between fantasy and reality.
I've been teaching myself Mandarin Chinese for 6 months now. Some reasons why you should pick it up:
- It's way easier than Westerners make it out to be...similar sentence structure to English, and the verbs stay the same between different tenses. No conjugations, declinations, etc. In many regards it's much easier than "Romance" languages.
- You will be able to communicate with a quarter of the world's population.
- Though there are 13 different dialects of spoken Chinese, they all share the same writing system. You get to read and write 12 additional languages for free. Japanese uses many Chinese characters, too.
- Because it's so hyped as the world's most difficult language, your Western colleagues and employers will think you're a freakin genius. Imagine having "Fluent in Chinese" on your resume?
- Future study in languages more closely related to English will become comparatively easy. You'd be surprised how much French, Spanish, and German you already unknowingly speak on a daily basis.
- It's utterly fascinating to learn, especially the characters.
- If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
If you want to get the hang of Mandarin Chinese quickly, Pimsleur is hands down the absolute best.
It is believed that the Moon's surface has large amounts of helium-3 in the lunar regolith.[18] At the start of the 21st century several countries planned to explore the Moon and to use its resources. Helium-3 is expected to be one of those resources if a commercial fusion process is created. Yet to be determined is the exact quantity of helium-3 which the solar wind traps and deposits on the lunar surface. As of our current knowledge of lunar regolith, it is exceedingly scarce (ppb quantities mixed in with ppm quantities of He4), and may be beneath the point of economic recovery. However, processes to extract other materials from the lunar regolith could cover the majority of the energy expenditures in extraction; Helium-3 extraction might be piggybacked on these processes.
Cosmochemist and geochemist Ouyang Ziyuan from the Chinese Academy of Sciences who is now in charge of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program has already stated on many occasions that one of the main goals of the program would be the mining of helium-3, from where "each year three space shuttle missions could bring enough fuel for all human beings across the world."[19]
In January 2006 the Russian space company RKK Energiya announced that it considers lunar helium-3 a potential economic resource to be mined by 2020.[20]
-(snip)-
Regarding funding for our own ailing space program, by the time the American sheeple wake-up and this actually becomes an issue that the politicians can use to run for re-election, it will be FAR too late.
My advice: learn to speak Mandarin. My wife and I are doing it already.
I am not a developer, but I am a salesman (of sorts).
My friend, don't listen to any of these guys. They obviously have an axe to grind. There are many types of "salesmen", and many types of products to sell. You wont be an SUV salesmen trying to push ripoff extended warranties, or some pimply faced chump selling cellphones from a booth in the mall.
It sounds like the products you'll be selling aren't commodities, but rather high value "business solutions" (or something) that require a lot of interaction with your customers.
You've worked for this firm for almost 20 years, and you're intimately acquainted with your products, indeed it appears you've been involved in every step of product development. What better person to help broker these deals, than you?
And why would you have to lie or "sell your soul"? As a techie you'll be leveling with your customers and helping them figure out how to interface with your product. Potential stumbling block? Be honest and tell them, then figure out a workaround together. No way to make it work and it's a deal breaker? Then "have a nice day and thank you for your time".
There is such a thing as karma. Take the high road, and it will pay you back in time. The mark of an amature is feeling you have to lie, cheat and steal to get ahead. That's the creed of jealous losers everywhere.
In my business (insurance) they say you should either add value to the transaction, or get out of the way. The poor or unethical salesman only removes value: they lie about product shortcomings, they don't listen to their customer's needs, they sell them the wrong thing, etc. But a person with your background has a lot of value to add for all parties involved.
Finally, this sounds like a tremendous opportunity for professional growth. Some sales skills are just the thing to really boost your career, and potentially push you in new directions. C'mon guys, whatever happened to expanding your comfort zones?
Nobody gets anywhere without eventually learning how to sell.
Slashdot Mirror
Excuse the bad pun, but seriously people, somewhere far off the Founding Fathers are shaking their heads.
- Imagine a garrison of third-gen "Big Dogs" in every major US city, with assault rifles and thermal vision. "Don't like martial law or the new curfew? Stay inside after 8:00 pm and you'll be safe, citizen! The recession will be over soon."
- Like someone else said, shoot-to-kill orders on any human-sized heat signature.
- If the only remaining witness of an atrocity is a platoon of robots, and they have no video recording units installed, did the atrocity really happen?
- Once the cheap and "bloodless" bombing from afar is over, the REAL fighting takes place on the ground in the rubble. This is the infantry equivalent of the ariel bomber.
- Imagine waves of these floating over from China. Like the Sherman tank in WWII, you don't have to make them better than the opposition, just make them in large enough quantities.
If you don't see the use for these things, try thinking like a politician, The uses are ENDLESS. Too bad American schools don't teach Civics anymore.
Since Wikipedia is apparently an authoritative source in your mind:
:)
"Islam had the astrolab [sic]"...but the Greeks had it first: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrolabe#A_Brief_History
"Islam had sundials."...eh? The Egyptians and Babylonians had them back in 3500 BC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundial#History
"Islam was circumnavigating the world"...the link says nothing about that! Nice try.
"Islam had explosive gunpowder."...China invented gunpowder first: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder#China
You and your buddies might want to "correct" those articles.
Prophet Moe didn't start slitting throats and spreadin' the word until around 600 AD. This may come as a shock, but a lot of other stuff happened in the previous several thousand years of recorded human history.
"Why would not knowing a foreign language be `a manifestation of ignorance'? Sure, if you're a businessman, a diplomat or a show-off, being multilingual is beneficial. If you're a mechanic, a bank teller or a steel-mill worker, I don't see the point."
Thank you for that quintessentially American viewpoint! My friend, possessing only one linguistic format with which to communicate to your fellow man is the very DEFINITION of ignorance.
And now some random tidbits on why every American needs to learn foreign languages:
(alternately titled "Why America is the Next France, Without All of that Culture and Stuff")
- As of 2006 The FBI only had 33 Arabic speakers, and even those had limited proficiency. The CIA and other government agencies are in the same boat. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001388.html)
- The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: language shapes how you see the world. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis)
- The Paris-Hilton generation: do you honestly think the TV babies of today are going to maintain, let alone expand, the prosperity created by the post WWII and baby boomer generations? Does anyone believe anymore that we haven't passed our zenith, after considering for a moment the sterling performance of our federal education system?
- Learning a foreign language will allow you and your family to emigrate to greener pastures when times get tough! Consider it an insurance policy of sorts.
- Got laid off from your fancy high-tech job? You can always switch gears and work as an interpreter: they must be in high demand, since Americans believe foreign language study has no value.
- We Americans should leave the fucking country once in a while, we might learn something! Seriously, it gets embarrassing when foreign friends refer to you as "an exceptional American" because you went to London once. And why is it that you can find German tourists everywhere in America? How many American tourists can you find in Germany? Embarrassing! NATIONALLY we need to get up off the sofa and go outside, and see what lies beyond our island fortress.
- Maybe poor Suzy Bank Teller, or Mack the Steel Worker, should do something other than stare at the TeeVee all night, every night. Maybe the more educated and affluent members of our society should do something to reverse America's strong anti-intellectual streak, rather than engaging in audio-visual or technological masturbation in turn. Maybe we should set a better example for our children, unplug the boob tube, study WITH our kids every night as well as on our own, show them that education is a luxury, a lifelong struggle, a never ending process to be cherished and valued!
- Language IS Culture. When you learn a foreign language, you also learn about foreign cultures. Inevitably you begin to compare these foreign cultures to your own. This is where the fun begins! You start to ask little questions like "Why does America have a NEGATIVE national savings rate?", "Why are we always losing wars nowadays?", "Why don't many Americans know their neighbors?", etc etc etc. You start to cue in on the things other cultures have, that ours lacks.
Foreign readers of Slashdot, please forgive my monoglot countrymen, they know not what they do.
Geeze, ad hominem much?
We no longer have a logical debate in the public arena, just an endless stream of logical fallacies posing as debate. Any attempt to explain this to people like the parent poster, is of course pointless.
In times of war, people are always quick to justify special government rights and powers, and allow violation of personal liberties. Their reasoning: What good are these liberties, if the whole nation must be destroyed lest one right be violated?
However, to quote Judge Andrew Napolitano, "...when we show the government that we will not protest its abuses of the natural law and will allow it to trample our freedoms just because there is a war being waged, we create an incentive for the government to go to war."
If the enemy is an abstract notion or poorly defined, all the better. Your war will never end, and it can extend to everyone and to anything. The incentive to "Wag the Dog" is enormous, and now here we have the plot line of a cheesy action flick for the latest incident.
Never mind the obvious solution, to disconnect power plants from the net.
Welcome to the new Cyberwar. Haven't you heard? China has been attacking us daily, why they even hacked the PENTAGON!!!1!1! We have the logs here to prove it. Honest.
(HOMELAND SECURITY NOTICE: For your safety, your online activities have been recorded. Thank you, citizen, for your very real cooperation in fighting virtual-terrorism.)
...I had the bright idea of touching a 9 volt battery to my *braces*.
I couldn't tell if the bright white flash/pop that followed came from just in front of my face, or from somewhere inside my head. Painful to say the least.
Can someone explain what happened?
If the brain were "just being efficient", then porn wouldn't be the biggest thing on the internet. Your statement phrased ANOTHER way...
"If the subject knows that the sex they are watching is fake then the brain wouldn't have to worry about filtering out sexual behavior because it is not sexual behavior. Perhaps the brain is just being efficient.
"I'd be more interested in seeing the results of people watching real sex on T.V and knowing it, or seeing the results of a child who doesn't know that fake sex in a movie is not real."
Though knowing whether its real or not may intensify the response, people still "get-off" on soft porn, action flicks, sitcoms, soap operas, etc. The id can't distinguish between fantasy and reality.
I've been teaching myself Mandarin Chinese for 6 months now. Some reasons why you should pick it up:
- It's way easier than Westerners make it out to be...similar sentence structure to English, and the verbs stay the same between different tenses. No conjugations, declinations, etc. In many regards it's much easier than "Romance" languages.
- You will be able to communicate with a quarter of the world's population.
- Though there are 13 different dialects of spoken Chinese, they all share the same writing system. You get to read and write 12 additional languages for free. Japanese uses many Chinese characters, too.
- Because it's so hyped as the world's most difficult language, your Western colleagues and employers will think you're a freakin genius. Imagine having "Fluent in Chinese" on your resume?
- Future study in languages more closely related to English will become comparatively easy. You'd be surprised how much French, Spanish, and German you already unknowingly speak on a daily basis.
- It's utterly fascinating to learn, especially the characters.
- If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
If you want to get the hang of Mandarin Chinese quickly, Pimsleur is hands down the absolute best.
Guys, the leaders of "The West" look ahead maybe five, ten years max. The Chinese are thinking ahead 100 years.
... here's an interesting tidbit:
They plan on mining Helium-3 from the lunar soil, for use in fusion reactions.
Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3
-(snip)-
It is believed that the Moon's surface has large amounts of helium-3 in the lunar regolith.[18] At the start of the 21st century several countries planned to explore the Moon and to use its resources. Helium-3 is expected to be one of those resources if a commercial fusion process is created. Yet to be determined is the exact quantity of helium-3 which the solar wind traps and deposits on the lunar surface. As of our current knowledge of lunar regolith, it is exceedingly scarce (ppb quantities mixed in with ppm quantities of He4), and may be beneath the point of economic recovery. However, processes to extract other materials from the lunar regolith could cover the majority of the energy expenditures in extraction; Helium-3 extraction might be piggybacked on these processes.
Cosmochemist and geochemist Ouyang Ziyuan from the Chinese Academy of Sciences who is now in charge of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program has already stated on many occasions that one of the main goals of the program would be the mining of helium-3, from where "each year three space shuttle missions could bring enough fuel for all human beings across the world."[19]
In January 2006 the Russian space company RKK Energiya announced that it considers lunar helium-3 a potential economic resource to be mined by 2020.[20]
-(snip)-
Regarding funding for our own ailing space program, by the time the American sheeple wake-up and this actually becomes an issue that the politicians can use to run for re-election, it will be FAR too late.
My advice: learn to speak Mandarin. My wife and I are doing it already.
"All your base are belong to us."
I am not a developer, but I am a salesman (of sorts).
My friend, don't listen to any of these guys. They obviously have an axe to grind. There are many types of "salesmen", and many types of products to sell. You wont be an SUV salesmen trying to push ripoff extended warranties, or some pimply faced chump selling cellphones from a booth in the mall.
It sounds like the products you'll be selling aren't commodities, but rather high value "business solutions" (or something) that require a lot of interaction with your customers.
You've worked for this firm for almost 20 years, and you're intimately acquainted with your products, indeed it appears you've been involved in every step of product development. What better person to help broker these deals, than you?
And why would you have to lie or "sell your soul"? As a techie you'll be leveling with your customers and helping them figure out how to interface with your product. Potential stumbling block? Be honest and tell them, then figure out a workaround together. No way to make it work and it's a deal breaker? Then "have a nice day and thank you for your time".
There is such a thing as karma. Take the high road, and it will pay you back in time. The mark of an amature is feeling you have to lie, cheat and steal to get ahead. That's the creed of jealous losers everywhere.
In my business (insurance) they say you should either add value to the transaction, or get out of the way. The poor or unethical salesman only removes value: they lie about product shortcomings, they don't listen to their customer's needs, they sell them the wrong thing, etc. But a person with your background has a lot of value to add for all parties involved.
Finally, this sounds like a tremendous opportunity for professional growth. Some sales skills are just the thing to really boost your career, and potentially push you in new directions. C'mon guys, whatever happened to expanding your comfort zones?
Nobody gets anywhere without eventually learning how to sell.