The Grameen Foundation, originating in the slums of Bangladesh, provides microloans, and more importantly, the infrastructure to help their borrowers to become financially independent. In many cases, this can be as simple as a few farm animals or providing a day's worth of raw materials, such as wicker for baskets. These workers often get gouged for these raw materials, and would otherwise have only pennies left over at the end of the day.
Many of these loans are provided to the woman of the house (often a cultural challenge), as they are more likely to make prudent decisions regarding the family's finances, such as making sure that there's enough food or fuel to look after the family.
The program has earned its founder a Nobel Prize, and it has been expanded throughout the world.
The branches use open source software, developed and managed as "Mifos." They have other opportunities here and a sourceforge project:
"Mifos is an MIS purpose-built for the microfinance industry. It provides MFIs the key functionality to better serve the poor: client management, loans & savings portfolio tracking, reporting, & social performance measurement. See mifos.org for more info."
Well, I hate to go back to the dreaded car analogy, but C -> PHP -> SQL is a bit like saying you should learn mechanical engineering before you learn to change the oil in your car, then learn how to back it out of the driveway.
If you have nothing but brains and time, C will be a great start...managing references vs. pointers and memory...you will be bulletproof when you start using a 21st century language. Not to start a flamewar here, but maybe it's useful in plenty of ways (mostly learning how freaking hard it was to program 40 years ago), I'm sure a bunch of people will jump down my throat and tell me I wouldn't be able to wake up in the morning and make it to my coffee machine without using C 12 times. My point is, it's hard, and not exactly a recommended place to start if you just want to build web sites. If you want to major in Computer Science, on the other hand...have at it.
Let's skip ahead to SQL. It's doesn't matter what language you "program" in, SQL is what you use to put and get data in and out of a database. 95% of the time, it's "Select [something] from [tablename] where [parameter] equals "whatever"... or a similar insert/update statement. Hordes, and I mean HORDES of sites use little more than that, but you can obviously go hog wild in this department and become an Oracle DBA and make piles of money if you like.
As far as a programming language to render pages and interact with a database? There are dozens of legitimate choices, and whichever one you pick, you will have millions of people agreeing with you or derisively calling you an idiot. Some people think java is robust and "enterprise" - some think it blows. PHP has some issues pointed out clearly above, but I've used it for basic web development and never ran into any problems (or had a site 0wned). c# or asp/vbscript is easyish (but widely hated on here), and you might need a $10,000 OS/product suite to run it on your own hardware (but obviously you can find that environment at any hosting company). Ruby, Python, Perl, whatever...advocates and critics abound. Keep in mind, you learn a lot from the code you borrow/find on the web, so if you pick an obscure language, you might make life harder down the road. i.e. Lisp might be the most perfect language ever designed, according to some, but if I needed "sample code" to rip off for my own web development efforts, I can't imagine finding a decent function after googling for ten minutes. Not so with php etc. (Of course, you'll also find some *bad* functions too!)
I'd look for 'tutorials' or 'getting started' and probably start with PHP or python. Actually, I'd spend a few days on 3-4 different ones...they'll all start off doing the same thing, and you might find that one is just easier to look at and comprehend. Look up LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP/Python) and you'll find loads of stuff.
Let the flames begin, I'm a "web developer" and not a "software engineer" - this is slashdot after all - but you asked.
Maybe this just nitpicking the title and not the article (haven't reg'd to RTFA myself), but the "music industry" will continue, albeit in varied forms. The *record companies* will either change drastically (hint: offering DRM-free downloads is not drastic enough) or die and have their IP bought by a company that gets it.
What ought to happen is what's happened to TV/Internet. Let the users have *everything* for $50/month. By "everything" I mean links to a library of every freaking song ever recorded. Not EMI's for $12/month and Colombia's for $10/month, and only on one device per household at a time...but a "base package" with a few premium catalogs a la carte for a couple dollars.
Every. Freaking. Song. Ever.
Then let the consumer play it on home stereo systems, computers, iPods, cars, phones, and watches if they want. Find an innovative way to filter it, whether it's XM-style channels, or collaboratively (people who made playlists similar to yours like the following bands that you haven't heard of).
I'm sure once upon a time some MBA said "No one is going to pay $50/month for TV. TV is Free!" Yet here we are. Do the same with music. Some people are gonna steal it, but an army of PhDs hasn't figured out how to stop that from happening, so they're gonna steal anyway. Make a legal way to let the masses access everything with little fuss, and plenty of people will take them up on it.
Sadly, the record companies will never agree to it. Perhaps one day when they can be bought for pennies on the dollar, some company with cash and vision (google) will do it right.
The funny thing is, even high school dropouts in the Netherlands are likely to speak English, French, and German quite well (though they often hold back on speaking German for, uh, cultural reasons). They are a stone's throw from countries speaking those languages, and unlike many other places, when they import television shows, they keep the original languages and add the subtitles in Dutch.
Plus the Dutch language is not deep in terms of dimensional vocabulary. While the Eskimos may have 70 words for snow, Dutch probably has one. I remember watching a movie and the English line was something like "the pain doesn't hurt" and the Dutch translation was "Pijn is nicht pijn" - Pain is not pain.
Of course it's very respectful to try to speak someone's language, especially when most of your countrymen (and the rest of the world, generally) don't bother. A diplomatic row? I doubt it.
It's funny, every time details about some "cutting edge" idea or business model surface, this forum (which used to be populated with physicists, engineers, and geeks of all stripes) piles on with their own particular angle on why it won't work.
Good thing slashdot isn't a frickin' VC company...I can just imagine the comments:
Are you kidding, no one will pay half a billion dollars for a site that just has free web-based email. I could knock that out in a weekend with perl...
No way anyone will pay two billion dollars for a video sharing site...I could knock that out in perl in a week
What? *Another* search company? Who needs that? We already have Lycos and yahoo, and their results are pretty good...besides, I could knock one out in perl if I really needed to...
An overpriced mp3 player with 5 buttons and a scroll dial? L4m3.
No, instead, we have the run of the mill peanut gallery, with their particularly ignorant insights. Don't get me wrong, a strong dose of skepticism is a healthy thing to have, but do you really think that Sergey and his band of PhD.s are not quite as clever as you when it comes to spotting and growing ideas? I'm no fan of the Segway, but you have to admit, much of the pesky unwanted energy in our machines shows its face in the form of heat, and if you can find a *relatively* cheap way to convert it to some other form, well, that seems like a pretty handy little model...
But slashdot has all the answers...it's too small, too expensive, the batteries should be $free, it's failed x times before, it's a toy, it's not safe, Joe sixpack wants a hummer, ponzi!, l4m3, FUD, w00t...whereas a couple of commenters actually get it: this could work in x conditions, but not in y, for z reasons...at least there are still a couple people left around here that haven't grown up thinking a forum is a place to pile on, the snarkier, the better.
I'm not saying it will succeed just because some heavy duty investors are behind it; plenty of ideas that fit that bill haven't made it. The point is, it could, and maybe one day something will happen that might cause people to think about energy differently, and this model will be ahead of its time, or at least some lessons will have been learned. Like a HOWTO on overclocking your chip with a stirling engine that charges your iPod...
Instead of analysis, we have negative comments modded as insightful. I suppose it's true what The Onion says, it turns out that a majority of Americans are actually NOT entitled to have their own opinions...
I'd go for even less, myself, ideally a GSM phone/pda (and a couple global cards) with a portable keyboard to upload blogstuff and images. I'm generally an ultralight packer, though I can't see myself needing to code on the road.
This is a pretty good comment overall, but I think at least one point deserves more attention:
The primary way to lose fat is through "cardio" exercise, aka aerobic exercise: running, bicycling, swimming, various gym machines like the elliptical or the stair climber, etc.
Cardio exercise is a good way to lose weight, but it's very easy to deceive yourself because the exercise itself often burns off mostly water weight. Believe me, it's fun to get on the scale after a summer run and see you've lost 2 lbs, but it's not something you can do day after day, especially if you don't turn around and hydrate yourself immediately. When doing mild to medium cardio, you actually enter a fat burning phase about 40 minutes into the exercise. If you consume some lightweight carbs during this time (a *bit* of dried fruit, sports drink), you will assist your body in burning the fat. The longer you can hold your body in this phase, the more fat you will burn...i.e. a 90 minute workout will burn more fat than two 45 minute ones.
Also, there are many goals to exercise: burning fat, building muscle, building aerobic and anaerobic capacity, endurance, power, developing/retaining flexibility, improving reflexes, etc. so there are obviously many ways to achieve these goals, so saying "cardio burns fat" is clearly a generalization that overlooks many of the other benefits you could be giving yourself.
In my own experience, I believe that a lot of things have to go just right (diet, heart rate, having plenty of time to spend in "the fat burning zone") to burn lots of fat via cardio, unless you're obese and just walking a few hours a day will do the trick (assuming you correctly cut your caloric intake). On the other hand, strength conditioning, i.e. weight training, will break down muscle fibers that take *loads* of energy to repair and renew. As the OP stated, muscle burns more calories at rest, as well.
There are plenty of reasons to do some basic weight training though: after age 40, your body naturally loses 5% of its muscle mass every ten years (a mass about the size of your bicep). A couple of studies have found that, ignoring ALL other factors (heart disease, weight, etc.), stronger people live longer. Of course, it's usually an indication that they lead a healthy lifestyle, but one study I read suggested that of two men, aged 70+, with the same bp, bmi, weight range, etc., the one that is physically stronger is expected to outlive the other by several years. Sure, that's a wild set of factors to nail down in a proper research study, but it's telling nonetheless. Maybe the stronger ones have better reflexes, so they won't fall as easily, or if they do hit the deck, their bones are harder, and they are much less likely to break a hip, etc.
Personally I've found that since I started *properly* weight training - NOT the bodybuilding sort that's in vogue (complex/compound lifts, no body part targeting...but that's another post entirely) - in addition to the expected benefits, I have been practically injury free across all the sports I do, and that in itself is no small accomplishment for an athlete.
One point about body fat percentage - I think most electrode scales are total crap. They can be highly affected by the hydration of your body, and I don't know anyone that sweats and drinks the same amount every day. Also, on the "athletic" setting it tells me I have 13% (I would be thrilled if that were true at my age and athletic effort) and on the "normal" setting it says 19% or so, which is equally off base. Fact is, I'm somewhere in that range, and I'd like the scale to be able to tell me exactly where I am, not the other way around. A couple glasses of water either way and I can jive the readings for the day. For me, it comes down to eyeballing my love handles - a crude caliper method if you will - and that's a lot more telling on a personal level.
Whether you think it was overhyped or a train wreck averted, you have to admit that Y2K helped bring IT issues to the radar of C-level execs, along with loads of cash. In addition, it also soaked up a lot of the "classically" trained CS majors and top programmers. That created a vacuum for a lot of underexperienced/self-trained programmers (like myself, at the time:) to slip into the workforce and get exposure to new technologies, advanced roles, and above-average pay. If another little tremor in the computing economy does the same, justified or not, it's fine with me. Whether it's this or the "bird flu will bring teh Internets to its knees," there should be plenty of changes in the ongoing IT economy to keep it from stagnating too much.
Jeff, get off the computer, it's time to take your incontinence meds, and change your diaper while you're at it.
Also, your urologist called and said that if the daily Cialis/Viagra cocktail doesn't work, then you're SOL, but your cardiologist wants to write a research paper on you.
I'd recommend checking out passfire.com software. I don't know a lot about the field, but the software is impressive. You can drag and drop music, colors/types of shells, etc. into the 'stage' to see what the show will look like, and when you're done, export it to a laptop in a somewhat industry standard format to trigger and run the actual show. It will even generate the 'chemical recipes' for the shells you've specified, so you can go off and build them.
It's the type of thing that "professional" fireworks companies have done in-house in house for many years -maybe to prototype or sell a contract- but passfire lets the amateur do the same type of thing. In full disclosure, I used to work with the developer, and he's fscking brilliant...I think a demo version is available on the site.
Maybe it's not what the OP was looking for, but a stellar piece of software nonetheless. I don't remember the details, but because it's a very desirable chunk of code (at least for those in the industry), the source is heavily encrypted and obscured, and the full-featured app runs off a dongle-based authentication mechanism. Unfortunately the market for such a thing is fairly small, but in some ways, it's better than what the 'real' fireworks companies use in-house.
Um. Most of the world's Polonium 210 comes from Russia. It can be made anywhere, but according to this article (frr), it's an industrial commodity produced cheaply in Russia:
In Tennessee, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory sells dozens of types of rare nuclear materials to American manufacturers. But Bill Cabage, a lab spokesman, said it sold no polonium 210 because Russia was able to do so much more inexpensively.
"That's typical" of exotic radioisotopes, he said. "We can't compete with their prices." Furthermore, this substance could be extracted from off the shelf anti-static devices, and still be "traced" to a Russian source. Nothing to see here, the chill the poster felt was their own lack of understanding.
In my junior year of high school, I took a prep course, and I think it helped, though not immensely, maybe 10-30 points added overall. I always scored fairly well on those kinds of tests, and I think the courses are more useful for below average students or people who, for various reasons, don't "test well."
However, the following year, I worked as an assistant in one of those prep classes, and I took the tests along with the students, one math and one verbal, 4 days a week, and helped explain difficult questions to some of the students. It was like a game after a while, I'd see how fast I could finish one day, or triple-check my work to try and get a perfect score on another. Over the course of a few months, my average score went up by 80-100 points.
The funny thing was, one of the tactics they taught was to take the test multiple times, and focus on the math one day, and verbal another, since your final score is considered the best of each. I found that when I took the "official" test a few times, when I focused on one, I'd do better in the other. I took it a few times my senior year, and I think I got my highest scores when I didn't even need it anymore, and didn't seriously expect to best my earlier scores. What that tells you, who knows, but it seemed to be more a test of self-relaxation for me.
A totally extraneous side note: My school encouraged us to take it in tenth grade, a year or two before most students do, and I scored very, very well, only bested by a math genius in my class who was taking college-level calculus at age 12. My teachers and counselor were convinced I could get in the 1500s within a couple more years, but I did *worse* my junior year, and only bested my score after taking hundreds of practice tests.
So to answer your original question, the best way to figure out what you're supposed to know is to simulate the activity as much as possible. Or don't look at the test at all and take it cold.
It reminds of that manuscript recently dug up from the 14th century.
If there's one thing we don't need, it's the King and his "men of science" dictating their values to the marketplace. It's businesses like mine that are leading this nation to prosperity. If I have to refrain from tossing my pissbucket out the front steps, and deliver it all the way to the cesspool, it will cost me money, and I may have to lay off some peasants as a result. Besides, it hasn't been proven that these so-called bacteria even exist, and if they do, maybe they don't cause the black death. Maybe they will make our teeth straight and white forever. I say we should wait and see.
Sometimes government-mandated values work for the greater good.
Basically, by buying up bandwidth and data center capabilities everywhere, google could insert context-driven advertising into any video stream on its way to the consumer, and do it far more efficiently and effectively than the networks are capable of.
Only an idiot would attempt to run a meth lab by grinding up Sudafed. It's way too expensive. It's better to just order a bunch of ephedrine from a chemical supply co.
Maybe you haven't made meth recently, but you can't do this anymore, unless you want an unmarked van suddenly following you around.
...teenagers who might use them to make methamphetamine...
Teenagers don't make meth, organized criminals make meth.
Most meth doesn't come from these sources
The source components used to be easily bought via chemical supply companies until the government wisely closed that loop. In response, many millions of cases of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine-containing pharmaceuticals were suddenly stolen off trucks, shoplifted, and bought...across the entire country. You think teenagers were behind that? Wrong. Organized crime. The US drug czar recommended that these drugs be put behind the counter, but the pharmaceutical industry lobbied otherwise. They finally lost that battle, but in the meantime, they were making tens of millions of dollars and they knew goddamned well that the population of Podunk Kansas wasn't legitimately using 100 cases of Sudafed every week.
In the late 90s a journalist from Seattle was investigating the rise of meth-related crimes in the region and discovered in charting them, that the rest of the US was mirroring the rise and fall over the course of a few years...upon investigating further with the FBI, he found that this pattern matched the availability of meth, based on wholesale supply, organized disbursement, etc. In other words: lots of cheap quality speed = lots of crime from the desperate junkies.
The reason this is different from crack, heroin, etc, is that a junkie can smoke $10 of crack in 1 minute, but $10 of speed can get you high for a day or so. It's easier to establish a habit at cheaper prices. I've never heard of methcathinone junkies, so something tells me that even though it's easier to make, it doesn't hold the same allure to speedheads.
They're trying to "stop a problem before it starts" or something.
The problem started 15 years ago. Perhaps you prefer pumping millions of dollars into the pharmaceutical industry so MORE junkies can come steal your TV and sell it for $10.
coughcoughPROHIBITIONNEVERWORKEDcoughcough
In this case, it has, as it's harder to mass produce meth and fewer people are turning into meth junkies. Are you suggesting the all drugs be legalized?
Not to troll or astroturf...in full disclosure, I work at USR, but:
USRobotics has a new wideband handset that's Skype certified. I don't know if it will fit the bill for your needs, you might be able to mic up a hi-fi handset and get better results than digitally capturing crufty audio. These wav files reflect the difference between the lo-fi and hi-fi quality.
I think it was IBM that made a big deal about putting together the site and it's "cutting edge" live text updates. Here we are 7 years later with...live text updates. The only thing that's changed is the flash doodad that shows the time gaps between the lead/chase groups, peloton, and gruppettos, and they don't tell you who's where, save for the specialty jerseys. If there's a GPS unit on each bike, it shouldn't be difficult to add that to the feed, maybe on mouseover to keep it clean, and lay the whole thing on a google earth map. Actually there's LESS technology now. At least back then you could get streaming audio of Phil and Paul, and a few video clips from the day before. Now you can't get a live audio feed anywhere, and video, fuggedaboutit. At least the World Cup was on TVUplayer.
While we're on the subject, back before Lance made the Tour worthy of more than a 1 hour weekly recap on a broadcast Network, the best you could hope for was to hear Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen call each stage live. They knew that like the "old days" most people could only get their live tour fix over the radio, and their commentary spoke volumes about the history of the tour and the day-to-day tactics. IMO they are "Hors Categorie" in the small field of bike racing announcers. Do they repeat themselves and employ a few hackneyed clichés? Of course, but talking for up to five hours a day on any subject would drive most announcers to far worse.
Like the knuckleheads Al Trautwig and Bob Roll. Maybe the American audience needs a baritone voiceover and a goofball sidekick to kick off the day, but their "expanded coverage" at the end of the day, evenhaving the benefit of knowing the outcome and setting up a little drama, cropped out the best part of the coverage by removing the sophisticated and insightful announcers and replacing them with frick and frack. Here's an example:
Al: It's got to be really hot out there. How much water do they have to drink on a day like this? Bob: They've got to drink enough water to drown a catfish. The air is hot, the bikes are hot, but the ground is scorchingly warmified. Al: As exciting as this is, does it hold a candle to the time that Lance charged up Alp d'Huez and slapped Jan Ullrich's mother? Bob: Of course not. After the 2001 season, they actually added a rule to the Tour Day Fraaantz rulebook about making the runner up shine Lance's shoes to prevent that from happening again.
Seriously, they have all day to put together voiceovers for the day's events, and they prattle on, slightly more interesting than dead air. That would be like a morning news announcer covering an accident scene, and the evening anchor sitting around looking at footage, saying "wow, that accident sure looks bad. I bet somebody got hurt."
Ok, enough ranting. Only 9 more months until the Spring Classics.
My friend invented a flapping paper airplane 20+ years ago in junior high. Of course it's not nearly the same, since it reacts to pressure fluctuations instead of creating them. There are (pdf) instructions so anyone can be an ornithoptrix.
A tax is 'money for a service or security provided.'
Bastard politicians like this seem to have not gotten the memo.
Technically, postage, a license (for nearly anything), a toll, a goverment-mandated surcharge of any sort, are all forms of tax, and in many cases, you get something back, even if it is in the form of regulation that (theoretically) makes it safer for you to conduct business. It boggles the mind that politicians can become aware of a transaction of any sort and view it as a revenue stream, while providing NOTHING in return.
In addition, it's delivered on top of a (telco) protocol that's presumably taxed out the yingyang. What if I invent a protocol that makes text messages smaller, and therefore subject to less tax? Will they tax my protocol within a protocol as well?
What Italy really needs to do is to lower the barriers for small business and service-oriented entrepreneurial startups. Right now, it's such a mess of regulations that no one can start one...or they'll do so under the table, thereby eliminating the possibility of additional revenue streams for the government. The $billions in wealth created in the last decade in the US and UK (among others) was created mostly in Services, while Italy has been building a protectionist barrier around their factories.
It's time for them to wake up and ask an economist for advice, not a tax collector.
Same here. I don't completely blame them for the quality issue, as I knew it would be a bit of a risk to expect VoIP to play nice on a consumer DSL line, but to have low expectations and still be disappointed is ridiculous. The scenarios could be summarized like this:
1. Computer downloading large file = VoIP quality at 25% (no way to carry on a conversation) 2. Computer engaged in a VPN session = VoIP quality at 50-75% (sometimes conversations are ok, but the chance of quality degradation increases exponentially as the call/session continues) 3. No computer traffic whatsoever = VoIP quality at 60-90% (always some line noise, and occasionally a callback needed to establish a clear connection)
My DSL line shouldn't be completely to blame though, as I've run heavy VPN-encrypted remote windowing sessions for hours without comparable lag. I had my suspicions when I looked at the install guide and saw that they recommended dog-legging the VoIP router off my existing network. I thought for sure they would have it funneled through their own device for traffic shaping, but I should have sent it back then and there.
None of this compares to their horrible customer service though. There's really no excuse for treating customers like that, and I haven't even started trying to cancel my service yet. (Not recommended until after you successfully transfer your number back.)
I also am going through the line-transfer tango with them. Despite their claims that it's "instantaneous," it's been several weeks and their phone jockeys don't know much. However, I did just speak to what could be summarized as a "third tier" jockey (had sort of a clue) and he finally told me something useful. A company called Focal technically owns the number, and they lease it to Vonage. To hasten your departure (and this works both in transferring to and from Vonage) you should call them directly at 866-362-2567.
Slashdot Mirror
The UK will become a nation of sporks.
The Grameen Foundation, originating in the slums of Bangladesh, provides microloans, and more importantly, the infrastructure to help their borrowers to become financially independent. In many cases, this can be as simple as a few farm animals or providing a day's worth of raw materials, such as wicker for baskets. These workers often get gouged for these raw materials, and would otherwise have only pennies left over at the end of the day.
Many of these loans are provided to the woman of the house (often a cultural challenge), as they are more likely to make prudent decisions regarding the family's finances, such as making sure that there's enough food or fuel to look after the family.
The program has earned its founder a Nobel Prize, and it has been expanded throughout the world.
The branches use open source software, developed and managed as "Mifos." They have other opportunities here and a sourceforge project:
"Mifos is an MIS purpose-built for the microfinance industry. It provides MFIs the key functionality to better serve the poor: client management, loans & savings portfolio tracking, reporting, & social performance measurement. See mifos.org for more info."
The one where Earth can no longer recycle its carbon dioxide into oxygen fast enough, and we all suffocate.
...hosting a website and posting a link on slashdot.
Well, I hate to go back to the dreaded car analogy, but C -> PHP -> SQL is a bit like saying you should learn mechanical engineering before you learn to change the oil in your car, then learn how to back it out of the driveway.
If you have nothing but brains and time, C will be a great start...managing references vs. pointers and memory...you will be bulletproof when you start using a 21st century language. Not to start a flamewar here, but maybe it's useful in plenty of ways (mostly learning how freaking hard it was to program 40 years ago), I'm sure a bunch of people will jump down my throat and tell me I wouldn't be able to wake up in the morning and make it to my coffee machine without using C 12 times. My point is, it's hard, and not exactly a recommended place to start if you just want to build web sites. If you want to major in Computer Science, on the other hand...have at it.
Let's skip ahead to SQL. It's doesn't matter what language you "program" in, SQL is what you use to put and get data in and out of a database. 95% of the time, it's "Select [something] from [tablename] where [parameter] equals "whatever"... or a similar insert/update statement. Hordes, and I mean HORDES of sites use little more than that, but you can obviously go hog wild in this department and become an Oracle DBA and make piles of money if you like.
As far as a programming language to render pages and interact with a database? There are dozens of legitimate choices, and whichever one you pick, you will have millions of people agreeing with you or derisively calling you an idiot. Some people think java is robust and "enterprise" - some think it blows. PHP has some issues pointed out clearly above, but I've used it for basic web development and never ran into any problems (or had a site 0wned). c# or asp/vbscript is easyish (but widely hated on here), and you might need a $10,000 OS/product suite to run it on your own hardware (but obviously you can find that environment at any hosting company). Ruby, Python, Perl, whatever...advocates and critics abound. Keep in mind, you learn a lot from the code you borrow/find on the web, so if you pick an obscure language, you might make life harder down the road. i.e. Lisp might be the most perfect language ever designed, according to some, but if I needed "sample code" to rip off for my own web development efforts, I can't imagine finding a decent function after googling for ten minutes. Not so with php etc. (Of course, you'll also find some *bad* functions too!)
I'd look for 'tutorials' or 'getting started' and probably start with PHP or python. Actually, I'd spend a few days on 3-4 different ones...they'll all start off doing the same thing, and you might find that one is just easier to look at and comprehend. Look up LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP/Python) and you'll find loads of stuff.
Let the flames begin, I'm a "web developer" and not a "software engineer" - this is slashdot after all - but you asked.
Maybe this just nitpicking the title and not the article (haven't reg'd to RTFA myself), but the "music industry" will continue, albeit in varied forms. The *record companies* will either change drastically (hint: offering DRM-free downloads is not drastic enough) or die and have their IP bought by a company that gets it.
What ought to happen is what's happened to TV/Internet. Let the users have *everything* for $50/month. By "everything" I mean links to a library of every freaking song ever recorded. Not EMI's for $12/month and Colombia's for $10/month, and only on one device per household at a time...but a "base package" with a few premium catalogs a la carte for a couple dollars.
Every. Freaking. Song. Ever.
Then let the consumer play it on home stereo systems, computers, iPods, cars, phones, and watches if they want. Find an innovative way to filter it, whether it's XM-style channels, or collaboratively (people who made playlists similar to yours like the following bands that you haven't heard of).
I'm sure once upon a time some MBA said "No one is going to pay $50/month for TV. TV is Free!" Yet here we are. Do the same with music. Some people are gonna steal it, but an army of PhDs hasn't figured out how to stop that from happening, so they're gonna steal anyway. Make a legal way to let the masses access everything with little fuss, and plenty of people will take them up on it.
Sadly, the record companies will never agree to it. Perhaps one day when they can be bought for pennies on the dollar, some company with cash and vision (google) will do it right.
The funny thing is, even high school dropouts in the Netherlands are likely to speak English, French, and German quite well (though they often hold back on speaking German for, uh, cultural reasons). They are a stone's throw from countries speaking those languages, and unlike many other places, when they import television shows, they keep the original languages and add the subtitles in Dutch.
Plus the Dutch language is not deep in terms of dimensional vocabulary. While the Eskimos may have 70 words for snow, Dutch probably has one. I remember watching a movie and the English line was something like "the pain doesn't hurt" and the Dutch translation was "Pijn is nicht pijn" - Pain is not pain.
Of course it's very respectful to try to speak someone's language, especially when most of your countrymen (and the rest of the world, generally) don't bother. A diplomatic row? I doubt it.
Good thing slashdot isn't a frickin' VC company...I can just imagine the comments:
No, instead, we have the run of the mill peanut gallery, with their particularly ignorant insights. Don't get me wrong, a strong dose of skepticism is a healthy thing to have, but do you really think that Sergey and his band of PhD.s are not quite as clever as you when it comes to spotting and growing ideas? I'm no fan of the Segway, but you have to admit, much of the pesky unwanted energy in our machines shows its face in the form of heat, and if you can find a *relatively* cheap way to convert it to some other form, well, that seems like a pretty handy little model...
But slashdot has all the answers...it's too small, too expensive, the batteries should be $free, it's failed x times before, it's a toy, it's not safe, Joe sixpack wants a hummer, ponzi!, l4m3, FUD, w00t...whereas a couple of commenters actually get it: this could work in x conditions, but not in y, for z reasons...at least there are still a couple people left around here that haven't grown up thinking a forum is a place to pile on, the snarkier, the better.
I'm not saying it will succeed just because some heavy duty investors are behind it; plenty of ideas that fit that bill haven't made it. The point is, it could, and maybe one day something will happen that might cause people to think about energy differently, and this model will be ahead of its time, or at least some lessons will have been learned. Like a HOWTO on overclocking your chip with a stirling engine that charges your iPod...
Instead of analysis, we have negative comments modded as insightful. I suppose it's true what The Onion says, it turns out that a majority of Americans are actually NOT entitled to have their own opinions...
My lawyers are polishing their C&D's at this very moment...
I'd go for even less, myself, ideally a GSM phone/pda (and a couple global cards) with a portable keyboard to upload blogstuff and images. I'm generally an ultralight packer, though I can't see myself needing to code on the road.
This is a pretty good comment overall, but I think at least one point deserves more attention:
The primary way to lose fat is through "cardio" exercise, aka aerobic exercise: running, bicycling, swimming, various gym machines like the elliptical or the stair climber, etc.
Cardio exercise is a good way to lose weight, but it's very easy to deceive yourself because the exercise itself often burns off mostly water weight. Believe me, it's fun to get on the scale after a summer run and see you've lost 2 lbs, but it's not something you can do day after day, especially if you don't turn around and hydrate yourself immediately. When doing mild to medium cardio, you actually enter a fat burning phase about 40 minutes into the exercise. If you consume some lightweight carbs during this time (a *bit* of dried fruit, sports drink), you will assist your body in burning the fat. The longer you can hold your body in this phase, the more fat you will burn...i.e. a 90 minute workout will burn more fat than two 45 minute ones.
Also, there are many goals to exercise: burning fat, building muscle, building aerobic and anaerobic capacity, endurance, power, developing/retaining flexibility, improving reflexes, etc. so there are obviously many ways to achieve these goals, so saying "cardio burns fat" is clearly a generalization that overlooks many of the other benefits you could be giving yourself.
In my own experience, I believe that a lot of things have to go just right (diet, heart rate, having plenty of time to spend in "the fat burning zone") to burn lots of fat via cardio, unless you're obese and just walking a few hours a day will do the trick (assuming you correctly cut your caloric intake). On the other hand, strength conditioning, i.e. weight training, will break down muscle fibers that take *loads* of energy to repair and renew. As the OP stated, muscle burns more calories at rest, as well.
There are plenty of reasons to do some basic weight training though: after age 40, your body naturally loses 5% of its muscle mass every ten years (a mass about the size of your bicep). A couple of studies have found that, ignoring ALL other factors (heart disease, weight, etc.), stronger people live longer. Of course, it's usually an indication that they lead a healthy lifestyle, but one study I read suggested that of two men, aged 70+, with the same bp, bmi, weight range, etc., the one that is physically stronger is expected to outlive the other by several years. Sure, that's a wild set of factors to nail down in a proper research study, but it's telling nonetheless. Maybe the stronger ones have better reflexes, so they won't fall as easily, or if they do hit the deck, their bones are harder, and they are much less likely to break a hip, etc.
Personally I've found that since I started *properly* weight training - NOT the bodybuilding sort that's in vogue (complex/compound lifts, no body part targeting...but that's another post entirely) - in addition to the expected benefits, I have been practically injury free across all the sports I do, and that in itself is no small accomplishment for an athlete.
One point about body fat percentage - I think most electrode scales are total crap. They can be highly affected by the hydration of your body, and I don't know anyone that sweats and drinks the same amount every day. Also, on the "athletic" setting it tells me I have 13% (I would be thrilled if that were true at my age and athletic effort) and on the "normal" setting it says 19% or so, which is equally off base. Fact is, I'm somewhere in that range, and I'd like the scale to be able to tell me exactly where I am, not the other way around. A couple glasses of water either way and I can jive the readings for the day. For me, it comes down to eyeballing my love handles - a crude caliper method if you will - and that's a lot more telling on a personal level.
Whether you think it was overhyped or a train wreck averted, you have to admit that Y2K helped bring IT issues to the radar of C-level execs, along with loads of cash. In addition, it also soaked up a lot of the "classically" trained CS majors and top programmers. That created a vacuum for a lot of underexperienced/self-trained programmers (like myself, at the time:) to slip into the workforce and get exposure to new technologies, advanced roles, and above-average pay. If another little tremor in the computing economy does the same, justified or not, it's fine with me. Whether it's this or the "bird flu will bring teh Internets to its knees," there should be plenty of changes in the ongoing IT economy to keep it from stagnating too much.
Jeff, get off the computer, it's time to take your incontinence meds, and change your diaper while you're at it.
Also, your urologist called and said that if the daily Cialis/Viagra cocktail doesn't work, then you're SOL, but your cardiologist wants to write a research paper on you.
You won't mind, will you?
I'd recommend checking out passfire.com software. I don't know a lot about the field, but the software is impressive. You can drag and drop music, colors/types of shells, etc. into the 'stage' to see what the show will look like, and when you're done, export it to a laptop in a somewhat industry standard format to trigger and run the actual show. It will even generate the 'chemical recipes' for the shells you've specified, so you can go off and build them.
It's the type of thing that "professional" fireworks companies have done in-house in house for many years -maybe to prototype or sell a contract- but passfire lets the amateur do the same type of thing. In full disclosure, I used to work with the developer, and he's fscking brilliant...I think a demo version is available on the site.
Maybe it's not what the OP was looking for, but a stellar piece of software nonetheless. I don't remember the details, but because it's a very desirable chunk of code (at least for those in the industry), the source is heavily encrypted and obscured, and the full-featured app runs off a dongle-based authentication mechanism. Unfortunately the market for such a thing is fairly small, but in some ways, it's better than what the 'real' fireworks companies use in-house.
"That's typical" of exotic radioisotopes, he said. "We can't compete with their prices." Furthermore, this substance could be extracted from off the shelf anti-static devices, and still be "traced" to a Russian source. Nothing to see here, the chill the poster felt was their own lack of understanding.
In my junior year of high school, I took a prep course, and I think it helped, though not immensely, maybe 10-30 points added overall. I always scored fairly well on those kinds of tests, and I think the courses are more useful for below average students or people who, for various reasons, don't "test well."
However, the following year, I worked as an assistant in one of those prep classes, and I took the tests along with the students, one math and one verbal, 4 days a week, and helped explain difficult questions to some of the students. It was like a game after a while, I'd see how fast I could finish one day, or triple-check my work to try and get a perfect score on another. Over the course of a few months, my average score went up by 80-100 points.
The funny thing was, one of the tactics they taught was to take the test multiple times, and focus on the math one day, and verbal another, since your final score is considered the best of each. I found that when I took the "official" test a few times, when I focused on one, I'd do better in the other. I took it a few times my senior year, and I think I got my highest scores when I didn't even need it anymore, and didn't seriously expect to best my earlier scores. What that tells you, who knows, but it seemed to be more a test of self-relaxation for me.
A totally extraneous side note: My school encouraged us to take it in tenth grade, a year or two before most students do, and I scored very, very well, only bested by a math genius in my class who was taking college-level calculus at age 12. My teachers and counselor were convinced I could get in the 1500s within a couple more years, but I did *worse* my junior year, and only bested my score after taking hundreds of practice tests.
So to answer your original question, the best way to figure out what you're supposed to know is to simulate the activity as much as possible. Or don't look at the test at all and take it cold.
It reminds of that manuscript recently dug up from the 14th century.
If there's one thing we don't need, it's the King and his "men of science" dictating their values to the marketplace. It's businesses like mine that are leading this nation to prosperity. If I have to refrain from tossing my pissbucket out the front steps, and deliver it all the way to the cesspool, it will cost me money, and I may have to lay off some peasants as a result. Besides, it hasn't been proven that these so-called bacteria even exist, and if they do, maybe they don't cause the black death. Maybe they will make our teeth straight and white forever. I say we should wait and see.
Sometimes government-mandated values work for the greater good.
This would be a clever bit of insight on ZDnet's part if it hadn't been exhaustively explored by Robert Cringely seven months ago.
Basically, by buying up bandwidth and data center capabilities everywhere, google could insert context-driven advertising into any video stream on its way to the consumer, and do it far more efficiently and effectively than the networks are capable of.
Only an idiot would attempt to run a meth lab by grinding up Sudafed. It's way too expensive. It's better to just order a bunch of ephedrine from a chemical supply co.
Maybe you haven't made meth recently, but you can't do this anymore, unless you want an unmarked van suddenly following you around.
Teenagers don't make meth, organized criminals make meth.
Most meth doesn't come from these sources
The source components used to be easily bought via chemical supply companies until the government wisely closed that loop. In response, many millions of cases of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine-containing pharmaceuticals were suddenly stolen off trucks, shoplifted, and bought...across the entire country. You think teenagers were behind that? Wrong. Organized crime. The US drug czar recommended that these drugs be put behind the counter, but the pharmaceutical industry lobbied otherwise. They finally lost that battle, but in the meantime, they were making tens of millions of dollars and they knew goddamned well that the population of Podunk Kansas wasn't legitimately using 100 cases of Sudafed every week.
In the late 90s a journalist from Seattle was investigating the rise of meth-related crimes in the region and discovered in charting them, that the rest of the US was mirroring the rise and fall over the course of a few years...upon investigating further with the FBI, he found that this pattern matched the availability of meth, based on wholesale supply, organized disbursement, etc. In other words: lots of cheap quality speed = lots of crime from the desperate junkies.
The reason this is different from crack, heroin, etc, is that a junkie can smoke $10 of crack in 1 minute, but $10 of speed can get you high for a day or so. It's easier to establish a habit at cheaper prices. I've never heard of methcathinone junkies, so something tells me that even though it's easier to make, it doesn't hold the same allure to speedheads.
They're trying to "stop a problem before it starts" or something.
The problem started 15 years ago. Perhaps you prefer pumping millions of dollars into the pharmaceutical industry so MORE junkies can come steal your TV and sell it for $10.
coughcoughPROHIBITIONNEVERWORKEDcoughcough
In this case, it has, as it's harder to mass produce meth and fewer people are turning into meth junkies. Are you suggesting the all drugs be legalized?
Not to troll or astroturf...in full disclosure, I work at USR, but:
USRobotics has a new wideband handset that's Skype certified. I don't know if it will fit the bill for your needs, you might be able to mic up a hi-fi handset and get better results than digitally capturing crufty audio. These wav files reflect the difference between the lo-fi and hi-fi quality.
Shameless product plug: USRobotics USB Internet Mini Phone
I think it was IBM that made a big deal about putting together the site and it's "cutting edge" live text updates. Here we are 7 years later with...live text updates. The only thing that's changed is the flash doodad that shows the time gaps between the lead/chase groups, peloton, and gruppettos, and they don't tell you who's where, save for the specialty jerseys. If there's a GPS unit on each bike, it shouldn't be difficult to add that to the feed, maybe on mouseover to keep it clean, and lay the whole thing on a google earth map. Actually there's LESS technology now. At least back then you could get streaming audio of Phil and Paul, and a few video clips from the day before. Now you can't get a live audio feed anywhere, and video, fuggedaboutit. At least the World Cup was on TVUplayer.
While we're on the subject, back before Lance made the Tour worthy of more than a 1 hour weekly recap on a broadcast Network, the best you could hope for was to hear Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen call each stage live. They knew that like the "old days" most people could only get their live tour fix over the radio, and their commentary spoke volumes about the history of the tour and the day-to-day tactics. IMO they are "Hors Categorie" in the small field of bike racing announcers. Do they repeat themselves and employ a few hackneyed clichés? Of course, but talking for up to five hours a day on any subject would drive most announcers to far worse.
Like the knuckleheads Al Trautwig and Bob Roll. Maybe the American audience needs a baritone voiceover and a goofball sidekick to kick off the day, but their "expanded coverage" at the end of the day, evenhaving the benefit of knowing the outcome and setting up a little drama, cropped out the best part of the coverage by removing the sophisticated and insightful announcers and replacing them with frick and frack. Here's an example:
Al: It's got to be really hot out there. How much water do they have to drink on a day like this?
Bob: They've got to drink enough water to drown a catfish. The air is hot, the bikes are hot, but the ground is scorchingly warmified.
Al: As exciting as this is, does it hold a candle to the time that Lance charged up Alp d'Huez and slapped Jan Ullrich's mother?
Bob: Of course not. After the 2001 season, they actually added a rule to the Tour Day Fraaantz rulebook about making the runner up shine Lance's shoes to prevent that from happening again.
Seriously, they have all day to put together voiceovers for the day's events, and they prattle on, slightly more interesting than dead air. That would be like a morning news announcer covering an accident scene, and the evening anchor sitting around looking at footage, saying "wow, that accident sure looks bad. I bet somebody got hurt."
Ok, enough ranting. Only 9 more months until the Spring Classics.
My friend invented a flapping paper airplane 20+ years ago in junior high. Of course it's not nearly the same, since it reacts to pressure fluctuations instead of creating them. There are (pdf) instructions so anyone can be an ornithoptrix.
A tax is not 'money for the hell of it.'
A tax is 'money for a service or security provided.'
Bastard politicians like this seem to have not gotten the memo.
Technically, postage, a license (for nearly anything), a toll, a goverment-mandated surcharge of any sort, are all forms of tax, and in many cases, you get something back, even if it is in the form of regulation that (theoretically) makes it safer for you to conduct business. It boggles the mind that politicians can become aware of a transaction of any sort and view it as a revenue stream, while providing NOTHING in return.
In addition, it's delivered on top of a (telco) protocol that's presumably taxed out the yingyang. What if I invent a protocol that makes text messages smaller, and therefore subject to less tax? Will they tax my protocol within a protocol as well?
What Italy really needs to do is to lower the barriers for small business and service-oriented entrepreneurial startups. Right now, it's such a mess of regulations that no one can start one...or they'll do so under the table, thereby eliminating the possibility of additional revenue streams for the government. The $billions in wealth created in the last decade in the US and UK (among others) was created mostly in Services, while Italy has been building a protectionist barrier around their factories.
It's time for them to wake up and ask an economist for advice, not a tax collector.
Same here. I don't completely blame them for the quality issue, as I knew it would be a bit of a risk to expect VoIP to play nice on a consumer DSL line, but to have low expectations and still be disappointed is ridiculous. The scenarios could be summarized like this:
1. Computer downloading large file = VoIP quality at 25% (no way to carry on a conversation)
2. Computer engaged in a VPN session = VoIP quality at 50-75% (sometimes conversations are ok, but the chance of quality degradation increases exponentially as the call/session continues)
3. No computer traffic whatsoever = VoIP quality at 60-90% (always some line noise, and occasionally a callback needed to establish a clear connection)
My DSL line shouldn't be completely to blame though, as I've run heavy VPN-encrypted remote windowing sessions for hours without comparable lag. I had my suspicions when I looked at the install guide and saw that they recommended dog-legging the VoIP router off my existing network. I thought for sure they would have it funneled through their own device for traffic shaping, but I should have sent it back then and there.
None of this compares to their horrible customer service though. There's really no excuse for treating customers like that, and I haven't even started trying to cancel my service yet. (Not recommended until after you successfully transfer your number back.)
I also am going through the line-transfer tango with them. Despite their claims that it's "instantaneous," it's been several weeks and their phone jockeys don't know much. However, I did just speak to what could be summarized as a "third tier" jockey (had sort of a clue) and he finally told me something useful. A company called Focal technically owns the number, and they lease it to Vonage. To hasten your departure (and this works both in transferring to and from Vonage) you should call them directly at 866-362-2567.
mmm...about 12 seconds on the grid?
ok, I'll bite. I would like to see Pi calculated to one bazillion kajillion places.