What if the gaming industry started a trend that became the norm for the whole industry?
I would rather not legislate or regulate based on what might happen. There's no limit to what we might prepare for. What if it becomes feasable to have machines write code? Should we outlaw that in our employment contracts? That's essentially what many autoworker unions did, and while it may have protected some workers for some time, in the long run, it's not a brilliant move.
Why do you think unions are inherently evil, but companies are not, especially given your family history?
I said neither of those things. Not everyone is greedy, but it's an innate human trait, and if it's easy to be greedy (and successful at it), people will be. People in unions can be greedy, as can people in companies. The point is, unlike the one-factory towns of the 30's, today's IT workers have many options. That serves as a more effective bargaining option than a union rep. There are jobs out there that offer flex time, good pay, telecommuting, etc. If your employer starts losing people for reasons like those, they might change their policies...More so than if IT sent a shop steward in with a list of demands.
all those pathetic perks you are talking about are nothing compared to what the people who really robbed the economy blind during the.COM boom got.
Your argument is that because some people, somewhere, at some time, were very greedy, then we should all put a pack of regulations or associations in place to make sure THAT doesn't happen again.
Unions are not free, and you're usually better off putting $50/week of your own money aside in case of wrongful termination, negligence, early retirement, or any of the other bad things that might happen. Because a union will take that money, and while it might represend your interests down the road, it might well represent a slacker who strained his pinky finger writing code, and wants to take it to the supreme court.
Again, I'm not anti-union across the boards, I just think as a prescription for the IT industry, it's like using a sledgehammer to swat a fly.
My family has always been pretty pro-union, mostly on account of my grandfather:
-NOT being issued shop glasses (he was a drill press operator in automobile production) -NOT being allowed to bring his own -being injured on the job -being administered by a substandard alcoholic 'company doctor' who promptly removed one of his eyes and hacked up the other one -being fired without compensation -eventually being re-hired at an ornamental job and given a $10,000 payoff to drop the whole thing.
In addition, there were stories of so-and-so's family having to buy the boss' groceries, or so-and-so's sister having to 'deliver' them, if you know what I mean. It was enough to make most of his kids go out and get their heads busted in fighting for the right to assemble a union.
I'm not going to get into where that particular institution has gotten itself today, but for this knucklehead to equate that with today's tech workers is ridiculous. Where was he when a crop of English majors called themselves 'programmers' and 'project managers' and started making $50-60k right out of college? When the company soda was flowing, foozball was an HR necessity, and the break room had a couch and a Playstation?
What exactly are the author's demands? That we be offered guaranteed jobs for life? That'll work, just ask GM and Delphi. With the possible exception of game developers, I don't think I've ever known a great programmer that felt 'exploited' for very long. Between my wife and I, we've been hit by one round of layoffs and dodged at least 6 others. If any of our past employers had been prevented from trimming the fat by union regulations, the entire operation would have folded up sooner.
And besides, some of my best freelance jobs were put together with fellow layoff victims...does that mean that I turned from a proletariat to a robber baron overnight?
There are plenty of problems with a handful of executives doing the insource/outsource swing every couple years, and playing games with people's careers in the process, but is a union going to fix that? Only if they break a bunch of other things in the process.
The American way is to put a carrot in front of the mule; the communist way is to create a narrow channel for the mule that only goes where YOU want him to go and provides for nasty shocks if he does anything different.
So what if the mule pulls the cart, and every other mule, off a cliff...it's the American way, dammit. Conservation is for commies.
They are being greedy, and any attempt to justify this by blaming it on the consumer is total BS. Why wouldn't they take the argument to it's extreme: give the music away for free and charge $300 for a ticket to the show?
Simply because they are well aware of the fact that supply and demand drives up the price. Scalpers get most of the tickets and sell them at 2-10x the original price. It has probably long irritated some of these greedy artists (or at least their handlers) that millions of dollars of wealth are created off their work and they get a fraction of it. If it were up to them, they would have jacked up the prices years ago, instead they do it slowly...by doing 'festivals' or 'megatours' for $90. Funny, the list of artists go down over the years, but the prices don't go down by much.
An outdoor, general admission show used to be much cheaper than a smaller venue, but there's nothing to distinguish them anymore. So now you're getting screwed for $40 for two bands, seeing the show from 1/4 mile away. Don't even get me started on Clear Channel and their predatory promotional practices. Forget it, I just won't spend that kind of money on that kind of show.
This nonsense of 'blame the filesharers' just allows them to jack up the price and get more of the scalpers' cut. I'm not shedding any tears for scalpers, but the fans are always the ones who get screwed.
Worker one: General Manager, html/photoshop/illustrator production, product photographer, global administrivia manager, web reporting, banner development, way too much more to list.
Worker two (me): Developer, Technical Manager, DBA, e-mail campaign executor, project manager for outsourced work, manage SEO and keyword purchases, occasional copywriter and all-around shortstop.
Mostly possible from a bunch of homegrown text-file and DB-based content management tools.
For the record, we just converted our 4,000 page (across 22 sites) to full css, and hired an outside firm for the template design (helps to have outsiders push new ideas through mid and upper management) and for the laborious debug and platform test. Their budget was about $33k, though we got an extra $10k added on here and there. A competing firm estimate we did the sites for $200k, but most of the production was done by the two of us.
The funny thing is, back in the early 90s, SBC and the other telcos got about $200 billion in rescinded taxes, favorable legislation, and other goodies to deliver fiberish speeds, and deliver "ultra high speed broadband" to 85% of the country. By 1998 or so. Now the US is 16th in broadband penetration, and at speeds that are a fraction of several Asian countries' networks.
They claimed that it was so expensive to build the infrastructure, that there was no way they could do it while being burdened with their usual tax and service structure. So how much have they delivered? Little, if at all. One of them promised that 99% of NJ would have affordable 5-8 MB broadband. If you live in NJ and pay one of the highest tax rates in the country (on just about everything: gas, property, sales, etc.), you can't be happy to hear that a corporation got hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks to deliver the Duke Nukem of broadband.
They ALL got similar breaks, and SBC is one of the worst violators. I wouldn't be surprised if they are currently making similar promises to get legislation on the books to outlaw third-party VoIP.
You need USA, CNBC, and MSNBC to get the full 400 hours.
You're just getting the highly produced, packaged version.
It's a little high on artificial drama and sappy anecdotes, but I think they do a pretty good job of production considering they have less than a day to put together every night's show. Consider the Tour de France, where, until OLN was broadcasting it daily (thanks Lance) you had to watch the distilled summary every sunday. They had no problem getting the viewer up to speed and making it dramatic (if it wasn't). With the Olympics, they have maybe 14-16 hours to select and edit the footage (granted their melodramatic stories are long since prepared) and link it all up for a "live" broadcast. It's no small feat.
That being said, I do think they should look beyond 'just the Americans' more, but with my tiny little bit of TV production experience, I can appreciate how difficult it must be to put together a show under those conditions for 3 weeks.
Maybe I heard a PR-friendly version of the story, but his parents wouldn't fly him and his brother around the world to compete, so they started a company to make some money. When he was thirteen. I made $3/hour at that age, and I was a high roller compared to my friends who couldn't even get jobs.
So he was making crapware? BFD. With the possible exceptions of the EFFers and some folks at NASA, how many slashdotters haven't ever written code that doesn't pollute the world with wasted CPU cycles? Christ, I just spent the day programming a Dealer Locator. That's not exactly feeding starving children, unless you count my own.
Who exactly gets to set the moral compass for what constitutes 'worthwhile' software? Right now, the net is crawling with identity theives, pr0n magnates, script kiddie extortionists, and worst of all, Marketers.
God forbid someone should judge you based the goals and accomplishments you had by age 21. I suspect the most vociferous flamers are just jealous of his financial and athletic success.
Re:Should you teach your children chess at all?
on
Chess for Kids?
·
· Score: 1
The play of chess requires some skills that are relatively useless in real life.
Like: -thinking and focusing for longer than GTA3 requires -encouraging analysis -building decision trees -tracking multiple variables in real time -watching for your opponent's mistakes -among many others...
With 'usefulness' as the threshold, you might find that Poker or some other form of high-stakes gambling is your best bet, or you might find no games are suitably useful.
One must spend years memorizing book openings in order to play at a competitive level.
While you're at it, don't bother getting them involved in sports, since one in 37,000 kids will end up going professional, and most of those spots will be taken by the ones that are genetically gifted to be either linebackers or power forwards. Why set them up for failure?
Saying they shouldn't try something because 'it won't be any fun at the highest level' would mean shutting the door on most challenges in their lives.
Maybe she's already beyond it, but I used QuickChess to teach my daughter, then about 4.
It introduces the pieces one at a time using basic games, but IMO the real value was that it comes with a 5 (wide) x 6 (deep) board with one of each piece (plus 5 pawns each). Though we moved on to a standard board, we often go back and use the smaller one for fast games. Sometimes a 'real' game can drag on a little too long, so we switch between boards so she doesn't get burnt out. Once she caught me slipping and got me in a fool's-type mate (not hard on a a tiny board), and it was a great moment for her.
Obviously, it wouldn't be hard to emulate that set; you could use a printer or tape up a standard one to make your own 5 x 6 board.
Also, I downloaded chess problems. There are more than enough of those on the web, many targeted for kids and beginning players (like yourself?)
Outside of that, a chess club, probably at school. I looked into the camps, but like a lot of 'focused' camps they seem a little high stress (like they are more for the parents then the kids). One that looked interesting was only for girls, since a lot of girls learn to play games much differently than boys, and it can affect their development.
For the record, I'm not advocating that she should *never* play against boys, but I think girls can learn new things more comfortably with other girls. I also think that playing against boys (and this goes for sports as well) in the long run will make her a better player.
"Can we trust science?" Author states that two scientists have been found falsifying data. Therefore, scientists shouldn't be trusted until their data can be verified. Wow, that's reassuring, Christians encouraging skepticism. Ever heard of Wurzburg? It was a small town that in 1589 alone, immolated or burned alive 28 heretics, including a number of children, and it was one of hundreds, if not thousands of towns doing so, with the full support of Church infrastructure. Based on your logic, I consider all Christians to be murderers, until it can be proved otherwise.
"The Devastating Issue of Dinosaur Tissue" Ah, the flagship article. A bona-fide evolutionist finds a T-rex fossil that looks young, and is perplexed. So, every fossil ever found, except for one mentioned in this story, contradicts the creation theory, but you expect to roll back the scientific clock to the dark ages based on this alone. The (lightly) quoted scientist also specializes in well-preserved fossils, and why they are so. She does not make the claim that the T-rex fossil is centuries old, but the author of the article does. In fact, I have dug up a line from her 1997 paper: Perhaps the mysterious structures were, at best, derived from blood, modified over the millennia by geological processes. [pg: 55]...But more work needs to be done before we are confident enough to come right out and say, "Yes, this T. rex has blood compounds left in its tissues."
So I have a question for you, why don't all T-rex fossils appear to be hundreds of years old? Science seeks to explain natural phenomenon, but you don't, therefore, what you are hawking is not science.
Another article cites an article from New Scientist magazine: Instead of small, rodent-like mammals living in the time of the dinosaurs, evidence has been discovered the a badger-like mammal may have hunted in those times. Curses! There's goes the entire evolutionary model! Also, evidence of grasses in dinosaur dung, though they shouldn't be there! Take that, Darwinist!
I love the RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth) conference summary: 8 whole "Scientists" trot out the most bogus theory ever, but really, the bullshit is conveniently packed into this one statement: "Nuclear processes were accelerated during certain periods of earth's history." OH, that's how you get from 5 billion years old to ten thousand. Someone call Steven Hawking, I'm sure he'll be soooooo relieved to find out.
This is the problem with taking creationists to task. Mountains of evidence point to one conclusion, one piece points to an inconsistency, and therefore you claim the theory is unsound. That is not science, and that is not how you win a logical argument. Here's my argument: you are not worthy of the hard-fought victories that science has made on your behalf. Inject a little Jesus into your kids to protect them from disease. Go ask the Bible why Hubble's law works so well.
Incidentally, Georges Lemaître, one of the first physicists to propose the Big Bang model, was also an ordained Priest. He wouldn't let you and your band of Creationist dimwits shine his shoes.
I still think it goes back to the parking issue. Unless a retractable shelter or even better, a deflatable membrane is developed, you're still looking at a storage problem.
If it took 100 units of helium to carry one unit of cargo (bogus numbers, but I'm out of my element here), then your shelter would need to be 100 times bigger than any payload you plan for. Maybe it can handle a greater payload than a helicopter, but you could fit a number of helicopters in the space required for just one of these.
In inclement weather, it's not you can just land it and tie it down like a conventional aircraft.
I suspect it would have to do with the ratio between size and useful lift.
From what I've seen, the payload area on most blimps is probably 1% of the size of the membrane. So, for every box that you wanted to carry, you'd need 100 'boxes' of helium.
Of course those are bogus numbers, but the point is, you have to have to have a shelter for something 100 times bigger than what you want to carry. If you have to build a shelter like that in a remote place, then it's probably going to get a road in the process.
It would be interesting if you could have a retractable shelter or deflatable airship to make it a little more hardy and self-sufficient.
Only one problem. Where are you going to park one of those, nevermind a fleet.
While I admire a couple of guys willing to build their dreams, seriously:
You think the military would really be interested? That thing could be downed with a BB gun.
Emergency supplies? Emergency means 'we need it fast' not 'load up the goodyear and we'll expect in 10 days.' They would need to be standing by at the ready everywhere to be effective.
Plus, I can't imagine they would be effective in, say a post-Katrina rescue effort. The aftermath of the storm would be kicking up winds and debris that would pose risks to the airship, so you'd have to wait a few days...and what if a new storm approaches? Will the captain lift off and hightail it out of there at 8 mph?
There's a reason that for all intents and purposes, the WWII-era cargo plane is still the most effective means of transportation for many of these cases.
2001: CargoLifter AG based to the South of Berlin in Germany is developing "Lighter-than-Air" systems for logistics and other applications. The Company's first product, the CL 75 AC balloon based system has been in prototype flight test since October 2001.
2002: For reasons of insolvency the CargoLifter AG Board of Managing Directors today filed an application for the opening of insolvency proceedings on the assets of CargoLifter AG at the Cottbus District Court.
I'm not saying it can't, or shouldn't be done, it makes sense on some levels, i.e. not having to ship your tons of goods via truck->rail->boat->rail->truck, but I remember reading about the operation mentioned above a few years back. It was no garage business, they had a wealthy shipping magnate with a lot of vertical expertise, a slew of aerospace engineers, and a ton of capital.
The problem, IIRC, was that the infrastructure to handle these things (big hangars) are gone, and real estate is too valuable to go around scooping it up near transportation hubs, where they could be integrated into existing systems. I think they went broke, not because the airships were too costly to build, but there weren't any other facilities to land/unload/service the things, and they had to build those too. The problem is easy to spot when you look at their plans.
coming soon out of beta, in full force...
on
Webhost Sues Google
·
· Score: 1
Of course IANAPL, so I don't pretend to know what I'm talking about, but I remember hearing that patent licensing maxes at $50MM or so.
If this case is strong enough to potentially shut down their core business (not judging on the merits of the suit myself) then why wouldn't they just pay it and be done? I realize that they think they have a shot at winning, but there are probably millions of customers and potential customers thinking the company might not be around to provide the service, so they are moving off the platform or not using it to begin with. Seems to me it might be worth considering. It's obviously not an option for most patent battles, and it smacks of corporate extortion, but I wonder if it's an option.
I'm sure their team of legal advisers want them to spend $400/hour fighting it, and there's the possibility this could open other legal vulnerabilities, but I wonder if it wouldn't make sense to settle it. It's possible that the $50MM figure wouldn't apply to this case though. Like I said, IANAPL.
Just as the center of manufacturing moved from Europe to the U.S., they want to keep it moving to Asia.
It's been in Asia for some time, Mitt.
Perhaps he should head across town to chat with several of the renowned economists at Harvard or MIT. American manufacturing has been in decline (much of it double-digit, iirc) since the 70s. I see that our economy has not followed suit.
He might also discover that nationalized plans to keep "manufacturing jobs" have been implemented in Germany and Italy, and despite the fact that they make some fine automobiles, they have not experienced the economic advantages of a service-based economy the way the US and UK have. To the contrary, they are threatening to destabilize the economies of those countries in the future. As soon as asian countries learn to truly create (and not just produce to spec) products of similar quality (no simple task) for a lower price, then EU manufacturing economies will suffer considerably.
Unfortunately for Germany and Italy, currently the creation of new businesses is a bureaucratic nightmare, making their transition that much more difficult. Not so in the US.
That's because we have quite a lot of it, compared to most global wage earners. We can't produce all the stuff we consume; keeping all those jobs filled would unnecessarily drive up the cost of goods. It makes more economic sense to NOT buy American.
Our money has been flying to China for some time, but it has not been the harbinger of doom so many have prognosticated.
Why? because we don't just make money, we also make stuff. Stuff that gets bought in China. Maybe the balance sheet isn't completely flat, but there's enough of a global market for US goods to put money back into our economy. And we make more stuff.
While I'm no fan of the decline of America's standing on the educational chart (word to you, Kansas), this guy is using an arbitrary number to jump on the bandwagon of "China's going to 0wn the US in a few years."
China makes, and for some time, has made its fortune making things...from cheap plastic toys to electronic components, circuitry, you name it.
The US (and several other advanced economies) have made their fortunes, for the most part in the last 30+ years, not from manufacturing (which has been in decline in the US since the 70s) but from the conceptualization, specification, packaging, marketing, and just moving the objects. The US will no more become a manufacturing powerhouse than China will start cranking out Google (granted, a lot of PhDs there), Madden NFL, G-Unit, and Spiderman 3. That's where the US is making its $billions these days.
Will China move up the food chain economically? Of course. Will they turn the US into a satellite economy? No. The US spends a lot because it makes a lot. There are a host of economic factors that can't be adequately explored here, but our money isn't going to up and fly away to China.
Perhaps, if this bandwagon jumper is so concerned about America's economic future, he should convince his fellow politicians that it's bad long term policy to create massive national debt that is bought up by the Chinese with all their new manufacturing profits. That's more of a financial danger than getting out-PhD'ed.
What bothers me is the large percentage of people posting on/. in complete denial that there might be a pandemic coming.
One man's denial is another's dose of skepticism. If this turns out to kill 40m people, then I will gladly admit my error, if I'm still around. I just don't see it happening like that.
Even if this strain mutates significantly and grows exponentially, the level of scrutiny is high; a single infected bird leads to the destruction of tens of thousands of potentially infected animals. This was not the case in the last two pandemics. Every human case is under the microscope, so to speak. As soon as a lethal easily-communicable human-to-human strain is identified, a targeted vaccine will be developed (maybe in the space of several months) and deployed in different ways. Will it kill? Almost certainly. Maybe hundreds (like SARS) or thousands, but 40 million? Again, I'm not in denial, just skeptical. A hell of a lot has changed in the world (and in medicine) since 1918.
Re:Legitimate concern?
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Your are citing concern as a cause for further concern. If they handed out a 200 page manual about what to do in case of an imminent attack by flying monkeys, people would be concerned.
Someone asked for a couple of worst-case scenarios, and an "expert" provided them. They handed it to the people who would be first affected. It's an alarming read, as most worst-case scenarios are. So far, what you're telling me is facts about the panic, not about the disease.
The fact that the administrators of a town of 40,000 people are preparing for the lack of school age children and tax income tells me they are pretty unsophisticated. This sounds like something they tell the local press, so they look like they are doing their jobs. I'd ask them what they would do if bored anarchist kids and the economically disadvantaged start setting fire to cars in the dead of night, something a little more likely.
The fact that a bunch of hospitals have received emergency training, and have been alarmed by it, is not necessarily significant. Did they receive similar materials in light of SARS and West Nile? How about a dirty bomb or chemical weapons attack? Earthquake? Asteroid? They're all scary, and they're all "possible."
If the top 100 epidemiologists in the world came out and said: "This strain of flu can be easily spread between humans, has a 50% mortality rate, and has no vaccine or treatment" then I would be concerned, but telling me your nurse is shocked because she's been told to read a manual about how they are going to run out of storage space for the bodies, well, that's not scientifically relevant. Even if she is a healthcare provider.
I think 'light' is a broadly applied term here, and fact is, the method they used was to measure cosmic radiation, and subtract from it the radiation levels of known galaxies to arrive at an amount that "must" be leftover from stars long past.
This CNN article put it best: "The exercise was like taking a recording of a stadium full of loud people and subtracting the noise of every person except one to hear the voice of that single individual."
Slashdot Mirror
What if the gaming industry started a trend that became the norm for the whole industry?
.COM boom got.
I would rather not legislate or regulate based on what might happen. There's no limit to what we might prepare for. What if it becomes feasable to have machines write code? Should we outlaw that in our employment contracts? That's essentially what many autoworker unions did, and while it may have protected some workers for some time, in the long run, it's not a brilliant move.
Why do you think unions are inherently evil, but companies are not, especially given your family history?
I said neither of those things. Not everyone is greedy, but it's an innate human trait, and if it's easy to be greedy (and successful at it), people will be. People in unions can be greedy, as can people in companies. The point is, unlike the one-factory towns of the 30's, today's IT workers have many options. That serves as a more effective bargaining option than a union rep. There are jobs out there that offer flex time, good pay, telecommuting, etc. If your employer starts losing people for reasons like those, they might change their policies...More so than if IT sent a shop steward in with a list of demands.
all those pathetic perks you are talking about are nothing compared to what the people who really robbed the economy blind during the
Your argument is that because some people, somewhere, at some time, were very greedy, then we should all put a pack of regulations or associations in place to make sure THAT doesn't happen again.
Unions are not free, and you're usually better off putting $50/week of your own money aside in case of wrongful termination, negligence, early retirement, or any of the other bad things that might happen. Because a union will take that money, and while it might represend your interests down the road, it might well represent a slacker who strained his pinky finger writing code, and wants to take it to the supreme court.
Again, I'm not anti-union across the boards, I just think as a prescription for the IT industry, it's like using a sledgehammer to swat a fly.
Can I flag TFA as Troll?
My family has always been pretty pro-union, mostly on account of my grandfather:
-NOT being issued shop glasses (he was a drill press operator in automobile production)
-NOT being allowed to bring his own
-being injured on the job
-being administered by a substandard alcoholic 'company doctor' who promptly removed one of his eyes and hacked up the other one
-being fired without compensation
-eventually being re-hired at an ornamental job and given a $10,000 payoff to drop the whole thing.
In addition, there were stories of so-and-so's family having to buy the boss' groceries, or so-and-so's sister having to 'deliver' them, if you know what I mean. It was enough to make most of his kids go out and get their heads busted in fighting for the right to assemble a union.
I'm not going to get into where that particular institution has gotten itself today, but for this knucklehead to equate that with today's tech workers is ridiculous. Where was he when a crop of English majors called themselves 'programmers' and 'project managers' and started making $50-60k right out of college? When the company soda was flowing, foozball was an HR necessity, and the break room had a couch and a Playstation?
What exactly are the author's demands? That we be offered guaranteed jobs for life? That'll work, just ask GM and Delphi. With the possible exception of game developers, I don't think I've ever known a great programmer that felt 'exploited' for very long. Between my wife and I, we've been hit by one round of layoffs and dodged at least 6 others. If any of our past employers had been prevented from trimming the fat by union regulations, the entire operation would have folded up sooner.
And besides, some of my best freelance jobs were put together with fellow layoff victims...does that mean that I turned from a proletariat to a robber baron overnight?
There are plenty of problems with a handful of executives doing the insource/outsource swing every couple years, and playing games with people's careers in the process, but is a union going to fix that? Only if they break a bunch of other things in the process.
The American way is to put a carrot in front of the mule; the communist way is to create a narrow channel for the mule that only goes where YOU want him to go and provides for nasty shocks if he does anything different.
So what if the mule pulls the cart, and every other mule, off a cliff...it's the American way, dammit. Conservation is for commies.
They are being greedy, and any attempt to justify this by blaming it on the consumer is total BS. Why wouldn't they take the argument to it's extreme: give the music away for free and charge $300 for a ticket to the show?
Simply because they are well aware of the fact that supply and demand drives up the price. Scalpers get most of the tickets and sell them at 2-10x the original price. It has probably long irritated some of these greedy artists (or at least their handlers) that millions of dollars of wealth are created off their work and they get a fraction of it. If it were up to them, they would have jacked up the prices years ago, instead they do it slowly...by doing 'festivals' or 'megatours' for $90. Funny, the list of artists go down over the years, but the prices don't go down by much.
An outdoor, general admission show used to be much cheaper than a smaller venue, but there's nothing to distinguish them anymore. So now you're getting screwed for $40 for two bands, seeing the show from 1/4 mile away. Don't even get me started on Clear Channel and their predatory promotional practices. Forget it, I just won't spend that kind of money on that kind of show.
This nonsense of 'blame the filesharers' just allows them to jack up the price and get more of the scalpers' cut. I'm not shedding any tears for scalpers, but the fans are always the ones who get screwed.
For 22 sites in 14 languages...
Worker one:
General Manager, html/photoshop/illustrator production, product photographer, global administrivia manager, web reporting, banner development, way too much more to list.
Worker two (me):
Developer, Technical Manager, DBA, e-mail campaign executor, project manager for outsourced work, manage SEO and keyword purchases, occasional copywriter and all-around shortstop.
Mostly possible from a bunch of homegrown text-file and DB-based content management tools.
For the record, we just converted our 4,000 page (across 22 sites) to full css, and hired an outside firm for the template design (helps to have outsiders push new ideas through mid and upper management) and for the laborious debug and platform test. Their budget was about $33k, though we got an extra $10k added on here and there. A competing firm estimate we did the sites for $200k, but most of the production was done by the two of us.
The funny thing is, back in the early 90s, SBC and the other telcos got about $200 billion in rescinded taxes, favorable legislation, and other goodies to deliver fiberish speeds, and deliver "ultra high speed broadband" to 85% of the country. By 1998 or so. Now the US is 16th in broadband penetration, and at speeds that are a fraction of several Asian countries' networks.
They claimed that it was so expensive to build the infrastructure, that there was no way they could do it while being burdened with their usual tax and service structure. So how much have they delivered? Little, if at all. One of them promised that 99% of NJ would have affordable 5-8 MB broadband. If you live in NJ and pay one of the highest tax rates in the country (on just about everything: gas, property, sales, etc.), you can't be happy to hear that a corporation got hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks to deliver the Duke Nukem of broadband.
They ALL got similar breaks, and SBC is one of the worst violators. I wouldn't be surprised if they are currently making similar promises to get legislation on the books to outlaw third-party VoIP.
This is just a generalization of the issues at hand. Find out more at 200billionscandal.typepad.com
You need USA, CNBC, and MSNBC to get the full 400 hours.
You're just getting the highly produced, packaged version.
It's a little high on artificial drama and sappy anecdotes, but I think they do a pretty good job of production considering they have less than a day to put together every night's show. Consider the Tour de France, where, until OLN was broadcasting it daily (thanks Lance) you had to watch the distilled summary every sunday. They had no problem getting the viewer up to speed and making it dramatic (if it wasn't). With the Olympics, they have maybe 14-16 hours to select and edit the footage (granted their melodramatic stories are long since prepared) and link it all up for a "live" broadcast. It's no small feat.
That being said, I do think they should look beyond 'just the Americans' more, but with my tiny little bit of TV production experience, I can appreciate how difficult it must be to put together a show under those conditions for 3 weeks.
Maybe I heard a PR-friendly version of the story, but his parents wouldn't fly him and his brother around the world to compete, so they started a company to make some money. When he was thirteen. I made $3/hour at that age, and I was a high roller compared to my friends who couldn't even get jobs.
So he was making crapware? BFD. With the possible exceptions of the EFFers and some folks at NASA, how many slashdotters haven't ever written code that doesn't pollute the world with wasted CPU cycles? Christ, I just spent the day programming a Dealer Locator. That's not exactly feeding starving children, unless you count my own.
Who exactly gets to set the moral compass for what constitutes 'worthwhile' software? Right now, the net is crawling with identity theives, pr0n magnates, script kiddie extortionists, and worst of all, Marketers.
God forbid someone should judge you based the goals and accomplishments you had by age 21. I suspect the most vociferous flamers are just jealous of his financial and athletic success.
The play of chess requires some skills that are relatively useless in real life.
Like:
-thinking and focusing for longer than GTA3 requires
-encouraging analysis
-building decision trees
-tracking multiple variables in real time
-watching for your opponent's mistakes
-among many others...
With 'usefulness' as the threshold, you might find that Poker or some other form of high-stakes gambling is your best bet, or you might find no games are suitably useful.
One must spend years memorizing book openings in order to play at a competitive level.
While you're at it, don't bother getting them involved in sports, since one in 37,000 kids will end up going professional, and most of those spots will be taken by the ones that are genetically gifted to be either linebackers or power forwards. Why set them up for failure?
Saying they shouldn't try something because 'it won't be any fun at the highest level' would mean shutting the door on most challenges in their lives.
Maybe she's already beyond it, but I used QuickChess to teach my daughter, then about 4.
It introduces the pieces one at a time using basic games, but IMO the real value was that it comes with a 5 (wide) x 6 (deep) board with one of each piece (plus 5 pawns each). Though we moved on to a standard board, we often go back and use the smaller one for fast games. Sometimes a 'real' game can drag on a little too long, so we switch between boards so she doesn't get burnt out. Once she caught me slipping and got me in a fool's-type mate (not hard on a a tiny board), and it was a great moment for her.
Obviously, it wouldn't be hard to emulate that set; you could use a printer or tape up a standard one to make your own 5 x 6 board.
Also, I downloaded chess problems. There are more than enough of those on the web, many targeted for kids and beginning players (like yourself?)
Outside of that, a chess club, probably at school. I looked into the camps, but like a lot of 'focused' camps they seem a little high stress (like they are more for the parents then the kids). One that looked interesting was only for girls, since a lot of girls learn to play games much differently than boys, and it can affect their development.
For the record, I'm not advocating that she should *never* play against boys, but I think girls can learn new things more comfortably with other girls. I also think that playing against boys (and this goes for sports as well) in the long run will make her a better player.
All your base (pairs) belong to us.
"Can we trust science?"
Author states that two scientists have been found falsifying data. Therefore, scientists shouldn't be trusted until their data can be verified. Wow, that's reassuring, Christians encouraging skepticism. Ever heard of Wurzburg? It was a small town that in 1589 alone, immolated or burned alive 28 heretics, including a number of children, and it was one of hundreds, if not thousands of towns doing so, with the full support of Church infrastructure. Based on your logic, I consider all Christians to be murderers, until it can be proved otherwise.
"The Devastating Issue of Dinosaur Tissue"
Ah, the flagship article. A bona-fide evolutionist finds a T-rex fossil that looks young, and is perplexed. So, every fossil ever found, except for one mentioned in this story, contradicts the creation theory, but you expect to roll back the scientific clock to the dark ages based on this alone. The (lightly) quoted scientist also specializes in well-preserved fossils, and why they are so. She does not make the claim that the T-rex fossil is centuries old, but the author of the article does. In fact, I have dug up a line from her 1997 paper:
Perhaps the mysterious structures were, at best, derived from blood, modified over the millennia by geological processes. [pg: 55]...But more work needs to be done before we are confident enough to come right out and say, "Yes, this T. rex has blood compounds left in its tissues."
So I have a question for you, why don't all T-rex fossils appear to be hundreds of years old? Science seeks to explain natural phenomenon, but you don't, therefore, what you are hawking is not science.
Another article cites an article from New Scientist magazine: Instead of small, rodent-like mammals living in the time of the dinosaurs, evidence has been discovered the a badger-like mammal may have hunted in those times. Curses! There's goes the entire evolutionary model! Also, evidence of grasses in dinosaur dung, though they shouldn't be there! Take that, Darwinist!
I love the RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth) conference summary: 8 whole "Scientists" trot out the most bogus theory ever, but really, the bullshit is conveniently packed into this one statement: "Nuclear processes were accelerated during certain periods of earth's history." OH, that's how you get from 5 billion years old to ten thousand. Someone call Steven Hawking, I'm sure he'll be soooooo relieved to find out.
This is the problem with taking creationists to task. Mountains of evidence point to one conclusion, one piece points to an inconsistency, and therefore you claim the theory is unsound. That is not science, and that is not how you win a logical argument. Here's my argument: you are not worthy of the hard-fought victories that science has made on your behalf. Inject a little Jesus into your kids to protect them from disease. Go ask the Bible why Hubble's law works so well.
Incidentally, Georges Lemaître, one of the first physicists to propose the Big Bang model, was also an ordained Priest. He wouldn't let you and your band of Creationist dimwits shine his shoes.
Good points.
I still think it goes back to the parking issue. Unless a retractable shelter or even better, a deflatable membrane is developed, you're still looking at a storage problem.
If it took 100 units of helium to carry one unit of cargo (bogus numbers, but I'm out of my element here), then your shelter would need to be 100 times bigger than any payload you plan for. Maybe it can handle a greater payload than a helicopter, but you could fit a number of helicopters in the space required for just one of these.
In inclement weather, it's not you can just land it and tie it down like a conventional aircraft.
I suspect it would have to do with the ratio between size and useful lift.
From what I've seen, the payload area on most blimps is probably 1% of the size of the membrane. So, for every box that you wanted to carry, you'd need 100 'boxes' of helium.
Of course those are bogus numbers, but the point is, you have to have to have a shelter for something 100 times bigger than what you want to carry. If you have to build a shelter like that in a remote place, then it's probably going to get a road in the process.
It would be interesting if you could have a retractable shelter or deflatable airship to make it a little more hardy and self-sufficient.
Only one problem. Where are you going to park one of those, nevermind a fleet.
While I admire a couple of guys willing to build their dreams, seriously:
You think the military would really be interested? That thing could be downed with a BB gun.
Emergency supplies? Emergency means 'we need it fast' not 'load up the goodyear and we'll expect in 10 days.' They would need to be standing by at the ready everywhere to be effective.
Plus, I can't imagine they would be effective in, say a post-Katrina rescue effort. The aftermath of the storm would be kicking up winds and debris that would pose risks to the airship, so you'd have to wait a few days...and what if a new storm approaches? Will the captain lift off and hightail it out of there at 8 mph?
There's a reason that for all intents and purposes, the WWII-era cargo plane is still the most effective means of transportation for many of these cases.
2001:
CargoLifter AG based to the South of Berlin in Germany is developing "Lighter-than-Air" systems for logistics and other applications. The Company's first product, the CL 75 AC balloon based system has been in prototype flight test since October 2001.
2002:
For reasons of insolvency the CargoLifter AG Board of Managing Directors today filed an application for the opening of insolvency proceedings on the assets of CargoLifter AG at the Cottbus District Court.
I'm not saying it can't, or shouldn't be done, it makes sense on some levels, i.e. not having to ship your tons of goods via truck->rail->boat->rail->truck, but I remember reading about the operation mentioned above a few years back. It was no garage business, they had a wealthy shipping magnate with a lot of vertical expertise, a slew of aerospace engineers, and a ton of capital.
The problem, IIRC, was that the infrastructure to handle these things (big hangars) are gone, and real estate is too valuable to go around scooping it up near transportation hubs, where they could be integrated into existing systems. I think they went broke, not because the airships were too costly to build, but there weren't any other facilities to land/unload/service the things, and they had to build those too. The problem is easy to spot when you look at their plans.
http://legalteam.google.com/
Of course IANAPL, so I don't pretend to know what I'm talking about, but I remember hearing that patent licensing maxes at $50MM or so.
If this case is strong enough to potentially shut down their core business (not judging on the merits of the suit myself) then why wouldn't they just pay it and be done? I realize that they think they have a shot at winning, but there are probably millions of customers and potential customers thinking the company might not be around to provide the service, so they are moving off the platform or not using it to begin with. Seems to me it might be worth considering. It's obviously not an option for most patent battles, and it smacks of corporate extortion, but I wonder if it's an option.
I'm sure their team of legal advisers want them to spend $400/hour fighting it, and there's the possibility this could open other legal vulnerabilities, but I wonder if it wouldn't make sense to settle it. It's possible that the $50MM figure wouldn't apply to this case though. Like I said, IANAPL.
Just as the center of manufacturing moved from Europe to the U.S., they want to keep it moving to Asia.
It's been in Asia for some time, Mitt.
Perhaps he should head across town to chat with several of the renowned economists at Harvard or MIT. American manufacturing has been in decline (much of it double-digit, iirc) since the 70s. I see that our economy has not followed suit.
He might also discover that nationalized plans to keep "manufacturing jobs" have been implemented in Germany and Italy, and despite the fact that they make some fine automobiles, they have not experienced the economic advantages of a service-based economy the way the US and UK have. To the contrary, they are threatening to destabilize the economies of those countries in the future. As soon as asian countries learn to truly create (and not just produce to spec) products of similar quality (no simple task) for a lower price, then EU manufacturing economies will suffer considerably.
Unfortunately for Germany and Italy, currently the creation of new businesses is a bureaucratic nightmare, making their transition that much more difficult. Not so in the US.
That's because we have quite a lot of it, compared to most global wage earners. We can't produce all the stuff we consume; keeping all those jobs filled would unnecessarily drive up the cost of goods. It makes more economic sense to NOT buy American.
Our money has been flying to China for some time, but it has not been the harbinger of doom so many have prognosticated.
Why? because we don't just make money, we also make stuff. Stuff that gets bought in China. Maybe the balance sheet isn't completely flat, but there's enough of a global market for US goods to put money back into our economy. And we make more stuff.
While I'm no fan of the decline of America's standing on the educational chart (word to you, Kansas), this guy is using an arbitrary number to jump on the bandwagon of "China's going to 0wn the US in a few years."
China makes, and for some time, has made its fortune making things...from cheap plastic toys to electronic components, circuitry, you name it.
The US (and several other advanced economies) have made their fortunes, for the most part in the last 30+ years, not from manufacturing (which has been in decline in the US since the 70s) but from the conceptualization, specification, packaging, marketing, and just moving the objects. The US will no more become a manufacturing powerhouse than China will start cranking out Google (granted, a lot of PhDs there), Madden NFL, G-Unit, and Spiderman 3. That's where the US is making its $billions these days.
Will China move up the food chain economically? Of course. Will they turn the US into a satellite economy? No. The US spends a lot because it makes a lot. There are a host of economic factors that can't be adequately explored here, but our money isn't going to up and fly away to China.
Perhaps, if this bandwagon jumper is so concerned about America's economic future, he should convince his fellow politicians that it's bad long term policy to create massive national debt that is bought up by the Chinese with all their new manufacturing profits. That's more of a financial danger than getting out-PhD'ed.
What bothers me is the large percentage of people posting on /. in complete denial that there might be a pandemic coming.
One man's denial is another's dose of skepticism. If this turns out to kill 40m people, then I will gladly admit my error, if I'm still around. I just don't see it happening like that.
Even if this strain mutates significantly and grows exponentially, the level of scrutiny is high; a single infected bird leads to the destruction of tens of thousands of potentially infected animals. This was not the case in the last two pandemics. Every human case is under the microscope, so to speak. As soon as a lethal easily-communicable human-to-human strain is identified, a targeted vaccine will be developed (maybe in the space of several months) and deployed in different ways. Will it kill? Almost certainly. Maybe hundreds (like SARS) or thousands, but 40 million? Again, I'm not in denial, just skeptical. A hell of a lot has changed in the world (and in medicine) since 1918.
Your are citing concern as a cause for further concern. If they handed out a 200 page manual about what to do in case of an imminent attack by flying monkeys, people would be concerned.
Someone asked for a couple of worst-case scenarios, and an "expert" provided them. They handed it to the people who would be first affected. It's an alarming read, as most worst-case scenarios are. So far, what you're telling me is facts about the panic, not about the disease.
The fact that the administrators of a town of 40,000 people are preparing for the lack of school age children and tax income tells me they are pretty unsophisticated. This sounds like something they tell the local press, so they look like they are doing their jobs. I'd ask them what they would do if bored anarchist kids and the economically disadvantaged start setting fire to cars in the dead of night, something a little more likely.
The fact that a bunch of hospitals have received emergency training, and have been alarmed by it, is not necessarily significant. Did they receive similar materials in light of SARS and West Nile? How about a dirty bomb or chemical weapons attack? Earthquake? Asteroid? They're all scary, and they're all "possible."
If the top 100 epidemiologists in the world came out and said: "This strain of flu can be easily spread between humans, has a 50% mortality rate, and has no vaccine or treatment" then I would be concerned, but telling me your nurse is shocked because she's been told to read a manual about how they are going to run out of storage space for the bodies, well, that's not scientifically relevant. Even if she is a healthcare provider.
(what the hell do you call someone from Kansas anyway?)
Pretty soon, we'll call them "Uneducated."
I think 'light' is a broadly applied term here, and fact is, the method they used was to measure cosmic radiation, and subtract from it the radiation levels of known galaxies to arrive at an amount that "must" be leftover from stars long past.
This CNN article put it best: "The exercise was like taking a recording of a stadium full of loud people and subtracting the noise of every person except one to hear the voice of that single individual."