Well, it may be available, but certainly a good part less so than in other regions. It's no problem if you go to bars (in Qatar it's more or less restricted to 5* hotels, in Dubai it's quite easy), but from what I've heard (correct me if I'm wrong) buying it for personal consumption can be a bit of a hassle... you may need to get a permit from your employer in order to get a license to buy in a limited number of specialized shops... a bit like Sweden, then;)
Your knowledge of world economics is amazing... Maybe you should apply for a management job
That aside, there are always opportunities out there for those willing to take them (and from what I see here, probably should). You can find lots of IT Jobs in Europe, but of course you'll compete with the local well-educated work force, and a number of companies may actually prefer people who speak the local language (better chances, I believe, in UK, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia).
From what I've seen, there are quite a number of opportunities in the Middle East, and the pay is good, if you're willing to accept some restrictive laws (such as the low availability of alcohol). For slashdotters, it shouldn't be a big problem that kissing/holding hands in public is prohibited;)
If you're more than just a programmer, specialized in sth (like ERM, SAP, data mining or whatever), or a good IT Manager/Sr Manager etc., you can also find sth in Asia, with Singapore and Hong Kong probably the best locations for those who don't speak a local language. (Plus Australia and New Zealand, but those are not technically Asia.) As mentioned elsewhere, China and India are probably not first choices unless you're posted there.
It's already happening anyway... companies involved in big high tech projects in China have to factor in the fact that they may be copied and that there's nothing they can do about it. They will just have to know whether it's worth the risk. For most companies it is - China is just too big and growing a market to ignore, and if the company doesn't go in, a competitor will - whatever the rules.
Examples are plentiful, one comes to my mind: the German Transrapid (yeah, I know, it has its own problems too) was bought for Shanghai Airport-City connection, and part of the deal was that Chinese engineers play a major part. Guess what, there is already a copy being produced in China. Same is happening for cars, btw - didn't take long for copies to hit the road.
... in restaurant/bar menus " * The wines on this list may have been artificially aged to increase taste and price."
This could be great for a decent wine, no need to wait 10 years to make it taste like aged wine, but as mentioned above - it won't turn a crappy wine into a good wine. And it won't make Canadian wine drinkable;)
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
So, science finally proves it? We're in the backwaters of the galaxy? Where aliens don't normally come, except those who have fun abducting weird people?
While the difference in performance is minimal to negligible (40.7% vs 40.8%), these two are not the same cell. From TFA:
NREL's Mark Wanlass invented the original inverted cell, which recently won a R&D 100 award. His design was modified by a team led by John Geisz that further optimized the junction energies by making the middle junction metamorphic as well as the bottom junction. Metamorphic junctions are lattice mismatched â" their atoms don't line up. The material properties of the mismatched semiconductors allows for greater potential conversion of sunlight.
I am soo... *yawn*
ummm... excited or sth. I am thrilled waiting for the next news on the Ancient Rocks Channel: "Even older rocks found!"
Rocks. Wow. Just - Wow.
... for a change. That is what medical students are forced to know in Germany as they start their studies. If they hadn't had it in school, they must learn it in the first semesters.
Now, that is a useless rite of passage; all they later use it for is to learn all Latin words they need (body parts, herbs, etc.) by heart.
for every time someone has put up a hypothesis about whether our solar system/planet is special or not!
As long as we're not "out there", and with our very limited methods of observation, there are just too many and too big unknowns to take any hypothesis in this area seriously. Generally, estimations range between one and a few million (or billion) similar solar systems / other intelligent civilizations in the universe.
The problem with your attitude is that it fails the "golden rule" - would my behavior still be OK if everybody did what I do? If it's not, that's a pretty good signal it's unethical.
Ah, but that depends which model of ethics you are basing your judgment on...;)
I personally do not think that everyone will use pirated games, there still seem to be quite a number of people paying for them. And, well... if you look at it economically, you should always base your budget on expected revenue, not on expected use or some other fantasy figure.
There is also a move towards online games, or added online functionality, which requires you to buy an account, and to use the original game. Seems like some companies at least are finding an answer to lower revenue streams from offline games sales...
The W3C is a lousy reference, actually, for practical use. I have never been able to find my way around it. Well, I have to say the one mentioned in the original article is pretty good on first look, though the navigability is somewhat limited. I have to say, though, that I still prefer http://de.selfhtml.org/ - it's a brilliant reference, the only problem being that it's in German and the author never got around to translating it.
Well, I had my fair share of work with LaTeX, first with my master thesis, then a book chapter. Possibly the worst experience was when I had to submit my master thesis again, for publication, and the publishing house wanted 100% vector-based fonts (as opposed to pixel-based fonts, which are used by default). Took me a long time to get THAT done.
And I also have to repeat the concerns voiced above, that working with latex you spend a damn whole lot of time trying to adjust margins, width and height of pictures, and in general deal with space management issues. Also, while latex is the best (and indeed almost the only) way to edit and display mathematical formulae efficiently, it is a pain in the *** when you need to embed pictures: you will need to choose once whether you use pdftex or latex, by choosing the image format you want to use; and pictures will need to embed fonts properly, or else it can become really ugly.
I have to say, for all it's worth, kile is a pretty damn good frontend for latex, and probably the best you'll find. To my knowledge, there is currently no alternative to latex, sadly, as MathML lacks a decent editor and converter, afaik. Hey, it's from 2001 and it still hasn't arrived in the scientific mainstream - that oughta tell you sth.
I guess, I have to agree that instead of an alternative (which may be unlikely to come along unless some slashdot reader feels the call), we might need a pimped-up version of LaTeX: LaTeX PE (pimped-up edition). It should use/include True-Type and vector-based fonts by default, a more sensible handling of and higher compatibility with image types (svg, jpg, gif), and an easier-to-adjust general formatting (colors, fonts, margins, paddings, etc.) Ã la CSS. And, in my wishlist would also feature a nice WYSIWYG editor, similar to an office suite, or maybe similar to MM's Dream Weaver.
Alright, more of a wishlist - future Knuth, hear my plea!:)
well, that is a whole different problem... there are actually countries out there (well, and cities in the US, I hope) that have a decent public transport system (e.g., Singapore, Japan). Would be interested as well if sb can point out what the avg energy/(person*kilometer) is in such environments. For Singapore, I can assume that it's quite a bit better than what was stated above.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it may be available, but certainly a good part less so than in other regions. It's no problem if you go to bars (in Qatar it's more or less restricted to 5* hotels, in Dubai it's quite easy), but from what I've heard (correct me if I'm wrong) buying it for personal consumption can be a bit of a hassle... you may need to get a permit from your employer in order to get a license to buy in a limited number of specialized shops... a bit like Sweden, then ;)
It's not a bug, it's a feature! (yeah, couldn't resist
Your knowledge of world economics is amazing... Maybe you should apply for a management job
;)
That aside, there are always opportunities out there for those willing to take them (and from what I see here, probably should). You can find lots of IT Jobs in Europe, but of course you'll compete with the local well-educated work force, and a number of companies may actually prefer people who speak the local language (better chances, I believe, in UK, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia).
From what I've seen, there are quite a number of opportunities in the Middle East, and the pay is good, if you're willing to accept some restrictive laws (such as the low availability of alcohol). For slashdotters, it shouldn't be a big problem that kissing/holding hands in public is prohibited
If you're more than just a programmer, specialized in sth (like ERM, SAP, data mining or whatever), or a good IT Manager/Sr Manager etc., you can also find sth in Asia, with Singapore and Hong Kong probably the best locations for those who don't speak a local language. (Plus Australia and New Zealand, but those are not technically Asia.) As mentioned elsewhere, China and India are probably not first choices unless you're posted there.
It's already happening anyway... companies involved in big high tech projects in China have to factor in the fact that they may be copied and that there's nothing they can do about it. They will just have to know whether it's worth the risk. For most companies it is - China is just too big and growing a market to ignore, and if the company doesn't go in, a competitor will - whatever the rules.
Examples are plentiful, one comes to my mind: the German Transrapid (yeah, I know, it has its own problems too) was bought for Shanghai Airport-City connection, and part of the deal was that Chinese engineers play a major part. Guess what, there is already a copy being produced in China. Same is happening for cars, btw - didn't take long for copies to hit the road.
Yeah, but it still can't drink... not in the US at least ;)
... in restaurant/bar menus " * The wines on this list may have been artificially aged to increase taste and price."
This could be great for a decent wine, no need to wait 10 years to make it taste like aged wine, but as mentioned above - it won't turn a crappy wine into a good wine. And it won't make Canadian wine drinkable ;)
Read The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. It says:
So, science finally proves it? We're in the backwaters of the galaxy? Where aliens don't normally come, except those who have fun abducting weird people?
While the difference in performance is minimal to negligible (40.7% vs 40.8%), these two are not the same cell. From TFA:
NREL's Mark Wanlass invented the original inverted cell, which recently won a R&D 100 award. His design was modified by a team led by John Geisz that further optimized the junction energies by making the middle junction metamorphic as well as the bottom junction. Metamorphic junctions are lattice mismatched â" their atoms don't line up. The material properties of the mismatched semiconductors allows for greater potential conversion of sunlight.
See also http://www.nrel.gov/features/0707_rd100.html for the award-winning cell, which seems to be the 2006 one.
But I agree, 0.1% difference does not really seem like much.
I am soo... *yawn* ummm... excited or sth. I am thrilled waiting for the next news on the Ancient Rocks Channel: "Even older rocks found!" Rocks. Wow. Just - Wow.
... for a change. That is what medical students are forced to know in Germany as they start their studies. If they hadn't had it in school, they must learn it in the first semesters.
Now, that is a useless rite of passage; all they later use it for is to learn all Latin words they need (body parts, herbs, etc.) by heart.
for every time someone has put up a hypothesis about whether our solar system/planet is special or not! As long as we're not "out there", and with our very limited methods of observation, there are just too many and too big unknowns to take any hypothesis in this area seriously. Generally, estimations range between one and a few million (or billion) similar solar systems / other intelligent civilizations in the universe.
The problem with your attitude is that it fails the "golden rule" - would my behavior still be OK if everybody did what I do? If it's not, that's a pretty good signal it's unethical.
Ah, but that depends which model of ethics you are basing your judgment on... ;)
I personally do not think that everyone will use pirated games, there still seem to be quite a number of people paying for them. And, well... if you look at it economically, you should always base your budget on expected revenue, not on expected use or some other fantasy figure.
There is also a move towards online games, or added online functionality, which requires you to buy an account, and to use the original game. Seems like some companies at least are finding an answer to lower revenue streams from offline games sales...
that might work... if they're not logging database accesses, which would make it relatively easy to filter out the good data again...
The W3C is a lousy reference, actually, for practical use. I have never been able to find my way around it. Well, I have to say the one mentioned in the original article is pretty good on first look, though the navigability is somewhat limited.
I have to say, though, that I still prefer http://de.selfhtml.org/ - it's a brilliant reference, the only problem being that it's in German and the author never got around to translating it.
Well, I had my fair share of work with LaTeX, first with my master thesis, then a book chapter. Possibly the worst experience was when I had to submit my master thesis again, for publication, and the publishing house wanted 100% vector-based fonts (as opposed to pixel-based fonts, which are used by default). Took me a long time to get THAT done. And I also have to repeat the concerns voiced above, that working with latex you spend a damn whole lot of time trying to adjust margins, width and height of pictures, and in general deal with space management issues. Also, while latex is the best (and indeed almost the only) way to edit and display mathematical formulae efficiently, it is a pain in the *** when you need to embed pictures: you will need to choose once whether you use pdftex or latex, by choosing the image format you want to use; and pictures will need to embed fonts properly, or else it can become really ugly. I have to say, for all it's worth, kile is a pretty damn good frontend for latex, and probably the best you'll find. To my knowledge, there is currently no alternative to latex, sadly, as MathML lacks a decent editor and converter, afaik. Hey, it's from 2001 and it still hasn't arrived in the scientific mainstream - that oughta tell you sth. I guess, I have to agree that instead of an alternative (which may be unlikely to come along unless some slashdot reader feels the call), we might need a pimped-up version of LaTeX: LaTeX PE (pimped-up edition). It should use/include True-Type and vector-based fonts by default, a more sensible handling of and higher compatibility with image types (svg, jpg, gif), and an easier-to-adjust general formatting (colors, fonts, margins, paddings, etc.) Ã la CSS. And, in my wishlist would also feature a nice WYSIWYG editor, similar to an office suite, or maybe similar to MM's Dream Weaver. Alright, more of a wishlist - future Knuth, hear my plea! :)
well, that is a whole different problem... there are actually countries out there (well, and cities in the US, I hope) that have a decent public transport system (e.g., Singapore, Japan). Would be interested as well if sb can point out what the avg energy/(person*kilometer) is in such environments. For Singapore, I can assume that it's quite a bit better than what was stated above.