This is just one more attempt to soften up the consumer marketplace, tenderize it like a NY strip steak, so that joe average will be ready to buy a new PC, capable of running Vista so...
You are right of course. However, Microsoft might have a bigger problem... They could soften the market right up for some people to purchase a Mac. I just helped my mother get one as her PC was pwned with spyware. Mac's are not foolproof, but I am willing to bet that OS X is still superior to Vista. (I am still not yet a Mac user - XP and Linux myself... For now...)
You have written some fairly insightful comments in the past which I have enjoyed, so I will take the stance that you are not trolling as you have been modded, but rather expressing a heartfelt opinion. Likely, you are very skilled with computers/networks or whatever your professional field happens to be. (I don't know what that field is to be honest, I can see that you are a writer from your personal website, but I don't know if that is your full time profession. So, please excuse my ignorance in this matter.)
However, my guess is that you have not learned a similar skill set with people. I could be wrong, but many have commented on the tone of your post, and it may be a valid and true point in the real world.
You can read books to learn how to hack machines and code, and you can also read books to learn how to hack people in (slightly) the same way as you do with computers. There is a difference however, and I don't have the room or time to go into the particular details here.
I *DO* however, have the time to recomend the most profound book you can get on the topic:
How to Win Friends and Influence People By Dale Carnagie. quick summary here.
I have gone through that book four times now, and I feel like an idiot for not having read the book much earlier in my life. In the computing world I made a huge number of interpersonal mistakes with co-workers and others because I was blatenly unaware of the real world protocols that people use. Just like computers, people have protocols - and you have to know what they are, and you can't know what those things are unless you take the time to listen to people.
The suits know this, at least, the good ones do. They also know about the effects of things like first impressions and the like. But the best suits, the ones who are on the top of their game know the material in Dale Carnagies book.
I am willing to bet that if you take the time to read it, your job will become easier as you will become much faster at convincing the suits of the right things to do with your network/code (or whatever it is that you do.)
One of the nice things about our servers is we don't allow swearing in the game chat (you can however swear your heart out on our TS server). We do this because many of the members have kids who play with us on the servers or have kids who watch them play.
I have always thought this strange. When it is your server, you can set the rules of course. But I find it ironic that it is ok for kids to play an M rated game that is high in violence - but they can't say "fuck". Sure, they can knife people and use shotguns on people at point blank, but they cannot swear, and using a porn or nudie tag (Half Life and CS) is out of the question.
It is just bizzare IMO - Graphic Violence? OK! Sex? Swearing? NOT ALLOWED!
Again, the server owners make the rules, and players must obey those who have admin rights, not to mention be polite. Still, I have always found such restrictions on such games to be rather strange.
If Lucas mostly keeps his hands off of this it will be good. Lucas is really good when it comes to the big picture view of the Star Wars universe. He did a fantastic job of creating this rich world with all kinds of potential. But if you look at the output from his work, the more involved he is with the movie, the more it sucks, generally speaking.
I believe that Lucas originally wanted to remake Flash Gordon, but could not get the rights - hence Star Wars appeared, and he created his own Mythos in the process.
However, many/. geeks (myself among them) accuse Lucas of bastardizing his own work.
I think it would be interesting to "add" to the Flash Gordon Mythos and send it on over to Lucas. You know, add annoying Gungans and Ewoks to the Flash Gordon mythos and see how Lucas feels about that!
Fail that remedial biology? Your prostate is nowhere (topologically) near your asshole. Wrong path. It would have to go up and back down again. Large and small intestine vs bladder and urethra. Shorter route would be through your stomache. Of course, the other alternative is worse... Far worse...
Fail that remedial comedy? Your funny bone is nowhere (topologically) near your asshole. But then, I hear there is a great deal of confusion between asses and elbows sometimes.;)
True, but really, the crux of the problem is that a PC does not really help your learning - in fact it may detract from it. People have been learning from dead trees and with pen/pencils for some time, so we know that it works. The problem with a PC method of learning is that there are too many distractions, or at the very least, there is not yet a good method of using a PC for instruction - although that will probably change.
I don't think that a PC is required for education - yet - but it is starting to become mandatory in college/university (in first world countries).
This is something I just can't wrap my head around. The more they sell, the cheaper they are to make. There are thousands of rural/poor school districts in the U.S. that would LOVE to get their hands on semi-rugged, simple, cheap laptops and give one to each student. I guess because we don't live in Africa the fact that we don't have the money to provide technology to our students doesn't matter.
They could sell tens of millions of those in the U.S. and make the units even more affordable in places like Sudan (mark them up to $150 here if you want, then it only costs $50 to put on in the hands of an African student).
When I was in Kenya in the summer of 1990 building a medical clinic in the town of Shiru (2-3 hrs East on the Kinshaha Hwy from Kisumu) I had the opportunity to meet many of the people in the area naturally.
They were all smart, and as well educated as you might expect people in that area to be, in fact, I was quite impressed with their level of education. However, in the area where I was, power was not common. There was a grand total of 3 light fixtures in the two medical clinic buildings. Everything else was done with dirty kerosene home made lamps (made out of garbage, very impressive improvisation).
The children there generally owned one set of clothes (often their Scouting uniform - which had no badges or any other "bling" of any kind). They had no pens, no pencils, and certanly no paper. In fact, I understand that being able to give most third world children pens or pencils is often a wonderful gift.
Nobody owned shoes, although running is a popular pastime. The kids played soccer, and since they could not even afford a soccer ball (I really wish we had brought some, if you go to Kenya, bring some balls *AND* a pump for the children, they will love you for it) they made their soccer balls out of woven strands of some kind of grass or reeds. Very well done, I know I could not do it.
There was no source of clean water, in fact, we did not have filtration for ourselves and had to boil everything, even then we did get some contaminated water, and nearly every North American in the group fell sick for over a week. These people drink water that is contaminated with human waste and many parasites because they have no other options.
The nearest phone was in Kisumu. (That may have changed now...)
And this tea plantation/village was right on the Kinsasha highway.
If these children got laptops/pdas/newtons for "education" they would sell them (or more likely have them stolen) and buy their families things - like better food, medicine for diseases, clothes, improvements on their houses, or even pens pencils and paper for schoolwork.
People have been getting along without laptops in school for a very long time, they are not required for education. In fact, they are not really required for any NEED that I know of. People in third world countries have needs that need to be met before they can begin to rely on "Toys" like laptops.
They could use more pens and paper first, and clean water, better homes, clothes and medical care first IMO.
But "Wall Street" doesn't know much about anything, whether they have information or not. They forcast that a company should make a profit of 27 cents a share, the company only makes 26 cents, and the stock price plummets! Two companies are going to merge, making them stronger and better able to compete in the marketplace, and their stock prices drop on news of the merger!
Before you ascribe prognosticative powers to The Street, remember this is the same body that single-handedly created and destroyed the tech bubble because of their rabid need to invest in tech companies with no products, no marketing, and no major capital outlay. Wall Street doesn't have a clue what is really going on and the only people who seem to get rich in the stock market are a) people who are already rich and b) traders, brokers, and analysts and the comapnies they work for.
You are so dead on with that. The behavior of "Experts" on Wall street is inane. I never could figure out what was going on until I read Peter Lynch's book: "Beating the Street" where he beats into your head that you should stop listening to the "experts" and then goes in to great detail why they are often wrong, and you can often be right.
There is a very valid reason that the Motley Fool has that book as one of their 7 best books on investment of all time.
And I think we all maybe getting a few terms mixed up: There is a difference between Rich and Wealth
I think Chris Rock said it best.
"Shaquille O'Neal maybe rich, but the guy that hands him his paycheck is Wealthy."
Agreed, however, as long as you live within your means you can become independantly wealthy if you pay enough attention to how money works. For the slashdot crowd, that would probably be called "hacking money".
I am working to become independantly wealthy myself, and I am getting fairly close. When my income through investments exceeds my expenses, I will be independantly wealthy. At which point I won't need to work my day job, and my investments (which I plan to grow) will become my "job".
Those who choose to mismanage their money (too much debt) will actually be paying my way. In this case, I will be riding off of others, but off of others who choose to have the nice shiny new cars and toys that I choose not to have to have a job-free life.
The only reason this works is because people choose to go into debt, I choose to use that to my advantage.
Globalization works great for the rich people. It forces their entire workforce to take pay and benefit cuts in order to eek out a living. At the same time, the people who sit on the top of the pile are getting tax cuts and crying about how unfair it is that they be asked to contribute anything to the society that made them rich in the first place.
Has it occured to you that by the very act of being able to post to slashdot, you are in fact, (compared to the rest of the worlds population) one of the rich people?
...not caving into the repressive, authoritarian Chinese government.
You know, the funny thing is that by "caving" as you say, Google will actually do more for the Chinese people than by not "caving".
How so?
Google has powerful search technology -Duh- but, when the Chinese search on google, and something is banned, instead of it not appearing, they will recieve a message that a page was blocked. This way, the Chinese people will know that the information is out there, but the government is blocking it.
If, as you suggest, Google does not move into China, and boycotts China, then some other search service will arise that blocks content as the government orders, and probably not even display that the contents were blocked, therefore, the 1984 style repressionism will be more effective because the people won't know that there is more information out there.
Boycotting China will not help the Chinese people in any way. Freedom has to come from within, and as more and more Chinese people get on the net, and as more and more learn that there is alternative information out there, they will begin to demand change. That is how democracy works, from within, not from some entity trying to force it from without.
If google did boycott China, then the Chinese would eventually try to go to google.com and see "Google.com Blocked by Governement" and have no available information at all. At least this way, they get SOMETHING.
I think that the Chinese people deserve to get SOMETHING in their searches as opposed to nothing.
However, if you would remove Google and help to opress the Chinese people even more, that is your choice.
That's perhaps the most frustrating thing that non-Muslims see in this whole situation. We hear constantly that "it's a small minority", etc., but we don't see moderate leadership taking that visible stand and trying stand up for civilization.
That is because western news outlets don't air the moderate views. It is far more inflamitory to air the radicals, and inflamitory news gets higher ratings.
You can quickly find the majority of moderate Muslim leaders decrying the cartoon riots and the associated outfall with a quick google search, but you won't find the same on CNN or Fox.
In some Xbox games, if you are trying to win, you can use the other person's emotional state to overcome their reason/rational thought. Normally when someone is cursing up a storm, they are letting their emotions overcome their rational thought and they make mistakes. This is both in fast games (Halo2) and slow games (World Championship Poker).
I used to play Half Life 2 with a guy who was obviously a troll. His nick was "sand nigger" and he kept uttering profanities all over the chat, both profanity and ethnic slurs.
People used to get all worked up about him and play badly, or type often and get killed - which is exactly what he wanted.
I decided to try anti-trolling him, and instead of responding to the "nigger" in his tag, I began objecting to his use of the word "sand". This confused him, and when I said things (that I don't actually agree with) like: "Well, I find the word 'sand' and all the implications that it carries, I am offended by that. You can keep using 'nigger' thats ok, I am not offended by that, 'nigger' is an ok word to use."
He suddenly lost his temper - and began accusing *ME* of being a racist, because I was clearly not offended by the term "nigger". I kept harping on him about his offensive use of the word "sand" and ignored all his ethnic slurs. His voice became very animated over the chat until he was positivly screaming. He finally left the server in disgust.
So, clearly, he was using his nick and his ethnic slurs as a way to get to people and have an advantage, when I came along and pretended not to be offended by these things, he thought I really was a racist, and went off on me.
That is really the best way to handle people that are trying to emotionally troll you - either ignore them, or troll them back, most will quite ironically bite.
I imagine to use hydrogen, that Mazda must have solved the sealing problems in the engine. They first dropped the rotary because of it's poor mileage and leaky rotor seals.
From Wikipedia on Wankel Engines:
As another advantage, the shape of the Wankel combustion chamber and the turbulence induced by the moving rotor prevent localized hot spots from forming, thereby allowing the use of fuel of very low octane number without preignition or detonation, a particular advantage for Hydrogen cars. This feature also led to a great deal of interest in the Soviet Union, where high octane gasoline was rare.
So, the engine, while improved, does not require better sealing, a Wankel engine runs well with a lower octane fuel, and it runs well on hydrogen too.
I agree with your sentiment about organized sports, therefore, I almost hate to bring about this little counterpoint of logic.
Your argument against the amount paid to a top sports player is basically a Short Term/Long Term fallacy, a subset of "Excluded Middle".
The reason a guy gets paid millions to toss a ball, or something similar is because millions of fans watch. They pay for viewing, they watch ads, hell, they have tailgate parties prior to games, and you can bet they buy a good deal of merchandise for those parties alone. Organized sports is big business, and having popular players (those who can throw the ball well) brings in added revenue for the teams that can win. Just take a look at the prices of the footballs in the article!
It boils down to money. The team owners/franchises want to make more money, the fans want to see more/better games, and are happy to spend their money to do so.
Ironically, when I was in Africa in 1990 building a medical clinic, all the locals loved playing soccer, and whenever a newspaper was around, everyone gawked over the world soccer scores. It was near religion to them. They also had a better knowledge of North American boxing than I ever have had. And yet, many of these people owned only one set of clothes, and most did not have electricity, and certanly not any clean water.
And so, these very people I was trying to help were caught up in organized sports, where, as you say the funds from the massive North American endevours could be used to help the people in Africa. You are right of course, but it seems that people everywhere, on the average are sports nuts. This does not make people bad, it just makes them human.
Oh indeed. The reason I realized a 45% profit is due to market conditions. I bought shares in two companies 2 years ago, expecting to realize about 12-15% gains, and that is fairly close to what I got. I bought the shares when the general populace was panicked. However, over October-December, the stocks decreased, and then went on this strange meteoric rise. Looking at the excessive gains that I had, and the fact that both stocks had PE ratios that were just too large for my tastes, I got out.
I was not anticipating this return, again, I got in for 12-15%, but I am quite happy with 45%!
I make no expectations that I can maintain a 45% return on a consistent basis.
Dead on about the value of the company. If the stock is overpriced, and the company is strong, the stock is still overpriced. Ergo, don't buy it.
I have not read Buffettology, but I have heard mixed things about it. I believe it was written without his blessing by an in Law, but don't quote me on that.
If you like Buffett, you should really check out "The Warren Buffett Way 2nd ed". The introduction is rather amusing, as Buffett himself phoned the author, who, initally thought it was a prank call.
Slashdot Mirror
This is just one more attempt to soften up the consumer marketplace, tenderize it like a NY strip steak, so that joe average will be ready to buy a new PC, capable of running Vista so...
You are right of course. However, Microsoft might have a bigger problem... They could soften the market right up for some people to purchase a Mac. I just helped my mother get one as her PC was pwned with spyware. Mac's are not foolproof, but I am willing to bet that OS X is still superior to Vista. (I am still not yet a Mac user - XP and Linux myself... For now...)
That was exactly my point. I can elaborate on it with a 5000 word essay if you like.
I am beta testing this device, it would work great except it keeps going off every time I visit slashdot....
You have written some fairly insightful comments in the past which I have enjoyed, so I will take the stance that you are not trolling as you have been modded, but rather expressing a heartfelt opinion. Likely, you are very skilled with computers/networks or whatever your professional field happens to be. (I don't know what that field is to be honest, I can see that you are a writer from your personal website, but I don't know if that is your full time profession. So, please excuse my ignorance in this matter.)
However, my guess is that you have not learned a similar skill set with people. I could be wrong, but many have commented on the tone of your post, and it may be a valid and true point in the real world.
You can read books to learn how to hack machines and code, and you can also read books to learn how to hack people in (slightly) the same way as you do with computers. There is a difference however, and I don't have the room or time to go into the particular details here.
I *DO* however, have the time to recomend the most profound book you can get on the topic:
How to Win Friends and Influence People By Dale Carnagie. quick summary here.
I have gone through that book four times now, and I feel like an idiot for not having read the book much earlier in my life. In the computing world I made a huge number of interpersonal mistakes with co-workers and others because I was blatenly unaware of the real world protocols that people use. Just like computers, people have protocols - and you have to know what they are, and you can't know what those things are unless you take the time to listen to people.
The suits know this, at least, the good ones do. They also know about the effects of things like first impressions and the like. But the best suits, the ones who are on the top of their game know the material in Dale Carnagies book.
I am willing to bet that if you take the time to read it, your job will become easier as you will become much faster at convincing the suits of the right things to do with your network/code (or whatever it is that you do.)
Just my opinion on the matter.
I feel a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of slashdotters cried out as the restarted firefox at once...
One of the nice things about our servers is we don't allow swearing in the game chat (you can however swear your heart out on our TS server). We do this because many of the members have kids who play with us on the servers or have kids who watch them play.
I have always thought this strange. When it is your server, you can set the rules of course. But I find it ironic that it is ok for kids to play an M rated game that is high in violence - but they can't say "fuck". Sure, they can knife people and use shotguns on people at point blank, but they cannot swear, and using a porn or nudie tag (Half Life and CS) is out of the question.
It is just bizzare IMO - Graphic Violence? OK!
Sex? Swearing? NOT ALLOWED!
Again, the server owners make the rules, and players must obey those who have admin rights, not to mention be polite. Still, I have always found such restrictions on such games to be rather strange.
If Lucas mostly keeps his hands off of this it will be good. Lucas is really good when it comes to the big picture view of the Star Wars universe. He did a fantastic job of creating this rich world with all kinds of potential. But if you look at the output from his work, the more involved he is with the movie, the more it sucks, generally speaking.
/. geeks (myself among them) accuse Lucas of bastardizing his own work.
I believe that Lucas originally wanted to remake Flash Gordon, but could not get the rights - hence Star Wars appeared, and he created his own Mythos in the process.
However, many
I think it would be interesting to "add" to the Flash Gordon Mythos and send it on over to Lucas. You know, add annoying Gungans and Ewoks to the Flash Gordon mythos and see how Lucas feels about that!
*Evil Laugh*
Fail that remedial biology? Your prostate is nowhere (topologically) near your asshole. Wrong path. It would have to go up and back down again. Large and small intestine vs bladder and urethra. Shorter route would be through your stomache. Of course, the other alternative is worse... Far worse...
;)
Fail that remedial comedy? Your funny bone is nowhere (topologically) near your asshole. But then, I hear there is a great deal of confusion between asses and elbows sometimes.
I don't know about the rest of you, but the idea of Habanero suppositories just does not sit well with me...
(I can hear Johnny Cash singing "Ring of Fire"...)
True, but really, the crux of the problem is that a PC does not really help your learning - in fact it may detract from it. People have been learning from dead trees and with pen/pencils for some time, so we know that it works. The problem with a PC method of learning is that there are too many distractions, or at the very least, there is not yet a good method of using a PC for instruction - although that will probably change.
I don't think that a PC is required for education - yet - but it is starting to become mandatory in college/university (in first world countries).
This is something I just can't wrap my head around. The more they sell, the cheaper they are to make. There are thousands of rural/poor school districts in the U.S. that would LOVE to get their hands on semi-rugged, simple, cheap laptops and give one to each student. I guess because we don't live in Africa the fact that we don't have the money to provide technology to our students doesn't matter.
They could sell tens of millions of those in the U.S. and make the units even more affordable in places like Sudan (mark them up to $150 here if you want, then it only costs $50 to put on in the hands of an African student).
When I was in Kenya in the summer of 1990 building a medical clinic in the town of Shiru (2-3 hrs East on the Kinshaha Hwy from Kisumu) I had the opportunity to meet many of the people in the area naturally.
They were all smart, and as well educated as you might expect people in that area to be, in fact, I was quite impressed with their level of education. However, in the area where I was, power was not common. There was a grand total of 3 light fixtures in the two medical clinic buildings. Everything else was done with dirty kerosene home made lamps (made out of garbage, very impressive improvisation).
The children there generally owned one set of clothes (often their Scouting uniform - which had no badges or any other "bling" of any kind). They had no pens, no pencils, and certanly no paper. In fact, I understand that being able to give most third world children pens or pencils is often a wonderful gift.
Nobody owned shoes, although running is a popular pastime. The kids played soccer, and since they could not even afford a soccer ball (I really wish we had brought some, if you go to Kenya, bring some balls *AND* a pump for the children, they will love you for it) they made their soccer balls out of woven strands of some kind of grass or reeds. Very well done, I know I could not do it.
There was no source of clean water, in fact, we did not have filtration for ourselves and had to boil everything, even then we did get some contaminated water, and nearly every North American in the group fell sick for over a week. These people drink water that is contaminated with human waste and many parasites because they have no other options.
The nearest phone was in Kisumu. (That may have changed now...)
And this tea plantation/village was right on the Kinsasha highway.
If these children got laptops/pdas/newtons for "education" they would sell them (or more likely have them stolen) and buy their families things - like better food, medicine for diseases, clothes, improvements on their houses, or even pens pencils and paper for schoolwork.
People have been getting along without laptops in school for a very long time, they are not required for education. In fact, they are not really required for any NEED that I know of. People in third world countries have needs that need to be met before they can begin to rely on "Toys" like laptops.
They could use more pens and paper first, and clean water, better homes, clothes and medical care first IMO.
But "Wall Street" doesn't know much about anything, whether they have information or not. They forcast that a company should make a profit of 27 cents a share, the company only makes 26 cents, and the stock price plummets! Two companies are going to merge, making them stronger and better able to compete in the marketplace, and their stock prices drop on news of the merger!
Before you ascribe prognosticative powers to The Street, remember this is the same body that single-handedly created and destroyed the tech bubble because of their rabid need to invest in tech companies with no products, no marketing, and no major capital outlay. Wall Street doesn't have a clue what is really going on and the only people who seem to get rich in the stock market are a) people who are already rich and b) traders, brokers, and analysts and the comapnies they work for.
You are so dead on with that. The behavior of "Experts" on Wall street is inane. I never could figure out what was going on until I read Peter Lynch's book: "Beating the Street" where he beats into your head that you should stop listening to the "experts" and then goes in to great detail why they are often wrong, and you can often be right.
There is a very valid reason that the Motley Fool has that book as one of their 7 best books on investment of all time.
Bin Laden has a huge heap of money. Most people with similar sized money-heaps in the US are pretty free too...
Like the Pakistani Millionaire who is currently being held in Guantanamo without trial?
http://www.tkb.org/NewsStory.jsp?storyID=109345
Note, he may be guilty, he may be innocent. I have no idea, but he does deserve Habeas Corpus, IMO everyone does.
If you choose to rely on people who go into debt and are by definition bad at managing money you sir are an idiot.
If you dont know what I meant by that comment, you sir, need to study economics.
And I think we all maybe getting a few terms mixed up: There is a difference between Rich and Wealth
I think Chris Rock said it best.
"Shaquille O'Neal maybe rich, but the guy that hands him his paycheck is Wealthy."
Agreed, however, as long as you live within your means you can become independantly wealthy if you pay enough attention to how money works. For the slashdot crowd, that would probably be called "hacking money".
I am working to become independantly wealthy myself, and I am getting fairly close. When my income through investments exceeds my expenses, I will be independantly wealthy. At which point I won't need to work my day job, and my investments (which I plan to grow) will become my "job".
Those who choose to mismanage their money (too much debt) will actually be paying my way. In this case, I will be riding off of others, but off of others who choose to have the nice shiny new cars and toys that I choose not to have to have a job-free life.
The only reason this works is because people choose to go into debt, I choose to use that to my advantage.
Globalization works great for the rich people. It forces their entire workforce to take pay and benefit cuts in order to eek out a living. At the same time, the people who sit on the top of the pile are getting tax cuts and crying about how unfair it is that they be asked to contribute anything to the society that made them rich in the first place.
Has it occured to you that by the very act of being able to post to slashdot, you are in fact, (compared to the rest of the worlds population) one of the rich people?
Fairly ironic because that very book is referenced in the Davinci Code. I bet that sales of it increased with the popularity of The Davinci Code.
Still, everyone is out to make a buck...
Sadly, The Davinci Code was not even that good, but the controversey certanly made it popular.
...not caving into the repressive, authoritarian Chinese government.
You know, the funny thing is that by "caving" as you say, Google will actually do more for the Chinese people than by not "caving".
How so?
Google has powerful search technology -Duh- but, when the Chinese search on google, and something is banned, instead of it not appearing, they will recieve a message that a page was blocked. This way, the Chinese people will know that the information is out there, but the government is blocking it.
If, as you suggest, Google does not move into China, and boycotts China, then some other search service will arise that blocks content as the government orders, and probably not even display that the contents were blocked, therefore, the 1984 style repressionism will be more effective because the people won't know that there is more information out there.
Boycotting China will not help the Chinese people in any way. Freedom has to come from within, and as more and more Chinese people get on the net, and as more and more learn that there is alternative information out there, they will begin to demand change. That is how democracy works, from within, not from some entity trying to force it from without.
If google did boycott China, then the Chinese would eventually try to go to google.com and see "Google.com Blocked by Governement" and have no available information at all. At least this way, they get SOMETHING.
I think that the Chinese people deserve to get SOMETHING in their searches as opposed to nothing.
However, if you would remove Google and help to opress the Chinese people even more, that is your choice.
That's perhaps the most frustrating thing that non-Muslims see in this whole situation. We hear constantly that "it's a small minority", etc., but we don't see moderate leadership taking that visible stand and trying stand up for civilization.
That is because western news outlets don't air the moderate views. It is far more inflamitory to air the radicals, and inflamitory news gets higher ratings.
You can quickly find the majority of moderate Muslim leaders decrying the cartoon riots and the associated outfall with a quick google search, but you won't find the same on CNN or Fox.
In some Xbox games, if you are trying to win, you can use the other person's emotional state to overcome their reason/rational thought. Normally when someone is cursing up a storm, they are letting their emotions overcome their rational thought and they make mistakes. This is both in fast games (Halo2) and slow games (World Championship Poker).
I used to play Half Life 2 with a guy who was obviously a troll. His nick was "sand nigger" and he kept uttering profanities all over the chat, both profanity and ethnic slurs.
People used to get all worked up about him and play badly, or type often and get killed - which is exactly what he wanted.
I decided to try anti-trolling him, and instead of responding to the "nigger" in his tag, I began objecting to his use of the word "sand". This confused him, and when I said things (that I don't actually agree with) like: "Well, I find the word 'sand' and all the implications that it carries, I am offended by that. You can keep using 'nigger' thats ok, I am not offended by that, 'nigger' is an ok word to use."
He suddenly lost his temper - and began accusing *ME* of being a racist, because I was clearly not offended by the term "nigger". I kept harping on him about his offensive use of the word "sand" and ignored all his ethnic slurs. His voice became very animated over the chat until he was positivly screaming. He finally left the server in disgust.
So, clearly, he was using his nick and his ethnic slurs as a way to get to people and have an advantage, when I came along and pretended not to be offended by these things, he thought I really was a racist, and went off on me.
That is really the best way to handle people that are trying to emotionally troll you - either ignore them, or troll them back, most will quite ironically bite.
I imagine to use hydrogen, that Mazda must have solved the sealing problems in the engine. They first dropped the rotary because of it's poor mileage and leaky rotor seals.
From Wikipedia on Wankel Engines:
As another advantage, the shape of the Wankel combustion chamber and the turbulence induced by the moving rotor prevent localized hot spots from forming, thereby allowing the use of fuel of very low octane number without preignition or detonation, a particular advantage for Hydrogen cars. This feature also led to a great deal of interest in the Soviet Union, where high octane gasoline was rare.
So, the engine, while improved, does not require better sealing, a Wankel engine runs well with a lower octane fuel, and it runs well on hydrogen too.
I refuse to become involved in this thread! Following the crowd is not my style.
I agree with your sentiment about organized sports, therefore, I almost hate to bring about this little counterpoint of logic.
Your argument against the amount paid to a top sports player is basically a Short Term/Long Term fallacy, a subset of "Excluded Middle".
The reason a guy gets paid millions to toss a ball, or something similar is because millions of fans watch. They pay for viewing, they watch ads, hell, they have tailgate parties prior to games, and you can bet they buy a good deal of merchandise for those parties alone. Organized sports is big business, and having popular players (those who can throw the ball well) brings in added revenue for the teams that can win. Just take a look at the prices of the footballs in the article!
It boils down to money. The team owners/franchises want to make more money, the fans want to see more/better games, and are happy to spend their money to do so.
Ironically, when I was in Africa in 1990 building a medical clinic, all the locals loved playing soccer, and whenever a newspaper was around, everyone gawked over the world soccer scores. It was near religion to them. They also had a better knowledge of North American boxing than I ever have had. And yet, many of these people owned only one set of clothes, and most did not have electricity, and certanly not any clean water.
And so, these very people I was trying to help were caught up in organized sports, where, as you say the funds from the massive North American endevours could be used to help the people in Africa. You are right of course, but it seems that people everywhere, on the average are sports nuts. This does not make people bad, it just makes them human.
We, the slashdot geeks are a different breed.
Oh indeed. The reason I realized a 45% profit is due to market conditions. I bought shares in two companies 2 years ago, expecting to realize about 12-15% gains, and that is fairly close to what I got. I bought the shares when the general populace was panicked. However, over October-December, the stocks decreased, and then went on this strange meteoric rise. Looking at the excessive gains that I had, and the fact that both stocks had PE ratios that were just too large for my tastes, I got out.
I was not anticipating this return, again, I got in for 12-15%, but I am quite happy with 45%!
I make no expectations that I can maintain a 45% return on a consistent basis.
Dead on about the value of the company. If the stock is overpriced, and the company is strong, the stock is still overpriced. Ergo, don't buy it.
I have not read Buffettology, but I have heard mixed things about it. I believe it was written without his blessing by an in Law, but don't quote me on that.
If you like Buffett, you should really check out "The Warren Buffett Way 2nd ed". The introduction is rather amusing, as Buffett himself phoned the author, who, initally thought it was a prank call.