I agree that Martin was a better writer then Jordan.. I gave up reading WOT after book #9 (path of daggers), but I disagree that Martin was that much better. Some characters were amazing but some were just boooring.
At this point I have a hard time motivating myself to care... I don't really remember what happened in the last book so I'm not sure I'll bother reading dance of dragons..
besides by now the bar is set higher with so many good new writers (Erickson, Lynch,Abercrombie etc)
ps. now that Sanderson is finishing WOT I'm actually debating with myself whether I should finish reading the series... If only I could skip books written by Jordan...
People have been drilling in deep water in the Gulf of Mexico for decades, with admittedly a couple of nasty accidents but so far things have gone pretty well. And do you know what? No-one had oil spill prediction software when they started. They relied on the skill and experience of the people operating the rigs.
How reasonable does it sound now?
Also In eastern europe resistance fought to the death , for survival.. in the west.. well their idea of resistance was (mostly).. no fresh bagels for the evil Germans..
I'm speechless.. is that what they teach in America?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht
couple quotes
1) Destruction of Warsaw
Up to 13,000 soldiers and between 120,000 and 200,000 civilians were killed by German-led forces during the Warsaw Uprising. At least 5,000 German regular soldiers assisted the SS to crush the Polish resistance, most of them as reserve units.[13] Human shields were used by German forces during the fighting.[14]
3) Between May 25 and May 28, 1940, the German Wehrmacht committed several war crimes in and near the small Belgian village of Vinkt. Hostages were taken and used as human shields. As the Belgian army continued to resist, farms were searched and looted and more hostages taken. In all, 86 civilians are known to have been executed.
2)
prisoners from Poland (which never capitulated) and the USSR were incarcerated under significantly worse conditions. By December 1941, more than 2.4 million Soviet Red Army troops had been taken prisoner. These prisoners suffered from malnutrition and diseases like typhus that resulted from the Wehrmacht's failure to provide sufficient food, shelter, proper sanitation and medical care for the prisoners....
4) Killing of POWs by Wehrmacht soldiers started during the September 1939 campaign in Poland. In many cases large groups of Polish soldiers were murdered after capture. On 26 March 1944, 15 uniformed U.S. Army officers and men were shot without trial at La Spezia, Italy, under orders of the commander of German 75th Army Corps, General Anton Dostler..
that's just the tip of the iceberg..
morals in my context had little do do with population control. I was merely stating that our technological advancement has far surpassed our ethical growth as a race and that's our biggest problem. I am also stating that it's too late for population control and regardless, it's undoable in our current situation...
As to the stupidity you mention.Offtopic.
how about reading the article before condemning the guy?...........
"What's the alternative to democracy? There isn't one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while."..............
He simply states that the issue is extremely important and warrants drastic action like in times of war
I think the history has proven that that the problem is the fact that our engineering capabilities have far exceeding our moral/ethical development. All the science in the world won't help us if we don't use it right.
So, no the technology can't fix anything. But we can.
As to voluntary means of checking growth that ship has sailed.
Yes, Europe/North American population are decreasing partly due to life quality but they are but a fraction of global population. Everywhere else population growth is exploding. By the time we increase everybody's life quality it'll be way too late.
If you look at the growth trends and the technological growth, Malthus's vision doesn't seem so outlandish.
well, education systems in eastern europe are trying to emulate western models (god knows why) so things are changing for the worse all over.. however the sense of entitlement here in schools is
in my opinion unmatched. Teachers are the best paid in the world, schools have amazing equipment (comparing to eastern europe), and yet you get all these problems. I won't mention the fact that if you're a good student here you're called a geek, where as in europe you're admired by your peers. I find that really strange.
I'm curious about schools in Asia & Africa.. do they have a bullying problem as well? of the same magnitude? anyone?
that coin has two sides.. I was raised in eastern Europe and I have to say, kids here are spoiled brats with entitlement issues. Teachers are not respected, many parents blame the school for their children's poor academic records and don't bother to actually lend a hand. Back home, bullying was never as bad as it seems to be here.Why? because over there children were taught that they depended on each other. You did not pick your classes. You did not pick you peers. In high school you had all the same classes with the same people, and most of you were friends by the fourth year. As a matter of fact classes had rivalries going on if I a student from a different class tried to bully you, your classmates would defend you no matter how popular you were.
I'm astonished every time I hear about bullying in North America. In different cultures it's much less common. Could it be the culture here?
actually I suspect the reason why some people think capitalism needs growth to survive is because of a fellow called Thomas Robert Malthus
He predicted that due to increasing population and decreasing marginal returns of food we will all end up starving: thus the need for growth, to outpace population growth. These days most economists do not agree..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus
I'll be damned before I say "oh my goodness" next time my coworker almost nails my foot with a nail gun.. (while framing a roof)
strong men need strong words
oh c'mon.. trade agreement is just a broad umbrella for all kinds of laws that often have nothing to do with the name..
just like any other acts (ie patriot act)
only you can answer that question.
Nice thing about open source is that you can download it, try it and decide for yourself.
for the record I'm not a big fan of OO..
couple issues
1)CIA wasn't really that formidable in cold war either.Soviet intelligence ran circles around them most of the time. If cold war victory was assigned on the bases of intelligence, we'd be speaking Russian right now. US won that war due to economics, not quality of intelligence services.
2) All the high tech and gadgets in the world won't help you if the bad guys go low tech (see Afghanistan). That's why NSA won't do much better. What we need is more human intelligence, but for that we need people that speak Arabic, Pashtun etc. See how many student Americans major in foreign languages as opposed to say business.
Well it seems to me that if a large, well known company like IBM would loose a lot of credibility if it tried to enforce pointless patents like that, so I'm not sure how much of a legal threat those patents could be..
would a company be able to sue FBI if it had it's stuff on one of those confiscated servers but was totally unrelated to the case? or can FBI legally take them all down, sort them out later?
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that Martin was a better writer then Jordan .. I gave up reading WOT after book #9 (path of daggers), but I disagree that Martin was that much better. Some characters were amazing but some were just boooring.
At this point I have a hard time motivating myself to care... I don't really remember what happened in the last book so I'm not sure I'll bother reading dance of dragons..
besides by now the bar is set higher with so many good new writers (Erickson, Lynch,Abercrombie etc)
ps. now that Sanderson is finishing WOT I'm actually debating with myself whether I should finish reading the series ... If only I could skip books written by Jordan ...
truth is its own reward
that ship has sailed ..
People have been drilling in deep water in the Gulf of Mexico for decades, with admittedly a couple of nasty accidents but so far things have gone pretty well. And do you know what? No-one had oil spill prediction software when they started. They relied on the skill and experience of the people operating the rigs.
How reasonable does it sound now?
Also In eastern europe resistance fought to the death , for survival.. in the west.. well their idea of resistance was (mostly) .. no fresh bagels for the evil Germans..
I'm speechless.. is that what they teach in America? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht couple quotes 1) Destruction of Warsaw Up to 13,000 soldiers and between 120,000 and 200,000 civilians were killed by German-led forces during the Warsaw Uprising. At least 5,000 German regular soldiers assisted the SS to crush the Polish resistance, most of them as reserve units.[13] Human shields were used by German forces during the fighting.[14] 3) Between May 25 and May 28, 1940, the German Wehrmacht committed several war crimes in and near the small Belgian village of Vinkt. Hostages were taken and used as human shields. As the Belgian army continued to resist, farms were searched and looted and more hostages taken. In all, 86 civilians are known to have been executed. 2) prisoners from Poland (which never capitulated) and the USSR were incarcerated under significantly worse conditions. By December 1941, more than 2.4 million Soviet Red Army troops had been taken prisoner. These prisoners suffered from malnutrition and diseases like typhus that resulted from the Wehrmacht's failure to provide sufficient food, shelter, proper sanitation and medical care for the prisoners. ...
4) Killing of POWs by Wehrmacht soldiers started during the September 1939 campaign in Poland. In many cases large groups of Polish soldiers were murdered after capture. On 26 March 1944, 15 uniformed U.S. Army officers and men were shot without trial at La Spezia, Italy, under orders of the commander of German 75th Army Corps, General Anton Dostler..
that's just the tip of the iceberg..
morals in my context had little do do with population control. I was merely stating that our technological advancement has far surpassed our ethical growth as a race and that's our biggest problem. I am also stating that it's too late for population control and regardless, it's undoable in our current situation... As to the stupidity you mention.Offtopic.
how about reading the article before condemning the guy? ...........
"What's the alternative to democracy? There isn't one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while." ..............
He simply states that the issue is extremely important and warrants drastic action like in times of war
"A successful global effort" ...
sounds like democracy in action to me
I think the history has proven that that the problem is the fact that our engineering capabilities have far exceeding our moral/ethical development. All the science in the world won't help us if we don't use it right. So, no the technology can't fix anything. But we can. As to voluntary means of checking growth that ship has sailed. Yes, Europe/North American population are decreasing partly due to life quality but they are but a fraction of global population. Everywhere else population growth is exploding. By the time we increase everybody's life quality it'll be way too late. If you look at the growth trends and the technological growth, Malthus's vision doesn't seem so outlandish.
well, education systems in eastern europe are trying to emulate western models (god knows why) so things are changing for the worse all over .. however the sense of entitlement here in schools is
in my opinion unmatched. Teachers are the best paid in the world, schools have amazing equipment (comparing to eastern europe), and yet you get all these problems. I won't mention the fact that if you're a good student here you're called a geek, where as in europe you're admired by your peers. I find that really strange.
I'm curious about schools in Asia & Africa.. do they have a bullying problem as well? of the same magnitude? anyone?
that coin has two sides.. I was raised in eastern Europe and I have to say, kids here are spoiled brats with entitlement issues. Teachers are not respected, many parents blame the school for their children's poor academic records and don't bother to actually lend a hand. Back home, bullying was never as bad as it seems to be here.Why? because over there children were taught that they depended on each other. You did not pick your classes. You did not pick you peers. In high school you had all the same classes with the same people, and most of you were friends by the fourth year. As a matter of fact classes had rivalries going on if I a student from a different class tried to bully you, your classmates would defend you no matter how popular you were. I'm astonished every time I hear about bullying in North America. In different cultures it's much less common. Could it be the culture here?
well, not like western governments are that much better to deal with ...
for every action there is an equal or opposite government program
actually I suspect the reason why some people think capitalism needs growth to survive is because of a fellow called Thomas Robert Malthus He predicted that due to increasing population and decreasing marginal returns of food we will all end up starving: thus the need for growth, to outpace population growth. These days most economists do not agree ..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus
nothing short of swearing can express how most people feel about california's budget
I'll be damned before I say "oh my goodness" next time my coworker almost nails my foot with a nail gun.. (while framing a roof) strong men need strong words
well actually you could also increase production/sales
oh c'mon .. trade agreement is just a broad umbrella for all kinds of laws that often have nothing to do with the name..
just like any other acts (ie patriot act)
only you can answer that question. Nice thing about open source is that you can download it, try it and decide for yourself. for the record I'm not a big fan of OO..
couple issues 1)CIA wasn't really that formidable in cold war either.Soviet intelligence ran circles around them most of the time. If cold war victory was assigned on the bases of intelligence, we'd be speaking Russian right now. US won that war due to economics, not quality of intelligence services. 2) All the high tech and gadgets in the world won't help you if the bad guys go low tech (see Afghanistan). That's why NSA won't do much better. What we need is more human intelligence, but for that we need people that speak Arabic, Pashtun etc. See how many student Americans major in foreign languages as opposed to say business.
I mean credibility at a bargaining table ...
Well it seems to me that if a large, well known company like IBM would loose a lot of credibility if it tried to enforce pointless patents like that, so I'm not sure how much of a legal threat those patents could be ..
but patents like that are worthless, so what's the point? why bother patenting something that's clearly is not gonna hold up in any court?
how do they came up with ideas like that? I'd love to sit on those meetings..
would a company be able to sue FBI if it had it's stuff on one of those confiscated servers but was totally unrelated to the case? or can FBI legally take them all down, sort them out later?