As an iPhone user and an AT&T customer (Cingular at the time) for over a decade... I'm bloody tempted. This thing looks like the bomb. I'll want to play with it first, but if it does half of what it appears to do, I'll drop AT&T for it.
You could probably make money with this. Seriously. Do you know how many chains of "men's hairstylists" or "luxury barbers" there are? Everything from a poor-mans version I used to see in Lafayette called "Sport Clips" where everything was themed with sports paraphernalia and the pretty (to one degree or another) hair stylists would give you a short shoulder rub for an extra $5, to "Aidan Gill For Men" in New Orleans where the proprietor was a chatty Irishman who served you Guinness or whiskey while you waited (and charged you enough that you paid for your drink without paying for it). A lot of men don't particularly like getting their hair cut, because the salons are designed for and by women. There's a market for "men's hair salons".
I paid Aidan $35 a haircut because: (A) his staff cut exclusively men's hair and was good at it, and (B) I liked the atmosphere. I wouldn't go to your "Stripper Barbershop" but I bet many men would. I'd make it a "high class joint", where the rules are firm, the bouncers serious and the girls both pretty AND good barbers. Serve drinks while people wait, charge outrageous prices, and make sure that every customer walks out with a good haircut as well as having had a good time. Your big problem would be that I'm thinking cutting hair topless would be a really unpleasant and itchy experience. You might do better with a men's specialty salon with pretty, competent (clothed) female barbers and a sort of "manly day spa" feel.
It's not really a dating service at all, it's more like phone sex or escort services (from the sounds of things it can be closer to either at your request). I've never understood either of these things. I mean, most normal people like the occasional porn, but porn is a non-interactive media. It's simply an ambiance that gets you in the mood (either by yourself or in whatever partner or partner + configuration floats your boat). This stuff is essentially lying to yourself. You're pretending that you have a real relationship (whether carnal or not) with this person who is essentially just hanging out with you because you're paying them.
Ok, let's accept for a moment the premise that Jediism is a valid religion. Let's further accept for the moment that a tenant of this religion requires you to dress like it's Halloween. Why does he have to leave his hood up? Jedi appear in every episode of the Star Wars movies, most if not all of the books, and numerous comics, games and other media. The *most* that has ever been said of them is that they *usually* wear robes. It's not a requirement of the order for them to do so, they often wear practical clothes or uniforms when appropriate, but they *usually* wear robes. Of all the various incarnations of Star Wars I've consumed, I'd estimate that the Jedi are wearing hooded robes with the hoods up less than 5% of the time.
This sounds suspiciously like the post I read on a Wiccan forum once. It was from a non-pagan squad leader in the Army, curious about athames. It seems that a member of his squad was insisting that carrying around a non-regulation knife was a part of his Wiccan religion; and to not permit him to do so would be a violation of his religious freedom. The squad leader was sympathetic to the soldier's religion, but thought this sounded far fetched. We calmly explained that while knives are certainly a part of Wiccan Ceremony, they do not need to be carried at all times, their absence can be worked around, and they certainly do not *need* to be 12 inch long Gothic daggers.
I'm all for Alternative Religions. I'm a member of an Alternative Religion. Alternative Religion does not mean you just get to claim that everything you want to do is part of your religion.
Like a lot of historical sources, they knew there was a letter, but had no idea what it contained. This is no uncommon in history and literature. Maybe they had another letter where Descartes said, "You remember in that last letter, where I told you to make some changes to the manuscript? Could you also change all the 'e's with funky little squiggles on top to 'e's with triangles on top? Thanks, Rene". Maybe they had an old catalog entry from the before the theft where a "Descartes letter describing manuscript changes to Meditations on First Philosophy" is mentioned. Maybe they still have the response to the letter, but not this letter. There are any number of ways that historians can remain aware that a source exists, or existed previously, without having it or knowing any pertinent details of it.
The causal relationship you imply here doesn't exist. It isn't inequality that's at fault, its these lads' greed coupled with lack of morals. I'm not tempted into crime where I see a Ferrari on the street -- and I would guess that the same is true for most folks.
I'm not either. Then again I drive a fairly nice, 5 year old VW, live in a multi-bedroom apartment, and have not wondered how I was going to afford three meals a day in a very long time. It's easy enough, when you are middle class, or even working class, to see these people and feel no sympathy. Hell, you'd even be right, they are criminals, and they are victimizing people. On the other hand, starving sucks. Is the criminal who steals a loaf of bread so he (or his family) can eat the same as the criminal who steals a car because he can, or the one who steals money so he can be rich? At best, poverty is a mitigating factor, not an excuse, but depending on the level of poverty it can be a pretty strong mitigating factor.
It's hard to quantify any of this, but there is a clear differentiation between stealing to take your basically good life and make it better, and stealing simply to eat. At what point the scale tips, and how much of a mitigating factor it will be varies from person to person, and situation to situation (I can't imagine this guy was *that* poor since he could attend school, but he may have still been quite poor), but it is a factor. There is also the question of: if you need to steal to eat, but then you steal much more than you actually needed, are you more or less guilt? Nothing is ever simple, but just boiling it down to a starving man stealing bread being the same as you stealing a Ferrari is overly simplistic in the extreme.
Is it your manager fault that you couldn't say "no, I won't work late tonight"? In the extreme case of the manager simply saying, "You will be fired if you don't work late every night", is it the manager's fault you don't go find a new job? I don't think anyone is saying that management doesn't share in the blame, perhaps even possessing the lion's share of the blame; but in the end you are responsible for you. You can blame the manager if he makes you work late once. You can blame the manager if he makes you work late for a month. You can blames the manager if he makes you work late for a year. You have no one to blame but yourself if after the first two to three months you haven't thought, "Ya know, I wonder what monster.com has in the area of software development."
In general the people doing software development for game companies are among the best in the field. They can find another job. It may take a month, or a few months, but surely it's better than 70 hour weeks.
And as has been pointed out in lots of places. Sitting at a desk 12 hours a day isn't exactly a healthy lifestyle. Ignoring for the moment things like stress, poor diet (since they rarely have time to eat properly), and such; a sedentary lifestyle is bad for you. Now an argument can easily be made that they would probably just use the extra time at home to sit in front of the TV/computer, but at least then it's their choice to be unhealthy.
It's not quite the same as a danger to their lives, per se, but it's sure not a recipe for a longer healthier life.
I have to wonder: does the heart consider 100 excess pounds of fat and 100 excess pounds of muscle the same?
Yes and no. Think about it. As far as straight dead weight goes, yes, 100 pounds is 100 pounds. That means your body has to pump more blood to more tissue, your bones and joints get the same burden, etc. Any place where the question is purely one of weight or volume, the 100 pounds is more or the less the same either way. Having said that, in nearly every way that matters, the muscle is better.
In order to develop 100 pounds of extra fat, you did nothing but eat more, in fact, the less you did, the more likely you developed the fat. In order to develop the 100 pounds of extra muscle you exercised; which strengthened your cardiovascular system. If you did it right, and ran a balanced exercise program, it strengthened your cardiovascular system a lot. Even if you did primarily anaerobic weight lifting though, it helped. Similarly the added muscle mass is helping to support itself. Your bones and joints may be supporting the same weight, but they are doing so with the support of strong muscles that lessen the burden. Additionally, where added fat mass tends to slow down your metabolism (thus adding yet more fat), muscle mass tends to speed up your metabolism. The muscles require calories to maintain themselves even when not in active use, so you can consume more calories without adding unhealthy fat mass.
Now, it must be said that in a very few cases of extremely unbalanced workout regimes, people have built great deals of muscle mass without strengthening their cardiovascular systems enough. This is unusual in the extreme, and usually caused by body-builder workout routines that focus entirely on building huge amounts of muscle with no care for aerobic exercise. It has caused heart attacks and even death. A more common problem with incorrectly designed exercise programs (as someone mentioned in one of the above posts) is over strengthening one side of a pair of muscles, without working the other side to compensate. So, for instance, doing lots of crunches, getting really strong abs, but not doing anything to strengthen your back muscles. This can result in the stronger muscles injuring the weaker ones they are paired with. The trick to avoid all of this is a well balanced exercise program that builds muscles evenly, burns calories, and strengths your cardiovascular system.
Personally I like jogging and martial arts, but both are fairly high impact and risk injury, especially if you're not used to them. Find stuff you enjoy doing that will strengthen your whole body. Cycling and swimming are both really good.
I think you're missing a few important details here...
Do some physical labor and what do you feel like the next day? That's right, you're in pain. Pain is your body's way of saying "stop that, you fool."
But if you keep doing it for a few weeks it stops hurting. Like anything else your body has to get used to exercise. Moderate discomfort from lactic acid build-up and muscle building is not the same as debilitating pain from injury. Creation and destruction are linked. We have to damage muscles slightly in order to build them. The trick is not to damage them too much at once.
I go to "working man's" bars where construstion workers hang out. These guys spend all day in heavy exersize, and the ones ten years my junior look ten years older than me. If exersize is so good for you then why do I look so young while these guys look like they could be my dad?
You are not considering other contributing factors. These men aren't exercising in a gym all day; they're working outside in the sun (skin damage) and wind (dries skin, which in the long term is skin damage). They do dangerous work which is more likely to injure them either through over-strain of muscles or simply being hit, cut, burned or otherwise beat up by job site hazards. They are culturally more likely to smoke, and certainly more likely to be be exposed to second hand smoke (since workplace smoking laws don't affect uncompleted buildings) which is bad for the skin. If they avoid non-exercise related risk factors (Smoking, excessive drinking, poor diet, extreme stress caused by trying to raise a family on a "workman's" salary), and work related risk factors (injuries, particle inhalation, etc) then they are most likely healthier than you on the inside, regardless of whether their skin looks like old leather. Even then, it's possible that you've won the genetic lottery and they haven't so your heart is in better shape despite everything. Exercise is just one factor in health. It's good for you, but just because you run 5 miles a day doesn't mean you won't keel over from colon cancer next year anyway.
The nice thing about exercise is that it's one of the controllable risk factors. I can choose to exercise more or not. I can, to an extent, control my diet, or not smoke. I can't do a lot about air quality (short of moving), genetic factors, or job related risk (I could change jobs, maybe, but not if I lack the skills to do so).
The notion that exersize, especially exersize that results in sore muscles is good for you is an excuse by drug addled jocks. The fact that it's your body producing the drug doesn't matter -- it's a drug addiction, and "it's good for you" is an excuse to keep getting high.
It's all a matter of perspective. What causes sore muscles? A combination of mild damage to the muscles (which will result in eventual strengthening) and lactic acid build up from anaerobic respiration. In either case, building those muscles will increase their maximum ability to work with stress and prevent pain in the future. You say walking is fine, because it doesn't result in sore muscles, but what if you walked all day? What if you were in worse shape than you are now? I know a very obese person for whom walking around the block a few times *does* result in sore muscles. Does that mean they should not do even so little exercise? Conversely, I can run for 15 or 20 minutes without any sore muscles at all ( I used to be able to go for much longer with no negative affects, but I've just restarted my exercise program after a long break). So I should run, but not very far or fast?
Also your argument about running endorphins is completely disingenuous. You say that pain is your body's natural way to tell you that you to stop doing something, but don't accept that equally natural endorphins might be your body's way to tell you to keep doing something? It works both ways after all. If your body uses unpleasant stimuli to tell you to stop something bad, then pleasant stimuli are probably designed to keep you doing something good, yes?
The "right" answer to this question is quite simple though. Leave the diagnosis to those qualified, psychiatrists and psychologists. The big problem here (IMHO) is that people are making diagnoses of their children and then taking them to GPs. They inform the GP that the child has "x" mental problem. The GP (who is only slightly more qualified than the parent to make psychiatric diagnoses) often performs the most rudimentary tests, "confirms" the illness and prescribes drugs. After all parents know their kids better than anyone, and you want to keep the customer happy. I'm not saying this happens all the time, with all parents and kids, but it happens a lot. Studies have verified it. Some schools even have doctors that they recommend to parents with "ADHD" kids; receptive doctors who are happy to confirm the school's and/or parent's diagnosis and prescribe drugs.
My wife was diagnosed with ADD as an adult. She was diagnosed by a psychiatrist who specializes in the disorder. She spent several multi-hour sessions taking various tests ranging from IQ, to personality, to information about study habits and the like. The Doctor took all of that and used an algorithm to come up with a very high probability that she was moderately ADD. It took a couple of weeks, and even then he admitted that there was a chance he was wrong. Compare that to a GP talking to a 9 year old for 20 minutes and making a firm diagnosis. It's bullshit, there's no possible way that these people are make valid diagnoses.
I'll never say that there is no such thing as ADD, or autism, or Apserger's; but I will say that if you're going to give that kind of diagnosis to a child, and then drug them with moderately powerful psychotropic drugs as a result... Well you should at least be get someone qualified and without any vested interest to make the call.
This is essentially what Lafayette Louisiana is hoping to do with it's metro ethernet. Essentially, all subscribers to their new publicly run ISP will be on a metro area network. Internally they will be able to talk over 100 Mb ethernet to anyone else on the MAN (or maybe it was Gb, I can't remember.), while traffic intended for the Internet proper will be going through their redundant backbone connection. In theory this means that local businesses will have more or less unlimited bandwidth when dealing with local customers and partners (assuming everyone involved is subscribed to the LUS ISP). If I have any regrets about having to leave Lafayette, it's that I won't be around to see how this experiment plays out. Succeed or fail it's one of the more audacious and interesting developments I've seen in "in the wild" relating to the Internet.
In every area I've ever lived in (Well in the last 10 years or so, as these things became common), cable companies provide their own telephone services and (whether by regulation or simply for the ability to advertise it) followed the same backup procedures as the telephone companies. DSL of course, is the telephone company. Have I had Internet outages? Of course, but not really any more often than I used to have POTS outages. Also, it seems to me that if we're talking about replacing POTS with VOIP on a regulatory scale, then the Feds will have to regulate IP service provisions as they now regulate POTS networks.
Are you sure your kids will ever be able to use cell phone or VOIP reliably when the power is out
Cell Phones are unaffected by all but the longest term power outages. For VOIP, they make these things called UPSes. A standard "10 minute" computer UPS can keep a cable (or DSL) modem, home router, and VOIP appliance running for hours. When I was living in downtown New Orleans shortly after Hurricane Katrina we had constant power outages and they often lasted for a good long time. I dropped $50 on a separate UPS to handle the telephony and network stuff and never had a significant outage of communications (The one time I did have a short outage, the DSL went too, so it would have killed a "pure" land line).
and/or injured to the point of being unable to speek or under duress and told not to?
Here I assume you're talking about the ability for 911 operators to find you based on phone number you're calling from. I don't know what hole you've been hiding in, but VOIP operators have been registering addresses with 911 system for years. You can tell them not too if you chose, but that seems like a sucker's bet me to me (I guess if you really feel your privacy is more important than the ability for the ambulance to get to your house...) You're partially right about cell phones here, but many if not most have GPS chips now, so you can still be found in an emergency. Some don't though, so it is something to watch out for. To be reasonable though, whatever TV may tell you, there are a fairly limited number of emergencies that will render you able to dial 911, able to survive until help arrives, but completely unable to speak. It's not impossible, but hardly a common occurrence.
Whether he's a douche or not is immaterial to his accomplishments. He wrote (originally) and later managed the development of the kernel that allowed GNU to become part of something mainstream. Whatever Hurd may have done, the remains that it was dramatically behind schedule and short of developers when Linus produced his first kernel; and didn't manage to catch up in either capability or developer interest during the years that Linux was little more than a barely functional hobby system. Douche or not, Linus managed to develop a system good enough to interest people, then hold onto their attention long enough to turn it into something useful.
RMS not an egomaniac? Seriously? He's the worst kind of egomaniac, the "Look at me I'm humble! Look! Me! Humble! Just wanna help, but can't help unless you. Look. At. Me!" kind. Flagellating yourself in the public square is not a gesture of humility. None of which should take away from his accomplishments either, don't get me wrong. Just because I happen to think he's a douche doesn't mean he's not a very effective douche, just like your opinion of Linus doesn't change how effective he's been.
I think it still is. I very carefully used words like "most" and "usually" through out my post. There are a very few exceptions where OS software is dominant in its niche and web server software is one of them. However, Apache is still fighting tooth and nail against a very viable closed competitor. IIS may not be quite a as popular as Apache, but it's hardly relegated to the distant corners of the market either. It's quite popular, and has nearly as much market share as Apache does.
You're making the same point as the guy above you, but doing a much better job. I agree that Apple makes use of (and, quite fairly, contributes back too) Open Source software in many low level areas of OS X. However it is equally true that neither OS X itself, nor the iPhone OS can be called Open Source products. They are distinct from Darwin and OpenDarwin in ways that Linux device manufacturer's operating systems are not usually distinct from "Linux".
In a way Apple demonstrated my point very well. They are a company that has found Open Source to be very useful in some areas of the business model, and much less useful in others. It is self evident that Apple makes extensive use of Open Source. It is equally self evident that they make extensive use of closed source. Thus far this balance approach has served them very well. No Open Source projects have found real reason to complain about them as a citizen of the OS community, but they still manage to make extensive and profitable use of closed and proprietary technology.
Yes and no. If we want to call the kernel the operating system, then yes. Beyond that it gets a lot more complicated. They are making use of parts of an open kernel, and many open tools, but the vast majority of what users see as "OS X" or "iPhone" OS is Apple code. If the the Free BSD project disappeared tomorrow, Apple would shrug, hire a couple more kernel developers and move on. If the Linux Kernel project disappeared tomorrow most of these "Linux Device" vendors would be up a creek without a paddle.
Put simply Apple develops OS X using some Open Source components. Linux device manufacturers use an Open Source OS.
Yeah, Microsoft, Adobe, Autodesk, Blizzard, Bungie... All those guys are the verge of bankruptcy. No one is willing to pay for software.
Solutions to many problems are available for free, but those solutions are not always very good. Even when they are good, they don't usually dominate the market. Linux, Apache, and Firefox are all great examples of successful Open Source products, and even they are still fighting tooth and nail for market share against very viable closed source competition. In most markets the competition isn't even close. Closed source software rules the market with some Open Source competitors of varying quality holding a distant second or third position.
In some cases it's a real shame, because the Open Source alternative is on par with or better than its closed alternative, but even then the open version rarely dominates the market.
This. Open Source is self evidently a better way for certain areas of software development and certain companies. It doesn't necessarily follow that it is self evidently a better way in general. Open source libraries make sens in a lot of the same ways that open standards make sense. They're, in fact, the next obvious growth of open standards. If we can all agree on the inputs and the outputs of the blackbox, why don't we all just use the same transparent box instead?
Open source also makes a lot of sense when you look at "reinventing the wheel" type problems. I need an Operating System for my device. I don't really care about making money on the operating system, I want to make money on the device. Hey, look, here's this Open Source operating system that works on lots of devices, can be easily modified to work on my device, and saves me a ton of work. Open source makes sense. I can save a lot of work reinventing the wheel on a non-monetized product by using something someone else has already done and opened for me.
Open source makes less sense when your software is your product. Microsoft is understandably reluctant to release their source code. It is not self evident that Microsoft would benefit from opening up its products. In fact, most would agrue that the opposite is self evident.
Apple looked at the same problem that Nokia is looking at and decided that since they had an operating system in house already, it made more sense to just modify it then modifying someone else's open operating system. It's worked for them and it is not self evident that making a different choice would have worked out better.
It is self evident that using Open Source is superior in certain situations and under certain circumstances. It is self evident that NOT using Open Source is superior in certain situations and under circumstances. It is NOT self evident that using Open Source is inherently superior. At least not to me.
I'm not saying it should be changed. Damn, that would be a nightmare. He regrets having done it that way in the first place, and had he not it would have been trivial to work around. Where does anyone say in the article that we should change it now?
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Install a video messaging app on this thing and it is a picture phone. It's got a front facing camera specifically for that.
As an iPhone user and an AT&T customer (Cingular at the time) for over a decade... I'm bloody tempted. This thing looks like the bomb. I'll want to play with it first, but if it does half of what it appears to do, I'll drop AT&T for it.
You could probably make money with this. Seriously. Do you know how many chains of "men's hairstylists" or "luxury barbers" there are? Everything from a poor-mans version I used to see in Lafayette called "Sport Clips" where everything was themed with sports paraphernalia and the pretty (to one degree or another) hair stylists would give you a short shoulder rub for an extra $5, to "Aidan Gill For Men" in New Orleans where the proprietor was a chatty Irishman who served you Guinness or whiskey while you waited (and charged you enough that you paid for your drink without paying for it). A lot of men don't particularly like getting their hair cut, because the salons are designed for and by women. There's a market for "men's hair salons".
I paid Aidan $35 a haircut because: (A) his staff cut exclusively men's hair and was good at it, and (B) I liked the atmosphere. I wouldn't go to your "Stripper Barbershop" but I bet many men would. I'd make it a "high class joint", where the rules are firm, the bouncers serious and the girls both pretty AND good barbers. Serve drinks while people wait, charge outrageous prices, and make sure that every customer walks out with a good haircut as well as having had a good time. Your big problem would be that I'm thinking cutting hair topless would be a really unpleasant and itchy experience. You might do better with a men's specialty salon with pretty, competent (clothed) female barbers and a sort of "manly day spa" feel.
It's not really a dating service at all, it's more like phone sex or escort services (from the sounds of things it can be closer to either at your request). I've never understood either of these things. I mean, most normal people like the occasional porn, but porn is a non-interactive media. It's simply an ambiance that gets you in the mood (either by yourself or in whatever partner or partner + configuration floats your boat). This stuff is essentially lying to yourself. You're pretending that you have a real relationship (whether carnal or not) with this person who is essentially just hanging out with you because you're paying them.
Ok, let's accept for a moment the premise that Jediism is a valid religion. Let's further accept for the moment that a tenant of this religion requires you to dress like it's Halloween. Why does he have to leave his hood up? Jedi appear in every episode of the Star Wars movies, most if not all of the books, and numerous comics, games and other media. The *most* that has ever been said of them is that they *usually* wear robes. It's not a requirement of the order for them to do so, they often wear practical clothes or uniforms when appropriate, but they *usually* wear robes. Of all the various incarnations of Star Wars I've consumed, I'd estimate that the Jedi are wearing hooded robes with the hoods up less than 5% of the time.
This sounds suspiciously like the post I read on a Wiccan forum once. It was from a non-pagan squad leader in the Army, curious about athames. It seems that a member of his squad was insisting that carrying around a non-regulation knife was a part of his Wiccan religion; and to not permit him to do so would be a violation of his religious freedom. The squad leader was sympathetic to the soldier's religion, but thought this sounded far fetched. We calmly explained that while knives are certainly a part of Wiccan Ceremony, they do not need to be carried at all times, their absence can be worked around, and they certainly do not *need* to be 12 inch long Gothic daggers.
I'm all for Alternative Religions. I'm a member of an Alternative Religion. Alternative Religion does not mean you just get to claim that everything you want to do is part of your religion.
Like a lot of historical sources, they knew there was a letter, but had no idea what it contained. This is no uncommon in history and literature. Maybe they had another letter where Descartes said, "You remember in that last letter, where I told you to make some changes to the manuscript? Could you also change all the 'e's with funky little squiggles on top to 'e's with triangles on top? Thanks, Rene". Maybe they had an old catalog entry from the before the theft where a "Descartes letter describing manuscript changes to Meditations on First Philosophy" is mentioned. Maybe they still have the response to the letter, but not this letter. There are any number of ways that historians can remain aware that a source exists, or existed previously, without having it or knowing any pertinent details of it.
The causal relationship you imply here doesn't exist. It isn't inequality that's at fault, its these lads' greed coupled with lack of morals. I'm not tempted into crime where I see a Ferrari on the street -- and I would guess that the same is true for most folks.
I'm not either. Then again I drive a fairly nice, 5 year old VW, live in a multi-bedroom apartment, and have not wondered how I was going to afford three meals a day in a very long time. It's easy enough, when you are middle class, or even working class, to see these people and feel no sympathy. Hell, you'd even be right, they are criminals, and they are victimizing people. On the other hand, starving sucks. Is the criminal who steals a loaf of bread so he (or his family) can eat the same as the criminal who steals a car because he can, or the one who steals money so he can be rich? At best, poverty is a mitigating factor, not an excuse, but depending on the level of poverty it can be a pretty strong mitigating factor.
It's hard to quantify any of this, but there is a clear differentiation between stealing to take your basically good life and make it better, and stealing simply to eat. At what point the scale tips, and how much of a mitigating factor it will be varies from person to person, and situation to situation (I can't imagine this guy was *that* poor since he could attend school, but he may have still been quite poor), but it is a factor. There is also the question of: if you need to steal to eat, but then you steal much more than you actually needed, are you more or less guilt? Nothing is ever simple, but just boiling it down to a starving man stealing bread being the same as you stealing a Ferrari is overly simplistic in the extreme.
Is it your manager fault that you couldn't say "no, I won't work late tonight"? In the extreme case of the manager simply saying, "You will be fired if you don't work late every night", is it the manager's fault you don't go find a new job? I don't think anyone is saying that management doesn't share in the blame, perhaps even possessing the lion's share of the blame; but in the end you are responsible for you. You can blame the manager if he makes you work late once. You can blame the manager if he makes you work late for a month. You can blames the manager if he makes you work late for a year. You have no one to blame but yourself if after the first two to three months you haven't thought, "Ya know, I wonder what monster.com has in the area of software development."
In general the people doing software development for game companies are among the best in the field. They can find another job. It may take a month, or a few months, but surely it's better than 70 hour weeks.
And as has been pointed out in lots of places. Sitting at a desk 12 hours a day isn't exactly a healthy lifestyle. Ignoring for the moment things like stress, poor diet (since they rarely have time to eat properly), and such; a sedentary lifestyle is bad for you. Now an argument can easily be made that they would probably just use the extra time at home to sit in front of the TV/computer, but at least then it's their choice to be unhealthy.
It's not quite the same as a danger to their lives, per se, but it's sure not a recipe for a longer healthier life.
I have to wonder: does the heart consider 100 excess pounds of fat and 100 excess pounds of muscle the same?
Yes and no. Think about it. As far as straight dead weight goes, yes, 100 pounds is 100 pounds. That means your body has to pump more blood to more tissue, your bones and joints get the same burden, etc. Any place where the question is purely one of weight or volume, the 100 pounds is more or the less the same either way. Having said that, in nearly every way that matters, the muscle is better.
In order to develop 100 pounds of extra fat, you did nothing but eat more, in fact, the less you did, the more likely you developed the fat. In order to develop the 100 pounds of extra muscle you exercised; which strengthened your cardiovascular system. If you did it right, and ran a balanced exercise program, it strengthened your cardiovascular system a lot. Even if you did primarily anaerobic weight lifting though, it helped. Similarly the added muscle mass is helping to support itself. Your bones and joints may be supporting the same weight, but they are doing so with the support of strong muscles that lessen the burden. Additionally, where added fat mass tends to slow down your metabolism (thus adding yet more fat), muscle mass tends to speed up your metabolism. The muscles require calories to maintain themselves even when not in active use, so you can consume more calories without adding unhealthy fat mass.
Now, it must be said that in a very few cases of extremely unbalanced workout regimes, people have built great deals of muscle mass without strengthening their cardiovascular systems enough. This is unusual in the extreme, and usually caused by body-builder workout routines that focus entirely on building huge amounts of muscle with no care for aerobic exercise. It has caused heart attacks and even death. A more common problem with incorrectly designed exercise programs (as someone mentioned in one of the above posts) is over strengthening one side of a pair of muscles, without working the other side to compensate. So, for instance, doing lots of crunches, getting really strong abs, but not doing anything to strengthen your back muscles. This can result in the stronger muscles injuring the weaker ones they are paired with. The trick to avoid all of this is a well balanced exercise program that builds muscles evenly, burns calories, and strengths your cardiovascular system.
Personally I like jogging and martial arts, but both are fairly high impact and risk injury, especially if you're not used to them. Find stuff you enjoy doing that will strengthen your whole body. Cycling and swimming are both really good.
Yeah, sometimes you'd almost rather not know.
I think you're missing a few important details here...
Do some physical labor and what do you feel like the next day? That's right, you're in pain. Pain is your body's way of saying "stop that, you fool."
But if you keep doing it for a few weeks it stops hurting. Like anything else your body has to get used to exercise. Moderate discomfort from lactic acid build-up and muscle building is not the same as debilitating pain from injury. Creation and destruction are linked. We have to damage muscles slightly in order to build them. The trick is not to damage them too much at once.
I go to "working man's" bars where construstion workers hang out. These guys spend all day in heavy exersize, and the ones ten years my junior look ten years older than me. If exersize is so good for you then why do I look so young while these guys look like they could be my dad?
You are not considering other contributing factors. These men aren't exercising in a gym all day; they're working outside in the sun (skin damage) and wind (dries skin, which in the long term is skin damage). They do dangerous work which is more likely to injure them either through over-strain of muscles or simply being hit, cut, burned or otherwise beat up by job site hazards. They are culturally more likely to smoke, and certainly more likely to be be exposed to second hand smoke (since workplace smoking laws don't affect uncompleted buildings) which is bad for the skin. If they avoid non-exercise related risk factors (Smoking, excessive drinking, poor diet, extreme stress caused by trying to raise a family on a "workman's" salary), and work related risk factors (injuries, particle inhalation, etc) then they are most likely healthier than you on the inside, regardless of whether their skin looks like old leather. Even then, it's possible that you've won the genetic lottery and they haven't so your heart is in better shape despite everything. Exercise is just one factor in health. It's good for you, but just because you run 5 miles a day doesn't mean you won't keel over from colon cancer next year anyway.
The nice thing about exercise is that it's one of the controllable risk factors. I can choose to exercise more or not. I can, to an extent, control my diet, or not smoke. I can't do a lot about air quality (short of moving), genetic factors, or job related risk (I could change jobs, maybe, but not if I lack the skills to do so).
The notion that exersize, especially exersize that results in sore muscles is good for you is an excuse by drug addled jocks. The fact that it's your body producing the drug doesn't matter -- it's a drug addiction, and "it's good for you" is an excuse to keep getting high.
It's all a matter of perspective. What causes sore muscles? A combination of mild damage to the muscles (which will result in eventual strengthening) and lactic acid build up from anaerobic respiration. In either case, building those muscles will increase their maximum ability to work with stress and prevent pain in the future. You say walking is fine, because it doesn't result in sore muscles, but what if you walked all day? What if you were in worse shape than you are now? I know a very obese person for whom walking around the block a few times *does* result in sore muscles. Does that mean they should not do even so little exercise? Conversely, I can run for 15 or 20 minutes without any sore muscles at all ( I used to be able to go for much longer with no negative affects, but I've just restarted my exercise program after a long break). So I should run, but not very far or fast?
Also your argument about running endorphins is completely disingenuous. You say that pain is your body's natural way to tell you that you to stop doing something, but don't accept that equally natural endorphins might be your body's way to tell you to keep doing something? It works both ways after all. If your body uses unpleasant stimuli to tell you to stop something bad, then pleasant stimuli are probably designed to keep you doing something good, yes?
The "right" answer to this question is quite simple though. Leave the diagnosis to those qualified, psychiatrists and psychologists. The big problem here (IMHO) is that people are making diagnoses of their children and then taking them to GPs. They inform the GP that the child has "x" mental problem. The GP (who is only slightly more qualified than the parent to make psychiatric diagnoses) often performs the most rudimentary tests, "confirms" the illness and prescribes drugs. After all parents know their kids better than anyone, and you want to keep the customer happy. I'm not saying this happens all the time, with all parents and kids, but it happens a lot. Studies have verified it. Some schools even have doctors that they recommend to parents with "ADHD" kids; receptive doctors who are happy to confirm the school's and/or parent's diagnosis and prescribe drugs.
My wife was diagnosed with ADD as an adult. She was diagnosed by a psychiatrist who specializes in the disorder. She spent several multi-hour sessions taking various tests ranging from IQ, to personality, to information about study habits and the like. The Doctor took all of that and used an algorithm to come up with a very high probability that she was moderately ADD. It took a couple of weeks, and even then he admitted that there was a chance he was wrong. Compare that to a GP talking to a 9 year old for 20 minutes and making a firm diagnosis. It's bullshit, there's no possible way that these people are make valid diagnoses.
I'll never say that there is no such thing as ADD, or autism, or Apserger's; but I will say that if you're going to give that kind of diagnosis to a child, and then drug them with moderately powerful psychotropic drugs as a result... Well you should at least be get someone qualified and without any vested interest to make the call.
This is essentially what Lafayette Louisiana is hoping to do with it's metro ethernet. Essentially, all subscribers to their new publicly run ISP will be on a metro area network. Internally they will be able to talk over 100 Mb ethernet to anyone else on the MAN (or maybe it was Gb, I can't remember.), while traffic intended for the Internet proper will be going through their redundant backbone connection. In theory this means that local businesses will have more or less unlimited bandwidth when dealing with local customers and partners (assuming everyone involved is subscribed to the LUS ISP). If I have any regrets about having to leave Lafayette, it's that I won't be around to see how this experiment plays out. Succeed or fail it's one of the more audacious and interesting developments I've seen in "in the wild" relating to the Internet.
In every area I've ever lived in (Well in the last 10 years or so, as these things became common), cable companies provide their own telephone services and (whether by regulation or simply for the ability to advertise it) followed the same backup procedures as the telephone companies. DSL of course, is the telephone company. Have I had Internet outages? Of course, but not really any more often than I used to have POTS outages. Also, it seems to me that if we're talking about replacing POTS with VOIP on a regulatory scale, then the Feds will have to regulate IP service provisions as they now regulate POTS networks.
Are you sure your kids will ever be able to use cell phone or VOIP reliably when the power is out
Cell Phones are unaffected by all but the longest term power outages. For VOIP, they make these things called UPSes. A standard "10 minute" computer UPS can keep a cable (or DSL) modem, home router, and VOIP appliance running for hours. When I was living in downtown New Orleans shortly after Hurricane Katrina we had constant power outages and they often lasted for a good long time. I dropped $50 on a separate UPS to handle the telephony and network stuff and never had a significant outage of communications (The one time I did have a short outage, the DSL went too, so it would have killed a "pure" land line).
and/or injured to the point of being unable to speek or under duress and told not to?
Here I assume you're talking about the ability for 911 operators to find you based on phone number you're calling from. I don't know what hole you've been hiding in, but VOIP operators have been registering addresses with 911 system for years. You can tell them not too if you chose, but that seems like a sucker's bet me to me (I guess if you really feel your privacy is more important than the ability for the ambulance to get to your house...) You're partially right about cell phones here, but many if not most have GPS chips now, so you can still be found in an emergency. Some don't though, so it is something to watch out for. To be reasonable though, whatever TV may tell you, there are a fairly limited number of emergencies that will render you able to dial 911, able to survive until help arrives, but completely unable to speak. It's not impossible, but hardly a common occurrence.
Whether he's a douche or not is immaterial to his accomplishments. He wrote (originally) and later managed the development of the kernel that allowed GNU to become part of something mainstream. Whatever Hurd may have done, the remains that it was dramatically behind schedule and short of developers when Linus produced his first kernel; and didn't manage to catch up in either capability or developer interest during the years that Linux was little more than a barely functional hobby system. Douche or not, Linus managed to develop a system good enough to interest people, then hold onto their attention long enough to turn it into something useful.
RMS not an egomaniac? Seriously? He's the worst kind of egomaniac, the "Look at me I'm humble! Look! Me! Humble! Just wanna help, but can't help unless you. Look. At. Me!" kind. Flagellating yourself in the public square is not a gesture of humility. None of which should take away from his accomplishments either, don't get me wrong. Just because I happen to think he's a douche doesn't mean he's not a very effective douche, just like your opinion of Linus doesn't change how effective he's been.
WoW has troll zombies riding velociraptors. That's really close. Maybe someone else can find you one with Nazi zombies.
Fedora Core is on a six month release cycle. They always look like they're keeping current with somebody :-)
I think it still is. I very carefully used words like "most" and "usually" through out my post. There are a very few exceptions where OS software is dominant in its niche and web server software is one of them. However, Apache is still fighting tooth and nail against a very viable closed competitor. IIS may not be quite a as popular as Apache, but it's hardly relegated to the distant corners of the market either. It's quite popular, and has nearly as much market share as Apache does.
You're making the same point as the guy above you, but doing a much better job. I agree that Apple makes use of (and, quite fairly, contributes back too) Open Source software in many low level areas of OS X. However it is equally true that neither OS X itself, nor the iPhone OS can be called Open Source products. They are distinct from Darwin and OpenDarwin in ways that Linux device manufacturer's operating systems are not usually distinct from "Linux".
In a way Apple demonstrated my point very well. They are a company that has found Open Source to be very useful in some areas of the business model, and much less useful in others. It is self evident that Apple makes extensive use of Open Source. It is equally self evident that they make extensive use of closed source. Thus far this balance approach has served them very well. No Open Source projects have found real reason to complain about them as a citizen of the OS community, but they still manage to make extensive and profitable use of closed and proprietary technology.
Yes and no. If we want to call the kernel the operating system, then yes. Beyond that it gets a lot more complicated. They are making use of parts of an open kernel, and many open tools, but the vast majority of what users see as "OS X" or "iPhone" OS is Apple code. If the the Free BSD project disappeared tomorrow, Apple would shrug, hire a couple more kernel developers and move on. If the Linux Kernel project disappeared tomorrow most of these "Linux Device" vendors would be up a creek without a paddle.
Put simply Apple develops OS X using some Open Source components. Linux device manufacturers use an Open Source OS.
Yeah, Microsoft, Adobe, Autodesk, Blizzard, Bungie... All those guys are the verge of bankruptcy. No one is willing to pay for software.
Solutions to many problems are available for free, but those solutions are not always very good. Even when they are good, they don't usually dominate the market. Linux, Apache, and Firefox are all great examples of successful Open Source products, and even they are still fighting tooth and nail for market share against very viable closed source competition. In most markets the competition isn't even close. Closed source software rules the market with some Open Source competitors of varying quality holding a distant second or third position.
In some cases it's a real shame, because the Open Source alternative is on par with or better than its closed alternative, but even then the open version rarely dominates the market.
This. Open Source is self evidently a better way for certain areas of software development and certain companies. It doesn't necessarily follow that it is self evidently a better way in general. Open source libraries make sens in a lot of the same ways that open standards make sense. They're, in fact, the next obvious growth of open standards. If we can all agree on the inputs and the outputs of the blackbox, why don't we all just use the same transparent box instead?
Open source also makes a lot of sense when you look at "reinventing the wheel" type problems. I need an Operating System for my device. I don't really care about making money on the operating system, I want to make money on the device. Hey, look, here's this Open Source operating system that works on lots of devices, can be easily modified to work on my device, and saves me a ton of work. Open source makes sense. I can save a lot of work reinventing the wheel on a non-monetized product by using something someone else has already done and opened for me.
Open source makes less sense when your software is your product. Microsoft is understandably reluctant to release their source code. It is not self evident that Microsoft would benefit from opening up its products. In fact, most would agrue that the opposite is self evident.
Apple looked at the same problem that Nokia is looking at and decided that since they had an operating system in house already, it made more sense to just modify it then modifying someone else's open operating system. It's worked for them and it is not self evident that making a different choice would have worked out better.
It is self evident that using Open Source is superior in certain situations and under certain circumstances. It is self evident that NOT using Open Source is superior in certain situations and under circumstances. It is NOT self evident that using Open Source is inherently superior. At least not to me.
I'm not saying it should be changed. Damn, that would be a nightmare. He regrets having done it that way in the first place, and had he not it would have been trivial to work around. Where does anyone say in the article that we should change it now?