Let her change hands. I did it myself and am now better in using my 'off' hand. I played stupid games like Minesweeper to train it. Then do something about the pain and damage. Physical therapy worked fine for me. Physical therapists know a lot more about muscles and joints than your average medical practitioner. Also, do something about the underlying causes. Probably the physical therapist can advise her best, otherwise get a ergonomist. But get her to do something about the complaints! Just providing her with another way of input is not enough.
I work in IT for over ten years now, and I very much appreciate meeting my colleagues at parties and inviting them to mine. Of course, sometimes there is a boring one, but most of them are nice and fun to hang out with. Some of them have become good friends.
It might help that I work in Europe, and that most people here try to keep to weeks of about 40 hours in the office. That leaves some time to have a social life of your own. If you are working long days, you might need the small amount of free time you have just for staying in contact with your family and old friends.
It might also help that my friends have always been of the nerdy type: mostly male, mostly into science & technology.
The article in the NYT gives me the distinct impression the USA is fighting the EU tooth and nail to protect racist speech. Seems a funny position to take, to me. What is so fine about racism and racist slander? What is the opinion of black Americans think about this?
Sounds like there are some echoes of an ugly past here.
There is something in this analysis that strikes me as odd.
1) Apparently, the NASA did not have enough money these last years, and solved this by pushing costs to the future.
2) The solution suggested for this problem is giving them even less money. Strange.
If you look at item 1, you would think that giving them *more* money, or more time on the current budget, would be a logical solution. At least, give them the same amount as before and allow for some time to reorganize their management.
Of course, budgetting is a real world issue, so just doing the logical thing is not always feasible. Spending for ISS has been going down for some time, even before the current maybe-recession and the attacks on Afghanistan. But even though wars costs lots of money, a wise government would not stop spending money on all research. Imagine when they would have said in WWII "we're at war, we don't have time for this research on atoms". The outcome could have been way different from what it was.
And on a side note, wouldn't you be giving the terrorists more credit than they're due? They are already disrupting normal life, which is surely one of their targets.
(Even though the U.S. already has a national ID card, since the states are in the process of linking their driver's license databases together.)
I would not think that a drivers license would really count as an ID. For instance, what about those people who don't have a drivers license? I don't know how it is in the US, but I've got loads of adult friends who do not have a drivers license. I live in a big urban area (in.nl) with good communal transport, though, and driving lessons are rather expensive. (Not to talk about parking...)
Or how about people who really cannot drive a car? Some just never get through the exam because of nervousness, or because they have a physical condition that prevents them from driving - the most obvious example being blindness...
A drivers license proves that you can drive a car and that you didn't misuse that priviledge enough to have it taken away. Nothing more.
I think voluntary sharing of your data is still accepted. The scheme someone mentioned, in which you answer questions and receive goodies in return, happens here in the EU too. It's just that people are protected against being forced to give all kind of very personal data to companies. Still, most people I know here have some trust (more than US-citizens, why should that be?) in the ability of governments and consumers to blow the wistle and do something about misuse, in case that should happen.
I for one am glad that the EU cares enough about my privacy to make regulations about it. If we left this to international companies, the only right we would have was to give more of our data to them.
Every ISP in the world would have to cooperate. You'll never be able to enforce this. ISP's in third world countries, in countries which don't honor copyrights on physical items even now, countries which have quarrels with other countries...
Also, it would force quite an administrative load on the ISP's, I don't think they'd like that. How about the small ISP's, set up by a single nerd, for him/herself and a few friends?
And: no way are people willing to pay for the things other people download. Can you imagine receiving a letter from your ISP that you'll have to pay more, because other people are continually downloading things? You'd think it very unfair if you never download material for which payment is necessary. (As I, and a lot of my friends do.) People don't like to pay for their anonymous fellow-users.
Several people poined out that the french don't have jurisdiction on US soil. Of course, this is true. The same should be upheld the other way around.
Has no one noted that the US has forces in several places of the world to uphold it's own drug laws? For instance, DEA agents work here in Europe enticing people into crimes (which is illegal in some countries here) to be able to arrest them. And the US is just entering and "upgrading" a war in Columbia. Does anyone care about that? If we try to make - for ourselves - a more lenient drug law, the US pressurizes us for it. If an international organization mentions the word abortion, the US tries to get the UN to stop financing that organization. Do I hear any American protesting this? No, of course not, we should adopt your god-given laws and stop thinking for ourselves!
The arrogance of the French, though legendary, isn't bigger than that of the Americans. It's actually kind of nice to see you two nations butting your head against each other. The immovable wall and the unstoppable object, things like that.
Also, remember that you may be very happy with your constitution and your society, you must realize that the French have their own constitution and are in no way bound by the American one. If they want it any other way, they can change it. These people have the *right* to make their own laws!
(I just posted this on the ICANN forum too, so the arguments are a bit company oriented, but I hope you can read through that.)
I notice a confusion between generic TLD's and US TLD's. I fear that allowing more generic TLD's will enhance the trouble we have with copyrights en lawcases in an international internet. The problem is the implicit assumption in the USA that especially.COM and.ORG domains are US domains, while the rest of the world believes the word "generic" means just that. Already we see that an US company can go to a judge in a chosen US state and claim a.COM name, and the judge feels qualified to rule over an European, Asian or whatever legal entity. And the US-company can choose from over 50 states to try this trick! If gTLD's were really generic, this should be out of the jurisdiction of, say, a Florida judge or even a national judge.
Great Britain has solved this problem by defining the 'country code generic' domain,.CO.UK. This is in my opinion an elegant solution, and I'm sorry that other countries haven't adopted it. I guess it's too late to add.US after the generic domains, and giving all registered organisations the option to switch to their own.COM.XX? In fact, I don't even know whether the country code for the USA really is.US, which is a nice illustration of the way US- and generic domains are mixed. An additional benefit of really using the.US suffix would be that it confronts US citizens and companies with the international nature of the internet, which they are often sadly ignorant of.
I don't want to start a flame war on who invented what, but the present day reality is that the internet is globally used, and this is benefiting everyone - also those US companies, who should realize it enables them to suddenly reach a much bigger market. I myself am from a country which has ages of experience with earning money, assembling knowledge, and getting all kinds of other benefits from an open attitude for other nationalities, (.NL), I can attest that this works.
My goal as a programmer is to write elegant code. When I look at it a year later, or someone else reads it, it should be clear after not too much thinking. Making changes or adding extra functionality should be easier than you expect beforehand. You know that feeling - when your code seems to anticipate things you only think of later. (I started in C, but the same goes for any language. After a few, a new language becomes 'Just Another Language.)
As you become more experienced, you notice your view getting wider. The structure of your programs becomes more clear to you, then the structure behind the way you work. Now I'm at the point that the organisation of projects seems to me a part of the work of programming... if it's done bad, it hampers your work as programmer.
By the way: yes, I'm female but usually that's not a problem after I've said something smart. OK, I have to prove myself, but so must men in the long run.
But really, my goal is doing well what I try. And for code, that is summarized by the term 'elegant'. No matter what you program, no matter what language.
What really irritates me are those emails with in the bottom a text like 'under US law you can't sue us if we include this information'. (I can hear them saying 'nah nah nah' and pulling a long nose at me!) And more often than not, the remove-address doesn't exist. Or, and this is the worst INHO, they include a 0800 phone number. As if I could - or would - call this from Europe, where I live...
Esther Dyson has some point that direct election can lead to stupid people being chosen. I won't turn this into a political discussion by quoting examples, but I think everyone can find some examples just looking in the history books.
Direct representation can lead to people being chosen because they have a lot of influence, money ("Vote for me and you get a free thingie!"), or because they are make use of scares and rethorics. ("Vote for me! I'm against kiddie porn!")
This two stage mechanism is meant to provide some stability, but why should it only be used by corporate types? Protesters should forget the knee-jerk reaction about direct democracy and use this process to get themselves more influence. Convince Esther and her crew that you are not "stupid people" and get yourself a place in that structure.
Inez{R}
P.S. I won't protest the fact that the US appoints someone to overview something international. After all, it is probably the only way to get some results in a few years instead of in a few tens of years... [sigh]
Don't forget a lot of the IRC servers which join in this strike are run by ISP's who also supply services. When the DDoS are making it more difficult to provide those services, as they say, I can't blame them for taking them down.
Oh, and for the person who posted "we're on the wrong track" - please note that 'the internet' is international, and that the US constitution is not.
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Let her change hands. I did it myself and am now better in using my 'off' hand. I played stupid games like Minesweeper to train it.
Then do something about the pain and damage. Physical therapy worked fine for me. Physical therapists know a lot more about muscles and joints than your average medical practitioner.
Also, do something about the underlying causes. Probably the physical therapist can advise her best, otherwise get a ergonomist.
But get her to do something about the complaints! Just providing her with another way of input is not enough.
I work in IT for over ten years now, and I very much appreciate meeting my colleagues at parties and inviting them to mine. Of course, sometimes there is a boring one, but most of them are nice and fun to hang out with. Some of them have become good friends.
It might help that I work in Europe, and that most people here try to keep to weeks of about 40 hours in the office. That leaves some time to have a social life of your own. If you are working long days, you might need the small amount of free time you have just for staying in contact with your family and old friends.
It might also help that my friends have always been of the nerdy type: mostly male, mostly into science & technology.
Inez{R}.
The article in the NYT gives me the distinct impression the USA is fighting the EU tooth and nail to protect racist speech. Seems a funny position to take, to me. What is so fine about racism and racist slander? What is the opinion of black Americans think about this?
Sounds like there are some echoes of an ugly past here.
Inez{R}.
There is something in this analysis that strikes me as odd.
1) Apparently, the NASA did not have enough money these last years, and solved this by pushing costs to the future.
2) The solution suggested for this problem is giving them even less money. Strange.
If you look at item 1, you would think that giving them *more* money, or more time on the current budget, would be a logical solution. At least, give them the same amount as before and allow for some time to reorganize their management.
Of course, budgetting is a real world issue, so just doing the logical thing is not always feasible. Spending for ISS has been going down for some time, even before the current maybe-recession and the attacks on Afghanistan. But even though wars costs lots of money, a wise government would not stop spending money on all research. Imagine when they would have said in WWII "we're at war, we don't have time for this research on atoms". The outcome could have been way different from what it was.
And on a side note, wouldn't you be giving the terrorists more credit than they're due? They are already disrupting normal life, which is surely one of their targets.
Inez{R}.
(Even though the U.S. already has a national ID card, since the states are in the process of linking their driver's license databases together.)
.nl) with good communal transport, though, and driving lessons are rather expensive. (Not to talk about parking...)
I would not think that a drivers license would really count as an ID. For instance, what about those people who don't have a drivers license? I don't know how it is in the US, but I've got loads of adult friends who do not have a drivers license. I live in a big urban area (in
Or how about people who really cannot drive a car? Some just never get through the exam because of nervousness, or because they have a physical condition that prevents them from driving - the most obvious example being blindness...
A drivers license proves that you can drive a car and that you didn't misuse that priviledge enough to have it taken away. Nothing more.
Inez.
I think voluntary sharing of your data is still accepted. The scheme someone mentioned, in which you answer questions and receive goodies in return, happens here in the EU too. It's just that people are protected against being forced to give all kind of very personal data to companies. Still, most people I know here have some trust (more than US-citizens, why should that be?) in the ability of governments and consumers to blow the wistle and do something about misuse, in case that should happen.
I for one am glad that the EU cares enough about my privacy to make regulations about it. If we left this to international companies, the only right we would have was to give more of our data to them.
Inez.
I see a few arguments against this approach:
Every ISP in the world would have to cooperate. You'll never be able to enforce this. ISP's in third world countries, in countries which don't honor copyrights on physical items even now, countries which have quarrels with other countries...
Also, it would force quite an administrative load on the ISP's, I don't think they'd like that. How about the small ISP's, set up by a single nerd, for him/herself and a few friends?
And: no way are people willing to pay for the things other people download. Can you imagine receiving a letter from your ISP that you'll have to pay more, because other people are continually downloading things? You'd think it very unfair if you never download material for which payment is necessary. (As I, and a lot of my friends do.) People don't like to pay for their anonymous fellow-users.
Inez.
Several people poined out that the french don't have jurisdiction on US soil. Of course, this is true. The same should be upheld the other way around.
Has no one noted that the US has forces in several places of the world to uphold it's own drug laws? For instance, DEA agents work here in Europe enticing people into crimes (which is illegal in some countries here) to be able to arrest them. And the US is just entering and "upgrading" a war in Columbia. Does anyone care about that? If we try to make - for ourselves - a more lenient drug law, the US pressurizes us for it. If an international organization mentions the word abortion, the US tries to get the UN to stop financing that organization. Do I hear any American protesting this? No, of course not, we should adopt your god-given laws and stop thinking for ourselves!
The arrogance of the French, though legendary, isn't bigger than that of the Americans. It's actually kind of nice to see you two nations butting your head against each other. The immovable wall and the unstoppable object, things like that.
Also, remember that you may be very happy with your constitution and your society, you must realize that the French have their own constitution and are in no way bound by the American one. If they want it any other way, they can change it. These people have the *right* to make their own laws!
(I just posted this on the ICANN forum too, so the arguments are a bit company oriented, but I hope you can read through that.)
.COM and .ORG domains are US domains, while the rest of the world believes the word "generic" means just that. .COM name, and the judge feels qualified to rule over an European, Asian or whatever legal entity. And the US-company can choose from over 50 states to try this trick!
.CO.UK. This is in my opinion an elegant solution, and I'm sorry that other countries haven't adopted it. .US after the generic domains, and giving all registered organisations the option to switch to their own .COM.XX? .US, which is a nice illustration of the way US- and generic domains are mixed. .US suffix would be that it confronts US citizens and companies with the international nature of the internet, which they are often sadly ignorant of.
I notice a confusion between generic TLD's and US TLD's.
I fear that allowing more generic TLD's will enhance the trouble we have with copyrights en lawcases in an international internet. The problem is the implicit assumption in the USA that especially
Already we see that an US company can go to a judge in a chosen US state and claim a
If gTLD's were really generic, this should be out of the jurisdiction of, say, a Florida judge or even a national judge.
Great Britain has solved this problem by defining the 'country code generic' domain,
I guess it's too late to add
In fact, I don't even know whether the country code for the USA really is
An additional benefit of really using the
I don't want to start a flame war on who invented what, but the present day reality is that the internet is globally used, and this is benefiting everyone - also those US companies, who should realize it enables them to suddenly reach a much bigger market.
I myself am from a country which has ages of experience with earning money, assembling knowledge, and getting all kinds of other benefits from an open attitude for other nationalities, (.NL), I can attest that this works.
Inez{R}
My goal as a programmer is to write elegant code. When I look at it a year later, or someone else reads it, it should be clear after not too much thinking. Making changes or adding extra functionality should be easier than you expect beforehand. You know that feeling - when your code seems to anticipate things you only think of later. (I started in C, but the same goes for any language. After a few, a new language becomes 'Just Another Language.)
As you become more experienced, you notice your view getting wider. The structure of your programs becomes more clear to you, then the structure behind the way you work. Now I'm at the point that the organisation of projects seems to me a part of the work of programming... if it's done bad, it hampers your work as programmer.
By the way: yes, I'm female but usually that's not a problem after I've said something smart. OK, I have to prove myself, but so must men in the long run.
But really, my goal is doing well what I try. And for code, that is summarized by the term 'elegant'. No matter what you program, no matter what language.
Inez{R}
What really irritates me are those emails with in the bottom a text like 'under US law you can't sue us if we include this information'. (I can hear them saying 'nah nah nah' and pulling a long nose at me!) And more often than not, the remove-address doesn't exist. Or, and this is the worst INHO, they include a 0800 phone number. As if I could - or would - call this from Europe, where I live...
Inez{R}.
Esther Dyson has some point that direct election can lead to stupid people being chosen. I won't turn this into a political discussion by quoting examples, but I think everyone can find some examples just looking in the history books.
Direct representation can lead to people being chosen because they have a lot of influence, money ("Vote for me and you get a free thingie!"), or because they are make use of scares and rethorics. ("Vote for me! I'm against kiddie porn!")
This two stage mechanism is meant to provide some stability, but why should it only be used by corporate types? Protesters should forget the knee-jerk reaction about direct democracy and use this process to get themselves more influence. Convince Esther and her crew that you are not "stupid people" and get yourself a place in that structure.
Inez{R}
P.S. I won't protest the fact that the US appoints someone to overview something international. After all, it is probably the only way to get some results in a few years instead of in a few tens of years... [sigh]
Don't forget a lot of the IRC servers which join in this strike are run by ISP's who also supply services. When the DDoS are making it more difficult to provide those services, as they say, I can't blame them for taking them down.
Oh, and for the person who posted "we're on the wrong track" - please note that 'the internet' is international, and that the US constitution is not.
Inez{R}