The word "Dollar" comes not from the Dutch "Daalder", as someone in this thread said, but rather, both words are descendants of the German "Thaler", which was a medieval coin of some sort.
And one of the finest "European" currency names would have been "Florin" rather than Crown, Shilling or Penny, but then that name would've been perceived as being too Netherlands-centric, as the Dutch currency symbol is Fl. (for "Florin", even though the currency is called "Gulden" (which, incidentally, means "Golden")).
Re:The Euro is here, i can feel it in my wallet.
on
The Euro
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· Score: 2
In the last couple of months general prices in the Netherlands were raised bij 15%.
Add to this the price increase we had in jan. 2001 when they upped VAT, and it almost seems as if the Dutch government *wants* inflation.
They don't run NT. Their backbone is Tandem machines, which run some sort of UNIX.
Re:Picture of bills with US bill
on
The Euro
·
· Score: 2
IIRC, one of the reasons why the Dutch guy "lost" was that his design couldn't be manufactured in each country - some printing firms simply were unable to produce each and every one of the anti-counterfeiting measures put in his designs. Which is why euro bills are way more secure than their dollar counterparts, but still very unsafe compared to recent Dutch bills.
I haven't. But I have gotten phonecalls from my dad that went something like "you see, there was this e-mail message, and it said 'click here' and I didn't, but still, my computer tries to dial in every five minutes now even though I didn't click when it told me to, just like you told me not to do a thousand times already". Hundreds of times. And, by proxy, from his colleagues.
I'm guessing email viruses are a reality for people who've got better things to do than toy around with computers and read/. (i.e. almost everyone). Count yourself lucky.
From the site: "Customers using Microsoft® Windows® ME or XP, or who have installed the Windows XP Internet Connection Sharing client on Windows 98 or 98SE [are affected]".
This means:
Windows XP is affected
Windows ME is affected
Windows 98 is only affected if it's a client to a WinXP NAT-server
Funnily enough, I haven't seen a patch for WinMe yet, though. What's up with that?
Another thing to consider is that since Windows' code base is being so heavily tested, there would come a time when there wouldn't *be* security bugs in them.
Except that the Windows code base is a moving target; patches and service packs get rid of some old bugs and introduce new ones.
Spot on as far as IIS and other services are concerned, though..
But why does it have to look just like MSFT's products?
Because, like it or not, the MSFT products it looks like (i.e. not XP, which out of the box is horrible IMHO) do a really good job at making day to day tasks simple. There's more than 20 years of research behind that (Xerox PARC ripped off by Apple ripped of by MSFT), so why should the KDE-team spend unnecessary time redoing that research?
This is of course not to say that they shouldn't if they feel they can come up with a better solution, but the one they have now works well enough, so...
And it doesn't look as if Java is going to be the environment of choice for every office suite/multimedia app/game out there for a long time to come (i.e. never).
Also, if you do get a situation where one programming standard dominates the market the same way Windows does now, you'll just shift the problem from MS to the new standard.
In defense of Microsoft, however, their products *do* get used by many, many more people than those by all other software manufacturers put together. Statistically, Microsoft products are therefore *far* more likely to yield *discovered* bugs, in part also because these products are a far more interesting and easy target for attack ("quality testing by script kiddies").
I'm pretty sure the number of bugs discovered in Linux will rise dramatically for the same reason once it replaces Windows as the most popular OS (I'd wager one or two price hikes for WinXP 2 and 3 would do the trick;-).
Of course I won't deny MS does make braindead marketing vs. security decisions as well (active scripting in an *e-mail client*? geez).
Where is the team that is being paid for this development?
Check Google. I'm sure you can find quite a few teams that are working on this.
So far, none of these teams' efforts have been successfull. I'd wager that is because the actual viewing area is 2D. Maybe if we start to use VR-glasses, 3D workspaces would be convenient, but since that isn't the case a 2D desktop is far less clunky than a (badly) projected 3D one.
The problem of your argument is that you seem to assume that autists actually care to function in society. The fact is that most don't seem to care.
Actually, I don't assume that autists care to function in society. I would, however, like to differentiate between people who suffer from a neurological disorder that makes it *physically* impossible for them to function in society, and people who have nothing wrong with them neurologically speaking but who are allowed to let their "loner" tendencies go unchecked. The *result* of letting these "normal" tendencies go unchecked is, in practice, the same as being a "proper autist", you let someone get away with shying away for society for twenty years growing up, and they'll be complete and utter social wrecks, and as yet, there's very little you can do about it afterwards.
You'll also find that psychological disorders (notice I'm not questioning the fact that these kids *do* suffer from psychological disorders) can lead to behavioral abberance that's very similar to that caused by neurological disorders: flapping hands, rocking back and forth, that sort of thing. The cause of the behavior is different, however.
When I bring ADHD into this discussion, it's not because I think the two disorders are similar, it's because I feel there's a similar mechanism at work ("bad upbringing", my grandma would call it, secretly, many teachers would agree with her). Whether parents can help it is often debatable, but fact is there was hardly any ADHD, borderline psychosis or "almost autism" fifty years ago, when the social fabric was a lot stronger than it is today (of course, they had other problems back then, one of which was a "disorder" called "neurastheny", common in repressed women, homosexuals and others who weren't allowed to live fulfilling lives).
But yes, I agree with you that something needs to be done. Present-day Dutch society (but I imagine this holds true for the rest of the western world as well) is ridiculously short-sighted in forcing parents to spend insane amounts of time at work, causing them to neglect the upbringing of their children. Day care, therapists, specialty babysitters etc. aren't the solution, they merely alleviate the most pressing symptoms. Rethinking our (work) ethic would have a much more lasting effect.
Somehow, it seems that when I say "lots of spoilt brats get labelled ADHD and loners get labelled autists" lots of people misread this to mean "every ADHD-case is a spoilt brat and autists are simply loners". The point, once again, is that there *are* genuine cases, but there's also a *lot* of cases where "disease" labels are slapped on kids just to define away the real problem (lousy social environment/upbringing). Ask anyone who works in education. There's just too many ADHD-kids/"mild autists"/dyslexics/etc running around today to make it believable that they *all* have a neurological condition. At the same time, it's a *fact* that many parents do a lousy job teaching their children moral and social values, partly because they simply work too much. All I'm saying is that this is a much more plausible cause for such an increase in pathological *behavior* in kids. So people who deal with *real* autists, ADHD-kids, dyslexics, what have you, I'm *not* *talking* *about* *you*.
I meant no disrespect to people dealing with *real* cases, I was talking about the increasing tendency to slap "diseased" labels on spoilt brats and loners. I haven't said that there is no such thing as autism at all, it's a serious neurological condition (I happen to know this because I've looked into it for more than a mere "half hour").
PDD-NOS is defined as a condition where the patient exhibits *some* of the traits of classic autism, but not all. You will, perhaps, agree with me that this makes it a rather questionable diagnosis: run through the checklist and you'll pretty soon be labelling yourself "a mild autist".
It's *this* what I'm talking about, not real autism, such as the autism your son has.
The same with ADHD: *some* kids do have a condition where they benefit from Ritalin, but nowadays every spoilt brat gets diagnosed with ADHD and given Ritalin to make him manageable. I believe you are mistaken if you say that in healthy kids Ritalin acts as a stimulant, IIRC, this is the case with amphetamines: it used to be that hyperactive kids were given Dexedrine (!), it would calm them down, while healthy adults would get all hyper on it. (wasn't there some sort of age thing as well?).
I'm not "blaming" anyone, just pointing out that in a lot of cases (esp. Silicon Valley, as discussed in the article), lack of parent involvement in the upbringing of their kids is the most obvious culprit.
I'm also not saying there isn't anything wrong with kids who manifest pathological behavior while there's nothing wrong with them neurologically. However, a lot of these psychological pathologies are very difficult to diagnose accurately (obvious, given the fact that psychology is still a very vague and poorly defined field) and there's a lot of quack psychologists out there who are keen to slap labels on kids that are "difficult" to deal with so that both the psychologist and the parents can feel satisfied: the problem is given a name, the manifestations of the problem can be checked (with Ritalin, for example) while the *cause* remains unknown and untreated.
Also, you shouldn't underestimate the impact of peers: your mom can teach you all sorts of social skills, but if you go out into an environment where no one else possesses these skills or where it's at least "ok" not to have these skills, it's not going to do you a lot of good.
As regards Asperger's syndrome: modern western society actually *encourages* monomania, focussing on developing a skill (especially hacking) while ignoring your environment is seen as somewhat good. It's somewhat acceptable, and it's not the biggest problem in the world if your child spends an inordinate amount of time doing something he loves doing. You'll find, however, that in collectivist societies, such as in Asia, ignoring your social obligations is very much frowned upon.
What I'm curious about, however, and excuse me if this is getting to personal: do you have problems with *all* forms of social interactions or just complex ones, such as sarcasm? As I understand it, "true" autists (the neurological cases) have trouble even with basic emotions such as sadness or anger. It would seem to me that basic emotions and social skills (recognising basic emotions in others) are genetically programmed, while the more complex ones are icing on the cake, so to speak, that are taught.
Bill Gates, however, is the child of two very well educated parents who held very high and time consuming positions. That would account, at least in part, for his socially abberant behavior.
It would seem to me that Asperger's syndrome is much closer to something like obsessive-compulsive disorder (a psychological condition that, like all others, is rather vaguely defined, but which, if it's severe enough, definitely is pathological). True autists have damaged brains. I'm pretty sure Bill Gates and Richard Stallman don't.
That, of course, is open to debate. But if you were to meet someone who suffers from the *neurological* disorder I'm pretty sure we'd both agree his level social skills is pathological.
A lot of reclusive loners can function socially, i.e., they know how to read emotions in others, maybe not very well, but they *will*, for example, understand that if someone is yelling at them, that someone is angry. Someone with neurological autism can't do this.
But yes, I agree with you that it's hard to define where "normal" stops and "pathological" begins in some cases. For instance, one of my g/f's students is an iffy case who *seems* to not know that when he vents his opinions every time he disagrees with one of his teachers, they'll get mad at him. He attracts trouble because he apparently doesn't realise the consequences of his actions, and he doesn't really interact well with his peers either. Whether this makes him a (very) difficult child or an autist isn't quite clear, however. He has suffered severe trauma in his early childhood (father committed suicide), so that *may* also be a cause of his "weird" behavior. But until they get a psychiatrist to take a look at him, the exact nature of his problem is anyone's guess.
Neither autism nor asperger's syndrome have been proven to be genetic disorders *at all*.
And I wasn't talking about happy or loving, but about spending time on your kids, a lot of it, to guide them into understanding and internalizing what constitutes socially acceptable behavior. Very few parents have the time to do this nowadays, and I'd guess this holds true especially in Silicon Valley.
People with autism show extreme ability in some area of scientific or artistic endeavor but extreme retardation in basic human social and communication skills (i.e. some can barely speak).
Bzzt. Autism, as in "the bonafide psychiatric/neurological disorder called autism" does not equal "extreme ability in one area vs. extreme retardation in social and communication skills". It's a genuine, empirically verifiable form of brain damage that *primarily* leads to severe retardation of social skills (and that, I can assure you, is a very broad category of skills), but to other forms of retardation as well. The so-called "Idiot Savant" is nowhere near as sexy as urban mythology would have you believe. If you were to take a look at the fruits of these so-called "extreme abilities", you'd find that they aren't that wonderful at all, they show insistence to do something, but not any form of talent, genius or what have you. Rather, they look like they were done by someone with Down Syndrome, but in a very mechanical, monomanic way.
Someone else in this thread mentions another popular misconception, that of Einstein being an example of an autist: this, too, is wildly off the mark. Sure, he was a bad student, but for the most part his social skills were well within "normal" range.
If you were to meet an autist in real life, you'd find that, to put it bluntly, he'd be a "retard", hardly distinguishable from other "retards".
Agreed. The most obvious factor at work here isn't radiation or bad genes, it's both parents working ridiculously long hours and leaving the children to raise themselves. For the past ten, twenty years, there's been an upsurge in "psychological disorders" children are supposed to suffer from that, to my mind, aren't disorders at all, just fancy names given to bad upbringing.
ADHD=spoilt brat
PDD-NOS ("mild form of autism") = loner
I've recently looked into this stuff together with my g/f, who is a secondary school teacher in a thinly populated area of the Netherlands (more like Montana than Silicon Valley), and we both felt that the criteria used to diagnose so many children these days with "psychological disorders" are extremely vague, appliccable in a whole slew of different situations (tends to be an indication of bad science) and, worst of all, there's a striking similarity between purportedly "pathological" behavior and "healthy" behavior.
Now in a situation where parents actually have time to spend on bringing up their children, such tendencies usually get checked in such a degree that the child may be a loner or a very chaotic person, but at least he'll be aware that in order to function within his society, there are some situations in which it's advantageous to conform somewhat. If, on the other hand, both parents work 9 to 9 in a cubicle farm, rarely have dinner with the kids and leave upbringing to school (teachers don't have time to raise 30 kids all at once), television, books, computer games, the internet, what have you, such tendencies will run unchecked, resulting in society, parents, doctors and overworked school teachers screaming "ADHD!" or "autism!" or what have you.
It's a problem that's not unique to Silicon Valley, it happens everywhere, but given the nature of Sillicon Valley society, it's not surprising that the problem is most apparent there. I'll guarantee, however, that it'll be a problem in other parts of the western world as well, and I'm very curious to see what it'll do to the fabric of society in years to come, when all these autists/ADHD/whatever kids grow up and start assuming positions of power and responsabilities.
Slashdot Mirror
not really. it looks like XP with the icons renamed to "Lindows . . ."
Nope, it's KDE. As every KDE-user will be able to confirm.
The word "Dollar" comes not from the Dutch "Daalder", as someone in this thread said, but rather, both words are descendants of the German "Thaler", which was a medieval coin of some sort.
And one of the finest "European" currency names would have been "Florin" rather than Crown, Shilling or Penny, but then that name would've been perceived as being too Netherlands-centric, as the Dutch currency symbol is Fl. (for "Florin", even though the currency is called "Gulden" (which, incidentally, means "Golden")).
In the last couple of months general prices in the Netherlands were raised bij 15%.
Add to this the price increase we had in jan. 2001 when they upped VAT, and it almost seems as if the Dutch government *wants* inflation.
They don't run NT. Their backbone is Tandem machines, which run some sort of UNIX.
IIRC, one of the reasons why the Dutch guy "lost" was that his design couldn't be manufactured in each country - some printing firms simply were unable to produce each and every one of the anti-counterfeiting measures put in his designs. Which is why euro bills are way more secure than their dollar counterparts, but still very unsafe compared to recent Dutch bills.
who hasn't gotten a single one of these worms?
/. (i.e. almost everyone). Count yourself lucky.
I haven't. But I have gotten phonecalls from my dad that went something like "you see, there was this e-mail message, and it said 'click here' and I didn't, but still, my computer tries to dial in every five minutes now even though I didn't click when it told me to, just like you told me not to do a thousand times already". Hundreds of times. And, by proxy, from his colleagues.
I'm guessing email viruses are a reality for people who've got better things to do than toy around with computers and read
But thankfully, those smart guys over in Redmond figured to close off everything you don't need for casual surfing and e-mail by default. Fancy that.
...
Seriously, such foresight really amazes me, it's almost as if they've learned something
This means:
Funnily enough, I haven't seen a patch for WinMe yet, though. What's up with that?
Another thing to consider is that since Windows' code base is being so heavily tested, there would come a time when there wouldn't *be* security bugs in them.
..
Except that the Windows code base is a moving target; patches and service packs get rid of some old bugs and introduce new ones.
Spot on as far as IIS and other services are concerned, though
But why does it have to look just like MSFT's products?
...
Because, like it or not, the MSFT products it looks like (i.e. not XP, which out of the box is horrible IMHO) do a really good job at making day to day tasks simple. There's more than 20 years of research behind that (Xerox PARC ripped off by Apple ripped of by MSFT), so why should the KDE-team spend unnecessary time redoing that research?
This is of course not to say that they shouldn't if they feel they can come up with a better solution, but the one they have now works well enough, so
Can we create the world described?
...
It's called Java, I believe
And it doesn't look as if Java is going to be the environment of choice for every office suite/multimedia app/game out there for a long time to come (i.e. never).
Also, if you do get a situation where one programming standard dominates the market the same way Windows does now, you'll just shift the problem from MS to the new standard.
In defense of Microsoft, however, their products *do* get used by many, many more people than those by all other software manufacturers put together. Statistically, Microsoft products are therefore *far* more likely to yield *discovered* bugs, in part also because these products are a far more interesting and easy target for attack ("quality testing by script kiddies").
;-).
I'm pretty sure the number of bugs discovered in Linux will rise dramatically for the same reason once it replaces Windows as the most popular OS (I'd wager one or two price hikes for WinXP 2 and 3 would do the trick
Of course I won't deny MS does make braindead marketing vs. security decisions as well (active scripting in an *e-mail client*? geez).
Where is the team that is being paid for this development?
Check Google. I'm sure you can find quite a few teams that are working on this.
So far, none of these teams' efforts have been successfull. I'd wager that is because the actual viewing area is 2D. Maybe if we start to use VR-glasses, 3D workspaces would be convenient, but since that isn't the case a 2D desktop is far less clunky than a (badly) projected 3D one.
my 2cts, anyway..
The problem of your argument is that you seem to assume that autists actually care to function in society. The fact is that most don't seem to care.
Actually, I don't assume that autists care to function in society. I would, however, like to differentiate between people who suffer from a neurological disorder that makes it *physically* impossible for them to function in society, and people who have nothing wrong with them neurologically speaking but who are allowed to let their "loner" tendencies go unchecked. The *result* of letting these "normal" tendencies go unchecked is, in practice, the same as being a "proper autist", you let someone get away with shying away for society for twenty years growing up, and they'll be complete and utter social wrecks, and as yet, there's very little you can do about it afterwards.
You'll also find that psychological disorders (notice I'm not questioning the fact that these kids *do* suffer from psychological disorders) can lead to behavioral abberance that's very similar to that caused by neurological disorders: flapping hands, rocking back and forth, that sort of thing. The cause of the behavior is different, however.
When I bring ADHD into this discussion, it's not because I think the two disorders are similar, it's because I feel there's a similar mechanism at work ("bad upbringing", my grandma would call it, secretly, many teachers would agree with her). Whether parents can help it is often debatable, but fact is there was hardly any ADHD, borderline psychosis or "almost autism" fifty years ago, when the social fabric was a lot stronger than it is today (of course, they had other problems back then, one of which was a "disorder" called "neurastheny", common in repressed women, homosexuals and others who weren't allowed to live fulfilling lives).
But yes, I agree with you that something needs to be done. Present-day Dutch society (but I imagine this holds true for the rest of the western world as well) is ridiculously short-sighted in forcing parents to spend insane amounts of time at work, causing them to neglect the upbringing of their children. Day care, therapists, specialty babysitters etc. aren't the solution, they merely alleviate the most pressing symptoms. Rethinking our (work) ethic would have a much more lasting effect.
Maybe I'm not a programmer.
Somehow, it seems that when I say "lots of spoilt brats get labelled ADHD and loners get labelled autists" lots of people misread this to mean "every ADHD-case is a spoilt brat and autists are simply loners". The point, once again, is that there *are* genuine cases, but there's also a *lot* of cases where "disease" labels are slapped on kids just to define away the real problem (lousy social environment/upbringing). Ask anyone who works in education. There's just too many ADHD-kids/"mild autists"/dyslexics/etc running around today to make it believable that they *all* have a neurological condition. At the same time, it's a *fact* that many parents do a lousy job teaching their children moral and social values, partly because they simply work too much. All I'm saying is that this is a much more plausible cause for such an increase in pathological *behavior* in kids. So people who deal with *real* autists, ADHD-kids, dyslexics, what have you, I'm *not* *talking* *about* *you*.
I meant no disrespect to people dealing with *real* cases, I was talking about the increasing tendency to slap "diseased" labels on spoilt brats and loners. I haven't said that there is no such thing as autism at all, it's a serious neurological condition (I happen to know this because I've looked into it for more than a mere "half hour").
PDD-NOS is defined as a condition where the patient exhibits *some* of the traits of classic autism, but not all. You will, perhaps, agree with me that this makes it a rather questionable diagnosis: run through the checklist and you'll pretty soon be labelling yourself "a mild autist".
It's *this* what I'm talking about, not real autism, such as the autism your son has.
The same with ADHD: *some* kids do have a condition where they benefit from Ritalin, but nowadays every spoilt brat gets diagnosed with ADHD and given Ritalin to make him manageable. I believe you are mistaken if you say that in healthy kids Ritalin acts as a stimulant, IIRC, this is the case with amphetamines: it used to be that hyperactive kids were given Dexedrine (!), it would calm them down, while healthy adults would get all hyper on it. (wasn't there some sort of age thing as well?).
I'm not "blaming" anyone, just pointing out that in a lot of cases (esp. Silicon Valley, as discussed in the article), lack of parent involvement in the upbringing of their kids is the most obvious culprit.
I'm also not saying there isn't anything wrong with kids who manifest pathological behavior while there's nothing wrong with them neurologically. However, a lot of these psychological pathologies are very difficult to diagnose accurately (obvious, given the fact that psychology is still a very vague and poorly defined field) and there's a lot of quack psychologists out there who are keen to slap labels on kids that are "difficult" to deal with so that both the psychologist and the parents can feel satisfied: the problem is given a name, the manifestations of the problem can be checked (with Ritalin, for example) while the *cause* remains unknown and untreated.
Also, you shouldn't underestimate the impact of peers: your mom can teach you all sorts of social skills, but if you go out into an environment where no one else possesses these skills or where it's at least "ok" not to have these skills, it's not going to do you a lot of good.
As regards Asperger's syndrome: modern western society actually *encourages* monomania, focussing on developing a skill (especially hacking) while ignoring your environment is seen as somewhat good. It's somewhat acceptable, and it's not the biggest problem in the world if your child spends an inordinate amount of time doing something he loves doing. You'll find, however, that in collectivist societies, such as in Asia, ignoring your social obligations is very much frowned upon.
What I'm curious about, however, and excuse me if this is getting to personal: do you have problems with *all* forms of social interactions or just complex ones, such as sarcasm? As I understand it, "true" autists (the neurological cases) have trouble even with basic emotions such as sadness or anger. It would seem to me that basic emotions and social skills (recognising basic emotions in others) are genetically programmed, while the more complex ones are icing on the cake, so to speak, that are taught.
Bill Gates, however, is the child of two very well educated parents who held very high and time consuming positions. That would account, at least in part, for his socially abberant behavior.
It would seem to me that Asperger's syndrome is much closer to something like obsessive-compulsive disorder (a psychological condition that, like all others, is rather vaguely defined, but which, if it's severe enough, definitely is pathological). True autists have damaged brains. I'm pretty sure Bill Gates and Richard Stallman don't.
That, of course, is open to debate. But if you were to meet someone who suffers from the *neurological* disorder I'm pretty sure we'd both agree his level social skills is pathological.
A lot of reclusive loners can function socially, i.e., they know how to read emotions in others, maybe not very well, but they *will*, for example, understand that if someone is yelling at them, that someone is angry. Someone with neurological autism can't do this.
But yes, I agree with you that it's hard to define where "normal" stops and "pathological" begins in some cases. For instance, one of my g/f's students is an iffy case who *seems* to not know that when he vents his opinions every time he disagrees with one of his teachers, they'll get mad at him. He attracts trouble because he apparently doesn't realise the consequences of his actions, and he doesn't really interact well with his peers either. Whether this makes him a (very) difficult child or an autist isn't quite clear, however. He has suffered severe trauma in his early childhood (father committed suicide), so that *may* also be a cause of his "weird" behavior. But until they get a psychiatrist to take a look at him, the exact nature of his problem is anyone's guess.
Neither autism nor asperger's syndrome have been proven to be genetic disorders *at all*.
And I wasn't talking about happy or loving, but about spending time on your kids, a lot of it, to guide them into understanding and internalizing what constitutes socially acceptable behavior. Very few parents have the time to do this nowadays, and I'd guess this holds true especially in Silicon Valley.
Dont compare someone with diabeties or cancer to someone with Autism.
Someone with a REAL disease which they can die from needs help.
Yes compare someone with diabetes or cancer to someone with autism. It *is* a real disease with empirically diagnosable brain disfunction.
The same, incidentally, is true for clinical depression: you'll find decreased levels of serotonin in a person who suffers from it.
People with autism show extreme ability in some area of scientific or artistic endeavor but extreme retardation in basic human social and communication skills (i.e. some can barely speak).
Bzzt. Autism, as in "the bonafide psychiatric/neurological disorder called autism" does not equal "extreme ability in one area vs. extreme retardation in social and communication skills". It's a genuine, empirically verifiable form of brain damage that *primarily* leads to severe retardation of social skills (and that, I can assure you, is a very broad category of skills), but to other forms of retardation as well. The so-called "Idiot Savant" is nowhere near as sexy as urban mythology would have you believe. If you were to take a look at the fruits of these so-called "extreme abilities", you'd find that they aren't that wonderful at all, they show insistence to do something, but not any form of talent, genius or what have you. Rather, they look like they were done by someone with Down Syndrome, but in a very mechanical, monomanic way.
Someone else in this thread mentions another popular misconception, that of Einstein being an example of an autist: this, too, is wildly off the mark. Sure, he was a bad student, but for the most part his social skills were well within "normal" range.
If you were to meet an autist in real life, you'd find that, to put it bluntly, he'd be a "retard", hardly distinguishable from other "retards".
Agreed. The most obvious factor at work here isn't radiation or bad genes, it's both parents working ridiculously long hours and leaving the children to raise themselves. For the past ten, twenty years, there's been an upsurge in "psychological disorders" children are supposed to suffer from that, to my mind, aren't disorders at all, just fancy names given to bad upbringing.
ADHD=spoilt brat
PDD-NOS ("mild form of autism") = loner
I've recently looked into this stuff together with my g/f, who is a secondary school teacher in a thinly populated area of the Netherlands (more like Montana than Silicon Valley), and we both felt that the criteria used to diagnose so many children these days with "psychological disorders" are extremely vague, appliccable in a whole slew of different situations (tends to be an indication of bad science) and, worst of all, there's a striking similarity between purportedly "pathological" behavior and "healthy" behavior.
Now in a situation where parents actually have time to spend on bringing up their children, such tendencies usually get checked in such a degree that the child may be a loner or a very chaotic person, but at least he'll be aware that in order to function within his society, there are some situations in which it's advantageous to conform somewhat. If, on the other hand, both parents work 9 to 9 in a cubicle farm, rarely have dinner with the kids and leave upbringing to school (teachers don't have time to raise 30 kids all at once), television, books, computer games, the internet, what have you, such tendencies will run unchecked, resulting in society, parents, doctors and overworked school teachers screaming "ADHD!" or "autism!" or what have you.
It's a problem that's not unique to Silicon Valley, it happens everywhere, but given the nature of Sillicon Valley society, it's not surprising that the problem is most apparent there. I'll guarantee, however, that it'll be a problem in other parts of the western world as well, and I'm very curious to see what it'll do to the fabric of society in years to come, when all these autists/ADHD/whatever kids grow up and start assuming positions of power and responsabilities.
You try and fly an airplane into a building in MS Flight Sim - it's hard!