As has been noted elsewhere, there isn't any need for 10,000 more engineers: there are already plenty of engineers, but they're not working as engineers right now because engineering doesn't pay enough. Creating 10,000 more unemployed engineers is not a solution.
And with birth rates falling, there is no need for 100,000 new teachers either. What there is a need for is teachers qualified in subjects: just getting a teaching diploma is useless to the kids if you don't know anything about the subjects you are supposed to teach. Teachers without a subject qualification need to be taken off the job until they get one (and if the government has the money, put it towards getting those teachers properly trained).
'Treating the freshman year as a "sink or swim" experience and accepting attrition as inevitable,' says a report by the National Academy of Engineering, 'is both unfair to students and wasteful of resources and faculty time.'
What would really help is admission to college on the basis of merit alone, rather than fulfilment of "social" quotas, or how much Daddy has paid the college for a new facility, or how fast you can run or throw a ball. If you continue to fill up the classes with people incapable of coping with the subject matter, you are depriving others who would be able to benefit.
a five-year initiative to encourage faculty members in the STEM fields to use more interactive teaching techniques
Which will achieve nothing. Providing students with buttons to press instead of questions to ask will simply teach students how to press buttons. We already have monkeys who can do this.
If I read the question correctly, he's not talking about getting off of spam lists, he's talking about getting off of legitimate mailing lists that are annoying.
Which doing what he suggests won't achieve — at least, not immediately. LISTSERV, for example, normally takes note of a 550 unknown user, but only adds it to a monitoring list, because some users may be on flaky Exchange servers which sometimes just issue 550s when they have lost their little minds temporarily. After a configurable period or repeated 550s, the address is removed from the list; otherwise it stays. The action is configurable: I'm on one list which instantly drops me if my employer's mail server has the slightest problem (which happens even in the best-run services). I then have to go crawl to the owner and ask nicely to be let back on.
I am, however, also on lists I joined for a specific purpose long ago, now long passed, but their supposed remove-yourself service never works, and I can see there might be a need for a reliable fake of an SMTP rejection.
Bounce has legit purposes. The only reason you don't see it in many other clients is the pompous philosophy that UI's should completely remove features that might cause any confusion to any one of the users. It's extremely simple to implement, so that's not why it isn't there.
It's unfortunate that Elm's "b" command (called "bounce") isn't any such thing, but actually a "redirect". When I originally asked for the same functionality in Thunderbird, I carelessly used the word "bounce", and this has led to the thread lasting for nearly a decade, as people constantly argued for and against allowing Tbird to actually perform a real bounce, when all I wanted was a redirect (had I know that that is what it was called — at the time — I would have kept my big mouth shut:-) Redirect is of course now available as an add-on anyway, making the point moot, but the argument continues.
But yes, having a button that could be used to spoof an MTA error-reject would be very useful, although in corporate and campus environments (where individual users cannot normally send their own SMTP direct to the outside world) it would probably never pass through the outgoing servers.
I love this problem. I have been reading about P=NP blah blah blah but never had a solid mental picture. This is great. I get it. Thanks. I wonder how many other mathematical misunderstandings could be cleared up with something as simple as pancakes?
It's easy: P=pancakes and NP=no pancakes. When P=NP it means you ate them all. The problem is that P-NP != 0 because there's always some maple syrup left on the plate...
It's part of the reason why government is inherently inefficient.
I don't see your example as "inefficient": if part of the objective is to ensure support for compliance, social policies, and to enable fiscal or technical accountability, etc, then, assuming those objectives have been achieved (and that they come at a cost), there is no inefficiency. You could just as easily argue that corporate consultancy/contracting companies are "inefficient" because of the overhead that goes to stockholders, lavish management expenses, or to bribing officials (a requirement in some countries), when they should just be charging for the wages of the person doing the work.
Where inefficiency really kicks in is in those bits of the form-filling and paperwork process that were created by uncoordinated control structures and which therefore do not contribute to accountability (or FoI or whatever their justification is).
Follow the money, follow the greed, find the power, find the corruption. It's a pretty common theme and has been going on for decades^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hmillenia. Ain't gonna change any time soon.
The big consulting firms do get away with charging significantly more
They generally offer more facilities than the SMB or solo consultant can, like access to a wider range of specialists, and the ability to have a replacement there the next morning if the assigned consultant drops dead or something. This all goes to increase the comfort zone of the client, and gets factored into the rate. Where the SMB/solo scores is in flexibility: the big contracting consultancies have their own corporate methodologies and apply them invariably, even where they are inapplicable; whereas the small guy will adapt the way of working to match the client's requirements.
Thank you...it looks like a Galaxy S2 or Prime will do the job.
Google's decision to omit proxy support was a sweetener to the US telcos so they could make more moneyselling their sucky expensive G3 networking by making it impossible to use Androids with company or academic wireless networks. They didn't know that outside the US, G3/Edge/H/etc connections are very cheap, and that they would lose a huge number of student and business potential users because of the omission of proxy support.
It's when a wireless access point sends packets to the Internet via a proxy server. This is standard on all large-scale wireless networks (eg industrial, campus, conference centre, etc). Lack of proxy support means I can connect to the AP, but my web/mail/twitter/etc requests go nowhere because the device is sending them to the AP instead of to the proxy.
All comments below about proxy support being something to do with tethering are complete rubbish.
I obviously didn't make it plain what I wanted to do. I want to be able to use wireless access points which run proxy servers behind them (all industrial and campus networks, for example). This is a standard setting on all devices except Androids, where the facility for specifying a proxy was left out. (Weirdly, it was included in the settings for 3G connections, where it is never needed, but omitted from regular wifi configs, where it is common. Go figure.) Regular wifi at home, in cafés, etc works fine: it's only APs that sit in front of proxies that cause problems.
...Just like they squealed like babies when governments started to say that seat belts would be compulsory. They always use that argument, and it is utter bollocks every time...
The guy is delusional and an asshole, but then he was employed to be delusional and an asshole, for an organisation full of delusionals and assholes, pursuing objectives set by assholes, for assholes; and he satisfies the requirements perfectly.
And never forget that your government that you elect[ed] is in favour of all this crap. If you don't like it, the proper remedy is to take the matter up with your friendly local pubic representative.
Didn't they say that 30mpg was impossible and would put them out of business, despite foreign car makers doing it for years?
No they didn't say that. Nor have the foreign car makers been "doing it for years". If you make a big heavy vehicle it is going to get crappy fuel efficiency. US consumers, for better or worse, love big heavy cars.
Good grief. What planet did you just arrive from?
Of course they said it: all auto manufacturers did, both in the USA and everywhere else that governments started mentioning consumption targets. Just like they squealed like babies when governments started to say that seat belts would be compulsory. They always use that argument, and it is utter bollocks every time (and they know it, but they have bought enough politicians to believe they might just get away with it).
And foreign car makers have been doing it for years, FFS. My father's old Triumph 2000 got over 30mpg and that was in 1972. Yes of course US drivers love big heavy cars: with gas being kept artificially cheap they can afford to.
And gas is certainly $7 a gallon in plenty of places outside the US.
If you think Detroit is going to commit a production run to an engine that has maybe 10 prototype copies, you've got to be kidding.
I don't think that was the point. It was that Detroit claimed it wasn't interested at all, on the basis that they had ''tried it before [a long time ago] and it didn't work''. If true, that smacks of arrogance, not business. If they had said (as you imply they should) ''that's very interesting, go and make it work demonstrably in production, and then come back and we'll talk'' then I'd be more inclined to believe good of them;-)
And the much-cherished American Myth #32768 that you have to change your oil every 5,000 miles.
Mine only needs a change every 20,000 or major service, like most every other modern car outside the USA.
When I first visited the USA, I couldn't work out why there was a lube station on every street, like the cars were all made in the 1920s. It took a while for it to dawn on me that a collaboration between auto manufacturers and oil companies could be very beneficial to both (to say nothing of the insurers).
The efficiency and power isn't all of the point. We're still stuck with four (usually) pistons that go up and down and propel the car forward with a series of short, explosive jerks (that's the power cycle I'm talking about, not the Detroit execs). Apart from an abortive flirtation with the Wankel engine, we still have basically the same setup that Benz used in the first car. Sure, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and if it still makes money, keep at it, but this attitude means that we'll still be drilling holes in the ground to get oil, and burning it in piston-engine cars in 2100. I'd like to see a little more progress and imagination from the car makers.
If all that is true, then I think selling the whole idea to Asia is an excellent move. Detroit has been an albatross around the American neck for far too long.
Slashdot Mirror
And with birth rates falling, there is no need for 100,000 new teachers either. What there is a need for is teachers qualified in subjects: just getting a teaching diploma is useless to the kids if you don't know anything about the subjects you are supposed to teach. Teachers without a subject qualification need to be taken off the job until they get one (and if the government has the money, put it towards getting those teachers properly trained).
'Treating the freshman year as a "sink or swim" experience and accepting attrition as inevitable,' says a report by the National Academy of Engineering, 'is both unfair to students and wasteful of resources and faculty time.'
What would really help is admission to college on the basis of merit alone, rather than fulfilment of "social" quotas, or how much Daddy has paid the college for a new facility, or how fast you can run or throw a ball. If you continue to fill up the classes with people incapable of coping with the subject matter, you are depriving others who would be able to benefit.
a five-year initiative to encourage faculty members in the STEM fields to use more interactive teaching techniques
Which will achieve nothing. Providing students with buttons to press instead of questions to ask will simply teach students how to press buttons. We already have monkeys who can do this.
If I read the question correctly, he's not talking about getting off of spam lists, he's talking about getting off of legitimate mailing lists that are annoying.
Which doing what he suggests won't achieve — at least, not immediately. LISTSERV, for example, normally takes note of a 550 unknown user, but only adds it to a monitoring list, because some users may be on flaky Exchange servers which sometimes just issue 550s when they have lost their little minds temporarily. After a configurable period or repeated 550s, the address is removed from the list; otherwise it stays. The action is configurable: I'm on one list which instantly drops me if my employer's mail server has the slightest problem (which happens even in the best-run services). I then have to go crawl to the owner and ask nicely to be let back on.
I am, however, also on lists I joined for a specific purpose long ago, now long passed, but their supposed remove-yourself service never works, and I can see there might be a need for a reliable fake of an SMTP rejection.
Bounce has legit purposes. The only reason you don't see it in many other clients is the pompous philosophy that UI's should completely remove features that might cause any confusion to any one of the users. It's extremely simple to implement, so that's not why it isn't there.
It's unfortunate that Elm's "b" command (called "bounce") isn't any such thing, but actually a "redirect". When I originally asked for the same functionality in Thunderbird, I carelessly used the word "bounce", and this has led to the thread lasting for nearly a decade, as people constantly argued for and against allowing Tbird to actually perform a real bounce, when all I wanted was a redirect (had I know that that is what it was called — at the time — I would have kept my big mouth shut :-) Redirect is of course now available as an add-on anyway, making the point moot, but the argument continues.
But yes, having a button that could be used to spoof an MTA error-reject would be very useful, although in corporate and campus environments (where individual users cannot normally send their own SMTP direct to the outside world) it would probably never pass through the outgoing servers.
The religious right sure would
I love this problem. I have been reading about P=NP blah blah blah but never had a solid mental picture. This is great. I get it. Thanks. I wonder how many other mathematical misunderstandings could be cleared up with something as simple as pancakes?
It's easy: P=pancakes and NP=no pancakes. When P=NP it means you ate them all. The problem is that P-NP != 0 because there's always some maple syrup left on the plate...
I think he's concerned about the welfare and information available to his family, not himself.
It's part of the reason why government is inherently inefficient.
I don't see your example as "inefficient": if part of the objective is to ensure support for compliance, social policies, and to enable fiscal or technical accountability, etc, then, assuming those objectives have been achieved (and that they come at a cost), there is no inefficiency. You could just as easily argue that corporate consultancy/contracting companies are "inefficient" because of the overhead that goes to stockholders, lavish management expenses, or to bribing officials (a requirement in some countries), when they should just be charging for the wages of the person doing the work.
Where inefficiency really kicks in is in those bits of the form-filling and paperwork process that were created by uncoordinated control structures and which therefore do not contribute to accountability (or FoI or whatever their justification is).
Follow the money, follow the greed, find the power, find the corruption. It's a pretty common theme and has been going on for decades^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hmillenia. Ain't gonna change any time soon.
The big consulting firms do get away with charging significantly more
They generally offer more facilities than the SMB or solo consultant can, like access to a wider range of specialists, and the ability to have a replacement there the next morning if the assigned consultant drops dead or something. This all goes to increase the comfort zone of the client, and gets factored into the rate. Where the SMB/solo scores is in flexibility: the big contracting consultancies have their own corporate methodologies and apply them invariably, even where they are inapplicable; whereas the small guy will adapt the way of working to match the client's requirements.
[...]banking websites. It's different to go after a group that is well armed and not restrained by morality and laws.
Banks are restrained by morality and laws? I must have missed something in the last 3-4 years.
Google's decision to omit proxy support was a sweetener to the US telcos so they could make more moneyselling their sucky expensive G3 networking by making it impossible to use Androids with company or academic wireless networks. They didn't know that outside the US, G3/Edge/H/etc connections are very cheap, and that they would lose a huge number of student and business potential users because of the omission of proxy support.
All comments below about proxy support being something to do with tethering are complete rubbish.
I obviously didn't make it plain what I wanted to do. I want to be able to use wireless access points which run proxy servers behind them (all industrial and campus networks, for example). This is a standard setting on all devices except Androids, where the facility for specifying a proxy was left out. (Weirdly, it was included in the settings for 3G connections, where it is never needed, but omitted from regular wifi configs, where it is common. Go figure.) Regular wifi at home, in cafés, etc works fine: it's only APs that sit in front of proxies that cause problems.
Could be the last toy you ever have to buy for your kids?
Close, but no cigar. Not until it can make something with wheels that turn :-)
...Roger Capriotti hopes people will choose IE9...
Cool, so there's an IE9 for Ubuntu Linux now? Where do I find the .deb?
AOL? Who they?
...Just like they squealed like babies when governments started to say that seat belts would be compulsory. They always use that argument, and it is utter bollocks every time...
Just saw this reposted on G+ A Brief History of Corporate Whining — my point exactly.
--
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it had bloody well better be a duck, or there'll be trouble
The job of Director of WIPO is still open for applications (closes 18 Oct): https://erecruit.wipo.int/public/hrd-cl-vac-view.asp?jobinfo_uid_c=25114&vaclng=en
And never forget that your government that you elect[ed] is in favour of all this crap. If you don't like it, the proper remedy is to take the matter up with your friendly local pubic representative.
Didn't they say that 30mpg was impossible and would put them out of business, despite foreign car makers doing it for years?
No they didn't say that. Nor have the foreign car makers been "doing it for years". If you make a big heavy vehicle it is going to get crappy fuel efficiency. US consumers, for better or worse, love big heavy cars.
Good grief. What planet did you just arrive from?
Of course they said it: all auto manufacturers did, both in the USA and everywhere else that governments started mentioning consumption targets. Just like they squealed like babies when governments started to say that seat belts would be compulsory. They always use that argument, and it is utter bollocks every time (and they know it, but they have bought enough politicians to believe they might just get away with it).
And foreign car makers have been doing it for years, FFS. My father's old Triumph 2000 got over 30mpg and that was in 1972. Yes of course US drivers love big heavy cars: with gas being kept artificially cheap they can afford to.
And gas is certainly $7 a gallon in plenty of places outside the US.
Detroit is begging for any innovation that will put them ahead of the hybrid invasion.
[...]
Remember Detroit must average 35mpg by 2016 and 54mpg by 2025.
So how come European cars have been doing this for years and they don't know about it?
It wouldn't be anything to do with the cosy relationships between Detroit and the oil business, now, would it?
25 to 50 percent less gas in a scooter isn't really that impressive.
It is outside the US. Srsly.
If you think Detroit is going to commit a production run to an engine that has maybe 10 prototype copies, you've got to be kidding.
I don't think that was the point. It was that Detroit claimed it wasn't interested at all, on the basis that they had ''tried it before [a long time ago] and it didn't work''. If true, that smacks of arrogance, not business. If they had said (as you imply they should) ''that's very interesting, go and make it work demonstrably in production, and then come back and we'll talk'' then I'd be more inclined to believe good of them ;-)
Mine only needs a change every 20,000 or major service, like most every other modern car outside the USA.
When I first visited the USA, I couldn't work out why there was a lube station on every street, like the cars were all made in the 1920s. It took a while for it to dawn on me that a collaboration between auto manufacturers and oil companies could be very beneficial to both (to say nothing of the insurers).
The efficiency and power isn't all of the point. We're still stuck with four (usually) pistons that go up and down and propel the car forward with a series of short, explosive jerks (that's the power cycle I'm talking about, not the Detroit execs). Apart from an abortive flirtation with the Wankel engine, we still have basically the same setup that Benz used in the first car. Sure, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and if it still makes money, keep at it, but this attitude means that we'll still be drilling holes in the ground to get oil, and burning it in piston-engine cars in 2100. I'd like to see a little more progress and imagination from the car makers.
If all that is true, then I think selling the whole idea to Asia is an excellent move. Detroit has been an albatross around the American neck for far too long.