This policy by Apple will allow Windows Phone 7 an opportunity to regain some of its market share.
Whether Phone 7 takes that opportunity remains to be seen.
I wonder if...
- drugs in the street were still illegal, but...
- legal drug centres were available that provided professionally made drugs, medical help, meals, consultation, social help ... that the consequences would be to...
- undermine the profitability of illegal drug trade (and as a consequence the "advertising" of drugs by dealers, in schools etc.)
- make crime resulting from addiction redundant, to a degree (as free drugs in a safe environment would be available in the drug centres)
Sure, organised criminals might move on, but I think it would reduce "the drug scene" and many of its consequences.
On average I'll work for about 30 hours a week in the office. That includes thinking hard and coding. If I work 40 hours, my total productivity actually drops. So I produce better results and faster in 30 hours than in 40 hours. Some days I'll sit focussed for 10-12 hours, then the day after... I'm not as productive.
At one job we had lots of meetings and code walkthoughs, and 9 hour days were really easy, as it's much easier than doing hard coding. I actually felt I was being paid for doing very little, when that's probably the level at which other people are used to working.
Being paid by the hour, my clients don't mind, because they end up paying less for more productivity. Something's not fair here. But my concience is clear and I have the freedom to walk into the office a couple of hours late (once the managers have figured me out).
Also, I never browse the net and stuff around on paid time, because that's not what I'm paid to do.
Even if you don't believe in science, you need only be old enough with good enough memory to remember what the seasons were like up to 20 years ago. The seasons are different now. Some places that were thick in snow every winter, now have little snow most winters (the last winter being an exception), places that had hot and dry summers now have humid summers. These are my own personal experiences.
Sure, climate always changes... but slowly and gradually, unless in a region that's recently had a volcanic eruption, massive forest fire, or something along those lines. And with all the pollution we humans are causing, I'd reason that each large city is the equivalent of a large forest fire burning out of control without pause for a very long time. And that's just talking about pollution. In addition to that we're changing entire ecologies, and as a consequence the local climates that those ecologies helped maintain.
So even if humans are not completely at fault, we certainly are a very big part of the problem. Science confirms our observations, and helps explain how and why climate change is happening.
I'm thinking that we're currently not democratic enough. Pretty much everyone I speak to agrees that climate change is a problem, but it seems that everyone feels powerless.
How about an alternative to Modern Democracy? An alternative that could be better because it: reduces room for corruption, allows domain experts to make decisions, and actually considers the will of the people.
"Modern Democracy" the world over is really a two
party republic system. You tend to have:
- The main party in power
- The main party in opposition
- The minor parties who support one of the two main parties
In Australia at least, the power party's task is to propose legislation, and the
opposition party's job is to challenge proposed legislation. That allows for only one or two views, and the people have little or no
say. The party can pressure an honest minister into doing what he knows is not right and it's easy for business to figure out which dishonest minister to bribe.
My thoughts:
1.
All parties that get over some smallish threshold are in power.
Parties cannot pass their votes on to other parties.
(eg. All parties that won 5+% of the peoples’ votes get to have a say and a vote.)
2.
Replace departments with councils (functionally different).
(eg. Council for Education, Council for Environment, etc.)
3. Councils run comittees.
The creation of comittees should be fluid.
So you might have smaller temporary specialist comittees for smaller specialised decisions.
4.
Comittees make decisions by voting from all parties in power.
Each party’s voting representation is based on the party’s popular vote percentage.
(eg. So if a party got 14% of the people’s support, that party's vote is
worth 14%.) I guess the parties that scored below the threshold could be massed into a single group somehow.
5.
Committee representatives should be domain experts, rather than professional politicians.
And drop ministers.
(It is not realistic to expect someone who makes the final decisions (ie. a minister)
to be an expert in everything in his portfolio, especially when his primary job is to play politics.)
6.
People should be able to vote for different parties for different councils.
(eg. I might vote Green for the Council of Environment, but I might vote Blue for the Council
of Economics/Finance, because I might disagree with the reddish economic leanings of the Green party)
7. As
voting technology in a country improves, such a system could become fluid and spontaneous.
Allowing people to change their support whenever, would make general elections redundant. Also, people could raise their own concerns
and suggest new solutions to councils, that comittees could consider.
8.
Allow multiple options. Having only Yes/No votes is not sufficient when there are several viable options.
The real world is not binary.
Consequences:
1. It
feels pointless to vote for a party, when one only agrees with some of the policies.
Voting with greater granularity would give one the feeling that one is voting
for what one actually believes in.
2. With
Modern Democracy, a vote going to a losing party, in particular a minor party, is effectively a lost vote. But if
your chosen party still has a voice, then your opinion is still heard.
3. Because
peoples own concerns and suggestions can be heard and possibly even considered, people could feel like they’re
actively taking part.
4. Because
of consequences 1-3, people might take more interest, and voting becomes more meaningful.
Participation, including self education about current topics, may increase a fair bit.
5.
Because it's unlikely any party can win an election and become powerful enough to call the shots,
there will be less incentive to "fund" a party. In particular if voting is fluid.
6.
Better decisions coming from people in the know, biased by the opinions of the people,
should come pretty close to sensi
My girlfriend (yes, I have one) has worked with small kids for ten years.
About literacy, she says that if kids start too early, before their brains are ready for literacy, they struggle to learn and develop mental blocks against literacy. In the longterm this slows down their uptake of further litercy skills. But if you wait 'til the kids are around 7, then they usually catch up and surpass the kids who start early. It seems the professor is saying the same thing about math skills.
Starting later is not the same as dumbing down. If starting later means kids will learn better and faster, then perhaps the curriculum can be improved instead.
Of course, not all kids are the same, and some devolop earlier, like you. But that also means you weren't the average kid. Kids like that could be moved up a year or be put in a "smart class".
You know the old story "The Emperors' New Clothes"?
The emperor walked around naked thinking he was wearing the latest fashion.
Actually, the "tailor" was really a computer graphics artist who created a simulation of clothes that was visible only on the emperors' contact lenses.
Start off with only writing functions in the main class. Thus starting them off with procedural programming.
If they grasp that soon enough, then you might be able to teach OO. Sure OO can be hard for newbies, but it is possible to teach OO in a very short time. (I've done it a few times. But that was with adults with some programming experience. Adults have better focus than kids.)
Also, I see Java as a much better/gentler languange for beginners than C. I don't know Python, so I don't have an opinion on it.
And if they do want to continue programming after your course, then a free Java IDE is only a download away.
I also think that insomnia due to stress can be more or less cured.
Learn to meditate. It may take alot of practice with patience and diligence. The "lots of thoughts in the head" problem is normal. Just don't push the thoughts away. Rather ignore the thoughts. So when you discover that you've lost concentration, then get back to it. Eventually you get more skilled at concentrating, and that's the core of meditation.
When you get it, it will really pay off. The mental discipline of staying focused can be used for many other things than just falling asleep.
I believe that different people are programmed for different times of day. But I also think that insomnia due to stress can be more or less cured.
As a child, I tossed and turned in bed until I finally passed out.
I was like that too. Except I don't think I ever was an insomniac. It used to take me three hours to fall asleep every night when I was a kid, but in the mornings I simply couldn't wake up.
Nowadays I'll wake up spontaneously at 9-10 in the morning, whether I go to bed at midnight or 4 in the morning. My youngest cousin is the same, except he wakes up spontaneously at 2 in the afternoon!!!
My parents insist that I just need to get used to a better routine. But after all those years going to school, and 15 years working professionally, I still haven't adjusted, which is why I believe that different people are programmed for different times of day.
When I was a kid there were a couple of techniques I worked out that helped:
- Occasionally I'd sneak out into the garden to get some fresh air.
- I invented a... "mental technique" that in retrospect was a form of meditation.
Since then I have learnt to meditate, and now I can control when I want to fall asleep. It kinda frustrates others that I can sleep wherever and whenever, but going to bed before midnight is still extremely rare.
So you are going to have a population that will decline in number that has a bunch of young men with no hope of being married.
Could it be that those might be just the right triggers/reasons to expand? You know, to keep the rabble busy, even out the gender ratio, and in the process tidy up unfinished business such as formally claiming Taiwan and also becoming the official top country of the world.
I don't think it's actually common for hired programmers to buy their own tools.
These are my experiences:
When full time employed to work in an office, I use office equipment.
When consulting at client site, I use client equipment (Australia) or my employers' laptop and tools at client site (Sweden).
When freelancing or contracting, I use my own laptop. It is then the clients' responsibilty to ensure I have the necessary development tools.
I'm surprised we 're not having a new Y2K-esque freak-out over this already.
the IPv4 report, which has continuously and reliably estimated global pool IP address exhaustion for late 2011 and regional registry exhaustion by late 2012
Forget the Y2K bug. At the end of 2012 the internet will crash, societies will collapse. The Mayans were right after all!
Why the hell would they recommend counseling for a non-violent and non-criminal act?
I think the family might need counceling for the trauma caused by the school. Imagine how paranoid that kid (and his parents) are going to be from now on.
And this is devastating for the Chinese government. After keeping their populace docile and stupid,
Do you honestly think they don't know what's going on? No, they know. They just don't care.
My mother does business with China and travels there several times a year.
She says they do know, and they do care, and many do want change, but that they can't do anything about it.
Slashdot Mirror
the magical energy source required to pump all this water into the air.
Well, you want to use clean energy. So of course the solution is solar panels adjacent to the clound machines.
I'm not torn. All the scientists had to do was say "please" and then respect the reply.
This policy by Apple will allow Windows Phone 7 an opportunity to regain some of its market share.
Whether Phone 7 takes that opportunity remains to be seen.
Ash wouldn't crash a blimp. The worst ash could do to a blimp would be to weigh it down a bit.
Of course, the steering might get totally damaged, and then the blimp would go where the wind blows... perhaps for a very long time.
The going rate for a soul: £5 GBP
In Switzerland there's an interesting program:
... that the consequences would be to...
http://www.parl.gc.ca/37/1/parlbus/commbus/senate/Com-e/ille-e/library-e/collin1-e.htm#3.%20%20Third%20Pillar:%20Harm%20Reduction
I wonder if...
- drugs in the street were still illegal, but...
- legal drug centres were available that provided professionally made drugs, medical help, meals, consultation, social help
- undermine the profitability of illegal drug trade (and as a consequence the "advertising" of drugs by dealers, in schools etc.)
- make crime resulting from addiction redundant, to a degree (as free drugs in a safe environment would be available in the drug centres)
Sure, organised criminals might move on, but I think it would reduce "the drug scene" and many of its consequences.
Ditto to that.
On average I'll work for about 30 hours a week in the office. That includes thinking hard and coding. If I work 40 hours, my total productivity actually drops. So I produce better results and faster in 30 hours than in 40 hours. Some days I'll sit focussed for 10-12 hours, then the day after... I'm not as productive.
At one job we had lots of meetings and code walkthoughs, and 9 hour days were really easy, as it's much easier than doing hard coding. I actually felt I was being paid for doing very little, when that's probably the level at which other people are used to working.
Being paid by the hour, my clients don't mind, because they end up paying less for more productivity. Something's not fair here. But my concience is clear and I have the freedom to walk into the office a couple of hours late (once the managers have figured me out).
Also, I never browse the net and stuff around on paid time, because that's not what I'm paid to do.
deconstruct the majority of the world's water into oxygen and hydrogen
And imagine the balance between the oxygen and hydrogen gas generated.
Then imagine one single lightning bolt.
Imagine seeing that from outer space.
Imagine being some surviving little critter on Earth at the time.
Why was that scored as flamebait?
Even if you don't believe in science, you need only be old enough with good enough memory to remember what the seasons were like up to 20 years ago. The seasons are different now. Some places that were thick in snow every winter, now have little snow most winters (the last winter being an exception), places that had hot and dry summers now have humid summers. These are my own personal experiences.
Sure, climate always changes... but slowly and gradually, unless in a region that's recently had a volcanic eruption, massive forest fire, or something along those lines. And with all the pollution we humans are causing, I'd reason that each large city is the equivalent of a large forest fire burning out of control without pause for a very long time. And that's just talking about pollution. In addition to that we're changing entire ecologies, and as a consequence the local climates that those ecologies helped maintain.
So even if humans are not completely at fault, we certainly are a very big part of the problem. Science confirms our observations, and helps explain how and why climate change is happening.
Open this in Firefox and see what happens in the Task Manager:
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world-news.aspx
If the browser doesn't hog a full processor straight away, then try opening a couple of news articles in tabs.
Ah, that explains Magneto's sense of morals.
I'm thinking that we're currently not democratic enough. Pretty much everyone I speak to agrees that climate change is a problem, but it seems that everyone feels powerless.
How about an alternative to Modern Democracy? An alternative that could be better because it: reduces room for corruption, allows domain experts to make decisions, and actually considers the will of the people.
"Modern Democracy" the world over is really a two party republic system. You tend to have:
- The main party in power
- The main party in opposition
- The minor parties who support one of the two main parties
In Australia at least, the power party's task is to propose legislation, and the opposition party's job is to challenge proposed legislation. That allows for only one or two views, and the people have little or no say. The party can pressure an honest minister into doing what he knows is not right and it's easy for business to figure out which dishonest minister to bribe.
My thoughts:
1. All parties that get over some smallish threshold are in power. Parties cannot pass their votes on to other parties.
(eg. All parties that won 5+% of the peoples’ votes get to have a say and a vote.)
2. Replace departments with councils (functionally different).
(eg. Council for Education, Council for Environment, etc.)
3. Councils run comittees. The creation of comittees should be fluid. So you might have smaller temporary specialist comittees for smaller specialised decisions.
4. Comittees make decisions by voting from all parties in power. Each party’s voting representation is based on the party’s popular vote percentage.
(eg. So if a party got 14% of the people’s support, that party's vote is worth 14%.)
I guess the parties that scored below the threshold could be massed into a single group somehow.
5. Committee representatives should be domain experts, rather than professional politicians. And drop ministers.
(It is not realistic to expect someone who makes the final decisions (ie. a minister) to be an expert in everything in his portfolio, especially when his primary job is to play politics.)
6. People should be able to vote for different parties for different councils.
(eg. I might vote Green for the Council of Environment, but I might vote Blue for the Council of Economics/Finance, because I might disagree with the reddish economic leanings of the Green party)
7. As voting technology in a country improves, such a system could become fluid and spontaneous. Allowing people to change their support whenever, would make general elections redundant. Also, people could raise their own concerns and suggest new solutions to councils, that comittees could consider.
8. Allow multiple options. Having only Yes/No votes is not sufficient when there are several viable options. The real world is not binary.
Consequences:
1. It feels pointless to vote for a party, when one only agrees with some of the policies. Voting with greater granularity would give one the feeling that one is voting for what one actually believes in.
2. With Modern Democracy, a vote going to a losing party, in particular a minor party, is effectively a lost vote. But if your chosen party still has a voice, then your opinion is still heard.
3. Because peoples own concerns and suggestions can be heard and possibly even considered, people could feel like they’re actively taking part.
4. Because of consequences 1-3, people might take more interest, and voting becomes more meaningful. Participation, including self education about current topics, may increase a fair bit.
5. Because it's unlikely any party can win an election and become powerful enough to call the shots, there will be less incentive to "fund" a party. In particular if voting is fluid.
6. Better decisions coming from people in the know, biased by the opinions of the people, should come pretty close to sensi
My girlfriend (yes, I have one) has worked with small kids for ten years.
About literacy, she says that if kids start too early, before their brains are ready for literacy, they struggle to learn and develop mental blocks against literacy. In the longterm this slows down their uptake of further litercy skills. But if you wait 'til the kids are around 7, then they usually catch up and surpass the kids who start early. It seems the professor is saying the same thing about math skills.
Starting later is not the same as dumbing down. If starting later means kids will learn better and faster, then perhaps the curriculum can be improved instead.
Of course, not all kids are the same, and some devolop earlier, like you. But that also means you weren't the average kid. Kids like that could be moved up a year or be put in a "smart class".
It's the spirit world. Or maybe it's the force.
If 90% of it is on the dark side, then we're in big trouble.
You know the old story "The Emperors' New Clothes"?
The emperor walked around naked thinking he was wearing the latest fashion.
Actually, the "tailor" was really a computer graphics artist who created a simulation of clothes that was visible only on the emperors' contact lenses.
Start off with only writing functions in the main class. Thus starting them off with procedural programming.
If they grasp that soon enough, then you might be able to teach OO. Sure OO can be hard for newbies, but it is possible to teach OO in a very short time. (I've done it a few times. But that was with adults with some programming experience. Adults have better focus than kids.)
Also, I see Java as a much better/gentler languange for beginners than C. I don't know Python, so I don't have an opinion on it.
And if they do want to continue programming after your course, then a free Java IDE is only a download away.
I also think that insomnia due to stress can be more or less cured.
Learn to meditate. It may take alot of practice with patience and diligence. The "lots of thoughts in the head" problem is normal. Just don't push the thoughts away. Rather ignore the thoughts. So when you discover that you've lost concentration, then get back to it. Eventually you get more skilled at concentrating, and that's the core of meditation.
When you get it, it will really pay off. The mental discipline of staying focused can be used for many other things than just falling asleep.
As a child, I tossed and turned in bed until I finally passed out.
I was like that too. Except I don't think I ever was an insomniac. It used to take me three hours to fall asleep every night when I was a kid, but in the mornings I simply couldn't wake up.
Nowadays I'll wake up spontaneously at 9-10 in the morning, whether I go to bed at midnight or 4 in the morning. My youngest cousin is the same, except he wakes up spontaneously at 2 in the afternoon!!!
My parents insist that I just need to get used to a better routine. But after all those years going to school, and 15 years working professionally, I still haven't adjusted, which is why I believe that different people are programmed for different times of day.
When I was a kid there were a couple of techniques I worked out that helped:
- Occasionally I'd sneak out into the garden to get some fresh air.
- I invented a... "mental technique" that in retrospect was a form of meditation.
Since then I have learnt to meditate, and now I can control when I want to fall asleep. It kinda frustrates others that I can sleep wherever and whenever, but going to bed before midnight is still extremely rare.
When I read the title my first thought was that Ötzi had been thrown in the slammer for getting stuck the glacier.
So you are going to have a population that will decline in number that has a bunch of young men with no hope of being married.
Could it be that those might be just the right triggers/reasons to expand? You know, to keep the rabble busy, even out the gender ratio, and in the process tidy up unfinished business such as formally claiming Taiwan and also becoming the official top country of the world.
I don't think it's actually common for hired programmers to buy their own tools.
These are my experiences:
When full time employed to work in an office, I use office equipment.
When consulting at client site, I use client equipment (Australia) or my employers' laptop and tools at client site (Sweden).
When freelancing or contracting, I use my own laptop. It is then the clients' responsibilty to ensure I have the necessary development tools.
So, yes, depending on the situation.
I'm surprised we 're not having a new Y2K-esque freak-out over this already.
the IPv4 report, which has continuously and reliably estimated global pool IP address exhaustion for late 2011 and regional registry exhaustion by late 2012
Forget the Y2K bug. At the end of 2012 the internet will crash, societies will collapse. The Mayans were right after all!
(Though on a serious note, I do agree with you.)
Why the hell would they recommend counseling for a non-violent and non-criminal act?
I think the family might need counceling for the trauma caused by the school. Imagine how paranoid that kid (and his parents) are going to be from now on.
And this is devastating for the Chinese government. After keeping their populace docile and stupid,
Do you honestly think they don't know what's going on? No, they know. They just don't care.
My mother does business with China and travels there several times a year.
She says they do know, and they do care, and many do want change, but that they can't do anything about it.
So much for the "Peoples Republic" of China.