So Terry Pratchett was on to something when he invented the concept of reverse phrenology. Hitting someone in the head enough times will change their personality.
Which was known for a fact since the time of Phineas Gage, at least.
Oregon Trail taught flexibility in planning(good) and hatred of random number generators(bad). The only subject related knowledge I retained was "Basic bridge engineering and buffalo jerky drying racks would have improved success for pioneers"
I learned that it's better to start out as a banker from Boston than as a farmer from Illinois. I also think distrust of RNGs can serve one well in life.
Or more seriously, a couple years ago huge amounts of pet food were found to have had melamine additives that test positive for proteins instead of using an actual protein made from wheat glutein, causing many pets to painfully die from renal failure. And how many knock-off toys made with lead have been recalled in the past few years?
Those weren't knock-offs. They were the actual licensed products (like Thomas the Tank Engine products) sold by the American companies that hired the Chinese factories. The deadly pet food was sold in stores by American and Canadian manufacturers. And there's no such thing as "glutein".
There's a lot that can go wrong with counterfeit hardware, even if it's made in the same factory. Out-of-spec components can be used in place of the high quality ones originally specified by the Cisco engineers. Cheap lead-based solder could be used with the RoHS label. Speeding up the production process can lead to shoddy workmanship. They probably aren't paying inspectors to check the assemblies. Toxic waste could be dumped in the garbage.
All the things you say are true. They could also be using parts that were tested and found to be sub-spec, so you could end up buying a router that was made on the actual Cisco assembly line, but was known to be defective and supposed to be destroyed (or made up from similarly condemned components). That's just yet another thing to worry about, even for apparently identical "genuine" equipment.
I would have no problem buying, say, bootleg clothes or backpacks made in the same factory as the real deal, but electronics are a whole different ballgame.
No. The problem is that the Chinese parents don't have significant savings - they lived through the times when China was actually a third world country. So when the 20 somethings grow up they have to babysit their parents.
I'm not entirely sure about this. You may be right, and China is (per capita) a poor country, which for most of the 20th century was much poorer than it is now, but the cost of living is also extremely low and the private household savings rate is extremely high. So high that economists have been saying the biggest hurdle to China's recovery has been convincing domestic households to save less and spend more.
Bear in mind that China's economic boom has been ongoing for more than 30 years now, so even parents who lived through the cultural revolution only started having their 20-something kids after steady jobs became available and markets became stable. On the other hand, I don't have any hard data at my fingertips right now, just generalizations I've read and heard, so you still might be right.
"Normal" being "people who don't spend hundreds of hours learning every keyboard shortcut (though they know they'll never use 99% of them)" type of people. As in the other 99.8% of the population that's not reading slashdot right now. Way to not realize that the typical slashdotter doesn't represent the general population at all, douche.
Ok, that still includes me, asshole. I don't know where you get the idea that you know exactly how much time everyone else spends on things, but I have a life too, have spent less than 1 hour total learning keyboard shortcuts for all Office suites combined in my entire life. You accuse me of not realizing things about the average slashdotter, but I didn't make any statement at all about the average slashdotter. I made a statement about myself, and apparently preferring OO.o makes me some kind of freak in your eyes.
At least not in all cases.
I have a family member (not a computer guru but someone with a fair bit of computer knowledge) who tried OpenOffice and found that it was unusable due to documented being formatted differently in OO.o writer and in Word (and formatted differently in ways that matter). Said family member ended up buying Office 2007 in order to get documents that looked the same as they did on the other machines.
I have a family member (not a computer guru but someone with a fair bit of computer knowledge) who tried MS Office and found it was unusable due to MS Office just generally sucking, and being totally unable to open.odt files! Needless to say, until MS adds better compatibility it's a waste of money. Said family member ended up downloading OO.o in order to get a decent office suite that did what she wanted, when she told it to.
Most normal people actually find the ribbon much easier to use because they (and I as well) never wasted the countless hours to memorize how many menus deep you had to go to find X rarely used feature.
Way to accuse anyone who doesn't have identical preferences to yours of being abnormal. Not content to state what your preferences are, you feel the need to disparage the rest of us. Way to go, douche.
Not everybody is a hero, but everyone SHOULD be a responsible citizen.
And that's the crux of the matter. The fact that someone SHOULD do something does not mean that anyone (not even the government) has the right to FORCE them to do something.
Thank you for that pearl of wisdom. To think for all this time, I never realized: the fact that we SHOULD pay our taxes to cover things like roads and the military does not mean anyone (not even the government) has the right to FORCE them to pay taxes. And of course, the fact that we SHOULD refrain from killing people we don't like does not mean anyone (not even the government) has the right to FORCE us to refrain from killing people. Thanks a lot for clarifying the crux of the matter for me!
Actually, even your negative synopsis of the piece flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which is that attacks of Chinese origin are all a carefully orchestrated by the ruthless and scheming Chinese government...
"Then there are the intelligence-oriented hackers inside the People’s Liberation Army," which you'd know if you'd bother to RTFA instead of trolling, "as well as more shadowy groups that are believed to work with the state government."
'When asked whether hackers work for the government, or the military, he says “yes.”'
Why is this guy living with his mom if he's such a great and skilled hacker? Where's his money? Where's his grandiose lifestyle? What is he doing with all those computers he's woven into a bot-net? If he's making all that money, why isn't he spending it?
Because it's traditional in Chinese society to live with your parents until you're married. It's becoming less common as time goes on, but I have several friends in China in their mid-to-late 20s who have good-paying careers but still live with their parents. It doesn't have the stigma that it has in the west. And he's probably saving his money up because that's prudent. Another thing about Chinese culture, prudence doesn't make you "uncool".
Corporations are voluntary contracts between individuals, and those individuals have rights, period. If some of you Slashdot commies fail to comprehend that, that is your problem and yours alone.
"Under today's decision, multinational corporations controlled by foreign governments" would have the same rights as Americans to spend money to tilt U.S. elections."
-Justice Stevens, dissenting.
“I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
~ Thomas Jefferson, also dissenting, November 12, 1816
A bit offtopic, I know, but can we please stop referring to everyone and everything as scientists? If you need better terms, try "Geneticists" or "Breeders" or "Italians."
Sure. Scientists are working on the problem right now. Before you know it, scientists will have replaced all references to scientists with references to Italians.
If you RTFA, it looks like the cops are saying that they should get counseling because the kid and parents were upset by the incident.
No it doesn't. It sounds exactly like the counseling they always give to kids who "do something wrong", like when a kid in Madison, WI brought a paring knife to school for a scientific demonstration and was told to undergo anger management counseling because it was a "weapon". There are lots of other examples but that's always how they describe forcing the kid to undergo counseling because the school can't admit it was wrong, and therefore has to make it seem like the kid is messed up to begin with. If it were as you say, they would have said it was recommended for the kid, not required. Required counseling is a CYA for the admin.
I can think of a lot of inane things out there, from birthers to truthers to GNAA, but those people are just annoying. A good moderation system like slashdot's can fix all of them.
Slashdot Mirror
And your post proves that it only takes 1 idiot to subtract 1 from 5.
I beg your pardon. My comment had value added, I gave insightful commentary on top of the subtraction.
...that it only takes 4 idiots for a post to become (Score: 5, Insightful)
Oh well, time to jerk off.
That can also mean more snow.
So Terry Pratchett was on to something when he invented the concept of reverse phrenology. Hitting someone in the head enough times will change their personality.
Which was known for a fact since the time of Phineas Gage, at least.
It does the same thing.
You were probably joking, but there is actual research that suggests you're correct (second link is about psilocybin but its effects are known to be quite similar)
http://books.google.com/books?id=mGscSLMA_P4C&lpg=PA199&ots=JOhFdkh5qu&dq=study%20lsd%20spiritual%20experience&lr=&pg=PA202#v=onepage&q=study%20lsd%20spiritual%20experience&f=false
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=visions-for-psychedelics
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Inconceivable!!!
Oregon Trail taught flexibility in planning(good) and hatred of random number generators(bad). The only subject related knowledge I retained was "Basic bridge engineering and buffalo jerky drying racks would have improved success for pioneers"
I learned that it's better to start out as a banker from Boston than as a farmer from Illinois. I also think distrust of RNGs can serve one well in life.
Or more seriously, a couple years ago huge amounts of pet food were found to have had melamine additives that test positive for proteins instead of using an actual protein made from wheat glutein, causing many pets to painfully die from renal failure. And how many knock-off toys made with lead have been recalled in the past few years?
Those weren't knock-offs. They were the actual licensed products (like Thomas the Tank Engine products) sold by the American companies that hired the Chinese factories. The deadly pet food was sold in stores by American and Canadian manufacturers. And there's no such thing as "glutein".
There's a lot that can go wrong with counterfeit hardware, even if it's made in the same factory. Out-of-spec components can be used in place of the high quality ones originally specified by the Cisco engineers. Cheap lead-based solder could be used with the RoHS label. Speeding up the production process can lead to shoddy workmanship. They probably aren't paying inspectors to check the assemblies. Toxic waste could be dumped in the garbage.
All the things you say are true. They could also be using parts that were tested and found to be sub-spec, so you could end up buying a router that was made on the actual Cisco assembly line, but was known to be defective and supposed to be destroyed (or made up from similarly condemned components). That's just yet another thing to worry about, even for apparently identical "genuine" equipment.
I would have no problem buying, say, bootleg clothes or backpacks made in the same factory as the real deal, but electronics are a whole different ballgame.
No. The problem is that the Chinese parents don't have significant savings - they lived through the times when China was actually a third world country. So when the 20 somethings grow up they have to babysit their parents.
I'm not entirely sure about this. You may be right, and China is (per capita) a poor country, which for most of the 20th century was much poorer than it is now, but the cost of living is also extremely low and the private household savings rate is extremely high. So high that economists have been saying the biggest hurdle to China's recovery has been convincing domestic households to save less and spend more.
Bear in mind that China's economic boom has been ongoing for more than 30 years now, so even parents who lived through the cultural revolution only started having their 20-something kids after steady jobs became available and markets became stable. On the other hand, I don't have any hard data at my fingertips right now, just generalizations I've read and heard, so you still might be right.
"Normal" being "people who don't spend hundreds of hours learning every keyboard shortcut (though they know they'll never use 99% of them)" type of people. As in the other 99.8% of the population that's not reading slashdot right now. Way to not realize that the typical slashdotter doesn't represent the general population at all, douche.
Ok, that still includes me, asshole. I don't know where you get the idea that you know exactly how much time everyone else spends on things, but I have a life too, have spent less than 1 hour total learning keyboard shortcuts for all Office suites combined in my entire life. You accuse me of not realizing things about the average slashdotter, but I didn't make any statement at all about the average slashdotter. I made a statement about myself, and apparently preferring OO.o makes me some kind of freak in your eyes.
At least not in all cases. I have a family member (not a computer guru but someone with a fair bit of computer knowledge) who tried OpenOffice and found that it was unusable due to documented being formatted differently in OO.o writer and in Word (and formatted differently in ways that matter). Said family member ended up buying Office 2007 in order to get documents that looked the same as they did on the other machines.
I have a family member (not a computer guru but someone with a fair bit of computer knowledge) who tried MS Office and found it was unusable due to MS Office just generally sucking, and being totally unable to open .odt files! Needless to say, until MS adds better compatibility it's a waste of money. Said family member ended up downloading OO.o in order to get a decent office suite that did what she wanted, when she told it to.
That's right. As long as Microsoft controls Zapf Wingdings, OpenOffice will never take off.
Yeah, those dingbats just aren't the same. And trying to use Comic Sans to replace Comic Sans MS? Crazy!
Most normal people actually find the ribbon much easier to use because they (and I as well) never wasted the countless hours to memorize how many menus deep you had to go to find X rarely used feature.
Way to accuse anyone who doesn't have identical preferences to yours of being abnormal. Not content to state what your preferences are, you feel the need to disparage the rest of us. Way to go, douche.
Not everybody is a hero, but everyone SHOULD be a responsible citizen.
And that's the crux of the matter. The fact that someone SHOULD do something does not mean that anyone (not even the government) has the right to FORCE them to do something.
Thank you for that pearl of wisdom. To think for all this time, I never realized: the fact that we SHOULD pay our taxes to cover things like roads and the military does not mean anyone (not even the government) has the right to FORCE them to pay taxes. And of course, the fact that we SHOULD refrain from killing people we don't like does not mean anyone (not even the government) has the right to FORCE us to refrain from killing people. Thanks a lot for clarifying the crux of the matter for me!
Actually, even your negative synopsis of the piece flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which is that attacks of Chinese origin are all a carefully orchestrated by the ruthless and scheming Chinese government...
"Then there are the intelligence-oriented hackers inside the People’s Liberation Army," which you'd know if you'd bother to RTFA instead of trolling, "as well as more shadowy groups that are believed to work with the state government."
'When asked whether hackers work for the government, or the military, he says “yes.”'
Why is this guy living with his mom if he's such a great and skilled hacker? Where's his money? Where's his grandiose lifestyle? What is he doing with all those computers he's woven into a bot-net? If he's making all that money, why isn't he spending it?
Because it's traditional in Chinese society to live with your parents until you're married. It's becoming less common as time goes on, but I have several friends in China in their mid-to-late 20s who have good-paying careers but still live with their parents. It doesn't have the stigma that it has in the west. And he's probably saving his money up because that's prudent. Another thing about Chinese culture, prudence doesn't make you "uncool".
Indeed. Who knew they had oranges in China?
Anyone who's ever been there?
avoid spell errors, use your better english, etc.. your text must be perfect. This really help these people, and your opportunities, everyone.
Good advice.
Corporations are voluntary contracts between individuals, and those individuals have rights, period. If some of you Slashdot commies fail to comprehend that, that is your problem and yours alone.
"Under today's decision, multinational corporations controlled by foreign governments" would have the same rights as Americans to spend money to tilt U.S. elections."
-Justice Stevens, dissenting.
“I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of our country.” ~ Thomas Jefferson, also dissenting, November 12, 1816
A bit offtopic, I know, but can we please stop referring to everyone and everything as scientists? If you need better terms, try "Geneticists" or "Breeders" or "Italians."
Sure. Scientists are working on the problem right now. Before you know it, scientists will have replaced all references to scientists with references to Italians.
If you RTFA, it looks like the cops are saying that they should get counseling because the kid and parents were upset by the incident.
No it doesn't. It sounds exactly like the counseling they always give to kids who "do something wrong", like when a kid in Madison, WI brought a paring knife to school for a scientific demonstration and was told to undergo anger management counseling because it was a "weapon". There are lots of other examples but that's always how they describe forcing the kid to undergo counseling because the school can't admit it was wrong, and therefore has to make it seem like the kid is messed up to begin with. If it were as you say, they would have said it was recommended for the kid, not required. Required counseling is a CYA for the admin.
The school's statement makes no sense either. The school's policies are published here I don't see where he ran afoul of them.
Under academic honesty, the bullet-point for fabrication, since clearly he fabricated the device.
Lilly levered Democrats, the solution lies with cruise missiles.
Lilly levered? Is that what they're calling the inability to get it up these days?
I can think of a lot of inane things out there, from birthers to truthers to GNAA, but those people are just annoying. A good moderation system like slashdot's can fix all of them.
Are you kidding? It can't even fix slashdot.