What is going to make the next version of uTorrent preferable to what's already there? I'm thinking that uTorrent's best days are behind it, and as long as 2.2.1 lives on Oldversion or OldApps, that is its legacy.
That's what I'm thinking too, I switched to qBittorrent that is open source and... it's done? Or well I see there's lots of tiny little enhancements and bugfixes in the release notes but honestly I can't think of a single noticeable change in the last couple years... nor any that I'd want, really. They'd have to pull off some entirely new non-torrent downloading functionality out of the hat to make me go back to uTorrent, which then begs the question.... why is it mixed up with uTorrent in the first place? Then again, looking at my peer logs a lot of other people use it (and by far most use 3.4.9), so I guess they have an audience. Whether they have one that'll let itself be monetized, well... whatever. There's plenty good alternatives if they get intrusive or obnoxious.
What will happen to humans displaced by these robots? We live in a society that expects everyone to work, but what will happen when there are no jobs? Crime? Extreme poverty? Mass protests? Political or religious extremism?
Probably all of the above, to some degree... but there's still huge differences between Russia 1917 and Greece 2017. Maybe Venezuela is getting close to the "fuck it, I got nothing to lose" level but as long as society is keeping people from really hitting rock bottom I think most poor people will simply be poor. Absolute poverty is in strong decline, the "third world" isn't nearly as primitive as it once was, even if the US middle class has been stagnant since the 70s the world hasn't moved backwards. Just like if global warming kills the Gulf Stream some places can get colder, not warmer - it's the big picture that counts.
Consider it this way, even if you're really poor the OSHA won't let companies kill you at work. The FDA won't accept dangerous food, you probably have clean hot and cold water, decent sanitation and so on. Medical science moves forward, people live longer and longer. Building codes keep getting stricter, cars safer and my impression is that people throw more and more away because they don't like it anymore or it looks a bit shabby, not because it's broken or useless. If you just accept being a bum and collect cheap or free second hand stuff from thrift stores and flea markets and eat Ramen noodles you might not be living it up by today's standards, but it's nothing like being genuinely poor 100 or 200 years ago. Or the worst hellholes today.
So 43 million Americans are on food stamps today, if we get (more) robotic tractors, robotic delivery vans, robotic shelf stockers, robotic checkout counters, robotic this, that... people go out of a job, some get new work others go on welfare. And if you think that's a problem, you can always replace one bulldozer with 1000 people with a spoon... it's not worth creating jobs just to have jobs. Expect it to be just barely enough to calm the masses though, it won't be given freely or easily. But I doubt they'll let it slide so far that people take to the streets with "give me UBI or give me death" slogans, there's always the "viva la revolution" or "Soylent Green" endings. But I think "bread and circus" is more likely.
Intel dabbled in this (as did others) years ago when SSDs were too small for most people. As far as I know, it was kinda shitty and only kinda worked and everyone abandoned it because hybrid drives were simpler (even though they too sucked) and SSDs kept getting bigger, faster, and cheaper. They called it "Smart Response Technology" when it launched. Maybe it's back? Maybe it never went away? Maybe Windows ReadyBoost has risen from the grave? (I've NEVER seen ReadyBoost in actual use.)
It's the same as far as I understand, just optimized for a lower latency high performance SSD. But to be honest, except for gamers I think almost everyone has space enough on the SSD these days. And even most gamers could if Steam only offered them two storage areas so they could put 1GB on the SSD and the other 29GB with all the media files on a HDD. I've gone all SSD anyway even though it's a waste.
if you look at shows like M*A*S*H or The Honeymooners or Star Trek or The Odd Couple you find most episodes are self-contained, and that it's fairly rare for most stories to directly span more than one episode. (...) Sometime in the nineties this shifted, and TV became serialized (...) I prefer the episodic model, as I don't feel compelled to watch if I don't want to, and I don't worry if I miss an episode or if I watch them out of original order.
Because VCRs became affordable and common. About the episodic format though, I think you're one of the few that don't enjoy any character development or long story arcs but would rather have a series spinning its wheels in one place. It's okay to be on season two when the show is at season five, unless you're the kind of person who can't put a book down. Even if the show is mostly the same like Big Bang Theory it's much better with a glacial drift, major big boobs Houlihan and i-want-out Klinger were pretty much cardboard characters. Yes, you can totally pick up on any episode in the series and not hate it, but eh... these days my standards are a little higher than not getting bored.
What is with this obsession of Linux users to want everyone to be "advanced users"? It's precisely because of that, that Linux doesn't have a bigger marketshare
Same reason we don't teach primary school pupils and university degree math in the same classroom or why NFL teams don't want to train against high school freshmen or Michelin chefs aren't interested in advice from their colleagues at McDonald's. You're not contributing anything useful at this level, you're just in the way. It's open source, people don't get paid per copy they sell. Most aren't trying to win a popularity contest. They're looking for a professional community/tool to support them and don't want it dumbed down to be newbie friendly.
And some of them aren't exactly going to apologize for it either, in their minds you're the one butting in on a place you don't belong, like trying to get advice at a doctor's conference instead of scheduling an appointment. It doesn't help that some users act like you're their support staff and expect them to drop whatever they're doing to help you. It's very tempting to basically say we don't give a shit. Of course there are some will also immediately jump to the conclusion that any problem you have is because you're an idiot, just like all the other idiots.
Most software try to separate newbies from experts, developers from users with varying degrees of success since they're not exactly crystal clear definitions or mutually exclusive categories. And without one bishop in the cathedral to swing the ban hammer, it's not so easy getting rid of destructive elements. It usually takes some rather extremely obnoxious behavior to make a whole community throw you out. But if this is approaching TL;DR, well they don't want you there and market share isn't an important metric for them. Why should it be?
I've been lurking here for years and seen many recommendations for a Linux flavor that works. What I'm really looking for is Linux that works without constant under-the-hood tweaking
I think the question really requires taking a step back and looking at what a distro is and does. Because if you're coming in from another OS I'd say there's three levels of changes and the distro-level is probably the least important.
1. Applications: Do your applications run under Linux or do they have functional equivalents like web services you'd be happy with. If you've heard about WINE, then stop because Windows emulation is full of quirks. It's a tool for users that really, really don't want to run Windows even if it has 10x the issues of running Windows software on Windows. No distro is going to help you if after banging your head on GIMP and Krita you realize that no, I really need Photoshop or anything else with less than a platinum rating on WINE. And even then it can break in the next update.
2. Desktop environment (DE), this is pretty much how the OS part of the interface will look like for you. No matter which one you pick it won't be like Windows or OS X. If a distro ships a DE, it'll probably look and feel pretty much the same across distros. If you don't like Gnome or KDE on Ubuntu there's not much point trying them again on SuSE, Mint or Debian. Granted, a few of these are almost like picking distros as I'd take Mint for Cinnamon and Ubuntu for Unity but far from all.
3. Quality of packaging, testing, support, upgrades, security patches, availability of backports and third party repositories, release schedule etc. basically a lot of the boring housekeeping and problem solving. For the most part, this is what distros do - they take what developers have made and wrap it up in packages for you. But if the developers haven't made the apps you want, you'll be tweaking your work process a lot. If they haven't made the DE the way you want, you'll be tweaking your OS interaction a lot. A good distro doesn't create fuss for you, but it doesn't really mean it'll work for you.
I'd just start with Ubuntu with Unity (the default) only because it's super common and see if you get past #1. If you do and don't like Unity I'd try Cinnamon, KDE, Gnome and XFCE, as far as I know they're all available as packages on Ubuntu. If you find something that looks right for you I'd move on to #3 and ask "What distro is the best to run [Cinnamon/Gnome/KDE/Unity/XFCE]?" Though I suspect that the answer will probably be one of the Mint or Ubuntu spins in most cases. There's not much point in going outside the beaten path if you just want to get started.
How the hell do you re-write something like that? An "if" statement keys on the value of a single variable and conditionally executes a function. There are some things for which there is only one solution. Someone might suggest "just cold-room it!" But how are they supposed to do that?
You mean cleanroom. Copyright protects one particular expression (implementation) not the underlying idea (functionality), so the point is not necessarily to come up with a different solution but to document that it has been done independently. Yes, that means they must find an "untainted" developer to write the new code but you can in great detail describe the functionality as long as you don't impose a particular implementation. It's even been done "after the fact" as evidence:
The court relied heavily on evidence NEC presented that compared a "clean room'' program with both the V20/30 and Intel 8086/88 microcode. NEC hired an independent engineer (Gary Davidian) to develop a set of microcode for the V20/30 without access to any other microcode. Because Davidian's version of the microcode was similar in many regards to both the Intel and NEC microcodes, the court found it likely that those similarities were dictated not by copying of Intel's microcode, but rather by functional constraints of the hardware, the architecture, and the need for 8086/88 compatibility.
The documentation is a pain in the butt, but the legal reasoning around it isn't so bad.
No issues linking to OpenSSL so long as you obey the terms of the OpenSSL license in the binary distribution of OpenSSL, and the GPL in the terms of the distribution of the software linking to openssl.
Doesn't work that way... then you could say that your "licensed for non-commercial use" code is distributed for $0, I'm just charging for my code and your restriction can't extend to my code. You'd get rid of all license restrictions by "librarifying" it. Distribution is not the only exclusive right in copyright, so is preparing derived works and running something as one program in the same memory space is definitively that.
Granted you've moved the primary violation over to the end user, who may or may not be able to claim fair use but as an organized means of license circumvention I'd say you'd get in legal trouble for vicarious copyright infringement. That's the legal theory they've used to go after centralized P2P and torrent sites, even though the torrent sites themselves don't commit primary violations they just benefit from them.
Consider it a bit this way, many things can be created from legal chemicals. That doesn't mean you can create one-click "meth lab kits" and act like you're just selling bits and pieces that by themselves are legal. Not even you split them into "Meth lab part 1" and "Meth lab part 2". It would be the same with OpenSSL and GPL code, legally you can distribute one or the other. But once it becomes a DIY copyright violation kit, you get in trouble.
It really depends, they don't need to be cool. They just need to be X86 compatible! Their phones have been decent but poorly supported app wise, give me compatibility with X86 and I would get one tomorrow instead of my planned Galaxy S8 purchase.
And we know Intel cancelled the last iteration of that project, probably because Microsoft wouldn't commit to buying enough processors to make it worth it. So unless there's some supersecret project that's not on any roadmap it's not going to happen.
I used to think the same before I talked to some legal people -- you might be surprised.
It's the sort of thing legal people can blabber on and on about, but when you consider that anyone distributing this project can be sued in 100+ jurisdictions with different laws and legal systems most of them will get very quiet. And at least in the US there are statutory damages, who ever is "hurt" doesn't have to prove that, they just have to prove infringement and they can cash in which could be tempting for a greedy heir. And not necessarily just liability either, fraudulent removal or alteration of a copyright license is a criminal act under USC 17506(d) and possibly many other nations.
Basically it's the kind of thing they can bill lots of hours for but try asking them if they'll put their money where their mouth is and take the bill if their legal interpretation is wrong and I think you'll find them disappear in a puff of smoke. Get permission from those you can get permission from, rewrite the rest. Maybe even document a cleanroom implementation if you know some are militantly opposed to the re-licensing. My guess is the formulation is a legally meaningless taunt, it didn't say they would re-license without your permission. It just implied it so they'd provoke a response.
The bigger question is why aren't the British (and the Americans for that matter) insisting that new citizens (including their children) become CITIZENS of that country in heart and soul
And how would you define what being "British in heart and soul" is? I think a lot of people that feel pretty genuinely British even though they don't eat pork because they're vegetarians or vegans or don't drink or don't go to church or... And how would you test if people actually live "British" enough for you? And what would you do with a child born and raised in Britain that's too "un-British" but isn't a citizen of any other country? Imprison them? Send them to "reeducation camps"? Deport them? India for Hinduism, Thailand for Buddhism, Japan for Shinto? You can't force people on other nations, you know.
I think it would get rather hilarious to try this in America, ask all the people who aren't "real" Americans to go home. I think you'll get a lot of funny debates on who exactly that is... Mexicans? Africans? Non-Christians? Everybody but the native Americans?
Here in Europe it usually means skipping cash altogether with online banking and payment cards. Usually it's because of a national debit card standard organized by the banks, like BankAxept here in Norway or EC-card in Germany. This is the price list of one our banks via Google Translate, prices converted to USD:
One time installation/terminal fees, fixed/mobile: $489/241 Monthly payment fees, fixed/mobile: $61/$83 Transaction fees, per transaction $0.026 flat
Use your card for a Big Mac? McDonald's is happy. Use it to buy a $1000 TV? The store is happy. Say you have a sale every 5 minutes, 10 hours a day, 6 days a week = ~25 days/month = 3000 sales total. That's $78 in processing fees + $61/83 = ~$150 total in operating costs for the whole month. Compare that to the expenses securing cash, transporting cash, keeping enough change and so on that they don't want and here it's yes please, use cards. And if the cash flows electronically, what do you need the local bank teller for? I just checked the stats for my purely online bank, 380k customers with 325 employees and 90% of the population do it online now.
Even the banks that do have branch offices now mostly train people to use the machines rather than process their deposits/bills and it's almost all retirees. Some banks have even started to put fees on the ATMs, because even maintaining and stocking them costs money even if there's no bank teller. With mobile pay now it's even BYOD, they don't even have to issue cards anymore. They're moving closer and closer to becoming a purely virtual organization that doesn't deal in anything but 0s and 1s. But that's okay, it's not like I really miss the days you were waiting in line at the counter.
For example, on (non-cryptographic) hash-functions my answer was to not do them yourself, because they would always be pretty bad, and to instead use the ones by Bob Jenkins, or if things are slow because there is a disk-access in there to use a crypto hash. While that is what you do in reality if you have more than small tables, that was apparently very much not what they wanted to hear. They apparently wanted me to start to mess around with the usual things you find in algorithm books.
No offense, but "I'd rather just use a library" seriously brings into question what you bring to the table and whether you'll just be searching experts-exchange for smart stuff other people have done..Like everybody knows you shouldn't use homegrown cryptographic algorithms, but if a cryptologist can't tell me what an S-box is and points me to using a library instead it doesn't really tell me anything about his skill, except he didn't want to answer the question. In fact, dodging the question like that would be a pretty big red flag.
Don't get me wrong, you can get there. But start off with roughly what you'd do if you had to implement it from scratch, what's difficult to get right, then suggest implementations you know or alternative ways to solve it. Because they're not that stupid that they think this is some novel issue nobody's ever looked at before or found decent answers to. They want to test if you have the intellect, knowledge and creativity to sketch a solution yourself. Once you've done that, then you can tell them why it's probably not a good idea to reinvent the wheel.
Meh, I'd say the people who write open source software on a non-commercial basis generally have a passion for it, make more effort in making it work correct and work harder to hone their skills than coders just looking for a paycheck. What's missing is usually the time and resources, sometimes it amazes me how much gets done with a skeleton crew. Projects and packages where it turns out there was really only one maintainer and he suddenly got other priorities and things go into limbo.
Most projects are not like the Linux kernel where there's several candidates and a nomination process. Often it's more like if you want to write code or take ownership then tag, you're it. Or it's just nobody who is going to write that kind of software or functionality in their spare time. Or it just reaches a level of mediocrity that's good enough to get shit done and not enough care about polish or user friendliness or niche features. It's 2017 and MS Office and Photoshop is alive and well. I think I've heard since '97 that Office was pretty much "done", well shouldn't we be catching up then?
It should work fine with quotes (for example search for "ubuntu 18.04", including quotes) as long as there are no typos.
If people typed that out fully when they ask yes, but on an Ubuntu forum that would be extremely redundant and "18.04" triggers on everything to do with 18th of April and other junk. The nice part about the nicknames is that if I say zesty and the page contains ubuntu somewhere, you've probably come to the right place even if they're not right next to each other. They should try to keep them short and simple tho. Like:
artsy, burly, curly, dandy, earthy, frisky, gaunt, humble, innate, jolly, keen, livid, murky, narly, overt, puffy, queezy, rocky, sweet, tasty, unique, vaunty, wobbly, x... can't really think of any. But I think that's enough for another decade.
Vista? Snow Leopard? I can understand names that are groan-worthy like GIMP, but the rest doesn't sound worse than NFL teams. Besides they have official release numbers, if you say Ubuntu 17.04 you don't have to call it "Zesty Zepus". If he should care enough to find it and ask, then "Yeah the developers have a nickname for each release, easier for the techs. For everyone else it's Ubuntu, just like Windows or OS X". If that's the excuse your boss would use it's because he doesn't like it for some other reason.
Assuming you like pizza, when you say you like pizza, do you mean the lowest common denominator pizza that may have human excrement for a topping or do you mean your general perception of pizza? It's a fairly simple concept.
That analogy only works if you say that the pizza has to be better in every way, better pie, better crust, better sauce, better cheese, better ham... I expect a self-driving car to meticulously obey the rules of the road, be extremely consistent in its driving and have superior reaction time. But to analyze all aspects of the human condition and flag all signs that another driver or pedestrian may not be inclined to follow the rules better than a human sounds unlikely. But if overall it has less accidents and particularly accidents that are our fault it's still a pizza. Perhaps in total a much better pizza. To do the car analogy, if "must run on hay" is an absolute requirement then the horse and buggy wins.
Somehow I'm not so concerned about this one, if you can follow the rules of the road in daytime and the sun is shining it's the same rules when it's night and raining. The rest is "just" a sensor sensitivity/noise cancellation problem that can be worked on in parallel to everything else. You can probably do a lot with combination LIDAR/optical systems to make LIDAR identify candidate surfaces then do optical do actually identify the sign. And you're looking for a predetermined number of surfaces of particular sizes, if you have identified the shape it should be possible to correlate candidates rather than try to analyze. You probably also have a lot of temporal data that could be used to enhance the search, after all traffic signs generally don't move or change. I'd be much more concerned with everything else that's out there, is it pedestrians or wild animals or a tree falling over the road that doesn't have any particularly known shape or size or color.
My condolences. Personally I loathe code that messes with variables in far-away objects, if it's a huge program you should call obj.setMessage( "I <3 Javascript" ); I don't know how much time I've wasted trying to track down WTF just did something compared to just setting a breakpoint on or printing a debug line in "setMessage()" to see what's happening from where. Yes, setters and getters are annoying copy-pasta code but it's a wonder for sanity. Same with stored procedures and databases, if something is done from many different places route it through one procedure. Even if it's done wrong, then at least it's done consistently wrong.
Hmmm - prison = food, clothing, shelter, in some cases a good gym membership and now your own tablet with internet and skype and probably easy access to porn. What's the deterrent to crime then?
The conditions in prison are rarely effective as a deterrent anyway, either people think they'll get away with it (typically theft, burglary, mugging, robbery, trafficking illegal goods, fraud, embezzlement and related crimes) or crimes of passion (rage, lust, envy mostly, often combined with being drunk or high - most violent crime, rape and murder) where they're not thinking rationally of consequences. While there are certainly repeat offenders there's also many first-time offenders that have no real concept of what doing time is like or small time criminals that confuse being off the streets for a few weeks on minimum security with being locked up for years.
And most criminals don't return or not return to prison because of how the conditions are on the inside. They return because they don't really see any alternatives to the life they have on the outside. No money, no job, no CV or work history, so it's back to stealing or peddling drugs on the street corner. Or they have impulse control or substance abuse issues that don't just disappear with time. And if prison is some horrible hellhole then you have these "nothing to lose", "never going back" people who will do anything to get away with it and fight the police until they die in a rain of bullets from a SWAT team. They need to see that there is another way, in prison and after prison. Not everyone will want to change, but you can't whip them into changing.
Getting proper apples-to-apples numbers on the effect of treating prisoners humanely is very difficult, but it generally varies from "it helps" to "it doesn't hurt", there's really very little to suggest it makes things worse. It's mostly a matter of whether it's money worth spending. Here in Norway we created what the international press called "the world's most humane maximum security prison" but mainly it's that it is built like a normal living quarters like a dorm room or hotel room. No escapes, very low tension even though it's murderers and rapists. Even gangs keep the peace inside the prison, it's like everybody is on time-out. And quite many find they like it better than the life they had.
And that is the real issue here: with the DMCA, and now with patents, these fuckers are trying to create some sort of bizarro-world where Imaginary Property is not only no longer imaginary, but somehow actually superior to the right to own actual property!
You say that as if this is something entirely new. Welcome to 1873:
Unlike the analogous first-sale doctrine in copyright, the patent exhaustion doctrine has not been codified into the patent statute, and is thus still a common law doctrine. It was first explicitly recognized by the Supreme Court in 1873 in Adams v. Burke. In that case, the patentee Adams assigned to another the right to make, use, and sell patented coffin lids only within a ten-mile radius of Boston. Burke (an undertaker), a customer of the assignee, bought the coffin lids from the manufacturer-assignee within the ten-mile radius, but later used (and effectively resold) the patented coffin lids outside of the ten-mile radius, in his trade in the course of burying a person.
Here's copyright in 1908:
The [first sale] doctrine was first recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1908 (...). In the Bobbs-Merrill case, the publisher, Bobbs-Merrill, had inserted a notice in its books that any retail sale at a price under $1.00 would constitute an infringement of its copyright.
Sadly they won the biggest battle, except for open source 99.999% of all software is licensed through an EULA not copies sold like a book so you don't have any property rights to begin with. If you wanted to really restore the consumer-manufacturer balance the first thing you should do is create a "Digital Sales Act" that basically says if it walks, talks and quacks like a duck it's a duck. Once you start invalidating most shrinkwrap and clickwrap licenses then you can start talking consumer rights.
Is the author high, or trying to sneak in support for an invalid patent, or just plain confused? Patents affect who can make a product. Not the sale or use of the item after the initial manufactures sale.
(a) Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent.
Use is in general covered. The court has in 1992 upheld this:
The plaintiff in the case owned a patent on a medical device, which it sold to hospitals with a "single use only" notice label. The defendant purchased the used devices from hospitals, refurbished them, and resold them to hospitals. The Federal Circuit held that the single-use restriction was enforceable in accordance with the 1926 General Electric case,
But now it's not so clear:
The 2008 Supreme Court decision in Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc., arguably leaves unclear the extent to which patentees can avoid the exhaustion doctrine by means of so-called limited licenses (...) At least two district courts have concluded that Mallinckrodt is no longer good law after Quanta.
Can you avoid patent exhaustion by only giving a limited patent license? There is no clear answer in law, it's a common law doctrine. If they go back to the 1992 decision and say we meant that, the Quanta case was different then single use cartridges will be legal. The Quanta case was more if the product embodies all the essentials of the patent, the right is exhausted. In which case the sticker doesn't bind anyone else from reusing the cartridge.
because of a temporary drop in oil prices (we're a long way off from oil becoming worthless) why the heck are they doing so bad? I'm not gonna chuck if up to gov't corruption because _everywhere_ has that. Usually the rest of the world will send some aid to a country floundering like this. Heck even Greece got some. Did they piss everybody off somehow?
As I understand it the main problem is that the shortages and massive inflation means that most people spend most of their day standing in line for the scraps rather than do anything productive. And when they do get to buy some subsidized goods they overbuy and go to sell them on the black market, which means even more time is wasted on finding places to buy, places to sell and bartering. Running any kind of shop is pretty hopeless because you can't get reliable supplies or reliable customers or pay reliable wages. If you want anything done it's bribes, that again don't do anything productive.
Nobody will give a country loans without concessions and Chavez won't give any. Since the country is reduced to pretty much a giant money sink it's hard to see how anyone sane would invest in that economy. The only half functioning market is the black market, where anything is available to those who can pay but that too is running on fumes because so few still have money to buy with. Those who have money can get to do and have pretty much everything they want though, almost everything and everybody is for sale.
It's a major problem in technology that really needs to be addressed if this country is going to be competitive in the future. It's unfortunate that it's so inflammatory, but it needs to be addressed.
Somehow I doubt it's particularly bad in the US tech industry compared to other countries, maybe there's more lawsuits but that's the American way. Anyway I think there's two quite different forms of sexism:
1. The belief that one sex is much better at something than the other by nature of their sex. 2. Inappropriate sexual comments/jokes/propositions that belong in locker rooms or on Tinder.
I'm pretty sure the first one is mostly dead and buried in the western world, at least I've never met anyone that has hinted to a natural order where doctors, engineers and mechanics are men and nurses, secretaries and hairdressers are women. Slight surprise yes, but no more than finding a man in a female-dominated occupation and never questioning their capability.
The second kind, well IT tends to attract people who are short on social antennas. Not that they're particularly wanted, but they don't get work in "people jobs" but as long as they can operate a computer they can do a tech job. That often means they haven't bonded on an emotional level and only think about women as objects for sex. Maybe they have experience from casual sex or prostitutes that reinforce that view.
Then there's the whole man-woman dynamic, for the most part men want sex and women relationships so the proposal is likely to be far more sexual. When a woman indicates she's attracted, most men will be flattered. When a man indicates he's attracted, many women will be insulted. Basically I think women in general are far more sensitive about unwanted sexual attention or objectification than men are.
P.S. Once me and one male, one female coworker had a conversation that started about her "cracking the whip" and it took a BSDM turn. And even though tolerances are higher here than in the US, I was wondering if this one had gone out of bounds. Then she took it to the next level with one of our other male coworkers as her leather gimp and a strap-on. I guess he should be the one suing about sexual harassment, if only he knew...
Man, you're completely wrong. The Earth doesn't have a population limit. 8 billion is no closer than 1 billion. We can all live comfortable, luxurious lives. The problems we're facing have nothing to do with resource exhaustion (aside from petroleum), but inefficiency and pollution. We can absolutely produce goods without air pollution. We have sources of essentially limitless energy. We can absolutely use nuclear reactors to ship goods - no need for bunker oil. It's a question of economics and political engagement.
Cool. Get back to me when you've convinced the world to put a potential nuclear meltdown in every town and every cargo ship and drive EVs so they can use it for charging. Back in the real world, CO2 levels keep going up, up and away as countries like China go modern. After that comes India, Brazil and the rest of the developing world. Even if the population boom has subsided we'll still hit 10 billion people, that's another 33% growth.
The people who talk about reducing emissions are smoking crack, we're likely to double the world's CO2 emissions in the next 40 years if the technology doesn't evolve. Make that quadruple if everybody decides to pollute as much as Americans, because if they can why can't we? Whatever improvements we make will only make the explosive growth slightly less explosive unless we invent a working fusion reactor or something. Say what you want about nuclear but in the public opinion it's beating a dead horse. We're shutting existing reactors down, not building new ones.
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What is going to make the next version of uTorrent preferable to what's already there? I'm thinking that uTorrent's best days are behind it, and as long as 2.2.1 lives on Oldversion or OldApps, that is its legacy.
That's what I'm thinking too, I switched to qBittorrent that is open source and... it's done? Or well I see there's lots of tiny little enhancements and bugfixes in the release notes but honestly I can't think of a single noticeable change in the last couple years... nor any that I'd want, really. They'd have to pull off some entirely new non-torrent downloading functionality out of the hat to make me go back to uTorrent, which then begs the question.... why is it mixed up with uTorrent in the first place? Then again, looking at my peer logs a lot of other people use it (and by far most use 3.4.9), so I guess they have an audience. Whether they have one that'll let itself be monetized, well... whatever. There's plenty good alternatives if they get intrusive or obnoxious.
What will happen to humans displaced by these robots? We live in a society that expects everyone to work, but what will happen when there are no jobs? Crime? Extreme poverty? Mass protests? Political or religious extremism?
Probably all of the above, to some degree... but there's still huge differences between Russia 1917 and Greece 2017. Maybe Venezuela is getting close to the "fuck it, I got nothing to lose" level but as long as society is keeping people from really hitting rock bottom I think most poor people will simply be poor. Absolute poverty is in strong decline, the "third world" isn't nearly as primitive as it once was, even if the US middle class has been stagnant since the 70s the world hasn't moved backwards. Just like if global warming kills the Gulf Stream some places can get colder, not warmer - it's the big picture that counts.
Consider it this way, even if you're really poor the OSHA won't let companies kill you at work. The FDA won't accept dangerous food, you probably have clean hot and cold water, decent sanitation and so on. Medical science moves forward, people live longer and longer. Building codes keep getting stricter, cars safer and my impression is that people throw more and more away because they don't like it anymore or it looks a bit shabby, not because it's broken or useless. If you just accept being a bum and collect cheap or free second hand stuff from thrift stores and flea markets and eat Ramen noodles you might not be living it up by today's standards, but it's nothing like being genuinely poor 100 or 200 years ago. Or the worst hellholes today.
So 43 million Americans are on food stamps today, if we get (more) robotic tractors, robotic delivery vans, robotic shelf stockers, robotic checkout counters, robotic this, that... people go out of a job, some get new work others go on welfare. And if you think that's a problem, you can always replace one bulldozer with 1000 people with a spoon... it's not worth creating jobs just to have jobs. Expect it to be just barely enough to calm the masses though, it won't be given freely or easily. But I doubt they'll let it slide so far that people take to the streets with "give me UBI or give me death" slogans, there's always the "viva la revolution" or "Soylent Green" endings. But I think "bread and circus" is more likely.
Intel dabbled in this (as did others) years ago when SSDs were too small for most people. As far as I know, it was kinda shitty and only kinda worked and everyone abandoned it because hybrid drives were simpler (even though they too sucked) and SSDs kept getting bigger, faster, and cheaper. They called it "Smart Response Technology" when it launched. Maybe it's back? Maybe it never went away? Maybe Windows ReadyBoost has risen from the grave? (I've NEVER seen ReadyBoost in actual use.)
It's the same as far as I understand, just optimized for a lower latency high performance SSD. But to be honest, except for gamers I think almost everyone has space enough on the SSD these days. And even most gamers could if Steam only offered them two storage areas so they could put 1GB on the SSD and the other 29GB with all the media files on a HDD. I've gone all SSD anyway even though it's a waste.
if you look at shows like M*A*S*H or The Honeymooners or Star Trek or The Odd Couple you find most episodes are self-contained, and that it's fairly rare for most stories to directly span more than one episode. (...) Sometime in the nineties this shifted, and TV became serialized (...) I prefer the episodic model, as I don't feel compelled to watch if I don't want to, and I don't worry if I miss an episode or if I watch them out of original order.
Because VCRs became affordable and common. About the episodic format though, I think you're one of the few that don't enjoy any character development or long story arcs but would rather have a series spinning its wheels in one place. It's okay to be on season two when the show is at season five, unless you're the kind of person who can't put a book down. Even if the show is mostly the same like Big Bang Theory it's much better with a glacial drift, major big boobs Houlihan and i-want-out Klinger were pretty much cardboard characters. Yes, you can totally pick up on any episode in the series and not hate it, but eh... these days my standards are a little higher than not getting bored.
What is with this obsession of Linux users to want everyone to be "advanced users"? It's precisely because of that, that Linux doesn't have a bigger marketshare
Same reason we don't teach primary school pupils and university degree math in the same classroom or why NFL teams don't want to train against high school freshmen or Michelin chefs aren't interested in advice from their colleagues at McDonald's. You're not contributing anything useful at this level, you're just in the way. It's open source, people don't get paid per copy they sell. Most aren't trying to win a popularity contest. They're looking for a professional community/tool to support them and don't want it dumbed down to be newbie friendly.
And some of them aren't exactly going to apologize for it either, in their minds you're the one butting in on a place you don't belong, like trying to get advice at a doctor's conference instead of scheduling an appointment. It doesn't help that some users act like you're their support staff and expect them to drop whatever they're doing to help you. It's very tempting to basically say we don't give a shit. Of course there are some will also immediately jump to the conclusion that any problem you have is because you're an idiot, just like all the other idiots.
Most software try to separate newbies from experts, developers from users with varying degrees of success since they're not exactly crystal clear definitions or mutually exclusive categories. And without one bishop in the cathedral to swing the ban hammer, it's not so easy getting rid of destructive elements. It usually takes some rather extremely obnoxious behavior to make a whole community throw you out. But if this is approaching TL;DR, well they don't want you there and market share isn't an important metric for them. Why should it be?
I've been lurking here for years and seen many recommendations for a Linux flavor that works. What I'm really looking for is Linux that works without constant under-the-hood tweaking
I think the question really requires taking a step back and looking at what a distro is and does. Because if you're coming in from another OS I'd say there's three levels of changes and the distro-level is probably the least important.
1. Applications: Do your applications run under Linux or do they have functional equivalents like web services you'd be happy with. If you've heard about WINE, then stop because Windows emulation is full of quirks. It's a tool for users that really, really don't want to run Windows even if it has 10x the issues of running Windows software on Windows. No distro is going to help you if after banging your head on GIMP and Krita you realize that no, I really need Photoshop or anything else with less than a platinum rating on WINE. And even then it can break in the next update.
2. Desktop environment (DE), this is pretty much how the OS part of the interface will look like for you. No matter which one you pick it won't be like Windows or OS X. If a distro ships a DE, it'll probably look and feel pretty much the same across distros. If you don't like Gnome or KDE on Ubuntu there's not much point trying them again on SuSE, Mint or Debian. Granted, a few of these are almost like picking distros as I'd take Mint for Cinnamon and Ubuntu for Unity but far from all.
3. Quality of packaging, testing, support, upgrades, security patches, availability of backports and third party repositories, release schedule etc. basically a lot of the boring housekeeping and problem solving. For the most part, this is what distros do - they take what developers have made and wrap it up in packages for you. But if the developers haven't made the apps you want, you'll be tweaking your work process a lot. If they haven't made the DE the way you want, you'll be tweaking your OS interaction a lot. A good distro doesn't create fuss for you, but it doesn't really mean it'll work for you.
I'd just start with Ubuntu with Unity (the default) only because it's super common and see if you get past #1. If you do and don't like Unity I'd try Cinnamon, KDE, Gnome and XFCE, as far as I know they're all available as packages on Ubuntu. If you find something that looks right for you I'd move on to #3 and ask "What distro is the best to run [Cinnamon/Gnome/KDE/Unity/XFCE]?" Though I suspect that the answer will probably be one of the Mint or Ubuntu spins in most cases. There's not much point in going outside the beaten path if you just want to get started.
How the hell do you re-write something like that? An "if" statement keys on the value of a single variable and conditionally executes a function. There are some things for which there is only one solution. Someone might suggest "just cold-room it!" But how are they supposed to do that?
You mean cleanroom. Copyright protects one particular expression (implementation) not the underlying idea (functionality), so the point is not necessarily to come up with a different solution but to document that it has been done independently. Yes, that means they must find an "untainted" developer to write the new code but you can in great detail describe the functionality as long as you don't impose a particular implementation. It's even been done "after the fact" as evidence:
The court relied heavily on evidence NEC presented that compared a "clean room'' program with both the V20/30 and Intel 8086/88 microcode. NEC hired an independent engineer (Gary Davidian) to develop a set of microcode for the V20/30 without access to any other microcode. Because Davidian's version of the microcode was similar in many regards to both the Intel and NEC microcodes, the court found it likely that those similarities were dictated not by copying of Intel's microcode, but rather by functional constraints of the hardware, the architecture, and the need for 8086/88 compatibility.
The documentation is a pain in the butt, but the legal reasoning around it isn't so bad.
No issues linking to OpenSSL so long as you obey the terms of the OpenSSL license in the binary distribution of OpenSSL, and the GPL in the terms of the distribution of the software linking to openssl.
Doesn't work that way... then you could say that your "licensed for non-commercial use" code is distributed for $0, I'm just charging for my code and your restriction can't extend to my code. You'd get rid of all license restrictions by "librarifying" it. Distribution is not the only exclusive right in copyright, so is preparing derived works and running something as one program in the same memory space is definitively that.
Granted you've moved the primary violation over to the end user, who may or may not be able to claim fair use but as an organized means of license circumvention I'd say you'd get in legal trouble for vicarious copyright infringement. That's the legal theory they've used to go after centralized P2P and torrent sites, even though the torrent sites themselves don't commit primary violations they just benefit from them.
Consider it a bit this way, many things can be created from legal chemicals. That doesn't mean you can create one-click "meth lab kits" and act like you're just selling bits and pieces that by themselves are legal. Not even you split them into "Meth lab part 1" and "Meth lab part 2". It would be the same with OpenSSL and GPL code, legally you can distribute one or the other. But once it becomes a DIY copyright violation kit, you get in trouble.
It really depends, they don't need to be cool. They just need to be X86 compatible! Their phones have been decent but poorly supported app wise, give me compatibility with X86 and I would get one tomorrow instead of my planned Galaxy S8 purchase.
And we know Intel cancelled the last iteration of that project, probably because Microsoft wouldn't commit to buying enough processors to make it worth it. So unless there's some supersecret project that's not on any roadmap it's not going to happen.
I used to think the same before I talked to some legal people -- you might be surprised.
It's the sort of thing legal people can blabber on and on about, but when you consider that anyone distributing this project can be sued in 100+ jurisdictions with different laws and legal systems most of them will get very quiet. And at least in the US there are statutory damages, who ever is "hurt" doesn't have to prove that, they just have to prove infringement and they can cash in which could be tempting for a greedy heir. And not necessarily just liability either, fraudulent removal or alteration of a copyright license is a criminal act under USC 17506(d) and possibly many other nations.
Basically it's the kind of thing they can bill lots of hours for but try asking them if they'll put their money where their mouth is and take the bill if their legal interpretation is wrong and I think you'll find them disappear in a puff of smoke. Get permission from those you can get permission from, rewrite the rest. Maybe even document a cleanroom implementation if you know some are militantly opposed to the re-licensing. My guess is the formulation is a legally meaningless taunt, it didn't say they would re-license without your permission. It just implied it so they'd provoke a response.
The bigger question is why aren't the British (and the Americans for that matter) insisting that new citizens (including their children) become CITIZENS of that country in heart and soul
And how would you define what being "British in heart and soul" is? I think a lot of people that feel pretty genuinely British even though they don't eat pork because they're vegetarians or vegans or don't drink or don't go to church or... And how would you test if people actually live "British" enough for you? And what would you do with a child born and raised in Britain that's too "un-British" but isn't a citizen of any other country? Imprison them? Send them to "reeducation camps"? Deport them? India for Hinduism, Thailand for Buddhism, Japan for Shinto? You can't force people on other nations, you know.
I think it would get rather hilarious to try this in America, ask all the people who aren't "real" Americans to go home. I think you'll get a lot of funny debates on who exactly that is... Mexicans? Africans? Non-Christians? Everybody but the native Americans?
Here in Europe it usually means skipping cash altogether with online banking and payment cards. Usually it's because of a national debit card standard organized by the banks, like BankAxept here in Norway or EC-card in Germany. This is the price list of one our banks via Google Translate, prices converted to USD:
One time installation/terminal fees, fixed/mobile: $489/241
Monthly payment fees, fixed/mobile: $61/$83
Transaction fees, per transaction $0.026 flat
Use your card for a Big Mac? McDonald's is happy. Use it to buy a $1000 TV? The store is happy. Say you have a sale every 5 minutes, 10 hours a day, 6 days a week = ~25 days/month = 3000 sales total. That's $78 in processing fees + $61/83 = ~$150 total in operating costs for the whole month. Compare that to the expenses securing cash, transporting cash, keeping enough change and so on that they don't want and here it's yes please, use cards. And if the cash flows electronically, what do you need the local bank teller for? I just checked the stats for my purely online bank, 380k customers with 325 employees and 90% of the population do it online now.
Even the banks that do have branch offices now mostly train people to use the machines rather than process their deposits/bills and it's almost all retirees. Some banks have even started to put fees on the ATMs, because even maintaining and stocking them costs money even if there's no bank teller. With mobile pay now it's even BYOD, they don't even have to issue cards anymore. They're moving closer and closer to becoming a purely virtual organization that doesn't deal in anything but 0s and 1s. But that's okay, it's not like I really miss the days you were waiting in line at the counter.
For example, on (non-cryptographic) hash-functions my answer was to not do them yourself, because they would always be pretty bad, and to instead use the ones by Bob Jenkins, or if things are slow because there is a disk-access in there to use a crypto hash. While that is what you do in reality if you have more than small tables, that was apparently very much not what they wanted to hear. They apparently wanted me to start to mess around with the usual things you find in algorithm books.
No offense, but "I'd rather just use a library" seriously brings into question what you bring to the table and whether you'll just be searching experts-exchange for smart stuff other people have done..Like everybody knows you shouldn't use homegrown cryptographic algorithms, but if a cryptologist can't tell me what an S-box is and points me to using a library instead it doesn't really tell me anything about his skill, except he didn't want to answer the question. In fact, dodging the question like that would be a pretty big red flag.
Don't get me wrong, you can get there. But start off with roughly what you'd do if you had to implement it from scratch, what's difficult to get right, then suggest implementations you know or alternative ways to solve it. Because they're not that stupid that they think this is some novel issue nobody's ever looked at before or found decent answers to. They want to test if you have the intellect, knowledge and creativity to sketch a solution yourself. Once you've done that, then you can tell them why it's probably not a good idea to reinvent the wheel.
Meh, I'd say the people who write open source software on a non-commercial basis generally have a passion for it, make more effort in making it work correct and work harder to hone their skills than coders just looking for a paycheck. What's missing is usually the time and resources, sometimes it amazes me how much gets done with a skeleton crew. Projects and packages where it turns out there was really only one maintainer and he suddenly got other priorities and things go into limbo.
Most projects are not like the Linux kernel where there's several candidates and a nomination process. Often it's more like if you want to write code or take ownership then tag, you're it. Or it's just nobody who is going to write that kind of software or functionality in their spare time. Or it just reaches a level of mediocrity that's good enough to get shit done and not enough care about polish or user friendliness or niche features. It's 2017 and MS Office and Photoshop is alive and well. I think I've heard since '97 that Office was pretty much "done", well shouldn't we be catching up then?
It should work fine with quotes (for example search for "ubuntu 18.04", including quotes) as long as there are no typos.
If people typed that out fully when they ask yes, but on an Ubuntu forum that would be extremely redundant and "18.04" triggers on everything to do with 18th of April and other junk. The nice part about the nicknames is that if I say zesty and the page contains ubuntu somewhere, you've probably come to the right place even if they're not right next to each other. They should try to keep them short and simple tho. Like:
artsy, burly, curly, dandy, earthy, frisky, gaunt, humble, innate, jolly, keen, livid, murky, narly, overt, puffy, queezy, rocky, sweet, tasty, unique, vaunty, wobbly, x... can't really think of any. But I think that's enough for another decade.
Vista? Snow Leopard? I can understand names that are groan-worthy like GIMP, but the rest doesn't sound worse than NFL teams. Besides they have official release numbers, if you say Ubuntu 17.04 you don't have to call it "Zesty Zepus". If he should care enough to find it and ask, then "Yeah the developers have a nickname for each release, easier for the techs. For everyone else it's Ubuntu, just like Windows or OS X". If that's the excuse your boss would use it's because he doesn't like it for some other reason.
Assuming you like pizza, when you say you like pizza, do you mean the lowest common denominator pizza that may have human excrement for a topping or do you mean your general perception of pizza? It's a fairly simple concept.
That analogy only works if you say that the pizza has to be better in every way, better pie, better crust, better sauce, better cheese, better ham... I expect a self-driving car to meticulously obey the rules of the road, be extremely consistent in its driving and have superior reaction time. But to analyze all aspects of the human condition and flag all signs that another driver or pedestrian may not be inclined to follow the rules better than a human sounds unlikely. But if overall it has less accidents and particularly accidents that are our fault it's still a pizza. Perhaps in total a much better pizza. To do the car analogy, if "must run on hay" is an absolute requirement then the horse and buggy wins.
Somehow I'm not so concerned about this one, if you can follow the rules of the road in daytime and the sun is shining it's the same rules when it's night and raining. The rest is "just" a sensor sensitivity/noise cancellation problem that can be worked on in parallel to everything else. You can probably do a lot with combination LIDAR/optical systems to make LIDAR identify candidate surfaces then do optical do actually identify the sign. And you're looking for a predetermined number of surfaces of particular sizes, if you have identified the shape it should be possible to correlate candidates rather than try to analyze. You probably also have a lot of temporal data that could be used to enhance the search, after all traffic signs generally don't move or change. I'd be much more concerned with everything else that's out there, is it pedestrians or wild animals or a tree falling over the road that doesn't have any particularly known shape or size or color.
obj.message = "I <3 Javascript";
My condolences. Personally I loathe code that messes with variables in far-away objects, if it's a huge program you should call obj.setMessage( "I <3 Javascript" ); I don't know how much time I've wasted trying to track down WTF just did something compared to just setting a breakpoint on or printing a debug line in "setMessage()" to see what's happening from where. Yes, setters and getters are annoying copy-pasta code but it's a wonder for sanity. Same with stored procedures and databases, if something is done from many different places route it through one procedure. Even if it's done wrong, then at least it's done consistently wrong.
Hmmm - prison = food, clothing, shelter, in some cases a good gym membership and now your own tablet with internet and skype and probably easy access to porn. What's the deterrent to crime then?
The conditions in prison are rarely effective as a deterrent anyway, either people think they'll get away with it (typically theft, burglary, mugging, robbery, trafficking illegal goods, fraud, embezzlement and related crimes) or crimes of passion (rage, lust, envy mostly, often combined with being drunk or high - most violent crime, rape and murder) where they're not thinking rationally of consequences. While there are certainly repeat offenders there's also many first-time offenders that have no real concept of what doing time is like or small time criminals that confuse being off the streets for a few weeks on minimum security with being locked up for years.
And most criminals don't return or not return to prison because of how the conditions are on the inside. They return because they don't really see any alternatives to the life they have on the outside. No money, no job, no CV or work history, so it's back to stealing or peddling drugs on the street corner. Or they have impulse control or substance abuse issues that don't just disappear with time. And if prison is some horrible hellhole then you have these "nothing to lose", "never going back" people who will do anything to get away with it and fight the police until they die in a rain of bullets from a SWAT team. They need to see that there is another way, in prison and after prison. Not everyone will want to change, but you can't whip them into changing.
Getting proper apples-to-apples numbers on the effect of treating prisoners humanely is very difficult, but it generally varies from "it helps" to "it doesn't hurt", there's really very little to suggest it makes things worse. It's mostly a matter of whether it's money worth spending. Here in Norway we created what the international press called "the world's most humane maximum security prison" but mainly it's that it is built like a normal living quarters like a dorm room or hotel room. No escapes, very low tension even though it's murderers and rapists. Even gangs keep the peace inside the prison, it's like everybody is on time-out. And quite many find they like it better than the life they had.
And that is the real issue here: with the DMCA, and now with patents, these fuckers are trying to create some sort of bizarro-world where Imaginary Property is not only no longer imaginary, but somehow actually superior to the right to own actual property!
You say that as if this is something entirely new. Welcome to 1873:
Unlike the analogous first-sale doctrine in copyright, the patent exhaustion doctrine has not been codified into the patent statute, and is thus still a common law doctrine. It was first explicitly recognized by the Supreme Court in 1873 in Adams v. Burke. In that case, the patentee Adams assigned to another the right to make, use, and sell patented coffin lids only within a ten-mile radius of Boston. Burke (an undertaker), a customer of the assignee, bought the coffin lids from the manufacturer-assignee within the ten-mile radius, but later used (and effectively resold) the patented coffin lids outside of the ten-mile radius, in his trade in the course of burying a person.
Here's copyright in 1908:
The [first sale] doctrine was first recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1908 (...). In the Bobbs-Merrill case, the publisher, Bobbs-Merrill, had inserted a notice in its books that any retail sale at a price under $1.00 would constitute an infringement of its copyright.
Sadly they won the biggest battle, except for open source 99.999% of all software is licensed through an EULA not copies sold like a book so you don't have any property rights to begin with. If you wanted to really restore the consumer-manufacturer balance the first thing you should do is create a "Digital Sales Act" that basically says if it walks, talks and quacks like a duck it's a duck. Once you start invalidating most shrinkwrap and clickwrap licenses then you can start talking consumer rights.
Is the author high, or trying to sneak in support for an invalid patent, or just plain confused? Patents affect who can make a product. Not the sale or use of the item after the initial manufactures sale.
35 U.S. Code 271 - Infringement of patent
(a) Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent.
Use is in general covered. The court has in 1992 upheld this:
The plaintiff in the case owned a patent on a medical device, which it sold to hospitals with a "single use only" notice label. The defendant purchased the used devices from hospitals, refurbished them, and resold them to hospitals. The Federal Circuit held that the single-use restriction was enforceable in accordance with the 1926 General Electric case,
But now it's not so clear:
The 2008 Supreme Court decision in Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc., arguably leaves unclear the extent to which patentees can avoid the exhaustion doctrine by means of so-called limited licenses (...) At least two district courts have concluded that Mallinckrodt is no longer good law after Quanta.
Can you avoid patent exhaustion by only giving a limited patent license? There is no clear answer in law, it's a common law doctrine. If they go back to the 1992 decision and say we meant that, the Quanta case was different then single use cartridges will be legal. The Quanta case was more if the product embodies all the essentials of the patent, the right is exhausted. In which case the sticker doesn't bind anyone else from reusing the cartridge.
because of a temporary drop in oil prices (we're a long way off from oil becoming worthless) why the heck are they doing so bad? I'm not gonna chuck if up to gov't corruption because _everywhere_ has that. Usually the rest of the world will send some aid to a country floundering like this. Heck even Greece got some. Did they piss everybody off somehow?
As I understand it the main problem is that the shortages and massive inflation means that most people spend most of their day standing in line for the scraps rather than do anything productive. And when they do get to buy some subsidized goods they overbuy and go to sell them on the black market, which means even more time is wasted on finding places to buy, places to sell and bartering. Running any kind of shop is pretty hopeless because you can't get reliable supplies or reliable customers or pay reliable wages. If you want anything done it's bribes, that again don't do anything productive.
Nobody will give a country loans without concessions and Chavez won't give any. Since the country is reduced to pretty much a giant money sink it's hard to see how anyone sane would invest in that economy. The only half functioning market is the black market, where anything is available to those who can pay but that too is running on fumes because so few still have money to buy with. Those who have money can get to do and have pretty much everything they want though, almost everything and everybody is for sale.
It's a major problem in technology that really needs to be addressed if this country is going to be competitive in the future. It's unfortunate that it's so inflammatory, but it needs to be addressed.
Somehow I doubt it's particularly bad in the US tech industry compared to other countries, maybe there's more lawsuits but that's the American way. Anyway I think there's two quite different forms of sexism:
1. The belief that one sex is much better at something than the other by nature of their sex.
2. Inappropriate sexual comments/jokes/propositions that belong in locker rooms or on Tinder.
I'm pretty sure the first one is mostly dead and buried in the western world, at least I've never met anyone that has hinted to a natural order where doctors, engineers and mechanics are men and nurses, secretaries and hairdressers are women. Slight surprise yes, but no more than finding a man in a female-dominated occupation and never questioning their capability.
The second kind, well IT tends to attract people who are short on social antennas. Not that they're particularly wanted, but they don't get work in "people jobs" but as long as they can operate a computer they can do a tech job. That often means they haven't bonded on an emotional level and only think about women as objects for sex. Maybe they have experience from casual sex or prostitutes that reinforce that view.
Then there's the whole man-woman dynamic, for the most part men want sex and women relationships so the proposal is likely to be far more sexual. When a woman indicates she's attracted, most men will be flattered. When a man indicates he's attracted, many women will be insulted. Basically I think women in general are far more sensitive about unwanted sexual attention or objectification than men are.
P.S. Once me and one male, one female coworker had a conversation that started about her "cracking the whip" and it took a BSDM turn. And even though tolerances are higher here than in the US, I was wondering if this one had gone out of bounds. Then she took it to the next level with one of our other male coworkers as her leather gimp and a strap-on. I guess he should be the one suing about sexual harassment, if only he knew...
Man, you're completely wrong. The Earth doesn't have a population limit. 8 billion is no closer than 1 billion. We can all live comfortable, luxurious lives. The problems we're facing have nothing to do with resource exhaustion (aside from petroleum), but inefficiency and pollution. We can absolutely produce goods without air pollution. We have sources of essentially limitless energy. We can absolutely use nuclear reactors to ship goods - no need for bunker oil. It's a question of economics and political engagement.
Cool. Get back to me when you've convinced the world to put a potential nuclear meltdown in every town and every cargo ship and drive EVs so they can use it for charging. Back in the real world, CO2 levels keep going up, up and away as countries like China go modern. After that comes India, Brazil and the rest of the developing world. Even if the population boom has subsided we'll still hit 10 billion people, that's another 33% growth.
The people who talk about reducing emissions are smoking crack, we're likely to double the world's CO2 emissions in the next 40 years if the technology doesn't evolve. Make that quadruple if everybody decides to pollute as much as Americans, because if they can why can't we? Whatever improvements we make will only make the explosive growth slightly less explosive unless we invent a working fusion reactor or something. Say what you want about nuclear but in the public opinion it's beating a dead horse. We're shutting existing reactors down, not building new ones.