The "we can't read PDF" excuse got old more than ten years ago. It's short for "we can't change PDF easily so we can't strip your resume...
Actually the reason is much simpler. Companies that receive a lot of resumes have software that parses the documents (for keywords mostly) and this software often doesn't work with PDFs. Since Word is by far the most popular word processing software on the planet that is what they focus on. This has become less of a problem in recent years but it still exists. Most computers can read PDFs now but the institutional inertia takes a while to move.
Besides if someone really wants to strip your resume, putting it in a PDF will not prevent them from doing that. It adds a step but cut/paste isn't exactly hard. In any case, it would be a RARE recruiter that would do this. The overwhelming majority simply don't have the time and don't really care. If they don't want to hire you they simply throw out your resume or ignore it.
The better recruiters can handle most normal formats (DOC, TXT, RTF, PDF, etc) but many companies aren't very sophisticated. Best to assume a basic level of technological expertise. You can wow them once you get the interview. No one is impressed by your ability to create a PDF.
Meh. I'm not sure I'd want to be hired by a company that can't figure it out anyway. To me, it tells me a lot about what life would be like "on the inside".
Maybe, maybe not. Remember that HR isn't the entirety of a company. HR is not usually staffed with the best and brightest. There are plenty of companies that are great to work for which have poorly run recruiting and HR departments. HR folks also aren't usually fully clued in on what the hiring manager wants so they are doing a keyword search and forwarding resumes. If they can't find the right keywords your resume is going to get ignored. Word, for better or worse, is the easiest way to get past these people most of the time.
Who said anything about my company? I thought I was pretty clear when I said HR departments in general...
When I'm hiring a tech person, a word document is a strike against you.
Do you care about the information contained in the resume or do you truly reject candidates for using the most popular word processing software on the planet for generating the resume? If the later I'd say you are being foolish.
Since most hiring departments actually require Word format, you are only hurting yourself with such an arbitrary bias. I'm capable of providing you my resume in Word, PDF, RTF, ODF, TXT, Postscript and just about any other format you care to request. But if you don't specify it's going to come to you in Word because that what MOST employers want to see. How am I to know that you have a pathological hatred of Word files? I don't like Microsoft either but if it means getting a job versus not I can get over my distaste for Word.
Furthermore, I'm not sure I would want to work in a company that couldn't open PDFs.
Don't confuse the company with the HR minions. Some companies have great HR people but many more staff HR with retards who are unqualified to do much else. You have to get past the HR folks and most of them in my experience are not especially tech savvy.
You should always send your reumes as pdf files unless they specifically ask for it in another format.
Sadly this is exactly backwards from what you should do if you want to get hired. As a techie I agree that this is what should happen but I've worked closely with lots of HR managers and recruiters and I can confidently say it is a BAD idea to default your resume to PDF. Your resume is likely to get 30-40 seconds consideration at most. The standard format nearly every HR department works with is MS Word. Too many of them don't even know what a PDF is - depressing as that sounds. If they can't or won't open it they won't read it. Some can read PDFs but virtually all of them can read Word. Sending a PDF formatted resume is unlikely to help you and it is very likely to hurt you. The proper thing to do is use Word (.doc NOT.docx) unless they specifically say they accept PDF.
I've also tried using OpenOffice to send Word formatted resumes. Generally works if the formatting is simple but not reliably enough I'd trust it for a resume. It is not at all uncommon for the resume formatting to get messed up. Even small formatting errors look REALLY bad on a resume. Guess who looks bad if this happens? Not Microsoft. The person doing the hiring is far more likely to assume you are an idiot and toss your resume in the figurative rubbish bin. Depressing but that's the way it is.
One minor knit to pick. The momentum doesn't double with a doubling of the speed of the reaction mass. It quadruples. Remember your high school physics: KE=0.5*m*v**2
Momentum = mass * velocity (linear momentum of a particle) Kinetic Energy = 0.5 * mass * velocity^2 (for a newtonian rigid body)
Cookies are also hard to even browse without, most sites don't load if the cookie is rejected.
Don't know where you are browsing but I've been blocking the majority of cookies for years with little problem. Yes some sites need them, usually the ones you are trying to log into or buy something from. That only describes a small minority of sites - most don't actually need to set a cookie and if you block them you'll never notice the difference. If it is a site you trust and do business with regularly, cookies are fine. Otherwise either block them forever or only allow them for that session. Your web experience will be no worse for the lack of cookies.
Ebay is legally required to take it down if they are served with a DMCA notice [chillingeffects.org]. However, if you file a counter-notice [chillingeffects.org], they are correspondingly legally required to put it back up unless the Copyright owner files suit against you.
All true but good luck getting eBay to put a posting back up. It would be hard to find a company that cares less about its customers (sellers and buyers) than eBay.
I can almost promise you that a strong enough work ethic can make up for any lack of innate ability.
It's a romantic idea but not demonstrably not true. Don't get me wrong, hard work can take you a LONG way - but not always enough to make up for an innate lack of ability. My mother is a reasonably smart lady in many ways but no amount of effort or desire on her part would turn her into an aerospace engineer. It's a very American idea that hard work can overcome any obstacle. Sometimes it can overcome obstacles and the notion is to our credit I think. Nevertheless, sometimes desire and hard work just aren't enough. I think in the US we take the legal concept "all men are created equal" a little too far. All people should have the same legal opportunities and should be able to go as far as their talents take them but that doesn't mean every person is equally talented or that hard work can overcome every obstacle.
There are some fields that require a certain amount of natural intellectual or physical talent. I'm a good athlete for some sports and completely unsuited for others no matter how hard I work at them. If you are a 5 foot tall female, you aren't going to play in the NFL no matter how hard you work. Your friend got the degree through hard work and squeaking by but you never mentioned if he is a *good* engineer. It's possible to get a degree in some field you are utterly unsuited for. The jobs that require the most brain power are probably not the jobs that can or should be done by the people with IQs in the lowest quartile. Someone with a 90 IQ just isn't cut out for a career as a theoretical physicist or a codebreaker or even as an engineer. Would you trust an airplane built by a hard working but dim engineer? If so you would be the exception.
The problem why most computing devices suck today is that are to restricted and often to cumbersome to use.
Since you clearly know what to do why don't you go and fix the problem Mr. Smartypants. I'm sure you'll find it is a trivial problem to solve. I'm sure all those engineers would never think of trying to get a competitive leg up by actually designing a better phone.
The iPhone was only successfull, because it is easy to use. It's still heavily restricted, for example you cannot do application development on it.
Umm, exactly what do you think all those applications in the app store are? 2007 called and it wants its iPhone criticisms back.
If you are talking about actually doing development ON an iPhone instead of FOR an iPhone, I can't for a second fathom why you would want to subject yourself to that much pain...
Life doesn't exist 4 billion years. The earth itself barely makes that number.
True - first organisms appeared 3 billion years ago. That still is a LOOOOOONG time and you still missed the point.
Sure the "one species conquers all" event hasn't yet happened, but an "a few species conquer all" event has in fact happened.
I think you have a fanciful and incredibly wrong idea about how genetics and evolution, not to mention thermodynamics, work. Either that or you read too much science fiction. The only time there has ever been a relatively small number of species on this planet was after large scale extinctions and EVERY time the species diversity increased afterward. The data does not support your theory.
There are 4 "human" species alive today.
According to whom? Perhaps you are referring to studies which claim there were 4-5 direct predecessors? Methinks you have no idea what you are talking about or you are a troll.
The diversity you see today is still quite extensive, but it's pitiful compared to what existed even a few million years ago.
The number of species waxes and wanes. No reason to believe that won't continue to be the case unless we humans or a very large asteroid turn the planet into a cinder.
Interesting question but I think a more interesting question is should we incentivize small scale agriculture? It does not necessarily follow that small farms are the only or best way to ensure a healthy and diverse food supply. Maybe they are, but then again maybe not. I'm not convinced either way.
Maybe the answer is more in stimulating demand from an informed end consumer through farmer's markets and education and perhaps regulation. If there is enough demand for diverse food options, agri-businesses will find a way to make it happen. We've seen some of that happening already - the produce options in my local megamart is vastly improved from when I was a child. Almost weekly I run across some variety of fruit or veggie I've never heard of before. More demand for more varieties will inevitably mean a more diverse food supply. Might not be the answer but it's a start...
IMHO, one way is to highlight the benefits of traditional farming practices.
Hmm, you're losing me here. Nothing wrong with family farming but even family farms use the same technology as the big boys these days. Even without getting modern genetics into the mix, a family farm is still a technology driven business and it's a HARD way to make a living. I respect the hell out of farmers. But most food products are commodities and with any commodity, the lowest price wins. Genetic engineering provides a HUGE advantage in yields. Plus small farms are more economically exposed to the vagaries of nature than a big agri-business. The only way for a small guy to compete is to differentiate but that's hard to do in a global food chain. I like your thought but I'm just not seeing how it would work.
Eventually (usually this takes a looooooooooooooooong while though) a "grey goo" type event takes place : some species finds a very efficient process and colonizes the whole planet (since no other species can acquire the energy necessary to stop it).
Since this hasn't happened or shown any sign of happening in the roughly 4 BILLION years our planet has existed, I'm going to feel comfortable declaring this to be nonsense. Reality trumps theory every time...
We used to engineer crops based on the outcome, the totality of the plant. Now, we're engineering crops based on single genes.
I'm well aware that we now have a scalpel where we used to have a sledgehammer. That doesn't change what we are doing, merely the speed and accuracy of how we do it. We used to make changes pretty much by guess and check without any clear idea what our changes were doing. The ONLY way to fully understand a genome is to make changes to single genes and see what happens.
I'm not saying genetic engineering is bad; I'm saying we should know literally everything we can about genes before we start fiddling with things.
A nice sentiment but not really possible or practical. The only way to really learn about genes is to "fiddle" with them and see what happens. We have a theory and then we test that theory. There is no way you can learn "everything" about genetics prior to doing the experiments and research. This necessarily involves tweaking the expression of individual genes if we really want to understand what is going on.
I would argue, however, that it would take order of magnitudes longer time for random mutation to stumble upon longer, desirable sequences which happen to exist in frogs.
No argument there. Modern genetic engineering is undeniably powerful and potentially dangerous but we've always been able to harness useful genetic mutations. The new technology just makes it faster, more reliable and more accurate. The best analogy I can think of is that it's a bit like trying to dig a hole and suddenly getting a backhoe when all you used to have was a shovel. You can get to the same end point with other techniques but it is going to be a lot harder and slower.
We've been manipulating genes for the last 10,000+ years. Only difference now is that we're better at it. Of course there are risks but there are huge rewards too. What annoys me is that most people who argue against genetic engineering don't even begin to actually understand the technology. There ARE reasonable critiques to be made but those critiques are made so rarely...
Finally, it is entirely plausible that modern genetics, or more specifically, modern agribusiness, could reduce the genetic diversity of our food supply. I'm going to guess I don't need to inform you of the risks there.
I'd say it's not only plausible but that it has already happened. Economies of scale tend to work against diversity. That's not always a bad thing (starvation is a worse problem than a non-diverse food supply) but monocultures do expose us to new risks.
The Sherman Act says actions meant to preserve market dominance are illegal when they destroy competition itself.
No, it doesn't actually say that. Read the act and the subsequent legislation including the Clayton Act and the Robinson-Patman Act. Market dominance by definition means that you have destroyed competition. What anti-trust law guards against is elimination of competition to the detriment of consumers. That is a MUCH harder case to make.
Apple isn't disabling the Pre's syncing because of worry about consumer, they do so because letting the Pre sync could damage their iPod sales. Despite a variety of alternatives, iPod's still command a healthy share of the mobile audio players market.
Apple is in the business of selling hardware - iPods and more importantly iPhones. So is Palm in the business of making and selling phones but NOT MP3 players. Apple has created software and a download service that helps create a market for their devices. These services have been quite successful. Palm has (to my knowledge) not created their own iTunes equivalent but instead has chosen to free ride on Apple's investment, knowing they will sell phones at Apple's expense. People who buy a Pre are probably not going to buy an iPhone as well. So what reasonably argument can we make that Apple should be supportive of this? I certainly can't think of one.
A case also could be made that Apple's disabling the Pre's ability to sync as a native iPod is illegal product tying - i.e. requiring the purchase of one product to complete purchase or use of another.
Tying is not generally held to be illegal unless there is no relationship between the goods offered for sale or some sort of price discrimination. There is no compelling argument for tying here because each part of the service is independent (you don't HAVE to use iTunes or ITMS with an iPod).
An MP3 player by itself isn't especially useful without software to load the files on to the device but you don't have to use Apple's software to do it. ITunes is merely one of many ways to manage a music library and interface with an MP3 player. Even iPods don't require iTunes to work nor does iTunes require an iPod to be useful - you can play music from iTunes without even owning an iPod. Furthermore iTunes is free so no one is required to pay anything to use it.
ITMS is a service and the product it provides (MP3 files) can be obtained easily elsewhere for similar if not lesser cost.
Morally? Doesn't it seem a bit greedy of Apple to stop the Pre from syncing just because Palm wanted to make life easier for users and making it a PITA to use a Pre might get some people to buy iPods?
Palm isn't selling MP3 players. Palm sells phones. Palm is trying to be a free rider on the work of Apple. Apple is in the business of selling handsets like Palm. If someone buys a handset from Palm they don't buy one from Apple. It's a zero sum game. Why should Apple pay to support Palm when it is perfectly legal for Palm to set up their own version of iTunes and ITMS?
However, none have the breadth that ITMS has as far as selection. It's much like how WalMart isn't a monopoly because other companies sell lots of the same stuff-they just happen to be hundreds of times bigger than your average supermarket chain
That's a fairly good analogy and illustrative. Apple is for the moment the 800lb gorilla in the MP3 music market. Like Walmart however they are no where close to being a monopoly. Dominant? Yes. Influential? Certainly. Monopoly? Nope. A monopoly that is detrimental to consumers? No way. Sorry but you haven't convince me that Apple's actions are in any way illegal.
OK, now explain how Monsanto could develop GURT [wikipedia.org] by using selection. That would be kind of hard, considering that the trait they want to enhance is sterility?
I'm not even close to a genetics expert but I expect you would do it something along the lines of the way you create a mule. There are plenty of ways to create sterile offspring without resorting to modern genetic techniques. The modern techniques just make it a whole lot easier. It might be too costly to bother but I don't see any fundamental impossibility here.
...no, direct genetic engineering isn't just a stronger form of cross-breeding and selection.
Then what is it? I have to say that I think it is nothing more than a stronger form but please... prove me wrong.
The hotheads they were defending against wasn't the US. It was their own generals.
I know that but you missed part of my point. To keep it secret from the US they would have to keep it secret from many of their own leaders. I'm sure they trust their generals but trust isn't foolproof. If only a few people have launch authority and those people are taken out, the launch cannot occur. If you distribute launch authority or automate it but keep that a secret, it INCREASES the risk of disaster. A secret disincentive is no disincentive at all.
How do you make sure you don't press the button first for fear that you're under attack when in fact it's nothing of the sort? Well, one way would be to devise a system so that MAD was still possible even if they were all dead.
What we are talking about is a sort of dead man's switch. Used in the context of a bomb it is a fail-deadly instead of a fail-safe system. In essence this system scarily similar to what a suicide bomber might use. The Soviets were scared but I didn't think they were suicidal.
A system like this is designed to go off no matter what so you can make a credible argument that it reduces the incentive not to launch first. If you think you are going to die anyway and you know you will likely kill your "enemy" you have less incentive not to launch first.
I'm willing to be convinced but I've studied a fair bit of game theory. I just haven't seen an argument I buy that this system somehow would reduce the incentive to launch first.
Morally, it's wrong of Apple to deny other media device manufacturers access to iTunes and ITMS.
Morally? There's nothing immoral about it so far as I can see. With apologies to the authors on wikipedia I just don't see how morality comes into the picture here.
descriptive usage, morality means a code of conduct or belief which is held to be authoritative in matters of right and wrong. Morals are arbitrarily created and subjectively defined by society, philosophy, religion, and/or individual conscience.
normative and universal sense, morality refers to an ideal code of belief and conduct, one which would be espoused in preference to other alternatives by the sane "moral" person, under specified conditions.
There is no authoritative code of conduct here other than our laws and the bylaws. You personally may feel they are behaving immorally but there are plenty who will disagree with you so your personal morals can't be argued in any sort of universal authoritative sense. You might make an open source style argument but you're on shaky ground there too. Neither ITMS nor iTunes is open source software. You know that up front. You also probably know that there are free (as in speech) and/or legal alternatives to both. If you don't like what Apple offers you don't have to use their software and services. Apple is not under any moral or legal obligation to cater to your every whim.
There also is no ideal code of conduct here that we can all agree on. Apple worked hard to create their combination of products and services. Should they not reap the benefits, especially when it has no detrimental effect on you? You may not like Apple not letting it's competitors be free riders but I see nothing morally wrong with them preventing the competition from capitalizing on their work. ITunes is not some piece of public infrastructure and there is no compelling argument that it represents a market failure. The entire reason we have copyrights and patents is precisely to advance the public interest in the face of the free rider problem. There is no compelling public interest to making iTunes or ITMS the equivalent of a common carrier at this time. Neither the software nor the service is a monopoly - both are merely popular in comparison to the alternatives available.
Legally, it's likely also wrong.
I suspect you are not a lawyer and you have provided no evidence whatsoever to back that assertion. I'm pretty aware of the issues involved and I cannot think of any reasonably legal argument whereby Apple is doing anything against the law. Happy to be proven wrong but I doubt you can prove me wrong.
With an automatic retaliation system in place, Russia gets its revenge whether or not there are any survivors. There was no reason to announce its existence when its purpose is not to prevent your enemy from attacking you, but instead to prevent you from attacking your enemy.
This bit doesn't make sense to me. To keep it from being known to the US the Soviets would have had to keep it tightly under wraps from their own people as well. Perhaps it's possible but I see no sane way to reconcile the need for secrecy with the need to inform. A doomsday device no one knows about is insane.
A doomsday device that you never tell anyone about is insane. The ENTIRE point of such a device is deterrence. The article says that it was to keep "hotheads" from a first strike but that makes no sense. To keep it a secret from the US they would have to keep it a secret from most Soviets as well thus it can't serve the function of cooling hotheads.
And of course since the device is built by humans there is always the chance it will malfunction or function properly in a situation that was never planned.
Nonsense. You get to "experience" a periodical in every issue.
You didn't bother to follow the link and learn what an experience good is did you? I'm not talking about some sort of gestalt or an amusement park "experience". An experience good is a term economists use for items you can't evaluate until after you have them in your possession. You don't know if information is valuable until AFTER you already have the information. When you pay for the Wall Street Journal, you aren't paying for specific information, you are paying for the reputation of that magazine for reliably providing interesting/useful content. If you already knew the content in advance of reading it there would be nothing worth paying for.
Even if the content is only available in hard copy you can still easily browse it and all of it's immediate competitors (library, bookstore).
You really didn't understand. No publication can sell you information you already have. The act of consumption (reading the paper) is one way act. Once you have read the information not even the might Wall Street Journal can make you un-read it. The good (information in this case) has already been consumed. Only after you have read it can you make a determination of value.
This is somewhat different than music where there is some entertainment value in listening to the same music repeatedly. News is much more of a wasting asset. Once news is consumed it is unusual that anyone reads it again and it loses most of its monetary value.
The character of The Journal doesn't change from one day to the next.
The content does change every day and not every article is valuable to every person. Not even the mighty Wall Street Journal has any way to know in advance whether I will regard a particular bit of information as valuable or what I will think it is worth. The best they can do is publish the best articles they can on a variety of topics and bundle them together in the hopes the consumer will find a sufficient number valuable.
Slashdot Mirror
The "we can't read PDF" excuse got old more than ten years ago. It's short for "we can't change PDF easily so we can't strip your resume...
Actually the reason is much simpler. Companies that receive a lot of resumes have software that parses the documents (for keywords mostly) and this software often doesn't work with PDFs. Since Word is by far the most popular word processing software on the planet that is what they focus on. This has become less of a problem in recent years but it still exists. Most computers can read PDFs now but the institutional inertia takes a while to move.
Besides if someone really wants to strip your resume, putting it in a PDF will not prevent them from doing that. It adds a step but cut/paste isn't exactly hard. In any case, it would be a RARE recruiter that would do this. The overwhelming majority simply don't have the time and don't really care. If they don't want to hire you they simply throw out your resume or ignore it.
The better recruiters can handle most normal formats (DOC, TXT, RTF, PDF, etc) but many companies aren't very sophisticated. Best to assume a basic level of technological expertise. You can wow them once you get the interview. No one is impressed by your ability to create a PDF.
Meh. I'm not sure I'd want to be hired by a company that can't figure it out anyway. To me, it tells me a lot about what life would be like "on the inside".
Maybe, maybe not. Remember that HR isn't the entirety of a company. HR is not usually staffed with the best and brightest. There are plenty of companies that are great to work for which have poorly run recruiting and HR departments. HR folks also aren't usually fully clued in on what the hiring manager wants so they are doing a keyword search and forwarding resumes. If they can't find the right keywords your resume is going to get ignored. Word, for better or worse, is the easiest way to get past these people most of the time.
I would send my resume as ODF. If the person doing the hiring could not open it, I would not be interested to work with that company.
Enjoy being unemployed!
That may be the way it is in your company.
Who said anything about my company? I thought I was pretty clear when I said HR departments in general...
When I'm hiring a tech person, a word document is a strike against you.
Do you care about the information contained in the resume or do you truly reject candidates for using the most popular word processing software on the planet for generating the resume? If the later I'd say you are being foolish.
Since most hiring departments actually require Word format, you are only hurting yourself with such an arbitrary bias. I'm capable of providing you my resume in Word, PDF, RTF, ODF, TXT, Postscript and just about any other format you care to request. But if you don't specify it's going to come to you in Word because that what MOST employers want to see. How am I to know that you have a pathological hatred of Word files? I don't like Microsoft either but if it means getting a job versus not I can get over my distaste for Word.
Furthermore, I'm not sure I would want to work in a company that couldn't open PDFs.
Don't confuse the company with the HR minions. Some companies have great HR people but many more staff HR with retards who are unqualified to do much else. You have to get past the HR folks and most of them in my experience are not especially tech savvy.
You should always send your reumes as pdf files unless they specifically ask for it in another format.
Sadly this is exactly backwards from what you should do if you want to get hired. As a techie I agree that this is what should happen but I've worked closely with lots of HR managers and recruiters and I can confidently say it is a BAD idea to default your resume to PDF. Your resume is likely to get 30-40 seconds consideration at most. The standard format nearly every HR department works with is MS Word. Too many of them don't even know what a PDF is - depressing as that sounds. If they can't or won't open it they won't read it. Some can read PDFs but virtually all of them can read Word. Sending a PDF formatted resume is unlikely to help you and it is very likely to hurt you. The proper thing to do is use Word (.doc NOT .docx) unless they specifically say they accept PDF.
I've also tried using OpenOffice to send Word formatted resumes. Generally works if the formatting is simple but not reliably enough I'd trust it for a resume. It is not at all uncommon for the resume formatting to get messed up. Even small formatting errors look REALLY bad on a resume. Guess who looks bad if this happens? Not Microsoft. The person doing the hiring is far more likely to assume you are an idiot and toss your resume in the figurative rubbish bin. Depressing but that's the way it is.
One minor knit to pick. The momentum doesn't double with a doubling of the speed of the reaction mass. It quadruples. Remember your high school physics: KE=0.5*m*v**2
Momentum = mass * velocity (linear momentum of a particle)
Kinetic Energy = 0.5 * mass * velocity^2 (for a newtonian rigid body)
Apparently you flunked high school physics...
...it is a ceramic, which can hardly be used as a cable conductor.
You mean except for the ceramic cables that are already in use? I think your "information" may be a wee bit out of date.
Cookies are also hard to even browse without, most sites don't load if the cookie is rejected.
Don't know where you are browsing but I've been blocking the majority of cookies for years with little problem. Yes some sites need them, usually the ones you are trying to log into or buy something from. That only describes a small minority of sites - most don't actually need to set a cookie and if you block them you'll never notice the difference. If it is a site you trust and do business with regularly, cookies are fine. Otherwise either block them forever or only allow them for that session. Your web experience will be no worse for the lack of cookies.
has fined Oracle $10,000...
Wow. How will Oracle ever come up with that kind of cash? Larry Elison might have to sell a seat cushion from one of his yachts to cover the bill.
Ebay is legally required to take it down if they are served with a DMCA notice [chillingeffects.org]. However, if you file a counter-notice [chillingeffects.org], they are correspondingly legally required to put it back up unless the Copyright owner files suit against you.
All true but good luck getting eBay to put a posting back up. It would be hard to find a company that cares less about its customers (sellers and buyers) than eBay.
I can almost promise you that a strong enough work ethic can make up for any lack of innate ability.
It's a romantic idea but not demonstrably not true. Don't get me wrong, hard work can take you a LONG way - but not always enough to make up for an innate lack of ability. My mother is a reasonably smart lady in many ways but no amount of effort or desire on her part would turn her into an aerospace engineer. It's a very American idea that hard work can overcome any obstacle. Sometimes it can overcome obstacles and the notion is to our credit I think. Nevertheless, sometimes desire and hard work just aren't enough. I think in the US we take the legal concept "all men are created equal" a little too far. All people should have the same legal opportunities and should be able to go as far as their talents take them but that doesn't mean every person is equally talented or that hard work can overcome every obstacle.
There are some fields that require a certain amount of natural intellectual or physical talent. I'm a good athlete for some sports and completely unsuited for others no matter how hard I work at them. If you are a 5 foot tall female, you aren't going to play in the NFL no matter how hard you work. Your friend got the degree through hard work and squeaking by but you never mentioned if he is a *good* engineer. It's possible to get a degree in some field you are utterly unsuited for. The jobs that require the most brain power are probably not the jobs that can or should be done by the people with IQs in the lowest quartile. Someone with a 90 IQ just isn't cut out for a career as a theoretical physicist or a codebreaker or even as an engineer. Would you trust an airplane built by a hard working but dim engineer? If so you would be the exception.
The problem why most computing devices suck today is that are to restricted and often to cumbersome to use.
Since you clearly know what to do why don't you go and fix the problem Mr. Smartypants. I'm sure you'll find it is a trivial problem to solve. I'm sure all those engineers would never think of trying to get a competitive leg up by actually designing a better phone.
The iPhone was only successfull, because it is easy to use. It's still heavily restricted, for example you cannot do application development on it.
Umm, exactly what do you think all those applications in the app store are? 2007 called and it wants its iPhone criticisms back.
If you are talking about actually doing development ON an iPhone instead of FOR an iPhone, I can't for a second fathom why you would want to subject yourself to that much pain...
Since bone-skinny has become synonym for sexy, healthy and so on, it's become hard to even FIND women with boobs or asses AT ALL.
You must not live in the US because we have female obesity rates above 30%.
Life doesn't exist 4 billion years. The earth itself barely makes that number.
True - first organisms appeared 3 billion years ago. That still is a LOOOOOONG time and you still missed the point.
Sure the "one species conquers all" event hasn't yet happened, but an "a few species conquer all" event has in fact happened.
I think you have a fanciful and incredibly wrong idea about how genetics and evolution, not to mention thermodynamics, work. Either that or you read too much science fiction. The only time there has ever been a relatively small number of species on this planet was after large scale extinctions and EVERY time the species diversity increased afterward. The data does not support your theory.
There are 4 "human" species alive today.
According to whom? Perhaps you are referring to studies which claim there were 4-5 direct predecessors? Methinks you have no idea what you are talking about or you are a troll.
The diversity you see today is still quite extensive, but it's pitiful compared to what existed even a few million years ago.
The number of species waxes and wanes. No reason to believe that won't continue to be the case unless we humans or a very large asteroid turn the planet into a cinder.
How do we incentivize small scale agriculture?
Interesting question but I think a more interesting question is should we incentivize small scale agriculture? It does not necessarily follow that small farms are the only or best way to ensure a healthy and diverse food supply. Maybe they are, but then again maybe not. I'm not convinced either way.
Maybe the answer is more in stimulating demand from an informed end consumer through farmer's markets and education and perhaps regulation. If there is enough demand for diverse food options, agri-businesses will find a way to make it happen. We've seen some of that happening already - the produce options in my local megamart is vastly improved from when I was a child. Almost weekly I run across some variety of fruit or veggie I've never heard of before. More demand for more varieties will inevitably mean a more diverse food supply. Might not be the answer but it's a start...
IMHO, one way is to highlight the benefits of traditional farming practices.
Hmm, you're losing me here. Nothing wrong with family farming but even family farms use the same technology as the big boys these days. Even without getting modern genetics into the mix, a family farm is still a technology driven business and it's a HARD way to make a living. I respect the hell out of farmers. But most food products are commodities and with any commodity, the lowest price wins. Genetic engineering provides a HUGE advantage in yields. Plus small farms are more economically exposed to the vagaries of nature than a big agri-business. The only way for a small guy to compete is to differentiate but that's hard to do in a global food chain. I like your thought but I'm just not seeing how it would work.
Eventually (usually this takes a looooooooooooooooong while though) a "grey goo" type event takes place : some species finds a very efficient process and colonizes the whole planet (since no other species can acquire the energy necessary to stop it).
Since this hasn't happened or shown any sign of happening in the roughly 4 BILLION years our planet has existed, I'm going to feel comfortable declaring this to be nonsense. Reality trumps theory every time...
We used to engineer crops based on the outcome, the totality of the plant. Now, we're engineering crops based on single genes.
I'm well aware that we now have a scalpel where we used to have a sledgehammer. That doesn't change what we are doing, merely the speed and accuracy of how we do it. We used to make changes pretty much by guess and check without any clear idea what our changes were doing. The ONLY way to fully understand a genome is to make changes to single genes and see what happens.
I'm not saying genetic engineering is bad; I'm saying we should know literally everything we can about genes before we start fiddling with things.
A nice sentiment but not really possible or practical. The only way to really learn about genes is to "fiddle" with them and see what happens. We have a theory and then we test that theory. There is no way you can learn "everything" about genetics prior to doing the experiments and research. This necessarily involves tweaking the expression of individual genes if we really want to understand what is going on.
I would argue, however, that it would take order of magnitudes longer time for random mutation to stumble upon longer, desirable sequences which happen to exist in frogs.
No argument there. Modern genetic engineering is undeniably powerful and potentially dangerous but we've always been able to harness useful genetic mutations. The new technology just makes it faster, more reliable and more accurate. The best analogy I can think of is that it's a bit like trying to dig a hole and suddenly getting a backhoe when all you used to have was a shovel. You can get to the same end point with other techniques but it is going to be a lot harder and slower.
We've been manipulating genes for the last 10,000+ years. Only difference now is that we're better at it. Of course there are risks but there are huge rewards too. What annoys me is that most people who argue against genetic engineering don't even begin to actually understand the technology. There ARE reasonable critiques to be made but those critiques are made so rarely...
Finally, it is entirely plausible that modern genetics, or more specifically, modern agribusiness, could reduce the genetic diversity of our food supply. I'm going to guess I don't need to inform you of the risks there.
I'd say it's not only plausible but that it has already happened. Economies of scale tend to work against diversity. That's not always a bad thing (starvation is a worse problem than a non-diverse food supply) but monocultures do expose us to new risks.
The Sherman Act says actions meant to preserve market dominance are illegal when they destroy competition itself.
No, it doesn't actually say that. Read the act and the subsequent legislation including the Clayton Act and the Robinson-Patman Act. Market dominance by definition means that you have destroyed competition. What anti-trust law guards against is elimination of competition to the detriment of consumers. That is a MUCH harder case to make.
Apple isn't disabling the Pre's syncing because of worry about consumer, they do so because letting the Pre sync could damage their iPod sales. Despite a variety of alternatives, iPod's still command a healthy share of the mobile audio players market.
Apple is in the business of selling hardware - iPods and more importantly iPhones. So is Palm in the business of making and selling phones but NOT MP3 players. Apple has created software and a download service that helps create a market for their devices. These services have been quite successful. Palm has (to my knowledge) not created their own iTunes equivalent but instead has chosen to free ride on Apple's investment, knowing they will sell phones at Apple's expense. People who buy a Pre are probably not going to buy an iPhone as well. So what reasonably argument can we make that Apple should be supportive of this? I certainly can't think of one.
A case also could be made that Apple's disabling the Pre's ability to sync as a native iPod is illegal product tying - i.e. requiring the purchase of one product to complete purchase or use of another.
Tying is not generally held to be illegal unless there is no relationship between the goods offered for sale or some sort of price discrimination. There is no compelling argument for tying here because each part of the service is independent (you don't HAVE to use iTunes or ITMS with an iPod).
An MP3 player by itself isn't especially useful without software to load the files on to the device but you don't have to use Apple's software to do it. ITunes is merely one of many ways to manage a music library and interface with an MP3 player. Even iPods don't require iTunes to work nor does iTunes require an iPod to be useful - you can play music from iTunes without even owning an iPod. Furthermore iTunes is free so no one is required to pay anything to use it.
ITMS is a service and the product it provides (MP3 files) can be obtained easily elsewhere for similar if not lesser cost.
Morally? Doesn't it seem a bit greedy of Apple to stop the Pre from syncing just because Palm wanted to make life easier for users and making it a PITA to use a Pre might get some people to buy iPods?
Palm isn't selling MP3 players. Palm sells phones. Palm is trying to be a free rider on the work of Apple. Apple is in the business of selling handsets like Palm. If someone buys a handset from Palm they don't buy one from Apple. It's a zero sum game. Why should Apple pay to support Palm when it is perfectly legal for Palm to set up their own version of iTunes and ITMS?
However, none have the breadth that ITMS has as far as selection. It's much like how WalMart isn't a monopoly because other companies sell lots of the same stuff-they just happen to be hundreds of times bigger than your average supermarket chain
That's a fairly good analogy and illustrative. Apple is for the moment the 800lb gorilla in the MP3 music market. Like Walmart however they are no where close to being a monopoly. Dominant? Yes. Influential? Certainly. Monopoly? Nope. A monopoly that is detrimental to consumers? No way. Sorry but you haven't convince me that Apple's actions are in any way illegal.
OK, now explain how Monsanto could develop GURT [wikipedia.org] by using selection. That would be kind of hard, considering that the trait they want to enhance is sterility?
I'm not even close to a genetics expert but I expect you would do it something along the lines of the way you create a mule. There are plenty of ways to create sterile offspring without resorting to modern genetic techniques. The modern techniques just make it a whole lot easier. It might be too costly to bother but I don't see any fundamental impossibility here.
...no, direct genetic engineering isn't just a stronger form of cross-breeding and selection.
Then what is it? I have to say that I think it is nothing more than a stronger form but please... prove me wrong.
The hotheads they were defending against wasn't the US. It was their own generals.
I know that but you missed part of my point. To keep it secret from the US they would have to keep it secret from many of their own leaders. I'm sure they trust their generals but trust isn't foolproof. If only a few people have launch authority and those people are taken out, the launch cannot occur. If you distribute launch authority or automate it but keep that a secret, it INCREASES the risk of disaster. A secret disincentive is no disincentive at all.
How do you make sure you don't press the button first for fear that you're under attack when in fact it's nothing of the sort? Well, one way would be to devise a system so that MAD was still possible even if they were all dead.
What we are talking about is a sort of dead man's switch. Used in the context of a bomb it is a fail-deadly instead of a fail-safe system. In essence this system scarily similar to what a suicide bomber might use. The Soviets were scared but I didn't think they were suicidal.
A system like this is designed to go off no matter what so you can make a credible argument that it reduces the incentive not to launch first. If you think you are going to die anyway and you know you will likely kill your "enemy" you have less incentive not to launch first.
I'm willing to be convinced but I've studied a fair bit of game theory. I just haven't seen an argument I buy that this system somehow would reduce the incentive to launch first.
Morally, it's wrong of Apple to deny other media device manufacturers access to iTunes and ITMS.
Morally? There's nothing immoral about it so far as I can see. With apologies to the authors on wikipedia I just don't see how morality comes into the picture here.
There is no authoritative code of conduct here other than our laws and the bylaws. You personally may feel they are behaving immorally but there are plenty who will disagree with you so your personal morals can't be argued in any sort of universal authoritative sense. You might make an open source style argument but you're on shaky ground there too. Neither ITMS nor iTunes is open source software. You know that up front. You also probably know that there are free (as in speech) and/or legal alternatives to both. If you don't like what Apple offers you don't have to use their software and services. Apple is not under any moral or legal obligation to cater to your every whim.
There also is no ideal code of conduct here that we can all agree on. Apple worked hard to create their combination of products and services. Should they not reap the benefits, especially when it has no detrimental effect on you? You may not like Apple not letting it's competitors be free riders but I see nothing morally wrong with them preventing the competition from capitalizing on their work. ITunes is not some piece of public infrastructure and there is no compelling argument that it represents a market failure. The entire reason we have copyrights and patents is precisely to advance the public interest in the face of the free rider problem. There is no compelling public interest to making iTunes or ITMS the equivalent of a common carrier at this time. Neither the software nor the service is a monopoly - both are merely popular in comparison to the alternatives available.
Legally, it's likely also wrong.
I suspect you are not a lawyer and you have provided no evidence whatsoever to back that assertion. I'm pretty aware of the issues involved and I cannot think of any reasonably legal argument whereby Apple is doing anything against the law. Happy to be proven wrong but I doubt you can prove me wrong.
With an automatic retaliation system in place, Russia gets its revenge whether or not there are any survivors. There was no reason to announce its existence when its purpose is not to prevent your enemy from attacking you, but instead to prevent you from attacking your enemy.
This bit doesn't make sense to me. To keep it from being known to the US the Soviets would have had to keep it tightly under wraps from their own people as well. Perhaps it's possible but I see no sane way to reconcile the need for secrecy with the need to inform. A doomsday device no one knows about is insane.
A doomsday device that you never tell anyone about is insane. The ENTIRE point of such a device is deterrence. The article says that it was to keep "hotheads" from a first strike but that makes no sense. To keep it a secret from the US they would have to keep it a secret from most Soviets as well thus it can't serve the function of cooling hotheads.
And of course since the device is built by humans there is always the chance it will malfunction or function properly in a situation that was never planned.
Nonsense. You get to "experience" a periodical in every issue.
You didn't bother to follow the link and learn what an experience good is did you? I'm not talking about some sort of gestalt or an amusement park "experience". An experience good is a term economists use for items you can't evaluate until after you have them in your possession. You don't know if information is valuable until AFTER you already have the information. When you pay for the Wall Street Journal, you aren't paying for specific information, you are paying for the reputation of that magazine for reliably providing interesting/useful content. If you already knew the content in advance of reading it there would be nothing worth paying for.
Even if the content
is only available in hard copy you can still easily browse it and all of
it's immediate competitors (library, bookstore).
You really didn't understand. No publication can sell you information you already have. The act of consumption (reading the paper) is one way act. Once you have read the information not even the might Wall Street Journal can make you un-read it. The good (information in this case) has already been consumed. Only after you have read it can you make a determination of value.
This is somewhat different than music where there is some entertainment value in listening to the same music repeatedly. News is much more of a wasting asset. Once news is consumed it is unusual that anyone reads it again and it loses most of its monetary value.
The character of The Journal doesn't change from one day to the next.
The content does change every day and not every article is valuable to every person. Not even the mighty Wall Street Journal has any way to know in advance whether I will regard a particular bit of information as valuable or what I will think it is worth. The best they can do is publish the best articles they can on a variety of topics and bundle them together in the hopes the consumer will find a sufficient number valuable.