I am FeralOink on WP (shhhhhhhhhh;o) I have Commons open on my adjacent browser tab right now!
I haven't been run off when editing articles about most topics of interest to me. This is even true for controversial articles e.g. Edward Snowden, AIG, Reptilians, Freedom Fries, cryptocurrency, Ambassador Chris Stevens, David E. Shaw, Codex Alimentarius, MongoDB and brassiere. Some articles are emotionally sensitive to other editors, e.g. Murray Rothbard, Ven currency, so I avoid them. It is easy to discern the situation. I have even made some horrific mistakes, deleting a huge chunk of Gen. Ghaddaffi's article was the worst, yet I was amazed that once I explained and apologized (I had also broken a genuine WP rule), the regulars on the article were very understanding. The only incidents of truly rude encounters and massive reverts of hours of my work has been for female-relevant articles. Both pertained to cunnilingus. I am still seething with irritation at the use of crappy references (Cengage Learning books instead of CDC or reputable websites), bare links, sloppy Google books citation without templates and bizarrely tangential content. Also... well, enough.
Wikipedia does omit a lot due to male PoV, even if unintentional. Here's an example. John Nash's sister wasn't mentioned at all in his bio, and his pre-university education was incorrectly modernized. Also, his wife is a graduate of MIT, a physics major in the class of 1956 or so. That's when Nash met her. His bio didn't mention that, but instead dwelt on her father "being of Argentine extraction"!
There are lots of little cliques that I sense, infer, and camaraderie. It would be great to be a part of that.
I took a quick glance at the study. "Well off" is based on parental education, not parental income. You'd think they would be tightly correlated, but I'm not so certain..
This quote from the article, along with the burnt out shell of a VW bus sitting in a field in Mississippi, was awkward:
Lacking good information, it has been easy even for sophisticated Americans to be seduced by apologists who would have the public believe the problems are simply those of poor kids in central city schools. Our results point in quite the opposite direction. The underachievement in some southern states was a reflection of deep-rooted historical divides and disadvantages, Prof Peterson said, such as slavery and segregation.
("Seduced by apologists"?)
The outlier is Texas. Oddly, despite being part of the Confederacy, children in Texas with poorly educated parents perform inexplicably well. Of course, according to this Harvard University School of Government study, Massachusetts children are the most proficient in mathematics in the United States, second only to Germany and Switzerland...
FDIC is insurance. They repay you if the bank goes out of business. They don't take your money!
Comparing $5000 confiscated by police, and suggesting that it is the motivation for the 100's of millions of dollars kept offshore by Forbes 400 billionaires is illogical.
Virtuoso musicians don't check their instruments as luggage. Even if their instruments are big, like a cello, they get a seat for the instrument.
...Razgui, who was not present when his bag was opened. 'I fly with them in and out all the time and this is the first time there has been a problem. This is my life.' When his baggage arrived in Boston, the instruments were gone.
If his instruments were his life and he is a virtuoso musician, he would have kept his flutes with him on the airplane.
"Rap Genius" is a misleading and silly name for what, transcription software like DragonWriter? Actually, it might not even be that good (all I read about lately are Internet piecework/ sweatshops that are supposedly "social" and "democratizing"...except they aren't).
I know that Mark Andreessen funded it, but he isn't right about everything.
OK, I'll bite. Treat yourself to a little "Gilbert and Sullivan"...
I really like Eminem and Kid Rock. They are sarcastic and very funny. Will they still have the same appeal after 100 years? I doubt it. Gilbert and Sullivan has endured.
I don't especially like G&S (I prefer what someone else called "traditional arias" e.g. full chorus "Ode to Joy"), yet I can completely relate to, understand why you are fond of G&S. A live G&S performance is music and art.
...It takes a skilled linguist to write good rap as it does to write good poetry and there are good and bad examples of both.
Linguist! The professors of linguistics that write University of Pennsylvania's Language Log are skilled linguists. I don't think that has anything to do with their ability to write poetry. Or rap, although it would be fun to ask!
Rap is words, music and visuals with attitude, and usually post-production effects. Poetry is written words on a page. They aren't comparable.
You believe that the GOP represents an "unhinged minority"? I don't think that is true. Or rather, I think that there are many, maybe even the majority, who aren't well represented by either party. The current Democrat regime is all about deregulation, privatization, anti-labor and ceding wealth to Wall Street. By "Wall Street", I don't refer to the financial sector. Consumer finance, life insurance, small business banking, accountants and actuaries do productive work and contribute positively to the economy. Most of Wall Street isn't even Wall Street any longer, just a few massive investment banks, private equity partnerships, hedge funds and Carl Icahn-types. All of Obama's second term cabinet members are scions of very wealthy families, his ambassadorial appointments were chosen from financiers who were major campaign contributors, with zero diplomatic experience. It wasn't like this in 2008, but it is now. They call themselves Democrats, but they are more venal and corrupt, in terms of (selectively) favoring big business and other special interests than we've had in a long time.
The GOP has not offered an appealing alternative, though they would be wise to try.
One could just as easily say, "If the Democrat Party wins, then American democracy loses". Everyone loses if we have one-party rule.
Ah man, now I want to see Boehner give an address on the steps of the Capitol holding a sawed-off shotgun...
I know this will sound terrible, but I felt a frisson of delight at that image. I don't know about Boehner; Any honest Congressman giving an address on the steps of the Capitol while holding a (fully intact) shotgun, saying something genuinely constructive... yes, that would make me very happy.
... it only affects me by having too many stories about it on/.
Similar to Eurovision on Twitter:o) but grim instead of fun. I hope this won't go on for as long as the Eurovision contest. Many critical parts of the U.S. government have about four weeks of reserves, then they'll have exhausted all operating funds.
Altmetrics is a new-ish bibliometic service for scholarly journal articles, including Nature, which is where this was published. Altmetrics includes mainstream media coverage as as well as social media appearance counts e.g. SciBlogs, Twitter as valid data. Physorg is mentioned but I do not see Slashdot. We, the Slashdot collective, demand recognition!
* Unless we are deemed insufficiently social? Anti-social? Of course not. ** Altmetrics is beta-ish, possibly open source, so my indignation is mostly insincere.
Positive net revenue? Or have a clearly stated business plan that will result in prophit? Uncertain. The secret S-1 is a red phlag, regardless oph what Business Insider says. * I apologize; my "eph" key is broken, thus my misspellings.
I honestly think it's going to be yet another fiasco for the tech sector.
I honestly think you are likely to be correct. I use Twitter a lot. It has given me amazing opportunities, that I would never have had otherwise, to interact and share my opinions with people who are so remote from me in distance, intelligence, fame, fortune*, accomplishment and occasionally notoriety.
Here's the problem: Who will pay to sustain that? I haven't. Other users don't either. There are promoted Tweet advertisements. Do they generate adequate revenue to sustain Twitter? I doubt it, but maybe they will. This bizarre IPO, without a public S-1, is troubling, to say the least. Somehow, Twitter needs to generate revenue while remaining (reasonably) open and unbiased as a communications platform. I want them to succeed, but don't know how they will do that. * Distance: far * Intelligence: above me * fame and fortune: I have none; etc.
Suppressed anger over something? That is so rude that I can't stop laughing! I love the "mod me lower" portion!
Seriously, I can't even tell if you're referring to the European Union countries or the U.S.A. Maybe... Switzerland? Not exactly notorious for propaganda or insularity!.(more giggles)
Clearly neither of you have ever met French Canadians. Quebec isn't even a country, yet they top the list of worlds most smugly, annoyingly rude people.
No, French people are worse than Quebecois, as far as smugness and a tendency be annoying and rude! People from Quebec, or Haiti or Morocco or just about anywhere, are willing to speak French with me.... courteously. French people tell me that I am brutalizing their language, to stop hurting their ears. My own brother, well, half-brother, grew up and went to school in Paris. He lives in Geneva now. He barely knows any English. But he will NOT speak to me in French, because it causes him such pain!
Smug, annoying and rude is okay as long as you are also honest, fair and transparent.
You are jumping away from the issue: The U.S. government is EXTREMELY corrupt, in a way that affects everyone on the planet.
If the U.S. government were extremely corrupt, we wouldn't be affecting everyone on the planet. We wouldn't affect much of anyone, other than to make our own citizens miserable. If we were corrupt, we wouldn't be trusted: *as a trading partner *as the world reserve currency *for financial markets transactions *for guidance and assistance in any sort of research or development, humanitarian aid, public health
and much more. The fact that we are NOT extremely corrupt, but are moving steadily in that direction, is what is so destabilizing. Trust, and consistency is vital.
At some companies, the management is exactly how you described (Eric Schmidt is like that, from what I can tell). But Google is not like other companies in terms of management. They even had Schmidt step down, so that Larry Page could be CEO again. Larry Page and Sergey Brin know that cost cutting at the expense of design and research is unwise. Well, they should. They did, in the past.. Maybe they are too distant now.
Isn't that what the MBAs and metric gurus teach? Once again the Excel numbers make the day and if there is a hidden cost or an opportunity cost then it doesn't exist according to the CPA
Metric gurus teach that. MBAs who have a clue do not.
If a company is in terrible financial condition, losing money, making unreliable products etc. THEN it is time for the Excel spreadsheets and CPA's to say, "Look, you can make payroll for another x weeks, but if you don't turn things around, fast, you'll need to dismiss staff, sell company assets and equipment to survive." In that scenario, the 20% time to work on projects needs to end, temporarily, until the company is more solvent.. Google is far from being in that situation though.
Public companies have a lot of latitude in fulfilling their fiduciary interests to shareholders. Look at what bank CEO's (and Larry Ellison of Oracle) are paid now. Are they really worth a salary that is over 1000 times that of the average employee? Maybe they are sometimes, but certainly not when they are running the business into the ground with layoff's, bad decisions and huge losses.
IF QZ is correct- they probably are, as I've read this elsewhere- that the 20% time had ended, then it is Google management's decision. It isn't motivated by fiduciary interests to shareholders. Google could justify why it is necessary for their employees to have that 20% time. Maybe it really is necessary. I've read that Google employees have been leaving at a higher rates than in the past. But I'm not sure, can't remember sources for that.
I'm really surprised that Moxie isn't more well-known around here. I just commented earlier about Moxie's Github repositories. I'm not a sycophant, and realize that Moxie has a lot of fans. He has done good work, regardless of politics or advocacy.
Aside from the fact that he's been championing against the certificate authority system...
Yes! I was wondering when someone would mention this! Anyone who's curious can glance at Moxie's repositories on Github. It is exactly as you described, about his efforts to make a better certificate authority system. I don't know if it was because it gave the U.S. too much power, or because it was not especially reliable (I think DigiNotar or Digi something cert auth break happened around then), many other issues.
I have mixed feelings about Moxie. He's very much the Anarchist, rebel hax00r. But he isn't insufferably arrogant like some of his peers are. He's a good sailor (not yachts!); sometimes I like what he has to say. And he looks sweet, handsome in the one photo I've seen of him, not overstated or hipster-odious. Anyway, the last time I checked, Moxie was a Twitter employee.
Good point too about the oddity that "agents of a foreign power", whether Saudi Arabia or any other, would approach Moxie for such work. It is unlikely that Saudi Arabia would be less informed than you and I. Moxie has a hefty entry in Wikipedia. I even wrote a post on my hobby blog about one of his projects a few years ago! I have no doubt that retaining Moxie's services would be worthwhile. But there are many less visible, less vocal alternatives.
I wish I could say "thank you" to whomever submitted the original post here. Good find!
Slashdot Mirror
That's a ridiculous claim, that children are required to study English literature for 12 years. They aren't.
There's no reason why English usage proficiency would preclude computer literacy. There's plenty of time to learn both.
Current list of Ebola drugs, tacky headline on their stock market status
I am FeralOink on WP (shhhhhhhhhh ;o) I have Commons open on my adjacent browser tab right now!
I haven't been run off when editing articles about most topics of interest to me. This is even true for controversial articles e.g. Edward Snowden, AIG, Reptilians, Freedom Fries, cryptocurrency, Ambassador Chris Stevens, David E. Shaw, Codex Alimentarius, MongoDB and brassiere. Some articles are emotionally sensitive to other editors, e.g. Murray Rothbard, Ven currency, so I avoid them. It is easy to discern the situation. I have even made some horrific mistakes, deleting a huge chunk of Gen. Ghaddaffi's article was the worst, yet I was amazed that once I explained and apologized (I had also broken a genuine WP rule), the regulars on the article were very understanding. The only incidents of truly rude encounters and massive reverts of hours of my work has been for female-relevant articles. Both pertained to cunnilingus. I am still seething with irritation at the use of crappy references (Cengage Learning books instead of CDC or reputable websites), bare links, sloppy Google books citation without templates and bizarrely tangential content. Also... well, enough.
Wikipedia does omit a lot due to male PoV, even if unintentional. Here's an example. John Nash's sister wasn't mentioned at all in his bio, and his pre-university education was incorrectly modernized. Also, his wife is a graduate of MIT, a physics major in the class of 1956 or so. That's when Nash met her. His bio didn't mention that, but instead dwelt on her father "being of Argentine extraction"!
There are lots of little cliques that I sense, infer, and camaraderie. It would be great to be a part of that.
("Seduced by apologists"?) The outlier is Texas. Oddly, despite being part of the Confederacy, children in Texas with poorly educated parents perform inexplicably well. Of course, according to this Harvard University School of Government study, Massachusetts children are the most proficient in mathematics in the United States, second only to Germany and Switzerland...
FDIC is insurance. They repay you if the bank goes out of business. They don't take your money!
Comparing $5000 confiscated by police, and suggesting that it is the motivation for the 100's of millions of dollars kept offshore by Forbes 400 billionaires is illogical.
It IS a stupid name. We have "smart" cities and devices, but Internet of Things always reminds me of dumb terminals.
The abbreviation is even worse: IoT
If his instruments were his life and he is a virtuoso musician, he would have kept his flutes with him on the airplane.
"Rap Genius" is a misleading and silly name for what, transcription software like DragonWriter? Actually, it might not even be that good (all I read about lately are Internet piecework/ sweatshops that are supposedly "social" and "democratizing"...except they aren't).
I know that Mark Andreessen funded it, but he isn't right about everything.
And if you want bad lyrics, listen to opera.
OK, I'll bite. Treat yourself to a little "Gilbert and Sullivan"...
I really like Eminem and Kid Rock. They are sarcastic and very funny. Will they still have the same appeal after 100 years? I doubt it. Gilbert and Sullivan has endured.
I don't especially like G&S (I prefer what someone else called "traditional arias" e.g. full chorus "Ode to Joy"), yet I can completely relate to, understand why you are fond of G&S. A live G&S performance is music and art.
...It takes a skilled linguist to write good rap as it does to write good poetry and there are good and bad examples of both.
Linguist! The professors of linguistics that write University of Pennsylvania's Language Log are skilled linguists. I don't think that has anything to do with their ability to write poetry. Or rap, although it would be fun to ask!
Rap is words, music and visuals with attitude, and usually post-production effects. Poetry is written words on a page. They aren't comparable.
You believe that the GOP represents an "unhinged minority"? I don't think that is true. Or rather, I think that there are many, maybe even the majority, who aren't well represented by either party. The current Democrat regime is all about deregulation, privatization, anti-labor and ceding wealth to Wall Street. By "Wall Street", I don't refer to the financial sector. Consumer finance, life insurance, small business banking, accountants and actuaries do productive work and contribute positively to the economy. Most of Wall Street isn't even Wall Street any longer, just a few massive investment banks, private equity partnerships, hedge funds and Carl Icahn-types. All of Obama's second term cabinet members are scions of very wealthy families, his ambassadorial appointments were chosen from financiers who were major campaign contributors, with zero diplomatic experience. It wasn't like this in 2008, but it is now. They call themselves Democrats, but they are more venal and corrupt, in terms of (selectively) favoring big business and other special interests than we've had in a long time.
The GOP has not offered an appealing alternative, though they would be wise to try.
One could just as easily say, "If the Democrat Party wins, then American democracy loses". Everyone loses if we have one-party rule.
Ah man, now I want to see Boehner give an address on the steps of the Capitol holding a sawed-off shotgun...
I know this will sound terrible, but I felt a frisson of delight at that image. I don't know about Boehner; Any honest Congressman giving an address on the steps of the Capitol while holding a (fully intact) shotgun, saying something genuinely constructive... yes, that would make me very happy.
... it only affects me by having too many stories about it on /.
Similar to Eurovision on Twitter :o) but grim instead of fun. I hope this won't go on for as long as the Eurovision contest. Many critical parts of the U.S. government have about four weeks of reserves, then they'll have exhausted all operating funds.
Altmetrics is a new-ish bibliometic service for scholarly journal articles, including Nature, which is where this was published. Altmetrics includes mainstream media coverage as as well as social media appearance counts e.g. SciBlogs, Twitter as valid data. Physorg is mentioned but I do not see Slashdot. We, the Slashdot collective, demand recognition!
* Unless we are deemed insufficiently social? Anti-social? Of course not.
** Altmetrics is beta-ish, possibly open source, so my indignation is mostly insincere.
Does Twitter even make money?
Positive net revenue? Or have a clearly stated business plan that will result in prophit? Uncertain. The secret S-1 is a red phlag, regardless oph what Business Insider says.
* I apologize; my "eph" key is broken, thus my misspellings.
I honestly think it's going to be yet another fiasco for the tech sector.
I honestly think you are likely to be correct. I use Twitter a lot. It has given me amazing opportunities, that I would never have had otherwise, to interact and share my opinions with people who are so remote from me in distance, intelligence, fame, fortune*, accomplishment and occasionally notoriety.
Here's the problem: Who will pay to sustain that? I haven't. Other users don't either. There are promoted Tweet advertisements. Do they generate adequate revenue to sustain Twitter? I doubt it, but maybe they will. This bizarre IPO, without a public S-1, is troubling, to say the least. Somehow, Twitter needs to generate revenue while remaining (reasonably) open and unbiased as a communications platform. I want them to succeed, but don't know how they will do that.
* Distance: far
* Intelligence: above me
* fame and fortune: I have none; etc.
I am so, so sad about Groklaw. That is a great loss. It portends others. (Sorry about pretentious word).
Suppressed anger over something? That is so rude that I can't stop laughing! I love the "mod me lower" portion!
Seriously, I can't even tell if you're referring to the European Union countries or the U.S.A. Maybe... Switzerland? Not exactly notorious for propaganda or insularity!.(more giggles)
Clearly neither of you have ever met French Canadians. Quebec isn't even a country, yet they top the list of worlds most smugly, annoyingly rude people.
No, French people are worse than Quebecois, as far as smugness and a tendency be annoying and rude! People from Quebec, or Haiti or Morocco or just about anywhere, are willing to speak French with me.... courteously. French people tell me that I am brutalizing their language, to stop hurting their ears. My own brother, well, half-brother, grew up and went to school in Paris. He lives in Geneva now. He barely knows any English. But he will NOT speak to me in French, because it causes him such pain!
Smug, annoying and rude is okay as long as you are also honest, fair and transparent.
You are jumping away from the issue: The U.S. government is EXTREMELY corrupt, in a way that affects everyone on the planet.
If the U.S. government were extremely corrupt, we wouldn't be affecting everyone on the planet. We wouldn't affect much of anyone, other than to make our own citizens miserable. If we were corrupt, we wouldn't be trusted:
*as a trading partner
*as the world reserve currency
*for financial markets transactions
*for guidance and assistance in any sort of research or development, humanitarian aid, public health
and much more. The fact that we are NOT extremely corrupt, but are moving steadily in that direction, is what is so destabilizing. Trust, and consistency is vital.
At some companies, the management is exactly how you described (Eric Schmidt is like that, from what I can tell). But Google is not like other companies in terms of management. They even had Schmidt step down, so that Larry Page could be CEO again. Larry Page and Sergey Brin know that cost cutting at the expense of design and research is unwise. Well, they should. They did, in the past.. Maybe they are too distant now.
Isn't that what the MBAs and metric gurus teach? Once again the Excel numbers make the day and if there is a hidden cost or an opportunity cost then it doesn't exist according to the CPA
Metric gurus teach that. MBAs who have a clue do not.
If a company is in terrible financial condition, losing money, making unreliable products etc. THEN it is time for the Excel spreadsheets and CPA's to say, "Look, you can make payroll for another x weeks, but if you don't turn things around, fast, you'll need to dismiss staff, sell company assets and equipment to survive." In that scenario, the 20% time to work on projects needs to end, temporarily, until the company is more solvent.. Google is far from being in that situation though.
Public companies have a lot of latitude in fulfilling their fiduciary interests to shareholders. Look at what bank CEO's (and Larry Ellison of Oracle) are paid now. Are they really worth a salary that is over 1000 times that of the average employee? Maybe they are sometimes, but certainly not when they are running the business into the ground with layoff's, bad decisions and huge losses.
IF QZ is correct- they probably are, as I've read this elsewhere- that the 20% time had ended, then it is Google management's decision. It isn't motivated by fiduciary interests to shareholders. Google could justify why it is necessary for their employees to have that 20% time. Maybe it really is necessary. I've read that Google employees have been leaving at a higher rates than in the past. But I'm not sure, can't remember sources for that.
I'm really surprised that Moxie isn't more well-known around here. I just commented earlier about Moxie's Github repositories. I'm not a sycophant, and realize that Moxie has a lot of fans. He has done good work, regardless of politics or advocacy.
Aside from the fact that he's been championing against the certificate authority system...
Yes! I was wondering when someone would mention this! Anyone who's curious can glance at Moxie's repositories on Github. It is exactly as you described, about his efforts to make a better certificate authority system. I don't know if it was because it gave the U.S. too much power, or because it was not especially reliable (I think DigiNotar or Digi something cert auth break happened around then), many other issues.
I have mixed feelings about Moxie. He's very much the Anarchist, rebel hax00r. But he isn't insufferably arrogant like some of his peers are. He's a good sailor (not yachts!); sometimes I like what he has to say. And he looks sweet, handsome in the one photo I've seen of him, not overstated or hipster-odious. Anyway, the last time I checked, Moxie was a Twitter employee.
Good point too about the oddity that "agents of a foreign power", whether Saudi Arabia or any other, would approach Moxie for such work. It is unlikely that Saudi Arabia would be less informed than you and I. Moxie has a hefty entry in Wikipedia. I even wrote a post on my hobby blog about one of his projects a few years ago! I have no doubt that retaining Moxie's services would be worthwhile. But there are many less visible, less vocal alternatives.
I wish I could say "thank you" to whomever submitted the original post here. Good find!