So now you want to conflate eating meat with rape, and then tell me I need to study formal logic a bit more? You need to study your teeth and your stomach a bit more. Presumably you are already sufficiently familiar with your asshole.
We like to think of ourselves as "King of the Jungle", and we are. But that's not due to our physical power, but rather, to our brain power. Also - our teeth are much closer to the herbivore's teeth than to the carnivores. We don't have the ruminant stomachs, but we have the ruminant teeth with a carnivore-lite's stomach. Which suggests to me that we're probably designed to eat mostly plants but can digest animal protein if we come across it.
I certainly do my best to avoid companies which have screwed me in the past. I gravitate towards companies who've sold me good products and dealt with me honestly.
Examples: 1) VENDOR1 in the mid-2000s started putting expiration dates on their ink cartridges. My printer would just stop working, without any informative error code. I bought a new cartridge and voila, it suddenly started working again. Net result? I've studiously avoided VENDOR1 printers, both personally and commercially.
2) I've had excellent experiences with VENDOR2, with their various devices. As a result, if VENDOR2 shows up in a group, I'll gravitate towards their product.
I used to be heavily into gaming but stopped. However, had my access been yanked or the game taken down and my character and equipment lost while I was playing, I would have had serious antipathy towards the organization that took it away. And would have studiously avoided the organization in the future.
These constructs in games are very similar to financial products, which are also logical constructs and virtual products:
1) "A financial product is about as conceptual as you can get,” says Wilson Ervin, a senior adviser at Credit Suisse. “You just need paper and ink.”-- The Economist magazine
2) "In an even more blunt description, Tourre calls the CDOs he produced "intellectual masturbation" and likens himself to Dr. Frankenstein.
"When I think that I had some input into the creation of this product (which by the way is a product of pure intellectual masturbation, the type of thing which you invent telling yourself: 'well, what if we created a 'thing', which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?")" -- CNN / Money
Be wary of those who tout the financialization of society, as it results in a "house" which generates these logical constructs, which it then sells to people. They have value because people value them, like Petville pets or Farmville tractors. All of these things are neither goods, nor services, but logical constructs. They're inherently volatile. The financial world is built on logical constructs - currency is a logical construct, as are stocks and bonds. Currency is durable construct because it makes life easier for people versus barter. Stocks are volatile - "Shares of ownership in a company." Bonds are volatile - "Promises to pay."
Anyway, just wanted to point out the similarities.
'This production [of documents], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI's surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protesters organizing with the Occupy movement These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.'
A highly decorated Marine Corps General, and one of only a handful of men to receive the Medal of Honor twice wrote:
"It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."
Congress has become government of the highest bidder, by the highest bidder, for the highest bidder. I assume the advertising industry donates quite a bit to Congress. I'd be quite surprised if they did anything to annoy a big donor, or do any harm to that business model. The example of the financial sector is illustrative. Trillions of dollars of FederalReserve and government spending (which the taxpayers will ultimately pay) have been funneled directly to the financial sector, and yet there's been no serious reform in that industry to avoid a crash in the future.
But wouldn't this indicate a monotone equivalent to the decibel peak of the show, if thinking about it as a graph of the loudness?
ISTM the average decibel level of the commercial is significantly higher than the average loudness of the television show. It's why I have to reach for the remote to turn the sound down during commercials.
On the other hand, as far as I can tell, never in non-Muslim cultures have women been forced to cover themselves from head to toe, with only their eyes visible. Or not allowed to leave the house without a male custodian. That's a unique curiosity only found in portions of the Muslim world.
In many ways, it seems better to pick up random folks off the street so that they base their decision on the evidence/testimony and not their own knowledge of the field.
The problem is that often juries do not often have the training in technical and legal matters which would let them come to accurate and reasonable conclusions.
You have top litigation expert lawyers from Harvard and Yale, and technical experts from top tier tech companies arguing with each other. And a high school graduate, or even dropout who is selected for his lack of knowledge of the topics is selected to decide on the merits of the arguments? Seems like a recipe for chaos.
Picking random yahoos off the sidewalk, making sure they're sufficiently clueless/pliable, then subjecting them to a barrage of conceptually complex technical and legal points, from experts and lawyers from top schools and companies, and expect them to come to reasonable and accurate conclusions.
Imagine doing medicine or bridge/building design the same way.
This might have worked for a low tech agrarian society. But it is not a reliable decision-making system today. The jury system is at best cute and quaint, but certainly not a reliable way to reach accurate and reasonable conclusions.
There's actually not a lot of full blown idiots out there. But the ones who are out there leave a trail of death and destruction. To the tune of about 30,000 dead a year, plus some multiple significantly injured.
As someone who has well over 10,000 hours behind the wheel, and a good driving record, I don't think the roads are going to be made safer with this system on my vehicle. I already keep my eyes forward, maintain sufficient following distance and slow down in bad weather. However, for a teenager, an elderly person, a drunk driver, or just someone who is stupid and gotten hold of a car, I think something like this will be very helpful in reducing roadway fatalities and injuries. Disabling the system should require the factory key and a passcode.
Statistics can ONLY show the degree of correlation. Statistics can never show causation. So, all you're ever going to get from statistics is correlation.
The reality is that statistics can ONLY show you whether there is a correlation or not, and how strong it is. Then it requires other methods to suggest whether there is a causative relationship.
Next time someone uses that as a catch-phrase to shoot down a correlation as meaningless, ask them: Does B require A? Necessary. Does A lead to B? Sufficient. QED, A causes B (or vice-versa).
B is a flooded basement. A is an overflowing washing machine. N is a crack in the foundation allowing in water.
Multiple paths can lead to B. So, even if B doesn't require A, A can cause B. But N can cause B too.
"The US has the best government money can buy." This whole regulatory capture issue starts at the top. With de facto bribery being legalized, people who are best at that fundraising game become politicians. They are the ultimate regulators, a frightening thought. They are first legislators. They write the laws and appoint people to see that they are enforced.
"Crony capitalism" is the term we're looking for. When government intervenes in the markets, hold onto your wallets. It's always done under the guise of supporting the public good, but ultimately it winds up extracting more wealth from the population and benefiting favored industries.
"The fish rots from the head." This is why so many industries are able to extract wealth from the society and concentrate it in the hands of the well connected few.
It's called "Privatize the profits, socialize the losses." Fabulous business model, if you have the money to buy enough politicians who'll make it into law.
Scenario: Group of humans moves away from an area rich in devourable animals. They turn mostly to plants. Many come sickly and die. Except for a few who remain strong and healthy due to the mutation. They breed more than the sickly ones. Soon, the trait has passed to most of the population.
It's a couple of Too Big To Fail banks. They aren't the most popular organizations just now. Is it a massive high-bandwidth DDOS? Or some Anonymous-esque probe? It may be Iran, I don't know, but lacking evidence, Iran wouldn't be my first choice of perpetrator for something like this.
No one is born a good writer, programmer, or auto mechanic. Aptitude is just a word we use to talk about existing skills, and let us pretend that they're somehow congenital. For the mechanic, it may mean that they had toys that taught them about gears and things. No pre-existing "aptitude", just past experience which is relevant/transferable.
Being exposed to very young children has totally changed my mind on this. The ones I've seen absolutely have pre-existing aptitudes. Some have much better hand-eye coordination. Some hate sitting still to learn something, others have no problem with it, in fact focus on it. Some like dolls and talking, others like trucks and legos. These attributes are built-in from very young ages, 1 to 3 years of age.
The differences from young ages is striking. It has really opened my eyes.
Undergraduate material is not bleeding edge information. It's basic stuff that undergrads must grasp in order to give them some sort of understanding of their major subject area.
Being able to uniquely identify individual and course and semester, creating an overall unique ID for that instance and preventing reuse of it is... diabolically efficient and profitable for the vendor.
The problem is that the costs of university education are getting so high that the benefits to the individual are being outweighed by the costs. They tell us that you must go to college if you hope to ever make anything of yourself. In the past, for a minor fee, you could do this and leverage your earning power. Today however, they extract much of the value you might have gotten from college upfront. And that doesn't talk about the intangibles, like being able to live debt free and the options that provides the relatively thoughtful and motivated young person who does go to college to improve himself.
This continues the hollowing out of the middle class.
Ultimately, the core of this problem comes down to the easy availability of debt. Many of the world's problems come down to the easy availability of debt.
The Boomers was really a short sited generation. Their fight to stay young and relevant, created a situation where there was poor if any succession planning. Previous generations when they got into their 40's or 50's they realized they were getting old so they shifted their work from going further, to slowing down and teaching the next generation on how to take the helm. The Boomers were really the first youth culture, and they tried to keep it up as a generation of young go ambitious high energy people.
The Boomers were a a generation guided by the "wisdom of youth." Historically, older folks with more experience were considered to be wiser. But the boomers turned that paradigm on its head. Granted, they were being mindlessly sent off to be maimed and killed in a pointless wargame by hawkish old men, in Vietnam, which was the catalyst for it all in my estimation. BUT - they wound up throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
It seems to me that older folks are wiser. And craftier. It makes sense as they simply have more experience navigating the world. But the problem is that old folks seem to want to take advantage of the younger generation. In Vietnam it was sending them off for a halfwitted, bloody, pointless military exercise. Today, the older generation (the younger generation of the Vietnam era) is piling on tremendous amounts of debt so they can live comfortably but the younger generation will have to bear the burden of it.
One typical progression is getting on board with some behemoth tech-esque company (Lockheed Martin comes to mind). Get the resume point, then progress to smaller companies where you can do more of what you like.
1) The one thing one cannot get around is experience in using the skill. Learning takes time and effort, practice takes time and effort. In the trades they have apprentices and journeymen and masters. The same is true of the computing-related fields, from IT to programming, although not in those exact terms. But the concept applies. Try to get on somewhere as an apprentice.
2) To get on as an apprentice, you need something on your resume that indicates you can learn and do the job. That you will be a profitable addition to the team and/or make your boss's life easier and/or improve his standing in the company. For people without direct experience, some kind of certification might be the ticket. Just gotta get that foot in the door.
3) I've discovered that you need to find a good book that is a TUTORIAL and not a REFERENCE. For learning any kind of technical skill. There are hybrid books out there which are pretty good. "Running Linux" by Dalheimer and Welsh is an excellent hybrid. There are books out there which are pretty terrible, with incorrect technical information. I'd do some looking on the web first to get some idea of what's available and what people think of it.
There's no way to snap your fingers and get it done, but it is eminently do-able.
As far as how I became a Linux professional, I used *nix and Linux in college. Then got a programming job where it was the OS for the product. Now, I maintain a Linux server and have continued with the programming.
Slashdot Mirror
Carnivore teeth:
1) Tiger
2) Baboon
Herbivore teeth:
1) Deer
2) Horse
And finally, human teeth.
We like to think of ourselves as "King of the Jungle", and we are. But that's not due to our physical power, but rather, to our brain power. Also - our teeth are much closer to the herbivore's teeth than to the carnivores. We don't have the ruminant stomachs, but we have the ruminant teeth with a carnivore-lite's stomach. Which suggests to me that we're probably designed to eat mostly plants but can digest animal protein if we come across it.
I certainly do my best to avoid companies which have screwed me in the past. I gravitate towards companies who've sold me good products and dealt with me honestly.
Examples:
1) VENDOR1 in the mid-2000s started putting expiration dates on their ink cartridges. My printer would just stop working, without any informative error code. I bought a new cartridge and voila, it suddenly started working again. Net result? I've studiously avoided VENDOR1 printers, both personally and commercially.
2) I've had excellent experiences with VENDOR2, with their various devices. As a result, if VENDOR2 shows up in a group, I'll gravitate towards their product.
I used to be heavily into gaming but stopped. However, had my access been yanked or the game taken down and my character and equipment lost while I was playing, I would have had serious antipathy towards the organization that took it away. And would have studiously avoided the organization in the future.
These constructs in games are very similar to financial products, which are also logical constructs and virtual products:
1) "A financial product is about as conceptual as you can get,” says Wilson Ervin, a senior adviser at Credit Suisse. “You just need paper and ink.”-- The Economist magazine
2) "In an even more blunt description, Tourre calls the CDOs he produced "intellectual masturbation" and likens himself to Dr. Frankenstein.
"When I think that I had some input into the creation of this product (which by the way is a product of pure intellectual masturbation, the type of thing which you invent telling yourself: 'well, what if we created a 'thing', which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?")" -- CNN / Money
Be wary of those who tout the financialization of society, as it results in a "house" which generates these logical constructs, which it then sells to people. They have value because people value them, like Petville pets or Farmville tractors. All of these things are neither goods, nor services, but logical constructs. They're inherently volatile. The financial world is built on logical constructs - currency is a logical construct, as are stocks and bonds. Currency is durable construct because it makes life easier for people versus barter. Stocks are volatile - "Shares of ownership in a company." Bonds are volatile - "Promises to pay."
Anyway, just wanted to point out the similarities.
A highly decorated Marine Corps General, and one of only a handful of men to receive the Medal of Honor twice wrote:
"It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."
-- General Smedley Butler
Terrorists terrorize civilian populations to reach political ends. The Founders didn't do this.
Instead, the founders could correctly be described as revolutionaries, rebels or insurgents.
Creating a non-administrator/root account for them should prevent the installation of most malware. DON'T give them the password.
And tell them that the Internet is like Mos Eisley: "It is a wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious."
Keep an up-to-date firewall and virus scanner like Norton. Turn on automatic updating for the operating system. And for the security software.
Hope for the best.
Congress has become government of the highest bidder, by the highest bidder, for the highest bidder. I assume the advertising industry donates quite a bit to Congress. I'd be quite surprised if they did anything to annoy a big donor, or do any harm to that business model. The example of the financial sector is illustrative. Trillions of dollars of FederalReserve and government spending (which the taxpayers will ultimately pay) have been funneled directly to the financial sector, and yet there's been no serious reform in that industry to avoid a crash in the future.
So - we'll see how this goes.
But wouldn't this indicate a monotone equivalent to the decibel peak of the show, if thinking about it as a graph of the loudness?
ISTM the average decibel level of the commercial is significantly higher than the average loudness of the television show. It's why I have to reach for the remote to turn the sound down during commercials.
Women there are treated like children. But we can't get too high and mighty here. Women only got the right to vote in the US in 1920.
On the other hand, as far as I can tell, never in non-Muslim cultures have women been forced to cover themselves from head to toe, with only their eyes visible. Or not allowed to leave the house without a male custodian. That's a unique curiosity only found in portions of the Muslim world.
The problem is that often juries do not often have the training in technical and legal matters which would let them come to accurate and reasonable conclusions.
You have top litigation expert lawyers from Harvard and Yale, and technical experts from top tier tech companies arguing with each other. And a high school graduate, or even dropout who is selected for his lack of knowledge of the topics is selected to decide on the merits of the arguments? Seems like a recipe for chaos.
Picking random yahoos off the sidewalk, making sure they're sufficiently clueless/pliable, then subjecting them to a barrage of conceptually complex technical and legal points, from experts and lawyers from top schools and companies, and expect them to come to reasonable and accurate conclusions.
Imagine doing medicine or bridge/building design the same way.
This might have worked for a low tech agrarian society. But it is not a reliable decision-making system today. The jury system is at best cute and quaint, but certainly not a reliable way to reach accurate and reasonable conclusions.
There's actually not a lot of full blown idiots out there. But the ones who are out there leave a trail of death and destruction. To the tune of about 30,000 dead a year, plus some multiple significantly injured.
As someone who has well over 10,000 hours behind the wheel, and a good driving record, I don't think the roads are going to be made safer with this system on my vehicle. I already keep my eyes forward, maintain sufficient following distance and slow down in bad weather. However, for a teenager, an elderly person, a drunk driver, or just someone who is stupid and gotten hold of a car, I think something like this will be very helpful in reducing roadway fatalities and injuries. Disabling the system should require the factory key and a passcode.
O Noble Gas, We Hardly Knew Ye! :(
Statistics can ONLY show the degree of correlation. Statistics can never show causation. So, all you're ever going to get from statistics is correlation.
That reality escapes many.
References:
1) Although [statistical] regression cannot prove causation, no statistical method can do that,
2) Epidemiological studies can never prove causation; that is, it cannot prove that a specific risk factor actually causes the disease being studied. Epidemiological evidence can only show that this risk factor is associated (correlated) with a higher incidence of disease in the population exposed to that risk factor. The higher the correlation the more certain the association, but it cannot prove the causation.
The reality is that statistics can ONLY show you whether there is a correlation or not, and how strong it is. Then it requires other methods to suggest whether there is a causative relationship.
B is a flooded basement.
A is an overflowing washing machine.
N is a crack in the foundation allowing in water.
Multiple paths can lead to B. So, even if B doesn't require A, A can cause B. But N can cause B too.
"The US has the best government money can buy." This whole regulatory capture issue starts at the top. With de facto bribery being legalized, people who are best at that fundraising game become politicians. They are the ultimate regulators, a frightening thought. They are first legislators. They write the laws and appoint people to see that they are enforced.
"Crony capitalism" is the term we're looking for. When government intervenes in the markets, hold onto your wallets. It's always done under the guise of supporting the public good, but ultimately it winds up extracting more wealth from the population and benefiting favored industries.
"The fish rots from the head." This is why so many industries are able to extract wealth from the society and concentrate it in the hands of the well connected few.
It's called "Privatize the profits, socialize the losses." Fabulous business model, if you have the money to buy enough politicians who'll make it into law.
Scenario: Group of humans moves away from an area rich in devourable animals. They turn mostly to plants. Many come sickly and die. Except for a few who remain strong and healthy due to the mutation. They breed more than the sickly ones. Soon, the trait has passed to most of the population.
It's a couple of Too Big To Fail banks. They aren't the most popular organizations just now. Is it a massive high-bandwidth DDOS? Or some Anonymous-esque probe? It may be Iran, I don't know, but lacking evidence, Iran wouldn't be my first choice of perpetrator for something like this.
Being exposed to very young children has totally changed my mind on this. The ones I've seen absolutely have pre-existing aptitudes. Some have much better hand-eye coordination. Some hate sitting still to learn something, others have no problem with it, in fact focus on it. Some like dolls and talking, others like trucks and legos. These attributes are built-in from very young ages, 1 to 3 years of age.
The differences from young ages is striking. It has really opened my eyes.
I mean, on a high level we do. But why a honeybee can solve the traveling salesman problem more effectively than supercomputers can is unclear.
Life seems to be more than electronic circuitry. But... we don't know exactly what it is. Operative word: exactly.
Undergraduate material is not bleeding edge information. It's basic stuff that undergrads must grasp in order to give them some sort of understanding of their major subject area.
Being able to uniquely identify individual and course and semester, creating an overall unique ID for that instance and preventing reuse of it is... diabolically efficient and profitable for the vendor.
The problem is that the costs of university education are getting so high that the benefits to the individual are being outweighed by the costs. They tell us that you must go to college if you hope to ever make anything of yourself. In the past, for a minor fee, you could do this and leverage your earning power. Today however, they extract much of the value you might have gotten from college upfront. And that doesn't talk about the intangibles, like being able to live debt free and the options that provides the relatively thoughtful and motivated young person who does go to college to improve himself.
This continues the hollowing out of the middle class.
Ultimately, the core of this problem comes down to the easy availability of debt. Many of the world's problems come down to the easy availability of debt.
The Boomers were a a generation guided by the "wisdom of youth." Historically, older folks with more experience were considered to be wiser. But the boomers turned that paradigm on its head. Granted, they were being mindlessly sent off to be maimed and killed in a pointless wargame by hawkish old men, in Vietnam, which was the catalyst for it all in my estimation. BUT - they wound up throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
It seems to me that older folks are wiser. And craftier. It makes sense as they simply have more experience navigating the world. But the problem is that old folks seem to want to take advantage of the younger generation. In Vietnam it was sending them off for a halfwitted, bloody, pointless military exercise. Today, the older generation (the younger generation of the Vietnam era) is piling on tremendous amounts of debt so they can live comfortably but the younger generation will have to bear the burden of it.
The beat goes on.
One typical progression is getting on board with some behemoth tech-esque company (Lockheed Martin comes to mind). Get the resume point, then progress to smaller companies where you can do more of what you like.
1) The one thing one cannot get around is experience in using the skill. Learning takes time and effort, practice takes time and effort. In the trades they have apprentices and journeymen and masters. The same is true of the computing-related fields, from IT to programming, although not in those exact terms. But the concept applies. Try to get on somewhere as an apprentice.
2) To get on as an apprentice, you need something on your resume that indicates you can learn and do the job. That you will be a profitable addition to the team and/or make your boss's life easier and/or improve his standing in the company. For people without direct experience, some kind of certification might be the ticket. Just gotta get that foot in the door.
3) I've discovered that you need to find a good book that is a TUTORIAL and not a REFERENCE. For learning any kind of technical skill. There are hybrid books out there which are pretty good. "Running Linux" by Dalheimer and Welsh is an excellent hybrid. There are books out there which are pretty terrible, with incorrect technical information. I'd do some looking on the web first to get some idea of what's available and what people think of it.
There's no way to snap your fingers and get it done, but it is eminently do-able.
As far as how I became a Linux professional, I used *nix and Linux in college. Then got a programming job where it was the OS for the product. Now, I maintain a Linux server and have continued with the programming.