Hmm.. I think you only say that because you may be blind to the changes that have gone on in the past, and the changes that are currently going on.
In the begining (well maybe not that long ago) there were some pretty big arguments over what things went into the bible. For example one of these things were the Apocrypha, which were out then in then out again. (Do I see a directors cut/special edition cut that includes the sections that were dropped?)
Let alone the translation from whatever to Greek to Latin to English.. to modern day English to ebonics (and I am sure there is one out there). Each translation will change the sense of the text depending on who it was who translated it. As a comparison... run something twice through babel fish and see what comes out.
[rant] As a person who is not a citizen of the US.. I cringe every time I see a US adaption of classic non-US work. It seems as if the American audience can't consume anything that is not made safe for them by converting it to a local reference point. Case in point, all the British sitcoms that have been remade over the years. Trying to take something that does not naturally occur in your culture and then (figuratively) bashing it around the head to make it fit does not result in a work with the same or better quality as the original.
So to all you people beating on the Arabic adaption of the Simpsons, all I can say is welcome to how the rest of the world sees what you do to non-US culture. [/rant]
Who was it who said "Never attribute to malice, that which can be attributed to stupidity" ??
I know this is OT but hey.. its sort of related
In the late '80s I was working in the R&D lab of a paper company. Part of our job was to get new grades of cardboard made into a standard sized box that we could smash to bits in a machine to see how well they lasted. As we got these boxes by the hundreds we just sent out designs to the manufacturing section to produce them, and deliver them back.
Well one day someone took the latest box design from some CAD drawings, saved it to a floppy, put it in a floppy mailer and sent it to the manufacturing department with a note attached saying "Make us 150 of these". I am sure you can all it coming head on.. yep.. we got back 150 beautifully crafted floppy mailers. We had a pile there for a while with a sign that said "please take"
Damn I wish I had mod points to mark this funny. But then again I think that the lead up to the punch line was a bit long, so I guess the people who modded you off topic never saw it coming (or going).
I just read the first chapter of his book, and while I agree that he does away with calculus for dealing with angles (no more sines and cosines) one of his sample solutions ends up with the square root of 7. Now how do you evaluate that with out a recourse to numerical method?
As per the article.. Dr Wildberger is from UNSW, the University of New South Wales.. in friggin' Australia. South Wales is somewhere all together different. But as always people don't RTFA
Regarding corruption, I think it is more along the lines of those that seek power (for the sake of power) shouldn't be allowed to have it. This goes for communism/dictatorship/democracy. If however they seek power for the genuine benefit of other people, then that is a different story. Unfortunately those sort of people are few and far between.
I'd agree about less local and more state control, not sure about more/less federal control as I am only newly living here.
But as to local control I was in Pittsburgh in the late 90s and some people in the city were bitching because playes for the Steelers were working (playing football) in the city, but residing in other counties. As such the city was losing the tax revenue from their salaries or properties (can't remember which), and as such the players should be forced to reside in the city. That came across to me as being petty, but highlighted the parochial nature of the US economy, where even at the lowest level (city vs county) there is bitching and power grabs going on all the time.
This leads me to beleive that people living here need to raise their perspective a bit more and see that everyone else around them is in the same boat, and that they are part of a wider community (which does extend all the way up to the national and international levels). Until that happens, the concept of centralised planning is always going to take the backseat to "I am OK, therefor I don't give a crap about anything else".
If the planners aren't doing their job then you don't have a planned system, what you have is a flawed implementation of a planned system.
But that mad me also think, what is the plan that the planners are trying to follow? Using gas prices, are they trying to minimise fuel usage, or minimise fuel cost, or maximise fuel company profits?
As you said, planners are influenced by things such as voters, and as people are more selfish than not, they would vote to minimise fuel cost before fuel usage. Hence you have anoterh control loop to deal with.
Perhaps we need benevolent dictators instead of elected officials? People who are not influenced by popular vote, but instead have long term interests and viability at heart.
And before anyone shoots me down for being a lefty pinko commie, I feel that socialism/communism has a lot of merits in this area. However, all the implmentations we have seen in the past have been very corrupt, and are not good examples of what that kind of system can do. However democracy is not immune to its own forms of corruption either.
<Begin simplistic economic rant> This is a problem I have with a market based economy, conservation issues are only addressed during times when people take a personal financial hit. At all other times its "I don't care if my vehical gets 2 gallons to the mile, as I can afford it".
We should be aware at all times as to how much non renewable resources we are consuming in our day to day lives, and how much of an effect that consumption has on the world around us.
Note that I am not saying we should go ultra green an everyone telecommute, or ride a bike to work, or sleep under your desk. But I believe a more overall solution to to things such as transportation is preferrable to a private market based one.
In the case of transportation such an approach would help with:
1) Getting better public transport, which reduces private car usage
2) Construction of communities that actually have sidewalks, and hence allow people to walk places (I think that the lack of sidewalks is more a USA phenom)
3) Reduction of vehicle sizes with an aim for improving fuel economy.
4) Reducing the idea that a car is an extension of your psyche, so that you don't feel like you have to have your own personal car, and instead can share cars amongst people. This can mean either less cars per household, or more car pooling.
All of the above are just some things off the top of my head that I think could develop better with a central system of planning, rather than with a market based system.
Now you could argue that the market based system will act to implement all of the above points just as well as a planned system. However I will posit that the market based system is NOT the best way to handle things such as high gas prices.
In my view the market based system is a feedback system, while the planned system is a feedforward system. (In a very simplistic description) With a feedback system, in order to respond to a change in conditions, the system must allow a disturbance to occur in the controlled system before feedback can bring the things back to equillibrium. With a feedforward system, the change in conditions is anticipated and compensated for, before the disturbance has occurred, and hence the disturbance never occurs.
In terms of transportation, a feedback system allows the price of gas to go sky high, which hurts peoples pockets and forces people to find alternatives. With a feedforward model, people are organised ahead of time to avoid using excessive amounts of gas prior to the rise in prices, so that when the rise does occur, no-one notices it. In both cases the end result is people get to travel where they need to, but in the case of feedback, the have gone through the un-necessary pain of paying high prices.
Another more timely example is New Orleans, for the sake of not having funding in the 10's of millions in order to shore up levies, the authorities now have to shell out billions to repair the damage. Shoring up the levies is feedforward, repairing the damage is feedback.
Have you seen the size of these things? I have handled one at the local compUSA store and (to put it politely) you are out of your mind to think that its the same size as a 256MB flash card, MP3 player, FM radio, and voice recorder. These things make the iPod mini look big and clumsy. and it makes my mp3 player (with its radio and 1.25GB) look like a dinosaur
All I can say is that I am glad slashdot moderation isn't used for anything serious. The other day I made a serious comment, and was moderated funny. Today I make a funny comment and I get moderated insightful? Sheesh..
If you knew your world history you would know that it was an early 20th century right wing plot to get the US to use aluminum instead of the aluminium that the rest of the world uses.
You see while aluminum looks and feels a lot like aluminium, it is actually a differant material, so much so that it cannot be used as a tinfoil hat replacement.
Thus by duping the US citizens into believing that aluminum was just as good as aluminium (and more patriotic for the country), the government easily gained the capability of reading all of your thoughts, even when you thought they couldn't [*]
As of now, the rest of English speaking world sits smuggly by wearing our aluminium foil hats, safe in the knowledge that our thoughts are secure.
[*] Unfortunatley there was a side effect to being able to read the thoughts of everyone in the US. The summaries of such thoughts are used to brief the president in order to help him direct policy. But starting with the Shiny Shiny movements of the mid 80's suceeding presidents have slowly become paralysed by the thoughts of the mass population. This has come to a head with GWB being briefed hourly about how the population feels about JLo and Bennifer, while other, more important items are ignored.
The only possible solution to this is to disband the remote thought readings, but when confronted with leftist radical ideas like this, the CIA/Industro-Military Complex reacts violently and labels such ideas as being the work of terrorists. (It should be noted that these people are known to have holdings of aluminium manufacturers in other countries, thus securing their *private* supply of aluminium foil hats).
But WTF???? Who moderated me funny? I was being serious.. work without compensation is a Bad Thing (tm) unless you are being a volunteer, when it becomes a Good Thing (tm)
Think of it this way.. every hour you work for free is an hour of your $$$ compensation straight into the pocket of your companies owner. You wouldn't whip out your wallet and give the owner cash, so why do it through agreements to effectively work 24/7
Years ago a colleague told me that he valued the equivelant $$$ worth of his free time as way more than the $$$ compensation he was receiving from work. This is formula that I tend to agree with.
(Don't know where my last attempt at a reply went)
The Sidekick maybe good, but as you noted, T-Mobile coverage sucks compared to other providers.
If your job depends on 24/7 connectivity, then going with a provider that has limited coverage is the wrong thing to do. You need to go with the best coverage of all of the providers, as without a connection you are screwed.
As an added thought, some other people have mentioned laptops with cards in them. This could be good as you can use a wireless hotspot as a backup for your cell connection.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm .. I think you only say that because you may be blind to the changes that have gone on in the past, and the changes that are currently going on.
.. to modern day English to ebonics (and I am sure there is one out there). Each translation will change the sense of the text depending on who it was who translated it. As a comparison ... run something twice through babel fish and see what comes out.
In the begining (well maybe not that long ago) there were some pretty big arguments over what things went into the bible. For example one of these things were the Apocrypha, which were out then in then out again. (Do I see a directors cut/special edition cut that includes the sections that were dropped?)
Let alone the translation from whatever to Greek to Latin to English
I just found this interesting link The Pre-Reformation History of the Bible From 1,400 BC to 1,400 AD
So to say that the Bible is permanent and forever is misleading and ignorrant of the history of that document.
You mean like these people are doing?
Generic GPU programming
Dunno why,
:-)
But then again I have a Dell 2405FPW 24" in front of me running at 1920 x 1200 so I am happy
This is a blog entry.
.. but hey .. thats life .. it sucks .. deal with it.
Yes I agree that Blizards behaviour is bad
After all we have to deal with bad editing here.
[rant] .. I cringe every time I see a US adaption of classic non-US work. It seems as if the American audience can't consume anything that is not made safe for them by converting it to a local reference point. Case in point, all the British sitcoms that have been remade over the years. Trying to take something that does not naturally occur in your culture and then (figuratively) bashing it around the head to make it fit does not result in a work with the same or better quality as the original.
As a person who is not a citizen of the US
So to all you people beating on the Arabic adaption of the Simpsons, all I can say is welcome to how the rest of the world sees what you do to non-US culture.
[/rant]
Who was it who said "Never attribute to malice, that which can be attributed to stupidity" ??
.. its sort of related
.. yep .. we got back 150 beautifully crafted floppy mailers. We had a pile there for a while with a sign that said "please take"
I know this is OT but hey
In the late '80s I was working in the R&D lab of a paper company. Part of our job was to get new grades of cardboard made into a standard sized box that we could smash to bits in a machine to see how well they lasted. As we got these boxes by the hundreds we just sent out designs to the manufacturing section to produce them, and deliver them back.
Well one day someone took the latest box design from some CAD drawings, saved it to a floppy, put it in a floppy mailer and sent it to the manufacturing department with a note attached saying "Make us 150 of these". I am sure you can all it coming head on
Damn I wish I had mod points to mark this funny. But then again I think that the lead up to the punch line was a bit long, so I guess the people who modded you off topic never saw it coming (or going).
.. I refuse to explain humouor.
And yes
BZZZZZT ... Umm .. sorry ..
Living in Brasil doesn't make you a person of colour. Brasil has a very mixed population from very white to very dark.
I just read the first chapter of his book, and while I agree that he does away with calculus for dealing with angles (no more sines and cosines) one of his sample solutions ends up with the square root of 7. Now how do you evaluate that with out a recourse to numerical method?
How about "People don't read" ?? Though this does assume that editors are people.
.editors would edit.
Maybe "People can't think" is better. But I am leaning more to "People can't critically think". If they did .
Oops .. just realised that *I* didn't RTF summary .. my bad
DIVINE PROPORTIONS: Rational Trigonometry to Universal Geometry by N J Wildberger is a link to the advertisment for his upcoming book, which also has a PDF dowbload of the first chapter.
As per the article .. Dr Wildberger is from UNSW, the University of New South Wales .. in friggin' Australia. South Wales is somewhere all together different. But as always people don't RTFA
Hmm .. do I reply D'oh or Duh??????
Java is part of Indonesia :-)
I am a control systems engineer .. so sue me :-)
Regarding corruption, I think it is more along the lines of those that seek power (for the sake of power) shouldn't be allowed to have it. This goes for communism/dictatorship/democracy. If however they seek power for the genuine benefit of other people, then that is a different story. Unfortunately those sort of people are few and far between.
I'd agree about less local and more state control, not sure about more/less federal control as I am only newly living here.
But as to local control I was in Pittsburgh in the late 90s and some people in the city were bitching because playes for the Steelers were working (playing football) in the city, but residing in other counties. As such the city was losing the tax revenue from their salaries or properties (can't remember which), and as such the players should be forced to reside in the city. That came across to me as being petty, but highlighted the parochial nature of the US economy, where even at the lowest level (city vs county) there is bitching and power grabs going on all the time.
This leads me to beleive that people living here need to raise their perspective a bit more and see that everyone else around them is in the same boat, and that they are part of a wider community (which does extend all the way up to the national and international levels). Until that happens, the concept of centralised planning is always going to take the backseat to "I am OK, therefor I don't give a crap about anything else".
If the planners aren't doing their job then you don't have a planned system, what you have is a flawed implementation of a planned system.
But that mad me also think, what is the plan that the planners are trying to follow? Using gas prices, are they trying to minimise fuel usage, or minimise fuel cost, or maximise fuel company profits?
As you said, planners are influenced by things such as voters, and as people are more selfish than not, they would vote to minimise fuel cost before fuel usage. Hence you have anoterh control loop to deal with.
Perhaps we need benevolent dictators instead of elected officials? People who are not influenced by popular vote, but instead have long term interests and viability at heart.
And before anyone shoots me down for being a lefty pinko commie, I feel that socialism/communism has a lot of merits in this area. However, all the implmentations we have seen in the past have been very corrupt, and are not good examples of what that kind of system can do. However democracy is not immune to its own forms of corruption either.
IANAE (I am not an economist)
<Begin simplistic economic rant>
This is a problem I have with a market based economy, conservation issues are only addressed during times when people take a personal financial hit. At all other times its "I don't care if my vehical gets 2 gallons to the mile, as I can afford it".
We should be aware at all times as to how much non renewable resources we are consuming in our day to day lives, and how much of an effect that consumption has on the world around us.
Note that I am not saying we should go ultra green an everyone telecommute, or ride a bike to work, or sleep under your desk. But I believe a more overall solution to to things such as transportation is preferrable to a private market based one.
In the case of transportation such an approach would help with:
1) Getting better public transport, which reduces private car usage
2) Construction of communities that actually have sidewalks, and hence allow people to walk places (I think that the lack of sidewalks is more a USA phenom)
3) Reduction of vehicle sizes with an aim for improving fuel economy.
4) Reducing the idea that a car is an extension of your psyche, so that you don't feel like you have to have your own personal car, and instead can share cars amongst people. This can mean either less cars per household, or more car pooling.
All of the above are just some things off the top of my head that I think could develop better with a central system of planning, rather than with a market based system.
Now you could argue that the market based system will act to implement all of the above points just as well as a planned system. However I will posit that the market based system is NOT the best way to handle things such as high gas prices.
In my view the market based system is a feedback system, while the planned system is a feedforward system. (In a very simplistic description) With a feedback system, in order to respond to a change in conditions, the system must allow a disturbance to occur in the controlled system before feedback can bring the things back to equillibrium. With a feedforward system, the change in conditions is anticipated and compensated for, before the disturbance has occurred, and hence the disturbance never occurs.
In terms of transportation, a feedback system allows the price of gas to go sky high, which hurts peoples pockets and forces people to find alternatives. With a feedforward model, people are organised ahead of time to avoid using excessive amounts of gas prior to the rise in prices, so that when the rise does occur, no-one notices it. In both cases the end result is people get to travel where they need to, but in the case of feedback, the have gone through the un-necessary pain of paying high prices.
Another more timely example is New Orleans, for the sake of not having funding in the 10's of millions in order to shore up levies, the authorities now have to shell out billions to repair the damage. Shoring up the levies is feedforward, repairing the damage is feedback.
</end simplistic economic rant>
Have you seen the size of these things? I have handled one at the local compUSA store and (to put it politely) you are out of your mind to think that its the same size as a 256MB flash card, MP3 player, FM radio, and voice recorder. These things make the iPod mini look big and clumsy. and it makes my mp3 player (with its radio and 1.25GB) look like a dinosaur
All I can say is that I am glad slashdot moderation isn't used for anything serious. The other day I made a serious comment, and was moderated funny. Today I make a funny comment and I get moderated insightful? Sheesh ..
If you knew your world history you would know that it was an early 20th century right wing plot to get the US to use aluminum instead of the aluminium that the rest of the world uses.
You see while aluminum looks and feels a lot like aluminium, it is actually a differant material, so much so that it cannot be used as a tinfoil hat replacement.
Thus by duping the US citizens into believing that aluminum was just as good as aluminium (and more patriotic for the country), the government easily gained the capability of reading all of your thoughts, even when you thought they couldn't [*]
As of now, the rest of English speaking world sits smuggly by wearing our aluminium foil hats, safe in the knowledge that our thoughts are secure.
[*] Unfortunatley there was a side effect to being able to read the thoughts of everyone in the US. The summaries of such thoughts are used to brief the president in order to help him direct policy. But starting with the Shiny Shiny movements of the mid 80's suceeding presidents have slowly become paralysed by the thoughts of the mass population. This has come to a head with GWB being briefed hourly about how the population feels about JLo and Bennifer, while other, more important items are ignored.
The only possible solution to this is to disband the remote thought readings, but when confronted with leftist radical ideas like this, the CIA/Industro-Military Complex reacts violently and labels such ideas as being the work of terrorists. (It should be noted that these people are known to have holdings of aluminium manufacturers in other countries, thus securing their *private* supply of aluminium foil hats).
(I know .. answering my own post etc)
.. work without compensation is a Bad Thing (tm) unless you are being a volunteer, when it becomes a Good Thing (tm)
.. every hour you work for free is an hour of your $$$ compensation straight into the pocket of your companies owner. You wouldn't whip out your wallet and give the owner cash, so why do it through agreements to effectively work 24/7
But WTF???? Who moderated me funny? I was being serious
Think of it this way
Years ago a colleague told me that he valued the equivelant $$$ worth of his free time as way more than the $$$ compensation he was receiving from work. This is formula that I tend to agree with.
(Don't know where my last attempt at a reply went)
The Sidekick maybe good, but as you noted, T-Mobile coverage sucks compared to other providers.
If your job depends on 24/7 connectivity, then going with a provider that has limited coverage is the wrong thing to do. You need to go with the best coverage of all of the providers, as without a connection you are screwed.
As an added thought, some other people have mentioned laptops with cards in them. This could be good as you can use a wireless hotspot as a backup for your cell connection.
Of course you have already asked how much extra they will compensate you for being connected 24/7?
You have haven't you?