I know someone that got scammed by them, so I have at least one data point: pensioner with little computer knowledge, uses facebook to keep up with the grand kids, not as jaded as I am.
By no means feeble minded, just from a different era, and it pisses me off to no end that there are people out there that will happily scam people living on fixed income.
It's true you can just unfriend people, or sort through Facebooks lists (which are, frankly, a UI abomination.) The main thing, I think, is that by their design they encourage different modes of behaviour. As I mentioned above, even people that followed from Facebook to G+ (myself included) adopted different posting patterns on G+.
Facebook encourages broadcasting of small chunks of data as widely and frequently as possible. G+ has adopted a more tailored approach that, in my experience, also encourages more connected and thoughtful discourse.
Frankly, I don't even really see them as competitors. They occupy very different spaces.
Oh, yeah, part of it was that I let too many "friends" hang on on Facebook. But Facebook is very much geared towards large, loose associations. I've noticed that my friends that moved from Facebook to G+ changed their posting style a bit when they moved. (Not sure if there's been a reciprocal change as I've not been on FB in almost a year.)
I tend to think of Facebook as a noisy bar, and G+ a pub with a good magazine rack. Not the same thing, both are fine, but I prefer the latter.
I ditched Facebook very shortly after G+ opened up. Comparisons to Facebook and post-counting completely miss the point. The experience on G+ is entirely different. Facebook was a continual stream of "If you don't repost this link, you are a jerk", "Look how much bacon I ate!!!!" and "I am having the worst day ever!"
On G+ I have a (comparatively) small circle of friends and we discuss music, politics, art, keep up with each other's families. I follow a few science bloggers, geeky personalities and a few generic music and science related searches. All of it gets fed into different streams, I can keep up with the important stuff and dip into something random that will almost certainly interest me if nothing else is going on.
G+ seems very well designed for encouraging more thoughtful content and discussion. The total throughput might not look as active, but I get one hell of a lot more signal. Not to mention that FB's interface makes my eyes bleed. G+ is almost relaxing.
Ordinarily there's little point in replying to an AC, but someone condescended to give you a mod point, so what the hell.
The idea that filtering news stories through political filters is to protect Canadians from bad information and those self centered, socialist scientists is, in a word, crap.
The Harper government has made it very clear - explicitly, actually, in government directives - that scientists who receive federal funding are not to the talk to the media without approval. This has been widely reported. They have cracked down hardest on environmental scientists (can't admit that companies are causing damage in the oil sands, shipping dangerous asbestos products, or damaging fisheries) and statisticians (you don't need data when you already know what policies you want to implement.) I'm sure you can think of other countries that have required their scientists to seek government approval before speaking.
It's a travesty, and one that any self respecting scientist sees for what it is - political manipulation to serve a cause that is neither left nor right wing, but corporatist and self-serving. Of course, you would realize this if you if you were actually a scientist.
- were convicted of campaign finance fraud (the in-and-out scandal), using accounting tricks to funnel more money than allowed into critical campaigns,
- suspended parliament to kill an inquiry into the treatment of Afghan detainees,
- were found in contempt of parliament for refusing to disclose the cost of several big ticket items (including law & order programs, corporate tax cuts and purchasing fighters.) This is the first time a British style parliament anywhere has been found in contempt.
Then we had an election, and voted them back in, this time with a majority. So, yeah, they figure than pretty much get away with it.
No, not forgotten. That Trudeau's name is mud here has nothing to do with whether or not his policies were good, though, and everything to do with how they were portrayed. You can get beat on the street for saying that the National Energy Policy was a good thing, but it was the only thing that kept our economy from crashing in the late seventies. That's a long conversation, though, and it's late. (I was a dyed in the wool Conservative at the time, wouldn't fuel up at a Petro Can. I think I was wrong.)
I miss the days we could have an honest disagreement about policy - cut corporate taxes? two-tiered health care? - rather than worrying about whether the governing party has any respect for parliament, the people or the constitution. God help me, I miss Mulroney.
I do understand the other parties didn't do themselves any favours. One thing that no one seems to be talking about is how poorly the Conservatives (federal and provincial) are managing the oil sands. Right now Ft. McMurray is a keg at a frat party, and we'll pay for every pint you drink. You *can* keep from being bled dry by multi-nationals, address environmental concerns and not crash the Alberta economy all at the same time. But we're dealing with sound bite politics, and Harper has hired some people that are very, very good at that.
I think Ignatief and Dion would both have been good Prime Ministers, but, no, they weren't electable. See other story today. And neither of them were capable of countering the campaign the Conservatives put forward.
I live in rural Alberta, so I'm dead in the Conservative heartland. I'm an hours drive from Stockwell Day's old stomping ground.
Talking to people during the last election, I heard two things: oil sands and economy. A lot of people in Alberta think that anyone other than the Conservatives will kill the oil sands and cost jobs, and that the only party that's strong on the economy is the Conservatives. They could prorogue parliament, insult vets, cut any program they felt like, and those two items would still trump it.
I was actually surprised how little ideology I ran into. It's the first election I've gone out and really engaged people to find out why they were voting Tory. People here like their big trucks, and they don't want to lose their big trucks, and everything else is secondary.
Regarding the polar bear scientist Charles Monett, it seems to be one of those frothy bits that get people excited when someone who said something they didn't like gets the least bit of tarnish. An email from Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement Director Michael Bromwich states:
We are limited in what we can say about a pending investigation, but I can assure you that the decision had nothing to do with his scientific work, or anything relating to a five-year old journal article, as advocacy groups and the news media have incorrectly speculated. Nor is this a "witch hunt" to suppress the work of our many scientists and discourage them from speaking the truth. Quite the contrary. In this case, it was the result of new information on a separate subject brought to our attention very recently.
I'm sure we'll be hearing about how Monett falsified the polar bear study to further his own agenda for years to come, but at this point it doesn't seem to be the case.
I write PHP like Java or else I would have committed suicide years ago.
Oh, yeah. Me too. It seems like the PHP community is growing up a bit, too. I'm seeing a lot more cross-pollination from other languages, especially Java, when a few years ago there was almost a willfull ignorance when it came to good coding practice. The underlying language is still ugly as hell, but what's being done with it is getting better.
I gave Unity the old college try on my workstation (and I do like it quite a bit on my netbook), but I ended up switching back to Gnome 2 for work. I did find that I was starting to change my habits (work with, not against), and much of it I liked. A couple of items (virtual desktops, single menu bar conflicting with focus-follows-mouse) made me switch back, but I'm about ready to try another run at it.
It's really easy to get so set in your ways that you can't find a more efficient way of doing things. If I'm honest, I still spend a good deal of time swearing at the classic menu approach to a desktop. I also still remember the revelation going from windows to (then) AfterStep. I'm about due for another UI boost.
Unfortunately, it's too late. Last election we elected a Conservative majority. In Canadian politics, this essentially means they can pass anything they want. They've been busily demonstrating that since the election in spring.
Usually, there is still debate and a good airing of issues. A majority government can still pass anything they really want to, but they tend to listen, at least a bit, and are also thinking about the next election. If there's enough outcry, bills have been quietly let go before.
The Harper government has demonstrated that they're not going to take that path. They've been cutting short debate on bills through what used to be a rarely used technicality, so they can get straight to passing it. Just this week they told the provinces what the health care plan is going to be - something which has always been negotiated between provincial and federal levels. Plans that were defeated when they had a minority - such as closing the Wheat Board (a.k.a. "screw the little farmer"), eliminating the gun registry, creating Texas-style super-max prisons and strict minimum sentencing requirements - have been brought through in the last six months.
The signal is very clear that the Harper government feels they can do what they want, and Canadians can suck it up. So, in this case, it is highly unlikely that any public outcry would change anything.
I'm a science nerd, and I've learned a little bit of computer programming over the years.
...
I figure that it would have taken me at least six months to a year to learn some programming-related skills well enough to earn my keep as you trained me.
I think this is something that's key in the whole "Learn to X in 24hrs!" thing. You've gone through the process of learning a field. Anyone that has has a proper appreciation of what it means to know something.
I'm all for more people getting their feet wet coding, getting a feel for the basics. They might find a life-long passion, or they might just gain a better appreciation for a bit of technology that will affect the rest of their lives. Anyone that has had to really learn something, though, knows that it takes more than a few weeks to get an understanding deep enough to be professionally useful, regardless of the profession.
This initiative is at best misleading, filled with false hope and eventual disappointment.
Interesting...I suspect that google is increasingly tailoring search results. I didn't have an actual social network until the third page of results, and it was for some Canadian one that I've never heard of (I live in Canada.)
I visit Wikipedia very frequently, and the other search results tended toward the techy-analysis type of sites.
I have a dream that this kind of personalization will kill the snake oil TOP TEN RESULTS GUARANTEED! SEO companies out there.
It's nigh impossible to put together anything that does anything and meet client expectations without javascript.
Yeah, I'm old school - I code in vim, I still use lynx on occasion, and I remember when HTML was about markup - but that's not where the web's at, and it's not what client's expect. Anyone can toss words like "graceful degradation" around, but when it's a real cost that shows no real benefit to a client (not in a way they'll easily understand), it's a serious business concern.
Slashdot Mirror
I know someone that got scammed by them, so I have at least one data point: pensioner with little computer knowledge, uses facebook to keep up with the grand kids, not as jaded as I am.
By no means feeble minded, just from a different era, and it pisses me off to no end that there are people out there that will happily scam people living on fixed income.
It's true you can just unfriend people, or sort through Facebooks lists (which are, frankly, a UI abomination.) The main thing, I think, is that by their design they encourage different modes of behaviour. As I mentioned above, even people that followed from Facebook to G+ (myself included) adopted different posting patterns on G+.
Facebook encourages broadcasting of small chunks of data as widely and frequently as possible. G+ has adopted a more tailored approach that, in my experience, also encourages more connected and thoughtful discourse.
Frankly, I don't even really see them as competitors. They occupy very different spaces.
Oh, yeah, part of it was that I let too many "friends" hang on on Facebook. But Facebook is very much geared towards large, loose associations. I've noticed that my friends that moved from Facebook to G+ changed their posting style a bit when they moved. (Not sure if there's been a reciprocal change as I've not been on FB in almost a year.)
I tend to think of Facebook as a noisy bar, and G+ a pub with a good magazine rack. Not the same thing, both are fine, but I prefer the latter.
I ditched Facebook very shortly after G+ opened up. Comparisons to Facebook and post-counting completely miss the point. The experience on G+ is entirely different. Facebook was a continual stream of "If you don't repost this link, you are a jerk", "Look how much bacon I ate!!!!" and "I am having the worst day ever!"
On G+ I have a (comparatively) small circle of friends and we discuss music, politics, art, keep up with each other's families. I follow a few science bloggers, geeky personalities and a few generic music and science related searches. All of it gets fed into different streams, I can keep up with the important stuff and dip into something random that will almost certainly interest me if nothing else is going on.
G+ seems very well designed for encouraging more thoughtful content and discussion. The total throughput might not look as active, but I get one hell of a lot more signal. Not to mention that FB's interface makes my eyes bleed. G+ is almost relaxing.
Ah, a man of taste and careful consideration!
Which just makes me wonder why you're here :)
Well, that's your first problem. If you had said "Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster", I would think you might understand.
Ordinarily there's little point in replying to an AC, but someone condescended to give you a mod point, so what the hell.
The idea that filtering news stories through political filters is to protect Canadians from bad information and those self centered, socialist scientists is, in a word, crap.
The Harper government has made it very clear - explicitly, actually, in government directives - that scientists who receive federal funding are not to the talk to the media without approval. This has been widely reported. They have cracked down hardest on environmental scientists (can't admit that companies are causing damage in the oil sands, shipping dangerous asbestos products, or damaging fisheries) and statisticians (you don't need data when you already know what policies you want to implement.) I'm sure you can think of other countries that have required their scientists to seek government approval before speaking.
It's a travesty, and one that any self respecting scientist sees for what it is - political manipulation to serve a cause that is neither left nor right wing, but corporatist and self-serving. Of course, you would realize this if you if you were actually a scientist.
During their last term, the Conservatives:
- were convicted of campaign finance fraud (the in-and-out scandal), using accounting tricks to funnel more money than allowed into critical campaigns,
- suspended parliament to kill an inquiry into the treatment of Afghan detainees,
- were found in contempt of parliament for refusing to disclose the cost of several big ticket items (including law & order programs, corporate tax cuts and purchasing fighters.) This is the first time a British style parliament anywhere has been found in contempt.
Then we had an election, and voted them back in, this time with a majority. So, yeah, they figure than pretty much get away with it.
Yeah, that's fair. Guess I was just unreasonably happy that it wasn't "the gays are ruining our marriages!" Or at least that it wasn't voiced.
Bah,sorry - eighties, not seventies. After a while all the decades start to blur together.
No, not forgotten. That Trudeau's name is mud here has nothing to do with whether or not his policies were good, though, and everything to do with how they were portrayed. You can get beat on the street for saying that the National Energy Policy was a good thing, but it was the only thing that kept our economy from crashing in the late seventies. That's a long conversation, though, and it's late. (I was a dyed in the wool Conservative at the time, wouldn't fuel up at a Petro Can. I think I was wrong.)
I miss the days we could have an honest disagreement about policy - cut corporate taxes? two-tiered health care? - rather than worrying about whether the governing party has any respect for parliament, the people or the constitution. God help me, I miss Mulroney.
I do understand the other parties didn't do themselves any favours. One thing that no one seems to be talking about is how poorly the Conservatives (federal and provincial) are managing the oil sands. Right now Ft. McMurray is a keg at a frat party, and we'll pay for every pint you drink. You *can* keep from being bled dry by multi-nationals, address environmental concerns and not crash the Alberta economy all at the same time. But we're dealing with sound bite politics, and Harper has hired some people that are very, very good at that.
I think Ignatief and Dion would both have been good Prime Ministers, but, no, they weren't electable. See other story today. And neither of them were capable of countering the campaign the Conservatives put forward.
I live in rural Alberta, so I'm dead in the Conservative heartland. I'm an hours drive from Stockwell Day's old stomping ground.
Talking to people during the last election, I heard two things: oil sands and economy. A lot of people in Alberta think that anyone other than the Conservatives will kill the oil sands and cost jobs, and that the only party that's strong on the economy is the Conservatives. They could prorogue parliament, insult vets, cut any program they felt like, and those two items would still trump it.
I was actually surprised how little ideology I ran into. It's the first election I've gone out and really engaged people to find out why they were voting Tory. People here like their big trucks, and they don't want to lose their big trucks, and everything else is secondary.
I have no idea what GTAs excuse was.
This is true, but the rate that things have accelerated at since last spring scares the living bejeezus out of me.
And where do I go to complain about US policies?
Some of us out here aren't terribly thrilled with the way America handles things that directly affect us.
Did the US stop throwing tantrums and start catching up on it's arrears at some point?
Either slashdot ate the link, or I boned it up. This is the source for the above quote.
Regarding the polar bear scientist Charles Monett, it seems to be one of those frothy bits that get people excited when someone who said something they didn't like gets the least bit of tarnish. An email from Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement Director Michael Bromwich states:
I'm sure we'll be hearing about how Monett falsified the polar bear study to further his own agenda for years to come, but at this point it doesn't seem to be the case.
Oh, yeah. Me too. It seems like the PHP community is growing up a bit, too. I'm seeing a lot more cross-pollination from other languages, especially Java, when a few years ago there was almost a willfull ignorance when it came to good coding practice. The underlying language is still ugly as hell, but what's being done with it is getting better.
Thanks for the post.
I gave Unity the old college try on my workstation (and I do like it quite a bit on my netbook), but I ended up switching back to Gnome 2 for work. I did find that I was starting to change my habits (work with, not against), and much of it I liked. A couple of items (virtual desktops, single menu bar conflicting with focus-follows-mouse) made me switch back, but I'm about ready to try another run at it.
It's really easy to get so set in your ways that you can't find a more efficient way of doing things. If I'm honest, I still spend a good deal of time swearing at the classic menu approach to a desktop. I also still remember the revelation going from windows to (then) AfterStep. I'm about due for another UI boost.
Unfortunately, it's too late. Last election we elected a Conservative majority. In Canadian politics, this essentially means they can pass anything they want. They've been busily demonstrating that since the election in spring.
Usually, there is still debate and a good airing of issues. A majority government can still pass anything they really want to, but they tend to listen, at least a bit, and are also thinking about the next election. If there's enough outcry, bills have been quietly let go before.
The Harper government has demonstrated that they're not going to take that path. They've been cutting short debate on bills through what used to be a rarely used technicality, so they can get straight to passing it. Just this week they told the provinces what the health care plan is going to be - something which has always been negotiated between provincial and federal levels. Plans that were defeated when they had a minority - such as closing the Wheat Board (a.k.a. "screw the little farmer"), eliminating the gun registry, creating Texas-style super-max prisons and strict minimum sentencing requirements - have been brought through in the last six months.
The signal is very clear that the Harper government feels they can do what they want, and Canadians can suck it up. So, in this case, it is highly unlikely that any public outcry would change anything.
I think this is something that's key in the whole "Learn to X in 24hrs!" thing. You've gone through the process of learning a field. Anyone that has has a proper appreciation of what it means to know something.
I'm all for more people getting their feet wet coding, getting a feel for the basics. They might find a life-long passion, or they might just gain a better appreciation for a bit of technology that will affect the rest of their lives. Anyone that has had to really learn something, though, knows that it takes more than a few weeks to get an understanding deep enough to be professionally useful, regardless of the profession.
This initiative is at best misleading, filled with false hope and eventual disappointment.
Interesting...I suspect that google is increasingly tailoring search results. I didn't have an actual social network until the third page of results, and it was for some Canadian one that I've never heard of (I live in Canada.)
I visit Wikipedia very frequently, and the other search results tended toward the techy-analysis type of sites.
I have a dream that this kind of personalization will kill the snake oil TOP TEN RESULTS GUARANTEED! SEO companies out there.
Neither is G+. When I searched Google, the first three hits were to three different, relevant articles on Wikipedia.
Neither Facebook or G+ were in the top ten. What I got were articles _about_ social networking, which seems entirely sane and not nefarious.
It's nigh impossible to put together anything that does anything and meet client expectations without javascript.
Yeah, I'm old school - I code in vim, I still use lynx on occasion, and I remember when HTML was about markup - but that's not where the web's at, and it's not what client's expect. Anyone can toss words like "graceful degradation" around, but when it's a real cost that shows no real benefit to a client (not in a way they'll easily understand), it's a serious business concern.
I am extremely pleased about this news.