I'm using a PC, it was assembled in the UK, but as you point out, the components were surely made in the far East. So what? Is your point that because we all use computers, and wear clothes that were made by workers in terrible conditions, that it is wrong to criticise those conditions?
I never said Apple were the only company that does this, but they are the biggest, and they have the largest gulf between their polished, doing-good-for-all image, and the reality.
$18 billion profit, but they can't afford to make their phones in a country with decent labour laws. Nope, can't do it. The numbers just don't add up I tell you. Apple are the apotheosis of psychopathic corporate greed, at the expense of any human decency.
Then where are they? Where are all these "dual talent pool" success stories? Why don't some of these diverse talents get together and trounce the white male at his own technological game? As a white male I would honestly give them a standing ovation if they did - nothing would make me happier than to see their success. But there's precious little sign of it, so what's stopping them?
Or could it be that women tend to be olympic champion complainers, and will not let an issue go until they get their way, whereas men would often rather shrug and go and do something else instead?
That isn't to say that women don't have anything to complain about - they surely do. But so do men - and male gripes get orders of magnitude less attention paid to them.
But why does this diversity necessarily have to involve both sexes? Why not just let the best, most motivated people participate in stem? Diversity may be better than a monoculture, but a politically enforced enforced diversity will be worse than either.
I agree completely, however it won't happen. A voluble minority of the female population will never accept that they're no longer oppressed, and will whine and complain and protest in perpetuum. Men, desperate to make them shut up for ten minutes, will cave in to their meritless demands, and boys will suffer even more.
I think there's a disadvantage with having languages designed solely by language design experts, and that is a tendency to over complicate things. They all understand it, and appreciate it's elegance, so it must be the best way.
To draw an analogy, consider the musical excesses of prog rock / jazz fusion. The musicians themselves may appreciate a Locrian scale played against an AbSus13th arpeggio , but the audience can easily end up excluded. Then a musically simple but catchy band like the Sex Pistols comes along and steals their audience.
I reckon languages need to be really really simple to understand, in order to become popular. For most people they're a tool, not an end in themselves.
I'm not sure there's anything particularly new about taking a grievance to court, however I daresay its warmer than marching around waving placards in the snow.
Assume they have numerous cameras on the surface of a ball, with significantly overlapping fields of view. The reconstruction phase would be where the difficulty lies - normal image stitching wouldn't work, because it assumes one single optical centre for all shots, and treats deviations from this as an error to be smeared away. However in this case you need to use the varying optical centres of the cameras, to gain parallax / depth information. So it becomes a photogrammetry problem, recovering 3d points - with points beyond a certain distance mapped to a distant sphere. Then on playback the data could be reprojected correctly.... somehow. *waves hands* It's definitely not simple to do correctly.
How do these scientists know what will be realistic?
If you make the analogy with ocean going vessels, and naval warfare, humanity is at the stage of making a small raft with logs and rope, and gently pushing it out onto a lake, hoping it wont fall apart. If we can't make spaceships well enough to even vaguely contemplate a space battle, how can this lot possibly know what is realistic to expect in some far future space conflict?
I could say the same thing to you, Mr Coward. There's the trap you see - complain about the tidal wave of no-added-value pundits, and someone hits back accusing you of hypocrisy, for making the comment. I've tried ignoring them, I'm afraid they don't seem to be going away.
Blah blah, here are 8 reasons why Apple should do this and that, but wont, and 5 reasons why Microsoft will never beat Google at 'X'. Blah blah, read my blah blog.
The world has too many commentators. Go and do something useful. Stop talking about what other people are doing, and go and do something amazing yourself.
So with the manual labour jobs being given to robots, and a distinct lack of young women, (thanks to female babies being unwanted) things are certainly looking bright for the tens of millions of young Chinese males.
I'm sure they'll take it philosophically - enormous gangs of angry, sexually frustrated young men usually do.
A small correction, Nvidia Quadro has not "turned into the Titan". Quadro cards are largely the same hardware as the consumer cards, but with minor changes to enable certain features. The main difference is in the drivers. Consumer drivers err on the side of speed, whereas Quadro drivers will typically have lower performance in a game type situation, but be better suited for CAD / 3D work.
I agree with you, the variance of the distribution is such to make the difference in mean IQ utterly meaningless on an individual basis. It must be incredibly frustrating to an intelligent black man to have that average working unfairly against him.
If you think that's bad though, imagine a world where it is easy to determine the average IQ of a black man from Baltimore, with a dead father,and who drives a car more than 8 years old. Now imagine coming from such a background, and being a great computer programmer. Now imagine the sinking feeling as you're handed a demographic form upon arriving for an interview for a coding job you could do well.
A life under the tyranny of statistics could be a hard life indeed, if we're not careful.
That's the problem. Modern society has decided to act as if every race is equal, and also decided that for the sake of us all getting along, we won't look too closely at whether this is in fact the case, because history shows that going down that road doesn't tend to end well. So far so good, but what happens when the differences (and there are bound to be some) between various groups can be highlighted by a data-mining algorithm, and are in everyone's face? Answer: Trouble.
I don't think opinions on this sort of subject are all that amenable to change. Obama looked at the numbers, and said what he thought would help him stay in office.
A lot of chest beating going on here, a lot of flexing of consumer muscles, and talk of the righteous boycotting of bigots. From the outside however, it just looks like a pitchfork wielding mob, using coercion to bend a third party to their will. People don't like seeing coercion, especially by groups who have no accountability to anyone, and I believe that the result of these protests will be a decrease in public's sympathy for equality of rights for gay people.
I think it's likely that Zuckerberg knows that Facebook is preposterously overvalued, that the market will realise this, and is diversifying into some other areas with massive future growth while the going is good. Perhaps they'll create a virtual world communication type thing. I don't think this is too bad a development.
I suppose some people are so unwilling to take the time to learn, or to do something properly, that there's always a ready market for a stupid device to make it "easier". It doesn't work. What do a load of flashing LEDs, (controlled by a smartphone, what else) add beyond what printed chord charts, or guitar tab provide? It's exactly the same information.
Instead, why not spend that $400 on an acoustic guitar (you can get a really good one for that money), and practice putting your fingers on the right strings and frets, forming the chords, practice picking or strumming, and KEEP DOING IT, again and again, every day until you can form the shapes instantly. Your brain will learn, and your fingers will get sore, but that goes away. It takes time, but at the end you've learned a real skill. Imagine how proud you'll feel, you've got that skill for life - the ability to play songs, entertain friends. It's well worth the effort.
Don't piss about with some gadget that promises to let you skip all the hard work. They don't work, never have and never will.
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I'm using a PC, it was assembled in the UK, but as you point out, the components were surely made in the far East.
So what? Is your point that because we all use computers, and wear clothes that were made by workers in terrible conditions, that it is wrong to criticise those conditions?
I never said Apple were the only company that does this, but they are the biggest, and they have the largest gulf between their polished, doing-good-for-all image, and the reality.
$18 billion profit, but they can't afford to make their phones in a country with decent labour laws. Nope, can't do it. The numbers just don't add up I tell you. Apple are the apotheosis of psychopathic corporate greed, at the expense of any human decency.
Then where are they? Where are all these "dual talent pool" success stories? Why don't some of these diverse talents get together and trounce the white male at his own technological game? As a white male I would honestly give them a standing ovation if they did - nothing would make me happier than to see their success. But there's precious little sign of it, so what's stopping them?
Or could it be that women tend to be olympic champion complainers, and will not let an issue go until they get their way, whereas men would often rather shrug and go and do something else instead?
That isn't to say that women don't have anything to complain about - they surely do. But so do men - and male gripes get orders of magnitude less attention paid to them.
Maybe girls / women just aren't as interested, statistically. Why is that not an acceptable conclusion?
But why does this diversity necessarily have to involve both sexes? Why not just let the best, most motivated people participate in stem? Diversity may be better than a monoculture, but a politically enforced enforced diversity will be worse than either.
I agree completely, however it won't happen. A voluble minority of the female population will never accept that they're no longer oppressed, and will whine and complain and protest in perpetuum. Men, desperate to make them shut up for ten minutes, will cave in to their meritless demands, and boys will suffer even more.
I think there's a disadvantage with having languages designed solely by language design experts, and that is a tendency to over complicate things. They all understand it, and appreciate it's elegance, so it must be the best way.
To draw an analogy, consider the musical excesses of prog rock / jazz fusion. The musicians themselves may appreciate a Locrian scale played against an AbSus13th arpeggio , but the audience can easily end up excluded. Then a musically simple but catchy band like the Sex Pistols comes along and steals their audience.
I reckon languages need to be really really simple to understand, in order to become popular. For most people they're a tool, not an end in themselves.
I'm not sure there's anything particularly new about taking a grievance to court, however I daresay its warmer than marching around waving placards in the snow.
Assume they have numerous cameras on the surface of a ball, with significantly overlapping fields of view. The reconstruction phase would be where the difficulty lies - normal image stitching wouldn't work, because it assumes one single optical centre for all shots, and treats deviations from this as an error to be smeared away. However in this case you need to use the varying optical centres of the cameras, to gain parallax / depth information. So it becomes a photogrammetry problem, recovering 3d points - with points beyond a certain distance mapped to a distant sphere. Then on playback the data could be reprojected correctly.... somehow. *waves hands* It's definitely not simple to do correctly.
How do these scientists know what will be realistic?
If you make the analogy with ocean going vessels, and naval warfare, humanity is at the stage of making a small raft with logs and rope, and gently pushing it out onto a lake, hoping it wont fall apart. If we can't make spaceships well enough to even vaguely contemplate a space battle, how can this lot possibly know what is realistic to expect in some far future space conflict?
This isn't science, it's futurology.
I could say the same thing to you, Mr Coward. There's the trap you see - complain about the tidal wave of no-added-value pundits, and someone hits back accusing you of hypocrisy, for making the comment. I've tried ignoring them, I'm afraid they don't seem to be going away.
Blah blah, here are 8 reasons why Apple should do this and that, but wont, and 5 reasons why Microsoft will never beat Google at 'X'. Blah blah, read my blah blog.
The world has too many commentators. Go and do something useful. Stop talking about what other people are doing, and go and do something amazing yourself.
Don't worry, they'll only use this to track terrorist cells.
So with the manual labour jobs being given to robots, and a distinct lack of young women, (thanks to female babies being unwanted) things are certainly looking bright for the tens of millions of young Chinese males.
I'm sure they'll take it philosophically - enormous gangs of angry, sexually frustrated young men usually do.
A small correction, Nvidia Quadro has not "turned into the Titan". Quadro cards are largely the same hardware as the consumer cards, but with minor changes to enable certain features. The main difference is in the drivers. Consumer drivers err on the side of speed, whereas Quadro drivers will typically have lower performance in a game type situation, but be better suited for CAD / 3D work.
I agree with you, the variance of the distribution is such to make the difference in mean IQ utterly meaningless on an individual basis. It must be incredibly frustrating to an intelligent black man to have that average working unfairly against him.
If you think that's bad though, imagine a world where it is easy to determine the average IQ of a black man from Baltimore, with a dead father,and who drives a car more than 8 years old. Now imagine coming from such a background, and being a great computer programmer. Now imagine the sinking feeling as you're handed a demographic form upon arriving for an interview for a coding job you could do well.
A life under the tyranny of statistics could be a hard life indeed, if we're not careful.
Let me know how the million-webgamer march goes.
That's the problem. Modern society has decided to act as if every race is equal, and also decided that for the sake of us all getting along, we won't look too closely at whether this is in fact the case, because history shows that going down that road doesn't tend to end well. So far so good, but what happens when the differences (and there are bound to be some) between various groups can be highlighted by a data-mining algorithm, and are in everyone's face? Answer: Trouble.
"France fails at having an Internationally competitive workforce."
Good for them. In the race to the bottom, France's "failure" sounds more fun than being the winner.
I don't think opinions on this sort of subject are all that amenable to change. Obama looked at the numbers, and said what he thought would help him stay in office.
A lot of chest beating going on here, a lot of flexing of consumer muscles, and talk of the righteous boycotting of bigots. From the outside however, it just looks like a pitchfork wielding mob, using coercion to bend a third party to their will.
People don't like seeing coercion, especially by groups who have no accountability to anyone, and I believe that the result of these protests will be a decrease in public's sympathy for equality of rights for gay people.
I think it's likely that Zuckerberg knows that Facebook is preposterously overvalued, that the market will realise this, and is diversifying into some other areas with massive future growth while the going is good. Perhaps they'll create a virtual world communication type thing. I don't think this is too bad a development.
I suppose some people are so unwilling to take the time to learn, or to do something properly, that there's always a ready market for a stupid device to make it "easier". It doesn't work. What do a load of flashing LEDs, (controlled by a smartphone, what else) add beyond what printed chord charts, or guitar tab provide? It's exactly the same information.
Instead, why not spend that $400 on an acoustic guitar (you can get a really good one for that money), and practice putting your fingers on the right strings and frets, forming the chords, practice picking or strumming, and KEEP DOING IT, again and again, every day until you can form the shapes instantly. Your brain will learn, and your fingers will get sore, but that goes away. It takes time, but at the end you've learned a real skill. Imagine how proud you'll feel, you've got that skill for life - the ability to play songs, entertain friends. It's well worth the effort.
Don't piss about with some gadget that promises to let you skip all the hard work. They don't work, never have and never will.
That is *A* solution, but not a very good one. Why don't we reduce the human population to zero, and completely solve the problem?