(If thats the case, can't every single smoker in the country sue the cigarette companies for 3 million dollars for every 5 years they smoked, essentially bankrupting that industry?) Reply to This
You must be pretty young or not from the US. The cigarette industry did get sued (quite a few times) and the biggest settlement was from 1998 where they effectively had to pay a bit over $200 billion over the next 25 years. The suit was 46 states versus the tobacco industry. You know all those "The Truth" ads? Those are funded by the tobacco companies.
The downside to this settlement is it also exempts the industry from further tort lawsuits (although, apparently not, there have been some since).
Believe me, I'm not doubting all ADD/ADHD diagnoses. Just the giant increasing trend of childhood diagnoses (where's Jenny McCarthy telling us it's immunizations causing it?). In fact, I'm ADD and I've spent my whole life learning to deal with it. I've become incredibly rigid in some regards (I always put my things in the same place every time to avoid losing them, since I won't know where I put them otherwise), I've developed anxiety about getting somewhere late (this isn't a good thing, but it gets me places on time), and I've gotten into a career where the hyperfocus aspect is beneficial (I'm a programmer - I feel bad for people who talk about taking hours to "get into the zone" as I get there in seconds and then lose 4 hours straight, as well as my ability to socialize or do anything else while hyperfocusing).
In my case I was never diagnosed with ADD as a child. I didn't even realize it until I made my wife take a stupid online test and was floored when she said no to all the questions (I said yes to them all).
Note that this whole topic is about children: I would also not say that depression is over- or misdiagnosed in adults. However, I would argue it is in children, especially during adolescence. Everyone is f'ed up during their teenage years. For many it's the simple change of body chemistry, for some it's simply the shortness of life and the inability to see long term (think how huge anything seemed to you at 13 verus 30 - "OMG Billy didn't call me! I can't go on with life!"), for some it's the lack of coping mechnisms we develop as we mature (and some never develop), and for far fewer it's actually true depression.
The medical tendency is to see a symptom and label it. BAM! You're depressed! Even though you may not fit the true clinical definition (long bouts, numerous times), you'll still get the diagnosis and the pills.
I had some childhood friends from 20 years ago that would be on medication if they were growing up today. One had terrible parents so tended to act out dramatically (he'd be on antipsychotics because he'd get into fights - even with a teacher if he deemed it necessary) and another that just loved attention so he'd do lots of bad things in class (he'd be on Ritalin).
I've had the pleasure of being an outside observer to the therapy and psychiatry world, and you are exactly right from what I've seen and heard. Problem children are problems, parents don't know what to do with them, and they'll go doctor to doctor until they find a solution. Even if that means putting a rowdy child (who just has serious authority issues) on antipsychotics. This problem goes way beyond just ADHD diagnoses; this is just one item in a sea of psychiatry doing what it does best: labelling and providing medication.
I'm a log time sleeping log, accustomed to 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep without any special effort. I've slept through a fire alarm in the dorm in college (completely sober), and the alarm was immediately outside my door (12 feet from me). At least as a light sleeper had it actually been a fire, you'd be alive and I'd be sleeping through burning.
Luckily for me Geocities was about 1.5 years after that. I was able to fund many hours of MK and MKII arcade gaming for about 2 years before most people even really knew what the internet was.
When I was 13 (1992) I manually compiled moves learned while playing and discussing Mortal Kombat and sold them for $3-$5 a piece. Who needs the internet an enterprising little kid is destroying you in MK then offers to sell you the list of moves he knows?
A 3 hour flight is ten bucks for airplane WiFi. Now, I do acknowledge that is expensive (though on par with in-terminal WiFi access), but when you already paid $300+ on a plane ticket, another $10 is definitely not priced towards executives. Just factor that into your cost of airplane tickets next time you fly.
Actually I believe the award is for the concept that as the planet warms, resources will become more scarce. Some areas will experience long severe droughts and others will experience unusual cooling streaks, wandering game will die off, nations will become more protective of their natural resources, etc.
Hence, spreading the word about the warming trend (to get people to help reverse the trend) will help prevent easily foreseeable problems in the future which could easily lead to war.
Get all mad all you want, just learn yourself on why they awarded it so you don't mischaracterize why it happened.
As a matter of record, Jefferson was not a Democrat of today. He was part of the Democratic Republican part (opposed to the Federalist party) and eventually split off and joined with the side of the people most mirroring today's Republicans (aside from his desire not to have a standing army).
While I agree that saying D's are better speakers than R's is pretty stupid, so is your apparent belief that political parties 200 years ago were even sort of similar to what they are today.
You realize he didn't win a science award right? He'd spent years, during his career as a politician and after trying to champion awareness of global climate change issues. That's what the award was for.
False on the registered mail crap. When the postal carriers deliver registered mail they are required to scan it. However, it's apparently a daunting task to do it at the time of delivery so a lot of carriers do them all at once at the beginning of the day. Then they go and deliver.
It's against the rules, but they do it. I've had things say they were delivered at 9am, yet my carrier doesn't arrive until after noon. Without the registered mail envelope no less (it got lost somewhere in between).
My wife's mother works at the USPS and confirmed this is common practice though disallowed. They all do it.
Yes, we're making the same point, though I'm also pointing out that the doom and gloom that is always presented wrt parallelism in current programming languages isn't so. It's only so for those that don't know what they're doing.
Threads are harder just like memory management in C++ is harder than Java and.NET.
It's the people who really can't program that are having significant trouble with parallelization in modern applications. That's not to say that in the future I won't love to be able to express a solution and have it automatically parallelized, but for the time being creating applications that take advantage of multiple cores well (server apps, not client apps) is not that difficult if you know what you're doing.
Though, like C++ with memory leaking, it is possible to shoot yourself in the foot with a deadlock occasionally.
All the games I have on my phone are Java based. Their UIs are perfectly adequate. Your misassociating data input UI with what people will actually put on a phone with Java (port their already written Java games).
Being in the tech industry, I'm pretty used to the pace of change in regards to hardware and software. Every month, every year something new comes out that makes the old look like a toy. In terms of gadgetry, the new stuff is always so much cooler than the old stuff. There always seem to be one more feature the new things have over the old, that pretty much necessitate continual upgrade after a while (you may skip an upgrade or two, but eventually your old POS will be upgraded).
New games come with new ideas, and the really good ideas eventually make their way into games with a long history. One game will change the notion of "hit points" and that idea will filter through other games. Yet another will change the notion of "difficulty" and that idea will filter through other games. That said, as game designers, how do you view the need for change in terms of underlying game mechanics and rules like the 4.0 release is bound to do, especially considering the long history and vast amount of source material that has, over time, become obsolete against current rule systems?
Last I checked $3,000,000 divided by 60,000 equals $50, not $500.
Math issues aside, if you RTFA (and follow TF link to the original article) you'll see the breakdown:
"The incident is expected to cost the state almost $3 million. Of that total, $2.3 million covers projected and existing enrollment in Debix Inc. credit protection services. Debix enrollment paid for by the state for affected individuals will remain open until Oct. 31. Debix protection will not be extended toward any businesses with information on the lost backup tape."
I highly doubt those licenses are figured into the $3 million estimate.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees that.
Actually Scott Hanselman has a better option using Skype and a dedicated PC he uses to talk to his family at home.
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/SkypingTheWifeFoolproofVideoConferencingWithYourFamilyWhileOnTheRoad.aspx
Doesn't take much to set up and would probably get one most of the way there.
(If thats the case, can't every single smoker in the country sue the cigarette companies for 3 million dollars for every 5 years they smoked, essentially bankrupting that industry?)
Reply to This
You must be pretty young or not from the US. The cigarette industry did get sued (quite a few times) and the biggest settlement was from 1998 where they effectively had to pay a bit over $200 billion over the next 25 years. The suit was 46 states versus the tobacco industry. You know all those "The Truth" ads? Those are funded by the tobacco companies.
The downside to this settlement is it also exempts the industry from further tort lawsuits (although, apparently not, there have been some since).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_politics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agreement
Believe me, I'm not doubting all ADD/ADHD diagnoses. Just the giant increasing trend of childhood diagnoses (where's Jenny McCarthy telling us it's immunizations causing it?). In fact, I'm ADD and I've spent my whole life learning to deal with it. I've become incredibly rigid in some regards (I always put my things in the same place every time to avoid losing them, since I won't know where I put them otherwise), I've developed anxiety about getting somewhere late (this isn't a good thing, but it gets me places on time), and I've gotten into a career where the hyperfocus aspect is beneficial (I'm a programmer - I feel bad for people who talk about taking hours to "get into the zone" as I get there in seconds and then lose 4 hours straight, as well as my ability to socialize or do anything else while hyperfocusing).
In my case I was never diagnosed with ADD as a child. I didn't even realize it until I made my wife take a stupid online test and was floored when she said no to all the questions (I said yes to them all).
Note that this whole topic is about children: I would also not say that depression is over- or misdiagnosed in adults. However, I would argue it is in children, especially during adolescence. Everyone is f'ed up during their teenage years. For many it's the simple change of body chemistry, for some it's simply the shortness of life and the inability to see long term (think how huge anything seemed to you at 13 verus 30 - "OMG Billy didn't call me! I can't go on with life!"), for some it's the lack of coping mechnisms we develop as we mature (and some never develop), and for far fewer it's actually true depression.
The medical tendency is to see a symptom and label it. BAM! You're depressed! Even though you may not fit the true clinical definition (long bouts, numerous times), you'll still get the diagnosis and the pills.
I had some childhood friends from 20 years ago that would be on medication if they were growing up today. One had terrible parents so tended to act out dramatically (he'd be on antipsychotics because he'd get into fights - even with a teacher if he deemed it necessary) and another that just loved attention so he'd do lots of bad things in class (he'd be on Ritalin).
I've had the pleasure of being an outside observer to the therapy and psychiatry world, and you are exactly right from what I've seen and heard. Problem children are problems, parents don't know what to do with them, and they'll go doctor to doctor until they find a solution. Even if that means putting a rowdy child (who just has serious authority issues) on antipsychotics. This problem goes way beyond just ADHD diagnoses; this is just one item in a sea of psychiatry doing what it does best: labelling and providing medication.
I'm a log time sleeping log, accustomed to 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep without any special effort. I've slept through a fire alarm in the dorm in college (completely sober), and the alarm was immediately outside my door (12 feet from me). At least as a light sleeper had it actually been a fire, you'd be alive and I'd be sleeping through burning.
Luckily for me Geocities was about 1.5 years after that. I was able to fund many hours of MK and MKII arcade gaming for about 2 years before most people even really knew what the internet was.
When I was 13 (1992) I manually compiled moves learned while playing and discussing Mortal Kombat and sold them for $3-$5 a piece. Who needs the internet an enterprising little kid is destroying you in MK then offers to sell you the list of moves he knows?
A 3 hour flight is ten bucks for airplane WiFi. Now, I do acknowledge that is expensive (though on par with in-terminal WiFi access), but when you already paid $300+ on a plane ticket, another $10 is definitely not priced towards executives. Just factor that into your cost of airplane tickets next time you fly.
And you used it wrong, because Jefferson was not a (D).
Actually I believe the award is for the concept that as the planet warms, resources will become more scarce. Some areas will experience long severe droughts and others will experience unusual cooling streaks, wandering game will die off, nations will become more protective of their natural resources, etc.
Hence, spreading the word about the warming trend (to get people to help reverse the trend) will help prevent easily foreseeable problems in the future which could easily lead to war.
Get all mad all you want, just learn yourself on why they awarded it so you don't mischaracterize why it happened.
As a matter of record, Jefferson was not a Democrat of today. He was part of the Democratic Republican part (opposed to the Federalist party) and eventually split off and joined with the side of the people most mirroring today's Republicans (aside from his desire not to have a standing army).
While I agree that saying D's are better speakers than R's is pretty stupid, so is your apparent belief that political parties 200 years ago were even sort of similar to what they are today.
You realize he didn't win a science award right? He'd spent years, during his career as a politician and after trying to champion awareness of global climate change issues. That's what the award was for.
Um, the Dark Knight was PG-13. That was part of the point of this article, had you read it ("look at the successful PG-13 comic movies!").
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/
Also part of the point was that damn, that was seriously rated PG-13 and not R?
And here I thought dropping an ice cube into the ocean was a really far fetched idea and nobody would take it seriously.
False on the registered mail crap. When the postal carriers deliver registered mail they are required to scan it. However, it's apparently a daunting task to do it at the time of delivery so a lot of carriers do them all at once at the beginning of the day. Then they go and deliver.
It's against the rules, but they do it. I've had things say they were delivered at 9am, yet my carrier doesn't arrive until after noon. Without the registered mail envelope no less (it got lost somewhere in between).
My wife's mother works at the USPS and confirmed this is common practice though disallowed. They all do it.
I won't hold it against you ;)
Yes, we're making the same point, though I'm also pointing out that the doom and gloom that is always presented wrt parallelism in current programming languages isn't so. It's only so for those that don't know what they're doing.
Threads are harder just like memory management in C++ is harder than Java and .NET.
It's the people who really can't program that are having significant trouble with parallelization in modern applications. That's not to say that in the future I won't love to be able to express a solution and have it automatically parallelized, but for the time being creating applications that take advantage of multiple cores well (server apps, not client apps) is not that difficult if you know what you're doing.
Though, like C++ with memory leaking, it is possible to shoot yourself in the foot with a deadlock occasionally.
All the games I have on my phone are Java based. Their UIs are perfectly adequate. Your misassociating data input UI with what people will actually put on a phone with Java (port their already written Java games).
Being in the tech industry, I'm pretty used to the pace of change in regards to hardware and software. Every month, every year something new comes out that makes the old look like a toy. In terms of gadgetry, the new stuff is always so much cooler than the old stuff. There always seem to be one more feature the new things have over the old, that pretty much necessitate continual upgrade after a while (you may skip an upgrade or two, but eventually your old POS will be upgraded).
New games come with new ideas, and the really good ideas eventually make their way into games with a long history. One game will change the notion of "hit points" and that idea will filter through other games. Yet another will change the notion of "difficulty" and that idea will filter through other games. That said, as game designers, how do you view the need for change in terms of underlying game mechanics and rules like the 4.0 release is bound to do, especially considering the long history and vast amount of source material that has, over time, become obsolete against current rule systems?
Last I checked $3,000,000 divided by 60,000 equals $50, not $500.
Math issues aside, if you RTFA (and follow TF link to the original article) you'll see the breakdown:
"The incident is expected to cost the state almost $3 million. Of that total, $2.3 million covers projected and existing enrollment in Debix Inc. credit protection services. Debix enrollment paid for by the state for affected individuals will remain open until Oct. 31. Debix protection will not be extended toward any businesses with information on the lost backup tape."
I highly doubt those licenses are figured into the $3 million estimate.
Right, because no other garbage collected runtime has this issue.
This "article" also shows why you don't let college students write productions systems.
"We set a timer to restart the computer after 40 minutes".
Wait. What? Really? That's classic programming by accident. "I added one and it started working, so I moved on."