I've tried both chiropractice and physiotherapy, and they seem like much of a muchness, although I suppose I have a little more confidence in conventional medicine -- I doubt that the certification process for chiropractors is as rigourous or lengthy as physiotherapy. I've recently heard enough horror stories about people being maimed or killed outright by dodgy chiropractice to ever consider returning to a chiropractor.
My family used chiropractors for years; the industry is so good as passing itself off as mainstream medicine, that I actually had to see the Simon Singh case to realize that chiropractice is woo-woo alternative medicine.
Horde is pure, utter shite, obviously written by weekend PHP developers with short attention spans, and wouldn't know a decently-designed user interface if it jumped up and bit them in the face.
The university I went to used (and probably still does) use it. It's a pain to use, and a pain to administer.
What's so hard about writing a decent Web email client anyway?
Relyig to my own post (I know, bad form)... the fee-payers can be desperate alright. The Chinese seem to have a penchant for doing whatever it takes to get ahead, regardless of the morality, or lack thereof, of what they are doing...
I got good marks, so I ended up getting the attention of some (admitted rather cute) Chinese girl, who got quite friendly. "Friendly", to the point where she was willing to sell herself in exchange for me giving her money for textbooks. To a lonely sex-starved geek such as myself, that was quite a tempting proposition.
I did CS at a major Australian university known for taking in lots of foreign fee paying students, and they had a TERRIBLE problem with cheating.
The trouble with the fee-paying students, is that quite a few of them don't speak English natively and thus struggle, lots are just as dumb as dogshit, and many are really desperate. Result: cheating.
I couldn't put down a printout or it would get swiped. I had tutorial workbooks stolen (I was a good student, so my stuff "grew legs" quite often). Copying of assignments was rife. The tutors I got to know quite well detected it more often than not -- they would just mark the assignment as normal -- and then divide the mark by the number of cheats. But in the end, the cheating, and general lack of ethics by the fee-payers got so bad, that the school simply abolished assignment work completely, and did all assessment in final exams and vivas.
The university system in Australia is underfunded (partly for ideological reasons; the rightwingers despised the universities as a hotbed for leftism and dissent), so they rely heavily on fee-payers. As a result, standards have plummetted, and several soft-marking and corruption scandals have been uncovered.
Who's gonna wager their hard-earned that this is a tactic by the climate denial industry to open up another avenue to discredit researchers?
And how long until idiots like Monckton miraculously become expert software engineers overnight, then start ripping climate researcher new assholes because their computer models contained logic errors?
... sorry CRYOGENIC liquid rocket engine technology. The SSMEs are state-of-the-art, and are one of the most advanced and high-performance rocket engines ever built.
The Chineses are probably trying to steal liquid rocket engine technology. There are plenty of half arsed regimes that would love to master that properly. It's particularly useful for high-performance upper stages.
The shitboxes that China, Iran, North Korea and friends are flying, are stuff like solids, hypergolics, LOX/kero, that sort of things.
I would imagine that data on hypersonic gliders might be useful too.
So it's all right for the Chinese to do what they please then.
Just claim that everyone else is doing it, or claim that they're a "developing" country, and therefore shouldn't be held to the same standards as everybody else.
If they want to be citizens, most certainly, yes. That's part of the agreement. If they don't want the obligation of assuming their adopted country as part of their identity, then they shouldn't become citizens, or the rights of a citizen.
Unless of course, you're brown, then your right to keep your culture and ways, no matter how backwards, and no matter where you are, is absolutely inviolate.
The phrase "fit in or fuck off", is a very concise distillation of this view. It's a very simple concept to grasp -- but one that's seemingly very difficult for especially conservative Muslims to grasp.
FWIW, being from another European country doesn't really count as different. My ancesters are English (on my father's side), and German/Hungarian on my mother's. My refugee grandparents never had problems learning English, and never had problems fitting in, despite their differing world-view, diet, customs, etc. They just assumed that they would have to bust their butts to fit in.
I don't know what makes brown people so special, unless having a brown skin or a Muslim surname bestows some kind of automatic privilege or virtue that I'm unaware of.
Interesting response. Does this imply that Muslim immigrants "aren't British?". Are they not accepted as British, or don't they want to be?
(Well admittedly, last night I was walking through the seedy side of Leyton, and the mosque was cheek-by-jowl by a brothel, a pub and a fried chicken joint. If Muslims set up shop in the most blighted parts of the UK, then little wonder that many Muslims consider 'British' people to be lowlife scum)
What mystifies me, is why these blokes, barely out of salwar kameez and burkhas (if they're lucky), would want to move to a country they despise, be treated like garbage, and then complain about it. That strikes me as a bit masochistic.
I think multiculturalism is a mixed bag. I've seen it work spectacularly well where I've worked and studied, where (admittedly, middle-class) people of all colours and creeds work together and all have something to contribute. Then I've seen it work poorly, like on the streets of where I live here in London, where there's obviously a lot of hostility, distrust and social dysfunction, and where a lot of the people have nothing at all to contribute to society (or rather, "contribute" by stirring trouble and joining gangs). And yes, racism MOST CERTAINLY cuts both ways.
I'm a live-and-let-live kind of guy. But there are limits to tolerance, especially when I find myself on the receiving end of rudeness, disrespect, hostility and outright racism from people who clearly don't belong here.
I'm a bit of a liberal myself, but I do think that "multiculturalism" and "anti racism" certainly can be used as a kind-of badge of virtue and moral superiority by a certain chunk of the population, especially those with little life experience, and unhealthily high levels of idealism.
You obviously have little experience having to live in the same neighbourhood as rude and hostile Muslim immigrants. Try it sometime and then get back to me.
I know there's a lot of very idealistic and naive libertarians on Slashdot who chafe against anything that would even hint suppressing free flow of information, no matter how objectionable or subversive.
But you all need to realise that when the rubber hits the road, idealism doesn't get you very far in the real world. Truth be told, the UK has a large problem with radical, violent, political Islam, and merely pussyfooting around, striving not to offend, and obsessing about theoretical and abstract notions of "rights" and "freedoms" -- and conveniently ignoring the obligations of EVERYONE to obey the law and behave like citizens -- will get us nowhere.
I heartily endorse any action taken to crack Islamist heads in the UK. Sometimes, tough choices have to be made, and idealism dispensed with.
Quite a few people out there have loudly, and at every opportunity, claimed that if only the government were to get off everybody's backs, and stopped holding the John Galts of the world back, then Americans would be walking on Mars by now.
Well, here's your big chance. Obama's just given you an unprecedented chance to show the world how free markets can solve the problems that the evil dead hand of Big Government can't.
We'll all be rooting for you to succeed, of course. But if, of course, reality fails to live up to the rhetoric -- and the libertarians are made to eat crow -- we all look forward to some peace and quiet.
Unlikely. The Chinese buy US T-bills because they/have to/, to maintain their dollar-yuan peg which helps keep their currency low, and their squillions of workers employed. They're doing this to contain unrest and prop up their odious totalitarian regime. As always with the Chinese, this is COMPLETELY about naked Chinese self-interest, or rather, the naked self-interest of the Chinese government.
As an aside, the US could play some financial games to make life REALLY hard for the Chinese government. Perhaps our friends in Beijing needs a timely little reminder of who's the superpower -- and who's the wannabe middle-power...
Remember, US overconsumption is funded by the Chinese government forcing their own people to be underpaid in sweatshops.
It should be pointed out too, that R&D costs SERIOUS money. If we were to fly to the Moon today, it'd be way cheaper, relatively speaking, than in the 1960s. All the technology's better, we have experience operating in space, we know what to expect, what corners to cut, what not to scrimp on, etc etc.
That kind of R&D spending is *FAR* beyond what any private enterprise is willing to invest, regardless of the potential payoff. You require the willpower and fundraising capability of a huge nation-state like the USA to pull that off; this is why America's achievement of putting a man on the Moon in a decade will probably never be matched again.
As an aside, SpaceX have reached orbit on private money, and are about to get into heavy lift and (eventually) human spaceflight. They have the **MASSIVE** benefit of leveraging the billions of dollars already spent by governments and militaries in building the systems that they're copying.
I'm getting tired of rebutting the right-wing myth that private enterprise can always do everything better. Because despite the fervent wishes of the 12-year-old "Atlas Shrugged" fan crowd, there are just some things in this world that require massive, coordinated action -- best run by governments.
Well, if it's so easy, then why hasn't some jumped-up John Galt character flown to the Moon on his own money yet?
Truth is, big plans cost money. The only reason why America went from suborbital flights to walking on the Moon in the space of a decade, is because it was given unlimited funding. Private business just doesn't do that sort of thing,
This is different. The people we are fighting aren't financiers and artisans like the Jews in Europe were -- they have nothing to go for them, morally, economically or otherwise.
Slashdot Mirror
Just gotta love euphemisms.
It's like in Australia, whenever a Lebanese Muslim commits a crime, the media describe the suspect of being "of Middle Eastern appearance".
They're not "East Europeans". THEY'RE RUSSIANS. Just cut to the chase please.
I've tried both chiropractice and physiotherapy, and they seem like much of a muchness, although I suppose I have a little more confidence in conventional medicine -- I doubt that the certification process for chiropractors is as rigourous or lengthy as physiotherapy. I've recently heard enough horror stories about people being maimed or killed outright by dodgy chiropractice to ever consider returning to a chiropractor.
My family used chiropractors for years; the industry is so good as passing itself off as mainstream medicine, that I actually had to see the Simon Singh case to realize that chiropractice is woo-woo alternative medicine.
Horde is pure, utter shite, obviously written by weekend PHP developers with short attention spans, and wouldn't know a decently-designed user interface if it jumped up and bit them in the face.
The university I went to used (and probably still does) use it. It's a pain to use, and a pain to administer.
What's so hard about writing a decent Web email client anyway?
(No, I didn't take her up. I never stooped as low as the fee-payers; or some of my other fellow students)
Relyig to my own post (I know, bad form)... the fee-payers can be desperate alright. The Chinese seem to have a penchant for doing whatever it takes to get ahead, regardless of the morality, or lack thereof, of what they are doing...
I got good marks, so I ended up getting the attention of some (admitted rather cute) Chinese girl, who got quite friendly. "Friendly", to the point where she was willing to sell herself in exchange for me giving her money for textbooks. To a lonely sex-starved geek such as myself, that was quite a tempting proposition.
I've never felt so slimy in my entire life....
QUT. They had a huge soft-marking scandal in the business faculty a few years ago.
I did CS at a major Australian university known for taking in lots of foreign fee paying students, and they had a TERRIBLE problem with cheating.
The trouble with the fee-paying students, is that quite a few of them don't speak English natively and thus struggle, lots are just as dumb as dogshit, and many are really desperate. Result: cheating.
I couldn't put down a printout or it would get swiped. I had tutorial workbooks stolen (I was a good student, so my stuff "grew legs" quite often). Copying of assignments was rife. The tutors I got to know quite well detected it more often than not -- they would just mark the assignment as normal -- and then divide the mark by the number of cheats. But in the end, the cheating, and general lack of ethics by the fee-payers got so bad, that the school simply abolished assignment work completely, and did all assessment in final exams and vivas.
The university system in Australia is underfunded (partly for ideological reasons; the rightwingers despised the universities as a hotbed for leftism and dissent), so they rely heavily on fee-payers. As a result, standards have plummetted, and several soft-marking and corruption scandals have been uncovered.
Who's gonna wager their hard-earned that this is a tactic by the climate denial industry to open up another avenue to discredit researchers?
And how long until idiots like Monckton miraculously become expert software engineers overnight, then start ripping climate researcher new assholes because their computer models contained logic errors?
... sorry CRYOGENIC liquid rocket engine technology. The SSMEs are state-of-the-art, and are one of the most advanced and high-performance rocket engines ever built.
The Chineses are probably trying to steal liquid rocket engine technology. There are plenty of half arsed regimes that would love to master that properly. It's particularly useful for high-performance upper stages.
The shitboxes that China, Iran, North Korea and friends are flying, are stuff like solids, hypergolics, LOX/kero, that sort of things.
I would imagine that data on hypersonic gliders might be useful too.
So it's all right for the Chinese to do what they please then.
Just claim that everyone else is doing it, or claim that they're a "developing" country, and therefore shouldn't be held to the same standards as everybody else.
If they want to be citizens, most certainly, yes. That's part of the agreement. If they don't want the obligation of assuming their adopted country as part of their identity, then they shouldn't become citizens, or the rights of a citizen.
Unless of course, you're brown, then your right to keep your culture and ways, no matter how backwards, and no matter where you are, is absolutely inviolate.
The phrase "fit in or fuck off", is a very concise distillation of this view. It's a very simple concept to grasp -- but one that's seemingly very difficult for especially conservative Muslims to grasp.
FWIW, being from another European country doesn't really count as different. My ancesters are English (on my father's side), and German/Hungarian on my mother's. My refugee grandparents never had problems learning English, and never had problems fitting in, despite their differing world-view, diet, customs, etc. They just assumed that they would have to bust their butts to fit in.
I don't know what makes brown people so special, unless having a brown skin or a Muslim surname bestows some kind of automatic privilege or virtue that I'm unaware of.
Interesting response. Does this imply that Muslim immigrants "aren't British?". Are they not accepted as British, or don't they want to be?
(Well admittedly, last night I was walking through the seedy side of Leyton, and the mosque was cheek-by-jowl by a brothel, a pub and a fried chicken joint. If Muslims set up shop in the most blighted parts of the UK, then little wonder that many Muslims consider 'British' people to be lowlife scum)
What mystifies me, is why these blokes, barely out of salwar kameez and burkhas (if they're lucky), would want to move to a country they despise, be treated like garbage, and then complain about it. That strikes me as a bit masochistic.
Ad-hominem much?
I think multiculturalism is a mixed bag. I've seen it work spectacularly well where I've worked and studied, where (admittedly, middle-class) people of all colours and creeds work together and all have something to contribute. Then I've seen it work poorly, like on the streets of where I live here in London, where there's obviously a lot of hostility, distrust and social dysfunction, and where a lot of the people have nothing at all to contribute to society (or rather, "contribute" by stirring trouble and joining gangs). And yes, racism MOST CERTAINLY cuts both ways.
I'm a live-and-let-live kind of guy. But there are limits to tolerance, especially when I find myself on the receiving end of rudeness, disrespect, hostility and outright racism from people who clearly don't belong here.
I'm a bit of a liberal myself, but I do think that "multiculturalism" and "anti racism" certainly can be used as a kind-of badge of virtue and moral superiority by a certain chunk of the population, especially those with little life experience, and unhealthily high levels of idealism.
You obviously have little experience having to live in the same neighbourhood as rude and hostile Muslim immigrants. Try it sometime and then get back to me.
I know there's a lot of very idealistic and naive libertarians on Slashdot who chafe against anything that would even hint suppressing free flow of information, no matter how objectionable or subversive.
But you all need to realise that when the rubber hits the road, idealism doesn't get you very far in the real world. Truth be told, the UK has a large problem with radical, violent, political Islam, and merely pussyfooting around, striving not to offend, and obsessing about theoretical and abstract notions of "rights" and "freedoms" -- and conveniently ignoring the obligations of EVERYONE to obey the law and behave like citizens -- will get us nowhere.
I heartily endorse any action taken to crack Islamist heads in the UK. Sometimes, tough choices have to be made, and idealism dispensed with.
... this is your chance to shine.
Quite a few people out there have loudly, and at every opportunity, claimed that if only the government were to get off everybody's backs, and stopped holding the John Galts of the world back, then Americans would be walking on Mars by now.
Well, here's your big chance. Obama's just given you an unprecedented chance to show the world how free markets can solve the problems that the evil dead hand of Big Government can't.
We'll all be rooting for you to succeed, of course. But if, of course, reality fails to live up to the rhetoric -- and the libertarians are made to eat crow -- we all look forward to some peace and quiet.
... they can stop stealing everything in the West that isn't nailed down.
Any suggestion of a tariff would drive the armies of armchair free-trade extremists batshit crazy. Would would be distorting the market, you see.
Unlikely. The Chinese buy US T-bills because they /have to/, to maintain their dollar-yuan peg which helps keep their currency low, and their squillions of workers employed. They're doing this to contain unrest and prop up their odious totalitarian regime. As always with the Chinese, this is COMPLETELY about naked Chinese self-interest, or rather, the naked self-interest of the Chinese government.
As an aside, the US could play some financial games to make life REALLY hard for the Chinese government. Perhaps our friends in Beijing needs a timely little reminder of who's the superpower -- and who's the wannabe middle-power...
Remember, US overconsumption is funded by the Chinese government forcing their own people to be underpaid in sweatshops.
It should be pointed out too, that R&D costs SERIOUS money. If we were to fly to the Moon today, it'd be way cheaper, relatively speaking, than in the 1960s. All the technology's better, we have experience operating in space, we know what to expect, what corners to cut, what not to scrimp on, etc etc.
That kind of R&D spending is *FAR* beyond what any private enterprise is willing to invest, regardless of the potential payoff. You require the willpower and fundraising capability of a huge nation-state like the USA to pull that off; this is why America's achievement of putting a man on the Moon in a decade will probably never be matched again.
As an aside, SpaceX have reached orbit on private money, and are about to get into heavy lift and (eventually) human spaceflight. They have the **MASSIVE** benefit of leveraging the billions of dollars already spent by governments and militaries in building the systems that they're copying.
I'm getting tired of rebutting the right-wing myth that private enterprise can always do everything better. Because despite the fervent wishes of the 12-year-old "Atlas Shrugged" fan crowd, there are just some things in this world that require massive, coordinated action -- best run by governments.
Well, if it's so easy, then why hasn't some jumped-up John Galt character flown to the Moon on his own money yet?
Truth is, big plans cost money. The only reason why America went from suborbital flights to walking on the Moon in the space of a decade, is because it was given unlimited funding. Private business just doesn't do that sort of thing,
This is different. The people we are fighting aren't financiers and artisans like the Jews in Europe were -- they have nothing to go for them, morally, economically or otherwise.