In your post, you called me "addicted to exaggeration", "liar", "careless in comprehension", "sloppy" and "worthless". You also said that the claims I made were "laughable" and "not supported by facts". The problem is that you spent so much time calling me names that you forgot to... do anything else. Usually I'd dismiss a post like that as obvious flamebait but as someone evidently modded you up, I guess I'll try to find the factual claims there so I can respond.
Apparently, you think I've made some "industrial revolution claim" which is partially true. The whole point of my post was that whatever is the reason, the climate is getting warmer currently. That was the only claim I made and I can't find anything in your post that would show you actually disagree here. I also referred to the industrialization in a manner that pretty clearly shows it's a point in time. i.e., "The warming started about when it'd have started if it were due to industrial revolution". I was claiming correlation, not causality... and I guess you disagree very strongly and on a personal level here.
At the end, you link to the same graph I linked to (the source of it is on the NASA site I used as a source and a link to it is on the page I linked to. I considered linking to the graph specifically, but then decided it'd be redundant). It's the main source of my post so you linking to it still doesn't explain what you disagree with. What the graph doesn't show is the "40 years of cooling", though. In 1880-1920 it fluctuates steadily and after that the trend is rather obvious.
I guess that all the namecalling was because you think that if the warming was caused by industrial revolution, it'd have started a few decades earlier? Is that what you're trying to say?
There is extremely solid evidence that the climate has been getting steadily warmer since the industrial revolution. http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/. That holds true even when we take into account things such as cities radiating heat and reduce them from the gathered data. And that holds true even on years when sun activity is low. That's as established fact as anything in the science can be: You can still claim that the earth is flat and call yourself a scientist, if you want to. You won't get much attention in peer reviewed scientific journals, though.
I like what you did there but surely you can't be satisfied with "Engineers modify Kinect to help the blind walk with confidence"? First of all, there is a lot of redundancy over there! In the context, it's obvious that people are "engineering" something so specifying "engineers" is redundant. We could substitute it with "People" but it's also obvious that people are doing the modification, so we arrive at "Kinect modified to help the blind walk with confidence".
Now that we're done with the redundancy, we still have a lot of problems left. First of all "walk with confidence"? That's accomplished by personal charisma or perhaps some drugs. Uninformative expression. Also "the Blind"? Surely that's too specific as exact same method should be applicable to any sightless thing, such as robots. Let's try "Modified Kinect - A limited substitute for sight?".
Obivously, we're just a few steps away from determining that headline is "Visual sensors can be used to substitute visual sensors", at which point we can completely eliminate the 100% redundant headline and go with a empty string.
1. Points out that since 1 December 2009 the Commission has had a legal obligation to inform Parliament immediately and fully at all stages of international negotiations;
2. Expresses its concern over the lack of a transparent process in the conduct of the ACTA negotiations, a state of affairs at odds with the letter and spirit of the TFEU; is deeply concerned that no legal base was established before the start of the ACTA negotiations and that parliamentary approval for the negotiating mandate was not sought;
3. Calls on the Commission and the Council to grant public and parliamentary access to ACTA negotiation texts and summaries, in accordance with the Treaty and with Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 of 30 May 2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents;
4. Calls on the Commission and the Council to engage proactively with ACTA negotiation partners to rule out any further negotiations which are confidential as a matter of course and to inform Parliament fully and in a timely manner about its initiatives in this regard; expects the Commission to make proposals prior to the next negotiation round in New Zealand in April 2010, to demand that the issue of transparency is put on the agenda of that meeting and to refer the outcome of the negotiation round to Parliament immediately following its conclusion;
5. Stresses that, unless Parliament is immediately and fully informed at all stages of the negotiations, it reserves its right to take suitable action, including bringing a case before the Court of Justice in order to safeguard its prerogatives;
6. Deplores the calculated choice of the parties not to negotiate through well-established international bodies, such as WIPO and WTO, which have established frameworks for public information and consultation;
7. Calls on the Commission to conduct an impact assessment of the implementation of ACTA with regard to fundamental rights and data protection, ongoing EU efforts to harmonise IPR enforcement measures, and e-commerce, prior to any EU agreement on a consolidated ACTA treaty text, and to consult with Parliament in a timely manner about the results of the assessment;
8. Welcomes affirmations by the Commission that any ACTA agreement will be limited to the enforcement of existing IPRs, with no prejudice for the development of substantive IP law in the European Union;
9. Calls on the Commission to continue the negotiations on ACTA and limit them to the existing European IPR enforcement system against counterfeiting; considers that further ACTA negotiations should include a larger number of developing and emerging countries, with a view to reaching a possible multilateral level of negotiation;
10. Urges the Commission to ensure that the enforcement of ACTA provisions – especially those on copyright enforcement procedures in the digital environment – are fully in line with the acquis communautaire ; demands that no personal searches will be conducted at EU borders and requests full clarification of any clauses that would allow for warrantless searches and confiscation of information storage devices such as laptops, cell phones and MP3 players by border and customs authorities;
11. Considers that in order to respect fundamental rights, such as the right to freedom of expression and the right to privacy, while fully observing the principle of subsidiarity, the proposed agreement should not make it possible for any so-called ‘three-strikes’
I'd like to thank my representatives. The problem is, I don't live in Poland or know any Polish... Can someone from there tell me who/where/how to send my thanks and perhaps who to donate a bit of money for next elections? (I feel somewhat betrayed by the far-left candidate I voted for, who actually became a minister of culture and one of the first things he did was to act like a good puppet of our RIAA-equivalent. He was the one guy I had hoped to protect my interests against those of multinational capitalistic corporations...)
Poland should have something like sixth-most weight to throw around in the EU but for some reason, they tend to act like one of the smaller countries. It's good that a lot of decisions are still made through consensus like this. And I feel a bit of pride that our own parliament likes it just the way it is.
No, it's "okay" because the Chinese people are better with Foxconn than without it, and they're better off if you buy from Foxconn than if you don't.
That is the standard argument that people use to rationalize buying stuff made with slave or child labor or by workers in similarly horrific working conditions. Frankly, it doesn't hold water.
You're creating a straw man when you say "If they didn't work for Foxconn, they would have no jobs at all". The alternatives aren't "Work long days for 29 cents an hour" and "Don't have a job at all". There is also the option of "Work a bit shorter days for 50 cents an hour". We as consumers can demand companies to demand their subcontractors to offer workers somewhat tolerable working conditions.
At this point right wing idealists tend to say "If wages go up, prices go up, less products are sold, less workers are hired, growth is stiffled and people end up worse off". It's hard to claim that this would apply here: How many manhours per smartphone are spent in Foxconn factories? If the cost of workforce would go up by 15 cents per manhour, the price increase of endproduct wouldn't significantly alter the demand.
So no, we don't suddenly become dicks if we tell companies "We are willing to accept 2 dollars of price increase in our smartphones but we won't buy your products unless you tell Foxconn - or any other subcontractor you choose - to provide reasonable working conditions".
The idea is to create a fine that will actually hurt the companies. If they said X% of the turnover in EU, it would just give companies even more incentive (in addition to tax dodging) to claim their profits are actually from somewhere else.
I'm trying to come up with some sort of logical/ethical/economical/whatever reason for why EU shouldn't be able to fine X% of worldwide turnover but I can't come up with any.
Of course, if you understand even the very basics of computing, you realize that "software simulations" are just a relatively quick way of making very difficult calculations. If you have a problem with a model, attack the model (of course, that would require researching the subject a bit before being able to make bold accusations) but complaining about computers being used to take care of complex is incredibly stupid. I hope you also oppose all modern astronomy as most of the data is crunched by "computer simulations".
I can't say that I oppose all USA military operations: I actually think that what they did (and led other nations to do) in Libya was pretty great. I bet we're going to see a lot more problems in that area (Be it terrorism, hanging on the edge of another civil war or just another dictator grabbing the power after a while) but it was still a joint operation by the international community, intended to help people who wanted to overthrow a dictator.
That said... It's hard to deny that a lot of the problems in the area are also more or less directly caused by the USA. It's a very militaristic nation, with a very large and loud minority(?) of islamophobes and every few years it demonstrates that it still reserves itself the right to attack any nation there for whatever reason it wants to, whether or not they have the support of the international community and whether or not those reasons even make sense.
Whenever any dictator faces an uprising or any terrorist organization faces opposition from the locals, the first thing they say "Those are just agents of USA messing around" and the problem is... that doesn't sound as far-fetched as it should. USA foreign policy has been very effective in painting the nation as an evil empire against which the Arabs should unite. I'm not saying that there wouldn't be terrorist nutjobs if not for USA but I am saying that they have more support and credibility due to actions by USA. As far as I'm aware, the main platform of Ahmadinejad is rallying against USA: He gains support during conflicts like these and loses it when people direct their attention to internal affairs.
China is an agrarian society, so most of the poor people are farmers. The land ownership is a very controlled system but the short version is that those poor farmers can't actually sell their land (as it technically belongs to the government) but they can lease it away for a few years. When a poor farmer decides that he wants to leave to a city to seek better wages, he leases his farm to someone, thus gains a bit of money to start the new life with and might or might not find a better paying job. If he does find factory work, he can make some more permanent arrangement about the farm and if he doesn't... he can return to continue his old life!
The system is a bit unusual but it actually works pretty well. It's the main reason why Chinese cities don't have shantytowns, etc. similar to those of most developing countries.
Democracy was created thousands of years ago in Europe
I guess you're referring to ancient Athens, where a subset of adult male citizens were allowed to vote on certain matters. Not only was the people allowed to vote a very exclusive group but the population didn't have many rights that we currently associate with democratic societies. Whether you count Athens as a democracy or not, it's certainly not the first one. Many primitive tribes operated through consensus, which makes it essentially certain that at least Africa invented actual democracy well before Europe.
You often hear about the nuclear bombs and the horrors caused by those. It's a sexy story: A new weapon so powerful that nobody truly understood what it would do... A single massacre of civilians to end a war... It makes for great movies and great ethical arguments. Nothing like the cold and calculated cruelty, such as firebombing, that was utilized by both sides but perfected by allies when effectively destroying European cities.
For those too lazy to go to Wikipedia, Firebombing is a nasty tactic: The first wave of bombers attacks infrastructure (roads, electricity, firefighters, roofs of buildings), the second one contains powerful incendiary bombs. The fires are difficult to put out (due to the first wave) but there is also an added benefit: The people who managed to get into shelters have pretty good chance of suffocating to death as the whole city block is in flames for hours. This was used over and over again against civilian targets.
Not that ordinary bombing wasn't bad enough: It's nothing like the romanticized idea of a couple of people in a small bunker in their backyard. I've visited the old bomb shelters of Berlin: There are airtight rooms that can't be opened from the inside (if they run out of air there, opening the door would just result in them consuming all the oxygen from the rest of the shelter, too. It's better to just open the door from the outside after the raid is over and see if the people are still alive or not). There were dozens of people tightly packed into relatively small space, being very still and hoping that the air would last. At the beginning of the wars, there were indicators to tell how much oxygen was left (three at different levels and they'd change color when the oxygen was out near the roof, near the center and near the floor) but those just caused panic and were removed soon. As the number of raids grew, it no longer made sense to leave the shelter for extended time periods. The managers removed doors from toilets because by removing all the privacy, they were able to somewhat lower the amount of suicides (Several each day) that people committed in the shelter. This was all caused by the good guys.
To point out something "nice" from the Axis portfolio... The siege of Leningrad: The only place and time (as far as I'm aware of) in the modern western world where cannibalism actually became a widespread problem among the civilian population of a major city.
So... yeah. Nuclear weapons were bad but I don't think they're nearly the worst things that happened in those wars. I wouldn't even list them in top 3 (though they would get into top 10). This is also why I always feel a small amount of outrage when Americans talk about how they're at war (or even two wars): USA pays some people to risk their life overseas, some of which then end up dying. That's an invasion or perhaps expensive armed conflict or something, but hardly equivalent to being in war.
40 years old nuclear plants will be shut down, unless they're still safe. --> 40 years old nuclear plants that are no longer safe will be shut down
One would assume that this has been the policy all along. Hell, if a nuclear plant is deemed "no longer safe" they should shut it down whether it's 20, 40 or 60 years old!
The government said Friday that it plans to introduce legislation in the coming months to require reactors to stop running after 40 years. Japanese media reported that the law may include loopholes to allow some old nuclear reactors to keep running if their safety is confirmed with tests.
The proposal could be similar to the law in the U.S., which grants 40-year licenses and allows for 20-year extensions. Such renewals have been granted to 66 of 104 U.S. nuclear reactors. That process has been so routine that many in the industry are already planning for additional license extensions that could push the plants to operate for 80 years or even 100.
Japan does not currently have a limit on years of operation. It had planned to expand nuclear power before the meltdown, but has since ordered reactors undergoing routine inspections to undergo new tests and get community approval before they can be restarted. The new restrictions mean that only six Japanese reactors are currently running.
So, they'll keep doing what they have always been doing, except that they now introduced arbitrary time limit, which they can circumvent if they want to.
And someone make sure he starts with C++. If he survives that, he won't have any trouble picking up other languages.
I've always been baffled by people who think that C/C++ is a good starting point when you want to learn/teach programming. I think that the most important thing to understand - whether you end up working as a programmer or not - is the basic structure/flow of the program (conditionals, loops, modularity/functions). Then the basic programming concepts (recursion, abstract data types, etc.) and then the libraries/APIs for your platform so that you can actually create something interesting/useful. I don't think that C/C++ offers any advantages over more modern languages in any of these things.
Perhaps advocates of C/C++ for first language think that if you start with a higher level language, the inner workings will forever be a mystery and you just end up using modules you don't understand. I could argue that if you aren't a professional programmer, that doesn't really matter at all but instead I'll argue that you do learn all the important concepts anyways. You can code in Java, PHP or Python and very quickly learn that there is a difference in whether you return a value or a reference to the value. The concept matters, not remembering where to put asterisks and where to put ampersands.;)
You might say "OK, perhaps C/C++ doesn't offer much advantages but they're still the languages... Why go with something else?" and the answer is pretty simple. If you study C for a week and then get bored / are too busy for a while, etc. you can't really do anything useful with it. There are pretty slim chances that you could, for example, create an application that saves you X amount of work by spending less than X in creating the application. If you spend a week learning PHP, JavaScript, AutoIt or whatever other language is best suitable for the domain of stuff that you're most interested in, you probably can actually use it for something. Also, if you choose a higher level language, the chances are that whether you spend a week or a month, you'll get to delve deeper into database access, networking, algorithms, etc. than you would by choosing C/C++. It's great to possess some basic understanding in those areas, even if you don't end up as a software engineer.
I guess that C/C++ is a good place to start for college kids who're just getting into CS: It's something that professionals probably should understand anyways (even if they don't end up coding in it) so they need to study it at one point or the another and it's easy way to get rid of the "I just like playing XBOX" crowd. For anyone else, I'd probably ask "What kind of stuff do you like to do on computer?" and then try determine what language helps them most in doing that thing.
There are plenty of companies that don't specialize in software but still need software developers. I've worked in three or four such places in the digital marketing business. In other words, companies that sell online advertisement, websites, facebook apps, smartphone apps, etc... I honestly think that if you interview well, your experience might be quite a benefit: We're talking about small-ish companies (like 5-30 people) where developers often communicate directly with the client, etc. so OP's experience in sales could be a great thing to have.
So, I think that kind of work would fit the OP's skills well and be relatively easy re-entry method. The difficult part is finding the correct companies (Many might be interested though they wouldn't even know it yet: Marketing company might buy the "If you hire me and give me about this much time, I can create application like that... which is another thing you can sell your customers!" even if they haven't given it too much consideration earlier and haven't posted an ad). So... As someone who works in companies like this, I'd say that's one option.
You said you've worked as a teacher? Now is pretty good time to think whether you've networked with any students who are now in the industry. I have hard time imagining any better recommendation than "He taught me and was one of the competent teachers (tm)".
Of course, whatever you do, you probably need to be able to show something you've done. If it's in the marketing sector, a few interesting websites and/or smartphone apps is a nice set of reference works. In the large software companies I guess they'll just have some other developer interview you and see what you know anyways...
You appear to have a positive karma, so I choose not to ignore that post as a troll.
Did you read the post you respond to? I linked to a page with several definitions (some of which overlap, others are mutually exclusive) and stated that by some of those definitions, all bloggers are journalists and by other definitions none of them are. And mentioned, that my based on the definition that I like the most, some of them are journalists.
How is that ignoring the others that contradict me?
A blogger is a professional journalist if they're making their living at it. It makes no difference how trivial the material they cover is, it's a matter of definition.
Blogger is not a synonym for journalist. Thus, a blogger is a professional blogger if they're making their living at it. They might or might not also be journalists, depending which definition of the word you use: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/journalism.
Personally, I prefer this one: "writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation", which means that a subset of people who write blogs are journalist, just like a subset of people who work at news organizations are journalists. By some of the definitions, essentially all bloggers are journalists, by other definitions none of them are. (Unless you argue that blog is a ((And not just equivalent to)) newspaper or magazine. I won't go there.)
I recently watched a few episodes, just to see what it was about. I love both scifi and steampunk, so I should be the target audience for a space western like that. It was... OK, I guess. The acting and writing were mediocre (A bit too many cliches, etc. but tolerable) and the special effects were OK (when taking into account the budget constraints they probably had). The setting itself was nice, though there wasn't that much originality if you're already well familiar with the genre. Really, it was on par with Farscape: I wouldn't change the channel when it's on but I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it to a friend.
So I found myself wondering... why do some people love it so much? Is there some specific aspect of the show that they consider well made or what?
I certainly know that what costs a government a million dollars, a private company can do for a few hundred thousand at most.
I've worked both in private sector and public sector. I've seen quite a few decisions to pay private company for something that used to be done by the government until that point. I have yet to see a single instance where the total costs would have gone down for equal or better service! Whether it's large government institution outsourcing the IT support or a state paying for private company to take care of public health care, the total costs seem to consistently be higher and the level of the service usually doesn't go up.
It's true that government has a lot of inefficiency due to internal power struggles, people who are unproductive but difficult to fire, etc... But then again, the private sector also has a lot of overhead (Usually higher wages, large marketing/lobbying/PR overhead depending on the industry, internal power struggles between departments, dividends, CEO bonuses, unproductive people, etc.), not to mention that at every single step the private companies have all the motivation to charge as much money as they can, they either enjoy a monopoly or can't get economics of scale to work out as well as one massive buyer could, etc. etc...
The very few times I've heard about private industry being more efficient in something have been cases where the public sector has been systematically sabotaged first (Ideological decision to buy from private sector even if it's more expensive --> Private sector gets to pay higher wages --> Competent people quit government jobs and enter private industry --> Private industry can say "Look, your workers are incompetent, we are much more efficient than you are now (though we might not be more efficient than you used to be)"). So, I'd appreciate it if you could quote some real examples (preferably within the last two decades) where decisions like this have ended up saving money.
Disclaimer: I'm not a socialist. I think that private sector is necessary to keep the society producing what people want, not what bureaucrats or politicians think they should want. I also agree that private sector is a good way to increase individual freedom and the threat of private sector forces public sector to stay more efficient... But I lean left in my home country (North-European welfare state) which probably puts me far left on the left-right axis of USA. From what I've personally seen, it's just really difficult to argue that private sector is more efficient, even if it is necessary.
I completely adopted the strategy described in this article: The Only Secure Password is the One You Can't Remember. Essentially, I have a different password for every single website, service, etc. and all of them are behind a strong master password in a software called 1Password. The encrypted file is saved to DropBox, so it's both online and on several computers (including my smartphone). For more detailed description and reasoning for why that's good, see the article.
The upsides: It's extremely unlikely that my passwords ever get into the wrong hands (I guess it would require someone finding out my master password and stealing the encrypted file. That would be a realistic threat if CIA was after my passwords but now for my needs that's essentially as safe as it gets). Even if one site I use is hacked, I don't use the same password anywhere else. 1Passwords costs a bit (something like 35 bucks, I think) but it's pretty good password vault: There is good dropbox integration, smartphone apps (which also work well with smartphone DropBox apps), browser extensions, automatic backups of the encrypted file, etc.
The downside: If I were to ever lose all instances of the encrypted file (I don't know how that could happen. I currently have it on three computers in two different locations, on my smartphone and in DropBox service) I would lose all my passwords, which would be very bad. I just assume that this risk is unlikely enough to be non-existent.
So because you object to the ads in Wikipedia (the please donate banners), you will not give Wikipedia the money that lets them not have ads.
I essentially stated that Wikipedia has two options:
1) Add small, non-intrusive ads (such as Google AdSense text ads banner to one column). Remove the ads when you have enough money (through ad revenue and contributions) for the year. It's likely that the required sum would even be gathered faster and everyone would be better off.
2) Have a massive (it takes up slightly over 10% of my 23", 1920x1080px screen!) and disruptive (I find it disorienting when I visit a page about a person and the first thing I see is a large image of someone completely else... just about the headline that's the person's name!) banner at the top of the page. Keep doing that even though it's clearly ineffective way to gather money (thus, keep the banner there indefinitely).
Wikipedia has chosen option 2, which I find unnecessary and borderline-absurd. If I donated them money now, it would be me supporting that option, which I certainly don't want to do. I believe that they will eventually see the reason and (have to) go with the number 1. If that doesn't generate enough revenue, I'll reconsider donating.
Do you really find this line reasoning so incomprehensible, was my earlier presentation too confusing or what's the problem?
From the summary & headline one could think that they are, well, building something facebook-like and that their target audience would be people like the ones who attended "occupy wallstreet" protest. The first claim is completely inccorect, the second only partially so. Rather, they're building a non-centralized social network for organizing protests, etc. because they feel that they can't trust FB and other existing services to protect the anonymity, etc. of protesters well enough.
I guess it's a good cause. Then again, a service like that is easy to block by police states with much less public outcry than if they blocked FaceBook or similar services. Anyone with enough know-how to get around that problem probably can do what they need to through already existing services. I'm not saying that - if they ever get it finished - it can't offer any advantages so it's cool that they're doing it... But I (having some activist background myself) really doubt the project will ever get finished.
I'm all for donating to the causes I support: I donate monthly to Red Cross, Amnesty International and two environmental organizations. I'm also a registered member of a political party, so I essentially donate to them annually. When faced between pirating stuff and supporting the services I find useful, I choose the latter (I pay for Spotify, Netflix, GOG.com and Humble Bundles) .
That said, Wikipedia won't get a penny from me, even though I fully support the service they provide.
The thing is, I disagree with Wikipedia's policy of not having ads. I really doubt it would ruin the credibility of the service if they adopted a policy of "We'll have one google adsense element in the right column, until donations+ad revenue has paid for our running expenses for that year". It would be efficient and - more importantly - a lot less annoying and confusing than the massive "PLEASE DONATE, HERE IS A PIC OF AN EDITOR" banners. I've seriously considered blocking those in adblock, even though I don't block non-intrusive ads... If they're not willing to do something that small for the convenience of their users, just because they believe it's at odds with some ideal I don't personally support, I don't think that it makes sense for me to pay them. I'm pretty confident that they'll end up adopting ads at some point anyways. When that happens, if they still don't have enough money, I'll donate.
I've always wanted to get into the apocalypse-business and figured that if I'll miss this one, I might not get another chance. I've dabbled a bit and can present my mediocre Evil Genius skills as a proof of my hobbyism. I've also caused the demise of many promising heroes, through activity known as "Dungeon Mastering".
If they had informed their customers of the 2 year warranty that they were entitled to by law,
Every european customer is supposed to know that.
*snip*
Every product in the EU since ages has a law gurranteed 2 years "guarranty".
That's funny because the consumer agency of at least one EU country begs to differ
The warranty provided for home appliances is often 1-2 years. Their expected service life - depending on the appliance - is, however, often much longer. If an appliance breaks down immediately after the warranty has expired, the cost of repairs is substantial and the consumer has not operated the appliance contrary to the operating instructions, he may appeal to the appliance's service life.
I can't be bothered to go through all EU countries but I feel confident saying that Finland doesn't have nearly the worst consumer protection laws of EU. So everything you wrote (with lots of bold text and stuff) is factually untrue.
Slashdot Mirror
In your post, you called me "addicted to exaggeration", "liar", "careless in comprehension", "sloppy" and "worthless". You also said that the claims I made were "laughable" and "not supported by facts". The problem is that you spent so much time calling me names that you forgot to... do anything else. Usually I'd dismiss a post like that as obvious flamebait but as someone evidently modded you up, I guess I'll try to find the factual claims there so I can respond.
Apparently, you think I've made some "industrial revolution claim" which is partially true. The whole point of my post was that whatever is the reason, the climate is getting warmer currently. That was the only claim I made and I can't find anything in your post that would show you actually disagree here. I also referred to the industrialization in a manner that pretty clearly shows it's a point in time. i.e., "The warming started about when it'd have started if it were due to industrial revolution". I was claiming correlation, not causality... and I guess you disagree very strongly and on a personal level here.
At the end, you link to the same graph I linked to (the source of it is on the NASA site I used as a source and a link to it is on the page I linked to. I considered linking to the graph specifically, but then decided it'd be redundant). It's the main source of my post so you linking to it still doesn't explain what you disagree with. What the graph doesn't show is the "40 years of cooling", though. In 1880-1920 it fluctuates steadily and after that the trend is rather obvious.
I guess that all the namecalling was because you think that if the warming was caused by industrial revolution, it'd have started a few decades earlier? Is that what you're trying to say?
There is extremely solid evidence that the climate has been getting steadily warmer since the industrial revolution. http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/. That holds true even when we take into account things such as cities radiating heat and reduce them from the gathered data. And that holds true even on years when sun activity is low. That's as established fact as anything in the science can be: You can still claim that the earth is flat and call yourself a scientist, if you want to. You won't get much attention in peer reviewed scientific journals, though.
I like what you did there but surely you can't be satisfied with "Engineers modify Kinect to help the blind walk with confidence"? First of all, there is a lot of redundancy over there! In the context, it's obvious that people are "engineering" something so specifying "engineers" is redundant. We could substitute it with "People" but it's also obvious that people are doing the modification, so we arrive at "Kinect modified to help the blind walk with confidence".
Now that we're done with the redundancy, we still have a lot of problems left. First of all "walk with confidence"? That's accomplished by personal charisma or perhaps some drugs. Uninformative expression. Also "the Blind"? Surely that's too specific as exact same method should be applicable to any sightless thing, such as robots. Let's try "Modified Kinect - A limited substitute for sight?".
Obivously, we're just a few steps away from determining that headline is "Visual sensors can be used to substitute visual sensors", at which point we can completely eliminate the 100% redundant headline and go with a empty string.
I don't know... While it's common (especially in USA) to claim that all politicians are scum, let's look at the European Parliament's stance on ACTA, as supported by something like 98% of the members in 2010. European Parliament resolution of 10 March 2010 on the transparency and state of play of the ACTA negotiations. The relevant parts:
I'd like to thank my representatives. The problem is, I don't live in Poland or know any Polish... Can someone from there tell me who/where/how to send my thanks and perhaps who to donate a bit of money for next elections? (I feel somewhat betrayed by the far-left candidate I voted for, who actually became a minister of culture and one of the first things he did was to act like a good puppet of our RIAA-equivalent. He was the one guy I had hoped to protect my interests against those of multinational capitalistic corporations...)
Poland should have something like sixth-most weight to throw around in the EU but for some reason, they tend to act like one of the smaller countries. It's good that a lot of decisions are still made through consensus like this. And I feel a bit of pride that our own parliament likes it just the way it is.
No, it's "okay" because the Chinese people are better with Foxconn than without it, and they're better off if you buy from Foxconn than if you don't.
That is the standard argument that people use to rationalize buying stuff made with slave or child labor or by workers in similarly horrific working conditions. Frankly, it doesn't hold water.
You're creating a straw man when you say "If they didn't work for Foxconn, they would have no jobs at all". The alternatives aren't "Work long days for 29 cents an hour" and "Don't have a job at all". There is also the option of "Work a bit shorter days for 50 cents an hour". We as consumers can demand companies to demand their subcontractors to offer workers somewhat tolerable working conditions.
At this point right wing idealists tend to say "If wages go up, prices go up, less products are sold, less workers are hired, growth is stiffled and people end up worse off". It's hard to claim that this would apply here: How many manhours per smartphone are spent in Foxconn factories? If the cost of workforce would go up by 15 cents per manhour, the price increase of endproduct wouldn't significantly alter the demand.
So no, we don't suddenly become dicks if we tell companies "We are willing to accept 2 dollars of price increase in our smartphones but we won't buy your products unless you tell Foxconn - or any other subcontractor you choose - to provide reasonable working conditions".
The idea is to create a fine that will actually hurt the companies. If they said X% of the turnover in EU, it would just give companies even more incentive (in addition to tax dodging) to claim their profits are actually from somewhere else.
I'm trying to come up with some sort of logical/ethical/economical/whatever reason for why EU shouldn't be able to fine X% of worldwide turnover but I can't come up with any.
Of course, if you understand even the very basics of computing, you realize that "software simulations" are just a relatively quick way of making very difficult calculations. If you have a problem with a model, attack the model (of course, that would require researching the subject a bit before being able to make bold accusations) but complaining about computers being used to take care of complex is incredibly stupid. I hope you also oppose all modern astronomy as most of the data is crunched by "computer simulations".
I can't say that I oppose all USA military operations: I actually think that what they did (and led other nations to do) in Libya was pretty great. I bet we're going to see a lot more problems in that area (Be it terrorism, hanging on the edge of another civil war or just another dictator grabbing the power after a while) but it was still a joint operation by the international community, intended to help people who wanted to overthrow a dictator.
That said... It's hard to deny that a lot of the problems in the area are also more or less directly caused by the USA. It's a very militaristic nation, with a very large and loud minority(?) of islamophobes and every few years it demonstrates that it still reserves itself the right to attack any nation there for whatever reason it wants to, whether or not they have the support of the international community and whether or not those reasons even make sense.
Whenever any dictator faces an uprising or any terrorist organization faces opposition from the locals, the first thing they say "Those are just agents of USA messing around" and the problem is... that doesn't sound as far-fetched as it should. USA foreign policy has been very effective in painting the nation as an evil empire against which the Arabs should unite. I'm not saying that there wouldn't be terrorist nutjobs if not for USA but I am saying that they have more support and credibility due to actions by USA. As far as I'm aware, the main platform of Ahmadinejad is rallying against USA: He gains support during conflicts like these and loses it when people direct their attention to internal affairs.
China is an agrarian society, so most of the poor people are farmers. The land ownership is a very controlled system but the short version is that those poor farmers can't actually sell their land (as it technically belongs to the government) but they can lease it away for a few years. When a poor farmer decides that he wants to leave to a city to seek better wages, he leases his farm to someone, thus gains a bit of money to start the new life with and might or might not find a better paying job. If he does find factory work, he can make some more permanent arrangement about the farm and if he doesn't... he can return to continue his old life!
The system is a bit unusual but it actually works pretty well. It's the main reason why Chinese cities don't have shantytowns, etc. similar to those of most developing countries.
Democracy was created thousands of years ago in Europe
I guess you're referring to ancient Athens, where a subset of adult male citizens were allowed to vote on certain matters. Not only was the people allowed to vote a very exclusive group but the population didn't have many rights that we currently associate with democratic societies. Whether you count Athens as a democracy or not, it's certainly not the first one. Many primitive tribes operated through consensus, which makes it essentially certain that at least Africa invented actual democracy well before Europe.
You often hear about the nuclear bombs and the horrors caused by those. It's a sexy story: A new weapon so powerful that nobody truly understood what it would do... A single massacre of civilians to end a war... It makes for great movies and great ethical arguments. Nothing like the cold and calculated cruelty, such as firebombing, that was utilized by both sides but perfected by allies when effectively destroying European cities.
For those too lazy to go to Wikipedia, Firebombing is a nasty tactic: The first wave of bombers attacks infrastructure (roads, electricity, firefighters, roofs of buildings), the second one contains powerful incendiary bombs. The fires are difficult to put out (due to the first wave) but there is also an added benefit: The people who managed to get into shelters have pretty good chance of suffocating to death as the whole city block is in flames for hours. This was used over and over again against civilian targets.
Not that ordinary bombing wasn't bad enough: It's nothing like the romanticized idea of a couple of people in a small bunker in their backyard. I've visited the old bomb shelters of Berlin: There are airtight rooms that can't be opened from the inside (if they run out of air there, opening the door would just result in them consuming all the oxygen from the rest of the shelter, too. It's better to just open the door from the outside after the raid is over and see if the people are still alive or not). There were dozens of people tightly packed into relatively small space, being very still and hoping that the air would last. At the beginning of the wars, there were indicators to tell how much oxygen was left (three at different levels and they'd change color when the oxygen was out near the roof, near the center and near the floor) but those just caused panic and were removed soon. As the number of raids grew, it no longer made sense to leave the shelter for extended time periods. The managers removed doors from toilets because by removing all the privacy, they were able to somewhat lower the amount of suicides (Several each day) that people committed in the shelter. This was all caused by the good guys.
To point out something "nice" from the Axis portfolio... The siege of Leningrad: The only place and time (as far as I'm aware of) in the modern western world where cannibalism actually became a widespread problem among the civilian population of a major city.
So... yeah. Nuclear weapons were bad but I don't think they're nearly the worst things that happened in those wars. I wouldn't even list them in top 3 (though they would get into top 10). This is also why I always feel a small amount of outrage when Americans talk about how they're at war (or even two wars): USA pays some people to risk their life overseas, some of which then end up dying. That's an invasion or perhaps expensive armed conflict or something, but hardly equivalent to being in war.
40 years old nuclear plants will be shut down, unless they're still safe. --> 40 years old nuclear plants that are no longer safe will be shut down
One would assume that this has been the policy all along. Hell, if a nuclear plant is deemed "no longer safe" they should shut it down whether it's 20, 40 or 60 years old!
So, they'll keep doing what they have always been doing, except that they now introduced arbitrary time limit, which they can circumvent if they want to.
And someone make sure he starts with C++. If he survives that, he won't have any trouble picking up other languages.
I've always been baffled by people who think that C/C++ is a good starting point when you want to learn/teach programming. I think that the most important thing to understand - whether you end up working as a programmer or not - is the basic structure/flow of the program (conditionals, loops, modularity/functions). Then the basic programming concepts (recursion, abstract data types, etc.) and then the libraries/APIs for your platform so that you can actually create something interesting/useful. I don't think that C/C++ offers any advantages over more modern languages in any of these things.
Perhaps advocates of C/C++ for first language think that if you start with a higher level language, the inner workings will forever be a mystery and you just end up using modules you don't understand. I could argue that if you aren't a professional programmer, that doesn't really matter at all but instead I'll argue that you do learn all the important concepts anyways. You can code in Java, PHP or Python and very quickly learn that there is a difference in whether you return a value or a reference to the value. The concept matters, not remembering where to put asterisks and where to put ampersands. ;)
You might say "OK, perhaps C/C++ doesn't offer much advantages but they're still the languages... Why go with something else?" and the answer is pretty simple. If you study C for a week and then get bored / are too busy for a while, etc. you can't really do anything useful with it. There are pretty slim chances that you could, for example, create an application that saves you X amount of work by spending less than X in creating the application. If you spend a week learning PHP, JavaScript, AutoIt or whatever other language is best suitable for the domain of stuff that you're most interested in, you probably can actually use it for something. Also, if you choose a higher level language, the chances are that whether you spend a week or a month, you'll get to delve deeper into database access, networking, algorithms, etc. than you would by choosing C/C++. It's great to possess some basic understanding in those areas, even if you don't end up as a software engineer.
I guess that C/C++ is a good place to start for college kids who're just getting into CS: It's something that professionals probably should understand anyways (even if they don't end up coding in it) so they need to study it at one point or the another and it's easy way to get rid of the "I just like playing XBOX" crowd. For anyone else, I'd probably ask "What kind of stuff do you like to do on computer?" and then try determine what language helps them most in doing that thing.
There are plenty of companies that don't specialize in software but still need software developers. I've worked in three or four such places in the digital marketing business. In other words, companies that sell online advertisement, websites, facebook apps, smartphone apps, etc... I honestly think that if you interview well, your experience might be quite a benefit: We're talking about small-ish companies (like 5-30 people) where developers often communicate directly with the client, etc. so OP's experience in sales could be a great thing to have.
So, I think that kind of work would fit the OP's skills well and be relatively easy re-entry method. The difficult part is finding the correct companies (Many might be interested though they wouldn't even know it yet: Marketing company might buy the "If you hire me and give me about this much time, I can create application like that... which is another thing you can sell your customers!" even if they haven't given it too much consideration earlier and haven't posted an ad). So... As someone who works in companies like this, I'd say that's one option.
You said you've worked as a teacher? Now is pretty good time to think whether you've networked with any students who are now in the industry. I have hard time imagining any better recommendation than "He taught me and was one of the competent teachers (tm)".
Of course, whatever you do, you probably need to be able to show something you've done. If it's in the marketing sector, a few interesting websites and/or smartphone apps is a nice set of reference works. In the large software companies I guess they'll just have some other developer interview you and see what you know anyways...
You appear to have a positive karma, so I choose not to ignore that post as a troll.
Did you read the post you respond to? I linked to a page with several definitions (some of which overlap, others are mutually exclusive) and stated that by some of those definitions, all bloggers are journalists and by other definitions none of them are. And mentioned, that my based on the definition that I like the most, some of them are journalists.
How is that ignoring the others that contradict me?
A blogger is a professional journalist if they're making their living at it. It makes no difference how trivial the material they cover is, it's a matter of definition.
Blogger is not a synonym for journalist. Thus, a blogger is a professional blogger if they're making their living at it. They might or might not also be journalists, depending which definition of the word you use: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/journalism.
Personally, I prefer this one: "writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation", which means that a subset of people who write blogs are journalist, just like a subset of people who work at news organizations are journalists. By some of the definitions, essentially all bloggers are journalists, by other definitions none of them are. (Unless you argue that blog is a ((And not just equivalent to)) newspaper or magazine. I won't go there.)
I recently watched a few episodes, just to see what it was about. I love both scifi and steampunk, so I should be the target audience for a space western like that. It was... OK, I guess. The acting and writing were mediocre (A bit too many cliches, etc. but tolerable) and the special effects were OK (when taking into account the budget constraints they probably had). The setting itself was nice, though there wasn't that much originality if you're already well familiar with the genre. Really, it was on par with Farscape: I wouldn't change the channel when it's on but I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it to a friend.
So I found myself wondering... why do some people love it so much? Is there some specific aspect of the show that they consider well made or what?
I certainly know that what costs a government a million dollars, a private company can do for a few hundred thousand at most.
I've worked both in private sector and public sector. I've seen quite a few decisions to pay private company for something that used to be done by the government until that point. I have yet to see a single instance where the total costs would have gone down for equal or better service! Whether it's large government institution outsourcing the IT support or a state paying for private company to take care of public health care, the total costs seem to consistently be higher and the level of the service usually doesn't go up.
It's true that government has a lot of inefficiency due to internal power struggles, people who are unproductive but difficult to fire, etc... But then again, the private sector also has a lot of overhead (Usually higher wages, large marketing/lobbying/PR overhead depending on the industry, internal power struggles between departments, dividends, CEO bonuses, unproductive people, etc.), not to mention that at every single step the private companies have all the motivation to charge as much money as they can, they either enjoy a monopoly or can't get economics of scale to work out as well as one massive buyer could, etc. etc...
The very few times I've heard about private industry being more efficient in something have been cases where the public sector has been systematically sabotaged first (Ideological decision to buy from private sector even if it's more expensive --> Private sector gets to pay higher wages --> Competent people quit government jobs and enter private industry --> Private industry can say "Look, your workers are incompetent, we are much more efficient than you are now (though we might not be more efficient than you used to be)"). So, I'd appreciate it if you could quote some real examples (preferably within the last two decades) where decisions like this have ended up saving money.
Disclaimer: I'm not a socialist. I think that private sector is necessary to keep the society producing what people want, not what bureaucrats or politicians think they should want. I also agree that private sector is a good way to increase individual freedom and the threat of private sector forces public sector to stay more efficient... But I lean left in my home country (North-European welfare state) which probably puts me far left on the left-right axis of USA. From what I've personally seen, it's just really difficult to argue that private sector is more efficient, even if it is necessary.
I completely adopted the strategy described in this article: The Only Secure Password is the One You Can't Remember. Essentially, I have a different password for every single website, service, etc. and all of them are behind a strong master password in a software called 1Password. The encrypted file is saved to DropBox, so it's both online and on several computers (including my smartphone). For more detailed description and reasoning for why that's good, see the article.
The upsides: It's extremely unlikely that my passwords ever get into the wrong hands (I guess it would require someone finding out my master password and stealing the encrypted file. That would be a realistic threat if CIA was after my passwords but now for my needs that's essentially as safe as it gets). Even if one site I use is hacked, I don't use the same password anywhere else. 1Passwords costs a bit (something like 35 bucks, I think) but it's pretty good password vault: There is good dropbox integration, smartphone apps (which also work well with smartphone DropBox apps), browser extensions, automatic backups of the encrypted file, etc.
The downside: If I were to ever lose all instances of the encrypted file (I don't know how that could happen. I currently have it on three computers in two different locations, on my smartphone and in DropBox service) I would lose all my passwords, which would be very bad. I just assume that this risk is unlikely enough to be non-existent.
So because you object to the ads in Wikipedia (the please donate banners), you will not give Wikipedia the money that lets them not have ads.
I essentially stated that Wikipedia has two options:
1) Add small, non-intrusive ads (such as Google AdSense text ads banner to one column). Remove the ads when you have enough money (through ad revenue and contributions) for the year. It's likely that the required sum would even be gathered faster and everyone would be better off.
2) Have a massive (it takes up slightly over 10% of my 23", 1920x1080px screen!) and disruptive (I find it disorienting when I visit a page about a person and the first thing I see is a large image of someone completely else... just about the headline that's the person's name!) banner at the top of the page. Keep doing that even though it's clearly ineffective way to gather money (thus, keep the banner there indefinitely).
Wikipedia has chosen option 2, which I find unnecessary and borderline-absurd. If I donated them money now, it would be me supporting that option, which I certainly don't want to do. I believe that they will eventually see the reason and (have to) go with the number 1. If that doesn't generate enough revenue, I'll reconsider donating.
Do you really find this line reasoning so incomprehensible, was my earlier presentation too confusing or what's the problem?
From the summary & headline one could think that they are, well, building something facebook-like and that their target audience would be people like the ones who attended "occupy wallstreet" protest. The first claim is completely inccorect, the second only partially so. Rather, they're building a non-centralized social network for organizing protests, etc. because they feel that they can't trust FB and other existing services to protect the anonymity, etc. of protesters well enough.
I guess it's a good cause. Then again, a service like that is easy to block by police states with much less public outcry than if they blocked FaceBook or similar services. Anyone with enough know-how to get around that problem probably can do what they need to through already existing services. I'm not saying that - if they ever get it finished - it can't offer any advantages so it's cool that they're doing it... But I (having some activist background myself) really doubt the project will ever get finished.
I'm all for donating to the causes I support: I donate monthly to Red Cross, Amnesty International and two environmental organizations. I'm also a registered member of a political party, so I essentially donate to them annually. When faced between pirating stuff and supporting the services I find useful, I choose the latter (I pay for Spotify, Netflix, GOG.com and Humble Bundles) .
That said, Wikipedia won't get a penny from me, even though I fully support the service they provide.
The thing is, I disagree with Wikipedia's policy of not having ads. I really doubt it would ruin the credibility of the service if they adopted a policy of "We'll have one google adsense element in the right column, until donations+ad revenue has paid for our running expenses for that year". It would be efficient and - more importantly - a lot less annoying and confusing than the massive "PLEASE DONATE, HERE IS A PIC OF AN EDITOR" banners. I've seriously considered blocking those in adblock, even though I don't block non-intrusive ads... If they're not willing to do something that small for the convenience of their users, just because they believe it's at odds with some ideal I don't personally support, I don't think that it makes sense for me to pay them. I'm pretty confident that they'll end up adopting ads at some point anyways. When that happens, if they still don't have enough money, I'll donate.
I've always wanted to get into the apocalypse-business and figured that if I'll miss this one, I might not get another chance. I've dabbled a bit and can present my mediocre Evil Genius skills as a proof of my hobbyism. I've also caused the demise of many promising heroes, through activity known as "Dungeon Mastering".
Every european customer is supposed to know that.
*snip*
Every product in the EU since ages has a law gurranteed 2 years "guarranty".
That's funny because the consumer agency of at least one EU country begs to differ
I can't be bothered to go through all EU countries but I feel confident saying that Finland doesn't have nearly the worst consumer protection laws of EU. So everything you wrote (with lots of bold text and stuff) is factually untrue.