Mod parent post up, please. Sure computers aren't intuitive, but you're arguing semantics. As the parent post said, the fear is that you wipe out what's on the disk -- it's a justified fear, and no, it's not a little gripe. Any sane computer user coming from any other computer environment will be skeptical to even drag and hover a disk over the trash bin (in Mac OS X that will lead to a change in icon from trash to eject, but how would you ever really know that!). It's like saying, "oh just dangle the baby over the balcony. Don't worry, trust me, the instant you do that, the hands of God will come down and protect him. Then you can let him go so he can."
I took a look at CmdrTaco's Jubei cabinet and got nostalgic and envious at the same time. I also did a quick check for the parts list and apparently all of the parts can be found at your local hardware store except for the rubber T-molding (I do some woodworking on the side and know this after having spent wasted hours at the hardware store). I know of t-molding.com, but anyone out there know where I can get it cheaper than $0.50 a foot?
You know WiFe technology has really been commoditized and has hit the mainstream when Home Depot is selling the stuff. I wouldn't be surprised now to see them stock these WiFi detectors, a great tool for the homeowner who wants to optimize his/her home network. They sell meters for just about every other wired products (RJ11, RJ45, etc.)
I had the same reaction when I started using it years ago. It took me days to finally read somewhere that the mouse is INTEGRAL to the functionality of e. In other words, in other desktops, lots of functions (if not all) are mapped to certain keys or hotkey combinations (which makes sense to me for efficiency) -- not to say that e doesn't have hotkeys. But in e, you have to throw that "conventional" wisdom out the door and re-adjust yourself in a new type of environment -- that is, one where the mouse is the center of all action (without a menubar).
That said, your mouse should be a three button mouse to best utilize e. And as another person posted, you can play around with it by right clicking the desktop, middle clicking, etc. to see all of the menus and functions.
I haven't kept up with DR17 development, but am I right to assume that the developers are trying to not only map mouse buttons, but also button and mouse movement combinations?
I wonder if the sensor can be used to create cheap cell counting devices. It could be used say in the clinic for a quick complete cell count (wouldn't be able to distinguish the different types of cells, but could still prove useful). Or in other areas, it could be used to count beads (nano beads).
After hearing anecdotes about the quality of living for professionals in Hong Kong, it is getting more and more enticing for the foreign professional. If you're in the tech industry, in the biomedical sciences or even in the corporate or business law, the city definitely has it's pluses. Aside from the housing prices, the cost of living is a fraction of that in say San Franciso (or most of CA for that matter), or Boston, or Sydney, or Paris, or London. Let's say you can secure a job with the same salary as you do now, you can have housekeepers to maintain your daily living requirements at a fraction of what you'd pay in Europe, US, or otherwise. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if I heard the same about foreign workers in other Chinese cities.
On the lighter side of things, I find it funny that IT departments often "re-invent" themselves by changing their name and acronyms--a complexity in themselves. You find acronyms such as MIS, CLC, ITC, CIT, CITS, etc. But in essence they all stand for the same thing.
My university's acronym is CITS (Computer and Information Technology Systems), and before that they were just the CLC (Computer Learning Center). Imagine if they kept the name "Learning" in the acronym somewhere, it could've been: Computer Learning and Information Technology Systems (CLITS). But somehow I don't see that happening.
My personal opinion is that the device will not have widespread use until specific applications are developed (and are mature). For example, it definitely has a niche in the automobile industry (think portable mp3 player, dvd player, navigation, browser, etc.), in watercrafts (sailing navigation, fish finding, luxury boating etc.), in the medical industry (bedside browser, communication device, all-in-one), but for it to be a good seller in these markets, developers have to have a crack at it to make the software better than what one can find in the regular PC market. Because they're so inexpensive, it wouldn't hurt for the manufacturer to give the device to key developers in each niche market. That way, it'll get the snowball rolling -- more apps mean more users that in turn mean more consumers to buy the products.
If the measure will be allowed in the future, there'll definitely be a niche market for devices that stand between the phone line and the phone to filter out spam calls. I know there are a few out there now. In fact, phone service providers could definitely add a little more value to their service if they add this feature--they could even quarantine the call for users to mark as true spam or not, just like for email.
I have to second this advice to SIPphone.com. There are number of benefits to going with SIPphone that the beginner may not realize. But first the cons:
1. There are upfront costs for hardware, unless you just go with the free softphone (X-ten lite). The hardware runs around $50. 2. Quality is not so good if you have shoddy upload rates (but this is general downside to VoIP in the real world and not unique to SIPphone).
But the pros are definitely worth the cost:
1. The ability to call other VoIP users in other networks (such as to FWD, IPtel, and IAXtel users). However, FWD has better peer access, allowing you to call Vonage users and other paid networks. 2. Nationwide access numbers are available. So, for example, you could call the access number on a regular landline (PSTN line, in VoIP lingo), and then be able to connect to a SIPphone. 3. Virtual numbers are available for purchase pretty cheap (about $6 a month) and all incoming calls to a SIPphone is always FREE! A virtual number means that you can have, say a phone number that's specific for a geographical region--for example, you can have a 610 area code number for the Philly area and have people call that number whenever they want to connect to your SIPphone. The benefit of this is: if you wanted to setup a dedicated fax line to just receive faxes, this is the way to go. As a price comparison, getting an eFax line is $12.95 a month (twice the virtual number price) and you don't get unlimited faxes. 4. The hardware you buy from SIPphone is NOT locked, which means that if you don't like the service, you can take it elsewhere. But from my own experience, it's about on par or better than other services such as Broadvoice. 5. Best of all, it's FREE! No monthly payments forever, nada, zip, zilcho. You just pay the upfront costs of the hardware and even then the prices are very competitive compared to outside (i.e. eBay). In fact, if you're just looking to buy fair priced VoIP hardware, I'd buy from SIPphone.
I realize that this post sounds like an advertisement for SIPphone, but in actuality, I'm a SIPphone user who's just real happy with my service. I wanted to let you know also that if one of your buddies go to school at UCSD, they can dial any SIPphone from their phone line anytime, free of charge to use. I've recently posted some thoughts about the whole VoIP service for the consumer on my blog http://linuxathome.com, perhaps you could check it out.
Apparently from the story, one of the criminals was probably involved in a previous heist at the same location. He was so greedy, he had to try and "double dip" and paid the biggest price for it. Now he's caught red handed--I'd like to see him weasel his way out of this.
I've always thought that Linux evangelists should advocate the Windows user to buy Macs. If users who switch at all wanted to learn *nix, they could always crack open the terminal application and learn a few commandline commands and shell scripting techniques to make their Mac experience all the more useful and efficient. Then after they become more adept at *nix in general, the migration to Linux is easy (that is, if they want to give up the niceties of Mac OS X:). For example, how many of us Windows users wanted to be able to send email without the need to setup SMTP settings in Outlook or Netscape mail -- thus avoiding the terrible restrictions our ISPs have on email transport? Mac users have it easy, they can easily enable sendmail in their systems, since sendmail is packaged but inactive in the standard Mac OS X system.
Just last week, I was at a banquet for the 2004 International Meeting of the Institute of Human Virology -- a meeting where most of the top scientists in HIV research (as well as in tumor biology and virology) congregate and discuss results. One of the speakers was a science journalist by the name of Jon Franklin. He gave a speech entitled "The End of Science Writing" and it is sort of eery that today's slashdot post is so reminiscent of its tone and words. If you have the time, and especially if you're a scientist, please read it. Here's a little excerpt:
As for me, I saw the handwriting on the wall but thought I could be of some value educating the next generation of science writers. In 1989 I took a job as head of the science journalism department at Oregon State University. OSU is Oregon's premier science campus, and its journalism department was the only undergraduate science journalism department in the country. There are several graduate institutions that teach science journalism, but most journalists do not have advanced degrees.
In any event, shortly after I arrived the voters of Oregon approved a tax-cutting measure that fell heavily on higher education. OSU decided science journalism was expendable. I knew the news industry wasn't going to support the program, but I thought science might. The critical player was OSU's dean of sciences. I went to him, hat in hand. I'll never forget his response.
"That's your problem," he said. "We don't need you."
I left the university, of course. Shortly thereafter they closed down science journalism. It looked for a while like they might also close the ballroom dance program. But they found money to keep that. Also, that year, the university undertook a multimillion dollar renovation of its football stadium.
Complete tolerance is not always the right direction. I can tolerate you smoking, but if you do it in a closed environment that affects me, then I don't tolerate that. We have to walk carefully when it comes to tolerance, because we don't want things to escalate -- and things can escalate, just look at the accepted words in radio and tv and compare it with just 15 years ago. Escalation can also go the other way, becoming too intolerant -- see all the discussion of Bush's future attempts to appoint Supreme Court Justices. When you talk about tolerance, there's a fine line, the tolerance you see in big cities is not always the "right" thing. Be honest with me, how many times have you seen a thug break into a car in the city AND called the police instantly? Or saw someone writing graffiti in the subway AND called the police, or even said something to the criminal? The police would laugh at you, and so you become tolerant of it, even though you know it's not the right thing. This is the essence of my argument -- living in the city makes you turn a blind eye, or do things that you otherwise would not, or even vote with someone you don't naturally follow. I also live in a big city, and so I know the mentality. And I've served jury duty in the city, and if you've served before, you know how peer pressure can affect your judgement -- if not your judgement, at least the judgements of those around you.
Do you have ANY evidence to back that up? I live in NYC where people are absolutely FINE disagreeing with each other. I look around and I see Muslim women in full covered dress chatting in the playground with Hasidic women.
As evidence, I've provided anecdotal evidence. I agree, I don't have hard proof. Sure, people are fine with disagreeing with each other in big cities, that does not detract from the fact that large crowds can be easily swayed -- history provides us plenty of evidence of this.
The biggest example of "mob mentality" in this country is the religious nut jobs in the south and west who do whatever the heck their church tells them to do for fear of "not conforming with everyone around" them. We simply DO NOT have that in the urban areas. If we disagree with a neighbor we just ignore them.
Point taken, but ignoring them when they're doing something wrong is a level of tolerance that I do not accept (see my argument about tolerance above). But let's turn back to the main issue of discussion -- that I am simply not convinced that a popular vote election is the right thing to do. It was put in place to provide certain protections that I agree with. It counteracts the political machines that we had at the turn of the century that extorted the large immigrant populations.
I voted for Kerry, but a popular vote in this election would have done nil for Kerry. I also voted for Gore, who by all accounts of the popular vote, should have won, but I stood behind the decision by law.
I do believe that the Dems could have won this election with the current voting laws. We don't need to change the laws to win. The Dems need to reconvene, reassess their base, and learn the tricks of the trade that the Republicans have learned so well.
I have a very sneaky suspicion that a major US student loan company outsources their customer support department. Why worry about this? Do you care that your sensitive information is being accessible halfway around the world? How many of us still have student loans to pay off?
There was a _reason_ the electoral college came into being: so that populous states would not "drown" out the less populous ones. It had nothing to do with "information technology".
I agree with you wholeheartedly. If anyone disagrees with this statement, all you have to do is ask yourself this: is the direction of mob mentality always the correct choice? In urban settings, you definitely run the risk of mob mentality and end up voting for the person less congruent with your views. I.e. you vote for the more popular person in that locality for fear of not conforming with everyone around you. At the risk of sounding like a fundamentalist, evidence for this goes back to biblical times--who did the mob cry for when asked to decide between releasing Jesus and Barabbas (a murderer)?. I'm sure there's hundreds of other examples in modern day.
Have you seen that commercial (for a shipping company that will remain unnamed) where one employee is trying to explain to employer number two, how to ship their product? Employer number two replies rather condescendingly with "but I have an MBA." And employee number one retorts, "well then, I better walk you through it."
Training to be top level managers means diddly without prior work experience. You just can't expect to be inserted at the top after 2 to 4 years of didactic study without hands-on experience; and expect to shine. It'll be interesting to see the status of US programmers in the future.
What's worse from a public relations standpoint? Having thousands upon thousands of people reading that UCSD is threatening litigation against these sites via a post on slashdot or having whatever trickle of people end up reading the criticisms on those "banned" sites? I hope the university weighed the consequences of their actions before going after the sites. In all honesty, how many of you prospective students would decide to go to a university where you knew they'd sic their dogs on you if you said something they didn't like?
You can find child prostitutes in any country in the world, including the US, UK, France, Germany, Austrailia, etc. It's not a problem that's unique to Asia, so don't try to paint it that way, please.
True, it's not a unique problem. But because Euro and US currency is so strong compared to these countries, you can get prostitutes for mere dollars. Secondly, law enforcement in these countries can literally be bought to turn a blind eye. The problem may be worldwide, but due to the ease of accessibility and the economics of the situation, Asian countries bear the brunt of the problem -- scratch that, poor countries with open borders for the influx of US and European "vacationers" bear the brunt of the problem.
Now back to the main point of this article. The social implications are chilling. Wives, do you know what your husbands did in that "business trip?" American women should be suspicious of their husband's behavior. It's a fact that a certain demographic of American women are unsuspectedly infected by their husbands.
I for one agree with proponents of the new law that if you commit a crime outside of your country, you can be prosecuted when you return, to the fullest extent of the law. If you were a Jon, preying upon children in Asian countries, the instant you step on US soil, your ass is grass. It's despicable what these Jons do. They have no idea of the global impact that these actions have -- ravaging the future of another country (the children), spreading disease and suffering, all for what? It's sick.
Even the statement about putting the "gene" in the vagina or rectum is not new: see microbicides.
Just a word to the wise, news like this will rarely, if ever, scoop a scientific publication in Science or Nature. If the discoveries truly have any scientific merit whatsoever, you'll more likely read about it in these journals or the media commotion stirred by these publications. In other words, unless somewhere in the article is says "results of these studies published in the journal [place name of journal here]," the results have not been peer reviewed. Therefore, "there's nothing to see here, move on."
In an interview last week, Jerry Grey, director of aerospace policy at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, credited Rutan and his team's achievements. "It's a tremendous engineering accomplishment. He's stimulated a new wave of interest." ...
"Rutan did it with private money," Grey says. "Other than that it's not much of a big deal."
If you just need to demonstrate how nice fonts can look in a linux desktop, then you have to most definitely demo Knoppix. This is one of the reasons why Knoppix was developed -- to show off linux with minimal effort. I'm surprised no previous comments about knoppix have been moderated up.
As another replier to your comment said, publishing and subscription fees generally do NOT go to peer review. As an author, you submit to the big publishers' journals because you want the reputation of having published in brand-named journals.
Actually, re-read the Washington Post article carefully. What NIH is proposing is not a complete revamp of the publishing mechanics in place. It is saying to the publishers "if you don't make the article freely available after 6 months, we're going to put it up for free anyway on PubMed Central (the government's freely accessible repository of papers), whether you like it or not." There's nothing in the proposal about requiring publishers to change the review process.
Now consider the worse case scenario of this policy: all the journals go out of business. This will be unlikely, but I'll entertain the thought for this argument. I argue that the peer review system will still stay intact. Why? Becauses the reviewers were doing the reviews without being paid anyway. They're not going to stop reviewing and critiquing articles just because the high priced journals are out of business. Scientists will not lose their jobs overnight. Most likely the editors of the journals will still do what they yearned to do in the first place -- matching reviewers with submitted papers to be published online via PubMed Central. And those scientists who want to be top in their field will still take on papers to review. I certainly don't see how this current NIH proposal is detrimental to the taxpaying public. Sure, perhaps some additional expense may need to be shelled out initially to bolster PubMed Central, but in the long run, countless dollars will be saved on subscription fees that the public would have to pay anyway.
Lastly, I continue to argue and believe that even if the publishing industry collapses, we will still see peer-reviewed papers being published online. I have faith that scientists in their field will stick together to find, create, or develop a new publishing venue for their field. After all, what good is the work performed by scientists, if no one knew about it?
It's also great business because once the value goes down to a small amount--an amount lower than the cheapest item you can buy in the store--the customer is forced to either buy another item to clear the card AND spend more money at the same time just to do so. Or risk losing that money to Starbucks, where it can gain interest for Starbucks until the escheet period passes.
Slashdot Mirror
Mod parent post up, please. Sure computers aren't intuitive, but you're arguing semantics. As the parent post said, the fear is that you wipe out what's on the disk -- it's a justified fear, and no, it's not a little gripe. Any sane computer user coming from any other computer environment will be skeptical to even drag and hover a disk over the trash bin (in Mac OS X that will lead to a change in icon from trash to eject, but how would you ever really know that!). It's like saying, "oh just dangle the baby over the balcony. Don't worry, trust me, the instant you do that, the hands of God will come down and protect him. Then you can let him go so he can ."
I took a look at CmdrTaco's Jubei cabinet and got nostalgic and envious at the same time. I also did a quick check for the parts list and apparently all of the parts can be found at your local hardware store except for the rubber T-molding (I do some woodworking on the side and know this after having spent wasted hours at the hardware store). I know of t-molding.com, but anyone out there know where I can get it cheaper than $0.50 a foot?
You know WiFe technology has really been commoditized and has hit the mainstream when Home Depot is selling the stuff. I wouldn't be surprised now to see them stock these WiFi detectors, a great tool for the homeowner who wants to optimize his/her home network. They sell meters for just about every other wired products (RJ11, RJ45, etc.)
I had the same reaction when I started using it years ago. It took me days to finally read somewhere that the mouse is INTEGRAL to the functionality of e. In other words, in other desktops, lots of functions (if not all) are mapped to certain keys or hotkey combinations (which makes sense to me for efficiency) -- not to say that e doesn't have hotkeys. But in e, you have to throw that "conventional" wisdom out the door and re-adjust yourself in a new type of environment -- that is, one where the mouse is the center of all action (without a menubar).
That said, your mouse should be a three button mouse to best utilize e. And as another person posted, you can play around with it by right clicking the desktop, middle clicking, etc. to see all of the menus and functions.
I haven't kept up with DR17 development, but am I right to assume that the developers are trying to not only map mouse buttons, but also button and mouse movement combinations?
I wonder if the sensor can be used to create cheap cell counting devices. It could be used say in the clinic for a quick complete cell count (wouldn't be able to distinguish the different types of cells, but could still prove useful). Or in other areas, it could be used to count beads (nano beads).
After hearing anecdotes about the quality of living for professionals in Hong Kong, it is getting more and more enticing for the foreign professional. If you're in the tech industry, in the biomedical sciences or even in the corporate or business law, the city definitely has it's pluses. Aside from the housing prices, the cost of living is a fraction of that in say San Franciso (or most of CA for that matter), or Boston, or Sydney, or Paris, or London. Let's say you can secure a job with the same salary as you do now, you can have housekeepers to maintain your daily living requirements at a fraction of what you'd pay in Europe, US, or otherwise. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if I heard the same about foreign workers in other Chinese cities.
On the lighter side of things, I find it funny that IT departments often "re-invent" themselves by changing their name and acronyms--a complexity in themselves. You find acronyms such as MIS, CLC, ITC, CIT, CITS, etc. But in essence they all stand for the same thing.
My university's acronym is CITS (Computer and Information Technology Systems), and before that they were just the CLC (Computer Learning Center). Imagine if they kept the name "Learning" in the acronym somewhere, it could've been: Computer Learning and Information Technology Systems (CLITS). But somehow I don't see that happening.
My personal opinion is that the device will not have widespread use until specific applications are developed (and are mature). For example, it definitely has a niche in the automobile industry (think portable mp3 player, dvd player, navigation, browser, etc.), in watercrafts (sailing navigation, fish finding, luxury boating etc.), in the medical industry (bedside browser, communication device, all-in-one), but for it to be a good seller in these markets, developers have to have a crack at it to make the software better than what one can find in the regular PC market. Because they're so inexpensive, it wouldn't hurt for the manufacturer to give the device to key developers in each niche market. That way, it'll get the snowball rolling -- more apps mean more users that in turn mean more consumers to buy the products.
If the measure will be allowed in the future, there'll definitely be a niche market for devices that stand between the phone line and the phone to filter out spam calls. I know there are a few out there now. In fact, phone service providers could definitely add a little more value to their service if they add this feature--they could even quarantine the call for users to mark as true spam or not, just like for email.
I have to second this advice to SIPphone.com. There are number of benefits to going with SIPphone that the beginner may not realize. But first the cons:
1. There are upfront costs for hardware, unless you just go with the free softphone (X-ten lite). The hardware runs around $50.
2. Quality is not so good if you have shoddy upload rates (but this is general downside to VoIP in the real world and not unique to SIPphone).
But the pros are definitely worth the cost:
1. The ability to call other VoIP users in other networks (such as to FWD, IPtel, and IAXtel users). However, FWD has better peer access, allowing you to call Vonage users and other paid networks.
2. Nationwide access numbers are available. So, for example, you could call the access number on a regular landline (PSTN line, in VoIP lingo), and then be able to connect to a SIPphone.
3. Virtual numbers are available for purchase pretty cheap (about $6 a month) and all incoming calls to a SIPphone is always FREE! A virtual number means that you can have, say a phone number that's specific for a geographical region--for example, you can have a 610 area code number for the Philly area and have people call that number whenever they want to connect to your SIPphone. The benefit of this is: if you wanted to setup a dedicated fax line to just receive faxes, this is the way to go. As a price comparison, getting an eFax line is $12.95 a month (twice the virtual number price) and you don't get unlimited faxes.
4. The hardware you buy from SIPphone is NOT locked, which means that if you don't like the service, you can take it elsewhere. But from my own experience, it's about on par or better than other services such as Broadvoice.
5. Best of all, it's FREE! No monthly payments forever, nada, zip, zilcho. You just pay the upfront costs of the hardware and even then the prices are very competitive compared to outside (i.e. eBay). In fact, if you're just looking to buy fair priced VoIP hardware, I'd buy from SIPphone.
I realize that this post sounds like an advertisement for SIPphone, but in actuality, I'm a SIPphone user who's just real happy with my service. I wanted to let you know also that if one of your buddies go to school at UCSD, they can dial any SIPphone from their phone line anytime, free of charge to use. I've recently posted some thoughts about the whole VoIP service for the consumer on my blog http://linuxathome.com, perhaps you could check it out.
Apparently from the story, one of the criminals was probably involved in a previous heist at the same location. He was so greedy, he had to try and "double dip" and paid the biggest price for it. Now he's caught red handed--I'd like to see him weasel his way out of this.
I've always thought that Linux evangelists should advocate the Windows user to buy Macs. If users who switch at all wanted to learn *nix, they could always crack open the terminal application and learn a few commandline commands and shell scripting techniques to make their Mac experience all the more useful and efficient. Then after they become more adept at *nix in general, the migration to Linux is easy (that is, if they want to give up the niceties of Mac OS X :). For example, how many of us Windows users wanted to be able to send email without the need to setup SMTP settings in Outlook or Netscape mail -- thus avoiding the terrible restrictions our ISPs have on email transport? Mac users have it easy, they can easily enable sendmail in their systems, since sendmail is packaged but inactive in the standard Mac OS X system.
Just last week, I was at a banquet for the 2004 International Meeting of the Institute of Human Virology -- a meeting where most of the top scientists in HIV research (as well as in tumor biology and virology) congregate and discuss results. One of the speakers was a science journalist by the name of Jon Franklin. He gave a speech entitled "The End of Science Writing" and it is sort of eery that today's slashdot post is so reminiscent of its tone and words. If you have the time, and especially if you're a scientist, please read it. Here's a little excerpt:
As for me, I saw the handwriting on the wall but thought I could be of some value educating the next generation of science writers. In 1989 I took a job as head of the science journalism department at Oregon State University. OSU is Oregon's premier science campus, and its journalism department was the only undergraduate science journalism department in the country. There are several graduate institutions that teach science journalism, but most journalists do not have advanced degrees.
In any event, shortly after I arrived the voters of Oregon approved a tax-cutting measure that fell heavily on higher education. OSU decided science journalism was expendable. I knew the news industry wasn't going to support the program, but I thought science might. The critical player was OSU's dean of sciences. I went to him, hat in hand. I'll never forget his response.
"That's your problem," he said. "We don't need you."
I left the university, of course. Shortly thereafter they closed down science journalism. It looked for a while like they might also close the ballroom dance program. But they found money to keep that. Also, that year, the university undertook a multimillion dollar renovation of its football stadium.
--Jon Franklin
Urban living promotes tollerance.
Complete tolerance is not always the right direction. I can tolerate you smoking, but if you do it in a closed environment that affects me, then I don't tolerate that. We have to walk carefully when it comes to tolerance, because we don't want things to escalate -- and things can escalate, just look at the accepted words in radio and tv and compare it with just 15 years ago. Escalation can also go the other way, becoming too intolerant -- see all the discussion of Bush's future attempts to appoint Supreme Court Justices. When you talk about tolerance, there's a fine line, the tolerance you see in big cities is not always the "right" thing. Be honest with me, how many times have you seen a thug break into a car in the city AND called the police instantly? Or saw someone writing graffiti in the subway AND called the police, or even said something to the criminal? The police would laugh at you, and so you become tolerant of it, even though you know it's not the right thing. This is the essence of my argument -- living in the city makes you turn a blind eye, or do things that you otherwise would not, or even vote with someone you don't naturally follow. I also live in a big city, and so I know the mentality. And I've served jury duty in the city, and if you've served before, you know how peer pressure can affect your judgement -- if not your judgement, at least the judgements of those around you.
Do you have ANY evidence to back that up? I live in NYC where people are absolutely FINE disagreeing with each other. I look around and I see Muslim women in full covered dress chatting in the playground with Hasidic women.
As evidence, I've provided anecdotal evidence. I agree, I don't have hard proof. Sure, people are fine with disagreeing with each other in big cities, that does not detract from the fact that large crowds can be easily swayed -- history provides us plenty of evidence of this.
The biggest example of "mob mentality" in this country is the religious nut jobs in the south and west who do whatever the heck their church tells them to do for fear of "not conforming with everyone around" them. We simply DO NOT have that in the urban areas. If we disagree with a neighbor we just ignore them.
Point taken, but ignoring them when they're doing something wrong is a level of tolerance that I do not accept (see my argument about tolerance above). But let's turn back to the main issue of discussion -- that I am simply not convinced that a popular vote election is the right thing to do. It was put in place to provide certain protections that I agree with. It counteracts the political machines that we had at the turn of the century that extorted the large immigrant populations.
I voted for Kerry, but a popular vote in this election would have done nil for Kerry. I also voted for Gore, who by all accounts of the popular vote, should have won, but I stood behind the decision by law.
I do believe that the Dems could have won this election with the current voting laws. We don't need to change the laws to win. The Dems need to reconvene, reassess their base, and learn the tricks of the trade that the Republicans have learned so well.
I have a very sneaky suspicion that a major US student loan company outsources their customer support department. Why worry about this? Do you care that your sensitive information is being accessible halfway around the world? How many of us still have student loans to pay off?
There was a _reason_ the electoral college came into being: so that populous states would not "drown" out the less populous ones. It had nothing to do with "information technology".
I agree with you wholeheartedly. If anyone disagrees with this statement, all you have to do is ask yourself this: is the direction of mob mentality always the correct choice? In urban settings, you definitely run the risk of mob mentality and end up voting for the person less congruent with your views. I.e. you vote for the more popular person in that locality for fear of not conforming with everyone around you. At the risk of sounding like a fundamentalist, evidence for this goes back to biblical times--who did the mob cry for when asked to decide between releasing Jesus and Barabbas (a murderer)?. I'm sure there's hundreds of other examples in modern day.
Have you seen that commercial (for a shipping company that will remain unnamed) where one employee is trying to explain to employer number two, how to ship their product? Employer number two replies rather condescendingly with "but I have an MBA." And employee number one retorts, "well then, I better walk you through it."
Training to be top level managers means diddly without prior work experience. You just can't expect to be inserted at the top after 2 to 4 years of didactic study without hands-on experience; and expect to shine. It'll be interesting to see the status of US programmers in the future.
What's worse from a public relations standpoint? Having thousands upon thousands of people reading that UCSD is threatening litigation against these sites via a post on slashdot or having whatever trickle of people end up reading the criticisms on those "banned" sites? I hope the university weighed the consequences of their actions before going after the sites. In all honesty, how many of you prospective students would decide to go to a university where you knew they'd sic their dogs on you if you said something they didn't like?
You can find child prostitutes in any country in the world, including the US, UK, France, Germany, Austrailia, etc. It's not a problem that's unique to Asia, so don't try to paint it that way, please.
True, it's not a unique problem. But because Euro and US currency is so strong compared to these countries, you can get prostitutes for mere dollars. Secondly, law enforcement in these countries can literally be bought to turn a blind eye. The problem may be worldwide, but due to the ease of accessibility and the economics of the situation, Asian countries bear the brunt of the problem -- scratch that, poor countries with open borders for the influx of US and European "vacationers" bear the brunt of the problem.
Now back to the main point of this article. The social implications are chilling. Wives, do you know what your husbands did in that "business trip?" American women should be suspicious of their husband's behavior. It's a fact that a certain demographic of American women are unsuspectedly infected by their husbands.
I for one agree with proponents of the new law that if you commit a crime outside of your country, you can be prosecuted when you return, to the fullest extent of the law. If you were a Jon, preying upon children in Asian countries, the instant you step on US soil, your ass is grass. It's despicable what these Jons do. They have no idea of the global impact that these actions have -- ravaging the future of another country (the children), spreading disease and suffering, all for what? It's sick.
The "mutant" gene referred by the article most likely is the CCR5delta32 deletion allele of CCR5. I agree, this is not news. Many of the points made in the article were vague and the discovery itself is nothing novel -- even if they determined the frequency of this allele in the Chinese, this is not a new finding. In Steve O'Brien's Science paper, the frequency of CCR5delta32 in Caucasions is 0.1 (2.8% of exposed uninfected patients were deletion homozygotes). I remember another population study among Koreans to try to determine CCR5delta32's frequency in that population.
Even the statement about putting the "gene" in the vagina or rectum is not new: see microbicides.
Just a word to the wise, news like this will rarely, if ever, scoop a scientific publication in Science or Nature. If the discoveries truly have any scientific merit whatsoever, you'll more likely read about it in these journals or the media commotion stirred by these publications. In other words, unless somewhere in the article is says "results of these studies published in the journal [place name of journal here]," the results have not been peer reviewed. Therefore, "there's nothing to see here, move on."
According to this Nature article:
...
In an interview last week, Jerry Grey, director of aerospace policy at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, credited Rutan and his team's achievements. "It's a tremendous engineering accomplishment. He's stimulated a new wave of interest."
"Rutan did it with private money," Grey says. "Other than that it's not much of a big deal."
If you just need to demonstrate how nice fonts can look in a linux desktop, then you have to most definitely demo Knoppix. This is one of the reasons why Knoppix was developed -- to show off linux with minimal effort. I'm surprised no previous comments about knoppix have been moderated up.
As another replier to your comment said, publishing and subscription fees generally do NOT go to peer review. As an author, you submit to the big publishers' journals because you want the reputation of having published in brand-named journals.
Actually, re-read the Washington Post article carefully. What NIH is proposing is not a complete revamp of the publishing mechanics in place. It is saying to the publishers "if you don't make the article freely available after 6 months, we're going to put it up for free anyway on PubMed Central (the government's freely accessible repository of papers), whether you like it or not." There's nothing in the proposal about requiring publishers to change the review process.
Now consider the worse case scenario of this policy: all the journals go out of business. This will be unlikely, but I'll entertain the thought for this argument. I argue that the peer review system will still stay intact. Why? Becauses the reviewers were doing the reviews without being paid anyway. They're not going to stop reviewing and critiquing articles just because the high priced journals are out of business. Scientists will not lose their jobs overnight. Most likely the editors of the journals will still do what they yearned to do in the first place -- matching reviewers with submitted papers to be published online via PubMed Central. And those scientists who want to be top in their field will still take on papers to review. I certainly don't see how this current NIH proposal is detrimental to the taxpaying public. Sure, perhaps some additional expense may need to be shelled out initially to bolster PubMed Central, but in the long run, countless dollars will be saved on subscription fees that the public would have to pay anyway.
Lastly, I continue to argue and believe that even if the publishing industry collapses, we will still see peer-reviewed papers being published online. I have faith that scientists in their field will stick together to find, create, or develop a new publishing venue for their field. After all, what good is the work performed by scientists, if no one knew about it?
It's also great business because once the value goes down to a small amount--an amount lower than the cheapest item you can buy in the store--the customer is forced to either buy another item to clear the card AND spend more money at the same time just to do so. Or risk losing that money to Starbucks, where it can gain interest for Starbucks until the escheet period passes.
Perhaps, if and when, the space elevator gets built, risks of sending waste into space could be minimized? No?