I don't know about WSJ but I can vouch for the Economist - I regularly pay money to read it because it's got very good (actual) journalism about happenings all over the world.
The mainstream media is failing because they couldn't be bothered to do journalism anymore. There are major problems all over the world that need urgent attention from the media that get massively collectively ignored by the media. Let them fail. We're genuinely reaching the point where bloggers and an army of citizens with cellphone cameras etc. are doing a better job. (Still a terrible job, mind you, but better than any mainstream news rag.)
And if you're Israel, apparently we pretend that we don't know that you're packing.
Yes, because a country that possesses nukes only for self-defense is totally the same as a fascist country that is actively threatening to blow up countries around it and "wipe them off the map" (recognize the quote?) at no provocation. Totally the same. Great point you have there. You really showed us the hypocrisy.
Re:And yet they do nothing to discourage the car
on
The Fresca Rebellion
·
· Score: 1
I've heard tons of stories from cyclists in the US detailing how people in vehicles purposely drive as close as possible to them, cut them off, throw things at them etc.
It's even worse here in South Africa, the primitive-caveman-brain disdain for cyclists is so bad that some drivers kill cyclists purposely, with relative regularity.
No, police help defend your essential liberties, not take them away. Police help enforce things like private property rights and your right not to be murdered by your neighbor. "Take care of us all like children" implies a system in which police also make sure you wear a helmet and knee-pads while cycling, that you eat your greens and exercise right, and so on (things which, if you really think about it, are infringements of liberties, not defense of liberties).
That's why you have a right to unionize, duh... collective bargaining. If enough employees unionized and then went on strike to protest things they didn't like, like random drug testing, the companies' hands would be forced.
Oh sorry, forgot to mention that the upload speed you get is usually half the download speed, so for that 384Kbit line you'd perhaps get 192Kbit/s upload speed, which is 0.19 megabit / sec.
So it's 1600 megabits in 7200 seconds. 1600 / 7200 = 0.22 megabit / sec.
I'm stuck with Telkom's slow overpriced ADSL and I can confirm that this figure sounds very possible... the most common "broadband" option that Telkom advertises in this day and age is 384kbits/second... for a 384kbit line (shaped and contended) and a maximum capped usage of 3GB/month you'll pay over $80/month. Yes, Telkom's idea of "broadband" is 384kbits with a 3GB usage cap, at a monthly price that is at least double the average in pretty much the rest of the Western world (never mind Japan or S. Korea). Yay. That's what happens when the government completely blocks the free market and grants one company a protected monopoly.
Not if you bothered to spend 20 seconds researching the issue in order to actually understand the point before posting an ignorant comment: In South Africa the telcos constitute a government-protected cartel, so bandwidth is extremely overpriced, service is terrible, quality is bad, and price-gouging is the order of the day... this publicity stunt draws public attention to this critical issue. Which part of that is hard for you to understand? It's *obviously* not intended to be "hard science" - duh.
So the artists that I know that make a living (some of them a decent living) painting things like murals or art for decoration, I guess they are a figment of my apparently vivid imagination.
but maybe things are changing in this day and age.
I'll tell you one thing that hasn't changed in this "day and age" (whatever that's supposed to mean), and that's that a person still needs a roof over their head, food on the table, and enough to raise a family. Something has to pay for that. There's nothing noble about dying a poor man while helping others for free. What a load of commie drivel. Art must pay its way, not look for handouts; you're maybe afraid art will die, but really it's not hard for art to pay its own way, it just has to provide value to people, and they'll pay for it.
Yeah, try get a part-time job or one that otherwise allows you to spend some time on the business / invention. Keep your costs low by 'living (almost) like a poor person', and expect to do so for several years. Expect that you've got some years ahead of you of really hard work and struggles. NB, have a business model... draw up a business plan that outlays a business model... a realistic one... under which the product could (even in theory) be made and sold and distributed. Think about what costs you'd need, what potential markets there are, etc.... you can't only think about the technical side of things now, like it or not you're already a 'businessman' if you're serious about going into this, you have to approach it like a serious business. If you want to take it big, or need serious money for the business model to work, then look for investors (but you shouldn't give up final control of things... unless you get a great offer you don't want to refuse... likely at this point you're emotionally invested in your product anyway already, but think about what you want out of life in the long term and how important it is to you personally to have your own little business or to potentially 'sell out' etc.). If you don't mind running a little one-man show and getting it going slowly (e.g. maybe you prefer having it be "your baby" and having 100% control) then look for the part-time job route. But with the part-time job route, you have less time, money and resources to grow the idea... so it's a trade-off... personal control (+ small business) on one hand, vs selling equity (+ potentially much bigger business faster) on the other hand.
It's really important to think out your business model, imagine how such a business would work in detail, what would be required, and identify all possible pitfalls that you can. You cannot think along the lines of "I'm an engineer, I've invented something, now I'll just find a business-type person to do the business side of things". No such person exists, *you* are now that "business-type person" who must do the business side of things.
Be very, very careful what you sign and with who. Believe me, in business, there will be someone trying to screw you over in some way from every single direction imaginable and then some.
There was a mechanical tabulating machine on many, many desks forty years ago.
Oh, so you mean at one stage, it was very useful for many people to know how to use them -- well there we go, proving it was indeed useful to teach that skill at school.
Thirty years from now, the only place you'll see a Querty keyboard is in a museum - and your grandchildren won't even understand what it was used for.
Firstly, you seem to have an amazingly accurate crystal ball; I'd be curious to know what technology you think will replace keyboards as a primary input device for computers. It won't be speech recognition, it's doubtful as to whether a direct mind interface will become that good that soon, and the only other technologies (e.g. advanced AIs and/or robotics and/or bio-engineering that radically alters what a human is) basically render most human jobs obsolete anyway, at which time people will have much bigger problems than having been taught touch-typing, like major socio-economic disruption.
Secondly, the kids in school *now* need skills that they can use in five to fifteen years time, not beyond 30 years out. I can pretty much guarantee that touch typing will be a valuable skill day in day out for at least the first decade of anyone graduating school today --- it's simply beyond absurd to say they shouldn't be taught a skill they will obviously need for a very long time to come, just because over an even longer period, about when they hit their 40s and they're well into their careers, it might become obsolete.
Technology changes - all the time. In this industry you ought to know this.
It changes fast, but not *that* fast. Touch-typing has been a valuable skill since manual typewriters were invented. It's not going away anytime soon.
But kids who are in school today won't hit the workplace for between five and twenty years. In five years they may still see keyboards in the workplace - but in twenty? Are you sure?
15 year horizon, very likely they'll still be common. And that's a long time for anyone's career.
In five years they may still see keyboards in the workplace - but in twenty? Are you sure?
So you propose what, that the kids spend their time playing ball instead? That they magically all be taught to be hyper-adaptable? Most kids just need concrete skills; the most intelligent will be hyper-adaptable anyway.
I'm a software engineer who can't touch type. And I can honestly say that learning wouldn't increase my productivity in any measurable way.
Logically the only way this can be true is if you think slower than you type, in which case, sorry, you may not be the best software engineer out there. I easily type 120wpm and it is still far too slow for me, whether it's coding or writing English (documents, slashdot posts, e-mails) I think much faster than I type, typing is *the* primary bottleneck in my work... if I could type 500 wpm my productivity would go through the roof.
OK, let me get this straight --- your reasoning is basically "I was taught some skills in school that are now obsolete, therefore touch-typing is obsolete"?
Similarly with touch typing.
Are you stark raving mad? Do you have any idea how many people have to use computers at work on a daily basis? Unlike tabulation machines, there's a keyboard on almost every desk in the world these days - yet you equate the two, and get modded up!? And most of the users type painfully badly... imagine every single one of them could type better, faster, more efficiently. Yeah, totally obsolete and useless.
The result? I type at 90+ words per minute and have extremely high accuracy.
So? I did learn to touch-type properly, and easily type at 120 wpm with high accuracy... much faster than 90, every hour of every day, imagine how much that extra speed adds up - why diss touch-typing?
Touch typing classes were MUCH more relevant in the days when correction tape was used and it meant that important papers would have to be completely retyped when there was a mistake.
Actually, the main issue was that you could type blind (in fact it used to also be commonly called "blind typing", but maybe that isn't Politically Correct enough these days?) --- so secretaries could retype documents without taking their eyes off the source document.
People who need to learn to type will learn on their own
Ha ha, right... tell that to half of the programmers at my workplace --- have you actually looked at a typical workplace, or are you still in school?
I can honestly say that teaching myself to touch-type early on (17 odd years ago) was the single-best, most valuable investment I ever made in my programmer career. It's been critical to my productivity and thus success (on a bad day I type over 100 wpm). I'm all for more of this in schools; apart from being a genuinely valuable skill, it would also reduce 'ppl lazly tpng lk this lol', and encourage more kids to write properly in general - and being able to write properly has strong links to being able to think properly.
Or it's to prevent scammers and phishers from making Google-like homepages.
Right. These people have no problem stealing bank account information, but I am certain that the idea of (horror) violating a design patent will stop them right in their tracks! I can just see them waving their fists in the air, yelling "Curse you Google, you've foiled our nefarious plans! What *will* we do now."
Where did I say it's no big deal? All I said was that people should PLAN for the possibility that it could happen, so that they don't go through the trauma she claimed she had to.
Are you genuinely saying that salary earners should not plan accordingly for the possibility that they might lose their job at short notice?
I'm sorry, I have never *expected* that I "will" have a job next month, I was just not raised that way, nor is it sensible.
Firstly, the global economy is not in "depression". Secondly, the New Zealand economy's unemployment rate is still a very healthy 6% - lower than the US's unemployment rate BEFORE the recession hit. Thirdly, the state of the economy has no bearing on whether or not somebody should be forced against their will to give you their money each month if they don't want to (the recession hurts employers too). Fourth, the state of the economy has no bearing on whether or not individuals should save at least enough money that they're not literally living hand to mouth (and thus not make overly large house purchases that prevent this from being possible). Fifth, in case you hadn't picked up on that point, people living paycheck to paycheck and buying houses they couldn't really afford are a large part of what caused the economic mess in the first place. Finally, I presume that since you have time and money to sit and browse slashdot, I presume it hasn't hurt you all that hard either.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about WSJ but I can vouch for the Economist - I regularly pay money to read it because it's got very good (actual) journalism about happenings all over the world.
The mainstream media is failing because they couldn't be bothered to do journalism anymore. There are major problems all over the world that need urgent attention from the media that get massively collectively ignored by the media. Let them fail. We're genuinely reaching the point where bloggers and an army of citizens with cellphone cameras etc. are doing a better job. (Still a terrible job, mind you, but better than any mainstream news rag.)
And if you're Israel, apparently we pretend that we don't know that you're packing.
Yes, because a country that possesses nukes only for self-defense is totally the same as a fascist country that is actively threatening to blow up countries around it and "wipe them off the map" (recognize the quote?) at no provocation. Totally the same. Great point you have there. You really showed us the hypocrisy.
I've heard tons of stories from cyclists in the US detailing how people in vehicles purposely drive as close as possible to them, cut them off, throw things at them etc.
It's even worse here in South Africa, the primitive-caveman-brain disdain for cyclists is so bad that some drivers kill cyclists purposely, with relative regularity.
No, police help defend your essential liberties, not take them away. Police help enforce things like private property rights and your right not to be murdered by your neighbor. "Take care of us all like children" implies a system in which police also make sure you wear a helmet and knee-pads while cycling, that you eat your greens and exercise right, and so on (things which, if you really think about it, are infringements of liberties, not defense of liberties).
That's the road to slavery, pure and simple.
More likely, the road to mass third-world poverty.
That's why you have a right to unionize, duh ... collective bargaining. If enough employees unionized and then went on strike to protest things they didn't like, like random drug testing, the companies' hands would be forced.
Wrong, bureaucrats make money from creating as many as possible jobs for bureaucrats, not from minimizing the number of jobs for bureaucrats.
Oh sorry, forgot to mention that the upload speed you get is usually half the download speed, so for that 384Kbit line you'd perhaps get 192Kbit/s upload speed, which is 0.19 megabit / sec.
So it's 1600 megabits in 7200 seconds. 1600 / 7200 = 0.22 megabit / sec.
I'm stuck with Telkom's slow overpriced ADSL and I can confirm that this figure sounds very possible ... the most common "broadband" option that Telkom advertises in this day and age is 384kbits/second ... for a 384kbit line (shaped and contended) and a maximum capped usage of 3GB/month you'll pay over $80/month. Yes, Telkom's idea of "broadband" is 384kbits with a 3GB usage cap, at a monthly price that is at least double the average in pretty much the rest of the Western world (never mind Japan or S. Korea). Yay. That's what happens when the government completely blocks the free market and grants one company a protected monopoly.
Not if you bothered to spend 20 seconds researching the issue in order to actually understand the point before posting an ignorant comment: In South Africa the telcos constitute a government-protected cartel, so bandwidth is extremely overpriced, service is terrible, quality is bad, and price-gouging is the order of the day ... this publicity stunt draws public attention to this critical issue. Which part of that is hard for you to understand? It's *obviously* not intended to be "hard science" - duh.
So the artists that I know that make a living (some of them a decent living) painting things like murals or art for decoration, I guess they are a figment of my apparently vivid imagination.
but maybe things are changing in this day and age.
I'll tell you one thing that hasn't changed in this "day and age" (whatever that's supposed to mean), and that's that a person still needs a roof over their head, food on the table, and enough to raise a family. Something has to pay for that. There's nothing noble about dying a poor man while helping others for free. What a load of commie drivel. Art must pay its way, not look for handouts; you're maybe afraid art will die, but really it's not hard for art to pay its own way, it just has to provide value to people, and they'll pay for it.
Yeah, try get a part-time job or one that otherwise allows you to spend some time on the business / invention. Keep your costs low by 'living (almost) like a poor person', and expect to do so for several years. Expect that you've got some years ahead of you of really hard work and struggles. NB, have a business model ... draw up a business plan that outlays a business model ... a realistic one ... under which the product could (even in theory) be made and sold and distributed. Think about what costs you'd need, what potential markets there are, etc. ... you can't only think about the technical side of things now, like it or not you're already a 'businessman' if you're serious about going into this, you have to approach it like a serious business. If you want to take it big, or need serious money for the business model to work, then look for investors (but you shouldn't give up final control of things ... unless you get a great offer you don't want to refuse ... likely at this point you're emotionally invested in your product anyway already, but think about what you want out of life in the long term and how important it is to you personally to have your own little business or to potentially 'sell out' etc.). If you don't mind running a little one-man show and getting it going slowly (e.g. maybe you prefer having it be "your baby" and having 100% control) then look for the part-time job route. But with the part-time job route, you have less time, money and resources to grow the idea ... so it's a trade-off ... personal control (+ small business) on one hand, vs selling equity (+ potentially much bigger business faster) on the other hand.
It's really important to think out your business model, imagine how such a business would work in detail, what would be required, and identify all possible pitfalls that you can. You cannot think along the lines of "I'm an engineer, I've invented something, now I'll just find a business-type person to do the business side of things". No such person exists, *you* are now that "business-type person" who must do the business side of things.
Be very, very careful what you sign and with who. Believe me, in business, there will be someone trying to screw you over in some way from every single direction imaginable and then some.
There was a mechanical tabulating machine on many, many desks forty years ago.
Oh, so you mean at one stage, it was very useful for many people to know how to use them -- well there we go, proving it was indeed useful to teach that skill at school.
Thirty years from now, the only place you'll see a Querty keyboard is in a museum - and your grandchildren won't even understand what it was used for.
Firstly, you seem to have an amazingly accurate crystal ball; I'd be curious to know what technology you think will replace keyboards as a primary input device for computers. It won't be speech recognition, it's doubtful as to whether a direct mind interface will become that good that soon, and the only other technologies (e.g. advanced AIs and/or robotics and/or bio-engineering that radically alters what a human is) basically render most human jobs obsolete anyway, at which time people will have much bigger problems than having been taught touch-typing, like major socio-economic disruption.
Secondly, the kids in school *now* need skills that they can use in five to fifteen years time, not beyond 30 years out. I can pretty much guarantee that touch typing will be a valuable skill day in day out for at least the first decade of anyone graduating school today --- it's simply beyond absurd to say they shouldn't be taught a skill they will obviously need for a very long time to come, just because over an even longer period, about when they hit their 40s and they're well into their careers, it might become obsolete.
Technology changes - all the time. In this industry you ought to know this.
It changes fast, but not *that* fast. Touch-typing has been a valuable skill since manual typewriters were invented. It's not going away anytime soon.
But kids who are in school today won't hit the workplace for between five and twenty years. In five years they may still see keyboards in the workplace - but in twenty? Are you sure?
15 year horizon, very likely they'll still be common. And that's a long time for anyone's career.
In five years they may still see keyboards in the workplace - but in twenty? Are you sure?
So you propose what, that the kids spend their time playing ball instead? That they magically all be taught to be hyper-adaptable? Most kids just need concrete skills; the most intelligent will be hyper-adaptable anyway.
Porting an app usually involves much less typing than writing an app from scratch.
I'm a software engineer who can't touch type. And I can honestly say that learning wouldn't increase my productivity in any measurable way.
Logically the only way this can be true is if you think slower than you type, in which case, sorry, you may not be the best software engineer out there. I easily type 120wpm and it is still far too slow for me, whether it's coding or writing English (documents, slashdot posts, e-mails) I think much faster than I type, typing is *the* primary bottleneck in my work ... if I could type 500 wpm my productivity would go through the roof.
OK, let me get this straight --- your reasoning is basically "I was taught some skills in school that are now obsolete, therefore touch-typing is obsolete"?
Similarly with touch typing.
Are you stark raving mad? Do you have any idea how many people have to use computers at work on a daily basis? Unlike tabulation machines, there's a keyboard on almost every desk in the world these days - yet you equate the two, and get modded up!? And most of the users type painfully badly ... imagine every single one of them could type better, faster, more efficiently. Yeah, totally obsolete and useless.
The result? I type at 90+ words per minute and have extremely high accuracy.
So? I did learn to touch-type properly, and easily type at 120 wpm with high accuracy ... much faster than 90, every hour of every day, imagine how much that extra speed adds up - why diss touch-typing?
Touch typing classes were MUCH more relevant in the days when correction tape was used and it meant that important papers would have to be completely retyped when there was a mistake.
Actually, the main issue was that you could type blind (in fact it used to also be commonly called "blind typing", but maybe that isn't Politically Correct enough these days?) --- so secretaries could retype documents without taking their eyes off the source document.
People who need to learn to type will learn on their own
Ha ha, right ... tell that to half of the programmers at my workplace --- have you actually looked at a typical workplace, or are you still in school?
I can honestly say that teaching myself to touch-type early on (17 odd years ago) was the single-best, most valuable investment I ever made in my programmer career. It's been critical to my productivity and thus success (on a bad day I type over 100 wpm). I'm all for more of this in schools; apart from being a genuinely valuable skill, it would also reduce 'ppl lazly tpng lk this lol', and encourage more kids to write properly in general - and being able to write properly has strong links to being able to think properly.
Evil? No. Lame? Yes. Sorry.
Or it's to prevent scammers and phishers from making Google-like homepages.
Right. These people have no problem stealing bank account information, but I am certain that the idea of (horror) violating a design patent will stop them right in their tracks! I can just see them waving their fists in the air, yelling "Curse you Google, you've foiled our nefarious plans! What *will* we do now."
(All shareholders get issued money-printing machines, you know - salary earners aren't allowed them.)
On top of that, what do you mean "People like you" are the ones paying for this? Are you a shareholder of the company that was sued?
Oh sorry, I forgot, the shareholders can just go use their money-printing machine in the back room.
Where did I say it's no big deal? All I said was that people should PLAN for the possibility that it could happen, so that they don't go through the trauma she claimed she had to.
Are you genuinely saying that salary earners should not plan accordingly for the possibility that they might lose their job at short notice?
I'm sorry, I have never *expected* that I "will" have a job next month, I was just not raised that way, nor is it sensible.
Firstly, the global economy is not in "depression". Secondly, the New Zealand economy's unemployment rate is still a very healthy 6% - lower than the US's unemployment rate BEFORE the recession hit. Thirdly, the state of the economy has no bearing on whether or not somebody should be forced against their will to give you their money each month if they don't want to (the recession hurts employers too). Fourth, the state of the economy has no bearing on whether or not individuals should save at least enough money that they're not literally living hand to mouth (and thus not make overly large house purchases that prevent this from being possible). Fifth, in case you hadn't picked up on that point, people living paycheck to paycheck and buying houses they couldn't really afford are a large part of what caused the economic mess in the first place. Finally, I presume that since you have time and money to sit and browse slashdot, I presume it hasn't hurt you all that hard either.