I think you just mixed up two different threads. In one I'm arguing (correctly) that much of Africa is in dire poverty (including large cities) and in another thread I tell people that Maurtius (not in Africa although close to it) is a semi-afluent nation comparable to lower wrung EU states such as Czech republic. It's you sir who are confused and replying to too many threads all at once.
Did I say that Czech Republic was undeveloped. I actually come from there and probably know much more about it than you do!
Mauritius does have a life quality similar to Czech Republic which is to say it's very high. However, Mauritius is nothing like most African countries in terms of its Human Development Index.
Been to Cairo and its poverty is astonishing. Outside of the city centre the rest is cheap apartment blocks followed by a large swathes of slum housing. Egypt as a whole is in dire poverty. Naturally pockets of affluence exist everywhere in the world, even in Kigali or Freetown. Overall even the largest African cities are very, very poor and offer only marginally better life quality than African country side which is to say not much. Drinkable water is a problem as is sewage treatment and intermittent power delivery and crime and... gosh it's really bad. Just go visit there.
Its per-capita GDP (the best indicator of the overall "wealth" of the country) is around $13,000 which is similar to Czech Republic or if you're not familiar with Eastern Europe it's about half of UK's per capita GDP.
I'm sure its IT industry is limited by its size but not because it's "dirt poor" because it's not.
Having kids or a house is not a prerequisite to being mature but it's frequently a side effect thereof. We define people's maturity by the kind of decisions they make. If one is often seen as spending all their disposable income on gadgets that will have zero market value two years from now, then by the very definition of the word they are not mature as their financial choices stipulate a need for instant gratification as opposed to working towards a farther but more worthwhile goal.
To put it bluntly, if you splurge on a $700 gaming graphics card every four months, you're either filthy rich or not very mature, and I know which one applies to my co-workers.
The house I bought costs me less in mortgage repayments than the rent I paid on a two bedroom apartment. It was only logical to quit paying rent and get a mortgage to earn some equity, particularly that the biggest employer in town is planning a large expansion which will no doubt drive up property prices around here.
Three years into it, I'm 29yo, have only 7 years left on my mortgage repayments, have about $80,000 worth of equity in my house through all the work I did to it and will be mortgage free before I'm 40yo (barring any disastrous events like serious illness etc).
Some of my co-workers who are my age are yet to save enough cash for a downpayment (in town where an average detached house costs $150,000) but who are always sure to own the latest bullshit gadget and the newest gaming graphics card. sigh.
Right on. I joined a company which went on a hiring spree last year and picked up a bunch of spring chickens in their early twenties who do nothing besides playing XBox and drooling over Half Life 2. Most of them do have enough income to buy a starter house and renovate it but nah, they are going to have their options vest and become dotcom millionaires instead (seriously, many of them do believe in that).
There is nothing wrong with playing games as long as it doesn't preclude living a real life, owning and improving a house, raising kids etc.
It's hard to have a conversation with them as their weekends are completely different from mine and conversations typically don't "gel" when we star them.
They'll grow up, no doubt. But it is going to take some time and no doubt I will have moved on by then and likely won't witness the event.
Wow. Looks (almost) like Mac Mini, but it's not. Isn't that cool.
Sort of reminds me when my parents remodelled their dining room and hung a nice crystal chandelier.
Our neighbour saw it, got jealous and went to buy a plastic knockoff at the mall for $30.
She thought it looked every bit as nice as my parents'
but games are supposed to be fun, a good simulation would be as frustrating as real life.
Flight simulator would be a good illustration of your point. While I'm sure it's great for aviation freaks it's just cumbersome and tedious for the average player such as myself.
the problem is related to the scale required. What nazi Germany required was miniscule compared to the shortfall we may be facing. Anyway if we liquefy most of our coal it will peak in less than two decades.
well, it may not be that smoot a transition. After all it takes ENERGY to retrofit cars or convert coal to oil. We're talking about 10 milion barrels of oil per day that need to come from SOMEWHERE. They're not going to come from the tar sands or the shale. No matter how much money you spend those resources will not come on line soon enough to cover the shortfall.
Another analogy. I could give you $10bn and tell you to hire the best scientists and find me a cure for cancer by this time next year. In all probability you're not going to accomplish the task. It would take a yet unkonwn medical breakthrough to do this.
It's the same with energy in general and oil specifically. There is no known substitute for oil that can become viable in the timeframe we need to avoid a major crisis and possibly even famine.
Retrofitting cars will cost too much and there may be nobody to do the work if oil becomes too scarce.
Converting coal to oil is possible but we don't have the infrastructure to do this right now and it'll take a lot of energy to build said infrastructure. Energy that will be very expensive then.
The problem with oil (or diesel) is that the supplies are getting behind demand and unless we switch to a more flexible source of energy we're fucked. Even if oil is cheaper now, wait till there is a 5% or 10% shortfall between supply and demand. $400 a barrel will not be unrealistic. Oil has a very inelastic demand curve ie. small shortages of supply cause incredible rises in price.
Neat but who cares if it won't make a dent...
on
Filling Up On Algae
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It's time to wake up and accept that we are running out of oil very quickly and no gimmicks are going to fix the problem. This technology may be neat but it's certainly not going to scale to the forecast energy shortfall that may be as large as 10 million barrels per day by 2010.
As far as oil supplies go, we are totally, royally and majorly fscked.
Relational algebra is a very nice and tidy concept but SQL is a piss poor (and limited) implementation thereof.
In other words, relational databases are very nice and elegant but their interface (SQL) is bad and should be replaced.
Also relational databases by themselves can't supply the needs of a typical enterprise and that's where technologies such as OLAP are built on top of RDBMS to make certain data manipulations efficient.
Yeah. Whatever you say, buddy... Incidentally CBC does not advertise itself or play adverts on their tv/radio channels. They are fully subsidised by the Canadian government and don't give a toss whether anyone listens to their broadcasts or not. Incidentally, most Canadians do because the quality of CBC's programming is very, very good.
CBC radio is without question the best radio station I've had the chance to listen to on a regular basis. Their programming is very diverse and there is a good representation of all points of view though they tend to lean slightly to the left.
Quirks and Quarks is excellent as is Northern Lights and Dispatches and Ideas and tons of other shows that are directed at an above average IQ listener. They are federally funded and unencumbered by the requirement to "have the numbers" and don't have to stoop to the lowest common denominator.
BBC is often hailed as the pinnacle of independent jounralism but I find their broadcasts have a very condescending patronizing bias when they report from "lesser" places such as Eastern Europe, Asia or Africa. Somehow, CBC manages to bring lots of news from all over the world while avoiding that annoying condescending tone that permeates the Beeb.
You can listen to CBC live. The links are on their website.
Re:Speed up the interface a bit!
on
Just a Phone?
·
· Score: 1
Most automatic gearboxes allow you to downshift. In fact I can't recall a single car built after 1992 that doesn't allow for downshifting in an auto gearbox.
Curves help with air resistance. Cars are getting to the point where this actually starts making a noticable difference in fuel consumption.
Most electrical systems in well built cars (which by definition excludes Volkswagen and most American brands) are highly reliable. My 1996 Mazda had the catalytic converter go but all electrical systems are as good as new. It's got 240,000 km on the clock. I'm tempted to replace it with something newer and sexier but it just frigging keeps on running:-)
Modern cars are far better built than the 70's clunkers.
At least YOU my friend, don't have an attitude or an ego problem, eh?
Java the language IS a dumbed down version of C++ and as of JDK 1.5 a horribly broken clone of C++. The "generics" suck ass, don't work half the time, have more consistency holes than swiss cheese and are nothing beyong syntax sugar. Even your stuupid Iterable crap is broken (doesn't work with arrays).
Nobody building applications uses EJBs. EJBs are broken just like the rest of Java. People who try to stay sane in the Java world use Spring and Hibernate. Nobody gives a flying fuck about EJB. Until EJB 3 ships, EJB in the present form is dead and buried.
Someone who knows struts and can deal with all its bugs and shortcomings is already a hard working developer (if not a terribly smart one).
You are an asshole because you diss people who don't share passing in your specific pieces of technology and who are not indoctrinated by Sun Microsystems as much as you are.
Your J2EE patterns are also a steaming pile of poop as they can nearly all be handled more elegantly with the use of AOP. AOP patterns are much more interesting but of course, I'm sure you already have a very firm opinion about this and every other subject under the sun.
Oh, yeah. There is one Netbeans freak at my office (who actually uses Eclipse for daily work) but with every release he keeps telling me how much better Netbeans is. I believe his word every time, and I always download that crap and end up deleting it two hours later due to all the frigging bugs and crashes. NetBeans is way too buggy for daily work. Even our NetBean freak at the office can't use it because it keeps crashing on him.
It sounds from the article that the systemic delivery of a drug based on this technique is still very tricky. It seems to work best with direct tumor injection which is not possible in the vast majority of cancers.
Personally I'm most hopeful for those virus based cancer therapies. They seem to be making some real headway there.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you just mixed up two different threads. In one I'm arguing (correctly) that much of Africa is in dire poverty (including large cities) and in another thread I tell people that Maurtius (not in Africa although close to it) is a semi-afluent nation comparable to lower wrung EU states such as Czech republic. It's you sir who are confused and replying to too many threads all at once.
Mauritius does have a life quality similar to Czech Republic which is to say it's very high. However, Mauritius is nothing like most African countries in terms of its Human Development Index.
Been to Cairo and its poverty is astonishing. Outside of the city centre the rest is cheap apartment blocks followed by a large swathes of slum housing. Egypt as a whole is in dire poverty. Naturally pockets of affluence exist everywhere in the world, even in Kigali or Freetown. Overall even the largest African cities are very, very poor and offer only marginally better life quality than African country side which is to say not much. Drinkable water is a problem as is sewage treatment and intermittent power delivery and crime and... gosh it's really bad. Just go visit there.
Even more "advanced" nations such as South Africa and Botswana post per-capita GDP much lower than most Eastern European countries.
I'm sure its IT industry is limited by its size but not because it's "dirt poor" because it's not.
To put it bluntly, if you splurge on a $700 gaming graphics card every four months, you're either filthy rich or not very mature, and I know which one applies to my co-workers.
Three years into it, I'm 29yo, have only 7 years left on my mortgage repayments, have about $80,000 worth of equity in my house through all the work I did to it and will be mortgage free before I'm 40yo (barring any disastrous events like serious illness etc).
Some of my co-workers who are my age are yet to save enough cash for a downpayment (in town where an average detached house costs $150,000) but who are always sure to own the latest bullshit gadget and the newest gaming graphics card. sigh.
There is nothing wrong with playing games as long as it doesn't preclude living a real life, owning and improving a house, raising kids etc.
It's hard to have a conversation with them as their weekends are completely different from mine and conversations typically don't "gel" when we star them.
They'll grow up, no doubt. But it is going to take some time and no doubt I will have moved on by then and likely won't witness the event.
Sort of reminds me when my parents remodelled their dining room and hung a nice crystal chandelier. Our neighbour saw it, got jealous and went to buy a plastic knockoff at the mall for $30.
She thought it looked every bit as nice as my parents'
It didnt.
Flight simulator would be a good illustration of your point. While I'm sure it's great for aviation freaks it's just cumbersome and tedious for the average player such as myself.
the problem is related to the scale required. What nazi Germany required was miniscule compared to the shortfall we may be facing. Anyway if we liquefy most of our coal it will peak in less than two decades.
Another analogy. I could give you $10bn and tell you to hire the best scientists and find me a cure for cancer by this time next year. In all probability you're not going to accomplish the task. It would take a yet unkonwn medical breakthrough to do this.
It's the same with energy in general and oil specifically. There is no known substitute for oil that can become viable in the timeframe we need to avoid a major crisis and possibly even famine.
Retrofitting cars will cost too much and there may be nobody to do the work if oil becomes too scarce.
Converting coal to oil is possible but we don't have the infrastructure to do this right now and it'll take a lot of energy to build said infrastructure. Energy that will be very expensive then.
The problem with oil (or diesel) is that the supplies are getting behind demand and unless we switch to a more flexible source of energy we're fucked. Even if oil is cheaper now, wait till there is a 5% or 10% shortfall between supply and demand. $400 a barrel will not be unrealistic. Oil has a very inelastic demand curve ie. small shortages of supply cause incredible rises in price.
As far as oil supplies go, we are totally, royally and majorly fscked.
In other words, relational databases are very nice and elegant but their interface (SQL) is bad and should be replaced.
Also relational databases by themselves can't supply the needs of a typical enterprise and that's where technologies such as OLAP are built on top of RDBMS to make certain data manipulations efficient.
I'm a first generation Canadian but was born and raised in Eastern Europe.
It's true that the CBC television has commercials but not nearly as many as most American channels.
Yeah. Whatever you say, buddy... Incidentally CBC does not advertise itself or play adverts on their tv/radio channels. They are fully subsidised by the Canadian government and don't give a toss whether anyone listens to their broadcasts or not. Incidentally, most Canadians do because the quality of CBC's programming is very, very good.
Quirks and Quarks is excellent as is Northern Lights and Dispatches and Ideas and tons of other shows that are directed at an above average IQ listener. They are federally funded and unencumbered by the requirement to "have the numbers" and don't have to stoop to the lowest common denominator.
BBC is often hailed as the pinnacle of independent jounralism but I find their broadcasts have a very condescending patronizing bias when they report from "lesser" places such as Eastern Europe, Asia or Africa. Somehow, CBC manages to bring lots of news from all over the world while avoiding that annoying condescending tone that permeates the Beeb.
You can listen to CBC live. The links are on their website.
Curves help with air resistance. Cars are getting to the point where this actually starts making a noticable difference in fuel consumption.
Most electrical systems in well built cars (which by definition excludes Volkswagen and most American brands) are highly reliable. My 1996 Mazda had the catalytic converter go but all electrical systems are as good as new. It's got 240,000 km on the clock. I'm tempted to replace it with something newer and sexier but it just frigging keeps on running :-)
Modern cars are far better built than the 70's clunkers.
Java the language IS a dumbed down version of C++ and as of JDK 1.5 a horribly broken clone of C++. The "generics" suck ass, don't work half the time, have more consistency holes than swiss cheese and are nothing beyong syntax sugar. Even your stuupid Iterable crap is broken (doesn't work with arrays).
Nobody building applications uses EJBs. EJBs are broken just like the rest of Java. People who try to stay sane in the Java world use Spring and Hibernate. Nobody gives a flying fuck about EJB. Until EJB 3 ships, EJB in the present form is dead and buried.
Someone who knows struts and can deal with all its bugs and shortcomings is already a hard working developer (if not a terribly smart one).
You are an asshole because you diss people who don't share passing in your specific pieces of technology and who are not indoctrinated by Sun Microsystems as much as you are.
Your J2EE patterns are also a steaming pile of poop as they can nearly all be handled more elegantly with the use of AOP. AOP patterns are much more interesting but of course, I'm sure you already have a very firm opinion about this and every other subject under the sun.
Oh, yeah. There is one Netbeans freak at my office (who actually uses Eclipse for daily work) but with every release he keeps telling me how much better Netbeans is. I believe his word every time, and I always download that crap and end up deleting it two hours later due to all the frigging bugs and crashes. NetBeans is way too buggy for daily work. Even our NetBean freak at the office can't use it because it keeps crashing on him.
Personally I'm most hopeful for those virus based cancer therapies. They seem to be making some real headway there.
BTW do all those things still apply if you drive a C5? If you can live with the image... you know it IS an option... allright perhaps not.
I once heard about that car called "Dodge" and didn't know what it meant so I looked it up in a dictionary and it said "to avoid". So I did.