/. stalkers is a new one to me. Shashdot has a big enough "community" that it is effectively semi-anonymous and I never really cared much who looked at my ID.
On the other hand, if someone if prone to getting into personal insult laden flamewars with people who also can't handle rational discussions with strangers, then you'll pick up the odd one who may want to mod you down as revenge.
> If you want to consider "poverty" to mean "people who have less stuff than other people" then yes, we have a lot of poverty in this nation. However, if you want to see real poverty, go to India, or rural China, or Africa. People routinely starve, they have no electricity or clean water, and disease is rampant. These people would kill to be in "poverty" American-style.
Very true. I did not know what true poverty was until I moved to Bangalore. What we call "poor" in the west, they call comfortably middle class in India.
The top 20% do have it better in India with their $6/day maids and whatnot.
UT3 is the reason why I usually don't run my Ubuntu install. It is how I relax and recharge. When I'm working, once or twice a day, I fire up UT3 in offline mode, choose Instant Action ->Warfare -> Torlan and spend fifteen minutes or so playing Charles Whitman on top of the big tower. Then I can get back to productive work.
UT2004 does not run very well on Ubuntu and UT3 not at all.
> What silverlight is, is a monopoly corporation's attempting to nasty up the playing field by using their monopoly in one field to gain a monopoly in another.
What Silverlight is is a monopoly corporation's attempt to prevent another monopoly corporation's thingee (Flash) in a related line of business from crushing its core business. Adobe's Flash is a threat to Windows. Now this being slashdot, that must obviously be a good thing.
I for one see Flash as simply replacing one monopoly platform (Windows) wth a monopoly platform for web ased apps. A little competition there won't hurt us a bit.
The solution to this nonsense is shareholder activism, which CEOs view the same way a Metternicht viewed the middle class of Europe demanding democracy.
>If your biological imperatives told you to jump off a bridge in order to impress potential mates, would you do it?
If your lack of bioligal imperitaves told you to take on a life of celibacy and get castrated, would you do it? There are such people here in India. They are called Hijras and they are regarded as deviants.
I spent a lot of years in acedemia before becoming a cog in the corporate machine and don't recall anything about having to subscribe to extreme left views. Then again, I was in hard science. YMMV
Perhaps these conclusions would be obvious to a professional ethnographer, but you don't find many ethnographer is mobile phone design teams.
It is not unusual for devs to not really understand the actualy usage patterns of their products in the field. The people creating the products often lave limited or no actual contact with users. The contact is mediated through product managers or "product definition" people, with a loss of fidelity. This happens for a couple of reasons:
1 - As soon as someone has a contact number or email address in development, that dev becomes the go to person for everything, even if it is unrelated. So companies try to shield their developers from the end users to enable them to remain productive.
2 - Devs are not often well versed in the company line and might say things about roadmaps and whatnot that the company would rather not have said.
Incedentially, I agree with you, but that is the lay of the land.
The GP is not asking for a G3 iPhone. He is asking for phones actually designed for his market instead of hand me downs designed for usage patterns that don't match the way people use phones where he is. This is exactly what this guy at Nokia does btw. There is also money to be made in the high volume, low margin business.
The Toyota Innova that I drive now was designed in Indonesia for third world markets. Is it less sophisticated that the Renault Espace that I had in Germany? Yes. Is it suitable for the Autobahns like the renault was? No. Could the Renault handle the monsterous potholes that make Indian roads look like the Rubicon trail? Not in a thousand lifetimes.
Define "working hard". Then please illustrate why it should be the highest standard.
There is no personal merit to being smart or being beautiful because it is not something that you can control. You can nurture both, but within limits.
Giving it your best IS something you can control and hence is worthy of merit.
If Salk didn't find it difficult to find a polio vaccine would that diminish its utility?
Ahhh... interesting that you bring up Salk. Let me quickly quote from the wikipedia article on him: In 1947, he moved to Pittsburgh, where he led the Virus Research lab at the University of Pittsburgh.
I don't know how much academic experience you have, but I suspect that you are a high school student or undergrad who has watched "A Beautiful Mind" a few too many times. In academia, EVERYONE is amazingly smart and EVERYONE works insane hours. It is simply too competitive to be otherwise. The less bright and the lazy geniuses fall by the wayside. As head of a lab, he had a small army of grad students and postdocs, probably putting in 60 to 80 hour work weeks. If you are a grad student or postdoc, then your work gets published as ", et. al." and the boss gives the powerpoint presentations and the boss gets any awards. But nobody ever gets to be the head of a lab without putting in his dues, so it is safe to assume that he was also in the lab at midnight with his people.
The media (film, books, etc) like the "lone genius" because he makes a good story. The mundane reality of science is that it is a team effort, but that is not nearly as photogenic, so we get recycled lone genius stories.
Well, no matter how bright you are, you won't be winning any contests without working hard. Being smart is like being good looking. Both are helpful and give you a competitive edge. You were lucky in the genetic lottery, but you still have to earn your place in the world.
In Iraq, the US military has had its greatest success when troops are out among the population and "get to know the locals". They have had their worst failures when everything is automated and remote. Unlike their political masters in the white house, they do learn. They also have to deal with a manpower shortage, so to them robotics is something they have a LOT of interest in.
Put two and two together and you get robts ferrying supplies and real live humans doing the shooting and dealing with people. That IS common sense. I'd rather see that than people ferrying supplies and robots doing the shooting.
"Google is also failing miserably in hiring military vets. That's a big no-no. I expect them to get in serious trouble for that."
Spending your 20's being a navy SEAL does not leave a whole lot of time to get the PhD in mathematics that Google is looking for.
I'd be willing to bet money that lack of military service is higher among the professional classes than the working class for precisely this reason. Yes, you can go back to school later, but those with the straight and narrow resume can develop a more "impressive" resume earlier if it is specialist skills that you are looking for and not general skills/leadership experience.
I'm not saying that Bill Gates is a nice guy, and Ballmer probably even less so. But between one narcissistic bully who at least gives credit, and a narcissistic bully who doesn't, Bill comes out as a bit less of a low life on my scale."
Don't forget that that choice between a narcissistic bully who gave a bazillion dollars to fight malaria (a serious developing world health issue) and one who parks in the handicapped zone. People like to say that Jobs is the allowed exception to the "No Asshole" rule, but just wait for the feeding frenzy if he ever makes a serious market mistake.
Intersting this Europrean model. T-Mobile Germany won't let me unlock my old 1st gen RAZR until next month, which is a bit of a hassle as I'd like to change the SIM card to one from a local (Bangalore) provider so that I'm not paying â5/min roaming.
I wish someone would tell T-Mobile that the "European way" is to provide an unlocked phone.
Slashdot Mirror
/. stalkers is a new one to me. Shashdot has a big enough "community" that it is effectively semi-anonymous and I never really cared much who looked at my ID.
On the other hand, if someone if prone to getting into personal insult laden flamewars with people who also can't handle rational discussions with strangers, then you'll pick up the odd one who may want to mod you down as revenge.
How's the broadband in Yellowknife?
> If you want to consider "poverty" to mean "people who have less stuff than other people" then yes, we have a lot of poverty in this nation. However, if you want to see real poverty, go to India, or rural China, or Africa. People routinely starve, they have no electricity or clean water, and disease is rampant. These people would kill to be in "poverty" American-style.
Very true. I did not know what true poverty was until I moved to Bangalore. What we call "poor" in the west, they call comfortably middle class in India.
The top 20% do have it better in India with their $6/day maids and whatnot.
EVE is an MMO and they make their money on the account that you log in to. Gving the client away is common with indie MMOs.
Interesting.
UT3 is the reason why I usually don't run my Ubuntu install. It is how I relax and recharge. When I'm working, once or twice a day, I fire up UT3 in offline mode, choose Instant Action ->Warfare -> Torlan and spend fifteen minutes or so playing Charles Whitman on top of the big tower. Then I can get back to productive work.
UT2004 does not run very well on Ubuntu and UT3 not at all.
> What silverlight is, is a monopoly corporation's attempting to nasty up the playing field by using their monopoly in one field to gain a monopoly in another.
What Silverlight is is a monopoly corporation's attempt to prevent another monopoly corporation's thingee (Flash) in a related line of business from crushing its core business. Adobe's Flash is a threat to Windows. Now this being slashdot, that must obviously be a good thing.
I for one see Flash as simply replacing one monopoly platform (Windows) wth a monopoly platform for web ased apps. A little competition there won't hurt us a bit.
> If you're looking at india, hindi (or PROPER english).
So you can do the needful and use a rubber in the office while using the continious present tense?
> means that the generations after them are "somewhere else" which is all we need for the future to be viable
"Somewhere Else" meaning YouTube, Mysace and Facebook right?
Excuse me while I go dig my personal bunker...
The solution to this nonsense is shareholder activism, which CEOs view the same way a Metternicht viewed the middle class of Europe demanding democracy.
>If your biological imperatives told you to jump off a bridge in order to impress potential mates, would you do it?
If your lack of bioligal imperitaves told you to take on a life of celibacy and get castrated, would you do it? There are such people here in India. They are called Hijras and they are regarded as deviants.
I spent a lot of years in acedemia before becoming a cog in the corporate machine and don't recall anything about having to subscribe to extreme left views. Then again, I was in hard science. YMMV
And yesterdays "announcement" of an anti-trust suit was to ensure that they got their cut.
There is nothing to see here... move along.
Perhaps these conclusions would be obvious to a professional ethnographer, but you don't find many ethnographer is mobile phone design teams.
It is not unusual for devs to not really understand the actualy usage patterns of their products in the field. The people creating the products often lave limited or no actual contact with users. The contact is mediated through product managers or "product definition" people, with a loss of fidelity. This happens for a couple of reasons:
1 - As soon as someone has a contact number or email address in development, that dev becomes the go to person for everything, even if it is unrelated. So companies try to shield their developers from the end users to enable them to remain productive.
2 - Devs are not often well versed in the company line and might say things about roadmaps and whatnot that the company would rather not have said.
Incedentially, I agree with you, but that is the lay of the land.
The GP is not asking for a G3 iPhone. He is asking for phones actually designed for his market instead of hand me downs designed for usage patterns that don't match the way people use phones where he is. This is exactly what this guy at Nokia does btw. There is also money to be made in the high volume, low margin business.
The Toyota Innova that I drive now was designed in Indonesia for third world markets. Is it less sophisticated that the Renault Espace that I had in Germany? Yes. Is it suitable for the Autobahns like the renault was? No. Could the Renault handle the monsterous potholes that make Indian roads look like the Rubicon trail? Not in a thousand lifetimes.
Define "working hard". Then please illustrate why it should be the highest standard.
There is no personal merit to being smart or being beautiful because it is not something that you can control. You can nurture both, but within limits.
Giving it your best IS something you can control and hence is worthy of merit.
If Salk didn't find it difficult to find a polio vaccine would that diminish its utility?
Ahhh... interesting that you bring up Salk. Let me quickly quote from the wikipedia article on him: In 1947, he moved to Pittsburgh, where he led the Virus Research lab at the University of Pittsburgh.
I don't know how much academic experience you have, but I suspect that you are a high school student or undergrad who has watched "A Beautiful Mind" a few too many times. In academia, EVERYONE is amazingly smart and EVERYONE works insane hours. It is simply too competitive to be otherwise. The less bright and the lazy geniuses fall by the wayside. As head of a lab, he had a small army of grad students and postdocs, probably putting in 60 to 80 hour work weeks. If you are a grad student or postdoc, then your work gets published as ", et. al." and the boss gives the powerpoint presentations and the boss gets any awards. But nobody ever gets to be the head of a lab without putting in his dues, so it is safe to assume that he was also in the lab at midnight with his people.
The media (film, books, etc) like the "lone genius" because he makes a good story. The mundane reality of science is that it is a team effort, but that is not nearly as photogenic, so we get recycled lone genius stories.
Good for you.
Now when you advance to the next level, you'll find the average IQ of the competetion considerably higher.
Well, no matter how bright you are, you won't be winning any contests without working hard. Being smart is like being good looking. Both are helpful and give you a competitive edge. You were lucky in the genetic lottery, but you still have to earn your place in the world.
Let's leave that to the imagination!
>The entire design of this craft baffles me.
;) It does not have to be practical and it does not have to work
If it scores DARPA funding, it will have served its purpose
Unfortunately, it appears that the pic has been slashdotted.
So just how impractical and silly does it look?
In Iraq, the US military has had its greatest success when troops are out among the population and "get to know the locals". They have had their worst failures when everything is automated and remote. Unlike their political masters in the white house, they do learn. They also have to deal with a manpower shortage, so to them robotics is something they have a LOT of interest in.
Put two and two together and you get robts ferrying supplies and real live humans doing the shooting and dealing with people. That IS common sense. I'd rather see that than people ferrying supplies and robots doing the shooting.
>believe that the government is right more than it actually is
No they are just partisan and their guy is in the white house. If Obama gets elected, we'll be treated to years of bitching about the US government.
"Google is also failing miserably in hiring military vets. That's a big no-no. I expect them to get in serious trouble for that."
Spending your 20's being a navy SEAL does not leave a whole lot of time to get the PhD in mathematics that Google is looking for.
I'd be willing to bet money that lack of military service is higher among the professional classes than the working class for precisely this reason. Yes, you can go back to school later, but those with the straight and narrow resume can develop a more "impressive" resume earlier if it is specialist skills that you are looking for and not general skills/leadership experience.
I'm not saying that Bill Gates is a nice guy, and Ballmer probably even less so. But between one narcissistic bully who at least gives credit, and a narcissistic bully who doesn't, Bill comes out as a bit less of a low life on my scale."
Don't forget that that choice between a narcissistic bully who gave a bazillion dollars to fight malaria (a serious developing world health issue) and one who parks in the handicapped zone. People like to say that Jobs is the allowed exception to the "No Asshole" rule, but just wait for the feeding frenzy if he ever makes a serious market mistake.
Intersting this Europrean model. T-Mobile Germany won't let me unlock my old 1st gen RAZR until next month, which is a bit of a hassle as I'd like to change the SIM card to one from a local (Bangalore) provider so that I'm not paying â5/min roaming.
I wish someone would tell T-Mobile that the "European way" is to provide an unlocked phone.