But who gives them that information? Is there really a reason to have a phone number anywhere on the web unless you want people to call you?
Google regularly asks me to attach a mobile number in case I lose access to my account. Facebook occasionally tells me the same lie.
They ask for this kind of stuff all the time. I also routinely see the same stupid canned "security questions" with no option of filling in your own meaningful (and secure) questions -- and those standard questions are too easily gotten by someone else.
Maybe we should rename them.... Umbrella Dept? I know, I know, cheap shot.
At this point, I'm thinking more like the Ministry of Truth. They're getting more and more involved with everything, and in a very disturbing way -- pretty much Orwellian in fact.
It's what happens at home that makes the difference, namely greater expectations from parents and a greater range of activities and experiences outside the school.
Better nutrition. Safer neighborhoods. Likely more stable homes. Being able to afford extra-curricular activities. Educated parents to help with homework.
I'm not disagreeing with you... all of the benefits of being rich/better off translate into many things. We sure as hell couldn't afford to play team sports when we were kids... people used to spend thousands of dollars each year, probably more. Not an option in my family.
If you go to school hungry, or have to worry about avoiding gangs, junkies and all of the things that rich kids don't... there's a lot more distractions and a lot fewer opportunities. Other Shit gets in the way.
Which is why people ignorantly say "they're just wasting their opportunity for an education". They're mostly just trying to get by with many more problems than advantaged kids, but people act like it's an equal playing field to start with.
But people don't want to fix the underlying socio-economic problems, they want higher test scores. They just say that "education in America is fine, it's the poor kids who are dragging down our test scores, the private schools are thriving. Who cares is the public schools might have developing-nation literacy rates?"
I also found it at bit odd that she is shown in a pram (instead of say an adult wheelchair)
Well, adult wheelchairs are adult sized. If she's the size of a 4 or 5 year old, she definitely won't fit (and TFA shows her in a wheel chair, not what I'd call a pram).
As to your other point:
Unfortunately any gained insights would not be able to treat her condition, but it is hoped that identifying the genetic abnormalities could lead to new treatments for other diseases.
I think you can safely assume the doctors are looking out for her interests and not just the anti-aging cosmetics.
As to age appropriate, the article doesn't say anything about her intellectual development -- if she's the size of a 4 year old, and at the same mental level... then a crib may be more appropriate. According to wiki: Walker noted that Greenberg's brain, for example, is not much more mature than that of a newborn infant, at which point a crib is absolutely appropriate and in her best interests. She's likely quite delayed in her development, which means she'd need a crib to sleep safely.
We're not talking about someone who is fully matured in the brain, but just small. We're talking about someone with a whole raft of challenges. They're not taking an otherwise 'normal' adult and making her sleep in a crib.
He's a middling actor at best, and lately has been stuck in the same tired re-hash of his hero fantasy.
Watch his movies if you like them, stop giving a shit about his personal life.
I'm sorry, but having seen him jumping on Oprah's sofa, and talking about how modern medical science is wrong about anti-depressants and the like... he's a crackpot idiot.
You want to make extraordinary claims? Back 'em up or STFU. He sure as heck can't back them up.
I don't give a shit what he does in his personal life... but I'm sure as hell not going to watch his movies and give the impression he deserves more of a public forum.
By all means, feel free to watch what he's making if you're into that -- but to me he's moved into the realm of actors I dislike and won't watch his stuff.
Did 'they' do that? Hubbard had written that bit of fiction before he moved onto his really lucrative fiction.
Seriously, would you trust a religion started by a science fiction writer who said "You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion."?
Really? Aliens? That can only be detected with your voodoo device? Is that the best he could come up with?
"The Government is disappointed with the United States' decision to include Canada in its [year here] Special 301 "Watch List." Canada does not recognize the Special 301 process due to its lacking of reliable and objective analysis, and we have raised this issue regularly with the U.S. in our bilateral discussions."
"In regard to the watch list, Canada does not recognize the 301 watch list process. It basically lacks reliable and objective analysis. It's driven entirely by U.S. industry. We have repeatedly raised this issue of the lack of objective analysis in the 301 watch list process with our U.S. counterparts."
Unless policy has changed, that watch list is largely regarded as being mostly about special interest groups with no good basis.
Sorry, but that is a wish list written by industry of the pony they want to be given. It's all about them getting the most draconian, invasive measures they can find.
It isn't an objective document in any way at all, and only the US pretends it is.
Oh, I agree... historically, that's been the primary reason for BlackBerry stuff. If you can access Exchange from other devices readily, what does RIM bring to the table?
At which point, they're just another manufacturer with nothing to differentiate themselves or make their platform a better choice.
If they don't have something nobody else does, I don't know what is going to bring customers they've already lost back.
I'd love to see a list of reasons why someone should go with a BlackBerry, because I'm at a loss to come up with a single one myself. That's not to say they don't exist, but they need to be sure to explain to people why it's worth looking at their products.
There was a time I'd have said "a phone running QNX, wow, that must be awesome". Now I just wonder how badly they've mangled QNX.
Which, if you think about it, probably is a wise investment.
If on day one there's 15 apps, nobody is going to buy one because it's dead on arrival and the money you spent developing it would be a waste. If there's 15,000 apps, it's possible to conclude it's not a completely useless platform.
Releasing it without apps would be suicide, because there's nothing interesting about a smart phone you can't get software for. By now, anybody who has had a smart phone has a list of a handful of apps which are deal breakers.
Now, the question remains as to if enough people will care enough to buy these. I'm not sure anything RIM does at this point is going to make me say "oooh, I need a BlackBerry"... but they do need to get a significant amount of people to do that.
To me, the only thing that differentiates the BlackBerry devices is the presence of the BES server so you can access your company Exchange. And I think the phone to phone messaging is supposed to be more secure.
But, as a consumer, BlackBerry has always had its strengths in the corporate environment -- which is why people started buying the other makes of smart phones when they became available. Because, for the most part, people have no need to connect to a corporate Exchange on their personal phone.
And, really, having seen the hassles my wife has had with the Playbook I bought her a year ago... they don't have anything which interests me... given that the OS should be based on QNX, it should be fast and stable, and my wife tells me her Playbook is anything but.
And now they're still trying to come out with stuff which is relevant, which they may or may not succeed at.
I know one person who has had a BB device of some form or another for years, and he swears by them. But then I'm hard pressed to think of anybody else outside of people who get them from work who give a damn. My limited experience with them left me underwhelmed.
According to id's Doom 3 coding standard, they use real tabs that are 4 spaces. Having a consistent tab setting for all programmers allows them horizontally align their class definitions
Years ago I had to have this fight with a co-worker. His electric mode in Emcas was writing out everything as a single tab char, and doing the indenting on its own. The problem is, not everything obeyed this style -- not even a little.
I had to explain to him that since we weren't all using Emcacs, he needed to be sure to leave the code in a usable state because his commits were leaving the whitespace as complete useless crap to everything else.
I don't care what editor you use, but it needs to leave the files in a usable state for everybody else. Having special formatting to work with your editor just pisses everybody else off.
For this consumer & everyone I influence it means that thes laptops will not be bought. Touch & vertical screens do not go together.
I have to agree with this... if I'm typing, and I need to reach up to touch the screen... well, how many of us are old enough to remember slapping the carriage return in a typewriter? It would look about like that.
The ergonomics of touch screen make no sense in a laptop, and this mostly sounds like Intel is trying to force everybody to build in the new hotness just because it's there and to move chips.
But moving my hands away from the keyboard to touch the screen seems stupid to me. It would be uncomfortable, and not really suited to any task I can think of.
How about building something people need or want instead of just deciding to jam it in and see what happens? Oh, wait, this is Intel -- and I'm hard pressed to come up with any examples of them innovating much in the last 20 years or so (integrated graphics doesn't count).
Speakerphones. Damn things should be destroyed on sight. There is no reason for anyone not in an office to have a speakerphone on their desk.
Years ago at another job, one of the only vacant cubicles was smack dab in the middle of all of the developers (and ONLY developers).
One day a visiting idiot decided to put his speaker phone on so he could listen to a con-call, and work while he was muted.
Eventually I walked over and hung up the phone on him -- naturally, he was shocked and thought I was being rude. I told him that nobody within a 50 foot radius ever used their speaker phone, that he was disturbing everybody around him, and if he really needed to listen to that damned call he could do it in such a way as to not force all of us to listen to it. His ability to multi-task was interfering with our ability to work.
He sputtered for a few seconds, but as I walked away you could hear co-workers clapping. He never chose that desk to work at again. I was told later he complained to a manager, and was told by the manager he would have done far more than I had and to stop being such a dick.
Yes, speakerphones are annoying in open plan offices. People who insist on using them so they can multi-task while everybody around has to listen? Well, there's a special place in hell for them.:-P
I'm sorry, but do you think they're going to leave the howler monkeys alone, unattended, and not check up with them?
The walls would be covered in feces, the coffee would be all gone, and everybody would be playing video games or surfing porn instead of doing any actual work.
Even when I was a developer it was fairly obvious that without adult supervision nothing would get done. The developers would be writing cool features nobody wants, optimizing code which is hardly ever called, or re-factoring it make it look pretty.
Slashdot Mirror
Google regularly asks me to attach a mobile number in case I lose access to my account. Facebook occasionally tells me the same lie.
They ask for this kind of stuff all the time. I also routinely see the same stupid canned "security questions" with no option of filling in your own meaningful (and secure) questions -- and those standard questions are too easily gotten by someone else.
They want your information so they can sell it. They want as much as they can possibly get.
Do you think Facebook even try to protect your privacy? They write a feature which you might want, but which mostly benefits them.
And they've shown time and time again, they're not very good at even trying.
That fact that Zukerfucks sister got burned with privacy settings says they're deliberately obtuse.
Sure, Facebook could do all sorts of things to protect your privacy, but that's now how they get paid.
Would polarized sunglasses help here? They're generally pretty good at cutting down glare.
But, maybe your doctor or optometrist would be better to ask?
And any advertiser Facebook decides they want to share it with.
At this point, I'm thinking more like the Ministry of Truth. They're getting more and more involved with everything, and in a very disturbing way -- pretty much Orwellian in fact.
It seems the DHS keeps expanding its mandate into ever broader areas.
And, quite frankly, that's a little creepy -- it's becoming this vast umbrella which has control over everything.
Better nutrition. Safer neighborhoods. Likely more stable homes. Being able to afford extra-curricular activities. Educated parents to help with homework.
I'm not disagreeing with you ... all of the benefits of being rich/better off translate into many things. We sure as hell couldn't afford to play team sports when we were kids ... people used to spend thousands of dollars each year, probably more. Not an option in my family.
If you go to school hungry, or have to worry about avoiding gangs, junkies and all of the things that rich kids don't ... there's a lot more distractions and a lot fewer opportunities. Other Shit gets in the way.
Which is why people ignorantly say "they're just wasting their opportunity for an education". They're mostly just trying to get by with many more problems than advantaged kids, but people act like it's an equal playing field to start with.
But people don't want to fix the underlying socio-economic problems, they want higher test scores. They just say that "education in America is fine, it's the poor kids who are dragging down our test scores, the private schools are thriving. Who cares is the public schools might have developing-nation literacy rates?"
Well, adult wheelchairs are adult sized. If she's the size of a 4 or 5 year old, she definitely won't fit (and TFA shows her in a wheel chair, not what I'd call a pram).
As to your other point:
I think you can safely assume the doctors are looking out for her interests and not just the anti-aging cosmetics.
As to age appropriate, the article doesn't say anything about her intellectual development -- if she's the size of a 4 year old, and at the same mental level ... then a crib may be more appropriate. According to wiki: Walker noted that Greenberg's brain, for example, is not much more mature than that of a newborn infant, at which point a crib is absolutely appropriate and in her best interests. She's likely quite delayed in her development, which means she'd need a crib to sleep safely.
We're not talking about someone who is fully matured in the brain, but just small. We're talking about someone with a whole raft of challenges. They're not taking an otherwise 'normal' adult and making her sleep in a crib.
Or at least update your Facebook profile or tweet about your imminent demise. :-P
An increasing number of politicans will only listen to the scienticians if what they're saying supports the conclusions they've already arrived at.
They're not interested in facts, just their own ideology.
Burma Shave? :-P
He's a middling actor at best, and lately has been stuck in the same tired re-hash of his hero fantasy.
I'm sorry, but having seen him jumping on Oprah's sofa, and talking about how modern medical science is wrong about anti-depressants and the like ... he's a crackpot idiot.
You want to make extraordinary claims? Back 'em up or STFU. He sure as heck can't back them up.
I don't give a shit what he does in his personal life ... but I'm sure as hell not going to watch his movies and give the impression he deserves more of a public forum.
By all means, feel free to watch what he's making if you're into that -- but to me he's moved into the realm of actors I dislike and won't watch his stuff.
Did 'they' do that? Hubbard had written that bit of fiction before he moved onto his really lucrative fiction.
Seriously, would you trust a religion started by a science fiction writer who said "You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion."?
Really? Aliens? That can only be detected with your voodoo device? Is that the best he could come up with?
Well, they've managed to demonstrate that Tom Cruise is an insufferable idiot.
That counts for something.
What does it stand for if you're an American or a British realist? It's the same thing.
Unless policy has changed, that watch list is largely regarded as being mostly about special interest groups with no good basis.
Sorry, but that is a wish list written by industry of the pony they want to be given. It's all about them getting the most draconian, invasive measures they can find.
It isn't an objective document in any way at all, and only the US pretends it is.
I'm sorry, but do they think the people who created that content are going to allow it?
I applaud someone for trying to do this, but I predict it would almost immediately lead to lawsuits by people claiming their EULA forbids this.
These are the same people who think photocopiers should be banned, and if more than one person watches a movie they should get paid more.
Oh, I agree ... historically, that's been the primary reason for BlackBerry stuff. If you can access Exchange from other devices readily, what does RIM bring to the table?
At which point, they're just another manufacturer with nothing to differentiate themselves or make their platform a better choice.
If they don't have something nobody else does, I don't know what is going to bring customers they've already lost back.
I'd love to see a list of reasons why someone should go with a BlackBerry, because I'm at a loss to come up with a single one myself. That's not to say they don't exist, but they need to be sure to explain to people why it's worth looking at their products.
There was a time I'd have said "a phone running QNX, wow, that must be awesome". Now I just wonder how badly they've mangled QNX.
Which, if you think about it, probably is a wise investment.
If on day one there's 15 apps, nobody is going to buy one because it's dead on arrival and the money you spent developing it would be a waste. If there's 15,000 apps, it's possible to conclude it's not a completely useless platform.
Releasing it without apps would be suicide, because there's nothing interesting about a smart phone you can't get software for. By now, anybody who has had a smart phone has a list of a handful of apps which are deal breakers.
Now, the question remains as to if enough people will care enough to buy these. I'm not sure anything RIM does at this point is going to make me say "oooh, I need a BlackBerry" ... but they do need to get a significant amount of people to do that.
To me, the only thing that differentiates the BlackBerry devices is the presence of the BES server so you can access your company Exchange. And I think the phone to phone messaging is supposed to be more secure.
But, as a consumer, BlackBerry has always had its strengths in the corporate environment -- which is why people started buying the other makes of smart phones when they became available. Because, for the most part, people have no need to connect to a corporate Exchange on their personal phone.
And, really, having seen the hassles my wife has had with the Playbook I bought her a year ago ... they don't have anything which interests me ... given that the OS should be based on QNX, it should be fast and stable, and my wife tells me her Playbook is anything but.
And now they're still trying to come out with stuff which is relevant, which they may or may not succeed at.
I know one person who has had a BB device of some form or another for years, and he swears by them. But then I'm hard pressed to think of anybody else outside of people who get them from work who give a damn. My limited experience with them left me underwhelmed.
Years ago I had to have this fight with a co-worker. His electric mode in Emcas was writing out everything as a single tab char, and doing the indenting on its own. The problem is, not everything obeyed this style -- not even a little.
I had to explain to him that since we weren't all using Emcacs, he needed to be sure to leave the code in a usable state because his commits were leaving the whitespace as complete useless crap to everything else.
I don't care what editor you use, but it needs to leave the files in a usable state for everybody else. Having special formatting to work with your editor just pisses everybody else off.
I have to agree with this ... if I'm typing, and I need to reach up to touch the screen ... well, how many of us are old enough to remember slapping the carriage return in a typewriter? It would look about like that.
The ergonomics of touch screen make no sense in a laptop, and this mostly sounds like Intel is trying to force everybody to build in the new hotness just because it's there and to move chips.
But moving my hands away from the keyboard to touch the screen seems stupid to me. It would be uncomfortable, and not really suited to any task I can think of.
How about building something people need or want instead of just deciding to jam it in and see what happens? Oh, wait, this is Intel -- and I'm hard pressed to come up with any examples of them innovating much in the last 20 years or so (integrated graphics doesn't count).
Years ago at another job, one of the only vacant cubicles was smack dab in the middle of all of the developers (and ONLY developers).
One day a visiting idiot decided to put his speaker phone on so he could listen to a con-call, and work while he was muted.
Eventually I walked over and hung up the phone on him -- naturally, he was shocked and thought I was being rude. I told him that nobody within a 50 foot radius ever used their speaker phone, that he was disturbing everybody around him, and if he really needed to listen to that damned call he could do it in such a way as to not force all of us to listen to it. His ability to multi-task was interfering with our ability to work.
He sputtered for a few seconds, but as I walked away you could hear co-workers clapping. He never chose that desk to work at again. I was told later he complained to a manager, and was told by the manager he would have done far more than I had and to stop being such a dick.
Yes, speakerphones are annoying in open plan offices. People who insist on using them so they can multi-task while everybody around has to listen? Well, there's a special place in hell for them. :-P
I'm sorry, but do you think they're going to leave the howler monkeys alone, unattended, and not check up with them?
The walls would be covered in feces, the coffee would be all gone, and everybody would be playing video games or surfing porn instead of doing any actual work.
Even when I was a developer it was fairly obvious that without adult supervision nothing would get done. The developers would be writing cool features nobody wants, optimizing code which is hardly ever called, or re-factoring it make it look pretty.
Not to your customers ... shitty bug ridden releases which should have spent more time in DEV and QA are a nuisance.
And usually either mean management are lousy at setting release dates, or the developers are lousy at living up to them.
Your customers don't want to QA your code for you.