You kind of missed my point. Are Android users lemmings because they won't "buy Apple"? No. Today we're into commodity computing - pretty much all devices from the major makers do what people want, just as pretty much any computer today is good enough for most people. That being the case, are people being lemmings by voting with their wallet, to buy something that does everything they want for 1/4 the cost? I doubt it. My android spends a lot of time in my front jeans pocket, and hasn't bent yet. I even twisted it yesterday, just to see what would happen, and it returned to normal - which is what I expected considering I've dropped it on the street while running to catch a bus and it still looks new.
Sure, no product is perfect - but Apple really stepped into it - 3 out of 15 stories on the front page were bad news for Apple - how often does that happen with Android? The same thing with the news - Apple's problems have made the major news outlets world-wide. Same thing with TV shows.
And I guess you haven't ever used an Android - Settings | Backup and reset to back up my device, restore it, or reset it. Plus I can just drag whatever I want to/from my laptop, a USB stick or drive, or wherever if I don't want to trust Google's servers. And it's just a few taps to put it into developer mode. And I don't have to buy anything to develop apps for it. And I can load apps from anywhere without jail-breaking. What more does anyone need?
Apple no longer makes a decidedly superior product, and have been playing catch-up in some aspects for several years now. NFC is a good example of this. Our transit system announced it was looking at an NFC app for payments well before the newest iPhone, so don't expect the iPhone to be the first to be supported, since it (1) has lower market share, and (2) didn't have NFC capability until now and (3) wants to be tied into Apple Pay instead of just emulating the transit's smart card, and being able to be topped up via my banking app, no trusting google or apple or any 3rd party.
So why pay a premium for what is now an ordinary consumer product, one that no longer benefits from the "network effect" of "everyone else has one"? Lemmings do that:-)
You forgot also giving them a Tim Hortons coffee and a Timbits. (Kind of sensitive, and on-topic, with Burger King buying Tim Hortons and moving it's head office to Canada to benefit from lower corporate tax rates).
Bill Gated did NOT "put a pc in every home." The big barrier to putting computers in every home was price - when a hobby computer (pre IBM PC era) cost $6k and up (and a car cost less), only people who were seriously interested would have one.
The manufacturers of PC clones were what started the trend to "a pc in every home," with lower prices. As did the game consoles of the era, which were most people's first real contact with something "computer-ish".
Also, the threat to "move jobs to Canada" has been made before. They use that when they've already decided that some jobs should be moved elsewhere, so that they can get some free leverage. But threatening to move jobs to Vancouver? Someone making $150k simply won't be able to afford housing - not in Vancouver where you can't tell the difference between a million-dollar home and a crack house.
Oh, and the income tax differential means that $150k US salary doesn't leave as much to take home as $200k in Canada.
You want to see lemmings? Look at every Android owner who continues to buy into a platform that is horribly insecure and a second class citizen where applications are concerned. Buying Android because "Not Apple" makes you guys the largest bunch of lemmings history will ever see.
Apple has been playing catch-up with android for a while. Near Field Communications is a big new thing for Apple in the i6, but it's been in android since Gingerbread.
Buying something "because it's Apple" is starting to sound like "Nobody got fired for buying IBM". It was the safe bet - until it wasn't.
I think what's really telling is that Blackberry hopes to sell a million of them over the next year.
That's what - 2-1/2 days of iPhone sales? Sales by the 10 AM coffee break any day of the week for Android?
So what does the passport have?
1. A square display - that cuts off video with black bars top and bottom, or drops the sides.
2. A real keyboard - but the shift key is on-screen (along with a bunch of others).
3. A camera that takes non-standard square pictures reminiscent of the old kodaks from 50 years ago.
4. Blackberry apps, but no access to google apps, so potential users will still need their android phone because they're tied into google for much of their workflow / data / services.
Forget the complaints about the form factor being too wide - people will adjust. Just like all the new Apple iPhone 6+ users are learning to adjust to bigger screens after saying for years that there was zero need for them. However, people are definitely tied to their current functionality, and before they carry around a blackberry as a second phone, they'll just buy a 7" or 8" tablet. A lot cheaper, works with their existing tools and data, much bigger display even if it is lower resolution, etc.
RIM would share with Saudi Arabia the unique pin number and code for each BlackBerry registered there. That will allow authorities to read encrypted text sent via Messenger, an instant messaging service that's distinct from email sent on the BlackBerry.
The arrangement would effectively give Saudi Arabia access to RIM's main server for Messenger, but only for communications to and from Saudi users, the source said..
The Canadian company declined to comment, referring media to its earlier statement in which it said it "cooperates with all governments with a consistent standard."
Just google for "rim gives government access to servers" India quickly got the same. The US and China? Yep!
Significantly, DoT was pulled up by a parliamentary committee a week ago over liberal extensions given to RIM on providing messages to security agencies in a readable format. Unlike the intransigent stance it took in India, RIM had provided access to its services to the U.S. and China.
The real question is, who doesn't have access to encrypted BBM messages?
No, I would bet that the lawyers are advising them to silently let this go forever, hoping the bending problem doesn't catch on in the mainstream media, or picked up by the late night comedians. They'll wait for it to blow over like they did with the antenna problems on the iPhone 4, because ultimately that proved to be nothing to them.
Less than 2 hours after your post, Whoopie Goldberg and co (on The View) are making fun of the bending issue - "what if it were a vibrator, or a combo iPhone/iVibrator?"
Comparing your latest and greatest to a dildo on (inter) national TV... and that's only the start.
With a disease with a high infection rate, even if more than half die within a month, you still have this huge pool of newly infected people to draw from. Thus, you can have both an increase in the number of carriers and an increase in the number of dead month-over-month, until you simply run out of people.
You are also continually playing "catch-up", as both the number of cases and the number of deaths continues to ramp up faster than your response.
Now throw in mistrust of western medicine, lack of treatment facilities, lack of effective treatments, lack of basics, and you have a pretty good formula for rapid spread of a disease with high mortality rates.
However this ends up, the world will not be the same after.
LinkedIn to face lawsuit for spamming users' email address books
A judge in the Northern District of California has paved the way for a lawsuit against the social network LinkedIn for violating the privacy of its users. The complaint was that LinkedIn "violated several state and federal laws by harvesting email addresses from the contact lists of email accounts associated with Plaintiffs’ LinkedIn accounts and by sending repeated invitations to join LinkedIn to the harvested email addresses". It relates to the fact that LinkedIn not only used the address books of those signing up for accounts to tout for business by sending out an email to that effect, but also sent follow-up email if there was no response.
US district judge Lucy Koh ruled that while users granted permission for LinkedIn to access their contact list it is this 'spamming' that is likely to land the company in court again. The judge outlined the process users were complaining about, explaining that LinkedIn sent an email to connected in users' address books -- albeit with initial permission -- sends the same email a week later if the recipient has not joined LinkedIn, and a third email if another week passes without a signup.
Further complaints stemmed from the fact that "the only way a LinkedIn user can stop the two follow-up endorsement emails (assuming the user found out about the initial emails in the first place) from going out to the email addresses harvested from that user’s external email account is for the user to individually open up each invitation from within his or her LinkedIn account (which LinkedIn has intentionally made difficult to find within the user’s account) and click a button that allows the user to withdraw that single invitation". This means it could take several hours to individually cancel hundreds, or even thousands, of emails that were scheduled to be sent out.
The complainants pointed out that LinkedIn's Help Center pages are filled with complaints from other users about the emails. Some users said that "LinkedIn knew about flaws in its process but nevertheless took no action". One of the plaintiff's main causes for concern is that their contacts would regard the emails sent out by LinkedIn as being indicative that they endorsed LinkedIn, as well as being seen as being so enamored with the network as to spam on its behalf. This 'spamming' is seen as having the potential to damage the reputation of the user the emails were sent on the behalf of -- it could "injure users' reputations by allowing contacts to think that the users are the types of people who spam their contacts or are unable to take the hint that their contacts do not want to join their LinkedIn network".
The judge also pointed out that some of the wording used during the signup process was misleading. "By stating a mere three screens before the disclosure regarding the first invitation that 'We will not... email anyone without your permission,' LinkedIn may have actively led users astray". Koh also suggests that LinkedIn has violated California law by associating users' names and images advertising for further business.
I sure as heck wouldn't want anyone to think I was willing to spam for linkedin, which still resembles a bunch of strangers asking other strangers to recommend them to still other strangers.
1.2 million? I call BS. When things start to look really bad people will voluntarily stay at home, dramatically reducing transmission. And this is before we consider government action. This already happened during the swine flu scare in Mexico where everyone stayed home for a week and then on top of that the government ordered restaurants, schools and other businesses closed.
Sierra Leone has already gone through the process of being a failed nation-state, and will be right back there if ebola continues to spread. Liberia has already admitted they could just cease to exist.
Besides, the H1N1 virus had a death rate of just 0.02 percent not the eye-popping 50% to 90% of ebola.
Assuming that the dead are buried safely just isn't going to happen. When you have that many people dying, nobody's going to be in a rush to join them by burying them. "Let someone else do it." And eventually, there just won't be enough people to bury all the dead even if they were willing. They'd be spending way too much time meeting their own basic survival needs in countries that are falling apart.
Nobody's going to be running to the local clinic for examination when they know that they can't even be fed there if it's confirmed they have the disease - and that's already happening.
The patient escaped from Monrovia's Elwa hospital, which last month was so crowded with cases of the deadly disease that it had to turn people away.
One woman at the scene said: "The patients are hungry, they are starving. No food, no water.
More and more, it appears the "best-case" scenario is that the disease burns itself out while being contained to only a few countries. And please keep in mind, even the UN agrees that we're going to see more of this once more diseases gain antibiotic resistance.
While I agree with most of what you wrote, I disagree with this:
Maybe they wanted to know if you're aware of C++11 or whatever and that's why they were asking those questions.
There are too many people in this industry who approach the interview process as a "pissing contest", and taking a leak on a potential job candidate makes their day a bit less run-of-the-mill. The question "List all the container classes in the STL" is completely bogus. A more pertinent question would have been "Diagram on a whiteboard how you would re-implement a subset of this container class's behavior for this particular need without using the stl." And for bonus points, you can throw in "Now I'll make it thread-safe."
But when someone asks a bogus question like that, just ask yourself "do I really want to work with jerks?" If the answer is no, thank them, tell them why you're stopping the interview, and leave. You weren't going to be happy anyway, you weren't going to get the job anyway, and maybe whoever else is sitting in on the interview will can the jerk and give you a call because they're also probably tired of the one-up-manship.
How do you address the "gaps in employment" problem that presents?
Tell them that you were in jail for writing code to do high-frequency trades that was a bit too "ambitious". Even that's better than a PhD. Or put another way, that's even better than a PhD.
Good GAWD - don't bother with crapola like linkedIn. And emailing resumes to recruiters is also a waste.
What works hasn't changed - Bang On Doors.
Companies get a gazillion resumes - and since you don't have the in-person real-time visual/audio feedback to engage with whoever is reading them, you don't have much of a chance of hitting the right buttons for that individual at that time. Worse, your resume probably contains at least one reason to reject you flat-out (in your case, the PhD).
In person, you have a first chance to make a good impression. After all, you took the effort to bang on the door instead of sitting on your arse spamming your resume to everyone, AND you can tailor your "elevator pitch" to the interests of whomever you're seeing in real-time, hitting what are their high points, instead of yours.
So what if it means cold-calling a few hundred companies? That's a few hundred that, when they say "No", you can ask them to keep you in mind when they're talking to others.
Reasons not to do this? "Oh, it's too hard! I'm too shy to talk to strangers! But I can cover thousands of potential employers sitting at home in my underwear! My online portfolio should speak for itself! Online social networking should be enough!" These are all excuses for doing the least possible. And since everyone is using the same excuses to avoid doing actual WORK, they're also good reasons NOT to do the same.
Netflix is just posturing here, claiming that they don't want to give out "highly sensitive information that might get leaked to their competitors." Their canadian competitors already have those numbers. If you're Rogers or Bell or Telus or Videotron, you just have to look at your customer's internet traffic to get the stats (and you can be darned sure they've all done this, since they're preparing to set up competing services).
So, since the "sensitive market information" is already easily compilable by their competition in the Canadian market, what's the real reason behind not trying to work out some agreement to provide the numbers? Do the real numbers disprove Netflix's claim that they "provide tons of Canadian support" and already fulfill the requirements?
Or is the real reason the "camel's nose in the tent" argument? That if they give in on this, it creates a precedent that opens the door to more CRTC regulation. That's the only thing that makes sense to me.
When it's American broadcasters going after Canada's icravetv, American courts had no problem getting a US court order that basically ended the service, because it was a rebroadcaster.
Can anyone seriously argue that Netflix isn't also rebroadcasting TV content?
Two weights, two measures. What a mess! And really, whatever solution will be a mess.
Actually, it IS about economies of scale, even thought the scale is smaller. The more 3d printers are manufactured, the lower the cost and the more features (bang for the buck) that scaling out any product brings.
The same for the end user. To use the patio chair example, if it costs me 3 times as much to print out a replacement chair as the single unit cost at the store, I'll still opt for printing if the store will only sell me in lots of 6. Right now, it will cost 100 times as much, but that's going to drop - a LOT.
We're seeing a lot of this "minimum quantity" stuff in retail, so there will be a demand for cheap 3d printing, and there will be businesses that, because they are doing it all day, will have their own economies for handling 100s of one-offs in a routine fashion. It will be no different than ordering a sub with your choice of toppings.
Now think of automotive manufacturers who no longer have to stock (literally) tons of dead inventory. Once the stock runs out, they can fulfill their legal obligation keep spares for many parts just by being able to print on demand right at the dealership. They save on warehousing, capital, insurance... it'll be a no-brainer for plenty of cheap plastic parts.
Hey, look at the bright side... the people complaining about all that cheap Chinese plastic stuff will be able to make it right at home.
It's already being used for items like old tail-lights, that cost too much from suppliers because of scarcity.
As with everything, economies of scale and increases in technology will bring the per-unit cost down.
When a body shop has the choice between ordering a whole assembly for $250, or printing up just the cracked lens that the dealer won't sell them separately for $50, they'll print to order.
Replacement parts, where the OEM won't sell just the tiny plastic gear (you need to buy the whole fuser unit) are a good example. Switch housing got cracked? Sorry, we don't sell just that... No, we only sell that in mininum quantities of 4. New knob? Sorry, you have to buy the whole timer.
This will allow for a lot of "unbundling", and could result in a revival of do-it-yourself repairs. And less waste.
Instead of ordering stuff from a supplier and having UPS ship it half-way across the country, they'll just make it at their nearest location and drop it off. Give it 20 years - this is the way of the future.
Aren't there still those mirrors on the moon [wikipedia.org] they set up that are reflecting laser light?
Denier: "It was fake. They used (wait for it) MIRRORS!"
... or magnets, cuz they're, like,. MAGIC!
Both deniers and haters have two characteristics in common
1. They are so far mentally invested in their world view that any evidence to the contrary must be denied at all cost.
2. The more time that passes, the shriller and wider-reaching their attacks. If you keep on refusing to be a true believer, eventually it must be because YOU are part of the conspiracy.
If a lot of them sound more than a bit paranoid, it's probably because they ARE paranoid.
The best "Proof" I have heard is this.
The Moon landings happened at the height of the cold war. Russian had the ability (and the desire) to monitor the whole thing.
IF a disaster happened you would be assured that Russian would have been broadcasting it quicker than the Americans would have.
IF the moon landings were faked, the Russians would have been there too shouting it out loud and clear for the world to hear, it would have been a huge propaganda coup.
However, to this day nothing has been heard from Russia about the landing being faked.
And the loonies will next say that the Russians were in on the whole thing. The two countries, by engaging in a fake "space race", were able to funnel bazillions of rubles and dollars into their military-industrial complexes, which provided a great way to skim off money^W^W^Wmodernize their economies. And if you ask for proof, they'll say that Obama and Putin are cooperating over the whole Ukraine thing, again for money. And that "isn't it a strange coincidence that since we haven't gone to war over the Ukraine, ebola has suddenly gotten out of control?"
Slashdot Mirror
Yes it is - it's just not criminal. That's why there's no debtor's prison, but you can still be sued in civil court for breech of contract, etc.
You kind of missed my point. Are Android users lemmings because they won't "buy Apple"? No. Today we're into commodity computing - pretty much all devices from the major makers do what people want, just as pretty much any computer today is good enough for most people. That being the case, are people being lemmings by voting with their wallet, to buy something that does everything they want for 1/4 the cost? I doubt it. My android spends a lot of time in my front jeans pocket, and hasn't bent yet. I even twisted it yesterday, just to see what would happen, and it returned to normal - which is what I expected considering I've dropped it on the street while running to catch a bus and it still looks new.
Sure, no product is perfect - but Apple really stepped into it - 3 out of 15 stories on the front page were bad news for Apple - how often does that happen with Android? The same thing with the news - Apple's problems have made the major news outlets world-wide. Same thing with TV shows.
And I guess you haven't ever used an Android - Settings | Backup and reset to back up my device, restore it, or reset it. Plus I can just drag whatever I want to/from my laptop, a USB stick or drive, or wherever if I don't want to trust Google's servers. And it's just a few taps to put it into developer mode. And I don't have to buy anything to develop apps for it. And I can load apps from anywhere without jail-breaking. What more does anyone need?
Apple no longer makes a decidedly superior product, and have been playing catch-up in some aspects for several years now. NFC is a good example of this. Our transit system announced it was looking at an NFC app for payments well before the newest iPhone, so don't expect the iPhone to be the first to be supported, since it (1) has lower market share, and (2) didn't have NFC capability until now and (3) wants to be tied into Apple Pay instead of just emulating the transit's smart card, and being able to be topped up via my banking app, no trusting google or apple or any 3rd party.
So why pay a premium for what is now an ordinary consumer product, one that no longer benefits from the "network effect" of "everyone else has one"? Lemmings do that :-)
You forgot also giving them a Tim Hortons coffee and a Timbits. (Kind of sensitive, and on-topic, with Burger King buying Tim Hortons and moving it's head office to Canada to benefit from lower corporate tax rates).
Bill Gated did NOT "put a pc in every home." The big barrier to putting computers in every home was price - when a hobby computer (pre IBM PC era) cost $6k and up (and a car cost less), only people who were seriously interested would have one.
The manufacturers of PC clones were what started the trend to "a pc in every home," with lower prices. As did the game consoles of the era, which were most people's first real contact with something "computer-ish".
Also, the threat to "move jobs to Canada" has been made before. They use that when they've already decided that some jobs should be moved elsewhere, so that they can get some free leverage. But threatening to move jobs to Vancouver? Someone making $150k simply won't be able to afford housing - not in Vancouver where you can't tell the difference between a million-dollar home and a crack house.
Oh, and the income tax differential means that $150k US salary doesn't leave as much to take home as $200k in Canada.
You want to see lemmings? Look at every Android owner who continues to buy into a platform that is horribly insecure and a second class citizen where applications are concerned. Buying Android because "Not Apple" makes you guys the largest bunch of lemmings history will ever see.
I guess you don't watch the news much. Apple Yanks iOS 8 Update, Apple Allegedly Knew of iCloud Brute-Force Vulnerability Since March (with screen shots of emails), Users Report Warping of Apple's iPhone 6 Plus ... and that's just today on slashdot.
Apple has been playing catch-up with android for a while. Near Field Communications is a big new thing for Apple in the i6, but it's been in android since Gingerbread.
Buying something "because it's Apple" is starting to sound like "Nobody got fired for buying IBM". It was the safe bet - until it wasn't.
I'm pretty sure hoarding trash in your house is also illegal.
Try convincing a hoarder of that. "No, no - I might need that some day!" "I paid good money for that!" "I'm collecting those pull-tabs!"
Why one person needs 5 mixers (it was on special), 6 sets of dishes (all still in their original boxes), empty egg cartons stacked to the ceiling ....
I think what's really telling is that Blackberry hopes to sell a million of them over the next year.
That's what - 2-1/2 days of iPhone sales? Sales by the 10 AM coffee break any day of the week for Android?
So what does the passport have?
Forget the complaints about the form factor being too wide - people will adjust. Just like all the new Apple iPhone 6+ users are learning to adjust to bigger screens after saying for years that there was zero need for them. However, people are definitely tied to their current functionality, and before they carry around a blackberry as a second phone, they'll just buy a 7" or 8" tablet. A lot cheaper, works with their existing tools and data, much bigger display even if it is lower resolution, etc.
How soon people forget. RIM was very quick to roll over and give access to their servers in 2010, to the Saudis of all people: as reported by Reuters and LOTS of other news sources.
RIM would share with Saudi Arabia the unique pin number and code for each BlackBerry registered there. That will allow authorities to read encrypted text sent via Messenger, an instant messaging service that's distinct from email sent on the BlackBerry.
The arrangement would effectively give Saudi Arabia access to RIM's main server for Messenger, but only for communications to and from Saudi users, the source said..
The Canadian company declined to comment, referring media to its earlier statement in which it said it "cooperates with all governments with a consistent standard."
Just google for "rim gives government access to servers" India quickly got the same. The US and China? Yep!
Significantly, DoT was pulled up by a parliamentary committee a week ago over liberal extensions given to RIM on providing messages to security agencies in a readable format. Unlike the intransigent stance it took in India, RIM had provided access to its services to the U.S. and China.
The real question is, who doesn't have access to encrypted BBM messages?
No, I would bet that the lawyers are advising them to silently let this go forever, hoping the bending problem doesn't catch on in the mainstream media, or picked up by the late night comedians. They'll wait for it to blow over like they did with the antenna problems on the iPhone 4, because ultimately that proved to be nothing to them.
Less than 2 hours after your post, Whoopie Goldberg and co (on The View) are making fun of the bending issue - "what if it were a vibrator, or a combo iPhone/iVibrator?"
Comparing your latest and greatest to a dildo on (inter) national TV ... and that's only the start.
With a disease with a high infection rate, even if more than half die within a month, you still have this huge pool of newly infected people to draw from. Thus, you can have both an increase in the number of carriers and an increase in the number of dead month-over-month, until you simply run out of people.
You are also continually playing "catch-up", as both the number of cases and the number of deaths continues to ramp up faster than your response.
Now throw in mistrust of western medicine, lack of treatment facilities, lack of effective treatments, lack of basics, and you have a pretty good formula for rapid spread of a disease with high mortality rates.
However this ends up, the world will not be the same after.
LinkedIn to face lawsuit for spamming users' email address books
A judge in the Northern District of California has paved the way for a lawsuit against the social network LinkedIn for violating the privacy of its users. The complaint was that LinkedIn "violated several state and federal laws by harvesting email addresses from the contact lists of email accounts associated with Plaintiffs’ LinkedIn accounts and by sending repeated invitations to join LinkedIn to the harvested email addresses". It relates to the fact that LinkedIn not only used the address books of those signing up for accounts to tout for business by sending out an email to that effect, but also sent follow-up email if there was no response.
US district judge Lucy Koh ruled that while users granted permission for LinkedIn to access their contact list it is this 'spamming' that is likely to land the company in court again. The judge outlined the process users were complaining about, explaining that LinkedIn sent an email to connected in users' address books -- albeit with initial permission -- sends the same email a week later if the recipient has not joined LinkedIn, and a third email if another week passes without a signup.
Further complaints stemmed from the fact that "the only way a LinkedIn user can stop the two follow-up endorsement emails (assuming the user found out about the initial emails in the first place) from going out to the email addresses harvested from that user’s external email account is for the user to individually open up each invitation from within his or her LinkedIn account (which LinkedIn has intentionally made difficult to find within the user’s account) and click a button that allows the user to withdraw that single invitation". This means it could take several hours to individually cancel hundreds, or even thousands, of emails that were scheduled to be sent out.
The complainants pointed out that LinkedIn's Help Center pages are filled with complaints from other users about the emails. Some users said that "LinkedIn knew about flaws in its process but nevertheless took no action". One of the plaintiff's main causes for concern is that their contacts would regard the emails sent out by LinkedIn as being indicative that they endorsed LinkedIn, as well as being seen as being so enamored with the network as to spam on its behalf. This 'spamming' is seen as having the potential to damage the reputation of the user the emails were sent on the behalf of -- it could "injure users' reputations by allowing contacts to think that the users are the types of people who spam their contacts or are unable to take the hint that their contacts do not want to join their LinkedIn network".
The judge also pointed out that some of the wording used during the signup process was misleading. "By stating a mere three screens before the disclosure regarding the first invitation that 'We will not... email anyone without your permission,' LinkedIn may have actively led users astray". Koh also suggests that LinkedIn has violated California law by associating users' names and images advertising for further business.
I sure as heck wouldn't want anyone to think I was willing to spam for linkedin, which still resembles a bunch of strangers asking other strangers to recommend them to still other strangers.
1.2 million? I call BS. When things start to look really bad people will voluntarily stay at home, dramatically reducing transmission. And this is before we consider government action. This already happened during the swine flu scare in Mexico where everyone stayed home for a week and then on top of that the government ordered restaurants, schools and other businesses closed.
Despite the drug wars, Mexico at least has a functioning government. Sierra Leone and Liberia? They're at the bottom of the barrel. Their Human Development Index sits at 175st and 183rd> on the planet respectively. In terms of per capita income, they rank 180th and 181st.
Sierra Leone has already gone through the process of being a failed nation-state, and will be right back there if ebola continues to spread. Liberia has already admitted they could just cease to exist.
Besides, the H1N1 virus had a death rate of just 0.02 percent not the eye-popping 50% to 90% of ebola.
Assuming that the dead are buried safely just isn't going to happen. When you have that many people dying, nobody's going to be in a rush to join them by burying them. "Let someone else do it." And eventually, there just won't be enough people to bury all the dead even if they were willing. They'd be spending way too much time meeting their own basic survival needs in countries that are falling apart.
Nobody's going to be running to the local clinic for examination when they know that they can't even be fed there if it's confirmed they have the disease - and that's already happening.
The patient escaped from Monrovia's Elwa hospital, which last month was so crowded with cases of the deadly disease that it had to turn people away.
One woman at the scene said: "The patients are hungry, they are starving. No food, no water.
More and more, it appears the "best-case" scenario is that the disease burns itself out while being contained to only a few countries. And please keep in mind, even the UN agrees that we're going to see more of this once more diseases gain antibiotic resistance.
While I agree with most of what you wrote, I disagree with this:
Maybe they wanted to know if you're aware of C++11 or whatever and that's why they were asking those questions.
There are too many people in this industry who approach the interview process as a "pissing contest", and taking a leak on a potential job candidate makes their day a bit less run-of-the-mill. The question "List all the container classes in the STL" is completely bogus. A more pertinent question would have been "Diagram on a whiteboard how you would re-implement a subset of this container class's behavior for this particular need without using the stl." And for bonus points, you can throw in "Now I'll make it thread-safe."
But when someone asks a bogus question like that, just ask yourself "do I really want to work with jerks?" If the answer is no, thank them, tell them why you're stopping the interview, and leave. You weren't going to be happy anyway, you weren't going to get the job anyway, and maybe whoever else is sitting in on the interview will can the jerk and give you a call because they're also probably tired of the one-up-manship.
How do you address the "gaps in employment" problem that presents?
Tell them that you were in jail for writing code to do high-frequency trades that was a bit too "ambitious". Even that's better than a PhD. Or put another way, that's even better than a PhD.
Good GAWD - don't bother with crapola like linkedIn. And emailing resumes to recruiters is also a waste.
What works hasn't changed - Bang On Doors.
Companies get a gazillion resumes - and since you don't have the in-person real-time visual/audio feedback to engage with whoever is reading them, you don't have much of a chance of hitting the right buttons for that individual at that time. Worse, your resume probably contains at least one reason to reject you flat-out (in your case, the PhD).
In person, you have a first chance to make a good impression. After all, you took the effort to bang on the door instead of sitting on your arse spamming your resume to everyone, AND you can tailor your "elevator pitch" to the interests of whomever you're seeing in real-time, hitting what are their high points, instead of yours.
So what if it means cold-calling a few hundred companies? That's a few hundred that, when they say "No", you can ask them to keep you in mind when they're talking to others.
Reasons not to do this? "Oh, it's too hard! I'm too shy to talk to strangers! But I can cover thousands of potential employers sitting at home in my underwear! My online portfolio should speak for itself! Online social networking should be enough!" These are all excuses for doing the least possible. And since everyone is using the same excuses to avoid doing actual WORK, they're also good reasons NOT to do the same.
Netflix is just posturing here, claiming that they don't want to give out "highly sensitive information that might get leaked to their competitors." Their canadian competitors already have those numbers. If you're Rogers or Bell or Telus or Videotron, you just have to look at your customer's internet traffic to get the stats (and you can be darned sure they've all done this, since they're preparing to set up competing services).
So, since the "sensitive market information" is already easily compilable by their competition in the Canadian market, what's the real reason behind not trying to work out some agreement to provide the numbers? Do the real numbers disprove Netflix's claim that they "provide tons of Canadian support" and already fulfill the requirements?
Or is the real reason the "camel's nose in the tent" argument? That if they give in on this, it creates a precedent that opens the door to more CRTC regulation. That's the only thing that makes sense to me.
Netflix has permission - provided they conform to reporting requirements. They have refused to. There's the problem.
When it's American broadcasters going after Canada's icravetv, American courts had no problem getting a US court order that basically ended the service, because it was a rebroadcaster.
Can anyone seriously argue that Netflix isn't also rebroadcasting TV content?
Two weights, two measures. What a mess! And really, whatever solution will be a mess.
In other words, the costs are in line with a running a regular copy shop in a strip mall. Sounds good to me.
Actually, it IS about economies of scale, even thought the scale is smaller. The more 3d printers are manufactured, the lower the cost and the more features (bang for the buck) that scaling out any product brings.
The same for the end user. To use the patio chair example, if it costs me 3 times as much to print out a replacement chair as the single unit cost at the store, I'll still opt for printing if the store will only sell me in lots of 6. Right now, it will cost 100 times as much, but that's going to drop - a LOT.
We're seeing a lot of this "minimum quantity" stuff in retail, so there will be a demand for cheap 3d printing, and there will be businesses that, because they are doing it all day, will have their own economies for handling 100s of one-offs in a routine fashion. It will be no different than ordering a sub with your choice of toppings.
Now think of automotive manufacturers who no longer have to stock (literally) tons of dead inventory. Once the stock runs out, they can fulfill their legal obligation keep spares for many parts just by being able to print on demand right at the dealership. They save on warehousing, capital, insurance ... it'll be a no-brainer for plenty of cheap plastic parts.
Hey, look at the bright side ... the people complaining about all that cheap Chinese plastic stuff will be able to make it right at home.
It's already being used for items like old tail-lights, that cost too much from suppliers because of scarcity.
As with everything, economies of scale and increases in technology will bring the per-unit cost down.
When a body shop has the choice between ordering a whole assembly for $250, or printing up just the cracked lens that the dealer won't sell them separately for $50, they'll print to order.
Replacement parts, where the OEM won't sell just the tiny plastic gear (you need to buy the whole fuser unit) are a good example. Switch housing got cracked? Sorry, we don't sell just that ... No, we only sell that in mininum quantities of 4. New knob? Sorry, you have to buy the whole timer.
This will allow for a lot of "unbundling", and could result in a revival of do-it-yourself repairs. And less waste.
Instead of ordering stuff from a supplier and having UPS ship it half-way across the country, they'll just make it at their nearest location and drop it off. Give it 20 years - this is the way of the future.
Aren't there still those mirrors on the moon [wikipedia.org] they set up that are reflecting laser light?
Denier: "It was fake. They used (wait for it) MIRRORS!"
Both deniers and haters have two characteristics in common
If a lot of them sound more than a bit paranoid, it's probably because they ARE paranoid.
The best "Proof" I have heard is this.
The Moon landings happened at the height of the cold war. Russian had the ability (and the desire) to monitor the whole thing.
IF a disaster happened you would be assured that Russian would have been broadcasting it quicker than the Americans would have.
IF the moon landings were faked, the Russians would have been there too shouting it out loud and clear for the world to hear, it would have been a huge propaganda coup.
However, to this day nothing has been heard from Russia about the landing being faked.
And the loonies will next say that the Russians were in on the whole thing. The two countries, by engaging in a fake "space race", were able to funnel bazillions of rubles and dollars into their military-industrial complexes, which provided a great way to skim off money^W^W^Wmodernize their economies. And if you ask for proof, they'll say that Obama and Putin are cooperating over the whole Ukraine thing, again for money. And that "isn't it a strange coincidence that since we haven't gone to war over the Ukraine, ebola has suddenly gotten out of control?"
In Soviet Russia, Conspiracy Theorists Moon YOU!