Actually, your rant is very timely. I read this article on the same subject in the newspaper this morning. Unfortunately, idea that discipline problems disrupt teaching is the sort of problem that doesn't have an easy solution, so often gets overlooked.
when you're so drunk that you could lose track of how much (or little) money you can spare
This is a pretty legitimate concern. There was a scandal at the Gold Club, the biggest "gentlemen's club" in Atlanta, a few years ago. They were charging extra stuff to the tabs of men who were really sloshed, figuring they wouldn't remember the next morning how many lap dances they'd had. I believe they targeted business travelers and pro athletes, people likely to have the money but not scrutinize their bills, and were able to get away with it for quite some time.
But not all blogs are journals. Some, like boingboing and memepool post interesting links with brief commentary. And don't forget Roland P.'s Technology Trends. By reading these blogs, I can find out about cool new stuff hours before it reaches Slashdot, and weeks before it hits the regular media.
Basically, blogs help me refine online content and figure out what's worth reading.
This is off-topic, but woo! Not only is the CD my former band is on [link=http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/shuteyeva4]on their site[/link], the review says we have one of the best songs on the album, thanks in part to my "fiddle" work (actually it was a viola but a compliment is a compliment).
I wonder how royalties for compilation albums like this work?
The internet should not replace old fashioned resources but merely embrace them.
I think this is where A9 will come in handy. Because it can search the text of all the books on Amazon, you could use the search engine to point you towards a physical resource.
It's good to hear that. When a friend of mine graduated with her degree in Math & Computer Science (our Uni didn't have a plain CS degree), she fretted about having learned so much theory and so little "practical" stuff. She read one of those "teach yourself C++ in a weekend" books and credited that with getting her her first job. But several years later, she is a successful database programmer, and I don't think it's all due to that one book. Being able to check off the skill boxes will get you in the HR door, but it's real knowledge and understanding that will get you farther.
If that's what you want to do, don't waste your time in college, because they won't teach you that.
Actually, I'd argue that if you're going to be writing web front-ends for databases (which is what I do for a living) you should take some classes in Human-Computer Interaction. It's what I'd do if I could take a couple years off work to go back to school. A lot of web interfaces for databases suck, and if you can build one that doesn't you will be a notch above the other guys.
There's no reason to go throwing away a perfectly good shower curtain when you can just wash it in the washing machine. I can't find the original hint from Heloise, but here's the gist of it:
Put your vinyl shower curtain in the washing machine with some laundry detergent, a little bleach, and a few towels. Use the regular wash cycle with warm water. The towels help "scrub" the shower curtain, so it will come out of the machine clean and organism-free. Hang it back up to dry.
That doesn't happen in the exclusive or dominantly middle class schools, where the ethos is to prepare everyone for university.
As someone who attended public school in an upper-middle-class neighborhood, I have to disagree. If you weren't into sports or wild parties, you weren't cool. If you weren't friends with the cool kids, you were teased. I was interested in reading books, drawing, and playing with computers. I had friends with the same interests who were also not into sports and drinking, so we were a group of nerds.
Sara Bunting has written a good article on school cliques and teasing that you might want to read.
Here's a prediction: as soon as this becomes imminant, we will see the massive implementation of extremely restrictive measures to control it.
I agree, but not with the specifics you mention. I think it's going to be more like the mobile phone industry, at least in the U.S. Large intrenched corporations make the technology available to conumers in a large, slow, bureaucratic, expensive way. The idea that all but young, wealthy technophiles in big cities will be late adopters is a self-fullfilling prophecy. By the time the Assembler Companies let their first-generation technology trickle down to the American masses, Asians and Europeans will be enjoying second- or third-generation molecular assemblers.
Is it a company you would be proud to admit working for to your friends / family / peers / random people?
Good question. Right after I graduated from college, I was doing temp work. I was depressed because I didn't have a "real" job and whenever someone asked me the dreaded question, "What do you do?" I felt like a loser when I answered "I'm temping" or "I'm looking for a job right now." So one day I went to a job fair determined to get a job, any job, as long as it was full-time. One interview later I was hired as a pre-need cemetery salesperson. After one miserable month I learned that there are some jobs worse than unemployment, and that it's hard to sell something when you're reluctant to tell people what you're selling.
Re. the MasterCards - they still accept regular MasterCards, just not bank debit cards being used as credit cards. My bank pays me back a percentage of each purchase made when I use the card and select the "credit" option. It's no skin off my nose, since either way the money's coming straight out of my account.
I agree that credit cards are a huge scam. I learned this the hard way. Fortunately, I've nearly finished paying off the mistakes of my misspent youth.
I'd say it's less about skin color and more about cultural familiarity. Growing up in the 80's, the USSR was in the news every day. My parents' generation had been taught to hate the Russians and wanted to correct that in their children. There were exchange programs and other educational opportunities to teach us kids not to discriminate against the Soviet kids just because our governments didn't agree. Plus, we learned about the history of Eastern Europe as part of our world history classes.
By contrast, what did I learn about India growing up? That it was a British colony for a while until Ghandi came along. That's it, that's all.
People fear the unfamiliar. If we make an effort to educate ourselves and our children about the culture and history of India, I'm pretty sure the discrimination will lessen. But this kind of thing takes some time.
There are some reasons other than what you mentioned that I won't shop at Wal-mart:
1) Their business model is to always lower their prices - you've probably seen the happy face ads on TV. In order to do this, they demand that their suppliers lower their prices. If the supplier refuses, Wal-mart threatens to look for a new supplier. Because Wal-mart is so big, the loss of such a contract can be devastating to most suppliers. So the suppliers cut costs to meet Wal-Mart's demands, laying off workers or moving operations overseas. (There was a good article about this about a month ago, but it's expired.)
2) They no longer let me use my bank MasterCard as a credit card because they don't like the fees MC charges.
3) Their practice of offering lousy employee benefits is encouraging other retailers to do the same.
Neither is yours. There are a huge variety of different types of Christian churches out there, with different worship styles and different kinds of people in the congregation.
If you came to my church, where everyone dresses up and recites Psalms and prayers out loud in unison, you might feel uncomfortable. I've been to other churches where I didn't exactly feel comfortable because the congregation was expected to sit there and be silent the whole time unless we were singing. Some churches are effusively welcoming and want visitors to stand up and introduce themselves. Others are more reserved and let visitors blend in quietly. But this isn't a problem with the church - it's serving the needs of that particular congregation. At least in the US, there are enough Christian churches around that everyone should be able find one where they feel welcome.
Of course, this is for a playlist that you have to create.
Actually, the Recently Played smart playlist comes already set up with iTunes. So does Top 25 Most Played, My Top Rated, and 60's Music.
My current fave smart playlist is one I set up called Unrated. It shuffles through all the songs I haven't assigned a rating to yet so I can hear them a few times and decide whether or not I like them.
That's in some ways why I'm glad Firefly was cancelled
On one hand, I'm glad it wasn't around long enough to jump the shark. On the other hand, I'm annoyed that we never got to find out about Book's mysterious background, what happened to River, who the blue hand guys were, and what exactly the Blue Sun corporation was. I'm hoping the movie explains some of this.
It's not just Anime, but many Japanese TV series have a planned expiration date. They're sort of like extra-long mini-series. For example, I saw one about a boy whose girlfriend shrank to 6" high. It was a fun teen drama that lasted about 8 or ten episodes. Long enough to get to have a decent story arc, not so long that the gimmick got old. After it was over, they ported a couple of the most popular actors into a new 8-10 episode teen drama series with an entirely new story.
Not to mention, they're just links so I can open them in a new tab without interrupting whatever I'm doing and look at them later.
I frequently do this with regular non-flash banner ads if they're advertising something that looks interesting. I don't click on Flash ads, though, because I can't right-click to open them in a new tab. I can, however, use the menu that appears when I right-click to stop their playback.
Back in the Good Old Days (1999), a chocolate company called Dan's Chocolates opened a web site, got some capital, and decided to create buzz by giving away free boxes of chocolates (I think they may have asked for a $1 token shipping charge). They got so many requests for chocolate that their ordering system choked and some people didn't receive any candy. It was a time of free-flowing capital and general goodwill, so to make it up to the folks who didn't receive their chocolate, instead of just offering a refund they sent everyone who had requested a box the first time around another box of chocolates.
The chocolate was pretty good, though I personally didn't order again (I still like See's better). What's amazing is that, even after that expensive publicity stunt and the.com bust, Dan's Chocolates is still in business.
I used to build all kinds of custom multimedia presentations for a former employer. Typically, various parts of the presentation would be customizable by the end user (e.g. ability to swap out videos or change some text). On one project, the requirements kept changing every day but I worked hard to meet them, adding and removing features as requested. I spent about 3x the hours budgeted working on this thing. Finally, it ended up that what the client really wanted was an empty presentation with a pretty background that would let them add their own bullet lists to slides and then display the slides linearly. Yes, I had just re-created PowerPoint, only with less functionality and for 10x the price!
True, we don't rent movies as often since we have Flix, Encore, WAM! etc. showing a variety of movies 24/7. But those are all included in the cost of our cable package. Since we have the package that includes Comedy Central & BBC America, they're along for the ride. But if I had to pay for each movie channel individually, I might get a Netflix subscription instead.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, your rant is very timely. I read this article on the same subject in the newspaper this morning. Unfortunately, idea that discipline problems disrupt teaching is the sort of problem that doesn't have an easy solution, so often gets overlooked.
when you're so drunk that you could lose track of how much (or little) money you can spare
This is a pretty legitimate concern. There was a scandal at the Gold Club, the biggest "gentlemen's club" in Atlanta, a few years ago. They were charging extra stuff to the tabs of men who were really sloshed, figuring they wouldn't remember the next morning how many lap dances they'd had. I believe they targeted business travelers and pro athletes, people likely to have the money but not scrutinize their bills, and were able to get away with it for quite some time.
But not all blogs are journals. Some, like boingboing and memepool post interesting links with brief commentary. And don't forget Roland P.'s Technology Trends. By reading these blogs, I can find out about cool new stuff hours before it reaches Slashdot, and weeks before it hits the regular media.
Basically, blogs help me refine online content and figure out what's worth reading.
This is off-topic, but woo! Not only is the CD my former band is on [link=http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/shuteyeva4]on their site[/link], the review says we have one of the best songs on the album, thanks in part to my "fiddle" work (actually it was a viola but a compliment is a compliment).
I wonder how royalties for compilation albums like this work?
Sounds to me like someone needs to build freeware or shareware spyware-free clone of Weatherbug, Comet Cursor, etc.
The internet should not replace old fashioned resources but merely embrace them.
I think this is where A9 will come in handy. Because it can search the text of all the books on Amazon, you could use the search engine to point you towards a physical resource.
It's good to hear that. When a friend of mine graduated with her degree in Math & Computer Science (our Uni didn't have a plain CS degree), she fretted about having learned so much theory and so little "practical" stuff. She read one of those "teach yourself C++ in a weekend" books and credited that with getting her her first job. But several years later, she is a successful database programmer, and I don't think it's all due to that one book. Being able to check off the skill boxes will get you in the HR door, but it's real knowledge and understanding that will get you farther.
If that's what you want to do, don't waste your time in college, because they won't teach you that.
Actually, I'd argue that if you're going to be writing web front-ends for databases (which is what I do for a living) you should take some classes in Human-Computer Interaction. It's what I'd do if I could take a couple years off work to go back to school. A lot of web interfaces for databases suck, and if you can build one that doesn't you will be a notch above the other guys.
There's no reason to go throwing away a perfectly good shower curtain when you can just wash it in the washing machine. I can't find the original hint from Heloise, but here's the gist of it:
Put your vinyl shower curtain in the washing machine with some laundry detergent, a little bleach, and a few towels. Use the regular wash cycle with warm water. The towels help "scrub" the shower curtain, so it will come out of the machine clean and organism-free. Hang it back up to dry.
That doesn't happen in the exclusive or dominantly middle class schools, where the ethos is to prepare everyone for university.
As someone who attended public school in an upper-middle-class neighborhood, I have to disagree. If you weren't into sports or wild parties, you weren't cool. If you weren't friends with the cool kids, you were teased. I was interested in reading books, drawing, and playing with computers. I had friends with the same interests who were also not into sports and drinking, so we were a group of nerds.
Sara Bunting has written a good article on school cliques and teasing that you might want to read.
Here's a prediction: as soon as this becomes imminant, we will see the massive implementation of extremely restrictive measures to control it.
I agree, but not with the specifics you mention. I think it's going to be more like the mobile phone industry, at least in the U.S. Large intrenched corporations make the technology available to conumers in a large, slow, bureaucratic, expensive way. The idea that all but young, wealthy technophiles in big cities will be late adopters is a self-fullfilling prophecy. By the time the Assembler Companies let their first-generation technology trickle down to the American masses, Asians and Europeans will be enjoying second- or third-generation molecular assemblers.
You can't have public policy that is aimed at 100,000 people when the other multi-multi-millions are also involved.
I think the "multi-multi-millions" he's referring to are dollars, not people.
Is it a company you would be proud to admit working for to your friends / family / peers / random people?
Good question. Right after I graduated from college, I was doing temp work. I was depressed because I didn't have a "real" job and whenever someone asked me the dreaded question, "What do you do?" I felt like a loser when I answered "I'm temping" or "I'm looking for a job right now." So one day I went to a job fair determined to get a job, any job, as long as it was full-time. One interview later I was hired as a pre-need cemetery salesperson. After one miserable month I learned that there are some jobs worse than unemployment, and that it's hard to sell something when you're reluctant to tell people what you're selling.
Re. the MasterCards - they still accept regular MasterCards, just not bank debit cards being used as credit cards. My bank pays me back a percentage of each purchase made when I use the card and select the "credit" option. It's no skin off my nose, since either way the money's coming straight out of my account.
I agree that credit cards are a huge scam. I learned this the hard way. Fortunately, I've nearly finished paying off the mistakes of my misspent youth.
I'd say it's less about skin color and more about cultural familiarity. Growing up in the 80's, the USSR was in the news every day. My parents' generation had been taught to hate the Russians and wanted to correct that in their children. There were exchange programs and other educational opportunities to teach us kids not to discriminate against the Soviet kids just because our governments didn't agree. Plus, we learned about the history of Eastern Europe as part of our world history classes.
By contrast, what did I learn about India growing up? That it was a British colony for a while until Ghandi came along. That's it, that's all.
People fear the unfamiliar. If we make an effort to educate ourselves and our children about the culture and history of India, I'm pretty sure the discrimination will lessen. But this kind of thing takes some time.
There are some reasons other than what you mentioned that I won't shop at Wal-mart:
1) Their business model is to always lower their prices - you've probably seen the happy face ads on TV. In order to do this, they demand that their suppliers lower their prices. If the supplier refuses, Wal-mart threatens to look for a new supplier. Because Wal-mart is so big, the loss of such a contract can be devastating to most suppliers. So the suppliers cut costs to meet Wal-Mart's demands, laying off workers or moving operations overseas. (There was a good article about this about a month ago, but it's expired.)
2) They no longer let me use my bank MasterCard as a credit card because they don't like the fees MC charges.
3) Their practice of offering lousy employee benefits is encouraging other retailers to do the same.
Your church is not normal.
Neither is yours. There are a huge variety of different types of Christian churches out there, with different worship styles and different kinds of people in the congregation.
If you came to my church, where everyone dresses up and recites Psalms and prayers out loud in unison, you might feel uncomfortable. I've been to other churches where I didn't exactly feel comfortable because the congregation was expected to sit there and be silent the whole time unless we were singing. Some churches are effusively welcoming and want visitors to stand up and introduce themselves. Others are more reserved and let visitors blend in quietly. But this isn't a problem with the church - it's serving the needs of that particular congregation. At least in the US, there are enough Christian churches around that everyone should be able find one where they feel welcome.
Of course, this is for a playlist that you have to create.
Actually, the Recently Played smart playlist comes already set up with iTunes. So does Top 25 Most Played, My Top Rated, and 60's Music.
My current fave smart playlist is one I set up called Unrated. It shuffles through all the songs I haven't assigned a rating to yet so I can hear them a few times and decide whether or not I like them.
Never believe anyone who refers to the use of shared public domain code as "theft".
I generally follow the rule "never believe anyone whose name is Rob Enderle."
That's in some ways why I'm glad Firefly was cancelled
On one hand, I'm glad it wasn't around long enough to jump the shark. On the other hand, I'm annoyed that we never got to find out about Book's mysterious background, what happened to River, who the blue hand guys were, and what exactly the Blue Sun corporation was. I'm hoping the movie explains some of this.
It's not just Anime, but many Japanese TV series have a planned expiration date. They're sort of like extra-long mini-series. For example, I saw one about a boy whose girlfriend shrank to 6" high. It was a fun teen drama that lasted about 8 or ten episodes. Long enough to get to have a decent story arc, not so long that the gimmick got old. After it was over, they ported a couple of the most popular actors into a new 8-10 episode teen drama series with an entirely new story.
Not to mention, they're just links so I can open them in a new tab without interrupting whatever I'm doing and look at them later.
I frequently do this with regular non-flash banner ads if they're advertising something that looks interesting. I don't click on Flash ads, though, because I can't right-click to open them in a new tab. I can, however, use the menu that appears when I right-click to stop their playback.
Back in the Good Old Days (1999), a chocolate company called Dan's Chocolates opened a web site, got some capital, and decided to create buzz by giving away free boxes of chocolates (I think they may have asked for a $1 token shipping charge). They got so many requests for chocolate that their ordering system choked and some people didn't receive any candy. It was a time of free-flowing capital and general goodwill, so to make it up to the folks who didn't receive their chocolate, instead of just offering a refund they sent everyone who had requested a box the first time around another box of chocolates.
.com bust, Dan's Chocolates is still in business.
The chocolate was pretty good, though I personally didn't order again (I still like See's better). What's amazing is that, even after that expensive publicity stunt and the
I used to build all kinds of custom multimedia presentations for a former employer. Typically, various parts of the presentation would be customizable by the end user (e.g. ability to swap out videos or change some text). On one project, the requirements kept changing every day but I worked hard to meet them, adding and removing features as requested. I spent about 3x the hours budgeted working on this thing. Finally, it ended up that what the client really wanted was an empty presentation with a pretty background that would let them add their own bullet lists to slides and then display the slides linearly. Yes, I had just re-created PowerPoint, only with less functionality and for 10x the price!
True, we don't rent movies as often since we have Flix, Encore, WAM! etc. showing a variety of movies 24/7. But those are all included in the cost of our cable package. Since we have the package that includes Comedy Central & BBC America, they're along for the ride. But if I had to pay for each movie channel individually, I might get a Netflix subscription instead.