"If you are Spanish and use English to speak to Dutch guys in Amsterdam you are fine. But if you are American and expect them to speak in English, not so fine."
Both cases are fine, speaking has someone who travels to Amsterdam often, and in fact returned from there only yesterday.
The vast majority of Dutch people are fully aware that theirs is a very difficult language to learn if it is not your mother tongue. I was speaking to a guy who had moved to Amsterdam from Brazil 10 years ago that still was at a simple conversational level in Dutch.
Really, I have yet to meet a Dutch person that seemed offended or annoyed that I could only communicate with them in English, in fact, most seem to like showing off their English fluency (and they should feel proud, after all, having so many people that are bi-lingual or even multi-lingual, is a pretty good reflection of the quality of their education system).
I can tell you that there are lots of ways to upset a Dutch person, and when you do, they will be happy to tell you, but speaking in English is not one of them.
Remember how piracy helps the terrorists and drug dealers?
Certain forms of piracy certainly do! It is common knowledge that certain gangs in the London area mass produce pirate DVDs to sell to fund other, more sinister, activities. If it is true in London, it is probably true in many other parts of the world (I just happen to live near London).
It could probably be argued that internet based file trading actually reduces the income of these gangs. The profit is all about being the middle-man. Whether that is illegal gangs selling pirate DVDs, groups like the RIAA or torrent websites funded by advertising dollars. Since the widespread adoption of broadband internet, and the development of easy to use filesharing tools, many of the people that would have used the gang funding guy who comes to the city's commercial districts selling DVDs will now opt to use online fire sharing. Of course, it is not always entirely clear where the torrent advert money ends up, but it is reasonable to suggest that it is less likely to be used to support a drug empire.
It seems to me that google page rank is probably the most effective implementation of this concept that is possible. Technically it does not ensure that the content of a website is truthful or reliable, but it does make the determination that it is popular, which is all any kind of 'press here to record that this website is truthful' is ever going to do. There are very few areas where people will agree on 'truth'. Imagine this concept applied to websites that discuss creationism for example. These kind of sites will receive many votes for being both truthful and untruthful. All you are really doing is measuring the popularity of the idea that they express.
Perhaps, an attribute could be added to the 'a' tag to indicate the type of link, so that a page author can indicate a rough reason why they have linked to a page. If I were to create a link in this post to a site that speaks of the LHCs potential to destroy the planet and called the link... "Check out these silly bastards". The PageRank of that site would increase, as there is no way to tell if I am supporting or lampooning that site with my link. A simple category system (not unlike slashdots moderations options) might help this process. So that I could add a category="funny" or category="insightful" to my link tags and any analysis tools (PageRank in particular) could adjust the ranking accordingly. Would be interesting to see what the top 10 funniest sites on the web were anyway:o)
I have not seen this kind of thing yet (I guess I have smart friends;o)). Are you saying that these people actually have their username/password compromised or is there some kind of facebook app that when installed can initiate this kind of activity?
Yeah, they are just a person in the leading opposition party to fill the role, (the presumption is that the 'shadow home secretary' would become the home secretary should the leading opposition party ever get into power, but thats not always the case, usually there is a reshuffle of jobs after an election). Despite all the crap in our political system, this works quite well as there is always somebody in the opposition party whose job it is to keep up to date on the relevant issues. The shadow health secretary should, in theory, be quite well versed with health system policy so if the actual health secretary proposes some new legislation, the shadow health secretary is in a position to challenge that proposal. Checks and balances basically.
Yes, my thoughts ran immediately to pulp fiction too. In fact, if I was asked to infer what this email address tells me about the owner, my reaction would have been, "Samuel L Jackson has used Tim Roth as an intermediary to tell that bitch to be cool":)
I must read 'Mein Kampf' at some point. The subject matter holds little interest with me, but with all these proof-reading Nazi's the language must be absolutely flawless!
I call bullshit on this, either you live in scotland, in which case your trip to london will be longer than your trip from london to amsterdam, or you are comparing bought on the day open tickets to pre-booked cheap tickets, which is just bullshit. Your amsterdam train ride is 7 miles, which if you went the same distance in london is like a zone 2 tube trip for £3.50.
To be fair, you are correct, I was comparing the lowest possible journey price to Amsterdam with the highest possible journey price to London. I would accept that this might have been a little misleading, but it is not 'bullshit', just a bit dramatic.
The point still stands though, I am fairly certain that we have one of the most expensive public transport systems in the developed world and at the same time are one of the most heavily taxed people in the developed world. Someone is clearly doing *something* wrong.
I'm not surprised we Dutch are trying (and apparently succeeding) to hack public transportation systems facilities if you look at the current pricing of our own system.
I am assuming that you are implying that the Dutch transport system is expensive. Clearly you have never been to the UK. I live an hour away from London by train, if I were to shop around a little and pick the budget airline flights I could fly to Schipol from Gatwick/Heathrow, get the train to Amsterdam Central and a tram to my hotel for a cheaper price than my train journey from my house to the airport!! It really is *that* bad.
I have been to Amsterdam many times (not *just* for the usual tourist reasons, my grandmother was born there, so I visit family), and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that transport around Amsterdam is many time more efficient and cheaper than transport around London, and I would much rather deal with the bizarre conversations with strangers that have 'had a little schmoke' on late night Amsterdam trams than the strangers that are looking to mug me on the London underground.
Both of our countries are culturally rich, with a fascinating history, but yours seems far superior when it comes to the management of public services.
I am really sorry, something else you can learn from me is to always use the preview button:).
The preamble was a little bit of waffle anyway... the important point...
All significant performance problems in software are architectural in nature.
You should be coding in the most easy to maintain style. Doing something difficult to maintain (like breaking MVC by merging controller logic into the view) might save a few milliseconds here and there. You will be quite proud of this until someone with more experience comes along and drops in a second level cache or adds some database indexes and increases performances by two orders of magnitude.
In which case, let me give you the benefit of my experience as well, the GP poster is absolutely correct.
Its a funny thing, but *every* junior developer (which I define as All significant performance problems in software are architectural in nature.
You should be coding in the most easy to maintain style. Doing something difficult to maintain (like breaking MVC by merging controller logic into the view) might save a few milliseconds here and there. You will be quite proud of this until someone with more experience comes along and drops in a second level cache or adds some database indexes and increases performances by two orders of magnitude.
This comment expresses the view of an agnostic. So many people consider agnostic to be, 'A person that hasn't made their mind up/sitting on the fence', but this is a poor interpretation of the definition at best.
I consider myself agnostic in that I believe that a human trying to understand the nature of 'god', is like trying to teach an ant to solve mathematical equations. The answer to these kinds of questions are just as 'unknowable' as trying to determine what is currently happening in a place that is 1 billion light years away. In a billion years, we may have the answer, but until then it is inderminate, and therefore not worth worrying about.
We, as humans, have this arrogant perspective that the answers to any given question are *just* beyond our current understanding. The truth of the matter is, that despite our advances, we are biological organisms that have evolved to survive in and comprehend a *very* narrow subset of possible states. Hawking himself, in one his books (probably 'brief history'), states that some things simply cannot be comprehended by the human mind, I think he was talking about a model of the universe with more spacial dimensions that we can perceive. Since we are used to viewing the world in 3 spacial dimensions, it is not possible for us to picture a 'shape' with 4 spacial dimensions, we have not evolved with that capability because it is not required in our '3 spacial dimension' view of our environment. Since there is no real finite limit to complexity, how about trying to picture a universe with a hundred billion spacial dimensions....? That level of complexity could be what is required to understand 'god'.
Agnostics simply believe that trying to comprehend something that is almost certainly 'unprovable' (in that it exists outside the concept of 'cause and effect'), is the pursuit of fools:). I am not opposed to the idea that when I die, I might discover that there is more to my existance than I understand at the moment. Until that day, my only reason to speculate would be to provoke arguments with those who have chosen to speculate differently;)
Well... I *am* a pilot (well ok, student pilot, but I am about 95% of the way through the course).
My first ever flying lesson was giving to me by a women who was certainly older than 49 and quite possibly a grandmother (I didn't ask). When you are about to take to the skies for a first flying lesson, and shortly before take off, you instructor finishes the final briefing with the phrase, "Ohh.. and here is what you do if anything happens to me up there...". You tend to notice stuff like age!:)
Slashdot Mirror
Yes yes yes... it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye, or takes a chair in the face.
You are about 30 years behind the curve with your questions.
So that you can immediately exclude any candidate who includes 'cheap' in their choice of two on the basis that they are clearly an idiot?
"I am not very good, but at least you won't have to pay me much!"
"It takes me ages to do anything, but you won't have to pay me much!".
Two phrases that are pretty much certain to ensure that you remain unemployed!
...uphill, both ways...
An excellent point!
How fortunate that the US has no ethnic ghettos and doesn't require a regular pledge to a Christian (or at the very least monotheist) god.
I agree with everything you have said except...
"If you are Spanish and use English to speak to Dutch guys in Amsterdam you are fine. But if you are American and expect them to speak in English, not so fine."
Both cases are fine, speaking has someone who travels to Amsterdam often, and in fact returned from there only yesterday.
The vast majority of Dutch people are fully aware that theirs is a very difficult language to learn if it is not your mother tongue. I was speaking to a guy who had moved to Amsterdam from Brazil 10 years ago that still was at a simple conversational level in Dutch.
Really, I have yet to meet a Dutch person that seemed offended or annoyed that I could only communicate with them in English, in fact, most seem to like showing off their English fluency (and they should feel proud, after all, having so many people that are bi-lingual or even multi-lingual, is a pretty good reflection of the quality of their education system).
I can tell you that there are lots of ways to upset a Dutch person, and when you do, they will be happy to tell you, but speaking in English is not one of them.
Certain forms of piracy certainly do! It is common knowledge that certain gangs in the London area mass produce pirate DVDs to sell to fund other, more sinister, activities. If it is true in London, it is probably true in many other parts of the world (I just happen to live near London).
It could probably be argued that internet based file trading actually reduces the income of these gangs. The profit is all about being the middle-man. Whether that is illegal gangs selling pirate DVDs, groups like the RIAA or torrent websites funded by advertising dollars. Since the widespread adoption of broadband internet, and the development of easy to use filesharing tools, many of the people that would have used the gang funding guy who comes to the city's commercial districts selling DVDs will now opt to use online fire sharing. Of course, it is not always entirely clear where the torrent advert money ends up, but it is reasonable to suggest that it is less likely to be used to support a drug empire.
It seems to me that google page rank is probably the most effective implementation of this concept that is possible. Technically it does not ensure that the content of a website is truthful or reliable, but it does make the determination that it is popular, which is all any kind of 'press here to record that this website is truthful' is ever going to do. There are very few areas where people will agree on 'truth'. Imagine this concept applied to websites that discuss creationism for example. These kind of sites will receive many votes for being both truthful and untruthful. All you are really doing is measuring the popularity of the idea that they express.
Perhaps, an attribute could be added to the 'a' tag to indicate the type of link, so that a page author can indicate a rough reason why they have linked to a page. If I were to create a link in this post to a site that speaks of the LHCs potential to destroy the planet and called the link... "Check out these silly bastards". The PageRank of that site would increase, as there is no way to tell if I am supporting or lampooning that site with my link. A simple category system (not unlike slashdots moderations options) might help this process. So that I could add a category="funny" or category="insightful" to my link tags and any analysis tools (PageRank in particular) could adjust the ranking accordingly. Would be interesting to see what the top 10 funniest sites on the web were anyway :o)
Thats interesting.
I have not seen this kind of thing yet (I guess I have smart friends ;o)). Are you saying that these people actually have their username/password compromised or is there some kind of facebook app that when installed can initiate this kind of activity?
Or political buildings
"I haven't even watched the movies I have at home due to the Olympics."
Watching or competing? :)
Yeah, they are just a person in the leading opposition party to fill the role, (the presumption is that the 'shadow home secretary' would become the home secretary should the leading opposition party ever get into power, but thats not always the case, usually there is a reshuffle of jobs after an election). Despite all the crap in our political system, this works quite well as there is always somebody in the opposition party whose job it is to keep up to date on the relevant issues. The shadow health secretary should, in theory, be quite well versed with health system policy so if the actual health secretary proposes some new legislation, the shadow health secretary is in a position to challenge that proposal. Checks and balances basically.
Yes, my thoughts ran immediately to pulp fiction too. In fact, if I was asked to infer what this email address tells me about the owner, my reaction would have been, "Samuel L Jackson has used Tim Roth as an intermediary to tell that bitch to be cool" :)
Funny what pop culture does the mind.
"Every election I keep expecting a virus that changes the values randomly in Access databases.
If that didn't expose how fragile our voting system is, I don't know what would."
Ok... are you guys thinking what I'm thinking? Cowboy Neal '08!!
"The rest of the world does NOT come to a screeching halt every Sept. 11th."
The rest of the world is still scratching it's head trying to figure out what significant event happened on the 9th of November.
I must read 'Mein Kampf' at some point. The subject matter holds little interest with me, but with all these proof-reading Nazi's the language must be absolutely flawless!
I call bullshit on this, either you live in scotland, in which case your trip to london will be longer than your trip from london to amsterdam, or you are comparing bought on the day open tickets to pre-booked cheap tickets, which is just bullshit. Your amsterdam train ride is 7 miles, which if you went the same distance in london is like a zone 2 tube trip for £3.50.
To be fair, you are correct, I was comparing the lowest possible journey price to Amsterdam with the highest possible journey price to London. I would accept that this might have been a little misleading, but it is not 'bullshit', just a bit dramatic.
The point still stands though, I am fairly certain that we have one of the most expensive public transport systems in the developed world and at the same time are one of the most heavily taxed people in the developed world. Someone is clearly doing *something* wrong.
I'm not surprised we Dutch are trying (and apparently succeeding) to hack public transportation systems facilities if you look at the current pricing of our own system.
I am assuming that you are implying that the Dutch transport system is expensive. Clearly you have never been to the UK. I live an hour away from London by train, if I were to shop around a little and pick the budget airline flights I could fly to Schipol from Gatwick/Heathrow, get the train to Amsterdam Central and a tram to my hotel for a cheaper price than my train journey from my house to the airport!! It really is *that* bad.
I have been to Amsterdam many times (not *just* for the usual tourist reasons, my grandmother was born there, so I visit family), and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that transport around Amsterdam is many time more efficient and cheaper than transport around London, and I would much rather deal with the bizarre conversations with strangers that have 'had a little schmoke' on late night Amsterdam trams than the strangers that are looking to mug me on the London underground.
Both of our countries are culturally rich, with a fascinating history, but yours seems far superior when it comes to the management of public services.
I am really sorry, something else you can learn from me is to always use the preview button :).
The preamble was a little bit of waffle anyway... the important point...
All significant performance problems in software are architectural in nature.
You should be coding in the most easy to maintain style. Doing something difficult to maintain (like breaking MVC by merging controller logic into the view) might save a few milliseconds here and there. You will be quite proud of this until someone with more experience comes along and drops in a second level cache or adds some database indexes and increases performances by two orders of magnitude.
In which case, let me give you the benefit of my experience as well, the GP poster is absolutely correct.
Its a funny thing, but *every* junior developer (which I define as All significant performance problems in software are architectural in nature.
You should be coding in the most easy to maintain style. Doing something difficult to maintain (like breaking MVC by merging controller logic into the view) might save a few milliseconds here and there. You will be quite proud of this until someone with more experience comes along and drops in a second level cache or adds some database indexes and increases performances by two orders of magnitude.
This comment expresses the view of an agnostic. So many people consider agnostic to be, 'A person that hasn't made their mind up/sitting on the fence', but this is a poor interpretation of the definition at best.
I consider myself agnostic in that I believe that a human trying to understand the nature of 'god', is like trying to teach an ant to solve mathematical equations. The answer to these kinds of questions are just as 'unknowable' as trying to determine what is currently happening in a place that is 1 billion light years away. In a billion years, we may have the answer, but until then it is inderminate, and therefore not worth worrying about.
We, as humans, have this arrogant perspective that the answers to any given question are *just* beyond our current understanding. The truth of the matter is, that despite our advances, we are biological organisms that have evolved to survive in and comprehend a *very* narrow subset of possible states. Hawking himself, in one his books (probably 'brief history'), states that some things simply cannot be comprehended by the human mind, I think he was talking about a model of the universe with more spacial dimensions that we can perceive. Since we are used to viewing the world in 3 spacial dimensions, it is not possible for us to picture a 'shape' with 4 spacial dimensions, we have not evolved with that capability because it is not required in our '3 spacial dimension' view of our environment. Since there is no real finite limit to complexity, how about trying to picture a universe with a hundred billion spacial dimensions....? That level of complexity could be what is required to understand 'god'.
Agnostics simply believe that trying to comprehend something that is almost certainly 'unprovable' (in that it exists outside the concept of 'cause and effect'), is the pursuit of fools :). I am not opposed to the idea that when I die, I might discover that there is more to my existance than I understand at the moment. Until that day, my only reason to speculate would be to provoke arguments with those who have chosen to speculate differently ;)
Well... I *am* a pilot (well ok, student pilot, but I am about 95% of the way through the course).
My first ever flying lesson was giving to me by a women who was certainly older than 49 and quite possibly a grandmother (I didn't ask). When you are about to take to the skies for a first flying lesson, and shortly before take off, you instructor finishes the final briefing with the phrase, "Ohh.. and here is what you do if anything happens to me up there...". You tend to notice stuff like age! :)
"I can't help but wonder; Gee, what's in the box?"
Well it is a box being delivered to a team of physicists, I guess they wont know for certain until they open it :)
Not until the 'all the lobbiests should be thrown in jail' lobby can sway a few more congressmen.
Oh I see! Not being American I was unaware of this loop hole!
So how come this guy didn't just trade his vote for dinner and a show?