For starters there really are some professions, not just Wall Street, where you have to have a degree from an accredited institution in order to work. Medicine for example, or engineering, or law, are all going to require the proper degrees in order to get certified to work in the field. You may not find that work interesting but clearly a lot of people do and pursue those careers by getting the education required to get started. Higher ed isn't just a bunch of handwaving and bullshit designed to fool HR into interviewing you.
The crippling debt thing is such an overblown myth too, but maybe you'd realize that if you'd actually gone to college. Just like any other investment or major purchase there are smart ways of buying and education and stupid ways of doing it. Even with rising tuition you can get a good education at a state school and come out with a little or no debt if you keep a job and live within your means while a student. I finished my Bachelors with only $5K in student loan debt for example.
Students and their parents just have to keep in mind that higher ed is an investment, not some extended fantasy camp for spoiled kids which seems to be the universal failing of most families you hear interviewed about crushing debt burdens from higher ed. "Oh my precious Tiffany would've been heartbroken if I'd told her we couldn't afford for her to go to Vanderbilt for her degree in underwater basket weaving... so we took out 150K in loans a year and are now fucked because she's only earning 8.50 an hour as a part-time docent at a folk-art museum in bum fuck Oklahoma" That makes for a great news story some how but really isn't representative of most people's college experience.
There's generally two smart ways to approach your college investment, assuming you don't have rich parents. One is simply to go to your local state college, work part time and live frugally while studying. You'll come out of it with manageable debt and a leg up starting your career. Or if you're smart, driven and talented enough you can bet big, pay out the ass for a prestigious degree and home the gamble pays off with a rock-star job that'll make the $200K in student loans manageable. I know exactly one person who's pulled that off, she went straight from Stanford law to a job with a top ten law firm making around $180k/year to start. You don't take on that sorta of risk without a clear plan for a payoff.
Of course as has already been pointed out a lot of the examples listed in the summary were of tech billionaires that went to college, made the connections they needed to be a success and started their businesses before graduating. They dropped out because their college investment had already paid off without the degree.
E. Coli naturally lives in the bovine digestive track and older strains of it had no tolerance to a highly acidic environments - a grass fed ruminate's stomachs have a fairly neutral pH - and so weren't a threat to humans if we consumed any. Feeding cattle a lot of corn lowers the pH in their stomachs enough that E. Coli strains have now evolved enough of an acid tolerance to survive in our guts and do bad things to us.
Cattle get sick a lot easier with the more acidic stomachs, since they never evolved a digestive track capable of handling strong acids, which is only exacerbated by the conditions they live in at the feedlot so they have to fed antibiotics by the shovel full every day just to survive long enough to be slaughtered. Thus the now acid tolerant E. Coli also gets a chance to evolve tolerance to a wide array of antibiotics.
Finally modern slaughter houses run so fast, mostly with untrained immigrant labor, that they can't even be bothered to butcher the animals carefully enough to avoid getting shit all over the meat. The shit contains E. Coli and when you eat this meat (especially meat ground at the factory) you end up eating some of this infected shit.
In my experience the only people who have a positive opinion of the TSA are people that don't ever come into contact with them, i.e. people that don't fly. Experienced travelers pretty nearly universally hate the TSA and think the agency is a waste of resources that does nothing to improve their safety.
I applaud the EFF's efforts here but I seriously doubt this will make a difference on the ground in China, even if Cisco were to see the light and speak up on behalf the dissidents. I also think the EFF is mistaken about which way influence flows in the CCP-Cisco relationship. Like any Western company doing major business with China, Cisco has had to jump through all sorts of hoops, hand over a large amount control of local operations to party apparatchiks and work under contracts that change significantly and frequently after being signed.
Cisco's position in China is so compromised at this point that I don't see how they could stand up to the CCP in this case without pulling out of the Chinese market entirely and I just don't mean stop selling in China. They have suppliers, production facilities, hundreds of directly employees not to mention billions of dollars of IP in China. All of that is vulnerable to CCP action if Cisco were to get on their bad side. China isn't like the West, the government won't need warrants or due process to arrest Cisco employers, seize facilities and IP or just choke off Cisco's supply train like they did with rare earths a few months ago.
Cisco is in too deep to take a stand at this point, they have more to lose than the CCP does. The CCP has demonstrated repeatedly that human rights aren't a concern for them and given their hostile reaction whenever a Western government or NGO (Nobel Committee) explicitly or implicitly criticizes their human rights record they aren't exactly concerned about their international image either. Cisco on the other hand pretty much can't win this no matter what they do. Just like most any Western company doing big business in China these days.
When hurricane Ike made landfall in Houston in 2008 most of the city was without electricity for a good two weeks. I spent several hours a night reading paper books by the light of oil lamps. No one was burning books for fuel or looting homes for paper books to wipe their asses with.
Believe it or not even in the USA it's possible to loose electrical service long enough to drain the batteries in all your toys for reasons other than the zombie apocalypse.
I don't have a personal need for a game console. When I want to get my game on, I prefer to use my PC.
What do you do when you happen to have friends over at your place and you all want to get your game on?
I can't speak for the OP but I'm just not that into group/party/social video games, or console style games in general for that matter. When people are over we're usually to busy eating and drinking and bullshitting with each other to bother with a game. If anyone feels like playing a something, board games and card games are a lot more fun (for me) at a party than video games.
When I feel like playing video games I just prefer to reboot my PC into windows and find something in steam to play on my own. For me video games are something I spend time on when I don't feel like being productive or social, which is pretty rare actually.
Terrible service? Depends on what area you are in. AT&T service is just fine where i live.
Same here in Houston actually, except for downtown during the work week but it's not confined to AT&T. My co-workers that refused to switch to AT&T to get an iPhone because the shitty network had a very hard landing when they got to work with there new Verizon iPhones and encountered the reality of oversaturated cell towers on their network as well. Even just walking a mile outside of downtown drastically improves services here. At home, about 10 miles out of downtown, AT&T data and voice service is just spiffy. Of course YMMV depending on where you live...
We're lucky to have those in museums. The only "complete" Saturn V was left out in the rain with zero protection and zero maintenance. It is getting a major overhaul now, but we nearly lost irreplaceable history there. (Next time someone in the US says that it has less history than other countries, stop and consider how close we came to losing one of the most significant pieces in the 20th century. Then consider how much has indeed been lost through negligence or lack of resources. Then consider slapping the person because it's in believing there's nothing historically important that there's so very little historically important left.)
Which is probably why Houston didn't get one of the retired shuttles or the Enterprise. JSC does indeed play an important role in manned spaceflight operations but Space Center Houston is a bit sad compared the Air and Space Museum or Kennedy Space Center. When I first moved down here - please someone help me escape! - I was shocked to see the Saturn V just sitting out by the side of the road falling apart. It's in better shape now but the hangar they built for it looks like a very large pre-fab "Tuff Shed" from the home improvement store, not really what I'd call inspiring. The rest of the Space Center's visitor activities are likewise in pretty sad shape and most of it of Springfield Elementary School field trip grade to begin with.
Yeah I noticed that when they showed Comcast at the top of the heap for my area with 50-100mbps. Which is a fucking joke, I never got those speeds with them even when the connection was working...
I hadn't realized Ubuntu was now the bad Linux, thanks random article from tech website I've never heard of! I'll go wipe this scourge from my desktop and replace it with an even trendier distro right away!
Wait before I do that can anyone tell me who or what the hell itmanagement.earthweb.com is and why should I give two shits what they say about Ubuntu or any other distro? I really have to discount the ramblings of any 'publication' that has the following headline anywhere on it's site "53 Open Source Replacements to Spice Up Your Desktop" which appears in the related stories box for this article. What is this Cosmo for penguin fetishists? Shouldn't crap like this be on idle or something?
The wooden frame house I'm living in now was built in the early 50's and has survived three hurricanes and several tropical storms. It creaked and groaned a bit, ok a lot, during Ike in 2008 but didn't suffer any damage. Not so much as a broken window. IIRC my neighborhood had sustained winds in 90mph range with recorded gusts up around 110mph. The house endured that beating for good four hours while the massive storm passed over.
Wood is much stronger than most people realize. The softwoods commonly used in home construction are also quite flexible and can deflect a lot before failing in a structural situation. When a wood frame house suffers a structural failure it's often somewhat graceful and the structure retains some of strength and doesn't just collapse on the people inside. A brick or concrete structure will hold up well until it hits a breaking point, then failure is complete and often catastrophic. Also concrete is ugly, I'd hate living in a concrete house.
You're joking right? I mean do you seriously view our relationship with microbes in terms of a moral conflict? That just seems very misguided. It's not "giving up" to let the bacteria live, look at like gaming the system for our benefit. Don't look at it like a game where we can play by our rules or by the rules set by bacteria, it's not a game and there aren't any rules. Our relationship with the microbial world is a complex system of interactions and the more we learn about those interactions the better we can manipulate their outcomes to our advantage. Why would it bother you if the end result is a healthy human and a healthy colony of bacteria instead of a healthy human and no bacteria? As long as the human outcome is positive there's no need for the bacteria to 'lose' in order for us to claim a 'victory'.
Since you seem to intent on seeing this in military/moral/political terms think of the approach described in the article as winning the battle with a clever coup d'etat instead of a direct and forceful coup de main either way you win. If it you can swing it the coup d'etat does less collateral damage, requires less resources, is less risky and far cheaper. In any case the real battle isn't against microbes it's against disease, if you can co-opt the microbes already in your body to prevent disease at a lower cost than you can eradicate them fully why not?
Is there actually any good journalism available for sale? Read a few newspaper stories about an area you actually know about, probably science or tech since you're on slashdot. Then try saying that journalism is accurate and reliable or even just good without bursting into laughter.
Depends on the paper actually. I've found The Economist's science and technology coverage to be surprisingly good in fact and their quarterly technology report is excellent. Albeit more focused on the economic, social, political and environmental impacts of technology and the companies driving it instead of the pure geeky goodness. The NYT does OK in science and tech reporting - I really miss Olivia Judson's column I hope she comes back or they find another active science writer to do something similar.
Discover has really improved the last few years since I let my old sub expire a while back, I was pleasantly surprised enough by a news stand purchase a year ago to resubscribe. Hell they are worth supporting just for the Bad Astronomer blog that they host.
Good reporting is still out there, you just have to put the time into finding it and be willing to pay for it.
The problem is finding a way to sell users a single article at a fair price that isn't overwhelmed by the transaction costs of processing the payment. The market needs a really good micropayment system, that can profitably handle transactions in the $.25-1.00 range.
I don't remember the last time I read a newspaper article which was worth $0.25 to me. Most 'news' just isn't very useful to anyone other than news junkies, and that's even ignoring the majority of 'news' that's just regurgitated press releases or celebrity gossip.
Nice use of 'scare' quotes to let us all know what you 'think' of news sources. You've added nothing to the discussion with this comment, you're parroting the same facile crap that other ignorant slobs espouse in order to justify their continued willful ignorance. It's the same retarded logic that political drops out spout "Both parties are corrupt and stupid and smelly and are both gonna screw me so I don't bother to vote or get involved or understand anything"
If you have such a low opinion of the news business why are even reading and commenting on a story about newspapers?
What is a micropayment to you is a large sum of cash to many in the world. There's also issues of access, there's people who can't even get a debit card (due to the Chex system which has no appeal) let alone a credit card. Some of this stuff is arguably a public right (thus the invention of the BBC in the UK). Be careful, you're thinking in a microcosm. In an age when anyone can attend a MIT class via OpenCourseWare you're championing alienating a large group of folks from basic news.
Look the bottom line is that someone has to pay the salaries of the people researching the news, writing and editing the stories. Someone has to pay the cost of sending the reporters to where the news is happening and all the other costs that go into providing accurate coverage of a story. Someone has to pay the hosting costs to deliver the content all the people that want to read it.
The BBC is a great service and tax supported by UK citizens, NPR and the like are supported by the donations of those that can afford to donate. Otherwise news outlets have to sell their service to the people consuming it. For those outlets like the NYT or the The Economist that don't get government support I would think that the ability to sell articles one at a time to people that could afford a quarter or whatever for the information would be useful.
I'm not championing alienating anyone from the news - if newspapers keep going bust that's going to alienate a lot more people from the news than a micropayment system that helps keep them afloat would.
I've had an account with the NYTimes site for longer than I can remember and I've happily signed up for every pay scheme they've tried. Reporters work hard to provide a valuable service and I'm happy to pay for it. I might be a bit of an anomaly given how poorly news papers and magazines are doing these days, but I also pay for a print subscription to the The Economist, Popular Woodworking, Fine Woodworking, MAKE and Discover. Information I care about, thoroughly researched and professionally edited has real value to me. I hope the Time's latest attempt at attracting readers and making money off them works out, given the problems at the Tribune family of publications right now America is desperately low on world class news outlets as it is.
Not to say that paywalls aren't a touch annoying and disruptive and I don't want to buy a full subscription to every publication that has a single article I'm interested in, but I wouldn't mind paying some small fee for the one story I wanted to read. The problem is finding a way to sell users a single article at a fair price that isn't overwhelmed by the transaction costs of processing the payment. The market needs a really good micropayment system, that can profitably handle transactions in the $.25-1.00 range. The digital equivalent of pocket change has yet to show up outside of walled off services like iTunes and other app stores.
I'm pretty sure I'd end up in that gray zone that a villain like Magneto occupies. Yeah he's done some pretty terrible things, but his motives for seeking ever greater power are based on protecting his people so he's not all bad. I don't think it would be worth the effort though to try and actively govern the whole world as a super tyrant though. Too easy to get bogged down in the minutia of ruling a personal empire, I think it would much easier and more effective to let the world govern itself most of the time and just come out of your lair from time to time to eliminate problems.
If I suddenly woke up with super powers tomorrow I'd start tackling big, pet issues right away. I'd apply my own very effective regulation on the financial sector, remove the most toxic personalities from the US political and media scene, curb pollution and green house gas emissions in a variety of industries, stop mountain top removal mining and clear cut logging. My preferred method would be just gather up the people responsible for all these evils and hurl them into space or drop them into an active volcano, assuming I had superman like powers where I just go in fast and heavy and get the job done.
After cleaning up the U.S. I'd work on the rest of the West before worrying about external threats. Finally when I thought the most dangerous internal enemies to Western Civilization were effectively removed I'd expand globally and use my super powers to take out nuclear installations and other sources of WMDs and probably work on some regime change. After that the world could go into maintenance mode and I could just watch out for new bugs to pop up before troubleshooting them.
The only problem with this that in my mind I'd be the great savior and protector of the world (with a very strong bias towards the Western world's ideology and way of life) and a good portion of the population would probably be happy with what I was doing, at least the portion that shares my political and moral outlook. Secular, environmentalist, socially liberal people that long for a competent government that bases policy on actual facts and evidence over superstition and cronyism would be delighted in the changes I'd make (even if grousing about my sometimes undemocratic space ejections.) However religious fundamentalists and other conservative people around the world would view me as a super villain. Also the people I flung into space would probably see me as a villain.
Just like Magneto sees himself as the hero and protector all mutants in the X-Men movies. I think most people would end up like that, a hero of sorts to their own constituency but a villain to others.
That's pretty much the main reason I joined and spend any time on there as well. I opened an account initially after leaning that an old friend I'd lost touch with was seriously ill and his wife was mostly posting updates on his condition via facebook. After that a few friend requests rolled in and I got pulled in. I've managed to filter out just about all the farmville and other game updates and just scan through updates every so often to see what folks are up to. I only get active on there when I have a need to communicate something to a general audience of people I know or if I'm actively looking for someone. I was pleasantly surprised recently when I was able to find a few old college friends before a trip home, some were still in town and some had also moved on but now I'm talking to people I haven't seen in seven years and had missed, so it's not all bad.
Mind you FB has it's share of faults, in fact I pretty much hate everything about how FB actually works, it's saving grace is it's ubiquity, so many people use it that you usually find who you're looking for on there. But beyond being a directory of nearly every internet user in N. America (and yes a large portion of users globally but I think it's market penetration is highest over here) between the ages of 15-40 it's a pretty rotten tool for communication or expression. The wall post and comment system isn't very well suited for anything but short pithy (or more often facile) comments or links to recycled "lulz" the photo gallery feature is OK but not on par with Picassa or Flikr by a long shot. Let's not even discuss the privacy nightmare... But all told it's bad features are still outweighed by it's usefulness as a large global registry of people around the world that it's worth staying moderately active on.
You forgot the part where the captain of the fishing boat rammed a pair of Japanese coast guard vessels during the altercation which is what led to his arrest. Note that the boat itself and the crew were released promptly. The Japanese currently have the boat captain held while they determine whether or not to formerly charge him in the ramming. IIRC Japanese law gives them ten days to hold him while charges are pending and if they charge him he will be put on trial and run through their justice system just like anyone charged with a crime pretty much anywhere.
China wants Japan to ignore their laws and release the captain. Not so much I think because they care about the captain though. Japan is holding the captain for violating their domestic laws for an act committed in their territorial waters. China is throwing a hissy fit because they also claim the islands near where this occurred and if they concede to Japan's right to try the captain in their courts they are assenting to Japan's claims of sovereignty over the islands in question. Of course it would really be a lot easier to just file an official protest with Japan, the UN and I don't know maybe the ICC protesting blah blah blah Japan's actions and then just carrying on as usual. They can still maintain their claim over the islands and instead of looking childish and irresponsible to the international community they look like a responsible grown up nation.
Personally I'm glad to see China playing their hand so early in the game with this and other recent outbursts as it really gives lie to their whole Peaceful Rise message they try to sell to the rest of the world. Their neighbors and west are finally getting the message that China needs to be taken seriously as a rising power and a rising threat to our interests and not just a cheap place to order walmart crap from.
LightPeak is a buzz word. That's it. It's light years away from actually showing up on devices in your local Best Buy. Far from making USB 3.0 obsolete.
Pet peeve: A light year is not a unit of time, it's a unit of distance. You'd be more likely to describe LightPeak as being years away than being miles away, no?
I thought he hinting that LightPeak was an alien technology and that it was on it's way to Earth but was several light years away and that it would take a little while for IPS (interstellar parcel service) to actually deliver to OEMs on Earth.
Slashdot Mirror
For starters there really are some professions, not just Wall Street, where you have to have a degree from an accredited institution in order to work. Medicine for example, or engineering, or law, are all going to require the proper degrees in order to get certified to work in the field. You may not find that work interesting but clearly a lot of people do and pursue those careers by getting the education required to get started. Higher ed isn't just a bunch of handwaving and bullshit designed to fool HR into interviewing you.
The crippling debt thing is such an overblown myth too, but maybe you'd realize that if you'd actually gone to college. Just like any other investment or major purchase there are smart ways of buying and education and stupid ways of doing it. Even with rising tuition you can get a good education at a state school and come out with a little or no debt if you keep a job and live within your means while a student. I finished my Bachelors with only $5K in student loan debt for example.
Students and their parents just have to keep in mind that higher ed is an investment, not some extended fantasy camp for spoiled kids which seems to be the universal failing of most families you hear interviewed about crushing debt burdens from higher ed. "Oh my precious Tiffany would've been heartbroken if I'd told her we couldn't afford for her to go to Vanderbilt for her degree in underwater basket weaving... so we took out 150K in loans a year and are now fucked because she's only earning 8.50 an hour as a part-time docent at a folk-art museum in bum fuck Oklahoma" That makes for a great news story some how but really isn't representative of most people's college experience.
There's generally two smart ways to approach your college investment, assuming you don't have rich parents. One is simply to go to your local state college, work part time and live frugally while studying. You'll come out of it with manageable debt and a leg up starting your career. Or if you're smart, driven and talented enough you can bet big, pay out the ass for a prestigious degree and home the gamble pays off with a rock-star job that'll make the $200K in student loans manageable. I know exactly one person who's pulled that off, she went straight from Stanford law to a job with a top ten law firm making around $180k/year to start. You don't take on that sorta of risk without a clear plan for a payoff.
Of course as has already been pointed out a lot of the examples listed in the summary were of tech billionaires that went to college, made the connections they needed to be a success and started their businesses before graduating. They dropped out because their college investment had already paid off without the degree.
>> $20 billion AUS dollars
>And how much is that in real money?
About $20,484,000,000 USD.
You're both right.
E. Coli naturally lives in the bovine digestive track and older strains of it had no tolerance to a highly acidic environments - a grass fed ruminate's stomachs have a fairly neutral pH - and so weren't a threat to humans if we consumed any. Feeding cattle a lot of corn lowers the pH in their stomachs enough that E. Coli strains have now evolved enough of an acid tolerance to survive in our guts and do bad things to us.
Cattle get sick a lot easier with the more acidic stomachs, since they never evolved a digestive track capable of handling strong acids, which is only exacerbated by the conditions they live in at the feedlot so they have to fed antibiotics by the shovel full every day just to survive long enough to be slaughtered. Thus the now acid tolerant E. Coli also gets a chance to evolve tolerance to a wide array of antibiotics.
Finally modern slaughter houses run so fast, mostly with untrained immigrant labor, that they can't even be bothered to butcher the animals carefully enough to avoid getting shit all over the meat. The shit contains E. Coli and when you eat this meat (especially meat ground at the factory) you end up eating some of this infected shit.
Cheers,
In my experience the only people who have a positive opinion of the TSA are people that don't ever come into contact with them, i.e. people that don't fly. Experienced travelers pretty nearly universally hate the TSA and think the agency is a waste of resources that does nothing to improve their safety.
Cheers,
Public
Service
Announcement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_service_announcement
Cheers,
I applaud the EFF's efforts here but I seriously doubt this will make a difference on the ground in China, even if Cisco were to see the light and speak up on behalf the dissidents. I also think the EFF is mistaken about which way influence flows in the CCP-Cisco relationship. Like any Western company doing major business with China, Cisco has had to jump through all sorts of hoops, hand over a large amount control of local operations to party apparatchiks and work under contracts that change significantly and frequently after being signed.
Cisco's position in China is so compromised at this point that I don't see how they could stand up to the CCP in this case without pulling out of the Chinese market entirely and I just don't mean stop selling in China. They have suppliers, production facilities, hundreds of directly employees not to mention billions of dollars of IP in China. All of that is vulnerable to CCP action if Cisco were to get on their bad side. China isn't like the West, the government won't need warrants or due process to arrest Cisco employers, seize facilities and IP or just choke off Cisco's supply train like they did with rare earths a few months ago.
Cisco is in too deep to take a stand at this point, they have more to lose than the CCP does. The CCP has demonstrated repeatedly that human rights aren't a concern for them and given their hostile reaction whenever a Western government or NGO (Nobel Committee) explicitly or implicitly criticizes their human rights record they aren't exactly concerned about their international image either. Cisco on the other hand pretty much can't win this no matter what they do. Just like most any Western company doing big business in China these days.
Cheers,
Josh
When hurricane Ike made landfall in Houston in 2008 most of the city was without electricity for a good two weeks. I spent several hours a night reading paper books by the light of oil lamps. No one was burning books for fuel or looting homes for paper books to wipe their asses with.
Believe it or not even in the USA it's possible to loose electrical service long enough to drain the batteries in all your toys for reasons other than the zombie apocalypse.
I don't have a personal need for a game console. When I want to get my game on, I prefer to use my PC.
What do you do when you happen to have friends over at your place and you all want to get your game on?
I can't speak for the OP but I'm just not that into group/party/social video games, or console style games in general for that matter. When people are over we're usually to busy eating and drinking and bullshitting with each other to bother with a game. If anyone feels like playing a something, board games and card games are a lot more fun (for me) at a party than video games.
When I feel like playing video games I just prefer to reboot my PC into windows and find something in steam to play on my own. For me video games are something I spend time on when I don't feel like being productive or social, which is pretty rare actually.
Cheers,
Josh
No, it took them 4+ years to admit it.
Terrible service? Depends on what area you are in. AT&T service is just fine where i live.
Same here in Houston actually, except for downtown during the work week but it's not confined to AT&T. My co-workers that refused to switch to AT&T to get an iPhone because the shitty network had a very hard landing when they got to work with there new Verizon iPhones and encountered the reality of oversaturated cell towers on their network as well. Even just walking a mile outside of downtown drastically improves services here. At home, about 10 miles out of downtown, AT&T data and voice service is just spiffy. Of course YMMV depending on where you live...
We're lucky to have those in museums. The only "complete" Saturn V was left out in the rain with zero protection and zero maintenance. It is getting a major overhaul now, but we nearly lost irreplaceable history there. (Next time someone in the US says that it has less history than other countries, stop and consider how close we came to losing one of the most significant pieces in the 20th century. Then consider how much has indeed been lost through negligence or lack of resources. Then consider slapping the person because it's in believing there's nothing historically important that there's so very little historically important left.)
Which is probably why Houston didn't get one of the retired shuttles or the Enterprise. JSC does indeed play an important role in manned spaceflight operations but Space Center Houston is a bit sad compared the Air and Space Museum or Kennedy Space Center. When I first moved down here - please someone help me escape! - I was shocked to see the Saturn V just sitting out by the side of the road falling apart. It's in better shape now but the hangar they built for it looks like a very large pre-fab "Tuff Shed" from the home improvement store, not really what I'd call inspiring. The rest of the Space Center's visitor activities are likewise in pretty sad shape and most of it of Springfield Elementary School field trip grade to begin with.
Yeah I noticed that when they showed Comcast at the top of the heap for my area with 50-100mbps. Which is a fucking joke, I never got those speeds with them even when the connection was working...
I hadn't realized Ubuntu was now the bad Linux, thanks random article from tech website I've never heard of! I'll go wipe this scourge from my desktop and replace it with an even trendier distro right away!
Wait before I do that can anyone tell me who or what the hell itmanagement.earthweb.com is and why should I give two shits what they say about Ubuntu or any other distro? I really have to discount the ramblings of any 'publication' that has the following headline anywhere on it's site "53 Open Source Replacements to Spice Up Your Desktop" which appears in the related stories box for this article. What is this Cosmo for penguin fetishists? Shouldn't crap like this be on idle or something?
Cheers,
Josh
Or even more idiot proof - don't turn the phone on / plug it into the bomb until you're ready to start the bombing run...
To keep the suicide bomber from getting cold feet and walking away at the last minute.
The wooden frame house I'm living in now was built in the early 50's and has survived three hurricanes and several tropical storms. It creaked and groaned a bit, ok a lot, during Ike in 2008 but didn't suffer any damage. Not so much as a broken window. IIRC my neighborhood had sustained winds in 90mph range with recorded gusts up around 110mph. The house endured that beating for good four hours while the massive storm passed over.
Wood is much stronger than most people realize. The softwoods commonly used in home construction are also quite flexible and can deflect a lot before failing in a structural situation. When a wood frame house suffers a structural failure it's often somewhat graceful and the structure retains some of strength and doesn't just collapse on the people inside. A brick or concrete structure will hold up well until it hits a breaking point, then failure is complete and often catastrophic. Also concrete is ugly, I'd hate living in a concrete house.
Cheers,
Josh
You're joking right? I mean do you seriously view our relationship with microbes in terms of a moral conflict? That just seems very misguided. It's not "giving up" to let the bacteria live, look at like gaming the system for our benefit. Don't look at it like a game where we can play by our rules or by the rules set by bacteria, it's not a game and there aren't any rules. Our relationship with the microbial world is a complex system of interactions and the more we learn about those interactions the better we can manipulate their outcomes to our advantage. Why would it bother you if the end result is a healthy human and a healthy colony of bacteria instead of a healthy human and no bacteria? As long as the human outcome is positive there's no need for the bacteria to 'lose' in order for us to claim a 'victory'.
Since you seem to intent on seeing this in military/moral/political terms think of the approach described in the article as winning the battle with a clever coup d'etat instead of a direct and forceful coup de main either way you win. If it you can swing it the coup d'etat does less collateral damage, requires less resources, is less risky and far cheaper. In any case the real battle isn't against microbes it's against disease, if you can co-opt the microbes already in your body to prevent disease at a lower cost than you can eradicate them fully why not?
Cheers,
Josh
Is there actually any good journalism available for sale?
Read a few newspaper stories about an area you actually know about, probably science or tech since you're on slashdot. Then try saying that journalism is accurate and reliable or even just good without bursting into laughter.
Depends on the paper actually. I've found The Economist's science and technology coverage to be surprisingly good in fact and their quarterly technology report is excellent. Albeit more focused on the economic, social, political and environmental impacts of technology and the companies driving it instead of the pure geeky goodness. The NYT does OK in science and tech reporting - I really miss Olivia Judson's column I hope she comes back or they find another active science writer to do something similar.
Discover has really improved the last few years since I let my old sub expire a while back, I was pleasantly surprised enough by a news stand purchase a year ago to resubscribe. Hell they are worth supporting just for the Bad Astronomer blog that they host.
Good reporting is still out there, you just have to put the time into finding it and be willing to pay for it.
The problem is finding a way to sell users a single article at a fair price that isn't overwhelmed by the transaction costs of processing the payment. The market needs a really good micropayment system, that can profitably handle transactions in the $.25-1.00 range.
I don't remember the last time I read a newspaper article which was worth $0.25 to me. Most 'news' just isn't very useful to anyone other than news junkies, and that's even ignoring the majority of 'news' that's just regurgitated press releases or celebrity gossip.
Nice use of 'scare' quotes to let us all know what you 'think' of news sources. You've added nothing to the discussion with this comment, you're parroting the same facile crap that other ignorant slobs espouse in order to justify their continued willful ignorance. It's the same retarded logic that political drops out spout "Both parties are corrupt and stupid and smelly and are both gonna screw me so I don't bother to vote or get involved or understand anything"
If you have such a low opinion of the news business why are even reading and commenting on a story about newspapers?
What is a micropayment to you is a large sum of cash to many in the world. There's also issues of access, there's people who can't even get a debit card (due to the Chex system which has no appeal) let alone a credit card. Some of this stuff is arguably a public right (thus the invention of the BBC in the UK). Be careful, you're thinking in a microcosm. In an age when anyone can attend a MIT class via OpenCourseWare you're championing alienating a large group of folks from basic news.
Look the bottom line is that someone has to pay the salaries of the people researching the news, writing and editing the stories. Someone has to pay the cost of sending the reporters to where the news is happening and all the other costs that go into providing accurate coverage of a story. Someone has to pay the hosting costs to deliver the content all the people that want to read it.
The BBC is a great service and tax supported by UK citizens, NPR and the like are supported by the donations of those that can afford to donate. Otherwise news outlets have to sell their service to the people consuming it. For those outlets like the NYT or the The Economist that don't get government support I would think that the ability to sell articles one at a time to people that could afford a quarter or whatever for the information would be useful.
I'm not championing alienating anyone from the news - if newspapers keep going bust that's going to alienate a lot more people from the news than a micropayment system that helps keep them afloat would.
Cheers,
Josh
I've had an account with the NYTimes site for longer than I can remember and I've happily signed up for every pay scheme they've tried. Reporters work hard to provide a valuable service and I'm happy to pay for it. I might be a bit of an anomaly given how poorly news papers and magazines are doing these days, but I also pay for a print subscription to the The Economist, Popular Woodworking, Fine Woodworking, MAKE and Discover. Information I care about, thoroughly researched and professionally edited has real value to me. I hope the Time's latest attempt at attracting readers and making money off them works out, given the problems at the Tribune family of publications right now America is desperately low on world class news outlets as it is.
Not to say that paywalls aren't a touch annoying and disruptive and I don't want to buy a full subscription to every publication that has a single article I'm interested in, but I wouldn't mind paying some small fee for the one story I wanted to read. The problem is finding a way to sell users a single article at a fair price that isn't overwhelmed by the transaction costs of processing the payment. The market needs a really good micropayment system, that can profitably handle transactions in the $.25-1.00 range. The digital equivalent of pocket change has yet to show up outside of walled off services like iTunes and other app stores.
Cheers,
Josh
I'm pretty sure I'd end up in that gray zone that a villain like Magneto occupies. Yeah he's done some pretty terrible things, but his motives for seeking ever greater power are based on protecting his people so he's not all bad. I don't think it would be worth the effort though to try and actively govern the whole world as a super tyrant though. Too easy to get bogged down in the minutia of ruling a personal empire, I think it would much easier and more effective to let the world govern itself most of the time and just come out of your lair from time to time to eliminate problems.
If I suddenly woke up with super powers tomorrow I'd start tackling big, pet issues right away. I'd apply my own very effective regulation on the financial sector, remove the most toxic personalities from the US political and media scene, curb pollution and green house gas emissions in a variety of industries, stop mountain top removal mining and clear cut logging. My preferred method would be just gather up the people responsible for all these evils and hurl them into space or drop them into an active volcano, assuming I had superman like powers where I just go in fast and heavy and get the job done.
After cleaning up the U.S. I'd work on the rest of the West before worrying about external threats. Finally when I thought the most dangerous internal enemies to Western Civilization were effectively removed I'd expand globally and use my super powers to take out nuclear installations and other sources of WMDs and probably work on some regime change. After that the world could go into maintenance mode and I could just watch out for new bugs to pop up before troubleshooting them.
The only problem with this that in my mind I'd be the great savior and protector of the world (with a very strong bias towards the Western world's ideology and way of life) and a good portion of the population would probably be happy with what I was doing, at least the portion that shares my political and moral outlook. Secular, environmentalist, socially liberal people that long for a competent government that bases policy on actual facts and evidence over superstition and cronyism would be delighted in the changes I'd make (even if grousing about my sometimes undemocratic space ejections.) However religious fundamentalists and other conservative people around the world would view me as a super villain. Also the people I flung into space would probably see me as a villain.
Just like Magneto sees himself as the hero and protector all mutants in the X-Men movies. I think most people would end up like that, a hero of sorts to their own constituency but a villain to others.
That's pretty much the main reason I joined and spend any time on there as well. I opened an account initially after leaning that an old friend I'd lost touch with was seriously ill and his wife was mostly posting updates on his condition via facebook. After that a few friend requests rolled in and I got pulled in. I've managed to filter out just about all the farmville and other game updates and just scan through updates every so often to see what folks are up to. I only get active on there when I have a need to communicate something to a general audience of people I know or if I'm actively looking for someone. I was pleasantly surprised recently when I was able to find a few old college friends before a trip home, some were still in town and some had also moved on but now I'm talking to people I haven't seen in seven years and had missed, so it's not all bad.
Mind you FB has it's share of faults, in fact I pretty much hate everything about how FB actually works, it's saving grace is it's ubiquity, so many people use it that you usually find who you're looking for on there. But beyond being a directory of nearly every internet user in N. America (and yes a large portion of users globally but I think it's market penetration is highest over here) between the ages of 15-40 it's a pretty rotten tool for communication or expression. The wall post and comment system isn't very well suited for anything but short pithy (or more often facile) comments or links to recycled "lulz" the photo gallery feature is OK but not on par with Picassa or Flikr by a long shot. Let's not even discuss the privacy nightmare... But all told it's bad features are still outweighed by it's usefulness as a large global registry of people around the world that it's worth staying moderately active on.
Cheers,
Josh
You forgot the part where the captain of the fishing boat rammed a pair of Japanese coast guard vessels during the altercation which is what led to his arrest. Note that the boat itself and the crew were released promptly. The Japanese currently have the boat captain held while they determine whether or not to formerly charge him in the ramming. IIRC Japanese law gives them ten days to hold him while charges are pending and if they charge him he will be put on trial and run through their justice system just like anyone charged with a crime pretty much anywhere.
China wants Japan to ignore their laws and release the captain. Not so much I think because they care about the captain though. Japan is holding the captain for violating their domestic laws for an act committed in their territorial waters. China is throwing a hissy fit because they also claim the islands near where this occurred and if they concede to Japan's right to try the captain in their courts they are assenting to Japan's claims of sovereignty over the islands in question. Of course it would really be a lot easier to just file an official protest with Japan, the UN and I don't know maybe the ICC protesting blah blah blah Japan's actions and then just carrying on as usual. They can still maintain their claim over the islands and instead of looking childish and irresponsible to the international community they look like a responsible grown up nation.
Personally I'm glad to see China playing their hand so early in the game with this and other recent outbursts as it really gives lie to their whole Peaceful Rise message they try to sell to the rest of the world. Their neighbors and west are finally getting the message that China needs to be taken seriously as a rising power and a rising threat to our interests and not just a cheap place to order walmart crap from.
Cheers,
Josh
And don't forget that you could use the handset to beat an attacker to death without dropping the call you were on!
LightPeak is a buzz word. That's it. It's light years away from actually showing up on devices in your local Best Buy. Far from making USB 3.0 obsolete.
Pet peeve: A light year is not a unit of time, it's a unit of distance. You'd be more likely to describe LightPeak as being years away than being miles away, no?
I thought he hinting that LightPeak was an alien technology and that it was on it's way to Earth but was several light years away and that it would take a little while for IPS (interstellar parcel service) to actually deliver to OEMs on Earth.