Then again, as far as the hoodie ban goes, anything that even makes an attempt at reclaiming the UK's streets is welcome, whatever the free-speech implications.
Bullying on the internet, however, can be addressed more effectively by simply rotating 180 degrees until one's face is no longer pointing toward the screen. Further measures may include going out, getting some fresh air, and finding a nice hobby.
Well, in the 20s, you could be beaten to death with pick handles for refusing to relocate to the suburb specially constructed for you by the local industrialist. In the 60s you could be barred from office and have your career and/or life ruined by the FBI on the strength of *suspicion* of holding pro-communist opinions. Under Lincoln, a newspaper could be disbanded for printing anti-Republican stories and a Presidential arrest warrent could be -- and often was -- issued against anyone who looked like they might not be entirely pro-Union.
The problem is, you aren't paying attention.
Also, as the guy who corrected you earlier said, America is not technically a democracy but a democratic republic. Just so you know.
So, you live in an area most of whose people have decided that beer shouldn't be sold before noon on Sunday. But that doesn't suit you. You'd prefer it to be changed -- you want the world around you adjusted to fit your way of thinking. Tough luck.
Those laws *do* serve the community. Whether they make sense I don't know, but the community opted for them. Whether the community are happier this way or not, whether they know what they're doing or not I don't know, but they picked what to do, and if that doesn't suit you that doesn't mean everyone *else* has to change and do it *your* way. Maybe you don't share their religious views. Maybe you don't spend your Sunday the same way as them. That doesn't mean they have to do things differently for your benefit.
It's ironic that you can use this as an example of *other people's* self-interestedness and closed-mindedness. You're right, those things aren't the exclusive territory of muslim extremists; suburbanites can be pretty darn focused on themselves too. Of course, not many devout Muslims would talk about unbelievers with quite the same lofty scorn that you use in your second-to-last paragraph, there.
The rest of the world really *isn't* asking you to compensate for their stupidity. But you seem to ask a heck of a lot from the rest of the world. Not everyone is the same as you and not everyone -- not the Taliban, not regular people who happen to have a religion, not your local town council -- has to be like you. They can write laws that they think protect their children if they darn well want to.
Well, here's an example. Suppose some guy picks up various scattered bits of facts -- a story on slashdot here, something about Mars kooks there. Now, he has an instinct -- or maybe it's hardwired at an even lower level than that -- to make up patterns around those scattered facts, to fill in the blanks. So he imagines a category of people who 'see things where nothing exists'. Before long, he's convinced enough of this specific phenomenon -- of this entity which is purely a product of his own tendency to create patterns to explain the phenomena he senses -- that he actually starts posting about this group of people on slashdot, as if there actually were one specific kind of person who has this trait!
And then other factors, psychological, move him to assume that he's 'better' than this entity that has popped up in his mind and that he now believes is an actual thing. He even begins to give patronising advice. To him, it's just as if he's *interacting* with this thing, this 'people who see things where nothing exists'. His self-deception is complete!
I spent years on MFC. I was really good at MFC. I even *liked* MFC, not because it's elegant or effective, which it isn't, but because it has many clever solutions to the *particular* problems that the designers originally faced when building a library for creating GUI apps on puny machines without even knowing whether the OS would support true multitasking or not. Custom message maps, dynamic resource handles, ATL integration, I did it all. I knew which specific message ID is handled differently in a Windows message queue than any other. I knew how to have a form containing windows with their message pumps in different threads. This was back before we had that fancy 'Java' and 'Flash' and 'C#', you know -- back when writing really powerful GUI apps involved a bit more than dragging your chart control onto your docking window control. And we lived in a cardboard box in the middle of a motorway.
Now all my MFC skillz are obsolete. Years of study and experience that I wouldn't even dare mention on my resume. Deader than cursive handwriting. Half my working life down the drain.
Good. That's progress.
The practise of stacking coins on an arcade machine to indicate that you are next, on the other hand, is much missed. Man, those were the days. When you went *out* to play instead of cowering in your house... what the hell happened?
(small timid voice) Is it ok if I don't have a personal brand?
It's just that when *everyone* has one, you know, you're kind of back to square one. And similarly, when *every* commercial player has a hip social networking solution, they do kind of blend into background noise. I'm going to wait until the inevitable next step, 'social networking site networks' in which networks of social networking sites will busily build *their* brands. And three months later when that brand space is crowded, venture capitalists will eagerly announce netwros of social networking site networks and all the social networks (by that time everyone will have their own social network) will crowd to build their brands in this new tier...
Sextants are derived from quadrants and astrolables, both Arab inventions. Sundials were used by the ancient Egyptians and it's rather unlikely they got them from China -- it's probably something that's been invented many times in many places. 'Circumnavigation' appears to be an idea from Gavin Menzies' book and has little scholarly support (probably lots of *political* support) even in China and nothing resembling actual evidence, although like the Da Vinci Code it's probably going to be remembered as real history by hordes of idiots.
Manchu China was technologically and politically stagnant for a LONG time before the Japanese arrived, and Ming China had been technologically and politically stagnant for an even longer time before that, which is how the Manchurians were able to conquer China in the first place.
Currently, the US imports from China in both fields. I'm sure China doesn't export EVERYTHING.
I will admit that the US and Japan did lead China in high-end industrial and scientific machinery until very recently, and the US and Japan between them did 99% of the research in areas such as high-speed turbines and whatnot. But since all that stuff was basically shipped to China in the 90s in exchange for cash, the playing field is level again.
Re:"How will you use XML in years to come?"
on
The Future of XML
·
· Score: 1
That was excellent, thanks.
The problem is that XML is a brand with a lot of recognizability. It's kind of like brand-name clothes versus well made, appropriate clothes. There's always going to be a lot of people who wouldn't know 'well made and appropriate' if it hit them in the face and who will therefore retreat to a recognisable brand.
XML has succeeded in the face of the fact that hardly anyone actually likes it, simply because whenever a plan or product is discussed someone says "Will it support XML?" and the answer always has to be yes. And so yet another format or application has a layer of tags and namespaces wrapped round it.
People who *do* like XML do exist but they are spooky and remind me of Sadako.
I've tried most of the keyboards shown (I like input devices). I'd rate them as follows, where '10' is a regular keyboard.
Combimouse -- 0/10. This is the one I haven't tried, but I simply don't see how it can possibly work. Evolution -- 11/10. This was intended to be used in conjunction with an entire ergonomic environment. It's like a regular keyboard but with touchpads. Yay. Wearable -- 1/10. This is nothing like as good as a chording keyboard such as the Twiddler. Optimus Maximus -- 12/10. I've only ever used it very briefly and since it's exactly like having a regular keyboard (except that you can put pictures on the function keys) I'd say it has mainly coolness value. But a *lot* of coolness value. Virtual Keyboard -- 3/10. Lack of tactile feedback renders this horrible to use. SafeType -- 6/10. This is one of the many easy-to-make, hard-to-use ergonomic keyboards that came out around the time RSI got to be big news. It's a pain. I think it used to come with little mirrors so you could see what you were doing. Tidy Tippist -- 1/10. I've never seen this before but *look* at it. AlphaGrip -- 9/10. It's nice to use, but there are two problems; first, it's fussier and slower than the Twiddler. Second, the keys can't be remapped or assigned macros at all. ElekTex -- 3/10. No tactile feedback, and easy to rumple it up inadvertently. TouchStream -- 16/10. This is fascinating to use. As a keyboard, it sucks because you can't tell what key you pressed (if any). However, the gesture system is fascinating, intuitive, and extendable. The small version of the TouchStream, used in conjunction with a regulare keyboard, is fun; but if you do that you can't type and gesture in the same place which takes away most of the fluidity of the full sized TouchStream.
I'd say people have had a lot of trouble coming up with designs that really improve on the IBM-style keyboard. The Kinesis Advantage I'm using is the only unusual keyboard I've ever had that I thought it was worth switching to, and it must be about 12 years old by now; since then almost every 'advance' has involved either not having keys (no tactile feedback, impossible to know where your hands are and whether you pressed a key) or else cutting a keyboard up and bolting junk to it (a la Evolution and Combimouse).
The Kinesis Advantage is remappable, programmable, pedal-compatible for those who just have to be like that, it saves my fingers a few miles of movement a day and it lets me use the cursor keys and backspace without having to drag my whole hand off the home row and over to some other part of the keyboard. But I note that the Evolution (also from Kinesis) outsells the Advantage, because it's got gadgets and rounded edges and looks space-agey when bolted to your executive chair. That's the trouble with keyboards as a market -- since flat keyboards are pretty much good enough, any extra money that gets spent tends to go on bells and whistles rather than on advancing the basic design.
There's a shortage of skilled staff. I know because I am endlessly looking for them.
There's no shortage of CS graduates who can't put together a coherent paragraph and who write as if they were sending txt messages. Heck, some of them, a few, who studied outsied the CS course or are actually interested, might have good technical skills. But if they can't communicate it doesn't matter and the average graduate of a UK university outside the top three can't communicate. They can't put themselves in someone else's shoes. They don't think, "How will this look to the person reading it?" They've been taught to express themselves and that there is no one right way, and as a result they aren't good at being diplomatic and they aren't good at being exact.
In my experience, Americans are better, but still declining.
It's better to get staff whose first language is not English but who understand that communication is a two-way thing, not a broadcast.
Well, Chicago *was* levelled by the Great Fire about a century ago. It's also far, far nicer than NY with (as the OP claimed about Halifax) big city facilities and a small-town feel. Interestingly, it's also a city on a major transport bottleneck (rails from the midwest / ships on the great lakes) which couldn't be abandoned after the disaster.
I guess the moral of this is, if you want a big city that's actually a nice place rather than a big pile of people in boxes, have it blown up a century ago.
Well, I haven't worked for Wipro. I *have* had them working for *me* and it was an unrepeatable experience -- scared, inexperienced, homesick, basically useless Indian guys supplied on a constantly revolving system, spending about a month on the project and then either disappearing or being rotated somewhere else. The absolutely classic bad side of outsourcing.
They're probably OK to work *for*, though, if you aren't one of those guys.
I was very excited to read the/. headline but honestly, this is rubbish. They've just got a big file in which each row is an English word and an image location -- it doesn't translate at all, it just looks up some *extremely* dubious images based on grepping for an image that matches each word in the input.
I don't read cuneiform but for hieroglyphs I swear it's as if they scanned in the pages of some 'The Wonder Of Ancient Egypt' type book and cut them into individual gifs. They didn't even start with a proper dictionary; there's really nothing going on here at all that'd be of any use to anyone interested in ancient egyptian.
The level of scholarship and indeed of coherency in the myspace-style notes plastered all over the page is also pretty darn tragic.
In short, I CALL SHENANIGANS. Heh, never said that before.
there is still no formal education on how to stay safe, secure and ethical online,
Yay, sanity prevails! At least, as of this instant.
The trouble is, teaching maths, grammar and history to kids whose career goal is to be a supermodel is inherently hard. Worthwhile, but difficult and even expensive. On the other hand, teaching them 'how to stay safe, secure and ethical online' is easy. Pointless, but easy and free-as-in-beer. If you're running a school or formulating an education policy, you're going to be tempted.
Luckily, immigration policies and economic conditions are generally still such that educated people (educated in regions where the career goal is to get an education and move to the West) continue to immigrate. Yay again!
Right now, the UK government can be offensive, inappropriate, incompetent, all the traditional sins of government, but they do stop short of being outright openly evil.
I don't really know anything about European mitochondrial DNA and I'm not entirely sure England (which was swept by various waves of invaders, not all of whom actually stayed, and then remained unchanged for a very long time) is a good example anyway. But I can say that over the last 100 years human genetic diversity (like linguistic diversity and cultural diversity) has plummeted, with truly distinct populations like the Andamanese (google them) and less-distinct but highly diverse populations like those of southern Siberia, Taiwan, and the Caucasus disappearing almost without comment.
Unfortunately, not only is it unfeasibly difficult to prevent such loss, it is also politically well-nigh impossible even to document it, as doing so involves admitting that a given population *is* distinct which is generally unacceptable to Russia and China in one way, and to politically-correct Western academics in another way. From peppercorn hair to multi-base counting systems, the vast majority of human biology, language and tradition has been lost, and a few selected strains and languages grow uncontrollably like some kind of bizarre algal bloom. Made of people.
This is not at all a recent phenomenon but in the last century it has massively speeded up. The catastrophic loss of ecological diversity may be just around the corner but the human equivalent has already happened and with a tiny fraction of the fanfare.
No, it isn't. For one thing, diversity is itself a survival trait in a population -- a population that had actually all zeroed in on the one single 'most fit' genotype would be terribly vulnerable.
It's misconceptions like these that make it easier for cranky American Protestants to think of 'Evolutionism' as just another faith.
You're so right. People are worried about climate change when they really shouldn't be. People who want to examine or react to climate change are ranting absolutists who can't see beyond the irrational beliefs they have forged for themselves. People are mean to Americans and it's naughty of them. Messages that make you uncomfortable do come from 'fanatic self-righteous alarmists' and there's no reason for you to have to think about them. It's all going to be all right.
Right, did that pacify your inner demons enough that the grown-ups now free to talk about bacteria?
Good. Sleep tight. If an actual global warming thread comes up, or an anti-American anti-Human fanatic criticizes the Republican Party, you can get this message out and re-read it and feel better.
That vista has not passed MacOS X yet, despite the benefit of being on a huge and much-encouraged upfrade path.
I'm no anti-MS crusader at all (death to the tyranny of Unix is more my motto) but to be fair, now, that's the real news.
Also I am SO DRUNK you would not believe it. Really, it's disgusting and even a bit scary. To give you some idea I drank a bottle of wine using ond of those 'shooter' things. And that was the start of the evening.
And yet, even *I* can see that Vista uptake, while not disastrous, is notable more for its slowness than for anything else. Maybe it will work out for MS, maybe not, but either way this aricle is bekeeen fearmongering and outright trolling.
Also, and I lie to you not, my/. digging compadres, there is a passed-out ex-girlfreind in my bed who has really only gotten more adorabhle with time, and yet STILL I felt it reasonable to walk over here and point out the obvious. THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME.
I appreciate that nobody in the USA cares about the difference any more in their mad rush to throw away all their liberties, but pedantry compels me to point out:
He gets his car back if he's proven innocent
Nooooo. He gets his car back if he's not proven guilty. It's a very VERY VERY basic part of the infrastructure of the relatively egalitarian society you used to have.
Unix killed NeXTStep. BeOS (a better OS than Unix and Windows -- perhaps not in terms of features but in terms of fundamental agenda) was killed by a combination of factors but mostly just the cost that it's hard to enter a market that's already been carved up.
Also... if your career became tedious because of a change of vendor, really I don't think you had a career to begin with.
Slashdot Mirror
That's as ridiculous as banning an article of clothing that can be used to disguise identity! It could never happen! THE VERY THOUGHT IS PREPOSTEROUS!!
Then again, as far as the hoodie ban goes, anything that even makes an attempt at reclaiming the UK's streets is welcome, whatever the free-speech implications.
Bullying on the internet, however, can be addressed more effectively by simply rotating 180 degrees until one's face is no longer pointing toward the screen. Further measures may include going out, getting some fresh air, and finding a nice hobby.
Well, in the 20s, you could be beaten to death with pick handles for refusing to relocate to the suburb specially constructed for you by the local industrialist. In the 60s you could be barred from office and have your career and/or life ruined by the FBI on the strength of *suspicion* of holding pro-communist opinions. Under Lincoln, a newspaper could be disbanded for printing anti-Republican stories and a Presidential arrest warrent could be -- and often was -- issued against anyone who looked like they might not be entirely pro-Union.
The problem is, you aren't paying attention.
Also, as the guy who corrected you earlier said, America is not technically a democracy but a democratic republic. Just so you know.
Comparing TODAY's Nazi gangs with Romans and Carthage shows complete lack of perspective.
Although not in the direction you mean.
That's how come decades of massive trade with the US has made Saudi Arabia into such a moderate, liberal regime!
So, you live in an area most of whose people have decided that beer shouldn't be sold before noon on Sunday. But that doesn't suit you. You'd prefer it to be changed -- you want the world around you adjusted to fit your way of thinking. Tough luck.
Those laws *do* serve the community. Whether they make sense I don't know, but the community opted for them. Whether the community are happier this way or not, whether they know what they're doing or not I don't know, but they picked what to do, and if that doesn't suit you that doesn't mean everyone *else* has to change and do it *your* way. Maybe you don't share their religious views. Maybe you don't spend your Sunday the same way as them. That doesn't mean they have to do things differently for your benefit.
It's ironic that you can use this as an example of *other people's* self-interestedness and closed-mindedness. You're right, those things aren't the exclusive territory of muslim extremists; suburbanites can be pretty darn focused on themselves too. Of course, not many devout Muslims would talk about unbelievers with quite the same lofty scorn that you use in your second-to-last paragraph, there.
The rest of the world really *isn't* asking you to compensate for their stupidity. But you seem to ask a heck of a lot from the rest of the world. Not everyone is the same as you and not everyone -- not the Taliban, not regular people who happen to have a religion, not your local town council -- has to be like you. They can write laws that they think protect their children if they darn well want to.
Well, here's an example. Suppose some guy picks up various scattered bits of facts -- a story on slashdot here, something about Mars kooks there. Now, he has an instinct -- or maybe it's hardwired at an even lower level than that -- to make up patterns around those scattered facts, to fill in the blanks. So he imagines a category of people who 'see things where nothing exists'. Before long, he's convinced enough of this specific phenomenon -- of this entity which is purely a product of his own tendency to create patterns to explain the phenomena he senses -- that he actually starts posting about this group of people on slashdot, as if there actually were one specific kind of person who has this trait!
And then other factors, psychological, move him to assume that he's 'better' than this entity that has popped up in his mind and that he now believes is an actual thing. He even begins to give patronising advice. To him, it's just as if he's *interacting* with this thing, this 'people who see things where nothing exists'. His self-deception is complete!
Far fetched? Maybe. But maybe not...
HTH
I spent years on MFC. I was really good at MFC. I even *liked* MFC, not because it's elegant or effective, which it isn't, but because it has many clever solutions to the *particular* problems that the designers originally faced when building a library for creating GUI apps on puny machines without even knowing whether the OS would support true multitasking or not. Custom message maps, dynamic resource handles, ATL integration, I did it all. I knew which specific message ID is handled differently in a Windows message queue than any other. I knew how to have a form containing windows with their message pumps in different threads. This was back before we had that fancy 'Java' and 'Flash' and 'C#', you know -- back when writing really powerful GUI apps involved a bit more than dragging your chart control onto your docking window control. And we lived in a cardboard box in the middle of a motorway.
Now all my MFC skillz are obsolete. Years of study and experience that I wouldn't even dare mention on my resume. Deader than cursive handwriting. Half my working life down the drain.
Good. That's progress.
The practise of stacking coins on an arcade machine to indicate that you are next, on the other hand, is much missed. Man, those were the days. When you went *out* to play instead of cowering in your house... what the hell happened?
(small timid voice) Is it ok if I don't have a personal brand?
It's just that when *everyone* has one, you know, you're kind of back to square one. And similarly, when *every* commercial player has a hip social networking solution, they do kind of blend into background noise. I'm going to wait until the inevitable next step, 'social networking site networks' in which networks of social networking sites will busily build *their* brands. And three months later when that brand space is crowded, venture capitalists will eagerly announce netwros of social networking site networks and all the social networks (by that time everyone will have their own social network) will crowd to build their brands in this new tier...
*wakes up in a cold sweat*
Sextants are derived from quadrants and astrolables, both Arab inventions.
Sundials were used by the ancient Egyptians and it's rather unlikely they got them from China -- it's probably something that's been invented many times in many places.
'Circumnavigation' appears to be an idea from Gavin Menzies' book and has little scholarly support (probably lots of *political* support) even in China and nothing resembling actual evidence, although like the Da Vinci Code it's probably going to be remembered as real history by hordes of idiots.
Manchu China was technologically and politically stagnant for a LONG time before the Japanese arrived, and Ming China had been technologically and politically stagnant for an even longer time before that, which is how the Manchurians were able to conquer China in the first place.
HTH
Currently, the US imports from China in both fields. I'm sure China doesn't export EVERYTHING.
I will admit that the US and Japan did lead China in high-end industrial and scientific machinery until very recently, and the US and Japan between them did 99% of the research in areas such as high-speed turbines and whatnot. But since all that stuff was basically shipped to China in the 90s in exchange for cash, the playing field is level again.
That was excellent, thanks.
The problem is that XML is a brand with a lot of recognizability. It's kind of like brand-name clothes versus well made, appropriate clothes. There's always going to be a lot of people who wouldn't know 'well made and appropriate' if it hit them in the face and who will therefore retreat to a recognisable brand.
XML has succeeded in the face of the fact that hardly anyone actually likes it, simply because whenever a plan or product is discussed someone says "Will it support XML?" and the answer always has to be yes. And so yet another format or application has a layer of tags and namespaces wrapped round it.
People who *do* like XML do exist but they are spooky and remind me of Sadako.
I've tried most of the keyboards shown (I like input devices). I'd rate them as follows, where '10' is a regular keyboard.
Combimouse -- 0/10. This is the one I haven't tried, but I simply don't see how it can possibly work.
Evolution -- 11/10. This was intended to be used in conjunction with an entire ergonomic environment. It's like a regular keyboard but with touchpads. Yay.
Wearable -- 1/10. This is nothing like as good as a chording keyboard such as the Twiddler.
Optimus Maximus -- 12/10. I've only ever used it very briefly and since it's exactly like having a regular keyboard (except that you can put pictures on the function keys) I'd say it has mainly coolness value. But a *lot* of coolness value.
Virtual Keyboard -- 3/10. Lack of tactile feedback renders this horrible to use.
SafeType -- 6/10. This is one of the many easy-to-make, hard-to-use ergonomic keyboards that came out around the time RSI got to be big news. It's a pain. I think it used to come with little mirrors so you could see what you were doing.
Tidy Tippist -- 1/10. I've never seen this before but *look* at it.
AlphaGrip -- 9/10. It's nice to use, but there are two problems; first, it's fussier and slower than the Twiddler. Second, the keys can't be remapped or assigned macros at all.
ElekTex -- 3/10. No tactile feedback, and easy to rumple it up inadvertently.
TouchStream -- 16/10. This is fascinating to use. As a keyboard, it sucks because you can't tell what key you pressed (if any). However, the gesture system is fascinating, intuitive, and extendable. The small version of the TouchStream, used in conjunction with a regulare keyboard, is fun; but if you do that you can't type and gesture in the same place which takes away most of the fluidity of the full sized TouchStream.
I'd say people have had a lot of trouble coming up with designs that really improve on the IBM-style keyboard. The Kinesis Advantage I'm using is the only unusual keyboard I've ever had that I thought it was worth switching to, and it must be about 12 years old by now; since then almost every 'advance' has involved either not having keys (no tactile feedback, impossible to know where your hands are and whether you pressed a key) or else cutting a keyboard up and bolting junk to it (a la Evolution and Combimouse).
The Kinesis Advantage is remappable, programmable, pedal-compatible for those who just have to be like that, it saves my fingers a few miles of movement a day and it lets me use the cursor keys and backspace without having to drag my whole hand off the home row and over to some other part of the keyboard. But I note that the Evolution (also from Kinesis) outsells the Advantage, because it's got gadgets and rounded edges and looks space-agey when bolted to your executive chair. That's the trouble with keyboards as a market -- since flat keyboards are pretty much good enough, any extra money that gets spent tends to go on bells and whistles rather than on advancing the basic design.
The Kinesis Advantage is the king of keyboards, by the way.
There's a shortage of skilled staff. I know because I am endlessly looking for them.
There's no shortage of CS graduates who can't put together a coherent paragraph and who write as if they were sending txt messages. Heck, some of them, a few, who studied outsied the CS course or are actually interested, might have good technical skills. But if they can't communicate it doesn't matter and the average graduate of a UK university outside the top three can't communicate. They can't put themselves in someone else's shoes. They don't think, "How will this look to the person reading it?" They've been taught to express themselves and that there is no one right way, and as a result they aren't good at being diplomatic and they aren't good at being exact.
In my experience, Americans are better, but still declining.
It's better to get staff whose first language is not English but who understand that communication is a two-way thing, not a broadcast.
Well, Chicago *was* levelled by the Great Fire about a century ago. It's also far, far nicer than NY with (as the OP claimed about Halifax) big city facilities and a small-town feel. Interestingly, it's also a city on a major transport bottleneck (rails from the midwest / ships on the great lakes) which couldn't be abandoned after the disaster.
I guess the moral of this is, if you want a big city that's actually a nice place rather than a big pile of people in boxes, have it blown up a century ago.
Well, I haven't worked for Wipro. I *have* had them working for *me* and it was an unrepeatable experience -- scared, inexperienced, homesick, basically useless Indian guys supplied on a constantly revolving system, spending about a month on the project and then either disappearing or being rotated somewhere else. The absolutely classic bad side of outsourcing.
They're probably OK to work *for*, though, if you aren't one of those guys.
I was very excited to read the
I don't read cuneiform but for hieroglyphs I swear it's as if they scanned in the pages of some 'The Wonder Of Ancient Egypt' type book and cut them into individual gifs. They didn't even start with a proper dictionary; there's really nothing going on here at all that'd be of any use to anyone interested in ancient egyptian.
The level of scholarship and indeed of coherency in the myspace-style notes plastered all over the page is also pretty darn tragic.
In short, I CALL SHENANIGANS. Heh, never said that before.
and I'd like to join the big pile of Slashdotters who have/will clawed you to bits for your ignorance of physics. My personal approach is going to be:
LEARN TO SPELL!!
Thanks.
there is still no formal education on how to stay safe, secure and ethical online,
Yay, sanity prevails! At least, as of this instant.
The trouble is, teaching maths, grammar and history to kids whose career goal is to be a supermodel is inherently hard. Worthwhile, but difficult and even expensive. On the other hand, teaching them 'how to stay safe, secure and ethical online' is easy. Pointless, but easy and free-as-in-beer. If you're running a school or formulating an education policy, you're going to be tempted.
Luckily, immigration policies and economic conditions are generally still such that educated people (educated in regions where the career goal is to get an education and move to the West) continue to immigrate. Yay again!
Right now, the UK government can be offensive, inappropriate, incompetent, all the traditional sins of government, but they do stop short of being outright openly evil.
Ha ha, yeah, good one.
I don't really know anything about European mitochondrial DNA and I'm not entirely sure England (which was swept by various waves of invaders, not all of whom actually stayed, and then remained unchanged for a very long time) is a good example anyway. But I can say that over the last 100 years human genetic diversity (like linguistic diversity and cultural diversity) has plummeted, with truly distinct populations like the Andamanese (google them) and less-distinct but highly diverse populations like those of southern Siberia, Taiwan, and the Caucasus disappearing almost without comment.
Unfortunately, not only is it unfeasibly difficult to prevent such loss, it is also politically well-nigh impossible even to document it, as doing so involves admitting that a given population *is* distinct which is generally unacceptable to Russia and China in one way, and to politically-correct Western academics in another way. From peppercorn hair to multi-base counting systems, the vast majority of human biology, language and tradition has been lost, and a few selected strains and languages grow uncontrollably like some kind of bizarre algal bloom. Made of people.
This is not at all a recent phenomenon but in the last century it has massively speeded up. The catastrophic loss of ecological diversity may be just around the corner but the human equivalent has already happened and with a tiny fraction of the fanfare.
No, it isn't. For one thing, diversity is itself a survival trait in a population -- a population that had actually all zeroed in on the one single 'most fit' genotype would be terribly vulnerable.
It's misconceptions like these that make it easier for cranky American Protestants to think of 'Evolutionism' as just another faith.
You're so right. People are worried about climate change when they really shouldn't be. People who want to examine or react to climate change are ranting absolutists who can't see beyond the irrational beliefs they have forged for themselves. People are mean to Americans and it's naughty of them. Messages that make you uncomfortable do come from 'fanatic self-righteous alarmists' and there's no reason for you to have to think about them. It's all going to be all right.
Right, did that pacify your inner demons enough that the grown-ups now free to talk about bacteria?
Good. Sleep tight. If an actual global warming thread comes up, or an anti-American anti-Human fanatic criticizes the Republican Party, you can get this message out and re-read it and feel better.
That vista has not passed MacOS X yet, despite the benefit of being on a huge and much-encouraged upfrade path.
/. digging compadres, there is a passed-out ex-girlfreind in my bed who has really only gotten more adorabhle with time, and yet STILL I felt it reasonable to walk over here and point out the obvious. THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME.
I'm no anti-MS crusader at all (death to the tyranny of Unix is more my motto) but to be fair, now, that's the real news.
Also I am SO DRUNK you would not believe it. Really, it's disgusting and even a bit scary. To give you some idea I drank a bottle of wine using ond of those 'shooter' things. And that was the start of the evening.
And yet, even *I* can see that Vista uptake, while not disastrous, is notable more for its slowness than for anything else. Maybe it will work out for MS, maybe not, but either way this aricle is bekeeen fearmongering and outright trolling.
Also, and I lie to you not, my
God this post is embarrassing.
I appreciate that nobody in the USA cares about the difference any more in their mad rush to throw away all their liberties, but pedantry compels me to point out:
He gets his car back if he's proven innocent
Nooooo. He gets his car back if he's not proven guilty. It's a very VERY VERY basic part of the infrastructure of the relatively egalitarian society you used to have.
Unix killed NeXTStep. BeOS (a better OS than Unix and Windows -- perhaps not in terms of features but in terms of fundamental agenda) was killed by a combination of factors but mostly just the cost that it's hard to enter a market that's already been carved up.
Also... if your career became tedious because of a change of vendor, really I don't think you had a career to begin with.