We're not the ones who are running the regimes of their oppressive dictators. We're not the ones diverting international aid away from starving people. Yes, production of biofuels makes the cost of some food items increase. But if they'd grow their own fucking food, it wouldn't be an issue.
Demonizing their actions is stupid. Shell is a for profit corporation
The second sentence renders the first null.
Large for-profit corporations are demons, psychopathic monsters created by the state for the benefit of the owning class. They are incapable of compassion or long-term thinking, short-term profits are their only drive.
The only way to control one is to rile people up -- "demonize" them -- into boycotts until public opinion hurts their bottom line.
The simple fact of the matter is that oil is too cheap.
If you paid the cost of oil wars, oil spills, and climate change at the pump, it would not be cheap. Our petroleum economy is heavily subsidized by externalizing costs.
No, capitalism prevents evolution by concentrating control of economic resources into the hands of a few. Perhaps you're thinking of markets -- they're not the same thing at all.
If we had functioning markets that took all costs into account and didn't allow externalization, we'd never have developed a petroleum based economy.
Some jumps cannot be made. Large jumps have lower probability of success.
We started our "jump" about 200 years ago at the start of the industrial revolution. If we continue on our current course, we'll go *splat* when we land. The question is whether or not we can change course in time.
Species go extinct... deal with it.
"Yes, I brutally murdered twenty people, but people die...deal with it." See the flaw here?
the multiple windows. It interferes with multiple desktops, other app windows and some focus policies, that regularly get me to select the wrong image or present the options for a tool in a window below the image (so I go window hunting).
You apparently need a better window manager.
If you find it interfering with other app windows, put all your GIMP windows on a separate desktop.
It should be a docking app, like Eclipse, Kdevelop, Karbon, and... Photoshop.
Please, please, please no. The fewer of those created, the sooner we can abandon that broken stinking wreck of an interface concept called "MDI".
Granted, catholics outnumber other christians in most places
Not in the U.S. Catholics are about 25% of the population, Protestants about 50%. (Catholics are the largest single sect, though, since "Protestant" identifies a large variety.)
There are areas where Catholicism dominates due to various demographic factors. I grew up in a suburban neighborhood just outside Baltimore, full of couples whose parents or grandparents were Catholic immigrants, lots of Polish or Irish or Italian. My CCD class and my elementary school class were almost identical. (This was 30 years ago, and the demographics have changed enormously.)
Most trials aren't really about "truth" as much as about being "fair". And what is "fair" is totally stacked against the state, and in favor of the defendant.
What country do you live in where this is true? Can't be the same one I live in, the one that leads the world in incarceration, where judges and juries typically assume a defendant is guilty. Spend a day in court and see how little evidence it actually takes to have a man locked in a cage for years.
And people like OJ are free because Furman said the N word (slight over simplification). That's the system. Everyone knows OJ did it.
Surely you're not suggesting the Simpson trial is typical of criminal trials?
Anyway, Furman perjored himself. The attitude he displayed, plus missing blood taken from Simpson and curious patterns of bloodstains, suggested that the cops might have planted evidence. The state presented insufficient evidence to prove the Simpson was guilty of the murders. The verdict was correct.
It only protects the actual text of a story, or drawings of a character, etc.
Copyright protects the right to make derivative works.
"Derivative work" is a wonderfully vague term, but has often been held to apply to re-use of the same characters or setting. Create a new movie with Luke Skywalker or Neo or Sarah Conner, I'd expect the courts to hold that you've created a derivative work and violated copyright.
Apparently, a series of Star Trek books was published that used a couple of elements from Ellison's story. If Ellison owns the rights to "City on the Edge of Forever" (which he might not, if it was a work for hire) and if these books are derivative works, he might have a case.
also that their scores on certain tests *declined over time*.
TFA suggests that this was a short-term study done of a group of varying ages, not a long-term study that followed a group over time and tracked changes. If that's correct, it's another confounding factor: I would not be surprised if, due to differences in stimuli, people who came of age when TV was new had different patterns of brain development than people who grew up playing video games.
(I downloaded the paper myself so this comes straight from a graph in the paper.)
Link, damn yer eyes, link!:-)
I don't know the details of the tests, you apparently do. But the "spatial orientation" tests I recall involving reasoning about 3-D objects from 2-D views. If on such a test a 27 year old who grew up playing FPSs, wandering through 3-D worlds projected on a 2-D screen, scores better than a 47 year old on a test involving reasoning about 3-D objects from 2-D views, I don't think we can clearly assign the difference to age-related mental decline.
I find corrupt police officers always notify me well in advance.
I don't, but I find that people attending political demonstrations and rallies where police malfeasance is likely, usually plan their attendance in advance.
Back on topic, This card is a solution to a non-problem.
If you're trying to document misbehavior by police or other security personal, the kind of folks who will beat you and smash your camera, having some auto-upload capability is a very good idea.
Sousveillance makes corrupt officials nervous. Anything that enables it is a worthwhile technology. Hide a netbook nearby, have it relay images from eye-fi equipped camera to a server far away, and see bad cops caught in the act.
How do you manage to be forced to look at internet porn on anyone else's terms? If you're running a broswer insecure enough to have porn forced on it, you're running a broswer insecure enough to have any amount of malware or phishing forced on it. For that reason, whether you have a kid or not, you need to be running NoScript and Adblock Plus.
Once your browser is secure, you won't be introduced to content you don't seek out.
Or, maybe by their late 20s, people have had enough of stupid tests -- they're done with school and the day when success was measured by testing rather than real accomplishments are over. Being less interested and excited by tests, they score lower.
If old age begins at 27, then I can say that from over a decade in, it's not so bad. I can still kick 20-somethings butts. I just wish those darn kids would stay off my lawn. (True -- I live near a middle school and the bastards keep cutting through yards to walk to school...)
it was a rule that kindergarteners could not books out of the school library.
Obviously that precocious youngster who learned to read so young, never learned how to type or proofread his posts so as to prevent the omission of verbs like "check". D'oh.
Translation: Control is more important than productivity.
No. Productivity is measured by more than the generation of code that works for the moment. Productivity is measured by the generation of code that can be maintained, i.e. is documented and not overly convoluted. This jackass was not productive.
When kids are recognized as being highly intelligent and gifted, parents, extended family, and teachers go out of their to coddle them. To treat them as special. To give them far greater leniency and independence than kids with normal intelligence.
Kids who are highly intelligent and gifted are special, by definition. Teachers and caregivers often find that the rules designed for age-group peers should not be applied, because the assumptions behind the rules don't fit. That's not coddling, especially when you consider the additional pressures of expectation placed on them.
For example, I remember in elementary school (this is around 1975) it was a rule that kindergarteners could not books out of the school library. After all, reading wasn't taught until first grade, so kindergarteners can't read. When they found two of us who showed up able to read, rather than remove the rule entirely or stunt our learning potential, the rule didn't apply to us.
Now, this has nothing to do with the sort of developer discussed in the article. A smart developer develops elegant and documented code, and is so proud of their work that they love to explain it to others. Someone who's mastered some arcane bit of technical lore and secretively builds convoluted, undocumented code around it, is neither smart nor talented nor an asset to their team. If they further behave like an asshole (not just quirky, but actively rude and abrasive), the only "special treatment" warranted is a swift kick in the ass.
The fundamental problem with our current system of education is that we're paying $35k a year for a $75k job. We simply don't want to pay for the quality we'd like to have.
I would really like to hear your distinction between academic and technical people.
An ex-paramour of mine was a graduate student in Egyptology. Used to go on archaeological digs all the time. She could speak or read six languages fluently, several of them dead. When we went to see the touring collection of the British Museum she read the hieroglyphs on various artifacts to us as easily as you or I would read a street sign. She's since finished up her PhD. I'm certain she'll end up a department head at a top university someday. Very academic.
She also got lost driving to places she'd already been to several times, and couldn't understand how to calculate a 20% tip by doubling and moving the decimal point. Can't imagine her using LaTeX. or CVS. Not technical at all.
How sad is it when the Army is contracting out one of its most essential functions?
Sad? It's great! It means the Army is doing a fine job of fulfilling its most essential function -- enriching the stockholder class.
Oh, come on, surely you don't believe that old-fashioned sentimental nonsense about the armed forces existing to protect the nation and its people? The U.S. military has been protecting commercial interests since the late 1800s. The military-industrial complex that grew up in the early 20th century just made war more of a racket. Turning military functions directly over to the industrial side of the complex merely improves the process of removing money from working citizens and putting it in the pockets of the owning classes. It's a great business model!
I wish Obama had the balls to call out and demand that all truancy laws be reinstated, teachers paid based on merit
Right, because forcing delinquents into classrooms is so good for everyone's learning, and student performance on federal standardized tests is such a good indicator of who's a good teacher.
I'm all for intervening when kids aren't showing up at school, and for rewarding good teachers. But neither of these can be accomplished with the simplistic ideas behind current truancy laws or merit pay schemes.
Life critical monitoring equipment is never plugged into the Internet.
"Should never be" and "never is" are two different things.
And what constitutes "life critical" is fuzzy. Is Google Maps "life critical"? Do you remember the family that got lost and the father froze to death? (It's not clear that the map in this case came from Google Maps, but it show the possibility.)
This is no different than hip hop producers who've been mixing stuff for 30 years
There's a big difference. Hip-hop remixed published professional recordings, since that's pretty much all the recordings that were available.
Now we're all on YouTube. (Yes, me too, as of a few days ago.) This isn't remixing a pre-selected bunch of approved source material, it's moving toward re-mixing the whole creative output of the human race. Every coffeehouse poet, every girl with a guitar at an open mic, every guy goofing around in from of a webcam, is providing source material.
What if they are playing acoustic with nylon strings?
Nylon? Feh. I string my guitar (which I carved myself out of a log) with catgut from cats I hunt with arrowheads I chip myself. I set it up in a unique tuning then play original songs written in scales of my own devising.
It's a pain, but it's the only way to keep from infringing somebody else's "intellectual property".
Slashdot Mirror
The political and socioeconomic development of most third-world nations was ruined by Western powers dating back to the colonial era, carrying through neo-colonialism and the Cold War. Now World Bank / IMF policies turn third world nations quite capable of feeding themselves into grain importers.
The second sentence renders the first null.
Large for-profit corporations are demons, psychopathic monsters created by the state for the benefit of the owning class. They are incapable of compassion or long-term thinking, short-term profits are their only drive.
The only way to control one is to rile people up -- "demonize" them -- into boycotts until public opinion hurts their bottom line.
If you paid the cost of oil wars, oil spills, and climate change at the pump, it would not be cheap. Our petroleum economy is heavily subsidized by externalizing costs.
No, capitalism prevents evolution by concentrating control of economic resources into the hands of a few. Perhaps you're thinking of markets -- they're not the same thing at all.
If we had functioning markets that took all costs into account and didn't allow externalization, we'd never have developed a petroleum based economy.
We started our "jump" about 200 years ago at the start of the industrial revolution. If we continue on our current course, we'll go *splat* when we land. The question is whether or not we can change course in time.
"Yes, I brutally murdered twenty people, but people die...deal with it." See the flaw here?
You apparently need a better window manager.
If you find it interfering with other app windows, put all your GIMP windows on a separate desktop.
Please, please, please no. The fewer of those created, the sooner we can abandon that broken stinking wreck of an interface concept called "MDI".
Not in the U.S. Catholics are about 25% of the population, Protestants about 50%. (Catholics are the largest single sect, though, since "Protestant" identifies a large variety.)
There are areas where Catholicism dominates due to various demographic factors. I grew up in a suburban neighborhood just outside Baltimore, full of couples whose parents or grandparents were Catholic immigrants, lots of Polish or Irish or Italian. My CCD class and my elementary school class were almost identical. (This was 30 years ago, and the demographics have changed enormously.)
What country do you live in where this is true? Can't be the same one I live in, the one that leads the world in incarceration, where judges and juries typically assume a defendant is guilty. Spend a day in court and see how little evidence it actually takes to have a man locked in a cage for years.
Surely you're not suggesting the Simpson trial is typical of criminal trials?
Anyway, Furman perjored himself. The attitude he displayed, plus missing blood taken from Simpson and curious patterns of bloodstains, suggested that the cops might have planted evidence. The state presented insufficient evidence to prove the Simpson was guilty of the murders. The verdict was correct.
And just what do you think is "improper" about the one it has now?
Copyright protects the right to make derivative works.
"Derivative work" is a wonderfully vague term, but has often been held to apply to re-use of the same characters or setting. Create a new movie with Luke Skywalker or Neo or Sarah Conner, I'd expect the courts to hold that you've created a derivative work and violated copyright.
Apparently, a series of Star Trek books was published that used a couple of elements from Ellison's story. If Ellison owns the rights to "City on the Edge of Forever" (which he might not, if it was a work for hire) and if these books are derivative works, he might have a case.
TFA suggests that this was a short-term study done of a group of varying ages, not a long-term study that followed a group over time and tracked changes. If that's correct, it's another confounding factor: I would not be surprised if, due to differences in stimuli, people who came of age when TV was new had different patterns of brain development than people who grew up playing video games.
Link, damn yer eyes, link! :-)
I don't know the details of the tests, you apparently do. But the "spatial orientation" tests I recall involving reasoning about 3-D objects from 2-D views. If on such a test a 27 year old who grew up playing FPSs, wandering through 3-D worlds projected on a 2-D screen, scores better than a 47 year old on a test involving reasoning about 3-D objects from 2-D views, I don't think we can clearly assign the difference to age-related mental decline.
If you're subject to popups, you're susceptible to phishing. If you're subject to Flash-based ads, you've got a security hole. If you're getting cookies from ads, you've got a security hole.
I don't, but I find that people attending political demonstrations and rallies where police malfeasance is likely, usually plan their attendance in advance.
If you're trying to document misbehavior by police or other security personal, the kind of folks who will beat you and smash your camera, having some auto-upload capability is a very good idea.
Sousveillance makes corrupt officials nervous. Anything that enables it is a worthwhile technology. Hide a netbook nearby, have it relay images from eye-fi equipped camera to a server far away, and see bad cops caught in the act.
How do you manage to be forced to look at internet porn on anyone else's terms? If you're running a broswer insecure enough to have porn forced on it, you're running a broswer insecure enough to have any amount of malware or phishing forced on it. For that reason, whether you have a kid or not, you need to be running NoScript and Adblock Plus.
Once your browser is secure, you won't be introduced to content you don't seek out.
Or, maybe by their late 20s, people have had enough of stupid tests -- they're done with school and the day when success was measured by testing rather than real accomplishments are over. Being less interested and excited by tests, they score lower.
If old age begins at 27, then I can say that from over a decade in, it's not so bad. I can still kick 20-somethings butts. I just wish those darn kids would stay off my lawn. (True -- I live near a middle school and the bastards keep cutting through yards to walk to school...)
Obviously that precocious youngster who learned to read so young, never learned how to type or proofread his posts so as to prevent the omission of verbs like "check". D'oh.
No. Productivity is measured by more than the generation of code that works for the moment. Productivity is measured by the generation of code that can be maintained, i.e. is documented and not overly convoluted. This jackass was not productive.
Kids who are highly intelligent and gifted are special, by definition. Teachers and caregivers often find that the rules designed for age-group peers should not be applied, because the assumptions behind the rules don't fit. That's not coddling, especially when you consider the additional pressures of expectation placed on them.
For example, I remember in elementary school (this is around 1975) it was a rule that kindergarteners could not books out of the school library. After all, reading wasn't taught until first grade, so kindergarteners can't read. When they found two of us who showed up able to read, rather than remove the rule entirely or stunt our learning potential, the rule didn't apply to us.
Now, this has nothing to do with the sort of developer discussed in the article. A smart developer develops elegant and documented code, and is so proud of their work that they love to explain it to others. Someone who's mastered some arcane bit of technical lore and secretively builds convoluted, undocumented code around it, is neither smart nor talented nor an asset to their team. If they further behave like an asshole (not just quirky, but actively rude and abrasive), the only "special treatment" warranted is a swift kick in the ass.
Sure. That would mean raising taxes or something.
Ha! Just picked this up to re-read yesterday.
An ex-paramour of mine was a graduate student in Egyptology. Used to go on archaeological digs all the time. She could speak or read six languages fluently, several of them dead. When we went to see the touring collection of the British Museum she read the hieroglyphs on various artifacts to us as easily as you or I would read a street sign. She's since finished up her PhD. I'm certain she'll end up a department head at a top university someday. Very academic.
She also got lost driving to places she'd already been to several times, and couldn't understand how to calculate a 20% tip by doubling and moving the decimal point. Can't imagine her using LaTeX. or CVS. Not technical at all.
Darn it, I wanted to be the one to post a Demon With A Glass Hand reference.
Sad? It's great! It means the Army is doing a fine job of fulfilling its most essential function -- enriching the stockholder class.
Oh, come on, surely you don't believe that old-fashioned sentimental nonsense about the armed forces existing to protect the nation and its people? The U.S. military has been protecting commercial interests since the late 1800s. The military-industrial complex that grew up in the early 20th century just made war more of a racket. Turning military functions directly over to the industrial side of the complex merely improves the process of removing money from working citizens and putting it in the pockets of the owning classes. It's a great business model!
(Sure, soldiers get electrocuted by shoddy KBR workmanship, but c'mon, we can't be worried about the lives of grunts like that any more than we worry about Iraqis or Afghanis who get blown up. Profits before people, after all, so long as they're not our people.)
Right, because forcing delinquents into classrooms is so good for everyone's learning, and student performance on federal standardized tests is such a good indicator of who's a good teacher.
I'm all for intervening when kids aren't showing up at school, and for rewarding good teachers. But neither of these can be accomplished with the simplistic ideas behind current truancy laws or merit pay schemes.
"Should never be" and "never is" are two different things.
And what constitutes "life critical" is fuzzy. Is Google Maps "life critical"? Do you remember the family that got lost and the father froze to death? (It's not clear that the map in this case came from Google Maps, but it show the possibility.)
Is your word processor "life criticial"? Michael Richard was executed after his lawyers were unable to file paperwork by a deadline due to computer problems, under circumstances that would likely have at least postponed his murder by the state.
Is your local park service's database "life critical"? It becomes so when a dead tree that was supposed to be removed falls and kills somebody.
(By the way, if you're a computer professional and you're not reading the RISKS digest, you oughta be.)
There's a big difference. Hip-hop remixed published professional recordings, since that's pretty much all the recordings that were available.
Now we're all on YouTube. (Yes, me too, as of a few days ago.) This isn't remixing a pre-selected bunch of approved source material, it's moving toward re-mixing the whole creative output of the human race. Every coffeehouse poet, every girl with a guitar at an open mic, every guy goofing around in from of a webcam, is providing source material.
Nylon? Feh. I string my guitar (which I carved myself out of a log) with catgut from cats I hunt with arrowheads I chip myself. I set it up in a unique tuning then play original songs written in scales of my own devising.
It's a pain, but it's the only way to keep from infringing somebody else's "intellectual property".