For a small nation it makes sense to select a single multi-role platform: have one type of plane that will comfortably handle most missions we'll likely take any part in. But what I don't know is how well the F35 is going to perform as such a platform, and if it's the best choice at the price. What I really don't know is why on earth we as a small nation (the Netherlands) decided to commit to this thing as a level 2 partner and order 40 or so, instead of waiting until the performance and price are clear, then buy off the shelf.
I think technology has a (major) role to play in education, but that doesn't mean that education has to be technology-based. We know that there are various ways to teach a kid, and any method in particular will work best only for certain kids. Same with the environment: some work best alone while others thrive in groups. Some need more help than others, some learn faster, some need discipline and planning while others learn fine on their own. And even in a school system where one can choose from a variety of school types to best suit their child, schools are still unable to really tailor the learning experience to the different kids that come to learn. That's where technology can play a role: enable the teacher to find out what kind of programme best suits each child, and enable the school to provide such tailored programmes without having to assign one tutor to every 5 kids.
Such tailored programmes may have e-learning and computerized tests, but it's only part of the curriculum, and certainly only part of the solution. We're not going to fix education by handing out iPads.
Biking and public transport can be a great way to get around in the Netherlands... but not for everyone. People who live close enough to work to be able to cycle (within reason) are considered by their coworkers to be very fortunate. And trains are great as long as your journey has only one leg; having to change to another train, tram or bus means adding another 10-15 minutes to your journey no matter how short the second leg is. When I commuted from Rotterdam to Rijswijk I used the train. Fantastic, almost literally door to door transportation. However that route uses the sucktastic "Sprinter" trains (you know, the ones with no toilets), and by the time it arrived at my station it would already be jam packed with commuters. The only way to get a seat was to get a first class ticket (which I did). It beat having to go by car in heavy traffic, but only because it was faster. Most people whom I hear extolling the virtues of public transportation are people who happen to have a convenient route to use, or politicians. Also think about this: if only about 10% of drivers (in the Netherlands) decide to take the train to work instead, the public transport system would be utterly flooded in rush hour. Some routes are already filled to capacity.
The moronic attitude to cyclists in the US and UK you mention is something we have as well, towards cars. I remember someone saying: "We don't have too many cars in the Netherlands, just too many people who hate them". For a majority of commuters, even in a country with generally excellent public transport, cars are still a good if expensive way to get around. And even with traffic jams it'll often be faster. Some people look at a commuter stuck in a traffic jam as a stubborn idiot who will not let go of his "status symbol", but I see perhaps a family man who, thanks to his car, had time this morning to have breakfast with his kids. It's fine if you choose not to own a car, but don't smugly knock those who do, out of preference or necessity.
Over here (NL), that's actually the rule: cyclists have to keep to the right at all times except in cases where there is a special bike lane. At traffic lights, cyclists wait at the right side of the road even when going straight. Cars turning right have to give them right of way... but since this is a major cause of accidents, in many cases you'll see separate lanes for bikes at traffic lights, or a "bike waiting area" one or more lanes wide, in front of where the cars would stop, where bikes wait for the lights.
Many people actually do. There are plenty of general and specialist hospitals in countries like India and Thailand that offer first world class service (some of them rank amongst the top hospitals). And some of the surgeons there got to that level by innovating out of necessity.
GP has a point though. I'm sure rich people are just like us: some like to show off, others don't care. But people generally think that design and quality matters, especially for personal items. I can tell the difference between a $50 shirt and a $500 one, and if I had plenty of cash I'd choose the expensive one. When I buy jewelry for my wife, I can choose from stuff ranging from dirt cheap to stupidly expensive, but the beautifully designed and well-made pieces that catch my eye are invariably the more expensive ones. Quality and design cost money... and yes, at some point they become overpriced, and it will be about the (barf-inducing marketing word) experience. It's much more enjoyable to go out to shop instead of ordering online, and when you do, it is better to go to a luxurious store where they serve you whisky and treat you like a god while you take the time to try on a few watches, compared to visiting a busy department store where you have to hunt around for a clerk to help you.
That sounds a bit like the old "if architects designed houses like software engineers design programs..." trope. There is some truth to that, even if the fields of software design, architecture and aerospace engineering are vastly different. An important difference is that it is extremely unsafe to make assumptions in software engineering, yet we have no choice but to make them all the time. Our current world of software development is a minefield of bedrock turning to mud overnight, cable ducts that melt if they come in contact with a certain titanium alloy, doors that randomly explode if you put the doorknob on wrong, and turbine blades that come off if you happen to fly over the date line twice in one hour, to use a few crappy analogies. Some of this can be fixed, but until it is, it makes software development a complex affair, where perfection is attainably only at great cost; vastly more than consumers or producers are willing to pay.
You do need a good process, but as I wrote before, it's not a substitute for good people. What I often see in IT is incredibly low standards. Sloppy work, sloppy decisions, sloppy designs, sloppy planning. And that has something to do with the quality of the people that we hire. Not just the developers, but the architects, testers and managers as well. Especially the managers. I can't imagine that airplane mechanics finding a leftover bolt after putting an engine back together will just shrug and say: "That was probably already here when we started" (I sure hope they don't...). In IT, such decisions are made on a daily basis just to meet the deadline for pushing out a product that sort of runs. And if you're going to change that culture, you need better people; just enforcing it through process is not going to cut it.
Coming back to Chaotic Architecture: you need good people for that to work as well. If you just throw it out there without making some other changes, you're inviting disaster.
It doesn't mean to just let everyone use whatever they want; you still need oversight, from your peers as well as your manager. And good individual choices can (and should) at some point be incorporated into company guidelines.
I've worked with software that came from a "chaotic" environment. When it came to fixing bugs, there was a lot more moaning about "why the hell did he do that?!" compared to software developed against corporate standards, however the time and cost of fixing a bug were similar for both types of software. When it comes to adding enhancements, I found that the success factor was not having a company standard software architecture, but a good one. Software developed by a lone but clever developer entirely doing his own thing turned out to be easily enhanced due to outstanding software architecture. Software developed to company standards was equally maintainable if the standards were good enough, however in many cases one would find that the standards were applied poorly, or were themselves incomplete, leading to poorly structured and hard-to-maintain software. Again, in the end it comes down to people
A few things I have learned from 20 years in IT:
1) On every project, (individual) people have been the critical success factor, not process.
2) While you will always need process, process is not a replacement for good people. Most common IT processes attempt to ensure that errors made by poor performers are caught, but they also ensure that your best people will not be operating at peak performance. This is sometimes called "predictable mediocrity"
This Chaotic Architecture thing sounds like a step in the right direction... putting trust (with oversight) in people rather than an ivory tower dictating company-wide policies. The real trick is how to organize that oversight without ending up with the same dictatorship by corporate architects. This requires effective management at all levels; daring to delegate and trust rather than dictate... but I've noticed a bad shortage of such Leaders in the places I've worked the last few years.
A lot depends on the roof. On flat roofs, you simply get racks adjusted to the right angle, just put them down and weigh them down. Over here in NL, many roofs are tiled, in which case you simply lift a tile, slip a hook under it to hook on to the slats under the tiles, then bolt horizontal mounting rails to the hooks. I saw the neighbour across do this last week, took him perhaps a few hours to get 8 panels up. And I'm allowed to do my own wiring too, up to and including wiring things up in the breaker box; as long as I install everything to code, I'll be legal and insured. These guys sell DIY kits, you can pick and choose what part of the work you do yourself and which part they take care of. I have no idea what good options exist for US or Canadian homes, though. Or what is legal there to do yourself.
The devices themselves certainly need the ability to receive new firmware as well. Despite testing, these things can fail in odd little ways, and while I'd expect a manufacturer to replace devices with buggy firmware, I'd much prefer a firmware update to avoid the hassle of dropping a device from the net (and all scenes it was associated with as well), returning it, waiting for the replacement, and reinstalling it. Danfoss needed 4 iterations to finally get the firmware in their TRV right.
Z-wave supports OTA updates, but as far as I know only Fibaro equipment uses it, and it only works with their own hub. By the way, the next Z-Wave version will include end to end security, though I've no idea how good it actually is. But it beats having no security at all...
The whole anti-nuke sentiment is part of the reason why we are still stuck with unsafe reactors, 30-40 years old, and kept running way past their projected lifespan. Look into Thorium cycle plants a little bit further. This technology promises to solve a lot of problems such as leaking pressurized reaction vessels, overheating/meltdown when the cooling dies, and waste that has to be kept safe forever. These things are no more unsafe than a large chemical plant, with comparable worst-case scenarios.
That's the promise, at least. There are still tons of practical problems to overcome, but those are engineering issues that seem easy compared to the challenges posed by viable fusion reactors. And perhaps thorium plants will turn out to not be completely safe... they'll still be way safer than any other nuclear plant, and way cleaner than any coal or gas fired plant. Interest in this technology is finally picking up, after the anti-nuke lobby and (in Europe) the French with their heavy investment in uranium plants have stalled large scale research for years. China and India are betting on this, and I recently noticed a bunch of research projects in Europe kicking off as well.
Labor costs are dropping too, especially on residential and small local installations. New clever mounting systems make installation on most roofs a snap, and it can often be done as a DIY job. Also there are developments to combine solar panels, insulation and roofing, so when a new building goes up, solar power will be more or less integrated (with labor costs split across solar and roof work). When residential solar gains in popularity, I can see housing project developers deliver "solar ready" housing with the electrical wiring already in place, meaning a further cost reduction (cheaper to install solar ready meters, fuse boxes and run wiring when you're still building the house). Or the house will come with panels already installed.
That's not even the point. Maybe encryption does hinder justice in some cases, and maybe having a back door will help solve some important cases, or maybe it won't. None of that matters. What matters is that requiring a back door into our private stuff violates an important basic right, and puts our private data at serious risk, not just from unauthorised or unwarranted government access (bored cops taking a peek...), but also from 3rd parties and hackers gaining access.
It doesn't matter if encryption hinders justice; government has no business poking around in our stuff. Solve your cases the old-fashioned way. They suck badly enough at that.
I think we're in agreement. What you call social security retirement is commonly called a "state pension" in Europe. It's not a pension paid to former employees of the state, but it's paid *by* the state, hence the name. . Here in the Netherlands, everyone who has lived here for 50 years gets it, even the former queen. And I think this pension should not be adjusted for cost of living if one chooses to live abroad.
This would only be for recipients of social security who go abroad. No social security = no chip. Even so, it's a disgusting idea to require the chip to receive those benefits.
Instead I would argue that no social security benefits should be paid to people living abroad, or have those benefits adjusted automatically for local cost of living. (excepting state pensions, which should be free to spend as one pleases). Require recipients to be registered in the country and have them collect their benefits in person.
That's because you are missing out on the tailored search ranking based on your search history (and browser history, social security records, data on your Android phone, etc). See? All that data harvesting *is* good for you.
Carphone warehouse is a nice, sensible (and yes: somewhat outdated) name. These days a lot of companies seem to go for utterly forgettable faux Latin names, or they take regular words but spell them slightly different, preferably using Qs and Zs. Ugh. Makes me long for the day when founders of a company would often just stick their own names on the door. A recent example: Andrews and Arnold Ltd, an ISP in the UK. Goes against every modern branding guideline, but these days I consider that a plus.
An interesting choice of word: "islamophobia", i.e. an irrational fear of Islam. Personally that belief leaves me with a mix of disdain and rational fear. Read the qur'an. Read what Islam's prominent and well respected scholars have to say about the right interpretation of its laws. Look at what is going on in every country where Islam is a mainstream religion. Listen to what so-called moderate preachers teach followers in western mosques. We should not fear, judge or condemn every muslim for their faith; like us, most of them are decent folk who just want to get on with their lives. But looking at it as a religious and political system, there's plenty to fear from Islam.
Starting with fear of erosion of our freedoms. Here in Europe, it is no longer safe to criticize Islam; those who do need fear retribution from fanatics as well as legal prosecution. There's even talk of blasphemy laws, in national as well as the European parliaments.
Getting rid of useless managers, red tape, and the law suits would be a pretty good start. Let government take over the bits where the market doesn't work (seriously, there are plenty). Then look into health insurers (hint: cheap health care is not in their best interest, on the contrary).
I never cared much for the whole superhero genre, with the sole exception of Batman (and he's just a regular guy with some awesome toys). As a kid I read Marvel / DC comics but tired of them quickly; I found the Belgian / French style of comic books much more interesting. The superhero comics do make for better movies, but that's all relative: most of them still suck. And the reboots are worse.
Is it me, or have 2014 and 2015 so far been really sucky years for blockbuster movies? In most years there'll be plenty of good popcorn fodder action movies to look forward to, but the last few years there's nothing that got me excited in anticipation, and few movies that I thought were really good after watching them. There have been good movies... just not in the blockbuster action category.
I read the book when I was in high school. Its literary value is somewhat meh; it's an interesting enough story, but the book struck me as highly unusual and interesting, as it was the first time I actually saw some of the values I held dear championed in print. Up till then, like most kids in Dutch high schools, I had read and been spoon fed mostly socialist fare. It's the book that got me interested in philosophy, politics and economics, even though I quickly dismissed Rand's philosophy. As the XKCD guy said, I find myself agreeing with most of her ideas, up to the point where it says: "and therefor, be a complete asshole to everyone".
I was interested again when I read that Atlas Shrugged was being turned into a couple of movies. I watched them, and I can only urge everyone else not to make that same mistake.
Slashdot Mirror
For a small nation it makes sense to select a single multi-role platform: have one type of plane that will comfortably handle most missions we'll likely take any part in. But what I don't know is how well the F35 is going to perform as such a platform, and if it's the best choice at the price. What I really don't know is why on earth we as a small nation (the Netherlands) decided to commit to this thing as a level 2 partner and order 40 or so, instead of waiting until the performance and price are clear, then buy off the shelf.
I think technology has a (major) role to play in education, but that doesn't mean that education has to be technology-based. We know that there are various ways to teach a kid, and any method in particular will work best only for certain kids. Same with the environment: some work best alone while others thrive in groups. Some need more help than others, some learn faster, some need discipline and planning while others learn fine on their own. And even in a school system where one can choose from a variety of school types to best suit their child, schools are still unable to really tailor the learning experience to the different kids that come to learn. That's where technology can play a role: enable the teacher to find out what kind of programme best suits each child, and enable the school to provide such tailored programmes without having to assign one tutor to every 5 kids.
Such tailored programmes may have e-learning and computerized tests, but it's only part of the curriculum, and certainly only part of the solution. We're not going to fix education by handing out iPads.
Biking and public transport can be a great way to get around in the Netherlands... but not for everyone. People who live close enough to work to be able to cycle (within reason) are considered by their coworkers to be very fortunate. And trains are great as long as your journey has only one leg; having to change to another train, tram or bus means adding another 10-15 minutes to your journey no matter how short the second leg is. When I commuted from Rotterdam to Rijswijk I used the train. Fantastic, almost literally door to door transportation. However that route uses the sucktastic "Sprinter" trains (you know, the ones with no toilets), and by the time it arrived at my station it would already be jam packed with commuters. The only way to get a seat was to get a first class ticket (which I did). It beat having to go by car in heavy traffic, but only because it was faster. Most people whom I hear extolling the virtues of public transportation are people who happen to have a convenient route to use, or politicians. Also think about this: if only about 10% of drivers (in the Netherlands) decide to take the train to work instead, the public transport system would be utterly flooded in rush hour. Some routes are already filled to capacity.
The moronic attitude to cyclists in the US and UK you mention is something we have as well, towards cars. I remember someone saying: "We don't have too many cars in the Netherlands, just too many people who hate them". For a majority of commuters, even in a country with generally excellent public transport, cars are still a good if expensive way to get around. And even with traffic jams it'll often be faster. Some people look at a commuter stuck in a traffic jam as a stubborn idiot who will not let go of his "status symbol", but I see perhaps a family man who, thanks to his car, had time this morning to have breakfast with his kids. It's fine if you choose not to own a car, but don't smugly knock those who do, out of preference or necessity.
Over here (NL), that's actually the rule: cyclists have to keep to the right at all times except in cases where there is a special bike lane. At traffic lights, cyclists wait at the right side of the road even when going straight. Cars turning right have to give them right of way... but since this is a major cause of accidents, in many cases you'll see separate lanes for bikes at traffic lights, or a "bike waiting area" one or more lanes wide, in front of where the cars would stop, where bikes wait for the lights.
Many people actually do. There are plenty of general and specialist hospitals in countries like India and Thailand that offer first world class service (some of them rank amongst the top hospitals). And some of the surgeons there got to that level by innovating out of necessity.
GP has a point though. I'm sure rich people are just like us: some like to show off, others don't care. But people generally think that design and quality matters, especially for personal items. I can tell the difference between a $50 shirt and a $500 one, and if I had plenty of cash I'd choose the expensive one. When I buy jewelry for my wife, I can choose from stuff ranging from dirt cheap to stupidly expensive, but the beautifully designed and well-made pieces that catch my eye are invariably the more expensive ones. Quality and design cost money... and yes, at some point they become overpriced, and it will be about the (barf-inducing marketing word) experience. It's much more enjoyable to go out to shop instead of ordering online, and when you do, it is better to go to a luxurious store where they serve you whisky and treat you like a god while you take the time to try on a few watches, compared to visiting a busy department store where you have to hunt around for a clerk to help you.
That sounds a bit like the old "if architects designed houses like software engineers design programs..." trope. There is some truth to that, even if the fields of software design, architecture and aerospace engineering are vastly different. An important difference is that it is extremely unsafe to make assumptions in software engineering, yet we have no choice but to make them all the time. Our current world of software development is a minefield of bedrock turning to mud overnight, cable ducts that melt if they come in contact with a certain titanium alloy, doors that randomly explode if you put the doorknob on wrong, and turbine blades that come off if you happen to fly over the date line twice in one hour, to use a few crappy analogies. Some of this can be fixed, but until it is, it makes software development a complex affair, where perfection is attainably only at great cost; vastly more than consumers or producers are willing to pay.
You do need a good process, but as I wrote before, it's not a substitute for good people. What I often see in IT is incredibly low standards. Sloppy work, sloppy decisions, sloppy designs, sloppy planning. And that has something to do with the quality of the people that we hire. Not just the developers, but the architects, testers and managers as well. Especially the managers. I can't imagine that airplane mechanics finding a leftover bolt after putting an engine back together will just shrug and say: "That was probably already here when we started" (I sure hope they don't...). In IT, such decisions are made on a daily basis just to meet the deadline for pushing out a product that sort of runs. And if you're going to change that culture, you need better people; just enforcing it through process is not going to cut it.
Coming back to Chaotic Architecture: you need good people for that to work as well. If you just throw it out there without making some other changes, you're inviting disaster.
It doesn't mean to just let everyone use whatever they want; you still need oversight, from your peers as well as your manager. And good individual choices can (and should) at some point be incorporated into company guidelines.
I've worked with software that came from a "chaotic" environment. When it came to fixing bugs, there was a lot more moaning about "why the hell did he do that?!" compared to software developed against corporate standards, however the time and cost of fixing a bug were similar for both types of software. When it comes to adding enhancements, I found that the success factor was not having a company standard software architecture, but a good one. Software developed by a lone but clever developer entirely doing his own thing turned out to be easily enhanced due to outstanding software architecture. Software developed to company standards was equally maintainable if the standards were good enough, however in many cases one would find that the standards were applied poorly, or were themselves incomplete, leading to poorly structured and hard-to-maintain software. Again, in the end it comes down to people
A few things I have learned from 20 years in IT:
1) On every project, (individual) people have been the critical success factor, not process.
2) While you will always need process, process is not a replacement for good people. Most common IT processes attempt to ensure that errors made by poor performers are caught, but they also ensure that your best people will not be operating at peak performance. This is sometimes called "predictable mediocrity"
This Chaotic Architecture thing sounds like a step in the right direction... putting trust (with oversight) in people rather than an ivory tower dictating company-wide policies. The real trick is how to organize that oversight without ending up with the same dictatorship by corporate architects. This requires effective management at all levels; daring to delegate and trust rather than dictate... but I've noticed a bad shortage of such Leaders in the places I've worked the last few years.
A lot depends on the roof. On flat roofs, you simply get racks adjusted to the right angle, just put them down and weigh them down. Over here in NL, many roofs are tiled, in which case you simply lift a tile, slip a hook under it to hook on to the slats under the tiles, then bolt horizontal mounting rails to the hooks. I saw the neighbour across do this last week, took him perhaps a few hours to get 8 panels up. And I'm allowed to do my own wiring too, up to and including wiring things up in the breaker box; as long as I install everything to code, I'll be legal and insured. These guys sell DIY kits, you can pick and choose what part of the work you do yourself and which part they take care of. I have no idea what good options exist for US or Canadian homes, though. Or what is legal there to do yourself.
The devices themselves certainly need the ability to receive new firmware as well. Despite testing, these things can fail in odd little ways, and while I'd expect a manufacturer to replace devices with buggy firmware, I'd much prefer a firmware update to avoid the hassle of dropping a device from the net (and all scenes it was associated with as well), returning it, waiting for the replacement, and reinstalling it. Danfoss needed 4 iterations to finally get the firmware in their TRV right.
Z-wave supports OTA updates, but as far as I know only Fibaro equipment uses it, and it only works with their own hub. By the way, the next Z-Wave version will include end to end security, though I've no idea how good it actually is. But it beats having no security at all...
There's a simpler and free solution already.
The whole anti-nuke sentiment is part of the reason why we are still stuck with unsafe reactors, 30-40 years old, and kept running way past their projected lifespan. Look into Thorium cycle plants a little bit further. This technology promises to solve a lot of problems such as leaking pressurized reaction vessels, overheating/meltdown when the cooling dies, and waste that has to be kept safe forever. These things are no more unsafe than a large chemical plant, with comparable worst-case scenarios.
That's the promise, at least. There are still tons of practical problems to overcome, but those are engineering issues that seem easy compared to the challenges posed by viable fusion reactors. And perhaps thorium plants will turn out to not be completely safe... they'll still be way safer than any other nuclear plant, and way cleaner than any coal or gas fired plant. Interest in this technology is finally picking up, after the anti-nuke lobby and (in Europe) the French with their heavy investment in uranium plants have stalled large scale research for years. China and India are betting on this, and I recently noticed a bunch of research projects in Europe kicking off as well.
Labor costs are dropping too, especially on residential and small local installations. New clever mounting systems make installation on most roofs a snap, and it can often be done as a DIY job. Also there are developments to combine solar panels, insulation and roofing, so when a new building goes up, solar power will be more or less integrated (with labor costs split across solar and roof work). When residential solar gains in popularity, I can see housing project developers deliver "solar ready" housing with the electrical wiring already in place, meaning a further cost reduction (cheaper to install solar ready meters, fuse boxes and run wiring when you're still building the house). Or the house will come with panels already installed.
Even if you include those, nuclear power still compares favourably to coal.
That's not even the point. Maybe encryption does hinder justice in some cases, and maybe having a back door will help solve some important cases, or maybe it won't. None of that matters. What matters is that requiring a back door into our private stuff violates an important basic right, and puts our private data at serious risk, not just from unauthorised or unwarranted government access (bored cops taking a peek...), but also from 3rd parties and hackers gaining access.
It doesn't matter if encryption hinders justice; government has no business poking around in our stuff. Solve your cases the old-fashioned way. They suck badly enough at that.
I think we're in agreement. What you call social security retirement is commonly called a "state pension" in Europe. It's not a pension paid to former employees of the state, but it's paid *by* the state, hence the name. . Here in the Netherlands, everyone who has lived here for 50 years gets it, even the former queen. And I think this pension should not be adjusted for cost of living if one chooses to live abroad.
This would only be for recipients of social security who go abroad. No social security = no chip. Even so, it's a disgusting idea to require the chip to receive those benefits.
Instead I would argue that no social security benefits should be paid to people living abroad, or have those benefits adjusted automatically for local cost of living. (excepting state pensions, which should be free to spend as one pleases). Require recipients to be registered in the country and have them collect their benefits in person.
That's because you are missing out on the tailored search ranking based on your search history (and browser history, social security records, data on your Android phone, etc). See? All that data harvesting *is* good for you.
Dixons Warehouse would have made even less sense.
Carphone warehouse is a nice, sensible (and yes: somewhat outdated) name. These days a lot of companies seem to go for utterly forgettable faux Latin names, or they take regular words but spell them slightly different, preferably using Qs and Zs. Ugh. Makes me long for the day when founders of a company would often just stick their own names on the door. A recent example: Andrews and Arnold Ltd, an ISP in the UK. Goes against every modern branding guideline, but these days I consider that a plus.
Civilisation
An interesting choice of word: "islamophobia", i.e. an irrational fear of Islam. Personally that belief leaves me with a mix of disdain and rational fear. Read the qur'an. Read what Islam's prominent and well respected scholars have to say about the right interpretation of its laws. Look at what is going on in every country where Islam is a mainstream religion. Listen to what so-called moderate preachers teach followers in western mosques. We should not fear, judge or condemn every muslim for their faith; like us, most of them are decent folk who just want to get on with their lives. But looking at it as a religious and political system, there's plenty to fear from Islam.
Starting with fear of erosion of our freedoms. Here in Europe, it is no longer safe to criticize Islam; those who do need fear retribution from fanatics as well as legal prosecution. There's even talk of blasphemy laws, in national as well as the European parliaments.
Getting rid of useless managers, red tape, and the law suits would be a pretty good start. Let government take over the bits where the market doesn't work (seriously, there are plenty). Then look into health insurers (hint: cheap health care is not in their best interest, on the contrary).
I never cared much for the whole superhero genre, with the sole exception of Batman (and he's just a regular guy with some awesome toys). As a kid I read Marvel / DC comics but tired of them quickly; I found the Belgian / French style of comic books much more interesting. The superhero comics do make for better movies, but that's all relative: most of them still suck. And the reboots are worse.
Is it me, or have 2014 and 2015 so far been really sucky years for blockbuster movies? In most years there'll be plenty of good popcorn fodder action movies to look forward to, but the last few years there's nothing that got me excited in anticipation, and few movies that I thought were really good after watching them. There have been good movies... just not in the blockbuster action category.
I read the book when I was in high school. Its literary value is somewhat meh; it's an interesting enough story, but the book struck me as highly unusual and interesting, as it was the first time I actually saw some of the values I held dear championed in print. Up till then, like most kids in Dutch high schools, I had read and been spoon fed mostly socialist fare. It's the book that got me interested in philosophy, politics and economics, even though I quickly dismissed Rand's philosophy. As the XKCD guy said, I find myself agreeing with most of her ideas, up to the point where it says: "and therefor, be a complete asshole to everyone".
I was interested again when I read that Atlas Shrugged was being turned into a couple of movies. I watched them, and I can only urge everyone else not to make that same mistake.