Speaking from personal experience, in Ontario we're taught French from grade 2 all the way to Grade 12 (end of high school). I never developed more than a passing understanding of the grammar and vocabulary, just enough to get me past each grade.
Fast forward a few years, and I ended up spending 2 months in Quebec one summer. I picked up more in those two months than after 10+ years of school. Part of it was motivation, definitely, but I think that it is very difficult to learn a language in a formal setting, 30 minutes per day, 5 days a week. Especially when I'm busy trying to learn things like Calculus, Physics, Geography, History, etc etc.
My wife's immediate family left Poland in 1982 during the crackdowns on Solidarity. Her mother's two sisters (my wife's aunts) stayed in Poland, in the southern portion near the Ukraine border.
No incidents of cancer yet, but both women hit menopause in their late 30s. My wife's mother is 52 and just hitting menopause now. Their mother hit menopause in her late 40s as well, before Chernobyl.
Yes, alot of things environmentally could be different between the mid-80s and now, but I'm still inclined to believe its Chernobyl. Unfortunately this stuff is almost impossible to prove, except on a macro scale of tens of thousands of subjects, years after the fact.
Thanks for the clarification. As an basic unix user I was having a hard time following these threads until I realised UML was not what I was thinking it was!
I stand corrected. I looked it up..Rebecca was 1940...I knew How Green was my Valley was 1941 so I was skeptical about your post at first. Thanks for the correction.
Hitchcock himself was never singularly honoured as best director, however, which I think is more relevant in this case.
Short list of 'obvious' works/people that never won a competitive, non-technical, Oscars:
Movies: Citizen Kane, Its a Wonderful Life, anything by Scorcese, anything by Altman, anything by Peter Weir, anything by Kubrick anything by Hitchcock (!!!).
Actors who never won a competitive Oscar:
Peter O'Toole, Harrison Ford, Cary Grant, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Johnny Depp, Peter Sellers, Monty Python, Orson Welles, The Marx Bros, etc etc.
As you can see, there's no shame in never being recognised by the Academy. I'd argue that the company you keep outside the academy is a more exclusive club.
I gave up on the Oscars when Al Pacino won for that movie where he plays a blind guy... a thoroughly forgettable film, a very basic performance from Pacino. But the Academy had missed so many other movies they felt it necessary to recognise him. Fortunately they didn't make the same mistake with Scorcese and Gangs of New York.
Don't forget the script writing prowess of Leigh Brackett on _Empire_... she wasn't around for _Revenge of the Jedi_ (sic) which to me is always why it was an inferior film.
She wrote the screenplays for _Rio Bravo_, and _The Big Sleep_, so she had a proven track record at great writing. I'm not quite so sure why she did so little work in the 1960s and 70s, but her last work was Empire.
I think what the slashdot community needs to do is provide some factual evidence. Specifically:
1) Identify known, 'in the wild' virii, that took advantage of a Microsoft vulnerability before MS announced a patch.
2) Identify how many virii were developed/released using knowledge derived after announcement, or release of, a patch.
Obviously there's way to many viruses to do a complete list, but say the major 10 virii per calendar year, would be a good sample. Case 1 would identify how many vulnerabilities are discovered by hackers through their own active behaviour,wherease Case 2 would help narrow down the % of virii related to script kiddies I think. I suspect the number of virii leveraging net-new vulnerabilities vs clones of existing code are at least 10:1.
In the end, I unforutnately fear that there's alot of truth in Microsoft's statements. It doesn't absolve them of being responsible for developing poor code in the first place, but the correlation they've identified is probably valid.
No offense, but a PhD means very little in the terms of innovation or the business world. I agree that its a good policy to hire the 'best and brightest', but they also have to be the right people for the right job. A PhD computer science expert might be able to design a really cool search engine algorithm, but they might not think of such an activity in the first place. Or, more likely, they have a great concept for technology AND are able to completely design it themsleves, but can't turn it into a viable business model (but others might!).
I think Google diversifying themslves into blogging, language translation, etc is a good thing. By exposing themsleves to other technologies they might realise some synergy not yet conceived. Search engines existed before Google, but Google's claim to fame is that they built a search engine bigger, better, stronger...
Please don't make the mistake of calling Les Mis an Opera. I might lose a semantic argument, but if I ever went to see Die Valkure or La Boheme or The Marriage of Figaro and it was presented half digitally, I'd fire bomb the theatre. Les Mis is a musical produced by committee and toured through the world to generate revenue. After the same bloody 10-20 stanzas repeated over and over for 3 hours, I doubt anyone would consider it great music.
I agree with all of your comments, but that still does not mean that a quantitative measurement scale could not be devised. You can create a number of categories, which provide a range of opinions on various matters.
e.g. "Would you take this course again?" (out of ten)
10 out of 10 ("Hell yeah, 80% for no work!")
vs "How would you rate the professor's attitude torwards his students?"
3 out of 10 ("He was always late, abusive, but he still gave out great marks!!!")
I'd argue (as have others) that English has become the modern day Latin. Perpetuated by Empire (first British, then American), it has become the common language of commerce and science. English has the added advantage of a very clear gramatical structure (e.g. no masculine/feminine nouns) and is very well suited to the adoption of words from other languages.
It is a difficult language to learn at first, given the numerous exceptions in its vocabulary (e.g. 'knife', 'i after e except after c, except when...', 'a,e,i,o,u, and sometimes y').
English today is not the language of Shakespeare or Donne or Tennyson, or even T.S.Elliot. It reflects our society, and the world we live in, which is very driven by the forces of science, progressive-ism, and capitalism. Accordingly, our use of English has become more and more direct, as we value accuracy and elegance more than anything else.
It can still be beautiful. Take for example this poem by Leonard Cohen:
With Annie gone,
whose eyes to compare
With the morning sun?
Not that I did compare,
But I do compare
Now that she's gone.
Simple, direct, elegant...easibly read and understood. But very modern in its approach. I love it.
I wish I could provide evidence. I know this second hand, as at the time my 'old man worked for Microsoft Canada and pulled a professional edition of VB from out of a dumpster on the way to the incinerator. I think it was VB 6?..
For what its worth, it was in their location *before* their new offices were built on Spectrum Way (just off of Eglinton).
I agree that this thread is relatively venom-laded, but I think the 1000-1 markup is 'valid' from a manufacturing perspective.
Several years ago (1995ish?), Microsoft Canada closed its retail distribution centre here in Mississauga, to concentrate operations in the US. So Canadian product is shipped north. No big deal. But what was interesting was when they closed the warehouse, it was more cost effective for them to destroy the software than to redistribute. The software packaing itself had very minimal value, compared to the intellectual property inside.
I've always remembered this example... when it comes to intellectual property, its value is very subjective -- especially to the eyes of the owner.
It could just be that Novell is diversifying its position, hoping that one or two of these ventures becomes a new, robust revenue stream. Becoming more active in the UNIX/LINUX space is a good move IMHO if only because it will get them into an area of active IT growth.
Of all the toys I played with growing up -- Star Wars (Kenner), Transformers, GI Joe, Capsella, etc -- LEGO by far got the most 'playing' time as a kid. Infinite combinations, infinite reusability. If I wanted custom pieces I'd buy those highly detailed McFarlane action figures. LEGO lost its core audience when it started to offer "Star Wars" toys that weren't as good as dedicated Star Wars molded action figures.
What is most impressive is that I have all of my original LEGO blocks in storage (from the early 1980s) and I am planning on giving them to my kids to play with. They're as good as the day I got them. I am looking forward to LEGO returning to its 'core' of basic single-coloured blocks so that I can add to my collection.
While on the topic of 'classics', the old board games are still as relevant today as LEGO is. Clue, Monopoly, Scrabble, The Game of Life, Battleship, Sorry, Trivial Pursuit... these all are fun things to play, that provide an early way to develop critical thinking skills.
Oh, and don't forget refridgerator boxes. An 8 year old kid with his very own TARDIS was very cool indeed.
Speilberg and Lucas were big supporters of DIVX, a closed proprietary alternative to DVDs. They were keen on the 'limited viewing' feature, for example paying $5 to watch the DVD for 48 hours, then you dispose of the disc. It was ugly, people stayed away in droves.
But until recently Lucasfilm and Amblin entertainment wouldn't release titles on DVD. Hell, its only this Christmas that Indiana Jones has finally been release.
If the new DVD formats being recommended aren't as 'open', and do not present a sizeable improvement over the current resolution of existing DVDs, I don't think that one conglomerate will be able to 'force' the market place into accepting a new tech.
Lucas and Speilberg weren't able to make their DVD alternative fly, and given their back catalogue of movies held in reserve, they had strong leverage over the marketplace.
Given that DVDs have an indefinite shelf life (okay, greater than 20 years) and better than broadcast resolution , I don't think people will see a compelling reason to upgrade. Maybe when HDTV becomes ubiquitous, but even then a really good DVD rig comes close to the HD broadcasts I've seen.
Let the industry duke it out...I won't need to worry for ~ 10 years.
Nick Nolte in a believable role. You ~know~ the movie is going to be good when Ralph Fiennes shows up in an unbilled cameo.
Another Ralph Fiennes film, Spider, was also very interesting. Dark, depressing, but what else do you expect from Cronenberg?
This summer was filled with utter dreck. I was forced to watch Under the Tuscan Sun, and was painfully aware that it was a much better film than X2, T3, or The Matrix Reloaded I saw beforehand.:(
Not everyone's cup of tea, but for modern interpretations "The English Patient" is the high water mark. I think its a brilliant movie. Its rare that I read a book, watch the movie, then re-read the book with a greater appreciation for it AFTER I've seen the movie.
LOTR was an ambitious attempt, but unfortunately it still isn't (nor could it ever be) better than the source materials. I also fundamentally disagree with some subtle tweaks made to some characters... Faramir was presented as inferior to Boromir, and pathetic, rather than tragically heroic. (note: charging to death to impress your psycho dad is NOT heroic). Denethor was a rambling buffon compared to an intellectual counter-balance to Gandalf. There's lots I can go with...
These are good points, but you have to remember how they can be interpreted. In this light, the US is a *bully*. It picks fights that it knows it can win. Its fighting because it can, not because its 'right' or the enemy is 'wrong'.
I will sleep better tonight knowing Saddam is arrested. I will hope for a better future for the Middle East. But my pragmatic side says the US will benefit from this more than Iraqi citizens, and that the zeal for human rights currently expressed by the US administration will not be extended to any other country.
I basically end up hosting 'links' on my computer that point to a pay-as-you-go service.
Essentially, I offer spam on my file sharing connection to other users.
Because each file has meta-information about myself, perhaps I can earn 'bonus points' and get free credit to download the latest Britney Spears single.
A simpler model of this system would be "we'll pay your for legitimate e-mail addreesses of your friends to whom we can send corporate spam."
The article is light on details, but as a business model I think this is one of the worst I've read about in months. The value proposition is so low I can't see anyone participating in this.
I work for a bank in their internet division. We list 'supported' browsers, but don't make any recommendations. Why? Because we don't want our telephone representatives providing tech support for our 5 million customers. We tried recommending Netscape about 4 or 5 years ago... "NEVER AGAIN" is our mantra.
Yes, it sucks. But we're a business and we can't lead technology change. Just be thankful we don't use.asp, Active X, or flash on our site.:)
Mod parent up. This summary was excellent, assuming it's accurate. None of the listed items in the slashdot linked article contradict this usenet posting, so I assume its good.
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking from personal experience, in Ontario we're taught French from grade 2 all the way to Grade 12 (end of high school). I never developed more than a passing understanding of the grammar and vocabulary, just enough to get me past each grade.
Fast forward a few years, and I ended up spending 2 months in Quebec one summer. I picked up more in those two months than after 10+ years of school. Part of it was motivation, definitely, but I think that it is very difficult to learn a language in a formal setting, 30 minutes per day, 5 days a week. Especially when I'm busy trying to learn things like Calculus, Physics, Geography, History, etc etc.
My wife's immediate family left Poland in 1982 during the crackdowns on Solidarity. Her mother's two sisters (my wife's aunts) stayed in Poland, in the southern portion near the Ukraine border.
No incidents of cancer yet, but both women hit menopause in their late 30s. My wife's mother is 52 and just hitting menopause now. Their mother hit menopause in her late 40s as well, before Chernobyl.
Yes, alot of things environmentally could be different between the mid-80s and now, but I'm still inclined to believe its Chernobyl. Unfortunately this stuff is almost impossible to prove, except on a macro scale of tens of thousands of subjects, years after the fact.
I wish you and your wife the best of luck.
Mod parent up!
Thanks for the clarification. As an basic unix user I was having a hard time following these threads until I realised UML was not what I was thinking it was!
I stand corrected. I looked it up..Rebecca was 1940...I knew How Green was my Valley was 1941 so I was skeptical about your post at first. Thanks for the correction.
Hitchcock himself was never singularly honoured as best director, however, which I think is more relevant in this case.
Short list of 'obvious' works/people that never won a competitive, non-technical, Oscars:
Movies: Citizen Kane, Its a Wonderful Life, anything by Scorcese, anything by Altman, anything by Peter Weir, anything by Kubrick anything by Hitchcock (!!!).
Actors who never won a competitive Oscar: Peter O'Toole, Harrison Ford, Cary Grant, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Johnny Depp, Peter Sellers, Monty Python, Orson Welles, The Marx Bros, etc etc.
As you can see, there's no shame in never being recognised by the Academy. I'd argue that the company you keep outside the academy is a more exclusive club.
I gave up on the Oscars when Al Pacino won for that movie where he plays a blind guy... a thoroughly forgettable film, a very basic performance from Pacino. But the Academy had missed so many other movies they felt it necessary to recognise him. Fortunately they didn't make the same mistake with Scorcese and Gangs of New York.
Don't forget the script writing prowess of Leigh Brackett on _Empire_... she wasn't around for _Revenge of the Jedi_ (sic) which to me is always why it was an inferior film.
She wrote the screenplays for _Rio Bravo_, and _The Big Sleep_, so she had a proven track record at great writing. I'm not quite so sure why she did so little work in the 1960s and 70s, but her last work was Empire.
I think what the slashdot community needs to do is provide some factual evidence. Specifically:
1) Identify known, 'in the wild' virii, that took advantage of a Microsoft vulnerability before MS announced a patch.
2) Identify how many virii were developed/released using knowledge derived after announcement, or release of, a patch.
Obviously there's way to many viruses to do a complete list, but say the major 10 virii per calendar year, would be a good sample. Case 1 would identify how many vulnerabilities are discovered by hackers through their own active behaviour,wherease Case 2 would help narrow down the % of virii related to script kiddies I think. I suspect the number of virii leveraging net-new vulnerabilities vs clones of existing code are at least 10:1.
In the end, I unforutnately fear that there's alot of truth in Microsoft's statements. It doesn't absolve them of being responsible for developing poor code in the first place, but the correlation they've identified is probably valid.
No offense, but a PhD means very little in the terms of innovation or the business world. I agree that its a good policy to hire the 'best and brightest', but they also have to be the right people for the right job. A PhD computer science expert might be able to design a really cool search engine algorithm, but they might not think of such an activity in the first place. Or, more likely, they have a great concept for technology AND are able to completely design it themsleves, but can't turn it into a viable business model (but others might!).
I think Google diversifying themslves into blogging, language translation, etc is a good thing. By exposing themsleves to other technologies they might realise some synergy not yet conceived. Search engines existed before Google, but Google's claim to fame is that they built a search engine bigger, better, stronger...
Please don't make the mistake of calling Les Mis an Opera. I might lose a semantic argument, but if I ever went to see Die Valkure or La Boheme or The Marriage of Figaro and it was presented half digitally, I'd fire bomb the theatre. Les Mis is a musical produced by committee and toured through the world to generate revenue. After the same bloody 10-20 stanzas repeated over and over for 3 hours, I doubt anyone would consider it great music.
I agree with all of your comments, but that still does not mean that a quantitative measurement scale could not be devised. You can create a number of categories, which provide a range of opinions on various matters.
e.g. "Would you take this course again?" (out of ten)
10 out of 10 ("Hell yeah, 80% for no work!")
vs "How would you rate the professor's attitude torwards his students?"
3 out of 10 ("He was always late, abusive, but he still gave out great marks!!!")
I'd argue (as have others) that English has become the modern day Latin. Perpetuated by Empire (first British, then American), it has become the common language of commerce and science. English has the added advantage of a very clear gramatical structure (e.g. no masculine/feminine nouns) and is very well suited to the adoption of words from other languages.
It is a difficult language to learn at first, given the numerous exceptions in its vocabulary (e.g. 'knife', 'i after e except after c, except when...', 'a,e,i,o,u, and sometimes y').
English today is not the language of Shakespeare or Donne or Tennyson, or even T.S.Elliot. It reflects our society, and the world we live in, which is very driven by the forces of science, progressive-ism, and capitalism. Accordingly, our use of English has become more and more direct, as we value accuracy and elegance more than anything else.
It can still be beautiful. Take for example this poem by Leonard Cohen:
With Annie gone,
whose eyes to compare
With the morning sun?
Not that I did compare,
But I do compare
Now that she's gone.
Simple, direct, elegant...easibly read and understood. But very modern in its approach. I love it.
I wish I could provide evidence. I know this second hand, as at the time my 'old man worked for Microsoft Canada and pulled a professional edition of VB from out of a dumpster on the way to the incinerator. I think it was VB 6?..
For what its worth, it was in their location *before* their new offices were built on Spectrum Way (just off of Eglinton).
I agree that this thread is relatively venom-laded, but I think the 1000-1 markup is 'valid' from a manufacturing perspective.
Several years ago (1995ish?), Microsoft Canada closed its retail distribution centre here in Mississauga, to concentrate operations in the US. So Canadian product is shipped north. No big deal. But what was interesting was when they closed the warehouse, it was more cost effective for them to destroy the software than to redistribute. The software packaing itself had very minimal value, compared to the intellectual property inside.
I've always remembered this example... when it comes to intellectual property, its value is very subjective -- especially to the eyes of the owner.
I was 99% sure this was going to be a Star Wars thread...
It could just be that Novell is diversifying its position, hoping that one or two of these ventures becomes a new, robust revenue stream. Becoming more active in the UNIX/LINUX space is a good move IMHO if only because it will get them into an area of active IT growth.
Of all the toys I played with growing up -- Star Wars (Kenner), Transformers, GI Joe, Capsella, etc -- LEGO by far got the most 'playing' time as a kid. Infinite combinations, infinite reusability. If I wanted custom pieces I'd buy those highly detailed McFarlane action figures. LEGO lost its core audience when it started to offer "Star Wars" toys that weren't as good as dedicated Star Wars molded action figures.
What is most impressive is that I have all of my original LEGO blocks in storage (from the early 1980s) and I am planning on giving them to my kids to play with. They're as good as the day I got them. I am looking forward to LEGO returning to its 'core' of basic single-coloured blocks so that I can add to my collection.
While on the topic of 'classics', the old board games are still as relevant today as LEGO is. Clue, Monopoly, Scrabble, The Game of Life, Battleship, Sorry, Trivial Pursuit... these all are fun things to play, that provide an early way to develop critical thinking skills.
Oh, and don't forget refridgerator boxes. An 8 year old kid with his very own TARDIS was very cool indeed.
Speilberg and Lucas were big supporters of DIVX, a closed proprietary alternative to DVDs. They were keen on the 'limited viewing' feature, for example paying $5 to watch the DVD for 48 hours, then you dispose of the disc. It was ugly, people stayed away in droves.
But until recently Lucasfilm and Amblin entertainment wouldn't release titles on DVD. Hell, its only this Christmas that Indiana Jones has finally been release.
If the new DVD formats being recommended aren't as 'open', and do not present a sizeable improvement over the current resolution of existing DVDs, I don't think that one conglomerate will be able to 'force' the market place into accepting a new tech.
Lucas and Speilberg weren't able to make their DVD alternative fly, and given their back catalogue of movies held in reserve, they had strong leverage over the marketplace.
Given that DVDs have an indefinite shelf life (okay, greater than 20 years) and better than broadcast resolution , I don't think people will see a compelling reason to upgrade. Maybe when HDTV becomes ubiquitous, but even then a really good DVD rig comes close to the HD broadcasts I've seen.
Let the industry duke it out...I won't need to worry for ~ 10 years.
Nick Nolte in a believable role. You ~know~ the movie is going to be good when Ralph Fiennes shows up in an unbilled cameo.
:(
Another Ralph Fiennes film, Spider, was also very interesting. Dark, depressing, but what else do you expect from Cronenberg?
This summer was filled with utter dreck. I was forced to watch Under the Tuscan Sun, and was painfully aware that it was a much better film than X2, T3, or The Matrix Reloaded I saw beforehand.
Not everyone's cup of tea, but for modern interpretations "The English Patient" is the high water mark. I think its a brilliant movie. Its rare that I read a book, watch the movie, then re-read the book with a greater appreciation for it AFTER I've seen the movie.
LOTR was an ambitious attempt, but unfortunately it still isn't (nor could it ever be) better than the source materials. I also fundamentally disagree with some subtle tweaks made to some characters... Faramir was presented as inferior to Boromir, and pathetic, rather than tragically heroic. (note: charging to death to impress your psycho dad is NOT heroic). Denethor was a rambling buffon compared to an intellectual counter-balance to Gandalf. There's lots I can go with...
I'm still holding out for the Garden of Eden Creation Kit...
These are good points, but you have to remember how they can be interpreted. In this light, the US is a *bully*. It picks fights that it knows it can win. Its fighting because it can, not because its 'right' or the enemy is 'wrong'.
I will sleep better tonight knowing Saddam is arrested. I will hope for a better future for the Middle East. But my pragmatic side says the US will benefit from this more than Iraqi citizens, and that the zeal for human rights currently expressed by the US administration will not be extended to any other country.
I basically end up hosting 'links' on my computer that point to a pay-as-you-go service.
Essentially, I offer spam on my file sharing connection to other users.
Because each file has meta-information about myself, perhaps I can earn 'bonus points' and get free credit to download the latest Britney Spears single.
A simpler model of this system would be "we'll pay your for legitimate e-mail addreesses of your friends to whom we can send corporate spam."
The article is light on details, but as a business model I think this is one of the worst I've read about in months. The value proposition is so low I can't see anyone participating in this.
I work for a bank in their internet division. We list 'supported' browsers, but don't make any recommendations. Why? Because we don't want our telephone representatives providing tech support for our 5 million customers. We tried recommending Netscape about 4 or 5 years ago... "NEVER AGAIN" is our mantra.
.asp, Active X, or flash on our site. :)
Yes, it sucks. But we're a business and we can't lead technology change. Just be thankful we don't use
Mod parent up. This summary was excellent, assuming it's accurate. None of the listed items in the slashdot linked article contradict this usenet posting, so I assume its good.