I'm sorry; I tried to follow your advice by reading the Pravda (English version; I can't read Russian), but I couldn't keep a straight face:
(...) Obama nervously looked over his notes as Putin spoke clearly from his memory and intelligence. At meetings end Obama then went on to try and slap a handshake. It was met with President Putin's stone hand which withered Obama's smile away. Putin's firm grip declared who's top dog in this world.
And this wasn't in the Opinions section!
Putin is a well know fitness freak, I could imagine him crushing pen-pushing Obama's hand just to make a point. The rest sounds like a mix of patriotism and bad translation.
The US and all its NSA bullshit isn't quite comparable to the threat of death for speaking out, if so all of the reporters who've covered Snowden would be fearing for their lives.
Not true, all the reporters who reported that he was doing the right thing would be fearing for their lives. Most are reporting things like "I'm sure the guy had an overactive Mother Teresa gene and thought he was going to go out and save America from Americans, but in reality he was very foolish," -CNN
Russian and the US have very different methods but both ensure the free press toe the official line.
No one on this planet (except perhaps a dwindling minority of US citizens and people of low intelligence in the Anglo-Saxon countries) thinks of the United States as the "good guys" any more. The best we can hope for is a balance of power by keeping all the bullies competing with each other.
This is the old idea of MAD and the balance of power. If one country gets too powerful it will exploit, or destroy, the others. Guess what? One country did become too powerful and the inevitable happened.
There never really were any "good guys" though, just self-interested guys who had good reasons to try to get along peacefully.
I'm sure some seriously big companies still resort to nonsense like graphology.
Even if a company has zero idea how to recruit staff it should be able to fire bad ones. Unless it's the Netherlands that is, where staff get a job for life regardless of performance.
It's pretty easy to evaluate how well someone is working out. Are they an asshole? Let them go. Have they added anything useful without dragging down the team's productivity? Keep them.
That is probably the best system anyone could come up with. It's not too easy to measure 'asshole', 'anything useful', and 'team productivity' though.
It wasn't even good PR as far as I'm concerned. Their stupid insistance that I must want to work for google and their constant trolling of linkedin and just about everywhere else has been annoying me for years.
According to the wiki, the Germans were first with a calculator, followed by the Americans. The Brits are given a sentence, saying that they built the Colossus, which had 'limited programmability', but that the US machine ENIAC was really the first proper computer....
Wikipedia is a fifedom not an encyclopedia. Editor's persistance beats facts a lot of the time.
You should treat wikipedia like the smart guy down the pub who seems to know what he is talking about but he might be just making everything up.
Give it a rest. The idea that Americans think Americans pioneered everything is even more of a shopworn generalization than Americans who actually think Americans pioneered everything.
Yet many Americans do believe that the US invented everything and can often recall names and dates to back this up. Yet they have no knowledge of the many times the same thing was invented before. People only know what they are taught so I blame the American education system for that one.
Amusingly Indians (from India, not native Americans) believe the exact same thing.
I don't think that the breakdown of the neighborhood social structure is due to TV, I think it's due to Air Conditioning. With no AC you have to go outside on a regular basis; with AC you don't.
Not everyone lives in a hot area, yet the social problems described are not specific to hot environments.
People veg in front of the TV because it's hard to want to do much else after a full day of work plus whatever actually HAS to get done around the house.
Unless you work 16 hour days then have to spend a few more hours each day nailing your roof back on that's just untrue. People got used to sitting in front of the TV for hours a day because it's easier than almost anything else.
I don't watch TV, I use my evenings for more productive things.
If you stared at the sunset or read a book for hours every single day to the exclusion of all else you would have a problem too. Doubly so if that book never taught you anything or enriched you in any way.
Television, the drug of the nation. Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation.
I totally agree. Television is killing the time people should be using to do better things, and just about anything is better except maybe crime. I have a TV but I never turn it on, there is always something better to do.
The old 'if you are innocent you have nothing to fear' argument. I thought that one went out of fashion when the German Jews realized that being innocent is no defense again tyrants.
Unless I'm thinking of the wrong person China didn't extradite. US agents lied about some huge deal to get the guy to go to a US territory of his own free will. Once there he was arrested.
But generally speaking the US considers US law to be global but everyone else's law to be local to them.
Hong Kong is not generally considered part of mainland China.
Hong Kong was returned to China after China told the UK to give it back or they will take it back. We can't be sure but it looked like China was quite serious about this. The normal story that Hong Kong was leased from China was only ever half true, the busiest part was given to the UK forever.
China is 'economically/geo-politically' invested in Hong Kong like torsmo says and given the US knows this direct military action by the US would be extremely reckless. Also given the population density of Hong Kong it would be extremely easy to accidentally kill a few hundred bystanders.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry; I tried to follow your advice by reading the Pravda (English version; I can't read Russian), but I couldn't keep a straight face:
(...) Obama nervously looked over his notes as Putin spoke clearly from his memory and intelligence. At meetings end Obama then went on to try and slap a handshake. It was met with President Putin's stone hand which withered Obama's smile away. Putin's firm grip declared who's top dog in this world.
And this wasn't in the Opinions section!
Putin is a well know fitness freak, I could imagine him crushing pen-pushing Obama's hand just to make a point. The rest sounds like a mix of patriotism and bad translation.
The US and all its NSA bullshit isn't quite comparable to the threat of death for speaking out, if so all of the reporters who've covered Snowden would be fearing for their lives.
Not true, all the reporters who reported that he was doing the right thing would be fearing for their lives. Most are reporting things like "I'm sure the guy had an overactive Mother Teresa gene and thought he was going to go out and save America from Americans, but in reality he was very foolish," -CNN
Russian and the US have very different methods but both ensure the free press toe the official line.
No one on this planet (except perhaps a dwindling minority of US citizens and people of low intelligence in the Anglo-Saxon countries) thinks of the United States as the "good guys" any more. The best we can hope for is a balance of power by keeping all the bullies competing with each other.
This is the old idea of MAD and the balance of power. If one country gets too powerful it will exploit, or destroy, the others. Guess what? One country did become too powerful and the inevitable happened.
There never really were any "good guys" though, just self-interested guys who had good reasons to try to get along peacefully.
Also see Russian and US stances on arming muslim extremists in Syria.
Russia seems far more reasonable than the US does right now.
I'm sure some seriously big companies still resort to nonsense like graphology.
Even if a company has zero idea how to recruit staff it should be able to fire bad ones. Unless it's the Netherlands that is, where staff get a job for life regardless of performance.
I agree with your points but you might get your point over better if you used less profanity.
And please don't start the 'beg the question' thing again!
It's pretty easy to evaluate how well someone is working out.
Are they an asshole? Let them go.
Have they added anything useful without dragging down the team's productivity? Keep them.
That is probably the best system anyone could come up with. It's not too easy to measure 'asshole', 'anything useful', and 'team productivity' though.
I don't know. I've worked with some very good people who don't speak English totally smoothly.
If you hire based on accent you will be dropping some very good talent.
It wasn't even good PR as far as I'm concerned. Their stupid insistance that I must want to work for google and their constant trolling of linkedin and just about everywhere else has been annoying me for years.
Sort out the preditory hiring google!
...this machine isn't even mentioned in the Wikipedia computer entry, then? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer
According to the wiki, the Germans were first with a calculator, followed by the Americans. The Brits are given a sentence, saying that they built the Colossus, which had 'limited programmability', but that the US machine ENIAC was really the first proper computer....
Wikipedia is a fifedom not an encyclopedia. Editor's persistance beats facts a lot of the time.
You should treat wikipedia like the smart guy down the pub who seems to know what he is talking about but he might be just making everything up.
And it didn't happen in the USA.
Give it a rest. The idea that Americans think Americans pioneered everything is even more of a shopworn generalization than Americans who actually think Americans pioneered everything.
Yet many Americans do believe that the US invented everything and can often recall names and dates to back this up. Yet they have no knowledge of the many times the same thing was invented before. People only know what they are taught so I blame the American education system for that one.
Amusingly Indians (from India, not native Americans) believe the exact same thing.
I don't think that the breakdown of the neighborhood social structure is due to TV, I think it's due to Air Conditioning. With no AC you have to go outside on a regular basis; with AC you don't.
Not everyone lives in a hot area, yet the social problems described are not specific to hot environments.
People veg in front of the TV because it's hard to want to do much else after a full day of work plus whatever actually
HAS to get done around the house.
Unless you work 16 hour days then have to spend a few more hours each day nailing your roof back on that's just untrue. People got used to sitting in front of the TV for hours a day because it's easier than almost anything else.
I don't watch TV, I use my evenings for more productive things.
Watching TV is an exercise is killing time. That doesn't mean that reading 4chan or whatever is not also an exercise in killing time.
Internet addiction is a recognized problem in a few countries now.
If you stared at the sunset or read a book for hours every single day to the exclusion of all else you would have a problem too. Doubly so if that book never taught you anything or enriched you in any way.
Television, the drug of the nation.
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation.
I totally agree. Television is killing the time people should be using to do better things, and just about anything is better except maybe crime. I have a TV but I never turn it on, there is always something better to do.
Have you seen http://www.whitedot.org/ ?
Or all those women burnt to death as witches. There are countless examples of the innocent having plenty to fear.
Only if they lay off the idiot types like you.
Nice reply boss, I didn't know you read slashdot.
Everyone should be concerned because all the other governments will see the US doing this and copy it.
The old 'if you are innocent you have nothing to fear' argument. I thought that one went out of fashion when the German Jews realized that being innocent is no defense again tyrants.
If interns have to get paid, there goes Hollywood, Print, and Radio media industries... Interns pretty much do everything these days.
How about laying off some lazy fat management types to free up some money?
If you have to pay interns like regular employees, what's the point of hiring interns?
Because some of them are good enough that you will want to employ them later but you can't really tell which ones from a conventional interview.
Personally I think no-one should be employed for zero pay, interns are not slaves.
Exactly. And pretty much everything is a crime somewhere.
Unless I'm thinking of the wrong person China didn't extradite. US agents lied about some huge deal to get the guy to go to a US territory of his own free will. Once there he was arrested.
But generally speaking the US considers US law to be global but everyone else's law to be local to them.
Hong Kong is not generally considered part of mainland China.
Hong Kong was returned to China after China told the UK to give it back or they will take it back. We can't be sure but it looked like China was quite serious about this. The normal story that Hong Kong was leased from China was only ever half true, the busiest part was given to the UK forever.
China is 'economically/geo-politically' invested in Hong Kong like torsmo says and given the US knows this direct military action by the US would be extremely reckless. Also given the population density of Hong Kong it would be extremely easy to accidentally kill a few hundred bystanders.