I highly doubt you've demonstrated that your childhood experience is remotely "average", but are instead making the assumption that you are average without any evidence to back it up. For instance, I had a college roommate who thought his parents were average folks, despite both of them having 6-figure incomes and managerial responsibilities (which is decidedly not the average).
Here's what Chu really brings to the table as Secretary of Energy: He knows wtf he's talking about, and more importantly wtf the various people who come to him are talking about.
And don't think that's not a critical ability to have. If, for instance, you're the head of a software company, and you don't understand software, then it's very likely that you'll make poor decisions because one of your subordinates misleads you for their own gain, and you'll allow incompetent people to remain in their jobs because you don't know that they're incompetent.
Oh, and the reason why Obama picked this particular scientist is that he's shown regularly that he can run large laboratories and major scientific projects, which is not totally different from what he's called upon to do now. If nothing else, picking Chu pissed off the coal and oil industries quite a bit, which made it a worthwhile pick.
I'm not suggesting that the job is easy. I'm suggesting that the job is necessary (because faulty wiring causes explosions), and easier to do now than later.
In other words, I'm taking about a, say, $120 million project now versus a $180 million project later. Still huge, still unpleasant, but less so than it will be if you wait.
So we have millions of people desperate for work, and a whole lot of dangerous wiring all over New York City. Why aren't we (and by "we", I mean ConEd or any level of government) investing in training up as many electricians as we can and replacing the bad wiring while it's relatively cheaper to do so?
Oh, wait, maybe because there are no financial consequences to any organization if a manhole cover gets launched 300' up and lands on some 3-year-old.
Assume that the I Agree button is binding on the organization that issues the agreement (whether it's binding on the person who clicked the button is an open question).
If there's a clause in that agreement that says that they can't sell your information to anybody, and they do, then they are in breach of contract. If there isn't a clause in there saying they can change the first clause without giving you a chance to say no, then they can't change the contract on you either. If they give away your info in breach of the contract, they're opening themselves up to a class-action lawsuit by everybody who's data they sold, and no organization wants to be on the receiving end of one of those. In addition, this sort of stuff could well be covered under health information disclosure laws.
Now, I'm not saying "go ahead, give away all your private info", just that it's not as clear-cut as "If you let organization A know that you have some medical condition, then your prospective employer 5 years from now will know it too." Some paranoia is healthy, but not too much.
Being a municipality, we are entitled to free expanded basic cable as a part of the franchise agreement back in 1982.
Sounds like you may need to have a quick chat with your city's lawyer about whether Comcast is trying to do an end-run around that agreement. That section may make your problem their problem instead.
This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
The real kicker about corn subsidies is that while the real economic effect is to dramatically decrease the cost of corn to Archer Daniels Midland Inc and other corn distributors, because it's paid to farmers rather than the companies directly any Senate candidate from any state that depends on corn for a large portion of its economic output would get creamed if they failed to support corn subsidies. Oh, and of course most senators from corn-heavy states get significant donations from ADM.
Why did I focus on the Senate? Because the Senate is the only place where the representation of 11 states with relatively small population can prevail over the vast majority of the population of the country.
I didn't Chavez was any variety of "good guy", just that he was socialist-leaning, and that historically at least socialist-leaning governments in Latin America have been overthrown by the United States (frequently by the CIA, but the Marines have also been used for this purpose). This wasn't even a reference to the Venezuelan coup attempt - read about how Batista came to power in Cuba, how Pinochet took over Chile, how the Panama canal zone was created, or the political history of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Haiti.
Because their governments are far from brilliant, but we're not making it easy for those governments either.
I'm going to disagree with that point, for a couple of reasons: 1. The governments of many if not most third world countries are in an impossible position of being in debt well beyond their ability to pay for it. Even worse, that debt is in a foreign currency (usually US dollars), so they can't devalue their currency to pay for it. The usual effect of this is that the International Monetary Fund basically controls any government action that involves the economy.
2. Governments of third world countries that take too aggressive a stance against first-world multinational corporations tend to get overthrown. In Latin America, the US has historically made sure of that, while in Africa the European colonial powers generally handled it. The unusual thing about Latin America's crop of socialist-leaning leaders (Chavez, Lula, Morales, etc) is not that they exist but that they've been allowed to retain power.
So it's not that the governments are stupid, it's that the governments are generally speaking subject to the whims of other countries and interests.
You, sir/madam, suffer from some lack of imagination and exposure.
There's a lot more development going on than just Windows and iPhone. Besides OS X and Android, there's a ton of server and backend code out there that runs on all sorts of things. Similarly, for language choices there are a lot of options besides C# and Ruby/Rails - try out some Java, Python, Perl, plain old C, etc just so you have a good basis for comparison.
That said, what C# work I've done has suggested that it's far easier to work with than, say, Visual C++ from back in the 1990's, so Microsoft has gotten better. However, everyone else has gotten a lot better too - in particular garbage collection as a normal language feature is a godsend.
I don't agree with everything Joel Spolsky writes, but he understands Microsoft fairly well (since he's an ex-Microsoftie) and explains this exact problem fairly well: How Microsoft Lost the API War
The real kicker is that we have no idea whether the candidate in question is a corporate stooge masquerading as a nutcase in order to win the primary, or a nutcase masquerading as a corporate stooge in order to win the general.
By contrast, her opponent in the general is clearly a corporate stooge.
There's a key difference between the USA de Tocqueville wrote about and the USA that Marx and Engels wrote about: The Industrial Revolution had begun to concentrate ownership of economic output in the hands of those who had the means of owning factories.
Now, some concentration is understandable: for instance, my great-great-grandfather invented a method of condensing milk, started a company (which is still the biggest brand in the business), and made a fortune. What's less understandable is that because my great-great-grandfather was a smart guy, I got a loan-free college education when most of my peers did not, so my income is effectively a good 10-15% higher than theirs.
While the exact form of it (the legal fiction of a limited liability corporation) isn't inherent in capitalism, the argument that this sort of concentration of wealth and ownership is an inherent aspect of capitalism was really the central point of Karl Marx's Capital. The way that most civilized countries prevent that problem from overwhelming them is via the use of democratic government to check the power of owners in favor of everybody else.
The big exception to this has been the United States since 1980. Anyone complaining about excessive taxation or regulation today ought to read up on what US law looked like in 1960 or so.
At least in some places the question "Have you ever been arrested?" is illegal on an employment application. This was done largely as a civil rights and affirmative action measure, because (especially historically) if a cop catches a black person and white person engaging in the same activity, the black person is considerably more likely to be arrested (even if they aren't tried or convicted). So the idea was that asking whether someone has been arrested means that the unequal enforcement by the cops should not result in unequal employment opportunities.
We're doing this whole space station thing in such a half-assed manner because approximately half of the people in Congress would dearly like to see the entire thing cancelled (and this is not a vote along party lines).
Out of curiousity, do you have a roll-call vote we can refer to that might give us some idea who to vote out of office if we don't like them half-assing it? I for one would like to know names.
It wasn't court system incompetence that caused Microsoft to get away with its antitrust practices. Far from it - they had gotten to the point of starting to decide sanctions.
The thing was, shortly after the 2000 election cycle, the Justice Department decided to stop pursuing the court case, for some reason, and settled for a slap on the wrist.
The day I wish I had mod points for an AC - Hell must be frozen over!
But seriously, that particular (mis)interpretation of the Bible, and Revelation in particular, can easily be traced to John Nelson Darby and Cyrus Scofield. If you want to really understand Christian fundamentalist nuttiness in the US, the Scofield Reference Bible is your source.
Slashdot Mirror
(average kid)
I highly doubt you've demonstrated that your childhood experience is remotely "average", but are instead making the assumption that you are average without any evidence to back it up. For instance, I had a college roommate who thought his parents were average folks, despite both of them having 6-figure incomes and managerial responsibilities (which is decidedly not the average).
Here's what Chu really brings to the table as Secretary of Energy: He knows wtf he's talking about, and more importantly wtf the various people who come to him are talking about.
And don't think that's not a critical ability to have. If, for instance, you're the head of a software company, and you don't understand software, then it's very likely that you'll make poor decisions because one of your subordinates misleads you for their own gain, and you'll allow incompetent people to remain in their jobs because you don't know that they're incompetent.
Oh, and the reason why Obama picked this particular scientist is that he's shown regularly that he can run large laboratories and major scientific projects, which is not totally different from what he's called upon to do now. If nothing else, picking Chu pissed off the coal and oil industries quite a bit, which made it a worthwhile pick.
I'm not suggesting that the job is easy. I'm suggesting that the job is necessary (because faulty wiring causes explosions), and easier to do now than later.
In other words, I'm taking about a, say, $120 million project now versus a $180 million project later. Still huge, still unpleasant, but less so than it will be if you wait.
So we have millions of people desperate for work, and a whole lot of dangerous wiring all over New York City. Why aren't we (and by "we", I mean ConEd or any level of government) investing in training up as many electricians as we can and replacing the bad wiring while it's relatively cheaper to do so?
Oh, wait, maybe because there are no financial consequences to any organization if a manhole cover gets launched 300' up and lands on some 3-year-old.
What's the difference between a pancake batfish and Tony Hayward?
One's a scum-sucking bottom-feeder, and the other's a fish.
Assume that the I Agree button is binding on the organization that issues the agreement (whether it's binding on the person who clicked the button is an open question).
If there's a clause in that agreement that says that they can't sell your information to anybody, and they do, then they are in breach of contract. If there isn't a clause in there saying they can change the first clause without giving you a chance to say no, then they can't change the contract on you either. If they give away your info in breach of the contract, they're opening themselves up to a class-action lawsuit by everybody who's data they sold, and no organization wants to be on the receiving end of one of those. In addition, this sort of stuff could well be covered under health information disclosure laws.
Now, I'm not saying "go ahead, give away all your private info", just that it's not as clear-cut as "If you let organization A know that you have some medical condition, then your prospective employer 5 years from now will know it too." Some paranoia is healthy, but not too much.
Drat, I thought it said "Azh nazg durbataluk, azh nazg gimbatul"
Being a municipality, we are entitled to free expanded basic cable as a part of the franchise agreement back in 1982.
Sounds like you may need to have a quick chat with your city's lawyer about whether Comcast is trying to do an end-run around that agreement. That section may make your problem their problem instead.
Or as one online poll puts it:
This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
The real kicker about corn subsidies is that while the real economic effect is to dramatically decrease the cost of corn to Archer Daniels Midland Inc and other corn distributors, because it's paid to farmers rather than the companies directly any Senate candidate from any state that depends on corn for a large portion of its economic output would get creamed if they failed to support corn subsidies. Oh, and of course most senators from corn-heavy states get significant donations from ADM.
Why did I focus on the Senate? Because the Senate is the only place where the representation of 11 states with relatively small population can prevail over the vast majority of the population of the country.
I didn't Chavez was any variety of "good guy", just that he was socialist-leaning, and that historically at least socialist-leaning governments in Latin America have been overthrown by the United States (frequently by the CIA, but the Marines have also been used for this purpose). This wasn't even a reference to the Venezuelan coup attempt - read about how Batista came to power in Cuba, how Pinochet took over Chile, how the Panama canal zone was created, or the political history of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Haiti.
Because their governments are far from brilliant, but we're not making it easy for those governments either.
I'm going to disagree with that point, for a couple of reasons:
1. The governments of many if not most third world countries are in an impossible position of being in debt well beyond their ability to pay for it. Even worse, that debt is in a foreign currency (usually US dollars), so they can't devalue their currency to pay for it. The usual effect of this is that the International Monetary Fund basically controls any government action that involves the economy.
2. Governments of third world countries that take too aggressive a stance against first-world multinational corporations tend to get overthrown. In Latin America, the US has historically made sure of that, while in Africa the European colonial powers generally handled it. The unusual thing about Latin America's crop of socialist-leaning leaders (Chavez, Lula, Morales, etc) is not that they exist but that they've been allowed to retain power.
So it's not that the governments are stupid, it's that the governments are generally speaking subject to the whims of other countries and interests.
You, sir/madam, suffer from some lack of imagination and exposure.
There's a lot more development going on than just Windows and iPhone. Besides OS X and Android, there's a ton of server and backend code out there that runs on all sorts of things. Similarly, for language choices there are a lot of options besides C# and Ruby/Rails - try out some Java, Python, Perl, plain old C, etc just so you have a good basis for comparison.
That said, what C# work I've done has suggested that it's far easier to work with than, say, Visual C++ from back in the 1990's, so Microsoft has gotten better. However, everyone else has gotten a lot better too - in particular garbage collection as a normal language feature is a godsend.
I don't agree with everything Joel Spolsky writes, but he understands Microsoft fairly well (since he's an ex-Microsoftie) and explains this exact problem fairly well:
How Microsoft Lost the API War
Developers, developers, developers, developers!
-Steve Ballmer
The real kicker is that we have no idea whether the candidate in question is a corporate stooge masquerading as a nutcase in order to win the primary, or a nutcase masquerading as a corporate stooge in order to win the general.
By contrast, her opponent in the general is clearly a corporate stooge.
There's a key difference between the USA de Tocqueville wrote about and the USA that Marx and Engels wrote about: The Industrial Revolution had begun to concentrate ownership of economic output in the hands of those who had the means of owning factories.
Now, some concentration is understandable: for instance, my great-great-grandfather invented a method of condensing milk, started a company (which is still the biggest brand in the business), and made a fortune. What's less understandable is that because my great-great-grandfather was a smart guy, I got a loan-free college education when most of my peers did not, so my income is effectively a good 10-15% higher than theirs.
While the exact form of it (the legal fiction of a limited liability corporation) isn't inherent in capitalism, the argument that this sort of concentration of wealth and ownership is an inherent aspect of capitalism was really the central point of Karl Marx's Capital. The way that most civilized countries prevent that problem from overwhelming them is via the use of democratic government to check the power of owners in favor of everybody else.
The big exception to this has been the United States since 1980. Anyone complaining about excessive taxation or regulation today ought to read up on what US law looked like in 1960 or so.
At least in some places the question "Have you ever been arrested?" is illegal on an employment application. This was done largely as a civil rights and affirmative action measure, because (especially historically) if a cop catches a black person and white person engaging in the same activity, the black person is considerably more likely to be arrested (even if they aren't tried or convicted). So the idea was that asking whether someone has been arrested means that the unequal enforcement by the cops should not result in unequal employment opportunities.
We're doing this whole space station thing in such a half-assed manner because approximately half of the people in Congress would dearly like to see the entire thing cancelled (and this is not a vote along party lines).
Out of curiousity, do you have a roll-call vote we can refer to that might give us some idea who to vote out of office if we don't like them half-assing it? I for one would like to know names.
a. Visit your country on vacation
Wi not try a holiday in Sweden?
See the loveli lakes
And mani interesting furry animals
Including the majestik moose
A moose once bit my sister
It happens when he gets into a disagreeable mode.
It wasn't court system incompetence that caused Microsoft to get away with its antitrust practices. Far from it - they had gotten to the point of starting to decide sanctions.
The thing was, shortly after the 2000 election cycle, the Justice Department decided to stop pursuing the court case, for some reason, and settled for a slap on the wrist.
The day I wish I had mod points for an AC - Hell must be frozen over!
But seriously, that particular (mis)interpretation of the Bible, and Revelation in particular, can easily be traced to John Nelson Darby and Cyrus Scofield. If you want to really understand Christian fundamentalist nuttiness in the US, the Scofield Reference Bible is your source.
Link for the curious: http://rescuemarriage.org/
Satire is a wonderful tool, that's for sure.