"A wrinkle in time" - great kids sci-fi fantasy book I read at HS in the early 70's, there's plenty of real science and math concepts in the book. It wasn't given to me by the teachers since the book is around #30-40 in the list of books that people most wanted to ban. Apparently a lot of parents in the US don't like their kids reading about imaginary witches, even if they are educational and fun witches. Wonder what those same people think about Shakespear's witches, why the lack of petitions to ban the Bard?
Thanks, if I hadn't posted elsewhere I would give you a karma cookie. I particularly like how the introduction makes it clear it's a "work in progress". Your links put the lie to the anti-government hyperbole that flies like monkey turds around the internet, I don't work for government and never have, but the vast majority of government workers I've met over my 35yr working life have been involved in providing essential infrastructure and useful services.
Siebel is IBM. There's a saying "you won't get sacked for picking IBM", same is true of Microsoft. At the executive level where these things are decided the choice of vendor has little or nothing to do with the quality of the software, they believe quality is something that can be enforced with contractual penalties. Their choice may not turn out to be all rainbows and unicorn farts for "we the code monkeys", but choosing from the market leaders is sound risk management from a business POV.
Governments have been using pen and paper to communicate for millenia, at the end of the day they want the traditional utility of words and numbers on paper delivered with the efficiency of words and numbers on a computer. The real problem is that they allowed the vendors to claim ownership of the new types of "paper" via patents, despite the fact they were already protected via copyright. OTOH, IBM, MSFT, et-al, didn't get where they are just because of patents, they had to fight the existing "vendor locks" put there by the paper based printing and archiving industry (which, apart from typewriters, is still far from dead).
Sure, the fart jokes are devoid of any real wit. OTOH, your post reminds me of the scene in "Good morning Vietnam" where the "red leather, yellow leather" guy tries to convince everyone he "knows funny".
"Watson is just doing checklists" - You miss the point, in a year or two, it will probably be more capable of writing and correcting those lists than any single human being.
Do that many people give a shit or have feelings for strangers they happen across / first meetings?
Yes they do, it's instinctive behavior for most primates, and the more the stranger looks and acts like a member of your "tribe" the more empathy they get. But who's talking about strangers? - This finding goes a long way to explaining why I tolerated my ex-wife for 20yrs.;)
Empathy travels in both directions, although I suspect your question was rhetorical, the fact that you asked it reduces the initial empathy I had for you. This is probably because at 53 I'm the "silverback" of my own little tribe and subconsciously judge you as a prospective associate from a similar tribe. Competition for resources (particularly territorial resources) dictates nobody can have the same level of empathy towards everyone but the tribe is always looking for social/political alliances to boost their standing in the neighborhood. You can see the same thing at work in the royal families of Europe both past and present, they were so busy using their children to seal territorial alliances that many of their descendants now suffer complications from inbreeding. In many ways our brains simply were not built to handle the civilizations we create, for example most of my tribe live more than an hour's drive away. Excluding my parents my own tribal elders live on the other side of the planet and are more or less strangers to me. I can't even name all my Uncles and Aunt's, I just know I had ~20 of them somewhere in the UK, I've met a few and a few are already dead. As a child these people were replaced by adult neighbors and family friends, in fact back then children were expected to address adult family friends as "Uncle" or "Aunt" as a sign of respect, similar as to how US kids today address adults as "Sir", etc.
The technology is not the story, it may have happened 15yrs ago but the fact is that Murdoch bought an Italian media outlet to prevent it bringing them to court and accusing News corp of wreaking their bussiness model with a well organised and well financed campaign to spread hacked cards on the internet. I find it odd that you don't think it's news to see the first detailed account of how Murdoch (the granddady of piracy alarmists) was using piracy as a coporate weapon against competing payTV vendors, OTOH, this is news for nerds and nerds are notoriously slow at picking up the human side of a story.
It's just a historical account which might be a little entertaining to those of us who used to program DirecTV cards for the fun of it and resell receivers with Hu cards (unprogrammed) for hundreds of dollars on ebay.
Congratulation, you were once one of Murdoch's useful idiots, yet you still don't get it, perhaps you should read the book in the "slashvertisment".
Agree, there's was a lot more to it than a summary of my recollections, when all's said and done Georgia is just another pawn in the Caspian sea oil wars being fought between the big boys.
From where I stand (10,000 miles away), it doesn't look like a government vendetta against the south, it appears to me that both sides of politics are falling all over themselves to make sure a repeat of the Katrina response does not happen AGAIN. This temporary bipartisan approach is a good for the USA's political soul, especially so close to an election when you would expect them to be trying to heap balme on the opposition. It's a clear acknowlegement that the people affected by Katrina (such as yourself) received shoddy support from their negligent governments, both state and fedral. At the very minimum those people owe you a heart felt apology, a government that fails it's people in their hour of need and cannot admit it's mistakes, will not change.
Also the cost of flood insurance depends on the exact location of your property, insurance companies are not known for their charitable works, I doubt it's affordable for those living below sea level even if the levy banks were maintained properly. As for your theory about cycles, there is a whole branch of science dedicated to them, it's called 'climate science' and the 'cycles' are changing. Insurance companies have been addding the projected costs of these changing "cycles" to your premiums for at least a decade now, the agricultural sector, coastal and other low lying properties have born the brunt of those increased costs since (statistically speaking) they are the ones most at risk from rising sea levels and the extremes of drought and flooding. Even if we stopped fucking with the climate tomorow, due to a natural phenomena called "thermal inertia", it's only going to get worse in the first half of this century. But that's not the real problem, the real problem is that like religion and politics, climate science is no longer discussed in polite company, and in my experience the 'average american' is suprisingly polite in face to face converstations.
Anonymous americans will swallow anything and then regurgitate it as fact. Georgia attacked the Russkies at the border, the Russkies chased them all the way back to the capital. If they "wanted their colonies back" they could easily have stomped the capital there and then and made the case that it was for their own defence. But that's not what happened, having marched to the city limits of the capital they had proved their point to the world and reiterated that point by simply walking away.
Words are often meaningless without context, a 'cracker' could be..
In the UK, something really good, as in "she's a cracker".
Short hand for 'firecracker'.
Someone who breaks computer security.
Someone who can open a safe without the combination.
Something to do with an american state, not sure what?.
I've been using Google news since day one, what I have noticed is many of the snippets are now one line adverts that have nothing to do with the story. My personal opinion is that Google should throw the complainers to the wolves by blacklisting them on their news site, that way the only disruption is to the organizations who are bitching about free advertising for their site (and their sponsors), the rest of the French population don't need to be affected by this madness. These bastards won't be satisfied with a payment, they don't just want a piece of Google pie, they want the whole thing and they want it on a silver platter to match their silver spoons.
OTOH, newspapers, in particular Murdoch papers, have been crying about this stuff to lawmakers for over a decade and so far nobody has offered them so much as a handkerchief. I hope the French government has the good sense to continue that tradition.
You misunderstand me, until today I had no idea who Tim Cook was. The fact that it is a story about Apple is irrelevant, I made the comment because I have seen a lot of monkeys in my time and I'm familiar with their behaviour.
Well of course you reward your loyal monkeys that have been with you all the way, it would be foolish to kick down your own ladder when you get to the top.;)
I like your dream, but at the end of the day you are fighting millions of years of evolution and the basic human fact that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Maybe our species can supress those instincts one day, like when slavery and genocide went out of fashion, but I doubt I will live long enough to see more than glimpses of your dream in the world around me.
Also daydreaming can get you killed. To many, many, people, fear is the equivalent of respect. If they didn't think that way, then gun control wouldn't be an issue in the US.
This means Jack Shit, it's standard mokey politics for an incoming boss, sack a few high profile monkeys and the other monkeys will fall into line. A boss who isn't noticed and can't hand pick his entorage is a figure head, not a leader.
Yep, if I wanted to be a spy (or a manager) I would WANT to drink cocktails and look like James Bond, rather than smoke spliffs and look like Willy Nelson, in fact when I was a manager in the past I did at least wear the uniform, but spliffs have always been better than cocktails. I figure if people are happy to hire me at face value then it follows I am more likely to fit in and enjoy the people around me.
I've had an unusual working life, 15yrs of blue collar, and 20+yrs of white collar, I get along with most people and can hold my own in a conversation with the janitor or the CEO, but I have no respect for superficial judgement. As soon as some cockhead like the guy in TFA tries to pigeon hole me, I will refuse to cooperate. That one rebellious trait makes me unsuitable for security work, I get that. I'm an honest, trustworthy person with a strong loyalty ethic, and with some oil to those rusty neurons could probably get past the technical interview, but I wouldn't hire me for the job so why would they?
Yes, it will make the US look bad because this wouldn't have happened to Imran in the UK, Australia, or New Zealand. The guy is a legendary cricket player, there are few people in these nations who have not heard of him, most of us already know about his charitable work and his peaceful political ambitions. He wants his people to stop dying, shooting a young girl in the face because here farther advocates education for girls, or bombing her from above because her father wants to shoot school girls, sure the motives are different but it's the same outcome from where he stands.
For our US friends, the term "it's not cricket" means it's unfair.
Because nerds are people that have a broad range of interests, they don't all hide in the basement hoping the real world will go away and leave them alone.
Also I believe that much of the document was meant to be vague, it needed to be in order for the parties negotiating it to come to an agreement.
Bingo, it's a set of principles to govern a nation, not a rule book for life. If you look at the bible the old testament attempted to be a rule book for life but it was all too confusing and people started fighting about what kind of animal to have for breakfast on Friday's. The new testament was a bit more abstract, although you were still technically required to follow the rules in the first draft there were enough contradictions in the document to have God on everyone's side.
Here's the thing, people who don't understand the utility of principles, and are unwilling to pay the cost of keeping a few as pets will always be attracted to a laundry list of rules that they can follow.
Slashdot Mirror
"A wrinkle in time" - great kids sci-fi fantasy book I read at HS in the early 70's, there's plenty of real science and math concepts in the book. It wasn't given to me by the teachers since the book is around #30-40 in the list of books that people most wanted to ban. Apparently a lot of parents in the US don't like their kids reading about imaginary witches, even if they are educational and fun witches. Wonder what those same people think about Shakespear's witches, why the lack of petitions to ban the Bard?
Thanks, if I hadn't posted elsewhere I would give you a karma cookie. I particularly like how the introduction makes it clear it's a "work in progress". Your links put the lie to the anti-government hyperbole that flies like monkey turds around the internet, I don't work for government and never have, but the vast majority of government workers I've met over my 35yr working life have been involved in providing essential infrastructure and useful services.
Siebel is IBM. There's a saying "you won't get sacked for picking IBM", same is true of Microsoft. At the executive level where these things are decided the choice of vendor has little or nothing to do with the quality of the software, they believe quality is something that can be enforced with contractual penalties. Their choice may not turn out to be all rainbows and unicorn farts for "we the code monkeys", but choosing from the market leaders is sound risk management from a business POV.
Governments have been using pen and paper to communicate for millenia, at the end of the day they want the traditional utility of words and numbers on paper delivered with the efficiency of words and numbers on a computer. The real problem is that they allowed the vendors to claim ownership of the new types of "paper" via patents, despite the fact they were already protected via copyright. OTOH, IBM, MSFT, et-al, didn't get where they are just because of patents, they had to fight the existing "vendor locks" put there by the paper based printing and archiving industry (which, apart from typewriters, is still far from dead).
Either way, the taxpayer wins.
Sure, the fart jokes are devoid of any real wit. OTOH, your post reminds me of the scene in "Good morning Vietnam" where the "red leather, yellow leather" guy tries to convince everyone he "knows funny".
Yeah, and if ponies farted rainbows. The internet is a public space, deal with it.
"Watson is just doing checklists" - You miss the point, in a year or two, it will probably be more capable of writing and correcting those lists than any single human being.
The $1.80 is no fantasy, that's newsworthy money! - (typo or not)
Do that many people give a shit or have feelings for strangers they happen across / first meetings?
Yes they do, it's instinctive behavior for most primates, and the more the stranger looks and acts like a member of your "tribe" the more empathy they get. But who's talking about strangers? - This finding goes a long way to explaining why I tolerated my ex-wife for 20yrs. ;)
Empathy travels in both directions, although I suspect your question was rhetorical, the fact that you asked it reduces the initial empathy I had for you. This is probably because at 53 I'm the "silverback" of my own little tribe and subconsciously judge you as a prospective associate from a similar tribe. Competition for resources (particularly territorial resources) dictates nobody can have the same level of empathy towards everyone but the tribe is always looking for social/political alliances to boost their standing in the neighborhood. You can see the same thing at work in the royal families of Europe both past and present, they were so busy using their children to seal territorial alliances that many of their descendants now suffer complications from inbreeding. In many ways our brains simply were not built to handle the civilizations we create, for example most of my tribe live more than an hour's drive away. Excluding my parents my own tribal elders live on the other side of the planet and are more or less strangers to me. I can't even name all my Uncles and Aunt's, I just know I had ~20 of them somewhere in the UK, I've met a few and a few are already dead. As a child these people were replaced by adult neighbors and family friends, in fact back then children were expected to address adult family friends as "Uncle" or "Aunt" as a sign of respect, similar as to how US kids today address adults as "Sir", etc.
Citation: The Monkeysphere
How does this count as news?
The technology is not the story, it may have happened 15yrs ago but the fact is that Murdoch bought an Italian media outlet to prevent it bringing them to court and accusing News corp of wreaking their bussiness model with a well organised and well financed campaign to spread hacked cards on the internet. I find it odd that you don't think it's news to see the first detailed account of how Murdoch (the granddady of piracy alarmists) was using piracy as a coporate weapon against competing payTV vendors, OTOH, this is news for nerds and nerds are notoriously slow at picking up the human side of a story.
It's just a historical account which might be a little entertaining to those of us who used to program DirecTV cards for the fun of it and resell receivers with Hu cards (unprogrammed) for hundreds of dollars on ebay.
Congratulation, you were once one of Murdoch's useful idiots, yet you still don't get it, perhaps you should read the book in the "slashvertisment".
No and thanks, I honestly had no idea what the GP was talking about, I was born in Manchester in the UK so already knew what the word "craic" means. ;)
Agree, there's was a lot more to it than a summary of my recollections, when all's said and done Georgia is just another pawn in the Caspian sea oil wars being fought between the big boys.
From where I stand (10,000 miles away), it doesn't look like a government vendetta against the south, it appears to me that both sides of politics are falling all over themselves to make sure a repeat of the Katrina response does not happen AGAIN. This temporary bipartisan approach is a good for the USA's political soul, especially so close to an election when you would expect them to be trying to heap balme on the opposition. It's a clear acknowlegement that the people affected by Katrina (such as yourself) received shoddy support from their negligent governments, both state and fedral. At the very minimum those people owe you a heart felt apology, a government that fails it's people in their hour of need and cannot admit it's mistakes, will not change.
Also the cost of flood insurance depends on the exact location of your property, insurance companies are not known for their charitable works, I doubt it's affordable for those living below sea level even if the levy banks were maintained properly. As for your theory about cycles, there is a whole branch of science dedicated to them, it's called 'climate science' and the 'cycles' are changing. Insurance companies have been addding the projected costs of these changing "cycles" to your premiums for at least a decade now, the agricultural sector, coastal and other low lying properties have born the brunt of those increased costs since (statistically speaking) they are the ones most at risk from rising sea levels and the extremes of drought and flooding. Even if we stopped fucking with the climate tomorow, due to a natural phenomena called "thermal inertia", it's only going to get worse in the first half of this century. But that's not the real problem, the real problem is that like religion and politics, climate science is no longer discussed in polite company, and in my experience the 'average american' is suprisingly polite in face to face converstations.
This is a category 5 reductio absurdum event.
Anonymous americans will swallow anything and then regurgitate it as fact. Georgia attacked the Russkies at the border, the Russkies chased them all the way back to the capital. If they "wanted their colonies back" they could easily have stomped the capital there and then and made the case that it was for their own defence. But that's not what happened, having marched to the city limits of the capital they had proved their point to the world and reiterated that point by simply walking away.
Words are often meaningless without context, a 'cracker' could be..
In the UK, something really good, as in "she's a cracker".
Short hand for 'firecracker'.
Someone who breaks computer security.
Someone who can open a safe without the combination.
Something to do with an american state, not sure what?.
I've been using Google news since day one, what I have noticed is many of the snippets are now one line adverts that have nothing to do with the story. My personal opinion is that Google should throw the complainers to the wolves by blacklisting them on their news site, that way the only disruption is to the organizations who are bitching about free advertising for their site (and their sponsors), the rest of the French population don't need to be affected by this madness. These bastards won't be satisfied with a payment, they don't just want a piece of Google pie, they want the whole thing and they want it on a silver platter to match their silver spoons.
OTOH, newspapers, in particular Murdoch papers, have been crying about this stuff to lawmakers for over a decade and so far nobody has offered them so much as a handkerchief. I hope the French government has the good sense to continue that tradition.
You misunderstand me, until today I had no idea who Tim Cook was. The fact that it is a story about Apple is irrelevant, I made the comment because I have seen a lot of monkeys in my time and I'm familiar with their behaviour.
Well of course you reward your loyal monkeys that have been with you all the way, it would be foolish to kick down your own ladder when you get to the top. ;)
I like your dream, but at the end of the day you are fighting millions of years of evolution and the basic human fact that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Maybe our species can supress those instincts one day, like when slavery and genocide went out of fashion, but I doubt I will live long enough to see more than glimpses of your dream in the world around me.
Also daydreaming can get you killed. To many, many, people, fear is the equivalent of respect. If they didn't think that way, then gun control wouldn't be an issue in the US.
This means Jack Shit, it's standard mokey politics for an incoming boss, sack a few high profile monkeys and the other monkeys will fall into line. A boss who isn't noticed and can't hand pick his entorage is a figure head, not a leader.
Yep, if I wanted to be a spy (or a manager) I would WANT to drink cocktails and look like James Bond, rather than smoke spliffs and look like Willy Nelson, in fact when I was a manager in the past I did at least wear the uniform, but spliffs have always been better than cocktails. I figure if people are happy to hire me at face value then it follows I am more likely to fit in and enjoy the people around me.
I've had an unusual working life, 15yrs of blue collar, and 20+yrs of white collar, I get along with most people and can hold my own in a conversation with the janitor or the CEO, but I have no respect for superficial judgement. As soon as some cockhead like the guy in TFA tries to pigeon hole me, I will refuse to cooperate. That one rebellious trait makes me unsuitable for security work, I get that. I'm an honest, trustworthy person with a strong loyalty ethic, and with some oil to those rusty neurons could probably get past the technical interview, but I wouldn't hire me for the job so why would they?
Yes, it will make the US look bad because this wouldn't have happened to Imran in the UK, Australia, or New Zealand. The guy is a legendary cricket player, there are few people in these nations who have not heard of him, most of us already know about his charitable work and his peaceful political ambitions. He wants his people to stop dying, shooting a young girl in the face because here farther advocates education for girls, or bombing her from above because her father wants to shoot school girls, sure the motives are different but it's the same outcome from where he stands.
For our US friends, the term "it's not cricket" means it's unfair.
Why is this news for nerds???
Because nerds are people that have a broad range of interests, they don't all hide in the basement hoping the real world will go away and leave them alone.
Also I believe that much of the document was meant to be vague, it needed to be in order for the parties negotiating it to come to an agreement.
Bingo, it's a set of principles to govern a nation, not a rule book for life. If you look at the bible the old testament attempted to be a rule book for life but it was all too confusing and people started fighting about what kind of animal to have for breakfast on Friday's. The new testament was a bit more abstract, although you were still technically required to follow the rules in the first draft there were enough contradictions in the document to have God on everyone's side.
Here's the thing, people who don't understand the utility of principles, and are unwilling to pay the cost of keeping a few as pets will always be attracted to a laundry list of rules that they can follow.