"Whoever thought Sydney was an appropriate place to hold something like APEC should be fired for incompetence"
Yes, we went to the trouble of building a new city in the middle of nowhere, I believe the idea of a "national capital" was to prevent politicians and this sort of shit away from coming into contact with the general public.
However on this occasion the politicians escaped from Canberra and "locked down" one of our two main population centers. 8:00pm on a Sat night in Canberra is so devoid of life that you could shoot a cannon down the main street and nobody would notice (or care).
Correct - nothing was inspected, they were waived through TWO checkpoints despite the fact their "fake ID's" were emblazoned with the words "Joke" and "Insecrurity".
Disclaimer: I am also a long time fan of Lateline and Chaser's, it's kinda ironic that the two government funded channels in Oz are by far the most informative and entertaining.
Yes, they got 2 SUV's and a car within 10 meters of the hotel. Had they been real bad guys they would have just needed to plant the foot and they could have taken out one side of the building with 3 car bombs.
The security types are simply pissed because a bunch a comics made them look like the keystone cops to the rest of the world.
"You're unpleasant and judgemental - go back to your Friends and your Cheers, I'm sure they suit your intellect perfectly."
Can you not see the irony in that statement. Personally I have been a Chasers fan from the first show and I also loved Friends and Cheers back when they were fresh. However I do agree that the ABC and SBS are under-rated by many Aussies.
"Furthermore, atheists tell us 1) we weren't designed for any reason 2) all the thoughts in our head are the result of physics and chemistry. If atheists were consistent with their own atheism, that would leave us with absolutely no confidence in our own rational faculties to ascertain truth."
While I agree BOTH atheists and the religious live in "glass houses"....
1) Reason and design are anthromorphisims of The miricale.
2) If there is no "head" to contain my thoughts do they still exist? I mean I know (intuitively and logically) they are NOT physical but does that mean they don't require physics and chemistry to emerge and maintain?
3) "Confidence in our own rational faculties to ascertain truth"...is limited to "I think therfore I am". Unless you happen to be a phycopath everything else is a kind of negotiated reality based on the faith that the "real world" exists and is inhabited by other beings with similar perceptions. "The republic of science" is based on this philosophy and the scientific method is it's formalization, as a consequnce science seeks but does not claim to know the "truth".
The only "truth" I know is we are all in the same boat, however it's a fact of life that 90+% of people have faith in a higher power and a large chunk of the remainder are just as adamant their faith in rationalisim is more...err..umm...rational.
Despite religion's bloody history of holy wars it has served as the glue that held individual societies together since our first ancestors stood up to scratch their head and arse at the same time. The strongest, most adaptable, and just plain lucky societies, have evolved into today's vast civilizations - pity human behaviour hasn't kept up.
As a "baby boomer" my life has basically spanned the "space/computer/indoor-toilet age", almost every boy at my primary school (in Australia) wanted to be an astronought at the time of the moon landings, it really was a "big deal" that stopped people in their tracks. The only recent event that compares is the 9/11 attacs, unfortunately they had the opposite "vibe". OTOH: Now I'm older I realise the "space race" was also a "missile race" and the "men to mars", "colonisation", "terraforming", ect comes from politicians hoping to "do what JFK did", but they can't because just like Beattle-mania it's already been done!
The only thing that will impress the general population in a "moon landing" kinda way will be the discovery of alien life/fossils, microsopoic bugs would stir some interest but wouldn't have that "in your face" impact since there is too much room for people to dismiss it with self-serving mumbo-jumbo.
"keep offering grand visions--but delivering on NONE of them."
Not all the "grand-visions" from NASA have been flops or pipe dreams, there have been plenty of long term scientific projects like the great-observatories, landsat, voyager, cassini, ect, ect, that have been enourmously fruitfull. IHMO the moon shots were a social phenomena that changed (for the better) the way we see the universe and ourselves. If nothing else the skills learned in building robotic craft for the moon shots have been refined and have produced scientific images of such popularity and "religious awe" that people display them on their walls, screensavers and t-shirts the world over. This is the standard you get when scientists are picking the projects, sure they may screw up metric/imperial occasionally but it's politicians and the military who waste billions planning/building space age cube farms in a feeble attempt to impress voters.
"they do not have the capability to move an inch outside their borders"
Regardless of who is in power China it has had a "foreign policy" that for 2000yrs has shown little (if any) interest in expanding China's borders.
US generals have all read and still use Sun Tzu's "art of war", I suggest you read the bit entitled "on the use of spies" before you pick a fight with the guys who turned strategic "games" into an artform.
"I think a strict set of laws fosters irresponsibility. It's counter-productive."
That's one of the problems common to ALL "-isims" and part of the reason I don't subscribe to any of them.
The Academy: The aim of Military trainning is to get young men to follow orders without question since contemplating one's navel when you hit the battle field is not a good survival technique. However just because it works for the military doesn't mean it works for politics. There have been some very successfull and long lived "warrior cultures", but they tend to fall apart when there is nothing left to conquer.
"the lesson I learned is that no system of rules and laws is capable of positively shaping a culture"
IMHO "rules and laws" are preferable to anarchy in all but the most extreme "isims".
Probably not, but the "Thomas the tank engine" thing makes me think Ringo might be a closet nerd.
Einstien wasn't a Libertarian either, but Newton was certainly selfish enough to qualify. Not that there's anything wrong with being selfish, it's part of being human. Just so long as these new-fangled Libertarian's don't bitch and moan (or shoot up their school/workplace) when someone "does on to them" first.
People with the twin gifts of genius and humilty are rare (I have neither), Einstien and others such as Sagan point to a "bigger picture" when they write about humanity's place in the cosmos. OTOH we have Newton, clearly the superior "genius", scribbling a million words (literally) on the "meaning of 666" and coming up with an impressive 6x6 magic square.
Speaking as someone who does this on a reasonably regular basis...
1. Read "free" license.txt. (Some are surprising, eg: SQLite's original "prayer" or FractInt's "Got money - want admiration")
2. Cut & paste the "free" license.txt into the appendix of your license.txt
3. ???
4. Profit!
There are companies and individuals who are willfully ignorant of steps 1&2 particularly when talking about shrink-wrapped software but IMHO most corporate shops treat copyright issues with "due dilligence".
You wouldn't happen to know the "secret undergound hacker keywords" to the womens locker room would you, I've tried everything but the free webcam links I find seem to be in some kind of loop that requires either a reboot or a real credit card number to exit. Every time it happens I have to spend hours on the phone with the stupid internet managers at the phone company who think my machine runs some DoS program. I told them I run Linux too and they said it means "denial of service", I stood up to them and said that was unconstitutional and they backed down and said if I reinstall everything they will let me have my old account and email address./desperate & dateless
Yes, everyone screams when the toilets aren't maintained. ALL employees are valuable, precisely how valuable in dollar terms is determined by market demand. It's NOT personal, it's just one of those pesky facts of life that demand will always be high for experienced people with good degrees. The sooner he grasps that "unfair" concept the sooner he will stop wondering why the cleaner gets less than him and others get more.
Having said that, I think the rest of your post is excellent advise.
Nice strawman, but I didn't say a degree was the "key to a happy life", I don't I think I'm any "smarter" than when I was working in a factory, as a mature age student I didn't have the time for, or an interest in "keggers", and I don't live in the US.
"...act like your entitled to things. I'm going to take a guess and say that out of the millions (billions ?) of college grads out there that a large majority of them are just like the majority of non-college grads: Morons.....I've only been doing technical screens for the past 6 months trying to find a level 2 unix admin, and a manager for a team of unix admins. In a shocking development, most people are not worth the paper and ink their degree is printed with"
You strike me as the kind of "entrepenuer" who thinks they are "entitled" to be an arsehole to their employees and is surprised when someone who you have been "kind enough to employee" tells you to jam it. My guess is that you have a giant chip on your shoulder that allows you to percieve "morons" everywhere, ie: classical PHB syndrome that very few qualified/experienced people would tolerate for long.
"That they are going to earn more..."
...is almost a statisical certainty.
"I make damned close to 6 figures a year"
So you are saying that in your case even moderate financial success permits such "know it all" arrogance? Money is no more a measure of intelligence or wisdom than a degree is, I have met many a dumb-fuck (with or without a degree) who has had enormous success only to watch them snort or drink their way into the gutter just as quickly.
"But then what do I know"
Very little about people by the sounds of it, perhaps you could try taxi-driving or digging ditches to knock that chip off your shoulder.
"God, slashdot is full of you guys and frankly I think you're all full of shit. No offense to you personally, I just hate seeing people kicking on college degrees like they don't mean anything."
Ditto, only financial success or inexperience permits the arrogance of thinking EE == Computer Science == Software developer == SysAdmin == Help Desk slave. It's total bullshit to infer dropping out of HS won't make a "difference" and that financially it is a detrimental step for all but a tiny minority of naturally gifted (or extremely lucky) entrepenuers and assorted geniuses.
Me, I'm a high school dropout who then went on to be a member of the "working poor" and/or "time poor" until I obtained a degree in my early 30's. I quit the factory, got a lisence and invested $1K in a brand new Acer XT with a "paper white" 16 colour CGA monitor to replace my $80 second-hand IIE at the start of my course. It was not a small investment for us, but freeing up the family TV was a diplomatic coup over the wife/kids and it was also the best finacial one I ever made.
My last year at uni the computer directly earned me $9K writing small "search and sort" examples for a text book the dept. head was writing. Indirectly, I am now quite comfortable in my late 40's and have a decent chance of being very comfortable in my 60's. Barring a lotto win, my alternate future would probably have seen me as a factory foreman (I was already a leading hand -death by rotating shiftwork- shudderrr). And when the factory job "disappeared", as so many did in the last couple of decades, I would probably have spent my severence pay on a franchise gardener/handyman/taxi-truck "bussiness", OTOH: I would probably be 10-15Kg lighter and have an endless supply of home grown pot...:)
Today I live by the beach with a 15min drive (or a broadband connection) to the office, I like to take pictures of storms on the bay but the trick is finding a profitable passion to pay for the time and material needed for your other passions (that may also one day be profitable). Sure doing a degree and finding out just how smart others before you have been can dull the "passion" as one by one you find your "original insights" are not original and/or not instghtfull. For me it didn't completely kill the passion but it did open up the enormity of what I don't know and how hard it can be to "find out". If the "passion" were to die completely I have made enough profit to walk away and do something else besides mowing lawns for the middle class simply because a little passion for one's job and a decent "fuck-you" fund equates to power when dealing with PHB's.
If someone doesn't think a degree will help with any of that then to them it isn't going to. They are either already "happy" or belive like I once did that the only reason for "working" is a paypack.
"If this was Connections, and I were James Burke, I'd be making a lot more money than what I'm getting for having written this. I am, however, every bit as pretty as Burke on camera, which is to say not at all."
Thankyou, I always forget her name as well as other details. That peice really is worthy of Burke, the thought even occured to me before I read the last line. I was addicted his column in Scientific american decades ago, I particularly liked the one explaining why the diameter of the space shuttle's booster rockets is consrained by 2X the width of a horse's arse.
"Smiling Uncle Albert had it half written for him."
I agree but that doesn't take anything away from the insight that allowed him to put things together as Emilie did. My OP was Albert did not "trump" Newton since Newton specifically stated the assumption "time is constant". Newton was generally a prick to everyone around him, his prolific output on many diverse subjects has had a profound influence for centuries. Uncle Albert was a affable pioneer of our modern view of the universe.
"Einstein trumped Newton with a more complex theory."
Is it "parsimonious" to say Einstein generalised Newton? - One of Newton's stated assumptions was "time is constant".:P
OTOH: 100 or so years after the Principa was published a (French?) woman of noble birth corrected Newton's kinetic energy equation by emprical means (ie: dropped steel balls into clay and mesured the craters).
Slashdot Mirror
"Whoever thought Sydney was an appropriate place to hold something like APEC should be fired for incompetence"
Yes, we went to the trouble of building a new city in the middle of nowhere, I believe the idea of a "national capital" was to prevent politicians and this sort of shit away from coming into contact with the general public.
However on this occasion the politicians escaped from Canberra and "locked down" one of our two main population centers. 8:00pm on a Sat night in Canberra is so devoid of life that you could shoot a cannon down the main street and nobody would notice (or care).
Correct - nothing was inspected, they were waived through TWO checkpoints despite the fact their "fake ID's" were emblazoned with the words "Joke" and "Insecrurity".
Disclaimer: I am also a long time fan of Lateline and Chaser's, it's kinda ironic that the two government funded channels in Oz are by far the most informative and entertaining.
Yes, they got 2 SUV's and a car within 10 meters of the hotel. Had they been real bad guys they would have just needed to plant the foot and they could have taken out one side of the building with 3 car bombs.
The security types are simply pissed because a bunch a comics made them look like the keystone cops to the rest of the world.
"You're unpleasant and judgemental - go back to your Friends and your Cheers, I'm sure they suit your intellect perfectly."
Can you not see the irony in that statement. Personally I have been a Chasers fan from the first show and I also loved Friends and Cheers back when they were fresh. However I do agree that the ABC and SBS are under-rated by many Aussies.
"Furthermore, atheists tell us 1) we weren't designed for any reason 2) all the thoughts in our head are the result of physics and chemistry. If atheists were consistent with their own atheism, that would leave us with absolutely no confidence in our own rational faculties to ascertain truth."
While I agree BOTH atheists and the religious live in "glass houses"....
1) Reason and design are anthromorphisims of The miricale.
2) If there is no "head" to contain my thoughts do they still exist? I mean I know (intuitively and logically) they are NOT physical but does that mean they don't require physics and chemistry to emerge and maintain?
3) "Confidence in our own rational faculties to ascertain truth"...is limited to "I think therfore I am". Unless you happen to be a phycopath everything else is a kind of negotiated reality based on the faith that the "real world" exists and is inhabited by other beings with similar perceptions. "The republic of science" is based on this philosophy and the scientific method is it's formalization, as a consequnce science seeks but does not claim to know the "truth".
The only "truth" I know is we are all in the same boat, however it's a fact of life that 90+% of people have faith in a higher power and a large chunk of the remainder are just as adamant their faith in rationalisim is more...err..umm...rational.
Despite religion's bloody history of holy wars it has served as the glue that held individual societies together since our first ancestors stood up to scratch their head and arse at the same time. The strongest, most adaptable, and just plain lucky societies, have evolved into today's vast civilizations - pity human behaviour hasn't kept up.
As a "baby boomer" my life has basically spanned the "space/computer/indoor-toilet age", almost every boy at my primary school (in Australia) wanted to be an astronought at the time of the moon landings, it really was a "big deal" that stopped people in their tracks. The only recent event that compares is the 9/11 attacs, unfortunately they had the opposite "vibe". OTOH: Now I'm older I realise the "space race" was also a "missile race" and the "men to mars", "colonisation", "terraforming", ect comes from politicians hoping to "do what JFK did", but they can't because just like Beattle-mania it's already been done!
The only thing that will impress the general population in a "moon landing" kinda way will be the discovery of alien life/fossils, microsopoic bugs would stir some interest but wouldn't have that "in your face" impact since there is too much room for people to dismiss it with self-serving mumbo-jumbo.
"keep offering grand visions--but delivering on NONE of them."
Not all the "grand-visions" from NASA have been flops or pipe dreams, there have been plenty of long term scientific projects like the great-observatories, landsat, voyager, cassini, ect, ect, that have been enourmously fruitfull. IHMO the moon shots were a social phenomena that changed (for the better) the way we see the universe and ourselves. If nothing else the skills learned in building robotic craft for the moon shots have been refined and have produced scientific images of such popularity and "religious awe" that people display them on their walls, screensavers and t-shirts the world over. This is the standard you get when scientists are picking the projects, sure they may screw up metric/imperial occasionally but it's politicians and the military who waste billions planning/building space age cube farms in a feeble attempt to impress voters.
I knew I was guilty of gross oversimplification before I posted. :)
"they do not have the capability to move an inch outside their borders"
Regardless of who is in power China it has had a "foreign policy" that for 2000yrs has shown little (if any) interest in expanding China's borders.
US generals have all read and still use Sun Tzu's "art of war", I suggest you read the bit entitled "on the use of spies" before you pick a fight with the guys who turned strategic "games" into an artform.
"I think a strict set of laws fosters irresponsibility. It's counter-productive."
That's one of the problems common to ALL "-isims" and part of the reason I don't subscribe to any of them.
The Academy: The aim of Military trainning is to get young men to follow orders without question since contemplating one's navel when you hit the battle field is not a good survival technique. However just because it works for the military doesn't mean it works for politics. There have been some very successfull and long lived "warrior cultures", but they tend to fall apart when there is nothing left to conquer.
"the lesson I learned is that no system of rules and laws is capable of positively shaping a culture"
IMHO "rules and laws" are preferable to anarchy in all but the most extreme "isims".
"the beatles weren't science nerds.
Probably not, but the "Thomas the tank engine" thing makes me think Ringo might be a closet nerd.
Einstien wasn't a Libertarian either, but Newton was certainly selfish enough to qualify. Not that there's anything wrong with being selfish, it's part of being human. Just so long as these new-fangled Libertarian's don't bitch and moan (or shoot up their school/workplace) when someone "does on to them" first.
People with the twin gifts of genius and humilty are rare (I have neither), Einstien and others such as Sagan point to a "bigger picture" when they write about humanity's place in the cosmos. OTOH we have Newton, clearly the superior "genius", scribbling a million words (literally) on the "meaning of 666" and coming up with an impressive 6x6 magic square.
"so the car doesn't need to know its own state in more detail than the LEDs on the dashboard can express"
The car makers using dynamic stability control would beg to differ, amd IMHO the system qualifies as a kind of "introspection" for cars.
"A terrorist (as opposed to a freedom fighter) is fundamentally an irrational and stupid person."
Stereotyping will get you killed, possibly with a box-cutter.
Speaking as someone who does this on a reasonably regular basis...
1. Read "free" license.txt. (Some are surprising, eg: SQLite's original "prayer" or FractInt's "Got money - want admiration")
2. Cut & paste the "free" license.txt into the appendix of your license.txt
3. ???
4. Profit!
There are companies and individuals who are willfully ignorant of steps 1&2 particularly when talking about shrink-wrapped software but IMHO most corporate shops treat copyright issues with "due dilligence".
You wouldn't happen to know the "secret undergound hacker keywords" to the womens locker room would you, I've tried everything but the free webcam links I find seem to be in some kind of loop that requires either a reboot or a real credit card number to exit. Every time it happens I have to spend hours on the phone with the stupid internet managers at the phone company who think my machine runs some DoS program. I told them I run Linux too and they said it means "denial of service", I stood up to them and said that was unconstitutional and they backed down and said if I reinstall everything they will let me have my old account and email address. /desperate & dateless
Yeah - big babies crying over a little candy they weren't using anyway. /sarcasm
Offtopic? - who payed for that trick?
"Bearing in mind that I'm still young (under 30)"
Get back to me when you grow up.
"He's saying he's as VALUABLE as they are"
Yes, everyone screams when the toilets aren't maintained. ALL employees are valuable, precisely how valuable in dollar terms is determined by market demand. It's NOT personal, it's just one of those pesky facts of life that demand will always be high for experienced people with good degrees. The sooner he grasps that "unfair" concept the sooner he will stop wondering why the cleaner gets less than him and others get more.
Having said that, I think the rest of your post is excellent advise.
Nice strawman, but I didn't say a degree was the "key to a happy life", I don't I think I'm any "smarter" than when I was working in a factory, as a mature age student I didn't have the time for, or an interest in "keggers", and I don't live in the US.
...is almost a statisical certainty.
"...act like your entitled to things. I'm going to take a guess and say that out of the millions (billions ?) of college grads out there that a large majority of them are just like the majority of non-college grads: Morons.....I've only been doing technical screens for the past 6 months trying to find a level 2 unix admin, and a manager for a team of unix admins. In a shocking development, most people are not worth the paper and ink their degree is printed with"
You strike me as the kind of "entrepenuer" who thinks they are "entitled" to be an arsehole to their employees and is surprised when someone who you have been "kind enough to employee" tells you to jam it. My guess is that you have a giant chip on your shoulder that allows you to percieve "morons" everywhere, ie: classical PHB syndrome that very few qualified/experienced people would tolerate for long.
"That they are going to earn more..."
"I make damned close to 6 figures a year"
So you are saying that in your case even moderate financial success permits such "know it all" arrogance? Money is no more a measure of intelligence or wisdom than a degree is, I have met many a dumb-fuck (with or without a degree) who has had enormous success only to watch them snort or drink their way into the gutter just as quickly.
"But then what do I know"
Very little about people by the sounds of it, perhaps you could try taxi-driving or digging ditches to knock that chip off your shoulder.
See what I mean....it's those big brown eyes, you can't trust them!
got a lisence => got a taxi license
"God, slashdot is full of you guys and frankly I think you're all full of shit. No offense to you personally, I just hate seeing people kicking on college degrees like they don't mean anything."
:)
Ditto, only financial success or inexperience permits the arrogance of thinking EE == Computer Science == Software developer == SysAdmin == Help Desk slave. It's total bullshit to infer dropping out of HS won't make a "difference" and that financially it is a detrimental step for all but a tiny minority of naturally gifted (or extremely lucky) entrepenuers and assorted geniuses.
Me, I'm a high school dropout who then went on to be a member of the "working poor" and/or "time poor" until I obtained a degree in my early 30's. I quit the factory, got a lisence and invested $1K in a brand new Acer XT with a "paper white" 16 colour CGA monitor to replace my $80 second-hand IIE at the start of my course. It was not a small investment for us, but freeing up the family TV was a diplomatic coup over the wife/kids and it was also the best finacial one I ever made.
My last year at uni the computer directly earned me $9K writing small "search and sort" examples for a text book the dept. head was writing. Indirectly, I am now quite comfortable in my late 40's and have a decent chance of being very comfortable in my 60's. Barring a lotto win, my alternate future would probably have seen me as a factory foreman (I was already a leading hand -death by rotating shiftwork- shudderrr). And when the factory job "disappeared", as so many did in the last couple of decades, I would probably have spent my severence pay on a franchise gardener/handyman/taxi-truck "bussiness", OTOH: I would probably be 10-15Kg lighter and have an endless supply of home grown pot...
Today I live by the beach with a 15min drive (or a broadband connection) to the office, I like to take pictures of storms on the bay but the trick is finding a profitable passion to pay for the time and material needed for your other passions (that may also one day be profitable). Sure doing a degree and finding out just how smart others before you have been can dull the "passion" as one by one you find your "original insights" are not original and/or not instghtfull. For me it didn't completely kill the passion but it did open up the enormity of what I don't know and how hard it can be to "find out". If the "passion" were to die completely I have made enough profit to walk away and do something else besides mowing lawns for the middle class simply because a little passion for one's job and a decent "fuck-you" fund equates to power when dealing with PHB's.
If someone doesn't think a degree will help with any of that then to them it isn't going to. They are either already "happy" or belive like I once did that the only reason for "working" is a paypack.
"If this was Connections, and I were James Burke, I'd be making a lot more money than what I'm getting for having written this. I am, however, every bit as pretty as Burke on camera, which is to say not at all."
Thankyou, I always forget her name as well as other details. That peice really is worthy of Burke, the thought even occured to me before I read the last line. I was addicted his column in Scientific american decades ago, I particularly liked the one explaining why the diameter of the space shuttle's booster rockets is consrained by 2X the width of a horse's arse.
"Smiling Uncle Albert had it half written for him."
I agree but that doesn't take anything away from the insight that allowed him to put things together as Emilie did. My OP was Albert did not "trump" Newton since Newton specifically stated the assumption "time is constant". Newton was generally a prick to everyone around him, his prolific output on many diverse subjects has had a profound influence for centuries. Uncle Albert was a affable pioneer of our modern view of the universe.
"How many tickets were not opened in the first place because things just work."
"Functionally stable": A euphemisim meaning your project/system is going nowhere and getting nothing.
"Einstein trumped Newton with a more complex theory."
:P
Is it "parsimonious" to say Einstein generalised Newton? - One of Newton's stated assumptions was "time is constant".
OTOH: 100 or so years after the Principa was published a (French?) woman of noble birth corrected Newton's kinetic energy equation by emprical means (ie: dropped steel balls into clay and mesured the craters).