#1)... why it is that when I wanted to create a black charachter (Africa-black), the closest I could get was a sort of deep tan?
#2)... why it is that parties were limited to five people? We often have LAN gaming groups of 6-8 people and someone's invariably relegated to soloing or grouping up with another team.
Funny you mention it, but I heard this mathematician on the radio yesterday talking about a mathematical study, using game theory, into what the best type of gift-giving would be to woo a woman.
The options were, 1) an expensive durable purchase (like diamonds), 2) an expensive non-durable purchase (like tickets to an opera, or skiing) and 3) a cheap non-durable purchase.
The study predicted that 2) was the best bet. So, I think it's not necessarily the wasting of the money, but that your waste it on her.
What you're seeing in this flood of posts is evidence of what's called "new conservativism" or "neo-conservativism" here in the states. It actually started some 20 years ago, with the election of Reagan, but grew and blossomed throughout the years of the Gingrich ascendancy and the "contract with America". The "new" part is really a change in the tactical approach to argument and disagreement. The tactic (Rove is a good example of how to use it well) is now to wrap your flag around you and immediately discredit/bash/hack apart anything you don't like as commie atheist liberal tree-hugging unethical anti-american immoral hippie sputum. Once the other side has been successfully characterized as undeserving of respect, nothing they say can be taken seriously, by anyone. It's very effective, too. Ordinarily, to stand taller than others you have to straighten your back. Using this method, you can just bash others until they get smaller. It's much less demanding and oh so much more fun. I'm not suggesting that it's right, only that this is "the way it is".
As for why most Americans aren't terribly worried, given hurricanes, drought and the like -- it has to do as much with geography than anything else. We've got, here in the southern half of North America, more rich and varied kinds of terrain and weather than almost anywhere else on the planet. We have HUGE coastlines. If you don't like the weather where you are, you can move someplace that's more to your liking. It may oversimplify it a bit, but that's my sense of it.
As for your last paragraph -- Well, we make our own common sense, here. If we wanted western european common sense, we'd never have left. Incidentally, I'm only the third generation of my family that's been born here, and we came from Minsk, where they also lack the western european flavor of common sense.
Anyhow, I hope that helps you sort it all out. What you may be missing, though, is that while there are a lot of naysaying posts (from Americans) about global warming, there are also a great many posts that are not so dismissive of the idea. Slashdot, in my experience, seems to get the attention of more of us commie atheist liberal tree-hugging unethical anti-american immoral hippie sputa than the neo-conservatives, but I can't really quantify it.
... and I can say this (happily) because I don't have nearly the budgetary control or responsibility in this job that I used to in the past... My dad does IT audits for AMEX, and I've also learned a lot from him.
Per-user costing is not a consistent indicator of what the costs really are. For example, your developers, while they'll require fast workstations and any number of different productivity tools (IDEs, merge tools, repositories, other 3rd party products, etc.), won't be actually taxing the infrastructure in the same way that one or two QA guys will. The QA guys may not need all the tools of the development staff, but they'll need hardware that roughly approximates what your customers are going to be using for load/functional testing. The devs might need one or two workstations each, but the QA guys might need five or six, each with it's own licensing and maintenance cost features. Likewise, a developer may not be terribly taxing to your communications infrastructure, but when QA is replicating a customer problem that requires loading the network elements to the hilt, you'll need to consider the costs of creating subnets (and adding NEs) that can isolate that traffic from regular network goings on. The time it takes to set up and maintain these new subnets is part of the cost. I think, from what I recall of of managerial accounting, that this is called activity-based costing. Someone will likely correct me if I'm wrong.
Consider also the idea of pitching more than one choice for what needs to be added or where money can be spent. Yes, you're the expert in all things IT, but people like choices. If you can propose cheap, middle, and spendy alternatives to dealing with a given purchase problem (if not to present to someone else, than for your own use), and qualify each with pros and cons, it may help you decide where the money can best be spent. Which alternative is going to satisfy in the 6 month time horizon? Which will satisfy in the 12-18 month horizon? Having a menu of choices that can fit into various anticipated need scenarios for capacity will help you when new challenges come up.
One gotcha that is always lurking as you plan a budget is the "voice of optimism". It's natural to expect that the business will grow over time, but you can't plan on that. You can only budget for what you need, and -=need=- is based on immediate concerns. Budgeting (and then spending) based on growth expectations is a dicey thing. You can easily get into places where you overshoot the need and end up with excess processing/network capacity that never gets filled. Those ten rusting Netra pizza boxes you bought because you were so sure that customer X would be depending on you to have them will be the stone around your neck when you get thrown overboard. Solution: buy one Netra pizza box for baselines and partner with the customer to gauge expectations about how many more you'll need and when.
Oh, one of my own pet peeves was not having enough disk space available, or the drives available to increase partitions when emergencies cropped up. Budget for plenty of spare HDs and make sure that SAN capacity upgrades (if you don't have a SAN, then a file server) are planned with all necessary funds allocated. Once I get past 60-70% capacity, I start worrying and looking for new drives. Make sure the people that affect your budget understand that storage is a big fluffy cushiony pillow that costs money to stay so comfortable. It's never an emergency cost, but you'll need more storage space each year than you needed the year before. Disk space is NOT a flat yearly cost, but you prolly know that already.
However, this article did not say much, and maybe that was the point. It pretty much amounted to "Games are neither good nor bad." Not so thought-provoking, really.
What the article may achieve, partly by being so unopinionated, is a moderation of the hype we get from Hilary (I think she's making shameless use the Tipper playbook here, btw) and other "experts" about games and the way they affect players. Given that the typical reader of The Economist is not a gamer, the message fits the intended audience.
Still, I thought that there was far less content about MMORPGs than there should have been. The economic and social implications of these titles are complex enough to merit further study/examination. It's to the point in most "mainstream" rags that the entire genre gets expressed by the example of "The Sims". Maybe they're saving that for a later article.
Yup, totally unfulfilling. Mildly informative to a non-gamer, but pretty milquetoast on the whole.
Thank you for your opinion. I'm so glad that you could share your disdain for public education.
Yes, when the public schools vanish completely there will be no more problems in our great nation. People of limited means won't have to worry about their children being "indoctrinated" by wacko teachers because there won't be any schools for them to attend. We can put those poor ignorant children to work, instead! And once the NEA and the teachers' union are gone, your ears will blissfully drift through the silence that only a nation without public education can provide. Ahhh, Xanadu.
Frankly, I don't give a hoot what christians think... whether in their hearts, homes, churches -- wherever. It's none of my business. I don't declare my faith to anyone because, frankly, it's nobody else's business but mine. I'll say this, though, if christianity brings certain people peace and fulfillment and guides their lives in a positive way, I think that's swell. Any religious practice or faith that leads people to be kind and thoughtful members of our productive society is A-OK by me.
I can't ever recall anyone in my public school education that told me that christianity was an anachronism, or anything close. This is the first I've heard of it, but you make it sound so pervasive that there must be plenty of evidence of it. Maybe you can back that up and share a link or two with us? Thanks.
What I hear coming from my government (especially this administration and congress) is very much pro-christianity, so I'm not sure how it is that you feel so persecuted. I've yet to hear anything from the govenment that comes close to being violently anti-christian. Please share these reports and quotations. I do know that I haven't seen any reports of hundreds of christians in mass graves by the roadside or being gassed or shot en masse, or anti-christian riots. Maybe I've just been living in a quiet corner of my major urban metropolis. Maybe I just don't get invited to the right parties, but I've never been asked to be violent towards christians. I wouldn't participate if I was asked, but it's never come up. I hear this whining: "I'm being persecuted because I'm a christian." Yet, when I hear about acts of vandalism or hostility towards a religious group it's always muslims and jews that are on the receiving end. The perpetrators are always christians, too, strangely. Maybe I just don't get out of the house enough.
As for equal time for teaching creationism, you can have it if you want it, at your local church/temple/synogogue/mosque/shrine. I went to public (and eventually private) school during the week, and went to religious school on the weekends. Sure, it meant that I spent a lot of time in schools of one kind or another, but my pop wanted me to have both. On an hourly basis, I actually got more religious instruction per week than I got in any other subject. Didn't seem to hurt me one bit. So, while I can appreciate that you see the need for equal time, I don't see how you're prevented from getting it, espcially if you choose to school your kids at home or at a parochial or other religious school. What I'd suggest is that you leave public schools (whatever their limitations/faults) free from having to teach topics that are best presented by members of the clergy or their lay appointees.
I started reading the review, but I was shaken free when I read this, on page 2:
"The company, which was formerly known as Lindows, has gotted a lot of press for including their OS with pre-bundled computers."
After "gotted", I think that as I continue to read the review, I'm going to be looking for these little goodies more than actually taking in the content.
Yunno, it's said that we stand on the shoulders of giants. Giants get produced every day, and they get trod on by so many people who may or may not become giants themselves. People switch giants all the time as they change their habits, their philosophies and their activities. I've been standing on your shoulders for so many years, and had the benefit of your efforts all the way, along with all the other giants. You're in great company.
The other giants are (in no order):
Ward Cunningham of Wiki
Paul Julius of CruiseControl
James Davidson of ANT
Stephen Hawking of The Universe
Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant of the WELL
Yeah, you're that good. Don't let 'em tell you otherwise. Bless you, sir.
... but not for subversion. Rather, for his documentation of CVS.
Years back, when I was first learning CVS, there was the Cederqvist and then there were the FREE chapters of Karl's CVS book at redbean.
While the Cederqvist may have been great, Karl's free chapters saved me. They described things simply and elegantly. I found them so useful that I would set up new development machines with a browser bookmark to redbean. Any time a CVS question popped up, I could answer it quickly, but I could always say "That's the short version, but if you want to know more, look at Karl Fogel's book."
"It's just not practical in the business arena to use IM as the only means of communication."
Aye. You are correct, sir.
At the last company I worked for (a startup), I set up a jabber server on the local network, one that would be accessible over the VPN, too. It was extremely handy for those times where someone was offsite, perhaps visiting a customer, working from home or travelling somewhere and you just needed to ask a quick question or get a quick status. We used jabber server and GAIM clients so the cost was free (apart from setup time and a little account and log maintenance from time to time).
When it was first turned up, there was some neat-o factor involved, but eventually it became part of the communications mix. While I can't point to any really obvious places where "IM saved us money or a customer account", having it as a part of the mix certainly improved efficiency.
I'd be interested in knowing what other slashdotters have experienced when they've added IM to their communications mix, or had it available from the get-go.
I beg to differ. I've read KSR's trilogy and while it's great fiction, it's still fiction.
I recommend that you take up "the Case for Mars" by Bob Zubrin, the founder of the Mars Society. It's a bit more challenging as a reading exercise, but if you really want to know about the actual challenges of just getting there and coming back, it'll get you a lot closer to the goal than KSR's fiction.
On a somewhat related note, I think this whole thing about going to the moon and mars is a big waste of money. I really don't think that it'll ever happen.
I'd prefer that the money be spent doing something that will make a real difference in the lives of Americans -- like insuring every kid under 16, for example.
Given the dominance of their OS, it may be exactly the right time to make it free and focus instead on services and serving the Winders development community.
I guess I don't see many improvements in Winders, generally, so there may be a smidge of bias to my perspective. If they gave it away for free, they'd be locking people into the OS for a very very long time.
Actually, Rove is currently a subject of the investigation... one of many. He may not be a target, admittedly. Both the subjects and targets of a grand jury investigation can be indicted.
I'd agree that FM is probably not that vital to the product feature list, not only for yourself, but others. Given how little room it must take up inside the device, though, why not add it?
Myself, I go to the FM side of the dial for pretty much one thing only -- the FM-stereo simulcast of my local PBS station. When I can't sit in front of the TeeVee for the News Hour (w. Jim Lehrer), this handy broadcast lets me get my nesw and info nonetheless.
Granted, my use (and admittedly the availability of FM stereo simulcasts of your local PBS station) may not be terribly common, but if there's one slice of FM that I use every day, that'd be the one.
An old friend of mine came into an old arcade game (defender) and the battery that kept the mainboard toasty (and the score history) had leaked acid all over it, nearly destroying it. He picked off what salvageable components were left on the board, scrounged around a number of dusty electronics stores to replace what could not be salvaged, bought a ROM programmer, made a new mainboard, slapped everything back together and the old game was restored. A few of the old pieces salvaged could not be made to work dependably and had to be replaced again, but over time the machine was back up and running.
The hard part is probably the media. I worked in radio for awhile and we were often faced with duplicating tapes after they'd exceeded a 5-7 year shelf life. I'm surprised that there was no plan for duping the data periodically to formats/platforms that could be sustained.
Actually, I've run into several chinese players on Doomhammer (my main server) who are playing with the english client, presumably from Hong Kong. About 10% of my guildmates are playing from Australia. I've also met a few japanese and taiwanese players on Doomhammer.
I don't doubt that there are chinese servers, but I do know that not all chinese players are on chinese servers.
You may want to poke around in the rest of the replies to this story. Someone said how to start a server with bots.
In a nutshell, you start a single player game -- the server starts. Other clients on the network then connect directly (via IP addr) to the machine running the single player game. Apparently there's a 16 player limit, though.
In the early 80s, my friends and I (in our early teens) were cracking the copyright protection on apple games with hex editors and hacking the Z80 assembly of our fave TRaSh-80 games to do and show things amusing to schoolboys like ourselves. We all had apple][ machines or kaypro/osborne/compaq CP/M luggables or TRaSh-80s at home.
So, I'd agree that being exposed to computers at an early age makes the uptake of knowledge very speedy. I'd also add that learning the rudiments of assembly language is a tough thing for just about anyone. You need to apply yourself to it. As a kid, though, it's more of a fun challenging puzzle to figure out than a task to be mastered. We looked at assembly as what our BASIC programs were doing behing the scenes, and that made it terribly interesting and fun to play with. It was also something our parents could not understand, which made it cool, too. C++, had I been exposed to it, would have been a really neat thing to play with.
I'd say the girl's well on her way to a fine career if she decides to stick with it for ten years or so. Her accomplishments are commendable. I'm sure her parents are very proud, and they should be, but it seems like natural aptitude to me.
One thing that isn't often pointed out is that there are child prodigies in only a subset of subjects. There's math, music, and now (clearly) programming. You could probably also make an argument for art. You do not, however, see child prodigies in literature, sociology, chemistry, biology, psychology, medicine, architecture, philosophy, and a host of others. I don't say this to minimize her accomplishments, but it may come as quite a surprise to her later on that she's not going to be super-wunderkind at everything she does. Apart from a couple subjects, she's going to be just like all the other kids. I hope she doesn't dumb-down to fit in with the crowd after awhile.
The plane charter will be of great assistance in contextualizing what you see on the ground against what your sat maps show. You may also be able to spot commonly used trade routes, animal migration routes and footpaths that don't show up as readily as established roadways. Many maps are not able to provide these more subtle details out of concern for clutter or overdoing the scope, but ethnographers, anthropologists and biologists can appreciate it -- especially in areas they don't get to very often. Getting a bush plane is a great piece of advice.
Stuff I'd add:
Creating a street map of any towns you visit can be one way to meet a lot of people and enlist the help of locals. Be sure to leave a copy or two of the map in-town, and follow up by leaving copies at the nearest government office and university.
I'd also suggest affiliating yourself with a geographic society before you go. It may help garner some contacts when you get there (professors, government officials, etc.), and also a way to get some more locally-specific advice about where to go, what areas are most sparsely covered by cartographers/surveyors, etc. Contact the Interior Ministry. Contact the geography professor at the university. You may be able to get some assistance from students, and it may help you get any necessary papers or authorizations required to make the trip more problem-free.
If it's suggested that you hire guards in an area, get help finding some that are trustworthy, hire them and pay them well. This is one area where having some local gov't or university contacts ahead of time can really help.
Actually, as an American who's always gone by "Randy" (my name's Randall), I had a very similar experience in Edinburgh, which reminded me at once that I needed to use my full, proper name from then on out.
I walked into the dining room of one of (imho) the nicer old pubs just behind Princes street (on Rose Street, I think?) and asked the matronly hostess to be put on the waiting list for a table. Without thinking, I said "Randy" when asked for my name. I recall looking down at the list for a few moments and noting that her pen was poised over the page but not moving, and then looking up into this poor woman's face to see that all color had left her features. It dawned on me, in that frightening moment of clarity, that I "wasn't in Kansas anymore". I corrected myself and gave my proper name, but she eyed me very harshly from across the room for the entire time I was there.
The problem with going by a name that you don't use much is that when addressed by it, there's this funny little moment where you look around for this other fellow until it dawns on you that, yes, you are the person they're talking to.
It's the "CRC Standard Mathematical Tables", 23rd ed., (c)1975.
This 23rd edition features upgraded interest rate information in the financial section, with compound interest and associated material from one quarter of a percent through twenty percent in intervals of one quarter of a percent.
Brilliant!
The neat thing with this one is that not only do you get the tables, you also get all the formulas and breakdowns of dozens of proofs!
"... (W)hat will all those semi-intelligent pedants... do?"
Educate themselves (if they care to) and become more intelligent pedants, I say.
I see your point. There may not be an actual, official set of codified grammatical rules for English. That much can be said. However, as someone who has worked in the publishing industry, you're probably familiar with any number of different texts on grammar and style. I keep four in easy reach, and they all complement each other.
They are:
Elements of Style (Strunk & White)
The AP Stylebook (a.k.a. the blue book)
The Practical Stylist (Sheridan Baker)
The Complete Stylist (Sheridan Baker)
Combine these four with a fairly weighty dictionary and a nice fat thesaurus, and you get all the grammatical rules (explained in different ways, and acknowledging alternative usages) and all of the generally accepted spellings.
Sure, as you point out, not one of these stylistic resources is explicitly definitive. If you have a sticky bit of usage to untangle, having multiple points of reference often lets you make the best informed decision.
While IANAL, I worked in law for many years, and later as both an editor and writer. In all of those roles, knowing the rules of the language was terribly important, and applying them became more natural and subconscious over time.
The truth is, though, that many people don't give a whit about using good grammar and style. Sometimes folks will correct them out of a desire to aggrandize themselves, as you point out. Most of the time, it's done to help these non-adherents understand that they're stepping on a rule. What the person does with the information is up to them, but I've never edited or given stylistic advice out of malice or a desire to give myself an ego boost.
Right now, I'm avoiding a stylistic critique of your post, but it's because 1) this is slashdot, and 2) because you probably don't give a hoot anyhow.
Slashdot Mirror
Given a choice, I'd like to stick with #2.
#2) ... why it is that parties were limited to five people? We often have LAN gaming groups of 6-8 people and someone's invariably relegated to soloing or grouping up with another team.
Thanks, Gorko on Doomhammer
The options were, 1) an expensive durable purchase (like diamonds), 2) an expensive non-durable purchase (like tickets to an opera, or skiing) and 3) a cheap non-durable purchase.
The study predicted that 2) was the best bet. So, I think it's not necessarily the wasting of the money, but that your waste it on her.
What you're seeing in this flood of posts is evidence of what's called "new conservativism" or "neo-conservativism" here in the states. It actually started some 20 years ago, with the election of Reagan, but grew and blossomed throughout the years of the Gingrich ascendancy and the "contract with America". The "new" part is really a change in the tactical approach to argument and disagreement. The tactic (Rove is a good example of how to use it well) is now to wrap your flag around you and immediately discredit/bash/hack apart anything you don't like as commie atheist liberal tree-hugging unethical anti-american immoral hippie sputum. Once the other side has been successfully characterized as undeserving of respect, nothing they say can be taken seriously, by anyone. It's very effective, too. Ordinarily, to stand taller than others you have to straighten your back. Using this method, you can just bash others until they get smaller. It's much less demanding and oh so much more fun. I'm not suggesting that it's right, only that this is "the way it is".
As for why most Americans aren't terribly worried, given hurricanes, drought and the like -- it has to do as much with geography than anything else. We've got, here in the southern half of North America, more rich and varied kinds of terrain and weather than almost anywhere else on the planet. We have HUGE coastlines. If you don't like the weather where you are, you can move someplace that's more to your liking. It may oversimplify it a bit, but that's my sense of it.
As for your last paragraph -- Well, we make our own common sense, here. If we wanted western european common sense, we'd never have left. Incidentally, I'm only the third generation of my family that's been born here, and we came from Minsk, where they also lack the western european flavor of common sense.
Anyhow, I hope that helps you sort it all out. What you may be missing, though, is that while there are a lot of naysaying posts (from Americans) about global warming, there are also a great many posts that are not so dismissive of the idea. Slashdot, in my experience, seems to get the attention of more of us commie atheist liberal tree-hugging unethical anti-american immoral hippie sputa than the neo-conservatives, but I can't really quantify it.
Have a nice day!
Per-user costing is not a consistent indicator of what the costs really are. For example, your developers, while they'll require fast workstations and any number of different productivity tools (IDEs, merge tools, repositories, other 3rd party products, etc.), won't be actually taxing the infrastructure in the same way that one or two QA guys will. The QA guys may not need all the tools of the development staff, but they'll need hardware that roughly approximates what your customers are going to be using for load/functional testing. The devs might need one or two workstations each, but the QA guys might need five or six, each with it's own licensing and maintenance cost features. Likewise, a developer may not be terribly taxing to your communications infrastructure, but when QA is replicating a customer problem that requires loading the network elements to the hilt, you'll need to consider the costs of creating subnets (and adding NEs) that can isolate that traffic from regular network goings on. The time it takes to set up and maintain these new subnets is part of the cost. I think, from what I recall of of managerial accounting, that this is called activity-based costing. Someone will likely correct me if I'm wrong.
Consider also the idea of pitching more than one choice for what needs to be added or where money can be spent. Yes, you're the expert in all things IT, but people like choices. If you can propose cheap, middle, and spendy alternatives to dealing with a given purchase problem (if not to present to someone else, than for your own use), and qualify each with pros and cons, it may help you decide where the money can best be spent. Which alternative is going to satisfy in the 6 month time horizon? Which will satisfy in the 12-18 month horizon? Having a menu of choices that can fit into various anticipated need scenarios for capacity will help you when new challenges come up.
One gotcha that is always lurking as you plan a budget is the "voice of optimism". It's natural to expect that the business will grow over time, but you can't plan on that. You can only budget for what you need, and -=need=- is based on immediate concerns. Budgeting (and then spending) based on growth expectations is a dicey thing. You can easily get into places where you overshoot the need and end up with excess processing/network capacity that never gets filled. Those ten rusting Netra pizza boxes you bought because you were so sure that customer X would be depending on you to have them will be the stone around your neck when you get thrown overboard. Solution: buy one Netra pizza box for baselines and partner with the customer to gauge expectations about how many more you'll need and when.
Oh, one of my own pet peeves was not having enough disk space available, or the drives available to increase partitions when emergencies cropped up. Budget for plenty of spare HDs and make sure that SAN capacity upgrades (if you don't have a SAN, then a file server) are planned with all necessary funds allocated. Once I get past 60-70% capacity, I start worrying and looking for new drives. Make sure the people that affect your budget understand that storage is a big fluffy cushiony pillow that costs money to stay so comfortable. It's never an emergency cost, but you'll need more storage space each year than you needed the year before. Disk space is NOT a flat yearly cost, but you prolly know that already.
hope it helps
However, this article did not say much, and maybe that was the point. It pretty much amounted to "Games are neither good nor bad." Not so thought-provoking, really.
What the article may achieve, partly by being so unopinionated, is a moderation of the hype we get from Hilary (I think she's making shameless use the Tipper playbook here, btw) and other "experts" about games and the way they affect players. Given that the typical reader of The Economist is not a gamer, the message fits the intended audience.
Still, I thought that there was far less content about MMORPGs than there should have been. The economic and social implications of these titles are complex enough to merit further study/examination. It's to the point in most "mainstream" rags that the entire genre gets expressed by the example of "The Sims". Maybe they're saving that for a later article.
Yup, totally unfulfilling. Mildly informative to a non-gamer, but pretty milquetoast on the whole.
Yes, when the public schools vanish completely there will be no more problems in our great nation. People of limited means won't have to worry about their children being "indoctrinated" by wacko teachers because there won't be any schools for them to attend. We can put those poor ignorant children to work, instead! And once the NEA and the teachers' union are gone, your ears will blissfully drift through the silence that only a nation without public education can provide. Ahhh, Xanadu.
Frankly, I don't give a hoot what christians think ... whether in their hearts, homes, churches -- wherever. It's none of my business. I don't declare my faith to anyone because, frankly, it's nobody else's business but mine. I'll say this, though, if christianity brings certain people peace and fulfillment and guides their lives in a positive way, I think that's swell. Any religious practice or faith that leads people to be kind and thoughtful members of our productive society is A-OK by me.
I can't ever recall anyone in my public school education that told me that christianity was an anachronism, or anything close. This is the first I've heard of it, but you make it sound so pervasive that there must be plenty of evidence of it. Maybe you can back that up and share a link or two with us? Thanks.
What I hear coming from my government (especially this administration and congress) is very much pro-christianity, so I'm not sure how it is that you feel so persecuted. I've yet to hear anything from the govenment that comes close to being violently anti-christian. Please share these reports and quotations. I do know that I haven't seen any reports of hundreds of christians in mass graves by the roadside or being gassed or shot en masse, or anti-christian riots. Maybe I've just been living in a quiet corner of my major urban metropolis. Maybe I just don't get invited to the right parties, but I've never been asked to be violent towards christians. I wouldn't participate if I was asked, but it's never come up. I hear this whining: "I'm being persecuted because I'm a christian." Yet, when I hear about acts of vandalism or hostility towards a religious group it's always muslims and jews that are on the receiving end. The perpetrators are always christians, too, strangely. Maybe I just don't get out of the house enough.
As for equal time for teaching creationism, you can have it if you want it, at your local church/temple/synogogue/mosque/shrine. I went to public (and eventually private) school during the week, and went to religious school on the weekends. Sure, it meant that I spent a lot of time in schools of one kind or another, but my pop wanted me to have both. On an hourly basis, I actually got more religious instruction per week than I got in any other subject. Didn't seem to hurt me one bit. So, while I can appreciate that you see the need for equal time, I don't see how you're prevented from getting it, espcially if you choose to school your kids at home or at a parochial or other religious school. What I'd suggest is that you leave public schools (whatever their limitations/faults) free from having to teach topics that are best presented by members of the clergy or their lay appointees.
Just for grins, I checked again and it still says "gotted".
Makes me wonder how it passed spell-check and proofreading.
I did finish the review, ultimately, and found that I didn't learn anything new about Lindows/Linspire.
Oh well, at least there was "gotted"! TeeHee.
"The company, which was formerly known as Lindows, has gotted a lot of press for including their OS with pre-bundled computers."
After "gotted", I think that as I continue to read the review, I'm going to be looking for these little goodies more than actually taking in the content.
The other giants are (in no order):
Yeah, you're that good. Don't let 'em tell you otherwise. Bless you, sir.
A Fan
Years back, when I was first learning CVS, there was the Cederqvist and then there were the FREE chapters of Karl's CVS book at redbean.
While the Cederqvist may have been great, Karl's free chapters saved me. They described things simply and elegantly. I found them so useful that I would set up new development machines with a browser bookmark to redbean. Any time a CVS question popped up, I could answer it quickly, but I could always say "That's the short version, but if you want to know more, look at Karl Fogel's book."
The man is the cat's pyjamas, imho.
Aye. You are correct, sir.
At the last company I worked for (a startup), I set up a jabber server on the local network, one that would be accessible over the VPN, too. It was extremely handy for those times where someone was offsite, perhaps visiting a customer, working from home or travelling somewhere and you just needed to ask a quick question or get a quick status. We used jabber server and GAIM clients so the cost was free (apart from setup time and a little account and log maintenance from time to time).
When it was first turned up, there was some neat-o factor involved, but eventually it became part of the communications mix. While I can't point to any really obvious places where "IM saved us money or a customer account", having it as a part of the mix certainly improved efficiency.
I'd be interested in knowing what other slashdotters have experienced when they've added IM to their communications mix, or had it available from the get-go.
Finally, I'm an old person ... and I didn't even have to wait until I was 40.
-=sigh=-
I recommend that you take up "the Case for Mars" by Bob Zubrin, the founder of the Mars Society. It's a bit more challenging as a reading exercise, but if you really want to know about the actual challenges of just getting there and coming back, it'll get you a lot closer to the goal than KSR's fiction.
On a somewhat related note, I think this whole thing about going to the moon and mars is a big waste of money. I really don't think that it'll ever happen.
I'd prefer that the money be spent doing something that will make a real difference in the lives of Americans -- like insuring every kid under 16, for example.
Given the dominance of their OS, it may be exactly the right time to make it free and focus instead on services and serving the Winders development community.
I guess I don't see many improvements in Winders, generally, so there may be a smidge of bias to my perspective. If they gave it away for free, they'd be locking people into the OS for a very very long time.
Myself, I go to the FM side of the dial for pretty much one thing only -- the FM-stereo simulcast of my local PBS station. When I can't sit in front of the TeeVee for the News Hour (w. Jim Lehrer), this handy broadcast lets me get my nesw and info nonetheless.
Granted, my use (and admittedly the availability of FM stereo simulcasts of your local PBS station) may not be terribly common, but if there's one slice of FM that I use every day, that'd be the one.
An old friend of mine came into an old arcade game (defender) and the battery that kept the mainboard toasty (and the score history) had leaked acid all over it, nearly destroying it. He picked off what salvageable components were left on the board, scrounged around a number of dusty electronics stores to replace what could not be salvaged, bought a ROM programmer, made a new mainboard, slapped everything back together and the old game was restored. A few of the old pieces salvaged could not be made to work dependably and had to be replaced again, but over time the machine was back up and running.
The hard part is probably the media. I worked in radio for awhile and we were often faced with duplicating tapes after they'd exceeded a 5-7 year shelf life. I'm surprised that there was no plan for duping the data periodically to formats/platforms that could be sustained.
I don't doubt that there are chinese servers, but I do know that not all chinese players are on chinese servers.
In a nutshell, you start a single player game -- the server starts. Other clients on the network then connect directly (via IP addr) to the machine running the single player game. Apparently there's a 16 player limit, though.
So, I'd agree that being exposed to computers at an early age makes the uptake of knowledge very speedy. I'd also add that learning the rudiments of assembly language is a tough thing for just about anyone. You need to apply yourself to it. As a kid, though, it's more of a fun challenging puzzle to figure out than a task to be mastered. We looked at assembly as what our BASIC programs were doing behing the scenes, and that made it terribly interesting and fun to play with. It was also something our parents could not understand, which made it cool, too. C++, had I been exposed to it, would have been a really neat thing to play with.
I'd say the girl's well on her way to a fine career if she decides to stick with it for ten years or so. Her accomplishments are commendable. I'm sure her parents are very proud, and they should be, but it seems like natural aptitude to me.
One thing that isn't often pointed out is that there are child prodigies in only a subset of subjects. There's math, music, and now (clearly) programming. You could probably also make an argument for art. You do not, however, see child prodigies in literature, sociology, chemistry, biology, psychology, medicine, architecture, philosophy, and a host of others. I don't say this to minimize her accomplishments, but it may come as quite a surprise to her later on that she's not going to be super-wunderkind at everything she does. Apart from a couple subjects, she's going to be just like all the other kids. I hope she doesn't dumb-down to fit in with the crowd after awhile.
The plane charter will be of great assistance in contextualizing what you see on the ground against what your sat maps show. You may also be able to spot commonly used trade routes, animal migration routes and footpaths that don't show up as readily as established roadways. Many maps are not able to provide these more subtle details out of concern for clutter or overdoing the scope, but ethnographers, anthropologists and biologists can appreciate it -- especially in areas they don't get to very often. Getting a bush plane is a great piece of advice.
Stuff I'd add:
Creating a street map of any towns you visit can be one way to meet a lot of people and enlist the help of locals. Be sure to leave a copy or two of the map in-town, and follow up by leaving copies at the nearest government office and university.
I'd also suggest affiliating yourself with a geographic society before you go. It may help garner some contacts when you get there (professors, government officials, etc.), and also a way to get some more locally-specific advice about where to go, what areas are most sparsely covered by cartographers/surveyors, etc. Contact the Interior Ministry. Contact the geography professor at the university. You may be able to get some assistance from students, and it may help you get any necessary papers or authorizations required to make the trip more problem-free.
If it's suggested that you hire guards in an area, get help finding some that are trustworthy, hire them and pay them well. This is one area where having some local gov't or university contacts ahead of time can really help.
It sounds like a blast. Good on ye and have fun!
I walked into the dining room of one of (imho) the nicer old pubs just behind Princes street (on Rose Street, I think?) and asked the matronly hostess to be put on the waiting list for a table. Without thinking, I said "Randy" when asked for my name. I recall looking down at the list for a few moments and noting that her pen was poised over the page but not moving, and then looking up into this poor woman's face to see that all color had left her features. It dawned on me, in that frightening moment of clarity, that I "wasn't in Kansas anymore". I corrected myself and gave my proper name, but she eyed me very harshly from across the room for the entire time I was there.
The problem with going by a name that you don't use much is that when addressed by it, there's this funny little moment where you look around for this other fellow until it dawns on you that, yes, you are the person they're talking to.
This 23rd edition features upgraded interest rate information in the financial section, with compound interest and associated material from one quarter of a percent through twenty percent in intervals of one quarter of a percent.
Brilliant!
The neat thing with this one is that not only do you get the tables, you also get all the formulas and breakdowns of dozens of proofs!
All in one handy volume!
Educate themselves (if they care to) and become more intelligent pedants, I say.
I see your point. There may not be an actual, official set of codified grammatical rules for English. That much can be said. However, as someone who has worked in the publishing industry, you're probably familiar with any number of different texts on grammar and style. I keep four in easy reach, and they all complement each other.
They are:
Combine these four with a fairly weighty dictionary and a nice fat thesaurus, and you get all the grammatical rules (explained in different ways, and acknowledging alternative usages) and all of the generally accepted spellings.
Sure, as you point out, not one of these stylistic resources is explicitly definitive. If you have a sticky bit of usage to untangle, having multiple points of reference often lets you make the best informed decision.
While IANAL, I worked in law for many years, and later as both an editor and writer. In all of those roles, knowing the rules of the language was terribly important, and applying them became more natural and subconscious over time.
The truth is, though, that many people don't give a whit about using good grammar and style. Sometimes folks will correct them out of a desire to aggrandize themselves, as you point out. Most of the time, it's done to help these non-adherents understand that they're stepping on a rule. What the person does with the information is up to them, but I've never edited or given stylistic advice out of malice or a desire to give myself an ego boost.
Right now, I'm avoiding a stylistic critique of your post, but it's because 1) this is slashdot, and 2) because you probably don't give a hoot anyhow.