Can you point me to an example of a person self-diagnosed with Asperger's? Why would anyone want to claim they are on the autism spectrum when they are not on it?
Try hanging out in some of the language-learning forums sometime. Many, many self-diagnosed Asperger's people hand out in them.
For some reason, they think that appearing to have Asperger's gives them an edge in how others view their intelligence and ease in learning foreign languages.
"Ooh! Hey look! I'm just like Daniel Tammet. I must have Asperger's."
So, when you buy a computer, you don't buy software?
...
They buy it for the ability to run software they need. Right now, Androids still don't have the software they need. It's as simple as that.
Has the common core standard even been finalized yet? According to one of the links in TFS it hasn't. I suppose it could be by 2014, but knowing the bureaucracy involved in both the standard itself and the LAUSD, I have my doubts.
I don't miss being in that profession at all. The money was great, but it got to a point that it wasn't enough to compensate for all the 24/7 shit I put up with.
We have been doing this for new homes in San Antonio for the past 5-10 years. My house was built in 1993 and it's like this.
And it's been happening in rural America forever.
My mailbox is a quarter of a mile away from my house. I have no problem taking a walk to get it. As it is, I don't go every day, because all my bills are paid online. Every single bill. So the only time I need to go to the mailbox is when I know I'll be receiving something. All the junk mail gets tossed. Any large packages go through UPS or FedEx.
In the winter I'll sometimes slap on some skis and trek to the mailbox, if I haven't gotten the chance to get the road plowed yet (it happens somewhat frequently in Northern Wisconsin in the winter). Add to the fact that AARP tells me I'm a senior citizen.
We've become a nation of lazy fat asses that can't think or do anything for ourselves.
Unless it is as progress to a degree, the reason to do these classes is to learn something. You seem to have done so, so why is the lack of the certificate so upsetting? Presumably you had a good feel for how you would have done on the test before taking it, so why not be content with learning what you could from the course?
If you go back to my original post, I wasn't upset at not receiving a certificate. I learned quite a bit from the course. The point I was trying to make was that if I had paid money to take a class for credit, only to be shut out by a technical issue that was clearly the fault of Coursera/U of Toronto policies, I would have been out of luck. I also posited whether the percentage of the no-pass rate for UCSJ/Udacity could have had anything to do with technical issues.
The article isn't specific as to *why* the percentage was what it was.
If I couldn't connect and it was on my end than that was obviously on me to find a solution either buy fixing my damn connection or going to the computer lab or library.
I would never take a course anywhere that had that as their policy and if it really is a "if we screw up on our end you still pay" policy they have then shame on anyone giving money to that kind of scummy organization.
I don't have the link handy at the moment, but the Coursera failure made news in the Canadian press at the time. The course I took wasn't for transferable credit, so I wasn't out any money, just time.
Regardless, you can't put a failure like that on the student. It rested squarely on the shoulders of Coursera and the U of Toronto for its policies.
They'll offer the same course again sooner or later; just take it again next time.
Yeah, see, that's the problem right there. That's not the answer. Making sure that technical issues aren't a problem is key for any of these MOOCs to work, whether it's Udacity, Coursera, edX or any other platform, particularly if it's for real, transferable college credit.
Telling people to "just take it again" because the platform fucked up is just going to drive students elsewhere.
I don't have any experience with Udacity, but I do have an experience with Coursera that caused me, the student, to shy away from their courses.
I completed a course through Coursera from the University of Toronto. It was a good course, and I enjoyed it. Learned a lot from the course. In the final week of the course (it wasn't a free-for-all - I had to register for the course and complete it, with tests every week, during and eight week period set but the U of Toronoto), there was an exam that would make up 50 percent of my total grade. Coursera completely fell over that final week, and I wasn't able to gain access to the test until two days after the course deadline. So there went an otherwise good grade. They wouldn't allow any tests to be taken after the deadline, regardless of technical issues.
I had spent a total of around 40-45 hours with the course, 20 of those hours were video lectures that needed to be watched, the rest was study time. Even though all I would get from the course was a certificate of completion, I felt cheated and like I'd wasted a lot of my time for what was otherwise a good course.
Would I take another course? Maybe, but I know that if I were studying for transferable college credit, I would have been seriously pissed.
I wonder how much of the non-pass rate was due to issues other than actual class material in Udacity's case.
Chromebooks are about all that's left in this price range, aren't they?
I couple years ago I bought an Acer Aspire One with Win7 loaded on it, but if I walk into a big box store, I only see Samsungs and Acer C7s (which are just rebadged netbooks from a year ago).
Subtitles are not the movie, they're text versions of translated text of the voice track of a movie.
In many cases, they're not even "text versions" of the voice track - they're paraphrases of what's being spoken, using completely different words. I've seen some professionally done subtitling (as well as fan-created) that even changes the meaning of what's being said.
Cinnamon and Gnome 3 still are missing one vital feature from Gnome 2 and Mate. That is the key feature of showing window previews in the pager. This is a powerful feature that helps make virtual desktops a bit more easy to use.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding... I get this feature with Gnome3/Gnome Shell, although I installed an extension to get a better version of it, called Workspace Navigator. It actually provides a better overview than Gnome2 did for me. If I forget what's where, I just hit the super key and can see what's running on each virtual desktop.
Truthfully, I like the idea of having extensions. I only install the functionality I need. I also like that I don't have to deal with Compiz in Gnome Shell. While it was fine with earlier versions of Ubuntu, the version of Compiz that ships with Ubuntu (at least with 12.04) is really garbage.
RTFS. The proposed character looks like a combination of T and h, but its meaning is the entire English word "the", not the sound "th".
And if that's what the submitter is after, what he's doing isn't saving any time or keystrokes or time. He still has t hit the cap key, the "t" and the "h". Three keystrokes, regardless.
In his case, incorporating T9 or something like it would probably help him more.
Not really. Companies have a choice in what they use. That choice comes down to the cost and training involved in switching to something else, and it's usually too high for them to bother.
But there's no law stating that a company must use Windows. I wish people would quit spouting that it's a requirement, when all it comes down to is weighing the pros and cons of using either Windows or another operating system.
Except for LA's. Then, BART and Muni look like a shining example.
LA is really a special case, as far as public transit goes. It's *so* spread out. Considering how spread out it is, at least they have bus lines (and a couple trains/light rail) that'll get you downtown or to the airport relatively easy, albeit it not so quickly. Compare it to another equally spread out city like Phoenix and you'll see that the coverage more complete in LA.
I think taking a taxi is LA is also MUCH easier than in SF. At least they'll come when you call them, unlike in SF. That so infuriated me in SF - you'd call for a taxi and one would never arrive.
The OP takes 90 minutes to do 49 miles, driving. I take public transit, and it takes me 60 minutes... to do 15 miles.
San Francisco's public transit truthfully sucks in comparison with other cities. When I lived in SF (early 90s-2005), I lived in a relatively quiet neighborhood between the panhandle and USF. I worked first in Sunnyvale, then in Fremont. Getting to either place was a hassle, and a large part of it was due to SF Muni (before I ever set foot in a Caltrain or BART station. I could take the Fulton or Hayes bus, which supposedly would come every 10-15 minutes (much less between runs in the early 90s). The reality was that the buses would stack up for 30-40 minutes, then all show up at once. It would take at least a half an hour to get downtown - a mere 3 miles or so. Once there, Caltrain or BART would be another 50-55 minutes to either Sunnyvale or Fremont. And that is assuming you didn't have someone jump in front of the train or the train didn't break down, or there weren't BART switching problems.
Don't even get me started on SF's taxi situation.
When I moved to Chicago, I thought I was in heaven with their transit and taxi system (and Chicago has PLENTY of transit problems, but nowhere near the amount that SF had for 1/4 of the population.)
well yes and no. im saying strip the term "marriage" for the legal world and replace it with "civil union" for ALL gay or straight. Leave the word marriage to the churches. or other groups. in other words, make "civil union" the legal definition of marriage as far as the government is concerned. than everyone should be happy. If people still are not happy with that, that just tells me there ar eother motives behind them.
I'd like to see it taken one step further: Drop the "power vested" in ministers and priests to perform legal marriages and leave that to the legal system and civil registries. Other countries (quite catholic countries, at that) seem to do just fine with this arrangement, so I don't see why it can't work for the US.
If people want to have a religious ceremony commemorating their marriage, great. But it should mean nothing in the eyes of the law.
Nearest largish city is abut 80 miles away (Twin Cities, or Eau Claire, WI, depending on which direction). It's pretty rural. Point is, it cheeses me off that they'll tell me I can get 12Mbps when I plug in my exact address on their website, yet when I actually compete the sign up procedure for the service, they'll simply say "Nope. 2 Mbps is what you'll get." It's really false advertising.
1.5 light seconds is roughly the distance to the moon.
And when was the last time we had humans on the moon? Distance doesn't matter all that much when we don't care enough to continue exploration of what's already reachable.
I live in a medium sized city in the midwest. I get 30 and 2 Mbps. It may not be spectacular, but it is adequate.
30/2Mbps is QUITE spectacular compared to my rural 2Mbps/384Kbps in Northern Wisconsin. CenturyLink will tell you that 12/4Mpbs is what's available. Until you actually sign up for their service. Then they'll simply say "Yeah, not for you."
Even when I lived across the street from ATT's CO in Chicago, my top speed was 12/6Mbps.
Because why should I be forced to agree to a third-parties terms and conditions to get a job, when I can put all my code that I want to share up on my own website?
If you're putting up all the code you want to share on your own website, then you *do* have some sort of online presence.
No reason you can't hand a prospective employer the URL as your portfolio. Although I'm in a different industry, I use my own website as my calling card for pretty much all freelance projects in which I'm involved. No prospective client will ever see my Facebook page (it's open to just family and friends), but I regularly use Twitter and G+ as URL pointers for any updates or new projects that I wish to share.
Agreed. If you count tablets as "PCs" then you should include smartphones. So don't.
I have a BenQ S6 that I still use all the time. It was manufactured in 2008 (and discontinued soon thereafter), but honestly, it's not that much less powerful than some of the netbooks being sold today. It's an Atom 800MHz processor, I can easily attach a BT or USB keyboard, and runs a full Linux distribution. There was also a second iteration of the device that ran WinXP. I also have an equally old Nokia N800 that I still occasionally use (and it kind of pains me to say that 5 year old mobile tech is old - ancient, actually). It's not at all the same, because, while I can run many applications, I CAN'T run any desktop application I want.
The BenQ is a full computer in my book - albeit pocketable, able to run any desktop application. Smartphones, on the other hand, aren't able to do that, even though smartphone processors may be more powerful. At least not yet.
Probably right. Nobody I know shuts their systems down. I certainly don't shut down my Linux systems unless I have to (although I restart Gnome - or outright kill it - regularly). It's a low power laptop, though, using less than 60W. I suppose if it were a huge desktop machine eating up 500W of power, I'd shut it down when not in use.
I'm not seeing what your post has to do with what I said. I was saying if I have to use an IMAP client to get a usable interface for Gmail, why even keep the Gmail account since the whole point of Gmail is the web interface and the storage on Google's servers.
I don't know if you remember when GMail was introduced to the general public, but its web interface wasn't the draw. It was the (for its time) ungodly amount of space for users to take advantage of.
It's only been over time that they've changed up the web interface. For those of us that have used GMail since its beginning, we don't really care about what whiz-bang thing they've done with the web interface.
that so many here on slashdot see work and travel as such a black and white issue.
It's entirely possible to do both. You don't ALWAYS have to be working or ALWAYS out sightseeing. You can easily set aside time for both and not miss a thing on your itinerary.
Then again, I'm an older traveler, been doing freelance work for close to two decades now. I take my netbook and smartphone wherever I go.
I will say, however, that I wouldn't consider staying in a hostel. It's just not me. I don't consider myself a shy person, but I'm certainly not the life of a party either, and I find I like socializing with the locals much more at a cafe or bar. And I suppose part of socializing with the locals to me means getting out there and actually meeting locals, not other travelers. Plus, you can generally find really cheap short-term furnished apartments where you'll have much greater peace of mind about your stuff and privacy.
I'm not a freelance coder, I'm a freelance translator, and if people see me working on something in a cafe, for example, I'm often approached and asked about my job (it's pretty obvious looking at my laptop screen that I'm working on a translation). That usually leads to some interesting exchanges, often with me getting to practice or outright learn about the local language - something important to me. And if we hit it off, there's usually an invitation somewhere in there to join them for sightseeing, lunch/dinner or some new bar.
The way I see it it, if I were just interested in meeting English speakers, I'd travel the US/Canada (well, there are some great places to see in the UK, Australia, South Africa, etc., too).
Slashdot Mirror
Can you point me to an example of a person self-diagnosed with Asperger's? Why would anyone want to claim they are on the autism spectrum when they are not on it?
Try hanging out in some of the language-learning forums sometime. Many, many self-diagnosed Asperger's people hand out in them.
For some reason, they think that appearing to have Asperger's gives them an edge in how others view their intelligence and ease in learning foreign languages.
"Ooh! Hey look! I'm just like Daniel Tammet. I must have Asperger's."
So, when you buy a computer, you don't buy software?
They buy it for the ability to run software they need. Right now, Androids still don't have the software they need. It's as simple as that.
Has the common core standard even been finalized yet? According to one of the links in TFS it hasn't. I suppose it could be by 2014, but knowing the bureaucracy involved in both the standard itself and the LAUSD, I have my doubts.
I don't miss being in that profession at all. The money was great, but it got to a point that it wasn't enough to compensate for all the 24/7 shit I put up with.
We have been doing this for new homes in San Antonio for the past 5-10 years. My house was built in 1993 and it's like this.
And it's been happening in rural America forever.
My mailbox is a quarter of a mile away from my house. I have no problem taking a walk to get it. As it is, I don't go every day, because all my bills are paid online. Every single bill. So the only time I need to go to the mailbox is when I know I'll be receiving something. All the junk mail gets tossed. Any large packages go through UPS or FedEx.
In the winter I'll sometimes slap on some skis and trek to the mailbox, if I haven't gotten the chance to get the road plowed yet (it happens somewhat frequently in Northern Wisconsin in the winter). Add to the fact that AARP tells me I'm a senior citizen.
We've become a nation of lazy fat asses that can't think or do anything for ourselves.
Unless it is as progress to a degree, the reason to do these classes is to learn something. You seem to have done so, so why is the lack of the certificate so upsetting? Presumably you had a good feel for how you would have done on the test before taking it, so why not be content with learning what you could from the course?
If you go back to my original post, I wasn't upset at not receiving a certificate. I learned quite a bit from the course. The point I was trying to make was that if I had paid money to take a class for credit, only to be shut out by a technical issue that was clearly the fault of Coursera/U of Toronto policies, I would have been out of luck. I also posited whether the percentage of the no-pass rate for UCSJ/Udacity could have had anything to do with technical issues.
The article isn't specific as to *why* the percentage was what it was.
If I couldn't connect and it was on my end than that was obviously on me to find a solution either buy fixing my damn connection or going to the computer lab or library.
I would never take a course anywhere that had that as their policy and if it really is a "if we screw up on our end you still pay" policy they have then shame on anyone giving money to that kind of scummy organization.
I don't have the link handy at the moment, but the Coursera failure made news in the Canadian press at the time. The course I took wasn't for transferable credit, so I wasn't out any money, just time.
Regardless, you can't put a failure like that on the student. It rested squarely on the shoulders of Coursera and the U of Toronto for its policies.
They'll offer the same course again sooner or later; just take it again next time.
Yeah, see, that's the problem right there. That's not the answer. Making sure that technical issues aren't a problem is key for any of these MOOCs to work, whether it's Udacity, Coursera, edX or any other platform, particularly if it's for real, transferable college credit.
Telling people to "just take it again" because the platform fucked up is just going to drive students elsewhere.
I completed a course through Coursera from the University of Toronto. It was a good course, and I enjoyed it. Learned a lot from the course. In the final week of the course (it wasn't a free-for-all - I had to register for the course and complete it, with tests every week, during and eight week period set but the U of Toronoto), there was an exam that would make up 50 percent of my total grade. Coursera completely fell over that final week, and I wasn't able to gain access to the test until two days after the course deadline. So there went an otherwise good grade. They wouldn't allow any tests to be taken after the deadline, regardless of technical issues.
I had spent a total of around 40-45 hours with the course, 20 of those hours were video lectures that needed to be watched, the rest was study time. Even though all I would get from the course was a certificate of completion, I felt cheated and like I'd wasted a lot of my time for what was otherwise a good course.
Would I take another course? Maybe, but I know that if I were studying for transferable college credit, I would have been seriously pissed.
I wonder how much of the non-pass rate was due to issues other than actual class material in Udacity's case.
I couple years ago I bought an Acer Aspire One with Win7 loaded on it, but if I walk into a big box store, I only see Samsungs and Acer C7s (which are just rebadged netbooks from a year ago).
Subtitles are not the movie, they're text versions of translated text of the voice track of a movie.
In many cases, they're not even "text versions" of the voice track - they're paraphrases of what's being spoken, using completely different words. I've seen some professionally done subtitling (as well as fan-created) that even changes the meaning of what's being said.
Cinnamon and Gnome 3 still are missing one vital feature from Gnome 2 and Mate. That is the key feature of showing window previews in the pager. This is a powerful feature that helps make virtual desktops a bit more easy to use.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding... I get this feature with Gnome3/Gnome Shell, although I installed an extension to get a better version of it, called Workspace Navigator. It actually provides a better overview than Gnome2 did for me. If I forget what's where, I just hit the super key and can see what's running on each virtual desktop.
Truthfully, I like the idea of having extensions. I only install the functionality I need. I also like that I don't have to deal with Compiz in Gnome Shell. While it was fine with earlier versions of Ubuntu, the version of Compiz that ships with Ubuntu (at least with 12.04) is really garbage.
RTFS. The proposed character looks like a combination of T and h, but its meaning is the entire English word "the", not the sound "th".
And if that's what the submitter is after, what he's doing isn't saving any time or keystrokes or time. He still has t hit the cap key, the "t" and the "h". Three keystrokes, regardless.
In his case, incorporating T9 or something like it would probably help him more.
Companies use it because they must.
Not really. Companies have a choice in what they use. That choice comes down to the cost and training involved in switching to something else, and it's usually too high for them to bother.
But there's no law stating that a company must use Windows. I wish people would quit spouting that it's a requirement, when all it comes down to is weighing the pros and cons of using either Windows or another operating system.
Except for LA's. Then, BART and Muni look like a shining example.
LA is really a special case, as far as public transit goes. It's *so* spread out. Considering how spread out it is, at least they have bus lines (and a couple trains/light rail) that'll get you downtown or to the airport relatively easy, albeit it not so quickly. Compare it to another equally spread out city like Phoenix and you'll see that the coverage more complete in LA.
I think taking a taxi is LA is also MUCH easier than in SF. At least they'll come when you call them, unlike in SF. That so infuriated me in SF - you'd call for a taxi and one would never arrive.
The OP takes 90 minutes to do 49 miles, driving. I take public transit, and it takes me 60 minutes... to do 15 miles.
San Francisco's public transit truthfully sucks in comparison with other cities. When I lived in SF (early 90s-2005), I lived in a relatively quiet neighborhood between the panhandle and USF. I worked first in Sunnyvale, then in Fremont. Getting to either place was a hassle, and a large part of it was due to SF Muni (before I ever set foot in a Caltrain or BART station. I could take the Fulton or Hayes bus, which supposedly would come every 10-15 minutes (much less between runs in the early 90s). The reality was that the buses would stack up for 30-40 minutes, then all show up at once. It would take at least a half an hour to get downtown - a mere 3 miles or so. Once there, Caltrain or BART would be another 50-55 minutes to either Sunnyvale or Fremont. And that is assuming you didn't have someone jump in front of the train or the train didn't break down, or there weren't BART switching problems.
Don't even get me started on SF's taxi situation.
When I moved to Chicago, I thought I was in heaven with their transit and taxi system (and Chicago has PLENTY of transit problems, but nowhere near the amount that SF had for 1/4 of the population.)
well yes and no. im saying strip the term "marriage" for the legal world and replace it with "civil union" for ALL gay or straight. Leave the word marriage to the churches. or other groups. in other words, make "civil union" the legal definition of marriage as far as the government is concerned. than everyone should be happy. If people still are not happy with that, that just tells me there ar eother motives behind them.
I'd like to see it taken one step further: Drop the "power vested" in ministers and priests to perform legal marriages and leave that to the legal system and civil registries. Other countries (quite catholic countries, at that) seem to do just fine with this arrangement, so I don't see why it can't work for the US.
If people want to have a religious ceremony commemorating their marriage, great. But it should mean nothing in the eyes of the law.
Do you live anywhere near a decent sized city?
Nearest largish city is abut 80 miles away (Twin Cities, or Eau Claire, WI, depending on which direction). It's pretty rural. Point is, it cheeses me off that they'll tell me I can get 12Mbps when I plug in my exact address on their website, yet when I actually compete the sign up procedure for the service, they'll simply say "Nope. 2 Mbps is what you'll get." It's really false advertising.
1.5 light seconds is roughly the distance to the moon.
And when was the last time we had humans on the moon? Distance doesn't matter all that much when we don't care enough to continue exploration of what's already reachable.
I live in a medium sized city in the midwest. I get 30 and 2 Mbps. It may not be spectacular, but it is adequate.
30/2Mbps is QUITE spectacular compared to my rural 2Mbps/384Kbps in Northern Wisconsin. CenturyLink will tell you that 12/4Mpbs is what's available. Until you actually sign up for their service. Then they'll simply say "Yeah, not for you."
Even when I lived across the street from ATT's CO in Chicago, my top speed was 12/6Mbps.
Because why should I be forced to agree to a third-parties terms and conditions to get a job, when I can put all my code that I want to share up on my own website?
If you're putting up all the code you want to share on your own website, then you *do* have some sort of online presence.
No reason you can't hand a prospective employer the URL as your portfolio. Although I'm in a different industry, I use my own website as my calling card for pretty much all freelance projects in which I'm involved. No prospective client will ever see my Facebook page (it's open to just family and friends), but I regularly use Twitter and G+ as URL pointers for any updates or new projects that I wish to share.
Agreed. If you count tablets as "PCs" then you should include smartphones. So don't.
I have a BenQ S6 that I still use all the time. It was manufactured in 2008 (and discontinued soon thereafter), but honestly, it's not that much less powerful than some of the netbooks being sold today. It's an Atom 800MHz processor, I can easily attach a BT or USB keyboard, and runs a full Linux distribution. There was also a second iteration of the device that ran WinXP. I also have an equally old Nokia N800 that I still occasionally use (and it kind of pains me to say that 5 year old mobile tech is old - ancient, actually). It's not at all the same, because, while I can run many applications, I CAN'T run any desktop application I want.
The BenQ is a full computer in my book - albeit pocketable, able to run any desktop application. Smartphones, on the other hand, aren't able to do that, even though smartphone processors may be more powerful. At least not yet.
... I guess nobody shuts computers down any more.
Probably right. Nobody I know shuts their systems down. I certainly don't shut down my Linux systems unless I have to (although I restart Gnome - or outright kill it - regularly). It's a low power laptop, though, using less than 60W. I suppose if it were a huge desktop machine eating up 500W of power, I'd shut it down when not in use.
I'm not seeing what your post has to do with what I said. I was saying if I have to use an IMAP client to get a usable interface for Gmail, why even keep the Gmail account since the whole point of Gmail is the web interface and the storage on Google's servers.
I don't know if you remember when GMail was introduced to the general public, but its web interface wasn't the draw. It was the (for its time) ungodly amount of space for users to take advantage of.
It's only been over time that they've changed up the web interface. For those of us that have used GMail since its beginning, we don't really care about what whiz-bang thing they've done with the web interface.
If I have to do that what's the point of even having a Gmail account? Nothing as far as I can see.
Aside from some web interface differences, a gmail account is no different than any other IMAP account.
Some of us prefer not to have to use a web browser for everything we do online (or offline, for that matter), and an IMAP client is perfect for that.
It's entirely possible to do both. You don't ALWAYS have to be working or ALWAYS out sightseeing. You can easily set aside time for both and not miss a thing on your itinerary.
Then again, I'm an older traveler, been doing freelance work for close to two decades now. I take my netbook and smartphone wherever I go.
I will say, however, that I wouldn't consider staying in a hostel. It's just not me. I don't consider myself a shy person, but I'm certainly not the life of a party either, and I find I like socializing with the locals much more at a cafe or bar. And I suppose part of socializing with the locals to me means getting out there and actually meeting locals, not other travelers. Plus, you can generally find really cheap short-term furnished apartments where you'll have much greater peace of mind about your stuff and privacy.
I'm not a freelance coder, I'm a freelance translator, and if people see me working on something in a cafe, for example, I'm often approached and asked about my job (it's pretty obvious looking at my laptop screen that I'm working on a translation). That usually leads to some interesting exchanges, often with me getting to practice or outright learn about the local language - something important to me. And if we hit it off, there's usually an invitation somewhere in there to join them for sightseeing, lunch/dinner or some new bar.
The way I see it it, if I were just interested in meeting English speakers, I'd travel the US/Canada (well, there are some great places to see in the UK, Australia, South Africa, etc., too).