If only air conditioning had not been invented. The south would not have become as populated as it is, more people would have congregated in cities to the north, and more of them would have been better educated.
Scopes Monkey Trial. I know it was a long time ago, but not much progress seems to have been made in overcoming the ignorance and superstition that seems to persist in the southern states. Hell, even here in enlightened California I see people with these fish things on the back of their cars with the word 'Truth' eating the word 'Darwin.' It was here that I saw a bumber sticker informing me that a good knowledge of the Bible is better than any four-year college degree course. Anecdotal? Maybe, but if anybody in Europe drove around with such a public display of ignorance they'd be laughed off the road. Out here it seems to be commonplace.
He kinda has a point with plots getting more sophisticated. Just look at the plot and writing of the current Battlestar Galactica compared to the original, the difference in quality is like between night and day.
That said, there are plenty of classic movies that stand the test of time very well, although film is a different medium.
They'll sack nothing of the sort. If he wanted to sack me he'd have done it long before now. I can stay here as long as I want. I can get my green card and go for better money, or I can get my green card and stay at the same rate.
That's where you're wrong actually. An added benefit is that my company's products are now cheaper and more affordable for your ungrateful self.
I'm a H1-B employee...
on
The H-1B Swindle
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
... and I refute the implication that I'm treated like a 'slave' or 'indentured labourer.' Yes I might make less than a US-born programmer, but I make a hell of a lot more than I was getting in the UK. Plus, I get all the benefits of being in California (cool lifestyle, nice weather, affordable stuff, etc.). And as someone else said, it's better for you guys that I'm here spending my money and paying taxes here rather than remaining in the UK and doing outsourced work from there.
On a side note, I can't vote here despite paying my taxes to Uncle Sam, but I can vote in UK elections by mail.
The other down side is that if my job goes, my visa goes with it soon after and I'm on the next plane back. However it becomes a lot easier to go through the green card application process when you're based here.
The BBC is running an article about the ongoing debate about municipal wi-fi in the US.
"Recent figures suggest that since 2000, the US has dropped from third to 16th among nations worldwide in terms of per capita broadband access.
Bob Hale, owner of American Onion, shows how he uses a laptop with wireless capabitlities from a remote, rural site at his onion fields in Hermiston, Oregon
Studies suggest that 86% of households with income of more than $75,000 have broadband access. But the share is just 38% for those with an income of less than $30,000.
Huge areas of US countryside outside major towns and cities are also poorly served.
Ironically, one of the frontiers of wireless accessibility is found in a rural swathe of Oregon, which is thought to have one of the world's largest wireless hotspots.
"
( ) Technical innovation in a developing country ( ) Product shipped to a developing market (*) General discussion about IT in the devbeloping world
The location is:
(*) Africa ( ) India ( ) Bangladesh ( ) China ( ) Somewhere else in Asia ( ) South America ( ) Central America ( ) Other ______________
You're objecting to it on the basis that:
(*) Poverty hasn't been eliminated in that area yet ( ) American jobs will be lost
Your argument is bogus because:
(*) Poverty hasn't been eliminated in the developed world either, that doesn't mean we should halt all technological research ( ) This will not adversely affect any efforts to alleviate poverty ( ) This will help to alleviate poverty ( ) Poverty in that area isn't as widespread as you say it is ( ) The US does not have a divine right to keep all the cool jobs
General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenceau once said about war? Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: No, I don't think I do, sir, no. General Jack D. Ripper: He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
HSBC has a good system. On the first page they ask for your online banking ID. On the second page they ask for your date of birth and then three numbers out of your 8-digit security number that you were able to choose when you signed up. The exact position of the three digits varies at random every time you log in. They've had this for about five years. Same goes for their online digital TV banking service too.
He's basically trying to use the old 'guns make people safer' argument that I was attempting to lampoon in my journal entry. Unfortunately, some people are so brainwashed by the 'more guns make people safer' fallacy that they can't even recognise sarcasm when used to riddicule them.
Let me put it this way. The argument for guns is that if someone broke into your house, you'd need a gun to protect yourself. The argument against guns is that if the person breaking into your house doesn't have a gun, and you know that he's unlikely to have one, you'd be a lot safer tackling him by other means, less likely to be shot, and fewer people are going to end up dead.
If I accidentally disturbed a burglar in my home now (in San Francisco) I'd probably kiss my ass goodbye. I once disturbed a gang of four burglars in my house back in England, whereupon I ran after them with a hurling stick and chased them into next week.
If you live in a society, like in England, where guns are rare, fewer people die in gun-related crime. It may sound like common sense, but unfortunately there are people out there who need this explained to them.
Dude, if I saw you on a plane with a pocket knife, I'd rugby tackle you immediately, have the cabin crew restrain you, and stick around to ensure that the feds are there to meet you when we make an emergency landing. Loon.
"Agree with the article poster - Lame. Not only is this a lackluster MP3 unit (which by virtue of being firewire will be limited to Apple Mac owners), but it has virtually no UI wizardry that might define it as an Apple product. A total waste of time."
"Raise your hand if you have iTunes...
Raise your hand if you have a FireWire port...
Raise your hand if you have both...
Raise your hand if you have $400 to spend on a cute Apple device...
There is Apple's market. Pretty slim, eh? I don't see many sales in the future of iPod."
And of course, the obligatory "Apple's going under:"
Goofy internal projects, expensive gaffes trying to "diversify" into areas it has only a tenuous relationship to, a complete inability to understand markets, and a constitutional immunity against learning from their mistakes.
There is no future in a $400 (about $250 too expensive) firewire-only (5% of computer users) hardrive-based (read: fragile) mp3 player. Any one of these critical flaws might doom the product - take them all together and you have another classic corporate farce.
When you see silliness on this level, though, normally you expect to see a raging egotist who is immune to common sense and criticism in some position of power in the company... oh wait, Steve Jobs. Never mind.
This just reinforces my steadily growing sense of foreboding about Apple. Yes, I've said this before and been wrong, but I'll say it again anyway. They're living on borrowed time."
Names hidden to spare any embarrassment.
See the original thread from the time of the original iPod launch.
traditional phone lines are cash cows, so allowing customers to buy Internet access without traditional phone service would be costly to telecom providers
The Economist has a good article about this very issue this week. From the leader:
THE term "disruptive technology" is popular, but is widely misused. It refers not simply to a clever new technology, but to one that undermines an existing technology--and which therefore makes life very difficult for the many businesses which depend on the existing way of doing things. Twenty years ago, the personal computer was a classic example. It swept aside an older mainframe-based style of computing, and eventually brought IBM, one of the world's mightiest firms at the time, to its knees. This week has been a coming-out party of sorts for another disruptive technology, "voice over internet protocol" (VOIP), which promises to be even more disruptive, and of even greater benefit to consumers, than personal computers
From the article itself:
"Much more so than fixed-line operators, mobile operators would have to cannibalise their current business in order to generate new revenues from VOIP. Ironically, this means that BT, once regarded as a dinosaur-like incumbent, is now being held up as a shining example of an operator that is embracing the future, while Vodafone, whose pure-mobile strategy once seemed visionary, now stands accused of being on the wrong side of history. At the end of the day, there is no getting around the reality, as Skype's Mr Zennstrom says, that "something that is a great business model for us is probably a terrible business model for them.""
Re:I thought nerds were supposed to be smart!
on
Flash, Meet Sparkle
·
· Score: 1
You're wasting your time, mate. I've been trying to educate the open-source fundamentalist/. crowd for years that it's not Flash's fault that a handful of people abuse it, and that javascript is a much more abused technology (see popups) than Flash. They aren't interested. Best to let them rant and rave away about how SVG is going to take over any day now and how you can do everything Flash does in HTML (which you can't).
People concentrated in a single area is kinda the whole point of building a city. Look at LA, the most sprawled out city in the world. It's an environmental and infrastructural disaster. As for the damage a supersonic plane would do to a building, it's not much different from the damage a subsonic plane would do. It's not as if any hijacker would be flying at Mach 2 at the point of impact anyway, he'd need to be a great darts player to be that accuracte. I do wish people would get over this 'would terrorists find this useful' complex that seems to come up every time a new technical development comes along.
Slashdot Mirror
If only air conditioning had not been invented. The south would not have become as populated as it is, more people would have congregated in cities to the north, and more of them would have been better educated.
Scopes Monkey Trial. I know it was a long time ago, but not much progress seems to have been made in overcoming the ignorance and superstition that seems to persist in the southern states. Hell, even here in enlightened California I see people with these fish things on the back of their cars with the word 'Truth' eating the word 'Darwin.' It was here that I saw a bumber sticker informing me that a good knowledge of the Bible is better than any four-year college degree course. Anecdotal? Maybe, but if anybody in Europe drove around with such a public display of ignorance they'd be laughed off the road. Out here it seems to be commonplace.
Is the Pope catholic?
He kinda has a point with plots getting more sophisticated. Just look at the plot and writing of the current Battlestar Galactica compared to the original, the difference in quality is like between night and day. That said, there are plenty of classic movies that stand the test of time very well, although film is a different medium.
No it's not. My boss prefers to hire Europeans as engineers because he places higher value in Euro universities than American ones.
They'll sack nothing of the sort. If he wanted to sack me he'd have done it long before now. I can stay here as long as I want. I can get my green card and go for better money, or I can get my green card and stay at the same rate.
Oh, and we fuck your women too. Just thought you should know.
That's where you're wrong actually. An added benefit is that my company's products are now cheaper and more affordable for your ungrateful self.
... and I refute the implication that I'm treated like a 'slave' or 'indentured labourer.' Yes I might make less than a US-born programmer, but I make a hell of a lot more than I was getting in the UK. Plus, I get all the benefits of being in California (cool lifestyle, nice weather, affordable stuff, etc.). And as someone else said, it's better for you guys that I'm here spending my money and paying taxes here rather than remaining in the UK and doing outsourced work from there.
On a side note, I can't vote here despite paying my taxes to Uncle Sam, but I can vote in UK elections by mail.
The other down side is that if my job goes, my visa goes with it soon after and I'm on the next plane back. However it becomes a lot easier to go through the green card application process when you're based here.
Somehow I think the vegetable got the name before the newspaper did.
You're responding to a post about a:
( ) Technical innovation in a developing country
( ) Product shipped to a developing market
(*) General discussion about IT in the devbeloping world
The location is:
(*) Africa
( ) India
( ) Bangladesh
( ) China
( ) Somewhere else in Asia
( ) South America
( ) Central America
( ) Other ______________
You're objecting to it on the basis that:
(*) Poverty hasn't been eliminated in that area yet
( ) American jobs will be lost
Your argument is bogus because:
(*) Poverty hasn't been eliminated in the developed world either, that doesn't mean we should halt all technological research
( ) This will not adversely affect any efforts to alleviate poverty
( ) This will help to alleviate poverty
( ) Poverty in that area isn't as widespread as you say it is
( ) The US does not have a divine right to keep all the cool jobs
General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenceau once said about war?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: No, I don't think I do, sir, no.
General Jack D. Ripper: He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
HSBC has a good system. On the first page they ask for your online banking ID. On the second page they ask for your date of birth and then three numbers out of your 8-digit security number that you were able to choose when you signed up. The exact position of the three digits varies at random every time you log in. They've had this for about five years. Same goes for their online digital TV banking service too.
He's basically trying to use the old 'guns make people safer' argument that I was attempting to lampoon in my journal entry. Unfortunately, some people are so brainwashed by the 'more guns make people safer' fallacy that they can't even recognise sarcasm when used to riddicule them. Let me put it this way. The argument for guns is that if someone broke into your house, you'd need a gun to protect yourself. The argument against guns is that if the person breaking into your house doesn't have a gun, and you know that he's unlikely to have one, you'd be a lot safer tackling him by other means, less likely to be shot, and fewer people are going to end up dead. If I accidentally disturbed a burglar in my home now (in San Francisco) I'd probably kiss my ass goodbye. I once disturbed a gang of four burglars in my house back in England, whereupon I ran after them with a hurling stick and chased them into next week. If you live in a society, like in England, where guns are rare, fewer people die in gun-related crime. It may sound like common sense, but unfortunately there are people out there who need this explained to them.
Dude, if I saw you on a plane with a pocket knife, I'd rugby tackle you immediately, have the cabin crew restrain you, and stick around to ensure that the feds are there to meet you when we make an emergency landing. Loon.
See the original thread from the time of the original iPod launch.
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
Er, languages don't produce code. People do.
You're wasting your time, mate. I've been trying to educate the open-source fundamentalist /. crowd for years that it's not Flash's fault that a handful of people abuse it, and that javascript is a much more abused technology (see popups) than Flash. They aren't interested. Best to let them rant and rave away about how SVG is going to take over any day now and how you can do everything Flash does in HTML (which you can't).
People concentrated in a single area is kinda the whole point of building a city. Look at LA, the most sprawled out city in the world. It's an environmental and infrastructural disaster. As for the damage a supersonic plane would do to a building, it's not much different from the damage a subsonic plane would do. It's not as if any hijacker would be flying at Mach 2 at the point of impact anyway, he'd need to be a great darts player to be that accuracte. I do wish people would get over this 'would terrorists find this useful' complex that seems to come up every time a new technical development comes along.
To ryhme with the way an Englishman would pronounce 'wow.'