Corporations make money by exploiting poor populations
Hold on there a minute, who exactly is being exploited by the evil corporations? You do realise that if they paid western wages to most of the people they employ in third world countries, it would put them in the top 1% of wage earners? Are their skills worth that?
And by the way, we are talking about employment here. These people have few prospects to better themselves, and are trapped in a vicious circle of desperate poverty the likes of which you can barely imagine. You haven't seen just how bad it can get until you visit someplace like Smoke Mountain, in Manila. Nothing like seeing hundreds of people rooting through trash from dawn till dusk for a few cents worth of recyclables to put things in perspective. You can google it, but I rather advise you don't. It ain't pretty.
So foreign corporations come in and pump in money, and motivate these people to educate themselves, and/or they go to places like America and send money home. Everyone wins, the consumer, the "exploited" workers, the corporations, everyone except the people whose jobs they took.
Theres only one answer to your problem, I'm afraid. Start your own corporation. Its not as hard as it seems.
A generation is the period from when a person is born to when they start having children, or something like that. I think the common acceptance is 30 years. I've had people 4 years younger than me telling me they were a different generation. The next generation is being born now, my fine redheaded stepchild, at least from my perspective. Whatever it is, it AIN'T what the marketroids tell you. And yes I'm talking to you MTV and Apple fans.
What the fuck, exactly, is the "iPod Generation"? Theres a whole generation that defines itself by its MP3 player now? Where are they and are their women cute, cos they sure ain't too smart.
RTFA. The walrus is a heavier than air vehicle, that uses engines and aerodynamics to get up and about. Its not just a helium balloon, and is unlike anything you have ever flown in.
Oh for god's sake, one of the natural wonders of the world is discovered, and the best we can come up with is a pissing contest about how we can make better machines. Guess what, the pterosaurs couldn't land on the moon or spit nuclear explosions either, aren't we great.
When you think about it, the likelihood of any fossils even existing, never mind surviving for us to find, is so low that its a miracle we have any record of what came before at all. I absoloutely guarantee that not one species in a million that existed in those days has left any sort of fossil record at all. Giant pterosaurs are most likely just the tip of the iceberg.
Besides, most of you are missing the the point, which is of course...
is can NASA keep up with the many contenders currently active out in the private sector, some of which have massive bankrolls available to them, and investors with very deep pockets backing the projects up...
Yes but an important point which many seem to miss is that NOBODY, but nobody, has pockets as deep as the government. I mean, whats NASA's annual budget these days, tens of billions? The much toted wealth of Microsoft, one of the richest corporations in existence, would collapse in a single year trying to fund it. NASA could be fine and could still do a great deal to advance space exploration, more than anyone else, it just needs to be organised properly (along non political lines).
As soon as the kid tripped in the water, he was no longer able to regain his footing and was floating face down in the pool!)
Yeah I have seen things like that as a lifeguard too, kids, even older kids, can drown in only a couple of feet of water; they fall over or put their heads under water, and (this mostly applied to girls with long hair) they apparently lacked the strength to pull their heads up again. The system here is great, but there is a lot that it can't catch.
Whoa, the flash EULA gives them the right to beat you and sexually assault you? Thats really taking DRM to the next level; I fully expect the RIAA to reintroduce indentured servitude after this bold move on the part of Macromedia.
1. You aren't Irish, so all evidence you might present is merely anecdotal and second or third hand.
2. I am Irish and have lived in Ireland all my life, so in terms of my statement, I am eminently more qualified than you will ever be to comment on how dependable various institutions around the country are, and how they run their shops (with lots of note taken of this last one).
Sooo, unless either of these two facts change anytime soon, you are simply arguing from a general perspective, which is so tangential to the point I made as to constitute a strawman attack. Cheers.
"The average man scores 5 IQ points higher than the average woman", backed-up by statistical evidence from thousands of tests, is uncomfortable to consider, but is (apparently) backed up by the evidence.
Ah the bitter medicine argument. I find it as suspect as any of the PC points of view, unfortunately. Not that I am pro PC-we-are-all created-equal nonsense.
and accepted by a mainstream psychology journal,
Do you think it lives and dies by its reputation or its revenue?
You appear to have a fundamental misunderstanding of statistics
Have you ever heard the phrase "lies, damned lies, and statistics"? The reason that it holds such common parlance is because it has more than a grain of truth. Statistics can be twisted to represent any facts you feel they should. Not to mention that the basis for the entire IQ system is highly suspect, I believe this has been succinctly covered by other posts than mine.
It is also composed of thousands upon of discrete, unrelated data-points.
I can draw upon any amount of discrete unrelated data points and draw conclusions based on that to suit my beliefs. Where I draw them from is another question; for example I might leave out a variety of valuable facts, such as social status and background.
pretty much the only resource an academic has is his reputation, so it's reasonable to assume they likely wouldn't have risen as far as they have without being careful about making stupid, inflamatory and baseless claims
Woo, you don't know much about academia do you. By the way, the man responsible for this was also the author of a nice claim that balck people were inherently more stupid than white people.
You also don't have to bet your professional reputation on it, or go in front of the country's (world's?) media and defend the assertion.
Again, you betray a singular lack of understanding about academia, in particular in the north. Short of murdering the students, this man can do just about anything he wants, and no one can say a thing to him. I ask you to put the study in context and balance potential bias (for which there there is plenty of scope) against the odds of it being a fairly balanced and equanimous study done to further the sum of human knowledge. Also, try living in the north for a few years, and preferably be a woman.
Already posted this twice, but thats no reason to not spread the love a bit more...
Wait wait wait, this is the university of Ulster. I don't know how many of you have any experience with the north of Ireland, but the northerners (or "noddies" as they are referred to) tend to be a sort of primitive atavistic throwback to a less evolved species. Now while I know that may sound like flamebait, what I am trying to underline here is that not all universities are created equal and take anything that comes from the north of Ireland with a LARGE pinch of salt (cf rev. Ian Paisley, female to male drop out rates for Queens University Belfast). Under no circumstances take anything these people say seriously.
Oh and hey if my sweeping generalisations offend, you might want to ask yourself how long you have lived in Ireland, and then you might want to ask yourself why my generalisations offend (true thought they are) and the ones made by the UU crowd do not.
I'm just gonna go ahead and repeat a previous post, since it bears repeating...
Wait wait wait, this is the university of Ulster. I don't know how many of you have any experience with the north of Ireland, but the northerners (or "noddies" as they are referred to) tend to be a sort of primitive atavistic throwback to a less evolved species. Now while I know that may sound like flamebait, what I am trying to underline here is that not all universities are created equal and take anything that comes from the north of Ireland with a LARGE pinch of salt (cf rev. Ian Paisley, female to male drop out rates for Queens University Belfast). Under no circumstances take anything these people say seriously.
Oh and hey if my sweeping generalisations offend, you might want to ask yourself how long you have lived in Ireland, and then you might want to ask yourself why my generalisations offend (true thought they are) and the ones made by the UU crowd do not.
Wait wait wait, this is the university of Ulster. I don't know how many of you have any experience with the north of Ireland, but the northerners (or "noddies" as they are referred to) tend to be a sort of primitive atavistic throwback to a less evolved species. Now while I know that may sound like flamebait, what I am trying to underline here is that not all universities are created equal and take anything that comes from the north of Ireland with a LARGE pinch of salt (cf rev. Ian Paisley, female to male drop out rates for Queens University Belfast). Under no circumstances take anything these people say seriously.
Oh and hey if my sweeping generalisations offend, you might want to ask yourself how long you have lived in Ireland, and then you might want to ask yourself why my generalisations offend (true thought they are) and the ones made by the UU crowd do not.
Odd, I get connection refused when I try to get to alexa. I wonder is it my IP block for some reason, or that I'm using mozilla? Could they be taking a "no looking at our website unless you get our BHO" policy?:D
You want to wake up, son. Lets put this in context, shall we? We are talking about a felony, that is entering children into the criminal justice system because the school admins didn't have clue one about how to secure their own systems from... children. The mini emporers in academia need a taste of their own medicine. Honestly speaking, a previous poster pointed out that taping the password to the backs of the computers was tantamount to incitement and solicitation of a minor. I wouldn't just use it as a threat though, I'd go afer the little hitlers until every man jack of them had spent a few months trying out the local prison facilites. Such irresponsible and knee jerk reactionists should under no circumstances be educating children.
Don't get me wrong, I know some kids are wretched creatures that shouldn't be in general education, but in this case I think an example does need to be made. Of the so called teachers.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but doesn't the fact that a given emergency takes out the power lines remove this interference? So if there is an emergency, the hams can operate as normal. If the power lines don't go down, there is no need for the emergency hams.
Now if anyone is talking about being unable to receive the ham radio in an area that has power, we can pick up trace signals from mars orbiters running on a few AA batteries, through the solar radiation, so don't tell me state run receivers can't pick them up.
But that's a moot point considering bandwidth is so cheap and if you want to throw up some kind of large, bandwidth consuming site you can generally run it on donation.
While I mostly agree with the rest of your rant, in particular with reference to the lifestyle type advertising (very Tyler Durden there), its time and way beyond time that you, tinker bell, and the rest of slashdot woke up to some realities you won't find steeping in the comfortable groves of academia or mouldering away in your parents' basement.
Some people run online businesses. These are what got the internet to where it is today. These require online advertising to let people know whats available. Everyone's favourite website, google, does that run on donations? No, its 100% advertising based revenue. One hundred percent.
The only reason that the internet is so ubiquitous today is purely private enterprise. A PC in every home, spreading broadband access, these things would not exist without commercial enterprise, whose sole purpose is profit. Do you seriously think that the internet would even exist if it had been left in the hands of academics?
And its not just the internet that was built on the back of commercial enterprise, take a look at spaceflight and see how has been fizzling like a wet firecracker until Richard Branson et al stepped in to bring you your star trek.
So if you don't like the nasty advertising, I suggest you sod off and read a good book, and leave the internet alone. Donation based websites, I mean what the good fuck.
I think the problem here is that we have the wrong people looking at the job. We have robotics engineers working on simulating natural muscles, and all sorts of technologists working in widely diverse fields, learning as they go. They should get the past masters of the field working on it, the engineers from Makita and John Deere, power tools and garden machinery experts. Also robots with chainsaws would be kinda cool.
CSS Zen Garden is a wonderful resource and has a lot of pretty pictures in it, but really it is taking two steps back to the start of the web, where every site was a poster with little interaction. All of those fixed layout designs and shiny objects are good to display artistic talent, but try putting dynamic content in there, and you are in for a world of hurt.
Although when you think about it, every micro-organism on earth has evolved to fill a unique ecological niche. Might not the harsh conditions on Mars have created organisms that have evolved to fill EVERY ecological niche? With resources so scarce there, who knows but that there might be some sort of very adaptable viruses or bacteria analogues that would swiftly take advantage of the moveable feast that is humanity...
Although to go from experience here on earth, most of the most dangerous stuff is in very dense ecospheres, like jungles etc. Deserts generally have not a whole lot.
Not trying to be flamebait here, but I just don't get dyslexia. I mean, you're an engineer, you need to be able to see and recognise complex specifications and long strings of numbers with extreme accuracy. What is so different from normal language use? See the string of letters, recognise them individually, and compare them to the known string mentally. Where's the problem?
Don't get me wrong, I'm no stranger to communications problems, having a semi serious speech impediment myself (which hasn't stopped me founding and running my own successful business by the way), but thats related to nervousness around other people, basically a nervous twitch. I just have difficulty with relating a perfect ability to understand and work with complex technical specifications in terms of the written word, and normal language. The only reason I can see is the degree of application given to each.
Slashdot Mirror
China is methodically destroying the west and making sure that they are in a good position.
The west ain't just America, baby.
Corporations make money by exploiting poor populations
Hold on there a minute, who exactly is being exploited by the evil corporations? You do realise that if they paid western wages to most of the people they employ in third world countries, it would put them in the top 1% of wage earners? Are their skills worth that?
And by the way, we are talking about employment here. These people have few prospects to better themselves, and are trapped in a vicious circle of desperate poverty the likes of which you can barely imagine. You haven't seen just how bad it can get until you visit someplace like Smoke Mountain, in Manila. Nothing like seeing hundreds of people rooting through trash from dawn till dusk for a few cents worth of recyclables to put things in perspective. You can google it, but I rather advise you don't. It ain't pretty.
So foreign corporations come in and pump in money, and motivate these people to educate themselves, and/or they go to places like America and send money home. Everyone wins, the consumer, the "exploited" workers, the corporations, everyone except the people whose jobs they took.
Theres only one answer to your problem, I'm afraid. Start your own corporation. Its not as hard as it seems.
and their women are pretty much just silhouettes
I'll still find a way to hit it.
A generation is the period from when a person is born to when they start having children, or something like that. I think the common acceptance is 30 years. I've had people 4 years younger than me telling me they were a different generation. The next generation is being born now, my fine redheaded stepchild, at least from my perspective. Whatever it is, it AIN'T what the marketroids tell you. And yes I'm talking to you MTV and Apple fans.
What the fuck, exactly, is the "iPod Generation"? Theres a whole generation that defines itself by its MP3 player now? Where are they and are their women cute, cos they sure ain't too smart.
RTFA. The walrus is a heavier than air vehicle, that uses engines and aerodynamics to get up and about. Its not just a helium balloon, and is unlike anything you have ever flown in.
Oh for god's sake, one of the natural wonders of the world is discovered, and the best we can come up with is a pissing contest about how we can make better machines. Guess what, the pterosaurs couldn't land on the moon or spit nuclear explosions either, aren't we great.
When you think about it, the likelihood of any fossils even existing, never mind surviving for us to find, is so low that its a miracle we have any record of what came before at all. I absoloutely guarantee that not one species in a million that existed in those days has left any sort of fossil record at all. Giant pterosaurs are most likely just the tip of the iceberg.
Besides, most of you are missing the the point, which is of course...
Here be dragons...
is can NASA keep up with the many contenders currently active out in the private sector, some of which have massive bankrolls available to them, and investors with very deep pockets backing the projects up...
Yes but an important point which many seem to miss is that NOBODY, but nobody, has pockets as deep as the government. I mean, whats NASA's annual budget these days, tens of billions? The much toted wealth of Microsoft, one of the richest corporations in existence, would collapse in a single year trying to fund it. NASA could be fine and could still do a great deal to advance space exploration, more than anyone else, it just needs to be organised properly (along non political lines).
Its like I've always said, I have no idea what I'm doing, but I've never let ignorance stop me before... :D
As soon as the kid tripped in the water, he was no longer able to regain his footing and was floating face down in the pool!)
Yeah I have seen things like that as a lifeguard too, kids, even older kids, can drown in only a couple of feet of water; they fall over or put their heads under water, and (this mostly applied to girls with long hair) they apparently lacked the strength to pull their heads up again. The system here is great, but there is a lot that it can't catch.
Whoa, the flash EULA gives them the right to beat you and sexually assault you? Thats really taking DRM to the next level; I fully expect the RIAA to reintroduce indentured servitude after this bold move on the part of Macromedia.
Eh listen, I'll sum this up with two points:
1. You aren't Irish, so all evidence you might present is merely anecdotal and second or third hand.
2. I am Irish and have lived in Ireland all my life, so in terms of my statement, I am eminently more qualified than you will ever be to comment on how dependable various institutions around the country are, and how they run their shops (with lots of note taken of this last one).
Sooo, unless either of these two facts change anytime soon, you are simply arguing from a general perspective, which is so tangential to the point I made as to constitute a strawman attack. Cheers.
No offence taken, but I do stand by my statements. I have a decent rebuttal here. And as for being liable, well sue me. :D
"The average man scores 5 IQ points higher than the average woman", backed-up by statistical evidence from thousands of tests, is uncomfortable to consider, but is (apparently) backed up by the evidence.
Ah the bitter medicine argument. I find it as suspect as any of the PC points of view, unfortunately. Not that I am pro PC-we-are-all created-equal nonsense.
and accepted by a mainstream psychology journal,
Do you think it lives and dies by its reputation or its revenue?
You appear to have a fundamental misunderstanding of statistics
Have you ever heard the phrase "lies, damned lies, and statistics"? The reason that it holds such common parlance is because it has more than a grain of truth. Statistics can be twisted to represent any facts you feel they should. Not to mention that the basis for the entire IQ system is highly suspect, I believe this has been succinctly covered by other posts than mine.
It is also composed of thousands upon of discrete, unrelated data-points.
I can draw upon any amount of discrete unrelated data points and draw conclusions based on that to suit my beliefs. Where I draw them from is another question; for example I might leave out a variety of valuable facts, such as social status and background.
pretty much the only resource an academic has is his reputation, so it's reasonable to assume they likely wouldn't have risen as far as they have without being careful about making stupid, inflamatory and baseless claims
Woo, you don't know much about academia do you. By the way, the man responsible for this was also the author of a nice claim that balck people were inherently more stupid than white people.
You also don't have to bet your professional reputation on it, or go in front of the country's (world's?) media and defend the assertion.
Again, you betray a singular lack of understanding about academia, in particular in the north. Short of murdering the students, this man can do just about anything he wants, and no one can say a thing to him. I ask you to put the study in context and balance potential bias (for which there there is plenty of scope) against the odds of it being a fairly balanced and equanimous study done to further the sum of human knowledge. Also, try living in the north for a few years, and preferably be a woman.
Already posted this twice, but thats no reason to not spread the love a bit more...
Wait wait wait, this is the university of Ulster. I don't know how many of you have any experience with the north of Ireland, but the northerners (or "noddies" as they are referred to) tend to be a sort of primitive atavistic throwback to a less evolved species. Now while I know that may sound like flamebait, what I am trying to underline here is that not all universities are created equal and take anything that comes from the north of Ireland with a LARGE pinch of salt (cf rev. Ian Paisley, female to male drop out rates for Queens University Belfast). Under no circumstances take anything these people say seriously.
Oh and hey if my sweeping generalisations offend, you might want to ask yourself how long you have lived in Ireland, and then you might want to ask yourself why my generalisations offend (true thought they are) and the ones made by the UU crowd do not.
I'm just gonna go ahead and repeat a previous post, since it bears repeating...
Wait wait wait, this is the university of Ulster. I don't know how many of you have any experience with the north of Ireland, but the northerners (or "noddies" as they are referred to) tend to be a sort of primitive atavistic throwback to a less evolved species. Now while I know that may sound like flamebait, what I am trying to underline here is that not all universities are created equal and take anything that comes from the north of Ireland with a LARGE pinch of salt (cf rev. Ian Paisley, female to male drop out rates for Queens University Belfast). Under no circumstances take anything these people say seriously.
Oh and hey if my sweeping generalisations offend, you might want to ask yourself how long you have lived in Ireland, and then you might want to ask yourself why my generalisations offend (true thought they are) and the ones made by the UU crowd do not.
Wait wait wait, this is the university of Ulster. I don't know how many of you have any experience with the north of Ireland, but the northerners (or "noddies" as they are referred to) tend to be a sort of primitive atavistic throwback to a less evolved species. Now while I know that may sound like flamebait, what I am trying to underline here is that not all universities are created equal and take anything that comes from the north of Ireland with a LARGE pinch of salt (cf rev. Ian Paisley, female to male drop out rates for Queens University Belfast). Under no circumstances take anything these people say seriously.
Oh and hey if my sweeping generalisations offend, you might want to ask yourself how long you have lived in Ireland, and then you might want to ask yourself why my generalisations offend (true thought they are) and the ones made by the UU crowd do not.
Odd, I get connection refused when I try to get to alexa. I wonder is it my IP block for some reason, or that I'm using mozilla? Could they be taking a "no looking at our website unless you get our BHO" policy? :D
You want to wake up, son. Lets put this in context, shall we? We are talking about a felony, that is entering children into the criminal justice system because the school admins didn't have clue one about how to secure their own systems from... children. The mini emporers in academia need a taste of their own medicine. Honestly speaking, a previous poster pointed out that taping the password to the backs of the computers was tantamount to incitement and solicitation of a minor. I wouldn't just use it as a threat though, I'd go afer the little hitlers until every man jack of them had spent a few months trying out the local prison facilites. Such irresponsible and knee jerk reactionists should under no circumstances be educating children.
Don't get me wrong, I know some kids are wretched creatures that shouldn't be in general education, but in this case I think an example does need to be made. Of the so called teachers.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but doesn't the fact that a given emergency takes out the power lines remove this interference? So if there is an emergency, the hams can operate as normal. If the power lines don't go down, there is no need for the emergency hams.
Now if anyone is talking about being unable to receive the ham radio in an area that has power, we can pick up trace signals from mars orbiters running on a few AA batteries, through the solar radiation, so don't tell me state run receivers can't pick them up.
But that's a moot point considering bandwidth is so cheap and if you want to throw up some kind of large, bandwidth consuming site you can generally run it on donation.
While I mostly agree with the rest of your rant, in particular with reference to the lifestyle type advertising (very Tyler Durden there), its time and way beyond time that you, tinker bell, and the rest of slashdot woke up to some realities you won't find steeping in the comfortable groves of academia or mouldering away in your parents' basement.
Some people run online businesses. These are what got the internet to where it is today. These require online advertising to let people know whats available. Everyone's favourite website, google, does that run on donations? No, its 100% advertising based revenue. One hundred percent.
The only reason that the internet is so ubiquitous today is purely private enterprise. A PC in every home, spreading broadband access, these things would not exist without commercial enterprise, whose sole purpose is profit. Do you seriously think that the internet would even exist if it had been left in the hands of academics?
And its not just the internet that was built on the back of commercial enterprise, take a look at spaceflight and see how has been fizzling like a wet firecracker until Richard Branson et al stepped in to bring you your star trek.
So if you don't like the nasty advertising, I suggest you sod off and read a good book, and leave the internet alone. Donation based websites, I mean what the good fuck.
I think the problem here is that we have the wrong people looking at the job. We have robotics engineers working on simulating natural muscles, and all sorts of technologists working in widely diverse fields, learning as they go. They should get the past masters of the field working on it, the engineers from Makita and John Deere, power tools and garden machinery experts. Also robots with chainsaws would be kinda cool.
CSS Zen Garden is a wonderful resource and has a lot of pretty pictures in it, but really it is taking two steps back to the start of the web, where every site was a poster with little interaction. All of those fixed layout designs and shiny objects are good to display artistic talent, but try putting dynamic content in there, and you are in for a world of hurt.
Although when you think about it, every micro-organism on earth has evolved to fill a unique ecological niche. Might not the harsh conditions on Mars have created organisms that have evolved to fill EVERY ecological niche? With resources so scarce there, who knows but that there might be some sort of very adaptable viruses or bacteria analogues that would swiftly take advantage of the moveable feast that is humanity...
Although to go from experience here on earth, most of the most dangerous stuff is in very dense ecospheres, like jungles etc. Deserts generally have not a whole lot.
Not trying to be flamebait here, but I just don't get dyslexia. I mean, you're an engineer, you need to be able to see and recognise complex specifications and long strings of numbers with extreme accuracy. What is so different from normal language use? See the string of letters, recognise them individually, and compare them to the known string mentally. Where's the problem?
Don't get me wrong, I'm no stranger to communications problems, having a semi serious speech impediment myself (which hasn't stopped me founding and running my own successful business by the way), but thats related to nervousness around other people, basically a nervous twitch. I just have difficulty with relating a perfect ability to understand and work with complex technical specifications in terms of the written word, and normal language. The only reason I can see is the degree of application given to each.