"We own that machine, we own the network its on, we own the bandwidth you use to connect to the outside world, and therefore, we get to say exactly what you get to do with it. If you don't like that, thats fine, I totally understand, leave"
Hell yeah. You own that paper, you own that desk, and you own that telephone I use to connect to the outside world, and therefore you get to say exactly what I get to do with it ?
Seeing that you'll tell me exactly what to do, I won't be getting to do anything innovative. In fact, it could be very dangerous for me not to park my brain at the door when entering your office.
You might think you know exactly what your workers should be doing with their IT, or any other part of the company infrastructure. But your competitors will soon find where you are not half so smart as you think you are.
And really, your workers would have to be be pretty brain dead to be working for a company that takes the view that paying wages buys ownership.
Unless your talking about a business that is doing idiot-simple work like flippin burgers at Maccas, you'll go belly-up just for that reason alone.
Offering bounties seems a long way to price fixing to me, so I don't quite understand your suggestion that legal issues stand in the way of insurance companies.
Historically, I believe insurance companies have been able to provide payments to fire fighting brigades and/or fund such, in order to manage their risk portfolios. I hail from Australia, where part of every fire insurance policy is a levy that provides funding to the Fire Brigades. Buying such insurance is non-compulsory, but it is the only source of funding to the Fire Brigade. In effect, those unwilling to purchase insurance are subsidised by those who do.
Not exactly the stuff that the Chicago school of economics would preach.
With fire-fighting, the costs of good or bad fire fighting are very localised, and benefits perhaps readily captured by those who pay for it.
A difficulty with medical research is that it's about more abstract knowledge which is less easily localised - and benefits are less easily captured by the payers and sometimes come decades later.
Holding patents might help capture some of the benefits, but whats to say it would not profit an insurance company (in the short term) to play the games the pharmaceutical guys are now accused of ? They too, have shareholders to take care of, and the patents are a property portfolio which must be managed to maximise profits. While you might think that they'd co-optimise their health insurance risk with the patent portfolio, that fact that they don't insure everyone that might buy the patented medicines might get in the way of this.
Perhaps, the real difficulty is that paying for medical research that benefits everyone doesn't make sense to someone who profits only from premiums from a much smaller proportion of society.
Nice idea, so why haven't they thought of it ?
Same reason the insurance companies don't pay for more cops to go out and round up the common thieves and the drug dealers they're supporting. Insurance companies profit from the risk and would go broke if they eliminated it. There is a level of theft required to provide incentive for people to buy insurance, and it is patently in the insurance industry's interest to keep theft going. No theft, no burglary insurance. Cure too many medical problems, and you'd have no medical insurance either.
If you want something done for the common good, you have to look for government action.
I believe there is a rather clear seperation between verbal insults and physical violence.
There is no distinction. At the least, one leads to the other. At worst, as the saying goes, The pen is mightier than the sword. Some people with rob you with a six-gun, others will do it with a fountain pen.
One problem here is time.
Expediency never justifies anything - it's another the ends justifies the means argument. Think it through - we all are running out of time - you could die any day. There's just no time to think about what is right and what is wrong - let's just do it before it's too late.
You know, I've always been worried about the billions of plants being killed every day. I can hear the carrots screaming as their roots are torn from the ground. It's only a matter of time before scientist's prove carrots have feelings too. And it's mainly the rabbits at fault here. Shouldn't I go out and start shooting those evil rabbits today ? I've never liked rabbits much, they dig holes all around my lunchtime walking track, and one day someones's gonna trip up on one and maybe give themselves a fatal concussion. I really should get rid of them before they make any more trouble. And I just love rabbit stew.
But no: fools rush in where angels fear to tread. All we really have is time, and we should use it wisely - not as an excuse for ill-considered actions
If I see someone being beaten up and robbed on the street and I run to help him, even hurting the
attacker, would you then think I'm arrogant, because I consider my opinion ("robbing bad") more
important then the opinion of the robber ("robbing good")?
No, it isn't arrogant to help a victim of theft. It is not a matter of your opinion only - society as a whole accepts that robbers are bad. It is societal values you are upholding in assisting the victim.
The trouble with your appeal to emotionality rather than rationality is that it provides no solution for how to resolve conflicting emotions - either those of one person, or conflicts between two or more people.
So when you fling about highly emotive terms like "animal torturer", and my blood boils at this insult to the Scientist and their governing ethics/review committees, am I entitled to just punch your lights out (pretend it will make me feel good) ?
Wouldn't that be a great society to live in ? The biggest ugliest meanest puncher would just belt everyone else into submission. There'd certainly be no point to discussing anything - just go bomb the people you don't like.
If that was the best way to organise a society, there would be no point to language and you'd have to wonder why we evolved the powers of communication.
Humans are capable of better behavior - of taking control of their emotions so that disagreements can be resolved in less destructive ways. We can discuss and debate issues, and even take account of the value and needs of animals that haven't evolved the power to participate in the debate.
Unfortunately the jerks that fire-bombed Dario Ringbach's neighbours have regressed on the evolutionary scale to a point where they have lost the power of rational discourse.
Arrogant means "Having or displaying a sense of overbearing self-worth or self-importance".
The ALF terrorists have acted to overbear the rights of Ringbach and all scientists to engage in and receive benefits from research using animal subjects. That's a supremely good fit to the dictionary definition of arrogance.
To assume that you're wrong simply because everybody disagrees with you is called idiocy.
I'd rather be "arrogant," than an idiot.
It's not a one-or-the-other choice. Being arrogant is IMHO an act of stupidity - and that qualifies under most definitions as an
idiot
Moreover if most people are disagreeing with you, you really need to do better than present an argument that you prefer to be labelled arrogant rather than idiot. Personally, both terms are disparaging, and I'd rather be known as neither arrogant nor an idiot.
One of the best indicators that you are not arrogant - not overbearing the rights of others - and indeed that you are right, is being able to convince others that you are right. That's what the scientific method and peer review are all about.
The debate on the ALF actions is about whether what the they did to Dario Ringach was right or not. It was over-bearing, it was arrogant.
If the ALF had a valid case, they should seek to establish that by rational debate dependent on peer review and objective evidence - and not on arrogant idiotic acts of terrorism.
As for whether the ends justifies the means, what is your evidence that it is an unpopular thought ?
I'm sure it's unpopular for terrorists to believe the ends don't justify the means. But what about the rest of civil society ?
I have a hard time even thinking of one example where ends justifies the means. And even if I could find one, I can think of plenty where the opposite is clearly true (The twin towers, and what happened to Dario are two that come to mind first).
If you were to accept that sometimes the ends do justify the means, how do you define the times where the ends no longer justifies the means ?
I'd rather keep it simple. From the worlds most popular book, "'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap (Galatians, 6:7)". It's quite a popular thought that the ends do not justify the means.
I disagree: Terrorists are (roughly) people who have given up all hope with "the system," and are taking matters into their own hands.
It's more than "taking matters into their own hands". It's the supremely arrogant belief that your ends justifies your means. Any means is justified, whether by your own hand or by someone else.
So one kind of animal rights terrorist puts names and phone numbers on a web page. Another kind of animal rights terrorist reads the names and throws bombs onto little old ladies doorsteps. For each party, Her ends justifies the means.
Terrorists are people who arrogantly believe their ends justifies their means - whatever they choose them to be.
Wouldn't it be good if somehow we could arrange for all the worlds terrorists to meet up and thrash things out in a field some where a long way from the rest of us. I'm thinking: Al Qaeda v's The Animal Liberation Front. Set a thief to catch a thief.
Why should America's working class poor kids and blacks be the only ones fronting up to save us from Islamic terrorists ?
I travelled business class Sydney to various Chinese cities 5 times between 1998 and 2003 with a colleague who always, to my horror, checked his laptop in with his luggage. He actually made trips to China 4 or 5 times a year, and did this every time. Never had a problem (initially with an NEC laptop, later a Toshiba).
Either he was lucky, or the baggage handlers recognised the laptop bag as fragile luggage and treated it well. I was never that trusting and always took mine as cabin luggage.
Some posts have suggested wrapping your bag and disguising it. Maybe that would be counter-productive - why not trust the baggage handlers and airlines to treat fragile luggage as just that - as my colleague did ?
But perhaps there is another solution. What's the difference between stowing laptops etc in cabin baggage or stowing it in cabin lockers which were locked for the duration of the flight (as they are during take-off/landing and turbulence) ?
OK, the checked-in luggage gets a more thorough security scan, but surely the airlines could do the same for laptops and other sensitive cargo that would be better off in the pressurised and heated cabin - and then load it into the cabin lockers, locking them before the passengers arrive. It would probably take somewhat longer, but passengers were already being delayed by huge amounts - I certainly would tolerate a little more delay to get my valuables stored with a little better protection.
It also seems that the threat from liquid explosives was that the ingredients were harmless until mixed on board the plane - most likely in the toilet. Simply leaving the cabin lockers locked would overcome that risk. Why not let people take toiletries etc.,. in locked-up cabin lockers so they can freshen up at their destination whilst waiting for the checked-in baggage to be unloaded ?
Hell yeah. Let's do that. A let's put a market up for air too while we're at it.
We could start with the bulk air polluters like car makers/petroleum cartels and eventually work our way down to the makers of stinking no-flush urinals.
accountants know the price of everything, and the value of nothing
You can no more educate yourself from an "online" course than you can from books.
If it were generally possible to learn from books or online resources without the assistance of other learned people, universities wouldn't exist - you'd just have libraries full of the right books supplemented with the odd web-presentation or two.
Unfortunately some very clever university graduates learn a lot from books without realising how much they couldn't have learned from the books - how much was due to people around them, providing guidance, motivation and the intellectual challenges that steer them in the right direction.
Research (or learning) of any kind really only becomes valuable when it is peer-reviewed and used by others. Peer review requires careful thought and discussion; it sometimes needs critical opinions offerred that can only be delivered effectively with the right body language. The internet is not up to the task of peer-review. Just try rewarding, enthusing or consoling someone without using body-language.
And sometimes the most important things you learn are learned when you're not focussed on a particular goal - like getting a degree. The real benefit of a university is not earning a degree, but rather learning to learn - and particularly learning to learn with peers. Learning with peers is ultimately the skill that is valuable in the workplace.
A university is an experience that is more than books, more than web-pages, more than blogs and more than chat-rooms. It's learning with peers.
An online course might deliver a degree, but in isolating you from your peers, it will be quite inferior to one gained in a learning environment.
"commerical in confidence" is a confidence trick on the common people. The primary reason for keeping contracts secret is to hide what you failed to do, but still got paid for. Markets simply don't work without transparency, at the very least because lack of information is a huge entry barrier for potential new entrants. Publication of government contract outcomes is one US policy I'd dearly love to see Australia import.
From figures in
Customs' CMR: what it is and what it does, the system adds about $A200 per container or passenger movement. Luckily, this is being picked up by Australian taxpayers, not the importers or exporters:-)
The article also answers other posters questions about the platform it was delivered on. Certainly no cheap linux stuff used here !
But really interesting is this:
A number of service providers were retained to develop and implement systems: Computer Associates' consortium with Kaz, IOCORE and NCR for applications, IBM for professional services (and some hardware and software under its arrangement with Customs outsource partner EDS), BeTrusted ( now Cybertrust )for PKI software and services for the Customs Connect Facility (CCF) "gateway", Novell for identity management and directory services software, and VeriSign for GateKeeper
With so many cooks in the kitchen, shouldn't problems be expected ? How could you ever figure which one can is responsible for the mess now emerging ?
Open-source projects sometimes have more cooks, but could the commercial agendas in a closed source project with patents etc.,. destroy the synergies ?
Good link especially for Mac people etc without google earth. If you have access to it, google earth has a roads layer which shows the Qinghai-Tibet highway route location. The railway follows that closely. Google Earth is also a bit more useful in looking at the 3D elevation - so you can appreciate the likelihood of landslides etc.,. Although not obvious, it's also possible to punch in coordinates like this in Google Earth's search textbox - that's the easiest way to find a known coordinate; the placemark lets you add text and "zoom" level etc.,.
Did anybody notice that the railway is not yet complete ? Sure, the Chinese held a ceremony on Saturday to mark the track completion, with no less than the Vice Premier Huang Ju in attendance (see http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/725/2005/10/16/202@249 98.htm
The report is a "pre-announcement" of the railway, and has all the credibility of undiluted Chinese Propaganda. See ChinaView.CN's article http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-10/15/conte nt_3620072.htm for the unadulterated Chinese-English report of the ceremony - the government newsagency report is worth reading for the payout to the projects opponents.
The railway could be a wonderful feat of engineering - but you can't tell from these kind of reports. The railway traverses very inhospitable earthquake prone territory. How many slashdotters were aware that the day before the 8th October Pakistan Earthquake there was a large 5.0 richter scale earthquake with epicentre just 6 km from a mountain pass traversed by the railway http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/bulletin/neic_dxbv.html ?
I couldn't find any media reports of the earthquake - and certainly no mention of any impacts or lack of impacts on the railway.
If the railway survived this unscathed, it would be a great credit to it. So why no report from the Chinese or Western media ?
The Chinese might be good at building monuments, and certainly can spin wonderful propaganda. But until they've built a hint of democracy, can you really give any credit to their claims ?
Agree totally. It can be worse than just getting your valid email blocked.
It is possible to get one particular large (but cheap) US web hosting company to shut down a web site simply on the basis of a single (that is, just one) complaint listing on spamcop.net. This complaint was triggered by a single instance when the receiver failed to recognise an email advising him of a domain name change for the list(because it came from the new site he did not recognise it, and although he'd subscribed to it, he shot first asked no questions later).
Even worse, no investigation was carried out either by spamcop.net nor the web-host company before taking the arbitrary action of closing the web site for "abuse".
Ironically, the web site had been moved because the previous web-host email accounts were getting vast amounts of spam that was wasting serious amounts of productivity (even with Bayesian filtering).
Don't like a competitor's site ? Use spamcop.net to put him out of business.
Seriously, you can't avoid eating for fear of choking.
Something better than vigilante action and dumb automated filtering is needed.
But be wary, this has a trojan in it that is released if you try to hack it. McAfee Virus scan will report the presence of the virus. Maybe you deserve it, if u are a hacker. But u probably don't deserve the alarm of a virus scan reporting if as nasty.
The drunk ugly poor peasants from London's East End were the convict stock that were Australia's first settlers. Two centuries of breeding, with a mixing pot of immigrants and poor refugees from around the world, can produce beauty without wealth. The message is beauty and wealth aren't synonymous in an egalitarian society.
Even more respectfully, would you buy a car if it were to be obsoleted in just 5 years ? What about a washing machine, or refrigerator ?
We'd be in dreadfully poor shape if some of the infrastructure around us only had 5 years support.
Quite simply, Microsoft have refined the art of planned obsolescence, and its a shame that they so monopolise the market that buyers have little alternative.
Microsoft is ever seeking to stretch its tentacles further - and getting into cars is one of their targets. Would you buy a car with a Microsoft Engine Management System and a mere 5 year life ?
Will you have a choice ?
Slashdot Mirror
"We own that machine, we own the network its on, we own the bandwidth you use to connect to the outside world, and therefore, we get to say exactly what you get to do with it. If you don't like that, thats fine, I totally understand, leave" Hell yeah. You own that paper, you own that desk, and you own that telephone I use to connect to the outside world, and therefore you get to say exactly what I get to do with it ? Seeing that you'll tell me exactly what to do, I won't be getting to do anything innovative. In fact, it could be very dangerous for me not to park my brain at the door when entering your office. You might think you know exactly what your workers should be doing with their IT, or any other part of the company infrastructure. But your competitors will soon find where you are not half so smart as you think you are. And really, your workers would have to be be pretty brain dead to be working for a company that takes the view that paying wages buys ownership. Unless your talking about a business that is doing idiot-simple work like flippin burgers at Maccas, you'll go belly-up just for that reason alone.
Offering bounties seems a long way to price fixing to me, so I don't quite understand your suggestion that legal issues stand in the way of insurance companies. Historically, I believe insurance companies have been able to provide payments to fire fighting brigades and/or fund such, in order to manage their risk portfolios. I hail from Australia, where part of every fire insurance policy is a levy that provides funding to the Fire Brigades. Buying such insurance is non-compulsory, but it is the only source of funding to the Fire Brigade. In effect, those unwilling to purchase insurance are subsidised by those who do. Not exactly the stuff that the Chicago school of economics would preach. With fire-fighting, the costs of good or bad fire fighting are very localised, and benefits perhaps readily captured by those who pay for it. A difficulty with medical research is that it's about more abstract knowledge which is less easily localised - and benefits are less easily captured by the payers and sometimes come decades later. Holding patents might help capture some of the benefits, but whats to say it would not profit an insurance company (in the short term) to play the games the pharmaceutical guys are now accused of ? They too, have shareholders to take care of, and the patents are a property portfolio which must be managed to maximise profits. While you might think that they'd co-optimise their health insurance risk with the patent portfolio, that fact that they don't insure everyone that might buy the patented medicines might get in the way of this. Perhaps, the real difficulty is that paying for medical research that benefits everyone doesn't make sense to someone who profits only from premiums from a much smaller proportion of society.
Nice idea, so why haven't they thought of it ? Same reason the insurance companies don't pay for more cops to go out and round up the common thieves and the drug dealers they're supporting. Insurance companies profit from the risk and would go broke if they eliminated it. There is a level of theft required to provide incentive for people to buy insurance, and it is patently in the insurance industry's interest to keep theft going. No theft, no burglary insurance. Cure too many medical problems, and you'd have no medical insurance either. If you want something done for the common good, you have to look for government action.
I believe there is a rather clear seperation between verbal insults and physical violence.
There is no distinction. At the least, one leads to the other. At worst, as the saying goes, The pen is mightier than the sword. Some people with rob you with a six-gun, others will do it with a fountain pen.
One problem here is time.
Expediency never justifies anything - it's another the ends justifies the means argument. Think it through - we all are running out of time - you could die any day. There's just no time to think about what is right and what is wrong - let's just do it before it's too late.
You know, I've always been worried about the billions of plants being killed every day. I can hear the carrots screaming as their roots are torn from the ground. It's only a matter of time before scientist's prove carrots have feelings too. And it's mainly the rabbits at fault here. Shouldn't I go out and start shooting those evil rabbits today ? I've never liked rabbits much, they dig holes all around my lunchtime walking track, and one day someones's gonna trip up on one and maybe give themselves a fatal concussion. I really should get rid of them before they make any more trouble. And I just love rabbit stew.
But no: fools rush in where angels fear to tread. All we really have is time, and we should use it wisely - not as an excuse for ill-considered actions
If I see someone being beaten up and robbed on the street and I run to help him, even hurting the attacker, would you then think I'm arrogant, because I consider my opinion ("robbing bad") more important then the opinion of the robber ("robbing good")?
No, it isn't arrogant to help a victim of theft. It is not a matter of your opinion only - society as a whole accepts that robbers are bad. It is societal values you are upholding in assisting the victim.
The trouble with your appeal to emotionality rather than rationality is that it provides no solution for how to resolve conflicting emotions - either those of one person, or conflicts between two or more people.
So when you fling about highly emotive terms like "animal torturer", and my blood boils at this insult to the Scientist and their governing ethics/review committees, am I entitled to just punch your lights out (pretend it will make me feel good) ?
Wouldn't that be a great society to live in ? The biggest ugliest meanest puncher would just belt everyone else into submission. There'd certainly be no point to discussing anything - just go bomb the people you don't like.
If that was the best way to organise a society, there would be no point to language and you'd have to wonder why we evolved the powers of communication.
Humans are capable of better behavior - of taking control of their emotions so that disagreements can be resolved in less destructive ways. We can discuss and debate issues, and even take account of the value and needs of animals that haven't evolved the power to participate in the debate.
Unfortunately the jerks that fire-bombed Dario Ringbach's neighbours have regressed on the evolutionary scale to a point where they have lost the power of rational discourse.
Or is this the pot calling the kettle black ?
Arrogant means "Having or displaying a sense of overbearing self-worth or self-importance".
The ALF terrorists have acted to overbear the rights of Ringbach and all scientists to engage in and receive benefits from research using animal subjects. That's a supremely good fit to the dictionary definition of arrogance.
To assume that you're wrong simply because everybody disagrees with you is called idiocy. I'd rather be "arrogant," than an idiot.
It's not a one-or-the-other choice. Being arrogant is IMHO an act of stupidity - and that qualifies under most definitions as an idiot
Moreover if most people are disagreeing with you, you really need to do better than present an argument that you prefer to be labelled arrogant rather than idiot. Personally, both terms are disparaging, and I'd rather be known as neither arrogant nor an idiot.
One of the best indicators that you are not arrogant - not overbearing the rights of others - and indeed that you are right, is being able to convince others that you are right. That's what the scientific method and peer review are all about.
The debate on the ALF actions is about whether what the they did to Dario Ringach was right or not. It was over-bearing, it was arrogant.
If the ALF had a valid case, they should seek to establish that by rational debate dependent on peer review and objective evidence - and not on arrogant idiotic acts of terrorism.
As for whether the ends justifies the means, what is your evidence that it is an unpopular thought ?
I'm sure it's unpopular for terrorists to believe the ends don't justify the means. But what about the rest of civil society ?
I have a hard time even thinking of one example where ends justifies the means. And even if I could find one, I can think of plenty where the opposite is clearly true (The twin towers, and what happened to Dario are two that come to mind first).
If you were to accept that sometimes the ends do justify the means, how do you define the times where the ends no longer justifies the means ?
I'd rather keep it simple. From the worlds most popular book, "'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap (Galatians, 6:7)". It's quite a popular thought that the ends do not justify the means.
It's more than "taking matters into their own hands". It's the supremely arrogant belief that your ends justifies your means. Any means is justified, whether by your own hand or by someone else.
So one kind of animal rights terrorist puts names and phone numbers on a web page. Another kind of animal rights terrorist reads the names and throws bombs onto little old ladies doorsteps. For each party, Her ends justifies the means.
Terrorists are people who arrogantly believe their ends justifies their means - whatever they choose them to be.
Wouldn't it be good if somehow we could arrange for all the worlds terrorists to meet up and thrash things out in a field some where a long way from the rest of us. I'm thinking: Al Qaeda v's The Animal Liberation Front. Set a thief to catch a thief.
Why should America's working class poor kids and blacks be the only ones fronting up to save us from Islamic terrorists ?
I travelled business class Sydney to various Chinese cities 5 times between 1998 and 2003 with a colleague who always, to my horror, checked his laptop in with his luggage. He actually made trips to China 4 or 5 times a year, and did this every time. Never had a problem (initially with an NEC laptop, later a Toshiba). Either he was lucky, or the baggage handlers recognised the laptop bag as fragile luggage and treated it well. I was never that trusting and always took mine as cabin luggage. Some posts have suggested wrapping your bag and disguising it. Maybe that would be counter-productive - why not trust the baggage handlers and airlines to treat fragile luggage as just that - as my colleague did ? But perhaps there is another solution. What's the difference between stowing laptops etc in cabin baggage or stowing it in cabin lockers which were locked for the duration of the flight (as they are during take-off/landing and turbulence) ? OK, the checked-in luggage gets a more thorough security scan, but surely the airlines could do the same for laptops and other sensitive cargo that would be better off in the pressurised and heated cabin - and then load it into the cabin lockers, locking them before the passengers arrive. It would probably take somewhat longer, but passengers were already being delayed by huge amounts - I certainly would tolerate a little more delay to get my valuables stored with a little better protection. It also seems that the threat from liquid explosives was that the ingredients were harmless until mixed on board the plane - most likely in the toilet. Simply leaving the cabin lockers locked would overcome that risk. Why not let people take toiletries etc.,. in locked-up cabin lockers so they can freshen up at their destination whilst waiting for the checked-in baggage to be unloaded ?
We could start with the bulk air polluters like car makers/petroleum cartels and eventually work our way down to the makers of stinking no-flush urinals.
accountants know the price of everything, and the value of nothing
If it were generally possible to learn from books or online resources without the assistance of other learned people, universities wouldn't exist - you'd just have libraries full of the right books supplemented with the odd web-presentation or two.
Unfortunately some very clever university graduates learn a lot from books without realising how much they couldn't have learned from the books - how much was due to people around them, providing guidance, motivation and the intellectual challenges that steer them in the right direction.
Research (or learning) of any kind really only becomes valuable when it is peer-reviewed and used by others. Peer review requires careful thought and discussion; it sometimes needs critical opinions offerred that can only be delivered effectively with the right body language. The internet is not up to the task of peer-review. Just try rewarding, enthusing or consoling someone without using body-language.
And sometimes the most important things you learn are learned when you're not focussed on a particular goal - like getting a degree. The real benefit of a university is not earning a degree, but rather learning to learn - and particularly learning to learn with peers. Learning with peers is ultimately the skill that is valuable in the workplace.
A university is an experience that is more than books, more than web-pages, more than blogs and more than chat-rooms. It's learning with peers.
An online course might deliver a degree, but in isolating you from your peers, it will be quite inferior to one gained in a learning environment.
"commerical in confidence" is a confidence trick on the common people. The primary reason for keeping contracts secret is to hide what you failed to do, but still got paid for. Markets simply don't work without transparency, at the very least because lack of information is a huge entry barrier for potential new entrants. Publication of government contract outcomes is one US policy I'd dearly love to see Australia import.
The article also answers other posters questions about the platform it was delivered on. Certainly no cheap linux stuff used here !
But really interesting is this:
With so many cooks in the kitchen, shouldn't problems be expected ? How could you ever figure which one can is responsible for the mess now emerging ?
Open-source projects sometimes have more cooks, but could the commercial agendas in a closed source project with patents etc.,. destroy the synergies ?
Good link especially for Mac people etc without google earth. If you have access to it, google earth has a roads layer which shows the Qinghai-Tibet highway route location. The railway follows that closely. Google Earth is also a bit more useful in looking at the 3D elevation - so you can appreciate the likelihood of landslides etc.,. Although not obvious, it's also possible to punch in coordinates like this in Google Earth's search textbox - that's the easiest way to find a known coordinate; the placemark lets you add text and "zoom" level etc.,.
The report is a "pre-announcement" of the railway, and has all the credibility of undiluted Chinese Propaganda. See ChinaView.CN's article http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-10/15/conte nt_3620072.htm for the unadulterated Chinese-English report of the ceremony - the government newsagency report is worth reading for the payout to the projects opponents.
The railway could be a wonderful feat of engineering - but you can't tell from these kind of reports. The railway traverses very inhospitable earthquake prone territory. How many slashdotters were aware that the day before the 8th October Pakistan Earthquake there was a large 5.0 richter scale earthquake with epicentre just 6 km from a mountain pass traversed by the railway http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/bulletin/neic_dxbv.html ?
For a google earth placemark of the location see http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showflat.php/Cat/0/Numb er/139349/an//page//vc/1 ?
I couldn't find any media reports of the earthquake - and certainly no mention of any impacts or lack of impacts on the railway.
If the railway survived this unscathed, it would be a great credit to it. So why no report from the Chinese or Western media ?
The Chinese might be good at building monuments, and certainly can spin wonderful propaganda. But until they've built a hint of democracy, can you really give any credit to their claims ?
Agree totally. It can be worse than just getting your valid email blocked. It is possible to get one particular large (but cheap) US web hosting company to shut down a web site simply on the basis of a single (that is, just one) complaint listing on spamcop.net. This complaint was triggered by a single instance when the receiver failed to recognise an email advising him of a domain name change for the list(because it came from the new site he did not recognise it, and although he'd subscribed to it, he shot first asked no questions later). Even worse, no investigation was carried out either by spamcop.net nor the web-host company before taking the arbitrary action of closing the web site for "abuse". Ironically, the web site had been moved because the previous web-host email accounts were getting vast amounts of spam that was wasting serious amounts of productivity (even with Bayesian filtering). Don't like a competitor's site ? Use spamcop.net to put him out of business. Seriously, you can't avoid eating for fear of choking. Something better than vigilante action and dumb automated filtering is needed.
But be wary, this has a trojan in it that is released if you try to hack it. McAfee Virus scan will report the presence of the virus. Maybe you deserve it, if u are a hacker. But u probably don't deserve the alarm of a virus scan reporting if as nasty.
The drunk ugly poor peasants from London's East End were the convict stock that were Australia's first settlers. Two centuries of breeding, with a mixing pot of immigrants and poor refugees from around the world, can produce beauty without wealth. The message is beauty and wealth aren't synonymous in an egalitarian society.
Even more respectfully, would you buy a car if it were to be obsoleted in just 5 years ? What about a washing machine, or refrigerator ? We'd be in dreadfully poor shape if some of the infrastructure around us only had 5 years support. Quite simply, Microsoft have refined the art of planned obsolescence, and its a shame that they so monopolise the market that buyers have little alternative. Microsoft is ever seeking to stretch its tentacles further - and getting into cars is one of their targets. Would you buy a car with a Microsoft Engine Management System and a mere 5 year life ? Will you have a choice ?