Actually, you got this backwards. American culture is taking over the world, in part, because America is digitally unified. America has a huge internal market for software, movies, music, etc. That gives American media and tech companies a huge headstart. Nearly all technology and media giants are American. The only other country that comes close is China, but Chinese companies like Alibaba, Baidu, and Xaiomi, have difficulty competing outside China.
If other countries, including EU members, become more digitally unified, it will help them stand up to American cultural homogenization.
At least that was the reason my college bound kid had when pressed for it.
Buy him the Macbook. If you don't, he will never get a date in college. My college aged daughter has informed me that all the cool kids use Macs, and the students that use Windows are "dorks". If he is stuck with a Windows laptop, his self-confidence will be crushed, he will do poorly in job interviews, and his life will be ruined.
And yet here we are just four presidential elections later, and the Democrats are leaning towards former Secretary Clinton.
But now the leftist insurgency that Ralph Nader headed in 2000 is happening inside the Democratic party, and instead of getting 1% of the vote, Bernie Sanders has 40%. He isn't winning, but he is doing way better than Ralph did.
Meanwhile, Trump is dragging the Republican Party away from hardline social conservatism (he isn't anti-gay, doesn't care which toilet people use, and is no ideologue about abortion) and focusing instead on economic issues that people (apparently) care about far more.
There are at least four choices available for president. The voter is the only limiting factor.
Also, third parties do not need to win to matter. The Green Party campaign in 2000 cost the Democrats the election, and sent a clear message that they could lose more votes on the left than they were gaining in the center. Likewise, the Libertarians show that there is a constituency for free market economics without the intolerant social conservatism. Someday the Republicans may stop worrying about toilets and go after those votes. Or maybe the Democrats will start focusing on growing the pie instead of how to slice it up.
The purpose of 3rd parties is to push new ideas into the Overton Window, and get the major parties to adopt them. If you look at American party platfoms in 1900, the most successful political party over the next 100 years was the Socialist Workers Party. They advocated public pensions, welfare, unemployment pay, and free healthcare for the elderly. They didn't win many elections, but all of those policies were adopted, and are now the law of the land.
If you want to make a difference, vote 3rd party, and send a message. This is especially true if you live in non-swing state, as most Americans do, where your vote is otherwise meaningless.
Nobody in any other country is corrupt like they are here.
This is true. No other country is corrupt in the way that America is corrupt. In other countries, corruption is illegal. Only in America are our most corrupt practices fully legal and right out in the open. Hillary didn't take under the table bribes from Wall Street bankers. Nope, they donated millions to her super-PAC and paid her over $600k in "speaking fees". This was all above board, and reported to the FEC and IRS.
The Soviet Union, China, and most Communist countries had 99% literacy.
That is not ALL. Should we stop all other education until we get the final 1%?
Getting to 99% literacy is trivial if we do it the way the communists did it: Just put the same people responsible for educating the children, in charge of also measuring the results. It is amazing the results you can achieve if you just let people evaluate themselves. The Soviets used the same policy for nuclear safety, and their record was perfect until the Swedes went and screwed everything up by complaining about the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl blowing across the border.
Go spend a winter in Denver, when the inversion traps the air and brown smog envelops the city. It is not as bad as Beijing, but still one of the worst cities in America for air quality. The summer is nice.
A productive and cooperative workforce. I lived and worked in China for several years. They spend way more time on backstabbing and petty office politics. Organizational loyalty is rare. Since the company doesn't trust the workers, information and decisions are compartmentalized, which degrades productivity even more.
If you need someone to turn a wrench on an assembly line, China is great. If you need innovation and teamwork, America is a much better choice. Even Chinese companies like Baidu have their research division in California.
Must trying to get noticed... seemed to have worked.
It is a site where you can pay people to do tasks, or earn money by doing tasks. Originally, you paid $5, but most people charge more than that now. I have hired several people to do things, including some graphic design, some voice-overs for apps, writing copy, etc. My 15 year old daughter has earned money on Fiverr writing fake Amazon reviews.
Home Ec has been renamed as "bachelor living" and now the boys take it too. My son took it this year, and learned a lot. They learn how to cook basic meals, patch jeans, replace a missing button, etc. They also learn financial skills like how to balance a checkbook, invest in an IRA, etc. They have to prepare a resume, wear a coat and tie to class, and go through a mock job interview.
It is an optional class, but since it is a lot of fun most kids take it.
If I could get all kids to actually, well, read in the fourth grade under our current system I'd be happy.
You will never get ALL kids to read. You will rapidly run into diminishing returns, and spend huge sums on one-on-one training of retards, and even then some of them will never get it.
Let's get the essentials fixed before we start adding extravagances.
... and the bright kids will be bored out of their minds as the teachers repetitively go over and over the same material.
The source was available directly from IBM via the Technical Reference Manual.
That brings back some sweet memories. I saved up and bought a TRM for $100, which was a lot of money back then. I remember reading every line of the source code, all in 8086 asm. I figured out plenty of tricks and shortcuts by jumping into the BIOS code instead of going through interrupts, and tweaking where the BIOS stored variables. Good times.
It's the implementations that they're protecting with the GPL, not the interfaces.
She is a lawyer, not a programmer. What she is saying is nonsense, but it is grammatically correct, and succinctly encapsulates Oracle's outrage at the verdict.
No, but a joint should help calm people down. I have never seen a stoner "rage" about anything.
But these shootings are not about "road rage" anyway. They are targeted gang shootings. Innocent people are caught in the crossfire, but they are not the intended targets.
There are a lot of myths about gangs, and one of them is that they are needlessly violent toward the general public. That is nonsense. They are business enterprises, and nearly all their violence is directed at competitors.
Putting cameras on I-80 may deter shootings on the highway but I'm guessing the bullets will start pop-pop-popping up somewhere else.
Most crime is opportunistic, not planned. If you remove the opportunity, you prevent the crime. There is no "law of conservation of crime", so better deterrence does not cause a fixed amount of crime to shift to other areas. The opposite is true: Lower crime in one area allows resources to be refocused in other areas, and lower crime leads to a positive feedback loop of economic recovery, more jobs, and stronger communities, in both the immediate area, and in surrounding neighborhoods.
If you actually care about social event invitations, etc., just set up a FB account, tell it to drop notifications to a burner mailbox, and never sign in using your normal every day browser sessions.
That's pretty much what I do. I have an account with enough basic info that old friends can find me. But I have never posted anything, and I have never clicked a "like" button.
I think Elop took over in 2010. The rapid decline started after that.
The rapid decline was already well underway. If Nokia had instead become a generic Android phone shifter, their profit margins would have gone way down, and there is no way they could have continued to support such a large workforce, and they certainly would not need Symbian developers. There is no realistic scenario where these people would have kept their jobs. Microsoft certainly accelerated the implosion, but they were not the root cause.
The BBC tends to be better because they are reporting on America from the outside. For the same reason, The Economist tends to be a good source of reasonably objective news about America. They are not as objective when reporting on Britain, where they tend to be pro-Tory, hate the SNP, and are rabidly anti-Brexit.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, you got this backwards. American culture is taking over the world, in part, because America is digitally unified. America has a huge internal market for software, movies, music, etc. That gives American media and tech companies a huge headstart. Nearly all technology and media giants are American. The only other country that comes close is China, but Chinese companies like Alibaba, Baidu, and Xaiomi, have difficulty competing outside China.
If other countries, including EU members, become more digitally unified, it will help them stand up to American cultural homogenization.
At least that was the reason my college bound kid had when pressed for it.
Buy him the Macbook. If you don't, he will never get a date in college. My college aged daughter has informed me that all the cool kids use Macs, and the students that use Windows are "dorks". If he is stuck with a Windows laptop, his self-confidence will be crushed, he will do poorly in job interviews, and his life will be ruined.
And yet here we are just four presidential elections later, and the Democrats are leaning towards former Secretary Clinton.
But now the leftist insurgency that Ralph Nader headed in 2000 is happening inside the Democratic party, and instead of getting 1% of the vote, Bernie Sanders has 40%. He isn't winning, but he is doing way better than Ralph did.
Meanwhile, Trump is dragging the Republican Party away from hardline social conservatism (he isn't anti-gay, doesn't care which toilet people use, and is no ideologue about abortion) and focusing instead on economic issues that people (apparently) care about far more.
I care about lighter, but not thinner.
People don't buy Macbooks because they are lighter, or thinner, or faster. They buy them because they run Mac OS X.
There are at least four choices available for president. The voter is the only limiting factor.
Also, third parties do not need to win to matter. The Green Party campaign in 2000 cost the Democrats the election, and sent a clear message that they could lose more votes on the left than they were gaining in the center. Likewise, the Libertarians show that there is a constituency for free market economics without the intolerant social conservatism. Someday the Republicans may stop worrying about toilets and go after those votes. Or maybe the Democrats will start focusing on growing the pie instead of how to slice it up.
The purpose of 3rd parties is to push new ideas into the Overton Window, and get the major parties to adopt them. If you look at American party platfoms in 1900, the most successful political party over the next 100 years was the Socialist Workers Party. They advocated public pensions, welfare, unemployment pay, and free healthcare for the elderly. They didn't win many elections, but all of those policies were adopted, and are now the law of the land.
If you want to make a difference, vote 3rd party, and send a message. This is especially true if you live in non-swing state, as most Americans do, where your vote is otherwise meaningless.
Nobody in any other country is corrupt like they are here.
This is true. No other country is corrupt in the way that America is corrupt. In other countries, corruption is illegal. Only in America are our most corrupt practices fully legal and right out in the open. Hillary didn't take under the table bribes from Wall Street bankers. Nope, they donated millions to her super-PAC and paid her over $600k in "speaking fees". This was all above board, and reported to the FEC and IRS.
The Soviet Union, China, and most Communist countries had 99% literacy.
That is not ALL. Should we stop all other education until we get the final 1%?
Getting to 99% literacy is trivial if we do it the way the communists did it: Just put the same people responsible for educating the children, in charge of also measuring the results. It is amazing the results you can achieve if you just let people evaluate themselves. The Soviets used the same policy for nuclear safety, and their record was perfect until the Swedes went and screwed everything up by complaining about the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl blowing across the border.
Cleaner air and water.
Go spend a winter in Denver, when the inversion traps the air and brown smog envelops the city. It is not as bad as Beijing, but still one of the worst cities in America for air quality. The summer is nice.
What does the USA have to offer anymore?
A productive and cooperative workforce. I lived and worked in China for several years. They spend way more time on backstabbing and petty office politics. Organizational loyalty is rare. Since the company doesn't trust the workers, information and decisions are compartmentalized, which degrades productivity even more.
If you need someone to turn a wrench on an assembly line, China is great. If you need innovation and teamwork, America is a much better choice. Even Chinese companies like Baidu have their research division in California.
Must trying to get noticed... seemed to have worked.
It is a site where you can pay people to do tasks, or earn money by doing tasks. Originally, you paid $5, but most people charge more than that now. I have hired several people to do things, including some graphic design, some voice-overs for apps, writing copy, etc. My 15 year old daughter has earned money on Fiverr writing fake Amazon reviews.
The only major one of the "basics" I missed out on was learning to type properly
My neighborhood's elementary school now teaches touch typing. They made room in the curriculum by eliminating cursive writing.
I think girls got home ec.
Home Ec has been renamed as "bachelor living" and now the boys take it too. My son took it this year, and learned a lot. They learn how to cook basic meals, patch jeans, replace a missing button, etc. They also learn financial skills like how to balance a checkbook, invest in an IRA, etc. They have to prepare a resume, wear a coat and tie to class, and go through a mock job interview.
It is an optional class, but since it is a lot of fun most kids take it.
If I could get all kids to actually, well, read in the fourth grade under our current system I'd be happy.
You will never get ALL kids to read. You will rapidly run into diminishing returns, and spend huge sums on one-on-one training of retards, and even then some of them will never get it.
Let's get the essentials fixed before we start adding extravagances.
... and the bright kids will be bored out of their minds as the teachers repetitively go over and over the same material.
The source was available directly from IBM via the Technical Reference Manual.
That brings back some sweet memories. I saved up and bought a TRM for $100, which was a lot of money back then. I remember reading every line of the source code, all in 8086 asm. I figured out plenty of tricks and shortcuts by jumping into the BIOS code instead of going through interrupts, and tweaking where the BIOS stored variables. Good times.
It's the implementations that they're protecting with the GPL, not the interfaces.
She is a lawyer, not a programmer. What she is saying is nonsense, but it is grammatically correct, and succinctly encapsulates Oracle's outrage at the verdict.
You think these gangs are shooting each over pot?
No, but a joint should help calm people down. I have never seen a stoner "rage" about anything.
But these shootings are not about "road rage" anyway. They are targeted gang shootings. Innocent people are caught in the crossfire, but they are not the intended targets.
There are a lot of myths about gangs, and one of them is that they are needlessly violent toward the general public. That is nonsense. They are business enterprises, and nearly all their violence is directed at competitors.
Putting cameras on I-80 may deter shootings on the highway but I'm guessing the bullets will start pop-pop-popping up somewhere else.
Most crime is opportunistic, not planned. If you remove the opportunity, you prevent the crime. There is no "law of conservation of crime", so better deterrence does not cause a fixed amount of crime to shift to other areas. The opposite is true: Lower crime in one area allows resources to be refocused in other areas, and lower crime leads to a positive feedback loop of economic recovery, more jobs, and stronger communities, in both the immediate area, and in surrounding neighborhoods.
These cities are certainly in the SF Bay Area.
Sure, but SF is where people seek sanctuary. Oakland is where from people seeking sanctuary are coming from.
Going from SF to Oakland is like going from El Paso to Juarez.
Surveillance is not going to stop road rage.
No, but marijuana legalization should help. We'll see what happens after November 8th.
Everybody goes to web sites. Nobody goes to a company's Facebook account.
You might want to check with your grandchildren about that.
If you actually care about social event invitations, etc., just set up a FB account, tell it to drop notifications to a burner mailbox, and never sign in using your normal every day browser sessions.
That's pretty much what I do. I have an account with enough basic info that old friends can find me. But I have never posted anything, and I have never clicked a "like" button.
Actual companies have their own web sites.
Sure, but they do all their marketing on Facebook, and all their recruiting on LinkedIn. Nobody goes to "websites" anymore.
I think Elop took over in 2010. The rapid decline started after that.
The rapid decline was already well underway. If Nokia had instead become a generic Android phone shifter, their profit margins would have gone way down, and there is no way they could have continued to support such a large workforce, and they certainly would not need Symbian developers. There is no realistic scenario where these people would have kept their jobs. Microsoft certainly accelerated the implosion, but they were not the root cause.
If the US legal system is not completely divorced from its inheritance of English Common Law, then I suspect that this isn't actually true.
It is true in practice, since 99% of written contracts have an "entire agreement" clause that specifically says that no verbal agreements are valid.
I find BBC is a little better, but not much.
The BBC tends to be better because they are reporting on America from the outside. For the same reason, The Economist tends to be a good source of reasonably objective news about America. They are not as objective when reporting on Britain, where they tend to be pro-Tory, hate the SNP, and are rabidly anti-Brexit.