I recently celebrated the 10th anniversary for my kidney transplant, and as someone who has to take a cocktail of immunosuppression medications daily for the last 10 years, I'm really looking forward for advances in the field. The problem is that the kidney is, unlike the liver for example, is a complex organ so I'm not sure how they'll grow one that my body doesn't rejects, perhaps by growing them in other animals?
Despite the medications and their side effects, it beats living on hemodialysis. Furthermore, before the transplant, I was under the impression that my immune system will be so compromised that I'll get sick for any reason, but I have been very healthy, even more than the average folks. The only catch that if you do get sick, then you're in trouble. A regular cold lasts 3-4 weeks with me if I'm lucky.
Unfortunately, a lot of people think that when theories are proven to be correct beyond a doubt (which never happens), then the theory magically gets transformed to a fact. The two terms are completely separate and do in fact mean different things:
Facts are confirmed observational data on some phenomena in the world. E.g. Farther galaxies exhibit a red shift. This is an observation we can record and measure.
Theories try to put the fact in perspective (how, why) and it also attempts to make predictions. Theories must be be testable and falsifiable. To explain #1, you can say it the observation is due to the universe expanding and accelerating, while others claimed that the frequency of light deteriorates over large cosmic distances and this is why we see the red shift.
I highly recommend reading Talk Origins Evolution is a Fact and a Theory as it clears up much of this misconception of the two terms.
Both distros claim to support and do all of the above. If you compile your program on SUSE, you want that binary to work on Fedora 7? Most likely not. Just compile it again on Fedora 7.
OpenSUSE 10.3 looks quite promising. I've been using SUSE since 8.2 and by far this is the most polished release in the 10.x series. I also recommend KDE, and I don't buy this "KDE is for power users only". I have KDE 3.5 setup on the kids computer (6 years to 12 years) and they never complained, being able to use all of the programs seamlessly. I never liked Gnome, but perhaps my personal choice. I do believe though that KDE has a superior architecture and its potential is not fully realized. With KDE4 on the way, it would be a great desktop experience.
Having worked on development on robotic telescopes, both hardware and software, let me tell you that using Linux was not an easy choice. We had to narrow our search to vendors who explicitly support Linux, and even there, their support was flaky at best and we spent hours in troubleshooting the drivers before we got them to work. However, this exercise resulted in better support for Linux from the vendor, so it's a win-win situation. We opted for National Instruments for their excellent DAQ boards & LabView which are all supported under Linux.
For the control system, we used INDI, it's a powerful server/client control protocol that you can use to jump start your project within minutes. While it is geared toward astronomy, it can be used for any purpose.
I'm an astronomer from Kuwait. Let me tell you that while many of the reasons mentioned as valid, they're overly simplified.You'll be surprised that many long held notions are utterly false.
Lack of Democracy: While this is indeed true, democracy will bring havoc to the middle east. We have a decent partial-democracy in Kuwait with a freely elected parliament and it's already a nightmare. If democracy ever to become wide spread in Kuwait, I'll immediately migrate! Remember that democracy can be like two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner. In Kuwait case at least, the fanatics won the greatest number of seats, and all their legislations are geared toward making Kuwait an Islamic state. Our "dictatorship" thankfully blocked a number of bills, forcibly, like the bill to implement full Shria'a Law (think flogging and chopping hands). It would have been much worse than Saudi Arabia. The fanatics were successful in passing bills to limit freedom of speech, even to go as far as to imprison those who dare to criticize not prophet Muhammad, but his friends. They were able to pass laws to segregate the university, and now instead of one university they're building TWO next to each other DOUBLE the cost and with a small river running between them to complete separate. If you think creationists and neo-cons are fanatics, you haven't experienced the mental terrorism here, we take it to another level.
Suppression of women: Again, it's an over simplification. In Kuwait, 70% of university graduates are women, about half the working force are women. Most technical jobs & especially IT in the government are headed by women (our IT department has about 5 males and 17 females engineers). My boss is a woman in fact, and so is her director! Also, women, by convention, come to work half an hour late, and leave work half an hour earlier, and this applies everywhere where.
The 'elected' parliament refused to grant women their right to vote up until 2005 where, again, the 'dictatorship' government forced the law on the parliament and threated to dissolve it if it didn't pass. My sister completely covers up her face, if somebody saw me with her, they'd think "Oh look at that Arab suppression his wife/family", while in fact, I tried many time to convince her to take it off and how ridiculous it is but with no success, she's a devout Muslim and she doesn't want to do that and she thinks hideously of any thing western. While it is true that a lot wear it forcibly, it's mostly due to culture "oh everyone is wearing it so I'll do that". On many instances, I've seen women become more conservative by their own will. What's ironic is that in the last parliamentary elections where women got the right to run for office and vote, an Islamic MP (Daif-Allah bu Ramiah) who worked so hard to devoid women of their rights by launching numerous campaigns, actually won the race mostly due to the overwhelming votes he got from women voters (Women voters represent more than 50% of the total vote, despite that fact, no women MP was elected). It's completely insane and I truly don't understand it.
Economy: This is a joke too, at least in my case where the whole country pretty much runs on a welfare-like system. Education, health, utilities, housing..etc if not subsidized heavily (and I do mean heavily) then they're basically free. And with the huge multi billion surpluses we've been lucky to get in the last few years, what's preventing us from advancing in science???
The country lives in a horrendous bureaucracy, most people are so lazy to work in an ethical manner, and most scientific institutions are run by zealot Islamic creationists who are wasting research money on 'scientific miracles of the Quran' and producing more books on why 'Evolution is a lie'. Their influence is heavy in education where kids are actually taught evolution, and how to 'disapprove it', not to mention the hatred driven religious classes which, thanks aga
Well, women do enjoy plenty of social advantages, and there is just more leeway if you're a woman. Also, it doesn't have to do with being at home, because that assumes that woman DO work at home, which they don't, 99% of all Kuwaiti women have servants that do everything with the exception of sex.
So yes they're able to work as much as they can, and a few do, but most just don't care since they'll receive their salary by the end of each month no matter what. I forgot to mention that you can't get fired in Kuwait unless you committed some sort of crime, or haven't been to the job for two weeks without notice.
I work in the IT department of a large utility company (government really) in Kuwait, we have around 35 employees, of whom 5 are men, the rest are woman. Just by being a woman, you are granted to so many privilges that I developed pussy envy. They can come 30 mins AFTER official work hours and leave 30 mins BEFORE it's done (8 AM - 2 PM, how hard can that be?). There are a couple of woman engineers that I rare see in the department because the keep getting pregnant (= 3 months full salary, 3 months half salary).
It's absolutely impossible to tell them to stay after ours (against tradition!) , and it's impossible to tell them to go to locations. In short, we can never depend on them, most of them (including men too) take too many sick leaves per year that none can accomplish a single project.
The end result is that work "real" work is accomplished by own 5 or 6 people, most of whom are men. Mind you, there are VERY active and sincere female computer engineers (actually, just 2 in my case), and there are very lazy men (some I don't see them for months at a time). But I can't believe how much leeway is given to women. The management can't do shit about it since this is how things work in a 3rd world country with too much money to spare. Nevertheless, I bet working here is the most relaxed anywhere in the world.
In Kuwait, there were a couple of 'demonstrations' that were quite non-violent. But then every one went back to their lives. The standards of living here is quite high, no one would go on rioting and throwing stones when they work from 8 AM - 2 PM, and then spend the rest of the day having fun, driving their luxury cars just to waste time, shopping in malls, and flirting with girls all night long.
It comes no surprise to me that there were no major riots in the Persian gulf overall. Having said that, there are always fanatics who would go to the extreme regardless of their financial status.
This might sound too little, but I pay NO taxes what so ever, and I don't have concerns for medical insurance (it's free). Of course, I live in Kuwait and the system is vastly different from the US, but salary isn't just a number, it depends on the expenses you have to pay for a good style of living.
Since most services are subsidized here, $36,000 is probably equal to $80,000 is some midwestern states.
When I signed up for my 512 kb/s ADSL in Kuwait, I asked the ISP salesman specifically if I might have any problems with file sharing.
He said it's perfectly fine with the compnay policies, and even suggested a few P2P clients that he liked!
Nice idea, won't work though
on
Linux in Iraq
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· Score: 1
Open Source would be a "real" alternative if and only if proprietery software IS expensive to obtain, which is not the case in Iraq, and in my countries in the region for that fact.
CDs of the latest MS XP, Office, Photoshop..etc are sold for $1 or less.
Now Iraq has a lot of infrastructure problems, I don't think "protecting intellectual property" is on their agenda yet.
There is in fact very little pressure if any against piracy in the region. Where piracy thrives, open source starves.
This doesn't make sense, last time I heard, kids don't carry credit cards. What's the point of redirecting kids to porn sites if they can't pay?
How did he get the $1 million? I never thought you can make this much by "click" advertising.
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Actually, Lebanon is the only Arab country that has NO desert at all. Lebanon's Geography
I recently celebrated the 10th anniversary for my kidney transplant, and as someone who has to take a cocktail of immunosuppression medications daily for the last 10 years, I'm really looking forward for advances in the field. The problem is that the kidney is, unlike the liver for example, is a complex organ so I'm not sure how they'll grow one that my body doesn't rejects, perhaps by growing them in other animals?
Despite the medications and their side effects, it beats living on hemodialysis. Furthermore, before the transplant, I was under the impression that my immune system will be so compromised that I'll get sick for any reason, but I have been very healthy, even more than the average folks. The only catch that if you do get sick, then you're in trouble. A regular cold lasts 3-4 weeks with me if I'm lucky.
- Facts are confirmed observational data on some phenomena in the world. E.g. Farther galaxies exhibit a red shift. This is an observation we can record and measure.
- Theories try to put the fact in perspective (how, why) and it also attempts to make predictions. Theories must be be testable and falsifiable. To explain #1, you can say it the observation is due to the universe expanding and accelerating, while others claimed that the frequency of light deteriorates over large cosmic distances and this is why we see the red shift.
I highly recommend reading Talk Origins Evolution is a Fact and a Theory as it clears up much of this misconception of the two terms.Both distros claim to support and do all of the above. If you compile your program on SUSE, you want that binary to work on Fedora 7? Most likely not. Just compile it again on Fedora 7.
OpenSUSE 10.3 looks quite promising. I've been using SUSE since 8.2 and by far this is the most polished release in the 10.x series. I also recommend KDE, and I don't buy this "KDE is for power users only". I have KDE 3.5 setup on the kids computer (6 years to 12 years) and they never complained, being able to use all of the programs seamlessly. I never liked Gnome, but perhaps my personal choice. I do believe though that KDE has a superior architecture and its potential is not fully realized. With KDE4 on the way, it would be a great desktop experience.
Having worked on development on robotic telescopes, both hardware and software, let me tell you that using Linux was not an easy choice. We had to narrow our search to vendors who explicitly support Linux, and even there, their support was flaky at best and we spent hours in troubleshooting the drivers before we got them to work. However, this exercise resulted in better support for Linux from the vendor, so it's a win-win situation. We opted for National Instruments for their excellent DAQ boards & LabView which are all supported under Linux.
For the control system, we used INDI, it's a powerful server/client control protocol that you can use to jump start your project within minutes. While it is geared toward astronomy, it can be used for any purpose.
The 'elected' parliament refused to grant women their right to vote up until 2005 where, again, the 'dictatorship' government forced the law on the parliament and threated to dissolve it if it didn't pass. My sister completely covers up her face, if somebody saw me with her, they'd think "Oh look at that Arab suppression his wife/family", while in fact, I tried many time to convince her to take it off and how ridiculous it is but with no success, she's a devout Muslim and she doesn't want to do that and she thinks hideously of any thing western. While it is true that a lot wear it forcibly, it's mostly due to culture "oh everyone is wearing it so I'll do that". On many instances, I've seen women become more conservative by their own will. What's ironic is that in the last parliamentary elections where women got the right to run for office and vote, an Islamic MP (Daif-Allah bu Ramiah) who worked so hard to devoid women of their rights by launching numerous campaigns, actually won the race mostly due to the overwhelming votes he got from women voters (Women voters represent more than 50% of the total vote, despite that fact, no women MP was elected). It's completely insane and I truly don't understand it.
The country lives in a horrendous bureaucracy, most people are so lazy to work in an ethical manner, and most scientific institutions are run by zealot Islamic creationists who are wasting research money on 'scientific miracles of the Quran' and producing more books on why 'Evolution is a lie'. Their influence is heavy in education where kids are actually taught evolution, and how to 'disapprove it', not to mention the hatred driven religious classes which, thanks aga
Well, women do enjoy plenty of social advantages, and there is just more leeway if you're a woman. Also, it doesn't have to do with being at home, because that assumes that woman DO work at home, which they don't, 99% of all Kuwaiti women have servants that do everything with the exception of sex.
So yes they're able to work as much as they can, and a few do, but most just don't care since they'll receive their salary by the end of each month no matter what. I forgot to mention that you can't get fired in Kuwait unless you committed some sort of crime, or haven't been to the job for two weeks without notice.
I work in the IT department of a large utility company (government really) in Kuwait, we have around 35 employees, of whom 5 are men, the rest are woman. Just by being a woman, you are granted to so many privilges that I developed pussy envy. They can come 30 mins AFTER official work hours and leave 30 mins BEFORE it's done (8 AM - 2 PM, how hard can that be?). There are a couple of woman engineers that I rare see in the department because the keep getting pregnant (= 3 months full salary, 3 months half salary).
It's absolutely impossible to tell them to stay after ours (against tradition!) , and it's impossible to tell them to go to locations. In short, we can never depend on them, most of them (including men too) take too many sick leaves per year that none can accomplish a single project.
The end result is that work "real" work is accomplished by own 5 or 6 people, most of whom are men. Mind you, there are VERY active and sincere female computer engineers (actually, just 2 in my case), and there are very lazy men (some I don't see them for months at a time). But I can't believe how much leeway is given to women. The management can't do shit about it since this is how things work in a 3rd world country with too much money to spare. Nevertheless, I bet working here is the most relaxed anywhere in the world.
The Iranian Mullahs are exceptions to the rule.
In Kuwait, there were a couple of 'demonstrations' that were quite non-violent. But then every one went back to their lives. The standards of living here is quite high, no one would go on rioting and throwing stones when they work from 8 AM - 2 PM, and then spend the rest of the day having fun, driving their luxury cars just to waste time, shopping in malls, and flirting with girls all night long.
It comes no surprise to me that there were no major riots in the Persian gulf overall. Having said that, there are always fanatics who would go to the extreme regardless of their financial status.
is 42
I'm a fresh software engineer and I get $36,000.
:P
This might sound too little, but I pay NO taxes what so ever, and I don't have concerns for medical insurance (it's free). Of course, I live in Kuwait and the system is vastly different from the US, but salary isn't just a number, it depends on the expenses you have to pay for a good style of living.
Since most services are subsidized here, $36,000 is probably equal to $80,000 is some midwestern states.
One more thing, I can never lose my job
"According to the web site of DSPAM, an open-source statistical anti-spam filter"
"The DSPAM project, a popular open source and freely available spam filtering application"
What's DSPAM for again?
Please use the correct title, RMS is rolling in his grave right now.
Oh wait.. he's not dead yet.
-- this sig is a speck of your imagination, enjoy it.
BSD *ducks*
When I signed up for my 512 kb/s ADSL in Kuwait, I asked the ISP salesman specifically if I might have any problems with file sharing.
He said it's perfectly fine with the compnay policies, and even suggested a few P2P clients that he liked!
Open Source would be a "real" alternative if and only if proprietery software IS expensive to obtain, which is not the case in Iraq, and in my countries in the region for that fact. CDs of the latest MS XP, Office, Photoshop..etc are sold for $1 or less. Now Iraq has a lot of infrastructure problems, I don't think "protecting intellectual property" is on their agenda yet. There is in fact very little pressure if any against piracy in the region. Where piracy thrives, open source starves.
That is, according to Chris Schlaeger, vice president, Research and Development in SUSE.
He said this at Novell's BrainShare in this LinuxToday article.
SUSE Personal will only be a KDE-distro now.
This doesn't make sense, last time I heard, kids don't carry credit cards. What's the point of redirecting kids to porn sites if they can't pay? How did he get the $1 million? I never thought you can make this much by "click" advertising.