Oh, good point! Have you ever been on the MSN finance forums? Framed crap that's what it is. The actual viewable part is like 400 pixels wide. I use FF adblock to block the useless frames! I hope if this goes through, they don't touch Yahoo Finance.
-If you use YahooGroups mainly for chatting with members, posting news and info, set yourself up a free message board hosted for free. A good example is InvisionFree. They have calendar features and you can combine this with some of Google's online document services for sharing info.
-Set up a blog at Blogger.
-Register your own domain name and host your own site. Domains are under $10/yr and solid unix hosting with mysql/php/perl, etc runs under $6/mo. Slap some FOSS up there and you got your own website. Great place to put an online portfolio and resume too...
- There's other options.. but I'm drawing a temporary blank... but if anyone tells you Facebook... run away.
I practise both Buddhist Mindfulness and Insight meditation and I think it's a very important part of training your brain to be more focused and a deeper / more productive thinker.
As an exercise slashdotters... turn off your monitor, close your eyes and try to rest your thoughts on your breathing for a few minutes. Only be aware of breathing. Don't think about what you have to do today, don't get lost in memories, don't judge yourself, or think things like "am I doing this right?" , or "well, this is me breathing, yup I'm breathing here", etc.
You should only be aware of the in and out. No quiet thought chatter, no daydreaming, no judging.
How long can you keep your mind totally empty of anything but the in and out of the breath? I bet not very long. It's tricky to even last a minute without a single subtle thought. But if you think about it.. we SHOULD be able to tell our mind what do do right?
My point is... our minds are like little children, running all over the place. Training it to sit still is very hard... but very worth while. Not only to be more productive, but also to catch yourself when your thoughts are negative.
But it's called Buddhism Practise, because it takes lots and lots of practise, it's really not easy.
In some ways I agree with what Bill is doing. His idea is good, but instead of adding more government funds to this type of incentive, the money that our governments CURRENTLY spend on sending cash and food and other things that are misappropriated, fall into the wrong hands etc needs to be re-allocated to make a better impact. How much do we spend sending tankers of water rather than building wells?
What's the most effective way to really combat poverty? Building schools like the Central Asia Institute (http://www.ikat.org/) does for only around $12K per school, or helping developed world lenders (like me) support entrepreneurs who want to open or run their own businesses (help themselves) like Kiva (http://www.kiva.org/) does is the best way to combat real poverty. Education, jobs and drinking water is the best way. Educated young people are less likely to be recruited by extremists as well.
Sending truckloads of rice is a temporary bandaid that's not even guaranteed to get to the hands of the needy.
Hell, Kiva has more people in countries like USA and Canada who want to help, but Kiva is small and can't scale up fast enough to get to enough needy people to take advantage of all the interested donors/lenders. Government money that ends up in the hands of rebel groups could be better spent here. There is a business case to be made as well since Kiva for example is looking into passing interest back to the lenders.
Next steps can be to help bring medical skills and sustainable agriculture to a region - something that building schools can help solve.
Anyway, the current model of foreign aid is waaay broken. Fix the root of the problem like lack of education, rather than trying to fix a collapsing damn with your finger tip in the hole.
(This post is kind of all over the place, but philanthropy issues have recently become something of a passion, and I can't write prettily just now.)
I question how this report measures the R&D spending of other countries? I would hazard a guess that Chinese and Japanese automakers (as an example) would not be quick to reveal the full extent of their R&D budgets. It would be in their government's best interests as well to under report this number to keep the US and others into a false idea of what they should spend to compete. Hell, if I was China/Japan I would under report it so that the US isn't inspired to ramp up R&D funding.
I also imagine that other countries might not have the same open-accounting rules for public companies...
Just a thought. Maybe North America is farther behind than we think. Hell... our automakers haven't exactly jumped onto the Green trend that has been glaringly obvious for the last 5 or so years. So if that R&D money has been going into bigger and beefier SUVs then that's money squandered as far as staying competitive goes.
Mine would have to be Commander Keen and Captain Comic on the the 386 my Dad brought home one day when I was a kid. I still love to play some Keen now and then, it's amazing how it all comes back to you... 15 years later...
There was a bunch of great shareware stuff my Dad installed for us... the original Wolfenstein, Monster Bash, Test Drive, Dangerous Dave, Duke Nukem. *sigh* All the goodies on dosgamesarchive.com.
The sad thing is that this is another example of the growing trend of parents not doing their jobs and schools having to step in (rightly or wrongly). Talk to any grey-haired teacher about how it used to be and how it is now... and you'll see the stress in their eyes. Kids don't respect teachers if they know that parents will always take the kid's side. "why did you fail my kid!?!" is always their first question, not "how can we help my child learn this better?".
Extrapolate this to the underage alcohol and drug problems, and you probably are having mixed feelings from the teachers. The want to help look out for the kids AND they want to curb bad behaviour that extends to schools.
I'm just saying, I can see why the administration would have done it.
Frankly I don't care much about the future of the Xbox, I care about the present. I have some Xmas money burning a hole in my pocket that I _want_ to use to buy an Xbox. But my friends who bought one for Xmas are having to ship it back to MS for repairs already. I've heard other spotty reports of continued overheating problems and what not. Damn. Fix it for god's sake! I don't know if I'm willing to pay for that kind of headache. Seriously, a year of these problems... enough is enough.
What the hell is Sears thinking? Didn't they learning anything from Sony's rootkit fiasco? This is a complete outrage. Look at the type of people who normally shop at sears. It's demographic is older women who I would guess are not normally tech-savvy or aware of online security issues. This stinks like rotten fish and I hope the word gets out. Bad Sears, BAD!
I love Dawkins' point about the difference in how we view politicians vs scientists who change their minds. I never did understand why some people criticize politicians for changing direction- that should be a virtue.
I don't see any reason to bother switching to the new disk formats- either one. My DVD collection is pretty expansive and I don't want to have to replace them. Also, I don't have a high-def TV (hell, my friends have a nice wide-screen one and it still shows the black bars on wide-screen movies... no idea why). The fact that there is still 2 main formats battling it out, makes it even more unattractive for me to choose one and risk choosing the eventual loser. Not to mention the extra cost. Though in my opinion... if the player can't play my old DVDs too, then it's a non-starter.
Overall there's just nothing to get excited about regarding these new formats. *yawn*
My biggest disappointment was how much of a graphics hog bioshock is. Can't run it on my PC whereas Orange Box runs fine. Plus Bioshock isn't out for Wii as far as I know, so no Bioshock for me until I fork out for a new graphics card, or break down and buy an Xbox. *cry*
Let me get this straight. For the last 10 or more years, the big three have been lobbying and fighting tooth and nail to block tougher emission standards, begging for government handouts (out of taxpayer pockets) to help them 'compete' with foreign car makers, they've stuck their collective heads in the sand while Toyota et al. innovate cars that consumers want, streamlined manufacturing processes and cleaner running and hybrid cars. Basically ignored the OBVIOUS path that the auto industry has been on, and as a result they are now far behind.
Then, surprise, surprise, emission standards are tightened (really, who didn't see this coming??) and they are now bitching and moaning to the government that, no shit, they are behind the foreign car makers?
I live in one of the most automotive-dependent cities in North America, and I could see the obvious signs of what steps that GM, Chrysler and Ford and their unions should have been taking all along to stay competitive. They refused to do so, or if they did a bit it was half hearted at best.
If you fail to stay ahead of your industry. If you watch your competition take a direction that consumers are jumping all over and you refuse to take it seriously, or think you can lobby the problem away, then I'm sorry, you deserve to lose market share. Even though my own home town would take, and is taking a serious knocking as the domestic car makers bleed profits... I'm secretly praying they either shut-up and get to work, or go out of business completely. These dinosaurs are keeping us behind.
It's so easy to do the emotional response thing and ship food there. It's must harder to do the smart, responsible thing and help people to help themselves. Rather than flood the economy with free food (lowering the value of farmed local food), better to educate the children, and teach better, more efficient local food raising practices. Many areas are still using subsistence farming, and are not using the better, disease resistant, higher yield seed stock.
Give a man a fish/teach a man to fish. It's so true, even if it might not be the emotional response.
Great post. Your points are bang on. My cousin works for the UN, and I can promise that shoveling food into poor countries is not solving any long term problems. It makes the population continue to grow so that the region's population is larger than can be supported on the economic and food production of the area. Then it is surviving on local food + aid. Soon the population continues to grow so that more aid is needed, and so on. Education, economic development and birth control and family planning (plus better rights for women) are what is really needed.
Rather than send a bag of rice, I'd rather help people to help them selves. For example, via an organization like Kiva.org where you can make micro-loans to entrepreneurs in poor or developing countries.
I just love the 'nuclear is the only way' people. I just don't get it. Please, Slashdotters, answer me this...
- How are we 'maxxed out' on hydro?? I guess I'm thinking in terms of Canada too.
- Why did she skip from hydro to fossil fuels and nuclear? What happened to wind, solar hot water heat, energy conservation - increased energy efficiency, etc? I know that in my Canadian home town... they are close to approving the largest wind project in Canada for my county- the first one in the county. Proof that we are far from 'maxxed out' on wind for example.
- If the sudden popularity of compact fluorescent lightbulbs has just recently taken off and can make such a difference, as well as Walmart's push for concentrated laundry detergent, etc, etc, isn't this a sign that we have many, many more areas where efficiency improvements can be made. Lets look at trimming the waste.
- What REALLY is the solution to nuclear waste? Isn't it kind of a joke to assume that any human government or corporation will be around and responsible enough to babysit these waste storage locations for 50 or a hundred thousand years? That's THOUSANDS of generations of humans!!! Puh-lease!
- It seems to me that it's kind of a give-up to say nuclear is the 'only' solution.
I'd like to see industry get rid of 'stand by' mode on electronics, pointless status lights on devices, more efficient lighting, turn lights and what not off when no one is in the room or using it (only some schools are starting to do this), remove excess packaging from products and excess water from liquid products, etc, etc.
I think the nuclear as the only solution people are really saying that nuclear is the only EASY solution.
Since you are talking about highschool and not college, I'd say go with the open source option and touch on the older versions of the commercial software. Here's why...
-If they find that they enjoy what you are teaching, knowing an open source (and FREE) software tool will make it easy for them to continue tinkering with it at home. They can download the same tool they used in the classroom and continue to hone their skills at home if that really is their area of interest/career path. In the end, it's their eye and talent as an artist that will determine if their career at this early stage, learning the software is secondary. Practice is key. Chances are a student can't afford a legal copy of Photoshop for their home computer.
-Odds are that it will be a few years before they get into the working world anyway, so even if the school board gave you the latest versions of the commercial software, chances are that what they end up using in the working world will be several versions in the future anyway.
- Once you've learned one tool, it's usually easy to learn another of the same type. Like learning programming languages. Once you have the basics, the icons for the tools and the menus are trivial.
- Many artists do freelance work when they are first trying to break into the graphic design/art world. Knowing a free tool will keep their costs down.
- It will help support the free/open source software movement, and make them aware of the wide variety of awesome free/open apps available to them.
- Many employers even if they provide a commercial graphics program, will allow you to install and use your own preferred tool if it's free/legal/legit/compatible.
- Giving them an additional taste of the old version commercial software you have will mean they've been exposed to two different tools- an advantage in the long run. Choice is good.
I would guess that if you create an account on both sites with the same email address, you can be logged out of FB, but logged in to the ecomm store and they can still link the two accounts.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, good point! Have you ever been on the MSN finance forums? Framed crap that's what it is. The actual viewable part is like 400 pixels wide. I use FF adblock to block the useless frames! I hope if this goes through, they don't touch Yahoo Finance.
Yes,
-If you use YahooGroups mainly for chatting with members, posting news and info, set yourself up a free message board hosted for free. A good example is InvisionFree. They have calendar features and you can combine this with some of Google's online document services for sharing info.
-Set up a blog at Blogger.
-Register your own domain name and host your own site. Domains are under $10/yr and solid unix hosting with mysql/php/perl, etc runs under $6/mo. Slap some FOSS up there and you got your own website. Great place to put an online portfolio and resume too...
- There's other options.. but I'm drawing a temporary blank... but if anyone tells you Facebook... run away.
I practise both Buddhist Mindfulness and Insight meditation and I think it's a very important part of training your brain to be more focused and a deeper / more productive thinker.
As an exercise slashdotters... turn off your monitor, close your eyes and try to rest your thoughts on your breathing for a few minutes. Only be aware of breathing. Don't think about what you have to do today, don't get lost in memories, don't judge yourself, or think things like "am I doing this right?" , or "well, this is me breathing, yup I'm breathing here", etc.
You should only be aware of the in and out. No quiet thought chatter, no daydreaming, no judging.
How long can you keep your mind totally empty of anything but the in and out of the breath? I bet not very long. It's tricky to even last a minute without a single subtle thought. But if you think about it.. we SHOULD be able to tell our mind what do do right?
My point is... our minds are like little children, running all over the place. Training it to sit still is very hard... but very worth while. Not only to be more productive, but also to catch yourself when your thoughts are negative.
But it's called Buddhism Practise, because it takes lots and lots of practise, it's really not easy.
In some ways I agree with what Bill is doing. His idea is good, but instead of adding more government funds to this type of incentive, the money that our governments CURRENTLY spend on sending cash and food and other things that are misappropriated, fall into the wrong hands etc needs to be re-allocated to make a better impact. How much do we spend sending tankers of water rather than building wells?
What's the most effective way to really combat poverty? Building schools like the Central Asia Institute (http://www.ikat.org/) does for only around $12K per school, or helping developed world lenders (like me) support entrepreneurs who want to open or run their own businesses (help themselves) like Kiva (http://www.kiva.org/) does is the best way to combat real poverty. Education, jobs and drinking water is the best way. Educated young people are less likely to be recruited by extremists as well.
Sending truckloads of rice is a temporary bandaid that's not even guaranteed to get to the hands of the needy.
Hell, Kiva has more people in countries like USA and Canada who want to help, but Kiva is small and can't scale up fast enough to get to enough needy people to take advantage of all the interested donors/lenders. Government money that ends up in the hands of rebel groups could be better spent here. There is a business case to be made as well since Kiva for example is looking into passing interest back to the lenders.
Next steps can be to help bring medical skills and sustainable agriculture to a region - something that building schools can help solve.
Anyway, the current model of foreign aid is waaay broken. Fix the root of the problem like lack of education, rather than trying to fix a collapsing damn with your finger tip in the hole.
(This post is kind of all over the place, but philanthropy issues have recently become something of a passion, and I can't write prettily just now.)
I question how this report measures the R&D spending of other countries? I would hazard a guess that Chinese and Japanese automakers (as an example) would not be quick to reveal the full extent of their R&D budgets. It would be in their government's best interests as well to under report this number to keep the US and others into a false idea of what they should spend to compete. Hell, if I was China/Japan I would under report it so that the US isn't inspired to ramp up R&D funding.
I also imagine that other countries might not have the same open-accounting rules for public companies...
Just a thought. Maybe North America is farther behind than we think. Hell... our automakers haven't exactly jumped onto the Green trend that has been glaringly obvious for the last 5 or so years. So if that R&D money has been going into bigger and beefier SUVs then that's money squandered as far as staying competitive goes.
If you aren't running your MS sofware on an MS operating system, then you aren't a real customer. Heh.
Mine would have to be Commander Keen and Captain Comic on the the 386 my Dad brought home one day when I was a kid. I still love to play some Keen now and then, it's amazing how it all comes back to you... 15 years later...
There was a bunch of great shareware stuff my Dad installed for us... the original Wolfenstein, Monster Bash, Test Drive, Dangerous Dave, Duke Nukem. *sigh* All the goodies on dosgamesarchive.com.
The sad thing is that this is another example of the growing trend of parents not doing their jobs and schools having to step in (rightly or wrongly). Talk to any grey-haired teacher about how it used to be and how it is now... and you'll see the stress in their eyes. Kids don't respect teachers if they know that parents will always take the kid's side. "why did you fail my kid!?!" is always their first question, not "how can we help my child learn this better?".
Extrapolate this to the underage alcohol and drug problems, and you probably are having mixed feelings from the teachers. The want to help look out for the kids AND they want to curb bad behaviour that extends to schools.
I'm just saying, I can see why the administration would have done it.
Frankly I don't care much about the future of the Xbox, I care about the present. I have some Xmas money burning a hole in my pocket that I _want_ to use to buy an Xbox. But my friends who bought one for Xmas are having to ship it back to MS for repairs already. I've heard other spotty reports of continued overheating problems and what not. Damn. Fix it for god's sake! I don't know if I'm willing to pay for that kind of headache. Seriously, a year of these problems... enough is enough.
What the hell is Sears thinking? Didn't they learning anything from Sony's rootkit fiasco? This is a complete outrage. Look at the type of people who normally shop at sears. It's demographic is older women who I would guess are not normally tech-savvy or aware of online security issues. This stinks like rotten fish and I hope the word gets out. Bad Sears, BAD!
I love Dawkins' point about the difference in how we view politicians vs scientists who change their minds. I never did understand why some people criticize politicians for changing direction- that should be a virtue.
I don't see any reason to bother switching to the new disk formats- either one. My DVD collection is pretty expansive and I don't want to have to replace them. Also, I don't have a high-def TV (hell, my friends have a nice wide-screen one and it still shows the black bars on wide-screen movies... no idea why). The fact that there is still 2 main formats battling it out, makes it even more unattractive for me to choose one and risk choosing the eventual loser. Not to mention the extra cost. Though in my opinion... if the player can't play my old DVDs too, then it's a non-starter.
Overall there's just nothing to get excited about regarding these new formats. *yawn*
My biggest disappointment was how much of a graphics hog bioshock is. Can't run it on my PC whereas Orange Box runs fine. Plus Bioshock isn't out for Wii as far as I know, so no Bioshock for me until I fork out for a new graphics card, or break down and buy an Xbox. *cry*
If he's using his 'secure' browser to visit trusted sites, and his insecure browser for un-trusted/casual browsing, isn't that backwards?
What country do you live in where governments choose the most cost effective or beneficial path by default? I'd like to move there....
Let me get this straight. For the last 10 or more years, the big three have been lobbying and fighting tooth and nail to block tougher emission standards, begging for government handouts (out of taxpayer pockets) to help them 'compete' with foreign car makers, they've stuck their collective heads in the sand while Toyota et al. innovate cars that consumers want, streamlined manufacturing processes and cleaner running and hybrid cars. Basically ignored the OBVIOUS path that the auto industry has been on, and as a result they are now far behind.
Then, surprise, surprise, emission standards are tightened (really, who didn't see this coming??) and they are now bitching and moaning to the government that, no shit, they are behind the foreign car makers?
I live in one of the most automotive-dependent cities in North America, and I could see the obvious signs of what steps that GM, Chrysler and Ford and their unions should have been taking all along to stay competitive. They refused to do so, or if they did a bit it was half hearted at best.
If you fail to stay ahead of your industry. If you watch your competition take a direction that consumers are jumping all over and you refuse to take it seriously, or think you can lobby the problem away, then I'm sorry, you deserve to lose market share. Even though my own home town would take, and is taking a serious knocking as the domestic car makers bleed profits... I'm secretly praying they either shut-up and get to work, or go out of business completely. These dinosaurs are keeping us behind.
And why all the grey? I'm so freakin sick of grey.
Thank you entropiccanuck, that was interesting!!
It's so easy to do the emotional response thing and ship food there. It's must harder to do the smart, responsible thing and help people to help themselves. Rather than flood the economy with free food (lowering the value of farmed local food), better to educate the children, and teach better, more efficient local food raising practices. Many areas are still using subsistence farming, and are not using the better, disease resistant, higher yield seed stock.
Give a man a fish/teach a man to fish. It's so true, even if it might not be the emotional response.
Great post. Your points are bang on. My cousin works for the UN, and I can promise that shoveling food into poor countries is not solving any long term problems. It makes the population continue to grow so that the region's population is larger than can be supported on the economic and food production of the area. Then it is surviving on local food + aid. Soon the population continues to grow so that more aid is needed, and so on. Education, economic development and birth control and family planning (plus better rights for women) are what is really needed.
Rather than send a bag of rice, I'd rather help people to help them selves. For example, via an organization like Kiva.org where you can make micro-loans to entrepreneurs in poor or developing countries.
I just love the 'nuclear is the only way' people. I just don't get it. Please, Slashdotters, answer me this...
- How are we 'maxxed out' on hydro?? I guess I'm thinking in terms of Canada too.
- Why did she skip from hydro to fossil fuels and nuclear? What happened to wind, solar hot water heat, energy conservation - increased energy efficiency, etc? I know that in my Canadian home town... they are close to approving the largest wind project in Canada for my county- the first one in the county. Proof that we are far from 'maxxed out' on wind for example.
- If the sudden popularity of compact fluorescent lightbulbs has just recently taken off and can make such a difference, as well as Walmart's push for concentrated laundry detergent, etc, etc, isn't this a sign that we have many, many more areas where efficiency improvements can be made. Lets look at trimming the waste.
- What REALLY is the solution to nuclear waste? Isn't it kind of a joke to assume that any human government or corporation will be around and responsible enough to babysit these waste storage locations for 50 or a hundred thousand years? That's THOUSANDS of generations of humans!!! Puh-lease!
- It seems to me that it's kind of a give-up to say nuclear is the 'only' solution.
I'd like to see industry get rid of 'stand by' mode on electronics, pointless status lights on devices, more efficient lighting, turn lights and what not off when no one is in the room or using it (only some schools are starting to do this), remove excess packaging from products and excess water from liquid products, etc, etc.
I think the nuclear as the only solution people are really saying that nuclear is the only EASY solution.
Wow. Who are these idiots looking for medial advice on YouTube? Before this article I would never even have considered it!
Next stop, MySpace for financial advice, and Slashdot for relationship advice. Ha!
Really, you get what you deserve people. Darwin awards for all of them.
A bit sideways of the topic, but I REALLY wish we had Netflix in Canada. It sounds like a great concept.
Yes, sturdier envelopes would be good, less damage to the DVDs in the long run...
Since you are talking about highschool and not college, I'd say go with the open source option and touch on the older versions of the commercial software. Here's why...
-If they find that they enjoy what you are teaching, knowing an open source (and FREE) software tool will make it easy for them to continue tinkering with it at home. They can download the same tool they used in the classroom and continue to hone their skills at home if that really is their area of interest/career path. In the end, it's their eye and talent as an artist that will determine if their career at this early stage, learning the software is secondary. Practice is key. Chances are a student can't afford a legal copy of Photoshop for their home computer.
-Odds are that it will be a few years before they get into the working world anyway, so even if the school board gave you the latest versions of the commercial software, chances are that what they end up using in the working world will be several versions in the future anyway.
- Once you've learned one tool, it's usually easy to learn another of the same type. Like learning programming languages. Once you have the basics, the icons for the tools and the menus are trivial.
- Many artists do freelance work when they are first trying to break into the graphic design/art world. Knowing a free tool will keep their costs down.
- It will help support the free/open source software movement, and make them aware of the wide variety of awesome free/open apps available to them.
- Many employers even if they provide a commercial graphics program, will allow you to install and use your own preferred tool if it's free/legal/legit/compatible.
- Giving them an additional taste of the old version commercial software you have will mean they've been exposed to two different tools- an advantage in the long run. Choice is good.
I would guess that if you create an account on both sites with the same email address, you can be logged out of FB, but logged in to the ecomm store and they can still link the two accounts.