his would be like doctors giving preferential treatment to other doctors (eg. less waiting time in countries with socialized medicine) or teachers distributing textbooks only to the children of other teachers. This is not to say that it doesn't happen, but it is profoundly wrong.
Sadly, the doctors' preferential treatment happens all the time here in Uruguay, where medicine is being more and more socialized (they wanted a level playing field... and the current government are leveling down:( ). You absolutely must know a doctor, or a political figure, or you'll have 2,3 or 4 months wait period to see a specialist (say, a dermatologist). Unless you pay one of the soon-to-be-outlawed US style health insurances, which are expensive by local standards (upwards of 100 USD/month plus some expenses).
I knew a kid when I was younger who lacked certain hormones in the correct proportions, so while he was my age mentally, and in actual years, he was about 5 years behind me in physical development, and had to take hormone shots.
Barcelona F.C. striker Lionel Messi also had this kind of problems:
"She has pajamas and outfits that are 10 or 12 years old,"
This is not normal! I can't keep my kids to make an outfit last for 10 or 12 months... sometimes the lifespan if clothing (especially blue jeans) can be measured in weeks.
Are you kidding me? I've used hand-me downs from my uncles, parents, brothers... stuff that has lasted forever (and yes, it was even more awfully outmoded than the usual hand-me-downs).
Ripping clothing would be punished with a spanking you'd never forget.
To this day, I have stuff that lasts 10 years, easily. I'm amazed (and envious) of US people being able to buy new clothing every year.
Well... so come up with a nationwide accepted ID !!! I know several slashdotters are against national IDs... but they work, and they ARE designed for stuff like this, unlike SSNs I guess.
Of course, I live in a country with nationwide IDs, and don't find them as offensive as the more libertarian amongst readers, so YMMV.
I agree; what an idiot. There's more useful, educationalinformation instantly available on the internet than any library in the world will ever hold.
A simple question: I've seen basically everybody access Wikipedia, and a large fraction of the internet users I know have used Youtube... but I've never seen anyone use MITs Open Course Ware. Do you people have any success stories with that?
I only tried once, and the material was not useful for what I wanted to learn (programming, it seems MITs courses are/were far different from the rest of the world. I will try to learn different paradigms someday...)
BTW, I just visited it again, and I'm glad to see some courses are starting to be translated, and the site is far better than what it was when I first visited.
(shooting account) That's probably one of the reasons why people don't make it out of the inner city.
I always find it bizarre that these things happen in the inner city in the U.S. Over here (Uruguay) we have some very bad neighbourhoods, but it's more like the favelas in Brazil, crime is confined to those areas. In my life I've never, ever, seen a shooting, and I live in the inner city.
A few weeks ago I was bored at work and looked at the crime stats for my city and Detroit... you're FIVE times more likely to get murdered (per 100.000 inhabitants) in Detroit than in Montevideo, but you're five times more likely to get robbed in Montevideo:P (I'll take the muggings, and I had my cell phone stolen twice this year already).
The good people understand that they cant do my job (and I cant do theirs) so we don't get in each others way, have respect for each other and just get along but there is about 30% of my co-workers that make me dread getting up in the morning because they are just arseholes who refuse to listen and expect me to make everything better.
And what of when you think it's one-sided (they couldn't do your job, but you could do theirs better:) ) - AND they make more:P.. do you move into their career? (except you can't move into being the Director's nephew or some such sometimes).
600 users 250 machines and printers, and I maintain the lot in 28 hours a week, 4 days at
7 hours a day. Including replacing 33% of machines each year.
And I spend more than half my day on Slashdot.
No network downtime in 5 years, all Windows XP/2003 server.
3 people for 250 users, luxury!
First of all, you're mad:)
Second, where I'm currently working is also a Windows shop, we have 2 people for 110 users, and one of them has half-time management duties (writing reports and the such:) ). We haven't been able to migrate away from Windows 2000 on the server side yet, as our core app doesn't run on 2008:(
I used to be alone for a 60-person branch at my prior job as sysadmin (moved into development a couple years ago), and it was also a Windows shop.
The whole reason the Gubinator is talking about online books is because CA has a budget deficit that is bigger than the GNP of a lot of countries.
Yep, the deficit is actually about the GNP of my country (Uruguay):( (though I recall some statistics said that California alone would be the 6th largest country by GNP in the world)
Indeed, Wikipedia confirms it:
California as an independent nation:
California compared to other countries GDP is in the same range as Spain, Italy and China (corresponding with the Department of Finance figures)
The economy of California is often cited for how it would compare to other countries if California were an independent nation. The statistic quoted varies widely (usually placing California between 7th and 10th) depending on the source, but also depending on the year. [17] The most recent estimates (provided by the CIA's Factbook) put California tenth.
I find it interesting that companies that make ATMs for systems that track things down to the penny are unable to track much smaller numbers with errors of plus or minus THOUSANDS.
I had ATMs screw up four times in about 8 years. One of the four times, a Diebold machine refused to give me the money, gave me no receipt, just had a "failure" message on screen, but the withdrawal was somehow recorded. It was on a national holiday over here, so nobody could be reached for help, the maintainers of the ATM network refused to acknowledge the error, and instructed me to file a complaint to the bank the day after.
The bank refused to reimburse the money, that's why I won't do business with Banco Itau again (it was BankBoston - the Uruguay branch - at the time of the ATM failure, was since purchased by Itau, along with my ill will).
Second time (after switching banks), the transaction was "rolled back" with no more inconvenience.
Tthe third time was on a workday and I camped at the ATM for hours until a crew arrived to repair it (both my card and the money had become stuck inside the ATM !!!).
The fourth time the ATM refused to give me the money and recorded the withdrawal again, I was instructed to file a complaint, and this time the bank (ABN-AMRO at the time, now Banco Santander of Spain) did refund me the money.
I'm South American, and I see the stats in your site for South America shows Google at 99%.. but I think that both Yahoo and MSN have a better presence (maybe I'm wrong about search, but both Hotmail and Yahoo mail are very strong in Uruguay and Argentina)... could you clarify your method? Is it from URL redirects or similar? Does your network have strong presence in South America? Maybe the results are skewed due to the methodology (that is, people that are savvy enough to use StatCounter get visitors savvy enough to use Google)?.
Ouch. Thanks for the information.... we're looking into using WPF for new developments at work... but text HAS to look sharp, as the gp said, it's what users will be staring into for hours.
I am, and I'm extremely happy with it (of course I migrated from VB 6, so anything would look good).
I'm probably at the "feature abuse" level, but I'm in love with LINQ, the amount of help you get from the IDE for everything is great, and it saves time like nobody's business.
I've used Eclipse for university projects until I graduated a couple years ago, and while it was good, VS 2008 blows it away (to be fair I should compare the current version of Eclipse though).
On to the dark side of the framework, the Entity Framework is AWFUL at this stage... I guess that it will become useable by version 3.0. We'll be looking into NHibernate and other options soon. And Microsoft is still behind on a lot of AJAXy stuff, the Web side is still in need of more polish - some stuff, like the AJAX panels, is bloated, and it's far easier to do a trillion postbacks than to work with Javascript with the IDE.
I'm really looking forward to VS 2010 due to its improved Javascript support, so it might address some of the current limitations.
A bit offtopic, I use glasses right now (myopia, -7 diopters IIRC) and several people have asked me why I haven't had surgery yet.. I don't really think surgery would change my life all that much, do you think your benefits outweighted the (possible, in your case real) dangers?
BTW I do sports with sports glasses - think Kareem, it's annoying at night after I took off my glasses, but not much else.
Did anyone really think they were going to give away their content for free forever?
What, you mean like broadcast television?
Do they actually give away something of value where you live? I had a TV set... and I gave it away, since I thought cable a waste of money for someone living alone, the over-the-air TV has NOTHING in terms of programming (the few things I could be interested in are either not aired - most likely, or, in the rare event they air something worthwhile, aired at an inconvenient time), and I mostly watch stuff on my PC anyways.
I won't stop watching "tv" or pretend I'm "holier-than-thou" because I don't own a TV*... I just switched the medium, and waste as much if not more time than before, only, on my terms.
You know, I'm a Canadian, and ten years ago, I would have voted to join the US... How could y'all have just let this happen ?
Sadly, Canada isn't that much better. As a Uruguayan traveling to Canada I had to present all kinds of documents to your country to convince them I wasn't staying... and, though they did issue a visa, they made it a one-trip-only visa, which means I'm not going again, as it's not worth it (if the visa issued was for multiple visits, I probably would have gone again).
"So what if they want to fingerprint travelers entering the country? I think this is a good idea"
"So what if they want to fingerprint travelers exiting the country? I think this is a good idea"
"So what if they want to fingerprint travelers changing flights at the country? I think this is a good idea"
"So what if they want to fingerprint travelers flying past the country? I think this is a good idea"
"So what if they want to fingerprint drivers? I think this is a good idea"
"So what if they want to fingerprint cyclists? I think this is a good idea"
"So what if they want to fingerprint pedestrians? I think this is a good idea"
"So what if they want to fingerprint everyone? I think this is a good idea"
The UK want to introduce ID cards - first they were going to be optional, then you would have to pay for them, then they would have fingerprint data, then they were remotely-readable, then they were going to be used on immigrants, then they were going to be used for all airport workers, etc.etc.etc. Feature creep. Watch out for it. That's where 1984 is gonna come from.
Actually, I think countrywide IDs are a good thing, in my country we have one, with fingerprints and everything, and it's far safer to purchase anything with a credit card, etc.
It's used for the same things you stupidly use the SSN and driver's license for - you still need some kind of ID for your stuff, why not make a centralised one?. Make it optional if you're worried about privacy (but, good luck conducting business without it)
The fingerprinting at airports and stuff, however, is more an annoyance than help.
I've been to the US many years ago, before 9/11 - I still have a US Visa in my passport (not needed anymore).
Since then I've moved countries twice and went on vacations (and sometimes business) to countless countries.
Yet I've never again been to the US - I purposefully refuse to travel there because of things like this and I've even been offered a job in Silicon Valley a couple of years ago.
20 or 30 years ago the USA was a nation admired by the vast majority of people out there - a land of dreams for many, even in other rich nations and amongst well educated people. Nowadays it's just a majorly fucked-up place.
Second the sentiment. I try not to go to the US if I can avoid it (still want to visit it though, preferably when/if it gets saner), and I wouldn't consider a job there if it was offered (and I am qualified enough for some companies to want me).
First, we are still better than most nations
I beg to differ. From a traveler's perspective even China is more relaxed than the US.
For example, I took a photo of the airport I landed in in China (its a habit of mine) and I took a photo of the airport I landed at in the US. Guess which country I was in where I was surrounded by armed men demanding what the hell I was doing, and guess which country I was in where a policeman offered to take a picture of me standing in front of the airport.
Sadly, that's true. I've so far refused to visit the US, even though I'd like to, because it's not worth the hassle (I've been over it, and less than a hundred meters from the US border, and I've still not gone there).
It's also taken some money from US companies (I can't travel in any US airline because you can't even be on transit in the US without a visa).
China wasn't easy to get into (a relative was there last month), but it's far easier than the US, and much more friendlier once you're inside (a lot more if you're doing business:) ), and the cities are far nicer than I imagined (still wouldn't want to live there, but it's getting better).
Slashdot Mirror
his would be like doctors giving preferential treatment to other doctors (eg. less waiting time in countries with socialized medicine) or teachers distributing textbooks only to the children of other teachers. This is not to say that it doesn't happen, but it is profoundly wrong.
Sadly, the doctors' preferential treatment happens all the time here in Uruguay, where medicine is being more and more socialized (they wanted a level playing field... and the current government are leveling down :( ). You absolutely must know a doctor, or a political figure, or you'll have 2,3 or 4 months wait period to see a specialist (say, a dermatologist). Unless you pay one of the soon-to-be-outlawed US style health insurances, which are expensive by local standards (upwards of 100 USD/month plus some expenses).
I knew a kid when I was younger who lacked certain hormones in the correct proportions, so while he was my age mentally, and in actual years, he was about 5 years behind me in physical development, and had to take hormone shots.
Barcelona F.C. striker Lionel Messi also had this kind of problems:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Messi
According to an article, he was diagnosed with Growth Hormone Deficiency, but Barcelona funded the treatment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_hormone_deficiency
>To this day, I have stuff that lasts 10 years, easily. I'm amazed (and envious) of US people being able to buy new clothing every year.
And they envy your retro wardrobe that doesn't even cost anything.
Lol, there's always an upside for anything :)
"She has pajamas and outfits that are 10 or 12 years old,"
This is not normal! I can't keep my kids to make an outfit last for 10 or 12 months... sometimes the lifespan if clothing (especially blue jeans) can be measured in weeks.
Are you kidding me? I've used hand-me downs from my uncles, parents, brothers... stuff that has lasted forever (and yes, it was even more awfully outmoded than the usual hand-me-downs).
Ripping clothing would be punished with a spanking you'd never forget.
To this day, I have stuff that lasts 10 years, easily. I'm amazed (and envious) of US people being able to buy new clothing every year.
Well... so come up with a nationwide accepted ID !!! I know several slashdotters are against national IDs... but they work, and they ARE designed for stuff like this, unlike SSNs I guess.
Of course, I live in a country with nationwide IDs, and don't find them as offensive as the more libertarian amongst readers, so YMMV.
Thanks, I'll have to check out those then :) . At least the street fighting math has a catchy title :)
I agree; what an idiot. There's more useful, educational information instantly available on the internet than any library in the world will ever hold.
A simple question: I've seen basically everybody access Wikipedia, and a large fraction of the internet users I know have used Youtube... but I've never seen anyone use MITs Open Course Ware. Do you people have any success stories with that?
I only tried once, and the material was not useful for what I wanted to learn (programming, it seems MITs courses are/were far different from the rest of the world. I will try to learn different paradigms someday...)
BTW, I just visited it again, and I'm glad to see some courses are starting to be translated, and the site is far better than what it was when I first visited.
(shooting account) That's probably one of the reasons why people don't make it out of the inner city.
I always find it bizarre that these things happen in the inner city in the U.S. Over here (Uruguay) we have some very bad neighbourhoods, but it's more like the favelas in Brazil, crime is confined to those areas. In my life I've never, ever, seen a shooting, and I live in the inner city.
:P (I'll take the muggings, and I had my cell phone stolen twice this year already).
A few weeks ago I was bored at work and looked at the crime stats for my city and Detroit... you're FIVE times more likely to get murdered (per 100.000 inhabitants) in Detroit than in Montevideo, but you're five times more likely to get robbed in Montevideo
The good people understand that they cant do my job (and I cant do theirs) so we don't get in each others way, have respect for each other and just get along but there is about 30% of my co-workers that make me dread getting up in the morning because they are just arseholes who refuse to listen and expect me to make everything better.
And what of when you think it's one-sided (they couldn't do your job, but you could do theirs better :) ) - AND they make more :P .. do you move into their career? (except you can't move into being the Director's nephew or some such sometimes).
600 users 250 machines and printers, and I maintain the lot in 28 hours a week, 4 days at 7 hours a day. Including replacing 33% of machines each year.
And I spend more than half my day on Slashdot.
No network downtime in 5 years, all Windows XP/2003 server.
3 people for 250 users, luxury!
First of all, you're mad :)
:) ). We haven't been able to migrate away from Windows 2000 on the server side yet, as our core app doesn't run on 2008 :(
Second, where I'm currently working is also a Windows shop, we have 2 people for 110 users, and one of them has half-time management duties (writing reports and the such
I used to be alone for a 60-person branch at my prior job as sysadmin (moved into development a couple years ago), and it was also a Windows shop.
The whole reason the Gubinator is talking about online books is because CA has a budget deficit that is bigger than the GNP of a lot of countries.
Yep, the deficit is actually about the GNP of my country (Uruguay) :( (though I recall some statistics said that California alone would be the 6th largest country by GNP in the world)
Indeed, Wikipedia confirms it:
California as an independent nation: California compared to other countries GDP is in the same range as Spain, Italy and China (corresponding with the Department of Finance figures)
The economy of California is often cited for how it would compare to other countries if California were an independent nation. The statistic quoted varies widely (usually placing California between 7th and 10th) depending on the source, but also depending on the year. [17] The most recent estimates (provided by the CIA's Factbook) put California tenth.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California
I find it interesting that companies that make ATMs for systems that track things down to the penny are unable to track much smaller numbers with errors of plus or minus THOUSANDS.
I had ATMs screw up four times in about 8 years. One of the four times, a Diebold machine refused to give me the money, gave me no receipt, just had a "failure" message on screen, but the withdrawal was somehow recorded. It was on a national holiday over here, so nobody could be reached for help, the maintainers of the ATM network refused to acknowledge the error, and instructed me to file a complaint to the bank the day after.
The bank refused to reimburse the money, that's why I won't do business with Banco Itau again (it was BankBoston - the Uruguay branch - at the time of the ATM failure, was since purchased by Itau, along with my ill will).
Second time (after switching banks), the transaction was "rolled back" with no more inconvenience.
Tthe third time was on a workday and I camped at the ATM for hours until a crew arrived to repair it (both my card and the money had become stuck inside the ATM !!!).
The fourth time the ATM refused to give me the money and recorded the withdrawal again, I was instructed to file a complaint, and this time the bank (ABN-AMRO at the time, now Banco Santander of Spain) did refund me the money.
Thanks for bringing that up.
I'm South American, and I see the stats in your site for South America shows Google at 99%.. but I think that both Yahoo and MSN have a better presence (maybe I'm wrong about search, but both Hotmail and Yahoo mail are very strong in Uruguay and Argentina)... could you clarify your method? Is it from URL redirects or similar? Does your network have strong presence in South America? Maybe the results are skewed due to the methodology (that is, people that are savvy enough to use StatCounter get visitors savvy enough to use Google)?.
I'm skeptical of this data--at least worldwide.
Me too. An unofficial survey (by me :) * ) shows that 0% of the population of my country (Uruguay) knows Bing exists.
OTOH, someone mentioned that the default MS search is now Bing, so those numbers might be explained due to that.
*see: sig
Ouch. Thanks for the information.... we're looking into using WPF for new developments at work... but text HAS to look sharp, as the gp said, it's what users will be staring into for hours.
I am, and I'm extremely happy with it (of course I migrated from VB 6, so anything would look good).
I'm probably at the "feature abuse" level, but I'm in love with LINQ, the amount of help you get from the IDE for everything is great, and it saves time like nobody's business.
I've used Eclipse for university projects until I graduated a couple years ago, and while it was good, VS 2008 blows it away (to be fair I should compare the current version of Eclipse though).
On to the dark side of the framework, the Entity Framework is AWFUL at this stage... I guess that it will become useable by version 3.0. We'll be looking into NHibernate and other options soon. And Microsoft is still behind on a lot of AJAXy stuff, the Web side is still in need of more polish - some stuff, like the AJAX panels, is bloated, and it's far easier to do a trillion postbacks than to work with Javascript with the IDE.
I'm really looking forward to VS 2010 due to its improved Javascript support, so it might address some of the current limitations.
Indeed, sounds promising
A bit offtopic, I use glasses right now (myopia, -7 diopters IIRC) and several people have asked me why I haven't had surgery yet.. I don't really think surgery would change my life all that much, do you think your benefits outweighted the (possible, in your case real) dangers?
BTW I do sports with sports glasses - think Kareem, it's annoying at night after I took off my glasses, but not much else.
Good luck with the keratoconus.
Did anyone really think they were going to give away their content for free forever? What, you mean like broadcast television?
Do they actually give away something of value where you live? I had a TV set... and I gave it away, since I thought cable a waste of money for someone living alone, the over-the-air TV has NOTHING in terms of programming (the few things I could be interested in are either not aired - most likely, or, in the rare event they air something worthwhile, aired at an inconvenient time), and I mostly watch stuff on my PC anyways.
... I just switched the medium, and waste as much if not more time than before, only, on my terms.
:)
I won't stop watching "tv" or pretend I'm "holier-than-thou" because I don't own a TV*
* actually, I am
next it'll be "ask slashdot: what should i eat for breakfast?"
That sounds like a good question to me :) ... we could all use some diet advice :)
My kayak and various camping gear, workstands, tools, etc, don't fit on my bike, sorry.
How often do you go camping? Once a year? Have you heard... you can "rent" a car :) (or truck or whatever suits your fancy)
You know, I'm a Canadian, and ten years ago, I would have voted to join the US... How could y'all have just let this happen ?
Sadly, Canada isn't that much better. As a Uruguayan traveling to Canada I had to present all kinds of documents to your country to convince them I wasn't staying... and, though they did issue a visa, they made it a one-trip-only visa, which means I'm not going again, as it's not worth it (if the visa issued was for multiple visits, I probably would have gone again).
"So what if they want to fingerprint travelers entering the country? I think this is a good idea" "So what if they want to fingerprint travelers exiting the country? I think this is a good idea" "So what if they want to fingerprint travelers changing flights at the country? I think this is a good idea" "So what if they want to fingerprint travelers flying past the country? I think this is a good idea" "So what if they want to fingerprint drivers? I think this is a good idea" "So what if they want to fingerprint cyclists? I think this is a good idea" "So what if they want to fingerprint pedestrians? I think this is a good idea" "So what if they want to fingerprint everyone? I think this is a good idea"
The UK want to introduce ID cards - first they were going to be optional, then you would have to pay for them, then they would have fingerprint data, then they were remotely-readable, then they were going to be used on immigrants, then they were going to be used for all airport workers, etc.etc.etc. Feature creep. Watch out for it. That's where 1984 is gonna come from.
Actually, I think countrywide IDs are a good thing, in my country we have one, with fingerprints and everything, and it's far safer to purchase anything with a credit card, etc.
It's used for the same things you stupidly use the SSN and driver's license for - you still need some kind of ID for your stuff, why not make a centralised one?. Make it optional if you're worried about privacy (but, good luck conducting business without it)
The fingerprinting at airports and stuff, however, is more an annoyance than help.
I've been to the US many years ago, before 9/11 - I still have a US Visa in my passport (not needed anymore).
Since then I've moved countries twice and went on vacations (and sometimes business) to countless countries.
Yet I've never again been to the US - I purposefully refuse to travel there because of things like this and I've even been offered a job in Silicon Valley a couple of years ago.
20 or 30 years ago the USA was a nation admired by the vast majority of people out there - a land of dreams for many, even in other rich nations and amongst well educated people. Nowadays it's just a majorly fucked-up place.
Second the sentiment. I try not to go to the US if I can avoid it (still want to visit it though, preferably when/if it gets saner), and I wouldn't consider a job there if it was offered (and I am qualified enough for some companies to want me).
First, we are still better than most nations I beg to differ. From a traveler's perspective even China is more relaxed than the US.
For example, I took a photo of the airport I landed in in China (its a habit of mine) and I took a photo of the airport I landed at in the US. Guess which country I was in where I was surrounded by armed men demanding what the hell I was doing, and guess which country I was in where a policeman offered to take a picture of me standing in front of the airport.
Sadly, that's true. I've so far refused to visit the US, even though I'd like to, because it's not worth the hassle (I've been over it, and less than a hundred meters from the US border, and I've still not gone there).
:) ), and the cities are far nicer than I imagined (still wouldn't want to live there, but it's getting better).
It's also taken some money from US companies (I can't travel in any US airline because you can't even be on transit in the US without a visa).
China wasn't easy to get into (a relative was there last month), but it's far easier than the US, and much more friendlier once you're inside (a lot more if you're doing business
When (if) the experiment is a success, it will become a "US led experiment".
Actually, I've heard lots of grumbles about the US not funding / underfunding ITER.