When Ellison was in New Zealand competing for the America's Cup several years ago, he so endeared himself to the Kiwis with his arrogant, abrasive personality, that the locals quipped that "Oracle" stood for "One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison". Classic!
What the fans want is the prequels rewritten and refilmed with good actors, compelling storylines, characters you can give a shit about, and most importantly, no Jar-Jar or midichlorians.
Everything you said is spot on, except that the actors aren't bad: their performances were. All the leads in the prequel trilogy have proven in other films that they are in fact quite talented. I've posted a couple times in defense of Hayden Christensen, who showed off his acting chops in "Life as a House" and "Shattered Glass", and it's a shame that he turned in a crappy performance in such a high-profile film. I also posted about the fact that Lucas is not an actor's director. Blame him for their performances as well.
The best actors in the world couldn't have saved those turkeys. The story, script, and direction were insulting, laughable, and incompetent, in that order.
Thank you for your reply, and in fact I agree 100% that India will prevail because of democracy. As Winston Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except of course for all the others." In my opinion, the most basic political right is freedom of expression, and so long as India allows it and China does not, the full potential of the Chinese people will not be met. The Right To Information Act of 2005 is another great step forward by India, and I believe it to be an example to most other nations.
It is a remarkable coincidence that when I first read this Slashdot thread, the quote at the bottom of the page was by Harry Truman: "If you have a government that is truly efficient, you have a dictatorship." Pure efficiency is not possible without trampling on the freedom of citizens. What I find interesting about China is the fact that their long history has been so tainted by chaos, disorder, foreign interference and exploitation, and unimaginable human suffering, that it is not a mystery why there is such a hunger for order, which is what the Communist Party purports to provide, and how they came to power in the first instance. It is my opinion that preserving social order is the foremost concern of the Chinese Communist Party, human rights be damned. But as Benjamin Franklin famously said, "Those who would trade security for liberty deserve neither".
Chinese society has historically changed so incredibly slowly that the Information Age must seem like a nightmare to the Communists. The sense I get is that the Communists feel that the forces of history are against them, and that inevitably they will fade into memory. Since the passing of Mao Zedong, they have seemed to be searching for a way to preserve order within Chinese society while at the same time positioning China to step onto the global stage, while still remaining Chinese. Their booming economy and reputation as "factory to the world" may be taken for granted now, but I am old enough to remember when their fledgling experiments with capitalism seemed so out of character that the world was stunned by it.
The world was rightfully horrified by the atrocities in Tienanmen Square, but what struck me at the time was that people were surprised by the brutal reaction of the authorities. I was most surprised by the fact that the demonstrators were allowed to gather in the first place, and remain there for three days. I remember talking with friends as the demonstrations entered the second day, and they were all gleeful that change was coming to China. I was almost in tears and practically pleading with the TV for them to leave: "You've made your point, and the authorities are signalling that they've heard you by allowing this gathering, now go, for the love of God!" My friends thought I was crazy because I predicted that it would end in tragedy and bloodshed.
China has undergone what is for them dramatic change in the last thirty years, and continues to change. It's just that the rate of change isn't enough by the standards of the rest of the planet in this day and age. One thing that people ignorant of Chinese history should keep in mind is that China will change at her own pace, and to hell with what everyone else thinks. But like evolution, political change in China comes so slowly that it seems unnoticeable until it is put into context. I personally believe that China will transition to democracy sometime in this century, but by the time they do India will be a superpower.
Three words: Pakistan and China. They've been to war several times with the former, and have had bloody border clashes with the latter. India has also blamed Pakistan for terrorist violence over Kashmir, among other things, including the bloody attack on the Grand Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai.
It's worse now that Pakistan has nukes, but realistically Pakistan is not a viable military rival for her much larger and far more populous neighbor. The scenario that keeps me up at night is the growing rivalry between the world's two most populous countries, India and China. As China's economy booms and she becomes more assertive on the global stage, both nations will find themselves on a collision course in a competition for resources, and it's interesting to see how it will play out in the coming decades, particularly from a political standpoint, considering that it's a contest between the world's largest democracy and an authoritarian giant (my money is on India).
I'm not Indian, by the way, and I'd be very interested in hearing the viewpoints of any Indian and Chinese Slashdot readers. In your opinions, will the 21st Century see the development of a bi-polar world all over again, with competition and rivalry between two economic powerhouses who espouse radically different political philosophies?
There are three links in the article summary. The first is to the Wikipedia entry for "Hello World"; the second is to an article about writing "Hello World" without libc; the third is to part II of the second, an examination of the ELF format and demonstrates the 45 byte program. The summary headline is rubbish. Whoever wrote it either (a); never read either article, or (b); deliberately sensationalized it by conflating the salient features of both articles, in which case they should be working for the tabloids.
Does anyone else remember the old story (probably apocryphal) that made the email rounds a few years ago? Apparently a British driver ran a traffic light and his license plate was photographed by the traffic cam. He received a photo of his plate in the mail, along with the traffic ticket. As a lark, he made out a cheque to the authorities, snapped a picture of it and mailed them the photo of the cheque. A couple days later he received another letter from the cops. In it was a photo of a pair of handcuffs. He mailed them the cheque, along with a note thanking them for their sense of humor.
It would seem to me if every citizen knew how to properly shoot a rifle, odds are pretty good one of those things could be knocked out of the sky with a barrett.
You really put a lot of thought into this didn't you? No, the odds are far from "pretty good". There's a reason why people hunt flying birds with shotguns: the spray of pellets is much more likely to hit a fast-moving target than a single projectile, and while there are any number of people in the U.S. who are quite proficient with shotguns, only a very, very few have the requisite skill necessary to hit a bird with a rifle, much less a drone, which would probably be flying MUCH faster than a bird, and if flying low, would be in sight for only a fraction of a second.
As to your suggestion that citizens be armed with Barrett sniper rifles, it takes months of intensive training to become a proficient sniper, and they start off with expert marksmen. Even then, the very best snipers would probably be ineffecive against a target such as a drone, which, given the the advances in small off-the-shelf turbine engines that are readily available to R/C hobbyists, would be travelling at a couple hundred mph, and if flying at low altitude, would only be visible for a split second. Add to that the mass of the Barrett, which makes it difficult to maneuver quickly enough to track a fast-moving target. Plus there is the wholly unanswered question of readiness: how to alert this civilian air defense artillery corps and give them useful targeting data IN TIME to be effective. What are they going to do? Lug a large heavy weapon plus ammunition with them to work, the beach, on dates etc, on the off chance that they might be alerted to incoming drones? The idea of training large numbers of ordinary citizens to the level of proficiency required is not a tenable one, to put it charitably, and would be FAR from cost-effective.
There is also the danger of falling bullets, as another poster pointed out. And if you don't think the danger is real, tell that to my friend Cathy, whose uncle was killed about four years ago in Miami by a falling bullet. He was sitting on his back patio with his wife watching the New Year's fireworks and having a glass of champagne when he slumped to the ground dead. The first thought was that he had suffered a massive heart attack, but the medical examiner noticed a small hole near his collarbone, and the autopsy revealed that he had been killed by a small caliber handgun bullet falling from a steep angle, fired into the sky by some unknown, and unknowing, person celebrating the fireworks. The thought of masses of people firing enormous volumes of.50 caliber rounds into the sky over populated areas is a terrifying one to me personally.
if they're going to call it a submarine, I'd like to see it go deeper than that.
Out of curiosity, how deep does a submersible have to be able to dive before you'd classify it as a submarine? Every dictionary I've checked only defines it, more or less, as a vessel capable of operating submerged; there is no mention whatsoever of a depth requirement to classify it as such.
As far as I know, marijuana was brought to the West Indies in the mid-1800's by immigrant laborers from India, hence the biological classification of the subspecies Cannabis sativa indica. Apparently it has been used since antiquity by some Hindus in their religious observances to the goddess Kali (to this day it is known among many Jamaicans as "kali weed"), and the word ganja, the name by which it is commonly called in Indic languages, is originally of Sanskrit provenance.
I was told by a teacher in high school that it was eventually banned by the British colonial authorities when they concluded that productive output among ganja smokers was dramatically lower than that of workers who were non-smokers, and they became concerned when its use spread to black laborers. The slave trade had been abolished by the British in 1834 and slavery itself in 1838, and the only way they could legally compel them to not smoke ganja was to ban its use.
In short, it was by no means a moral issue for the British, although it was couched as such, but one of practical economics for the agrarian colonies of the British West Indies. After all, if the sugar crop wasn't up to snuff because the darkies and the coolies were comporting themselves licentiously with the demon weed, Massa couldn't live in his accustomed style, now could he? And in the British Colonial Empire Massa lived very, very well indeed.
This state of affairs endured until the British started divesting themselves of their former colonies in the '50s and '60s, but the demonization of marijuana was complete, and as a child in the mid-Sixties I still remember how Rastafarians were treated by Jamaican society in general, and by the police in particular. Their belief that Haile Selassie was divine in origin would merely have made them a bunch of nutty, albeit pacifistic, religionists, but it was their use of ganja that caused them to be treated as menaces to society. Bob Marley made the world safe for Rastas, but talk to anyone who had dreadlocks in the Sixties. They'll tell you horror stories of brutal beatings, forced hair cuts by the authorities, and worse. The nadir was the Coral Gardens Massacre in 1963, when a Rasta commune near Montego Bay was attacked by security forces and a number of them killed. The total has never been ascertained, but survivors claim that dozens or hundreds lost their lives.
Personally, I believe that the use of marijuana is still viewed askance because of the vestiges of emotionalism surrounding it, much as how an older generation of Jamaicans still believe Rastas to be some sort of deviant perverts for using it. The fact that its use by young children is part of their religious observances, much like communion in the church, certainly hasn't done anything to win over these critics.
"You don't know the horrible aspects of war. I've been through two wars and I know. I've seen cities and homes in ashes. I've seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is Hell!" -- General William Tecumseh Sherman, address to the graduating class of the Michigan Military Academy, 1879.
No wonder you posted anonymously; that is the single most tasteless "joke" I've ever seen here, and that's saying a lot. War is easy to joke about for those who've never seen blood and brains spilled in actuality, or experienced the stench of a battlefield.
I've heard that in Australia, there are wild parrots that do the Nokia sound.
Not sure if it's the parrots that do that in Australia; you may possibly be referring to the Superb Lyrebird, "Nature's Tape Recorder". The Lyrebird has an extraordinarily complex vocal organ, and is perhaps the most amazing mimic in nature. The males incorporate natural and artificial sounds into their call during courtship, including the songs of other birds and sounds as diverse as loggers' chainsaws, the click of a motor-driven camera, car alarms, and yes, mobile phones as well. Check out this astounding video of the Superb Lyrebird narrated by naturalist Sir David Attenborough.
Your job as a manager or business owner might look a little iffy at this point if this is how you conduct a conversation.
Business has been good for the last 28 years, thanks for asking. And if by "conversation" you mean making bizarre assertions and then getting touchy when asked for some supporting evidence, then you have a very different definition of "conversation" than most people. Grow up.
There, fixed that for you. Señor Montalbán was proud to be a Mexican and a Latino, and never applied for U.S. citizenship. He created the Nosotros Foundation in order to highlight the contributions of Latinos to the arts and entertainment and was active in Hispanic affairs throughout his life. I was saddened to learn that since 1993 he had been more or less confined to a wheelchair because of an old spinal injury which worsened as he aged (he had been thrown from a horse and trampled while filming in 1951). Both he and Patrick McGoohan will be sorely missed.
I'm stunned that no one has posted about the passing of Patrick McGoohan, star of TV's Danger Man (Secret Agent in the U.S.), and the massive cult hit The Prisoner, which he also conceived, produced, wrote, and directed. I remember watching both of these series as a kid in the 60's, and I remain surprised that The Prisoner ran for only 17 episodes (it was conceived as a miniseries), and that the entirety of the series consists of the attempts of McGoohan's character, Number Six, to escape the Village; ascertain the identity of the mysterious Number 1, the person in charge; and above all, to retain his individuality and sanity. ("I am not a number - I am a free man!")
The Prisoneris considered one of the most groundbreaking original TV series of all time, and it's weird, mind-bending tales with elements of science fiction and allegory have had a profound influence. Patrick McGoohan died at his Los Angeles home after a short illness on the same day as Ricardo Montalbán.
Bit of trivia: McGoohan became the highest paid actor in the U.K after Danger Man became a hit, and was subsequently offered, and turned down, the roles of both James Bond and Simon Templar (The Saint). Said roles kick-started the careers of both Sean Connery and Roger Moore.
I really should state that I absolutely do not believe that knowledge workers, or any workers are "commodities"; I was merely stating that they are treated as such by many companies. As a business owner/operator I probably have more experience dealing with workers than most here, and I can state from personal experience that it is impossible to not care about them.
I'd add that many of us carry around in our heads the knowledge of how the business actually works, down at the detail level. We know it far better than management, because we're the ones charged with understanding it well enough to fix it when it breaks down and adapt it to new problems.
No. You carry around in your heads the knowledge of how your part of the business works, down at the detail level. Of course you know it far better than management; it's what you do. Their job is to make the disparate parts work together, and although they know less about the details of any single department than the people in it, I'll bet that they're vastly more knowledgeable about the entire company than anyone else. Many geeks tend to think of running a business as an engineering problem, and in many ways it is, but any business owner or operator will tell you that the toughest part of any business is managing the people, the spectrum of egos, expectations, personalities, foibles, etc. It really is like herding cats. You can do your job better than your managers ever could, but that's no guarantee that you could step into their shoes and do their job better than them.
Because I actually own and run one, with 2,300 employees. And guess what? It is hard. Damned fucking hard. As a poster in this thread said, being in management is like herding cats. It always amuses me when people with no actual experience in a field, lacking knowledge of the nuances, believe that all that's required is "general intelligence and basic social skills". "I'm bright and personable, put me in charge at GM. I'll straighten them out!"
Yeah, right. Manage a successful business, with real, live people in it, not Sims, then get back to us and tell us how easy it was.
If you really think that engineers (or any knowledge worker for that matter) are simply "commodities", then you truly don't understand. Quality varies considerably.
Why are you assuming that I don't understand? My brothers and I own and operate a retail chain with 2,300 employees, and I probably have a much better understanding than you about the variation in quality among rank and file workers (I'm in charge of training). I stand by my statement: the sad fact is that workers are treated as commodities by many companies, and you're deluding yourself if you think these companies really care about the quality of their people.
Apart from directing our in-house training and orientation programs, I'm also an instructor, and I can tell you from more than 30 years of professional experience that companies generally follow two models when it comes to how they treat their workers. Very, very few of them invest the resources in actually developing the individual; the vast majority subscribe to what we call the "turn-and-burn" philosophy. They burn them out and turn them over. This is particularly true among manufacturing companies, where the bulk of employees do not interface with the public. As shocking as it may seem to most people, companies actually pursue this philosophy, and plan for high staff turnover.
Service companies such as ours don't have the luxury of outsourcing; people actually have to come into our stores. Not only would the turn-and-burn model destroy our business in very short order, as the replacement and training cost of quality staff would be prohibitive, but the level of service would crater. In the retail business, price is not nearly as great a distinguishing factor between companies as one might think. It boils down to service; if our customers are happy with it they'll come back, and they'll recommend us to family and friends. Believe me, we know how critical it is to invest in the training and development of staff who actually have to deal with people, sometimes having to maintain their professionalism even in the face of the most egregious provocation. That takes training, lots and lots of expensive training, but it is critical to our survival and prosperity. I'm willing to bet that every time you hear horror stories about the terrible level of service at any organization it's a function of poor training.
I'm not terribly concerned about the execs that earn 10 times an average workers salary. I'm terribly concerned about the ones that earn 100-200x an average workers salary. Those people are seriously overpaid, and more often than not based on graft and not performance.
You're assuming again. Without being privy to the financials, how do you judge whether an exec is overpaid or not? What you need to compare is not salaries, but the value each individual brings to the company. Are you going to tell me that Steve Jobs' value to Apple isn't 100-200 greater than that of a code jockey in some windowless building in Cupertino? And that broad statement about graft versus performance gives the impression that most execs are corrupt. Care to back that up with some facts?
Where did we go so wrong that support staff are the ones elevated to executive positions?
Forgive me for saying this, but you went "wrong" with your career choice in college. The reason why "support" staff are elevated above you and your fellow engineers (I'm assuming you're an engineer) is that they're administrative support staff, i.e. they are actually trained to run a business (or aspects of the business) and they'll be promoted within the administration of the company; whereas engineers are part of the production team, which means that engineers will probably rise only as far as project or department head. Executives build wealth on the "backs of laboring engineers" (and sales clerks, machinists, programmers, etc) because you're commodities.
I can understand your frustration, but the fact is that in any organization--large, medium, small, corporate, military, religious, political, whatever--there will be only a very few who are able to run the whole thing, and all things being equal, the qualified ones will rise to the top, provided that they're also politically savvy. An unfortunate fact of life is that there also exist within any organization the ass-kissers, toadies, and fast-talking con artists who scheme their way to positions well above their level of competence. Such glaring injustices will rankle obviously, but regrettably the vast majority of people within an organization really don't have a clue how the whole thing works. Forgive me again for saying this, but your post only reinforces this notion; you really don't know what's going on from an administrative standpoint, and I get the strong sense that you are either totally naive about, or disgusted by, organizational intrigue and politics. Good for you, if that's the case. You probably won't get a seat on the corporate jet, but you get to keep your soul.
And I'm certainly not presuming to suggest that engineers cannot run a company; my eldest brother was an engineer who worked at his chosen profession for only about a year after graduating, then went into the financial services industry and took to it like a duck to water. He is now the owner of a successful mutual fund company.
By sheer coincidence I was reading last night about Theo Jansen, the Dutch artist whose wind-powered kinetic sculptures were feature in a Wired.com article a few years ago. Check out his website, Strandbeest (Beach beasts), which features amazing must-see videos of some of his creations.
His multi-legged "beasts" are constructed almost completely of ingeniously hinged yellow plastic tubing, and feature membranes that wave and flap in the wind like the wings of insects. These serve to store compressed air into what appears to be plastic soda or water bottles, which each "creature" uses for propulsion. Jansen leaves the sculptures to wander on beaches, and guides their "evolution" by adopting the "genetic code" (mainly by varying the lengths of the plastic tubes) from more successful creatures into other designs. There is a startlingly alien eeriness, as well as fascinating beauty, in watching these skeletal assemblages of yellow tubes sitting on a beach, translucent membranes undulating in the wind, then suddenly walking away for a few steps with remarkable grace.
The Walking House concept is evocative of one of Jansen's beasts called the Animaris Rhinoceros Transport, a wind-powered two-ton design resembling a titanic crab that can carry passengers. Jansen is working on a 12-ton version called the Animaris Mammoth, which incorporates several interior rooms. I'm quite surprised that there is no mention of this remarkable visionary in such an appropriate Slashdot thread. This guy will make everyone who thought they had mad Tinkertoy skillz feel like dolts.
Slashdot Mirror
According to John Gruber, this photo of Jobs's office was taken early yesterday.
When Ellison was in New Zealand competing for the America's Cup several years ago, he so endeared himself to the Kiwis with his arrogant, abrasive personality, that the locals quipped that "Oracle" stood for "One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison". Classic!
Everything you said is spot on, except that the actors aren't bad: their performances were. All the leads in the prequel trilogy have proven in other films that they are in fact quite talented. I've posted a couple times in defense of Hayden Christensen, who showed off his acting chops in "Life as a House" and "Shattered Glass", and it's a shame that he turned in a crappy performance in such a high-profile film. I also posted about the fact that Lucas is not an actor's director. Blame him for their performances as well.
The best actors in the world couldn't have saved those turkeys. The story, script, and direction were insulting, laughable, and incompetent, in that order.
Thank you for your reply, and in fact I agree 100% that India will prevail because of democracy. As Winston Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except of course for all the others." In my opinion, the most basic political right is freedom of expression, and so long as India allows it and China does not, the full potential of the Chinese people will not be met. The Right To Information Act of 2005 is another great step forward by India, and I believe it to be an example to most other nations.
It is a remarkable coincidence that when I first read this Slashdot thread, the quote at the bottom of the page was by Harry Truman: "If you have a government that is truly efficient, you have a dictatorship." Pure efficiency is not possible without trampling on the freedom of citizens. What I find interesting about China is the fact that their long history has been so tainted by chaos, disorder, foreign interference and exploitation, and unimaginable human suffering, that it is not a mystery why there is such a hunger for order, which is what the Communist Party purports to provide, and how they came to power in the first instance. It is my opinion that preserving social order is the foremost concern of the Chinese Communist Party, human rights be damned. But as Benjamin Franklin famously said, "Those who would trade security for liberty deserve neither".
Chinese society has historically changed so incredibly slowly that the Information Age must seem like a nightmare to the Communists. The sense I get is that the Communists feel that the forces of history are against them, and that inevitably they will fade into memory. Since the passing of Mao Zedong, they have seemed to be searching for a way to preserve order within Chinese society while at the same time positioning China to step onto the global stage, while still remaining Chinese. Their booming economy and reputation as "factory to the world" may be taken for granted now, but I am old enough to remember when their fledgling experiments with capitalism seemed so out of character that the world was stunned by it.
The world was rightfully horrified by the atrocities in Tienanmen Square, but what struck me at the time was that people were surprised by the brutal reaction of the authorities. I was most surprised by the fact that the demonstrators were allowed to gather in the first place, and remain there for three days. I remember talking with friends as the demonstrations entered the second day, and they were all gleeful that change was coming to China. I was almost in tears and practically pleading with the TV for them to leave: "You've made your point, and the authorities are signalling that they've heard you by allowing this gathering, now go, for the love of God!" My friends thought I was crazy because I predicted that it would end in tragedy and bloodshed.
China has undergone what is for them dramatic change in the last thirty years, and continues to change. It's just that the rate of change isn't enough by the standards of the rest of the planet in this day and age. One thing that people ignorant of Chinese history should keep in mind is that China will change at her own pace, and to hell with what everyone else thinks. But like evolution, political change in China comes so slowly that it seems unnoticeable until it is put into context. I personally believe that China will transition to democracy sometime in this century, but by the time they do India will be a superpower.
Three words: Pakistan and China. They've been to war several times with the former, and have had bloody border clashes with the latter. India has also blamed Pakistan for terrorist violence over Kashmir, among other things, including the bloody attack on the Grand Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai.
It's worse now that Pakistan has nukes, but realistically Pakistan is not a viable military rival for her much larger and far more populous neighbor. The scenario that keeps me up at night is the growing rivalry between the world's two most populous countries, India and China. As China's economy booms and she becomes more assertive on the global stage, both nations will find themselves on a collision course in a competition for resources, and it's interesting to see how it will play out in the coming decades, particularly from a political standpoint, considering that it's a contest between the world's largest democracy and an authoritarian giant (my money is on India).
I'm not Indian, by the way, and I'd be very interested in hearing the viewpoints of any Indian and Chinese Slashdot readers. In your opinions, will the 21st Century see the development of a bi-polar world all over again, with competition and rivalry between two economic powerhouses who espouse radically different political philosophies?
1) Submit inflammatory article
2) Watch the hit count spike
3) ???
4) Proffitt!
Sorry; I couldn't resist. I'll let myself out now...
Apple "strongarmed" the publishers by agreeing to their retail model? Clearly you have a different definition of "strongarm" than most people...
There are three links in the article summary. The first is to the Wikipedia entry for "Hello World"; the second is to an article about writing "Hello World" without libc; the third is to part II of the second, an examination of the ELF format and demonstrates the 45 byte program. The summary headline is rubbish. Whoever wrote it either (a); never read either article, or (b); deliberately sensationalized it by conflating the salient features of both articles, in which case they should be working for the tabloids.
Does anyone else remember the old story (probably apocryphal) that made the email rounds a few years ago? Apparently a British driver ran a traffic light and his license plate was photographed by the traffic cam. He received a photo of his plate in the mail, along with the traffic ticket. As a lark, he made out a cheque to the authorities, snapped a picture of it and mailed them the photo of the cheque. A couple days later he received another letter from the cops. In it was a photo of a pair of handcuffs. He mailed them the cheque, along with a note thanking them for their sense of humor.
You really put a lot of thought into this didn't you? No, the odds are far from "pretty good". There's a reason why people hunt flying birds with shotguns: the spray of pellets is much more likely to hit a fast-moving target than a single projectile, and while there are any number of people in the U.S. who are quite proficient with shotguns, only a very, very few have the requisite skill necessary to hit a bird with a rifle, much less a drone, which would probably be flying MUCH faster than a bird, and if flying low, would be in sight for only a fraction of a second.
As to your suggestion that citizens be armed with Barrett sniper rifles, it takes months of intensive training to become a proficient sniper, and they start off with expert marksmen. Even then, the very best snipers would probably be ineffecive against a target such as a drone, which, given the the advances in small off-the-shelf turbine engines that are readily available to R/C hobbyists, would be travelling at a couple hundred mph, and if flying at low altitude, would only be visible for a split second. Add to that the mass of the Barrett, which makes it difficult to maneuver quickly enough to track a fast-moving target. Plus there is the wholly unanswered question of readiness: how to alert this civilian air defense artillery corps and give them useful targeting data IN TIME to be effective. What are they going to do? Lug a large heavy weapon plus ammunition with them to work, the beach, on dates etc, on the off chance that they might be alerted to incoming drones? The idea of training large numbers of ordinary citizens to the level of proficiency required is not a tenable one, to put it charitably, and would be FAR from cost-effective.
There is also the danger of falling bullets, as another poster pointed out. And if you don't think the danger is real, tell that to my friend Cathy, whose uncle was killed about four years ago in Miami by a falling bullet. He was sitting on his back patio with his wife watching the New Year's fireworks and having a glass of champagne when he slumped to the ground dead. The first thought was that he had suffered a massive heart attack, but the medical examiner noticed a small hole near his collarbone, and the autopsy revealed that he had been killed by a small caliber handgun bullet falling from a steep angle, fired into the sky by some unknown, and unknowing, person celebrating the fireworks. The thought of masses of people firing enormous volumes of .50 caliber rounds into the sky over populated areas is a terrifying one to me personally.
Out of curiosity, how deep does a submersible have to be able to dive before you'd classify it as a submarine? Every dictionary I've checked only defines it, more or less, as a vessel capable of operating submerged; there is no mention whatsoever of a depth requirement to classify it as such.
As far as I know, marijuana was brought to the West Indies in the mid-1800's by immigrant laborers from India, hence the biological classification of the subspecies Cannabis sativa indica . Apparently it has been used since antiquity by some Hindus in their religious observances to the goddess Kali (to this day it is known among many Jamaicans as "kali weed"), and the word ganja, the name by which it is commonly called in Indic languages, is originally of Sanskrit provenance.
I was told by a teacher in high school that it was eventually banned by the British colonial authorities when they concluded that productive output among ganja smokers was dramatically lower than that of workers who were non-smokers, and they became concerned when its use spread to black laborers. The slave trade had been abolished by the British in 1834 and slavery itself in 1838, and the only way they could legally compel them to not smoke ganja was to ban its use.
In short, it was by no means a moral issue for the British, although it was couched as such, but one of practical economics for the agrarian colonies of the British West Indies. After all, if the sugar crop wasn't up to snuff because the darkies and the coolies were comporting themselves licentiously with the demon weed, Massa couldn't live in his accustomed style, now could he? And in the British Colonial Empire Massa lived very, very well indeed.
This state of affairs endured until the British started divesting themselves of their former colonies in the '50s and '60s, but the demonization of marijuana was complete, and as a child in the mid-Sixties I still remember how Rastafarians were treated by Jamaican society in general, and by the police in particular. Their belief that Haile Selassie was divine in origin would merely have made them a bunch of nutty, albeit pacifistic, religionists, but it was their use of ganja that caused them to be treated as menaces to society. Bob Marley made the world safe for Rastas, but talk to anyone who had dreadlocks in the Sixties. They'll tell you horror stories of brutal beatings, forced hair cuts by the authorities, and worse. The nadir was the Coral Gardens Massacre in 1963, when a Rasta commune near Montego Bay was attacked by security forces and a number of them killed. The total has never been ascertained, but survivors claim that dozens or hundreds lost their lives.
Personally, I believe that the use of marijuana is still viewed askance because of the vestiges of emotionalism surrounding it, much as how an older generation of Jamaicans still believe Rastas to be some sort of deviant perverts for using it. The fact that its use by young children is part of their religious observances, much like communion in the church, certainly hasn't done anything to win over these critics.
"You don't know the horrible aspects of war. I've been through two wars and I know. I've seen cities and homes in ashes. I've seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is Hell!" -- General William Tecumseh Sherman, address to the graduating class of the Michigan Military Academy, 1879.
No wonder you posted anonymously; that is the single most tasteless "joke" I've ever seen here, and that's saying a lot. War is easy to joke about for those who've never seen blood and brains spilled in actuality, or experienced the stench of a battlefield.
Not sure if it's the parrots that do that in Australia; you may possibly be referring to the Superb Lyrebird, "Nature's Tape Recorder". The Lyrebird has an extraordinarily complex vocal organ, and is perhaps the most amazing mimic in nature. The males incorporate natural and artificial sounds into their call during courtship, including the songs of other birds and sounds as diverse as loggers' chainsaws, the click of a motor-driven camera, car alarms, and yes, mobile phones as well. Check out this astounding video of the Superb Lyrebird narrated by naturalist Sir David Attenborough.
Business has been good for the last 28 years, thanks for asking. And if by "conversation" you mean making bizarre assertions and then getting touchy when asked for some supporting evidence, then you have a very different definition of "conversation" than most people. Grow up.
There, fixed that for you. Señor Montalbán was proud to be a Mexican and a Latino, and never applied for U.S. citizenship. He created the Nosotros Foundation in order to highlight the contributions of Latinos to the arts and entertainment and was active in Hispanic affairs throughout his life. I was saddened to learn that since 1993 he had been more or less confined to a wheelchair because of an old spinal injury which worsened as he aged (he had been thrown from a horse and trampled while filming in 1951). Both he and Patrick McGoohan will be sorely missed.
I'm stunned that no one has posted about the passing of Patrick McGoohan, star of TV's Danger Man (Secret Agent in the U.S.), and the massive cult hit The Prisoner , which he also conceived, produced, wrote, and directed. I remember watching both of these series as a kid in the 60's, and I remain surprised that The Prisoner ran for only 17 episodes (it was conceived as a miniseries), and that the entirety of the series consists of the attempts of McGoohan's character, Number Six, to escape the Village; ascertain the identity of the mysterious Number 1, the person in charge; and above all, to retain his individuality and sanity. ("I am not a number - I am a free man!")
The Prisoneris considered one of the most groundbreaking original TV series of all time, and it's weird, mind-bending tales with elements of science fiction and allegory have had a profound influence. Patrick McGoohan died at his Los Angeles home after a short illness on the same day as Ricardo Montalbán.
Bit of trivia: McGoohan became the highest paid actor in the U.K after Danger Man became a hit, and was subsequently offered, and turned down, the roles of both James Bond and Simon Templar (The Saint). Said roles kick-started the careers of both Sean Connery and Roger Moore.
Really? How can you know that for certain? Allow me to ask again. Facts please.
So basically your argument boils down to "Because I said so!"
Nice. Don't give up your day job; that second career as a logician is looking mighty iffy at this point.
I really should state that I absolutely do not believe that knowledge workers, or any workers are "commodities" ; I was merely stating that they are treated as such by many companies. As a business owner/operator I probably have more experience dealing with workers than most here, and I can state from personal experience that it is impossible to not care about them.
No. You carry around in your heads the knowledge of how your part of the business works, down at the detail level. Of course you know it far better than management; it's what you do. Their job is to make the disparate parts work together, and although they know less about the details of any single department than the people in it, I'll bet that they're vastly more knowledgeable about the entire company than anyone else. Many geeks tend to think of running a business as an engineering problem, and in many ways it is, but any business owner or operator will tell you that the toughest part of any business is managing the people, the spectrum of egos, expectations, personalities, foibles, etc. It really is like herding cats. You can do your job better than your managers ever could, but that's no guarantee that you could step into their shoes and do their job better than them.
Because I actually own and run one, with 2,300 employees. And guess what? It is hard. Damned fucking hard. As a poster in this thread said, being in management is like herding cats. It always amuses me when people with no actual experience in a field, lacking knowledge of the nuances, believe that all that's required is "general intelligence and basic social skills". "I'm bright and personable, put me in charge at GM. I'll straighten them out!"
Yeah, right. Manage a successful business, with real, live people in it , not Sims, then get back to us and tell us how easy it was.
Why are you assuming that I don't understand? My brothers and I own and operate a retail chain with 2,300 employees, and I probably have a much better understanding than you about the variation in quality among rank and file workers (I'm in charge of training). I stand by my statement: the sad fact is that workers are treated as commodities by many companies, and you're deluding yourself if you think these companies really care about the quality of their people.
Apart from directing our in-house training and orientation programs, I'm also an instructor, and I can tell you from more than 30 years of professional experience that companies generally follow two models when it comes to how they treat their workers. Very, very few of them invest the resources in actually developing the individual; the vast majority subscribe to what we call the "turn-and-burn" philosophy. They burn them out and turn them over. This is particularly true among manufacturing companies, where the bulk of employees do not interface with the public. As shocking as it may seem to most people, companies actually pursue this philosophy, and plan for high staff turnover.
Service companies such as ours don't have the luxury of outsourcing; people actually have to come into our stores. Not only would the turn-and-burn model destroy our business in very short order, as the replacement and training cost of quality staff would be prohibitive, but the level of service would crater. In the retail business, price is not nearly as great a distinguishing factor between companies as one might think. It boils down to service; if our customers are happy with it they'll come back, and they'll recommend us to family and friends. Believe me, we know how critical it is to invest in the training and development of staff who actually have to deal with people, sometimes having to maintain their professionalism even in the face of the most egregious provocation. That takes training, lots and lots of expensive training, but it is critical to our survival and prosperity. I'm willing to bet that every time you hear horror stories about the terrible level of service at any organization it's a function of poor training.
You're assuming again. Without being privy to the financials, how do you judge whether an exec is overpaid or not? What you need to compare is not salaries, but the value each individual brings to the company. Are you going to tell me that Steve Jobs' value to Apple isn't 100-200 greater than that of a code jockey in some windowless building in Cupertino? And that broad statement about graft versus performance gives the impression that most execs are corrupt. Care to back that up with some facts?
Forgive me for saying this, but you went "wrong" with your career choice in college. The reason why "support" staff are elevated above you and your fellow engineers (I'm assuming you're an engineer) is that they're administrative support staff, i.e. they are actually trained to run a business (or aspects of the business) and they'll be promoted within the administration of the company; whereas engineers are part of the production team, which means that engineers will probably rise only as far as project or department head. Executives build wealth on the "backs of laboring engineers" (and sales clerks, machinists, programmers, etc) because you're commodities.
I can understand your frustration, but the fact is that in any organization--large, medium, small, corporate, military, religious, political, whatever--there will be only a very few who are able to run the whole thing, and all things being equal, the qualified ones will rise to the top, provided that they're also politically savvy. An unfortunate fact of life is that there also exist within any organization the ass-kissers, toadies, and fast-talking con artists who scheme their way to positions well above their level of competence. Such glaring injustices will rankle obviously, but regrettably the vast majority of people within an organization really don't have a clue how the whole thing works. Forgive me again for saying this, but your post only reinforces this notion; you really don't know what's going on from an administrative standpoint, and I get the strong sense that you are either totally naive about, or disgusted by, organizational intrigue and politics. Good for you, if that's the case. You probably won't get a seat on the corporate jet, but you get to keep your soul.
And I'm certainly not presuming to suggest that engineers cannot run a company; my eldest brother was an engineer who worked at his chosen profession for only about a year after graduating, then went into the financial services industry and took to it like a duck to water. He is now the owner of a successful mutual fund company.
By sheer coincidence I was reading last night about Theo Jansen, the Dutch artist whose wind-powered kinetic sculptures were feature in a Wired.com article a few years ago. Check out his website, Strandbeest (Beach beasts), which features amazing must-see videos of some of his creations.
His multi-legged "beasts" are constructed almost completely of ingeniously hinged yellow plastic tubing, and feature membranes that wave and flap in the wind like the wings of insects. These serve to store compressed air into what appears to be plastic soda or water bottles, which each "creature" uses for propulsion. Jansen leaves the sculptures to wander on beaches, and guides their "evolution" by adopting the "genetic code" (mainly by varying the lengths of the plastic tubes) from more successful creatures into other designs. There is a startlingly alien eeriness, as well as fascinating beauty, in watching these skeletal assemblages of yellow tubes sitting on a beach, translucent membranes undulating in the wind, then suddenly walking away for a few steps with remarkable grace.
The Walking House concept is evocative of one of Jansen's beasts called the Animaris Rhinoceros Transport, a wind-powered two-ton design resembling a titanic crab that can carry passengers. Jansen is working on a 12-ton version called the Animaris Mammoth, which incorporates several interior rooms. I'm quite surprised that there is no mention of this remarkable visionary in such an appropriate Slashdot thread. This guy will make everyone who thought they had mad Tinkertoy skillz feel like dolts.
Oh. My. God.
A million grammarians cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.