What does our education system already teach them - as long as you're answering questions correctly, you're doing okay? It's easy to put decent solutions in unsavoury words.
I don't think "doing things well results in rewards" is that bad a lesson to teach kids, and I'm a teacher.
A case of RTFA in this case, a careless untruthful comment on the summary.
"In a document from the Clark County prosecutor, he alleges she hacked his account, changed his password and posted things that involve slander about his personal life."
The posts weren't from her account on his statuses or whatever, it sounds like she actually went onto HIS account and posted slanderous things in his name (or at least, that is what is being accused). Sounds a little more serious now.
Mod parent up. I'm sorry, but if you can't find decent new music these days, you aren't looking. Besides, there's plenty of good rap. Saying one genre is terrible and is responsible for the downfall of music lacks imagination and is usually terribly wrong. Music is better and more varied than its ever been, and if you have exposure to anything other than MTV, you will realise this.
"... I mean, we could have dropped the last half of the single player in GoW2 and made that downloadable, but of course that really would have upset people who don't have Live. I don't want to hurt customers who are just trying to play our game."
There are other factors too. In the UK, whoever loses the suit has to pay the other side's legal fees. So you have to be fairly confident that you're going to win, as the risks of losing are substantially higher.
There was a recent case with Max Mosely (a motorsporting exec who was accused of indulging in Nazi orgies) where he was awarded £60,000 in damages, plus £300,000 in legal fees.
To be honest, I do think that Facebook should ban games that rely solely upon inviting other people (chain letters in everything but name).
BUT. Everyone I see complain about applications probably doesn't realise that facebook added a "block this application" link months ago. You can also minimise the app boxes on each page and that application will be always minimised on EVERY page.
I'd blame human stupidity over the application designers/facebook staff. Some people (mysteriously) seem to like these zombie applications. Most of my friends don't, or maybe that app blocking thing finally kicked in. All I know is that it doesn't bother me anymore.
It is often forgetten that labour itself is a commodity that is bought and sold. Unions are monopolies of labour. Imagine if every company decided to collude and not serve you unless you paid an arbitrarily higher amount that they deemed to be 'fair'? Fairness is in the eye of the beholder.
As for the original question of corporate citizenship - it reeks of protectionism to me. Corporations are there to serve the consumer, NOT the other way round. Anyone unconvinced should give Frédéric Bastiat's satire The Candlemaker's Petition a read: http://silentpc.org/university/Candlemaker.pdf
Growth means nothing, really. China has been growing fast because it started from comparitively little. The US is growing slowly because it was already very productive. There's nowhere it can go to get the vast amounts of growth China is experiencing. It's not really a valid comparison at all.
I agree in principle that the chinese have a lot to be happy about with their government compared to the past. But they have a lot to be angry about as well. And the government should be afraid: if the chinese are willing to get riled up en masse about the tibetian protests, what happens if they get similarly angry at their own country?
Not that I don't think this has enormous potential, but there is a downside people should keep in mind.
Albedo. This matters. Remember that carbon is dangerous because it helps the atmosphere retain more energy than it should? Well, if the earth absorbs more energy from the sun instead of reflecting it, this can have a similar effect. Now, the amount of energy it absorbs depends upon how dark the material is, and I don't know if you've noticed, but the desert is pretty lightly coloured. If you build stuff over the desert that absorbs more energy than it did before, it does directly contribute to climate change. Even if you're turning it to electrical energy, it'll find its way back to heat sooner or later (good old thermodynamics).
The question I guess, is whether the benefits outweigh the consequences.
One of my teachers in the physics department mused upon this a few years ago, and he said there was actually a paper proving from a logical/mathematical perspective that all units *had* to be integer combinations. Something to do with how we model dimensions. So, no m(1/2)s(-2) etc.
I understand what you mean, but it's not something that hasn't been considered in scientific circles.
Hang on, why do I constantly see this logic trotted out?
"vista's reputation is justifiably bad.. hence why I'm never buying a copy"
wait, what? You have no idea what it's like, therefore you definitely know it's terrible? I can understand erring on the side of caution, but jumping on the bandwagon isn't justifiable.
I have vista on this computer and it's been alright. It more or less feels like an unnecessarily pretty xp with some much needed features (search bar instead of start menu). I wouldn't recommend buying it outright for $x million, but if it comes with a new computer it's not the end of the world.
Some modern art is nonsense. But not all of it. The stuff I have real problems with is that which lacks any kind of imagination. I go to a gallery to see new stuff. I couldn't give a damn what it means, just what it looks like. If something uses an interesting technique or makes an interesting array of shapes, that's neat. As long as it looks good. Roy Lichenstein's work looks like bollocks until you see it in real life - then it blows you away. And that's what good art should do. The breaking point for me was Kapoor's Marsyas. (http://leftundone.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/marsyas.jpg)
People get too uppity about art anyway. Yeah, some stuff gets sold for an insane amount of money. But who pays for that..? Stupid millionaires? Better them than me.
1. From what I've heard, fact. They have very rudimentary quantum computers working. We're talking 4 qubits or so, nothing fancy.
2. The problem with talking about quantum physics is that you deal with principles quite unlike real life. Every particle is a wave (see de broglie). It can be represented by a wavefunction, the square of which is the probability of detecting it at any given point. Different energies represent different waves, but not every wavefunction is possible. Hence, only certain energies can exist, meaning we have discretely based quanta.
Heisenberg's principle is not a technical limitation, but an artefact of the maths. It's impossible to seperate some properties from others. The function of momentum, for example, is linked to the function of position (if I remember correctly, it's ih d/dx). The more you narrow down the probability of one function, the other gets wider and wider. It's like playdoh - the more you squish it, the more it spreads out in every other direction. If you're mathematically inclined, the function of space is actually a fourier transform of the function of momentum, and vice versa.
Hang on. You're putting words in my mouth. I'm just saying you can see how it'd be a useful tool, another way to cross reference suspects and their movements. I certainly don't think it's worth the severe breach of freedom or the potential fuckups that may ensue, but I can see why MI5 would see the data as useful.
Actually, there are two types of oyster card, but not the types you've described.
You can buy photocards or topup Oysters. The latter is as you described, you top it up a bit like a mobile and enjoy reasonably priced travel. You can add auto-topup to it, but it's still fundamentally the same.
The other type is the photocard, which is for season ticket holders. I have a student photocard, because I'm a smug git.
It's not really that stupid if the terrorist keeps on using it. If you know where they've travelled, you can fit it to CCTV data, and see what they look like. Then, next time they use it, you can apprehend them. It is useful. If worryingly Orwellian.
"somehow find a way" is the key thing. Communism is an interesting thought exercise, but bogged down in the fact that a village of 20 is absolutely nothing like a thronging society. And people will act completely differently.
This isn't entirely stupid. First off, lots of people have already mentioned that it won't apply outside of Egypt, and secondly, it obviously isn't for the geometrical structure, just the obvious purpose of selling something that is a likeness of the ancient monument. Also, this is not an unusual thing to do. The illuminations on the Eiffel tower are copyrighted, it's illegal to take a picture of them and sell it, publish it, et cetera, without permission (of the company who put them up, I think, not sure though).
Personally I'm worried this will give the government a monopoly over one of the most lucrative parts of the economy. A lot of people make their living by selling merchandise, and if the government decide to charge a significant royalty for this stuff (which they know they can get away with) it could destroy a lot of livelihoods. Giza is a pretty grim place as it is.
I'm typing this from Cairo, if you were wondering.
That's basically quantum computing for you. You can get them involved in such a state that they can influence one another even though they're not even next to one another (action at a distance). Hence they're sort of invisibly entangled within one another, if you mess around with one the other will instantly change. This is pretty great though, because if you can get all these things to represent a calculation, and act upon it, it instantly changes at this other place you can read them. Even better, if someone else tries to read it at the other place it'll show up back at the origin.
Quantum isn't really a buzzword, it actually means that it's taking advantage of the fact that energy is discrete rather than continuous. It's supposed to be used in opposition to classical or Newtonian mechanics, which assumes that energy is continuous, and has a huge amount of crazy consequences.
If you're REALLY interested in learning about quantum mechanics I'll one up the sister post and recommend you some of Feynman's lectures. In the first video here he whips through almost the entire history of physics and why QM is different: http://www.vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8
Actually, in South America, they typically refer to South America as just America and are quite pissed off that the common usage of the phrase in the western world is to refer to the United States. I guess if you were being pedantic, it would be "citizen of the United States of America" rather than American. It has no use in common parlance, but if you ever want to be a diplomat, then you'd have to get used to saying it!
If you implemented gun control in the US, I'm sure only the outlaws would have them, because it's a different culture, more difficult to watch your borders etc. However, it's not really the case here. From what I've seen, the only people with guns are either gangs (who use them to shoot one another, and not anybody else) or people who want to rob banks/hijack airports etc. And there are plenty of measures at both those locations to make sure that anybody who does have a gun doesn't have a significant advantage. Basically put, only those who have bigger fish to fry have guns. They're that scarce. And appropriate police officers have army issue assault rifles.
It's not like it's reduced violent crime or anything, now the petty muggers etc just use knives instead. At least it gives the victim a running start, though. And at least you don't have the risk of blowing your own family to pieces by accident (I believe it's some hideous statistic like you're 5 times more likely to do that, but don't quote me on that).
I don't know. Call me a socialist or impractical or whatever you want, but I kinda don't see the point of selling something to the general public that only has illegal uses. If you want to protect yourself, it makes more sense to take a martial art or something.
What does our education system already teach them - as long as you're answering questions correctly, you're doing okay? It's easy to put decent solutions in unsavoury words.
I don't think "doing things well results in rewards" is that bad a lesson to teach kids, and I'm a teacher.
A case of RTFA in this case, a careless untruthful comment on the summary.
"In a document from the Clark County prosecutor, he alleges she hacked his account, changed his password and posted things that involve slander about his personal life."
The posts weren't from her account on his statuses or whatever, it sounds like she actually went onto HIS account and posted slanderous things in his name (or at least, that is what is being accused). Sounds a little more serious now.
Believe it or not, we know what baseball is in the UK and how it works. It was derived from Rounders which is very popular with school children.
Mod parent up. I'm sorry, but if you can't find decent new music these days, you aren't looking. Besides, there's plenty of good rap. Saying one genre is terrible and is responsible for the downfall of music lacks imagination and is usually terribly wrong. Music is better and more varied than its ever been, and if you have exposure to anything other than MTV, you will realise this.
Cue the "you must be new here", but RTFA.
"... I mean, we could have dropped the last half of the single player in GoW2 and made that downloadable, but of course that really would have upset people who don't have Live. I don't want to hurt customers who are just trying to play our game."
There are other factors too. In the UK, whoever loses the suit has to pay the other side's legal fees. So you have to be fairly confident that you're going to win, as the risks of losing are substantially higher.
There was a recent case with Max Mosely (a motorsporting exec who was accused of indulging in Nazi orgies) where he was awarded £60,000 in damages, plus £300,000 in legal fees.
To be honest, I do think that Facebook should ban games that rely solely upon inviting other people (chain letters in everything but name).
BUT. Everyone I see complain about applications probably doesn't realise that facebook added a "block this application" link months ago. You can also minimise the app boxes on each page and that application will be always minimised on EVERY page.
I'd blame human stupidity over the application designers/facebook staff. Some people (mysteriously) seem to like these zombie applications. Most of my friends don't, or maybe that app blocking thing finally kicked in. All I know is that it doesn't bother me anymore.
Parent is spot on.
It is often forgetten that labour itself is a commodity that is bought and sold. Unions are monopolies of labour. Imagine if every company decided to collude and not serve you unless you paid an arbitrarily higher amount that they deemed to be 'fair'? Fairness is in the eye of the beholder.
As for the original question of corporate citizenship - it reeks of protectionism to me. Corporations are there to serve the consumer, NOT the other way round. Anyone unconvinced should give Frédéric Bastiat's satire The Candlemaker's Petition a read: http://silentpc.org/university/Candlemaker.pdf
Growth means nothing, really. China has been growing fast because it started from comparitively little. The US is growing slowly because it was already very productive. There's nowhere it can go to get the vast amounts of growth China is experiencing. It's not really a valid comparison at all.
I agree in principle that the chinese have a lot to be happy about with their government compared to the past. But they have a lot to be angry about as well. And the government should be afraid: if the chinese are willing to get riled up en masse about the tibetian protests, what happens if they get similarly angry at their own country?
Not that I don't think this has enormous potential, but there is a downside people should keep in mind.
Albedo. This matters. Remember that carbon is dangerous because it helps the atmosphere retain more energy than it should? Well, if the earth absorbs more energy from the sun instead of reflecting it, this can have a similar effect. Now, the amount of energy it absorbs depends upon how dark the material is, and I don't know if you've noticed, but the desert is pretty lightly coloured. If you build stuff over the desert that absorbs more energy than it did before, it does directly contribute to climate change. Even if you're turning it to electrical energy, it'll find its way back to heat sooner or later (good old thermodynamics).
The question I guess, is whether the benefits outweigh the consequences.
One of my teachers in the physics department mused upon this a few years ago, and he said there was actually a paper proving from a logical/mathematical perspective that all units *had* to be integer combinations. Something to do with how we model dimensions. So, no m(1/2)s(-2) etc.
I understand what you mean, but it's not something that hasn't been considered in scientific circles.
Hang on, why do I constantly see this logic trotted out?
"vista's reputation is justifiably bad.. hence why I'm never buying a copy"
wait, what? You have no idea what it's like, therefore you definitely know it's terrible? I can understand erring on the side of caution, but jumping on the bandwagon isn't justifiable.
I have vista on this computer and it's been alright. It more or less feels like an unnecessarily pretty xp with some much needed features (search bar instead of start menu). I wouldn't recommend buying it outright for $x million, but if it comes with a new computer it's not the end of the world.
Some modern art is nonsense. But not all of it. The stuff I have real problems with is that which lacks any kind of imagination. I go to a gallery to see new stuff. I couldn't give a damn what it means, just what it looks like. If something uses an interesting technique or makes an interesting array of shapes, that's neat. As long as it looks good. Roy Lichenstein's work looks like bollocks until you see it in real life - then it blows you away. And that's what good art should do. The breaking point for me was Kapoor's Marsyas. (http://leftundone.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/marsyas.jpg)
People get too uppity about art anyway. Yeah, some stuff gets sold for an insane amount of money. But who pays for that..? Stupid millionaires? Better them than me.
I've had to do similar things on XP. Is it OEM? They can be surprisingly touchy about changing hardware.
1. From what I've heard, fact. They have very rudimentary quantum computers working. We're talking 4 qubits or so, nothing fancy.
2. The problem with talking about quantum physics is that you deal with principles quite unlike real life. Every particle is a wave (see de broglie). It can be represented by a wavefunction, the square of which is the probability of detecting it at any given point. Different energies represent different waves, but not every wavefunction is possible. Hence, only certain energies can exist, meaning we have discretely based quanta.
Heisenberg's principle is not a technical limitation, but an artefact of the maths.
It's impossible to seperate some properties from others. The function of momentum, for example, is linked to the function of position (if I remember correctly, it's ih d/dx). The more you narrow down the probability of one function, the other gets wider and wider. It's like playdoh - the more you squish it, the more it spreads out in every other direction. If you're mathematically inclined, the function of space is actually a fourier transform of the function of momentum, and vice versa.
- a physics student who's fed up of fourier
Hang on. You're putting words in my mouth. I'm just saying you can see how it'd be a useful tool, another way to cross reference suspects and their movements. I certainly don't think it's worth the severe breach of freedom or the potential fuckups that may ensue, but I can see why MI5 would see the data as useful.
The NHS is a bit broad, but the IT project in particular is a gigantic waste of money.
http://www.abcmoney.co.uk/news/3120062419.htm
My favourite bit of the article is the advert for BUPA.
Actually, all you need for that is a bucket of paint.
Actually, there are two types of oyster card, but not the types you've described.
You can buy photocards or topup Oysters. The latter is as you described, you top it up a bit like a mobile and enjoy reasonably priced travel. You can add auto-topup to it, but it's still fundamentally the same.
The other type is the photocard, which is for season ticket holders. I have a student photocard, because I'm a smug git.
It's not really that stupid if the terrorist keeps on using it. If you know where they've travelled, you can fit it to CCTV data, and see what they look like. Then, next time they use it, you can apprehend them. It is useful. If worryingly Orwellian.
"somehow find a way" is the key thing. Communism is an interesting thought exercise, but bogged down in the fact that a village of 20 is absolutely nothing like a thronging society. And people will act completely differently.
how the hell are their tactics anywhere near approaching evil? It's called competition. economics, anybody?
This isn't entirely stupid. First off, lots of people have already mentioned that it won't apply outside of Egypt, and secondly, it obviously isn't for the geometrical structure, just the obvious purpose of selling something that is a likeness of the ancient monument. Also, this is not an unusual thing to do. The illuminations on the Eiffel tower are copyrighted, it's illegal to take a picture of them and sell it, publish it, et cetera, without permission (of the company who put them up, I think, not sure though).
Personally I'm worried this will give the government a monopoly over one of the most lucrative parts of the economy. A lot of people make their living by selling merchandise, and if the government decide to charge a significant royalty for this stuff (which they know they can get away with) it could destroy a lot of livelihoods. Giza is a pretty grim place as it is.
I'm typing this from Cairo, if you were wondering.
That's basically quantum computing for you. You can get them involved in such a state that they can influence one another even though they're not even next to one another (action at a distance). Hence they're sort of invisibly entangled within one another, if you mess around with one the other will instantly change. This is pretty great though, because if you can get all these things to represent a calculation, and act upon it, it instantly changes at this other place you can read them. Even better, if someone else tries to read it at the other place it'll show up back at the origin.
Quantum isn't really a buzzword, it actually means that it's taking advantage of the fact that energy is discrete rather than continuous. It's supposed to be used in opposition to classical or Newtonian mechanics, which assumes that energy is continuous, and has a huge amount of crazy consequences.
If you're REALLY interested in learning about quantum mechanics I'll one up the sister post and recommend you some of Feynman's lectures. In the first video here he whips through almost the entire history of physics and why QM is different: http://www.vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8
Actually, in South America, they typically refer to South America as just America and are quite pissed off that the common usage of the phrase in the western world is to refer to the United States. I guess if you were being pedantic, it would be "citizen of the United States of America" rather than American. It has no use in common parlance, but if you ever want to be a diplomat, then you'd have to get used to saying it!
About your gun control bit:
If you implemented gun control in the US, I'm sure only the outlaws would have them, because it's a different culture, more difficult to watch your borders etc. However, it's not really the case here. From what I've seen, the only people with guns are either gangs (who use them to shoot one another, and not anybody else) or people who want to rob banks/hijack airports etc. And there are plenty of measures at both those locations to make sure that anybody who does have a gun doesn't have a significant advantage. Basically put, only those who have bigger fish to fry have guns. They're that scarce. And appropriate police officers have army issue assault rifles.
It's not like it's reduced violent crime or anything, now the petty muggers etc just use knives instead. At least it gives the victim a running start, though. And at least you don't have the risk of blowing your own family to pieces by accident (I believe it's some hideous statistic like you're 5 times more likely to do that, but don't quote me on that).
I don't know. Call me a socialist or impractical or whatever you want, but I kinda don't see the point of selling something to the general public that only has illegal uses. If you want to protect yourself, it makes more sense to take a martial art or something.