That raises an interesting point about the intersection of copyright and trademark. If I write a version of, say, Snow White, that is similar-but-legally-distinct from the Disney version, am I infringing on the use of their Snow White trademark if my Snow White looks nothing like the Disney Snow White?
Thanks for answering the OP. I had no idea who Murakami was (is?) so I too was trying to figure out why this was on Slashdot.
Any particular works / translations of his you recommend?
Can you back up those assertions or is this just doom-and-gloom prognostication? I don't like Trump, but we're Slashdot, we should be holding ourselves to a higher standard of conversation.
It's one of two things: 1) Skills mismatch: employers can't find personnel with the skill-set they need. I don't work in the tech sector so I won't comment on the HB1 visa debacle, but I know this is a big issue in construction and civil infrastructure sectors. 2)Regional mismatch: the jobs are in places where people aren't.
As for Seattle, I'd guess that most of the street people don't have the necessary skills to work in the tech sector. That said, feel free to donate your time and energy to teach a few of them how to code.
No, not even close. Wikipedia has a list of military bases in Europe. The bases in Italy provide easy access to the Mediterranean. The bases in Germany, particularly Grafenwoehr and Hoehnfelds, are large-scale maneuver training areas, used by both NATO members and US allies.
Fascinating. Again I'm not opposed to buses, I just don't get why most of them seem to be run by crayon eaters or people who actively have their user base.
I'm inclined to agree with you on public transit in the forms of subways or commuter rail but all bus systems seem to universally suck (with the exception of Helsinki, Finland). I've used bus systems in multiple cities and countries and they are universally more difficult to use then either the subway or commuter rail systems. Assuming the schedule is posted, it's often illegible due to age or the scratches on the cheap plexiglass the stations use for posting it. Or it's a public holiday and the bus lines are running on a different schedule that isn't posted at the stop but can only be gotten from the local transit authority website. Change-overs or bus-line intersections or whatever you want to call them are rarely posted. Often times the transit routes themselves aren't posted or they're posted by color (for example, the Red Line) while the bus sports a number (the #1 Line) and there's no key/legend to let you know what is what.
Assuming you can figure out how to get from A to B, often times getting from A to B takes WAAAY longer than it would take by either subway or commuter rail or car. Using San Antonio as an example, though admittedly an extreme one, it took an acquaintance of mine 45 minutes to walk from his apartment to his job. Using the bus, it took two hours and two transit-line changeovers.
Every subway or commuter rail line I've ever ridden (all European admittedly) has had a nicely labeled sign at every stop, with clear instructions on how the lines intersected, where the various stops were within the city, and what time you could expect the next train for normal workdays, weekends, and public holidays.
In short, I don't object to buses in principle, but in practice they're often poorly executed. Maybe fire the bus people and hire some commuter rail / subway folks to design their information signs.
Google "The Toxoplasma of Rage"* It's an interesting article on the outrage cycle that fuels clickbait and other type articles.
*Posting the title, but no link, as the writer recently asked people to stop linking directly to his page from major news media. I'm honestly not sure if Slashdot counts or not.
Unfortunately, the DRC has an electricity distribution issue. While the DRC has a lot of power-generating capability, civil infrastructure development is very lopsided and a lot of areas suffer rolling blackouts or brownouts.
Also, never underestimate how far dictators will go to stay in power.
Eh, having survived a US public education I can see both points. I hated a good chunk of the assigned school reading (the overriding theme of one particular year was "everyone dies alone in the rain"). The stuff that wasn't terrible in hindsight*, we had to analyze and dissect every single sentence and word nuance to write some ridiculous essay on the author's intent or biases or hidden meanings or anarcho-facist transcendentalist leaning or what-have-you. I can understand how four years of that could kill someone's love of reading; it nearly killed mine. Fortunately I discovered Terry Pratchett and Orscon Scott Card in about the same time frame and remembered that books didn't have to be complete dreck.
*Incidentally I picked up some of the writers (Shakespeare, Vonnegut,Hemmingway) later on in life and found, to my pleasant surprise, that they're much more readable when you're reading for entertainment and not critique.
Podcasts: "The Magnus Archives" is a collection of short horror stories, each narrated by the Head Archivists of the eponymous Magnus Institute. Each of the stories works as a stand-alone, but the writers have been slowing tying threads together into larger story arcs. Season Two finished in August and Season Three just started up last month. I also recommend "King Falls AM", which about a pair of late-night AM radio talk show hosts and the weirdness in their town. It's similar to "Welcome To Nightvale" but hasn't achieved WtN's level of pretentiousness.
For television, I recommend: "The Punisher" if for no other reason than the fight scene at the end of the first episode set to Tom Waits' "Hell Broke Loose", "Defenders", because Iron Fist is not nearly as annoying when he's part of a group,
For movies: "Gaurdians of the Galaxy Vol 2", "Valerian", "Wonder Woman", and "Going In Style" are not transcendent works of art but are are very entertaining.
That's fair; I'll concede the point about Allied intervention. As to the Soviet-Nazi relationship, most counterfactual scenarios I can think of have them coming to blows at some point. Still, Hitler handed Stalin probably the greatest propaganda victory Ol' Joe could have hoped for.
I also recommend "In Search of Putin's Russia", if you've got the time.
Another thing we tend to forget in the West is the effect the downfall of the Soviet Union had on the Russian national psyche. Communism may not have been very popular, but it was stability and there was a certain amount of prestige in being a citizen of a superpower. Imagine the US collapses one day, the economy tanks, and the Reconquista that Mexico's academia dreams of happens. What would that be like for the US, to suddenly find itself with distrustful nations at its border? Then imagine these newly independent nations of Texas, California, Arizona, what have you, start getting buddy-buddy with, say, China or Iran. How would the US react to something like that? This is a (very) rough approximation of the Russian situation following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin's demonstrating, very publicly, that Russia can and will square off against the US and that it's not some broken shell of a nation.
Please note that I'm not excusing Putin or the Russian actions in Crimea. I'm just pointing out that he's hardly the mustache-twirling Snidely Whiplash that television news has made him out to be.
While Allied intervention exacerbated existing problems, it's a stretch to say that it had a hand in the collapse (assuming you use the phrase "had a small hand in" to mean "was a partial cause of"). Russia had serious domestic problems and the brutality of WWI didn't help. One could arguably blame Germany for sending Lenin back, but by the time he arrived on the scene, the whole edifice of state was teetering anyway. Edward Crankshaw's "Shadow of the Winter Palace" is a good summation of the conditions that led to revolution.
The Russian people, in general, don't have a particularly hopeful view of the future and historically seem to prefer stability over autonomy, provided the living conditions aren't too bad. To borrow an internet meme, the history of Russia can be summed up in a single sentence "And then things got worse." Russia has had two major governmental collapses in the last century,* one of which the US was openly attempting. Russians see the US, and democracy in general, as an instigator of chaos. There's an excellent article in the Atlantic this month if you've got 30 minutes to read it
*Granted, there are African nations that have two government collapses before lunch, but Africa is its own basket of problems.
On the philosophical side, your argument is only valid if there is somewhere left to go that is not part of the collective. (Yes, I know Apple wants to be part of the collective, but the whole idea of social contracts bug me.)
Slashdot Mirror
Google and Facebook are out to make money. The Chinese are out to be a superpower. I like my chances better with the US than with China.
That's about 1.5% of the total US population. What point are you trying to make here?
That raises an interesting point about the intersection of copyright and trademark. If I write a version of, say, Snow White, that is similar-but-legally-distinct from the Disney version, am I infringing on the use of their Snow White trademark if my Snow White looks nothing like the Disney Snow White?
Thanks for answering the OP. I had no idea who Murakami was (is?) so I too was trying to figure out why this was on Slashdot. Any particular works / translations of his you recommend?
That'll do wonders to help the housing crisis, I'm sure.
Yes, this. I just want to eat my meal. I will signal if I need something. Otherwise, let me alone.
Can you back up those assertions or is this just doom-and-gloom prognostication? I don't like Trump, but we're Slashdot, we should be holding ourselves to a higher standard of conversation.
It's one of two things:
1) Skills mismatch: employers can't find personnel with the skill-set they need. I don't work in the tech sector so I won't comment on the HB1 visa debacle, but I know this is a big issue in construction and civil infrastructure sectors.
2)Regional mismatch: the jobs are in places where people aren't.
As for Seattle, I'd guess that most of the street people don't have the necessary skills to work in the tech sector. That said, feel free to donate your time and energy to teach a few of them how to code.
"Universal"
"You keep on using that word. I do not think that word means what you think that word means.
I think the main one left in Europe is in Italy
No, not even close. Wikipedia has a list of military bases in Europe. The bases in Italy provide easy access to the Mediterranean. The bases in Germany, particularly Grafenwoehr and Hoehnfelds, are large-scale maneuver training areas, used by both NATO members and US allies.
Fascinating. Again I'm not opposed to buses, I just don't get why most of them seem to be run by crayon eaters or people who actively have their user base.
I'm inclined to agree with you on public transit in the forms of subways or commuter rail but all bus systems seem to universally suck (with the exception of Helsinki, Finland). I've used bus systems in multiple cities and countries and they are universally more difficult to use then either the subway or commuter rail systems. Assuming the schedule is posted, it's often illegible due to age or the scratches on the cheap plexiglass the stations use for posting it. Or it's a public holiday and the bus lines are running on a different schedule that isn't posted at the stop but can only be gotten from the local transit authority website. Change-overs or bus-line intersections or whatever you want to call them are rarely posted. Often times the transit routes themselves aren't posted or they're posted by color (for example, the Red Line) while the bus sports a number (the #1 Line) and there's no key/legend to let you know what is what.
Assuming you can figure out how to get from A to B, often times getting from A to B takes WAAAY longer than it would take by either subway or commuter rail or car. Using San Antonio as an example, though admittedly an extreme one, it took an acquaintance of mine 45 minutes to walk from his apartment to his job. Using the bus, it took two hours and two transit-line changeovers.
Every subway or commuter rail line I've ever ridden (all European admittedly) has had a nicely labeled sign at every stop, with clear instructions on how the lines intersected, where the various stops were within the city, and what time you could expect the next train for normal workdays, weekends, and public holidays.
In short, I don't object to buses in principle, but in practice they're often poorly executed. Maybe fire the bus people and hire some commuter rail / subway folks to design their information signs.
Google "The Toxoplasma of Rage"* It's an interesting article on the outrage cycle that fuels clickbait and other type articles.
*Posting the title, but no link, as the writer recently asked people to stop linking directly to his page from major news media. I'm honestly not sure if Slashdot counts or not.
The US government gets its money from the taxpayers. It then follows that the taxpayers are indeed the ones paying for it.
Unfortunately, the DRC has an electricity distribution issue. While the DRC has a lot of power-generating capability, civil infrastructure development is very lopsided and a lot of areas suffer rolling blackouts or brownouts. Also, never underestimate how far dictators will go to stay in power.
Eh, having survived a US public education I can see both points. I hated a good chunk of the assigned school reading (the overriding theme of one particular year was "everyone dies alone in the rain"). The stuff that wasn't terrible in hindsight*, we had to analyze and dissect every single sentence and word nuance to write some ridiculous essay on the author's intent or biases or hidden meanings or anarcho-facist transcendentalist leaning or what-have-you. I can understand how four years of that could kill someone's love of reading; it nearly killed mine. Fortunately I discovered Terry Pratchett and Orscon Scott Card in about the same time frame and remembered that books didn't have to be complete dreck.
*Incidentally I picked up some of the writers (Shakespeare, Vonnegut,Hemmingway) later on in life and found, to my pleasant surprise, that they're much more readable when you're reading for entertainment and not critique.
Podcasts: "The Magnus Archives" is a collection of short horror stories, each narrated by the Head Archivists of the eponymous Magnus Institute. Each of the stories works as a stand-alone, but the writers have been slowing tying threads together into larger story arcs. Season Two finished in August and Season Three just started up last month. I also recommend "King Falls AM", which about a pair of late-night AM radio talk show hosts and the weirdness in their town. It's similar to "Welcome To Nightvale" but hasn't achieved WtN's level of pretentiousness.
For television, I recommend: "The Punisher" if for no other reason than the fight scene at the end of the first episode set to Tom Waits' "Hell Broke Loose", "Defenders", because Iron Fist is not nearly as annoying when he's part of a group,
For movies: "Gaurdians of the Galaxy Vol 2", "Valerian", "Wonder Woman", and "Going In Style" are not transcendent works of art but are are very entertaining.
Seconded. Iron Fist is WAY more tolerable as part of an ensemble.
Weird Al has you covered."
That's fair; I'll concede the point about Allied intervention. As to the Soviet-Nazi relationship, most counterfactual scenarios I can think of have them coming to blows at some point. Still, Hitler handed Stalin probably the greatest propaganda victory Ol' Joe could have hoped for.
I also recommend "In Search of Putin's Russia", if you've got the time. Another thing we tend to forget in the West is the effect the downfall of the Soviet Union had on the Russian national psyche. Communism may not have been very popular, but it was stability and there was a certain amount of prestige in being a citizen of a superpower. Imagine the US collapses one day, the economy tanks, and the Reconquista that Mexico's academia dreams of happens. What would that be like for the US, to suddenly find itself with distrustful nations at its border? Then imagine these newly independent nations of Texas, California, Arizona, what have you, start getting buddy-buddy with, say, China or Iran. How would the US react to something like that? This is a (very) rough approximation of the Russian situation following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin's demonstrating, very publicly, that Russia can and will square off against the US and that it's not some broken shell of a nation. Please note that I'm not excusing Putin or the Russian actions in Crimea. I'm just pointing out that he's hardly the mustache-twirling Snidely Whiplash that television news has made him out to be.
While Allied intervention exacerbated existing problems, it's a stretch to say that it had a hand in the collapse (assuming you use the phrase "had a small hand in" to mean "was a partial cause of"). Russia had serious domestic problems and the brutality of WWI didn't help. One could arguably blame Germany for sending Lenin back, but by the time he arrived on the scene, the whole edifice of state was teetering anyway. Edward Crankshaw's "Shadow of the Winter Palace" is a good summation of the conditions that led to revolution.
The Russian people, in general, don't have a particularly hopeful view of the future and historically seem to prefer stability over autonomy, provided the living conditions aren't too bad. To borrow an internet meme, the history of Russia can be summed up in a single sentence "And then things got worse." Russia has had two major governmental collapses in the last century,* one of which the US was openly attempting. Russians see the US, and democracy in general, as an instigator of chaos. There's an excellent article in the Atlantic this month if you've got 30 minutes to read it
*Granted, there are African nations that have two government collapses before lunch, but Africa is its own basket of problems.
On the philosophical side, your argument is only valid if there is somewhere left to go that is not part of the collective. (Yes, I know Apple wants to be part of the collective, but the whole idea of social contracts bug me.)
And what qualifications do you boast that would make you such an authority?