Yes I am. I have followed the midterm elections closely and it was not an issue. Or would be so kind to point me to a campaign site of a congressman or senator that proves me wrong? There are some, but if the campaign websites of the major candidates are any indication it's not high on the list.
As one of the slim majority of Americans who considers himself ethical and didn't have anything to do with Abu Ghraib I don't think your post is actually very insightful.
Of course you did not have anything to do with Abu Ghraib. But why is there no public outcry about the terrible things that are happening in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay? Why aren't more Americans angry about this? The Democrats won the midterm elections because of the war in Iraq. But it was not because of the 100,000 civilian deaths. It was not because of the atrocities and the torture. It wasn't even because of the fact that the war in Iraq has made America unsafer. It was because of the 2,800 Americans that have died in the conflict.
I can understand how families are angry that their sons, brothers and fathers will not come back. They have every right to be. But why weren't more Americans angry that president Bush practically legalised torture? The American soldiers fighting in Iraq went there to fight for the freedom of the Iraqi people. I'd say that the atrocities in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay are an insult to the memories to those who gave their lives
Yes, you had nothing to do with Abu Ghraib. But sometimes not having to do anything with something is not enough. After all, Edmund Burke was right when he said: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing"
Furthermore, C# is an ECMA standard and given the amounts of time and money MS has invested in evangelicalizing.NET, C# is here to stay. I've been working on it for 4 years and I don't see C# going away anytime soon.
You assume Perl programming is more fun than programming in.NET. This may be true for you but it's defintely not true for everyone. I like to develop in.NET and I like Visual Studio [1].
But I think that the main factor in determining if your job is fun is not necessarily the language and/or platform. It's what you're developing what counts. At home, I'm working on NXT#, a Mindstorms NXT library for C#. It's a lot of fun and it would also be fun if I was developing the library in Perl. (of course then the name would be NXT@#__$!;)
I can't speak for other parts of the world, but in the Netherlands IT is one of the best sectors to be in. Frankly, I have a hard time understanding all the people on slashdot talking about how shitty a job in IT is. Maybe things in the states are totally different (for one thing, the wages are even higher than here in the Netherlands). But there is little reason why IT could not be a pretty good career choice. Of course, there are some things which might help you along:
* Work on your social skills. It's not accurate along the board, but many people think that every IT specialist lives in his mothers' basement. Be sociable and this prejudice might turn out to be an advantage.
* Keep on learning. It's fun but it's also an investment in yourself. In few sectors knowledge is as volatile as in IT. Make sure you keep on top.
* Find an employer that fits your personality. Don't expect flexibility from a megacorporation and don't think small businesses will be able to buy you education.
* But most of all: Make sure you're doing something you like (most of the time). A great salary is of little use if you hate the work. If you enjoy your work, you'll be able to go the extra mile which will pay for itself in the long run.
No. It wouldn't. That sea level change would occur over quite a long time, as compared to human reaction time. We're not talking about Katrina here; Sunday, everything is fine, by Friday, the seawall is being smashed. No, we're talking about years, decades even, of creeping, sluggish, detectable only by instruments, rise. Consequently, all humans and their possessions and their lower-functioning chattels (children, pets, livestock, religious thinkers, politicians, lawyers -- listed in descending order of average creativity) would have plenty of time to develop, and pursue, an exit strategy.
Even if it takes a century the consequences would be profound. Population is clustered around the coasts. Moving New York would cost a fortune, even if you have some time.
In the meantime, while we hear you mooing about disasters, I would note that you conspicuously fail to list the improvements such changes would inevitably bring about. Areas that were arid would become able to support farming. Areas that just went underwater would provide new resources in terms of biological materials for coastal life forms. Fishing would benefit from both more area and more complex environments (think of man-made reefs, for instance.) Produce would move north by preference for temperature and precipitation, benefiting our northern neighbors and probably helping the soil by changing the crop types a little more radically than usual. Canada (and Siberia) might become the new "bread basket."
Of course there would be certain areas that would be better off. However, human activity is concentrated in the most suitable areas. That's why noone is living in the Sahara. moving to the new best areas would be a huge effort. I'm not saying the earth would be uninhabitable. I *am* saying that the effects on the global economy of adapting to the changes would be tremendous.
Tons of new jobs (and technologies) would arise to make areas just a little too close to sea level into diked environments similar to the Dutch approach. Did the Dutch elect to drown? No. So why does anyone else have to?
It's funny you mention this since I am Dutch. I was born 5m below sea level. 5 or 6 meters does not seem like a huge difference. However, this situation cost centuries to achieve. Upgrading the defences to a sea level of just a meter higher (and there are studies that indicate the possibility much larger deviations) would cost a fortune. I'd rather spend less money now (for instance on developement of better nuclear power plants).
Furthermore, people move all the time. Docks and warehouses crumble all the time. And these changes -- should they occur, which is not a given by any means -- will take so long that a move could be planned for over several generations. People move faster than that all of the time. I've moved several times in my life.
Moving is a lot more pleasant if you *choose* to do so.
Should we watch our emissions? Certainly. Should we keep our environment clean? You bet. But should we run bleating from side to side in our virtual cattle cage, worrying about global warming, trying to craft solutions for something we can't even scientifically identify as a problem as yet, and where the cries of "the coming catastrophe(s)" are utterly overblown? No. Definitely not.
Maybe you misread my post as advocating the sunshade solution. I'm not, since it's clearly ridiculous. However, I am advocating a sense of urgency that is largely missing. We should start keeping tabs on emissions. We should also work (much) harder on developing sustainable energy sources like better nuclear power plants for the short term and stuff like fusion plants, large scale concentrated power and what not.
We might be changing the environment, but it's still on a much smaller scale (a couple of PPM) than what a different species did billions of years ago (around 90%)
Be that as it may, those changes resulted in catastrophic changes. Life did survive but a sea level change of a mere meter would have catastrophic effects on society as we know it. Considering the fact that most of our population concentrations live near the sea it's not just Bangladesh who'd be in big trouble.
Thanks for the obligatory relativistic post but I just can't understand how a (fortunately declining) number of Americans support acts that are totally contrary to all the groundlines laid down in your wonderful constitution. No seriously. I know it may sound sarcastic but the way the American Constitution specifies which issues should be handled bu which level of government and, more importantly, which issues should be left up to individual people themselves is still as inspiring now as it was more than two centuries ago.
Something repeatedly bothers me. We act like global warming caused by humans means the end of days, but surely the earth has undergone far more cataclysmic changes (such as after supervolcanoes), even during the lifespan of humanity, and we've lived to tell the tale?
Oh yes, we have survived. But barely. According to the Toba Catastrophe Theory the Lake Toba eruption reduced the total number of human beings to 1000-10000. We also survived the plague, which killed of a third of Europe's population in the middle ages.
But surviving doesn't mean a walk in the park. Yes. We would survive sea levels rising a couple of feet. I live in Holland and we've been fighting the water for centuries. Now, we're more prosperous than ever so we'll be able to build the dykes. But countries like Bangladesh (which floods like every two years already) would be in serious trouble and would not be able to do a thing about it.
Perhaps it's just now that we're so widely knowledgeable (if not intelligent) about our world at large, we realise just how many people will be outright fucked over by the coming changes. I'm sure humanity will survive, regardless of what happens. Anyone recall Daisyworld and biodiversity versus adverse conditions from biology class?
You are right if bare survival is your criterium of success. But I'd prefer to aim a little higher than that.
Oh and of course I am aware that I'm talking about global warming, which has very little to do with the hole in the ozone layer. But the point remains valid.
Chernobyl was a very serious incident. WHO attributed 56 direct deaths and possibly as many as extra 4000-6000 cancer deaths in the long term. (source 1), (source 2). However, you can't compare the Chernobyl reactor to western reactors of that day and age and certainly not to new types of reactors with passive safety. Three Mile Island is considered to be worlds' second worst nuclear accident. The death toll? 0. Compare that to the thousands of people that die in Chinese coal mines every year. (source)
We're told that current nuclear plants are safe, and not like the ones that exploded or went up in flames. At the time the plants which are now acknowledged to be dangerous were being constructed, the public were also told that they were completely safe. The public can be forgiven for not believing that an industry with a history of serial lies on safety is now both safe and truthful about it for once.
They ARE safe, even the ones that were being built back then. There is no such thing as 100% safety but the safety record of western nuclear power plants is way better than any other industry. Bhopal anyone?
Also, I don't suppose they were actually intending to have any accidents, or for some of the radioactive leaks - though BNFL's own propaganda admits they deliberately discharged nuclear waste into the sea. Humans make mistakes, which is another reason nuclear isn't trusted.
That's why we need to keep investing ways to make better use of nuclear fuel. A lot of promising research has been done in that area, like the Integral Fast Reactor, which by the way is even safer than contempary reactors.
Thirdly, terrorism. You don't get coal-fired suicide bombers.
It's a lot easier to blow up a refinery, which would cause vastly more damage. Containment buildings are actually built to withstand a 747 flying into it.
sounds like it just speeds up existing AI routines..... and existing AI routines, well, SUCK.
That's largely because most CPU cycles go to the pretty graphics. More computing power might help the AI in some games (although many AI routines are basically flawed anyway). This chip offers a more powerful tool to the AI programmer. It's still up to him to make an AI that's not totally stupid.
If you were an english nut, you would know that using 'gay' for homosexuals is also a quite recent development. 'Gay' used to mean 'happy'. Of course, complaining about the happy lag doesn't make much sense either:)
In Doom the camera was fixed behind a weapon. You have a pistol, a shotgun, a rocket launcher, a machine gun and two energy guns (one fast and weak, and the other slow but powerful). Also you could use a chainsaw.
Today games have lost the chainsaw, and added a sniper rifle. So much for gameplay advance.
I'm still waiting for the sniper chain saw. Now THAT's gameplay advance!
I believe XHTML 2.0 will ultimately receive widespread acceptance and adoption.
Yeah right, just like CSS2. and XHTML1.0... 'Adoption' is not just not exploding when encountering XHTML2.0 - it means full support for the entire standard. And unfortunately we're not there yet for standards which have been around for years. I don't see why things will go differently for XHTML2.0
Slashdot Mirror
You're serious??
Yes I am. I have followed the midterm elections closely and it was not an issue. Or would be so kind to point me to a campaign site of a congressman or senator that proves me wrong? There are some, but if the campaign websites of the major candidates are any indication it's not high on the list.
Linus, RMS, Tim Berners-Lee, and Jimmy Wales are my biggest heroes.
Jim, is that you?
As one of the slim majority of Americans who considers himself ethical and didn't have anything to do with Abu Ghraib I don't think your post is actually very insightful.
Of course you did not have anything to do with Abu Ghraib. But why is there no public outcry about the terrible things that are happening in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay? Why aren't more Americans angry about this? The Democrats won the midterm elections because of the war in Iraq. But it was not because of the 100,000 civilian deaths. It was not because of the atrocities and the torture. It wasn't even because of the fact that the war in Iraq has made America unsafer. It was because of the 2,800 Americans that have died in the conflict.
I can understand how families are angry that their sons, brothers and fathers will not come back. They have every right to be. But why weren't more Americans angry that president Bush practically legalised torture? The American soldiers fighting in Iraq went there to fight for the freedom of the Iraqi people. I'd say that the atrocities in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay are an insult to the memories to those who gave their lives
Yes, you had nothing to do with Abu Ghraib. But sometimes not having to do anything with something is not enough. After all, Edmund Burke was right when he said: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing"
VB != VBScript != J++ != VB.Net != C#.
Furthermore, C# is an ECMA standard and given the amounts of time and money MS has invested in evangelicalizing .NET, C# is here to stay. I've been working on it for 4 years and I don't see C# going away anytime soon.
You assume Perl programming is more fun than programming in .NET. This may be true for you but it's defintely not true for everyone. I like to develop in .NET and I like Visual Studio [1].
;)
But I think that the main factor in determining if your job is fun is not necessarily the language and/or platform. It's what you're developing what counts. At home, I'm working on NXT#, a Mindstorms NXT library for C#. It's a lot of fun and it would also be fun if I was developing the library in Perl. (of course then the name would be NXT@#__$!
[1] Please don't hurt me, Slashdot crowd.
I can't speak for other parts of the world, but in the Netherlands IT is one of the best sectors to be in. Frankly, I have a hard time understanding all the people on slashdot talking about how shitty a job in IT is. Maybe things in the states are totally different (for one thing, the wages are even higher than here in the Netherlands). But there is little reason why IT could not be a pretty good career choice. Of course, there are some things which might help you along:
* Work on your social skills. It's not accurate along the board, but many people think that every IT specialist lives in his mothers' basement. Be sociable and this prejudice might turn out to be an advantage.
* Keep on learning. It's fun but it's also an investment in yourself. In few sectors knowledge is as volatile as in IT. Make sure you keep on top.
* Find an employer that fits your personality. Don't expect flexibility from a megacorporation and don't think small businesses will be able to buy you education.
* But most of all: Make sure you're doing something you like (most of the time). A great salary is of little use if you hate the work. If you enjoy your work, you'll be able to go the extra mile which will pay for itself in the long run.
Pretty detailed shots too, and in one you could even see me mowing the lawn in the backyard!
p.And this doesn't even concern you a little bit?
No. It wouldn't. That sea level change would occur over quite a long time, as compared to human reaction time. We're not talking about Katrina here; Sunday, everything is fine, by Friday, the seawall is being smashed. No, we're talking about years, decades even, of creeping, sluggish, detectable only by instruments, rise. Consequently, all humans and their possessions and their lower-functioning chattels (children, pets, livestock, religious thinkers, politicians, lawyers -- listed in descending order of average creativity) would have plenty of time to develop, and pursue, an exit strategy.
Even if it takes a century the consequences would be profound. Population is clustered around the coasts. Moving New York would cost a fortune, even if you have some time.
In the meantime, while we hear you mooing about disasters, I would note that you conspicuously fail to list the improvements such changes would inevitably bring about. Areas that were arid would become able to support farming. Areas that just went underwater would provide new resources in terms of biological materials for coastal life forms. Fishing would benefit from both more area and more complex environments (think of man-made reefs, for instance.) Produce would move north by preference for temperature and precipitation, benefiting our northern neighbors and probably helping the soil by changing the crop types a little more radically than usual. Canada (and Siberia) might become the new "bread basket."
Of course there would be certain areas that would be better off. However, human activity is concentrated in the most suitable areas. That's why noone is living in the Sahara. moving to the new best areas would be a huge effort. I'm not saying the earth would be uninhabitable. I *am* saying that the effects on the global economy of adapting to the changes would be tremendous.
Tons of new jobs (and technologies) would arise to make areas just a little too close to sea level into diked environments similar to the Dutch approach. Did the Dutch elect to drown? No. So why does anyone else have to?
It's funny you mention this since I am Dutch. I was born 5m below sea level. 5 or 6 meters does not seem like a huge difference. However, this situation cost centuries to achieve. Upgrading the defences to a sea level of just a meter higher (and there are studies that indicate the possibility much larger deviations) would cost a fortune. I'd rather spend less money now (for instance on developement of better nuclear power plants).
Furthermore, people move all the time. Docks and warehouses crumble all the time. And these changes -- should they occur, which is not a given by any means -- will take so long that a move could be planned for over several generations. People move faster than that all of the time. I've moved several times in my life.
Moving is a lot more pleasant if you *choose* to do so.
Should we watch our emissions? Certainly. Should we keep our environment clean? You bet. But should we run bleating from side to side in our virtual cattle cage, worrying about global warming, trying to craft solutions for something we can't even scientifically identify as a problem as yet, and where the cries of "the coming catastrophe(s)" are utterly overblown? No. Definitely not.
Maybe you misread my post as advocating the sunshade solution. I'm not, since it's clearly ridiculous. However, I am advocating a sense of urgency that is largely missing. We should start keeping tabs on emissions. We should also work (much) harder on developing sustainable energy sources like better nuclear power plants for the short term and stuff like fusion plants, large scale concentrated power and what not.
We might be changing the environment, but it's still on a much smaller scale (a couple of PPM) than what a different species did billions of years ago (around 90%)
Be that as it may, those changes resulted in catastrophic changes. Life did survive but a sea level change of a mere meter would have catastrophic effects on society as we know it. Considering the fact that most of our population concentrations live near the sea it's not just Bangladesh who'd be in big trouble.
ok, It's fucking Lego, not Legos.
I do realise that the LEGO company objects to the bricks being called Legos but I seriously doubt they will like 'fucking Lego' much better.
You left off the words "to me".
Thanks for the obligatory relativistic post but I just can't understand how a (fortunately declining) number of Americans support acts that are totally contrary to all the groundlines laid down in your wonderful constitution. No seriously. I know it may sound sarcastic but the way the American Constitution specifies which issues should be handled bu which level of government and, more importantly, which issues should be left up to individual people themselves is still as inspiring now as it was more than two centuries ago.
Something repeatedly bothers me. We act like global warming caused by humans means the end of days, but surely the earth has undergone far more cataclysmic changes (such as after supervolcanoes), even during the lifespan of humanity, and we've lived to tell the tale?
Oh yes, we have survived. But barely. According to the Toba Catastrophe Theory the Lake Toba eruption reduced the total number of human beings to 1000-10000. We also survived the plague, which killed of a third of Europe's population in the middle ages.
But surviving doesn't mean a walk in the park. Yes. We would survive sea levels rising a couple of feet. I live in Holland and we've been fighting the water for centuries. Now, we're more prosperous than ever so we'll be able to build the dykes. But countries like Bangladesh (which floods like every two years already) would be in serious trouble and would not be able to do a thing about it.
Perhaps it's just now that we're so widely knowledgeable (if not intelligent) about our world at large, we realise just how many people will be outright fucked over by the coming changes. I'm sure humanity will survive, regardless of what happens. Anyone recall Daisyworld and biodiversity versus adverse conditions from biology class?
You are right if bare survival is your criterium of success. But I'd prefer to aim a little higher than that.
Oh and of course I am aware that I'm talking about global warming, which has very little to do with the hole in the ozone layer. But the point remains valid.
Chernobyl, Windscale, Three Mile Island.
Chernobyl was a very serious incident. WHO attributed 56 direct deaths and possibly as many as extra 4000-6000 cancer deaths in the long term. (source 1), (source 2). However, you can't compare the Chernobyl reactor to western reactors of that day and age and certainly not to new types of reactors with passive safety. Three Mile Island is considered to be worlds' second worst nuclear accident. The death toll? 0. Compare that to the thousands of people that die in Chinese coal mines every year. (source)
We're told that current nuclear plants are safe, and not like the ones that exploded or went up in flames. At the time the plants which are now acknowledged to be dangerous were being constructed, the public were also told that they were completely safe. The public can be forgiven for not believing that an industry with a history of serial lies on safety is now both safe and
truthful about it for once.
They ARE safe, even the ones that were being built back then. There is no such thing as 100% safety but the safety record of western nuclear power plants is way better than any other industry. Bhopal anyone?
Also, I don't suppose they were actually intending to have any accidents, or for some of the radioactive leaks - though BNFL's own propaganda admits they deliberately discharged nuclear waste into the sea. Humans make mistakes, which is another reason nuclear isn't trusted.
That's why we need to keep investing ways to make better use of nuclear fuel. A lot of promising research has been done in that area, like the Integral Fast Reactor, which by the way is even safer than contempary reactors.
Thirdly, terrorism. You don't get coal-fired suicide bombers.
It's a lot easier to blow up a refinery, which would cause vastly more damage. Containment buildings are actually built to withstand a 747 flying into it.For example, what is Intel (primarily a hardware manufacturer) doing on that list?
Because projects like Arduino show that Open Source can also work on the hardware side of business.
Duke Nukem Forever is supposed to have a beneficial effect when it comes out.
sounds like it just speeds up existing AI routines..... and existing AI routines, well, SUCK.
That's largely because most CPU cycles go to the pretty graphics. More computing power might help the AI in some games (although many AI routines are basically flawed anyway). This chip offers a more powerful tool to the AI programmer. It's still up to him to make an AI that's not totally stupid.
Everyone who has played Quake knows sideway motion is the ONLY way for humans!
I call Big Crunch!
Respect, you just made my morning :)
If you were an english nut, you would know that using 'gay' for homosexuals is also a quite recent development. 'Gay' used to mean 'happy'. Of course, complaining about the happy lag doesn't make much sense either :)
The question was not *IF* a hurricane would flood New Orleans, just *WHEN*.
Experts had been warning for this for years but somehow the levees were not reinforced.
In Doom the camera was fixed behind a weapon. You have a pistol, a shotgun, a rocket launcher, a machine gun and two energy guns (one fast and weak, and the other slow but powerful). Also you could use a chainsaw.
Today games have lost the chainsaw, and added a sniper rifle. So much for gameplay advance.
I'm still waiting for the sniper chain saw. Now THAT's gameplay advance!
I believe XHTML 2.0 will ultimately receive widespread acceptance and adoption.
Yeah right, just like CSS2. and XHTML1.0... 'Adoption' is not just not exploding when encountering XHTML2.0 - it means full support for the entire standard. And unfortunately we're not there yet for standards which have been around for years. I don't see why things will go differently for XHTML2.0
...I read a similar article about the sun.
What is this 'greeting' you are talking about.
I learned my social skills form online games!