Well said. I thoroughly agree with you. Philosophical musing on the meaning of life is a valuable thing to do. Many people have come up with some great ideas as a result. My philosophy is to try to lead my life to the full and help others as well. But I also spend time slacking reading and posting on slashdot as well as other things;-)
I don't think many people in the UK would be offended if you asked about our past and wanted to find out more about it. Our ancestors did some good things, and bad things. Most people won't be offended because most of us are less than 100 years old so it's just history to us as well, we didn't personally take part in it or make any of the decisions.
But I think we'd all be happy for you to take an interest and read up rather than making random generalisations. Wikipedia actually has some pretty reasonable articles, start on the British Empire. Good on you for being up for learning more.
Indeed we have libel laws, they'll likely be different in England from Scotland as there as two different legal systems.
Why did we 'lose' the Empire: worth reading up - mixture of social change, political change, and economy. Some places people forced their freedom, other places it was more by agreement. Now we're pretty broke, the first and second world wars changed the world political scene: I believe it's only been in the last five years of so we finally paid back the loans we borrowed from the USA in the 1940s to pay for the second world war, we were pretty much in hock to the USA post-war so the USA could set the conditions to an awful lot of our international involvements (look up "Suez Crisis" for example).
I don't think many people in the UK would be offended if you asked about our past and wanted to find out more about it. Our ancestors did some good things, and bad things. Most people won't be offended because most of us are less than 100 years old so it's just history to us as well, we didn't personally take part in it or make any of the decisions.
But I think we'd all be happy for you to take an interest and read up rather than making random generalisations. Wikipedia actually has some pretty reasonable articles, start on the British Empire . Good on you for being up for learning more.
Indeed we have libel laws, they'll likely be different in England from Scotland as there as two different legal systems.
Why did we 'lose' the Empire: worth reading up - mixture of social change, political change, and economy. Some places people forced their freedom, other places it was more by agreement. Now we're pretty broke, the first and second world wars changed the world political scene: I believe it's only been in the last five years of so we finally paid back the loans we borrowed from the USA in the 1940s to pay for the second world war, we were pretty much in hock to the USA post-war so the USA could set the conditions to an awful lot of our international involvements (look up "Suez Crisis" for example).
"People are so tricked into that that they'll actually spend real money on something that does absolutely nothing, nothing at all"
Sounds like a general damnation on a lot of modern consumer society to me. Social media games - do nothing for you. Game console - doesn't improve your life. Clothes with logo that's considered desirable, no more efficient at keeping you warm or dry - made in the same factory in Cambodia / Vietnam as the value-label clothes probably, both made by people in terrible working conditions for a dollar a day. Special paint job on your auto - does absolutely nothing. Buying new matching table crockery or wine glasses instead of picking up second hand ones / using the ones your parents gave you from their old set - no more functionality.
Functionally, you're probably better off investing your money, buying property, buying further skills training, putting into a pension plan. But folk love spending "real money on something that does absolutely nothing".
Article summary states: "allowing the reentry to Earth of a privately developed spacecraft".
Presumably the article summary should have read "allowing the reentry to the USA's airspace of a privately developed spacecraft"?
I am guessing the FAA's jurisdiction only extends over USA territories rather than making a claim for global control over who lands on Earth? I am assuming the Russians and Chinese don't have to notify the FAA whenever they wish to land a spacecraft, nor would they expect a private craft launched and landed in their airspace to ask the FAA for permission?
How about offering to do IT work for a local voluntary group / charity? Telling a future employer that you spend an evening a week helping a local charity will look good on your cv and once you've been helping at the local charity for a while and done the mundane jobs they'll probably give you more challenging jobs to take on as they learn to trust you, or you could take the initiative and offer to build them systems to manage their processes.
Alternatively you could do part time consultancy, start your own business and do a few hours a week.
Or get involved in an open source project and apply your skills there.
All these things will give you experience and look good on your cv.
None of them are likely to give you much money but they won't get in the way of you holding down a job in a shop or a bar or whatever brings the rent money in.
These are my suggestions for helping you get experience; if you want to get rich quick and you're asking how you can move into a high paid job immediately then I don't have any solutions. I do sympathise with you though about the problem of trying to persuade IT companies to take on university graduates with no skills.
Perhaps a further suggestion might be to try to persuade a local IT company to take you on as an unpaid intern for a month or three months, that might open up doors for you. You might make yourself so useful your line manager will be marching into his boss's office and telling them they need to keep hold of you and the big boss needs to find the money to hire you....
I suppose if the USA has a tradition of presidents referring to serious, highly complex, global geopolitical situations in terms of cowboy movies, "good guys", "bad guys" etc. then having a diplomatic service that refers to local meteorological conditions as "crazy bad" is merely following form....
"The performers aren't indentured servants, they should have say in who they want to perform for." You are clearly not too familiar with the music industry;-)
Yes. But the confusion between the words "England" and "Britain" seems to be common enough in the USA that it's worth pointing out the difference to trolls in the vain hope we might educate a few.
I know, I bit, my fail....
Funniest thing I saw was when I lived in Edinburgh and some touring hip hop acts did a gig, third act or so in came on stage to a warmed up audience and she shouted out "hey it's great to be here in England"... the whole place went silent and nobody said a thing through her whole act, she left to silence and folded arms totally puzzled. Lucky she didn't do that in Glasgow...
haha, correcting myself! well if I am going to talk about "transatlantic" of course I should be referring to the Atlantic Ocean not the Pacific! doh! but you get what I mean about small steps leading to larger ones, I am sure...
"It is a spaceship factory, if a few tens of Km over the surface of the Earth can be considered "space". But, let me not spoil it for the future "space tourists"."
Transatlantic air tourism across the Pacific Ocean in Boeing 747s began with retired WW1 pilots charging passengers to sit in the back seat of shaky 2 seater military planes for bumpy flights a few metres off the sea over the English Channel in the early 1920s.... Let's see where this goes before sneering too quickly.
Does childhood diet and nutrition have anything to do with life expectancy? Today's 65-75 year olds in the UK grew up in wartime and post-war shortages, limited diets, and lack of resources under rationing, whereas their counterparts in the USA probably had a different childhood environment. Does this affect lifespan?
"why are other people making this decision for me?
Because you chose to live in a country / political state with laws that affect these issues, that have been decided by the population.
You have two main options: combine with your fellow citizens to change the laws, or move to a place where these laws do not apply. Simple.
Quite a lot of people fall into a third category of moaning about laws they like but neither actually doing anything about getting those laws changed or moving out to another country / location, though.
well we're having fun and just passing the time here on slashdot, I didn't mean the date to mean literally 1939. Though you might argue the industrial capacity of the USA outstripped the UK sometime in the 30s or 40s. Mind you if you are looking for dates when political power swung globally from the UK to the USA you might also argue that 1956 was a brutally clear point in time. The British and French won militarily in Suez but had to get out as soon as they had done this because the USA told them to... could be argued this was the end of empire for the UK.
David Cameron (UK prime minister) has let all the rhetoric go to his head. He actually believes it when the US politicians pat him on the head and tell him that the UK and USA do indeed have a special relationship. Wake up, any balance of power between the USA and UK finished sometime before World War 2, over 70 years ago. The "special relationship" deal is that the USA expects the UK to give their requests special treatment (collude in "special renditions", help out on a war, that kind of thing), but don't expect anything in return beyond maybe the occasional tour of the White House and a signed photo from the president.
Fool. The USA isn't going to listen to any UK request any more than the USA expects the UK to refuse any request from them. They'll shout "1776" and "tea party" and ignore whatever is said next.
"Go to these places and see how long you last without AC" My understanding is that people have lived in these places for the last 30,000 years or so, some people have a magic secret that hasn't been cracked by the US military then. And unfortunately in most of these places as well as building civilisations they've also proved its perfectly possible to wage wars, from the Pharoahs to Alexander and to the present.
So the US military can only fight where there is aircon? A secret weakness revealed! best keep that one quiet;-)
I think it's completely insane for the family of the victim to want to be heard in court. In most countries this would be ruled as an accident, regrettable but nevertheless an accident between a small child not completely in control of their actions and an elderly person less aware and agile than a typical 40 year old. The media around the world is laughing at the USA right now, go and do an internet search to see the kind of reactions that are being published.
Do the majority of Americans believe a costly court case is the only way to find out all the facts and reach some resolution after such an unhappy accident? I think people are suprised in many countries that in the USA the resolution of a sad accident is not solved through the two families talking after a coroner has defined the facts, perhaps arbitrated by a counsellor, but that the victim's family is claiming that emotional laying to rest can only be achieved by sueing a pre-school child in court.
In most countries I think the police and legal authorities would rule that cause of death was an unfortunate coming together of circumstances, and probably there would be an opportunity for the victim's family to meet the child's parents. Child's parents would be terribly upset and offer sincere apologies, maybe ask the child to apologise, victim's family would probably be distraught but recognise that very sad accidents happen and accept apologies and understand that things happen that we can't control. Both families would probably agree that the small child was not an intentional murderer, not evil at heart, and agree that a small child shouldn't be traumatised or penalised for life for an accidental action so try to impress upon the child that you must be careful in what you do, but not load the kid with massive guilt complexes.
Meanwhile in the USA the victim's family wants to go to court and sue a pre-school child for millions.
Seems like you're moving back to a pre-20th century era when children were considered small adults with the same rights and responsibilities. Progress in science has proved that children are biologically as well as experientially unable to make the same level of decision making as adults and hence have to be treated differently. Their brains have not yet formed, they are simply not adults and cannot be considered accountable as an adult.
- what "nationalist chest thumping" went on to make the Large Hadron Collider happen?
just curious to see how this fits into your theory. I've no idea, maybe you have the answer. But the LHC seems to have got built, and not as a war time artefact (in my ignorant opinion). Seems more like a collaboration between nations.
Seems to me the people who really dislike unions are those white collar office workers whose idea of "industrial accidents" extends to catching your tie in the stapler or spilling a latte over your nicely pressed shirt.
Ask the "Los 33" miners who have been just rescued from a death trap of a mine in Chile if they think unions are a good or bad thing, ask them if they have the power as individual employees to protect themselves against dangerous cost cutting by their employers.
Closer to home, you might ask your female colleagues if they think it would be a good thing if employers could sack them if they were pregnant, had kids or got married.
The folk who disparage industrial laws are the ones who don't even realise they benefit from them. The folks who are acutely aware of their importance to keep them alive, healthy or in a job tend to give them and unions a bit more time.
Slashdot Mirror
Well said. I thoroughly agree with you. Philosophical musing on the meaning of life is a valuable thing to do. Many people have come up with some great ideas as a result. My philosophy is to try to lead my life to the full and help others as well. But I also spend time slacking reading and posting on slashdot as well as other things ;-)
You wear underwear with your kilts? weirdos.
I don't think many people in the UK would be offended if you asked about our past and wanted to find out more about it. Our ancestors did some good things, and bad things. Most people won't be offended because most of us are less than 100 years old so it's just history to us as well, we didn't personally take part in it or make any of the decisions.
But I think we'd all be happy for you to take an interest and read up rather than making random generalisations. Wikipedia actually has some pretty reasonable articles, start on the British Empire. Good on you for being up for learning more.
Indeed we have libel laws, they'll likely be different in England from Scotland as there as two different legal systems.
Why did we 'lose' the Empire: worth reading up - mixture of social change, political change, and economy. Some places people forced their freedom, other places it was more by agreement. Now we're pretty broke, the first and second world wars changed the world political scene: I believe it's only been in the last five years of so we finally paid back the loans we borrowed from the USA in the 1940s to pay for the second world war, we were pretty much in hock to the USA post-war so the USA could set the conditions to an awful lot of our international involvements (look up "Suez Crisis" for example).
I don't think many people in the UK would be offended if you asked about our past and wanted to find out more about it. Our ancestors did some good things, and bad things. Most people won't be offended because most of us are less than 100 years old so it's just history to us as well, we didn't personally take part in it or make any of the decisions.
But I think we'd all be happy for you to take an interest and read up rather than making random generalisations. Wikipedia actually has some pretty reasonable articles, start on the British Empire . Good on you for being up for learning more.
Indeed we have libel laws, they'll likely be different in England from Scotland as there as two different legal systems.
Why did we 'lose' the Empire: worth reading up - mixture of social change, political change, and economy. Some places people forced their freedom, other places it was more by agreement. Now we're pretty broke, the first and second world wars changed the world political scene: I believe it's only been in the last five years of so we finally paid back the loans we borrowed from the USA in the 1940s to pay for the second world war, we were pretty much in hock to the USA post-war so the USA could set the conditions to an awful lot of our international involvements (look up "Suez Crisis" for example).
"People are so tricked into that that they'll actually spend real money on something that does absolutely nothing, nothing at all"
Sounds like a general damnation on a lot of modern consumer society to me. Social media games - do nothing for you. Game console - doesn't improve your life. Clothes with logo that's considered desirable, no more efficient at keeping you warm or dry - made in the same factory in Cambodia / Vietnam as the value-label clothes probably, both made by people in terrible working conditions for a dollar a day. Special paint job on your auto - does absolutely nothing. Buying new matching table crockery or wine glasses instead of picking up second hand ones / using the ones your parents gave you from their old set - no more functionality.
Functionally, you're probably better off investing your money, buying property, buying further skills training, putting into a pension plan. But folk love spending "real money on something that does absolutely nothing".
Article summary states: "allowing the reentry to Earth of a privately developed spacecraft".
Presumably the article summary should have read "allowing the reentry to the USA's airspace of a privately developed spacecraft"?
I am guessing the FAA's jurisdiction only extends over USA territories rather than making a claim for global control over who lands on Earth? I am assuming the Russians and Chinese don't have to notify the FAA whenever they wish to land a spacecraft, nor would they expect a private craft launched and landed in their airspace to ask the FAA for permission?
How about offering to do IT work for a local voluntary group / charity? Telling a future employer that you spend an evening a week helping a local charity will look good on your cv and once you've been helping at the local charity for a while and done the mundane jobs they'll probably give you more challenging jobs to take on as they learn to trust you, or you could take the initiative and offer to build them systems to manage their processes.
Alternatively you could do part time consultancy, start your own business and do a few hours a week.
Or get involved in an open source project and apply your skills there.
All these things will give you experience and look good on your cv.
None of them are likely to give you much money but they won't get in the way of you holding down a job in a shop or a bar or whatever brings the rent money in.
These are my suggestions for helping you get experience; if you want to get rich quick and you're asking how you can move into a high paid job immediately then I don't have any solutions. I do sympathise with you though about the problem of trying to persuade IT companies to take on university graduates with no skills.
Perhaps a further suggestion might be to try to persuade a local IT company to take you on as an unpaid intern for a month or three months, that might open up doors for you. You might make yourself so useful your line manager will be marching into his boss's office and telling them they need to keep hold of you and the big boss needs to find the money to hire you....
I suppose if the USA has a tradition of presidents referring to serious, highly complex, global geopolitical situations in terms of cowboy movies, "good guys", "bad guys" etc. then having a diplomatic service that refers to local meteorological conditions as "crazy bad" is merely following form....
"The performers aren't indentured servants, they should have say in who they want to perform for." ;-)
You are clearly not too familiar with the music industry
...probably believes in a two-tier society generally, the nobility and the peasants! ;-)
This is a man (son of Lord Vaizey) who accidentally got £2000 worth of furniture delivered to "the wrong home", including an antique chair and paid it all back when the accounts committee found out.
Yes. But the confusion between the words "England" and "Britain" seems to be common enough in the USA that it's worth pointing out the difference to trolls in the vain hope we might educate a few.
I know, I bit, my fail....
Funniest thing I saw was when I lived in Edinburgh and some touring hip hop acts did a gig, third act or so in came on stage to a warmed up audience and she shouted out "hey it's great to be here in England"... the whole place went silent and nobody said a thing through her whole act, she left to silence and folded arms totally puzzled. Lucky she didn't do that in Glasgow...
>Where do you have greater freedom of speech and presumption of innocence: Britain or Saudi Arabia?
On balance I'd say Britain
>Where are you more likely to be harassed by police for trivialities: Britain or Saudi Arabia?
Not sure, do you have the figures that you could share with us?
>Every day the two look more alike.
Evidence from, say the last 5 days: could you give us five separate summaries to prove this point?
>And now I will commit a crime in the eyes of England:
I suppose you mean "in the laws of England". Are you aware that England and Britain are different?
haha, correcting myself! well if I am going to talk about "transatlantic" of course I should be referring to the Atlantic Ocean not the Pacific! doh! but you get what I mean about small steps leading to larger ones, I am sure...
"It is a spaceship factory, if a few tens of Km over the surface of the Earth can be considered "space". But, let me not spoil it for the future "space tourists"."
Transatlantic air tourism across the Pacific Ocean in Boeing 747s began with retired WW1 pilots charging passengers to sit in the back seat of shaky 2 seater military planes for bumpy flights a few metres off the sea over the English Channel in the early 1920s.... Let's see where this goes before sneering too quickly.
... and with plane services so terrible, the USA might finally get a decent intercity and interstate passenger train network!
Does childhood diet and nutrition have anything to do with life expectancy? Today's 65-75 year olds in the UK grew up in wartime and post-war shortages, limited diets, and lack of resources under rationing, whereas their counterparts in the USA probably had a different childhood environment. Does this affect lifespan?
Yes. "Hunting of and trade in all Indian owl species is banned under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972."
"why are other people making this decision for me?
Because you chose to live in a country / political state with laws that affect these issues, that have been decided by the population.
You have two main options: combine with your fellow citizens to change the laws, or move to a place where these laws do not apply. Simple.
Quite a lot of people fall into a third category of moaning about laws they like but neither actually doing anything about getting those laws changed or moving out to another country / location, though.
well we're having fun and just passing the time here on slashdot, I didn't mean the date to mean literally 1939. Though you might argue the industrial capacity of the USA outstripped the UK sometime in the 30s or 40s. Mind you if you are looking for dates when political power swung globally from the UK to the USA you might also argue that 1956 was a brutally clear point in time. The British and French won militarily in Suez but had to get out as soon as they had done this because the USA told them to... could be argued this was the end of empire for the UK.
David Cameron (UK prime minister) has let all the rhetoric go to his head. He actually believes it when the US politicians pat him on the head and tell him that the UK and USA do indeed have a special relationship. Wake up, any balance of power between the USA and UK finished sometime before World War 2, over 70 years ago. The "special relationship" deal is that the USA expects the UK to give their requests special treatment (collude in "special renditions", help out on a war, that kind of thing), but don't expect anything in return beyond maybe the occasional tour of the White House and a signed photo from the president.
Fool. The USA isn't going to listen to any UK request any more than the USA expects the UK to refuse any request from them. They'll shout "1776" and "tea party" and ignore whatever is said next.
"Go to these places and see how long you last without AC"
My understanding is that people have lived in these places for the last 30,000 years or so, some people have a magic secret that hasn't been cracked by the US military then. And unfortunately in most of these places as well as building civilisations they've also proved its perfectly possible to wage wars, from the Pharoahs to Alexander and to the present.
So the US military can only fight where there is aircon? A secret weakness revealed! best keep that one quiet ;-)
I think it's completely insane for the family of the victim to want to be heard in court. In most countries this would be ruled as an accident, regrettable but nevertheless an accident between a small child not completely in control of their actions and an elderly person less aware and agile than a typical 40 year old. The media around the world is laughing at the USA right now, go and do an internet search to see the kind of reactions that are being published.
Do the majority of Americans believe a costly court case is the only way to find out all the facts and reach some resolution after such an unhappy accident? I think people are suprised in many countries that in the USA the resolution of a sad accident is not solved through the two families talking after a coroner has defined the facts, perhaps arbitrated by a counsellor, but that the victim's family is claiming that emotional laying to rest can only be achieved by sueing a pre-school child in court.
In most countries I think the police and legal authorities would rule that cause of death was an unfortunate coming together of circumstances, and probably there would be an opportunity for the victim's family to meet the child's parents. Child's parents would be terribly upset and offer sincere apologies, maybe ask the child to apologise, victim's family would probably be distraught but recognise that very sad accidents happen and accept apologies and understand that things happen that we can't control. Both families would probably agree that the small child was not an intentional murderer, not evil at heart, and agree that a small child shouldn't be traumatised or penalised for life for an accidental action so try to impress upon the child that you must be careful in what you do, but not load the kid with massive guilt complexes.
Meanwhile in the USA the victim's family wants to go to court and sue a pre-school child for millions.
Seems like you're moving back to a pre-20th century era when children were considered small adults with the same rights and responsibilities. Progress in science has proved that children are biologically as well as experientially unable to make the same level of decision making as adults and hence have to be treated differently. Their brains have not yet formed, they are simply not adults and cannot be considered accountable as an adult.
- what "nationalist chest thumping" went on to make the Large Hadron Collider happen?
just curious to see how this fits into your theory. I've no idea, maybe you have the answer. But the LHC seems to have got built, and not as a war time artefact (in my ignorant opinion). Seems more like a collaboration between nations.
Education on this point welcomed.....
Seems to me the people who really dislike unions are those white collar office workers whose idea of "industrial accidents" extends to catching your tie in the stapler or spilling a latte over your nicely pressed shirt.
Ask the "Los 33" miners who have been just rescued from a death trap of a mine in Chile if they think unions are a good or bad thing, ask them if they have the power as individual employees to protect themselves against dangerous cost cutting by their employers.
Closer to home, you might ask your female colleagues if they think it would be a good thing if employers could sack them if they were pregnant, had kids or got married.
The folk who disparage industrial laws are the ones who don't even realise they benefit from them. The folks who are acutely aware of their importance to keep them alive, healthy or in a job tend to give them and unions a bit more time.
Note to self for world domination plans: don't stamp my robots/tanks/drones with plain text serial numbers, always encrypt! :-)