I agree, I think social agreements are the most powerful means of getting everybody to buy into a way of working and living together. You don't need to resort to laws where everybody agrees what the social norms are. The most adhered to 'laws' are those which people adhere to because they believe in the values: don't punch small kids, show respect to old folks, etc. However when people don't subscribe to those values they may be more likely to break the 'laws' whether legislated or not. As you note you would then hope that such offenders will modify their behaviour when told to by figures of authority such as Teachers or Parents. Unfortunately, sometimes that is not effective, and for people who won't listen to this broader establishment, some further regulatory procedures are required.
What happens, for example when a teacher tells a kid not to bully other kids, and the kid tells the teacher to go away, and the troublesome kid is backed up by his parents who don't care/think it's funny/ encourage him to bully the other kids? Some level of escalation is required such as excluding the bully from school. Ultimately there may need to be recourse to legislation, perhaps if the excluded bully then attacks the other kids outside the school.
I think we're in agreement - legislation needs to be a last ditch answer, but unfortunately, I'd suggest that not everybody buys into societal norms and in a minority of cases it is required.
I know that "Freedom" is something all good citizens of the USA hold dear but I think freedom needs to be moderated in some cases. It's a great thing when you're the biggest kid in the class and can say what you like including intimidating and harassing the little kids. Not so great when you're the small kid who's being bullied. Some kids are better than others at arguing their point, standing up for their beliefs/rights/ etc and need help when they are not able to do so.
The strong will always be able to look after their own interests, I think we should judge a society by how it looks after its weak.
Hungary and Estonia are different countries, doh, not even adjacent to each other. I think maybe you should use teh interweb and brush up on your geography?
Well maybe he's just got to polish up his presentation skills but he comes over on media channels as stupid. Anybody who can summarise his country's position on life and death global geopolitical situations to quotes that you'd expect a walk-on extra to use in a bad 50s cowboy movie ("we're going to smoke out the bad guys" etc) is doing his country a disservice. Is it any wonder people from other countries are suspicious of the USA if serious situations are reduced by your leader to such childish language?
I don't think I've met any Yale graduates but I've met enough Oxbridge graduates to understand that there are people who are highly talented in a specific field yet worryingly naive when it comes to broader issues, and shouldn't be in charge of anything bigger than the Physics Society.
I think I Australia can't get its act together on solar power there's little hope for the rest of the planet.... all the other countries where there are more marginal benefits for experimenting with solar must surely be looking to countries with high levels of sunshine and large land mass to explore different test configurations from massive power stations down to domestic roof panels. I would have thought a country like Oz would be the ideal place for all sorts of tests to be run and some decent reports fed back to the rest of the world "yup town sized system X is the one you want to go for, domestic users, use roof system Y..". Plus I'd have hoped that there would be enough take up to get mass production rolling and make solar systems cheaper for us all.
Or am I missing something? engineers care to help me? does Australia's low population mean that it would be too inefficient to generate power inland and transport to the people?
I've often wondered why these countries with huge areas of unused desert land don't invest in big solar energy plants... help please on this? Would be wonderful if for example some of the poorest sub-Saharan countries could make use of all their free solar energy to improve their quality of life and maybe even have energy exports as an income generator...
USians demand right for ultra-violence in media, get upset about female anatomy being shown (e.g. Janet Jackson's boob on tv). Europeans get upset about kids getting exposed to violence (big fuss in the UK at the moment because 5 teenagers got shot dead in the country in the last month, people really worried about level of violence) but happy with nudity... go round France, Italy etc and there will be billboards by the side of the road with topless models advertising perfume etc.
Metric is abitrary, but it's rest of the world arbitrary!:-) (umm I think there's only three or four countries in the world who don't use it officially*)
So assuming you trade with the rest of the world, that's one argument for metric. You can buy engineering / mechanical components from other people's production lines and fit them onto your kit. You can get your engineers to collaborate with their engineers and not have wrong assumptions about what units are being used (and hence avoid rather unfortunate screw-ups as you note, poor ole NASA).
* I know a good few places use a mixture of systems unofficially but I'm referring to your "engineering/machining/manufacturing perspective"
I got one as well now I've thought about. Going into same bar and asking if anybody's got a fag (cigarette on my side of the pond...). Mind you, double mistranslation, I guess if I go into a redneck bar and announce I really want to smoke a fag and I am disappointed that you can't do this in a public place I'll probably have a lot of scary people wanting to be my friends?
Comment 10. England, U.K.? Heck they are the same let's use them interchangeably.
Oh dear oh dear please dumb American cousins* please be careful, going into a pub in Glasgow and loudly exclaiming "my it's good to be here in England!" could be bad for your health.... please note 'England' and 'U.K.' are not interchangeable expressions for the same place.
* I know it's only a minority of folk in the USA who are dumb, we've got loads of stupid people here as well who would likely make an equivalent mistake. In fact I am so dumb you'll have to tell me what the equivalent stoopid thing to say would be if I walked into a bar in the USA...:-)
The theory is that the term came into existence as a means of being rude about these guys, so best avoided if you want to be nice and polite.
"Politically correct" is such a loaded term it is best used with caution I reckon, but I don't think there's anything wrong with changing the word you use to describe a group of people if it really hurts these people and they would prefer you chose another word.
Usage Note: Eskimo has come under strong attack in recent years for its supposed offensiveness, and many Americans today either avoid this term or feel uneasy using it. It is widely known that Inuit, a term of ethnic pride, offers an acceptable alternative, but it is less well understood that Inuit cannot substitute for Eskimo in all cases, being restricted in usage to the Inuit-speaking peoples of Arctic Canada and parts of Greenland. In Alaska and Arctic Siberia, where Inuit is not spoken, the comparable terms are Inupiaq and Yupik, neither of which has gained as wide a currency in English as Inuit. While use of these terms is often preferable when speaking of the appropriate linguistic group, none of them can be used of the Eskimoan peoples as a whole; the only inclusive term remains Eskimo.The claim that Eskimo is offensive is based primarily on a popular but disputed etymology tracing its origin to an Abenaki word meaning "eaters of raw meat." Though modern linguists speculate that the term actually derives from a Montagnais word referring to the manner of lacing a snowshoe, the matter remains undecided, and meanwhile many English speakers have learned to perceive Eskimo as a derogatory term invented by unfriendly outsiders in scornful reference to their neighbors' unsophisticated eating habits"
Don't some morse characters have 5 or 6 dots or dashes? what's the average length of a character in morse? I would have thought that the current phone keyboards where most characters are between 1 and 4 characters away would be faster. Plus the cognitive leap of having to learn another intermediary language... ? All numbers on a current keyboard are one key press, how does this compare to morse?
Turning up to an office and being able to use the software running on their machines is more likely to get you a job than having an interesting side line in software programs, as far as the barely technologically literate manager of that office is concerned.
I'm not talking about computer enthusiasts, I am referring to the larger number of people who have a few hours limited access to computers before they enter the job market as teenagers. If you give a kid in Cambodia the opportunity to have a few hours access and training on a computer, I'd imagine the chances are they'd ask to be trained in whatever the offices down the road use, so they can make themselves more employable.
If I was teaching kids in a place like this I'd use whatever program would be most likely to make them employable. Alas that's probably MS Office suite. Maybe the advanced kids would get a lesson showing them other similar programs...
Well if you've got to send up a plane empty to do some flight testing, I guess it's a pretty good result if you can sucker the world's media into giving you global coverage about your company on the side!
I think we've got something analogous here in Europe, as the European Union becomes more significant and the final court for more laws, and more and more legislation is "harmonised" (I think this is the official term they use, for gently negotiating common ground and gradually bringing laws to the same place between countries). I could imagine in a few years time that an EU-wide driving licence might be proposed.
Probably this is not a perfect parallel though as the concept of 'European nationhood' is much more nebulous than 'United States nationhood'. I think people self -identify with their nation rather than the EU when talking to outsiders, whereas my impression is that folk from the USA will tend to tell people they are from the USA first, rather than that they are from Ohio, or New England, etc.
I'd be interested to hear from readers in other federalised countries as well - for example Germany - on how the interaction between local state and nation is worked out.
Just recently there have been stories in the UK papers about some DNA testing in the north east of England, in Yorkshire. They've found one place where a number of folk have DNA matching the same as one specific group in Sub-Saharan Africa, and this must have happened at least a few hundred years ago.
My theory is humans just like to travel around a bit, or sometimes settle far from home because of economic or political necessity or benefit. Hey, we see it today, why not 2000 years ago?
In the UK we've got Hadrian's Wall, big old wall the Romans built in the north of England. There's documented proof that soldiers from other parts of the Empire were stationed there, from north Africa, Greece, Spain, etc... Who's to say a few of them didn't taking a liking to the place and decide to settle, maybe met a local girl, got a bit of a good little business number going locally, that sort of thing?
The idea of a bunch of soldiers going freelance in exchange for a load of money and ending up quite a long way from home (Romans in China) - well why not?
Why is there a problem with a national driving licence in the USA?
I'm not trying to start a flamewar, just genuinely interested in what the key issues of the debate are (I'm posting from the UK). Is it something to do with the federal political make up of your country, or individual states lack of trust in national government?
I think you have other national level shared data sources don't you - isn't the social security number a national level ID? or is this also only ratified at a federal level? would the national driving licence be a precedent in the USA?
"But the camera I got from Christmas from Wal-Mart/Tescos says put in the CD ROM (must be Windows) first and then plug it in and it will work. I tried it on my computer you put that new program on and it won't work. Can you get my new camera to work?"
Me (on the telephone)"How do you mean doesn't work"
Them: "Well I put the disc in and nothing appears on the screen".
I'd expect that might be the next question I'd get, or maybe something about putting the disc in for the printer.
Mod parent who's teaching at an HE college up, well spotted. I think my retired Dad might be one of his students!
It took a couple of years before my dad got the difference between "being online" "being on the internet" "email" and "web browser". But that's ok because he's remarkably tolerant with what he feels is my appalling lack of ability to diagnose car problems from the sounds my old car makes (he's an engineer).
Linux is still too difficult for most of the population. The user interface still assumes expert computer user. I'm not blaming anybody, but I agree with all the other posters, long live the user interface designers, encourage them to join in!
Bloody humans, scratch their mark on everything. Earliest graffitti in our house is scratched into the stone door frame, says "SK 1773" (house was built in 1729).
Now, did you mean there are only 8 words in all the world's languages that end in "su" or just English? I can't believe that there aren't a few more out there in different languages...
outdoor theatre gigs - so phone gets dropped from ten feet up a scaffold tower, falls into puddles, works outside when pouring with rain, knocked against all sorts of hard unforgiving surfaces, rattles around in land rovers, that kind of thing. Good call on the tucked away phone for weather proofing - something I will investigate in future, but shock proofing and good for all weathers definitely a must. I think these new Japanese phones might be useful for sure.
Signal is usually not too much of a problem in the UK (though not always guaranteed) but a good option for those places is walkie talkies to each other then get the base folks to phone out if possible. Sat phones - I don't really work where those are needed, and I don't get the kind of contracts that will stump up satphone charges - Iridium is what, close to a thousand for a handset and 2 pounds a minute for voice?
Party trick - set it to "vibrate" mode, drop it in a pint of beer, and phone it - instant cocktail shaker!:-)
Completely gortex'd up phone. You can find them on ebay here in the UK for about 50 pounds now and again, old stock people are dumping...
Not hated, more like disappointed
on
The Privacy Candidate
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I'd say across the world there are more people desperately disappointed in the USA than hate the USA. Lots of people really want to believe in the USA and are desperately disappointed when the rhetoric and the actions don't correspond. Help us to believe in you. Don't tell us you stand for liberty and truth and freedom and then carry out actions to the contrary. We want to believe in your rhetoric.
Perhaps "becoming definitive" is not a desired goal. Most world renowned scholars are humble enough to accept that somebody might come along and improve / disprove their work. Referring to my original post I think that an important issue is that people should cite which version of the article they are referring to, in order to enable others to examine that particular version and its authors.
As you note well I think the issues here are the authority of the posters, and the difficulty for others to keep up to date on rapidly changing articles, whether they can be considered authoritative or not. The peer reviewed academic process is slow for a reason:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I agree, I think social agreements are the most powerful means of getting everybody to buy into a way of working and living together. You don't need to resort to laws where everybody agrees what the social norms are. The most adhered to 'laws' are those which people adhere to because they believe in the values: don't punch small kids, show respect to old folks, etc. However when people don't subscribe to those values they may be more likely to break the 'laws' whether legislated or not. As you note you would then hope that such offenders will modify their behaviour when told to by figures of authority such as Teachers or Parents. Unfortunately, sometimes that is not effective, and for people who won't listen to this broader establishment, some further regulatory procedures are required.
/think it's funny/ encourage him to bully the other kids? Some level of escalation is required such as excluding the bully from school. Ultimately there may need to be recourse to legislation, perhaps if the excluded bully then attacks the other kids outside the school.
What happens, for example when a teacher tells a kid not to bully other kids, and the kid tells the teacher to go away, and the troublesome kid is backed up by his parents who don't care
I think we're in agreement - legislation needs to be a last ditch answer, but unfortunately, I'd suggest that not everybody buys into societal norms and in a minority of cases it is required.
I know that "Freedom" is something all good citizens of the USA hold dear but I think freedom needs to be moderated in some cases. It's a great thing when you're the biggest kid in the class and can say what you like including intimidating and harassing the little kids. Not so great when you're the small kid who's being bullied. Some kids are better than others at arguing their point, standing up for their beliefs/rights/ etc and need help when they are not able to do so.
The strong will always be able to look after their own interests, I think we should judge a society by how it looks after its weak.
Hungary and Estonia are different countries, doh, not even adjacent to each other. I think maybe you should use teh interweb and brush up on your geography?
Well maybe he's just got to polish up his presentation skills but he comes over on media channels as stupid. Anybody who can summarise his country's position on life and death global geopolitical situations to quotes that you'd expect a walk-on extra to use in a bad 50s cowboy movie ("we're going to smoke out the bad guys" etc) is doing his country a disservice. Is it any wonder people from other countries are suspicious of the USA if serious situations are reduced by your leader to such childish language?
I don't think I've met any Yale graduates but I've met enough Oxbridge graduates to understand that there are people who are highly talented in a specific field yet worryingly naive when it comes to broader issues, and shouldn't be in charge of anything bigger than the Physics Society.
"Solar-thermal power could work really well here"
I think I Australia can't get its act together on solar power there's little hope for the rest of the planet.... all the other countries where there are more marginal benefits for experimenting with solar must surely be looking to countries with high levels of sunshine and large land mass to explore different test configurations from massive power stations down to domestic roof panels. I would have thought a country like Oz would be the ideal place for all sorts of tests to be run and some decent reports fed back to the rest of the world "yup town sized system X is the one you want to go for, domestic users, use roof system Y..". Plus I'd have hoped that there would be enough take up to get mass production rolling and make solar systems cheaper for us all.
Or am I missing something? engineers care to help me? does Australia's low population mean that it would be too inefficient to generate power inland and transport to the people?
I've often wondered why these countries with huge areas of unused desert land don't invest in big solar energy plants... help please on this? Would be wonderful if for example some of the poorest sub-Saharan countries could make use of all their free solar energy to improve their quality of life and maybe even have energy exports as an income generator...
USians demand right for ultra-violence in media, get upset about female anatomy being shown (e.g. Janet Jackson's boob on tv). Europeans get upset about kids getting exposed to violence (big fuss in the UK at the moment because 5 teenagers got shot dead in the country in the last month, people really worried about level of violence) but happy with nudity... go round France, Italy etc and there will be billboards by the side of the road with topless models advertising perfume etc.
:-)
mmm... your choice
Metric is abitrary, but it's rest of the world arbitrary! :-) (umm I think there's only three or four countries in the world who don't use it officially*)
So assuming you trade with the rest of the world, that's one argument for metric. You can buy engineering / mechanical components from other people's production lines and fit them onto your kit. You can get your engineers to collaborate with their engineers and not have wrong assumptions about what units are being used (and hence avoid rather unfortunate screw-ups as you note, poor ole NASA).
* I know a good few places use a mixture of systems unofficially but I'm referring to your "engineering/machining/manufacturing perspective"
Cheers!
I got one as well now I've thought about. Going into same bar and asking if anybody's got a fag (cigarette on my side of the pond...). Mind you, double mistranslation, I guess if I go into a redneck bar and announce I really want to smoke a fag and I am disappointed that you can't do this in a public place I'll probably have a lot of scary people wanting to be my friends?
Also (referring to the slashdot summary)
... :-)
Comment 10. England, U.K.? Heck they are the same let's use them interchangeably.
Oh dear oh dear please dumb American cousins* please be careful, going into a pub in Glasgow and loudly exclaiming "my it's good to be here in England!" could be bad for your health.... please note 'England' and 'U.K.' are not interchangeable expressions for the same place.
* I know it's only a minority of folk in the USA who are dumb, we've got loads of stupid people here as well who would likely make an equivalent mistake. In fact I am so dumb you'll have to tell me what the equivalent stoopid thing to say would be if I walked into a bar in the USA
The theory is that the term came into existence as a means of being rude about these guys, so best avoided if you want to be nice and polite.
"Politically correct" is such a loaded term it is best used with caution I reckon, but I don't think there's anything wrong with changing the word you use to describe a group of people if it really hurts these people and they would prefer you chose another word.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Eskimo
Usage Note: Eskimo has come under strong attack in recent years for its supposed offensiveness, and many Americans today either avoid this term or feel uneasy using it. It is widely known that Inuit, a term of ethnic pride, offers an acceptable alternative, but it is less well understood that Inuit cannot substitute for Eskimo in all cases, being restricted in usage to the Inuit-speaking peoples of Arctic Canada and parts of Greenland. In Alaska and Arctic Siberia, where Inuit is not spoken, the comparable terms are Inupiaq and Yupik, neither of which has gained as wide a currency in English as Inuit. While use of these terms is often preferable when speaking of the appropriate linguistic group, none of them can be used of the Eskimoan peoples as a whole; the only inclusive term remains Eskimo.The claim that Eskimo is offensive is based primarily on a popular but disputed etymology tracing its origin to an Abenaki word meaning "eaters of raw meat." Though modern linguists speculate that the term actually derives from a Montagnais word referring to the manner of lacing a snowshoe, the matter remains undecided, and meanwhile many English speakers have learned to perceive Eskimo as a derogatory term invented by unfriendly outsiders in scornful reference to their neighbors' unsophisticated eating habits"
Don't some morse characters have 5 or 6 dots or dashes? what's the average length of a character in morse? I would have thought that the current phone keyboards where most characters are between 1 and 4 characters away would be faster. Plus the cognitive leap of having to learn another intermediary language... ? All numbers on a current keyboard are one key press, how does this compare to morse?
Turning up to an office and being able to use the software running on their machines is more likely to get you a job than having an interesting side line in software programs, as far as the barely technologically literate manager of that office is concerned.
I'm not talking about computer enthusiasts, I am referring to the larger number of people who have a few hours limited access to computers before they enter the job market as teenagers. If you give a kid in Cambodia the opportunity to have a few hours access and training on a computer, I'd imagine the chances are they'd ask to be trained in whatever the offices down the road use, so they can make themselves more employable.
If I was teaching kids in a place like this I'd use whatever program would be most likely to make them employable. Alas that's probably MS Office suite. Maybe the advanced kids would get a lesson showing them other similar programs...
"close, but no. it (Cambodia) was stable until we pulled out"
With due respect, please read some history. Cambodia's history does not start with the day the USA was involved.
Well if you've got to send up a plane empty to do some flight testing, I guess it's a pretty good result if you can sucker the world's media into giving you global coverage about your company on the side!
Cheers for your thoughts imikem.
I think we've got something analogous here in Europe, as the European Union becomes more significant and the final court for more laws, and more and more legislation is "harmonised" (I think this is the official term they use, for gently negotiating common ground and gradually bringing laws to the same place between countries). I could imagine in a few years time that an EU-wide driving licence might be proposed.
Probably this is not a perfect parallel though as the concept of 'European nationhood' is much more nebulous than 'United States nationhood'. I think people self -identify with their nation rather than the EU when talking to outsiders, whereas my impression is that folk from the USA will tend to tell people they are from the USA first, rather than that they are from Ohio, or New England, etc.
I'd be interested to hear from readers in other federalised countries as well - for example Germany - on how the interaction between local state and nation is worked out.
Just recently there have been stories in the UK papers about some DNA testing in the north east of England, in Yorkshire. They've found one place where a number of folk have DNA matching the same as one specific group in Sub-Saharan Africa, and this must have happened at least a few hundred years ago.
My theory is humans just like to travel around a bit, or sometimes settle far from home because of economic or political necessity or benefit. Hey, we see it today, why not 2000 years ago?
In the UK we've got Hadrian's Wall, big old wall the Romans built in the north of England. There's documented proof that soldiers from other parts of the Empire were stationed there, from north Africa, Greece, Spain, etc... Who's to say a few of them didn't taking a liking to the place and decide to settle, maybe met a local girl, got a bit of a good little business number going locally, that sort of thing?
The idea of a bunch of soldiers going freelance in exchange for a load of money and ending up quite a long way from home (Romans in China) - well why not?
Why is there a problem with a national driving licence in the USA?
I'm not trying to start a flamewar, just genuinely interested in what the key issues of the debate are (I'm posting from the UK). Is it something to do with the federal political make up of your country, or individual states lack of trust in national government?
I think you have other national level shared data sources don't you - isn't the social security number a national level ID? or is this also only ratified at a federal level? would the national driving licence be a precedent in the USA?
My Dad: "thanks! - now is that the same with the printer? I just plug it in and then it will go? So I don't need to put in a disc for that?"
What am I saying? I guess alas, amongst other things, that linux distros have to be as good as if not better than windows to be accepted.
"But the camera I got from Christmas from Wal-Mart/Tescos says put in the CD ROM (must be Windows) first and then plug it in and it will work. I tried it on my computer you put that new program on and it won't work. Can you get my new camera to work?"
Me (on the telephone)"How do you mean doesn't work"
Them: "Well I put the disc in and nothing appears on the screen".
I'd expect that might be the next question I'd get, or maybe something about putting the disc in for the printer.
Mod parent who's teaching at an HE college up, well spotted. I think my retired Dad might be one of his students!
It took a couple of years before my dad got the difference between "being online" "being on the internet" "email" and "web browser". But that's ok because he's remarkably tolerant with what he feels is my appalling lack of ability to diagnose car problems from the sounds my old car makes (he's an engineer).
Linux is still too difficult for most of the population. The user interface still assumes expert computer user. I'm not blaming anybody, but I agree with all the other posters, long live the user interface designers, encourage them to join in!
Bloody humans, scratch their mark on everything. Earliest graffitti in our house is scratched into the stone door frame, says "SK 1773" (house was built in 1729).
mm don't forget tiramisu :-)
Now, did you mean there are only 8 words in all the world's languages that end in "su" or just English? I can't believe that there aren't a few more out there in different languages...
yeah, ninja antenna eh?
outdoor theatre gigs - so phone gets dropped from ten feet up a scaffold tower, falls into puddles, works outside when pouring with rain, knocked against all sorts of hard unforgiving surfaces, rattles around in land rovers, that kind of thing. Good call on the tucked away phone for weather proofing - something I will investigate in future, but shock proofing and good for all weathers definitely a must. I think these new Japanese phones might be useful for sure.
Signal is usually not too much of a problem in the UK (though not always guaranteed) but a good option for those places is walkie talkies to each other then get the base folks to phone out if possible. Sat phones - I don't really work where those are needed, and I don't get the kind of contracts that will stump up satphone charges - Iridium is what, close to a thousand for a handset and 2 pounds a minute for voice?
Still happy with my 5 year old Ericsson R310s.
:-)
Party trick - set it to "vibrate" mode, drop it in a pint of beer, and phone it - instant cocktail shaker!
Completely gortex'd up phone. You can find them on ebay here in the UK for about 50 pounds now and again, old stock people are dumping...
I'd say across the world there are more people desperately disappointed in the USA than hate the USA. Lots of people really want to believe in the USA and are desperately disappointed when the rhetoric and the actions don't correspond. Help us to believe in you. Don't tell us you stand for liberty and truth and freedom and then carry out actions to the contrary. We want to believe in your rhetoric.
Perhaps "becoming definitive" is not a desired goal. Most world renowned scholars are humble enough to accept that somebody might come along and improve / disprove their work. Referring to my original post I think that an important issue is that people should cite which version of the article they are referring to, in order to enable others to examine that particular version and its authors.
:-)
As you note well I think the issues here are the authority of the posters, and the difficulty for others to keep up to date on rapidly changing articles, whether they can be considered authoritative or not. The peer reviewed academic process is slow for a reason