Or maybe the other students were humiliated by your arrogance and decided not to participate: "I was the only one who was computer literate! I have taken a university course in computers! all my class mates are lusers!"... hmmm...
In some cultures it would be polite not to put your hand up when a professor asks a question like this as it would be considered arrogant to do so. I would be interested in your fellow students reasons for not putting their hands up. I'd bet that some of them were perfectly competent at the skills the professor was asking for and they didn't all need remedial special classes to get up to speed on computer skills required. Can you comment on this?
I'd agree with you that computer literacy is field specific but I'd disagree that you need a CS major to be considered computer literate (grow up college boy! see the real world!) or you need a high level of trouble shooting skills. If you can complete the tasks you need to achieve then I'd say you're functionally literate.
Machiavelli was writing about city states in renaissance Italy, i.e. don't trust anybody who's not from your city and the surrounding farmland (10 miles or so in each direction). It opens up an interesting point to be discussed: what is this 'loyalty' that you refer to? how is it defined, created, maintained? It could be argued that corporate loyalty is stronger than national loyalty in some cases. Perhaps a quick reading of Gellner's writings on nations and nationalism might be in order.
Can you explain why you are posting anonymously? What professional concerns? I thought one of the cornerstones of academic ethics was to only post up statements that you can stand by, and are prepared to defend, and reference. Anonymous postings with no references - or justifications regarding the methodology - are no more valuable than bar room gossip surely?
"According to a special investigative report [washingtontimes.com] by the "Washington Times", "Contagious diseases are entering the United States because of immigrants, illegal aliens , refugees and travelers, and World Health Organization officials say the worst could be yet to come"." (my bolds)
Clearly then the solution is easy. Ban all travel to and from the USA and everybody will be safe.
comfortable? get in your armchair sprung mid range saloon car with built in seat warmers old man !!;-)
Ok on one level you're right, it will never be as comfortable as your big phat saloon car - but I think if these guys go for that market, they are missing the point. They should go for the fun, young, sporty market. Maybe the BMW C-1 looked too much like a crappy low grade scooter with a big roll cage on it "the scooter for people too scared to be on two wheels". Maybe it's just marketing but this thing looks more sporty.. as the video says, people who like the buzz of motorcycles but maybe don't want to get dressed up in leathers in the morning. Look at the success of the Smart cars in Europe - they've hit that trendy hip young web designer/PR executive market. These guys would be wise to aim at the same sort of market - internet execs and city traders who want to believe they are hip, only carry a small bag with a laptop and a couple of gadgets (and maybe pick up a bag of shopping during the day), want to zip in and out of traffic and park up in small spaces, want to show off a bit to their friends.
Got to say it looks a lot of fun. And 60mph, well tell me the last time you managed that in rush hour in a big city, as long as it has acceleration and get up to that, it's fine for urban driving.
Add in some sort of greenish credentials and you're away, heck I reckon if the engine technology was a stumbling block you could stick in a motorbike engine and it would still pick up sales, given the benefits on lowered insurance ratings and lower fuel costs from the tiny engine.
There's been a smoking ban in Ireland for the last couple of years. Seems to work pretty well. Bars are still open, people still drink, tourists still come. Country hasn't collapsed. Don't get many countries with more of an ingrained drinking culture than Ireland and it seems to be working ok (I did a couple of gigs in Dublin last summer and the bars seemed pretty full to me).
As another posted has commented, if I go into a bar, I can choose whether or not to drink the same poison as you. I can share the space and enjoy the ambience/ music / company but make the decision on what to put into my body. If it's a smoking bar I have no choice whether or not to breathe in somebody elses poisonous fumes.
"The way I see it, open source is an opportunity for everyone. This is just as true of small towns and rural places in the USA and Europe as it is for third world countries. Rather than sending off money to Redmond and Silicon Valley, these countries and cities and towns can hire locals to develop the software."
I agree, an opportunity for everybody. But a little reality check/ pragmatism is required. You need to be able to afford to hire enough open source programmers to develop the alternative. Does every Smalltown USA with population 5000 *have* a significant population of local open software developers? You need a sustainabile project management structure to cope if your small team falls apart or moves on. I'm all for this approach, I think it's possible, but I think its got complex sustainability issues and this I think is one of the major challenges to address. Smalltown USA wants a software package that will be supported in 5, 10, 20 years time. They currently purchase large company products in the belief that this will offer them security. Whether or not this is true, how can local open source programmers offer this security? I think this is the major challenge.
"Wikipedia isn't an academic source by any stretch of the imagination, and should never be used as a reference in any remotely serious writing. It's a great resource to use to explore a subject, but you'd be crazy to cite it in a paper."
Wikipedia is a source that should be used with distinct caution but I'd say it is possible to use it on occasion, and within context. Thomas Vander Wal makes an interesting suggestion: that wiki articles used should indicated the revision number in the reference, so it is clear which version of an article is being referred to. I'm aware of several articles that are worked on by academics and respected within their field, e.g. the Community Informatics article (though as with any paper bias has to be taken into account). By indicating the reference number this makes it clear that a particular version is respected rather than the latest one which is currently hacked.
"Nordic-style welfare capitalism"? I thought that Scandinavian countries were usually politically described as social democracies? Any Scandinavians care to comment on how they prefer to describe their own systems (politely;-) ) ? Apologies if I've got it wrong, I've just never heard the phrase "Nordic-style welfare capitalism" before. Maybe it's just two different spins on the same system, claims from the right and the left to 'owning' the same model?
wikipedia: -- "studies have shown that a risk does exist in some individuals to develop symptoms of psychosis [1] and anxiety [2]"
Plus of course regular heavy use may bring on the more feared long term addiction to tie dyed clothing, Grateful Dead, and believing one to be living in California in the late 1960s...
#1 Prospective cohort study of cannabis use, predisposition for psychosis, and psychotic symptoms in young people, by Cécile Henquet, Lydia Krabbendam, Janneke Spauwen, Charles Kaplan, Roselind Lieb, Hans-Ulrich Wittchen and Jim van Os, British Medical Journal, December 2004, Volume 330: 11
#2 Cannabis use and mental health in young people: cohort study, by G C Patton, Carolyn Coffey, J B Carlin, Louisa Degenhardt, Micheal Lynskey and Wayne Hall, British Medical Journal, 2005, Volume 325: 1195
I agree. Hence I would say the value of international fora such as the UN to get everybody round the table and offer common sense when one country gets too high on its own self belief.
I was just making fun of the fact that Europeans are overly paranoid of what goes on in their backyard but are completely ignorant to what goes on globally.
First of all I still think you're being insensitive. I'm guessing you're from a part of the world which has been lucky enough not to have terrifying acts of genocide occur in its locality. My pet theory for the US govt hawkishness is that the USA has never experienced a modern war on its own soil. Be thankful and have some sensitivity. Maybe I am being over sensitive but have some respect for folks who've lived through it. Secondly I see a lot of European aid agencies in these parts of the world and I'd dispute Europeans are "completely ignorant to what goes on globally". Probably just as much ignorance as anywhere else in the world.
(Cambodia? Rwanda? Sudan? Tibet? More recently, Darfur?) We hear about them a lot on the news (BBC). We should do more I agree. I am sick of developed countries only seeming to help out places where there are resources (oil etc) or geopolitical advantage. I think we agree with each other here. I've been to Cambodia a couple of times, I've got a friend working there on a health project. I know what you're saying. My life is so good, I don't have to worry about landmines in my day to day life.
I'm not saying the U.S. is perfect either (the U.S. should've stopped Pol Pot when we had the troops there)
It was very complex indeed. The USA complicated matters by the nature of its engagement with the Sihanouk administration before then after all. The Arclight missions didn't help either. The Khmer Rouge indeed committed terrible attrocities. I've been to S-21, I've been to Choeung Ek. We need some sort of international agreement on stopping these kind of insane crimes.
the sheer inaction of the U.N. completely undermines its authority
Yeah sometimes more needs to be done but we definitely need an international body rather than individual nations deciding what's best for the world. Plenty of historical precedents suggest that's a bad thing...
(ZOMG genocide in Europe again?! Its a modern day Hitler, someone bring Churchill back from the dead!11!!)
Not funny. Grow up college kid (or at least keep your mouth shut if you visit that part of Europe or you'll find yourself in a lot of trouble). Several very nasty acts of genocide happened. For example - (from wikipedia)
The Srebrenica massacre was the July 1995 killing of an estimated 8,100 Bosniak males, ranging in age from teenagers to the elderly, in the region of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina by a Serb Army of Republika Srpska under general Ratko Mladi including Serbian state special forces "Scorpions". The Srebrenica massacre is considered one of the largest mass murders in Europe since World War II and one of the most horrific events in recent European history.
Mladi and other Serb army officers have since been indicted for various war crimes, including genocide, at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The ICTY's final ruling was that the massacre was indeed an act of genocide.
If you're going to crash a 2 tonne probe into the surface, why not just send a block of concrete? surely cheaper....:-)
Euro-zone is a big market (bigger than US?)
on
The .EU Landrush Fiasco
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I don't have the figures (any economists please? google?) but I am pretty sure that the Euro-zone of countries is now similar to North America in its size as a market for products. I'm pretty sure that countries in the Euro-zone often have similar product specifications due to common laws as well, so yup, I'd say branding your product as.eu is as important as a.com.
I'm in the UK and I purposely *avoid*.com products, hey, I don't want to pay for a company to ship a paperback 3000 miles from the USA, I'd prefer them to post it from somewhere in the EU and charge me that instead (pretty well the same rate as from the UK). Don't have to pay import taxes either...
How come if something doesn't go right in the USA, you sue somebody? This just feels so weird to me. Every time you're unhappy, sue somebody. Spill your coffee? sue MacDonalds. Walk into a lampost? Sue the city. Weird.
Surely there have to be other ways to sort out your problems? I agree this kid had a hard time. Hell, I had a hard time at school, got bullied, I sympathise. But a bunch of kids just stuck up some movies on the internet. A third of a million bucks! You have a crazy lawyer mad society. Isn't there another method of 'conflict resolution' in your country (apart from the obvious second amendment 'get the guns out')?
Yes, the kid was hurt, and yes, the images were distributed far wider than, I don't know, if my classmates had found a stupid photo of me and photocopied it a few times, but really...
Let's make a brave assumption - the internet isn't going away, and digital image reproduction won't either. So either your legal system is going to collapse in a few years and you'll all be indentured serfs to some sort of legal aristocracy because you all sue each other on a daily basis for millions and end up owing the lawyers all your money.... or a more sane method of conflict resolution. Why didn't they just get the kids who put the images up to apologise? get their parents to withold their pocket money for a few weeks and buy the star wars kid some sci-fi DVD movies as an apology present?
While you're at it, ban literacy. People's memories got worse after that pesky reading and writing was invented, they got dumber. And metal, people just got so lazy after we started using metal instead of having to *really think hard* about how to chop down trees and build our dugout canoes with stone axes.
Technological aids have always come in for criticism, and both clever and stupid people have used them to make their lives easier. It could be argued that automatic parking could save a few dents. Mind you, I'd like to see people using cars less and cycling more, full stop:-)
Mod parent up as insightful. Get rid of the administrators and secretaries and... (etc, etc) - you end up with what? Highly trained very expensive astronauts painting the fences round the airbases rather than flying? (somebody's got to do it!). The country's top astrophysics experts paying for telescopes on their personal credit cards and typing up the invoices rather than looking at the stars? (somebody's got to do the paperwork!).
Big organisations need the little guys as well as the big guys. Now you might want to tune up the organisation, but don't trash it all. There's a lot of little guys keeping the machinery running. Try telling the army to sack everybody apart from its combat troops and see where you are in six months...
"In college, I once ordered a book only to find it was the "overseas" paperback edition. Beware of these, not only are they fake but they will not last to heavy use and have no color/durability."
On the other hand, when I was in India, I found a couple of bookshops in Connaught Place (Delhi) that had a stack of local imprints of O'Reilly books sold for the SE Asian market. Locally printed, I agree paper was a bit thinner and print quality was a bit lower (not that much). But the same text, and hey, I'm not worried if code samples are in black and white.
Check out the computer shops next time you're in India. Even allowing for sea mail postage back home buying a dozen O'Reilly's still came out at only about 20% of the cost back home. Nice little present at the end of the holiday!
So what's the model for paying the rent and feeding you if you give the software away for free? presumably consultancy and post "sales" support, installation support, etc. You might avoid having to deal with online financial transactions but you're still going to have to learn to deal with the technical aspects of ensuring cashflow in the right direction. And just as importantly the social aspect. Make sure you think about how you will do this. Maybe sign up for some small business courses. It's a business, doesn't matter if you're selling software and IT expertise or potatoes or used cars.
Me and my friends ran a small internet/database company for a while, this was a real killer for us. We were craftsmen, we loved creating things, working to build beautiful solutions, but none of us really loved doing the books or threatening to get in the lawyers if people didn't pay up. We hated being 'hard men'. In the end we gracefully wound things down slowly and felt proud about running a nice little business for 3 years but we learnt some hard lessons about our strengths and weaknesses and being businessmen.
What does "Irish-American" mean anyway?
on
Green Geek Beer
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· Score: 1
Genuinely confused. Does it mean having "one ancestor from Ireland five generations back" or "at least 50% of grandparents born in Ireland" or what?
I was born in England, got a southern English accent, but using the above suggested definitions, well in the first case (one ancestor five generations back) maybe you could call me "Spanish-English" (apparently one of my great great grandfathers married a Spanish girl). Or in the second case, two of my grandparents were born and bred Scots, my mum spent a lot of her time growing up there during the war, my mum's side is definitely Scots, I've still got a great aunt there etc, so maybe I am Scots-English...though if I opened my mouth in most of the bars in Scotland and announced I was Scottish I'd get it kicked in pretty fast with my accent or at least laughed at.
How does this all work in the USA? Is it a feature of "new world" countries with people keen to find their roots past a couple of generations back? Why aren't people just happy to say they are American if both their parents were born there? (not flamebait, genuine curiousity about people's motivations...)
I agree, rain when you're weeding is terrible, the vegetable patch gets really muddy and you end up with flu. I tend to go and find something else to do, like mess around with linux distros on my spare computer. Watch yourself in that damp weather!
In the UK a director has released a film which has been offered straight for download at the same time as it was released on TV: "The Road to Guantanamo. It was shown at the Berlin Film Festival but I guess Channel 4 (the UK arts channel) decide to buy the rights to show it here. It's an 'reconstruction/ documentary' kind of film so not mainstream pulp but it's interesting to see this method of release. I was a bit disappointed to find you actually have to *pay* to download the film from Tiscali but nevertheless it's an interesting approach, I'll wonder if we'll see more of this kind of 'parallel release' in future?
Slashdot Mirror
Or maybe the other students were humiliated by your arrogance and decided not to participate: "I was the only one who was computer literate! I have taken a university course in computers! all my class mates are lusers!" ... hmmm...
In some cultures it would be polite not to put your hand up when a professor asks a question like this as it would be considered arrogant to do so. I would be interested in your fellow students reasons for not putting their hands up. I'd bet that some of them were perfectly competent at the skills the professor was asking for and they didn't all need remedial special classes to get up to speed on computer skills required. Can you comment on this?
I'd agree with you that computer literacy is field specific but I'd disagree that you need a CS major to be considered computer literate (grow up college boy! see the real world!) or you need a high level of trouble shooting skills. If you can complete the tasks you need to achieve then I'd say you're functionally literate.
"no loyalty to those they are serving"
Machiavelli was writing about city states in renaissance Italy, i.e. don't trust anybody who's not from your city and the surrounding farmland (10 miles or so in each direction). It opens up an interesting point to be discussed: what is this 'loyalty' that you refer to? how is it defined, created, maintained? It could be argued that corporate loyalty is stronger than national loyalty in some cases. Perhaps a quick reading of Gellner's writings on nations and nationalism might be in order.
How is DART different from Progress (the Soyus based supply ship)? I thought Progress carried out automated docking to the ISS?
Can you explain why you are posting anonymously? What professional concerns? I thought one of the cornerstones of academic ethics was to only post up statements that you can stand by, and are prepared to defend, and reference. Anonymous postings with no references - or justifications regarding the methodology - are no more valuable than bar room gossip surely?
"According to a special investigative report [washingtontimes.com] by the "Washington Times", "Contagious diseases are entering the United States because of immigrants, illegal aliens , refugees and travelers, and World Health Organization officials say the worst could be yet to come"." (my bolds)
Clearly then the solution is easy. Ban all travel to and from the USA and everybody will be safe.
comfortable? get in your armchair sprung mid range saloon car with built in seat warmers old man !! ;-)
Ok on one level you're right, it will never be as comfortable as your big phat saloon car - but I think if these guys go for that market, they are missing the point. They should go for the fun, young, sporty market. Maybe the BMW C-1 looked too much like a crappy low grade scooter with a big roll cage on it "the scooter for people too scared to be on two wheels". Maybe it's just marketing but this thing looks more sporty.. as the video says, people who like the buzz of motorcycles but maybe don't want to get dressed up in leathers in the morning. Look at the success of the Smart cars in Europe - they've hit that trendy hip young web designer/PR executive market. These guys would be wise to aim at the same sort of market - internet execs and city traders who want to believe they are hip, only carry a small bag with a laptop and a couple of gadgets (and maybe pick up a bag of shopping during the day), want to zip in and out of traffic and park up in small spaces, want to show off a bit to their friends.
Got to say it looks a lot of fun. And 60mph, well tell me the last time you managed that in rush hour in a big city, as long as it has acceleration and get up to that, it's fine for urban driving.
Add in some sort of greenish credentials and you're away, heck I reckon if the engine technology was a stumbling block you could stick in a motorbike engine and it would still pick up sales, given the benefits on lowered insurance ratings and lower fuel costs from the tiny engine.
There's been a smoking ban in Ireland for the last couple of years. Seems to work pretty well. Bars are still open, people still drink, tourists still come. Country hasn't collapsed. Don't get many countries with more of an ingrained drinking culture than Ireland and it seems to be working ok (I did a couple of gigs in Dublin last summer and the bars seemed pretty full to me).
As another posted has commented, if I go into a bar, I can choose whether or not to drink the same poison as you. I can share the space and enjoy the ambience/ music / company but make the decision on what to put into my body. If it's a smoking bar I have no choice whether or not to breathe in somebody elses poisonous fumes.
"The way I see it, open source is an opportunity for everyone. This is just as true of small towns and rural places in the USA and Europe as it is for third world countries. Rather than sending off money to Redmond and Silicon Valley, these countries and cities and towns can hire locals to develop the software."
I agree, an opportunity for everybody. But a little reality check/ pragmatism is required. You need to be able to afford to hire enough open source programmers to develop the alternative. Does every Smalltown USA with population 5000 *have* a significant population of local open software developers? You need a sustainabile project management structure to cope if your small team falls apart or moves on. I'm all for this approach, I think it's possible, but I think its got complex sustainability issues and this I think is one of the major challenges to address. Smalltown USA wants a software package that will be supported in 5, 10, 20 years time. They currently purchase large company products in the belief that this will offer them security. Whether or not this is true, how can local open source programmers offer this security? I think this is the major challenge.
many thanks!
Wikipedia is a source that should be used with distinct caution but I'd say it is possible to use it on occasion, and within context. Thomas Vander Wal makes an interesting suggestion: that wiki articles used should indicated the revision number in the reference, so it is clear which version of an article is being referred to. I'm aware of several articles that are worked on by academics and respected within their field, e.g. the Community Informatics article (though as with any paper bias has to be taken into account). By indicating the reference number this makes it clear that a particular version is respected rather than the latest one which is currently hacked.
"Nordic-style welfare capitalism"? I thought that Scandinavian countries were usually politically described as social democracies? Any Scandinavians care to comment on how they prefer to describe their own systems (politely ;-) ) ? Apologies if I've got it wrong, I've just never heard the phrase "Nordic-style welfare capitalism" before. Maybe it's just two different spins on the same system, claims from the right and the left to 'owning' the same model?
Plus of course regular heavy use may bring on the more feared long term addiction to tie dyed clothing, Grateful Dead, and believing one to be living in California in the late 1960s...
#1 Prospective cohort study of cannabis use, predisposition for psychosis, and psychotic symptoms in young people, by Cécile Henquet, Lydia Krabbendam, Janneke Spauwen, Charles Kaplan, Roselind Lieb, Hans-Ulrich Wittchen and Jim van Os, British Medical Journal, December 2004, Volume 330: 11
#2 Cannabis use and mental health in young people: cohort study, by G C Patton, Carolyn Coffey, J B Carlin, Louisa Degenhardt, Micheal Lynskey and Wayne Hall, British Medical Journal, 2005, Volume 325: 1195
wikipedia, not mine.
The world does not revolve around Europe
I agree. Hence I would say the value of international fora such as the UN to get everybody round the table and offer common sense when one country gets too high on its own self belief.
I was just making fun of the fact that Europeans are overly paranoid of what goes on in their backyard but are completely ignorant to what goes on globally.
First of all I still think you're being insensitive. I'm guessing you're from a part of the world which has been lucky enough not to have terrifying acts of genocide occur in its locality. My pet theory for the US govt hawkishness is that the USA has never experienced a modern war on its own soil. Be thankful and have some sensitivity. Maybe I am being over sensitive but have some respect for folks who've lived through it. Secondly I see a lot of European aid agencies in these parts of the world and I'd dispute Europeans are "completely ignorant to what goes on globally". Probably just as much ignorance as anywhere else in the world.
(Cambodia? Rwanda? Sudan? Tibet? More recently, Darfur?)
We hear about them a lot on the news (BBC). We should do more I agree. I am sick of developed countries only seeming to help out places where there are resources (oil etc) or geopolitical advantage. I think we agree with each other here. I've been to Cambodia a couple of times, I've got a friend working there on a health project. I know what you're saying. My life is so good, I don't have to worry about landmines in my day to day life.
I'm not saying the U.S. is perfect either (the U.S. should've stopped Pol Pot when we had the troops there)
It was very complex indeed. The USA complicated matters by the nature of its engagement with the Sihanouk administration before then after all. The Arclight missions didn't help either. The Khmer Rouge indeed committed terrible attrocities. I've been to S-21, I've been to Choeung Ek. We need some sort of international agreement on stopping these kind of insane crimes.
the sheer inaction of the U.N. completely undermines its authority
Yeah sometimes more needs to be done but we definitely need an international body rather than individual nations deciding what's best for the world. Plenty of historical precedents suggest that's a bad thing...
(ZOMG genocide in Europe again?! Its a modern day Hitler, someone bring Churchill back from the dead!11!!)
Not funny. Grow up college kid (or at least keep your mouth shut if you visit that part of Europe or you'll find yourself in a lot of trouble). Several very nasty acts of genocide happened. For example - (from wikipedia)
The Srebrenica massacre was the July 1995 killing of an estimated 8,100 Bosniak males, ranging in age from teenagers to the elderly, in the region of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina by a Serb Army of Republika Srpska under general Ratko Mladi including Serbian state special forces "Scorpions". The Srebrenica massacre is considered one of the largest mass murders in Europe since World War II and one of the most horrific events in recent European history.
Mladi and other Serb army officers have since been indicted for various war crimes, including genocide, at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The ICTY's final ruling was that the massacre was indeed an act of genocide.
If you're going to crash a 2 tonne probe into the surface, why not just send a block of concrete? surely cheaper.... :-)
I don't have the figures (any economists please? google?) but I am pretty sure that the Euro-zone of countries is now similar to North America in its size as a market for products. I'm pretty sure that countries in the Euro-zone often have similar product specifications due to common laws as well, so yup, I'd say branding your product as .eu is as important as a .com.
.com products, hey, I don't want to pay for a company to ship a paperback 3000 miles from the USA, I'd prefer them to post it from somewhere in the EU and charge me that instead (pretty well the same rate as from the UK). Don't have to pay import taxes either...
I'm in the UK and I purposely *avoid*
fair call, apologies. Still seems crazy!
How come if something doesn't go right in the USA, you sue somebody? This just feels so weird to me. Every time you're unhappy, sue somebody. Spill your coffee? sue MacDonalds. Walk into a lampost? Sue the city. Weird.
Surely there have to be other ways to sort out your problems? I agree this kid had a hard time. Hell, I had a hard time at school, got bullied, I sympathise. But a bunch of kids just stuck up some movies on the internet. A third of a million bucks! You have a crazy lawyer mad society. Isn't there another method of 'conflict resolution' in your country (apart from the obvious second amendment 'get the guns out')?
Yes, the kid was hurt, and yes, the images were distributed far wider than, I don't know, if my classmates had found a stupid photo of me and photocopied it a few times, but really...
Let's make a brave assumption - the internet isn't going away, and digital image reproduction won't either. So either your legal system is going to collapse in a few years and you'll all be indentured serfs to some sort of legal aristocracy because you all sue each other on a daily basis for millions and end up owing the lawyers all your money.... or a more sane method of conflict resolution. Why didn't they just get the kids who put the images up to apologise? get their parents to withold their pocket money for a few weeks and buy the star wars kid some sci-fi DVD movies as an apology present?
rant over , grin!
While you're at it, ban literacy. People's memories got worse after that pesky reading and writing was invented, they got dumber. And metal, people just got so lazy after we started using metal instead of having to *really think hard* about how to chop down trees and build our dugout canoes with stone axes.
Technological aids have always come in for criticism, and both clever and stupid people have used them to make their lives easier. It could be argued that automatic parking could save a few dents. Mind you, I'd like to see people using cars less and cycling more, full stop :-)
Big organisations need the little guys as well as the big guys. Now you might want to tune up the organisation, but don't trash it all. There's a lot of little guys keeping the machinery running. Try telling the army to sack everybody apart from its combat troops and see where you are in six months...
On the other hand, when I was in India, I found a couple of bookshops in Connaught Place (Delhi) that had a stack of local imprints of O'Reilly books sold for the SE Asian market. Locally printed, I agree paper was a bit thinner and print quality was a bit lower (not that much). But the same text, and hey, I'm not worried if code samples are in black and white.
Check out the computer shops next time you're in India. Even allowing for sea mail postage back home buying a dozen O'Reilly's still came out at only about 20% of the cost back home. Nice little present at the end of the holiday!
Me and my friends ran a small internet/database company for a while, this was a real killer for us. We were craftsmen, we loved creating things, working to build beautiful solutions, but none of us really loved doing the books or threatening to get in the lawyers if people didn't pay up. We hated being 'hard men'. In the end we gracefully wound things down slowly and felt proud about running a nice little business for 3 years but we learnt some hard lessons about our strengths and weaknesses and being businessmen.
I was born in England, got a southern English accent, but using the above suggested definitions, well in the first case (one ancestor five generations back) maybe you could call me "Spanish-English" (apparently one of my great great grandfathers married a Spanish girl). Or in the second case, two of my grandparents were born and bred Scots, my mum spent a lot of her time growing up there during the war, my mum's side is definitely Scots, I've still got a great aunt there etc, so maybe I am Scots-English.. .though if I opened my mouth in most of the bars in Scotland and announced I was Scottish I'd get it kicked in pretty fast with my accent or at least laughed at.
How does this all work in the USA? Is it a feature of "new world" countries with people keen to find their roots past a couple of generations back? Why aren't people just happy to say they are American if both their parents were born there? (not flamebait, genuine curiousity about people's motivations...)
I agree, rain when you're weeding is terrible, the vegetable patch gets really muddy and you end up with flu. I tend to go and find something else to do, like mess around with linux distros on my spare computer. Watch yourself in that damp weather!
In the UK a director has released a film which has been offered straight for download at the same time as it was released on TV: "The Road to Guantanamo. It was shown at the Berlin Film Festival but I guess Channel 4 (the UK arts channel) decide to buy the rights to show it here. It's an 'reconstruction/ documentary' kind of film so not mainstream pulp but it's interesting to see this method of release. I was a bit disappointed to find you actually have to *pay* to download the film from Tiscali but nevertheless it's an interesting approach, I'll wonder if we'll see more of this kind of 'parallel release' in future?