What you mean to say is, the United States of America has been printing money and using it to make purchases from other nations, and those other nations hoard those US dollars and trade them amongst themselves rather than redeeming them for American made goods, so America basically gets a free ride on the back of everyone else and has since the 70s.
It's like if I wrote a cheque and used it to pay for groceries, and the grocer didn't cash it, but paid their power bill with it, and the power company didn't cash it, but paid their employees with it, etc, etc.
But it's going to come to an end soon... China is selling oil for Yuan, and Russia has made an agreement with them to supply them with as much oil and gas as they want.
So, the era of the USA is at an end, along with the ridiculous culture they've created.
ABC, CBS, FOX are afraid to tell you that the USA has a debt greater than Greece or Spain, and that the USA is far far from being number one. That distinction has shifted to the Malgrave and Asia, to countries without such high debut.
Exporting manufacturing jobs killed the USA and toppled it from #1. It will take some fantastic invention to have the USA regain that position. If you look at Apple, as an example, where are the manufacturing jobs and the people who are working and making money? Whose kids are going to university. It is certainly not the kids whose parents work at Walmart or low retail or distribution jobs.
USA, wake up, start to repatriate your manufacturing. It may cost some profits, but it will drop your unemployment from the mid-20's percent to 6-8 percent.
You mean Madoff? Or would you like to talk about the mortgage meltdown stuff? Well the mortgage meltdown stuff gets interesting, because if you really want to get into that, the first thing that needs to happen is you go back to where the government forced banks into lending to people who shouldn't have gotten the loans in the first place. And when the banks said "we shouldn't have to..." the government said: "you will loan, or we'll pull your FDIC backing and launch trade and trust investigations against you."
Nothing quite like the government at work right? Might also want to look into which party was heavily involved in all of that too. But let's just say that, when changes were put forward to get it fixed back in 2002, and 2003 the "opposite party in charge" cockblocked the entire thing. Oh...if you didn't figure it out yet, it was the democrats.
So you are saying that the democrats wanted to fix the problem, but were stopped by the forces of greed
It is the students who will decide the future of a Office Product. Students do more with Office products than do Business owners. Second to students are Accountants and secretaries.
CS students learn Linux, and then Doz. They are not afraid of Linux. In Latin American countries, and east of Europe (and many European cities, Linux is the default system). Much of Linux development is not from North America.
So, I would pay $10/mo for a fully supported Linux that is truly not owned by a big site (Not a Ubuntu, Fedora, IBM or Oracle, as examples, but perhaps a Mint, or Mandriva, or Debian).
You're already leasing it. It's called licensing. The only difference is that you had a one-time payment before, and now they want you to pay continuously.
They say they're going to add new features, but I don't see how they can add $100 worth of new features every year. Heck, office 2004 still gets my jobs done. I don't see what features they could possibly have added over the last 8 years that would be worth $800.
The whole pricing thing for apps like this I think is going to do a bubble burst shortly anyway. Who's going to pay $100/yr to lease an app that a cloud app will do for you for $15/yr? I've used Google Docs recently, and while it's not a perfect replacement yet, it's sure a lot cheaper!
Is it more likely that for $100/year, you will be getting a full set of 1000 programs, which include games, science, music library, video library, encyclopaedia, (Wiki or other), office tools, databases, etc. If you are a casual writer, would that 100/year actually be for 100 minutes of use? You need much more, much much more for $100/yr than a Word Processor
At some point, the free ride with open source will taper off in North America and Europe, and we will have to visit websites in India and other impoverished countries to download FOSS software. That is not to say that their software will be inferior, but the American Mindset is to monetize everything that is possible, irrespective of benefit to society.
New owners may change things, but we do hope they realize that what works well and is not broken, should not be radically changed. Change is good, and so, be prepared for revenue generating activities to start appearing.
SourceForge is my real concern. It is a jewel of a source for phenomenal open source software. It could also host from time to time, adverts for Dice.
Will Slashdot go on a subscription basis? Dice is the one to decide.
You buy a phone once a year vs a PC once every 3 years. I would expect 3x more smartphone shipments than PCs.
I buy a phone when the lettering on the keypad is worn out. About every 6 years or so. I usually go through 2 batteries.
I use a phone as a phone, and I have other equipment too. When my 6 years is up, I will buy what functionally meets my requirements. It will include scanner, voice activation, GPS, browser and camera. Maybe even have a 12 hour battery life device.
I worked in a non-union shop. While most of us respected the 5 minutes per hour of cigarette break, and the 15 minuts per 4 hours of bathroom breaks, some of us who did not like the job, or had some personal business that needed extra time, abused the system. If extra time was needed, the honest ones stayed longer to make up the time, or came in eariier.
Then I worked in a time card oriented shop. People would punch in at 7:45am, and go to the cafeteria for breakfast, expecting to be paid for that time. Others would abuse the 15 minutes break mid-shift. We added a tolerance of 5 minutes to return before time was docked. If you can go for a smoke every hour, and you have 15 minutes in the AM, Lunch time (unpaid) and 15 minutes paid break in the afternoon, it was fair. There was for everyone, a five minutes pee and wash time at end of shift.
So yes, it is ok to measure your breaks. The employer may look at a week at a time to see if there is a pattern of abuse.
This is exactly right. So many people are bitching about Unity and Gnome3, all this would be moot if they'd just dump that crap and make KDE the default desktop, and different distros customize the many configuration options in it to their liking. KDE can be made to look and act very different with the config options and themes (and of course users can use that as a starting point and make further tweaks easily in "System Settings"). People who want something lighterweight can use XFCE or whatever, so that can be offered as an alternative to KDE in some distros.
Why all the distros are so in love with Gnome, I have no idea.
======================= After using Gnome3 for the past year, and frequently reverting to Gnome2 or KDE or XFCE, I can say that G3 with a tweak that presents the desktop as the background is most welcome and makes G3 enjoyable. I installed a second tweak that provides an icon on the panel which, when clicked, opens up a G2 style of menu. The only other tweak I installed was to show the power-off option as well as suspend button.
I put the terminal icon onto the favorites bar, as well as my VIM GUI, and removed apps that I do rarely use. Doing so gave me the interface that I enjoy. There is one improvement that I would love, and that is to be able to have a an ability to drag a specific directory rapid switch to the favorites bar. Clicking that icon should work in the same manner as clicking the home directory icon. Why only limit me to the home directory?
On the negative side, the top left corner is not an ideal choice to use to present the windows select option. Its position should default elsewhere, but allow the user to select how to present the windows selection presentation.
I do miss compiz wobbly windows, or fast virtual desktop changing. My KDE setup provides WW and Fast VDC.
Please take your pills again, otherwise you'll write more nonsense.
If you grow up in Germany, you will get fed everything about the holocaust until you are sick of it. It will be the topic of (mandatory) history class for at least half a year, usually one year.
There's stuff on TV about the holocaust every week. There's lots of books in the history section of book stores.
The jewish lobby organisations have a massive influence, and if you want to kill a political topic dead, all you need to do is find a convincing way to link it to the holocaust. For example, there's a current discussion regarding the legality of circumcision for religious purposes. We're not talking about something done by a doctor in a hospital under anesthesia, but about the religious ceremony where some priest cuts of a part of your dick as a child without any painkillers. A court recently ruled that strictly speaking, that is assault. There was an uproar within Germany because both muslims and jews do that to their kids. In the media, the jewish position takes headlines, while the muslim position is rarely mentioned. There are about 200,000 jews in Germany, but 3.6 million muslims. Jewish speakers seriously said that this court decision "is the worst thing that happened to judaism in Germany since the holocaust".
Israel is more likely to forget about the holocaust than Germany is.
Would you prefer to be reminded to not criticize that other religion where if you critize it, you can end up dead.
If the EU really wants to force the issue, google can just threaten to withdraw from Europe. We will see how well that goes over with the people.
Actually, Google tailors its search algoriythms and services for the country or region which has a significant number of users. For a while though, Goole has been facing stiff competition from the Russian and Israeli Search Engine companies, which do provide very comparable results. These sites do not inundate us with the amount of advertising that appears on Page 1 of a Google search result.
There is a fundamental flaw in elections today: lack of consideration for "margin of error". In my opinion, margin of error should be calculated and any election which falls within the margin of error should either be held again or some sort of tie breaker should kick in.
Pretending that we can deduce the intention of every voter with zero errors is noble, naive, and ridiculous.
There is a fundamental flaw in elections today: lack of consideration for "margin of error". In my opinion, margin of error should be calculated and any election which falls within the margin of error should either be held again or some sort of tie breaker should kick in.
Pretending that we can deduce the intention of every voter with zero errors is noble, naive, and ridiculous.
I was a scrutenizer for the Quebec Provincial Election held last Sept 4th. My poll had 325 electors, but only 200 voted. Of the two hundred who voted, 2 ballots were purposely defaced (all parties but 1 were checked).
The amount of preparation before the election, and the work we do in the setup, operation and close of day is phenomenal. lIke the accounting books for a small business, every sub-total, and cross total, and damaged or spoiled ballet is accounted for. And there is no such thing as rounding errors. IT MUST BALANCE.
Ballots had to be marked with our provided pencils, which were returned to me along with the folded ballot. The ballot was stuffed into the sealed ballot box by the voter. For every empty ballot, I had a stub that went along with it. We had to balance stubs to ballots, to verify there was no stuffing of the box, or that a person decided to walk away after his/her being given the ballot.
The paper ballot worked just fine. Polls closed at 8pm, and we balanced by 9:30pm, were audited, and every category of document was placed into sealed envelops, and the whole thing sealed in plastic bags. My initials were on every seal, making me accountable.
I can say that the women voters outnumbered the men (around 60% women). It was a long day, with no lunch or supper breaks, and hardly anytime for a bathroom break.
The poll was located in a Multi-cultural community, where the majority of voters were first generation Canadians..
In winter we get our tomatoes from the southern states or even Latin America. They are genetically modified to resist worms, and to be more meaty. Squeeze one of these tomatoes, and you hardly get any juice, you get a lot of pulp. I think that the tomatoes, when organic (to me it means no fertilizer and not genetically modified) are juicer, have better color, and a great flavor. I can taste the difference, or perhaps my tongue can distinguish between a tomato prepared for shipping by air to store shelves and a tomato grown on the local farm and sold at farmer's markets.
For the past 10 years, I have always had a tomato as an aperitif with my boxed lunch. Blind-folded, I can tell the brand, (Italian, Beefsteak, Rose, etc.) when I take a first slice. What am I distinguishing in my blindfold test?
Pretty much, along with cookie blockers. Anyone who doesn't use one on the internet these days is either mad or insane. Perhaps both. I don't care that site users are whining and crying that they're losing revenue, it's stuff like what was mentioned in the article itself(too long to repeat) that ensure that I'm going to keep using them. Plus the long list of abusive ads themselves that like to run with their volume at 11, or inject malware.
I'd be happy with ads, no really. If companies weren't being so stinking abusive over it. I'd call the entire thing an abusive relationship, you even get companies promising "we don't do this, don't worry we've changed." And next time, they're right back to doing it. Sounds familiar doesn't it?
I don't mind ads if they are in the margins. What I HATE are popups that show up when you slide the mouse across a keyword in a blog or article. These popups are ads that I write off as my subconscious telling me to avoid purchasing that product because a hard sell means an inferior product. The worst are girlie ads that popup while I am reading a technical article or even while reading stuff rom Slashdot.org, The ISP or whoever, creates browser triggers for keywords. I frequently dump cache, cookies, etc. but sometimes these guys are not using a cookie that is in the standard location.
We need several things. The end of the massive summer off. Take the quarters and put a couple of weeks between them. Second, the end of grade levels beyond sixth, or maybe beyond eighth, as important metrics. If proper feedback testing on their abilities and instruction was performed for the years leading up to this, the student gets placed in classes in each discipline relevant to the student's abilities. Allow parents to have one free "appeal" in the form of a test to re-place the student, but after that initial result, all further appeals cost the parent to prevent helicopter parents from abusing the system. For students that place at mediocre levels, offer practical electives so that when they get out of high school they have something that they can do for their income where they won't need a lot of further training. If anything, start with an intro to trades type of class where students get exposure to trades, and use that to place them.
Some may call this unfair, as it no longer gives each and every child equal opportunity. I would say that parents choose the path their child takes from the very beginning, and the school should accommodate that decision while still allowing those who choose to excel despite home choices to do so. If little Johnny wasn't encouraged to do well in school then little Johnny doesn't get to be placed into the classes where his sheer presence gets to drag others down to his level if he is inclined to do that. He doesn't get college prep classes as he's probably not going to college. On the other hand, if he does well in school, for whatever reason, he'll be placed to where it's expected that his education will continue past secondary school.
Lastly, for hellions, boarding school. Uniforms, curfew, mandatory attendance, the works. Put a fence around the place if necessary. We do not serve them by letting them get away with outright bad behavior. Boarding school is expensive, but as a whole, is it cheaper to let them disrupt normal school and keep them there?
============= Here in Montreal, my grandkids attend public school from 8am to 4pm which includes an extra hour a day for enrichment. The extra hour per day is optional. The schools here don't pander to softening course subjects. Even without the extra hour, they follow a much tougher curriculum, along the lines of what you find outside of the USA. From kindergarten they study a second language, learn science and mathematics as essentials. My grandkids in grade 3 learn and practice to write coherently, and to think logically in two languages.
Some in our provincial government want the public school extended to 5pm, but keeping the summer vacation to the 10 weeks. During these 10 weeks, teachers are encouraged to take diploma courses in pedagogy, child psychology, etc. Each accredited course results in a bump in salary. The 5pm end-of-day will never come to pass, but if implemented would serve for enrichment, and for day-care for two income families. All teachers here must have a bachelor degree in education.
My observation is that with two languages being taught from kindergarten, children exercise different parts of their brain. They appear more alert, imaginative and creative. By the way, the second language includes time in gym, use of computers, and conversation/writing. They also have reading/writing in our mother tongue (English). This two language requirement is in the Public School curriculum.
Gnome has injured Fedora and all distributions that were obliged to follow with a Gnome3 implementation. Gnome3 development did damage by removing functionality that previously existed. It has very very substantially fallen behind Ubuntu's Unity. If you doubt my opinion, compare the Unity 12.10 beta with any version 3 of Gnome, including betas.
I now do more with XFCE, Unity and KDE than I do with Gnome 3.x because the tools that accompany the former are richer in function.
Hey, sparky.. in case you hadn't noticed, the terrorists HAVE won.. I can just see what remains of OBL's guys sitting over there in Afgan-land laughing their asses off at how those stupid ass Americans are chasing their tails.. No matter WHAT precautions TSA or ANY other three-letter-agency does, they CANNOT completely 100% PREVENT any terrorist attack.. I gar-ron-tee if you think the bozos at TSA are good at security theater now, wait till they get what their drooling for.. 100% surveillance of EVERYBODY.. EVEN with that, a determined OBL-wanna-be can easily cause big kaboom, since by definition he WANTS to die, and have sex with his 72 virgins.... So, whats next after 100% surveillance? Use your imagination.... (shudder)
I'm FAR FAR FAR more afraid of the US goverment and its security theater than I am the remote chance of my being killed by some OBL-wanna-be... I'm quite sure I'm NOT the only one who feels this way...
A message from a few dead extremists. Don't commit suicide, there are no more virgins left. But we can give you some same sex ones.
If you consider lint, the bane of cooling systems, then we have to appreciate liquid cooling via immersion. Every year, I open my desktop machines, vacuum the lint from where I can, use the compressed air to blow the lint from the cpu cooler fins, and check the fans, replacing any which has stopped turning.
I do keep a machine for 6 years, and after that, figure that it is time to upgrade that box.
Lint, builds up, even with the lint filters and controlled air flow.
The NHS should begin a program of providing him with a homeopathic salary. The less they pay him, the more motivated he will become!
If they say homeopathic medicine works, then don't dismiss it as quackery. The native Indians of many countries use homeopathic medicine, as well as many many other peoples from Africa to South America.
It does not mean a homeopathic prescription works for everything, but in some cases it does work. Perhaps it is a placebo, perhaps it works because of knowledge handed down generation to generation.
We know chocolate helps combat cancer . If it is recommended to consume two teaspoons of chocolate per day, would you agree that it is homeopathic prescription? If aspertime sugar substitute causes brain lesions and there are organic sweeteners that have no such effect, and if the organic ones are prescribed by the homeopathic community, is that hogwash?
Many many prescribed drugs are placebos, or do harm via side effects, while others are life savers. Look up via your search engine for the Green Tea topic. It is a homeopathic remedy.
I am a skeptic, but I do know that some of their medications do work, and the medication works with minimal side effects.
I've gone paperless, so I have tax returns, medical info, SSNs, etc on my laptop. Full Disk Encryption means I don't have to worry about it.
With FDE, you have to decrypt it every time you use the computer, so you're not going to forget the password. If you're worried about that, put the password on a piece of paper in a safe deposit box or some other type of storage at home.
What happens if your computer mother-board is fried, and you buy a new machine, plug-in the encrypted hard disk as a second drive?
Does the system ask for a password when it should be mounted? Realise it is not the primary boot disk
We need several things. The end of the massive summer off. Take the quarters and put a couple of weeks between them. Second, the end of grade levels beyond sixth, or maybe beyond eighth, as important metrics. If proper feedback testing on their abilities and instruction was performed for the years leading up to this, the student gets placed in classes in each discipline relevant to the student's abilities. Allow parents to have one free "appeal" in the form of a test to re-place the student, but after that initial result, all further appeals cost the parent to prevent helicopter parents from abusing the system. For students that place at mediocre levels, offer practical electives so that when they get out of high school they have something that they can do for their income where they won't need a lot of further training. If anything, start with an intro to trades type of class where students get exposure to trades, and use that to place them.
Some may call this unfair, as it no longer gives each and every child equal opportunity. I would say that parents choose the path their child takes from the very beginning, and the school should accommodate that decision while still allowing those who choose to excel despite home choices to do so. If little Johnny wasn't encouraged to do well in school then little Johnny doesn't get to be placed into the classes where his sheer presence gets to drag others down to his level if he is inclined to do that. He doesn't get college prep classes as he's probably not going to college. On the other hand, if he does well in school, for whatever reason, he'll be placed to where it's expected that his education will continue past secondary school.
Lastly, for hellions, boarding school. Uniforms, curfew, mandatory attendance, the works. Put a fence around the place if necessary. We do not serve them by letting them get away with outright bad behavior. Boarding school is expensive, but as a whole, is it cheaper to let them disrupt normal school and keep them there?
Wrong... I have a different take.
Children need structure. They need parents who take an active interest in their achievements and to help them through the child's encounter with course difficulties. To many homes have two working parents, with not enough energy to sit with their child to insure that the child is doing OK.
Another major problem is that a teacher is given a course outline, is given a state or provincially supplied curriculum, and has to follow the outline. If the teacher takes ill, a substitute can continue. That outline is very well thought out, but one size does not fit all.
Another problem is motivation. A teacher who can motivate a student is a gem, and gems are rare. Many teachers, after graduation start out with energy and motiviation, but the system beats the enthusiasm out of them. Teaching and motivating students is very difficult, and produces brain fatigue, and in rare cases, depression. The teacher tries hard, but the student hasn't turned on. And the parents don't help, they blame the teacher. Oh-no, it is not us, is the parent response.
Many teachers are required to take summer courses as a way to get monetary promotions and as well, training courses explaining how to teach to exceptional children. Make the school day longer or the school year longer will not work. Students need time to burn out energy, with Baseball, soccer, bike-riding, etc. Teachers need time to mark homework, to plan the next days work, and to prepare suppers. A teacher is also a parent, and must devote time to her siblings.
Another problem is the dumbing down of the school curriculum due to the desire to get the student out of it without his/her repeating a grade or subject. And the problem is compounded with the for-profit universities, who take any student, as long as the money is provided. So, the under qualified student is in university, when he/she should be in a trade school where aptitudes are matching interests
Slashdot Mirror
What you mean to say is, the United States of America has been printing money and using it to make purchases from other nations, and those other nations hoard those US dollars and trade them amongst themselves rather than redeeming them for American made goods, so America basically gets a free ride on the back of everyone else and has since the 70s.
It's like if I wrote a cheque and used it to pay for groceries, and the grocer didn't cash it, but paid their power bill with it, and the power company didn't cash it, but paid their employees with it, etc, etc.
But it's going to come to an end soon... China is selling oil for Yuan, and Russia has made an agreement with them to supply them with as much oil and gas as they want.
http://www.examiner.com/article/dollar-no-longer-primary-oil-currency-as-china-begins-to-sell-oil-using-yuan
So, the era of the USA is at an end, along with the ridiculous culture they've created.
ABC, CBS, FOX are afraid to tell you that the USA has a debt greater than Greece or Spain, and that the USA is far far from being number one. That distinction has shifted to the Malgrave and Asia, to countries without such high debut.
Exporting manufacturing jobs killed the USA and toppled it from #1. It will take some fantastic invention to have the USA regain that position. If you look at Apple, as an example, where are the manufacturing jobs and the people who are working and making money? Whose kids are going to university. It is certainly not the kids whose parents work at Walmart or low retail or distribution jobs.
USA, wake up, start to repatriate your manufacturing. It may cost some profits, but it will drop your unemployment from the mid-20's percent to 6-8 percent.
You mean Madoff? Or would you like to talk about the mortgage meltdown stuff? Well the mortgage meltdown stuff gets interesting, because if you really want to get into that, the first thing that needs to happen is you go back to where the government forced banks into lending to people who shouldn't have gotten the loans in the first place. And when the banks said "we shouldn't have to..." the government said: "you will loan, or we'll pull your FDIC backing and launch trade and trust investigations against you."
Nothing quite like the government at work right? Might also want to look into which party was heavily involved in all of that too. But let's just say that, when changes were put forward to get it fixed back in 2002, and 2003 the "opposite party in charge" cockblocked the entire thing. Oh...if you didn't figure it out yet, it was the democrats.
So you are saying that the democrats wanted to fix the problem, but were stopped by the forces of greed
It is the students who will decide the future of a Office Product. Students do more with Office products than do Business owners. Second to students are Accountants and secretaries.
CS students learn Linux, and then Doz. They are not afraid of Linux. In Latin American countries, and east of Europe (and many European cities, Linux is the default system). Much of Linux development is not from North America.
So, I would pay $10/mo for a fully supported Linux that is truly not owned by a big site (Not a Ubuntu, Fedora, IBM or Oracle, as examples, but perhaps a Mint, or Mandriva, or Debian).
You're already leasing it. It's called licensing. The only difference is that you had a one-time payment before, and now they want you to pay continuously.
They say they're going to add new features, but I don't see how they can add $100 worth of new features every year. Heck, office 2004 still gets my jobs done. I don't see what features they could possibly have added over the last 8 years that would be worth $800.
The whole pricing thing for apps like this I think is going to do a bubble burst shortly anyway. Who's going to pay $100/yr to lease an app that a cloud app will do for you for $15/yr? I've used Google Docs recently, and while it's not a perfect replacement yet, it's sure a lot cheaper!
Is it more likely that for $100/year, you will be getting a full set of 1000 programs, which include games, science, music library, video library, encyclopaedia, (Wiki or other), office tools, databases, etc. If you are a casual writer, would that 100/year actually be for 100 minutes of use?
You need much more, much much more for $100/yr than a Word Processor
At some point, the free ride with open source will taper off in North America and Europe, and we will have to visit websites in India and other impoverished countries to download FOSS software. That is not to say that their software will be inferior, but the American Mindset is to monetize everything that is possible, irrespective of benefit to society.
New owners may change things, but we do hope they realize that what works well and is not broken, should not be radically changed. Change is good, and so, be prepared for revenue generating activities to start appearing.
SourceForge is my real concern. It is a jewel of a source for phenomenal open source software. It could also host from time to time, adverts for Dice.
Will Slashdot go on a subscription basis? Dice is the one to decide.
AMERICA IS AWESOME!!!!!! We're #1! We're #1!!!! WHOOOOO!
I love tour sarcasm.
You buy a phone once a year vs a PC once every 3 years. I would expect 3x more smartphone shipments than PCs.
I buy a phone when the lettering on the keypad is worn out. About every 6 years or so. I usually go through 2 batteries.
I use a phone as a phone, and I have other equipment too. When my 6 years is up, I will buy what functionally meets my requirements. It will include scanner, voice activation, GPS, browser and camera. Maybe even have a 12 hour battery life device.
I worked in a non-union shop. While most of us respected the 5 minutes per hour of cigarette break, and the 15 minuts per 4 hours of bathroom breaks, some of us who did not like the job, or had some personal business that needed extra time, abused the system. If extra time was needed, the honest ones stayed longer to make up the time, or came in eariier.
Then I worked in a time card oriented shop. People would punch in at 7:45am, and go to the cafeteria for breakfast, expecting to be paid for that time.
Others would abuse the 15 minutes break mid-shift. We added a tolerance of 5 minutes to return before time was docked. If you can go for a smoke every hour, and you have 15 minutes in the AM, Lunch time (unpaid) and 15 minutes paid break in the afternoon, it was fair.
There was for everyone, a five minutes pee and wash time at end of shift.
So yes, it is ok to measure your breaks. The employer may look at a week at a time to see if there is a pattern of abuse.
If your profit is from selling hardware, what would your reaction be to the European Commission or to anyone else?
This is exactly right. So many people are bitching about Unity and Gnome3, all this would be moot if they'd just dump that crap and make KDE the default desktop, and different distros customize the many configuration options in it to their liking. KDE can be made to look and act very different with the config options and themes (and of course users can use that as a starting point and make further tweaks easily in "System Settings"). People who want something lighterweight can use XFCE or whatever, so that can be offered as an alternative to KDE in some distros.
Why all the distros are so in love with Gnome, I have no idea.
=======================
After using Gnome3 for the past year, and frequently reverting to Gnome2 or KDE or XFCE, I can say that G3 with a tweak that presents the desktop as the background is most welcome and makes G3 enjoyable. I installed a second tweak that provides an icon on the panel which, when clicked, opens up a G2 style of menu. The only other tweak I installed was to show the power-off option as well as suspend button.
I put the terminal icon onto the favorites bar, as well as my VIM GUI, and removed apps that I do rarely use. Doing so gave me the interface that I enjoy. There is one improvement that I would love, and that is to be able to have a an ability to drag a specific directory rapid switch to the favorites bar. Clicking that icon should work in the same manner as clicking the home directory icon. Why only limit me to the home directory?
On the negative side, the top left corner is not an ideal choice to use to present the windows select option. Its position should default elsewhere, but allow the user to select how to present the windows selection presentation.
I do miss compiz wobbly windows, or fast virtual desktop changing. My KDE setup provides WW and Fast VDC.
Germany not wanting to remember the holocaust
Please take your pills again, otherwise you'll write more nonsense.
If you grow up in Germany, you will get fed everything about the holocaust until you are sick of it. It will be the topic of (mandatory) history class for at least half a year, usually one year.
There's stuff on TV about the holocaust every week. There's lots of books in the history section of book stores.
The jewish lobby organisations have a massive influence, and if you want to kill a political topic dead, all you need to do is find a convincing way to link it to the holocaust. For example, there's a current discussion regarding the legality of circumcision for religious purposes. We're not talking about something done by a doctor in a hospital under anesthesia, but about the religious ceremony where some priest cuts of a part of your dick as a child without any painkillers. A court recently ruled that strictly speaking, that is assault. There was an uproar within Germany because both muslims and jews do that to their kids. In the media, the jewish position takes headlines, while the muslim position is rarely mentioned. There are about 200,000 jews in Germany, but 3.6 million muslims. Jewish speakers seriously said that this court decision "is the worst thing that happened to judaism in Germany since the holocaust".
Israel is more likely to forget about the holocaust than Germany is.
Would you prefer to be reminded to not criticize that other religion where if you critize it, you can end up dead.
If the EU really wants to force the issue, google can just threaten to withdraw from Europe. We will see how well that goes over with the people.
Actually, Google tailors its search algoriythms and services for the country or region which has a significant number of users.
For a while though, Goole has been facing stiff competition from the Russian and Israeli Search Engine companies, which do provide very comparable results. These sites do not inundate us with the amount of advertising that appears on Page 1 of a Google search result.
We need a lot of vasectomies to cure the problem
There is a fundamental flaw in elections today: lack of consideration for "margin of error". In my opinion, margin of error should be calculated and any election which falls within the margin of error should either be held again or some sort of tie breaker should kick in.
Pretending that we can deduce the intention of every voter with zero errors is noble, naive, and ridiculous.
There is a fundamental flaw in elections today: lack of consideration for "margin of error". In my opinion, margin of error should be calculated and any election which falls within the margin of error should either be held again or some sort of tie breaker should kick in.
Pretending that we can deduce the intention of every voter with zero errors is noble, naive, and ridiculous.
I was a scrutenizer for the Quebec Provincial Election held last Sept 4th. My poll had 325 electors, but only 200 voted. Of the two hundred who voted, 2 ballots were purposely defaced (all parties but 1 were checked).
The amount of preparation before the election, and the work we do in the setup, operation and close of day is phenomenal. lIke the accounting books for a small business, every sub-total, and cross total, and damaged or spoiled ballet is accounted for. And there is no such thing as rounding errors. IT MUST BALANCE.
Ballots had to be marked with our provided pencils, which were returned to me along with the folded ballot. The ballot was stuffed into the sealed ballot box by the voter. For every empty ballot, I had a stub that went along with it. We had to balance stubs to ballots, to verify there was no stuffing of the box, or that a person decided to walk away after his/her being given the ballot.
The paper ballot worked just fine. Polls closed at 8pm, and we balanced by 9:30pm, were audited, and every category of document was placed into sealed envelops, and the whole thing sealed in plastic bags. My initials were on every seal, making me accountable.
I can say that the women voters outnumbered the men (around 60% women). It was a long day, with no lunch or supper breaks, and hardly anytime for a bathroom break.
The poll was located in a Multi-cultural community, where the majority of voters were first generation Canadians..
In winter we get our tomatoes from the southern states or even Latin America. They are genetically modified to resist worms, and to be more meaty. Squeeze one of these tomatoes, and you hardly get any juice, you get a lot of pulp. I think that the tomatoes, when organic (to me it means no fertilizer and not genetically modified) are juicer, have better color, and a great flavor. I can taste the difference, or perhaps my tongue can distinguish between a tomato prepared for shipping by air to store shelves and a tomato grown on the local farm and sold at farmer's markets.
For the past 10 years, I have always had a tomato as an aperitif with my boxed lunch. Blind-folded, I can tell the brand, (Italian, Beefsteak, Rose, etc.) when I take a first slice. What am I distinguishing in my blindfold test?
Ad-block FTW
Pretty much, along with cookie blockers. Anyone who doesn't use one on the internet these days is either mad or insane. Perhaps both. I don't care that site users are whining and crying that they're losing revenue, it's stuff like what was mentioned in the article itself(too long to repeat) that ensure that I'm going to keep using them. Plus the long list of abusive ads themselves that like to run with their volume at 11, or inject malware.
I'd be happy with ads, no really. If companies weren't being so stinking abusive over it. I'd call the entire thing an abusive relationship, you even get companies promising "we don't do this, don't worry we've changed." And next time, they're right back to doing it. Sounds familiar doesn't it?
I don't mind ads if they are in the margins. What I HATE are popups that show up when you slide the mouse across a keyword in a blog or article. These popups are ads that I write off as my subconscious telling me to avoid purchasing that product because a hard sell means an inferior product.
The worst are girlie ads that popup while I am reading a technical article or even while reading stuff rom Slashdot.org, The ISP or whoever, creates browser triggers for keywords. I frequently dump cache, cookies, etc. but sometimes these guys are not using a cookie that is in the standard location.
Wrong.
We need several things. The end of the massive summer off. Take the quarters and put a couple of weeks between them. Second, the end of grade levels beyond sixth, or maybe beyond eighth, as important metrics. If proper feedback testing on their abilities and instruction was performed for the years leading up to this, the student gets placed in classes in each discipline relevant to the student's abilities. Allow parents to have one free "appeal" in the form of a test to re-place the student, but after that initial result, all further appeals cost the parent to prevent helicopter parents from abusing the system. For students that place at mediocre levels, offer practical electives so that when they get out of high school they have something that they can do for their income where they won't need a lot of further training. If anything, start with an intro to trades type of class where students get exposure to trades, and use that to place them.
Some may call this unfair, as it no longer gives each and every child equal opportunity. I would say that parents choose the path their child takes from the very beginning, and the school should accommodate that decision while still allowing those who choose to excel despite home choices to do so. If little Johnny wasn't encouraged to do well in school then little Johnny doesn't get to be placed into the classes where his sheer presence gets to drag others down to his level if he is inclined to do that. He doesn't get college prep classes as he's probably not going to college. On the other hand, if he does well in school, for whatever reason, he'll be placed to where it's expected that his education will continue past secondary school.
Lastly, for hellions, boarding school. Uniforms, curfew, mandatory attendance, the works. Put a fence around the place if necessary. We do not serve them by letting them get away with outright bad behavior. Boarding school is expensive, but as a whole, is it cheaper to let them disrupt normal school and keep them there?
=============
Here in Montreal, my grandkids attend public school from 8am to 4pm which includes an extra hour a day for enrichment. The extra hour per day is optional. The schools here don't pander to softening course subjects. Even without the extra hour, they follow a much tougher curriculum, along the lines of what you find outside of the USA. From kindergarten they study a second language, learn science and mathematics as essentials. My grandkids in grade 3 learn and practice to write coherently, and to think logically in two languages.
Some in our provincial government want the public school extended to 5pm, but keeping the summer vacation to the 10 weeks. During these 10 weeks, teachers are encouraged to take diploma courses in pedagogy, child psychology, etc. Each accredited course results in a bump in salary. The 5pm end-of-day will never come to pass, but if implemented would serve for enrichment, and for day-care for two income families. All teachers here must have a bachelor degree in education.
My observation is that with two languages being taught from kindergarten, children exercise different parts of their brain. They appear more alert, imaginative and creative. By the way, the second language includes time in gym, use of computers, and conversation/writing. They also have reading/writing in our mother tongue (English). This two language requirement is in the Public School curriculum.
Gnome has injured Fedora and all distributions that were obliged to follow with a Gnome3 implementation.
Gnome3 development did damage by removing functionality that previously existed. It has very very substantially fallen behind Ubuntu's Unity. If you doubt my opinion, compare the Unity 12.10 beta with any version 3 of Gnome, including betas.
I now do more with XFCE, Unity and KDE than I do with Gnome 3.x because the tools that accompany the former are richer in function.
Hey, sparky.. in case you hadn't noticed, the terrorists HAVE won.. I can just see what remains of OBL's guys sitting over there in Afgan-land laughing their asses off at how those stupid ass Americans are chasing their tails.. No matter WHAT precautions TSA or ANY other three-letter-agency does, they CANNOT completely 100% PREVENT any terrorist attack.. I gar-ron-tee if you think the bozos at TSA are good at security theater now, wait till they get what their drooling for.. 100% surveillance of EVERYBODY.. EVEN with that, a determined OBL-wanna-be can easily cause big kaboom, since by definition he WANTS to die, and have sex with his 72 virgins.... So, whats next after 100% surveillance? Use your imagination.... (shudder)
I'm FAR FAR FAR more afraid of the US goverment and its security theater than I am the remote chance of my being killed by some OBL-wanna-be... I'm quite sure I'm NOT the only one who feels this way...
A message from a few dead extremists. Don't commit suicide, there are no more virgins left. But we can give you some same sex ones.
If you consider lint, the bane of cooling systems, then we have to appreciate liquid cooling via immersion. Every year, I open my desktop machines, vacuum the lint from where I can, use the compressed air to blow the lint from the cpu cooler fins, and check the fans, replacing any which has stopped turning.
I do keep a machine for 6 years, and after that, figure that it is time to upgrade that box.
Lint, builds up, even with the lint filters and controlled air flow.
Subject line says it all.
The NHS should begin a program of providing him with a homeopathic salary. The less they pay him, the more motivated he will become!
If they say homeopathic medicine works, then don't dismiss it as quackery. The native Indians of many countries use homeopathic medicine, as well as many many other peoples from Africa to South America.
It does not mean a homeopathic prescription works for everything, but in some cases it does work. Perhaps it is a placebo, perhaps it works because of knowledge handed down generation to generation.
We know chocolate helps combat cancer . If it is recommended to consume two teaspoons of chocolate per day, would you agree that it is homeopathic prescription? If aspertime sugar substitute causes brain lesions and there are organic sweeteners that have no such effect, and if the organic ones are prescribed by the homeopathic community, is that hogwash?
Many many prescribed drugs are placebos, or do harm via side effects, while others are life savers. Look up via your search engine for the Green Tea topic. It is a homeopathic remedy.
I am a skeptic, but I do know that some of their medications do work, and the medication works with minimal side effects.
I've gone paperless, so I have tax returns, medical info, SSNs, etc on my laptop. Full Disk Encryption means I don't have to worry about it.
With FDE, you have to decrypt it every time you use the computer, so you're not going to forget the password. If you're worried about that, put the password on a piece of paper in a safe deposit box or some other type of storage at home.
What happens if your computer mother-board is fried, and you buy a new machine, plug-in the encrypted hard disk as a second drive?
Does the system ask for a password when it should be mounted? Realise it is not the primary boot disk
Wrong.
We need several things. The end of the massive summer off. Take the quarters and put a couple of weeks between them. Second, the end of grade levels beyond sixth, or maybe beyond eighth, as important metrics. If proper feedback testing on their abilities and instruction was performed for the years leading up to this, the student gets placed in classes in each discipline relevant to the student's abilities. Allow parents to have one free "appeal" in the form of a test to re-place the student, but after that initial result, all further appeals cost the parent to prevent helicopter parents from abusing the system. For students that place at mediocre levels, offer practical electives so that when they get out of high school they have something that they can do for their income where they won't need a lot of further training. If anything, start with an intro to trades type of class where students get exposure to trades, and use that to place them.
Some may call this unfair, as it no longer gives each and every child equal opportunity. I would say that parents choose the path their child takes from the very beginning, and the school should accommodate that decision while still allowing those who choose to excel despite home choices to do so. If little Johnny wasn't encouraged to do well in school then little Johnny doesn't get to be placed into the classes where his sheer presence gets to drag others down to his level if he is inclined to do that. He doesn't get college prep classes as he's probably not going to college. On the other hand, if he does well in school, for whatever reason, he'll be placed to where it's expected that his education will continue past secondary school.
Lastly, for hellions, boarding school. Uniforms, curfew, mandatory attendance, the works. Put a fence around the place if necessary. We do not serve them by letting them get away with outright bad behavior. Boarding school is expensive, but as a whole, is it cheaper to let them disrupt normal school and keep them there?
Wrong... I have a different take.
Children need structure. They need parents who take an active interest in their achievements and to help them through the child's encounter with course difficulties. To many homes have two working parents, with not enough energy to sit with their child to insure that the child is doing OK.
Another major problem is that a teacher is given a course outline, is given a state or provincially supplied curriculum, and has to follow the outline. If the teacher takes ill, a substitute can continue. That outline is very well thought out, but one size does not fit all.
Another problem is motivation. A teacher who can motivate a student is a gem, and gems are rare. Many teachers, after graduation start out with energy and motiviation, but the system beats the enthusiasm out of them. Teaching and motivating students is very difficult, and produces brain fatigue, and in rare cases, depression. The teacher tries hard, but the student hasn't turned on. And the parents don't help, they blame the teacher. Oh-no, it is not us, is the parent response.
Many teachers are required to take summer courses as a way to get monetary promotions and as well, training courses explaining how to teach to exceptional children. Make the school day longer or the school year longer will not work. Students need time to burn out energy, with Baseball, soccer, bike-riding, etc. Teachers need time to mark homework, to plan the next days work, and to prepare suppers. A teacher is also a parent, and must devote time to her siblings.
Another problem is the dumbing down of the school curriculum due to the desire to get the student out of it without his/her repeating a grade or subject. And the problem is compounded with the for-profit universities, who take any student, as long as the money is provided. So, the under qualified student is in university, when he/she should be in a trade school where aptitudes are matching interests