Dude, stop making assumptions. I'm a chick who grew up in a town that hasn't had an economy since I was in kindergarden. Diesels are actually popular there since it's hours to a real town.
Why aren't diesels realistic in Minnesota? I know lots of Canadians in multiple provinces very happy with VW TDIs. The latest generation is particularly good but the previous one just meant running the glow plugs a bit longer during cold snaps.
I'm cheap too. TV came free with my in-law's last car and the Wii was a Christmas gift years ago. I wouldn't pay for cable but Netflix on a 30" screen is more enjoyable than watching free tv shows on a laptop. Over the last year, over 90% of the Wii's use has been for Netflix.
Not at the University of Waterloo. They mostly limit engineering classes to only engineering students. Then they charge engineering students engineering tuition for their arts electives. I paid a lot more for my intro to anthro class as the anthro student sitting next to me.
But it was the government's fault: they capped tuition rate hikes for non-professional degrees. Engineering was considered professional so we got 10+% hike a year while most students got 2%.
I work at home 4 or 4 1/2 days per week. If my job could be done from India, I'd be on a boat. One afternoon of team meetings and a client visit every few weeks is enough to make it compelling for my employer to have me locally available. Just being in the same time zone as clients tends to make them a lot happier.
Unless you have logs showing hits from IPs that resolve as being at the paper, I think Occam's Razor applies.
But they do:
Update: Since someone asked about my server logs, the answer is: yes, I checked them out. On March 28 (the date their article was published) I did log one request for favicon.ico that originated at mail.longislandpress.com. Here it is:
XXX.XXX.XXX.XX – - [28/Mar/2011:20:56:31 +0000] “GET/favicon.ico HTTP/1.0 304 – “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0
It was served with an HTTP 304 code (meaning “unmodified”) which suggests the favicon was already in someone’s cache. That means the page had previously been loaded. The timestamp is 20:56:31 UTC, meaning it was 4:56PM in New York. The timestamp on the original Long Island Press article is 5:02PM.
To put it in a simpler way: someone from longislandpress.com visited my site less than 10 minutes before they published the article in question. I have to admit I didn’t expect the timestamps to be so close to each other, but there they are!
Update: I kept going through the logs, and what do you know I noticed this entry, which originated from the same IP address as the previous entry:
XXX.XXX.XXX.XX - - [29/Mar/2011:19:40:30 +0000] "GET/blog/2011/03/total-bummer-longislandpress-com-plagiarism-and-coverup/ HTTP/1.0" 200 13398 "http://www.longislandpress.com/[redacted wordpress admin.php]" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0"
For anyone I have to support, iOS is the best OS. I get a lot fewer "my computer is broken" calls from family members who've switched to mostly using iPhones & iPads. It's a lot quicker to talk someone through the Mail or Settings app to fix their email configuration than to do the same in Outlook when they're not sure what a left-click is.
I call it "f-you money", as in, my bank account means I can say "f-you" any time I want. Lends a certain detachment and amused attitude to those crappy work situations to know you can walk away but don't quite want to. There are alternatives to item 2 btw, like dividend-yielding investments. Nothing like buying income.
They want you to believe that crap, but it isn't necessarily true. I've been unemployed or underemployed for a cumulative year and a half since 2005. I've had 3 job offers in that time. All started with benefits on day 1 or day 30 (after a short probation). Two started with 3 weeks vacation in the first year (and I wanted a week off for my own pleasure about a month after I'd start one or the other). The third job I worked at for over a year but I took about 3 weeks off during the first year. Technically I had no vacation but I made it clear that I'd pull solid hours to get releases out the door, but I wasn't taking salary or overtime pay for them. Turns out nobody cared if I was chilling in Vegas while they were at a conference showing off my features and making sales.
They have a lot to gain form you believe that you can't change the way things work. At least question what "everyone knows" if someone so clearly benefits from it, even if they seem to have all the power.
I also live in a country where I won't go bankrupt if I get sick, even without benefits. That might help.
Nash equilibrium isn't necessarily the most rational solution, given sufficient information. Look at fishing as a tragedy of the commons problem: it makes sense for each player to overfish as much as possible, which eventually degrades the stocks. But if you know everyone's going to do it, then you'd be a fool to stake your livelihood on it for the long term. Same with vaccines, if you can predict that enough other parents won't vaccinate their kids then you'll realize that the risk of measles to your kid will rise significantly. So then it's rational to vaccine your kid. Or you could hedge it and run the probabilities assuming a 50% chance of significant some loss of herd immunity, 25% chance of no change, and 25% chance of enough kids not being vaccinated and the viruses mutating.
Part of the definition of Nash equilibrium is that no other player in the game can change their strategy if you change yours. If you model the diseases as players since their effects can be affected by the actions of the other players, then you have a player whose strategy may change if you change yours. So it's not Nash equilibrium in that model.
Some people are moving when they die. They just stop when they hit the ground. Getting hit by a car while riding a bike could keep you moving for a fair distance after you're dead.
Depends where you are. On the east coast, I've only ever found cartons and plastic jugs. Ontario seems to have mostly bags (grocery stores) and jugs (convenience stores) with some cartons (mostly 1L), depending on where you shop.
But the NDP is a pretty big minority. If the liberals and NDP stick together on an issue, the tories can't overrule them. Or did I miss another election?
Science & engineering can be long hours but aren't necessarily. I've worked with/as half a dozen types of engineers and a few sets of scientists and never been expected to put in 12 hour days on a regular basis. I've had a few managers suggest that I head home at a reasonable hour when I got caught up in a project. I'm sure there are companies with long hours but the pervasive super-long hours of the financial work don't seem to be a universal standard.
If you mean academia, then yes, the hours there are extreme.
The grants aren't as good as they used to be so lifestyle debt is a little easier to end up with. I know profs close to retirement who bought houses soon after doing their PhDs for about 100-200k. Their stipends were about 14k. Stipends are now 17k and their houses are worth 400-700k. They went to Cuba for spring break; it would be incredibly difficult to manage that on a stipend now.
Now, when you are starting college, and you see a choice between two paths (and you think you'd be likely happy at either as a career) which would you take? The one with the long hours studying to get a job with long hours period and low pay? Or, would you take the path that led to more normal hours and levels of stress, which paid more?
This might make sense but finance tends to be long hours + high stress + high pay whereas other options are moderate hours + moderate/high stress + low/moderate pay. I know I'd make more as a banker, heck, I have relatives and former classmates who do. What I wouldn't be is happier spending 12-14 hours/day at the office, having to carry my blackberry on camping trips to stay in contact "just in case", working Canadian holidays because the American markets are open, and wondering where all this money is coming from if the bank isn't just screwing people. I guess if I were always working I wouldn't have time to wonder about the ethics of the current financial system.
I'd rather they manufactured a single vehicle that could do that stuff without being huge (other than the soccer team, though a minivan would do that). I drive a VW Golf that I'm considering replacing. I desperately don't want a big SUV or truck, partly for personal preference and partly because I don't want to go through that much gas. I need to tow 800 lbs (trailer + sailboat) with enough mostly lightweight camping gear for a week, about equivalent to having 4-5 adults in the car. That's technically a bit over the 1000 lbs that my Golf is rated for.
Other than a Subaru Outback (which is now SUV-sized so I'd have to find one a few years old, then need to find another replacement sooner), I can't find a non-SUV that can handle it. Especially if we add a few kids and a dog. They'd fit in a Golf Wagon just fine but the towing and load capacity just aren't there. If I didn't enjoy driving so much, I'd just give up and get an SUV. We'll probably just end up with the Wagon and void the warranty.
Strangely, of the outdoorsy people at my sailing club (who all tow a small boat at least twice a year) very few drive larger vehicles. Lots of Accords, Golfs, older minivans & wagons,... I know one guy who tows his Laser to and from the club with a Miata.
What about the child's right to be exposed to parts of the world that aren't perfectly safe, so that they grow up before they're 30? Keep someone from skinning their knees or hearing "dirty" words until they're 18 then see how "productive" or mature they'll be at 22.
The suicide rate is easily 10x higher among some groups in North America (e.g., adolescent native americans). Somehow we just don't get as worked up about that.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, stop making assumptions. I'm a chick who grew up in a town that hasn't had an economy since I was in kindergarden. Diesels are actually popular there since it's hours to a real town.
Why aren't diesels realistic in Minnesota? I know lots of Canadians in multiple provinces very happy with VW TDIs. The latest generation is particularly good but the previous one just meant running the glow plugs a bit longer during cold snaps.
I'm cheap too. TV came free with my in-law's last car and the Wii was a Christmas gift years ago. I wouldn't pay for cable but Netflix on a 30" screen is more enjoyable than watching free tv shows on a laptop. Over the last year, over 90% of the Wii's use has been for Netflix.
The percentage bachelors degrees granted in engineering doubled from 1975-1985 and it's dropped back down to the 1975 value again. I can't find the source but I read the other day that the number of bachelors degrees has roughly doubled since the 1970s. If so, we're graduating as many engineers as we were in 1975 but "production" of engineers has not not kept up with the increase of over 25% in population.
Not at the University of Waterloo. They mostly limit engineering classes to only engineering students. Then they charge engineering students engineering tuition for their arts electives. I paid a lot more for my intro to anthro class as the anthro student sitting next to me.
But it was the government's fault: they capped tuition rate hikes for non-professional degrees. Engineering was considered professional so we got 10+% hike a year while most students got 2%.
I work at home 4 or 4 1/2 days per week. If my job could be done from India, I'd be on a boat. One afternoon of team meetings and a client visit every few weeks is enough to make it compelling for my employer to have me locally available. Just being in the same time zone as clients tends to make them a lot happier.
Unless you have logs showing hits from IPs that resolve as being at the paper, I think Occam's Razor applies.
But they do: /favicon.ico HTTP/1.0 304 – “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0 /blog/2011/03/total-bummer-longislandpress-com-plagiarism-and-coverup/ HTTP/1.0" 200 13398 "http://www.longislandpress.com/[redacted wordpress admin.php]" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0"
Update: Since someone asked about my server logs, the answer is: yes, I checked them out. On March 28 (the date their article was published) I did log one request for favicon.ico that originated at mail.longislandpress.com. Here it is:
XXX.XXX.XXX.XX – - [28/Mar/2011:20:56:31 +0000] “GET
It was served with an HTTP 304 code (meaning “unmodified”) which suggests the favicon was already in someone’s cache. That means the page had previously been loaded. The timestamp is 20:56:31 UTC, meaning it was 4:56PM in New York. The timestamp on the original Long Island Press article is 5:02PM.
To put it in a simpler way: someone from longislandpress.com visited my site less than 10 minutes before they published the article in question. I have to admit I didn’t expect the timestamps to be so close to each other, but there they are!
Update: I kept going through the logs, and what do you know I noticed this entry, which originated from the same IP address as the previous entry:
XXX.XXX.XXX.XX - - [29/Mar/2011:19:40:30 +0000] "GET
If my mother's driving it and doesn't want to pay a mechanic, it is.
For anyone I have to support, iOS is the best OS. I get a lot fewer "my computer is broken" calls from family members who've switched to mostly using iPhones & iPads. It's a lot quicker to talk someone through the Mail or Settings app to fix their email configuration than to do the same in Outlook when they're not sure what a left-click is.
I call it "f-you money", as in, my bank account means I can say "f-you" any time I want. Lends a certain detachment and amused attitude to those crappy work situations to know you can walk away but don't quite want to. There are alternatives to item 2 btw, like dividend-yielding investments. Nothing like buying income.
You'd be surprised what can be done as a web app these days: http://www.sencha.com/products/touch/demos.php
No need to deal with Apple or Objective C (which I rather like) to get web apps installed on an iOS device.
They want you to believe that crap, but it isn't necessarily true. I've been unemployed or underemployed for a cumulative year and a half since 2005. I've had 3 job offers in that time. All started with benefits on day 1 or day 30 (after a short probation). Two started with 3 weeks vacation in the first year (and I wanted a week off for my own pleasure about a month after I'd start one or the other). The third job I worked at for over a year but I took about 3 weeks off during the first year. Technically I had no vacation but I made it clear that I'd pull solid hours to get releases out the door, but I wasn't taking salary or overtime pay for them. Turns out nobody cared if I was chilling in Vegas while they were at a conference showing off my features and making sales.
They have a lot to gain form you believe that you can't change the way things work. At least question what "everyone knows" if someone so clearly benefits from it, even if they seem to have all the power.
I also live in a country where I won't go bankrupt if I get sick, even without benefits. That might help.
Nash equilibrium isn't necessarily the most rational solution, given sufficient information. Look at fishing as a tragedy of the commons problem: it makes sense for each player to overfish as much as possible, which eventually degrades the stocks. But if you know everyone's going to do it, then you'd be a fool to stake your livelihood on it for the long term. Same with vaccines, if you can predict that enough other parents won't vaccinate their kids then you'll realize that the risk of measles to your kid will rise significantly. So then it's rational to vaccine your kid. Or you could hedge it and run the probabilities assuming a 50% chance of significant some loss of herd immunity, 25% chance of no change, and 25% chance of enough kids not being vaccinated and the viruses mutating. Part of the definition of Nash equilibrium is that no other player in the game can change their strategy if you change yours. If you model the diseases as players since their effects can be affected by the actions of the other players, then you have a player whose strategy may change if you change yours. So it's not Nash equilibrium in that model.
Some people are moving when they die. They just stop when they hit the ground. Getting hit by a car while riding a bike could keep you moving for a fair distance after you're dead.
Are they releasing the .NET SDK & Express editions for *nix now?
Depends where you are. On the east coast, I've only ever found cartons and plastic jugs. Ontario seems to have mostly bags (grocery stores) and jugs (convenience stores) with some cartons (mostly 1L), depending on where you shop.
Naw, we've gotta pack on the weight for the hard, long winter and ice cream's one of the best ways to do it.
But the NDP is a pretty big minority. If the liberals and NDP stick together on an issue, the tories can't overrule them. Or did I miss another election?
Science & engineering can be long hours but aren't necessarily. I've worked with/as half a dozen types of engineers and a few sets of scientists and never been expected to put in 12 hour days on a regular basis. I've had a few managers suggest that I head home at a reasonable hour when I got caught up in a project. I'm sure there are companies with long hours but the pervasive super-long hours of the financial work don't seem to be a universal standard.
If you mean academia, then yes, the hours there are extreme.
The grants aren't as good as they used to be so lifestyle debt is a little easier to end up with. I know profs close to retirement who bought houses soon after doing their PhDs for about 100-200k. Their stipends were about 14k. Stipends are now 17k and their houses are worth 400-700k. They went to Cuba for spring break; it would be incredibly difficult to manage that on a stipend now.
Now, when you are starting college, and you see a choice between two paths (and you think you'd be likely happy at either as a career) which would you take? The one with the long hours studying to get a job with long hours period and low pay? Or, would you take the path that led to more normal hours and levels of stress, which paid more?
This might make sense but finance tends to be long hours + high stress + high pay whereas other options are moderate hours + moderate/high stress + low/moderate pay. I know I'd make more as a banker, heck, I have relatives and former classmates who do. What I wouldn't be is happier spending 12-14 hours/day at the office, having to carry my blackberry on camping trips to stay in contact "just in case", working Canadian holidays because the American markets are open, and wondering where all this money is coming from if the bank isn't just screwing people. I guess if I were always working I wouldn't have time to wonder about the ethics of the current financial system.
But could you imagine the typical American driving behind one of these people?
I'd rather they manufactured a single vehicle that could do that stuff without being huge (other than the soccer team, though a minivan would do that). I drive a VW Golf that I'm considering replacing. I desperately don't want a big SUV or truck, partly for personal preference and partly because I don't want to go through that much gas. I need to tow 800 lbs (trailer + sailboat) with enough mostly lightweight camping gear for a week, about equivalent to having 4-5 adults in the car. That's technically a bit over the 1000 lbs that my Golf is rated for.
Other than a Subaru Outback (which is now SUV-sized so I'd have to find one a few years old, then need to find another replacement sooner), I can't find a non-SUV that can handle it. Especially if we add a few kids and a dog. They'd fit in a Golf Wagon just fine but the towing and load capacity just aren't there. If I didn't enjoy driving so much, I'd just give up and get an SUV. We'll probably just end up with the Wagon and void the warranty.
Strangely, of the outdoorsy people at my sailing club (who all tow a small boat at least twice a year) very few drive larger vehicles. Lots of Accords, Golfs, older minivans & wagons, ... I know one guy who tows his Laser to and from the club with a Miata.
What about the child's right to be exposed to parts of the world that aren't perfectly safe, so that they grow up before they're 30? Keep someone from skinning their knees or hearing "dirty" words until they're 18 then see how "productive" or mature they'll be at 22.
The suicide rate is easily 10x higher among some groups in North America (e.g., adolescent native americans). Somehow we just don't get as worked up about that.