Cant your designer friends get their goods made cheaply in china too? A business is more about customers than supply really. If you have the loyal customers (who buy into the designers vision) they will pre-order unique items that can be cheaply made in china.
First of all, they are not my friends, they are my wife's. Second of all, are you nuts? Only the massive brands could possibly do this for logistical reasons alone (let alone idealogical ones). All the people I mentioned hand make every item! This is a labour of love that is ripped off by greedy bastards that don't give two shits about "art" or "passion". It makes my blood boil when I think of it. You clearly have no understanding of this industry whatsoever.
My wife works in fashion, she knows many designers personally and has very strong views on copyright as a result of her experiences. Big companies are not really affected by these issues; owning a big name designer brand is all about the brand. If you have an identical fake, it is not as good purely because it is a fake. This is not directly equatible to software where nobody cares that there pirated copy isn't a "geniune Prada". The people who get screwed, though, are the smaller designers. It actually does take considerably more effort to create something unique and special, then it takes to copy that something. My wife has people from these cheaper knock-off stores come in, buy (or look at an item) and then see the near identical item in their store the next week. This hurts! If it was so damned easy to make in the first place, why do these people need to copy. Another designer she knows from Paris (who is a holocost surviver), was put out of business for a time due to floods of cheap copies from china. The problem isn't just that some people can get it for cheap as a result, it's also that your entire brand is devalued by association. (note that these copies were majorly inferiour in every way, except for how they looked). This sort of thin causes real harm to real people. It's made me re-think some of my pirating ways.
It's ok to like flash or silverlight; just naive. The problem is not with these technologies in and of themselves (although there are problems from a purely functional perspective), the problems are as follows. 1) My security attack surface just doubled. I have bugs in the browser, bugs in the player, and interactions between the two. 2) If I am a new hardware manufacturer, I don't get the full Internet till adobe supports my platform. 3) Adobe could give me a crap implimentation (or none) and there is nothing I can do about it. The issue here is closed propriety platforms and how much that sucks for the open web. How good flash or silverlight are as dev platforms is irrelevant to this.
The only way to ensure cross-platform capabilities is open standards (unencumbered by patents). If we have learned anything from the age of the Internet, it's that building on an open standard, even if inferior in many ways, allows for an amazing array of applications that could never be imagined. Anyone can impliment a HTML browser for any piece of hardware (to a point). Flash's cross-platform capabilities are entirely dependent on one company. One public company who at anytime could choose to not port their "Internet viewer" to your platform (or just drag the chain, or do a poor job). Who in their right mind would want to be beholden to that? Adobe holds the Internet to ransom! Yes we need flash like capabilites, but we need them an an open format that anyone can impliment. I am not beholden to firefox, if I wanted to get off my arse, I could contribute to add whatever feature I so desired. If I had enough capital I could make a browser from scratch. No, flash is the antithesis of the open web, it must die, and the only way achieve this is to replace it with an open standard that can do as much (or close).
Perhaps, if none of your coworkers are worth spending time with, you should be looking for another job? Of course, you may just be an arrogant arse-hole who thinks he is too good to spend time with the peons of any workplace. (who are naturally inferior, although the rest of the world doesn't seem have noticed your magnificence as yet. Peons.). I have a suggestion! You could pretend to like these simpletons, while using them for your own ends! Once you are in control, you can rule them with an iron fist! I think you'd like that.
Am I glad that I don't work with you! "I'm here to work, not talk". Ever hear of the concept of colaboration? You know, working together as a team to achieve a common goal? Normally involves this thing I like to call "communication", you do it with your mouth. The advise on avoiding gossip is good, but the rest of your post smacks of some severe personality problems. Many of my co-workers are now friends, and this is a good thing! Lifes too short to be the "lone wolf". As another counter-point, you will never get anywhere if you don't socialize. It's half gaining peoples respect for your technical ability, and half gaining their trust because they know you.
Get your head out of your arse, and join in!
And to take that anology even further... If the forklift driver swallows the keys and refuses to shit; you wouldn't expect him to go to prison for five years. The punshiment is way overblown here. Sure, sue the asshole, put him in prison till he gave up the password. But seriously, five years?
The idea that a near death experience is behind belief in an afterlife is simply wrong. Well known historical religious figures had no such experiences. (Jesus, Mohamud, Gautama Buddha). There is no evidence to suggest that the concept of the near death experience even existed before the advent of modern medicine. You have come up with a simplistic rational for the origin of religion, which simply has no bearing in reality. It's an interesting thought, but even a cursory glance of the literature would show your error.
The actuall research was related to why people have these weired and wonderful experiences when they almost die. There is also a fare degree of similarity in the experiences, which has made it all the more fascinating. This research posits a possible reason, which is very interesting in my personal view. Any extension of "it explains heaven" is really not relevent to anyone except those that believe this to be a glimpse into an afterlife (the exception being anthropologists, however I think this is flawed as given in my previous post). As to your off topic biblical rant; do some research! There are plenty of reasons to disregard the Christian religion, however "the edited bible" is not one of them. The new testament is textually stable, and has more source material than any other ancient document. It is not on these grounds that you should make your case! If we go down this road, however, be prepared for pages of discussion and plenty of links. Textual criticism is not a light topic!
This research is probably accurate in explaining near death experiences, however I think that's as far as it goes. If you study religions, the concept of an afterlife varies quite a bit. In non of them is the "white light that is God" mentioned (to my knowledge). If you look at these near death experiences; all the cases appear in relation to where modern medicine has literally brought the person "back from the brink" (that is to say that they were very near to death indeed by modern standards) Certainly, they were not conscious during the experience. How then could primitive man regale his story when it would have lead to actual death while unconscious? More damning to the idea, though, is simply that these depictions are not represented in any of the religions.
I think the issue that people are missing is not "would you want to be cured from X problem", rather it is the manner of the cure. This cure modifies your DNA, and our genetic identity is something that defines us. I see paralles to the concepts raised in "the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind". This specific case of colour blindness is not particulary controversial or worrying, but playing with DNA takes us down the GATACA path (enhanced DNA, class balance between those with access vs those without etc). It raises ethical questions that need to be discussed. As a side note, my wife is colour blind (extremely rare for women), but she tells me she would not get the cure. She thinks of her colour blindness as part of her identity.
Now, I don't know one way or the other about the validity or otherwise of this study. I'd just like to point out that Australians are now very close to your levels of obesity, and we use cane sugar.
I hate to break it to you, but you could have got those titles for free. I remember seeing those in shops, and always wondered at who would buy them when they were free! All you needed was access to a BBS or a mate. The license allowed sharware to be copied for non commercial use. Those guys who were charging the $5 dollars were ripping off the sharware guys (I'm sure they never saw a dime)! I had friends who used to charge, but they made it clear it was just for the cost of the media and their time.
What? What is/b/ ? What is Omegle? I have heard of chat roulette, but who in the hell would actually use it? I have never vandalised a wiki page, who over the age of 12 would bother to do such a thing? I can't criticize 4chan; because I don't know what it is! I have never browsed rotten.com; and frankly the kind of person that would scares me a little bit. If this typifies the slashdot community, I had no idea. News for nerds wasn't it? I browse slashdot, physorg, news sites, the old new thing, back to slashdot, few more software dev blogs. Aren't nerds into nerdy things? Who are you people???
Perelman is not a normal guy (obvious I realize, but hear me out). People like to subscribe 'normal' motives for behaviour they see as abnormal. I think this is why the idea that the fields medal was rejected as 'beneath' him was put forward. Arrogance is simple to understand. But what did Perelman actually say? "[the prize] was completely irrelevant for me. Everybody understood that if the proof is correct then no other recognition is needed". What Perelman was looking for was recognition for solving the problem. This was more important than the fields medal! What he got instead, was Yau and his cohorts claiming to have "really solved it." In Perelman's mind, political play such as this has no place in mathematics! Worse, his peers were not standing up to a) condemn this behaviour, and b) defend his paper. I think an important missing piece was that Perelman had not been officially recognized as having solved the Poincare conjecture. Now that this had been rectified, perhaps the world will be in enough order for him to rejoin it.
Perelman has famously turned down the fields medal and shunned the world since the whole Yau political saga. Will he take this prize? I hope that he will. I think that the whole Yau trying to take the credit for the proof issue, sullied the entire world for Perelman. Perhaps now that the honour is being fairly directed at him in response to his work, Perelman will be able to re-enter society and enjoy some of the fruits of his labour.
Here in 2010 it's not necessary to understand the whole computer, from the hardware up through device drivers and the kernel through to the high-level language that came from your apt repositories.
It wasn't necessary then either. The point is that you could. Now this is no longer possible. There are pros and cons to this, we can acheive more by building on the magical black boxes, but there was something deeply satisfying about knowing a device in such depth. The same can still be acheived in the embedded realm, however, and due to modern advances, it's cheaper and smaller than ever!
I have a friend who is an audiologist, and let me tell you, it's the best bloody profession to get in to. All you need is a one year post grad on top of any degree. This friend of mine had a three year degree in music. The guy earns twice as much as me (as a developer), and gets to go home at three most days! His base is good, but all the money is in the commisions from the hearing aids. There is a lot of cream to go around. My advice? Go back to University and get in on the action! It's only one year, and all you do is look in oldies ears and sell them hearing aids.
Of course, another way of looking at it is "only a smallish percentage of people will be tech savy enough to do the whole add blocking thing, so let the other saps pay for it" Now this is going to break down for tech oriented websites, in which case I suggest "no intrusive adds, and ask people to unblock your site". There, see, everyone is happy.
I (and I think I speak for many people here) do not have a problem with adds per say. What I have a problem with is intrusive adds. Google style adds don't bother me a bit, I click them all the time. Sometimes I'm looking for a product, or am just plain interested, and then I click. It is not for these adds that people like me run add blockers. The problem is obnoxious advertising. It's like those television adds where a guy just yells the whole time. Adds like this make me willing to invest the time, money, and effort in a TIVO style box. You would think other advertisers would be trying to stop this sort of thing to preserve their own revenue! Can you imagine how pissed you'd be if your add screened after screaming man? It's these guys that motivate people to find a way to turn it off! If an add move blinks, etc, I find it very distracting and will leave a site. I will not visit your sight again, and I use add blockers to avoid this kind of thing in general browsing. The submitter admits to intrusive adds, so your site would be on my shit list. It's nothing personal, it's just that if you want traffic from people like me, just don't do intrusive adds.
Another question to ask is when should doctors admit "hey we can't save you, your better off in palliative care". This is an issue that has been raised in Australia recently, and it makes a good point. We in the west, are too often affraid to confront death, even talk about it with acceptance. Palliative care allows one to die a good death (as is frequently not the case in hospital; just ask any nurse). Doctors do not want to say "there is nothing we can do". For them this is failure. They are looking for ways to extend life, or that outside one in a million chance that just might work. The thing is, if I had to choose between extended suffering, or a peaceful death, I'd rather the peaceful death. We need more doctors who are able to recognize that a good death may be the best thing they can offer.
Report explains declining school performance in Sweden
Let me summarize the article for you. Sweden's standard of education (still very high, much higher than the US) has been in decline. The reasons are as follows.
1) Schools only to a limited degree compensate for socioeconomic differences. (as you have stated)
2)The most important resource factor is teacher competence.
3)The level of segregation in the school system has increased. Widespread housing segregation and the right to choose which school to attend have resulted in more homogenous student bodies, which affects learning negatively (All the poor kids in one school, and all the rich kids in another is bad for everyone).
4) Less direction on learning outcomes and methods has led to less teacher-led instruction and this negatively affects children's performance.
I don't know how you improve on these things (apart from point 2 and 4), but it seems to me that this is a great list to work from.
Your first reference is a guy saying "I heard they torture dogs to make them taste better". This is not a reference! Now, I believe that your statement may be true (I know a guy from China who told a story about his father/grand father beating to death his favourite dog to eat for dinner for his bride to be. The idea was that it was a big sacrifice that proved his love, but cultural differences were never going to make that story ok to a westener). As to eating animals in general, I'll quote Dr. Temple Grandin (the autistic cow lady) "I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we've got to do it right. We've got to give those animals a decent life and we've got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect."
Slashdot Mirror
Cant your designer friends get their goods made cheaply in china too? A business is more about customers than supply really. If you have the loyal customers (who buy into the designers vision) they will pre-order unique items that can be cheaply made in china.
First of all, they are not my friends, they are my wife's. Second of all, are you nuts? Only the massive brands could possibly do this for logistical reasons alone (let alone idealogical ones). All the people I mentioned hand make every item! This is a labour of love that is ripped off by greedy bastards that don't give two shits about "art" or "passion". It makes my blood boil when I think of it. You clearly have no understanding of this industry whatsoever.
My wife works in fashion, she knows many designers personally and has very strong views on copyright as a result of her experiences. Big companies are not really affected by these issues; owning a big name designer brand is all about the brand. If you have an identical fake, it is not as good purely because it is a fake. This is not directly equatible to software where nobody cares that there pirated copy isn't a "geniune Prada". The people who get screwed, though, are the smaller designers. It actually does take considerably more effort to create something unique and special, then it takes to copy that something. My wife has people from these cheaper knock-off stores come in, buy (or look at an item) and then see the near identical item in their store the next week. This hurts! If it was so damned easy to make in the first place, why do these people need to copy. Another designer she knows from Paris (who is a holocost surviver), was put out of business for a time due to floods of cheap copies from china. The problem isn't just that some people can get it for cheap as a result, it's also that your entire brand is devalued by association. (note that these copies were majorly inferiour in every way, except for how they looked). This sort of thin causes real harm to real people. It's made me re-think some of my pirating ways.
It's ok to like flash or silverlight; just naive. The problem is not with these technologies in and of themselves (although there are problems from a purely functional perspective), the problems are as follows. 1) My security attack surface just doubled. I have bugs in the browser, bugs in the player, and interactions between the two. 2) If I am a new hardware manufacturer, I don't get the full Internet till adobe supports my platform. 3) Adobe could give me a crap implimentation (or none) and there is nothing I can do about it. The issue here is closed propriety platforms and how much that sucks for the open web. How good flash or silverlight are as dev platforms is irrelevant to this.
The only way to ensure cross-platform capabilities is open standards (unencumbered by patents). If we have learned anything from the age of the Internet, it's that building on an open standard, even if inferior in many ways, allows for an amazing array of applications that could never be imagined. Anyone can impliment a HTML browser for any piece of hardware (to a point). Flash's cross-platform capabilities are entirely dependent on one company. One public company who at anytime could choose to not port their "Internet viewer" to your platform (or just drag the chain, or do a poor job). Who in their right mind would want to be beholden to that? Adobe holds the Internet to ransom! Yes we need flash like capabilites, but we need them an an open format that anyone can impliment. I am not beholden to firefox, if I wanted to get off my arse, I could contribute to add whatever feature I so desired. If I had enough capital I could make a browser from scratch. No, flash is the antithesis of the open web, it must die, and the only way achieve this is to replace it with an open standard that can do as much (or close).
Perhaps, if none of your coworkers are worth spending time with, you should be looking for another job? Of course, you may just be an arrogant arse-hole who thinks he is too good to spend time with the peons of any workplace. (who are naturally inferior, although the rest of the world doesn't seem have noticed your magnificence as yet. Peons.). I have a suggestion! You could pretend to like these simpletons, while using them for your own ends! Once you are in control, you can rule them with an iron fist! I think you'd like that.
Am I glad that I don't work with you! "I'm here to work, not talk". Ever hear of the concept of colaboration? You know, working together as a team to achieve a common goal? Normally involves this thing I like to call "communication", you do it with your mouth. The advise on avoiding gossip is good, but the rest of your post smacks of some severe personality problems. Many of my co-workers are now friends, and this is a good thing! Lifes too short to be the "lone wolf". As another counter-point, you will never get anywhere if you don't socialize. It's half gaining peoples respect for your technical ability, and half gaining their trust because they know you. Get your head out of your arse, and join in!
And to take that anology even further... If the forklift driver swallows the keys and refuses to shit; you wouldn't expect him to go to prison for five years. The punshiment is way overblown here. Sure, sue the asshole, put him in prison till he gave up the password. But seriously, five years?
The idea that a near death experience is behind belief in an afterlife is simply wrong. Well known historical religious figures had no such experiences. (Jesus, Mohamud, Gautama Buddha). There is no evidence to suggest that the concept of the near death experience even existed before the advent of modern medicine. You have come up with a simplistic rational for the origin of religion, which simply has no bearing in reality. It's an interesting thought, but even a cursory glance of the literature would show your error.
The actuall research was related to why people have these weired and wonderful experiences when they almost die. There is also a fare degree of similarity in the experiences, which has made it all the more fascinating. This research posits a possible reason, which is very interesting in my personal view. Any extension of "it explains heaven" is really not relevent to anyone except those that believe this to be a glimpse into an afterlife (the exception being anthropologists, however I think this is flawed as given in my previous post). As to your off topic biblical rant; do some research! There are plenty of reasons to disregard the Christian religion, however "the edited bible" is not one of them. The new testament is textually stable, and has more source material than any other ancient document. It is not on these grounds that you should make your case! If we go down this road, however, be prepared for pages of discussion and plenty of links. Textual criticism is not a light topic!
This research is probably accurate in explaining near death experiences, however I think that's as far as it goes. If you study religions, the concept of an afterlife varies quite a bit. In non of them is the "white light that is God" mentioned (to my knowledge). If you look at these near death experiences; all the cases appear in relation to where modern medicine has literally brought the person "back from the brink" (that is to say that they were very near to death indeed by modern standards) Certainly, they were not conscious during the experience. How then could primitive man regale his story when it would have lead to actual death while unconscious? More damning to the idea, though, is simply that these depictions are not represented in any of the religions.
I think the issue that people are missing is not "would you want to be cured from X problem", rather it is the manner of the cure. This cure modifies your DNA, and our genetic identity is something that defines us. I see paralles to the concepts raised in "the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind". This specific case of colour blindness is not particulary controversial or worrying, but playing with DNA takes us down the GATACA path (enhanced DNA, class balance between those with access vs those without etc). It raises ethical questions that need to be discussed. As a side note, my wife is colour blind (extremely rare for women), but she tells me she would not get the cure. She thinks of her colour blindness as part of her identity.
Now, I don't know one way or the other about the validity or otherwise of this study. I'd just like to point out that Australians are now very close to your levels of obesity, and we use cane sugar.
I hate to break it to you, but you could have got those titles for free. I remember seeing those in shops, and always wondered at who would buy them when they were free! All you needed was access to a BBS or a mate. The license allowed sharware to be copied for non commercial use. Those guys who were charging the $5 dollars were ripping off the sharware guys (I'm sure they never saw a dime)! I had friends who used to charge, but they made it clear it was just for the cost of the media and their time.
Oh, and penny-arcade and xkcd of course.
What? What is /b/ ? What is Omegle? I have heard of chat roulette, but who in the hell would actually use it? I have never vandalised a wiki page, who over the age of 12 would bother to do such a thing? I can't criticize 4chan; because I don't know what it is! I have never browsed rotten.com; and frankly the kind of person that would scares me a little bit. If this typifies the slashdot community, I had no idea. News for nerds wasn't it? I browse slashdot, physorg, news sites, the old new thing, back to slashdot, few more software dev blogs. Aren't nerds into nerdy things? Who are you people???
Perelman is not a normal guy (obvious I realize, but hear me out). People like to subscribe 'normal' motives for behaviour they see as abnormal. I think this is why the idea that the fields medal was rejected as 'beneath' him was put forward. Arrogance is simple to understand. But what did Perelman actually say? "[the prize] was completely irrelevant for me. Everybody understood that if the proof is correct then no other recognition is needed". What Perelman was looking for was recognition for solving the problem. This was more important than the fields medal! What he got instead, was Yau and his cohorts claiming to have "really solved it." In Perelman's mind, political play such as this has no place in mathematics! Worse, his peers were not standing up to a) condemn this behaviour, and b) defend his paper. I think an important missing piece was that Perelman had not been officially recognized as having solved the Poincare conjecture. Now that this had been rectified, perhaps the world will be in enough order for him to rejoin it.
Most rocket science isn't rocket science.
Perelman has famously turned down the fields medal and shunned the world since the whole Yau political saga. Will he take this prize? I hope that he will. I think that the whole Yau trying to take the credit for the proof issue, sullied the entire world for Perelman. Perhaps now that the honour is being fairly directed at him in response to his work, Perelman will be able to re-enter society and enjoy some of the fruits of his labour.
Here in 2010 it's not necessary to understand the whole computer, from the hardware up through device drivers and the kernel through to the high-level language that came from your apt repositories.
It wasn't necessary then either. The point is that you could. Now this is no longer possible. There are pros and cons to this, we can acheive more by building on the magical black boxes, but there was something deeply satisfying about knowing a device in such depth. The same can still be acheived in the embedded realm, however, and due to modern advances, it's cheaper and smaller than ever!
I have a friend who is an audiologist, and let me tell you, it's the best bloody profession to get in to. All you need is a one year post grad on top of any degree. This friend of mine had a three year degree in music. The guy earns twice as much as me (as a developer), and gets to go home at three most days! His base is good, but all the money is in the commisions from the hearing aids. There is a lot of cream to go around. My advice? Go back to University and get in on the action! It's only one year, and all you do is look in oldies ears and sell them hearing aids.
Of course, another way of looking at it is "only a smallish percentage of people will be tech savy enough to do the whole add blocking thing, so let the other saps pay for it" Now this is going to break down for tech oriented websites, in which case I suggest "no intrusive adds, and ask people to unblock your site". There, see, everyone is happy.
I (and I think I speak for many people here) do not have a problem with adds per say. What I have a problem with is intrusive adds. Google style adds don't bother me a bit, I click them all the time. Sometimes I'm looking for a product, or am just plain interested, and then I click. It is not for these adds that people like me run add blockers. The problem is obnoxious advertising. It's like those television adds where a guy just yells the whole time. Adds like this make me willing to invest the time, money, and effort in a TIVO style box. You would think other advertisers would be trying to stop this sort of thing to preserve their own revenue! Can you imagine how pissed you'd be if your add screened after screaming man? It's these guys that motivate people to find a way to turn it off! If an add move blinks, etc, I find it very distracting and will leave a site. I will not visit your sight again, and I use add blockers to avoid this kind of thing in general browsing. The submitter admits to intrusive adds, so your site would be on my shit list. It's nothing personal, it's just that if you want traffic from people like me, just don't do intrusive adds.
Another question to ask is when should doctors admit "hey we can't save you, your better off in palliative care". This is an issue that has been raised in Australia recently, and it makes a good point. We in the west, are too often affraid to confront death, even talk about it with acceptance. Palliative care allows one to die a good death (as is frequently not the case in hospital; just ask any nurse). Doctors do not want to say "there is nothing we can do". For them this is failure. They are looking for ways to extend life, or that outside one in a million chance that just might work. The thing is, if I had to choose between extended suffering, or a peaceful death, I'd rather the peaceful death. We need more doctors who are able to recognize that a good death may be the best thing they can offer.
Report explains declining school performance in Sweden Let me summarize the article for you. Sweden's standard of education (still very high, much higher than the US) has been in decline. The reasons are as follows. 1) Schools only to a limited degree compensate for socioeconomic differences. (as you have stated) 2)The most important resource factor is teacher competence. 3)The level of segregation in the school system has increased. Widespread housing segregation and the right to choose which school to attend have resulted in more homogenous student bodies, which affects learning negatively (All the poor kids in one school, and all the rich kids in another is bad for everyone). 4) Less direction on learning outcomes and methods has led to less teacher-led instruction and this negatively affects children's performance. I don't know how you improve on these things (apart from point 2 and 4), but it seems to me that this is a great list to work from.
Your first reference is a guy saying "I heard they torture dogs to make them taste better". This is not a reference! Now, I believe that your statement may be true (I know a guy from China who told a story about his father/grand father beating to death his favourite dog to eat for dinner for his bride to be. The idea was that it was a big sacrifice that proved his love, but cultural differences were never going to make that story ok to a westener). As to eating animals in general, I'll quote Dr. Temple Grandin (the autistic cow lady) "I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we've got to do it right. We've got to give those animals a decent life and we've got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect."