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Comment My Trifecta. (Score 1) 716

Sorry to hear that. I'd like to chime in on this one.

I have 3 lovely, well adjusted, funny, principled, intelligent daughters. I do not deserve them.

All 3 were valedictorians of their HS, without pushing by us.

Anecdotal? Perhaps, but harder to argue with results * 3.

I've never before shared this much info about what we did. FWIW, YMMV, etc.

1) Give them the gift of self esteem. Demonstrate your believe in their intrinsic worth, and act out of love only. This does not mean giving them every toy they want, but it does mean make sacrifices when you can for the best aspirations of your kids, and constantly showing them how much you appreciate them. Be sentimental and approachable. I think my kids knew I would have been no less their fan if they were D students.

2) They need you, give them all of you. Don't hold back and don't ever fake it with them. They know you; no double standards! If that movie is bad for your kids, parents can do without watching it. Schedule regular whole-family time and 1:1 time. Family dinners together are important.

3) Humor and curiosity are some of the best tools. Demonstrate them. Memorize funny poems, make music together, show how to take things apart, and keep it all upbeat, even crazy.

4) Don't let anyone else raise your kids. That includes daycare and school systems. I lean toward public school system over homeschooling, and it worked out for us, but that depended on what the system had to work with. Social development and problem solving is important. So are friends. Be involved parents, room mothers, etc. Know the kids in their K-6 classes; they end up on your doorstep asking for dates. Here's the tough part, but it proved extremely important: I barely made a living wage and my wife made more than me when we decided one would stay home. It was her call who would. I don't know if I would be able to look my kids in the eyes if we hadn't sacrificed.

5) Money incentives? Oh ya. Make cash match effort was my philosophy. They got a pittance for base allowances but kept job-journals as they learned to write and were richly rewarded for finding new ways to help. In school, the first A is the easiest, even hard not to get. That last A is a bear, it's the subject they don't like. My kids got $1 for the first A, and the pay doubled for each additional A. They nearly bankrupted me. Long term, the investment works out. The youngest just took her MCAT.

Comment My Summary of the Article (Score 1) 626

Since I see little evidence that timothy or Mr. Chapman read the article, I'll do them a favor so they don't have to click:

< article paycheck="undeserved" >

Hi I'm Agam Shah and I'm writing an article about multicore processors, but these concepts are so new to me that I'm putting quotees around "race conditions" like it's frickin' sharks with lasers.

So then I did a Google search on "parallel programming tools" and it help me get another paragraph out of the way.

Oh, and I quote some lamer analyst who has never heard of NUMA or libhoard, so I'll try to fabricate some crisis that the problems they address might never be solved.

Parallel programming is hard, WAH! WAH!

Oh, except when it's not, as in that trivial application named Photoshop. I'll write one of those next weekend.

Comment Better Criteria (Score 1) 347

It seems the article and the report casts the net too wide.

Some mega-corps (like Coca-Cola and Cisco) actually do business everywhere, and even though they show considerable numbers of businesses in tax havens, those are a small fraction (10%) of the total number of countries in which they have offices. For companies like that, I'd be surprised to find a country where they are *not* operating.

Others, like Chevron and Goldman Sachs, show over half of their foreign operations in tax-haven locales. To me, that sounds very slimy.

Others are somewhere in between, probably representing a somewhat disproportionate presence in tax havens.

What else would you expect? Corporations do behave like psychopaths.

Programming

Solving the Knight's Tour Puzzle In 60 Lines of Python 311

ttsiod writes "When I was a kid, I used to play the Knight's Tour puzzle with pen and paper: you simply had to pass once from every square of a chess board, moving like a Knight. Nowadays, I no longer play chess; but somehow I remembered this nice little puzzle and coded a 60-line Python solver that can tackle even 100x100 boards in less than a second. Try beating this, fellow coders!"
Censorship

Blogger.com Banned In Turkey 262

petermp writes "A Turkish court has blocked access to the popular blog hosting service Blogger (Blogger.com and Blogspot.com, owned by Google), since Friday, October 24th, 2008. According to BasBasBas.com, a Dutch blogger based in Istanbul, who alerted readers about the issue: 'It is suspected that the reason for this has something to do with Adnan Oktar, by some considered the leading Muslim advocate for creationism, who has in the past managed to get Wordpress, Google Groups, as well as Richard Dawkins' website [banned].'"

Comment Re:Record label dude is kinda asking for it (Score 3, Informative) 282

>Fair enough

Not fair at all. First of all, if the blog and myspace post are accurate, then the ISP is citing their TOS as the agreement that requires this. The TOS here dated June 16:

http://www.ixwebhosting.com/index.php/v2/pages.tos#q21

says *nothing* about copyright registrations being required or any other provenance for hosted content. If they don't have some other reason for the service outage, I'd speculate that they're making up the "terms" as they go.

>why record label dude doesn't simply register

I see no indication of how many files we're talking about. Depending on how it's structured, $35/file could add up to cash that a struggling artist does not have. They probably would not be needed later either, as I think most folks are inclined to respect CC license provisions.

Still, it's hardly a problem going forward. If the label's report bears scrutiny, then the IX brand is toxic.

Media

MLB Fans Who Bought DRM Videos Get Hosed 299

Billosaur writes "Major League Baseball has just strengthened the case against DRM. If you downloaded videos of baseball games from MLB.com before 2006, apparently they no longer work and you are out of luck. MLB.com, sometime during 2006, changed their DRM system. Result: game videos purchased before that time will now no longer work, as the previous DRM system is no longer supported. When the video is played, apparently the MLB.com servers are contacted and a license obtained to verify the authenticity of the video; this is done by a web link. That link no longer exists, and so now the videos will no longer play, even though the MLB FAQ says that a license is only obtained once and will not need to be re-obtained. The blogger who is reporting this contacted MLB technical support, only to be told there are no refunds due to this problem."
United States

Submission + - Font Freedom Day (trumpetpower.com)

TrumpetPower! writes: "On September 29, 1988, the Library of Congress Copyright Office issued a notice of policy decision (4 Mbyte coralized PDF) in the Federal Register “to inform the public that the Copyright Office has decided that digitized representations of typeface designs are not registrable under the Copyright Act because they do not constitute original works of authorship.” In observance of Font Freedom day, go ahead and share some of your favorite fonts with your friends — and do so entirely guilt-free!"

Feed Science Daily: Sizing Cells Up: Researchers Pinpoint When A Cell Is Ready To Reproduce (sciencedaily.com)

For more than 100 years, scientists have tried to figure out the cell size problem: How does a cell know when it is big enough to divide? In research conducted in budding yeast, scientists have now identified the cellular event that marks the moment when a cell knows it is big enough to commit to cell division and spawn genetic replicas of itself. The findings provide a precise and quantitative framework for studying the possible mechanisms that allow cells to monitor and sense their size.
Portables

Submission + - ACER Sent me back my Tablet damaged and NONworking

iv_vi writes: Hi, At the beginning of this month I sent my Acer Tablet to be repaired because I had problems with my optical drive (two times in the last 4 months) and FLASHING screen (very annoying! on 14"). When I got it back a week later it appeared that the latch did not work, there was a dent on the cover and the most important thing — it was NOT working at all. After I talked with a supervisor from Acer Support, at least I was told he was one, he said that they will accept the tablet back and I should not pay for sending it to them (very nice of them!) and he promised that they will extend my warranty. Once I receive it back two days ago I noticed that they had fix the latch and the tablet was working. BUT the keys for launching wireless and bluetooth do not work, the space bar is not working most of the time, the dent was still here and ... the screen is FLASHING again (they claim they replaced the inverter). I talked with Costumer Service immediately — they refuse to fix the dent, they wanted me to pay for the shipping (flashing screen is a problem that appeared two times in the same month and by all means should be their responsibility) and finally almost at the very end of the conversation they agreed to cover this expense, and they say they DO NOT have a record for extending my warranty, no word why my screen is still having the same problem. Sending them working Tablet and receiving not working one?!? My questions are: What can I do? What should I do? (You think about the quality of the product!)
Censorship

Submission + - AT&T Silences Criticism in New Terms of Servic (bellsouth.net) 1

marco13185 writes: AT&T's new Terms of Service give AT&T the right to suspend your account and all service "for conduct that AT&T believes"..."(c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries." After cooperating with the government's violations of privacy and liberties, I guess AT&T wants their fair share. AT&T users may want to think twice about commenting if they value their internet service.
Enlightenment

Submission + - Satellite images show Myanmar abuses (msn.com) 1

Lucas123 writes: "Satellite images that resulted from a year-long study just released by The American Association for the Advancement of Science, human rights campaigners and commercial satellite providers show evidence from above that Burma's military-led government has engaged in a long campaign of destroying villages and relocating villagers. "Human-rights groups say that more than 3,000 villages have been destroyed in an effort to crush opposition to the junta. Civil unrest in Myanmar has created 1.5 million refugees and 500,000 internally displaced people, and 1,300 political prisoners are in jail, according to human-rights reports.""
United States

Submission + - Texas Lawmakers Steal Votes (youtube.com) 4

absentmindedjwc writes: "It appears lawmakers in Texas frequently walk around the house floor casting votes for members who are not at their seat. Some members are seen on video casting as many as 4 votes. One member goes on camera to justify this practice as necessary in order to allow fellow house members time for lunch and personal time.

Watch the video and determine for yourself if you think these people are doing this as a "favor" for their colleagues, or if they might just be stealing votes."

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