An interesting article published a few years back CHARLIE HEBDO: Not racist? If you say so… by Olivier Cyran sums up Charlie Hebdo as follows:
“You claim for yourself the tradition of anticlericalism, but pretend not to know the fundamental difference between this and Islamophobia. The first comes from a long, hard and fierce struggle against a Catholic priesthood which actually had formidable power, which had − and still has − its own newspapers, legislators, lobbies, literary salons and a huge property portfolio. The second attacks members of a minority faith deprived of any kind of influence in the corridors of power. It consists of distracting attention from the well-fed interests which rule this country, in favour of inciting the mob against citizens who haven’t been invited to the party, if you want to take the trouble to realise that − for most of them − colonisation, immigration and discrimination have not given them the most favourable place in French society. Is it too much to ask a team which, in your words “is divided between leftists, extreme leftists, anarchists and Greens”, to take a tiny bit of interest in the history of our country and its social reality?”
These are just some notes I plucked from an interesting email conversation with a friend.
On the distribution of resources and where to invest:
I think it’s important to think about companies that provide value in the “essentials” area (bottom of the Maslow pyramid) and those that do so in the areas that clearly involve “disposable income”. While we have so many people incapable of fulfilling their most basic needs, how much resource expenditure should be tolerated/encouraged for such frivolity? Those that benefit initially convince themselves that such progress is utterly necessary in order to drive society forward for *everyone*, but that sounds very much like the underpinnings of trickle-down economics.
On the transition from brick and mortar to Internet:
I’m reminded of the article I read last year in that magazine you gave me, about the fracking boom in the States. Most of the companies listed there were values in the dozens of billions, if not more, and had dozens of thousands of employees.
That is one of the differences I see in the move to Internet value as well: these companies are valued in the billions but have hardly any employees (relatively speaking). That is, they are perfect vessels for funneling a tremendous amount of wealth to a handful of people. That’s great for those people. Not so good for all of those who are finding it harder to find jobs in an economy based more and more on this scale of company.
And, without jobs, where do people get the money to purchase Uber services? This is all kind of short term, to my way of thinking. It’s short-term gain for Uber, but they too will collapse because Uber’s very model helps create a world where there are no Uber customers anymore. There are solutions to this, but they are either not very classically capitalist or quite fascist.
On the valuation of GoDaddy at over $2 billion:
As for GoDaddy: this is one of those company whose 2.25b valuation is an utter mystery to anyone who still thinks that the company’s main service is to its supposed customers (the users). They are very good for funneling advertising and “trapping” customers. This is considered to be very valuable to those who are just interested in turning a profit and not interested in *how* that profit is turned. As long as there exists such a strong separation between ethics, *true* value and investment, we will have these dilemmas.
The stock corporation was truly both a blessing and a curse. It allows companies to grow more quickly (and to presumably provide more value to its customers), but it also allows companies that would otherwise go out of business to survive and thrive simply because they know how to turn a profit (if not actually provide a non-parasitic value). The world would be a better place without GoDaddy in it. As long as GoDaddy can figure out how to make money for its investors, we’re stuck with it. And, no, I’m not sure what to do about that either: is it good or bad? Dunno. I’m just thinking out loud.
I just saw the article RadioShack continues death march, loses $98.3 million in a quarter by Megan Geuss (Ars Technica) and it got me thinking again: where do you usually find Radio Shack stores in the US? In poorer neighborhoods, where they more often than not provided a convenient place to find replacement parts for electronic goods.
Did the need for Radio Shack’s goods disappear? Or is it just that it provides value to the wrong target market? With our overemphasis on valuation, are we not also picking winners and losers? Are we not preferring the opinions of the wealthy over those of the poor? If you can vote billions, you get your way. Once again, we circle back to the question of to whom is value being provided?
In defense of the OpenSSL project, the article OpenSSL code beyond repair, claims creator of “LibreSSL” fork by Jon Brodkin (Ars Technica) cites its OpenSSL Software Foundation President Steve Marquess “describ[ing] OpenSSL’s struggle to obtain funding and code contributions.”
““I’m looking at you, Fortune 1000 companies,” Marquess wrote. “The ones who include OpenSSL in your firewall/appliance/cloud/financial/security products that you sell for profit, and/or who use it to secure your internal infrastructure and communications. The ones who don’t have to fund an in-house team of programmers to wrangle crypto code, and who then nag us for free consulting services when you can’t figure out how to use it. The ones who have never lifted a finger to contribute to the open source community that gave you this gift. You know who you are.” […] As for Heartbleed, “the mystery is not that a few overworked volunteers missed this bug,” Marquess wrote. “The mystery is why it hasn’t happened more often.”(Emphasis added.)”
The emphasized text is what we should all learn from this experience.
The article Fukushima Emergency debunks the fancy we-re-all-gonna-die chart that’s also been making the rounds (shown below).
Purported chart of Fukushima radiation (it's not)
“However, that chart did not actually track or measure radioactive discharge emanating from Fukushima in 2013, or any other aspect of the Fukushima disaster. It was a plot created by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) immediately after the Tohoku earthquake in March 2011 showing the wave height of the tsunami that followed. It had (and has) nothing to do with the flow or spread of radioactive seepage from Fukushima.”
Nice. Take a chart from 2011 about a completely different topic and use it to “prove” that people are being duped by Tepco about the radiation in Fukushima. I think Californians can breathe easy, at least as far as dying from Fukushima radiation is concerned.
““The Pacific Ocean is an enormous place,” said Norman, who found radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power in California rainwater, milk and plants soon after the earthquake and tsunami. “There’s a lot of material between us and Japan. No matter what happens in Fukushima, it’s not going to be a problem over here.””
From Who is responsible for the US shutdown? The same idiots responsible for the 2008 meltdown by Slavoj Žižek (The Guardian)
“[…] sales of her opus Atlas Shrugged exploded. According to some reports, there are already signs that the scenario described in Atlas Shrugged – the creative capitalists themselves going on strike – is coming to pass in the form of a populist right. However, this misreads the situation: what is effectively taking place today is almost the exact opposite. Most of the bailout money is going precisely to the Randian “titans”, the bankers who failed in their “creative” schemes and thereby brought about the financial meltdown. It is not the “creative geniuses” who are now helping ordinary people, it is the ordinary people who are helping the failed “creative geniuses”. (Emphasis added.)
“John Galt, the central character in Atlas Shrugged, is not named until near the end of the novel. Before his identity is revealed, the question is repeatedly asked, “Who is John Galt”. Now we know precisely who he is: John Galt is the idiot responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown, and for the ongoing federal government shutdown in the US.”
Good article and had basically come to a lot of the same conclusions mention here.
I had another similar issue which i though was worth sharing as it took a couple of days to sort out. As part of a move to 64 bit we installed VS 2012 alongside VS 2010 for a peek but decided to stay with VS 2010. I therefore uninstalled VS2012 and this is where my problems began. When i opened forms in VS 2010 (especially inherited forms) they would usually render in the designer fine. However, any subsequent close and reopen would cause a load of errors in the designer referring to “The variable ‘X’ is either undeclared or was never assigned”. Interesting enough was the ‘X’ usually related to properties of Infragistics controls that are used on our base form..
The issue turned out to be .net 4.5 that was installed as part of VS2012 but was not removed as part of the uninstall. I assumed VS2010 was still using it (as i could not see .net 4 under installed programs) so I decided to uninstall .net 4.5. At this stage (after uninstall) if you try to start VS2010 you will get “unexpected error” at the visual studio splash screen. Next step was to repair VS2010 which in turn installed .net 4. Once VS2010 was restarted the issues with the designer disappeared.
Number of ports: Don’t forget the port-replicators aka Docking-Station. Depending on the notebook model you are using you can get a docking-station for that. Depending on that docking-station you are using you get more ports then on the notebook itself. As you docking-station normally is there where your big screens are, they are connected to docking-station. So ports of the docking-station count too.
VGA: I use it often when on customer site and get “a screen” (if I am lucky a 24", sometimes smaller). Most of the time the customer IT have only VGA-cables or maaaaaybe a DVI (which I can’t plug into my Lenovo notebook) at hand. No display-port-* cables. So I still need a VGA port these days ;-(
MacBook Air: I think you Meran GB instead MB.
Some numbers I heard yesterday by Swiss national radio station about the current conflict: 3 dead Israelis vs. 170 dead Palestine.
I had to laugh out loud when I saw the title of this article. How do you know what I actually put on my ballet though ;).
Nice article, dude. Interesting what Google tries to achieve with this all? Reducing browsers? Hmm… don’t think so as you already wrote they all (except one but this one is not of question) are acceptable in compatibility. Maybe a kind of “cover my ass” because they don’t test with Opera? But blocking then is really hard. Hmm….
You’ll have to dig out any references to the wrong version number. First, do as Marc says: get rid of all compiled assemblies that Visual Studio may be using. Also make sure that VS can’t find the wrong version in the GAC because it might be grabbing that one as well. Restarting VS is also a good idea as it sometimes retains caches references in memory.
If none of that works, then you have an explicit reference to the assembly using the old version number somewhere in your solution. Check project files for references with that version number; check those pesky license.licx files (you can just delete the offending line from those).
Good luck! And be reassured, there’s always some logical reason for the assembly mismatch. It’s just sometimes tedious to find.
First I would try deleting ALL compiled binaries in all bin and obj directories (for all your projects). Then do a rebuild and maybe restart VS.
We created Windows batchfiles to do this when VS bot in trouble again.
Great article.
I am having the problem described above where the underlying component is version 1.0.50.0, but the designer is trying to load 1.0.49.0. Any ideas on how to force VS to load the current version? I used to be able to simply rebuild the underlying assembly and the problem would be solved, but since I moved to 64bit, this strategy no longer seems to work.
In this sample the Where() could be replaced with a TypeOf<>() I guess. But yes, I got the point ;-)
And then there are the people who really are living on the edge of destitution, eviction and being frozen out of society (in the colder states, quite literally); the article Chart of the day: The working poor by Felix Salmon (Reuters) has this to say:
“Nearly 1 in 3 working families in the United States, despite their hard work, are struggling to meet basic needs. The plight of these families now challenges a fundamental assumption that in america, work pays. […] The workers in these families have a much greater risk of becoming unemployed than the population as a whole, and of course they’re financially much less prepared for any period of unemployment than most of the rest of us.”
The chart below shows the 200% of poverty level income for various family sizes. The census reports that 30% of the working families in America are at or below this line. More proof of the lopsided distribution of wealth and prosperity in an increasingly expensive society.
200% of Poverty Level for Various Family Sizes
aber dazu bräuchte ich erst mal einen mac :-/
The article, When Propaganda Is No Longer Necessary (Anonymous Liberal), also lashes out at the U.S. media, for whom Israel’s essential goodness is so deeply ingrained that it extends to absolving it of the murder of an American citizen a priori.
“There’s another rather disgusting tendency of the American Right on display in Johnson’s post: the blind assumption that any Muslim who is killed or captured deserves it. With his keen logic, he notes that if this kid was “shot five times at close range, four times in the head,” then “it is reasonable to infer that he was one of those attacking Israeli soldiers with a club, knife or other weapon and was shot in self-defense.”
“Yes, of course, the only logical inference one can make when presented with a corpse riddled with five gun shot wounds, including four to the head, is that person was shot in self-defense. Someone get this guy a job on CSI. Really, who needs propaganda when there are people out there who, without any prodding, already reason like this?”
Closing the Hole in the Gulf: A Petroleum Engineer Responds by Robert Reich
“Mobilize every possible tanker to siphon up crude from as close to the leak points as possible. Oil industry leaders as John Hofmeister (president of Shell Oil from 2005 until 2008) have recommended this, but inexplicably neither BP nor the federal government are talking about even trying this idea. BP currently has only one spot where they have inserted a tube into a riser, or pipe, that is leaking oil from the sea floor. The company is gathering the crude oil and siphoning it up to a drill ship for storage.
“They should have at least a dozen collectors. BP has 24 tankers that are being used to make money for BP, not for clean-up duty.”
The article, Who Is Afraid of a Real Inquiry? by Uri Avnery (Antiwar), has 80 questions for Israelis and their government that would be asked “[i]f a real commission of inquiry had been set up (instead of the pathetic excuse for a commission).”
Questions cover topics like
The article, Israel’s Gift to Iran’s Hardliners by Juan Cole (TomDispatch), points out that Iran is not as stupid as Washington seems to think it is, and the world is not as convinced of Iran’s intrinsic evil as the U.S. and Israel think it is.
“The hypocrisy in all this was visibly Washington’s and Israel’s. After all, both were demanding that a country without nuclear weapons ‘disarm’ and the only country in the region to actually possess them be excused from the disarmament process entirely. This was, of course, their gift to Tehran. Like others involved in the process, Iran’s representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency immediately noted this and riposted, ‘The U.S… is obliged to go along with the world’s request, which is that Israel must join the NPT and open its installations to IAEA inspectors.’”
Israeli and U.S. policy has been working against itself for a while now, with their actions fitting poorly together with their stated goals. For example,
“[Netanyahu’s] election as prime minister in February 2009 turns out to have been the best gift the Israeli electorate could have given Iran. The Likud-led government continues its colonization of the West Bank and its blockade of the civilian population of Gaza, making the Iranian hawks who harp on injustices done to Palestinians look prescient. It refuses to join the NPT or allow U.N. inspections of its nuclear facilities, making Iran, by comparison, look like a model IAEA member state.”
Either Israel and the U.S. don’t believe that anyone will notice that they are failing utterly, they are otherwise benefiting it, they just don’t care or they are utter idiots. Or perhaps some wondrous combination of all of these.
On the topic of American brainwashing, there’s the article Shaping the Story on Iran:
“The unanimity of view is particularly evident on the editorial pages where the neocons and the groupthink that they have fostered have become deeply embedded. Everyone in the MSM agrees that Iran either already has nukes or is about to go nuclear and that the country shelters terrorists on every block, all colluding to attack a completely innocent and guileless United States. Saturated with the propaganda, the American public more or less accepts that narrative.”
If you know that Iran has nuclear weapons, ask yourself how you know this. Do you know because you learned it from the same people that told you that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction?
Do you think it’s perhaps time that you start thinking for yourself before even more people are killed in order to assuage your irrational fears.
Thanks for the response! I didn’t notice it until now because I had comment notifications shut off.
“What I don’t see is your gripe about merging from the command line. Aren’t you merging on your dev-box? Don’t you have visual tools for the actual file-merges there? You can even use p4merge. (http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/MergeProgram)”
On my dev box I now use Murky, which is great! I tried MacHG as well, which is even sexier-looking, but doesn’t show diffs automatically. The P4Merge integration was working on my old Mac, but I haven’t gotten around to setting it up again because I haven’t had to merge locally yet.
The problem was really on my Debian machine, on which I have only headless SSH access.
“Sadly, TortoiseHg is not yet available for OS X. I use it on Ubuntu and simply love the way it lets me work from the command line and seamlessly switch into GUI mode as needed.”
+1 for TortoiseHG on Windows as well. As I said, though, there are all of a sudden two very strong contenders on OS X, so that’s a relief.
Maybe many are still confused how to pronounce the name of this volcano, Mt. Eyjafjallajokull. The eruption of Mt. Eyjafjallajokull has disrupted air travel once again. The volcano re-erupted and a change of winds caused an ash cloud to prevent air travel again. Luckily for travelers this time around it was only overnight and not for days. There’s chatter that this volcano may erupt all over again, leading to delays in flights yet again. If it is in any way achievable, I would recommend not flying into any regions affected by this volcano until it is certain that there won’t be any more activity with the volcano.
Windows users don’t have to download anything to play the OGG file… it plays right in Wiki :P
Just today, the article An Open Letter to the Iraqi People, From Soldiers in the Unit Depicted in the WikiLeaks Video by Josh Stieber and Ethan McCord (AlterNet) appeared. The soldiers were on the ground (not in the helicopter):
“We acknowledge our part in the deaths and injuries of your loved ones as we tell Americans what we were trained to do and carried out in the name of “god and country.” The soldier in video said that your husband shouldn’t have brought your children to battle, but we are acknowledging our responsibility for bringing the battle to your neighborhood, and to your family. We did unto you what we would not want done to us.”
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