Category: rePosts

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rePost::Mind your own business | Filipino Voices

You know what their arguments sound like? The arguments of The Best And The Brightest against letting Vietnam fall. Letting Vietnam fall would lead to the fall of most Asian nations to communism. This reeks of the small mindedness and ultimately wrong headed infallibility approach to policy making.

Mind your own business

via Mind your own business | Filipino Voices.

March 2nd, 2010 by Manuel Buencamino

“The ratio of tolerance of our bishops towards the excesses of the Arroyo regime is directly proportional to their intolerance for condoms and contraceptives.” – Philip Gilmore
Health secretary Esperanza Cabral decided to distribute free condoms “to those who cannot afford it” because HIV/AIDS cases are spreading at an alarming rate. That earned her the ire of the Catholic Church.
One bishop denounced her timely intervention as immoral and warned her that, “she already has one foot in hell and many more might suffer the same fate” if she did not stop what she was doing.
“It’s very immoral for someone in a government position to support the distribution of condoms which we know, do not really reduce or stop the spread of HIV-AIDS. It’s scary because it’s the morality of our society, especially of our youth, that is at stake. We only wish that Cabral would change because she already has one foot in hell. People might suffer the same fate,” the bishop said.
Another bishop refused to accept the fact that Cabral’s primary duty as the secretary of health is to safeguard the public’s physical wellbeing, not their spiritual health and salvation. He wanted her fired for reasons that would make sense only if the Philippines were a theocratic state like Iran or an Afghanistan under Taliban rule.
“Secretary Cabral should not continue serving until June because the culture and morality of society will be endangered under her. First, she does not respect the big number of Catholics in the country who oppose the distribution of condoms. Second, is she Catholic? I doubt that she is. Because if you are a Catholic and in the government, you should be living the teachings of the Church. But she is doing the opposite.”

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rePost :: Malaysian Catholics accept apology over 'desecration' – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos

Malaysia would occupy a special place in my heart. It’s as close as the ideal I believe a democracy and Islam could co exist. I pray they keep their beautiful society can be kept in their currently beautiful balance.

Malaysian Catholics accept apology over 'desecration'
Agence France-Presse
First Posted 15:01:00 03/07/2010
Filed Under: Religions, Media
KUALA LUMPUR – Catholic authorities in Malaysia on Sunday accepted an apology from a Muslim magazine after its writers took part in a Catholic service and allegedly desecrated the communion wafer.
“We accept the public apology. It is laudable,” Father Lawrence Andrew, the editor of the Catholic “Herald” newspaper, told AFP.
“We trust they will not repeat it. We are not holding any grudges.”
Two journalists from the “Al Islam” magazine took the wafer and spat it out after entering a Catholic church to investigate claims that Muslims were illegally converting to Christianity.
via Malaysian Catholics accept apology over ‘desecration’ – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos.

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rePost :: “evil plans”: how a little shack in chappell hill, texas changed my life | gapingvoid

This was an inspiring story read the whole thing!!!!

“No, Darlin’. A thousand pounds, every day.”
BOOM! Moment of clarity. A tiny little shack-store in Nowheresville, Texas. Making probably somewhere between twenty and forty thousand dollars a week, pure profit. That’s a lot more money than me or any of my other New York cronies were making (or probably ever going to make). For a lot less hassle and overheads, to boot.
Now, I never wanted to go into the meat business, but since that day in Chappell Hill, Texas, I have always aspired to have a business model as simple, elegant, profitable and low-key as this one. I’m not quite there yet, but I’m getting close…
And that, My Friends, is what “EVIL PLANS” is really all about. Exactly.
via “evil plans”: how a little shack in chappell hill, texas changed my life | gapingvoid.

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rePost::Couple arrested for starving real life baby while raising a virtual baby – Boing Boing

We really need to create a law that makes procreation a privilege and not a right. Some people don’t deserve to have children.

Couple arrested for starving real life baby while raising a virtual baby

Lisa Katayama at 4:21 PM March 5, 2010

A South Korean couple was arrested for allegedly letting their prematurely born daughter starve to death. The parents, it appears, were addicted to a popular role-playing game called Prius Online; they spent most of their time in Internet cafes raising a virtual baby they called Anima while neglecting to feed their real life baby.
via Couple arrested for starving real life baby while raising a virtual baby – Boing Boing.

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rePost :: LeBron and Kobe Team Up – TrueHoop Blog – ESPN

This is a nice story

By CHRIS BROUSSARD
It’s safe to assume that LeBron James and Kobe Bryant haven’t talked privately about giving the world what it wants – the dream NBA Finals matchup between James’ Cleveland Cavaliers and Bryant’s Los Angeles Lakers.
But in January, the two superstars talked about giving another gift to the basketball world, or at least to the basketball world’s greatest players.
James and Bryant decided to buy each member of the 2010 NBA All-Star team a pair of custom-made “Beats by Dr. Dre’’ Monster headphones. James bought them for his 12 Eastern Conference teammates, while Bryant did the same for the 14 other Western Conference all-stars.
Speaking via blackberry, James and Bryant settled on getting Dre’s $350 “Studio’’ version headphones. They then contacted Dr. Dre and asked him to customize each set of headphones by making them in the All-Star colors (blue for the East, red for the West) and putting each player’s number on them. That cost an extra $100 per set.
via LeBron and Kobe Team Up – TrueHoop Blog – ESPN.

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rePost::Learning “Just in Case” versus “Just in Time” – Preparation – Lifehacker

This is a nice post. Read the whole thing.
The competing vs running was an excellent dichotomy. If you do not learn something before hand you will be hardpressed to say where you are going to use it. You use it because you know it. You can think of where you can make use of it because you already understand it. I can still remember a lot of the ugly code I’ve written because I didn’t know of some technique or some abstraction. I can still remember how it feels to code around a problem because your current toolset doesn’t have the necessary tools to help you solve the problem. In academe there is this saying “Publish or Perish”, in the world we call corporate at least for programmers there is nothing equal so I propose “Learn or Burn”. The basic structure of how my profession is organized allows the companies to have the upper hand. They don’t give you enough time to study, this allows them to devalue your skills as time goes by. Don’t let the companies have the upper hand. “Learn or Burn”

What do you learn just in case you’ll need it in the future, and what do you learn just in time when you do need it?
In general, you learn things in school just in case you’ll need them later. Then once you get a job, you learn more things just in time when you need them.
When you learn just in time, you’re highly motivated. There’s no need to imagine whether you might apply what you’re learning since the application came first. But you can’t learn everything just in time. You have to learn some things before you can imagine using them. You need to have certain patterns in your head before you can recognize them in the wild.
Years ago someone told me that he never learned algebra and has never had a need for it. But I’ve learned algebra and use it constantly. It’s a lucky thing I was the one who learned algebra since I ended up needing it. But of course it’s not lucky. I would not have had any use for it either if I’d not learned it.
via Learning “Just in Case” versus “Just in Time” – Preparation – Lifehacker.

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rePost :: List of 82nd Oscar nominees | ABS-CBN News Online Beta

LOS ANGELES – Nominees in selected major categories ahead of the 82nd annual Academy Awards to be held at the Kodak Theater here Sunday (Monday in Manila):
Best Picture:
“The Hurt Locker”
“Avatar”
“The Blind Side”
“District 9”
“An Education”
“Inglourious Basterds”
“Up in the Air”
“Precious”
“A Serious Man”
“Up”
Best Actor in a Leading Role:
Jeff Bridges — “Crazy Heart”
George Clooney — “Up in the Air”
Colin Firth — “A Single Man”
Morgan Freeman — “Invictus”
Jeremy Renner — “The Hurt Locker”
Best Actress in a Leading Role:
Meryl Streep — “Julie & Julia”
Sandra Bullock — “The Blind Side”
Carey Mulligan — “An Education”
Helen Mirren — “The Last Station”
Gabourey Sidibe — “Precious”
Best Actor in a Supporting Role:
Christoph Waltz — “Inglourious Basterds”
Woody Harrelson — “The Messenger”
Christopher Plummer — “The Last Station”
Matt Damon — “Invictus”
Stanley Tucci — “The Lovely Bones”
Best Actress in a Supporting Role:
Penelope Cruz — “Nine”
Mo’Nique — “Precious”
Anna Kendrick — “Up in the Air”
Vera Farmiga — “Up in the Air”
Maggie Gyllenhaal — “Crazy Heart”
Best Director:
Kathryn Bigelow — “The Hurt Locker”
James Cameron — “Avatar”
Quentin Tarantino — “Inglourious Basterds”
Jason Reitman — “Up in the Air”
Lee Daniels — “Precious”
Best Foreign-Language Film:
“Ajami” — Israel
“El Secreto de Sus Ojos” — Argentina
“The Milk of Sorrow” — Peru
“Un Prophete” — France
“The White Ribbon” — Germany
Best Animated Feature Film:
“Coraline”
“Up”
“Fantastic Mr Fox”
“The Princess and the Frog”
“The Secret of Kells”
—————–
Catch the live telecast and complete coverage of the 82nd Academy Awards on March 8 — red carpet and pre-show at 6:30 a.m. and the main show at 9 a.m. — on Velvet Channel (SkyCable channel 53).
via List of 82nd Oscar nominees | ABS-CBN News Online Beta.

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rePost :: A typology of crowds :: Rough Type :: Nicholas Carr's Blog

nice list!!

A typology of crowds

March 04, 2010

Over the last few days, I’ve been involved in an email discussion on “The Crowd,” which will be excerpted on PBS’s Digital Nation site. One thing that has long bothered me about discussions of online crowds is that they tend to yoke lots of different sorts of groups together under a single rubric. Important differences end up being glossed over.
With that in mind, I’ve been trying to think through the various forms that online crowds take. As a rough starting point, I came up with four:
“Social production crowd”: consists of a large group of individuals who lend their distinct talents to the creation of some product like Wikipedia or Linux.
via Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: A typology of crowds.

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rePost :: Apple vs. HTC: No matter who wins, we lose

Been considering a MacBookPro for my next computer, feel most at home with macosx. Not Anymore.  Apple just lost another customer.

Among the 20 claims submitted [6] to the Federal Court and the International Trade Commission are patents for the seemingly straightforward “Object Oriented Graphic System,” the widely used “Unlocking a Device By Performing Gestures on an Unlock Image” and the brain-twisting “Method for providing automatic and dynamic translation of object oriented programming language-based message passing into operation system message passing using proxy objects.” Whew.
Interestingly, two of those (Nos. 1 and 3) predate the iPhone by more than a decade. Apple’s really reaching deep into its patent toy chest here.
I’m not a trademark attorney (thank god), and I truly believe people who invent groundbreaking technologies should reap the rewards — but not at the expense of stifling innovation elsewhere. Even if you created the first device that lets you make things happen when you smear your finger across a touch screen doesn’t mean that you should be able to prevent other folks from making a better way to smear. That is the beauty of open source [7], which Google embraced with Android [8].
Imagine how the automobile industry would have evolved if, say, Henry Ford managed to patent the steering wheel and the accelerator pedal, while Walter P. Chrysler owned the rights to the stick shift and the rearview mirror. Every time we climbed behind the wheel — er, inside the driver seat — of an unfamiliar car, we’d be starting from scratch.
Of course, there are companies who simply buy up patents on the open market and wait for an opportunity to pounce on somebody with deep pockets [9]. The fact that the U.S. patent system [10] still keeps trolls alive and well fed (especially those who line up at the trough in the Eastern District of Texas) is an ongoing disgrace.
Apple is not a patent troll by any stretch. It actually makes products people buy, and it filed suit in Delaware, not Texas. Still, it sends a chill through the air at precisely the time that mobile computing is getting really exciting [11] — in large part because Apple finally has some serious competition. And you get the feeling Apple’s lawyers are just getting warmed up.
via Apple vs. HTC: No matter who wins, we lose.