You can't fault people for being unlucky and complaining about it.
First, lets go ahead and accept that we're both pretty lucky. I won't include the cliched "starving child in Africa" references, but really, you don't have it so bad.
I agree with you in principal. The world would be a better place if every person was able to apply their skills and get paid fairly for doing it. I just get caught on the idea that society (or people at large, or whatever) have "obligations" and "owe" someone something because they went to school. Granted, it's better for society that you went to school and worked hard to learn useful skills. But the problem is that society is made up of a bunch of individuals. If the government isn't the one who "owes" you (and I agree with you that they'd just mess it up), who does? If I tip waitresses well as you suggest (and I do, by the way. When I had my own company and employees I paid them very well too. That may be why I don't have my own company any more:) ) that doesn't actually help you get a job. In fact, I may have been in a position to hire you if I charged my customers a little more and paid my employees a little less, now I think about it.
Anyway, in the abstract I agree with you. The world would be a better place if that was how it worked, unless someone decided to change the world so it had to work that way, which would suck.
I think you are owed a decent wage if you worked hard for a degree
You're owed that job by whom? Imagine that you own a company (you can, by the way, just by starting a company). Maybe you start designing web sites for neighborhood babysitters. Are you immediately obligated to provide jobs for any college graduate who comes by? Or is it only other people who are required to hand out jobs even if you don't meet their requirements?
Who has to give the job to the Oceanographer (with a legitimate degree) who wants to work in Ohio? Yes, that's ridiculous because there's no ocean in Ohio. If there is no software development market in Ohio, is it less ridiculous for you to expect someone to produce a job for you?
Is it possible that people (even college graduates) have some responsibility for their future?
Sweden isn't communist, and neither is Russia. Sweden is more socialist than the US, and Russia is certainly struggling with capitalism, but I think you're about 20 years behind the times.
The answer is I would much rather pay tens of millions and have the government have to suspect someone before they investigate them.
In my original post, I said I'd still feel this way if 40% of the people were breaking the law. I'll throw another arbitrary line out there -- if more than 40% of people are breaking a given law, it's probably a law that should be thrown out. It's either un-enforceable or the government isn't bothering to enforce it.
Why should we give up freedoms just because the government passed a law that it can't enforce without violating the constitution? Tax something else if you can't tax online purchases without increasing the power of government.
Am I missing something here? People really expect the govt to not be interested in small online businesses and taxing them? What you're missing is that the government doesn't have the right to randomly search through everyone's private data because 1% (or 40% for that matter) of them might be breaking the law. If they suspect an individual, they get a warrant and investigate them.
Only in very specialized applications where you have extremely weak, but continuous sources of power, could you realize any benefit to a picowatt vs a nanowatt of consumption. no, I think you're missing the point. They aren't really saying you can use the same battery and have it last 200 years. They're saying you can use a MUCH SMALLER battery and have it last just as long.
what if the only dna they got were from guys? the "make them females" doesn't sound too good anymore Females have two X chromosomes. Males have one X and one Y. You could duplicate the X chromosome and pull out the Y (that would mean that the females would be just as susceptible to some common X- chromosome related conditions like color blindness, though).
I think the point is that a bad poster or a good moderator make the opposite argument (they make the argument FOR a moderated forum, rather than against). He says that one bad moderator or one good poster can hide the affects of moderation. I believe one bad poster in an un-moderated forum could be enough to make you wish the forum was moderated. Obviously, a good moderator could also make an argument for a moderated forum. I think the point was that it's hard to make an argument for a moderated forum if all you have are smart posters and bad moderators.
Wikipedia says that Stephen J. Gould says they're dark with white stripes and a big white patch on their stomach. You can tell by shaving them. Shaving zebras is not a hobby for the weak-willed.
Oh, and they aren't horses. They are related, but different.
13 years ago, I worked in Technical Support for a fairly large company that sold database software and DB development tools. It's basically help desk but for external customers rather than internal users. This was in the tech bubble, when everyone was trying to hire people constantly.
Your whole day is spent with technical users or their managers (in our case, DBAs or developers) calling you to help them with problems they're having. If you were particularly bright, helpful, or sometimes just polite, you'd get offered a job. They just seemed to assume that they needed your skills, because if they had it in-house already, they wouldn't have had to call you.
The job also started with a couple of months of training on every product the company sold before you even hit the phones. In this company, patches were also handled by Support. So as I advanced, I got to fix bugs, port the product to different flavors of unix, and teach lots of classes.
It was a great first job that set me up for a career as a database developer and data architect.
The big problem with the Wikipedia comes down to one of opinion.
As long as it is just facts then it seems too work pretty well. The problem with this is that you can't add every pertinent fact. You have to choose which ones are most pertinent or useful. That part is opinion. Even making an encyclopedia article about something everyone pretty much agrees on -- say, gravity -- involves some editorial decisions that can't be completely objective.
someone with root access could slip a rootkit right under your nose Yeah, someone with root access can take control of your server. Oh, wait, they've got root access. They already have control of your server.
At some point, you have to just accept that giving someone root access is a security risk.
why are they called "stealth fighters"? Wikipedia says they named it F-117 rather than B-something (which would be usual for a bomber) because it was harder to fly than regular bombers, and they wanted to attract fighter pilots to fly it. I believe the Ministry of Truth named it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-117_Nighthawk (scroll down to "Designation."
. . . this is just Ben Stein's great way of capitalizing on fears and preconceptions of the population. He literally produced a film . . . This is a pet peeve of mine. The word "literally" rarely belongs in a sentence unless you are making a distinction between reality and something that is normally figurative. Save an animal shelter exploded, sending debris everywhere. Then it might literally rain cats and dogs.
In this case. Ben Stein isn't the producer of the movie (from IMDB, it was Logan Craft and Mark Ruloff). The most you can say about Ben Stein is that he is literally in the cast of this movie.
I don't disagree with your point at all, just the words.
If God is the one making the rules, then he's on top. If not, the whole thing is a scam. Right, but not all of the hierarchies have God on top, obviously. It turns out Zeus wasn't running the ancient Greek religion, priests were. Odin wasn't running the Norse religion, priests were. God may be running the Catholic church, but if he is, then he probably isn't running the Baptists, Methodists, Anglicans, or Lutherans. Of course, if Allah is running Islam, then God ISN'T running the Catholic church, the Pope is.
Clearly, all but (at most) one of them are scams.
I really like the idea of a presidential candidate who is interested in technology and bright enough to find ways to apply it to reaching a goal. On the other hand, I really don't like the idea of whitehouse.gov becoming a government-run myspace which encourages people to give the government even more personal information about themselves. I guess my problem is that I find this an appealing characteristic in a candidate, but a scary characteristic in a President. How inconvenient.
Even if you could somehow use it for Google directions, your route would be crazy. You could start out next door to your destination and it may take you a day-and-a-half of travel to finally wind up there as you tour all over the city Oh, then I think Mapquest already uses this algorithm for routing.
that isn't exactly evil. he said instead of premarital sex with condoms, don't have sex at all. And one could also hazard the guess that "hey, if you're dying from some disease that you could spread to your significant other, perhaps maybe you should forgo the little bit of pleasure to let him/her avoid the lifelong pain." First, I think I first brought up premarital sex but Pope JPII (all popes, I guess) are against condoms at all, even if you are married. Obviously, people who are HIV+ can also spread HIV to their spouses. Who would use condoms with their spouse? I'd hope anyone who lives in an area with African levels of AIDS who hasn't been tested.
Your second statement ignores that it may take 10 years to find out they are HIV+. These people aren't avoiding condoms even though they know they have AIDS. They're avoiding condoms even though they know they have a 1 in 4 chance of being HIV+, AND they and their significant other will go to hell if they use a condom.
Honestly, he spent his career telling people that he speaks for God, and that God thinks condoms = murder. When condoms are the only thing keeping people from unknowingly spreading a horrible, deadly disease, that's EVIL.
If you disagree, I challenge you to mention anything evil John Paul II has done, because he lectured A LOT about human dignity. One evil thing that Pope John Paul II did -- he actively discouraged condom use in countries with almost pandemic levels of AIDS. Yes, he also discouraged premarital sex, but people are more easily convinced to avoid condoms than to avoid sex.
I'm sure all of those sick and dieing people felt a lot more dignified than they would have if they'd used condoms -- after all, buying condoms can be kind of awkward.
I actually bought a Mac for my wife, and she hated it. She's not big on change. She didn't like different fonts, she didn't like having the app menus separated from the windows, and she didn't like losing MS Outlook. I ended up installing XP for her in bootcamp, and it's just the most stylish windows box on the block.
I wasn't going to post on this thread because I didn't feel like that was much of a contribution, but her father IS actually called 'Mac.'
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You can't fault people for being unlucky and complaining about it.
First, lets go ahead and accept that we're both pretty lucky. I won't include the cliched "starving child in Africa" references, but really, you don't have it so bad.
:) ) that doesn't actually help you get a job. In fact, I may have been in a position to hire you if I charged my customers a little more and paid my employees a little less, now I think about it.
I agree with you in principal. The world would be a better place if every person was able to apply their skills and get paid fairly for doing it. I just get caught on the idea that society (or people at large, or whatever) have "obligations" and "owe" someone something because they went to school. Granted, it's better for society that you went to school and worked hard to learn useful skills. But the problem is that society is made up of a bunch of individuals. If the government isn't the one who "owes" you (and I agree with you that they'd just mess it up), who does? If I tip waitresses well as you suggest (and I do, by the way. When I had my own company and employees I paid them very well too. That may be why I don't have my own company any more
Anyway, in the abstract I agree with you. The world would be a better place if that was how it worked, unless someone decided to change the world so it had to work that way, which would suck.
I think you are owed a decent wage if you worked hard for a degree
You're owed that job by whom? Imagine that you own a company (you can, by the way, just by starting a company). Maybe you start designing web sites for neighborhood babysitters. Are you immediately obligated to provide jobs for any college graduate who comes by? Or is it only other people who are required to hand out jobs even if you don't meet their requirements?
Who has to give the job to the Oceanographer (with a legitimate degree) who wants to work in Ohio? Yes, that's ridiculous because there's no ocean in Ohio. If there is no software development market in Ohio, is it less ridiculous for you to expect someone to produce a job for you?
Is it possible that people (even college graduates) have some responsibility for their future?
Sweden isn't communist, and neither is Russia. Sweden is more socialist than the US, and Russia is certainly struggling with capitalism, but I think you're about 20 years behind the times.
The answer is I would much rather pay tens of millions and have the government have to suspect someone before they investigate them.
In my original post, I said I'd still feel this way if 40% of the people were breaking the law. I'll throw another arbitrary line out there -- if more than 40% of people are breaking a given law, it's probably a law that should be thrown out. It's either un-enforceable or the government isn't bothering to enforce it.
Why should we give up freedoms just because the government passed a law that it can't enforce without violating the constitution? Tax something else if you can't tax online purchases without increasing the power of government.
I think the point is that a bad poster or a good moderator make the opposite argument (they make the argument FOR a moderated forum, rather than against). He says that one bad moderator or one good poster can hide the affects of moderation.
I believe one bad poster in an un-moderated forum could be enough to make you wish the forum was moderated. Obviously, a good moderator could also make an argument for a moderated forum. I think the point was that it's hard to make an argument for a moderated forum if all you have are smart posters and bad moderators.
Wikipedia says that Stephen J. Gould says they're dark with white stripes and a big white patch on their stomach. You can tell by shaving them. Shaving zebras is not a hobby for the weak-willed. Oh, and they aren't horses. They are related, but different.
13 years ago, I worked in Technical Support for a fairly large company that sold database software and DB development tools. It's basically help desk but for external customers rather than internal users. This was in the tech bubble, when everyone was trying to hire people constantly.
Your whole day is spent with technical users or their managers (in our case, DBAs or developers) calling you to help them with problems they're having. If you were particularly bright, helpful, or sometimes just polite, you'd get offered a job. They just seemed to assume that they needed your skills, because if they had it in-house already, they wouldn't have had to call you.
The job also started with a couple of months of training on every product the company sold before you even hit the phones. In this company, patches were also handled by Support. So as I advanced, I got to fix bugs, port the product to different flavors of unix, and teach lots of classes.
It was a great first job that set me up for a career as a database developer and data architect.
Man, I wish I had mod points. A beautiful Douglas Adams reference in a Neal Stephenson thread.
I really like the idea of a presidential candidate who is interested in technology and bright enough to find ways to apply it to reaching a goal. On the other hand, I really don't like the idea of whitehouse.gov becoming a government-run myspace which encourages people to give the government even more personal information about themselves. I guess my problem is that I find this an appealing characteristic in a candidate, but a scary characteristic in a President. How inconvenient.
Your second statement ignores that it may take 10 years to find out they are HIV+. These people aren't avoiding condoms even though they know they have AIDS. They're avoiding condoms even though they know they have a 1 in 4 chance of being HIV+, AND they and their significant other will go to hell if they use a condom.
Honestly, he spent his career telling people that he speaks for God, and that God thinks condoms = murder. When condoms are the only thing keeping people from unknowingly spreading a horrible, deadly disease, that's EVIL.
If you disagree, I challenge you to mention anything evil John Paul II has done, because he lectured A LOT about human dignity.
One evil thing that Pope John Paul II did -- he actively discouraged condom use in countries with almost pandemic levels of AIDS. Yes, he also discouraged premarital sex, but people are more easily convinced to avoid condoms than to avoid sex. I'm sure all of those sick and dieing people felt a lot more dignified than they would have if they'd used condoms -- after all, buying condoms can be kind of awkward.
I actually bought a Mac for my wife, and she hated it. She's not big on change. She didn't like different fonts, she didn't like having the app menus separated from the windows, and she didn't like losing MS Outlook. I ended up installing XP for her in bootcamp, and it's just the most stylish windows box on the block. I wasn't going to post on this thread because I didn't feel like that was much of a contribution, but her father IS actually called 'Mac.'
Take a deep breath. Then try NeoOffice. It's OO ported to OS X. It doesn't require X11.