Don't be fooled. This is an election year ploy. If Bush gets re-elected, expect it to either quietly disappear from the media (like so many of his other lies) or get held up due to funding problems, insurmountable technical difficulties, and the like. Sure, it sounds good, but so did No Child Left Behind (which has rapidly become No Behind Left), all his "small government" talk (increasing the budget by over $300 billion from the height of the Clinton era is by no means small), individual rights...
Ah, but that's why you should have your spam filter dumping to a folder instead of just sending everything it catches to the bit bucket. That way, you can manually scan subject lines and senders and pick out any false positives... Which you will then, presumably, tell the Bayesian filter is ok.
Wow! Yeah, I loved the "Model Team" stuff and its Technic "kit" precursors. It was even cooler because each set had instructions for two or three different vehicles, and most of the parts were generic enough that you could easily use them in your own constructions. The Technic kits were, IMHO, just as cool, in their own way.
If Lego released a $30 or less generic Technic kit with all the usual motors, gears, etc. and a programmable microcontroller brick with a decent OS... I'd SO buy it.
Don't get me started on Wal-Mart. They're the very definition of what I like to call "economic pirates". They move into small towns, kill off all the local retail outlets, then close up shop when the town's economy takes a nose-dive and move on. Its no surprise that they're one of the forces "motivating" companies to do the same thing to third-world nations. (And the US, come to think of it.)
Not if you can't afford basic housing, there isn't. And $30K is close to that in a lot of places where tech workers would have to work. $40K is what I've heard quoted as the minimum figure for low-class housing in most of these places, and $50K for the lower end of medium. And that's plus college loans to pay off....
Most techies are willing to take a pay cut. Unfortunately, they can't compete with $5-10K per year.
Actually, it was fairly well-known among techies even at the time that there wasn't actually a job shortage. Companies were whining about that to get the government to raise the H1B limit, so they could bring in more workers from overseas and work them like slaves, then send them back when they became inconvenient. Now we see what they were really doing - they were training workforces in India so they could dump higher-paying American jobs (even H1Bs had minimum wages) entirely and get rid of those techies that kept changing the world.
Yes, that's right. The information revolution of the '90s scared executives. Expect to start seeing things backslide if they aren't reigned in. And so far, the only Presidentail candidates who've shown any inclination to reign them in are Dean and Kucinich.
So to all Americans... Vote Dean in '04, unless you want to spend the rest of your life asking vacationing businessmen "You want noodles with that?"
Actually, most citizens would "buy American" if they had a choice. They don't. Most markets they buy stuff from are dominated by a few massive companies (food, electronics, music, clothing - all fit into this category) that are controlled by a barely larger number of people. These companies are the ones driving the movement of jobs to the third world. Their executives want to reduce one of the bigger numbers on the budget sheet, because that means bigger profits, which usually go straight into their pocket. (The days of reinvesting are long gone) And employee wages are easy to reduce. Ergo, citizens aren't given a real choice.
Yes, I'm aware that there are alternatives in all of the above. I buy from them... When I can find their products.
Yes, I do really believe that. Why? Because they're destroying the economy of the only regions on the planet willing to pay the prices they're asking for their products in a mad rush for short-term gains. Any economist will tell you that this is a stupid move, especially since they literally cannot lower the price of their products. (Most already have razor-thin profit margins, thanks to Dubya's "finance" policies)
All they're doing is training their next generation of competitors and ensuring that they won't be able to respond when Indian and Chinese tech companies start popping up.
because it seems to be in stark contrast to the comments in the story about U.S. workers being unwilling to work for less money.
Those comments would be blatant lies. Most US workers aren't willing to work below the poverty line. If I can't buy food or afford housing... What's the point, again?
You want cheap goods, but do not want to lose your high paying job.
How nice of you to speak for me. Yes, of course, that's exactly what I want, because that's all anyone could want. Right?
Wrong. I want a reasonably-paying job that doesn't include mandatory unpaid overtime. I want reasonably-priced goods of reasonable quality, which does not mean cheap. I'd rather pay more to get something good than cheap, mass-produced crap that'll fall apart in a week. Which is, as the past two decades have proved, all the "sweatshop labour" model is capable of turning out.
Exactly! Greed's been appropriated by the "let companies do anything they want - you have no rights" "Libertarian" Randroid crowd and twisted into a virtue that's supposedly at the core of the capitalist system. Its not. Capitalism is based on seeing a need and fulfilling it, and being rewarded for doing so. Not on greed. Greed kills capitalism and replaces it with consumerism, in which a few producers tell vast hordes of consumers what they want.
That's not teaching citizenship either. That's teaching them to be mindless test-taking consumer drones. Citizenship would be teaching them about their responsibilities as citizens of a representative democracy - to constantly question their leaders, to examine their policies, and to keep themselves informed.
Of course, this might also lead to them questioning the leaders and policies of their school, which could lead to some administration official or teacher being made to look bad because they don't have a clue. Can't have that!
there (presumably) being no evidence for a higher power, one believes in such only by virtue of "blind faith".
Unfortunately, your argument revolves around that presumably. If there were evidence for a higher power, however shaky, then there is a difference, and your argument falls apart. And there is evidence - every religion out there has books full. Whether or not you accept this evidence, and why you decide one way or another, is another matter entirely.
As for experimental evidence and understanding how the world works, that doesn't necessarily preclude belief in a higher power. It does preclude, as you say, blind faith, but that doesn't mean the scientist can't consider the evidence and decide that faith is worth a try. It also doesn't mean that faith impedes his scientific efforts. (Not to say that it couldn't - but there are many things that could)
Ah, but saying tend escapes you from the problem I was objecting to. Saying "Black men are better at basketball..." is problematic. Saying they tend to be is merely an observed fact. Saying are seems to imply some genetic factor linked to the fact that they're "Black".
Are you sure about that court cases bit? Every case I've ever heard of has gone in favour of the customer, stating that "looks like a sale, acts like a sale" holds because they never got to review the license before the sale, or were even told that it was a license and not a sale. (And saying "They can return it" doesn't hold) If you could provide some examples of ones that went the other way, that'd be good...
The exception was, of course, the law large software companies were trying to ram through state legislatures a few years back. The UCITA would've not only given EULA's teeth, but effectively outlawed the sale of software or distribution of it under GPL-like licenses.
I respectfully disagree about religion. Organized religion, perhaps. Blind faith, definitely. But if you've considered the other standpoints, and weighted the evidence, and still decided that faith is the way to go... Why, exactly, is that a bad thing? What is demonstrably bad about believing in some kind of higher power, if that's the conclusion you've drawn from the evidence at hand?
Re:Two things you can't say
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
even though it's obvious that some races tend to be better at some things than others
No, its not obvious. Not to anyone who's bothered to do even a little research into the subject, at least. There's little biological difference, so any percieved "racial aptitudes" arise from social pressures, not some inherent quality.
It really depends on what you define as Christian. A lot exclude Catholics (IMHO wrongly), which makes the answer accurate again for all but the past 200 years or so. And outside of the Americas and Europe, it could still be a bad idea. People didn't tend to like missionaries very much, as they were often the first wave of a colonial invasion...
Yeah, I'm aware of this. That's why I said its the only "acceptable" choice. Both because it doesn't say anything one way or the other and because so many people interpret it as undecided. I think this is silly - the fact that I happen to believe one thing in no way invalidates the fact that you believe something else, and everyone should be free to believe what they like. Why's it so strange to believe in a higher power?
Of course, given that most Americans worship science (and yes, that is the right usage for what they do)...
Not just the atheist. Announcing that you actually believe in a religion, whatever it may be as long as its not currently fashionable, can lead to a lot of eyebrow-raising too. The only "acceptable" choice right now seems to be to be an agnostic...
The mplayer developers have been known to rant and rave in the past. You might remember some of the documentation that comes with it ("Developers VS Users" springs to mind) or all the screaming when the Debian project pointed out that they were violating the licenses of several libraries. The mplayer people made the (blatantly wrong) claim that they were allowed to do that because they prohibited binary distribution and forced the user to compile. (And so, the user was the one violating the license, not them)
Yes, we all know how the US is not protectionist at all with its own market, *sigh*.
In fact, the US is worse in this respect. European farm subsidies are a drop in the bucket compared to those of the USA.
As for peace in the middle east... Real good job there. Iraq is showing every sign of turning into another Vietnam or, worse, another Cold War Afghanistan, now that Saddam's gone. And Bush has done wonders for the Israel/Palestine peace process. Clinton had them very nearly signing a treaty after eight years of hard work. Bush managed to demolish that in less than three, and now Israel's talking about more expansion of its Golan Heights territory.
Ah, but that's the wonder of radio - its omni-directional. You don't need to tell one potential target that a cruise missile's coming. You tell every target you deem important that its on its way, and they throw up a wall of fire or do whatever they need to to shoot it down when its within range.
Plugins are indeed very nice... There's lots of good ones available, and the ability to install them to your profile or system-wide is very useful. The one problem is that its virtually impossible to uninstall an extension - not just disable it, remove it from the system. So I can't download something, try, it, then remove it if I don't like it to keep it from cluttering up my plugins list.
Hopefully, this will change in the next couple of versions.
Indeed. I remember the ad campaign well. Ads everywhere within a month of launch... For crappy sports game. Then nothing about the console's fighting games or RPGs or platformers. Then cancellation.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't be fooled. This is an election year ploy. If Bush gets re-elected, expect it to either quietly disappear from the media (like so many of his other lies) or get held up due to funding problems, insurmountable technical difficulties, and the like. Sure, it sounds good, but so did No Child Left Behind (which has rapidly become No Behind Left), all his "small government" talk (increasing the budget by over $300 billion from the height of the Clinton era is by no means small), individual rights...
Ah, but that's why you should have your spam filter dumping to a folder instead of just sending everything it catches to the bit bucket. That way, you can manually scan subject lines and senders and pick out any false positives... Which you will then, presumably, tell the Bayesian filter is ok.
So the spammer still gains nothing.
Wow! Yeah, I loved the "Model Team" stuff and its Technic "kit" precursors. It was even cooler because each set had instructions for two or three different vehicles, and most of the parts were generic enough that you could easily use them in your own constructions. The Technic kits were, IMHO, just as cool, in their own way.
If Lego released a $30 or less generic Technic kit with all the usual motors, gears, etc. and a programmable microcontroller brick with a decent OS... I'd SO buy it.
Don't get me started on Wal-Mart. They're the very definition of what I like to call "economic pirates". They move into small towns, kill off all the local retail outlets, then close up shop when the town's economy takes a nose-dive and move on. Its no surprise that they're one of the forces "motivating" companies to do the same thing to third-world nations. (And the US, come to think of it.)
Point-source exploitation. I like it.
Not if you can't afford basic housing, there isn't. And $30K is close to that in a lot of places where tech workers would have to work. $40K is what I've heard quoted as the minimum figure for low-class housing in most of these places, and $50K for the lower end of medium. And that's plus college loans to pay off....
Most techies are willing to take a pay cut. Unfortunately, they can't compete with $5-10K per year.
Actually, it was fairly well-known among techies even at the time that there wasn't actually a job shortage. Companies were whining about that to get the government to raise the H1B limit, so they could bring in more workers from overseas and work them like slaves, then send them back when they became inconvenient. Now we see what they were really doing - they were training workforces in India so they could dump higher-paying American jobs (even H1Bs had minimum wages) entirely and get rid of those techies that kept changing the world.
Yes, that's right. The information revolution of the '90s scared executives. Expect to start seeing things backslide if they aren't reigned in. And so far, the only Presidentail candidates who've shown any inclination to reign them in are Dean and Kucinich.
So to all Americans... Vote Dean in '04, unless you want to spend the rest of your life asking vacationing businessmen "You want noodles with that?"
Actually, most citizens would "buy American" if they had a choice. They don't. Most markets they buy stuff from are dominated by a few massive companies (food, electronics, music, clothing - all fit into this category) that are controlled by a barely larger number of people. These companies are the ones driving the movement of jobs to the third world. Their executives want to reduce one of the bigger numbers on the budget sheet, because that means bigger profits, which usually go straight into their pocket. (The days of reinvesting are long gone) And employee wages are easy to reduce. Ergo, citizens aren't given a real choice.
Yes, I'm aware that there are alternatives in all of the above. I buy from them... When I can find their products.
Yes, I do really believe that. Why? Because they're destroying the economy of the only regions on the planet willing to pay the prices they're asking for their products in a mad rush for short-term gains. Any economist will tell you that this is a stupid move, especially since they literally cannot lower the price of their products. (Most already have razor-thin profit margins, thanks to Dubya's "finance" policies)
All they're doing is training their next generation of competitors and ensuring that they won't be able to respond when Indian and Chinese tech companies start popping up.
because it seems to be in stark contrast to the comments in the story about U.S. workers being unwilling to work for less money.
Those comments would be blatant lies. Most US workers aren't willing to work below the poverty line. If I can't buy food or afford housing... What's the point, again?
You want cheap goods, but do not want to lose your high paying job.
How nice of you to speak for me. Yes, of course, that's exactly what I want, because that's all anyone could want. Right?
Wrong. I want a reasonably-paying job that doesn't include mandatory unpaid overtime. I want reasonably-priced goods of reasonable quality, which does not mean cheap. I'd rather pay more to get something good than cheap, mass-produced crap that'll fall apart in a week. Which is, as the past two decades have proved, all the "sweatshop labour" model is capable of turning out.
Exactly! Greed's been appropriated by the "let companies do anything they want - you have no rights" "Libertarian" Randroid crowd and twisted into a virtue that's supposedly at the core of the capitalist system. Its not. Capitalism is based on seeing a need and fulfilling it, and being rewarded for doing so. Not on greed. Greed kills capitalism and replaces it with consumerism, in which a few producers tell vast hordes of consumers what they want.
That's not teaching citizenship either. That's teaching them to be mindless test-taking consumer drones. Citizenship would be teaching them about their responsibilities as citizens of a representative democracy - to constantly question their leaders, to examine their policies, and to keep themselves informed.
Of course, this might also lead to them questioning the leaders and policies of their school, which could lead to some administration official or teacher being made to look bad because they don't have a clue. Can't have that!
there (presumably) being no evidence for a higher power, one believes in such only by virtue of "blind faith".
Unfortunately, your argument revolves around that presumably. If there were evidence for a higher power, however shaky, then there is a difference, and your argument falls apart. And there is evidence - every religion out there has books full. Whether or not you accept this evidence, and why you decide one way or another, is another matter entirely.
As for experimental evidence and understanding how the world works, that doesn't necessarily preclude belief in a higher power. It does preclude, as you say, blind faith, but that doesn't mean the scientist can't consider the evidence and decide that faith is worth a try. It also doesn't mean that faith impedes his scientific efforts. (Not to say that it couldn't - but there are many things that could)
Ah, but saying tend escapes you from the problem I was objecting to. Saying "Black men are better at basketball..." is problematic. Saying they tend to be is merely an observed fact. Saying are seems to imply some genetic factor linked to the fact that they're "Black".
Are you sure about that court cases bit? Every case I've ever heard of has gone in favour of the customer, stating that "looks like a sale, acts like a sale" holds because they never got to review the license before the sale, or were even told that it was a license and not a sale. (And saying "They can return it" doesn't hold) If you could provide some examples of ones that went the other way, that'd be good...
The exception was, of course, the law large software companies were trying to ram through state legislatures a few years back. The UCITA would've not only given EULA's teeth, but effectively outlawed the sale of software or distribution of it under GPL-like licenses.
I respectfully disagree about religion. Organized religion, perhaps. Blind faith, definitely. But if you've considered the other standpoints, and weighted the evidence, and still decided that faith is the way to go... Why, exactly, is that a bad thing? What is demonstrably bad about believing in some kind of higher power, if that's the conclusion you've drawn from the evidence at hand?
even though it's obvious that some races tend to be better at some things than others
No, its not obvious. Not to anyone who's bothered to do even a little research into the subject, at least. There's little biological difference, so any percieved "racial aptitudes" arise from social pressures, not some inherent quality.
It really depends on what you define as Christian. A lot exclude Catholics (IMHO wrongly), which makes the answer accurate again for all but the past 200 years or so. And outside of the Americas and Europe, it could still be a bad idea. People didn't tend to like missionaries very much, as they were often the first wave of a colonial invasion...
Yeah, I'm aware of this. That's why I said its the only "acceptable" choice. Both because it doesn't say anything one way or the other and because so many people interpret it as undecided. I think this is silly - the fact that I happen to believe one thing in no way invalidates the fact that you believe something else, and everyone should be free to believe what they like. Why's it so strange to believe in a higher power?
Of course, given that most Americans worship science (and yes, that is the right usage for what they do)...
Not just the atheist. Announcing that you actually believe in a religion, whatever it may be as long as its not currently fashionable, can lead to a lot of eyebrow-raising too. The only "acceptable" choice right now seems to be to be an agnostic...
The mplayer developers have been known to rant and rave in the past. You might remember some of the documentation that comes with it ("Developers VS Users" springs to mind) or all the screaming when the Debian project pointed out that they were violating the licenses of several libraries. The mplayer people made the (blatantly wrong) claim that they were allowed to do that because they prohibited binary distribution and forced the user to compile. (And so, the user was the one violating the license, not them)
Yes, we all know how the US is not protectionist at all with its own market, *sigh*.
In fact, the US is worse in this respect. European farm subsidies are a drop in the bucket compared to those of the USA.
As for peace in the middle east... Real good job there. Iraq is showing every sign of turning into another Vietnam or, worse, another Cold War Afghanistan, now that Saddam's gone. And Bush has done wonders for the Israel/Palestine peace process. Clinton had them very nearly signing a treaty after eight years of hard work. Bush managed to demolish that in less than three, and now Israel's talking about more expansion of its Golan Heights territory.
Ah, but that's the wonder of radio - its omni-directional. You don't need to tell one potential target that a cruise missile's coming. You tell every target you deem important that its on its way, and they throw up a wall of fire or do whatever they need to to shoot it down when its within range.
Plugins are indeed very nice... There's lots of good ones available, and the ability to install them to your profile or system-wide is very useful. The one problem is that its virtually impossible to uninstall an extension - not just disable it, remove it from the system. So I can't download something, try, it, then remove it if I don't like it to keep it from cluttering up my plugins list.
Hopefully, this will change in the next couple of versions.
Indeed. I remember the ad campaign well. Ads everywhere within a month of launch... For crappy sports game. Then nothing about the console's fighting games or RPGs or platformers. Then cancellation.