I graduated from High School with a career 59% grade average. For those of you who didn't go to school in New York, that's basically an F average. I was awarded a diploma because I passed all of the required classes, barely. The conclusion you might come to is that I hate learning. But you'd be wrong.
For someone who loves to learn, school is the absolute worst enemy in this regard. In my case, I would cut school simply to hang out in the library and study with notebook in hand. School is not about learning, it's about control, purely and simply. Some teachers could recognize your interests and help you along, but these teachers were so rare and could only do so much.
I never did go on to college. I never even took the SATs. I regret nothing.
One thing I said to myself then, which I say to myself now, is that the beaten path is the easy way out. Down that road is what everyone else has. A 9-5 job with unpaid overtime, living for the weekends, and genuinely being told what to do throughout life hoping that someone will someday appreciate your obedience and throw you some scraps. Public schools train you to fit in this kind of life. In my opinion, that's not life. I don't know what it is, but I can't imagine calling it life.
You can take away my car, house, bank accounts, brokerage accounts, retirement accounts, heaven forbid even my high school diploma, but as long as you haven't taken away my ability to think, I can still survive and I can still be happy.
Like they said in trainspotting (but missing the point entirely): Choose life.
there are also questions about whether this new form of instant access could become as oppressively intrusive as e-mail often seems
As intrusive as email? I consider email to be the least intrusive form of communication. Making a phone in my pocket ring no matter where I am in the world is the most intrusive way to communicate, if you ask me.
The hypocrisy runs thick. It's hard for most people to admit both of these candidates have less than a stellar record to vote for them. The sad part is most people are voting for Kerry only because they hate Bush, so I ask you this one question. What does Kerry stand for? I bet you will be unable to find out because of his unbelievable ability to change his stance on an issue based upon what is appeared to be hot at the time. Frankly I do not want a president who will change his mind because of pressure.
I asked this question once too, and the internet told me in about 5 minutes.
Kerry's stance on the issues:
Gay Marriage: Supports separate but equal civil unions; gay rights groups give him good ratings despite the fact that he isn't for all out gay marriage.
Iraq War: "Internationalizing" the war effort (this probably means sharing the oil in exchange for some help and possible "legitimacy").
Taxes: Middle-class tax cuts. A repeal of the tax cuts for the rich.
Health care: Wants to socialize health care for >90% of the population.
Labor: wants to index the minimum wage against inflation.
Medicine: government backing of stem cell research!
Abortion: is personally against abortion, but says he could never impose his personal preference on others (pro-choice)
Education: boring policies on education I don't care about. Also, wants to start some kind of mandatory community service requirement in order to graduate high school.
And so on. Kerry and Edwards apparantly published a book about their positions: http://www.johnkerry.com/pdf/our_plan_for_america. pdf
Try watching less TV -- you might learn something besides other people's opinions this way.
Personally, I'm against many of Kerry's policies, but overall support them over Bush's.
I agree entirely with holding people responsible for their own actions.
I don't however agree with having the state force others to take out insurance policies based on my what-if fears, even if they are popular fears. I'm the one with the fear, I should take out the policy or learn to cope.
I suppose before you let someone into your house, you require them to show proof of insurance? No? What if they knock over something valuable? What if they slip and fall and really hurt themselves? What if you get into a fight and he/she hurts you? What if they accidentily start a fire and your house burns down? Why should your homeowner's/renter's insurance have to take the hit -- hold the people who did it responsible!
I suppose there are people out there who require this, but I've never met them. And even if there were a lot of them who felt this way, I'd object to them turning it into a law and making everyone walk around with personal liability insurance just because some of the apples in the bunch are paranoid.:D
So, your solution is that I pay much higher premiums to protect myself? Seems unfair to me - someone could do millions of dollars worth of damage to me personally and I have to pay to insulate myself against that risk?
You're the one who is paranoid about poor people hurting them. Why is it fair that the rest of us need to buy insurance to quell your fear?
Yes, but what if you hit me and you don't have the money for my medical bills you've caused? Or the money to pay for my car? What then?
This is a poor way to describe the problem, and it leads to poor solutions like mandatory insurance laws.
This is about you. What you're really saying is "I am worried that poor people will hurt me" which is basically saying "I need to protect my assets". Fortunately, this is a common concern, and many people opt to take an insurance policy that covers this risk.
If you don't care about protecting your assets, or have no assets worth protecting, you don't get this coverage.
Wikipedia: Amblyopia or lazy eye is a disorder of the eyes. It is characterised by poor or dim vision in an eye that is otherwise physically healthy and normal. The problem is normally due to a faulty connection between the eye and the brain, which did not develop correctly during early childhood. Amblyopia normally only affects one eye, but it is possible to be amblyopic in both eyes.
The "Huckleberry Finn" test says I got 95WPM gross, 2 errors, 93 WPM net speed.
The "Fishing in Finland" test said gross 101WPM, 3 errors, 98WPM net speed. I was able to better hold the text in my head since the grammar wasn't as funny.
Please, I'm honestly asking - how is this good for me?
Lets play devil's advocates (I don't necessarily agree with any/all of them):
A cell phone isn't a god-given right. If you don't like it, don't buy it.
Maybe the reason telco sucks so much is because of the FCC. Cellular phones existed for decades before they saw common use, presumably because the FCC's interference delayed their deployment.
The pressures of supply/demand always "correct' the market. It may not always be as fast as we like, but on the whole, this natural phenomenom tends to do a better job of communicating the needs of the market better than any rational entity can. (Or put another way, capitalism is the worst way to manage resources, except for all of the others.)
Telcos driving manufacturers into bitter competition because they're demanding more for less money? This is a self-correcting problem.
If increased competition turns profits into losses, eventually manufacturers will begin to leave the market, leaving fewer manufacturers. Fewer manufacturers means that those who remain are in a market with decreased competition, which drives prices up.
And it's extremely easy to parse the format. I wrote a module in Python in about 4 hours that can traverse sections and pull symbols out for me. The Linux kernel needs to care a little less about the specifics since shared libraries are all handled by libc.
The module is at http://michael.bacarella.com/projects/sograph/sogr aph-0.95/elf.py (Remove the space)
SCO doesn't hold a patent on the ELF format, so even if the Linux kernel code for the ELF loader is proven "stolen", it'd be a very trivial rewrite.
Linux needs a powerful brand to succeed on the desktop -- just like how Apple and Microsoft have powerful brands. Linux's technical capabilities are completely irrelevent.
Successfully marketing Linux as a shrinkwrap product to compete with Microsoft/Apple requires an enormous degree of sales, marketing, and management resources. Unless I missed something, Linspire just doesn't have it.
Dell is throwing its money away, and so are most people who buy these systems.
Linux is of a species of software that the end user who sees their computer as a VCR or a toaster won't understand. It's completely possible to take Linux and refactor it into such a device and make that the de facto standard (kind of like taking the internet, lobotomizing it, and packaging it and calling it "AOL"), but that's going to take serious work.
"Owning" Linux in the way that hardcore geeks own it is not a prospect that most end users can deal with.
"The chances that in the last week or year or month you've used the computer to simulate some interesting idea is zero--but that's what it's for."
Is the listener supposed to then ask a simple question like "what would you simulate?" and he would say "everything!" and the listener says "how do you do that?" and he says "by building a model of EVERYTHING!" and the listener, still not understanding what the value of "simulating everything" means, just writes him off as a kook who will research useless ideas for the rest of his life?
If Microsoft insisted that every computer in 2005 should support the Apple Desktop Bus instead of USB or PS/2 Keyboard/Mice, and ceased selling operating systems that support the older standards, virtually every commodity PC manufacturer in the world would have to comply and produce machines with ADB ports.
Even if PC manufacturers didn't have agreements that prevented Microsoft from doing this (I have no idea if they do, it would make sense to say that right?), they'd probably be hit with dozens of temporary restraining orders while a judge gets to figure out if this is an anti-competitive move.
How do government agencies continue life? No, not by providing useful services to the community. They survive by making headlines.
The DA prosecutes to make headlines. Ever try to get the DA to prosecute an assault charge? See how completely uninterested they are compared to asking them to prosecute murder. Murder charges get their rocks off. Why? Assault won't show up in the paper, but prosecuting murder gets headlines and paragraphs, maybe more. (Adjust accordingly if famous people are involved)
The DHS isn't concerned with keeping America safe. They're concerned with people believing that they keep America safe.
The FCC? They aren't really concerned with keeping indecency off the air. They're concerned with people believing that they do this. Attacking Howard Stern, for example, makes headlines and energizes the people who are most likely to continue funding them (religious right). On the other hand, Oprah Winfrey qualifies as obsence under the same guidelines, but she hasn't been attacked because it would be contrary to their goals: keep getting funding. Oprah's powerful enough that she could decide elections, and by extension, FCC funding.
From the government's point of view, making headlines IS almost always the best thing they could be doing.
My advice here is simple and it relates directly to the difference in those expectations.
CONTACT A LABOR LAWYER NOW. Get a consultation, see who will just talk to you. Talk now.
That or start looking for a new job (or both).
If the terms of your employment have gotten to the point where you need a lawyer to straighten things out, you really would do better to just quit. Forcing someone to employ you if they don't want to is about the same as being forced to work for someone you don't want to.
Seek out good agreements. The best agreements involve compromise on both sides to reach mutual satisfaction. The best agreements recognize changing needs and can be revised accordingly. These are agreements that people are happy to stick to.
Bad agreements are ones that involve too much give on one side. Bad agreements are written in stone. The party that is getting the ass end in such an agreement will be unhappy. Unhappy people become angry people. Angry people don't care about what the agreement says. Or what ethics say. Or what the law says.
If the terms of your employment are so rotten and the other party is not interested in satisfying your needs. Ask yourself. Do you live for someone else, or do you live for yourself?
Yes, but Britannica's 85,000 articles are credible and verified for accuracy, while some of Wikipedia's content should be questionned.
I can't think of any better method of verification than allowing any person to submit a change/correction, and for every other person to verify that correction, and for every other person to verify the verifying verifying correction.
As an experiment I've vandalized wikipedia in the most subtle ways factually, and so far all have been corrected. Most in minutes, one lasted for several hours.
With the Encyclopedia Britannica you basically have to trust the elite cabal that writes the articles. Interestingly enough, Wikipedia's entry on Encyclopedia Britannica has several links to reports of bias and abuse.
But at the same time, anyone who says "the customer is always right" has never worked retail. Contrary to popular belief, at least 90 percent of the time the customer is full of shit.
My wife works at a bank, and under bank policy, if someone wants to make a huge cash withdrawal from their account, they must present two forms of identification and she needs to check their signature card.
Sounds like a good security policy that keeps the customer's interests in mind. So what happens? People bitch that they need to reach into their wallets and find their driver's license. Then they bitch while she checks out their signature card.
Slashdot Mirror
I graduated from High School with a career 59% grade average. For those of you who didn't go to school in New York, that's basically an F average. I was awarded a diploma because I passed all of the required classes, barely. The conclusion you might come to is that I hate learning. But you'd be wrong.
For someone who loves to learn, school is the absolute worst enemy in this regard. In my case, I would cut school simply to hang out in the library and study with notebook in hand. School is not about learning, it's about control, purely and simply. Some teachers could recognize your interests and help you along, but these teachers were so rare and could only do so much.
I never did go on to college. I never even took the SATs. I regret nothing.
One thing I said to myself then, which I say to myself now, is that the beaten path is the easy way out. Down that road is what everyone else has. A 9-5 job with unpaid overtime, living for the weekends, and genuinely being told what to do throughout life hoping that someone will someday appreciate your obedience and throw you some scraps. Public schools train you to fit in this kind of life. In my opinion, that's not life. I don't know what it is, but I can't imagine calling it life.
You can take away my car, house, bank accounts, brokerage accounts, retirement accounts, heaven forbid even my high school diploma, but as long as you haven't taken away my ability to think, I can still survive and I can still be happy.
Like they said in trainspotting (but missing the point entirely): Choose life.
there are also questions about whether this new form of instant access could become as oppressively intrusive as e-mail often seems
As intrusive as email? I consider email to be the least intrusive form of communication. Making a phone in my pocket ring no matter where I am in the world is the most intrusive way to communicate, if you ask me.
Wikipedia is not paper.
Wikipedia is not a product.
Compare the article to its previous versions. It makes it so easy.
The discussions also contain a great deal of additional information about the article.
The hypocrisy runs thick. It's hard for most people to admit both of these candidates have less than a stellar record to vote for them. The sad part is most people are voting for Kerry only because they hate Bush, so I ask you this one question. What does Kerry stand for? I bet you will be unable to find out because of his unbelievable ability to change his stance on an issue based upon what is appeared to be hot at the time. Frankly I do not want a president who will change his mind because of pressure.
I asked this question once too, and the internet told me in about 5 minutes.
Kerry's stance on the issues:
Gay Marriage: Supports separate but equal civil unions; gay rights groups give him good ratings despite the fact that he isn't for all out gay marriage.
Iraq War: "Internationalizing" the war effort (this probably means sharing the oil in exchange for some help and possible "legitimacy").
Taxes: Middle-class tax cuts. A repeal of the tax cuts for the rich.
Health care: Wants to socialize health care for >90% of the population.
Labor: wants to index the minimum wage against inflation.
Medicine: government backing of stem cell research!
Abortion: is personally against abortion, but says he could never impose his personal preference on others (pro-choice)
Education: boring policies on education I don't care about. Also, wants to start some kind of mandatory community service requirement in order to graduate high school.
And so on. Kerry and Edwards apparantly published a book about their positions: http://www.johnkerry.com/pdf/our_plan_for_america. pdf
Try watching less TV -- you might learn something besides other people's opinions this way.
Personally, I'm against many of Kerry's policies, but overall support them over Bush's.
I agree entirely with holding people responsible for their own actions.
I don't however agree with having the state force others to take out insurance policies based on my what-if fears, even if they are popular fears. I'm the one with the fear, I should take out the policy or learn to cope.
I suppose before you let someone into your house, you require them to show proof of insurance? No? What if they knock over something valuable? What if they slip and fall and really hurt themselves? What if you get into a fight and he/she hurts you? What if they accidentily start a fire and your house burns down? Why should your homeowner's/renter's insurance have to take the hit -- hold the people who did it responsible!
I suppose there are people out there who require this, but I've never met them. And even if there were a lot of them who felt this way, I'd object to them turning it into a law and making everyone walk around with personal liability insurance just because some of the apples in the bunch are paranoid. :D
How is a laser printed reciept placed in a secure box any different than a punched card or marked paper slip placed in a secure box?
In theory, it should be impossible to create an invalid paper receipt.
Compare to hanging chads or someone who checked more than a check only one box.
So, your solution is that I pay much higher premiums to protect myself? Seems unfair to me - someone could do millions of dollars worth of damage to me personally and I have to pay to insulate myself against that risk?
You're the one who is paranoid about poor people hurting them. Why is it fair that the rest of us need to buy insurance to quell your fear?
Yes, but what if you hit me and you don't have the money for my medical bills you've caused? Or the money to pay for my car? What then?
This is a poor way to describe the problem, and it leads to poor solutions like mandatory insurance laws.
This is about you. What you're really saying is "I am worried that poor people will hurt me" which is basically saying "I need to protect my assets". Fortunately, this is a common concern, and many people opt to take an insurance policy that covers this risk.
If you don't care about protecting your assets, or have no assets worth protecting, you don't get this coverage.
Troll? But I meant "insane" as a compliment! :D
Or is this a new thing?
Now lets fix amblyopia!
The "Huckleberry Finn" test says I got 95WPM gross, 2 errors, 93 WPM net speed.
The "Fishing in Finland" test said gross 101WPM, 3 errors, 98WPM net speed. I was able to better hold the text in my head since the grammar wasn't as funny.
Please, I'm honestly asking - how is this good for me?
Lets play devil's advocates (I don't necessarily agree with any/all of them):
Telcos driving manufacturers into bitter competition because they're demanding more for less money? This is a self-correcting problem.
If increased competition turns profits into losses, eventually manufacturers will begin to leave the market, leaving fewer manufacturers. Fewer manufacturers means that those who remain are in a market with decreased competition, which drives prices up.
And it's extremely easy to parse the format. I wrote a module in Python in about 4 hours that can traverse sections and pull symbols out for me. The Linux kernel needs to care a little less about the specifics since shared libraries are all handled by libc.
The module is at http://michael.bacarella.com/projects/sograph/sogr aph-0.95/elf.py (Remove the space)
SCO doesn't hold a patent on the ELF format, so even if the Linux kernel code for the ELF loader is proven "stolen", it'd be a very trivial rewrite.
...to protect them from just such a thing.
Right?
Linux needs a powerful brand to succeed on the desktop -- just like how Apple and Microsoft have powerful brands. Linux's technical capabilities are completely irrelevent.
Successfully marketing Linux as a shrinkwrap product to compete with Microsoft/Apple requires an enormous degree of sales, marketing, and management resources. Unless I missed something, Linspire just doesn't have it.
Dell is throwing its money away, and so are most people who buy these systems.
Linux is of a species of software that the end user who sees their computer as a VCR or a toaster won't understand. It's completely possible to take Linux and refactor it into such a device and make that the de facto standard (kind of like taking the internet, lobotomizing it, and packaging it and calling it "AOL"), but that's going to take serious work.
"Owning" Linux in the way that hardcore geeks own it is not a prospect that most end users can deal with.
"The chances that in the last week or year or month you've used the computer to simulate some interesting idea is zero--but that's what it's for."
Is the listener supposed to then ask a simple question like "what would you simulate?" and he would say "everything!" and the listener says "how do you do that?" and he says "by building a model of EVERYTHING!" and the listener, still not understanding what the value of "simulating everything" means, just writes him off as a kook who will research useless ideas for the rest of his life?
Does anyone else understand his vision?
If Microsoft insisted that every computer in 2005 should support the Apple Desktop Bus instead of USB or PS/2 Keyboard/Mice, and ceased selling operating systems that support the older standards, virtually every commodity PC manufacturer in the world would have to comply and produce machines with ADB ports.
Even if PC manufacturers didn't have agreements that prevented Microsoft from doing this (I have no idea if they do, it would make sense to say that right?), they'd probably be hit with dozens of temporary restraining orders while a judge gets to figure out if this is an anti-competitive move.
And somehow Starbucks always manages to hire the cutest girls. I think part of their job description is to be flirty.
I've probably ordered complicated drinks just so I have an excuse to stay there longer and hope that they'll pay more attention to me.
Guys are so stupid. :(
Doesn't the government have better things to do?
Government agencies want to continue to live.
How do government agencies continue life? No, not by providing useful services to the community. They survive by making headlines.
The DA prosecutes to make headlines. Ever try to get the DA to prosecute an assault charge? See how completely uninterested they are compared to asking them to prosecute murder. Murder charges get their rocks off. Why? Assault won't show up in the paper, but prosecuting murder gets headlines and paragraphs, maybe more. (Adjust accordingly if famous people are involved)
The DHS isn't concerned with keeping America safe. They're concerned with people believing that they keep America safe.
The FCC? They aren't really concerned with keeping indecency off the air. They're concerned with people believing that they do this. Attacking Howard Stern, for example, makes headlines and energizes the people who are most likely to continue funding them (religious right). On the other hand, Oprah Winfrey qualifies as obsence under the same guidelines, but she hasn't been attacked because it would be contrary to their goals: keep getting funding. Oprah's powerful enough that she could decide elections, and by extension, FCC funding.
From the government's point of view, making headlines IS almost always the best thing they could be doing.
My advice here is simple and it relates directly to the difference in those expectations.
CONTACT A LABOR LAWYER NOW. Get a consultation, see who will just talk to you. Talk now.
That or start looking for a new job (or both).
If the terms of your employment have gotten to the point where you need a lawyer to straighten things out, you really would do better to just quit. Forcing someone to employ you if they don't want to is about the same as being forced to work for someone you don't want to.
Seek out good agreements. The best agreements involve compromise on both sides to reach mutual satisfaction. The best agreements recognize changing needs and can be revised accordingly. These are agreements that people are happy to stick to.
Bad agreements are ones that involve too much give on one side. Bad agreements are written in stone. The party that is getting the ass end in such an agreement will be unhappy. Unhappy people become angry people. Angry people don't care about what the agreement says. Or what ethics say. Or what the law says.
If the terms of your employment are so rotten and the other party is not interested in satisfying your needs. Ask yourself. Do you live for someone else, or do you live for yourself?
She gets 24x7 support, and I get my freedom.
I work in exactly that kind of arrangement now.
See how much freedom you have next time you want to take a two week vacation without bringing a laptop or a cell phone.
Yes, but Britannica's 85,000 articles are credible and verified for accuracy, while some of Wikipedia's content should be questionned.
I can't think of any better method of verification than allowing any person to submit a change/correction, and for every other person to verify that correction, and for every other person to verify the verifying verifying correction.
As an experiment I've vandalized wikipedia in the most subtle ways factually, and so far all have been corrected. Most in minutes, one lasted for several hours.
With the Encyclopedia Britannica you basically have to trust the elite cabal that writes the articles. Interestingly enough, Wikipedia's entry on Encyclopedia Britannica has several links to reports of bias and abuse.
But at the same time, anyone who says "the customer is always right" has never worked retail. Contrary to popular belief, at least 90 percent of the time the customer is full of shit.
My wife works at a bank, and under bank policy, if someone wants to make a huge cash withdrawal from their account, they must present two forms of identification and she needs to check their signature card.
Sounds like a good security policy that keeps the customer's interests in mind. So what happens? People bitch that they need to reach into their wallets and find their driver's license. Then they bitch while she checks out their signature card.
The customer is a stupid dumbass.