I preface this by saying that I recently converted to veganism, so it pains me that I'm lumped in with these idiots. I did not stop eating animal products for the benefit of any animal except myself. I believe that the natural order of the animal kingdom involves death and suffering, and animals will eat animals. I don't think that means that I need to eat animals, but that's neither here nor there.
These idiots are trapped by their own inconsistent ideology because they have members who want to help animals and therefore want the shelters to run, and then they have other members who think even owning a pet is cruel to animals (so why have them around to adopt?), and I think that the presence of the shelters, but the almost blase way in which they kill animals reflects that split in their member base. There's no way to reconcile it, so they do both badly to keep both sides equally unhappy.
The real losers here are the animals that could go to good homes.
If I could burn all my moderation points to mod the parent up I would. It amazes me that 50 years ago the US was willing to stand up to the Soviet Union and risk total nuclear annihilation in the process in the name of preserving essential liberties. And today we have leaders who ask us to give up our liberties, while undermining them in secret out of fear of a potential terrorist attack in some vague future scenario which may or may not include a nuclear bomb.
It makes me wish for a leader like Eisenhower, who incidentally said: "How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?"
I think Verizon's willing to talk because they know now they blew the iPhone deal. They had the opportunity to be the sole provider of the hottest phone in forever and couldn't close the deal, so I imagine there's no way they're going to let a Google Phone slip through their fingers, even if they can't be the sole carrier.
I was going to say that you indeed so awesome that we should call you "Captain Awesome" but it occurs to me that if you're a computer geek who's also an outside linebacker you might actually have your own gravity.
I can't go to Wal-Mart and get an unbowdlerized copy of a CD...I guess because "it's for the children", meanwhile, said "children" are over at the movies picking up Saw VIII: the "We-Cut-Titties-Off-In-This-One-Double-Secret-Unce nsored-Director's-Cut" edition double-packed with Jackass III with the uncut scene of Steve-O eating his own nuts.
It should also be telling in the whole debate over private schools vs. public schools that public school teachers send their children to private schools at a rate of more than double the general population. As do politicians who are telling us that we should support and use the public schools.
If the teachers teaching there and the politicians running and funding it don't think they should educate their children there, then why should we?
I don't believe that people are apathetic to privacy, I think that a lot of people in America have antipathy towards privacy and hold the whole notion in scorn. I don't preach about it on the corner or froth at mouth when browbeating people into thinking about privacy. I support the EFF, I use tools like TOR, PGP, etc, and I get questioned:
"Don't you think you're taking it all a little too far?" "What are you soooo worried about? The government doesn't care about people like you." And that old chestnut: "If you've got nothing to hide, why do you care?"
I think that these are attitudes that have long been drummed into people. We send our kids to schools that routinely search their lockers. Our politicians demand the right to search cars during DUI checkpoints, orginizations like the ACLU are categorized as crazy when they try to fight illegal searches and seizures, etc. The media and the government combined (not saying it's a conspiracy, just saying they're preaching the same mission) talk to us about privacy as if it's something to be feared and derided.
The fact that some people are beginning to express some concern about their rights actually makes me feel a touch more hopeful.
I got laid off on 9/11, and spent several months without a job or insurance. My wife is diabetic and requires lots of doctor's visits and medication, especially when she was pregnant with our kids. Between having to make the choice between credit card debt and rent, etc, my credit score took a big hit. However, in all of the times that I've ever interviewed for a job, if the employer announced they'd like to pull my credit as part of the application process, I've been upfront about what they'd find when looking in my credit and why it's there, and I've never had an issue.
I even had one HR employee tell me: "It's not that important, the parent company just requires we pull credit."
I hope that it kind of stays that way, for the sake of other people who've had similar troubles as me.
I'm just curious to know where LGF was when Republican Howard Kaloogian posted those photos of a peaceful Istanbul suburb on his website and claimed they were Baghdad, and it was obvious we were "making real progress" there. Seems like a bit of fraud there as well.
There are desks that are fully height adjustable, such as this very expensive one, to a line of cheaper ones at ErgoBoy (caution some only move a few inches to adgust for taller people sitting).
I find that the old biology class slate tables I had in high school work best though. Lots of room to spread stuff out and very stable.
If you were to take someone from 2005 and show them the world of 2020 they'd find many things weird, including the fact that John Dvorak is still getting published, someone still finds it relevant, and people still submit his half-assed half-baked phoned-in nonesensical crap to Slashdot.
Well don't you realize, sir, that it is only through the fine efforts of our boys at the NSA listening in your phone conversations that no one else has died because of terrorism. When will you take your simpering 'Hate America First' french-sounding whining about the truth over to the hills of Afghanistan and march with the real heros of this fight, our troops. Every time you have a negative thought about our administration's bold and completely legal efforts to protect us from Saddam Hussein's hidden WMDs falling into the hands of Al-Qaeda, our enemies are emboldened and another soldier dies. You know what, just cut off his mic. Mr. Alphorn has nothing good to say. CUT IT OFF.
Disclaimer: the above was written in the spirit of comedy and irony, and in no way indicates my desire to be vanished to a secret Eastern European prison where angry white men in suits will perform Rush Limbaugh's "fraternity pranks" on my testicles.
Khasim, I wish had moderation points to heap on your article, but I don't, so I just wanted to say kudos. I wish there were more sane and rational posts like yours. My hat's off to you.
I highly doubt the database was compromised. Rather, I am willing to bet that this spammer has a sufficiently large database that it was possible for him to correlate the mountain of opt-out requests he got to emails it was sent to and make some simple deductions. This makes me wish I could run two copies of BlueFrog on my machine at the same time, and double the amount of opt-outs I was sending him.
As far as directing their efforts towards people like me, that's fine. That means less spam around the world for the rest of you. I accepted that risk when I signed up.
I've had a ton of problems with my iPod headphones but I thought "What luck, I'll just drive down to the King of Prussia Apple Store and get some help!" Riiiiiggggghhhht.
The first time they said that they wouldn't help me at all with the stock headphones, so I bought a new pair of earbuds. They lasted a month. Back to the Apple Store. I have to deal with the "Genius Bar" (TM) but it takes me a few minutes to figure out how to get my name on the list to be helped, wait for-goddamn-ever only to have the guy take one look at them and say "You obviously stepped on them, we're not helping you." and turned to the next person to be helped. When I complained to the manager she found someone to help me, but I had to wait two weeks for them to get the same model in.
They called in two weeks and my wife went down. No record of me in the system, no they don't have my new earbuds. My wife showed them the slip they gave me, the email printed out that they sent me. "Sorry man, but we don't know where they are." So I went down the next weekend. Hey look, they changed the way you get your name on the Genius Bar (TM) list AGAIN! Oh look, it doesn't work! Wow. What a lot of geniuses. Put my name on the sheet of paper and wait
and wait
and wait
after 90 minutes of alternately waiting and insisting I'm not leaving until I have my new headphones they miraculously appear and I can leave.
If (when) these break, I'm going to wipe my butt with them and mail them express to Steve Jobs and buy a pair at Best Buy.
I have been saying, and I'll say it again, in some areas the shortage is real. I live and work in the Philadelphia area and it's an extremely tight labor market. I've been off the job hunt for 3 months and I still get 2 or more calls and emails a week from recruiters. Every one of them that I talk to says the same thing: "We can't find enough people to fill the positions we have open".
I'm hearing the same thing from friends in Maryland
I appreciate there are areas where IT workers can't find a job, but that's not all of America.
Fine, AT&T will own a large corner of the DSL market, all the while Verizon is working on rolling out FIOS, which will make DSL and cable look downright pathetic. The posters who have said that this is a different world now with many different alternatives to what Ma Bell used to offer are true. Telecommunications is a much bigger market, with more open and robust offerings.
The plans for the Vogon's Hyperspace Bypass have finally been approved. Demolition begins this week. They've been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.
I remain skeptical. While this CNet article matches what researches have been studying for years, for example, this paper from MIT published originally in 1991, it's only measuring people's perceptions, rather than hard economic data. The economic indicators of the last 5 years have shown huge boosts in worker productivity in the US (ignoring last quarter's results). That directly contradicts the CNet article.
Yes, the paper from MIT makes the case that there are many factors which can increase a person's productivity, and our gains in productivity could have come from other sources than technology, but the question remains: is this true, or simply a matter of perception?
That's not entirely accurate. Yes its assets and liabilities have remained untouched, but it lost monetary value. If there were a company that wanted to buy Google today it could be had cheaper than it would have a few weeks before. This could also affect its ability to raise more money (as if they needed to) because they would have to sell off more company control to raise the same amount of capital or to attract new talent who might be looking for better compensation.
Very simple - a lot of ads flash or blink. I have epilepsy, and while flashing doesn't immediately cause a seizure, it can cause vertigo, especially if it's not the thing I'm looking at directly, so a big flashing snake advertising refinancing of home loans is bad for me head.
That's also why I tend to turn the flourescent bulbs over my head off too when I work. A little bit of flicker from them can make me feel very ill.
Strangely enough, I can play most video games just fine.
A CEO can be arrogant, regardless of their status as a monopoly. Plenty of people are arrogant without any semblance of real power.
Verizon's position as a monopoly is laughable. There are at least 5 nationwide cell carriers, many local and long-distance landline carriers, an explosion of VoIP carriers, with Comcast threatening to enter the VoIP market soon, which will only further eat into their market share. Internet service providers abound, including cable, DSL, and satellite, plus normal dial-up.
Verizon is not a monopoly. Your use of the word is wrong, as is your implication that a company having a majority market share is bad. I suggest you return to your economics and history books.
I'm learning Hindi, and I've found a few computer programs that work okay, but I rely on learning from books, watching Bollywood movies, and talking with my co-workers from India (those that do speak Hindi).
I think that the older methods work best, just because constant immersion and practice help you retain what you're learning.
Slashdot Mirror
I preface this by saying that I recently converted to veganism, so it pains me that I'm lumped in with these idiots. I did not stop eating animal products for the benefit of any animal except myself. I believe that the natural order of the animal kingdom involves death and suffering, and animals will eat animals. I don't think that means that I need to eat animals, but that's neither here nor there.
These idiots are trapped by their own inconsistent ideology because they have members who want to help animals and therefore want the shelters to run, and then they have other members who think even owning a pet is cruel to animals (so why have them around to adopt?), and I think that the presence of the shelters, but the almost blase way in which they kill animals reflects that split in their member base. There's no way to reconcile it, so they do both badly to keep both sides equally unhappy.
The real losers here are the animals that could go to good homes.
If I could burn all my moderation points to mod the parent up I would. It amazes me that 50 years ago the US was willing to stand up to the Soviet Union and risk total nuclear annihilation in the process in the name of preserving essential liberties. And today we have leaders who ask us to give up our liberties, while undermining them in secret out of fear of a potential terrorist attack in some vague future scenario which may or may not include a nuclear bomb.
It makes me wish for a leader like Eisenhower, who incidentally said:
"How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?"
I think Verizon's willing to talk because they know now they blew the iPhone deal. They had the opportunity to be the sole provider of the hottest phone in forever and couldn't close the deal, so I imagine there's no way they're going to let a Google Phone slip through their fingers, even if they can't be the sole carrier.
I was going to say that you indeed so awesome that we should call you "Captain Awesome" but it occurs to me that if you're a computer geek who's also an outside linebacker you might actually have your own gravity.
I can't go to Wal-Mart and get an unbowdlerized copy of a CD...I guess because "it's for the children", meanwhile, said "children" are over at the movies picking up Saw VIII: the "We-Cut-Titties-Off-In-This-One-Double-Secret-Unce nsored-Director's-Cut" edition double-packed with Jackass III with the uncut scene of Steve-O eating his own nuts.
Somehow that's okay to Wal-Mart.
It's just that he worked this really awful job as a teenager where his boss forced him to wear buttons and insisted on calling them "flair"...
It should also be telling in the whole debate over private schools vs. public schools that public school teachers send their children to private schools at a rate of more than double the general population. As do politicians who are telling us that we should support and use the public schools. If the teachers teaching there and the politicians running and funding it don't think they should educate their children there, then why should we?
I don't believe that people are apathetic to privacy, I think that a lot of people in America have antipathy towards privacy and hold the whole notion in scorn. I don't preach about it on the corner or froth at mouth when browbeating people into thinking about privacy. I support the EFF, I use tools like TOR, PGP, etc, and I get questioned:
"Don't you think you're taking it all a little too far?"
"What are you soooo worried about? The government doesn't care about people like you."
And that old chestnut:
"If you've got nothing to hide, why do you care?"
I think that these are attitudes that have long been drummed into people. We send our kids to schools that routinely search their lockers. Our politicians demand the right to search cars during DUI checkpoints, orginizations like the ACLU are categorized as crazy when they try to fight illegal searches and seizures, etc. The media and the government combined (not saying it's a conspiracy, just saying they're preaching the same mission) talk to us about privacy as if it's something to be feared and derided.
The fact that some people are beginning to express some concern about their rights actually makes me feel a touch more hopeful.
I got laid off on 9/11, and spent several months without a job or insurance. My wife is diabetic and requires lots of doctor's visits and medication, especially when she was pregnant with our kids. Between having to make the choice between credit card debt and rent, etc, my credit score took a big hit. However, in all of the times that I've ever interviewed for a job, if the employer announced they'd like to pull my credit as part of the application process, I've been upfront about what they'd find when looking in my credit and why it's there, and I've never had an issue.
I even had one HR employee tell me: "It's not that important, the parent company just requires we pull credit."
I hope that it kind of stays that way, for the sake of other people who've had similar troubles as me.
I'm just curious to know where LGF was when Republican Howard Kaloogian posted those photos of a peaceful Istanbul suburb on his website and claimed they were Baghdad, and it was obvious we were "making real progress" there. Seems like a bit of fraud there as well.
There are desks that are fully height adjustable, such as this very expensive one, to a line of cheaper ones at ErgoBoy (caution some only move a few inches to adgust for taller people sitting). I find that the old biology class slate tables I had in high school work best though. Lots of room to spread stuff out and very stable.
If you were to take someone from 2005 and show them the world of 2020 they'd find many things weird, including the fact that John Dvorak is still getting published, someone still finds it relevant, and people still submit his half-assed half-baked phoned-in nonesensical crap to Slashdot.
Well don't you realize, sir, that it is only through the fine efforts of our boys at the NSA listening in your phone conversations that no one else has died because of terrorism. When will you take your simpering 'Hate America First' french-sounding whining about the truth over to the hills of Afghanistan and march with the real heros of this fight, our troops. Every time you have a negative thought about our administration's bold and completely legal efforts to protect us from Saddam Hussein's hidden WMDs falling into the hands of Al-Qaeda, our enemies are emboldened and another soldier dies. You know what, just cut off his mic. Mr. Alphorn has nothing good to say. CUT IT OFF.
Disclaimer: the above was written in the spirit of comedy and irony, and in no way indicates my desire to be vanished to a secret Eastern European prison where angry white men in suits will perform Rush Limbaugh's "fraternity pranks" on my testicles.
Khasim, I wish had moderation points to heap on your article, but I don't, so I just wanted to say kudos. I wish there were more sane and rational posts like yours. My hat's off to you.
I highly doubt the database was compromised. Rather, I am willing to bet that this spammer has a sufficiently large database that it was possible for him to correlate the mountain of opt-out requests he got to emails it was sent to and make some simple deductions. This makes me wish I could run two copies of BlueFrog on my machine at the same time, and double the amount of opt-outs I was sending him.
As far as directing their efforts towards people like me, that's fine. That means less spam around the world for the rest of you. I accepted that risk when I signed up.
"I have a pithy sarcastic anonymous comment dismissing what you said. I'm brillient..." No, you're really not.
I've had a ton of problems with my iPod headphones but I thought "What luck, I'll just drive down to the King of Prussia Apple Store and get some help!" Riiiiiggggghhhht.
The first time they said that they wouldn't help me at all with the stock headphones, so I bought a new pair of earbuds. They lasted a month. Back to the Apple Store. I have to deal with the "Genius Bar" (TM) but it takes me a few minutes to figure out how to get my name on the list to be helped, wait for-goddamn-ever only to have the guy take one look at them and say "You obviously stepped on them, we're not helping you." and turned to the next person to be helped. When I complained to the manager she found someone to help me, but I had to wait two weeks for them to get the same model in.
They called in two weeks and my wife went down. No record of me in the system, no they don't have my new earbuds. My wife showed them the slip they gave me, the email printed out that they sent me. "Sorry man, but we don't know where they are." So I went down the next weekend. Hey look, they changed the way you get your name on the Genius Bar (TM) list AGAIN! Oh look, it doesn't work! Wow. What a lot of geniuses. Put my name on the sheet of paper and wait
and wait
and wait
after 90 minutes of alternately waiting and insisting I'm not leaving until I have my new headphones they miraculously appear and I can leave.
If (when) these break, I'm going to wipe my butt with them and mail them express to Steve Jobs and buy a pair at Best Buy.
I have been saying, and I'll say it again, in some areas the shortage is real. I live and work in the Philadelphia area and it's an extremely tight labor market. I've been off the job hunt for 3 months and I still get 2 or more calls and emails a week from recruiters. Every one of them that I talk to says the same thing: "We can't find enough people to fill the positions we have open".
I'm hearing the same thing from friends in Maryland
I appreciate there are areas where IT workers can't find a job, but that's not all of America.
Fine, AT&T will own a large corner of the DSL market, all the while Verizon is working on rolling out FIOS, which will make DSL and cable look downright pathetic. The posters who have said that this is a different world now with many different alternatives to what Ma Bell used to offer are true. Telecommunications is a much bigger market, with more open and robust offerings.
The plans for the Vogon's Hyperspace Bypass have finally been approved. Demolition begins this week. They've been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.
I remain skeptical. While this CNet article matches what researches have been studying for years, for example, this paper from MIT published originally in 1991, it's only measuring people's perceptions, rather than hard economic data. The economic indicators of the last 5 years have shown huge boosts in worker productivity in the US (ignoring last quarter's results). That directly contradicts the CNet article.
Yes, the paper from MIT makes the case that there are many factors which can increase a person's productivity, and our gains in productivity could have come from other sources than technology, but the question remains: is this true, or simply a matter of perception?
That's not entirely accurate. Yes its assets and liabilities have remained untouched, but it lost monetary value. If there were a company that wanted to buy Google today it could be had cheaper than it would have a few weeks before. This could also affect its ability to raise more money (as if they needed to) because they would have to sell off more company control to raise the same amount of capital or to attract new talent who might be looking for better compensation.
Very simple - a lot of ads flash or blink. I have epilepsy, and while flashing doesn't immediately cause a seizure, it can cause vertigo, especially if it's not the thing I'm looking at directly, so a big flashing snake advertising refinancing of home loans is bad for me head.
That's also why I tend to turn the flourescent bulbs over my head off too when I work. A little bit of flicker from them can make me feel very ill.
Strangely enough, I can play most video games just fine.
A CEO can be arrogant, regardless of their status as a monopoly. Plenty of people are arrogant without any semblance of real power.
Verizon's position as a monopoly is laughable. There are at least 5 nationwide cell carriers, many local and long-distance landline carriers, an explosion of VoIP carriers, with Comcast threatening to enter the VoIP market soon, which will only further eat into their market share. Internet service providers abound, including cable, DSL, and satellite, plus normal dial-up.
Verizon is not a monopoly. Your use of the word is wrong, as is your implication that a company having a majority market share is bad. I suggest you return to your economics and history books.
I'm learning Hindi, and I've found a few computer programs that work okay, but I rely on learning from books, watching Bollywood movies, and talking with my co-workers from India (those that do speak Hindi).
I think that the older methods work best, just because constant immersion and practice help you retain what you're learning.