Troll? Come on, Republican drones. If you feel the need to mark down my message from +5 because you can't answer any of my points, at least use the "-1 overrated" button. Marking it as "troll" just makes you look stupid.
Not true. What the Texas law does say is that if both a hand and machine recount are requested, only one, the hand recount is performed.
In other words, the hand count is deciding, because it is considered to have a higher accuracy. This is exactly the opposite of what Bush, Cheney, Baker, and their legions of drones have been maintaining.
After all, the Republicans did complain about the interpretations of dimpled chads that Broward County came up with. The Republican judge on the Broward County board disagreed with tons of the calls, and one Republican observer was thrown out for disagreeing with a call.
As I recall, that Republican observer wasn't thrown out for "disagreeing", he was thrown out for making a loud, obnoxious spectacle of himself. I guess the tactics Republicans used outside the counting areas didn't work inside the counting areas, for which we should all be happy.
The point, however, is the oft-repeated charge that hand counting "invites mischief", that is, ballot fraud. And I ask again: do you think the Democrat observers could punch out a chad right under the noses of the Republican observers? Or spoil Republican ballots with doubling punching? I think not. A hand count, would, however, produce a more accurate count of the vote, and that seems to be the scenario Dubya and company wish to avoid at all costs.
After all, the Attorney General for Florida jumped in the dispute, and he managed Gore's campaign in Florida.
First, one conflict of interest does not justify another. Second, Bob Butterworth isn't involved with the vote count directly. He's voiced his opinion to the press, as any of us may do, but he's not the guy certifying the election. It's not the same situation at all. Third, Katherine Harris has a direct monetary interest in seeing Bush win. Her office is being phased out at the end of her term and she's looking for work. She's already been fishing for an ambassador position if Dubya wins. Do I have to spell it out for you any more? This is as blatant a case of conflict of interest as any I've ever seen. Maybe this would be considered "bidness as usual" in Texas, but it sure as hell wouldn't be in the rest of the country. Some of us might even call it a bribe.
Note that optical systems and punchcard systems are distributed proportionally in counties the each candidate won, although Gore did have slightly more spoiled ballots in counties he won.
Thanks for the link. I counted those returns myself, and saw that it's true that about 58% of the counties that each candidate won had optical vote readers.
This almost made me recant, until I saw that the three largest counties in Florida -- Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Broward -- which supplied by far the largest number of Gore's votes were all punch card counties. The three largest, most urban counties were among the last to receive updated equipment from Bush's little brother and the Republican-dominated Florida legislature. Imagine that.
First, you say Gore leads by 200,000 in the popular vote. Actually, it's over 300,000, but what's a hundred thousand lost votes to a Republican?
Second, you say that a lead of 200,000 votes is insignificant, to the point where there was "no winner", yet you're arguing that Bush's lead of 500 votes in Florida is decisive, conclusive, and we should all go home. That's particularly funny when his lead shrinks to 120 votes if you count the recounts already submitted from Miami and Palm Beach. Of course, Katherine Harris, lackey-in-chief, didn't count these votes, or the 10,000 undervotes yet to be inspected. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
Third, you tell me that having three democrats on one canvassing board is illegal. Might be, but it's the first I've heard of it. Apparently no one else has either. You should contact Matt Drudge and the Bush campaign immediately with this scoop.
Fourth, dimpled chads aren't being counted.
Fifth, your hero doesn't agree with your assertion that counting them is ridiculous, since Dubya himself signed a law saying dimpled chads are legal in Texas.
I've yet to hear of this video of democrats "bending ballots" until the chads are dimpled. Pretty amazing that they can do that right under the nose of a room full of Republican observers. Perhaps you can share a link to this video?
I assume you're familiar with at least the basics of programming, since you're hanging out here. In particular, I think you probably can parse the word "if". Look closely now, sound it out, I'm sure you can do it.
Nice try, but you missed the mark. Yes, Texas does have a state wide procedure, and it's more liberal than anything proposed in any county in Florida. In Texas, even "dimpled chads" count, that is, cards where there isn't even penetration of the ballot. Yet in Florida, we're told by Republicans that even votes that are hanging by one corner of a chad don't represent a voter's intent, such is the shamelessness of the Bush campaign. If Florida went by Texas standards, we wouldn't even be having this conversation, and Gore would already be the president-elect.
Second, the main reason that the counties couldn't get their votes in on time were due the delaying tactics of Katherine Harris. She did her job well and no doubt will get a rich reward from Dubya should he succeed in his swindle.
While we're on the topic, care to tell me how she was justified in throwing out the ballots already counted in those counties that missed the deadlines? According to this article from the Washington Post, Gore had picked up 157 votes in Miami and 210 in Palm Beach, which leaves Bush's lead at 120 votes with over 10,000 "undervoted" ballots uninspected. Harris was wise to pull the plug when she did, since it's pretty clear a full recount will give the presidency to Gore.
You dismiss my concerns about the co-chair of the Bush campaign in Florida being the ultimate arbiter of this election as "crap", but you notably leave out any reason for this dismissal. Does the phrase "conflict of interest" not mean anything to you? This is about the most blatant abuse of power I've seen in a long time. Apparently, Republicans want their guy to win so badly that it doesn't bother them. So much for "restoring honor and diginity to the white house".
As for the voting machines, who do you think controls which areas get upgraded first? Here's a hint: it's the state government headed by Bush's little brother.
Have you been watching the news, asshole? Your "proof" has been plastered all over CNN, MSNBC, and all the major networks. Your ignorance is not my problem.
Sure, if everything is recounted and Bush wins, that's exactly what Gore should do. But everything hasn't been recounted. Or did you miss that scene of Republican goons physicially intimidating the Miami canvassing board into calling off their recount last week?
At least Bush was smart enough to not issue them armbands.
You're wrong for two reasons. First, it's not the duty of the Democratic party to request recounts in counties they won. That's the Republicans job. Two, despite that, Gore did indeed offer a state-wide hand recount last week, which Bush immediately rejected. Why? Because he knows he'll lose.
Strip away the vitriol, and you'll see that you're agreeing with me. As you say, "hand counts produce more accepted ballots than machine counts". Which, last time I checked, was the whole point of a democratic election.
I actually agree that hand recounts done only in certain counties is rather bogus, but the Bushies were given every opportunity to request hand counts in any area they wished to dispute -- twice.
Once, immediately after the election, and twice, after Al Gore offered them a hand count for the whole state. By your own logic, that's a fair, legal, offer, so what's your beef? In any case, it's a better way to resolve this crisis than shipping in goons to intimidate election officials. That's not rhetoric, it's history, as you'll know if you really were watching CNN.
Gore on the other hand is looking like a power mad tyrant, who will do ANYTHING to be President. I am scared at the thought of someone who wants that power THAT badly... Gore's only chance to preserve any dignity would be to concede. He will not do that. In fact, I don't think he ever will, even when Bush is sworn in.
Really? Is it Gore trying every trick in the book to stop legally mandated recounts, including the threat of physical intimidation? No, that's Bush.
And is it Gore who is threatening to use the legislature to overturn an election if it doesn't go the way he wants? Nope, sorry, that's Bush.
Was it Bush that offered a fair and honorable way out of this morass -- a full hand recount across all of Florida? Nope, that was Gore.
And was it Bush that went on national TV saying that he would not accept the electoral votes of any Republican electors who decided to switch their votes? Oops, sorry again, that was Gore.
Seems to me that before this election Dubya was making a lot of noise about the need for Gore to step down if he only won the electoral vote. Bush promised to "fight on" in such a circumstance. Amazing how flexible Dubya is, eh?
Perhaps you need to reconsider which candidate is the dishonorable scumbag willing to stoop to any low to steal the presidency. (Here's a hint: Bush).
I'd rather see issues decided by lawyers than by mobs of shipped-in goons, like the one in Miami that frightened the canvassing board into calling off their hand recount. That single act just might have decided the presidency, yet you have the nerve to accuse the Democrats of dirty tricks that damage faith in "the Constitution, law, and fairness"?
And Nader was the greatest evil of all in this election. I'd sooner see Buchanan president than that son-of-a-bitch.
He repeatedly told the big lie that the two parties were identical, and then he spent his money in swing states, deliberately trying to cripple Gore. If he was a paid operative of the Bush campaign, I don't see how his behaviour would have been any different.
And now, due directly to him and his sheep-like followers, the odds are we'll wind up with a president who believes in voluntary pollution laws, unlimited soft money, breaking the powers of unions whenever possible, and repealing Roe vs. Wade. Quite a legacy for the "Green Party".
Yeah, just like in 1800, when Thomas Jefferson had no mandate due to a tie in the electoral college which had to be decided by the legislature.
It's too bad, that Jefferson guy had talent, but he wound up fading into obscurity, accomplishing nothing, and no one outside of history professors even know who he is.
If machine recounts are more accurate than hand recounts, why was there a difference of 1400 votes after the second machine recount? Sure as hell doesn't sound like "two votes in a million" to me.
If hand recounts are less accurate than machine recounts, why are hand recounts ordered by law in case in dispute in both Florida and Texas, as well as most of the other states?
How easy is it to stuff the ballot box when you're in a roomful of extremely partisan observers from the other side? Do you think the Dem's are ripping out chads right under the Republicans noses?
How can Gore have "clearly lost" the hand recount when the recount wasn't allowed to finish? Do you think shipping in goons to harass election canvassing boards into calling off recounts is an acceptable outcome in a Western democracy?
The woman who certified this vote, and who has consistently attempted to block all attempts at hand recounts, is Bush's co-campaign chair in Florida. How can this be allowed to happen? Do they not have conflict of interest laws in Florida? Further, her job is due to be slated out of existence at the end of her term, which means she's looking for work. She'll get a plum appointment in a Bush administration, maybe even an Ambassadorship. Is this the way we do elections in America? Sounds more like one of those new Russian states making it's first attempt at democracy.
Why are most of the optical counting machines in Florida in Republican areas, where the shitty old punchcard systems are in place in Democratic strongholds?
I wish this was over too, but it ain't. Gore gave them a chance to do it right -- hand recounts in ALL of Florida's counties. But Bush refused, because he knows he'll lose if votes are accurately counted. Whether or not he'll get away with this swindle remains to be seen, but I fully support the efforts of the Gore team to see justice done here.
How about having a real recount, that is, a hand recount that is actually allowed to finish?
Bush's lackeys have expended a great deal of energy to prevent the lawful counting of ballots. Clearly, it's because they know that if every vote is counted, they lose, the same way the lost the popular vote. They even resorted to goon tactics with shipped-in hooligans to intimdate election officials in Miami. Maybe that's your idea of democracy, but it sounds more like South America to me. It sure as hell isn't "the rule of law" or "trusting the people".
I'm glad Gore isn't going to let this drop. The Republicans can't be allowed to steal this election.
You're a real zealot, aren't you? Microsoft treats people like slaves because Microsoft treats people like slaves, and god damn the opinion of anyone who has actually worked there.
Did you miss the part of my message about having my own office, setting my own hours, wearing whatever I want, and getting lots of money? I bet you wish you were treated so well at your job, monkey boy.
I didn't even mention the free beverages, the beer and pizza every Friday, the margueritas on Thursdays, the occasional department-wide trip to the movies, and the unlimited and completely free training on pretty much any subject I desire.
It's also a rare week when I work 40 hours. I don't need to, since the pay is so good. I never work overtime except in the direst of emergencies, and even then that's only because I'm a decent fellow, not because I'm forced to.
Seems to me that my current reality pretty much exactly matches up with the wish lists posted on this thread. But it must all be a delusion, because I'm working for the evil Microsoft, right?
It's already pretty clear to me that you're some kid who has yet to enter the workforce, so I'll go easy on you. If I had any doubts of that, your witless comment about money and stress removed them. Money is what makes most problems go away, especially when it's not just yourself that you're responsible for.
I will leave you with this parting shot, though: perhaps if your sources of stress don't involve finances, then maybe it's you who has "major emotional deprivation". I have a wife, a child, friends, hobbies, and a career. My problems were solely due to a lack of money. Now, thanks to my own initiative in training myself, and the good folks in Redmond, I don't have those problems, either. Perhaps you're the type of person who would still be depressed while sitting on a pile of money, but that ain't me, buddy.
If this training is gonna make you worth two or three times more, why didn't you do it for yourselves earlier? Take control of you professional life.
I was starting to wonder if I was the only person in this thread that had that opinion. Anyone who can read and who can afford $20 a month for a net connection can get all the free training they want. I have no certification in anything -- not even a CS degree -- and I've yet to find an employer that considers that an impediment in any way.
I had to "settle" for an entry level job of $50K a few years ago because I had no job experience. Now that I do, I make a hell of a lot more. I'm actually really shocked at reading all these stories of $10 an hour computer techs in this thread. Why on earth would anyone with even the slightest degree of technical sophistication ever consider taking such a job? You guys are letting yourselves be screwed.
He's probably talking about scripting, asshole. You know -- JavaScript, VBScript, Active Server Pages, and so on. A friend who just went to a conference in San Francisco told me that experienced ASP writers are going for $80 an hour in that market now.
Spoken like a man who has never had a high paying job.
The truth, of course, is that along with higher pay also comes more job security and less stress. The reason for this is because you don't get the big bucks unless you're good, and if you're good, you quickly become very difficult to replace without seriously setting back the product schedule.
P.S. I'm currently working a contract for Microsoft and I'm pretty far from being "chained to my desk". I've got my own office, I come and go as I please, I wear whatever I want, I'm "in the loop" as much as I care to be, and I make scads of money -- enough to remove about 90% of the stress from the rest of my life. But by all means, keep working your shitty, low paying job and making ignorant comments about the rest of the industry if it makes you feel any better.
Excuse me, friend, but that's horseshit. Go read the chapters on Heinlein in Asimov's collection of autobiographical essays, "I, Asimov". His rips on Heinlein quite strongly for someone as polite as Isaac. He compared him to Ronald Reagan, someone who was liberal when he had a liberal wife, and conservative when he had a conservative wife. So much for the depths of Heinlein's political beliefs.
Starship Troopers is the same raving right-wing horse shit that he espoused in all his other novels as well as his personal life.
If someone hung out on Slashdot and posted about niggers every day for five years I'm sure some of you would think they were trying to make a point about the evils of racism.
And it's considered even more fascist by people who have the read the book and are old enough to be out of high school. Do you remember how humanity was an aggressively imperialist species in that book, really no better than the bugs? And what was the rationale for conquering lesser races? Because we can. The strong have an obligation to dominate the weak, it's really in everyone's best interest, don't you see, since it makes the species stronger.
You know, Heinlein wasn't the first hack writer to come up with that idea. Nietzsche wrote the same thing. He impressed a foolish young Austrian corporal with his ridiculously transparent whack-off fantasies the same way virginal males today fantasize about being characters in Heinlein novels.
Mind you, I have read some excellent short stories by Heinlein. Check out "Universe" sometime. It was written around 1941, at least 20 years before crap like Stranger in a Strange Land and all those other horrible novels. Maybe it was a mid-life crisis he never recovered from.
You've got that right. Word has gotten shittier and more annoying in every version. I really liked version six, which I think was the first one to include the feature that underlines misspelled words as you type. That was the last useful thing they added.
After that they started adding a lot more crap to second guess the user. Now it's just as annoying as Wordperfect, but without control codes so you can't even fix the problems Word introduces half the time.
What I'd really like to see in a future version of Windows is some option you can click that says "I know what I'm doing, don't try to second guess me, ever. Don't reformat my documents, don't ask me if I really meant to move a file, and most of all, don't second guess what I'm trying to select with the mouse cursor".
This in itself regularly sends me into insane rages. Some programs, like Textpad, are smart enough to have an option to turn off Windows cursor behaviour, but most aren't.
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Troll? Come on, Republican drones. If you feel the need to mark down my message from +5 because you can't answer any of my points, at least use the "-1 overrated" button. Marking it as "troll" just makes you look stupid.
In other words, the hand count is deciding, because it is considered to have a higher accuracy. This is exactly the opposite of what Bush, Cheney, Baker, and their legions of drones have been maintaining.
After all, the Republicans did complain about the interpretations of dimpled chads that Broward County came up with. The Republican judge on the Broward County board disagreed with tons of the calls, and one Republican observer was thrown out for disagreeing with a call.
As I recall, that Republican observer wasn't thrown out for "disagreeing", he was thrown out for making a loud, obnoxious spectacle of himself. I guess the tactics Republicans used outside the counting areas didn't work inside the counting areas, for which we should all be happy.
The point, however, is the oft-repeated charge that hand counting "invites mischief", that is, ballot fraud. And I ask again: do you think the Democrat observers could punch out a chad right under the noses of the Republican observers? Or spoil Republican ballots with doubling punching? I think not. A hand count, would, however, produce a more accurate count of the vote, and that seems to be the scenario Dubya and company wish to avoid at all costs.
After all, the Attorney General for Florida jumped in the dispute, and he managed Gore's campaign in Florida.
First, one conflict of interest does not justify another. Second, Bob Butterworth isn't involved with the vote count directly. He's voiced his opinion to the press, as any of us may do, but he's not the guy certifying the election. It's not the same situation at all. Third, Katherine Harris has a direct monetary interest in seeing Bush win. Her office is being phased out at the end of her term and she's looking for work. She's already been fishing for an ambassador position if Dubya wins. Do I have to spell it out for you any more? This is as blatant a case of conflict of interest as any I've ever seen. Maybe this would be considered "bidness as usual" in Texas, but it sure as hell wouldn't be in the rest of the country. Some of us might even call it a bribe.
Note that optical systems and punchcard systems are distributed proportionally in counties the each candidate won, although Gore did have slightly more spoiled ballots in counties he won.
Thanks for the link. I counted those returns myself, and saw that it's true that about 58% of the counties that each candidate won had optical vote readers.
This almost made me recant, until I saw that the three largest counties in Florida -- Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Broward -- which supplied by far the largest number of Gore's votes were all punch card counties. The three largest, most urban counties were among the last to receive updated equipment from Bush's little brother and the Republican-dominated Florida legislature. Imagine that.
Such a rich message, so ripe with errors.
First, you say Gore leads by 200,000 in the popular vote. Actually, it's over 300,000, but what's a hundred thousand lost votes to a Republican?
Second, you say that a lead of 200,000 votes is insignificant, to the point where there was "no winner", yet you're arguing that Bush's lead of 500 votes in Florida is decisive, conclusive, and we should all go home. That's particularly funny when his lead shrinks to 120 votes if you count the recounts already submitted from Miami and Palm Beach. Of course, Katherine Harris, lackey-in-chief, didn't count these votes, or the 10,000 undervotes yet to be inspected. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
Third, you tell me that having three democrats on one canvassing board is illegal. Might be, but it's the first I've heard of it. Apparently no one else has either. You should contact Matt Drudge and the Bush campaign immediately with this scoop.
Fourth, dimpled chads aren't being counted.
Fifth, your hero doesn't agree with your assertion that counting them is ridiculous, since Dubya himself signed a law saying dimpled chads are legal in Texas.
I've yet to hear of this video of democrats "bending ballots" until the chads are dimpled. Pretty amazing that they can do that right under the nose of a room full of Republican observers. Perhaps you can share a link to this video?
I assume you're familiar with at least the basics of programming, since you're hanging out here. In particular, I think you probably can parse the word "if". Look closely now, sound it out, I'm sure you can do it.
Nice try, but you missed the mark. Yes, Texas does have a state wide procedure, and it's more liberal than anything proposed in any county in Florida. In Texas, even "dimpled chads" count, that is, cards where there isn't even penetration of the ballot. Yet in Florida, we're told by Republicans that even votes that are hanging by one corner of a chad don't represent a voter's intent, such is the shamelessness of the Bush campaign. If Florida went by Texas standards, we wouldn't even be having this conversation, and Gore would already be the president-elect.
Second, the main reason that the counties couldn't get their votes in on time were due the delaying tactics of Katherine Harris. She did her job well and no doubt will get a rich reward from Dubya should he succeed in his swindle.
While we're on the topic, care to tell me how she was justified in throwing out the ballots already counted in those counties that missed the deadlines? According to this article from the Washington Post, Gore had picked up 157 votes in Miami and 210 in Palm Beach, which leaves Bush's lead at 120 votes with over 10,000 "undervoted" ballots uninspected. Harris was wise to pull the plug when she did, since it's pretty clear a full recount will give the presidency to Gore.
You dismiss my concerns about the co-chair of the Bush campaign in Florida being the ultimate arbiter of this election as "crap", but you notably leave out any reason for this dismissal. Does the phrase "conflict of interest" not mean anything to you? This is about the most blatant abuse of power I've seen in a long time. Apparently, Republicans want their guy to win so badly that it doesn't bother them. So much for "restoring honor and diginity to the white house".
As for the voting machines, who do you think controls which areas get upgraded first? Here's a hint: it's the state government headed by Bush's little brother.
Have you been watching the news, asshole? Your "proof" has been plastered all over CNN, MSNBC, and all the major networks. Your ignorance is not my problem.
Sure, if everything is recounted and Bush wins, that's exactly what Gore should do. But everything hasn't been recounted. Or did you miss that scene of Republican goons physicially intimidating the Miami canvassing board into calling off their recount last week?
At least Bush was smart enough to not issue them armbands.
You're wrong for two reasons. First, it's not the duty of the Democratic party to request recounts in counties they won. That's the Republicans job. Two, despite that, Gore did indeed offer a state-wide hand recount last week, which Bush immediately rejected. Why? Because he knows he'll lose.
Strip away the vitriol, and you'll see that you're agreeing with me. As you say, "hand counts produce more accepted ballots than machine counts". Which, last time I checked, was the whole point of a democratic election.
I actually agree that hand recounts done only in certain counties is rather bogus, but the Bushies were given every opportunity to request hand counts in any area they wished to dispute -- twice.
Once, immediately after the election, and twice, after Al Gore offered them a hand count for the whole state. By your own logic, that's a fair, legal, offer, so what's your beef? In any case, it's a better way to resolve this crisis than shipping in goons to intimidate election officials. That's not rhetoric, it's history, as you'll know if you really were watching CNN.
Really? Is it Gore trying every trick in the book to stop legally mandated recounts, including the threat of physical intimidation? No, that's Bush.
And is it Gore who is threatening to use the legislature to overturn an election if it doesn't go the way he wants? Nope, sorry, that's Bush.
Was it Bush that offered a fair and honorable way out of this morass -- a full hand recount across all of Florida? Nope, that was Gore.
And was it Bush that went on national TV saying that he would not accept the electoral votes of any Republican electors who decided to switch their votes? Oops, sorry again, that was Gore.
Seems to me that before this election Dubya was making a lot of noise about the need for Gore to step down if he only won the electoral vote. Bush promised to "fight on" in such a circumstance. Amazing how flexible Dubya is, eh?
Perhaps you need to reconsider which candidate is the dishonorable scumbag willing to stoop to any low to steal the presidency. (Here's a hint: Bush).
I'd rather see issues decided by lawyers than by mobs of shipped-in goons, like the one in Miami that frightened the canvassing board into calling off their hand recount. That single act just might have decided the presidency, yet you have the nerve to accuse the Democrats of dirty tricks that damage faith in "the Constitution, law, and fairness"?
Yep, you're a Republican all right.
And Nader was the greatest evil of all in this election. I'd sooner see Buchanan president than that son-of-a-bitch.
He repeatedly told the big lie that the two parties were identical, and then he spent his money in swing states, deliberately trying to cripple Gore. If he was a paid operative of the Bush campaign, I don't see how his behaviour would have been any different.
And now, due directly to him and his sheep-like followers, the odds are we'll wind up with a president who believes in voluntary pollution laws, unlimited soft money, breaking the powers of unions whenever possible, and repealing Roe vs. Wade. Quite a legacy for the "Green Party".
Yeah, just like in 1800, when Thomas Jefferson had no mandate due to a tie in the electoral college which had to be decided by the legislature.
It's too bad, that Jefferson guy had talent, but he wound up fading into obscurity, accomplishing nothing, and no one outside of history professors even know who he is.
Let me bounce these facts off you:
I wish this was over too, but it ain't. Gore gave them a chance to do it right -- hand recounts in ALL of Florida's counties. But Bush refused, because he knows he'll lose if votes are accurately counted. Whether or not he'll get away with this swindle remains to be seen, but I fully support the efforts of the Gore team to see justice done here.
How about having a real recount, that is, a hand recount that is actually allowed to finish?
Bush's lackeys have expended a great deal of energy to prevent the lawful counting of ballots. Clearly, it's because they know that if every vote is counted, they lose, the same way the lost the popular vote. They even resorted to goon tactics with shipped-in hooligans to intimdate election officials in Miami. Maybe that's your idea of democracy, but it sounds more like South America to me. It sure as hell isn't "the rule of law" or "trusting the people".
I'm glad Gore isn't going to let this drop. The Republicans can't be allowed to steal this election.
You're a real zealot, aren't you? Microsoft treats people like slaves because Microsoft treats people like slaves, and god damn the opinion of anyone who has actually worked there.
Did you miss the part of my message about having my own office, setting my own hours, wearing whatever I want, and getting lots of money? I bet you wish you were treated so well at your job, monkey boy.
I didn't even mention the free beverages, the beer and pizza every Friday, the margueritas on Thursdays, the occasional department-wide trip to the movies, and the unlimited and completely free training on pretty much any subject I desire.
It's also a rare week when I work 40 hours. I don't need to, since the pay is so good. I never work overtime except in the direst of emergencies, and even then that's only because I'm a decent fellow, not because I'm forced to.
Seems to me that my current reality pretty much exactly matches up with the wish lists posted on this thread. But it must all be a delusion, because I'm working for the evil Microsoft, right?
It's already pretty clear to me that you're some kid who has yet to enter the workforce, so I'll go easy on you. If I had any doubts of that, your witless comment about money and stress removed them. Money is what makes most problems go away, especially when it's not just yourself that you're responsible for.
I will leave you with this parting shot, though: perhaps if your sources of stress don't involve finances, then maybe it's you who has "major emotional deprivation". I have a wife, a child, friends, hobbies, and a career. My problems were solely due to a lack of money. Now, thanks to my own initiative in training myself, and the good folks in Redmond, I don't have those problems, either. Perhaps you're the type of person who would still be depressed while sitting on a pile of money, but that ain't me, buddy.
I was starting to wonder if I was the only person in this thread that had that opinion. Anyone who can read and who can afford $20 a month for a net connection can get all the free training they want. I have no certification in anything -- not even a CS degree -- and I've yet to find an employer that considers that an impediment in any way.
I had to "settle" for an entry level job of $50K a few years ago because I had no job experience. Now that I do, I make a hell of a lot more. I'm actually really shocked at reading all these stories of $10 an hour computer techs in this thread. Why on earth would anyone with even the slightest degree of technical sophistication ever consider taking such a job? You guys are letting yourselves be screwed.
He's probably talking about scripting, asshole. You know -- JavaScript, VBScript, Active Server Pages, and so on. A friend who just went to a conference in San Francisco told me that experienced ASP writers are going for $80 an hour in that market now.
Spoken like a man who has never had a high paying job.
The truth, of course, is that along with higher pay also comes more job security and less stress. The reason for this is because you don't get the big bucks unless you're good, and if you're good, you quickly become very difficult to replace without seriously setting back the product schedule.
P.S. I'm currently working a contract for Microsoft and I'm pretty far from being "chained to my desk". I've got my own office, I come and go as I please, I wear whatever I want, I'm "in the loop" as much as I care to be, and I make scads of money -- enough to remove about 90% of the stress from the rest of my life. But by all means, keep working your shitty, low paying job and making ignorant comments about the rest of the industry if it makes you feel any better.
Excuse me, friend, but that's horseshit. Go read the chapters on Heinlein in Asimov's collection of autobiographical essays, "I, Asimov". His rips on Heinlein quite strongly for someone as polite as Isaac. He compared him to Ronald Reagan, someone who was liberal when he had a liberal wife, and conservative when he had a conservative wife. So much for the depths of Heinlein's political beliefs.
Starship Troopers is the same raving right-wing horse shit that he espoused in all his other novels as well as his personal life.
If someone hung out on Slashdot and posted about niggers every day for five years I'm sure some of you would think they were trying to make a point about the evils of racism.
And it's considered even more fascist by people who have the read the book and are old enough to be out of high school. Do you remember how humanity was an aggressively imperialist species in that book, really no better than the bugs? And what was the rationale for conquering lesser races? Because we can. The strong have an obligation to dominate the weak, it's really in everyone's best interest, don't you see, since it makes the species stronger.
You know, Heinlein wasn't the first hack writer to come up with that idea. Nietzsche wrote the same thing. He impressed a foolish young Austrian corporal with his ridiculously transparent whack-off fantasies the same way virginal males today fantasize about being characters in Heinlein novels.
Mind you, I have read some excellent short stories by Heinlein. Check out "Universe" sometime. It was written around 1941, at least 20 years before crap like Stranger in a Strange Land and all those other horrible novels. Maybe it was a mid-life crisis he never recovered from.
Right on. I'd mod you up to 10 if I could. Heinlein is without doubt the most over rated sci-fi writer of all time.
You've got that right. Word has gotten shittier and more annoying in every version. I really liked version six, which I think was the first one to include the feature that underlines misspelled words as you type. That was the last useful thing they added.
After that they started adding a lot more crap to second guess the user. Now it's just as annoying as Wordperfect, but without control codes so you can't even fix the problems Word introduces half the time.
What I'd really like to see in a future version of Windows is some option you can click that says "I know what I'm doing, don't try to second guess me, ever. Don't reformat my documents, don't ask me if I really meant to move a file, and most of all, don't second guess what I'm trying to select with the mouse cursor".
This in itself regularly sends me into insane rages. Some programs, like Textpad, are smart enough to have an option to turn off Windows cursor behaviour, but most aren't.
Oops, bad link. I hit submit instead of preview. Ironic thing to happen in the context of this thread.
Anyway, the graph is about half way down the page.
rea l link