Well, if you've got a "black-sounding" name, changing your name might be helpful in some success... hiring managers (and I suspect book-readers, etc.) sometimes filter who they want to deal with based on first names.
Try criticizing the advertising industry
on
AdCritic To Return
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· Score: 1
The thing that was wrong with AdCritic.com was that it wasn't about criticism of advertisements, either in general or of particular ads; people just went to watch ads.
The best thing they could do to improve it is give it to the AdBusters folks.
Studies have consistently shown that different content draws large black audiences, vs. large non-black audiences, in other media. For example, last time I saw statistics on this, of the top 10 TV shows watched by blacks vs. watched by whites, there was an overlap of 1 or 2 shows. Different things were drawing people of different ethnicities to watch television.
As long as most Internet content is not created by black people, and the websites that get most of the press and scrutiny are created by white people, the things that would draw black people to the Net will be few and far between, or not known about. As a result, you'll have fewer blacks using the Net, regardless of income. And so you'll have fewer people building content that might appeal to blacks. And the cycle will perpetuate.
This is bad for a few reasons. One, because you'll end up with a certain number of black kids growing up not inspired to get on the Net, and not realizing their full potential - as geeks, as content providers, etc. (Yes, exceptional folks will overcome whatever barriers are placed in their way. But let's face it: most of the world - including the people who succeed in life - are mediocre.) You'll also end up with this supposedly global resource not truly being global, and non-blacks will remain unexposed to parts of African-American culture which could otherwise benefit them.
When thinking about this thread, do keep in mind: the original article didn't cry "racism" - it didn't say people are trying to keep black people down. It just said technology has different effects on different people, and some of those effects can be unintended and negative.
Delta: PHP3 offers persistent connections to PostgreSQL. That is, it lets you open a connection to PostgreSQL, and all subsequent PHP hits on the database will try to go through that same connection. I've used PHP's persistent connections to MySQL, but not to PostgreSQL yet. For more info, see the PHP home page.
I've written an article on choosing a web database (and a server platform) over at ahref.com.
Among other things, it mentions something I don't think anyone's hit on yet: as nice and fast as MySQL is, it doesn't support stored procedures, which are a very nice, language-independent way of storing a series of actions you want to take with your database. With stored procedures, recoding the programs accessing your db gets a lot easier. That being said, I do use MySQL for most sites I work on. This may change soon, though...
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Well, if you've got a "black-sounding" name, changing your name might be helpful in some success... hiring managers (and I suspect book-readers, etc.) sometimes filter who they want to deal with based on first names.
The thing that was wrong with AdCritic.com was that it wasn't about criticism of advertisements, either in general or of particular ads; people just went to watch ads.
The best thing they could do to improve it is give it to the AdBusters folks.
Go feed somebody.
They aren't banning the cookies (or web bugs, which are also covered). Read the proposed amendment: PDF (page 6) or text (converted from PDF).
Race is part of the issue; the "digital divide" is not merely a question of economics. See http://www.ntia.doc. gov/ntiahome/fttn99/FTTN_I/Chart-I-14.html, a chart breaking down computer ownership based on both income and race. (The full NTIA report is at http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiah ome/fttn99/contents.html.) For every income bracket, black people have a lower rate of Internet access. There is something besides income at work.
Studies have consistently shown that different content draws large black audiences, vs. large non-black audiences, in other media. For example, last time I saw statistics on this, of the top 10 TV shows watched by blacks vs. watched by whites, there was an overlap of 1 or 2 shows. Different things were drawing people of different ethnicities to watch television.
As long as most Internet content is not created by black people, and the websites that get most of the press and scrutiny are created by white people, the things that would draw black people to the Net will be few and far between, or not known about. As a result, you'll have fewer blacks using the Net, regardless of income. And so you'll have fewer people building content that might appeal to blacks. And the cycle will perpetuate.
This is bad for a few reasons. One, because you'll end up with a certain number of black kids growing up not inspired to get on the Net, and not realizing their full potential - as geeks, as content providers, etc. (Yes, exceptional folks will overcome whatever barriers are placed in their way. But let's face it: most of the world - including the people who succeed in life - are mediocre.) You'll also end up with this supposedly global resource not truly being global, and non-blacks will remain unexposed to parts of African-American culture which could otherwise benefit them.
When thinking about this thread, do keep in mind: the original article didn't cry "racism" - it didn't say people are trying to keep black people down. It just said technology has different effects on different people, and some of those effects can be unintended and negative.
PHP3 offers persistent connections to PostgreSQL. That is, it lets you open a connection to PostgreSQL, and all subsequent PHP hits on the database will try to go through that same connection. I've used PHP's persistent connections to MySQL, but not to PostgreSQL yet.
For more info, see the PHP home page.
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Among other things, it mentions something I don't think anyone's hit on yet: as nice and fast as MySQL is, it doesn't support stored procedures, which are a very nice, language-independent way of storing a series of actions you want to take with your database. With stored procedures, recoding the programs accessing your db gets a lot easier. That being said, I do use MySQL for most sites I work on. This may change soon, though...
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