So blacks, women, and people under the age of 40 just aren't working hard enough? Because those are the people that are most likely to be making less than average wages, more likely to be working without benefits, etc. You call it an excuse, but for people who have poured their heart and soul into their work year after year and realized nothing from it, they call it prejudice. And it's just self-serving crap for you to say that "proper knowledge or experience" is the only pathway to opportunity when every day on the news we read about Haliburton and kickbacks, slush funds, and back room deals.
Intelligence is a bell curve, but almost 80% of the wealth in this country is concentrated amongst 5% of the population; And most of that held by white men who are over the age of 50. I don't suppose you're willing to say that this is because that's the only group that works hard.
It's just that as long as we're going to admit to ourselves that a person's abilities and talents are equally or less relevant than who they are, we should explore why this is and who's benefiting from this invisible framework. But as you can see by the score of my original post; It's not a comfortable truth. People who benefit from the system (white men, which make up the majority demographic here on slashdot) don't want to admit that it's this system that gets them ahead in life, not their abilities, talents, or contributions. And so long as that is true, nothing's going to change.
They were all white men too. go ahead now, mark me down as flamebait, but do it knowing it's true. Some people are just born "lucky." The rest of us actually have to work.
Humanity will likely kill itself off because they can't agree who gets to shower first in the morning. We've fought wars over one city taking a girl from another city (Troy, and nobody cared that she wanted to leave), we fight over liquid dinosaur guts, over patches of barren desert. We've even fought over things that are completely intangible -- fascism versus communism versus capitalism versus god only knows what else. And we're constantly creating ways to kill ever greater numbers of people. During WWII, the Germans were stuffing people into giant incinerators, when they weren't busy leveling entire cities with fire bombs (and vice versa), and the war ended because the Americans came up with a better way to kill people -- a nuclear bomb.
Well, what's going to come after the nuclear bomb? Trust me when I say, there are scientists right now in a laboratory somewhere thinking to themselves -- will my children ever forgive me? Not that any of this is really necessary; the survivors will quite happily keep throwing rocks at each other in the post-apocalypse. Our only hope of salvation will be figuring out why humanity abjectly fails to evolve better methods of conflict resolution and then putting us on the path to doing so. It doesn't help that men who stomp around tearing up grass and biting the heads of their enemies off somehow leads to reproductive success. I'm told it's because they're attractive when they do that. -_-
Look, it was a poor choice of words. When big corporations want to hire a couple hundred programmers in bulk, they usually come from third world countries because they're cheap. It's not to say they wouldn't have the same epic fail if they did the same thing in this country.
There are some cultural differences, but my professional experience is that it comes down to how hard it is to get them to start taking their own initiative rather than asking permission for everything. Indian programmers (especially new ones that just got here) won't say they see a problem with something a superior is advocating for cultural reasons. Yes, that ALSO happens in this country -- say between a doctor and a nurse. It's just that in the engineering discipline in this country, the engineers won't defer to management quite so easily if they see a problem. It isn't about competence, it's simply a communication problem, a culture problem. And it is solveable if people take the time to address it. The problem is, management usually doesn't because most managers are reactive not proactive and they won't see a problem unless it sets their nose on fire. So they're both to blame, really.
I'm a 20-something, very probably so are you. And the only reason I'm posting at all on slashdot is because people really do look at what you say instead of who's saying it, and I'd like to find out if it's what I'm saying that's the problem, or (achem) if my suspicions are right.
You're right, Target wasn't it, that's why I left. One of their senior executives decided to "offshore" 2/3rds of all contract positions within the organization. There wasn't a study done on this, no economic reasons, it was just given as an order and people carried it out. A lot of resentment came out of that decision -- because we lost a lot of good people who were trained and had them replaced by people that in some cases didn't even know how to take apart and put a desktop system back together. Is that their fault? No -- it's management, which was what I was trying to say in my original post... It's about how the group is organized and directed, not who's in it. And for the record, it wasn't just people from india; They also outsourced to an office in Quebec, Canada and the problems there were the same except they spoke better english.
There really ARE cultural values that are prevalent in this country that I just don't see anywhere else. That's my only point. It's not to say people in another country are worse than this one -- I'm truly sorry it was interpreted that way -- people everywhere are the same as far as potential. This isn't about diversity; It's not about where they are coming from. My choice of wording was poor; It's just that most often when programmers need to be purchased in bulk, they do come from places like India, who are third world (though this is rapidly changing). I don't think that hiring a hundred mediocre programmers in this country would yield any better results.
If you ever worked with people from other countries from serious companies you'd see that these people are not trained according to their culture but to the company's culture.
First, name calling is pretty childish, and we're trying to discuss this as professionals. Second, does working for the 33rd largest company in this country qualify me? It's Target (TGT), by the way, an international retail establishment, and I worked there for two years doing (amongst other things) development work. Let me give some examples from my professional experience there:
- My department was not allowed to develop a database in-house to do incident and call tracking. It was assigned to a team of 14 developers in India, and they worked on it for 16 months. When we finally got the product back it had none of the features we requested built into it, ran on.NET, and had a record limit of 64k records. Note, this was not a 64k record limit per database but for all databases that that software used. After consulting with two programmers on-site who were familiar with.NET, we concluded that we could have developed it in-house in about 2 weeks, with another 2 weeks for testing, using a team of... two programmers. But management declined our offer (again) "because it would cost too much".
- I was assigned to do software deployments on the overnight shift. I worked two people from "a third world". They were highly educated, naturalized citizens of this country... And despite numerous improvements to the tools and process that I made that would have resulted in a nearly 10x increase in problem resolutions, they stuck with what they knew. Even when I sat with them to explain the new tools, they steadfastly refused to use them out of an apparent fear that someone above us would punish them. I wound up doing about 80% of the night shift work for about 6 months, mostly using custom scripts, while they slaved away at their administation tasks by hand. They were both eventually let go when we downsized. I liked them, I did, but I couldn't convince them for anything to try something new.... I could go on, but there's a size limit to posts on slashdot.
We're considering continuing to use a vehicle that has a failure rate of 1-2% per flight? In the words of Invader Zim -- Have you the brain worms?! No, if the President wants space flight he needs to pony up on a vehicle that does more than act as an ashtray that seats seven. Honestly, given the current economic outlook, the United States needs to start looking at partnerships with other countries and pooling our resources collectively. Our space flight program is a national icon, but I think we proved that we can do it... Now the question is whether we can play well with others too.
It's a culture problem, not what tools are being used. Most of these foreign programmers are very good at following orders. The problem is that they're very bad at taking initiative; They want/need management approval to do much more than go to the bathroom. This is true for most eastern countries; People are more collectivistic by nature. Engineers in this country are taught to think critically and independently, and often clash with their managers. But the result is better engineering. As some non-engineering examples -- look at the Three Gorges Dam, which has a number of serious engineering deficiencies, arguably due to cultural differences -- nobody was willing to question their superiors. Of course, if I lived in China, I wouldn't either for obvious reasons.
No, I haven't, but I'm sure someone who has will be along shortly. Be patient.:) As to who's doing the development work, any query into google about the H1-B visa program and Microsoft will confirm the first fact. Here's an example: ahref=http://www.programmersguild.org/docs/bill_gates_lies_about_h1b_wages.htmlrel=url2html-811http://www.programmersguild.org/docs/bill_gates_lies_about_h1b_wages.html>
It's common knowledge by now even amongst the general public that Vista exploded on the launch pad. At this point, the only thing this line of inquiry has to offer is to help Microsoft prevent a repeat of the last performance. If you ask me, Windows 7 will suffer many of the same problems -- namely because they are still using the monkey-horde development technique, which is get a bunch of third-world programmers in a room and churn out very lackluster code, and then keep redeveloping it until it works "good enough". Microsoft still hasn't learned that great programmers have a lot of experience outside programming, and to make the best code you need to give them the freedom to try different solutions and then listen to their feedback. From what I've seen, Microsoft is a hugely divided organization where hundreds of small teams compete to produce the most lines of code and nobody knows quite what everybody else is doing. Management constantly changes direction during the development process, to the point that a lot of work is wasted in duplication of effort and things being thrown away due to changing priorities.
Windows has reached a level of complexity that these kinds of organizational mistakes can no longer be tolerated, but Microsoft is too large and entrenched to be capable of streamlining their development process. Maybe they get rid of UAC, and the DRM, and rewrite the driver infrastructure so it sucks less; And those are all fine goals to have, but it doesn't fix the real problem -- which is that the organization made these decisions in the first place when I know their developers were screaming at them "For the love of all things good and holy in the world don't do it!"
Microsoft isn't the first to deal with this. One Mr. Richard Feynman noted similar organizational problems that led to the Challenger disaster at NASA. NASA has been trying to squelch this addendum for some time and you won't find a link to it on their main report anymore, but you can find it here http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/rogers-commission/Appendix-F.txt
At the risk of reminding you of your history, the Mafia didn't exist until the Prohibition. And naturally, like any business that has just lost its primary source of revenue, or whose market has dissolved, but still has a significant amount of capital and labor resources... It diversified. Would Microsoft disappear tomorrow if suddenly nobody ever bought Windows after tomorrow?
No. Criminal enterprise is like that... Once they step over, they know they can't go back and that's because that's how the system is designed. It's how people want it to be. Once a criminal, always a criminal. There's no way back, it's a scarlet letter. If that weren't the case, then sure -- the Mafia probably wouldn't exist today because it would have made more sense to turn away from crime and back to legitimate enterprise. But none of the participants could wash their hands of it. There's no pardon waiting for them, no way to just start over fresh, so they looked for other crime because that's the only work that was left for them.
The drug underground is no different. Once you start, there's no way back. You can't just walk away from it and back into your old life, or start a new life. It's a one way trip, because there's always someone that knows what you used to do and that person could talk. Chances are good that you've made enemies, and they aren't going to care that you quit.
You want to pass moral judgement on these people, you do that, but before you start casting stones you should ask about the morality of a system that doesn't give anyone a second chance. It's a system that creates its own problems to repetitively solve in order to justify its own relevance.
Well, just before 09/11, the FBI retasked most of their anti-terror team to work on copyright. Says something about their priorities. Or rather, the priorities of those in charge of their budget.
I know what civil disobedience means. As in, as Thoreau meant it, not like most people do today. And no -- I think you miss my point. They have no right to charge for it in the first place, there's no exchange... A corporation shouldn't own something that should be in the public domain. What I'm saying is "I don't agree with the law, nor your warped interpretation of it, and so I'm going to break it, say I broke it, and if you've got the gumption to come after me then let's go at it... And I will make you suffer for it in legal fees far, far more than you'll ever be able to collect from me by any means."
If enough people do this, they lose, regardless of what the law says or the judges or anyone else.
Well, I did state at the end "DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A DOCTOR". And as to ignorance... I'm pagan, not wiccan. Get it right. Also, I got a higher score than you did, so before we grab the measuring stick and start in on that whole game... just think about that.
Jeez, has everyone here gone soft? Download it, repackage it, and give it to your friends. To hell with the law! I'm not saying screw over the authors but if it's been out more than 15 years, to hell with corporate interest then. Practice an act of civil disobedience. And as Mark Twain would say, "A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way." Tell these corporate bastards we're not going to pay anymore. It's their turn to give something back, rather than just take, take, take.
Yeah, and they can keep them until they realize it has a maladaptive effect on their lives and makes them miserable for it. Do you know how many vegetarians get admitted to the hospital each year because they don't take in enough protein and eventually become malnourished? More than a few. Mild delusions that don't have a significant effect on a person can continue for some time, but the really big ones... No. They hit a brick wall and they fall apart -- whatever you believe, reality will still be there when you open your eyes again.
How about this; I'm pagan. Several of my friends are wiccan or american indian (one is both). We bless our houses, some of us see spirits, or hear things, or get feelings about a place, or sense a presence. By your definition, these things are delusions because they're part of our culture. But to most other people, their subjective realities don't include them and so (quite naturally) they think we're nuts. Which brings me to my ultimate point -- the mental health community in general has defined these kinds of things as a disorder if they cause significant impairment in a person's daily life.
So, this is part of my culture, but by the same token it's quite readily apparent that it causes a negative impact on my ability to deal with the rest of the world, who don't share my beliefs. It doesn't pass a clinical threshold in these cases, but assume they did. Would it change anything? Since just about anything can be defined as "cultural"-- afterall, schizophrenics have a cultural identity too (I'd like to know about the whole pennies thing myself)-- how can you (or anyone in the medical community) abandon the more objective metric of significant impairment for "cultural values"? Does this mean we're throwing out gender identity disorder too, because that's cultural? How about depression -- all those goths, they're not depressed anymore, they're just down with their culture. And people who drink the koolaid -- there was nothing wrong with them, they were just trying to fit in.
If you ask me, it seems like a cop-out by an establishment that's not sure enough of its foundations to take the initiative and say that some behaviors, even when culturally acceptable, lead to bad results. Because that would be a moral judgement, is that the argument? Just like pharmacists that refuse to dispense birth control and insurance companies that refuse to pay for gender reassignment surgery, etc. Here's a suggestion -- how about the medical community stop trying to pass moral judgements through the back door like this. Your job is to help people, not figure out their culture. Their culture is totally irrelevant -- what IS relevant is if they're in pain, if their life is significantly impacted, and there is a medical treatment or cure available that could help them. THAT is where the focus needs to be, and culture only plays a role insofar as how to reach out to the patient and contextualize what's happening.
disclaimer: not a doctor.
Because a one-size-fits-all morality is what parents want. It saves them from having to parent and ensures that the child will, at the age of 18, be as boring, ill-prepared, and stupid as most other 18 year olds. You assume incompetence where willful negligence exists.
Slashdot Mirror
So blacks, women, and people under the age of 40 just aren't working hard enough? Because those are the people that are most likely to be making less than average wages, more likely to be working without benefits, etc. You call it an excuse, but for people who have poured their heart and soul into their work year after year and realized nothing from it, they call it prejudice. And it's just self-serving crap for you to say that "proper knowledge or experience" is the only pathway to opportunity when every day on the news we read about Haliburton and kickbacks, slush funds, and back room deals.
Intelligence is a bell curve, but almost 80% of the wealth in this country is concentrated amongst 5% of the population; And most of that held by white men who are over the age of 50. I don't suppose you're willing to say that this is because that's the only group that works hard.
It's just that as long as we're going to admit to ourselves that a person's abilities and talents are equally or less relevant than who they are, we should explore why this is and who's benefiting from this invisible framework. But as you can see by the score of my original post; It's not a comfortable truth. People who benefit from the system (white men, which make up the majority demographic here on slashdot) don't want to admit that it's this system that gets them ahead in life, not their abilities, talents, or contributions. And so long as that is true, nothing's going to change.
They were all white men too. go ahead now, mark me down as flamebait, but do it knowing it's true. Some people are just born "lucky." The rest of us actually have to work.
not sustainable self-enclosed ecosystems, which is really what we need.
Humanity will likely kill itself off because they can't agree who gets to shower first in the morning. We've fought wars over one city taking a girl from another city (Troy, and nobody cared that she wanted to leave), we fight over liquid dinosaur guts, over patches of barren desert. We've even fought over things that are completely intangible -- fascism versus communism versus capitalism versus god only knows what else. And we're constantly creating ways to kill ever greater numbers of people. During WWII, the Germans were stuffing people into giant incinerators, when they weren't busy leveling entire cities with fire bombs (and vice versa), and the war ended because the Americans came up with a better way to kill people -- a nuclear bomb. Well, what's going to come after the nuclear bomb? Trust me when I say, there are scientists right now in a laboratory somewhere thinking to themselves -- will my children ever forgive me? Not that any of this is really necessary; the survivors will quite happily keep throwing rocks at each other in the post-apocalypse. Our only hope of salvation will be figuring out why humanity abjectly fails to evolve better methods of conflict resolution and then putting us on the path to doing so. It doesn't help that men who stomp around tearing up grass and biting the heads of their enemies off somehow leads to reproductive success. I'm told it's because they're attractive when they do that. -_-
Look, it was a poor choice of words. When big corporations want to hire a couple hundred programmers in bulk, they usually come from third world countries because they're cheap. It's not to say they wouldn't have the same epic fail if they did the same thing in this country.
There are some cultural differences, but my professional experience is that it comes down to how hard it is to get them to start taking their own initiative rather than asking permission for everything. Indian programmers (especially new ones that just got here) won't say they see a problem with something a superior is advocating for cultural reasons. Yes, that ALSO happens in this country -- say between a doctor and a nurse. It's just that in the engineering discipline in this country, the engineers won't defer to management quite so easily if they see a problem. It isn't about competence, it's simply a communication problem, a culture problem. And it is solveable if people take the time to address it. The problem is, management usually doesn't because most managers are reactive not proactive and they won't see a problem unless it sets their nose on fire. So they're both to blame, really.
I'm a 20-something, very probably so are you. And the only reason I'm posting at all on slashdot is because people really do look at what you say instead of who's saying it, and I'd like to find out if it's what I'm saying that's the problem, or (achem) if my suspicions are right.
You're right, Target wasn't it, that's why I left. One of their senior executives decided to "offshore" 2/3rds of all contract positions within the organization. There wasn't a study done on this, no economic reasons, it was just given as an order and people carried it out. A lot of resentment came out of that decision -- because we lost a lot of good people who were trained and had them replaced by people that in some cases didn't even know how to take apart and put a desktop system back together. Is that their fault? No -- it's management, which was what I was trying to say in my original post... It's about how the group is organized and directed, not who's in it. And for the record, it wasn't just people from india; They also outsourced to an office in Quebec, Canada and the problems there were the same except they spoke better english.
There really ARE cultural values that are prevalent in this country that I just don't see anywhere else. That's my only point. It's not to say people in another country are worse than this one -- I'm truly sorry it was interpreted that way -- people everywhere are the same as far as potential. This isn't about diversity; It's not about where they are coming from. My choice of wording was poor; It's just that most often when programmers need to be purchased in bulk, they do come from places like India, who are third world (though this is rapidly changing). I don't think that hiring a hundred mediocre programmers in this country would yield any better results.
I can only speak to my experience in computer software development, and my post is about that, not space shuttles and MIT.
If you ever worked with people from other countries from serious companies you'd see that these people are not trained according to their culture but to the company's culture. First, name calling is pretty childish, and we're trying to discuss this as professionals. Second, does working for the 33rd largest company in this country qualify me? It's Target (TGT), by the way, an international retail establishment, and I worked there for two years doing (amongst other things) development work. Let me give some examples from my professional experience there: - My department was not allowed to develop a database in-house to do incident and call tracking. It was assigned to a team of 14 developers in India, and they worked on it for 16 months. When we finally got the product back it had none of the features we requested built into it, ran on .NET, and had a record limit of 64k records. Note, this was not a 64k record limit per database but for all databases that that software used. After consulting with two programmers on-site who were familiar with .NET, we concluded that we could have developed it in-house in about 2 weeks, with another 2 weeks for testing, using a team of... two programmers. But management declined our offer (again) "because it would cost too much".
- I was assigned to do software deployments on the overnight shift. I worked two people from "a third world". They were highly educated, naturalized citizens of this country... And despite numerous improvements to the tools and process that I made that would have resulted in a nearly 10x increase in problem resolutions, they stuck with what they knew. Even when I sat with them to explain the new tools, they steadfastly refused to use them out of an apparent fear that someone above us would punish them. I wound up doing about 80% of the night shift work for about 6 months, mostly using custom scripts, while they slaved away at their administation tasks by hand. They were both eventually let go when we downsized. I liked them, I did, but I couldn't convince them for anything to try something new. ... I could go on, but there's a size limit to posts on slashdot.
Yes, and the management of it has been a classic example of how Not To Do It.
Yeah, because it has nothing to do with economics (read: they're cheaper), it has to be race.
We're considering continuing to use a vehicle that has a failure rate of 1-2% per flight? In the words of Invader Zim -- Have you the brain worms?! No, if the President wants space flight he needs to pony up on a vehicle that does more than act as an ashtray that seats seven. Honestly, given the current economic outlook, the United States needs to start looking at partnerships with other countries and pooling our resources collectively. Our space flight program is a national icon, but I think we proved that we can do it... Now the question is whether we can play well with others too.
It's a culture problem, not what tools are being used. Most of these foreign programmers are very good at following orders. The problem is that they're very bad at taking initiative; They want/need management approval to do much more than go to the bathroom. This is true for most eastern countries; People are more collectivistic by nature. Engineers in this country are taught to think critically and independently, and often clash with their managers. But the result is better engineering. As some non-engineering examples -- look at the Three Gorges Dam, which has a number of serious engineering deficiencies, arguably due to cultural differences -- nobody was willing to question their superiors. Of course, if I lived in China, I wouldn't either for obvious reasons.
Here's an article that says it far better than I do. ahref=http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Companies_should_avoid_culture_shock/articleshow/2811348.cmsrel=url2html-26813http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Companies_should_avoid_culture_shock/articleshow/2811348.cms> What I'm saying is that the horde technique churns out lackluster code, not the people used... though culture contributes to the problem.
No, I haven't, but I'm sure someone who has will be along shortly. Be patient. :) As to who's doing the development work, any query into google about the H1-B visa program and Microsoft will confirm the first fact. Here's an example: ahref=http://www.programmersguild.org/docs/bill_gates_lies_about_h1b_wages.htmlrel=url2html-811http://www.programmersguild.org/docs/bill_gates_lies_about_h1b_wages.html>
It's common knowledge by now even amongst the general public that Vista exploded on the launch pad. At this point, the only thing this line of inquiry has to offer is to help Microsoft prevent a repeat of the last performance. If you ask me, Windows 7 will suffer many of the same problems -- namely because they are still using the monkey-horde development technique, which is get a bunch of third-world programmers in a room and churn out very lackluster code, and then keep redeveloping it until it works "good enough". Microsoft still hasn't learned that great programmers have a lot of experience outside programming, and to make the best code you need to give them the freedom to try different solutions and then listen to their feedback. From what I've seen, Microsoft is a hugely divided organization where hundreds of small teams compete to produce the most lines of code and nobody knows quite what everybody else is doing. Management constantly changes direction during the development process, to the point that a lot of work is wasted in duplication of effort and things being thrown away due to changing priorities.
Windows has reached a level of complexity that these kinds of organizational mistakes can no longer be tolerated, but Microsoft is too large and entrenched to be capable of streamlining their development process. Maybe they get rid of UAC, and the DRM, and rewrite the driver infrastructure so it sucks less; And those are all fine goals to have, but it doesn't fix the real problem -- which is that the organization made these decisions in the first place when I know their developers were screaming at them "For the love of all things good and holy in the world don't do it!"
Microsoft isn't the first to deal with this. One Mr. Richard Feynman noted similar organizational problems that led to the Challenger disaster at NASA. NASA has been trying to squelch this addendum for some time and you won't find a link to it on their main report anymore, but you can find it here http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/rogers-commission/Appendix-F.txt
At the risk of reminding you of your history, the Mafia didn't exist until the Prohibition. And naturally, like any business that has just lost its primary source of revenue, or whose market has dissolved, but still has a significant amount of capital and labor resources... It diversified. Would Microsoft disappear tomorrow if suddenly nobody ever bought Windows after tomorrow?
No. Criminal enterprise is like that... Once they step over, they know they can't go back and that's because that's how the system is designed. It's how people want it to be. Once a criminal, always a criminal. There's no way back, it's a scarlet letter. If that weren't the case, then sure -- the Mafia probably wouldn't exist today because it would have made more sense to turn away from crime and back to legitimate enterprise. But none of the participants could wash their hands of it. There's no pardon waiting for them, no way to just start over fresh, so they looked for other crime because that's the only work that was left for them.
The drug underground is no different. Once you start, there's no way back. You can't just walk away from it and back into your old life, or start a new life. It's a one way trip, because there's always someone that knows what you used to do and that person could talk. Chances are good that you've made enemies, and they aren't going to care that you quit.
You want to pass moral judgement on these people, you do that, but before you start casting stones you should ask about the morality of a system that doesn't give anyone a second chance. It's a system that creates its own problems to repetitively solve in order to justify its own relevance.
Well, just before 09/11, the FBI retasked most of their anti-terror team to work on copyright. Says something about their priorities. Or rather, the priorities of those in charge of their budget.
I know what civil disobedience means. As in, as Thoreau meant it, not like most people do today. And no -- I think you miss my point. They have no right to charge for it in the first place, there's no exchange... A corporation shouldn't own something that should be in the public domain. What I'm saying is "I don't agree with the law, nor your warped interpretation of it, and so I'm going to break it, say I broke it, and if you've got the gumption to come after me then let's go at it... And I will make you suffer for it in legal fees far, far more than you'll ever be able to collect from me by any means."
If enough people do this, they lose, regardless of what the law says or the judges or anyone else.
Well, I did state at the end "DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A DOCTOR". And as to ignorance... I'm pagan, not wiccan. Get it right. Also, I got a higher score than you did, so before we grab the measuring stick and start in on that whole game... just think about that.
Jeez, has everyone here gone soft? Download it, repackage it, and give it to your friends. To hell with the law! I'm not saying screw over the authors but if it's been out more than 15 years, to hell with corporate interest then. Practice an act of civil disobedience. And as Mark Twain would say, "A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way." Tell these corporate bastards we're not going to pay anymore. It's their turn to give something back, rather than just take, take, take.
1st para; They aren't delusions because they're part of our culture.
Yeah, and they can keep them until they realize it has a maladaptive effect on their lives and makes them miserable for it. Do you know how many vegetarians get admitted to the hospital each year because they don't take in enough protein and eventually become malnourished? More than a few. Mild delusions that don't have a significant effect on a person can continue for some time, but the really big ones... No. They hit a brick wall and they fall apart -- whatever you believe, reality will still be there when you open your eyes again.
How about this; I'm pagan. Several of my friends are wiccan or american indian (one is both). We bless our houses, some of us see spirits, or hear things, or get feelings about a place, or sense a presence. By your definition, these things are delusions because they're part of our culture. But to most other people, their subjective realities don't include them and so (quite naturally) they think we're nuts. Which brings me to my ultimate point -- the mental health community in general has defined these kinds of things as a disorder if they cause significant impairment in a person's daily life.
So, this is part of my culture, but by the same token it's quite readily apparent that it causes a negative impact on my ability to deal with the rest of the world, who don't share my beliefs. It doesn't pass a clinical threshold in these cases, but assume they did. Would it change anything? Since just about anything can be defined as "cultural"-- afterall, schizophrenics have a cultural identity too (I'd like to know about the whole pennies thing myself)-- how can you (or anyone in the medical community) abandon the more objective metric of significant impairment for "cultural values"? Does this mean we're throwing out gender identity disorder too, because that's cultural? How about depression -- all those goths, they're not depressed anymore, they're just down with their culture. And people who drink the koolaid -- there was nothing wrong with them, they were just trying to fit in.
If you ask me, it seems like a cop-out by an establishment that's not sure enough of its foundations to take the initiative and say that some behaviors, even when culturally acceptable, lead to bad results. Because that would be a moral judgement, is that the argument? Just like pharmacists that refuse to dispense birth control and insurance companies that refuse to pay for gender reassignment surgery, etc. Here's a suggestion -- how about the medical community stop trying to pass moral judgements through the back door like this. Your job is to help people, not figure out their culture. Their culture is totally irrelevant -- what IS relevant is if they're in pain, if their life is significantly impacted, and there is a medical treatment or cure available that could help them. THAT is where the focus needs to be, and culture only plays a role insofar as how to reach out to the patient and contextualize what's happening. disclaimer: not a doctor.
Well, speaking to both the feeling old part and the flying car part... Gravity is a bitch, ain't it? :)
Because a one-size-fits-all morality is what parents want. It saves them from having to parent and ensures that the child will, at the age of 18, be as boring, ill-prepared, and stupid as most other 18 year olds. You assume incompetence where willful negligence exists.