Hot geeky girls, on the other hand, are much more elusive. A geek in a small town could easily go his whole life without meeting a HGG. As a student at a large public university, I've met 0 hot, seriously-geeky girls and a few hot, sorta-geeky girls.
That's because they are hiding from you. Quite apart from the fact that they are geeks in the first place which tends to lead to a reclusive lifestyle, especially in college (they're studying!), anyone who knows they will basically cease to exist as a person and become an instant target for horndoggery the minute you find out something about them is likely to hide these things to a certain extent. The fact geeks tend to be shy does not help. Rinse and repeat this a few times and it's a wonder that someone hasn't created a secret bunker only accessable through obscure mathematical codes where women can evade such depredations. Then again maybe they did.
I was looking for, and have once again found, the HOWTO that talks about the problems women have with the men who hound them from the fields they might have trod, and how to prevent yourself from being one of those guys. If you really want to "score" a "geek chick," the first step, I would think, is to stop treating them the way men usually do (especially maladjusted ones). Some people also enjoy ESR's Sex Tips for Geeks, but you aren't old enough to read that until you've finished the other and done penance to linuxchix.org for your many failings:D.
Why is it that whenever a woman does anything noteworthy the first response here on slashdot is whether or not she is hot/doable/marryable, etc. What is wrong with you people? There is a post further down the page that says she looks like a man... and got modded funny! WTF? A couple days ago, a 17 year old girl won a 100,000 dollar science fair prize, and at least 1/3 of the comments were about whether she was hot or not. Most likely none of the readers here will ever see the woman in real life, so just what value do these comments have in the discussion?
I blame society:D. In our culture, for some reason men feel inclined to behave like asses when they congregate, especially with respect to the way they talk about women. I'm sure women talk differently in a roomful of women, too, and there is that "locker room atmosphere" to take into account. Part of it is the same process that happens in any group wherein there is some aspect that is noticably absent. In this case it's (ostensibly, since there are women on slashdot) a bunch of guys talking with no girls around. It's kind of like a bunch of white guys hanging around and someone cracks a black joke that they probably would not tell if their black friends were around. It is wrong, but people do it, and we aren't yet at that place in our society where enough people see the two as being equally and unequivocably wrong.
Men tend to objectify women and have a natural tendency to see them in terms of their sexual attractiveness. Part of that is a natural process, but part of that is a sickness in society that prevents men from treating women as truly equal. Even when they get to the evolutionary stage where they are able to treat women more or less equally in day to day life, under the right conditions these kinds of things can resurface if those thought processes have not been addressed. It does not help that this is the internet, where people are more or less anonymous or feel that they are. We all know what effect that can have.
In any case, just as it is quite possible, given a little self-control, to talk to an attractive woman without staring at her chest, and equally possible to sublimate sexual feelings in order to deal with someone in a professional context as another human being rather than some fantasy, I think it should be possible for a slashdotter to read a story about an attractive woman without spooging on their keyboard about how hard they'd toss her salad, or whatever. It just seems that people choose not to.
It was definitely more than a little weird in the case of the underage girls, like the high school student you mentioned. I do think (or rather hope) that in many cases, and especially that one, there was some humour involved, making fun of this very tendency. It might not have been funny for her, but who knows. Maybe she blew it off like the rest of us did.
Imagine how these women feel if they read slashdot. Here they are, busting their asses to do something cool/good, they finally get some recognition, and the response is a debate on how nice her hips look or don't.
I hate to break it to you, but they do read slashdot, and if they cared, some of them could probably find out who you were. Definitely Wendy Seltzer could. Not that she will, you panting dogs. You are right, though. It is probably something they have dealt with their whole lives because that is how women are treated in our society. To a certain extent there is flattery because, after all, it is not like it is bad to be smart and attractive as well as accomplished. I know my girlfriend is. But that does not mean that they like being publically drooled over like that by a horde of oversexed, underwashed virgins who they just *know* are doing unspeakable things at their computers (hopefully not involving their picture).:P It's gross, and it is a poor way to treat someone who is contrib
It doesn't surprise me that someone with this point of view does NOT sign their comment. Extreme right-wing satire, perhaps?
You sound like one of those New York liberals. Maybe the post was written by the invisible hand!
Either way, losing your internet service because someone exploited a zero-day on your box is NOT what I want to see happen. Exploits are constantly being researched by whit e and blackhats alike, but to be cut off without ANY way to defend yourself (seeing as most people don't patch for a few days... or weeks) is just unfair.
Fair, schmair, Vladimir! Here we let the market decide; all's fair in Free Market Capitalism!*
* Note that weenie liberal French words like "laissez-faire" have gone the way of Freedom Fries.
** If you don't get it, you might not be a redneck:D.
And now, you want to close outbound port 25. So how do I send my e-mail? We use POP3.
If you are using a VPN then the ports being blocked by the hotel are no longer relevant. They are blocking port usage on their network, but you are not using their network except as a conduit to your network. They cannot block port 25 on your VPN. They can block port 25 for IP traffic in and out of their network, which will not affect your VPN transactions.
No doubt. When I moved from a small apt to a bigger one, I "made a reservation" for one of the smaller trucks (the 2nd smallest one I believe), but when I got there they were "out of those" so I got this behemoth that you would think one would need a CDL to drive and I could barely fit in my parking lot. I also clipped the barrier at the gas station a little bit but fortunately they didn't notice that on the inspection.
You were lucky they were only out of those trucks. I've had Uhaul send me to places that don't even carry the equipment or size of equipment that I was trying to reserve. In the end you end up having to just call individual lots until you get lucky, and even then its a crapshoot as to whether you will receive what you rented. Individual lots seem to have trouble figuring out what they have on hand, much less the Uhaul system, such as it is, being of any use in such determinations. It seems they just let anyone be a Uhaul dealer these days and there's no real inventory management. These two problems are the crux of most others.
I am surprised that no one has bitched about deposits here. I've had several Uhaul outfits just keep deposits because they feel like it and others who said they paid the deposit back when they clearly never did. After the deductions they are allowed, the deposit is often just around the threshhold of what it would cost to sue to get it back, and in the end less worth the time out of work to do it. It's probably another example of the problem that broken business models and poor customer service bordering on fraud (or even crossing the line) are rewarded therefore giving no incentive to improve these things.
Actully, you do both. Apply the handbrake *and* leave the car in gear (preferably gear 1 or reverse). Some manual cars are even made so that it is physically impossible to remove the key from the ignition unless the car is in reverse. (SAAB comes to mind)
Handbrakes fail. Plus, on most cars the handbrake works on the rear wheels while leaving the car in gear will block the *front* wheels on a front-drive car. (which is 80-90% or so of european/japanese cars these days) Offcourse people that don't a) live somewhere hilly and b) where manual is the norm, wouldn't know this.
But they should anyway since cars with automatic transmissions have to be left in gear as well, and most will not release the key unless they are. It's just that they have a "park" setting for this that perhaps confuses people. But in park the gears are locked (achieving a similar effect to that of putting a standard transmission into first gear without the possibility of lurching forward) whereas in neutral the gears are disengaged which allows the wheels to turn on their own.
Leaving your car in neutral while using the handbrake is at best going to wear out your brakes quicker and at worst end up in an accident. as you suggest, on some grades your handbrake is almost sure to slip, and in any case it is going to be straining if there is any grade at all. There is no substitute for locking the gears, which not only is safer, but relieves the strain on the brake. You want both if you want the car to stay still.
Secondly, while we'd all like to think that a university education implies a certain level of critical thinking skill and cerebral performance, it does not. I've worked with folks who have degrees from the US, UK, Canada, China, and India who were duds. Boneheads. Morons. Whatever you'd like to call them. Sure, if you came out of Waterloo with a CS degree or Georgia Tech with an undergrad in EE you're not likely to be a complete idiot, but the mass majority of universities are suited more to mere mortals.
Speaking of which, the situation does beg the question of what happened with President Bush. I mean, as much as people, including himself, make fun of his poor academic performance, the guy has a law degree from Yale and an MBA from Harvard. Supposedly you cannot get much better than that. Yet he managed to cock up quite a bit, including things in his own field. Constitutional law comes to mind.
If you want a real mindfuck think of this. If Bush has degrees from Yale and Harvard, but you don't, yet you think what he is doing is stupid... what if it is *you* who are stupid. After all he's the one with the degree.
Thankfully it does not work that way. Intelligent people can make mistakes, especially the ones who give out degrees.
More indepth answer? If you assume a degree is synonymous with 'being qualified' you are incorrect. There are a large number of graduates who have yet to learn the 'tough lesson' that their degree doesn't actually carry much weight.
A college degree is not a certification from a trade school. If all you want is proof you can do a job, you are seeking a certificate from vocational/trade school.
A college degree is proof of a level of academic achievement in a given area of study and is not truly the end goal of a college education in any event. The journey is its own reward, for in the pursuit of a degree one becomes more aware of the world around them, what has gone before, what is being done now in a given field, and how to make a difference. The point of going to college is not a job, but rather to become an initiate to the priesthood of academia and gain better tools for discovering, processing, and understanding data. It's also deliberately broad because a truly educated person should at least know a little about some other fields other than the one in which they earn their paycheck.
People get sour grapes about college because they don't understand what it is. Even people who manage to get a degree often don't have a clue about this. Getting a degree does not mean you know everything about that subject. It does mean you have studied the subject in some detail and might have a better idea about what you do not know. In any case, both those who have degrees and think they know everything and those who do not and likewise think they know everything are wrong; both should go back to school and see if they cannot learn something this time.
A degree is only worthless to someone who does not value it. Likewise a college education. A #2 phillips screwdriver is lousy for nails and won't get you a job as a carpenter, but try and take a computer apart without one. A dual pentium box with 512MB RAM and a 2GB HD is useless for video editing but is more than adequate as a BSD router. A college education and/or degree is only useless to people who fail to understand their purpose and value.
Why does there seem to be such a big hatred for college degrees here on slashdot? I'm not trying to flamebait or anything, but it seems that every time there is a story about college (especially computer science programs), there's always a bunch of people who chime in on how a degree is useless.
Quite apart from the fact that the IT industry slashdot serves is replete with dropouts, there is the fact that Slashdot is forthe most part a US-oriented site. At some point the US developed an antagonistic relationship with academia and the idea of education in general. This only got worse after the violent clashes of the 1960s which not only were blamed on academics at the time but became part of the history we are taught. The fact that the slant becomes part of the story we are taught is strange because it results in baby boomer academics being forced to teach a history that is unsympathetic to academics and baby boomers. In any case you then have the neoconservative view that pretty much everything bad in the world was caused by hippie academics, which is reinforced by the media and to a certain extent the education system itself. Add to that the yearly flagellation of our school system and the perception that education sucks anyway (and makes you gay!) and it is a wonder there are any schools left in the US at all.
This kind of attitude has always been more prevalent among those who either never attended college or do not have a degree. They have no idea what college is about (or a great many other things) but they believe that they do since like Colbert they think with their gut. Their gut says that college is rotten and they did not need it anyway; anyone who disagrees is a fool who deserves to have his money wasted for a piece of paper.
It's sad that this kind of attitude is prevalent in the US. It's even more sad since IT people should know better because their field requires increasing knowledge, is dependant on science, and follows what is essentially the academic/scientific method of exporation in its execution. In any case this anti-academic attitude is a major issue and at least contributes to all of our worst problems; it's an accident of demographics which makes it seem more prevalent on slashdot.
Actually honorary degrees are more of a "we need someone to speak at our graduation and we will give you one as payment". Nothing more, nothing less. Kind of cheapens what the real graduates are getting IMHO.
Some institutions have rules against letting people without degrees speak in certain settings, and have given honorary degrees in order to get around this problem when it comes to famous dropouts like Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, Michael Dell, etc. In some cases the degrees were given in order for the famous dropout to teach a class/ give a lecture; it was an end run around the problem of having to lower academic standards in order to have someone famous show up.
Most people strive to become sucessful to spite the fact that they have no degree. Myself included. I would absolutely refuse one should someone attempted to offer it to me.
In any other field than IT, you'd be really striving. Even in IT a degree probably helps at least a little. In any case, I would refuse an honorary degree for the complete opposite reason. Just as much as living life without a degree is a challenge requiring hard work by virtue of the fact you've handicapped yourself, perhaps cutting off your nose to spite your face, getting a degree can be a challenge as well. Probably the most challenging aspect of it is the simple act of perseverance required to slog through several years without any other compensation than your degree.
In my opinion there should be no honorary degrees; they dilute the value of the real thing even more than "paper MCSEs" diluted the value of certification, and cast a bad light on the institution itself. Shame on Harvard for bowing to pressure and giving degrees who could not or would not earn them. If I were offered an honourary degree I would turn it down because it is an insult to all those people who earn their degrees; I prefer to get what I have through hard work like everything else I have achieved, preferably without pissing on those who are working harder than me to get the same thing.
As a Canadian, I suggest that asking nicely for one's political independence can work just fine. We did in 1982. We repatriated our constiution via the signing of the agreement by Pierre Elliot Trudeau and Queen Elizabeth II. It can be civilized, when people are of the best in themselves.
Americans are too impatient to wait 200 years for independance, you insensitive clod!
Les Américains sont trop impatients pour attendre 200 ans l'independance, vous motte peu sensible !
If the people of this nation at the time would put down their bongs and annoying overly overt liberalism and grew some balls, we would have stayed in the war and kept South Vietnam free of the bullshit regime of the North Vietnamese.
And the same thing is happening in Iraq. Militarily we are winning a conflict that cannot be won militarily because at it heart the conflict is political. We will only lose in Iraq if we are brought down by liars who say we are losing and can never win (as the media did during Vietnam) and thus pull out before the enemy submits to a political solution (as General Giap said would have happened in Vietnam because of the failed Tet Offensive, had the US media not lied about it and the US government not responded by pulling out troops).
The problem we have right now is that we are getting involved in more and more conflicts specifically because our enemies and potential enemies are getting the idea that while a large standing army has no chance against us and an insurgency cannot militarily defeat us there is a large portion of the population that will claim we cannot win and that they have no clue why we are there no matter what the war is about, resulting in a withdrawal. It's strange but this is actually a major obstacle to peace. If our enemies think they can defeat us militarily they will choose to do so since violence is always easier. If they do not they will be forced to bargain with us diplomatically. As much as I hate violence I think we may have to show some balls as you say if we don't want to see the world implode in an inexorable flow of small petty conflicts that turn global and spawn infinite retreat.
And if they wanted to be our masters and already made contact, since they would have the technology to reach us, I guess they'd already be our masters. (well, looking at our politicians' behavior, maybe they already are!;-)
Anyone advanced enough to develop interstellar travel would probably be smart enough to come up with better plans than our politicians; if anything the Earth would be much better regulated than it is now. Then again they would also probably be smart enough not to bother ruling a backward planet filled with suicidal primates bent on taking the world with them.
There is the interesting possibility of an interstellar society which regresses much like our own in that interstellar vehicles and other similar tech are so ubiquitous and education so inadequate that pilots/users actually have no idea how the equipment works or how to maintain it. Then stupid, sadistic fools with far more money than brains could cruise the universe in giant spaceships that deliberately waste energy in search of amusement and happen upon our planet. It would be much like some of the early European settlers and the games they played with natives (which weren't so much fun for them -- see the Yaqui and Tasmanians ), and not unlike that of a small boy molesting a pile of ants. It would require neither wisdom nor intelligence and as unlikely as it is would be more likely than the scenario you describe.
Unless our planet's resources are more rare than we think, or there is some property of our location that makes it more important than we now know, it just doesn't seem that our planet would be that interesting to your average spacefarers except for the curiousity. If we were to be ruled by some spacefaring race you'd think the first thing they'd do is get rid of us since we are screwing up the planet they want.
Incidentally, the fact we know of no other planet like ours and no other life than this makes it even more important that we do not mess this one up and start working on finding other systems in which to plant life while we still can. Even if there is life elsewhere this is still a good idea; I am actually pretty glad that Stephen Hawking agrees because people will listen to him before they will listen to anyone else on an issue like this.
I, for one, salute our new potato overlords. Which has nothing to do with the French, or UFOs, or for that matter, science. Being humble, I have already modded myself down -10 and tagged it "Food Nazi Bait"
But because you called yourself a Nazi your post cannot be published in France, you insensitive clod!
French fries are long and thin, chips (in England) are thicker and shorter.
Here in the US the thick ones are often called "steak fries."
Here in Australia you get a strange crossover between British and American English, and so chips can mean either crisps or fries depending on context.
Actually depending on where you go in the US chips can mean anything, within a restaurant context. Often, ordering "chips" in an Anglophile/English-style pub/restaurant will result in something like what other restaurants call "steak fries." Some restaurants will give you freshly fried "potato chips" which are basically what you call "crisps." Nevertheless, what you get when you order "french fries" varies widely as well. "French Fries" are supposed to be fried julienne potatoes which is where the name comes from ("frenched" being slang at one time for julienne), but most fast food places serve what used to be called "shoestring potatoes" instead (incidentally, shoestring potatoes also are, or at least were, available dried and canned).
It gets even more confusing when you throw in "home fries" and "hash browns." To some people the two are the same, and in any case ordering either could result in a heap of grated, fried, salted potatos, a heap of diced fried potatoes, a fried potato patty with the consistency of a "tater tot" (often oblong shaped), or some variation on the theme. I am sure someone else will point to a variety of "tater tot" interpretations. At least we're consistent enough to almost always use potato in these dishes, unlike with some other foods (like Caesar Salad, which is a whole other contentious discussion which may or may not involved anchovies).
Food in the US is weird, partially because of the many influences, immigrants, and rampant individualism coupled with inventiveness. As an aside, when hosting dinner for mobsters from New York and Boston simultaneously, don't serve clam chowder unless you want to clean up blood. Then again, I guess serving the Manhattan style would do nicely for that problem.
Yes. The DMCA is fundamentally flawed. But that doesn't matter. There is no objective measure at the moment whether this video is infringing or not. If Viacom were to sue the creators directly, and made an argument as to why it infringes, then it would take a court to make the decision. Now, as long as the creators submitted the argument "It's clearly a parody" they'd win in court, but that hasn't happened yet.
The DMCA would not be so bad if it were actually enforced as written. As things are it's only being used in a one-sided manner such that large companies are able to suppress whatever they want with no repercussions and small content providers are not protected at all (and are in fact being silenced via misapplication of the DMCA). In order to compel someone to take down infringing content providers have to swear under penalty of perjury that they own the content. To date, although numerous examples of blatant violation exist, including takedown notices being issued for obviously original works and other work that the submitter does not own, no prosecutions seem to have occurred. This is also the first lawsuit I have heard of on such grounds; it is a wonder that more have not been submitted.
As for your bit about arguments being submitted in court, that is an odd bit of logic. TFA is about precisely that; to wit, the creators have submitted the argument, in court, that their video was wrongfully removed because it is in fact a parody. You don't even need to read the summary because this information is contained in the title of the slashdot article.
Viacom probalby should have known that this is non-infringing, but their argument that they aren't in a position to make a legal judgement will be a decent defence in court.
No, they have to be able to prove that they knew for a fact it was infringing. They are in a positioon to make a legal judgement and have done so wrecklessly. This is a blatant abuse of the DMCA which is covered in the statute itself. It's also an important case because this kind of abuse is far too frequent and comes of content providers not doing the due diligence required by the Act. It's about time someone cracked down on it; let's hope they make a fine example. Hang 'em high, judge! Hang 'em high!
"we hold bars accountable if they serve alcohol to patrons who appear to already be intoxicated"
And what we DON'T do is require bartenders to administer a breathalyzer test to every person who places a drink order, which is what Viacom is saying YouTube should have been doing.
Actually, that is what YouTube has been doing, which makes this argument even more silly. YouTube has a catalog of checksums of known videos and will not allow you to upload a clip that matches that checksum. They add to this when people send them takedown notices, with which they comply relatively immediately. It seems to me this is more than what is required by law.
For all the copyrighted material on YouTube there is an awful lot of original material that would not have a home otherwise. YouTube does a lot of good and it would be a shame to see it go. It's sad because basically Viacom is only blackmailing YouTube because they did not feel the blackmail payments they were offered were big enough. They should have accepted what they were getting since YouTube does not need to pay them anything; the scheme of paying off copyright owners was just a ploy to stop these nuisance suits, which so far only have been threatened by companies with competing (and noticably shittier) services.
Some working is not commonly used anymore like "goeth", valid but just not used.
Actually we never lost "goeth," "hath," etc, we simply changed the common spelling. "th" became "s," and the pronunciation of the two was never far off. In fact in Castillian Spanish and similar variants they went the other way and pronounce words with "s" similarly to the way US English speakers pronounce "th." In any case it is true that the pronunciation of the two has diverged somewhat more in modern US English, enough so that the "s" is pronounced more like "z" and "hath," etc can be pronounced differently to "has," as an atavistic affectation.
Like I said below. All novel has to do is fork all the FSF projects now while the licensing says GPL Version 2 or later. It's not like 'ls' or 'cd' changes all that often.
GPLv2 or later means that once GPLv3 is available those packages will be under GPLv3 automagically. The only hope would be to fork projects that do not include the "or later" clause. In any case, it would be madness because they would have to maintain the GPLv2 code without allowing any GPLv3 code to come in and contaminate the system. They'd end up rewriting everything and gaining nothing from the free software model. History has proven that for the most part it's a matter of what most of the developmet community working on a particular project wants; if Novell forks just to keep patents and the ability to sue Linux developers that will not attract many developers.
Personally, I think this is an outstanding compromise; it leaves legitimate fair use rights in place, but provides a means for large-scale-distribution violations to be prosecuted. It's certainly a far better deal than mandatory DRM, which in all seriousness is the other contender. I'll take watermarks over DRM any day.
I'm not so sure this protects our rights. The article mentions the fact that ANY video sent over the wire will receive the mark. That means that your own movies would get the watermark as well as anything else in the major video formats that you send. I can understand the studios would like to be able to claim they are stopping themselves from sending out pirate copies of their own movies (which is what they have admitted this is) but I don't like the sound of that.
Imagine the guy who films some police abuse and sends that clip to youtube being found and arrested for filming police abuse (which is now a crime in a number of places) based on evidence from the watermark. Or whatever else $GOVERNMENT_ENTITY or $CORPORATION decide they don't like so they decide they want to find that person. This makes it easier to do without any subpoenas required, and I don't like it.
Besides, it violates some very basic principles including data integrity. I should not have to worry that some device like a router or dsl modem is going to start manipulating and editing/corrupting my data as it travels down the pipe just because it struck the creator's fancy. That's not cool in my book. It also sounds like a recipe for trouble, which most copyright protection tech tends to be from the getgo.
You say you would rather have this than DRM, but this is just another part of DRM. Except in this case it's a way to track what people are doing rather than overtly stopping them on playback. It still has onerous consequences. Just wait until they go after the guy who sends films of his kids to the grandparents over and over because they mysteriously won't play, and call him a pirate. Besides, you'll get all the DRM as well so it's not like this trade means anything.
$100,000 will get you all the way through your masters now days. Assuming you can maintain some semblance of a GPA.
He said at a good University. Granted less expensive schools can actually provide a competitive education but someone like this is probably going to be thinking Princeton or MIT or something, and just about any college in that neck of the woods will put a serious dent in $100,000 pretty fast. Certainly the ones I named would; I think "a couple of years" is about right, considering, and it may in fact be too optimistic depending on how much other cash is involved.
I honestly don't see why this is flamebait. It could have been said in a better way, especially since it seems to have been misunderstood. It is important for people to understand that parents and social/economic status matter when it comes to academic and scientific achievement, especially in the type of school system we have. That's not to say that individual effort is not needed in the more positive cases or that it cannot overcome the negative cases. But it is true that the more tools you have in life and the better and more stable your learning environment is the easier it is to achieve something. It does not mean that this person's achievement was any less spectacular, just as it is still awesome that John Nash was doing Calculus at age 7 even though the fact his parents were academics who encouraged their son and exposed him to everything he seemed able to handle or have an interest in when he showed interest.
John Nash growing up in an abusive home where no textbooks were available and learning was frowned upon would have a tough row to hoe even as a genius that he was. He would probably be able to achieve a lot because of his drive and intellectual fortitude, but you never know. Not only would he have to overcome the negative aspects of his upbringing, he would not have some of the formative experiences that led him on the path he ended up on. He might not learn to read at an early age because neither his parents nor the public school would encourage reading at an early age or advancing in that skill. He also might not therefore have read _Men_of_Mathematics_ which was the book that most inspired him to become a mathemetician. Perhaps between a bad upbringing and the mental problems he had, he would have ended up in that negative feedback loop so many left behind children find themselves in, where the outside world (especially school, their parents, and other students) gives them a constant reinforcement of the idea that they are "no good" or substandard and will never achieve anything, and their own struggles, when they find the strength to struggle, seem to reinforce it as well and lend fodder to the fire until they either lapse into a kind of apathy toward achievement or take the further course of attempting to achieve something completely negative (addict, prostitute, thug, etc).
Children need encouragement and guidance to grow properly and it is proven that the more successful children in school tend also to be those students whose parents are most involved in their education, and vice versa. Parents that don't have or take time for working with their kids or for whatever reason don't give the right kind of structure and experience for a healthy childhood will tend to have children with problems in school. This is what educators have been telling us, too. I think reform is necessary for the system, and I know parents are resistant to any suggestion that they could have anything to do with problems they have with their children, but consider the fact that this is the portion of the equation parents are most able to change.
It is obvious to me that whereas this person was clearly gifted they also had parents who supported her endeavours. In fact she is quoted in TFA:
Masterman said she has been interested in science "ever since I was little. I can't remember ever not being interested." She credits her parents with encouraging her.
Poorly stated I will give you, but what the poster said was true and was probably not meant as flamebait. It does not seem like flamebait to me.
Slashdot Mirror
1) All Slashdotters are male.
2) All Slashdotters are single.
3) All Slashdotters are virgins.
4) 99% have never kissed a girl.
5) 95% have never spoken to a girl other than Mom whose basement they live in.
You forgot:
6) CowboyNeal
7) ???
8) Profit!
Hot geeky girls, on the other hand, are much more elusive. A geek in a small town could easily go his whole life without meeting a HGG. As a student at a large public university, I've met 0 hot, seriously-geeky girls and a few hot, sorta-geeky girls.
That's because they are hiding from you. Quite apart from the fact that they are geeks in the first place which tends to lead to a reclusive lifestyle, especially in college (they're studying!), anyone who knows they will basically cease to exist as a person and become an instant target for horndoggery the minute you find out something about them is likely to hide these things to a certain extent. The fact geeks tend to be shy does not help. Rinse and repeat this a few times and it's a wonder that someone hasn't created a secret bunker only accessable through obscure mathematical codes where women can evade such depredations. Then again maybe they did.
I was looking for, and have once again found, the HOWTO that talks about the problems women have with the men who hound them from the fields they might have trod, and how to prevent yourself from being one of those guys. If you really want to "score" a "geek chick," the first step, I would think, is to stop treating them the way men usually do (especially maladjusted ones). Some people also enjoy ESR's Sex Tips for Geeks, but you aren't old enough to read that until you've finished the other and done penance to linuxchix.org for your many failings :D.
Why is it that whenever a woman does anything noteworthy the first response here on slashdot is whether or not she is hot/doable/marryable, etc. What is wrong with you people? There is a post further down the page that says she looks like a man... and got modded funny! WTF? A couple days ago, a 17 year old girl won a 100,000 dollar science fair prize, and at least 1/3 of the comments were about whether she was hot or not. Most likely none of the readers here will ever see the woman in real life, so just what value do these comments have in the discussion?
I blame society :D. In our culture, for some reason men feel inclined to behave like asses when they congregate, especially with respect to the way they talk about women. I'm sure women talk differently in a roomful of women, too, and there is that "locker room atmosphere" to take into account. Part of it is the same process that happens in any group wherein there is some aspect that is noticably absent. In this case it's (ostensibly, since there are women on slashdot) a bunch of guys talking with no girls around. It's kind of like a bunch of white guys hanging around and someone cracks a black joke that they probably would not tell if their black friends were around. It is wrong, but people do it, and we aren't yet at that place in our society where enough people see the two as being equally and unequivocably wrong.
Men tend to objectify women and have a natural tendency to see them in terms of their sexual attractiveness. Part of that is a natural process, but part of that is a sickness in society that prevents men from treating women as truly equal. Even when they get to the evolutionary stage where they are able to treat women more or less equally in day to day life, under the right conditions these kinds of things can resurface if those thought processes have not been addressed. It does not help that this is the internet, where people are more or less anonymous or feel that they are. We all know what effect that can have.
In any case, just as it is quite possible, given a little self-control, to talk to an attractive woman without staring at her chest, and equally possible to sublimate sexual feelings in order to deal with someone in a professional context as another human being rather than some fantasy, I think it should be possible for a slashdotter to read a story about an attractive woman without spooging on their keyboard about how hard they'd toss her salad, or whatever. It just seems that people choose not to.
It was definitely more than a little weird in the case of the underage girls, like the high school student you mentioned. I do think (or rather hope) that in many cases, and especially that one, there was some humour involved, making fun of this very tendency. It might not have been funny for her, but who knows. Maybe she blew it off like the rest of us did.
Imagine how these women feel if they read slashdot. Here they are, busting their asses to do something cool/good, they finally get some recognition, and the response is a debate on how nice her hips look or don't.
I hate to break it to you, but they do read slashdot, and if they cared, some of them could probably find out who you were. Definitely Wendy Seltzer could. Not that she will, you panting dogs. You are right, though. It is probably something they have dealt with their whole lives because that is how women are treated in our society. To a certain extent there is flattery because, after all, it is not like it is bad to be smart and attractive as well as accomplished. I know my girlfriend is. But that does not mean that they like being publically drooled over like that by a horde of oversexed, underwashed virgins who they just *know* are doing unspeakable things at their computers (hopefully not involving their picture). :P It's gross, and it is a poor way to treat someone who is contrib
It doesn't surprise me that someone with this point of view does NOT sign their comment. Extreme right-wing satire, perhaps?
You sound like one of those New York liberals. Maybe the post was written by the invisible hand!
Either way, losing your internet service because someone exploited a zero-day on your box is NOT what I want to see happen. Exploits are constantly being researched by whit e and blackhats alike, but to be cut off without ANY way to defend yourself (seeing as most people don't patch for a few days ... or weeks) is just unfair.
Fair, schmair, Vladimir! Here we let the market decide; all's fair in Free Market Capitalism!*
* Note that weenie liberal French words like "laissez-faire" have gone the way of Freedom Fries.
** If you don't get it, you might not be a redneck :D.
And now, you want to close outbound port 25. So how do I send my e-mail? We use POP3.
If you are using a VPN then the ports being blocked by the hotel are no longer relevant. They are blocking port usage on their network, but you are not using their network except as a conduit to your network. They cannot block port 25 on your VPN. They can block port 25 for IP traffic in and out of their network, which will not affect your VPN transactions.
No doubt. When I moved from a small apt to a bigger one, I "made a reservation" for one of the smaller trucks (the 2nd smallest one I believe), but when I got there they were "out of those" so I got this behemoth that you would think one would need a CDL to drive and I could barely fit in my parking lot. I also clipped the barrier at the gas station a little bit but fortunately they didn't notice that on the inspection.
You were lucky they were only out of those trucks. I've had Uhaul send me to places that don't even carry the equipment or size of equipment that I was trying to reserve. In the end you end up having to just call individual lots until you get lucky, and even then its a crapshoot as to whether you will receive what you rented. Individual lots seem to have trouble figuring out what they have on hand, much less the Uhaul system, such as it is, being of any use in such determinations. It seems they just let anyone be a Uhaul dealer these days and there's no real inventory management. These two problems are the crux of most others.
I am surprised that no one has bitched about deposits here. I've had several Uhaul outfits just keep deposits because they feel like it and others who said they paid the deposit back when they clearly never did. After the deductions they are allowed, the deposit is often just around the threshhold of what it would cost to sue to get it back, and in the end less worth the time out of work to do it. It's probably another example of the problem that broken business models and poor customer service bordering on fraud (or even crossing the line) are rewarded therefore giving no incentive to improve these things.
Actully, you do both. Apply the handbrake *and* leave the car in gear (preferably gear 1 or reverse). Some manual cars are even made so that it is physically impossible to remove the key from the ignition unless the car is in reverse. (SAAB comes to mind)
Handbrakes fail. Plus, on most cars the handbrake works on the rear wheels while leaving the car in gear will block the *front* wheels on a front-drive car. (which is 80-90% or so of european/japanese cars these days) Offcourse people that don't a) live somewhere hilly and b) where manual is the norm, wouldn't know this.
But they should anyway since cars with automatic transmissions have to be left in gear as well, and most will not release the key unless they are. It's just that they have a "park" setting for this that perhaps confuses people. But in park the gears are locked (achieving a similar effect to that of putting a standard transmission into first gear without the possibility of lurching forward) whereas in neutral the gears are disengaged which allows the wheels to turn on their own.
Leaving your car in neutral while using the handbrake is at best going to wear out your brakes quicker and at worst end up in an accident. as you suggest, on some grades your handbrake is almost sure to slip, and in any case it is going to be straining if there is any grade at all. There is no substitute for locking the gears, which not only is safer, but relieves the strain on the brake. You want both if you want the car to stay still.
He just doesn't get that modern web programming is event driven in many cases; he thinks it's still done with Perl and forms.
So does Commander Taco. :D
Secondly, while we'd all like to think that a university education implies a certain level of critical thinking skill and cerebral performance, it does not. I've worked with folks who have degrees from the US, UK, Canada, China, and India who were duds. Boneheads. Morons. Whatever you'd like to call them. Sure, if you came out of Waterloo with a CS degree or Georgia Tech with an undergrad in EE you're not likely to be a complete idiot, but the mass majority of universities are suited more to mere mortals.
Speaking of which, the situation does beg the question of what happened with President Bush. I mean, as much as people, including himself, make fun of his poor academic performance, the guy has a law degree from Yale and an MBA from Harvard. Supposedly you cannot get much better than that. Yet he managed to cock up quite a bit, including things in his own field. Constitutional law comes to mind.
If you want a real mindfuck think of this. If Bush has degrees from Yale and Harvard, but you don't, yet you think what he is doing is stupid ... what if it is *you* who are stupid. After all he's the one with the degree.
Thankfully it does not work that way. Intelligent people can make mistakes, especially the ones who give out degrees.
More indepth answer? If you assume a degree is synonymous with 'being qualified' you are incorrect. There are a large number of graduates who have yet to learn the 'tough lesson' that their degree doesn't actually carry much weight.
A college degree is not a certification from a trade school. If all you want is proof you can do a job, you are seeking a certificate from vocational/trade school.
A college degree is proof of a level of academic achievement in a given area of study and is not truly the end goal of a college education in any event. The journey is its own reward, for in the pursuit of a degree one becomes more aware of the world around them, what has gone before, what is being done now in a given field, and how to make a difference. The point of going to college is not a job, but rather to become an initiate to the priesthood of academia and gain better tools for discovering, processing, and understanding data. It's also deliberately broad because a truly educated person should at least know a little about some other fields other than the one in which they earn their paycheck.
People get sour grapes about college because they don't understand what it is. Even people who manage to get a degree often don't have a clue about this. Getting a degree does not mean you know everything about that subject. It does mean you have studied the subject in some detail and might have a better idea about what you do not know. In any case, both those who have degrees and think they know everything and those who do not and likewise think they know everything are wrong; both should go back to school and see if they cannot learn something this time.
A degree is only worthless to someone who does not value it. Likewise a college education. A #2 phillips screwdriver is lousy for nails and won't get you a job as a carpenter, but try and take a computer apart without one. A dual pentium box with 512MB RAM and a 2GB HD is useless for video editing but is more than adequate as a BSD router. A college education and/or degree is only useless to people who fail to understand their purpose and value.
Why does there seem to be such a big hatred for college degrees here on slashdot? I'm not trying to flamebait or anything, but it seems that every time there is a story about college (especially computer science programs), there's always a bunch of people who chime in on how a degree is useless.
Quite apart from the fact that the IT industry slashdot serves is replete with dropouts, there is the fact that Slashdot is forthe most part a US-oriented site. At some point the US developed an antagonistic relationship with academia and the idea of education in general. This only got worse after the violent clashes of the 1960s which not only were blamed on academics at the time but became part of the history we are taught. The fact that the slant becomes part of the story we are taught is strange because it results in baby boomer academics being forced to teach a history that is unsympathetic to academics and baby boomers. In any case you then have the neoconservative view that pretty much everything bad in the world was caused by hippie academics, which is reinforced by the media and to a certain extent the education system itself. Add to that the yearly flagellation of our school system and the perception that education sucks anyway (and makes you gay!) and it is a wonder there are any schools left in the US at all.
This kind of attitude has always been more prevalent among those who either never attended college or do not have a degree. They have no idea what college is about (or a great many other things) but they believe that they do since like Colbert they think with their gut. Their gut says that college is rotten and they did not need it anyway; anyone who disagrees is a fool who deserves to have his money wasted for a piece of paper.
It's sad that this kind of attitude is prevalent in the US. It's even more sad since IT people should know better because their field requires increasing knowledge, is dependant on science, and follows what is essentially the academic/scientific method of exporation in its execution. In any case this anti-academic attitude is a major issue and at least contributes to all of our worst problems; it's an accident of demographics which makes it seem more prevalent on slashdot.
Actually honorary degrees are more of a "we need someone to speak at our graduation and we will give you one as payment". Nothing more, nothing less. Kind of cheapens what the real graduates are getting IMHO.
Some institutions have rules against letting people without degrees speak in certain settings, and have given honorary degrees in order to get around this problem when it comes to famous dropouts like Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, Michael Dell, etc. In some cases the degrees were given in order for the famous dropout to teach a class/ give a lecture; it was an end run around the problem of having to lower academic standards in order to have someone famous show up.
Most people strive to become sucessful to spite the fact that they have no degree. Myself included. I would absolutely refuse one should someone attempted to offer it to me.
In any other field than IT, you'd be really striving. Even in IT a degree probably helps at least a little. In any case, I would refuse an honorary degree for the complete opposite reason. Just as much as living life without a degree is a challenge requiring hard work by virtue of the fact you've handicapped yourself, perhaps cutting off your nose to spite your face, getting a degree can be a challenge as well. Probably the most challenging aspect of it is the simple act of perseverance required to slog through several years without any other compensation than your degree.
In my opinion there should be no honorary degrees; they dilute the value of the real thing even more than "paper MCSEs" diluted the value of certification, and cast a bad light on the institution itself. Shame on Harvard for bowing to pressure and giving degrees who could not or would not earn them. If I were offered an honourary degree I would turn it down because it is an insult to all those people who earn their degrees; I prefer to get what I have through hard work like everything else I have achieved, preferably without pissing on those who are working harder than me to get the same thing.
As a Canadian, I suggest that asking nicely for one's political independence can work just fine. We did in 1982. We repatriated our constiution via the signing of the agreement by Pierre Elliot Trudeau and Queen Elizabeth II. It can be civilized, when people are of the best in themselves.
Americans are too impatient to wait 200 years for independance, you insensitive clod!
Les Américains sont trop impatients pour attendre 200 ans l'independance, vous motte peu sensible !
If the people of this nation at the time would put down their bongs and annoying overly overt liberalism and grew some balls, we would have stayed in the war and kept South Vietnam free of the bullshit regime of the North Vietnamese.
And the same thing is happening in Iraq. Militarily we are winning a conflict that cannot be won militarily because at it heart the conflict is political. We will only lose in Iraq if we are brought down by liars who say we are losing and can never win (as the media did during Vietnam) and thus pull out before the enemy submits to a political solution (as General Giap said would have happened in Vietnam because of the failed Tet Offensive, had the US media not lied about it and the US government not responded by pulling out troops).
The problem we have right now is that we are getting involved in more and more conflicts specifically because our enemies and potential enemies are getting the idea that while a large standing army has no chance against us and an insurgency cannot militarily defeat us there is a large portion of the population that will claim we cannot win and that they have no clue why we are there no matter what the war is about, resulting in a withdrawal. It's strange but this is actually a major obstacle to peace. If our enemies think they can defeat us militarily they will choose to do so since violence is always easier. If they do not they will be forced to bargain with us diplomatically. As much as I hate violence I think we may have to show some balls as you say if we don't want to see the world implode in an inexorable flow of small petty conflicts that turn global and spawn infinite retreat.
And if they wanted to be our masters and already made contact, since they would have the technology to reach us, I guess they'd already be our masters. (well, looking at our politicians' behavior, maybe they already are! ;-)
Anyone advanced enough to develop interstellar travel would probably be smart enough to come up with better plans than our politicians; if anything the Earth would be much better regulated than it is now. Then again they would also probably be smart enough not to bother ruling a backward planet filled with suicidal primates bent on taking the world with them.
There is the interesting possibility of an interstellar society which regresses much like our own in that interstellar vehicles and other similar tech are so ubiquitous and education so inadequate that pilots/users actually have no idea how the equipment works or how to maintain it. Then stupid, sadistic fools with far more money than brains could cruise the universe in giant spaceships that deliberately waste energy in search of amusement and happen upon our planet. It would be much like some of the early European settlers and the games they played with natives (which weren't so much fun for them -- see the Yaqui and Tasmanians ), and not unlike that of a small boy molesting a pile of ants. It would require neither wisdom nor intelligence and as unlikely as it is would be more likely than the scenario you describe.
Unless our planet's resources are more rare than we think, or there is some property of our location that makes it more important than we now know, it just doesn't seem that our planet would be that interesting to your average spacefarers except for the curiousity. If we were to be ruled by some spacefaring race you'd think the first thing they'd do is get rid of us since we are screwing up the planet they want.
Incidentally, the fact we know of no other planet like ours and no other life than this makes it even more important that we do not mess this one up and start working on finding other systems in which to plant life while we still can. Even if there is life elsewhere this is still a good idea; I am actually pretty glad that Stephen Hawking agrees because people will listen to him before they will listen to anyone else on an issue like this.
I, for one, salute our new potato overlords. Which has nothing to do with the French, or UFOs, or for that matter, science. Being humble, I have already modded myself down -10 and tagged it "Food Nazi Bait"
But because you called yourself a Nazi your post cannot be published in France, you insensitive clod!
French fries are long and thin, chips (in England) are thicker and shorter.
Here in the US the thick ones are often called "steak fries."
Here in Australia you get a strange crossover between British and American English, and so chips can mean either crisps or fries depending on context.
Actually depending on where you go in the US chips can mean anything, within a restaurant context. Often, ordering "chips" in an Anglophile/English-style pub/restaurant will result in something like what other restaurants call "steak fries." Some restaurants will give you freshly fried "potato chips" which are basically what you call "crisps." Nevertheless, what you get when you order "french fries" varies widely as well. "French Fries" are supposed to be fried julienne potatoes which is where the name comes from ("frenched" being slang at one time for julienne), but most fast food places serve what used to be called "shoestring potatoes" instead (incidentally, shoestring potatoes also are, or at least were, available dried and canned).
It gets even more confusing when you throw in "home fries" and "hash browns." To some people the two are the same, and in any case ordering either could result in a heap of grated, fried, salted potatos, a heap of diced fried potatoes, a fried potato patty with the consistency of a "tater tot" (often oblong shaped), or some variation on the theme. I am sure someone else will point to a variety of "tater tot" interpretations. At least we're consistent enough to almost always use potato in these dishes, unlike with some other foods (like Caesar Salad, which is a whole other contentious discussion which may or may not involved anchovies).
Food in the US is weird, partially because of the many influences, immigrants, and rampant individualism coupled with inventiveness. As an aside, when hosting dinner for mobsters from New York and Boston simultaneously, don't serve clam chowder unless you want to clean up blood. Then again, I guess serving the Manhattan style would do nicely for that problem.
Yes. The DMCA is fundamentally flawed. But that doesn't matter. There is no objective measure at the moment whether this video is infringing or not. If Viacom were to sue the creators directly, and made an argument as to why it infringes, then it would take a court to make the decision. Now, as long as the creators submitted the argument "It's clearly a parody" they'd win in court, but that hasn't happened yet.
The DMCA would not be so bad if it were actually enforced as written. As things are it's only being used in a one-sided manner such that large companies are able to suppress whatever they want with no repercussions and small content providers are not protected at all (and are in fact being silenced via misapplication of the DMCA). In order to compel someone to take down infringing content providers have to swear under penalty of perjury that they own the content. To date, although numerous examples of blatant violation exist, including takedown notices being issued for obviously original works and other work that the submitter does not own, no prosecutions seem to have occurred. This is also the first lawsuit I have heard of on such grounds; it is a wonder that more have not been submitted.
As for your bit about arguments being submitted in court, that is an odd bit of logic. TFA is about precisely that; to wit, the creators have submitted the argument, in court, that their video was wrongfully removed because it is in fact a parody. You don't even need to read the summary because this information is contained in the title of the slashdot article.
Viacom probalby should have known that this is non-infringing, but their argument that they aren't in a position to make a legal judgement will be a decent defence in court.
No, they have to be able to prove that they knew for a fact it was infringing. They are in a positioon to make a legal judgement and have done so wrecklessly. This is a blatant abuse of the DMCA which is covered in the statute itself. It's also an important case because this kind of abuse is far too frequent and comes of content providers not doing the due diligence required by the Act. It's about time someone cracked down on it; let's hope they make a fine example. Hang 'em high, judge! Hang 'em high!
"we hold bars accountable if they serve alcohol to patrons who appear to already be intoxicated"
And what we DON'T do is require bartenders to administer a breathalyzer test to every person who places a drink order, which is what Viacom is saying YouTube should have been doing.
Actually, that is what YouTube has been doing, which makes this argument even more silly. YouTube has a catalog of checksums of known videos and will not allow you to upload a clip that matches that checksum. They add to this when people send them takedown notices, with which they comply relatively immediately. It seems to me this is more than what is required by law.
For all the copyrighted material on YouTube there is an awful lot of original material that would not have a home otherwise. YouTube does a lot of good and it would be a shame to see it go. It's sad because basically Viacom is only blackmailing YouTube because they did not feel the blackmail payments they were offered were big enough. They should have accepted what they were getting since YouTube does not need to pay them anything; the scheme of paying off copyright owners was just a ploy to stop these nuisance suits, which so far only have been threatened by companies with competing (and noticably shittier) services.
Some working is not commonly used anymore like "goeth", valid but just not used.
Actually we never lost "goeth," "hath," etc, we simply changed the common spelling. "th" became "s," and the pronunciation of the two was never far off. In fact in Castillian Spanish and similar variants they went the other way and pronounce words with "s" similarly to the way US English speakers pronounce "th." In any case it is true that the pronunciation of the two has diverged somewhat more in modern US English, enough so that the "s" is pronounced more like "z" and "hath," etc can be pronounced differently to "has," as an atavistic affectation.
Like I said below. All novel has to do is fork all the FSF projects now while the licensing says GPL Version 2 or later. It's not like 'ls' or 'cd' changes all that often.
GPLv2 or later means that once GPLv3 is available those packages will be under GPLv3 automagically. The only hope would be to fork projects that do not include the "or later" clause. In any case, it would be madness because they would have to maintain the GPLv2 code without allowing any GPLv3 code to come in and contaminate the system. They'd end up rewriting everything and gaining nothing from the free software model. History has proven that for the most part it's a matter of what most of the developmet community working on a particular project wants; if Novell forks just to keep patents and the ability to sue Linux developers that will not attract many developers.
Personally, I think this is an outstanding compromise; it leaves legitimate fair use rights in place, but provides a means for large-scale-distribution violations to be prosecuted. It's certainly a far better deal than mandatory DRM, which in all seriousness is the other contender. I'll take watermarks over DRM any day.
I'm not so sure this protects our rights. The article mentions the fact that ANY video sent over the wire will receive the mark. That means that your own movies would get the watermark as well as anything else in the major video formats that you send. I can understand the studios would like to be able to claim they are stopping themselves from sending out pirate copies of their own movies (which is what they have admitted this is) but I don't like the sound of that.
Imagine the guy who films some police abuse and sends that clip to youtube being found and arrested for filming police abuse (which is now a crime in a number of places) based on evidence from the watermark. Or whatever else $GOVERNMENT_ENTITY or $CORPORATION decide they don't like so they decide they want to find that person. This makes it easier to do without any subpoenas required, and I don't like it.
Besides, it violates some very basic principles including data integrity. I should not have to worry that some device like a router or dsl modem is going to start manipulating and editing/corrupting my data as it travels down the pipe just because it struck the creator's fancy. That's not cool in my book. It also sounds like a recipe for trouble, which most copyright protection tech tends to be from the getgo.
You say you would rather have this than DRM, but this is just another part of DRM. Except in this case it's a way to track what people are doing rather than overtly stopping them on playback. It still has onerous consequences. Just wait until they go after the guy who sends films of his kids to the grandparents over and over because they mysteriously won't play, and call him a pirate. Besides, you'll get all the DRM as well so it's not like this trade means anything.
a couple of years?
$100,000 will get you all the way through your masters now days. Assuming you can maintain some semblance of a GPA.
He said at a good University. Granted less expensive schools can actually provide a competitive education but someone like this is probably going to be thinking Princeton or MIT or something, and just about any college in that neck of the woods will put a serious dent in $100,000 pretty fast. Certainly the ones I named would; I think "a couple of years" is about right, considering, and it may in fact be too optimistic depending on how much other cash is involved.
I bet! Mom & Dad never helped at all!
I honestly don't see why this is flamebait. It could have been said in a better way, especially since it seems to have been misunderstood. It is important for people to understand that parents and social/economic status matter when it comes to academic and scientific achievement, especially in the type of school system we have. That's not to say that individual effort is not needed in the more positive cases or that it cannot overcome the negative cases. But it is true that the more tools you have in life and the better and more stable your learning environment is the easier it is to achieve something. It does not mean that this person's achievement was any less spectacular, just as it is still awesome that John Nash was doing Calculus at age 7 even though the fact his parents were academics who encouraged their son and exposed him to everything he seemed able to handle or have an interest in when he showed interest.
John Nash growing up in an abusive home where no textbooks were available and learning was frowned upon would have a tough row to hoe even as a genius that he was. He would probably be able to achieve a lot because of his drive and intellectual fortitude, but you never know. Not only would he have to overcome the negative aspects of his upbringing, he would not have some of the formative experiences that led him on the path he ended up on. He might not learn to read at an early age because neither his parents nor the public school would encourage reading at an early age or advancing in that skill. He also might not therefore have read _Men_of_Mathematics_ which was the book that most inspired him to become a mathemetician. Perhaps between a bad upbringing and the mental problems he had, he would have ended up in that negative feedback loop so many left behind children find themselves in, where the outside world (especially school, their parents, and other students) gives them a constant reinforcement of the idea that they are "no good" or substandard and will never achieve anything, and their own struggles, when they find the strength to struggle, seem to reinforce it as well and lend fodder to the fire until they either lapse into a kind of apathy toward achievement or take the further course of attempting to achieve something completely negative (addict, prostitute, thug, etc).
Children need encouragement and guidance to grow properly and it is proven that the more successful children in school tend also to be those students whose parents are most involved in their education, and vice versa. Parents that don't have or take time for working with their kids or for whatever reason don't give the right kind of structure and experience for a healthy childhood will tend to have children with problems in school. This is what educators have been telling us, too. I think reform is necessary for the system, and I know parents are resistant to any suggestion that they could have anything to do with problems they have with their children, but consider the fact that this is the portion of the equation parents are most able to change.
It is obvious to me that whereas this person was clearly gifted they also had parents who supported her endeavours. In fact she is quoted in TFA:
Masterman said she has been interested in science "ever since I was little. I can't remember ever not being interested." She credits her parents with encouraging her.
Poorly stated I will give you, but what the poster said was true and was probably not meant as flamebait. It does not seem like flamebait to me.