I'll break my rule and respond, because yours is such a delicious troll.
Thank you for your wonderful example also of over-generalizing, and utterly failing to look at facts.
1- There may be a good reason why the help offered (which is what ?) does not help with the issue at hand (which is what ?). Any help from any one does not help with any and all problems.
I replied specifically in the context of Japan's refusal to accept needed medical aid from the U.S. after the 1995 earthquake. You, however, could not have been more over-generalizing, you hypocrite.
2- This has nothing to do with genital mutilation and such, but please don't let that derail your rant.
3- If you want to talk multiculturalism, you may want to try and weight both sides of the issue. I think the gist is that there's "good" stuff in all cultures, and "bad" stuff too, so one culture should not be allowed to wipe out all the others. You're good with examples of bad stuff from other cultures... know of any good ones from them ? or bad stuff from yours ?
I was obviously comparing the acceptance of such negligence to more abusive practices, noting that multiculturalists apologize for a whole range of bad behavior, from neglect to mutilation. And I didn't exempt my own culture from that criticism. Nor did I suggest in the slightest that one culture should "wipe out all the others". You simply made that up. Talk about ranting, pot meet kettle.
I personally, think your post is worthless. And destructive.
Really? I'm being destructive to suggest (suggest, mind you), that we criticize objectively bad behaviour when we see it? Wow, that's really... openminded of you.
Just wondering here... I sent $300 to a reputable non-religious agency that's providing both short and long-term aid to the victims in Japan. While it's a small gesture, I'm guessing it's more than you have done, which is exactly nothing (aside from running your mouth). Feel free to spew nonsense again, but I'm done with this thread. I can't afford to spend any more of my time educating you.
Here's a good example of why the multiculturalism movement is worthless and destructive. "Well, it's their way, so I can't criticize it." Bullshit. Letting hundreds or thousands more of your own people die because you're "too proud" to accept help is immoral. Leaders who take that course instead of doing what they can to ease their people's misery should be excused from government, and probably prosecuted for criminal malfeasance.
Some people (not parent poster) use this argument to excuse female genital mutilation, the burka, virtual house arrest for women, honor killings, and "The Jersey Shore". I'm not advocating invasion over these horrible "cultural traditions", but can't we at least start with, "that's wrong - you shouldn't be doing that"?
On the bright side, at least in this disaster Japan is accepting help from the world.
Avoid it? Avoid it how? By asking the earth to please not quake? By forecasting the earthquake with an accuracy for which there is no credible method?
No wait, I know - they could have "deficit spent" enough to move all their coastal towns a mile inland, then built a 50 foot wall around the entire country, with gates to load and unload ships at new docking facilities.
Pardon me for getting a little exercised and calling this AC a FUCKING RETARD HEARTLESS BASTARD PIECE OF SHIT.
Exactly. The fact is many people enjoy feeding trolls, because it lets them feel superior to that schmuck who's standing there waving his dick in the community's face.
Case in point; Charlie Sheen. The media machine LOVES this troll, because he's feeding THEM, so they want to keep him going as long as people pay attention. And people (real people) are paying attention. So go ahead, give people advice on disarming trolls. They won't follow it, because trolls are part of the online experience, and most people would miss them if they didn't exist (though lots of those would angrily deny it; see responses to my post).
Flamebait? When Apple is dictating to consumers, producers, and middlemen? There's not a segment of their manufacture and distribution chain that doesn't include some practice that should alarm an objective observer about their current practices, pointing to much worse to come.
The fanboy defense of Apple for most of their existence has been, "Don't like Apple? Don't buy their products. It's not like they're a monopoly." Well, they're getting monopoly-like control over large segments of multiple markets, and the "ooh, shiny" doesn't make up for the damage they're doing to the freedom that the/. crowd seems to be so hard for.
Sure, you just called Apple users locked-in, superficial cultists. Not a dig at all...
I have to agree... that's pretty mild, considering. He might have said that Apple users are also selfish and shortsighted, slavishly giving marketshare to a company that's going to retard openness, choice, and diversity in the long run.
Original iPad is 1 GHz A4 processor, new iPad is 1 GHz A5 processor. I wouldn't worry about that, it's not like the original is that slow or that many apps strain it.
Exactly, the new one's not much of an improvement over the old one. It's just Jobs keeping the attention machine running, to (squeeze more blood out of the stone) / (shake a few more coconuts out of the tree) / (fool a few more idiot consumers that *this* is what they need to feel less empty inside). Pick your own metaphor.
The cell connection would be useful, but remember that Kindles hold 3,500+ books. At 1 per week, that's about 70 years' worth, times what, 2-3 kids sharing each Kindle? So around 140-200 "reader years" per $138 e-reader. Also, if there are, say, 10 Kindles per village with 20 students, that's up to 35,000 different books. Or maybe 1,000 common texts on every Kindle, and 26,000 different books across all Kindles.
I was pretty well educated, and very well read for a kid (nicknames; Poindexter, Shakespeare). I think that's an order of magnitude more books than I consumed through high school.
I have to lie down, this made me dizzy.
Yeah, content cost is the big factor in this equation, but between free, subsidized and donated, they can probably get enough content to put on the devices. For no-frills, I-just-want-to-read, Kindle is a firehose. Fuck magical, fuck shiny.
Calm down, cowboy. If true, Zuckerberg not using facebook is hypocritical. (I don't know if it's true - some people posted links to the contrary, I don't care enough to check it out.)
Your nasty little ad hominem attack was way out of proportion to the gp's post. What's really got you angry?
Since you say it's not a group, but a shifting number of people who do what they individually decide, then you can't rail against "all this fucking public anonymous moralfaggotry" and "huge fucking difference between real anon--the way this "group" all started out". You can't have it both ways. The people who identify themselves as Anonymous are, in fact, Anonymous, whether you approve of the changing nature of their behavior or not.
It's like calling someone who treats others in a particularly cruel and sadistic manner "inhuman". Well of course, they're not, they're exactly human. Inhumane perhaps, but not inhuman.
Don't keep correcting people by telling them they're mis-identifying a group or hierarchy in Anonymous, while complaining about the motherfuckers who just don't act how YOU would like them to.
Me, I take them at their word, er, self-identification, and I'm comfortable applying a broad brush to them. They're all Anonymous. And they're all douchebags.
Name your airport, I dare you. I named mine, the infamous PHL. Every airline says you should show 2 hours before flight time, because they're covering their asses. I doubt very much that you spend 1.5 hours waiting to get through security.
If I were in the executive branch and responsible for helping to craft the budget one of the things I would propose is a 5 to 10-year moratorium on all foreign aid. Get your own house in order before you incur any more debt on the behalf of others...
Wow, just... wow. The U.S. spends less than 1% of its budget on foreign aid. And that aid buys a great deal of influence.
Now, if you had advocated cutting the fucking MILITARY budget, you'd have something. Why are we spending hundreds of billions of dollars each year stationing occupying forces in the countries of our allies? Germany, Japan, South Korea, it goes on and on. For deterrence? Against who, the Soviet Union? They went out of business over 20 years ago. Against China? Seriously? We spend our treasure on occupation, while China spends theirs investing in trade, and in relationships with the countries in Africa and elsewhere who have the resources we'll need in 20 years.
Cut the military budget 10% every year for the next 5 years, and keep sending antiretroviral drugs and mosquito nets to Africa.
I do not mean using engine breaking to slow the car in poor weather, merely to avoid gaining unwanted speed. ABS is another topic I do not want to get into and would frankly prefer to be able to disable in my own vehicles.
You're still spewing nonsense. When driving on icy roads, I avoid gaining unwanted speed by using the advanced technique of not hitting the gas too much. And if I need to slow down, I lightly press the brakes. Hardly ever do I engage the ABS.
But speaking of ABS, which in your manful resistance, you avoided doing while implying they suck at the same time, yes ABS is a good safety device. Not a substitute for good driving habits, but a nice supplemental tool. Unless you fight them, because you're too uber-manly to accept that a computer-assisted brake can help you.
Good lord, Bob Heinlein would love you, too bad you can't go get a drink with him and commiserate on the failings of the common man.
Do I have to repeat it? The reason for driving on public roads is to safely arrive at your destination in a reasonable period. It's not a test of your worth as a man.
Absolutely. This phenomenon is related to a design flaw in the hardware, not in the carrier. I've enjoyed Verizon service for a long time, but I'd never expect its holy touch could heal the leprous iPhone.
Please tell me you didn't mean that studly humanoids who have the brains and the ballz to drive a manual transmission automobile are less likely to stomp on the wrong pedal. In my experience, they poll a little lower on the intelligence scale.
I love shifting on my bikes (Triumph's and Honda's), but they're toys, riding them is for fun. Automatic transmissions for cars is sensible, since the main objective is to get where you're going safely, not engage in some ritual of manhood comparison. Calling them slushboxes is on par with posts against Windoze, or M$.
Your follow up doesn't help you any. It's pure speculation and prejdudice - and I do have experience with offshore staffing, traveling to work with companies in India and their staff based both in the U.S. and in India.
My "quote" was a humorous paraphrase which captured some of the tone of the post, and of some of the responses. Most neutral readers would discern that it wasn't intended to be a "real" quote. Don't like it? Sue me. Or delve into another branch of speculative judgment using facts not in evidence.
The juice is chewed out of this for me. Feel free to post a "harumphh!" response, but I won't read it.
The problem with your analysis is that offshoring is done as a cost-saving measure. This means two pertinent things: that the quality of the help desk could easily go down, and that it is explicitly unstated whether the workers at the offshore IT help desk would be paid appropriate wages.
Er, how does one leave something "explicitly unstated"? It was either stated, or it wasn't, no? That's like describing someone as being "aggressively uninterested".
Since you're arguing in a vacuum because the article did not include all factors, I'll join you there to make my point. It could just as easily be the case that the maximum amount of funding the employer will spend for help desk would buy the best of the labor force offshore, and would buy, at best, help desk workers with inferior skills here in the U.S. Therefore, from the consideration that you manufactured about the employer's ethics in regard to its customer service, it could be unethical NOT to offshore the help desk.
("Gasp!") Leaving the fact-vacuum to rejoin the oxygenated world, the question was in regard to the ethics of helping to take away jobs from co-workers to "give them jobs to furriners with funny accents." Since the rest of the world is developing skills and demanding a piece of the action, the lower level skilled jobs will continue to leave this country, and no amount of protectionism (and certainly not high-minded refusal to participate) will stop that. I, like many of the people on/., keep retraining myself to move higher on the skill ladder, to remain employed. Yeah, that sucks, but who said we were owed these jobs?
Where will it end? I don't know, but we would have to change our model of competing with the world to get back the stability we had when the U.S., U.K.,and Europe were the part of the world that dictated to the rest. I don't see that happening.
Wow, really? If I am at a point in an accident that the only thing keeping me inside the car is my seatbelt, I can assure you that I have ZERO control over the car at that point...
Sorry, that's nonsense. A seat belt keeps you from being ejected, and what are your hands doing? Hmm, clutching the wheel. You will seriously maintain that you're in no more control in your seat, clutching the wheel, than flying through the air (or getting rolled over by your own ride)? Really?
...not buckling up doesn't hurt anyone else, so why am I being punished???
Drivers who wear seatbelts are more likely to remain inside the car during an accident, and to remain in control of the car.
I'd rather you were desperately wrenching the wheel to reduce the effect of the crash than flying senseless through the air after exiting your vehicle through the windshield. You might save someone else's life. And you might not end up in a wheelchair paralyzed from the neck down, supported by public funds (my tax dollars).
Slashdot Mirror
My first thought was "OMG! They proved the existence of souls? Talk about burying the lead!"
I don't provide sexual favors to the mentally retarded.
Whoosh!
Thank you for your wonderful example also of over-generalizing, and utterly failing to look at facts.
1- There may be a good reason why the help offered (which is what ?) does not help with the issue at hand (which is what ?). Any help from any one does not help with any and all problems.
I replied specifically in the context of Japan's refusal to accept needed medical aid from the U.S. after the 1995 earthquake. You, however, could not have been more over-generalizing, you hypocrite.
2- This has nothing to do with genital mutilation and such, but please don't let that derail your rant.
3- If you want to talk multiculturalism, you may want to try and weight both sides of the issue. I think the gist is that there's "good" stuff in all cultures, and "bad" stuff too, so one culture should not be allowed to wipe out all the others. You're good with examples of bad stuff from other cultures... know of any good ones from them ? or bad stuff from yours ?
I was obviously comparing the acceptance of such negligence to more abusive practices, noting that multiculturalists apologize for a whole range of bad behavior, from neglect to mutilation. And I didn't exempt my own culture from that criticism. Nor did I suggest in the slightest that one culture should "wipe out all the others". You simply made that up. Talk about ranting, pot meet kettle.
I personally, think your post is worthless. And destructive.
Really? I'm being destructive to suggest (suggest, mind you), that we criticize objectively bad behaviour when we see it? Wow, that's really... openminded of you.
Just wondering here... I sent $300 to a reputable non-religious agency that's providing both short and long-term aid to the victims in Japan. While it's a small gesture, I'm guessing it's more than you have done, which is exactly nothing (aside from running your mouth).
Feel free to spew nonsense again, but I'm done with this thread. I can't afford to spend any more of my time educating you.
Here's a good example of why the multiculturalism movement is worthless and destructive. "Well, it's their way, so I can't criticize it." Bullshit. Letting hundreds or thousands more of your own people die because you're "too proud" to accept help is immoral. Leaders who take that course instead of doing what they can to ease their people's misery should be excused from government, and probably prosecuted for criminal malfeasance.
Some people (not parent poster) use this argument to excuse female genital mutilation, the burka, virtual house arrest for women, honor killings, and "The Jersey Shore". I'm not advocating invasion over these horrible "cultural traditions", but can't we at least start with, "that's wrong - you shouldn't be doing that"?
On the bright side, at least in this disaster Japan is accepting help from the world.
Avoid it? Avoid it how? By asking the earth to please not quake? By forecasting the earthquake with an accuracy for which there is no credible method?
No wait, I know - they could have "deficit spent" enough to move all their coastal towns a mile inland, then built a 50 foot wall around the entire country, with gates to load and unload ships at new docking facilities.
Pardon me for getting a little exercised and calling this AC a FUCKING RETARD HEARTLESS BASTARD PIECE OF SHIT.
Yes, I'm jealous that you live in Arizona, with its perpetual Standard Time all year.
And no downsides to Arizona, none at all.
Exactly. The fact is many people enjoy feeding trolls, because it lets them feel superior to that schmuck who's standing there waving his dick in the community's face.
Case in point; Charlie Sheen. The media machine LOVES this troll, because he's feeding THEM, so they want to keep him going as long as people pay attention. And people (real people) are paying attention.
So go ahead, give people advice on disarming trolls. They won't follow it, because trolls are part of the online experience, and most people would miss them if they didn't exist (though lots of those would angrily deny it; see responses to my post).
Flamebait? When Apple is dictating to consumers, producers, and middlemen? There's not a segment of their manufacture and distribution chain that doesn't include some practice that should alarm an objective observer about their current practices, pointing to much worse to come.
/. crowd seems to be so hard for.
The fanboy defense of Apple for most of their existence has been, "Don't like Apple? Don't buy their products. It's not like they're a monopoly." Well, they're getting monopoly-like control over large segments of multiple markets, and the "ooh, shiny" doesn't make up for the damage they're doing to the freedom that the
Sure, you just called Apple users locked-in, superficial cultists. Not a dig at all...
I have to agree... that's pretty mild, considering. He might have said that Apple users are also selfish and shortsighted, slavishly giving marketshare to a company that's going to retard openness, choice, and diversity in the long run.
But he didn't.
Original iPad is 1 GHz A4 processor, new iPad is 1 GHz A5 processor. I wouldn't worry about that, it's not like the original is that slow or that many apps strain it.
Exactly, the new one's not much of an improvement over the old one. It's just Jobs keeping the attention machine running, to (squeeze more blood out of the stone) / (shake a few more coconuts out of the tree) / (fool a few more idiot consumers that *this* is what they need to feel less empty inside).
Pick your own metaphor.
The cell connection would be useful, but remember that Kindles hold 3,500+ books. At 1 per week, that's about 70 years' worth, times what, 2-3 kids sharing each Kindle? So around 140-200 "reader years" per $138 e-reader. Also, if there are, say, 10 Kindles per village with 20 students, that's up to 35,000 different books. Or maybe 1,000 common texts on every Kindle, and 26,000 different books across all Kindles.
I was pretty well educated, and very well read for a kid (nicknames; Poindexter, Shakespeare). I think that's an order of magnitude more books than I consumed through high school.
I have to lie down, this made me dizzy.
Yeah, content cost is the big factor in this equation, but between free, subsidized and donated, they can probably get enough content to put on the devices. For no-frills, I-just-want-to-read, Kindle is a firehose. Fuck magical, fuck shiny.
Calm down, cowboy. If true, Zuckerberg not using facebook is hypocritical. (I don't know if it's true - some people posted links to the contrary, I don't care enough to check it out.)
Your nasty little ad hominem attack was way out of proportion to the gp's post. What's really got you angry?
Since you say it's not a group, but a shifting number of people who do what they individually decide, then you can't rail against "all this fucking public anonymous moralfaggotry" and "huge fucking difference between real anon--the way this "group" all started out". You can't have it both ways. The people who identify themselves as Anonymous are, in fact, Anonymous, whether you approve of the changing nature of their behavior or not.
It's like calling someone who treats others in a particularly cruel and sadistic manner "inhuman". Well of course, they're not, they're exactly human. Inhumane perhaps, but not inhuman.
Don't keep correcting people by telling them they're mis-identifying a group or hierarchy in Anonymous, while complaining about the motherfuckers who just don't act how YOU would like them to.
Me, I take them at their word, er, self-identification, and I'm comfortable applying a broad brush to them. They're all Anonymous. And they're all douchebags.
Aww, nice sig, but you ruined it by misspelling Brock's name.
Name your airport, I dare you. I named mine, the infamous PHL. Every airline says you should show 2 hours before flight time, because they're covering their asses. I doubt very much that you spend 1.5 hours waiting to get through security.
If I were in the executive branch and responsible for helping to craft the budget one of the things I would propose is a 5 to 10-year moratorium on all foreign aid. Get your own house in order before you incur any more debt on the behalf of others...
Wow, just... wow. The U.S. spends less than 1% of its budget on foreign aid. And that aid buys a great deal of influence.
Now, if you had advocated cutting the fucking MILITARY budget, you'd have something. Why are we spending hundreds of billions of dollars each year stationing occupying forces in the countries of our allies? Germany, Japan, South Korea, it goes on and on. For deterrence? Against who, the Soviet Union? They went out of business over 20 years ago. Against China? Seriously? We spend our treasure on occupation, while China spends theirs investing in trade, and in relationships with the countries in Africa and elsewhere who have the resources we'll need in 20 years.
Cut the military budget 10% every year for the next 5 years, and keep sending antiretroviral drugs and mosquito nets to Africa.
If you show up at the airport 3 hours before your flight, you must really love the airport mall.
My airport is PHL, that's right, fucking P-H-L, Philadelphia International Airport, the greatest hive of scum and villainy you will ever see.
And I show up an hour before flight time. My Southwest flight nearly always leaves on time, and arrives 5 minutes early.
3 hours, yowza.
I do not mean using engine breaking to slow the car in poor weather, merely to avoid gaining unwanted speed. ABS is another topic I do not want to get into and would frankly prefer to be able to disable in my own vehicles.
You're still spewing nonsense. When driving on icy roads, I avoid gaining unwanted speed by using the advanced technique of not hitting the gas too much. And if I need to slow down, I lightly press the brakes. Hardly ever do I engage the ABS.
But speaking of ABS, which in your manful resistance, you avoided doing while implying they suck at the same time, yes ABS is a good safety device. Not a substitute for good driving habits, but a nice supplemental tool. Unless you fight them, because you're too uber-manly to accept that a computer-assisted brake can help you.
Good lord, Bob Heinlein would love you, too bad you can't go get a drink with him and commiserate on the failings of the common man.
Do I have to repeat it? The reason for driving on public roads is to safely arrive at your destination in a reasonable period. It's not a test of your worth as a man.
Absolutely. This phenomenon is related to a design flaw in the hardware, not in the carrier. I've enjoyed Verizon service for a long time, but I'd never expect its holy touch could heal the leprous iPhone.
Geez.
Excellent subject line: wait, what?
Please tell me you didn't mean that studly humanoids who have the brains and the ballz to drive a manual transmission automobile are less likely to stomp on the wrong pedal. In my experience, they poll a little lower on the intelligence scale.
I love shifting on my bikes (Triumph's and Honda's), but they're toys, riding them is for fun. Automatic transmissions for cars is sensible, since the main objective is to get where you're going safely, not engage in some ritual of manhood comparison. Calling them slushboxes is on par with posts against Windoze, or M$.
Your follow up doesn't help you any. It's pure speculation and prejdudice - and I do have experience with offshore staffing, traveling to work with companies in India and their staff based both in the U.S. and in India.
My "quote" was a humorous paraphrase which captured some of the tone of the post, and of some of the responses. Most neutral readers would discern that it wasn't intended to be a "real" quote. Don't like it? Sue me. Or delve into another branch of speculative judgment using facts not in evidence.
The juice is chewed out of this for me. Feel free to post a "harumphh!" response, but I won't read it.
The problem with your analysis is that offshoring is done as a cost-saving measure. This means two pertinent things: that the quality of the help desk could easily go down, and that it is explicitly unstated whether the workers at the offshore IT help desk would be paid appropriate wages.
Er, how does one leave something "explicitly unstated"? It was either stated, or it wasn't, no? That's like describing someone as being "aggressively uninterested".
/., keep retraining myself to move higher on the skill ladder, to remain employed. Yeah, that sucks, but who said we were owed these jobs?
Since you're arguing in a vacuum because the article did not include all factors, I'll join you there to make my point. It could just as easily be the case that the maximum amount of funding the employer will spend for help desk would buy the best of the labor force offshore, and would buy, at best, help desk workers with inferior skills here in the U.S. Therefore, from the consideration that you manufactured about the employer's ethics in regard to its customer service, it could be unethical NOT to offshore the help desk.
("Gasp!") Leaving the fact-vacuum to rejoin the oxygenated world, the question was in regard to the ethics of helping to take away jobs from co-workers to "give them jobs to furriners with funny accents." Since the rest of the world is developing skills and demanding a piece of the action, the lower level skilled jobs will continue to leave this country, and no amount of protectionism (and certainly not high-minded refusal to participate) will stop that. I, like many of the people on
Where will it end? I don't know, but we would have to change our model of competing with the world to get back the stability we had when the U.S., U.K.,and Europe were the part of the world that dictated to the rest. I don't see that happening.
Wow, really? If I am at a point in an accident that the only thing keeping me inside the car is my seatbelt, I can assure you that I have ZERO control over the car at that point...
Sorry, that's nonsense. A seat belt keeps you from being ejected, and what are your hands doing? Hmm, clutching the wheel. You will seriously maintain that you're in no more control in your seat, clutching the wheel, than flying through the air (or getting rolled over by your own ride)? Really?
...not buckling up doesn't hurt anyone else, so why am I being punished???
Drivers who wear seatbelts are more likely to remain inside the car during an accident, and to remain in control of the car.
I'd rather you were desperately wrenching the wheel to reduce the effect of the crash than flying senseless through the air after exiting your vehicle through the windshield. You might save someone else's life. And you might not end up in a wheelchair paralyzed from the neck down, supported by public funds (my tax dollars).