How about sympathy for those of us who are female and work in the industry, then arrive at a trade-show only to see women used purely as decoration over-and-over-and-over again ?
What exactly do you want sympathy for? Are you forbidden to make presentations at these events where women are used purely as decoration? No? Are you just jealous there are no men to ogle?
as evidenced by the fact that the usage of "booth babes" is ubiquitous at such events
IIRC, PAX has no booth babes.
Is it really that hard to picture the scenario where the situation is reversed, that it's women that are most of the people who are into what you're into, and everywhere you go at the show/convention there's big burly guys in bikini briefs getting paid to stand around and show off the products to you for no visibly apparent reason related to the product? How comfortable would you be about that?
It's not hard to picture that at all, and I'd have no problem with it whatsoever. Why would I? Hell, get the ladies thinking sexy thoughts and it increases the chances for the guys. That's a good thing.
Booth babes are unseemly, but the prudery and paranoia they seem to instill in some people is even more unseemly.
The sad part is that there is still this common misconception that low self-esteem and depression are easily overcome. The sufferer just simply can't "Start feeling better". Without professional help, there is really no way out, thus limiting his/her options for life and careers.
The really depressing part is that there is no treatment for moderate depression that works significantly better than placebo. SSRIs only actually work on people with severe major depression. The most empirically supported type of talk therapy, CBT, is effective only in anxiety disorders.
There's really no effective treatment for depression, because depression isn't really an illness. It's a rational response to an abusive world. The real sickos are the ones who are ok with the way things are.
Thanks. I can see how that would be the message of that story. But it strikes me how it took Micheal Harrington one sentence to say what Bradbury couldn't convey in pages of fiction.
Can I use this opportunity to push SpaceVenture, from the creators of Space Quest?
They only have 5 days to make $150,000. If you didn't contribute to Double Fine, or to Al Lowe's Leisure Suit Larry remakes, consider maybe helping out here. Space Quest was a great series, and it would be amazing to see a modern take on the concept.
On the bad and/or dull side of Non-Fiction, are works that simply "do nothing for you". CIA Factbooks come to mind. Neat for 12 seconds to make sure you're not mistaking Zimbabwe for Zambia, but then the rest of the 700 pages does nothing for you.
I dunno, simply learning new things is pretty interesting. I'd rather have the CIA factbook with me on a desert island than any work of fiction. When you think about it, "The population of Zambia is 12,000,000" isn't really any less interesting than "a fictional beggar said 'There's only a few of us left.'"
Same kind of thing with fiction. At its best, fiction takes normal life, smooths out the stupid flukes and errors to sculpt a fairly theoretical message from the author.
Couldn't the point have been better made with a well crafted essay? e.g. I always found George Orwell's essays far more interesting than his allegorical fiction. After all, he actually shot that elephant, despite his best efforts not to. The pressure of the "coolies" who he was supposed to be superior to was too much. That's a pretty profound thing to think about. Animal Farm on the other hand, never happened, and it's unclear what relevance it actually has to anything. The dynamics between the animals in Animal Farm could be completely a figment of Orwell's imagination. If such a thing could happen, who's to say it would go down the way Orwell portrayed?
Make me think about what exactly? Why are the mundane conversations of imaginary people worth thinking about? The only thing any work of fiction ever made me think was "wtf is the point of this?".
Non-fiction on the other hand makes me think. The work makes a claim, and I have to think about whether that claim is true or false. Then I have to think about what the implications are of that claim. If a work fails to make a claim, there's not much point in reading it as far as I can tell.
Gee. I wonder if there could be anything else that could cause you to have memory problems. Hmm, what could it be? I'm having trouble remembering myself too.
I'd side with the masses. It's not particularly important what the author intended. It only matters what people take away from it.
If the intent of the author doesn't matter, what's the point of the author? Why not just skip the writing and the reading, make up your own message, and call it good?
However, a contradiction between those two parties doesn't mean an author sucks at getting his/her point across. It just means when the work was released and took on a life of its own, the takeaway was different than what the author originally envisioned. There's nothing wrong with that.
If the point of writing is to communicate, then it absolutely means the author sucked at getting his point across. If the writing is intended to be pure entertainment, then the content doesn't matter at all.
Microsoft learned after their last antitrust investigation, and increased their political contributions by an order of magnitude, without changing their business practices at all. Now that Microsoft has paid the appropriate protection money, they can do whatever they want.
Before you look at it, it's in a quantum superposition of counterfit and authentic states. Looking at the bill collapses that superposition into being actually counterfit or authentic.
The problem is, you can never prove a theory. It's always conceivable that you just haven't found the exception yet. Science is built on falsification, not proof.
A kids trying hes damndest and getting a B is better then a kid getting an easy A.
I agree, if and only if the A is easy because standards are too low. If the A is easy because the kid knows his shit, that's obviously better than a kid struggling to get a B by the same standards.
Again, typical Republican. Arguing from a position of ignorance while displaying complete certitude.
Right there we know why federal express always costs more. They're required to be more expensive by law.
That's what is actually required to provide universal service. Urban dwellers subsidize mail service to rural areas, which historically has made life significantly easier for those who grow our food. This benefits everyone in society.
If you allow private carriers to deliver mail, they don't have a mandate for universal access. That means they don't have to subsidize rural users, so urban users will use private carriers as they are lower cost. This puts the Post Office out of business, eliminates affordable rural postal service, and puts a greater burden on the rural communities that make urban communities possible. That's not good for anyone except the private carriers.
You like that? You like monopolies that force everyone out of business and make things more expensive?
I like monopolies that make things less expensive for society as a whole. The free market is not the solution for every problem.
It's perfectly possible(and has been done) for creationists(YECs, even) to do perfectly adequate science by means of some 'microevolution/macroevolution' flimflam, 'working out the implications of evolution as a contrafactual hypothesis', or simply not thinking about it much from Monday to Friday and thinking the opposite on Sundays.
Not really. I mean, you can do the technical work. But the real work of science is in integrating many different lines of evidence into a model and coming up with testable hypotheses. You can't do that without really thinking things through.
A creationist scientist is going to be a bad biologist. Still, he may be as good of a scientist as someone who is bad for other reasons. There are lots of barely competent people in academia actually. But a creationist will never excel in Biology.
You can play "what if" games all day if you like. There's no evidence for any explanation besides evolution. There is no theory with anywhere near the explanatory power of evolution. Literally, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution".
They don't need to provide funding. Provide specs and let the community do the work. The reason nouveau lags is because reverse engineering takes a lot of time.
Slashdot Mirror
They were probably just stalling while DHS installed keyloggers on any electronics he may have been carrying.
How about sympathy for those of us who are female and work in the industry, then arrive at a trade-show only to see women used purely as decoration over-and-over-and-over again ?
What exactly do you want sympathy for? Are you forbidden to make presentations at these events where women are used purely as decoration? No? Are you just jealous there are no men to ogle?
How does this affect you negatively?
as evidenced by the fact that the usage of "booth babes" is ubiquitous at such events
IIRC, PAX has no booth babes.
Is it really that hard to picture the scenario where the situation is reversed, that it's women that are most of the people who are into what you're into, and everywhere you go at the show/convention there's big burly guys in bikini briefs getting paid to stand around and show off the products to you for no visibly apparent reason related to the product? How comfortable would you be about that?
It's not hard to picture that at all, and I'd have no problem with it whatsoever. Why would I? Hell, get the ladies thinking sexy thoughts and it increases the chances for the guys. That's a good thing.
Booth babes are unseemly, but the prudery and paranoia they seem to instill in some people is even more unseemly.
The sad part is that there is still this common misconception that low self-esteem and depression are easily overcome. The sufferer just simply can't "Start feeling better". Without professional help, there is really no way out, thus limiting his/her options for life and careers.
The really depressing part is that there is no treatment for moderate depression that works significantly better than placebo. SSRIs only actually work on people with severe major depression. The most empirically supported type of talk therapy, CBT, is effective only in anxiety disorders.
There's really no effective treatment for depression, because depression isn't really an illness. It's a rational response to an abusive world. The real sickos are the ones who are ok with the way things are.
Wake me up when someone intelligent is interviewed.
If they were intelligent, they wouldn't be working as "booth babes", would they?
Thanks. I can see how that would be the message of that story. But it strikes me how it took Micheal Harrington one sentence to say what Bradbury couldn't convey in pages of fiction.
Can I use this opportunity to push SpaceVenture, from the creators of Space Quest?
They only have 5 days to make $150,000. If you didn't contribute to Double Fine, or to Al Lowe's Leisure Suit Larry remakes, consider maybe helping out here. Space Quest was a great series, and it would be amazing to see a modern take on the concept.
On the bad and/or dull side of Non-Fiction, are works that simply "do nothing for you". CIA Factbooks come to mind. Neat for 12 seconds to make sure you're not mistaking Zimbabwe for Zambia, but then the rest of the 700 pages does nothing for you.
I dunno, simply learning new things is pretty interesting. I'd rather have the CIA factbook with me on a desert island than any work of fiction. When you think about it, "The population of Zambia is 12,000,000" isn't really any less interesting than "a fictional beggar said 'There's only a few of us left.'"
Same kind of thing with fiction. At its best, fiction takes normal life, smooths out the stupid flukes and errors to sculpt a fairly theoretical message from the author.
Couldn't the point have been better made with a well crafted essay? e.g. I always found George Orwell's essays far more interesting than his allegorical fiction. After all, he actually shot that elephant, despite his best efforts not to. The pressure of the "coolies" who he was supposed to be superior to was too much. That's a pretty profound thing to think about. Animal Farm on the other hand, never happened, and it's unclear what relevance it actually has to anything. The dynamics between the animals in Animal Farm could be completely a figment of Orwell's imagination. If such a thing could happen, who's to say it would go down the way Orwell portrayed?
I remember when TLC used to have shows like this, but now it's PBS doing the job.
Thank you socialism.
Make me think about what exactly? Why are the mundane conversations of imaginary people worth thinking about? The only thing any work of fiction ever made me think was "wtf is the point of this?".
Non-fiction on the other hand makes me think. The work makes a claim, and I have to think about whether that claim is true or false. Then I have to think about what the implications are of that claim. If a work fails to make a claim, there's not much point in reading it as far as I can tell.
Gee. I wonder if there could be anything else that could cause you to have memory problems. Hmm, what could it be? I'm having trouble remembering myself too.
I'd side with the masses. It's not particularly important what the author intended. It only matters what people take away from it.
If the intent of the author doesn't matter, what's the point of the author? Why not just skip the writing and the reading, make up your own message, and call it good?
However, a contradiction between those two parties doesn't mean an author sucks at getting his/her point across. It just means when the work was released and took on a life of its own, the takeaway was different than what the author originally envisioned. There's nothing wrong with that.
If the point of writing is to communicate, then it absolutely means the author sucked at getting his point across. If the writing is intended to be pure entertainment, then the content doesn't matter at all.
This is why I don't read fiction. All that prose and it's totally unclear what we're supposed to take away from it. What's the point of this story?
Developer time is spent once. User time is spent as often as the program is used. The difference is that businesses can externalize wasted user time.
Microsoft learned after their last antitrust investigation, and increased their political contributions by an order of magnitude, without changing their business practices at all. Now that Microsoft has paid the appropriate protection money, they can do whatever they want.
There's a difference between a theory and a theorem. Science is not math.
Before you look at it, it's in a quantum superposition of counterfit and authentic states. Looking at the bill collapses that superposition into being actually counterfit or authentic.
The problem is, you can never prove a theory. It's always conceivable that you just haven't found the exception yet. Science is built on falsification, not proof.
A kids trying hes damndest and getting a B is better then a kid getting an easy A.
I agree, if and only if the A is easy because standards are too low. If the A is easy because the kid knows his shit, that's obviously better than a kid struggling to get a B by the same standards.
Denying them? I wasn't aware of them.
Again, typical Republican. Arguing from a position of ignorance while displaying complete certitude.
Right there we know why federal express always costs more. They're required to be more expensive by law.
That's what is actually required to provide universal service. Urban dwellers subsidize mail service to rural areas, which historically has made life significantly easier for those who grow our food. This benefits everyone in society.
If you allow private carriers to deliver mail, they don't have a mandate for universal access. That means they don't have to subsidize rural users, so urban users will use private carriers as they are lower cost. This puts the Post Office out of business, eliminates affordable rural postal service, and puts a greater burden on the rural communities that make urban communities possible. That's not good for anyone except the private carriers.
You like that? You like monopolies that force everyone out of business and make things more expensive?
I like monopolies that make things less expensive for society as a whole. The free market is not the solution for every problem.
You're an idiot.
That's rich.
It's perfectly possible(and has been done) for creationists(YECs, even) to do perfectly adequate science by means of some 'microevolution/macroevolution' flimflam, 'working out the implications of evolution as a contrafactual hypothesis', or simply not thinking about it much from Monday to Friday and thinking the opposite on Sundays.
Not really. I mean, you can do the technical work. But the real work of science is in integrating many different lines of evidence into a model and coming up with testable hypotheses. You can't do that without really thinking things through.
A creationist scientist is going to be a bad biologist. Still, he may be as good of a scientist as someone who is bad for other reasons. There are lots of barely competent people in academia actually. But a creationist will never excel in Biology.
Are you seriously denying the existence of the Private Express Statutes? Typical Republican. Inconvenient facts don't exist.
Anyone intelligent considers competing theories side by side until one is proved.
Anyone intelligent consideres competing theories side by side until all but one is disproven.
You can play "what if" games all day if you like. There's no evidence for any explanation besides evolution. There is no theory with anywhere near the explanatory power of evolution. Literally, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution".
They don't need to provide funding. Provide specs and let the community do the work. The reason nouveau lags is because reverse engineering takes a lot of time.