"Tempest in a teacup" means a small problem that's being overblown. This isn't even a small problem. This is one poorly-informed pundit struggling to get out his daily quota of BS. It always bugs me that idiots like that actually make a living with their idiocy.
Yes, broad terms can be useful. They can also be misused. In political discourse they're mostly misused, especially in the last few years. If we ever want to go back to serious political discourse, we have to start being a little more careful. Next time you think in terms of "the left" or "the right" ask yourself if you're thinking about a coherent thing, or you're just using a too-convenient shorthand.
If you think it's all about "breaking" the teachers unions (or any other pressure group) you might as well give up now. They're not a bunch of gangsters you can throw in jail, they're just a group of people exercising their democratic rights. Maybe they do need to be taken down a notch, but they'll still be a part of any solution.
Ever since a former cowboy actor got himself elected President, U.S politics has been entirely about good guys versus bad guys. That's not a viable model for running a nation — you have to address everybody's concerns. The voucher model addresses your concerns but not other people's. If you keep insisting that it's all or nothing, it will be nothing.
Perhaps you'd find it easier to understand why people opposes something if you stopped thinking of them with big monolithic labels like "the left".
There are three big reasons people oppose vouchers.
First, a lot of vouchers would end up subsidizing religious education. Previous posts have covered this issue. I'll just comment that it's pretty sad when anybody who doesn't want taxpayer support of religion is dismissed as a "leftist". How is it left-wing to not want a theocracy?
Then there's the privilege issue. A lot of vouchers would up subsidizing exclusive schools that just aren't open to most people. Mostly it would be about money, but private schools are going to exclude for all kinds of reasons. I know the left is the one that tends to carp the most about the rich and powerful getting government goodies. But that's just ideology. Conservative ideology tends to cut the rich a bit more slack, but it seems pretty clear that people with plain conservative ideals and values are a little less tolerant. How many middle-American ordinary Republicans were happy about Enron, the more recent stupidity and greed on Wall Street? Does it make sense to you that if you lose your job you get nothing, but if your CEO loses his his he gets millions in golden parachute? And to top this off, you want to subsidize the fancy private school his kids go to?
Finally, there's what the Chinese call the iron rice bowl issue: teachers who like things the way they are and use their union clout to make sure nothing changes. Now technically, I guess that's a lefty thing, since unions are involved. But how lefty are most teachers? Almost all the ones that taught me were pretty damn conservative. I seem to recall seeing a lot of pro-republican and NRA bumper stickers when I walk past the teacher parking lot in high school.
And hey, guess who's out to break this iron rice bowl? A certain "socialist" President who always been in favor of charter schools and who now supports total layoffs at failing schools. Where he (and I) draw the line is diverting public education money into private schools that the public has no say in running.
Dude, you really need to slow down. Not only did you reply to the wrong post, nobody made the statement you're disputing. If you meant to reply to the post I think you meant to reply to, (go up a couple levels from your own post), go back and read it more carefully. You'll find that it says that deduping is important to people who do a lot of virtualization. And it is; if you have 1,000 VMs running Windows Server, you don't want a thousand copies of all the OS files.
Did you miss the part where I mentioned that most of the reviews were positive? In any case, not liking the same things that foodies like doesn't make you an idiot.
Yeah, that makes sense. But I had to do some googling to figure that out. If Slashdot lived up to its pretense to be a news site, the editors would take a few minutes to summarize the concept, or at least point at the appropriate Wikipedia article. It's beyond lame that they can't be bothered.
One wonders if they even bother to read the stories they post — and what they do with the remaining 7 3/4 hours in the work day after they've picked out the stories.
Where I live it can hit 122F (with almost no humidity), and it doesn't kill anyone (unless they're stupid).
I assume not being stupid means staying in the shade, possibly with a fan or even air conditioning. Which means your laptop also has these benefits.
Where on earth do you live? Unless it's North Africa or the Middle East, I think you're mistaken. These are the only places that regularly get that hot -- and the heat regularly kills people who can't get out of it.
I can't be bothered to dig up the link, but there was a story about a restaurant in San Francisco that was so mad at Yelp they had all their employees wear satirical shirts. I looked up that restaurant's Yelp page, and discovered a large number of extremely positive reviews and the usual comments by people who hate everything. All in all, Yelp is a big driver of business for these people. Some people just go ballistic at the slightest hint of criticism.
One thing that does bug me about Yelp is the way people suddenly develop enthusiasms for businesses of limited merit. Three or four times I've gone out for lunch based on Yelp reviews and been a little puzzled as to what all the fuss was about. One was a Halal restaurant that serves OK food, but is a little on the pricey side for what they serve. (Following religious law in food preparation drives up the overhead a bit.) Needless to say, the staff are a little confused by this sudden influx of non-Muslim customers!
As long as they use the correct prefix, I don't really mind whether they use base 2 or 10 to display the numbers.
That's actually the hard part. I'm seen nasty flame wars breakout on Wikipedia when somebody tried to insert that lower case "i". When I'm asked to review engineer-written release notes and UI text (I'm a tech writer), I get really brutal pushback when I try to tell them that "megabyte" means "1,000,000 Bytes", not "2^20 Bytes".
Down deep, most people are language nazis, usually with some weird notions about "correct" usage that have no real basis. Telling people they mean "mibi" not "mega" definitely pushes that button.
Speaking of language nazis: you mean "suffix," not "prefix."
Loss of market share is certainly a factor in this. But not the only one.
One big factor is all the legal and political pressure to play nice with others. One result is that browser choice screen that EU customers get. Another is the fact that they've given no preference to their new free antivirus software; not so long ago, they would have just added it to the Windows install and ignored the complaints.
But I think the biggest change is a cultural shift among all software people. Engineers use to be a lot more arrogant about the superiority of their own favorite way of doing things. MS was particularly bad this way, but the problem was industry-wide. The whole Microsoft-Sun legal tsuris over Java late 90s happened mainly because people in both companies had strong opinions as to what features the language needed and total contempt for other people's opinions on the same issue. Now it's all about MS-Sun (Oracle?) cooperation, even to the point of selling servers with Windows pre-installed.
The sea is a relentless source of destruction; global warming just makes an existing problem worse. And throwing out some sand or rock is at best a short-term solution, as anybody with ocean-front property will tell you.
... more on expanding their selection of movies and shows available for streaming.
What makes you think they're not already doing all they can on that score? They can't show a movie unless the people who own the rights say they can — and the entertainment industry hates and fears the very concept of online availability in any form. Short of hiring mercenaries or mobsters for a little extralegal negotiating (traditional in the industry, but frowned upon these days) there's not much more they can do.
Meanwhile, the more devices they support, the bigger their customer base, and the more clout they have. Hollywood will come around when they realize they can't live without online customers.
And if Google hadn't bought Keyhole, it would be an expensive niche product, not a widely-used free product. As the guy who started this thread pointed out, Google subsidizes GE users for huge amounts in licensing and bandwidth costs. Having an OS alternative doesn't do you much good if you can't afford the incidental costs.
If you want to convince me that you are actually reading my posts, try responding to something I actually said. Basically you're accusing me of seeing Google as some kind of evil force. I don't see them that way, and I haven't said a word that implies I do. Hell, I have friends there, and wouldn't mind working there myself.
Aside from your convoluted logic, your history is wrong. Nobody saw MS as liberating us from IBM. We saw cheap microcomputers as liberating us from IBM. MS became the villain because they did a lot to make the microcomputer revolution a lot more difficult than it had to be. If Digital Research (or Quantum Software Systems, or Convergent, or any other vendor with an OS far superior to MS-DOS) had become the dominant player, they world have been far more popular. MS-bashing isn't based on knee-jerk anti Big Business; it's based on dealing with a lot of really crappy products.
Slashdot Mirror
"Tempest in a teacup" means a small problem that's being overblown. This isn't even a small problem. This is one poorly-informed pundit struggling to get out his daily quota of BS. It always bugs me that idiots like that actually make a living with their idiocy.
I see your "why" and raise you a "huh?" What's your connection between having a higher-mileage car and not wanting to buy a new one?
Yes, broad terms can be useful. They can also be misused. In political discourse they're mostly misused, especially in the last few years. If we ever want to go back to serious political discourse, we have to start being a little more careful. Next time you think in terms of "the left" or "the right" ask yourself if you're thinking about a coherent thing, or you're just using a too-convenient shorthand.
If you think it's all about "breaking" the teachers unions (or any other pressure group) you might as well give up now. They're not a bunch of gangsters you can throw in jail, they're just a group of people exercising their democratic rights. Maybe they do need to be taken down a notch, but they'll still be a part of any solution.
Ever since a former cowboy actor got himself elected President, U.S politics has been entirely about good guys versus bad guys. That's not a viable model for running a nation — you have to address everybody's concerns. The voucher model addresses your concerns but not other people's. If you keep insisting that it's all or nothing, it will be nothing.
Perhaps you'd find it easier to understand why people opposes something if you stopped thinking of them with big monolithic labels like "the left".
There are three big reasons people oppose vouchers.
First, a lot of vouchers would end up subsidizing religious education. Previous posts have covered this issue. I'll just comment that it's pretty sad when anybody who doesn't want taxpayer support of religion is dismissed as a "leftist". How is it left-wing to not want a theocracy?
Then there's the privilege issue. A lot of vouchers would up subsidizing exclusive schools that just aren't open to most people. Mostly it would be about money, but private schools are going to exclude for all kinds of reasons. I know the left is the one that tends to carp the most about the rich and powerful getting government goodies. But that's just ideology. Conservative ideology tends to cut the rich a bit more slack, but it seems pretty clear that people with plain conservative ideals and values are a little less tolerant. How many middle-American ordinary Republicans were happy about Enron, the more recent stupidity and greed on Wall Street? Does it make sense to you that if you lose your job you get nothing, but if your CEO loses his his he gets millions in golden parachute? And to top this off, you want to subsidize the fancy private school his kids go to?
Finally, there's what the Chinese call the iron rice bowl issue: teachers who like things the way they are and use their union clout to make sure nothing changes. Now technically, I guess that's a lefty thing, since unions are involved. But how lefty are most teachers? Almost all the ones that taught me were pretty damn conservative. I seem to recall seeing a lot of pro-republican and NRA bumper stickers when I walk past the teacher parking lot in high school.
And hey, guess who's out to break this iron rice bowl? A certain "socialist" President who always been in favor of charter schools and who now supports total layoffs at failing schools. Where he (and I) draw the line is diverting public education money into private schools that the public has no say in running.
Dude, you really need to slow down. Not only did you reply to the wrong post, nobody made the statement you're disputing. If you meant to reply to the post I think you meant to reply to, (go up a couple levels from your own post), go back and read it more carefully. You'll find that it says that deduping is important to people who do a lot of virtualization. And it is; if you have 1,000 VMs running Windows Server, you don't want a thousand copies of all the OS files.
Did you miss the part where I mentioned that most of the reviews were positive? In any case, not liking the same things that foodies like doesn't make you an idiot.
You mean imply. And I implied no such thing. One can be critical of a web site and still find it useful. And in fact I use Yelp a lot.
Yeah, that makes sense. But I had to do some googling to figure that out. If Slashdot lived up to its pretense to be a news site, the editors would take a few minutes to summarize the concept, or at least point at the appropriate Wikipedia article. It's beyond lame that they can't be bothered.
One wonders if they even bother to read the stories they post — and what they do with the remaining 7 3/4 hours in the work day after they've picked out the stories.
You're talking as a given that Yelp is corrupt. I don't think it is, and the whole point of TFA is that Yelp claims they're not.
Yes, and if the temperature outside is 120 degrees, staying outside will kill you.
Pretty darn hot -- but still way below 122. We're talking temperature where the laptop actually is.
I assume not being stupid means staying in the shade, possibly with a fan or even air conditioning. Which means your laptop also has these benefits.
Where on earth do you live? Unless it's North Africa or the Middle East, I think you're mistaken. These are the only places that regularly get that hot -- and the heat regularly kills people who can't get out of it.
I can't be bothered to dig up the link, but there was a story about a restaurant in San Francisco that was so mad at Yelp they had all their employees wear satirical shirts. I looked up that restaurant's Yelp page, and discovered a large number of extremely positive reviews and the usual comments by people who hate everything. All in all, Yelp is a big driver of business for these people. Some people just go ballistic at the slightest hint of criticism.
One thing that does bug me about Yelp is the way people suddenly develop enthusiasms for businesses of limited merit. Three or four times I've gone out for lunch based on Yelp reviews and been a little puzzled as to what all the fuss was about. One was a Halal restaurant that serves OK food, but is a little on the pricey side for what they serve. (Following religious law in food preparation drives up the overhead a bit.) Needless to say, the staff are a little confused by this sudden influx of non-Muslim customers!
That's actually the hard part. I'm seen nasty flame wars breakout on Wikipedia when somebody tried to insert that lower case "i". When I'm asked to review engineer-written release notes and UI text (I'm a tech writer), I get really brutal pushback when I try to tell them that "megabyte" means "1,000,000 Bytes", not "2^20 Bytes".
Down deep, most people are language nazis, usually with some weird notions about "correct" usage that have no real basis. Telling people they mean "mibi" not "mega" definitely pushes that button.
Speaking of language nazis: you mean "suffix," not "prefix."
Loss of market share is certainly a factor in this. But not the only one.
One big factor is all the legal and political pressure to play nice with others. One result is that browser choice screen that EU customers get. Another is the fact that they've given no preference to their new free antivirus software; not so long ago, they would have just added it to the Windows install and ignored the complaints.
But I think the biggest change is a cultural shift among all software people. Engineers use to be a lot more arrogant about the superiority of their own favorite way of doing things. MS was particularly bad this way, but the problem was industry-wide. The whole Microsoft-Sun legal tsuris over Java late 90s happened mainly because people in both companies had strong opinions as to what features the language needed and total contempt for other people's opinions on the same issue. Now it's all about MS-Sun (Oracle?) cooperation, even to the point of selling servers with Windows pre-installed.
Funny you should mention Venice:
http://www.lifeinitaly.com/tourism/veneto/sinking-venice.asp
The sea is a relentless source of destruction; global warming just makes an existing problem worse. And throwing out some sand or rock is at best a short-term solution, as anybody with ocean-front property will tell you.
No kidding. In Mexico, children buy and consume chili powder as a treat. The scovilian tolerance that requires boggles the mind!
... more on expanding their selection of movies and shows available for streaming.
What makes you think they're not already doing all they can on that score? They can't show a movie unless the people who own the rights say they can — and the entertainment industry hates and fears the very concept of online availability in any form. Short of hiring mercenaries or mobsters for a little extralegal negotiating (traditional in the industry, but frowned upon these days) there's not much more they can do.
Meanwhile, the more devices they support, the bigger their customer base, and the more clout they have. Hollywood will come around when they realize they can't live without online customers.
Funny thing, not everybody runs out and buys every electronic toy on the market. So there's less redundancy in most households.
Darn! I thought it was!
Who's "we"?
I might ask you the same question. You and the other guy are the only two people I've ever met who've considered MS to be the good guys.
And if Google hadn't bought Keyhole, it would be an expensive niche product, not a widely-used free product. As the guy who started this thread pointed out, Google subsidizes GE users for huge amounts in licensing and bandwidth costs. Having an OS alternative doesn't do you much good if you can't afford the incidental costs.
MS wasn't a villain until the 90s? How old are you? Back in the 80s we used to call them "Microsloth" because of all the buggy software they produced.
FYI, cheap microcomputers were around long before MS became big. They didn't create the PC revolution, they just rode the wave.
If you want to convince me that you are actually reading my posts, try responding to something I actually said. Basically you're accusing me of seeing Google as some kind of evil force. I don't see them that way, and I haven't said a word that implies I do. Hell, I have friends there, and wouldn't mind working there myself.
Aside from your convoluted logic, your history is wrong. Nobody saw MS as liberating us from IBM. We saw cheap microcomputers as liberating us from IBM. MS became the villain because they did a lot to make the microcomputer revolution a lot more difficult than it had to be. If Digital Research (or Quantum Software Systems, or Convergent, or any other vendor with an OS far superior to MS-DOS) had become the dominant player, they world have been far more popular. MS-bashing isn't based on knee-jerk anti Big Business; it's based on dealing with a lot of really crappy products.
I did say "cheaper".