Except that the communist experiment has been attempted and shown to fail in several venues. Apples and oranges...it's not the same thing.
Marxism, Leninism, and Stalinism have been attempted and allegedly shown to fail (by Western, capitalist societies with completely different mores and goals), but in places like Christiana, Denmark, communism is working out just fine. Not to mention, I don't see where "progressive-ism" is an oustanding success, either.
So yea, actually, they are the same thing - both are political philosophies, and both have been demonized by virtue of people who don't actually believe in the aforementioned philosophy claiming to be an adherent, and thus damaged support for the movements.
>the vast majority of employees whose jobs will be eliminated will be notified over the next six months.
Really? With that one half of a sentence, you've just killed morale for 6+ months.
You're looking at it all wrong, from an employee mentality.
You need to look at it from a PHB mentality - telling people they *might* get fired in the next 6 months is incentive for them to work harder so that their job isn't the one that's cut (nevermind the fact that management decided who was to go a long, long time ago).
I particularly like it how big companies use the same terms to get rid of a junk computer as they do to get rid of people. It is time to surplus or excess uneeded assets...
And now you should understand why they call it the Human Resources department and not Human Relations.
Right, which means people have soured on the term, and thus if a real progressive ever runs, they're pretty much guaranteed to lose short of a miracle.
Same thing happened to the term "communist" back in the 1950's.
You're a good statistician and sociologist. Strongly persuaded by the narrow anecdote you used to support your loosely worded presumptuous conclusion.
I know, right? Do you think CNN will hire me to do a show, or should I shoot more towards the ultra-partisan MSNBC/FOX News crowds? When it comes to BS I can make Ann Coulter look like a rank amateur.
'Course, were I to respond in a slightly less sardonic manner, I'd mention how if you're the sort of person who extrapolates someone's personal anecdote about their own officemates to imply a globally-viable statistic, well, that little bit o' idiocy is on you, not me.
So, no, there is not a "shortage of girls in tech." Now, there may be a "shortage of girls" in certain avenues of the tech industry
Were they in actual tech roles, or non tech roles?
Seems about 50/50 - half are either in management or administrative roles, the rest are either developers, project coordinators, or systems designers and installers. In my department, 2/3 of the managers are women.
My own experience says I've never seen more than about 10-15% female actually in tech roles. I've never worked at a place which didn't have women in tech roles, but there's always been a bit of a skewing towards males.
It does seem that tech jobs tend to have more men than women in them (sure, half the women are devs, but 80% of the men are too), but I don't believe the reasoning to be nearly as misogynistic as some of these "gurls up" organizations want us to think. It's just that most chicks don't dig coding, just like most men aren't big fans of sewing. Has nothing to do with ability.
Heck, when I was in school, the ratio was about the same in my classes, and seemed to drop as you went to more advanced classes.
Interesting, I had the opposite experience - I recall 1 female student in most of my 100-level classes, but when I came back to the higher level stuff after a 2 year hiatus, about a 1/4 of the students were ladies; still not "equal numbers," but significantly higher enrollment than a few years prior.
But my experience (yes, purely anecdotal, and I don't claim otherwise) is that out of 27 cubes the most I've ever seen is 2-3 women, and that's an upper bound.
What part of the country? I'm in the Midwest, I wonder if perhaps geographics/local demographics is an influencing factor?
So, no, there is not a "shortage of girls in tech.
Your survey of your immediate surroundings isn't very convincing in the face of much wider studies and larger data sets. Are you one of those people who doesn't believe in climate change because it's quite cool in your office?
Unlike the author of TFA, who doesn't even bother with facts or statistics at all, but rather predicates their entire platform on the statement "Dur, we need more gurls in tech!"
Seriously, go read TFA. It's not so much an article as an advertisement for the organization.
3 cubes are inhabited by boxes and spare equipment, the rest by people.
Out of 24 cubes with people, a solid half (13 to be precise) are filled with females, the rest, males.
So, no, there is not a "shortage of girls in tech." Now, there may be a "shortage of girls" in certain avenues of the tech industry, but I'll bet dollars against pesos that there's a perfectly reasonable, non-misogynistic reason for at least the majority of those shortages.
Aside from dog whistle theatrics, there's nothing that Rand Paul can do about governments at the local level.
Oh, sure there is! The feds force state and local governments into compliance all the time with three little words:
"Withholding federal funds"
See, the feds will give the states/locals funding based on a certain criteria... then, once the state/locals are wholly dependent on those federal dollars, the feds will start tying more and more strings on, with the consequence of "if you don't toe the line, we'll cut your funding and you'll be screwed."
Seriously, the feds are like dope dealers, and they treat taxpayer monies like crack: First taste is free, but once you're hooked...
Aww, you should have kept reading, at least to the part where the author says, "the math works out this way," but doesn't actually show his work.
Funny how something that caused me to fail Geometry in high school is a perfectly acceptable response to requests for information in adult life, idn't it?
When people complain about "the 1 percent," they're actually complaining about the 0.1 percent.
Because the reality is yea, while you might be well-off enough to qualify as "part of the 1 percent," you're still a dirt-poor worthless piece of shit in the eyes of the 0.1% who really do own/run everything.
Amazing to see that people are still falling for Reagan's "welfare queen" fantasy.
I can think of 2 reasons:
1) Because it's not a total fantasy
2) Because it affirms their pre-existing beliefs about people on welfare.
Regarding #1 - I know of at least 3 families on welfare. 2 of them are hard working people who, in some way or another, got shafted by circumstances beyond their control, and wouldn't be able to survive without the assistance, regardless of how hard they work. The third contains your stereotypical "welfare queen;" the one who hasn't had a job in 5 years, gets $10,000/yr in tax refunds (even though they maybe pay $3,000 in) and immediately blow it on big screen TVs and rims for the car they can't afford, and refuses to buy groceries when she's out of food stamps but continues to frequent expensive restaurants.
Granted, it's an incredibly small sample size, but the fact is that 33.3% of the families I know who are on some form of welfare abuse it. That's a significant number*.
* And yet, the amount of taxpayer money spend on welfare cheats is but a grain of sand on an endless beach compared to the amount our government "leaders" give to their buddies companies in the form of corporate welfare. Which is why I tend to ignore people who bitch about "welfare queens" without ever mentioning Shell or Pfizer.
You cannot get welfare if you are in that situation... But keep on thinking that.
What gets me is that chumps like AC here bitch endlessly about the pittance a person on welfare receives, yet you never hear them say word 1 about corporate welfare, which has zero benefit to taxpayers and costs hundreds of billions every year.
where else can you get hundreds of channels of TV i hate and crappy internet for one low price of $200 a month? what else would i do if i didn't have 400 channels of TV? how else would i watch commercials?
We changed comcast TV to the lowest package that you can get - just the local stations, and if we want something else we watch Netflix.
You're not really paying a cable company to provide you with content you could get for free OTA, are you?
I've thought about signing back up for cable so I can watch Animal Planet (big fans of Caesar and Jackson in my household), but they won't let me de-couple the $30-50 fee for "local broadcast channels."
I mean granted, maybe some people here can tell me how a single family home can use that much bandwidth (downloading several dozen torrents simultaneously?), but my family doesn't even use half of our 30 Megabit/second bandwidth.
You kids are really still posting/signing petitions on the White House site?
Even after several years of them all but telling us "this is purely for show, we will never honor any of the requests in these?"
There's a point where the definition of insanity intersects with the definition of absolutely goddamn brainlessness. That point is, apparently, the We The People petition site.
How to avoid being manipulated by online poll results
Short answer: don't buy into online poll results.
Polls are one of the worst methods of "information gathering" known to man, in terms of accuracy; online polls, doubly so. Not only do you have to be concerned with how the polls are worded, how large a sample size is used, and what group of people were used for the sample, you also have to consider that not every poll respondent is answering honestly 100% of the time. Take the "drug use" polls, many of which are now saying that marijuana use is up in teens. Is usage really up? Is the question just worded in a different way than the last poll? Or has the recent bi-state decriminalization caused more people to be willing to be honest in a poll that asks them if they're doing something that may be illegal where they live?
Trouble is, it seems, is that most people will ignore flawed methodology if the result of the poll is confluent with their pre-existing beliefs.
You didn't read any of the rest of my post, did you?
Why would I? This is Slashdot, reading whole posts prior to responding is for noobs.
Kidding aside, digital transactions are easily taxed (and traced and monitored and logged), which is why service personnel tend to prefer cash tips. Couple that with the fact that I indeed "live in a culture that is fundamentally opposed to paying people a reasonable wage," I'm all about helping those guys supplement their crap paycheck with tax-free donations.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that the communist experiment has been attempted and shown to fail in several venues. Apples and oranges...it's not the same thing.
Marxism, Leninism, and Stalinism have been attempted and allegedly shown to fail (by Western, capitalist societies with completely different mores and goals), but in places like Christiana, Denmark, communism is working out just fine. Not to mention, I don't see where "progressive-ism" is an oustanding success, either.
So yea, actually, they are the same thing - both are political philosophies, and both have been demonized by virtue of people who don't actually believe in the aforementioned philosophy claiming to be an adherent, and thus damaged support for the movements.
>the vast majority of employees whose jobs will be eliminated will be notified over the next six months.
Really? With that one half of a sentence, you've just killed morale for 6+ months.
You're looking at it all wrong, from an employee mentality.
You need to look at it from a PHB mentality - telling people they *might* get fired in the next 6 months is incentive for them to work harder so that their job isn't the one that's cut (nevermind the fact that management decided who was to go a long, long time ago).
It's amazing that this guy can run the company into the ground and still have a job. How badly do you have to screw up to get fired as a CEO?
looks a Ballmer
Pretty bad, apparently...
I particularly like it how big companies use the same terms to get rid of a junk computer as they do to get rid of people. It is time to surplus or excess uneeded assets...
And now you should understand why they call it the Human Resources department and not Human Relations.
RE: To whomever modded this post "Flamebait" -
Thank you. If only we could publicly point that shit out when politicians say it on the campaign trail.
Right, which means people have soured on the term, and thus if a real progressive ever runs, they're pretty much guaranteed to lose short of a miracle.
Same thing happened to the term "communist" back in the 1950's.
And corporations are people, my friend...
You're a good statistician and sociologist. Strongly persuaded by the narrow anecdote you used to support your loosely worded presumptuous conclusion.
I know, right? Do you think CNN will hire me to do a show, or should I shoot more towards the ultra-partisan MSNBC/FOX News crowds? When it comes to BS I can make Ann Coulter look like a rank amateur.
'Course, were I to respond in a slightly less sardonic manner, I'd mention how if you're the sort of person who extrapolates someone's personal anecdote about their own officemates to imply a globally-viable statistic, well, that little bit o' idiocy is on you, not me.
Slightly less sardonic...
Were they in actual tech roles, or non tech roles?
Seems about 50/50 - half are either in management or administrative roles, the rest are either developers, project coordinators, or systems designers and installers. In my department, 2/3 of the managers are women.
My own experience says I've never seen more than about 10-15% female actually in tech roles. I've never worked at a place which didn't have women in tech roles, but there's always been a bit of a skewing towards males.
It does seem that tech jobs tend to have more men than women in them (sure, half the women are devs, but 80% of the men are too), but I don't believe the reasoning to be nearly as misogynistic as some of these "gurls up" organizations want us to think. It's just that most chicks don't dig coding, just like most men aren't big fans of sewing. Has nothing to do with ability.
Heck, when I was in school, the ratio was about the same in my classes, and seemed to drop as you went to more advanced classes.
Interesting, I had the opposite experience - I recall 1 female student in most of my 100-level classes, but when I came back to the higher level stuff after a 2 year hiatus, about a 1/4 of the students were ladies; still not "equal numbers," but significantly higher enrollment than a few years prior.
But my experience (yes, purely anecdotal, and I don't claim otherwise) is that out of 27 cubes the most I've ever seen is 2-3 women, and that's an upper bound.
What part of the country? I'm in the Midwest, I wonder if perhaps geographics/local demographics is an influencing factor?
So, no, there is not a "shortage of girls in tech.
Your survey of your immediate surroundings isn't very convincing in the face of much wider studies and larger data sets. Are you one of those people who doesn't believe in climate change because it's quite cool in your office?
Unlike the author of TFA, who doesn't even bother with facts or statistics at all, but rather predicates their entire platform on the statement "Dur, we need more gurls in tech!"
Seriously, go read TFA. It's not so much an article as an advertisement for the organization.
But were they young, cute girls?
No...
OK, suddenly I have a "good" reason to support this ChickTech idea...
It means "Cow shit."
Looking around my cube farm:
3 rows of 9 cubes for a total of 27 cubes.
3 cubes are inhabited by boxes and spare equipment, the rest by people.
Out of 24 cubes with people, a solid half (13 to be precise) are filled with females, the rest, males.
So, no, there is not a "shortage of girls in tech." Now, there may be a "shortage of girls" in certain avenues of the tech industry, but I'll bet dollars against pesos that there's a perfectly reasonable, non-misogynistic reason for at least the majority of those shortages.
Aside from dog whistle theatrics, there's nothing that Rand Paul can do about governments at the local level.
Oh, sure there is! The feds force state and local governments into compliance all the time with three little words:
"Withholding federal funds"
See, the feds will give the states/locals funding based on a certain criteria... then, once the state/locals are wholly dependent on those federal dollars, the feds will start tying more and more strings on, with the consequence of "if you don't toe the line, we'll cut your funding and you'll be screwed."
Seriously, the feds are like dope dealers, and they treat taxpayer monies like crack: First taste is free, but once you're hooked...
Aww, you should have kept reading, at least to the part where the author says, "the math works out this way," but doesn't actually show his work.
Funny how something that caused me to fail Geometry in high school is a perfectly acceptable response to requests for information in adult life, idn't it?
I want to add something else. The 1% is a myth.
No, it's a misnomer.
http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...
When people complain about "the 1 percent," they're actually complaining about the 0.1 percent.
Because the reality is yea, while you might be well-off enough to qualify as "part of the 1 percent," you're still a dirt-poor worthless piece of shit in the eyes of the 0.1% who really do own/run everything.
Amazing to see that people are still falling for Reagan's "welfare queen" fantasy.
I can think of 2 reasons:
1) Because it's not a total fantasy
2) Because it affirms their pre-existing beliefs about people on welfare.
Regarding #1 - I know of at least 3 families on welfare. 2 of them are hard working people who, in some way or another, got shafted by circumstances beyond their control, and wouldn't be able to survive without the assistance, regardless of how hard they work. The third contains your stereotypical "welfare queen;" the one who hasn't had a job in 5 years, gets $10,000/yr in tax refunds (even though they maybe pay $3,000 in) and immediately blow it on big screen TVs and rims for the car they can't afford, and refuses to buy groceries when she's out of food stamps but continues to frequent expensive restaurants.
Granted, it's an incredibly small sample size, but the fact is that 33.3% of the families I know who are on some form of welfare abuse it. That's a significant number*.
* And yet, the amount of taxpayer money spend on welfare cheats is but a grain of sand on an endless beach compared to the amount our government "leaders" give to their buddies companies in the form of corporate welfare. Which is why I tend to ignore people who bitch about "welfare queens" without ever mentioning Shell or Pfizer.
-- CanHasDIY, preserving mods
... or maybe not, if I forget to check the "post as AC" box...
Well scheisse.
You cannot get welfare if you are in that situation... But keep on thinking that.
What gets me is that chumps like AC here bitch endlessly about the pittance a person on welfare receives, yet you never hear them say word 1 about corporate welfare, which has zero benefit to taxpayers and costs hundreds of billions every year.
Straining at gnats while swallowing camels.
-- CanHasDIY, preserving mods
I guess living in the midwest, where it's not uncommon for a person to put a big-ass antenna up on their property.
Hadn't considered the space limitations of those residing in cattle chutes, er, I mean, cities.
If that's the case, just sign up for Aero! *snicker*
where else can you get hundreds of channels of TV i hate and crappy internet for one low price of $200 a month?
what else would i do if i didn't have 400 channels of TV? how else would i watch commercials?
We changed comcast TV to the lowest package that you can get - just the local stations, and if we want something else we watch Netflix.
You're not really paying a cable company to provide you with content you could get for free OTA, are you?
I've thought about signing back up for cable so I can watch Animal Planet (big fans of Caesar and Jackson in my household), but they won't let me de-couple the $30-50 fee for "local broadcast channels."
So fuck 'em.
I mean granted, maybe some people here can tell me how a single family home can use that much bandwidth (downloading several dozen torrents simultaneously?), but my family doesn't even use half of our 30 Megabit/second bandwidth.
Two words: Minecraft Server.
You kids are really still posting/signing petitions on the White House site?
Even after several years of them all but telling us "this is purely for show, we will never honor any of the requests in these?"
There's a point where the definition of insanity intersects with the definition of absolutely goddamn brainlessness. That point is, apparently, the We The People petition site.
How to avoid being manipulated by online poll results
Short answer: don't buy into online poll results.
Polls are one of the worst methods of "information gathering" known to man, in terms of accuracy; online polls, doubly so. Not only do you have to be concerned with how the polls are worded, how large a sample size is used, and what group of people were used for the sample, you also have to consider that not every poll respondent is answering honestly 100% of the time. Take the "drug use" polls, many of which are now saying that marijuana use is up in teens. Is usage really up? Is the question just worded in a different way than the last poll? Or has the recent bi-state decriminalization caused more people to be willing to be honest in a poll that asks them if they're doing something that may be illegal where they live?
Trouble is, it seems, is that most people will ignore flawed methodology if the result of the poll is confluent with their pre-existing beliefs.
The return of Clippy:
It looks like you're trying to use a finger on a touchscreen.
Would you like some help?
- continue without help
- wipe the grease/food/semen off your nasty hand
- install a different but equally broken driver
- kick Steve Ballmer in the berries
You didn't read any of the rest of my post, did you?
Why would I? This is Slashdot, reading whole posts prior to responding is for noobs.
Kidding aside, digital transactions are easily taxed (and traced and monitored and logged), which is why service personnel tend to prefer cash tips. Couple that with the fact that I indeed "live in a culture that is fundamentally opposed to paying people a reasonable wage," I'm all about helping those guys supplement their crap paycheck with tax-free donations.
Partially because I remember being one of them.