They closed the comments or I would have left my favourite word for that particular piece of anatomy, so I thought I'd send an email instead. Sure, it's nothing on the scale of things, but it really exemplifies the decline of our society. Newspapers - once infulential, once worth reading - reduced to this 'social media' bullshit. And a guy involved in this worthless pursuit contributes just a bit more intolerance to a culture full of it. So depressing...
Anyway, here's the mail:
Hello,
I am from Perth, Australia, the other side of the world to you. I am just so disturbed by your actions in tracing some guy and calling his workplace just for using a word that offended you (I assume) that I had to write and tell you that I consider you much lower as a human being than that guy ever could be. In fact, his joke was slightly amusing. But you, with your intolerance of something so slightly off colour, are a real non-entity. It's people like you - not just you, but all of you in the millions - that are dragging down our liberal western societies. Small minded, mean spirited, and easily offended.
I may have wasted my time sending you this email, but it's less than the amount of time it would have taken you to take out your pathetic vengeance on that poster. Not to mention that you'll be wasting yet more time writing further moronic blog posts - after all it's your job! Actually think of the irony of a guy like you, who basically adds nothing to the world (I mean those ridiculous blogs are available at every newspaper's website in the world, same tired old topics recycled every day) getting a teacher fired. A teacher, someone who actually helps people, who contributes to society. I mean, you're not alone, the vast majority of us basically toil on nothings, it's just a shame that you took out one of the few who actually does do something. Over nothing.
Well, that's about it. Thanks for making me lose yet further faith in society...
Jacques.
p.s. if you want to call my workplace go ahead. I'll make your snooping a little easier: it's an IT consultancy in Australia. Now go!
Fuck, I was wondering where the equivocation would come from and there it is. After being *stunned* by the defense of Apple's crippling their software to damage Palm yesterday I knew it wouldn't take long. The Apple fanboys on Slashdot are so out of control that they can even control the discussion on issues that go to the heart of Slashdot's focus like this IP issue or the crippleware Apple is peddling to hurt their competition.
And for the apologists: I don't have any antipathy toward Apple (except for stunts like this) and recommend their laptops to many people. I also don't have any love for Palm (never even *used* their products). Actually I don't have an emotional connection with *any* company...they're companies...they manufacture products. That's it. Sometimes they do really well, and sometimes their IP or marketing or other departments do really terrible things that are unethical. It's pretty pathetic to actually fall for the marketing and think a company is part of you, I don't care how good the product is.
Actually of all news sites I find Slashdot loads the best. I'm using a Nokia with a fairly small screen, not an iPhone sized one, and it manages to get the column of stories the right width so I don't have to scroll around (well, other than down), and the same with comments. It could be a lot smaller bandwidth wise of course, and I'd love an m.slashdot.org. But compared to mainstream news sites it is magnificent.
And what the FUCK is with mainstream news sites' mobile version being so pathetic? m.theage.com.au is just about worthless - it shows about 6-10 stories in a few categories. Why not show the whole paper like the regular site? If I'm on a long train journey I get through the interesting stories (if any) in about 5 minutes...
Re:Kubuntu is KDE4.2? Thanks for the warning!
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Ubuntu 9.04 Released
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· Score: 1
My feelings pretty much exactly. Just add my being able to 'deal' with the last 6 months of pain from various breakages with 8.10 (which I was very excited to install.) I don't know what's going on over a Kubuntu, it's like they've lost the feel for what makes a release good to users, i.e. lack of insane bugs (as opposed to normal workaroundable bugs, which everything has.)
Actually this decision appears to disapprove of the phone book case (Desktop Marketing), though as they say IceTV didn't dispute the copyright of the TV schedule, they just disputed that they had infringed it, so the court didn't consider the question in depth here. But maybe it'll be overturned in the future.
"It is by no means apparent that the law even before the 1911 Act was to any different effect to that for which the Digital Alliance contends. It may be that the reasoning in Desktop Marketing with respect to compilations is out of line with the understanding of copyright law over many years. These reasons explain the need to treat with some caution the emphasis in Desktop Marketing upon "labour and expense" per se and upon misappropriation. However, in the light of the admission of Ice that the Weekly Schedule was an original literary work, this is not an appropriate occasion to take any further the subject of originality in copyright works."
Shopkeeper: Take this object, but beware it carries a terrible curse! Homer: Ooh, that's bad. Shopkeeper: But it comes with a free frogurt! Homer: That's good. Shopkeeper: The frogurt is also cursed. Homer: That's bad. Shopkeeper: But you get your choice of toppings. Homer: That's good! Shopkeeper: The toppings contain potassium benzoate. [Homer looks puzzled] Shopkeeper:...That's bad. Homer: Can I go now?....and just to add some actual comment: with the constant uncovering of bad effects of things thought previously to be entirely safe I find myself beginning to side with the anti-GM people... I mean I don't think it's definitely harmful, but the positive effects are mainly economic (and so reletively uninteresting unless money turns you on)- why can't be just deal with the good old food we're used to and know isn't going to do anything bizarre to our bodies. Not just with GM but with over-processing of any kind. When you've got beverages being made in ways to minimise only cost and maximise only the positive reaction with our taste buds then you're going to get stuff like this.
From what you originally said the GPP's assertion makes perfect sense. You said that the people exposed to porn gave lighter sentences and I believe the GPP meant that this was possibly just because they were less hysterical about sex crime than the non-porn group. Not that the sex crime was not wrong, but that they were less hysterical about it just because it had to do with sex. The assumption is that many in society want tougher sentences for rape not because they are rationally assessing the crime and thinking of a fitting sentence, but because anything to do with sex will get these people whipped up into a frenzy.
As for your ideas about porn, I think you need to see that it is not as simple as you (or Andrea Dworkin and Catherine McKinnon) think. I have watched oodles of porn of all varieties, as have most of my male and some of my female friends. Yet I would personally describe myself as a feminist (just not anti-sex as the aforementioned two, more along the lines of Betty Dodson) and extremely un-misogynist.
Yes, there is horrible misogynist porn on the internet and elsewhere and it makes me wonder just who watches it and it's horrifying. But equally there is some porn that's presents sex really nicely, or just with both genders obviously enjoying the act (a la Annie Sprinkle, Ovidie, etc - look 'em up), or just as complete sexual fun, no politics at all. It's not the case that 'all porn is evil'. It is the case that most people in IT, and on Slashdot watch porn, but I think, from my experience, this group also tends to be less misogynist than the norm... Finally, have a look at this - it ain't porn, but it's a really nice appreciation of cute girls, and there's heaps of stuff like that around... the internet isn't all misogynistic creeps.
erhaps the problem was that you did not structure your email properly and keep it sufficiently succinct
Uh, yeah, perhaps. But why assume all that if you've ever dealt with people by email in business? Here I am, probably in another country to the submitter, and his story rang so true I had to laugh. Also, before complaining about an colleague wouldn't you make real sure what you're complaining about was true? That s/he wasn't giving you the information?
As for succinctness and structure, I have found, over three years of being the only person in charge of a system used by most of management (i.e. above me), that the only way to get anything accross is to make an email a maximum of three paragraphs, each containing a maximum of two sentences. And anything that is mildly complicated should be in a bulleted list. I think that's ridiculous. Basically, most people (especially when reading stuff at work) have something like an 8th grade attention span and literacy level. So you have to be like a newspaper, write for 13 year olds.
Now I know you're thinking, well yeah, that's a skill you develop and what's wrong with that? And you're right, it is something I've learned and so I do it. What's wrong with it though is that sometimes when describing a complex concept you can't really describe it to a 13 year old, and you're not working with 13 year olds so really you should be able to write a dense, yet still clear and uncluttered, paragraph or two setting out the situation as it is and expect your colleagues to read it, maybe twice or even three times, and take it in. It's called reading comprehension and I remember being tested on it in primary school, so apparently it's a valuable skill as well.
But as working in this industry (or I suspect any other) has taught me, literacy and professionalism in email communication is not at all valued. Some of the emails I get make me cringe, it's like they were written by that 13 year old, but to a friend about what they did on the weekend, not something important.
Anyway, that's enough of a rant. But you really were assuming a lot about this guys colleagues and giving them way too much benefit of the doubt.
More of a term for analysis (or more often, synthesis) of business related data. Data analysis sounds pretty fancy anyway - but it's more often than not a misnomer. Most 'analysis' is really just grouping and trending, and unless you take something out of the data and see the effect you aren't really analysing anything.
Just for interest's sake, analysis means to take apart, while synthesis means to bring together, I think.
Well that would take a day or so, depending on the movie. A lot of the ones I download are golden age Hollywood stuff or foreign films which takes a week or more to download. Plus I like having a good library that I can choose from at whim when I feel like watching a movie.
I think the obvious point you're missing is that harddrives are huge and cheap.
At some point this really has to stop being considered a valid answer. In reality I download five or ten movies a week, some which I watch immediately, some which I don't and watch later. In that same reality I can't be arsed setting up a RAID and buying a 200GB drive every year or so when it's so easy to burn to DVD every week, update my crappy plain text file index (really should use a Db, see above laziness) and when I want to watch a movie I just pull out the disk.
I know, it would be more convenient to have that TB of storage and just be able to pull it up, but for some people (i.e. me) the little inconvenience each week or so is outweighed by the bigger initial inconvenience of setting up a RAID and adding hard drives to it ad infinitum. The other point is that not everyone has the inclination or budget to have enterprise grade storage systems at home;) I know HDDs have a constant rate of failure but I'm still using an 80GB from 2001 in a box from same and hoping it'll keep chugging away for another couple of years...
So my point is, OPs idea is a good one, no doubt fairly trivial to implement, but would be good integrated into Spotlight or Beagle, and would help out those among us without TBs of storage or the desire to acquire it. Horses for courses, eh?:)
...it's nice to see a company realize that a parody only helps them more.
Indeed, or even that behaving socially (as opposed to the MPAA's sociopathic actions) is more important that whether or not GetAFirstLife's action helps them. Reading the letter I was struck by just how ridiculous the expected behaviour of companies is. We expect them to act ultra-selfishly - and of course this is covered by the focus of a corporation, profit above all else. But to see a company have some humour, and even grant something it doesn't need to (possibly for a long term profit motive as suggested by parent, but also possibly just because it can and it's nice) shows that the all-profiting, knee jerk bullshit that we are used to is not at all necessary.
Completely OT, but after reading your sig and noting your use of Wikipedia, I thought I should direct you to this. Interesting discussion of the two terms. Personally, I consider them virtually synonymous in practical usage, though patriotism usually denotes a less aggressive intent of the speaker. Certainly I would be more disturbed by someone who consciously considers themselves nationalist.
In any case, nations, countries, homelands or whatever - all arbitrary and all social constructions. I think we should love our fellow creatures, and base no significant opinion upon where they or we were born by chance.
Of course loving one's society/environment/landscape or whatever isn't terrible, I just don't see the point in arbitrarily using the borders of one's nation to define that area. For example, I live in Subiaco, Perth, Western Australia, Australia, Oceania, Southern Hemisphere, etc. Which one to choose? Most people in around here are pretty patriotic (a recent phenomenon) and choose to take Australia. I probably like my suburb best of all those constructions as it is quite pleasant, but that's about it. Every other level of government is fairly disgusting, State and National.
But above all, I feel no brotherhood or kinship with anyone just because they live or were born anywhere in particular, and I can't see how any other position is reasonably defensible.
An appropriate subject line;) But I have to point you to this article.
You are right to be frustrated by the kind of reasoning that the OP was using, but not because it's impossible to prove a negative, but because it is impossible to completely prove anything so broad as 'Mobile phones do not cause cancer'. The article talks about taking the best bet, which is just looking at the evidence which is of course what everyone does every day with just about every action.
Pedantry regarding provability is pointless. And that sentence was quite nicely alliterative:)
Ok, try this - You have no right to privacy on a public street. It's a well held standard in US courts.
Exactly! I never understand people getting all upset about other people capturing light which happens to have bounced of their body in a public space. You don't own your image, you never had and hopefully you never will.
I have a friend who recently told me a story of him being on holiday with a couple of female friends walking down the street and some guy was taking snaps of the girls. So he gets all macho and goes over and makes the guy delete them. I was a little horrified by this action, I don't care how much of a 'creep' the photographer appeared, and that he apparently had a series of snaps of attractive women on his camera, I just don't see how there's a problem with someone taking your photo, either ethically or legally.
"...allowing you to sniff foods or fragrances before you buy..."
I would have thought this kind of tech would be as much a nightmare for the fragrance industry (perfumes etc.) as easy and cheap reproduction of music is for the music industry.
Like the music industry the fragrance industry is selling something fairly low on utilitarian value, and very high in 'cool' (or sign) value. With the music industry people figured out some time ago that the actual product could be attained without the charge. In the fragrance industry, which is so reliant on sign value over use value that you don't even see or hear references to the supposed use value in advertisements (e.g. "CK One smells so good..."), I can imagine that they would really not want to make use of this technology. They'd want to keep the 'mystique' that surrounds the industry and probably would trot out a line like "Our fragrances are so complex and use the purest hopogo-oil and other exotic ingredients which simply can't be replicated by nasty chemicals".
It's also similar to the challenge that hopefully the diamond industry will face some day, when synthetic diamonds become acceptable to the idiots that pay for real ones. A bit of a waste of technology, but anything that causes less money to flow into these cesspools of human idiocy the better. But IMO, it won't happen with fragrances, really these companies don't even sell the barest shred of a product, just the image, so tech can't really bring them to their knees. Diamonds and music are different while still relying on sign value - you do get something in the end, and if it serves it's main purpose just as well (looking expensive/sounding cool) then the consumer will probably go to the cheaper source.
I've always considered anything done in public (i.e. within the reach of CCTV) to be in the public space and not protected from regular CCTV surveillence - I don't really care if some security guard sees me doing anything I'd be prepared to do in public.
This proposal though, depends on the sort of desire for voyeuristic titilation for which 'we' (being society in general) seem to have an insatiable appetite - implied through the general addiction to reality TV, no matter how banal. In the case of reality TV of course the objects of voyeurism give their explicit consent.
With this proposal we have every act you do in public - every hidden snog in an alley - possibly exposed to the voyeuristic delight of thousands. I don't meant to stigmatise voyeurism, it is obviously a widely held, if taboo, fascination, but I do not think every public act should be potentially watched by thousands. The crime angle is obviously spin, the promoters are depending on people wanting to watch other people without their knowledge, and of course prevention of crime is never a good enough reason to remove essential liberties.
This sort of surveillance does have 1984 connotations, despite the absence of the government seeing into our homes, because it allows every public act to be watched by anonymous masses, and hence yields the potential for social ostracisation of people commiting various non-illegal acts. Imagine the MP or other high profile type 'caught' on camera in a homosexual embrace. Despite the legality of such an act, many such people may not want it to be made public knowledge, and given a secluded enough spot, neither should they have to fear such exposure. Public space can be consumed reletively privately, broadcasting CCTV would remove that right.
I speak of Google only as they speak of themselves. They seek to create a perception that they are different to other mega-corps, that they will value ethics. Indeed they use the extreme (and one of a binary pair) word 'evil' often and openly. I was, and to an extent still am, excited by this, it's the kind of corp we need to see arise - if it is not a contradiction in terms (ethical corp - corps by definition only know profit), which it probably is.
What I did is simply apply logic to Google's statements about their ethics and specifically to the idiot PR-man's comments in this article. Use words like 'evil' and 'sacrifice' and you get judged by how you live up to them. In this case, not very well.
I had thought that myself and the poster I was replying to had agreed that censorship is unethical. Note my usage of 'you' instead of the more formal 'one', more restrictive in scope I think. In any case, I know unfortunately only too well that others will do things I consider unethical and consider themselves to be ethical.
I don't see how you can be involved in censorship in any way and consider yourself ethical. Form me the OFLC board and anyone who works for it is unethical. But censoring excersise of political speech and access to information on history and current affairs is far, far worse.
(I'm going to use the Google terminology of 'Evil' here, even though I find the word hyperbolic and ill-defined in general usage)
an excruciating decision for a company that adopted "don't be evil" as a motto. But management believes it's a worthwhile sacrifice.
That statement is bullshit. The 'worthwhile sacrifice' mentioned is clearly meant to work against the clear contravention of the 'do no evil' motto. However what is being sacrificed? The ethics of Google. What is being gained by the sacrifice? Access to China == profit. So they're sacrificing ethics for profit - that isn't exactly original for a corporation.
More from the article: "We firmly believe, with our culture of innovation, Google can make meaningful and positive contributions to the already impressive pace of development in China," said Andrew McLaughlin, Google's senior policy counsel.
Again, bullshit. Google is an informaiton company. Their entire existence is justified by making access to and use of information easier. If they censor that information based on the petty politics of nationalists (or any other political concern) then they are not serving their purpose. They are in fact reinforcing the policies of censorship and repression in China. If everyone, every company goes along with these policies then what motivation is there to change them?
Here's a real sacrifice: lose profits from lack of presence in China and be ethical and further the cause of free speech. That's a sacrifice, something you'd like, for something better. Not the other way around. Really the way these PR droids use language makes me want to have them lobotomised... and PR school doesn't count.
You obviously don't work for a company where you are considered exempt.
Do you mean expendable? If so, I should hope not:)
You also apparently don't work in a state that has at-will employment.
This is also true - and I wouldn't live in one, not ever. Where you live is always a choice (ok, well not always, but it is for those in NY, the only at-will state I know of, and others in the US) I'm in Australia myself and although the government is doing it's damnedest to weaken our unfair dismissal laws, even after they rammed the changes through we don't come close to at-will. That is just a worship of capital and hence extreme rights for the owners of it, i.e. the employer.
I hope 20 or so of those hours are paid overtime. I can't stand seeing some of my friends (grad lawyers and engineers) doing unpaid overtime because it's 'standard' in the industry or necessary to 'get ahead'. I'm out of here the second the clock strikes five (actually, usually 5 to 5 to get the good bus:) unless there's a project that needs to be worked on to meet deadline and I've got some pre-approved paid overtime (or some agrreed time off in lieu). Happily this is the norm at my company and it is the first job I had out of Uni, and I know it's harder to quit such a job if the culture in your workplace is all about unpaid overtime, but once you start submitting to that bullshit you can wave bye to your life IMO. If I didn't have a good five hours after work to relax and do other things I think I'd go quite mad...
If you're the primary breadwinner shouldn't your husband be keeping the house etc under control? I'm assuming he works part-time or less, if so and you are working full-time it seems that the majority of such tasks should fall to him...
Not at all! Sounds to me like your company is being miserly. Most IT companies, I believe, see the value of continuing education in our field and provide it. At my company, where I have been for two years, I have been on three training courses so far (one of three days, two of a week each). They have been for ITIL foundations, which is required for all employees, even non technical, and two HP Administration courses for products we support and deploy. In all cases I was paid while training as though I was at work, and in two cases I was flown to other cities in Australia, with the expenses taken care of - as is the norm I believe.
In fact this Sunday I'll be off to Melbourne for another course of a week, the second admin course for HPOV Performance Insight. Without the training I can't imaigine being able to deploy and support this quite complex (and not overly intuitive) product, it would in fact be negligent to have me do so.
I'd reccommend taking your need for education to your managemnt quite firmly, and if they won't budge look elsewhere - not just because of this particular issue, but because such behaviour is indicative of a lack of management vision IMO. If they can't outlay some cash now to train for the future it doesn't sound like they'll have much of a future to worry about - at least not a very interesting high growth one.
Slashdot Mirror
They closed the comments or I would have left my favourite word for that particular piece of anatomy, so I thought I'd send an email instead. Sure, it's nothing on the scale of things, but it really exemplifies the decline of our society. Newspapers - once infulential, once worth reading - reduced to this 'social media' bullshit. And a guy involved in this worthless pursuit contributes just a bit more intolerance to a culture full of it. So depressing...
Anyway, here's the mail:
Hello,
I am from Perth, Australia, the other side of the world to you. I am just so disturbed by your actions in tracing some guy and calling his workplace just for using a word that offended you (I assume) that I had to write and tell you that I consider you much lower as a human being than that guy ever could be. In fact, his joke was slightly amusing. But you, with your intolerance of something so slightly off colour, are a real non-entity. It's people like you - not just you, but all of you in the millions - that are dragging down our liberal western societies. Small minded, mean spirited, and easily offended.
I may have wasted my time sending you this email, but it's less than the amount of time it would have taken you to take out your pathetic vengeance on that poster. Not to mention that you'll be wasting yet more time writing further moronic blog posts - after all it's your job! Actually think of the irony of a guy like you, who basically adds nothing to the world (I mean those ridiculous blogs are available at every newspaper's website in the world, same tired old topics recycled every day) getting a teacher fired. A teacher, someone who actually helps people, who contributes to society. I mean, you're not alone, the vast majority of us basically toil on nothings, it's just a shame that you took out one of the few who actually does do something. Over nothing.
Well, that's about it. Thanks for making me lose yet further faith in society...
Jacques.
p.s. if you want to call my workplace go ahead. I'll make your snooping a little easier: it's an IT consultancy in Australia. Now go!
Fuck, I was wondering where the equivocation would come from and there it is. After being *stunned* by the defense of Apple's crippling their software to damage Palm yesterday I knew it wouldn't take long. The Apple fanboys on Slashdot are so out of control that they can even control the discussion on issues that go to the heart of Slashdot's focus like this IP issue or the crippleware Apple is peddling to hurt their competition.
And for the apologists: I don't have any antipathy toward Apple (except for stunts like this) and recommend their laptops to many people. I also don't have any love for Palm (never even *used* their products). Actually I don't have an emotional connection with *any* company...they're companies...they manufacture products. That's it. Sometimes they do really well, and sometimes their IP or marketing or other departments do really terrible things that are unethical. It's pretty pathetic to actually fall for the marketing and think a company is part of you, I don't care how good the product is.
And what the FUCK is with mainstream news sites' mobile version being so pathetic? m.theage.com.au is just about worthless - it shows about 6-10 stories in a few categories. Why not show the whole paper like the regular site? If I'm on a long train journey I get through the interesting stories (if any) in about 5 minutes...
My feelings pretty much exactly. Just add my being able to 'deal' with the last 6 months of pain from various breakages with 8.10 (which I was very excited to install.) I don't know what's going on over a Kubuntu, it's like they've lost the feel for what makes a release good to users, i.e. lack of insane bugs (as opposed to normal workaroundable bugs, which everything has.)
Actually this decision appears to disapprove of the phone book case (Desktop Marketing), though as they say IceTV didn't dispute the copyright of the TV schedule, they just disputed that they had infringed it, so the court didn't consider the question in depth here. But maybe it'll be overturned in the future.
"It is by no means apparent that the law even before the 1911 Act was to any different effect to that for which the Digital Alliance contends. It may be that the reasoning in Desktop Marketing with respect to compilations is out of line with the understanding of copyright law over many years. These reasons explain the need to treat with some caution the emphasis in Desktop Marketing upon "labour and expense" per se and upon misappropriation. However, in the light of the admission of Ice that the Weekly Schedule was an original literary work, this is not an appropriate occasion to take any further the subject of originality in copyright works."
Shopkeeper: Take this object, but beware it carries a terrible curse! ...That's bad. ....and just to add some actual comment: with the constant uncovering of bad effects of things thought previously to be entirely safe I find myself beginning to side with the anti-GM people... I mean I don't think it's definitely harmful, but the positive effects are mainly economic (and so reletively uninteresting unless money turns you on)- why can't be just deal with the good old food we're used to and know isn't going to do anything bizarre to our bodies. Not just with GM but with over-processing of any kind. When you've got beverages being made in ways to minimise only cost and maximise only the positive reaction with our taste buds then you're going to get stuff like this.
Homer: Ooh, that's bad.
Shopkeeper: But it comes with a free frogurt!
Homer: That's good.
Shopkeeper: The frogurt is also cursed.
Homer: That's bad.
Shopkeeper: But you get your choice of toppings.
Homer: That's good!
Shopkeeper: The toppings contain potassium benzoate.
[Homer looks puzzled]
Shopkeeper:
Homer: Can I go now?
As for your ideas about porn, I think you need to see that it is not as simple as you (or Andrea Dworkin and Catherine McKinnon) think. I have watched oodles of porn of all varieties, as have most of my male and some of my female friends. Yet I would personally describe myself as a feminist (just not anti-sex as the aforementioned two, more along the lines of Betty Dodson) and extremely un-misogynist.
Yes, there is horrible misogynist porn on the internet and elsewhere and it makes me wonder just who watches it and it's horrifying. But equally there is some porn that's presents sex really nicely, or just with both genders obviously enjoying the act (a la Annie Sprinkle, Ovidie, etc - look 'em up), or just as complete sexual fun, no politics at all. It's not the case that 'all porn is evil'. It is the case that most people in IT, and on Slashdot watch porn, but I think, from my experience, this group also tends to be less misogynist than the norm... Finally, have a look at this - it ain't porn, but it's a really nice appreciation of cute girls, and there's heaps of stuff like that around... the internet isn't all misogynistic creeps.
erhaps the problem was that you did not structure your email properly and keep it sufficiently succinct
Uh, yeah, perhaps. But why assume all that if you've ever dealt with people by email in business? Here I am, probably in another country to the submitter, and his story rang so true I had to laugh. Also, before complaining about an colleague wouldn't you make real sure what you're complaining about was true? That s/he wasn't giving you the information?
As for succinctness and structure, I have found, over three years of being the only person in charge of a system used by most of management (i.e. above me), that the only way to get anything accross is to make an email a maximum of three paragraphs, each containing a maximum of two sentences. And anything that is mildly complicated should be in a bulleted list. I think that's ridiculous. Basically, most people (especially when reading stuff at work) have something like an 8th grade attention span and literacy level. So you have to be like a newspaper, write for 13 year olds.
Now I know you're thinking, well yeah, that's a skill you develop and what's wrong with that? And you're right, it is something I've learned and so I do it. What's wrong with it though is that sometimes when describing a complex concept you can't really describe it to a 13 year old, and you're not working with 13 year olds so really you should be able to write a dense, yet still clear and uncluttered, paragraph or two setting out the situation as it is and expect your colleagues to read it, maybe twice or even three times, and take it in. It's called reading comprehension and I remember being tested on it in primary school, so apparently it's a valuable skill as well.
But as working in this industry (or I suspect any other) has taught me, literacy and professionalism in email communication is not at all valued. Some of the emails I get make me cringe, it's like they were written by that 13 year old, but to a friend about what they did on the weekend, not something important.
Anyway, that's enough of a rant. But you really were assuming a lot about this guys colleagues and giving them way too much benefit of the doubt.
More of a term for analysis (or more often, synthesis) of business related data. Data analysis sounds pretty fancy anyway - but it's more often than not a misnomer. Most 'analysis' is really just grouping and trending, and unless you take something out of the data and see the effect you aren't really analysing anything.
Just for interest's sake, analysis means to take apart, while synthesis means to bring together, I think.
Well that would take a day or so, depending on the movie. A lot of the ones I download are golden age Hollywood stuff or foreign films which takes a week or more to download. Plus I like having a good library that I can choose from at whim when I feel like watching a movie.
I think the obvious point you're missing is that harddrives are huge and cheap.
At some point this really has to stop being considered a valid answer. In reality I download five or ten movies a week, some which I watch immediately, some which I don't and watch later. In that same reality I can't be arsed setting up a RAID and buying a 200GB drive every year or so when it's so easy to burn to DVD every week, update my crappy plain text file index (really should use a Db, see above laziness) and when I want to watch a movie I just pull out the disk.
I know, it would be more convenient to have that TB of storage and just be able to pull it up, but for some people (i.e. me) the little inconvenience each week or so is outweighed by the bigger initial inconvenience of setting up a RAID and adding hard drives to it ad infinitum. The other point is that not everyone has the inclination or budget to have enterprise grade storage systems at home;) I know HDDs have a constant rate of failure but I'm still using an 80GB from 2001 in a box from same and hoping it'll keep chugging away for another couple of years...
So my point is, OPs idea is a good one, no doubt fairly trivial to implement, but would be good integrated into Spotlight or Beagle, and would help out those among us without TBs of storage or the desire to acquire it. Horses for courses, eh?:)
Indeed, or even that behaving socially (as opposed to the MPAA's sociopathic actions) is more important that whether or not GetAFirstLife's action helps them. Reading the letter I was struck by just how ridiculous the expected behaviour of companies is. We expect them to act ultra-selfishly - and of course this is covered by the focus of a corporation, profit above all else. But to see a company have some humour, and even grant something it doesn't need to (possibly for a long term profit motive as suggested by parent, but also possibly just because it can and it's nice) shows that the all-profiting, knee jerk bullshit that we are used to is not at all necessary.
Completely OT, but after reading your sig and noting your use of Wikipedia, I thought I should direct you to this. Interesting discussion of the two terms. Personally, I consider them virtually synonymous in practical usage, though patriotism usually denotes a less aggressive intent of the speaker. Certainly I would be more disturbed by someone who consciously considers themselves nationalist.
In any case, nations, countries, homelands or whatever - all arbitrary and all social constructions. I think we should love our fellow creatures, and base no significant opinion upon where they or we were born by chance.
Of course loving one's society/environment/landscape or whatever isn't terrible, I just don't see the point in arbitrarily using the borders of one's nation to define that area. For example, I live in Subiaco, Perth, Western Australia, Australia, Oceania, Southern Hemisphere, etc. Which one to choose? Most people in around here are pretty patriotic (a recent phenomenon) and choose to take Australia. I probably like my suburb best of all those constructions as it is quite pleasant, but that's about it. Every other level of government is fairly disgusting, State and National.
But above all, I feel no brotherhood or kinship with anyone just because they live or were born anywhere in particular, and I can't see how any other position is reasonably defensible.
You are right to be frustrated by the kind of reasoning that the OP was using, but not because it's impossible to prove a negative, but because it is impossible to completely prove anything so broad as 'Mobile phones do not cause cancer'. The article talks about taking the best bet, which is just looking at the evidence which is of course what everyone does every day with just about every action.
Pedantry regarding provability is pointless. And that sentence was quite nicely alliterative:)
Ok, try this - You have no right to privacy on a public street. It's a well held standard in US courts.
Exactly! I never understand people getting all upset about other people capturing light which happens to have bounced of their body in a public space. You don't own your image, you never had and hopefully you never will.
I have a friend who recently told me a story of him being on holiday with a couple of female friends walking down the street and some guy was taking snaps of the girls. So he gets all macho and goes over and makes the guy delete them. I was a little horrified by this action, I don't care how much of a 'creep' the photographer appeared, and that he apparently had a series of snaps of attractive women on his camera, I just don't see how there's a problem with someone taking your photo, either ethically or legally.
"...allowing you to sniff foods or fragrances before you buy..."
I would have thought this kind of tech would be as much a nightmare for the fragrance industry (perfumes etc.) as easy and cheap reproduction of music is for the music industry.
Like the music industry the fragrance industry is selling something fairly low on utilitarian value, and very high in 'cool' (or sign) value. With the music industry people figured out some time ago that the actual product could be attained without the charge. In the fragrance industry, which is so reliant on sign value over use value that you don't even see or hear references to the supposed use value in advertisements (e.g. "CK One smells so good..."), I can imagine that they would really not want to make use of this technology. They'd want to keep the 'mystique' that surrounds the industry and probably would trot out a line like "Our fragrances are so complex and use the purest hopogo-oil and other exotic ingredients which simply can't be replicated by nasty chemicals".
It's also similar to the challenge that hopefully the diamond industry will face some day, when synthetic diamonds become acceptable to the idiots that pay for real ones. A bit of a waste of technology, but anything that causes less money to flow into these cesspools of human idiocy the better. But IMO, it won't happen with fragrances, really these companies don't even sell the barest shred of a product, just the image, so tech can't really bring them to their knees. Diamonds and music are different while still relying on sign value - you do get something in the end, and if it serves it's main purpose just as well (looking expensive/sounding cool) then the consumer will probably go to the cheaper source.
This proposal though, depends on the sort of desire for voyeuristic titilation for which 'we' (being society in general) seem to have an insatiable appetite - implied through the general addiction to reality TV, no matter how banal. In the case of reality TV of course the objects of voyeurism give their explicit consent.
With this proposal we have every act you do in public - every hidden snog in an alley - possibly exposed to the voyeuristic delight of thousands. I don't meant to stigmatise voyeurism, it is obviously a widely held, if taboo, fascination, but I do not think every public act should be potentially watched by thousands. The crime angle is obviously spin, the promoters are depending on people wanting to watch other people without their knowledge, and of course prevention of crime is never a good enough reason to remove essential liberties.
This sort of surveillance does have 1984 connotations, despite the absence of the government seeing into our homes, because it allows every public act to be watched by anonymous masses, and hence yields the potential for social ostracisation of people commiting various non-illegal acts. Imagine the MP or other high profile type 'caught' on camera in a homosexual embrace. Despite the legality of such an act, many such people may not want it to be made public knowledge, and given a secluded enough spot, neither should they have to fear such exposure. Public space can be consumed reletively privately, broadcasting CCTV would remove that right.
What I did is simply apply logic to Google's statements about their ethics and specifically to the idiot PR-man's comments in this article. Use words like 'evil' and 'sacrifice' and you get judged by how you live up to them. In this case, not very well.
I had thought that myself and the poster I was replying to had agreed that censorship is unethical. Note my usage of 'you' instead of the more formal 'one', more restrictive in scope I think. In any case, I know unfortunately only too well that others will do things I consider unethical and consider themselves to be ethical.
I don't see how you can be involved in censorship in any way and consider yourself ethical. Form me the OFLC board and anyone who works for it is unethical. But censoring excersise of political speech and access to information on history and current affairs is far, far worse.
an excruciating decision for a company that adopted "don't be evil" as a motto. But management believes it's a worthwhile sacrifice.
That statement is bullshit. The 'worthwhile sacrifice' mentioned is clearly meant to work against the clear contravention of the 'do no evil' motto. However what is being sacrificed? The ethics of Google. What is being gained by the sacrifice? Access to China == profit. So they're sacrificing ethics for profit - that isn't exactly original for a corporation.
More from the article: "We firmly believe, with our culture of innovation, Google can make meaningful and positive contributions to the already impressive pace of development in China," said Andrew McLaughlin, Google's senior policy counsel.
Again, bullshit. Google is an informaiton company. Their entire existence is justified by making access to and use of information easier. If they censor that information based on the petty politics of nationalists (or any other political concern) then they are not serving their purpose. They are in fact reinforcing the policies of censorship and repression in China. If everyone, every company goes along with these policies then what motivation is there to change them?
Here's a real sacrifice: lose profits from lack of presence in China and be ethical and further the cause of free speech. That's a sacrifice, something you'd like, for something better. Not the other way around. Really the way these PR droids use language makes me want to have them lobotomised... and PR school doesn't count.
You obviously don't work for a company where you are considered exempt.
Do you mean expendable? If so, I should hope not:)
You also apparently don't work in a state that has at-will employment.
This is also true - and I wouldn't live in one, not ever. Where you live is always a choice (ok, well not always, but it is for those in NY, the only at-will state I know of, and others in the US) I'm in Australia myself and although the government is doing it's damnedest to weaken our unfair dismissal laws, even after they rammed the changes through we don't come close to at-will. That is just a worship of capital and hence extreme rights for the owners of it, i.e. the employer.
I hope 20 or so of those hours are paid overtime. I can't stand seeing some of my friends (grad lawyers and engineers) doing unpaid overtime because it's 'standard' in the industry or necessary to 'get ahead'. I'm out of here the second the clock strikes five (actually, usually 5 to 5 to get the good bus:) unless there's a project that needs to be worked on to meet deadline and I've got some pre-approved paid overtime (or some agrreed time off in lieu). Happily this is the norm at my company and it is the first job I had out of Uni, and I know it's harder to quit such a job if the culture in your workplace is all about unpaid overtime, but once you start submitting to that bullshit you can wave bye to your life IMO. If I didn't have a good five hours after work to relax and do other things I think I'd go quite mad...
If you're the primary breadwinner shouldn't your husband be keeping the house etc under control? I'm assuming he works part-time or less, if so and you are working full-time it seems that the majority of such tasks should fall to him...
In fact this Sunday I'll be off to Melbourne for another course of a week, the second admin course for HPOV Performance Insight. Without the training I can't imaigine being able to deploy and support this quite complex (and not overly intuitive) product, it would in fact be negligent to have me do so.
I'd reccommend taking your need for education to your managemnt quite firmly, and if they won't budge look elsewhere - not just because of this particular issue, but because such behaviour is indicative of a lack of management vision IMO. If they can't outlay some cash now to train for the future it doesn't sound like they'll have much of a future to worry about - at least not a very interesting high growth one.