I've had them on the phone on more than occasion, the funniest time was was probably the third time they called, it was an asian sounding woman who told me my computer was sending them messages that it was infected. I asked which one as I have three, she said I could go to any one, anyway I humoured her to find out what the scam was. She took me to a remote access site (which in itself seemed perfectly legitimate), anyway at this point I'd seen enough and called her out as a scammer, her response made me laugh, 'Hey you!' She said, 'Stick the phone up your ass!' and then she hung up on me. Awesome customer service:)
Glad they've been caught.
I got the "your computer was infected" call a couple of times, but now it's all "Lower my credit card interest rates" and "We want to give you a free cruise." Regardless, I string them along a bit (if I have the time) and then drop the "you're a slimy scammer!" and (for the male callers) "Next time I'm over at your house f***ing your wife, I'll wait 'til you come home so I can smack you!" or (for the "ladies") "Why don't you go back to turning tricks? It's more honest work." The callers are generally nonplussed, but I enjoy it. Good times.:)
> Practicing law is fun BECAUSE it is
> complicated and too big a field of
> knowledge for any one person to
> know everything...
Yes, FUN! And it's not like anything important is at stake. Not like anyone's life ever got ruined because of cases like you described. No one ever went to jail, lost their job, their business, their family, all their savings, etc., because no one playing was aware of the law that could have freed them. FUN, I tell you!
And it's not like the deck is stacked against the little guy in the first place, or that big companies with big war chests win solely because they have more money to throw at a problem. Or win by attrition. Or that they bought unjust laws in the first place. Yes, it's just LOADS and LOADS of FUN!
Yes, that's why people who have *careers* choose the field that they do. Because they enjoy doing the serious business of whatever field that happens to be. For me, that's IT. I have *fun* doing IT because it allows me to explore new technologies and creatively design and implement solutions for real problems and situations.
When the GP said that this guy is having fun, I knew immediately what he (she?) was talking about. I work harder and better because I have *fun* doing what I'm paid to do. Is it all fun? No. If it was all fun and games, they wouldn't call it a job -- and you wouldn't get paid for it either.
Is it possible that you folks who don't understand what it means to have a fulfilling and yes, fun, career? That would really be sad.
I'd much rather have a lawyer who enjoys his work and is energized to go the extra mile because it gives them pleasure (read: has fun) to do the best job they can.
A successful career is about much more than money. If you can't understand how that's supposed to work, I pity you.
If you are going to do conversions, make sure you include proper rounding to significant digits and avoid false precision.
In other words: 1300 feet = 400 m = 2 furlongs.
Well, those are approximate conversions, but it is an approximate distance as well. This is something I think most "science reporting" does a horrible job of dealing with as well.
As for cubits, those were about 21 inches or about 52 centimeters, which would put the distance at about 800 cubits or about 80 rods. A hoghead is a unit of volume, which isn't applicable.
I break out in hives if I use less than two decimal places, you insensitive clod!
...Truth be told, I spend a considerable amount of my time in Konsole on the vm (Oracle client, and all the utils that are missing from windows like grep, sed, locate, cut).
First things first. *You* need to know what you're looking for. This is not optional. Make a high level list of the tasks/projects to be performed by the person you hire. Then do a little bit of research into how this is done (cf. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd349801(v=ws.10) for starters). There's plenty of information out there. Focus on what you need.
Certifications are no substitute for experience. That doesn't mean that people with certifications are not competent. People get certifications for many reasons. People lie. People lie on their resumes (I'm not sure why, it never ends well) which is why it's important to test the skills they say they have.
Take that list of tasks/projects and the research you've done and prepare a set of questions based on both. Give the candidate a scenario and have them describe how they would create a solution. Have the candidate document, by him(her)self, how to perform specific tasks. Most of all, make the questions/scenarios *relevant* to the role you need them to fill.
Make sure all candidates are asked *exactly* the same questions. Compare their answers. Compare their relative comfort level with the role for which they they are interviewing. Most candidate resumes will be completely worthless. At least 50% of those that aren't are a pack of lies. Those folks are easy to spot and weed out.
The difficult part is figuring out who can talk the talk, but can't walk the walk. That's where having the candidate perform specific tasks (with full access to the resources they'd have while doing the job) with a specific time frame. These should be tasks you (or a competent Windows person on staff, if you have one) have done and determined how long it should take. It's not necessary to tell the candidate that you're timing them -- they know, or should.
Another point that doesn't get touched on very much is that they are interviewing you as much as you are them. Make your interview questions relevant and within the scope of the role for which they are interviewing. If you try to trick them or push too hard, you'll end up alienating the good ones (they'll walk away because they have the skills to get work where they won't be harangued).
There's much more of course, but if you don't already have the appropriate interviewing/management skills to figure that out then you're the wrong person to act as the front line hiring person. HTHAL
As a lefty, the only things that really annoy me are clipboards and wristwatches. Both are purposely designed for righties. As for the mouse, I'm so used to the "righty" button locations that I don't even think about it. I tried switching the buttons a few times, but it just annoyed me.
All that said, this isn't exactly a news flash..."We interrupt your regular programming to bring you a special news bulletin: because most people are right-handed, the left-handed are sometimes minorly inconvenienced. Film at eleven." Please!
VOIP calls generally utilize somewhere (depending on the codec used) between 50-160kbps or so.
Then again, 50 people talking at once is ~8Mb/sec, which is a significant amount of bandwidth. At high utilization rates, call quality could be a problem as well.
Another consideration is the revenue stream that airlines derive from charging you to use *their* phones. We mustn't upset that apple cart. It could spell doom for the airlines.:)
No responsible parties are advocating "no oversight" of the market. You should read Adam Smith. Even he recognized, way back then, that a reasonable body of antitrust law would be necessary to keep people playing within a real capitalist system.
IIRC, Alan Greenspan (a staunch advocate of deregulation) several times made the comment that laws against fraud were unnecessary as the market would correct these problems. Would you consider Mr. Greenspan a responsible party?
"We have banking regulation because the lack of it caused people to be wiped out in the great crash of '29."
Absolute bollocks. Government intervention, in concert with Fed policy, CAUSED the crash of '29. The economists who were saying so were completely correct about what would happen (it WAS predicted)... government and other "interventionist" economists continued to say the economy was FINE... up to Irving Fischer's famous declaration that the economy had never been healthier, the very day before the big crash.
Really? So highly leveraged securities trading had nothing do with it, huh? Geez! I want some of what you've been smoking!
"Things went OK for quite a while, then those regulations got rolled back and here we are with another crash."
Once again, it wasn't lack of regulation that caused the crash. Wall Street had never been more heavily regulated! It was IRRESPONSIBLE regulation, not lack of regulation, that caused it.
BZZZT. Wrong. Thanks for playing. The repeal of critical provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act was the biggest act of deregulation in the financial sector since the Act was implemented and is considered by many to be the primary catalyst for many of the excesses that caused the crash in 2008.
If you want a real culprit, who without any doubt contributed greatly to the crash, you need look no further than Barney Frank.
But no... I am not prepared to debate that on Slashdot. There have been whole books written about it.
Barney Frank? Yeah, he was instrumental in making liar/no doc loans and corruption of the rating agencies de rigeur in the financial sector. You really have drunk the Kool-Aid, haven't you? Of course you're not prepared to debate this on/. or anywhere else for that matter. Mostly because your arguments are specious and can't stand any kind of critical review. I ask again, are you dumb? Are you paid to write this tripe? Or just brainwashed?
Free-market capitalism (again, Adam Smith and what most people mean when they say "capitalism", since in fact he defined it), has to do with voluntary exchange of goods. It is possible for people in a truly free market to be greedy, but their business will suffer as a result. If people feel ripped off, they cease to do business. That's what voluntary means.
True, sustained greed cannot come about without government collusion. When there are controls and regulation, and people no longer have a choice. That is when monopoly, oligopoly, and corporate greed can breed.
And that's not capitalism.
Blowing my mods on the thread for this one. Sustained greed is not dependent on anything except the drives and desires of the greedy. Since the greedy are generally willing to screw anyone, including their family and friends (c.f. Bernie Madoff), government regulation of markets is essential.
The greedy will press whatever advantages they can (the housing/mortgage/credit default swaps debacle is a prime example) to extract wealth regardless of their impact on others. Semi-adequate government regulation (e.g., The Glass-Steagall Act) of the financial sector prevented much of this for many years. The corruption of the greedy politicians by the greedy bankers got government regulation out of the way so the greedy could press additional advantages.
Lack of oversight/regulation have given us, among other disasters, one-sided contracts which don't allow the little guy to press their claims in court, unlimited campaign contributions, Mega-corporate control of the media and financial sectors, that same media fomenting fear to allow their lackeys in government to spend more and more money on "defense" and "security" thus further enriching the big corporations at the expense of the average person.
Yes, that's the "capitalism" you get without government regulation. Since you're posting on/., I'm guessing that you're not a seven (or eight) figure corporate executive or one of the high net-worth individuals. So why is it that you are espousing ideas that tend to limit your economic opportunities in favor of the already fabulously wealthy? Are you dumb? Have you been brainwashed by the media? Are you paid to do so? Do tell.
Those against abortion would argue it is those who won't admit that an unborn child with a beating heart and active brain inside the womb is not a living human being that are anti-science. And, moronic hypocrites too!
I suppose that reasonable people can disagree. However, someone who supports charging a woman who had a miscarriage with murder is not reasonable, IMHO.
If the fetus has a right to life, than all women who miscarriage need to be investigated to determine if they should be charged with some variation of manslaughter/murder over the death of their fetus (after all a miscarriage due to negligence is just as bad as letting a toddler drown in the bathtub isn't it?)
Or you know, we could call birth the point at which you count as being "alive" and then not need to worry about all the edge cases like rape.
I hate to break it to you, but this is already happening in Mississippi and elsewhere.
Note that the in places where this type of prosecution is going on, the anti-science, bible-thumping morons are running things. Why am I not surprised?
Homo Depot, Target, JCPenney and others actively give thousands of dollars each year in support of indoctrination of kids and employees to accept the gay lifestyle.
Indoctrination? Citation please.
Apparently people are no longer allowed to have opinions, or at least those that are in disagreemnt with the homosexual agenda.
Homosexual agenda? What agenda is that? The one where gay folks would prefer not to be beaten to death or dragged behind a car for their sexual orientation? The one where they would prefer to be treated just like everyone else in terms of being able to build strong, healthy families and enjoy the same government benefits bestowed upon heterosexual couples?
“The correct way to punctuate a sentence that states: "Of course it is none of my business, but -- " is to place a period after the word "but." Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.” -- Robert A. Heinlein
Clearly you don't know anything about the Stanford Prison experiment. In short, the "experiment" was mostly a fizzle.
Yes, try again.
Please show me how even one statement in my post was untrue:
In this experiment, the basement of a Stanford University school building was used as a *pretend* prison. College students were *randomly* selected as guards or prisoners. The experiment had to be cut short because the "prison guards" were abusing the "prisoners."
1. Experiment done in the basement of a Stanford University school building (Jordan Hall).
2. College students (all of those who were selected for the experiment were college students) were *randomly* (via a coin toss) selected as prisoners or guards.
3. The experiment was cut short (six days instead of two weeks) because of abuse by the "guards."
Please enlighten me as to what exactly it was that I said is not supported by the facts?
You have yet to use any large ones. My point was that you can't honestly use a flawed study to prove a point (or to prove anything at all). This study was used to illustrate the truth of "men are all evil" when it proves not only nothing of the sort, but nothing at all.
Since you feel it necessary to point out the flaws in the SPE, I suggest you take them up with those who actually had something to do with said experiment, or perhaps who give a rat's ass about the experiment, it's results or it's applicability to *anything*. Have a nice day!
Now maybe they'll actually review past purchases before calling/texting me every three weeks or so about how some transactions I make all the time could be fraud. sigh.
Yes. It was a flawed study. The poster I was replying to stated that he/she felt that prison populations were not a good measure of human behavior as a whole. This was in response to a reference to the SPE.
Dunbal's statement led me to believe that he/she thought that actual prisoners and prison guards were used in the experiment. They were not. I suppose that some college students might think themselves prisoners. but that's hardly the point.
My name is not Zimbardo. I do not have any affiliation with him, the SPE or any other of the persons involved in that "experiment."
I'll say it again and will use small words so that you'll be sure to understand: the OP implied that the SPE used actual prisoners/prison guards. Because of the OP's statement, I remarked that he/she wasn't aware of the details of said experiment. Period. End of sentence. No endorsement (or criticism) of the SPE was implied.
I have learned since then that many people see the SPE in a negative light for a variety of reasons. I make no judgements regarding the validity or invalidity of the SPE.
So. Since you feel it necessary to point out the flaws in the SPE, I suggest you take them up with those who actually had something to do with said experiment. Have a nice day!
Very good sir. However, it seems to me that the traits which McFarland and Carnahan attribute to the self-selection of volunteers for a "Study of Prison Life" found by is strikingly similar to many traits we see in successful politicians. As such, perhaps the SPE is more descriptive of the situation than we thought.
To test the hypothesis of whether humans are inherently prone to abuse when given power in general, you'd need to set it up so that there is no initial difference between participants - ideally, the group should then select those in power on its own, and then only after some general commingling. Then, at some point, cement the power structure in place such that it can no longer be changed (again, the group shouldn't know when that happens in advance), and see if the behavior of people in power changes noticeably from that point on.
How silly of me. So we need to start out with people who are relatively equal (like the citizens of a "free" society perhaps?). Then we have "self-selection" of leaders (perhaps elections?
The result? Those who have been "self-selected" are used to exacerbate the power imbalance by allowing those in power to restrict who can stand for election by controlling access to resources and to make sure that those who have the resources to succeed in elections are beholden to those in control (those with deep pockets, cf. Citizens United decision) to retain their power and that of their cronies. And voila! The golden rule applies. (that is, "He who has the gold makes the rules."). And so, our "noble experiment" has just proven Lord Acton correct.
Power dynamics can be measured in many ways. Regardless of any cultural bias for/against prisoners, all the participants knew that this was an experiment and the guards knew that the "prisoners" were college students just like themselves. The roles played seem rather analogous to the situation with the TSA/Executive branch. They are self-selected from the pool of US citizens (who are presumed to be relatively equal -- ha ha) know that their role is to "keep us safe" or "run the country" and are given power over the rest of us to perform those tasks. The fact that they both abuse that power seems to validate the results of the Stanford Prison Experiment *and* the Milgram Experiment.
And so I modify my original statement to Dunbal:
Clearly you don't know much about the Stanford Prison Experiment [wikipedia.org].
I didn't realize that a coin toss (assuming fair coin tosses of course) introduced selection bias. Please elucidate -- or at least provide a reference for your statement.
In this experiment, the basement of a Stanford University school building was used as a *pretend* prison. College students were *randomly* selected as guards or prisoners. The experiment had to be cut short because the "prison guards" were abusing the "prisoners."
that would create more jobs than nasa/commie liberal government every has. ryan was a great choice for vp. this crap commie government can only be fixed by putting a randist in charge. nasa/welfare/social slush funds that are nothing more than personal unlimited checking accounts for barack HUSSEIIN obama. more money to the job creators not slush funds like nasa.
Romney/Ryan 2012!!!!!!!!
less liberal FRAUD; more jobs!!!
You get paid to do this, don't you? Why don't you go back to turning tricks -- it's more honest work.
Except too many morons want the government to solve all their problems, but then turn around and complain that the government misuses the power they just gave it to solve those problems.
YOU WANT GOV'T HEALTH CARE, THEN SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT THE PATRIOT ACT!!!!
You want taxes raised to pay for "investments" and so everyone "pays their fair share"?
THEN SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT WARRANTLESS WIRETAPS
Seriously - if you want to give the government all the power to solve all your problems, you really have no room to complain when that power is misused.
You've got the right idea with the false comparisons, but the execution is way too transparent. Keep working on it and someday you might actually convince a moron or two.
How about this? If you want government health care, then support a real single-payer system because it's more cost-effective, efficient and as is seen across the developed world, provides quality health care to just about everyone while spending less per capita.
Or maybe...If you want to create a vibrant, prosperous and peaceful society, support an equitable tax code which generates a revenue stream that can support quality public services like education, a social safety net, basic scientific research, maintenance and modernization of infrastructure, etc., etc., etc.
Perhaps...If you want to live in a country that respects its residents, citizen and non-citizen alike. A country with expansive civil liberties, tolerance and a generally satisfied populace, then fight against laws like the Patriot Act. Demand the freedoms guaranteed by our constitution and its amendments. Force the government to clean house and ensure that we are not spied upon, tracked or otherwise harassed by the government unless there is enough evidence to convince an impartial court to issue warrants authorizing such activities. Rail against the wholesale surveillance of millions of innocent people.
See how much better it works when the elements you include actually have some relation to each other?
Slashdot Mirror
I've had them on the phone on more than occasion, the funniest time was was probably the third time they called, it was an asian sounding woman who told me my computer was sending them messages that it was infected. I asked which one as I have three, she said I could go to any one, anyway I humoured her to find out what the scam was. She took me to a remote access site (which in itself seemed perfectly legitimate), anyway at this point I'd seen enough and called her out as a scammer, her response made me laugh, 'Hey you!' She said, 'Stick the phone up your ass!' and then she hung up on me. Awesome customer service :)
Glad they've been caught.
I got the "your computer was infected" call a couple of times, but now it's all "Lower my credit card interest rates" and "We want to give you a free cruise." Regardless, I string them along a bit (if I have the time) and then drop the "you're a slimy scammer!" and (for the male callers) "Next time I'm over at your house f***ing your wife, I'll wait 'til you come home so I can smack you!" or (for the "ladies") "Why don't you go back to turning tricks? It's more honest work." The callers are generally nonplussed, but I enjoy it. Good times. :)
...What I'm saying is, and I'm trying to put it politely, people as a whole should be aspiring to a higher level of ethics than douchebag spammers.
Yeah, well good luck with that.
> Practicing law is fun BECAUSE it is > complicated and too big a field of > knowledge for any one person to > know everything...
Yes, FUN! And it's not like anything important is at stake. Not like anyone's life ever got ruined because of cases like you described. No one ever went to jail, lost their job, their business, their family, all their savings, etc., because no one playing was aware of the law that could have freed them. FUN, I tell you!
And it's not like the deck is stacked against the little guy in the first place, or that big companies with big war chests win solely because they have more money to throw at a problem. Or win by attrition. Or that they bought unjust laws in the first place. Yes, it's just LOADS and LOADS of FUN!
Yes, that's why people who have *careers* choose the field that they do. Because they enjoy doing the serious business of whatever field that happens to be. For me, that's IT. I have *fun* doing IT because it allows me to explore new technologies and creatively design and implement solutions for real problems and situations.
When the GP said that this guy is having fun, I knew immediately what he (she?) was talking about. I work harder and better because I have *fun* doing what I'm paid to do. Is it all fun? No. If it was all fun and games, they wouldn't call it a job -- and you wouldn't get paid for it either.
Is it possible that you folks who don't understand what it means to have a fulfilling and yes, fun, career? That would really be sad.
I'd much rather have a lawyer who enjoys his work and is energized to go the extra mile because it gives them pleasure (read: has fun) to do the best job they can.
A successful career is about much more than money. If you can't understand how that's supposed to work, I pity you.
If you are going to do conversions, make sure you include proper rounding to significant digits and avoid false precision.
In other words: 1300 feet = 400 m = 2 furlongs.
Well, those are approximate conversions, but it is an approximate distance as well. This is something I think most "science reporting" does a horrible job of dealing with as well.
As for cubits, those were about 21 inches or about 52 centimeters, which would put the distance at about 800 cubits or about 80 rods. A hoghead is a unit of volume, which isn't applicable.
I break out in hives if I use less than two decimal places, you insensitive clod!
What is that in a civilized unit of measure?
When are American's going to grow up?
It's Americans, not American's and that's a very good question.
Also, 1m=3.275ft, so 1300 feet = 396.95m or 1.97 furlongs.
...Truth be told, I spend a considerable amount of my time in Konsole on the vm (Oracle client, and all the utils that are missing from windows like grep, sed, locate, cut).
In that case, what you want is Cygwin
First things first. *You* need to know what you're looking for. This is not optional. Make a high level list of the tasks/projects to be performed by the person you hire. Then do a little bit of research into how this is done (cf. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd349801(v=ws.10) for starters). There's plenty of information out there. Focus on what you need.
Certifications are no substitute for experience. That doesn't mean that people with certifications are not competent. People get certifications for many reasons. People lie. People lie on their resumes (I'm not sure why, it never ends well) which is why it's important to test the skills they say they have.
Take that list of tasks/projects and the research you've done and prepare a set of questions based on both. Give the candidate a scenario and have them describe how they would create a solution. Have the candidate document, by him(her)self, how to perform specific tasks. Most of all, make the questions/scenarios *relevant* to the role you need them to fill.
Make sure all candidates are asked *exactly* the same questions. Compare their answers. Compare their relative comfort level with the role for which they they are interviewing. Most candidate resumes will be completely worthless. At least 50% of those that aren't are a pack of lies. Those folks are easy to spot and weed out.
The difficult part is figuring out who can talk the talk, but can't walk the walk. That's where having the candidate perform specific tasks (with full access to the resources they'd have while doing the job) with a specific time frame. These should be tasks you (or a competent Windows person on staff, if you have one) have done and determined how long it should take. It's not necessary to tell the candidate that you're timing them -- they know, or should.
Another point that doesn't get touched on very much is that they are interviewing you as much as you are them. Make your interview questions relevant and within the scope of the role for which they are interviewing. If you try to trick them or push too hard, you'll end up alienating the good ones (they'll walk away because they have the skills to get work where they won't be harangued).
There's much more of course, but if you don't already have the appropriate interviewing/management skills to figure that out then you're the wrong person to act as the front line hiring person. HTHAL
As a lefty, the only things that really annoy me are clipboards and wristwatches. Both are purposely designed for righties. As for the mouse, I'm so used to the "righty" button locations that I don't even think about it. I tried switching the buttons a few times, but it just annoyed me.
All that said, this isn't exactly a news flash..."We interrupt your regular programming to bring you a special news bulletin: because most people are right-handed, the left-handed are sometimes minorly inconvenienced. Film at eleven." Please!
VOIP calls generally utilize somewhere (depending on the codec used) between 50-160kbps or so.
Then again, 50 people talking at once is ~8Mb/sec, which is a significant amount of bandwidth. At high utilization rates, call quality could be a problem as well.
Another consideration is the revenue stream that airlines derive from charging you to use *their* phones. We mustn't upset that apple cart. It could spell doom for the airlines. :)
No responsible parties are advocating "no oversight" of the market. You should read Adam Smith. Even he recognized, way back then, that a reasonable body of antitrust law would be necessary to keep people playing within a real capitalist system.
IIRC, Alan Greenspan (a staunch advocate of deregulation) several times made the comment that laws against fraud were unnecessary as the market would correct these problems. Would you consider Mr. Greenspan a responsible party?
"We have banking regulation because the lack of it caused people to be wiped out in the great crash of '29."
Absolute bollocks. Government intervention, in concert with Fed policy, CAUSED the crash of '29. The economists who were saying so were completely correct about what would happen (it WAS predicted)... government and other "interventionist" economists continued to say the economy was FINE... up to Irving Fischer's famous declaration that the economy had never been healthier, the very day before the big crash.
Really? So highly leveraged securities trading had nothing do with it, huh? Geez! I want some of what you've been smoking!
"Things went OK for quite a while, then those regulations got rolled back and here we are with another crash."
Once again, it wasn't lack of regulation that caused the crash. Wall Street had never been more heavily regulated! It was IRRESPONSIBLE regulation, not lack of regulation, that caused it.
BZZZT. Wrong. Thanks for playing. The repeal of critical provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act was the biggest act of deregulation in the financial sector since the Act was implemented and is considered by many to be the primary catalyst for many of the excesses that caused the crash in 2008.
If you want a real culprit, who without any doubt contributed greatly to the crash, you need look no further than Barney Frank. But no... I am not prepared to debate that on Slashdot. There have been whole books written about it.
Barney Frank? Yeah, he was instrumental in making liar/no doc loans and corruption of the rating agencies de rigeur in the financial sector. You really have drunk the Kool-Aid, haven't you? Of course you're not prepared to debate this on /. or anywhere else for that matter. Mostly because your arguments are specious and can't stand any kind of critical review. I ask again, are you dumb? Are you paid to write this tripe? Or just brainwashed?
Free-market capitalism (again, Adam Smith and what most people mean when they say "capitalism", since in fact he defined it), has to do with voluntary exchange of goods. It is possible for people in a truly free market to be greedy, but their business will suffer as a result. If people feel ripped off, they cease to do business. That's what voluntary means. True, sustained greed cannot come about without government collusion. When there are controls and regulation, and people no longer have a choice. That is when monopoly, oligopoly, and corporate greed can breed. And that's not capitalism.
Blowing my mods on the thread for this one. Sustained greed is not dependent on anything except the drives and desires of the greedy. Since the greedy are generally willing to screw anyone, including their family and friends (c.f. Bernie Madoff), government regulation of markets is essential.
The greedy will press whatever advantages they can (the housing/mortgage/credit default swaps debacle is a prime example) to extract wealth regardless of their impact on others. Semi-adequate government regulation (e.g., The Glass-Steagall Act) of the financial sector prevented much of this for many years. The corruption of the greedy politicians by the greedy bankers got government regulation out of the way so the greedy could press additional advantages.
Lack of oversight/regulation have given us, among other disasters, one-sided contracts which don't allow the little guy to press their claims in court, unlimited campaign contributions, Mega-corporate control of the media and financial sectors, that same media fomenting fear to allow their lackeys in government to spend more and more money on "defense" and "security" thus further enriching the big corporations at the expense of the average person.
Yes, that's the "capitalism" you get without government regulation. Since you're posting on /., I'm guessing that you're not a seven (or eight) figure corporate executive or one of the high net-worth individuals. So why is it that you are espousing ideas that tend to limit your economic opportunities in favor of the already fabulously wealthy? Are you dumb? Have you been brainwashed by the media? Are you paid to do so? Do tell.
Those against abortion would argue it is those who won't admit that an unborn child with a beating heart and active brain inside the womb is not a living human being that are anti-science. And, moronic hypocrites too!
I suppose that reasonable people can disagree. However, someone who supports charging a woman who had a miscarriage with murder is not reasonable, IMHO.
If the fetus has a right to life, than all women who miscarriage need to be investigated to determine if they should be charged with some variation of manslaughter/murder over the death of their fetus (after all a miscarriage due to negligence is just as bad as letting a toddler drown in the bathtub isn't it?)
Or you know, we could call birth the point at which you count as being "alive" and then not need to worry about all the edge cases like rape.
I hate to break it to you, but this is already happening in Mississippi and elsewhere.
Note that the in places where this type of prosecution is going on, the anti-science, bible-thumping morons are running things. Why am I not surprised?
Homo Depot, Target, JCPenney and others actively give thousands of dollars each year in support of indoctrination of kids and employees to accept the gay lifestyle.
Indoctrination? Citation please.
Apparently people are no longer allowed to have opinions, or at least those that are in disagreemnt with the homosexual agenda.
Homosexual agenda? What agenda is that? The one where gay folks would prefer not to be beaten to death or dragged behind a car for their sexual orientation? The one where they would prefer to be treated just like everyone else in terms of being able to build strong, healthy families and enjoy the same government benefits bestowed upon heterosexual couples?
Zip up, your bigotry is showing
“The correct way to punctuate a sentence that states: "Of course it is none of my business, but -- " is to place a period after the word "but." Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.” -- Robert A. Heinlein
Clearly you don't know anything about the Stanford Prison experiment. In short, the "experiment" was mostly a fizzle.
Yes, try again.
Please show me how even one statement in my post was untrue:
In this experiment, the basement of a Stanford University school building was used as a *pretend* prison. College students were *randomly* selected as guards or prisoners. The experiment had to be cut short because the "prison guards" were abusing the "prisoners."
1. Experiment done in the basement of a Stanford University school building (Jordan Hall).
2. College students (all of those who were selected for the experiment were college students) were *randomly* (via a coin toss) selected as prisoners or guards.
3. The experiment was cut short (six days instead of two weeks) because of abuse by the "guards."
Please enlighten me as to what exactly it was that I said is not supported by the facts?
I'll say it again and will use small words
You have yet to use any large ones. My point was that you can't honestly use a flawed study to prove a point (or to prove anything at all). This study was used to illustrate the truth of "men are all evil" when it proves not only nothing of the sort, but nothing at all.
Since you feel it necessary to point out the flaws in the SPE, I suggest you take them up with those who actually had something to do with said experiment, or perhaps who give a rat's ass about the experiment, it's results or it's applicability to *anything*. Have a nice day!
Now maybe they'll actually review past purchases before calling/texting me every three weeks or so about how some transactions I make all the time could be fraud. sigh.
Yes. It was a flawed study. The poster I was replying to stated that he/she felt that prison populations were not a good measure of human behavior as a whole. This was in response to a reference to the SPE. Dunbal's statement led me to believe that he/she thought that actual prisoners and prison guards were used in the experiment. They were not. I suppose that some college students might think themselves prisoners. but that's hardly the point.
My name is not Zimbardo. I do not have any affiliation with him, the SPE or any other of the persons involved in that "experiment."
I'll say it again and will use small words so that you'll be sure to understand: the OP implied that the SPE used actual prisoners/prison guards. Because of the OP's statement, I remarked that he/she wasn't aware of the details of said experiment. Period. End of sentence. No endorsement (or criticism) of the SPE was implied.
I have learned since then that many people see the SPE in a negative light for a variety of reasons. I make no judgements regarding the validity or invalidity of the SPE.
So. Since you feel it necessary to point out the flaws in the SPE, I suggest you take them up with those who actually had something to do with said experiment. Have a nice day!
Participants were recruited through an ad looking for people "interested in prison life."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment#cite_note-revisitingSFE-11
Very good sir. However, it seems to me that the traits which McFarland and Carnahan attribute to the self-selection of volunteers for a "Study of Prison Life" found by is strikingly similar to many traits we see in successful politicians. As such, perhaps the SPE is more descriptive of the situation than we thought.
To test the hypothesis of whether humans are inherently prone to abuse when given power in general, you'd need to set it up so that there is no initial difference between participants - ideally, the group should then select those in power on its own, and then only after some general commingling. Then, at some point, cement the power structure in place such that it can no longer be changed (again, the group shouldn't know when that happens in advance), and see if the behavior of people in power changes noticeably from that point on.
How silly of me. So we need to start out with people who are relatively equal (like the citizens of a "free" society perhaps?). Then we have "self-selection" of leaders (perhaps elections?
The result? Those who have been "self-selected" are used to exacerbate the power imbalance by allowing those in power to restrict who can stand for election by controlling access to resources and to make sure that those who have the resources to succeed in elections are beholden to those in control (those with deep pockets, cf. Citizens United decision) to retain their power and that of their cronies. And voila! The golden rule applies. (that is, "He who has the gold makes the rules."). And so, our "noble experiment" has just proven Lord Acton correct.
Power dynamics can be measured in many ways. Regardless of any cultural bias for/against prisoners, all the participants knew that this was an experiment and the guards knew that the "prisoners" were college students just like themselves. The roles played seem rather analogous to the situation with the TSA/Executive branch. They are self-selected from the pool of US citizens (who are presumed to be relatively equal -- ha ha) know that their role is to "keep us safe" or "run the country" and are given power over the rest of us to perform those tasks. The fact that they both abuse that power seems to validate the results of the Stanford Prison Experiment *and* the Milgram Experiment.
And so I modify my original statement to Dunbal:
Clearly you don't know much about the Stanford Prison Experiment [wikipedia.org].
I didn't realize that a coin toss (assuming fair coin tosses of course) introduced selection bias. Please elucidate -- or at least provide a reference for your statement.
Yeah because the population of a prison - the inmates and the guards, is an accurate compass to map all human character.
Clearly you don't know anything about the Stanford Prison Experiment.
In this experiment, the basement of a Stanford University school building was used as a *pretend* prison. College students were *randomly* selected as guards or prisoners. The experiment had to be cut short because the "prison guards" were abusing the "prisoners."
So. Do you want to try that again?
that would create more jobs than nasa/commie liberal government every has. ryan was a great choice for vp. this crap commie government can only be fixed by putting a randist in charge. nasa/welfare/social slush funds that are nothing more than personal unlimited checking accounts for barack HUSSEIIN obama. more money to the job creators not slush funds like nasa.
Romney/Ryan 2012!!!!!!!!
less liberal FRAUD; more jobs!!!
You get paid to do this, don't you? Why don't you go back to turning tricks -- it's more honest work.
Except too many morons want the government to solve all their problems, but then turn around and complain that the government misuses the power they just gave it to solve those problems.
YOU WANT GOV'T HEALTH CARE, THEN SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT THE PATRIOT ACT!!!!
You want taxes raised to pay for "investments" and so everyone "pays their fair share"?
THEN SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT WARRANTLESS WIRETAPS
Seriously - if you want to give the government all the power to solve all your problems, you really have no room to complain when that power is misused.
You've got the right idea with the false comparisons, but the execution is way too transparent. Keep working on it and someday you might actually convince a moron or two.
How about this? If you want government health care, then support a real single-payer system because it's more cost-effective, efficient and as is seen across the developed world, provides quality health care to just about everyone while spending less per capita.
Or maybe...If you want to create a vibrant, prosperous and peaceful society, support an equitable tax code which generates a revenue stream that can support quality public services like education, a social safety net, basic scientific research, maintenance and modernization of infrastructure, etc., etc., etc.
Perhaps...If you want to live in a country that respects its residents, citizen and non-citizen alike. A country with expansive civil liberties, tolerance and a generally satisfied populace, then fight against laws like the Patriot Act. Demand the freedoms guaranteed by our constitution and its amendments. Force the government to clean house and ensure that we are not spied upon, tracked or otherwise harassed by the government unless there is enough evidence to convince an impartial court to issue warrants authorizing such activities. Rail against the wholesale surveillance of millions of innocent people.
See how much better it works when the elements you include actually have some relation to each other?