I read it. Every so often I am in the mood or am interested enough to want to hear more than the 3+ posts, and so turn to the nested-newest format. And yours was quite new.
What do you know, I already had "Ron's piece" in my collection (Houston/Lyon live 160kbit). Lesse... Yeah, I see what you mean. Not as haunting as some things I've heard, but I'm sure that's just personal taste speaking.
I was in my grade 9 home economics class at the time, we were all standing around 5 minutes before noon (CST) after having cleaned up the place, and someone came in asking if we'd heard. I lived in town and usually went home for lunch, and as soon as I got there Mom confirmed that it had happened. We sat in front of the TV for the next hour, until we had to go back to school.
I don't particularly remember any specific feelings or thoughts, maybe us Canucks didn't get as much pumping up by our media before-hand as you Americans did?
Re:Rogers Commission Report
on
The Challenger
·
· Score: 1
Ok, now how did you manage to get the link in without the infamous 'space' problem while he did not (and neither can I). I see that one of the replies implies that it's Mozilla, I'm using Netscrape 4.6/7. Another person replied to that insisting it is slashcode, which it can't be as you managed to get it through.
So, please, someone explain the real secret behind why some of us can't put long hyperlinks in our posts without them getting mangled, while some people clearly can.
> For example in the hovercraft episode, we got to watch someone make a roughly 4' diameter propeller from a block of wood and a chainsaw. The NERDS last year made a 3000rpm centrifugal water pump out of a brake rotor and some scrap metal.
Yep, those two items were *quite* impressive. I'm amazed that the prop stayed together. And that you could build a vehicle based on sytrofoam! (albeit thick styrofoam, with a little extra strengthening).
Yes, but it's gotten worse with each season. The very first season or two from England had much less obvious or near-nonexistent seeding. The seeding with the latest English and American episodes is going too far, and leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I can understand it a bit from the perspective that they've already built a lot of the things that one can build, and they always need to come up with something new..., but it's still gone too far. (And they never should have replaced Robert Llewellyn in the American series, good thing they kept whats-her-name, if they'd replaced her with some stupid blonde-bubble-gum girl, I'd have puked.)
All rightie. I've finally found the answer to my own post.
A reporter on CNN had information from the California authorities that individual's conservation efforts have been *so* successful that it's basically allowing/would-allow 2 million homes to keep their power on. They're actually a bit afraid of telling the public that things have gotten that much better, as it might cause a negative feedback putting them right back where they started...
Damn, I'm impressed. I never expected to see or hear arguments from politicians or government documents that are so lucid and compelling.
(I'm just making a comment on an impression I just had and the contrast it brought to light against my cynical frustrated stereotypical views of politicians and government bureaucracy. My statement is not a representation of my current thoughts on this issue itself...)
If a decent fraction of them didn't do or say or stand for so many stupid things in the public limelight, and if stuff like this was actually 'seen and felt' by the common citizen, there might be a smidgen more appreciation for politicians and government in general.
One of the most common things one hears when discussing this stuff is that we should "conserve power", but one wonders just how far the average Westerner can manage to conserve. IE: if we went all out, what's the maximum percentage of our power needs that we could conserve. And I don't mean 'potentially', I mean realistically, considering all the idiots and regular fools on the continent.
With the enegery crisis in California I keep hearing about all these calls to Californians to conserve power and I read about tons of distributed computing enthusiasts turning off their computers to conserve power so the schools, hospitals, and traffic lights can get power. So if anyone has had a reason to do a good job of conserving power, it's Californians.
My question is, just how much of an effect has the call to Californians to conserve power been? Just how many Megawatts have Californians been able to 'conserve'? And what percentage of the total is it?
I see this as a real world test case for just how much (or how little) we (not you and me, the average people) could conserve if they 'had' to.
> that nobody has even heard of, and they were very serious.
> > Wow. Let me get this straight. The same news media that.... this same news media is so incompetent they can't cover major nuclear disasters?
Yup. Have you ever gone reading all the archived on-line accounts of North American nuclear incidents? I especially like the account of the three men killed by the explosion of the small reactor under development ages ago. One of the guys was found in the rafters. One of the nurses taking care of the lone survivor (who didn't survive long) got a huge dose herself just from being in the ambulance with him. Darn, I can't find the reference, and an extremely restricted search using all the tidbits of info I have still results in a thousand hits on Google. (that's got to tell us something:)
I will agree that most of these incidents are older and not really applicable to modern Nukes, *however* holding up Canadian Nukes as 'the model of saftey' is kind of strange, since just a year ago an American staffed safety review delivered an absolutely *scathing* report on Ontario Hydro's chronic management problems, to the point that it was severely jepordizing safety. A number of Ontario Nukes have been shut down and we've been on more Coal power than ever, as these plants and Ontario Hydro themselves (and if possible the management structure) is completely overhauled to bring them back in line so they are safer.
Don't overlook the capability of absolutely incompetent human managers from screwing up even the best engineered systems.
Anywho, I'd also go for Nuke power, *if* we could get the rest of the babies to certify a disposal method, so we could accurately account for the end-of-life costs of decomissioning.
I'd like to see everyone choke down the costs of Solar and Wind. I'd be willing, but I doubt many of the other bums and idiots on this planet would. All talk and no walk.
The original "DivX;)" was basically 99% leaked Microsoft source for their mpeg4 implementation, with the content header changed so that it was a "seperate codec".
I can hardly believe they've developed something from scratch on their own, therefore this "new" DivX must still be based on the MS source.
If that is true, then ALL of this talk about licenses is moot! ANYONE who distributes DivX in the real world (outside of the shadows) is apt to get EATEN ALIVE by Microsoft's lawyers.
I can't believe anyone is even bothering to worry about their "licensing terms", it's stolen property!!!
I call on all slashdotters to join the campaign for the targeting of high speed probes against near earth planetary bodies in order to create a spectacular1833-like meteor storm!
On the other hand, the spectacle of viewing 100,000 meteors per hour might grind society to a halt for a day or so.
They'd have all my personal info AND my money if I had to subscribe. Instead in return for a tiny smattering of information (some of it made up) I get to read a lot of great articles for free. Ever notice how the NYT always seems to have all these great articles people are talking about?
I have a copy of Windoze, I use it regularly, and I refuse to pay for it because I am not convinced, not in the least, that it is worth a hundred bucks; not to me, and not to most computer users. It is closed-system software, and it sucks.
If microsoft had not cornered the software market so long ago, I would not be forced into running their crappy product for compatibility issues; and therefore I feel I have the right to use it free of charge
AHMEN BROTHER!!
To put it simply, I don't think they've earned their hundred billion dollars!
Not when I spend all evening rebooting my system, or repairing the damange that IE 5.5 did, or painfully spending my days working around glaring flaws and hunting down nefariously evil little bugs in NT based software and data centers.
The techies and intelligent people have always known that PCs and Microsoft were absolute crap, that's why we bought Amigas and Macs. Unfortunately the other 98% of the people on the planet, the idiots and business leaders, made the worst decisions possible despite our pleas and advice, and now we have to put up with it.
And people wonder why so many techies have a personal hatred of Microsoft or Bill Gates.
This page states in small print at the bottom that "The national and regional competitions are produced by Motivate Canada (1994) Inc., a national non-profit organization."
It would be interesting to do a freedom-of-information request and get their financial details. How much they pay their president and staff, etc etc. Not all "non-profit organizations" are created equal.(*) Some do a very good job paying their principal employees (often founders of the organization), satisfying the minimum federal requirements for non-profit status, and that's about it.
The fact that this is in such small print and almost barely mentioned, that the 'people' and the 'who' is behind it is not so clear on the website, leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth.
I wouldn't want to be involved. I wouldn't want the company I work for involved.
And their website is good, but it's not impeccable. It's got a "splash page" whose entry-hyperlinks are almost un-noticeable. I ended up doing a google search and then finding a link into the pages from there. It was only after I went back out to the splash page and HUNTED that I found the parts of the image that were clickable.
(*) - Now there is a good social studies / law class / school newspaper project. An investigative report on this non-profit organization. An expose. Heck, even verifying that they *are* an officially listed non-profit organization.
There is a message in the 21.18 Risks digest which claims that the 4C's CPRM was solely for Compact Flash media, and that John Gilmore over-reacted, that the technology is "neither intended nor licensed for use with PC hard drives", and that this 'issue' is being blown all out of proportion. It was in directly reply to John Gilmore's own Risks submission about the 'issue'.
So, can someone without a flaming streak of extremism or a conflicting interest and with some detailed technical knowledge of the facts please speak up. Is this Risks submission (from a guy from Intel) accurate?
I don't like it when zealots create a big wave and brou-ha-ha over nothing. It wouldn't be the first time.
And yes, it suprised me to learn that the BMGF would be donating stuff to Canadian libraries. In fact seeing as how useful it will be in giving my Mom net access, it feels kind of strange. I hate BG because his companies software causes me such frustration and wasted time, and yet this happens... Lawyer, nice car, cliff, you know the story.
(ck goes away to do a bit of searching, comes back 10 seconds later)
Hey!, here is the word direct from the horse's mouth! Hmmm, from the numbers there it sounds like $3600 per libarary. Although that reference doesn's say whether they are USD or CDN dollars. I presume USD since it's on the BMFG site, which does translate to just over $5000 CDN.
Ah hah! And there it is right in this release, a "half million dollars worth" of software from Microsoft! With 215 computers that works out to "$2,000 worth of software" from Microsoft, which may mean what, $500-$800 in tax breaks?
No kidding!! As it turns out the "Bill and Melinda Gates" foundation is donating a computer system and software "worth $5000" to the library in my tiny rural home-town.
Who want's to bet that Microsoft isn't writing off $4000 of 'donated software', getting a $1500 tax cut, and only donating a $800 (wholesale) piece of hardware.
That's right. I'm saying they might be MAKING MONEY on this shit.
Ahhh, now here's a convoluted subject to argue about.
Blatant conscious racism is one thing. But what you're talking about is something that isn't necessarily conscious. I'm not appologizing for it. But I'm also saying we can't look down at those people as if they were wearing white hoods and all. Hell, I *know* I've done similar things to a very small extent one way or another at some point in the world, and I've *always* been consciously anti-racist, and a strident believer in the equality of man and all that stuff. But it's so subtle, and it's not a conscious thing... I imagine that it has slowly ebbed into peoples subcoscious minds and expectations by circumstance.
I mean, to give you an outrageous example that tries to give you a hint of what I'm saying: I've never seen a purple fire truck, so I don't expect to see a purple fire truck, and if I ever do I'll most certainly do a double take and have to look directly at the red flashing lights and big white text saying 'FIRE DEPARTMENT' before I go "huh! cool!". (Note that I'm absolutely logically certain the purple fire truck can fight fires just as well as a red one or a yellow one.)
So, I wouldn't equate what you've seen with out and out horrific racism, and I hope no-one ever holds something similar to what you've described against me. As I 'discover' it in myself I'm sure I'll try and consciously change, but until I do consciously notice it, well, I won't know about it! And I won't notice it until the day I see that purple fire truck. It's not as simple as thinking to myself "if I ever see something that I haven't seen regularly before, I won't be suprised". I am certain that if I saw or knew of some purple fire trucks, my sub-conscious mind would be a lot less suprised to come across one. It's just the way the human brain has been built to work.
Note that I wouldn't think of trying to minimize what you might have thought and felt when you saw someone do a double take. If I owned a purple fire truck and people kept giving me suprised faces, I could either be annoyed or proud. Either would be a valid and understandable, especially if I thought that 10% of the people weren't just suprised, but actually harbored a deep resentment of purple fire trucks... (I'm babbling now, aren't I?)
I'm just sure that it's not all black and white (no pun intended), and I don't know what to say to help either of us! Well, other than to say to you "chill out and have some pride" and to myself "I'll try a bit more to consciously correct what nature's evolution has hard-coded into my brain as to what to expect and not expect based upon what I've seen".
Do you remember the first time someone explained Quantum Mechanics to you? It was only after an extended period of time that I subconsciously begin to accept the idea, seeing as it was so discontinuous with everything I had experienced up to that time.
The company I currently work for (in a major multi-cultural northern North-American city) has (*roughly* - plus or minus 20 relative percentage points on each number) around 55% white caucasian males, 30% oriental males, 5% african american males, 8% oriental females, and 2% caucasian females (mostly from Eastern Europe). I can't think of a single african american female in engineering. The only North American raised caucasian females are in the support staff, except for one senior technical lead/manager.
And trust me, we'll hire *everyone* we can get our hands on who is qualified. Half of management (the founders of the Company, who still do the hiring) are minorities. Once upon a time we wanted to hire someone from the mid-east, and immigration said "You have to prove there isn't anyone in this country that you can find to do that", and we said "we'll hire *everyone* we can find who can do that job no matter where they live." And we did.
Remember when you first joined epinions? Remember the big form they asked you to read and sign? Remember the bits in it authorizing them to take legal action against any site that uses your review without approval? Remember the bits asking you to inform them if you ever discover someone ripping off your review?
Excellent! Go here and report these violations, then sit back and let epinions' lawyers whip their asses.
Admit it, occasionally lawyers are good for something:)
Slashdot Mirror
I read it. Every so often I am in the mood or am interested enough to want to hear more than the 3+ posts, and so turn to the nested-newest format. And yours was quite new.
What do you know, I already had "Ron's piece" in my collection (Houston/Lyon live 160kbit). Lesse... Yeah, I see what you mean. Not as haunting as some things I've heard, but I'm sure that's just personal taste speaking.
I was in my grade 9 home economics class at the time, we were all standing around 5 minutes before noon (CST) after having cleaned up the place, and someone came in asking if we'd heard. I lived in town and usually went home for lunch, and as soon as I got there Mom confirmed that it had happened. We sat in front of the TV for the next hour, until we had to go back to school.
I don't particularly remember any specific feelings or thoughts, maybe us Canucks didn't get as much pumping up by our media before-hand as you Americans did?
Ok, now how did you manage to get the link in without the infamous 'space' problem while he did not (and neither can I). I see that one of the replies implies that it's Mozilla, I'm using Netscrape 4.6/7. Another person replied to that insisting it is slashcode, which it can't be as you managed to get it through.
So, please, someone explain the real secret behind why some of us can't put long hyperlinks in our posts without them getting mangled, while some people clearly can.
Thankyou in advance.
Did you even read the article!?!?! One of the main issues dealt with was the very misconception that you are spouting!!!
We may have gotten rid of the worst of the trolls, but now we're over-laden with idiots. The fight goes on...
And what the hell does "end to end signature" refer to?
Yep, those two items were *quite* impressive. I'm amazed that the prop stayed together. And that you could build a vehicle based on sytrofoam! (albeit thick styrofoam, with a little extra strengthening).
Yes, but it's gotten worse with each season. The very first season or two from England had much less obvious or near-nonexistent seeding. The seeding with the latest English and American episodes is going too far, and leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I can understand it a bit from the perspective that they've already built a lot of the things that one can build, and they always need to come up with something new..., but it's still gone too far. (And they never should have replaced Robert Llewellyn in the American series, good thing they kept whats-her-name, if they'd replaced her with some stupid blonde-bubble-gum girl, I'd have puked.)
All rightie. I've finally found the answer to my own post.
A reporter on CNN had information from the California authorities that individual's conservation efforts have been *so* successful that it's basically allowing/would-allow 2 million homes to keep their power on. They're actually a bit afraid of telling the public that things have gotten that much better, as it might cause a negative feedback putting them right back where they started...
Damn, I'm impressed. I never expected to see or hear arguments from politicians or government documents that are so lucid and compelling.
(I'm just making a comment on an impression I just had and the contrast it brought to light against my cynical frustrated stereotypical views of politicians and government bureaucracy. My statement is not a representation of my current thoughts on this issue itself...)
If a decent fraction of them didn't do or say or stand for so many stupid things in the public limelight, and if stuff like this was actually 'seen and felt' by the common citizen, there might be a smidgen more appreciation for politicians and government in general.
One of the most common things one hears when discussing this stuff is that we should "conserve power", but one wonders just how far the average Westerner can manage to conserve. IE: if we went all out, what's the maximum percentage of our power needs that we could conserve. And I don't mean 'potentially', I mean realistically, considering all the idiots and regular fools on the continent.
With the enegery crisis in California I keep hearing about all these calls to Californians to conserve power and I read about tons of distributed computing enthusiasts turning off their computers to conserve power so the schools, hospitals, and traffic lights can get power. So if anyone has had a reason to do a good job of conserving power, it's Californians.
My question is, just how much of an effect has the call to Californians to conserve power been? Just how many Megawatts have Californians been able to 'conserve'? And what percentage of the total is it?
I see this as a real world test case for just how much (or how little) we (not you and me, the average people) could conserve if they 'had' to.
> > Wow. Let me get this straight. The same news media that .... this same news media is so incompetent they can't cover major nuclear disasters?
Yup. Have you ever gone reading all the archived on-line accounts of North American nuclear incidents? I especially like the account of the three men killed by the explosion of the small reactor under development ages ago. One of the guys was found in the rafters. One of the nurses taking care of the lone survivor (who didn't survive long) got a huge dose herself just from being in the ambulance with him. Darn, I can't find the reference, and an extremely restricted search using all the tidbits of info I have still results in a thousand hits on Google. (that's got to tell us something :)
I will agree that most of these incidents are older and not really applicable to modern Nukes, *however* holding up Canadian Nukes as 'the model of saftey' is kind of strange, since just a year ago an American staffed safety review delivered an absolutely *scathing* report on Ontario Hydro's chronic management problems, to the point that it was severely jepordizing safety. A number of Ontario Nukes have been shut down and we've been on more Coal power than ever, as these plants and Ontario Hydro themselves (and if possible the management structure) is completely overhauled to bring them back in line so they are safer.
Don't overlook the capability of absolutely incompetent human managers from screwing up even the best engineered systems.
Anywho, I'd also go for Nuke power, *if* we could get the rest of the babies to certify a disposal method, so we could accurately account for the end-of-life costs of decomissioning.
I'd like to see everyone choke down the costs of Solar and Wind. I'd be willing, but I doubt many of the other bums and idiots on this planet would. All talk and no walk.
> There's nore novelty in the future than there has been in the past, because the univese of possibilities is open ended.
> change is as good as a holiday.
Both of those just made my quotes file. Are they originals, or should I credit someone else?
The original "DivX;)" was basically 99% leaked Microsoft source for their mpeg4 implementation, with the content header changed so that it was a "seperate codec".
I can hardly believe they've developed something from scratch on their own, therefore this "new" DivX must still be based on the MS source.
If that is true, then ALL of this talk about licenses is moot! ANYONE who distributes DivX in the real world (outside of the shadows) is apt to get EATEN ALIVE by Microsoft's lawyers.
I can't believe anyone is even bothering to worry about their "licensing terms", it's stolen property!!!
On the other hand, the spectacle of viewing 100,000 meteors per hour might grind society to a halt for a day or so.
They'd have all my personal info AND my money if I had to subscribe. Instead in return for a tiny smattering of information (some of it made up) I get to read a lot of great articles for free. Ever notice how the NYT always seems to have all these great articles people are talking about?
So bite me.
If microsoft had not cornered the software market so long ago, I would not be forced into running their crappy product for compatibility issues; and therefore I feel I have the right to use it free of charge
AHMEN BROTHER!!
To put it simply, I don't think they've earned their hundred billion dollars!
Not when I spend all evening rebooting my system, or repairing the damange that IE 5.5 did, or painfully spending my days working around glaring flaws and hunting down nefariously evil little bugs in NT based software and data centers.
The techies and intelligent people have always known that PCs and Microsoft were absolute crap, that's why we bought Amigas and Macs. Unfortunately the other 98% of the people on the planet, the idiots and business leaders, made the worst decisions possible despite our pleas and advice, and now we have to put up with it.
And people wonder why so many techies have a personal hatred of Microsoft or Bill Gates.
> This interview is perhaps the worst ever?
No kidding. He comes off sounding like a l33t d00d. 3/4 of the way through I wondered if some kid hadn't managed to pull one over on Roblimo.
But for the record, I'll just assume that English isn't his first language, or that he naturally gives terse off-the-cuff answers.
This page states in small print at the bottom that "The national and regional competitions are produced by Motivate Canada (1994) Inc., a national non-profit organization."
It would be interesting to do a freedom-of-information request and get their financial details. How much they pay their president and staff, etc etc. Not all "non-profit organizations" are created equal.(*) Some do a very good job paying their principal employees (often founders of the organization), satisfying the minimum federal requirements for non-profit status, and that's about it.
The fact that this is in such small print and almost barely mentioned, that the 'people' and the 'who' is behind it is not so clear on the website, leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth.
I wouldn't want to be involved. I wouldn't want the company I work for involved.
And their website is good, but it's not impeccable. It's got a "splash page" whose entry-hyperlinks are almost un-noticeable. I ended up doing a google search and then finding a link into the pages from there. It was only after I went back out to the splash page and HUNTED that I found the parts of the image that were clickable.
(*) - Now there is a good social studies / law class / school newspaper project. An investigative report on this non-profit organization. An expose. Heck, even verifying that they *are* an officially listed non-profit organization.
There is a message in the 21.18 Risks digest which claims that the 4C's CPRM was solely for Compact Flash media, and that John Gilmore over-reacted, that the technology is "neither intended nor licensed for use with PC hard drives", and that this 'issue' is being blown all out of proportion. It was in directly reply to John Gilmore's own Risks submission about the 'issue'.
So, can someone without a flaming streak of extremism or a conflicting interest and with some detailed technical knowledge of the facts please speak up. Is this Risks submission (from a guy from Intel) accurate?
I don't like it when zealots create a big wave and brou-ha-ha over nothing. It wouldn't be the first time.
> and XML is a "technology" in the same way as comma-separated list is a "technology".
ROTFL... sigh..
Thank-you for that fabulous quote! If I were a moderator I would have given you a +1 funny.
And yes, it suprised me to learn that the BMGF would be donating stuff to Canadian libraries. In fact seeing as how useful it will be in giving my Mom net access, it feels kind of strange. I hate BG because his companies software causes me such frustration and wasted time, and yet this happens... Lawyer, nice car, cliff, you know the story.
(ck goes away to do a bit of searching, comes back 10 seconds later)
Hey!, here is the word direct from the horse's mouth! Hmmm, from the numbers there it sounds like $3600 per libarary. Although that reference doesn's say whether they are USD or CDN dollars. I presume USD since it's on the BMFG site, which does translate to just over $5000 CDN.
Ah hah! And there it is right in this release, a "half million dollars worth" of software from Microsoft! With 215 computers that works out to "$2,000 worth of software" from Microsoft, which may mean what, $500-$800 in tax breaks?
My Mom, whose cousin is the librarian, who would know. Oh, and I should have mentioned that it's CDN dollars.
No kidding!! As it turns out the "Bill and Melinda Gates" foundation is donating a computer system and software "worth $5000" to the library in my tiny rural home-town.
Who want's to bet that Microsoft isn't writing off $4000 of 'donated software', getting a $1500 tax cut, and only donating a $800 (wholesale) piece of hardware.
That's right. I'm saying they might be MAKING MONEY on this shit.
Ahhh, now here's a convoluted subject to argue about.
Blatant conscious racism is one thing. But what you're talking about is something that isn't necessarily conscious. I'm not appologizing for it. But I'm also saying we can't look down at those people as if they were wearing white hoods and all. Hell, I *know* I've done similar things to a very small extent one way or another at some point in the world, and I've *always* been consciously anti-racist, and a strident believer in the equality of man and all that stuff. But it's so subtle, and it's not a conscious thing... I imagine that it has slowly ebbed into peoples subcoscious minds and expectations by circumstance.
I mean, to give you an outrageous example that tries to give you a hint of what I'm saying: I've never seen a purple fire truck, so I don't expect to see a purple fire truck, and if I ever do I'll most certainly do a double take and have to look directly at the red flashing lights and big white text saying 'FIRE DEPARTMENT' before I go "huh! cool!". (Note that I'm absolutely logically certain the purple fire truck can fight fires just as well as a red one or a yellow one.)
So, I wouldn't equate what you've seen with out and out horrific racism, and I hope no-one ever holds something similar to what you've described against me. As I 'discover' it in myself I'm sure I'll try and consciously change, but until I do consciously notice it, well, I won't know about it! And I won't notice it until the day I see that purple fire truck. It's not as simple as thinking to myself "if I ever see something that I haven't seen regularly before, I won't be suprised". I am certain that if I saw or knew of some purple fire trucks, my sub-conscious mind would be a lot less suprised to come across one. It's just the way the human brain has been built to work.
Note that I wouldn't think of trying to minimize what you might have thought and felt when you saw someone do a double take. If I owned a purple fire truck and people kept giving me suprised faces, I could either be annoyed or proud. Either would be a valid and understandable, especially if I thought that 10% of the people weren't just suprised, but actually harbored a deep resentment of purple fire trucks... (I'm babbling now, aren't I?)
I'm just sure that it's not all black and white (no pun intended), and I don't know what to say to help either of us! Well, other than to say to you "chill out and have some pride" and to myself "I'll try a bit more to consciously correct what nature's evolution has hard-coded into my brain as to what to expect and not expect based upon what I've seen".
Do you remember the first time someone explained Quantum Mechanics to you? It was only after an extended period of time that I subconsciously begin to accept the idea, seeing as it was so discontinuous with everything I had experienced up to that time.
The company I currently work for (in a major multi-cultural northern North-American city) has (*roughly* - plus or minus 20 relative percentage points on each number) around 55% white caucasian males, 30% oriental males, 5% african american males, 8% oriental females, and 2% caucasian females (mostly from Eastern Europe). I can't think of a single african american female in engineering. The only North American raised caucasian females are in the support staff, except for one senior technical lead/manager.
And trust me, we'll hire *everyone* we can get our hands on who is qualified. Half of management (the founders of the Company, who still do the hiring) are minorities. Once upon a time we wanted to hire someone from the mid-east, and immigration said "You have to prove there isn't anyone in this country that you can find to do that", and we said "we'll hire *everyone* we can find who can do that job no matter where they live." And we did.
Then someone else(*1) should submit the abuse complaint to epinions. One way or another, epinions should take a look at it.
I'm not wasting my time on it though. Well, other than these two posts :)
(*1) Such as yourself or one of the other people who are railing against him.
Then what you have to do is very very simple.
Remember when you first joined epinions? Remember the big form they asked you to read and sign? Remember the bits in it authorizing them to take legal action against any site that uses your review without approval? Remember the bits asking you to inform them if you ever discover someone ripping off your review?
Excellent! Go here and report these violations, then sit back and let epinions' lawyers whip their asses.
Admit it, occasionally lawyers are good for something :)