to not go see that movie. How did Ashton Kutcher manage to get himself a career as an actor? Rob Schneider could probably do a better job than Kutcher, as could any of a thousand other people, many of whom aren't even actors.
why don't we just genetically engineer people to like the taste of human meat? Nature will take its course and within a few decades we'll have a nice balance between the number of people who eat people and those who don't. The population will drop along with demands on resources. It's a win-win situation.
We need to have some sort of intelligence test for voters. We can still let everyone vote, but better informed, more intelligent people's votes should count more than the dope's votes.
The current system counts everyone's votes more or less equally, but there are so many more dopes they end up deciding who gets to run things. This leads to political parties (especially the GOP) pandering to the least intelligent among us with promises of lower gas prices, prayer in schools, deslutification of our women by denying them birth control and abortions, denial of science, etc.
The US has lost its mojo. We are finished.
Temptress? Did someone say temptress?
on
The eBook Backlash
·
· Score: 1
NRA files suit to allow an armed drone body-guard for self-defense. I can imagine a flock (is that the correct term?) of drones following me everywhere I go, circling overhead, ready to respond to any threat against me with deadly force.... One day it will be orbital charged particle beam weapons or rail guns, all clearly within the intent of the 2nd amendment.
No, atheists don't have to prove anything and don't have to rely on faith. Atheism isn't a religion, it is the absence of religion. Religion is the absence of reason. Unlike the faithful, atheists are generally open-minded people. If someone shows up and proves they are God (however they would manage that) the atheists will turn religious.
Both reason and faith have made huge contributions to human history, both good and bad, however, only reason has proven itself to be a way to get things done.
Prayer has proven itself to be a crappy way to get anything done, yet the faithful continue to try to use it. One popular definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results (the only thing that has ever demonstrated different results to me after doing the same thing over and over is the Windows operating system). Isn't that what the "faithful" do when they pray?
Science and engineering have proven themselves to be very reliable ways of getting things done. If something else comes along and proves itself better, here I feel safe in speaking for most atheists, we'll change teams in an instant.
me wherever I go, strictly for self-defense, of course. It will follow me wherever I go, circling overhead, and respond to threats against me either automatically or by my control using my phone or other remote interface. I believe having an armed drone is within the limits of my 2nd amendment right to bear arms.
When the technology becomes available I want to have access to a particle beam weapon in geosynchronous orbit so that I may again defend myself against any and all threats.
people in China to build Apple products? Where are the pick-and-place robots and other automated assembly bots? Why are people required to build these things at all?
your loss of money on lottery tickets. It is a voluntary tax in ignorance. Facebook (and the lottery people) know that there are huge numbers of ignorant people out there who are willing to part with something valuable for something of very little (or no) value simply because they don't understand what they are parting with and what they are gaining/losing.
when the activities regarded as piracy are recognized as normal in a technologically enabled world.
The ISPs advertise on TV about how blazingly fast their speed is- you can download movies in 8 minutes, CDs in 30 seconds, etc. AFAIK there is nowhere that you can legally download a movie in 8 minutes or even 3 hours. CD and DVD burners are in every computer- they aren't there for backing up your data. Blank CD and DVD media (and now Bluray) are sold in 100 packs. No one has that much data to back up, and again AFAIK, it's a violation of the DMCA to "back-up" your DVDs either to your HDD or to a burnable disc. Media server software like Playon and even Windows Media Server will stream video off your HDD to your TV. How did all that video get onto your HDD?
Technology keeps making it easier and cheaper to copy and transmit digital data of any sort which is completely at odds with the media companies' attempts to stuff the genie back into the bottle and prevent you from doing what the technology companies are making it easier for you to do. The media company executives are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The stupid employers keep cranking up pay until you get into your 40s, then suddenly you are too expensive to keep around. I was laid off from TI when I was 45. Over the last 8 or 9 years as an engineer I talked to HR people from multiple companies about why they pay so much when what people really want is more time off. I knew a lot of other engineers and talked to them about things like pay and benefits and almost everyone was satisfied with the money- they all wanted more time off (and time that you could actually take off without getting the hairy eye-ball from their managers). I used to tell HR people that if they offered an extra week of vacation they'd have people lining up down the block for their jobs and it wouldn't cost them a dime extra.
The problem is that the big engineering employers collude to set salaries because it prevents people jumping ship to other companies looking for a better deal. The whole H1B visa thing got popular when there was an engineering "shortage" in the early 90s and companies were having to pay signing bonuses to recruit people. They figured out that if they claimed there wasn't enough domestic talent available they could hire H1B slaves. They created the shortage by kicking engineers in their 40s to the curb, then proceeded to replace them with H1B slaves that they could work for 80 hours per week and if they didn't like it, threaten to send them back to wherever they came from.
I got fed up with the whole mess and went back to school and became a dentist.
people crossing Abbey road are also copyright infringers? Jesus, the British courts are going to be up to their eyeballs trying to prosecute all of those!
When I worked for HP about 20 years ago they used to herd all the employees into presentations every year at annual raise time and tell us with great pride that they had their HR people meet with HR people from every other big engineering employer in the bay area to define job descriptions and benefits including salaries, vacation, and annual raises. The purpose of this was to indirectly tell everyone "don't bother looking for work elsewhere- you won't get a better deal". I eventually went to work for a smaller company that wasn't in that "negotiating" (i.e. price-fixing) group for a substantial raise and an extra week of vacation time.
I find it tragically amusing that the feds are talking about censoring the internet to crack down on piracy because "it costs American jobs", and you know, the congress is all about keeping jobs in America. Where was congress when the big corporations were shipping jobs overseas for the last 30 or 40 years? And who's been cutting education funding and even talking about closing down the Dept of Education?
We need a CEO to run the government like we need more tax cuts for the rich.
I've started my second career as a dentist. So far it looks pretty good, but the study and nature of the work aren't for everyone. My brother has a distillery and seems to be doing well. I think I would steer my son into starting or buying a business that he likes.
FYI, I was promoted to director of engineering at Fujitsu Microelectronics during that 22+ year career as "a chair-warmer". I too received stock options (most of which are handed out in lieu of cash and ultimately not worth the paper they are printed on, which is why they are given to engineers).
The fact that you make so many assumptions about me reveals you to be like some of the managers that I worked under. Managers who think they know everything and who don't give a shit about the people under them are exactly the reason I left engineering and will not steer my son toward it.
Ask yourself this- would you give your little speech about chairwarmers to applicants for engineering positions? Do you tell them that they'll be kicked to the curb next year if sales/revenues/etc. drop off? If not, why not? It appears that you hire engineers based on specific work projections for the coming year. Do you tell the people you're hiring that they are being hired for a year or are they given the impression that they are getting into a career? Why aren't you hiring people on a contractual basis instead of as employees? Why is it that you end up hiring so many "chair-warmers"- is the problem with the engineer or with the manager?
I have nothing but sympathy for the people who work/suffer under you.
and every time I tried to take a day off I got the hairy eye-ball from the boss.
Every year they raised my pay a few % and in the last maybe 6-8 years of work, when things were booming and companies couldn't hire engineers fast enough, and were paying ridiculous "signing bonuses", I suggested to HR that they offer a little more time off instead of jacking up pay every year. I always got a blank stare as if I was speaking some sort of alien language.
While working for HP they used to march all of us into big presentations every year at annual raise time. They would proceed to tell us with pride how their HR people sat down with the HR people from every other large engineering employer in the bay area and came up with standardized job descriptions and salary/benefits. They never said it directly, but to anyone with a brain they were saying "don't bother to look for work somewhere else because you won't get a better deal".
Of course you can't take your lousy week or two of vacation time. Start doing that and you mark yourself as ready to be kicked to the curb when the stock price drops $2/share and the $20M/year CEO's brilliant answer is to lay off a bunch of engineers. No wonder the economy sucks. Between the fuckwit politicians and the fuckwit CEOs it's a wonder we are ALL living in cardboard boxes under an overpass somewhere.
I'm definitely NOT steering my son toward a career in engineering and would never recommend anyone else living in the US to do so.
and stuck in a cubicle smaller than a prison cell, I had a boss who always knew more than anyone else in the room about whatever topic was being discussed. And he was an expert on all things operatic. And classical music, and art, and mountain biking, and skiing, and etc. This guy knew all there was to know about every worthwhile human endeavor and was an expert at every sport imaginable. Let's not forget that he was also a gourmet cook and an oeneologist!
He was a short little guy, with a big belly and a bacchanalian beard- a jolly looking elf! He had a couple personal habits that drove others around him nuts. First there was the snorting. All day, every day at 30 second intervals he would snort like he was getting ready to hock up a big loogie, then swallow. Then there was his flatulence. Each and every time that clown came into my cubicle to point out where I had made some spelling error on a data sheet or application note he had to fart. I quickly learned to subconsciously keep track of his location by the sound of his snorting so that when I detected he was heading in my direction I would stand up in the narrow entrance to my cubicle and prevent his entering.
The wine crap used to bug me more than anything else. I recall a few occasions when my coworkers and I would go out for a pint after work and end up having dinner at some grubby place. We'd order our burgers for $5 each and this ass-hat would insist on ordering a bottle of wine to "match the food and the spirit of the occasion". Food bill for 5: $30 or 40. One bottle of wine: $90.
We had department meetings on Monday mornings. It quickly became apparent to all who attended these meetings that anything brought up in a meeting would ultimately be done his way because it was always better to do things that way. After a while people stopped saying anything in the meetings. The rest of the department would go out to lunch on Mondays (making sure he was left out of the loop) and hold the real department meeting where things were decided without him. We used to toss around ideas about what to do to get rid of him and someone eventually came up with an idea to get him promoted (out of the department).
We spent the next 6 months doing everything we could to make him look great to his boss. In the end he was promoted to a position as an "individual contributor".
Right about that time I took a much better job at Fujitsu for about 50% more pay.
Any of the carbon sequestration schemes talked about in the last few years would be fine, but who is going to pay for it? You put air in, you get air out. How do you get people to spend money (tax or private funds) for something they can't see, touch, taste, or smell and might have a payoff in terms of things staying just the way they are for another 100 years? (yeah, OK, they suckered us into paying for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, so maybe it isn't so difficult...)
between Riverside and LA on several occasions, a route that includes some long hills both up and down, and traffic moving along at 70-80 MPH when it moves and crawling at walking speed when it doesn't. I don't stomp the gas hard, but I don't hold up traffic or merge onto freeways at 40 mph either. I run the AC and the stereo, etc. I have consistently gotten >50 mpg as reported by the car's computer on such trips.
My wife reports that she never gets more than about 35 mpg, but she has a lead foot that only knows two positions- go fast and stop fast.
millions of users have known for many years- you have to reinstall the OS a couple times a year to keep things working. Now if they'd really get in touch with users they'd put a bootable linux in the CMOS memory so that you can still access your stuff even when Windows isn't working. Wait, didn't ASUS already do that?
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to not go see that movie. How did Ashton Kutcher manage to get himself a career as an actor? Rob Schneider could probably do a better job than Kutcher, as could any of a thousand other people, many of whom aren't even actors.
Matthew Garrett (1):
PCI: ignore pre-1.1 ASPM quirking when ASPM is disabled
why don't we just genetically engineer people to like the taste of human meat? Nature will take its course and within a few decades we'll have a nice balance between the number of people who eat people and those who don't. The population will drop along with demands on resources. It's a win-win situation.
We need to have some sort of intelligence test for voters. We can still let everyone vote, but better informed, more intelligent people's votes should count more than the dope's votes.
The current system counts everyone's votes more or less equally, but there are so many more dopes they end up deciding who gets to run things. This leads to political parties (especially the GOP) pandering to the least intelligent among us with promises of lower gas prices, prayer in schools, deslutification of our women by denying them birth control and abortions, denial of science, etc.
The US has lost its mojo. We are finished.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K84ntztw0g8
The ONLY temptress that can distract me from a good ebook is a furry temptress.
Is it?
NRA files suit to allow an armed drone body-guard for self-defense. I can imagine a flock (is that the correct term?) of drones following me everywhere I go, circling overhead, ready to respond to any threat against me with deadly force. ... One day it will be orbital charged particle beam weapons or rail guns, all clearly within the intent of the 2nd amendment.
No, atheists don't have to prove anything and don't have to rely on faith. Atheism isn't a religion, it is the absence of religion. Religion is the absence of reason.
Unlike the faithful, atheists are generally open-minded people. If someone shows up and proves they are God (however they would manage that) the atheists will turn religious.
Both reason and faith have made huge contributions to human history, both good and bad, however, only reason has proven itself to be a way to get things done.
Prayer has proven itself to be a crappy way to get anything done, yet the faithful continue to try to use it. One popular definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results (the only thing that has ever demonstrated different results to me after doing the same thing over and over is the Windows operating system). Isn't that what the "faithful" do when they pray?
Science and engineering have proven themselves to be very reliable ways of getting things done. If something else comes along and proves itself better, here I feel safe in speaking for most atheists, we'll change teams in an instant.
me wherever I go, strictly for self-defense, of course. It will follow me wherever I go, circling overhead, and respond to threats against me either automatically or by my control using my phone or other remote interface. I believe having an armed drone is within the limits of my 2nd amendment right to bear arms.
When the technology becomes available I want to have access to a particle beam weapon in geosynchronous orbit so that I may again defend myself against any and all threats.
people in China to build Apple products? Where are the pick-and-place robots and other automated assembly bots? Why are people required to build these things at all?
to separate the hydrogen from water. That would seem like a better use than making electricity, but I'll take either.
your loss of money on lottery tickets. It is a voluntary tax in ignorance. Facebook (and the lottery people) know that there are huge numbers of ignorant people out there who are willing to part with something valuable for something of very little (or no) value simply because they don't understand what they are parting with and what they are gaining/losing.
Oh yeah, and Windows is malware.
when the activities regarded as piracy are recognized as normal in a technologically enabled world.
The ISPs advertise on TV about how blazingly fast their speed is- you can download movies in 8 minutes, CDs in 30 seconds, etc. AFAIK there is nowhere that you can legally download a movie in 8 minutes or even 3 hours. CD and DVD burners are in every computer- they aren't there for backing up your data. Blank CD and DVD media (and now Bluray) are sold in 100 packs. No one has that much data to back up, and again AFAIK, it's a violation of the DMCA to "back-up" your DVDs either to your HDD or to a burnable disc. Media server software like Playon and even Windows Media Server will stream video off your HDD to your TV. How did all that video get onto your HDD?
Technology keeps making it easier and cheaper to copy and transmit digital data of any sort which is completely at odds with the media companies' attempts to stuff the genie back into the bottle and prevent you from doing what the technology companies are making it easier for you to do. The media company executives are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The stupid employers keep cranking up pay until you get into your 40s, then suddenly you are too expensive to keep around. I was laid off from TI when I was 45. Over the last 8 or 9 years as an engineer I talked to HR people from multiple companies about why they pay so much when what people really want is more time off. I knew a lot of other engineers and talked to them about things like pay and benefits and almost everyone was satisfied with the money- they all wanted more time off (and time that you could actually take off without getting the hairy eye-ball from their managers). I used to tell HR people that if they offered an extra week of vacation they'd have people lining up down the block for their jobs and it wouldn't cost them a dime extra.
The problem is that the big engineering employers collude to set salaries because it prevents people jumping ship to other companies looking for a better deal. The whole H1B visa thing got popular when there was an engineering "shortage" in the early 90s and companies were having to pay signing bonuses to recruit people. They figured out that if they claimed there wasn't enough domestic talent available they could hire H1B slaves. They created the shortage by kicking engineers in their 40s to the curb, then proceeded to replace them with H1B slaves that they could work for 80 hours per week and if they didn't like it, threaten to send them back to wherever they came from.
I got fed up with the whole mess and went back to school and became a dentist.
Maybe we should pray instead...
Hah!
people crossing Abbey road are also copyright infringers? Jesus, the British courts are going to be up to their eyeballs trying to prosecute all of those!
When I worked for HP about 20 years ago they used to herd all the employees into presentations every year at annual raise time and tell us with great pride that they had their HR people meet with HR people from every other big engineering employer in the bay area to define job descriptions and benefits including salaries, vacation, and annual raises. The purpose of this was to indirectly tell everyone "don't bother looking for work elsewhere- you won't get a better deal". I eventually went to work for a smaller company that wasn't in that "negotiating" (i.e. price-fixing) group for a substantial raise and an extra week of vacation time.
I find it tragically amusing that the feds are talking about censoring the internet to crack down on piracy because "it costs American jobs", and you know, the congress is all about keeping jobs in America. Where was congress when the big corporations were shipping jobs overseas for the last 30 or 40 years? And who's been cutting education funding and even talking about closing down the Dept of Education?
We need a CEO to run the government like we need more tax cuts for the rich.
I've started my second career as a dentist. So far it looks pretty good, but the study and nature of the work aren't for everyone.
My brother has a distillery and seems to be doing well.
I think I would steer my son into starting or buying a business that he likes.
FYI, I was promoted to director of engineering at Fujitsu Microelectronics during that 22+ year career as "a chair-warmer". I too received stock options (most of which are handed out in lieu of cash and ultimately not worth the paper they are printed on, which is why they are given to engineers).
The fact that you make so many assumptions about me reveals you to be like some of the managers that I worked under. Managers who think they know everything and who don't give a shit about the people under them are exactly the reason I left engineering and will not steer my son toward it.
Ask yourself this- would you give your little speech about chairwarmers to applicants for engineering positions? Do you tell them that they'll be kicked to the curb next year if sales/revenues/etc. drop off? If not, why not? It appears that you hire engineers based on specific work projections for the coming year. Do you tell the people you're hiring that they are being hired for a year or are they given the impression that they are getting into a career? Why aren't you hiring people on a contractual basis instead of as employees? Why is it that you end up hiring so many "chair-warmers"- is the problem with the engineer or with the manager?
I have nothing but sympathy for the people who work/suffer under you.
and every time I tried to take a day off I got the hairy eye-ball from the boss.
Every year they raised my pay a few % and in the last maybe 6-8 years of work, when things were booming and companies couldn't hire engineers fast enough, and were paying ridiculous "signing bonuses", I suggested to HR that they offer a little more time off instead of jacking up pay every year. I always got a blank stare as if I was speaking some sort of alien language.
While working for HP they used to march all of us into big presentations every year at annual raise time. They would proceed to tell us with pride how their HR people sat down with the HR people from every other large engineering employer in the bay area and came up with standardized job descriptions and salary/benefits. They never said it directly, but to anyone with a brain they were saying "don't bother to look for work somewhere else because you won't get a better deal".
Of course you can't take your lousy week or two of vacation time. Start doing that and you mark yourself as ready to be kicked to the curb when the stock price drops $2/share and the $20M/year CEO's brilliant answer is to lay off a bunch of engineers. No wonder the economy sucks. Between the fuckwit politicians and the fuckwit CEOs it's a wonder we are ALL living in cardboard boxes under an overpass somewhere.
I'm definitely NOT steering my son toward a career in engineering and would never recommend anyone else living in the US to do so.
and stuck in a cubicle smaller than a prison cell, I had a boss who always knew more than anyone else in the room about whatever topic was being discussed. And he was an expert on all things operatic. And classical music, and art, and mountain biking, and skiing, and etc. This guy knew all there was to know about every worthwhile human endeavor and was an expert at every sport imaginable. Let's not forget that he was also a gourmet cook and an oeneologist!
He was a short little guy, with a big belly and a bacchanalian beard- a jolly looking elf! He had a couple personal habits that drove others around him nuts. First there was the snorting. All day, every day at 30 second intervals he would snort like he was getting ready to hock up a big loogie, then swallow. Then there was his flatulence. Each and every time that clown came into my cubicle to point out where I had made some spelling error on a data sheet or application note he had to fart. I quickly learned to subconsciously keep track of his location by the sound of his snorting so that when I detected he was heading in my direction I would stand up in the narrow entrance to my cubicle and prevent his entering.
The wine crap used to bug me more than anything else. I recall a few occasions when my coworkers and I would go out for a pint after work and end up having dinner at some grubby place. We'd order our burgers for $5 each and this ass-hat would insist on ordering a bottle of wine to "match the food and the spirit of the occasion". Food bill for 5: $30 or 40. One bottle of wine: $90.
We had department meetings on Monday mornings. It quickly became apparent to all who attended these meetings that anything brought up in a meeting would ultimately be done his way because it was always better to do things that way. After a while people stopped saying anything in the meetings. The rest of the department would go out to lunch on Mondays (making sure he was left out of the loop) and hold the real department meeting where things were decided without him. We used to toss around ideas about what to do to get rid of him and someone eventually came up with an idea to get him promoted (out of the department).
We spent the next 6 months doing everything we could to make him look great to his boss. In the end he was promoted to a position as an "individual contributor".
Right about that time I took a much better job at Fujitsu for about 50% more pay.
Any of the carbon sequestration schemes talked about in the last few years would be fine, but who is going to pay for it? You put air in, you get air out. How do you get people to spend money (tax or private funds) for something they can't see, touch, taste, or smell and might have a payoff in terms of things staying just the way they are for another 100 years? (yeah, OK, they suckered us into paying for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, so maybe it isn't so difficult...)
between Riverside and LA on several occasions, a route that includes some long hills both up and down, and traffic moving along at 70-80 MPH when it moves and crawling at walking speed when it doesn't. I don't stomp the gas hard, but I don't hold up traffic or merge onto freeways at 40 mph either. I run the AC and the stereo, etc. I have consistently gotten >50 mpg as reported by the car's computer on such trips.
My wife reports that she never gets more than about 35 mpg, but she has a lead foot that only knows two positions- go fast and stop fast.
millions of users have known for many years- you have to reinstall the OS a couple times a year to keep things working. Now if they'd really get in touch with users they'd put a bootable linux in the CMOS memory so that you can still access your stuff even when Windows isn't working. Wait, didn't ASUS already do that?