No one clicks on ads when they pop up. They're just an annoyance factor.
Wrong. Pop-up ads were entirely successful, otherwise companies wouldn't have continued to do them for so long. No, no one you knew clicked on them, but some small minority of web users did, and that made it profitable. It's just like infomercials and telemarketers and many other annoying marketing things; they don't need to work on the majority of the populace, just a large enough (but still tiny) idiotic minority to make it profitable, and they'll keep doing it until legislation prevents it. The thing that finally killed pop-ups was that browsers all started blocking them by default because most users were so fed up with them.
That said I understand why companies resent having to pay someone to allow them to make money by verifying their ads are 'acceptable'.
Tough shit: if those companies hadn't tried to ruin the internet in years past with popups, popunders, flashing banner ads, and all kinds of other obscenity, users would never have bothered resorting to adblockers.
That's all beside the point, which is that "the government" doesn't do that much, it contracts it out to private corporations to get done.
But in addition to that, there's no commercial reason to build Europa probes and the like. There is a commercial reason to build and launch communications satellites, but it only happened after all the technology was developed at government expense for other purposes (sending men to the moon and having ICBMs).
There's a lot of Indian and Chinese women who hate their programming job but do the work because it pays well compared to other jobs in their areas.
There's also lots of white men who hate their programming job but do the work because it pays well compared to other jobs they could get.
You really think all those guys in the late 90s got into web development because they really loved computers that much?
You're assuming that all (or even most) men in our culture go into STEM jobs just because they really love it that much, and not because they have a little interest in the subject matter and a lot of interest in a good-paying job.
For that matter, how many people go to law school because they really love poring through legal texts and advising clients on legal matters? How many people would continue to practice law if they could earn the same money just sitting on their ass? And how many STEM professionals?
Ask yourself why women in Iran have the same interest in STEM that women in India or China.
The same reason most other people go into their chosen professions? Because they're reasonably good at it, somewhat interested in the subject matter, and interested in a stable, good-paying career?
You're an idiot. Who do you think built the rockets that got men to the Moon? Hint: it wasn't NASA or the government, it was a company called Rocketdyne.
Today's private spaceflight companies like Orbital Sciences and SpaceX are mostly doing the same thing: they're vying for government contracts for things like ISS resupply missions (in addition to commercial contracts for satellite launches; they didn't have commercial communications or other satellites back in the 60s).
That's because Slashdot has been continuously devolving as real techheads and nerds have been abandoning it for greener pastures, leaving behind only morons. Honestly, I'm not sure why I still hang out here; the S/N ratio has gotten ridiculously low.
Hello from 2015!!! I see you are a time-traveler from the year 2034 (since the movie "2010" starring Roy Scheider came out in 1984), or have somehow discovered a rift in the space-time continuum by which you can communicate with the past. Can you please tell us about life in 2034 and what mistakes we can avoid?
It's not biological, it's cultural. There's lots of female computer programmers and engineers of Indian and Chinese backgrounds. It's western women who have zero interest in computers, along with blacks and Latinos of both sexes. This is a product of culture.
The problem though is that setting up quotas does not change the underlying culture which creates these symptoms.
Just show them that they will have a job for more than six months, they will be paid industry rates, won't be working 80 hours a week, and will be financially successful if the company is successful. That doesn't mean a millionaire. It means a great benefits package and decent profit sharing.
You've got to be fucking kidding me. No companies do this shit any more, and haven't for a long time; they're happy to can your ass as soon as the project is over and they can save a little money (and get a bigger bonus) by not having to pay that team any more. They're also happy to hold down your salary if you don't job-hop every year or two, and pressure you to work 80 hours a week so they don't have to hire as many people.
These companies might as well just give up, because engineers aren't going to buy their bullshit for another generation.
The policy wouldn't be specific, it could say something like "the administration must take all threats seriously, no matter how unrealistic they may seem".
Again, you're applying common sense to the situation. You can't do that. This is a governmental agency with written policies, which must be adhered to. If the policies are stupidly written, and enforced at the highest levels, this is what we'll get.
Well now, for the individual cancer would likely be preferable to death, would it not?
The reason we have cancer is because our cellular machinery is sometimes defective, and without technology, we have no way to fix it.
Now that we're developing technology to fix problems with ourselves at the cellular and even genetic levels, we should be able to solve cancer.
Remember too, we were evolved to survive, as a species, in an environment without technology and hospitals and medicine, where we just lived in caves and huts and lived a primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyle. We have a lot of mechanisms in us which assume this environment: when we're cut, our blood clots and we form a scar (if the cut is bad enough). Our bodies don't understand the concept of bandages, so they take measures to protect us from infection in an environment where there is no such artificial protection.
Now that we have artificial environments and modern medicine and technology, some of the ways our bodies work just isn't necessary any more, or could even be harmful.
Another reason for a genetic lifetime limit could be that, without it, you have the potential for individuals to live forever, hampering the evolution of the species by repeatedly reintroducing obsolete DNA into the gene pool. Over time those species with a built-in age limiter will experience more net genetic drift, allowing them to adapt more quickly to changing conditions.
The problem with this is that a species doesn't necessarily need to evolve; it only needs to if its environment changes substantially and it can't continue to survive as-is (or gets out-competed) by another species or by a mutated version of its own.
The poster child for this is the shark. Sharks haven't changed in any significant way in many millions of years. Fossils of prehistoric sharks dating to the time of the dinosaurs are virtually identical to modern sharks. The other poster child is the horseshoe crab, which has also not been touched by evolution.
What if the teacher and the principal don't have that power? What if the district they're in has clear policies which force them to act this way, or else be fired themselves?
The problem with that is that it has to be live streaming video or else sports fans won't be interested. For some weird reason, they just can't stand to watch sports if it's not live.
The phone company isn't selling DSL, they're selling FiOS in many areas. So the cablecos are in competition with the phone companies.
At my last residence, I had two choices for high-speed data: Comcrap cable and Verizon FiOS. I chose Comcrap, because the monthly cost was lower. My neighbor had Verizon, and had constant problems with it: he had to constantly reset the outside box to get it to work; he moved out and a new guy moved in, got Verizon service too, and again had no end of trouble with his internet service being out for days at a time, and Verizon techs having to make personal visits. At least my Comcrap service was actually quite reliable.
The problem with Comcrap, it seems, is the customer service, not the technical part, at least not in my experience, and all the horror stories I read are about customer service and billing, such as them not canceling peoples' service when asked and continuing to bill them. So to avoid this, when I had to move out, I called and canceled the service (which took forever, most of it on hold), and then I went to my bank which issued the debit card which Comcrap was billing every month, and had them cancel that card and give me a new one (which cost me nothing luckily). So if Comcrap had tried to continue billing me, it was have been unsuccessful. However, I had no sign of that happening: I got a final bill a bit later which I paid (it was for the service at the end of my term), and then another bill for $0.00 after that, and that was the end.
I will say though, I did have a lot of problems with Comcrap service for a while when I was trying to watch Netflix on it. After that highly publicized peering agreement, the issues went away.
TV these days is pretty bad. I can't remember the last time a show caught my interest.
I can: Firefly was excellent.
Actually, there's a few more that are more recent that I've found interesting as well: - (Star Trek) Enterprise: this was surprisingly good (I only watched it last year, after it was already 10 years old), except for the 3rd season Xindi plot arc which I found rather annoying. The first two seasons were very good though. - Big Bang Theory: I've only watched the first two seasons so far, but it's actually very funny, something I've never really found in a sitcom before. I guess it being about physicists instead of typical average morons helps a lot this way. - Game of Thrones: this one really shouldn't require an explanation.
This is exactly it, in my opinion. Democrat voters are idiots who will back anything their Dear Leader Obama does, even when it was something they were bitching about during Bush's reign.
And Republican voters are just as stupid. They're now bitching about things that they were perfectly OK with when Bush was doing them, but now that Obama is doing them, they're up in arms.
This is because the crowd you hang out with is not representative of mainstream America. These polls are important because they show what the majority of Americans think about things, and those people are who vote for our leaders. Your little peer group does not have sole power to choose our governmental leaders.
What this shows can be argued different ways. Are young people these days generally more conservative than older people? (seems unlikely) Or is it because they're aligned with the Democratic Party, and since that party is currently in power in the Executive Branch, and their Dear Leader is all in favor of NSA spying, they too are in favor of it? Personally I think it's the latter. Americans are really stupid politically, and simply choose a "team" and then mindlessly back anything that team does. If Obama came out in favor of tax breaks for the rich and against abortion, Democrat voters would adopt those positions immediately, while if the Republican Party suddenly came out in favor of gay marriage and abortion rights and extremely progressive taxation (i.e. rich people would be taxed much more heavily), Republican voters would immediately adopt those positions too.
Slashdot Mirror
No one clicks on ads when they pop up. They're just an annoyance factor.
Wrong. Pop-up ads were entirely successful, otherwise companies wouldn't have continued to do them for so long. No, no one you knew clicked on them, but some small minority of web users did, and that made it profitable. It's just like infomercials and telemarketers and many other annoying marketing things; they don't need to work on the majority of the populace, just a large enough (but still tiny) idiotic minority to make it profitable, and they'll keep doing it until legislation prevents it. The thing that finally killed pop-ups was that browsers all started blocking them by default because most users were so fed up with them.
That said I understand why companies resent having to pay someone to allow them to make money by verifying their ads are 'acceptable'.
Tough shit: if those companies hadn't tried to ruin the internet in years past with popups, popunders, flashing banner ads, and all kinds of other obscenity, users would never have bothered resorting to adblockers.
That's all beside the point, which is that "the government" doesn't do that much, it contracts it out to private corporations to get done.
But in addition to that, there's no commercial reason to build Europa probes and the like. There is a commercial reason to build and launch communications satellites, but it only happened after all the technology was developed at government expense for other purposes (sending men to the moon and having ICBMs).
There's a lot of Indian and Chinese women who hate their programming job but do the work because it pays well compared to other jobs in their areas.
There's also lots of white men who hate their programming job but do the work because it pays well compared to other jobs they could get.
You really think all those guys in the late 90s got into web development because they really loved computers that much?
You're assuming that all (or even most) men in our culture go into STEM jobs just because they really love it that much, and not because they have a little interest in the subject matter and a lot of interest in a good-paying job.
For that matter, how many people go to law school because they really love poring through legal texts and advising clients on legal matters? How many people would continue to practice law if they could earn the same money just sitting on their ass? And how many STEM professionals?
Ask yourself why women in Iran have the same interest in STEM that women in India or China.
The same reason most other people go into their chosen professions? Because they're reasonably good at it, somewhat interested in the subject matter, and interested in a stable, good-paying career?
You're an idiot. Who do you think built the rockets that got men to the Moon? Hint: it wasn't NASA or the government, it was a company called Rocketdyne.
Today's private spaceflight companies like Orbital Sciences and SpaceX are mostly doing the same thing: they're vying for government contracts for things like ISS resupply missions (in addition to commercial contracts for satellite launches; they didn't have commercial communications or other satellites back in the 60s).
That's because Slashdot has been continuously devolving as real techheads and nerds have been abandoning it for greener pastures, leaving behind only morons. Honestly, I'm not sure why I still hang out here; the S/N ratio has gotten ridiculously low.
Hello from 2015!!! I see you are a time-traveler from the year 2034 (since the movie "2010" starring Roy Scheider came out in 1984), or have somehow discovered a rift in the space-time continuum by which you can communicate with the past. Can you please tell us about life in 2034 and what mistakes we can avoid?
I'm pretty sure evangelicals are a growing proportion of Christians in the USA.
(Outside the US, yes, they're a tiny minority, but the US is full of nuts.)
It's not biological, it's cultural. There's lots of female computer programmers and engineers of Indian and Chinese backgrounds. It's western women who have zero interest in computers, along with blacks and Latinos of both sexes. This is a product of culture.
The problem though is that setting up quotas does not change the underlying culture which creates these symptoms.
Just show them that they will have a job for more than six months, they will be paid industry rates, won't be working 80 hours a week, and will be financially successful if the company is successful. That doesn't mean a millionaire. It means a great benefits package and decent profit sharing.
You've got to be fucking kidding me. No companies do this shit any more, and haven't for a long time; they're happy to can your ass as soon as the project is over and they can save a little money (and get a bigger bonus) by not having to pay that team any more. They're also happy to hold down your salary if you don't job-hop every year or two, and pressure you to work 80 hours a week so they don't have to hire as many people.
These companies might as well just give up, because engineers aren't going to buy their bullshit for another generation.
The policy wouldn't be specific, it could say something like "the administration must take all threats seriously, no matter how unrealistic they may seem".
Again, you're applying common sense to the situation. You can't do that. This is a governmental agency with written policies, which must be adhered to. If the policies are stupidly written, and enforced at the highest levels, this is what we'll get.
Well now, for the individual cancer would likely be preferable to death, would it not?
The reason we have cancer is because our cellular machinery is sometimes defective, and without technology, we have no way to fix it.
Now that we're developing technology to fix problems with ourselves at the cellular and even genetic levels, we should be able to solve cancer.
Remember too, we were evolved to survive, as a species, in an environment without technology and hospitals and medicine, where we just lived in caves and huts and lived a primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyle. We have a lot of mechanisms in us which assume this environment: when we're cut, our blood clots and we form a scar (if the cut is bad enough). Our bodies don't understand the concept of bandages, so they take measures to protect us from infection in an environment where there is no such artificial protection.
Now that we have artificial environments and modern medicine and technology, some of the ways our bodies work just isn't necessary any more, or could even be harmful.
Another reason for a genetic lifetime limit could be that, without it, you have the potential for individuals to live forever, hampering the evolution of the species by repeatedly reintroducing obsolete DNA into the gene pool. Over time those species with a built-in age limiter will experience more net genetic drift, allowing them to adapt more quickly to changing conditions.
The problem with this is that a species doesn't necessarily need to evolve; it only needs to if its environment changes substantially and it can't continue to survive as-is (or gets out-competed) by another species or by a mutated version of its own.
The poster child for this is the shark. Sharks haven't changed in any significant way in many millions of years. Fossils of prehistoric sharks dating to the time of the dinosaurs are virtually identical to modern sharks. The other poster child is the horseshoe crab, which has also not been touched by evolution.
Wouldn't it be cheaper, over the long term, to just pack up and move to a state where the public schools are decent?
So why the fuck are you still living in Texas???
It's really not that hard to pack up and move to another state, you know.
What if the policy actually requires them to treat all threats as credible, no matter how ridiculous?
And if they don't follow the policy to the letter, they get fired?
I don't know if this is the case, but it is possible that the stupidity is coming from a higher level.
What if the teacher and the principal don't have that power? What if the district they're in has clear policies which force them to act this way, or else be fired themselves?
The problem with that is that it has to be live streaming video or else sports fans won't be interested. For some weird reason, they just can't stand to watch sports if it's not live.
The problem with watching these things on cable is that you then have to watch commercials.
A better solution is to just download them on BitTorrent.
The phone company isn't selling DSL, they're selling FiOS in many areas. So the cablecos are in competition with the phone companies.
At my last residence, I had two choices for high-speed data: Comcrap cable and Verizon FiOS. I chose Comcrap, because the monthly cost was lower. My neighbor had Verizon, and had constant problems with it: he had to constantly reset the outside box to get it to work; he moved out and a new guy moved in, got Verizon service too, and again had no end of trouble with his internet service being out for days at a time, and Verizon techs having to make personal visits. At least my Comcrap service was actually quite reliable.
The problem with Comcrap, it seems, is the customer service, not the technical part, at least not in my experience, and all the horror stories I read are about customer service and billing, such as them not canceling peoples' service when asked and continuing to bill them. So to avoid this, when I had to move out, I called and canceled the service (which took forever, most of it on hold), and then I went to my bank which issued the debit card which Comcrap was billing every month, and had them cancel that card and give me a new one (which cost me nothing luckily). So if Comcrap had tried to continue billing me, it was have been unsuccessful. However, I had no sign of that happening: I got a final bill a bit later which I paid (it was for the service at the end of my term), and then another bill for $0.00 after that, and that was the end.
I will say though, I did have a lot of problems with Comcrap service for a while when I was trying to watch Netflix on it. After that highly publicized peering agreement, the issues went away.
People shouldn't be misogynists, but a large fraction of the population is.
TV these days is pretty bad. I can't remember the last time a show caught my interest.
I can: Firefly was excellent.
Actually, there's a few more that are more recent that I've found interesting as well:
- (Star Trek) Enterprise: this was surprisingly good (I only watched it last year, after it was already 10 years old), except for the 3rd season Xindi plot arc which I found rather annoying. The first two seasons were very good though.
- Big Bang Theory: I've only watched the first two seasons so far, but it's actually very funny, something I've never really found in a sitcom before. I guess it being about physicists instead of typical average morons helps a lot this way.
- Game of Thrones: this one really shouldn't require an explanation.
Nope, you've proven you're a typical moronic American who thinks there's a difference between the "blue team" and the "red team".
This is exactly it, in my opinion. Democrat voters are idiots who will back anything their Dear Leader Obama does, even when it was something they were bitching about during Bush's reign.
And Republican voters are just as stupid. They're now bitching about things that they were perfectly OK with when Bush was doing them, but now that Obama is doing them, they're up in arms.
This is because the crowd you hang out with is not representative of mainstream America. These polls are important because they show what the majority of Americans think about things, and those people are who vote for our leaders. Your little peer group does not have sole power to choose our governmental leaders.
What this shows can be argued different ways. Are young people these days generally more conservative than older people? (seems unlikely) Or is it because they're aligned with the Democratic Party, and since that party is currently in power in the Executive Branch, and their Dear Leader is all in favor of NSA spying, they too are in favor of it? Personally I think it's the latter. Americans are really stupid politically, and simply choose a "team" and then mindlessly back anything that team does. If Obama came out in favor of tax breaks for the rich and against abortion, Democrat voters would adopt those positions immediately, while if the Republican Party suddenly came out in favor of gay marriage and abortion rights and extremely progressive taxation (i.e. rich people would be taxed much more heavily), Republican voters would immediately adopt those positions too.