Except that none of those actually exist in the marketplace. They've been promising wonderful new high-capacity removable-media systems for over 20 years now, and almost none of them went anywhere: LS-120, Floptical, I could go on and on. They've never been able to make a removeable-media system with a decent storage capacity relative to contemporary hard drives. They make a bunch of noise about a new one every couple years, and then it just disappears. It's going to be the same way with this one.
Is this really true, though? Yes, we all know that rents in Manhattan are ridiculous. However, I thought this article was about them setting up a lot of workplaces in Brooklyn, which is on the other side of the river. I'm not very familiar with Brooklyn, but I would imagine that the rents there are somewhat lower than in Manhattan. Any Brooklyn natives care to shed some light on this issue?
I'm surprised there isn't more of a push to build high-rise condos in NYC (Manhattan or Brooklyn), given the ridiculous rents in the area.
I guess $112/mo. isn't bad; I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who only goes to NYC for occasional day excursions (I live in northern NJ), and who took some vacations there back in the early 2000s. I remember back then getting a week-long unlimited pass for $17, and when I went there last, I didn't see it any more.
Yeah, I pay a lot of money for my apartment. I also save $500-$800/mo by not owning a car.
No, you save $800/month by not owning a $100k car. I don't know what kind of normal car costs anywhere near that. Over here in NJ, the cost for owning a 10-year-old 30+mpg car is dirt cheap.
As for NJ, this is by design. Its best to keep Jersey in Jersey.
Ok, what's with the snide comment? Have you ever been to NJ? They don't call it the "Garden State" for nothing; it's quite nice over here (once you get a little west of Elizabeth and that area; Elizabeth's a dump). The people here are also quite nice. I've been to Westchester and Stamford CT, and the people there aren't nearly as nice as north New Jerseyans, and the scenery isn't nearly as pretty either. Stamford, in fact, looked like a dump to me.
I work for a wonderful company that isn't anywhere near any other major tech company, and while we can't hire people fast enough because the allure of living where we are isn't exactly superb, you can't beet a 5 minute drive to a place that pays you extremely well.
There's more than one reason you can't hire enough people: 1) lots of people probably don't care for your particular location. Where exactly are you located anyway? and 2) if you're the only tech company in the area, that's a stupid place to relocate for a job. What happens if you get laid off, or your boss sucks, etc.? In a tech hub (not just Silicon Valley, but any city with a healthy number of tech companies), you just go get a job at one of the other companies in the area. Where you are, you're screwed: you have to uproot your family, sell your house, and pay thousands of dollars to move somewhere else. Maybe your company should offer prospective new employees free relocation costs in case they ever want to move out, including for people who stay less than 90 days.
There seems to be a trend now of eliminating telecommuting. Yahoo infamously banned all telecommuting when Marisa Meyer took over as CEO. I was a telecommuter at my last company, and they were bought out by a much larger company that seemed to be quietly pushing out all the telecommuters and not hiring any new ones. Companies like the ability to have teams in disparate geographical locations, but they want all the workers in boring cubicles in corporate offices, where managers can watch over them.
NYC and other big cities are really big because there's a lot of people there. And there's a lot of people there because a lot of people want to live there, despite the high cost of living. Small places are small because they have few people; few people want to live there despite the low rents and open spaces.
I disagree; it's not necessarily that simple. Lots of people would like to live elsewhere, but they live where they do because that's where their work is. Companies (in their industry) tend to cluster in certain places, so workers in those industries flock to thse places to get high-paying jobs. Some of them might really prefer to live in Bumfuck, Iowa, but the lower cost-of-living there isn't going to make up for having to give up their 6-figure job and take a job at the local feed-n-seed store, so they stay in the city they live in. Even if 80% of the workers wished they could live in some other place, they can't agree on that place (some people might like Iowa, but most wouldn't; some might like ND, but most wouldn't; some might like WV, but most wouldn't; etc.). So the city is a place where lots of people can agree it's "good enough", at least for the time being, though when they retire they may very well pack up and move out to one of those more rural places.
I live in NJ, across the river from Manhattan. Public transit inside Manhattan is not bad: it's very fast, as the subway trains run very frequently. It's not cheap though: it seems to have skyrocketed in price over the last 10 years. I think the current price is $2.25 per ride; back in 2000 it was $17 for a weeklong unlimited ride pass, which doesn't seem to exist any more.
However, public transit outside of Manhattan sucks. Yes, there's a light rail that goes to NJ (there's a stop just a couple miles from my house here), but it's horribly slow, and only runs once per hour, and costs $8 per trip. It's actually faster and easier to just take a bus, though that isn't exactly quick, but the train is so slow and infrequent (and parking is a giant problem and expense unless you happen to live within walking distance of the train station) that the bus becomes better by default.
From what I've seen of the Long Island Railroad, it's much the same. Too-slow trains running much too infrequently.
Public transit in this area could be much better; they just need to quadruple the frequency of train trips, and provide better and cheaper parking solutions at the train stations (i.e., free parking garages) for all the people who live only a few miles away: close enough to use the train, but too far to walk.
So yes, transportation inside Manhattan is perfectly adequate, if you only want to employ 20-something workers who live in the city in tiny shared apartments. If you want any older workers (i.e., people with more than a few years of experience, people who might have families), it really isn't that great.
Iran just elected a new President. That doesn't look too much like a monarchy to me. Venezuela doesn't look like much of one either; it appears to be a democracy as well, though like ours the voting is probably heavily rigged. NK is really the only one that looks a lot like a monarchy, with its hereditary leadership. Other autocracies may share the autocratic feature with monarchies, but a monarchy is characterized by hereditary, autocratic leadership. Otherwise it's just a dictatorship or oligarchy.
Anyway, given that NK never had democracy at all, it doesn't support your assertion at all, instead it actually disproves it. Korea was originally a kingdom, and was then seized and occupied by Japan. When Japan lost WWII, it was split apart, much like Germany, with the Soviets controlling the North (which then came under the rule of Kim-Il Sung), and the south controlled by the Americans, which then declared itself a new democratic state. Things haven't really changed since then, governmentally. So NK went from kingdom to colony and back to kingdom. SK went from kingdom to colony to democracy, and hasn't left that.
If anything seems to be the real undoing of democracies, it's not "the majority voting itself largess out of the public treasury", it's massive corruption, where a tiny minority votes itself largess out of the public treasury. See the USA and Brazil for examples.
Do you have any historical examples of this? I've never heard of a monarchy being instituted after a democracy (or dictatorship), though there's certainly plenty of examples of democracies collapsing and being replaced by dictatorships (usually military juntas). This has happened in Turkey many times.
It's all about how many alternatives you have to exercise your free speech. When the government mandates something, you have no choice: there's only one government, and you can't pick and choose which government's laws you want to follow: the government has a monopoly on governing, by definition. If the government colludes with (rather than mandates) corporations to restrict free speech, that's no different. It's still coming from the government. If a monopoly corporation restricts free speech, that's really little different from the government doing it, because again you don't have any real choice since that corporation (say, your regional ISP, assuming your region only has one ISP) is acting like the government. Indeed, even if the government isn't colluding with or forcing the corporation to restrict free speech, they're neglecting their responsibility to regulate monopolies (and break them up when they don't serve a useful purpose and are abusive), and in effect, colluding with them (a "sin of omission", you could say). The same goes for oligopolies: having 3 choices that are all exactly the same isn't any different than having a single "choice", or no choice at all. And again, it's the government's responsibility to regulate and break up oligopolies, just like with monopolies. So it's entirely valid to say that all these are "censorship", and are also the fault of the government.
However, to call it "censorship" when a minimum-wage worker who pays $3/month for his blog hosting service deletes inflammatory comments is really stretching things. If you want to make inflammatory (or any kind of unpopular) comments, there's nothing preventing you from signing up for your own blog for $3/month. Anyone can afford $3/month. Even compared to the pitifully low minimum wage we have here in the US these days (about $7.50/hour I think), which hasn't changed significantly in ages, that's still easily affordable, and is certainly much cheaper than owning a car, paying for rent/food, and in fact it's a lot cheaper than any ISP service I've ever heard of (and having a blog isn't much use to you if you don't have a computer and internet access, though you could take the trouble to go to the library to do it if you're really poor). It's even affordable compared to standing on a street corner with a sign: Sharpie markers to draw your sign will probably cost as much as a month's worth of blog service.
For whatever reason women are simply less inclined to even try STEM areas of work.
It's most likely cultural. Contrary to your subject line, there's tons of women in engineering. I've worked with many. The thing is, very very few of them are caucasian; they're mostly Indian and Chinese (or from other countries in that region). Their culture apparently doesn't steer women towards loving Barbies and Prada and HR and marketing careers, and instead steers them towards productive careers.
So lets not go around building fucking walls to keep even more out than naturally already discard the thought out of hand even though they would enjoy it.
No one's building walls to keep women out. Chinese and Indian women have no problem getting into engineering professions. I'm just questioning the idea that we need to use sexist, asinine, and degrading methods like trying to use overpriced fashion clothes to get women into the profession.
Again, you CANNOT get the size of a group to increase be being highly selective and exclusionary!
No one is proposing that.
WHAT THE FUCK. The pay (and job stability) is *already* extremely compelling and just about any STEM field. That's OBVIOUSLY not any kind of solution.
Bullshit. The pay and job stability are poor compared to careers that require a similar level of education. You've OBVIOUSLY an idiot, or maybe some managerial moron who thinks engineers are overpaid.
We do, there are tons of things everywhere that make STEM seem interesting to boys.
Like what? I don't see any coding contests where the prizes are football or baseball tickets, and of course ALL men love those things, right?
That's only a slight difference: if I understand correctly, in Europe, if someone writes something slanderous on your blog, you can be liable for it if you leave it there, whereas in America it's not quite so clear-cut. That's totally different from what we're discussing, which is whether blog owners should be allowed to delete comments they don't like. Well according to you, in Europe, not only can blog owners delete comments they don't like, they're required to delete comments that are slanderous.
My assertion is that on a private blog, you (the owner) have every right to delete comments you don't like (aka moderation). Where in the world would that not be correct? It's true in America, and obviously it's true in Europe by your own admission.
that if a government were to allow only a single ISP to be registered, that ISP (not being a government entity), can prevent you from exercising your free speech rights, that would not be not censorship.
Wrong. That's still censorship, just in an indirect and underhanded way.
Moreover, if an ISP (which is the company that provides you internet access to your location; ISPs are not the same as web hosts) exercises any control over what you say or do on the internet, then they lose their common carrier status, and become totally responsible for everything you do with that connection. If you download any child porn, the ISP is responsible for that as well, and needs to go to prison for CP trafficking. Communications companies can only free themselves of liability by turning a blind eye to everything their customers do, except when they receive a warrant from the government to look at someone's communications.
I don't know anyone on the left supporting those things,
Obviously, you haven't been reading Democrat forums, or indeed Slashdot discussions that veered off into Obama arguments. There's tons of Obama apologists out there, people who obviously voted for him and support him. No, not everyone on the left is like this; there do seem to be a fair number of people, leftists and Democrats (the two are distinct but overlapping sets), who are disillusioned and/or angry with him, but a large portion of his supporters (hard to say whether it's a majority or not) changed their tune, from being critical of Bush's policies to supporting Bush's policies now that Obama has adopted them wholesale.
but we would like to know why the right is pushing these things as a scandal now, when they were cheering them just a few short years ago.
That's easy: because Obama supports these things, and they're anti-Obama, so just like the Democrat voters have changed their opinions and are now pro-war, anti-environment (Obama supports KeystoneXL), pro-big-banks, the Republican voters have had to change their opinions and adopt opposite opinions on many issues.
The Democrats suck, but the Republican agenda, socially, environmentally, culturally and economically, is a disaster we cannot afford.
The Democrat agenda is the same as the Republican agenda, it only differs in extremely minor and insignificant ways.
If the web host (not ISP; ISPs don't provide blogs) censors people's private blogs, then it becomes responsible and liable for the contents of everyone's blogs. So they don't. Same goes for ISPs censoring what people look at and do with their internet connections.
However, on my private blog, I have every right to exercise editorial control over what's posted there.
What you are missing is this: When you censor your blog, you are not a _platform for free speech_. It is not your responsibility to be one, but as a society, for free speech to have any meaning, there must be platforms for free speech.
I'm not missing anything. I don't know about you, but if I had a blog, my aim is not to provide a platform for free speech. I don't know why this should be anyone's aim. A blog is a platform for you to exercise your free speech, not to provide a forum for anyone and everyone to exercise their rights.
There's nothing preventing other people from getting their own blog from a web host. Web hosting plans are dirt cheap these days; eating out at McDonald's once a month costs more.
The press has traditionally been such a platform.
No it hasn't. The press has always exercised editorial control. Newspapers have never been open forums for everyone to write whatever they wanted. They were (and still are, though they're in their death throes) platforms for the newspapers' owners to write their own opinions (mainly in the op-ed page), and to let some select people write their opinions and have them be aired (in the "letters to the editor" page). They don't publish every single letter to the editor that shows up in their postbox. They only have so much space anyway, but they also only post letters they agree with, along with perhaps some select ones they don't agree with. They certainly don't post letters that we'd consider "trolls" or highly inflammatory, including foul language, or just plain stupid (unless they strategically include these to make some groups of people look bad). There's no way for us to know which letters didn't get published.
Today ISPs and network operators must be platforms for free speech.
They are, if you include web hosts in that group. ISPs and network operators do not prevent people from writing blogs, and webhosts are dirt cheap. There's not much (beyond $3/month, plus the cost of registering your domain) keeping you from starting your own blog.
Most censorship is done by private companies, not by the government.
Citation needed. I don't know about other countries, but here in the US I really don't see any censorship at all going on on the internet (on public streets is another matter, with "free speech zones", brutal arrests of peaceful protesters, etc.).
We're on the internet, on various (privately owned) forums and blogs. The question seems to be more specifically about Martin's own blog. On his blog, he has the absolute right to delete any comments he doesn't argee with. That's not "censorship"; it's only censorship when the government does it. Free speech means you're (supposed to be) free from any government interference in expressing yourself. It doesn't mean that I'm obligated to provide you a forum to air your opinions. If you want to express yourself, go get your own blog.
There's no reason to bitch and complain about "trolls" and "fanboys" on your own blog. If you don't like someone's post, just delete it. Ban them if they continue to be a problem. It's that simple. If people are being a pain on other forums you don't control, there's nothing you can do about that, other than to ignore those forums.
In the wake of the NSA scandals, you have all sorts of people who want to support their side (aka the good guys) and make sure the other side (aka the bad guys) don't score political points on them.
It's older than that: this is exactly how so many Obama supporters went from being pro-transparency, anti-wars, anti-Guantanamo, anti-torture, etc. to anti-transparency, pro-wars, pro-waterboarding. They have to support their "side" at all costs, even when it means reversing their opinions.
The point of the free speech amendment is make sure THE GOVERNMENT cannot decide that YOU will say whatever THEY want on YOUR servers.
Exactly. Free speech is something we should uphold, but it doesn't mean that any private party has a responsibility to provide a platform for someone they don't agree with. If I have a blog, I can say whatever the hell I want on it. If people make comments on it, and I agree with them, I'll let them stand. If some troll (or anyone else I disagree with) says something I don't like, I'm free to delete it, because it's my blog, not theirs. If they want to exercise their free speech, they can do it on their own blog. It's only censorship when the government prevents you from exercising your free speech rights.
Perhaps that more an artifact of short-sighted managers and HR people.
Are there any other kinds? Especially HR people.
Anyway, for many large companies, your choice of school will determine if they look at you at all. For smaller companies, it's probably not that big a factor. Also, as you get older and have more experience, your college degrees and grades become less and less important. If you graduated in '87, your degree really isn't important at all at this point.
What price matching? BB never matches prices with online stores. The whole way they make money is by overcharging on accessories (cables, etc.) and with their idiotic extended warranties. They're never going to match prices on a $3 HDMI cable when their list price is $50.
The point is, women who are highly interested in being fashion consumers are unlikely, IMO, to be interested in getting involved in the nitty-gritty details of technology (e.g. coding). If there were more of a correlation between the two groups, we would have seen it before now: women with such interests would be more commonly seen in technical careers and technical degree programs. What's more, what does being a fashion consumer have to do with creating fashion? Lots of people (most people in the US) buy cars, but that doesn't mean they have any interest in being car designers, automotive engineers, assembly plant workers, or auto mechanics. Even the people who really like cars frequently have no interest in getting that involved in them. You think some guy who drives an Aston Martin or Lamborghini has any interest in designing such cars himself? No? So why do you think some woman who likes Gucci purses has any interest in designing or making them?
If you want to make STEM careers attractive to a larger set of the population, the answer is simple: increase the pay, improve the career prospects and working conditions, and improve the prestige of such jobs. We had a brief time in the late 90s when being a "web developer" was hyped up and paid very well (really, massively overpaid, compared to other technical careers, considering how easy web development is compared to other forms of software development) and everyone and his brother wanted to become a web developer all of a sudden. Of course, then the Slashdot crowd bitched and complained about how all these people were in it only for the money, didn't have any passion for the work, were incompetent, churned out crap, etc. And then after the bubble imploded, and most of these barely-competent people got out of the industry and moved on to something else (like real estate), everyone on Slashdot was cheering that all these people were gone.
But now people on Slashdot, for some odd reason, want to bring more uninterested people into this career field? Why? If they were really that interested in this career field, they would have shown that interest much earlier. If anyone is avoiding the field who would actually be a good fit, they're avoiding it for the reasons I listed above, not because they need some cheap gimmick like a contest with fashion clothes as the prize to get them interested.
Finally, if this is such a great idea, why don't we use a variation of it to bring more men into STEM careers? How about we have coding competitions, but with football tickets or ESPN subscriptions as the prizes? Because all men like football and ESPN, right? And football/sports fans would surely be a great pool of talent for STEM careers, right? Or how about Harley Davidson merchandise (clothing, even a motorcycle) as the prizes? Because all men like that stuff too, right? And 20-something Harley riders would surely make great cubicle workers.
So you think all women are interested in overpriced fashion clothes?
I've known lots of women in engineering (and dated a couple). They were definitely NOT the kind of women interested in fashion clothes; even if they wanted some clothes, they'd rather just spend their own money on them, and spend their time doing something more productive or more lucrative. Doing work for non-monetary rewards is always a losing proposition; the people giving away the "free" items are doing it because it's cheaper than just giving out cash.
Male engineers aren't going to design anything in exchange for phones, power tools, etc. They want cash, so they can buy their own stuff.
The women who spend all their time on fashion clothes are not likely to have any interest in coding, no matter how much free stuff you offer them.
Lots of people would probably like to be geeks. However with the costly educational requirements, the lackluster compensation, the crappy career path and working conditions (for what's supposed to be a high-end career), and the rampant ageism in the industry (not to mention sexism), it's just not a very attractive career. People smart enough for engineering will do better in medicine or finance.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that none of those actually exist in the marketplace. They've been promising wonderful new high-capacity removable-media systems for over 20 years now, and almost none of them went anywhere: LS-120, Floptical, I could go on and on. They've never been able to make a removeable-media system with a decent storage capacity relative to contemporary hard drives. They make a bunch of noise about a new one every couple years, and then it just disappears. It's going to be the same way with this one.
Is this really true, though? Yes, we all know that rents in Manhattan are ridiculous. However, I thought this article was about them setting up a lot of workplaces in Brooklyn, which is on the other side of the river. I'm not very familiar with Brooklyn, but I would imagine that the rents there are somewhat lower than in Manhattan. Any Brooklyn natives care to shed some light on this issue?
I'm surprised there isn't more of a push to build high-rise condos in NYC (Manhattan or Brooklyn), given the ridiculous rents in the area.
This is very enlightening. Thanks for the info!
I guess $112/mo. isn't bad; I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who only goes to NYC for occasional day excursions (I live in northern NJ), and who took some vacations there back in the early 2000s. I remember back then getting a week-long unlimited pass for $17, and when I went there last, I didn't see it any more.
Yeah, I pay a lot of money for my apartment. I also save $500-$800/mo by not owning a car.
No, you save $800/month by not owning a $100k car. I don't know what kind of normal car costs anywhere near that. Over here in NJ, the cost for owning a 10-year-old 30+mpg car is dirt cheap.
As for NJ, this is by design. Its best to keep Jersey in Jersey.
Ok, what's with the snide comment? Have you ever been to NJ? They don't call it the "Garden State" for nothing; it's quite nice over here (once you get a little west of Elizabeth and that area; Elizabeth's a dump). The people here are also quite nice. I've been to Westchester and Stamford CT, and the people there aren't nearly as nice as north New Jerseyans, and the scenery isn't nearly as pretty either. Stamford, in fact, looked like a dump to me.
I work for a wonderful company that isn't anywhere near any other major tech company, and while we can't hire people fast enough because the allure of living where we are isn't exactly superb, you can't beet a 5 minute drive to a place that pays you extremely well.
There's more than one reason you can't hire enough people: 1) lots of people probably don't care for your particular location. Where exactly are you located anyway? and 2) if you're the only tech company in the area, that's a stupid place to relocate for a job. What happens if you get laid off, or your boss sucks, etc.? In a tech hub (not just Silicon Valley, but any city with a healthy number of tech companies), you just go get a job at one of the other companies in the area. Where you are, you're screwed: you have to uproot your family, sell your house, and pay thousands of dollars to move somewhere else. Maybe your company should offer prospective new employees free relocation costs in case they ever want to move out, including for people who stay less than 90 days.
There seems to be a trend now of eliminating telecommuting. Yahoo infamously banned all telecommuting when Marisa Meyer took over as CEO. I was a telecommuter at my last company, and they were bought out by a much larger company that seemed to be quietly pushing out all the telecommuters and not hiring any new ones. Companies like the ability to have teams in disparate geographical locations, but they want all the workers in boring cubicles in corporate offices, where managers can watch over them.
NYC and other big cities are really big because there's a lot of people there. And there's a lot of people there because a lot of people want to live there, despite the high cost of living. Small places are small because they have few people; few people want to live there despite the low rents and open spaces.
I disagree; it's not necessarily that simple. Lots of people would like to live elsewhere, but they live where they do because that's where their work is. Companies (in their industry) tend to cluster in certain places, so workers in those industries flock to thse places to get high-paying jobs. Some of them might really prefer to live in Bumfuck, Iowa, but the lower cost-of-living there isn't going to make up for having to give up their 6-figure job and take a job at the local feed-n-seed store, so they stay in the city they live in. Even if 80% of the workers wished they could live in some other place, they can't agree on that place (some people might like Iowa, but most wouldn't; some might like ND, but most wouldn't; some might like WV, but most wouldn't; etc.). So the city is a place where lots of people can agree it's "good enough", at least for the time being, though when they retire they may very well pack up and move out to one of those more rural places.
I live in NJ, across the river from Manhattan. Public transit inside Manhattan is not bad: it's very fast, as the subway trains run very frequently. It's not cheap though: it seems to have skyrocketed in price over the last 10 years. I think the current price is $2.25 per ride; back in 2000 it was $17 for a weeklong unlimited ride pass, which doesn't seem to exist any more.
However, public transit outside of Manhattan sucks. Yes, there's a light rail that goes to NJ (there's a stop just a couple miles from my house here), but it's horribly slow, and only runs once per hour, and costs $8 per trip. It's actually faster and easier to just take a bus, though that isn't exactly quick, but the train is so slow and infrequent (and parking is a giant problem and expense unless you happen to live within walking distance of the train station) that the bus becomes better by default.
From what I've seen of the Long Island Railroad, it's much the same. Too-slow trains running much too infrequently.
Public transit in this area could be much better; they just need to quadruple the frequency of train trips, and provide better and cheaper parking solutions at the train stations (i.e., free parking garages) for all the people who live only a few miles away: close enough to use the train, but too far to walk.
So yes, transportation inside Manhattan is perfectly adequate, if you only want to employ 20-something workers who live in the city in tiny shared apartments. If you want any older workers (i.e., people with more than a few years of experience, people who might have families), it really isn't that great.
Iran just elected a new President. That doesn't look too much like a monarchy to me. Venezuela doesn't look like much of one either; it appears to be a democracy as well, though like ours the voting is probably heavily rigged. NK is really the only one that looks a lot like a monarchy, with its hereditary leadership. Other autocracies may share the autocratic feature with monarchies, but a monarchy is characterized by hereditary, autocratic leadership. Otherwise it's just a dictatorship or oligarchy.
Anyway, given that NK never had democracy at all, it doesn't support your assertion at all, instead it actually disproves it. Korea was originally a kingdom, and was then seized and occupied by Japan. When Japan lost WWII, it was split apart, much like Germany, with the Soviets controlling the North (which then came under the rule of Kim-Il Sung), and the south controlled by the Americans, which then declared itself a new democratic state. Things haven't really changed since then, governmentally. So NK went from kingdom to colony and back to kingdom. SK went from kingdom to colony to democracy, and hasn't left that.
If anything seems to be the real undoing of democracies, it's not "the majority voting itself largess out of the public treasury", it's massive corruption, where a tiny minority votes itself largess out of the public treasury. See the USA and Brazil for examples.
Do you have any historical examples of this? I've never heard of a monarchy being instituted after a democracy (or dictatorship), though there's certainly plenty of examples of democracies collapsing and being replaced by dictatorships (usually military juntas). This has happened in Turkey many times.
It's all about how many alternatives you have to exercise your free speech. When the government mandates something, you have no choice: there's only one government, and you can't pick and choose which government's laws you want to follow: the government has a monopoly on governing, by definition. If the government colludes with (rather than mandates) corporations to restrict free speech, that's no different. It's still coming from the government. If a monopoly corporation restricts free speech, that's really little different from the government doing it, because again you don't have any real choice since that corporation (say, your regional ISP, assuming your region only has one ISP) is acting like the government. Indeed, even if the government isn't colluding with or forcing the corporation to restrict free speech, they're neglecting their responsibility to regulate monopolies (and break them up when they don't serve a useful purpose and are abusive), and in effect, colluding with them (a "sin of omission", you could say). The same goes for oligopolies: having 3 choices that are all exactly the same isn't any different than having a single "choice", or no choice at all. And again, it's the government's responsibility to regulate and break up oligopolies, just like with monopolies. So it's entirely valid to say that all these are "censorship", and are also the fault of the government.
However, to call it "censorship" when a minimum-wage worker who pays $3/month for his blog hosting service deletes inflammatory comments is really stretching things. If you want to make inflammatory (or any kind of unpopular) comments, there's nothing preventing you from signing up for your own blog for $3/month. Anyone can afford $3/month. Even compared to the pitifully low minimum wage we have here in the US these days (about $7.50/hour I think), which hasn't changed significantly in ages, that's still easily affordable, and is certainly much cheaper than owning a car, paying for rent/food, and in fact it's a lot cheaper than any ISP service I've ever heard of (and having a blog isn't much use to you if you don't have a computer and internet access, though you could take the trouble to go to the library to do it if you're really poor). It's even affordable compared to standing on a street corner with a sign: Sharpie markers to draw your sign will probably cost as much as a month's worth of blog service.
I'm American too, just completely disillusioned about my countrymen. We're not all blind, just most of us.
Interesting how you get a "flamebait" moderation for this. It must have been an American who did that.
For whatever reason women are simply less inclined to even try STEM areas of work.
It's most likely cultural. Contrary to your subject line, there's tons of women in engineering. I've worked with many. The thing is, very very few of them are caucasian; they're mostly Indian and Chinese (or from other countries in that region). Their culture apparently doesn't steer women towards loving Barbies and Prada and HR and marketing careers, and instead steers them towards productive careers.
So lets not go around building fucking walls to keep even more out than naturally already discard the thought out of hand even though they would enjoy it.
No one's building walls to keep women out. Chinese and Indian women have no problem getting into engineering professions. I'm just questioning the idea that we need to use sexist, asinine, and degrading methods like trying to use overpriced fashion clothes to get women into the profession.
Again, you CANNOT get the size of a group to increase be being highly selective and exclusionary!
No one is proposing that.
WHAT THE FUCK. The pay (and job stability) is *already* extremely compelling and just about any STEM field. That's OBVIOUSLY not any kind of solution.
Bullshit. The pay and job stability are poor compared to careers that require a similar level of education. You've OBVIOUSLY an idiot, or maybe some managerial moron who thinks engineers are overpaid.
We do, there are tons of things everywhere that make STEM seem interesting to boys.
Like what? I don't see any coding contests where the prizes are football or baseball tickets, and of course ALL men love those things, right?
That's only a slight difference: if I understand correctly, in Europe, if someone writes something slanderous on your blog, you can be liable for it if you leave it there, whereas in America it's not quite so clear-cut. That's totally different from what we're discussing, which is whether blog owners should be allowed to delete comments they don't like. Well according to you, in Europe, not only can blog owners delete comments they don't like, they're required to delete comments that are slanderous.
My assertion is that on a private blog, you (the owner) have every right to delete comments you don't like (aka moderation). Where in the world would that not be correct? It's true in America, and obviously it's true in Europe by your own admission.
that if a government were to allow only a single ISP to be registered, that ISP (not being a government entity), can prevent you from exercising your free speech rights, that would not be not censorship.
Wrong. That's still censorship, just in an indirect and underhanded way.
Moreover, if an ISP (which is the company that provides you internet access to your location; ISPs are not the same as web hosts) exercises any control over what you say or do on the internet, then they lose their common carrier status, and become totally responsible for everything you do with that connection. If you download any child porn, the ISP is responsible for that as well, and needs to go to prison for CP trafficking. Communications companies can only free themselves of liability by turning a blind eye to everything their customers do, except when they receive a warrant from the government to look at someone's communications.
I don't know anyone on the left supporting those things,
Obviously, you haven't been reading Democrat forums, or indeed Slashdot discussions that veered off into Obama arguments. There's tons of Obama apologists out there, people who obviously voted for him and support him. No, not everyone on the left is like this; there do seem to be a fair number of people, leftists and Democrats (the two are distinct but overlapping sets), who are disillusioned and/or angry with him, but a large portion of his supporters (hard to say whether it's a majority or not) changed their tune, from being critical of Bush's policies to supporting Bush's policies now that Obama has adopted them wholesale.
but we would like to know why the right is pushing these things as a scandal now, when they were cheering them just a few short years ago.
That's easy: because Obama supports these things, and they're anti-Obama, so just like the Democrat voters have changed their opinions and are now pro-war, anti-environment (Obama supports KeystoneXL), pro-big-banks, the Republican voters have had to change their opinions and adopt opposite opinions on many issues.
The Democrats suck, but the Republican agenda, socially, environmentally, culturally and economically, is a disaster we cannot afford.
The Democrat agenda is the same as the Republican agenda, it only differs in extremely minor and insignificant ways.
Two words: common carrier.
If the web host (not ISP; ISPs don't provide blogs) censors people's private blogs, then it becomes responsible and liable for the contents of everyone's blogs. So they don't. Same goes for ISPs censoring what people look at and do with their internet connections.
However, on my private blog, I have every right to exercise editorial control over what's posted there.
What you are missing is this: When you censor your blog, you are not a _platform for free speech_. It is not your responsibility to be one, but as a society, for free speech to have any meaning, there must be platforms for free speech.
I'm not missing anything. I don't know about you, but if I had a blog, my aim is not to provide a platform for free speech. I don't know why this should be anyone's aim. A blog is a platform for you to exercise your free speech, not to provide a forum for anyone and everyone to exercise their rights.
There's nothing preventing other people from getting their own blog from a web host. Web hosting plans are dirt cheap these days; eating out at McDonald's once a month costs more.
The press has traditionally been such a platform.
No it hasn't. The press has always exercised editorial control. Newspapers have never been open forums for everyone to write whatever they wanted. They were (and still are, though they're in their death throes) platforms for the newspapers' owners to write their own opinions (mainly in the op-ed page), and to let some select people write their opinions and have them be aired (in the "letters to the editor" page). They don't publish every single letter to the editor that shows up in their postbox. They only have so much space anyway, but they also only post letters they agree with, along with perhaps some select ones they don't agree with. They certainly don't post letters that we'd consider "trolls" or highly inflammatory, including foul language, or just plain stupid (unless they strategically include these to make some groups of people look bad). There's no way for us to know which letters didn't get published.
Today ISPs and network operators must be platforms for free speech.
They are, if you include web hosts in that group. ISPs and network operators do not prevent people from writing blogs, and webhosts are dirt cheap. There's not much (beyond $3/month, plus the cost of registering your domain) keeping you from starting your own blog.
Most censorship is done by private companies, not by the government.
Citation needed. I don't know about other countries, but here in the US I really don't see any censorship at all going on on the internet (on public streets is another matter, with "free speech zones", brutal arrests of peaceful protesters, etc.).
Totally irrelevant.
We're on the internet, on various (privately owned) forums and blogs. The question seems to be more specifically about Martin's own blog. On his blog, he has the absolute right to delete any comments he doesn't argee with. That's not "censorship"; it's only censorship when the government does it. Free speech means you're (supposed to be) free from any government interference in expressing yourself. It doesn't mean that I'm obligated to provide you a forum to air your opinions. If you want to express yourself, go get your own blog.
There's no reason to bitch and complain about "trolls" and "fanboys" on your own blog. If you don't like someone's post, just delete it. Ban them if they continue to be a problem. It's that simple. If people are being a pain on other forums you don't control, there's nothing you can do about that, other than to ignore those forums.
In the wake of the NSA scandals, you have all sorts of people who want to support their side (aka the good guys) and make sure the other side (aka the bad guys) don't score political points on them.
It's older than that: this is exactly how so many Obama supporters went from being pro-transparency, anti-wars, anti-Guantanamo, anti-torture, etc. to anti-transparency, pro-wars, pro-waterboarding. They have to support their "side" at all costs, even when it means reversing their opinions.
The point of the free speech amendment is make sure THE GOVERNMENT cannot decide that YOU will say whatever THEY want on YOUR servers.
Exactly. Free speech is something we should uphold, but it doesn't mean that any private party has a responsibility to provide a platform for someone they don't agree with. If I have a blog, I can say whatever the hell I want on it. If people make comments on it, and I agree with them, I'll let them stand. If some troll (or anyone else I disagree with) says something I don't like, I'm free to delete it, because it's my blog, not theirs. If they want to exercise their free speech, they can do it on their own blog. It's only censorship when the government prevents you from exercising your free speech rights.
Perhaps that more an artifact of short-sighted managers and HR people.
Are there any other kinds? Especially HR people.
Anyway, for many large companies, your choice of school will determine if they look at you at all. For smaller companies, it's probably not that big a factor. Also, as you get older and have more experience, your college degrees and grades become less and less important. If you graduated in '87, your degree really isn't important at all at this point.
What price matching? BB never matches prices with online stores. The whole way they make money is by overcharging on accessories (cables, etc.) and with their idiotic extended warranties. They're never going to match prices on a $3 HDMI cable when their list price is $50.
The point is, women who are highly interested in being fashion consumers are unlikely, IMO, to be interested in getting involved in the nitty-gritty details of technology (e.g. coding). If there were more of a correlation between the two groups, we would have seen it before now: women with such interests would be more commonly seen in technical careers and technical degree programs. What's more, what does being a fashion consumer have to do with creating fashion? Lots of people (most people in the US) buy cars, but that doesn't mean they have any interest in being car designers, automotive engineers, assembly plant workers, or auto mechanics. Even the people who really like cars frequently have no interest in getting that involved in them. You think some guy who drives an Aston Martin or Lamborghini has any interest in designing such cars himself? No? So why do you think some woman who likes Gucci purses has any interest in designing or making them?
If you want to make STEM careers attractive to a larger set of the population, the answer is simple: increase the pay, improve the career prospects and working conditions, and improve the prestige of such jobs. We had a brief time in the late 90s when being a "web developer" was hyped up and paid very well (really, massively overpaid, compared to other technical careers, considering how easy web development is compared to other forms of software development) and everyone and his brother wanted to become a web developer all of a sudden. Of course, then the Slashdot crowd bitched and complained about how all these people were in it only for the money, didn't have any passion for the work, were incompetent, churned out crap, etc. And then after the bubble imploded, and most of these barely-competent people got out of the industry and moved on to something else (like real estate), everyone on Slashdot was cheering that all these people were gone.
But now people on Slashdot, for some odd reason, want to bring more uninterested people into this career field? Why? If they were really that interested in this career field, they would have shown that interest much earlier. If anyone is avoiding the field who would actually be a good fit, they're avoiding it for the reasons I listed above, not because they need some cheap gimmick like a contest with fashion clothes as the prize to get them interested.
Finally, if this is such a great idea, why don't we use a variation of it to bring more men into STEM careers? How about we have coding competitions, but with football tickets or ESPN subscriptions as the prizes? Because all men like football and ESPN, right? And football/sports fans would surely be a great pool of talent for STEM careers, right? Or how about Harley Davidson merchandise (clothing, even a motorcycle) as the prizes? Because all men like that stuff too, right? And 20-something Harley riders would surely make great cubicle workers.
So you think all women are interested in overpriced fashion clothes?
I've known lots of women in engineering (and dated a couple). They were definitely NOT the kind of women interested in fashion clothes; even if they wanted some clothes, they'd rather just spend their own money on them, and spend their time doing something more productive or more lucrative. Doing work for non-monetary rewards is always a losing proposition; the people giving away the "free" items are doing it because it's cheaper than just giving out cash.
Male engineers aren't going to design anything in exchange for phones, power tools, etc. They want cash, so they can buy their own stuff.
The women who spend all their time on fashion clothes are not likely to have any interest in coding, no matter how much free stuff you offer them.
Lots of people would probably like to be geeks. However with the costly educational requirements, the lackluster compensation, the crappy career path and working conditions (for what's supposed to be a high-end career), and the rampant ageism in the industry (not to mention sexism), it's just not a very attractive career. People smart enough for engineering will do better in medicine or finance.