well, to summarize ur comment, most of the rights what u talked abt also comes with development of a country and India is still developing. Compared to before, the situation has changed significantly now and it would continue in future as well. All the things needed to constitute a civilized world according to ur definition will also be achieved in future...it's just a matter of time.
Being civilized is something that has to come from within. Stop blaming it on the development of your country. Countries with far less culture and freedom than India have become more civilized in less time than we've had. Then again, as long as people like you abound, I doubt it's going to happen any time soon.
By the way, better u revise ur idea of security rights (any idea how many ppl r killed in gun shootouts in USA every year??) and equality rights (u know, black ppl and white ppl kind of racism) in those so called civilized world.
Okay, the number of people dying in shootouts in the US is probably one hundredth (or less) of the number of people that die in hit-and-runs in India. If you want to talk numbers, I can assure you that even taking the population into account, man for man, the number of violent deaths in India is way more. And FYI - people have been equal in this country for a long, long time. The racism that you speak of exists in extremely small pockets and is caused by a handful of idiots, much like the Shiv Sena. And you know, just take the number of people dead in the Gujarat riots and the kind of crap that Narendra Modi and others pulled and compare that with the numbers here in the US - the numbers will tell you something about racism.
The freedom of speech...hmmm...so u say that whatever were published there in Danish newspapers were freedom of speech?? If u say so, why the hell u ppl dont talk abt holocaust....most of the European countries, and perhaps USA as well, restricts the "denial of holocaust" by law. Where does ur freedom of speech go then?? Few months ago, when the Iranian president was organizing a debate on if the holocaust really happened, how may of European governments had decried abt it??
Yes. What the Danish newspapers published *was* freedom of speech. I can show Allah with a bomb in his head, I can show Krishna as a pimp and I can show Jesus as a rabid baby-killing monster. It is my right to do so, because as a sovereign *citizen* I have the freedom to express my thoughts. Now, very few countries have banned talking about the holocaust - and that is wrong. And in most of them, it is only the denial of the holocaust that is wrong (which falls into denying history, which is remarkably different from freedom of speech, if I might add). But either way, I think what they are doing is wrong, too. What is your point? Just because a handful of countries make stupid mistakes (because millions died) does not mean you should do the same thing - you are both wrong and you are both mistaken.
No, if u r nobody, it doesn't matter much what u speak because no one listens to u.
Shows your ignorance. Go to Rashtrapati Bhavan and call for Manmohan Singh's head and let's see how long you last. Or go to Kashi and say some nasty things about some Indian god. Or maybe, go to Amritsar and say some no-so-nice things about Guru Gobind Singh. How about going to Meerut and saying no-so-nice things about Allah? Let's see how things work out for you.
But if it comes to a well-known public figure or a group widely visible to others, the consequences are not confined only to an individual. It use to have a much wider effect and special care must be taken in such circumstances and that is what Shiv Sena is doing. Although, as I said before, I support their campaign having objective of filtering out the orkut from those groups involved in anti-religious or anti-nation activities, but not their way of violence.
Freedom of speech in a civilized world...wow!! what constitutes a civilized world??
Ahh, the academic's ace of using subjective contexts to arbitrarily define things. What, indeed, constitutes a civilized world? Why, any place where the fundamental human rights and dignity can be preserved and upheld - you know, democracy, liberty, equality, freedom of speech and things like that. Generally speaking, any place where (broadly) the basic human rights can be upheld, such as -
Security rights that prohibit crimes such as murder/"enforced" involuntary suicide, massacre, torture and rape
Liberty rights that protect freedoms in areas such as belief and religion, association, assembling and movement
Political rights that protect the liberty to participate in politics by expressing themselves, protesting, participating in a republic
Due process rights that protect against abuses of the legal system such as imprisonment without trial, secret trials and excessive punishments
Equality rights that guarantee equal citizenship, equality before the law and nondiscrimination
Welfare rights (also known as economic rights) that require the provision of, e.g., education, paid holidays, and protections against severe poverty and starvation
Group rights that provide protection for groups against ethnic genocide and for the ownership by countries of their national territories and resources
Or if you want a particularly rigorous definition, look up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As of today's international laws and agreements (many of which that India is a signatory to, if I may remind you), any place where these rights exist and are upheld are defined as "civilized" and any place where they are trampled upon is generally agreed to be not-quite civilized.
America or may be u have Denmark in ur mind for their anti-muslim cartoons.
Well, to be fair, these two countries do have a fairly good record of human rights practices than large parts of the world, India included. And one of those rights is the freedom of speech, which is what the cartoons depict. Anything wrong in that?
Freedom is speech should only be practiced if it doesn't hurt anyone.
Actually, no. The idea of freedom of speech is that you should be able to speak freely, but the consequences will be yours to face (i.e. it maybe unwise, but discrimination because you speak your mind would be unacceptable). It's a subtle difference.
Just think of a situation...someone comes to u in ur office and uses slangs against u....what will u do? Will u say that "hey it's ok...it is the freedom of speech what he is practicing"?? And if u say so, u r different from most of the people...and it is those very same most of the people who determine the consequences of freedom of speech.
Hold on. Uses *slangs*? Do you even know what a slang is? I think you probably meant slander. And by definition, slander (or libel) lets the victim seek retaliation because it's intentional defamation. For instance, I can say that you speak *like* a pig, and that would be a subjective opinion. However, I cannot that you had sex with a pig, because it is defamatory and I would need evidence to show that you indeed did have sex with a pig. It is a subtle difference. Similarly, you are more than welcome to walk into my office and say that I smell like a baboon and cuss like a sailor, however you may *NOT* say that I had sex with a baboon and cussed my boss (unless you had evidence to show that I did either, of course).
If Thackeray speaks anything anti-muslim, he is also wrong because it hurts many others. I would say, be practical.
The problem is, most of these religious nutheads practice some extreme form of their faith, which basically forbids them to fornicate or procreate until they've done a bunch of stupid things.
Personally, I think if we could somehow introduce these guys to alchohol, pot and assorted intoxicants and got them laid a bunch, they'd just stop thinking about other things.
It's all the pent up horniness that's getting to them.
Shiv Sena? RSS? Those guys are a bunch of nutjobs.
These are the same who vandalize flower shops on Valentine's Day and threaten couples if they are seen doing anything they consider "obscene" in public.
Personally, I think that these guys need to have a good drink and need to get laid a little.
Orkut is used by many destructive elements to spread canards about India, Hindus, our gods and cultural heritage
I thought it was all about tolerance and forgiveness and all those good things? Pursuit of truth and enlightenment? No? I guess it doesn't quite have the same ring as terrorizing innocent people and flauting your ideologies about.
Because you can find a cheap, *new* Dell for the same price as a used iBook. And the new Dell notebook will probably have a better configuration, too.
If you want to go still cheaper, just get a refurbished one and you will find something that beats the pants off an iBook.
I have been looking for a notebook for my girlfriend, and so far Apple notebooks, used or new, still turn up way more expensive than new or refurbished Dells (or Gateways).
Ah Everest, the Las Vegas of mountaineering. I think the hardest part of Everest nowadays is getting the ~$60,000 it costs to be guided up there. It isn't much cheaper for permits to do it youself via the Nepal side either.
Let me know when they set up a network on top of K2 or Gasherbrum IV.
K2 or the Gasherbrums are hard because they are technical. But just because Everest is not very technical does not make it easy.
At high altitudes, it is not just how hard it is technically, you have a million other factors. Remember that people die at Everest regularly, not the least because of factors beyond their control.
Like another poster mentioned, climbing Everest is a question of your mental state (for that matter, climbing any peak is - it's just that it's a lot harder in case of Everest because of the time, altitude, weather and strain involved). I know people with excellent technical skills _and_ stamina who've failed to summit Everest on multiple occasions.
It's quite easy for you to comment on the ease of climbing Everest, sitting comfortably (wherever you are) - but unless you've done it yourself, your comment is laughable. Mountaineering isn't easy. And climbing any of the 8000-ers definitely isn't, no matter how "popular" any of them may seem.
They have a long way to go before they get to the top - from their route, it looks like they will be going through the Northeast ridge route. This means that they have a long way before reaching the First, Second and Third Steps and finally, the summit.
And like someone else mentioned, Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air is his book on Everest - he talks about Anatoli Boukreev (a Russian climber whom Jon criticizes) and he talks about Beck Weathers who was left for dead but despite being frostbitten, he found his way to the nearest camp and was rescued (he did lose both his hands and part of his face).
If you want to read another awesome book that has nothing to do with Everest, but is about a story of survival in the Andes, you should read Touching the Void.
And yes, I'm a mountaineer - not good enough to climb Everest (yet), but I do plan on climbing Denali within the next couple of years.
This time, the RIAA can't drop the suit without prejudice as soon as it starts to look like they'll lose.
Who says they have to drop the suit? They can settle outside the courts and the defendant who has filed the counter-claim will be offered a large enough sum of money that they can't resist, who will then drop the counter-claim.
Everytime I see a comparison of some random country with the US, I cringe.
Despite what you may think, the US truly has democracy that works and we certainly do respect human rights much more than most countries in the world do. You have no idea how much human rights are respected here until you go out and see in some of the other countries out there.
Are we living up to your own standards? Sadly, no, not lately at least.
But are we better than almost everyone else out there? Hell yeah. Well, except maybe tiny little homogeneous neo-socialist European republics (think Scandinavia).
To compare the US with Russia? Where people disappear and nobody asks a question and where state prisons for "political prisoners" exist, with the ex-intel folks running their own little fun-filled camp? Please.
We've made a lot of mistakes. Iraq was one and gitmo is another, but we are no way the same as them. We made a few during the cold war, which are regrettable - but we *are* human. Compared to the mistakes of the other superpowers (WW1 and WW2 Germany, post-WW2 Soviet Union) etc, they're nothing. But the fact that we know we are making mistakes and work towards correcting them is what differentiates us from them.
If you really do not know what I mean, try going to one of those countries. I think Pakistan would be an excellent start - and calling their dictator names, or abusing Islam. Or better yet, go to Russia and try organizing a TRC against Putin. Or how about going to Saudi Arabia and trying to say some nice things about Allah? Or maybe, go to China and try speaking out the truth against PRC and its human rights practices or the Tiannamen Square massacre.
And then, why don't you go to a rural town in midwest and say some nice things about Jesus H. Christ? You might find a wee bit of a difference in how things are done outside the US.
As for the tactile feedback, I think you're underestimating the UI mechanisms used to use the device. The most pressing activity on a phone is dialing.
Not really. Can't speak for others, of course, but I use my cellphone for two other things - text (SMS) messages and as my organizer.
So, yes, I do text a lot (it's asynchronous IM on your phone - can't beat that) and I can touch type quite easily on a cellphone that provides tactile feedback but I would really hate typing it on something like the iPhone.
Worse yet, I usually text when I am in meetings (or rarely, when I am driving). So, while I may occasionally glimpse at the screen, texting is something that happens in the background for me. So, in these scenarios, it would be a little hard for me to pay full attention to what I am typing, which is what the iPhone seems to need, from what I've seen. Or if I am checking my calendar or seeing if I have mail (or even replying to them), it would be impossible to do so while you are doing other things (like, nodding to whatever is going on in one of those particularly boring meetings and replying to mails in the background).
Can't speak for the rest of the world, but I would imagine that there are more than enough folks here at Slashdot who do use cellphones and PDAs for sending text messages, replying to emails and organizing their calendar, and doing so with a system that doesn't provide tactile feedback would be very, very hard.
Now, if they had generic buttons whose keys could come up with varying kind of texts - that would be neat. Sort of like the Optimus Keyboard for cellphones.
Here is the way it works - companies alternate between the red and the green, and when they are in the green (actual, good performance), they want to keep the investor confidence in the high.
Now, based on how they perform, the market they may mark them as Buy, Sell or Hold. If a company's deep in the red zone, it gets marked Buy. But if a company goes from red to green, it tends to get marked as Sell. Usually, if enough investors dump the stocks (making a profit while they can etc), then the stock price tends to go down.
So, companies want to stay in the green zone for as long as possible to avoid this from happening. After all, how else could the management get rid of all their stock options? So when they do have profits, they institute cost-cutting measures (e.g. hiring freeze, no travel, no corporate lunches, no company-sponsored lunches or dinner unless you're entertaining a client etc). After a while, they run out of this too, so they use the good old fashioned means of laying people off to stay in the green.
At this point, the stocks jump way higher than ever before and this gives the management time to get rid of all those stock options and make some money.
And once they are in the red again, they "realize" that their short-term goals have cost them in the long run and they go back into hiring folks and so on. After a while, these efforts will pay off and the company will be back in the green.
Lather, rinse, repeat. Of course, not all companies do this, but most companies follow some of the same patterns. Which is why you see just as many lay-offs when the company is doing well as when the company is doing poorly.
Besides, getting rid of people when you are doing well is less likely to hurt your stock price than when you are doing poorly. When you are doing poorly, analysts would predict that your layoffs are because you are the Titanic and are sinking. But when you are doing well, it is because you are rearranging the chairs on the Hindenburg (with due apologies to Stephen Colbert).
Well, in several cultures, it was (and still is) acceptable to marry within the family.
Egyptian pharaohs used to marry their own sisters. Several communities in Asia and Africa marry their own first siblings, cousins, or uncles marry their nieces.
While western culture may forbid it, the world doesn't necessarily revolve around western civilizations.
Morality is seldom absolute and in this case, it's quite relative (sorry, bad pun).
Since you mentioned architecture - a project I did when I was in grad school for an HCI class, called ArchiTech. You might find the section on aDesk to be of interest.:)
See, which is weird because a lot of management folks that I work with are all big-time geeks (theoretical physicists from Bell Labs, just as an example). Do they do physics now? Of course not, but that does not mean they don't do interesting, technical stuff.
For example, I know management folks with technical backgrounds who keep up to date on projects, who want to know what's going on and will even have a good technical debate with you.
At the end of the day, it's not all cut and dried. There are people who are interested in keeping themselves technically skilled and people who aren't. Just like everything else.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh no problem. Intellectual bankruptcy? Please, that is such a loaded phrase. Perhaps you meant sheer stupidity? :)
It's quite sad, I will say that.
Being civilized is something that has to come from within. Stop blaming it on the development of your country. Countries with far less culture and freedom than India have become more civilized in less time than we've had. Then again, as long as people like you abound, I doubt it's going to happen any time soon.
Okay, the number of people dying in shootouts in the US is probably one hundredth (or less) of the number of people that die in hit-and-runs in India. If you want to talk numbers, I can assure you that even taking the population into account, man for man, the number of violent deaths in India is way more. And FYI - people have been equal in this country for a long, long time. The racism that you speak of exists in extremely small pockets and is caused by a handful of idiots, much like the Shiv Sena. And you know, just take the number of people dead in the Gujarat riots and the kind of crap that Narendra Modi and others pulled and compare that with the numbers here in the US - the numbers will tell you something about racism.
Yes. What the Danish newspapers published *was* freedom of speech. I can show Allah with a bomb in his head, I can show Krishna as a pimp and I can show Jesus as a rabid baby-killing monster. It is my right to do so, because as a sovereign *citizen* I have the freedom to express my thoughts. Now, very few countries have banned talking about the holocaust - and that is wrong. And in most of them, it is only the denial of the holocaust that is wrong (which falls into denying history, which is remarkably different from freedom of speech, if I might add). But either way, I think what they are doing is wrong, too. What is your point? Just because a handful of countries make stupid mistakes (because millions died) does not mean you should do the same thing - you are both wrong and you are both mistaken.
Shows your ignorance. Go to Rashtrapati Bhavan and call for Manmohan Singh's head and let's see how long you last. Or go to Kashi and say some nasty things about some Indian god. Or maybe, go to Amritsar and say some no-so-nice things about Guru Gobind Singh. How about going to Meerut and saying no-so-nice things about Allah? Let's see how things work out for you.
Okay, get this into your head. Th
I second that! Oh boy.
Did you read the link that his signature pointed to?
It was some foam-at-the-mouth idiot (quite like you, if I might add) who made that statement because the above poster was trying to speak rationally.
*shakes head and walks away*
Ahh, the academic's ace of using subjective contexts to arbitrarily define things. What, indeed, constitutes a civilized world? Why, any place where the fundamental human rights and dignity can be preserved and upheld - you know, democracy, liberty, equality, freedom of speech and things like that. Generally speaking, any place where (broadly) the basic human rights can be upheld, such as -
Or if you want a particularly rigorous definition, look up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As of today's international laws and agreements (many of which that India is a signatory to, if I may remind you), any place where these rights exist and are upheld are defined as "civilized" and any place where they are trampled upon is generally agreed to be not-quite civilized.
Well, to be fair, these two countries do have a fairly good record of human rights practices than large parts of the world, India included. And one of those rights is the freedom of speech, which is what the cartoons depict. Anything wrong in that?
Actually, no. The idea of freedom of speech is that you should be able to speak freely, but the consequences will be yours to face (i.e. it maybe unwise, but discrimination because you speak your mind would be unacceptable). It's a subtle difference.
Hold on. Uses *slangs*? Do you even know what a slang is? I think you probably meant slander. And by definition, slander (or libel) lets the victim seek retaliation because it's intentional defamation. For instance, I can say that you speak *like* a pig, and that would be a subjective opinion. However, I cannot that you had sex with a pig, because it is defamatory and I would need evidence to show that you indeed did have sex with a pig. It is a subtle difference. Similarly, you are more than welcome to walk into my office and say that I smell like a baboon and cuss like a sailor, however you may *NOT* say that I had sex with a baboon and cussed my boss (unless you had evidence to show that I did either, of course).
Actually, Hinduism has only one God (prajapati) and several god-forms (Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva) and several incarnations of those god-forms.
See, I agree with you.
The problem is, most of these religious nutheads practice some extreme form of their faith, which basically forbids them to fornicate or procreate until they've done a bunch of stupid things.
Personally, I think if we could somehow introduce these guys to alchohol, pot and assorted intoxicants and got them laid a bunch, they'd just stop thinking about other things.
It's all the pent up horniness that's getting to them.
These are the same who vandalize flower shops on Valentine's Day and threaten couples if they are seen doing anything they consider "obscene" in public.
Personally, I think that these guys need to have a good drink and need to get laid a little. I thought it was all about tolerance and forgiveness and all those good things? Pursuit of truth and enlightenment? No? I guess it doesn't quite have the same ring as terrorizing innocent people and flauting your ideologies about.
Jerks.
Because you can find a cheap, *new* Dell for the same price as a used iBook. And the new Dell notebook will probably have a better configuration, too.
If you want to go still cheaper, just get a refurbished one and you will find something that beats the pants off an iBook.
I have been looking for a notebook for my girlfriend, and so far Apple notebooks, used or new, still turn up way more expensive than new or refurbished Dells (or Gateways).
Exactly.
You can get a good Dell notebook for $700, or a decent Dell box for about ~$350 - and you can run both Windows *and* Linux on it, and you are set.
On the other hand, I cannot get a good Apple notebook for anywhere near that price, and the Mac Minis themselves start at ~$600.
Secondly, upgrading any of the off-the-shelf Dells (or $PCs) is a breeze. I'm not quite sure if the same applies to Apple notebooks or boxes.
At high altitudes, it is not just how hard it is technically, you have a million other factors. Remember that people die at Everest regularly, not the least because of factors beyond their control.
Like another poster mentioned, climbing Everest is a question of your mental state (for that matter, climbing any peak is - it's just that it's a lot harder in case of Everest because of the time, altitude, weather and strain involved). I know people with excellent technical skills _and_ stamina who've failed to summit Everest on multiple occasions.
It's quite easy for you to comment on the ease of climbing Everest, sitting comfortably (wherever you are) - but unless you've done it yourself, your comment is laughable. Mountaineering isn't easy. And climbing any of the 8000-ers definitely isn't, no matter how "popular" any of them may seem.
Well said.
:)
Arm-chair mountaineering, anyone?
You're correct.
They have a long way to go before they get to the top - from their route, it looks like they will be going through the Northeast ridge route. This means that they have a long way before reaching the First, Second and Third Steps and finally, the summit.
And like someone else mentioned, Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air is his book on Everest - he talks about Anatoli Boukreev (a Russian climber whom Jon criticizes) and he talks about Beck Weathers who was left for dead but despite being frostbitten, he found his way to the nearest camp and was rescued (he did lose both his hands and part of his face).
If you want to read another awesome book that has nothing to do with Everest, but is about a story of survival in the Andes, you should read Touching the Void.
And yes, I'm a mountaineer - not good enough to climb Everest (yet), but I do plan on climbing Denali within the next couple of years.
*shrug*
Seen it happen before, will happen again. Gee.
Alien or not, that comparison is just unfair.
I could make a Sarah Silverman joke, but that would be unfair, too.
Please.
Everytime I see a comparison of some random country with the US, I cringe.
Despite what you may think, the US truly has democracy that works and we certainly do respect human rights much more than most countries in the world do. You have no idea how much human rights are respected here until you go out and see in some of the other countries out there.
Are we living up to your own standards? Sadly, no, not lately at least.
But are we better than almost everyone else out there? Hell yeah. Well, except maybe tiny little homogeneous neo-socialist European republics (think Scandinavia).
To compare the US with Russia? Where people disappear and nobody asks a question and where state prisons for "political prisoners" exist, with the ex-intel folks running their own little fun-filled camp? Please.
We've made a lot of mistakes. Iraq was one and gitmo is another, but we are no way the same as them. We made a few during the cold war, which are regrettable - but we *are* human. Compared to the mistakes of the other superpowers (WW1 and WW2 Germany, post-WW2 Soviet Union) etc, they're nothing. But the fact that we know we are making mistakes and work towards correcting them is what differentiates us from them.
If you really do not know what I mean, try going to one of those countries. I think Pakistan would be an excellent start - and calling their dictator names, or abusing Islam. Or better yet, go to Russia and try organizing a TRC against Putin. Or how about going to Saudi Arabia and trying to say some nice things about Allah? Or maybe, go to China and try speaking out the truth against PRC and its human rights practices or the Tiannamen Square massacre.
And then, why don't you go to a rural town in midwest and say some nice things about Jesus H. Christ? You might find a wee bit of a difference in how things are done outside the US.
So, yes, I do text a lot (it's asynchronous IM on your phone - can't beat that) and I can touch type quite easily on a cellphone that provides tactile feedback but I would really hate typing it on something like the iPhone.
Worse yet, I usually text when I am in meetings (or rarely, when I am driving). So, while I may occasionally glimpse at the screen, texting is something that happens in the background for me. So, in these scenarios, it would be a little hard for me to pay full attention to what I am typing, which is what the iPhone seems to need, from what I've seen. Or if I am checking my calendar or seeing if I have mail (or even replying to them), it would be impossible to do so while you are doing other things (like, nodding to whatever is going on in one of those particularly boring meetings and replying to mails in the background).
Can't speak for the rest of the world, but I would imagine that there are more than enough folks here at Slashdot who do use cellphones and PDAs for sending text messages, replying to emails and organizing their calendar, and doing so with a system that doesn't provide tactile feedback would be very, very hard.
Now, if they had generic buttons whose keys could come up with varying kind of texts - that would be neat. Sort of like the Optimus Keyboard for cellphones.
Here is the way it works - companies alternate between the red and the green, and when they are in the green (actual, good performance), they want to keep the investor confidence in the high.
Now, based on how they perform, the market they may mark them as Buy, Sell or Hold. If a company's deep in the red zone, it gets marked Buy. But if a company goes from red to green, it tends to get marked as Sell. Usually, if enough investors dump the stocks (making a profit while they can etc), then the stock price tends to go down.
So, companies want to stay in the green zone for as long as possible to avoid this from happening. After all, how else could the management get rid of all their stock options? So when they do have profits, they institute cost-cutting measures (e.g. hiring freeze, no travel, no corporate lunches, no company-sponsored lunches or dinner unless you're entertaining a client etc). After a while, they run out of this too, so they use the good old fashioned means of laying people off to stay in the green.
At this point, the stocks jump way higher than ever before and this gives the management time to get rid of all those stock options and make some money.
And once they are in the red again, they "realize" that their short-term goals have cost them in the long run and they go back into hiring folks and so on. After a while, these efforts will pay off and the company will be back in the green.
Lather, rinse, repeat. Of course, not all companies do this, but most companies follow some of the same patterns. Which is why you see just as many lay-offs when the company is doing well as when the company is doing poorly.
Besides, getting rid of people when you are doing well is less likely to hurt your stock price than when you are doing poorly. When you are doing poorly, analysts would predict that your layoffs are because you are the Titanic and are sinking. But when you are doing well, it is because you are rearranging the chairs on the Hindenburg (with due apologies to Stephen Colbert).
Didn't you know?
Or if you are lucky, they may be quite kind to you with that 9 mil.
Or Babylon 5. Or Stargate SG-1. Or Firefly.
Sigh.
Well, in several cultures, it was (and still is) acceptable to marry within the family.
Egyptian pharaohs used to marry their own sisters. Several communities in Asia and Africa marry their own first siblings, cousins, or uncles marry their nieces.
While western culture may forbid it, the world doesn't necessarily revolve around western civilizations.
Morality is seldom absolute and in this case, it's quite relative (sorry, bad pun).
Since you mentioned architecture - a project I did when I was in grad school for an HCI class, called ArchiTech. You might find the section on aDesk to be of interest. :)
Quite ironic.
See, which is weird because a lot of management folks that I work with are all big-time geeks (theoretical physicists from Bell Labs, just as an example). Do they do physics now? Of course not, but that does not mean they don't do interesting, technical stuff.
For example, I know management folks with technical backgrounds who keep up to date on projects, who want to know what's going on and will even have a good technical debate with you.
At the end of the day, it's not all cut and dried. There are people who are interested in keeping themselves technically skilled and people who aren't. Just like everything else.
I don't see why there needs to be a dichotomy.