And I love this ringing endorsement that appears on every single sub-page that he has linked at the top of the main page:
"Thank goodness for John and his team. These big law firms just don't understand how to handle technology litigation. With their trial record, technology expertise, and legal and business perspective, they have been a godsend...."
My wife is a lawyer. Contrary to popular belief perpetuated by crime dramas on TV, thrillers involving "lawyers" in the movies, and a lot of fancifully written novels about law, you don't need to be necessarily great at the "soft skills" to be a great lawyer. Being married to my wife has taught me that the best lawyers are simply those people who work hard like the rest of us who work hard, and who are kind people - with either good or bad "soft skills".
The other trick is that you don't need to be good at math to do well in law school. Sure, you have to be intelligent and know math in a rudimentary manner as with any profession, but you can really suck at math and still do great in law school. Inversely, you can totally suck at reading and writing in Engineering and still do just fine in school, but the same is certainly not true of law school.
The reason why tons of foreign students are in Engineering Grad schools in America, disproportionately to Americans? Our primary education system sucks the life out of 95% of all students who go through it. The "No Child Left Behind" Act has only perpetuated the problem, too. Teaching should not be the domain of our government. Our current system is far too Platonic in its thinking about educating the "youngsters of the state" for my liking, and I think we all do a disservice to ourselves to think that every child must graduate from high school to be an actively contributing and worthy member of our society. Yes, everyone should have access to do so if they wish, but to require every child to do so in the form of standardized testing at an exact age is only keeping standards for each child at every level lower than they should be in order to make sure that "no child is left behind." No child WOULD be left behind if they all weren't forced to take the same tests at the same age - children mature at different rates! And our society would continue to mature at a much faster rate if every person were given the additional freedom to achieve things at their own pace, not the pace dictated to us by state (and now federal) government.
The argument is invalidated because there is practically no way to show the null hypothesis: i.e. if we reduce global CO2 emissions, the probability of global warming goes back down to "normal" levels. Why can't we prove the null hypothesis? Because the ENTIRE world would have to participate in the experiment, not just one person or a group of persons.
"The odds of that might be comparable with those estimated for the negative effects of CO2-forced global warming." - yes, they *might* be comparable, but then again, they're probably not as we have many many many individual human bodies to study the effects of smoking on to arrive at statistically valid assumptions, but we have only one earth to study to arrive at conclusions about "global warming."
Great point, and I believe that this very problem - closed scientific data and mathematical proof of global warming - has been the key item of contention for the global warming detractors (like me) because it sheds a lot of doubt on the accuracy of what we're being told by pro global warming scientists. Now, granted, I saw a lot of evidence of rather drastic changes to the global environment in Alaska earlier this summer while on vacation, but I don't believe that anyone is capable right now of quantifying and accurately measuring the impacts humans are having on a global scale towards these environmental changes, AND I'm not convinced that this isn't just a meta-cycle that the earth goes through from time to time and not "global warming" due to humanity polluting the earth.
So if I am an open-minded skeptic about global warming that could change his mind given full disclosure of the methods used to determine the proof that "global warming" is all due to humans, then why wouldn't the scientists who support global warming theories just release said data? My theory is that they don't release all of their info because they know it's a shoddy product, just like Microsoft knows not to open-source their OS or parts of it because hackers would find all kinds of flaws with it very quickly.
I'm not against protecting one's information from time to time for one's own profit, but if you're going to attempt to use that closed off info to alter my fundamental rights, my taxes, and my way of life then you had better start getting more open about it or you'll always be fighting with critics and losing.
Re:Mandatory Disconnect of Infected Computers
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Maybe on a college campus this is a generally good practice since the risk of infection and destruction is likely much higher than if it was suburbia with a bunch of old grandma houses up and down each street, but this would not be an adequate action to take legislatively.
The U.S. already bans assault weapons, various drugs, and other "nefarious" activities or items which it believes making laws against will somehow magically protect the populace from pure anarchy. Unfortunately, these legislative measures have not all been useful in stemming the tide of the various levels of activities considered by the populace as "wrong." Kicking soccer moms and crusty old guys off of the 'net to eliminate spam- and bot-nets just isn't going to work. What we'll get instead are ISPs, colleges, and government organizations controlling ALL of the access to "the Internet" which specifically goes against the redundant nature and open freedom of what the Internet was originally intended to be used for: disseminating information.
What you suggest is just another proposition of the Child Online Protection Act, CAN-SPAM, and the non-neutral network; which per the Electronic Frontier Foundation and many armchair politician slashdotters are all big failures at an attempt to force everyone to "just get along", a la Rodney King.
Won't somebody puh-leaaase think of the environment?!!...err, the children!... err... which life-ending horrible issue am I supposed to be railing against this decade???
Correction: The average, below average, and just-plain-dumb "bosses" will always want lower wages. The smart "bosses" are more concerned about the holistic profitability of their business, not just how cheap they can get with their workers. Harvard Business Review has a pretty good article on this facet of American business.
Great point, but try not to be too harsh on the younger crowd with this mindset. I too was once disgusted with having to "retake" American History, English & Literature, and other liberal arts courses when I got to college because, hey, I already learned that stuff in high school!! (Mind you, probably 80% of most high school grads haven't *actually* learned that stuff by the time they hit their freshman year of college, but that's a different issue altogether.) I thought that college should be more training related, but what I have found out now (after dropping out of college after 3 years, then re-enrolling and finishing my Comp. Eng. degree after working 5 years) is that most high school students are not mature enough yet to go to college straight out of high school.
Of course, when you're 18 you probably ignore all sorts of sensible advice like "work for a year or two to save up for college" because you're 18 and you know exactly how stupid everyone else older than you is, but this is the reality for most high school students. I should've listened to this kind of advice when I was 18! I would probably already have my PHD by now if I had! Unfortunately, I had to learn this lesson the slightly harder way, and now I've got school loans out the wazoo.:(
My point is that most students in college probably view all of the liberal arts courses as stupid wastes of time because they only view education at that point in time as a means to an end - namely, making more money than the average US citizen once they graduate. Colleges exacerbate this situation by HEAVILY recruiting every single high school student starting in their sophomore or junior years of high school, so these kids (who are barely old enough to drive a car at that point in their lives) get it drilled into their head that yes, going to college immediately is the best medicine for a successful life. Unfortunately, for 80% of us it's not, and we need to spend just a little time in the "real world" first to find out just how bad life can be without the skills and knowledge obtained by studying broader subjects than what we are particularly talented in doing regardless of that level of education.
I'm not a "suit", but I'm also not a programmer. I am a technologist, as I like to call it, meaning I know WTF is going on with a computer and how it works quite intimately, but that I don't typically use it like a true geek. And when I hopefully become a "suit" some day soon, I'll still be using some Linux distro (or maybe a Mac) at home as I have been for the past 6 months as my primary "get shit done" computer. I used to like each new Microsoft OS for all the cool new possibilities of the new PC games that would come out for each new MS OS, but with Vista, who cares? The Wii is a lot of fun, the PS2 and PS3 are a lot of fun, the XBox360 is a lot of fun, and my current dual-boot Windows/Ubuntu PC allows me to play Civ4 and HL2 while actually using a non-DRM-laden OS for all the other multimedia and productivity stuff that I need normally.
Sure, Windows has its place and usefulness in the business world, but honestly, if MS Project, Excel, and *maybe* Access are the only productivity apps left that Macs or Linux systems don't already have really good alternatives for, then that's all that's left stopping a lot of future "suits" hopefuls like me to simply quit wasting money on Microsoft's sub-par OS (and all the IT Support staff needed to keep such systems up-to-date and not falling apart) for the bulk of my employees who don't EVER use such programs.
Yes, very funny. This week on the retardedly renamed "worse than failure" website they're re-running stories because the two admins are on vacation. Apparently a/.'er just found out about the site.
ROFL! Yes, a Turd Sandwich or Giant Douche were the candidates I was staring at during the last election IMO, but you make a very good argument FOR dutifully voting. Perhaps part of my reluctance to lend my vote to the representative process of government we live in is due in part to my age, possibly in part due to my lack of understanding of the political process in general, partly just due to my personality, or potentially harmfully, because I can tend to be lazy about things I think are a waste of my time - whether they are or are not a waste of my time.
I'll keep this all in mind during the upcoming 2008 election and see what kinds of philosophical changes of heart I may have this time around since I'm guaranteed that there will at least be a new leader in charge thanks to the forethought of reducing the amount of time that any one Turd Ferguson is allowed to rule.
Agreed, but stop looking, and start talking... talking to former leaders in past organizations that you respected for their leadership abilities. Nothing beats a good referral from a good leader in helping you find a job that you'll fit into well.
I agree with all of that, except with the part about it being the "duty of the citizenry to remove the government in power and replace it with one that does the right thing."
Perhaps I was too poor, or had a physical or mental difficulty, or family circumstances, or any myriad of reasons that once I was born in this country made it extremely difficult for me to leave to the country with the government of my choosing. Suppose I don't know what type of government would be the right one to choose. Is it a duty to fulfill this requirement of being a citizen, or simply yet another social or moral "rule" I am strongly encouraged to obey?
Even if my one vote counted enough to remove poor leadership, I could potentially be not only violating rule #1 by voting against the majority opinion on what constituted the "right" government that I am to elect, but also wasting my own time and efforts in concerning myself with political campaigns of the losers that ultimately go nowhere because they lose. Is this really helping my fellow man in any meaningful way?
Lastly, I think any casual student of the political sciences can see that there necessarily will never BE any "right" government, for government is made up of people, just like us, who are flawed. Flawed people make mistakes... sometimes many many mistakes, and sometimes mistakes which cost the lives of many hundreds, thousands, or millions of people despite whatever ill-fated in-their-own-mind "right" thinking they thought they were providing for the betterment of society. Sometimes this is intentional on their part - for their own selfish warped benefit - and sometimes unintentional - because they truly believed their way to be the "right" way.
Now, personally, I have absolutely NO problem with others voting for their "rights." I just don't find it to be a good use of my time and effort, although it would be easily defensible to attack me on what I define as a good use of my time, as I have clearly already wasted time pointing out this opinion on a little read forum when I could have been reading up on candidates for the upcoming 2008 election.:/ None-the-less, I don't necessarily agree with you that it is strictly my duty to vote, but rather a strongly encouraged American value that I choose not to uphold as a core value in my life.
If the only upside to this episode is that more folks become more wary of what "protections" one assumes are in force whilst flitting about the Internet, it would be meager, but might even spill over into real life. (god what a tortured sentence...) This would be a Good Thing, imo. Good hope, but it'll never happen. Case in point:
My first year in college was about 3 years after email became a big thing on this new-fangled Interwebs thing, and one of my roommates and I kept getting annoyed at our less intelligent friends that kept forwarding us all of the stupid "send this to 10 people to help cancer-ridden Billy have a happy life" emails. So we decided to "teach" everyone a lesson by crafting our own very ridiculous, completely cruel chain email of an alternate Billy who had every disease known to man. The only thing we got for our funny-to-us prank was a couple of responses that we were huge f-ing jerks for doing it... because think of the real Billy! WTF?! There WAS no real Billy! It was just a scam to harvest email addresses for spammers (which were a very very small minority at the time without access to large databases full of email addresses) and that was our point! But most people are too clueless or gullible to see it that way - ever.
I agree with the fact that this isn't at all the same as IRL rape. THAT has real consequences. Reading or seeing freaks do it to your online avatars only points out who to avoid in the future both IRL and online as you pointed out, but sadly, the people who need to realize that fact probably never will. My point is: don't be surprised when your local Congress critters start making "virtual" whatever a crime, even if it's not even comparable to the real thing. They've got some (or a lot, depending on area) of stupid constituents to appease to remain in office.
I agree, linuxquestions.org is a great resource, but first you have to be breaking stuff to find it useful. Sooo...
Install Gnome, KDE, XFCE, Fluxbox, and a bunch of other desktop related apps, upgrade your nVidia drivers, add Beryl, and really start trashing your/etc directory to see stuff break. Then go to linuxquestions.org or another resource online by copy-pasting your various error messages to start learning more about how to troubleshoot and find out what's screwing things up in your system. I'm no Linux expert, but I know enough now to run it at home for all my "get things done" activities (vs. just playing games in Windows). What helped me the most was, in order of importance:
1. looking for error messages in forum posts online using Google (or lynx if I manage to kill X) 2. reading up on and troubleshooting/etc/X11/ config file issues 3. tweaking various config files in/etc and getting familiar with how various programs utilize config files in Linux (to me, this is the heart of the beast for us "Power Window Users" that run around the office everyday fixing our coworkers problems because we know enough about how Windows works to be dangerous, but we're not programmers) 4. learning to use/var/log to research problems myself before whining about them on a forum 5. installing and getting my own custom kernel to run without any significant problems at least once (I used Gentoo to do it all the way through successfully the first time on an old machine, but now I just rely on Ubuntu's standard kernel since I don't typically have time to recompile my own kernel every time a patch is released) 6. installing experimental programs here and there that require the use of the whole './configure', 'make', 'make install' standard routine for installing programs in Linux because they're alpha or beta stage programs and don't have nice packages setup for easy installation (sure to cause you some library dependancy compiler warnings, errors, and other hijinks that will amaze and annoy!:)
Yes, I completely agree with your WTFs list. ComputerWorld seems to be more interested in informing their clueless readers how to be good "netizens" than what is useful for their readers. Besides, if you're a clueless computer world reader, then you're probably already wasting shitloads of bandwidth every day forwarding on shitty jokes via email, "free computers from Microsoft if you forward this email to 10 of your friends!" emails, downloading tons of youtube "ow, my crouch!" videos, and other retarded crap through all the interweb tubes. Who cares if I decide to use FasterFox to speed up my browsing experience? If the website owner is smart enough to block my attempts to cache tons of pages off his site, then so be it - that's his (or her) prerogative!
Ah, but what isn't wasted time? In the end none of it matters, when the universe becomes a frozen wasteland in billions upon billions years the only effect you may have is where a infinitesimal amount of that frozen junk sits.
By some metrics having enjoyed life, whatever enjoyment is to you, is the best way to waste it. While this may indeed be a troll, allow me to destroy such a notion of "do what feels right" as a good moral compass by which we should all base our actions:
Jeffery Dahmer did what felt right at the time to him. Joseph Stalin did what felt right at the time to him. Hitler did what felt right at the time to him. And billions of other criminals, rapists, liars, cheats, and pedophiles have all, at one time or another throughout history, done what felt right to them at the time.
Oh, but yes, I forgot, you're probably going to contradict my over-generalization by stating that everyone should do what feels right to them, as long as it hurts no one else. OK, fine. So define what does and does not hurt me. Include ALL of the actions you might take that cannot hurt me. So if you felt like cutting me off in traffic 'cause you're just doing a little joy-riding that day on your new motorcycle, as long as I don't crash, I'm not hurt, right? Well what if your action causes me to lose it with my anger tolerance for the day, and because I can't take it out on you, the biker doing 2x the speed my car can achieve, I simply go home and mentally and verbally abuse my wife. Is that not hurting me? or my wife? (By the way, I don't verbally or mentally abuse my wife, but we can and do get into fights because we have had stressful days dealing with other jerks in our lives - or simply because either one of us feels like being a jerk to the other person - and therefore I believe this to be a completely relevant example.)
So should I really still be wasting my life in whatever I, personally, deem to be "the best way to waste it?"
I believe the director of IT at the school stepped down not long after all of the student data thefts from their networks sometime last year because he was found to have been completely incompetent and unresponsive with regards to the campus' computer security issues. I'm not surprised that during the same time there would be the most file-sharing notices sent to the school as well... zombies, bot-nets, and infected computers, oh my!
Wow, the same AC who STILL doesn't understand the grand-parent post!
You idiot, he clearly explained that it's not a matter of ill will towards the employee, it's a mutual understanding that "hey, you don't want to work here anymore, I'll let you go your own way right now, with the pay that you were willing to take to finish up your obligations around here because I have a solid enough business that we CAN make do without you for a short time." How can you even begin to find this insulting??? That's free FUCKING money, you FUCKTARD! Now you're potentially able to start at your new job 2 weeks early than anticipated, get paid for it, and you're BETTER OFF than if you had been required to stick around at your old employer. You don't want to work there anymore, REMEMBER?!?!
Idiot! (Or troll or flamer, I can't quite tell which it is)
OK, first off, when did I EVER say that Freedom == Open Markets? I said freedom represented both additional risks and additional rewards. That can mean freedom to innovate, and freedom to suppress for businesses and individuals. In other words, I'm not 100% lasaiz-fare (spelling is crap, I know, I'm lazy) on how to govern the market because there could be significant risk in letting anyone run amock in the market without rules.
I also didn't say that off-shoring created an automatic money trickle-down effect. I claim that it causes additional freedom to look for new risks to take in expanding one's business for new rewards because you are saving money (potentially).
BTW, I HATE getting a call center person in India. Absolutely the most aggravating thing on the phone these days; it's even worse than automated speech recognition systems.
My main point is that the stupid FUD spewed forth on/. about the horrors of out-sourcing have simply not come to pass, and very likely never will. And my analogy to the FUD about how necessary it was to "buy American" back in the 80's still stands. Get off your socialist high-horse and think about what I'm saying, not just you're preconceived notions about what you think my belief system is.
"Well, if a job is created elsewhere that could have been created in the US, isn't that a job lost?"
Wow, that is some astoundingly simplistic logic there. Good work!
Temporarily it may be a job lost, but cutting costs allows for further expansion of a business. (if the business is intent on growing, which 99.9% of businesses in the US ARE interested in doing I think.) I've been of this opinion all along that off-shoring was no great threat to jobs in America, just like buying Japanese cars or clothing made in Taiwan and China posed any major threat back in the 80's. It's the stifling of expansion and growth (like the stifling of 3G, wireless, and broadband spectrum use in the US) that poses a serious threat to jobs in America. Freedom is risky, but risk produces hefty rewards. No freedom, no risks, no rewards. If you don't want the risks of losing your job due to IT off-shoring, go move to France. I'm sure you'll find the rewards there are in much less frequent supply than here in the U.S.
I like all the parent posts that have generated SLEWS of negative responses in this thread, primarily because the parent posters have been sold on the lie of the "almighty buck." I.e. it's not worth their or their employer's time and money to give a second thought to a really bad candidate for a position. They seem to not be considering that sometimes their HR department flubs the position description, and that in turns makes the interviewee think that they are applying for something they are qualified for, but in reality are clearly not qualified for or wouldn't even WANT to apply for if the wording on the job description had been more accurate in the first place. Secondly, it's possible that they are clueless, but haven't been shown how clueless they are in a tactful way so that they can learn from their mistakes and better themselves. Or third, it's possible that the interviewee is a genuine jerk, liar, and/or moron, and when found lying should be told directly that their lying cost them a job - maybe they wouldn't waste everyone else's time the rest of their lives continuing on in their lying, jerkwad, moron ways. That interviewer *could* (although I admit, it's highly unlikely) just turn that person's life around by exposing them to their own idiotic, destructive behavior.
But no, somehow some of you think that you are making the company worth so much more because you didn't spend the $10 worth of the company's (and your own) time to send a tactful note (or $2 to do it there, on the spot) on to the failed interviewee as to why they got rejected for the job. Is an extra $10 in the company's pocket really going to make that much of a difference to the company, or more importantly, to your paycheck? The answer is, unequivocally, NO!
Bloat - I can interchange all sorts of "core" programs in the typical Linux distribution to suit my needs for each type of computer I'm building. If I want a server, no need to run X; if I want a MythTV media center box, no need to run bloaty Gnome or KDE as the desktop interface. Microsoft Windows FORCES me to use its 1 interface, 1 web browser, 1 file system manager, 1 scheduler, etc. whether I like Microsoft's programs or not. Sure, there's lots of "replacements" to overlap some of those programs, but at the heart of Windows it's still running those programs in the background, and a vast majority of 3rd party vendors rely on those programs so much so that I *cannot* ever recompile or change the programs to something that I like better. Granted, I do usually use the defaults set for me by the particular Linux distribution I'm using, but at some point Windows' programs will drive you crazy with one little nuance, but too bad, you can't change that program to something you would like better.
Security - Is it hard to get a virus, trojan, worm, or bit of spyware on a Windows computer? NOPE! Is it hard to get one on Linux or MacOSX? Yep! Why? Because Linux and MacOSX are based on the original BSD way of doing things, which is to segregate users from the 'system' and 'root'. Therefore, unless you know my password to login as root on my Linux or MacOSX box, good luck trying to destroy it! (And this goes for automated script-kiddy level cracking - not the manual cracking that true hackers are so good at that defeating nearly any running computer system poses little problem to them.)
Investigative Ability - Linux has all kinds of logs, you can look at the code that is generating the errors (if it's not proprietary drivers from nVidia or ATI), and if you're so inclined, you can go about correcting said errors. With Windows you get cryptic error messages about core OS programs failing, but half of the time you just have to reboot the thing.
Stability - While it is easy to bomb a Linux box through any number of foul-ups (I know because I've done it myself numerous times), there is usually a pretty easy solution to fixing the problem once you find out what the problem is. Granted, Windows XP was far superior in the stability dept. than any of its predecessors, but ESPECIALLY when I'm using it for hard-core gaming it likes to get all f-d up, and then comes the reboot! At least with Linux I can look into problems that are occurring and seek out the answers to those problems, or track the progress others are making towards eliminating those problems as more and more users report such errors.
Lastly, I think it's important to remember that there are programs in the Windows world which are far superior to what you can find on MacOSX or Linux. Likewise, there are programs in MacOSX or Linux that are far superior to Windows programs. 99.9% of all video games in Windows kick the ass of any game that can be run in Linux, for instance. But there are a great number of low-level "OS maintenance" type programs in Linux that can do so much more than similar Windows 'functions'. (VI, grep, syslog, etc.) I think the people who tend to despise MS Windows are the type of people who like to have limitless boundaries of learning when it comes to computers, and when they start to hit the wall of learning that is proprietary software, they get upset. It's a barrier that need not exist (in their opinion), and it aggravates them.
Nice try, but that's also a completely one-sided argument. Christ often didn't take sides on "law" issues, because as He states in John, while he was given the authority to judge while on earth, that was not his duty - his duty was to fulfill the law, not to judge by it. Soooo...
Stating that the Old Covenant is more or less no longer useful for proof and correction is a fallacy. It does NOT simply represent a reason for Jesus to "come down" to save us from our sins. While The Jewish Law found in the Torah does indeed highlight our inability to ever fully meet the expectations of The Law as you point out, and to become gods in and of ourselves, that alone doesn't make it no longer useful or no longer applicable, or worse: what you suggest, useless! Yes, since Christ's death on the cross paid for our sins we are thankfully free from the worshiping God in the way the Jews prior to Christ's death had to worship and serve God; however, we should by no means simply do away with the guidelines of the original Law. The "New Age/Covenant" does NOT revolve around your "few new thoughts" - it revolves around Christ being the sacrifice to allow us the opportunity to not die a spiritual death in addition to the physical death we are cursed with thanks to Adam and Eve by simply believing in Him as God, come as a man on earth to die a physical death for our sins. However, the following of God hinges on following Christ, and in following Christ and believing in Him we are set free to actually follow The Old Testament Law, unlike the Jews of that Old Testament age who had to make constant sacrifices to offer up a mere pittance, an observance if you will, of the true forgiveness that would ultimately be made through Christ's future physical death on the cross. Their following of The Law and all it's sacrificial system was merely the form of belief shown in the expectation of a future, true Messiah. (Christ - the Messiah - being both God and man, and hence, the ONLY possible propitiation for our sins as a perfect man that could die that physical death in place of all the people who have sinned thanks to Adam and Eve, the only people that ever got us into this sinful mess in the first place)
Sorry, that's a long-winded, probably unnecessary rebuttal to BOTH of those parent posts, but I want to make it clear that following Christ (as opposed to following merely a religion titled "Christianity") does not prescribe that I should be defensively warlike or a pansy pacifist - that was never the point. Therefore, I can follow Christ, carry a gun to protect me and my family, and if you don't agree that you should carry a gun - DON'T! Just don't be surprised when I shoot you for breaking into my house because I don't know whether you're a crack-head crazed rapist or just a petty thief who wants some loot to take to the pawnshop.
Slashdot Mirror
And I love this ringing endorsement that appears on every single sub-page that he has linked at the top of the main page:
The other trick is that you don't need to be good at math to do well in law school. Sure, you have to be intelligent and know math in a rudimentary manner as with any profession, but you can really suck at math and still do great in law school. Inversely, you can totally suck at reading and writing in Engineering and still do just fine in school, but the same is certainly not true of law school.
The reason why tons of foreign students are in Engineering Grad schools in America, disproportionately to Americans? Our primary education system sucks the life out of 95% of all students who go through it. The "No Child Left Behind" Act has only perpetuated the problem, too. Teaching should not be the domain of our government. Our current system is far too Platonic in its thinking about educating the "youngsters of the state" for my liking, and I think we all do a disservice to ourselves to think that every child must graduate from high school to be an actively contributing and worthy member of our society. Yes, everyone should have access to do so if they wish, but to require every child to do so in the form of standardized testing at an exact age is only keeping standards for each child at every level lower than they should be in order to make sure that "no child is left behind." No child WOULD be left behind if they all weren't forced to take the same tests at the same age - children mature at different rates! And our society would continue to mature at a much faster rate if every person were given the additional freedom to achieve things at their own pace, not the pace dictated to us by state (and now federal) government.
The argument is invalidated because there is practically no way to show the null hypothesis: i.e. if we reduce global CO2 emissions, the probability of global warming goes back down to "normal" levels. Why can't we prove the null hypothesis? Because the ENTIRE world would have to participate in the experiment, not just one person or a group of persons.
"The odds of that might be comparable with those estimated for the negative effects of CO2-forced global warming." - yes, they *might* be comparable, but then again, they're probably not as we have many many many individual human bodies to study the effects of smoking on to arrive at statistically valid assumptions, but we have only one earth to study to arrive at conclusions about "global warming."
Great point, and I believe that this very problem - closed scientific data and mathematical proof of global warming - has been the key item of contention for the global warming detractors (like me) because it sheds a lot of doubt on the accuracy of what we're being told by pro global warming scientists. Now, granted, I saw a lot of evidence of rather drastic changes to the global environment in Alaska earlier this summer while on vacation, but I don't believe that anyone is capable right now of quantifying and accurately measuring the impacts humans are having on a global scale towards these environmental changes, AND I'm not convinced that this isn't just a meta-cycle that the earth goes through from time to time and not "global warming" due to humanity polluting the earth.
So if I am an open-minded skeptic about global warming that could change his mind given full disclosure of the methods used to determine the proof that "global warming" is all due to humans, then why wouldn't the scientists who support global warming theories just release said data? My theory is that they don't release all of their info because they know it's a shoddy product, just like Microsoft knows not to open-source their OS or parts of it because hackers would find all kinds of flaws with it very quickly.
I'm not against protecting one's information from time to time for one's own profit, but if you're going to attempt to use that closed off info to alter my fundamental rights, my taxes, and my way of life then you had better start getting more open about it or you'll always be fighting with critics and losing.
Maybe on a college campus this is a generally good practice since the risk of infection and destruction is likely much higher than if it was suburbia with a bunch of old grandma houses up and down each street, but this would not be an adequate action to take legislatively.
The U.S. already bans assault weapons, various drugs, and other "nefarious" activities or items which it believes making laws against will somehow magically protect the populace from pure anarchy. Unfortunately, these legislative measures have not all been useful in stemming the tide of the various levels of activities considered by the populace as "wrong." Kicking soccer moms and crusty old guys off of the 'net to eliminate spam- and bot-nets just isn't going to work. What we'll get instead are ISPs, colleges, and government organizations controlling ALL of the access to "the Internet" which specifically goes against the redundant nature and open freedom of what the Internet was originally intended to be used for: disseminating information.
What you suggest is just another proposition of the Child Online Protection Act, CAN-SPAM, and the non-neutral network; which per the Electronic Frontier Foundation and many armchair politician slashdotters are all big failures at an attempt to force everyone to "just get along", a la Rodney King.
Won't somebody puh-leaaase think of the environment?!! ...err, the children! ... err... which life-ending horrible issue am I supposed to be railing against this decade???
Correction: The average, below average, and just-plain-dumb "bosses" will always want lower wages. The smart "bosses" are more concerned about the holistic profitability of their business, not just how cheap they can get with their workers. Harvard Business Review has a pretty good article on this facet of American business.
Great point, but try not to be too harsh on the younger crowd with this mindset. I too was once disgusted with having to "retake" American History, English & Literature, and other liberal arts courses when I got to college because, hey, I already learned that stuff in high school!! (Mind you, probably 80% of most high school grads haven't *actually* learned that stuff by the time they hit their freshman year of college, but that's a different issue altogether.) I thought that college should be more training related, but what I have found out now (after dropping out of college after 3 years, then re-enrolling and finishing my Comp. Eng. degree after working 5 years) is that most high school students are not mature enough yet to go to college straight out of high school.
:(
Of course, when you're 18 you probably ignore all sorts of sensible advice like "work for a year or two to save up for college" because you're 18 and you know exactly how stupid everyone else older than you is, but this is the reality for most high school students. I should've listened to this kind of advice when I was 18! I would probably already have my PHD by now if I had! Unfortunately, I had to learn this lesson the slightly harder way, and now I've got school loans out the wazoo.
My point is that most students in college probably view all of the liberal arts courses as stupid wastes of time because they only view education at that point in time as a means to an end - namely, making more money than the average US citizen once they graduate. Colleges exacerbate this situation by HEAVILY recruiting every single high school student starting in their sophomore or junior years of high school, so these kids (who are barely old enough to drive a car at that point in their lives) get it drilled into their head that yes, going to college immediately is the best medicine for a successful life. Unfortunately, for 80% of us it's not, and we need to spend just a little time in the "real world" first to find out just how bad life can be without the skills and knowledge obtained by studying broader subjects than what we are particularly talented in doing regardless of that level of education.
I'm not a "suit", but I'm also not a programmer. I am a technologist, as I like to call it, meaning I know WTF is going on with a computer and how it works quite intimately, but that I don't typically use it like a true geek. And when I hopefully become a "suit" some day soon, I'll still be using some Linux distro (or maybe a Mac) at home as I have been for the past 6 months as my primary "get shit done" computer. I used to like each new Microsoft OS for all the cool new possibilities of the new PC games that would come out for each new MS OS, but with Vista, who cares? The Wii is a lot of fun, the PS2 and PS3 are a lot of fun, the XBox360 is a lot of fun, and my current dual-boot Windows/Ubuntu PC allows me to play Civ4 and HL2 while actually using a non-DRM-laden OS for all the other multimedia and productivity stuff that I need normally.
Sure, Windows has its place and usefulness in the business world, but honestly, if MS Project, Excel, and *maybe* Access are the only productivity apps left that Macs or Linux systems don't already have really good alternatives for, then that's all that's left stopping a lot of future "suits" hopefuls like me to simply quit wasting money on Microsoft's sub-par OS (and all the IT Support staff needed to keep such systems up-to-date and not falling apart) for the bulk of my employees who don't EVER use such programs.
Yes, very funny. This week on the retardedly renamed "worse than failure" website they're re-running stories because the two admins are on vacation. Apparently a /.'er just found out about the site.
ROFL! Yes, a Turd Sandwich or Giant Douche were the candidates I was staring at during the last election IMO, but you make a very good argument FOR dutifully voting. Perhaps part of my reluctance to lend my vote to the representative process of government we live in is due in part to my age, possibly in part due to my lack of understanding of the political process in general, partly just due to my personality, or potentially harmfully, because I can tend to be lazy about things I think are a waste of my time - whether they are or are not a waste of my time.
I'll keep this all in mind during the upcoming 2008 election and see what kinds of philosophical changes of heart I may have this time around since I'm guaranteed that there will at least be a new leader in charge thanks to the forethought of reducing the amount of time that any one Turd Ferguson is allowed to rule.
Agreed, but stop looking, and start talking... talking to former leaders in past organizations that you respected for their leadership abilities. Nothing beats a good referral from a good leader in helping you find a job that you'll fit into well.
Now, personally, I have absolutely NO problem with others voting for their "rights." I just don't find it to be a good use of my time and effort, although it would be easily defensible to attack me on what I define as a good use of my time, as I have clearly already wasted time pointing out this opinion on a little read forum when I could have been reading up on candidates for the upcoming 2008 election. :/ None-the-less, I don't necessarily agree with you that it is strictly my duty to vote, but rather a strongly encouraged American value that I choose not to uphold as a core value in my life.
My first year in college was about 3 years after email became a big thing on this new-fangled Interwebs thing, and one of my roommates and I kept getting annoyed at our less intelligent friends that kept forwarding us all of the stupid "send this to 10 people to help cancer-ridden Billy have a happy life" emails. So we decided to "teach" everyone a lesson by crafting our own very ridiculous, completely cruel chain email of an alternate Billy who had every disease known to man. The only thing we got for our funny-to-us prank was a couple of responses that we were huge f-ing jerks for doing it... because think of the real Billy! WTF?! There WAS no real Billy! It was just a scam to harvest email addresses for spammers (which were a very very small minority at the time without access to large databases full of email addresses) and that was our point! But most people are too clueless or gullible to see it that way - ever.
I agree with the fact that this isn't at all the same as IRL rape. THAT has real consequences. Reading or seeing freaks do it to your online avatars only points out who to avoid in the future both IRL and online as you pointed out, but sadly, the people who need to realize that fact probably never will. My point is: don't be surprised when your local Congress critters start making "virtual" whatever a crime, even if it's not even comparable to the real thing. They've got some (or a lot, depending on area) of stupid constituents to appease to remain in office.
You mean like this:
I agree, linuxquestions.org is a great resource, but first you have to be breaking stuff to find it useful. Sooo...
/etc directory to see stuff break. Then go to linuxquestions.org or another resource online by copy-pasting your various error messages to start learning more about how to troubleshoot and find out what's screwing things up in your system. I'm no Linux expert, but I know enough now to run it at home for all my "get things done" activities (vs. just playing games in Windows). What helped me the most was, in order of importance:
/etc/X11/ config file issues /etc and getting familiar with how various programs utilize config files in Linux (to me, this is the heart of the beast for us "Power Window Users" that run around the office everyday fixing our coworkers problems because we know enough about how Windows works to be dangerous, but we're not programmers) /var/log to research problems myself before whining about them on a forum :)
Install Gnome, KDE, XFCE, Fluxbox, and a bunch of other desktop related apps, upgrade your nVidia drivers, add Beryl, and really start trashing your
1. looking for error messages in forum posts online using Google (or lynx if I manage to kill X)
2. reading up on and troubleshooting
3. tweaking various config files in
4. learning to use
5. installing and getting my own custom kernel to run without any significant problems at least once (I used Gentoo to do it all the way through successfully the first time on an old machine, but now I just rely on Ubuntu's standard kernel since I don't typically have time to recompile my own kernel every time a patch is released)
6. installing experimental programs here and there that require the use of the whole './configure', 'make', 'make install' standard routine for installing programs in Linux because they're alpha or beta stage programs and don't have nice packages setup for easy installation (sure to cause you some library dependancy compiler warnings, errors, and other hijinks that will amaze and annoy!
Yes, I completely agree with your WTFs list. ComputerWorld seems to be more interested in informing their clueless readers how to be good "netizens" than what is useful for their readers. Besides, if you're a clueless computer world reader, then you're probably already wasting shitloads of bandwidth every day forwarding on shitty jokes via email, "free computers from Microsoft if you forward this email to 10 of your friends!" emails, downloading tons of youtube "ow, my crouch!" videos, and other retarded crap through all the interweb tubes. Who cares if I decide to use FasterFox to speed up my browsing experience? If the website owner is smart enough to block my attempts to cache tons of pages off his site, then so be it - that's his (or her) prerogative!
By some metrics having enjoyed life, whatever enjoyment is to you, is the best way to waste it. While this may indeed be a troll, allow me to destroy such a notion of "do what feels right" as a good moral compass by which we should all base our actions:
Jeffery Dahmer did what felt right at the time to him.
Joseph Stalin did what felt right at the time to him.
Hitler did what felt right at the time to him.
And billions of other criminals, rapists, liars, cheats, and pedophiles have all, at one time or another throughout history, done what felt right to them at the time.
Oh, but yes, I forgot, you're probably going to contradict my over-generalization by stating that everyone should do what feels right to them, as long as it hurts no one else. OK, fine. So define what does and does not hurt me. Include ALL of the actions you might take that cannot hurt me. So if you felt like cutting me off in traffic 'cause you're just doing a little joy-riding that day on your new motorcycle, as long as I don't crash, I'm not hurt, right? Well what if your action causes me to lose it with my anger tolerance for the day, and because I can't take it out on you, the biker doing 2x the speed my car can achieve, I simply go home and mentally and verbally abuse my wife. Is that not hurting me? or my wife? (By the way, I don't verbally or mentally abuse my wife, but we can and do get into fights because we have had stressful days dealing with other jerks in our lives - or simply because either one of us feels like being a jerk to the other person - and therefore I believe this to be a completely relevant example.)
So should I really still be wasting my life in whatever I, personally, deem to be "the best way to waste it?"
I would like to remind everyone that OU has been in the Columbus Dispatch recently for other retarded computing mistakes:v ersity-risks-and-preventative-measures/
http://irobert.org/2006/05/data-theft-at-ohio-uni
I believe the director of IT at the school stepped down not long after all of the student data thefts from their networks sometime last year because he was found to have been completely incompetent and unresponsive with regards to the campus' computer security issues. I'm not surprised that during the same time there would be the most file-sharing notices sent to the school as well... zombies, bot-nets, and infected computers, oh my!
Wow, the same AC who STILL doesn't understand the grand-parent post!
You idiot, he clearly explained that it's not a matter of ill will towards the employee, it's a mutual understanding that "hey, you don't want to work here anymore, I'll let you go your own way right now, with the pay that you were willing to take to finish up your obligations around here because I have a solid enough business that we CAN make do without you for a short time." How can you even begin to find this insulting??? That's free FUCKING money, you FUCKTARD! Now you're potentially able to start at your new job 2 weeks early than anticipated, get paid for it, and you're BETTER OFF than if you had been required to stick around at your old employer. You don't want to work there anymore, REMEMBER?!?!
Idiot! (Or troll or flamer, I can't quite tell which it is)
OK, first off, when did I EVER say that Freedom == Open Markets? I said freedom represented both additional risks and additional rewards. That can mean freedom to innovate, and freedom to suppress for businesses and individuals. In other words, I'm not 100% lasaiz-fare (spelling is crap, I know, I'm lazy) on how to govern the market because there could be significant risk in letting anyone run amock in the market without rules.
/. about the horrors of out-sourcing have simply not come to pass, and very likely never will. And my analogy to the FUD about how necessary it was to "buy American" back in the 80's still stands. Get off your socialist high-horse and think about what I'm saying, not just you're preconceived notions about what you think my belief system is.
I also didn't say that off-shoring created an automatic money trickle-down effect. I claim that it causes additional freedom to look for new risks to take in expanding one's business for new rewards because you are saving money (potentially).
BTW, I HATE getting a call center person in India. Absolutely the most aggravating thing on the phone these days; it's even worse than automated speech recognition systems.
My main point is that the stupid FUD spewed forth on
Wow, that is some astoundingly simplistic logic there. Good work!
Temporarily it may be a job lost, but cutting costs allows for further expansion of a business. (if the business is intent on growing, which 99.9% of businesses in the US ARE interested in doing I think.) I've been of this opinion all along that off-shoring was no great threat to jobs in America, just like buying Japanese cars or clothing made in Taiwan and China posed any major threat back in the 80's. It's the stifling of expansion and growth (like the stifling of 3G, wireless, and broadband spectrum use in the US) that poses a serious threat to jobs in America. Freedom is risky, but risk produces hefty rewards. No freedom, no risks, no rewards. If you don't want the risks of losing your job due to IT off-shoring, go move to France. I'm sure you'll find the rewards there are in much less frequent supply than here in the U.S.
I like all the parent posts that have generated SLEWS of negative responses in this thread, primarily because the parent posters have been sold on the lie of the "almighty buck." I.e. it's not worth their or their employer's time and money to give a second thought to a really bad candidate for a position. They seem to not be considering that sometimes their HR department flubs the position description, and that in turns makes the interviewee think that they are applying for something they are qualified for, but in reality are clearly not qualified for or wouldn't even WANT to apply for if the wording on the job description had been more accurate in the first place. Secondly, it's possible that they are clueless, but haven't been shown how clueless they are in a tactful way so that they can learn from their mistakes and better themselves. Or third, it's possible that the interviewee is a genuine jerk, liar, and/or moron, and when found lying should be told directly that their lying cost them a job - maybe they wouldn't waste everyone else's time the rest of their lives continuing on in their lying, jerkwad, moron ways. That interviewer *could* (although I admit, it's highly unlikely) just turn that person's life around by exposing them to their own idiotic, destructive behavior.
But no, somehow some of you think that you are making the company worth so much more because you didn't spend the $10 worth of the company's (and your own) time to send a tactful note (or $2 to do it there, on the spot) on to the failed interviewee as to why they got rejected for the job. Is an extra $10 in the company's pocket really going to make that much of a difference to the company, or more importantly, to your paycheck? The answer is, unequivocally, NO!
- Bloat - I can interchange all sorts of "core" programs in the typical Linux distribution to suit my needs for each type of computer I'm building. If I want a server, no need to run X; if I want a MythTV media center box, no need to run bloaty Gnome or KDE as the desktop interface. Microsoft Windows FORCES me to use its 1 interface, 1 web browser, 1 file system manager, 1 scheduler, etc. whether I like Microsoft's programs or not. Sure, there's lots of "replacements" to overlap some of those programs, but at the heart of Windows it's still running those programs in the background, and a vast majority of 3rd party vendors rely on those programs so much so that I *cannot* ever recompile or change the programs to something that I like better. Granted, I do usually use the defaults set for me by the particular Linux distribution I'm using, but at some point Windows' programs will drive you crazy with one little nuance, but too bad, you can't change that program to something you would like better.
- Security - Is it hard to get a virus, trojan, worm, or bit of spyware on a Windows computer? NOPE! Is it hard to get one on Linux or MacOSX? Yep! Why? Because Linux and MacOSX are based on the original BSD way of doing things, which is to segregate users from the 'system' and 'root'. Therefore, unless you know my password to login as root on my Linux or MacOSX box, good luck trying to destroy it! (And this goes for automated script-kiddy level cracking - not the manual cracking that true hackers are so good at that defeating nearly any running computer system poses little problem to them.)
- Investigative Ability - Linux has all kinds of logs, you can look at the code that is generating the errors (if it's not proprietary drivers from nVidia or ATI), and if you're so inclined, you can go about correcting said errors. With Windows you get cryptic error messages about core OS programs failing, but half of the time you just have to reboot the thing.
- Stability - While it is easy to bomb a Linux box through any number of foul-ups (I know because I've done it myself numerous times), there is usually a pretty easy solution to fixing the problem once you find out what the problem is. Granted, Windows XP was far superior in the stability dept. than any of its predecessors, but ESPECIALLY when I'm using it for hard-core gaming it likes to get all f-d up, and then comes the reboot! At least with Linux I can look into problems that are occurring and seek out the answers to those problems, or track the progress others are making towards eliminating those problems as more and more users report such errors.
Lastly, I think it's important to remember that there are programs in the Windows world which are far superior to what you can find on MacOSX or Linux. Likewise, there are programs in MacOSX or Linux that are far superior to Windows programs. 99.9% of all video games in Windows kick the ass of any game that can be run in Linux, for instance. But there are a great number of low-level "OS maintenance" type programs in Linux that can do so much more than similar Windows 'functions'. (VI, grep, syslog, etc.) I think the people who tend to despise MS Windows are the type of people who like to have limitless boundaries of learning when it comes to computers, and when they start to hit the wall of learning that is proprietary software, they get upset. It's a barrier that need not exist (in their opinion), and it aggravates them.Nice try, but that's also a completely one-sided argument. Christ often didn't take sides on "law" issues, because as He states in John, while he was given the authority to judge while on earth, that was not his duty - his duty was to fulfill the law, not to judge by it. Soooo...
Stating that the Old Covenant is more or less no longer useful for proof and correction is a fallacy. It does NOT simply represent a reason for Jesus to "come down" to save us from our sins. While The Jewish Law found in the Torah does indeed highlight our inability to ever fully meet the expectations of The Law as you point out, and to become gods in and of ourselves, that alone doesn't make it no longer useful or no longer applicable, or worse: what you suggest, useless! Yes, since Christ's death on the cross paid for our sins we are thankfully free from the worshiping God in the way the Jews prior to Christ's death had to worship and serve God; however, we should by no means simply do away with the guidelines of the original Law. The "New Age/Covenant" does NOT revolve around your "few new thoughts" - it revolves around Christ being the sacrifice to allow us the opportunity to not die a spiritual death in addition to the physical death we are cursed with thanks to Adam and Eve by simply believing in Him as God, come as a man on earth to die a physical death for our sins. However, the following of God hinges on following Christ, and in following Christ and believing in Him we are set free to actually follow The Old Testament Law, unlike the Jews of that Old Testament age who had to make constant sacrifices to offer up a mere pittance, an observance if you will, of the true forgiveness that would ultimately be made through Christ's future physical death on the cross. Their following of The Law and all it's sacrificial system was merely the form of belief shown in the expectation of a future, true Messiah. (Christ - the Messiah - being both God and man, and hence, the ONLY possible propitiation for our sins as a perfect man that could die that physical death in place of all the people who have sinned thanks to Adam and Eve, the only people that ever got us into this sinful mess in the first place)
Sorry, that's a long-winded, probably unnecessary rebuttal to BOTH of those parent posts, but I want to make it clear that following Christ (as opposed to following merely a religion titled "Christianity") does not prescribe that I should be defensively warlike or a pansy pacifist - that was never the point. Therefore, I can follow Christ, carry a gun to protect me and my family, and if you don't agree that you should carry a gun - DON'T! Just don't be surprised when I shoot you for breaking into my house because I don't know whether you're a crack-head crazed rapist or just a petty thief who wants some loot to take to the pawnshop.