Any 'timebombed' message will be vulnerable to this attack, as much to the chagrin of RIAA and MPAA any digital data is perfectly reproducable in any state/format the original exists in and can be copied an unlimited number of times. If it's in a format where it can be read then it can be copied.
I don't understand how 'delete' helps either; the other 4 or so people a message goes out to may choose to save the message and therefore it's still available as evidence. Some people save email forever. Some of these out of UI ineptitude, and some like me archive and compress it for CYA.
There is no such force in space In a word, gravity.
Yes, it's the force the water applies to the keel, counteracting the sideways force of the wind which allows a sailboat to sail upwind. FYI sailing on water the vessel moves forward by using the wind to generate lift (like an airplane's wings) to pull it forward, whereas space sailing movement is generated by action/reaction (like a rocket motor) so they are two completely different methods.
The 'keel' a solar sail uses to get closer to the sun is the sun's gravity itself. As the solar sail changes it's speed by reflecting particles in the direction it's traveling and causing an opposite reaction away from that direction (i.e. slowing itself) the lower orbital speed makes it fall towards the sun.
The best way to explain it may not be by words; so try the solar sail simulator java applet and see for yourself.
A conventional solar sail will sail 'to windward' like a Farr 40, whereas a magnetospheric sail sails to windward like a Morgan OutIsland.
-- Greg (S/V Scirocco)
PS: In the future please double-check that you are 'right' before calling someone else 'wrong'.
I've seen several questions about how to 'tack' back into the solar wind to get back to earth. With a conventional solar sail its pretty straight forward.
A conventional solar sail works by reflecting particles/light/etc and simple action/reaction. to go out to mars for example it is angled in a way to reflect particles away from itself to increase it's orbital speed; faster orbital speed puts the vessel in a higher orbit in the solar system. Coming back simply means angling the sail the other way so that the reflected particles slow the orbital speed untill the orbit lowers back to earth.
My understanding with a magnetosSPHERE sail is that it cannot by it's nature 'tack' back into a lower orbit as it is sphere shaped; It acts much like a parachute rather than a flat sail.
To tack such a vessel back you either have to figure out a way to 'flatten' the magnetic sphere into more of a disk shape that can act as a conventional flat sail. The other alternative is to use a planet's gravity to 'slingshot' you back the way you came.
You could probably 'flatten' a magnetic sail by using a large torsional (donut-shaped) ring to create the magnetic field. Older magnetic sail designs I have seen used a superconducting cable in a loop which naturally repelled itself and created such a shape but these early designs did not incorporate the 'plasma boosting' the new design displays.
Redhat is proud to announce the availability of Redhat 7.0, dubbed the 'Firestone ATX' release.
Lets see. shipping non-stable beta libc and gcc that won't even compile the kernel (or much else).
I agree with bug ID 18033; recalling redhat 7.0 might be a good idea although I suppose it's late for that. I hope redhat can make this mistake up to its customers; up untill now I've been satisfied with their products.
Read your own site much? the playstation delays were announced two days ago, then we've got two stories within two hours of each other here. Perhaps you people paid good money to run this site should read the site before going off to approve stories.
As long as a government has the ability to weild more force than the governed then politics is important. Regardless of if you chose to participate in government or not the policies of that government have immediate and permanent effect on you.
Those politicians make determinations on how much (more) of your money they will take from you and for which actions they may imprison or execute you.
Given that the government has become a major part of the population, and is certainly much better armed than the general population (and increasing the disparity through 'gun violence' and 'war on drugs' paranoia) it's a long way off before anyone can just offhand decide to ignore laws or taxes they decide are unjust. Ruby Ridge and Waco being a few key examples.
So you damn well better take part in the political process.
I think 'cunt' is only the most offensive among the female population. I'm guessing because to many of them became proud of the other derogatory term 'bitch'. Those who could be defined as 'cunt's have no sense of humor either. Like that time I sent the ticking clock to the abortion clinic; they just didn't get the humor in it. Ah well. *thats a joke, laugh!*
There are for most segments of the population a word which is the most offensive for that group. 'cunt' being for females, whereas blacks are none to fond of hearing the word 'nigger' out of the mouth of a white person. I haven't figured out the word that most offends white males to a degree that they 'gasp' in a state of shock like those other words cause. *shrug*
Santa Clara county is full of parks. Between the county and state run parks Santa Clara and San Mateo counties both have alot of open space. I work in Santa Clara (city) and co-workers often go mountainbiking at Alviso. My S.O. does the same in Palo Alto at a park behind Stanford. I'd say I've got 10 parks within 20 minutes driving time. Of course depending on where your job was located your milage may vary.
OTOH; There are many things here that detract from quality of life. Stupid people abound, but I think its like that anywhere. Going any sort of distance after work is frustrating due to traffic. Housing prices are high but then again the salaries here are also porportionally higher.
Of course the ideal would be to make silicon valley wages with a T1 uplink in the bahamas; now that would be quality of life!
There is a ton to do! I've lived here three years and I'm still not bored.
SF Bay is a great place for sailing (one of the best in the world) and on an IT salary a good ~22 foot sailboat is very affordable. There are lots of parks to see if you like outdoors, hiking, camping, etc.
If you are more into urban nightlife SF has more to do then alot of big cities. Oakland has lots of warehouse raves if thats your thing. Even San Jose has enough clubs and bars to keep most people satisfied.
You can do the touristy stuff; you can drive a few hours and go skiing or surfing; theres more deep-geek stuff to do than you can shake a stick at. The first step is to leave the house.
As far as housing/commuting goes; yeah housing is expensive. the trick is to get some friends together and rent a house. Much better (even cheaper given the room) then getting an apartment. Get a house near where you work and your commute will be much easier (and work off hours). Dono what to tell you about finding girls, but there are plenty if you look.
Yes, we all rather have our hospitals run like the DMV. "I don't care if you have a punctured lung and are drowning in your own blood. If you don't have an appointment you have to wait at the end of the line".
Right now you have choices. You can either be part of any number of health insurance plans and abide by their policies or you can go without insurance and therefore have the option to seek whichever treatment you would like and can afford. If you socialized medicine you have no choice but to have (and pay for through taxes) the one and only state-run healthcare system. If the government decides it's not cost efficient to treat desease XYZ and you happen to have desease XYZ too bad so sad.
Cultivating secondary skills is a good piece of advice. I suspect that for alot of people, just like me, this IT thing _was_ a secondary skill. I joined the army outa highschool and fixed trucks for four years and got into this IT thing after leaving the army. I see/know alot of english/ business/ physics majors who did IT once they left university; I suspect alot of IT people jumped into IT because there was a good opprotunity and can easily jump out when the market slows down.
Now.. My esteemed advice: The IT sector is very hot right now, and may perhaps cool off. But while it's hot you've got a tremendous opprotunity to make youself fiscally independent. Do you really need that new BMW or super-widescreen HDTV? Save up a wad of cash and pay off all your debt while you are making all this moola, and when/if the IT sector dries up you'll have a nice cushion of cash and no payments to worry about while you figure out what to do next.
Obvously you have a computer that she can use; Or she can pick up an old first-generation pentium very cheaply or buy a new computer on credit..
Linux is free and comes with support for almost every language possible..
I think 40 hours is pretty standard for a work week (low even in the tech industry); why exactly is there no time? Chances are she has two full days a week to learn along with five evenings after work.
What's holding her back?
Most tech businesses are so starved for talent that they'll pay contractors outragous hourly fees or spend lots of time and money to import labor on H1B visas. They would welcome anyone in who were self-taught themselves would work at a discounted salary on the assumtion that she'd learn-while-she-worked. The concept that she would not be hired in the tech industry soley on the premis that she's a girl is a lie.
Of course the heart of the problem is that you feel that someone should just train her to be a developer and at the same time pay her while she's training and not doing any work. Think of how much your girlfriend spends on eating out, or on clothes, or on a car payment. If she really gave a damn about her lowly station in life she'd be spending that money on books or education to improve it.
This whole thing reminds me of the scene in fight club with the convenence store clerk. The sad truth is that most people need a kick in the ass or a gun down their throats to actually persue their goals rather than float through life wishing they had done better and cursing society for not providing them with a fat inheritance or lottery winnings and making up excuses like "society holds me back so I'm glad I never even tried".
I think you should dump her, from what you've said she sounds like a real loser.
I also find it hard to believe that anybody is born with a personality, much less a M-B result.
Gender is mostly a societal construct... You aren't born with your gender, you discover it after everyone spends time treating you like a [boy/girl]
Good grief!
Here's a simple example to prove you dead wrong as to the affects of biological gender and it's affects on personality. Examine any member of the animal kingdom which are abandoned by their parents at or before birth (reptiles, fish, etc..). Do the males behave differently then the females? Of course they do. They behave differently regardless of nurture (as they had no nurturing!). Assuming you give some weight to the theory of evolution or can at least recognize the basic similarities of us to those animals (two genders, DNA) then you've gotta admit that gender does affect personality.
while society is great at screwing us all up, it's certainly unfair to women
Nothing in this society (the US) is preventing any woman from getting into computers. See my other post 'anti-girl riot police'.
Yes it's the mythical 'them' keeping your girlfriend down. Standing in front of every community colledge CS program and computer book store with tazers to zap any female who dare attempt to enter.
Perhaps Al Gore will create a government program with a billion dollar budget to get your girlfriend off her ass to get a computer education.
</sarcasm>
People's problems do not come from society. There is no law preventing your girlfriend from becoming a programmer. It is only herself standing in the way of that goal (which I suspect she has no true interest in persuing). Every person out there on a minimum wage effort either has the ability to get more education (public libraries are still free) or have made their own choices in life that hold them back (i.e. having 4 kids before turning 20). One's station in life is much more due to the choices one made then to anything society has done.
This covers the touted income/pay 'gender gap'. Individuals make choices as to what jobs they wish to persue; some people like crunching numbers and staring at facts and figures all day and some don't. Its possible for very real genetic and biological differences (a 3 year old can tell you there's differences between boys and girls!) that more members of one sex would like doing this than members of the other sex. This is probably the reason more males get into business/ investing/ technology; and that is where the big money is, hence the 'gender gap'. No quota or government program is going to make someone who wants to be a teacher enjoy being a portfolio manager.
I _like_ what I do, computer networking. I certainly would not want someone to determine there are not enough male nurses and tell me that now I have to stop doing networking and go take care of sick folks.
Creating programs/quotas to 'encourage' more of one subset of people to do something they may not have a desire to do just removes choices rather than fix problems.
It soulds as if shipping no matter what is going to be as much as the parts themselves. List them as being worth $0.01 and send it and hope for the best. Don't bother insuring it.
Tobacco isn't the issue... tobacco ain't the worst of them
Please provide an example; and I'll probably be able to show you that this example is a direct result of either government not enforcing common law (i.e. you can't go out and shoot someone dead) or a result of government intervention/regulation providing an unfair advantage that the corporation is simply making use of.
the sheep with the shepard lives a longer, richer, fuller, and easier life
Really? So you would tell me that sheep would be much better off if they were caged up, herded from place to place, and dominated by a master that controls every aspect of their lives (including when it ends) then to have their own free will and personal liberty with the risk of being eaten for not being fast or smart enough to escape predators?
You feel the same way about people? That they should be caged and led from place to place, allowed no personal liberty of their own; that the state should be a good shepard and tell them what they must do when they must do it and with whom it must be done? That humans would be better off as state-controlled 'for their own good'. And for those who don't accept this? Off to siberia?
Don't deny it; thats what you just said. That is exactly what you said; that to be dominated is better than personal risk. If you don't believe this is true then perhaps you should re-think your political views, because thats exactly where they lead.
the right to operate a car or SUV upwind of my property simply overrides my right to breath.
Places where there's a low density of people this is not a problem. Where there is a high density of people of course air quality is going to be a problem (i.e in cities). Regardless of if its cars, or rubbish, or animal waste or wood fires (progressing back through the ages) the higher the people densities the poorer the air quality. You have the option to move somewhere else. After all the city was there before you were; who are you to want to move in and then start telling your neighbors how to live??
I'll suspect when you went house/apartment hunting you saw cars parked out on the streets and in the driveways, if you don't like the smell of cars you should have chosen to live somewhere where they were not so prevalent instead of moving in and then working to abolish them.
The average worker who didn't have investors build factories or offices for him/her to work in made $0/Hr, FYI.
By your calculations, the worker got 55%. The corporate taxrate, BTW, is 36%. This leaves the investors a scant 9% return on their investment, which they may have lost completely if the factory burnt down for instance.
So, for every dollar the investor got the workers got five times more in the form of created jobs and payroll, and the government got three times more in taxes.
The people who did no work, but risked something (the investors) got 9%. The people who did no work and risked nothing (the government) got 36%. It should also be noted that the people who worked did not risk anything! They do not have to return their paychecks or lose their houses if the business fails; but the investor is out whatever money he put into the effort!
In Nazi Germany what was done for the strength of the community was to make Zyclon gas and 2 x 2 x 7 foot ovens to eliminate an unwanted portion of the poluation.
The point being made was that what you consider 'working for the well-being of the community' may not be what someone else may consider it to be.
How many of the plantifs in the tobbaco lawsuit did not know that smoking caused cancer, and cancer can kill you? Either they knew when they started and started anyway or (for the really old ones) learned about it but decided to continue to smoke. Regardless of how 'addictive' smoking is they had it within their power to quit. It was their conciense choice to continue using a product that endangered their lives with full knowledge of the conequences.
Eating fast food may someday clog my arteries and through a heart attack kill me. Driving a car that may someday propel me into a solid object at high speeds and kill me. Drinking coffee, if I overdo it can cause heart palpitations and kill me. These are all risks I accept because they are either a needed or wanted part of my life. If I'm in a hostpital bed at 60-something getting triple bypass surgery I'm not going to be angry at McDonalds for doing this to me, it was my decision.
Now how about this.. What if I decide and accept the fact that smoking might kill me but I decide I want to do it anyway cause it imparts just that much joy in my life. Should I be prohibited from aquiring that product? But outlawing that product and corporations that produce it because it might 'destroy.. lives' is taking away my right to it. We already do this with the 'war on drugs', and alcholhol prohabition before it.
Everyone has the choice to make an educated purchase of a product from a business. If you aren't educated it's your job to get educated before making that buy.
For those of you who believe that it's government job to protect you from yourselves I rue the day when you get just that and realize what sort of totalitarian regulated life you've brought apon yourselves.
You want a shepard to protect you from the wolves but don't you realize that shepard will slaughter you for meat when it's in his best interests?
Here's your five options.
1. Be a victim of the system
2. Whine and do nothing ( see point 1 )
3. Try to change the system
4. Ignore the system ( break the law )
5. Use the system to your advantage
I for one am going to 5 (by owning stock of companies who work the system to their advantage) while using my vote to help 3 (by voting libertarian, and removing the big government billyclub corporations use to beat consumers and competitors with).
If you are all so damn mad that rich people can go out and make policy then here's a novel idea.. become a rich person. Then you can pay politicians to make all the tree-huggin slacker-subsidizing citizen-babysitting laws you'd ever want! It's not that hard. If Warren Buffet can start out with a hundred bucks and become a billionare then why can't you? Gee he's probably a conservative too, which means he's dumb and misguided because he's not a liberal. We all know is the truth because the press tells us so. A smart liberal like you should be able to do it in half the time. So what's your excuse?
-- Greg
PS. good luck to all you 2's and your slashdot posts.
75% of the price of gasoline in Briton is taxes! Most EU nations charge similar taxes on it. I think the price is around $5.50 a gallon (give or take a little on the conversion). No wonder farmers and truckers are up in arms!
Politicians can go around and blame big-business / big-oil all day for high prices, but when the government extracts 75% of the money from each gallon of gasoline sold.. thats outragous!
I hope the truckers/farmers stay strong and get people to realize just what theives there are in their government.
Ah well, I suppose they need that much money to support their bloated goverment programs like 'socialized medicine'. If you think HMO's are bad, imagine your healthcare system run by the same folks at the DMV.
A businesses' goals are simple and will never change. Maximize owner's return on investment by working within the established system.
If the established system (i.e. Government) has abusive IP regulations, a legal system that can be used to bash opponents, databases that can be purchased for customer lists, and easily influenced politicians then of course a business is going to take advantage of these things. If the government can be used as a tool to bloody your competition then businesses are going to use it.
The problem is not corporations, and likewise abolishing corporations is not a solution. The solution is to turn government around so that it doesn't feel the need to have it's thumb in everyone's pie. Our government feels the need to regulate and controll _everything_ and the result is that businesses control everything through the proxy of campaign donations.
Both of the big abuses that have affected the slashdot community are IP (intelectual property) related. The government has for years increased regulation on IP, increasing the years that it's holdable, increasing the controls on how it's sold to consumers (licensed, haha), and now increasing the regulation of how end-users can use that property. It wasn't SONY who passd DMCA, it wasn't Disney. It was the congress, who felt the need to have more control over your lives by regulating what you do with your property. Government thinks they know better than you what you should do with your life.
The only solution is to get government back to providing for the national defense and enforcing minimalist sensable laws (murder, rape, theft, etc..).
Great a friggin trailer, in goddamn windows media format. Thats soooooo useful.
I'd venture to bet that the majority of slashdot readers either 1) run an operating system that doesn't do windows media, or 2) are too damn stupid to but wish they could.
Slashdot Mirror
Two words...
cut.paste.
Any 'timebombed' message will be vulnerable to this attack, as much to the chagrin of RIAA and MPAA any digital data is perfectly reproducable in any state/format the original exists in and can be copied an unlimited number of times. If it's in a format where it can be read then it can be copied.
I don't understand how 'delete' helps either; the other 4 or so people a message goes out to may choose to save the message and therefore it's still available as evidence. Some people save email forever. Some of these out of UI ineptitude, and some like me archive and compress it for CYA.
-- Greg
There is no such force in space
In a word, gravity.
Yes, it's the force the water applies to the keel, counteracting the sideways force of the wind which allows a sailboat to sail upwind. FYI sailing on water the vessel moves forward by using the wind to generate lift (like an airplane's wings) to pull it forward, whereas space sailing movement is generated by action/reaction (like a rocket motor) so they are two completely different methods.
The 'keel' a solar sail uses to get closer to the sun is the sun's gravity itself. As the solar sail changes it's speed by reflecting particles in the direction it's traveling and causing an opposite reaction away from that direction (i.e. slowing itself) the lower orbital speed makes it fall towards the sun.
The best way to explain it may not be by words; so try the solar sail simulator java applet and see for yourself.
A conventional solar sail will sail 'to windward' like a Farr 40, whereas a magnetospheric sail sails to windward like a Morgan OutIsland.
-- Greg (S/V Scirocco)
PS: In the future please double-check that you are 'right' before calling someone else 'wrong'.
I've seen several questions about how to 'tack' back into the solar wind to get back to earth. With a conventional solar sail its pretty straight forward.
A conventional solar sail works by reflecting particles/light/etc and simple action/reaction. to go out to mars for example it is angled in a way to reflect particles away from itself to increase it's orbital speed; faster orbital speed puts the vessel in a higher orbit in the solar system. Coming back simply means angling the sail the other way so that the reflected particles slow the orbital speed untill the orbit lowers back to earth.
My understanding with a magnetosSPHERE sail is that it cannot by it's nature 'tack' back into a lower orbit as it is sphere shaped; It acts much like a parachute rather than a flat sail.
To tack such a vessel back you either have to figure out a way to 'flatten' the magnetic sphere into more of a disk shape that can act as a conventional flat sail. The other alternative is to use a planet's gravity to 'slingshot' you back the way you came.
You could probably 'flatten' a magnetic sail by using a large torsional (donut-shaped) ring to create the magnetic field. Older magnetic sail designs I have seen used a superconducting cable in a loop which naturally repelled itself and created such a shape but these early designs did not incorporate the 'plasma boosting' the new design displays.
-- Greg
I suppose it's my job to point this out. The head of the KGB was elected president of Russia.
At least he isn't claiming he invented it.
-- Greg
Redhat is proud to announce the availability of Redhat 7.0, dubbed the 'Firestone ATX' release.
Lets see. shipping non-stable beta libc and gcc that won't even compile the kernel (or much else).
I agree with bug ID 18033; recalling redhat 7.0 might be a good idea although I suppose it's late for that. I hope redhat can make this mistake up to its customers; up untill now I've been satisfied with their products.
-- Greg
Read your own site much? the playstation delays were announced two days ago, then we've got two stories within two hours of each other here. Perhaps you people paid good money to run this site should read the site before going off to approve stories.
-- Greg
Well at least this playstation will meet it's delivery date.
-- Greg
It is certainly not the last days of politics!
As long as a government has the ability to weild more force than the governed then politics is important. Regardless of if you chose to participate in government or not the policies of that government have immediate and permanent effect on you.
Those politicians make determinations on how much (more) of your money they will take from you and for which actions they may imprison or execute you.
Given that the government has become a major part of the population, and is certainly much better armed than the general population (and increasing the disparity through 'gun violence' and 'war on drugs' paranoia) it's a long way off before anyone can just offhand decide to ignore laws or taxes they decide are unjust. Ruby Ridge and Waco being a few key examples.
So you damn well better take part in the political process.
-- Greg
I think 'cunt' is only the most offensive among the female population. I'm guessing because to many of them became proud of the other derogatory term 'bitch'. Those who could be defined as 'cunt's have no sense of humor either. Like that time I sent the ticking clock to the abortion clinic; they just didn't get the humor in it. Ah well. *thats a joke, laugh!*
There are for most segments of the population a word which is the most offensive for that group. 'cunt' being for females, whereas blacks are none to fond of hearing the word 'nigger' out of the mouth of a white person. I haven't figured out the word that most offends white males to a degree that they 'gasp' in a state of shock like those other words cause. *shrug*
-- Greg
Santa Clara county is full of parks. Between the county and state run parks Santa Clara and San Mateo counties both have alot of open space. I work in Santa Clara (city) and co-workers often go mountainbiking at Alviso. My S.O. does the same in Palo Alto at a park behind Stanford. I'd say I've got 10 parks within 20 minutes driving time. Of course depending on where your job was located your milage may vary.
OTOH; There are many things here that detract from quality of life. Stupid people abound, but I think its like that anywhere. Going any sort of distance after work is frustrating due to traffic. Housing prices are high but then again the salaries here are also porportionally higher.
Of course the ideal would be to make silicon valley wages with a T1 uplink in the bahamas; now that would be quality of life!
-- Greg
There is a ton to do! I've lived here three years and I'm still not bored.
SF Bay is a great place for sailing (one of the best in the world) and on an IT salary a good ~22 foot sailboat is very affordable. There are lots of parks to see if you like outdoors, hiking, camping, etc.
If you are more into urban nightlife SF has more to do then alot of big cities. Oakland has lots of warehouse raves if thats your thing. Even San Jose has enough clubs and bars to keep most people satisfied.
You can do the touristy stuff; you can drive a few hours and go skiing or surfing; theres more deep-geek stuff to do than you can shake a stick at. The first step is to leave the house.
As far as housing/commuting goes; yeah housing is expensive. the trick is to get some friends together and rent a house. Much better (even cheaper given the room) then getting an apartment. Get a house near where you work and your commute will be much easier (and work off hours). Dono what to tell you about finding girls, but there are plenty if you look.
-- Greg
Yes, we all rather have our hospitals run like the DMV. "I don't care if you have a punctured lung and are drowning in your own blood. If you don't have an appointment you have to wait at the end of the line".
Right now you have choices. You can either be part of any number of health insurance plans and abide by their policies or you can go without insurance and therefore have the option to seek whichever treatment you would like and can afford. If you socialized medicine you have no choice but to have (and pay for through taxes) the one and only state-run healthcare system. If the government decides it's not cost efficient to treat desease XYZ and you happen to have desease XYZ too bad so sad.
-- Greg
Cultivating secondary skills is a good piece of advice. I suspect that for alot of people, just like me, this IT thing _was_ a secondary skill. I joined the army outa highschool and fixed trucks for four years and got into this IT thing after leaving the army. I see/know alot of english/ business/ physics majors who did IT once they left university; I suspect alot of IT people jumped into IT because there was a good opprotunity and can easily jump out when the market slows down.
Now.. My esteemed advice: The IT sector is very hot right now, and may perhaps cool off. But while it's hot you've got a tremendous opprotunity to make youself fiscally independent. Do you really need that new BMW or super-widescreen HDTV? Save up a wad of cash and pay off all your debt while you are making all this moola, and when/if the IT sector dries up you'll have a nice cushion of cash and no payments to worry about while you figure out what to do next.
-- Greg
Lets see...
Obvously you have a computer that she can use; Or she can pick up an old first-generation pentium very cheaply or buy a new computer on credit..
Linux is free and comes with support for almost every language possible..
I think 40 hours is pretty standard for a work week (low even in the tech industry); why exactly is there no time? Chances are she has two full days a week to learn along with five evenings after work.
What's holding her back?
Most tech businesses are so starved for talent that they'll pay contractors outragous hourly fees or spend lots of time and money to import labor on H1B visas. They would welcome anyone in who were self-taught themselves would work at a discounted salary on the assumtion that she'd learn-while-she-worked. The concept that she would not be hired in the tech industry soley on the premis that she's a girl is a lie.
Of course the heart of the problem is that you feel that someone should just train her to be a developer and at the same time pay her while she's training and not doing any work. Think of how much your girlfriend spends on eating out, or on clothes, or on a car payment. If she really gave a damn about her lowly station in life she'd be spending that money on books or education to improve it.
This whole thing reminds me of the scene in fight club with the convenence store clerk. The sad truth is that most people need a kick in the ass or a gun down their throats to actually persue their goals rather than float through life wishing they had done better and cursing society for not providing them with a fat inheritance or lottery winnings and making up excuses like "society holds me back so I'm glad I never even tried".
I think you should dump her, from what you've said she sounds like a real loser.
-- Greg
I also find it hard to believe that anybody is born with a personality, much less a M-B result.
... You aren't born with your gender, you discover it after everyone spends time treating you like a [boy/girl]
Gender is mostly a societal construct
Good grief!
Here's a simple example to prove you dead wrong as to the affects of biological gender and it's affects on personality. Examine any member of the animal kingdom which are abandoned by their parents at or before birth (reptiles, fish, etc..). Do the males behave differently then the females? Of course they do. They behave differently regardless of nurture (as they had no nurturing!). Assuming you give some weight to the theory of evolution or can at least recognize the basic similarities of us to those animals (two genders, DNA) then you've gotta admit that gender does affect personality.
while society is great at screwing us all up, it's certainly unfair to women
Nothing in this society (the US) is preventing any woman from getting into computers. See my other post 'anti-girl riot police'.
-- Greg
Yes it's the mythical 'them' keeping your girlfriend down. Standing in front of every community colledge CS program and computer book store with tazers to zap any female who dare attempt to enter.
Perhaps Al Gore will create a government program with a billion dollar budget to get your girlfriend off her ass to get a computer education.
</sarcasm>
People's problems do not come from society. There is no law preventing your girlfriend from becoming a programmer. It is only herself standing in the way of that goal (which I suspect she has no true interest in persuing). Every person out there on a minimum wage effort either has the ability to get more education (public libraries are still free) or have made their own choices in life that hold them back (i.e. having 4 kids before turning 20). One's station in life is much more due to the choices one made then to anything society has done.
This covers the touted income/pay 'gender gap'. Individuals make choices as to what jobs they wish to persue; some people like crunching numbers and staring at facts and figures all day and some don't. Its possible for very real genetic and biological differences (a 3 year old can tell you there's differences between boys and girls!) that more members of one sex would like doing this than members of the other sex. This is probably the reason more males get into business/ investing/ technology; and that is where the big money is, hence the 'gender gap'. No quota or government program is going to make someone who wants to be a teacher enjoy being a portfolio manager.
I _like_ what I do, computer networking. I certainly would not want someone to determine there are not enough male nurses and tell me that now I have to stop doing networking and go take care of sick folks.
Creating programs/quotas to 'encourage' more of one subset of people to do something they may not have a desire to do just removes choices rather than fix problems.
-- Greg
It soulds as if shipping no matter what is going to be as much as the parts themselves. List them as being worth $0.01 and send it and hope for the best. Don't bother insuring it.
-- Greg
Tobacco isn't the issue ... tobacco ain't the worst of them
Please provide an example; and I'll probably be able to show you that this example is a direct result of either government not enforcing common law (i.e. you can't go out and shoot someone dead) or a result of government intervention/regulation providing an unfair advantage that the corporation is simply making use of.
the sheep with the shepard lives a longer, richer, fuller, and easier life
Really?
So you would tell me that sheep would be much better off if they were caged up, herded from place to place, and dominated by a master that controls every aspect of their lives (including when it ends) then to have their own free will and personal liberty with the risk of being eaten for not being fast or smart enough to escape predators?
You feel the same way about people? That they should be caged and led from place to place, allowed no personal liberty of their own; that the state should be a good shepard and tell them what they must do when they must do it and with whom it must be done? That humans would be better off as state-controlled 'for their own good'. And for those who don't accept this? Off to siberia?
Don't deny it; thats what you just said. That is exactly what you said; that to be dominated is better than personal risk. If you don't believe this is true then perhaps you should re-think your political views, because thats exactly where they lead.
the right to operate a car or SUV upwind of my property simply overrides my right to breath.
Places where there's a low density of people this is not a problem. Where there is a high density of people of course air quality is going to be a problem (i.e in cities). Regardless of if its cars, or rubbish, or animal waste or wood fires (progressing back through the ages) the higher the people densities the poorer the air quality. You have the option to move somewhere else. After all the city was there before you were; who are you to want to move in and then start telling your neighbors how to live??
I'll suspect when you went house/apartment hunting you saw cars parked out on the streets and in the driveways, if you don't like the smell of cars you should have chosen to live somewhere where they were not so prevalent instead of moving in and then working to abolish them.
-- Greg
The average worker who didn't have investors build factories or offices for him/her to work in made $0/Hr, FYI.
By your calculations, the worker got 55%. The corporate taxrate, BTW, is 36%. This leaves the investors a scant 9% return on their investment, which they may have lost completely if the factory burnt down for instance.
So, for every dollar the investor got the workers got five times more in the form of created jobs and payroll, and the government got three times more in taxes.
The people who did no work, but risked something (the investors) got 9%. The people who did no work and risked nothing (the government) got 36%. It should also be noted that the people who worked did not risk anything! They do not have to return their paychecks or lose their houses if the business fails; but the investor is out whatever money he put into the effort!
Theres an interesting bit of math for you.
In Nazi Germany what was done for the strength of the community was to make Zyclon gas and 2 x 2 x 7 foot ovens to eliminate an unwanted portion of the poluation.
The point being made was that what you consider 'working for the well-being of the community' may not be what someone else may consider it to be.
-- Greg
How many of the plantifs in the tobbaco lawsuit did not know that smoking caused cancer, and cancer can kill you? Either they knew when they started and started anyway or (for the really old ones) learned about it but decided to continue to smoke. Regardless of how 'addictive' smoking is they had it within their power to quit. It was their conciense choice to continue using a product that endangered their lives with full knowledge of the conequences.
.. lives' is taking away my right to it. We already do this with the 'war on drugs', and alcholhol prohabition before it.
Eating fast food may someday clog my arteries and through a heart attack kill me. Driving a car that may someday propel me into a solid object at high speeds and kill me. Drinking coffee, if I overdo it can cause heart palpitations and kill me. These are all risks I accept because they are either a needed or wanted part of my life. If I'm in a hostpital bed at 60-something getting triple bypass surgery I'm not going to be angry at McDonalds for doing this to me, it was my decision.
Now how about this.. What if I decide and accept the fact that smoking might kill me but I decide I want to do it anyway cause it imparts just that much joy in my life. Should I be prohibited from aquiring that product? But outlawing that product and corporations that produce it because it might 'destroy
Everyone has the choice to make an educated purchase of a product from a business. If you aren't educated it's your job to get educated before making that buy.
For those of you who believe that it's government job to protect you from yourselves I rue the day when you get just that and realize what sort of totalitarian regulated life you've brought apon yourselves.
You want a shepard to protect you from the wolves but don't you realize that shepard will slaughter you for meat when it's in his best interests?
-- Greg
Here's your five options.
1. Be a victim of the system
2. Whine and do nothing ( see point 1 )
3. Try to change the system
4. Ignore the system ( break the law )
5. Use the system to your advantage
I for one am going to 5 (by owning stock of companies who work the system to their advantage) while using my vote to help 3 (by voting libertarian, and removing the big government billyclub corporations use to beat consumers and competitors with).
If you are all so damn mad that rich people can go out and make policy then here's a novel idea.. become a rich person. Then you can pay politicians to make all the tree-huggin slacker-subsidizing citizen-babysitting laws you'd ever want! It's not that hard. If Warren Buffet can start out with a hundred bucks and become a billionare then why can't you? Gee he's probably a conservative too, which means he's dumb and misguided because he's not a liberal. We all know is the truth because the press tells us so. A smart liberal like you should be able to do it in half the time. So what's your excuse?
-- Greg
PS. good luck to all you 2's and your slashdot posts.
Anyone wonder why fuel is so expensive in europe?
75% of the price of gasoline in Briton is taxes! Most EU nations charge similar taxes on it. I think the price is around $5.50 a gallon (give or take a little on the conversion). No wonder farmers and truckers are up in arms!
Politicians can go around and blame big-business / big-oil all day for high prices, but when the government extracts 75% of the money from each gallon of gasoline sold.. thats outragous!
I hope the truckers/farmers stay strong and get people to realize just what theives there are in their government.
Ah well, I suppose they need that much money to support their bloated goverment programs like 'socialized medicine'. If you think HMO's are bad, imagine your healthcare system run by the same folks at the DMV.
A businesses' goals are simple and will never change. Maximize owner's return on investment by working within the established system.
If the established system (i.e. Government) has abusive IP regulations, a legal system that can be used to bash opponents, databases that can be purchased for customer lists, and easily influenced politicians then of course a business is going to take advantage of these things. If the government can be used as a tool to bloody your competition then businesses are going to use it.
The problem is not corporations, and likewise abolishing corporations is not a solution. The solution is to turn government around so that it doesn't feel the need to have it's thumb in everyone's pie. Our government feels the need to regulate and controll _everything_ and the result is that businesses control everything through the proxy of campaign donations.
Both of the big abuses that have affected the slashdot community are IP (intelectual property) related. The government has for years increased regulation on IP, increasing the years that it's holdable, increasing the controls on how it's sold to consumers (licensed, haha), and now increasing the regulation of how end-users can use that property. It wasn't SONY who passd DMCA, it wasn't Disney. It was the congress, who felt the need to have more control over your lives by regulating what you do with your property. Government thinks they know better than you what you should do with your life.
The only solution is to get government back to providing for the national defense and enforcing minimalist sensable laws (murder, rape, theft, etc..).
-- Greg
Great a friggin trailer, in goddamn windows media format. Thats soooooo useful.
I'd venture to bet that the majority of slashdot readers either 1) run an operating system that doesn't do windows media, or 2) are too damn stupid to but wish they could.
-- Greg